SPIRITUAL VALUES
A 1,097,055
WM. W. GUTH
.
1
.
T
.
.
.
.
1
hii.
.
-
-
-
;
.
.
12
1
ve
NII
.
-
.
...
i
.
.
-...
-
os
iii
3
...
.
i
.
.:.
.
:
i.
:':.
-
.
".:.
!!!!!

PE
puw
UKUL
1837
Dudung!
hah
KIINNITINUM SI
SCIE
."
ARTES
:
LIBRARY VERITAS OF THE
NIVERSITY OF MICHY
OF MICHIGAN
YO
H THIMINIMALISITHULINIAI
3110 IllIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
.
SOC.004001101000QOOOOOOOOOOOOO
HOIDUL
kovas
W
..".
SED
Guinn Minninunuoluntatunnittlioni1181AOWANNINUNDAIHDAnointitain titistiintuntuninni
2
1. OUKIS P
COC
NINJA.SI
UN
MAM NAW
A
TAKEN
WS
ncUMS
ODYANSYA'
AMITGYVEZEPT
W MURAHVATIIVILHLUTIR
enHULIHANOUKOnin mor
pocow
WOHNUIDARITIIN11111111101.: NTT
MULTILININ
TITUTIN UNLILIHTIM
e n
grunnumPIRAMIDA pressure you are mann
TOPAILUT
arar
d
SON MANA-
TO
S VR
Ria
A.:
,
BJ
1581
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
By
\
WILLIAM W. GUTH,
President Oollege of
the Pacific.
Faith is an experiment which
ends in an experience.-Inge.
Cincinnati:
JENNINGS AND GRAHAM.
New York:
EATON AND MAINS.
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
JENNINGS AND GRAHAM,
To
My Parents
FROM WHOM I RECEIVED
MY
FIRST KNOWLEDGE
OF
SPIRITUAL VALUES
374233
PREFACE.
THE real values of life are spiritual.
Every age seems to be materialistic in
tendency. But this is an indication on the
surface and does not represent the deeper
conditions of human striving. Each era
of civilization has had its ebb and flow of
spiritual endeavor. But there have always
been heroic souls in every step of progress
who stemmed the onrush of the material-
istic. The flood-tide of faith has always
returned. On this tide peoples and nations
have gone forward.
So in the individual life there is the fluc-
tuation of spiritual desire and effort. It
would seem at times that individual men
had a surfeit of spirituality and deliber-
ately turned to the materialistic. But the
sea of faith in the human soul does not go
out forever. It returns. And on the full
ocean of the spiritual man really rides.
PREFACE.
As each age has its great soul to bring men
back and hold them to faith, so each in-
dividual has an impulse which keeps him
in the stream of the eternal. In the strug-
gles of life we are only too truly brought
in touch with the materialistic. But our
calmer moods recall and establish the spir-
itual. All men covet inward peace. In
this desire they are spiritual far more than
they appreciate, and if they are true to
their religious instincts, they actualize
spirituality even in their unconscious
yearning for the good and abiding.
Because we seem to be hurried on in the
tide of the materialistic it is well to empha-
size strongly the presence and the impor-
tance of the spiritual. Any serious attempt
to do this ought to add to the hope and
constancy of human effort to realize the
worthy. Young men and women, especially,
should have the deeper aspects of life con-
tinually set before them. They are inter-
ested in the fundamental truths. Skep-
ticism does not represent their real attitude
PREFACE.
to things eternal. They are unwilling
rather than intentional doubters. They are
often indifferent, it is true, to spiritual
needs, but this fact is not so discouraging
faith of the fathers is still a living faith,
and are far more ready to accept than re-
ject this faith. They demand, however,
that it be put into new forms and be in-
terpreted in terms of to-day.
To emphasize the vital nature of the
spiritual is the purpose of the following
essays. Stress is placed in each essay
upon the deeper and abiding aspects of life.
Further than in this stress no especial con-
secutiveness of thought is claimed for the
essays. They are published with the hope
of adding to the material which helps to
create and strengthen faith.
WILLIAM W. GUTH.
San José, Cal., January 21, 1912.
CONTENTS.
EACE
I. “SEEK YE My Face,” - - - 13
II. GIVING WHAT WE HAVE, -
III. THE PERILS OF POPULARITY, .
IV. LIMITING GOD, - - -
V. PEACE WITHIN, - - - - 52
VI. TRANSFIGURATION AND SLUMBER,
VII. HONEST DIFFERING, - - -
VIII. HIDING FROM JESUS, - - - 91
IX. IN SIGHT OF THE PROMISED LAND, 104
X. ROUND-ABOUT WAYS OF GOD, - 115
XI. THE WIDENING UNIVERSE, - 127
XII. EVENING AND MORNING, - - 141
XIII. EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN HOUSE, 155
XIV. THE INCARNATION OF IDEAS, - - 170
XV. THE TOUCH OF FAITH, - - 187
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
ОК
SEEK YE MY FACE.
"SEEK ye My face." The Almighty wrote
this invitation on every page of Scripture.
With the same hand He penned the warn-
ing, "My face shall not be seen, for there
shall no man see Me and live." Here we
stand before a puzzling contradiction. And
we find no solution when we look away
from God's word to His act. Nature in all
her moods cries to us, “Seek ye my face.”
We confidently accept the invitation, and
then are met with the rebuff, “My face
shall not be seen."
The sun, making all nature laugh and
sing, calls out, “Come to see me.” We go
to the door and knock. A defiance is hurled
at us from the other side, “Go away, you
can not see me, my face is too terrible for
your eyes.” The stars twinkle, and each
13
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
laughingly flaunts the challenge down,
“Seek ye my face.” Out into space we
project ourselves, and boldly grasp at in-
finitude. But the stars mock us. “You
may measure the distance by which we are
separated from you, you may fix the time
of our coming and going, you may trace
our steps as we run through space, but you
can never know us." The flower smiles at
us and seems to be saying, “Seek ye my
face." We respond; and then it coyly
draws a veil over its face and says, “Thou
shalt not see me.” We pluck it, we hold
it in our hand or under the microscope.
But it defies us. “You may tear me apart
and classify me, but my face you shall
never see."
We turn to truth. Again we hear the
cry, “Seek ye my face," and again the
veil immediately covers truth. We pur-
sue our quest, "a thousand glimpses win,"
but never see the whole. Oft with Pilate
we are tempted to say, "What is truth?"
making bold, in the impatience of our pes-
14
SEEK YE MY FACE.
simism, to suggest that there is no truth;
that what seems to be truth and to whose
call we can not shut our souls, is nothing
but a mirage. And yet we seek on. The
forces of nature blindfold us. Clasping
hands and forming a circle, as in the play,
they enclose us within and call out, “Truth
is there; catch and hold it.” So we cry,
"Truth, where art thou?” Truth answers,
“Here I am.” We grope about, cal
"Where? Where?” Truth answers gayly,
now in front, now at our side, now at some
distance off, now in our very ears, “Here,
here!” But the forces of nature laugh at
our antics as we try to catch and hold
truth, and free ourselves from the blind-
fold.
We should remain in hopeless perplexity
if we insisted upon our quest. We go back,
rather, to the psalmist and hear his state-
ment further: “When Thou saidst, Seek
ye My face; My heart said unto Thee, Thy
face, Lord, will I seek.” There is here
no indication that the psalmist expected
15
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
to find the face of the Lord, and no thought
that he would be disappointed did he not
find it. There is simply the response of
the psalmist's heart to the command of
his God. His life-given task is to seek,
his duty obedience.
Here we have a real answer to the many
questions we are continually asking. What
is life? To attain to a certain end, or
while living, to live? Lessing has a bold
word when he says: “If Almighty God
should come to me and with outstretched
hands offer me in His right hand Truth
as a perfected and finished whole, and in
His left hand the desire after truth with
the condition that I would continually be
misled in my search for it, and should say
to me, Choose thou between these two,
I should with humility fall before Him
and, reaching toward His left hand, say,
'Father, give me but the desire for truth;
pure truth is for Thee alone.' ” On to
whatever path our quest may lead us, the
goal, if we are striving to live, will be
16
SEEK YE MY FACE.
truth. But it is not truth as such, to quote
Lessing again, which any man possesses
or thinks he possesses which constitutes
the true worth of a man, but the conscien-
tious pains he puts forth to get behind the
truth. So it is not life which any one
possesses or thinks he possesses that con-
stitutes the true essence of joy, but the real
pains one puts forth in his desire to live,
“Seek ye My face.” The heart accepts
the invitation; it takes up the task of liv-
ing and finds the delights and true worth
of life. It is when the head comes down
and says to the heart, “O you foolish little
creature, struggling away at something
you can never attain to," that the heart
becomes sick and faint and would give up.
But there is something in the constitution
of the heart that will not be baffled; instead
of being routed by the head, it more often
comes to the aid of the head and helps it
over many a difficulty. As we often see
a frail woman struggling against great
odds to maintain herself and her little
17
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
ones, lift herself up triumphantly and suc-
ceed simply because of the strength that
lies at the very soul of her being, so do we
find the heart breaking through all ob-
stacles, righteously exultant, saying, “I
will seek, for by seeking I shall live.”
Or, to change the figure: The little tug-
boat plying the harbor receives meekly the
taunts of the ocean liner as it sails in from
its long voyage of conquest in foreign
waters. “Get out of my way, you little
boat! I sail the broad ocean, I touch at
distant shores, the whole world is mine.
What do you know about life? Cease
puffing away and trying to be pretentious."
But sometimes it happens that the great
hulk of fifteen or twenty thousand tons
gets stranded or is thrown upon the rocks;
and, if it is to be helped at all, it is by
the little tug which comes alongside, throws
over the rope, hitches to, and pulls it out
into its element once more. So the head
may say to the heart, “I sail on the broad
ocean of thought, I touch at all the foreign
DUIS
18
SEEK YE MY L
FACE.
shores of knowledge, you know nothing
about my life, get out of my way, let me
have full and free scope.” But does the
head never become stranded, is it never
left high and dry on the rocks or in the
sand until the little, faithful, plodding
heart-the heart that never sails the ocean
of thought, but remains at home attending
to the commonplaces of life-comes and
pulls it out into sailing water again?
To the heart the words, “My face shall
not be seen," have no meaning; the heart
To the mind the words, “Seek ye My face,”
always to be hidden. If we begin the
quest for God with the heart we shall be
rewarded; if we begin it with the mind God
will draw a veil over His face. This is
God's way. We must submit. But He
has not left or ever will leave us comfort-
less. “Seek and ye shall find," was not
a vain word of the Master. Following
Him we look into the inner recesses of our
19
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
being, and observe that the heart life is
the only true life. By no means do we
discard the mind. We use it, we develop
it to its very highest capacity. But we do
not try to divorce it from the heart. What
God hath joined together we do not put
asunder. We teach mind and heart to live
together in happy unity, and find the es-
sence of life not in perfect knowledge, but
in worthy action.
20
II.
GIVING WHAT WE HAVE.
THE lame man at the Gate Beautiful asked
Peter for what he did not have. Peter
gave him what he had. He might have
walked by, saying, “I should like to help
the poor man, but I have nothing to give
him." He asked himself, “How can I help
this cripple?" And what he found he could
give was more than what he had been asked
for. Thus we walk by the gates beautiful
of life and see men and women longing to
enter in, but who can not because they are
crippled.
Here is a man or woman with a narrow
outlook upon life, lacking in high and noble
aspirations, drawn along in the current of
the commonplace to the maelstrom of ob-
livion. The life was morally or intellectu-
ally crippled from birth. It brought with
it none of the rich endowments of a parent-
age so essential to a proper start in life.
21
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
The home surroundings were neither in-
spiring nor elevating. The child grew up,
walking on moral or intellectual crutches.
limbs.
particularly vicious and necessarily a can-
didate for the workhouse. There are many
criminals who could have been saved had
the hand of sympathy and love been
reached out to them in time and had they
been bidden to rise up and walk. We see
such before us every day. They ask too
often for money. Modern society is obli-
gated as never before to hear their cry.
But money is not what they so much need.
They need rather to be lifted to their feet
and given a chance to move on into the
temple of life. The rich, red blood of their
infinite and hidden capacities must be
stirred in their veins and set to flowing.
Here is a young man who ought to have
a college education. He has hardly had a
common schooling. While he has a certain
22
GIVING WHAT WE HAVE.
amou
amount of ambition, if left to himself he
will aim for something lower than for
that he is capable of. His parents do
not appreciate the need of his training.
Even if they did they would not have the
money to pay for his education. Neither
have we any money to give him. And yet
he is a cripple and needs our help. What
we can give him is an enthusiasm for learn-
ing and culture. We can urge him to read,
we can open up the stimulating fountains
of literature, we can bring him to a knowl-
edge of the great men and things of the
past, of the world movements of the pres-
ent and future. We can make his latent
powers throb and pulsate, and in so doing
enable him to stand upon his feet. He will
then proceed to earn an education. Our
one-candle power, all we had, perhaps, will
have become a searchlight in him, sending
out its white pathways over every range
of darkness. :
Or here is another whose sense of the
great and noble in life is not developed.
Oven
23
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
From birth the faculties of appreciation
of the beautiful and good have been allowed
to remain inactive. He is crippled. An
essential part of his organism is shriveled
up and deadened. And nobody is deeply
concerned about the necessary cure. As
the lame man was carried every day to the
Beautiful Gate that he might ask for alms
when he needed sound limbs, so this one
is offered almost everything except what he
needs. We, by birth and training, may-
hap, have the stimulant he requires. Our
ideals are high; we have traveled, perhaps,
and have become acquainted with peoples
and lands; we have seen the greatest
works of nature and art; we have read
widely, cultivating an inborn taste for the
best in literature. Or we may have never
been away from home and yet have de-
veloped the highest and deepest instincts
of the worth of man, and acquired the
ability to point others to the appreciation
of their true needs, and to awaken their
sense of the sublime and eternal. What
24
GIVING WHAT WE HAVE.
CO
we thus have we can give to the man of low
ideals. As we touch the springs of his
life the channels of his better self will be-
come filled, an infusion of power will
quicken his wasted faculties, he will be able
to rise and stand upon his feet. We gave
him what we had and it made him whole.
A love of flowers or birds may seem a
small possession to the busy merchant or
professional man. And yet if he can share
his enthusiasm with another, wholly lack-
ing in response to the delights of nature,
he will open a new world for that other.
There are men who have become morally
and ästhetically crippled as they have pur-
sued the hard game of life. What they
need is not what they ask for-more money
and power in business life but a touch of
nature, an idea of the beautiful, a sound of
the sublime. Fields and flowers, paintings
and statues, the voice of the singer, the
combined harmony of the orchestra—these
are unknown to them. The very best side
of their natures is shrunken and lifeless.
25
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
When they reach out their hands to us for
greater business opportunity, larger finan-
cial gain, we do not have it to give them.
What we have, however, we need not hesi-
tate to bestow; nay, it is our duty to give.
For it is a miracle working power, it will
make them whole, they will stand on their
feet and shout for joy, a part of their lives
hitherto unknown to them will have been
opened up, they are reborn.
Or we have faith in the great verities
of life. Our hopes are large, our spiritual
reach long. We have the faculty for be-
lieving and not the tendency to doubt. We
are not bothered so much about logic when
we enter the religious realm as about life.
We accept everything that makes for life,
even although as yet we are not able to re-
solve it in the crucible of thought. We
see things beyond the ordinary range of
sight, we hear voices not audible in the
clangor of dissenting opinions. But there
are others about who are weak in their
faith, they can see only at short range
26
GIVING WHAT WE HAVE.
and believe only what they see. They are
crippled. What they lack we can supply.
Not as though we should feel intellectually
or spiritually superior to them and thus
seek to minister to them, but by letting
them share our faith and hope, imparting
to them the l'argeness of our spiritual
views, until they see that the rigor and
vigor of logic is a crutch to help a lame
man along, but not necessary to one who
approaches life through the door of faith.
They will become able to adjust their faith
to reason and will not try to reason their
way to faith. They will stand upon their
feet and walk as the deepest needs of their
intellectual and spiritual natures demand
they should.
Here are a few of the ways in which we
can help this world along and bring our
fellow-beings into a better understanding
of themselves and of the universe. What
the world needs to-day is not more knowl-
edge or more wealth or more comfort or
more luxury. We are surfeited with these.
27
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
What our brother is yearning for is sym-
pathy and helpfulness. Not giving what
we do not possess, borrowing it perhaps
and going bankrupt, morally and spirit-
ually. But giving what we have, believing
in its miracle working power, and acting
upon our belief.
This is the gospel of Jesus. If we pro-
fess to follow the Christ this is our gospel.
It is a workable gospel. It supplies an
every-day need. Every man can apply it,
some more in one way, some more in an-
other.
And we shall be called upon frequently
to test our gospel when it seems more im-
portant to do something else. Peter and
John were going into church. The hour
for the service had arrived. Their duty
surely lay in this direction rather than to
help one of the numerous beggars who
crowded the Gate Beautiful. He would be
there after the service ended. They could
help him then. But no. The teaching of
Jesus made even the Church service sec-
28
GIVING WHAT WE HAVE.
ondary to the helping of a fellow-man when
the opportunity offered.
Or Peter might have given the man
money for his physical needs. It is easy
for some to help humanity with gold or
silver. But this would not have been suf-
ficient. The personal touch, the intimate
sympathy, would have been lacking. The
man would have had to come again and
ask for more alms. To avoid this he must
be helped so that he could rise and help
himself. Only as Peter gave of the power
which the Christ had bestowed upon him,
could he help the man. Some power of
this kind has been bestowed upon every
one of us; we do not know to what degree
until we test its strength. It is a spiritual
possession, not a material; and will work
a miracle where silver and gold would be
ineffective.
Giving what we have and by so doing
discovering powers we did not think we
possessed—this is the message we leam
at the Gate Beautiful.
29
III.
THE PERILS OF POPULARITY.
THE events of Passion Week lie before
us as the events of any other period of his-
tory, and we can review them from begin-
ning to end. It was not so in the case of
Jesus' disciples as they stood on that first
Palm Sunday, the center of a tremendous
outburst in recognition of Jesus' Kingship.
For the disciples, doubtless, the struggle
and disappointment of Jesus' ministry
were at an end. Now He was accepted as
Israel's King; soon He would be crowned
and sit on David's throne.
Not so Jesus. He understood the mul-
titude. He knew what were the perils of
this sudden popularity. If we watch Him
closely as He allows the crowd to honor
Him we shall see how little He was in-
fluenced by the circumstance. The events
30
THE PERILS OF POPULARITY.
of His short ministry showed Him gradu-
ally but unmistakenly what He must ex-
pect at the hands of His own people. And
we may well believe that in the very midst
of Palm Sunday He could see His Geth-
semane. The shouts of “Hosanna, hail to
our King,” brought the echo, “We have
no king but Cæsar; crucify Him! crucify
Him!” The enthusiastic crowd about Him
as He entered the city in triumph, indicated
only the howling mob that would be about
Him as He left it in disgrace. The honor
bestowed upon Him as He was placed upon
the King's animal and conducted along the
decorated highway to the courts of the
Temple brought only the picture of the
via dolorosa and of His staggering under
the weight of His own cross. The shadow
of Calvary was already on the brow of
Olivet, and the gloom of Good Friday cast
its solemnity backward over Palm Sunday.
Jesus has the distinction as none other
has of pointing the way for man. When
He said, “I go to prepare a place for
31
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
you,” His words had a very practical
meaning. He goes before man in the Wil-
derness of life and blazes the way for him.
If man has shown great ingenuity and deep
insight and gone far along ühknown ways
leading his fellow-men in truth and dis-
covery, he always finds that Jesus has been
before him. His footsteps are found on
every roadway of human experience, and
he who runs, if he will, may read them.
He could not be fooled by the mere ex-
igency of human events. He saw deep into
the meaning of things and could not be
misled by any fortuitous circumstance.
The career of a man must be laid in the
concrete of his own character And char-
acter must be founded upon the deep un-
derlying truths of nature. These are not
found on the surface. Man comes to them
only by discernment, and discernment is
the result of closely following the distinc-
tions between morals and conduct, between
desires for things that are temporary and
things that are lasting, between popularity
32
THE PERILS OF POPULARITY.
with the public approval and actions which
are right, whatever may be the opinion
of the public.
So Jesus on Palm Sunday was not in
any way tal en by surprise. He had read
the heart of His own people truly. They
were so enmeshed in the present that they
could not see the trend of events. He had
already chided their leaders for being un-
able to read the signs of the times. Events
of to-day had no significance for them in
the light of tomorrow. They could not
see that conduct, which was not right,
could never run on lines which would
converge in truth and goodness. They
could not understand that a point gained
to-day would be of no value tomorrow,
unless the point was rightly gained and had
abiding significance for the future. Es-
pecially were they absolutely unable to see
that a Jewish king on Cæsar's throne
would not solve their problems or lessen
their burdens, but would only aggravate
the desire of Rome to control them and
33
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
bring upon them a more powerful army
and a more determined intention to sub-
jugate them. Their only safety and their
peace and prosperity lie in the elevation
of the King of righteousness on the throne
of David, and the perpetuation of His
Kingdom by lives of purity and goodness.
For this they were not ready. Jesus knew
the mind of the crowd and saw even in
those crying so enthusiastically for Him
the fickleness which would cause them to
desert Him.
The popularity of Jesus on Palm Sun-
day, therefore, was only the forerunner of
His crucifixion on the following Friday.
He is marked as the Man of Sorrows even
on the day of His greatest outward tri-
umph. This very fact is another indica-
tion of how Jesus met the hard realities
of life and lived the experiences which
every man who gains popular applause
must make. He had the keen ear to distin-
guish the divergent waves in the shouting.
And long before the approving voices had
us
34
THE PERILS OF POPULARITY.
ceased, He caught the faint but louder
growing echoes of dissent. He would not
court popularity. That was for children,
not for men; especially for a man with a
destiny. For the world will little note nor
long remember what men do that gains
them applause; it will take account only
of their lasting benefit to humanity. And
this the present generation can never ap-
preciate. We are too near the facts. As
we can not see the hands of the clock go
round, so are we unable to discover history
in the making. Only time reveals it.
The saying that no man is great until
he is dead is true, because not until he
has passed away can his acts be estimated
calmly and without prejudice. Jesus de-
clared the same truth when He said, “A
prophet is not without honor except in his
own land and among his own people.”
For in his own land there are too many
vying with him for the supremacy, and
from the plateau of the present the low
peaks of rivalry hide the high summit be-
35
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
yond. And among his own people he is
too well known. His greatness is hidden
by the multiplicity of little things his
friends and acquaintances know about him.
Emerson has said, “Heaven sometimes
hedges a rare character about with un-
gainliness and odium, as the burr that pro-
tects the fruit.” It would seem that all
the great men have been buried in their
day by the very familiarity of their lives
which should have disclosed their great-
ness. We wonder why it is that Lincoln
made so little impression on the leaders of
his day and that his almost superhuman
dealing with the problems of his time was
not recognized. Doubtless a rare charac-
ter must be hedged about so that the pop-
ulace will not recognize his greatness and
lead him to his doom by popular acclaim.
History makes account of many a man who
had the marks of greatness upon him, but
who was spoiled for any real service to his
people and time because of premature
praise that was bestowed upon him..
36
THE PERILS OF POPULARITY.
One of the consequences of greatness is
to be misunderstood and maligned. There
were those in Jerusalem on that Palm Sun-
day who were asking themselves, without
prejudice, whether Jesus really was the
leader which the prophets declared was to
come. He truly was great, He had a won-
derful influence over the public, none dis-
cerned truth as He did and none taught
so convincingly. Yet they were in doubt
as to His true greatness. They wagged
their heads and were ready to look for
weakness rather than strength. So men of
commanding prominence to-day must meet
the criticism of the public. “Yes, he is a
great man; but still he is not doing any-
thing so wonderful. See the mistakes he
has made. They surely indicate a con-
stitutional weakness." The approval of
day, and may change without warning
into fierce onslaught. Even those who
were nearest to Jesus all through His min-
istry deserted Him in the end and by their
37
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
conduct showed they had lost faith in His
greatness. A big man is always more in
danger of being hit than a small man; and
one who is doing many things offers more
chances for attack than one who is keeping
his hands folded. In the incidents of
Palm Sunday and Good Friday we learn
the fate that must necessarily come to him
who would carry the burdens of humanity
and advance the cause of his fellows.
The futility of striving for popular ap-
proval, therefore, is evident. A man who
is more ready to ask what will win favor
than what would be right has none of the
marks of leadership upon him. For a
season the praise of his fellows will ring
in his ears. But the noise will soon cease
and in the silence which follows his name
will not be heard. The term “opportun-
ist,” applied to a leader of a party or other
organization, stigmatizes a man beyond
recognition of his better qualities. This
the year 1783 and characterized the party
38
THE PERILS OF POPULARITY.
of concession, the party that would bow
to public clamor, waiting for an opportu-
nity to act in favor of the public wish. So
the word means the leader who will not
urge upon others his principles or beliefs
unless the occasion be opportune, and
hence characterizes him as one without
settled principles or consistent policy, one
who holds his ear to the ground to ascer-
tain what the public in superficial clamor
wants. Nature is not governed by chance,
but by law. Mankind is steadied in the
conflict of opinion by the leaders who rule
according to principle and not opportunity.
It has been well said that “modern poli-
ticians are for the most part no longer
men trained from their youth in the phi-
losophy of government, but opportunists
who view politics as a field for self-ad-
vancement." Such an one will always
look for popular favor; public applause
will be to him the indication that he is
meeting the wishes of the people; he will
be unable to read the signs of the times and
39
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
CL
discover how soon the public will turn him
down.
So there have been opportunists in lit-
erature, in education, in the Church. The
reproach of authorship to-day is that men
are ready to sell their talent for what
they think the people want, rather than
give them what they know they ought to
have. We call such literature cheap and
would not be disturbed by it were it not
that an undiscriminating public will grab
for this sort of reading matter. But we
are consoled by the fact that such stuff
has no abiding value and writers thereof
soon sink into oblivion. Men have striven
for results in education and religion when
they were convinced that they were doing
the best that could be done under the cir-
cumstances. And this kind of opportun-
ism has a certain justification. But it can
never take the place of the broad prin-
ciples which center in truth and right, and
which must always prevail because they
have the future as well as the present
in mind.
40
THE PERILS OF POPULARITY.
He who would lead men must carry their
burdens. This means the cross. Unless
he is able to ride down Olivet on Palm
Sunday and not be turned from duty be-
cause of popular applause, he will shrink
from walking the steeps of Calvary on
Friday amid the jeering crowd. To that
extent he will fail. History will never
say of him, “He saved others, himself
he could not save." The verdict will be,
"In trying to save himself he became
self-centered and could not see beyond the
horizon of his own interests.” Jesus was
never in peril on account of popularity
because He never could allow Himself to
regard applause as approval. He coveted
neither the one nor the other, but only
to do the will of Him who sent Him. He
could afford, therefore, to lose His own
life in saving others.
IV.
LIMITING GOD.
THE psalmist, in describing the attitude of
the children of Israel toward God as they
were being led from Egypt to Canaan,
said, “Yea, they turned back and tempted
God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.”
They criticised unfavorably, they grum-
bled, they rebelled. And so this writer,
with a keen insight, records his judgment,
that in so acting the Israelites limited
God, and thus held Him from doing all
that He otherwise could have done.
As soon as our attention is called to
this fact, we appreciate its importance.
In the conduct of the children of Israel we
recognize the conduct of mankind gen-
erally. In ourselves, as individuals, we
see how we shorten the hand of God and
force Him at times to throw His blessings
42
LIMITING GOD.
at us with difficulty, rather than let Him
hand them to us naturally and gently.
One of the incomprehensible features of
man's nature is his unwillingness to take
the best of life there is as it is offered to
him freely. There is at once a certain
rebellion against leadership of a higher
kind, and an inability to see beyond im-
mediate circumstances to the greater good
that is to be attained in the future. Both
these traits are splendidly illustrated in
neyed through the wilderness. They did
not appreciate Moses' leadership. They
rebelled against it, they tempted him, they
provoked him, until finally his powers were
limited. Furthermore, they could not look
beyond their immediate present. They lost
sight of the land of which they had a
good account -- flowing with milk and
honey, and murmured concerning the meat.
and drink with which God was daily pro-
viding them. The freedom and the pros-
pects of the promised land were forgotten
43
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
in the necessary hardships of the desert.
Many said, “Let us go back to Egypt and
the taskmasters; we were better off there."
The trouble with the Israelites was that
they did not have full confidence in their
God. They entertained low and circum-
scribed notions of His power and goodness
and faithfulness. They limited Him. And
this is what men have always done. We
need only glance over the development
of learning to see how true this is. In
science and philosophy men have not been
able to get along without God. However
independent they have become at times,
they have never been able to make man-
kind believe there is no God in and through
and of all things. But science and phi-
losophy, while not able to do without God,
still have persisted in limiting Him. Some
tell us that God's function was simply to
start this world agoing, but that thereafter
He had no proper office, either in or out-
side the world. And could these men find
the fact of creation in some force outside
44
LIMITING GOD.
of God-and some even have hopes of this
—they would not have given the Creator
any place whatever in His universe.
Others make a hard and fast distinction
between natural and supernatural, but give
reality only to the natural, and hence claim
that only the natural laws and movements,
as we know them, can be considered by
any intelligent man. The supernatural
they would call miraculous, and everything
which must be attribued to the miraculous
they consider nonsense.
Now we are perfectly willing to let the
distinction between the natural and super-
natural go. It is better that it should, for
all of God's movements are natural. If
something seems to us to be contrary to
nature, we ought neither to say that it
could not have happened nor that it hap-
pened according to the supernatural. For
in both cases we should be limiting God to
a sphere of knowledge and power only
known to us. We would confine God's
knowledge in the limits of our own. To
L.
45
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
say, for example, that Jesus could not have
healed a lame man or caused a blind man
to see, because this would be contrary to
nature, is simply to say that we know all
the laws of nature, and that no laws of
nature exist that we do not know. And
yet we are discovering new laws of nature
every day. And when these are discovered
we do not say they never existed before.
No man, however else he would limit God,
has declared this. Not the man of science
or philosophy, therefore, but the eternal
God is the judge of what we call natural
law. And when we try to limit His sphere
or power, the heavens shall have us in de-
rision, for we only shall have exhibited our
own limitations.
Not only in His power do men seek to
limit God, but also in His goodness and
faithfulness. God is good when all is well
with us. But calamity, misfortune, sick-
ness, death, change the attitude of many
towards the Father. How hard the heart
may become, how harsh the word, how cyn-
46
LIMITING GOD.
ical and pessimistic the expression and de-
meanor! We thus set a limit to the good-
ness and faithfulness of God; we declare
He is not perfectly good, or He would not
have done so and so; we pronounce against
His constancy because this or that event
did not happen as we thought it would or
should. We are like the Children of Israel
who did not have full faith in their God.
And so out of circumstances immediately
about us, out of our daily disappointments
and trials, we build a barrier around us
and limit God to this circumference, not
realizing that His purpose is an eternal
one, that His eye and mind and will com-
prehend all space and time and process,
and that He operates only to bring man
into a closer union and fellowship with
Him and to bless him for evermore.
Man sets a limit to God's power and
goodness, denies that He is omnipotent,
doubts whether He is all-loving and con-
stant. But God in no way is affected by
this; He goes on exerting His power and
47
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
exhibiting His goodness. There is no limit
to either. He is the Eternal Source, the
wise and loving Distributor of both.
And yet, while man can not limit God in
His power and goodness, can not weaken
the one nor lessen the other, he can limit
God in His action. “Yea, they turned back
and tempted God and limited the Holy One
of Israel."
Man limits God because of unbelief in
Him. One might deny the power of the
sun, and yet the sun would in no wise be
limited. But he might close up his doors
and windows, shut out even the tiniest ray
of light, and live in a dank and unwhole-
some air. So to deny the existence of God
does not affect God in any way. But un-
belief of this kind is the shutting of the
soul's doors and windows, refusing to let
God's light and air brighten and invigorate
and warm the soul so that it can live and
move in its appointed sphere.
We read that Jesus did not many mighty
works in His own country, because of the
48
LIMITING GOD.
unbelief of His countrymen. His power
was not limited, but His ability to let it
become operative in the heart and mind
was weakened. Whosoever should disbe-
lieve the fact that two and two make four
would in no wise disturb the relationship
of numbers. But if he undertook to act on
the assumption that two and two make one
or five or nothing, he would disturb his
own equilibrium and could neither think
rightly nor act wisely. He would limit
truth so that it could have no influence
upon him and would necessarily faļl with-
out the pale of truth-loving and seeking
and obeying men. To disbelieve in God
does not affect God. But such an attitude
limits His power of manifestation.
Unbelief has a confining effect. If we
question a man's honesty or candor or
ability, we limit him at once. It is like
tying a weight to him and then expect
him to move freely. Belief in a man's
honesty, on the other hand, has made even
dishonest men break loose from crooked
49
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
ways. Confidence in a man's sincerity and
ability goes far to help a weak and vacil-
lating man become strong and self-respect-
ing. Without doing any violence to the
facts whatever, we can say that believing
men have always made for constructive
forces, and unbelieving men for destruc-
tive. Take any great period of unbelief
in the history of civilization and prove this
statement. A man who has no will to be-
lieve is anarchistic in tendency. He is a
promoter of disorder, whether he be oper-
ating in the world of letters or science or
art or education, or whether in the home
or Church or State. He does not build up,
but pulls down.
A believer, on the other hand, always
makes for construction. He is not to be
considered as one who takes everything
for granted, who never looks below the sur-
face, who never investigates, who accepts
every profane and old wives' fable. But
he has a will to believe; he throws himself
on the side of law and order and well-
50
LIMITING GOD.
be able to uni ruthne
established tradition, and, making these
assumptions, proves all things and holds
fast to that which is good. His attitude
of faith opens the avenues to truth and,
while he will not be able to understand all
things, he will be able to sense the mean-
ing of many a mystery. He will see with
the eye of faith; he will move not in the
material world, which decays with each
decade, but in the spiritual world, which
ever grows larger as man moves forward.
One of the disciples said to Jesus, "Mas-
ter, how is it that Thou wilt reveal Thyself
unto us and not unto the world?” Jesus
replied that His life and teaching were
based on loving and believing disciples.
They who believed in Him would know
Him. The world which disbelieved Him
could not understand Him. To the world
He would forever speak in mysteries, pro-
voking anger and scorn and ridicule. To
His disciples the words which He spoke
would be spirit and truth.
51
V.
PEACE WITHIN.
OUR life, like the ocean, is always moving.
Now we are high on the waves, now dash-
ing on the shore, now riding in storm and
tempest and seeing strange specters walk-
ing on the water.
The great Master centuries ago com-
manded the wind and the waves to be still,
and there was a great calm. But the effect
of His words was not so much on the ele-
ments of air and sea as upon His disciples.
They had become still. Fear and doubt
had fled. Never again could they sail that
lake in a storm and not hear the words,
“Be still!” and find that their quivering
hearts were silenced. For it was not
merely to subdue the tempest that Jesus
came to them, it was to reassure the disci-
ples and strengthen their faith.
52
PEACE WITHIN.
Life is not so much a problem of sub-
duing outward forces. It is a task of
securing inner peace in the calm and poise
of which all questions are to be judged and
all conditions met. Not so long ago ma-
chinists thought two engines alternately
running would wear longer than one en-
gine running all the required time. But
it was discovered that not the continual
running of the machine made it wear out
more rapidly, but the friction in the joints
and bearings. So especial attention was
paid to reducing friction to a minimum.
Oiling and packing have become a
science.
We think sometimes that if we had two
bodies, one of which could rest while the
other worked, we would not become so ex-
hausted or wear out so soon, and would
find the peace we covet. The man who
guarantees a machine to run eight hours
every day for a certain length of time does
so with full knowledge of its capacity. So
the All-wise Creator knew the running
53
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
capacity of man. He made the changes of
night and day for rest and work, and He
appointed one day in seven for re-creation.
Man was made to toil. He wears his life
out unduly not because of labor, but be-
cause of friction. There are not many men
who work eight hours a day, seven days in
the week, and fifty-two weeks in the year.
But there are many who worry eighteen.
They have not learned the science of lubri-
cating and packing the bearings and joints
of their mental and muscular machinery to
reduce friction to a minimum. To master
this principle is as much the concern of
man for the body as it is of the mechanic
for a machine.
We are embarked upon the sea of life
as the disciples were upon the Sea of Gali-
lee. It was their business to be there; it
is ours to be here. They had no control
over wind and wave; it was their task to
learn how to trim their sails and balance
their boat and properly steer it so that
it would neither founder on a rock nor cap-
54
PEACE WITHIN.
size in open water. This was a knowledge
first of the spirit and will, and only after-
ward of skill and muscle. It was training
the man to be thrown into the very teeth
of the elements. And although tempests
came which they could not foresee and
which swallowed up many an inexperi-
enced fisherman, such catastrophes did not
in any sense warrant them to cease learn-
ing how to manage their boat and to sail
the sea.
Neither have we control over the great
currents and upheavals in the business and
social world which sometimes engulf us.
But there are certain rules we have
learned; we know that under certain con-
ditions the wind and the waves will act
in certain ways, and our training, if it can
be called such, is intended to meet these
conditions and to teach us how to sail our
craft in safety. It is the inward man
first of all, and if he command the inner
peace of composure and self-poise he will
ride the harbor safely. He will know how
55
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
to manage wind and wave, or to keep out
of their clutch when they are too much for
him. He will remain in the quiet harbor
and let them churn and howl outside. He
will not be among those who, when the
skies are lowering and the lightning al-
ready flashing and the thunder rumbling,
will set out upon the financial Lake of
Galilee. Those who do so, invite storm
and stress. They would have peace, but
refuse to pay the price. If peace comes
as they fly in the teeth of the wind, they
will take it; otherwise not. As they churn
the waves they set everybody else to rock-
ing and rolling. As they madly rush for-
ward to grasp a prize, they force in their
wake those who would otherwise remain
calm and unshaken.
This is the disease of our present life:
to rush onward in spite of law or restraint.
Whether it was a disease of five centuries
or five decades ago need not concern us.
It is a present problem we have to solve.
We read of the simple life and perhaps are
56
PEACE WITHIN.
lulled into the delusion that the simple life
is either possible or desirable. Not the
simple life, but the peaceful life, should we
strive for. When everybody nowadays
must walk faster or lag behind it is idle
to talk of the simple pace of our fore-
fathers. Doubtless they thought they were
whirling along rapidly enough. We have
our own pace to keep, and we must learn
how to keep it in peace. Mr. Huxley is said
to have thrown himself into a jaunting car
in Dublin and breathlessly to have com-
carriage began to jolt over the cobbles, and
Huxley, collecting himself, said to the
driver, “Do you know where you are driv-
ing?” And he replied, “I do not, sir; but
I am driving fast, all right." So humanity
throws itself into the jaunting car of life
and gives the command, “Drive fast.”
But whither? By driving fast we mistake
speed for progress. In speaking of the
peaceful life we confound it with idleness
and inactivity. But the busy life can be
57
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
the peaceful life; it must be the peaceful
life. For only thus can we be fitted to this
world. We can not give up our present
activities. But in pursuing them we dare
not barter away our peace.
On the evening in which Christ was be-
trayed He said to His disciples, “Peace I
leave with you, My peace I give unto you."
At the very beginning of His ministry He
said, “Come unto Me all ye that labor and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
And yet, can we imagine a more busy or a
more restless life than that of Jesus? Was
it peace He was looking forward to in that
last night as He sat with His disciples, or
a sword? Was it peace He was looking
forward to as He first faced His career,
or conflict? Was there any time in His
life when it could be said that He was
peaceful and at rest? Surely not in His
boyhood home at Nazareth, when they
would have cast Him down the hill head-
long; or on the shores of Galilee, where
people could not come nigh Him for the
58
PEACE WITHIN.
press; or in Jerusalem, when He was spied
upon in the temple and in the streets until
He was forced to depart from the city each
night and keep in hiding. And yet we sing
of His life, and sing truly, that it was
majestic, calm, serene. Not to outward
appearances, it is true, but inwardly. To
be at peace did not mean to Him to be in-
active or idle or apart from the crowd or
shut off from the world. His peace was
the peace of the restored soul.
We are apt to think that outward con-
ditions make the inner states of mind and
heart. It is the inner state that makes the
outward condition. Wealth will conduce
to happiness only if the soul is abounding
and rich. Power will give control and in-
fluence only if the mind and heart and
will have been brought under subjection.
There can be comfort and peace and rest
only as these are found and manifested in
the soul-life. Where the heart of man is
poor, riches only throw a searchlight upon
that poverty. Where the mind and the
59
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
will of man are not under control, temporal.
power only discloses the weakness of the
fortification that should guard the inner
citadel. When outward disturbance, anx-
iety, apprehension, fear are manifest,
there is evidence of inner unrest, of an
unrestored soul.
The unrestful heart is restless in pros-
perity as well as in adversity; in times of
when the birds are singing and the skies
are blue as well as when they are flying to
cover beaten by the first drops of the on-
coming storm. But the restored heart will
be at ease when the clouds thicken and the
skies darken. It can see the rainbow in
the rain. It feels already the warmth of
the sun which will shine after the flood-
gates have been closed. It hears the birds
singing in spite of the thunder. It catches
the sweet sound of lowing cattle resting
care free under the summer shade of a
wide spreading tree. Its habitual condition
is joyful; so all things are joyous. Its
60
PEACE WITHIN.
every expression is peace; so the whole
world is peaceful. It walks in paths of
righteousness; even although the valley of
the shadow is nigh, it fears no evil; con-
scious of no ill-will, it can sit at meat in
the presence of annoying enemies; good-
ness and mercy follow it all the days of
life, for it dwells continually in the house
of the Lord.
This gift, this blessing of the restful and
strong heart comes from above. He re-
storeth my soul. God is love, for He has
placed within our grasp and under our
control the only means of finding and se-
curing peace. We are thrown out into the
sea of life, but He gives us an anchor to
the windward. We are cast into the tur-
moil of this world, but He reassures us in
His still small voice. We seem to be left
without a comforter and guide, but He
sends us the Christ to strengthen our weak-
ness and help us carry our load. In the
power of perfect manhood He comes, but
with the fullness of divinity--His heart
61
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
without guile, His lips pure, His garments
clean-and
... calls us o'er the tumult
Of our life's wild, restless sea.
When the tempest was raging, Jesus
could sleep. calmly. When the mob was
howling and His judges were unmanned,
He could keep still. We listen, therefore,
when He confidently says, “Let not your
hearts be troubled. Come unto Me." In
our best moments we hear Him. He has a
word for all men and for every mood. To
the anxious soul He quietly suggests that
there is no cause for disturbance. Peace
can be found within. To the seeking mind
He declares that no cause for doubt or per-
plexity exists, and wisely recommends a
search for truth within oneself and in Him.
To the saddened, the sick, the longing, the
heavy, the lonesome, His encouragement is
that as they come to know Him they will
learn to know themselves and their life's
destinies. He penetrates the heart of
62
PEACE WITHIN.
man's condition and hopes in a pronounce-
ment at once ultimate and universal, “In
the world you will have tribulation; but be
of good cheer. I have overcome the world.
In Me you will find rest unto your souls."
63
VI.
TRANSFIGURATION AND SLUMBER.
THE Transfiguration began while the dis-
ciples were dead in slumber. The glory of
the Christ was before them, but they did
not see His glory. Not until they were
awake did they know of its power and
beauty.
The eternal truths of God's revelation
are in the world everywhere. Only as men
are awake, however, and in full possession
of their faculties are they able to discover
these truths.
Nature itself is transfigured before men.
Its glory and wonder shine about us. But
it has no meaning for men who are asleep.
There are those who live on high mountain
passes, where the splendors of nature are
spread out below them. And yet there is
64
TRANSFIGURATION AND SLUMBER.
no transfiguration, because they are asleep.
There are those who live in the valleys,
where they can look over the fertile plains
and up to the foothills and the towering
heights beyond, and to sun and moon and
stars which in all their seductive influence
woo but do not win, because those looking
are dulled to their charms. God made a
world which the verdict of history declares
to be beautiful and good. Wide-awake
men behold its transfigurement. But only
to such is this miracle shown.
Literature, music, art, have their trans-
is the power that draws over the poem, the
statue, the symphony, such change as to
take it quite out of the sphere of the
human. If men are awake, the glory of the
Almighty is discovered in the human in-
struments which He has chosen to set forth
His truths. The galleries may be full of
paintings, the libraries stocked with books,
the world itself tuned to the harmonies of
the Infinite. But if there is no wakeful re-
65
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
sponse on the part of man, the miracle of
the transfiguration remains a mystery.
The dulled heart and deafened ear and
sleeping eye can not feel or hear or see.
The glory of the inspiration of the Al-
mighty, as it has changed men and made
them poets, artists, musicians, has been a
fact from the beginning of time. But the
transfiguration has been witnessed only by
men who were awake.
So, too, is there the transfiguration in
lives which have striven after good deeds
and loving ministration. The sainted life
is transfigured, the glory of God changes
the outward figure, the face glistens like
the bright rays of light, and the form
changes into the whiteness of snow. This,
too, has been happening from the founda-
tion of the world. Men and women have
been transfigured before their fellow-be-
ings; but only as these latter are awake can
they see the glory.
There is a transfigurement in every
honest effort at labor or toil. Work is
66
TRANSFIGURATION AND SLUMBER.
transfigured if the work be worthy. No
position in life is so humble as to escape
the transfigurement of the Almighty. Men
are asleep before this fact. If there can
be a transfigurement in toil at all, so some
think, it must be in some great labor, some-
thing that has stirred the soul and awak-
ened the conscience of humanity, some-
thing the sound whereof has sent its echoes
to the farthest shore of human life. A
transfigurement of this kind, perhaps, is
possible. But for the humble, unheard-of
toiler who remains at his duty day by day
there can be no such miracle. Yet while
men are asleep the transfigurement of
lowly labor goes on. As men become
awake they see its glory and realize that
every upright toiler is on holy ground in
the presence of the Almighty.
We need not look for any mystery in this
incident which is related of Jesus as He
was transfigured before His disciples.
They had been asleep for months, even al-
though their eyes were opened, and they
67
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
could not see the glory of the Father. The
lesson is realistically pointed out to us on
the high mountain where Jesus took His
disciples apart. There was no underlying
mystery or any deep secret. The miracle
in the life of Jesus was an ordinary one,
because the same miracle, if we will
but see it, is ordinary to us in this day.
The fact of transfiguration can not be
disputed. We work along day by day in
the material and prosaic march of our
duties. Our feet are on the ground; they
move heavily; often do they become mired,
because we allow them to be weighted with
the cares of daily life. We are so much
engrossed with looking after the wants of
our physical natures and physical condi-
tions that we become unconscious of the
higher side of human life. We look at the
external, we think of the external. The
world about us is near, sometimes painfully
near. We would put our hands upon what
we can feel and grasp; we would put our
eyes upon what we can see and hold; we
68
TRANSFIGURATION AND SLUMBER.
would walk upon the firm surface of the
earth. This is our world; this is our life.
And so humankind is not in a position
to behold the presence and the transfigura-
tion of the eternal about us. We do not
look within and discover the needs of the
soul; nay, some would even declare that
there is no soul. We do not find in the heart
of nature something that is hidden from
sight, something that the hand can not
touch or the feet walk upon, something that
goes to the very center of being. And be-
cause we are dulled to these inner suscepti-
bilities, to these inner responses, we sleep
on and do not know that the transfigura-
tion is taking place.
A discriminating English writer has re-
cently written on “The Spirit of Amer-
ica,'' and has pointed out the fact that no-
where else than in our country is there a
more evident desire to purchase the results
of culture, to expend vast sums of money
to bring the singer or player, or the
painting or statue, from Europe. But the
69
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
American is striving after something that
can not be bought. The soul of the poet
or writer can not be acquired by mate-
rial means. The borrowed culture from
Europe, the result of age-long tradition
and century-old cultivation, can do the
dweller on this continent no more good
than the statues which the Romans stole
from Greece could impart the culture of
the Greek to the Romans. And yet the
culture of Europe may become a personal
asset of every American who is awake to
the glory of the Old World art and litera-
ture. Culture is not tangible, it can not
be bought and transported. But it can
enter the soul and the life of the indi-
vidual who with awakened eyes beholds it
at the place of the transfigurement.
This is not to say that the American
people are wholly devoid of sensibility to
the finer and deeper facts of life. It is
to say, however--and this the apprecia-
tive traveler in Europe notes-that the
pursuit after wealth and the reaching out
70
TRANSFIGURATION AND SLUMBER.
after material influence and power have
been unparalleled on these shores and men
have come to believe that money is the
main thing and will buy anything if only
the price offered is large enough. The
fallacy is apparent. A man asleep would
not even know of the presence of the paint-
ing, much less appreciate its value. And
even if his eyes are fully opened, but his
soul slumbering, he could not respond to
its call. It is this soul-slumber into which
we, as a people, have fallen which prevents
us from beholding the glory round about
us, the glory which is the manifestation of
the Almighty.
When we send our children off to school
the tendency is to ask, How much better
able will they be to secure to themselves
financial gain than they would be other-
wise? Our institutions of learning can not
do their real work and fit men and women
for life until this element of financial re-
turn is removed from our ideas of educa-
tion. We see the result of this in every
71
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
field of human activity. The cry goes up
everywhere that our colleges are not fitting
men for the actual duties of life, but only
giving them the facility of getting the best
of their fellows. Education means a great
deal more than the getting together of
knowledge and the making the hand and
mind skillful. Education itself is a trans-
figuration. It is the soul of the Eternal
manifesting itself before the souls of our
youth. They must be awakened to the
higher, the deeper elements of education,
so that the transfiguration will be real to
them and its glory manifest.
As we have already suggested, every
kind of worthy laborer must be able to dis-
cover the fact of transfiguration. Toil in
itself must be related to the activity of the
eternal. “My Father worketh hitherto,
and I work." Only as the Father and the
Son work in that ever-present desire to
bring order out of chaos, clearness out of
confusion, truth out of error, and right out
of wrong, can this old world progress, and
72
can men have the abiding conviction that
this world is good and life in it worth
while. Not for one single moment does the
Almighty remove His hand from the wheel.
Whether He is bringing out the tadpole
or fashioning the lily or shaping character,
His work is a transfiguration. To wake,
men up so that they can see their own
transfiguration in toil and labor, so that
they can discover the real service to man,
which they by their labor can perform, is
the great need of to-day. Art, music, lit-
erature must play their part in this trans-
figuration of labor, so that all who toil
may have the scales cast from off their
eyes and be brought into a seeing nearness
of the Almighty.
This is the fact of the transfiguration,
and if men will open their eyes they will
behold it. But there is a further thought.
The transfiguration is not only a fact, it
always from the less to the greater, from
the lower to the higher, from partial to
73
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
complete, from error to truth, from doubt
to belief. So great is its power that if men
will be serious they will be awakened from
their slumber. The eternal can not be
present in the world without manifesting
that presence through transfiguration, and
the transfiguration can not continue with-
out waking up the soul of man if that soul
is controlled by sincerity of motive. We
often have our dreams, our ideals, our
visions; and suddenly, before we are aware
of it, there is a transfiguration going on
before us and we behold its glory.
“When love dawned on that world which is
my mind,
Suffer a sudden, strange transfigurement;
It was as if new sight were given the blind.
Then where the shore to the wide sea in-
clined
I watched with new eyes the new sun's
ascent;
My heart was stirred within me as I leant
And listened to a voice in every wind.”
74
TRANSFIGURATION AND SLUMBER.
Cic
we
It was on an exceedingly high mountain
that the Transfiguration took place. It
can not take place down on the levels of
life. We must get away from our lower
natures to the higher reaches of the soul if
we would behold the transfiguration. We
must have high ideals, true purposes, noble
desires, if the transfiguring power is to
transform our lives. We must reach out
to the soul of the eternal if our own
souls are to be imbued with the power of
the eternal. The disciples were compan-
ioning with the Master day by day until
the time came when He took them up on
the heights and was transfigured before
them. So as we companion with goodness,
with the better things of life, with the
higher and nobler forces, the day will come
when they will take us up to the heights
of our being and become transfigured be-
fore us. We shall behold their glory.
But more than this, we can walk day
by day with the Master and behold His
glory. The gospel transfigured before
75
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
sleeping men; this is the sad and awful
side of the Transfiguration. The gospel
transfigured before men who are fully
awake; this is the significant and inspiring
side of the Transfiguration. By its power
men are charged with new life and led into
the world to do His work.
76
VII.
HONEST DIFFERING.
THERE was an honest differing among the
people concerning Jesus. This can not be
said of the rulers and leaders of the Jews.
These had already made up their minds as
to Jesus' work and worth, and their opin-
ion was not favorable to Him. But the
people, the common people, who had seen
and heard this Prophet from Nazareth,
were divided in opinion about Him. Some
were saying, “He is a good man.” Others
said, “Not so; but He deceiveth the peo-
ple.”
This fact leads us to note that in all great
questions there is a difference of opinion.
Not out of unanimity, but out of diver-
sity of opinion, have peoples advanced,
nations been born, art, literature, science,
the crafts been fostered. Around one cen-
77
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
tral truth surge and swell counter-currents,
throwing themselves at each other at times
with titanic velocity, only to be finally
drawn into the main channel of the stream.
The tugging and straining have opened the
way for truth to sweep onward and come
into its own.
Difference of opinion, to continue the
figure, operates as a sluice-gate which
holds in check the waters coming from
widely separated sources on the mountain
of life, and in due time permits this com-
bined force to flow onward, turning the
wheels that grind out and shape the fin-
ished product of thought. Let two streams
of water flow down the mountain side from
opposite directions, and when they meet
there is a great splashing and churning
and whipping about, and much froth and
foam. But further down you see these
streams as one flowing on peacefully, with
nothing on the surface to indicate conten-
tion. The froth and the foam as well as
the excitements are gone, and down deep
78.
HONEST DIFFERING.
beneath is a steady power that works un-
seen and holds in the leash the tides of
trade and commerce.
When two counter-opinions flow down
from the mountain height of men's minds
and meet there is a clash, furious and seem-
ingly irreconcilable, and there is also much
froth and foam. But later on all this sub-
sides, men learn to know each other, and
what was conflict becomes peace, what was
confusion and destruction a quiet, upbuild-
ing power that makes for righteousness.
Take as a very pertinent illustration the
warfare between science and religion.
This was so fierce but a few years ago that
it seemed prudent for one of our brilliant
scholars to set down in two large volumes
the nature of this fight. To-day he who
speaks of a conflict between science and
religion lives in a past age and must be
likened to the Southerner in a mountain
fastness who, as he grew older and needed
assistance to till his small piece of land,
went down, not very long ago, to Atlanta
ace
79
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
to buy a slave, not knowing that a war had
been fought and the slaves freed. The
struggle between science and religion was
a civil war, a fight between brother and
brother, which, if the eternal powers had
not been in control, would have devastated
the fairest land on which the sun of truth
ever shone. Science, to change the figure,
is the willing, the loving handmaid of re-
ligion, intended by the Almighty to serve,
yes, and to obey religion. Heaven itself
has blessed this union. And whom God
hath joined together, let no man put
asunder.
Honest difference of opinion, although it
means conflict, has as its ultimate result
a salutary effect and develops the strong
in man and nations. But much that goes
for honest opinion is, as a matter of fact,
not true in its essentials. It is the off-
spring of pride and prejudice, of stubborn-
ness and misunderstanding. Self-decep-
tion is the commonest of all deceptions and
the easiest to accomplish. And where per-
80
HONEST DIFFERING.
sons are self-deceived their opinions are to
be taken with a great deal of allowance.
Take the matter of prejudice, for exam-
ple. Prejudice is the better half of pride.
Let them start on their wedding journey
and go, we will say, to Europe. They are
in strange, unusual surroundings. New
faces and different sounds greet them.
Their eyes and their ears are open. They
are intensely interested and to a certain
extent charmed. What a wonderful coun-
try they are in, and what remarkable peo-
ple! But soon the tendency to compare
takes hold on pride. He remembers his
own country, its unlimited resources, its
undaunted enterprises, its snowy mountain
heights of shrewdness and skill, where with
cool and clear heads the greatest questions
of state and trade are solved. He begins
to swell with joy; his patriotic egotism
knows no bounds; there is no country on
earth so great, so glorious, as his own.
And then the hand of prejudice softly
steals through the arm of pride, and off
81
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
they go, disapproving the temporarily
adopted, and glorifying their native land.
This is not an allegory merely. It is also
a stern fact, and deals with flesh and blood,
men and women, as they scamper over
Europe on sight-seeing tours. The most
worthless of all opinions concerning for-
eign countries are those of persons, too
often belonging to the professional class,
who, having merely scoured Europe, un-
dertake to tell all about it. These have not
got over the pride and prejudice stage. It
is only the experienced traveler who, not
forgetting his own country, but, because
of the fact that he remembers it so well,
and a strange people and give both their
proper desert. And he is always the true
patriot, loyal to his own country.
The havoc pride and prejudice play in
our common daily affairs, unfitting us com-
pletely at times for worthy judgments,
needs only a suggestion to be appreciated.
So too with stubbornness and misunder-
82
HONEST DIFFERING.
standing; these are not found yoked to-
gether so often as pride and prejudice.
But, like many another ill-starred mar-
riage, we find stubbornness and misunder-
standing now and then joined in unholy
wedlock. One of the very painful incidents
of the Protestant Reformation was the dis-
pute between Luther and Zwingli over the
sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Neither
understood the other. Added to this was
the unyielding stand taken by Luther,
which made him appear so other than as
his true self. History is full of such inci-
dents: a dogged determination to hold
one's ground when that ground is falsely
taken. Standing in the very roadway of
civilization, men have stopped for dispu-
tation, blocking the way with their argu-
ments, making it exceedingly difficult or
even impossible for those who had a right
to the road to pass. The opinions of a
stubborn man or a man who jumps at con-
clusions are usually to be taken with great
care. Because the Athenians misunder-
83
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
stood Socrates they condemned him to
drink the fatal hemlock; because the Jews
stubbornly resisted the gentle but persua-
sive power of Jesus they caused Him to
be nailed to a cross.
What we believe colors our life. We
have no portraits of the men who stood
about Jesus, and no minute description of
them. But could a discerning reader of
character have before him their pictures,
he would be able to point out those who
said of Jesus, "He is a good man,” and
those who said, “Not so; but He leadeth
the multitude astray.” Although both
classes might have been honest in their
opinions, and we believe they were, yet
there was something in the character of
each that made them incline one way or
the other. A vine in a dark cellar, with
only a tiny ray of light entering in, will
turn, in spite of the darkness, to the light.
So will the intuition of a righteous man
lead him toward the truth in spite of doubt
and darkness. An artist who had lived
84
HONEST DIFFERING.
all his life in a provincial town and seen
only the mediocre work of ordinary artists
would have certain opinions on art, and
he would be honest in them. And he might
take serious issue with another man who
had feasted his eyes on the masterpieces,
bathing his soul in their inspiring depths.
Here would be an honest difference of
opinion. But how other it would have been
had our provincial artist also sat at the
feet of the great painters.
We can become set in our own ideas and
ideals, form honest opinions, and yet not
know that those opinions are of very little
significance. It is a travesty of art to call
a man an artist who has never been in the
company of the great artists, living and
dead. The very name he assumes implies
that he is familiar with the highest in his
profession or is striving for that famili-
arity. It is a travesty of life to say that
we are living, and yet continue to remain
on the lower levels. The very term "life"
implies the fullest and strongest capacity
85
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
to reach onward and upward. One who
has not companioned with Jesus, therefore,
has no right to speak intimately of Him.
His judgment will be superficial. Even
the remark, "He is a good man,” may be
a hasty conclusion. If it be no more than
mere assent to the opinion of others, it
can carry no weight of personal experi-
ence. And no one can pass judgment on
the claims or the worth of Jesus who has
not come into personal touch with Him.
The testimony of a man who grew old in
well-doing as he closely related his life
to the life and teaching of Jesus, will be
quite different from that of a man who
lived honestly and decently enough all his
life, but who was indifferent to the higher
ideals. The opinions of the latter as well
as of the former can be regarded as honest,
but the difference will be that between the
light of a candle and the light of the sun.
The one will reach a limited radius, the
other will flood the world. The one will
be a wick, which, to burn, must be lighted.
86
HONEST DIFFERING.
The other will be the perpetual source of
all light.
Some said, “He is a good man;" others
said, “Not so; but He leadeth the multi-
tude astray." Suppose these men had
gone direct to Jesus and become acquainted
with Him; suppose they had laid aside
their Jewish pride of a kingly ancestry
that had ruled on the throne of David;
their Jerusalem prejudice against Naza-
reth and all that came out of it; their stub-
bornness to accept any one as the desired
Savior unless He came in regal splendor
and warlike pomp, and, therefore, their
mistaken attitude of the real person and
mission of Jesus, and had sat at His feet
and leamed of Him,-would their opinions
about Him have differed? He who could
speak but a few words to Nicodemus, the
master in Israel, and send him away with
such burning thoughts that his soul was
afterward warmed into pure and clear af-
fection and devotion toward Him; who
could speak to the rich young ruler and
87
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
send him away with true insight into life's
real duties and obligations; who could an-
swer the lawyers so truly that they must
admit the supremacy of His wisdom, and
the doctors so shrewdly that none dare ask
Him any more questions; who spoke so
tenderly, so persuasively, that the officers
who were sent to take Him returned empty-
handed and with the one justification of
the failure of their mission, “Never man
spake as this Man;" who could say to
the unfortunate woman, "Neither do I
condemn thee: go and sin no more;'
who could say to the paralytic, “Son,
thy sins be forgiven thee; take up thy
bed and walk;" who looked upon the
people following Him as sheep without
a shepherd and said, “Come unto Me all
ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest," and upon Jerusalem
and the men who were plotting against
Him, saying, “How often would I have
gathered thy children together, even as a
hen gathereth her chickens under her
88
HONEST DIFFERING.
IS-
wings, but ye would not;" yes, He who
could say, with crimson perspiration cours-
ing down His brow, “Father, not My will,
but Thine be done;" who could stand silent
when He was insulted and spit upon and
spitefully accused; who even in death's
agony remembered to groan out the words,
“Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do,”-could He not have spoken
a conclusive word to those who were doubt-
ful concerning His character?
This picture of men passing their judg:
ments upon Jesus is the picture of Jesus
standing in the arena of the world's
thought. All minds come to Him. We can
say that the opinions of the serious are
honest. But we would look beyond the
scene of this picture to another and see
the company broken up, each going the way
of his choosing. Some of them are minded
to follow Jesus, as the two disciples did,
and ask Him, “Where dwellest Thou?"
And He says, “Come and see!" They who
leave off discussing about Jesus and go
89
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
to live with Him are alone entitled to pass
judgment on Him. And they will place
Him not only in the class of “good men,”
but in the uniqueness of the One Good Man,
construing at its full face value the remark
of Jesus Himself, “None is good, save One,
that is God."
90
VIII.
HIDING FROM JESUS.
ZACCHÆUS, we read was a man of small
stature trying to see Jesus. The incident
is an interesting one. As we study it, we
are led to conclude that he was prevented
from seeing Jesus not so much because of
a physical smallness of stature, but be-
cause of a lowness of spiritual reach.
Here was a man prominent both on ac-
count of his riches and of his position. He
was the tax commissioner of Jericho, and
would not have been seen pushing in the
street crowd to see Jesus. Had he really
wanted to come near, the crowd would not
have been an obstacle. He surely was as
strong as the woman sick for many years,
who pushed through as great a crowd of
men as ever thronged the Master. Then,
too, had he merely wanted to see Jesus,
he could have secured a place in one of the
91
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
windows or on a housetop, where he could
have seen Jesus with ease and clearness.
But he ran ahead of the crowd and
climbed a tree. This seems a most unusual
proceeding for a rich man and the chief
of the tax-gatherers, until we note what
kind of a tree he climbed. It was a syca-
more tree, the tree of low, thick, spreading
branches and broad leaves; the tree which
has always been noted in the Orient for its
dense foliage and heavy shade. In this
tree Zacchæus hoped to screen himself
from Jesus. He counted on the excitement
down in the road, with all eyes centered on
Jesus, to keep the eyes of any from turning
upon him. He wanted to see Jesus, but
he did not want to be seen. He did not
dare to trust himself to the gaze of the
Master. For had he not heard about Mat-
thew, Matthew the publican, whom Jesus
saw and called to be one of His disciples ?
Might Jesus not also call Zacchæus? And
could he withstand the call? Or, even if
Jesus did not call him, might He not say
Sie
92
HIDING FROM JESUS
to him what He said to the rich young
ruler, “One thing thou lackest; sell all that
thou hast and give to the poor, and come
follow Me?” Zacchæus was not ready to
do that, even to be saved. He did not want
to have any of these embarrassing things
said to him. Yet he wanted to see Jesus.
There was something peculiarly attractive
in this Man, whose fame had gone all
abroad.
Here is a type of man we find every-
where. How many are there who are suffi-
ciently interested in Jesus to put them-
selves to some inconvenience to see Him,
and yet who do not wish to be seen by Him!
They are men of small stature spiritually.
They are neither large enough to look at
Jesus from the level, nor strong enough to
secure a position near Him and maintain
it, in spite of all forces that would draw
them away.
Here are the men of business. Many of
these are immensely wealthy or control
great resources of wealth; all of them are
93
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
striving after this world's goods. Few
ever reach the point where they conclude
they have a sufficiency. Now, the princi-
ples of the Sermon on the Mount are as
well known to them as was Jesus to Zac-
chæus. And a great interest attaches to
this teaching. It is surprising how numer
ous are the books and magazine articles
and popular lectures on subjects which deal
directly with the message Jesus delivered.
A journalist who reads some fifty news-
papers every day says the amount of space,
both in editorials and contributed matter,
devoted to subjects that deal with ethics
and higher moral standards is remarkably
large. And the inspiration of these ar-
ticles is had from the teaching of Jesus.
He is the dominant force in the higher life
of to-day. An intense interest is mani-
fested in Him. Men want to see Him, who
He is. But they are afraid to come direct
to Him. They know Him well enough to
feel His magnetic power. But they do not
want to be drawn too close to Him. He
94
HIDING FROM JESUS
VANUS
may ask them some embarrassing ques-
tions. Or His very silence as He looks
upon them may be vocal with reproach.
So their interest in Jesus is that of the
passive onlooker. It is the interest that
would ask for information, but which
would balk at acting upon it if any dis-
agreeable demands were made.
There are rich men in every community
who fall short of their possible usefulness
simply because they will not interest them-
selves in Jesus actively. There are busi-
ness men who only half-heartedly support
the institutions for righteousness because
they can not cut loose from the current of
business practices. They are afraid of
the teaching of Jesus. They know its grip-
ping power. They are candid men and
honest, the men often who most truly rep-
resent the community. They appreciate
the straight-forward, unrelenting charac-
terization of right and wrong as it fell
from Jesus' lips. They know only too well
that, did they let Jesus' teaching really
95
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
e
take hold on their lives, it would mean a
readjustment of their practices. They are
controlled by the current, business stand-
ards and methods. They must bow before
the fetish of competition. “Business is
business." "Let him get who can, and
keep who is able." We recognize to the
fullest extent the difficulties which beset
the business man in this terrible tug and
strain of competition. And we also recog-
nize that the standards are higher to-day
than yesterday, and that to-morrow is
golden with the hope of a still higher
standard. But in the present there is en-
tirely too much hiding from Jesus. The
desire for commercial and financial gain
is deeper' and more controlling than any
other. Men seemingly must overreach
their competitors or those from whom they
draw their income. They can not do this
and at the same time subscribe to Jesus'
creed of honesty and square dealing. So
they climb up into their sycamore trees to
be mere onlookers while Jesus passes.
96
HIDING FROM JESUS
There is another class which sets itself
up against the evils which come through an
inordinate desire to amass wealth and the
evils which come from ignorance and pov-
erty among the masses. There are social
workers, for example, who set themselves
in earnest toward the amelioration of evil
and unfavorable conditions. But they lay
emphasis upon character rather than re-
ligion. Now, we are not in favor of prose-
lyting and evangelizing among the masses
as the sole end of their betterment. A
piece of bread and butter is worth infinitely
more to a poor and helpless man than a
whole bundle of tracts; and to put a man
on his feet and enable him to work with
his hands and his head is worth infinitely
more than merely to preach to him the sav-
ing power of the gospel. And yet, if there
is to be any character, the soil of religion
must be tilled and sown. And it were idle
for us to argue that the teaching of Jesus
is the best seed for religious growth. This
fact is generally admitted, but not in an
97
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
open and direct way. Rather do we find
much of the work which is done in the
name of Jesus credited to some other in-
fluence. Scant acknowledgment is given
to His principles. It would seem at times
that some of the leaders in this work would
take their lessons from the Man of Naza-
reth as He passes by, but not let others
know they have even seen Him.
So, too, with many of the lectures on
culture and the humanities. We find the
rule of conduct they lay down drawn from
read treatises on ethics and morals in
which the name of Jesus is not mentioned,
and no recognition whatever of His stu-
pendous force in the progress of civiliza-
tion. And yet there are passages in the
books so like the teaching of Jesus that
their authors would be guilty of plagi-
arism if it were possible to plagiarize
Jesus' words. These men would consider
indebtedness. For there are some de-
98
HIDING FROM JESUS
mands Jesus would make upon them which
would modify their teaching or even take
away the seeming originality thereof.
What a work there remains to be done by
these very men in recognizing the Master!
They could speak with authority equal to
that of the Church
They could help powerfully, did they
come down out of their sycamore trees, to
give the Church of Christ the influence it
ought to have to-day in meeting the great
problems that are before it.
Then there is another class of small
persons spiritually who would look at
Jesus from concealment. They are in the
Church itself. They saw Jesus face to
face, and began to walk with Him; yes,
who even now are ranked among His fol-
lowers. They know Him only too well and
are familiar with what He asks of them.
“Why call ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not
the things I say unto you?” They want
to see Jesus, but they dare not come out
99
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
into the open. They are God's people in
God's Church. They hide themselves,
however, when Jesus passes by.
A Church, like everything else, in order
to exist, needs support. Yet there is no in-
stitution less heartily supported by its ad-
herents than the Christian Church. There
are men and women in large numbers who
want the benefits of Church affiliations, but
who refrain from identifying themselves
actively with the work or from assuming
responsibility. If there were no other rea-
son for the Church's existence, there is one
that is all-sufficient. That is the fellowship
it offers. We need friends, and we need
fellowship. One of our most eminent psy-
chologists has said that definite ethical in-
struction is quite unimportant as compared
with the subtle influence of another per-
sonality at the critical moment. The at-
mosphere of this influence is generated in
every meeting of people, whether social,
political, business, or religious. But it is
the business of the Church to create such
*
100
HIDING FROM JESUS
an atmosphere. And it meets all its de-
mands. Where a number of men and
women are banded together for no other
purpose but spiritual uplift, a fellowship
results which is inestimable in its influ- -
ences. And when we say this we are not
unmindful of the fact that the Church is
not a perfect institution and that every
communicant has not attained to fullness
of true manhood.
The Church as such needs to be sup-
ported morally as well as financially. But
too often do we find avenues in our
Churches lined on both sides with syca-
more trees in which sit many a Zacchæus
in his cool shade, looking down upon the
hot and dusty road and on Jesus and His
few laboring disciples. The place where
every member of the Church needs to be
is not on some vantage point, looking on,
but down in the road, however hot and
dusty it may be, toiling with Jesus as He
mounts the steeps to Jerusalem.
Jesus saw Zacchæus. Whether His at-
101
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
tention was called to him by another or
whether His eye penetrated the foliage, is
immaterial. Jesus saw him, for it is as
impossible to hide anything from Jesus
as to veil the sun. This has ever been the
power of the gospel. It finds people even
when they are hiding from it. The psalm-
ist sensed this ever-present Spirit of God
and phrased it in words which shall never
be forgotten. “Whither shall I go from
Thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from
Thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven,
Thou art there; if I make my bed in sheol,
behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings
of the morning and dwell in the uttermost
part of the sea, even there shall Thy hand
lead me and" Thy right hand hold me.”
The gospel spirit is in the heights above
and the depths beneath and at the utmost
reach of the horizon. The winds are not
swift enough to outrun its messengers, nor
the darkness black enough to hide its light.
Zacchæus was as open before Jesus' gaze
as though he had been standing near.
102
HIDING FROM JESUS
There is no shade behind which we can hide
to-day from the Nazarene Peasant. He
has been the most potent heart-searching
factor in the world for the last eighteen
hundred years. We deceive ourselves
greatly if we think we can be mere passive
onlookers as He passes by. He sees us and
calls us just as He saw and called Zacchæus.
The only question is whether we will re-
remained in the tree, or, letting himself
down, might have slunk away. But a -
change came over him as Jesus ap-
proached. And when Jesus called he made
haste and came down and received Him
joyfully. “I have need of you, Zacchæus,”
Jesus said; “you can be of great service
to Me. I must spend the night with you."
From a passive onlooker, Zacchæus, by the
manhood in him which Jesus could touch,
became an active adherent. More than
this. That day salvation came to his soul.
For he took Jesus into his home.
103
IX.
IN SIGHT OF THE PROMISED LAND.
were
A WOMAN of discernment said, “I never
want to teach the lesson of Moses barred
out of the promised land. It seems so un-
fair. The Children of Israel were ever-
lastingly dissatisfied with him, and he did
the very best he could with them. Yet they
were allowed to cross over, and he was
forced to remain behind.”
The words spoken to Moses do seem to
be a very harsh judgment. After all his
toils and struggles, his hopes and disap-
pointments, forty long years of anxiety and
anticipation, right in sight of his journey's
end, Jehovah tells him he shall see the
Promised Land, but may not enter into it.
Why Moses should not reap the fruit of
his toil is hard for us to understand. The
104
IN SIGHT OF PROMISED LAND.
judgment upon him, however, is the judg-
ment of life upon humankind.
Let us note that Moses was not only a
great man, he was a good man. He was
the only available man God had to lead the
Israelites out of the slavery of Egypt into
the mastery of Palestine. We are told,
nevertheless, that he was debarred from
entering in because in moments of weak-
ness he trespassed against God. The weak
spots in Moses' life were to count more
against him than all his strength was to
count for him. There is a trite saying that
a chain is no stronger than its weakest link.
It would appear to be a most unwarranted
conclusion to say that one weak tendency
in man or one single failure at a time when
much depended thereon was to be the indi-
cator of his real strength and usefulness.
But this is the law we have before us in
the incident of Moses. It is a law that
should cause us to ponder deeply.
If we look into the world we see men by
the score who came to the very borders of
105
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
the promised land, but were hindered from
entering in. Men of good parts, men of
much promise in youth or even in middle
age, men who seem even now to be carry-
ing the real work of the world, have failed
of their journey's end. By mathematical
computation our engineers can tell us how
strong a beam or a girder must be to bear
a certain weight. Those who do business
in the tall building or who ride on trains
over the deep chasm can do so with abso- .
lute safety. They know the strength of
the building or bridge is sufficient to carry
the weight laid upon it. We have no such
means of computing the strength of a
human being. While we can make approxi-
mations, we can come to no exact figures.
How much physical, mental, moral, or even
spiritual strain individual men can bear is
an unknown quantity.
Worse than this, there is a tendency on
the part of human nature to resist any
actual computation in this regard. The
young man will not listen very attentively
106
IN SIGHT OF PROMISED LAND.
when problems of physical strain are
placed before him. He is living in the
present; he has the assurance that his
strength is sufficient for his needs. Or, if
he has indications that this is not the case,
he is inclined to be indifferent, and will
not listen to admonition. He is perfectly
ready to run his train of life over a phys-
ical bridge not strong enough to support
it. Many a young man, therefore, comes
to the very verge of the promised land of
life and is told he can not enter in.
The task of parents and teachers to en-
list youth in the arithmetic of physical
strain is a fearful one. Young men and
women do not seem to care whether they
make their life-calculations accurately. It
seems to matter little how much informa-
tion we have on the subject or how care-
fully our physicians are able to point out
the source of future weakness. Knowledge
of this sort does not represent a present
quantity. The element of chance enters in
to such an extent as to lead many a youth
107
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
to feel that he may be able to override the
law of nature and win out in the end. The
future is too far ahead, and years, as one
looks forward, will pass too slowly to in-
duce young manhood to guard against the
weakening effects which the ordinary
strain and toil of life bring. And so there
are middle-aged and older men who hover
around the border of the promised land
and who have heard unmistakably the ver-
dict that they may not enter in, because
they trespassed against the law of physical
endurance.
So in the realm of mental activity. He
who sins against mental strength will be
debarred from entering the promised land.
Some of the saddest wrecks that human
life makes are the wrecks of the broken
mind, of the intellect that can not carry the
day's strain and toil. Even where there
is no complete breakdown of mental tissue,
and man is able to think on the great prob-
lems before him, there is the inability for
hard, sustained, penetrative thought. The
108
IN SIGHT OF PROMISED LAND.
mind can not go the full length; it can not
cross over into the promised land; it must
stand aside and see others marching on.
The confusion of voices we have in polit-
ical, educational, ecclesiastical, and busi-
ness life to-day, as always, arises from
the inability of men to think themselves
through to a satisfying conclusion. There
is a babel of sounds, but few distinct voices.
The race is not trained to think; it is too
slow a process. We would get on. We
jump at conclusions, and when we arrive
at the border of the promised land we are
halted, and may not cross over, for our
mental mechanism is not adequate for the
burden over yonder.
The law of overstrain which brings to us
the gravest concern is that in the moral and
spiritual realm. Here we are absolutely
unable to make any satisfactory calcula-
tions as to how strong the moral and spir-
itual foundations of man must be in order
to carry the full weight of the strain which
will be placed upon them. There are moral
109
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
wrecks, of course, and spiritual wrecks,
men and women who are dropped behind
in the wilderness and who never come even
within sight of the promised land. These
cases are as sad as they seem to be hope-
less. For the train of humanity marches
on, counting them out of the race.
Even the larger portion of those who
come to the very border of the promised
land have not trained the susceptibilities of
the soul and, therefore, have no eyes that
look inward to the deeper meanings in man
and nature. We are told that all men are
born color-blind, that even he who is most
susceptible to the shades and harmonies of
color can not see one quarter of the colors
which are known to exist in nature. Color-
sight must be cultivated just as all things
in life worth while. He who would catch
the tints of nature must go the whole way
of preparatory training. So, too, must the
æsthetic, the moral, the religious sense be
cultivated. And not only is it sufficient to
have these senses under culture; it is nec-
110
IN SIGHT OF PROMISED LAND.
essary to keep them quick and responsive.
had susceptibilities for the finer capacities
have permitted these to fall into decay be-
cause of disuse, and the harmonious strain
of music or the beauty in form and color
have no meaning to them. They come to
the promised land of life and are not able
to enter in. The sadness that results in
such cases is shown by the lines noted men
have written. When they listened to music
they could catch no thrill; when they read
poetry they felt no throb; when they looked
at the painting they had no inspiration.
'Thou shalt not enter in," is the word they
heard. And it comes in the gloom and
desolation which can neither be penetrated
nor dispelled.
Or men have allowed the cares of the
world to press upon them to crowd out the
better self, to deaden the instinct which
makes for religion and spirituality. They
come in their journey where they are un-
able to enter with any feeling of satisfac-
111
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
tion into the great religious problems or
spiritual solaces. They are not at home;
they do not belong in these realms; seem-
ingly they get along fairly well and can
hold themselves on the other side of the
border with satisfaction and equanimity.
Nevertheless there is something lacking.
The way in which men to-day look for sub-
stitutes for the simple religion of Jesus
Christ, the way in which they will grasp
at every wind of strange doctrine that
blows, the way in which they will submit
themselves to religious theories that have
no foundation in fact, indicate only too un-
mistakably the presence of spiritual unrest
and discontent.
Man belongs in the promised land of re-
ligion and spiritual truth; it is the purpose
of Almighty God to lead him from the
bondage of Egypt into the freedom of Pal-
estine. He will bring him the long way
through vicissitudes and experiences, all of
which will make him strong. But in the
lives of too many men there are the waters
112
IN SIGHT OF PROMISED LAND.
of Meribah or the wilderness of Zin which
lead them from the way and cause them to
relinquish their grasp upon the verities.
So they come to the borders of the prom-
ised land and hear the word that they can
not enter in. Spiritual truth has its law
as well as natural truth. We are just as
much under spiritual gravity as we are
under natural gravity. And we are made
to realize this fact by the inexorable on-
going of God's will. He gives us intelli-
gence to choose rightly, and we are the
makers of our own destiny. What a man
soweth, that shall he also reap.
This judgment on Moses was harsh, but
it is no harsher than the judgment of life
generally. We can account for the judg-
ment only as we recognize and submit our-
selves unto law and order. If this world
of ours, according to the dictum of the sci-
entist, for one moment should deviate from
the regularity of its ongoing, it would
shrivel up like an empty snake-skin. We
have the same pronouncement in Holy
113
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
Writ. God can not deviate from His law
or order, for He is Law and Order. While
we do not know His ways and do not un-
derstand how He can temper justice with
mercy, as we know He does, we dare not
take chances on life. We are going
through the wilderness under His guid-
ance. We must accept this guidance as
sure and kind. Ours is not to question, but
to follow.
114
X.
ROUND-ABOUT WAYS OF GOD.
ca
FROM Egypt to Palestine is a march of
about five days. It took the Israelites
forty years to make the journey. God led
them by the round-about way. The near
way was through the land of the Philis-
tines, à hardy and warlike people. The Is-
raelites were not trained to fight. They
were passing from a period of slavery to
a land they were to conquer. They had no
idea as yet what it meant to govern.
Hence the forty years of training and
God's round-about way.
The experience of the Children of Israel
is our own. The ways are before us. They
seem short. So far as we know they are
easy and delightful. But God says, “You
must follow the round-about way.” Paul
would have gone to Rome much earlier in
his experience. He felt confident he could
115
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
render a service there. But twice we read
the Spirit restrained him from going. We
study his career and discover he was not
nearly so strong as he thought he was;
had he come to Rome immediately, it must
have been by way of the Philistines, and
he might have been overcome. Then, too,
he was not trained for his work. He
needed the experience which he went
through to educate him for his great tasks.
Although God's round-about way led him
through misunderstanding and persecu-
tion, it gave him the routine he needed as
a student of Christ's gospel. When he
finally reached Rome it was as a graduate
in the school of Christ.
So we make experience. We ask our-
selves frequently, “Why is it necessary for
tis to come to strength and knowledge only
by the long, round-about way?" We ask
these questions as grown-up people. When
we look at the child we are reminded of
our own infancy and of our weakness and
ignorance, and we do not wonder it was
116
ROUND-ABOUT WAYS OF GOD.
necessary for us to come by slow stages
of growth into the strength and knowledge
of maturity. But as the great questions
crowd about us, as we are dealing with the
problems of life, we ask why we can not
make more progress into strength and en-
lightenment. It matters not whether these
problems go to the very heart of the uni-
verse and deal with the grave concerns of
eternity and destiny, or whether they are
the more practical problems of success and
failure in our life's work. Whatever they
are, we are impatient of the slow progress
we make. The young man as he enters col-
lege looks forward to his course with all
the eagerness and buoyancy of his youth-
ful enthusiasm. He is apt to fret and to
chafe under the routine and the necessary
stages of his work. Why can he not take
more hours than are allotted him? Why
must the course be so long? But when the
end comes he looks backward with the ex-
perience he gained while prosecuting his
studies. The years' wandering in the wil-
117
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
derness, as it were, seems a very brief
period, and the training for his life's work
all too short.
Why does not God unveil His face?
Why has He said, “No one shall see My
face and live?" Why does He hold His
secrets and mysteries so close within His
own grasp? The way to the promised
land of divine knowledge ought to be near
if God is good. If He is mindful of the in-
terests of His children, why does He not
lead them straight to it? This was the
thought of the early Israelites, who, as we
are told, concluded to go the near way to
God. They would build a tower which
would reach into the very heavens. They
would project themselves into the very
presence of the Almighty. They would
learn His secrets. They would bring them
down to earth. Up the steps of this tower
mankind would freely pass, and all that
was known in heaven would likewise be
known upon the earth. But God said:
“Not so. This is the way through the land
al
118
ROUND-ABOUT WAYS OF GOD.
of the Philistines; you are not strong
enough as yet to bear the knowledge which
the Almighty reserves for you. If you
should peer into the heavens and look upon
His face you would be undone, and you
could never reach the mind of the Infinite."
So God tumbled over the stones of the
tower and took the people and led them
by the round-about way through His school
of life.
The Old Testament is a history of this
education. From the heathen ideas of
polytheism to the Hebrew idea of the one
God, who in love and mercy visited His
people and who did not demand their phys-
ical sacrifices and oblations, was a long
step. We read the steps in the great liter-
ature of the prophets. God led them on
through this way of the wilderness because
they needed to be educated. And so, too,
in the Old Testament we have that intense
longing for deliverance through the Mes-
siah who was to come. Job's cry, “Oh,
that one might plead for man with God,
119
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
as a son of man pleadeth for his neigh-
bor," was the sob of every earnest and de-
vout Israelite. What grief, what anxiety,
what darkening of hope and trust there
were as the Children of Israel reached out
Yet God led them in this regard by round-
about stages. Not until the fullness of
time was come did He send forth the Re-
deemer of the world. Thus God reveals
Himself. He takes His children the long
way round, and in the experience they
make there they grow strong in mental
and spiritual strength.
Man is not always willing to accept this
fact. He would go the near way. Here,
for example, is a class of people whom we
might call the easy-going class. They lay
the great problems of life and destiny upon
the shelf. They will not concern them-
selves about them. If there is a God in
heaven, and He is good, He will take care
of them. There is no need for them to be
concerned about their welfare. If there
are
120
ROUND-ABOUT WAYS OF GOD.
is no God in heaven, but if we are in the
grasp of a blindly working mechanism,
from which we can not free ourselves, then
we shall come to our sure doom, and there
is no escape from our fate. Let us drink,
therefore, and be merry, for to-morrow
we die. These easy-going people see only
the near way into life. It is the life of
least resistance; it is the life of immediate
pleasure; it is the life of present gain; it
is the life to be lived in every detail here
and now,—the life that leads to the prom-
ised land of existence. They do not see
the Philistines along the way, or, if they
do, do not realize how weak they are to
cope with them.
Or here are those who see only evil in
the world. They hear the song of the lark,
it is true, but the hiss of the adder sounds
in their ear. They pluck the wild rose,
but their pleasure is destroyed because
they find the poison ivy growing near.
They till their fields to sow the grain, but
they do it discontentedly, because they
121
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
know that the witch-grass or other weed
will grow in strength and plenty. They
prune their trees and spray them, but only
with the thought that the scale or thrip will
destroy the crop. They do not hear God's
voice in the gently falling rain, but in the
rolling thunder. They do not see God's
hand in the warming ray of the sun, but
in the flash of the lightning. God's pres-
ence is not discovered in the sprouting of
the grass or the dawn of each new day, but
in the earthquake or the volcano or the
tidal wave. God is present somewhere,
doubtless, but He is a great cosmic force
removed by infinite stages from the life of
the individual. He is bringing a world to
perfection, He is training a people for ulti-
mate good and happiness. In the process
there will be great cataclysms of nature.
The deeps of the ocean will be stirred and
the peaks of the mountains will tremble
and human beings unnumbered will go to
their death. Man as an individual will be
only an incident in the ongoing stream of
122
ROỨND-ABOUT WAYS OF GOD.
life. If he has discovered anything good,
if he has developed a mind that is able to
grasp and fix great truths, if he has left
a song or a painting or a statue which ap-
peals to posterity, if he has been the lead-
ing spirit in a body politic or a religious
order or an educational system, his
achievements will simply be added to the
sum total of the good that man accom-
plishes as he lives his life and does his
work. But he himself will pass out into
the night. He was only a spark which was
fanned by environment and conditions into
a bright light, but which was extinguished
again by the very same forces of environ-
ment and condition. So the pessimist or
the stoic is abroad in the land. He would go
the near way. He can not see the reason
or the purpose of the round-about way, and
before he knows it, comes in conflict with
the Philistines and goes down to defeat.
Or there are those who look upon life
only as beautiful and good. This is their
near way to the promised land. There are
123
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
VO
jarring discords, there are black clouds,
there are grave apprehensions. But they
would drown the discords in pleasant mu-
sic, they would draw rainbows over the
clouds, they would quiet themselves by
false hopes in spite of their fears. Sin is
non-existent; evil is good gone wrong or
not yet able to adjust itself to the higher
life; pain is only an imagination; sickness,
a delusion. Like the Hindu of old, they
would draw the robe of forgetfulness about
them and lose themselves in an imaginary
world. But this is the way of Philistia. It
is not God's way. The hard, obstinate
facts of sin and sickness, of misery and
woe, are before us, and in order to under-
stand them we have to wander through the
wilderness. We must make the experience
of the Children of Israel. We will be re-
bellious, we will be impatient, we will be
obstinate; but under God's hand we must
continue.
The problem becomes a personal one.
We all go through a bondage in Egypt; a
124
ROUND-ABOUT WAYS OF GOD.
slavery of some kind attaches to us. God
can and does lead us out of this Egypt.
He can do it in a night, as He led out the
Children of Israel. But it is an entirely
different matter for Him to take us to
Palestine. The Egypt inheres in our blood,
it flows through our veins, and it is as im-
portant for the Almighty to get Egypt out
of us as it is to get us into Palestine.
The long, round-about way is necessary.
If we were strong enough to go through
the land of Philistia we would immediately
think too highly of ourselves. The feel-
ings of independence would stir in our
veins; we would have no need for the Al-
mighty; nay, we would even ignore Him,
or declare Him to be non-existent.
We must go the longer way. Here we
shall meet our foes gradually and have a
fighting chance against them. We must
be led even to the very point of despair,
where water and food fail us, in order to
see that God can and will provide. We
must be placed before inscrutable mystery
се у
125
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
in order to see that the mind of man is not
sufficient unto itself, but dependent upon
God. By constant disappointment in the
wilderness we must learn that stability and
sufficiency in daily life are the result of
gradual, painstaking, invigorating growth,
and that the road to ease and plenty is the
round-about way. When we come face
to face with the deeper problems of life we
must understand that there is something
lying underneath, and that only as we
strive to reach this can we show ourselves
fit for life's task.
Life is the test of the long run. It is
not an easy task. Its solutions are not
make; it is a task we can accomplish. A
Federal commissioner listened attentively
to a proposed plan, and finally gave his ap-
proval. But he added, “Do you know that
you have entered upon a hundred years'
job?” “We do,” was the instant re-
sponse, "and so we have n't an hour to
lose.” God calls us, and He leads.
126
XI.
GY
DEEP in the consciousness of men lies the
conviction that for earnest and devoted
consecration to any cause there is no limit
to the possibility of result. He who truly
loves his calling or pursuit is aware of the
fact that there are wide areas for him to
possess which as yet lie undiscovered.
And even if he feel his incapacity to dis-
cover and possess them, he is not ready to
say that no other is capable of this task.
The most conceited or self-confident man
dare not claim that human ability and ca-
pacity have come to their final flowering
in him.
As we consider how man's universe
widens as he loves and devotes himself to
any one cause, we find a confirmation of
the words, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear
127
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
heard, neither have entered into the heart
of man the things that God hath prepared
for them that love Him."
Following this thought, we see how the
loving mind and heart ever lives in a
widening and expanding universe. This
is true in our most commonplace experi-
ences. He who loves the stars and the
flowers will exclaim with the psalmist that
“the heavens declare the glory of God and
the firmament showeth His handiwork."
And his universe will be an ever widening
one, for he will discover the presence of
God even in the common wayside bush.
He who really loves his neighbor will be-
gin to understand the power of love that
passeth all knowledge. His universe will
ever be a widening one, for he will be in
the presence of the Eternal, whose love fills
the earth as the waters cover the sea.
But in a more particular sense we dis-
cover how a devoted mind and heart en-
larges its own world. We look out on the
heavens at night and see a white patch of
128
THE WIDENING UNIVERSE.
light. To the naked eye it has the appear-
ance of a filmy vapor. This is all it will
remain to those who have no further in-
terest in heavenly bodies. But for him
who really loves the stars, what a widening
universe there is! He turns his telescope
upon that milky spot, and it miraculously
expands into a whole world of planets, each
moving with as much regularity and pur-
pose across the beaten tracks of the sky
as the planet upon which we live. Within
the radius of the natural eye one can count
six thousand stars; the telescopes of our
modern observatories multiply this range
of vision more than two hundred times,
and in that ever widening area a hundred
million suns are seen to revolve.
Even after the eye of man, looking
through the strongest telescope, has ex-
hausted its power, the universe of the
heavens still continues to widen. For a
sensitized plate is applied to the eye-piece
of a telescope, the huge tube is turned to
what seems an empty space in the arching
129
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
heavens, and after long exposure the plate
is dotted with thousands of tiny points,
each point registering a planet circling in
its orbit at a distance beyond even the
guess of man. What the human eye can
not see is by this miracle made known to
human knowledge, and there is not a scien-
tist foolish enough to dispute these facts.
Eye hath not seen,--and yet to the mind of
man it hath been revealed. Think of the
enthusiasm of the psalmist as he said,
“When I consider Thy heavens, the work
of Thy finger, the moon and the stars
which Thou hast ordained.” And yet that
ancient Hebrew had no conception of the
innumerable unseen worlds the Almighty
was holding in the hollow of His hand.
For beyond all human vision a thousand
million suns and planets were revolving,
and he could see only a few stars.
Shall we stop with the astronomer?
What the telescope reveals to us on the
scale of the vast the microscope reveals on
the plane of the minute. How many
130
THE WIDENING UNIVERSE.
spheres as large as an orange or even a
football would it take to fill the area of our
globe? And yet such an inconceivable
number of spheres are packed into every
dewdrop, and science discovers that in each
one of these infinitesimally small molecules
is a stellar system as regular as the solar
system, and much more marvelous because
a million million times more minute. Can
we stop here? The same widening universe
opens up for the botanist, the geologist, the
chemist, the physicist, the psychologist.
Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither
have entered into the heart of man the
things which lie discoverable for every true
devotee of science.
Or turn to what we regard as ordinary
inventive ability. How have the discov-
eries of the last hundred years added to
the sum total of our knowledge and com-
fort! And yet, does any one believe there
is a limit to the possibilities of creative
genius? Every invention is but as a peb-
ble dropped into the bottomless lake of
M-
131
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
life's possibilities starting the concentric
circles to move closer in shore. The inven-
tion of telegraphy was a feat which our
forefathers would have ascribed to a black
hand, and the ancients have written down
as a miracle. To operate a keyboard in
Baltimore and make another keyboard in
Washington register the same signals so
that an intelligent and accurate message
could be reproduced, might well have
seemed to the men of sixty years ago as
the limit of telegraphic communication,
But for the minds devoted to this pursuit
there was a widening universe, and soon
the subtle currents of electric power were
running over the mountains and under the
seas, until the whole world became a net-
work of telegraphic appliance.
Was this the end? Had the limit of elec-
tricity to transmit messages been reached ?
Not at all. Other minds were only stimu-
lated. The universe continued to widen.
What Morse in 1844 perhaps had not
dreamed off, Bell in 1876 was putting into
132
THE WIDENING UNIVERSE.
operation, and the wires began to carry
audible speech over widely separated dis-
tances. And still the universe widened.
For Marconi made the very air articulate
and compressed the expanse of the ocean
in the speaking limits of a drawing-room.
These are only a few of the many illus-
trations that suggest themselves to us.
Who dares be hopeless or pessimistic about
the future or declare what may not yet be
in store for the loving mind and the search-
ing heart?
What is true in the physical realm is
true also in the mental. We sometimes de-
plore the fact that we have no great men
such as lived twenty or fifty or two thou-
sand years ago. We compare our literary
age with the Elizabethan or ancient clas-
sical; we speak of philosophers and think
of Plato and Kant; we study art and go
back to the period of the Renaissance, as
though literature and philosophy and art
were dead in this day and generation.
Even in a field where it may seem that
ee
133
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
the old is better than the new is there ever
the expansive power of the mind to grap-
ple with humanity's growing problems.
Man is so constituted that he is forever
equal to his emergencies. Not every man
has been a great man or a leader, to be
sure, but a man for every age and every
crisis of the world's history has appeared.
Humankind has not yet been left without
a mind ready for the demands of the hour
or an innumerable company capable to
undertake the tasks of the moment. At
times there has seemed to be a long wait-
ing for such men, as though the currents of
life were running to the shore and there
were no escape from the shoals. But just
as we have steamed along the coast and
the land closed in on all sides, and at the
moment when our ship seemed sure to
strike the reef, the shore began to give way,
there was a broadening of the waters, and
we found ourselves in a haven for safe
anchorage and a future starting-point on
our journey; so in times past have the ob-
ni
134
THE WIDENING UNIVERSE.
stacles confronting the State, the Church,
the school, the individual, melted away as
the widened universe of some mind opened
out, and a safe repose was found until the
further steps of progress needed to be
taken.
It is most suggestive to study the prob-
lems with which successive ages have had
to deal. All the puzzles, for example, that
the modern mind has grappled with con-
fronted Greek philosophy four hundred
years before Christ was born. The Greeks
magnificently answered them, but only
from their point of view and limited expe-
rience. Their answers did not solve the
problem, but they served to stimulate the
thought of succeeding ages as the widening
universe of man's mind demanded. Plato's
mind was a high tower in the Ancient
World, but it was not high enough to
darken succeeding minds. The intellect of
the great German philosopher has been
regarded as the highest peak in the range
of modern mental capacity. The mighty
135
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
stirrings in his brain piled up the world
of thought mountain high, and men are
still climbing to reach that height. But as
a lower mountain, looked at from the plain,
will hide the higher mountains beyond, so,
standing on the level of the present, we
dare not say that contemporary thought
does not, or that future thought will not,
see yet higher peaks of intellect. The more
we study the progress of thought the more
do we discover the power of mind and the
capacity of life to unfold an ever-growing
and widening world.
This fact has deep meanings. If the
Almighty has put man in a widening uni-
verse and has given him the power to grow
with it, is there to be a sudden end to this
growth? Why shall it not continue as long
as the universe. The universe is not
merely this world, it is the whole creation
and thought of Almighty God. Why, then,
should we limit life to this world, and not
rather consider it co-extensive with God's
universe, and hence eternal?
as
136
THE WIDENING UNIVERSE.
This has ever been man's belief, even in
the ages of tradition long preceding the
times of history. And there has been no
power able successfully to drive this
thought from the minds of men. Ancient
and modern doubt and skepticism have
been as little able to confine man in his
thought to a life that ends in this world, as
the stone that was rolled in front of Jesus'
grave was capable of holding Him a pris-
oner therein. Science does not separate
us from God, but ever brings us closer to
Him. And the nearer we come to Him the
more are our minds stayed by the power
of an endless life. “What aforetime men
ignorantly believed, Jesus hath declared
unto us, and hath brought life and immor-
tality to light.” As death was not the cul-
mination of, but only an incident in His
life, so can death have no fears for us, for
we are already in our Father's house, liv-
ing the life eternal, and shall simply enter
its larger room.
Our unfinished work, the hundred plans
ea
137
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
we have evolved and the thousand ambi-
tions we have cherished, will not come to
naught. In that wider universe that shall
naturally unfold for us we shall labor and
love throughout eternity.My Father
worketh hitherto, and I work. Because I
live ye shall live also. Where I am there
ye shall likewise be. What that universe
is, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, but it
exists as surely as do the planets revolving
in space beyond our power of sight; it is
as real as human love, which we feel, but
can not understand.
What is our warrant for these state-
ments? Not the voice of the scientist. If
he tells us there is no human immortality,
we reject his statement. But not because
of lack of proof_simply because of his
own personal disbelief. If he tells us there
is human immortality, we gladly accept his
statement. But not because he has proved
it-simply because he personally believes
it. For “the faith of immortality de-
pends on a sense of it begotten, and not
138
THE WIDENING UNIVERSE.
on an argument of it concluded.” (Bush-
nell.) This sense is begotten of God; it is
His creation, implanted in the heart and
life of man. As we love Him we prepare
ourselves for all that He has in store for
us. We nourish this life so that it natu-
rally widens into the life beyond.
As we contemplate the resurrection of
Jesus, it is a significant fact that He ap-
peared in His resurrection body to none
save His followers. Those who loved Him
saw Him and recognized Him as soon as
He exhibited some trait of character or
manner of speech with which they had
been familiar in His lifetime. The eyes of
the two walking with Him to Emmaus were
beholden simply because they were looking
down upon the ground, and not up at Him.
As soon as they looked upon His face they
recognized Him and understood why their
hearts had so burned within them as He
talked with them.
Here is the conclusion of the whole mat-
ter. The soul that is preparing itself for
139
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
immortal life, that is looking upon the fair
face of the Eternal, is able to recognize and
comprehend immortality. The pure in
heart shall see God; they who love Him
shall enter into the Kingdom prepared for
them before the foundation of the world.
“For eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
neither have entered into the heart of man
the things that God hath prepared for them
that love Him." Immortality thus be-
comes an experience and we begin to live
the immortal life here and now.
140
XII.
EVENING AND MORNING.
We read in Genesis that the evening and
the morning were the first day. The prog-
ress of creation was from nightfall until
dawn, and not from daybreak until sunset.
The eternal forces were working not
through the bright hours of sunlight until
darkness, but through the dark hours of
the night until sunrise. The earth in the
beginning was without form and void, and
darkness was upon the face of the deep.
We think of the end of the world as a
day of great darkness, when the sun shall
be veiled and the moon hidden. But this
may be but the beginning of the world, or
of a new era. When the earth trembles
and the mountains burn and smoke covers
the land, man fears that the last moment
of the world has come. But the great cata-
clysms of history have marked beginnings
141
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
rather than final stops, and we note the
order of progress from evening until morn-
ing.
Darkness is so much a suggestion of
dread, and even of death, that we fail to
note its significance. In the divine econ-
omy it is the beginning, and not the end,
of the day. It is the evening and night
through which man must pass to the morn-
ing and day. If we can grasp this truth
we shall have a key with which to open
many a dark chamber of life, and light
will stream upon many a clouded and con-
fused problem.
In the beginning darkness was upon the
face of the waters. It was upon this dark-
ness that the Spirit of God breathed. Had
there been light at the beginning, there
would have been need of neither sun nor
moon nor stars nor even of God Himself.
God alone is Light. All else is darkness
until He breathes, and then He leads His
children through the night into the day.
At the end of the day there is not night
lor
142
EVENING AND MORNING.
yer
again, but the new and endless day which
John on Patmos saw, where “there shall
be no need of a candle, nor light of the
sun, for the Lord God giveth it light, and
they who dwell there shall reign for ever
and ever." From the chaos and darkness
of Genesis to the heavenly order and light
of Revelation-this is the divine progres-
sion.
We find darkness at first on the face of
man's intellect. We call the years which
divided ancient from modern history the
Dark Ages. But this age was as the first
streaks of dawn compared with the dark-
ness of history's beginning. This dark-
ness at the beginning can not be pene-
trated. Scholars devote their best energy
to lift the veil of dimness. They can go
back a certain way only. Then mystery
and myth begin. The light of day becomes
enveloped in a mist, and this mist leads
to night. Into this night there is no pass-
ing. The progress is from darkness to
day, and not otherwise.
143
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
It would seem as though there were a
divine wisdom here in blocking man's way
into the past. It would seem as though
man, like Moses, were asking to see the
face of God, and that the answer came
back, “My face thou shalt not see, for
there shall no man see Me and live.”
There is a reason here. For we know that
men who persist in remaining in the dark,
even although their first purpose was a
good one, are not fit for the day. They
lose their organs of sight like the mice in
Mammoth Cave and the moles in the earth.
Herein is a suggestion, too, why scholars
who live only in the past, or whose inter-
ests are subjective and not objective, pro-
mulgate views often which have no relation
to or importance for the light and life of
our world. They are called closet-philoso-
phers, because they never move beyond the
rooms in which they work.
been anointed he sees men as trees walk-
144
EVENING AND MORNING.
ing. In the beginning, to drop the figure,
he is in the region of ignorance. He un-
derstands but a few facts, and these often
he is unable to demonstrate. He must
reach his conclusions by making mental
leaps. He can not pick out a way step by
step. When God called Abraham to go
forth into an unknown land, Abraham was
in darkness. His only light was the fact
that God called him. So the mind of man
stincts call him to go forth into a new coun-
try. His only light is the persistence of
the call. There are streaks of light in the
darkness sometimes, but too often they
are not the real light. They are
“The wisp that flickers where no foot can tread.”
It is well to note this fact. It is declared
by some that darkness reigns only in the
realm of religion; that in science there is
light, and no darkness at all, and that this
light lighteth every one that cometh into
the world. We should not get very far
145
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
if we depended only upon the light of
science. Here, as well as everywhere else,
there is night in the beginning, a groping
in the dark, reaching out the hands of spec-
ulation and hypothesis, until there is some-
thing firm to grasp hold of and day can
be drawn in. In every department of the
mental life we go forth with theories, with
stray bits of testimonies. As we cling to
these, by the faith that is in us, light be-
gins to dawn and we are able to see.
There is darkness in the beginning on
the face of man's moral aspirations. Man
desires to be good and to do right. But
he has a very limited insight into what is
good. We are disturbed sometimes at the
relentless recital of immorality in the Old
Testament. Instead of declaring, on the
one hand, that the accounts of wholesale
murders and of wickedness frequently re-
sulting in tragedy are a sufficient reason
for rejecting the Bible as a moral guide,
or, on the other hand, of assuming that
God was responsible for such doings, and
146
EVENING AND MORNING.
therefore can not be a good or loving God,
it is well to look at such accounts squarely
and ask why they are permitted in a book
that takes a higher moral plane than any
other book ever written. The accounts of
immorality in the Old Testament do not
vitiate, but emphasize the moral teaching
of the Bible. And this Book would not
be true to itself if there were no details
of darkness in the moral strivings of its
heroes. It is an account of human nature,
and human nature has its evening before
its morning. Go as far back as we can into
the beginning of mankind, and we find
him moving in moral darkness. The im-
mediate members of his family or clan
were his friends. But everybody else was
his enemy. And any means was honorable
which would enable him to conquer and to
kill his enemy. Even after Israel had ad-
vanced far in its knowledge of God it still
regarded Him as the God only of the He-
brews and would have excluded all other
nations from the benefits of His love and
147
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
wisdom. In the individual life the rights
of one's neighbor, especially of woman,
were not considered in the light of our
modern altruistic and beneficent motives.
Property of others was appropriated, sa-
cred obligations were trampled upon. The
law of most might and keenest shrewdness
prevailed.
This could not have been otherwise.
And yet man went forth out of darkness
into light. The desire to be good and to
do right constrained him. The darkness
of his moral conduct was a schoolmaster.
And he learned lessons which he carved in
the milestones which mark civilization's
advance. At the present time we are in
the full light of day on many a moral ques-
tion. The darkness of the beginning is
past, and we shall go on into endless day
as we use the light we have. But other
questions rise continually concerning
which we are in moral darkness. Every
advance civilization makes is but the an-
nouncement of a new moral problem.
148
EVENING AND MORNING.
Mankind was never in a darker age
morally than that through which we have
been and are passing in regard to the great
moneyed interests of our land. Stealing
was considered the unrightful taking of a
loaf of bread or the breaking and entering
into a bank at night, and a thief one who
went about stealthily and with a jimmy,
and a murderer one who shot down another
in cold blood. But new kinds of stealing
and lifetaking have germinated and grown
so rapidly that printing presses have been
kept busy describing and declaring against
them. The great moral problem to-day is
the problem of the trust, whether it be of
capital or labor. While right-minded men
are groping around in the darkness for
a solution of the problem, all kinds of
known and hitherto unknown wrongs, mis-
demeanors, and crimes are being perpe-
trated. But it is not a going back into the
darkness of past ages. It is a mark of
progress. Large and intricate combina-
tions of capital, close and far-reaching
149
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
amalgamations of labor, were inevitable.
We are forced, to be sure, to protect our-
selves from the maraudings and depreda-
tions of this night-time, and to set what
lights we can to guide us in the darkness.
But the day will dawn and the terrors and
iniquities of the night will be an experience
that taught us our way.
In the realm of morals as well as of in- .
tellect there is first evening and then morn-
ing. Darkness in the beginning is also on
the face of man's spiritual yearnings. In
his mental operations man endeavors to
know. There is no moral or ethical prin-
ciple, as such, involved. In his moral striv-
ings man seeks to come into proper rela-
tions with his fellow-men, to be right be-
fore them and to have their approval. But
in his spiritual yearnings man tries to
come into close communion with the Eter-
nal. This desire has always characterized
man, and it represents his truest self.
Man is religious, because he tries in spite
of himself to break through the cloud that
150
EVENING AND MORNING.
hides him from God. And singular as it
may seem, God, who is Light, is ever repre-
sented as hiding in darkness. The peoples
who lived before the Israelites groped in
densest darkness. To them it was the
night-time of God's existence. Their ef-
forts to find Him are interesting, but not
instructive. Their mythologies, it is true,
struck many a light in the darkness, but
the flames were feeble and soon died out.
The Israelites had a feeling for the light
even in their midnight darkness. As they
believed that the sun had gone in hiding
over night and would reappear, so they
also were convinced that God would some
time come out of the darkness and show
Himself to them. This belief was evi-
denced in such words as are reported of
Moses when he is expostulating with God
and cries, “Show me Thy face.” But the
Lord spoke to Moses, we are told, only out
of the darkness and the clouds and the
thick darkness. The mountain itself
burned with darkness. In the darkness
151
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
rs
God made His pavilions. Darkness was
in His paths, as Job said. Thick darkness
was His swaddling band. His treasures
were in darkness. And again and again
the psalmist declares that clouds and dark-
ness are about Him.
Yet this darkness is the precursor of
light. It is evening first and the long hours
of the night, and then morning. The
writer of the Book of Revelation has the
secret when he says, “Behold, He cometh
with clouds, and every eye shall see Him."
The writers of the Old Testament thought
He came in the clouds, and that the clouds
therefore enveloped Him. But he who saw
the New Jerusalem coming down out of
heaven and the eternal light, saw that God
comes not in, but with, the clouds and that
the darkness is only in the seeming.
Every eye shall see Him. Suffering is a
cloud, but God is not in the cloud, He comes
with it, and in the darkness is ever present
to lead the trusting soul into the light.
Our inability to understand the deep and
152
EVENING AND MORNING.
mo
hidden things of life, to know what the
morrow is to bring forth, to comprehend
the happenings even of to-day or of yester-
day, are all clouds which envelop us. But
they do not envelop God. He is not in the
cloud, a part of it. He comes with the
cloud. They are His messengers, modes
of His workings, and “so far from delay-
ing His coming, are the very chariots in
which He comes."
No life can be complete without its night
as well as day. The Spirit of God moves
on the dark face of man's spiritual long-
ings. He says, “Let there be light," and
there is light. But He teaches us in les-
sons we ought not to misunderstand that
there will be many a night of darkness in
our lives, many an hour of fear and trem
bling and cold dread, many a season of
loneliness and heartache. These are clouds
in which He reveals Himself. They are not
the end of hope and trust, but the begin-
ning; not the close of life, but its opening,
when the candle of our night-time, with its
153
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
feeble and uncertain flame, will become
needless as the great orb of day illumines
our pathway. John saw this on Patmos
because he walked with Jesus in Palestine.
As he thought of darkness he remembered
Jesus, the Sun of righteousness. This
was the Light he experienced. And this
Light "lighteth every man that cometh
into the world.” He saw Him come with
the clouds to usher in an endless day.
154
XIII.
EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN HOUSE.
-100
AFTER a long discussion with Jesus and
with each other concerning Jesus, the
crowd dispersed, and "every man went
unto his own house." This is a common
experience of life. The lecture-room, the
sanctuary, the banquet hall, the house of
mirth, the shop, the factory, holds its as-
sembly for the time being. And then learn-
ers, worshipers, revelers, toilers disperse
and go home. The way of some may be
the same for a while. But one by one they
begin to drop off and turn to side paths,
until every man has entered his own house.
And into that house none but he can enter.
For his house, which he finally enters, is
not four walls and a roof, but the inner
recesses of his own self.
This fact is full of meaning. It suggests
155
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
that every man has his own house. The
tendency to look into the house of an-
other, especially at night, when the cur-
tains are not drawn, or to roam about a
vacant house, to see how its rooms are ar-
ranged, is as strong as it is natural. A
large part of the tourists' time in Europe
is devoted to visiting the homes of cele-
brated people and tramping about the pal-
aces of royalty. We enter the house of
some world-famed man, be it the house
where he was born or in which he toiled or
died, and listen with rapt attention as the
attendant leads us from one room to an-
other. But the voice of that attendant
seems to be the voice of a far-off age, as it
grinds out the hackneyed phrases, “Here
was his sleeping apartment,” or, “Here
the living-room," or, “Here his study,"
and so on. These we have come miles to
see; the spirit of the man who used them
is still pervasive; it speaks, and we under-
stand his writings or his works a little bet-
ter. But after all we feel that this was
was
156
EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN HOUSE.
not his real house and does not explain
the man. We would still push behind the
external into the real spirit of the man.
We have intimate friends. Our tastes
are literary or scientific, and we have a
certain entrée into the homes of literary
and scientific men. We are invited into the
drawing-room and engage in more or less
desultory conversation in the midst of con-
ventional surroundings. Or we are asked
to the dining-room, where the conversation
becomes intimate and familiar. Finally,
perhaps, we are taken into the study or the
laboratory. Now we have reached the
inner sanctum. We see the books of our
friend and the table at which he writes;
or his microscopes and test-tubes and the
place where he experiments. If our in-
terest is keen, we tread as on hallowed
ground. We are in the very place from
which emanate essays and books charged
with life and formulas far-reaching in their
importance. But are we?
The thought soon fastens upon us that
157
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
mere tools and a workshop do not let us
into the secret of that man's labors and
success. These are the mere common-
place. There stands the man. The secret
of his work will ever remain hidden in his
breast. For that is his house, and none
may enter. And while he may be disposed
to let everybody in and open up every
corridor and chamber of his inner self, still
it is beyond his power to disclose the mys-
teries and treasures of that inner house.
“The eyes of those who enter there must
remain holden.
Again, we read a book, and if it is worthy
of our time we immediately want to know .
something about the author. We image
in our mind his likeness, and are eager to
see his picture. We are interested in every
scrap of news concerning him; how he
lives, how he dresses, how he talks. We
would peer into his house, his inner self,
and with piercing and all-sweeping eyes
discover the smallest detail of his person-
ality and genius. We are not repulsed, but
158
EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN HOUSE.
pleased, when he writes of himself in the
first person and reveals himself as a lead-
ing character in one of his stories. But
he lives in his own house, and we may not
enter in.
Every man is under compulsion to go
into his own house. He can not go into the
house of another. His house must always
be occupied. He can not bar the doors
and windows and put up a notice that he
has gone abroad. However far man may
roam in his body, in his spirit he must
stay at home. And his home life will rep-
resent his real self. However he may seem
to others on the outside, as he comes in
contact with them he can not be a seeming,
to himself. He must be what he is. And
in the end, whatever kind of a man he is in
his own house he will be to others who
come to know him.
We are thus singled out and individual-
ized. Our personality may be very much
like that of our friend. But it is ours,
nevertheless, and not his. Although he
159
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
may understand us better than any one
else, he will not be able to lift the veil en-
be, he can not solve them for us. He may
help, suggest, inspire, but in the end he
can not act. Whatever sorrows we have
we must bear alone. He may sympathize
and condole and make the burden lighter,
but he can not take our sorrow and bear it.
That word of the prophet, speaking of Je-
hovah's Servant, that He “trod the wine-
press alone,” is only too vividly brought
home to every man or woman who must
toil and weep.
In our joys it seems to be different, as
though we could rollick around in an-
other's house just as well as in our own.
But the same rule holds here. Whatever
the mirth or enjoyment, if it be anything
real to us we must enter with it into our
own house and there live it. Especially is
this true in those things which appeal to
our æsthetic and intellectual natures. The
beautiful landscape is ours only as we look
160
EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN HOUSE.
at it through the windows of our own
house. The masterpiece is ours only as
we see it with the eyes of our own soul.
The oratorio, the musical drama, is ours
only as it impinges on the tympanum of
our inner ears. Others may interpret for
us and make the meaning clear. But they
can not see or hear for us. Into our own
sic, the painting, the far-sweeping meadow
our own.
So of learning. The mechanic can show
the apprentice how to use his tools, but
he can not handle them for him. The
teacher can unfold a subject for his stu-
dent, but he can not carry the subject into
the mind of the student. Apprentice and
pupil must each go into his own house and
there master the lessons for himself.
As it becomes more and more apparent
that man is a sole tenant in his own house,
it is of some importance how he furnishes
the house. Some furniture he will have
inherited. But even here he will be re-
161
11
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
sponsible for its arrangement. The most
of his material he will have brought, or
will constantly be bringing from the out-
side. And what his house, ultimately is
will turn upon his attitude to this great
outside.
The artist's house will exhibit his ar-
tistic taste; the literary man's, his schol-
arly habits; the mechanic's, his practical
bent. So the world will be able to mark
them off and put each in his proper class.
But whether or not he remains in that class
depends upon his attitude to the forces that
play about him in nature and the world of
thought and action, and also to what extent
he allows his natural tendency to control
him. The artist must ever try to realize
his ideal. The suggestions of nature and
of his fellow-man must form the avenue
along which this realization is to run. So
he is ever bringing into his house the ma-
terial that will best enable him to furnish
it according to the tastes demanded by his
real self. If he is indifferent to these out-
162
EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN HOUSE.
ward promptings he will soon show it in
his inner activities. And his house will be
no longer the natural place of entry for
everything that is artistic and beautiful.
We are all in this sense artists. For
we are engaged in perfecting the highest
of all arts, that of right living. And here
we undervalue too greatly the necessity of
setting our own houses in order, or, when
we have done so, the imperativeness of
keeping them in order. We have eyes to
see outward, and can see, or think we can
see, the disorder in our neighbors' houses.
We have no eyes to see inward, and there-
fore are blind so far as our real world is
concerned. The outer world and the world
of our neighbors will be colored by our own
world. That word of Jesus concerning the
mote and the beam is very much in point.
We are small enough to see the tiny speck
in our brother's eye, but not big enough
to discover the beam in our own.
We are limited in choosing the comforts
and delights of life for our material houses.
163
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
We can buy only as we have means to pay.
But in our spiritual houses there is no
limit to what we may possess. We can
have what we choose. And our choice will
depend upon the attitude we take to the
things which are real and permanent. A
Wallachian legend represents a peasant,
who had performed some good deed upon
the earth, taken to heaven for his reward.
When asked what he would have, he chose
a worn-out bagpipe which had been thrown
into a corner of the heavenly treasure-
house. With this he came back to the earth.
The riches of the Almighty were before
him. He had a free choice, yet he was con-
tent with a broken instrument which had
lost its full capacity of sound. Thus too
often we make our choice and go forth con-
tributing to life our weak and wheezy
melodies, when we might have commanded
an angel orchestra.
There is a further suggestion of truth
in the statement, “Every man went into
his own house." Unconsciously, it seems,
164
EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN HOUSE.
did the inspired writer force into these
words a meaning that reaches far beyond
its intent. The men who went each his own
way were the scribes and Pharisees and
officers of the Sanhedrin; the mechanics and
artisans and common folk of the great city
of Jerusalem. They represent the classes
into which all humanity falls. Since the
day of Jesus all men like those of His day
are divided according to their attitude to
Him.
There were the indifferent. The ques-
tion, “Can Christ come out of Galilee?"
was a mere passing remark, with no par-
ticular significance for them. Like the
soldiers, casting lots for Jesus' garments,
and indifferent both to His life and death,
so many others remained in a state of
apathy concerning Him. They expressed
themselves neither for nor against Him.
Others there were, who, at the Pharisees'
bidding, would have done Him bodily harm.
But they were not any more interested in
the Pharisee's cause. They took the same
165
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
attitude a bribed voter might take who
cares neither for the interests of the man
who buys his vote nor for the cause of good
government. There are those, also, who
had a conviction concerning Jesus' merits,
but who nevertheless remained indifferent.
These said, “Of a truth this is a prophet."
But they cared little for the words of His
prophecy or the example of His precept.
He was simply a rivulet emptying into the
stream of humanity, and no more to be
recognized after His time than is a creek
mingling its current with that of a river.
These men, who were indifferent to
Jesus, cared little whether He was a man
who perverted the people or was indeed
the Light of the world. Their houses were
furnished with the thoughts they carried
there, and according to these they lived.
Next to the indifferent class stood the
actual opposers and revilers of Jesus.
They were headed by the scribes and
Pharisees. They objected to Jesus' teach-
ing because it set at variance their privi-
166
EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN HOUSE.
leges and prerogatives. They did not pro-
pose to be disturbed in their rights. One
recourse was open to them: to cause Jesus'
death. This they were ready to accomplish
by the aid of false witnesses. They were
actually at work trying to trump up evi-
dence against Him. They went into their
houses, when the talking was done, carry-
ing with them the spirit of antipathy.
Later we find them at the foot of Jesus'
cross. Their hostility was so great that
even after His crucifixion they could not
rest content, but went to feast their eyes on
His torture and to hurl their poisoned epi-
thets at Him.
Among those who went each to his own
house were also the earnestly thoughtful.
They had a share in the discussion con-
cerning Jesus. There were the officers who
had been sent by the Pharisees to take
Jesus, and, returning empty-handed, re-
plied, “Never man spoke as this Man."
There was Nicodemus, the Pharisee, who,
when his brother Pharisees would have con-
167
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
demned Jesus without a hearing, asked,
“Doth our law judge any man before it
hear him and know what he doeth ?”
There were those whom He had mightily
impressed, and who said, “When Christ
cometh, will He do more miracles than
these which this Man hath done?” There
were those, also, who were convinced con-
cerning Jesus' identity and who declared,
“This is indeed the Christ.” The ear-
nestly thoughtful were quick with sym-
pathy. They listened to the Christ until
they understood Him. When they went
down to their own houses they had differ-
ent feelings and thoughts. Later on at the
cross their eyes were full of tears and
their hearts of anguish. They saw their
friend and Savior dying. In the stillness
of His death their sympathy became actual-
ized in service. They lifted His body from
the cross and wrapped it in linen garments
and laid it with the spices brought by Nico-
demus, the believing Pharisee.
“And every man went unto his own
168
EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN HOUSE.
house." He carried with him his own food
for thought. The food was mixed with in-
difference or with hostility or with a will-
ingness to hear and understand. Jesus'
question, “What think ye of the Christ?”
sounds to-day with all the intonations of
the centuries behind it. Every man must
take this question into the recesses of his
own being. As he goes into his own house
he must choose to answer it either in the
spirit of disinterestedness or of disloyalty
or of surrender and service.
169
XIV.
THE INCARNATION OF IDEAS.
THERE has always been an interesting dis-
cussion as to whether an idea has any re-
ality. To the question, "Which is real,
the idea of a machine or the machine it-
self?” the answer probably would be, “The
machine is real." For there it stands; it
is in operation; we marvel at the work it
can perform. The idea of the machine,
however, can not be seen. It has no ob-
jective significance for the beholder.
If we should push the inquiry further,
however, and ask, “How did this machine
come to be?” we would be told that some
man invented it. This would be an admis-
sion that the machine did not come into ex-
istence of itself. And if we inquired still
further we should learn that it did not
come into existence primarily because some
170
THE INCARNATION OF IDEAS.
man or a number of men made it, but be-
cause of an idea which originated in the
brain of some man. So back of the ma-
chine was the idea of the machine. The
idea was real before the machine was
actual.
Now, if the machine is real, and if the
idea of the machine as it existed in the
mind of the inventor was real, what is the
answer to the question, “Which is the more
real, the idea or the machine?” This is no
idle question. Men's minds have become
dizzy as they have given it thought. Is it
perhaps possible that the objects which
we see: trees, houses, birds, men, are not
real after all, but that only the ideas of
these objects have reality? For instance,
here is a house. It burns down and ceases
to exist. The idea of that house, however,
still remains. All the burnt and ruined
hills and levels of San Francisco are not
sufficient to blot out the picture of the city
as it existed before the morning of April
18, 1906.
171
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
We know a man. He dies. Our idea or
impression or memory of that man still
lives. We continue to know him as he
was in life. Some of our most real as well
as tender impressions to-day are the mem-
ories of those we laid to rest years and
years ago.
Or take a statue or a picture or a flower.
It presents an idea of beauty that pos-
sesses our soul. When the statue falls
down and is marred, or the picture fades
and becomes dim, or the flower withers and
dies, the idea of its beauty endures and is
still real to us.
Or take a good man or a good child. The
man is honest and sober, the child is at-
tentive and obedient. Both the man and
the child give us an idea of goodness that
is appealing. But to-morrow the man may
be incomprehensibly guilty of some wrong
act, and the child may fret and annoy us
beyond endurance. The goodness of the
individual man and boy is gone, but the
idea of goodness remains. For we should
172
THE INCARNATION OF IDEAS.
have to admit that the goodness of yes-
terday was a real thing; and if real in
them, it can be real in others. Hence the
idea of goodness would have universal
reality.
So we can continue with other illustra-
tions. The fact which underlies this line
of argument has led philosophers to main-
tain seriously that only the idea is real,
all else is copy or shadow. The idea of
man remains, the individual man disap-
pears; the idea of beauty remains, beauty
itself is destroyed; the idea of goodness
remains, goodness itself is never perfect.
Therefore that which remains is alone
truly real.
Here is a fact we can not dispute, and
the more we contemplate it the more it
possesses us. But if we should allow this
thought to dominate our thinking as it
dominated the thinking of the great Greek
philosopher and of many other profound
thinkers since his day, we should lose our-
selves in the clouds as they did. For if
10re 1
173
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
we make only the idea of beauty real, we
shall end by having nothing beautiful
upon the earth. Why bother about having
actual beauty when this would be unreal?
If we make only the idea of goodness real,
we shall have no goodness upon the earth.
Why should we try to be good, when try-
ing to be good would be unreal and we
could satisfy ourselves by merely thinking
about goodness. If we make the idea of
God alone real, we shall have an unreal
God; hence no God at all. So why worship
an unreal God or try to conform our lives
to his commands. For even worship and
obedience would be unreal. Only the ideas
of worship and obedience could have any
reality.
The fallacy in this method of reasoning
is the failure to recognize that life is some-
thing more than mere thinking. It com-
prehends doing as well. Our thinking
must ever be related to our doing. Thought
must be put into practice. Otherwise it
is nothing. A thought or an idea can have ---
174
THE INCARNATION OF IDEAS.
· reality only as it finds expression in some
personality. We can have a thousand
ideas or conceptions, but if we do not give
them shape and form in some tangible way,
they can have no reality.
Here, for example, is the thought of a
mother's love. This is only an idea. We
may discuss it, grow eloquent over it, ex-
haust the possibilities of tongue and pen
to describe it. Yet as a mere idea it would
mean little or nothing to one who never
realized what is the love of woman. But
let the idea of a mother's love have rela-
tion to the personality of some mother; let
it assume visible form; let it become in-
carnated, a mother wearing herself out at
the bedside of her child, or battling against
the flames or in the water, giving up her
own life for that of her child, if need be,
and the idea of a mother's love assumes
some meaning, it becomes real.
Liberty is an idea. We may sing songs
to it, we may teach it and preach it, and
yet it will not mean much, only as an idea.
175
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
But let a nation become oppressed or en-
chained, and the idea of liberty assumes
blood in every man and woman struggling
for freedom. And the men will march out
and stand behind their guns and make their
ideas speak in thunder tones and the
women will remain at home and mold bul-
lets and weave bandages and give expres-
sion to their ideas in every step they take,
in every word they utter, in every look that
flashes from their eyes.
What is religion but the ideas of good-
ness and purity incarnated in men and
women living by the force of righteous
convictions? What is education but the
ideas of truth and honesty incarnated in
the minds and souls of men who would find
the true and the real? Temples are built
painted to give expression to the ideas
which have become incarnated and live and
move and have their being in the head and
heart of some personality.
176
THE INCARNATION OF IDEAS.
So an idea is real. But it is real only
as it has relation to some personality.
And that personality must be a worthy
representative of his idea. As Emerson
has said, “Ideas must work through the
brains and arms of good and brave men, or
they are no better than dreams.” Many
are the examples which prove this truth.
Rousseau, the great champion of an ideal
education, allowed his children to go un-
clothed and unfed as paupers and beggars
on the streets. His idea of education was
not incarnated, it had no relation to a
worthy life. He is only a type of the
French thinker of the eighteenth century,
whose high and lofty ideas had no vis-
ible unfolding in flesh and blood. They
preached a “gospel of human perfecti-
bility;" they lived a life of brutal immo-
rality. Jesus characterized all such when
He told the Pharisees that their life of
precept had no counterpart in their life
of example. Their ideas took form, but it
was the form of dead men's bones and all
12
177
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
uncleanness. Incarnation, on the other
hand, means life and purity. Great ideas
become real, therefore, in great souls.
Heine wrote a lyric in which he repre-
sents an ordinary fellow-awkward, list-
less, irresolute-who suddenly is changed
into a spirited and noble young man upon
the approach of his lady love. This is an
allegory, in which the poet tries to show
that he is at his best only in the presence
of his muse. When she comes, his thoughts
are charged with life. They breathe and
speak. So commanding men of all ages
have declared that it was not they, but an
idea flowing through them, which caused
them to perform their almost superhuman
deeds.
It is nature's way to wait for the man
who is ready for the incarnation. And
then the Word becomes flesh. Often na-
ture must wait a long time for the coming
of such a man. Ages before Luther did
men believe that the just shall live by faith
and that man may speak to God without
mo
178
THE INCARNATION OF IDEAS.
the mediation of a priest. But not until
Luther did these ideas become incarnated.
Then, facing his accusers and judges, he
said, “Here I stand; I can not do other-
wise; so help me God!" Long before Lin-
coln did men preach that all men should
be physically free. But not until Lincoln
came did this idea become incarnated.
Then, facing the world, he said, “A house
divided against itself can not stand. I be-
lieve this Government can not endure half
slave and half free." The ideas of Luther
and Lincoln were the realities in these
great movements; the Protestant Reforma-
tion and the Emancipation Proclamation
were only the incidents. For in their ideas
the thought and hope of the ages were
crystallized and expressed. The Word be-
came flesh.
Erasmus tells us that in his day "there
was a project to have a congress of kings
to enter into mutual agreements to pre-
serve peace with each other and through
Europe.” In the beginning of the six-
179
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
teenth century, four hundred years ago,
the idea of universal peace was floating
over Europe, and yet but yesterday we
closed one of the most sanguinary wars of
history. This idea has not yet become in-
carnated. But some day a man will ap-
pear who will gather in himself the hope
and expectation of the centuries, and then
nations will learn to war no more.
So we come to the real meaning of the
truth, “The Word became flesh.” When-
ever we speak of God we intuitively asso-
ciate with Him certain ideas. We say God
is good, God is just, God is love. So we
speak of the ideas of goodness, of justice,
and of righteousnes. Probably the first of
these ideas, that of goodness, predominates
in our minds. It is in fact inclusive of all
the others. As goodness is an idea with
us, so it is an idea with God. It is con-
ceivable that God could entertain this idea
as any one of us could entertain an idea,
keeping it entirely to ourselves, turning
it over in our minds and finding in it in-
180
THE INCARNATION OF IDEAS.
finite enjoyment. It is not our nature, how-
ourselves, unless there be a selfish motive
back of it and we desire to reap some ma-
terial gain therefrom. And even then, to
attain our ends, we must impart our idea
to others. So it is not in the nature of
God to keep His goodness to Himself, nor
could He do so if the idea of goodness were
to have any meaning for us. God's idea
of goodness, therefore, must become in-
carnated. It can exist only in relation to
some personality. And that personality
must be a most worthy representative of
ca
As we cast our eye over the events of
Old Testament history we find that God's
goodness always has relation to some per-
sonality. Enoch walked with God, and he
was not, for God took him. Abraham
trusted God, and his faith was counted for
righteousness. Elijah spoke with the Al-
mighty, and was taken to heaven in a flame
of fire. These narrations and many others
181
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
are the attempts of the early Hebrew
writers to show how God's goodness be-
came flesh and blood in some personality,
and in this way, although imperfectly, re-
vealed God to man. If God was working
in and through man after this manner, and
as he is the supreme type of perfection, it
was inevitable that there must come a mo-
ment when God would reveal Himself in.
the ideal incarnation. This moment burst
with all its fullness upon an expectant
world. The Word became flesh, and Jesus
Christ walked the valleys and hills of Pal-
estine the embodiment of goodness, purity,
and truth.
As we contemplate this thought of God
-entering the human race in the person of
Jesus Christ, we must not forget that,
while the incarnation to us is an event in
time, with God it was an eternal idea. The
ancient Hebrews had many a foregleam of
this idea becoming a fact. They were con-
vinced that God must come to the earth in
visible form. So they represented Him as
182
THE INCARNATION OF IDEAS.
living in a tabernacle where His name
dwelt. Or they represented Him as the
Shekinah, the symbol of the Divine Pres-
ence, which rested in the shape of a cloud
or a visible light over the mercy seat. This
was God's glory dwelling in a tabernacle.
The writer of John's Gospel uses this same
imagery. “The Word became flesh” in
Jesus Christ and “tabernacled among us,
and we beheld His glory, the glory of the
only begotten of the Father, full of grace
and truth.” God in the Old Testament is
unseen; He dwells in a tabernacle; His
glory shines round about. God in the New
Testament is seen; He tabernacles with
men, and in Him they behold God's glory.
So Paul declares that, although “no man
had ever seen God,” yet "the only begot-
ten Son hath made Him known."
We must also remember that the Incar-
nation was God's idea, or word, coming
into the world in the form of a man. God
was already in the world. His Spirit was
all-pervading. He must give His idea
183
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
wo
form in the personality of a man. And
not of a man who must, but who might do
His will. Jesus, therefore, came into the
world a man in all points as we are, except
without sin. And He was without sin, not
because it was made impossible for Him to
- sin, but simply because He chose to remain
pure. If He could not sin, then His temp-
tation has no significance, for only one who
can sin can be tempted. He was free to
disobey God as we are. He willed to do
God's will. This was the incomprehensible
miracle which puzzled His disciples as
much, if not more, than it puzzles us.
That He, the Son of God, should also
choose to be the Son of man, coming into
and remaining upon the earth to suffer its
temptations and trials, was to them the
deepest mystery. They saw the grandeur,
however, and the overpowering nobility of
Jesus' sacrifice. Paul, overcome by the un-
selfishness of such a love, gives it expres-
sion in the words, Behold the Christ, “who,
though He was rich, yet for your sakes be-
184
THE INCARNATION OF IDEAS.
came poor, that ye through His poverty
might become rich.”
From the divine and from the human
side, therefore, the Incarnation was ideal.
It was all that God and Christ could do.
It was all that needed to be done. Like a
mighty bridge which stretches high above
an angry current permits a man to cross
from one side to the other, so the Incarna-
tion spans this sinful world. With the aid
of Jesus Christ man comes to God. The
New Testament never allows us to forget
this fact. God was in Christ reconciling the
world unto Himself. Because ye are sons,
God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into
your hearts, crying, Abba, Father, who
was the brightness of God's glory, the ex-
press image of His person, the Word be-
come flesh which tabernacled among us full
of grace and truth. Eternal love and eter-
nal life became flesh in Jesus Christ.
What is the significance to us personally
of this great truth? It means that God is
185
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
that man has a permanent capability of in-
carnation. What God's intention was for
Jesus Christ it is for the whole race. God
is forever on the side of man, and earnestly
desires that he be saved. Hence God's
word will become flesh in man if he in-
tend that it shall. Through Jesus of Naza-
reth He calls him to be worthy, so that
goodness and purity and truth can flow in
him and find expression.
186
XV.
THE TOUCH OF FAITH.
To womanhood Jesus paid His noblest
tributes. The Gospel narrative would be
devoid of many a beautiful passage and
bereft of some of its most inciting and ir-
resistible truths had it not been for the
occasions women offered Jesus for preach-
ing His sermons. The story of the woman
who spent all her substance for healing is
full of suggestion.
She shows us that Jesus never was so
busily engaged that He could not stop to
help in case of need. She was healed by
Him as He was going to the house of
Jairus, whose little girl lay at the point
of death. The emergency was a great one;
the father feared the Master would not
come in time; Jesus was hurrying to reach
the sick-room. And yet, as He feels that
187
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
tug at His garments He knows there is an-
other helpless soul imploring His aid, and,
seemingly forgetful about the dying child,
He stays His steps to give the relief
sought.
This woman shows us also that real faith
grows out of a sense of need. She had been
ailing twelve years, had suffered much of
many physicians, had spent all her money,
yet had not become better, but rather
worse. Sick and poor and friendless, this
was her condition. But as soon as she
heard of Jesus she came to Him. He had
helped others, He could help her.
We shall make a mistake if we attribute
this act to the despair of a woman who had
lost all and who could well afford another
venture. Great trial and sorrow often
drive one from God rather than to Him,
and despair never leads up the heights.
After every great disaster, when homes are
made desolate, the tide of men's feelings
runs like a mill-race, with all the power of
gravity tugging at it down into the depths
188
THE TOUCH OF FAITH.
of despair. Only the anchor of faith will
hold against the counter-streams of sorrow
and distress. Sailors know they will have
need of an anchor, and so they prepare
for the emergency. Out of this same sense
of need grows real faith, which like an an-
chor steadies men on the sea of life and
holds them from the currents that run on
the rocks or into the whirlpool.
As this woman had real faith, she shows
us further that nothing can hinder such a
faith. It was a mountain-moving faith, the
kind of faith Jesus tried to instill into
His disciples. There was the mountain of
social ostracism. The Mosaic law ban-
ished such as she beyond the usual walks
rf life. The sticklers for that law would
have been only too quick to stone or other-
wise punish her. But her faith told her
such a law could not be just; that He who
would violate a similar law to cure on the
Sabbath day would also set this one aside.
So with the words trembling upon her lips,
“If I can but touch His garments," she
189
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
walked right over the towering height of
her ostracism.
There was the mountain, also, of friend-
lessness. She was now a pauper. Poverty
added to ostracism heaves up a mighty
barrier. Such a barrier hung over this
unfortunate woman wherever she walked,
threatening to fall upon and crush her.
But she lifted this mountain and flung it
into the sea when she heard of Jesus. For
she said within herself, "If I can but touch
His garments, I shall be healed." Health
was more than riches.
Immediately, however, another mountain
rose before her, higher and more impass-
able than the other two. It was the moun-
tain the multitude about Jesus formed, and
which made approach to Him by such a
weak and frail woman almost impossible.
Let us understand what this mass of hu-
manity was. Matthew says the people
were literally storming Jesus, Mark de-
clares they were knocking and pushing
against Him, Luke tells us it was suffocat-
190
THE TOUCH OF FAITH.
ing to be in that crowd. The disciples,
when Jesus turned and asked, "Who
touched My garments?" rebuked their
Master and said, “Thou seest the multi-
tude thronging Thee, and sayest Thou,
Who touched Me?" It was preposterous
in their eyes for Jesus to think He could
tell the individual touch of any one in that
crowd.
Imagine, therefore, this woman, dis-
turbed in mind as well as weakened in
body, throwing herself into that turbulent
and jostling crowd. Consider the tram-
pling of feet, the shouting of voices, the
dust coming up into her face, the sun beat-
ing down on her head; look at her fearing
and trembling lest her condition be dis-
covered and she be immediately pounced
upon by the unfeeling crowd. And yet, see
her pushing onward with superhuman
strength-superhuman because she had
faith-now thrown to one side, now to the
other, now backward, now effectually
stopped by the wall of human flesh, but
191
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
still struggling onward, her hands out-
stretched, her lips muttering that one re-
frain of hope and joy, “If I but touch His
garments I shall be made whole.” And
then see the mountain of humanity roll
away before her as she comes to her
Savior.
From this incident we learn further that
real blessing comes only as we openly ac-
knowledge the benefit received. When she
touched Jesus' garments and experienced
the unutterable joy of relief she fell back
to go unnoticed as she came. Already was
she beginning to lose herself in that crowd.
But the moment Jesus asked, “Who
touched My garments ?” she stopped, and
when she saw that Jesus could not be put
off with the assurance that no one in par-
ticular had touched Him, she came trem-
blingly and with fear to confess what she
had done.
To give her this opportunity, Jesus
framed His question. He was not asking
for information, no more than He was
as
192
THE TOUCH OF FAITH.
when, after the disciples had been disput-
ing who was to be the greatest among them,
He asked, “What was it that ye disputed
by the way?” or when walking with those
other disciples on the way to Emmaus He
said, “What manner of communications
are these which ye have, and why are ye
sad?” For the sole purpose of giving this
woman an opportunity to make humble and
open and full confession of her faith did
Jesus ask that question, "Who touched My
garments?"
It would have been but a barren blessing
to her had she gone away in silence. On
the other hand, it was never a matter of
indifference to Jesus whether or not those
whom He helped acknowledged His service.
On one occasion He sent ten lepers who
came to Him for healing on an errand to
test their faith, and as they went they were
cleansed. But only one returned to give
thanks and glorify God. And Jesus, look-
ing upon him, said, “Were there not ten
cleansed, but where are the nine?” They
13
193
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
had gone off benefited, but not blessed. To
the one alone Jesus said, “Arise, go thy
way; thy faith hath made thee whole.” So
to this woman, when she fell before Him to
confess, He said, “Daughter, thy faith
hath made thee whole; go in peace."
Then, and only then, could she leave Him
with the happiness and peace of a newly
found life. The sustenance and healing we
receive every day from God are benefits;
they do not become blessings until we re-
turn thanks to Him and receive His bene-
diction.
But we have not exhausted the truth this
woman teaches us. There were hundreds
of men and women touching Jesus as they
thronged Him; there was only one touch
that He felt. That touch was "the touch
of faith.” From the day when multitudes
gathered to hear the great Teacher the
world has been touching Jesus' garments.
How close the contact has been we little
consider as we move along our daily path.
But take that figure out of our life, and the
194
THE TOUCH OF FAITH.
world will become as barren and desolate
as are the hills and valleys of His native
land from which He was driven.
This is no mere figure of speech. Civili-
zation, with Christ at its head, has gone
marching on. Its one impetus has been the
possibility and privilege of touching Him.
Were there no power to draw men to-
gether so that human prejudice and hatred,
human love and patience, could find ex-
pression and the lessons of common expe-
rience be taught, there would be little in-
centive for living. It would be just as well
under such circumstances for men to hide
themselves in caves and jungles and eke
out their solitary existence until life should
ebb away. There is this power, however,
and as men touch each other there comes
the spur to life. But if there were not
some high ideal and worthy motive by
which men are drawn together, the contact
and communion of life would be but little
better than an idle game. This incentive
and this motive converge in the Christ.
195
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
Men have eagerly run to Him and are
thronging Him to-day as much as they
thronged Him nineteen hundred years ago.
In this crowd we find the philosopher and
theologian, the artist and the man of let-
ceeds from Jesus. The record of past his-
tory is not to be discredited. For nineteen
centuries there has been only one Figure
who was great and powerful enough to at-
tract and hold the interest and thought of
men. So we find men who represent the
intellectual and spiritual and æsthetic side
of mankind in the multitudes which have
touched Jesus. But they have too often
typified the merely curious or indifferent
or sneering or criticising element in every
crowd. They brushed the very garments
of Jesus, but He did not ask, “Who
touched Me?" For He felt none of them
touching Him.
So in Church and State, in school and
home, Jesus has been the one great center
of attraction. Ecclesiastics and statesmen,
196
THE TOUCH OF FAITH.
o
teachers and parents, have been thronging
Him to draw upon the institutions they
represent His virtue. Here He has stood,
and a crown has been offered Him. But
this crown has too often been the very one
Jesus in His lifetime refused. It was not
offered with an intelligent understanding
of what His true mission was. These lead-
ers would have crowned Him externally,
so that He might give dignity and power
to the provinces over which they presided,
when He asked only that they receive Him
into their lives and encourage others to do
likewise. They pushed and tugged as they
touched Him, but He asked not, “Who
touched Me?" For theirs was not the
touch of faith.
So individual men and women have been
storming Jesus throughout the ages. They
have touched Him as they have come in
contact with godly men and women, whose
influence is a divine blessing and from
whose lives the Christ spirit proceeds.
But their lives have not had an impetus up-
197
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
ward. For as they looked upon these per-
sons they have always found the frailties
which make men and women too truly
human. They have been quick to take an
inventory of human mistakes and short-
comings rather than to make an investment
of earnest and righteous effort. They have
hidden the talent that was given them, for
they said, “The Master is a hard one, He
will take account of every weakness that
besets us and every failure we make. So
why try to increase our talent." The
riches of the Kingdom were in reach of
their grasp, but they did not stretch out
the hand of faith, and Jesus did not know
they touched Him.
So have men touched the Master as they
have read the literary treasures of past
and present ages. A man of learning
wrote a chapter entitled, “The Lost
Bible.” He pictured a morning when men
discovered that the Bible had been taken
out of the world. Not only was the Sacred
Book gone, but also every passage in every
198
THE TOUCH OF FAITH.
other book which had been inspired by
the one Book. As they took up the volumes
which had molded civilization in estab-
lished forms of righteousness, they found
that these books had blank spaces on al-
most every page, that the thread of the nar-
rative was broken. There was little mean-
ing in what remained. The power that had
inspired the book had been withdrawn. So
they cried in distress, “Give us back our
Bible."
It would be too elementary to discuss the
influence the Bible has had upon literature.
Suffice it to say that the reading multitude
must throng the Master on every literary
avenue and highway. They can not help
but touch Him here if they read anything
worthy, for His Spirit is all pervasive. If
they do not hear Him say, “Who touched
My garments?" they may know they have
not touched Him in faith.
Then in established religion itself the
multitudes throng the Master. On the
great roads worn smooth and hard by nine-
2. ve
199
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
teen hundred years' tramping of Christian
travelers, how truly can it be said, “The
whole multitude presses upon Him to
touch Him, for they know that virtue goeth
out of Him." And yet, how many indi-
vidual communicants are there who hear
Jesus say, “Who touched My garments?”
Men get into the habit of going to church
just as they acquire other habits. While
this is a habit always to be encouraged, it
is not one of unmixed good for the indi-
vidual so habituated. For he may get no
nearer to the spirit of the Master than did
those men who were brushing the very gar-
ments of Jesus on that Galilean road,
Some men go to church merely to see
what is going on. They listen to the music
and the prayers and the sermon, and go
through all the outward motions of wor-
ship, but they never get into the spirit of
the service. These are they who followed
Jesus curiously, to hear what He might
say or see what He might do; who touched
His very garments, but who were not ar-
ne
200
THE TOUCH OF FAITH.
rested by the question, “Who took hold.
of Me?"
Other men get into the habit of going to
church in a hypercritical or tentative atti-
tude. They are the self-constituted judges
of what ought to take place in Church.
They are experts on the form of worship,
understand how much or how little of
ritual should be used, take in at once what
is wrong with the ushering or the singing
or the serving of tables generally. They
soon become professional sermon tasters,
as there are professional tasters of tea and
of other commodities, whose business is
to do with the selling value rather than the
nourishing qualities thereof. They are apt
to judge the whole by a very little part,
and are in a danger they do not realize,
the danger that besets all professional
tasters, whose sense of taste after a period
of years begins to deceive them, so that
everything tastes the same.
Such critics of all that goes on in Church
are like those who thronged the Master, to
201
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
see whether He would violate the law or
to ask Him questions in order to entrap
Him. Jesus never stopped one of them
with His question, “Who touched Me?"
for He never felt them tugging at His
garments.
Then there are those who go to church
because they feel they ought to. The train-
ing they have received, the profession they
make, the position in life they take, force
upon them a certain obligation to attend
church. But during the service they are
easily distracted, their minds wander, like
water running down hill, to their engage-
ments of the past week and to the plans
for the future; they are casting mental
balances of their business ventures; they
are considering what they are going to
get out of life, whether it be a financial
gain or a social prominence or a satisfac-
tion for mental efforts expended. These
are real disciples of the Master. They rep-
resent the human bundles of weakness who
followed Him closely, but whose minds
202
THE TOUCH OF FAITH.
were continually wandering from their
service of Him to their own worldly pros-
pects; who were saying to Him, "Master,
we have left all and followed Thee; what
shall we have therefore?'' who argued with
considerable heat who was going to be
greatest in His Kingdom.
And yet such as these were the only ma-
terial Jesus had with which to build up His
Kingdom. They were the only ones He
could send to preach His gospel and carry
on His work; He lost none of them, we
read, except the son of perdition, even
although at times they left Him. But how
often was He grieved in His soul because
of their weakness and listlessness! How
patient He had to be with them! how gen-
tle, in order to bring out their true selves !
With them Jesus built a structure of un-
shakable foundation, yet we can not help
but feel how much more successful He
would have been could He have counted
confidently on the unreserved service and
following of His disciples! And to-day,
203
SPIRITUAL VALUES.
how much grander and more noble would
life be if all who call upon His name would
do so in absolute surrender and consecra-
tion to His service!
"Touching Me every day, and yet at
arm's length from Me." This was the
comment of Jesus upon His followers.
Thronging Him everywhere, and yet sepa-
rate from Him. This is the verdict of his-
tory upon those whose surroundings have
been most benefited by Him. They have
touched Him, but not with the touch of
faith, and He has not stopped to bless
them.
Many there were in crowds about Jesus
who never came in contact with Him.
Others there were who were not of His
immediate following, but who, when they
heard of Him, came to Him with the touch
of faith. No wonder, therefore, that Jesus
marveled and said, “I have not found such
faith, no, not even in Israel." No wonder,
also, that He added, “Verily I say unto
you, Many shall come from the east and
204
THE TOUCH OF FAITH.
from the west who have no inherited right
to the Kingdom, but they shall sit down
with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, while
the children of the Kingdom will not be
permitted to enter. For behold, there are
last which shall be first, and first which
shall be last."
MAY 4 1921
205

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
UL
3 9015 01128 0727

“
有一次
​重生
​主再
​" 可​,其量有
​「平
​無量​。
** 4亨動1/
IM
/
,
作者​:
量一
​*
;
产鲁大学
​中学
​:
5
1.
上一
​產
​一
​中中中中 ​- "
:“
、
" ,
本高等封中一样
​--
-
*
--
//
--
这次​:
一
​4
些4
**
.
*
*
-
---中国科书​”
是 ​一个十年​,
,
一一一
​一一一rr h
*
-H争
​大学生
​中​,朴r--P
4
,一个不争e+
,
,
,
中中中中 ​- *- -
一甲-
​Mor”
-
-
“
是
​。
-
,
:美女​,"int時尚
​:
=
--
-
-
-
“是
​。
”
”
是
​“
,
量产​。
-
-
-
」
是
​,看​。
」
「
事
​」
1
-
1
。
事
​-
-
-
-
是​,
「是
​是是​。」
重生​..
**
*
*
**
**
Fire
.
.
.
事业
​-
一等​。
,
,,
,
fil,
“.
...
-
.
::,
-
**
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
,
,
,
,
1