BV 4241 .M3
McKeehan, Hobart Dietrich,
1897-
Great modern sermons
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2019 with funding from
Princeton Theological Seminary Library
https://archive.org/details/greatmodernsermoOOmcke
Great Modern Sermons
>
Great Modern Sermons
EDITED BY
HOBART D. McKEEHAN, S. T. M.
Pastor t St. Paul's Reformed Church , Dallastown , Pennsylvania
New York Chicago
FI eming H. Revel] Company
* London and Edinburgh
Copyright, 1923, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
London: 2! Paternoster Square
Edinburgh : 75 Princes Street
Preface
A SELECTION of really great sermons,
like an anthology of poetry, is a treasure-
store of sentiment and thought. Both the
lay reader and the student of homiletics may profit
by the reading. Here are perfect models open to
analysis and review, and the reader may glance
before and after in the pursuit of the author’s
thoughts . and inspirations. These models repre¬
sent not the great sermons of yesterday, but of
to-day.
No such volume of representative character has
thus far appeared, though there are numerous col¬
lections of sermons of the decades past. One must
keep up with the changing trend of style in rhetoric
and composition. For example, the sermons of
the past depended on form and technical com¬
position, whereas the sermon of to-day tends to¬
ward directness and simplicity as the route to
power. We have in this volume made the humble
venture to collect what is representative of the
best in modern homiletics, as opposed to the
formal, well-divided, and sometimes laborious
classic of the older school.
Although the editor has exercised his own judg¬
ment in the selection of preachers who have made
5
6
PREFACE
their contributions, he has, in most instances, per¬
mitted each contributor to choose the sermon repre¬
sentative of his best pulpit efforts. In several
cases a number of manuscripts were submitted by
contributors and the choice lay entirely with the
editor.
No two editors would probably agree as to the
list of the ten or twelve supreme preachers of this
generation. But to produce the selection a decision
had to be made. The basis of choice has been laid
upon the consensus of opinion, the verdict of
scholars, and of a world that loves inspired preach¬
ing. No formal rhetoric or other rule of homiletic
art will have half as much force as the power of
example, of good models. These splendid creations
of our modern preachers are not intended to dazzle
or to be slavishly imitated or to submerge one’s
individuality. They are meant rather to create new
thought and fresh devotion to the ministry, and to
stimulate to a higher order of effort. The com¬
piler will be well rewarded if this object is ful¬
filled, even in small degree.
Regret is recorded that Dr. William Lonsdale
Watkinson, the greatest surviving preacher of the
Victorian era, owing to advanced age and illness,
has been unable to prepare and submit the manu¬
script of sermon which we intended to include in
this volume. Thanks are due my esteemed friend,
Rev. S. Parkes Cadman, D. D., who consulted Dr.
Watkinson personally, and reported his inability to
PEEFACE
7
make a contribution. Dr. Watkinson’s sermons
offer almost incomparable models, and we can do
no better than commend to the reader his latest
volume, “ The Shepherd of the Sea ” (Revell).
Hobart Deitrich McKeehan.
Dallastown, Pa.
/
Contents
I. Religious Revivals . . . .II
(. Romans 8 : 1 4.)
Rev. E. W. Barnes, M. A., F. R. A. S.
II. The Faith that Counts . . .23
(John 9: 35 •)
Rev. David James Burrell, D.D., LL. D.
III. Faith’s Coronation 35
( I Timothy 1 :y.)
Rev. S. Parkes Cadman, D.D., S.T.D.
IV. Procrastination . 49
(Acts 24 : 25.)
Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, D.D.
V. The World Under the Aspect of
Tragedy . 69
(Lamentations y ; 22 .)
Rev. George Angier Gordon, D,D.
VI. What If Christ Were Not? . . 81
(John 6 : 67 y 68.)
Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, D.D., LL.D.
VII. The Weapon of Purity 97
(Psalm 42 : I.)
Rev. John A. Hutton, D.D.
VIII. Willing and Knowing
(John 7 : 17.)
Rev* W. R. Inge, D.D., C.V.O.
9
1 1 1
10
CONTENTS
IX. The Spirit of Christ . . . .131
(. Romans 8 : <?.)
Rev. Charles E. Jefferson, D.D.
X. The Cross — The Measure of the
World . 147
{Rev. 21 : 15. I Cor. i : 23, 24.)
Rev. John Kelman, D.D.
XI. Life After Death . . . 165
( Luke 24 ;j >0, 31.)
Rev. J. Fort Newton, D.D., Litt. D.
XII. Reciprocal Faith . 179
{John 2 : 23 , 24.)
Rev. F. W. Norwood, D.D.
XIII. Christ's Man . 193
{Romans 8 ; 9.)
Rev. Frederick F. Shannon, D.D.
I
RELIGIOUS REVIVALS
By
ERNEST WILLIAM BARNES, M. A., F. R. A. S.,
Canon of Westminster
i
Ernest William Barnes was born April i, 1874.
He received his education at King Edward’s School,
Birmingham, and Trinity College, Cambridge. In
1902 he was ordained as an Anglican clergyman. He
was Select Preacher to Cambridge in 1906 and Ox¬
ford 1914-1916 and has been Canon of Westminster
since 1918. Canon Barnes is a famous scientist and
has become a no less famous preacher. The distinc¬
tive quality of his mind is an invaluable asset not
simply to the Church of England, but to all Prot¬
estantism.
I
RELIGIOUS REVIVALS1
“As many as are led by the Spirit of God , these
are sons of God” — Romans 8: 14.
LL religious people ought to be glad when
others feel themselves called to serve and
worship God. Yet many among us re¬
gard the sudden appearance of religious enthusiasm
with critical coldness or open hostility. Such
Christians instinctively show the temper of men of
the world who have no active religious faith. The
worldly are almost invariably contemptuous of, or
angered by, great religious movements; they con¬
demn revivals, as we now commonly term them.
Only when a spiritual movement has established
itself, when its beneficial character is too plain to
be doubted, does it receive from the world at first
a grudging, and then a respectful recognition.
At the present time, alike in East Anglia and in
Northeast Scotland, there have been notable signs
of a religious awakening among some sections of
our people. In Southern India and in Central
Africa an enthusiasm for Christianity has recently
shown itself, so extensive that the missionary so-
1 Delivered in Westminster Abbey and published also in
The Church Family Newspaper.
14
RELIGIOUS REVIVALS
cieties have found their resources insufficient for
the suddenly-developed need. Our newspapers, for
the most part, either ignore these movements or
are sceptical that any permanent good will result
from them. What ought our attitude to be? This
afternoon we may well meditate upon this impor¬
tant subject, and remind ourselves of the nature
and consequence of some similar movements in the
past.
William Booth’s Efforts
Some of us are old enough to remember the days
when William Booth began his effective public
ministry, and the Salvation Army spread through¬
out England. His methods were decried for their
vulgarity. Street-corner preaching was derided.
The so-called Skeleton Army was organized to'
break up his meetings. At times the police took
action for obstruction against his officers; but,
when in the north of England a magistrate stepped
from the Bench to take a place in the dock by the
side of a woman in a Salvation Army bonnet, the
end of official interference was rapid. And Wil¬
liam Booth lived to receive an honorary degree
from the University of Oxford.
Very similar was the experience of Wesley and
Whitefield, the pioneers and leaders of the great
Evangelical Movement of the eighteenth century.
Whitefield was a man of the people, with a superb
gift for popular open-air preaching. Wesley was
E. W. BARNES
15
an Oxford scholar of good family, at first reluctant
to do anything so unusual as preaching in field or
market-place. When he took the plunge, he found
his life’s work. Both men at first had to endure
persecution, kicks, blows and missiles from the
half-savage, wholly pagan rabble of the time.
Men of position, even some of the clergy, en¬
couraged or condoned such violence. Enthusiasm
was a word of contempt. In 1768 six under¬
graduates were brought by their tutor before the
Vice-Chancellor of Oxford on the charge that they
were “ enthusiasts who talked of regeneration, in¬
spiration, and drawing nigh to God.” On this
charge they were expelled from the University.
In the end, of course, spiritual enthusiasm justified
both itself and the men whose lives it enriched.
Wesley, after an incredibly active open-air ministry
of fifty-two years, died in 1791, respected and
honoured by good men throughout England. From
the fire which he kindled came the greater part of
the spiritual energy which regenerated both our
Church and Non-conformity at the close of the
eighteenth century. Probably few in his own life¬
time thought of him as a political force ; he was a
prophet called by God to preach the Gospel with
power and great glory. But modern historians,
asking why this country was preserved from the
horrors of the French Revolution, find in Wesley
and his fellow Evangelists the reason. He en¬
listed in the service of Christ many who would
16
RELIGIOUS REVIVALS
otherwise have been wild and impetuous reform¬
ers. Through him the spirit of peace and right¬
eousness became strong in the land. Though our
people suffered and endured much that was evil,
W esley had taught them that, by brotherhood and
not by violence, men build the Kingdom of God.
The Eighteenth Century
The great Evangelical Movement of the eight¬
eenth century is especially interesting as showing
how rapidly and how far spiritual earnestness can
travel. A religious awakening in South Germany
led to the foreign missionary work of the Moravian
brotherhood. Both here and in America its influ¬
ence was felt, and in particular, by John Wesley.
Wesley’s early mission to Georgia failed; but
Methodist success in Western England led to sim¬
ilar success in America. Later the stream of in¬
spiration flowed back to England, and so fired
William Carey and his friends of the Northampton
Association that they started to preach the Gospel
in India. In all this wonderful development there
was a unity. We seem to see many movements in
different lands. In reality the same Spirit was
dominant in all; the same purpose and the same
power, in Anglican, Methodist, Baptist and Mora¬
vian, showed that all were fundamentally one in
Christ Jesus.
In the light of such facts of history, we may
well inquire why it is that religious revivals, when
E. W. BARNES
17
they begin, should be so disliked alike by the
worldly and the placidly religious. Why are they
commonly viewed with prejudice, and their leaders
often reviled? The early Christians, products of
the greatest religious movement in the history of
mankind, were accused of atheism and foul vices.
For a century after St. Paul’s death the educated
of the ancient world almost invariably excluded
from their writings any mention of the new and
despicable superstition. Now, several reasons
combine to create this attitude. There is distrust
of the unknown. An outburst of religious zeal is
inexplicable; and the presence of the Spirit of God
is disturbing. Those in whom it comes to dwell
see the world in new light, and comfortable
hypocrisies wither under its glare. Then, too, all
strong emotion is unpleasant to an onlooker; the
behaviour of those to whom the revelation of God
comes suddenly is that of men at a crisis, tears
and intimate speech, penitence and joy. When tears
made white marks down the cheeks of the colliers
to whom Whitefield preached, respectable people
were repelled. It was to them as if some obscure
contagion had broken out. We may admit that
such a view is not wholly wrong. As the Dean of
St. Paul’s has well said, “ Religion is caught,
not taught.” In a spiritually healthy society we
may catch it unawares, and grow, as it were nat¬
urally, to feel the presence of God, His Spirit
guiding and aiding us. But, when the Spirit
18
RELIGIOUS REYIYALS
comes among masses of men to whom religion has
meant nothing, it may come with explosive force.
Organized society fears explosions; they may be
dangerous. Further, as we examine the causes of
dislike of religious enthusiasm, let us admit that
sometimes the fire burns out quickly; no lasting
good results. The parable of the sower shows
that Jesus was well aware of this disappointing
end. Sometimes reaction makes the whole process
not merely barren but harmful. To the house
swept and garnished come seven devils worse than
the first. Then, too, there are always persons
ready to exploit a religious movement for base per¬
sonal advantage. The greater religious leaders
have been strong to protect their organizations
from self-seeking adventurers. St. Paul, Wesley,
Booth were all, for this reason, somewhat auto¬
cratic in their rule.
— " Justified By Their Fruits
Yet, when all that is to their discredit is ad¬
mitted, the great uprushes of the Spirit are justi¬
fied by their fruits. They bring into the presence
of God men who have never been there before.
In the words of the Psalmist they create clean
hearts ; they renew a right spirit in human society.
Critics who say that the theology of revivalism is
crude are in danger of forgetting that an impec¬
cable theology may be joined to singularly barren
forms of organized religion. Churches grow
E. W. BARNES
19
sterile unless quickened by just those spiritual
movements which at first their members are apt to
regard with disfavour. Often a movement, when
organized into a Church, loses its power as the
original impetus becomes a dying tradition. Noth¬
ing is more pathetic than the sight of a great re¬
ligious movement become threadbare. Phrases
and formulae survive. Once they meant much.
They were the battle-cries of spiritual welfare, the
best expression men could give of the enthusiasm
which transformed their lives. They were in some
ways like paper money, of merely symbolic value;
but behind them was the gold of spiritual reality,
and so they satisfied human needs. Yet there
comes a time in the history of every religious move¬
ment when the spirit which made it passes away.
So it was with Pharisaism, the finest religious de¬
velopment of post-exilic Judaism. The salt lost
its savour. Insensibly a passion for truth and
righteousness became a tradition of casuistry and
formalism. Needless to say, men are not redeemed
by defensive verbal ingenuity or by self-regarding
schemes of conduct. Yet he who would break
tradition to renew the power of the Spirit of God
seems to upholders of tradition a dangerous man.
The faith is imperilled, its unity destroyed, thought
the Pharisees, by a Teacher who would play fast
and loose with laws ascribed to Moses. None but
a man careless of economic security or national
honour would denounce the rich and preach
20
RELIGIOUS REVIVALS
“ Resist no evil.” So the professional exponents
of the laws of Moses ranged themselves against
Him Who came, not to destroy, but to fulfill that
law. The righteous and the worldly alike en¬
couraged the mob to cry “ Crucify Him.”
To Serve God is to Follow Jesus
Religious people need always to be on their
guard lest they range themselves with tradition
against the Spirit of God. Let us allow that not
every enthusiasm which stirs men is divine. But
when religious enthusiasm leads to a passion for
justice and righteousness, for truth and love, there
is in it the true Spirit of Christ. In the Hebrew
prophets His Spirit appeared. His was the mes¬
sage, “ I will have mercy, and not sacrifice,”
whereby the prophets set personal purity and social
service above formal worship. In modern times
the presence of the Spirit of Christ is similarly the
test of true religious understanding. It is not an
accident that those religious revivals which have
been supremely fruitful have led me to Jesus, to
find in Him the Lord and Saviour of mankind.
For to serve God, to be true to the best that we
can picture, is to follow Jesus, to make Him an
example and pattern. And we cannot be loyal to
Jesus without painful effort, inward conflict, re¬
nunciation, suffering. So men who are converted
always make the Cross central in their outlook on
human life. On the Cross Jesus showed that the
E. W. BARNES
21
Son of God had to give up all to do His Father’s
will. There His love for mankind was seen in
service sealed by death. There in loneliness and
misery He passed to the New Life which, through
Him, all may win. The man who would save his
life shall lose it, but he who will give it up that
the Kingdom of Christ may come shall keep it
unto life eternal. Such is the final answer to the
question, “Is religion worth while?” “How
shall we balance gain and loss?” The same
answer is put in other words in Isaac Watts’
familiar lines:
“ When I survey the wondrous Cross,
Where the young Prince of Glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.”
What We Need
If these lines do not ring true in our ears, if
their beauty seems faded or their sentiment ex¬
aggerated, we have forgotten the rock on which
Christ’s Church is built. Many there are amongst
us to whom the Gospel and the Cross mean little.
The war has quenched the Spirit. It has done
much to barbarize thought. New cults are flourish¬
ing which are travesties of religion; for they
neither emphasize that the God Who made us for
Himself is righteousness and love, nor do they
point to One Who, by the perfection of His service,
explained the puzzle of human life. We need a
22
KELIGI0U3 KEVIVALS
wave of spiritual understanding to flow over the
land, a revival in which men shall see through
Jesus why they exist and what they ought to do
and be. Here we are, in a Universe of incom¬
prehensible vastness, shut in by the unknown on
every side, mere dust and water, for an absurdly
brief time alive. Dreams and fears and hopes,
appetites and aspirations — and then quickly the
end. What is man? What is the meaning of his
life, its value in the whole scheme of things?
There is, I am convinced, no explanation of it all,
save in that revelation of God which came through
the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is why, when, in
a revival of religion, men are converted and find
Christ, their wanderings cease and their true
pilgrimage begins. “ As many as are led by the
Spirit of God, these are sons of God.”
II
THE FAITH THAT COUNTS
By
DAVID JAMES BURRELL, D. D., LL. D.,
Fast or of Marble Collegiate (Reformed) Church ,
New York
David James Burrell was born at Mount Pleasant,
Pa., August i, 1844. He received his education at
Yale University and at Union Theological Seminary,
New York City; ordained Presbyterian ministry,
1872; missionary, Chicago, 1872-1876; Pastor Sec¬
ond Church, Dubuque, la., 1876-1887; Westminster
Church, Minneapolis, 1887-1891. Since 1891, Dr.
Burrell has been pastor of the historic Marble Col¬
legiate Reformed Church on Fifth Avenue, New
York City. Dr. Burrell represents both a great
preacher and an uncommon pastor. For more than
thirty years, his pulpit has been his throne, while his
influence has spread all over America. Dr. Burrell
is the author of more than forty different books, to¬
gether with many tracts and sermons.
Among Dr. Burrell’s many volumes may be men¬
tioned: The Laughter of God, Why I Believe the
Bible, The Sermon: Its Construction and Delivery,
The Religion of the Future, The Spirit of the Age,
The Lure of the City, Christ and Progress, The
Wondrous Cross and The Evolution of a Christian.
II
THE FAITH THAT COUNTS
“ Dost thou believe on the Son of God t ”
—John 9:35.
A BLIND man sits by the Temple gate with
his hand stretched out for alms. A
group of men approach, who seem to be
disputing about the doctrine of Original Sin. The
blind beggar furnished an illustration in point.
“ Master, who did sin,” they ask, “ this man or his
parents, that he was born blind? ” — “ Neither,” He
answers, “ so far as we are concerned just now.
The question is, What shall be done about it ? As
for me, I must work the works of Him that hath
sent me, while it is day.” Thereupon He anoints
the beggar’s eyes with clay and bids him, “ Go
wash in the pool of Siloam.” The man gropes his
way to the pool near by, while Jesus and His dis¬
ciples pass on to Solomon’s Porch, His usual
preaching station, where the people gather about
Him.
The beggar, having recovered his sight, returns
to his customary place by the gate, where he is
naturally the observed of all observers. Some are
asking, “Is not this the blind beggar?” Others
25
26
THE FAITH THAT COUNTS
say, “ It is impossible ; look at his eyes ! ” The
man settles the question by affirming, “ I am he.”
They ask how his eyes were opened. — “ A man that
is called Jesus anointed mine eyes with clay and
bade me wash in Siloam; and I went and washed
and received my sight.” — “ Where is this man? ” —
“I know not; I wish I did, that I might thank
him.”
They lead the beggar to the Pharisees in the
Temple, who proceed to catechize him: “ Art thou
the blind man who sat by the gate? ” — “ I am.” —
“ How didst thou receive thy sight?” — “A man
that is called Jesus bade me wash in Siloam,
which I did and came seeing.” — “ When did this
occur?” — ‘‘This morning/’ — At this there is a
lifting of their eyebrows; “Aha, this Jesus is a
sinner. He has been breaking the Sabbath ! What
sayest thou of him?” — “I say he must be a
prophet ; ” that is, a holy man.
At this point the parents of the man are called
and questioned: “ Is this your son who was bom
blind? “ It is.”— “ How then doth he see? ”—
“ We know that this is our son and that he was
born blind, but by what means he doth now see we
know not, or who hath opened his eyes we know
not. He is of age; ask him.” They evidently
scent danger and prudently avoid it.
The fact of the beggar’s cure being now beyond
question, the inquisitors turn again to him, saying,
“ Give God the praise. As for this Jesus, he is a
DAVID JAMES BURRELL
27
sinner; thou shouldst have no dealings with him.”
His answer is, “ Whether he be a sinner I know
not; one thing I know, that whereas I was blind,
now I see ! ” They continue, “ Tell us, what did he
do ? How opened he thine eyes ? ” — “ I have told
you and ye believed not; why pursue the matter?
Would ye be his disciples?” This is too much;
they lose their temper: “Thou art his disciple!
As for us we are Moses’ disciples. We know that
God spake unto Moses; but as for this fellow, we
know not whence he is.” — “ Why here is a marvel¬
lous thing,” he exclaims, “ that ye know not whence
he is and yet he hath opened mine eyes! How
could he, if God were not with him?” Sound
reasoning, but how tactless and presumptuous on a
beggar’s lips ! “ Thou wast altogether born in
sin,” they reply, “ and dost thou teach us? ” And
they cast him out.
In a lonely place, somewhere outside the walls,
he wanders with the anathema upon him. Out¬
cast and excommunicate, who will venture now to
lend a hand or put a cup of water to his thirsty
lips?
Jesus finds him. O blessed seeker of the lost!
He asks, “ Dost thou believe on the Son of God? ”
A strange question, when one stops to think of it;
so apparently abrupt and inconsequential. Why
not, rather, a word of sympathy and encourage¬
ment? No; the question cannot wait. It never
can wait. It presses hard upon every one of us
28
THE FAITH THAT COUNTS
for an immediate answer, because the issues of life
are involved in it. — “ Who is he, Lord,” asks the
beggar, “ that I might believe on him? ” — “ Thou
hast both seen him and he it is that talketh with
thee.” — “Lord, I believe!” And he worships
Him.
So ends the drama. A seeking sinner always
finds a seeking Saviour; and the turning-point of
every life is reached just here. “ Dost thou be¬
lieve in the Son of God ? ” It is distinctly a per¬
sonal question ; “ Dost thou ? ” Every man must
answer it for himself. It cannot be farmed out;
it cannot be postponed until a more convenient
season; it cannot be evaded, since not to believe is
to believe not.
This being so, it is vitally important that we
should understand precisely what is meant by “ be¬
lieving in the Son of God.”
The Christ of Long Agg
To begin with, it does not mean simply to be¬
lieve in the historic Christ; that is, in a personage
who lived, suffered and died nineteen hundred
years ago. So far as that goes, everybody believes ;
just as everybody believes in Julius Csesar and
Napoleon; but nobody is morally or spiritually af¬
fected by it. Obviously this sort of faith is only
a door ajar, which may or may not be pushed open
into something further on.
DAVID JAMES BURRELL
29
The Best of Men
And again it means more than to believe that
Jesus was a superman. Everybody believes that
too. Pilate even, who sentenced Him to death,
confessed, “ I find no fault in him at all,” and the
centurion who had charge of His crucifixion said,
“ Verily this was a righteous man.” Some of the
most glowing tributes ever paid to Jesus as a mere
man have been uttered by men like Goethe and
Channing, David Strauss and Ernest Renan and
John Stuart Mill, who have utterly refused to ac¬
cept His superior claims. But Jesus declined to be
honoured that way. To the young ruler who came
running to Him with the appeal, “ Good master,
what must I do that I might inherit eternal life ? ”
His answer was, “ Why callest thou me good ?
There is none good but one, that is God ; ” which
could only mean that the young man must either
go further or go back; must acknowledge that
Jesus was what He insistently claimed to be or else
pronounce Him a deceiver and a charlatan. There
is no middle ground to stand on.
The Great Teacher
For another thing, it is not enough to believe in
Him as a super-eminent teacher, the peer of Plato
and Seneca and Marcus Aurelius; or even as a
greater than them all. The Roman guard that was
sent to arrest Him as He was teaching in Solomon’s
30
THE FAITH THAT COUNTS
Porch came back empty-handed and with nothing
better to say for themselves than, “ Never man
spake like this man! ” The teaching of Jesus has
overawed His enemies time without number.
Listen to Theodore Parker: “ He pours out a
doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as heaven
and true as God!,, But what of it? Even
orthodoxy has no saving power, unless it grips
more than one’s intellectuals. A man may know
his Bible “ by heart ” without getting it into his
heart or having his life affected by it.
The Thaumaturge
Still further, the faith that really counts must
do more than accept Jesus as a wonder-worker.
His miracles were unquestioned by those who hated
and crucified Him; but again what of it? The
Bible affirms that Moses wrought miracles too; a
fact that everybody accepts (barring the anti-
biblical critics, of course, who are willing to believe
anything so long as the Bible does not say it), but
that fact has only the most remote connection with
the business at hand. The important question is
whether Jesus is able to save. Nicodemus the
rabbi was frank to confess that Jesus was “a
teacher come from God,” because, as he said, “ no
man could do the miracles which thou doest ex¬
cept God were with him;” but when Jesus told
him that he “must be born again,” he staggered
with unbelief, crying, “ How can these things be? ”
DAVID JAMES BUEEELL
31
A Son of God
Well then, suppose a man believes ^in Jesus as a
Son of God — will that answer? By no means..
We are constantly reminded that “ there are many
sons of God.” The definite article “ the ” sets
Jesus apart from all others as a singular Son of
God. “Behold,” says John,' “what manner of
love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we
should be called sons of God ; ” but our sonship
is by adoption while that of Jesus is by a divine
begetting, or as the old time theologians used to ^
say, “ by an eternal generation.” If the Scriptural
account of the virgin birth be rejected, it follows
that He, like shorn Samson, is “ weak as other
men ; ” in which case He is no longer the mighty
to save. This involves a denial of the claim for
which He suffered death, namely, that He was
“ equal with God.” -
/
The Son of God
It thus appears, by a process of elimination, that
we are to believe in Jesus as the only begotten Son
of God. Will that, then, make our calling and
election sure? Not yet. One may consent that
the Child in the manger was “ God manifest in
flesh ; ” that the sufferer on the cross was “ tasting
death for every man; ” that the miracle in Joseph's
garden was a real triumph over death; and that
the ascension of Jesus was a veritable return to
32
THE FAITH THAT COUNTS
“ the glory which he had with the Father before
the world was,” without being vitally affected by
it. An intellectual apprehension of truth, based on
incontrovertible evidence, not infrequently leaves
the soul as unmoved as are the depths of the sea
by the winds that blow over and ruffle it. *
My Saviour
The only faith that makes for salvation is the
faith that appropriates. The word “ thou ” in our
Lord’s question takes in the whole man: mind, con¬
science, heart and will. This makes the objective
Christ a subjective reality. One must so believe
on Him as to be able to say, “ My Lord, my life,
my sacrifice, my Saviour and my all.” Or to use
Luther’s words, “ It is the first personal pronoun
possessive that brings us into vital harmony with
God.” This is what Jesus meant when He said,
“ Except ye eat the flesh and drink the blood of the
Son of Man, ye have no life in you; ” that is, He'
must be so received as to enter into our whole
being, precisely as our food is assimilated and
transmuted into nerve and sinew and thought and
character and usefulness. The result is such a
blending of personalities that the believer is able to
say with Paul, “ It is no longer I that live but
Christ liveth in me; for the life which I now live
is by faith in the Son of God who loved me and
gave himself for me.”
DAVID JAMES BURRELL
33
“ Son of God, to Thee I cry :
By the holy mystery
Of Thy dwelling here on earth,
By Thy pure and holy birth.
Lord, Thy presence let me see.
Manifest Thyself to me ! ”
How may we know that we thus believe in
Him ? The test is worship ; not lip-service but the
consecration of time, energy and self itself to
Christ. A man is adjudged a good citizen not by
his ability to sing “ My country ’tis of thee ” but
by his whole-hearted accord with everything that
makes our Republic what it is. Repeating a Creed
is a very different thing from Relieving it.
Thomas was a disciple of Jesus long before he
really appreheiMed Him. It was not until with
open eyes beholding he saw the nail-prints in the
hands of the living Christ, that he came to believe
in Jesus as what He claimed to be and therefore
able to save; then he worshipped with the cry,
“ My Lord and my God ! ” The same was true of
Luther who was years old in monkhood when,
under the Crucifix of the Monastery at Erfurt, he
cried, with tears in his throat, “ Fur mich, fur
mich ; He died for me ! ” This, and nothing short
of it, is to believe in Him.
Is any one asking, “ Where is He, that I might
thus believe on Him ? ” The answer is, “ Thou
hast already seen him and he it is that talketh with
thee.” I see Him now coming down the aisle
34
THE FAITH THAT COUNTS
yonder, mounting the pulpit steps and pausing here
beside me. Let me be silent while He speaks,
“ Dost thou believe on the Son of God ; thou for
whom I have waited until my locks are wet with
the drops of night? Thou hast long believed about
me ; wilt thou go further and believe on me ? Then
shall we sup together and thy voice tremble with
the joy of a new confession, ‘ I know whom I
have believed and am persuaded that he is able to
keep that which I have committed unto him until
the day when I shall meet him in glory and see him
as he is.' ”
Ill
FAITH’S CORONATION
By
SAMUEL PARKES CADMAN, D. D., S. T. D.
Pastor Central Congregational Churchy
Brooklyn , N. Y.
Samuel Parkes Cadman was born in Shropshire,
England, December 18, 1864, and was graduated
from Richmond College, London University in 1889.
Coming to America in 1890, he was appointed
Pastor of the Metropolitan Temple, New York
City, in 1895. From this pastorate he was called to
Central Congregational Church, Brooklyn. Dr. Cad¬
man is the humanist among American Congregational
divines. He possesses in a rare manner both evan¬
gelical fervour and profound learning. Both in the
pulpit and on the platform, Dr. Cadman stands in a
class of his own, and no one in this generation has
accomplished more in welding bonds of friendship
between America and Great Britain. Dr. Cadman
has written several very important books; chief
among his published works are: The Three Re¬
ligious Leaders of Oxford, Ambassadors of God
and Lectures on Church and State (in the press).
I
III
FAITH'S CORONATION
“ Now the end of the commandment ( charge ) is
love out of a pure heart and of a good conscience
ana of faith unfeigned” — i Timothy i : 5.
I
THE charge which St. Paul commissioned
St. Timothy to lay upon the Church at
Ephesus was meant to veto those useless
speculations and controversies which injured the
fraternity of the sacred household. Fine spun
allegories, fabulous recitals of the generation and
gradation of the angelic hosts, the arithmetic of
mysterious aeons, and lurid predictions of apoca¬
lypses, then, as now, had a strange fascination for
a certain type of believers. They wTere too pre¬
occupied with vain debates upon inexplicable
themes to give heed to the real ends of religion.
Evangelical discretion was at the mercy of
zealots, who identified divine truth with their
distorted notions, making them the test of
spiritual understanding. In order that the grow¬
ing evil should be eliminated the Apostle de¬
fined the outstanding purpose of the New Testa¬
ment gospel as a salvatory education. His lan¬
guage is axiomatic, precise, compressed ; erroneous
37
38
FAITH’S CORONATION
or perverse constructions find no opening in his
closely woven arguments. Both matter and words
express the wisdom of a profound religious ex¬
perience. They rank as a classic utterance em¬
bodying the aims of Christian being and its obli¬
gations. According to them the heart’s pure love
begins and continues in faith unfeigned. The
power that surpasses any other; the one power in
this world and the world beyond which is
superior to the creeds, or better still, behind
them, is the love herein named. The love that
gives and does not ask, and being denied, still loves
with joy and gladness. In their deepest selves,
men and women know that this love is the grand
reality of life, infinitely more substantial and au¬
thoritative than all objects of sensory perception.
Yet neither this love nor any other ordination
of Heaven can possess our souls without the royal
faculty of faith. Believers can be and do nothing
worthy of their calling apart from the vitalizing
energy of faith as the gift of God. Where it is
complete it hallows every profession of allegiance
to our Lord and Redeemer; where it is defective,
the development of the hidden man of the heart is
arrested. Rectitude of conscience and of conduct
is secured by faith unfeigned. The motives and
thoughts which lie far and remote in human na¬
ture are regulated by it. They, too, own the sway
of a divine and unfaltering faith. Affectation,
pretense, caprice, deference to conventionality, and
S. PABKES CADMAN
39
even superstition or hypocrisy cannot defile the
heritage of an undivided faith fixed upon its giver.
But once this faith languishes, the weaknesses
which simulate it speedily appear, evoking re¬
ligious disaster.
Such a disaster fell upon ancient Israel and
wrecked her usefulness to mankind. The prophet
was displaced by the pharisee, and the interpreter
by the scribe. These ardent advocates of Judaism
suffered, not from secular but from religious
skepticism; from disproportionate emphasis and
confusion of sign with substance. Their outward
pieties were ostentatious and austere. They loved
to offer their endless prayers before the public
eye. But these devotions were symptomatic of
spiritual degeneracy. Excessive ceremonialisms,
fastings for which sour faces were the bulletins;
almsgiving to the tune of the trumpet’s blare, and
slavish adherence to outworn traditions were the
trappings of Judaism’s death. Shallow egotism
and self-complacent arrogance marked its predomi¬
nant tribe of religionists. Nor is the tribe extinct
to-day. It still troubles God’s Commonwealth, pa¬
rading the insignia which denote the bigot and the
formalist who thank Heaven they are not as other
men are ; who would willingly surrender the spirit
of the Evangel to its letter, and the essences of
Christian doctrine to their rituals. The pagan
world of the period was also congenial to artificial¬
ity in religion. Its numerous cults were diversified
40
FAITH’S CORONATION
as to tenets, but alike in their utter failure to ap¬
prehend religious realities. Long after life had
gone out of them, and their sterility was notorious,
they retained popular approval and enjoyed na¬
tional patronage. Temples arose in profusion to
celebrate legends which cultured Greeks and
Romans mocked, and the proletariat despised.
The moments of solemn insight, the passports to
justice and compassion, which one finds in Plato
and Marcus Aurelius, were now foreign to the
pagan habit. Its soul, like that of Israel, was
smothered beneath the pressure of a stately ex-
ternalism. What happened then, and did not spare
the chosen race, may happen now, and is well
within the realm of possibility. Every generation
must itself transmit the creative forces which be¬
get real religion, intellectually conceived, morally
exemplified, culminating in that love which is the
height of good and hate of ill; the triumph of
truth, and falsehood’s overthrow.
II
The theological training of seminaries and col¬
leges does not impart faith unfeigned. Be that
training liberal or conservative, it is necessarily
secondary, and has been overestimated in the
Church. The gifts of God are not commandeered
by instructors, however sincere or erudite. I fore¬
see in saying this, the complaints of critical minds
which can scarcely conceive the oceanic power be-
S. PAEKES CADMAN
41
hind the faith St. Paul honours. Nevertheless, it
is always originative of the best in particular
doctrinal systems. These have their day and cease
to be. But the faith which is a part of God's
predetermination for mankind produces its own
intellectual fabric and makes the pace for man’s
enlarging knowledge of the world. It will not be
found flat, stale, unprofitable. No branch of
learned inquiry will successfully challenge its
supremacy. It is purposive as well as creative,
and finds its vindication in the character it shapes
and the civilization it promotes. We shall not
be vexed with doubts about the hazards of the
Church and her embassies when such faith has
control in us. If theological research puts re¬
ligious realities from old or new standpoints, and
with more accurate technique, its results should
be gratefully accepted. But it is sheer imperti¬
nence and, in some instances, revolt against New
Testament Christianity, to declare that its fate is
involved in the welter of human opinions about it.
Broadly speaking, one has good reason to ques¬
tion those forms of Christianity which have been
too much influenced by contemporary opinion, be
it either reactionary or progressive. While fac-
tionists contend for the merits of their respective
systems, their regenerative capacity is apt to di¬
minish. It may be urged that the collective judg¬
ments of earnest men are of considerable value.
Do they not suppress notorious wrongs, refine .so-
42
FAITH’S CORONATION
cial customs and upraise the public mind? Cer¬
tainly these achievements are listed to their credit.
But faith unfeigned is not brought into being by
religious views and counter views. It rests on no
human foundations: least of all on those fissured
by controversy. It is neither mimetic nor differ¬
ential. It owns and is not owned by the historic
personalities of Christian annals. Its manifesta¬
tions in the building of the Church and of decently
behaved States have not always followed pre¬
scribed paths. Coming, as it does, directly from
God through Christ, “ faith unfeigned ” has fre¬
quently confounded the wisdom of the wise and
rebuked the passions of the simple.
Its light has shone forth in unsuspected spots
and through apparently feeble agents. Yet men’s
perceptions were enlightened, their affections
sweetened, their ethics and their conduct purified.
Skin-deep inoculations which had been substitutes
for the transforming power of this faith were
swept away because of their inadequacy to meet
the demands of human life. The beliefs assumed
for the sake of intellectual consistency were
promptly discarded, for intellectualism often
changes its fashion, and indeed is rapidly changing
it now. But the God-given trust fastened on
eternal realities does not have to change. It is in¬
dependent of the clearest and most cogent brains;
and as available for all creatures as air or light.
The believer who is wise enough to rest his soul
S. PARKES CADMAN
43
on God as revealed in His Son reflects upon the
immensity of the past, the littleness of the present,
the boundlessness of the future; upon the Deity
before whom time and space are as nothing. He
centers his hope on the Everlasting; the Ever
Present One, from whom all life, strength and re¬
demption proceed. His self-manifestation in our
Blessed Lord sustains every Christian against the
dominancy of temporal things. He does not think
of death as the worst possible, as do the unbe¬
lieving. Regions beyond the grave are no terrible
void for him. The heathen rage, the people in
their self-adulation imagine a vain thing. But
faith unfeigned raises its subjects above the sensi¬
ble universe, enables them to break its thrall, and
to go forward confidently to the destiny awaiting
them. Only those who put the seen before the
unseen, gain before righteousness, baseness before
nobleness and pleasure before their Maker, will
deny this position. The Ruler of life and death,
of judgment and eternity, is the disposer of faith
unfeigned. Who is on His side? Who' shall
stand when He appears ?
Ill
Some recent crusades in Protestantism assert
that Christian faith is an epidemic which spreads
from soul to soul by means of associations sur¬
charged with surface excitement. Fellowship
stimulates religious beliefs and interests. But it
44
FAITH’S CORONATION
is the individual alone in his or her own personal
contact with the Spirit of the Living God who
receives vitalizing faith. The operations of the
Spirit should not be discounted by the press of the
multitude. He prefers to deal with the man, not
the mass. Devices for capturing the one through
the many are not sure of His approval. They
may be legitimate or again, as not a few are, ille¬
gitimate. Meanwhile the modest God delights to
dwell in the single heart and there He witnesses
of sin, of righteousness, and of a judgment to
come. He is the great companion of conscience,
memory, and will, and none but He has the pass¬
key to the throne room of the soul. He unveils
the bliss, the burden, the rapture, and the affliction
of that mind which was in Christ Jesus. Through
Him the attributes of human nature are harmo¬
nized with the Divine will. If you ask for a token
of His indwelling, its chief evidence is in your
penitential attitude. Contrition is His hall-mark,
and its painfulness is the birth pang of your re¬
generate being. Those who deem iniquity a trifle,
retribution an open question, goodness a matter of
environment or of education, and evil habits no
more than a reaction from irrestrainable tenden¬
cies, may escape the Spirit’s searching for a time,
but they never escape beggary of soul and moral
destitution.
Their ideas of life are altogether too meager for
its necessities. Nothing of lasting significance
S. PARKES 0 ADMAN
45
pivots on them or on what they think. Their
capacity for ever enlarging blessedness is nullified
by their alliance with the perishable elements of
existence. On the other hand, the faith which
fosters in us the sense of immortality and con¬
strains us to shape our course accordingly is in¬
evitably triumphant. It is not a speculation, nor
a theory, nor a concession to what is seemly.
These, if they exist at all, are its accidents. At
the core it is the throb in men of the heart of
honour and of fire at the center of all things: the
divine dynamic which drives life toward its
ascertainable and best ends.
Sophistications do not disfigure the mind which
seeks, not only knowledge, but wisdom in religious
competency and sacrificial duty. Fidelity to God is
expressed in the purpose to discover what is truly
religious as finally reasonable and to believe that
those who deny either are in peril of being neither.
In this concord, the transient and segmental experi¬
ences of a mutilated trust are unknown. Faith is
normal, and habitual because the acts comprised in
the sum total of a human life are responsive to one
Presence and its rule. Midway between faith’s
germinal activities and the pure love which crowns
them is a good conscience, standardized by the
spirit and teaching of the Master. Its most exact¬
ing requirements receive their sanction from faith
as the receptive faculty of God’s illumination.
This conscience is not content to be righteous;
46
FAITH’S CORONATION
commendable as that is; it is also the conscience
of pity which modifies the tenets of justice with
the precepts of benevolence. It welcomes the
highest ethic of sacrificial service and holds to holi¬
ness as more desirable even than righteousness.
The fruits of holiness cannot but be excellent for
the faith unfeigned which makes the Christian
conscience alert, discriminative, ready to respond
to every impulse, not only of law but of grace.
It spurns the compromises which plague moral
vigour. As the sun-bathed branch connects the
root in the soil beneath with the luscious clusters
of the vine above, so conscience connects the ten-
derest and purest love with the natural affections
from which it springs. This truth explains in a
measure St. Paul’s distinction between the
“ righteous ” and the “ good ” man.
IV
Lastly, God’s purpose is to educe in His children
the spiritual abandonment of Christian love. Its
chief limitation is imposed upon it by playing off
the will against the affections and the intellect
against the conscience. St. Paul forewarns us
against the chaos in which one faculty hoodwinks
another. Their harmony by faith’s free, full ex¬
ercise is the distinctive note of the text. When
this is gained, the clouds disperse, the shadows
S. PARKES C ADMAN
47
flee; the whole man rejoices in a divine life and
law to which every member of his being yields
cheerful obedience.
Mere emotionalism is barred; intellectual effort
subserves spiritual liberty, and charity, the life¬
blood of creeds and churches, becomes the perfect¬
ness of faith. It is needless to remark that much
called love is veneered selfishness, covert gross¬
ness, masked anarchy. But this love, of which
St. Paul’s soul was full to overflowing, comes
from the nature which God has revealed in
Christ. Currents of feeling that assume its title
often carry in solution the taint of moral squalor,
the subtle poison of spiritual death. It has to be
defined by one’s experience and demonstrated by
one’s deeds. These together aim to confer the
best upon the worst by bringing all men and
women whom that love can reach within its radius.
Because it holds the sinner very dear to God it is
not likely to be a smiling affability. Politic affini¬
ties and honeyed phrases which nourish desire at
the cost of character do not become its ministry
to mankind. The parading of what is con¬
venient or practicable or materially profitable as
Christian love will not mislead those who
have bowed at the Cross and there tasted the
grace of God. Unfeigned faith is its parent, con¬
science is its preceptor, a purified heart the center
from which it issues to bless its surroundings.
None of them is dispensable, and all their springs
48
FAITH’S CORONATION
are in God. W e are here dealing with the discerner
of hearts who is intent upon our fitness for His
fellowship. We speak of the love He had for us
when He sent the Saviour of the world to Bethle¬
hem and to Calvary. “ Behold ! what manner of
love the Father hath toward us that we should be
called the sons of God,” exclaimed St. John. It
should be as altruistic in us as it was in the Master.
Then the souls of the believers and the soul of the
Church Universal alike shall be as a sea of glass
mingled with fire, embracing peace and power, re¬
plete of force without waste, and of tranquillity
with fervour.
The scenes of earthly circumstance which be¬
longed to the Roman Empire when St. Paul wrote
these words have vanished forever. The chariots
of gold and silver, the pomp, the warriors, the
pageants, the millions of followers drunk with the
cup of abominations, have become as though they
had not been. Wantonness, insolence and pride
have passed with that corrupted world. The
avenging gates have closed on them. The Temple
at Jerusalem has shared their doom. But the truth
of this text continues as an everlasting testimony
to the Gospel which ministers to our penitence and
our hope. Let us cling to its simplicity as the life
of God in the souls of men, made known by faith
unfeigned, by intellectual honesty, by the warrant
of a conscience void of offense toward God and
man, by the love which is faith’s coronation.
IV
PROCRASTINATION
By
HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK, D. D.,
Special Preacher , First Presbyterian Church ,
New York
Harry Emerson Fosdick was born in Buffalo,
N. Y., May 28, 1878. He received his education at
Colgate University and Union Theological Seminary.
In 1903 he was ordained a Baptist minister and in
1904 he began his eleven-year pastorate at the First
Baptist Church, Montclair, N. J. In 1908, Dr. Fos¬
dick was made Instructor in Homiletics at Union
Theological Seminary and in 1915, Professor of
Practical Theology. Since January, 1919, he has
acted in the capacity of Special Preacher of First
Presbyterian Church, New York. During the sum¬
mer of 1921, Dr. Fosdick addressed conventions of
missionaries in China and Japan. In his present
pulpit he preaches to one of the most influential audi¬
ences to be found anywhere in America. Among
Dr. Fosdick’s exceedingly popular books must be
mentioned: The Meaning of Prayer, The Meaning
of Faith, The Meaning of Service, and Christianity
and Progress .
IV
PROCRASTINATION
“ When I have a convenient season, 1 will call thee
unto me.” — Acts 24:25.
WE are to think this morning about the
homely and familiar matter of pro¬
crastination. Instead of letting our
thoughts dwell upon that abstract noun let us from
the beginning have in our mind’s eye a concrete
picture from the life of Paul. Paul had been
mobbed and nearly killed by his fellow countrymen
in Jerusalem; and, saved only by the intervention
of the Roman soldiery, he soon found himself in
prison in Caesarea, where he had been taken to
escape lynching. There Felix, the governor, was
alike his jailer and his judge. One night when the
governor’s wife, Drusilla, wished to hear and see
this tempestuous and troublesome Jew, Felix had
Paul brought before him, and allowed him freedom
to speak. One might have thought that Paul’s
spirit would have been tamed by his perilous ex¬
perience ; but Paul was always like a fire that is not
blown out but fanned to a fiercer heat when the
hard winds blow. Let the twenty-fourth chapter
of the book of Acts tell us the simple narrative:
“ After certain days, Felix came with Drusilla, his
wife, who was a Jewess, and sent for Paul, and
5i
52
PROCRASTINATION
heard him concerning the faith in Christ Jesus.
And as he reasoned of righteousness, and self-con¬
trol, and the judgment to come, Felix was terrified,
and answered. Go thy way for this time; and
when I have a convenient season, I will call thee
unto me.”
Felix is one of the most unlovely characters in
Scripture, and all that we know of him outside of
Scripture simply deepens our distaste for him. Yet
it is apparent from this experience of his with Paul
that like all the rest of us he was a strange com¬
bination of good and bad, that deep in his heart
he had chords that the fine, strong fingers of a
personality like Paul persuasively could play upon.
Bad as he was, let us remember that there was one
time when he heard the Gospel of Jesus and was
stirred by it, when he heard great words about
righteousness and self-control, and felt their
appeal, when he looked upon his life and the end
to which it was tending, and shrank back from it.
He was not all bad.
This morning we are going to think of the way
he dealt with this significant hour with the apostle.
You will notice that he was not abusive and dis¬
courteous; he was not blasphemous and sceptical.
He merely procrastinated. He simply postponed
decision; he politely waved the matter aside, and
said, “ When I have a convenient season, I will
call thee unto me” And so he lost the supreme
opportunity of his life.
HAEEY EMEESON FOSDICK
53
Is it not so that we are continually making
failures of our lives? Here in this church, where
through another winter we have so repeatedly pre¬
sented appeals for the Master, for the type and
quality of spirit which He represents, for the con¬
crete opportunities of service which His cause
offers, one does not suspect that there has been
much brusque and deliberate rejection, much scorn¬
ful and contemptuous scepticism; but one does
suspect that among all the people who have
gathered here there must have been a great deal of
procrastination. It is so popular a method of
avoidance. It can be indulged in so easily and
without offense. How many times in this church
do you suppose these words have in effect been
spoken in the hearts of men: “ Go thy way for this
time ; and when I have a convenient season, I will
call thee unto me ” ?
We are all perfectly familiar with this habit of
procrastination in practical details. We do not
decide not to answer a letter from a friend. We
simply postpone answering it. We take it up,
and dally with it, and lay it aside for a more con¬
venient time. We do not decide not to make a
call that ought to be made. We merely post¬
pone making it. We let the days and weeks
pass; and ever, as we postpone it, it becomes
easier to postpone it still, until at last the call is
never made at all. We never decide not to hear
the best music and read the best books. We
64
PEOCEASTINATIQN
merely defer doing so. We comfort our con¬
sciences by saying, “ Sometime we will see this or
hear that.” And we never decide not to pay
serious attention to the religious education of our
children. We simply put it off; we refer it to this
nebulous, convenient to-morrow when all letters are
going to be answered, all calls made, all privileges
enjoyed, and all duties done. With this popular
habit of procrastination we are perfectly familiar.
But surely it is not so small and trivial a matter
as too frequently we are tempted to suppose.
Leonardo da Vinci’s picture of the Last Supper
was spoiled by a single broken tile through which
the rain poured down across the face of Christ. So
great a picture to be spoiled by so small a thing!
Yet after many years of watching folk from the
vantage-point of the ministry I am sure that many
lives are spoiled in that way, and that the broken
tile is the habit of procrastination.
Pick up the words of Felix this morning, one of
the classic utterances of a confirmed procrastinator,
and look into them until, as in a mirror, they re¬
veal us to ourselves.
First of all, how full of hope they are! Felix
is counting on the future. “ A more convenient
season,” he says politely to Paul as he bids him
good-night; and at once we are aware that pro¬
crastination is the perversion of something good.
It is the abuse of hope. It is the misuse of to¬
morrow. Now, to-morrow is one of God’s best
HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK
55
gifts to men. The animals do not possess it.
They have only to-day, — their yesterdays dim and
vague, their to-morrows prepared for by instinct,
but not by expectation, — but man has yesterday
and to-day and to-morrow. How utterly bereft
we all Should be without that backreach of memory
and that outreach of hope! If to-day the clouds
overspread our sky, to-morrow the sun may shine
again. If to-day sickness has invaded our homes,
to-morrow health may come back once more. If
to-day our business is vexatious and troublesome,
to-morrow may see the turning of the tide that will
bring back the better times. If to-day our tempta¬
tions seem insupportable, to-morrow we may find
spiritual power to overcome. And if to-day we
are cast down by the weariness and tragedy of this
war-rent mankind, we turn to a prophet to en¬
courage us about to-morrow: “ My own hope is,
a sun will pierce the thickest cloud earth ever
stretched.” We should all be lost without to¬
morrow, for in hope we are saved.
But here, as always, the perversion of the best
is the worst, and the perversion of to-morrow is
procrastination. For we keep putting off until to¬
morrow the enjoyment of privileges and the use of
opportunities that we ought to rejoice in to-day.
I suspect that we ministers are sometimes partly
responsible for this very attitude against which I
speak. For continually we plead for ideals we are
sometime to realize but have not yet attained ; we
56
PROCRASTINATION
urge gains in personal and social life that are some¬
time to be achieved, but are not yet achieved. We
fill in the picture of to-morrow with blessings to
be enjoyed, ideals to be attained, until the upshot
may be that we draw the thought of our people
away from what they have to-day to what they
may have to-morrow. To-day in our preaching
becomes too often something to be overpassed and
outgrown, but to-morrow is the home of fulfilled
ideals. There is, however, a serious fallacy in this.
We need continually to be reminded not simply of
what we may have sometime, but of what we do
have to-day.
It is a shame to see a man running across his
to-days as a boy runs a race, with his eyes tightly
fixed upon the far goal, thinking only of what lies
ahead. But many men do so run their lives.
“ To-morrow,” they cry, while all the time to-day
presents to them privileges and blessings that they
run past, not seeing.
“ Felix, come out and enjoy the sunset/’ and
Felix says, “ To-morrow.” But to-morrow the
sunset will not be one whit more beautiful than it
is to-day if we have eyes to see it.
“ Felix, let us rejoice in friendship; ” and Felix
says, “ To-morrow.” But friends will not be one
bit more beautiful to-morrow than they are to-day
if we have eyes to see and hearts to understand.
“ Felix, let us grow up with our children, and
even here on earth gain a foretaste of heaven which
HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK
57
a true home affords.” And Felix says, “To¬
morrow.” But your children will not be one bit
more fascinating in their youthful companionship
to-morrow than they are to-day ; and you may say
“ To-morrow ” too long, until there are no children
to grow up with in your home at all.
“ Felix, let us enter into the sustaining fellow¬
ship of Christ, see life from His height, and live
in His spirit;” and Felix says, “To-morrow.”
But Christ will not be one whit more gracious and
redeeming to-morrow than He is to-day.
My friends, after all, to-day is all we actually do
possess. Yesterday is gone, and to-morrow is not
yet here; and procrastination is a deadly habit of
blinding one’s eyes to the opportunities and privi¬
leges we have in our hands and dreaming of some¬
thing that sometime we may have. “ Carpe diem,”
cried the old Latins, “ Seize the day.”
There are many of us who do not learn this
significant lesson until we learn it in the hardest of
all ways; we lose something that we have had in
our possession a long time, too little appreciated;
and then we wake up to wish above all things that
we might have it back again. So an old man may
look back upon the strength of youth that once he
had. What a splendid time it was when he awoke
each morning with power sufficient for his tasks,
and went out to work with joy! Why did he not
appreciate it more when he had it, and get more out
of it? Often a man feels so about his friends
58
PROCRASTINATION
when they are gone. What tonic, refreshing
spirits they were ! Why did he not take more ad¬
vantage of the fine boon of their fellowship when
he had the chance? So, oftentimes, mothers feel
about their children. They were so beautiful!
Why did they leave them so much with others and
live with them so little when they had a chance?
So, continually we are waking up to discover,
only when we have lost them, that for years we
have had life’s choicest privileges within our grasp;
for years we have been saying, “ To-morrow ”
while each to-day was filled with unrealized possi¬
bilities. You will know where this applies to you.
I am sure it does apply, for I am sure that every
one of us has in his possession now relationships,
blessings, opportunities, privileges, concerning
which after each is gone, he will say, “ Why did I
not make more of it while I had it? ” My friends,
it will not do to go on postponing everything until
to-morrow. If a man is going to live a fine, rich,
radiant, and joyful Christian life, it were better to
begin to-day.
Once more pick up these words of Felix and look
at them. “ A convenient season,” he says to Paul,
and at once we are aware that he doesn’t think that
he is deciding the question that Paul has raised.
He thinks that he has postponed the decision, but
he hasn’t. For indecisive procrastination is one of
the most conclusive methods of decision that man¬
kind knows. Now, the reason for this is perfectly
HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK
59
simple. Life’s processes do not call a halt simply
because we have not made up our minds. If here
in New York City or in the country round about
you have this spring a garden-plot, you may sup¬
pose that you have three choices: either to have
flowers, or to have weeds, or to be hesitant, un¬
certain, indecisive. But in fact you have only two
choices. If you choose flowers, you may have
them ; but if you decide to be indecisive, nature will
decide for you. You will have weeds. The proc¬
esses of God’s eternal universe do not stop to wait
for us to make up our minds.
Now, life continually is facing us with these en¬
forced decisions, where to endeavour to escape de¬
cision by procrastination is utter futility. For pro¬
crastination is irretrievable decision. Reach down
into life at random, anywhere, and you will find
illustrations in plenty. Shall we try to stop the
starvation of the Chinese? is a question that has
been facing us all these winter and spring months.
Do you say you will wait for a more convenient
season to make up your mind? You may as well
say that you will not help them at all. For the
processes of starvation do not cease until you de¬
cide. They still stalk their ghastly way through
the Celestial Land, and take their toll of thousands
and tens of thousands every day. To be indecisive
is not to be indecisive. It is one of the most con¬
clusive, fatal, irretrievable decisions you can make.
Or come in to a more homely episode. You see
60
PROCRASTINATION
a purse dropped in the street and you see the one
who dropped it. You may suppose that you have
three choices: either to be honest and return it, be
dishonest and keep it, or be indecisive, uncertain.
But you have only two choices. If you decide to
be indecisive, the processes of life will not wait for
you. The crowds will surge in between you and
the purse’s owner, and the opportunity of being
honest which was yours for a moment will vanish ;
and, while you yourself will not decide, life will
have decided for you and leave you standing there,
dishonest.
Or, once more, let your imagination reach out to
the most stupendous problem in the world to-day,
the avoidance of war. Some people think we have
three choices: either to make a united stand in
favour of disarmament, to save the world from this
intolerable burden of taxation for war that is
breaking the back of our civilization; or to refuse
to do that and to plunge deliberately into huge
competition in armament in preparation for
another way; or to be indecisive, to dally and de¬
fer, to procrastinate and put off. But as a matter
of fact we have only two choices. The processes
of life are not waiting — God pity us! — for us to
make up our minds. We are like ships upon a sea
where to drift means wreck as certainly as though
with full deliberation we steered toward the rocks.
A little more indecisiveness, uncertainty, procras¬
tination, a little more folding of the hands and cry-
HAEEY EMEESON FOSDICK
61
ing, “ To-morrow,” and it will be decided. We
shall have another war.
In the same class with those illustrative instances
lies that question on which Felix tried to postpone
decision, the question of a righteous, self-corn
trolled, and Christian life. For see this one ele¬
ment that runs through all these illustrative cases.
To make flowers grow means positive decision ; to
help starving Chinese means a deliberate act ; to be
honest in a crisis means a thrust of the will; to
move toward disarmament means a resolute act of
the public conscience. All great things cause
positive decision. You cannot float into them like
thistle-down blowing in the wind. And being a
Christian is a great thing. You cannot become a
Christian in your sleep. You must make up your
mind to it. And if any Felix endeavours to be in¬
decisive, he is not really indecisive. His life proc¬
esses still go on without Christ because he has not
positively decided for Christ.
No earnest minister could speak on such a theme
without thinking of the young men and women here
who, it may be, have been in attendance on these
morning services all this winter past, and now, as
school or college closes, go to their homes, or, it
may be, begin their business or professional
careers. I speak to some of you as though I might
never have the chance to speak to you again. No
one would urge you to choose something that you
do not understand or that you do not believe. But
62
PROCRASTINATION
if you have caught at all the emphases of this
pulpit, you must see how little we care here about
those sectarian peccadillos that have marred the
church, and the theological peculiarities that have
disfigured her serious thought ; you must have seen
how earnestly we have pressed our emphasis back
to that central matter, the spirit of Jesus, His filial
life with God, His brotherly life with men, His
sacrificial passion for the coming of the kingdom
of righteousness upon the earth, the faith that em¬
powered Him, the hope that sustained Him, the
character that was His crown and glory. You
haven’t three choices about that. You have two
choices. You may glorify your life if you will by
having Him for the Master of your soul. But if
you try to be indecisive, you are not indecisive;
you are missing Him; you are missing Him as
thoroughly as though you said, “ No ” to Him.
For you will go out to live a life not mastered by
His positive faiths, not dedicated to His positive
cause.
As one thinks of this refusal through procrasti¬
nation, he sees how many men are living in just
this attitude. For there are multitudes of people to
whose hearts the highest impulses are not strange
at all, who again and again have risen to the appeal
of Jesus like waves that almost come to their crest,
but not quite; they never quite break into the
white foam of a finished billow ; but they rise and
sink, rise and sink, forever moving, but moving no-
HAEEY EMEESON FOSDICK
63
where, forever promising, but never consummated.
How futile is a life like that in any realm! In
literature Coleridge was the consummate example
of procrastination. He projected more poems,
more essays, more lectures, than any other man
that ever lived; but he finished almost nothing — a
few things like “ The Ancient Mariner/’ but not
much else. He planned everything, but he post¬
poned work on anything. You pick up a page,
and read,
“ In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.”
You say, “ This is fascinating.” But the trouble
is, that is about all there is of it. He never
finished it. It was a passing impulse. He never
made up his mind to write it through. He was
an animated prospectus, full of deferred plans.
But there are many of us who have no business
to laugh at him. In a far more deep and important
matter than writing poems, we are living that kind
of life. Again and again we have felt the appeal
of Christ. Again and again we have felt the lure
of an open, decisive, consistent Christian life in a
generation when open, decisive, and consistent
Christian lives are more needed than anything else ;
but we are still uncertain, irresolute, procrastina¬
ting. I wish there were one here this morning who
64
PEOCEASTINATION
would cease the refusal of the highest through pro¬
crastination, who would say, “ As for me, now,
now is the accepted time, and now is the day of
salvation.”
Just once more pick up these words of Felix
and look at them. “ A convenient season,” he
says politely and cheerfully to Paul as he bids him
good-night, and you perceive at once that he con¬
fidently thinks there will be a convenient season.
He has not deeply perceived that serious truth
which runs through all human life, that there is
such a thing as being too late. Procrastination a
small fault? No, not in a universe where some
things have to be done on time if they are going
to be done at all. Says the tree in April, “ I will
not put forth my leaves now — in May;”’ and in
May the tree says, “ A more convenient season —
June.” But it would better take care. If leaves
are not forthcoming in April or May or June, it
is getting late. July is no time for leaves to come,
and August is almost hopeless, and September is
quite too late. He must have blind eyes who can¬
not see that truth running all through human life,
a serious truth to which no cheap and easy opti¬
mism ought ever to blind our sight.
The truth is inherent in the very fact of growing
up from youth to age. What a fairy-land of pos¬
sibilities youth is ! Listen to this lad talking. He
is not sure, he says, yet, whether he is to be a civil
engineer, or a business man, or a lawyer, or a pro-
HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK
65
fessional aviator; and he thinks he might be a
minister. And, when he talks to you like that,
what is more, you must listen to him seriously.
He may be any one of them. The doors are all
open. He is young. But we who have reached
maturity have all these years been listening to a
sound with which we are perfectly familiar, the
sound of shutting doors. The range of our pos¬
sible choices has been narrowing down. We know
well enough that there are some things on this
earth we never can do now. It is too late. Happy
the man who has chosen right! Happy the man
who has not put off too long doing something that
he wanted to do very much indeed.
Alongside this fact of the inevitable passage of
the years, the possibility of being too late is accen¬
tuated by the companion fact of habit. There may
have been a time when you could straighten out
the down-town streets of Boston, when they were
meandering cow-paths along the shores of Mas¬
sachusetts Bay, but it is too late now. They have
been widened into streets and set in asphalt, and
curbed in stone, and the life of the metropolis has
immovably solidified itself around them. It is too
late. So is the set of habit in the life of man.
It is no small matter, then, to say to young men
and women in their fluid years of choice that they
would better make the decision that concerns the
deep interests of their spiritual life. For Felix is
no ancient character alone. He has had a multi-
66
PROCRASTINATION
tude of reincarnations. Edgar Allan Poe was
another Felix. He died as a result of a drunken
night’s revel in a saloon in Baltimore. You say he
was bad ? A man cannot content himself in speak¬
ing of such a man by saying, “ He is bad.” Look
upon that brutal, drunken death, and think of what
he wrote:
“ For the moon never beams without bringing me
dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee,
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling — my darling — my life and my bride.
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.”
Surely, men who write like that are not all bad.
There are harbours in the world where the harbour
bar is so high that it never can be passed at low
tide; so the ships wait for the high tide that they
may enter in. So are the souls of men. Think of
the flood-tides, then, that a man like Edgar Allan
Poe must have had when the sky called to the deep,
and in his heart there were voices speaking, like
Paul before Felix, about righteousness and self-
control and judgment to come. But he would not
decide! Up and down, up and down, outside the
harbour bar he sailed his craft, irresolute, procras¬
tinating, till the tide went out, and then it was too
late.
HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK
67
And this possibility of being too late is of course
accentuated, so far as this earth is concerned, by
death. I do not know whether that impresses me
more when I think of my own death or when I
think of the death of my friends. For, when
death comes, it does come very suddenly. Ah, if
you have anybody to love, you would better love
him now. If you have little children to be brought
up in the spirit of Jesus, you would better do it
now. If you have quarrelled with some one with
whom in your deepest heart you did not mean to
quarrel, you would better make it right now. If
you have any contributions that you can make to
build here a juster, kindlier world for our hu¬
manity, you would better make it now. And if
you know a Lord whose service is perfect freedom,
a Saviour whose love is wider than the measure of
man’s mind, you would better choose Him now.
My young friends, there are three great choices
that a man makes in his experience: First, his voca¬
tion, what he will do with his life; second, his
marriage, who will be the mother of his children;
and third, his faith, who shall be the guide of his
soul. I think you know that Jesus Christ has a
right to that place. Then put Him there — not to¬
morrow — TO-DAY.
y
THE WORLD UNDER THE ASPECT
OF TRAGEDY
By
GEORGE A. GORDON, D. D.,
Pastor , Old South ( Congregational ) Church ,
Boston
George Angier Gordon was born in Scotland in
1853. He received his academic training at Harvard
College and has been minister of Old South Congre¬
gational Church, Boston, Massachusetts, since 1884.
The pulpit style of Dr. Gordon is conspicuous for its
literary beauty and for many years Old South Church
has been one of the famous preaching points of
North America. Dr. Gordon is both a great preacher
and a great thinker. He was lecturer in the Lowell
Institute Course 1900; University Preacher to Har¬
vard 1886-90; to Yale 1888-1901; Lyman Beecher
Lecturer, Yale 1901. He has published many books
of great merit. Among these may be named: The
New Theodicy and The Witness to Immortality.
V
THE WORLD UNDER THE ASPECT
OF TRAGEDY
“ Because his compassions fail not ”
— Lamentations 3 : 22.
THERE are four things present in all great
tragedy. Every one of the tragic per¬
sons is to blame for the fateful complica¬
tion, and no one is altogether to blame; the
magnitude of the experience is unmeasured, the
sin, the mistake, the suffering, the woe; mystery,
like starless midnight, broods upon all the confines
of being and overhangs the whole field of action;
and lastly, there is pity arising in the heart of the
spectator of the awful tragic movements, pity that
purifies his heart, that exalts his soul, that brings
with it a strange peace and a great indefinable hope.
Look into the heart of one of the greatest of all
tragedies and see if these statements are not true.
There is King Lear. He is to blame for vanity,
over-fondness for affection, and credulity. Cor¬
delia, that rare and beautiful soul, is to blame for
temper and want of tact. If these two tragic per¬
sons in the drama are to blame, all the others surely
are. Each one is to blame, and no one wholly to
71
72
THE ASPECT OF TRAGEDY
blame. Then there is the extent of that tragic
complication; persons, families, kingdoms are in¬
volved; sin, mistake, and suffering are there that
no mind can measure. The last thing that the
tragedy does for the one who beholds it is to melt
his heart in compassion, and the compassion brings
with it awe, exaltation, and a strange peace and
hope.
The man of genius who wrote the text, a great
deep-hearted patriot, looked at his nation under the
aspect of tragedy. In 586 b. c. Jerusalem was laid
waste by the Chaldeans, and the youth, the beauty,
the promise, and the power of the people were
carried away, and only the remnants remained of
those not slain or not enslaved. His nation was
a nation in ruin; thus he beheld it. Every one
was to blame for the fateful complication, and no
one was wholly to blame; the magnitude of the
experience was evident, outrunning all possible
measurement or comprehension ; mystery was
brooding over all like a thick cloud so that not even
his prayers could pierce through. Then the re¬
sultant mood, “ It is of the Lord’s mercies that we
are not consumed, because his compassions fail
not.”
There are many ways of regarding this world of
ours, its tumult, its terrible processes of wickedness
and of suffering. The text bids us look at it under
the aspect of tragedy and behold the world-wide
complication for which every living being is in
GEOEGE AKGIEE GOEDON
73
part responsible and for which no single individual,
however wicked, is wholly responsible. Again, it
bids us look at the immeasurable extent of the
experience, the sin, the sheer ignorance, the per¬
versity, the suffering, the woe; and once more, it
bids us look at the mystery that overhangs the
whole, dark, as I have said, as starless midnight,
impenetrable, utterly inscrutable, and finally it
directs attention to our own hearts, if we are men
of faith, men of patriotism, of humanity, to the
fountain flowing there of pity, of compassion; it
seems to whisper that we are on the great world’s
altar-stairs that slope through darkness up to God.
I ask you to look with me for a few moments at
what the Eternal Compassion means as we reach it
through the world regarded under the aspect of
tragedy.
I
The first great attribute in compassion is the
understanding mind. God knows His world from
the inside. Sometimes during the summer I pass
this church and look up at the windows scorched
with heat, covered with dust, black, unmeaning, and
then I come into the House of God, find the radi¬
ance of the summer sun flooding the building, and
I see there the Good Samaritan still healing the
sick, there the Apostles and the Prophets still
holding forth the Word of Life, there the saintly
and faithful ones silently running on their errands
74
THE ASPECT OF TRAGEDY
of grace; lastly my eye lights upon the Parable of
the Sower. “ Behold, a sower went forth to sow ”
in the minds and hearts and wills of men. Here,
from the inside, is the promise of a new and
glorious world. God, the compassionate Father of
men, understands His world from the inside. He
sees His prophets still with their visions and their
dreams. He sees His apostles still declaring the
message of His Mind and Character; His healers
and His faithful ones are all at work unseen and
silent, the music of whose feet only the angels
hear. And Pie sees a sower going forth to sow
in the tragedy of the world new and better thoughts
in the minds of men, and in their hearts new and
deeper feelings, and in their wills new and greater
purposes. He beholds, from the inside, vast
movements out of the depths of the tragic world,
promising by and by a morning without clouds.
Two members of His family went out to meet
the Lost Son on his return, the elder brother and
the father. The elder brother looked from the
outside and said, “ This son of yours who wasted
your substance with harlots, you have feasted
him.” This is the outside view; it was absolutely
correct as far as it went. Did it comprehend that
young man’s life? Ah, no. The father went
forth to meet him, moved with compassion ; he read
the whole secret tragedy of his son’s life, his sin,
the plot into which his sin threw him, his mistake,
his suffering, his woe, and the emergence as from
GEOEGE AEGIEB GOEDON
75
Erebus, of his soul seeking life. Which under¬
stood that son, the brother or the father? God
understands His world from the inside and rests on
the vision of the order that shall come forth out of
the tragedy that now reigns.
II
The second great attribute of compassion is
magnanimity. That is the Greek word for “ great¬
mindedness.” Greek tragedy, in one way, is un¬
surpassable, perhaps incomparable, in its sim¬
plicity, in its integrity, in its austere order and
power. It has little or no humour in it, and herein
it is surely surpassed by Shakespearian tragedy
which composes in its own vast mind both the
pathos and the humour of life. Look into your
Hamlet again. Is there any scene anywhere of
more piercing pathos or profounder tragedy than
Ophelia, beautiful Ophelia, crazed with grief and
yet undying in her loveliness, strewing flowers upon
the new-made grave of her father who was slain
by her lover. A little further on you find the
grave-digging scene, with its pure, irresistible
humour. The debate between the grave-diggers
shakes one’s soul with merriment ; and there is the
conversation of the callous, mirthful grave-digger
with the sorrowful, awe-struck Hamlet. Here is
I
humour, pure as the spirit that made it, coming
from the very heart of humanity in this tragic
world, and both the pathos and the humour are
76
THE ASPECT OF TRAGEDY
reconciled, composed, wrought into a whole by the
great-minded poet. Is not this true of life? Who
is the most tragic figure in our American history ?
Abraham Lincoln. He moved, during the four
long years of that tragic drama, the supremely
tragic man, and on his right hand was the fountain
of tears and on his left the fountain of mirth, both
composed within the universal catholicity of his
humanity.
And Jesus, the most tragic figure in all history,
moves to His cross and on the way notes the irra¬
tionality and absurdity of the time in which He
lives, and says, “ This generation is like unto chil¬
dren sitting in the market-place who call unto their
fellows and say, We piped unto you, and ye did
not dance; we wailed, and ye did not mourn.,,
The tragedy and the comedy, He saw them deep as
life and broad as the world, and He composed them
in His own magnanimity.
Does not this help us toward the vision of the
magnanimous God, Who makes His sun to rise
upon the evil and the good and Who sends His rain
upon the just and the unjust, not because He is
indifferent to moral distinctions, but because of His
Eternal Magnanimity. Again, He rests on the
vision of the issue of the tragic complication and
waits in His Eternal Peace.
Ill
Finally, there is in compassion another vast at-
GEOEGE ANGIER GORDON
77
tribute that touches every one of us, and that is
recreative moral power. The classic example is
the Lost Son. What changed him, what made him
new forever? It was his father’s compassion.
What changed Peter after that triple denial, that
terrific treason of his soul to the truth and to his
Master ? The Lord turned and looked upon Peter.
It was that compassionate look; the look not of
reproach, not of indignation, not of the cry of
vengeance, but of sorrow, of purest, divinest
compassion, that made Peter new, and new for¬
ever.
How far our Lord’s prayer upon the cross has
gone: “Father, forgive them; for they know not
what they do.” It has gone everywhere and been
a source of moral hope to the despairing and
recreative power to those crumbling into dust.
This is the gospel we all need. Am I not right
in supposing that we wake many a morning to ask
the question, “ What right have I to pray to God,
what right have I to speak to Him, I, so worldly, so
selfish, so unmindful of things that are high, so far
away from fidelity and honour?” And again,
“ What right have I to think of myself as a Chris¬
tian? Where are my absentee ideals? Where are
the great passionate loves that should follow Chris¬
tian ideals ? And where are the purposes that hold
men’s souls together? What right have I to call
myself a Christian? What have I done for the
great ideal causes of the world, those that represent
78
THE ASPECT OF TRAGEDY
our whole higher civilization, without which our
civilization would be the economy of brutes? What
have I done for education, for hospitals, for the
mission of the prophet and healer, for the builder
of the Kingdom of God at home and abroad?”
Then in our despair we think of the Infinite Com¬
passion, and we bathe our whole troubled and fail¬
ing soul in that, and we come forth again able to
pray to God, able to claim the name of Christian,
able to think of ourselves as soldiers and servants
of the Ideal.
Every human being here this morning needs this
gospel of the Eternal Compassion. Those who are
morally successful need it, they are so much less
successful than they should be. That those who
are morally defeated need it, I do not need to say.
They who have the prospect of long life before
them need it ; and we whose daily chant is, “We
who are about to die salute thee,” we need it. The
whole race of men needs it. And when we come
to our human world, what shall we say to it to-day,
tempest-tossed and driven by the tides of its own
wickedness and ignorance, what shall we say to it ?
Come back to the Eternal Compassion. Do not
dwell simply on the guilt of all, the magnitude, the
sin, and the woe, nor upon the mystery that like
a pall overhangs the whole. Read it from the
point of view of compassion, find its meaning
there.
About the most tremendous words in the New
GEOBGE AKGIEB GOBDON
79
Testament are those that I read to-day, the most
tragic I think, in the literature of mankind:
“ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the
prophets, and stoneth them that are sent
unto her! How often would I have gath¬
ered thy children together, even as a hen
gathereth her brood under her wings, and
ye would not ! ”
And yet the religion of Jesus is the religion of
compassion, the religion of the Eternal Compas¬
sion that cannot finally be defeated.
Here is the gospel. Do not sit down and paint
the blackness of the world. It knows how black
it is. Tell it of the loving-kindness of the Lord
and His unfailing compassion. Climb on the altar¬
stairway of the pity in your own heart up through
the gloom and into the presence of God.
You recall Whittier’s “ Ten on the Beach.” How
one recurs to that series of poems. Whittier, who
regarded our human world so often and with such
eyes under the aspect of tragedy, sings:
“ Oh, the generations old
Over whom no church-bells tolled,
Christless, lifting up blind eyes
To the silence of the skies ! ”
There is the appalling tragedy. But he had faith
to match it, faith in the Eternal Compassion de¬
clared through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
80
THE ASPECT OF TRAGEDY
“ Still Thy love, O Christ arisen,
Yearns to reach these souls in prison!
Through all depths of sin and loss
Drops the plummet of Thy cross !
Never yet abyss was found
Deeper than that cross could sound ! ”
There is the religion for this day. The com¬
plication is fateful and terrible, the experience in
sin, folly, shame, and woe is immeasurable, the
mystery is such that no finite mind can disperse or
even mitigate. There remains the compassion in
our own heart, aspiring to the Eternal Soul, finding
in our human pity a ladder from time to Eternity,
from finite to Infinite. When we climb that ladder
we find ourselves in the presence of the Absolute
Compassion ; we behold our world under the aspect
of Eternity, and our world under the aspect of
tragedy finally melts through suffering, through all
the ways of an inexorable justice, through re¬
creative pity, into accord with a Universe all light,
all love, all joy, all peace.
VI
WHAT IF CHRIST WERE NOT?
By
NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS, D. D., LL. D.,
Pastor , Plymouth ( Congregational ) Church ,
Brooklyn , N. Y.
Newell Dwight Hillis was born at Magnolia, Iowa,
in 1858. The Presbyterian Church at Evaston, Illi¬
nois, was the scene of his first pastorate. At the
death of Prof. David Swing he was called to the
pulpit of Central Church, Chicago. In 1899 he was
called to the pulpit of historic Plymouth Church,
Brooklyn, as successor to Drs. Henry Ward Beecher
and Lyman Abbott. Upon learning of the death of
Dr. F. W. Gunsaulus who was, perhaps, the fore¬
most American pulpit orator of this generation, Dr.
Joseph Fort Newton wrote me saying: “ Only Hillis
can take his place as master of the Pulpit Art.”
Judged by the throngs that everywhere seek to hear
him, by the number of times his words are quoted,
and his name mentioned both in America and Eng¬
land, together with the popularity of his many written
works, it is scarcely too much to say that there is no
more influential living preacher in the English-speak¬
ing world.
Among Dr. Hillis’ best known books are: All the
Year Round , The Battle of Principles , The Contagion
of Character, The Fortune of the Republic, The
Quest of John Chapman, A Man's Value to Society,
The Investment of Influence, The Quest of Happi¬
ness, The Better America, The Influence of Christ in
Modern Life, Great Books as Life Teachers, Great
Men as Prophets of the New Era .
VI
WHAT IF CHRIST WERE NOT?1
“And Jesus said to his disciples , Will ye also go
away f And Peter answered , To whom ?”
— John 6: 67, 68.
SEVERAL authors, with varying skill, have
written books on the condition of the world
if Christ were not. Every one is familiar
with Jean Paul’s Dream of the Children, coming
into the church and sobbing out their sorrow be¬
cause there is no Christ, and no Christmas, and
that all alike are orphans. Henry Rogers wrote
a book called “ The Eclipse of Faith,” in which he
imagines that some powerful hand has wiped the
influence of Christ out of civilization, as some
hand wipes the chalk writing from the blackboard
of the schoolroom. This brilliant author repre¬
sents himself as going into his library to discover
that every vestige of Christ’s life and words has
wholly disappeared. He opens his law books upon
the legal safeguards protecting children in the poor-
houses, the orphans, the chimney sweeps, the boys
in the coal mines, the poor in tenements, the slaves
everywhere, and lo ! all these laws have disappeared,
leaving paragraphs blank in some law books, with
here and there whole pages, and indeed, entire
‘Published also in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
83
84
WHAT IF CHRIST WERE NOT?
chapters, until what is left on the code is meaning¬
less jargon. Alarmed, he turned to his histories of
art, and where the Transfiguration had been he
found a blank page, and to the galleries, but instead
of the Sistine Madonna of Raphael and the Ecce
Homo, by Guido Reni, and Rembrandt’s Prodigal
Son, with thousands of other masterpieces, he
found only empty frames. Turning to the greatest
'poems of Dante and Milton, of Wordsworth and
Tennyson and Browning, he found nothing but
empty pages with the number of the page at the
top. Having long loved architecture with a great
passion, his thoughts flew to St. Peter’s in Rome,
to Milan and Cologne and Westminster Abbey, and
lo, nothing remained there but great cellars, for
when the cross went, the cathedrals fashioned in
the form of that cross perished also. And then it
was that Rogers realized that if Christ were not,
the schools, the hospitals, the beautiful philan¬
thropies, the missions, so beneficent in their influ¬
ence at home and abroad, would all perish, as if
shaken down by some cosmic earthquake, and this
lawyer cried out that he would not want to live at
all in a world where Christ was not.
And to-day we all have our vision of a revolution
against Jesus in thought and life. What if in the
stress of a great crisis representatives of the na¬
tions of the earth should meet together, ostensibly
to destroy war and organize a universal peace.
But when the chairman of the world’s conference
NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS
85
begins his opening address, every one should notice
the cynical look upon his face and the bitter note
that had crept into his voice. The burden of his
argument has to do with the economic wastes of
Christian sympathy. He makes a plea against the
industrial losses incident to Christ’s story of the
Good Samaritan. He estimates that our genera¬
tion would save fifteen to twenty per cent, by com¬
ing out boldly for the anarchistic principle of every
fellow for himself and the devil take the hindmost.
He urges that the weak have no right to survive
and should go to the wall. And that it is an
outrage for the strong to be made unhappy by
carrying the burdens of the weak. “ Look abroad
over the world — everywhere this Galilean’s baneful
influence is found. Why should the poorly born
not die to-day, since they must die to-morrow?
Why should not this conference declare plainly that
Jesus of Nazareth, with His doctrine of love, pity
and self-sacrifice, has laid an unbearable burden
upon men ? The key-word in this crisis,” he said,
“ is revolt. Let us return to Nature, and live as
the beasts and birds in the forests live, and die as
they die — namely, a natural death, having no re¬
gard for these petty dreams of Christian im¬
morality - ” and this man carries the delegates,
and with one voice they shout aloud, “Away with
this superstition ! Down with these spires ! ” And
in the midst of the noise and confusion the twilight
falls, and suddenly in the darkness a still, small
86
WHAT IF CHRIST WERE NOT ?
voice is heard, that in the silence of each heart
turns to thunder, “ What I have made shall be
unmade.”
It shall be as you have willed. “ Henceforth
the light that was given is withdrawn, and for
angels’ bread there shall be the apples of Sodom,
and for the wine and the nectar of Paradise there
shall be what you ask the dropping of asps and
the poison of serpents.” But going into the
streets, these apostates look with altered eyes upon
an altered world. Lifted, now, all the restraints
of law! Wild men who through fear and shame
had restrained their appetites suddenly reveal them¬
selves. It was as if harpies and assassins had
leaped from every alleyway upon those delegates,
when the mob spirit burst loose. Then came the
crashing of plate glass windows, the shrieks of
night watchmen, the looting of splendid stores and
shops, and in the suburbs the flaming houses heard
the shrieks of women and the moans of little
children, for the beast was let loose. In fact,
there was no Christ to stand between the wicked
man and his victims. The scene was as dreadful
for that great city as if the bells of time had tolled
the beginning of eternity, while the great serpent
wound his coils about the earth to crush it into
nothingness. That noise was the crash of falling
domes, cathedrals and tumbling spires above gal¬
lery, and minister, with the sound on the pavement
of pictures falling from their places, and statues
NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS
87
tumbling from their niches, when structures of art
and literature and law and reform, manifest in
architecture, came down in full ruin. It was as if
the sun had tumbled from the sky, leaving a black
socket.
Of course, if there were no Christ, our civiliza¬
tion would immediately change. Christendom
would go, because there would be no estimating
time from the new era, beginning with the day
when that beautiful summer civilization set forth
from' Bethlehem. Time would doubtless begin with
the story of Romulus and Remus. The year would
then be 2753, and the dominant power would be
the force of that imperial city, for militarism, law
and government seated on the banks of the Tiber.
Our civilization would perish and sink into dust
with the sinking of the teachings and example of
Christ. When we speak of civilization, we think
of our ships, our office buildings, our factories, our
great industries, our schools and libraries and
churches ; but all is an illusion. What we ought to
think about is the ideas, affections and great con¬
victions that realized themselves in these material
structures. Suppose that every building in the
United States were blotted out, leaving the forests,
minerals, grains, fruits unchanged. Now bring in
100,000,000 Mohammedans to take the place of the
Americans. Soon the different ideas of these
Turks and Arabs would organize the wood and the
iron and stone into mosques, minarets, palaces for
88
WHAT IF CHRIST WERE NOT 1
the Sultan, harems, slave markets, with horsemen
armed with spears, planning a raid across the line
upon Canada to the north or Mexico to the south.
Different ideas coerce metals, forests, stone quar¬
ries, into different forms of architecture. All this
gorgeous equipage of civilization is but an outer
show that is as fleeting as the leaf. The thing that
abides is the thought, affections and visions of the
heart. Therefore, touch the teachings of Jesus at
your peril! Destroy Christ’s teachings as to His
little ones, whose angels behold the face of His
Father in heaven, and the orphan asylums and the
kindergartens and the schools would dissolve, even
though built of stone, like the snowflakes in Au¬
gust. We trace all granaries, all wheat shocks and
sheaves back to that first perfect grain of wheat, in
which all harvests were latent. We trace all noble
buildings back to the first house. We trace a
great river like the Mississippi back to a little
spring. And we trace the outer institutions of
civilization back to the teachings of Jesus as a soul
made in the image of God, a soul that must love
and serve its brothers and finally give its account
unto God.
But if there were no Christ, to whom would the
modern man go in the hour when the world reels
beneath his feet, the fog chokes his throat, and he
clutches at what Tennyson calls dust and straw
and chaff, where he needs to find the rock ? When
the thoughtful man gives up that which is good
NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS
89
he expects to obtain something that is better. Will
a man leave a stone house in time of storm to
seek a frail tent? Man’s body must have food,
and his anxiety for harvest abides. Man’s intellect
must have the truth, and more and more he desires
books, and thirsts for knowledge and beauty. All
these musical instruments found in old museums,
beginning with the reed, and the rude strings
stretched over the mouth of sea-shells, and the
drums of the medicine man, an ascending series
that culminates in the pipe organ, are proofs of
man’s artistic needs. But what about the passion
for righteousness, that deathless longing in the soul
of Augustine, conscious of his black sins? That
tragic cry of David calling unto the heavens for
pity, forgiveness and cleansing: that muffled sob in
the throat of Cicero, when he exclaimed, after the
death of his beloved daughter, “ Is there a meeting
place for the dead? ” When men were starving in
Armenia for want of wheat, they substituted grass
roots, and when Christianity is gone, men want a
substitute. But it cannot be found in Confucius —
Confucius has had centuries for his work, and the
end is the Chinese Wall, national exclusiveness,
polygamy, the parents’ right of life and death over
an unwelcome female babe, the headsman’s axe.
Confucius has produced China, and no American
will exchange this city for what goes on upon the
banks of the Yangste River. Not one of you will,
as a substitute, accept the leader of the Brahmins,
90
WHAT IF CHRIST WERE NOT f
or the Buddhists. India is a monument of that
faith. The English army and Government have
abolished their Juggernaut car, the burning of the
widows upon the funeral pile of their dead hus¬
bands, and many other foul and cruel results of the
Indian faith, but Brahminism stands for the caste
system and you are Americans, believing in equal¬
ly*
You can have no interest in the harem or the
Zenana, or the idolatrous orgies, or in the worship
of millions of gods or in the goal promised of a
“ dreamless sleep.” You can achieve unconscious¬
ness in a moment by a rope, a pistol, a little cyanide
of potassium. But surely this is not the last work
of a religion by which one can live and die? It is
certain also that you will not accept as a substitute
the Positivism of Comte, with his three hundred
and sixty-five heroes and a new name for each day,
to be used as a substitute for God. You know, as
you read their names — Cicero, Lamartine, Goethe
— that the names of these hundreds of men hold a
certain admixture of selfishness and vice and
meanness and even of crime. Nor can you substi¬
tute the Agnosticism or secularism of these teach¬
ers of to-day. Witness Martineau’s question:
“ Will any moonlit form be seen kneeling in our
Gethsemanes? And rising from prostrate anguish
to sublime repose through the prayer, ‘ Oh, thou
Eternal Not Ourselves that makes for righteous¬
ness, let this cup pass from me/ Will any cruci-
NEWELL DWTIGHT HXLLXS
91
fied one lose the bitterness of death by crying,
‘ Oh, Stream of Tendency, into thy hands I commit
my spirit 5 ? To the martyr, stoned to death, will
any heaven open when he exclaims, ‘ Great En¬
semble of Humanity, receive me ’ ? Will any
penitent soul pour out its sorrows to a deaf ideal
and shed its passionate tears on an abstraction that
cannot wipe them away ’ ? ” But if there were no
Christ, nought else is left save these abstractions.
If the wheaten loaf is not, it remains for man to
clutch at the fog bank and feed his hunger upon
mist. It is Christ then — or nothing!
But if Christ were not, the human intellect loses
its only rational explanation ever given of the
problem of suffering and sorrow. To deny the
existence of pain is as foolish as to deny an earth¬
quake that destroyed those towns in Italy, or that
tidal wave that destroyed Lisbon, or the war that
cursed Belgium and France. Granted the exist¬
ence of summer and the harvests, we must accept
the winter also. Granted the garden, the palm
trees and the fountains, we cannot deny the desert,
and the occasional famine. Ours is a world over
which, from time to time, troubles sweep like
sheeted storms. No man can escape. Genius has
sought out many inventions, discovered many se¬
crets, but genius has never built a roof nor a door
that can shut out trouble. Soon or late death robs
us of our loved ones. At last comes the day when
the grasshopper becomes a burden and desire fails.
92
WHAT IF CHRIST WEEE NOT !
At last the messenger upon his errand of release
and convoy comes, not for others this time, but for
you yourself. And in the world of selfishness,
and ignorance, and sin Jesus comes into collision
with the Pharisees, and Roman governors, and
slave owners, and the more unyielding His con¬
victions and ideals, the fiercer the collision. Denial
is not enough; mere denial of pain will cure no
torture of the soul in its Gethsemane. And then
Jesus enters the scene. His message is that suf¬
ferings are educatory; that when the summer fails
to turn the acid of the grapes to sugar, or sweeten
the nuts, the frost completes the transformation;
that gold is tried in the fire, and acceptable men in
the furnace of adversity; that the self-sacrifice of
one hero, with his death, means life and happiness
to those who come after; that the greatest souls
have come out of great tribulation, from the days
of Moses and Paul, with their martyrdom and un¬
accomplished aims, to the days of Lincoln and
Livingstone; that the richness of the soil begins
with the glaciers’ ice plough ; that granite boulders
are melted by fire billows, and that slowly, from
upheaval, come harvests and a soil fit for grow¬
ing the tree of life.
Earth’s noblest souls have proven the soundness
of Christ’s teaching. Witness your own experi¬
ence. Hours there are when for you everything
fails, and doubts come in; but there is one face
that shines like a star, the face of your beautiful
NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS
93
mother, who came through all the battle of life,
gathering sweetness, purity, tenderness and love,
and her testimony to the days when she learned in
suffering the lessons of song, has held you to your
work, like an anchor — sure and steadfast. And
in that hour of transfigured intellect you know that
Jesus’ philosophy was sound, and His secret sure;
that He alone had the clue of the maze, and that,
therefore, you can go on through all the thunder of
life’s battle, serene in the conviction that whom the
Lord loveth He chasteneth, and that He makes all
the sons of genius and of goodness to be perfect
through suffering. The greatest discovery that
our world has ever known was not Columbus’s dis¬
covery of America, nor Newton’s discovery of
gravity, nor Franklin’s discovery of electricity —
Earth’s greatest discovery — is the discovery of
growth and character and salvation through suf¬
fering, through the surrender of the will of man
to the Will of God, and the determination to do
right though the heavens fall. That simple state¬
ment of the mission of sorrow and the sad plight
of a world without pain has transformed the world
and wrought a new era for the soul, just as the
doctrine of Newton brought a new era to
astronomy.
But if the world were without Christ, men would
lose the motive to service and heroism. It was
Jesus who made the sum of religion to be service
pud kindness, its emblem a cup of cold water and
94
WHAT IF CHRIST WERE NOT ?
its genius to be helpful. The soul is not self -propul¬
sive. All sailing boats need winds for their sails.
There is no locomotive that does not depend upon
some exterior power named steam and coal. The
human soul is dependent upon motives for its for¬
ward movement. What hurled Paul along the
highway of his life? What drove him toward
mobbings, scourgings, prisons, and unto death
itself ? That chariot of the Greek god was hurled
forward by the fiery steeds of the sun, but as for
Paul, in his eager, passionate desire to serve gladia¬
tors, slaves, fugitives, prisoners, was the word,
“ The love of Christ constraineth me.” What led
that Roman boy who had just heard the story of
the Carpenter upon the Cross, that Roman boy who
was a slave, and came in from the field to find
that his young master had drowned, who asked for
the place where his young master had gone down,
and when they held him back, leaped into the black
flood, and he felt around on the bottom of the lake
and brought up the body, and died himself? Surely
there was a motive back of this Roman boy’s deed.
He had heard that “ he that loseth his life shall
save it.”
Recall also that little cripple in Switzerland,
when the army of the Austrians was crossing the
mountain pass. A great love of country welled
up in the heart of the little hunchback. So when
the sentinels felt that all was safe, because the
heavy snowfall had come, and they flung them-
NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS
95
selves down to sleep, the cripple, at midnight, when
all was still, kept his window up, drew the blankets
a little closer, and with his head out in the snow
listened, straining to hear the slightest sound. It
was his vigilance that detected the approach of the
enemy. The cripple wakened the sentinels, and
the sentinels roused the soldiers, and the top of the
pass was held and the valley saved. What mir¬
acles the love of country hath wrought ! Ah, what
a transformer love is! What impossible feats it
accomplished! Ten thousand beautiful philan¬
thropies were born when Jesus said, “ Their angels
do always behold the face of my Father.,, “ Inas¬
much as ye have done it unto one of the least of
these, my little ones, ye have done it unto me.”
There is on a certain tropic tree a purple blossom,
at the end of the bough. Travellers say that if you
touch that crimson heart you slay the glorious
shrub. Not otherwise touch at your peril Christ,
with His love of the poor and the weak, for when
the Master with His motive of love and brother¬
hood goes, then all the reforms, the beautiful
philanthropies perish also.
But if there were no Christ, then the immortal
hope perishes with Him. One December day, Har¬
riet Martineau wrote her friend, saying: “ For
England the summer has gone, and for me the
everlasting winter has set in.” And when James
Mill gave up the Christ he said, “ That the clouds
had slowly closed in and choked all hope, and that
death had become only a leap into the dark, over
96
WHAT IF CHEIST WERE NOT f
a chasm, whose sharp rocks held an unknown
power for mangling.” The philosophers argued.
The poets have hoped for a meeting place of the
dead. The lovers have cried out for the beloved
©ne. Th& par^i^s ha^ve sobbed, “ Is death a door
into another room ? Or a fall into''a'black hole in
the ground? ” Then Jesus stood at the gate of the
sepulchre, and His Message concerned the life im¬
mortal. What others talked about, He saw. His
forehead grazed the stars, He looked over the top
of the hill, named man’s horizon, and saw afar off
the sweet fields of living green in the land of pure
delight. He plucked the fear out of men’s souls
as the husbandman plucks the tare out of the wheat,
as the physician plucks the foul growth out of the
fair body, and restores it to full health. He
taught men that dying was home-going; that
heaven was the Father’s house, and that nothing
could ever injure God’s children, either here or
there, either before death or after death. The
sweetest music that ever fell over heaven’s battle¬
ments are the words, “ In my Father’s house are
many mansions.” “ Let not your heart be trou¬
bled, neither let it be afraid.” And hot until men
prefer fog banks to wheat harvests, the will-o’-the-
wisp light to the guiding star; not until they prefer
candles flickering into the socket, to the summer¬
making sun, will they prefer these tawdry little
superstitions before that Divine Teacher, whose
music is sphere-music, and whose voice is the
melody of the world.
VII
THE WEAPON OF PURITY
By
JOHN A. HUTTON, D. D.,
Minister of Belhaven Church , Glasgow
John Alexander Hutton was born at Coatbridge,
Lanarkshire, April 21, 1868. He was educated at
Glasgow University; ordained a Presbyterian minis¬
ter in 1892 ; called to Bristo Church, Edinburgh, 1898 ;
to Jesmond, Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1900; and to Bel-
haven Church, Glasgow, in 1906, where he is still
pastor. Dr. Hutton is a searching preacher, present¬
ing a perfect blending of keen intellectuality and
spiritual insight.
Among his written works, all of which are very
popular, must be mentioned: Guidance from Robert
Browning, In Matters of Faith, The Winds of God,
The Weapons of Our Warfare, Discerning the Times,
and Victory Over Victory.
VII
THE WEAPON OF PURITY 1
“As the heart panteth after the water brooks, so
panteth my soul after thee.” — Psalm 42:1.
NOTHING can hinder us from believing
that the Eternal Spirit, Who sent Jesus
into the world, sent also, securing it
by an unfathomable play of events and circum¬
stances, that hunger and dissatisfaction and moral
tenderness which prepared a welcome for Him in
the human heart. God’s truth for an age never
comes as a stranger to that age. On the contrary,
God is so ready to hide Himself, that, when the
truth comes, the wise men of the world at the time
are permitted to suppose that it was they who
discovered it, and that they were always sure that
the thing was as now they perceive it to be.
It is not very common nowadays, except' at
street corners and in open spaces where one may
still have the spectacle of a man plunging about in
the backwash of an old controversial method — it is
not very common nowadays to have it quoted
against Christian truth, or against the force of a
moral idea, that there is already a hunger and
1 From The Weapons of our Warfare and with permission
of Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton.
99
100
THE WEAPON OF PURITY
thirst for it in human hearts. On the contrary,
the most lively school of thought in our day is
apt to err on the other side, declaring that the one
mark of truth is that it works, that it fits the facts
and suits our very case. If the allegation is put
forward that Christianity made its way in the
world simply because it accommodated itself to the
need of the time and offered people anything they
wanted, it is a false accusation and can be repelled
by some quite obvious facts. For example it is quite
apparent from even a casual reading of the New
Testament that the early Church is already aware
that she is engaged in a warfare against the world.
She sees clearly that it is her doom and calling to
protest against the general mood of the time. The
later books of the New Testament are concerned
with almost nothing else than to warn Christians,
both as individuals and as communities, that they
have committed themselves in Christ to a Cause
and a Spirit which will range the world against
them, which will encounter the spiritual habit and
inertia of long ages, which will provoke unsus¬
pected antagonisms ; in short, that Christianity is a
declaration of war, an unsheathing of the sword;
“ Ours is not a conflict with mere flesh and blood,
but with the despotisms, the empires, the forces
that control and govern this dark world.” I de¬
tect no trace of accommodation in such a saying,
and it is but one of a thousand. The fact is,
Christianity did fall in with the profound neces-
JOHN A. HUTTON
101
sities of the human heart in those days. But the
necessities in the human heart which laid hold on
Christianity were the last necessities of our com¬
mon human nature, the invincible cries which will
always break from man, because he is what he is.
And in order to help man at the depths Christianity
did not hesitate to offend and rebuke man in his
superficial and temporary requirements.
It is true, I think, of every high thing which
assails us and appeals to us in the name of God,
that there is something in us which holds out hands
to it and there is something in us which at the
same moment hesitates or shrinks back. It is a
sure sign that we are face to face with something
from God, something with which we had better
come to terms, that at the same moment we want
it and we do not want it, we like it and we do not
like it.
When Jehoshaphat and Ahab were in a difficulty
as to whether they should go to war against Syria,
some officials had assured them that it was God’s
will that they should go. Jehoshaphat, who was a
good man, was not easy in his mind. It seemed
to him that those officials had been suborned to
say what they had said. “ Is there not some man
of God,” said he to Ahab, “ by whom we might
enquire of the Lord ? ” “ There is,” said Ahab,
with some heat ; “ there is one man by whom we
might enquire of the Lord, Micaiah, the son of
Imlah; but I hate him, for he doth not prophesy
102
THE WEAPON OF PURITY
good concerning me but evil.” “ That is the very
man for us to hear,” said Jehoshaphat.
There is always something in truth which we
like, and something which we do not like. It is
always proof that the matter is one with which
we ought to come to terms — that we like it and do
not like it at the same moment. Christianity had
those simultaneous marks of truth: there was
something in it which the world resented and hated,
and tried to put away; and all the time there was
that in it for which the world in the last solitudes
and realities of its own self-consciousness patheti¬
cally cried out. Looking back over those days,
and observing with what fidelity to its own ethical
genius the Church dealt with the world without
indulging that mood, how it refused to follow the
easy way to power, how it was able at once to
condemn the world and to attract it — looking back,
I say, it is not possible to doubt that wherever the
two or three were met together Christ was in the
midst, guiding.
There were three lines, we were saying, along
which Christianity moved and overcame the world ;
and first by the attractiveness of its faith.
Let me pass now to the second element of
power — the new and haunting quality of Christian
goodness. By the wonderful pressure, as we be¬
lieve, of the Spirit of God upon the hearts of men,
there was already abroad in the world in the first
days of Christianity a real and widely experienced
JOHN A. HUTTON
103
* desire for moral purity and cleanness. It was one
of those times which come when, it may be, men
do not see their way clearly, when they do not see
for the time being how things on a wide scale are
to be improved, when the mind in consequence is
driven in upon itself, and we perceive that al¬
though there may be no open vision, nevertheless
we need not be idle in the work of God; that there
is a work to be done within ourselves. However,
it may be explained historically, there had come
over the human heart in those days a great yearn¬
ing to be made clean, to be free from moral guilt,
to be done with all interior disorder and entangle¬
ment. In those days, and in pursuit of this per¬
sonal rightness and integrity, the most popular
ceremony was a sacrament called the “ taurobo-
lium.” Let me say what it was, leaving it to your¬
selves to perceive what a place for Christ life had
evidently laid open in the souls of men. In the
mystery of the “ taurobolium ” the suppliant stood
or knelt beneath a scaffolding of wood. On the
wooden platform above his head a bull was slain,
and its blood poured through the grating, drench-
-ing the suppliant beneath.
It was man’s profound insight into his moral
necessities. It was man, urged by the. 'Spirit' of
God, trying to find his -Way home. It was’ his
discovery, guided by delicate organs of moral per¬
ception, that death was the only way to newness of
life; and that it was not his own death merely
104
THE WEAPON OF PUKITY
which brought down the blessing, but his sharing
as it were in the very life of death.
It was into this troubled and uneasy world, with
its pathetic and puzzled half-beliefs, with its in¬
sistent cry for better things, that the disciples of
Jesus came. They lived their life before the eyes
of men. They declared that they had achieved this
moral peace and cleanness. Men and women joined
them from the world, men and women in many
cases with such a past history that outsiders made
merry over their new profession. “If He were
a good man,” it had been said of their Master,
“ He would have knowm that this woman was a
sinner.” And the world said the same of the
Church. But even the world could not deny that
those who had been sinners took on a new grace,
as though by some mysterious chemistry the very
elements of their nature had been transformed.
Sufferings came to them, as we shall see, sufferings
of such ingenuity and horror, that we cannot even
bear to describe them ; but they endured by the help
as it seemed of some Ally beyond nature and
beyond mere human experience. All their words
and ideas wTere full of a beautiful confidence as to
the way by which God was pleased to be leading
them. Nothing could come upon them unawares.
If they lived, well; if they died, once again it was
well. If the sky was fair for them, they would
praise the Lord ; if the sky was foul, they still had
the resource of prayer. The Prince of this world
JOHN A. HUTTON
105
came and found nothing in them. They were pre¬
pared for everything. If you asked them the
secret of this supernatural peace, they might utter
some mysterious word like “ Maranatha — the Lord
is near.” They had found what all the world was
seeking for. The presence of some Holy Guest
hung about them, at their work, in their home,
purifying everything, sanctifying everything. This
Holy One had once upon a time been here; they
themselves knew some one who had actually spoken
with Him ; or in later years they knew many who
had in turn known one who had actually seen Him
die on Calvary and appear again, risen from the
dead, in the upper room.
At the time when He went away He had prom¬
ised to come again. It might be that they had been
looking for Him to come too soon; because now
years had passed and He had not yet come. But
the delay, though a disappointment to their natural
sense, was not so hard to bear as the world might
think. True, He had not come ; still He had come,
and was with them always. As St. Paul had said,
“ There is first that which is natural, and after¬
wards that which is spiritual ! ” In the growing
refinement of their natures they began to ask them¬
selves what more they would have from their Lord
than He was daily giving them. In any case He
had not left them comfortless; they had bread to
eat that the world knew not of. Besides, it might
be God’s will for them that they should go to Him
106
THE WEAPON OF PUEITY
rather than that He should come to them. And
death was now no dreadful trap-door through
which the soul fell down into darkness. It was
the gateway into new life — a gate which they had
seen opened for many of their friends, and as it
opened they had seen with their own eyes the light
of that glorious place, falling upon the countenance
of one whom Christ was calling home. They were
so very sure of God that they were tempted some¬
times to wish that this present life would come
quickly to an end; but their teachers and their
sacred books had bidden them be patient and show
by their very patience that they had no doubts
about God. In the second century the leaders of
the Church had to issue instructions to Christian
people that they should pray for the delay of the
Lord’s coming. His communion with them was
already sufficient, it would appear. Meanwhile,
they wanted to spare humanity, to increase the
number of those who might share in the glory of
the Lord.
So on and on, one might imagine and describe
the kind of life they lived, for whom the memory
of Jesus was still a living thing and for whom that
memory was penetrated by an unquestioning hope.
That is the point which Pater makes in his
Marius the Epicurean, the story of one who acted
as the amanuensis to Marcus Aurelius. (The
story opens with Marius as a little boy leaving
home for school, for the Eton of Harrow of his
JOHN A. HUTTON
107
day. His mother wanted to say something to him
as a last instruction, but did not know what to
say — and there is nothing more difficult than to
kno\t what to say at such a time: the Lord Him¬
self did not know what to say to His disciples when
He was about to leave them, so He did not say
anything at all, but took a towel and washed the
disciples’ feet — this mother did not know what to
say just as the last thing she would like to say.
She took the boy away into her room, and as they
looked across the Campagna, she put her hand
upon his shoulder and said, “ Marius, a white bird
which you are to carry with unsullied wings across
a crowded public place; your soul is like that.”
That is only a hint of the incomparable felicities
both of feeling and expression which you will find
in Marius, which I have no hesitation in advising
you to read. )
What impresses Pater in those first three cen¬
turies is the wonderful consecration which Chris¬
tianity brought, the consecration of the elementary
functions of life — marriage, birth, death. How it
purified those elementary functions! How it
placed the proper garland upon the brow of
woman, and hailed in each little child a gift from
heaven ! Perhaps you are not aware that in those
days, which were in so many ways so intellectual
and advanced, there were moral enormities that
simply are staggering to us. It was a very com¬
mon thing, not only among ignorant people — to
108
THE WEAPON OF PUKITY
throw out little children who were not wanted by
their parents. It contributed enormously to the
enlargement of the Church in its membership, that
the Church picked up those little children and
trained them, creating within them by the atmos¬
phere of love a natural appetite for the things of
the Spirit.
We only need to know our own essential nature
— that by God’s appointment there is something in
man which will forever lay him open to the appeal
of goodness; that the sight of moral beauty, of an
obvious contentment in this world and victory over
its fear, will always raise in the souls of men who
behold such things the question whether this is not
the one true way— we only need to believe that
man is so made and is finally susceptible to such
things, to see that such a community of faith and
hope and love as was the Church of the early days,
was bound to gain the victory over a disordered
and unhappy world. Like God Himself, man “ is
the same yesterday and to-day and forever/’ We
often ask ourselves by what means the Church of
Christ shall ever again resume the story of her
own best days. There is only one way. It is no
part of our duty to lay schemes for achieving
worldly success. We have but one thing to do.
We are here as Christians and as Christian com¬
munities to attest to the world, and to make in¬
carnate a quality of life which is beyond its reach.
We cannot by any stated argument convince those
JOHN A. HUTTON
109
who are without the reality of the deepest things.
Only the presence of holy and beautiful lives will
ever awaken in the world the sense of its own
capacity and in the same moment the sense of its
own shortcoming.
In the story of the rich young ruler who came
to Jesus, it is not without significance that in each
of the gospel narratives the incident occurs just
after Jesus had taken little children into His arms
and had laid hands upon them and blessed them.
And what the conjunction of incidents means for
me is just this: it was the sight of that perfectly
simple and beautiful thing which stirred in the
man’s heart an unsuspected or half-suspected crav¬
ing for whatever of the same blessedness might
yet be possible for such as he.
For this is our faith, as it was the faith of our
Master, that the presence amongst men, of perfect
moral beauty, will soon or late break the bars of
iron in sunder and throw open the everlasting
doors.
VIII
WILLING AND KNOWING
By
W. R. INGE, D. D., C. V. 0,
Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral , London
William Ralph Inge was Dbrn at Crayke, York¬
shire, June 6, i860. He was educated at King’s
College, Cambridge University; Vice President of
the Royal Society of Literature; Fellow of Jesus Col¬
lege, Cambridge and Hertford College, Oxford; and
Gifford Lecturer St. Andrew’s University 1917-18.
In 1911 Dr. Inge became Dean of St. Paul’s Cathe¬
dral. Known to many as the “ Gloomy Dean,” Dr.
Inge is one of the most profound thinkers in the
active ministry to-day, and as a scholar, has few, if
any, equals in the English-speaking world. Among
his published works are : Christian Mysticism,
Speculum Animce, Personal Idealism and Mysticism,
The Philosophy of Plotinus , Faith and Knowledge
and Outspoken Essays.
VIII
WILLING AND KNOWING
“If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know
of the doctrine ” — John 7: 17.
THESE words of our Blessed Lord seem
to me to point the way to the solution of
a very old controversy, which still divides
us. What is the nature of religious faith? Is it
an act of trust, or is it conviction? Is it a work¬
ing hypothesis, or the result of reasoning? Is it
an attitude of the will, which selects for acceptance
those ideas which help us to live as we desire to
live, or is it an apprehension of absolute truth?
The question was already discussed by the school¬
men of the Middle Ages, some of whom based
faith on the mystical intuition which enlightens the
eyes of the understanding, while others maintained
that its nature is practical, and in no wise specula¬
tive.
I wish to consider the question as a religious, not
as a philosophical problem, and to treat it as a
problem which deeply concerns every one of us.
Let me sum up shortly what might be said on
each side.
Faith is and must be a venture; we walk by
faith, not by sight. Faith is the resolution to stand
or fall by the noblest hypothesis. It must be a
IJ3
114
WILLING AND KNOWING
matter of the will rather than of the intellect, both
because ultimate truth is beyond our reach, and
because, whether consciously or unconsciously, our
world is constructed out of those facts which inter¬
est us and bear upon our own needs. We do not
and cannot see life steadily and see it whole; we
see what lies in our path — the stepping-stones and
stumbling-blocks which we have to use or avoid.
We have to practice the difficult art of living in a
world which we do not understand. Religion is
the chief portion of this art. Truth is relative to
our spiritual need ; it has been said whatever helps
our souls is true. From this point of view, religion
is a kind of mind-cure; it is to be studied and
practiced as a man learns an art or uses a^ remedy.
If we wish to learn an art, we put ourselves under
a training which experts tell us will make us
proficient in it; we are content if this result fol¬
lows. If we wish to remedy some physical defect
in ourselves, the true remedy is that which cures
us. For example, if our eyesight is bad, we buy
a pair of spectacles which will help us to see like
other people. We do not inquire whether the
spectacles are true; their value for us depends on
their not being true for healthy eyes. We are told
that those who do not understand that this is the
function of religion, criticize the beliefs of their
neighbours from a wrong point of view. Such
books, for example, as Lord Morley’s essay on
Compromise, waste a great deal of virtuous indig-
W. R. INGE
115
nation on the intellectual disingenuousness of re¬
ligious people who he says profess to believe
dogmas which they ought to know to be untrue.
The assumption all through such books is that
religious truth is a branch of scientific truth,
whereas it is really a method of ordering the whole
life with a view of the formation of character.
Those who think in this way set but a small value
on the labours of critics and philosophers, unless
they devote their talents to the advocacy of tradi¬
tional dogmas. The Liberal Churchman seems to
them to be a man who has taken up, perhaps
almost by accident, the study of theology, and who
treats it, in an abstract manner, like any other
science, a method under which its religious value
evaporates, and its therapeutic efficacy almost dis¬
appears. They can find many well-worn maxims
ready at their hand, such as that “ God has not
willed to save His people by dialectic,” and that the
heart has its reasons which the intellect knows
not of.
Scholars and thinkers must admit the partial
truth of this charge against them. They know
how easily the logical intellect transforms vital in¬
terests into dialectical counters. They know how
easy it is to personify their own opinions and those
of their opponents, labelled probably with their
names, and to forget, in the excitement of an in¬
tellectual tournament, that they are dealing with
the mysteries of time and eternity, and with the
116
WILLING AND KNOWING
struggle of overburdened men and women to find
their way and to work out their own salvation
with fear and trembling. The intellectual study of
religion is an abstract science; so are all other
sciences; and though the aim of philosophy is to
coordinate and at last to rise above abstractions, no
sane thinker counts himself to have apprehended.
And yet I cannot think that we ought to be con¬
tent with a merely subjective and relative standard
of truth in religion. The God who has made us
for Himself, and who will not let our hearts rest
till they find rest in Him, has not so hidden His
face from us that we cannot know Him, however
dimly and imperfectly, as He is. And we cannot
really hold that there are for us two standards or
two kinds of truths, one speculative or scientific,
and the other practical. Our minds are not divided
or divisible, and we cannot with impunity play
tricks with our reason, either to stimulate our
wills or to win inward peace. There is after all a
sterling sincerity in the negations of the honest
rationality which we miss in such utterances as
this of Renan: “ What a delight to the man who
is weighed down by six days of toil, to come on
the seventh to rest upon his knees, to contemplate
tall columns, arches, and altar, to listen to the
chanting, to hear moral and consoling words. It is
the privilege of pure sentiment to be invulnerable
and to play with poison without being hurt by it.”
This is no doubt a crude and half-contemptuous
W. E. INGE
117
description of a very common attitude, which is
familiar to us in the phrase “ the consolations of
religion/’ as if religion were a species of anodyne,
a cure for soul-ache. There is surely a levity, an
indifference to truth, or a deep scepticism, in those
who can use such language. I prefer the harsh
dictum of the rationalist, that every wish to be¬
lieve, when it is dragged into the open, is a reason
for doubt. There is an asceticism of the intellect,
which though it may be carried too far, is itself a
noble thing. There are men who are afraid to
accept what their souls — their whole selves — bid
them to believe, because they know that they long
to believe it and because it cannot be proved. This
kind of renunciation is an act of homage to truth
as an absolute principle; I do not think that it in¬
jures the character, though it makes life less bright
than it ought to be. But in those who indulge
what is called the wish to believe; who fly under
the wings of authority to escape the buffetings of
doubt; who grasp at an inward peace which they
have not earned; who make religion a matter of
emotion or sentiment or aesthetic thrill, I have
observed that not onlv the intellect but the moral
•/
sense loses its finer qualities. A faith that is pro¬
cured ready-made gives but little guidance where
no authoritative precepts can be had. It is in re¬
ligious persons of this type that we find the most
incurable obtuseness in the face of new duties not
sanctioned by tradition — such for example as our
118
WILLING AND KNOWING
obligations to the lower animals, and to posterity.
Nor do I think that this kind of religion often rises
above enthusiastic loyalty to its institution ; it does
not seem to those outside to do much in making the
institution more worthy of loyalty.
The social psychologists have failed, I think, to
tell us what religious beliefs ought to be. They
have missed what is the most essential quality of
faith — that is a devotion to absolute values, to
which we pay homage as being absolute, eternal,
universal and indestructible truths which claim our
allegiance in their own right, as ends in themselves,
and not means to anything else, not even to our
own happiness or the happiness of others, or a
better social order, or anything else that we wish
for on earth. The religious man, of course, be¬
lieves that the universe is under divine law, and
that this law is ultimately in agreement with the
spiritual laws which have been revealed to us. He
believes that if he surrenders happiness as his
immediate aim, he will win, for himself and others,
what Christ in the Beatitudes calls blessedness, but
which may, if we will, be called a higher and deeper
happiness. But the objects of faith are beyond
this bourne of time and place; they are not to be
degraded into means for any earthly end; nor do
their truth and value consist in the use which we
can make of them.
The psychologists have failed to show us what
faith ought to be and may be. But they have done
W. R. INGE
119
good service in laying bare the actual springs of
what often passes for faith. The mind of the
average man is a confused medley of sentiments,
prejudices, and self-centered interests, which de¬
termine his opinions on religion as on anything
else. “ Such as men themselves are, such will God
appear to them to be,” as a deep Christian thinker
of the seventeenth century said. The religion of
the average man is a reflection of his undisciplined
self— an unassorted mixture of second-hand
opinions, adopted in laziness and maintained in
obstinacy. He never probes his mind, and is
actually unable to distinguish between what he
would like to believe and what he has reason to
believe. The luxuriant crop of superstitions which
at the present time chokes the soil of the rational
mind is the result of a mental indiscipline which
hardly rises to the level of intellectual dishonesty,
because the intellect never acts freely at all.
The best account of faith that I know is that of
Clement of Alexandria, who was perhaps not a
great philosopher, but was one of the most enlight¬
ened as well as the most attractive of the Christian
Fathers. He says that there are three stages in the
spirit life. — Faith, Knowledge and Love. Faith,
he defines as compendious Knowledge, and Knowl¬
edge as scientific Faith. Faith and Love, he says,
are not taught. He means that Faith begins as
an act of choice; it is an experiment which passes
into experience. It verifies itself with the help of
120
WILLING AND KNOWING
reverent and open-minded inquiry, an inquiry
which is only possible to those who are earnestly
trying to live out their thoughts and to think out
their lives. (He is not afraid of the word of
Gnosis, and will not surrender it to heretical
Gnostics; the word is too precious, for it asserts
that knowledge of God is possible to man.) And
the pursuit of Knowledge, as he understands it, is
as far from leading us to arid pedantry and jug¬
gling with bloodless categories, that it makes us fit
to receive the gift of divine Love, which, like Faith,
is “ not taught.” This Love, he says (for like all
Platonists he ends in mysticism) , is the communion,
or even the union of the knower and the known.
He who has reached this state may be said to be,
in the words of St. Luke, equal to the angels. It
is the same path from earth to heaven which is
traced by Coleridge:
“ He first by fear uncharmed the drowsed soul,
Till of its noblest nature it can feel
Dim recollections ; and thence soared to hope,
Strong to believe whate’er of mystic good
The Eternal dooms for His immortal sons ;
From hope and firmer faith to perfect love
Attracted and absorbed ; and centred there,
God only to behold and know and feel
Till by exclusive consciousness of God
All self annihilated, it shall make
God its identity— God all in all!
We and our Father one
And blest are they
Who in this fleshly world, the elect of heaven,
W. E. INGE
121
Their strong eye darting through the deeds of
men,
Adore with steadfast unpresuming gaze
Him, nature’s essence, mind and energy;
And gazing, trembling, patiently ascend,
Treading beneath their feet all visible things
As steps, that upward to their Father’s throne
Lead gradual.”
The same writer says in prose: “Evidence of
Christianity! I am weary of the word. Make a
man feel the want of it. Rouse him if you can to
the self-knowledge of his need of it, and you may
safely trust it to its own evidence, remembering
only the express declaration of Christ Himself,
No man cometh unto me unless the Father draw
him.”
I wish to apply these thoughts to the matter of
religious doubt. We must begin by admitting that
our strongest and most permanent interests will
almost certainly determine our view of the world
generally, and therefore, our religion, which sums
up our experience of life. There are some whose
world is a playground, or a counting-house, or an
arena, or a stage. That is the world in which they
have chosen to live, and they have made for them¬
selves a world of this kind, in their own image.
It is not the real world, but it is their world; and
there is not much room for God in it. Until they
change their dominant interests, they will see no
other world; they will continue, in the word of the
Old Testament, to live in the light of the sparks
122
WILLING AND KNOWING
that they have kindled. Therefore, the first ques¬
tion which we have to ask ourselves is, What are
my dominant interests in life? What are the
subjects to which my leisure thoughts most readily
turn? What do I most earnestly desire to gain;
and what do I most anxiously fear to lose? These
are not very difficult questions to answer, but if
we have not made a habit of putting them to our¬
selves, the result may be a startling revelation to us.
We shall probably find that we have indulged our¬
selves in certain trains of thought far too
frequently, and that we have allowed them almost
literally to cut deep channels in our minds, so that
it has become very difficult to control our imagina¬
tions, and to observe a due proportion in the
amount of attention which we pay to the various
interests of life. Perhaps most serious faults, and
most disastrous blunders spring from disease of the
imagination caused by want of control over our
leisure thoughts.
But I am now dealing rather with the effect of
attention and want of attention upon our religious
beliefs. I have said that we all surround our¬
selves with a world after our own likeness. Is the
world which we have made for ourselves a world
in which there is room for God and an eternal
spiritual world ? And since we have to admit that
our wishes as well as our habitual interests affect
our beliefs, are we so living that the Christian
standard of values would be welcome to us?
W. R. INGE
123
Would it perhaps demonetize the currency in which
we do all our business, and a good supply of which
we have tried to keep in store ? The principle that
a motive for belief is a reason for doubt is a
principle which must be vigorously applied to our
unbeliefs as well as to our beliefs. Most people
when they reach mature years, construct for them¬
selves a rough scheme of values; they make up
their minds what they want, how they mean to
get it, and what price they will have to pay. It is
most inconvenient to have this scheme upset. It
is as inconvenient as to find that the country in
which we have invested our savings has gone
bankrupt. It is, therefore, possible and only too
easy, to create for ourselves strong vested interest
in that kind of world which Christianity tells us
not to love. And if we find ourselves confronted
by formidable obstacles in the way of faith, we
must ask ourselves whether perhaps we have not
put them there ourselves. And if our hearts acquit
us on this charge, we have still to ask ourselves
whether, supposing that there is a God, and a
Holy Spirit who is willing to be the Guest of
our souls, we have given Him, or rather ourselves,
a chance. How many minutes, on an average, do
we give in the day to thinking about Him? Five
minutes, out of seventeen hours of waking life?
If this is so, we cannot be surprised if the spiritual
world is dim and faint for us. The loss of faith
is mainly caused by the neglect of private prayer
124
WILLING AND KNOWING
and meditation. Religion is crowded out by other
interests, most of which we should ourselves admit
to the frivolous. We, none of us, really think that
the spiritual world is moonshine; but we are
troubled to find that it does not touch our experi¬
ence much. Have we any right to be surprised?
Do we give ourselves a fair chance? When we
remember the words of the Psalmist, “ I have set
God always before me,” and St. Paul’s admonition,
“ Bringing into captivity every thought to the
obedience of Christ,” we must realize how unlike
our inner life is to that of God’s saints. I am not
suggesting that we should load the dice and create
for ourselves a stake in ideal values; but we must
admit that if these values exist, we are foolish not
to take far more trouble to realize them and live
by them. Frequent acts of recollection; short
ejaculatory prayer before beginning my task or
occupation; a few minutes of meditation on our
knees — this is not much to give to that which alone
makes life worth living. It is difficult at first, no
doubt, so is the exercise of any faculty which we
have left untrained. But if we have not made the
effort, do not let us assume either that man cannot
commune with his Maker, or that we are religiously
ungifted, destitute of the faculty which in its fullest
development we call saintliness or religious genius.
There are great differences in human endowments,
on this side as on others, and there is no reason to
think that God looks with especial favour on those
W. E. INGE
125
who are devotional by temperament. The twelve
apostles, so far as we can gather from what we
know of them, were brave and loyal men, but, at
any rate at first, rather dull listeners to their
Master’s highest teachings. Most of us are not
called to be saints, any more than we are called to
be poets or musicians ; but we have the capacity for
drawing near to God in prayer and we cannot with
impunity allow this faculty to rust unused.
Religious doubts, it seems to me, fall into two
classes. Sometimes they gather round some par¬
ticular doctrine, which we have been taught to re¬
gard as an essential part of the Christian faith. It
is probable that this doctrine will be some alleged
event in the past or future, for which we have
come to think that the evidence is untrustworthy or
insufficient. I do not think that we have any right
to crush or inhibit such doubts. Even Pascal, with
all his distrust of human reason, says, “ He who
doubts and searches not is at the same time a
grievous wrong-doer and a grievously unfortunate
man.” The last words remind me of a line of
Euripides, which applies to all who shirk the full
human experience, that of domestic life for ex¬
ample: “ He suffers less, but we cannot envy his
good fortune.” I believe that we ought to pull
these skeletons out of the cupboard, and look them
squarely in the face. And having done so, the
first questions which we ought to ask are: Is this
doctrine really part of Christianity as I understand
120
WILLING AND KNOWING
it? If it is true, what does it prove? And if it
is not true, what does it take away with it? Is
there any part of my vital religion which stands or
falls with this doctrine ? It may be that we have
listened to that mischievous type of apologists
whose favourite weapon is the dilemma. If you do
not believe this, you cannot believe that, and if
you do not believe that the whole of Christianity
goes by the board. We must not attend to them.
If we find that the doctrine which seems to us to be
insufficiently attested is not of vital importance to
us, we may cease to trouble ourselves about it.
Sometimes we may discover later that it is better
supported than we thought; more often perhaps we
may conclude that it is a bit of scaffolding which
the fabric no longer needs, or an outwork which
is no longer of any use in the fortifications of the
citadels. The late Father Tyrell wrote an able
book called Lex Orandi, in which he discusses what
he calls the “ prayer-value ” of dogmas. He is
perhaps dangerously near saying that the truth of
dogmas consists in their prayer-value, which is the
subjective or pragmatist position described in the
opening part of my sermon to-day; but I think it
is true that we need not trouble ourselves much
about a dogma which has no prayer value for us.
It makes all the difference in our attitude toward
doubt whether we regard it as a temptation of the
devil, or as part of the discipline which we are
called to undergo. Doubts of the kind which we
W. R. INGE
127
have just been considering are not temptations of
the devil, and we have no right to run away from
them, and stifle them under authority. If one
authority tells us to believe, and another authority
tells us to disbelieve, and we follow the first
authority without examining the evidence, that is
tantamount to saying, “ I will believe because I
choose,” which is not an attitude for an intelligent
or even an honest man.
But there is another kind of doubt, which does
not attach to any particular doctrine, but to the
existence of God Himself, and the spiritual world.
It is not so much that any anti-theistic arguments
seem to us to be cogent, as that the whole subject
matter of religion seems to us to be unreal. As the
French encyclopaedist said: “The question of God
lacks actuality.” This is a very different thing
from the other kind of doubt, and only a bigot will
confound them. In dealing with this second type
of doubt, it is a pertinent and not an impertinent
question to ask whether there is anything in the
character of the doubter to account for his failure
to see what too many others are the most certain
of all truths. Theologians have often misused a
perfectly legitimate argument by hinting at secret
sins, moral obliquities of some kind, as the prob¬
able source of want of faith. It is certainly true
that only the pure in heart can see God, and we
must extend the meaning of purity of heart to all
unfaithfulness to the light that is in us. The
128
WILLING AND KNOWING
double heart, it has been said, makes the double
head. But it is not necessary to assume that
irreligious persons are evil livers. My argument
this morning has been that inattention and want
of interest are quite enough to account for the
feeling of unreality which for many of us sur¬
rounds the spiritual world, and that however real
and important the truths of religion may be, we
cannot expect to feel their reality and importance
if we hardly ever think of them.
I know that most of the younger generation are
disposed to think that there is something small and
selfish about care for their own souls, and that it
is enough for them to cherish, on the one side,
what a recent writer has called loyalty to the be¬
loved community, the Church, and on the other,
ardour for social reform. A breezy, familiar, con¬
fident religion, with this dual basis, has been
brought back from the battle-field of France. But
believe me, you can serve both the Church and the
country best by deepening your own personal faith.
The reason why organized religion has lost nearly
all its credit, is not that it is not sufficiently organ¬
ized, but that it has no vision of the invisible; it
does not hold up before the nation that standard of
values which Christ revealed to us; it does not
believe from its heart with that noble rebel
Mazzini, that the cause of all our trouble is the
gradual substitution of the worship of material
interests for the adoration of holy ideas; and so it
W. R. INGE
129
fluctuates between shallow and mischievous
political agitation and an equally shallow and
eclectic medievalism. You will do far more good
in your generation by being devout and open-
minded Christians, “ adding to your faith knowl¬
edge ” in the spirit of the words of Clement which
I quoted to you, than by plunging into movements
which are too superficial to add any real strength
to the cause of religion. If we are to have a re¬
ligious revival, it must be unmistakably a spiritual
revival — it must flow from an outpouring of the
Holy Spirit, with His gifts of wisdom and under¬
standing of counsel and might, of knowledge and
the fear of the Lord ; it must point straight to the
Cross of Christ, and to heaven into which He is
ascended. Such a revival can begin only in hearts
which have prepared themselves earnestly to re¬
ceive the heavenly Guest; and where can we hope
to find the first promise of it if not here,1 the home
of young life and of ancient wisdom, the store¬
house of things new and old — new things that
were old before the world was, and old things
which spring ever fresh from the fountains of the
river of God? If any man willeth to do His will,
he shall know of the doctrine. The way is not yet
clear before us; many old things are passing away,
and we do not know what is coming. It is a time
for thought and prayer and self-discipline. “ I will
hearken what the Lord God will say concerning
Oxford University.
130
WILLING AND KNOWING
me.” Things may be clearer ten years hence, when
the seed sown in a million heroic graves has had
time to grow. Meanwhile, remember St. Paul’s
words to Timothy, “ Take heed to thyself, and to
the doctrine ” ; and to thyself first.
IX
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST
By
CHARLES E. JEFFERSON, D. D.,
Pastor , Broadway ( Congregational ) Tabernacle ,
New York
Charles Edward Jefferson was born at Cambridge,
Ohio, August 29, i860. He received his academic
and theological training at Ohio Wesleyan and Boston
Universities. He was ordained in the Congregational
ministry in 1887. He was pastor of Central Church,
Chelsea, Mass., 1887-1898. In 1898 he became pastor
of the Broadway Tabernacle Congregational Church,
New York, where he is still located. Dr. Jefferson,
during the spring and summer of 1922, acted in the
capacity of Special Preacher to the City Temple,
London. He is uniquely a preacher’s preacher and
has, through his written and spoken work, yielded
an amazing influence over his contemporaries of the
pulpit.
Among his many written works must be men¬
tioned: Under Twenty , Old Truths and New
Facts, The Character of Jesus , Doctrine and Deed,
The Minister as Prophet, Things Fundamental, The
Ministering Shepherd, The Building of the Church.
IX
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST1
“Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he
is none of his.” — Romans 8 : 9.
SO said the first great interpreter of the Chris¬
tian religion. The statement is straight¬
forward, emphatic and beautifully clear.
Only fifteen words, and all but one of them mono¬
syllables. One does not need a dictionary to read
them. A child of six can take them in. It is a
sentence without mist or fog. It has in it the note
of finality. It is positive, dogmatic, solid as an
axiom. It is in the style of Euclid. Paul is not
setting forth a thesis for discussion. There are
some things not open for debate. A few questions
are closed. We say there are two sides to every¬
thing, but there are not two sides to this. You can¬
not say that if a man have not the Spirit of Christ
it makes no difference. Everybody sees that if a
man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His.
There are axioms in religion as in mathematics.
This is one of them. Like all axioms, this one is a
basal truth, and therefore a truth to start with. In
working out intricate problems we must begin with
fundamental principles. The only way to illumine
1 Delivered before the Copenhagen Peace Conference
(1922). Published also in The Christian Work.
133
134 ^ THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST
\
a confused situation is to flash on it the light of an
elemental truth. Unless we begin with facts which
are incontrovertible we cannot prosper in our
efforts to solve the problems of life. To begin
with forms is a constant temptation. It is the
surface things which catch the eye and arrest the
mind. It is easier to deal with measures than with
truths, to frame programs than to mould dis¬
positions, to devise machinery than to create a new
heart. Measures and programs and machinery are
indispensable. Without them we cannot go on.
They deserve not a little of our time and our
thought. But our machinery and schedules and
policies are all the time disappointing us, because
we have neglected the things which lie deeper.
W e get into morasses because we start at the wrong
point. The house falls because we do not go
down to the rock. In this Cathedral, dedicated to
God, in Whom we live and move and have our
being, to Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, and
to the Holy Ghost, our Advocate and Guide, it is
fitting that before we enter on the work that lies
before us we should think together of some things
which are fundamental and all controlling.
“ If a man have not the Spirit of Christ he is
none of his.” Too often we begin and end with
the words of Jesus. His words are wonderful.
They lie before us in the New Testamenf. They
are often on our lips. It is easy to repeat them
and to conjure with them. Does the Church pos-
CHARLES E. JEFFERSON
135
sess the words of Jesus? Yes. Does the Church
possess the Spirit of Christ? That is an embar¬
rassing question. But if the Church have not the
Spirit of Christ itris none of His, no tnatter how
diligent it is in repeating His words. “ Many will
say to me Lord, Lord.”
Sometimes we do not begin with Christ at all;
we begin with the Church, its forms of worship,
its sacraments, its orders, its government, its
creedal statements, its traditions. But the first
great Christian preacher did not begin in his think¬
ing with the Church ; he began always with Christ.
To him Christ is all. If we have the Spirit of
Christ we have everything. If we have not His
Spirit we have nothing. That was Paul’s convic¬
tion. See what this means. A man may be bap¬
tized with water, but if he is not baptized into the
Spirit of Christ he is none of His. A man may
come to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper all
through his life, but if he have not the Spirit of
Christ he has no part with Him. A man may re¬
peat the most orthodox of the creeds, but if he
have not the Spirit of Christ he is not a believer.
Paul had a genius for seeing through shams. He
always cut to the core, he grasped the essence, he
made his way into the marrow. He did not allow
his eye to wander from the main point. He saw
that if a man have not the Spirit of Christ he is
none of His. ThisJs not a dictum to be Recited or
quibbled over, but a truth to be pondered over and
136 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST
/
accepted and built on. Let us reckon with it to¬
day.
If a man have not the Spirit of Christ he is
none of his.” Paul liked to Say this. He says
it now in one way and now in another. Like all
great teachers, he varies his language in order that
the trtfth may have a better chance to capture the
mind. To the Romans he says it in prose. To
the Corinthians he says it in poetry. To the man
on the Tiber he is as curt and matter of fact and
peremptory as Pontius Pilate with his “ What is
written is written.” To the Greeks he is as
picturesque and opulent as Plato. “ Though I
speak with the tongues of men and of angels and
have not love- — in other words, if I have not the
Spirit of Christ I am nothing but noise ” — I am
not creating music that can be caught up and woven
into the everlasting harmonies. The Corinthians,
like certain moderns, put primary emphasis upon
rhetoric and knowledge. Paul asserts, “ Though
I know all the mysteries and all knowledge and
have not the Spirit of Christ I am nothing.”
There were some in Corinth, as there are some
now, who talked much about faith. They had
caught up the word of Jesus and were making a
fetish of it. Paul declares, “ Though I have all
faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have
not the Spirit of Christ I am nothing.” There
were Corinthians who made good works the be-all
and end-all of religion, and their descendants have
CHABLES E. JEFFEESON 137
i
gone abroad through all the earth. Their religion
consisted in feeding poor people. Paul proclaims,
“ Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor
and have not the Spirit of Christ it profits me
nothing.” Philanthropy is not religiori. It is
possible to scatter large benefactions and have a
heart at enmity with God. Even martyrdom does
not always possess ethical value. Men can become
martyrs through superstition or fanaticism, or
through sheer stubbornness, and Paul lays it down,
“ Though I give my body to be burned and have
not the Spirit of Christ it does not help me at all.”
Here is a truth which the Apostle is determined
to drive home. Everything, so he thinks, depends
on this being understood. The future of the
Church and of religion and of civilization itself all
hangs on this. If men fail to see that being a
Christian means possessing the Spirit of Christ,
then all the future course of the world’s life will
be bound in shallows and miseries.
What is the Spirit of Christ? Fortunately we
are not left in the dark. There is much twilight
in the New Testament, but not at this point.
Many things which we want to know about Jesus
the New Testament refuses to disclose. One thing
it makes gloriously luminous — the Spirit of Christ.
His soul stands out before us radiant, full-statured,
clear-cut as a star. We are uncertain sometimes
as to His words ; we are never in doubt concerning
the sort of man He was. We are always absolutely
138
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST
sure of His attitude, His disposition, His spirit.
First of all. He was brotherly. His spirit was
wafmly fraternal. His heart was big and friendly.
He was a brother to everybody. The crowd at
once saw that. His brotherliness was amazing,
unprecedented, even scandalous. He carried it too
far, so thought the Scribes. He shocked the
prudent by being too brotherly. He was the friend
of publicans and sinners. That was the first in¬
dictment brought in against Him. To Jesus
brotherliness is of the essence of true religion.
Fellowship is cardinal and indispensable. In re¬
ligion worship does not come first; brotherliness
comes first. It is far easier to worship than to be
brotherly. “ If thou bring thy gift to the altai
and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought
against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar
and go thy way- — first be reconciled to thy brother
and then come and offer thy gift.” This is what
He was always saying. His disciples could never
forget it. One of them, when he was an old man,
wrote: “ He that loveth not his brother, whom he
hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not
seen?” Brotherliness expresses itself in inter¬
course, communion, cooperation. The Christian
who is zealous in worship and indifferent to fellow¬
ship does not know the A B C of Christianity.
What foolery to make a great to-do about forms
of worship and crucify the spirit of brotherliness!
Church bigots and snobs, ecclesiastical autocrats
CHARLES E. JEFFERSON
139
and churls have no part with Christ. Paul is right
— “ If a man have not the Spirit of Christ he is
none of his.” Brotherliness is the first note of a
genuinely Christian Church.
Brotherliness leads to service. Christ was a
servant No one questions that. He so glorified
the word servant that His disciples could think of
no higher title for themselves than “ servants.”
“ He went about doing good.” That was Peter’s
description of Jesus’ life when he held Jesus up be-L
fore the Romans in the house of Cornelius in
Caesarea. Jesus loved to think of Himself as a
servant. “ The Son of man came not to be min¬
istered unto, but to minister.” “ If any man will
be great, let him become the servant of all.” The
man who rises highest is the man who serves most.
At the end of His life Jesus, standing with a basin
of water in one hand and a towel in the other,
said: “ I have given you an example.” The dis¬
ciple who wrote the fourth Gospel has nothing to
say about the Sacrament of the Bread and Wine ;
he fixes attention upon the Sacrament of the Basin
and Towel. The Spirit of Christ is, then, the
Spirit of service. A Christian man is always help¬
ful. If he have not this spirit of helpfulness he
does not belong to Christ. If a church is not a
servant of the town, of the world, it is none of
His. What matters it what you label it?
Brotherly service finds its climax in sacrifice.
The Spirit of Jesus is the spirit of sacrifice. Does
140
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST
any one doubt it? The fundamental principle of
Christianity is self-denial. When Paul urges men
to have the mind that was in Christ he portrays the
self-surrender of the man Jesus, obedient unto
death, even the death of the Cross. Jesus was
always laying down His life for others. “ If any
man will come after me, let him take up his Cross
every day.” The Church is right in making the
Cross the symbol of the Christian faith.
Here, then, we stand in the presence of the Soul
of Jesus. He is brotherly, helpful, self-denying.
His Spirit is the spirit of fraternity, service and
loving sacrifice. If a man have not this same
spirit he is none of His. If a church is not bap¬
tized into this same spirit it does not belong to Him.
If you roll brotherliness, service and sacrifice into
one word, you have love. The Spirit of Jesus is
the spirit of love. “ God is Love,” and Jesus is
the express image of His Father, and is therefore
Love. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father
and also of the Son, and therefore the Holy Spirit
is the Spirit of Love. The Kingdom of God is the
sway of love. If the world is full of suspicion,
and fear, and ill-will, the Kingdom of God has not
come. If the Church abound in unbrotherliness
and selfishness and dissension, the Kingdom of
God has not come. All Christians are expected to
pray constantly that the sway of love may come.
It must come, first of all, to those who offer the
prayer. The sway of love must be first in the
CHARLES E. JEFFERSON
141
Church. If it is not there, it is not likely to be any¬
where. It cannot be there until Christians repent
and are born from above. Christ is inexorable on
this point. “ A new commandment I give unto
you that ye love one another as I have loved you.”
Men are always willing to love up to a certain
point, and after a conventional standard. We be¬
come real Christians only in loving our fellow
Christians as Christ has loved us. This is His
type of love which will save the Church and the
world. No lower grade of love will meet the situ¬
ation. The Publicans’ style or the Gentiles’ type
are not sufficient. There must be the generous for¬
giving, overflowing, reckless love of Christ. We
must forgive our enemies and do good to them
that despitefully use us. It is this Christlike type
of love in Christian men which is to convince the
world that Jesus Christ is from heaven. Such love
is the only badge of discipleship, the only satis¬
factory proof of loyalty. It is the only orthodoxy
recognized in heaven. “ By this shall all men
know that ye are my disciples if ye have love one^
for another.” A loveless Church is not a Christian
Church. A Church which does not serve human¬
ity does not belong to Christ. A divided Church
is a stumbling block and scandal. A Church made
up of groups of men who are unbrotherly, and who
hold aloof from mutual service, and who refuse to
cooperate in loving sacrifice for the attainment of
common ends is a Church which is a disappoint-
142
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST
ment to the heart of Christ. The nations will never
be won by the observance of sacraments. The
world can only be won by the massed cohorts of
Christians who love one another as Christ has loved
them. If the Church have not the Spirit of Christ
it is none of His. Until that axiomatic truth is
faced and accepted and incarnated we must remain
outside the city whose gates are pearl.
“ If a man have not the Spirit of Christ he is
none of his.” Let us put a fresh emphasis on
that. If he does not have the mind of Christ he
is contributing nothing to that public opinion which
will some day control the world. If he does not
have the heart of Christ he does not count in the
sum total of redemptive forces.
If the Church has not the Spirit of Christ it is
none of His. Let us stress that. Jesus of
Nazareth walked boldly across national, racial and
social lines, and He said, “ Follow Me.” Let us
follow Him. It is the duty of the Church to walk
unafraid across national frontiers. It is ordained
to carry across national boundaries considerateness
and helpfulness and forgiveness and sacrifice. It
should do this audaciously. Men must learn to
clasp hands across racial chasms. The Church
must train them to do it. Men’s hearts must touch
one another through the barriers of nationality and
race and tradition and prejudice. The inter¬
twining of human sympathies and affections, to
this mighty work the Church is called. If the
CHAELES E. JEFFEESON
143
Church have not the Spirit of Christ it is none of
His.
If a nation have not the Spirit of Christ it is
none of His. Let us say that with authority, and
let us say it often. Diplomacy must be baptized
into the Spirit of Christ. This must be insisted
on. The diplomat must obey the law of Christ.
He must be brotherly. His ambition must be to
help, and he must do his work within sight of the
principle of sacrifice. The mailed fist must go —
only the pierced hands can lift the world to new
levels. Love is the mightiest force in the universe.
Let us believe it and act upon it. Scientists are
not ashamed of the law of gravitation. It is in¬
exorable, unchangeable, and those who ignore it
perish. Let us not apologize for the law of love.
It also is unalterable, inflexible, and those who
violate it are ground to powder. The world is in
its present deplorable condition solely because of
the long continued and outrageous trampling upon
the law of love.
If a government have not the Spirit of Christ it
is none of His. If it lack His Spirit it is doomed.
Its wealth will not save it, nor its learning, nor its
genius, nor its military power. If a nation have
not the Spirit of Christ it must go down. Let us
press this upon the mind and conscience of the
world. Let us put it in the forefront of all our
teaching. God has made of one flesh every nation
of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having
144
THE SPIKIT OF CHRIST
determined their appointed seasons and the bounds
of their habitations. Corporate life is ordained of
God, and ruled by Him. National development is
held in the grip of unchanging and irresistible law.
God is love, and rulers and statesmen lead nations
to the abyss if they refuse to obey the law of love.
Nations, like individuals, live and move and have
their being in God (i. e., in love). No nation lives
to itself. Every nation is vitally related to every
other nation, and all nations are bound up in 'the
life of the Lord of Love. A nation which refuses
to do justly and love mercy and walk humbly with
its neighbours in the path of brotherly sendee and
good will is sooner or later dashed to pieces like a
potter’s vessel. Those who doubt this should read
history.
It is in the international realm that the Church
must, through the coming centuries, perform its
most zealous and arduous labour. The world is
sick and the Church must heal it. The world is
torn by evil spirits, suspicion and fear, and greed,
and injustice, and hate, and revenge, and all these
must be cast out. The fhurch is commissioned to
cast out demons. War is a demon. War must
go. We must have a warless world if we are to
have any world at all. Let us demand in the name
of Christ that preparations for war throughout
shall cease. Preparing for war leads to war. We
can never have peace so long as nations prepare for
war. Let us insist that target practice shall come
CHAELES E. JEFFEESON
145
to an end. Let us denounce it as blasphemy
against God, a conscienceless trampling on our
word to the young men who went out to die in
the Great War, heartened by our promise that that
would be the last war. Let us cry out unitedly
against the building of battle-ships, those breeders
of fear, and against the construction of bomb¬
dropping airplanes, those fomenters of hate, and
against the creation of all those instruments of
death whose very existence arouses suspicion and
poisons the springs of international good will.
God calls all men to repent. To repent is not to
cry or to feel bad. We have cried enough. To
repent is to change one’s mind. God commands us
to change our ways of thinking. We think like
men, and the world can never become better or
happier until we think like God. We think like
God only when we think like Christ. When we
think like Christ we think in terms of justice and
mercy, of tenderness and forgiveness and good will.
When we think like Christ we believe in men.
We trust them, we suffer long and still are kind.
We are patient with them, and we forgive them
when they do us wrong. We claim them as our
brothers.
To bring the separated races together and to
train alienated nations to love one another — this is
"our heavenly Father’s business and we must be
about it. There are many obstacles. We must
travel the way of the Cross. The adversaries are
146
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST
not few. We must go by way of Golgotha. The
discouragements and disappointments and defeats
and delays make the heart sick — this is the cup
which our Father has given us to drink. Shall we
not drink it? If God is for us, who is against us?
“ He that spared not his own Son, but delivered
him up for us all, how shall he not also with him
freely give us all things.” “ If ye being evil know
how to give good gifts unto your children, how
much more shall your Father who is in heaven give
the Holy Spirit to them that ask him.”
Let us open our Conference with a great wish,
a mighty longing, a passionate prayer that the
Spirit of Love may come upon us and direct us in
all our ways. Then shall we have the Spirit of
Christ and the Conference will be His.
X
THE CROSS— THE MEASURE
OF THE WORLD
By
JOHN KELMAN, D. D.,
Fast or, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church ,
New York
John Kelman was born June 20, 1862, in Ayrshire,
Scotland. He received his academic training at New
College, Edinburgh and Ormond College, Melbourne ;
ordained as a Presbyterian clergyman 1891 ; assistant
to Rev. (now Principal) George Adam Smith,
D. D., LL. D., in Aberdeen ; minister of Peterculter,
Aberdeenshire, 1891 ; of New North Church, Edin¬
burgh, 1897-1907; of St. George’s United Free
Church, Edinburgh, 1907-1919; now minister of
Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York City.
Dr. Kelman is a ripe scholar, an illuminating author
and a master of pulpit technique.
Outstanding among his publications are ; The Faith
of Robert Louis Stevenson , The Holy Land , A Study
of John Runyan’ s Pilgrim’s Progress, Ephemera
Eternitatis , Among Famous Books, The Light That
Saves, and The Foundations of Faith.
X
THE CROSS— THE MEASURE OF
THE WORLD
“ He that talketh with me has a golden reed to
measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall
thereof — Revelation 21 : 15.
" We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a
stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness ;
but unto them which are called, both Jews and
Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of
God — 1 Corinthians i : 23, 24.
I
THERE is a fine phrase of Newman’s in
which he speaks of the cross as the
measure of the world. There is no one
text of Scripture which gives these words exactly,
but if we combine the two texts which have been
chosen for to-day we shall get something very
near it. It is a phrase very rich and full of
spiritual suggestion. It shows us on the one hand
one of the deepest of the world’s needs, and on the
other hand the remedy for that defect. The need
of the world is for a true standard whereby it may
judge itself and its beliefs. Many hard things
have been said about the world, in condemnation
both of its wisdom and of its morality, but this is
the most fundamental of them all. If it be true
149
150 THE CROSS THE MEASURE OF WORLD
that the world habitually deludes itself because of
the false standards by which it judges, then the case
is indeed serious. In Second Corinthians St. Paul
speaks of some who measure themselves by them¬
selves and compare themselves among themselves,
and by doing this prove that they are not wise.
Theirs was the same folly which Pope rebukes in
his famous line, Still make themselves the meas¬
ure of mankind. This is a very far-reaching ac¬
cusation. It does not mean merely that the world
is mistaken in its judgments, and accuse it of
falsity or foolishness in this or that estimate. It
goes much further than that and tells us that the
world cannot but be mistaken in its judgment, be¬
cause it has lost its sense of values and proportions
altogether. Its greatest need is not for a correct
view of this or that, but for a new standard by
which to judge all things.
Here then the new standard is offered to the
world. It is the cross of Calvary. Of the many
points of view from which men have seen the cross
none could possibly be more interesting and none
more vital than this. It has been given to man
as a measuring-rod, an absolute standard of value
to which he may bring all the aspects and details
of his manifold life, and determine the worth of
each, not for time but for eternity. This is an
idea which has been often and beautifully ex¬
pressed. Readers of Cynewulf’s great poem of
Christ will remember how on Judgment Day the
JOHN KELMAN
151
cross dominates the whole scene with its mingled
streams of fire and blood. Equally dominant is
the cross in Dante’s Paradiso in which everything
is subordinate to its supreme decision. The idea of
the cross as standard has become domesticated in
our Gothic architecture. All over Christian lands
our fathers erected cruciform churches and ca¬
thedrals, symbolizing the dying Saviour point by
point. In many of these the leaning chancel has
indicated the head of the Crucified, and the altar-
rail has been familiarly spoken of as the breast of
God, while the transepts are the outstretched arms.
These churches were the Christian attempt to re¬
measure the world with the measure of Christ, the
Crucified, and so correct the mistaken judgments of
things that men were everywhere making.
If we may pursue the figure a little further we
can well see how in the day of Calvary the cross
of Jesus was measuring the city of Jerusalem.
Then was fulfilled the prophecy of Zechariah who
lifted up his eyes and looked, and beheld a man
with a measuring-line in his hand. Then said I,
Whither goest thou? And he said unto me, To
measure Jerusalem, to see what is the breadth
thereof, and what is the length thereof. Undoubt¬
edly in Christ’s time Jerusalem was needing a new
standard of measurement. Its history had intoxi¬
cated it. It had taken itself so seriously that it
seemed to be the greatest city, nay the only city
worth mentioning, in all the world. After so long
152 THE CROSS THE MEASURE OF WORLD
a lapse of time the airs which Jerusalem gave her¬
self would be amusing if they were not so pathetic.
She complacently asked whether any good thing
could come out of Nazareth, and evidently was per¬
suaded that there was nothing which counted for
anything, and no one who counted for anybody
outside of Jerusalem.
How sarcastically history has dealt with that
judgment. The city shrank long ago to a provin¬
cial town famous chiefly for a crime. A score of
times besieged, its character seemed to grow worse
rather than to improve under calamity. They used
to ask whether any good thing could come out of
Nazareth, but the question seemed to retort upon
them, asking whether any good thing could come
out of Jerusalem, and the answer was that it was
very doubtful whether any good thing could come
out of Jerusalem — alive. Even in temporal mat¬
ters the cross measured Jerusalem. It was the
token of the city’s subjection under the power of
Rome. It measured its religion, showing how
narrow were its projects and how unreasoning its
hatreds. It branded it with the perpetual accusa¬
tion that with all its boasted austerity of righteous¬
ness Jerusalem was a place where men could still
be crucified to save a situation. Thus Jesus from
the cross judged His judges, Roman and Jewish
alike. When, near the end, He cried, It is finished,
the words were His verdict upon a great deal that
had been characteristic of the ancient world. Much
JOHN KELMAN
153
that seemed important, much that had been taken
for granted, much that was universal and had been
esteemed excellent, was indeed finished upon that
day. The ways and standards which had satisfied
the earlier conscience would satisfy man no more.
Old things were passed away and many of them
thrown upon the rubbish-heap forever. The old
Jerusalem had outlived her day. A new world,
managed upon different principles and measured by
different standards, began at the cross. The tri¬
umph of these principles and standards would be a
new Jerusalem descending from God out of heaven
to take the place of the old.
It is perhaps fanciful, and yet the fancy is quite
irresistible and there is much truth in it, to see in
the cross a rod that measures human life in four
directions — east and west and down and up. It
measured the East and all that Oriental life had
stood for. Especially did it take the measure of
Judea and Palestine. The Holy Land in its super¬
cilious fashion imagined that it had taken the meas¬
ure of the cross. Paul tells us that it had called it
a stumbling-block and passed on its way regardless.
For the pious Jew this symbol was simply a gallows
on which a blasphemer had been punished by the
hands of his appointed judges. How little could
he imagine that this execution was really taking
the measure of him and of his nation and sending
it down to all future time. It was not long till the
apostles of the new creed were proclaiming that
154 THE CROSS THE MEASURE OF WORLD
Palestine was a nation which had crucified its
Messiah, and the cross was already branding them
in history as the murderers of the Holy One of
God. In countless touches we see the judgment of
the cross upon those who were responsible for it.
As they passed by while Christ was dying, they
called up to Him in mockery, Come down from the
cross and we will believe. He saved others, Him¬
self He cannot save. Nothing could have been
more revealing than that. It measured their esti¬
mate of what God and the Son of God must be.
The Crucified would have seemed divine to them
if He had saved Himself. But the cross has taught
the world that He Who saves Himself cannot save
others, and the world has believed in Christ pre¬
cisely because He did not come down from the
cross.
Not less accurately and sweepingly did the cross
take the measure of the Western world that day.
The West was dominated by the Greek spirit which
counted the cross foolishness. Their measure of it
was contemptuous in the last degree, and it would
have seemed sheer folly to offer it to them in their
culture. Cicero had said, Let the very name of
the cross be far away from Roman citizens, not
from their bodies only — but from their thoughts,
their eyes and their ears. The weakness of the
Greek world was that it refused to face the facts
of life. Nature was crucifying Greece in national
disaster and in the sad and insoluble mystery of
JOHN KELMAN
155
death, to say nothing of all the individual pain and
wretchedness with which life itself was beset. The
Greek was perplexed, and there hung about all his
fair dreams that melancholy with which we are
familiar. The cross might indeed be foolishness to
the Greek, but in the deep heart of him he knew
it was fact also, and he had no explanation for the
mystery. The cross of Calvary has measured and
explained the tragedy which perplexed and sad¬
dened the Grseco-Roman world and which are still
so insistent in the heart of man. It revealed a sor¬
row that was not unavailing, a sacrifice that could
redeem, and thus it answered the questions which
classical culture could not answer, and took the
measure of that culture’s highest wisdom.
Behold how far also the east is from the west!
How very far is Athens from Jerusalem! Yet He
Who was crucified on Calvary stretched out His
hands toward both of these. He revealed and put
on record the inevitable failure of their life and
showed that He alone could rectify it. As He
hung there in mute agony He was interpreting the
deepest meaning both of Eastern and of Western
thought. Beyond the bounds of the Grseco-Latin
world on the one side and the Semitic on the other,
the cross was the measure of still further lands.
All other faiths with their acceptances and rejec¬
tions must sooner or later come to this measuring-
place and have their values tested by the cross of
Calvary. The faith of which that cross is the
156 THE CROSS THE MEASURE OF WORLD
symbol is not a new faith better than others that
had already existed or were yet to be born. It is
the very essence of all true religion, the thing
which every faith of man is seeking and more or
less vainly trying to express.
Further; the cross is the measure not only of
man’s religion but of all departments of his life
and thought. It tears off all our wrappings of
local prejudice and brings us down in every region
to the dire facts of human life. It measures our
politics and all our national ideals. These have
been too often measured by such poor conceptions
as the balance of power and the most convenient
compromise which will tide a nation over the im¬
mediate future. But the cross strikes home to the
principles upon which politicians are working. It
knows nothing of questions of expediency, but re¬
veals these principles as essentially Christian or
anti-Christian, good or bad. Similarly, it meas¬
ures our wealth and poverty, and the causes which
produce them. Social prejudice and the habit of
laissez faire have pronounced their own judgment
upon this distribution and found that it was all very
satisfactory. That is not the judgment of the
cross. The cross demands a justice founded upon
equity rather than upon the mere letter of the law.
It insists upon humanity instead of legality as the
master of the social conscience.
Similarly, the cross measures the art of any age,
not by the fashion of critics and the popular fancy
JOHN KELMAN
157
of the time, but by its relation to truth and loftiness
and purity, in virtue of which art is the handmaid
of the Lord. It measures our science by its fear¬
lessness in the search for truth. It sets for the
model of the scientific man that Christ Who died
rather than retract, and Who incurred enormous
risks of misunderstanding rather than suppress the
word He had to proclaim. It justifies investiga¬
tion and convinces the world that in the long run
it is always safe to know and to declare the facts of
the case. With equal remorselessness it measures
our ambitions and all our dreams of greatness, our
pleasures and frivolities and slightnesses. These
are always popular and are understood and accepted
as the normal way for the world to live. But the
cross forces sacrifice into the heart of life. It
condemns selfishness, the oldest idol in the world.
It reveals God’s method of dying in sacrifice and
being raised again in power, not merely as an
ancient dogma concerning His Son in Jerusalem,
but as the process through which individual lives
and the history of the race must move forward
through the ages. It sets man over against the
world and proclaims his infinite value asking in its
silent eloquence, What shall it profit a man if he
gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? Thus
it exalts men and makes them know the superiority
of their human value to all earthly gains. No such
claim for the rights of man was ever made on the
earth before. He has a right not onlv to the
158 THE CROSS THE MEASURE OF WORLD
perishing gains of a day and to equal chances in
its business, but to righteousness and honour and
love, things which will outlast all earthly success or
failure.
The cross stretches its grim measuring-line
downwards, searching the deep places of life’s
tragedy and man’s misery. It measures the world’s
pain with an intimate and understanding measure¬
ment, and it offers the only solution for the mystery
of suffering which has ever satisfied the human
soul. In all generations bruised and thwarted
spirits have rebelled against the injustice of life,
and have taken their sufferings as a humiliation.
The cross proclaims suffering to be a redeeming
thing, and as the centuries go by we are under¬
standing better and better the truth of that great
pronouncement. Take the instance of the recent
war. It is the fashion now to deplore the lack of
noble consequence such as was prophesied from it.
Yet in the hour of decision the question was forced
upon millions of young men, as it had never been
before, Which is the nobler destiny for man, selfish
ease and imperial tyranny, or bloody trenches and
the steadfast purpose of liberty at the cost of
death? Thus to the end of time will the cross of
Christ exalt and glorify suffering undertaken for
all honourable causes. It will whisper to the pain
and agony of man a message of eternal hope.
Deeper still searches the cross into the human
tragedy, measuring the sin and folly of the ages.
JOHN KELMAN
159
Sin has been esteemed a light thing. Men have
been ingenious in discovering excuses for it, and
in practicing easy luxurious ways of repentance
which might silence the voice of conscience. The
music of the Venusberg has always been trying to
drown the Pilgrim’s March. There is no task
which has more constantly exercised mankind than
the attempt to break down the difference between
right and wrong and to persuade the world that
there is no real difference. All such moral con¬
fusion has been answered by the late Dr. Denney
in the one sentence that Christ died for the differ¬
ence between right and wrong. His cross is still
the measure of the world’s power to resist love,
and that is the very essence of sin in all sorts. To
every age, beset by moral scepticism, which would
tell the young generation that there is no real dif¬
ference between right and wrong, Christ gives the
conclusive answer. This is what sin meant to
Jesus — this agony of spirit, this unspeakable shame,
this death that followed when the sin of the
world came upon His soul. No man, however
wise or learned he may be, can really construct a
moral philosophy that is worthy of the name until
he has measured all the problems of good and evil
at the cross of Christ.
There is yet another direction toward which the
cross points: it points upward toward heaven and
is the measure of the world in that direction also.
Beyond the head bowed in anguish the long
160 THE CEOSS THE MEASUEE OF WOELD
straight line of the cross pointed toward the
darkened skies, and pierced through them to the
light beyond. It measures not only the misery of
human life with its pain and sin, but also the
power of God to deal with it at its worst; It has
given to the world its only true optimism. There
is an optimism which is a mere dislike to look at
the painful side of things, and the construction of
a beautiful world by the simple expedient of shut¬
ting the eyes to the world as it is. That kind of
optimism had long ago proved a delusion which
only deepened man’s distrust in life. Amid the
wreckage of such vain hopes the tall cross of
Calvary stands. When we look upon it we are
persuaded that there is here the one power in the
universe able to look with open eyes upon the
worst, and still believe in the best. In the cross
love has proved absolutely able to cope with the
very worst that hell can do. It reveals to us the
enormous stretch of the love and power of God.
We do not seek to balance one of His attributes
against another, and read into the cross a com¬
promise between justice and mercy. We find in
it the assurance that He Himself is adequate to
deal with all that there is or ever can be, able to
save to the uttermost. Thus the cross is the
measure of God’s ability to deal with life, a prop¬
osition which includes three great and final
thoughts.
First of all, it shows a new conception of love.
JOHN KELMAN
161
Love has too often been looked upon as a mere
gratification, which in many cases is neither more
nor less than the highest degree of selfishness. In
its new meaning love proves to be essentially a
gift. Bearing the cross in mind one asks, not how
can I get out of fellowship with this other, but
how much can I give, contributing to the other’s
need. Love is not a matter of pleasure only, but
also the very essence of life and duty. It is not a
sweet and voluptuous decoration, but the very
structure of the house of life. Here then in the
cross we see all that love can do. In this tremen¬
dous exhibition God loves man to the uttermost,
and in so loving him He has set the one authentic
standard for all our lesser human loves.
In the second place, the cross has established a
measure for God’s trust in man. He committed
Christ unreservedly to humanity and they be¬
trayed the trust. Yet that trust was given in
certain knowledge that mankind would rebound
from its betrayal, and come back in tears and
shame to the foot of the very cross it had erected
on which to slay Christ ; and when men come back
in penitence to God they receive the last and
highest exhibition of trust that is possible even to
the Divine, the trust of forgiveness. In Christ’s
day many sinners heard from His lips the words,
Go and sin no more, and they must have been
astonished at the amazing confidence which these
words expressed with so little apparent reason.
162 THE CEOSS THE MEASUEE OF WOELD
But the forgiveness and trust of Christ were very
wise, and His cross has brought them down the
ages. Sinners still find their forgiveness and re¬
demption in Him, and are amazed as they realize
how freely and fully He is trusting them. To the
end of time the cross will be the measure of God’s
trust in sinful man.
Finally, the cross is the measure of hope. The
age-long battle between optimism and pessimism
swings to and fro continually. There is one thing
that can settle it finally on the side of hope, and
that is that once and for all in the cross of Calvary
love proved mightier than all its enemies. The
problem of Providence is perpetually baffling us as
it meets us in our own experience. We cannot
but feel that it is not only mysterious but some¬
times apparently unreasonable that we should be
left to the conscienceless play of natural laws and
so completely at their mercy. It is in the cross
that we find that higher wisdom and that individual
affection which we miss so terribly in Providence.
Here we see God bearing the tragedy of the
universe and yet remaining calm amidst it all, be¬
cause of that secret of redemption which He
knows and in which He asks mortals also to con¬
fide.
Thus the cross of Jesus searches and measures
the world, its religions and its wickednesses, its
appearances and its realities alike: its power to
bring out and to exhibit the worst that there is in
JOHN
163
human nature, and its power also to bring out the
best. After the measurement is done and we come
to examine the record of it, we see love revealed
as the absolute master of the universe, and all that
is the enemy of love cast into eternal contempt.
XI
LIFE AFTER DEATH
By
J. FORT NEWTON, D. D., Litt. D.,
Minister of the Church of the Divine Paternity,
New York
Joseph Fort Newton was born at Decatur, Texas,
July 21, 1876. He was a student at Hardy Institute
and received his theological training at the Southern
Baptist Seminary, Louisville, Ky. Dr. Newton was
ordained a Baptist minister in 1893; pastor First
Baptist Church, Paris, Texas, 1897-1898; founder
and pastor People’s Church, Dixon, Ill., 1901-1908;
pastor Liberal Christian Church, Cedar Rapids, la.,
1908-1916. From the latter church, Dr. Newton was
called to the pulpit of the historic City Temple, Lon¬
don, where he remained for several years. He is at
present pastor of the Church of the Divine Paternity,
New York. Dr. Newton is a literary artist, and a
man of wide sympathies and outlook.
Among his many volumes of published sermons
and addresses we would mention: The Religious
Basis of a Better World Order , The Eternal Christ ,
The Ambassador, The Mercy of Hell and his illumi¬
nating diary, Preaching in London.
XI
LIFE AFTER DEATH
“And it came to pass , as he sat at meat with them,
he took bread , and blessed it, and brake, and gave to
them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew
him.” — Luke 24:30, 31.
LOVERS of letters will recall the poem en¬
titled Conversation, by Cowper, where,
after making excellent fun of various
kinds of tedious talkers, he stops suddenly — as if
he had seen a vision. With arresting abruptness
he thinks of that never-to-be-forgotten conversa¬
tion in the gloaming of the day on the way to
Emmaus. He tells what “ happened on a solemn
even-tide/' how “ ere yet they brought their
journey to an end, a Stranger joined them, cour¬
teous as a Friend,” gathering up the thread of their
despairing talk, with “ truth and wisdom gracing
all he said.” In one of his letters the poet refers
to the incident : “ I have been intimate with a
man of fine taste who has confessed to me that,
though he could not subscribe to the truth of
Christianity itself, he thought that if the stamp of
Divinity was anywhere to be found in the Scrip¬
tures, it was vividly impressed upon that passage
of St. Luke.”
It is indeed true. For my part, no other scene
167
168
LIFE AFTER DEATH
in the Book of Faith, whose leaves are for the
healing of human hearts, is so perfect an example
of that naturalization of the Unseen, which is the
goal of religious insight and experience. There
is about this narrative an air of reality which sets
it apart from other such records. It has a re¬
straint, a dignity, a delicacy, and withal an in¬
effable beauty, which give it every mark of authen¬
ticity. Moreover, its vivid human colour and its
awful yet tender disclosure blend as naturally as
earth and sky on the horizon. No imagined ac¬
count known to me gives anything like the same
impression of validity in beauty. Here are the
three things that make our life worth while: the
Divine companion, the sufficient interpretation, and
the triumph of spiritual personality. Jesus was
known to His friends, not by His profound exposi¬
tion of prophecy, but by a familiar little gesture —
all His own — in the breaking of bread. Of all
pages of the Bible, none is more exquisitely satis¬
fying, none more luminously revealing of what we
really need to know.
By the same token, it is in the atmosphere of that
sacramental even-tide — with its glowing heart of
fellowship, and its gentle unveilings — that we
ought to discuss the questions that rise out of the
Easter anthem. The last entry in the Journal of
Sir Walter Scott was as follows: “We slept
reasonably, but on the next morning - ” The
sentence was never finished. Death cut it short.
J. FORT NEWTON
169
Only Sir Walter himself knew what came to him
on the next morning. But once we know that life
is one, here, hereafter, and forever, unbroken, un¬
interrupted, and that, had Sir Walter made himself
known to his friends, they would have known him
there, as they knew him here, by some little charac¬
teristic of gesture or turn of mind, the mystery be¬
comes plainer and the wonder more intelligible.
Once we are assured of life after death — not
another life, but life further on — it is the natural
and eager inquiry of humanity to know what hap¬
pens on “ the next morning.” It is not enough to
know that we will continue to exist; we desire to
know how, when, where?
There is a famous story of an officer in the
British army in India, who, when discussing these
matters with his friends, remarked that some day
he expected to know in five minutes more than all
the philosophers had ever learned. When asked
what he meant, he said: “ The first five minutes
after death!” What does the soul discover in
that moment of emancipation? Such a question
is in all our hearts when we think of our own
passing, or follow in faith and imagination the
flight of those who vanish from us. Jesus did not
answer the question. He revealed the triumph
of personality, but He left the details hidden by a
discreet and wise silence, in order, no doubt, not
to interfere with the life that now is. It was
enough, He thought, to make the life beyond real,
170
LIFE AFTER DEATH
homelike, and near, confirming faith without satis¬
fying mere curiosity, and even we can see that it
is better so. In a world where there is good to
do, truth to win, and “ beauty passes with the sun
on her wings/’ the question of the angel of the
Ascension is valid: “ Why stand ye gazing into
heaven ? ”
As we knew nothing of life here before enter¬
ing it, and could not have imagined its conditions,
so we cannot picture the details of life further on,
which must be different from the physical limita¬
tions which beset us here. All attempts to do so
are futile and unsatisfactory, when, indeed, they
are not grotesque and irritating. They are for
the most part projections into the future of de¬
sires unfulfilled on earth, finding there what is
missed here. For John on Patmos, sundered from
his friends by the imprisoning sea, “ There shall
be no more sea ” ; for Robert Hall, in a long agony
of pain, heaven is health; for Wilberforce, hin¬
dered in his labour of love, it is un thwarted affec¬
tion. The Paradiso of Dante, with its throne ap¬
proached through circles of blinding light, is as un¬
attractive as the military heaven of Milton, with its
shock of armies and its tramping legions. Sir
Conan Doyle and his fellow-seekers have helped to
humanize the after life in our thought, but the
picture is spoiled when they try to fill out the de¬
tails. The grand dream of Swedenborg is nobler
and more worthy, but it leaves much to be de~
J. FOET NEWTON
171
sired — albeit surpassing all other such portrayals
alike in moral insight and spiritual reality. Since
all efforts to picture the future in detail are un¬
satisfactory, the sum of wisdom, no less than of
faith, lies in the confidence that the God who made
us and led us to what we are will lead us to what
we ought to be.
Must we then admit that we know nothing at all
about the life after death, and are doomed to live
in a world of dim hints and cryptic analogies, with
no glad, triumphant assurance? Far, very far
from it! Indeed the whole point of my sermon is
to show that we know much — very much — about
life after death, both as to its reality and its con¬
ditions — all, in fact, that we really need to know —
and if we are wise enough to lay the facts to heart,
we shall find consolation for to-day and inspiration
for the morrow. Jesus lifted our immortal faith
in immortality into the light, showing us that the
Eternal Life is here, not a life into which we enter
at death, but a present reality, at once a possession
and prophecy. His religion, as Harnack said, is
nothing else than the eternal life lived in time, in
the spirit of love and by the grace of God. Emer¬
son was right when he refused to discuss mere
survival, saying that Jesus, who lived in the realm
of moral realities, heedless of sensual fortunes,
never made the separation of the idea of duration
from the essence of the spiritual attributes of man,
“ nor uttered a syllable concerning the duration of
172
LIFE AFTER DEATH
the soul.” No, it was left for His disciples to
sever duration from the moral elements and to
teach the immortality of the soul as a doctrine, and
maintain it by evidences. “ The moment the doc¬
trine is separately taught, man is already fallen.
In the flowing of love, in the adoration of hu¬
mility, there is no question of continuance.” Only
in a spiritual universe is the question of immor¬
tality pertinent, and in such a universe life is
measured not by quantity but by quality, not by
duration but by depth. The Eternal Life, then, is
all of a piece, one here, hereafter, and forever, its
conditions everywhere the same, its experience a
perpetual revelation — pray, what more do we really
want or need to know ?
Let us be more specific, in the effort to make this
matter plain, as a help both to our thinking and to
our living. What we have to remember is that all
the realities that make life great, deep and re¬
warding, abide hereafter untouched by time or
death. They are at once realities and prophecies
which, if we consider them deeply, are like lumi¬
nous streamers thrown forward by an enormous
search-light, and if they do not reveal all, they do
illumine the pathways of the future, just as they
sustain, fortify, and guide us here below. First of
all, God lives here, hereafter, and unto everlasting,
and in Him there is no death, no darkness, no
distance. Without God immortality would be the
ultimate horror of desolation, not a destiny but a
J. FORT KEWTON
173
doom. With Him, it is a lengthening vista of hope
and joy. “ In him we live and move and have
our being,” said the Apostle, and that will be as
true after death as it is here. “ Lord, thou hast
been our dwelling-place in all generations, from
everlasting to everlasting,” said the Psalmist; and
death does not so much as cast a shadow upon that
elemental fact. As for man, his days may be as
the grass that withers, as a tale that is told, as a
vapour that melts, but God lives, and we live in
Him!
i Second, we live in a living, vibrant, prophetic
universe in which Life is the vivid, radiant, all-
conquering reality. Life, with its vigour, its
movement, its colour, its power, is the one over¬
flowing, overwhelming fact. Even matter, if we
analyze it, dissolves into energy, activity, power.
Dead inert matter, as we now know, simply does
not exist. ^Third, life does not even stand still,
much less die. Growth, movement, progress ; that
is its law. The one stupendous fact, revealed in
all the universe, so far as we can read its laws, is
an irresistible, pauseless advance. From the
amoeba to man, from the savage to the saint, it is
ever an ascending march, in which life is better,
finer, nobler, farther on, disclosing higher forms.
Here our outlook differs radically from the out¬
look of the ancient world, when men thought of life
after death as a pale, thin shadow of the life that
now is. With us it is different. Our clearer
174
LIFE AFTER DEATH
vision is of life bursting through limitations into
new fields, unfolding new potentialities, making
to-day better than yesterday and prophesying a
better to-morrow. In accordance with this uni¬
versal law of progress, life after death will be an
advance, a step forward, an adventure into new
lands, new visions, new and unimagined discov¬
eries !
Fourth, add now the fact of a universal moral
order, sovereign everywhere, and it begins to be
clear that we know a great deal about the life after
death. It moves under the same moral jurisdic¬
tion, in obedience to the same law of righteousness
and retribution. Neither in life nor in death can
we escape the moral law. Its empire is eternal. If
we take the wings of morning and fly to the utter¬
most end of the sky, lo it is there. If we sink to
the lowest depth, behold it is there. There is no
redemption, here or anywhere, until we learn to
do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with
God. The idea that death is moral doom — fixing
fate, either for salvation or damnation — is an
absurdity, in violation of the simplest laws of the
moral life. Death does not make a man a saint.
It does not petrify him in sin. It does not touch
the moral life at all, save as it may strip us of
sensuality and set us free from handicaps which
beset us here. The awakening after death may be
bewildering, but the moral continuity of life is
unbroken. Life after death begins where it leaves
J. FORT NEWTON
175
off here, without interruption. “ To-day thou
shalt be with me in paradise ” — that is, a garden —
said Jesus to the man who died with Him. To-day,
before the sun goes down! There, as here, God
lives, the moral law rules, and salvation is in the
fellowship of love and righteousness.
Fifth, the laws of the spiritual life are not
clouded, much less abrogated, by the ordeal of
physical death. What are those laws? The life
of love, the knowledge of the truth, and the doing
of good! Whatever else may pass away, love
remains, and love never faileth, for God is love.
It is His nature, His spirit, His life, inexhaustible,
indestructible, all-conquering — a love to which we
may trust our souls, and the destiny of those we
love. Love in ourselves is the revelation of God,
and its predictions cannot fail of fulfillment. If
all is law, all is love too, as Browning said, and this
law of love is the life of God, as it is the hope and
destiny of humanity. If we are to know the truth,
as Bergson said, it must be “ after the fashion of
one who loves.” How little we know, and how
much we long to know ! How the heart beats high
when we hear the words of Kepler, as he looked
through his glass into the heavens : “ O Almighty
God ! I think Thy thoughts after Thee ! ”
Eternity will be needed, and endless development,
if we are to follow the long flight of the thoughts
of God. What joy of revelation awaits the mind
that seeks the freedom of the truth, of which we
176
LIFE AFTER DEATH
read only here a line and there a stanza in the
dim twilight of this world. The words of Newton
rise from prayer to praise: “ Glory to God who has
permitted me to catch a glimpse of the skirts of
His garments ! My calculations have encountered
the march of the stars ! ” Even in this tangled
life there is no joy like the Doing of Good ! Jesus
made it His business, and He had no other occupa¬
tion. Love, Truth, and the Doing of Good — to be
partners with God in His moral enterprise, fellow-
workers in the redemptive making of humanity —
what more do we ask to know of life after death?
“ Old Past, let go and drop in the sea !
Till fathomless waters cover thee !
For I am living but thou art dead,
Thou drawest back, I strive ahead
The Day to find.”
Toward the end of his life Dostoevsky divided
the race into two classes, those who know the
eternal life and those who do not, and he thought
the fate of civilization will rest with those who are
citizens of eternity. It is indeed true. Material¬
ism is disintegrating anarchy. Pessimism is
poison. Cynicism and scepticism are forms of
death. All the dear interests and institutions of
humanity have their basis in the eternal life, else
they cannot abide. It would be easy to delude
ourselves and suppose that society is held together
by outward forms, but these no more cement it
J. FORT NEWTON
177
than the tortoise in the old fable upheld the earth.
Our human world is kept in place and urged along
its orbit by unseen forces. Thence come those
impulses to progress, those insights and aspirations,
which impel man to vaster issues; they are the
pressure upon him of the endless life. Men have
tried to found empires upon slavery, upon brute
force, upon cunning and cruelty, and they have
failed. Liberty, justice, love, truth are things of
the eternal life, without which customs are cob¬
webs and laws are ropes of sand. The power of
an endless life is thus the creative and constructive
force of social life; and he renders the highest
service to society who makes the eternal vivid to
men — makes it something more than a visionary
scene suspended in the sky.
What is true of social life is equally true in the
making of character and personality — the two
loveliest flowers grown in these short days of sun
and frost. Only recently a great physician said
that subconscious health cannot be obtained in one
who has lost faith in immortality. Without it the
noblest powers of the soul are inhibited, the divin-
est instincts are frustrated, having no happy release
and no promise of fulfillment. They are driven
inward, and make a restless ache in the heart, an
anxiety which nothing can heal. When we know
the Eternal life, all doors are open and the great
aspirations of the heart take wings. The impinge¬
ment of eternity upon man gives to the moral sense
178
LIFE AFTER DEATH
an august authority, and makes religion not a
dogma, but the life of God in the soul of man. Life
everywhere grows in dignity, meaning and worth
when it is lived in the fellowship of eternal things.
Under the expansive pressure of eternal values we
become aware of what life is, what it means, and
what it prophesies, eager only to do the will of
God, whether to-morrow find us toiling here, or out
yonder with the dwellers of the City on the Hill.
XII
RECIPROCAL FAITH
By
F. W. NORWOOD, D. D.,
Minister of The City Temple , London
Frederick W. Norwood, the present minister of
City Temple, London, was born in Australia. At
the outbreak of the World War he went to France
as a chaplain where he became exceedingly popular
among the soldiers. In 1919, Mr. Norwood suc¬
ceeded Dr. Joseph Fort Newton as pastor of the
London City Temple. His rise in pulpit fame has
been meteoric, but his reputation has been made and
will remain secure. During the summer of 1922 he
exchanged pulpits with Dr. Charles E. Jefferson of
the Broadway Tabernacle Church, New York, as an
ambassador of Anglo-American friendship.
He was granted the degree of Doctor of Divinity,
by Ursinus College, during his American visit. Dr.
Norwood’s sermons are intensely human and vital;
his pulpit manners are exceedingly simple and un¬
conventional. He is author of a volume of really
great sermons entitled : The Cross in the Garden .
XII
RECIPROCAL FAITH
“Many believed in his name . . . but Jesus
did not commit himself unto them.,> — John 2 : 23, 24.
u 1 UT Jesus.” That disjunctive is dislocat-
ing, startling, arresting ! We had thought
that He wanted people to believe in Him ;
we had been told that the reason He did these
signs was that they might believe in Him. Why
then, when they did believe in Him, did He fail to
respond ? Have they not said in our ears until we
were weary of hearing, “ Only believe ” ? But
there seems to have been a difficulty upon His side ;
they believed, but He did not respond. “ But
Jesus!” The disjunctive arrests the reverent
mind, sets it thinking, probing back even to the
original tongue itself, and then we discover that
the same word in the Greek is rendered differently
in our English translation. The same word that
means “ belief ” is also translated “ commit.”
“ Many believed in him . . . but Jesus did
not commit himself unto them.”
Our translators, in seeking to find a word which
would make the meaning clear to English ears, have
probably to some extent obscured the sense. They
might have got nearer to the mark if they had said,
181
182
RECIPROCAL FAITH
“ Many believed in Him, but Jesus did not believe
in them.”
Belief then is a reciprocal thing after all. It
takes two to make a Christian — myself and Jesus.
If I believe in Him, and He does not believe in me,
am I a Christian? How futile it has been for us
to put all the emphasis upon our side of believing.
Belief is a reciprocal thing. We have overem¬
phasized the value of the creed, yet nothing has
been more often demonstrated than the fact that
correctness in creed is not necessarily the same
thing as correctness in spirit. One would trust a
Christian with one’s life, but one would not neces¬
sarily trust the merely orthodox. The creed is our
side of faith, but there is another side, and faith is
not consummated until the two meet. That is a
fact of human experience.
Christopher Columbus was not the only man who
believed that the world was round ; there were other
men who believed that, but the round world did not
commit itself to them. It did to Columbus; it laid
hold of him, took him by the hand, led him down
to the sea, where he sat for long hours on the
shore, considering the bits of driftwood that came
from the unknown; presently it led him on board
a little ship, so that he sailed away over the wide
sea, till at last the round world whispered to him,
“ See, you believed in me, I have committed myself
to you, I have told you my secret; go back and
tell the world what you have learned.,,
F. W. NORWOOD
183
Belief is not consummated until that in which
you believe trusts you and commits itself to you.
For true belief is mutual belief and is also a
mutual committal.
All men believe in peace, but if peace were a
personal spirit, would she commit herself to all
men?
All men believe in the League of Nations, or at
least a great many men, but could the spirit of the
League of Nations commit herself to all men?
All men believe in honesty, up to a point at any
rate; they like to be so dealt with, they see quite
clearly that social, industrial and commercial life
are not possible without it, but could the spirit of
honesty commit herself to all men?
All men believe in purity, there are some lives
whose purity they would guard with their own, but
could the spirit of purity commit herself to them?
They only are honest whom honesty herself
would trust ; they only are pure whom purity would
trust. There are two sides to every effort of
faith.
After all, what I believe depends upon a good
many things. It depends to a great extent upon
the way in which I have been brought up. It
depends also upon the cleanness with which certain
things have been explained, upon the nature of the
experiences through which I have passed in life,
and also upon my own reaction to those factors, so
that what I believe depends not upon myself alone.
184
RECIPROCAL FAITH
It is not impossible that there are some folk who
have been brought up in a wrong way, to whom
things have never been explained, whose experi¬
ences have been very adverse, and yet Jesus might
believe in them, though they did not believe in Him.
In that great parable, which He told, of the end
of all things, the parable of the sheep and the goats,
as we call it, you remember He represented Him¬
self as saying, “ Blessed are ye,” and some of those
to whom He spoke said, “ Lord, when saw we
thee ? ” They did not know Him, they had never
met Him, but He said, “ Inasmuch as ye did it
unto these, ye did it unto me.” They did not
believe in Him, but He believed in them. I venture
to think that there are many people in this world
who do not believe in Jesus, who never heard His
name, who have not had the possibility of believing,
but He may believe in them; and if one has to
separate the two, surely that is the greater thing
after all.
As we study the life of the Master, in His deal¬
ings with men, does it not seem to you that the
chief factor in their salvation was not so much
their belief in Him as His belief in them?
“ Simon,” said He, the first day that Peter came
to Him, “ thou shalt be called a rock.” Simon
Peter was anything but a rock, the days came again
and again when that element of instability in his
character allowed him to be swept off his feet and
threatened to engulf him, but I can imagine Peter
F. W. NORWOOD
185
pulling himself up and saying, “ He said I was a
rock,” and a rock he became at last.
Thomas was not very successful as a believer;
he was not built that way; he could not help him¬
self; he had to ask questions, and often enough he
found his problems insoluble. But Jesus believed
in Thomas, and one day revealed Himself in a
special manner to him. Jesus knew what we dis¬
cover as we study the life of Thomas, that per¬
plexed as he was mentally, he was very loyal per¬
sonally. It was Thomas who said, when they tried
in vain to restrain Jesus from going down amongst
the Jews for fear He might be stoned, “ Let us go
with him, that we may die with him.” Thomas
was not very clear in his theological beliefs, but he
was very loyal in his personal trust, and Jesus
believed in Thomas.
Jesus believed in Zaccheus; I do not know why,
— I cannot find anything about Zaccheus that makes
me disposed to believe in him, except that Jesus did.
He was chief of the publicans, and the publicans
were a bad lot, but Jesus believed in Zaccheus, and
Zaccheus came down from his tree into the midst
of the hostile crowd and said:
“ Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor ;
and if I have wrongfully exacted aught from any
man, I restore fourfold.”
Jesus believed in Zaccheus, and Zaccheus accord¬
ingly believed in both Jesus and himself.
Jesus believed in Mary Magdalene; I do not
186
EECIPEOCAL FAITH
know why. There is not much in her life to in¬
spire confidence, but Jesus believed in her, and
Mary Magdalene became pure and beautiful be¬
cause of His belief.
Jesus believed in the woman of Samaria; I can
hardly tell why. To me she seems ignorant, vulgar,
curious, as well as immoral, but He believed in her,
and the woman responded to His belief and became
a naive evangelist.
It was the same in His pictorial teaching. Jesus
believed in the publican in the Temple; whether he
was a real character or not I do not know, but he
was typical. Jesus believed in the publican who
only smote his breast and said, “ God, be merciful
to me a sinner.” He did not seem to believe over¬
much in the Pharisee, though the odds are all in
his favour. He had performed all his religious
duties, he fasted twice in the week, he gave alms;
there appears to be little wrong in the Pharisee,
but Jesus did not believe in him much. He did
believe in the publican, and somehow our hearts go
out to the publican and not to the Pharisee.
Jesus believed in the younger brother in that
parable of the Prodigal Son; I do not know why;
there does not seem much indication that he was
worth believing in. Thoughtless, selfish, grasping,
riotous, careless. I have seen lots of prodigals like
that; God knows they are pitiful people; they have
such a way of drifting back again to the hog-
troughs. One would find it easier to believe in
F. W. NORWOOD
187
the elder brother, who had never done anything
palpably wrong, but had been a loyal son and a
faithful worker all the days of his life. But Jesus
believed in the younger one, and the world’s sym¬
pathy goes in the same direction. You feel some¬
how there was that in him, in spite of his weak¬
nesses, which made him superior to the elder
brother. It was the belief of Jesus in them that
transformed men more than their belief in Him.
And surely it is the same to-day. It is not so
much what I believe, for I have been taught many
things, as you have, and have had certain influ¬
ences playing upon me all the time, as you have.
It is not so much what we believe; that is half of
the problem ; but the real value lies in the response
that comes to us from that in which we believe. In
other words, a Christian is not a man who holds
on to Jesus by a mere intellectual effort ; a Christian
is a man or woman in whom the Spirit of Jesus
becomes manifest. Jesus may become manifest in
a man or woman whose mental knowledge concern¬
ing Him is very vague and imperfect indeed.
I have been reading a book during the week by
the Marquise da la Tour du Pin, who lived in the
days of the French Revolution. It was not a book
that attracted me for some time. She was one of
the gay Court of Marie Antoinette; she lived her
butterfly life, while France was reeling down to
destruction; she was flitting from one ballroom to
another, while hunger and despair were eating into
188
RECIPROCAL FAITH
the hearts of the people. She was giving a banquet,
as she puts it naively, of twenty dishes, while the
Bastille was falling; she was living in the palace
of the King, but did not know anything was wrong
until she saw that motley mob, mostly of women,
come surging out of Paris, demanding bread, and
she only records that they filled her with disgust.
Yet you cannot be angry with her; it was the way
she had been brought up. She had always lived
like that, devout in her religion (she had lived in
the house of an Archbishop, though that did not
mean much) ; she is not much to be blamed; she
just did not know.
At last she escaped with her husband to America,
where they lived on a farm. It was just there
that something happened. She says :
“ I was feeling very happy under these circum¬
stances, when God struck me a most unexpected
blow, and as I then imagined, the most cruel and
terrible that one could endure. Alas, I have since
experienced others which have surpassed it in se¬
verity. My little Seraphine was taken from us by a
sudden illness very common in this part of the coun¬
try — a kind of infant paralysis. She died in a few
hours without losing consciousness. . . .
“ There was no Catholic Priest either in Albany or
in the neighbourhood. My husband, who did not
wish to have a Protestant Minister called, himself
performed the last rites for our child, and placed her
in a little enclosure which had been arranged to serve
F. W. NOEWOOD
189
as a cemetery for the inhabitants of the farm. It
was situated in the middle of our woods. Almost
every day I went to kneel upon the grave, the last
resting-place of the child whom I had so much loved,
and it was there that God gave to me a change of
heart.
“ Up to this period of my life, although I was far
from being irreligious, I had never taken much in¬
terest in religion. During the course of my educa¬
tion no one had ever spoken to me of religion. Dur¬
ing the first years of my childhood, I had had under
my eyes the worst possible examples. In the high
society of Paris I had been witness of scandals, so
often repeated that they had become familiar to me
to the point of no longer moving me. In this way
every thought of morality had been benumbed in my
heart, but the hour had come when I had to recognize
the hand which had smitten me.
“ I do not know exactly how to describe the trans¬
formation which came over me. It seemed to me as
if a voice cried out to me that I must change my
whole being. Kneeling upon the grave of my child,
I implored her to obtain from God, who had already
recalled her to Him, my pardon and a little relief
from my distress. My prayer was heard. God ac¬
corded me then the grace to know and serve Him.
He gave me the courage to bend very humbly under
the stroke which had smitten me and to prepare my¬
self to support without complaining the new griefs
by which in His justice He deemed it proper to try
me in the future. From that day the divine will
found me submissive and resigned.”
190
EECIPEOCAL FAITH
Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, these do not
matter very much when you get down to the real
thing like that! It is in that way God is always
dealing with men. We build churches, preach ser¬
mons, try different religious methods, like children
playing with their building blocks. The great
worker upon the hearts of men is the invisible
silent Spirit, and only He knows how He trans¬
mutes that external meaningless belief into the
character that merits confidence. We pay too much
attention to the merely doctrinal side of our creed.
I do not minimize its value, it makes all the dif¬
ference to have a clear and pure teaching, but it is
only half of the mystery after all. It is not so
much whether I believe in God as whether God
believes in me. I am not a Christian because I
think it most probable that Jesus of Nazareth was
the Son of God; I am a Christian rather if Jesus
of Nazareth could have trusted me — can indeed
trust me now.
In this City Temple one always has the con¬
sciousness that there are folk who gather from
Sunday to Sunday, but who have little definite
creedal belief. I want to say to you, “ the essence
of true Christianity is being worthy of the trust of
Jesus Christ.” Suppose that the great eternal
Spirit in this world is a Spirit like that of Christ.
Suppose that the last question that shall be asked
of us, when life is over, and the greater light has
dawned, shall be asked in the Spirit of Jesus of
F. W. NORWOOD
191
Nazareth, will not the supreme thing be whether
we have so lived as to have deserved His trust?
You have your difficulties, but can you go away
determined to try to live so that Jesus Christ would
have trusted you, would have rested His cause in
your hands, and believed that, in spite of all your
weaknesses or your failings, you would remain
loyal and carry through at last?
Let us try to live so that Jesus might reasonably
believe in us. They whom Jesus could have be¬
lieved in are usually those in whom others believe.
When sufficient time has passed, we forget the
idiosyncrasies of their belief and remember just
that!
XIII
CHRIST’S MAN
By
FREDERICK F. SHANNON, D. D.,
Minister of Central (Independent) Church , Chicago
Frederick Franklin Shannon was born in Morris
County, Kansas, February n, 1877. He received
his education at the Webb School, Bell Buckle, Tenn.,
and at Harvard University; was ordained a clergy¬
man of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South,
1899; pastor Logan, W. Va., 1899-1900; Grace
Methodist Church, Brooklyn, 1904-1912. In 1912,
Dr. Shannon was called to the pastorate of the Re¬
formed Church on The Heights, Brooklyn. Here he
remained until 1919; he was called to the pulpit of
historic Central Church, Chicago, as the last in that
famous succession of great prophets — Hillis and
Gunsaulus. Dr. Shannon is a pulpit genius. Prac¬
tically a self-made man (in the best sense of the
term), he is to-day one of the most brilliant preach¬
ers of modern times.
Among his published volumes are: The Land of
Beginning Again, The New Personality, The SouVs
Atlas, The Enchanted Universe, The Infinite Artist,
The Country Faith and The Economic Eden .
XIII
CHRIST’S MAN1
“But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ , he
is none of his — Romans 8 : 9.
PAUL has a fashion of penetrating into the
very soul of reality. The text is a striking
illustration of his method. He is consider¬
ing the stamp of a genuine as contrasted with a
spurious Christian. Laying aside conventionalities,
he declares, in a swift lightning-stroke of thought,
what constitutes the ultimate in discipleship. It is
this: The Christian is a person possessing, and
possessed by, the Spirit of Christ. Everything
else is beside the mark. The issue is clear-cut.
There is no haze, no half-lights, no soft-tinted
suppositions. It is simply the difference between the
quick and the dead, fact and fiction, make-believe
and reality. “If any man hath not the Spirit
of Christ, he is none of his.” Here is the death¬
blow to mere professionalism, a kind of judgment-
day’s doom for clever excuses and popular trim¬
ming. Moreover, it is a challenge to our own
time, which seems in a strait between the Emer¬
sonian and Father Taylor types of mind. The
philosopher and the Methodist preacher were very
dear friends, but lived in different sections of the
1 From “ The Economic Eden.”
195
196
CHBIST’S MAN
spiritual universe. “ Emerson/' wrote Taylor, “ is
one of the sweetest creatures God ever made ; there
is a screw loose somewhere in the machinery, yet I
cannot tell where it is, for I never heard it jar.
He must go to heaven when he dies, for if he went
to hell the devil would not know what to do with
him. But he knows no more of the religion of the
New Testament than Balaam’s ass did of the
principles of the Hebrew grammar.” Now this
is not just a discriminating and humorous state¬
ment. It is far more than that; it enables us to
catch two souls in their attitude toward finalities.
Intimate as they were, friends and lovers, able to
respect and appreciate each other’s individuality,
yet the religion of the New Testament and Christ
mark the line of separation for Emerson and
Taylor. And, my friends, make no mistake — this
is the line of separation for all of us. It is just
a pointblank choice between the lower and the
higher, the secondary and the essential, the good
and the best. Here, then, is the gist of our present
study — whether we have any right to accept the
inferior ways of life and faith when the more ex¬
cellent and superior are demanding a verdict.
I
By way of approach, we may say that the lesser
meanings of Christianity partake of the imper¬
sonal. Dropping the negative in the text, it
reads: “ If any man have the spirit of Christ” —
FREDERICK F. SHANNON
197
that is, spirit is spelled with a small “ s.” It im¬
plies that the Christian is one under the influence
of a man named Jesus, who lived and died in
Palestine two thousand years ago. He was a good
man — the best earth ever saw; he was a great
man — the greatest among the sons of men. But
he is dead and gone ; the stars keep watch above his
Syrian grave ; he is a lovely memory, precious, but
just a page in the sealed book of the past. This,
I think, is an adequate statement of the imper¬
sonal phase of Christianity. Analyzed, this view¬
point breaks up into the following subdivisions:
1. Jesus is an atmosphere. The metaphor is
excellent. Atmosphere is essential to physical
well-being. A room is shut off from the outer
world. Darkness, disease, and death hold carnival
within. Why? For lack of atmosphere. Fling
wide the doors, open the windows, and atmosphere,
sweet, keen, health-bringing, comes smiting in with
gently powerful pressure. So this idea of atmos¬
phere as descriptive of Jesus on man and society
is fine, but — impersonal. It marks the difference
between the antique east and the modern west,
between such religions and cults as Hinduism and
Eddyism and New Testament and historic Chris¬
tianity, to say nothing of the finer philosophies of
the race.
2. Jesus is an example. This is better still.
Example, we know, is one of the immeasurable
factors in our human world. The example of the
198
CHRIST’S MAN
parent, the friend, the scholar, the statesman, the
preacher is so vast, so subtle that we have no ac¬
curate method of reckoning it. Thus certain men
emphasize the example of Jesus. He befriended
the outcast; He remembered the forgotten; He
sought out the lost, as a shepherd seeks the one
strayed lamb; He loved children and took them in
His arms; He toiled with His hands; He entered
into the joys of a wedding feast; He was august
in His simplicity ; He was majestic in His humility;
He was compelling in His self-assertion; He
was quietly masterful, and sometimes He was
irresistibly indignant in the presence of injustice
and unrighteousness. Yes; Jesus was a truly
great and wonderful example. “ Why not take
Him as such ? ” asks the disciple of the inadequate
view. Why? Just because example falls pathet¬
ically short of that full-toned vitality which bursts
from the personal, with which the impersonal can¬
not be on intimate, friendly terms. Jesus as an
example, merely, confronts us with the alternative
of choosing the good, the second-rate, when it is
our duty and privilege to choose the best and the
supreme.
3. Jesus as a teacher. From the atmospheric
to the exemplary the transition may not be marked,
but it is important. It helps to distinguish some
of the finer shades and tones in Christian thought.
Thus Jesus the teacher occupies a separate brain
compartment. Why not, says the lesser stand-
FREDERICK F. SHANNON
199
point, close with Jesus the teacher and settle the
matter? He is the first schoolmaster of the race.
Think of His morality, His views of God and
man, His wealth of democracy, His international
inclusiveness! Socrates was Greek, Cicero was
Roman, Voltaire was French, Shakespeare was
English, Kant was German, Emerson was Ameri¬
can, but Jesus — well. He was opulently universal.
His planet-wideness could not be obscured by His
Palestinian garb and Aramaic speech. Why not,
therefore, accept Him as our foremost teacher and
have done with mental hair-splittings? Just be¬
cause the facts drive us to something beyond —
infinitely beyond — the teacher, however transcen¬
dent. For the general soul of man offers no deeper
homage to the Christ than this: He Himself is so
interwoven with His Teaching that the truth and
the person cannot he separated. This is phenom¬
enal in the history of mankind. Of what other
figure does the soul make such rigid demands ? It
is enough for Plato to be identified with truth ; we
accept his truth and let Plato go; but truth and
Jesus — they are one and indissoluble, now and
forevermore. Who cares whether Socrates some¬
times lost his temper and said harsh things to
Xanthippe? We rather think, perhaps, that it was
the philosopher’s duty to “ talk back.” But we
grant no such license to Jesus; we demand perfec¬
tion of Him. The Christian consciousness is a
hard master — so austerely just, so whitely true that
200
CHRIST’S MAN
it will have only One for Master and Lord, and
One alone ! He must be without blemish, terrible
with moral splendour, free from fleck or taint.
Here, surely, is something unique in the history
of thought and character: Truth is able to walk
alone, unattended save by its own moral grandeur,
except in the solitary instance of Jesus. Poetry
could even dispense with Shakespeare and survive ;
song would be draped in mourning the rest of its
years, but its heart-break would not be utterly in¬
curable. Philosophy could drop the name of Im¬
manuel Kant, tremendously significant as that
name is, without permanent dislocation. Art
would survive if Rembrandt’s colours were taken
from its canvases. Science would be sorely handi¬
capped without the work of Darwin; but the loss
of that imperial name from scientific categories
and processes would not cause chaos in the
physical universe. Except in the single case of
Jesus Christ, truth is so absolute that its agent may
be dispensed with; so impersonal that undue in¬
trusion of the personal element is bad form. But
truth and Jesus are so enmeshed and rooted in each
other, that if a flaw is found in His person, the
rafters of the Temple of Truth itself would come
crashing down. Humanity could not survive the
wound wrought by a false Christ ; the moral uni¬
verse would be wrecked by the shock of a mere¬
tricious Jesus. Let Solomon be a rake, and David
play the fool, and Peter act the traitor, and John
FEEDEEICK F< SHANNON
201
lose his temper; but Jesus — let no dark stain mar
the snow of His being, lest life itself become an
idiot’s tale and earth be found to rest upon painted
fog-banks ! Is not this demand which we make of
our Saviour one of the mightiest tributes the soul
could offer its Redeemer?
Moreover, this lower or second-rate interpreta¬
tion of Christ not only partakes of the impersonal,
but it is marked by a differentiating character-
strain through the Christian centuries. For ex¬
ample, it has fostered the delusion that the King¬
dom of God belongs to the intellectuals. It insists
that a man must think his way into and through
the spiritual kingdoms. Now it is the duty, of
course, of every Christian to be a thinker; but if
a man is just a thinker, operating an intellectual
mental trap for the delight of seeing it open and
shut, he is not only very far from the Kingdom
of God, but he is so far that, until he changes his
method of spiritual travel, he has no hope what¬
ever of reaching even the outer confines of the
Abode of the Blessed. Many spend so much time
changing their intellectual clothes in preparation
for the Christian feast that they are always just
too late for the feast itself. Too often they
come to the end of life mental incompetents as well
as spiritual paupers. It is a solemn task to keep
on speaking terms with mind and thought ; but let
us remember that the laws of mind require us to
play fair; we cannot go intellectually hopping,
202
CHRIST’S MAN
skipping, and jumping through our years without
discovering, in the end of the day, that we have
largely dissipated whatever thinking powers we
may have had.
Besides the intellectualist the lesser viewpoint
produces, also, a passionless type of discipleship.
Well-pleased with life, it is distantly enraptured
by the progress of mankind in general and of itself
in particular. Unaware that there are agonies and
heavens and hells in the universe and in the human
heart, it jauntily acquiesces in the hope that
“ Somehow things will come out all right.” Thus,
putting nothing worth while into the world, it
naturally draws nothing out. Such living declares
no Christian dividends because it earns none. The
fire of missionary activity never flames upon its
hearth. To it, the dire disasters of sin are as
nothing compared with the shallow reformations
wrought to-day and forgotten to-morrow or the
day after. Gliding smoothly along the broad
highways of the non-essential, it is most timid in
undertaking those great spiritual steeps gashed by
Calvary, indented by the Tomb, and garlanded by
Resurrection lilies. It has a positive genius for
tracing great events and truths to secondary causes,
when the First Cause is so reasonable that any but
the spiritually blind are compelled to recognize it.
And all the while this passionless, splendidly dead
genus of discipleship is congratulating itself upon
its modernity, pathetically unconscious that it is
FREDERICK F. SHANNON
203
just the twentieth century dupe of those outworn
gnosticisms which flourished in Egypt, India, and
Greece thousands of years ago. Having borrowed
some present-day intellectual toggery, many of
these vendors of the antique and exploded are sell¬
ing their wares at bargain-counter prices and in¬
cidentally doing a land-office business. It is all
beautifully inane, magnificently humbuggish, and
Christlessly tragical.
II
If the lesser meanings attached to Christianity
emphasize the impersonal, Christ’s man emphati¬
cally asserts the personal. “If any man hath the
Spirit of Christ,” suppose we read it thus, “ he is
one of His.” The small letter, the emasculated
and undistinguishable, is flung into the back¬
ground ; that which ought to be capitalized, which
is agelessly unique, swiftly occupies the front lines
to wage a Christian warfare. After all, it is not
the professional Christian who counts, much less
the neutral dabbler in spiritual shallows. Rather
is it the man possessed — the man reborn, renewed,
rerisen — who knows he was greatly dead and who
likewise knows that he is throbbingly alive in
Christ Jesus — he is the man who wears well in
this world and will thrive in any world to which
his soul-business calls him. Consequently, this
larger meaning of Christianity, like the smaller,
manifests itself in certain splendid details.
204
CHKIST’S MAN
1. Christ’s man is he into whose personality
the Christ is inwrought. Here we come upon a
realm so mysterious and occult that it refuses to
yield up its secret to clumsy philosophic and
psychologic tools. Certainly we must try to ap¬
prehend and understand it; that is our duty as
well as an essential part of our spiritual unfold¬
ing. Many, however, become so hypnotized by
the process that they are undazzled by the reality.
Now it is the fact we are considering, and the
vibrant, transfiguring fact is in my text. What
is it? Just this: That Christ Jesus, in the person
of the Holy Spirit, seizes the human personality
and indwells it. This fact alone constitutes a
Christian. The theology of it is another and dif¬
ferent matter; the philosophy of it is just an effort
to put decent mental clothing upon naked thought ;
the psychology of it is compellingly interesting but
unquestionably secondary. Multitudes know the
reality and are ignorant of its philosophy; multi¬
tudes, also, are experts in the philosophy, and
strangers to the reality. “If any man hath not
the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” He may
be Buddha’s, or Zoroaster’s, or Plato’s, but he is
not managed by the Final, he is not in companion¬
ship with the Ultimate, he is not possessed by the
Supreme.
Now this is either truth or nonsense. And
nonsense is at a premium in our time ; why should
truth be thrust out into the cold — a beggar whom
FREDERICK F. SHANNON
205
we refuse soul-lodging? As a sample of the kind
of thinking that evokes applause, take this state¬
ment of Sir Oliver Lodge in his New York lecture:
u Character persists after death. If we have no
character, then our individual life merely goes
back to the general stream of life like the vegetable
and animal.,, Assuredly, character persists after
death; but what a nice, easy method Sir Oliver
has for getting rid of personality! If we have
character, supposedly good, we survive after death ;
otherwise, we are merged into the general stream
of vegetable and animal life. That is to say, an
atom outlasts a soul. “ Whip an atom from one
end of the universe to the other,” the brilliant
Thomas Starr King was wont to say, “ and it will
remain an atom still.” But, argues Sir Oliver,
if we fail to achieve good character, we blandly
discharge our moral obligations to God and man
by subtly absconding out of the personal into the
animal and vegetable kingdoms. What an invit¬
ing Mexico such realms would be to every wilfully
moral insolvent and practiced scamp in the spiritual
universe! Would he not escape thither with
mocking joy, glad to leave his creditors and the
hounds of justice in the lurch? Like much
muddy thinking in our day, this kind forgets to
distinguish between character and personality.
Personality cannot be gotten rid of; it may be
good or bad; it may be clothed in a Joseph’s-coat-
of-many-colours, but personality is on our hands,
206
CHRIST’S MAN
on God’s hands, forevermore. The worlds may be
folded up like a garment, but personality is so
alive with the stuff of Godhead, that it cannot be
tucked away in some cozy comer, doomed to time¬
less inertia. Having laboured personality into
being, at the command of God, the universe can¬
not modify its work, nor undo what has been done
by Infinite Wisdom and Love.
At this juncture, also, Christ’s man asks a ques¬
tion of the psychological researchers, spiritualistic
mediums, and disciples of the ouija board. The
question, in view of the stress which is placed upon
the relatively unimportant, is fundamental: Why
do so few of their cult make any effort to com¬
municate with Christ? Beyond all question, if
anybody has survived the grave, if anybody offers
indisputable evidence of persistence in the unseen
kingdoms, it is He. Thus, if humanity is on the
verge of establishing some new method of com¬
munication with the world of spirits, is it not
strange that more is not made of the One Person
Who is readily accessible, Who challenges mankind
to verify His claims, Who is eager to be com¬
municated with? Until this is done, some of us
will be compelled to keep our spiritual heads, pay
tribute to reason, and practice the old but ever
new method of climbing to the feet of God over
the rungs of the unfallen ladder of Christian
prayer, repentance, worship, forgiveness, faith,
hope, and love. “ Every one that hath heard from
FREDERICK F. SHANNON
207
the Father, and hath learned, cometh unto me,”
says the Christ. Have you had authentic tidings
from God? Have you learned the unlearned?
Very well! What is the evidence of your master¬
ship in eternal matters? That you rock a table?
That you spend your days in trying to talk with
some one who, in Time or Eternity, is very much
of a human like yourself? Not at all! If you
are expert in the high things of God, this is your
unassailable credential — that you come to the King
of Glory, Who opens the Kingdom of Heaven to
all believers. Otherwise, you may succeed in get¬
ting yourself everlastingly classified in somewhat
suspicious company. “ He that entereth not by
the door into the fold of the sheep/’ says the Good
Shepherd of the Immortal Sheepfolds, “ but
climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief
and a robber.”
2. Christ’s man is the playground of authentic
spiritual power. “ Ye shall receive power, when
the Holy Spirit is come upon you.” The per¬
plexed disciples were insistent upon minor prop¬
ositions — times and seasons; our Lord held the
major matters in the foreground — enriched per¬
sonality and its secret. These are the essential
facts for all men and for all time. How, in the
best sense, to enrich personality, is the task of every
human. We may push the subject into the back¬
ground, giving it small chance in our tumultuous
days, but some time we are as certain to be con-
208
CHRIST’S MAN
vinced of its absoluteness as we are God-imaged
men and women. Personality is all we finally
retain; it is our wealth or woe; all the vanishings
from us, all the clingings to us — these are meaning¬
ful only as they make the person rich or poor.
Having laid the world away, we shall see ourselves
as we are. The trappings of circumstance, the
veneered excuses, the conventional apologies — all
the current coin which rattles so loudly in our
markets of hypocrisy, has no purchasing power
whatsoever in the emporiums of reality. There¬
fore, power — power personalized — power that is
the essence and quintessence of the highest and
finest in the universe — power inbreathed and
generated by the Holy Spirit — this is the true
mark of Christ’s man, who is not the victim of
what William Watson calls “ world-strangeness,”
but is at home in any world, because his Lord is
Master and King of all worlds.
“ Then,” you say, “ if this is so important, tell
us how to obtain it, or receive it, or possess it.”
That is a noble request indeed — one that any ser¬
vant of the Lord should be eager to comply with.
I think I can tell you how to become an instru¬
ment of the Holy Spirit, how you may realize and
illustrate in your own person what Professor Pea¬
body has defined Christianity to be — “ a form of
power.” The initial step has to do with sin — re¬
penting of your sin, changing your mind, forsak¬
ing the thing you know to be wrong, unhallowed,
FREDERICK F. SHANNON
209
unworthy. You will find this a big job — much
more than you contracted for, if you are in earnest.
You will be forced to your knees — you will know
wrestlings, agonies, misgivings. You may wet
your pillow with your tears as you cry out in the
night: “ God be merciful to me, a sinner.” If
your case is genuine, you will not think much of
your possessions or your position, your culture or
your crudeness, your youth or your age. You will
feel the truth of that assertion of Professor James
about the deliverance of all religions — that there is
something wrong with you, and your wrongness is
made right by connecting with the Higher Powers.
Or, again, you may not be the subject of religious
violence. You may be born from above as quietly
as the new day arises upon the world, as noiselessly
as summer’s green steals across the pasturelands, as
softly as the dews of night kiss the faces of sleep¬
ing flowers. But beware ! The still-born child is
forever still. Striking the true Christian vein, we
know that, in general, Christ’s man came somewhat
violently rather than quietly into the Kingdom of
God. Of this much be perfectly sure: He either
knows when he was born from above, or else he
knows that he is alive nozv. Life is splendid evi¬
dence that birth has taken place. Power — power
in the will, power in the mind, power in the imagi¬
nation — “ye shall receive power, when the Holy
Spirit is come upon you ; ” but — “ if any man have
not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”
210
CHRIST’S MAN
“ Christianity,” said Tennyson, “ with its divine
morality, but without the central figure of Christ,
the Son of Man, would become cold.” In verifica¬
tion of the truth of the poet's statement, many a
professed disciple’s spiritual temperature has
dropped several degrees below zero. And all be¬
cause he tried to make Christianity just one more
of the world-philosophies, instead of enjoying its
life-giving vitalities, of experiencing the thrill of
its power-inspiring energies.
3. Christ’s man is clothed with an unworldly
peace. One of the supreme moments of history,
surely, was that in which the Master promised His
peace to the disciples. Calamity had shocked them
to the centers of their being; their world seemed
to topple down in ruins and chaos; they were like
frightened folk of the woodlands pursued by de¬
stroying hounds. But hark! The chimes of un¬
earthly peace begin to peal forth in that troubled
hour. Peter’s fear vanished; John’s perplexity
took wings; James was lifted out of his practicali¬
ties into tranquillizing ideals. “ Peace I leave
with you ” — a testament which will outlast Caesar’s
dominions ; “ My peace I give unto you ” — the in¬
most Soul of the Universe shall gently enfold you
in His protecting care ; “ not as the world giveth,
give I unto you ” — the world gives gorgeous illu¬
sions, I bequeath spiritual substance. Therefore,
“ let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be
afraid.” For Christ’s man knows that His peace
FREDERICK F. SHARKOK
211
is not a dead, lifeless calm, an unruffled emptiness,
but something fiery and glowing, a creative serenity
which refuses to be disturbed by all the tumults
of earth and time. It enables one to perceive, with
George Fox, that there is “ an ocean of darkness
and death; but withal, an infinite ocean of light
and love which flows over that of darkness.” A
man said to me, as we were looking out over the
park near his home: “ It is lovely here in summer.
Sometimes I can hardly go to business for watch¬
ing the children play. As many as fifty nurses,
with their happy-hearted little ones, may be seen
down there in the grass and under the trees on fine
mornings.” It was the dead of winter when he
spoke. Snow was on the ground; the trees wore
no “nests of robins in their hair the music of
childhood’s laughter could not be heard. But my
friend’s words and face instantly suggested two
aspects of peace. First, there was the quick, riot¬
ous, innocent peace of children at play. It was an
intervital peace — a peace wrought of summer
mornings, of singing birds, of perfumed gardens,
of green trees. Lovely, it was external; enchant¬
ing, it was a matter of environment; sweetly inno¬
cent, it was unrelated to character. The man’s face
told a different story. It was the playground of
many a storm arched by spiritual rainbows; many
a temptation had left its imprint there, as well as
many a victory; he had companioned sorrow and
joy, failure and triumph, doubt and faith — a gal-
212
CHRIST’S MAH
lant, masterful human who had fought and won the
good fight, serenely westward bound. Such, I take
it, is the tribute God commands the years to pay
lofty human character. For Christ’s peace at last
stations the soul upon the skull of the brute; grants
spiritual equilibrium in a universe of terrific mo¬
tion and mystery; abstracts deepest joy from bit¬
terest sorrow; turns apparent death into a jubilate
of life. Therefore, if any man hath the Spirit of
Christ, he is one of His — one of His redeemed, one
of His deathless, one of His music-makers, one of
His hundred and forty and four thousand, even
they that have been purchased out of the earth.
Christ’s man is the final incense the universe gives
back to God.
Printed in the United States of America
Date Due
& 1 8 ?
r
! §■
i &>c
BE 10%
•
Mu 2 i 22
\
t
>miwh*» "•«»*»
* ‘ :._, i»- - 5,
^ . >#»-
fcr
•*>p.
jiarf"
__ t
; 2^m
0p$00i
•UK*
r
f
I