"HREEl QATfe ©H A^IJTE, Parkhurst i • ■ I A*** k «*. t&m v ■ ■ M* r, »*"""» ^H^ .,'../•' . ■I IP LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Shelf. .1?.3.T4 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 8S H ■ I • ■ & ■ Three Gates on a Side 3tn& <0tf>er Jbermong A M* BY CHARLES H. PARKHURST, D.D. PASTOR OF THE MADISON SQUARE CHURCH, NEW YORK Author of "The Blind Man's Creed," "The Pattern on the Mount" etc. \ ^ << Fleming H. Revell Company pubXigfat? of <£fcan0elicai Hiterature NEW YORK ' CHICAGO 30 Union Square, East 148 & 150 Madison Street iTHB LIBRARY OF CONGRBiS IWAtMlWOTOK -P3T4 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1891, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY, In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. All Rights Reserved. fji } 173 Macdougal Street, New York CONTENTS PAGE I. Three Gates On a Side, Rev. xxi: 13, 5 II. God is Spirit, John iv: 24, 19 III. The Nerve of Religious Sensation, Prov. xx: 27, . 35 IV. The Secret of Power, / Cor. iv: 20, 53 V. The Garden of the Lord, Gen. Hi: 8, 69 VI. Unconscious Faith, Gen. xxiv: 27, 84 VII. Doing, the Means of Knowing, Gen. xxiv: 27, . . 98 VIII. I Know Whom I Have Believed, II Tim. i: 12, . 113 IX. The Lord Is My Shepherd, Ps. xxiii: 1, .... 127 X. The Gadarene Preacher, Luke viii: 38, 39, ... 141 XL The Under Man, "Matt, xxv: 40, 157 XII. I Go A-Fishing, John xxi: 3, 171 XIII. How Much Is a Man Better Than a Sheep? Matt, xii: 12. 185 XIV. Partakers of the Divine Nature, // Peter i: 4, . 200 XV. Defensive Armor, Eph. vi: 13-16, 212 XVI. Christ Still Escaping from Entombment, Acts it: 24. 226 XVII. Eternal Life a Present Possession, John v: 24, . 241 XVIII. We Know in Part, / Cor, xiii: 9,10, 255 I m* * v* v* On the East Three Gates; On the North Three Gates; On the South Three Gates, and on the West Three Gates. — Rev. xxi:13. rj7HREE gates on each side of the celestial quad- rangle. So much as to the accessibility of the heavenly city. So that no one coming from the North need go around on to the South side in order to get in ; no one approaching from the East need go around on to the West side in order to get in. Wherever outside of the kingdom we may any of us happen to be standing, we are each of us close to some threshold. Three gates on a side. A good many of us here are not in the kingdom, perhaps ; but the assurance that there is not one such but has his foot even now close to some threshold creates the hope and inspires the faith that some such will this morning enter into the kingdom. It is in pur- suance of that end that we speak. Christ is himself gateway impersonated — what Scripture calls "open door." That fact is familiar; but our particular matter this morning is that he is not simply one open door to which we all of us have (5) THREE GATES ON A SIDE. to come in order to enter, but that he is himself a good many open doors, one of which is cut in the wall immediately in front of each of us to let us enter. Three gates in each wall. Christ is not only one gate — he is all the gates ; and his multiplicity matches our diversity. So that each man to be saved will be saved by his own particular Christ, and enter the kingdom through his own special, private portal. In reading the narrative of Christ's early dealings with the people he moved among, you have prob- ably remarked what a variety of note he struck in order to hit the music that was in each ear. The sick believed in him because he healed them ; the blind, because he gave them new eyes; the hungry, because he procured them bread ; the thirsty, because he made them wine ; the discouraged, because he brought them a new hope ; the wicked, because he forgave them. He conducted men to God, but he was all kinds of open doors for them to go through, and a separate door for each particular one of them to go through — like a mirror that answers for every face ; like an organ that sufficeth'for every tune. | And men have still their own special Christ. He is as various as the men are various that believe in him. We believe in the same Christ, and yet we have not the same belief in Christ ; like two men standing on the opposite side of a hill, who have a view of the same hill, but not the same view THREE GATES ON A SIDE. of the hill. We are in that respect like dif- ferent kinds of flowers growing out in the sun- shine ; one flower, when it is touched by white light, will extract from the white light one particular tint, another flower will extract another particular tint from the same white light. So, while we all, in a way, believe in Christ, we each believe in our own way ; and he is not the same to any two of us. If the question were to be passed around, " What think ye of Christ ?" no two, except as they answered in some one's else words, would return the same answer. No one statement is quite valid for two people ; just as you know that no one rainbow is quite good for two eyes; each eye has its own rainbow. Each man's own study of the Gospel, each man's own personal experience, extracts from the white light of revelation his own tint. So far as there is sincerity in the matter, there will be a great deal of individ- uality in the matter. This leads on to say that Christ, as you apprehend him, not as I apprehend him, not as your neighbor apprehends him, but Christ as you apprehend him, is your Christ — is your open door. You, probably, have some ideas about him that are quite definite. Then behind those ideas are others that stretch back into the dim distance along a long line of perspective. But there is some one conception of him (perhaps more than one) which you have, that is defined enough so that you could think it out to yourself. THREE GATES ON A SIDE. You might even be able to tell it aloud. Possibly you could make a written statement of it that would look clear and read intelligibly. The particular thought you may have of him may be that he is the Son of God ; or that he is the Son of man ; or that he is the teacher of a new system of morality ; or that he is the personification of the spirit of self-sacri- fice ; or that he is a fountain of comfort or a well- spring of strength. Some one thing or other, prob- ably, he means to you in a peculiar way. There is some one point at which he touches you ; some one point where his meaning as a person is specially gathered. What this point will be will depend a good deal upon the way in which you have been educated — considerably upon your own tempera- ment and condition. If we are in any particular distress, Christ will be likely, first of all, to mean to us the Being who can relieve that distress ; just as to the blind people in Galilee he meant, first of all, the restorer of sight ; just as he means to the poor inebriates down in our Mission, the Power who saves a man from his appetites. We dress him in a garb woven out of our necessities. Human necessities are the cleft into which the wedge of the Gospel strikes. But whether due to difference in the way in which we have been taught, or to difference in the way we are conditioned, there is this difference in the aspect which Christ wears to us ; and that is the main point THREE GATES ON A SIDE. we have to do with here. My Christ is not exactly your Christ ; and I have got to be saved by my Christ, and you have got to be saved by yours. Doubtless as we come to know him better, and to enter more deeply into the intimacies of his character and spirit, our conceptions of him will have more and more in common, and we shall draw nearer and nearer to each other in our views and experience of him. It would be like vessels running from different ports on this side of the Atlantic to a common port — say Liv- erpool — on the other side of the Atlantic. One ves- sel sails out from Boston, another from New York, and so from different points along down the coast to Savannah. Their routes may lie a good ways apart to begin with, and so, for 1500 or 2000 knots after they get out to sea ; but as they approach Liverpool their lines of travel more and more thicken up, till by the time they pass Holyhead, they are all run- ning substantially the same course, and you could not judge from their bearings but what they all hailed from Boston, or all hailed from Savannah, or even from Maracaibo or Rio. There is no point on the coast from which a vessel cannot easily reach the highway of transatlantic travel, provided only it heaves anchor and keeps its nose oceanwards. So, when we get into the heart of the heavenly city we may be very closely neighbored in our views and ex- periences, and none the less so from having first entered the city through gates that lie toward dif- 10 THREE GATES ON A SIDE. ferent points of the compass or at opposite angles of the celestial metropolis. But Christ is gateway ; and your Christ (I speak now particularly to any one of you that has never entered into the kingdom) your Christ — that is to say, the particular view you have of Christ — is your gate. Your gate may be on the opposite side of the city from what mine is — clear off at the northeast corner, perhaps. If you were to state your idea of Christ, you might not find one officer of this church or one member of this church that would agree with you. That need not make any difference. It is a part of the goodness and wisdom of the Lord that gates have been widely and generously distributed for the convenience of travelers and strangers. It is not nec- essary for you to spend the better part of your life per- ambulating town bounds to find the door that some eminent saint or other of the old or new church went in at. Three gates on a side. The Lord is nigh unto them that call upon him. Christ, in the conception you already have of him, is your gate. There is no traveling for you to do in order to reach the gate ; no hunting necessary in order to find it. No wait- ing requisite. The Bible would not say, " Choose ye this day," if there were anything to wait for. Such words as " now" and " to-day" would have to be left out if the gate were anywhere but directly in front of you. If you needed to know more about the matter than you do now, or to have a more cor- THREE GATES ON A SIDE. 11 rect or thorough idea of Christ and the doctrines of redemption than you possess already, then we should have to bid men take Christ as soon as they could get some of their difficulties cleared up, or as soon as they had made themselves better acquainted with the New Testament. We could not say, " Come to-day/* but try and be ready to come next Sabbath or next week, or week after next. The biblical idea of " to-day " just matches this apocalyptic idea of three gates on a side — every man's gate close to him. The object of this is not to encourage the notion that it makes no difference how little idea a man has of Christ. Our only point is that the veriest scin- tilla of an idea, if made available, is enough to begin with. Supposing in a dark, starless night you be- come lost in the woods. The glimmer of a distant candle reaches your eye and you are not lost any longer. There may not be light enough about it to show you where you are, but you are not lost any longer, because there is light enough about it to give you a direction. You do not sit down on an old log and say, If it were an electric light or a bonfire I would avail myself of it. Perhaps it is a bonfire made obscure by foliage or by distance. But the size of the light will make no difference with your feeling that you are not lost any more, because that light shows you that your foot is on the threshold of re- covery. That light is doorway to recovery, and 12 THREE GATES ON A SIDE. whether it is a big door or a little door makes no difference, provided only you go through the doof and quit calculating the arithmetic proportions of the casing. Any smallest, feeblest conception you may have of Christ, will answer every purpose, if only you will treat it in the same way that you would treat what appeared to be the glimmer of a distant candle, fall- ing upon your eye by night, in the midst of a black forest. Light is a sure guide, because, unlike sound, it goes in straight lines. If you were to strike the tired, diminished end of a sunbeam a million million miles from the sun, you are on the certain track of the sun the instant you begin treading upwards the glimmer- ing highway that that sunbeam spreads out for you. And wherever, and howsoever far out, upon the cir- cumference of Christ's character you take your position and begin threading inward any one of its radiating lines, you are moving by a line as straight as a sunbeam toward the heart and center of the en- tire matter. One radius is about as good as another for finding the center. Each of the twelve gates thresholded a main avenue of the heavenly Jerusa- lem. In conference with such as come to see me with reference to the matter of uniting with the Church, it is my habit to ask them what, in their judgment, it is to be a Christian. Of course the question re- ceives a wide variety of answers, but those answers THREE GATES ON A SIDE. 13 usually have wrapped up in them (for this is the gate that men more commonly enter by), as a kernel, this idea, that to be a Christian is to be as nearly as we can in our daily life what Christ would have us be. That is probably with most of us our initial conception ; and what the majority of people think, is apt to have in it a good deal of truth. When the Disciples were bidden by Christ to follow him, clearly that meant to them at the outset little more than patterning their lives after his, going where he went and doing as he did. There was where they first took hold of the matter. Anything like mere imitation seems mostly to disappear from their life in its later manifestations and further developments, but it was not much but imitation to begin with. They commenced by obeying him and trying to be like him. Christ's early instruction to them was in this line. Now it must needs be said that this obediently doing what God in Christ enjoins upon us, important and indispensable as it, of course, is, is by no manner of means the best and most distinct- ive part of the Christian matter. At the same time, there are two things to be said about it that are practical and that are in line with our morning's thought. The first is, that while studiously doing as Christ bids us is not the best part of the Lord's matter, it is singulary educating, and contributes with wonder- ful facility to initiate us into the best part of the 14 THREE GATES ON A SIDE. Lord's matter. Studious obedience, scrupulous pat- terning after a model, is the outer court of almost every temple of acquisition that a man can enter. It is a very small part of the matter of skilled and graceful chirography to sit down before a copy-book and painstakingly imitate the strokes there drawn for us to pattern after ; but there is no way of learning to write with easy grace but by the tuition of painstaking imitation. There is no liberty that has not to be acquired by obeying. There is a good deal of servility in studying to be able to state in exact phraseology the thoughts of the master minds that have lived and worked before us ; but till we have learned with precision to think the thoughts of other men after them, we do not know how to think our own thoughts for ourselves. And it is still more true when you pass from the area of mechanics and art into that of ethics, and free spirit. There is no way by which a child can so learn to know the best and deepest that is in his own father as by obeying him. If the wills are coincident everything else becomes a kind of com- mon property. If two strings vibrate at the same rate, one may be a good deal longer than the other, but they will sound the same tone. Which is what Christ in one instance says of himself — " My judg- ment is just because I seek not mine own will but the will of him that sent me :" certain that he told God's truth because he had no will separate from THREE GATES ON A SIDE. 15 God's will. The short string told the same story as the long string because the two vibrated with one beat. Obedience, the secret of spiritual vision ; loyalty to the word of Christ, the quickest avenue into the mystery of Christ. The common habit is to put divine mysteries too early in the curriculum. A good many people stand aloof from Christ because they are not clear on the matter of his divinity. There is not much use in trying to believe in the divinity of Christ except as that belief comes as the fruitage of loyalty to Christ. You will know him as fast as you obey him. Ordering our lives after his will afford us the best evidences of Christianity. " If any man will do his will he shall know the doc- trine whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself." That is one point ; obedience to Christ is only gateway so far as relates to the full meaning of Christ and of Christian life, but it is gateway that portals one of the central avenues conducting di- rectly to meanings that are more essential and com- plete. The other point is that this matter of taking Christ's commands and doing them is not only gate- way, but gateway that opens itself immediately in our face. We have not to search around in order to find it. The door is directly in front of us. Christ's ad- monitions as to the way we are to deal with ourselves and with each other and with God, address them- 16 THREE GATES ON A SIDE. selves to us authoritatively. Argument has no par- ticular relevancy to them. Proof neither helps nor hinders them. They carry their own conviction. The lessons he gives us as to the kind of thoughts we should think, the sort of words we should speak, the ways of forbearance and loving kindness in which we should carry ourselves toward our neigh- bors — all these things men listen to respectfully and approvingly when read. There is no disposition to quarrel about them. We think so perfectly alike about them that there is no point upon which a quarrel could pin itself. And not only is that true of people that are grown, but it is as true of the children. A child can begin to be a Christian when he is ten as well as when he is fifteen or twenty. To such a child that asked me how he or she could begin to be a Christian, I would say — read every day out of the Gospel two or three verses of what Christ said and did ; then kneel down and ask God to help you to be like Christ in your words and deeds ; then go out into the midst of your play or your study or your work, and do as nearly as you can what you asked God to help you to do. And what is good for a child in this matter is good for an adult, for we are all of us children with some little difference in our years. Is there probably any one here, even of those who do not quite consider themselves Christians, who would not think it wise to THREE GATES ON A SIDE. 17 preface each day by reminding himself of some les- son conveyed by the word or example of Christ, and then asking from God the strength needed in order to make that lesson efficient in his own daily walk ? I am not saying that that is the only way to become a Christian, but only that it is one w 7 ay ; and that it is a way that some of you would feel to be so free from objections that, if you chose, you could adopt it without any more waiting, finding nothing in it which your conscience would disapprove, or to which your judgment would take exception : which is only another way of saying that that is a thresh- old of entrance into the heavenly kingdom — a threshold that lies immediately at your feet ; no seeking necessary ; no hunting required ; no philo- sophic doubts so far forth, needing to be resolved. Up to this point it is a matter involving no theologi- cal embarrassment, no intellectual complication. We have reduced it to the same simple terms with which it addressed itself to the Lord's first followers: by the help of God reduplicating in our own sphere the life of Christ. To every one here who believes in that, but who may be out of the kingdom, that, dear friend, is your open door into the kingdom. Your foot is just now on the threshold. Your eye is in line with the central light of the celestial city. Will you by the help of God make Christ, as he is revealed in the Gospel, the pattern of your life? 18 THREE GATES ON A SIDE. There is no place left for argument. There are in that no mental difficulties to clear up, no doctrinal haze to brush away. Will you by the help of God make Christ, as he is revealed in the Gospel, the pattern of your life ? You stand at the open gate. In front of you is the celestial city. II ^ F* ** r* God Is Spirit.— John iv ; &£. OD is spirit — which is the reading of the new revision, as given in the margin. Not a spirit; not one out of many spririts ; not one of a class. "A" is indefinite, but not nearly so indefinite as when there is no "A." That little word, small as it is, gives tired mind something against which it likes to lean a little of its weight ; but if erased, thought is left to its own helplessness and bewilderment ; which is healthy — sometimes. There are certain results which can never be attained, either in our mental or religious discipline, except as we once in a while bravely stand up in front of a truth that shows to us no edge and no center. God is spirit. So worded, the text yields an idea that is without nucleus and without selvedge. No shining little peg which we can confidently wind our small thoughts around ; no sloping beach upon which we can shove our small ideas out of reach of the tide and the surf. It is far more a forest to lose ourselves in than one in which to fell timber and (19) 20 THREE GATES ON A SIDE. build us a little hut of opinion, or gather chips to kindle us a fire and cook us a little mess of particu- lar doctrine. God is spirit.* With this word of the Lord we commence another season's study of truth and pur- suit after holiness. It is with intention we have prefaced our year's work with a truth comprehensive enough to include everything that can justly be said here between now and next summer. This is the widest, roomiest thing anywhere told us of God. Our text gives us, then, space to float about in with- out fear of jostling or fouling one another. There is comfort and security always in thinking and feel- ing along the arc of great circles. The heavens are administered upon broad orbits, hence their exemption from disaster and collision. And, per- haps, also in thinking as in ocean sailing, it is following great circles that brings us most quickly to our destination. No doubt we have to have our little particular thoughts about matters of religion and morals, exactly as about business and affairs. So we have to have our little houses, but we take pains so to build them up and out from the firmament beneath as to have them participate in the solidity of that firmament ; and so we have to have our little halls and chambers, but we take care so to window them up into the firmament overhead as that they shall ^Delivered the first Sabbath after the summer vacation of 1887. GOD IS SPIRIT. 21 share in the brightness and freshness of that firma- ment and become part of the vastness that is frontiered by nothing nearer than the stars. The smallest blossom shows a world-beauty, but that is because it is first of all an outcome from the world, and has sucked up world-wideness and meaning through its intertwined roots. Everything is a failure that does not begin large. That holds everywhere. Small matters do not become great by prolonged processes of addition. A heap of small notions cannot be so fused together as to become one great notion. Greatness at best is not so much a matter of quantity as of quality ; as the sparkle of the smallest diamond is congener with that of the Orloff, Regent or Koh-i-noor. Knowing many matters is not wisdom, and piling up a lot of little ideas, cob-house fashion, will not give us a great, wealthy theology, any more than the Postdiluvians could lift themselves into heaven by piling up bricks in the plain of Shinar. How high you can carry the apex of your pyra- mid will depend upon how much base you give to it. And in these days, when there is so loud and inces- sant a demand for generous ethics and broad theol- ogy, let it be frankly said that no particular ideas that we may have of God or men or morals can possess abiding worth that do not in the last analysis connect back in a living way with the massive breadth of underlying truth that is eternal. We 22 THREE GATES ON A SIDE. believe with all our might in a liberal theology, but not in any such liberal theology as a small man unconscious of or indifferent to the eternal verities can sit down in his study or his office or his parlor and extemporize. Liberal theology, deserving the name, is not obtainable by soaking crusts of Calvin- ism till they are softened to a mush of concession or drawn out into a watery gruel of latitudinarianism ; nor by whittling down an old dogma of the West- minster Assembly till it is a peg attenuated enough to fit into the small hole of personal preference and convenience. Liberal theology, no less than any other theology, can derive its worth and dignity only from the immensity and living energy of the basal truths of God with which it is vitalized and irradiated, the same as the smallest rose-petal glows only with the luster that is a quotation from the sun, and the most delicate rose-pistil is held erect by the cosmic energy of all the stars. Hence, notwithstanding — and not only that, but just because #/— the popular insistence upon what is practical and easy and congenial in theology and pulpit deliverances, arises the necessity of con- ferring often with the massive fundamentals of our religion and invigorating our hearts and saturating our thoughts with the life-energy of divine truth forever inherent in them, that so our powers of feel- ing and of reason may have a safe and sure trend given them, and we be secured against the danger of deck- GOD IS SPIRIT. 23 ing out our theology with leaves and flowers that stand in no natural relation with the soil of the heavenly Word, and take hue and shape at no im- pulse that comes down to us from what is divine overhead or that rises up to us from what is eter- nal beneath. And, in passing, it lies near by to remark the inspiration that a young or otherwise undisciplined mind can draw from conference with these great unfathomed and unmargined truths of God. No material is offered which more swiftly goes to com- pose the structure of personal breadth and stamina. The entrance of such thoughts into the mind stimu- lates its energies and enhances its resources, some- thing as the entering of a great master-mind into a community works magically and baptismally upon all the members of that community. Viewed simply as a matter of mental discipline there is nothing which has so ministered to the possibilities of the intellect as the science of the great things of God. No other theme wakens so deep echoes or arouses to such gropings, searchings and findings. And, as I say, I never cease marveling how accessible such truths as that of our text are to young or otherwise undisciplined minds. We never need be afraid of saying to a child or a barbarian a great thing about God. Mind comes into being religiously endowed. As soon as a plant gets through the crust of the ground it begins to grow up. Every man has a 24 THREE GATES ON A SIDE. genius for the apprehension of divine things. The cords are all drawn and tuned upon which the mar- velous song is to be played. We found it in the chapter read this morning in Romans, where we are told that mind is divinely constructed with a capac- ity for recognizing divine things, appreciating them as such. You adjust your clock to keep time with the sun. We are adjusted to keep time with the sun. It was just to a poor, unschooled water-bearer that this truth of our text was spoken. We need to remember that. The most difficult thing that could be told her, and yet Christ judged her equal to the lesson. It is curious to notice how soon she showed signs of believing in him ; and we may be sure that her whole life was changed, not because he lectured her on the mischiefs and the grossness of her life (and how gross it was is evident enough) but be- cause he let into her seeing eye a vision of the majesty and glory of God. The mind is made for just this. There is a spirit in man and the inspira- tion of the Almighty giveth them understanding. It is well enough to prick men's consciences, but a wounded conscience shows marvelous recuperative powers. The pulpit needs to preach against particular sin, but needs also to remember that Christ's hint at the adulterous relations in which the Samaritan woman was living was followed up by a discourse that left her thoughts centered not upon herself, nor her GOD IS SPIRIT. 25 paramour, nor her sin, but upon her unspeakable God. Childhood, ignorance, is no bar to religious perceptions or intuitions. Theology is easier than astronomy or geology ; for we are more nearly akin to the Almighty than we are to the stars or the rocks. The Bible is God's breath whispering to the soul of man his own unconscious secrets. Even without the intervention of reasoning or of logic — and sometimes better without it than with it — the things of God are to the mind a presence and a power ; something as we can draw down a great inspiration from the mountains and the constella- tions, even though we may never have learned the series of geological strata or been taught the laws of Kepler. Only a nice analysis will yield up the chemical elements of the air, but even a coarse string hung in the casement will tremble before the wind and in aeolian music utter the wind's deepest meaning and longing, and even a savage will bend to the singing string a listening ear, and the child find the music in the air becoming in his own heart a gladness, and upon his own lips a song. This unmargined and unfathomed exhibit of God as we have it in our text, is furthermore important and to our instant and constant advantage because a great, wide, profound sense of God in his un- discriminated unity is a necessary preliminary to any safe and helpful estimate of him in the more di- versified character under which he has evinced him- 26 THREE GATES ON A SIDE. self in later revelation. We believe in Christ, cer- tainly, but we must be thorough and say that faith in Christ is not the beginning of the matter. Faith in the //^-incarnated God logically antedates and is fundamental to faith in God incarnate. God is the temple ; Christ is the vestibule through which we have access to the interior of the temple. We cannot fully enter into the temple's glorious interior except by availing ourselves of the vestibule, but. we shall never put foot inside of the vestibule for the pur- pose of entrance till we have first the profound as- surance of a temple into which the vestibule con- ducts. We may contemplate that temple only in the massive proportions which it exhibits outwardly, its solemn vastness, its cold and distant spires, the shaded, meaningless shapes, painted from within in bright, glowing colors upon the window-lights ; but if it is the vestibule that draws us near to the temple in the second instance, it is not till the temple has first drawn us near to the vestibule in the first in- stance. It is as John records Christ as saying : " No man can come to me except the Father draw him." Man believes first of all in God. Philip spake the heart of man universal when he said: "Shew us the Father and it sufficeth us." While it is true that Christ reveals God, it is antecedently true that only God reveals Christ. Only the sun makes visible the window through which we look sunwards. Only the sun makes available the telescope by which we study GOD IS SPIRIT. 27 the sun. God is more fundamental than Christ. That is a doctrine taught at Princeton. We are hearing in certain quarters a good deal about a Christo-centric theology, a theology that affects to group itself exclusively around Christ. Such phras- ing is plausible and is calculated to tickle an ortho- dox ear ; but the phrase is a good deal of it sophis- try, and what of it is not sophistry is cant. It was along this line precisely that the lamented Hodge of Princeton was speaking shortly before his death, when he said : "All theology must be Theocentric, and a great deal of confusion of thought arises from substituting words for thoughts in the pious claim in vogue now-a-days that all theology must be grouped Christo-centrically. ,, Says St. Paul: "The head of every man is Christ, and the head of Christ is God." And he says also in Corinthians: "When all things shall be subdued unto the Son, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all." We can certainly have no narrow, selfish object in representing God as more fundamental than Christ, any more than could Archibald Hodge in the passage just quoted, unless a supreme ambition to know and state things as they are be deemed narrow and sel- fish. But Theology is one thing, and Christology is another. And it is not because Christ signifies so lit- tle to me, but because he signifies so much, that I have the impulse and the courage to push this. But 28 THREE GATES ON A SIDE. a correct knowledge of relations, divine as well as human, hinges upon standpoint. A thing is not known until it is known right. Relations cannot be appreciated till you stand where relations can be squarely and distinctly beheld. There is only one outlook which a man can occupy in order to grasp the truth of the solar system ; and therefore there was no just science of the solar system till Coper- nicus. You cannot grasp the topography of a re- gion of country till you reach a standpoint which uncovers to you the physical axis around which its hills, valleys and rivers are organized and its moun- tains co-ordinated. This illustrates the matter in hand. Theology is greater than Christology and contains it. There is a great deal in religion besides the Son of God, and a great deal that is logically funda- mental to him. The one living, unfleshed, undivided and undistinguished God-spirit is the basis of the whole theological pyramid, the root of the entire theological tree ; and your Christian superstructure can rise no higher than your theistic base runs deep. You can be only as sound a trinitarian as you are first profound a monotheist. A keen sense of God in his oneness is the only condition upon which a man ought ever to venture to be a trinitarian, even as it is the only bond strong enough to keep the mani- foldness that is in God from splitting apart into competitive sections, and restrain trinitarianism from GOD IS SPIRIT. 29 becoming only a churchy name for baptized polythe- ism. I wish that we were all Christians, and felt through and through the divineness that comes near to us in the person and life of God's Son, Jesus Christ. But even in the same instant, I deprecate the language we are so likely, some of us, to use of those who believe in God and try to serve him, but have no distinct conviction as to the nature of Jesus Christ. What I mean is, that we cannot afford to say of a man that he is nothing but a theist. It is a great thing to be able to speak from the heart just the first four words of the Apostles' Creed, even if we have to stop there. The Jews were nothing but theists. Great Abraham — the friend of God — was nothing but a theist ; Moses, Samuel, Elijah, David — nothing but theists. They were not unitarians because they did not deny the threefoldness of God, and unitarians do. But not any more were they trinitarians, because they knew nothing about the threefoldness of God, and trinitarians do. But although nothing but theists, their faith in the great God-spirit was a joy to the Almighty and salvation to their own souls ; they laid wide the foundations of the future, unconsciously prepared the highway for the coming of the Redeemer, and are to-day, in part, the strong shoulders upon which is upborne our own blessed era of a Father reconciled, a Son become flesh and dwelling among us and a Holy Spirit de- scending in Pentecostal baptism. 30 THREE GATES ON A SIDE. Let me go on still a little farther and say, that however jealous we maybe of evangelical truth, and however profoundly we may believe in the divinity of Christ, God manifest in the flesh is deity shorn of a portion of its divine attributes, so far at least as the actual exercise of those attributes is concerned, and no man can limit his gaze to the scope of the divine man of Galilee with any just expectation of fostering in his own mind and life a conception and experience of God in the fullness and completeness of his divine character. In the historic Christ we see God under self-imposed limitations. It is some- thing as in the case of a father taking short steps to keep pace with his little child. He is an adult all the same, but for the instant makes a child revela- tion of himself for the sake of his child. St. Paul expresses this truth when, in speaking of the incar- nation, he says in the Second of Philippians (using now the phrasing of the new revision, which is both more accurate and more graphic) : " Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of man." " He emptied himself ! " — that is the expression I want you should let stick in your memories. You cannot see the sun except through smoked glass, Jt is quite like what every man has to do in all hia GOD IS SPIRIT. 31 efforts to bless those that are farther down than he. Self-repression is a part of the key to all successful ministration. In teaching an ignorant child, you take care not to let him see all your wisdom ; in aid- ing a poor man you take care not to let him feel all your wealth ; in becoming limbs to a paralytic you sere careful not to betray all the fullness and exuber- ance of your own physical vigor. Christ is God manifest in the flesh, but he is at the same time God concealed in the flesh, God " emptied." And espe- cially is there in him the repression of those features of deity that challenge the awe of the worshipper, and stir in him emotions of God's supernal majesty, ineffable glory and power. A smoked glass held before the sun lets through only a part of the sun's rays, and those only of a particular hue. So incar- nation is the smoked glass through which we behold the veritable God to be sure, but with most of the divine rays intercepted except those of Godly tend- erness and love. Other attributes can be shown in other ways : " The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork." These illustrations have not been used for the pur- pose of simplifying the doctrine of incarnation — although they may be of some service in that way — but for the purpose of illustrating the truth, that while in the historic Christ there dwelt all the full- ness of the Godhead bodily, it was no purpose of his to let us find and feel in him all the fullness of the 32 THREE GATES ON A SIDE. Godhead bodily. Godhead that has emptied itself, suppressed itself, is not Godhead that shows God to us in all the round completeness of his supernal per- fection. And here suggests itself one of the ele- ments of weakness in current religious knowledge and experience ; not that we walk too closely with Christ, or that Christ means too much to us, but that we are not diligently supplementing the knowl- edge of God's love to us as Christ reveals it, with the knowledge of God's crushing attributes of all- power and everlastingness, filling all space and time, from everlasting to everlasting, before the morning stars, mightier than the noise of many waters, sitting upon the circle of the earth, holding the stars in his hand. These things we do not find and cannot feel in converse or communion with the tired Nazarene sitting on Jacob's well, the tearful Nazarene weeping over Jerusalem, or the dying Nazarene bleeding upon the cross. All the way through from Bethlehem to Olivet you see the pressure of the bonds of voluntary self-limitation. There are a hundred notes in the gamut of God's perfection that are dumb if you let all your religious thought terminate in the " man of sor- rows " and deity " emptied." God is spirit. We come back to the words of the now sainted Princetonian : " The z/7z-incarnate God must be more fundamental than the incarnate God." The supreme necessity of the human soul, intel- lectually, morally and spiritually, is to know God. GOD IS SPIRIT. 33 To this end we will use incarnation with the pur- pose for which it was divinely intended, and gather the blessed lesson of God's infinite tenderness ; but we will remember that there is infinitely much in God which it was no part of God-incarnate's purpose to embody; infinitely much without which even infinite tenderness would be of little account. God is more and greater than even his love. We will walk with Christ, but we will walk with our own consciences too. We will stand at the foot of the Cross on Calvary, but we will walk also amid the cold, grey shadows thrown down from the old Ara- bian mountain of the law. We will search after God in the New Testament scriptures, but we will find him also in the perhaps harder passages, and cer- tainly colder and more towering imagery of the old Bible of the Hebrews ; we will come close to him in the volume of his grace, but we w T ill bow ourselves before him in chastened reverence as he speaks down to us from out the oldest of all inspired scrip- tures, the hills, the forests and the solemn stars. We have gained vastly over the Jews in our appre- hension of the love of God, but we have fallen far behind the Jews in our appreciation of God's glory and unspeakable majesty. We have found the Father but we have lost much of the King. Be- cause we have learned that God can become man, we have almost ventured to think that God is man, and are permitting ourselves to approach him with 34 THREE GATES ON A SIDE. almost that easy, flippant familiarity with wh.ich friend confers with equal friend ; to carry ourselves toward his holy and distinct commands with some- thing of that careless indifference with which a spoiled child treats the wishes of a foolish and dot- ing grandfather, and even to enter his hallowed courts or bow in secret worship with less of humil- ity, reverence and true piety than that with which the Catholic bends before the virgin mother, or the pagan sacrifices to his gods of wood and stone. God is spirit. May it be one of the results of our work and association together this year that the great God-spirit shall mean more to us in our daily thought and act ; that he shall become a larger ele- ment in our theology, make out a more conspicuous factor in our plans and hopes for the life now and the life to come, be the deep basal note undergo- ing all the diversified harmony of our lives, the great holy gracious Presence pervading all our experience, urging us to duty, sweetening our lives, hallowing our worship. Ill ©ft* ^Levne of gUIigtatt* *£jm#ati