LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 
 
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 Shelf :V/.l.Wo> 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
HBp William llBumet Wixi^u 
 
 ANCIENT CITIES, FROM THE DAWN TO THE 
 
 DAYLIGHT. i6mo, $1.25. 
 THE WORLD TO COME. Sermons. i6mo, $1.25. 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 
 Boston and New York. 
 
THE WORLD TO COME 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM BURNET WRIGHT 
 
 AUTHOR OF "ANCIENT CITIES" 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1887 
 
 
1*. 
 
 *>T> 
 
 *v 
 
 Copyright, 1887, 
 By WILLIAM BURXET WRIGHT. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 Tlie Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 9 
 
 When the earthly grandeur of Israel had 
 vanished and the vast majority of Israelites 
 were exiles, an inspired teacher wrote the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews. It cheered them 
 with the hope that their wanderings would 
 end in a city fairer than the old Jerusalem 
 had ever been ; a city in which righteous- 
 ness should rule, love prevail, peace and joy 
 be the portion of every citizen. Other parts 
 of the New Testament offer to all men the 
 same radiant hope, and assure us that though 
 the desired place is always at hand, it can 
 be entered only by those who are "born 
 from above," and is discerned by those alone 
 whose eyes Christ has opened to see things 
 which, though they have been present from 
 the foundation of the world, have been hid- 
 den from men's eyes, because men " having 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 eyes see not the things belonging to their 
 peace." 
 
 That city, the author of the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews named in the phrase selected 
 for the title of this book, " The World to 
 Come." 
 
 For its coming all men hope. For its 
 coming all good men toil. Into it Mr. Her- 
 bert Spencer and Mr. Henry George are 
 endeavoring earnestly and honestly to lead 
 us by different but, I think, by equally mis- 
 taken roads. It will never be reached ex- 
 cept by the steep and narrow way to which 
 the Master pointed. 
 
 The vague but universal expectation of 
 the world which is to come is expressed in 
 the text of the opening paper. The rate of 
 our approach toward what all desire is in 
 some degree measured by the history of 
 Christmas with which the volume closes. 
 
 That we can all wish each other " A 
 Happy New Year" implies the general hope 
 of a future in which there shall be no more 
 sighing. 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 The history of Christmas may serve to 
 show that so much of progress toward that 
 future as can be measured by the gradual 
 transformation of the Roman Saturnalia into 
 the German festival has consumed about 
 fifteen hundred years. 
 
 Most of us already spend one three-hun- 
 dred-and-sixty-fif th part of our time in an at- 
 mosphere distinctively Christian ; in a world 
 where the true business of life is practically 
 conceded to be — what our Saviour affirms 
 that it is — not getting for ourselves, but 
 giving to others. Already during one day 
 of each year the Holy Spirit is poured out 
 upon all flesh, as if God compelled us to bo 
 Christians for a little while, in order that 
 we might know by actual experience how 
 good aftd pleasant it is to enter into the joy 
 of our Lord, and continue Christians by our 
 own choice the remainder of the time. 
 
 How soon the lesson will be learned effec- 
 tually and all our time redeemed by Him 
 who declares that it is more blessed to give 
 than to receive, the reader can calculate as 
 
Vi PREFACE. 
 
 easily as I. We know that God is long-suf- 
 fering and marvellously patient. 
 
 What external changes the future may 
 bring to increase human felicity I do not 
 know. Whatever they may be, I cannot 
 think them essential to our happiness while I 
 hear one who is the Truth asking for those He 
 loves — even while He accepts the cup which 
 He pleads with a great agony to have pass 
 from Him. and faces the trials which marked 
 Him as the Man of Sorrows — " that they 
 may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.*' 
 But it seems to me supremely important for 
 every man to understand that he can reach 
 heaven only by walking the steep and nar- 
 row way. and that the essential conditions 
 of all joy are deliverance from those sins 
 and possession of those virtues, of which 
 such as I have oftenest needed to remind 
 myself and my brethren are in this book 
 brought to view. 
 
 In the selection of sermons T have care- 
 fully avoided all which treat of questions in 
 debate, and have chosen those which depend 
 
PREFACE. yn 
 
 for such force as they have upon principles 
 acknowledged by the universal Christian 
 conscience as true. In other words, the fol- 
 lowing pages deal not with the ephemeral 
 phases of human speculation, but with the 
 permanent elements of human nature. 
 
 The tinge of local coloring in the Memo- 
 rial of Franklin Snow comes from the fact 
 that it — as were all the utterances in this 
 book — was spoken in Berkeley Street 
 Church, Boston, of which Mr. Snow was at 
 the time of his death a deacon, and the 
 speaker was the pastor. The closing paper 
 is not a sermon, but a familiar talk given 
 to the young people of the same Church at 
 a certain Christmas festival which many 
 of them will remember, and afterwards 
 repeated to larger audiences in different 
 parts of New England. I hope it may 
 strengthen the reader's conviction that the 
 stones for the strong foundations of the 
 New Jerusalem and for the walls which 
 " are both great and high " must be quar- 
 ried from the Mountain of the Beatitudes ; 
 
Vlll PREFACE: 
 
 for only he " who heareth these sayings of 
 mine and doeth them " builds for himself 
 a home which neither storm nor flood can 
 sweep away. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. A Happy New Year .... 1 
 
 II. The Model Church .... 15 
 
 III. Teach us to Pray . . . .32 
 
 IV. The Keys of the Kingdom . . 45 
 V. Spiritual Ploughing . . . .59 
 
 VI. Jericho . 74 
 
 VII. Gideon's Men 88 
 
 VIII. Self-Pity : Saul in the Witch's Cave 100 
 
 IX. Samson: Self-Deception . . .112 
 
 X. To Parents 124 
 
 XI. Saving Faith 139 
 
 XII. Franklin Snow 149 
 
 XIII. What Must I do to be Saved? . 177 
 
 XIV. What has God done to Save Me ? . 194 
 XV. The Missionary Spirit . . . 209 
 
 XVI. Easter: Transfiguration . . . 222 
 
 XVII. Flower Sunday 233 
 
 XVIII. Decoration Day . . ■ . .241 
 
 XIX. Harvest Sunday .... 253 
 
 XX. Christmas 267 
 
THE WOELD TO COME. 
 
 I. 
 
 A HAPPY NEW YEAR. 
 "I wish you a happy New Year." 
 
 I must take a little time to give you the 
 chapter and verse of the text, because I 
 have heard it from so many lips, and seen it 
 in so many faces, of which the Concordance 
 issued in heaven has not yet been repub- 
 lished upon earth. 
 
 The last day of the old year was not al- 
 together bright to me. Clouds were thick 
 when it dawned. Within fourteen days I 
 had ministered at fourteen funerals. Early 
 in the afternoon I was called to visit a mo- 
 ther, two of whose children had been buried 
 the week before, and who was herself thought 
 to be dying. A friend stopped me on the 
 doorstep to ask if I could officiate at 
 another funeral the next afternoon. I was 
 beginning to feel that this is a bad world, 
 
2 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 with too much trouble in it. For a minister, 
 I know, and for you, I think, it is worse to 
 doubt any of those words of the Master in 
 which He said, "Blessed are they that 
 mourn," than to doubt the things which men 
 have put in the creeds about the Trinity, or 
 the Atonement, or endless punishment. And 
 how bad it is to question the latter, any of 
 the theology books will tell you. A con- 
 sciousness of the sorrowfulness of life was 
 creeping like mildew over me, as I passed 
 into a neighborhood where only poor people 
 live. There the stores are dingy, and most 
 of them are in cellars. Baskets of coal, 
 painfully small, and puny bunches of fagots 
 are for sale upon the sidewalk. The day 
 was bitterly cold. On such days few sights 
 are more pitiful than these tiny morsels of 
 fuel, which the poor buy when they can af- 
 ford them. As I crossed the broad street 
 which divides your neighborhood from this 
 section, I heard my name called. A bright 
 face shone, a cheery voice exclaimed, " I wish 
 you a happy New Year." We shook hands, 
 and a star seemed to be struggling through 
 the clouds. Not everybody was crying. 
 
 I passed on. A mother — a member of 
 our church ; two sick children ; yet the 
 
A HAPPY NEW YEAR. 3 
 
 single room in which they all lived together 
 seemed empty to her, because within a fort- 
 night two other children had been carried 
 from it, never to return. The poor love 
 their children perhaps the more because they 
 have so little else to love. The poor woman 
 finds in her babe all of light and laughter 
 that she has ; all that books, flowers, amuse- 
 ment, society, travel, and children, give to 
 you. This mother had come near following 
 her loved little ones, the night before. She 
 was very weak. But she had strength enough 
 to say these three things : " I have slept a 
 whole hour, and I feel so rested." " I never 
 thought of it in that way before. He had 
 not where to lay his head, and I have a good 
 bed to lie upon." And, as I came away, " I 
 wish you a happy New Year." The clouds 
 were growing thin. 
 
 Then Miss B wanted me to visit an 
 
 aged Scotch woman, who had asked to see 
 me because, seven years ago, when she was 
 still in the old country, I buried her daugh- 
 ter. She lives in a cellar. She is old, and 
 her brogue was hard for me to understand. 
 She had rheumatism, and a pleurisy pain in 
 her side, and a few weeks ago she fell upon 
 the stairs, and the jar was terrible. She 
 
4 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 had never seen me before, but when my 
 name was spoken, memories came. Hers 
 was the familiar story, — " Son that never 
 let her want for anything when he had it to 
 give ; out of work now. The landlord was 
 not pressing for the three weeks' rent, and 
 Jamie was promised a long job come the 
 New Year ; and she had had a splendid cup 
 o' tea the morn, and there was eneuch for the 
 morrow; and a gude woman cam at the 
 gloamin', to cook the meal and tidy a bit. 
 But times her head gaed woad, and she for- 
 got the endin' o' the psaulms, tho' gen the 
 prayers cam short and she could na mind 
 the endin', perhaps the Lord mindid a' the 
 same ! And wad I pray." " Yes ! But do 
 not try to kneel, for it hurts you ! " " But 
 it 's little eneuch to kneel before Him ! " So 
 we helped her off the bed, and after prayers 
 we helped her back upon it. And " God be 
 wie ye, sir," she said, as she wished me " a 
 happy New Year." 
 
 The clouds were almost gone as I entered 
 the room of a dear friend who has been con- 
 fined some weeks to her chamber, and heard 
 her say : " I will not remind you that you 
 have not been in my house for a year, because 
 I am so glad to see you and to w 7 ish you l a 
 happy New Year.' " 
 
A HAPPY NEW TEAR. 5 
 
 The sky was clear when at last I joined 
 some of you in the rooms below, and saw 
 sixty or seventy tots of children, dressed in 
 their best, and saw you trying with all your 
 skill to make them happy. It takes so little 
 to make children happy ! Even the three 
 with pinched faces who at first shrunk apart, 
 and would not join in the games because 
 their clothes were shabby, soon began to look 
 eager and delighted. I never loved our 
 superintendent and our deacons so well, as 
 while I saw them racing with the gleeful 
 babies, and so becoming little children after 
 the manner of those who enter the kingdom 
 of God. " Let 's sing now," they said. 
 rt What shall we sing? " Sing " Christ was 
 shined in Bethlehem ! " cried a tiny tot of 
 rapturous humanity. 
 
 You should have seen their eyes dilate, 
 heard their shouts of ecstasy when a kind 
 friend turned eggs into rabbits, and brought 
 doves out of tin cans. Feeling richer than 
 Croesus with his gold, each little one was led 
 home at seven with his orange and his bag 
 of peanuts. 
 
 It takes so little to make children happy, 
 and yet they are so often unhappy ! 
 
 In the evening the older members of the 
 
6 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 Sunday-school convened, and so sweet a cel- 
 ebration, so joyous and so gracious a meeting 
 I have rarely seen. All seemed to rejoice, as 
 if they knew whose hand would lead them 
 safely through the unexplored and tangled 
 paths of the future, and therefore felt, 
 " Nothing can hurt us, nothing can make us 
 afraid, for He will be with us always, and 
 none can pluck us out of his hand." 
 
 It was half past nine when an esteemed 
 friend took both my hands and said : " It is 
 time, I think, to wish you a happy New Year." 
 He little thought, perhaps none of you 
 thought, how mightily you were working to 
 make my New Year happy. 
 
 Three children went home with me, and 
 each of them declared they had never had 
 so good a time before. The next morning, 
 before my eyelids opened, a patter of little 
 feet, a shout, a kiss, a chorus of " Happy New 
 Year, papa ! " mingled with this radiant re- 
 frain, "I love to go to church where they 
 have real doves." 
 
 The text is one of those utterances. 
 Which one I cannot quite tell, and perhaps 
 it does not matter, for all of them may be 
 found in the Lamb's Book of Life. 
 
 1. I remark ; though the words of the text 
 
A HAPPY NEW" YEAR. 7 
 
 do not occur in the Bible, they are none the 
 less inspired. Every one who has sincerely 
 uttered them has spoken by inspiration of 
 the Holy Spirit. It is God who makes you 
 love your neighbor, and I shall do a worthy 
 work to-day, if I can make you realize that 
 the fervent love you feel for your friends and 
 your families comes from Him whose name 
 is Love. Could any other than God's Spirit 
 inspire a young lady, elegantly dressed, to 
 plunge through carts and cars across the 
 muddy street, risking her comfort and her 
 toilet, just from loving-kindness, to wish me 
 a** happy New Year ? Was it not God's 
 Spirit that, checking the envy so common to 
 us all, moved a sick woman, old, suffering, 
 in rags, in a cellar, with no money and few 
 friends, her rent unpaid, rheumatism in her 
 bones and chilblains in her feet, to look at 
 me, sleek, well-dressed, well-fed, glowing with 
 health, and sincerely wish me " a happy New 
 Year" ? But for God, she would have been 
 eying this gold watch-chain and saying, "It 
 might be sold for much, and given to the 
 poor ! " But for God, she would be think- 
 ing, " Is he better than I, who read my Bible 
 and say my prayers every day, and have not 
 a cent with which to bless myself?" Was 
 
8 THE WORLD TO COME, 
 
 it not the Spirit of God which said, " I will 
 not remind you that you have not been to 
 see me for a year, because I am so glad to see 
 you and to wish you a happy New Year " ? 
 
 And was it not God's Spirit that guided 
 old and young in the rooms below, to enact 
 the same greeting in such a way that I went 
 home feeling so full of gladness that to sleep 
 seemed to squander joy ? 
 
 Friends, whoso loveth is born of God. 
 He that loveth his brother, whom he hath 
 seen, is growing in the love of God, whom he 
 hath not seen. For this New Year's greet- 
 ing is in fact the exact benediction which 
 Heaven spoke upon Earth over the cradle of 
 Christ. It is the prayer which Jesus uttered 
 for his own when He asked that they might 
 be one ; and the fulfilment of the radiant 
 permission, " Enter into my joy." 
 
 2. My hope dilates and my courage grows 
 because so many have sincerely said, " I wish 
 you a happy New Year." From millions of 
 hearts this great psalm of the new life has 
 ascended. Some have spoken insincerely. 
 In some the lips have belied the heart. 
 There are pharisees of fashion as there are 
 pharisees of religion. But oftenest far the 
 words have been genuine. How earnestly 
 
A HAPPY NEW TEAR. 9 
 
 do parents desire a happy New Year for 
 their children; friends for their friends. 
 For how many of those that mourn, and of 
 those who are poor, has the wish been hon- 
 estly felt, " May they have a more cheerful 
 future." How much true charity have these 
 Christmas holidays beheld. 
 
 If the recording angels are as careful of 
 good words as of idle ones, — and who can 
 question that they are — they have been 
 busy this past week over the Lamb's Book. 
 When the Lion of the tribe of Judah pre- 
 vails to open it for us, we shall read many 
 things we have not written in our note- 
 books ; we shall miss much that we have 
 printed in our largest type. 
 
 " He hath built us a synagogue" 
 may have been entered on high. But 
 She hath cast in Two Mites 
 
 all eyes shall see. 
 
 Remember these kind greetings are 
 prayers. God himself has inspired them, 
 and they show that He is wishing us a happy 
 New Year. 
 
 3. God has in reserve for every one of us, 
 this coming year, something better than we 
 can ask or think. It is most appropriate 
 
10 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 for us to begin the year at the communion 
 table. For the happiness of our future de- 
 pends upon our communion with Him at 
 whose right hand are pleasures forever- 
 more. They who walk with God shall be 
 happy ; they who live nearest God shall be 
 happiest. 
 
 In all the realms of life you shall find no 
 creatures joyful save such as obey the laws 
 of their being. God so wishes all his crea- 
 tures to be glad, that He has shown to each 
 of them the things belonging to their peace. 
 To the brutes by instinct, to us by reason 
 and by revelation, He has revealed the con- 
 ditions under which alone we can be glad. 
 These conditions we call laws, and talk about 
 them as if they were arbitrary requirements 
 of our Father ; as if He were a king who 
 makes decrees for his own pleasure, and 
 punishes those who disobey them. But 
 God's Statute Book declares, " There is no 
 peace for the wicked." God himself could 
 not find that which " is not." " Wisdom's 
 ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her 
 paths are peace." "I wish you a happy 
 New Year for time, for eternity ! " This is 
 the meaning of the law which warns, of the 
 gospel which woos. To wish you all "a 
 
A HAPPY NEW YEAR. 11 
 
 happy New Year " is to wish you all Chris- 
 tians. 
 
 Let the year that is past be our compass 
 for the year that is passing. From some of 
 you money has gone ; from some friends 
 have been taken ; some have been sick ; 
 some have been slandered ; some have failed 
 in their undertakings ; some have worked 
 till they are very weary; some have lost 
 heart and hope and faith. As the past has 
 been, the future will be, except for the 
 changes within us. Do you need a stay 
 that is not rooted in the ground ? A support 
 that earthquakes cannot throw down ? The 
 things we have most lamented, it may be, 
 have been God's best gifts to us. Is there 
 green grass in the desert? Do flowers 
 blossom there? Are fruits ripened above 
 its sands ? Yet there the sun always shines. 
 There clouds never come. There the blue 
 sky bends always over all. And no frost 
 chills the air. But the only fruits of its 
 perpetual radiance are the bleaching bones 
 of camels and men, who have tried in vain 
 to cross it. There can be no rain where 
 clouds never come, for He, by whom in the 
 beginning all things were made that were 
 made, wrote in the silent ground what He 
 
12 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 read aloud to his suffering children when 
 He stood upon the mount, "Blessed are 
 they that mourn." 
 
 4. My friends, if we begin this year seek- 
 ing our own ends and not God's, we shall be 
 as children who enter school not to learn and 
 grow wise by their teacher's wisdom, but to 
 idle or to play. For them there shall be 
 pain and punishment and tears. No love 
 sweetens their daily work, and at the end no 
 dear assurance of rest and full contentment, 
 — " Well done, good and faithful." 
 
 Remember, whatever your plans may be, 
 God has something for you to do. You may 
 not yet see what it is. Then wait upon Him 
 and He will show you. His will is not only 
 that you may grow rich ; He may not mean 
 you to succeed in the things you propose for 
 yourself. He means you to become a truer, 
 wiser, stronger man ; more just, more brave, 
 more loving. That is surely his first pur- 
 pose for you. Is it your first purpose for 
 yourself ? If you do that, whatever else may 
 come of loss or trouble, will you feel sure 
 that you have not failed, though all the 
 newspapers in the land and all the com- 
 mercial registers write you down a bank- 
 rupt? If not, you are not fit to do business 
 in God's world. 
 
A HAPPY NEW YEAR. 13 
 
 There are two natures in every one of us, 
 fighting for the mastery : a higher and a 
 lower. If we put the sceptre in the hands 
 of impulse, and take counsel only of our 
 wishes and our passions, we shall have tor- 
 ment enough. A beast is a good thing to 
 drive ; but alas for the man who is driven by 
 a beast ! If we crown principle and take 
 counsel of God we shall have his peace that 
 passeth understanding. 
 
 When spring comes I shall look upon the 
 fields. Here and there, in early April, per- 
 haps I shall find one green, and growing 
 daily greener. No blade in it that breaks 
 the ground shall be disturbed. No flower 
 that peers shall be uprooted. That field 
 shall keep all its growths, no sharp share 
 shall wound its breast, and I shall know 
 the farmer has given it over to lie barren. 
 It will bear no harvest either of beauty or of 
 fruit. " Ephraim is joined to his idols, let 
 him alone." God will not hurt us when we 
 are past being helped by pain. 
 
 Other fields I shall see, cut with sharp 
 shares, pounded and pierced by harrows; 
 every blade that peers toward heaven up- 
 rooted, every flower torn up, till the ground 
 seems sterile as desert wastes. In such 
 
14 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 fields I shall look for harvests. There, in 
 due time, I shall find flowers, fruits, grain. 
 When ye are stripped and scarred and 
 scourged, listen to the Lord's voice ; He is 
 saying, "All this is because I wish you a 
 happy New Year ! " 
 
 Does the future mean to us earth or 
 heaven ? A few months and the new year 
 shall be old. A few years, and all years 
 shall be ended. In a moment, in the twin- 
 kling of an eye, for each of us mortality 
 shall be swallowed up of life. 
 
 Let us realize that we are immortal. Let 
 us remember that the themes we ponder here 
 on this day are infinitely more momentous 
 than those presented by the counting-room, 
 the kitchen, or the parlor. Let us give 
 them their lawful sovereignty. Let us live 
 as becometh immortal sons of God, loving 
 each other because God hath loved us. Do 
 this and our prayers for each other shall 
 be answered, — we shall have a happy New 
 Year. 
 
II. 
 
 THE MODEL CHURCH. 
 
 And fear came upon every soul, and many wonders 
 and signs were done by the Apostles. And all that 
 believed were together and had all things common ; and 
 they sold their possessions and goods, and parted them 
 to all according as any man had need. And day by day, 
 continuing steadfastly with one accord in the temple, and 
 breaking bread at home, they did take their food with 
 gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and hav- 
 ing favor with all the people. And the Lord added 
 to them day by day those that were being saved. — 
 AcTsii. 43-47. (R. V.) 
 
 This is a description of the first Christian 
 Church. Its officers had been chosen and 
 trained by Jesus Christ. Its members, we 
 are told, continued steadfast in the Apostles' 
 teaching. Their fellowship was undisturbed 
 by dissensions. They had favor with all the 
 people — even " working men," that must 
 include. Every day God added to them 
 those who were being saved. 
 
 This is the only Church minutely described 
 in the New Testament. It would therefore 
 appear to be held before us as the ideal 
 
16 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 which other churches should try to realize 
 and reproduce. 
 
 I. I would have you observe that it had 
 an extremely simple creed, — personal loy- 
 alty to the Lord Jesus Christ. That and 
 that alone qualified a man for membership. 
 It was bound together, not by a consensus 
 of intellectual opinions as political parties 
 are, but, as families are, by affectionate obe- 
 dience to a person. 
 
 II. The description of this Church forms 
 the beginning of the Book of Acts. The 
 biographies of the Apostles are not records 
 of emotions, like the biographies of A Kem- 
 pis and Tauler ; nor of speculative contro- 
 versies, as the history of the Church became 
 after she had, at Constantinople, laid aside 
 the crown of thorns for the diadem of 
 pearls : but a book of acts. 
 
 It is said that one of the early hermits 
 spent seventeen years standing in the atti- 
 tude of prayer, until his knees had grown so 
 stiff that he could not stoop to give drink to 
 a sick man dying at his feet. The marvel 
 is, not that such a story could gain credence, 
 but that the hermit should pass for a saint 
 among the disciples of Him who warned us 
 not to make long prayers, and told us to 
 
THE MODEL CHURCH. 17 
 
 •imitate the good Samaritan. A church 
 may come out of the Lenten season or the 
 week of prayer like the stiff-kneed hermit. 
 Whether, during appointed seasons of devo- 
 tion, we really pray, the deeds which follow 
 those seasons will inexorably indicate. The 
 narrative of the days in the Upper Chamber, 
 and of the Pentecost which followed them, 
 would have described the Waterloo of Chris- 
 tianity, if it did not begin the Book of Acts. 
 By this approach let us scrutinize the Model 
 Church. 
 
 1. We are told that fear came upon every 
 soul, that is, upon every member of the 
 Church. So it seemed to Luke. Caiaphas, or 
 Josephus, even Gamaliel, or any other than 
 an inspired seer, would have written, ;i Fear 
 departed from every soul." The most the 
 
 .Sanhedrim could discern was that certain 
 timid men had grown bo]d and made others 
 bold. A Galilean had been executed upon 
 the double charge of blasphemy and sedi- 
 tion. His disciples had fled and sought con- 
 cealment. For more than a month they 
 kept in hiding. Then suddenly they reap- 
 peared. The hares had become lions. They 
 met openly. They chose the most conspic- 
 uous places and occasions to publish them- 
 
18 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 selves followers of their dead leader. They 
 proclaimed that leader, whom the Jews had 
 condemned for blasphemy and the Romans 
 crucified for treason, the rightful King of 
 both. They declared that the supreme 
 crime possible to men was the denial of his 
 authority. They entered the temple, which 
 was the throne of Jewish sovereignty, where 
 also a Roman garrison was quartered, and 
 there, among civic rulers, exasperated church- 
 men, and Roman soldiers, they talked trea- 
 son in the name of their lost leader with 
 a reckless daring never paralleled by any 
 body of men before or since. They rang in 
 the ears of Jewish priest and Roman soldier, 
 " This Jesus whom ye have crucified is both 
 Lord and Christ." Luke describes this 
 splendid bravery by saying, "Fear came 
 upon every soul " which caught the fine con- 
 tagion. 
 
 Luke was a seer. He described, not the 
 obvious flower, but the hidden root. These 
 men were fearless, he explains, because they 
 feared God. That was the root of all their 
 brave and beautiful deeds. This Church at 
 Jerusalem had come to see Him who is in- 
 visible, and to realize that He was not on 
 the side of Caiaphas, but of Christ. That 
 
TEE MODEL CHURCH. 19 
 
 conviction was the foundation of their char- 
 acter, the blood of their bravery. As Paul 
 afterwards told the Corinthians to do, they 
 went forward " perfecting holiness in the 
 fear of the Lord." 
 
 The preacher often asks, " Whom do you 
 love?" He does well to ask the question. 
 But the Bible often asks, " Whom do you 
 fear?" "For the fear of the Lord is the 
 beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of 
 the holy, that is understanding." The man 
 who fears God can be afraid of no other 
 person ; can fear no thing ; neither life, nor 
 death, nor principalities, nor powers, nor 
 things present, nor things to come." 
 
 Something more than such valor is requi- 
 site to Christian manhood, to church prosper- 
 ity °, something greater than this, as the oak 
 is greater than the acorn. John Baptist is 
 less than the least in the kingdom of heaven. 
 But without the fear of the Lord, even vir- 
 tues are but artificial flowers glued upon the 
 tree of life, not leaves for the healing of 
 the nations. For where the fear of the 
 Lord is not, the fear of men will be, and 
 better Cromwell with his thunder than the 
 gentlest singer singing soft songs because 
 he is afraid to thunder. Better the Levite 
 
20 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 passing by on the other side than a Samari- 
 tan pouring in oil and wine because he fears 
 the anger of the Jews if he neglects their 
 countryman. 
 
 I think the Church in our time has need 
 of exhortation to fear God. She is afraid 
 of many things because she does not realize 
 the awfulness of disobeying Him. 
 
 2. We are told that many signs and won- 
 ders were done by the Apostles. That 
 Luke records the fact, without pausing to 
 relate what the signs and wonders were, is a 
 proof of inspired wisdom. Another histo- 
 rian would — as so many early Christian 
 writers did — have lingered over the mira- 
 cles. But Luke does not. He knew that 
 miracles were not essential to church life. 
 He wrote, not to appease curiosity, but to 
 inspire conduct. Therefore he simply notes 
 the fact that miracles were wrought, and 
 passes on to record what is essential to 
 church life. It is as if he had said, " The 
 Apostles wrought miracles, but since you are 
 not apostles the fact does not greatly concern 
 you. But you are believers, and therefore 
 need to know what all the believers did, 
 and what you must do." 
 
 If we could pray sick men into health or 
 
THE MODEL CHURCH. 21 
 
 dead men back to life, most of us would 
 think that supremely notable, and the news- 
 papers would be filled with descriptions of 
 the signs and wonders we could work. But 
 in describing the Model Church, in which 
 such miracles actually were performed, Luke 
 diverts attention from them as if he held 
 them immaterial ; saying, " The Apostles 
 wrought miracles, but all the members of 
 the church did these other things." 
 
 3. Upon the next statement the inspired 
 writer dwells with careful minuteness, as if 
 he considered it supremely important. The 
 members of this Church, he tells us, had 
 that self-denying affection for each other, 
 without which even their bravery would 
 have been a king without a sceptre, a Gibral- 
 tar with no human garrison upon its breast 
 of stone, a skeleton to inspire terror rather 
 than a beautiful body of Christ to win love. 
 
 " All that believed were together, and 
 had all things common ; and they sold their 
 possessions and goods and parted them to 
 all, according as any man had need." 
 
 Well did such a miracle of love deserve 
 the minute description it received, for it 
 was the most perfect realization of heavenly 
 society which has yet appeared among men. 
 
22 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 Here, you will observe, is nearly the polit- 
 ical economy of a Christian family. All 
 things common ; each receiving what he 
 needs ; the wisest and best deciding, with 
 help of all, what each does actually require. 
 
 Here the Christian ideal was realized as it 
 never has been since, and as it cannot be 
 realized again, until men are once more 
 brought under equally perfect control of the 
 Spirit of God. These Christians were able 
 to do w T hat no other body of men have been 
 able to achieve. Other attempts have been 
 made to live in community of property, 
 but they have miserably failed. The Apos- 
 tles never advised it. Except this once, the 
 apostolic churches never attempted it. But 
 this Church practised it, and so long as the 
 members retained the spirit in which they 
 began, they were blessed. No equally con- 
 vincing proof, I think, has ever been given 
 by any other body of men that they w r ere 
 the visible body of Christ, filled with the 
 Spirit of God. 
 
 " All that believed were together." Could 
 you select a hundred men and women any- 
 where on earth who should be able to live 
 in the same house, to meet not only once or 
 twice a week, but every day, breaking bread 
 
THE MODEL CHURCH. 23 
 
 together continually, surrounded by most 
 bewildering and threatening circumstances, 
 each driven by intense convictions, excited 
 by most fervid emotions, and have never 
 a jar ? Many a church cannot have a fair 
 without a quarrel. 
 
 And these Christians had not been 
 trained, as we have been, under influences 
 which tended to produce in them all the same 
 tastes, the same habits. They had come 
 from every nation under heaven. Some 
 were rich, some were poor. Yet they had 
 all things ift common. If only the um- 
 brellas in a modern church were held in 
 common, on the first rainy day there would 
 be trouble. But these Christians held 
 houses and lands and all things so. One 
 accustomed to luxury resigns his wealth with- 
 out repining. Another trained in want gives 
 up his poverty without becoming arrogant. 
 Each receives, not what he craves, but 
 what he needs. If that were tried to-day, 
 what murmurings, what snatchings, would 
 result ! Let Fourierism, let Brook Farm, 
 let the Knights of Labor, reply ! Coleridge, 
 I count the most commanding intellect, 
 and Southey one of the most perfect char- 
 acters, this century has seen. They are 
 
24 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 starting to establish upon the banks of 
 the Susquehanna their ideal society. All 
 property is to be held in common, and 
 peace and brotherhood to be perfected in 
 love. But they can get no farther than 
 Bristol without striking upon a pocket diffi- 
 culty which shatters their golden ship ! 
 
 Born brothers cannot so live when they 
 have passed that period of childhood 
 which represents the kingdom of God on 
 earth. The delirium of anarchy always 
 follows when community of property pre- 
 cedes. In time the system proved too 
 heavenly for even this noble Church to 
 maintain. They could not long live on 
 angels' food. Others less spiritually-minded 
 joined them. Perhaps the original mem- 
 bers grew lax. Then began certain Hel- 
 lenists to complain that their wddows were 
 neglected in the daily ministrations. But 
 a considerable time elapsed before murmurs 
 disturbed their peace. They rejoiced to- 
 gether and praised God continually. No 
 one received more than it was best for 
 him to have. Each must have loved his 
 neighbor as himself. Each must have been 
 too zealous about laying up treasures in 
 heaven to mind about laying up treasures 
 
THE MODEL CHURCH. 25 
 
 on earth. The entire Church must have 
 been as you have seen a family where sick- 
 ness has lifted its sweet sceptre and the 
 charity of heaven fills the house. Each 
 walks softly ; is eager to watch or to run, 
 thinking not of his own things but of the 
 things of the sick one, as God thinks of 
 the one sheep. Then for a little while the 
 wings of death shed the glory of God on 
 earth, as if the Father had told him to com- 
 fort those that mourn, by giving them some 
 right conception of the heaven to which he 
 for whom they mourn has been taken. 
 
 This early Church actually realized for a 
 season that ideal state which has been the 
 dream of humanity in all ages ; which has 
 been the aim of all socialists whose failures 
 are the blotches of history. This early 
 Church realized in fact a social condition 
 which George MacDonald has ventured to 
 describe only as an insane man's dream of 
 heaven. 
 
 Would I have you attempt such an ar- 
 rangement here? Would I have you at- 
 tempt to kindle a fire with blocks of ice ! 
 Community of property would instantly 
 draw into your membership those who will 
 not dig and are not ashamed to beg. But 
 
26 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 that . it would not do if joining the church 
 meant risking your life. Persecution was 
 the careful guardian of the Church at Jeru- 
 salem. From us that guardian has been 
 withdrawn. 
 
 When the right fuel is on the hearth of 
 Christ the fire will easily be kindled. Till 
 then this picture in the text must stand 
 before us as a revelation of the greatness 
 of the change we need to fit us for the 
 kingdom of heaven. Trying to do what the 
 first Church did would be trying to pull 
 rosebuds into roses with dental forceps. 
 Trying to be what the first Church was will 
 water the roots, and make the roses in 
 due time appear. 
 
 4. " They continued steadfastly with one 
 accord in the temple." Observe the fidelity 
 of these men to their trust. The temple 
 was God's house. They were God's ser- 
 vants, God's children. At the risk of 
 their lives they continued to claim their 
 rights and perform their duty by worship- 
 ping in their Father's house. 
 
 These early Christians were related to 
 the temple much as we are related to what 
 men call the world. By "the world" 
 to-day is meant, not what the Apostles 
 
THE MODEL CHURCH. 27 
 
 meant by the same expression, but the 
 broad life of humanity, the business, the 
 pleasure, the arts, the sciences, the indus- 
 tries of men. All these are Christ's. It 
 is the business of the Church to claim 
 them in his name. When false men, when 
 wicked men, usurp control of them, the 
 Church is cowardly and recreant to her 
 Lord if she leaves such men in undisputed 
 control of her Lord's possessions. The earth 
 is the Lord's and — not the emptiness there- 
 of, as some appear to think — but the ful- 
 ness thereof. To the last moment, when the 
 temple itself was destroyed, the followers of 
 Christ claimed it for their Father and his 
 Son. There Stephen stood; thither Peter 
 and John went daily ; there, when Stephen 
 had been stoned and Peter imprisoned, Paul 
 asserted his right to be ; thither he returned, 
 when he had been cast out, again and again, 
 and from the temple at last James the Just 
 was hurled. 
 
 Though their dearest, tenderest devotion 
 was not here, but in the inner circle of 
 believers ; though they met privately, not 
 because they feared to meet openly, but be- 
 cause it was sweeter to break bread together 
 with Christ alone, yet did these brave, kind 
 
28 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 men claim their rights in the temple their 
 Father had given them in the world which 
 was God's. But what pleasant thing, what 
 profitable thing, what thing which men love, 
 whether in business, art, science, recreation, 
 can be named which some coward Chris- 
 tians have not renounced as the property of 
 Satan ! 
 
 5. " Praising God." These members of 
 the Model Church were glad men, singing 
 men. The times were sick. The world 
 had never been so sad as in their day. 
 There was enormous wealth. There were 
 innumerable appliances for pleasure. But 
 men no longer enjoyed their books, their 
 pictures, their games, their banquets. Dives' 
 heart was heavy. Faring sumptuously 
 every day, clothed in purple and fine linen, 
 the Roman noble kept his bath of per- 
 fumed water warm, that he might lie down 
 in it, open an artery, and pass without 
 pain into what he hoped would be oblivion, 
 if some small grain of peril or despondency 
 should be added to the burden beneath 
 which he continually labored and was 
 heavy-laden. Those who were not enor- 
 mously and iniquitously rich were extrava- 
 gantly poor; not in honorable, sturdy 
 
THE MODEL CHURCH. 29 
 
 poverty, but in servile beggarly poverty, 
 that festered and fawned and chose to 
 flatter rather than to starve. The con- 
 sciousness of God and immortality had 
 vanished from the Roman world. That 
 world had become a fetid chamber, in 
 which charcoal braziers glowed. Poisoned 
 by the fumes and by their own breaths, 
 men looked hopelessly into each other's 
 ghastly faces and knew not what ailed 
 them. They only knew that pleasures no 
 longer pleased. 
 
 The first Church was a ventilator opened 
 by Christ. The air of heaven rushed in, 
 bringing life and joy to smothering human- 
 ity. More than any other of its features, 
 the joyousness of Christianity first attracted 
 and fascinated mankind. The soldiers came 
 asking what it was that made men sing while 
 they w r ere butchered, though the butchers 
 could never sing. And is not the world sad 
 to-day ? Is it not faring sumptuously with 
 a sickly appetite ? And whence should 
 spring the fountain of joy if not from the 
 Church of Christ ? Who should be wells of 
 water springing up unto eternal life ? 
 
 Would that the world might see in us a 
 flock led beside still waters, in green pas- 
 
30 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 tures — a company of men and women "be- 
 girt with all the common ills of life, bearing 
 all the burdens that weigh down other men, 
 but minding those burdens no more than 
 travellers mind the dust and cinders that 
 fall upon them in the railroad train that 
 carries them home ! Then would the world 
 observe, wonder, and wish to come among 
 us. 
 
 " Joy to the world, the Lord is come." To 
 say that to men in some convincing way is 
 the business of the Church. 
 
 6. " Having favor with all the people." 
 The true way to win men is shown us here. 
 For a little while we may win popularity by 
 pandering for it. But they who win and 
 keep the favor of their fellows are they to 
 whom man is little and God is all There- 
 fore we read the great distinction of the 
 Model Church in this : " The Lord added 
 daily to it those who were being saved." 
 
 To such a church nieninust be drawn as 
 iron filings to a magnet; a church where 
 the fear of the Lord makes the members 
 brave, so brave that they can be always 
 kind, can wholly love not only one another, 
 but even the enemies that stone and kill 
 them ; a church filled with men always 
 
THE MODEL CHURCH. 31 
 
 glad because the springs of tlieir joy are 
 high in the hills where drouth never 
 comes. Brave, loving, faithful, glad men 
 and women, the Church afc Jerusalem was 
 indeed the visible body of Christ. There- 
 fore men sought to touch it, and as many as 
 touched were made whole. 
 
III. 
 
 TEACH US TO PRAY. 
 
 And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites ; 
 for they love to stand and pray in the synagogue and in 
 the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. 
 Verily I say unto you they have received their reward. 
 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner 
 chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father 
 which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret 
 shall recompense thee. And in praying use not vain rep- 
 etitions as the Gentiles do, for they think that they shall 
 be heard for their much speaking. — Matt. vi. 5-7. 
 (R. V.) 
 
 It is the beginning of the week of prayer. 
 In place of the programme offered by the 
 Evangelical Alliance, we have assigned for 
 the subject of each day one of the seven pe- 
 titions in our Lord's Prayer. Selections of 
 Scripture calculated either to explain the 
 meaning or hold the mind to contemplation 
 of the subject of each petition are named 
 upon the cards handed you this morning. 
 By keeping our thoughts resolutely for an 
 entire day upon each of these objects of de- 
 sire it is hoped that we shall learn to obey in 
 
TEACH US TO PRAY. 33 
 
 some measure the command : " After this 
 manner therefore pray ye." 
 
 But the dangers against which the Mas- 
 ter bids us guard ourselves, whenever we try 
 to pray, become especially formidable at a 
 time like this. I will try to open your eyes 
 to them this morning. 
 
 I. It would be difficult, I think impos- 
 sible, to prove that our Lord ever com- 
 manded his disciples to pray. " Watch and 
 pray, lest ye enter into temptation," is 
 shown by the context to be the granting of 
 a privilege rather than the enforcement of 
 a duty. Jesus always assumes that his dis- 
 ciples pray ; teaches them plainly that un- 
 less they pray they cannot do what they 
 must do. A man cannot work unless he 
 eats. The harder he works the more im- 
 peratively he will realize his need of food. 
 But there are no commandments in any 
 code declaring that men shall eat. If they 
 have no appetite they cannot ; if they have ? 
 they do not need to be commanded. 
 
 But nothing is more common with reli- 
 gious teachers than to tell men it is their 
 duty to pray, as it is their duty to tell the 
 truth. Thus men have been led to assume 
 that they can pray by resolving to do so, and 
 
34 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 the result is, so little real prayer tliat per- 
 haps a majority are able to doubt whether 
 praying is not folly, and to feel the need of 
 prayer -tests to prove that our Father in 
 heaven is to be thought of in the figure of 
 parental considerateness rather than under 
 the form of parental obstinacy or deafness. 
 
 Our Lord moved his disciples to pray, not 
 by telling them to do so, but by exciting in 
 them desires which compelled them to sup- 
 plication. When they saw Him with Moses 
 and Elias, they began to pray ; when they 
 watched Him healing diseases, they began 
 to pray ; when they heard Him praying, they 
 straightway asked Him to teach them how 
 to pray. 
 
 If you are dying through inability to eat, 
 you cannot cure yourself by simply resolving 
 to swallow food. You must take measures 
 to restore your appetite. Neither can you 
 pray by direct force of resolution. You must 
 put yourself under conditions which will in- 
 spire desire for communion with God. 
 
 1. Because for most men it is hard to 
 pray, and easy to pretend, we are warned 
 against that easily besetting sin. 
 
 " When ye pray, be not as the hypocrites 
 are." 
 
TEACH US TO PRAY. 35 
 
 The hypocrites wanted of the king only to 
 be seen in his company. They stood at his 
 door that they might be mistaken for his 
 friends. 
 
 The same temptation assails us at all 
 times, and is acutely dangerous now. It is 
 insidious as malaria. It saps the health of 
 piety before its presence is suspected ; has 
 depraved many an honorable pagan into a 
 sanctimonious Pharisee ; and we will be wise 
 to remember what Mr. Ruskin has said with 
 truth, that " the rottenest thing about a 
 rogue is always his religion." 
 
 2. Most of us say grace before our meals. 
 If we realize who feeds us, we cannot help 
 doing so unless we are brutes. Most of us 
 have family worship. If we are alert to 
 spiritual facts, it will be more natural to 
 omit our meals than our devotions. 
 
 But what are the motives we often hear 
 unblushingly advanced for continuing these 
 spiritual exercises? The children will be 
 surprised if they do not hear grace at table ! 
 For the sake of the example upon them, 
 daily prayers must be inexorably main- 
 tained. 
 
 But is it permitted to pray that we may 
 be seen of children, and forbidden to pray 
 
36 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 that we may be seen of men? Coleridge 
 says he "once knew a small but (in out- 
 ward circumstances at least) respectable con- 
 gregation, four fifths of whom professed that 
 they went to church entirely for the exam- 
 ple's sake; in other words, to cheat each 
 other and act a common lie." When the 
 minister leads in prayer, you all assume the 
 attitude of worship. Not to do so would ap- 
 pear ill-bred. Those of you who arrive dur- 
 ing prayer-time stand silently in reverential 
 attitudes near the door. While you stand or 
 sit with closed eyes and bowed heads, are 
 you really communing with God ? Are you 
 thinking of Him? Is your spirit actually 
 employed as your body advertises it to be ? 
 If not, why do you assume the attitude of 
 worship? I can conceive no other motive 
 — though probably no one is aware of it — 
 than the desire to be seen of men. I sup- 
 pose that is what the dread of appearing ill- 
 bred means. Christ forbids us to assume 
 attitudes in order that we may appear unto 
 men to pray, especially when we are not pray- 
 ing. What would be the impression created 
 if, while we bowed together in praying pos- 
 tures, one should take out a letter and begin 
 to read it ; another should speak of a sleigh- 
 
TEACH US TO PRAT. 37 
 
 ing party ; another begin to cipher upon the 
 hymn-book last week's profits, or the chances 
 of next week's election ; and another inquire 
 how soon the minister would be through? 
 No one would be satisfied to have the prayer 
 continue in the midst of such a Babel. All 
 would summon the minister to stop. 
 
 But does He who looks not at the out- 
 side of us never witness a similar confusion ? 
 If so, is it strange that what we call our 
 "united prayers" have no conspicuous re- 
 sults ? 
 
 3. This week every professing Christian 
 who does not pray will be powerfully tempt- 
 ed to pretend he does. The world expects 
 you to pray. Your brethren expect you to 
 pray. You expect yourself to pray. De- 
 votional meetings are multiplied. They are 
 arranged for every day, and several times 
 a day. If you attend none of them, with 
 your training and views of duty, you cannot 
 help feeling in some degree as a soldier feels 
 when he shirks his duty. You will therefore 
 be tempted to come to the meetings and 
 assume the appearance of devotion, in order 
 to be seen of those men of whom you your- 
 self are one. 
 
 But how can this temptation to pious pre- 
 tence be mastered ? 
 
38 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 Christ tells us in the text. The closet is 
 the cure for hypocrisy in prayer. There is 
 no recorded prayer from our Master's lips 
 which could have occupied three minutes in 
 its utterance, but we know He often spent 
 whole nights in solitary communion with 
 God. No man goes into his closet to be seen 
 of men, for there men cannot see him. The 
 more we have to pray in public, the more we 
 must pray in secret, if we preserve the integ- 
 rity of our spiritual manhood. 
 
 For this reason the cards inviting you to 
 the meetings this week ask you to come 
 through your closets. It will be hardly pos- 
 sible for any one to read and ponder the 
 Scriptures selected and marked for each day, 
 without receiving such impressions of God's 
 presence and power and love as will make 
 men seem small and their opinions trivial. 
 If any one is obliged to choose between com- 
 ing to the meetings, and carefully pondering 
 the readings at home, it will be better for 
 him to observe the readings at home, even 
 if he has to omit the meetings. Twenty of 
 us coming together at the close of a day 
 spent in breathing the spiritual atmosphere 
 of Moses and Elias, of Paul and John ; at 
 the close of a day in which we have walked 
 
TEACH US TO PRAY. 39 
 
 in imagination each alone from Sinai to Cal- 
 vary, or among the kings, the beggars, and 
 the peasants of Palestine in the company 
 of Jesus, will be able to pray together free 
 from all thought of being seen by men. 
 
 II. When we pray, we are forbidden to 
 use vain repetitions as the heathen do. The 
 Jews had borrowed from Egypt and from 
 Babylon the superstition here rebuked. 
 They believed there was magical power in 
 certain combinations of words. If repeated 
 a certain number of times, even by one who 
 did not understand their meaning, it was 
 held that sickness would be cured and de- 
 mons cast out. The foolish notion in later 
 times ripened into the system of the Cabala, 
 which assumed that mysterious efficacy in- 
 hered in a certain arrangement of mere let- 
 ters. No one of us supposes himself infected 
 by that folly. Yet most of us are. 
 
 There are men, good men, men meaning 
 to be honest, who think their prayers must 
 be right if they are couched in Scriptural 
 phrases. Many say prayers every night and 
 every morning, who never pray except when 
 they are scared. 
 
 Repeating David's or Isaiah's petitions, 
 or even our Lord's Prayer, is not necessarily 
 
40 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 praying because we do it on our knees. Say- 
 ing over even the Lord's Prayer is for us a 
 vain repetition until we so understand its 
 meaning and so sympathize with its spirit 
 that the words express our real desires. For 
 " vain repetitions " are simply " empty 
 phrases," sayings which do not express what 
 we really mean. 
 
 1. Most of us dread a spot of silence in 
 the prayer meeting. " Let no time be wast- 
 ed," from the lips of the leader, implies and 
 expresses the general conviction that, even 
 when we have nothing to say, it is better to 
 say it, because we are praying to be seen of 
 men. 
 
 2. One rises to pray. His spiritual devel- 
 opment has reached just far enough to make 
 him realize God's goodness and desire God's 
 care. But only in a vague and general way. 
 He begins : " We thank Thee, O God, for 
 thy goodness. We pray Thee to take care 
 of us." This much is genuine prayer. But 
 he feels it will not do to stop yet. He must 
 keep on two or three or five minutes at least. 
 He catches Scripture phrases, or familiar sen- 
 tences which other men have genuinely and 
 sincerely spoken. The first twenty seconds 
 was prayer, the rest vain repetition. Many 
 
TEACH US TO PEAT. 41 
 
 a man can pray half a minute, when to pray 
 a minute requires more spiritual-mindedness 
 than he possesses. 
 
 With no man is the clanger of making vain 
 repetitions so great and so constant as with 
 the minister. He cannot pray in the great 
 congregation unless he has brought him- 
 self by much meditation to realize the needs 
 not only of himself, but those of other men, 
 and made them in some degree his own bur- 
 den. 
 
 3. There are certain things we know we 
 ought to desire. We feel guilty if we realize 
 that we do not. But if we ask for them 
 when we do not want them, we are making 
 vain repetitions. 
 
 Yet how many pray volubly for Foreign 
 Missions who never give a dollar for God to 
 employ in answering their petitions! How 
 many pray for the divine blessing upon 
 their country who do not care enough for 
 its welfare to vote ! 
 
 The cure for this habit of making vain 
 repetition lies in creating right desires. We 
 must learn to know what we need, and to 
 desire that. Therefore we are told, — 
 
 III. When we pray, to pray after this 
 manner. 
 
42 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 After warning us against praying to be 
 seen of men, and against vain repetitions, 
 the Master gives positive directions. 
 
 That the words were not material is evi- 
 dent because the three evangelists do not re- 
 port the same words. The Lord's meaning 
 must be, " When ye pray, pray in this 
 spirit, with these desires." The prayer tells 
 us what we need, but rarely crave. If we 
 were sure that one wish, and one only, would 
 be granted us this day for the asking, 
 would that wish be the petition which stands 
 first in the Lord's Prayer? Does not the 
 whole tenor of our lives imply that, if we 
 were entirely honest with ourselves, the most 
 imperative desire of this man is to be rich, 
 of that man to be praised, of the third man 
 to have the life of his child spared ? You 
 will find the prayers in the New Testament 
 ask for none of these things except in a 
 very subordinate way. It is not forbidden 
 to desire them. It is not forbidden to ask 
 for them. It is forbidden to desire them 
 first, to ask for them first, to labor for them 
 first, and that most of us do. Three facts 
 appear distinct as sunlight : — 
 
 1. That we shall not pray effectively until 
 we pray according to the mind of God. 
 
TEACH US TO PRAY. 43 
 
 2. That few of us do greatly desire the 
 things God desires for us. 
 
 3. That we need such a change of heart 
 as shall make us crave what God declares 
 we need. 
 
 And this is only another way of saying, — 
 
 1. That we cannot pray effectually until 
 we can sincerely pray in the manner of 
 our Lord's Prayer. 
 
 2. That few of us can yet do that. 
 
 3. That we need to learn to do so. 
 
 For this reason you are asked to spend 
 this week in honest contemplation of that 
 prayer. 
 
 My friend and brother ! Suppose no 
 mortal were present. Suppose yourself as- 
 sured that your dearest wish would be real- 
 ized. I will suppose you to have been rich. 
 But now you are poor. You are struggling 
 against inevitable bankruptcy. To-morrow 
 the secret will be out. In the black future 
 you see attachments ; you see your long-hon- 
 ored credit gone, your good name dragged 
 in the dirt, your wife and children in want. 
 Now with perfect honesty say, is the first 
 desire of your heart, is your dearest wish, 
 this : " Our Father who art in heaven, hal- 
 lowed be thy name"? If not, be sure it 
 
44 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 ought to be. I have only described the posi- 
 tion upon which his disciples were entering 
 when Jesus told them to pray " after this 
 manner." We need to lay fast hold of those 
 influences which will inspire such desires as 
 can be faithfully expressed by the petitions 
 the Lord would have us offer. 
 
 Widowed wife, the life of your only son 
 hanging by a hair, is your first wish " Thy 
 will be done ' r ? Then have you not need to 
 realize those facts revealed and impressed in 
 the Scriptures which will make you turn to 
 your Father's love as your son trusts yours, 
 and desire that his will may be done, even 
 though that means a sword through your 
 heart ? 
 
 But weak mortals cannot rise to such 
 heights ! We cannot feel thus ! Paul felt 
 so. He asked for what he wanted, not for 
 what he knew he ought to want. When we 
 are filled with desires like his, we shall re- 
 ceive blessings like his. When we can sin- 
 cerely pray, " Thy kingdom come," be sure 
 the kinodom will come. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM. 
 
 And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon 
 this rock I will build my church ; and the gates of Hades 
 shall not prevail against it. I will give unto thee the 
 keys of the kingdom of heaven ; and whatsoever thou 
 shalt hind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatso- 
 ever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 
 — Matt. xvi. 18, 19. (R. Y.) 
 
 The essential difficulty of this passage and 
 of the two others it brings to mind is this : 
 Jesus told Simon that he should be called a 
 Rock-man. He afterwards called him a 
 Rock-man. Yet the narrative of the New 
 Testament shows that of all the disciples Pe- 
 ter was least like a rock. He was the most 
 impetuous, the most mobile, the least stable 
 of them all. His age, for he appears to have 
 been the oldest, his impetuosity, the ardor of 
 his affection, and his powers of sympathy 
 qualified him for leadership. But in stead- 
 fastness which is the characteristic of a rock, 
 he was eminently deficient. It is never pos- 
 sible to understand our Master's meaning by 
 
46 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 blinking facts, even though our motives may 
 be reverential. If we will give due weight 
 to the obvious peculiarities of Peter's char- 
 acter, it will be evident that the words of the 
 text were not intended to remind him of his 
 strength, but to warn him of his weakness. 
 
 The context implies as much : " Blessed 
 art thou, Simon Bar Jonah." Immediately, 
 as if another fact needed to be kept in mind, 
 our Lord adds, " I also say unto thee." 
 Then follows the text. 
 
 It emphasized by repeating in three dis- 
 tinct illustrations the same fact. These are 
 the pictures : — 
 
 1. A building — the Church — of which 
 Peter is to be the foundation stone. 
 
 2. A city or a house in which Peter is to 
 be the porter. 
 
 3. A wood-yard or a fountain where Pe- 
 ter is to bind the loads or the water- jars 
 upon the carriers who bear them into the 
 city. For observe it is not " whomsoever ye 
 bind," but "whatsoever ye bind." 
 
 Thus Peter is reminded that he is to serve 
 as the foundation of a building, the porter 
 of a dwelling, a binder or unbinder of loads. 
 
 In each of these figures the enrphasis be- 
 longs not, where it has been carelessly 
 
THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM. 47 
 
 placed, upon the words "rock," "keys," 
 " bind on earth," but upon those which ex- 
 press the importance of the work to be done. 
 The common laws of Greek emphasis sug- 
 gest if they do not compel the reading: 
 " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I 
 build my church, and the gates of Hades 
 shall not prevail against it" i. e. the church 
 which shall endure for ever ; the point of 
 the illustration being the permanence of the 
 building. 
 
 " I will give unto thee the keys of the 
 kingdom of heaven." The attention is here 
 drawn to the value of the trust. 
 
 " Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth 
 shall be bound in heaven" The momentous 
 nature of the issues at stake is emphasized. 
 
 Suppose yourself a master builder. You 
 say to the masons, " I mean on these founda- 
 tions to rear a structure that shall endure 
 until the last trumpet sounds." Certainly 
 you would be understood as warning the 
 masons to exert their utmost care. 
 
 You serve in a great mansion. The mis- 
 tress, intrusting you with keys, explains : 
 " These are the keys, not of the ash-bin, but 
 of the medicine-chest and the silver closet." 
 
 You are a physician. You see me bind- 
 
48 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 ing a load upon the back of my child, and 
 tell me it will curve his spine for life to 
 carry that. 
 
 In each of these figures the same truth 
 was pressed upon Peter. " Be faithful, be 
 steadfast, for tremendous responsibilities are 
 placed in your charge." This was the les- 
 son Peter most needed to be taught. It was 
 the lesson Christ in other ways and at other 
 times urged upon him. It was the lesson 
 which in a few moments, when the Master 
 shall be compelled to rebuke his wilfulness, 
 Peter will hear repeated in the stern utter- 
 ance, " Get thee behind me, Satan." 
 
 I. It is apparent therefore why the words 
 of the text were first and specially addressed 
 to Peter. For Peter we know was, of the 
 eleven, the most likely to forget his trust. 
 He oftenest had occasion to repent. He 
 oftenest needed forgiveness. For Peter Je- 
 sus showed the most solicitude. Peter He 
 warned most earnestly. For Peter He prayed 
 that his faith might not fail. It was Peter 
 whose fidelity, faltering in time of trial, He 
 strove to steady beforehand by reminding 
 him of the magnitude of his trust. It was 
 Peter whom, at the last supper, He prepared 
 for the coming storm by putting him spe- 
 cially in charge of the rest. 
 
THE KEYS OF TEE KINGDOM. 49 
 
 If you were leaving the house in your 
 children's care, you would warn them all to 
 watch until you returned. But upon the 
 one whom you knew to be most heedless 
 you would strive most earnestly to impress 
 the danger of playing with matches. To the 
 one you thought most passionate and way- 
 ward you would say, " Kemember, the credit 
 of the family rests with you ; see to it that, 
 whatever the others do, you are kind and 
 gentle." So Jesus, when He began to fore- 
 tell his own departure, reminded Peter how 
 much depended upon him, and said to him, 
 " Strengthen thy brethren." 
 
 II. Neither of the three illustrations used 
 by Christ was new to the disciples. They 
 had heard Him denounce the priests at Je- 
 rusalem for precisely that misuse of divinely 
 given opportunities against which He is now 
 .warning themselves. Those priests also had 
 been divinely commissioned to be founda- 
 tions in the kingdom of God, and porters to 
 open unto men. They, too, had been ap- 
 pointed to unbind heavy burdens. But they 
 had perverted their functions to the service 
 of their pride, and, though they had been 
 chosen to minister as children of heaven, 
 the Master himself described them as the 
 " children of hell." 
 
50 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 The man wlio was at the moment the most 
 prominent example of Jewish priestcraft — 
 who stood before the world as the head of 
 that godless, selfish, arrogant, ambitious, 
 avaricious, unscrupulous, and cruel hierarchy 
 for the reformation of which our Lord never 
 expressed a hope, the high priest who de- 
 clared it was expedient that Christ should 
 die — was also named Kock - man. 1 That 
 wicked and apostate priest was, not so much 
 by his own individuality as by his repre- 
 sentative position, the conspicuous example 
 of all that a disciple ought not to be, — of 
 all that Peter would become unless the im- 
 pulses he had already shown, and would dis- 
 play still more clearly before the passing 
 interview should end, were eradicated. Jo- 
 seph Caiaphas was only Simon Peter refus- 
 ing God's gracious guidance and full grown. 
 " Get thee behind me, Satan ! " was ad- 
 dressed to that infant tendency revealed in 
 Peter which, grown to giant proportions in 
 the Jewish hierarchy, called forth the su- 
 preme denunciations against those whom our 
 Lord designated as children " of their father 
 
 1 Cephas and Caiaphas appear to "be the same word, 
 though it is right to say that the great authority of Pro- 
 fessor Thayer is against the identification. 
 
THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM. 51 
 
 the devil." To those whose ears were full 
 of the awful woes uttered against the Phar- 
 isees, at a time when the most influential 
 member of that religious sect which Christ 
 would certainly destroy was named Roek- 
 man, there must have been a tremendous 
 warning in the words addressed to the most 
 influential member of the organization which 
 Christ was about to establish, "Thou, too, 
 shalt be called Rock-man, and upon this 
 Rock will I build my church." 
 
 The second figure was equally familiar. 
 For the disciples had heard their Master de- 
 nounce the religious teachers of the time 
 because they had taken away the key of 
 knowledge intrusted to their care, and would 
 neither enter in themselves nor suffer others 
 to go in. In a few days they would hear 
 their Master cry, " Woe unto you, scribes 
 and Pharisees, hypocrites ! For ye shut up 
 the kingdom of heaven against men ! " 
 With such denunciations fresh in mind, Pe- 
 ter first and the disciples afterwards heard 
 our Lord say, "I will give unto you the 
 keys of the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 The third figure was equally familiar. 
 How often had the twelve heard the Master 
 say, as he raised the fallen, healed the sick, 
 
52 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 preached glad tidings to the poor, and 
 opened the prison doors to the prisoners, 
 "The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' 
 seat ; all therefore whatsoever they bid you 
 observe, that observe and do ; but do not 
 ye after their works : for they say and do 
 not. For they bind heavy burdens and 
 grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's 
 shoulders, but they themselves will not move 
 them with one of their fingers." The dis- 
 ciples knew that their Master came to un- 
 bind burdens, and make men free for time 
 and for eternity. They knew the leaders of 
 the Jewish Church were under his unquali- 
 fied denunciation because they had not done 
 that, but had bound the burdens they were 
 set to loose. And now they hear Him tell 
 themselves that to them it is given to loose 
 men, not for time alone, but for eternity. 
 Woe will it be to them if, wdien they are 
 sent to loose, they also bind. 
 
 How sorely Peter needed these warnings 
 presently appears. For, the moment Jesus 
 began to tell what He meant to suffer for 
 the sake of opening the kingdom to men 
 and unbinding their burdens, Peter's van- 
 ity, ambition, and selfishness, the Caiaphas 
 traits in him, aw r oke. He begins to play 
 
TEE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM. 53 
 
 pope instantly. He protests, and Christ 
 answers in the sharpest rebuke ever admin- 
 istered to one of the disciples. 
 
 III. We see why these same warnings, 
 first addressed to Peter, were repeated, as 
 appears from the 18th chapter of Matthew, 
 to all the disciples. If those eleven men 
 had proved indolent or faithless, the king- 
 dom of heaven would not have been opened 
 unto us. For to them the keys were given ; 
 on them the Church was built ; they have 
 unbound the burdens which press men to 
 perdition. They were not gods ; they were 
 not even angels. They were tempted, as 
 their predecessors, the Jewish doctors, had 
 been tempted, as all their successors in office 
 have been tempted, to pride, to arrogance, 
 to indolence, to cowardice. 
 
 IV. Thus the text shows us the Master, 
 while laying the foundations of the Chris- 
 tian Church, warning the builders against 
 that danger which has always been the most 
 universal, the most persistent, and the most 
 insidious the Church has had to meet. All 
 ecclesiastical history bears constant testi- 
 mony to the inveterate tendency in the men 
 whom Christ sends into the world, as his 
 Father sent Him into the world, to repeat 
 
54 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 the crimes of Caiaphas. To make Chris- 
 tianity a temporal kingdom rather than an 
 eternal power ; to take away from men the 
 key of knowledge, and, when ignorance grows 
 dense enough to make it possible, to rule by 
 fostering superstition rather than by feeding 
 faith, — these have been the arch crimes of 
 the Church. The kingdom of God has ad- 
 vanced only by successive rebellions inspired 
 by the Holy Spirit against the usurpations 
 of those who were sent forth to minister 
 among brethren, but who have insisted upon 
 getting themselves called masters and lords, 
 and using the towels given them to gird 
 themselves for humble services in imitation 
 of the Master, as banners to inscribe with 
 emblems of pride and flaunt before the eyes 
 of men. 
 
 The text says to every one of us who oc- 
 cupies in the Church a position of the least 
 influence or authority, " The keys of the 
 kingdom of heaven are in your hand : see to 
 it how you employ them ! Are you enter- 
 ing in yourself? Are you opening unto 
 others ? " Many are still carrying their 
 keys as Peter for a time carried his. Until 
 the enemies came, he followed Jesus, disput- 
 ing, contradicting, disobeying. Headstrong 
 
THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM. 55 
 
 in going his own way, lie was continually 
 getting himself rebuked. There was little 
 peace in that for him. When danger came, 
 he shirked. Then he mingled slyly with the 
 Lord's enemies. Not much peace in that! 
 The cock crew ; he repented and wept bit- 
 terly. All the while he carried the key to 
 the kingdom of peace unused. He would 
 not forget himself, nor obey his Master 
 humbly, faithfully. He would be pope. 
 When he was content to let another gird 
 him, and follow where he did not wish to 
 go ; to resign all papal authority and accept 
 the fact that, if the Lord would have John 
 tarry till He came, that was nought to him ; 
 when he was content to mind his own ways, 
 and feed the sheep and the lambs without 
 arrogating authority over them, — he entered 
 into peace, and was able to open the door 
 for himself, and to lead others unto the true 
 Bishop and Shepherd of their souls. 
 
 The text asks us also whether we are loos- 
 ing burdens or binding them upon men's 
 shoulders. There are so many ways in 
 which we may do either, and scarcely know 
 what we are doing ! 
 
 Here is a little child. It is such an one 
 as Jesus took in his arms and said, " Of such 
 
56 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 is the kingdom of heaven." She flutters 
 about the house an embodied joy. She 
 sings to the ceiling. She shouts to her little 
 red shoes. She claps her hands, she knows 
 not why, from sheer excess of gladness. 
 She kisses the cat. When little tears come 
 into her eyes, they are like the dewdrops on 
 the rose : the next zephyr dries the flower. 
 The queen of happy, unburdened beings is 
 a healthy little child ! 
 
 That being of more than fairy brightness 
 has become a haggard woman. Discontent 
 has ploughed her brow and pinched her 
 eyelids. Disappointment and envy reign 
 in her eyes and curl her lip. She cannot 
 dress as her pride desires. She cannot gain 
 the position she craves. All her small arts 
 and dissimulations have not won the admi- 
 ration for which she pines. She has mar- 
 ried and her husband is no hero. She has 
 children whom she loves, but she is ashamed 
 because she cannot dress them richly as the 
 children of her neighbors. She must toil 
 by day and watch by night. Life is a bur- 
 den, and she is afraid to die. The fierce, 
 unresigned, discontented spirit will not be 
 changed by death. The grave cannot take 
 off the burden she bears. She must carry 
 it into eternity. 
 
THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM. 57 
 
 Wlio bound the burden on her? The 
 mother tliat bore her, the father that trained 
 her in maiden years. Neither taught her the 
 true facts of life and peace. They did not 
 surround her with an atmosphere of love for 
 God and trust in Him. They never taught 
 her to go, as Mary went, to One who casts 
 out all devils, whether they be vanity, care, 
 anxiety, or fear ; to One who makes the ves- 
 sel tossed by the storm to be " in a great 
 calm." They taught her to take much 
 thought for this world, saying, " What 
 shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and 
 wherewithal shall we be clothed ? " Until 
 she had been long under their charge, she 
 cared for none of those things. She was in 
 the kingdom. 
 
 But there are women who cannot be 
 bound. They are crowned queens. When 
 sickness desolates their homes, when the hus- 
 band fails, money goes, drudgeries increase, 
 through days of toil and nights of watching, 
 they say, by eye, voice, gesture, " Be not 
 afraid ! Let not your heart be troubled." 
 And when death comes, they smile in the 
 eyes of their beloved one and say, " Do not 
 be sad for me ! It is not such a hard thing 
 to die!" 
 
58 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 You shall find, when you receive the con- 
 fidences of such women and learn the secret 
 of their lives, that they often think of their 
 mothers ; that, when they were little chil- 
 dren, they were taught, how they cannot al- 
 together tell, but they were taught to realize 
 that the unseen world is more real than the 
 visible, and that all the things which make 
 men afraid are shadows cast by a sun which 
 will never set. Their mothers taught them 
 that, and they teach it to their children. 
 
 Such is the loosing which pastors and 
 deacons are sent into the Church to accom- 
 plish, and the opposite of that is the binding 
 of which pastors and deacons are warned 
 with appalling distinctness to beware. 
 
V. 
 
 SPIRITUAL PLOUGHING. 
 
 And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee ; but 
 let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at 
 my house. And Jesus said unto him, No man, having 
 put his hand to the plough., and looking back, is fit [ lit. 
 " well placed," t. e. in the right attitude ] for the king- 
 dom of God. — Luke ix. 61, 62. 
 
 Let us beware of drawing from these 
 words the foolish inference that it is better 
 not to plough than to plough poorly ; better 
 to stay behind than to glance behind. It 
 is folly not to do the best we can because 
 we cannot do better than we can. Some are 
 waiting until they are perfect Christians be- 
 fore they will begin to be Christians at all. 
 Pride, aping humility, makes them ashamed 
 to creep, and therefore they never learn to 
 walk. 
 
 But our Lord was not speaking to one in 
 danger of making that mistake. He was 
 showing a disciple how to do in the right 
 way what the disciple was undertaking to 
 do in a wrong way. 
 
60 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 The man had decided to go with Jesus. 
 He asked leave only to return home and bid 
 farewell to his family. He might never see 
 them again. His request seems innocent 
 and amiable. Yet Jesus replied to him : 
 " You are beginning in a wrong way. You 
 are like a farmer trying to plough with his 
 eyes behind him." 
 
 Like certain other utterances of our Lord, 
 that of the beam and the mote, of the old 
 and new bottles, for example, this one glows 
 with a sweet and subtle humor. Those who 
 have watched a ploughman at his work will 
 appreciate the figure, for it would be easy 
 to show that, though the appearance of an 
 Oriental ploughing with young steers was 
 radically different from that of an American 
 ploughing with horses, the sight of either 
 would produce with almost equal vividness 
 the impression upon which the significance 
 of the text depends. 
 
 Perhaps no other kind of labor demands 
 a more intense concentration of muscle, 
 mind, and will, towards a single purpose, 
 than does ploughing. The ploughman must 
 note every motion of his two draft-horses. 
 If either lags, the other will jerk the share 
 out of line. What each brute intends must 
 
SPIRITUAL PLOUGHING. 61 
 
 be foreseen, and loitering steps prevented 
 by voice or whip. The ploughman must ob- 
 serve each root and stone before him, and 
 be ready by swift and dexterous twist to 
 cut through the one or ease over the other. 
 His eye must be upon the drawing beam, 
 for, if it too abruptly leaves the level, the 
 handles, wrenched from his grasp, may hurl 
 him aside or strike him to the ground. He 
 must watch the opening furrow, and find 
 footing by instant shifts from glebe to glebe 
 as the softened earth yields and crumbles 
 beneath his weight, or he will be thrown. 
 Alert to each of these requirements, he must, 
 like the steersman of a vessel, steadily sight 
 his bearings by some stationary object far 
 in front, or his furrow will curve. All this 
 he must do on the jump to economize mo- 
 mentum, or his horses may be stalled. It 
 is an exhilarating sight to watch the skil- 
 ful ploughman, rushing his furrow forward, 
 springing from clod to clod, holding the 
 handles firm with masterful grip, wrench- 
 ing them this way and that with superlative 
 force, shouting to his horses, while the sweat 
 beads his face and his whole body seems one 
 flashing eye, the muscles strained like watch- 
 springs in obedience to his stimulated vision. 
 
62 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 So the yachtsman steers the craft that 
 moves with bellying sail amid the ships and 
 buoys and reefs and shallows of the crowded 
 harbor. 
 
 ""Skipper, you almost grazed that reef ! 
 Look back ! the wake line touches the surf ! " 
 
 But the skipper does not look back. His 
 business is, forgetting those things that are 
 behind, to reach forth unto those things that 
 are before. One glance backward may bring 
 wreck or collision. 
 
 Add to the skipper's gaze, the straining 
 muscles, the beaded brow, the energetic mo- 
 tion, and you have the ploughman ploughing 
 as he should. 
 
 While such an one presents a glorious 
 emblem of victorious achievement, a man 
 trying to plough with his eyes behind him 
 is an equally impressive picture of pitia- 
 ble impotence. Xo longer master of the 
 strength of wood and iron vivified by vast 
 brute force, he has become its slave. Flung 
 hither and thither by each of an hundred 
 obstructions, he is dragged forward, bruised, 
 bewildered, until the handles are wrenched 
 from his grasp and he is dropped or dashed 
 upon the ground. Far better, far nobler 
 even that, than not to try at all ! But how 
 
SPIRITUAL PLOUGHING. 63 
 
 different the appearance of the ploughman 
 doing his work aright ! 
 
 This pitiable picture our Lord held, as if 
 it had been a mirror, before the disciple who 
 wished to leave him only long enough to say 
 farewell to friends he might never see again. 
 
 Life is here figured as a field w r hich God 
 has set us to plough. Upon it three classes 
 of men appear : 
 
 1. There are those who move without 
 regard to their orders or their duty. Their 
 purpose is to live as easily and pleasantly as 
 possible. They mean to enjoy the present ; 
 to enjoy virtuously, if that may be, but to 
 enjoy. What questions may be asked them 
 by and by, they refuse to consider. 
 
 Of such the text says nothing. 
 
 2. There are others trying to plough with 
 their eyes behind them. They have seized 
 the plough in order to be dra,wn by it to 
 heaven But they have found life no sum- 
 mer sea over which they can be carried 
 smoothly gliding. They have found it an 
 unbroken prairie that must be ploughed as 
 it is passed. They are continually tripped 
 and thrown by unexpected obstacles. They 
 do not find the joy they crave. When de- 
 mands upon their energies increase, they are 
 
64 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 disturbed. When tribulation or persecution 
 ariseth because of the word " by and by they 
 are offended." Thus they learn by sad ex- 
 perience that religion which is not wings is 
 always chains. 
 
 3. But there are men who begin and con- 
 tinue the Christian life as the instructed 
 ploughman runs his furrow. 
 
 Let us mark three points in the Master's 
 illustration which give reply to certain 
 questions often asked of Christians by the 
 world, by their own hearts, by the Holy 
 Spirit : — 
 
 1. Why does God's kingdom come so 
 slowly ? Why is the Church not stronger ? 
 Why are my prayers so cold, so few ? 
 
 One could scarcely glance upon the plough- 
 man at his work, remembering Christ's words 
 the while, and ask these questions twice. 
 The marvel would rather seem to be that 
 the kingdom does increase. 
 
 Survey the field of Christian ploughmen. 
 Some are absorbed in watching and in 
 criticising other people's furrows. Some 
 are gazing back upon their own, recalling 
 past experiences, at times anxiously, which 
 is bad ; at times proudly, which is worse. 
 How few are eagerly alert to the work they 
 
SPIRITUAL PLOUGHING. 65 
 
 themselves are set to do ! How few are even 
 sure that they have furrows to plough ! 
 
 2. The Lord's words bring an answer to 
 another question of serious practical import. 
 
 It is said the Church is losing, if she has 
 not already lost, her hold upon young men. 
 It is said that while the feeble come to her 
 for help, while children rest in her bosom 
 contented until they begin to think, while 
 the sick and the sad seek solace in her 
 arms, the stalwart, the commanding, the 
 masterful no longer show the old alacrity in 
 responding to her call. I will not pause to 
 debate the truth of the assertion. You know 
 that it is often made. When thistle-down 
 is in the air, there must be thistles in some 
 man's farm, and therefore all farms are in 
 danger. 
 
 A distinctive characteristic of Christ's 
 work was the enthusiasm He created among 
 young men. The noblest, the most enter- 
 prising, the strongest were the quickest to 
 take fire from his touch. We read of no 
 young man who opposed Him, of no old 
 man who followed Him. Why is this not 
 true now? We are told the young refuse 
 to join Christ's Church, because in youth the 
 passions are imperative, and, until pleasures 
 
66 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 have begun to pall, men are loath to sacri- 
 fice the seen to the unseen, the temporal to 
 the eternal. But the statement is not true. 
 It is accurately the reverse of true. The 
 young have always been readiest to give 
 themselves for ideals. It is when life is 
 fullest and sweetest that men are quickest to 
 renounce it on due occasion given. "Who, 
 when the guns began to thunder, rushed to 
 Sumter and to Richmond ? Who, when 
 danger threatens, are expected to be first 
 in the breach ? Always and everywhere that 
 class which to-day is deemed most loath to 
 join the Church ; the class which was most 
 prompt to follow Jesus eighteen hundred 
 years ago, — young men, young women, in 
 the ardor and energy of life's spring. Why 
 does Christ now appear less captivating to 
 the strong and to the able ? 
 
 Is not an answer found in this, that we no 
 longer preach Him with the old heroic ring ? 
 
 There are so many weak ones, so many 
 sufferers in the world ! The Master's words 
 to them are so endlessly winning, that we 
 have been moved to repeat those words out 
 of all due proportion, while we neglect his 
 more strenuous calls. 
 
 " Blessed are they that mourn, for they 
 
SPIRITUAL PLOUGHING. 67 
 
 shall be comforted." But many do not 
 mourn. Has Christ no message for them ? 
 
 " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest." But 
 multitudes are not heavy laden. To multi- 
 tudes the idea of rest is repugnant, because 
 they are not weary. They carry life as a 
 hunter bears his gun through an unflushed 
 preserve. Has Christ no words for them ? 
 Ay, verily ! But how rarely are those words 
 repeated ! 
 
 The current conception of a Christian is 
 taken more largely from " Pilgrim's Pro- 
 gress " than from the Bible. In the New Tes- 
 tament the Christian is painted, not as one 
 flying from a doomed city, but as a stalwart 
 farmer ploughing the old growths of the old 
 world under, until visions of a new earth no 
 less than of a new heaven fill his horizon. 
 He appears digging, as men dig who have 
 discovered gold. He is called a fisherman, 
 and what that means I have learned not 
 only from much communion with my trout- 
 rod, but still more clearly from watching the 
 deeds of obscure heroes who sail in winter 
 from Gloucester and Cape Breton ; "a war- 
 rior," which means to me Grant or Sheri- 
 dan ; " a wrestler," and the sight of two 
 
68 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 muscular giants clinched for thirteen minutes 
 in the tense, unyielding strain of the Greeeo- 
 Roman grip, till the bursting of a blood- 
 vessel forces one of them to give way, may 
 teach the interpretation of that word ; " a 
 runner" of races (read Morris's " Atalanta" 
 for that) ; " a boxer" (remember the marble 
 Danioxines for that) ; " a flasher of light " 
 (let Minot's on dark nights be your lexicon 
 for that) ; and, superlative synonym for 
 ceaseless, immeasurable splendor, of gener- 
 ous and helpful energy, " a follower," that is, 
 "an imitator," "of Jesus Christ." Could 
 you find a series of illustrations less sugges- 
 tive than these of an average modern prayer- 
 meeting ? 
 
 The portrait of a Christian painted by 
 the Master, which hangs foremost in the 
 gallery of the gospels, represents a man 
 with eyes flashing, nerves quivering, mus- 
 cles corded, brow beaded, blood dancing, in- 
 tellect quickened, heart bounding : " I am 
 come that they might have life, and that 
 they might have it more abundantly." 
 
 Is a woman trembling among the Phari- 
 sees, show her Christ standing beside her as 
 Great Heart caring for Christiana and her 
 children. Is Mary mourning for her brother, 
 
SPIRITUAL PLOUGHING. 69 
 
 tell her that Jesus wept. But is a young 
 man in the unslipped leash of life quivering 
 with exultant expectation, make him see in 
 Christ the Master of the chase. 
 
 The Christian has come to be thought of 
 as one who endures rather than as one who 
 does ; as dead to this world rather than as 
 alive to the eternal ; as one who renounces 
 toys rather than as one who takes victo- 
 riously treasures ; as one ceasing to serve 
 Satan rather than as one beginning to serve 
 God. In our thought, we define him chiefly 
 by negatives. He does not lie, nor steal, 
 nor envy, nor bear false witness, nor rebel 
 overmuch against God's providence. Until 
 we break through some of these negations 
 we rarely question our right to wear the uni- 
 form of Him who rides forth conquering 
 and to conquer. 
 
 But the strong and the ardent hate nega- 
 tives. If I say of the sun, " It is not red, 
 nor blue, nor green, nor square, nor near," 
 all that I say is true, and only the more 
 false for being true. Say rather, " The sun 
 is all colors transfigured into dazzling radi- 
 ance, piercing everywhere, and quickening 
 all things that have life." It is what a man 
 is and does, never what he is not and does 
 
70 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 not, that truthfully describes him. But we 
 have unconsciously come to define the Chris- 
 tian — not articulately, but in our thoughts 
 — as one " who never does to others what 
 he would not have others do to him." 
 You have sung it in popular hymns, you 
 have read it in Sunday-school books, you 
 have heard it in the nursery when Charlie 
 pinched Jamie. " How would you like to 
 be treated so ? You must never do to others 
 what you would not have them do to you." 
 That is no definition of a Christian. It is 
 the definition of an oyster. Let us get it 
 right in our inmost thought : " All things 
 whatsoever ye would that men should do to 
 you, do ye even so to them." That will 
 send us into life-boats to rescue drowning 
 women when other men are afraid to go ; 
 up ladders into burning houses, and into 
 cities plagued with yellow fever, when other 
 men are afraid to go ! That will send us 
 into hospitals singing cheerful songs when 
 our own hearts are sad ; will make us stand 
 for the weak against the strong ; for the 
 truth when lies are popular. That will 
 make us kind to those who revile us, honest 
 to those who cheat us. That will make us 
 treat our fiercest afflictions as the fine fur- 
 
SPIRITUAL PLOUGHING. 71 
 
 nace treats the coal which it receives black 
 and heavy into its own heart, but sends forth 
 to others transmuted into warmth and light. 
 That will set those who waste life whining 
 over their troubles to singing of their mer- 
 cies, and w T ill convert all pharisees and hyp- 
 ocrites into loyal men and true. For it will 
 force us to realize that whatever creeds may 
 say, whatever experiences in the past, hopes 
 for the future, or emotions in the present 
 may have seduced us to believe, the Master 
 has given us no warrant to call ourselves 
 Christians, or to hope that we are building 
 upon the rock, unless we have begun to " do 
 these sayings of mine." 
 
 3. One other question presses upon many 
 who read the text. 
 
 " Let me first go bid them farewell which 
 are at home, at my house." Was the Mas- 
 ter's reply intended to rebuke the disciple 
 for loving his family, — to teach him not to 
 care for wife and child ? 
 
 Altogether the reverse, I think. The man 
 assumed that to follow Christ was to forsake 
 his family. It was the fatal blunder made 
 by most Christians some centuries later, 
 when they conceived that to run away from 
 their duties, and try to save their souls by 
 
72 THE WORLD TO COME, 
 
 hiding in caves or monasteries, without a 
 thought of the world their Master came to 
 deliver, was the proper way to obey Him. 
 To grant the man's request would have 
 confirmed him in his error. It was needful 
 to teach him that he could effectually care 
 for wife and child only by following with 
 unswerving gaze and unfaltering foot the 
 Lord who gave them to him. No man ever 
 obeyed Christ in singleness of heart without 
 discovering that fact. This disciple, if he 
 obeyed, learned it in due time, and learned 
 it effectually, though when or how he learned 
 it we are not told. 
 
 Here is wisdom: to look upon wife and 
 children remembering not that Jesus Christ 
 has given them to you, — which is the fruitful 
 parent of strikes and lockouts, and divorces 
 and anarchies of every kind, — but that God 
 has given you to them ; to look upon your 
 country remembering that Jesus Christ has 
 given yourself and your family to it ; to con- 
 sider all nations, and realize that Jesus 
 Christ has given you, your family, your 
 country, to the world which He came to rec- 
 oncile to God. Follow Christ thus, and as 
 far as in you lies you shall save all. Re- 
 verse this order, place Christ last, or sec- 
 
SPIRITUAL PLOUGHING. 73 
 
 ond, and as far as in you lies you shall lose 
 all. 
 
 There are still those who fancy, " If I 
 follow Him I must say farewell to my dear 
 ones, for they will not come with me." The 
 text is only one of many proofs which teach 
 us that not to follow Christ is to say to our 
 dear ones, " Farewell forever." 
 
VI. 
 
 JERICHO. 
 They took the city. — Joshua vi. 20. 
 
 The children of Israel had crossed the 
 Jordan. Forty years they had wandered in 
 " that great and terrible wilderness." With 
 hunger and thirst they were familiar. At 
 last their eyes, long scorched with the glare 
 of burning sands, are cooled by the sight of 
 streams and grass. In place of arid plains, 
 dreary gulches, angry crags, they see a rich, 
 a tropical fertility. Fields of grain carpet 
 the lowland ; palm groves offer delicious 
 shade ; vineyards and olive orchards have 
 come to view. The sterile waste is behind ; 
 the land that flows with milk and honey is 
 before them. Their eyes behold its beauty ; 
 their feet press its margin. 
 
 Athwart the alluring garden rises a bar- 
 rier strong and grim. Directly in their path 
 stands Jericho, the military key to Pales- 
 tine. Jericho must be captured, or the forty 
 
JERICHO. 75 
 
 years of journeying through deserts will 
 prove futile. 
 
 The obstacle may well have seemed insu- 
 perable. It was a walled city, probably the 
 strongest in Southern Syria. In the time of 
 Joshua, the science of military defence was 
 better understood than the science of attack. 
 Cities could build walls which assailants 
 could not breach. Even ten centuries later 
 a properly constructed fortress was impreg- 
 nable to any artillery invented. Before 
 Moses left Egypt the Cyclopean walls de- 
 scribed by Dr. Schliemann had been raised 
 at Tyrens and Mycene. The walled cities 
 of Palestine, though not like them of stone 
 but of brick, were imposing structures. The 
 sight of them inspired such terror in the 
 spies sent forth by Moses, that they fled 
 back to their countrymen declaring the con- 
 quest of the land impossible, for they had 
 seen cities " walled and very great." These 
 walls of solid masonry, probably from thirty 
 to seventy feet in thickness, and so high that 
 the spaces they enclosed were described as 
 "fenced up to heaven," defied direct as- 
 sault. 
 
 Of the many fortresses in Palestine,, Jeri- 
 cho appears to have been the most nearly 
 
76 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 impregnable. Tile Israelites had no siege 
 engines; neither battering-ram, nor cata- 
 pult, nor moving tower. Their only weapons 
 were slings, arrows, spears. Against the 
 walls of Jericho these were as straws and 
 thistle-down. 
 
 There were two other passes by which 
 Joshua might have entered the Promised 
 Land. Neither of them was guarded. It is 
 significant that God conducted him across 
 the Jordan at the point where the strongest 
 fortification in the country stood directly in 
 his way; the point where the sole alterna- 
 tives before him were victory that seemed 
 impossible, or defeat that would be ruin. 
 
 Once before the Israelites had entered 
 Palestine. Then they approached from the 
 south, crossed the border unopposed, and 
 fled back before they were attacked. But 
 in conquering Jericho they virtually subdued 
 the Promised Land. 
 
 I. No good or permanently pleasant pos- 
 session is ever gained in this world except by 
 overcoming obstacles. Jericho always bars 
 the entrance to the Promised Land. We see 
 some object of desire. We see the diffi- 
 culties in the way. We wish they were re- 
 moved. We attack them, if we dare, for 
 
JERICHO. 77 
 
 the sake of what we see behind them. But 
 in conquering our Jericho we always win 
 something more precious than we see or seek. 
 Is it wealth one longs for? It must be 
 earned by toil, frugality, self-denial. Indo- 
 lence must be overcome. Unless these diffi- 
 culties have been mastered, wealth is no 
 blessing. There are no beatitudes save 
 such as are approached by steep and narrow 
 ways. 
 
 Self-control, self-respect, — for these we 
 must fight ! A man has yielded to the bad 
 sceptre of his passions. He wishes those 
 passions were less strong. He forgets that 
 only Bucephalus controlled can carry Alex- 
 ander. He would escape temptation, and so 
 elude transgression and subsequent remorse. 
 True, the only peace possible to passionate 
 men is the peace won by self-conquest, but 
 " greater is he that ruleth his own spirit 
 than he that taketh a city." 
 
 If only a man's purpose is right, every 
 obstacle which keeps him from attaining it 
 is there by God's own appointment. It is 
 there for him to conquer. By God's grace 
 he can conquer it, and by the victory he 
 will gain more than he has asked or thought. 
 
 II. Consider the preparations. Two con- 
 
78 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 clitions were essential. The people must be 
 prepared for victory. The obstacle must be 
 removed. 
 
 1. For seven days the Israelites were kept 
 marching around Jericho. They had never 
 seen a walled city. Xot in Egypt, for only 
 two of them had been there. Xot in the des- 
 ert, for it contained none. Day after day 
 they were forced to gaze upon the stupen- 
 dous structure. From every point of view 
 they were compelled to scrutinize its strength. 
 Time is needed for objects really great in 
 nature or in art to exert their full effect 
 upon the mind. Niagara grows as we gaze 
 upon it. Conversation was forbidden. It 
 might divert attention. In silence the sol- 
 diers contemplated the mighty walls. Every 
 hour forces them to feel more keenly that 
 their own strength is impotence. It is flesh 
 against brick and mortar. That every man 
 of them must have realized before the seven 
 days had passed. Xot only do the besiegers 
 learn to appreciate their weakness, but they 
 advertise it to their foes. When first the 
 rumors of an impending invasion reached 
 the city, it was filled with panic. But as 
 the strangers marched round and round the 
 walls, fear of them must have changed into 
 
JERICHO. 79 
 
 contempt. One can almost hear the jeers 
 from Jericho. " Do these unarmed vaga- 
 bonds expect to capture us by blowing 
 horns ? " For, while the invaders marched 
 in silence, ever and anon their priests blew 
 upon trumpets quick, short, triumphant 
 notes, such as in later times were used, 
 echoes from this experience at Jericho, to 
 usher in the year of jubilee. 
 
 These notes seemed to say to 'the chosen 
 people : " Take heart, our victory is sure ! " 
 The more the army become impressed with 
 its own impotence, the more amazing must 
 these tones have appeared. The soldiers' 
 eyes reported, with constantly increasing em- 
 phasis, " Victory is impossible ! " But their 
 ears, catching the triumphant notes from the 
 trumpets of the Levites, reported continu- 
 ally, " Victory is sure ! " 
 
 My friends, have you never been subjected 
 to a similar discipline ? Have you never 
 been brought to a wall great and high with 
 no implement with which to pull it down ? 
 Have you never been beset with difficulties 
 which seemed to increase as you faced them ? 
 You walk around your Jericho. You see no 
 place that can be breached ; no open gate ; 
 no crevasse through which even one arrow 
 
80 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 can be shot. Hope begins to pass into de- 
 spair. But listen. Open your ears to the 
 notes that are blown for you by the trum- 
 peters of God : — 
 
 " Behold, I will not fail thee nor forsake 
 thee." 
 
 " They that are for thee are more than 
 they which are against thee." 
 
 " When my father and my mother for- 
 sake me, then the Lord will take me up." 
 
 " No good thing will He withhold from 
 them that walk uprightly." 
 
 " Let not your heart be troubled, neither 
 let it be afraid." 
 
 " Fear not, little children." 
 
 "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but 
 my words shall not pass away." 
 
 It is not when the victory is won that we 
 need these promises. Blessed is the man 
 who listens to the trumpets of jubilee while 
 his eyes are fixed on the walls of Jericho. 
 
 2. Meantime God is not idle. The walls 
 must be removed, or the city cannot be 
 taken. Though no sign appears, they are 
 being sapped. Slowly, inexorably, subter- 
 ranean fires are kindling. Silently, through 
 the seven days of preparation, the earth- 
 quake has been running mines beneath the 
 
JERICHO. 81 
 
 doomed city. Unconscious of their invisible 
 antagonist, the men of Jericho look down 
 upon their visible assailants with scorn and 
 sneer. Conscious of their unseen Helper, 
 the men of Israel look up at their visible 
 foes and wait — watching. How they know 
 not, when they know not, but that victory 
 will be theirs they know. Theirs only to 
 obey ; theirs only to stand ready ; theirs to 
 believe and rest in the Rock that is higher 
 than they, higher than the walls of Jericho. 
 For they know they are obeying God. 
 
 My friends, it is always true that every 
 obstacle which hinders goodness, every for- 
 tress which guards wickedness, is being un- 
 dermined. Right rules. Wrong is doomed 
 in this world. If you are on God's side ; 
 if your plan is right, your purpose pure, — 
 your triumph is certain. Whatever hinders, 
 whatever threatens, will go down. You may 
 not see when or how. Wickedness often 
 seems impregnable. But right is omnipo- 
 tent. To-day Judas seems wise, Jesus un- 
 wise. But look again to-morrow. There 
 is nothing so hard to believe, but there is 
 nothing more true, than this : till the judg- 
 ment of the prince of this world cometh, the 
 prince of this world always seems stronger 
 
82 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 than the King of heaven. But the prince 
 of this world is doomed. It is when men 
 doubt this that the faith which saves fails 
 them. Oh for the faith which, though it 
 sees Christ fettered, convicted, crucified, and 
 saying, " It is finished, " still believes that, 
 when the city which rejects Him is ploughed 
 and sown with salt, its inhabitants nailed 
 upon crosses over which carrion eagles gath- 
 er, the crucified One shall stretch his sceptre 
 from sea to sea, and lead the isles rejoic- 
 ing in his law ! 
 
 Be anxious about nothing but your duty. 
 No Joshua, whom we may unquestioningly 
 follow, stands before us. Whether we are 
 doing God's work we must learn by other 
 means. But learn we can, and if we are 
 doing that, we shall be more than conquer- 
 ors through Him that loveth us. 
 
 III. The victory. 
 
 I think the most marvellous fact in the 
 narrative we are studying is not the boldness 
 of Joshua in laying siege to such a city, nor 
 the willingness of his army to begin it, nor 
 the patient marching of the seven days, nor 
 the amazing catastrophe which ensued, but 
 the spirit in which the final assault was 
 made. 
 
JERICHO. 83 
 
 You may fancy the invader's task was 
 easy. When the walls were fallen, half 
 the defenders perhaps crushed beneath the 
 ruins, the remainder by terror incapaci- 
 tated for resistance, was it not easy for the 
 besiegers to march forward and slay the 
 defenceless survivors? If you think so, I 
 suspect you have not well considered the 
 narrative. I know you have never experi- 
 enced an earthquake. The marvel is that 
 the invaders did not themselves fly, or stand 
 petrified with terror until their opportunity 
 was past. 
 
 Joshua's army was certainly less than 
 two miles, probably less than a quarter of 
 that distance, from Jericho. It lay in the 
 edge of a palm-grove. Any shock sufficient 
 to prostrate the massive walls of the city 
 must have extended far beyond his camp. 
 We must remember the necessary concomi- 
 tants of a convulsion such as here occurred. 
 They would have produced in a common 
 army only panic and impotence. 
 
 The Israelites stood in battle line. At a 
 divine intimation, they are ordered to raise 
 the battle-cry. At that moment the solid 
 earth beneath their feet begins to shudder, 
 to quake, to heave in billows like the sea. 
 
84 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 The tall palms sway like mainmasts. Some 
 fall crashing to the ground. From the rocky 
 defile on ' their right, crags and loosened 
 boulders plunge with terrific noise upon the 
 plain. Clouds of dust and sulphurous smoke 
 obscure the sun. Electric discharges make 
 the thickened air lurid, or thread the gloom 
 with lines of fire. Thunderous detonations 
 roar down the ravine that debouches from 
 the west. The tumult grows fiercer. By 
 the lightning's glare the walls that for seven 
 days have stood like Gibraltar before their 
 eyes are seen' to tremble. Rents appear in 
 the solid masonry. The rents gape into 
 fissures. Through the rifts terrified men 
 are visible. Suddenly, with the crash of 
 avalanches, the walls vanish. They do not 
 oscillate, they only disappear. Before the 
 awful reverberations have ceased, the order, 
 passed from trumpet to trumpet, rings along 
 the line, " Charge ! " Then every man 
 moved straight forward, over the heaving 
 earth, over the debris of shattered rocks and 
 crushed palms, through the dust and sul- 
 phur clouds. How do these soldiers know 
 the earth may not open and ingulf them? 
 
 Let such experience occur to an ordinary 
 army, it would help them not at all until 
 
JERICHO. 85 
 
 hours had passed. Imagine what your emo- 
 tions would have been. Would you not have 
 felt that omnipotent power was working in 
 wrath, or that the forces of nature were 
 blindly destroying? 
 
 But the Hebrews felt it was their God 
 working for them. The earthquake was his 
 voice. Therefore it could not harm, it must 
 help them. Forty years of training had 
 taught them this. They believed in Him 
 who had parted the Red Sea, and shown 
 himself in pillars of fire and of cloud for 
 their sakes. 
 
 Such is the faith Christians need to-day. 
 There is gloom on the faces of many, even 
 among God's people. Anxiety is in their 
 hearts. And why? Because the walls of 
 Jericho are rocking, the walls of Jericho are 
 falling. 
 
 The civil, the industrial, the religious 
 world on both sides of the sea is troubled 
 as in our time it has not been before. At 
 the beginning of last winter, a few owners 
 of coal-mines in Pennsylvania decreed that 
 every poor man on the continent should find 
 it harder to keep warm than it ought to be. 
 700,000 working men, through their rep- 
 resentatives at Richmond, encamped with 
 
86 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 strong entrenchments against that castle of 
 Giant Despair. We have all been hit by the 
 missiles flying between castle and besiegers. 
 Newspapers with large circulations are open- 
 ly advocating anarchy, murder, and pillage. 
 There is not a man in the country who has 
 not been in some way warned of the danger 
 threatening from the conflicts of labor and 
 capital. What the end shall be no one 
 knows. But only the reckless and the 
 frivolous are without concern. Herr Most, 
 though himself a trifle light as thistle-down, 
 by his want of weight serves well to show 
 how the winds are setting. 
 
 In the religious world anxieties are many. 
 Some fear that the faith delivered us by the 
 Apostles is in danger. The splendid work 
 once done by the American Board is sus- 
 pended. While millions upon millions are 
 stumbling and perishing in the darkness at 
 home and abroad, those whom Christ has 
 commissioned to give them light have ceased 
 to hold up the lamp of life while they debate 
 whether white light or blue light is the best. 
 
 Many good men feel the ground quaking. 
 
 But let us be full of faith. God is remov- 
 ing those things that are shaken, that the 
 things which cannot be shaken may remain. 
 
JERICHO. 87 
 
 Now is the time to pray as we have never 
 prayed ! To labor as we have never la- 
 bored ! To give money as we have never 
 given money for Jesus Christ ! For God is 
 multiplying opportunities for true Christian 
 work. Men are weary of quibbles, though 
 many religious teachers have not yet discov- 
 ered the fact. Men are hungry for the true 
 bread that cometh down from heaven. God 
 has prepared the way for a revival of that 
 true religion which consists in loving Him 
 with all the heart, and one's neighbor as 
 one's self. 
 
 This is the bugle-call to us, this single 
 fact, — that never since the world began 
 have men been so eager as they are to-day 
 to know the simple words and works of Je- 
 sus Christ, and so prompt to recognize the 
 obligation they are under to obey Him and 
 follow in his steps. 
 
VII. 
 
 GIDEON'S MEN. 
 
 And the Lord said unto Gideon, By the three hun- 
 dred men that lapped will I save you and deliver the 
 Midianites into thine hand. — Judges vii. 7. 
 
 The Midianites had conquered Palestine. 
 They had not settled in the land, for they 
 were rovers. The desert was their ocean, 
 camels their ships, Palestine their victual- 
 ling and coaling station. Every year, when 
 the harvests were ripe, they landed at the 
 rich plain of Esdraelon, stripped the country 
 of its produce, and, after rioting awhile, as 
 pirates in port, swept off again upon their 
 wide voyages over the boundless desert. 
 They came in irresistible numbers. Their 
 chiefs, clad in barbaric splendor, rode upon 
 camels caparisoned with trappings of scarlet 
 and chains of gold. At their approach the 
 Israelites forsook the plain, abandoned their 
 flocks and their harvests, and sought safety 
 in the caves of the hills. Year after year 
 had this shame and terror been repeated, 
 
GIDEON'S MEN 89 
 
 when Gideon attempted to organize resist- 
 ance. 
 
 The tents of Midian covered the plains o£ 
 Jezreel when, we read, the Spirit of the Lord 
 came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet 
 and sent messengers throughout all Manas- 
 seh, Asher, Zebulon, and Naphthali, the 
 tribes which bounded or lay nearest to the 
 camp of the invaders. The first blast of 
 the trumpet sorted the nation. The servile- 
 spirited, the indolent, those who were con- 
 tent to endure lives of shame beneath 
 oppression and to be dumb driven cattle, 
 paid no heed to the trumpet. But all whose 
 manhood had not yet been crushed, all in 
 whom sparks of patriotism still glowed, all 
 who were ready to risk one blow for free- 
 dom, rallied at the call. Their number was 
 small. Only thirty-two thousand responded 
 to the summons. 
 
 The Midianites — like grasshoppers for 
 multitude — were encamped upon the plain 
 of Esdraelon. That plain, the historic bat- 
 tle-ground of Palestine and the garden of 
 Southern Syria, shrinks towards the east, 
 before it reaches the Jordan, into a narrow 
 valley. The south wall of this valley is the 
 range of Gilboa. In the time of Gideon 
 
90 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 that range was heavily wooded, and upon its 
 northern slope there appears to have been 
 a water-course. The channel w T as probably 
 dry during part of the year, for no perennial 
 stream exists at the spot where the spring 
 of Harod seems to be necessarily located by 
 the narrative ; and though it is not possible 
 to dissent without hesitation from the views 
 of Canon Tristram, neither is it possible to 
 identify the well of Harod with the spring 
 of Jezreel, which flows at the base of the 
 hill, without confusing the description of the 
 battle. 
 
 In the thick wood upon the north slope 
 of Gilboa, beside the upper stream, Gid- 
 eon's men assembled. Probably signs of 
 panic appeared among them when they per- 
 ceived the numbers and strength of their 
 foes. Guns in sight are more impressive 
 than guns beyond the horizon. But cowards 
 will be only an encumbrance here, and that 
 Gideon knows. Therefore he issues orders 
 for every one who is faint-hearted and every 
 one who is afraid to return home before the 
 descent from the hill is made. Twenty-two 
 thousand departed. This fact, I suppose, 
 and not the subsequent panic of the Midi- 
 anites, gave the stream the name it bears in 
 
GIDEON'S MEN. 91 
 
 the narrative, " The Spring of Harod," or 
 " Cowards' Creek." 
 
 The ten thousand who remained were all 
 brave men. But more than courage was re- 
 quired in a battle such as Gideon had to 
 fight. 
 
 There had been two sortings already, — 
 one by the trumpet, another at " Cowards' 
 Creek." A third was needed. There is no 
 lesson we need to lay more to heart than 
 this: in every strenuous campaign quality 
 counts for more than quantity. The mouse 
 jeered the lioness for bearing but a single 
 cub. " True," replied the lioness, " and you 
 have twelve, but my one is a lion." Xerxes 
 had nearly two million soldiers, Leonidas 
 three hundred. But the three hundred 
 were Spartans. The Spirit of God was not 
 poured out at Pentecost until the provi- 
 dence of God had so sifted the multitude, 
 who waved palms before Jesus, that those 
 who remained found room in a single upper 
 chamber. 
 
 There were two churches in Scotland. One 
 of them added to its membership two hun- 
 dred and fifty converts in a single year, and 
 rejoiced greatly in its growth. The other 
 that same twelvemonth gained but a single 
 
92 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 member and lamented its barrenness. But 
 the single member was David Livingston, 
 and therefore in due time it appeared to all 
 men that the " barren had borne seven, while 
 she that had many children had waxed 
 feeble." 
 
 Because quality counts for more than 
 quantity a third sorting was required. 
 Therefore Gideon led the ten thousand down 
 to the brook of Jezreel, which flows at the 
 base of the hill, in sight of the enemy, as if 
 advancing to attack. At the stream he 
 halted his men to drink. Those who drank 
 as cattle drink he was told to send home. 
 Those who drank as hounds drink were the 
 men for the crisis. 
 
 Men show most certainly their essential 
 characters in the trifles they do unconscious- 
 ly, and the genius of leadership belongs to 
 him who can see the meaning of signs which 
 to others appear insignificant, and read, in 
 the sparkle of white dust upon the surface, 
 that gold-bearing quartz lies beneath. A 
 hunter will most easily appreciate the ex- 
 quisite accuracy of Gideon's test. But to 
 any one who will watch a dog and a cow 
 drink water, its purpose will grow plain. 
 
 Oxen fix their eyes upon the stream, glue 
 
GIDEON'S MEN. 93 
 
 their lips to the water, and drink all they 
 want, heedless of everything except the 
 slaking of their thirst. You may pound 
 them, but they will not move until they have 
 had enough. 
 
 Dogs glance at the water, touch their 
 tongues to it, but keep their eyes turning 
 watchfully hither and thither, as if drinking 
 seemed to them a trivial matter, and every 
 sense must be kept alert to whatever of 
 serious moment may occur. His tongue 
 may be parched or swollen, none the less a 
 dog always drinks as if slaking his thirst 
 were a trifle to be instantly deferred if need 
 be. 
 
 So the three hundred did not kneel upon 
 the bank, but stood watching, and caught up 
 the water in their hands, as if watching, and 
 not drinking, were their business. 
 
 I. The attitude reveals concentration and 
 persistency of purpose. Success in any 
 cause depends in great degree upon having 
 an aim and holding stanchly to it. Two 
 young men begin life abreast. Both are 
 poor ; both are friendless ; both are equally 
 gifted. In twenty years one is at the top, 
 the other at the foot, of the ladder, only 
 because one has turned aside to gather 
 
94 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 flowers, to fly kites, or to sleep. The other 
 has refused to be diverted from his aim. 
 
 Paul says he won the race, not because he 
 was gifted, not because he was inspired, but 
 because he kept his eyes fixed upon the goal. 
 Gideon will have only men of one idea. 
 That is what our Lord meant in declaring 
 that unless we forsake all for Him we can- 
 not be his disciples. 
 
 II. A dog drinking is the emblem of 
 alertness. Watch him ! If a leaf rustles, 
 he sees it and starts. Sights and sounds 
 which elude your powers of observation ar- 
 rest his. He pauses, seems to consider ; 
 dashes away, circles around until assured 
 that all is as it should be, then returns to 
 resume his drinking. He may do this a 
 dozen times before his thirst is quenched. 
 
 The successful man perceives every cir- 
 cumstance which bears upon the purpose of 
 his life. Success is the right use of oppor- 
 tunities which pass us with the speed of 
 wings never to return. Opportunity, says 
 the Eastern proverb, has a beard, but no 
 back hair. You may catch and hold it 
 from before, but never from behind. 
 
 The French are being driven at Auster- 
 litz, when Napoleon observes that the Eus- 
 
GIDEON'S MEN. 95 
 
 sian columns are charging over a frozen 
 lake. He orders his gunners to fire at the 
 zenith. The descending balls pound the ice 
 into fragments ; the Russian column is de- 
 stroyed, and so defeat is converted into that 
 victory which Victor Hugo affirms to be the 
 most brilliant known to history. 
 
 Paul walking the streets of Athens dis- 
 cerns an altar inscribed " To the Unknown 
 God." Instantly, by making it a pulpit, he 
 compels the brain of the world to listen for 
 a season to the gospel. 
 
 III. Intensity of purpose, combined with 
 alertness in detecting and employing oppor- 
 tunities, alw r ays gives a certain quality of 
 character for which I cannot readily find 
 a name, but which you may find exhibited 
 by the next dog you see lapping from the 
 gutter. 
 
 Even when the hound appears to hear 
 nothing, to see nothing, he does not drink 
 continuously. At intervals he pauses as 
 if a thought, which he must consider, had 
 struck him. He seems to be reflecting. An 
 instant passes and he resumes his drinking. 
 
 There is this much of inspiration in all 
 men. Our best thoughts, our most fertile 
 suggestions, often come to us in moments 
 
96 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 when the mental powers are relaxed. If 
 the mind is so trained that one's thoughts 
 flow spontaneously in the channels cut for 
 them by the main purpose of his life, his 
 usefulest plans will be suggested to him at 
 moments when he is not seeking them. 
 Newton was strolling for rest when he ob- 
 served the apple fall. James Watt was 
 warming himself by the kitchen fire when 
 he saw the steamboat in his mother's tea- 
 kettle. Daniel Webster was on a pleasure 
 trip, enjoying the prospect from the Heights 
 of Abraham, and listening to the evening 
 drum-beat of the British garrison at Que- 
 bec, when first occurred to him that magni- 
 ficent description of English dominion as 
 the empire on which the sun never sets, 
 though years elapsed before the Senate was 
 electrified by its utterance. 
 
 Here lies the arch peril of amusements. 
 If a man allows himself to become so much 
 absorbed in them, innocent though they may 
 be, that in moments of relaxation his thoughts 
 will gravitate towards them, he will rarely 
 excel. If music is one's business, it is well 
 when the grating of files sets him thinking 
 how they may be tuned. But if the average 
 man allows himself to become so interested 
 
GIDEON'S MEN, 97 
 
 in cards, or billiards, or operas, or horses, 
 that when he is not compelled to think of 
 his proper business he instinctively thinks 
 of them, he will never give the world prime 
 work. 
 
 IV. The most conspicuous distinction be- 
 tween the dog and the ox at water is this : 
 the ox never heeds his master until his 
 thirst is quenched ; the dog never heeds 
 his thirst till his master is obeyed. I have 
 seen a hound panting with heat, his black 
 lips baked, his tongue cracked, dart toward 
 the cool spring. But his master's whistle 
 arrests him at the brink, and he darts back 
 without a drop. I have watched drovers 
 call, pound, goad oxen at the ford, but the 
 beasts would not budge until their thirst 
 was slaked. Both types you may have seen 
 among recruits enlisted in the army of the 
 Lord. 
 
 If we should trace, step by step, the con- 
 flict in which the Midianites were defeated, 
 we would see that the victory was won solely 
 by the exercise on the part of Gideon's men 
 of those qualities displayed in their drink- 
 ing. 
 
 1. Oxen are bigger and stronger than 
 dogs. The Midianites were many, the Is- 
 
98 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 raelites were few. But a single purpose ab- 
 sorbed each of the three hundred. It was 
 to reach a certain spot undiscovered. 
 
 2. To do that required them to keep their 
 faculties almost preternaturally alert. They 
 stole upon the foe, wary, watchful, every 
 sense awake. It is dark. The crackling of 
 a dry twig beneath a careless tread may give 
 the alarm. It is night, and without hawks' 
 eyes no man can be sure of his way. 
 
 3. But if the three hundred reach their 
 goal, that will be futile unless they keep the 
 lights burning within their pitchers. Each 
 must watch his torch. He must guard it as 
 one guards his secret thoughts. Ever and 
 anon, as a dog who pauses from time to time 
 we know not why, he must get sight of his 
 candle without allowing a ray to escape in 
 front. 
 
 4. Most important of all conditions of suc- 
 cess, he must observe every sound and sign 
 made by his leader, and be ready for instant 
 obedience. A moment's delay in breaking 
 the pitchers, blowing the trumpets, shouting 
 the battle-cry when the signal had been 
 given, would have converted the most bril- 
 liant victory of Hebrew annals into a piti- 
 able fiasco. 
 
GIDEON'S MEN 99 
 
 If you will read with these suggestions 
 the seventh chapter of Judges, it may grow 
 plain why Cromwell's Ironsides, who never 
 were defeated, with instinctive perception of 
 its significance, selected for their battle-cry, 
 the cry which heralded victory at Naseby 
 and Marston Moor, " The sword of the Lord 
 and of Gideon." It may also become ap- 
 parent what qualities of character are re- 
 quisite in us who would win in that more 
 strenuous and important spiritual warfare 
 we wage for Jesus Christ. " For we wres- 
 tle not with flesh and blood, but with prin- 
 cipalities and powers." 
 
VIII. 
 
 SELF-PITY: SAUL IN THE WITCH'S CAVE. 
 
 And Saul answered, I am sore distressed ; for the Phi- 
 listines make war against me, and God is departed from 
 me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets nor 
 by dreams ; therefore I have called thee, that thou may- 
 est make known unto me what I shall do. — 1 Sam. 
 xxviii. 15. (R. V.) 
 
 I BO not know whether I have been more 
 thrilled by the horror, touched by the pa- 
 thos, or numbed by the despair, in these 
 words. They appear to be true. They were 
 utterly false. 
 
 The horror of them is this : they express 
 a man's deliberate conviction that God, in 
 whom he lives and moves and has his being, 
 has cast him off, and left him to struggle 
 alone against forces which sweep him as Ni- 
 agara sweeps a skiff. 
 
 The pathos of them is twofold. They are 
 Saul's only complaint. They are the single 
 shriek of one who believes himself a lost 
 spirit pushed into the abyss. But they also 
 
SELF-PITY. 101 
 
 express the awful loneliness of a human 
 being famishing for sympathy. Because he 
 thinks he cannot have God 5 Saul turns to 
 Samuel. So I have seen a woman who had 
 outlived her associates, or driven them away 
 by persistent selfishness, turn to a poodle 
 and try to make it fill the place of a friend ! 
 So I have heard men in stress of trouble 
 entreat me to pray for them, without a 
 thought of praying for themselves, because, 
 while God was drawing them to his ear by 
 their afflictions, they fancied God had de- 
 parted from them. 
 
 The hopelessness of Saul's condition was 
 that he mistook his own doings for God's, 
 and, while the world was green and only his 
 own glasses gray, fancied the world was 
 gray and his glasses clear. 
 
 The apparent truth of Saul's words comes 
 from the fact that he was alienated from 
 God. Their essential falsehood is in their 
 saying that God had deserted him, when in 
 fact he had deserted God. 
 
 I. Recall the scene, — a valley three miles 
 wide, running from northeast to southwest. 
 Northward it swells upward into the hill 
 Moreh. Its south side is Mount Gilboa. 
 At the base of Gilboa flows the spring of 
 
102 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 Jezreel, a stream fifty yards wide. Upon 
 the plain, north and west of Gilboa, the 
 Philistines are encamped. South of the 
 stream, upon the north slope of Gilboa, are 
 Saul and his army. There is no reason for 
 supposing that his forces were outnumbered 
 by the enemy. That enemy was the Phi- 
 listines, and the Philistines he had defeated 
 many times. His position was impregnable. 
 He could choose his own time for attack, or 
 decline battle altogether, for his base of sup- 
 plies was immediately behind him, while the 
 enemy were cut off from theirs and must fight 
 or retreat. The strength of the Philistine 
 army was in their iron chariots. These could 
 only be employed upon the plain. They 
 could not charge through the dense woods or 
 up the steep slopes of Gilboa, upon the crest 
 of which Saul's troops were safe as an eagle 
 in its eyry. He was encamped on the spot 
 whence Gideon descended upon the Midi- 
 anites, and won the most brilliant battle re- 
 corded in the history of Israel. Every in- 
 dication promised an easy and decisive vic- 
 tary, if only Saul could be Saul. But that 
 he cannot be. Once he would have minded 
 those Philistines as a lion minds jackals. 
 But his courage is gone. He cannot hope, 
 
SELF-PITY. 103 
 
 because lie cannot pray. He feels that God 
 has departed from him. Where clear eyes 
 would have seen signs of promise, he dis- 
 cerns only signals of despair. What shall 
 he do? 
 
 II. Seven miles as the bee flies north of 
 his camp, directly in the rear of the Philis- 
 tine army, lies Endor. At Endor lives a 
 woman who claims that she can raise the 
 dead. Perhaps she can. If so, it is by help 
 of the infernal powers. If not, she is a fraud. 
 In either case she is a wizard, and Saul him- 
 self has commanded that every wizard in 
 the land be put to death. To this woman, 
 whether fraud or fiend he may not know, 
 but believing her to be the latter, Saul re- 
 solved to direct those prayers which he 
 dares not address to God. Often you may 
 see men, who count it folly to pray to the 
 Almighty Love, turn with agony of suppli- 
 cation to fellow-mortals weaker or wickeder 
 than themselves ! 
 
 Disguising himself, in order both to elude 
 the Philistine outposts and to deceive the 
 woman by whom he will be deceived, he 
 makes a wide detour around the hostile 
 army, and next appears in the witch's 
 cave. 
 
104 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 It is night. Darkness and misery are 
 friends to each other, but fiends to a guilty 
 soul. Every step of the dark and dismal 
 journey has taken something from Saul's 
 manhood. Every step has quenched some 
 ray of the light that still glimmers in his 
 spirit, the light that lighteth every man that 
 cometh into the world. He is moving from 
 his friends. Every foot he advances brings 
 more of his foes between his defenceless 
 body and its natural protectors. He is go- 
 ing from his God. Every foot he advances 
 brings more of tormenting memories between 
 his soul and his heavenly Father. Inch by 
 inch, he is going from the light toward the 
 outer darkness. This he knows. Still he 
 moves on. Have you never seen men walk- 
 ing from Gilboa to Endor ? 
 
 III. At last the fearful journey ends. 
 "Whether correctly or not I do not know, and 
 it does not in the least matter, for the Bible 
 does not tell us, Saul believes himself in the 
 presence of the spirit of the dead. Under 
 the pressure of that tremendous conviction 
 the inmost workings of his spirit appear. 
 His secret thoughts break from him. Hith- 
 erto he has kept silence. But now the vol- 
 canic fires burst through the granite of his 
 
SELF-PITY. 105 
 
 pride. The living who might have helped 
 him have sought his confidence in vain. 
 But into the ear of an impotent shade, a 
 dead man powerless to help or hurt, he 
 pours his despair like a lava flood. 
 
 " Why hast thou disquieted me to bring 
 me up ? " The question may have been the 
 ventriloquism of a charlatan bribed by the 
 Philistines to practise upon Saul's supersti- 
 tion, and meant to check further inquiry. 
 It may have been some sign from the unseen 
 world. Again I repeat, I do not know and 
 it does not matter. But Saul believed that 
 Samuel spoke, and the misery of it is, he 
 believed that Samuel could love him when 
 God had ceased to care for him ; he believed 
 there could be rain upon the grass when 
 there was no water in the sea. Therefore 
 his reply : " I am sore distressed ; for the 
 Philistines make war upon me, and God is 
 departed from me and answereth me no 
 more, neither by prophets nor by dreams. 
 Therefore I have called thee up, that thou 
 mayest make known to me what I ought to 
 do." 
 
 This, then, is what Saul has been think- 
 ing. These are the thoughts which have 
 driven him, as they will drive any man who 
 
106 THE WORLD TO COME, 
 
 cherishes them, to the chamber of death, 
 the wizard's cave, the ante-room of hell. 
 
 And what were the facts that corresponded 
 to Saul's fancies ? Statement by statement, 
 word for word, accurately and absolutely, the 
 reverse of what Saul imagines them to be, 
 says that they are. 
 
 " I am sore distressed." The words mean, 
 " I am pressed upon from without " by un- 
 toward events, as a weight presses upon a 
 body and crushes it. 
 
 The fact was the opposite, as we have seen. 
 Saul was sore rent from within. Conscious 
 of his pain, he attributes its origin not in 
 the least to the real cause, which was him- 
 self, but to something outside his own soul 
 which he had not caused and could not cure, 
 and for which he was not responsible. He 
 is shaking with ague and thinks that it is 
 winter, though the air is warm upon his 
 cheeks. 
 
 " For the Philistines make war upon me." 
 It was he who had inaugurated war upon 
 the Philistines, and incurred their desperate 
 and implacable hostility by compelling Da- 
 vid to a deed of wanton and disgusting cru- 
 elty upon them. Not only that. Even now 
 the Philistines would not have dared to rise 
 
SELF-PITY. 107 
 
 in arms against him but for this. David 
 had been Saul's most brilliant soldier and 
 his ablest captain. By him again and again 
 the Philistines had been routed. While 
 David fought for Israel, the Philistines had 
 not ventured to begin even movements for 
 self-defence. But Saul in his frantic jeal- 
 ousy had banished David, and thus given 
 the Philistines hope and courage to attack 
 him. 
 
 " And God has departed from me." Had 
 God moved ? Saul had moved, from the 
 shrine at Shiloh, where God showed him- 
 self in light, to the darkness of a witch's 
 cave. While the Father's arms are stretched 
 out all the day long, saying, " Why wilt thou 
 die ? " the child runs from Him lamenting, 
 " My Father has cast me off ! " 
 
 " And answereth me no more." There, 
 were three ways in which Saul knew that 
 God communed with him and answered his 
 requests, — by dreams or visions, by proph- 
 ets, by Urim. 
 
 1. By dreams. The narrative relates how 
 in Saul's younger days music had exerted 
 a mysterious power upon him, and brought 
 him into a state of spiritual exaltation in 
 which inspired visions came to him. We 
 
103 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 are also told that lie had driven away from 
 his presence, by attempting to murder him. 
 the only man whose harp had power to exert 
 that mysterious influence upon him. Thus 
 he had closed, and still held closed, one of 
 the three doors by which it was possible for 
 God to answer him. 
 
 2. By prophets. Saul had driven from 
 his presence Samuel, the greatest of the 
 prophets, by persistent disobedience, and had 
 withdrawn from the lesser prophets who 
 remained. Thus he had himself closed the 
 second door of divine communication. 
 
 3. There was a third method in which 
 God had been accustomed to make known 
 his will. It was communion by Uriin. 
 What this was we do not know. It was in 
 some way connected with the gleam of a 
 precious stone, probably a diamond, worn by 
 the high priest, and the mysterious com- 
 munication could come only through the 
 priest acting as mediator. But Saul, in a 
 frenzy of wrath against David, had slaugh- 
 tered all the members of the priestly house 
 save one. and that one was in exile, still 
 under sentence of death. 
 
 Thus Saul had locked the three doors, 
 the onlv three of which he knew, bv which 
 
SELF-PITY. 109 
 
 God could answer him, and held the keys 
 of them in his hand at the moment when he 
 cried in despair, " God answereth me no 
 more." Was Saul, in this insanity of self- 
 delusion, wholly unlike us ? 
 
 IV. There is one other point in Saul's 
 exclamation which I would have you observe. 
 
 What an energy of anguish throbs in the 
 two words " no more " ! — " God answers me 
 no more." Saul appreciates the awfulness of 
 the change which has occurred in his rela- 
 tions toward God, though he is so wildly 
 oblivious of the cause. He sees the great 
 gulf fixed between himself in torment and 
 the water for one drop of which he pleads, 
 though he does not see by whom the gulf 
 has been fixed. He burns in the flames he 
 has kindled, though he thinks God has kin- 
 dled them to consume him. He pleads with 
 Abraham for one drop of water, without a 
 suspicion that God's bosom, an ocean, is 
 there for him to lie upon. He has gone the 
 way of those who love not the truth, upon 
 whom has been sent " a strong delusion that 
 they should believe a lie." 
 
 " No more." It was not always so. Once 
 he could turn to God with hope and joy. 
 Once peace brooded over him. The light 
 
110 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 in the past makes the darkness of the pres- 
 ent more appalling, as a sailor drowning in 
 the night sees afar the candle shining in the 
 cottage of the mother he has forsaken. It 
 is the sight of a little child kneeling by the 
 white crib and falling asleep as he prays — 
 asleep in trust and peace — that compels a 
 wicked man to realize his loneliness, even if 
 it does not force him to appreciate his guilt. 
 Once he was a little child ! Once he could 
 pray and sleep like that. But now ! If he 
 seeks help from the invisible powers, and 
 there are times when all men do that, he can 
 turn only to the wizards that peep and mut- 
 ter, and pretend they can change the laws 
 of the Almighty. 
 
 It is plain, I think, why there could be no 
 hope for Saul, no deliverance from misery 
 for him, while he remained in such a spirit. 
 You or I, beholding agony like his, though 
 in our bitterest foe, would have whispered 
 words of hope. But God is kinder than we. 
 There was no hope until Saul himself should 
 change. Only the truth can make men free. 
 Therefore the truth was spoken to him. He 
 was reminded of the past, reminded that 
 only those things had come upon him which 
 he had been assured would come if he went 
 
SELF-PITT. HI 
 
 the way he had gone. He was reminded of 
 Moses and the prophets, and warned to hear 
 them, and told that he had but a night to 
 listen. No gleam of hope from any out- 
 ward change was given him. " To-morrow 
 thou and thy sons shall be with me." 
 
 However these words were spoken, wheth- 
 er by fraud or by miracle, God permitted 
 them. How they affected Saul we are not 
 told. After this single outburst of despair 
 the monarch resumed the majesty of silence. 
 He wrapped his curse about him and went 
 forth into the night. The next day he 
 fought bravely, he died not ignobly, and 
 when men begin to do well I infer that it 
 has begun to go well with them. But this 
 I know : every pang Saul felt, every loss 
 he endured, every star that was extinguished 
 in his sky, marked a fresh effort of God to 
 open his blind eyes and his deaf ears, that 
 he might see and hear and perceive who had 
 kindled and kept aflame the fires that con- 
 sumed him, till he should turn to Him who 
 was saying then and is saying still, " Come 
 unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy- 
 laden, and I will give you rest." 
 
IX. 
 
 SAMSON : SELF-DECEPTION. 
 
 And it came to pass, when she pressed him daily 
 with her words, and urged him. so that his soul was 
 vexed unto death, that he told her all his heart, and 
 said unto her, There hath not eome a razor upon mine 
 head; for I have been a Nazarite unto God from my 
 mother's womb : if I be shaven, then my strength will 
 go from me, and I shall become weak, and be like any 
 other man. — Judges xri. 16, 17. 
 
 Samson is perhaps the most fascinating 
 character described in the Old Testament. 
 His biography exhilarates the reader. "We 
 admire his courage, exult in his strength, are 
 charmed by his good-nature. Dean Stanley, 
 guided by the fine exegetical insight of Pro- 
 fessor Ewald, has taught us to recognize in 
 this champion of Dan " the solitary humor- 
 ist " of sacred history, and to believe that 
 though " he was capable of every crime but 
 cowardice," he was also " capable of every 
 virtue but humility." It is easy to palli- 
 ate the vices and exaggerate the excellences 
 of a character so captivating. Men pardon 
 
SAMSON: SELF-DECEPTION-. 113 
 
 excesses in a good-natured man who makes 
 them laugh. When they see one who never 
 backbites, nor envies, nor hesitates to squan- 
 der his money ; who is kind to his friends and 
 fearless of his foes ; going the broad way 
 which obviously leads to ruin, they are wont 
 to say, " He is a noble fellow ; " " He is his 
 own worst enemy." /They forget that the 
 same is true of those who do not pass for 
 "noble fellows;'' that lago, no less than 
 Othello, was " his own worst enemy." 
 
 We are drawn to Samson because he al- 
 ways appears with a smile upon his face. 
 We can hear his boisterous laughter as he 
 stands upon the hill that overlooks the Phil- 
 istine plain, and watches the frightened 
 jackals scampering through the fields of 
 ripe grain, scattering fire as they run. We 
 can detect the sly smile of smothered mirth, 
 as with lamb-like meekness he permits him- 
 self to be bound and delivered to his foes. 
 We wait without anxiety, with curiosity 
 alone, until he breaks his bonds, as one 
 breaks tow that fire has scorched, and smites 
 his captors hip and thigh, shouting out the 
 would-be pun, " With the jaw of an ass I 
 have slain a mass." A poor pun it is, but a 
 vent sufficing for his rollicking humor. He 
 
114 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 has all our sympathy when, rising at mid- 
 night, he steps carefully over the sleeping 
 Philistines' guards who are waiting to arrest 
 him at dawn ; unhinges the leaves of the 
 city gates, and lugs them on his burly shoul- 
 ders, like a school-boy sweating to accomplish 
 a practical joke, three miles, to the crest of 
 the hill, where all in Gaza must see them in 
 the morning. When he bends between the 
 pillars of Dagon's temple, his irrepressible 
 humor breaks forth in a last grim jest, 
 even in prayer : " Give me strength just 
 this once to be avenged for one of my two 
 eyes." For 
 
 "when he died his parting groan 
 
 Had more of laughter than of moan." 
 
 For more than twenty years this jovial, 
 mighty man of valor " judged Israel." Dur- 
 ing the whole of that period he w r as never 
 conquered until he told his secret. To see 
 him then, bound in fetters of brass, in the 
 prison-house of his repulsive foes, — 
 
 " Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill, with slaves ! " — 
 the sunny Samson blind ; the champion of 
 Israel at Gaza ; the resistless warrior in 
 prison ; the strongest of men doing woman's 
 work ; the breaker of fetters wearing them ; 
 
SAMSON: SELF-DECEPTION. 115 
 
 all on account of a moment's amiable weak- 
 ness; all because the great, strong, brave, 
 generous heart could not resist a woman's 
 crocodile tears — this seems too mournful. 
 It seems monstrous, a thing that ought not 
 to have been. 
 
 Yet such is, I think, substantially the gen- 
 eral estimate of Samson and of his career. 
 We weigh him in the same scales in which 
 society weighs the noble young men whom 
 every one loves, and who would be so use- 
 ful to the world, with their rare gifts, such 
 ornaments to the community, if only they 
 would not get drunk, nor gamble, nor break 
 the hearts of their wives and mothers ; if 
 only they had not been overcome by temp- 
 tation in moments of weakness, stolen the 
 funds of the men who trusted them, and 
 squandered the hardly earned savings of 
 other people in buying fine horses and build- 
 ing palaces for themselves. 
 
 I think we are wise in going to this epi- 
 sode with Delilah for the explanation of 
 Samson's ruin. But I doubt whether the 
 current reading of that episode is exhaus- 
 tive, and therefore I would have you read it 
 once more. 
 
 1. And first I would have you observe 
 
116 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 that the scene described in the text occurred, 
 not at the beginning, but at the close, of 
 Samson's career. For nearly twenty years 
 he had been at his work. Yet by his 
 strength and his courage, by his battles, his 
 jokes, and his various activities, he had 
 accomplished literally less than nothing of 
 the task he had been appointed to perform, 
 the task to which he had deliberately dedi- 
 cated his life. That task, assigned to him 
 by God, revealed through an angel, accepted 
 first by his parents and then by himself, was 
 the liberation of his country from Philistine 
 oppression. Twenty years have passed since 
 Samson, endowed with superhuman powers, 
 began his judgeship. Still his people are 
 not free. At his death the Philistines will 
 be stronger than they were at his birth, and 
 their chains more firmly riveted upon Israel. 
 Near the close of the twenty years Samson 
 himself is lying supine upon the breast of the 
 ablest, the most patriotic, and the most fas- 
 cinating of Philistine women. Surely some- 
 thing must be wrong ; something for which 
 Delilah alone is not responsible ; something 
 which cannot be explained by the theory of 
 a moment's amiable weakness in Samson 
 himself. 
 
SAMSON: SELF-DECEPTION. 117 
 
 2. Observe, when Samson yielded to an 
 irrational impulse and revealed his secret, 
 he only did once more what he had been 
 doing all his life. 
 
 There are two types of men. The first 
 are controlled by principle, the second by 
 impulse. The first live the life of God. 
 The second live the life of beasts. 
 
 A cat scratches when she feels like scratch- 
 ing, and purrs when she feels like purring. 
 When she scratches, we smite her; when she 
 purrs, we pet her. A snake hisses, a dove 
 coos. We kill snakes, we cherish doves. 
 But a man who does well only u when he 
 feels like it" is in training to do ill "when 
 he feels like" doing that. While he lives 
 the life of the dove, he is equally living 
 the life of the cat, of the snake. Samson 
 was such a man. There is not an act re- 
 corded of him which he did not perform 
 simply because he "felt like doing it." He 
 had been intrusted with an important mis- 
 sion. He had been furnished with abilities 
 adequate to its demands. He was allowed 
 twenty years to complete his work. Instead 
 of setting himself to do it, like a man, be- 
 cause it was given him to do, he worked only 
 when the impulse seized him, — when it was 
 
118 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 therefore easier for him to work than to 
 play. Thus even the right things he did — 
 if such can be found recorded, of which I am 
 not sure — trained him steadily to be more 
 and more the slave of his impulses ; and when 
 at last the impulse to do obviously wrong 
 came upon him, he obeyed it precisely as an 
 untrained cat scratches, and an untrained 
 horse kicks. 
 
 The essential blasphemy against God in 
 whose image we are made, the crime against 
 nature for us who have been created men and 
 not brutes, has been committed by the man 
 who says, " 1 will do as I like ; " "I will do 
 this just because I feel like doing it ; " " I 
 will leave that undone just because I do not 
 feel like doing it." 
 
 That fact explains why the magnificent 
 Samson was at last compelled to grind meal 
 in the mills of his enemies, though the sor- 
 did and servile Jacob came in due time to 
 be the prince of Israel. 
 
 3. The life of impidse in men always tends 
 to become the life of self-deception. 
 
 The text shows us how profound was the 
 deception which Samson practised upon him- 
 self. 
 
 Intentional deceit is the vice of the weak. 
 
SAMSON: SELF-DECEPTION. 119 
 
 Foxes and little children and slaves, who 
 have no other weapons of defence, take in- 
 stinctively to lying. But there are curves 
 so large that they seem flat. The world is 
 round, yet to us who live upon it the world 
 seems a plain. Such was Samson's curve 
 from the straight line of truth. 
 
 In my childhood I was suffered to believe 
 that so long as the Danite hero persisted in 
 telling lies to Delilah he was safe, while the 
 instant he whispered the truth he was lost. 
 An unwholesome moral that, especially for 
 children, even if it were taught in the Bi- 
 ble. But it is not taught in the Bible ; least 
 of all is it taught here. 
 
 Samson said, " If they bind me with green 
 withes I shall be as another man." That 
 every child perceives to be a lie. " If they 
 bind me with new ropes." That, too, is 
 obviously a falsehood. " If my locks are 
 weaved together." That was no less evi- 
 dently a deception. But what every child 
 who reads this narrative should be made to 
 understand is this : when Samson told Deli- 
 lah " all that was in his heart," that is, when 
 he uttered to her his profoundest conviction, 
 and said, " I have been a Nazarite from my 
 youth," he spoke perhaps the largest lie that 
 
120 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 exists in recorded literature, though lie had 
 so warped his conscience that he believed it 
 to be a truth. The penalty of persistent* 
 lying is loss of ability to discern the truth. 
 
 Samson knew perfectly well what a JNaz- 
 arite was. An angel had explained the 
 meaning of the word to his parents before 
 he was born. It was clearly defined in the 
 laws of Moses. His father and mother re- 
 minded him of its significance when, in his 
 first recorded action, he refused to heed its 
 meaning. 
 
 A Nazarite was one set apart by God for 
 a peculiar mission, who accepted the mission 
 and renounced the world, with all its pleas- 
 ures, in order to devote his energies, undis- 
 tracted by the common allurements or cares 
 of life, to the vocation to which he had been 
 called. As a sign that he accepted his ap- 
 pointed work, the Nazarite was required to 
 abstain from wine, and to wear his hair un- 
 cut ; indications that he had no leisure to 
 enjoy the ordinary gratifications or conform 
 to the current customs of society. These 
 outward signs, the long hair and the absti- 
 nence from wine, were merely door-plates 
 announcing that a devoted and self-denying 
 spirit dwelt within. Samuel was a Nazarite. 
 
SAMSON: SELF-DECEPTION. 121 
 
 John the Baptist was a Nazarite: But there 
 was no need of mentioning their long hair to 
 advertise the fact. Their lives evinced it. 
 But Samson was the worldliest of the world- 
 ly. Year after year he lived the most ob- 
 vious falsehood, a falsehood proclaimed by 
 his unshorn locks to every eye that beheld 
 him. His long hair said : " This is a man who 
 sacrifices himself, yields every personal de- 
 sire, every personal interest, every pleasure 
 this world can give, every hope and every 
 fear, to a divinely given mission." Yet not 
 one deed is recorded of this long-haired man 
 which was not done to gratify some personal 
 passion, some personal vanity, or some per- 
 sonal impulse. Torquemada in the Spanish 
 inquisition is certainly a repulsive object in 
 our eyes, and Samson, even in his wild ex- 
 cesses of good humor, seems attractive to us. 
 But Torquemada, kindling fires to burn those 
 he hates, and calling himself a disciple of 
 Jesus because he wears a red cross embroi- 
 dered upon his black robe, was not a more 
 colossal fraud than Samson devoting his life 
 to the gratification of his whims, his vanity, 
 and his lusts, while he called himself a Naz- 
 arite because he wore long hair. It was 
 time his hair should be cut, time that he who 
 had so thoroughly deceived himself, should 
 
122 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 at last be taught the truth. Be sure it was 
 not his veracity, but his living and speaking 
 a lie, which caused his ruin. 
 
 4. This sunny Samson, whom we have all 
 admired so much; from whose sorrows we 
 cannot withhold our sympathy ; in whom 
 Milton saw the tragedy of his own heroic 
 life foreshadowed, and Handel recognized a 
 prototype ; with whom Ewald has taught us 
 to laugh and Stanley to rejoice, appears to 
 have been but a sham hero after all. Essen- 
 tially, beneath the splendid clothes he wore, 
 he seems to have been an altogether selfish 
 and paltry creature. What act of his has 
 been recorded which he did not do for his 
 own sake ? 
 
 He fell in love with a Philistine woman. 
 Thwarted in his love, he attacked and slew 
 the men who had thwarted him. That was 
 his first obedience to the Nazarite vow which 
 bound him to devote his life, without shar- 
 ing the common passions of mankind, solely 
 to the emancipation of his country. 
 
 Provoked by a personal injury, he declared, 
 " I will be avenged," and set fire to the corn- 
 fields of those with whom he was angry. 
 That was his second act of obedience to the 
 Nazarite vow. Besieged in Gaza by men 
 who sought his life, he arose at midnight, 
 
SAMSON: SELF-DECEPTION, 123 
 
 and wasted his great strength lugging the 
 city gates to place them where they would 
 advertise his prowess. This prank, which 
 exasperated without weakening the foes of 
 his country, was the third act of obedience 
 to his Nazarite vow. 
 
 When bound hand and foot, and sur- 
 rounded by his own vindictive enemies, he 
 broke the ropes that bound him, and slew a 
 thousand men to save his own life. Of all 
 these amazing efforts not one was inspired 
 by patriotism or the memory of his vow ; 
 and when at last the inevitable end of such 
 a career had come, his dying prayer, as he 
 bent between the pillars, was not for his 
 country, but for himself : " O Lord, that I 
 may be avenged upon the Philistines." ■ 
 
 Is it not plain why Samson's life was 
 futile? 
 
 Why, then, is it that the career of Samson 
 fascinates us, and why do we find it difficult 
 to blame him ? If he was the slave of his 
 passions, a false man, a wholly selfish, trivial 
 man, why do we not despise him ? 
 
 I will answer that question by asking an- 
 other. Why do men admire Byron, Aaron 
 Burr, and Napoleon ? And why is it woe to 
 the disciples of Christ when all men speak 
 well of them ? 
 
X. 
 
 TO PARENTS. 
 
 Train tip a child in the way he should go, and when 
 he is old he will not depart from it. — Pkoy. xxii. G. 
 
 The text may have originated with Solo- 
 mon. If so, it contains the judgment of the 
 most observant and sagacious of men. More 
 probably it was a proverb in Israel, and 
 therefore expresses the general judgment of 
 the race which has trained its children more 
 admirably than any other which has yet ap- 
 peared on earth. 
 
 When Waltham would make watches it 
 went to Geneva for instruction. For the 
 same reason wise parents turn to the Bible 
 for guidance in family discipline. 
 
 I. The example of Solomon warns us to 
 remember that those who do not govern 
 themselves, cannot govern their children. 
 In this respect the celebrated epigram upon 
 Charles II., 
 
 ' ' Who never said a foolish thing", 
 And never did a wise one," 
 
 may be applied to the wise king of Israel. 
 
TO PARENTS. 125 
 
 We do not know that any of Solomon's 
 sons turned out well, and yet the most judi- 
 cious maxims for parents that can be found 
 have come to us through him. 
 
 The background of the text, therefore, 
 warns us that the first essential in the gov- 
 ernment of our children is the government 
 of ourselves. Rehoboam did not obey his 
 father's precepts; he imitated his father's 
 example. 
 
 A large part of parental discipline must 
 consist in rewards and punishments. God's 
 government is full of them. Every act of 
 obedience to his law is rewarded ; every act 
 of disobedience is punished. But the di- 
 vine punishments are administered without 
 a tinge of passion. If one lies he will suf- 
 fer. If one gets drunk his head will ache. 
 These penalties are inexorable. But the 
 drunkard feels that he suffers not because 
 God is angry with him, but because he has 
 dashed himself against a law. 
 
 When parents punish children, it is of- 
 ten only bad temper at work. The boy has 
 been forbidden to throw stones. He throws 
 twenty, and nothing is done. The twenty- 
 first breaks a window-pane, and he is dis- 
 ciplined with perhaps undue enthusiasm. 
 
126 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 He knows lie is made to suffer, not because 
 he has broken a law, but because he has 
 broken a window. He thinks his father 
 "outrageous" to care so much for a bit of 
 glass, and his opinion is indisputably correct. 
 
 A child by his fretful ways makes the 
 house a purgatory until his mother's patience 
 is exhausted. Then she boxes his ears, and 
 so makes him realize, not that she can gov- 
 ern him, but that she cannot govern herself. 
 
 A man burned down his house by trying 
 to govern his stove before he had learned 
 to govern himself. The weather was cold 
 and the coal would not burn. He shook out 
 the ashes. He grew hot and red. The 
 lever slipped and bruised his fingers. It 
 slipped again and bruised them worse. 
 Then the grate stuck fast. He caught the 
 lever with both hands, braced both feet, and 
 jerked it viciously. Of course the stove was 
 upset, the hot coals rolled upon the floor, 
 and he shouted for assistance. The stove 
 cared nothing for his temper. It obeyed 
 its own laws. When the man lost his tem- 
 per, he could not perceive those laws. But 
 the safety of his house depended upon his 
 obeying them. 
 
 The laws which govern the human spirit 
 
TO PARENTS. 127 
 
 are as inexorable, and "far more occult and 
 complex, than those which govern stoves. 
 A man in temper is always blind to them. 
 He can better afford to burn up twenty 
 houses than one home. Yet often have I 
 been called to help put out the fire when 
 the parent's temper had upset the child. 
 
 There is a false principle, sometimes de- 
 liberately adopted by parents, which works 
 nearly as much disaster as bad temper itself ; 
 which is in fact the cosey nest in which bad 
 temper often hatches its eggs, secure from 
 attacks of conscience. It is this : " I have 
 but one law with my children. That is, 
 absolute, instant obedience to my command. 
 Even when I have given an order which it 
 would have been wiser not to have given, 
 I exact unquestioning obedience, for the 
 parent's authority must be preserved ; and if 
 a child once is allowed to question the wis- 
 dom of my commands, the foundations of 
 family government will be undermined." 
 
 This is simply retaining in the household 
 a legal fiction which has long been rejected 
 from every civil government except perhaps 
 in Russia and Turkey. It used to be said 
 and believed, " The king can do no wrong." 
 That fiction has cost many a sovereign both 
 
128 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 crown and head. It was blown into frag- 
 ments, with memorable solemnities, by the 
 French Revolution. The certain way to 
 convince the people that their king can do 
 no right, has been found to be, insisting that 
 he can do no wrong. Parents who are not 
 fools know that they are fallible. If they 
 try to teach their children otherwise, they 
 try to teach what they know is not true ; 
 and, in this world, no good ever comes of 
 lying. The instant a parent finds himself 
 in the wrong, he should confess the fact to 
 his child. That is the one sure way of estab- 
 lishing and maintaining his authority. 
 
 I knew a child of exceptionally quick and 
 strenuous impulses. Though affectionate he 
 was not obedient, and needed to "be watched 
 as a weasel to be kept from mischief. His 
 father told him to pick up a pin. The 
 father thought the boy refused, but the 
 father was mistaken. A sharp rebuke. The 
 boy began to sulk (I had far rather hear a 
 child swear than see him sulk). " Come here, 
 sir!" The child did not stir. The father 
 lost his temper. He seized his boy tempes- 
 tuously ; carried him into another room for 
 punishment. The moment's delay brought 
 the man to himself. He sat for a little while 
 
TO PARENTS. 129 
 
 with his child in his arms. Then said : "My 
 son, we have done wrong. I have lost my 
 temper and you have lost yours. It is worse 
 for me to do that than it is for you, because 
 I am bigger and stronger and ought to be 
 wiser than you. I ask God to forgive me and 
 I ask you. I must be right before I can 
 help you to be right. Help me to be a good 
 father, so that I can help you to be a good 
 son." The sullen defiance left the child's 
 face. His arms clasped his father's neck. 
 " Father, I did n't say what you thought I 
 did ! " The child was six years old. He is 
 now sixteen. The father is a quick-tem- 
 pered man. But I have heard him say 
 repeatedly that, for ten years, he has never 
 had occasion to rebuke his boy, by word or 
 gesture, for the slightest approach to disobe- 
 dience. The man of fifty and the boy of 
 sixteen appear to live and have their being 
 in each other as a single soul. 
 
 It is sometimes urged : " But the child's 
 will must be broken. Unless that is done 
 he will surely come to grief.'' 
 
 Break a child's will ! You had better 
 break his back. The parent's chief business 
 is to strengthen his child's will. Will power 
 means success both in this life and in the 
 
130 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 life which is to come. Men become drunk- 
 ards because they lack will power. They 
 fail in their vocations ; they sink into idle- 
 ness and pauperism and all manner of ruin- 
 ous self-indulgences, because their wills are 
 weak. They do not become Christians, or 
 they continue paltry, useless Christians, be- 
 cause they have so little will power. 
 
 A kitten is born blind and weak of limb. 
 Nature prepares it to be a good cat not by 
 breaking its weak little claws, but by open- 
 ing its blind little eyes. The parents' busi- 
 ness is not to make children do what is right, 
 which for a time is easy and then impossible, 
 but to make them will what is right, which 
 at first is difficult, but if achieved becomes 
 instinctive. 
 
 Johnnie has disobeyed. You said he 
 should not play with the carving knife, and 
 there it is in his hand. It is there because 
 his will is weak, not as you fancy because 
 his will is strong. When you told him not 
 to do it, there was in him a little bit of res- 
 olution to obey you, because he loves you. 
 But the resolution was not strong enough 
 to resist ^temptation. Your business is to 
 strengthen his weak will until it becomes 
 stronger than anything that can attack it. 
 
TO PARENTS. 131 
 
 There are a hundred different ways of doing 
 this, and the study of your life should be to 
 find them. You may conquer the child a 
 thousand times, and each time you have in- 
 jured him unless you have helped him to 
 conquer himself. Every child, even when 
 in a fury, is a little Paul. He feels, though 
 he cannot say, " Wretched child that I am. 
 That which I would not I do, and that 
 which I would I do not. Who shall deliver 
 me from the body of this death." You, the 
 parent, are set by God to deliver him by 
 strengthening his will. 
 
 II. How to do this the text can teach us. 
 
 1. By training the child " in the way he 
 should go." 
 
 Avoid training him in the way he ought 
 not to go. The babe lies quietly in his 
 little crib. His soft eyes wander over the 
 room. He is studying hard. He begins to 
 smile and coo. He is obeying the sweetest 
 impulses that can sway the human spirit. 
 Wise mothers select this moment to whisper 
 in his ears murmurs of approval and endear- 
 ment. They let other matters wait while 
 they smile upon their darling. Foolish 
 mothers let him lie without a word. They 
 are too busy to notice, and are only thankful 
 
132 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 that the child is quiet. But when he grows 
 weary and begins to kick and scream, they 
 hasten to caress him, and call him "mother's 
 precious darling." So in politics and in 
 churches it not infrequently occurs, that a 
 man may continue until he dies doing all 
 things, bearing all things, sacrificing all 
 things for the general good, sweet spirited 
 as Stephen, while none praise, none observe, 
 except to use him for their own selfish ends. 
 But the instant he grows fractious and hate- 
 ful enough, all begin to pet and truckle to 
 him for fear of what he may do next. They 
 even put him in office, not because he is 
 fit for the place, but to keep him in good 
 temper. 
 
 Babies are by no means fools. When 
 they get petted for kicking and neglected for 
 smiling they draw influential inferences. 
 
 It should be remembered that when, at 
 the beginning of his career, a healthy child 
 screams or frets, it is always pins or colic. 
 If it is pins, remove them. If colic, send 
 for the physician. If it is because you have 
 trained him to disturb the household by his 
 temper, you must undo your work. 
 
 The wisest and tenderest mother I ever 
 knew, a mother loved so dearly that when 
 
TO PARENTS. 133 
 
 she had been a year in heaven her youngest 
 child, only eight years old, was heard say- 
 ing : " We must take care to remember what 
 mother said, because if we make her sorry 
 now she cannot tell us ! " made it an inflex- 
 ible rule that her children should never 
 have anything for which they cried. Before 
 most parents would have supposed them old 
 enough to understand her meaning, she care- 
 fully explained to them that in this world no 
 one ever gets anything by whining for it ; at 
 least no one ought to, and they certainly 
 would not. Her teaching was effective. 
 
 Again, when a child trips or stumbles 
 and hurts himself, have you never heard, 
 " Naughty chair to trip baby ! Mamma whip 
 chair." It is easy in that fashion to dry up 
 tears ! But it is drying them by kindling the 
 fires of hell. It is planting seeds whose har- 
 vests appear in the moody man who blames 
 circumstances for the results of his own 
 transgressions. Is it not as easy to rouse 
 the sweet side of the child's nature by work- 
 ing through his imagination ; to say, " Poor 
 chair ! Baby hurt chair. Mamma kiss chair 
 and make it well." That is to dry tears by 
 the sun of heaven. 
 
 A hundred illustrations are at hand. 
 
134 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 Perhaps the commonest is this. A child 
 snatches at table. " Why, my son ! Sup- 
 pose company were here ! What would Mrs. 
 B think if she saw you do that ! " 
 
 So the principle of conduct which Christ 
 vehemently denounced is instilled into the 
 receptive spirit, and the little one is taught 
 to " do all things to be seen of men." The 
 child is forced to feel that the opinions of 
 strangers are more important than the hap- 
 piness of his parents and sisters. Thus ; for 
 as those who know tell us that before a hu- 
 man being is three years old it learns more 
 than it ever acquires after that age, though 
 it should live to be a hundred ; and as the 
 child is father of the man ; a crop is sown 
 of husbands who will be polite to every 
 one's wife except their own ; of fathers and 
 brothers who will suppress their tempers in 
 society, and let them effervesce at home. 
 
 2. We are told to train a child in the 
 " way he should go." 
 
 But many train them to stand still. It is 
 a child's nature "to go," and go he will. 
 Eight or wrong he will go ! 
 
 A common mistake, and a fatal one, is 
 made by those who endeavor to mould 
 children by negatives. 
 
TO PARENTS. 135 
 
 God begins their training by prompting 
 them to incessant activity. They never rest 
 save when they are sick or asleep. 
 
 Parents are often satisfied with telling 
 children what they must not do. Long ago 
 Milton wrote that one ounce of right doing 
 was worth many pounds of forcible preven- 
 tion of wrong doing. I suppose most of us 
 have reproved our little ones twenty times 
 for doing what we did not want them to do, 
 for once that we have praised them for 
 doing as we wished to have them. Who 
 watches and when the child has tried twenty 
 times in vain to make his card house stand, 
 cries out " Bravo ! " when at the twenty-first 
 attempt his perseverance succeeds ? The 
 way to prevent a child from doing wrong 
 things is to encourage him in doing right 
 ones. 
 
 A parent should be a governor in the me- 
 chanical meaning of that word. He should 
 be a great fly-wheel. When the little wheels 
 work too fast, it gathers up the superfluous 
 energy. When they flag, it restores the 
 hoarded force, and thus keeps them all mov- 
 ing evenly, but moving. Most of us per- 
 form the least important part of the duty. 
 We check the disturbing energy, especially 
 
186 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 when our heads ache, but we do not give it 
 back to impel the children forward in good 
 works. 
 
 3. To train a child in the way he should 
 go is often a different matter from training 
 him in the way we wish he would go. 
 
 There are certain not over wise maxims 
 which have been over much believed. Such 
 are these : that the child is blank paper, 
 upon which the parent may write what he 
 likes ; that as the twig is bent the tree is in- 
 clined ; that the child is virgin soil, in which 
 you may plant what seed you choose, sure 
 that it will bear fruit after its kind. 
 
 Parents who think so are like to reap fine 
 crops from their virgin soil ! The child is a 
 field in which ancestors have been planting 
 seeds for thousands of years. That small 
 bundle of impotence in your cradle is full of 
 germs as a tropic jungle. Your business is 
 to watch them, to cultivate the flowers and 
 train the weeds, remembering that every 
 weed has its uses. Tares and wheat will 
 show their blades. ^Ve must recognize them 
 when they appear. All the educational 
 steam-pumps in the universe will never force 
 into a child anything of which God has not 
 put the germ within him. TTe can create 
 
TO PARENTS. 137 
 
 nothing. We can only educate, that is, 
 " draw out " into strength and beautiful 
 growths what is already there. 
 
 Watch, and wait, and pray. Nothing 
 will come up which wise and patient culture 
 cannot train to useful manhood; even the 
 tares can be made to fertilize the wheat. 
 That boy is sly, secretive, deceitful. But 
 this badness is only the untrained fruit of 
 caution. Watched with sufficient care, it 
 may be made the useful helper of frankness 
 and valor. 
 
 4. To train a child in the way he should 
 go is not to train him as other children 
 should go. 
 
 This is the reason why there appears so 
 often one black sheep in the flock. Parents 
 are sometimes spoiled by their success with 
 one child, until reformed by their failure 
 with another. They think they have only to 
 cast each child into the same candle mould 
 which shaped their first so well. 
 
 But children are born to go different 
 ways. The master in a menagerie trains 
 each animal according to its nature. He 
 does not try to make a falcon swim, or a fish 
 fly, or an otter climb. But the distinctions 
 between children are no less radical, and 
 
138 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 far more subtle and difficult to discern. 
 Parents should remember that because they 
 have succeeded with one child they are in 
 danger of failing with another. Teaching a 
 chicken to scratch does not qualify for teach- 
 ing a duck to swim, except in the general 
 way that it trains the trainer to be patient, 
 persistent, and watchful. In certain re- 
 spects all animals are similar, and all chil- 
 dren are alike. If you show temper to ani- 
 mals, all will exhibit temper in return. But 
 each in a different way. One will bite, an- 
 other will scratch, another will kick, another 
 will run away. If you are kind and just, 
 all will respond and try to do your bidding, 
 but each in its own fashion. 
 
 To the lay eye these larvae look substan- 
 tially alike. To it small differences in shade 
 and size seem immaterial. But at a glance 
 the naturalist declares, "That will be a 
 white miller, give it grape leaves to eat; 
 that will be a silk moth, give it mulberry ; 
 and that will be a purple emperor, feed it 
 upon oak." 
 
 If men would observe their children, upon 
 whose welfare their most precious hopes de- 
 pend, with half the judicious care they have 
 bestowed upon beasts and birds and fishes 
 and insects, great would be their reward. 
 
XI. 
 
 SAVING FAITH. 
 
 To Children. 
 
 Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be 
 saved. —Acts xvi. 31. 
 
 This promise was made to a man in great 
 trouble. The man learned to believe in the 
 Lord Jesus Christ and was saved from his 
 trouble. 
 
 The words are as true for us to-day as 
 they were for that man eighteen hundred 
 years ago. Our troubles may be great or 
 small. They may come from having the 
 measles ; from not getting what we want ; 
 from losing our friends, or from having to 
 do what we &on't like. Whatever they are, 
 if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ we 
 shall be saved from them every one. 
 
 Not very many days ago there was a little 
 boy in such distress that he could not eat 
 his breakfast. When he tried to, his head 
 dropped upon his plate, and he sobbed as 
 
140 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 if his heart would break. He had behaved 
 badly in school. His teacher had sent a 
 note to his father. He was mortified and 
 miserable. His sobs- asked as plainly as 
 words, " What shall I do to be saved? " 
 
 Something within him said, " Teacher 
 was mean as dirt to tell father! Pay her 
 back. Be as hateful as you can without get- 
 ting docked. Believe in me" 
 
 His father answered, " Jesus says you 
 have been mean. He tells us when we have 
 injured any one to confess it, and ask their 
 pardon. Believe in Him, my boy, and you 
 will be saved." 
 
 The little fellow went to school. 
 "Teacher," he said, "I'm ashamed I acted 
 so you had to tell father. I 'm sorry, and I 
 will try to be a good boy." He said this 
 aloud like a man. All the boys heard him. 
 He expected they would laugh at him and 
 call him a sneak. But they did n't. His 
 misery and tears departed as the fog goes 
 before the sun. It was the happiest morn- 
 ing he ever spent in school. 
 
 This boy believed in the Lord Jesus and 
 was saved from his trouble. 
 
 I. The Bible tells us that Jesus cannot 
 save us unless we believe in Him. I wish 
 
SAVING FAITH, 141 
 
 you would stop a moment and think that 
 out. 
 
 God gave you a mother. Without her 
 care you would have died almost as soon as 
 you were born. She fed you, dressed you, 
 kept you warm, and saved you from a thou- 
 sand perils of which you knew nothing, 
 before you could do anything to help your- 
 self. 
 
 So God has given you a Saviour, Jesus 
 Christ. You cannot know a thousandth part 
 of what He has done for you and is doing 
 for you all the time. 
 
 But there are many things, and they are 
 the worst things, from which a mother can- 
 not save her child unless he believes in her. 
 
 When Charlie began to creep his mother 
 told him not to go near the fire or it would 
 hurt him. But Charlie's eyes told him a 
 different story. They said, " The flame is 
 kind and beautiful ; go catch it. Perhaps 
 you can make it sing like a bird." Charlie 
 believed in his eyes, not in his mother, and 
 the flame did not long seem lovely to him. 
 Another time his mother caught her unbe- 
 lieving boy before he reached the grate. 
 He screamed and struggled to get away 
 from her. He grew angry and hot. That 
 
142 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 too was misery for him. She could save him 
 from being burnt outside, but she could not 
 keep the fire from burning him inside, be- 
 cause he did not believe in her. 
 
 So you see a mother cannot save her child 
 from misery, even by holding him in her 
 arms and kissing him, unless he believes in 
 her. But when he trusts her more than he 
 trusts himself, believes her eyes and thoughts 
 rather than his own, the fire will not hurt, 
 it will help him. He will get its warmth 
 and beauty without its sting. For folks are 
 like trees, the things they believe are their 
 roots, and the things they do their fruits. 
 
 Trusting Jesus' eyes and ears and thoughts 
 more than our own St. Paul called " walk- 
 ing by faith." And Jesus himself called it 
 " Believing in Him." 
 
 II. It is not easy to believe in Jesus. If 
 it were the Bible would not spend so much 
 time urging us to do it. For people do not 
 need much urging to do easy things, but 
 hard ones. 
 
 Even the things we see with our eyes are 
 often so different from what they seem, that 
 it is hard to believe the truth about them. 
 Our eyes say the sun moves and the earth 
 stands still. When my father toJd me how 
 
SAVING FAITH. 143 
 
 the earth rolled round I did not believe him, 
 because I thought the chimneys would tum- 
 ble off the houses and the water out of the 
 wells every night if what he said were true. 
 But when we come to things we cannot see 
 it is harder still to believe the truth. We 
 are like travellers in a strange country who 
 know neither the way nor the language, and 
 do not see things as they are, but call stones 
 bread, and gall honey, and poison water. 
 There is something inside us always saying 
 black is white, and bitter is sweet. If we 
 believe it we get into no end of trouble here, 
 and if we keep on believing it we shall be in 
 misery always in this world and the next, 
 for everything — even the kindest things, 
 health and wealth and Christmas and friends 
 — will hurt us. 
 
 But Jesus understands everything, and 
 always tells us the truth about it. If we 
 believe in Him all things, even the hateful- 
 lest, sickness and poverty and enemies, will 
 help us. Therefore the first business of a 
 wise boy or man will be to learn what Jesus 
 calls things, and believe that ; to learn what 
 Jesus tells us, and do that. 
 
 Many a boy thinks, " If I had a veloci- 
 pede, a pony, and a sail -boat; if I could 
 
144 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 have everything I want by wishing for it ; 
 if I never had to do anything I don't like, I 
 should be happy." 
 
 Almost everybody in the world thinks the 
 same. People do not often say it, but they 
 act it, and Jesus tells us always to judge 
 what a man believes by what he does and not 
 by what he says. Most of the misery in the 
 world comes from people's thinking they can 
 be made happy by getting what they want 
 and doing what they like. It is not true. 
 Every one who tries finds out some time that 
 it is false. Your father can tell you of men 
 who have everything money can buy, who 
 are able to do as they please, and yet are 
 not half so happy as they used to be when 
 they were children and had to live in a poor 
 little house with scarcely enough to eat. 
 
 Jesus says we can be happy only through 
 loving God and our neighbors. If we do 
 that we shall be glad, whether we are rich 
 or poor, sick or well. Neither father nor 
 mother can tell you of any one who has 
 tried Jesus' way and found that He was mis- 
 taken. 
 
 III. Believing in Jesus is a habit. TTe 
 cannot believe in Him once for all and have 
 it over like being vaccinated. AYe must ac- 
 
SAVING FAITH. 145 
 
 quire the habit little by little, day by day, 
 just as we learn to walk or skate or believe 
 in our mothers. We believed in them first 
 of all because we loved them. But our 
 faith grew stronger as we found that, when- 
 ever we thought differently from them, 
 they were always right and we were always 
 wrong. 
 
 But some one is ready to say : " I thought 
 being saved always meant in the Bible going 
 to heaven when we die ; and all your sermon 
 is about this world ! " 
 
 In thinking so you are partly right and 
 partly wrong. That kind of believing which 
 does not help us out of trouble and into hap- 
 piness in this world will not help us into 
 heaven when we die. But if you learn to 
 believe in the Lord Jesus so that He saves 
 you from misery in this world, something 
 will happen to you even better than going 
 to heaven when you die. You will find your- 
 self in heaven before you die. That is what 
 Jesus promised. A little girl looked up and 
 longed for the beautiful blue sky. I told her 
 she was in the sky already, only she did 
 not know it. Every time she breathed she 
 swallowed some of the sky. In it she lived 
 and moved and had her being as truly as the 
 
146 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 birds. When she held her breath — as she 
 did once in a passion — her ears hummed, 
 her head ached, and she grew black in the 
 face just because she would not let the sky- 
 get into her, though it tried to all the time. 
 So Jesus told a great many people they were 
 in heaven, only they did not know it, and 
 never would know it until they believed in 
 Him. This He said to Nicodemus, a rich 
 ruler ; to a poor ignorant woman in Sama- 
 ria ; and to Mary and Martha when their 
 brother was dead. 
 
 When we die we shall still be in heaven. 
 When worms become butterflies they have 
 the same air and sun as when they were 
 worms, only they enjoy the sun and air a 
 great deal more, because they themselves are 
 changed. 
 
 So when we die we shall have the same 
 God ip. whom we are living now. The same 
 Jesus who is the light of this world will be 
 the light of that world. If we cannot re- 
 joice in the light here we shall not rejoice 
 in Him there. 
 
 IV. Finally, Jesus says that if we will do 
 as He tells us we will believe in Him, be- 
 cause He has made us so that we cannot 
 help it. 
 
SAVING FAITH. 147 
 
 You can try the truth of his words this 
 minute if you like. 
 
 Perhaps mother has been reading this ser- 
 mon aloud to you. It would not be strange 
 if you were tired. Perhaps she is tired too. 
 Ask her. Say, " Mother, let me read to 
 you! I will read anything you like, and 
 I '11 try my best to read well." 
 
 " That 's too much trouble," says self. 
 " Do as you would be done by," says Jesus. 
 Try Him, and see what comes of obeying 
 Him. 
 
 Perhaps it is Sunday. The day seems 
 long and tedious. " I wish father would tell 
 me a story." " Whatsoever ye would that 
 men should do unto you do you even so unto 
 them," says Jesus. But you don't know 
 any story ! Then learn one. Take your 
 Bible and learn this story of Paul and the 
 jailer. Learn it so well that father will 
 enjoy hearing you tell it. 
 
 If you cannot yourself remember anything 
 Jesus tells you to do, ask your mother to re- 
 peat some command of his. Then do it at 
 once with all your might. You will find that 
 you cannot help believing in Him, and you 
 will find you are in heaven. You will un- 
 
148 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 derstand, too, better than all the preachers 
 in the world can explain it, the meaning of 
 the text: "Believe in the Lord Jesus 
 Christ and thou shalt be saved." 
 
XII. 
 
 FRANKLIN SNOW. 
 
 Covet earnestly the best gifts. — 1 Cor. xii. 31. 
 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three ; 
 but the greatest of these is charity. — 1 Cor. xiii. 13. 
 Follow after charity. — 1 Cor. xiv. 1. 
 
 While urging men to desire the best gifts 
 the Apostle is careful to remind them what 
 the best gifts are. Among them he does 
 not mention any of the things which most 
 of us spend our lives in seeking, but those 
 only which, when our lives are spent, we 
 shall wish we had spent them in obtaining. 
 Those, he tells us, are faith, hope, charity. 
 Such qualities of character are the sole pos- 
 sessions which neither moth nor rust can cor- 
 rupt, and which thieves cannot break through 
 nor steal. If the Apostle's estimate of life is 
 false, this sermon ought not to be preached. 
 If the Apostle's words are true, to withhold 
 it would be, in some sort, a crime. 
 
 Franklin Snow was a private Christian 
 gentleman. He never held a public office. 
 
150 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 The papers neither chronicled his deeds nor 
 heralded his praises. He was neither poet, 
 orator, scholar, nor statesman. He had not 
 even the poor renown of wealth. No insti- 
 tution, endowed by him, perpetuates his 
 name. He was a plain business man. If 
 the success of a business man can be meas- 
 ured by the amount of property he accumu- 
 lates, his career cannot be called successful. 
 When he died, a few brief paragraphs in 
 the newspapers announced that a citizen of 
 rare energy and worth had passed away. 
 
 Why, then, should I disturb the silence 
 that rests upon his memory ? He would not 
 have wished to be spoken of in this public 
 way. He desired no memorial, save that 
 which he has written in hearts that love him. 
 He shunned notoriety. Though his voice 
 was so often heard in prayer-meeting, who 
 can remember ever hearing him speak of 
 himself ? Christ, duty, the Christian's joys, 
 the Christian's privileges, these themes were 
 continually upon his lips, but his own deeds, 
 his own experiences, never. If, while he was 
 seen among us, he avoided mention of him- 
 self, far less does he desire it now. If we 
 praise his virtues, he has already heard the 
 Master say : " Well done ! " If we criticise 
 
FRANKLIN SNOW. 151 
 
 his imperfections, he himself has learned to 
 judge them by the standard which convicts 
 the angels of folly. To him our best praises 
 seem paltry now, our keenest censures super- 
 ficial. 
 
 But his life teaches a lesson we can ill af- 
 ford to lose. If I should tell you the story 
 of some dazzling genius, the recital would 
 help you only in so far as a generous admi- 
 ration always purifies the breast that feels 
 it. We admire such careers ; we cannot 
 imitate them. But achievements greater and 
 far more to be desired than those which 
 genius only can accomplish are possible to 
 all of us. The best things God has put 
 within the reach of every man. It is only 
 the inferior things, the things for which 
 God's immortal children cannot afford to 
 be anxious, the things which we soon shall 
 prize as we already prize the toys of our 
 childhood ; it is only these which any man 
 need forego. We cannot all have health 
 and wealth and length of days, but we all 
 may earn faith and hope and love. 
 
 I do not point you to Franklin Snow for 
 guidance in laying up what the world calls 
 treasures, but in winning those possessions 
 which God has placed us here to gain. 
 
152 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 Therefore, I shall put slight emphasis upon 
 his business abilities, great as they confes- 
 sedly were, and shall dwell upon those suc- 
 cesses w T hich he won with weapons offered to 
 us all by the Master when He said : " Thou 
 shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart and thy neighbor as thyself." 
 
 By the Apostle's standard, was Mr. 
 Snow's life a successful one ? 
 
 To that question this seems the sufficient 
 answer. Five weeks ago many of you at- 
 tended his funeral in this place. It was the 
 busiest hour of a business day. The snow 
 and sleet were falling fast. The keen March 
 wind blew savagely. Yet more than fifteen 
 hundred men and women left their business, 
 or their homes, and braved the fierce storm 
 to come hither. While the vast congrega- 
 tion waited, the silence was so deep, so ten- 
 der, that one who closed his eyes might 
 think the building empty. When oppor- 
 tunity was given to look upon his face, all 
 came forward. For nearly two hours the 
 slow procession moved. Every moment of 
 the time the air around his bier quivered 
 with sobs. Men whom Mr. Snow's most in- 
 timate friends had never seen before paused, 
 bent over the still face, kissed the cold fore- 
 head, and wept aloud. 
 
FRANKLIN SNOW. 153 
 
 Who were these mourners? You saw 
 them, and, therefore, know I do not exagger- 
 ate their woe. One was a colored man, born 
 and bred in slavery. " When I escaped 
 from Richmond, he fed me and clothed me. 
 He has been my father ever since ! " One 
 was a woman infirm with age : " When I 
 was intemperate and sold liquor years and 
 years ago he saved me, and taught me to 
 love Jesus." One was a young man univer- 
 sally respected now : " When I had flung 
 away my manhood, and could find no other 
 friend to help me, he raised me from the 
 mire, and made me all I am. He was as 
 Christ to me." Such were some of the ex- 
 clamations by which one and another of 
 those who stood by weeping held up to view 
 the garments which Dorcas had made. 
 
 Among these mourners came the men he 
 had employed in business. Many of them 
 were of different nationalities, of different 
 religious faiths from his. They were men 
 unused to tears. But as they passed they 
 clasped his hand, many of them kissed his 
 face and wept as women weep. The man 
 who has been for twelve years foreman in his 
 business household, when led away almost by 
 force, broke forth in loud and bitter cries 
 
154 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 that still ring in your memory. And when 
 the rest were gone, an old man lingered by 
 the bier as if he could not go. In his des- 
 olate face was written the woe he uttered : 
 "I have been in his employ at times for 
 five and twenty years. I have lost parents 
 and children and wife. I thought I knew 
 trouble, but I never felt all alone before." 
 
 I have been a pastor eighteen years. I 
 have attended many funerals, but I have 
 never before seen the face of the dead kissed 
 except by the lips of kinsmen. But here a 
 multitude of men, who had never sat at his 
 table, nor crossed the threshold of his home, 
 were moved by an impulse that seemed ir- 
 resistible to touch the dead face as Mary 
 touched the living feet. 
 
 If you would understand a man's true 
 character, go to his place of business: ask 
 the men he has employed, the men to whom 
 he has given orders, paid wages ; the men 
 who have worked for him and watched him 
 while they worked : ask what they think of 
 him, — ask when self-interest can no longer 
 dictate their replies. If tears choke their 
 voices when they try to tell you, mark that 
 man, for there is something in him worth 
 your minding. 
 
FRANKLIN SNOW. 155 
 
 Society may be deceived in him ; the 
 church may mistake long prayers for piety ; 
 self-love may cherish wife and children ten- 
 derly ; but a man's servitors learn to know 
 him as he is. 
 
 I will not pause to speak of letters which 
 have come from far and near since that day, 
 breathing the same sentiments which were 
 manifested here, — letters some of them in 
 which the writers attributed to him their own 
 resurrection from sin into Christian man- 
 hood. For a greater triumph than Caesar ever 
 won that funeral procession seemed to me. 
 
 In thirty-three years a generation passes. 
 If of those whom he had in fifty years 
 taught to love him so many remained in this 
 world to mourn because he had left it, how 
 vast must be the number of those who were 
 waiting on the other side to rejoice at his 
 coming ? To say : " We were hungry and 
 he fed us, in prison and he visited us ! " 
 
 Had he left millions of money and an in- 
 tellectual renown like Webster's, these would 
 have appeared paltry in comparison with 
 what he carried with him to us who believe 
 that love is the best possession. Therefore 
 it seems worth our while to inquire why this 
 man was so beloved ! How he made him- 
 
156 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 self, as it were, a part of other men's lives! 
 In what nursery the fruit he bore was 
 ripened. 
 
 Franklin Snow was the second of seven 
 children. He was born at Orleans, Mass., 
 fifty-one years ago the second of last March. 1 
 His parents were devout. They were not 
 wealthy, but the business of the father, a 
 merchant, supported the family in comfort. 
 Franklin had not fairly learned to walk when 
 a serious illness deprived him for life of the 
 sight of one eye. Before he was twelve 
 years old his four sisters died. He was but 
 twelve when he saw the form of his father 
 laid in the church-yard beside the forms of 
 his sisters. Then it became necessary for 
 the boy to leave the village school, and for 
 his brother Gideon, three years older than 
 himself, to go to sea. At fourteen Franklin 
 went to Provincetown alone, and there found 
 employment among strangers. In less than 
 a year he was brought back to Orleans pros- 
 trated by typhus fever. His life was for a 
 time despaired of. He awakened from deli- 
 rium to learn that both his mother and his 
 elder brother had taken the fever, and that 
 their forms also lay in the church-yard. 
 1 Spoken April, 1880. 
 
 
FRANKLIN SNOW. 157 
 
 Father, mother, four sisters, elder brother, 
 all had been taken. There was left to him, 
 of all his family, but one, a brother seven 
 years old. 
 
 How cruel God often appears until time 
 reveals his purposes ! Why should this boy, 
 gifted with a nature so affectionate, be so 
 fearfully bereaved ? Why should he be 
 enfeebled by sickness at the crisis wh&n he 
 most needed strength? Why should he be 
 forced to go forth alone, among the dangers 
 and hardships of the world, to fight the bat- 
 tle of life, not only for himself, but for the 
 child brother towards whom he felt thence- 
 forth a father's love and a father's care? 
 Such questions tempt one to doubt God's 
 thought for orphans. But time often brings 
 the answers to them. 
 
 Here in this city of Boston is an insti- 
 tution called " The Home for Little Wan- 
 derers." In it thousands of orphans have 
 found help and hope and happiness. It is 
 among the most Christlike institutions of 
 our city. Its existence and its success are 
 largely if not mainly due to the labors, the 
 sacrifices, and the prayers of Mr. Snow. 
 His hands were among the first to found it. 
 To his last day he carried it in his heart of 
 
158 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 hearts. In the soul of the boy of fifteen, 
 while he looked upon his own orphan brother, 
 God wrote with the diamond-point of pain 
 answers to the cries of many thousand or- 
 phans. So was the Captain of our Salva- 
 tion made perfect by suffering. It is suffi- 
 cient for the disciple to be as his Master. 
 
 Keenly as he felt his bereavements the boy 
 uttered no complaint, but turned sturdily to 
 his work. As soon as he had recovered 
 sufficient strength to go he returned to Prov- 
 incetown. In three years he achieved a 
 position of responsibility and influence there. 
 But success did not blind him to his lack 
 of education. The nature of his occupation 
 permitted him to be absent from it during 
 the winter, and careful economy enabled him 
 to spend two terms of four months each in 
 Phillips Academy at Andover. 
 
 He studied as he had worked, with all his 
 might. Before the close of his first term 
 his teachers advised him to prepare for a 
 professional life. 
 
 At Andover in his seventeenth year he 
 deliberately gave himself to the service of 
 Christ. There was at the time no special 
 religious interest in the Academy. Some 
 student, seeking assistants for the conduct 
 
FRANKLIN SNOW. 159 
 
 of the weekly prayer-meeting, asked if he 
 were a Christian. The question arrested 
 his attention. He could not answer it. He 
 retired to his room, locked the door, and 
 resolved that he would not open it until 
 he had answered the question. Then life 
 opened to his thought as it had never done 
 before. The narrow and the broad ways 
 seemed to meet at the door of his little dor- 
 mitory. When he opened it he must start 
 forward upon one of them. Which should he 
 choose ? He thought of his family in heaven. 
 He thought of the child brother intrusted 
 him to lead there. He reviewed his own 
 career until the hand which had guided and 
 protected him seemed almost visible. With 
 a great joy of gratitude he grasped it con- 
 sciously. On his knees he gave himself to 
 God ; then arose and went forth to tell the 
 boy who had asked him if he were a Chris- 
 tian that he would try to help in the prayer- 
 meetings. 
 
 He threw himself into religious activities 
 with the same energy which had given him 
 success in business and in study. 
 
 He began at once to work in the prayer- 
 meeting and in the Sunday-school. Each 
 Sunday he walked four miles to instruct a 
 
160 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 handful of children in a neglected district. 
 Friends felt it wise to warn him against 
 the exhaustion that might come of excessive 
 zeal. He answered : ;; I find it brings great 
 good to myself to be thus engaged in reli- 
 gious work, and that I need to attend on all 
 the means of grace." 
 
 He resolved, as one way of obeying the 
 Master's last command, to speak in prayer- 
 meeting whenever opportunity was offered. 
 But he did not expect to speak without prep- 
 aration. " One may pump forever/' he wrote, 
 "and get no water out of a well that is dry." 
 He began to read the Bible carefully and 
 prayerfully. He took notes of the sermons 
 he heard ; he wrote to Christian friends ask- 
 ing for facts and suggestions to be used in 
 prayer- meetings : he searched the papers 
 and periodicals within his reach : he sought 
 assistance of the Seminary students and 
 professors in furnishing his mind, until the 
 habit was formed in him of gathering un- 
 consciously from all directions material for 
 devotional utterance. This was the source 
 of his freshness in religious meetings. 
 
 With him religion was never a penance 
 but always a delight. AVhat many do as a 
 price to buy heaven he did because he loved 
 
 
FRANKLIN SNOW. 161 
 
 to do it. Years after leaving Andover he 
 wrote : " It appears to me that if the Sab- 
 bath were blotted out of the privileges I 
 enjoy, one half of all the pleasure of living 
 would be lost." 
 
 He greatly desired to be a minister. Dur- 
 ing his second term the question was con- 
 stantly in his mind. Friends and teachers 
 advised him to gratify his wish. It cost 
 him a hard struggle not to do so. A chief 
 motive in his decision was that, unless he 
 returned to business, means could not be 
 furnished to prepare for the ministry another 
 whom he believed by nature better fitted for 
 it than himself. 
 
 At eighteen he came to Boston. Flatter- 
 ing offers had been made to detain him in 
 Provincetown. The management of the 
 business of the Union Wharf Company, 
 with an ample salary, was offered him. It 
 was a tempting prospect. But he declined 
 it, believing that he needed a larger business 
 experience than could be gained in a pro- 
 vincial town. 
 
 It is worth our while to consider what cap- 
 ital this boy of eighteen brought to Boston. 
 First of all, he brought a pure soul in a pure 
 body. Mr. Snow, his own master from his 
 
162 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 fourteenth year, was his own master. Cast 
 at that early age into the midst of the 
 world's temj)tations, without father, mother, 
 or sister, he never experienced in any form 
 the smirch of dissipation. Those w T ho have 
 known him from childhood may be safely 
 challenged to recall one gross utterance, one 
 indelicate expression, from his lips. He af- 
 filiated with the pure, because he was pure 
 in heart. He never possessed that super- 
 ficial polish of fine manners which is able to 
 conceal a cancer in the soul. But in purity 
 of manhood, in genuine delicacy and refine- 
 ment of thought and feeling, he has been 
 equalled by few and surpassed by none. 
 His modesty was like the modesty of women 
 in the presence of which vice cringes and is 
 ashamed. When he gave his body to be a 
 living sacrifice he had no infamous habits 
 to eradicate, no pledges to sign, no infernal 
 thirsts to fight, no festering ulcers to heal. 
 AYith a magnificent physique, capable of 
 bearing for years strains which would have 
 crushed many a man in months, he began 
 life's battle. 
 
 Next in the inventory of his possessions 
 were five years of business experience pa- 
 tiently and laboriously acquired; habits of 
 
FRANKLIN SNOW. 163 
 
 intense industry ; the confidence and good 
 will of all who knew him ; the primary educa- 
 tion of a village school ; the results of eight 
 months well used at Andover ; the love of 
 God supreme in his heart, and the necessity 
 of earning each meal before he ate it. A 
 finer capital who could ask? He sought 
 employment at the leading fish-house in the 
 city, and was told that, though no new help 
 was needed, he might begin work on proba- 
 tion at |250 a year. 
 
 He had come from a position of authority 
 and dignity, which he had been pressed to 
 resume with increased emoluments. It was 
 open to him still. But without hesitation 
 he accepted the new position, which appears 
 to have been offered with the expectation 
 that he would decline it. "I hope," he 
 wrote to his only confidential friend, " I 
 hope I shall not have to ascend all the steps 
 of clerkship as I have done, for that would 
 seem pretty hard. My employment thus far 
 has been principally to collect bills, to do 
 some writing, to take care of the store, and 
 when we have to deliver goods, I have to see 
 to the marking. It is a place in which a 
 great deal of business is done, and I think 
 it an excellent one for a young man wishing 
 
164 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 to learn correct business habits." Brave, 
 bright words ! 
 
 It was not long before his employers found 
 that they needed him ; found that they 
 could not afford to dispense with him. He 
 made all their interests his own. Each 
 morning found him the first at the wharf, 
 and the evenings saw him the last to leave 
 it. A few months excepted, he remained 
 with this house until he began business in 
 his own name. By six years of faithful ser- 
 vice he won such consideration in the house 
 that, when the firm dissolved, each of the 
 partners solicited his partnership in a new 
 firm, and when that was declined, each of- 
 fered him the capital required to establish 
 him independently in business. The offer 
 of one was accepted, and in 1853 the name 
 of Franklin Snow appeared at the head of 
 a firm, which in due time took front rank 
 among the leading fish-houses of the United 
 States. 
 
 He had turned from the pulpit to the 
 counting-room in obedience not to his de- 
 sires, but to his sense of duty. He meant 
 to serve God in his business. It was his 
 conviction that all success depends upon the 
 divine favor. Such errors as he made were 
 
FRANKLIN SNOW, 165 
 
 errors of judgment. His exuberant hope- 
 fulness at times hurried him into complica- 
 tions which all his vast energy was not able 
 to unwind. Even in questions of right and 
 wrong his judgments were not infallible. 
 Are any man's? But what he thought right 
 he did. What he thought wrong he would 
 not do. He abhorred deceit. He spoke the 
 truth, even to his own hurt. God was in all 
 his thoughts. 
 
 He realized how easily the flame of devo- 
 tion may be extinguished by the whirlwinds 
 of the market. " I find myself in such a 
 continued whirlpool of business," he wrote 
 more than twenty years ago, "that some- 
 times it seems I almost lose sight of that 
 great light which came into the world to 
 guide fallen men, but I hope by God's as- 
 sistance to steer safely through the shoals 
 and quicksands of this life. I cannot be 
 too thankful that I gave my heart to God 
 at the time I did, as now I fear I would not 
 be able. It is true that we are all after the 
 glittering gold which this world gives, but I 
 think my thoughts are much on Christ and 
 his glory." 
 
 When Mr. Snow came to Boston he be- 
 gan business in two places, — the wharf and 
 
166 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 the church. He worked in each with equal 
 energy. He united at once with Salem 
 Street Church. He joined the choir, led 
 the music, paid generously towards the ex- 
 penses of the society, became one of the 
 most active tract distributers. The pastor 
 leaned on him as on a pillar. He was rarely 
 absent from the prayer-meeting. He was 
 chosen deacon. He was elected superinten- 
 dent of the Sunday-school. 
 
 Though never a wealthy man, his liberal- 
 ity was great and increasingly great to the 
 end of his life. In one of those early years 
 he gave to benevolent operations half of all 
 he possessed, in addition to those generous 
 contributions for the support of his own 
 church, which he counted the first items of 
 his necessary personal expenses, and paid 
 out of his meagre salary. Accident has 
 brought this fact to my knowledge. It is a 
 fair type of his bountiful benevolence. The 
 sum of his benefactions is known only in 
 heaven, for in these matters his left hand 
 was not the confidant of his right. He 
 counted himself a steward of God. Yet 
 why should I dwell on this ? When a man 
 has truly given himself to God, his money 
 will always follow his heart. Mr. Snow 
 
FRANKLIN SNOW. 167 
 
 gave money for others as pleasure-seekers 
 spend money upon themselves. 
 
 I cannot discover that he ever sought or 
 felt the need of recreations other than the 
 joy he found in worshipping God and serv- 
 ing his fellow-men. But the recreations of 
 others, especially of the young, he encour- 
 aged with energetic sympathy. He never 
 travelled except on business ; he rarely at- 
 tended places of amusement, and never un- 
 less by going he could contribute to another's 
 pleasure. The rest which most of us seek 
 in amusements he seemed to find in prayer 
 and praise, singing and making melody in 
 his heart. The joy of the Lord was his 
 strength. Many have been surprised at the 
 facility with which he turned from the cares 
 of business to the comforts of prayer. He 
 would work to the last moment in his count- 
 ing-room with energy the most intense, then 
 hasten across the street, enter a prayer- 
 meeting, usually a little late, and speak or 
 pray as if he had come directly from hours 
 of uninterrupted meditation. The secret of 
 this power is an open one. He never 
 learned the distinction between religious and 
 secular life. He did not believe that God 
 was farther off on Monday than on Sunday, 
 
168 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 or that He observed more carefully the way in 
 which deacons distribute bread and wine at 
 the communion than the way in which they 
 distribute quintals of fish on week clays. 
 
 The horizon of his charity was not 
 bounded by the walls of his own church. I 
 have said he was one of the founders of The 
 Home for Little Wanderers. To the time 
 of his death he continued one of its direc- 
 tors and most efficient sustainers. The 
 TTashingtonian Home, The Seaman's Friend 
 Society. The Homoeopathic School of Medi- 
 cine are largely indebted to him for the good 
 they have accomplished. He was early in- 
 terested in foreign missions, and became a 
 generous supporter of the American Board. 
 Since his death I have learned of five strong- 
 churches which think they owe their lives to 
 the timely aid he gave them unasked in the 
 hours of their weakness and their need. It 
 becomes us to remember that evening lonq; 
 ao'o when a business meeting had convened 
 in the rooms beneath to lay a new mort- 
 gage upon the property already heavily bur- 
 dened. Mr. Snow was present. He belonged 
 to another church, and was carrying a large 
 share of its expenses. But when he saw the 
 trouble here his cheery voice rang out : 
 
FRANKLIN SNOW, 169 
 
 " Why not pay the floating debt ! " He 
 subscribed a third of the entire sum re- 
 quired, the remainder was raised at once, 
 and the gloom of the meeting was scattered 
 by a hopeful dawn. 
 
 Again let us not forget that when two 
 years ago it was proposed to make that 
 effort which has relieved our church from 
 debt, — so that for the first time in its his- 
 tory its members can at last say " We owe 
 no man anything but to love one another," 
 — when even the pastor believed the effort 
 greater than we ought to attempt, it was the 
 enthusiasm and energy of Mr. Snow which 
 mastered our hesitation and inaugurated our 
 success. 
 
 More precious and more influential than 
 his gifts of money were his gifts of time 
 and thought for others. When he had be- 
 come one of the prominent business men 
 of Boston; in his own branch, I am told, 
 the most widely known and the leading 
 dealer in the land ; directing branch houses 
 in different cities ; having established and 
 still controlling a line of steamers to the 
 Provinces ; a bank director ; carrying the 
 work of his church almost as largely as its 
 pastor ; an active member of the Boards of 
 
170 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 The Little Wanderers' Home, The Wash- 
 ingtonian Home, The Seaman's Friend So- 
 ciety ; sustaining near his place of business 
 a daily prayer-meeting, from which he was 
 never absent at noon each day, this man 
 still finds time to listen whenever suffering 
 whispers in his presence, to go wherever 
 prospect appears of saving a soul from sin. 
 When his employees meet him for half an 
 hour of prayer, they come feeling that their 
 employer is their brother; they return to 
 their work feeling that their brother is their 
 employer. But they do not know that in 
 the little memorandum book he always car- 
 ries with him many of their names are writ- 
 ten with a word or two that indicates their 
 needs, and guides him as he plans for their 
 spiritual health and remembers them in his 
 secret prayers. 
 
 But, friends, it is not what we do but what 
 we are that creates our influence and decides 
 our destiny. Our deeds are only chisels 
 with which our characters are sculptured. 
 I have given this outline of biography to 
 indicate the school in which the man we 
 mourn was formed. It was not what he did 
 but what he was that made Franklin Snow 
 so well beloved. 
 
FRANKLIN SNOW. 171 
 
 You have resolved to place his portrait in 
 your prayer-room. There it will say to all 
 who knew him, with an emphasis not possible 
 to naked words, Faith, Hope, Charity; 
 
 BUT THE GREATEST OF THESE IS CHARITY. 
 
 His faith was great, his hope was great. 
 Both were in him the children of Charity. 
 
 1. Men loved him because he loved men. 
 You know how his great heart beat toward 
 you, his associates in this church. But he 
 could also feel for those with whose ways 
 he could not sympathize. To the drunkard 
 this most temperate of men was a brother. 
 To the profligate this pure man was a stern 
 but tender friend. For the penurious this 
 generous giver had never a word of criti- 
 cism. In transgressors he saw brothers to 
 be helped. The sins of men grieved but did 
 not easily provoke him. His mission was 
 not to censure but to save. 
 
 He was long-suffering with the fallen. 
 Again and again he has lifted the same man 
 from the same mire, still hoping all things. 
 He taught the despairing to hope for them- 
 selves because he still hoped for them. 
 
 After years of intimacy I cannot recall a 
 word spoken by him of the absent which he 
 would not have spoken in their presence. 
 
172 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 When he could not praise he was silent. 
 But when his official duty in the church 
 compelled him to recognize evil in others 
 and describe it, he painted the guilty as the 
 Greek artist painted Alexander, — the mon- 
 arch's hand covering the scar upon his brow, 
 — that so he might follow charity in loyalty 
 to truth. 
 
 He was quick to sympathize with the joys 
 of others, for next to making men good he 
 delighted in making them happy. 
 
 Born on that sandy stretch of land which, 
 coveting no luxury of flowers or of fruits, 
 thrusts its brave breast far forth into the 
 Atlantic, meets the cold north currents, 
 turns them from Rhode Island and Connec- 
 ticut, and gives to those states the mild and 
 genial climate it seeks not for itself, his 
 birthplace typifies himself. Early taught 
 by stern necessity to live for another, years 
 confirmed in him that love which seeketh 
 not her own. 
 
 2. Hope ! He was its harbinger, its incar- 
 nation. He radiated joy as the sun sheds 
 light. He seemed the gladdest man I ever 
 knew. He was born with a buoyant tem- 
 perament. But natural spirits alone cannot 
 sustain such joyousness as his beneath such 
 
FRANKLIN SNOW. 173 
 
 burdens as he bore. The chirrup of the 
 cricket ceases when the fire is extinguished. 
 They only can sing always who have learned 
 the song of Moses and the Lamb. Men 
 who forget that through much tribulation 
 we must enter the kingdom may be sur- 
 prised to know the school in which his glad- 
 ness grew. If the expression did not belong 
 to the high and holy One, we might be 
 tempted while we consider the early life of 
 our friend to call him "a man of sorrows," 
 and to marvel that he least of all could be 
 called a sorrowful man. His later life was 
 not remote from grief. Three of his chil- 
 dren he followed to the grave. After years 
 of incessant toil he was compelled to en- 
 dure in his business experience a mortifica- 
 tion and anguish whose poignancy God only 
 knew. He carried it so nobly that strangers 
 scarcely suspected it was in him. The shock 
 of it was the initial cause of his death. He 
 carried that sorrow to his grave. For years 
 he has been an overworked, a tired man. 
 His health had been so impaired that animal 
 spirits were replaced by physical depression. 
 Yet still the bright face beamed hope and 
 cheer among us. Still strangers visiting our 
 church inquired who it was that " furnished 
 
174 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 sunshine for that aisle." His face drove 
 away despondency. It made us ashamed to 
 moan. When others pointed to the shadow, 
 he pointed to the sun that cast it. When 
 others said, " We fear the thunder in the 
 cloud," he said, " The cloud is his chariot." 
 His presence in the prayer-meeting was as 
 the coming of a spring breeze to refresh 
 others less weary than himself. In his death 
 it seems not so much as if a star had been 
 taken from our sky, but rather as if some 
 strange eclipse was shedding gloom from 
 horizon to horizon. 
 
 And this was more than a sunny temper- 
 ament. It came of discipline and prayer. 
 He schooled himself to carry his sorrows 
 alone, and to share his joys with all. So the 
 fine furnace receives the black coals into its 
 heart, and gives them back to others trans- 
 muted into radiance and warmth. There 
 is no quality of manhood rarer than this. 
 To say, while bearing the cross, " My joy I 
 give unto you." This is the offspring of 
 that love which seeketh not her own, which, 
 when it fasts, disfigures not the counte- 
 nance, but anoints the head and washes the 
 face, and appears not unto men to fast, but 
 unto the Father which seeth in secret. 
 
FRANKLIN SNOW. 175 
 
 3. His faith came of obedience working by- 
 love. His trust in God was of the uncon- 
 scious sort which children have toward their 
 parents. It was not gained by reasoning, 
 and by reasoning it could not be displaced. 
 By doing the will of God he came to know 
 the truth of Christ. He was not conscious 
 of that religious uncertainty which permeates 
 the air. Sermons to Thomas seemed to him 
 a waste of time. Eternal verities were real- 
 ities to him. He could not argue in defence 
 of them, for that would imply a possibility 
 of their being false. But when one's spirit 
 was tormented with doubts of that which 
 to doubt is a living death, — doubts which 
 learned doctors cannot cure, — his presence 
 and his prayers would often banish them as 
 sunlight drives away the dismal creatures 
 that infest the night. 
 
 As one who, laboring with gauze and 
 velvet and knife and needle, makes at last 
 an artificial flower, fastens the poor thing on 
 her bosom, and goes forth proud of her or- 
 nament ; but when she sees by the wayside 
 a violet which has grown, no one knows how, 
 by simply looking at the sun, receiving the 
 dew of heaven, and letting its heart dilate as 
 the spirit of beauty inspires, the lady casts 
 
176 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 aside her artificial gaud, and clasps the gen- 
 uine flower; so I turn from the reasonings 
 of the schools to the grand child-like faith 
 of this inerudite disciple ; faith which grew 
 strong in the world's highway through sim- 
 ply loving the Lord Jesus and doing his 
 commandments, — and know that my Re- 
 deemer liveth. 
 
 When our hearts are heavy and our way 
 grows dark, when we are tempted to fear 
 that God has forgotten us, let us remember 
 the orphan child, enfeebled by sickness, leav- 
 ing his ruined home. Let us follow him in 
 our thought through six and thirty years of 
 trials, struggles, victories, defeats, till we see 
 the great multitude weeping around his bier. 
 Let us think of the life he is living now, and 
 return to our appointed work reassured that 
 the hairs of our heads also are numbered by 
 One who is with us always even unto the end 
 of the world. 
 
XIII. 
 
 WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED ? 
 
 Sirs, what must I do to be saved ? — Acts xvi. 30. 
 
 This is a question often asked, and rarely 
 answered. Every good resolution formed, 
 every evil habit combated, evinces a soul 
 asking what it must do to be saved. At 
 times the quest grows eager. The man is 
 burdened with the weight of his immortality. 
 Unrest deepens into anguish. Silent ques- 
 tionings become outcries. He turns to those 
 in whom he confides, — the men on whom he 
 recognizes the livery of the Great King, — 
 saying, " Sirs, what must I do to be saved ? " 
 
 The question was asked by many persons, 
 in varied and dissimilar circumstances, of 
 the inspired teachers. By them, I think, it 
 was never answered twice in precisely the 
 same terms. If each of us should ask the 
 question of many religious teachers, it is 
 probable that we would all receive nearly the 
 same reply; we would be answered in one 
 
178 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 of two or three stereotyped phrases, — we 
 would be told to " believe in the Lord Jesus 
 Christ," or to " give our hearts to Jesus," or 
 " to love Jesus." 
 
 I will endeavor to remind you, first, how 
 the Master and his Apostles answered the 
 question, and then to compare our answers 
 with theirs. 
 
 1. As far as the New Testament shows, 
 when any man inquired what he should do 
 to be saved, the inspired teachers pointed 
 him to some one definite, intelligible act. It 
 was generally something he was least in- 
 clined to do. It was always something he 
 could not possibly misunderstand. We will 
 commence at the beginning. 
 
 John the Baptist came preaching in the 
 wilderness of Judaea, and saying, " Repent 
 ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." 
 Many hearts were stirred by religious feel- 
 ing. Multitudes came to the preacher, ask- 
 ing what they should do. Their fears and 
 their hopes had been excited. They felt the 
 need of more instruction. " What do you 
 mean by telling us to repent ? We want to 
 repent. Tell us how. What shall we do ? " 
 
 To each the prophet returned a swift, 
 clear-cut, piercing reply, — such a reply that 
 
WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED t 179 
 
 the seeker could not remain in doubt what 
 he ought to do next ; could not remain an 
 instant groping for the door, as a man gropes 
 in the dark. 
 
 We have reports of four interviews with 
 four different classes of inquirers. 
 
 First. The Pharisees and Sadducees 
 came to him. They represented the religious 
 classes ; they filled that place among the con- 
 temporaries of John which professing Chris- 
 tians, church -members, occupy among us. 
 Some of them were good men. Some of 
 them were bad men. All supposed them- 
 selves special favorites of Heaven, because 
 they were lineal descendants of Abraham. 
 God had covenanted, long before, to remem- 
 ber the seed of Abraham forever. On that 
 promise they grounded their hopes. When 
 these men asked, " What shall we do ? " 
 John said to them, " Stop saying to your- 
 selves we have Abraham to our father ; for 
 God is able of these stones to raise up chil- 
 dren unto Abraham. Judge yourselves by 
 the same standards you apply to other men. 
 A wicked Pharisee is not better off than 
 a wicked publican, but worse; for he sins 
 against more light. If you are good men, 
 and bear good fruit, well ; if you are bad 
 
180 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 men, and bear bad fruit, the axe is laid at 
 your roots ; ye shall be hewn down, and 
 cast into the fire." 
 
 From the New Testament we have fabri- 
 cated a theory the f ac-simile of that which 
 the Pharisees constructed from the Old. 
 We have abused Paul's doctrine of the per- 
 severance of the saints, into a notion that 
 men who have passed through a certain 
 gamut of emotions will be saved, whether 
 they become saints or continue sinners. 
 This notion, utterly without scriptural war- 
 rant, tinges our thinking, and twists our 
 practice. Translated into the language of 
 to-day, John's words are addressed to us, 
 members of churches, and they are these : 
 " Think not to say within yourselves, we 
 have been converted, we are safe ; for I say 
 unto you, God is able out of those wooden 
 pews to raise up converted men. The axe 
 is laid at your roots. Every one of you that 
 beareth not fruit shall be hewn down, and 
 cast into the fire." All spiritual children 
 of Abraham bear fruit. The promises are 
 for them alone. All truly converted persons 
 become good ; not perfect in a moment, — 
 there are unlovely Christians, — but better 
 than they were before they were converted. 
 
WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? 181 
 
 There must be a change in fact, not in 
 fancy. 
 
 Second. The common people came, ask- 
 ing, " What shall we do ? " The answer 
 was equally precise: "Let him that hath 
 two coats give to him that hath none ; and 
 he that hath meat, let him do likewise." 
 
 The masses are poor. Poverty tends to 
 make men penurious. The drudgery of in- 
 cessant toil, with small returns, tends to 
 render them over-careful. One who has in- 
 herited wealth, or won it by speculation, is 
 prone to prodigality. But when a competence 
 is obtained cent by cent, saving here and 
 grinding there, the tendency is to hardness. 
 Money being the one thing toiled for, and 
 saved for, and lived for, assumes an undue 
 value in the possessor's eyes : it is hard for 
 him to give it away. Despite the splendid 
 exceptions, which gleam in the lives of the 
 poor like diamonds set in black, poverty is 
 prone to make men thoughtless of others, 
 over-careful for themselves. To this class 
 of men, asking what they should do, John 
 replied, " Give, give, give." 
 
 Third. The publicans asked, "What 
 shall we do?" These were the tax-gather- 
 ers. It was more difficult for them to de- 
 
182 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 fraud their government than it is for our 
 revenue collectors ; but it was much easier 
 for them to levy blackmail upon the people. 
 They could not reach up and take from the 
 Roman eagle's nest ; his eyes were too keen, 
 his talons too sharp : but they could reach 
 down into the people's pockets, and take 
 what they would. 
 
 There was no power to prevent the pub- 
 lican from visiting any merchant and de- 
 manding a talent. If asked the reason of 
 the tax, the reply was at hand, " Because, if 
 you do not hand over one, I will have you 
 fined two ! " The merchant must choose be- 
 tween bribery and ruin. If he refused the 
 claim, the wealth of government would be 
 used against him. It cost the publican noth- 
 ing to go to law: government paid his 
 costs. But it would be costly for the private 
 individual, and he was sure of losing his case. 
 This was the reason why the people so thor- 
 oughly detested the publicans. Doubtless 
 there were honest tax-gatherers besides Zac- 
 cheus and Levi ; but history has not preserved 
 their names. The taint of their class was 
 upon all. They could not be respected. 
 They must be rich, or ciphers. The govern- 
 ment's enormous demands allowed no margin 
 
WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? 183 
 
 for legitimate profits. They could not gain 
 wealth by fair means. The temptation to 
 gain it by foul means was superlative. 
 
 To the publicans John said simply, " Ex- 
 act no more than is appointed you." Trans- 
 lated into the language of to-day, his words 
 are to every whiskey inspector, bank ex- 
 aminer, custom-house officer, revenue col- 
 lector, government employee from the chief 
 magistrate down to the municipal policeman, 
 who would save his soul, u Take nothing 
 more than your salary." If this command 
 were obeyed, the machinery of government 
 might stop, but the wheels of God's kingdom 
 might advance more swiftly than they do. 
 
 Fourth. The soldiers came, asking, 
 " What shall we do ? " The special sins of 
 those soldiers were three. Familiarity with 
 bloodshed had brutalized them. Further, 
 they were in a subjugated country. Sedi- 
 tion was punishable not only by death, but 
 by confiscation of the convict's property. 
 Part of the confiscated wealth fell to the 
 executioners. The soldiers were the exe- 
 cutioners. They were therefore strongly 
 tempted to accuse innocent persons in order 
 to obtain their wealth. Again: the stated 
 pay, even of Roman soldiers, was small. 
 
184 THE WORLD TO COME, 
 
 Booty and glory were the expected com- 
 pensations. In small and conquered prov- 
 inces, like Syria, there was no prospect of 
 glory or of booty. Hence the temptation to 
 mutinous discontent was strong, because the 
 voyage was monotonous, and the hope of 
 prize-money small. 
 
 To those soldiers John said, — 
 " Do no violence." 
 " Accuse no man falsely." 
 And, hardest of all, — 
 " Be content with your wages." 
 These are the only recorded conversations 
 of John with inquirers. He gave each some- 
 thing definite to do. It was, in each case, 
 the thing the seeker was least likely and 
 least willing to do. John allowed no one to 
 remain a moment in doubt. He encouraged 
 none to spend ten seconds examining the 
 quality of their emotions. Whether they 
 felt well, or ill, or indifferently, he treated 
 as a matter altogether immaterial. If they 
 began to be better men than they had been, 
 that was evidence of their repentance ; if 
 they were not better men, — no matter what 
 they felt or hoped or feared, — they had not 
 repented. He said to each one, " Stop do- 
 ing the wrong you have been doing ; begin 
 
WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? 185 
 
 the right you have been neglecting : " and 
 he showed each what that meant for him. 
 
 We pass on to the Master's instruction to 
 inquirers. To the young man asking what 
 he should do to inherit eternal life, Jesus 
 replied, " Keep the commandments." This 
 the young man claimed to have done. 
 " What more shaU I do ? " — " Sell all thou 
 hast, and give to the poor," replied the Lord. 
 When men impressed by the Master's mira- 
 cles came to him, he assigned them duties 
 equally definite. He bade some leave their 
 friends, even their unburied fathers, and en- 
 dure the hardship of following Him who 
 had not where to lay his head ; or he directed 
 others to forego the luxury of his presence, 
 return to their own friends, and face the 
 odium of being called disciples of the Na- 
 zarene. 
 
 He laid no emphasis upon emotions, but 
 endeavored to make the inquirer's emotions 
 the steam to drive his conduct. He warned 
 men not to base their confidence upon their 
 feelings. When Peter was sure of himself, 
 because he felt full of love, Jesus warned him 
 of the approaching fall. When surrounded 
 by crowds of enthusiastic and admiring hear- 
 ers, he would not trust himself to them, be- 
 
186 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 cause he knew what was in men, but de- 
 parted secretly out o£ their midst. When 
 the whole city approached him, waving 
 branches, and shouting " Hosanna in the 
 highest," his eyes were wet with tears, while 
 he cried, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ! that 
 stonest the prophets." 
 
 Paul's example travels the same path. 
 He abounds in lists of vices and virtues. 
 He reiterates, that if men's emotions lead 
 them to perform the virtues and avoid the 
 vices, they have evidence that they are con- 
 verted. Emotions which do not work this 
 result are delusive. Sorrow itself in the sin- 
 ner may be a sign of good or of evil. The 
 only proof that it is not a sorrow itself need- 
 ing to be repented of, is, that it works cer- 
 tain practical results. 
 
 The New Testament seeks in men's con- 
 duct the evidence of their conversion. We 
 almost never seek it there. 
 
 2. Our answers to inquirers are generally 
 vague. When a man under religious excite- 
 ment asks us what he shall do, we rarely tell 
 him anything definite, — anything he can 
 understand. If the most penurious man we 
 know asked what he should do to be saved, 
 
WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? 187 
 
 we should not dare to tell him, " Give a hun- 
 dred thousand dollars to the poor ; " yet we 
 all should feel that his religion would be a 
 sham until it touched his pockets. 
 
 Afraid to tell men they must do right if 
 they would be saved, we take refuge in cer- 
 tain scriptural phrases, which were once full 
 of meaning, but which are empty cups as we 
 offer them. 
 
 First. We tell men " to repent." Sup- 
 pose they ask us what we mean. We do not 
 mean u feel distressed." The man is dis- 
 tressed ; we want to relieve him. We dare 
 not say, feel happy ; there may be no ground 
 in him for rejoicing. 
 
 The Apostles would not have delayed an 
 instant over the man's feelings. They would 
 have discovered his besetting sin, or his near- 
 est neglected duty, and directed him to that. 
 If penurious, they would have told him to 
 give to the poor. If he were a coward, they 
 would have told him that he must be born, 
 not only of the Spirit, but of water ; that is, 
 baptized, — wear publicly in daylight the 
 badge of the new and despised calling, in- 
 stead of seeking Jesus by night, for fear of 
 the Jews. 
 
 This would be the result. Either the in- 
 
188 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 quirer would obey, and gain strength of 
 character, — become a better man, — or he 
 would go away sorrowful, knowing that he 
 was not a Christian. There would be no 
 possibility of self-delusion ; no possibility of 
 his settling down, with heart unchanged, into 
 a deadly lethargy of church - membership, 
 until startled by the revealing voice, " I 
 never knew you ! " 
 
 Second. Another cloud in which we take 
 refuge is this : " Give yourself to Jesus." 
 The phrase is hallowed by so long a usage, 
 that we suppose it quite intelligible. Doubt- 
 less, when first employed, the phrase was 
 terse and clear ; but it has risen like a fog, 
 to hide the gate of God from many an in- 
 quirer. " You tell me to give myself to 
 Jesus : " I want to ; but how can I ? You 
 have been urging me to do a definite act ; 
 but when I ask you what I am to do, you 
 sing to me, — 
 
 " Nothing either great or small remains for me to do." 
 
 Now the expression, " Give yourself to 
 Jesus," means exactly this : obey Jesus. 
 When we say a man is giving himself to 
 drink, we mean he gets drunk. Giving 
 one's self to study means studying. To 
 
WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? 189 
 
 give one's self to fashion, means to obey 
 fashion. Giving one's self to Garibaldi, 
 means obeying Garibaldi. To give yourself 
 to Jesus, means to obey Jesus, — to begin 
 doing instantly, without reference to your 
 inward sensations, the thing Jesus has com- 
 manded ; probably a different thing in the 
 case of each one of you. 
 
 If you are angry, it means, " First, go 
 and be reconciled to thy brother, and then 
 come and offer thy gift." If, like Peter, 
 you are afraid of an unbelieving world, it 
 means, u Go feed my sheep, and dare to be 
 crucified for it with your head downward, if 
 need be." 
 
 Third. We often bewilder men by telling 
 them to " Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ." 
 The inquirer replies, " I do believe that 
 Jesus is the Christ ; I always have believed : 
 it is impossible for me to believe more than 
 I do." 
 
 When the Apostles employed that expres- 
 sion, it carried a definite and exact idea. It 
 meant what giving one's self to Christ means, 
 — it meant obeying Christ. 
 
 Here is a sick man, and he has no hope 
 of recovery. You tell him, if he only be- 
 lieved in your doctor, he would get well. 
 
190 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 You do not mean that any change of opinion, 
 or any new intellectual appreciation in itself, 
 will cure him ; but that taking your doctor 
 for his doctor, swallowing his medicines, 
 obeying his directions, will bring health. 
 
 Believe, and be baptized, said Paul to the 
 jailer. Till then, the jailer was one of the 
 pagans. For him to submit to baptism was 
 to take the first prescription ; it was to break 
 with his old and degrading associates and as- 
 sociations, to take the first step among new 
 and redeeming company. It was to take 
 Jesus for his Lord and Saviour. 
 
 3. I have said that, if we imitate the 
 Master, we will help the inquirer to perceive 
 his nearest neglected duty, and urge him to 
 seek evidence of his conversion in the faith- 
 ful performance of that. 
 
 This we rarely do. If any man has been, 
 thou oil ever so long a 2:0, under certain reli- 
 
 O © © 7 
 
 gious impressions, — if he has felt first dis- 
 tressed and afterwards delighted, — we re- 
 ceive this as the most satisfactory evidence 
 of conversion. Unless he has subsequently 
 been flagranti} 7 immoral, no examining com- 
 mittee questions his evidences ; least of all 
 does he doubt them himself. I can find no 
 warrant for this in the Bible. Paul did not 
 
WE AT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? 191 
 
 base his hopes on the visions he had seen, 
 but labored lest, while saving others, he 
 should himself become a castaway. There 
 was nothing in Peter's past that ought to 
 have dried denying Peter's tears. 
 
 By this, John knew that he had passed 
 from death unto life : not because a divine 
 voice had called him from the nets ; not be- 
 cause he had lain upon the Saviour's bosom ; 
 not because his heart had glowed with rap- 
 ture of apocalyptic vision ; not because he 
 had been called the disciple whom Jesus 
 loved ; not because he had loved the breth- 
 ren, and for their sakes endured tribulation ; 
 not because he had been persecuted for the 
 faith, — but because then, at the time of 
 writing, he obeyed Christ by loving the 
 brethren. Another might have had all his 
 past experiences; but if such a man said 
 he loved God, while hating his brother, he 
 would be a liar, and the truth not in him. 
 
 Paul, Peter, John, would no more have 
 based their hopes upon some past sensations 
 than you would think of dining to-day on 
 the memory of the milk you drank in in- 
 fancy. The result of our vague and often 
 deluding replies to inquirers is seen in the 
 condition of Christian communities. Men 
 
192 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 have not been trained to seek evidence of 
 conversion in performance of duties, but in 
 experience of prescribed sensations. There 
 are men and women not a few, in the 
 churches, who will never draw nearer heaven 
 until some influence sweeps away their " evi- 
 dences." They trust in them, not in Christ. 
 How often do we hear men say, " I am sure 
 I am a Christian, because I once felt thus 
 and so." If Jesus Christ were dead, it 
 would be equally true that they once ex- 
 perienced those feelings. They are like the 
 enchanted sleepers, nodding before the ma- 
 gician's lyre. If conscience pricks, they find 
 balm in their " evidences." They neither 
 watch nor pray ; they enter freely into 
 temptation ; they do not love the Master's 
 work; they do not feed the hungry, nor 
 clothe the naked, nor visit the sick and in 
 prison : they do worship mammon ; they do 
 love the chief seats in the synagogues, and 
 to be called of men Rabbi ! When God 
 rains conviction, they make a stout um- 
 brelH of their " evidences," and not a drop 
 touches them. 
 
 Beside these self-satisfied ones, who think 
 the work was all completed long ago, sit 
 others of a different temper, — men prayer- 
 
WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? 193 
 
 ful, men with a sorrowful sense of sin, men 
 struggling against temptation. They have 
 a deep appreciation of Jesus' character. 
 They strive to imitate and obey Him. Daily 
 they climb upwards. But they do not count 
 themselves Christians ; others do not count 
 them Christians. Sleek Pharisees lament 
 over them as " sinners,' 9 because they have 
 had no such emotional experience as dead 
 professors delight in. 
 
 These men I count as the most hopeful 
 candidates for heaven. They are spared the 
 peril of relying upon past evidences, and 
 they shall have the sweet surprise of those 
 who say, " Lord, when saw we thee in prison, 
 and visited thee ? " 
 
 The first class are like those prairie-trees 
 that glowed an hour in glorious flame, when 
 the fire swept the plain, and ever since have 
 stood dead, charred trunks. The other class 
 are like the hidden germs, warmed by the 
 same heat, which grew unseen, and made the 
 harvest. 
 
XIV. 
 
 WHAT HAS GOD DONE TO SAVE ME? 
 
 And there cometh to him a leper beseeching him, and 
 kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou 
 wilt, thou canst make me clean. And being moved with 
 compassion, he stretched forth his hand and touched him, 
 and saith unto him, I will, be thou clean. And straight- 
 way the leprosy departed from him, and he was made 
 clean. — Makk i. 40-43. (R. V.) 
 
 The text leads us to consider a momen- 
 tous theme, the salvation of our souls. But 
 what I have to say will not be worth your 
 minding, unless we can keep steadily in 
 mind three facts, which, though they are 
 familiar and certain, are often overlooked 
 precisely when they should fill the horizon 
 of our thoughts. The facts are these : — 
 
 I. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to- 
 day, and forever. 
 
 II. He who hath seen Him hath seen the 
 Father. 
 
 III. In the New Testament the same 
 word is, when used to describe Christ's 
 treatment of sick bodies, translated, " make 
 
WHAT HAS GOD DONE TO SAVE ME? 195 
 
 whole," that is, " restore to health," but, 
 when employed to describe Christ's treat- 
 ment of sinful souls, is rendered " save," 
 whatever that may mean. 
 
 For example : In the account of the cure 
 of the issue of blood, the word occurs three 
 times. The woman thought, " If I may but 
 touch his garment I shall he made ichole" 
 The Master said, " Daughter, be of good 
 comfort ; thy faith hath made thee whole" 
 The evangelist adds, she " was made per- 
 fectly whole" 
 
 But the same word is rendered, " They 
 shall call his name Jesus, because He shall 
 save his people from their sins ; " " The 
 Son of Man is come to seek and to save that 
 which was lost." 
 
 By using two distinct English words, 
 which are not synonyms, to render the same 
 original, a fact which Christ taught with 
 careful emphasis has been obscured ; namely, 
 that his healing men's bodies illustrated and 
 revealed what He came into the world to do 
 for our souls. He compared himself to a 
 physician, not because he ministered unto 
 the body, but to the spirit. It was not of 
 invalids, but of robust publicans and sinners, 
 that he said, " They that are whole have no 
 
196 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 need of a physician, but they that are sick. 
 I am come not to call the righteous, but sin- 
 ners to repentance." The divinely offered 
 key, therefore, to a right appreciation of 
 Christ's spiritual work, even to that which 
 theologians call the Atonement, should be 
 sought, I think, by observing how our Lord 
 cleansed the lepers, made the blind to see, 
 and the lame to walk. And this is, I believe, 
 the only key which has not been employed to 
 unlock that mystery. 
 
 Let us endeavor to realize how He, whose 
 name is the only name given under heaven 
 among men whereby we may be saved, 
 healed men's diseases, in order that we may 
 understand, so far as it has been revealed, 
 how He saves us from our sins. 
 
 I. Consider first why Jesus healed. There 
 came a leper to Him. The leper knelt be- 
 fore Him, beseeching Him and crying, " If 
 thou wilt, thou canst make me clean/' 
 
 " If thou wilt " is not a future. The verb 
 is in the present tense and signifies volition. 
 The words mean, " If you wish to, you can 
 cure me." 
 
 Some exegetes infer, from a Greek word 
 employed later in the narrative, that the 
 leper must have entered the house where 
 
WHAT HAS GOB DONE TO SAVE ME? 197 
 
 Jesus was teaching. Others think that he 
 came to Christ when the multitude followed 
 bim down the Mount of the Beatitudes. 
 For a leper to do either of these things was 
 an outrage. It was as if a man broken out 
 with small-pox should enter a street-car or 
 walk down that aisle. Jesus himself rebuked 
 the man sharply, we read in the forty-third 
 verse. But he did not rebuke until he had 
 healed him. Remember that by coming to 
 this place the leper had broken both the 
 civil and ecclesiastical law; he had defied 
 the commandments given through Moses ; 
 possibly he had endangered the health, even 
 the lives of others ; certainly he had greatly 
 alarmed them. They were many; he was 
 one. He had therefore done an exceedingly 
 selfish act. Still, when the leper cried, " You 
 can heal me if you wish to," Jesus was sorry 
 for him. He said, " I do wish to heal you." 
 
 Then Christ healed the man, not to show 
 that He could, but because He pitied the 
 sufferer. 
 
 This was characteristic of all our Lord's 
 cures. When asked to work miracles to 
 prove his ability to do so, He habitually 
 declined. Every act of healing wrought 
 by Christ was an act of pure compassion. 
 
198 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 He never healed to attract attention to him- 
 self. He often commanded those He healed 
 to say nothing of their cure. Often, as in 
 this instance, he sent the man he had healed 
 instantly away out of sight. When, in 
 spite of his wish, his miracles attracted so 
 much attention that men's minds were by 
 them diverted from his teachings, "He 
 departed out of their midst," and went 
 where He could preach to ears that were not 
 stopped by wonder. He fed the multitudes 
 because He had compassion upon them, see- 
 ing that they were hungry and faint and had 
 far to go. 
 
 " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, 
 and forever." 
 
 " He that hath seen me hath seen the 
 Father." 
 
 II. Consider next how Jesus healed. 
 
 1. The fact that He had compassion upon 
 them was itself the first step in the cure of 
 many who came to Him. 
 
 Physicians tell me there are diseases in 
 which recovery must begin by regaining lost 
 self-respect. The most hopeless symptom 
 of certain maladies — generally they are 
 those induced by dissipation — is a sense 
 of utter degradation. It may be only the 
 
WHAT HAS GOD DONE TO SAVE ME? 199 
 
 reflection of a false but intense public opin- 
 ion. Strangers say, " I will waste no sympa- 
 thy on him. He has only what he deserves. 
 He ought to be ashamed of himself." Never 
 a trace of such sentiment in Christ's treat- 
 ment of any man. The most dissolute and 
 disgraced found in Him not only pity, but 
 a delicate considerateness which rekindled 
 their self-respect. The demoniacs belonged 
 to a class degraded by their own conduct, at 
 least according to a current opinion, which 
 may have been false, but certainly obtained. 
 Christ began the cure of the demoniac of 
 Gadara by treating him with the respect one 
 gentleman shows toward another ; treating 
 him as the poor creature had not been 
 treated since his malady began. He in- 
 quired, " What is thy name ? " It was 
 equivalent to exchanging cards in modern 
 high society. The demoniac had cried out, 
 " What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou 
 Son of the Most High God." Christ replied 
 in effect, " You have mentioned my name : 
 may I ask yours ? " 
 
 He completed the cure by sending the 
 man home to those who had known only to 
 despise him, with this message, " Go tell thy 
 friends that God hath had compassion on 
 
200 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 thee, and give theui the proof. Show them 
 what great things God hath done for thee." 
 It was like sending to his home, decorated 
 with orders from the sovereign, one who had 
 left his native city a disgraced beggar. 
 
 When a man palsied by his own sins — 
 we have the Master's authority for that — 
 had been borne of four and laid before Him, 
 while the Pharisees from Jerusalem regarded 
 him with contemptuous repugnance, as 
 thoughtless or inexperienced men often look 
 upon a confirmed inebriate, Our Lord be- 
 gan that man's cure by restoring his self-re- 
 spect. He said, "Thy sins are forgiven 
 thee." That is, " God respects you." 
 
 He treated these invalids as He treated 
 the publicans and sinners. When they 
 " drew near for to hear Him," and the Phar- 
 isees "murmured, saying, This man receiv- 
 eth sinners and eateth with them," He spoke 
 the parable of the prodigal, which said to 
 the outcasts, " God is glad you have come, 
 though these religious teachers think them- 
 selves defiled by your approach." 
 
 But of all Christ's acts no other, I think, 
 so instantaneously restored to men that lost 
 self-respect, without which physical recovery 
 is sometimes, and moral reformation is al- 
 ways, impossible, as his touching the lepers. 
 
WHAT HAS GOD DONE TO SAVE ME? 201 
 
 We can scarcely conceive what the effect 
 must have been upon a man who had for 
 years been closeted with his loathsome self, 
 or with still more loathsome fellow-sufferers ; 
 a man who might not eat with human beings 
 unless the same deadly taint was upon them, 
 nor appear in the street except jangling a 
 bell to give warning of the peril his presence 
 brought ; who, if he patted upon the head a 
 carrion dog, it must be instantly killed, lest 
 it should brush against others and defile 
 them because he had touched it ; who, if he 
 saw his mother, his child, his wife approach 
 must fly or shout, " Unclean, unclean, keep 
 afar ! " We can scarcely conceive what the 
 effect must have been upon such a man, 
 when he saw Jesus draw nigh. 
 
 The multitude attending the Saviour falls 
 back as men shrink from the plague, for 
 crowds are always cowards. But the Master 
 approaches, and paying no heed to the j an- 
 gling-bell, the warning cry, lays his hand 
 upon him. For the first time in years the 
 leper feels the touch of a hand that is not 
 hardened by the awful malady. That touch 
 must have made the leper a new man in 
 heart before the quickened pulse could shoot 
 new life into the decaying limbs. 
 
202 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 2. But more is signified in those words : 
 " He put forth his hand and touched him." 
 They suggest, what other passages confirm, 
 that in healing Christ made effort. We are 
 accustomed to think of the Master's miracles 
 as wrought without exertion. As if they 
 cost Him nothing ; as if He were a piece of 
 machinery, an iron man, no more exhausted 
 by the good He did than is an elevator 
 which carries you aloft by steam. But 
 Christ is not so revealed. It is written, 
 " Himself took our infirmities, and bore our 
 diseases ; " " He hath borne our griefs, and 
 carried our sorrows, and by his stripes are 
 we healed." 
 
 If you have watched one suffer whose pain 
 it was harder to behold than to endure, be- 
 cause you loved her more than she loved her- 
 self ; if you have held your own little child 
 in the dental chair while the great tooth was 
 drawn, and almost rebelled against the fiat 
 which prevented you from taking the pain 
 you were compelled to witness, — you have 
 a guide to the right understanding of those 
 words. One must be blind to read the New 
 Testament, and fancy Christ's cures cost 
 Him nothing because He was divine. It was 
 because He was divine that they cost Him so 
 
WHAT HAS GOD DONE TO SAVE ME? 203 
 
 much. If you would seek beings incapable 
 of suffering, you must go not up toward the 
 angels and the great white throne, for there 
 you will find " the Lamb as it had been 
 slain," but down among the oysters. 
 
 Ewald, who has seen further than most 
 into the spirit of the New Testament, re- 
 minds us that when Christ healed the dumb 
 man, He looked up to heaven as if seeking 
 reinforcement of strength, fie looked up to 
 heaven and sighed. When the woman was 
 healed He felt that virtue, that is, strength, 
 had gone from Him. He approached the 
 grave of Lazarus groaning within himself as 
 a man in stress. He looked up and prayed 
 before offering the prayer which He uttered 
 for the sake of them " that stood by." He 
 led the blind man away from the crowd, as if 
 seeking to be as " undisturbed as possible." 
 He put all but the three friends and the pa- 
 rents out of the room when He restored 
 to life the daughter of Jairus. He took Pe- 
 ter's wife's mother by the hand and " lifted 
 her up." 
 
 Thus He bore men's diseases. He sighed, 
 He prayed, He lifted them in his arms, He 
 put his hands upon them, He drew them to 
 his bosom, He groaned, He felt his strength 
 
204 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 go from Him, to heal their bodies. If He 
 had done less He would not have made man- 
 ifest the long-suffering God ; and his saving 
 men's bodies, his bearing their infirmities 
 and healing their diseases, would have been 
 no illustration of the agony with which He 
 wrestled in Gethsemane for the salvation of 
 their souls. 
 
 " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, 
 and forever/' 
 
 " He that hath seen me hath seen the 
 Father," saith He who is the Saviour of the 
 body and the Saviour of the soul. 
 
 3. Again, in many instances we are told, 
 that Jesus employed known remedies in 
 physical healing. He manipulated the pal- 
 sied tongue and the stopped ears ; " put his 
 fingers in the ears ; " "touched the tongue." 
 He covered the blind eyes with moist clay, 
 a well-known Egyptian remedy for ophthal- 
 mia. He inquired minutely the symptoms 
 of the demoniac boy. He bent over those 
 He healed, He touched them, as careful phy- 
 sicians do. 
 
 Those who came asking his help for their 
 sick besought Him to lay his hands upon 
 them, as if this was known to be his usual 
 method of healing. When He sent his dis- 
 
WHAT HAS GOB DONE TO SAVE ME? 205 
 
 ciples forth in his name, they anointed the 
 sick with oil, a common remedy, and James 
 refers to that as still customary among those 
 who followed their example. James v. 14 
 teaches the reverse of what it is often fancied 
 to mean. It bids us use the best remedies 
 known, and pray while we employ them, for 
 the fervent, effectual prayer of the righteous 
 man availeth much while he uses the right 
 remedies, of which anointing with oil was 
 among the commonest, and is therefore 
 given as representative of all. 
 
 In healing the demoniac of Gadara, we 
 are told Christ did two things which every 
 physician experienced in the treatment of 
 the insane would wish to have done. He be- 
 gan by asking the maniac his name. There 
 was more in that than the soothing influence 
 already noted. The question was calculated 
 to divert the man's attention from his dis- 
 tracting malady. Sometimes, with the in- 
 sane, to divert is to inaugurate the cure. 
 To convince the man that he is well may be 
 to complete his cure. Often the last step is 
 the more difficult. 
 
 A victim of intemperance was dashing 
 himself hither and thither at risk of life in 
 vain attempts to elude the monstrous phan- 
 
206 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 torn serpent lie saw assailing him. Nurses 
 and physician were baffled. Opiates had no 
 effect. The man must sleep or he must 
 die. A new physician was summoned. He 
 entered the room with a huge bare knife, 
 attacked the phantom serpent, fought it, 
 drove it under the bed, while the cowering 
 wretch watched every motion in an agony 
 of alternating hopes and fears ; stabbed it 
 again and again, slew it, dragged it across 
 the floor, threw it from the door, locked the 
 door again ; and the sufferer, with a great 
 sigh of relief, sank into a slumber which 
 saved his reason and his life. 
 
 May not such an experience throw light 
 upon the fact that Jesus allowed the devils 
 to enter into the swine and drive them down 
 a steep place into the sea, where they were 
 choked ? Certainly not until he had seen 
 that, did the demoniac sit at the feet of 
 Jesus " clothed and in his right mind." 
 
 Thus did Jesus encourage, not the breach 
 but the observance of God's order. He put 
 honor, by his example, upon the use of sci- 
 entific remedies. At times he healed by a 
 word, without approaching the sick one. 
 But He seems to have dispensed with rem- 
 edies only when to employ them was impos- 
 
WHAT HAS GOD BONE TO SAVE ME? 207 
 
 sible, or when they would have been obvi- 
 ously useless, or when there was a special 
 reason for neglecting them. His example 
 said to those Apostles to whom miraculous 
 powers were given, " Use the best means ; 
 pray God to bless their use ; and when you 
 can do nothing more, pray." And that is 
 what every wise and instructed Christian 
 strives to do. 
 
 4. But in all Christ's healings there was 
 conspicuously revealed the authority of ab- 
 solute power. In every instance the suf- 
 ferer was made to feel that the secret and 
 source of his cure lay in the fact which jus- 
 tified the words, " I wish, it, therefore be 
 thou clean." The presence of supernatural 
 power was so obvious that those who would 
 not concede the agency of God were forced 
 to assume the ministry of Satan, and to say, 
 " He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, the 
 prince of the devils." 
 
 Others might pity the sufferer, might love 
 him, grieve over him, use all known appli- 
 ances, spend all their strength, to help him ; 
 the four might bear the palsied man in their 
 arms and break open roofs to make way for 
 him ; the father might suffer many deaths, 
 because his son cast himself now into the 
 water and now into the fire ; men might bind 
 
208 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 the demoniac with chains, and the woman 
 might spend all that she had upon physi- 
 cians, — in vain. Jesus alone could say with 
 authority, 4; I will, be thou clean/' 
 
 When He spoke, devils obeyed, the dead 
 heard, the despairing hoped, the lost knew 
 that they were found. 
 
 " The same yesterday, to-day, and for- 
 ever." " He that hath seen me hath seen 
 the Father," saith Jesus Christ, the Saviour 
 of the body, the Saviour of the soul. 
 
 If you ask me to explain the Atonement, I 
 cannot, though I might perhaps, as well as 
 another, darken counsel by words without 
 knowledge. If von ask me how God, bv the 
 sacrifice of his Son, saves men from their 
 sins, I point you to Jesus Christ delivering 
 men from their diseases. There we may 
 find all we need to know, all I believe we 
 can know, until we have grown into larger 
 intellectual growth and loftier mental stature 
 than in this world we shall reach. For in 
 Jesus we see God revealed not as a king, a 
 judge, a potentate afar off, but Immanuel, 
 God with us, calling us, coming after us, lift- 
 ing us, encouraging us, hoping for us when 
 we cannot hope for ourselves, giving himself 
 for us, healing our diseases, and bearing our 
 iniquities. 
 
 
XV. 
 
 THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 
 
 For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ 
 for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. — 
 Rom. ix. 3, 
 
 This is the most perfect illustration known 
 to Hie of Paul's own assertion that the letter 
 killeth, but the spirit maketh alive. Meas- 
 ure the words with rule and compass, weigh 
 them in mathematical scales, and they are an 
 offence to God and man. How much sun- 
 light have I between my two hands? Box 
 in the space, to make sure you include no 
 more, no less. Apply the carpenter's rule. 
 You have no sunlight ; blank darkness only. 
 Treat the words of the text in that same 
 way. Consider them apart from the man 
 who wrote them, apart from the mental ex- 
 altation in which he wrote them, and you 
 put an extinguisher upon a burning lamp. 
 
 " I could wish myself accursed from Christ 
 for my brethren." Could St. Paul deliber- 
 ately say that? Could he deliberately oppose 
 
210 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 his own desires to his Master's will, and pre- 
 fer his kinsmen's welfare to his Saviour's 
 blessing ? Certainly not. But in the text 
 does he not say he could? Certainly he 
 does. Bring your dictionary and your gram- 
 mar. They will not weave the words for 
 you into any other meaning. With lexi- 
 cons and grammars only, men have tried for 
 eighteen hundred years to extract from the 
 expression some saintlier significance. 
 
 But identical phrases do not always carry 
 the same meanings. 
 
 " I want to die ! " So moans Pericles of 
 Tyre. He has lost his wife, his child, his 
 throne. You may pity him. But pity can- 
 not blind judgment. You know the wish 
 is weak and wicked. It is rebellion against 
 the Powers above. 
 
 Hear the same words on other lips. The 
 Austrian squadrons stand firm, each one an 
 impenetrable hedge of spears. Switzerland 
 is lost unless those squares are broken. " I 
 want to die ! " It is the voice of Win- 
 kelried, as he gathers the spears into his 
 bosom, breaks the squares, and saves his 
 country. Is it right to want to die ? No ! 
 Did not a hero say it ? Yes ! Was he not, 
 then, weak and wicked? Go measure tape 
 
THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 211 
 
 with that yardstick. It may serve to meas- 
 ure tape. It will not suffice to measure 
 lightning. 
 
 The words of the text are a window in the 
 Apostle's breast. Through them appears a 
 great soul struggling with emotions too fer- 
 vent for control. It will be our wisdom not 
 to criticise the words, but to catch such 
 gleams as we may of the spirit that shines 
 through them. 
 
 This Epistle to the Romans is Paul's most 
 splendid utterance. It contains his last ap- 
 peal to his countrymen, his final plea with 
 the Jews to become Christians. Every power 
 of his heart and brain is strained. He 
 begins as a lawyer addressing a jury. He 
 is sternly logical until each proposition has 
 been proved. In the outset he announces 
 his theme to be "concerning Jesus Christ" 
 our Lord. Next he proves that the Gentiles 
 need a Saviour. Third, that the Jews must 
 perish if they have no Redeemer. Fourth, 
 that God has provided for both an all-suffi- 
 cient Saviour in his Son. Thus far each 
 fagot is placed with careful accuracy. Then 
 the match is applied. The logic blazes. 
 Flames ascend. They dart upward. They 
 wrap the pile in fire. He enters realms of 
 
212 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 feeling where literal speech is impossible. 
 Metaphors are thrown off like sparks from 
 wheels which revolve too fast for sight to 
 follow. Expressions are poured out which 
 seem incoherent and unintelligible except 
 to those who share the writer's exalta- 
 tion. 
 
 He has proved that without Christ all 
 men are lost, and lost hopelessly. He turns 
 to show the abounding love of God, who in 
 his Son has opened a way of salvation for 
 all. He strives to express the magnitude of 
 that salvation. Carried beyond himself, he 
 breaks forth in the grandest of all his dox- 
 ologies : " I am persuaded that neither death 
 nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor 
 powers, nor things present nor things to 
 come, nor heighth nor depth, nor any other 
 creature, shall be able to separate us from 
 the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ 
 our Lord." 
 
 Borne far beyond the present, his pinions 
 bathed in light of the Eternal love, he re- 
 members the unutterable loss of those who 
 will not go with him. Must he leave his 
 people in their darkness? The thought 
 wrings his heart. A counter-wave of horror 
 rushes over him. It sweeps him from Her- 
 
THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 213 
 
 mon into Gethsemane. Never perhaps be- 
 fore has he approached so near the mind 
 of Him who wept over his countrymen, cry- 
 ing, " O Jerusalem, how often would I have 
 gathered thy children, and ye would not." 
 
 His father, his mother, — great Israel, 
 with all its faults the noblest race the earth 
 has seen ; to whom first the promises were 
 given, first the glory was offered ; stem of 
 which Christ himself had come ! — these 
 Israelites alone of all the world he sees re- 
 jecting the world's Saviour. The Master's 
 own parable is in his brain. The great day 
 is near, has come. He sees the chosen peo- 
 ple, his own people, upon the left hand. He 
 hears the words, " Depart from me, ye ac- 
 cursed ! " That he sees, that he hears. For 
 the instant he sees no more, hears no more. 
 He cannot reason, he can only feel. " My 
 brethren are doomed! My brethren are 
 lost!" Love shrieks while reason reels: 
 " Save them ! Send me away, but save 
 them ! I am one, they are many." In such 
 a moment come the words : " I could wish 
 myself accursed from Christ for my breth- 
 ren, whose are the fathers, from whom as 
 concerning the flesh Christ came, who is 
 over all, God blessed for ever. Amen." 
 
214 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 After that " Amen," I think, Paul's pen 
 stopped ; stopped long enough for emotion 
 to vent itself in tears. The next sentence 
 reveals a serener mood. 
 
 Another thought has brought relief. We 
 can read it between the lines. It is this : 
 " Do I love my people more than God loves 
 them ? Am I willing to do for them more 
 than God will do for them ? Xo ! No ! God 
 has done for them all that could be done 
 in the past, will do for them all that can be 
 done in the future. The word of God has 
 been effectual. Many, many will be saved. 
 All may be if they will." In this strain he 
 continues until able to express his deliberate 
 thought. " My heart's desire and prayer for 
 Israel is that they might be saved." That 
 is mathematics. It is the translation of the 
 text into the language of lower feeling. 
 
 Have you had no experience which throws 
 light on Paul's expression ? Have you never 
 felt, " Without my husband, my child, there 
 can be no heaven for me " ? Have you never 
 prayed, " Save him, O God ! Save him, 
 though I be cast aw r ay " ? At such a moment 
 you may have uttered illogical, incoherent 
 words. But God understands them. Love's 
 wildest cries are dear to Him. In the letter 
 
THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 215 
 
 they contradict, in the spirit they fulfil, the 
 commandment of Him who bade us pray 
 saying, " Thy will be done," — who taught 
 us it is his will that not one should be lost 
 of those whom He has given us by the title- 
 deeds of love. 
 
 An inferior, self-conscious spirit could not 
 have spoken as Paul spoke. Paul himself 
 could speak thus only when the unutterable 
 vision had fused his soul and burned away 
 its dross. The nearest approach to this 
 glowing utterance was made by Moses when 
 he too had been closeted with God, had 
 talked with God as a man talketh with his 
 friend, had caught enough of the divine 
 spirit to think of others more than of him- 
 self. Then for an instant he forgot who 
 had taught him to love and to sacrifice ; for 
 that instant fancied he loved men more than 
 God loved them, and exclaimed in substance, 
 " If thou wilt not forgive them, blot me, I 
 pray thee, out of the book which thou hast 
 written." Moses had left the divine pres- 
 ence but a little moment when he lost power 
 to speak such words. 
 
 Spoken deliberately, they would be blas- 
 phemy. Spoken in the supreme moment 
 when the heaven - kindled heart melts the 
 
216 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 fetters of the intellect, they are doxologies. 
 If we picture God in the image of a small- 
 souled, jealous lover, of course we shall count 
 such language blasphemous. If we remem- 
 ber that God is God, it will seem prayer. 
 
 That little boy was set by you, his parent, 
 to protect his infant sister. He did so well 
 the duty you assigned him that, when you 
 had occasion to punish his charge, he forgot 
 that you were wiser and tenderer than he. 
 For an instant, while his brain's small eye 
 was dazzled by the light from his heart, he 
 thought he must protect her even from you ! 
 He asked : " Mother, let Mary go with us, 
 or let me stay with her. I cannot go with- 
 out her." Did that anger you? Did it pro- 
 voke you to say " If my boy loves his sister 
 better than his mother, she will leave him " ? 
 If so, it was not because you are like God. 
 AVken John Knox cried in an agony, " Give 
 me Scotland or I die ! " was he not setting 
 his will against the Eternal ? Was it not his 
 business to live and work willingly, though 
 it should not be God's purpose to give him 
 Scotland? The dictionary and grammar 
 books answer " Yes ! " What God himself 
 thought of John Knox's prayer you may read 
 in the way He answered it. 
 
TEE MISSIONARY SPIRIT 217 
 
 Paul simply felt about eternal things as all 
 honorable men feel about temporal things. 
 Offer your body's life for another's, plunge 
 into the sea to rescue a drowning man, and 
 right-minded men will call you " hero." To 
 offer your soul's life, if that were possible, 
 to save your brother from eternal death, — 
 were that less heroic ? There are times when 
 men should count the cost of their resolves. 
 The Master said it. But there are times 
 when only cowards can be prudent ; times 
 when, if one counts the cost, he is a caitiff. 
 
 Troy is burning, her army is scattered, 
 her monarch slain. Foes fill her streets. 
 The gods bid iEneas fly. On him rests the 
 last hope of his people. The priests with 
 the sacred image, the company of men, wo- 
 men, and children in his charge, hear the 
 furious cries of the approaching Greeks. 
 They urge .ZEneas to instant flight. But 
 within the walls of Troy ^Eneas' father 
 waits. He is an old man and useless. Too 
 feeble to walk, but a few days more of life 
 are possible to him. Shall ^Eneas delay? 
 Shall he return and risk his life in the 
 attempt to bear the old Anchises on his 
 shoulders, a mark for Grecian swords and 
 spears ? Yes ! And the gods will veil him 
 
218 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 in protecting cloud and lead him safely. A 
 hero cannot count the cost when his father 
 is in danger. Even pagans knew that. But 
 Christians are not less self-sacrificing than 
 pagans, but more. Paul could not count the 
 cost when his brethren were in danger. His 
 was the spirit which would plunge into the 
 eternal sea to save an infant sinking there, 
 as promptly as lesser heroes would plunge 
 into the Atlantic. 
 
 " I will hold this gate against the Sara- 
 cens until our ranks can form ! " "It will 
 be death, for you are unarmed." " I can 
 die ! " " But you are unabsolved. Die thus 
 and you will be damned forever." " I know 
 it, but King Louis will be saved; go bid 
 him arm while I hold the gate." Less than 
 that is less than Christian. 
 
 By his own will Christ was delivered for 
 our offences. If he had weighed his sacri- 
 fice in any other scales than those which 
 mothers use, he never would have made it. 
 What are you and I and all men worth, 
 compared to the infinite God, blessed for 
 evermore? We have no language to ex- 
 press such things. But we know there are 
 millions and millions of worlds, so many 
 that our earth is a grain of sand among them. 
 
THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 219 
 
 If it were annihilated, none but God would 
 know. Christ made all worlds. From Him 
 all gather life and light. Our little sand- 
 grain was peopled by mites that fought 
 against their Creator, set their puny wills 
 defiantly against the Highest, and planted 
 for themselves eternal misery. As our dark 
 and pygmy-peopled earth darts through the 
 shining spaces, its angel with veiled face 
 crying, " These are they who crucified the 
 Lord of Glory," can the universe believe 
 that the Most High will give himself for 
 such an atom ? Yet God will sacrifice him- 
 self for us because He is God. Were you 
 the only man that ever sinned, Jesus Christ 
 would die for you, because He weighs him- 
 self in the same scales He has given moth- 
 ers and taught mothers to employ. 
 
 Friends, if we will thus look, not at the 
 Apostle's words, but through them into the 
 Apostle's soul, we shall see what made him 
 different from us ; what made him an apos- 
 tle ; what made him like his Saviour. We 
 shall see a man who thought first of his 
 Master ; second of his Master's work ; third, 
 or not at all, of his own felicity. 
 
 Paul's dialect is strange to us because we 
 have lost his spirit. The language of self- 
 
220 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 seeking, which in earthly matters we call 
 cowardly, passes current with us for celes- 
 tial speech. We have thought of religion 
 as a fleet of life-boats. Leap into them, cut 
 away from the sinking vessel, row hard each 
 for himself, — this has been long the cry. 
 It was not the cry of Paul. It was not the 
 cry of Moses. Their work was to tow the 
 ship to harbor. 
 
 To go to heaven alone ! That would not 
 be possible for such men. To them the 
 thought was terrible. Their love of God 
 quintupled their love of men. Therefore 
 these men were trees full of sap. The faster 
 they grew heavenward, the deeper and 
 broader grew the roots with which they 
 grasped the earth. 
 
 I think a man's religion, like most else 
 within him, often begins in selfishness. If it 
 is true religion, it cannot end in selfishness. 
 
 The child sees in his mother at first only 
 the reservoir of food and comfort. He seeks 
 her bosom for his own sake. By and by he 
 will love her in another way. Not what he 
 can gain from her, but what he can do for 
 her, then becomes his quest. 
 
 " What must I do to be saved ? " That is 
 often the sinner's first cry. With only that 
 
THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT. 221 
 
 he may come to Christ. If he tarries with 
 Jesus the cry will change into " What may 
 I do to save ?" That is the cry which opens 
 the gates of heaven. It is the only cry 
 which can give victory over the world, or 
 keep the disciple near the Master. He who 
 fights the battle filled with the spirit that 
 flashes through the text will end his warfare 
 with the shout of trumpet-toned triumph : 
 " I have fought the good fight, I have fin- 
 ished the work thou gavest me to do." 
 
XVI. 
 
 EASTER : TRANSFIGURATION. 
 
 And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and 
 James, and John, and bringeth them np into a high 
 mountain apart by themselves ; and he was transfigured 
 before them. — Mark ix. 2. (R. Y.) 
 
 The last clause of the text should, I think, 
 be read, not " He was transfigured before 
 them," but " He was transfigured before 
 them'' For the fact which Mark would 
 make prominent is not that Jesus was trans- 
 figured, but that he was transfigured in the 
 presence of certain witnesses. 
 
 1. The reading I suggest is favored by the 
 Greek laws of emphasis. 
 
 2. The fact it brings to lio4it is corrob- 
 orated by many intimations in the Gospels. 
 
 3. The lessons it reveals the Master teach- 
 ing are precisely those which Peter, James, 
 and John appear to have supremely needed 
 at that critical time when this transfigura- 
 tion occurred. 
 
 I. Transfiguration does not seem to have 
 been an unusual experience with our Lord. 
 
EASTER: TRANSFIGURATION. 223 
 
 We read of several occasions when He as- 
 sumed an appearance which inspired un- 
 usual awe in those who beheld Him. There 
 were times when even the disciples, accus- 
 tomed though they were to familiar inter- 
 course with Jesus, " durst not ask Him any 
 questions." When, with a whisp of straw, 
 He drove the money-changers from the tem- 
 ple, the subjection of the crowd to a single 
 man, and He the man of whom they had 
 lightly spoken as only " the carpenter's son," 
 is best explained by supposing that they 
 saw in Him a supernal majesty. When the 
 multitude led by soldiers approached Geth- 
 semane to apprehend Him, — remember He 
 had come directly from communing with 
 heavenly beings, — there was something in 
 the appearance of the solitary and defence- 
 less One which moved them to draw back 
 and fall upon the ground in attitude of wor- 
 ship. 1 I do not infer that on these occasions 
 
 1 It is possible that the same soldiers who arrested 
 Jesus at Gethsemane were on guard during- his trial before 
 Pilate. If so, the touch of rancor in their mocking may 
 have been caused by their vivid recollection of the hom- 
 age they had been unconsciously constrained to pay Him 
 the preceding night. The scarlet robe and the crown of 
 thorns may be proofs of the profound awe felt by the 
 Roman soldiers before Him who the next day appeared 
 
224 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 our Lord appeared altogether as He was seen 
 upon the mount, but that his appearance was 
 the same in kind, though less in degree ; that 
 a change occurred which affected beholders 
 with the awe expressed by Peter when he 
 spoke, " not knowing what he said ; " an awe 
 which made men fear to gaze or to intrude 
 upon Him. 
 
 Again, that Jesus went apart by himself 
 into mountains to pray, we are told in a 
 way that implies this to have been his cus- 
 tom. No mortal eyes observed Him at 
 those times of solitary communion with his 
 Father. But on more than one occasion we 
 are told that angels came and " ministered " 
 to Him; " strengthened Him," "comforted 
 Him." Keep these facts in mind. Remem- 
 ber that they were known to the narrator ; 
 remember also that on every other occasion 
 when Jesus went "apart to pray," He dis- 
 missed his disciples and went alone, and read 
 with the right emphasis, " And after six days 
 Jesus taketh with Him Peter, and James, 
 and John, and leadeth them up into a high 
 
 to them an ordinary man. In coarse natures the reaction 
 from extreme reverence to none at all is generally vindic- 
 tive. Those Frenchmen who had bowed lowest before 
 the crown compelled their king to wear the red cap. 
 
EASTER: TRANSFIGURATION. 225 
 
 mountain apart by themselves and was trans- 
 figured before them." 
 
 To my mind the implication of the nar- 
 rative is plainly this : " Jesus was accus- 
 tomed to go apart to pray, — to ascend 
 mountains and spend whole nights in devo- 
 tion. He was accustomed to meet heavenly 
 beings there. He was accustomed to shine 
 among them as the light. All this we know. 
 But once He took three earthly witnesses, 
 and permitted them to see those angels, who 
 " strengthened Him," " comforted Him," 
 " ministered unto Him." Some at least of 
 these celestial visitors were seen to be pious 
 men who had lived and tried to do God's 
 will on earth. One of them certainly had 
 died and been buried as we must be. 
 
 The Transfiguration appears to have been 
 an event in the line of our own experi- 
 ence. 
 
 We know something of the power exerted 
 by the soul in changing the appearance of 
 the body. If you heard that your child was 
 dead, your face would blanch. If you were 
 told your dying child would recover, your 
 face would shine. The man who cherishes 
 impure thoughts will in due time reveal them 
 in his countenance. Love and purity illu- 
 
226 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 minate the darkest features ; malice and foul 
 imaginations darken the most luminous ones. 
 But the face is not only the door-plate on 
 which are written the names of those that 
 occupy the house : it is the window through 
 which they peer. When one is suddenly re- 
 lieved from mental anguish, or roused by 
 rapturous thoughts, we can find no more ac- 
 curate word to describe the change that oc- 
 curs in his appearance than to say, " He 
 seemed transfigured." 
 
 Do not these familiar facts help us to- 
 wards conceiving what transforming energy 
 a soul like Christ's must have exerted upon 
 a body such as his, while He was convers- 
 ing with celestial beings ? 
 
 There are well-attested instances where, 
 just before death, the veil of sense between 
 the two worlds has seemed to be withdrawn, 
 and the dying has called the name of some 
 loved one long departed. Then the pale, 
 worn features shone with a light never seen 
 in them before ; friends ceased to weep and 
 felt, " It is good for us to be here." I do not 
 mean to assert that the dying one actually 
 beheld the face of the returning dead. I do 
 not know. But what no one can deny is the 
 power with which the soul — awakened by 
 
EASTER: TRANSFIGURATION. 227 
 
 some unusual experience — transfigured the 
 sick face. 
 
 Now think of this lantern. Its sides are 
 daubed with paint and grime. Through 
 them the tallow dip within can send only a 
 few feeble rays. When it blazes with un- 
 accustomed brilliancy, a few more rays are 
 transmitted. Such lanterns are we. Our 
 bodies are coarsened and dulled by our dis- 
 obedience to the laws of their development 
 and preservation. The soul within smoul- 
 ders, barely burning. Yet such souls as 
 ours can shine through bodies like ours with 
 the effulgence which you may have seen 
 when your dying mother thought she saw 
 the spirit of your father, for whom she had 
 longed and waited twenty years. 
 
 Look upon this lantern. Its sides are 
 unflecked crystal. No stain dims their 
 transparency. Each ray of the Drummond 
 light that blazes within them is perfectly 
 transmitted. Such a light in such a body 
 was Jesus Christ, when his soul had been 
 kindled by converse with Moses and Elias 
 upon the theme which at his birth made 
 heaven sing. 
 
 II. What lessons did Christ mean to 
 teach his disciples by going thus once into 
 his closet without having shut to the door ? 
 
228 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 1. He showed them the source of his 
 strength. How often do we read that in 
 his devotions angels " strengthened Him " ? 
 In solitude, when temptation had come and 
 He had retired into the wilderness to seek 
 divine help against it; in Gethseruane, be- 
 fore enduring the trial and the crucifixion ; 
 at other times, when He had sought seclusion 
 with his Father to prepare himself for what 
 must come, " an angel strengthened Him." 
 
 Such seasons of communion with Heaven 
 are needed by his disciples. If we live in 
 this world alone, we shall be smothered by 
 its small horizon. We need experiences 
 which remind us that we are citizens of 
 eternity, — experiences which will make the 
 events of the markets, of the grave-yard, 
 and even wars and rumors of wars, seem 
 insignificant except so far as they move us 
 to consider the " sign of the Son of Man." 
 
 When Elisha asked for a double portion 
 of Elijah's spirit, Elijah answered, "If thou 
 shalt see me when I am taken from thee it 
 shall be so, as thou desirest. But if not 
 it shall not be so. " If we think only of 
 the body, we are on the road to saying, 
 " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
 die." While we discern those who have 
 
EASTER: TRANSFIGURATION. 229 
 
 gone before, we are moved to reason, " Let 
 us watch and pray, for to-morrow we live." 
 
 2. Christ strengthened his disciples to 
 meet the trouble that was coming, by show- 
 ing them what that trouble meant. 
 
 Observe the context. In each of the 
 evangelists it is the same. Peter confesses 
 Christ. Then Jesus foretells his own cruci- 
 fixion. Peter protests against the shame 
 of it. Christ replies, " He that is ashamed 
 of me and of my words, of him shall the 
 Son of Man be ashamed when He cometh 
 with all the holy angels." Then to the 
 twelve he continues : " Some of you stand- 
 ing here shall not see death until you behold 
 the Son of Man in his glory." Each of 
 the three evangelists who record it dates the 
 Transfiguration from this conversation, as if 
 the scene on the mount were in some way 
 connected with it. And was it not? On the 
 mount, three of those " standing here " did 
 see Christ in his glory. In the first chap- 
 ter of his Second Epistle, Peter explicitly 
 describes this as the occasion upon which 
 he had seen the Son of Man " in his glory." 
 And as the three listened to the speech of 
 heaven, what was the theme? The same 
 which they had discussed " eight " or " six " 
 
230 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 days before. The thing of which the three 
 blind mortals had been ashamed, and one 
 of them had said, " Far be it from thee ! " 
 is the thing in which Heaven glories ! The 
 thing of which Heaven would be ashamed 
 is the thing in which these disciples would 
 glory. 
 
 Is it not plain that the three who most 
 needed this lesson were Peter, who had pro- 
 tested most vehemently against the cross, 
 and James and John, the throne-seekers ? — 
 Peter, who will take the sword to assault the 
 high priest's servant, and the Sons of Zeb- 
 edee, who would call down fire from heaven 
 after the manner of Elijah before he learned 
 to understand the power of Christ revealed 
 in the still small voice. 
 
 Did not these most need to be taught that 
 the throne of God was the cross ? 
 
 3. But why did the Master forbid the 
 three to mention the heavenly interview 
 until after He should arise from the dead ? 
 Plainly a prominent purpose of the peculiar 
 experience granted them was, to impress 
 their minds with a consciousness of the sym- 
 pathy of the two worlds. The scene must 
 have made them feel that heaven and earth 
 were adjacent mansions in their Father's 
 
EASTER: TRANSFIGURATION. 231 
 
 house ; that the door was always swinging. 
 As their Master retired at will into celes- 
 tial companionships, so might they. But 
 this was a lesson they did not need to use 
 while He, their Guide, their Friend, their 
 Saviour, was with them in the world. " Hear 
 ye Him ! " was the sole direction they re- 
 quired then. 
 
 But the time was drawing near when they 
 would need to use the lesson learned upon 
 the mount. That time was not when Jesus 
 hung upon the cross, not even when his body 
 lay in the sepulchre, but when He had risen, 
 and they would be tempted to believe that 
 their continued communion with Him was 
 an illusion, an " idle tale." But most of all 
 would they need to realize the nearness of 
 heaven and earth after the Lord had as- 
 cended up out of their sight ; when they had 
 seen Him vanish in the cloud, and felt the 
 fancy assailing them, and wrapping itself 
 around them like a fog, that He had gone 
 far off beyond the stars, and left them to 
 fight their way alone up to his distant 
 throne. 
 
 When that time came, and come to them 
 it did, as it comes to us, the seal of silence 
 was broken. Then they might " comfort one 
 
232 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 another with these words," and tell all men 
 that Christ holds heaven and earth together ; 
 that the dead join hands with the living 
 around Him, for He who is always with 
 them, is always with us even unto the end 
 of the world. 
 
 It is when we are in the furnace heated 
 seven times hotter than it is wont to be 
 heated that we most need to see beside us, 
 and unharmed by the fire, the form of the 
 Fourth. It is when Death has taken away 
 our loved ones and we know not where he 
 has laid them, that we most need to see 
 Moses and Elias standing with Jesus upon 
 the shining mount. 
 
XVII. 
 
 FLOWER SUNDAY. 
 
 To Children. 
 
 Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. — Matt. 
 vi. 28. 
 
 There are three virtues which Jesus was 
 endeavoring to teach when He told his dis- 
 ciples to consider the lilies. They are, con- 
 tentment, obedience, humility. 
 
 I. Flowers are not only beautiful, but they 
 always seem contented and glad. Did you 
 ever think how little they have to make them 
 so ? They live on other people's leavings. 
 The air gives them only what finer folks re- 
 ject and call poison. When the birds and 
 the beasts have taken from the atmosphere 
 all they want, the flowers, like poor Lazarus, 
 desire what is left, the crumbs that fall from 
 the rich man's table. Then, too, if there is 
 any dreadful filth from the sewers or the 
 barnyard, of which men do not know how 
 else to be rid, they give it to the flowers ; 
 
234 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 just as I have seen certain children send rag- 
 ged clothes and broken toys to the Christmas 
 poor-box. But the flowers are grateful, and 
 though they cannot talk they blush with 
 gratitude, pink or blue or yellow or white, 
 according to the color of their blood. Then 
 the poor flower-folk, out of these odds and 
 ends which nobody else will have, make for 
 themselves such splendid clothes as King 
 Solomon could not get, though he had first 
 choice of everything, and all the weavers and 
 tailors and jewellers in the world to dress 
 him. 
 
 Once there was a toy chariot in a shop 
 window. It had two horses, a driver, and 
 four people inside. It went by springs, and 
 when it moved the horses pranced, the 
 driver cracked his whip, and the people in- 
 side craned their necks to see what was the 
 matter. There was a certain boy who 
 thought he would be perfectly happy if he 
 only had that chariot. He longed for it, 
 and talked about nothing else for weeks. 
 At last Christmas came, and some one gave 
 him a brown-paper parcel, tied w T ith a long 
 piece of pack-thread. It was the long- 
 coveted chariot. The boy danced with de- 
 light as he tore open the paper and tossed 
 
FLOWER SUNDAY. 235 
 
 away the thread. Wise auntie picked up 
 the thread from the floor and said, " May I 
 have this? " 
 
 Not many evenings afterwards the boy 
 was asking for something to play with. 
 " Why don't you get your chariot ? " " Oh, 
 I am sick and tired of that ! " Then wise 
 auntie took out of her bag the piece of pack- 
 thread which he had flung away. She 
 taught the owner of the chariot to play cat's- 
 cradle with the twine. She taught him the 
 names of the figures as they appeared, trian- 
 gles and parallelograms and squares. She 
 taught him how to bring out new figures. 
 Many a long winter's evening seemed short 
 to them both as they played with that 
 string. The boy never seemed to tire of it, 
 and from it he learned with delight many a 
 lesson that helped him at school and on the 
 play-ground, too. But the most important 
 of them was, that an old string well used 
 could give a hundred-fold more pleasure 
 than even a gilded chariot which could only 
 be looked at and coveted. 
 
 My boy had a beautiful Chinese top which 
 spun itself. He wearied of it in a few days. 
 But for three seasons he has been happy 
 with an old peg-top that cost five cents, but 
 
236 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 which nobody can spin without a deal of 
 practice. I never knew a girl kept happy- 
 long by a silk dress made at the mantua- 
 maker's, but to make a gown of calico with 
 her own hands will give any girl real and 
 permanent delight. 
 
 Some of you may be studying geometry. 
 It often seems tedious and stupid. That 
 everlasting ABC; X Y Z; and two par- 
 allel lines between two other parallel lines 
 are equal, etc, " What if they are ? Who 
 cares? I 'd rather fly my kite." That is 
 because you keep on trying to gain more 
 knowledge without getting the good out of 
 the knowledge you have. Go into the yard. 
 Take a shingle, a short string, a lead pencil, 
 and a yardstick. Find out with these the 
 distance between the back door-sill and the 
 top of the next house. When you have suc- 
 ceeded you will enjoy geometry ; you will 
 understand that we could have no railroads, 
 nor bridges, nor Atlantic cables, and could 
 never learn how far it is to anywhere much 
 beyond the ends of our noses, if it were not 
 for those stupid triangles and parallelo- 
 grams. 
 
 Sometimes the Sunday-School lessons and 
 even the sermon grow tedious, especially in 
 
FLOWER SUNDAY. 237 
 
 summer. You get tired of hearing " Blessed 
 are the merciful." That, too, is because you 
 don't use what you know. Carry that 
 knowledge about mercy somewhere and use 
 it. Try to be merciful in collecting beetles 
 and butterflies. Try to catch trout without 
 hurting them, — you cannot do it with 
 worms, but you can with a fly, — and you 
 will begin to enjoy the sermon. 
 
 So the first lesson in contentment is to get 
 all the good out of the things you have, be- 
 fore you wish for more things. 
 
 II. Flowers have no wings and no feet. 
 They must stay in one place. Therefore 
 they never do anything which they cannot 
 do at home. 
 
 I will tell you a parable. A boy lived in 
 the country. He was happy as the day was 
 long. He played in the fields. He ran 
 home at dinner and at supper time, and told 
 his mother everything he saw and everything 
 he did. But one day he overheard the beasts 
 talking together. The horses stood under a 
 shady tree watching him, and he thought 
 they said : " Poor boy! he has only two feet : 
 how tired he must get ! " But one old cir- 
 cus horse, who had been turned out to die, 
 said : " Oh, no ! He has four feet, but his 
 
238 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 mother whips him if he does n' t walk on his 
 hind-legs ! I know how to pity him." 
 
 While he listened to the beasts, somehow 
 the boy began to grow ashamed. So he got 
 down on his hands and knees and tried to 
 walk that way. He was very tired when he 
 reached home. But though his mother asked 
 him how his trousers got so muddy and torn, 
 he only hung his head and would not tell. 
 
 One evening he was late, from going on 
 all-fours. The bats were flitting around, 
 and he heard them say : " Poor boy ! he has 
 to spend the best part of his time in bed. 
 At night, when it is so splendid to be out, he 
 has to be shut up." The next day he heard 
 the crows, that steal corn and eat carrion, 
 cawing : " Poor boy ! he has to eat cooked 
 corn and tough meat. How his jaws must 
 ache ! " Thus he began to pity himself and 
 fancy he was very wretched, and that his 
 mother meant to make him miserable. So 
 he stayed out nights and began to eat car- 
 rion. He grew peaked from never walking 
 upright, and from getting scared so often in 
 the darkness, and from the dreadful carrion 
 which he smoked and chewed and drank. 
 But when his mother asked what ailed him 
 he would not tell. He went to the owl 
 
FLOWER SUNDAY. 239 
 
 about it, who looked so wise. She said his 
 trouble all came of too much sunlight, and 
 he must put out his eyes or he would never 
 be any better. So he put out his eyes. He 
 came no more to church or Sunday School. 
 He could not see to find his mother, even if 
 he had wanted to. He was seen last Sunday 
 in a dram-shop. I don't know where he is 
 now, but he is very forlorn. 
 
 The flowers told him long ago : " Never 
 do anything you cannot do at home ; never 
 do anything you are ashamed to do at home." 
 If a boy will stick to that, he will grow up 
 like a flower into a noble and beautiful man. 
 When the Lord Jesus was asked to do wrong 
 he said : " I and my Father are one." It 
 was his way of saying, " That is not as 
 they do at home ; therefore I cannot do so 
 here." 
 
 If boys use their feet to get away from 
 home, they are worse off than the flowers, 
 which have no feet. But if they use them 
 to carry their homes wherever they go, they 
 are far more blessed than the fairest flowers. 
 
 III. The flowers have no tongues. I do 
 not mean that you must not talk. God has 
 given us tongues, and means us to use them. 
 But let the silent beauty of the flowers teach 
 
240 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 us to do all the good we can and make no 
 fuss about it. Never be in a hurry to tell 
 people you are Christians, but act so that 
 they cannot help finding it out. 
 
 Did you ever watch beans grow? They 
 come out of the ground as if they had been 
 planted upside down. * Each appears carry- 
 ing the seed on top of his stalk, as if they 
 were afraid folks would not know they were 
 beans unless they immediately told them. 
 But most flowers wait patiently and humbly 
 to be known by their fruits. 
 
 Sometimes boys get laughed at because 
 they think they must tell everybody that 
 they are Christians. They talk about their 
 piety, and never show it in any other way. 
 But no boy gets laughed at for being a Chris- 
 tian ; for being true and brave and kind and 
 humble and pure, like the Lord Jesus. 
 
 Consider the lilies, and see if you can read, 
 with the help of this sermon, the words writ- 
 ten upon their leaves : Contentment, Obedi- 
 ence, Humility. 
 
XVIII, 
 
 DECORATION DAY. 
 
 For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one 
 to come. — Heb. xiii. 14. 
 
 Man is distinguished from all other deni- 
 zens of earth by his inclination to build sep- 
 ulchres. I recall no other human industry 
 which is not rooted in some instinct shown 
 by the inferior creatures. Beavers build 
 cities. Bees maintain a civil polity. Ants 
 plant and reap ; organize municipalities with 
 hospitals for the sick ; support schools in 
 which the young are taught to earn their liv- 
 ing. Wolves combine in regiments, and, of- 
 ficered by corporals and generals, prosecute 
 campaigns which manifest both strategy and 
 discipline. There are insects which weave 
 garments and wear them, build houses and 
 dwell in them, set traps and feed themselves 
 from them. But among the lower creatures 
 I can find no germ of that instinct which 
 seeks to make provision for the dead; no 
 trace of the impulse which moves to act as if 
 
242 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 the dead could be influenced by its action ; 
 no feeblest sign that indicates expectation of 
 a city yet to come. 
 
 But from man the indications of that in- 
 stinct are never absent. All his tribes have 
 left memorials which show him caring for 
 the dead even more sedulously than for the 
 living. His sepulchres outlast his palaces. 
 The homes in which the Incas dwelt have 
 left no vestiges ; their tombs endure. Most 
 of the treasures of antiquity which enrich 
 museums are gifts once placed by affection 
 in hands that were cold, or laid upon breasts 
 that were still. The richest, the grandest, 
 and the loveliest structures reared by human 
 hands have been given to the dead. The 
 Mausoleum and the Taj Mahal, the Pyra- 
 mids and The Gazneh, St. Peter's and the 
 minster of Cologne, the monument to Wash- 
 ington and the tomb beside the Seine, alike 
 bear witness to the existence, in all ages and 
 among all races, of the instinct which has led 
 us to spend one day of every year in strew- 
 ing flowers upon the graves of those we love. 
 
 Animals have never, men have always, 
 acted as if they believed their dead were still 
 alive and sensitive to the ministries of affec- 
 tion. The Egyptians placed guide-books in 
 
DECORATION DAY. 243 
 
 their sepulchres ; Greece put money in the 
 hands of the dead ; the earlier Semites gave 
 them both food and money ; while the He- 
 brews covered them with spices. 
 
 This instinct of immortality, — call it 
 dream or fancy or faith or superstition, — 
 which has never been detected in the beast, 
 and has never been missing in man, appears 
 to me profoundly significant. Each of us 
 carries in his heart the key to its interpreta- 
 tion. He who brought life and immortality 
 to light reveals the door into the lock of 
 which that key fits with unerring accuracy. 
 
 Perhaps this universal and distinctive hu- 
 man instinct has never found a fairer form 
 of expression than in our Decoration Day, 
 which, though cradled in war, has become a 
 strong guardian of peace. Let us therefore 
 listen to some of the suggestions it enforces. 
 
 I. By covering graves with flowers we are 
 led to think of death as God intends that we 
 should. 
 
 The young rarely think of it at all. Some 
 reach manhood without having learned the 
 meaning of the word. The child hears of 
 many that " they are dead." He may even 
 have seen some die before he tastes the bit- 
 terness of death. But each one's hour must 
 
244 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 come. In due time that friend is taken 
 whose going puts out the light of the one 
 who is left. The earth will never again 
 seem to him as it has seemed. For a little 
 while others remember and respect his grief. 
 Soon they begin again to act and to talk alto- 
 gether as they used to do. He finds himself 
 wondering, not that to him all is so changed, 
 but that to others life seems still the same. 
 Men go on buying and selling, smiling and 
 weeping, when the things they mind so much 
 seem to him so infinitely trivial. Of dying 
 he has thought as of a thing utterly dread- 
 ful. He has joined in the general opinion, 
 and recognized in death the ultimate horror. 
 When he wished to express extremity of re- 
 pugnance he, too, has been wont to say : " I 
 had rather die than do it ! " But the ex- 
 perience which made him for the first time 
 appreciate death as an inexorable fact, and 
 which made him realize that he himself must 
 die, has also robbed death of all terror. 
 
 Such is the goodness of God that usually 
 men are first made to feel that they must 
 die, in a way that removes their fear of 
 dying. Yesterday, when the happy child 
 was at play, if you could have convinced 
 him that he had but a few hours to live, 
 
DECORATION DAY. 245 
 
 you would have plunged him into despair. 
 But, thank God, yesterday you could not 
 make him realize the brevity of life. A life- 
 time seemed an eternity to him. But to- 
 day God has told him the truth, but has told 
 it as Jesus told his disciples : " I go to pre- 
 pare a place for you." For to-day the child 
 returns from his mother's grave and buries 
 his head in her bare pillow. The whisper, 
 " In a little while death will take you to her," 
 is not a gloomy threat, but a radiant promise. 
 
 So does God, in the rule, prepare men to 
 die by teaching them — if they will learn 
 the lesson — that they are citizens of another 
 country. Every precious grave becomes a 
 certificate of naturalization in the land where 
 our loved ones are. Gradually, to most good 
 men, the time arrives when they feel as the 
 man in Ireland feels when one by one his 
 kindred have gone to America and he is left 
 alone among strangers. The fatherland is 
 still dear, but home is across the sea. So 
 God means us to ripen for heaven as life 
 wears away. 
 
 II. We shall best prepare for the life 
 which now is and for that which is to come, 
 if we pause at times to commune with the 
 dead. 
 
246 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 They who tell us we should think only of 
 the living and the present, contradict God's 
 gospel, and bid us trample under foot that 
 peculiar sentiment which distinguishes men 
 from brutes. If we obey them, we shall 
 come to resemble brutes in more respects 
 than one. 
 
 Let our memories of the departed make 
 us kinder to those who are with us. 
 
 The bitterest drop in the cup of bereave- 
 ment is the recollection of what we might 
 have done but did not do ; of what we might 
 have left undone but did. The unkind word, 
 so little recked of once, comes back to sting 
 us when we cannot make atonement. 
 
 The deeds of kindness we have done fall 
 back, like drops of rain from the heaven of 
 memory, upon the heart that thirsts in the 
 desert of its loneliness. For more than 
 twenty years before my father's death I was 
 away from home. During all those years 
 I think I did not ten times fail to send a 
 Sunday letter to him. When he had gone 
 each of them was found in the private desk 
 where he had kept his treasures. It was a 
 little thing to do. But — 
 
 "The world is wide, these things are small; 
 They may be little, but they are all." 
 
DECORA TION DA Y. 247 
 
 Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, 
 brothers, husbands, wives, you do not yet 
 know how dearly you love each other ! Only 
 death can teach you that. You cannot con- 
 ceive how your hearts will bleed when one 
 is taken and you are left; yet how many 
 days are allowed to pass without one deed 
 of kindness done, one word of tenderness 
 spoken ! Your circle will be broken. Not 
 together, but one by one, you must go, and 
 those who remain must live again the past ; 
 must live it again in all but this, that you 
 can never say, " I am sorry ! " 
 
 " She was the flower of my house. She 
 gave my life its beauty and its fragrance. 
 But I returned her neither sunshine nor 
 dew. My frowns I brought home to those 
 who were saddened by them, my smiles I 
 wasted among those who cared not for them. 
 And now she has gone! — she has gone ! " 
 That is the future many are preparing for 
 themselves. 
 
 III. This day should inspire in us grati- 
 tude towards our fathers, and incite us to 
 emulate their example. 
 
 To more than half of those now living 
 our civil war is only history. Young men 
 know it as they know the Revolution. Many 
 
248 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 whose parents fell in its battles cannot recall 
 the faces of those parents. They are stran- 
 gers to the sentiment which swayed the 
 nation twenty-five years ago. Therefore to 
 them those who remember should speak. 
 
 This country of ours seemed given over to 
 pleasure-seeking and money-making. More 
 than three millions of its citizens were held 
 in slavery. Good men deplored the fact, 
 but none could find the remedy. A vast 
 majority continued buying and selling, mar- 
 rying and giving in marriage, as if the in- 
 famy did not in the least concern them. 
 Almost no one appeared to care for his 
 country except as a mine out of which to 
 dig treasure for himself. Americans talked 
 calmly of the rupture of the Union. They 
 discussed the expediency of such a course, 
 and the gains or losses that probably would 
 come of carving into morsels our father- 
 land. Of patriotism there seemed none. 
 
 At last cannon were fired at fort Sumter. 
 Mr. Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand 
 men to volunteer as soldiers. The number 
 seemed to us, who heard the call, enormous. 
 He asked with fear and trembling. 
 
 Then the Spirit of the Lord moved upon 
 our people. From Maine to California, men 
 
DECORATION DAT. 249 
 
 forgot to care for their money or their lives. 
 In every state and city and village the 
 same resolve was registered : " Our country 
 shall be saved.' 9 Old and young, women 
 and children, quivered with the high enthu- 
 siasm. Was any individual suspected of 
 caring for his own interest, for his property 
 or his life, more than for the salvation of 
 his country, women would not speak to him ! 
 He was shamed, if not into his duty, at least 
 into pretence of his duty. 
 
 For four years, young men, we breathed 
 the atmosphere of heroic self-sacrifice. Dur- 
 ing four years the common feeling among 
 Americans was this : " My country owns 
 me ! Whatever she requires of me, that I 
 am to do. It is not for me to ask, ' Where 
 can I earn wealth? Where can I win 
 power ? Where can I enjoy life ? but 
 Where can I be useful to her ? ' " 
 
 Certainly there were hypocrites among us. 
 But their hypocrisy bore witness to the prev- 
 alence of virtue. For such were the senti- 
 ments dominant among your fathers that 
 those who did not care for their country felt 
 constrained to feign what they did not feel. 
 Women sent their sons and their husbands 
 to die, and did not murmur. 
 
250 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 Such was the spirit of your fathers dur- 
 ing four solemn, splendid years. Because 
 that spirit animated them you have still a 
 country. That passion of self-sacrifice God 
 gave unto your elders, which taught them 
 they were here to live, not for themselves, 
 but to live and if need be to die for others, 
 has secured for you this superb inheritance. 
 
 And you, young men, are called by the 
 same God to act the same part in peaceful 
 times. I frankly tell you, yours is the 
 harder task. For you are set to stand in 
 business, in politics, in society, in church, in 
 family, realizing that you are not your own, 
 that you are here to do, not what is profit- 
 able or what is pleasant to yourselves, but 
 what is right, what God and your neighbors 
 need to have you do. Only so can you main- 
 tain what your fathers won. You are helped 
 by no tide of popular enthusiasm which will 
 carry you forward in its rush. The current 
 sets against you. It is always harder to live 
 for the right than to die for it. But unless 
 in time of peace we obey the Spirit who 
 moved our fathers in time of war, we shall 
 help our nation to become a rabble of quar- 
 relling shop-keepers, of factory operatives 
 who twine hemp for their own execution. 
 
DECORATION DAY. 251 
 
 Let us ask ourselves, while we breathe the 
 perfumes that fill the air, " What am I 
 doing for any other than myself? Am I 
 living only for my own pleasure, for my own 
 profit? Can I look without shame upon 
 these granite statues ! Dare I lay garlands 
 upon the graves of those who fell at Gettys- 
 burg and in the Wilderness ? " 
 
 IV. To the elders among us, this day 
 brings brightest witness to the guardian care 
 of God. 
 
 You remember days when the most hope- 
 ful dared not hope to witness the end of 
 slavery in our land. We remember how 
 God forced us, by means which seemed so 
 cruel and have proved so kind, to do right. 
 We tried for years and years to save our- 
 selves without saving our country, and could 
 not. Then we tried to save our country 
 without saving freedom, and we could not. 
 When at last we were compelled to do right, 
 we trembled and believed that generations 
 must pass before the savage passions fed by 
 war could be extinguished. We were sure 
 a standing army would be requisite to hold 
 the South to allegiance ; that the land would 
 be bankrupted by its debt ; would be 
 drowned in ignorance by the black man's 
 
252 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 vote. But none of these things came to 
 pass. The soldiers of the South met the 
 soldiers of the North as brothers. The debt 
 began to melt away, and the nations to rec- 
 ognize that the baptism of fire and of blood 
 had given us a right to stand among the 
 foremost. 
 
 And still we have little faith ! We are 
 not worthy to carry flowers to these graves ; 
 we are not worthy to tell our children of 
 the great deeds we remember, nor to bear 
 the name of the Christ who has died for 
 us, — unless we can gather, from the revela- 
 tion He unveils in Decoration Day, hope and 
 courage that will enable us to look boldly 
 into the eyes of political chicane, of intem- 
 perance, of municipal rings, of Antichris- 
 tian combinations and infidelities of every 
 sort, and say to them all, " We will de- 
 stroy you ! By the help of God, we are 
 stronger than you ! " 
 
 Rejoice, ye righteous ! Lift up thy voice, 
 O America! lift it up with strength. Be 
 not afraid. Cry unto the cities of our coun- 
 try, "Behold your God!" 
 
XIX. 
 
 HARVEST SUNDAY. 1 
 
 And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at even- 
 tide. — Gen. xxiv. 63. 
 
 I. These fruits remind us that our Father 
 has provided for us food abundantly. 
 
 1. They bear witness that He has not only 
 given us provision for a day, as charity vis- 
 itors give meals to paupers, but that He pro- 
 vides for us a steady income. Year after 
 year He causes the earth to give bread to 
 the eater and seed to the sower. In Isaac's 
 day it was not so. Then, a local drought or 
 an untimely frost produced a famine and 
 the people starved. In our day the prayer 
 of Christ has been so far fulfilled that in 
 material things at least, the whole of Chris- 
 tendom is one. Unless the harvests fail the 
 
 1 In accordance with the yearly custom at Berkeley 
 Street Church, the pulpit platform was covered with 
 vegetables, fruits, and flowers, which had been contrib- 
 uted by individuals for the general use. These, together 
 with offerings of meat and money, were to be distributed 
 before Thanksgiving Day as the officers of the church 
 should direct. 
 
254 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 same year over all the earth — which they 
 never do — there can be no famine among 
 Christian nations. Steam has lengthened 
 their arms. If Russia is hungry, she is fed 
 from the lap of America. 
 
 2. Consider further that God so gives as 
 to ennoble the recipients of his charities by 
 cultivating in them manly independence. 
 The most difficult task we have to perform 
 is to relieve the poor without degrading 
 them. But God supplies our needs in ways 
 that elevate us. 
 
 Food is not brought to us in baskets and 
 set down before our doors. God might feed 
 us by sending aerial ships, ferried by angels 
 across the sky, with freights of food for all. 
 By that means He would pauperize and make 
 the world a colossal Ireland. Therefore He 
 does not feed us so. No good apple ripens 
 but some man feels that he himself has made 
 it, and finds in the food, whether he has 
 raised it or bought it, the result of his own 
 exertion. God is so careful not to pauper- 
 ize men by his charities that, though every 
 morsel is God's gift as really as it would ap- 
 pear to be if his hand were visible bestowing 
 it, men feel and are meant to feel that they 
 themselves produce what they consume. So 
 
HARVEST SUNDAY. 255 
 
 much more careful is our Maker of our char- 
 acters than of his own reputation, that He 
 never forces his agency on our attention. We 
 must reflect before we can realize that we owe 
 Him gratitude. There is need of occasions 
 like this to remind the farmer who grows 
 wheat that he does not grow it by himself. 
 As a wise mother guides the unskilled fin- 
 gers of her child to move aright over the 
 paper she holds in place the pencil she has 
 given him, and rejoices to hear him say, 
 " Charlie can make pictures ! " so, carefully, 
 God cultivates in us the germs of self-reliance. 
 3. Each object here, while it represents 
 ennobling human labor, reminds us also of 
 the wealth of gladness God has already made 
 these fruits the means of bestowing upon 
 men. We are accustomed to dwell upon 
 the pleasure of consuming the products of 
 the earth. We consider too little the pleas- 
 ure of producing them. When you see a 
 genial company enjoying their Thanksgiving 
 dinner, remember that the preparation of it 
 has given others a larger sum of satisfaction 
 than the present company receives. Con- 
 sider the joy of wholesome exercise expe- 
 rienced by the sower going forth to sow ; 
 the thrill in some one's soul when he saw the 
 
256 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 blades appear, and read in the tasselled grain 
 the prophecies of coming harvests ; the 
 sweet sleep of the laboring man ; the beauty 
 of sky and earth perpetually pressing upon 
 the reapers, and filling with quiet rapture 
 those who, having eyes, will see ! Innumer- 
 able insects have danced in ecstasy of in- 
 nocent intoxication over the blossoms whose 
 beauty feeds the faith of every man who will, 
 as we are told to do, consider the lilies. But 
 the chief felicity of man comes from succeed- 
 ing in good work. Every ripened apple, 
 every gr^in of wheat, registers the success of 
 some one in a good work ; is the writing of 
 the Master, " Well done, good and faithful 
 servant." 
 
 4. Consider the spiritual treasures of 
 strengthened character each harvest repre- 
 sents ! The moral condition of a people is 
 accurately gauged by the quality of their 
 agriculture. A consummate Lawton black- 
 berry is a more certain evidence than a 
 prayer - meeting that the basilar Christian 
 virtues have been at work in a community. 
 An excellent Antwerp raspberry was never 
 grown until self-denial, resolute faith, pa- 
 tience of hope created it ; while there have 
 been prayer-meetings which failed to de- 
 
HARVEST SUNDAY. 257 
 
 monstrate the presence of either self-denial, 
 patience, or faith. Neither cannibals nor 
 Sybarites ever produced a Bartlett pear, nor 
 ever will. No general statement is truer 
 than this, that a thriftless agriculture evinces 
 a degraded moral state. Turkey, with a soil 
 of exquisite fertility, is always hungry. 
 Poor, sterile Norway and Sweden export 
 grain. " Seek ye first the kingdom of God 
 and his righteousness, and all these things 
 shall be added unto you." God put man 
 into the garden to till it and to dress it. 
 If man obeys, God's earth returns a rich 
 reward. If he disobeys, man always reaps 
 thorns and thistles. This is true in all 
 climates and under all meridians. There- 
 fore the excellence of their fruitage is a just 
 reason for confidence in the moral character 
 of any people. It is a better test than the 
 speeches of their legislators, the books of 
 their authors, or even the wisdom of their 
 laws. In a nation thoroughly corrupted, 
 genius may blaze as it blazed in Demosthenes 
 and in Cicero, but the harvests will fail as 
 they failed in Greece and in Rome. The 
 punishment perpetually threatened upon the 
 Jews was that, if they forsook God, blight 
 and mildew would devour their fields. 
 
258 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 Among all peoples the same retribution has 
 ultimately followed persistent disobedience 
 of God. 
 
 The first words legible upon these har- 
 vest fruits are therefore : " Thank God, who 
 feeds us. Thank Him that in feeding He 
 does not pauperize us. Thank Him that He 
 mingles joy with the procuring as richly as 
 with the consuming of his gifts; Thank 
 Him, above all, for the evidence brought by 
 these full harvests recurring every year that, 
 beneath the surface - wickedness of our na- 
 tional life, there is a deep and prevalent 
 endeavor to "fear God and keep his com- 
 mandments." 
 
 If it is seemly to thank God for the corn 
 and the oil, we ought far more to thank Him 
 for the better gifts of morality and faith. 
 Yet religious people shrink from acknowl- 
 edging God's goodness in keeping them good. 
 They are afraid of appearing self-righteous. 
 Far as our country is from what it ought to 
 be, and from what by God's help we hope 
 to make it, a higher standard of living pre- 
 vails in the United States than in any other 
 country on the globe. Our prayers and the 
 prayers of our fathers have been answered. 
 When the seeds of one year have produced 
 
HARVEST SUNDAY. 259 
 
 a hundred fold, the farmer is encouraged to 
 sow more bountifully the next season. So 
 should it be in spiritual husbandry. There 
 has been almost no effort made in America 
 for the sake of Christ and his kingdom which 
 has not been obviously blessed. We have 
 sown few seeds that have not borne sixty 
 fold. 
 
 II. These fruits teach us to feel our need 
 of God in ways that impel us to hope and to 
 pray. 
 
 By watching the processes of nature, men 
 have inferred, in a way that seems to me il- 
 logical, that there is no God. Thinkers 
 whose sincerity I do not question affirm that 
 they can see no need of a God. The laws 
 of nature are invariable, we are told. They 
 are never broken ; they cannot be changed ; 
 their working furnishes no evidence of a 
 personal Will, reveals no need of one. 
 
 But these flowers and fruits seem to me 
 written over with testimonies to the need 
 and the presence of a controlling Will, — a 
 Will altogether independent and outside of 
 what we call the " laws of nature." 
 
 Look at this cranberry. It is a child of 
 humble parentage. I have often seen it 
 growing under the laws of nature with no 
 
260 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 help from a personal will. So growing, it 
 bears bitter little berries no bigger than 
 duck-shot, and so few of them that an acre 
 may produce perhaps two pecks. So you 
 may find them to-day in New Brunswick 
 wilderness or South African savanna. 
 
 But a personal will, named Man, has so 
 employed the laws of nature on Cape Cod as 
 to make these poor little bushes bear many 
 barrels, four hundred dollars' worth to an 
 acre, I am told, of such fruit as this. 
 
 Here is a luscious apple. It is a child of 
 the crab. Not such a crab as we see in 
 gardens, but a bitter midge of a thing, all 
 skin and core and pucker. It will grow 
 wild almost anywhere between the Cape of 
 Good Hope and Spitzbergen. For all the 
 laws of nature, it continued a wizened, 
 worthless thing, until a controlling will took 
 it in hand and made it a Rhode Island Pip- 
 pin, a Montreal Fameuse, an Ohio Belle 
 Flower. When the care of man is with- 
 drawn, it begins to relapse into the crab 
 state again, like an unchurched Christian 
 falling from grace. 
 
 Look, if you will, at this golden emblem 
 of good-nature, this symbol of contentment 
 in a well-completed destiny, this harbinger 
 
HARVEST SUNDAY. 261 
 
 of Thanksgiving, this pumpkin. What is 
 it and whence did it come ? Who is its 
 father? Who is its mother? And who 
 are its kindred ? Is it not the offspring of a 
 wretched gourd that climbed up trees in the 
 edge of jungles, and hung its little lumpy 
 fruit in a bewildered way among the branches, 
 as if it did not know why it was made, and 
 hoped some one would see it and tell it what 
 to do? 
 
 And at last some one did see, — the Egyp- 
 tians, I am told. They took it and taught it 
 what to do, and, obeying the education given 
 by the human will, it became in due time a 
 cucumber, a watermelon, a luscious citron, 
 and, not least if last, the golden ornament 
 of New England cornfields. Finally, by fur- 
 ther interference of an independent personal 
 will, it may become a pumpkin-pie. 
 
 Yet men who have carefully observed and 
 told us how the human will, by using the 
 laws of nature intelligently, can convert a 
 wretched gourd into a watermelon, while 
 they have seen no instance in which the laws 
 of nature unaided by the human will have 
 wrought so great a change, conclude that 
 natural laws, uncontrolled and undirected by 
 a personal Will, have transformed the harem 
 
262 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 of Sardanapalus into the Christian family, 
 the quarrelling murderers of Anglia into the 
 English Parliament, the feasting of can- 
 nibals into the New England Thanksgiving. 
 That is, while all our studies demonstrate 
 the immense importance of the presence of a 
 personal Will in changing a Shetland pony 
 into a cart-horse, no personal Will can have 
 had place in transforming an ape into 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 The studies which have been most popular 
 for many years emphasize the efficacy of 
 man's interference, not in breaking but in 
 applying the laws of nature. By using them 
 man can transform and has transformed 
 black coal into dazzling light, and dock mud 
 into strawberries. 
 
 Suppose the voice of prayer should be 
 lifted by the inanimate creation. The coals 
 cannot see him, but they have a tradition 
 which speaks of man and calls him " helper," 
 i. e. "holy." The plants cannot see him, 
 but in their hearts the same old story reigns. 
 Moved by the tradition, both coals and mud 
 and plants begin to pray. The black carbon 
 cries, " O man, if there be any man, make 
 me a shining light ! " The mud cries, " O 
 man, if there be any man, convert me into 
 
HARVEST SUNDAY. 263 
 
 strawberries ! " The gourd cries, u O man, 
 if there be any man, make me a water- 
 melon ! " 
 
 These supplications might well seem silly 
 to the unbelievers of their race, but this is 
 accurately the figure I have read you from 
 the Apostle Paul in the eighth chapter of 
 Romans. 
 
 The whole creation, he affirms, groans and 
 travails in pain together. The earnest ex- 
 pectation of all other created things waiteth 
 for the revealing, the instructive teaching, 
 of the sons of God, that is, of man redeemed 
 and enlightened by God. The whole crea- 
 tion waiteth for man, by the sovereignty of 
 his redeemed and purified will, to conduct it 
 into its designed development. Creation, 
 that is, all but man, has been made subject 
 to vanity, i. e. confusion, aimlessness, not by 
 its own choice, but by reason of God, who 
 thus subjected it in hope that man would re- 
 deem it into order ; and creation must re- 
 main undeveloped until man, by his God- 
 enlightened will, leads it into liberty of 
 glorious development. The crab remains a 
 crab until man makes it an apple ; the gourd 
 remains a gourd until man makes it a melon. 
 Neither knows for what it was meant, nor 
 
264: THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 into what it can be made, until it feels and 
 yields to human influence. 
 
 In like manner also the Spirit helpeth our 
 infirmities, for we know not what we should 
 pray for as we ought, but the Spirit maketh 
 intercession within us and for us according 
 to the mind of God. The Spirit knows what 
 we need, knows what He intended us to be- 
 come, and that He alone can make us. 
 
 Every soul is a garden of God. We are 
 his planting. To pray to Him, to trust in 
 Him, to hope in Him, to rejoice in Him, is 
 our only wisdom, our only peace. 
 
 Therefore the sight of these fruits moves 
 me to pray, for in praying I am only asking 
 One unimaginably better and abler than my- 
 self to do for me as I can do for my inferiors 
 and dependents. I do not ask God to break 
 his laws. When I ask a carpenter to smooth 
 a board I ask him not to break his plane, but 
 to use it. Natural laws are God's tools. 
 When I pray I only ask Him to use them 
 as I cannot. 1 I look upon this rose. I re- 
 member the scentless, ragged, single blossom 
 which man's care has developed into the tea 
 
 1 In accuracy of speech. God's laws are simply God's 
 ways of working-. In a man we should call them habits. 
 They are invariable because alwavs the best. 
 
HARVEST SUNDAY. 265 
 
 which cheers, the canielia which adorns, and 
 I ask God to do for me and all his human 
 flowers more and better than men have done 
 for roses as He is greater and better than 
 men. 
 
 To think of God under his name of "Hus- 
 bandman" fills me with large hopes. I 
 know how a genuine love for flowers makes 
 a man delight in his garden. He watches 
 with eagerness for the tender blade to ap- 
 pear, struggling out of darkness. He shields 
 it with carefulest care from the perils that 
 threaten its young life. His affection grows 
 with his care. "With sweet and honest satis- 
 faction he observes the forming buds. He 
 strives to make each plant finer than any 
 that have been before ; and when one bursts 
 into glory of crimson, or purple, or gold, he 
 calls in his friends and neighbors, saying, 
 " Rejoice with me ! " 
 
 " Ye are God's husbandry." 
 
 Let us remember that God thinks of us as 
 of a vineyard in a very fruitful field. Eye 
 hath not seen, we do not know, what we shall 
 be. But his eyes will not slumber, his care 
 will not fail. We may refuse his control. 
 If we reject his gracious help, we must re- 
 main wild grapes. But be sure of this : if 
 
266 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 we will yield to Him, obey his command- 
 ments when we know them, receive his Spirit 
 as it is given, we shall some time appear at 
 his right hand, transformed by the renewing 
 of our minds till the change from what we 
 are to what we shall be will immeasurably 
 exceed the change from the sooty coal into 
 the electric light. 
 
XX. 
 
 CHRISTMAS. 
 
 The mistletoe, which our New England 
 fathers flung contemptuously away, con- 
 tained a lesson they would have done more 
 wisely to have heeded. 
 
 As the story runs, Balder, the god of peace, 
 was so beautiful that all who saw him loved 
 him. When he lay in his cradle, his mother 
 spoke a charm which restrained all created 
 things from harming him. Eventually it 
 became a pastime of the Scandinavian dei- 
 ties to gather around their favorite and hurl 
 missiles at him to provoke his smiles, which 
 were more lustrous than sunbeams. Oak 
 could not bruise him, granite could not wound 
 him, iron could not pierce him. Obedient 
 to Friga's charm, they fell as thistledown 
 upon his body. But the mother forgot to 
 charm the mistletoe. It grew concealed 
 from sight, and seemed too insignificant for 
 notice. When Loke grew envious, he 
 plucked a spray of mistletoe, sharpened it to 
 
268 TEE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 an arrow's point, and persuaded Hoder, who 
 was blind, to cast it at Balder. The missile 
 flew with fatal aim and heaven was draped 
 in mourning. 
 
 In 1644 the Long Parliament decreed that 
 Christmas, which had long been the merriest 
 day of all the year, should be observed as a 
 fast. But the Pilgrims had already written 
 in the journal of the Mayflower : " Dec. 25, 
 1620 : This day we went on shore, some 
 to fell timber, some to saw, some to rive, 
 and some to carry, so no man rested on that 
 day." Thus they repeated Lady Friga's er- 
 ror. They consecrated all departments of 
 life except its recreations. Those sturdy 
 heroes fancied play too trivial for their no- 
 tice. They had no time for sports. They 
 forgot that it is never the consciousness of 
 immortality that makes men feel hurried. 
 Only the consciousness of mortality can do 
 that, for he that believeth shall not make 
 haste. I think that many a Christian par- 
 ent has loved his children, toiled for them, 
 instructed them, prayed with them, given 
 the best hours of his life to them, and seen 
 them sloughed at last in dissipation, solely 
 because he never played with them. Play 
 is the divinely ordained business of child- 
 
CHRISTMAS. 269 
 
 hood. It is generally in the " child gar- 
 den " that the human spirit learns to eat or 
 to refuse forbidden fruits. Christmas bears 
 witness that " the ministers of salvation " 
 began their work by thronging the air with 
 radiance and song. 
 
 The Church in New England has treated 
 amusements as Congress has treated the In- 
 dians, and with somewhat similar results. 
 The Indians once were friendly. Our legis- 
 lators banished them outside the limits of 
 Christian influence, confined them to the so- 
 ciety of buffaloes, bears, wolves, rattlesnakes, 
 and Indian agents ; have, in consequence, 
 been forced to spend more than seven hun- 
 dred million dollars to protect the scalps of 
 fifty million white men from the tomahawks 
 of three hundred thousand red ones, and 
 now complain that Indians cannot be civil- 
 ized. With equal wisdom the Church thrust 
 amusements far beyond her pale, resigned 
 the management of recreations to her en- 
 emies, and grieves, with a surprise which 
 would be ludicrous if it were not sad, to see 
 her children scalped when they enter a bowl- 
 ing alley, touch a billiard-cue, take an oar 
 to pull in a regatta, or touch the hand of a 
 maiden to lead her in the dance. 
 
270 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 When the Church refused to use her silver 
 nets, Satan stole and made them snares. 
 She reaped the experience of many mothers 
 who wash and dress their children, set them 
 on chairs where their feet cannot touch the 
 floor, and bid them keep still and be good. 
 
 " But the saucy little boy 
 Who had no toy 
 
 Did not know what to do ; 
 So he rumpled his frock, 
 And tore his sock, 
 
 And tried to eat his shoe.'' 
 
 Christmas originated in the instinctive 
 protest of the Christian consciousness against 
 asceticism. It came of a half-conscious en- 
 deavor to stamp the divine seal upon glad- 
 ness. 
 
 In the fourth century the relation of the 
 Church to the world had come to resemble 
 that which exists to-day. Christianity had 
 become the dominant religion. But the 
 splendid sports of the pagans drew Chris- 
 tian youths into the ring, the theatre, and 
 the temple. To win them thence, the fa- 
 thers instituted a Christian festival more al- 
 luring than those heathen ones which had 
 proved so seductive. The time selected for 
 its celebration proves the bravery of its 
 originators. 
 
CHRISTMAS. 271 
 
 The winter solstice, when the days begin 
 to lengthen, as if the eyes of Time dilated 
 while they watched their returning Lord, 
 has always been the part of the year most 
 honored by all systems of nature-worship. 
 At this season the heathen world celebrated 
 its most brilliant rites and its wildest orgies : 
 the Swedes kindling bonfires on their hill- 
 tops, and crowning columns with evergreen 
 for Lady Friga's sake ; the Romans were 
 rushing through their streets in the revels 
 of the Saturnalia ; Grecian maidens were 
 waving torches on Helicon to Dionysus ; 
 Egyptian youths were bringing branches of 
 palm to the temples of Horus ; Persians 
 were singing the birth of Mithras ; and 
 even Hindoos were shouting their loudest 
 cries to Vishnu. Each of these festivals 
 had come to be defiled by practices it would 
 be unseemly to describe, when, in the midst 
 of this whirl and confusion, where drunk- 
 ards raved, night-birds screamed, and ser- 
 pents coiled, the bold fathers planted the 
 cross, called down the dove, set the cradle of 
 Christ, and declared to those various forms 
 of sun-worship, which numbered among their 
 disciples nine twelfths of the Roman Em- 
 pire, "The babe is the Light of the World." 
 
272 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 Gradually the pagan festivals disappeared, 
 supplanted by Christmas. The victor came 
 forth triumphant, adorned with the spoils 
 taken from those she had conquered and su- 
 perseded. Those spoils she still wears, for 
 most of our Christmas customs are only 
 pagan practices picked from the mire and 
 made clean. Bishop Liberius would have 
 exulted could he have foreseen what has 
 since come to pass, when, in the year 342, 
 he preached at Rome the first Christmas 
 sermon. 
 
 Christmas is not only the children's day : 
 it is a memorial of the childhood of Chris- 
 tendom. 
 
 Men love to perpetuate the memories of 
 their childhood. We do not banish Robin- 
 son Crusoe from our hearts when we have 
 ceased to believe the fiction fact. The re- 
 ligion of one age has often become the 
 poetry of the next. During the Middle 
 Ages Europe was in its imaginative child- 
 hood. Beliefs which to us are fancies were 
 then religious creeds. Many of them still 
 linger, half believed, among the peasants of 
 the old world, and give an atmosphere of 
 peculiar sanctity to Christmas Eve. 
 
 In parts of Germany the belief still flut- 
 
CHRISTMAS. 273 
 
 ters in many a heart that on the Holy Night 
 all nature bloomed with the pristine loveli- 
 ness of Eden. On its return the heavens 
 still drop healing dews, and the aspen-tree 
 distils a precious balsam. At midnight the 
 maidens of Thuringen enter the gardens 
 robed in white, shake the fruit-trees, and 
 sing : — 
 
 i l Sleep not, sleep not little trees ! 
 The good lady draws nigh ! 
 The sun's daughter is coming, 
 She will give you leaves, 
 She will give you flowers, 
 She will give you fruits ; 
 But eye shall not see 
 What she hangeth on thee, 
 Till summer returns 
 And the July sun burns." 
 
 On this Holy Night alone of all the year 
 the quivering aspen-tree has rest. For eigh- 
 teen centuries her leaves have shivered with 
 the guilty consciousness that she furnished 
 wood for the cross of Christ. On Christmas 
 Eve she rests, remembering that she also 
 furnished wood for the Redeemer's cradle. 
 A leafless bough placed in water on St. An- 
 drew's night will blossom Christmas Eve, 
 and roses of Jericho will adorn it all the 
 year. At twelve o'clock the pains of the 
 lost are relaxed, Judas sleeps upon his bed 
 
274 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 of fire. For an hour Herod ceases to clank 
 his chains. On this night Pontius Pilate's 
 ghost, which has wandered all the year on 
 the summit of Mt. Pilatus vainly striving 
 to cleanse its hands in the water of " Dead 
 Man's Lake," but only generating storms 
 and tempests by the endeavor, rests until the 
 dawn. The Wandering Jew hears no longer 
 the goading voice " Onward, ever onward! " 
 He sinks upon the ground, his black hair 
 blanches, and he slumbers peacefully as a 
 little child. The daughter of Herodias, 
 doomed to spin an eternal dance in circles 
 round the Arctic pole, finds rest on Christ- 
 mas Eve. Mountains open their sides. The 
 subterranean gnomes cast forth gems and 
 gold, which are washed with the sand down 
 river channels for the use of men. Water 
 drawn this night will change to wine or pre- 
 serve its sweetness through the year. At 
 twelve o'clock animals are endued with pow- 
 ers of speech and prophecy. The planets 
 stand still while the beasts of the forests 
 kneel in prayer for men. The sound of 
 church bells will be heard wherever a church 
 has stood, though no vestige of its ruins re- 
 main. Bread baked in the open air to-night 
 will cure diseases. Lie in a manner and 
 
CHRISTMAS. 275 
 
 you will see your future. Peel an apple 
 without breaking the skin, swing the strip 
 three times around your head, drop it be- 
 hind you, and it will form upon the floor 
 the initial of your sweetheart's name. As 
 the apple was in Paradise the source of sor- 
 row, to-night it becomes the harbinger of 
 
 joy- 
 Indeed, the apple was always sacred to 
 Venus, and was used by the augurs in di- 
 vining. Who of us has never taken an ap- 
 ple, named and counted the seeds to forecast 
 the future ? One, I love ; two, I love ; three, 
 I love, I say ; four, I love with all my heart ; 
 and, five, I cast away ; six, he loves ; seven, 
 she loves ; eight, both love ; nine, he comes ; 
 and ten, he tarries ; eleven, he courts ; and, 
 twelve, — suspense is ended. 
 
 Fosbrooke tells us how Roman youths 
 made their declarations. They went by 
 night and hung a garland upon the door, 
 behind which the dear one slept. This asked 
 the important question. Then they returned 
 to their bachelor abodes, filliped apple seeds 
 against the ceiling, and from the way in 
 which they fell upon the floor inferred the 
 chances of a favorable reply. 
 
 When our children ask for the wish-bones 
 
276 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 at dinner, dry them, pull them with each 
 other, and believe that he who gets the long- 
 est limb will have his wish, they are imi- 
 tating Cornelia and Julius Caesar, for this 
 same thing the Roman augurs taught chil- 
 dren to do at the Saturnalia two thousand 
 years ago. 
 
 But shadows also lie on the blessed night. 
 Amber is the congealed tears which mer- 
 maids weep into the sea on Christmas Eve, 
 because they have no share in the trophies 
 of the time. 
 
 " For this is the day when the fairy kind 
 
 Sit weeping alone for their hopeless lot, 
 When the wood-maiden sighs to the sighing wind, 
 
 And the mermaiden weeps in her crystal grot. 
 For this is the day when a deed was done, 
 
 In which they have neither part nor share ; 
 For the children of clay was salvation won, 
 
 But not for the forms of earth or air." 
 
 Malignant spirits are on the watch, and 
 would riot over the earth but for this. The 
 cock crows all night on Christmas Eve, and 
 the wicked imps, who cannot be wise or they 
 would not be wicked, think it continually 
 about to dawn, and are afraid to appear lest 
 the snn may overtake them. 
 
 We twine wreaths of holly with the scar- 
 let berries and call them Christmas wreaths. 
 
CHRISTMAS. 211 
 
 The Danes taught us to do that. They said 
 Christ's crown was made of holly. When 
 its briers touched his brow they softened 
 into pointed leaves, and the berries which 
 had been white before were dyed scarlet by 
 his blood. 
 
 The Thanksgiving mince pie appears to 
 be inherited from Christmas. Originally it 
 contained no meat but mutton, perhaps from 
 deference to the shepherds of Bethlehem. 
 Into it was put all fruits and spices brought 
 from the East, some say in memory of the 
 Wise Men whose gifts came from the Orient. 
 But the truer theory seems to be that the 
 grateful housewife strove to combine, in a 
 thankful offering, all the products of the 
 year from near and far. In England, to 
 suggest the manger, the crust was made ob- 
 long in shape. 
 
 From Germany comes the Christmas tree. 
 The legend runs that when Eve plucked 
 that unwholesome apple, the fruit fell from 
 the tree of life, its leaves shrank into needle 
 points, its rich green turned sombre. In 
 short, it became the fir-tree, whose evergreen 
 dress beneath the winter snow still marks it 
 as the tree of life. 
 
 On the night of Christ's birth the tree 
 
278 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 cast off its mournful dress and bloomed 
 again as of old. This legend is reenacted 
 when we take the fir-tree, decorate it with 
 all things bright and beautiful, and hang 
 upon its boughs gifts radiant with love ; 
 leaves and fruits for the healing of the na- 
 tions. Only by miracle was the true nature 
 of the fir-tree learned. 
 
 Maturnus was the son of the widow of 
 Nain. He was sent by St. Peter as a mis- 
 sionary to the Gauls upon the Rhine. The 
 Apostle gave him a staff which had been cut 
 from the tree of life. When the pilgrim 
 reached the Black Forest, he leaned his staff 
 against a fir-tree, and went to sleep. When 
 he awoke it had disappeared. It had grown 
 into the trunk, and become once more a 
 branch of the tree of life. While Matur- 
 nus searched for his cane there came a little 
 bird from Paradise, alighted on the branch, 
 and sung a song which told him that the 
 staff had found its parent. So he knew that 
 his journey was ended and straightway be- 
 gan to preach. 
 
 Our custom of giving presents is borrowed 
 from the Romans. Their usual gift was a 
 small taper of white wax. Love makes light. 
 But in the time of Tacitus the custom had 
 
CHRISTMAS. 279 
 
 developed so much ostentation that only the 
 wealthiest could afford to meet the expecta- 
 tions of their friends. Fashionable people 
 sometimes bankrupted themselves by mak- 
 ing Saturnalia presents, hoping to receive 
 back again more than they gave. The same 
 danger threatens Christmas among us. 
 
 These old traditions would not be worth 
 repeating, but for the fact already men- 
 tioned. Most of them were once religious 
 creeds. History was shaped by them, as we 
 are shaping history by our strenuous faith 
 in the opposite of the Gospels. 
 
 For an illustration, the legend of the 
 Magi may serve. Its influence can be traced 
 through the Middle Ages, and its power in 
 moulding history shown. This is the tradi- 
 tion. The three Wise Men who came from 
 the East bearing gifts were kings. Twelve 
 days were consumed in their journey. This 
 is one of the reasons given for continuing 
 Christmas festivities twelve days, and con- 
 cluding them with the Twelfth Night of 
 England, or Sylvester Abend of Germany. 
 
 The names of the Wise Men were Mel- 
 chior, Jaspar, Belthazar. Melchior's gift 
 was a golden apple, which had been cast by 
 Alexander from the tribute of the world, 
 
280 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 and thirty pieces of silver. What became of 
 the apple I do not know, but the history of 
 the money has been preserved. A Chaldean 
 idol of gold was melted and minted by 
 Terah, and the coins, thirty in number, 
 given to his son Abraham. By Abraham 
 they were paid to Ephron the Hittite for 
 the cave in which Sarah was buried. Thence 
 the coins passed into the hands of the Ish- 
 maelite merchants, who with them bought 
 Joseph from his treacherous brothers. To 
 Joseph they were repaid by these same 
 brethren, when they went to Egypt after 
 corn. With the same coins Joseph bought, 
 from the sovereign of Sheba, spices to em- 
 balm his father. After lying a few cen- 
 turies in the imperial treasury they were 
 brought by the Queen of Sheba as a present 
 to Solomon. The king of Arabia plundered 
 them from the Temple in the time of Ee- 
 hoboam. They remained in Arabia until 
 Melchior, the king of that country, brought 
 them to Mary. When the Holy Family fled 
 to Egypt, Herod's soldiers pursued them 
 closely. They passed a field where a man 
 was sowing wheat. The grain sprang up 
 instantly by miracle. An hour later the sol- 
 diers arrived. " Have any fugitives passed 
 
CHRISTMAS. 281 
 
 this way?" they asked. "Not since that 
 field was sowed ! " was the reply. As the 
 grain was ready to harvest, the soldiers 
 turned another way. When Mary saw the 
 miracle, in surprise she dropped the money 
 Melchior had given her. The peasant picked 
 it up, paid it as a votive offering to the tem- 
 ple at Jerusalem, where it remained until 
 given by the high priest to Judas for the 
 betrayal. How the coins became silver, 
 though they had been cast from an idol of 
 gold, I do not know. Perhaps the idol was 
 only plated. It would be encouraging to 
 discover such an evidence that pagans also 
 tried to be thrifty in matters of religion. 
 
 In return for their gifts, Mary gave the 
 Wise Men the swaddling clothes, and the three 
 were eventually baptized by St. Thomas. In 
 the fourth century their remains were mirac- 
 ulously discovered by the Empress Helena 
 and removed to Constantinople. 
 
 Here the legend ends and history begins. 
 In the Church of St. Sophia reliques sup- 
 posed to be those of the Wise Men had long 
 been worshipped, when in the twelfth century 
 they were removed to Milan and presented 
 by the Emperor Frederick, in 1164, to Rhi- 
 naldus who carried them to his bishopric of 
 
282 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 Cologne. Hence the Magi were called the 
 Three Kings of Cologne. King Louis of 
 France, leaving the skulls at Cologne, trans- 
 ported the bones to Paris. Those who vis- 
 ited Paris to worship at their shrine received 
 rings or fragments of ivory or parchment 
 inscribed with the names of the three wor- 
 thies, usually with some word of benediction 
 added. These were worn about the person 
 as amulets. They were believed to protect 
 the possessor from disease, and were largely 
 used as gifts between friends. From such 
 a practice arose the custom, so common on 
 the continent, of giving Christmas mottoes, 
 the originals of Christmas cards. 
 
 A pleasant reminder of this custom I have 
 witnessed at the annual Christmas ball given 
 at Kroll's Gardens, Berlin, upon Sylvester 
 night. Twenty years ago Kroll's was per- 
 haps the largest dancing hall in Europe. It 
 was always crowded at the Sylvester ball. 
 At the first stroke of twelve the music 
 stopped, dancing ceased ; the silence was 
 broken only by the clang of the huge bell 
 striking midnight. The revellers looked up 
 and stood as if spell-bound. The stranger 
 lifted his eyes because the rest had done so. 
 Nothing appeared until the air pulsated with 
 
CHRISTMAS. 283 
 
 the last stroke of twelve. Then a mist 
 appeared to gather on the lofty ceiling, as 
 when one breathes upon the window pane. 
 The mist condenses. It begins to flutter 
 downward as flakes of snow. Slowly the 
 flakes descend. They seem minutes in fall- 
 ing, before they are seen to be bits of tissue 
 paper. Ladies and gentleman stand below, 
 motionless as statues, each braced for a 
 leap. It is a sight to photograph. Gentle- 
 men with orders glittering on their breasts. 
 Ladies in silk and velvet, with diamonds 
 flashing on arm and bosom. Each in atti- 
 tude of eager expectation. Before the snow 
 fall reaches the floor, the entire company 
 appears bewitched. They leap upwards, 
 they spring on each other's shoulders, they 
 snatch from each other's hands. Each 
 strives to secure the first handful. Though 
 the papers fall thick and fast, few reach the 
 floor. Well bred though one may be, it is 
 scarcely possible for him to escape the con- 
 tagion, or keep from scrambling with the 
 rest. The politest people take the measles. 
 The papers are Christmas greetings. He 
 who gathers most is counted victor. The 
 mottoes are preserved through the year, not 
 as amulets, but as tokens of good-will and 
 memorials of Christmas. 
 
284 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 But we have not reached the end of this 
 legend of the Wise Men. The three skulls 
 have long been preserved at Cologne, their 
 names written in rubies. They were kept 
 in a mimic temple of gold and gems in the 
 most sacred shrine of the ancient edifice. 
 Over them, and because they were there, 
 arose the grandest monument of Gothic art, 
 the mighty minster of Cologne. 
 
 In the year 1212, before the present edi- 
 fice was built, a peasant boy named Nicholas 
 appeared in Cologne. He was twelve years 
 old. He claimed to be a messenger from 
 Jesus Christ to the children of Germany. 
 He said he had been sent to lead them to 
 the Holy Land. 
 
 The elders had failed to capture the sep- 
 ulchre of Christ by swords and spears. 
 Therefore the little ones must win it by their 
 songs. Jesus would divide the sea for them 
 to pass, and teach them songs which should 
 make the walls of Jerusalem fall down and 
 convert the Saracens to his service. 
 
 At the spot consecrated by the reliques of 
 the first pilgrims from the East the children 
 gathered. In his childish treble, with the 
 eloquence of complete conviction, the boy 
 proclaimed the glory of the enterprise. He 
 
CHRISTMAS. 285 
 
 pointed to the golden casket which enclosed 
 the reliques of the Wise Men. His message 
 fell upon willing ears. It entered hearts full 
 of the crusader's ardor, which had passed 
 from men and entered the children. These 
 gathered from near and from far. They 
 could not be restrained. Of those kept by 
 force at home, some sickened and died. The 
 superstition of the age saw in their deaths 
 the judgment of God upon those who had 
 attempted to oppose the will of the Holy 
 Spirit. Even the Pope feared to speak 
 against the enterprise. The children of the 
 poor went unattended. The rich sent ser- 
 vants with their little ones. Hundreds of 
 monks joined the weird caravan. In July 
 or August of the year forty thousand chil- 
 dren, many of them under twelve, marched 
 from Cologne. Some were clad in crusa- 
 der's costume, white, with a cross of scarlet 
 cloth upon the shoulder. Each wore a palm- 
 er's hat and bore a palmer's staff. They 
 moved in two columns, their small hands 
 grasping tiny pennons and mimic crosiers. 
 Twenty thousand of them ascended the 
 Rhine. They had no organization, no com- 
 missariat. Their only plan was to follow 
 the leader, whom they believed to be inspired. 
 
286 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 It seems to have been expected that they 
 would be miraculously guarded. It almost 
 seems as if they were. 
 
 At nightfall they lay down upon the grass 
 and slept until the dawn. They ate what 
 charity bestowed as they passed through 
 village and hamlet. Those who had provi- 
 sions in their small crusading sacks shared 
 with those who had none. They advanced 
 practising the hymns they were to sing 
 before Jerusalem. 
 
 Some of these hymns which Nicholas had 
 taught them are still preserved. One, if it 
 was indeed composed by a boy of twelve, 
 and not, as has been suspected, by his 
 father, is little less than a miracle. Ren- 
 dered from the Latin it runs thus : — 
 
 i ' Fairest Lord Jesus, 
 
 Ruler of all T&tions, 
 Thou of Mary and of God the son! 
 
 Thee will I cherish, 
 
 Thee will I honor, 
 Thee my soul's glory, joy, and crown. 
 
 " Fair are the meadows, 
 
 Fairer still the woodlands, 
 Robed in the beauty of the spring ! 
 
 Jesus is fairer, 
 
 Jesus is purer, 
 Who makes our saddened hearts to sing." 
 
CHRISTMAS. 287 
 
 They have reached the Alps. Hardship and 
 famine have been at work. They are only 
 ten thousand now. Still they struggle for- 
 ward, over the terrible pass that nearly 
 thwarted Hannibal and Napoleon. 
 
 Their tender feet press the flints and tread 
 the ice of the lonely glacier, but the moon 
 shines softly and the stars are bright while 
 the little ones kneel at nightfall in the snow 
 and their sobs pass into melody : — 
 
 "Fair is the sunshine, 
 
 Fairer still the moonlight, 
 And the sparkling starry host ! 
 
 Jesus shines brighter, 
 
 Jesus shines fairer, 
 Than all the angels heaven can boast." 
 
 After seven hundred miles of journeying 
 these little wanderers appear approaching 
 Genoa. The amazed Italians ask the mean- 
 ing of their coming. 
 
 " May we rest one night in your city ? 
 We are going to deliver Palestine and 
 baptize the Paynim. " The city asked the 
 children to remain a few days for rest, and 
 promised then to send them safely home. 
 The offer was gently rejected. 
 
 " We would only rest one night in this 
 city. To-morrow Jesus will make a path 
 through the waters for his holy children, and 
 we will journey on." 
 
288 THE WORLD TO COME, 
 
 Bitter was their disappointment when the 
 next day's sun revealed the ocean still im- 
 passible. Of these enthusiasts it is not 
 known that one ever reached his home again. 
 History has passed lightly over this marvel- 
 lous episode as a mystery it is equally unable 
 to explain or to deny. 
 
 The one truth preached by these children 
 the world cannot afford to forget. It is 
 that the harp is stronger than the sword. 
 The crusades of the nineteenth century are 
 between the rich and the poor. To bridge 
 the space between them with genial fellow- 
 ship has been a main work of Christmas. 
 
 Once a year, at the festival of Mithras, it 
 is said that the Parthian monarch descended 
 from his throne, stood upon the ground, 
 clasped hand with the common people, and 
 cried, " I am one of you." At the Saturna- 
 lia masters and slaves exchanged apparel, 
 the masters served while the slaves sat at 
 table. Liberty of speech was allowed. At 
 the banquet some one was by vote elected 
 temporary king. Beans, white and black, 
 were used as ballots. White " yes," black 
 " no." Generally a wit of obscure birth like 
 Plautus was selected, and all his commands 
 must be obeyed. 
 
CHRISTMAS. 289 
 
 Hence the English Twelfth Night with its 
 " King of the bean," or " Lord of Misrule." 
 Here are germs of the old time English 
 Christmas. Let the housemaid rise early on 
 Christmas morning, for two village swains 
 are waiting at the door. If the great sau- 
 sage is not boiling over the fire at sunrise, 
 they may take the damsel by her elbows be- 
 tween them, and run with her around the 
 market-place till she is out of breath and 
 ashamed of her laziness. 
 
 The centre of the Christmas dinner was 
 the boar's-head, sacred animal, — because by 
 rooting with his tusks in the ground he 
 taught mankind to plough. It has been ob- 
 served that this is not the only habit men 
 appear to have derived from the same in- 
 structor. When the Puritans abolished the 
 boar's-head by law, even the Christmas pie 
 and plum-pudding were for a time counted 
 heretical, which made Sir Roger de Coverly 
 remark that he had hope of the Roundheads 
 when he observed them at the king's pud- 
 ding. 
 
 A beautiful dish was the peacock. Some- 
 times it was carefully skinned so as not to 
 mar the plumage, the flesh cooked and re- 
 placed within the skin and brought upon the 
 
290 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 table with all the feathers flying. Some- 
 times it was baked in a pie. the head and 
 tail in full splendor appearing above the 
 crust, to give origin to the Shakespearian 
 oath : " By the cock and pie." 
 
 In the third year of his reign King Henry 
 VIII. celebrated Christmas at Greenwich. 
 A castle was erected in the grand hall. 
 Cannon frowned across the mimic moat. 
 Knights armed cap-a-pie paced the battle- 
 ments. On the pennon floating from the 
 keep was written, " Castle Dangerous. "Be- 
 fore it appeared the king with five compan- 
 ions. They were clad in suits half velvet 
 covered with gold spangles, half cloth of 
 gold. They wore caps of russet satin em- 
 broidered with gold and brilliants. They 
 charged upon the castle. Its pennon sank. 
 The drawbridge was lowered. Forth came 
 the defenders. They were the six most 
 beautiful ladies of the court, clad in russet 
 satin embroidered with leaves of gold and 
 powdered with seed pearls. They danced a 
 morris with the knights. Then the pennon 
 rose again, and the fair dames led the knights 
 captive within the castle. 
 
 Enormous sums were expended in such 
 pageants by King Henry. But the revels 
 
 
CHRISTMAS. 291 
 
 were not confined to royalty. All classes 
 participated. The bulwarks of rank w r ere 
 largely removed at Christmas time. 
 
 In the kitchen every member of the house- 
 hold from duke to scullion must aid in carry- 
 ing the Yule log, while each one tried to drop 
 his end upon his neighbor's toes, as Congress- 
 men endeavor to carry through Congress 
 bills which, though remunerative, are like to 
 prove unpopular. Even the learned bar- 
 risters must share in the revels. Dugdale 
 tells us the matter was not left to their op- 
 tion. All the members of the bar were 
 obliged to dance after the Christmas dinner, 
 before the judges, chancellors, and bench- 
 ers, and with them. " And this was thought 
 very needful, as making these gentlemen 
 more fit for their books at other times." In 
 the reign of James I., all the barristers of 
 Lincoln's Inn were disbarred by decimation, 
 because they refused to dance at Candlemas 
 according to the ancient order of the society. 
 It would amaze us if Harvard should refuse 
 to graduate students who could not or would 
 not dance the hornpipe. Yet out of such 
 soil grew Bacon, Burleigh, and Blackstone. 
 
 France seems least of all the nations in 
 Europe to have enjoyed the spirit of Christ- 
 
292 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 mas. Frenchmen could not even make a 
 Christmas pudding. Louis le Grand once 
 attempted to regale the English ambassador 
 upon that celebrated viand. He sent to 
 London for the recipe, instructed the royal 
 cook with his royal lips, told how to mingle 
 the flour and the condiments, how many 
 raisins and how much citron to use. But he 
 forgot to tell the cook to boil the pudding in 
 a bag, and the combined efforts of the great- 
 est monarch, and the most famous chef in 
 Europe resulted in a mess wilich had to be 
 served like soup in a tureen, while the guests 
 were compelled to harpoon the floating plums 
 with forks or dredge them up with ladles. 
 
 The cynical, unlovely customs which have 
 hung upon the robes of Christmas come from 
 France. Such is April Fool's day, which 
 was first devised in memory of the bootless 
 errand on which Pilate sent Christ to Herod, 
 and was afterwards transferred to the time 
 of Easter. 
 
 At Christmastide the priests entered the 
 pulpits and crowed as chanticleers, calling 
 themselves St. Peter's cocks. They dis- 
 guised, perhaps it would be more accurate to 
 say revealed, themselves in asses' skins, and 
 brayed in honor of Balaam, who first pre- 
 
CHRISTMAS. 293 
 
 dieted the rising of the Star of Bethlehem. 
 They celebrated the time, as that navigator 
 who sighted certain bluffs in Southeastern 
 Africa on Christmas Day, and therefore 
 called them " Natal," or " birth town," with- 
 out suspecting that they were the gateway 
 to a land of diamonds. French merrymak- 
 ings are more redolent of gas-lights than of 
 May-blossoms. Frenchmen danced, but often 
 in a fiendish style, — a style commemorated 
 in that legend made familiar by the " Elegy 
 of the Cork Leg." 
 
 A party of young people assembled near 
 a church on the south of the Rhine to dance 
 on Christmas Eve. A priest, disturbed at 
 his devotions, asked them to desist. They 
 refused. Three times he. repeated the re- 
 quest. Three times they scornfully rejected 
 it. He warned them to beware. They 
 ridiculed his warning. On they danced. 
 At last they grew weary. But as they would 
 not stop when they could, now they could 
 not when they would. The dawn broke, 
 still they danced on. The town came to see. 
 On they danced. The monk discerned his 
 own sister in the cotillon. He seized her 
 by the arm and tried to draw her from such 
 fell companionship. Off came the arm in 
 
294 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 his hands, and the rest of her danced on. 
 The ground was worn away to their ankles, 
 then to their arm - pits. Their clothes fell 
 off. Their ribs grew visible, their bones 
 clattered like castanets ; still they danced on 
 twelve months, night and day, until at last 
 Bishop Hubert took pity upon them, granted 
 absolution, and they stopped. 
 
 Perhaps in no institution has the spirit of 
 Christmas brotherhood gleamed more gayly 
 than in the German Christmas fair. Let 
 me show you one at Berlin. Six days be- 
 fore Christmas, a visible change passes over 
 city and suburb. A magic change, as when 
 the wand touched Cinderella, and the child 
 of the ash-heap became the queen of the ball- 
 room. The streets begin to be lined with fir- 
 trees. The shop-windows grow kaleidoscopic. 
 The central attraction is the Christmas fair. 
 It is held in the royal square. Here a mimic 
 city springs up in a night. The buildings 
 are booths of fir boughs, and tents decked 
 with evergreen. No monojDolies are allowed. 
 It is the people's fair. Peasants from the 
 country are there, peddlers from the slums, 
 princely merchants from the Linden. The 
 booths are arranged in avenues that form a 
 mimic town. 
 
CHRISTMAS. 295 
 
 Each booth is adorned with prodigality of 
 ornament, till it looks almost like a Christ- 
 mas tree. At night wax tapers of countless 
 colors gleam on every side. They are fas- 
 tened in most surprising places, — hung upon 
 twigs, thrust into pipe bowls, stuck into hat 
 bands. All manner of articles are exposed 
 for sale. Here is a pair of white china 
 wolves lineally descended from the nurse 
 of Romulus and Remus. There is the iden- 
 tical mouse which gnawed the lion free, 
 whose biography is it not written in the 
 chronicles of the book of -ZEsop? Blown 
 glass fairies, gilt gingerbread ogres, plaster 
 of Paris angels, wooden peacocks with bead 
 eyes and chicken - feather tails, diminutive 
 steamboats on wheels, disconsolate lovers 
 done in sweet-cake with pathetic ditties in 
 white sugar dropping from their lips ; impla- 
 cable furies on impossible dragons with red- 
 foil eyes and tin claw toes ; the bright faces 
 of the damsels who offer these monsters for 
 sale presenting sweet contrast to the mon- 
 sters themselves. 
 
 The avenues are filled with a motley 
 throng. Rich and poor are together here. 
 The bright uniforms of the soldiers, the sil- 
 ver helmets of the police, harlequins fantas- 
 
296 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 tically clad, boys with colored lanterns and 
 variegated transparencies. Some have rat- 
 tles which they spring at you, and shriek 
 with laughter as they see you start. One 
 thinks himself at Rome in the carnival. 
 
 Woe to the spectator whose dignity re- 
 bukes the fun. At other times the Prussians 
 are remarkable for the deference they show 
 to rank and wealth. But to-night they effer- 
 vesce. Here comes an elegant youth. From 
 silken hat to mirror boot his attire is immac- 
 ulate. Through his eye-glass he surveys the 
 wild scene with the solemnity of a grasshop- 
 per on a light-house observing the ocean and 
 seeming to wonder why it foams. A bright- 
 eyed peasant girl casts tender glances toward 
 him. He looks toward her booth. He pities 
 her weakness. He will remind her that the 
 wren must not too much admire the eagle. 
 But he will not be cruel, for she blushes ; 
 poor child ! He will buy a trifle. Alas for 
 the young foreigner! He has yet to learn 
 that buying trifles of young damsels at fairs 
 is no trifle ! What shall he buy ? M Oh sir, 
 this toilet box ! See the cupid on the lid ! 
 Only five groschen, good sir, and a cupid on 
 the lid ! " 
 
 He pays the five groschen. " Thank you, 
 kind sir, thank you I " 
 
CHRISTMAS. 297 
 
 He tries to lift the lid, but it will not 
 open. 
 
 " Let me show you, kind sir ! Touch the 
 little spring, kind sir." 
 
 He presses the spring : up flies the lid, 
 forth darts a clawing demon with a terrific 
 shriek, dashing a cloud of powder into his 
 face. Peals of luscious laughter ripple 
 around him, as blinking, sneezing, sputter- 
 ing, his broadcloth ruined, he shouts for the 
 police. There they stand, laughing also, 
 for it is Christmas time, and this is the 
 Christmas fair. 
 
 But the genius of kindness and Christ- 
 mas polity is nowhere more completely pre- 
 sented than in the American conception of 
 Santa Claus. I once knew a little boy who 
 had seen that hero. It was after midnight 
 when the child stole down the broad stair- 
 way, crossed the deserted hall, and entered 
 the large dining-room. The fire was out. 
 The moonlight cast fantastic shadows upon 
 the floor, as he crouched beside the huge 
 Franklin stove, shivering with cold and awe. 
 A rustling in the chimney, a fall of soot 
 uDon the hearth. " He is coining ! He is 
 
 coming 
 
 ! " 
 
 " As still as death with stifled breath," 
 
298 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 the watching eyes dilate with fear and ex- 
 pectation. A moment of quivering excite- 
 ment, and the fur cap, the twinkling eyes 
 appear ! But what is this ? A tail ! Bit- 
 ter was the disappointment when there ap- 
 peared the tame raccoon, which had been 
 shut out by accident, and had taken this 
 mode of entrance, not because it was Christ- 
 mas but because it was cold. But the dis- 
 appointment was tempered and made toler- 
 able by the strong suspicion which the boy 
 still retains, though thirty years have passed, 
 that it was St. Nicholas, and that he sud- 
 denly changed into a familiar form to baffle 
 and rebuke a wicked curiosity. Did not 
 Proteus assume the appearance of a seal 
 under similar conditions? 
 
 But why can Santa Claus enter only by 
 the chimney ? The road he travels was pre- 
 pared by the Norse Goddess Hertha. At 
 the festival held in her honor the house was 
 decked with evergreens. An altar of flat 
 stones, called Hertha's stones, contracted 
 eventually into " hearthstone," was placed at 
 one extremity of the hall in which the fam- 
 ily assembled. Fir boughs were piled upon 
 it, and the torch applied. As the crackling 
 boughs shrivelled, the Goddess was supposed 
 
CHRISTMAS. 299 
 
 to descend through the smoke, and so to 
 guide the flames that those skilled in Saga 
 lore could predict the destinies of each per- 
 son present from the movements of the fire 
 flakes. 
 
 An irreverent spirit has suggested that 
 these were not the only occasions on which 
 the destinies of families have been known 
 to be influenced by sparks. 
 
 When the older festival was absorbed in 
 Christmas, Santa Claus must needs come by 
 the way Hertha had opened for him. 
 
 St. Nicholas — the name has been con- 
 tracted into Santa Claus by dropping the 
 first instead of the last syllable, as Alexan- 
 der is shortened into Sandy — must not be 
 confounded, as he often is in America, with 
 Kris-Kringle, the little Christ - child, or 
 Christ -Kindlein, who goes about Holland 
 on errands of loving-kindness. The verita- 
 ble St. Nicholas was born at Patara early 
 in the fourth century. His piety was un- 
 paralleled. His nurse could never wash the 
 soles of his feet, because he would continu- 
 ally stand erect in the attitude of prayer, 
 even while he was being bathed. His sanc- 
 tity was so great that when an infant at the 
 breast he fasted twice a week, and could not 
 
300 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 be induced to touch pap or gruel on Fri- 
 days. His virtues multiplied with his years, 
 until he was known throughout Christendom 
 as " The Good.*' 
 
 An Italian nobleman of wrecked fortunes 
 had three daughters. Too poor to portion 
 them with dowries, the wicked parent ap- 
 prenticed them to degrading employments. 
 St. Nicholas heard of this, came at night, 
 and threw three bags filled with gold into 
 the house, to be used as marriage portions 
 for the girls, or returned to the giver. Thus 
 he put the father in pawn for his children. 
 This gave him rank as the first Christian 
 pawnbroker. The three purses of gold, 
 rounded into three gilded balls, which still 
 hang above the doors of these benevolent in- 
 stitutions, and serve as stars to mariners, for 
 the help of victims persecuted by the police, 
 point to St. Nicholas as the patron saint of 
 pawnbrokers. 
 
 The news of the saint's kindness was 
 spread afar. The nuns of a certain convent 
 begged their abbess to persuade St. Nicho- 
 las to visit them. He consented to do so, 
 and sent word that every nun who gave him 
 one of her stockings should receive it again 
 filled with sweetmeats. Hence came his habit 
 of filling stockings. 
 
 
 I 
 
CHRISTMAS. 301 
 
 At another time a nobleman sent his two 
 sons to Athens to be educated. But first he 
 dispatched them to St. Nicholas to receive 
 his blessing and advice. It was night when 
 they reached the holy man's abode, and with 
 boyish bashfulness they withdrew to the vil- 
 lage inn to wait until the morning. There 
 the landlord murdered them, stole their gold, 
 and to conceal his crime chopped their bod- 
 ies into small pieces, which he concealed 
 in two barrels of salted meat. The deed 
 was disclosed to St. Nicholas in a vision. 
 He charged the innkeeper with the crime, 
 brought him to confession and repentance, 
 forgave him, resuscitated the defunct youths, 
 sent them on their way rejoicing, and has 
 been ever since the patron saint of school- 
 boys. 
 
 The legend of St. Nicholas is the pro- 
 test of healthy human instinct against the 
 ecclesiastical asceticism of the Middle Ages. 
 That the wholesome reaction did not suc- 
 ceed without opposition may be, perhaps, in- 
 ferred from the fact that the same concep- 
 tion, which we love to cherish by the name 
 of Santa Claus, inspired in some minds those 
 fears which are still suggested by that other 
 name, " The Old Nic." But the wiser course 
 
302 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 prevailed. While the monks taught that 
 piety and cheerfulness were foes, that the 
 doors of heaven swung on leaden hinges, 
 and that hilarity and gayety were crimes ; in 
 violent half -conscious protest against that 
 accepted creed, the saintliest saint in all the 
 calendar, the only one who never committed 
 a sin, and whose saintship dates from his 
 cradle, was sent forth in fullest sympathy 
 with the universal human heart to scatter 
 smiles and rain down gladness, and teach 
 once more that only they who become as lit- 
 tle children can enter the kingdom of God. 
 
 Thus Christmas bids us make our churches 
 radiant, and our homes happy with the glad- 
 ness children can enjoy. It is well worth 
 our while to do so. Chambers quotes from 
 Dr. Jamieson a letter of Hamilton's, written 
 when the disciples of John Knox were striv- 
 ing to drive Christmas out of Scotland. The 
 ministers, it is said, made their wives spin 
 flax at the front doors, and the more zealous 
 sent their servants into the fields to plough 
 on Christmas Day, to emphasize their disap- 
 proval of the popular festivities. " Yes," 
 wrote Hamilton, " the ministers of Scotland 
 cause their wifis and servants to spin in 
 open sight on Yule Day ; and their auditors 
 
CHRISTMAS. 303 
 
 constrain their tenants to yoke their pleuchs 
 on Yule Day in contempt of Christ's na- 
 tivite ! Whilk our Lord has not left unpun- 
 ishit ! For their oxen ran wod [mad] and 
 brak their nekis, and lamit some o' the 
 pleueh-men." 
 
 In our day there is small danger that such 
 blunders will be repeated. He best uses 
 Christmas who makes his home so happy 
 that his children cannot be enticed from it. 
 A happy childhood is a saving talisman 
 through life. The angels that hover over 
 his mother's chair follow a man always. 
 
 A youth sat in his solitary room thinking 
 of the circle around his father's hearth. He 
 was in a foreign land, it was the first Christ- 
 mas he had spent away from home, and a 
 huge city lay around him. In the great 
 capital he thought no one but he seemed 
 sad. The boy or the man who has grown 
 too old to long for home is to be pitied, for 
 home is the little mirror lake in this world, 
 the only one that, by its still reflection of 
 what bends over us, discloses the reality of 
 heaven. The youth was homesick. There 
 came a knock upon the door. A stranger 
 entered. At least he was almost a stranger, 
 for the two had met but once. The stranger 
 
304 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 brought an invitation to his house. Not 
 without protest, for the young are often shy, 
 the invitation was accepted. They did not 
 go directly to the stranger's house. First, 
 they made a little tour together. The stran- 
 ger's pockets were plethoric, and he carried 
 a large basket on his arm. It, too, was full. 
 They went to many a door that had no bell, 
 up many a stairway that was dark and dank. 
 Wherever they appeared children clustered 
 around them with gleeful welcomes. Each 
 child received some token that Christ was 
 in the world. For the sick there were deli- 
 cacies, for the old comforts. When the 
 youth praised the stranger's benevolence, 
 the sole reply was this : " Oh, no ! I am 
 only trying to pay back! " The words were 
 not quite plain, but both were made happy 
 by sight of so many faces brightened by 
 their coming, and sound of so many bene- 
 dictions. 
 
 When pockets and basket were empty the 
 two reached the stranger's house. There was 
 waiting a little maiden just twelve months 
 old to a day. A mother held her. The 
 maiden crowed and cooed, pursed up her 
 red lips to be kissed, and reached out her 
 arms to be taken. Then by the light in 
 
CHRISTMAS. 305 
 
 her father's eyes the meaning grew plain of 
 the words he had spoken : " Trying to pay 
 back ! Trying to pay back." 
 
 The memory of that Christmas has been 
 to the youth who experienced it a perpetual 
 benediction. He forgot that he was not one 
 of the family. There were trifles upon the 
 Christmas tree with his name written upon 
 them. There was a chair for him at the 
 Christmas table. When he feared for a mo- 
 ment he might jar the peace of the house- 
 hold by intrusion of foreign feet, the anxiety 
 was banished by the echo of the words, 
 " Trying to pay back ! " 
 
 Perhaps the hostess divined the thought 
 of her guest, for when they parted she said, 
 with a grace of courtesy acquired by years 
 of familiarity with courts and companion- 
 ship with a queen, who has since become an 
 empress, " When Noah opened the window 
 and drew in the lonely and wing-weary dove 
 it brought a leaf which made his family far 
 more blessed than it found them." 
 
 In that Christmas Day the young man 
 thought he saw a dim but lustrous reflec- 
 tion of that World to Come where a Happy 
 New Year shall comfort those that mourn ; 
 where the Church of Christ shall appear 
 
306 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 without spot or wrinkle or any such thing ; 
 where praise and prayer shall be sponta- 
 neous as the carolling of larks ; where all 
 burdens shall be loosed and God's people 
 shall find their joy in serving Him whose 
 name is in their foreheads ; where faith 
 shall discern distinctly things not disclosed 
 to sight; where Gideon's men shall rest 
 from their enemies, Saul shall not seek the 
 -witches' cave, and Samson shall have learned 
 the truth that can make him free ; where 
 the hearts of the children shall have been 
 turned to their fathers, and the hearts of the 
 fathers to their children, that the earth may 
 not be smitten with a curse ; where he that 
 is least shall be greater than the greatest we 
 have known ; where none shall ask, " What 
 must w T e do to be saved ? " but all shall be 
 singing, " Thou wast slain and hast redeemed 
 us to God by thy blood out of every kindred 
 and tongue and nation ; " where all shall 
 be filled with the Spirit of Him who left 
 the bosom of his Father to make God mani- 
 fest to men ; where the Unseen shall be rec- 
 ognized as the real ; where the lesson of the 
 lilies shall be heeded, the prophecies of 
 Decoration Day fulfilled, and the gratitude 
 which good men feel at Harvest Home find 
 
CHRISTMAS. 307 
 
 utterance in the psalm ascending with the 
 voice of many waters, " Allelujah ! for the 
 Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. Let us 
 rejoice and be glad and give honor to Him, 
 for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and 
 his wife hath made herself ready ! " 
 
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