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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 
 
 
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 UNITED STATES GE AMERICA. 
 
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PERSONALITY 
 
 J>entiong 
 
 BY 
 
 J 
 
 SAMUEL RICHARD FULLER 
 
 RECTOR OF ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, MALDEN, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1892 
 
^ 
 
 3 
 
 <\ 
 
 
 Copyright, 3892, 
 By SAMUEL RICHARD FULLER, 
 
 All rights reserved, 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S.A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 The preservation of these unwritten sermons is 
 due to the voluntary and faithful reports of Mr. 
 Henry John Clark of Maiden. Frequent appli- 
 cation to him for private reading of his manuscript 
 has led to this issue in printed form, which with- 
 out his labor of love would have been impossible. 
 The opportunity has been taken to give the sermons 
 a slight revision, but they stand substantially as 
 delivered. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Personality i 
 
 II. A Personal Christ the Ultimate 
 
 Gospel 21 
 
 III. God's Spirit in Man's Life .... 39 
 
 IV. Reconciliation to God by Apprehen- 
 
 sion of God 57 
 
 V. The Birth of the Soul 77 
 
 VI. The Divine Surprises 97 
 
 VII. Suffering n 1 
 
 VIII. Job 129 
 
 IX. Isaiah 147 
 
 X. St. John 167 
 
 XI. The Good Shepherd 183 
 
 XII. The Church 195 
 
 XIII. All Saints' 213 
 
 XIV. Vines of Samaria 227 
 
 XV. Personal Faith the Ground of Life 243 
 
 XVI. Riches of God 257 
 
 XVII. Entering by Faith 273 
 
 XVIII. No Separation from the Love of God 289 
 
I. 
 
 PERSONALITY. 
 
 Because I live, ye shall live also. — St. John xiv. 19. 
 21 June, i8gi. 
 
PERSONALITY. 
 
 "Because I live, ye shall live also," as 
 if he were to say : " For the same reason 
 that I live, ye shall live also. The ground 
 of your life is the same on which my life 
 rests. The foundation of your life is the 
 same as mine." The basis of your life is 
 the same as that on which rests the life of 
 God. Your life, therefore, is not a reflec- 
 tion of any other life, is not a reflection of 
 the life of God, is not an imitation of the 
 life of God ; your life is real, not an imita- 
 tion, not a reflection : for the same reason 
 that Christ lives, you may live ; for the same 
 reason that God lives, you may live. Your 
 life may be just as real as is Christ's, as 
 is God's, may have freedom of the same 
 nature as the freedom of Christ's or God's 
 life. This is a marvelous truth, that every 
 human soul has within it the possibility 
 of life, personal, individual life, the entire 
 
4 PERSONALITY. 
 
 freedom of perfect life, as truly as Christ 
 and as God ; "for the same reason that I 
 live, ye shall live also." Personality, then, 
 is the highest achievement in human life. 
 To be yourself is the highest conceivable 
 attainment — to be yourself and live as God 
 lives. 
 
 Christ stands the great life of the world 
 because he lived his own life ; because in 
 him was the realization, complete, full, and 
 final, of personality ; because he lived • as 
 God lives ; because he lived with the same 
 basis of life that God has ; because his 
 life was not in any way an imitation, nor a 
 reflection, but simply the complete and 
 full expression of what God had implant- 
 ed there. He lived himself ; therefore, 
 the highest achievement of human life is 
 personality, because it is self-realization, 
 self-mastery, self-attainment, the full and 
 complete expression of all that God has 
 implanted within us. In man there is in 
 personality the highest that is within the 
 knowledge of man. It is the "steepest, 
 loftiest summit toward which we move in 
 our attainment." 
 
 Nothing in the realm of physical and 
 scientific research can compare in worth 
 
PERSONALITY. 5 
 
 and significance with this attainment of 
 personality. 
 
 Personality, in its absolute condition, as 
 in the life of God, is without limitation ; 
 it is the entire and complete fulfillment 
 of all the forces that go to make up life, 
 so that only in God do we find complete 
 personality. That does not mean that 
 man's personality is without reality ; is 
 derived from outside sources ; that we are 
 the played upon ; that we are but a bunch 
 or collection of certain hereditary traits 
 and tendencies, over which we have no 
 control ; that our personality rests in 
 the finite limitations by which we are 
 surrounded ; that our personality has its 
 ground in those limitations ; that we are 
 the product of a certain environment ; 
 that certain influences play upon us as the 
 chisel upon the marble ; although our per- 
 sonality has, as a matter of fact, its ex- 
 istence among finite limitations, but not 
 its ground in them. Of course, our per- 
 sonality is affected by those finite limita- 
 tions. It is true that we are constantly 
 taking our cue from other lives, but al- 
 ways to our disadvantage. 
 
 Personality in man is impaired in the 
 
6 PERSONALITY. 
 
 same measure in which it is determined 
 from without. It suffers the mutations 
 which exist in the necessary processes of 
 the world. We are content with low 
 views, influenced by other lives, and so 
 our personality is colored by those limita- 
 tions, but always to our disadvantage. 
 Wherever our personality is affected by 
 our surroundings, or is derived from those 
 surroundings, just so far is it impaired. 
 The example of some one else will never 
 serve for us, because each man is made 
 to live his own life. Each man has his 
 own ground of personality, his own foun- 
 dation for his own personality, in the same 
 everlasting life that Christ has, that God 
 has. He is made to be a free spirit, an 
 entire and complete realization of the 
 forces that are w T ithin him, to be an indi- 
 vidual, to have his own freedom, his own 
 life, in his own way. In other w T ords, 
 every human soul, however low, debased, 
 or degraded he may be, is made to live his 
 own life in his own way, and to take hold 
 of his own portion of the eternal. 
 
 This is a marvelous gospel to preach to 
 men, that they may live as God lives, as 
 Christ lives, that for the same reason that 
 
PERSONALITY. J 
 
 God lives, they may live also. It is the 
 glorious gospel of the achievement of per- 
 sonality, of the attainment of indepen- 
 dence of life, of self-mastery, the glorious 
 gospel that every man, by the slow, long, 
 and tedious process of individuation may 
 build himself up as Christ is built up, in 
 fullness of assertion and of soul life. 
 
 See how this process works. Here are 
 men striving for personality. They scorn 
 imitation, they understand that it is of the 
 nature of limitation. They understand 
 that life is so powerful that it must burst 
 from the restraints of all confining influ- 
 ences ; that if they are to live as Christ 
 lives, as God lives, they must express 
 themselves fully and completely. 
 
 How glorious, then, it is to think that 
 they may have, as the highest possible 
 achievement in human life, the realization 
 of their own personality. See what this 
 means. See how God loves with that per- 
 fect love which knows no hate, which can 
 harbor no shadow of the feeling of resent- 
 ment ; that perfect love which pours out 
 its forgiveness as naturally and as truly 
 upon foe as upon friend, as the outpouring 
 spring pours out naturally the rivulet, the 
 
8 PERSONALITY. 
 
 stream, the river that loses itself in the 
 ocean of its own realization. See that 
 perfect love of God, which holds within its 
 protecting arms every human soul, and in 
 that perfect love see the spiritual force, 
 which is eternal in its very nature ; and 
 as we see this perfect love of God, so we 
 perceive that personality realizes itself in 
 proportion as it is able to take hold of 
 that portion of eternal life which is love ; 
 realizes itself in proportion as it is able 
 to love perfectly, as God loves ; so are we 
 drawn nearer and nearer to God, for the 
 process of the realization of personality 
 brings man always nearer to God. Thus 
 is the bond made more real and more vi- 
 tal which holds us to God. Nay, there is 
 the eternal necessity of striving to love 
 as God loves, in order that we may live 
 as he lives. 
 
 Sometimes this comes as a hard message 
 to human souls. Hearts are torn asunder 
 by the wrong-doing of others. Must it 
 not be a hard message to God when we do 
 him despite and shame and wrong, that he 
 must love us ? Yet he does. But as his 
 perfect love holds us, so we are held by 
 that perfect life when we learn to live as 
 he lives. 
 
PERSONALITY, 9 
 
 As of love, so of thought. The thought 
 of God pours itself out as from the fath- 
 omless depths of eternal truth. There is 
 the perfect truth that pours out from him 
 so that thought and will are one ; that 
 thought which sees, in its all -wisdom, 
 from the very beginnings of every human 
 soul away on to its completion ; that 
 thought which realizes itself in absolute 
 and perfect truth. That is the force of 
 personality which finds only its complete 
 realization in God himself. 
 
 But as we learn to love as God loves, 
 to think as he thinks, to receive from him 
 the outpouring from those great reservoirs 
 of eternal truth, so are we to become 
 inspired, breathed into, by his eternal 
 thought, so live as he lives, and make our 
 will at one with his thought. Then there 
 follows rightness of conduct, and it cannot 
 be otherwise. Given absolute love and 
 thought, the outcome of those two spirit- 
 ual forces, love and truth, must of neces- 
 sity be right dealing, right expression, 
 right conduct ; in a word, righteousness. 
 
 Do you not see, then, the sublime 
 height to which you may climb, the sum- 
 mit of all human endeavor, which can be 
 
IO PERSONALITY. 
 
 reached by taking hold of those forces of 
 the spirit out of which, as a necessary 
 consequence, there must come right liv- 
 ing, right conduct, righteousness, or, in 
 other words, the right expression of the 
 human life according to its own laws, the 
 taking hold by the individual of his own 
 portion of the eternal, and living his own 
 life, in his own individual peculiar way, in 
 righteousness ? 
 
 I wish I could hold before you the 
 glory of this possibility, the sweetness, 
 the richness, of this attainment of per- 
 sonality. I wish I could make you feel 
 that if you should take hold of God, that 
 is to say, take hold of these eternal truths 
 which go to make up the life of God, that 
 you would then live absolutely, and, liv- 
 ing in your own way, would assert your 
 own life, vindicate your own soul expe- 
 rience. 
 
 The one thing you are to strive after is 
 to be yourself, not to be another. Every 
 force that God has implanted in you is 
 of the same nature as those spiritual 
 forces which find expression in himself ; 
 they are not separated from God even in 
 thought, they are of the same nature and 
 
PERSONALITY. 1 1 
 
 waiting for the same expression. Is it 
 possible, O infinite Father, that we may- 
 be like thee ? And Christ gives the an- 
 swer, " For the same reason that I live, 
 ye shall live also/' 
 
 Here enters the personal element, the 
 meaning of your life. It is the struggle to 
 be yourself. 
 
 Life has no greater meaning than this ; 
 it is an effort at self-mastery, self-victory. 
 It is an effort to live your own life. It 
 is an effort to rest your own personality 
 on the same foundation as that on which 
 rests the personality of God. 
 
 Because the life of Jesus was so wide- 
 reaching, so profound, so exalted, had such 
 a scope, touched human life so at every 
 point, it was impossible for him to retain 
 within himself any negative force of hate, 
 and because he could love perfectly and 
 truly, it was possible for him to think truly 
 and perfectly as to those great eternal 
 truths which have their influence and ef- 
 fect upon human life. 
 
 That we may think truly, we must first 
 learn to love truly. Thought pours out its 
 richest treasure only in the hearts that love 
 the truth. No scoffing man receives great 
 
12 PERSONALITY. 
 
 riches of eternal knowledge ; no carping 
 spirit in any realm of investigation receives 
 the richest reward from the great treasure- 
 house of ascertained knowledge ; and be- 
 cause Christ loved in such an exalted way, 
 he was able to think truly, to teach truly, to 
 pour out of himself the great teachings of 
 eternal truth which welled up in his soul, 
 and because he was so able to love and 
 to think and to pour out the truth, as a 
 consequence he could make no mis-steps in 
 conduct. 
 
 If we could love as he loved and think as 
 he thought, mis-steps in conduct would be 
 impossible. It is because love and thought 
 and will do not have harmony existing 
 among them that stumbling ensues^ that 
 transgression of spiritual laws and unright- 
 eousness takes place, and sin, as a many- 
 headed monster, seems to demand that we 
 shall serve it continually. But if we have 
 the perfect love and thought of Christ, then 
 righteousness comes, righteousness in the 
 same way that you and I are made to be 
 righteous ; that is to say, " for the same 
 reason that I am righteous, ye also may," 
 nay, "also shall be righteous." 
 
 On those sublime heights, then, Jesus 
 
PERSONALITY. 1 3 
 
 stands, in the complete achievement of his 
 own personality ; stands there as having 
 brought about the ultimate result of that 
 long process of soul individuation by which 
 he is separated from the great mass of hu- 
 man life, so separated as to assert within 
 himself his own individuality and person- 
 ality ; standing there because of his com- 
 plete individuation ; standing there as the 
 one man the world has ever seen ; unique, 
 because one with God, and yet it is the 
 same divineness that is held out as the 
 possible achievement of every individual 
 soul, — "for the same reason that I live, 
 ye shall live also." 
 
 From those sublime heights hear the 
 voice of Jesus calling, "Come up here also 
 and be a man." The call is to every hu- 
 man soul to strive to live its own life as 
 Christ lived his life, to be free from every 
 imitation and thus free from every limita- 
 tion. See how hate may poison the very 
 springs of your conduct ; how falsehood 
 may, like a viper, envenom the very life- 
 blood of your mind, and make it impossible 
 for you to bring forth all the latent forces 
 of your soul. Jesus calls, " Come up here 
 also and be a man ; be yourself, and be one 
 
14 PERSONALITY. 
 
 with God." Nay, he not only stands upon 
 those sublime heights, but he descends 
 into the gruesome valleys, where we are 
 living with poisoned hearts, unstable 
 minds, unrighteous conduct, and as he 
 would lead the wounded lamb, the bruised 
 soul, as he would bind up the broken- 
 hearted, stanch the flow of blood from the 
 gaping wound, so he comes down from 
 those exalted heights, those heights lit 
 with the radiance of Almighty God, and 
 through tortuous paths, through bramble, 
 and thorn, and tangle, and thicket, he seeks 
 every human soul. His locks are wet with 
 dew, on him are the rains that have poured 
 down upon our hearts and lives, and yet 
 he seeks to take us up to those exalted 
 heights where personality is the achieve- 
 ment of his soul, and is made to be the 
 achievement of ours, also. 
 
 I have tried to show you what the mean- 
 ing of life is. It is to struggle -for the 
 achievement of your individuality, your 
 own life, your own personality ; that as 
 God has those great soul forces in full and 
 complete attainment and expression, that 
 as in him there is absolute personality 
 without any limitation, and, in consequence 
 
PERSONALITY. 1 5 
 
 absolute and complete freedom of spirit, 
 that so in you there is the same ground of 
 life, that " for the same reason he lives, ye 
 shall live also/' Then I have tried to show 
 you also how it is that Jesus is the right- 
 eous one, because he expressed in himself 
 his own individuality and personality, has 
 taken hold for himself of his own peculiar 
 portion of the eternal; that he is, therefore, 
 unique, and, because unique, he is divine, 
 and, because divine, he is one with God, 
 and, because one with God, he is the mani- 
 festation, the revelation, the uttered word 
 of God himself. 
 
 I know what a glorious gospel this is to 
 preach to you. I know that when you are 
 conscious of your own peculiarities, nay, of 
 your own temptations, your own hardness 
 of experience, of the heartbroken agony 
 that seems to rend asunder body and spirit, 
 ■ — I know that at such moments you are to 
 remember that those very peculiar experi- 
 ences of yours are to be treasured as gifts 
 that come from God. 
 
 Fancy for a moment Jesus ignoring the 
 peculiar life that he had bestowed upon him. 
 Fancy for a moment his imitation of some 
 other life, his life being influenced in its 
 
1 6 PERSONALITY. 
 
 development by surrounding conditions, 
 his ever failing to be true to himself, fail- 
 ing to be himself, and you behold the 
 defeat of the soul-struggle instead of the 
 victory of self-mastery. 
 
 Bear with me while I say this, that abso- 
 lute independence must be your aim ; you 
 must strive to live as no other soul has 
 ever lived. God has put a heart in you 
 unlike that of any other being that ever 
 lived. Your heart, your affection, your love, 
 is unlike the heart, the affection, or the love 
 of any other soul that ever lived. As was 
 the life of Jesus, of Paul, as was the life of 
 every great spirit that has been great be- 
 cause of his individuality and asserted per- 
 sonality, and, because of his being great, 
 has been useful, so is the life of every man, 
 woman, and child. You have your own 
 heart, your own love, your own thought, to 
 express in your own way. Thus God lives ; 
 thus are you privileged to live. " For the 
 same reason that he lives, you may live/' 
 
 You are to express this life in indepen- 
 dence. Not in the same way as some other 
 life, not reflecting some other life. Abso- 
 lute independence in your life is to be your 
 aim. 
 
PERSONALITY. IJ 
 
 As this must be your aim in your love, 
 so also in your thought. Check not the 
 inspiration of God by the blending in of 
 your own theory, your own thought. 
 Think after God. Think his thoughts after 
 him. Let him pour his truth into you as 
 he is pouring it out in all its fullness and 
 richness. 
 
 No flower is like its companion ; no leaf 
 is like its mate ; no bird sings as any other 
 bird has sung. There are no repetitions 
 with God in his physical universe, nor are 
 there any repetitions in his spiritual crea- 
 tions. Your achievement is to be the attain- 
 ment of your own personality, to love and 
 to think independently, as he loves and 
 thinks, and with these two conditions your 
 righteousness, that is to say, your conduct, 
 will be unlike the conduct of any soul that 
 has ever been — it will be your own. 
 
 It is God's call to you to be unlike your 
 neighbor. His call is, " Come up higher 
 and declare yourself. Stand with me on 
 this height in your own life and in your 
 own way." Standing there, fear is impos- 
 sible. Who can be filled with fear when 
 he is above the clouds of man's ambition ? 
 Ambitions are but the mist of deadly poi- 
 
1 8 PERSONALITY. 
 
 son that destroys the soul, and when the 
 soul has reached those starry heights of fel- 
 lowship with the life of God he has no am- 
 bitions and can be attacked by no fears. 
 The courage of a great life ministers to 
 him. Nor on those heights can he be 
 touched by the slings and arrows of mali- 
 cious tongues, by slander, or by the cal- 
 umny of vindictive words, for, though he 
 be the chief of sinners, as St. Paul was in 
 his own estimate, God still is calling to him 
 in his great love and all-seeing wisdom to 
 come up higher, and to declare his own love, 
 his own thought, his own life, and so de- 
 clare himself that he shall at length be 
 righteous. 
 
 Men may sneer and scoff at such a soul, 
 but they cannot harm it, as they could not 
 harm the one who endured such a storm on 
 Calvary's mount. 
 
 Thus as you have loved and thought 
 after God and with God, so superstition 
 can find no lodgment in your souls. What 
 is superstition ? A collection of perverted 
 thoughts, poisonous, deadly notions about 
 God and about the human soul. There can 
 be no torture with God, and if we rightly 
 apprehend him there can be no room for 
 
PERSONALITY. 19 
 
 a false, vindictive God in our thoughts. 
 He shall hold in his loving arms forever 
 the child of his begetting. As God is our 
 father he can never cease to love us, to call 
 to us as does Jesus as he stands on those 
 sublime heights, " Come up here also and 
 be a man." As God loves and thinks, so 
 he will hold us to himself. And the truer 
 we are to ourselves, the nearer we come to 
 him and live more truly and perfectly in 
 him in whom we always live, and move, and 
 have our being. 
 
 Take with you to your homes this morn- 
 ing the thought that to be like God is to be 
 yourself, is to live your own life, is to take 
 hold of your own portion of the eternal, 
 your own segment of the circle of eternal 
 life. To be like God is to enter into the 
 freedom of his spirit, is to love as he loves, 
 think as he thinks, act as he acts. Would 
 you be helped to this great consummation ? 
 Then take the outstretched hand, the 
 wounded hand, of the brother Jesus whom 
 you have seen, that he may lead you into 
 the eternal presence of him whom you have 
 not seen. 
 
II. 
 
 A PERSONAL CHRIST THE ULTI- 
 MATE GOSPEL. 
 
 Looking unto Jesus the finisher of our faith. — Heb. 
 
 xii. 2. 
 
 14. June, i8gu 
 
II 
 
 A PERSONAL CHRIST THE ULTIMATE 
 GOSPEL. 
 
 The ultimate gospel will be the one 
 which shall manifest a personal life of the 
 race, which shall make possible the ulti- 
 mate triumph of the best there is in human 
 nature over the worst. That is to be the 
 final gospel. 
 
 Whether it is Christianity or not shall 
 be determined by the issue. It will be 
 our present Christianity in its substance, 
 if this Christianity is faithful to her Lord ; 
 it must be a real Christianity because it 
 must be Christ. The ultimate gospel, the 
 final revelation, must be Jesus Christ. 
 
 It will be well, also, for our present 
 Christianity if it be Christianity. It must 
 be Jesus Christ, because he is not only 
 the beginner of our faith, but he is the 
 completer, the finisher of our faith ; and 
 he himself, not something said about him, 
 
24 PERSONALITY. 
 
 not a system of theology, not a code of 
 laws, not even a message, but he himself 
 is the gospel, the ultimate gospel, because 
 he himself is that manifestation of the per- 
 sonal life of the race which can make it 
 possible for the final triumph of the best 
 there is in human nature over the worst.. 
 
 I wish I could make this very clear and 
 to be very deeply felt. I sympathize keenly 
 with that yearning of the human heart for 
 good tidings. Most fully do I sympathize 
 with those throes of the human race which 
 are the very agony of the human soul by 
 which, as in a mine, the rock is let loose 
 and the gold is discovered. I sympathize 
 with all the attempts that men and women 
 are making for a larger and completer life, 
 I feel deeply with that intense desire 
 which is manifesting itself continually to 
 accomplish better, nobler, greater things. 
 I realize how intense is the striving to 
 bring in a new kingdom, a kingdom of 
 righteousness ; I appreciate how we all are 
 longing for anew heaven and a new earth, 
 how every man and woman in his or her 
 best estate is desiring to see the city which 
 hath foundations, longing for the republic 
 of God, is desiring to see the kingdom of 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOSPEL. 2$ 
 
 God among men, praying in very truth 
 "Thy kingdom come." And I would say 
 to such, as I must say to myself, that 
 that city of God, that republic of God, 
 that city which hath foundations, that new 
 heaven and new earth can come, and will 
 come, in the only way possible, in the 
 manifestation of the personal life of the 
 race, which personal life shall have within 
 it the elements of the possible triumph of 
 the best there is in human nature over the 
 worst. 
 
 I have carefully said "a personal life/' 
 because I think that in every uplifting of 
 the human mind there must of necessity 
 be the influence of the personal element. 
 I may not understand the reason of this, 
 — the reason why I may not rise from 
 higher to still higher and more perfect 
 conditions, apart from the aid of any per- 
 sonal element. As I stand and reason 
 theologically, metaphysically I do not find 
 myself able to detect the flaw in my reason- 
 ing, in my theory, when I am inclined to 
 say to myself : " I can bring the new life 
 into my soul quite alone, without personal 
 aid." 
 
 But still it seems to me that when man 
 
26 PERSONALITY. 
 
 is to grow from strength to strength, mani- 
 fest larger life, there must be the impetus, 
 the kindling power, the vitalizing force of 
 a personal element. 
 
 Soldiers find it so beneath the flag 
 which they are striving to defend. Even 
 those who give themselves to art and 
 music find themselves not altogether free 
 from the inspiring influence of master 
 and teacher, and wherever we find hu- 
 man hearts and wills welded together as 
 by a common purpose, there we find the 
 personal element present, inspiring and 
 building up. It seems to be a law of 
 human activity in its best estate, opera- 
 tive in the development of the best over 
 the worst, that there shall be present, as 
 an impelling and compelling force, a per- 
 sonal force, element, life. 
 
 I do not see men and women, as a 
 matter of fact, rise to their highest when 
 this personal element is absent. I can 
 understand how a man in those crises 
 of the national life, when the very fireside 
 is in peril, reading in his newspaper of 
 the necessities of the army, of the call 
 of patriotism, and of the reasons why a 
 man should enlist, — I can understand 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOSPEL. 27 
 
 how, theoretically, he should say, "I must 
 be a soldier and go to the front." But 
 he does not go. There is lacking the en- 
 thusiasm which is kindled by personal in- 
 fluence. I am constrained to believe that 
 God calls forth the best that is within us 
 only through a personal channel, only by 
 the manifestation of a personal life, — a 
 life which shall be the life of the race, 
 which shall make possible the final triumph 
 of the best there is in human nature over 
 the worst, — so only through himself in 
 Jesus, the Christ, 
 
 Men may sneer at us in our demand for 
 personal life, may not understand our de- 
 votion to a personal Christ ; but I think as 
 men grow older that they begin to realize 
 that there is something lacking whenever 
 they are striving for the greatest, apart 
 from this devotion and loyalty to a per- 
 sonal Christ. 
 
 I see this in children, in the influence 
 that one boy has upon another: how a high- 
 spirited lad can draw out the best there 
 is in another boy, and inspire him with 
 enthusiasm to accomplish what he thought 
 an impossible task! I see this, as it seems 
 to me, in every phase of human life, so 
 
28 PERSONALITY. 
 
 that I am constrained to believe that, if 
 we are to have a new heaven and a new 
 earth, it must be by the declaring of a 
 personal life, the personal life of him 
 whose attainments in life are of such a 
 nature as to make him, by eminence and 
 by successful expression, the head of the 
 race. 
 
 This is the reason why I believe that 
 Christianity is not only the revelation of 
 God, because it is the revelation of Christ, 
 but that it is the ultimate revelation, it 
 is to be the ultimate gospel, and whenever 
 men will cease to build up their own lit- 
 tle systems between themselves and God 
 they shall see that Jesus Christ is Lord 
 of all, and that Christianity has within it 
 the possibility of being the ultimate gos- 
 pel of mankind. 
 
 Here are some theories you have. You 
 have been constrained to feel that hu- 
 man life would crystallize. You have 
 wrapped about you, like graveclothes, spir- 
 itually, certain thoughts, theories, notions, 
 till you have come to substitute your 
 own notions for God's facts, to dwell in 
 your own theories instead of his reali- 
 ties. You see elsewhere that life does 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOSPEL. 29 
 
 not crystallize. I may bind the tree with 
 knotted thongs, but still the growth will 
 go on, soon the cord will tighten, and, a 
 little later, with a groan and a snap, it will 
 defy my attempts to restrain its life. So 
 with the human soul. You may wrap about 
 a soul confessions of faith, attempt to crys- 
 tallize it with a theory, make an effort to 
 run it in a mould of some peculiar notion 
 about God ; but God himself, who refuses 
 to be held with chains, ever pours out him- 
 self as the outpouring of life, as the in- 
 spirer of human souls, and goes on living 
 in that soul which you and I have tried to 
 restrain, till there comes a moment when 
 the preconceived notion begins to tighten, 
 there comes a bursting of the bonds, a go- 
 ing forth from the cerements which have 
 been wrapped about the spiritual life, and 
 the risen life walks out, refusing to be 
 bound, defying any attempt at crystalliza- 
 tion, and declaring its life as God gives it 
 to it. 
 
 It is so with human life in every pro- 
 cess, whether physical or spiritual. Hu- 
 man life refuses to be crystallized, to be 
 bound, to be held, to be restrained. 
 
 Inspiration is constant. These are days 
 
30 PERSONALITY. 
 
 of inspiration just as truly as any the 
 world has ever seen. Human life cannot 
 be robbed of inspiration. Men and wo- 
 men are as much inspired to-day as they 
 ever have been, and will be more and 
 more inspired as they let the soul fly to 
 its God, and break away from crystalli- 
 zation and restraint, refuse to be bound 
 about by notions and theories, and no 
 longer substitute their own notions for 
 God's everlasting facts. 
 
 If I have been perfectly clear that there 
 must be a personal element in every effort 
 to rise to higher conditions in the soul and 
 in the race, that life refuses to be crystal- 
 lized, that it will burst the graveclothes 
 of any attempt to confine it within the 
 limitations of our own theories and no- 
 tions, and that the soul must be con- 
 stantly breathed into by God, then, I think, 
 you are ready to say, when philosophy 
 affirms, " I have found the way, the truth, 
 and the life ; I have found how the new 
 heaven and the new earth are to come ; 
 I have discovered the kingdom of right- 
 eousness and of heaven ; I have formu- 
 lated the ultimate gospel of life ; when 
 improvement shall come along the lines 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOSPEL. 3 1 
 
 of ethical culture, then men shall reach a 
 sufficient development by which to be 
 fairly judged/'-— you are ready to say that 
 while this theory of ethical culture is a 
 theory of real worth, and one which, un- 
 questionably, has done much in aid of 
 truth, yet it lacks at a vital point. 
 
 If I go into a chemist's laboratory, he 
 will tell me that the human organization 
 is made up of gases, and will enumerate 
 the constituent elements. It is all true 
 and good just so far as it goes. The the- 
 ory is sound ; it is all logical; it can be 
 expressed in accurate formulae. Let us 
 have a man, then. But it does not work. 
 Who shall breathe into him the breath of 
 life ? It does not materialize the life. 
 
 Theoretically, I cannot see any logical 
 flaw in the notions of philosophy in ethical 
 culture. I do not use the term "notion" 
 disrespectfully. Let us see this theory ; it 
 is this : That man in his upward develop- 
 ment from the brute attained certain intel- 
 lectual faculties, facilities, and forces, and 
 out of these has developed certain notions 
 as to right and wrong, which we have de- 
 nominated conscience. But this dawn of 
 conscience shows itself in a very low state, 
 
32 PERSONALITY. 
 
 awaiting that moment of development when 
 it shall be illuminated with the light of a 
 more perfect day by the sun of righteous- 
 ness shining into it ; then, as this cultiva- 
 tion of the conscience goes on, there is 
 noted the necessity of observing the rights 
 and privileges of others in the community, 
 and here are the beginnings of what is called 
 altruism — the welfare of our neighbor and 
 of the community. If we could get this 
 highly developed conscience and a recog- 
 nition of those principles of the welfare of 
 neighbor and state, we should have a more 
 perfectly developed civilization. 
 
 This is the theory. But as a matter of 
 fact, there lacks something which makes 
 it possible for a human soul to 1iave its 
 conscience quickened and inspired, and to 
 grow sensitive, and to have its powers of 
 perception whetted so that it may deter- 
 mine the right and refuse to follow the 
 wrong, that it may behold the vision of 
 holiness in its beauty, and behold that 
 vision in such manner as to be captivated 
 by it, — and that something which is lack- 
 ing, it seems to me, is the personal ele- 
 ment. 
 
 I look to Jesus, and in beholding him I 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOSPEL. 33 
 
 am inspired, held by enthusiastic love and 
 admiration, by him who has realized in 
 himself all those redemptive forces which 
 make life possible. 
 
 I do not understand the why, and I am 
 not able to detect the reasons ; it seems, 
 however, to be simply true that when we 
 go about our business, actuated only by 
 theory, by notion, by what we calmly deter- 
 mine to be the best, there appears to be 
 lacking something to bring these notions 
 into life. 
 
 I am not finding fault with the strivings 
 of philosophy. I find no fault with these 
 theories of the development of the con- 
 science so far as they go, but, so far as I 
 am concerned, there lacks the inspiration 
 of the personal element, that vitality which 
 comes from a person, and makes it possible 
 for man to rise, grow, break away from 
 those moulds, forms, and theories in which 
 he has thus far been content to exist, and 
 I find it in one whose life is the manifes- 
 tation of the personal life of the race, be- 
 cause I regard Jesus as the human race, 
 the very embodiment of mankind, the one 
 catholic man, and, therefore, with St. Paul, 
 I hold him to be "the finisher of our faith. " 
 
34 PERSONALITY. 
 
 I trust you will agree with me; at all 
 events, I must declare it as my message 
 that, as philosophy, with its systems of 
 ethical culture, is lacking, because bereft 
 of this personal element, so also there is 
 something lacking in any system of social 
 science which says, " I have found the new 
 heaven and the new earth, if you will only 
 wait till the logical result shall have been 
 reached of these efforts that I am making 
 toward the improvement of the environ- 
 ment of the race." 
 
 I understand how much environment has 
 to do with life. I know it is very hard to 
 live like a man while housed like a brute, 
 to be clean and virtuous when the possi- 
 bilities of decency are beyond one's reach. 
 I understand it, and with great pity that 
 the environment in many places is such as 
 to shame the privilege of those who know 
 better, who have within themselves the pos- 
 sibilities of making things better, have in- 
 trusted to them stored power, knowledge, 
 and wealth, and yet tolerate such environ- 
 ment for a moment, and I bid God-speed to 
 social science as it strives to improve the 
 condition of our fellow-beings. I long to 
 see their efforts reach the desired and de- 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOSPEL. 35 
 
 sirable result. I understand perfectly well 
 that a comparatively new heaven and new 
 earth are waiting for us when we shall 
 have housed our brothers and sisters only 
 as well as we do now our beasts of burden, 
 and I therefore say God-speed to every 
 effort of social science toward the improve- 
 ment of the race. 
 
 But perfect environment does not make 
 perfect men. I see men clothed in purple 
 and fine linen, faring sumptuously every 
 day, with the softness of luxury surround- 
 ing them, but I do not always find the 
 highest development of spiritual life within 
 palatial walls. Saints there are there, but 
 their saintliness is not the outcome of 
 their perfect environment. "What went 
 ye out for to see ? A man clothed in soft 
 raiment ? Such live in kings houses. A 
 reed shaken by the wind ? " Ah, yes. 
 Such are the lives of many men and women 
 whose environment is indeed perfect, but 
 they themselves are as reeds shaken by the 
 wind, and so shaken that we are compelled 
 to this conclusion, that environment does 
 not make life ; that gilded palaces, adorned 
 with works of art and hanging with rich 
 tapestries, do not produce life. Do you not 
 
36 PERSONALITY. 
 
 think so ? So that if every city's streets 
 could be made fair, and if every human soul 
 could live in palaces, surrounded by every 
 perfect condition of physical environment, 
 that would not bring the new heaven and 
 the new earth. 
 
 Nero fiddling while Rome burns, — a 
 most perfect physical environment, indeed. 
 See him watch those living torches, Chris- 
 tians clothed in pitch, burning as candles to 
 light his summer fete. 
 
 It is artificial, dramatic, unreal, to think 
 that the spirit of the sectarian, the spirit 
 of the ecclesiastic, the spirit of the framer 
 of ecclesiastical shibboleths, so that the 
 tongue may trippingly pronounce each ar- 
 ticle of the confession of faith and not hes- 
 itate between sibboleth and shibboleth, 
 the spirit of substituting theories and no- 
 tions for God's facts, the attempt to confine 
 life, to crystallize spiritual power and force, 
 — to think all this to be vital is indeed un- 
 real ! 
 
 Men have thought this. One denomi- 
 nation of Christians after another has said, 
 " The new heaven and the new earth " (and 
 has said it with entire sincerity) " shall 
 come when all men and women shall think 
 
THE ULTIMATE GOSPEL. 37 
 
 as I think, and subscribe to the same con- 
 fession of faith." There are no excep- 
 tions ; it has been so with the Methodist, 
 the Roman Catholic, and the Episcopalian. 
 We have believed, in very sooth, that our 
 theories, our notions, our formulae, our 
 statements about God, can take the place 
 of God himself. 
 
 Christianity is not of Christ when this 
 sectarian spirit seizes it. Christianity is 
 not the ultimate gospel when it ceases to 
 be Christ ; is not the bringing in of the 
 new heaven and the new earth when it 
 strives to make all men conform to a uni- 
 form statement of a theory or a notion. 
 
 But Christianity is Christ when it sees 
 in him the hope of glory ; when it takes 
 into its life him who is the life of the soul. 
 Christianity is the ultimate gospel, the 
 universal church, the kingdom of heaven 
 upon earth, when it takes the one great 
 catholic man, Jesus, enfolds him to her 
 heart, and strives to grow as he grew, to 
 live as he lived, strives to reflect on 
 earth him from whom is life, strives to 
 have the kingdom of heaven come with 
 great power within the soul and through 
 the race, conquering every negative force, 
 
38 PERSONALITY. 
 
 and finds in him the possibility of the 
 triumph of the best there is in human 
 life over the worst 
 
 Hold forth that hope to human souls 
 and you have preached to them a gospel 
 which must and shall be the ultimate gos- 
 pel, an inspiration that they are working 
 with God, and that God's working cannot 
 be stayed. You have preached to them 
 him who is the resurrection and the life ; 
 hini who began our faith by giving us God, 
 who will complete our faith by giving us 
 more and more of God ; who shall be the 
 finisher of our faith by giving us the ulti- 
 mate gospel, by bringing into our hearts 
 and lives that manifestation and unfolding 
 of the eternal life of the universe, God 
 of God, very God of very God, — Jesus 
 Christ 
 
III. 
 
 GOD'S SPIRIT IN MAN'S LIFE. 
 
 The Spirit of truth. Ye know him ; for he dwelleth in 
 you. — St. John xiv. 17, in part 
 
 if May, i8qi. 
 
III. 
 
 GOD'S SPIRIT IN MAN'S LIFE. 
 
 We know of being by its manifestation, 
 and only by its manifestation. We know 
 the Spirit of Truth because he dwelleth 
 with us and manifesteth himself in us. Ev- 
 ery human soul is a manifestation of God, 
 of the Spirit of Truth, is an incarnation of 
 God, for every human soul is a son of God, 
 and the son must declare him ; and we 
 know the Spirit of Truth because he dwell- 
 eth with us. 
 
 Of course, this manifestation of the 
 Spirit of Truth is diversified. It is not 
 the same in every human soul. The pure 
 white ray of light is broken up into many 
 colors, manifests itself in different ways. 
 In one it colors the alpine snows with the 
 delicate tint of the early rose ; in another 
 it gives the pansy its color, and so on. 
 Manifestation declares being. I take a 
 jewel in my hand and turn it to the sun's 
 
42 PERSONALITY. 
 
 light, and the color declares its being. So 
 I know the character of the human soul 
 only by its manifestation. Whenever it 
 speaks, then I know what it is, what its 
 character is. 
 
 You say, " I know a man by the spirit 
 that is within him. Not always by his 
 achievements, his attainments, but by the 
 spirit that animates him, the motive that 
 lies at the base of his conduct ; not by 
 his high flights in the sphere of character, 
 but by the spirit that animates him, the 
 motive of his life." So I know being by 
 its manifestation. 
 
 When we come to speak of God, we are 
 speaking of a spirit that manifests itself, 
 and in the complete result of that manifes- 
 tation declares itself as fully as, with our 
 finite minds, we can comprehend. 
 
 So with Christ. We say he is the man- 
 ifestation of God, the word of God, the 
 declared God, the result of the manifes- 
 tation of God, therefore, he is the mani- 
 fested God. We know the character of 
 God by the character of Jesus Christ, be- 
 cause we see in him the complete fulfill- 
 ment of all that our most vivid imagination 
 can paint as the perfection, of character, 
 
GOD'S SPIRIT IN MAX'S LIFE. 43 
 
 of life. So we may call Jesus Christ the 
 manifested God. 
 
 There is also the process of manifesta- 
 tion. The Holy Spirit is the process, the 
 operation, and we find the operation of the 
 Holy Spirit declaring itself in us. 
 
 How shall we know anything of the out- 
 side world save as we study it from within ? 
 We ourselves are the only things with 
 which we are familiar, and even here there 
 are great mysteries, but there are also cer- 
 tain tangible facts which concern the in- 
 dividual life ; so, when we are striving to 
 seek after God, the argument begins from 
 within. We turn to ourselves and find 
 something there that we may examine, 
 study, and ponder until the mystery of life 
 discovers to us some reasonable and tangi- 
 ble answer. I do not say that we may de- 
 termine all the truth that is within us, but 
 if we are to search after truth, we are to 
 begin with ourselves. And when we begin 
 the search, what do we find first that is 
 real, tangible ? Life. 
 
 The surgeon's knife, no matter how 
 skillfully it may cut, cannot find the secret 
 of life. The alchemv of the chemist, has 
 failed to discover its secret. There is no 
 
44 PERSONALITY. 
 
 process known to man by which he can 
 discover the secret of life ; how it begins 
 or what is its nature. Yet we know that 
 we live, think, feel, have experiences of 
 the soul; and these feelings, thoughts, ex- 
 periences, and manifestations we call life. 
 We know that we live, because there is 
 within us that nameless something which 
 we call life. You and I know that we pos- 
 sess this mysterious something ; are con- 
 scious that we live. No one here may tell 
 us that we do not live. We are not able 
 to solve this mystery, but yet the fact re- 
 mains with us. The being is known by 
 its manifestation, and it is of such a char- 
 acter that we call it life. 
 
 It seems to rne, we must come to this: 
 either that life proceeds from a living, 
 spiritual source, or that it proceeds from 
 something which is not life. There is this 
 alternative for us. We must say either 
 there is a spiritual source, or a material 
 source. The more I think and study, the 
 more I see these lines run closely together, 
 and it seems to me that men of all shades 
 of opinion are coming to this conclusion, 
 that ultimately even matter, the ultimate 
 molecule, is animated by mind. At all 
 
GOD'S SPIRIT IN MAN'S LIFE, 4$ 
 
 events, we are to accept, as the only solu- 
 tion that commends itself to our experi- 
 ence, that as lives we spring from life, 
 The manifestation of ourselves is from 
 something of the same nature, proceeds 
 from life ; therefore we come to take a spir- 
 itual view of ourselves and of the whole 
 universe. 
 
 As I walk through the fields, climb over 
 the hilltops, descend the valleys, thread 
 my way through the mazes of the forest, 
 there is one thought that inspires me con- 
 stantly. It is that I am surrounded by 
 life. Silent life, but silent only because 
 of the dullness of my hearing. "The won- 
 derful noonday silence of a tropical forest 
 is after all due only to the dullness of our 
 hearing, and could our ears catch the mur- 
 murs of these tiny maelstroms as they 
 whirl in the innumerable myriads of living 
 cells which constitute each tree, we should 
 be stunned as with the roar of a great 
 city." I am surrounded by life. From 
 life I come ; life I express ; my companion- 
 ship is life ; my environment is life ; every 
 circumstance about me is life. Who shall 
 say that even the rocks do not live ? Who 
 shall say that the flower does not live as 
 
46 PERSONALITY. 
 
 the tree lives, that life is absent from any 
 phase of the declared and manifested uni- 
 verse ? 
 
 We think, and when this process of 
 thinking, this manifestation of life, begins, 
 we say, "God comes. ,, "I think, there- 
 fore, I am." Not only that, " I think, 
 therefore, I am a person;" more than that, 
 " I think, therefore, God, the thinker, has 
 entered me, is near me." 
 
 Let us go back a moment and say that 
 there is demanded by our reason a unity 
 of God. There must be a unity of God. 
 The time has gone by when men may talk 
 polytheistically as of many Gods, or dualis- 
 tically as of more than one universe.. The 
 time has gone by when the reason will be 
 satisfied with anything short of a unity of 
 God. There must be a unity of purpose 
 and of result along the line of the unfold- 
 ing of God ; a unity of expression, of the 
 unfolding of the will of God, which is only 
 another way of saying there must be a 
 unity of law, and men, feeling the burden 
 of this necessity, are sometimes unable to 
 hear the other demand of the soul, not 
 only this demand of the reason that there 
 shall be a unity, but the demand of the 
 
GOD'S SPIRIT IN MAX'S LIFE. 47 
 
 soul that there shall be personality in this 
 God, that is, goodness, character, the mer- 
 ciful goodness of God. 
 
 Oh, how men groan under this burden. 
 They say, " If the will of God, like the 
 wheels of a chariot, rolls on, yet the wheels 
 crush out my life, the roof that shelters 
 me is torn away, the noisome pestilence 
 snatches the beloved child, and all this un- 
 folding of the will of God shuts out the 
 merciful goodness of the Father." 
 
 But now the Holy Spirit says, "Abba, 
 Father ; " " My own personal Father." 
 This will is also person ; is also goodness. 
 Behold the merciful goodness of God, for, 
 even while in the onward movement the 
 physical life is crushed, the spiritual life 
 is thereby made strong. I appeal to your 
 own experience if this is not so, — that 
 when the physical life is crushed your spir- 
 itual life is not thereby made stronger, 
 fuller, richer, more abundant than before ; 
 if when your soul has passed through a 
 process of development by suffering there 
 has not been also a perfecting that could 
 only be attained by suffering. 
 
 The human soul is made like the soul of 
 God, and we can only know the soul of God 
 by its manifestation in Christ. 
 
48 PERSONALITY. 
 
 Suffering is resistance, and the human 
 soul acquires completeness and perfection 
 only by the exercise of the power of re- 
 sistance over all those processes which 
 make life possible. 
 
 Following this line of thought, we are 
 also led to this consideration, that the his- 
 toric movement is always towards spir- 
 ituality. This is simply because we are 
 made for spirituality. A hypothesis com- 
 mends itself to us as truth by its being, 
 or striving to be, a working hypothesis. I 
 cannot value a theory if it will not work. 
 It may be carefully expressed ; it may be 
 a thing of beauty, regarded theoretically, 
 but, unless it works, it is useless. It 
 seems to me that the hypothesis that we 
 are spirits is an hypothesis that works, — 
 that not only commends itself to our rea- 
 son, but works when applied to our expe- 
 rience. 
 
 In the physical process, in the light of 
 the present theory of evolution, what shall 
 we say ? We say this, that from the low- 
 est forms of existence there is a constant 
 upward movement to higher and more per- 
 fect conditions, until it reaches man, and 
 in reaching man it expresses itself, not 
 
GOD'S SPIRIT IN MAN'S LIFE. 49 
 
 in materialistic conditions, but spiritually. 
 That is, man is the talking, the thinking, 
 the reasoning, the contemplative being. 
 He is the spiritual being. It is the spirit- 
 ual which differentiates him from all other 
 forms of existence. 
 
 Of course, I understand that there are 
 many of us who do not express ourselves 
 spiritually ; that the expressions of many 
 of our lives scarcely go beyond the mani- 
 festations of the animal life ; but we must 
 know that in such a life we are not express- 
 ing ourselves truly, that in such a life we 
 are simply linking ourselves with the life of 
 the animal kingdom. Man in his material 
 embodiment may be bound up in the ele- 
 ments that constitute also the life of the 
 vegetable, but if so he was made to spring 
 from the vegetable life into the animal life, 
 and, still further, to spring out of the animal 
 life, to vindicate his right of being as man, 
 as spirit. 
 
 This is true, then, of the physical pro- 
 cess as it finds expression in man, and it is 
 also true of the historic movement of the 
 race. When the race tends toward spirit- 
 uality, then it most truly lives. There was 
 nothing spiritual, was there, in the cruel 
 
50 PERSONALITY. 
 
 tortures of the Inquisition ? No. Nor did 
 the life of the human race express itself at 
 its best by such barbarities. When man 
 holds his brother in the bondage of slavery 
 he is not expressing his highest and best. 
 Is it not so ? 
 
 Wherever, then, the human race in its 
 historic development has thrown aside those 
 chains of bondage, — those experiences 
 which link it with the animals, those cruel- 
 ties, those oppressions, all those things 
 which are " of the earth, earthy," — then it 
 expresses itself most fully and completely. 
 The tendency in the historic movement of 
 the race is toward spirituality, and when it 
 is not in that direction, then just so much 
 of human life is checked and is not true to 
 its ideals. We do not say that the human 
 race has yet reached the highest point at- 
 tainable of its spiritual development. This 
 cannot be said while the hand of the bro- 
 ther is on the throat of the brother. We 
 are still, as a race, too prone to express the 
 animality that is within us. Theologians 
 call this " original sin." It is that which 
 is linking us to that from which we have 
 sprung, and from which we ought to ascend 
 to a higher, a nobler, condition. This sim- 
 
GOB'S SPIRIT IN MAN'S LIFE. 5 I 
 
 ply shows that man has not attained his 
 goal, but that the onward movement is 
 toward spirituality. It is not until the race, 
 as a race, realizes its possible spirituality 
 that it begins most truly to live. 
 
 What is true of the race is true also of 
 the individual. The human soul says, " I 
 am destined for spiritual things." "As 
 pants the hart for the water brooks, so pants 
 my soul after thee, O God." The hunger 
 and thirst after spirituality, the intense de- 
 sire for holiness, the aspiration for the ful- 
 fillment of the spiritual idea that the Holy 
 Spirit shall build us up as individuals into 
 himself, is the tendency toward spirituality 
 which makes life worth living. This is the 
 hypothesis which works. When you are 
 striving after spirituality, then you are be- 
 ginning to live. 
 
 Here is a young man just setting out in 
 life. For what purpose ? His foot is on 
 the threshold of life, and he asks himself, 
 " Why am I living ? " and he must give an 
 answer to himself that shall satisfy him. 
 No one else can give the answer for him. 
 He stands alone in the world ; he is an- 
 swerable to God. There is a contract be- 
 tween God and him, and there is nothing 
 
52 PERSONALITY. 
 
 in that contract save that he shall meet the 
 conditions and requirements of his spiritual 
 life. There must be an object in his life, 
 a striving towards spirituality. It will not 
 do for him to strive to bring to himself 
 certain comforts, to attain what men call 
 success, but the answer must commend it- 
 self to the spirituality that is within him, 
 and in so doing will commend itself to 
 God. 
 
 We were born for spirituality, for holi- 
 ness, for righteousness. As the musician 
 is born to express himself righteously by 
 producing the harmony that is within him, 
 so the human life is born to join the an- 
 them of angel and archangel, to express the 
 harmony that God has already placed within 
 the soul. We are born for these things, 
 and when we are not seeking after them 
 we are thwarting God. 
 
 The Holy Spirit comes as the manifes- 
 tation of God. He comes to us as our 
 energy. This energy of our souls, this 
 energy that belongs to our souls, is not 
 there as an accident ; it belongs there. 
 This energy of the Holy Spirit in you ex- 
 presses itself as inspiration. Yes, every 
 human soul stands ready to be inspired, 
 
GOD'S SPIRIT IN MAN'S LIFE. 53 
 
 This is a solemn truth : every soul stands 
 ready to be breathed into by God, inspired 
 so that God may make clear his purpose, 
 his will, his unfolding of the life, his fulfill- 
 ment of spirituality. Oh, let no human 
 soul shut out this holiness which is striv- 
 ing to inspire with truth, with light. 
 
 We read how the Holy Spirit strove 
 until he inspired the sinner David, till he 
 burned out by the fire of his great holiness 
 and truth many of the seeds of sin in him 
 who was both murderer and sinner against 
 God, till, as the result of that inspiration, 
 we have some of those beloved Psalms, 
 which serve as balm to your souls and 
 mine. See how this same Holy Spirit 
 strove with the persecuting Saul, to inspire 
 him, to stay him in his persecuting jour- 
 ney, to strike him to the very earth, as 
 sometimes he does strike other souls to the 
 earth, that he may make the persecuting 
 Saul the adoring Paul. He is taking away 
 your treasures, calling a halt to your on- 
 ward movement, that he may inspire you 
 to turn from your cold-heartedness into an 
 adoring and loving child. 
 
 The day of inspiration will never cease. 
 God is as ready now to inspire your soul 
 
5 4 PERSONA LITY. 
 
 and mine as he was to inspire Isaiah, or 
 David, or Paul, and because we do not re- 
 ceive his inspiration is not that God is 
 not ready and waiting to give it, but be- 
 cause we still let our hearts remain hearts 
 of ice, and will not receive sufficient melt- 
 ing influence. 
 
 In one of the glaciers near Chamounix 
 the hand of man has cut a grotto. You 
 may live within that grotto, as some men 
 have cut within their own souls a chamber 
 of retreat wherein they live. The sun in 
 heaven does not shed its rays into that 
 grotto of ice, and the Sun of Righteous- 
 ness does not reach the chamber cut by 
 men in their souls. Yet it is not man's 
 normal state that he should dwell so. The 
 sun waits to pour down upon the life within 
 that ice grotto that the life may grow and 
 express itself, and the Sun of Righteous- 
 ness is waiting to pour down the life-giving 
 energy of his own holiness into your heart 
 and mine, and is calling on you to come 
 out of the ice grotto. 
 
 He waits to inspire. He calls to life. 
 His energy expresses itself as inspiration. 
 He makes you to see the exceeding sinful- 
 ness of sin and the superb righteousness of 
 
GOD'S SPIRIT IN MAN'S LIFE. 55 
 
 God. The Holy Ghost is striving to work 
 in you the fullness of the glory of Christ. 
 
 You are going now to your homes, and 
 what shall you find there ? The old life, 
 with its ice grotto where you may hide 
 yourselves ? Or shall you find within 
 those homes a temple of the living God ? 
 Shall you throw open the windows of that 
 temple and let in the inspiring energy of 
 the Holy Spirit, that he may burn out as 
 with a fire all the dross therein ? For " our 
 God is a consuming fire." 
 
 When those windows are thrown wide, 
 will you receive him, the Spirit of Truth, 
 whom ye know, "for he dwelleth with 
 you"? Thus you dwell with Jesus and 
 with God. His holiness inspires you. 
 The convicter convinces you of sin and of 
 the grandeur of righteousness ; convinces 
 you of the possibilities that lie within you ; 
 calls to you to come up higher ; and you 
 responding to that call, will you dwell with 
 him who dwelleth in you, the Spirit of 
 Truth whom ye know ? 
 
IV. 
 
 RECONCILIATION TO GOD BY 
 APPREHENSION OF GOD. 
 
 All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to him- 
 self by Jesus Christ. — 2 Cor. v. 18. 
 
 28 June, i8gi. 
 
IV. 
 
 RECONCILIATION TO GOD BY APPREHEN- 
 SION OF GOD. 
 
 The world is reconciled to God by the 
 apprehension of God. The world, that is 
 ffie human souls that go to make up the 
 world, are to be reconciled, transformed, by 
 the apprehension of the nature of the life, 
 that is, the personality of God. There is 
 no other way. Reconciliation is transfor- 
 mation. The world must be reconciled, or 
 transformed, to God through the personal- 
 ity of Jesus Christ, by the apprehension of 
 God. 
 
 As the highest achievement of man is 
 his own personality, that is, the realization 
 of his own life, and as his truest education 
 is the development of his idiosyncrasies, 
 the fulfillment of every latent force that 
 there is in him ; or, we might say, as the 
 highest achievement of man is the preserv- 
 ing intact of the only capital he ever has in 
 
60 PERSONALITY. 
 
 time or in eternity, or, better, I think, the 
 making the highest and best use of that 
 capital, — so the personality of God tends 
 ever toward its own end, that is, toward 
 the fulfillment of his own purpose, which is 
 none other than the reconciliation of every 
 human soul to himself. 
 
 In other words, the purpose of God, — 
 toward which his own personality tends 
 without conflict, because there is no con- 
 flict in perfect personality, as there is con- 
 flict in our imperfect personality, which is 
 affected by our finite limitations, — the pur- 
 pose of God is the fulfillment of his own 
 life, through the spiritual processes, and 
 that purpose is none other than the trans- 
 formation of every human soul, of every 
 phase of human life, to his own likeness. 
 
 What a glorious sweep of truth that is, 
 that as our finite personalities are tending 
 through long, slow struggles toward reali- 
 zation, that as man's ascent is ever 
 through conflict, so God, in the infinite 
 calm of absolute personality, is fulfilling 
 the end of his own being, in the transfor- 
 mation of every phase of human life unto 
 himself. This is the truth that St. Paul 
 grasped so firmly, that we are made to re- 
 
RECONCILIATION TO GOD. 6 1 
 
 fleet the glory of God, to fulfill in ourselves 
 the realization of the divine personality. 
 
 Thus the reconciliation of the world is 
 by the apprehension of God, because man 
 is made for God, for nothing short of God. 
 In our feeble struggles, our human life 
 seems unreconciled to anything, even to 
 itself, to its own desires, its own purposes, 
 aims, and ambitions. With us human life 
 is a seething caldron wherein bubble all 
 sorts of efforts, and it will ever be so until 
 its endeavor is upward; until its strivings 
 are for ascent ; until its purposes are con- 
 centrated on the one struggle that is wor- 
 thy of it, namely, the realization of its own 
 personality ; until it strives to enter into 
 the fulfillment of its own being; until it 
 be transformed, at least in its purpose, to 
 the likeness of God. 
 
 The relation between God and the soul 
 is real and vital. As we realize ourselves, 
 so we come into the realization of the vital 
 bond that unites us with God. When we 
 lose sight of that, life becomes unreal, ar- 
 bitrary ; revelation, so far as we appre- 
 hend it at all, becomes dramatic ; we talk 
 of things about God, and fail to realize the 
 nature of God himself. 
 
62 
 
 PERSONALITY. 
 
 If what I have said commends itself to 
 your judgment, you will see that man's 
 reconciliation is first through knowledge, 
 and afterward by growth ; that we must 
 know God ; that there must be to the hu- 
 man soul the revelation of God, the laying 
 bare of the very nature of God ; that there 
 must be the declaring to the human soul of 
 God, — not of things about God, but of 
 God himself. 
 
 This revelation of God is seen in the ex- 
 ternal processes, those movements of life 
 which we call history. For example, I 
 suppose that not all the obstructing com- 
 bination of the armies of man could have 
 ultimately thwarted the abolition of slavery. 
 We see, as a matter of fact, in those exter- 
 nal processes of life, that is, in history, the 
 laying bare of an eternal righteousness. 
 The more carefully we try to solve the 
 depths of the philosophy of history, the 
 more we see that this righteousness marches 
 on and may not be checked, stayed, or ulti- 
 mately thwarted ; that in its own power it 
 is invincible. 
 
 As we see this in history, so, I am con- 
 strained to believe, we see it in the inter- 
 nal processes which we call human con- 
 
RECONCILIATION TO GOD. 63 
 
 sciousness. Man feels that the call within 
 himself, as soon as he stops to think, is to 
 higher and still higher steeps of life ; that 
 there is within him a force, a power, which 
 makes for righteousness. Whenever this 
 power is obstructed, hindered, or tempo- 
 rarily thwarted in any way, there is a re- 
 vulsion effected which is produced by that 
 which is not true, so that he feels that 
 there is a revelation, outside and within, of 
 a power which makes for righteousness. It 
 would seem, then, that because this power 
 makes for righteousness it must be true, 
 for that which makes for right is clearly 
 true. It is not only true, but is something 
 with which we have a vital kinship. Touch 
 the electric current, and you have estab- 
 lished a vital kinship with it, and when we 
 come in contact with this righteousness in 
 the historical processes, we find its result 
 to be along the lines of truth. 
 
 No man for a moment calls in question 
 the truth of freedom, the falseness of sla- 
 very, nor doubts that if there were right- 
 eousness in the universe, it must ultimately 
 crush slavery, abolish bondage, and estab- 
 lish freedom. This power within man, if 
 it be a power for righteousness, must es- 
 
64 PERSONALITY. 
 
 tablish righteousness within him, and not 
 only establish it, but in the establishing 
 of it man must feel its truth. 
 
 If we are to have our lives transformed 
 to the life of the universe, or in other 
 words, to be reconciled to God ; if we are 
 to be brought into sympathetic contact 
 with those great spiritual forces that sweep 
 on through human life, we must begin in 
 our study with ourselves. I may not be- 
 gin from without ; I must see what is here. 
 And here within me I find, or believe I 
 find, a power working for righteousness, 
 which brings a certain amount of satis- 
 faction and peace ; and in the processes 
 outside of me I see these processes also 
 tending toward righteousness, and it estab- 
 lishes at least the probability, within my 
 mind, that there is something in the uni- 
 verse absolute in its righteousness, with 
 which the soul of man has a natural and a 
 vital union and fellowship, so that when he 
 comes into sympathetic contact with that 
 life, peace follows, harmony is established, 
 and progress asserts itself. 
 
 Hence this reconciliation must first be 
 by knowledge, and afterward by growth. 
 Knowledge comes by reflection. I have 
 
RECONCILIATION TO GOD. 65 
 
 anticipated that already. You begin to 
 think about God, to reflect upon certain 
 clearly recognized principles within your- 
 self, and one of these principles is right- 
 eousness. When a thinking man begins 
 to ponder the subject of righteousness, he 
 finds it to be a quality of positive truth. 
 In business, men say, " Let the word be as 
 good as the bond," indicating that man 
 recognizes within his constitution a certain 
 element of right which is of the nature of 
 positive truth. Therefore this recognition 
 of God in the human consciousness is first 
 by reflection. Do not fear, then, the man 
 who thinks. He may think perversely ; 
 his thoughts may be distorted, his logic 
 lame and halting ; his conclusions impo- 
 tent: but it is something that the great 
 depths of human thought have been stirred ; 
 that the angel of reason has come and 
 touched the waters of his mind ; for out of 
 these depths, muddy though they may be, 
 there may yet come the clear reflection of 
 the divine truth. 
 
 Reflection, then, is the first thing by 
 which the human consciousness comes into 
 the knowledge of God. Nurture your 
 thoughts. Be not afraid of the conclusions 
 
66 PERSONALITY, 
 
 to which they may carry you. The very 
 first step is to open the mind's eye that it 
 may get some glimpses of the divine truth. 
 So the revelation of God (I may not say 
 from God, because it is primarily of God) 
 is the laying bare of the very nature of 
 God, and that revelation comes to the hu- 
 man consciousness through the avenue of 
 reflection. As reflection is but a function 
 of the reason, so there is another function 
 of the mind which seems to me as clearly 
 established as reflection, namely, the func- 
 tion of faith. I believe faith to be a fac- 
 ulty of the spiritual life, the soul life, just as 
 truly as I consider reflection to be ; and the 
 next avenue of the apprehension of God 
 is through faith, where the scope of man's 
 vision is enlarged, where his horizons are 
 broadened, and where, resting on reason, 
 he takes hold with a firmer grasp of a 
 larger outpouring of truth by the exercise 
 of that faculty called faith. 
 
 Faith does not ignore reason. Reason 
 is the place on which the first rung of the 
 ladder rests, and faith climbs that ladder 
 till it comes nearer to the face of God. 
 
 As reflection and faith are the channels 
 through which God reveals himself, so also 
 
RECONCILIATION TO GOD. 6/ 
 
 are the experiences of the soul. Here is 
 a little child, and he strives in his little 
 childish way after righteousness. He be- 
 gins to realize that there is such a thing 
 as right conduct, as well as right thought, 
 for children's notions are sometimes much 
 clearer and truer than we imagine. This 
 child begins to apprehend the very na- 
 ture of the righteousness of God. He be- 
 gins to realize that his little forces are be- 
 ing reconciled to the great life of God, and 
 as he passes through these processes* when 
 he becomes old enough to think, he finds 
 that he has been living as a child of God, 
 and realizes that the soul experiences 
 through which he is passing are teaching 
 him more and more of that fullness of life 
 for which his soul thirsts and is hungry, 
 and he is filled, satisfied, whenever God 
 comes into his heart. Watch your own 
 child. See when the moment comes in his 
 life that he comes to you with a new 
 light that never was on sea or land shin- 
 ing forth from his soul, and tells you that 
 he wants to serve God ; then you see that 
 there seems to come within his soul a real- 
 ization of a larger and fuller life, and you 
 seem to be standing in the very presence 
 
68 PERSONALITY. 
 
 of God. So near to G»d are little chil- 
 dren. 
 
 When we have this revelation of God 
 as it comes to us from reflection, faith, and 
 soul experiences, we realize that it is in 
 relations. You cannot separate God from 
 life — it is absolutely inconceivable. You 
 cannot, as it were, separate this life of the 
 universe from relationship. Isolation is 
 death. Life standing alone always dies. 
 Take away from the rose the sunshine, the 
 rain, the dew, the light, those many fel- 
 lowships and relationships which stimulate 
 its life, and you have death. 
 
 Sometimes men begin to realize what 
 sin is because it is always a cutting off, a 
 separating process, a process whose logical 
 end must be isolation, and therefore "the 
 wages of sin is death. ,, The thief is cut 
 off from companionship, the murderer is 
 held behind prison bars. Every trans- 
 gression of the moral and spiritual law is, 
 in its result, isolation, and isolation is al- 
 ways death. 
 
 We cannot, then, have a separated God ; 
 we cannot say or think that there is not 
 a vital union with him. The existence of 
 God must always be in relations. There 
 
RECONCILIATION TO GOD. 69 
 
 is a profound philosophy in that simple 
 statement, " I believe in God, Father and 
 Son/' and when we undertake to establish 
 the principle of the foundations of national, 
 family, or church life, it must always be on 
 the principle of relationships. 
 
 This leads one to say that this revelation 
 of God must also be the revelation of a 
 being who exists, not for the sake of mere 
 existence, of mere being, of a mere strug- 
 gle for being, but for another. * This is a 
 paradox which puzzles people. They have 
 tried to reconcile selfishness and self-real- 
 ization. But man knows that there is a 
 vast difference between the two, and he 
 realizes the profundity of the truth of the 
 saying of our Lord : " He that loseth his 
 life shall find it." The very foundation of 
 self-realization is the living for another. 
 
 Thus we find this revelation of God 
 coming to us as a being in relations, and 
 also as a being realizing itself for another. 
 If it is to be true to human experience and 
 reflection, it is not only to be a revelation 
 of God in relations, and as a being exist- 
 ing for another, but it is to be a revelation 
 of the divine fullness as we see it in that 
 precious parable of the prodigal son. Hear 
 
JO PERSONALITY. 
 
 the words of the Father as he says, "Son, 
 thou art ever with me, and all that I have 
 is thine." All there is of God is to be 
 poured out into the human soul ; the life 
 of the universe is to touch the human soul 
 in every phase and at every point of its 
 experience, because it is the life of rela- 
 tions, because it is the life of a being ex- 
 isting for another ; because it is the life of 
 divine fullness. Its beginnings are always 
 in love. 
 
 Reconciled to God ! Do you not see 
 how it . is to be accomplished ? It is by 
 the human soul lifting its face, raising its 
 vision, opening its eyes, and beholding in 
 clear knowledge, through reflection, faith, 
 and soul experiences, the life of its Father, 
 the life of him whose child he is, the life of 
 him who in divine fullness and richness is 
 pouring himself into his heart. It is that 
 God through knowledge is developing the 
 soul in the larger life which comes through 
 growth, through the Christ the Son of God, 
 through the mediation of the Spiri't, for it 
 is a revelation of life to life, of spirit to 
 spirit, of spiritual life to spiritual life. 
 
 As man's achievement in its highest ex- 
 pression is the realization of his personal- 
 
RECONCILIATION TO GOD. J\ 
 
 ity, and as the personality of the universal 
 life tends ever toward its own fulfillment 
 in the reconciliation of all life to himself, 
 so this revelation of God is in a person, 
 through a person, by a person. 
 
 The revelation of God, then, is through 
 the moral order, through personal channels ; 
 not through physical processes, in which, 
 because of the limitations of our finite ex- 
 perience and knowledge, there is, appar- 
 ently, dualism, but through a moral order, 
 through a person. Through personality 
 God comes to the human heart in his own 
 likeness. He reveals himself. Revelation 
 is light, — not a reflection of light, not a 
 refraction of light, even, but light itself, and 
 needs no cumulative argument to sustain 
 it. God lays bare his own heart, and man 
 feels the power in himself that works for 
 righteousness. In his own consciousness 
 a man contemplates that power. His 
 faith takes a larger grasp, and in that 
 power he sees the divine life; and in the 
 processes of his soul's experience he sees 
 in that divine life the same ground of life 
 and existence in himself, and beholds in 
 figure the face of the personal God, his 
 own Heavenly Father. 
 
72 PERSONALITY. 
 
 Whenever truth becomes unfolded, then 
 there is a realization of freedom. The 
 whole truth gives whole freedom. There 
 can be no contradiction in truth. I may 
 not say, " This is of God and this is of 
 nature ; " all things are of God, and every 
 truth that man takes hold of in the physi- 
 cal or in the spiritual processes, whether 
 he calls himself scientist or philosopher, or 
 whether his spiritual nature calls out and 
 takes hold of a single element of truth, 
 wherever truth is apprehended there is 
 at least one letter that spells out ulti- 
 mately, in God's good time, the very na- 
 ture of God. Thus grows the alphabet 
 of the knowledge of God. Nothing can 
 bring about this knowledge of God, this 
 reconciliation of the world, save truth in 
 its absolute fullness, in its entirety. 
 
 It seems to me that every unfolding of 
 the life of God comes as naturally, as 
 reasonably, as if it could not have been 
 otherwise. There seems, when looked at 
 aright, nothing arbitrary in this revelation 
 of God, nothing unreal, nothing dramatic, 
 nothing that might be changed without 
 shaking the foundations of all reason, of 
 all faith, without stultifying all human ex- 
 
RECONCILIATION TO GOD. 73 
 
 perience, without going flatly in the face 
 of all progress, for to be is to progress, 
 and the soul that most truly lives is the 
 soul that has taken hold most firmly of 
 the very chariot wheels of the soul's devel- 
 opment, and is speeding en with lightning 
 pace into the very presence of him who is 
 all truth. 
 
 I stand now on the shores of Galilee, 
 and I see a humble peasant approaching. 
 My soul asks, as may sometimes yours, 
 "Why do I call him the Son of God?" 
 Why ? Because I discern in him truth 
 and light ; and this is a sufficient answer. 
 I enlarge that answer, however, though 
 his truth needs no argument, is self-evi- 
 dent : in him is the laying bare of a soul, 
 of a life, of a personality, a soul that exists 
 in relations, who laid the foundation of 
 that glorious conception of the universal 
 brotherhood of mankind. 
 
 This same Galilean peasant, — see how 
 like God he is. He needs no argument. 
 He is a manifestation of truth, and the 
 soul feels it in coming into his presence ; 
 realizes it ; cares nothing for the argument 
 from design, from the miraculous, from 
 the validity or authenticity of documents ; 
 
74 PERSONALITY. 
 
 stands safely in the presence of this per- 
 sonality, this soul, whose very being is the 
 laying bare of those principles which we 
 have found to be of the very nature of 
 God, — till the soul feels that it is standing 
 in the preserfce of him who is none other 
 than the Son of God. 
 
 Wherever man as man, wherever the 
 race as a race, has taken hold of this life 
 of Jesus Christ, there has been the most 
 stupendous and overwhelming onward 
 movement of righteousness among men, 
 and wherever men have failed to recognize 
 this life of Jesus they have been overtaken 
 by unrighteousness, defeat, and shame. 
 
 Who was it that stayed the progress 
 of the abolition of slavery ? It was those 
 who failed most to realize the divine life 
 and fellowship of this Jesus of Nazareth. 
 In the name of Christianity, some, mis- 
 taking the very nature of Christ, tried to 
 prove the divine origin of slavery, but 
 he who was larger than his creature con- 
 founded the clay of his own making, and 
 made his righteousness triumph, as ne- 
 cessarily it always must. 
 
 So with the individual consciousness. 
 Wherever an individual soul has taken 
 
RECONCILIATION TO GOD. 75 
 
 hold of this life of Jesus he has been the 
 more filled with the life of God. It is a 
 fair test. He who has within him the 
 most of the outpouring of Jesus finds him- 
 self most filled with God. Point by point 
 we might show this application : as in rela- 
 tionships, so in the living for another, giv- 
 ing his life for others ; and as in the living 
 for another, so in that larger realization 
 of all life he stands in the presence of 
 him who is the laying bare of truth and 
 of light. 
 
 Christ, therefore, is to me the revelation 
 of God, the revelation in personality, the 
 only way, it seems to me, God can come to 
 my soul ; and because he is the revelation 
 of God, because his life is truth and light, 
 we are reconciled to God, transformed to 
 God, made into the likeness of God — 
 changed from glory to glory through this 
 same Galilean peasant, this Jesus, the car- 
 penter's son, this brother, this human 
 Jesus, this Son of God, who has become 
 the son of man that he might lay bare 
 the life and light of his eternal Father. • 
 
 The reconciliation of the world, then, 
 is through the knowledge of God, through 
 the apprehension of God, through the 
 
j6 PERSONALITY. 
 
 upward conflict and struggle of the soul, 
 through experiences, through the life 
 of Christ ; and it is the work of the one 
 Holy Spirit, who, with the Father and the 
 Son, is ever one God. The soul's life, 
 its beginning, its end, its destiny is in him 
 in whom it finds reconciliation, by whom 
 it is changed, transformed, and passes 
 from glory to glory. O God, thou art my 
 God. In thee is my realization ; in thee, O 
 Christ, is my reconciliation ; in thee, O 
 Holy Spirit, I live and can never die. 
 
V. 
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 
 
 That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. — St. John 
 
 iii. 6. 
 
 ii October, i8gi. 
 
THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 
 
 The birth of a human soul, its growth, 
 its progress, its fruition, — these are the 
 thoughts which at one time or another 
 command the most earnest consideration 
 of every human life. There come mo- 
 ments when we look into our natures to 
 learn their great secrets, to understand 
 what we are, to strive to solve the great 
 problems which seem to confront us. It is 
 a moment when one seems to say to him- 
 self : " There is something more in me 
 than nerve, muscle, bone, sinew, and flesh. 
 There is something in me more than that 
 which makes me kin to other growths, 
 whether physical or of another sort, in the 
 natural world ; " a moment when one seems 
 to say to himself, "That which men call 
 a soul I think I have," and the instant that 
 thought comes to a man he is asking him- 
 self, " What is this soul ? What is its end ? 
 
80 PERSONALITY. 
 
 How does it come? How does it grow? 
 What are the stages of its progress ? 
 What is its destiny ? " 
 
 I do not say that this is a joyful moment 
 in any man's life. Sometimes it is an hour 
 of great pain, this hour of introspection, 
 of self-realization ; this moment when there 
 is crowded upon him the necessity of a 
 great question, of the demand of a great 
 answer. " What am I ? " " What am I to 
 be ? " I sympathize most profoundly with 
 the agony of such moments. I think I un- 
 derstand somewhat of the pain of such an 
 hour, and it is because I wish to soothe that 
 pain — not to remove the cause of the pain, 
 but, by giving greater strength, that from 
 within the soul may rise above its pain till 
 it cease in its torture — that I ask you to 
 think with me for a moment something of 
 the nature of this soul. 
 
 It is a common heritage that we have. 
 Your soul and mine are fundamentally 
 alike. It is a common stream of everlast- 
 ing life that pours through your soul, 
 through mine. It is a common story there 
 told, a common experience we share, a 
 common struggle we make. Together we 
 live, together we struggle for life, together 
 
THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 8 1 
 
 through soul-trials we may reach the con- 
 summation ; so that what I read within my 
 soul must be, to a great extent, true of 
 yours ; what you read in yours must be 
 capable of serving me. 
 
 Here is a soul ; whence it comes we ask 
 not, but, if an institution is the lengthened 
 shadow of a man, so is the human soul the 
 prolonged life of the centuries. It bears 
 the mark of ancestry, that mysterious law 
 of heredity. It is the gathering up of much 
 which has, gone before. A man lives the 
 life of his ancestors, finds within himself 
 powers, and energies, and impulses, and 
 tendencies which startle him in their mani- 
 festation. He cannot tell whence he has 
 come.- He only regards himself here as 
 the beginning of a great soul striving to 
 express itself. Marked by the avalanche, 
 so to say, of histories preceding him, by 
 many generations and centuries, there are 
 great lines left upon his soul, as on the 
 mountain sides the sliding glacier has left 
 its deep cuts ; preceding histories and cen- 
 turies have engraved themselves upon it, so 
 that every human soul bears somewhat of 
 that which has gone before. 
 
 The realization of this sometimes over- 
 
82 PERSONALITY. 
 
 whelms him. He is stunned by the great 
 forces that are contending within him. 
 Sometimes it is a force of great brilliancy, 
 and as a little child he manifests powers 
 which are stupendous. Fancy a great poet, 
 almost before his infant lips can speak 
 without lisping, expressing thoughts that 
 must strike those who listen to him by 
 reason of their unusual power. How came 
 this child to such knowledge, never having 
 learned ? How is it sometimes with the 
 soul of a little child ? He seizes the brush 
 and paints, and produces on the canvas a 
 work powerful in its majesty, its brilliancy, 
 exceeding the work of other men who have 
 toiled for years without reaching such re- 
 sults. How is it sometimes that those of 
 mathematical powers, powers of invention, 
 powers of discovery, seize the hidden 
 forces of nature and tear aside the veil 
 that hides the great mysteries of life and 
 discovery, and reveal to admiring and won- 
 dering eyes secrets never dreamed of ? No 
 man seems to be able to solve this. Suffice 
 it to say, that there is a piling up of great 
 powers and forces through generations and 
 centuries by this which we call the law of 
 heredity. God is working in a mysterious 
 way " his wonders to perform." 
 
THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 83 
 
 So you find sometimes within yourselves 
 forces that startle you and confound you. 
 Sometimes these forces lead you into great 
 sin ; sometimes they help you to a sublime 
 sense of spirituality and to great demands 
 in righteousness. Sometimes they hurry 
 you to crime, or lead you into philanthropic 
 fields, where with the hand of blessing you 
 comfort all those who come within the reach 
 of your holy and gentle life. In the one 
 case, as much as in the other, you are star- 
 tled, stunaed, by the powers and forces that 
 are there. In the one case you are able to 
 see clearly where other men do not see, or 
 are blind where every one is crying out : 
 "Do you not see? Is it not beautiful ? " 
 stumbling, halting, creeping, where other 
 men are walking with strong, mighty 
 strides. In the one case, as in the other, 
 you are at a loss to account for the forces 
 that are within you. 
 
 The realization of this seems to me to be 
 the coming to the birth of a soul. " That 
 which is born of the Spirit is spirit." No 
 man knows how it is born, where it is born, 
 what is the process through which it passes. 
 The soul manifests itself and we see the 
 manifestation, but more we cannot tell. 
 
84 PERSONALITY. 
 
 We do know this, that here is a ground of 
 courage, of hope, of pity, of charity. 
 
 When I see a soul beating against the 
 bars of its cage, striving, longing for free- 
 dom, yearning to take the wings of* the 
 morning that it may fly where it may 
 reach its true atmosphere, though the beat- 
 ing against those bars be what is called sin, 
 however bitter the struggle, though it crip- 
 ple and wound the poor soul striving, pant- 
 ing for its life, yet I shall be filled both 
 with pity and with hope ; then, though I 
 see the soul steeped in its blood because of 
 this beating and striving, see it overcome 
 apparently, thrown back upon itself by rea- 
 son of its sin, yet I shall say, " It is born 
 for escape, for freedom," and I shall have 
 a ground of hope th^t the bars shall one 
 day be broken, and the soul shall escape to 
 its greatest liberty. 
 
 Your souls are struggling. Yes, the 
 souls of the greatest saints of whom we 
 know anything have struggled. St. Paul 
 looks within himself and finds there forces 
 warring one with one another, and how great 
 is his distress ! How all the great spirits of 
 earth are staggered by what they see within 
 themselves ! Even these forces within man 
 
THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 85 
 
 may be perverted, but still they are great 
 forces. The force that leads a man to sin 
 may yet become the power that shall lead 
 him to holiness. The force may be latent, 
 but thefe it is, and the power stuns, or the 
 lack of power confuses and confounds, and 
 as a weakness or as a strength seems to 
 strike the soul with awe as it asks the ques- 
 tion, " What am I ? " Those forces which 
 St. Paul found warring within him brought, 
 I doubt not, great discouragement, as when 
 he says : " What I would, that do I not ; but 
 what I hate, that do I." So to-day there 
 are many who are thrown back upon them- 
 selves in a long and apparently fruitless 
 struggle for life, and become faint-hearted, 
 discouraged, cast to the earth in despair. 
 But it is not right for us to be discouraged, 
 faint-hearted, conquered by despair, for 
 we are not alone. Every soul in one way 
 or another has been thus torn by the war- 
 ring within. This is no new conflict, no 
 new panting, no new effort, no new mani- 
 festation of strange powers as they come 
 to the surface. It is the bubbling up of 
 the great wellspring of life striving for an 
 outlet here through the reeds or grasses 
 of forbidding and hindering conditions, 
 
86 PERSONALITY. 
 
 there bursting the banks of law, but finally 
 settling into its rightful channel. 
 
 Here are the great streams of tendency 
 that have been pouring themselves through 
 human souls down all the centuries, and 
 now they come within our souls. There, 
 perchance, they seem to throw off only 
 currents of sin and death. No, they are 
 the streams of life, and are persistent in 
 their manifestations, and wall sooner or 
 later burst the bounds that seem to hem 
 in the soul, and the soul shall yet find its 
 expression. It is where your soul, though 
 now, apparently, dammed up, limited, 
 hedged about by that which seems to be 
 altogether of sin, of obstruction, of death, 
 shall one day, nay must, by the very per- 
 sistence of all streams as they come from 
 mountain fastnesses and find their level in 
 the ocean, find its complete entire devel- 
 opment and fruition. It is the gospel of 
 good cheer that Christ preached when say- 
 ing in another figure : " Be of good cheer, I 
 have overcome the world." It is the gos- 
 pel of good tidings which he preaches when 
 he says : " I am come that ye may have life, 
 and have it more abundantly." It is the 
 gospel of good tidings that the lifestream. 
 
THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 87 
 
 coming from the one source of all life, 
 coursing through human souls, shall ex- 
 press itself. Let him that will, drink of 
 the fountain of life ; it is there for all to 
 partake. 
 
 Sometimes this moment of realization 
 comes to a man in his childhood, sometimes 
 not till middle age, sometimes not till far 
 advanced in old age. But come one day 
 or another it surely does. Forces within 
 him contend, warring forces, jarring ele- 
 ments, all striving for harmony, peace, har- 
 monious expression ; yet such a tangled 
 skein is the life of human souls that we 
 seem to lose all hope that the thread of life 
 may ever be discovered, or that our lives 
 may ever become peaceful, or the music 
 of our soul, the anthem of the praise of a 
 great life, ever be restored. But to all such, 
 to all who are in an apparent state of hope- 
 less jargon, shall come a stirring of the great 
 depths ; out of it all shall come a realization 
 of what they are capable ; they shall awake 
 to the fact that they have a soul, and when 
 they come to that glorious moment of awak- 
 ening, then they strive to prove their souls. 
 
 Remember, as you must, that the stream 
 of remote generations has poured itself 
 
88 PERSONALITY. 
 
 into you, and through you it shall find its 
 channel, and shall one day justify its be- 
 ing. So we sometimes see our dearest 
 friends go down, lost from sight, into the 
 bogs of wasted life, dissipation, sin, yes 
 and crime, and what are we to say? Say 
 only this, that the soul has gone down into 
 the depths, only one day to appear again 
 to find he is a soul; and when that mo- 
 ment comes, the remainder of his days are 
 passed in the effort to assert it and in the 
 striving for its realization. 
 
 There is no soul that can be lost ; the 
 Father's eye is sleepless, and watches over 
 every spiritual being that he has called 
 into existence. Nothing beclouds his vi- 
 sion. We may shut out our view and no 
 longer raise our eyes to see the Father's 
 face. By the mists of our indifference, by 
 the great thick darkness of our willful 
 transgression, we may shut out from our 
 souls the light of his countenance, but his 
 eve ever discerns the soul which is his, the 
 child of his own creating. 
 
 Then the moment of the struggle of 
 realization comes. 
 
 " I go to prove my soul ! 
 I see my way as birds their trackless way. 
 
THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 89 
 
 I shall arrive ! What time, what circuit first, 
 
 I ask not : but unless God send his hail 
 
 Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow, 
 
 In some time, his good time, I shall arrive : 
 
 He guides me and the bird. In his good time ! " 
 
 Oh, in ascending the mountain one foot 
 of the climber is always lagging, and when 
 that lagging foot speaks it speaks of de- 
 spair ; it says : " Once I was leading, once 
 I was achieving. I placed myself on firm 
 ground, and there was the upward move- 
 ment, progress, and acquisition, and the 
 joy that came in that feeling of spiritual 
 attainment ; but now, lagging far behind, 
 overcome, apparently, by the difficulty of 
 the ascent, I am in despair." Oh, how 
 many such souls there are to-day, men who 
 strive to live, to climb ! Now they say : 
 "It is useless ; I have slipped back; these 
 forces have pulled me down, thrust me 
 back ; I have no power of holiness within 
 me." But it is but the lagging foot, No 
 greater obstacle confronts you now than in 
 the past ; the movement of the soul is ever 
 upward and onward, though, apparently, 
 at times it may seem to be downward, and, 
 therefore, seem to be hopeless. 
 
 Physical temptation comes to you again, 
 and with shattered nerve you go down the 
 
90 PERSONALITY. 
 
 hill of your dissipation, and what do you 
 say ? Oh, say that the day is yet to dawn, 
 the nerves are yet to grow strong, renewed 
 health is to come to you, God is leading 
 you through a soul process no more diffi- 
 cult to endure than that through which 
 you have already passed. Be of good 
 cheer. "That which is born of the Spirit 
 is spirit." The process is painful, but it is 
 sure. Courage, now and always ! I deeply 
 sympathize with the one whose physical 
 temptation masters him again and yet 
 again, but you rest in the sure knowledge 
 that it is yet to pass, you are yet to be set 
 free. Or the mental trial comes, and the old 
 doubts reassert themselves, but once again 
 the Father's face, through the fog of your 
 mental difficulty, is yet to shine. The 
 spiritual temptations assert themselves 
 over and over again, till in the slough of 
 utter helplessness you seem to be lost. 
 But the soul is still passing through pro- 
 cesses and a larger hold upon spiritual life 
 is yet to be yours. 
 
 Can you afford, then, to give up the 
 striving ? Do you not realize how these 
 forces are within you, that they shall yet 
 find an awakening, that you shall discover 
 
THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 9 1 
 
 your soul has growth and progress, and that 
 the progress cannot be without these in- 
 spiring soul-catastrophes ? There cannot 
 be the great mountain ascents without the 
 striving and without descents into the val- 
 leys intervening between the hills. There 
 cannot be great strides of progress without 
 the lagging foot, without discouragements. 
 Discouragement is a part of the process of 
 progress. 
 
 Do you not see, then, that the soul 
 grows not as trees or flowers, though these 
 serve as an analogy ? The tree does not 
 sink as it rises, save as it thrusts down its 
 roots till it finds the moisture, the nourish- 
 ment, its life requires. But with the soul 
 there is a going back, but only that the now 
 lagging foot shall soon spring forward. 
 
 So, at one time or another in his life, 
 the moment of realization, of soul-striving, 
 comes to a man. It is a time, however, of 
 pruning, of cutting back the life, of put- 
 ting in the curb and bridle, the time of 
 checking, of a formative process where the 
 forces of the soul are to be shown their 
 highest and best development, and these 
 processes cannot be without pain, and mo- 
 ments of discouragement, suffering, and 
 
92 PERSONALITY. 
 
 momentary despair. If. the marble shrieks 
 as the biting chisel forms to greater beauty 
 the angel that is yet hidden, so there cannot 
 be the formative process of our soul's life 
 without pain, suffering, sorrow. But that 
 process leads, by reason of the forces at 
 work, to higher and still higher manifesta- 
 tions. These processes of the soul are to 
 lead to the time of fruition. It is a great era 
 in the soul's life first, when it awakes to its 
 realization ; second, when it strives after ex- 
 pression ; and still a greater era w T hen the 
 soul sees itself bear fruit. It is the stage of 
 its fruition, when it begins to bless, to help, 
 to encourage, to stimulate, to vitalize other 
 souls. 
 
 Oh, what a blessed moment of soul-ex- 
 perience when the life that is within you 
 is giving life to others ! What is it that 
 has exalted Jesus to the great throne 
 whereon he blesses other souls, and at 
 whose foot souls lift their hearts in ador- 
 ing praise ? It is the \\iz that has streamed 
 from the source of all life into his great 
 soul, so filling him to the full in complete 
 realization of all the vitalizing forces of hu- 
 man life, that he pours out from this over- 
 flowing fountain of spiritual attainment the 
 
THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 93 
 
 riches and the richness of an exalted life, 
 of a life that finds its complete oneness 
 in him, the author of our being, the source 
 of eternal life, — God. 
 
 As this fruition shows itself in Christ 
 so it does in other souls. What has some- 
 times given you courage but the blessing 
 of a mother's great life, or the tender spirit 
 of your father ? What is it that has some- 
 times given you renewed hope and a strong 
 grasp upon the great effort your soul is 
 making to- attain higher flights of spiritual 
 being, but the outpouring of the full life of 
 some friend who has himself gone down 
 through those dark, hideous valleys, who 
 has taken the warring elements in his soul 
 and brought them out of chaos into order, 
 out of confusion into harmony, so stemmed 
 the great tide of contending streams within 
 his soul as to give them the proper current 
 and manifestation of their being ? This 
 great soul of your friend, now having 
 reached, in its progress, fruition, is pouring 
 out upon you the greatness of his own 
 life. Such was St. Paul's. What animates 
 the world in the influence he has poured 
 out but the fruition of that life ? he found 
 in the beginning these warring forces, he 
 
94 PERSONALITY. 
 
 strove that he might so preach that he 
 himself might not be a castaway, he saw 
 the great value of his soul, and pressed to- 
 ward the mark that he might win the crown 
 of everlasting life ; and in the winning of 
 that crown, see how he has been a fruitful 
 blessing to generations then unborn, so 
 marvelous are the ways of the Spirit, — for 
 "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. ,, 
 
 The day of your fruition, perchance, is 
 dawning now. I know not but it may be 
 high noon in some of your souls. You 
 may not know it either. The greatest 
 souls have not known when the hour of 
 their fruition had come. They did not 
 know that the midday light was shining in 
 them, did not realize that they were being 
 life-giving to other souls. It may be now 
 in the moment when you are suffering 
 most that you are in the full blaze of a 
 glorious day of fruition, and are blessing 
 other lives most abundantly. 
 
 There stands a soul. Oh, how precious 
 it is, what forces are centred within it ! 
 See how the souls of many centuries have 
 poured themselves into it. Shall you not, 
 as you contemplate your soul, take courage ? 
 Shall you not be unwearied in your effort 
 
THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL. 95 
 
 to assert it, to seek its highest and best real- 
 # ization ? Shall you not count all this pain, 
 discouragement, and despair as nothing, 
 as only the price you would gladly pay 
 for the great joy and privilege of one day 
 so bearing fruit that other weak, thirsting 
 souls may from you find new courage, 
 strength, hope ? Are you not willing to 
 pay this price, willing to suffer that others 
 may be strong, willing to live and take 
 great holds upon life that you may bless 
 those who with you are panting to get free, 
 struggling against the bars of their prison- 
 house to let their souls soar to greater 
 heights ? 
 
 Do you not believe that the crucified 
 Lord must have had a joy unspeakable in 
 knowing that from him there was flowing, 
 as his blood streamed down, a life-giving 
 current which was to vitalize all spiritual 
 beings world without end ? Do you not 
 believe that St. Paul was entirely sincere 
 as he recounted shipwreck, the bitterness 
 of foe, the falseness of friends, much of 
 suffering, and rated them as nothing for 
 the joy that was set before him, the joy of 
 being a blessing and a life-giving energy 
 to generations yet to come ? 
 
g6 PERSONALITY. 
 
 It is thus I appeal to you to prove your 
 souls. I will not appeal to the cowardly 
 side of your nature. Do not lose your 
 grasp ; do not be overcome by despair; do 
 not think that you are not ascending the 
 mount of spiritual attainment. The lag- 
 ging foot is yet to be the foremost one. 
 It may be the very one which is first to 
 press itself upon the very summit of spirit- 
 ual attainment. 
 
 The growth, the progress, the fruition 
 of the human soul — oh, what a marvelous 
 unfolding it is to see ! And in that unfold- 
 ing let us trust, for it is God who calls the 
 soul into being, who. is shaping its desti- 
 nies, who is ever calling, " Friend, come up 
 higher." It is still God, the suffering, cru- 
 cified God, who is calling, " I am come that 
 you may have life, and have it more abun- 
 dantly." " Be of good cheer, because I 
 live/ye shall live also." 
 
 Oh, you must be of good cheer, for 
 Christ is in you, ever in you, always in 
 you, the hope of glory, your hope now and 
 forever. 
 
VI. 
 THE DIVINE SURPRISES. 
 
 So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed 
 into the ground ; and should sleep, and rise night and 
 day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he know- 
 eth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of her- 
 self; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn 
 in the ear. — St. Mark iv. 26. 
 
 8 March, i8gi. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE DIVINE SURPRISES. 
 
 In the fourth chapter of the Gospel ac- 
 cording to St. Mark, at the 26th verse, is 
 that familiar parable where our Lord says, 
 " So is the kingdom of God, as if a man 
 should cast seed into the ground ; and 
 should sleep, and rise night and day, and 
 the seed should spring and grow up, he 
 knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth 
 forth fruit of herself ; first the blade, then 
 the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." 
 And all the time that this parable has been 
 ringing in our ears, down through many 
 centuries, we have been slow to understand 
 that the kingdom of God is within us, and 
 that the spiritual development of the soul 
 is after its own laws, is always an un- 
 folding, and is always looking on to the 
 best that is yet to be. It is hard for us to 
 accept this, and the parable receives a deaf 
 ear, for we have fancied that our soul 
 
IOO PERSONALITY. 
 
 might grow in our way, and we have fan- 
 cied sometimes, in moments of despair, 
 that the best has already been, and that 
 the future is without hope, and when those 
 great processes of spiritual growth occur, 
 the soul, stunned, is scarcely prepared to 
 receive them. 
 
 The soul in its spiritual growth and de- 
 velopment has laws of its own, for the 
 kingdom of God is as if a man should cast 
 seed into the ground and should sleep, or 
 with anxious watchfulness should rise day 
 and night, and give it every care, and 
 scratch away the earth, to watch, impatient, 
 the beginning of the growth ; but the seed 
 groweth on, and he knoweth not how. 
 With all his skill and anxiety he cannot 
 tell how, but the seed grows, because the 
 earth bringeth forth fruit of herself, and 
 there is first the blade, but the blade does 
 not know what is coming after. 
 
 The little green growth, as it forces its 
 way through the soil, is not prepared for 
 the great surprises of its own development ; 
 it is not prepared for the beautiful verdure 
 of the green field caused by its own shoot- 
 ing up, nor even then for a still further 
 development ; for now comes the ear with 
 
THE DIVINE SURPRISES. IOl 
 
 its promises of even further development ; 
 with its promises of great usefulness, of 
 some time furnishing food for the eater. 
 And even then greater surprises are still 
 in store, for the ear can scarcely guess, — 
 this little ear of wheat not yet developed, 
 just heavy enough to bend the stem on 
 which it is growing, — it is scarcely pre- 
 pared for the still further surprises of the 
 full wheat, or corn, in the ear, and men and 
 women, following this same thought, begin 
 to realize that there is within them some- 
 thing of divine, Godlike possibility. 
 
 It is a strange experience when this re- 
 alization first comes. It does not come 
 often until there has been something of 
 pain and anguish, corresponding, possibly, 
 to the pain and anguish which the seed 
 may experience. When first put into the 
 repellent earth, and before the warm ger- 
 minating influences of the soil have been 
 felt, there comes the process of disintegra- 
 tion, of decay, and the seed suffers, as it 
 were, while being torn limb from limb ; 
 but all this suffering, all this disintegration, 
 makes the little seed grow and shoot up 
 away from this misery and suffering. So 
 when the disintegrating process comes to 
 
102 PERSONALITY. 
 
 us, there comes the realization of new life. 
 Long before the sunlight, even, is seen, the 
 life comes, while buried beneath the earth, 
 as the little shoot pushes its way to the 
 surface. Before we come to any realization 
 of the strength of that great potency which 
 is now at work within us, there is a growth, 
 and it is a true growth. No true growth 
 can be godless, because all growth begins 
 from the root, and this is the true spiritual 
 beginning, the true spiritual growth and 
 development. 
 
 Now come the surprises, and men begin 
 to realize that there is a reality to their 
 own peculiarity, and discover that there are 
 certain lines along which this reality is 
 going, certain lines of development, certain 
 processes of individuation ; just as, if we 
 were to look at this little germ long before 
 it pushes its way above the surface, we 
 should see that it was unlike any germ that 
 ever before has striven to come to the sun- 
 light. 
 
 In all the vast domain of life there is no 
 repetition ; every speck, every atom, every 
 molecule, every minute particle of life, has 
 its own special property and peculiarity. 
 It is as if a child should take the mud that 
 
THE DIVINE SURPRISES. 1 03 
 
 it plays with to build a little house, and 
 cut off here and there little bricks and 
 stones, and every one of them were separate 
 from the other, not one like another ; so 
 there is a process of individuation, separa- 
 tion, and with it development and growth. 
 
 I speak this in order that the soul, when 
 it comes to the realization of its life, may 
 not look for the same life in another soul. 
 It does not look to other souls to see what 
 are the surprises in store for it. Because 
 one man has had one experience, because 
 another soul has manifested itself in this 
 way, it does not follow that this soul shall 
 have the same experience and pass through 
 the same processes. There should be no 
 mistake. No soul should think of imitat- 
 ing another soul. 
 
 And now that every soul may look for 
 still further surprises, what a surprise it 
 is to some souls to find that they have 
 distinction ; that they have peculiar powers ; 
 that they may by their influence do some- 
 thing for other souls. It is one of the 
 divine surprises. The surprise is when 
 the little green growth comes above the 
 earth's surface and finds that it is making 
 the whole earth beautiful with its rich ver- 
 
1 04 PERSONA LITY. 
 
 dure. Its beauty is not the beauty of the 
 forest, of the hothouse growth, of the sky 
 brilliant with sunset gorgeousness, but it 
 has its own peculiar beauty. So the soul 
 that finds that it has distinction is now 
 ready to realize that it must be true to this 
 surprise, to its own individuality, its own 
 distinction, and will have nothing now of 
 imitation, of striving to be like other souls. 
 It will say to itself, " Be true to thine own 
 self. Now let me seek for the distinction 
 for which God has created me." 
 
 You this morning are looking to know 
 what shall be your life, as he who should 
 rise in the night ; yet the seed grows, he 
 knows not how. It is not wise foil us to 
 ask what shall be our lives. "Sufficient 
 unto the instant is the evil thereof." Our 
 lives are hid with Christ in God, as the 
 seed was hid in the mother earth, as the 
 development was still hid in the tender 
 arms of the sunlight and watered by the 
 gentle dews from heaven. It is not best 
 for us to ask what our lives shall be, but to 
 be true to the present life and await with 
 gentle expectancy still further surprises and 
 developments. 
 
 Life is truest when it is most uncon- 
 
THE DIVINE SURPRISES. 1 05 
 
 scious. Do not be eager to know what 
 your life is. Love loses its genuine ring 
 when it knows that it is love. Virtue 
 seems to be masquerading when it parades 
 itself as virtue. Patriotism, when it sings 
 its own praises, is not worthy of the name 
 of patriotism. Whenever the soul realizes 
 that it is alive, that moment there is a di- 
 minishing of the life. To illustrate : There 
 have been supreme moments in your life 
 when to others you seemed to live and to 
 fairly glow with life as never before. In 
 that unconscious manifestation of your soul 
 you were more truly alive than ever before, 
 as St. Paul caught up to the seventh heaven, 
 or as the soul of the mother, bending over 
 the cot on which the child lies wasting with 
 sure and dreadful disease, manifests most 
 truly the love that is within her, yet uncon- 
 sciously. So the originality, the individua- 
 tion, the distinction, the separateness passes 
 on, and as the little shoot becomes the 
 blade, as the tender growth develops into 
 the larger leaf, there comes the realization 
 of the continuity of life. It is the same cur- 
 rent of life passing through the grown ear 
 that there was in the first sprouting, that 
 there was in the seed beneath the earth, 
 
106 PERSOXALITY. 
 
 and this continuity of life breathes itself 
 through all the forms of existence so that 
 when men have become living souls it has 
 been called inspiration. It is indeed in- 
 spiration, this great force of the universe 
 breathing itself through nature. " So is 
 the kingdom of God, as if a man should 
 cast seed into the ground, and it should 
 spring and grow up, he knoweth not how." 
 
 This inspiration, this breathing through 
 human souls, may not be limited by either 
 time, place, or character of the individual. 
 As God breathed through the prophets, 
 and into him, the last of the prophets, 
 that is, into his own true Son until in 
 him was the fullness of the Godhead bod- 
 ily, God breathed into you that you may 
 become more and more living souls by 
 this inspiration illuminating your hearts 
 and mind, till you see things hitherto hid, 
 till you feel things before unknown, till 
 you are imbued with strength hitherto not 
 suspected, and this divine surprise of in- 
 spiration hi the individual is an indication 
 also of the further surprises in store. 
 
 If you, as an individual soul, are not 
 bigger, fuller of divine power and inspira- 
 tion, than you were five or ten years ago, 
 
THE DIVINE SURPRISES. IO/ 
 
 it is because this process of growth has 
 been hindered or thwarted by your own 
 rebellious interference — as if the farmer 
 who has sown the seed should untimely 
 scratch away the earth and hinder the 
 germ's expansion, or later on, heedless of 
 law, should walk rough-shod, as men some- 
 times do, over this early verdure and 
 thwart its development. And if, I say, 
 you are not fuller of divine love, more 
 inspired by God, nearer to bearing fruit, 
 it is because you have interfered with the 
 seed of the soul as it was struggling on 
 and up towards its development and fruit- 
 age. 
 
 So with mankind at large. If 1890 is 
 not better than 1790, and if each decade 
 is not better than the preceding one, it is 
 because we have interfered as a race with 
 those processes of growth and develop- 
 ment which God ever has in store for us. 
 
 As this is true, so we listen expectantly 
 to what perchance we call new laws ; not 
 new, although it is a new law to the trem- 
 bling stalk as it finds itself developing into 
 the wheat, but the law was always there. It 
 came as an inspiration. So with great ex- 
 pectancy we listen for new laws, and mea- 
 
108 PERSONALITY. 
 
 sure the truthfulness of those laws only 
 by their fruits. If they minister to the life, 
 cure the diseases of the soul, make the life 
 larger, greater, and truer, then are they ac- 
 cepted as an inspiration of God. 
 
 Fixedness in creed, in belief, in any- 
 thing that is spiritual, is fatal. Look at 
 the civilization of Egypt and see how crys- 
 tallization binds it hand and foot. We 
 must live in God, for God, and with God, 
 and expect the surprises of development 
 and growth. 
 
 How surprised John the Baptist must 
 have been at the breaking up of his spirit- 
 ual nature ! How the great life-blood cours- 
 ing though his veins must have astonished 
 him, as with power he preached the com- 
 ing of the great Messiah ! How St. Paul 
 must have been staggered, — Paul, the tent- 
 maker, with his scholarly logic, — how it 
 must have astonished him to find himself 
 endued with a power to turn the world 
 upside down ! and yet this upheaval of his 
 spiritual life that burst the graveclothes 
 of his theism was the divine surprise ac- 
 cording to the great divine principle of in- 
 spiration. 
 
 We speak of the onward progress of the 
 
THE DIVINE SURPRISES. IOg 
 
 Christian Church. It has not accomplished 
 the one thousandth part of the realization 
 in store for it. Why ! imagine ten men 
 endued with a Holy Ghost ; twenty or a 
 hundred men expecting this kingdom of 
 God, prepared for its distinction, prepared 
 for its inspirations, for its realization, then 
 try to imagine the leavening influence in 
 any community. If each one who has real- 
 ized it would touch with this inspired 
 power of God the soul that is next to him 
 so that the whole mass might be ablaze 
 with the divine fervor, souls knit to souls 
 in a kindling inspiration that should burn 
 out the sin of the race, and leave mankind 
 refined of its dross, — shining metal, pure 
 gold, — then I say the best is yet to be, 
 must be. 
 
 Thus for you in all your sorrows, your 
 sins, your disappointments, despairs, afflic- 
 tions, the best is yet to be. Expect these 
 surprises, welcome these experiences, be 
 glad of these processes ; for the earth 
 bringeth forth fruit of herself. God is in 
 his heaven. God is working with you ; we 
 are fellow-workers with God. I see souls 
 grasping with feebleness the truth, and I 
 bid them to look on, and look up, and realize 
 
1 1 PERSONALITY. 
 
 that we have but guessed what we may yet 
 be. At present be true to your growth, 
 to these laws, to this divine germ, and then 
 await the surprises. Life shall come as a 
 bright beam from heaven penetrating the 
 dark recesses of the hidden chamber of 
 your soul, and shall quicken into growth 
 the divine seed. You shall grow, though 
 you know not how. Without impatient ex- 
 pectancy disturbing the influences of the 
 soul, its development, its growth, there 
 is now a gentleness hitherto unknown, a 
 forgiveness you did not suppose possible, 
 and still you live unconscious of this virtue 
 that has come within you, a blessing to 
 those with whom you come in contact, 
 and still you live on, expecting more and 
 more of the divine surprises. 
 
 Men, women, look up, look on, "for the 
 kingdom of God is as if a man should cast 
 seed into the ground, and the seed should 
 spring up. For the earth bringeth forth 
 fruit of herself, first the blade, then the ear, 
 then the full corn in the ear." 
 
 Your life is hid, safely hid with God. 
 Let it grow. Let it spread, and as the great 
 tree, its leaves shall be for the healing of 
 the nations. 
 
VII. 
 
 SUFFERING. 
 
 For it became him to make the captain of their salva- 
 tion perfect through sufferings. — Heb. ii. 10. 
 
 ji May, i8gi. 
 
VII. 
 
 SUFFERING. 
 
 Let me say this again, not quite in the 
 same words. It was the expression of the 
 will of God in leading many of his children 
 unto their destiny, that is. unto blessedness, 
 unto glory, to make Jesus, the Captain of 
 their salvation, perfect, that is, fully de- 
 veloped as to his soul, his spiritual life, 
 through sufferings. 
 
 Behold, then, the outpouring, the mani- 
 festation, of the eternal will of God. We 
 behold it, we note it, and the record we 
 thus make of this observed operation of 
 the will of God we call law. So that it 
 seems to be the law of God, that is, the will 
 of God in operation, that, in the full and 
 complete development of man as a spiritual 
 being, suffering shall be a process through 
 which the soul acquires character. We do 
 not venture to say that this stands in the 
 relation of cause and effect. I do not pre- 
 sume to say that suffering causes char- 
 
1 1 4 PERSONALITY, 
 
 acter. I only note that, as the soul passes 
 through suffering, character follows when 
 other spiritual laws are obeyed. 
 
 Behold the " Man of Sorrows," ac- 
 quainted with grief. On the grassy slopes 
 of Galilee there walks a man acquainted 
 with poverty. " He had not where to lay 
 his head." A few friends attach them- 
 selves to him. By reason of his life, the 
 purity of his soul, he is as a magnet to 
 draw spiritual beings into his presence ; 
 but even these forsake him, and he is 
 left alone, without companionship, without 
 friends. Later on comes the pain of mis- 
 representation. He is- not a gluttonous 
 man, nor a wine-bibber, nor is he one who 
 would cringe or fawn in the presence of 
 the rich ; but he is so represented. It is 
 said of him that he was a gluttonous man 
 and a wine-bibber. It was as false to say 
 this of him as to say of some honest spirits 
 to-day that they are tricky, dishonest, and 
 false to their trust, or of some gentle 
 spirits that they have been cruel and base. 
 Men will be misrepresented, and he suffers 
 this. He chooses some intimate friends, 
 enfolds them to his heart in the intimacy 
 of love and profound friendship, but one of 
 
SUFFERING. 1 1 5 
 
 them becomes a traitor, and for only thirty 
 pieces of silver, till his name has rung 
 through the centuries as the synonym of 
 infamy, and one can say no worse of an- 
 other than that he is a Judas. Yet this 
 same gentle soul drinks cf that bitterness, 
 that dreg of the cup of human sorrow, the 
 feeling that he has been the cause of the 
 sin of another. Can you fancy any greater 
 suffering than this, to believe that you 
 have caused the spiritual loss of another? 
 Sometimes when I picture to myself the 
 sufferings of this Jesus, it seems to me 
 that there is no dreg in the cup so bitter, 
 so hard to drink, as the feeling, the belief, 
 that one has been the cause of the spirit- 
 ual loss of another. Soon the cross awaits 
 its victim. The bed-ridden sufferer knows 
 something of this physical agony, knows 
 how hard it is to lie for years, perhaps, 
 upon a bed of pain. Now, see the uplift- 
 ing cross ; the nerves are tortured, the 
 burning thirst consumes the life, the rack- 
 ing pain distorts the features. Yet this is 
 not all. Greater suffering^ than this phy- 
 sical pain is endured. The heavens are 
 darkened, as in many souls since the veil 
 of despair has dropped ; even the face of 
 
1 1 6 PERSONALITY. 
 
 God seems to be shut out. "My God, 
 why hast thou forsaken me ! " The very 
 depth of human woe is reached. Now 
 is the very birth-throe of the soul, for in 
 the very next instant it comes into the 
 full realization of itself. "Thy will, not 
 mine, be done;" like a mighty flood 
 there rushes into his soul the will of God, 
 and he is at one with his Father. 
 
 Thus briefly have I tried to bring before 
 your minds the agony, both physical and 
 mental, of this Jesus, the Captain of our 
 salvation. 
 
 Now, what he experienced must all the 
 more truly be experienced by every soul 
 reaching the sublime heights of his^ great- 
 ness. If he, through the greatest suffer- 
 ing, is made perfect, how shall we expect 
 to enter into the full development and 
 realization of our souls, apart from this law 
 of suffering? Again I do not venture to 
 say that this is cause and effect, but that 
 there seems to be a certain law operative 
 in the spiritual process along which life is 
 developed by suffering. 
 
 Notice that the end of the human soul 
 is not pleasure. You were not made that 
 you might participate in pleasure, — ■ this 
 
SUFFERING. W] 
 
 is not the highest expression of your life ; 
 you were made for something higher than 
 that, for blessedness, for the full develop- 
 ment of character, to enter into the full 
 realization, completion, and fulfillment of 
 the powers of the ideal soul. 
 
 Character, then, is the one aim of man, 
 that is, life. " I am come that ye may 
 have life, and have it more abundantly.'' 
 You were not made for pleasure, nor that 
 you might escape from pain, but for life, 
 for character, for blessedness. " Blessed 
 are they that mourn." That is, the happi- 
 ness of the fulfilled and developed soul is 
 in store for those who mourn, that blessed- 
 ness for which we were created, destined. 
 If we shall keep clearly in mind the end 
 and destiny for which the human soul is 
 called into being, then I think we shall be 
 capable of looking at this question of pain 
 in a very different light. Hold firmly, 
 then, before your minds what you were 
 made for, not for pleasure, but for the 
 complete development of your soul, — " in 
 leading many of his children into glory," 
 not merely bringing, but leading, — and 
 that this development can come by suffer- 
 ing, as the Captain of our salvation was 
 fully developed through suffering. 
 
I 1 8 PERSONALITY \ 
 
 With God there are no problems. We 
 have no problems in the spiritual process, 
 as we should have none in the physical. 
 Rather, we simply stand with eager hearts 
 and waiting eyes, watching the unfolding 
 of the will of God. The true electrician 
 finds no problem in electricity. He may 
 be bewildered by the mystery by which he 
 is surrounded; he may not understand how 
 the message is transmitted along the wires, 
 or what he calls the underground current ; 
 he has nothing now to do with the solution 
 of mystery, but simply to watch the de- 
 velopment and manifestation of a physical 
 process, and in proportion as he is true to 
 his science, to this unfolding and develop- 
 ment, so he becomes the true scientist and 
 electrician. 
 
 What would you think of the scientist 
 trying to square a theory of three hundred 
 years agt) with a theory of six hundred 
 years ago, and then striving for a formula 
 to make them fit ? The true scientist must 
 have to do with the forces of nature to- 
 day, noting their fulfillment and manifes- 
 tation ; not wasting his time endeavoring 
 to discover how his chariot is made, but 
 simply " hitching his wagon to the stars." 
 
SUFFERING. 
 
 II 9 
 
 He has nothing to do with problems as 
 such. So it is in the spiritual process. 
 We must not turn our eyes backward to 
 theological theories of some hundred or a 
 thousand years ago, but simply note the 
 outpouring of the spiritual life, of the will 
 of God, and in that noting we shall make 
 our spirits go the way of the will of God, 
 and in making our souls thus a part of the 
 will of God we shall enter into that full 
 and complete development of the soul of 
 which it is capable. 
 
 Here lies a sufferer, bed-ridden for 
 years, nerve-tortured, in racking pain, and 
 he goes back in his despair to the theories 
 of a thousand years ago and sees in this 
 blessed universe two Gods, a God of evil 
 and a God of love, contending one with 
 another. The God of evil says : "Iara pun- 
 ishing you for some transgression you com- 
 mitted in the past ; " and the soul of this 
 poor tortured sufferer raises its eye to this 
 God and curses the day it was born, and 
 would die ; God entirely shut out from his 
 vision, he rests only in the absolute de- 
 spair of suffering. Now, let us say to that 
 bed-ridden sufferer, " God is a God of love." 
 As he is the God of love, so is he also 
 
X 20 PERSONA LITY. 
 
 the God of pity. As the mother's heart is 
 torn in witnessing the sufferings of her 
 child, suffering many times more keenly in 
 her heart than the child can possibly suffer 
 in its body, so God, who weeps when we 
 weep, feels with us, as did Jesus in the 
 story of the beloved Lazarus, suffers with 
 us, pities us, cares for us to the end. 
 
 There are certain laws in the physical 
 process which God does not promise to 
 stay. The child puts its finger in the fire. 
 God is sorry for the pain of the burned 
 hand, but he does not promise to stay the 
 operation of this law. If we violate a law 
 of the physical process, we must take the 
 suffering. We thus see how knowledge 
 comes only by experience, which is another 
 way of saying that knowledge comes only 
 by suffering. If we are to learn the laws 
 of the physical process we must accept the 
 suffering. Many a man must be stricken 
 down by lightning before the laws of elec- 
 tricity are discovered and the science made 
 useful to man. 
 
 It is along the line of broken laws that 
 experience through pain and suffering 
 brings knowledge. If knowledge is power, 
 suffering is still greater power. The suf- 
 
SUFFERING. 121 
 
 fering that men of science have experi- 
 enced is the momentum given to the force 
 and power which have enlarged the area 
 of ascertained knowledge. It is the martyr 
 flame that has become the quickening 
 power of the spiritual growth and develop- 
 ment of the soul. Everywhere suffering 
 has given power, mightier than that of 
 knowledge. Who was it that was able to 
 write some of the Psalms ? David, the 
 sinner, adulterer, murderer. Yet when 
 the iron of remorse entered his soul, his 
 sufferings became intense, and by that 
 suffering, experience, and knowledge he 
 comes to have his lips touched as with a 
 burning and living coal snatched from the 
 fire of the altar of God's love. So has it 
 been with Paul, — ■misdirected power. For 
 what is sin, sometimes, but the failure to 
 hit the mark ? The bow is bent, the arrow 
 is sped, but the mark is missed and suffer- 
 ing follows. Saul bends the bow of his en- 
 thusiasm, speeds the arrow of his persecut- 
 ing venom, desiring to do God service, but 
 misses the mark, and then the sufferings 
 come. He is smitten to the earth with 
 momentary blindness ; he is not acknow- 
 ledged by God's people. Even the Chris- 
 
1 2 2 PERSONALITY. 
 
 tians at Jerusalem will not recognize him ; 
 but through all this knowledge, pain, and 
 suffering he comes to be the loving Paul. 
 
 If we may note the result of broken laws 
 in pain, and that through pain knowledge 
 comes, and even a greater power than 
 knowledge, is it not reasonable, at least, 
 to say that suffering seems to have a ne- 
 cessary place in the development of the 
 human soul ? The body suffers, but it is 
 of comparatively little consequence what 
 happens to the body ; it is ephemeral, it 
 lasts but a day. It is better than the gar- 
 ment it wears, but it is only the creature 
 of an hour. The racking pain of the body, 
 we may say, in many instances, is the re- 
 sult of violated physical laws, but the spir- 
 itual life is of the first consequence, and, 
 as a matter of fact, it does grow along the 
 lines and through the process of suffer- 
 ing. 
 
 It seems to me a perfectly fair ques- 
 tion to ask, Was there ever any fully de- 
 veloped soul who did not suffer intensely, 
 and in that suffering develop the forces 
 and talents within it, rising almost to the 
 level of genius ? Have you never felt in 
 the presence of some mighty spirit, born 
 
SUFFERING. 1 23 
 
 with unusual powers, capable of accom- 
 plishing mighty things, rising in the sub- 
 limity of his forces to the transcendent 
 heights of genius, yet never having been 
 burned to the fibres of his soul by the 
 consuming fire of pain and agony, — have 
 you not felt in the presence of such a life 
 that, when the supreme moment of Christ- 
 like agony shall have come to him, he will 
 burst the bonds binding him by reason of 
 his limitations and through the fires of his 
 suffering spring into hitherto unknown 
 powers and capabilities ? Shall we dare 
 to say that Lincoln could have been a 
 Lincoln without his sufferings ? Dante a 
 Dante without his ? Luther, Melancthon, 
 Ridley, Cranmer, St. Augustine ? Oh, 
 how the pain of sin entered St. Augus- 
 tine's soul ; how the biting chisel of vio- 
 lated law cut the fair beauty of holiness, 
 engraved his character ! and through his 
 Confessions we are enabled to see the pro- 
 cess through which the angel of his spirit 
 was let out. Dare we say that St. Augus- 
 tine would have been what he was without 
 all his sufferings ? 
 
 May we not say, then, that it is a law, — 
 understanding all the time that law is only 
 
1 24 PERSONALITY. 
 
 the record we make of our observations of 
 the manifestations and unfoldings of the 
 will of God ; but with this understanding, 
 may we not say that it is a law of the soul 
 that character shall come along the line 
 and through the process of suffering ? 
 May we not also say that suffering devel- 
 ops all the latent forces, and that if the 
 greatest and the best came out in Jesus 
 through suffering, so the greatest and best 
 can come out in us along the same lines ? 
 We shall not then lift up our faces to God 
 and say, " Curse the day I was born," but, 
 "Thou art my God, and I will trust thee; 
 thou art my God, and I will love thee." 
 
 Thus in the spiritual process the higher 
 life is growing, developing, asserting itself, 
 fulfilling its being, claiming in realization 
 its destiny, and thus, through suffering, 
 nothing can stay it, obstruct it, thwart it, 
 defeat it. As soon grasp the chariot 
 wheels of the sun, as stop the soul's ulti- 
 mate development. 
 
 "Is it true, O Christ in heaven, 
 That the highest suffer most? 
 
 That the strongest wander farthest, 
 And most hopelessly are lost ? 
 
 That the mark of rank in nature 
 Is capacity for pain ? 
 
SUFFERING. 1 25 
 
 And the anguish of the singer 
 
 Makes the sweetness of the strain ? " 
 
 Of course there is much suffering that 
 we have it in our power to prevent. The 
 animal life about us suffers ; shame to us 
 that it is so. What a commentary on hu- 
 man savagery it is that only by the power 
 of an organized society for the prevention 
 of cruelty to animals, backed by the con- 
 stabulary force of the government, we may 
 have our hand stayed from violence and 
 cruelty to the dumb brutes that serve us 
 so patiently ! It is only a step higher, 
 "man's inhumanity to man," when we wit- 
 ness the sorrow and suffering by which 
 we are surrounded without lifting a finger 
 to touch but the hem of sorrow, that vir- 
 tue may go out from us to help and bless. 
 But shall we blame God for that ? rather 
 the demon of hate, cruelty, and selfishness 
 that inspires our own hearts. 
 
 But men may rise on stepping-stones 
 of their dead selves to higher things, and 
 you and I should use the experiences that 
 come to us as ladders, by which we may 
 ascend with blessing and praise into that 
 realm of existence where we belong in kin- 
 ship with* God. 
 
1 26 PERSONALITY. 
 
 I wonder if I have said enough to have 
 you take away with you this morning one 
 or two simple truths. First, that you are 
 made for glory, character, to become a 
 fully developed soul. Nothing short of 
 this can ever satisfy the demands of your 
 being. There are certain spiritual laws 
 that must be obeyed, and they are as ex- 
 acting in their demands as physical laws. 
 Here is a farmer with his mowing-machine. 
 He understands that every cog must an- 
 swer cog, every wheel fit into wheel, other- 
 wise there will be grinding, waste, loss, de- 
 struction. It is so with the soul. There are 
 certain forces that must fit, — righteousness 
 with love, patience with humility, pardon 
 and forgiveness with courage and heroism, 
 sanctification with holiness, — and those 
 are vital forces of the soul and must an- 
 swer, and fit in one with another. You are 
 made for glory, and God is helping you on 
 to glory, not to salvation only, except in so 
 far as salvation is being saved from blun- 
 der and from mistake. He is leading you 
 to character, to the welfare of the soul, 
 and that is his aim for your life, that it may 
 be well with all the forces of your spiritual 
 nature. 
 
SUFFERING. \2J 
 
 Then I want you to see that he, who 
 alone of all men has reached that glory, — 
 the Man of Sorrows, treading the way of 
 the cross, forsaken of friends, feeling that 
 he was the cause of the spiritual loss of an- 
 other, misrepresented, suffering every phy- 
 sical pain and the still greater mental agony 
 of a soul shut out from the presence of God, 
 — that he only entered into that fullest 
 realization of the soul when he could cry, 
 "Thy will, not mine, be done." So that 
 the soul at this moment is flooded, as it 
 were, with the vision of the will of God, till 
 the two wills become one ; and in that one- 
 ness is the power of victory, the victory by 
 which the soul enters into harmony with 
 all the spiritual forces of the universe and 
 is at one with God. I want you to see 
 that as the Captain of your salvation leads 
 that way, so you must go, and in going 
 that way the latent forces of your soul may 
 be developed ; that physical pain may be as 
 nothing; and that mental anguish is only 
 the consuming fire that shall inspire your 
 soul to greater effort and draw out the 
 spiritual forces that are within you. 
 
 Oh, take new ideas of your possibilities, 
 your destinies ; see in this great suffering 
 
I 2 8 PERSONALITY. 
 
 of yours that you are bound more closely 
 with others who suffer, that there is sym- 
 pathy that goes out to them, that you have, 
 because of your suffering, a power and 
 force for the uplifting of your fellows only 
 excelled by him who endured the cross and 
 despised the shame that he might lead us, 
 children of his Father, flesh of his flesh, 
 bone of his bone, — lead his own brethren 
 from glory unto glory, into the full reali- 
 zation and development of their souls, 
 through the pain, the suffering, the agony 
 by which man creeps first to the foot of 
 his cross, then to its summit, and there be- 
 holds the lines of the cross melting away 
 and taking on the shape of the throne of 
 the soul, whereon sits forever the suffering 
 God. At his right hand he reigns for ever 
 and ever, the suffering Christ, whose love 
 is continually brought to us by that same 
 suffering Spirit, whose groanings and be- 
 seechings never cease, as he seeks with 
 tender pity to draw us to our hearts' true 
 home in the bosom of the infinite God. 
 
VIII. 
 JOB. 
 
 The Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. 
 Job xlii. 10. 
 
 Newport^ ig July, i8gi. 
 
VIII. 
 
 JOB. 
 
 This is a wonderful drama, this drama 
 of Job, — ■ archaic in form, ancient in char- 
 acter; probably one of the most ancient 
 pieces of literature. It is inspired,, because 
 it tells the truth. It seems quite striking 
 that so clear a grasp of truth should have 
 come down to us from so early a date. 
 
 In Cairo to-day you see the mummy of 
 Rameses II., and you feel as if the 3300 
 years since his death had been bridged 
 over, and that you were gazing upon his 
 face and taken back to the time when this 
 drama is set. The scene is laid perhaps 
 one hundred years before the time of Ra- 
 meses II. We know to what an extent 
 civilization had risen in Egypt, how great 
 were the attainments of the Egyptians in 
 poetry, in literature, and in the sciences. 
 We are therefore ready to appreciate the 
 scope of this drama ; and also are ready to 
 
1 3 2 PERSONALITY. 
 
 see that religion had advanced only so far 
 as a patriarchal type, domestic in form and 
 spirit, with little ceremonial, and no sepa- 
 rate priesthood. 
 
 The Book of Job is a poem of the purest, 
 most exalted type. There are graphic 
 touches of human life in it. Let us see 
 how it begins. 
 
 Here is a rich Arabian of high rank, 
 called Job, — a chieftain, a warrior, a judge, 
 and of immense wealth ; one of the greatest 
 men in the East. His wealth is enumer- 
 ated in the poem. It speaks of his seven 
 thousand sheep, three thousand camels, 
 one thousand oxen, and so on. His home 
 is near the great cities of the rivers Eu- 
 phrates and Tigris, which he frequently 
 visits. He is upon the main caravan route 
 between the East and Egypt, and is in 
 constant communication with the advanced 
 Egyptian civilization. He has all that 
 great prosperity can give him, and, as a 
 happy and unusual combination, with this 
 great wealth he has absolute integrity. 
 
 I say integrity, because integrity is only 
 another name for spirituality. The man 
 who preserves his integrity preserves his 
 spirituality. The man who manifests his 
 
JOB. 133 
 
 life most truly is the most pious man. He 
 may not know it himself. Many men are 
 not aware of the greatness of their own 
 souls, quite unaware, frequently, of the 
 depth of the spirituality which is mani- 
 festing itself through them constantly. We 
 see this in the lives of great spirits. Such 
 was St. Paul, such our Lord. 
 
 Here in Job is this happy combination 
 of wealth, spiritual attainment, and power, 
 the respect of his fellow|, friends, and 
 neighbors, and the happiest domestic life. 
 This great man, with all that these favor- 
 able external surroundings can give him, 
 is also a man of great spirituality, of great 
 integrity. 
 
 That God may lead man from a great 
 height of spiritual attainment to one still 
 greater and far more sublime, he may lead 
 him first down through deep, dark valleys, 
 before he has the power to scale the 
 greater heights to which God destines him. 
 It is by this increase of his spiritual life, 
 by this going down into these valleys of 
 great soul- agony, that man is able to climb 
 the dizzy heights, those sublime summits, 
 to which God strives to lead him. Great 
 spirits who have changed the current of 
 
1 34 PERSOXALITY. 
 
 human life, and have left their impress 
 upon their fellows, have come down from 
 heights into the dark, deep valleys of great, 
 heart-breaking grief, Christ himself passed 
 down into the deep sorrows of Gethsem- 
 ane's garden before he reached that sub- 
 limest height on Calvary's cross-crowned 
 top. It is by such experiences that the 
 human soul stands side by side with God, 
 and the human will becomes at one with 
 the divine. It is God's way constantly 
 with man, that through those dark valleys 
 of sorrow and great trial he may lead him 
 to the greater heights. Sometimes these 
 experiences come to man in middle life. 
 It was so with Moses. He was more than 
 forty years old before he began to be led 
 into the dark valley, and he w r as eighty 
 before he began to assert the powers that 
 were within him. 
 
 It is in middle life that these experiences 
 come to Job. God has great jewels, which 
 he is holding in his hand ready to give to 
 him. See in this a parable of the human 
 experience of life. In his hand God is 
 holding forth the great jewels of his own 
 spiritual life, ready to impart them to 
 man. But man can receive them only in 
 
Job. 135 
 
 God's way. When God finds man strong 
 enough to receive more of the divine, then 
 he lets him go down into the valley of the 
 shadow. So Job at seventy has swept 
 from him, — not at a single blow, months 
 probably elapse between each of the catas- 
 trophes, — he has taken from him his 
 wealth, his position, his home, his domes- 
 tic happiness. Everything that man would 
 hold dear is taken away. First comes the 
 loss of his wealth, and that would stagger 
 most men. Then his entire family is lost. 
 Then comes a revolting disease, "elephan- 
 tiasis." 
 
 Months elapse before Job's friends in the 
 far East get tidings of the calamities that 
 have come to him, and they make reason- 
 able haste to come to see him, and accord- 
 ing to Eastern custom they scatter the 
 dust over their heads and throw it toward 
 heaven ; they tear their robes, expensive 
 garments of silk, as expressions of their 
 sympathy, and coming into Job's presence, 
 they sit staring and gaping upon him for 
 seven days in awful, painful silence. 
 
 Seven days and nights without uttering 
 a word, and finally Job himself breaks the 
 silence. 
 
I36 PERSONALITY. 
 
 " Remember," they say, " we have had a 
 council in heaven between the Lord, the 
 angels, and Satan." There is no irreverence 
 here; and Satan receives his commission to 
 subject Job to the most painful privations. 
 There is an archaic simplicity in this 
 great drama when Satan says to the Lord : 
 " Doth this prosperous Job fear thee for 
 naught ? " That is to say : " See how well 
 his piety serves him. It brings him 
 wealth, prosperity." The problem is pro- 
 pounded : " Can there be righteousness 
 apart from selfishness ? " 
 
 Men sometimes think that goodness for 
 its own sake has no foundation in human 
 experience ; that " goodness is merely the 
 best policy ; " but that is the Satanic view. 
 In this drama we are shown that there is 
 such a thing as goodness for its own sake ; 
 and the more the human race realizes that 
 there is such a thing in human conscious- 
 ness and experience as goodness for its 
 own sake, righteousness for its own value, 
 piety for its own worth, the truer it comes 
 to the normal life. 
 
 The three pious romancers, not inten- 
 tionally misrepresenting the truth, but dis- 
 torting God's ways to make them square 
 
JOB. 137 
 
 with their own peculiar views, — Eliphaz, 
 with his profound dignity ; Bildad, with 
 his wise saws, and Zophar, bigoted, violent, 
 coarse, striving to measure all souls by the 
 standard of a balance-sheet, — they know 
 that suffering means some special sin. 
 
 " Can it be that there is so much calamity 
 without sin ? " We have sometimes, either 
 looking at ourselves or at others, thought 
 that, because this man or woman is expe- 
 riencing great calamity, there must be 
 some secret sin somewhere, some great 
 violation of God's law. But Christ taught 
 quite otherwise. " Who hath sinned, this 
 man that is born blind, or his parents ? " 
 Hear the answer : " Neither hath this man 
 sinned, nor his parents : but that the works 
 of God should be made manifest in him." 
 
 Job's friends are confident that there 
 must be something wrong as to his faith ; 
 he must have denied the fundamental prin- 
 ciples of religion. 
 
 We are so ready to say, when a man or 
 woman has suffered, that there is some- 
 thing wrong with his religion. These men 
 were only too eager to see the beam in 
 Job's eye, to say with their vulgar, gross de- 
 nunciation, " What you need is some such 
 
1 3 8 PERSONALITY. 
 
 faith as we have ; " and Job, in that deli- 
 cious sarcasm, replied : " Surely ye are 
 the people, and wisdom must perish with 
 you ! " 
 
 Calamity is not caused by sin. It is the 
 process through which the soul is passing, 
 and sorrows are used as God's agencies, as 
 the processes through which the soul may 
 pass, the vehicles to convey the riches of 
 God's life and love. 
 
 Then follows the great controversy, and 
 it wages with great spirit and vigor. Job 
 insists upon his own integrity. Although 
 perplexed by events to which he can find 
 no clue, he insists upon his own substantial 
 innocence. He knows he may have trans- 
 gressed spiritual laws, but as to conscious 
 sin, willful sin, deliberate hostility to God, 
 he is innocent, and he insists upon his in- 
 tegrity. He respects the righteousness 
 that is within him. 
 
 One of the first steps toward spiritual 
 life is to respect the righteousness that is 
 within you, because that righteousness is a 
 part of God. How do you know God, save 
 by the righteousness he has implanted 
 within you ? You say : " I will conduct 
 my business honestly, but I know nothing 
 
JOB. I39 
 
 about religious matters. " Ah, but you do. 
 By this very honesty that is within you, 
 you are beginning to recognize God and to 
 see who he is. How do we take hold of 
 eternal life, save by knowing God through 
 righteousness, that is, through Christ ? 
 He is the righteous one, the Sun of Right- 
 eousness. 
 
 All through this drama Job maintains 
 his own integrity. Men may scoff, laugh, 
 and jeer at him, but it will not make him 
 swerve from his position as to his con- 
 scious innocence. So the drama moves 
 on ; the controversy rages, yet Job all the 
 while is getting more and more of God. 
 Destruction of property has taken place ; 
 disease has done its worst ; domestic joys 
 have departed, wife and children gone ; ev- 
 erything that man would ordinarily value 
 has been taken away, but there stands Job, 
 strong in the life of God, which no man can 
 take from him ; nay, stronger in that which 
 was of value, than at any previous time in 
 the history of his soul-development. 
 
 There never was a time when he was so 
 gre&t, so strong, so real, as when he lies 
 stricken to the earth, overcome by his great 
 sorrows and afflictions, forsaken, rejected, 
 
140 PERSONALITY. 
 
 alone. It is now that God is pouring out 
 himself into the soul of Job. It is the na- 
 ture of God to suffer, to pity, to love ; and 
 to know God is to know him through suf- 
 fering, through pity, and by love. 
 
 In the closing scenes of the drama the 
 question is raised as to the prosperity of 
 the wicked. In the light of Christ's life 
 we have reached a solution of this. But 
 it startles us to find it reached thirty-five 
 hundred years ago. It comes up again in 
 the Psalms : " I have seen the wicked in 
 great prosperity. " Men are asking the 
 same question now: " How is it that the 
 wicked prosper ? " The answer should 
 be clear enough, and it is in this great 
 dramatic poem. Clear enough ! There 
 is no such thing as the prosperity of the 
 wicked. 
 
 The prosperity of a man's soul cannot 
 be measured by terms of sheep, of camels, 
 of oxen, of wealth, fame, reputation. You 
 cannot measure .a man's prosperity in terms 
 of being a chieftain, a warrior, a statesman, 
 simply because man is made along other 
 lines. He is made for other things. The 
 happiness and prosperity of a child may be 
 measured, when he is very young, by the 
 
JOB. 141 
 
 number of pretty pebbles picked from the 
 seashore and crammed into his little pock- 
 ets, but when you begin to realize that the 
 child is made for something more than 
 that, then his prosperity ceases to be mea- 
 sured by such terms. If we are to be mea- 
 sured by wealth, by health, by fame, then, 
 indeed, Job's prosperity was taken from 
 him when all these things were stripped 
 away ; but because a man's prosperity 
 consists of that which is of the greatest 
 value to him, of that which differentiates 
 him from every other being in creation, 
 his "manness," his integrity, then do you 
 not see that to speak of the prosperity of 
 the wicked is a contradiction in terms ? 
 The wicked man is bristling with negative 
 signs. That which is of value to a man 
 is positive ; life, righteousness, honesty, 
 holiness, are positive. Wickedness cannot 
 be a positive thing, and to speak of the 
 prosperity of the wicked is, I am sure, a 
 contradiction in terms. I-say this for your 
 encouragement and warning. If prosper- 
 ity means wealth, riches, power, success, 
 we are placing ourselves upon the level of 
 the little child. That which is true pros- 
 perity is that which is of the greatest value 
 
142 PERSONALITY. 
 
 to man, which differentiates him from 
 other beings, namely, his spirituality, his 
 integrity, his manliness ; and the whole 
 drama of Job serves to show this clearly, 
 that a man's goodness can be retained even 
 in a hell of surroundings. 
 
 Now a great deal of false theology has 
 been derived from this drama. If you will 
 run through it, you will see dozens of 
 phrases which are thus in common use, but 
 they came from those three men who, at 
 the close of the drama, were condemned 
 by the Lord : " My wrath is kindled against 
 thee and thy two friends." 
 
 Then comes the close of the drama, and 
 it is a beautiful ending: "And the Lord 
 turned the captivity of Job, and also the 
 Lord gave him twice as much as he had 
 before. ,, It sounds like a child's tale now 
 to hear about the fourteen thousand sheep, 
 the six thousand camels, the two thousand 
 oxen, and the one thousand she asses, — 
 how everything is doubled ! His children, 
 who had been taken away by death, have 
 their places taken by ten more children, 
 seven sons, three daughters (" and no wo- 
 men found so fair"); and how the great- 
 ness of Job is magnified ! But it is always 
 
JOB. I43 
 
 so. God takes away that he may give, 
 that is all. Look back over your own lives, 
 or the lives of others, and see how true this 
 is of God's dealing with human souls. 
 Pick out from your acquaintances some of 
 those spirits before whose righteousness 
 you have had the opportunity to bow down, 
 and see how, in the processes through 
 which this great soul-development has been 
 attained, there has been the giving by God 
 of those jewels which he holds in his ten- 
 der, loving hands. 
 
 All God could give to Job through joy 
 he had given him before his suffering, and 
 now he sees him strong enough to take a 
 greater measure of riches, and he leads 
 him through the deep, dark valleys of sor- 
 row and trial to the sublime heights of 
 still greater achievement. It is fascinating 
 and exhilarating to watch God's provi- 
 dences, to see how there is the constant 
 revelation of himself, the giving at every 
 possible opportunity of himself, the leading 
 of the child through tangle and thicket and 
 rough paths, always that he may impart 
 something more. 
 
 When once you begin to realize what 
 you are, begin to be at one with God, real- 
 
144 PERSONALITY. 
 
 ize that you were created to have your will 
 in absolute oneness with the Father's will, 
 that you are destined to have your own 
 place in the spiritual process, that you 
 are an heir with Christ, then do you not 
 see that you are ready, gladly ready, eagerly 
 watchful, to seize every revelation of God, 
 every outpouring of God, whether in joy or 
 sorrow, ready to see that he is giving you 
 double of himself? " And the Lord also 
 gave Job twice as much as he had before. ,, 
 
 " Grow old along with me ! 
 The best is yet to be, 
 
 The last of life, for which the first was made; 
 Our times are in His hand 
 Who saith, ' A whole I planned, 
 
 Youth shows but half ; trust God : see all, nor be 
 afraid I '" 
 
 Oh, may you catch this impression, that 
 God is striving to fill your hearts and lives 
 and souls with himself ; that in this great 
 drama you see how true it is to live through 
 an onward, even movement, from lower to 
 higher spiritual attainments. As spiritual 
 beings you are made for the best, the high- 
 est and greatest, and the Lord shall turn 
 your captivity if you will but realize that 
 you are spirits, that you are made for the 
 best and highest, and that toward the best 
 
job. i 4S 
 
 and highest he is leading you. May God 
 hasten the day when, through sorrow, pain, 
 or joy, you may receive a double portion 
 of himself, and enter at last into oneness 
 with him, oneness with Jesus, oneness with 
 the Christ, — in all things like him, that we 
 may live forever and not die. 
 
IX. 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 Lo, this hath touched thy lips. — Is. vi 7. 
 26 July, i8gi. 
 
IX. 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 Behold, the fire of God hath done its 
 perfect work, and there stands before us 
 the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, Isa- 
 iah. What hath God wrought ! A creature 
 of clay touched with the fire of God, and 
 behold, one of the grandest figures on the 
 page of history. 
 
 History never repeats itself. Man comes 
 upon the stage unlike any of his predeces- 
 sors, and no man follows him who is his 
 like. So human experience never repeats 
 itself. No man has passed through just 
 such stages of development as Isaiah did. 
 Isaiah, therefore, stands unique. His ex- 
 periences, as yours, are unlike those which 
 come into the life of any other man. 
 
 We have had strange notions about 
 such men as Moses and Isaiah. We have 
 thought of them as men unlike ourselves, 
 as demigods, not men having passions, 
 
1 50 PERSONALITY. 
 
 thoughts, experiences, temptations, like 
 ourselves ; not surrounded by conditions 
 similar to ours. In this respect human 
 nature is always more or less alike. I re- 
 member in my boyhood days it was ex- 
 ceedingly difficult to believe that men who 
 lived fifty, five hundred, a thousand, or three 
 thousand years before were men such as 
 live to-day. To me it was inconceivable 
 that they were men having thoughts, feel- 
 ings, temptations, like ours ; men as we 
 understand men. But all that has gone. 
 
 Isaiah is a sagacious politician, a pro- 
 found statesman ; a man bred in the city, 
 always living in the capital ; of high so- 
 cial rank, having access and great influ- 
 ence at court, having such opportunities 
 and power there that he can address, in 
 very plain language, even the king. He 
 is also a man of great literary skill and 
 training. This is apparent from his writ- 
 ings. Of keen perception of truth, a man 
 whose soul is so set afire by God that 
 his mental perceptions are set aglow ; so 
 that he can see where other men are 
 blind, hear where other men are deaf, re- 
 spond where other men are indifferent to 
 the great fundamental principles of eternal 
 truth, 
 
ISAIAH. I 5 I 
 
 Fancy with me eternal life as a circle, 
 and Moses taking hold of his segment of 
 the circle, Isaiah taking hold of his, and so 
 with every great spirit, each one taking 
 hold of his own particular segment of the 
 cfrcle of everlasting truth, and you will get 
 some conception of the opportunity that 
 rests upon every human soul to declare it- 
 self. Isaiah thus was himself. 
 
 Isaiah is married, and his wife is kindled 
 with the same enthusiasm, so much so that 
 she is called a prophetess. What scope 
 God gave to the powers of women in the 
 development of Israel ! His two sons also 
 are aroused to the same feeling, and they 
 are to grasp their own segment of the circle 
 of eternal truth. 
 
 Nay, more than this. Isaiah draws about 
 him a school of disciples, of followers, who 
 also are fired with the same desire to grasp 
 eternal truth. He founds a school of pro- 
 phets. Hence he was not a man of in- 
 significant position or influence. We must 
 not think of him as a mere creature of cir- 
 cumstance, but as a great personage ; a 
 soul filled with the fire of righteousness 
 and with an intense determination to dis- 
 charge every function of his great being, 
 
1 5 2 PERSONALITY. 
 
 so far as he understood them ; a man who 
 had a vision of righteousness so set on fire 
 with everlasting truth that his very soul 
 was aglow with light from the holiness of 
 God. He blazed God ! 
 
 Note the political aspect of his day and 
 generation. Judah is prosperous, silver and 
 gold are in plenty, millionaires multiply, 
 field is added to field, great estate to great 
 estate, till the riches of the few are the 
 cause of the suffering of the many, and the 
 faces of the poor are ground, and yet their 
 cry comes up to deaf ears. For there has 
 been a failure to distinguish between 
 righteousness as it affects the soul, and 
 mere ceremonial righteousness, — that is 
 to say, the one burden of Isaiah's message 
 to his fellows as individuals and as con- 
 stituting the state, speaking both as a 
 preacher and as a statesman, — his one 
 message is Holiness. But see how men 
 had mistaken the conception of holiness, 
 even as we also sometimes do. Holiness 
 with them had been to a great extent cere- 
 monial righteousness merely. As we say 
 sometimes that when a man says his 
 prayers, reads his Bible, becomes a church 
 member, and conducts himself according 
 
ISAIAH. 153 
 
 to the dictates of public opinion, all is well 
 with him. Notice that in the Jewish mind 
 there had been this idea of ceremonial 
 righteousness ; that is to say, everything 
 would go well if there were conformity to 
 the requirements of the state. So it had 
 come to pass as a current opinion that 
 there might be holiness with gross im- 
 morality ; that immorality affected not at 
 all the question of holiness. The immorali- 
 ties of Canaanitish worship in their in- 
 fluence upon the Hebrews is a case in 
 point. 
 
 In the New Testament there is a clearer 
 conception of sin and of holiness, but in 
 Isaiah's day there was an incomplete no- 
 tion of holiness and a false notion as to 
 sin. A wrong act would put you in the 
 power of one who would make you rue it ; 
 if you violated a certain political require- 
 ment or ceremonial enactment, that was a 
 sin, because it placed you in the power of 
 one who could make you suffer the punish- 
 ment. Just as now men sometimes think 
 that the heinousness of their sin is mea- 
 sured by the probabilities of their being 
 detected, Notice Isaiah's preaching of 
 righteousness, of holiness, as the first of 
 
I 5 4 PERSONALITY. 
 
 spiritual realities ; that sin is that which 
 injures the soul, a negative expression of 
 the soul's life, and it matters not whether 
 it be known or not. That is not the ques- 
 tion. It matters not whether the soul be 
 detected in a violation of spiritual holi- 
 ness. Of course it is wrong to commit 
 sin, because it hurts your brother. No 
 man can live to himself, no man can die 
 to himself, so no man can sin to himself. 
 We never can separate ourselves in our 
 influence from others. The thrill of that 
 violation is felt in its vibration and touches 
 some other life. It is the pebble dropped 
 into the sea of human experience, whose 
 waves touch to the farthest shore in its 
 effect. That is always and entirely true, 
 but the evil of sin is not so much in its 
 hurtfulness to other lives, as in that it 
 hurts man's own integrity. Sin is the jar 
 given to the exquisite sensitiveness of per- 
 sonal holiness. 
 
 Isaiah's ideas had to expand somewhat, 
 I think, in the beginning of that forty 
 years of his ministry. He begins his pro- 
 phetic career before 734 b. c, and it ex- 
 tends beyond 701 b. c, probably forty 
 years at least, possibly even longer, from 
 
ISAIAH. I 5 5 
 
 his youthful enthusiasm on to the mature 
 determination of his advanced life. With 
 him there is a growth and an appreciation 
 of the nature of spiritual holiness. At 
 first he had felt that if Judah as a nation 
 could have absolute integrity and righteous- 
 ness, if it could have conformity to the en- 
 actments of the law, that thus Israel should 
 be saved. It is not till later on that he 
 seizes with a fuller grasp the truth that, 
 even if Judah as a nation were stricken to 
 the earth, her great wealth taken from her, 
 prostrated and trodden under foot, — even 
 amid all this woe, yet integrity, holiness, 
 righteousness, might prevail. Jeremiah saw 
 this more clearly one hundred years later ; 
 and in the times of our Lord, then indeed 
 we see a clearer vision of what integrity, 
 holiness, and righteousness are. But we 
 in these days see, or should see, that as a 
 fundamental spiritual reality, absolutely 
 essential to the soul's growth, righteous- 
 ness, apart from any consideration from 
 without, is a requisite of the soul's life. 
 
 Sometimes we think we are to be saved 
 from without. We say, "We are citizens 
 of Judah, or Hebrews of the Hebrews, or 
 members of the church, Christians, or 
 
I 5 6 PERSONALITY. 
 
 Americans, and, for example, as goes the 
 State, so we also shall go ; as goes the 
 Church, so we also shall go." Some even 
 have felt that their family shall save them. 
 " We have never done anything that has 
 been detected, committed no overt trans- 
 gression ; " all the time ignoring the neces- 
 sity of spiritual soul-righteousness, ignor- 
 ing the absolute necessity that spirituality 
 shall be synonymous with holiness, and 
 that righteousness shall mean the soul's 
 integrity ; failing to recognize the fact that 
 holiness (righteousness) is none other than 
 being at one with God, and that salvation 
 means nothing less than a man taking hold 
 of his own portion of eternal truth — of the 
 eternal God. 
 
 Then, as ever, there was a division of the 
 world's life, where religion on the one hand 
 was a worship of national prosperity, po- 
 litical alliances, as who should say : " If 
 only we could have land enough, capital 
 enough, and millionaires enough, a suffi- 
 ciently advanced civilization, public libra- 
 ries, electric railways, public schools and 
 colleges, institutions of learning, art gal- 
 leries, everything that means material pros- 
 perity, — if only we could have prosperity 
 
ISAIAH. 157 
 
 enough, we should have the salvation of 
 the whole race, the holiness of mankind. 
 If only we could have wealth enough, if 
 only we could have that highest condi- 
 tion of altruism, one living for another, 
 it would land man upon a plane of such 
 exalted being that it would be righteous- 
 ness, salvation indeed. All hail to the sal- 
 vation of the race ! ,; That was what the 
 Hebrews thought, If only they could have 
 a sufficiently beautiful temple, land joined 
 to land, field to field, estate to estate, riches 
 enough, material prosperity enough, form 
 satisfactory alliances with neighboring na- 
 tions, why, then there would be success, 
 salvation that would be righteousness, holi- 
 ness to the nation ; the very bells on the 
 horses should ring it out. 
 
 The other division is of those who wor- 
 ship holiness, the Holy One of Israel, spirit- 
 ually, apart, and in spite of any material 
 condition ; who strive to express their 
 souls, even though they may be oppressed 
 with the great temptations of riches ; who 
 carry cheerfully, if need be, the great cross 
 of fame, reputation, and success, even if 
 they are compelled to stand upon the very 
 apex of the pinnacle of worldly honor and 
 
1 5 8 PERSONALITY, 
 
 glory, where men have placed them, yet 
 stand there in the strength which God sup- 
 plies ; or who, though stricken to earth by 
 affliction, sorrow, or pinching want, beaten 
 down, tempest torn, yet live, as such 
 souls may, as did Paul, and count it joy 
 thus to be crucified with Christ, because 
 they have the life of God within them ; 
 because it is as true of them as of Isaiah, 
 "one of the seraphim has come to him, 
 with a live coal in his hand, taken from off 
 the altar, and has placed it on his mouth 
 and said, ' Lo, this hath touched thy lips/ " 
 
 Thus mankind ever has been divided into 
 these two classes, the one whose religion is 
 material prosperity, the other whose religion 
 is spirituality, that is, the expression of the 
 soul in the life of God, whence it springs, 
 to whom it belongs, whither it is going. 
 
 I think you would be interested to have 
 it brought to your mind that the prophecies 
 of Isaiah are collections of his writings 
 through the long years of his preaching. 
 He had preached orally, and had made a 
 careful arrangement of his prophecies, and 
 committed them to writing. His disciples, 
 or followers, had aided him in this work, 
 and many of these prophecies as they are 
 
ISAIAH. 159 
 
 bound up here in this book are, therefore, 
 not in chronological order, because, per- 
 haps, they did not take their present fixed 
 form until two hundred and fifty years 
 after Isaiah had committed them to writ- 
 ing. You can see, then, how this would 
 account for some disarrangement as to 
 dates. Go back now two hundred and 
 fifty years and edit documents written 
 then, and you would see how difficult it 
 would be to give them just the order they 
 might naturally assume. You will also be 
 interested to note that many of these writ- 
 ings were placarded in public places where 
 men could read them. Reading and writ- 
 ing by this time had become a common 
 accomplishment ; it was the custom to 
 place these prophecies, these sermons, ex- 
 hortations, warnings, in public places, that 
 people might read them, and that thus the 
 influence of Isaiah might be extended, so 
 that thousands beyond his immediate hear- 
 ers might know of the deep things that 
 were stirring his heart. You have also 
 seen how Isaiah drew about him disciples ; 
 they also would extend his words by com- 
 mitting them to writing. 
 
 Beside being a statesman, Isaiah was a 
 
160 PERSONALITY. 
 
 national reformer, and he gives himself in 
 entire consecration to the cause of bring- 
 ing spirituality into the Hebrew national 
 life. He is also the one who delineates 
 for the first time a concrete example of spir- 
 ituality. He preaches it with life-giving 
 power. Lineament upon lineament, as an 
 engraver with his tools traces line upon 
 line, so at length there stands out in con- 
 crete form the great beauty of holiness, the 
 strength, the suffering, the gentleness, the 
 purity, the simplicity of that divine figure 
 which, having seen once, and once only, we 
 hold as dear as life. This divine figure 
 expresses itself forever upon the annals of 
 human history. Thus it is Isaiah who 
 first gives us the Christ, the personal Mes- 
 siah, the embodiment in concrete form of 
 spirituality, and who establishes in this 
 Messiah the fellowship of righteousness. 
 
 It is in Isaiah's mind that there is the 
 birth of that first conception of a church 
 in its richer and larger significance, where 
 there is first recognized the advantage and 
 the necessity of fellowship, of drawing to- 
 gether spiritualities, personalities, human 
 souls, that they may help one another, build 
 themselves into the temple not made with 
 
ISAIAH. l6l 
 
 hands, and thus perpetuate the life of God 
 among men ; or, in other words, we find 
 that larger, completer view of the oneness 
 and the brotherhood of the human race. 
 Up to this time there was the feeling, like 
 lurking poison, that their brethren were 
 foreigners, barbarians. It is a poison 
 which pervades our present day civilization 
 to a great extent, — regarding men of yel- 
 low skin or of dark skin not as brothers, 
 but as aliens, not of the one family of God. 
 It is that same disease which makes men 
 refuse to recognize the brotherhood of 
 mankind. Isaiah beholds the true vision 
 of the oneness of the brotherhood of man- 
 kind, and in that oneness alone is the hu- 
 man race to accomplish all the grandeur 
 for which it is called into being. Often 
 you and I feel that this oneness is some- 
 thing to be admired, at least in theory, yet 
 we fail to come into full apprehension of 
 the necessity of the existence of this one- 
 ness, the necessity of this brotherhood of 
 the human race. We do not seem to un- 
 derstand even to-day that when the faces of 
 the poor are being ground, then the king- 
 dom of God is being thwarted. The wheels 
 of the chariot of progress "drave heavily " 
 
1 62 PERSONALITY, 
 
 under such conditions ; yet we are holding 
 back the great chariot of the onward move- 
 ment of the divine purpose when we suffer 
 one member of the human race to be out- 
 raged, his rights withheld, or himself made 
 a slave. Whenever we are oppressing the 
 poor, adding field to field, estate to estate, 
 piling up fortunes at the cost of the suffer- 
 ing of any brother, we are ignoring that 
 fundamental principle of the spirituality, 
 the brotherhood, of the human race, and 
 rolling back by centuries with a single 
 movement of the arm the onward move- 
 ment of the coming of the great civiliza- 
 tion, the divine citizenship, the kingdom of 
 God on earth. 
 
 Isaiah emphasizes personal holiness, por- 
 trays the features, the divine holiness of 
 the coming Messiah, binds all kindred 
 spiritual souls into the oneness of an or- 
 ganic fellowship, which shall continue be- 
 yond the gates of death, beyond any of 
 those disintegrating forces which have 
 pulled down thrones and shaken the foun- 
 dations of the nations of the earth. This 
 conception of the oneness of fellowship 
 is the outcome of the inspiration of that 
 divine vision where one of the seraphim, 
 
ISAIAH. 163 
 
 with a live coal snatched from off the altar, 
 touched Isaiah's lips. 
 
 He has unconquerable faith in God. 
 With Isaiah man's extremity is God's op- 
 portunity. His faith is in the living God 
 as a consuming fire ; he believes in the 
 efficacy of the divine love which as a living 
 coal burns the soul, purifying, illuminat- 
 ing, making clear the faculties and all the 
 powers of man's spiritual life. Though the 
 people of God be led into captivity, though 
 riches be exchanged for great poverty and 
 distress, yet through all this pruning there 
 is the hand of a loving life, which is cutting 
 back the branches, even the vine itself, 
 that it may bear fruit and bear it more 
 abundantly. 
 
 This is Isaiah's vital faith which makes 
 it possible to see in the face of all adverse 
 conditions that even though the life be cut 
 back, yet it is done by the loving hand of 
 God, and that the branch is being pruned, 
 not mercilessly, not without pity, not arbi- 
 trarily, but because the great heart of God 
 sees in the vine and in the branch greater 
 possibilities. " I am the vine, ye are the 
 branches," and " I am come that ye may 
 have life more abundantly." 
 
1 64 PERSONALITY. 
 
 Oh, ye uncertain ones, catch Isaiah's 
 faith ; oh, ye weeping ones, see his vision ; 
 and let us all strive after that spirituality, 
 that holiness ; let us each strive to behold 
 the King in his beauty, that personal 
 Christ, that Jesus, that Friend of friends, 
 that we may live in him as did St. Paul ; 
 and then let us see in our fellow-men bro- 
 thers whose life we would not hurt, but 
 build up ; let our greatest happiness be to 
 minister unto others, even as the Son of 
 Man went about, not being ministered unto, 
 but ministering. In that oneness of the 
 brotherhood, let us see with faith the lov- 
 ing hand of God leading us, even though 
 it be into captivity, away from friends and 
 home, into the desert, exiled, where we, by 
 the waters of Babylon, weep and cannot 
 sing the songs of Zion ; but where even 
 the wilderness of our captivity shall yet 
 blossom as the rose, where, even in appar- 
 ent separation, behold, we find ourselves 
 nearer to God. 
 
 There is no such nearness to God as 
 when through all processes of joy or pain 
 we come into the presence of him whose 
 hands bear the nail prints, whose brow 
 bears thorns as its crown, whose throne is 
 side by side with eternal love. 
 
ISAIAH. 165 
 
 Oh, cheerfully, gladly, then, watch the 
 unfolding of his will ; if it be by suffering, 
 hail it joyously; if it be through joy and 
 prosperity, hold fast to the loving arms 
 of his righteousness. Wherever he leads, 
 through riches, with their great tempta- 
 tions, by crags and mountain peaks, still 
 hold fast to him. Isaiah's faith shall be 
 yours, you shall find yourself at last at 
 one with God's will. A joy which no man 
 can take from you shall illumine your vi- 
 sion, as the living coal gives light and glow 
 to the human lip which has been touched 
 by one of the seraphim who wing their 
 flight from the throne of infinite life and 
 love. 
 
X. 
 
 ST. JOHN. 
 
 John surnamed Boanerges, which is, the Son of Thun- 
 der. — St. Mark Hi. 17. 
 
 4 October, i8gi. 
 
X. 
 
 ST. JOHN. 
 
 The ideal life of man, the ideal that you 
 would paint, not from the realization in 
 your own life, but from the picture that you 
 have drawn in your own mind, would be 
 that of one who has gentleness, with 
 strength ; calmness, firmness, with zeal ; 
 who has love that lays hold of the very 
 fibres of his life and expresses itself in pity, 
 consideration, fortitude, and patient endur- 
 ance. The rich man, then, is the man of 
 such character, the man who has acquired, 
 in expressing his acquisitiveness, such a 
 mastery over the functions of his soul as 
 to express the highest, the truest, the best 
 that there is in him. 
 
 Oh, the richness of such a life ! It is 
 the richness of poverty, the richness of 
 having poured out all the selfishness that 
 there is in the soul, and permitting to flow 
 in the selflessness of a great life. I honor 
 
I /O PERSOA r AL/TY. 
 
 this thirst for such wealth, this desire for 
 such true riches ; I honor this zeal, this 
 acquisitiveness, only I must see all centred 
 on that which is worthy of a man. The 
 wealth of a great soul, the riches of vast 
 acquisitions of life, all this expression of 
 acquisitiveness, is altogether most desir- 
 able. The rich man ! Oh, let us see him ; 
 let us look upon him ; for he shall be to us 
 the ideal man, of such great wealth that he 
 has swept into his own life the great riches 
 of human character which God has poured 
 down upon him so abundantly. Acquisi- 
 tiveness, then, has done her best work, 
 reaped great soul-wealth and riches, and 
 made the ideal man both possible and 
 actual. I make this sketch because I want 
 men and women to take just views of their 
 possibilities, to see that when they have 
 gathered to themselves only such things as 
 men call riches and wealth, they have gath- 
 ered that which is altogether beneath their 
 dignity, beneath their just and rightful 
 consideration. 
 
 John stands before my mind as one pos- 
 sessed of great riches. Painters have loved 
 to portray his features as those of a young 
 man. Perpetual youth seems to mark his 
 
ST. JOHN. 171 
 
 life, whether we see it in childhood, as on 
 the shores of Galilee he picks up pebbles 
 or helps his father mend his nets ; or as a 
 little boy of thirteen going to Jerusalem 
 with his clear, bright, merry face, to attend 
 the three periodical festivals of the holy 
 city ; or, later on, listening to the stirring 
 preaching of John the Baptist; or, still 
 later, with the calm, steadfast power of 
 youth, receiving the terrible news of the 
 death of his own brother James by the 
 cruel despot, Herod ; or, again, as he stands 
 upon the Mount of Transfiguration, the 
 chosen companion of the Jesus whom he 
 loves ; or in the Garden of Gethsemane, 
 with his youthful strength giving courage 
 and support to his Lord ; or in the full 
 and developed powers of his manhood, as 
 he stands beneath the cross to receive the 
 last gift from his Master, the care of the 
 Blessed Virgin ; or, finally, as with aged 
 and trembling hands, when he has filled 
 his full portion of a long life, the century 
 of his existence having run its course, he 
 writes the Revelation on the isle of Patmos, 
 — still the painter loves to give him through 
 all these stages of his career the features 
 of youth, perpetual youth. 
 
172 PERSONALITY. 
 
 I sympathize with this feeling of the ar- 
 tist. Of course it is not true to life, yet it 
 is true to the idealized life that the man 
 who is rich, wealthy, great, knows nothing 
 of beginnings of life and length of days, 
 but has within him the fountain of perpet- 
 ual life, of perennial youth; not effeminate 
 grace, but grace and gentleness, even 
 though accompanied by the zeal, impetuos- 
 ity, nay, vehemence, of this son of thunder. 
 
 While St. John was the son of thunder 
 in his youth, many have felt that in his 
 later life his character in this regard was 
 greatly changed. But son of thunder he 
 was from the.beginning, when he demanded 
 great things of God, took hold of great 
 segments of the circles of everlasting truth, 
 even calling down fire from heaven. What 
 a relation to the universe to make such 
 colossal demands ! That same character- 
 istic follows him to the very last. His is a 
 burning zeal for the acquisition of truth, 
 an untiring loyalty striving to express the 
 wealth of the life that is within him, so 
 that he is ever the son of thunder, never 
 losing this characteristic, only deepening, 
 intensifying it into the larger life which 
 becomes his as the years go on. I love to 
 
ST JOHA r . 173 
 
 think of him as with gentleness, meekness, 
 calm dignity ; as the one who knows how 
 so to love that that faculty of his soul has 
 seized the very fibres of his being, and has 
 become that upon which he rests his friend- 
 ship, his devotion to the Lord to whom he 
 has chosen to give himself, that foundation 
 upon which he rests the fellowship and 
 brotherhood of mankind. I love not only 
 to think of St. John with his perpetual 
 youth, but also with that strength and dig- 
 nity which go to make up the rich, the 
 wealthy, the great, and the noble. 
 
 St. John stands to me quite in the light 
 of an ideal life, — one who has derived 
 his life from the great source of all life, 
 God; who has realized within himself the 
 love that is born of God, the strength 
 which great souls can have, and yet a 
 strength of which they are scarcely con- 
 scious. For what great soul has ever 
 known his own greatness ? What rich 
 spirit, possessed of great abundance of soul- 
 wealth, has ever realized that he was more 
 than a little child ? You find illustrations 
 of this everywhere. In the kingdom of 
 science man first enters as a little child. 
 Indeed there can be no door in any great 
 
174 PERSONALITY. 
 
 kingdom of soul-life which a child may not 
 open, and thus enter into the greatness 
 and richness and wealth in store for him. 
 
 I note, then, these characteristics of St. 
 John, richness of soul and discernment of 
 truth. Painters have loved to depict him 
 as the one of such keenness of perception 
 that he may soar aloft as an eagle, and, with 
 undimmed, unfilmed eye look full upon the 
 sun in its glory. It is the same St. John 
 who has had the open eye, the quick per- 
 ception to look full on the Sun of Right- 
 eousness, into the face of Jesus, and to 
 see there truths, greatness of life, which 
 others have not been quick to discern : to 
 see there the highest expression of the soul 
 of God. This same gentle St. John, nay, 
 this son of thunder, becomes by the very 
 keenness of this perception the profound 
 philosopher, who sees that in the beginning 
 was the Word, the Logos ; before all time, 
 this Word was, and the Word was with God, 
 and the Word was God. The same was in 
 the beginning with God ; and the Word was 
 made manifest in the flesh, the Word was 
 made flesh and dwelt among us, and we 
 beheld his glory. St. John beheld with 
 open eye his glory, full of grace and truth. 
 
ST. JOHN. 175 
 
 Who so well tells the mystery of the 
 incarnation, its simplicity, sublimity, and 
 grandeur ? 
 
 Here is the basis of his philosophy, the 
 eternal Word made flesh, the Word of God 
 become man, nay, recognized as God be- 
 cause of his perfect manhood, manness. 
 For who shall see God save through man, 
 understand God save through the human 
 life that speaks of God ? If we are to know 
 Jesus as the Son of God, we are to know 
 him as the Son of man, through the fullness 
 of his life, through its richness, through its 
 perfection, and, seeing all this as the Son 
 of man, we see in him the Word made 
 flesh, the Son of God. We are to learn, 
 then, that " he that loveth not the bro- 
 ther, whom he hath seen, cannot love God, 
 whom he hath not seen." Thus we under- 
 stand that when we love our brethren, 
 whom we see (as in loving Jesus, whom 
 also we see), we are loving God. It is the 
 very basis of Christian fellowship, the truth 
 upon which life, immortal, eternal life, the 
 life of God, rests. Thus his eagle eye 
 discerns this vital truth, and sees this life 
 of Jesus as the salvation of human souls. 
 It takes away sin, because it enters into 
 
1 76 PERSONALITY. 
 
 the soul as a life-giving force, producing 
 health, and crowding out evil and soul-dis- 
 ease. 
 
 Although St. John represents Jesus as 
 the propitiation for our sins, yet he takes 
 hold of the deeper and more profound 
 truth that propitiation means mercy. Je- 
 sus is the mercy for our sins ; mercy is 
 applied forgiveness. Forgiveness is the 
 giving for, — the giving of life for death, 
 wholeness for sickness, wealth for poverty, 
 riches for great want. Thus Jesus is the 
 "mercy" for our sins, taking the richness, 
 the health, the wealth of God into our 
 souls ; he becomes the propitiation for our 
 sins, not ceremonially, but vitally, actually, 
 the applied forgiveness for our sins ; and 
 thus becomes our life. Hence the neces- 
 sity of forgiveness in the life of every in- 
 dividual, for as Christ is, so is every man 
 born to be. We are all possible Christs in 
 •this sense, all possible mercies for sins, so 
 that every man must learn this primal les- 
 son, this fundamental truth, this essential 
 function of the life of the soul, — forgive- 
 ness, He who will not forgive, who has 
 not learned to forgive, has burned the 
 bridge over which he himself must one 
 
ST JOHN. 177 
 
 day pass, because over the bridge of for- 
 giveness, sooner or later, every soul must 
 go. Forgiveness is the applied mercy of 
 love, the expression of the life of God, and 
 the expression of the deepest spiritual life 
 of man ; not a weak sentiment, not a lax 
 holding of truth, but a firm, strong laying 
 hold upon the deepest truth of the soul, 
 namely, this love which brings the soul 
 into close and vital contact with God and 
 makes a man so divine that he can rise 
 above the fogs and mists which blind his 
 discernment and judgment. This forgive- 
 ness makes a man so divine as to be able 
 to apply mercy, forgiveness, to every soul 
 that may have wronged him, and by this 
 application of forgiveness he becomes, like 
 God, a life-giver, a life-bestower, an out- 
 pourer of life, and the more life he pours 
 out, the more he has to give, for God lives 
 by giving and by forgiving. 
 
 See St. John's zeal for the acquisition of 
 truth. When you wish to make your boy 
 desire riches, you show him a bit of gold, 
 or a precious stone, or some other mate- 
 rial form of riches, in order that you may 
 arouse in his heart a desire for acquisition. 
 I wonder we do not resort to the same 
 
1 78 PERSONALITY. 
 
 method in holding before child-souls the 
 riches of the Sun of Righteousness. Why 
 do we go through life so blind to truth, 
 with so little desire for its acquisition, that 
 a ruby, red with the fire of God, we value 
 no more than a bit of broken glass ? 
 
 It is told of a great picture belonging 
 here in Massachusetts, that, when it was 
 exposed for sale, one who was known to 
 be able to value such a work of art was 
 requested to visit it with the thought of 
 purchase. After sitting before it for per- 
 haps an hour, he went away. " Have you 
 seen the picture ? " he was asked. " Have 
 you seen it ? Are you sure you have seen 
 it ? " He went back and looked again. 
 For the first time he saw it, and when he 
 saw it he was aware of its great beauty 
 and value and made the purchase. Yet we 
 look upon the " pearl of great price," the 
 life of Jesus in our souls ; gaze upon it 
 but walk away ; we have no desire to be- 
 come rich in its possession ; we are not 
 fired with the zeal to call it down from 
 heaven, making a colossal demand for this 
 greatness of life, richness of soul, this great 
 wealth of spirituality as brought to us in 
 this Son of God. If we could but discern 
 
ST. JOHN. 179 
 
 its value, we should buy it at whatever cost. 
 St. John gives his whole life to buying the 
 life of Jesus, because it is the life of God, 
 of strength, of vitality, the life of great- 
 ness, richness, wealth, spirituality. 
 
 When a Darwin begins to discern the 
 truth, he ceases not in his toil, day after 
 day, year after year, burning with the de- 
 sire for its acquisition. So it is with the 
 scientific spirit, the musical spirit, the ar- 
 tistic spirit. When once what is of value 
 is discerned, then the soul becomes a son 
 of thunder, a Boanerges, and devotes all its 
 vehemence and impetuosity, all the forces 
 of its nature, to its acquisition. But we 
 are indolent, idle, palsied, and have not the 
 courage to stop and pick up the jewel, so 
 full of sunlight that it seems to tell of the 
 great white throne of God. 
 
 The richness of individual life is the 
 greatest gift of God to man, and the great- 
 est gift of man to man also. The richest 
 gift that Jesus could give to St. John was 
 himself. St. John lies on the bosom of 
 Christ, and Christ loves him because of 
 this keen discernment of truth, loves him 
 for his zeal, for his devotion, for his great 
 desire to become rich, for his unswerving 
 
1 80 PERSONALITY. 
 
 zeal in expressing the richness he has re- 
 ceived. He has received the gift of Jesus, 
 the very best gift Jesus could give of him- 
 self, and in receiving this gift he expresses 
 it to the utmost. So in his old age he 
 goes about saying to every one he meets, 
 " Little children, love one another." It 
 is not the babbling of decrepit old age, 
 but the utterance of a soul who knew what 
 love meant, a striving to express the gift 
 imparted to him, an effort to make himself 
 a continuation of the life of his Lord and 
 Master. It is the richness of great gener- 
 osity, the lavish outpouring of what one 
 has received. We see the beginnings of 
 such a spirit as this when, sometimes, a 
 man of wealth seeks to give to his town a 
 free library, or a hospital, or makes other 
 provision for the convenience of the gen- 
 eral public. This desire to express the 
 richness which has come into the life is one 
 of the noblest traits in human nature. Yet 
 how are you and I striving to express any 
 richness which has come into our lives, — 
 how striving to pour out from the vast store- 
 houses of our souls the spirituality which 
 God has showered so abundantly into their 
 deepest recesses ? 
 
ST JOHN. i8l 
 
 I know not what you will do with this 
 life of our Lord to-day, but I know the day 
 will come, — it may not come now, nor to- 
 morrow, this year or next, — but I know 
 the day will come when, with St. John, you 
 will be able to write a cipher across the 
 lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and 
 the pride of life ; when, taking those things 
 up which the world calls riches, fame, and 
 glory, all that can gratify the sense of liv- 
 ing or pride of being, all that men would 
 value as to be desired or acquired, you shall 
 write a positive mark of falseness across 
 them, realize their worthlessness, realize 
 the richness of Christ, and take up this 
 ruby so filled with the fire of God as to 
 make you feel that the very vitality of God 
 is struggling within it ; take up this life of 
 Jesus and follow it. That day must come. 
 Pray God it may come quickly, when you 
 can say in the words of St. John, "Come, 
 Lord Jesus, come quickly." For when he 
 comes, oh, how rich you are ; what acquisi- 
 tions are yours ; how you rise above the 
 marshes and swamps, the tangle, the under- 
 growth, the valleys ; how you creep up the 
 hillsides ; how you reach the mountain 
 tops ; how on eagle's wings you soar above 
 
1 8 2 PERSONALITY. 
 
 the clouds, and reach the sun in its full 
 glory, and with clear, open eye behold the 
 king in his beauty of holiness ! Yes, you 
 behold the king in his beauty, and in the 
 vision you become rich, great, strong, — a 
 son of thunder, a disciple whom Jesus 
 loves. You become in a very large and 
 real sense a son of God and a joint heir 
 with Christ 
 
XI. 
 
 THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 
 
 I am the good shepherd. — St. John x. i i. 
 
 i2 April, i8gi. 
 
XL 
 
 THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 
 
 This is a beautiful parable of the Good 
 Shepherd. There is an exquisite tender- 
 ness in it. It has the delicacy of truth. 
 There is something in the nature of truth 
 so exquisite and so delicate as to transcend 
 any possible analysis. It comes to us with 
 the force of truth, and we recognize it as 
 such. It escapes and eludes us when we 
 attempt to subject it either to dissection 
 or to analysis. I listen to music, and I may 
 not say that thus and thus are the waves 
 of sound piled one upon another. There 
 is this same exquisite delicacy about it 
 that eludes me, yet I feel its truth. I am 
 led captive by its sway ; my soul is brought 
 into a state of rejoicing. Lo, there stands 
 before me a character of great beauty, sub- 
 limity, profundity, — all those elements 
 which go to constitute greatness, a char- 
 acter w r hich thus becomes admirable. I 
 
1 86 PERSONALITY. 
 
 may not succeed altogether in analyzing the 
 nature of this character and be able to say 
 that this went to make up his courage, that 
 his bravery, this his large-mindedness, and 
 so on, but standing before me he com- 
 mends the truthfulness of his nature to 
 mine, and I accept it. 
 
 It has seemed to me that the more we 
 strive after a comprehension and an ap- 
 prehension of truth, the more we find our- 
 selves in the difficulty of inability to sub- 
 ject it to analysis, and are able simply to 
 throw wide the portals of the soul that it 
 may in its experience receive the truth. 
 We may say of a certain production of art 
 that up to a given point it commends itself 
 to our mind and we receive it with a de- 
 gree of joy and gladness, but beyond that 
 point it seems to elude analysis. In art, 
 therefore, it is measurably true that analy- 
 sis is impracticable, while in the most 
 transcendent phases of truth it seems to 
 be altogether impossible. Truth therefore 
 comes to us without our ability to analyze 
 its component parts ; it simply commends 
 itself to us as such. I stand now before 
 the sublime character of him who calls 
 himself "the Good Shepherd." In this par- 
 
7 HE GOOD SHEPHERD. 187 
 
 able there is that delicacy of touch, that 
 exquisite tenderness, which make me feel 
 that, beyond question, he is the Good 
 Shepherd. 
 
 Let us see, if we may, what it is that is 
 promised in our text. 
 
 The good shepherd is the shepherd who 
 cares more for his sheep than for himself ; 
 becomes attached to these helpless ani- 
 mals ; cares more for their safety than for 
 his own ; else, in the hour of danger, or im- 
 minent peril, when, possibly, he might lose 
 his own life, he would flee, and make good 
 his own personal safety, and thus prove 
 himself not to be a shepherd. The good 
 shepherd, then, cares more for the welfare 
 of these helpless brutes in his charge than 
 for his own safety. He also is to see that 
 they have what they need, not what they 
 think they need, for the wisdom of sheep 
 is not preeminent. We speak of sheep as 
 following example, and as not able to select 
 what is really good for them. But the good 
 shepherd will see that they have what they 
 most need. He will see that they have 
 the clear sparkling waters, the green fields, 
 protection from the storm, safe pathways 
 over the rocks, through the narrow passes, 
 
1 8 8 PERSONA LITY. 
 
 through the tangled thicket ; that they 
 shall be conducted safely to the pasturage 
 and return safely to the fold. They shall 
 have provided for them what is most ne- 
 cessary to their best welfare. 
 
 All we, like sheep, have gone astray. 
 Is it so ? Are we able to provide for our- 
 selves that which we most need ? Have 
 we sufficient wisdom, far-sightedness, abil- 
 ity to take all circumstances so into con- 
 sideration as to be able to determine what 
 we most need, what is best for us ? Ex- 
 periencing this inability to always deter- 
 mine what is best for us, we instinctively 
 turn to others for an example to imitate. 
 
 The boy looks up to the swinging gait 
 of the man as he walks along thestreet 
 and almost catches his swagger. It is the 
 same old story, this inability to determine 
 what is best for us, this desire to look up 
 to and imitate some one, to take some one 
 for our leader. Sometimes we take a 
 hireling who cares not for us, and we imi- 
 tate him. The danger comes, and the 
 hireling fleeth, — because he is a hireling. 
 Sometimes that hireling is our own self- 
 will. We say, " I will find for myself the 
 quiet waters and green pastures. I know 
 
THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 189 
 
 these mountain fastnesses ; I understand 
 these intricate paths ; I think I can thread 
 my way through the tangled thicket ; I 
 know the world pretty well ; I can take 
 care of myself," till a lacerated, pinched, 
 starved soul staggers back from dry tor- 
 rent bed and barren mountain side, — back 
 to the fold for shelter and gentle care, — 
 learning late the outcome of his self-will, 
 the result of determining in his own limited 
 wisdom what is best for him. 
 
 I would not say this if I did not believe 
 that you were made for the very best, that 
 the possibility is in you of the very best ; if 
 I did not believe that you had a right to have 
 the very best shepherd that can possibly be 
 given to you ; if I did not know that, as you 
 sit before me to-night, there is within you 
 such priceless value by reason of the possi- 
 bilities that lie there, that you ought to have 
 the very best of leaders, the very best of 
 shepherds. It is not best for you that you 
 should spiritually starve. It is not best 
 that you should be lost on the mountain 
 tops, that you should be alone, and hungry 
 spiritually. It is not best that this poor 
 lost wandering lamb in the mountain pas- 
 tures should have his young coat, which 
 
I90 PERSONALITY. 
 
 should be luxuriant and rich, rough,, poor, 
 and worthless, Nor is it best for you that 
 you should be without the richest spiritual 
 pastures, the purest, most sparkling, clearest 
 waters, the best of shepherds, the only one 
 worthy of you, — he who calls himself the 
 Good Shepherd. 
 
 You are cheating yourself each time you 
 take a hireling to be your leader. Why 
 may we not believe this? Why not put 
 away all hirelings, banish all self-will ? I 
 wish we could see that hatred, malice, or 
 vindictiveness, that neglect or indiffer- 
 ence, that pride, spiritual or worldly, that 
 covetousness or self-seeking, are all phases 
 of self-will, sins that surely sap the vital- 
 ity of all noblest living, are all of the spirit 
 of the hireling, and that we might say 
 to them collectively, You shall no longer 
 claim to be my shepherd, my guide ; in 
 my need you forsook me ; in my peril you 
 abandoned me ; you fled because you were a 
 hireling, and you are not able to lead me to 
 the fold where I belong. This is an alle- 
 gory, but is it not absolutely and plainly 
 true that your life does not reach its high- 
 est mark when you are taking for its leader 
 a shepherd other than the best life the 
 
THE GOOD SHEPHERD. iqi 
 
 world has ever known and Heaven has 
 had to give ? Think of the young musician 
 who should take an inferior master for his 
 instructor, or the hopeful young artist who 
 should take for his teacher some one who 
 neither knew his art nor cared for his 
 pupil. Think you, when you come to the 
 delicate organization of your soul, that you 
 do not need the best ? And the beauty of 
 it all is that the best is so glad to be your 
 leader. Hear him : " I came not to be 
 ministered unto." Hear him, this King of 
 kings and the Lord of lords : " I am come to 
 minister." He came to serve you as your 
 Good Shepherd, because you needed him, 
 and because of the possibilities that lie 
 within you of becoming fit companions, 
 notice this, — fit companions of the Good 
 Shepherd. For he says, " I know my 
 sheep," and these words are spoken with 
 the same tongue that elsewhere said, " Ye 
 are my friends." "I know my sheep," 
 — as if he were to say, I look down into 
 your hearts and see every perplexity you 
 have, every trouble, every uncertainty. I 
 know every striving of your soul ; I am in 
 sympathy with you ; I am touched with 
 every effort you make. I know my sheep, 
 
I92 PERSONALITY. 
 
 and they know me. And then he links 
 this companionship with that which he 
 has with the Father : " I know my sheep 
 and they know me. I and my Father are 
 one." 
 
 He who runs may understand this par- 
 able of the Good Shepherd. It needs no 
 careful exposition, no skillful analysis, it 
 appeals at once to the human conscious- 
 ness, to your heart and to mine, and we 
 recognize that in that Good Shepherd we 
 have one our soul needs, who knows us and 
 is known by us. 
 
 Then, as if he were to bring to a close 
 this beautiful parable, he says, " You are 
 enfolded, you are cared for, I know you 
 and am known by you, and I am your Good 
 Shepherd as you are my faithful sheep." 
 " I am the Shepherd and the Bishop of 
 your souls ; I lead you, direct you, and 
 guide you." But even then he ceases 
 not. " Other sheep have I, which are 
 not of this fold : them also I must bring 
 with me ; and there shall be one fold and 
 one shepherd." A necessary prophecy ! 
 for if he be the Good Shepherd he will 
 not forget the one sheep on the mountains 
 lost. There is the parable of the ninety 
 
THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 1 93 
 
 and nine. He does not forget the one lost 
 sheep. He could not if he were the Good 
 Shepherd, and if it is a brother or sister 
 who is lost, or if you yourselves are lost, 
 that Good Shepherd has not forgotten you. 
 " Them also I must bring with me." Oh, 
 the necessity of love, the imperative neces- 
 sity! " I must bring them with me/' He will 
 seek you. He will bring you home. He 
 may have to drag you through the thorny 
 thicket, your flesh may be lacerated, but in 
 his arms you are held, the fold is not far 
 distant ; there you shall be with him. I 
 like to say this because it is so encouraging 
 to know that God will yet have your lost 
 friend or brother or sister, and in his own 
 good time he will have you also. He is 
 not done with you, nor will he be till your 
 heart is made like the heart of a little 
 child, soft, tender, gentle, patient, loving. 
 Though it were the heart of a Nero, yet 
 this shall come to pass. " There shall be 
 one fold and one shepherd. ,, The strife 
 of tongues, even though they be called 
 Christian tongues, shall cease ; and wran- 
 glings and bitterness and feuds, even 
 though they be called Christian wranglings, 
 bitterness, and feuds, shall come to an 
 
194 PERSONALITY. 
 
 end ; and the fellowship in Christ, and of 
 Christ, and with Christ, as the Bishop of our 
 souls, the one Good Shepherd, shall be es- 
 tablished, — the unity of God's family, when 
 brother shall greet brother eye to eye, and 
 shall realize that the omnipotent Shepherd 
 does not stay his never-failing power, till 
 he shall have accomplished the miracle of 
 ages, the unity of those for whom he laid 
 down his life ; for the Good Shepherd giv- 
 eth, and continueth to give, and ever will 
 give his life for the sheep. 
 
 Do not go away from here to-night until 
 you have looked fairly in the face that 
 Good Shepherd as you have never beheld 
 him before. Do not feel that you may 
 wander and stray from his side. ~~ See in 
 him the one who is to perform the mighty 
 work in your soul of bringing you into the 
 gentle, loving companionship of him, the 
 most exquisite being the world has ever 
 seen, the Good Shepherd of the sheep. 
 
XII. 
 
 THE CHURCH. 
 
 Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it. 
 Eph. v. 25. 
 
 26 April, i8gi. 
 
XII. 
 
 THE CHURCH. 
 
 Christ so loved the church that he gave 
 himself to it, body, soul, and spirit. He 
 gave all that there was in him to give. For 
 it he realized all the redemptive forces of 
 human life. He redeemed it. He loved 
 it that he might sanctify it and cleanse it, 
 and present it unto himself a glorious 
 church, without spot or wrinkle, holy, 
 without blemish. I want you to love the 
 church, because Christ loved it ; because 
 to love it is to love Christ. The personal 
 element is inherent in the very considera- 
 tion of this subject, because the church 
 is composed of human souls, God's chil- 
 dren, — of all human souls who have re- 
 sponded to the call of " Friend, come up 
 higher/' It is no wonder, then, Christ loved 
 it. It is here to call human souls to come 
 out of sin into holiness, to come from an 
 abnormal to a normal condition of life, and 
 
1 98 PERSONA LITY. 
 
 so St. Paul speaks of it as the " body of 
 Christ," of which Christ is the head. 
 
 This body has imperfections, but be- 
 cause it is that body of which Christ is the 
 head we do not cut off here a hand, take 
 out there an eye, mutilate the possibilities 
 of usefulness of the body, simply because 
 they have imperfections. Christ loves the 
 members of his own body with the hopeful- 
 ness of love that these members may come 
 out from their sin, respond to the call to 
 holiness, and become through him sanc- 
 tified and cleansed : that they may be pre- 
 sented to him with an entire abnegation, 
 consecration, and devotion ; that they may 
 be a glorious church. To this state of life 
 they are called, and therefore it is because 
 of these possibilities that they may con- 
 stitute a glorious church, that Christ loves 
 them. 
 
 The purpose of the church is to serve 
 the head. Is it not ? The purpose of the 
 members of the body is to serve the head 
 of the body, —the hands to do by skill and 
 aptness that for which they are constituted 
 in grateful ministry to the demands and 
 necessities indicated by the head ; the feet 
 to be swift to do the errands of life and 
 
THE CHURCH. 1 99 
 
 the message of usefulness. So it is all 
 through the ministry of the body : the 
 members are to serve the head, and the 
 purpose of the church is not primarily to 
 save the individual, as it is not primarily 
 the purpose of the head to save the fingers 
 and the hands and the feet, but in the dis- 
 charge of their natural and necessary func- 
 tions they are necessarily saved. As soon 
 as my hand and arm may have exercise, ■ — 
 that is, in discharging the natural function 
 of the hand and of the arm, — that moment 
 they are saved from uselessness, from de- 
 cay, from death. If I bind my hand or my 
 arm to my side in utter uselessness, it is 
 only a question of time when it shall be 
 utterly without power, seized of death. So 
 the primary object is that the hand or 
 the arm may each discharge its natural 
 function, and the primary object of the 
 church is that the members of the church 
 may serve the head. 
 
 Of course, in saying this, we are rec- 
 ognizing the worthiness of the head of the 
 church of Jesus Christ, as the one perfect 
 human life whom it is the call to serve. 
 So that the end of the church is that it 
 may grow " into the measure of the stature 
 of the fullness of Christ. " 
 
200 PERSONALITY. 
 
 What a broad view you have of human 
 life and of salvation ; what dignity for 
 man, this exalting him to be a member of 
 Jesus Christ, the one perfect life, the one 
 manifestation of the Godlike to man, that 
 as a member of Christ he is thus dischar- 
 ging the purpose of his being, that he is 
 serving Christ, that he is a member of 
 Christ in active, willing, ready service, and 
 that it is the end of his life that he shall 
 grow into the measure of the stature of the 
 fullness of that Christ ! It is hard for us to 
 realize, with all these finite surroundings, 
 that we are hands and feet and arms and 
 eyes of him who is the perfect life ; that 
 we are members of him ; that it is our pur- 
 pose to serve him, and our end and destiny 
 to be like him, so that we may be made a 
 glorious church. 
 
 The continuity of this church is self- 
 evident. It is here to-day, is it not ? There 
 are hunAn souls to - day who have re- 
 sponded to the call, " Friend, come up 
 higher," who have entered into the realiza- 
 tion of the purpose of their being, who 
 have taken Jesus Christ as their head ; and 
 as the church is here to-day, so it was here 
 yesterday, one hundred years ago, five hun- 
 
THE CHURCH. 201 
 
 dred years ago, and a thousand years ago, 
 till we get back to the very beginning, 
 nearly two thousand years ago, There 
 has been this continuity of the church, 
 because the church is the body of Christ, 
 because it is the continued life of Christ. 
 
 Behold the responsibility, then, that rests 
 upon us as members of him to continue 
 his life in the world. It is also a witness 
 to the fact of the necessity of an organ- 
 ized fellowship of the body of Christ. The 
 hand alone may not discharge its func- 
 tion. The foot, separated from the body, 
 cannot discharge its function. In the very 
 construction of human life there is the 
 necessity of an organized body. Hence 
 there is a church, the visible, tangible body 
 of Jesus Christ perpetuating the life of 
 Christ among men. 
 
 The church witnesses also to the neces- 
 sity which lies, in the very nature of things, 
 in the constitution of human life, for the 
 fellowship of spiritual help and worship 
 among brethren. We may reason about 
 this as we choose, but it remains that we 
 need the comfort, the assurance, the in- 
 spiration of other souls, and he who holds 
 himself aloof from visible and organic con- 
 
202 PERSONALITY. 
 
 nection with the church has a serious 
 charge to lay to his own conscience, since 
 he has withheld strength and comfort and 
 inspiration from those other members of 
 Christ's body who need it. What right 
 have I to say, " I will live alone" ? " No 
 man liveth unto himself." What right have 
 you or I to say, " I will stand outside of 
 the church and refuse such inspiration, or 
 comfort, or help, or sympathy, as I may 
 possibly be able to impart to others " ? We 
 do not stand alone ; and in this we rec- 
 ognize a debt which each member owes 
 to every other member of the one great 
 family of God. 
 
 Because of these considerations, that 
 Christ loved the church as his own body, 
 and because of the nature and of the pur- 
 pose of the church, because of this continu- 
 ity ever expressing the life of the church, 
 because of this necessity for fellowship, 
 the church is a divine institution : divine 
 because it is a part of him who alone is 
 divine, divine because the church is the 
 body of him who is the expressed image of 
 holiness, and divine because it calls human 
 souls to a divine state of life. It is divine 
 also because the changes it works in the 
 
THE CHURCH. 203 
 
 lives of men are divine, and because the 
 mission, the work, the ministry, the possi- 
 bilities of the expression of human life are 
 also divine. What spiritual development 
 can there be without the sympathy, the 
 comfort, the help, the inspiration which we 
 may give to other souls to live broader, 
 nobler, better lives ? The church, then, is 
 a divine institution, and the marks of the 
 church are those which characterized it at 
 first, and only those. 
 
 We read in the forty-second verse of the 
 second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles 
 that those early disciples, those early mem- 
 bers of the church, those early parts of that 
 body of which Christ was the head, con- 
 tinued steadfast in the apostles* doctrine, 
 in their fellowship, in the breaking of the 
 bread and in the prayers, and those marks 
 are ever to be marks of the members of the 
 body of Christ, in every day and in every 
 generation. 
 
 The apostles' doctrine, reduced to its 
 simple form, what is it ? You have it 
 standing there in the Apostles' Creed, and 
 even this is reduced to a simpler form. It 
 was, and is, and ever shall be, a belief in 
 God. " This is life eternal to know thee, 
 
204 PERSONALITY. 
 
 the only God." It is where the human 
 soul arises, stands on its feet ; ventures to 
 lift its eyes, to look upward and into the 
 Father's face, and comes with affectionate 
 trust to believe in God the Father. Oh, 
 what a sublime doctrine that is ! The apos- 
 tles' doctrine, the martyrs' doctrine, the con- 
 fessors' doctrine, the doctrine of saints, 
 the doctrine of Christ — belief in God. 
 Nothing is said, or should be said (which 
 would be an impertinence here), of belief 
 about God. A thousand and one difficul- 
 ties might thus arise.. We as individuals 
 might never reach a consensus of thought 
 and opinion in striving to give expression 
 to our thought about God, whereas the one 
 holy catholic church can lift its heart as 
 one soul and say, " I believe in God." And 
 the necessary expression of this belief is 
 the belief in Christ, through whom alone 
 we know the fullness of God. Who else 
 has so expressed the universal life as this 
 same Jesus ? and what marvel is it, there- 
 fore, that he said, " This is life eternal to 
 know thee, the only true God, and Jesus 
 Christ, whom thou hast sent " ? The soul, 
 as it rises in spiritual consciousness of its 
 own powers and of the reality of its spirit- 
 
THE CHURCH. 205 
 
 ual being, loves to trust in Jesus, to believe 
 in Christ, adores this beauty of holiness, 
 and folds to its heart the divine sublimity 
 of the life of Jesus. 
 
 The apostles' doctrine, then, is one of 
 the marks of the church, a belief in God, 
 in Christ, and in Christ's continued light, 
 the HoTy Spirit. For, as has been said, as 
 we may think of God as a ray of pure white 
 light, incapable of being apprehended by 
 the eye until it be broken into prismatic 
 hues by the life of Jesus, so the Holy Spirit 
 may be thought of as that continued light 
 reaching the earth, softening the soul with 
 generative force, bringing into beauty the 
 powers of nature, softening the heart of 
 man, and developing and quickening the 
 spiritual life. 
 
 "They continued also in the apostles' 
 fellowship.'' And what was that? Mem- 
 bers of the same bodv. Who are the mem- 
 bers ? Every human soul is called to be 
 a member. Every human soul has the 
 privilege of being a member. Every hu- 
 man soul has within him the obligation to 
 be a member. Every human soul is a 
 child of God, and to every soul the call is, 
 " Friend, come up higher." Those who 
 
206 PERSOXALITY. 
 
 have responded to that call, and by the 
 initial step of baptism have signified their 
 response to that call, — for in baptism 
 there is a taking of the belief in God, in 
 Christ, in the Holy Spirit, — those who 
 have responded to that call, then, are to 
 live in that fellowship as brethren one of 
 another. ^ 
 
 But some shall say, We cannot love 
 all men, for many are unlovable, degraded, 
 repulsive, brutal. Oh, that is anti-Chris- 
 tian ! Christ loved all men, not so much 
 for what they are, as for what they are des- 
 tined to be. Because this poor hand is 
 deformed, shall I love it the less ? God 
 made it. It is part of my body ; it may, 
 though imperfectly, serve the body, and I 
 must love these members of my body 
 which God has made. This is Christian 
 socialism. So the obligation rests upon 
 every human soul to love his brother as 
 himself, not because of his perfections, but 
 because of the possibilities that are within 
 him, because of the source whence he came, 
 and because of his being a child of the 
 same heavenly Father. 
 
 In this fellowship there is unity, or there 
 should be. Offenses must come, but " woe 
 
THE CHURCH. 207 
 
 to him by whom the offense cometh." On 
 our hearts and souls and consciences there 
 may be, this morning, the burden of the 
 offense that we have been hindering this 
 unity of the body of Christ. What right 
 have I to say to the hand, " I have no need 
 of thee " ? and why do we dare point to an- 
 other child of God, as if in derision, be- 
 cause his way of serving the same God is 
 not our way ? How much responsibility 
 there may be resting upon us for hinder- 
 ing this possible unity of all souls who 
 hold Jesus as their head, who are mem- 
 bers of the church! In that unity of the 
 church there must be fellowship, and I be- 
 lieve that we should do everything within 
 our power, even to the changing of canons, 
 to cement that fellowship and to seal it 
 with the devotion of our own lives. We 
 have longed, perchance theoretically, for 
 organic unity, and yet have shut the door 
 in the face of those who were also seeking 
 for this unity. Remember that the marks 
 of the church are those things which char- 
 acterized the infant church and no more, 
 and he who ignores those marks is not 
 fulfilling the requirements of a member of 
 the bodv of Christ. 
 
208 PERSONALITY. 
 
 As to the Christian ministry, as a mat- 
 ter of fact there are three orders, bishops, 
 priests, and deacons, and there have been 
 such for many centuries. 
 
 " But the case of St. Paul receiving his 
 apostleship direct from God and not from 
 the apostles (who might have exhibited an 
 unwillingness to impart it to him) is a per- 
 petual protest against the danger of hu- 
 man interference in things concerning the 
 closest relations of the spirit of man with 
 God." This is the way another puts it. 
 Moreover we have nearly lost one order 
 in our imperfect diaconate, not lost actu- 
 ally, yet practically, because we pass from 
 the diaconate to the priesthood merely as 
 from one step to another. Yet who would 
 be justified in repelling us merely because 
 we had allowed the diaconate to slip out of 
 recognition ? And so, have you and I any 
 right to avoid others because they have 
 suffered another order of the ministry to 
 fall into disuse ? Even the Roman Church, 
 has she retained her episcopate ? It is not 
 a time for us to judge our brethren, but for 
 us to accept gratefully any real beginnings 
 of a unity among Christians, any possible 
 realization of the communion of saints. 
 
THE CHURCH. 209 
 
 Then there is the " breaking of the 
 bread," which stands in the minds of the- 
 ologians for the sacraments, baptism and 
 the Lord's supper. There the sacraments 
 have stood from the beginning, in one form 
 or another, with the essence always the 
 same. They stand there as perpetual mon- 
 uments of the continuity of the apostolic 
 church, as the continuity of the Christian 
 church, the continuity of the incarnation 
 of the life of Christ. What your opinion 
 about them may be is not pertinent to this 
 discussion. It is simply for us to preserve 
 these marks of the church, and in grateful 
 gladness accept what the good, true head 
 of the church provides. 
 
 As to the worship, we read that the 
 early church continued steadfast "in the . 
 prayers." And see what our privileges 
 are. Here we open this prayer book. We 
 do not care to present one single argument 
 for its value. We simply say : " Here is 
 a book of very rich treasures." I open it 
 at random, and find in it the Psalms of Da- 
 vid, full of words that have expressed the 
 uplifting of human souls for nearly three 
 thousand years, and I make no comment. 
 I open it again at random, and I find the 
 
2 1 PERSONALITY. 
 
 Lord's Prayer, that outpouring of the holy 
 life of Jesus, who taught us thus to pray, 
 and for very nearly two thousand years 
 these words have been uttered by millions, 
 and I make no comment. I turn to it again 
 at random, and I find the " Gloria in Excel- 
 sis." It has been there since 633, and pos- 
 sibly since the year 300, and through all 
 these intervening centuries it has expressed 
 the outpouring of divine praise. Again, I 
 find the hymn called the " Te Deum," and 
 since the year 527, and possibly even ear- 
 lier, it has been sung as a grateful Chris- 
 tian paean to Almighty God. Thus I turn 
 at random up and down the pages of this 
 same book, and I find that nearly four fifths 
 of it are in phrases taken directly from 
 the holy Scriptures, and still I make no 
 comment. 
 
 But this book is the heritage and prop- 
 erty of every human soul that will take it. 
 There is no exclusive ownership in it. It 
 belongs to every human soul. 
 
 In speaking, therefore, of the church, as 
 to her doctrine, as to her fellowship, as to 
 her ministry, as to her sacraments, as to 
 her form of worship, as to her liturgy, the 
 service of the holy communion, which has 
 
THE CHURCH. 211 
 
 stood there substantially as it is now since 
 the year 150, we speak not so much of 
 rights as of privileges. 
 
 The rights of the church we are silent 
 about, but of the privileges of the church 
 let us speak with outpouring and grateful 
 hearts. And should not the heart pour 
 itself out in gratitude ? As it is every 
 man's duty to preach and to pray, so it 
 must be every man's duty to praise God 
 in grateful, loving service for the priceless 
 blessings he has given us in the church 
 which he loves. 
 
 As to personal responsibility, remem- 
 ber the words of St. Paul, that Christ loved 
 the church, and gave himself for it, that 
 he might sanctify it, you and me, that he 
 might cleanse it, you and me, that he 
 might present it unto himself, a glorious 
 church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any 
 such thing ; and in his own good time God 
 will accomplish that, so that you and I 
 shall be presented to him, holy and without 
 blemish. Remember these words, then. Re- 
 member your privilege as members of his 
 body, to serve him who is the head of the 
 church, and remember also your destiny, 
 to grow unto the measure of the stature of 
 the fullness of Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 
XIII. 
 
 ALL SAINTS'. 
 
 Let not your heart be troubled. — St. John xiv. 1-6. 
 
 / November, i8gi. 
 
XIII. 
 
 ALL SAINTS'- 
 
 If our Lord were to stand here to-day, on 
 this glorious thanksgiving morning, — for 
 such is All Saints' day to rejoicing souls, — 
 I think he would say just such words as 
 we have taken now from his lips. I think 
 he would say, If ye believe in God, be of 
 good cheer. If ye trust in God ; if ye know 
 that beneath your sorrow are the ever- 
 lasting arms ; if ye know that your feet, 
 as they seem to slip, are stayed on the 
 everlasting Rock of Ages ; then, if so ye 
 trust and believe and know, let not your 
 heart be troubled. Be of good cheer. Ye 
 know the world, and the world hates you, 
 falsifies your life and your character, de- 
 spises you, torments you, and persecutes 
 you. But what of that ? As gold is tried 
 in the fire, so sorrow, and sin, and tempta- 
 tion, and grief, and affliction, and all that 
 you sum up and say, "This is pain," shall 
 
2 1 6 PERSONALITY. 
 
 work their perfect work, and from out the 
 furnace, the dross left behind, ye shall 
 come. Be of good cheer, I have overcome 
 the world. I who endured for you the 
 cross, the tree of sin, and despised the 
 shame, and was persecuted and buffeted 
 and tormented, I who had not where to 
 lay my head, I say to you, Be of good 
 cheer, I have overcome the world. " Let 
 not your heart be troubled : ye believe in 
 God, believe also in me." 
 
 You hear me say : " In my Father's 
 home." You have thought in your short- 
 sightedness, or in your doubt, or in your 
 hesitancy, or in your unbelief (which I pity), 
 — you have thought that my Fathers house 
 is a small spot in the universe. You do 
 not realize that it is my Father's home, 
 and that wherever you are you are not ab- 
 sent from it. His heart circles the globe. 
 From its warm embrace no child of his 
 can escape, and where my Father's heart 
 is, — where his life is, — there is his home ; 
 and in it are many stopping places, many 
 abiding places, many staying places, where 
 a man may rest, faint with the journey, 
 dust-covered, soiled, begrimed, footsore, in 
 distress, outcast, forsaken, — many stopping 
 
ALL SAINTS'. 2\J 
 
 places where such may rest, but they are 
 always in my Father's home. And when 
 you, a pilgrim, stumbling, oppressed, lacer- 
 ated, mastered for a moment because of 
 your temptation — nay, because of your sin 
 and crime ; even there where you stumble, 
 fall down, where you are prostrated, is a 
 stopping place in my Father's home. When 
 another form of trial comes to you, pain, 
 grief, affliction, or bereavement ; when you 
 pause again, this time to close the eyes of 
 those you love, it is still a stopping place 
 in the Father's home, where you are held 
 in the Father's heart, embraced by the 
 Father's love. Underneath are still the 
 everlasting arms. 
 
 Enfolded in his arms in the moment of 
 your bereavement, as well as in the mo- 
 ment of your transgression, affliction, 
 doubt, or despair, it is but a stopping place 
 where you halt, it is but a staying place in 
 the Father's home. And when again a cer- 
 tain rivulet is reached, where we pause, yet 
 spring gently from bank to bank as from 
 life to life, even as when before the gate 
 of death we pause, it is only another stay- 
 ing place in the Father's home. " In my 
 Father's house are many mansions : if it 
 
2l8 PERSONALITY. 
 
 were not so, I would have told you." They 
 are his mansions. They are in his house. 
 It is another way of saying, — of course, 
 it is figurative ; our Lord is speaking in 
 parable, — it is another way of saying that, 
 come what will, nothing shall separate us 
 from the love of God, whether it be sorrow, 
 trial, affliction, transgression, sin, chastise- 
 ment, whatsoever may come to us, nothing 
 can shut out the Father's presence. 
 
 If we believe in God (or, appealing to 
 the nobler side of our life, our Lord refuses 
 to make it conditional, and says : " Ye be- 
 lieve in God "), be strong, be brave. Let 
 the arm once more resume its power and 
 vigor. Be strong, because of the victories 
 that faith has won. Time would fail me 
 to speak of Barak and David and Samson 
 and Jephtha — those who were persecuted, 
 sawn asunder, clad in sheepskins and goat- 
 skins and wandered in the desert, but be- 
 cause of their faith they were not troubled. 
 They were of good cheer. Their life was 
 linked with the life of him who had con- 
 quered, and, in being faithful unto death, 
 they knew (figure again) they should be 
 crowned with life. Man cannot receive 
 life in its largeness and fullness except on 
 
ALL SAINTS 1 . 219 
 
 the ground of faith. His life must rest on 
 faith. His largeness of being must find 
 its bottom foundation stone in trust. He 
 must find himself rooted, — radically, only- 
 radical souls take hold fully of life, — -man 
 must be rooted in the life of God, by faith 
 by trust, by belief ; and then, superior to 
 man's infirmities, superior to his tempta- 
 tions, what may man do to him ? 
 
 "Let not your heart be troubled. " Do 
 not try to carry this world on your shoul- 
 ders. It is God's world; not yours. Do 
 not try to carry the welfare of your own 
 soul, even, on your own shoulders. It is 
 God's soul ; not yours. Responsibility in 
 its larger sense belongs not to you, but 
 only in its limited sense. God has assumed 
 in the very nature, in the very condition of 
 his being, the largest, fullest responsibility 
 (and is he not equal to it ?). It remains for 
 you and me and every human soul to trust, 
 to believe, to lean, and God will carry his 
 own world and all that dwelleth therein, 
 and you in particular. We have reversed 
 this. We have fancied that the weight of 
 the world's welfare rests upon us. We 
 have felt that with us is the responsibility 
 of the welfare of our souls. Not so if we 
 
2 20 PERSONALITY. 
 
 have the first condition of life — namely, 
 belief in God. " God 's in his heaven — 
 All 's right with the world " and with every 
 individual in the world. " Be of good 
 cheer, I have overcome the world/ ' " Be 
 thou faithful unto death, and I will give 
 thee a crown of life." This is not equiva- 
 lent to saying that it matters not how a 
 man lives. It matters everything. Only, 
 when he has taken hold of life, his respon- 
 sibility ceases ; when he has taken hold of 
 God, then God completes the growth. I 
 do not think that the tree says to itself, 
 " I must take care that in April there is a 
 bud, and, a little later, there is a leaf, and, 
 still later on, a blossom, and then fruit." 
 If the life of the tree were altogether arti- 
 ficial, if it were altogether arbitrary, dra- 
 matic, unreal, unvital, then I think the tree 
 should be much troubled, much concerned 
 for the flower and fruitage, not only of its 
 own, but of all other trees. But if the tree 
 be vital and real, if it have life, if it be not 
 arbitrary, artificial, dramatic, if its roots 
 strike deep to find the wellspring of life 
 that it may take hold of life more fully and 
 largely, then it has no responsibility, no 
 accountability. It has no anxiety as to its 
 
ALL SAINTS'. 221 
 
 growth, its leafage, its blossom, its harvest. 
 So the soul that stays on God has no 
 cause, or ground, or reason, for being trou- 
 bled as to its future ; nay, or as to its pres- 
 ent. Nor has it anything to do with the 
 past. The tree must not, does not, turn 
 back and say, " Thus was I wounded when 
 the storm raged ; thus was I rent asunder 
 by the lightning's stroke ; thus was I 
 blasted ; thus became I gnarled, and, look- 
 ing back, I am filled with fear and trem- 
 bling." Not thus does the tree groan, but 
 the past is gone — dead. Nature heals the 
 wound, and by the process of the law of 
 life it takes on new strength. Just as the 
 acorn does not say, " Thus am I overcome 
 by disintegrating forces ; thus am I made 
 to perish in the soil." It is all true, and 
 so the acorn might have said, were the 
 acorn contrary to the law of life, if it did 
 not repose on the life that was above, be- 
 neath and around it, — it might have said, 
 " I cannot endure this disintegrating pro- 
 cess — I cannot die." Yet die it must, 
 but without tears or regret, and in its dy- 
 ing it takes hold of life, and the forest 
 monarch is the justification of the acorn's 
 entombment and death ! 
 
222 PERSONALITY. 
 
 " Be of good cheer. Let not your heart 
 be troubled." Tempest tossed, tempest 
 pelted and beaten 5 tempest swayed and 
 rocked, tempest down-thrown, be not trou- 
 bled ; for when he who utters this was 
 beaten upon by the fiercest storm the ma- 
 lignity of hateful men could cause to beat 
 upon him, they erected what they thought 
 to be a tree of disgrace, but it proved a 
 throne, and on it they lifted him, and en- 
 throned there, he thus drew all men unto 
 him. 
 
 " And if I go to prepare a place for you, 
 I will come again, and receive you unto 
 myself." The intimacy of the relationship 
 is not only not severed by what we call 
 death, it is not even jarred. The com- 
 munion, one fellowship, one life, one body, 
 one universe, has its own continuity. What 
 a prophetic vision St. Paul had, to look with 
 discerning eye through all these misty cen- 
 turies, thick with the fog of blinding super- 
 stitions, and see, with penetrating clear- 
 ness, what we are only beginning to see ! 
 Therefore because there is no separation 
 from this cloud of witnesses by which we 
 are surrounded, because the ground of their 
 being is the same as the ground of our be- 
 
ALL SAINTS', 22$ 
 
 ing, — namely, God, — the time will come 
 when we shall see that the violet and the 
 oak are inseparable in their oneness of life, 
 and you, humble, obscure, as out of the way 
 of observation as the modest violet, shall 
 one day find your life joined to the lives of 
 the greatest spirits — like St. Paul's — the 
 world has ever seen, that your life is knit 
 to Christ's ; because the ground of your 
 life is the same as the ground of the life 
 of every other soul, and the same as the 
 life of Christ. "Because I live, ye shall 
 live also." 
 
 Let not your heart be troubled, there- 
 fore, either about this world, or about what 
 comes to you. Taking for granted that ye 
 believe in God, — and how can a man fail 
 to believe in God ? He may, with stam- 
 mering lips and faltering tongue, be unable 
 to formulate any belief as a more gifted 
 brother can do, but what man feeling 
 life in him, about him, beneath him, and 
 around him, can fail to believe in God ? — 
 taking for granted, then, belief in God, let 
 not your heart be troubled. Nothing can 
 come to you of whatsoever nature that 
 shall not minister, — I will not check the 
 application of that nor limit it, — whatso- 
 
224 PERSONALITY. 
 
 ever shall come to you shall in some way 
 minister to the proving of your soul, to 
 the building up your nature into the like- 
 ness of God. Look at David. There are 
 greater souls here than David's. He took 
 as much of life as he was capable of re- 
 ceiving, but when Christ gives a man 
 larger visions he becomes more filled with 
 life and with God. And because these 
 souls, like Isaiah's, like St. John the Evan- 
 gelist's, like that of Moses, like that of the 
 countless throng that no man can num- 
 ber, because these souls have grown — I 
 think I must say grown by reason of every- 
 thing that has come to them — so be as- 
 sured, " Let not your heart be troubled.'' 
 Whatever of affliction, transgression, disap- 
 pointment, apparent failure, distress, or sin, 
 whatever seems to tear and rend asunder the 
 very fibres of your being, remember that 
 they all, in God's making, conforming, and 
 loving hand, shall minister to the upbuild- 
 ing, the perfecting, the ultimate justifica- 
 tion of your souls. It is a joyous gospel this, 
 this gospel of good cheer, that finds its 
 basis in the life of God. 
 
 " And the way ye know." Still we are 
 so blind, dull, stupid, we do not under- 
 
ALL SAINTS'. 225 
 
 stand, while all the time the way lies be- 
 fore us. Must the sun, shining bright and 
 clear, explain himself, showing his creden- 
 tials, when he is fructifying every force 
 and potency in the universe ? Must the 
 Christ, the light of life, explain himself 
 further to those who are of dull ear and 
 slow heart, and listen, but do not com- 
 prehend ? Do you not see that he who 
 shines in the full warmth and power of 
 life must be the Sun of righteousness ? 
 And the pathway that his brilliant efful- 
 gence makes, streaming from the throne 
 of God into the darkest, most noisome 
 valleys of earth, must be the way for hu- 
 man souls to tread. Must he still say : 
 " I am the light," when the light is shining 
 full on the face of the darkened soul so 
 perplexed in the deepening twilight, till 
 suddenly there bursts from the western 
 sky the clear bright light of him who said : 
 " Be of good cheer, I have overcome the 
 world " ? So he tells Thomas (oh, I do 
 not want to hear him tell me again), " I 
 am the way, the truth, and the life." Be- 
 cause, O Jesus ! thou art the way, the 
 truth, and the life, because thou comest, 
 because thou goest, because thou returnest, 
 
226 PERSONALITY. 
 
 because the intimacy of that close com- 
 munion and fellowship is not even jarred 
 by what I have blindly called the article 
 of death, therefore those whom thou hast 
 led before me through the dark valley and 
 the shadow to shining heights in thy eter- 
 nal presence, — I shall not be troubled con- 
 cerning them. All the saints are with 
 thee ; I cannot be troubled about them, 
 for I believe in God, and I believe also in 
 thee, O Son of God, O Word of God, O 
 Light of God, O Life of God, O Way and 
 Truth of God ! " 
 
 Ring out the bells of joy, then, for all thy 
 saints in light, and may we grow, — grow 
 as everything in nature calls out to us to 
 join their chorus in growth. Oh, could our 
 ears but catch the note of growing nature's 
 song ! May we grow day by day, grace by 
 grace, into the likeness of him, the captain 
 of our salvation, the author, the finisher of 
 our faith. " Ye believe in God, believe also 
 in me ! " 
 
XIV. 
 
 VINES OF SAMARIA. 
 
 Thou shalt yet plant vines upon the mountains of 
 Samaria. — Jer. xxxi. 5. 
 
 20 September, i8gi. 
 
XIV. 
 
 VINES OF SAMARIA. 
 
 This is the sure hope, the calm, stead- 
 fast optimism, the confident belief rooted 
 in the depths of reason, bound fast by the 
 very fibres of a soul that has seen God 
 face to face : " Thou shalt yet plant vines 
 upon the mountains of Samaria, ,, and the 
 vines stand for sustenance, nourishment, 
 cheer, prosperity, for the soul's welfare. It 
 is the hope, the reasonable hope, the firm 
 conviction of Jeremiah, both for himself 
 and for his people, that the soul's pros- 
 perity is sure with God. The soul's vine 
 may not appear to be growing ; its roots 
 may be covered from sight, planted out in 
 the dark valleys where little of sunlight 
 and possible development can come to it. 
 For every man knows that upon the hill- 
 sides the vines grow best, yet the time 
 shall come (as I hope we may yet say, 
 must come), when on the hilltops " shalt 
 
230 PERSONALITY. 
 
 thou yet plant vines." It is the hope, the 
 calm deliberate conviction, of every soul 
 that has seen God. It rests in the know- 
 ledge of God. 
 
 The husbandman rests the hope of his 
 harvest upon the knowledge of seedtime 
 and harvest ; it is no guess. The parent 
 rests the future of his child on the know- 
 ledge whence the gift, or the knowledge of 
 the growth, of the increased strength and 
 health of the child, and makes his plans 
 for the child's future accordingly. The 
 physician knows, not guesses, that all na- 
 ture tends toward recovery, and on this 
 knowledge rests his hope, his calm deliber- 
 ate hope, of returning health, strength, and 
 vigor. When this knowledge has come to 
 souls, it has come sometimes as a light from 
 heaven, striking the hidden genius of God 
 which lies dormant in every human being ; 
 striking forth its latent fire till it illumi- 
 nates the individual spiritual nature, and, 
 in some instances, sets ablaze the world 
 with the molten gold, the glory of holi- 
 ness, as in such souls as those of Moses, 
 Isaiah, and this prophet Jeremiah, and John 
 the Evangelist, and St. Paul, and our 
 blessed Lord, and in countless saints, con- 
 
VINES OF SAMARIA, 23 1 
 
 fessors, martyrs in all centuries, even to 
 this present moment, where in humble cot 
 and rude cabin, nay, in king's palace, 
 and in the abode of the rich, there are 
 souls whose genius for good has been 
 touched by this knowledge of God, till 
 they are illuminated with the confidence 
 of their soul's progress in him, that all is 
 well with them, that their vine shall yet 
 be planted on the mountain hilltops of Sa- 
 maria. 
 
 Such men have seen God face to face ; 
 they are never the same again. 
 
 You cannot take away from them this 
 vision ; it has burned itself into their 
 souls. They are as full of God as the red 
 blossomed tulip is of fire. No arguments 
 can rob them of it. No metaphysical sub- 
 tleties can deprive them of this reality ; 
 as who shall say, " We will withdraw from 
 the sunlight until we have examined the 
 theories of colors and prismatic hues." 
 Having seen God, they know in whom they 
 have believed. You are never again the 
 same after this coming into the presence 
 of God and seeing him face to face. The 
 warp and woof of your soul's history is 
 being woven constantly, and you may not 
 
232 PERSONALITY. 
 
 pull out this thread of rich red glory, this 
 vision of God; it is a part of your soul's 
 life. 
 
 This knowledge of God is the knowledge 
 of the God whom Christ hath revealed. 
 Christ declares him as a God of love, of 
 life, of personality, of all that is positive as 
 implied in these terms, and -not negative. 
 It is absolute unreason to think of God in 
 his infinity as including evil as well as 
 good, hate as well as love, the negative as 
 well as the positive, death as well as life. 
 So I firmly believe. Language must al- 
 ways bear its own limitations. I may not 
 express, by any terms I am able to employ, 
 the accurate story of my soul, of my life ; 
 nor may I say all that is true of God when 
 I try to describe him in terms of love, of 
 life, of personality ; but I only say that 
 what is positive rests in God and the nega- 
 tive has no place in him, and while I may 
 delude myself with all sorts of intellectual 
 vagaries, I realize the unreason of it all 
 when I make him a God of confusion, not 
 of order, of death and not of life. God 
 reveals himself, he declares himself to me, 
 to my soul, to my reason, to all my facul- 
 ties, as life, positive, full, and complete. 
 
VINES OF SAMARIA. 233 
 
 I speak to God from my soul as to a per- 
 son realizing all the time the limitations of 
 the term, and yet I say " person " because 
 it describes the highest expression of life 
 with which I am familiar. I do not say it 
 describes the highest expression of life yet 
 to be declared, for of this I know nothing, 
 and whenever that higher expression is 
 made clear to me I shall take the higher 
 term to describe it ; but till then, " per- 
 son" describes the highest expression of 
 life. 
 
 God lives, and because he is life there is 
 association. There cannot be life without 
 association. Solitariness is of death. The 
 very awfulness of sin is that it separates, 
 isolates, cuts off, leaves standing alone, and 
 because alone "the wages of sin is death." 
 Solitariness is death. Life carries with it 
 the necessary thought of association, and 
 because of this association my soul must 
 live. It is unreason to think even of God 
 as alone. He needs your soul. God can- 
 not live without your soul. He cannot live 
 alone ; it is a contradiction in terms. The 
 very thought of God without human life 
 is impossible, and my hope, my sure, calm 
 hope, my conviction of the prosperity of 
 
234 PERSONALITY. 
 
 my soul, rests in the very being of the life 
 of God, in the very thought of association. 
 I cannot take him out of the universe, nor 
 can I take my soul out of the world. And 
 because my soul is in the universe, as are 
 the planets as they swing in their courses, 
 — nay, for a greater reason than can touch 
 the stars, because I am in the universe as a 
 soul, and because God is life, and because 
 life implies association, — the one cannot 
 and will not live without the other. Though 
 I may be dwelling in the valleys, buried 
 from sight, yet as God lives, so my soul 
 cannot be taken out of this universe of as- 
 sociation and life. It must, one day or 
 other, creep up the sides of the mountains 
 and blossom on the hilltop. My soul must 
 prosper ; bask in the sunshine of his life. 
 I must say to my soul, " Thou shalt yet 
 plant vines upon the mountains of Sa- 
 maria." Thus the ultimate thought of God 
 is life, and there cannot be life without as- 
 sociation. Why, it is the very cardinal 
 principle of Christianity — fellowship, as- 
 sociation, life with life. Your soul is in 
 the world, that is, in the universe, and it 
 cannot be taken out. You may not pull 
 down the sun from his throne, and no man 
 
VINES OF SAMARIA. 235 
 
 may tear my soul from God, and the hour 
 must come when the soul shall prosper, 
 shall live, shall glorify itself, and so glorify 
 its Maker. 
 
 As this is the revelation of the revealer ; 
 as it is the discovery of the discoverer ; as 
 it is the unfolding of the unfolder, the ut- 
 terance of him who is the spoken, the eter- 
 nal Word, the manifestation of Jesus, the 
 Christ, the Son of God ; as it is the Word 
 made flesh ; as this is the truth that flashes 
 from the face of the soul of him who is 
 the Sun of Righteousness, — so it is the 
 truth that binds our souls to life eternal, 
 for this is life eternal to know thee, God, 
 and no man can take this life from us. 
 
 This manifestation of God in Christ 
 shows us who God is, in whom we believe, 
 and it shows us who man is. Inferentially, 
 we have already discovered in this revela- 
 tion of God somewhat of the nature of man. 
 We have seen how man's soul is essen- 
 tially a part of God, of the essence of God. 
 We have seen that this soul of man cannot 
 be taken from God. Every manifesta- 
 tion of truth in the individual is a mani- 
 festation of God. Whenever we read the 
 book of any great life, do we not sometimes 
 
236 PERSONALITY, 
 
 feel, as we are told of the achievement of 
 this great man and that, as if we ourselves 
 could triumph like Job, or like Moses free 
 a people ? It is the divine that is welling 
 up in you, the oneness you have with all 
 human life, the participation you experi- 
 ence in all truth. And when you come to 
 Christ, you feel that what he is, is possible 
 for you also. The genius of spirituality is 
 within every human soul, and when the mo- 
 ment comes and the eyes are opened and 
 the man awakes to see who and what he 
 is, behold, he is touched by God, and all 
 things become possible to him. So all men 
 are born to be parts of God, to be like 
 Christ. Every man has within him this 
 genius of spirituality that is to seize the 
 divine fire of God, and in that fire to see 
 God's face bright and clear in his own soul, 
 and thus he himself is to illuminate man- 
 kind. 
 
 As Jesus is the life-giving vine, so may I 
 plant my vines on the mountains of Sa- 
 maria, so may I, by living, give to others, 
 and in thus giving receive life. Thus our 
 whole attitude toward God and man is 
 changed. Our first thought now is not as 
 to what we are receiving or may receive 
 
VINES OF SAMARIA. 237 
 
 from God ; all notion of receiving is crowded 
 out by the larger truth of giving, till we look 
 to our fellow-men as to those to whom we 
 may give, and take no thought of receiving. 
 The vine lives to give, and in giving re- 
 ceives life abundantly. So as I first bear 
 fruit I become like him who is the vine, and 
 in the very life-giving and fruit-bearing I 
 receive life and receive it abundantly. " I 
 am come that ye may have life." How? 
 By giving life, by becoming the fruitful 
 vine on the wall, whose branches hang over 
 and kiss the limpid stream below, and 
 whose fruit refreshes the weary traveler. 
 This is the imagery of the Hebrew prophet, 
 the imagery of divine truth, of one who is 
 first the vine, giving life, cheer, sustenance 
 to others, and thus in the very giving re- 
 ceives life from the eternal source of life 
 itself. 
 
 So, when any soul takes hold of truth, 
 he takes hold of God. It matters not 
 whether it is a hod carrier in whom a drop 
 of generosity quickens the lifeblood as he 
 gives the cup of cold water, whether it is 
 the clerk behind the desk, the book-keeper 
 at his ledger, the business man in his 
 counting-room, the carpenter at his plane ; 
 
238 PERSONALITY, 
 
 wherever there is the taking hold of truth, 
 there is the taking hold of God, and once 
 having received the touch of God, he is 
 never the same man again. If I am told 
 that if I am touched by sin I am never the 
 same man again, why may I not be told 
 the greater truth, that when I am touched 
 with holiness, when I touch truth, when 
 once I see God face to face, I am never 
 the same man again ? The cup of cold 
 water, the struggle after righteousness, the 
 acquisition of mastery, the earnest desire 
 after holiness however insignificant it may 
 be, — all have become a part of my personal 
 history, and I can never be again the man 
 I was before the glory of God's righteous- 
 ness fired my heart. 
 
 How stimulating is this thought ! I am 
 not going to appeal to the sting of sin. 
 Sin is negative ; it has nothing to do with 
 God. I rather call your thought to this 
 truth, that where you have taken hold once 
 of righteousness you are not the same you 
 were before, and never again can be. It is 
 an eternal fact. No man can tear that cup 
 of cold water from your history, how r ever 
 base and mean and despicable you may 
 have been at some time in your life. Wher- 
 
VIXES OF SAMARIA. 239 
 
 ever you have been noble, stretched the 
 lame hand of faith and touched but the 
 hem of the garment of the Sun of Right- 
 eousness, you have become what you never 
 were before, and can never again be the 
 same. It has entered into your personal 
 history, and you are the richer for it. You 
 are not the same man you were ten years 
 ago. Oh, how you have struggled to over- 
 come that habit ! It matters not what octo- 
 pus it was which threatened your very life, 
 the mastery you have gained is a fact, it is 
 a taking hold of God, and that fact can 
 never be eradicated from your being. 
 
 Because God has been with you through 
 all these struggles, through all this con- 
 test ; been with you in the hour of partial 
 victory and somewhat of conquest, the 
 hour of attainment ; because he has been 
 with you as, with painful fingers, you have 
 scraped away the leaves and mould, pulled 
 away the stone and rock, taken off the 
 pressure of some great obstacle that was 
 preventing your soul from springing up ; 
 because he has been with you in those 
 dark moments in the chill valley of your 
 soul's history, experience, and develop- 
 ment, have you not the sure hope that he 
 
24O PERSONALITY. 
 
 will be with you yet again ? Do you not 
 know it to be true ? The worst is over ; 
 it matters not now what may come to 
 your soul. It may be nail-prints, a cross, 
 it cannot be so bad as what has gone be- 
 fore, because now you have more of God 
 than ever, because you are not the same 
 man you were, because your soul is not the 
 same, and strength now is yours you had 
 not then. You are the soul that dared to 
 pluck its life from the burning and fly with 
 it to God. This touch of genius must be 
 well pleasing to your heavenly Father, well 
 pleasing to behold in the son, in his child, 
 in you, as he sees you dare to grasp your 
 soul, and carry it to him to plant, to prune, 
 to nurture, that it may grow and bud and 
 bear fruit on the mountains of Samaria. 
 
 I long to have every soul feel that the 
 best is yet to be ; that nothing can separate 
 us from the love of God, as it cannot from 
 the life of Christ ; that in every human 
 soul there is a genius of spirituality ; that 
 every human life has within it the pos- 
 sibility of oneness with God ; that this 
 calm assurance rests in the very life, the 
 very being of God. Oh, in that confidence, 
 what courage you are going to feel in tak- 
 
VINES OF SAMARIA. 24 1 
 
 ing, planting, nurturing, caring for the vine 
 of your soul ! How strong you are going to 
 be as you face all experiences and condi- 
 tions ; with what spontaneity this new life, 
 now awakened, grows ! How it laughs and 
 sings in the dew and sunlight ; nay, also, 
 when the wind and storm sweep over it, 
 still it is safe, chants praises to its heavenly 
 Father, who is in that cloud and storm now 
 as he was in the past, and from that cloud 
 and storm pours out his life in love, his 
 strength in pity, and sustains the soul 
 through all experiences that await it ere it 
 enters the eternal presence of the great 
 husbandman who planted the vine, Christ 
 Jesus, the stem of Jesse, who planted hu- 
 man souls to grow as branches of the one 
 vine. 
 
 O my soul, wait thou still upon God, 
 for thou shalt yet plant thyself on the sunlit 
 sides of the mountains of Samaria, 
 
XV. 
 
 PERSONAL FAITH THE GROUND 
 OF LIFE. 
 
 If ye believe not that I am, ye shall die in your sins. - 
 St. John viii. 24. 
 
 25 October, 1891. 
 
XV. 
 
 PERSONAL FAITH THE GROUND OF LIFE. 
 
 As if he might have said : " If ye believe 
 that I am, ye must live in your holiness/' 
 There is something pathetic in watching 
 the struggle of a life aglow with the courage 
 of its convictions, striving to persuade men, 
 striving to compel them to take hold of the 
 truth. Why, it is truth that shall make 
 you free. He that committeth sin is the 
 bondservant of sin, but he that taketh 
 hold of the Son is free, and if the Son 
 shall make you free, ye shall be free in- 
 deed. 
 
 Here is a life that believes in himself, 
 entirely self-centred in the only true sense 
 that life ever can be self-centred, as the 
 sun in heaven is self-centred, feeling its 
 own power, believing in its own power, 
 striving through fog and cloud and mist 
 and storm to manifest its own power. 
 Here is a life self-poised, conscious of its 
 
246 PERSONALITY. 
 
 own wholeness, integrity, truth, and vi- 
 tality (" which of you convinceth me of 
 sin ?"), striving to convince men that there 
 is such a thing as life ; striving to compel 
 men to take hold of life ; seeing in the 
 great depth of the pity of his large heart 
 man held in bondage by sin, men pros- 
 trated by powers over which they cannot 
 gain the mastery, seeing human lives thus 
 supinely overcome by the baser forces 
 which contend for supremacy. With great 
 pity, with the strong courage of conviction, 
 he strives to hold forth life to these souls 
 in such a way that they shall take hold of 
 these vitalizing forces and escape from 
 their bondage and enter into the largeness 
 and fullness of the liberty of entire life for 
 which they were made, for which they 
 exist, and to which they ultimately shall 
 come. 
 
 If it is pathetic to watch such struggles 
 of a life so inspired by the courage of its 
 convictions in endeavoring to impart this 
 life to others, so, also, it is sublime. It 
 is a sublime unfolding of the thought of 
 Christ in this eighth chapter of St. John's 
 Gospel: "Before Abraham was, I am." 
 " If ye believe that I am, ye shall live in 
 
FAITH THE GROUND OF LIFE. 247 
 
 your wholeness." A great gulf-current, so 
 to £ay, of spiritual life, of vitalizing energy, 
 circles the universe of human existence, 
 where human life, coming to the surface, 
 reaches forth its grasp, striving to take hold 
 of life in its entirety, to enter into the free- 
 dom of perfect life, to escape from the waves 
 that are threatening its very existence, and 
 in this warm, vitalizing current of eternal 
 life, which encircles the universe of hu- 
 man striving, is the life of Jesus. I mean 
 by this that Jesus became conscious of this 
 oneness of spiritual life, and, in the con- 
 sciousness of the existence of that oneness 
 of spiritual life, he realized that he himself 
 was the manifestation of that life, so that 
 it was not in any figure of speech that he 
 said: " Before Abraham was, I am." He 
 uses the strongest phrase possible to express 
 his existence, not as our feeble translation 
 has it, " If ye believe not that I am he," 
 but "If ye believe not that I am." It 
 is the same expression that he uses else- 
 where when he says : " Before Abraham 
 was, I am." It is the consciousness of the 
 existence of a oneness of a vital current of 
 life circling the universe of human exist- 
 ence, and in that consciousness realizing 
 
248 PERSONALITY. 
 
 that he himself is the highest expression 
 of that life, that he himself is the manifes- 
 tation of the eternal life of the universe. 
 
 Oh, what an overwhelming power it 
 gives to the life to be persuaded, to be 
 conscious of the existence of this vitalizing 
 current, and to realize that this current 
 finds its complete expression in himself ! 
 No wonder, then, that he says : " Which 
 of you convinceth me of the lack of life? " 
 " Which of you convinceth me of the de- 
 fect of life ? " " Which of you convinceth 
 me of not grasping life firmly ? " " Which 
 of you convinceth me of being out of this 
 current of life?" " Which of you con- 
 vinceth me of failure, of missing the mark 
 of life ? " " Which of you convinceth me 
 of sin ? ,: No wonder that he speaks of 
 the entire freedom that there is within 
 himself, and this without the slightest sug- 
 gestion, — nay, it seems to jar upon our 
 thought to even utter what I am to say, 
 — without the slightest suggestion of spir- 
 itual pride, — the entire realization that in 
 himself there is the fullness of life, where 
 there can be no bondage. No man is held 
 in bondage when he lives. No man can 
 be bound hand and foot in any degree of 
 
FAITH THE GROUND OF LIFE. 249 
 
 servitude who is welling up with life, life 
 that will snap all restraints. Why, the 
 tree as it grows will not be restrained by 
 any bands or clamps that human ingenuity 
 can devise. Life snaps all bondage, and 
 the entire freedom of life is in Jesus and 
 in his consciousness, in his realization. 
 As he sees men despairing, or led in cap- 
 tivity by imbruting passions or demor- 
 alizing tendencies ; sees them led captive 
 by small forces beneath their dignity ; sees 
 men creeping as worms, or groping as four- 
 footed beasts ; sees men living, not in the 
 full dignity of their powers ; sees men be- 
 smeared with that which disfigures the 
 rare beauty of the countenance illuminated 
 by the rays of righteousness and holiness, 
 how in great pity he longs to impart to 
 them that which he, as the Son of Man, 
 as a brother, as a kindred spirit, has in 
 common with every human soul, — life, life 
 self-centred, life self -poised, self -existent 
 life. It is a self - existent life of which we 
 take hold — this life of Christ of which 
 we may have a part — because it is the life 
 of God. He yearns that men shall take 
 hold of this life, that they may be free, and 
 if the Son make you free, ye shall be free 
 indeed. 
 
250 PERSONALITY. 
 
 It would not be freedom for you if he 
 should ask you to escape from pain. Cal- 
 vary stares him full in the face. Yet, with 
 such a life as his, there cannot be shrink- 
 ing from any cross. Therefore he asks 
 you to escape from bondage, and so into 
 freedom. He says to us and to all man- 
 kind, — for he cannot withhold this utter- 
 ance from any soul that comes from God, 
 — he says : " If ye believe that I am, if ye 
 believe in this vitalizing current, namely, 
 this eternal life of God, manifested in me, 
 ye must live in your holiness, and I, the 
 Son of Man, shall make you free." 
 
 There is no suggestion of arbitrariness 
 about it. It is not as if Christ were stand- 
 ing as an arbitrary king to dole out favors, 
 but it is as if he touched a great truth as 
 an electric current, and, having touched it, 
 this is the necessary outcome of it. And 
 in the giving of that life there is escape 
 from bondage, from servitude, from sla- 
 very ; there is the escape into freedom. The 
 only way a man can be saved is by becom- 
 ing a son of man, because to become a son 
 of man is to link himself indissolubly, — 
 say, rather, is to make himself a part of 
 this life current, which is the life of God ; 
 
FAITH THE GROUND OF LIFE. 25 1 
 
 and thus making himself a son of man he 
 becomes, in the larger meaning, the child 
 of God, and as he becomes a son of man 
 and a child of God there is freedom and 
 escape, because there is life. So, before 
 Abraham was, this Jesus is. What a force 
 to manifest itself in human experiences ! 
 What a marvel that God should declare 
 himself in such a way that men may learn 
 the secret of life, that they may live for- 
 ever and not die ! 
 
 All religious striving, all pious aspira- 
 tion, all thirsting for righteousness, all 
 manifestation of the religious consciousness 
 which has expressed itself in any era of the 
 world's development, all these are not con- 
 trary the one to the other, but are as so 
 many facets of a precious stone, till men 
 are won by the beauty of the perfect 
 jewel, Christ, and he thus becomes the 
 universal life ; and his religion, nay, not 
 religion, but his revelation, being the man- 
 ifestation of the divine presence and life, 
 must ultimately become universal. Not, 
 perchance, as you and I have compre- 
 hended Christianity. We have not yet 
 stated its full expression. But he who 
 stood before the bewildered brethren, de- 
 
252 PERSOXA LITY. 
 
 claring himself the source of all life, self- 
 existent before the days of Abraham, is 
 the life of the human race, and in him all 
 mankind are to find escape into freedom. 
 Escape into freedom ! What a blessed de- 
 liverance ! 
 
 What helps me just here is this, that 
 there is in Christ, — for he is the ever- 
 present, with him there is no past, no fu- 
 ture, — there is in Christ a belief in him- 
 self. We do not now mistake the nature 
 of that belief, but we recognize its exist- 
 ence, and I think that one of the first steps 
 toward life and freedom is a belief in one's 
 self as Christ believed in himself. We see 
 intimations of this when we respect the 
 righteousness that is within us, the first 
 streaks of dawn, so to say, when the sun 
 of righteousness rises within our horizon 
 and we begin to value righteousness for 
 righteousness' sake, virtue for virtue's sake, 
 right for right's sake. We see intimations 
 of this belief in ourselves in this first re- 
 specting the righteousness within us, and 
 I think it is the first step we must take in 
 the way of escape and life and freedom, 
 namely, belief in ourselves. 
 
 For, oh, who are we ? Not that life 
 
FAITH THE GROUND OF LIFE. 253 
 
 that links itself with the violet or the rose ; 
 not that life that is kin to the brute, how- 
 soever beautiful may be the manifestation 
 of that animal life. We are children of 
 the one Father, brothers of the one Christ, 
 made in his image, sharers with him, par- 
 takers of the divine nature. Fancy the 
 tremendous grasp it would have upon a 
 man's soul if he could come to believe thus 
 in himself: that he himself has a soul that 
 is a sharer in the life of God, that he 
 himself is a child of God, that he himself 
 is a brother of Christ, that within him are 
 the divine possibilities, that within him 
 there is a possible escape into the full 
 freedom of the sons of God. What a 
 sweep there would be over the heart-strings 
 which, now unstrung, discordant, out of 
 tune, give such pathetic wails of discour- 
 agement, despair, sorrow, defeat. What a 
 sweep there would be over the soul of man, 
 producing a divine harmony and the sweet 
 music of a free soul, could man but come 
 to believe in himself. 
 
 I feel that we cannot believe in God 
 until we believe in ourselves, for what is 
 said generally is, I think, to be said specif- 
 ically. " If a man love not his brother, 
 
254 PERSONALITY. 
 
 whom he hath seen, how can he love God, 
 whom he hath not seen ? " If a man be- 
 lieve not in his brother whom he hath 
 seen, how can he believe in the great elder 
 brother, or in God, whom he hath not 
 seen ? So, specifically, if a man believe 
 not in this personal life of which he is 
 conscious, how can he believe in the life 
 of the world — Jesus ? How can he believe 
 in God, whom he hath not seen ? I know 
 it is hard for you to believe in yourselves. 
 I know how disfigured the possible beauty 
 of your souls may have become, how you 
 shrink from even the introspection that 
 shall declare to you the true nature of your 
 spiritual life. But beneath it all, removing 
 all the debris of past failure, calamity, ca- 
 tastrophe, there is the divineness of the 
 Father's life. God has given you of him- 
 self, you are his child, you are his off- 
 spring. 
 
 Oh, a man cannot contentedly stay in sin 
 when thus he comes to believe in himself. 
 If I could persuade a youthful spirit in 
 whom I discerned the genius of an artist 
 that these powers, though latent, were 
 within him, he could no longer contentedly 
 violate the laws of color and proportion, 
 
FAITH THE GROUND OF LIFE. 255 
 
 strive after the merely clever, but, believing 
 in himself, he must strive to the utmost to 
 give expression to the life that is within 
 him. And Christ, believing in himself, 
 soars, so it seems to our limited vision, our 
 restricted and withheld sight, — soars into 
 the eternities, but on wings only belonging 
 to his nature, because he has not only 
 fellowship and companionship with God, 
 but he has life with God ; and as he lives, 
 so are we also to live ; and his flights into 
 the eternities are into the mansions pre- 
 pared by him for us. 
 
 The other thought that encourages us, 
 supports and sustains us, is that our escape 
 from bondage, our liberty, our life, our sal- 
 vation, comes not only by taking this initial 
 step of believing in ourselves, and the sec- 
 ondary step of believing in other human 
 souls, thus deepening our charity, widening 
 our sympathies, intensifying our interest in 
 others ; but there is life for us only in be- 
 lieving also in Jesus, the Son of Man, the 
 Son of God, the light and the life of the 
 world. " If ye believe not that I am, ye 
 must perish, ye must die in your sins/' 
 I cannot find life elsewhere. It is the uni- 
 versal life. It is the great life of God, 
 
256 PERSONALITY, 
 
 which so ramifies human life that there is 
 not a soul that is not touched by this vi- 
 talizing electric current of life. In him we 
 live and cannot die. 
 
 It is a personal matter, so personal that 
 first we come to believe in ourselves, in 
 that glorious faith that enables us to see 
 what we are, — God's dear children. It is 
 that faith that makes it possible for us to 
 believe in and realize the value of other 
 souls, and it is supremely that personal 
 love and faith in Jesus our Saviour, who 
 thus becomes in very truth our God. For 
 thee, whom we have seen, O Jesus, we love 
 and believe in, and in loving and believing 
 in thee we are loving and believing in God 
 whom we have not seen. 
 
 God speed the day, then, when we may 
 believe Christ is, and because we believe 
 he is we shall live in the righteousness 
 that thus becomes ours, because it flows 
 through him from the throne of God. 
 
XVI. 
 RICHES OF GOD. 
 
 Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, . . . the things which 
 
 God hath prepared for them that love him. — 
 
 i Cor. ii. 9. 
 
 18 October, i8gi. 
 
XVI. 
 
 RICHES OF GOD. 
 
 What a prophetic eye St. Paul had ! 
 How he discerned the things of the Spirit ! 
 Your eye and mine have not seen, into 
 your heart and mine have not entered, the 
 things which God hath prepared for them 
 that love him ; but into St. Paul's heart 
 these things had entered ; God has revealed 
 them to him by his Spirit. And what God 
 has done for St. Paul, God is now doing 
 for any and every human soul who will but 
 roll back the gates of his being and let the 
 tide of spiritual life flow in. 
 
 In other words, there is a revelation of 
 God to every individual, which shall become 
 a personal possession, a personal revela- 
 tion, the acquired property of every human 
 soul. And so we wait, you and I and all 
 of us, God's will ; you and I wait the pro- 
 cess of his unfolding of himself ; you and 
 I stand here waiting till God fills up our 
 
26o PERSONALITY. 
 
 souls with himself. The things that per^ 
 tain to God, these are the things for which 
 we wait, which he has prepared for them 
 that love him ; these pertain to the spir- 
 itual life, to the possession of God ; they 
 are the things that God hath revealed to 
 us by his Spirit. 
 
 This is the spiritual process through 
 which the soul is being led step by step. 
 Every event that has come to you in your 
 life has been the necessary preparatory 
 event before the next unfolding of the life 
 of God can be received by you. Little by 
 little the curtain, so to say, is pushed back, 
 just as fast as your vision is able to appre- 
 hend that which is being declared and re- 
 vealed ; just as fast as you are able to have 
 the curtain unrolled, so God is declaring 
 himself, revealing himself, unfolding him- 
 self to you. Sometimes these events in 
 your life have seemed to be cruel, unneces- 
 sary, almost the subverting of all spiritual 
 attainment and growth, as if they were the 
 pushing back of your onward movement ; to 
 be like chains about your feet preventing 
 the onward step, the cruel iron biting your 
 tender flesh or staying your hands as they 
 strive to take hold of life, yet only thus in 
 
RICHES OF GOD. 26 1 
 
 the seeming. Each event that has come 
 to you, however seemingly painful, cruel, 
 or unnecessary, — each event has been a 
 necessary preparatory step that your soul 
 might be in a condition to learn more and 
 more of God. 
 
 Human souls are made as they are made, 
 not as we, perchance, fancy they should be 
 made. It is not within the limits of the 
 possible that the human soul shall take in 
 with one great apprehension all the things 
 which God hath revealed, hath prepared, 
 for them that love him. Man's capacity 
 must be gradually acquired. He does not 
 spring into the full attainment of his 
 growth and acquisition. His capacity is 
 not fully developed at the beginning. The 
 little child must first creep and crawl be- 
 fore it can walk, lisp and babble before it 
 can speak ; he comes first to see, then to 
 apprehend, then to become with prophetic 
 eye the possessor of a fuller, a larger vi- 
 sion of truth. It is so everywhere. Man 
 does not spring into immediate possession 
 of his powers and capacities in business, 
 nor in literature, nor in the sciences, nor 
 in any of the possible acquisitions before 
 him. It is first the little taking hold, then 
 
262 PERSONALITY. 
 
 the larger grasp, till finally the full powers 
 of the man are expanded to express the 
 capacities of his soul for the reception of 
 the fuller truth. 
 
 So God stands eager and ready to pour 
 out himself, so man waits patiently the 
 will of God and the extension of his own 
 capacities, and sees in this waiting the ne- 
 cessary growth and development of the 
 powers of his soul. So he receives every 
 event that has come to him as a necessary 
 step to the event that is to take place, and 
 as he looks over his past life studded with 
 blunders, mistakes, yes, sins and crimes, 
 marked here and there by the pitfalls into 
 which he has fallen, sees in all these events 
 which seemed at the time so unnecessary, 
 experiences through which his soul must 
 pass for the reception of the larger, fuller, 
 completer life which his God is waiting to 
 pour into his soul. 
 
 Look back, yourself, over the events of 
 your past life and ask, Has there been a 
 moment in my past history when I have 
 been in a position to receive such a mea- 
 sure of the power and glory of God as at 
 present ? You have lived up to this day 
 by passing through certain cruel, painful 
 
RICHES OF GOD. 263 
 
 experiences. You have had sorrow, fail- 
 ure ; you have had yourself thrown back, 
 as it were, upon yourself, and thus have 
 found yourself thrown back upon the 
 power and life of God. It is, of course, 
 plainly true that the revelation of God has 
 been made already to the very full. The 
 sun shining in his heavens stands there 
 ever shining, but the infant eye cannot 
 apprehend the glory of the sun at once ; 
 there are certain painful processes through 
 which the eye must first pass. Christ has 
 been revealed ; God has declared himself 
 in many and multiform ways, but the soul 
 cannot apprehend the fullness of the power 
 and glory of God, save by its passing 
 through certain preparatory processes. So, 
 you are glad to welcome these processes 
 as they come, because now you see their 
 meaning. You are now standing upon the 
 vantage ground which you have won, inch 
 by inch, and, standing there, you are able 
 to realize now somewhat of the power, the 
 life, the love, the richness, of those things 
 which God has revealed to you of himself 
 by his Spirit. 
 
 "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, " but 
 eye shall see and ear shall hear, and it 
 
264 PERSONALITY. 
 
 shall enter into the heart of man, this life 
 of God, just so fast as eye is adjusted to 
 the vision, ear quickened to the sound, and 
 heart prepared for the revelation of the 
 life, the unfolding of the power, the mani- 
 festation of the majesty of Almighty God. 
 When that comes, — as come it shall, 
 sooner or later, in the experience of every 
 man's life ; not, perhaps, to-day, nor to- 
 morrow, nor ten, nor a hundred, nor a 
 thousand years hence, but come it must, — 
 but when that hour comes, behold, " all 
 old things are passed away, and all things 
 are become new." 
 
 All old things pass away. Why, the 
 very God you had in your childhood is 
 now lost to you in the larger, richer, fuller 
 possession of him whom you now call 
 " My God." You seem to stand now in a 
 new heaven and on a new earth. You 
 seem now to have a God of your own. He 
 has become such that you now say, " Thou 
 art my God and I will praise thee ; thou 
 art my God and I will exalt thee." If he 
 is become to you a personal possession, a 
 new God has come into your heart, a per- 
 sonal appropriation, a personal apprehen- 
 sion, a personal, actual property of your 
 
RICHES OF GOD. 265 
 
 own, as it were. You and God, God and 
 you, the one with the other, the other with 
 the one, standing alone in the world as if 
 he were God only to you, and as if you 
 were his only child. There comes such a 
 nearness of the relation that your heart is 
 filled with the richness and the riches of 
 this outpoured life of himself. 
 
 As these new things come to you, so a 
 new estimate of everything with which you 
 come in contact is made also. The men 
 now about you are new souls ; there are 
 new meanings of events, new understand- 
 ings of the processes through which the 
 soul passes. The soul has a new value to 
 you, because you see in it the unfolding 
 of the manifestation of the life of God. 
 So wherever you see a human soul you 
 look with eager searching eyes to read the 
 revelation, the story, the manifestation, 
 the unfolding of this infinite eternal living 
 God of yours. No child that babbles, no 
 youth that strives, no man who exerts the 
 power of his manhood, no human soul ex- 
 pressing itself, comes before your life with- 
 out a message of God to you. So that 
 every man, every soul, every child, every 
 human life, is now to you a word of God, 
 
266 PERSONALITY, 
 
 a ray of truth. Nay, every event in life, 
 howsoever befogging it may seem, is an 
 unfolding of the life of God, is the pour- 
 ing into the human soul of the message 
 of God. See how a new estimate is put 
 upon the value of every human soul, how 
 it quickens our interest in all human en- 
 deavors, our pity for every human trans- 
 gression, increases our charity for every 
 human soul as it struggles toward the light 
 and toward larger life, and pants and 
 thirsts and yearns for escape and freedom ; 
 how it makes a new world of that in which 
 you live. 
 
 Why is all this ? Because this manifes- 
 tation of God is none other than the reve- 
 lation of life ; in other words, none other 
 than the manifestation of perfect manness, 
 manhood. So where we take hold of an 
 attribute of a man, of life, there we are 
 taking hold of perfect manhood, taking 
 hold of God ; and as, step by step, we pass 
 through these painful processes and are 
 able to take hold of anything that is good 
 and true, wheresoever we are able to take 
 hold of anything that is positive, there we 
 are taking into our souls a fraction, so to 
 say, of these infinite riches, of the perfect 
 manhood, of the unfolding life of God. 
 
RICHES OF GOD. 267 
 
 It needs illustration. I need to tell you 
 that when perhaps last week a great cloud 
 of thick blackness shut down over your 
 life, and despair was the only wail the soul 
 was capable of uttering, because of failure, 
 of transgression, of great affliction, of sor- 
 row, of the evil that seemed to demand a 
 supremacy in your nature, that was the 
 moment when you were nearer to God, 
 perhaps, than ever before ; and if in that 
 moment of despair and weakness you were 
 able to take hold of but the hem of the 
 garment of perfect manhood, from the 
 touch there came virtue, power, strength, 
 — you were taking hold of God. So mar- 
 velous is this real and vital presence of 
 Christ ! 
 
 Oh, the richness of such a life, even in 
 its apparent poverty ! How near to great 
 riches is the soul when it is beggared of 
 its own possessions, when all its estimates 
 of value have been reversed, turned upside 
 down, till now that which it once consid- 
 ered of the greatest value and to be striven 
 after is held to be altogether worthless, 
 and that which had been lost sight of now 
 becomes the first thing to be desired ! 
 
 It is the history of the human race con- 
 
268 PERSONALITY. 
 
 stantly, as it is the history of the individual 
 soul, this taking of the physical as of the 
 first importance ; then later the outpouring 
 of the life of God becomes the triumph 
 in the ethical struggle of the spiritual over 
 the physical. There comes a moment in a 
 man's life when he ceases to regard the 
 physical as of worth, and it is then that 
 there is a triumph of the spiritual over the 
 physical. It is the life of the spirit. It is 
 the outcome of the ethical struggle, of the 
 struggle for life, for mastery, for escape, 
 for freedom, and when this life of God be- 
 comes the possession of man, when man, 
 little by little, takes hold of these attri- 
 butes of manness, of manhood, then he 
 finds himself brought really and vitally 
 into the presence of the one life who man- 
 ifests, completely and entirely, the eternal 
 life of God, and fills up to the very full 
 man's soul with perfection, that is, with the 
 life of the eternal righteousness. 
 
 Thus are we brought into the realm of 
 the operation of the Spirit. "God hath 
 revealed himself unto us by his Spirit. ,, 
 The child learns the alphabet, but it is not 
 till the full processes of life have been 
 gone through that, in his mature years, he 
 
RICHES OF GOD. 269 
 
 is able to apprehend the real meaning of 
 the rich treasures of poetry. So we, in the 
 infancy of our spiritual growth and devel- 
 opment, learn the alphabet of the begin- 
 ning of life, and are made acquainted with 
 the historic Christ, know him in a measure ; 
 but it is not till the great soul-processes 
 have been gone through that the soul 
 comes to learn the deep things of God, 
 to know Jesus truly and vitally, comes into 
 the possession of the life of that perfect 
 manhood, into the acquisition of that man- 
 hood as applied to human life, into the 
 knowledge of the things God has prepared 
 for them that love him, and which are 
 made known to him only by the Spirit and 
 through the processes of the Spirit alone, 
 which are the way of the development of 
 the soul as it is brought into communion, 
 and into clear vision, with God and of 
 God. 
 
 So we wait for God's will, you and I, — 
 not with painful patience, but with patient 
 joy, knowing that all things work together 
 for good to them that love him. There 
 can be but one outcome of love. There 
 can be but one result to the soul that loves 
 righteousness, takes hold of truth. 
 
270 PERSONALITY. 
 
 "If I stoop 
 Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, 
 It is but for a time ; I press God's lamp 
 Close to my breast ; its splendour, soon or late, 
 Will pierce the gloom : I shall emerge one day." 
 
 There can be but one outcome in the great 
 struggle for life, — the outcome of escape 
 from bondage, the freedom of the soul as 
 it wings its flight into the very presence 
 of the effulgence of the great glory of the 
 eternal righteousness of God, and is now 
 able to see him face to face, — him who 
 before was beheld darkly because of the 
 mists, whether of transgression or doubt, 
 or of uncertainty, or of indifference, darkly 
 because of the clouds that arose between 
 the soul and the face of the always loving 
 Father. " Eye hath not seen nor ear 
 heard the things which God hath prepared 
 for them that love him, but God hath re- 
 vealed them unto us by his Spirit." 
 
 This revelation is going on all the time. 
 It is the blessed gospel of good tidings 
 which Christ brings to you. He stands 
 before you in the infancy of your spiritual 
 life, and you behold somewhat of his beauty, 
 — the beauty of his character, the great 
 richness of his holiness ; but, more and 
 
RICHES OF GOD. 2*]\ 
 
 more as he stands before you, as in the 
 great struggles of your life you pass on 
 with ever-increasing capacity for truth and 
 life, he pours into you more and more of 
 himself, till there come moments when the 
 Christ-life is filling you up to the full. The 
 life of love, of gentleness, of uprightness, 
 of integrity, so fills you that your life is hid 
 with Christ in God, and Christ in you be- 
 comes the ground, as well as the hope, of 
 your ultimate glory. Glory as it seems to 
 me is none other than this, the irradiation 
 of the soul in the high noon blaze of its 
 spiritual power and activity. Therefore in 
 this gradual acquisition of the Christ-life 
 in you there is the ground, the hope, of 
 your ultimate manifestation, the ground of 
 your ultimate shining forth in the fullness 
 of your spiritual powers, in the complete 
 glory of a son of God. 
 
 How rich, oh, how unspeakably rich, 
 must such souls be ; for so filled with Christ 
 they are giving, though unconsciously, 
 Christ to others. 
 
 Is there not a new God for you to-day ? 
 Is he not the one to whom your soul cries 
 out, " My God ; " and does not your soul say 
 to him, " My God, I wait, and through all 
 
272 PERSONALITY, 
 
 these painful events of life I still wait, in 
 the full assurance, nay, in the sure know- 
 ledge, that thou art opening wide the win- 
 dows of my soul that thou mayest ^hine 
 into its very deepest recesses with the full- 
 ness of thy life " ? 
 
 Do you not say, " Now, O my soul, 
 wait thou for Christ to come, more and 
 more," till he take complete possession as 
 the fullness of the Godhead bodily, filling 
 up every recess, every possible part of 
 your soul, so filling it that your will and 
 heart and love and mind and thought are 
 at one with him ? Thus becoming through 
 Christ one with God, you find your free- 
 dom, your escape, your final salvation. 
 
XVII. 
 ENTERING BY FAITH. 
 
 Strive to enter in at the strait gate. — St. Luke xiii. 24. 
 16 November, i8gi. 
 
XVII. 
 
 ENTERING BY FAITH. 
 
 This spiritual energy that manifests it- 
 self in striving is the first element of free- 
 dom. We were born for freedom ; we came 
 into the world to become, in all the large- 
 ness and fullness of the meaning of the 
 term, sons of God. Nothing short of the 
 realization of this boundless, limitless, spir- 
 itual life can ever satisfy the demands of 
 the being of the human soul ; and man 
 must say : " For this purpose came I into 
 the world, that I might be free." Whatso- 
 ever, therefore, is holding man in captivity 
 is alien to his nature, and needs one day 
 or other to be stripped off. It is a chain, a 
 shackle, a sign of bondage. This spiritual 
 force, this energy which strives, which 
 agonizes (for this is what it means), for 
 life, as a competitor in a race strives, ago- 
 nizes to reach what he feels to be the pos- 
 sible goal, is the ground of liberty. 
 
276 PERSONALITY. 
 
 No man throws himself into a race with- 
 out the thought that the goal is possible 
 to be reached, and the very striving that he 
 makes, the very beginning of this striving, 
 the very energy that thus wells up within 
 him, that makes the striving possible, is, as 
 it were, the first step in the race, — better 
 than that, the first element within him of 
 his freedom. 
 
 When there is a loss or an absence of 
 this striving, when there is such a decay 
 of this spiritual force and energy that there 
 is no effort, no conscious uplifting of life, 
 nay, worse than that, not even the desire 
 of effort and of striving, then the plummet 
 has been dropped to the very lowest depth 
 which the human soul is capable of ex- 
 periencing, desire sunk, buried, lost, no up- 
 lifting of spiritual force sufficient to stir the 
 calm, placid surface of indifferent apathy, 
 the stillness, as it were, of death. Pity the 
 soul when he reaches that deep where there 
 is only apathy, where no desire can cause 
 even a bubble of energy, of effort, of striv- 
 ing to reach the glassy surface of a life 
 lost in despair. So that the very first 
 striving, the very first realization, as it were, 
 of a new life, the very beginning of the 
 
ENTERING BY FAITH. 2J J 
 
 expression of this spiritual energy, is the 
 first element of a man's freedom. 
 
 How that striving is to be kindled ; how 
 that desire is to be again set aglow ; how 
 that energy is to be called forth into mani- 
 festation and expression, must be deter- 
 mined by the characteristics peculiar to 
 the individual. In one man, perchance, 
 who long since has strayed from his fa- 
 ther's home, the thought that a mother 
 still prays, a mother's love still remembers, 
 that a mother's heart still agonizes for the 
 welfare of the child who once was folded 
 to her bosom, — such a recollection, such 
 a calling back of old-time memories, may 
 be the incentive of desire, the inception of 
 energy, the quickening of a life that shall 
 manifest itself in striving. But, howsoever 
 this awakening shall be called forth, when- 
 ever it comes, whenever there is the first 
 quickening expression of this new life, the 
 first coming to the birth of an energy striv- 
 ing for expression, there, at that instant, 
 the first element of freedom has been ac- 
 quired. 
 
 We may turn this about and say that 
 until there is a striving, man is still in his 
 bondage. Until life begins to pulsate, to 
 
278 PERSONALITY. 
 
 throb, to express, to manifest itself ; until 
 there be an inspiration that shall breathe 
 upon the dying embers of desire, fanning 
 them into a quickening flame ; until a man 
 desire escape, desire freedom and strive 
 after it, he is still in bondage. He is, as 
 it were, a great giant, prostrate, bound 
 hand and foot, mouth stopped, breath gone, 
 silent in the dust. Galvanized life may be 
 forced into him, and he may arise and 
 walk the streets and pursue his various 
 avocations, but the life which is properly 
 his, which is peculiarly his, which is his 
 by birth, which he should vindicate by ex- 
 pressing to the full, is dead, because the 
 desire, the striving, the expressing of the 
 energy within him, has not as yet taken 
 place. 
 
 Alas, how many of us are thus spiritually 
 dead ! How many of us are living but an 
 artificial life ! How many of us are thus 
 non-vital in our goings in and comings out, 
 are thus living merely the semblance of a 
 life, God only, in his loving wisdom, knows, 
 and in that same loving, pitying wisdom 
 cares, and will not suffer us to long continue 
 so. It may be that that darkest moment 
 when desire, even as a faint spark, has be- 
 
ENTERING BY EAITH. 279 
 
 come extinguished, and a thick black dark- 
 ness, in the absence of this faint glimmer 
 of desire, has taken possession of the soul, 
 — it may be that that instant was God's 
 opportunity, that then there was the be- 
 ginning of a new life ; desire again began 
 to appear and energy began to stir within 
 the prostrate form, till the man, first creep- 
 ing, then raising himself to his feet, strove 
 with a mighty, agonizing striving to enter 
 into the strait gate. It is encouraging to 
 think that when a man has touched the 
 very bottom of this awful deep of spiritual 
 apathy, it may be a rich moment, paradoxi- 
 cal as it may sound, in his spiritual expe- 
 rience, in the process of the development 
 of his soul ; mighty contrasts of values may 
 appear and desire be awakened. Howso- 
 ever a man may be living, he is not living 
 truly and vitally until the energy of his 
 spiritual life manifests itself in some desire 
 and striving for the possible attainment of 
 his being. 
 
 This exhortation to striving, this call 
 that comes from the Saviour's lips, is not 
 an appeal to apathy, to vacancy of will, to 
 an enervation caused by spiritual transgres- 
 sion. Have I not said enough to make 
 
28o PERSONALITY. 
 
 it quite apparent without further elabora- 
 tion that while this apathy lasts a man is 
 not living ; that while there is a vacancy 
 of will, the human soul, as such, is not 
 being true to its possibilities ; that while 
 a man is spiritually debilitated and ener- 
 vated by clinging to his transgressions he 
 is in the very bondage of helplessness ? 
 So that this appeal is not to man's apathy, 
 not to that spiritual enervation, which is 
 caused by, and continues because of, a life 
 of spiritual transgression, which we call 
 sin, but it is a deeper call ; it is an appeal 
 to desire, which is the starting-point of the 
 highest, noblest, and best that there is 
 within us. It is the call of the Son of God 
 to a son of God. It is " Child of God, 
 son of man, brother of Christ, ,, — it is the 
 call to the human soul as such, as a par- 
 taker of the divine life, — " Son of man, 
 arise, stand on thy feet." So that this 
 striving — oh, how discouraging at times 
 it has been to you ! — yet this striving, be 
 well assured of this, is the first element of 
 your freedom. Thank God for it. Praise 
 him that it has expressed itself within you. 
 Blessed be his name that there is within 
 you the striving at this moment for large- 
 ness and fullness of life. 
 
ENTERING BY FAITH. 28 1 
 
 Sometimes, however, this striving is mis- 
 directed, looks in wrong directions for its 
 proper manifestation, is led astray by false 
 notions as to how the striving may accom- 
 plish its best results. Sometimes, as in 
 the case of the drunkard, the dipsomaniac, 
 the gambler, — the man who is led in cap- 
 tivity by these and other lusts of the flesh, 
 — sometimes this striving for freedom and 
 escape is asked to secure its freedom by 
 artificial methods, extraneous appliances, 
 as if we were to shut out of mind the 
 teaching of the analogue of nature, whereby 
 we perceive that nothing of life comes from 
 without. 
 
 The tree buttressed by extraneous sup- 
 ports is not thereby vitally increased in its 
 strength. We may prop up a building, be- 
 cause it is not vital ; but the tree, to grow 
 strong, must have strength at its roots, its 
 vitality must well up from within, as the 
 vital sap rushes through trunk and limb to 
 twig and leaf, and in that strength which 
 comes from within the tree its entire free- 
 dom is made possible and realized. This 
 everlasting analogue must be kept in mind 
 whenever the thought of man is in danger 
 of being deluded by false possibilities that 
 
282 PERSONALITY. 
 
 help, strength, support can come from with- 
 out. Environment may sometimes aid, but 
 may never give life. I may build round 
 the young sapling a wall to protect its in- 
 fant life, but that does not give life to the 
 tree. I may cover with glass the tender 
 shoot, and that may protect it from pelting 
 storm, driving rain, biting, cutting sleet ; 
 but that does not give life to the growth 
 which I am caring for. So there may be 
 many things to which we may give the name 
 environment, which may help and minister 
 to certain possibilities of realization, yet 
 the growth and strength must always come 
 from within. The appeal must ever be 
 made to the spiritual depths of the soul. 
 Let us do what we can in the way of re- 
 moving needless temptation ; but, in the 
 removing of temptation, let us always un- 
 derstand that this is not the coming of 
 life, — it is merely building a fence or wall 
 about the life, which may serve a protective 
 purpose, but no other. 
 
 Entering into the strait gate is through 
 the righteousness of a person. I have had 
 much to say — and I hope I may have 
 strength to say it again and again, often and 
 often, to the very end — of the personal 
 
ENTERING BY FAITH. 28$ 
 
 element as it has to do with our spiritual 
 life. I have called your thought to the 
 person of Christ, and this because the very- 
 nature of the striving is the realization of 
 the righteousness of God. I am conscious 
 that this is strong language. I understand 
 what it implies, — that we are sons of God, 
 parts of God. Will you misunderstand me 
 if I say that we are gods ? Christ said it. 
 And it seems to me indubitably, everlast- 
 ingly true that the end of this striving, the 
 destiny of it, the goal of it, is the realization 
 of the righteousness of God, that we are 
 made for this righteousness, that this right- 
 eousness is possible one day or other, some 
 time or other, somehow or other. Salva- 
 tion cannot be confined to a smaller signifi- 
 cance than this, — the entire escape and 
 freedom into the absolute realization of the 
 righteousness of God. Therefore, this en- 
 tering into the strait gate of righteousness, 
 of life (that is the apparent meaning ; it 
 needs no analysis, or exegesis, or elabora- 
 tion), must be through a person, through 
 the righteousness of a person. 
 
 It must be a living, vitalizing, and vital 
 faith, belief, trust in the righteous one, 
 Christ. So that justification by faith is 
 
284 PERSONALITY, 
 
 the entering into the being of Christ. It 
 is the striving and the entering. It is the 
 losing of the life in the life of another. It 
 is going into the being of another. It is 
 abiding in the being of another. It is be- 
 ing clothed by the life of another, and so 
 the righteousness of another. So that be- 
 ing justified by faith is not a judicial, fo- 
 rensic justification ; it is not a substituted 
 justification. That is impossible, unvital, 
 negative. But it is the actual being in 
 Christ. 
 
 Note how self, dwelling alone with itself, 
 is poverty. Note how sin is a violating of 
 soul-laws, — and soul-laws is only our way 
 of saying soul-manifestation ; strictly speak- 
 ing, there is no such thing as law, for law 
 is only the jotting down, the record, the 
 report of our observation of the processes 
 of nature, whether spiritual or physical, so 
 that the term law is at the best a term of 
 accommodation, — note how the violation 
 of soul-laws has always a cutting-off nature, 
 a separating, isolating nature, leaving the 
 soul standing alone in its beggarliness, its 
 poverty, its guilt, its shame. Then note 
 that a justification by faith, an entering 
 into righteousness, is by the self being lost 
 
ENTERING BY FAITH. 285 
 
 in the self of another who is worthy of it. 
 So that our life is hid with Christ in God ; 
 that is to say, he, being worthy of receiv- 
 ing us, his righteousness being whole right- 
 eousness as ours is fragmentary, — he, the 
 righteous one, being capable of receiving 
 us, worthy of our dwelling in him, is the 
 one in whom we live ; and being in Christ 
 is possessing riches. Oh, the unspeakable 
 riches of Christ ! 
 
 This faith, then, is the very enthronement 
 of life. It cannot be an arbitrary matter, as 
 he who should say, " It is an intellectual 
 process by which we assent to certain state- 
 ments, creeds, or dogmas." That is artifi- 
 cial, as if the sapling were to say to the tree, 
 " This is a tree. This tree grows, buds, 
 blossoms, bears fruit, refreshes the w T eary 
 and the hungry by its fruitage." That is 
 but assenting to certain truths which are 
 truisms. It intellectually apprehends this 
 unquestionable truth as to the tree. But 
 the sapling, to live, must live as the tree 
 lives. It must lose its life in the same 
 life-current that wells up within the trunk 
 and limbs, the vitalizing forces of the tree. 
 
 So that the faith which is accomplishing 
 righteousness in us is a faith that is not 
 
286 PERSONALITY. 
 
 conscious of its being faith at all. When 
 we are to walk in newness of life we are 
 to forget our own lives, forget even our 
 faith, and have our thoughts centred on 
 the life worthy of us. Nor must we look 
 down at the abyss over which our cautious 
 steps are bearing us, lest thus looking'. we 
 become conscious of ourselves, and slip- 
 ping pitch headlong, by reason of our real- 
 ization of our own self-consciousness. He 
 who thus values faith as faith has not 
 faith, because he has turned from Christ 
 to himself, from Christ to his own being, 
 his own nature. It is selfness asserting 
 itself, and thus driving out the possibility 
 of selflessness, for selfness is self-realiza- 
 tion in its unreal sense. Therefore, he 
 who is thinking most of his faith, either as 
 to its nicety of expression or as to the ex- 
 actitude of its utterance, or as to its power 
 by which it may accomplish certain results, 
 ■ — in whatsoever form this self-compla- 
 cency of a perfect faith presents itself as 
 being entitled to admiration and respect, 
 that very moment it ceases to be faith, 
 and becomes artificial, unreal, unvital, and 
 cannot speed the soul on toward the reali- 
 zation of its possibilities, toward the fulfill- 
 ment of the righteousness of God. 
 
ENTERING BY FAITH. 287 
 
 But when the soul is lost in Christ, lost 
 in an absolute thinking of Christ and a for- 
 getting of self, an absolute trust and faith 
 in the righteousness of God, then, plunged 
 beneath that flood of the blood of Christ, 
 — that is, the life, the vitalizing, energizing 
 force and power of the righteousness of 
 God as it comes to us in Christ, — it is 
 washed of its guilt, as the tree is washed 
 of its guilt when its enswathement is 
 stripped off and the new bark takes its 
 place. So we, disrobed of our sin and 
 transgression, are clothed upon by the 
 righteousness of God. 
 
 In the soul's onward movement toward 
 the goal not the universe can stay it, not 
 the power of man or angel can hinder or 
 let it, because now its life is lost in the 
 fullness of a life which is at one with God's ; 
 and the universe and all its powers, not 
 only not staying, not hindering it, but bid- 
 ding it " Godspeed," are ministering to 
 its progress and advancement. For it is 
 going the way of the universe. It is going 
 the way of righteousness, and in that going 
 it finds it is at one with him whose striv- 
 ing found realization and fulfillment when 
 in Gethsemane he strove, agonized, till he 
 
288 PERSONALITY. 
 
 could bring his will into absolute oneness 
 with the will of God and say, " Neverthe- 
 less not my will, but thine, be done." 
 
 For this you are born, to be free in the 
 freedom of the realization of the life of 
 Christ. This oneness with Christ as he 
 is one with God is your life. His life-blood 
 is the blood that pardons guilt, that clothes 
 the nakedness of shame. It is this faith 
 in him that washes the soul white and 
 clean, that brings new life into the para- 
 lyzed limbs, new flesh upon the leprous 
 frame, new power into the enervated, pros- 
 trated spiritual form. This crying out to 
 us to strive to enter the strait gate is the 
 calling to the great giant whom -God has 
 made for great things, and is the bidding 
 him, — " Son of man, arise, stand on thy 
 feet." 
 
 Oh, then, may we not strive, strive with 
 a great agonizing force and power, to enter 
 into the righteousness, into the life and 
 power of God, through Jesus Christ our 
 Lord! 
 
XVIII. 
 
 NO SEPARATION FROM THE LOVE 
 OF GOD. 
 
 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life . . . shall 
 
 be able to separate us from the love of God. — 
 
 Rom. viii. 38, 39. 
 
 8 November ; i8gi. 
 
XVIIL 
 
 NO SEPARATION FROM THE LOVE OF 
 GOD. 
 
 Who shall separate us from the love of 
 Christ ? Shall tribulation, distress, trans- 
 gression, famine, nakedness, the sword ? 
 For we are more than conquerors in all 
 these things through him that loved us, 
 because love is the greatest gift of God to 
 man. The capacity for receiving love, the 
 ability to express it, makes of man a crea- 
 tor; it brings him into oneness with the 
 creative forces of God, and he himself be- 
 comes filled with the creative power. 
 
 As heat is the sun in operation, so is 
 love God in manifestation ; and as nothing 
 in heaven or earth may shut out heat in 
 its operation, and so cut off the efficacy of 
 the sun, so here we have an analogue of 
 God in operation through love, for love is 
 not only " the sunlight of peace," it is the 
 very power of the sun, the very force of 
 God, ramifying in every direction all the 
 
292 PERSONALITY. 
 
 forms of life, and producing in creative 
 power oneness with God himself. 
 
 Am I not right, then, in being persuaded 
 that love is the greatest gift of God to 
 man, both in capacity and in expression, 
 the ability to receive, and the ability to 
 make manifest, the ability to throw wide 
 the portals of the heart and let in the 
 streams of God's eternal sunshine, his con- 
 tinued light of mercy and peace, — and 
 the ability to manifest from the impelling 
 power of the heart this same divine oper- 
 ation of love ? It is man's highest achieve- 
 ment, as it is the indication of his highest 
 glory, this reception of love, and this abil- 
 ity to express it. 
 
 When man has so succeeded in laying 
 bare the deepest recesses of his soul that 
 he may take in, in all its fullness, the vital 
 power of the love of God, and in something 
 like a similar fullness give expression to 
 it, then he has reached the sublimest 
 height of which he is capable ; then he 
 has justified his existence. For the first 
 moment in his life he has arisen to his feet 
 and stood there in all the dignity, majesty, 
 and sublimity of a son of man ; he stands 
 for the first time in his life a redeemed, 
 
NO SEPARATION, 293 
 
 liberated, free being; he has become one 
 with him who says : " I and the Father 
 are one." 
 
 What sublime sunlit heights are these 
 to which man may fly as a bird escaped 
 from the fowler ? What achievements are 
 these which shall bring man into creative 
 oneness with the Almighty Sun of right- 
 eousness, who manifests himself in life- 
 giving power, encircling the globe with his 
 creative force ? 
 
 Hence St. Paul says : " I am persuaded 
 of this love of God ; I am persuaded that 
 neither death, nor life, nor things present, 
 nor things to come, can separate me and 
 us, and all mankind, from the love of God 
 which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 
 
 Why, if a man were to have held before 
 him to-day, as in a silver cup, lined with 
 gold, all the rare precious gems the world 
 has so known as to give them names be- 
 cause of their great preciousness and value, 
 — if these were held out to him, the tangi- 
 ble riches of the world, they would be as 
 nothing in comparison with this creative 
 power of love that is held before him as 
 the possibility which shall make him at one 
 with God. 
 
294 PERSONALITY. 
 
 I magnify the power of love, because I 
 see it is the highest name we may give to 
 God ; because I see that one who is the 
 Son of Man, the elder brother of us all, 
 has exemplified that power, manifested 
 that power, is the embodiment of that 
 power, and is, in very truth, one with him, 
 the Father of all love. I magnify this 
 force, this potency, this creative energy 
 of love, to the utmost, because I see in it 
 the only way of man's justification, the 
 only way of man's expression of his entire 
 being ; because I see in it the only way of 
 escape from man's prison-house, the only 
 way of his entering into that large liberty 
 of the sons of God. I see in this energiz- 
 ing force, vitalizing power, man's highest 
 achievement, that which brings him into 
 oneness with Christ and with God. I 
 magnify this force because of the necessity 
 that lies upon every human soul to strive 
 after its reception, to strive endlessly after 
 its expression, to yearn with a great desire, 
 to be thus one with God. Neither death 
 nor life shall separate us from this love of 
 God, because it has a double manifesta- 
 tion. It is the capacity for loving on our 
 side, and it is the capacity for loving on 
 
NO SEPARATION . 295 
 
 God's side. Man has within him this 
 ability to love, to express his love, and 
 until he has acquired the power of mani- 
 festing that love, he is paralyzed in certain 
 functions of his soul, a great leprosy is 
 seizing the very life of his spiritual nature, 
 making useless their forces. There is, then, 
 the necessity on man's part of love, and 
 not death itself shall separate him from 
 this power of expressing love. There are 
 things that creep upon him, which are of 
 the nature of spiritual death, — malice, ma- 
 lignity, transgression, the desire of pulling 
 down the one who stands in his path, 
 hindering his progress and achievement, 
 the bitterness of discord, the fierceness of 
 cruelty unbridled and unchecked, the un- 
 forgiving, relentless spirit ; but even all 
 these shall not separate man from God's 
 love. They are shutting God out of man's 
 life, for while man is in this state of dis- 
 cord, in this state of malice, suffering hatred 
 to take possession of his soul, then he is, 
 in the very nature of things, shutting out 
 the capacity for the large expression of his 
 life, because he is shutting out his ability 
 to love God. No man can love God whom 
 he hath not seen, while hating his brother 
 
296 PERSONALITY. 
 
 whom he hath seen. No man can fill his 
 lungs with poison and pure air at the same 
 moment. No man can take hold of hatred, 
 unforgiveness, all these evil powers of the 
 soul which dwarf and belittle and starve it, 
 and at the same moment express in any 
 degree the fair possibilities of his spiritual 
 nature. For he is binding his spiritual 
 nature with the hard cords of malice, bind- 
 ing it hand and foot, so that it cannot rise 
 into the dignity of manhood — into one- 
 ness of sonship with God. He is bound 
 by hatred to death ! In a word, I wish I 
 could make you see that hatred is damna- 
 tion. 
 
 Oh, the necessity of forgiveness, and of 
 thus coming into the eternal presence of 
 God, where we may rest in abiding peace ! 
 But not even this spiritual death of ma- 
 lignity, of hatred, of malice, though it shut 
 God out of our hearts, can shut us out of 
 the infinite, tender, pitying, loving heart 
 of God. When you are most demonlike, 
 though your sin of hatred be as scarlet, 
 God cannot tear you from his heart. There 
 are heartstrings of infinite love that en- 
 circle you, arms of infinite pity that hold 
 you, hateful, sinful, perverted as you are, 
 
NO SEPARATION. 297 
 
 — arms that hold you in a never-yielding 
 grasp. 
 
 Nor yet can the spiritual death of your 
 sinful conduct separate you from God's 
 love. God loves on, though your own love 
 for him is destroyed by your sin. Run 
 through the category of past transgression, 
 and in every instance you must find that 
 sin drives out love. If I steal or bear false 
 witness against my neighbor, I am not lov- 
 ing, I am not vindicating my title to be a 
 son of man. But, though sin tears at the 
 soul-bands that bind me to the great heart 
 of God, so tears at them that they are, 
 seemingly, to snap ; though my actual 
 transgression tugs at the very anchor chains 
 which bind me to the rock of ages ; though 
 I am, as it were, tugged at as the moon 
 tugs at the tides, scattered hither and 
 thither up and down the " everlasting beach 
 of things ; " though thus in my sinning I 
 am, as it were, snatching to pull down the 
 lights in heaven, the stars of wisdom, and 
 bringing into my soul black, thick dark- 
 ness, obscuring the light of heaven itself ; 
 though thus in my sinning I am undermin- 
 ing my own integrity, doing violence to my 
 spiritual possibilities, driving out, crowd- 
 
298 PERSONALITY. 
 
 ing out love for God, yet not even this 
 spiritual death of actual transgression can 
 separate me from the love of my Father ! 
 
 " God ! Thou art love ! I build my faith on that ! 
 Even as I watch beside thy tortured child 
 Unconscious whose hot tears fall fast by him, 
 So doth thy right hand guide us through the world 
 Wherein we stumble." 
 
 If Jesus had never uttered any other 
 word than to give us the parable of the 
 prodigal son, he would have everlastingly 
 compelled our gratitude, to tell us that 
 though we are companioning with the 
 swine, yet, whensoever that moment of 
 self-realization shall come, and we come to 
 ourselves and take one step toward his for- 
 giving heart, then he will run and throw 
 his arms about our necks and enfold us in 
 his forgiving, pitying embrace, for nothing 
 can separate even a sinful heart and life 
 from this love of God. 
 
 Men are taking hold of riches, of power, 
 of invention, of attainment, of achieve- 
 ment ; we see the progress of the race in 
 civilization, of the individual in acquiring 
 powers, the multiplicity, the enlargement, 
 the widening scope and sphere of man's 
 activities ; but all these multiform phases 
 
NO SEPARATION. 299 
 
 of life often shut out the love of God ; and 
 man, in his prosperity, forgets mercy, gen- 
 erosity, kindness, pity, tenderness, helpful- 
 ness, fellowship, love. 
 
 Yes, the rich can enter the kingdom of 
 heaven, though burdened with great packs 
 of jewels and bent low with the load of 
 great acquisition. It is quite within the 
 limits of the possible. Rich men may en- 
 ter the kingdom of love and mercy and 
 pity and righteousness, the kingdom of 
 heaven, even as the overloaded pack mule 
 may squeeze through that narrow and la- 
 cerating pass of jagged rocks which is 
 known, because of its narrowness, as the 
 "Needle's Eye." Yet not even the dan- 
 ger of riches, the shutting-out power of 
 prosperity ; not even the dangers of spirit- 
 ual pride, which come by reason of man's 
 attainments and acquisitions, — not even 
 these soul-destroying forces, which make 
 a true spiritual life to seem almost shut 
 out of possible grasp, can separate us from 
 his love. 
 
 God's pruning hand will never forget in 
 love our prosperity. In his great love for 
 us he will not forget to cut us back. When 
 the proper moment comes, this rich bear- 
 
300 PERSONALITY. 
 
 ing vine hanging over the walls with great 
 purple clusters, this wealth, reputation, or 
 success, even these God will cut back, and 
 in the winepress we may alone tread out 
 the wine of life, till it becomes possible 
 for us to take the cup pressed out in grief 
 and sorrow and drink it gladly, cheerfully, 
 to the last drop, for it is the wine of God's 
 love which could not let us live longer with- 
 out him. Thus are we forced back upon 
 God. 
 
 Therefore was not St. Paul right when 
 he was persuaded that nothing could sepa- 
 rate us from the love of God which we 
 have in Christ Jesus our Lord ? Have we 
 not seen how necessary love is to^ save us 
 from malignity, from unforgiveness, from 
 malice ? How necessary love is to tear 
 away the prison bars which hatred has 
 made fast to hold in captivity our spiritual 
 lives ? Have we not seen the necessity of 
 love, the sharp knife of love, to cut the 
 withes that are binding the soul so that it 
 cannot escape to God ? How necessary 
 it is that we should love Christ! 
 
 For who is Christ ? He is the life of God 
 made manifest. He it is who has shown us 
 what man is, — " man in his birth, God in 
 
NO SEPARATION. 30I 
 
 his deathlessness ; " man in his weakness, 
 God in his capacity for living and loving. 
 Do we not owe gratitude to this Christ 
 who thus has shown us what man is, and 
 not only what man is, but has so exempli- 
 fied in himself all the forces of manhood 
 that he stands as the Son of Man ? And 
 when he stands as the perfect Son of Man, 
 the elder brother, he is showing us how 
 living on such Apennine heights brings us 
 where we may be illuminated and cheered 
 by the sun of God's love striking out clear 
 and warm from what had seemed to us a 
 black cloud of great darkness ; enabling us 
 to see that on such a height we are brought 
 into vital contact with the love of God, and 
 may be one with Christ, as he is one with 
 the Father. 
 
 When, therefore, in the oneness of that 
 relationship you receive this mighty power 
 of love, then in your new, vitalizing, life- 
 giving power you bless where before you 
 cursed, you exchange for the girdle knife 
 the branch of olive, you build up where 
 before you tore down, give life where 
 once you were sowing the seeds of death, 
 restore where once you destroyed. You 
 in your new power, like God, are bring- 
 
302 PERSONALITY. 
 
 ing peace on earth, good will to men. You 
 are bringing life in its fullness, — the life 
 which has saved you and is now saving your 
 brother also. 
 
 " I am persuaded, that neither death nor 
 life, angels, principalities, powers, things 
 present, things to come, nor any other crea- 
 ture shall be able to separate us from the 
 love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our 
 Lord." 
 
 u I know Thee, who hast kept my path, and made 
 Light for me in the darkness, tempering sorrow 
 So that it reached me like a solemn joy ; 
 It were too strange that I should doubt Thy love." 
 
 THE END, 
 
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