LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
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A NOBLE LIFE. 
 
 / 
 
 7 BY 
 
 HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D., 
 
 MINISTER OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 
 NEW YORK CITY. 
 
 m " **>»^_ 
 
 £68 i *p% 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 
 
 (incorporated) 
 l83 FIFTH AVENUE. 
 
$ H f 
 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY 
 ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 
 
 (INCORPORATED) 
 
The Love of Christ constraineth us. 
 
 2 Corinthians iv. 14.0 
 
A NOBLE LIFE. 
 
 Commonplace chafes. Humdrum 
 galls. Monotony grinds. Yet they 
 are our inseparable companions. 
 They keep step with us the whole of 
 the way. We are never far from 
 their side, never out of their sight. 
 No wonder that sometimes the 
 clouds hang low, and heaven is hid- 
 den. No wonder that heart failure 
 is frequent. No wonder that the 
 moment comes when living seems 
 drudging ; when we tire of trying ; 
 when even in this high noon of mod- 
 ern knowledge we stand tongue-tied 
 
 5 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 before the stony challenge of the 
 ancient sphinx : — 
 
 "What of it all, when it all is 
 done?" 
 
 From the deep places of the human 
 heart there rises a hungry cry for 
 greatness. Weariedly we reach out 
 "lame hands," if haply we may but 
 touch the hem of majesty. With 
 unsleeping eyes we peer into every 
 quarter for a glimpse of grandeur. 
 We persist in looking the wrong 
 way. We keep on beating the wrong 
 bush. The sublimity which we seek 
 is not without us, but within. 
 
 The man wants manhood who can 
 gaze unthrilled upon the spires and 
 domes of the cathedral-like moun- 
 tains, or walk unstirred the pillared 
 6 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 aisles of forest temples ; or listen inl- 
 awed to the weird and never quiet 
 diapason of the sea. The man is 
 lacking in finest faculty who is not 
 enkindled by the majestic ideas 
 which have been chiselled into 
 stately marbles, or pencilled upon 
 the glowing canvas ; who is not en- 
 thralled by the matchless harmonies 
 through which master spirits have 
 whispered their mysterious secrets to 
 uncounted generations ; who is not 
 enchanted by the spell of the pen, that 
 magic wand with which the magicians 
 of the mind, shape the course of the 
 world. But more sublime than 
 sculptured stone, or snow-crowned 
 Alps, or sweetest music, or richest 
 
 rhetoric, is a noble life. Character 
 
 7 
 
A Ncble Life. 
 
 dwarfs the most magnificent of things 
 inanimate. Soul is the true patent 
 of nobility. Royalty of spirit may 
 be uninvested with the circumstances 
 of external grandeur. The noble 
 heart may look out upon the world 
 through a face that is homely. It 
 may move upon a plane that is lowly. 
 It may spend its energies upon en- 
 deavors that are ordinary. Its pos- 
 sessor may be "in bodily presence 
 weak, and in speech contemptible/' 
 but let head and hand and heart be 
 welded in the furnace glow of a 
 lofty and uplifting purpose, and men 
 recognize the king. 
 
 It was intensity of purpose that 
 put power into Paul. There never 
 lived a man so dead in earnest as 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 that little tent-maker from Tarsus. 
 " Deserts beheld him battling with 
 their sand-storms. Fierce river tor- 
 rents were breasted by his arm. 
 Ocean held him a solitary waif float- 
 ing upon its surface. Again and 
 again did the cruel sea cast him ship- 
 wrecked upon the land, and the land 
 sent him back full of high and holy 
 enterprise to ocean. Singing at mid- 
 night in the dungeon, weaving tent- 
 cloth at the loom, disputing among 
 the philosophers upon Mars Hill, 
 marching over the stones of the Ap- 
 pian Way, clanking his fetters while 
 he writes in his hired house in Rome, 
 — where, and in what employ do we 
 not find this strangely fervent man ?" 
 Ordinary motives had lost their grip 
 
 9 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 upon him. Trial could not depress 
 him. Toil could not daunt him. 
 These things were his glory. What 
 spark kindled such flaming zeal ? 
 What magnetism drew him on and 
 helped him up in the face of such 
 relentless opposition ? What talis- 
 man, with mystic power, enabled 
 that man to conquer all the foes 
 that challenge the progress of a human 
 soul ? Can his secret be mastered 
 by other minds ? Can that energy 
 be generated within our hearts? 
 Hearken to his answer: " The love 
 of Christ constraineth us" The 
 simple, single secret of a noble life 
 is the constraining power of a 
 Saviour's love. 
 
 There had been a day when Paul 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 regarded the death of Christ with 
 very different feelings. There had 
 been a day when the thought of 
 the crucifixion only wreathed his 
 lips with a stern smile of satisfac- 
 tion that a malefactor had suffered 
 his just deserts. There was a day 
 when the single impulse which the 
 death of the Nazarene imparted to 
 the man of Tarsus was the spur of a 
 vindictive frenzy to exterminate His 
 followers. But the light that flooded 
 the Damascus highway with glory, 
 flashed radiance upon Golgotha. 
 Paul discovered that the hill of Cal- 
 vary was the summit of sublimity; 
 that the thorn crown of Jesus was 
 the diadem of an ineffable royalty ; 
 
 that the cross crimsoned with agony 
 
 ii 
 
A Noble Life, 
 
 was the altar of a mysterious sacri- 
 fice of love, whereon the victim had 
 made an offering of himself. He 
 now caught with quickened hearing 
 those tender accents, "The Son of 
 man has come to seek and to save 
 that which was lost, and to give His 
 life a ransom for many." His soul 
 melted as he listened to the quiver- 
 ing accents of the dying sufferer 
 while He prayed for the forgive- 
 ness of His foes. The knowledge of 
 that grace brought Paul to a knowl- 
 edge of himself. All opposition to 
 the Christ went down before the 
 flood of feeling that came surging 
 out at the touch of a mercy great 
 enough to take him into its embrace. 
 Standing before the cross of Jesus, 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 he loses sight of everything else, and 
 raises the exultant shout, " God for- 
 bid that I should glory save in that 
 cross of my Lord Jesus Christ ; for 
 He was the Son of God, and He 
 loved, and He died for me." 
 
 This feeling of personal interest 
 in the love of the crucified Jesus 
 made it sheer impossibility for that 
 man to live a life of commonplace. 
 He felt the pressure of that motive 
 to be phenomenal. He ransacks his 
 affluent vocabulary to find the phrase 
 that will aptly express its intensity. 
 With vulture-eyed nicety he swoops 
 upon a word used in the New Testa- 
 ment to express all kinds of resistless 
 power : the surge of a crowd, the 
 
 clutch of the police, the tenacity of 
 
 *3 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 disease, and as though the impulse of a 
 noble life generated by personal recog- 
 nition of the Saviour's love, summed 
 up and exceeded the might exhibited 
 in all these ways, he writes with 
 flaming heart and ardent pen, "The 
 love of Christ constraineth us." That 
 sentence was Paul's biography in 
 brief. The love of Christ constrained 
 him to lay his heart at the foot of 
 the cross. It sustained him under 
 the smitings of adversity. It in- 
 flamed him with its summons to 
 arduous and chivalrous service. It 
 restrained him when chafed by the 
 oppositions of brutality and stupid- 
 ity. It remained with him in the 
 lonely shadow hours of desertion and 
 
 bereavement. The heart of Jesus 
 14 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 was the dynamo that electrified his 
 life. Its energy is no whit wasted. 
 The circuit along which its power 
 travels can still be established. When 
 the negative pole of human need is 
 brought into contact with the posi- 
 tive pole of the grace of Christ, the 
 life is pervaded with the play of 
 those elemental forces which built 
 Paul. Each, in our measure, may 
 be charged with the same ennobling 
 energy. 
 
 I. Note the soul-saving power of 
 the "love of Christ." Allusion to 
 the power of Jesus, ordinarily causes 
 the thought to revert to those mar- 
 vels of His earthly story when He 
 trod the storm-chafed sea as though 
 
 a pavement of marble was beneath His 
 
 15 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 sandals, — when pain and grief fled 
 before His presence, like spectres at 
 sunrise, when He reversed the irrev- 
 ocable, and the spirits of the dead 
 hastened at His call to recross the 
 threshold of the tomb. But the con- 
 version of a soul surpasses in display 
 of divine energy those works of won- 
 der recorded upon the pages of the 
 evangelists. Martin Luther weighed 
 every syllable when he wrote, " Re- 
 generation is the greatest of mir- 
 acles." The pen of inspiration made 
 no slip when it inscribed in the same 
 category, the creation of the universe, 
 the resurrection of the Lord from the 
 dead, and the conversion of the soul. 
 Every time a man is converted there 
 
 is re-creation and resurrection ; but 
 16 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 there is no longer an empty void to 
 be peopled with existences by a fiat 
 of deity ; there is no longer a cold 
 and shrouded body to be awakened 
 from its death sleep by a syllable of 
 power. There is a living soul, satu- 
 rated and suffused with antagonism 
 to the Almighty. There is a rebel 
 will ; its every energy embattled 
 against the Lord of Hosts. There 
 is a quick and throbbing spirit, puls- 
 ing with hostility to Him who sits 
 upon the throne. Omnipotence can 
 break that will ; but the problem is, 
 to bend it. Omnipotence can crush 
 that heart ; but the problem is, to 
 change it. Omnipotence can grind 
 that enemy into powder ; but the 
 
 problem is, to transform antagonism 
 
 17 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 into allegiance. Can sheer Almight- 
 iness ever constrain a single indi- 
 vidual to surrender his prejudices; 
 prejudices that have not merely 
 been engrafted by education, but 
 implanted by birth ; prejudices that 
 have been cultured into convictions ; 
 convictions that have flowered into 
 habits ; habits that have fruited 
 into the seemingly necessary laws 
 of being? 
 
 Souls cannot be dragooned into 
 holiness. The baton of the policeman 
 cracks the skull, but cannot dent the 
 heart. Hatred is not to be clubbed 
 into love. Guilt may be handcuffed 
 and jailed, but the logic of the 
 patrol wagon and the prison cell 
 does not make a bad man a better 
 
 18 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 man. Siberia makes no allegiance 
 to the Czar. State the problem and 
 it seems insoluble. Jesus solved 
 it. Jesus said, " I, if I be lifted up, 
 will draw all men unto Me." Iron 
 bends to the magnetism of the cross. 
 Adamant melts under the electric 
 currents of the love of Christ. 
 Hearts become willing when they 
 catch the meaning of Jesus* death. 
 Wills become yielding when face to 
 face with the crucified Redeemer. 
 Mercy is stronger than might. Love 
 is more potent than omnipotence. 
 Tenderness is Titanic. The crown 
 of thorns is more imperial than the 
 wreath of laurel. It is the talisman 
 of universal conquest. Saul of Tarsus 
 felt its power. It changed him from 
 
 *9 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 a pharisaic persecutor of Christians, 
 into the Napoleon of the early 
 church. Augustine of Carthage felt 
 its power. It transformed the pagan 
 roue into the prince of theological 
 thinkers. Martin Luther felt its pow- 
 er. It emancipated him from bondage 
 to cowled superstition and anointed 
 him as the pioneer champion of hu- 
 man liberty. John Newton felt its 
 power. It raised him from a moral 
 degradation lower than that of the 
 slaves he sold, and it made him a lib- 
 erator of Satan's captives. John Bun- 
 yan felt its power. " Grace Abound- 
 ing" snatched him as a brand from 
 the burning and made him a guide for 
 pilgrims to the Celestial City. John 
 
 B. Gough felt its power. It caught 
 20 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 him from a gutter grave, and it 
 taught him to sound the bugle-call 
 of a rescue work, the echoes of which 
 reverberate around the globe. Jerry 
 McAuley felt its power. It floated 
 the banners of eternal hope over the 
 black despair of a Water Street dive. 
 The magnetic pole of the world is 
 marked by the socket of the cross. 
 The fountain - head of the most 
 triumphant of energies is the heart 
 that broke on Calvary. 
 
 II. Note the character-building 
 power of the " love of Christ." 
 Character to be strong must be con- 
 centrated. Rays of light scattered, 
 warm. Focused, they burn. So the 
 love of Christ by gathering up the 
 straggling beams of man's influence, 
 
 21 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 and centering them upon a single ex- 
 alted purpose, puts a fervency into life 
 that can be kindled by no other flame. 
 Unrestrained, the brook streams 
 gently across the meadow. Enclosed 
 within the narrow channel of the 
 race, it drives with resistless mo- 
 mentum the powerful mechanism of 
 the mill. So the love of Christ, by 
 cutting a man off from earthly ends, 
 and hemming a man in from selfish 
 aims and shutting a man up to a way 
 that is strait and narrow, but high 
 and holy, causes the entire machinery 
 of his being to move with a power 
 and momentum that is derivable 
 from no other impulse. " The love 
 of Christ " is the precise form of en- 
 ergy for which Plato longed when, 
 
 22 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 heartsick at the moral debasement 
 of his fellow-men, he said that hu- 
 manity could never be exalted, save 
 by the lever of " loyalty to a divine 
 person." The philosopher diagnosed 
 keenly. All the after centuries have 
 attested the accuracy of his insight. 
 Loyalty to a divine person has point- 
 ed the few paragraphs in human his- 
 tory which can be read without a 
 blush or tear. Loyalty to a divine 
 person has cradled and nurtured the 
 choicest spirits of our race: such 
 typical forms of manhood as the 
 princely William of Orange, who 
 battled no less stoutly for the honor 
 of Christ, than he did for the freedom 
 of the down-trodden Netherlands; 
 
 like the poet-statesman Milton, who 
 
 23 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 devoted that imperial intellect which 
 was the guardian of England's honor, 
 to the unfolding of the ways of God 
 to man ; like that intellectual giant, 
 Sir Isaac Newton, whose eagle-eyed 
 intellect scanned with equal interest 
 the marvels of God's works, and the 
 mysteries of God's word ; like big- 
 brained Daniel Webster, who in the 
 clear light of his evening time wrote, 
 " Lord, I believe ; help Thou my un- 
 belief "; like Bismarck, that man of 
 iron and fire, who said, "If I were 
 not a Christian and a firm believer, 
 you would never have had such a 
 chancellor "; like Gladstone, who not 
 only lays his lance in rest for the main- 
 tenance of human rights, but is ar- 
 mored cap-a-pie for the honor of the 
 24 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 word of God ; like Kepler and Far- 
 aday ; like Herschel and Agassiz, 
 like Clerk Maxwell, and Stanley, and 
 Drummond, — who counted it as their 
 highest achievement to think the 
 thoughts of God after Him, and 
 have made it their loftiest ambition 
 to win the children of God back to 
 Him. Loyalty to a divine Person 
 is the salt-principle of humanity, alone 
 preserving it from entire corruption. 
 Loyalty to a divine Person is the 
 leaven power of the race, alone in- 
 fusing it with the energies which can 
 achieve its regeneration. 
 
 Life is not all achievement. It is 
 endurance ; and to endure is a much 
 harder thing than to act. It is easier 
 
 to prance than to plod. It is easier 
 
 25 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 for the tongue to slip its leash than 
 
 to wear its curb. It is easier to strike 
 
 from the shoulder than to keep the 
 
 fingers unclenched at the side. It is 
 
 easier to charge with the bayonet than 
 
 to trudge with the knapsack. It is 
 
 easier to strive than to stand, — to 
 
 work than to wait. But " the love 
 
 of Christ" has a magic which other 
 
 motives lack, so to gird the heart 
 
 that it can pace unswervingly the 
 
 lonely sentinel beat of duty — and 
 
 when freighted with life's mysteries, 
 
 to suffer and be strong. 
 
 We have counted the martyr age 
 
 back into the distant past. We cast 
 
 a wistful look toward "the brave 
 
 days of old." Many a generation has 
 
 ended its march since Polycarp 
 26 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 sealed his allegiance in syllables of 
 flame. Sun after sun has set since 
 Latimer and Ridley kindled in the 
 old Smithfield market that candle 
 which, by the grace of God, never 
 shall go out. But all martyrs do not 
 burn at the stake. Every age and 
 clime furnishes recruits for that 
 noble army which is the body-guard 
 of our King. Heroes of the faith 
 live in every hamlet. Bearers of 
 the Cross of Jesus pass us daily on 
 the streets. On the martyr-rolls of 
 heaven are names that are written in 
 our visiting lists. In these homes 
 about us — in these pews beside us — 
 there is many a follower of the Christ, 
 whose life is a long, weary, triumph- 
 ant martyrdom. The world has 
 
 27 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 left behind it — rack and fagot, but 
 the tongue has lost none of its edge, 
 nor speech its venom, since the long- 
 ago day when David wrote of those 
 "who whet their tongues like a 
 sword, and made ready their arrows 
 even bitter words," — and many a 
 loyal-hearted follower of Jesus is 
 standing in his lot, a lonely but un- 
 flinching target for the rattling and 
 rankling volleys of the world's con- 
 tempt. The Gethsemane prayer for 
 submission is hourly winging its way 
 heavenward from hearts that can 
 break, but can never desert. Crowned 
 with thorns and clad in garments of 
 heaviness — many a soul endures in 
 suffering silence, pangs that cannot 
 
 be measured by physical anguish, 
 
 28 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 To-morrow morning many a soul 
 will shoulder the load of its daily life 
 with a spirit no less heroic than that 
 with which men used to go to the 
 stake, yea, with the same unquestion- 
 ing trustfulness with which the Son 
 of God went tottering up Golgotha. 
 Have you never seen a Christian 
 in loneliness and weariness, stagger- 
 ing, stumbling, struggling on, broken 
 in heart, bruised in spirit, but the 
 brow all aglow with the radiance of a 
 martyr crown ? Have you never seen 
 a Christian when nerve was tingling 
 and flesh quivering in the rude 
 clutch of disease, dispelling the 
 shadows of the sick-room by theun- 
 dimmed fortitude of the martyr 
 
 spirit ? Have you never seen the 
 
 29 
 
A Noble Life, 
 
 face of the dying Christian, in that 
 hour when heart and flesh were fail- 
 ing, light up with rapture as through 
 the gathering gloom he beheld a 
 vision of angels ? The spirit of 
 worldliness may, in this latter day, 
 have intruded within the hallowed 
 precincts of the sanctuary. It has 
 never extruded the spirit of Christ. 
 Spiritual vigor may, perhaps, lie 
 latent, awaiting the trumpet call 
 that shall summon it to resur- 
 rection. It is not dead. It only 
 sleepeth. If occasion should demand 
 it, there are those on the roll of 
 every congregation who, rather than 
 prove false to the Lord that loved 
 them, would plant their feet in the 
 
 footprints of blood and fire where 
 30 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 our fathers stood, crying as they 
 take their stand, " The love of Christ 
 constraineth us." 
 
 The supreme and present-day need 
 of the Church is to feel afresh the 
 thrill of this mighty love. The vine- 
 yard of the Lord needs to be sown 
 again with this seed of fire. This is 
 an incandescent age. This is an era 
 of burning enthusiasms. In com- 
 merce and in art, in culture and in 
 pleasure, men are enthusiasts. There 
 is need of a kindred enthusiasm in 
 religion. The times demand men of 
 athletic piety, men of sinewy faith, 
 men who have a vertebrate Christian- 
 ity ; who can resist the shock of 
 skeptic assault, who can throw off 
 
 the malaria of popular doubt, who 
 
 3 1 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 can stem the current of popular con- 
 tempt ; men who have an intense 
 and an intelligent enthusiasm for the 
 honor of their blessed Lord. If the 
 Church of Christ was set free from 
 the thraldom of earth-born ambitions, 
 from the clash and jar of party jeal- 
 ousies and petty contentions, and 
 was tingling in every fibre with a 
 passion of love for Jesus, — glowing 
 from core to circumference with con- 
 suming desire for the honor of His 
 name, — who can tell with what re- 
 sistless swing the battle-line would 
 sweep the field, and the trumpets 
 peal that triumphant and longed-for 
 hour when "the war-drum beats no 
 longer, and the battle-flags are 
 furled." Who can say what tides of 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 influence would begin to set toward 
 
 this thrilling consummation if each 
 
 life in this congregation became the 
 
 exponent of a single-hearted and 
 
 whole-souled affection for the Christ 
 
 of Calvary? Would that it might 
 
 be so ! Would that the Spirit of 
 
 the living God might come in 
 
 power; come as a rushing, mighty 
 
 w 7 ind and fan the flame of love for 
 
 Jesus in the hearts where it now 
 
 burns low ; come as a heavenly fire 
 
 and kindle with holy ardors the 
 
 hearts that now are dark and cold ; 
 
 come as a divine Teacher, and make 
 
 every one of us to feel to the depth 
 
 of our consciousness that sublimest 
 
 truth that created intelligence can 
 
 ever compass, " Jesus, the Son of 
 
 33 
 
A Noble Life. 
 
 God, loved me, and died to save 
 my soul." Let that fact fasten its 
 hold upon the heart, and life will be- 
 come a boon, fraught with glorious 
 possibilities. Work will become 
 sweet. The future will become bright. 
 All cloud will vanish. Every star 
 will shine. For head and hand and 
 heart will be energized with that same 
 triumphant and holy enthusiasm that 
 beat within the breast of that man of 
 Tarsus, the throb of whose mighty 
 heart we feel across nineteen centu- 
 ries, as we repeat his words, " The 
 love of Christ constraineth us." 
 
 34 
 
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