T) I-
 
 A WAY OF HONOR 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER COLLEGE SERMONS 
 
 By 
 HENRY KINGMAN, D.D. 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 LONDON AND EDINBURGH
 
 Copyright, 191 r, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 125 N. Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W. 
 London : 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
 
 TO MY WIFE 
 
 2130592
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE truths that inspire the world are likely 
 to be old-fashioned truths. But we are im- 
 patient of old fashions. It is the problem 
 of the preacher to commend the ancient messages 
 of Jesus and the apostles to those who demand that 
 their text-books in other lines should have been 
 written within ten years in order to secure a hear- 
 ing. It is the firm conviction of the writer that the 
 essentials of the message that once stirred Galilee 
 and Rome are intensely and incisively fresh and in- 
 teresting to each new generation : and that there is 
 nothing to which the critical college student of our 
 day listens with deeper attention than these same 
 words of Jesus, related to the issues of our time. 
 
 The following addresses were prepared for such 
 an audience of college men and women, and were 
 delivered in the Congregational Church of Clare- 
 mont, California, where half the audience is made 
 up of the students of Pomona College. They are 
 printed only at the earnest solicitation of friends, 
 to whom they seemed to have a wider message than 
 their original use made possible. Their only claim
 
 Preface 
 
 to a hearing must be in the simplicity with which 
 certain long familiar truths may appear in them, 
 for the comfort of men and women who have still 
 to walk by faith and not by sight. 
 
 HENRY KINGMAN. 
 
 CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA, 
 August, 191 1.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. A WAY OF HONOR n 
 
 II. A GOOD FIGHT 26 
 
 III. THE MAN BORN BLIND . . . -41 
 
 IV. MAKING A CONVENIENCE OF CHRIST . 56 
 V. WITH FEET OF CLAY . . . .70 
 
 VI. THE ANCIENT AND HONORABLE COMPANY 
 
 OF THE CHURCH 84 
 
 VII. THE OBEDIENCE OF JESUS . . .98 
 
 VIII. THE POWER OF AN AFFIRMATION . .112 
 
 IX. THE REPROACH OF CHRIST . . .127 
 
 X. LIFE THROUGH VICTORY .... 141 
 
 XI. GOD FIRST 156 
 
 XII. SIMON OF CYRENE 170 
 
 XIII. THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS . . . 184 
 
 XIV. A LIFE PURPOSE 196
 
 A Way of Honor 
 
 " Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are 
 honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things 
 are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things 
 are of good report; if there be any virtue and if there be 
 any praise, think on these things." PHIL. 4:8. 
 
 PAUL was no pessimist. He knew that the 
 world was full of things true and honorable 
 and lovely ; and that a man might, as a matter 
 of habit and principle, fill his mind and heart with 
 these things, and so keep his mind wholesome and 
 pure, and his heart sweet and loving, even in this 
 present evil world. 
 
 Neither was Paul blindly an optimist. He knew 
 that the world was full of things false and dishon- 
 orable, yes, and disgusting; and that a man might 
 as many did and do fill his mind with these 
 things to the point of losing faith in man and God. 
 He knew how the young Christian could cripple 
 and disfigure, or perfect and beautify, his soul's life, 
 according as he saw and dwelt on these things or 
 their opposite. So, as a Christian gentleman, and 
 a pure and knightly soul, he besought them to shut 
 
 ii
 
 12 A Way of Honor 
 
 their minds to one great side of life, and open them 
 to another. And, as a very practical and sensible 
 man, not a mere scholar or theologian, he told them 
 what he meant by this, and how his bidding might 
 be carried out. 
 
 He urged them, as in this verse, to form the 
 habit and principle of noticing, seeking out, and 
 dwelling upon, such things in life as are honorable 
 and lovely in the sight of God and men alike; and 
 elsewhere he urged them, no less earnestly, to shun 
 both thought and speech on certain other facts of 
 life, no less real, but which it was a shame for a 
 man, living as a friend of Jesus Christ and in the 
 eye of God, so much as to converse about. " I 
 would have you," he says, " to be wise unto that 
 which is good, and simple unto that which is evil." 
 
 This means a crippling of one's observation, does 
 it not; a one-sidedness of knowledge and experience 
 which a true man of the world would not consent 
 to? Yes, it is unsymmetrical and one-sided, just 
 as the famous art-galleries of the world are one- 
 sided and untrue to life, so far as they depict, in 
 marble and on canvas, only the beauties of the 
 natural human form and not the deformities and 
 monstrosities that are to be found in the medical 
 museums. And just as these last are shocking and 
 painful to any artistic eye, so Paul would have the 
 young converts cultivate a spiritual sense to which
 
 A Way of Honor 13 
 
 the cruel deformities and excrescences of life its 
 moral abnormities should become honestly shock- 
 ing and painful also, as they were to Jesus. 
 
 Paul believed in a distinct self-limitation, alike 
 in knowledge and development. He did not believe 
 that a man should be equally open-eyed and open- 
 minded to all the facts of life. He was not the 
 man to fear the charge of lack of courage or lack 
 of breadth because he refused and abhorred the 
 knowledge he could have got from any of the young 
 blades of Corinth, or from keeping his eyes and 
 ears attentively open to all that a heathen world 
 might have to say to them. He was a specialist, 
 with a specialist's frank courage to relinquish 
 knowledge in lines utterly out of relation with his 
 own. He was, as you and I would be, a specialist, 
 as we may say, in virtue, seeking ever to lay hold 
 of that for which he was laid hold of by his Master, 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 He could not, then, have a well-rounded acquaint- 
 ance with all the ways and thoughts of avarice and 
 cunning and malice and uncleanness, in which it is 
 so easy to perfect one's self by a little persevering 
 observation and inquiry. For the sake of having 
 a mind like Christ, he would seek to have it as far 
 as possible unsoiled by images that sear the brain 
 and haunt the imagination life-long, starting up 
 like spectres when most undesired, and that like
 
 14 A Way of Honor 
 
 Banquo's ghost will not down at our command. 
 Even at the risk of being called narrow or Puritanic 
 or goody-goody could you stand that? Paul 
 would have a man remember that he is a specialist, 
 that Christ is his Teacher, and that Christ set the 
 example of self -limitation at a prodigious cost: a 
 cost infinitely greater than that asked from us, of 
 deliberately trying to starve the mind in its un- 
 doubted craving for knowledge of things hurtful 
 and dishonoring, cruel and unlovely and impure, 
 even though newspapers and dramatists and literary 
 realists of our day tell us that this craving is nat- 
 ural and legitimate, and must be met. 
 
 It is a very prosaic rule that Paul lays down, 
 somewhat wooden and arbitrary to the thought of 
 many : the rule of deliberately and systematically 
 looking for and feeding upon what is good and 
 beautiful and true, and doggedly refusing to join 
 in the search for what is as poisonous as it may be 
 fascinating. It is a prosaic rule, but it leads in 
 the end to a character exquisitely beautiful, natural, 
 and strong. It must have been Christ's rule, as 
 He listened to the talk of the village neighbors, 
 gathered in the shade for the noon siesta, or for 
 the evening gossip the strongly flavored daily 
 newspaper of His time. And it has been the rule 
 and practice of all since then whose memory chiefly 
 gives us faith in the possibilities of human kind.
 
 A Way of Honor 15 
 
 I wish that every young man and woman might 
 have in mind the famous dedication in the biog- 
 raphy of Charles Kingsley, written by his wife. 
 This is it : 
 
 " To the beloved memory of a righteous man, who 
 loved God and truth above all things. A man of 
 untarnished honor, loyal and chivalrous, gentle and 
 strong, modest and humble, tender and true, pitiful 
 to the weak, yearning after the erring; stern to all 
 forms of wrong and oppression, yet most stern to- 
 ward himself; who being angry, yet sinned not. 
 Whose highest virtues were known only to his wife, 
 his children, his servants, and the poor. Who lived 
 in the presence of God here, and passing through 
 the grave and gate of death, now liveth unto God 
 forevermore." 
 
 The world does not possess such men, except as 
 they are the product of such a rule of life as this 
 of Paul's. They are the most characteristic product 
 of a Christian civilization. A Christian gentleman; 
 not only a Christian but a gentleman; not only a 
 gentleman but a Christian; true, honorable, just, 
 pure, lovely. And the Christian world is full of 
 lives like this if we but knew them and of deeds 
 and ways and thoughts like this, with which we 
 may largely fill our minds, and so determine our 
 growth and development. Christ in His words and 
 ways is our chief inspiration, but not the only one;
 
 1 6 A Way of Honor 
 
 and Paul bids the young Christians to look about 
 them for every one and every thing that may help 
 them to pure living and high thinking. 
 
 " Whatsoever things are true, think on these 
 things." John says that truth came by Jesus Christ. 
 The old heathen world sneered at truth. Until to- 
 day the Orient scarce knows what it is to hold 
 truth and sincerity dear as life. But Jesus Christ 
 was truth incarnate, and doubtless every Christian 
 who really masters His spirit is as true as steel. 
 But such a man is a choice man and rare, and 
 the world is sorely in need of more of his kind 
 not only of those who tell the truth, but of those 
 who are true not only the same on week-days as 
 on Sundays, or who have the same spirit in busi- 
 ness as in the prayer-meeting, but who would be 
 the same on a pleasure tour alone in a European 
 capital as among those who know them best at 
 home; true, because consciously living in the 
 searching eye of God, and in heart loyal to Him; 
 not to the church, nor to society, nor to social con- 
 ventions, from whose restraints one is sometimes 
 freed, but true to a present Friend and Companion, 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 We need to think on everything that reminds us
 
 A Way of Honor 17 
 
 what real truth demands; on what it has meant to 
 other lives, and of how noble it is when it has 
 been achieved. We, even in Christendom, live every 
 day in sight of untruth in myriad forms. We are 
 in grievous need of every aid we can get to remind 
 us what it is to be unswervingly loyal to one's con- 
 viction; to refuse to say what we wish to be true, 
 rather than what is true ; to be unwilling, as it were 
 unable, to bow the knee to good policy, or political 
 necessity, or popular preferences, at the sacrifice of 
 untarnished loyalty to our real allegiance; to prefer 
 scrupulous honor to a little additional gain in a 
 bargain; honestly to abhor disingenuousness and 
 indirection; to remember that a lie is a stain on 
 our honor, even if told to a corporation. 
 
 We need to be reminded that the way of the 
 world is not the only way that men are treading; 
 that there are other ideals in life than those of a 
 diplomacy which gains its ends by cunning or eva- 
 sion; of a trade which is not ashamed to use lying 
 labels, or to overreach a competitor; of a press 
 which, in a political campaign, both in England and 
 America, largely misrepresents and systematically 
 slanders its opponents; of a political life in which 
 personal convictions are often sacrificed to expedi- 
 ency or to party pressure; of a society where sin- 
 cerity is not considered a thing needful; or of a 
 private life with two sides. In every one of these
 
 1 8 A Way of Honor 
 
 fields of life wherever the influence of Jesus is in 
 control there are other ideals and other practices. 
 But we need to look for them, to remember them, 
 to reflect upon their unspoken appeal to our own 
 hearts; and to keep ourselves strong in the truth 
 by keeping in the great fellowship of unswervingly 
 truthful souls. 
 
 ii 
 
 " Whatsoever things are honorable." The old 
 version had " honest," but that is not quite the 
 meaning, though certainly it covers that. It is 
 rather the sense of " seemly," " deserving of re- 
 spect," "honorable." Our Lord was. a man of 
 honor. You remember that curious passage in one 
 of Dr. Livingstone's journals, written in a time of 
 danger and despondency, when he was holding on 
 by faith to one of our Lord's promises. He says, 
 " I count that our Lord Jesus was a very perfect 
 gentleman, and He will keep his word." And that 
 is true, though the way of putting it may seem 
 strange. 
 
 We sometimes speak of a public character as a 
 man of " high honor." That would seem to indi- 
 cate that there is a lower grade of honor prevailing 
 even among good men; men who are not scrupu- 
 lously honorable in the small details of life, who
 
 A Way of Honor 19 
 
 are not above overreaching a little if the sufferer 
 is well able to stand the loss, as in the case of 
 the government, or a railway company, or a 
 wealthy corporation ; and who, in other very trifling 
 ways, would act as we cannot conceive our Lord 
 would act were He upon earth, because He was a 
 man of high honor. 
 
 Very often the answer is made to such an in- 
 dictment as this, " Oh yes, but every one does the 
 same, and every one expects it to be done." This 
 shows what need there is to heed Paul's injunction 
 to think on whatever things are honorable for that 
 answer is not true. Everywhere are those, though 
 they may be very quiet or humble people, who are 
 of a higher honor than to profit by another's loss, 
 and who are honestly endeavoring to do as Jesus 
 would do in like case. For those who really count 
 themselves followers of Christ, the stately principle 
 of noblesse oblige holds good, as it did not even for 
 the old nobility of France. We are the nobility, 
 of the family of God, with our king among us. 
 If the current of popular indifference to high honor, 
 in these and in many other small obligations of 
 student and business life, threatens to sweep us 
 away from a noble resolution, let us look up at 
 our Lord and consider what He expects of us, and 
 think again upon whatsoever things are honor- 
 able.
 
 20 A Way of Honor 
 
 in 
 
 " Whatsoever things are pure." Thank God that 
 there were never so many such things to look out 
 upon before. One who would think upon these 
 things is in a great company to-day. Yet he needs 
 every atom's weight of their sympathy and fellow- 
 ship to hold him uncompromising in the face of the 
 many who call him a fool and a Philistine for his 
 pains. There is an old-fashioned saying, once pop- 
 ular and much abused, but now grown sadly out of 
 repute with the fashionable in art and letters and 
 society, a voice stern, Puritanic, yet tremulous with 
 feeling, " Come ye out from among them and be 
 ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch no unclean 
 thing; and I will receive you and will be a Father 
 to you, and ye shall be to me sons and daughters, 
 saith the Lord Almighty." 
 
 To be, in fact, sons and daughters to such a 
 Father is worth some sacrifice, is it not, even of 
 things good in themselves ; worth some deprivations 
 and separations and limitations, if need be, if these 
 really serve that end? If there is no such Father, 
 holy and tender, and no such actual possibility of 
 a real filial relation to Him, then away with such 
 precautions. But if there be, and one can have the 
 infinite gain of drawing nearer to Him and His love,
 
 A Way of Honor 21 
 
 and can the better see Him as the pure in heart 
 have been said to do then it is well to rob our- 
 selves of some of the indulgences that come at a 
 high price in godliness. For if we will see what 
 we choose, and hear what we choose, and read what 
 we choose, and meditate on what allures us, with- 
 out discrimination, then surely there is a price to 
 pay, to be taken out of those most precious and 
 sensitive faculties by which we see and apprehend 
 and draw near to God. 
 
 There is no thought, in that utterance just 
 quoted, of the old Pharisaical or monkish separa- 
 tion from the world's sin and need and sorrows, 
 no thought of pride, or conceit of sanctity, or prud- 
 ish seclusion. It does not prevent one going, as 
 the slum Sisters of the Salvation Army go, into 
 the very sink of a city's slums, and living there in 
 daily pain of eye and ear and heart, as indeed our 
 Lord lived among us. It does not demand our sep- 
 aration from anything that it is our business to 
 know and understand and measure carefully, that 
 we may grapple with it as with an enemy, and seek 
 to overthrow it. It will even carry some, a few, 
 where only those sent of God and encompassed by 
 Him can go without corruption of soul. But it will 
 not let one soul of Christ's followers, so exquisitely 
 sensitive to soil or stain, go a foot into idle, curious 
 contemplation of the world's evil. Each one must
 
 22 A Way of Honor 
 
 decide how far he has reason, in God's sight, to 
 venture, in seeing, or hearing, or reading of those 
 things which have the old mysterious fascination of 
 the deep things of Satan. It depends somewhat 
 on whether one's imagination is of tinder or of 
 clay. 
 
 The literature of three millenniums, as it is gath- 
 ered in any of our large libraries, is a wide field to 
 ransack if one cares to know through what our 
 world has come, and what it has shaken off. But 
 one thing is as sure as a word of God, and of a like 
 awful gravity that for one beginning life, furnish- 
 ing that mysterious mill, the human brain, with the 
 grist of vivid thoughts and conceptions and images 
 that during a whole life-time will be ground over 
 and over and over again, entering into every one 
 of its products, and worked with them into every 
 morsel of the bread of thought that he must con- 
 tinue to eat, whether he will or no, as year follows 
 year, for him, at least, a curious fancy to know 
 the worst will presently sting and poison and 
 threaten, until it will be God's mercy to him if it 
 only torments him so till death, and does not win 
 him over to a complaisant acquiescence in its 
 evil. 
 
 Self -limitation here is self-preservation. The 
 words, " Whatsoever things are pure, think on these 
 things," is a clear, sweet call from God, pointing
 
 A Way of Honor 23 
 
 out the paths of peace. And to be wise toward that 
 which is good, and simple toward that which is 
 evil, is the way to a development of strong sym- 
 metry, beautiful to God's eye, and fitted to be of 
 the best and rarest help to men. 
 
 It may not be easy to form such a resolution; 
 but form it ! Hold to it with a dogged obstinacy ! 
 And one day, years hence, when this carefully 
 guarded present is in the past, and you are far 
 away, alone, in some place where the devil's tides 
 surge back and forth about your feet, so that a 
 man is not expected to stand upright, you will stand 
 upright, with Jesus Christ. This early resolution 
 will have proved your strength and deliverance. 
 
 It is here that one is compelled to define his posi- 
 tion regarding the modern drama, and to be old- 
 fashioned for the most part in his attitude to the 
 theatre. The day has passed when it is possible 
 to secure assent to any general railing accusation 
 against the theatre, as though stage plays, some- 
 how, must needs be a source of evil, or as though 
 the acting of them, in which we take so natural and 
 keen a pleasure, were in some way objectionable 
 and injurious. But the influence of the modern 
 theatre, as it is for the most part in fact, any man 
 who hungers for God in his soul, does well to dis- 
 trust and fear. 
 
 There are many good plays and uplifting. But
 
 24 A Way of Honor 
 
 if you will take the leading plays of the last five 
 years, on both continents, which have held the 
 boards in our chief cities, and to which has largely 
 been devoted the best talent of the stage, with a few 
 conspicuous exceptions they are degrading to any 
 sensitive moral taste; and to the eye of our Lord, 
 who knew His own mother's heart, and who loved 
 the joys of the home that He could not have for 
 Himself, and loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus 
 and their quiet refuge at Bethany, they would be 
 fearful and loathsome. If it be urged that they are 
 true to the facts of life, it may be admitted, as the 
 medical museum is true to life. But if it be urged 
 that they incite to virtue by showing the penalties 
 of the opposite, this may be freely denied; for in 
 that case the habitues of the theatre, who fill its 
 front seats, would be of a far different type from 
 what they are. 
 
 He is a brave man, and a Christian, who is afraid 
 of such things, for himself and others; for there 
 is a poison in them that in the end infallibly affects 
 the sight ; that deadens the nerve of the spiritual eye. 
 As one has lately said, " The impure shall see all 
 save God." Save God ! We cannot face the horror 
 of such blindness. With Jesus and His mother, with 
 Paul and John, and with all those who would rather 
 see the face of God than any other thing on earth, 
 let us think on " whatsoever things are pure."
 
 A Way of Honor 25 
 
 IV 
 
 We cannot now consider further the lessons of 
 this verse. Many will be found to tell you, in the 
 club or on the street, that its ideas are narrow and 
 out-of-date. Let us be wise enough to oppose to this 
 ever-whispering voice of the Tempter the high call 
 of Jesus, and this clean, noble appeal of Paul. Live 
 in continual sight not only of Jesus Christ, but of 
 the human lives that He has touched, so that they 
 exalt humanity. Form the habit of reading those 
 modern biographies that give us just and vivid pic- 
 tures of these men, and that stir the soul like a 
 trumpet call. Such biographies, I mean, as those 
 of General Lee and General Armstrong, of Pro- 
 fessor Le Conte and W. H. Baldwin; of Charles 
 Kingsley, of Drummond, and Gladstone, and 
 Phillips Brooks, and Miss Willard, and many an- 
 other, knightly souls, pure and of a high honor, 
 that help us to understand what the religion of 
 Christ can do for one to make life lovely and of 
 good report. Think on these things. For though 
 evil fills our ears, and surrounds us like a poisonous 
 miasma, we are citizens of another country, whose 
 gates we hope one day to enter. And through those 
 gates in no wise passes anything unclean, or he 
 that maketh an abomination and a lie.
 
 II 
 
 A Good Fight 
 
 " Fight the good fight of the faith" \ TIM. 6:12. 
 
 A WONDERFUL great fight it is! No two 
 find it alike. Yet can you tell me how a 
 true man can keep out of it! \ 
 
 Here is Robert Louis Stevenson speaking, writing 
 to his father : " I am lonely and sick and out of 
 heart. Well, I still hope; I still believe; I still see 
 the good in the inch and cling to it." And years 
 later he writes : " The battle goes on ill or well 
 is a trifle, so as it goes. I was made for a contest, 
 and the Powers have so willed that my battle-field 
 should be this dingy inglorious one of the bed and 
 the physic bottle." 
 
 Who will doubt that his life was a battle-field, 
 indeed, and that he more and more saw his place 
 in the good fight? 
 
 Here is a fellow Scotsman, speaking from the 
 heart of Africa, Livingstone; an old man, broken 
 with sickness, racked with pain, lonely with the 
 
 26
 
 A Good Fight 27 
 
 great loneliness of one who had not heard from 
 home for years, yet still holding grimly to his task 
 and refusing to come home till it was finished. He 
 writes from his dull hut in Manyuema : " I have an 
 intense and sore longing to finish and retire, and 
 trust that the Almighty may permit me to go home. 
 Yet if I fall, I will do so doing my duty, like one 
 of his stout-hearted servants." And just before he 
 fell for the last time, still among those endless for- 
 ests, he wrote : " Nothing earthly will make me give 
 up my work in despair. Yet so many obstacles 
 have arisen. Let not Satan prevail over me, O my 
 good Lord Jesus." A braver fight was never 
 fought by human soul. 
 
 In a far different field, consider what sort of life 
 he led who was our country's leader through the 
 dark days of the great war Abraham Lincoln. A 
 life of unremitting anxiety, of stern, strong patience 
 under endless provocation, of struggle with almost 
 unendurable odds, that drove him more and more 
 to reverent dependence upon God, but that, even 
 so, graved in his face as with a chisel those deep 
 lines that told how sore the fight had been. 
 
 I think of a woman, Josephine Butler, who for 
 years was the champion of those girls and women 
 of England who were without a helper. She once 
 wrote to Mrs. Booth pathetically, explaining why 
 her face was not as joyful as she wished it. In
 
 28 A Good Fight 
 
 the sight of the terrible wrongs against which she 
 fought, her earlier life, she said, was full of sor- 
 row indeed, of tragedy. " I have gone through 
 seas of trouble and strange suffering. I am hap- 
 pier as I get older. The joy which God gives me 
 overwhelms even the awful memories of the past. 
 He so thoroughly broke my heart with despair, that 
 I gave up and left the whole matter to Him." Do 
 you realize how many of the world's helpers are 
 still fighting in so bitter a contest even till to- 
 day? 
 
 Or, to cross the seas again, I think of my old 
 friend and colleague, Pastor Meng, of Paotingfu: 
 who, when the cruel days came of the Boxer up- 
 rising, utterly refused to flee when he could and 
 leave the three foreign teachers alone; and whom 
 they tormented through one summer night, before 
 they slew him, hoping to make him betray his as- 
 sociates or blaspheme his Leader; who stood un- 
 daunted, unfaltering, till the morning came and 
 death with it, because he, too, like Paul, had 
 one with him who comforted him and held him 
 faithful. 
 
 Or right here at home are mothers, who have 
 wrestled with God for their children, that they 
 might be true men and true women, as God reckons 
 true; who have spent some moments on their knees 
 daily for more years now than they can remember,
 
 A Good Fight 29 
 
 praying that their boys might live to war a good 
 warfare, and that their girls might be fair and 
 honorable in His sight; never letting go, never 
 losing heart, never relaxing in the hope and minis- 
 try of life. Oh, it has been a long fight, and often 
 weary, and it is not, over yet, and will not be until 
 the mother's heart has quite let go of earth! No 
 biography will ever mention it, no newspaper will 
 ever speak words of public praise concerning it, 
 but in the great campaign surely God has given 
 them an honorable post. 
 
 And so we might go on through all this hour, 
 calling up men and women from every walk in 
 life, from the endless roll of witnesses to the fact 
 that life at its best is a fight. At its noblest, it is 
 a struggle. Not at its poorest and meanest. One 
 may drift, or idle, or sing one's care-free way along 
 any of the innumerable avenues that lead to failure 
 and the ultimate disappointment. But if we are 
 going anywhere that is worth the going, we have 
 need to take a new grip on ourselves day by day, 
 to hold ourselves steadily in the patience of effort 
 and self-restraint. 
 
 But what is the use of saying these things, that 
 are as familiar to us as any alphabet of life? Do 
 we not all believe them and accept them as a 
 matter of course? Does not our presence here this 
 morning show that we are all of one mind in this
 
 30 A Good Fight 
 
 matter, and that each of us in his own way is trying 
 to hold his own in the battle? 
 
 No! that does not follow. When we think of 
 it we know that it is not so. We wish it were 
 true. It is not true! To think so would be to 
 resemble those who insisted on crying peace, peace, 
 when swords were out and actually flashing in their 
 streets. In our quiet company this morning is gath- 
 ered every shade of human need and weakness in 
 relation to this good fight, that demands strength 
 and courage first of all. Some are consciously 
 strong and overcoming. But some wonder if they 
 still have a place in the ranks. Some have actually 
 fallen out. Some simply hang about the skirts of 
 the army of the Lord, non-combatants, looking on. 
 Some, even among boys and girls full of good met- 
 tle, of the sort that may make and yet will make 
 true soldiers, are actually ashamed to be counted 
 as in the fight at all, and are rather proud of show- 
 ing their independence by standing outside alto- 
 gether. And only God knows how many who keep 
 up a brave front are distressed at heart, as if they 
 already saw themselves defeated. 
 
 So it is not a mere formal thing to ask ourselves 
 carefully about this fight again what it is, and 
 how one plays his part in it, and what hope there 
 is of persevering to the end. It is very familiar 
 ground, but let us go over it again this morning,
 
 A Good Fight 31 
 
 and see if the divine light does not fall on it at 
 a new angle, and illuminate life's problems anew for 
 us this day. 
 
 And first let us take the words at their face 
 value, for what Paul meant by them when he 
 begged this young man to fight the good fight. The 
 word used is not the one for battle, or for military 
 service: its associations are not those of the camp 
 or legion. It belongs to the athletic field, to the 
 great games of the stadium, and to them alone. 
 Our athletics, even our college athletics, are play, 
 compared to those that Paul had been familiar with 
 ever since his boyhood. Every Greek city had its 
 stadium and its great contests, and the love of these 
 national games was far more a passion with the 
 Greeks, as has been said, than a mere amusement. 
 The young men entered for them as a patriot en- 
 ters his country's army. The training and diet and 
 discipline were of the strictest. No man could enter 
 for an event without taking oath that he had been 
 ten months in training, and the athletic training- 
 grounds of the city were as much a place of popular 
 resort as the stadium itself. It was not a beggarly 
 few they would get upon the bleachers in the days 
 before one of the great games ; the whole city popu- 
 lation were eagerly alive and interested in the com- 
 ing events. And so it is that Paul's writing is 
 filled with allusions to various features of the games
 
 32 A Good Fight 
 
 to their rules, to their training, and to their prizes. 
 But here he speaks of the greatest event of all 
 the good contest the strife above all others in its 
 intensity and in its issues. 
 
 Contest, he says, in the great contest. Play the 
 game, he says, in the greatest game of all. It was 
 a life-and-death affair with him. Life was often 
 involved in those Grecian and Roman contests of 
 the amphitheatre. And it was to a lifelong struggle 
 that he called Timothy; a struggle such that the 
 best word for it, after all, was " the fight." So we 
 have the appeal : " Fight the good fight." It was the 
 appeal to the athlete to the man who loves the 
 intense, clean, manly struggle of the arena, for 
 clean, high ends of honor, not for money or pro- 
 fessional's reward; and to the man who would pay 
 the price of the rigorous training and discipline re- 
 quired, without whining and without complaint. 
 Altogether it is a noble, manly appeal to the best 
 and strongest in us ; an appeal of a sort that our own 
 best athletics help us to understand. 
 
 But Paul did not lose himself in sentiment, or 
 hide his meaning behind metaphors. The good fight 
 of which he spoke was something vividly clear be- 
 fore him, and he did not leave his meaning in the 
 vague, polite obscurity of one who does not dare 
 speak out what is in his mind. He comes out clearly 
 in the open, and speaks as a man speaks to men
 
 A Good Fight 33 
 
 when the utmost is at stake. He would have no 
 man in doubt as to the terms of this contest. 
 
 He makes it shining clear that it means loyalty to 
 the leadership of Jesus Christ. That loyalty will 
 plunge a man headlong into a fight, from the first 
 day and such loyalty will keep him at the centre 
 of the world's great fight until the end. If Jesus 
 Christ had come into the world to preach a gospel 
 like the Buddhist's, of the cessation of effort and 
 the mortifying of desire till both die out together, 
 then this great contest would have been another 
 thing. But Jesus came to kindle desire and in- 
 tensify effort, to raise them both to their highest 
 power, and through them to save the world. He put 
 himself at the heart of the struggle. He threw 
 himself, like a forlorn hope, against the world's 
 evil, and went down before it, in those days of 
 which we read in the gospels. 
 
 But His own sacrifice was not the end of the 
 fight, but the beginning. He came to destroy the 
 works of the devil, and they shall be destroyed. 
 But how many of the world's choicest lives shall 
 be used in the contest, before it is at an end? Like 
 Livingstone, and Mrs. Butler, and Pastor Meng, 
 and the innumerable fellowship of those who give 
 themselves to the struggle for the sake of others 
 against the ever-changing forms of evil. If you or 
 I are halfway in touch with Jesus Christ we shall
 
 34 A Good Fight 
 
 be involved in the greatest struggle the world has 
 ever witnessed. A contest for athletes, indeed, in 
 which each man must give account of himself. 
 
 For here is the other phase of the good fight. 
 To be loyal to Jesus Christ is to be brought into 
 an undying struggle with ourselves. For our own 
 souls are beset with adversaries. As Paul was 
 saying to Timothy, when he used these words, even 
 a very innocent and natural desire the desire to be 
 rich may lead a man into a temptation and a snare 
 and many foolish and hurtful lusts, such as drown 
 men in destruction and perdition, and pierce them 
 through with many sorrows. And if he honestly 
 tries, obeying his Leader, to follow after righteous- 
 ness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness, has 
 he not a contest on his hands ? Does it come easily 
 to play the game when it makes such demands on 
 our daily living as meekness, and love, and patience ? 
 But is there any manlier contest worth engaging in 
 in life, than a good fight against those things that 
 drown the soul? 
 
 It is a help just here to remember that the " good 
 fight " means always and everywhere not only a 
 fight for certain things, but one under certain terms 
 and conditions of leadership and fellowship and 
 method. It does not mean the mere " fight for 
 character," as we sometimes think, but a fight for 
 character under these terms of leadership that as-
 
 A Good Fight 35 
 
 sure success. Millions of men, like the old iron- 
 hearted Stoics, have made their fight for character 
 under conditions that left their life bare and hard 
 and cheerless as a desert without the sun. This 
 good fight takes its color and attractive quality from 
 its inseparable associations. 
 
 Surely we can understand this. Here is a man 
 who has played college football for three years, and 
 really loves the game enjoys it for its excitement 
 and intensity, for its own sake. A man comes to 
 him after his graduation and says to him : " See 
 here; will you join a football team I am getting up 
 for next season's play?" "Well, I don't know; 
 who are the other men in it ? " " Oh, well ; they 
 are all star players ; they are not exactly your kind, 
 not all of them are college men, but they know the 
 game all right." " But who is the captain ? " " Oh ! 
 he is a man you don't know, McGuire of Chicago; 
 he is a bit of a slugger, but he can just handle a 
 team; if you like football you can't do better than 
 join us." But the man doesn't join wouldn't join 
 for a big salary. Why? It is the same game. 
 Yes! But the same game with another team, and 
 another captain, and under a totally different at- 
 mosphere, becomes another game altogether, and 
 your true athlete wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot 
 pole. 
 
 And so with the fight for character! It may be
 
 36 A Good Fight 
 
 a very bleak and disheartening affair. But the 
 good fight is the one under the inextinguishable 
 hope and cheer of the good Leader, Jesus Christ, 
 and the fellowship is that of the true and knightly 
 souls that would be faithful to Him, and the rules 
 and training of it are those of the loved family of 
 God's own. We are not out for our own hand, 
 fighting the battle at our own charges; to be dis- 
 appointed, or discouraged, or fairly disheartened, 
 just as the day's fortune changes. We are men in 
 touch with the Captain of our Salvation; called by 
 Him, inspired by Him, trusted by Him, loved by 
 Him. How can we play Him false, however the tide 
 of battle may be going! 
 
 You know the fiery enthusiasm of the men in 
 the army of Garibaldi, the Italian patriot, how the 
 very sight of his red-shirted figure was enough to 
 make them forget fear. You remember how the 
 Chinese, in that ever-victorious army of General 
 Gordon's, would follow in the face of any enemy, 
 if only he were leading, unarmed though he was. 
 And for us in the good fight, all our hope of a 
 fearless success is in this, that we are in personal 
 association with Him who has called us to be His 
 soldiers. There is where the sunlight and the hope 
 break in, even on a half -beaten man, because He 
 simply will not let us go down if we turn to Him. 
 And the inspiration to go on is coming into our
 
 A Good Fight 37 
 
 lives, ever new and fresh, day by day, year by year, 
 if we keep Him in sight. 
 
 But here we stop a moment to think of beaten 
 men, who have made a slip or a fall, who have been 
 beaten down for a day or a week, and who, heavy- 
 hearted, have dropped out of the contest. If we 
 are not men enough to fight the fight successfully, 
 ought we not to give it up? If we are not gritty 
 enough to play the game, ought we not to drop out ? 
 If a man tries to follow the Leader, and fails, must 
 he not confess himself beaten and withdraw? 
 
 Oh, that we might hear the answer, trumpet- 
 tongued, from heaven, the fervent answer, " No ! " 
 The very hero in this fight is the man who per- 
 severes in the face of failure who cannot be scared 
 or shaken off by his own mishaps. Who comes back 
 again. God knows, the hero is not the man who 
 never slips or proves unfaithful, but he who rises 
 again and again, penitent and humbled, but indom- 
 itable: who will run the course and play the game, 
 though he comes late limping in, a sorry figure. He 
 is the hero of the good fight. For it is a life strug- 
 gle not one of a week or month. In a hundred- 
 yard dash, if a man slips, his chance is gone. But 
 this event is like a long Marathon not of hours 
 but of days where slips and falls may come more 
 than once or twice, where a man may be clean 
 winded and yet recover, where the only fatal blunder
 
 38 A Good Fight 
 
 is to drop out of the course altogether. But we 
 do not love a quitter, and we are not of those who 
 throw the whole matter up because we have made a 
 poor showing on the first lap or the twentieth. 
 
 And all the more because we are sure of our 
 Master's wish in this particular, even though we 
 may have treated Him very shabbily. You remem- 
 ber how Peter asked Him once whether he, Peter, 
 ought to forgive a man as many as seven times; 
 and what Jesus answered, that up to seventy times 
 he must forgive if he would be like God. The for- 
 giveness for our blunders and our failures is inex- 
 haustible, and God's mercy will not give out if we 
 live on for seventy years, fighting the good fight as 
 we do with many a setback, if only we stand up to 
 the contest till the end. Let go we cannot; drink 
 deep of God's mercy to a poor fighting-man, we 
 can; all the more that out of poor fighting-men He 
 has often made His heroes. 
 
 We do not think much upon the prize upon the 
 reward. Perhaps it is as well we should not. Those 
 Greek warriors never received a penny for their 
 long training, only the wreath of bay, or of the 
 unfading pine that still grows about the Corinthian 
 isthmus. What the incorruptible crown may be, of 
 which Paul spoke, we cannot guess. But we are 
 sure that God calls no man to a lifetime in the 
 great contest without a heart-satisfying end, though
 
 A Good Fight 39 
 
 the end is not in sight. And along the way, what 
 richness of reward, in the gratitude of our own 
 hearts for such a calling, in the thanks of weak 
 and discouraged souls we may have helped, in the 
 sunlight of our Lord's approval. Is there any one 
 here who is ashamed or afraid of entering on such 
 a fight, or who would ridicule or hold back him 
 who does enlist? 
 
 That oft-quoted school poem of Henry New- 
 bolt's fairly sums up what we have been saying : 
 
 * " There's a moment's hush on the crowded field, 
 
 Six to make and the game to win: 
 A stubborn foe and a cruel fight, 
 
 Five minutes to play and one's strength all in. 
 And it's not for the sake of the field's applause, 
 
 Or the selfish hope of a season's fame, 
 But his captain's hand on his shoulder smote 
 
 ' Play up! play up! and play the game! ' 
 
 The sand of the desert is sodden red 
 
 Red with the wreck of a square that broke 
 The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead, 
 
 And the regiment blind with dust and smoke. 
 The river of death has brimmed his banks, 
 
 And England's far, and Honor's a name, 
 But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks, 
 
 ' Play up! play up! and play the game! ' 
 
 This is the word that year by year 
 
 While in'her place the school is set 
 Every one of her sons must hear, 
 
 And none that hears it dare forget. 
 
 * First verse altered.
 
 40 A Good Fight 
 
 This they all with a joyful mind 
 
 Bear through life like a torch in flame, 
 And falling fling to the next behind, 
 ' Play up! play up! and play the game! ' " 
 
 In the supreme game of life, the great contest of 
 a man's soul, the good fight, we hear such a call 
 from our Leader, and nerve ourselves again to an- 
 swer with our best.
 
 Ill 
 
 The Man Born Blind 
 
 JOHN ix. 
 
 IT was an autumn day in Jerusalem. Jesus and 
 His disciples were picking their way along the 
 narrow street, a little straggling company of 
 twos and threes. Many eyes were watching them, 
 and people pointed at them as they passed. It was 
 a Sabbath morning, but there was little of the Sab- 
 bath peace in it for that company, which had been 
 a target for bitter feeling for days preceding. They 
 must have moved like men on the edge of a volcano. 
 Jesus, inside those old city walls, was like a man 
 caged among fierce animals, having need to walk 
 warily lest they be at His throat. Enemies were 
 all about Him. He was protected, in a way, by 
 the friendship of the common people. The ruling 
 classes said that He was a deceiver, a blasphemer, 
 a man possessed of the devil; they had given orders 
 for His arrest. But still no man laid hands on 
 Him; the time was not ripe. They watched Him 
 viciously; he was the centre of animated and bitter 
 
 41
 
 42 The Man Born Blind 
 
 discussion; but still He moved among them calmly 
 and fearlessly, though only a day or two before 
 they had taken up stones to stone Him. All His 
 friends must have recognized that it would be well 
 for Him to flee the city while He could, and leave 
 its dangerous prisoning walls far behind. In Gali- 
 lee He could still be measurably safe, but Jerusa- 
 lem was a very trap set for His destruction. 
 
 It was in such an atmosphere of danger that He 
 and His friends were passing along the street that 
 Sabbath morning. So they came to the spot where, 
 in some niche or doorway or street-opening, a blind 
 beggar sat. Blind beggars were too common to 
 excite remark. But one of the disciples happened 
 to ask, out of curiosity, what was the cause of his 
 misfortune; because this man had never even seen 
 the world in which he lived he had been born 
 blind. Of course they thought it was a punish- 
 ment for sin; no man could be so afflicted as that, 
 except for cause. Was it his own sin, with which 
 as the Pharisees were saying a few hours later 
 he had come into the world already stained and 
 doomed, or was his trouble a judgment on his fa- 
 ther's sin, as even to-day so often is the case? 
 
 They might have discussed the question as they 
 went on down the street, but Jesus stopped in front 
 of the beggar, and made His answer there : an an- 
 swer so warmly given that it has lived for men to
 
 The Man Born Blind 43 
 
 hear these nineteen centuries. " The blindness was 
 not a punishment at all, either for sin of his own 
 or his parents; it was for the glory of God, he suf- 
 fering that he might shew forth God's works." 
 
 This was a strange view of human suffering. 
 The heavens show forth the glory of God. The 
 great achievements of men, and their high virtues, 
 these bear witness to His character. But what can 
 sickness or crippling affliction do but witness to the 
 blight of sin, and the power of man's enemy? 
 
 Jesus evidently thought that it might be as elo- 
 quent of God as great deeds and high position. 
 And unnumbered men and women since have borne 
 their blindness, or pain, or infirmity the more pa- 
 tiently and nobly because they hoped that they, too, 
 might by their very loss and sorrow show forth 
 the praise of their Heavenly Father. It would be 
 worth being patient a few years, if one might so 
 prove worthy of the singular but painful trust God 
 had allotted him, and fill faithfully an unwelcome 
 and difficult position. 
 
 We do not know what Jesus said to the beggar. 
 Something passed between them that made the 
 young man for it was a young man come to His 
 feet in quivering expectancy. The chance of seeing 
 the great sunlit world, on which he had never 
 looked, had suddenly dawned upon his life-long 
 blindness. And already his endless dark had be-
 
 44 The Man Born Blind 
 
 come a prison-house, from which he panted to es- 
 cape from which this strange man, Jesus, should 
 help him to be free. 
 
 Jesus spat on the ground and made clay, and 
 anointed the man's eyes. And though the man had 
 no eyes to see, and had no glimpse of the face of 
 Jesus, yet if ever gentleness and love were in a 
 human touch he felt it then, as Jesus pressed the 
 sightless eyeballs; and the man's heart understood 
 and answered, as we shall see later. Then he hur- 
 ried away at Jesus' bidding, as fast as his stick 
 could guide his footsteps, to the pool of Siloam, 
 and down the long stair of rock-hewn steps that led 
 to its waters. And there he washed, and looked up 
 for the first time to the sky, and for the first time 
 out upon the pleasant world. 
 
 He came back into the city another man, not 
 pathetically slow and feeble, sounding his perilous 
 way before him with his staff, but with elastic, inde- 
 pendent footsteps, a man among his equals. 
 Straight back he came to his old haunts, to pro- 
 claim the wonder and to receive congratulations. 
 He was as well known in the city as is the blind 
 man who sits reading on the sidewalk in Los An- 
 geles all were familiar with his face. Yet as he 
 came back to his old corner, men said to one an- 
 other, " Who is this coming that looks like the blind 
 beggar ? Surely it can't be the same man ! "
 
 The Man Born Blind 45 
 
 Others said, " It is the very man himself, you 
 can tell him by his clothes and his beggar's pouch." 
 
 But some would not believe it, insisting that it 
 was only a resemblance. And so they gathered 
 about him and argued his identity until he put argu- 
 ment out of the question by his insistence that he 
 was the very man. They said, therefore, unto him : 
 " How then were thine eyes opened ? " He an- 
 swered, " The man that is called Jesus made clay 
 and anointed them, and said, ' Go to Siloam and 
 wash.' So I went away, and washed, and I re- 
 ceived sight." And they said unto him, " Where 
 is he? " He said, " I know not." 
 
 They stared at him open-mouthed. The thing 
 was fairly impossible, and yet they could not get 
 away from it. Here was the beggar-man looking 
 at them. They must have asked him again and 
 again to repeat the astounding story, that was so 
 provokingly simple, before the truth really dawned 
 upon them. 
 
 Then what was to be done! A miracle such as 
 this ought to be looked into by the authorities. If 
 Jesus had really done this thing, perhaps the Phari- 
 sees would believe on Him ! Or perhaps some ill- 
 disposed persons in the crowd sought a chance to 
 embroil Jesus still further with the officers. So to- 
 gether they set off for the place where some repre- 
 sentative gathering of the Pharisees, or committee
 
 46 The Man Born Blind 
 
 of the Sanhedrin, was known to be in session. 
 Once there, the story was soon told, and the beggar 
 pushed into the forefront, like a culprit before the 
 court for sentence. And, indeed, the Pharisees 
 must have looked on him like an offender. Inno- 
 cent as he was, he had yet put them in an exceed- 
 ingly awkward position, and how they were to deal 
 with him was a puzzle, especially if he should prove 
 intractable or obstinate. 
 
 So they asked him first to tell exactly how it 
 happened that might give some clue. But the man 
 only said, " He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, 
 and I see ! " 
 
 Some of the Pharisees said at once, " That settles 
 the matter. This man Jesus is self-declared a Sab- 
 bath-breaker and despiser of the law. He made 
 clay, which is flatly forbidden on the Sabbath, and 
 he took the clay and rubbed it on the man's eyes, 
 which is sheer lawlessness. A man who breaks the 
 law is a bad man, whether he works cures or not. 
 This beggar may have been healed, but it is the 
 devil's work." 
 
 But others of the Pharisees possibly with Nico- 
 demus as spokesman insisted just as strongly that 
 a sinner would not and could not work such a mira- 
 cle; and Jesus was, therefore, evidently of God. 
 The man's judges were at odds among themselves. 
 Some of them asked the beggar, as though that
 
 The Man Born Blind 47 
 
 would throw any light on the situation, " What do 
 you say of him, in that he opened your eyes ? " 
 He said unhesitatingly, " He is a prophet." 
 
 Meantime there were those among them who 
 solved the difficulty by denying it. " The whole 
 thing is a swindle," they said. " This man never 
 was blind. These disciples of Jesus are palming 
 off an impostor; the man certainly resembles the 
 blind beggar, but it is not he. Send for the real 
 beggar's father and mother! They can tell, and 
 then we shall know the truth." So some petty un- 
 derling went off on a run for the man's parents, 
 and the crowd waited to see the end. They came 
 back, an old, humble couple, timid and frightened, 
 and bowed before the court. 
 
 " You see that man ; is he your son, that you say 
 was born blind? If so, how does it come that he 
 is able to see ? " 
 
 " Yes, he is our son ; we are sure of that, and 
 that he was born blind. But how he comes to see, or 
 who healed him, we don't know. Ask him; he is 
 old enough; he can tell the facts." One may be 
 sure that they had already heard the whole story 
 again and again. But they were poor timid crea- 
 tures, terrified of the Pharisees, and were evidently 
 willing that their son should get himself out of 
 trouble in his own way. So they said, " Ask him." 
 
 The attendants then brought him forward again,
 
 48 The Man Born Blind 
 
 in place of his parents. The Pharisees would try 
 browbeating him. He was a common fellow, a 
 beggar, surely they could make him see the thing 
 as they saw it, and stop his mouth. 
 
 " Give glory to God," they said, " we know this 
 man Jesus, and he is a sinner." 
 
 But the beggar was of different stuff from his 
 parents a sturdy man, a brave man; simple, but 
 unafraid; of the stuff of Luther and John Hamp- 
 den, and of our Puritan forebears. He merely said, 
 " I don't know whether he is a sinner; but one 
 thing I do know, that whereas I was blind, now I 
 see." 
 
 Both sides were losing their temper now. They 
 began to badger him. "What did he do to you? 
 How did he open your eyes ? " 
 
 " I have just told you," he replied, " and you 
 would not listen. Why do you want to hear it 
 again ? Do you want to become his disciples ? " 
 
 This was too much for their dignities. They 
 reviled him. They abused him, as is the habit of 
 such tribunals when no argument is left them. 
 " You are his disciple," they said. " We are 
 Moses' disciples. God spoke to him, but as for 
 this man, who knows where he comes from ? " 
 
 Then the proud, loyal spirit in the humble man 
 broke out. " Why, this is a wonderful thing," he 
 said, " that you don't know where he comes from,
 
 The Man Born Blind 49 
 
 and yet he opened my eyes. We all know that God 
 does not hear sinners; but if a man is a worshipper 
 of God, and does His will, him He hears. Since 
 the world began, it was never heard that any one 
 opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man 
 were not from God, he could do nothing of this 
 sort." 
 
 The insolence of such a rejoinder from a mere 
 ignorant beggar, such as he, was of course beyond 
 endurance ; it made them stand aghast. 
 
 " Thou wast altogether born in sin damned 
 from birth and dost thou teach us ? " And they 
 drove him from the place. Probably he was thrown 
 out bodily by the officious underlings, with the cer- 
 tainty that he would be formally excommunicated 
 from the synagogue a few days later. 
 
 So he went his way home, a marked man, under 
 heavy penalty, like an apostate or a criminal. 
 He must needs have been dazed at the swift 
 changes of fortune that had come over him that 
 day. 
 
 The news was soon brought to Jesus of what had 
 happened. He was not going to leave the poor 
 man in trouble. He had something better for him 
 even than eyesight, that would last longer, and bring 
 greater joys intjo his life. So He sought him out 
 and found him; and the beggar saw the face of the 
 friend who had touched his eyes with so divine a
 
 50 The Man Born Blind 
 
 touch, and Jesus looked into the eyes of the man 
 who had so sturdily defended Him, at heavy cost. 
 
 Possibly each thanked the other. In any case 
 Jesus quickly brought their talk to this strange ques- 
 tion, " Do you believe on the Son of God? " Yes, 
 surely the man would if Jesus wished him to. 
 " Who is he, Lord, that I may believe on him ? " 
 Jesus answered, " Thou hast both seen him and he 
 it is that talketh with thee." And he said, " Lord, 
 I believe." And he worshipped Him. 
 
 And here he passes forever out of sight. We are 
 only sure that he was a disciple after his Lord's 
 heart, true and leal, and if he was presently hounded 
 out of Jerusalem with the others, he went bearing 
 witness to the word, and to Jesus Christ, his Lord. 
 We do not know his name, and probably he was of 
 very humble station. But well would it be for you 
 and me if we were as gratefully sure of what the 
 great Friend has done for us, and if we proved as 
 loyal witnesses to His power and goodness. 
 
 For notice now the two brief lessons that lie 
 agreeably plain upon the surface. We judge a tree 
 by its fruits. We judge a man by his actions. It 
 is a shrewd, safe way of judgment. And the blind 
 beggar was on sure ground when he argued that 
 if Jesus were a bad man He would not and could 
 not work such miracles of love and pity. They were 
 godlike, and Jesus must be a godlike man. As some
 
 The Man Born Blind 51 
 
 said later, " Can a demon open the eyes of the 
 blind? These are not the sayings of one possessed 
 of a demon." The words and works of Jesus de- 
 mand not only an explanation, but an adequate 
 explanation. And the only cause that could ex- 
 plain His life to His friends was that God was in 
 Him, and spoke and worked through Him. 
 
 Every year I find myself coming more and more 
 under the power of this argument in judging of the 
 person of Jesus. Was He a man only, like our- 
 selves, but infinitely better, or was He, as His 
 friends have always believed and taught, more than 
 man, the Son of God, in a unique and unapproached 
 relation ? 
 
 From the very beginning, as Dr. C. R. Brown 
 has so forcibly pointed out, there have been this high 
 view and this low view of Jesus' person. That 
 which claimed less for Him has almost always had 
 strong champions, often men not only of unusual 
 culture and intellectual strength, but men of win- 
 some and noble life. Yet always and everywhere 
 the low view of Jesus' person has been in the long 
 run a fruitless and sterile principle unable to win 
 victories, unable to subdue strongholds of sirt, un- 
 able to propagate and sustain itself. Influential as 
 it may have been for a time, it has never been a 
 virile and conquering faith. The seeds of death 
 have always been in it.
 
 52 The Man Born Blind 
 
 While, on the contrary, the high view of Jesus' 
 person has been in every corner of the world a 
 divine and thrilling power of life. Often it has 
 been overlaid by superstition or bigotry, but always 
 it has burst its bonds, and has wrought its own 
 proper effects, cleansing, redeeming, transforming, 
 in the very power of God. No degradation is too 
 profound for it to relieve, no race of men is too 
 savage or debased for it to reach and save. It is 
 a living spring of truth and purity and honor, 
 wherever it touches the hearts of men. 
 
 These are not the works of a delusion and an 
 untruth! The whole moral integrity of the uni- 
 verse would seem to be shaken if this now world- 
 wide stream of moral energy came from the muddy 
 fountain of an imposture, whether wilful or unin- 
 tended. The word which is a word of life for 
 millions is not a word destined to perish because 
 untrue. We rest upon the high view of Jesus' per- 
 son, with the blind beggar, with John, and Paul, 
 and Peter, and with all the modern apostles to a 
 lost world, with Livingstone, and Gilmore, and 
 Paton, with Grenfell, and Mott, and Jacob Riis, and 
 Mrs. Booth, and still say of Him, as did an anxious, 
 doubting soul of old, " My Lord and my God! " 
 
 And once more, see how great a gainer was this 
 blind man for his sturdy, unhesitating confession 
 of his Friend and Helper. He stood firm in his
 
 The Man Born Blind 53 
 
 gratitude and loyalty in the face of threats and 
 danger, and his loyalty led him straight to Jesus' 
 life-long friendship. He might easily have crept 
 away from any further association with Jesus, as 
 many another did. He had never even seen his 
 physician. He might easily have said, " It does not 
 matter much who touched me. The mercy is from 
 God ; it is enough to give glory to Him." And so he 
 would have escaped all the perplexity and unpop- 
 ularity that came upon him just as soon as he in- 
 sisted on a devoted loyalty to the man Jesus, who 
 had touched his eyes. 
 
 There are only a few causes in life that are 
 worth this brave, uncompromising loyalty, that re- 
 fuses to count the cost. But gratitude to Jesus 
 Christ, the Saviour, has always stood first and 
 glorious, far above them all. 
 
 There, for instance, was that poor noble old 
 philosopher, Galileo, standing like this blind beggar 
 before a threatening tribunal that sought to brow- 
 beat him out of the truth! And we hear him say- 
 ing he who knew of the motions of the heav- 
 enly bodies as we know of them we hear him say- 
 in'g, broken and terrified in spirit, " I abjure, curse, 
 and detest the false and unscriptural doctrine that 
 the earth moves and is not the centre of the world." 
 
 And men do not condemn him. There are few 
 scientific doctrines for which a man will go to the
 
 54 The Man Born Blind 
 
 torture that threatened Galileo. But far above all 
 scientific loyalties, shining and illustrious in its 
 claims, is the loyalty of personal gratitude to Jesus 
 Christ, for which an unnumbered multitude have 
 gone bravely, even if in fear and weakness, to the 
 threatened death. 
 
 And greatly do we need, like this blind man, to 
 give sharp definition to our recognition of what 
 Jesus Christ has done for us, that our gratitude 
 may be living and powerful over us, and that our 
 trust in His friendship and help for the future may 
 be strong and full of joy. Would that Jesus had 
 laid His own fingers on our eyes, that we might 
 have felt His touch and looked up into His face of 
 love. But we must walk our whole way by faith 
 alone. And yet, Jesus Christ has met us ! He has 
 done more for us even than for that blind beggar. 
 God's mercy has reached us through Him and 
 through Him only. It is the fact of His death and 
 life that has broken the power of sin in our lives. 
 It is on His promises that all our hope of the future 
 rests. 
 
 We can easily dissolve in a nebulous uncertainty 
 all that has come to us through Jesus Christ, and 
 go without the bond of gratitude and fellowship 
 between us, all our days. But how unspeakably 
 shall we be the losers, if we so lose the richest and 
 most fruitful relationship of the human soul !
 
 The Man Born Blind 55 
 
 Let us count up what He has done for us. Let 
 us make confession of His goodness and our in- 
 debtedness. Let us begin each day with a new 
 thanksgiving and reckon the future in terms of His 
 abiding presence and helpfulness. And we also, in 
 this close natural friendship with Jesus Christ, shall 
 find, like the blind man, that God is taking posses- 
 sion of our lives.
 
 IV 
 Making a Convenience of Christ 
 
 "He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not 
 worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than 
 me, is not worthy of me. And he that doth not take his 
 cross, and follow after me, is not worthy of me. He that 
 findeth his life shall lose it; aud he that loseth his life for 
 my sake shall find it." MATT. 10:37-9. 
 
 THERE is no doubt that human nature would 
 only too gladly make a convenience of Jesus 
 Christ. None of us care to pay for that 
 which may be had for nothing. In these wise 
 late days we press into our service all the wisdom of 
 the ages. Wherever we can gather up a thought 
 of inspiration or comfort or enlightenment, we ap- 
 propriate it gladly as our inheritance from the past, 
 whether it be from Hebrew prophet, or Indian sage, 
 or Greek philosopher. We are the heirs of the ages, 
 and while we own our indebtedness to them, we 
 have no means of paying them this debt, nor do we 
 come under any concrete obligation. 
 
 And so it is natural, perhaps, that when our 
 eager yet self-indulgent generation comes to the 
 
 56
 
 Making a Convenience of Christ 57 
 
 words and works of Jesus, now the common prop- 
 erty of the race for near two thousand years, it 
 should freely seize upon every idea they hold that 
 is ethically uplifting or spiritually helpful. We ad- 
 mit that no other man has ever brought so great 
 a light and help to his fellow-men. We own Him 
 more than we can estimate. But so also do we own 
 a debt of gratitude to many another leader of men 
 on whom the past has closed. To Socrates and 
 Plato, to Epictetus and to Marcus Aurelius, to Paul, 
 and John, and Dante, and Pascal, and Shakespeare, 
 Goethe, and Emerson, and Browning, and a host 
 of others ; not directly to them all, but at least indi- 
 rectly and in a general way. 
 
 Yet so much does our debt to Jesus surpass all 
 these, that we are willing even to count ourselves 
 students, disciples, of His ; to be classed with those 
 who count Him the supreme spiritual leader of all 
 time, and who would wish to be considered follow- 
 ers of His ideals. And with good reason, too! 
 How much solid comfort His words have brought 
 us ! How inspiring and fruitful in our lives some of 
 His spiritual conceptions have proved! What a 
 moral help and safeguard we have found in His 
 example! No wonder we are willing to admit our 
 indebtedness to Him, and to allow men to know 
 our appreciation of Him, and even to call us in a 
 conventional and guarded way followers of His
 
 58 Making a Convenience of Christ 
 
 teaching. He has been a great help to us unde- 
 niably. 
 
 We should be foolish, should we not, to deny 
 ourselves this help! I am not going to read Shak- 
 speare the less, or cut off one atom of the pleasure 
 he gives me, because I cannot make him any return 
 for the favor. What he can give me I have a right 
 to take; and if it is simply making a convenience of 
 him, well and good, let it stand at that ! He serves 
 me, and I use whatever service he can render. And 
 so of Jesus of Nazareth ! His was a great soul, and 
 His words are a great help to me. I reverently ad- 
 mit my debt to Him. But as for going further, for 
 putting a yoke on my neck, becoming a follower of 
 His in the sense that I must accept all His teachings 
 and follow all His commands, some of which are 
 both disagreeable and inconvenient, as for becoming 
 an open partisan of His in the sense of being what 
 is called a Christian, to stand by Him and His ways 
 and His policies at all times and under all condi- 
 tions, like the pledged friend of a living man, it 
 is out of the question. It would be irksome, and 
 awkward, and inconvenient in many ways, and is 
 simply not to be thought of. What Jesus can con- 
 tribute to my life, without disordering it, I am will- 
 ing to take, but further, at present, I cannot go. 
 This is what many say. 
 
 What answer Jesus makes to this attitude of our
 
 Making a Convenience of Christ 59 
 
 day, you know. We have His answer in His own 
 words in our text. Love he asks for, first of all a 
 love that outwears life and death. Browning, or 
 Dante, or Plato, we may love or not, if we are their 
 followers but our Lord Jesus, in what dark are we 
 wandering if we have no love of Him ! 
 
 The cross He insists upon. Elsewhere He speaks 
 of the burden as a yoke. But whether it be yoke 
 or cross no man becomes His follower save at a 
 price at a cost. He who would make a con- 
 venience of Christ is met by Jesus at the outset 
 with this heavy inconvenience of something that it 
 bends the will to bear. 
 
 And to make His demands clearer still, though 
 with all His heart He yearned for friends, if He 
 could only have had them at a less price, He asks 
 for life. The furthest reaching claim of all ! For 
 the whole sum of a man's powers, and hopes, and 
 possibilities; that one should put it in His hands, 
 trusting Him with its use. These are dear terms 
 on which to be a Christian, are they not? 
 
 No doubt Jesus was and is patient and sympa- 
 thetic beyond all our thought with those who are 
 groping after Him honestly, much hindered and 
 darkened by doubt and ignorance and selfishness. 
 Surely he counts many His followers whom we 
 might look upon askance. But for the church or 
 society that would complacently use Him as far as
 
 60 Making a Convenience of Christ 
 
 is agreeable, making of Him a spiritual convenience, 
 but without sharing His love, or His unpopularity, 
 or His self-devotion to the lost, from them He 
 would seem to turn utterly away. 
 
 Do not we know something of a church that, e.g., 
 claims all the comfort of Jesus' gospel, but with 
 growing wealth gives less and less each year to 
 preach that gospel to the \vhole creation; enjoying 
 its convenient application to themselves, but repudi- 
 ating the inconvenience of being made messengers 
 to others that will not take the trouble to stand 
 with Him as the Seeker of the lost? Or of a 
 church that probably talks more of Jesus than it 
 ever did, but that widely forgets that to love Him 
 is at once the gladdest and most necessary element in 
 a disciple's life; so that with all its talk of ethical 
 and social service it is a church grown cold and 
 passionless ? Or of a society that is more and more 
 pathetically afraid of pain or poverty or hardness 
 of any kind, that adds new luxuries and demands 
 new amusements every year, that wants every ray 
 of cheer or peace or comfort that Jesus shed on 
 life, but that fears to come to close grips with 
 Him lest He somehow break in upon its ease ? And 
 we know individuals who are tempted always to 
 get as much as possible from Christ, while giving 
 as little as may be in return. And there are some 
 whose dearest hopes, in their heart of hearts, centre
 
 Making a Convenience of Christ 61 
 
 on Him, and who yet are unwilling even to confess 
 Him as the Lord and Master of their lives. 
 
 Now all of this, in comparison with the white 
 heat of earnestness and love in these words of 
 Jesus about discipleship, is cold, calculating cow- 
 ardice and selfish prudence. It is making a con- 
 venience of Christ. It is not worthy of sons and 
 daughters of God, to whom His eternal grace and 
 mercy have come through Jesus Christ. And it is 
 only possible for those who have drifted out of 
 touch with the actual gospel of the New Testament, 
 who have forgotten how great and free it is, how it 
 throbs with love and new strength for life, and how 
 it lays answering demands on the deepest energies 
 of our souls. 
 
 See now how Jesus deals with this strong tend- 
 ency of human nature to deal with Him weakly 
 and unworthily, following Him cautiously and with 
 prudent calculations as to where one is going. In 
 His calls to men to follow Him, how far does He 
 make it easier for them to obey, by recognizing 
 their cowardice and love of ease, and conceding 
 something to their various weaknesses? And here 
 instantly the fact emerges, conspicuous, unmistaka- 
 ble, that Jesus conceded nothing ! He spoke to those 
 weak, tempted men and women of His time as 
 though they were divinely heroic. Confidently, and 
 without apology or hesitation, He made demands
 
 62 Making a Convenience of Christ 
 
 on His would-be followers, that were sublime in 
 their contempt for human love of bargaining and 
 compromise. He treated and the heart of human- 
 ity has thrilled in answer to such treatment he 
 treated their sloth and cowardice and love of ease 
 with utter disregard, as though they were not. He 
 made no provision for them. He trusted to a great 
 love to consume them and make them powerless. 
 He would not admit that Levi or Zaccheus, or you 
 or I, are necessarily held in bondage to them. He 
 speaks with a quiet assurance of His right so to 
 command, and of our power to obey. 
 
 You know the two classes of leaders ! One that 
 gains followers by asking so little of men that they 
 stand to risk nothing in case they fail; and the 
 other, that appeals to the heroic in men, asking 
 them to risk everything like Garibaldi in divided 
 Italy, or Pizarro on the Isle of Gallo. All the for- 
 lorn hopes and great triumphs of the world have 
 been led by such leaders. The great achievements 
 of our race have been won by men and women 
 who hurled themselves upon difficulty at the call 
 of such heroic contempt for odds of pain and 
 hardship. 
 
 And chief among all the world's throng of leaders 
 who have scorned even to recognize the latent cow- 
 ardice in their followers' hearts, stands Jesus Christ. 
 He, alone among men, knew how much the human
 
 Making a Convenience of Christ 63 
 
 heart would do and dare for such a leader and for 
 such a cause. He alone had courage to ask so 
 much to ask for the uttermost reach of self -sur- 
 render because He knew the immeasurable force 
 of divine love in its appeal. And He had faith to 
 foresee the ever-growing multitude who would 
 choose rather to stand with Him in death, than to 
 stand apart from Him in the most voluptuous joys 
 of life. 
 
 In early days, by the Sea of Galilee, Jesus broke 
 in on the daily bread-winning of those fishermen 
 with the peremptory bidding to leave their fish and 
 nets and boats, and partners in the business, and 
 take up a life of utter strangeness as His personal 
 attendants. He offered no halfway compromise; 
 He asked unhesitatingly for what only a king might 
 command. But He knew how the heroic spirit of 
 self-devotion was there, waiting for an appeal; and 
 from that day they were His, to do as He would, 
 until neither Herod nor Nero could shake their 
 constancy. 
 
 Then Levi was appealed to, in his very office in 
 the custom-house, to shake himself free from all 
 his past and become an attendant on an itinerant 
 rabbi. And then began those utterances that stead- 
 ily deepened in tone, as He drew nearer to the heart 
 of the world's sin. 
 
 " Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord,
 
 64 Making a Convenience of Christ 
 
 shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he 
 that doeth the will of my Father which is in 
 heaven." 
 
 " Strive to enter in by the narrow door, for many, 
 I say to you, will seek to enter in and shall not be 
 able." 
 
 ' Think not that I came to send peace on the 
 earth. I came not to send peace but a sword." 
 
 " He that loveth father or mother more than 
 me, is not worthy of me, and he that loveth son 
 or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, 
 and he that doth not take his cross and follow after 
 me, is not worthy of me." 
 
 Then those words spoken out of great trouble 
 of His own : " If any man would come after me, let 
 him deny himself and take up his cross and follow 
 me. For whosoever would save his life shall lose 
 it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, 
 the same shall save it." 
 
 And how He sifted those who would have lightly 
 become His companions ! Here is one who says : 
 " I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest." But 
 Jesus made answer, " Foxes have holes, and birds of 
 the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not 
 where to lay his head." 
 
 And another said, " I will follow thee, Lord ; but 
 first suffer me to bid farewell to them that are at 
 my house." And Jesus said, " No man, having put
 
 Making a Convenience of Christ 65 
 
 his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for 
 the kingdom of God." 
 
 Still later, when there went with Him great multi- 
 tudes, He turned and said unto them : 
 
 "If any man cometh unto me, and hateth not his 
 own father, and mother, and wife, and children, 
 and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, 
 he cannot be my disciple." 
 
 There are other utterances, closely allied to these 
 as on the hopelessness of serving God and mam- 
 mon, the relative worthlessness to us of a hand or 
 foot or eye that causes us to stumble, the necessity 
 of becoming like little children if we would enter 
 the kingdom of God. These are the chief and most 
 characteristic utterances of our Lord on the general 
 subject of discipleship. They are hard sayings ! 
 What are we to do with them, and how are we 
 to make a place for them in a church that would 
 make a convenience of Jesus Christ? 
 
 We feel the need of something easier to begin 
 with. We would like to plead that we are not the 
 sort of stuff out of which heroes are made: that 
 we have not had the sort of upbringing to make us 
 companions of the pure and holy One: that it is 
 in any case impossible for us to live a continuous 
 life of obedience; we could manage three days a 
 week, on an average, or even four, but that we are 
 accustomed to being taken off our feet by the reac-
 
 66 Making a Convenience of Christ 
 
 tion from any special moral endeavor, and if 
 we became Christians this would be glaringly ap- 
 parent. Or that we are naturally sceptical, or nat- 
 urally independent, or naturally pleasure-loving, or 
 what not. So that, in a word, if we are to be 
 brought through life with the minimum of friction 
 and unpleasantness, we must have a less heroic 
 treatment than the unqualified command to follow 
 Jesus Christ as sworn companions and disciples. 
 
 But the answer of our Lord to such a hesitating 
 disciple is what we know it to be. With contempt 
 for the " minimum of unpleasantness," with utter 
 ignoring of the poor stuff out of which we are 
 made, with denial of disabling weakness, our Lord, 
 firm and confident in His love for us, only bids us 
 the more exactingly to deny ourselves and take up 
 our cross and come after Him. 
 
 And that is just the message for which we hunger 
 the command of one who perfectly knows the lim- 
 itations of our weakness; who knows that it has not 
 disabled us, and cannot disable us if we will listen 
 to His voice. Who knows the limits of our un- 
 profitableness; knows that we are not unprofitable, 
 but worthy of a high calling. Knows the limits of 
 our cowardice and love of ease, that we are not 
 cowards by nature, or sold in helpless slavery to 
 love or comfort, but that we have still the spirit of 
 free men, from which heroes and martyrs spring.
 
 Making a Convenience of Christ 67 
 
 And then, with this hardness of service reiterated 
 and thrust upon our view, He calls us, the pleasure- 
 loving, to rise up and follow Him, to do as He 
 will have us do unto the end, for better, for worse, 
 for richer, for poorer; to go to the altar or to the 
 plough, to Central Africa or the kitchen, to labor 
 mightily or to lie still in bodily pain while the great 
 world moves on without us. 
 
 He will take no less ! We may be able to join 
 the Catholic church for less, or the Methodist or 
 the Congregational. But we cannot join Jesus 
 Christ for less. He makes the claim with the ten- 
 derness and love of a mother, but with the unaltera- 
 ble firmness of the righteous God. 
 
 He cannot take less ! One cannot move the hu- 
 man soul like a puppet, as caprice suggests, any 
 more than one can compel the lightning; each has 
 its laws, that laugh at our caprice. And God knows 
 that, for the work He has to do with us, nothing 
 less than " no compromise " will answer. His aim 
 is not to see how many weak, cowardly, selfish souls 
 can at last be piloted into heaven, but to lead us on 
 to win the estate of children of God. And half- 
 decisions, for such piloting, are useless. Half- 
 persuaded, half-wilful, half-mutinous followers can 
 be piloted nowhere they are the sport of circum- 
 stance. No man, least of all themselves, can tell 
 where they will be a twelve-month from to-day.
 
 68 Making a Convenience of Christ 
 
 And we would not have Him take less. For a 
 destiny that reaches on without an end, we do not 
 want to be taken at our weakest and meanest. If 
 He sees better in us, if He is confident that we are 
 capable of heroic patience, then, as He loves us, 
 let Him appeal to it, and resolutely refuse our poor 
 pleadings for a less exacting calling or a meaner 
 birthright. And if He sees that we, who are so 
 ready thus to make of Him a convenience only, may 
 be His friends forever, may know His heart and 
 enter into His heart's love, then who would have 
 Him make easy for us the way to the shameful life 
 of evaded privilege and obligation? 
 
 It is a great joy to be able to bring with confi- 
 dence the message that the call of Jesus to His fol- 
 lowers is something that reaches to the last fibre 
 of their capacity; that the bond between them is the 
 personal bond of an undying love, with all the obli- 
 gation that such a love entails: and that the New 
 Testament knows no other way for a disciple to live 
 with Christ than on these great heroic terms of per- 
 sonal devotion, a devotion of trifling beginnings, 
 it may be, with us, but of an infinite depth and ef- 
 ficiency with Him. 
 
 Suppose less were possible! That His people 
 could walk with Him on the basis simply of His 
 spiritual convenience to their souls! What would 
 become of us when our souls stand face to face with
 
 Making a Convenience of Christ 69 
 
 the elemental emergencies of life, in times of great 
 moral temptation, in days of bewildering physical 
 prostration, in the grip of heavy sorrow, or in the 
 hour of death? What unspeakable loss is ours if 
 Jesus Christ then is only the dull memory of an 
 ethical convenience. But if in such hours He is 
 still perceived to be the one who hath loved us and 
 loosed us from our sins, to whom we have given 
 ourselves unshakably and whose we are in distress 
 or sunshine, then, indeed, the truth of God is found 
 to reach as far as human need. 
 
 So then, let us meet His offers heroically, as He 
 would have us. Not bargaining to see how little He 
 will exact, but rejoicing to choose Him and all His 
 will for us. And if He would have us confess Him 
 before men, let us exult that we may openly, un- 
 hesitatingly, take our stand with Him, and feel the 
 thrill of its eternal promise and its joy. It was he 
 who refused the great renunciation who went away 
 sorrowful; it is those who measure conveniences 
 with their Saviour who wear out the heavy lives; 
 but always the joy of the Lord is for those who, 
 looking unto Him, fear not to admit Him wholly to 
 their hearts.
 
 V 
 With Feet of Clay 
 
 " Be thou sober in all things; suffer hardship .... ful- 
 fil thy ministry." 2 TIM. 4:5. 
 
 IF you look out of the car window on the left 
 side, as you go up by train from Jaffa to Jeru- 
 salem, you will see, after you have begun to 
 enter the hill country, the site of the village of 
 Zorah: perched high up on the shoulder of the 
 mountain, just under the eaves, as has been said, 
 of Judah's mountain home. It was the home of 
 one of the heroes of our own childhood, of one of 
 the judges of Israel; of the great tribal hero of the 
 Danites, the strong man, Samson. 
 
 It was as beautiful a spot for a quiet boyhood 
 home as one might find. But in that day the land 
 lay under the oppression of its enemies, the Philis- 
 tines of the plain. They were the rulers, meeting 
 on half friendly terms with the tributary Hebrews, 
 who lived in timid submission under their suzerainty. 
 The village itself lay on the north slope, only a few 
 miles distant from the Philistine lowlands, where 
 the yellow grain in harvest time almost filled the 
 
 70
 
 With Feet of Clay 71 
 
 horizon, to the blue edge of the sea. There were 
 the great caravan routes, the crowded heathen cities 
 of the Philistines, the busy, fascinating, wicked 
 world, that lay unknown and hateful to the Hebrews 
 in their mountain home, beyond their ken or care. 
 
 Sequestered from this gay heathen life, in the 
 tiny hill-town of Zorah, was the home of Samson's 
 parents. They were of choice stock. She was a 
 woman of beauty of face and character alike; and 
 Manoah was a man known through all the country- 
 side for his sterling virtue and godliness. They had 
 no son. To them appeared an angel, to tell them 
 that the son who should be born to them was dedi- 
 cated to a great work the freeing of the people of 
 Jehovah from their oppressors. He should be a 
 marked man from his birth, as one who had a divine 
 calling. He should be a Nazirite a man under a 
 vow who should drink no wine, and whose long 
 hair should be the outward sign of an inward 
 purity and consecration. 
 
 So he began life, a Hebrew Brahman, with every 
 favor that can meet a life at its beginning; with 
 godly, loving parents, and a peaceful, honorable 
 home, in which he was to be trained for his high 
 calling. A young fellow he was, as a lad, head and 
 shoulders above any of his companions in stature, in 
 strength, in spirits, in courage, and audacity, an 
 athlete of renown a man to have a career like
 
 72 With Feet of Clay 
 
 another Moses or Joshua, or David after him, as 
 a leader and saviour of his people. And he was 
 free from one of the great temptations of his tribe, 
 he was a pledged teetotaler, a total abstainer from 
 what made drunkards of so many of his fellows. 
 And we may be sure that there was no prouder, 
 more hopeful father or mother in all Israel than his 
 mother, and his father Manoah. 
 
 But here begins a canker to show itself in the 
 bud, a shadow to steal over the fairness of his pros- 
 pects. He seems to have no ambition in any wise 
 proportionate to his strength; to have no clear 
 vision of a heroic life of what any life must mean 
 to a man who was to be a leader and helper of 
 others. He has no self-control. He must have, 
 like a spoiled child, the gratification of the moment, 
 even if it breaks in disastrously on God's plan for 
 his life. 
 
 Only three miles away, among the lower hills 
 across the valley, was Timnath, occupied by the 
 Philistines. And there was a girl who had caught 
 his fancy. It did not matter that by birth and 
 training and preference she was one who hated and 
 despised his people; that she was an idol-wor- 
 shipper, and of the race that he was sworn to fight 
 to the death and overthrow; that to marry her was 
 to cast his whole career into confusion, and prob- 
 ably break his mother's heart. She was what he
 
 With Feet of Clay 73 
 
 wanted at the moment, and the habits of years had 
 made him think that what he wanted at the moment 
 was the thing that he must have, and that somehow 
 it must be right for him to have. 
 
 But what about the fidelity of a brave man of a 
 true patriot to his people? What about the honor 
 of Jehovah, that it was his chiefest duty to up- 
 hold? How was he to be a leader of other young 
 men against the enemy, if he went over to that 
 enemy at the beginning? These were inconvenient 
 thoughts, and, as we all know how to do, he put 
 them aside and thought only how impossible was 
 any other solution of the difficulty than the one 
 that should gratify his desire. So he compelled 
 his parents to arrange the marriage. 
 
 You can trace on the story in the chapter fol- 
 lowing. How he led a life apparently quite uncon- 
 trolled of any high or steadfast purpose. Sometimes 
 he sulked, like Achilles, in his tent; and then in 
 freakish rage would burst out in some useless act 
 of private revenge against the enemy. He never 
 led or attempted to lead his people against their 
 oppressors. He was himself the sport of his own 
 impulse. He was so helpless in the sight of pleasure 
 that any noble achievement, demanding self-re- 
 straint, was quite impossible for him. 
 
 As the years went on, although he became a judge 
 of Israel, it is evident that he was less and less
 
 74 With Feet of Clay 
 
 content to abide the simple life of a country village 
 in Judea. He hankered for the paved city streets 
 where gilded chariots went and came, where ships 
 from strange lands lay at the piers, where foreign 
 perfumes drifted out from baths and temples, and 
 where the rugged simplicity of Hebrew peasants 
 was but a jest for the luxurious. He used to go 
 down into the cities of the plain for his pleasures. 
 The nearer cities, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron, he 
 had apparently often visited. They lay near at 
 hand, for the whole scene of his life was but a 
 tiny spot. In search of new diversion he even went 
 as far as Gaza, where he was well-nigh surprised, 
 and where only his giant strength saved him from 
 captivity. 
 
 At last, after he had so lived as judge of Israel 
 for twenty years, a disappointment and a failure, a 
 useless border champion and freebooter, who might 
 have been the divinely empowered saviour of his 
 people, the Philistines planned to capture him with- 
 out a struggle. There in his own valley the Vale 
 of Sorek they laid a trap for him. And there he 
 who had never taken the trouble to be his own 
 master finds a master at last in others. They take 
 him and put out his eyes as Asiatic cruelty so loved 
 to do and harnessed him up in place of a donkey at 
 the prison mill, there to push in dreary endless round 
 at the polished beam that turned the upper stone.
 
 With Feet of Clay 75 
 
 And when his earthly sight went out, then his 
 true sight came to him. There in the endless dark 
 he could see his life unrolled; could see, in clear-cut 
 relief, the career that Jehovah meant for him that 
 had been his, if only he had understood that he must 
 himself work out the fulfilment of the angel's 
 prophecy; if only he had been man enough to be 
 sober in all things, to endure hardness, to fulfil his 
 ministry. And now the chance was irrecoverably 
 gone. Even were he set free, his eyes were out ; the 
 weakest of his enemies might put him to shame. 
 Repentance and wisdom came to him there, too late 
 to be of service other than to make him humble 
 before his God. 
 
 The only atonement he could make was to secure 
 one last revenge, and gladly throw away in it his 
 tasteless, useless life " let me die with the Philis- 
 tines ! " It was a sweet revenge, but as idle as all 
 the other revenges of his life had been. It deepened 
 the Philistine hatred and strengthened their oppres- 
 sion of his people, but brought the day of deliver- 
 ance not an hour the nearer. It was a spectacular, 
 memorable ending for a life memorable, as so 
 many lives have been, for the magnificence of 
 its promise and the pitifulness of its achieve- 
 ment. 
 
 The story of Samson is so plain and simple in 
 its lessons for to-day that they scarce need pointing
 
 76 With Feet of Clay 
 
 out It was a typical life of failure typical of a 
 few great lives, in every century, and an unnumbered 
 multitude of humbler ones; lives of disappointment, 
 like Coleridge, or De Quincey, or Edgar Allan Poe 
 in literature, or like Aaron Burr, or Lord Randolph 
 Churchill, or Charles Stuart Parnell in politics; 
 and typical of the other unnoticed careers, whose 
 name is legion, that each of us has watched in his 
 circle of personal acquaintance, each one, however 
 humble, bearing the burden of its own tragedy. 
 
 At the risk of dwelling on what is already obvious, 
 let us notice two or three of the principles that are 
 writ large in the story of the Danite hero, that 
 unheroic judge of Israel. Let us not be afraid to 
 notice, first, that he was a temperance man, in days 
 when intemperance was the rule. He was a total 
 abstainer amid a people where drunkenness was the 
 undoing of a multitude. As a young man he was 
 pointed out as exemplary; as one who stood upon a 
 pledge, whose solemn Nazirite vow placed him at 
 once beyond the common temptations of his fellows. 
 And from many a temptation it did deliver him. 
 But, as Milton says: 
 
 " What boots it at one gate to make defence 
 And at another to let in the foe ? " 
 
 It was a worthy prohibition, and it is needed in 
 our day even more than it was in his. But let
 
 With Feet of Clay 77 
 
 us not suppose that this prohibition, or any other 
 single prohibition, is going to put us or any other 
 man or any group of men on a plane of comparative 
 moral safety. Let not the perfection of our defence 
 or society's defence, at this point, blind us to the 
 weakness at other points more exposed. Probably 
 for us who are gathered here, taken as a whole, 
 there is no one of the great temptations that is less 
 insidious than the one of strong drink. Because 
 at that point we are so well guarded by training, 
 by habit, by prevalent social conditions, by self- 
 respect. But any one who has lived for years among 
 Mohammedan or Buddhist peoples, where drunken- 
 ness is practically unknown, realizes only too keenly 
 that poor human nature, in spite of triumphant pro- 
 hibition at one point, finds other ways of degrada- 
 tion that bring about, even more completely than 
 drink, the ruin of the soul. 
 
 You and I cannot be honorable men without many 
 negative virtues without many hard and fast pro- 
 hibitions in our lives, prohibitions that will neces- 
 sarily differ with different men. But if you or I are 
 leaning hard on the fact that, e.g., we don't swear, 
 and don't smoke, and don't gamble, and don't drink, 
 we shall find some day that, for leaning hard upon, 
 they are rotten reeds that will break and leave us 
 morally in the mire. We cannot live nobly without 
 prohibitions; but a character built up of prohibi-
 
 78 With Feet of Clay 
 
 tions is still a weak and unworthy character that 
 is likely to fall like the house founded upon the 
 sands. There are such characters, and they are 
 wholly exasperating and a trifle contemptible. 
 
 You see of course what I mean. For any strength 
 or completeness of character there must be devotion 
 to some positive constructive principle, such as Sam- 
 son lacked. There must be the positive love for 
 what is true and honorable and of good repute, 
 that with even hand makes good the defence against 
 the whole circle of what is vicious, or base, or mean. 
 The need for that conserving, constructive love 
 takes a man to God. In the case of Samson, fidelity 
 to Jehovah should have been such a saving principle ; 
 it would have been worth a hundred Nazirite vows. 
 As it was, his defence was like that of some Chinese 
 forts that I have seen, absolutely impregnable at 
 one point, but at some other point, behind those 
 bristling Krupp cannon, lying all but open to the 
 enemy. If a man would save his life from failure, 
 he must have in it the great constructive force, 
 operating everywhere and always along the line 
 of his consciousness, of the love of God, of self- 
 committal to Him. Then, only, will he be sure 
 that there is no unguarded point. 
 
 Again, we see well enough in Samson's career 
 the product of a life whose strength is sapped by 
 self-indulgence, so that it is helpless in the sight of
 
 With Feet of Clay 79 
 
 pleasure. We see in him a man who, when con- 
 fronted by any fascinating allurement, could see 
 no way out of it but by yielding. The stern self- 
 control, built up by years of resistance to petty 
 gratifications, that could say peremptorily, " I will 
 not," he never could fall back upon, because it never 
 was his own he had never earned it. When, at 
 Timnath, vehement fascination blurred all the nobler 
 deeper impulses of his soul, and he groped about 
 for some habit of action that would still enable him 
 to be true to the best when he could no longer see 
 or feel it, he groped in vain there was no such 
 habit there. 
 
 Great temptations never come when God and 
 heaven and the heavenly calling are quite clear. 
 They would not be great temptations if they did. 
 A great allurement confronts us, and lo ! it seems 
 to be the only thing on the horizon. Pleasure is 
 before us, dazzling as the sun, and all else is 
 blurred, and indistinct, and far-away. What we 
 believed and what we determined last Sunday is 
 vague and unreal as a dream. If, then, our only 
 fixed habit is the one of gratifying any insistent 
 compelling impulse, we shall be the sport of the 
 tempter, helpless as thistledown in the path of a 
 tornado. 
 
 If we could only see the working of this law in 
 time! For the failures of life, the great tragedies
 
 8o With Feet of Clay 
 
 and the dull, prosaic, mean defeats, are the plain 
 fruits of the habit of being always indulgent with 
 one's self in little things. You know well the type 
 of characters I mean; characters that a dozen times 
 a day allow themselves the gratification that is just 
 before them, simply because it offers the path of 
 least resistance at the moment. It is quite possible, 
 without thinking, to drift into a state where the 
 pleasant thing to eat, the pleasant thing to wear, 
 the pleasant place to go, the pleasant thing to do, 
 the pleasant book to read, becomes almost our in- 
 variable choice, whether or not it conflicts with our 
 better impulse; because at that precise moment we 
 do not see any sufficiently compelling reason why 
 we should not choose it. But the result is not only 
 that the pleasant always wins, but that we become 
 helpless to resist it moral weaklings. 
 
 It is sober truth to say that this way is the very 
 descent of Avernus. One day the irresistible pleas- 
 ure will be one that can be had only at a cost at 
 a cost of our best ambition, even sometimes at a 
 cost of reputation or of honor. And we shall be 
 as helpless as the thousands of others, for whose 
 presence the world is a poorer place to-day. If we 
 are never stern with ourselves in little things, where 
 shall we find, or beg, or borrow, the stern rectitude 
 that shall hold us true in crucial times of trial ! 
 
 Samson's high calling and ambitions, beginning
 
 With Feet of Clay 81 
 
 with a heavenly brightness, trailed off into the 
 muddy ways of a foolish wastrel. But it was not 
 of purpose or any evil intent, but because day in and 
 day out his highest operative ambition was the love 
 of the agreeable. 
 
 It is but one more step to notice how Samson 
 lacked any ambition worthy of his strength. He 
 had a huge endowment of power, but no adequate 
 ambition to control it. Like an ocean steamer with 
 the rudder of a fishing boat, he wallowed in the 
 trough of life's sea. He lacked the vision of the 
 heroic life! And for the lack of it his whole 
 career, so far as we know it, was poor and mean 
 and purposeless. If once there had dawned upon 
 him the nobility and heroism of a life that should 
 fulfil his ministry ! But apparently he never caught 
 a glimpse of it. And the great life, self -controlled, 
 of one who should live for others, who should be 
 the deliverer of a nation, never so much as kindled 
 his imagination, much less ruled his will. 
 
 Here is the tragedy that is right in our midst 
 of which, it may be, we are a part. You may see 
 the pity of it in any community or college ; perhaps 
 clearest of all among children, when choices are 
 easiest to make. The tragedy of lives meant to be 
 heroic, started to be heroic, like Samson's, drifting 
 on into poor, commonplace, limited careers, for 
 which the world will never be the better. They
 
 82 With Feet of Clay 
 
 might so easily be great and noble ; not perhaps for 
 the world to applaud, but really great, in the sight 
 of God, with a greatness never to fade into insig- 
 nificance. And, instead, for lack of a great com- 
 pelling motive, because they never looked steadily 
 to see what God would make of them, they never 
 rise to heroism. The peril that made shipwreck of 
 Samson is the same peril that haunts our way to-day. 
 
 Thank God! we know how one may triumph 
 over it. In the face of Jesus Christ we see clearly 
 what our life is meant to be. As we resolutely 
 face His life, and think upon His words, we find 
 Him not as a matter of theory, but as a matter 
 of fact actually compelling our characters ; putting 
 our daily life under discipline for the heroic; giving 
 us self-mastery. His example and His spirit are a 
 light like noonday upon what our life was meant 
 to be. Only we must face Him and His thought 
 for us, clear-eyed, every day; and we shall have 
 an ambition even greater than our strength, able 
 to grip and mould and ennoble every capacity of 
 our being. It is easier for us to look away, to 
 forget, to befog His shining presence, and so follow 
 our own way with ease, drifting with Samson to 
 his end. In spite of our knowledge of Jesus Christ, 
 it is easy for us also to lose all sight of the heroic 
 life. 
 
 On the south coast of England, above the cliffs
 
 With Feet of Clay 83 
 
 of the Lizard, stands one of the most powerful sea- 
 lights of the world. Two hundred and thirty feet 
 above high water it is, and with an electric flash- 
 light of a half million candle-power, visible for over 
 forty miles. And yet, several years ago, the Suevic, 
 a great ocean steamer, loaded with passengers and 
 mails, went on the rocks in a gale of wind, just at 
 the foot of that towering lighthouse, somehow fail- 
 ing to see it in the driving mist. 
 
 Even in such a community as this we may miss 
 the sight of what our life should be the sight 
 that is so shining clear. We must needs look for it. 
 Day by day we must invite its illumination of our 
 soul. It is the heroic vision that makes the heroic 
 man, and still, as in Paul's day, it is in " looking 
 unto Jesus " that God's heroes overcome.
 
 VI 
 
 The Ancient and Honorable Company 
 of the Church 
 
 " The church of the living God, the pillar and ground of 
 the truth." i TIM. 3:15. 
 
 JESUS CHRIST is always at the centre of the 
 world's strife. He is the Prince of Peace, but 
 He said that He came to bring not peace on 
 earth but a sword. His presence developed here, 
 and has roused ever since, as hot and malignant 
 hatreds as the human heart can know. And the 
 fight against those old, fierce, inveterate powers of 
 evil is the hereditary fight and obligation of His 
 church. 
 
 I have at home a photograph of a gale at sea, 
 taken from the Land's End in England. You do 
 not notice any waves the ocean surface looks flat 
 and beaten down by the weight of the wind. The 
 waves are there, sweeping headlong to the shore with 
 the rush of the Atlantic behind them; but unchecked 
 and unopposed, their power does not betray itself; 
 their headlong course has something of the deadly 
 
 84
 
 Ancient and Honorable Company 85 
 
 smoothness of the rapids above Niagara. But just 
 in the foreground stands the Longships Lighthouse, 
 rooted in the living granite of a hidden reef of rock, 
 immovable before the shock of these titanic forces ; 
 and there, there leaps up a perpendicular avalanche 
 of white, a hundred feet in height, burying from 
 sight the slender column of masonry. And the 
 waters which elsewhere drive past so silently and 
 unobserved under the smother of white foam, 
 rage and howl and thunder so furiously in the 
 rifts and chasms of the ledge, that men in the 
 lighthouse are said to have gone demented with 
 fear, after one night in that awful maelstrom of 
 sound. 
 
 It is a fair illustration of the way in which 
 Jesus Christ must needs stand at the centre of the 
 world's strife. If He be thrust into the mid-current 
 of human selfishness and passion, to stand immov- 
 able for the righteousness and love of God, He 
 must needs feel the full shock and fury of resistance 
 that such a stand involves. The tide of human in- 
 terests might seem to be flowing quietly enough 
 if unopposed, silent and deep and dangerous; but 
 with that fronting presence of divine rebuke and 
 opposition, it leaps into a tumult of rebellious 
 protest. 
 
 You may talk as you will about the nobility of 
 human nature and the latent goodness in all men, but
 
 86 Ancient and Honorable Company 
 
 if you will effectively oppose even a single one 
 of the lower vices of society, as did Anthony Corn- 
 stock or Sergeant Petrosini in New York, you will 
 find yourself assailed with a murderous hate that 
 will shrink from no crime to compass your defeat. 
 There is still a multitude of men and women, as old 
 Jonathan Edwards used to say, who would kill God 
 if they could. And to confront them vividly and 
 steadily with the love of God, so much more piercing 
 than His wrath, or with His insistent righteousness, 
 with its inexorable demands, is still to feel the in- 
 tensity of their opposition. As Paul said, " They 
 that will live godly, shall suffer persecution." Even 
 the witness of a godly life is a challenge to the 
 active enmity of many minds. 
 
 You may seek out a sequestered corner, like this 
 of ours, where all this is like a tale of arctic storms 
 told in a summer garden ; but we cannot live always 
 in quiet waters. Out into the swirling current we 
 must go, and there find and show what mettle we 
 are of. 
 
 I would have you notice now where the Christian 
 Church stands among the " many waters " of man- 
 kind, for that oft-recurring phase of the New 
 Testament is only a vivid metaphor for the eternally 
 shifting and seething masses of society. Jesus 
 Christ, as the revelation of God's will among men,
 
 Ancient and Honorable Company 87 
 
 stood at the centre of strife. The waves of passion- 
 ate refusal and resistance met about Him, rolled 
 over Him, bruised and beat Him down to death. 
 But, risen and triumphing, He still stands at the 
 heart of the great struggle the good fight of all 
 good fights on earth. And in each generation the 
 church, the federation and organization of His loyal 
 disciples and followers, has, of necessity, inherited 
 the glory and the peril of that strife; has had to 
 be His voice, His witness, amid the babel of 
 worldly outcries. With all its weakness and im- 
 purities, it has nevertheless remained the fellowship 
 of those battling for their life, and for the lives of 
 others, in loyalty to that Lord and Master; and as 
 such the New Testament did not fear to call it the 
 " church of the living God " let who will revile 
 it or despise it the " pillar and ground of the 
 truth." 
 
 Not of all truth, for the church has always walked 
 as in a labyrinth of ignorance and error regarding 
 many things! But of the one superb redeeming 
 truth, that it had seen the glory of God in the face 
 of Jesus Christ. And that company of men and 
 women, so fallible and frail, is further called the 
 " body of Jesus Christ." A body still vulnerable, 
 still on earth, still exposed to abuse and injury and 
 suffering, as the thousands went down to torture and 
 to death, and the long roll of the witnessing martyrs
 
 88 Ancient and Honorable Company 
 
 was built up; but suffering on His behalf, enduring 
 hardness under His leadership. 
 
 It has never been a fraternity of wise men, whom 
 you could not ridicule; or a company of saints whom 
 you could not criticise. It has always been what it 
 was in Jesus' day or in Paul's, a very humble and 
 fallible fellowship, of men and women being saved 
 from what they were. Jesus was patient with its 
 occasional conceit and pettiness, and Paul gave his 
 life to it, though he knew, far better than any clever 
 journalist to-day, how pathetic were its weaknesses. 
 It has always had the defects inseparable from a 
 membership of common men and not of angels. 
 Yet it has always stood, perforce, like its Leader, 
 at the heart of the world's strife. It has always 
 been a fighting church; the ancient and honorable 
 company of those who would make head against a 
 world in arms. It has never been a body of cravens, 
 or of invalids, or weaklings. 
 
 No fighting regiment in the world's armies to- 
 day, proud of its long, long record of gallantry on 
 many fields, in many lands, with its sheaves of 
 tattered regimental colors, has a tithe of the record, 
 or should have a tithe of the pride, that we have 
 to-day in the inheritance of the pride and glory of a 
 fighting regiment a church militant that has stood 
 shoulder to shoulder about its Leader for nineteen 
 hundred years. One can easily affect to be superior
 
 Ancient and Honorable Company 89 
 
 to it, to despise it : can easily join in the old sneers, 
 as old as the apostles, about its timidity and selfish- 
 ness; but no man who would not display his igno- 
 rance can deny that it has led a glorious fight- 
 ing life down to the present day, against every 
 form of intrenched evil that it has come to recog- 
 nize. 
 
 It has often been slow to recognize its duty ; and 
 portions of the church have sometimes been blinded 
 as to a moral issue; as so many were blinded to 
 the deep wrong of slavery, in the twenty years be- 
 fore 1 86 1. But the mere fact that its members 
 are honestly seeking, for their very life's sake, to 
 keep in touch with Jesus Christ and to do His will, 
 means that sooner or later they come out into the 
 light and follow His leadership in spite of every 
 confusing or opposing influence on earth. And so 
 it will be in these new industrial and social problems 
 of our generation. It will not follow the leaders of 
 the hour, each so sure of his own programme, and 
 each so indignant that the church will not make it 
 its own. But as light comes it will assuredly follow 
 the Great Leader and Friend of men, who can guide 
 His people through the twentieth century as surely 
 as through the third or the sixteenth. 
 
 A great many people will always be critical and 
 sarcastic because the church cannot be used as an 
 organization to undertake this reform or that, and
 
 90 Ancient and Honorable Company 
 
 to carry it out the prohibition movement, or suf- 
 frage movement, or some new campaign for clean 
 politics or social purity or international peace, or 
 the elimination of business competition. And others 
 are restless because the church will not use its 
 authority and organization directly to create and 
 administer this or that department of civic charity 
 or philanthropy free baths, public parks and gal- 
 leries, juvenile courts, and so on, in unending 
 variety. 
 
 But the church is and always has been for the 
 inspiration of the individual in the spirit of Christ, 
 which is the very essence of the spirit of social 
 service; so as to send him out in that spirit to play 
 his part in all these various relationships of philan- 
 thropy and reform; to inspire them, and to create 
 them, and to carry them on to success, in politics, 
 and civic reform, and every phase of humanitarian 
 effort. There was an age in which the church 
 took these things into its own hands, to enforce 
 them by its authority, and carry them on through 
 its own organization, and compel their success by 
 weight of its prestige. And that age was the poor- 
 est age that Christendom has ever seen. 
 
 It is not so that the church carries on its great 
 warfare. It strikes at the centre of disease at the 
 sin that " weakens all the fine humanities of our 
 nature," and works out into ever-changing mani-
 
 Ancient and Honorable Company 91 
 
 festations of social wrong and selfishness. And it 
 inspires not with a programme but with a divine 
 eternal life, that is always laboring to seek out 
 human needs and bring joy where misery has been 
 supreme. So if you will look anywhere in the 
 world to-day you will find the church behind the 
 active fighting agencies for human good, wherever 
 those agencies demand, not only machinery, but 
 sacrifice of money and of life. 
 
 It is behind the hospitals of New York or Labra- 
 dor or China, the leper asylums all over the Orient, 
 the orphanages and rescue homes past counting in all 
 lands. It is in the schools, and training institutes, 
 and colleges, wherever civilization has not yet pro- 
 vided them ; in homes and clubs for seamen and sol- 
 diers an d railroad men, wherever the tempted con- 
 gregate ; in Young Men's Christian Associations and 
 Young Women's Christian Associations in the cities 
 of the world where men and women need a helping 
 hand; in a hundred forms of settlement work and 
 social and welfare work and mission work; in the 
 world-wide fight against opium and whiskey, in 
 anti-saloon work, and the struggle against the white 
 slave traffic, and the black slave traffic in Africa or 
 on the Congo, against child labor, and sweat-shop 
 cruelty, and graft in politics, and so on and on. 
 As the spirit of Jesus continually reveals itself to 
 His disciples, the fellowship of believers in Him,
 
 92 Ancient and Honorable Company 
 
 animated by His love, becomes the great fighting 
 body of the world greater than all its armies ; with 
 endless money behind it, and uncounted lives, and a 
 devotion that lives and burns to-day as glowingly 
 as it used to live and burn in Rome of the Caesars, 
 when Paul nursed the flame. The church of the 
 living God is still the church militant, the church 
 at war. 
 
 Men and women of this spirit have always wanted 
 to get together, that together they might nourish 
 the flame of love and devotion. It so easily dies 
 down! Our enthusiasms unsupported so quickly 
 cool and die. You could not keep apart those one 
 hundred and twenty men and women who met after 
 Jesus' death in an upper room in Jerusalem. The 
 work they had to do, the burden they had to bear, 
 was too great for them to do or bear scattered 
 singly and unaided in their homes. 
 
 Without organization any great cause languishes. 
 When Japan was standing against Russia for its 
 national life, you might as well have expected it 
 to win by turning loose a half million men on 
 the shore of Korea, each bearing a sword or rifle 
 as he saw fit, and each going his own way inde- 
 pendently, to overthrow the enemy, as to expect the 
 great fellowship of the disciples of Christ to fight 
 effectively the good fight, without close ties of 
 loyalty and discipline and organization. So there
 
 Ancient and Honorable Company 93 
 
 has always been, not a loose multitude of believers 
 in Jesus, but a church of Christ, holding closely 
 together to nourish the flame of divine love among 
 men for the sake of the race, men and women knit 
 together by a great need, a great gratitude, and a 
 heavenly ambition, with Christ at the centre of the 
 deathless fellowship. 
 
 Where do you stand in relation to it? Christ 
 loved the church and gave Himself for it! Is it 
 your clear purpose to be loyal to it till death? To 
 build your life into it to the last ounce of its vital 
 energy, as millions have done of the world's saints 
 and noblest servants? 
 
 It would seem that the church would be a better 
 church were it not so generously humble; if it did 
 not invite to itself such utterly unfinished and im- 
 perfect men; if it did not so freely receive ordinary 
 half -developed characters like ourselves men and 
 women half-Christian, half-selfish, half-believing, 
 half-doubting ; unstable, like Peter, and with clinging 
 evil elements left over from the old life. It might 
 be a better church if it were reserved for the noble 
 souls, and great souls, and clean and devoted souls 
 of our generation. But it is magnificent in its 
 graciousness. It welcomes all who would be loyal 
 to the Master who would escape their meaner 
 selves through His love and help. We cannot blame 
 it or its Master for welcoming such as we so freely,
 
 94 Ancient and Honorable Company 
 
 if we will only cleave to Him, and fight the 
 good fight of His faith. It must needs have 
 many imperfect soldiers in it if it enrolls such 
 material. 
 
 But such as it is, what place do you give it? 
 Is it possible that any of us should be not loyal 
 to the last red drop of blood, but loftily superior, 
 condescending, contemptuous? Can you imagine a 
 man honestly desirous not only to plough his lonely 
 furrow through life, but to throw in his life with 
 all who will stand together resolutely for great 
 ends, and yet turning away from this ancient and 
 honorable company, covertly sneering at its humble 
 folk and their old fashions and their unadaptability 
 to modern ways? Can you draw the line between 
 loyalty to the great Captain and Master, and loyalty 
 to the world-wide family of those who love Him 
 and bear His name? 
 
 If you will imagine what this State of California 
 would be without the church as a centre of organized 
 Christian opinion and effort in its midst, what any 
 of our large towns would be if all the churches were 
 withdrawn, you can understand what so clear- 
 headed a man as Dr. C. R. Brown meant when he 
 said that " the man who stays outside the church 
 on the theory that he can be just as good a Christian 
 without assuming the responsibilities of church 
 membership, is a coward and a shirk." It is as-
 
 Ancient and Honorable Company 95 
 
 suredly clear that there are good men outside the 
 church; but it is very far from clear that you will 
 be a good man if you refuse for yourself so plain 
 a step of loyalty to Jesus Christ, your Master, as 
 to ally yourself with the fellowship of His confessed 
 servants. 
 
 You sometimes hear men speak as though the 
 Christian Association were somehow a more satis- 
 factory organization than the church, and as though 
 membership in it might fairly take the place of alle- 
 giance to the broader, world-wide, life-long fellow- 
 ship of all disciples. They forget how utterly the 
 Young Men's Christian Association and the Young 
 Women's Christian Association are the creation and 
 child of the church; how the church wrought them 
 out, and brought them forward into strength, and 
 backs them everywhere with men and money and 
 sympathy, guiding and inspiring them with that 
 noble international committee of churchmen as the 
 centre of the complex machinery. It is the church 
 that lives and moves and works through the Christ- 
 ian Associations in every city in alm(ost every land 
 to-day, and without the church they would be dead 
 in a night, as if stricken with the plague. 
 
 And we forget also how some day, looking back 
 on life from the far limit of seventy years, even 
 these full four years of Association life and in- 
 fluence will appear only as a quick-passing half -hour
 
 96 Ancient and Honorable Company 
 
 in the long, arduous day of a completed life. But 
 the fellowship of the church, our mothers' church 
 and the church of our fathers, meets us in our 
 infancy, follows our boyhood, calls to us through 
 manhood in the trumpet-tones of the summons to 
 bravery of service, comforts and sustains us through 
 losses and sorrows as years multiply, and upholds 
 us even in old age on the broad, strong current of 
 Christian sympathy and overcoming faith and min- 
 istering love. 
 
 And when I say to myself, " The church is not 
 as influential as it should be, and is not as pure 
 as it should be," I turn and ask myself, " Are you 
 doing the part of a true man in helping to make 
 it pure and influential? Have you ever come up 
 under your share of responsibility for its life? Are 
 you contributing to its support, or do you leave 
 altogether to others the duty of maintaining its 
 helpfulness, that has meant so much to you already? 
 Are you helping to make it pure, and worthy, and 
 influential are you treating it as you would wish 
 its great Head and Master to find you treating it, 
 were He to make sudden inquiry of your atti- 
 tude?" 
 
 Not all of us are worthy to enter into the humble 
 fellowship of the men and women who would make 
 their life one of reverent gratitude and love to 
 God their Saviour. But for as many as hope to
 
 Ancient and Honorable Company 97 
 
 join one day in the great song of the church tri- 
 umphant, " Unto Him that loveth us and loosed 
 us from our sins by His blood," the clear, pene- 
 trating call is that to-day we should be found true 
 and loyal to the hard-pressed, ever-battling company 
 of the church militant.
 
 VII 
 The Obedience of Jesus 
 
 " Obedient even unto death" PHIL. 2:8. 
 
 IN June, 1893, the Mediterranean squadron of 
 the British fleet was manoeuvring off Tripoli. 
 The vessels were proceeding in a double column, 
 twelve hundred yards apart, under command of 
 Admiral Tryon on the Victoria. At a certain point 
 the admiral signalled for both columns to reverse 
 their course by turning inwards. It was instantly 
 pointed out to the admiral, by the captain of the 
 Victoria, that this was an impossible manoeuvre, 
 inasmuch as the ironclads could not turn in less 
 than six hundred yards, and that the Victoria would 
 be risking collision with the Camperdown, the lead- 
 ing warship of the other column. Three times Cap- 
 tain Bourke remonstrated, and the Camperdown 
 also signalled for further instructions. But the 
 order stood. 
 
 Both vessels began turning at the same time, and 
 with breathless anxiety and horror the whole fleet 
 looked on at the tragedy that followed. The two 
 
 98
 
 The Obedience of Jesus 99 
 
 men-of-war drew nearer, faced the danger, struggled 
 too late to check their way, and came together, the 
 great steel ram of the Camper down tearing out the 
 side of her consort, which began to heel over and 
 sink almost immediately. Perfect order was main- 
 tained, and the swarms of men went down to their 
 death like heroes. But more than half of the 
 Victoria's six hundred men were drowned before 
 their companions's eyes within fifteen minutes. 
 
 None will ever know what was in the admiral's 
 mind, whether perhaps it had suddenly failed him 
 for a few moments, for he went down with his ship, 
 remorsefully refusing all help until the last. But 
 when the court-martial was held in England upon 
 the captains who carried out the fatal manoeuvre 
 in obedience to orders, and who were furiously 
 blamed for so doing, England refused in any wise 
 to censure them, because " it is not in the best 
 interests of the service to blame them for obedience 
 to their commander-in-chief ." The whole efficiency 
 of the navy and the whole stability of the empire 
 rested upon unquestioning obedience to a superior's 
 orders ; and even the lives of the three hundred and 
 fifty men were not too great a price to pay for the 
 unhesitating maintenance of that first essential of 
 national greatness. 
 
 We are apt to think as children that obedience is 
 a virtue required of us only, but that as we grow
 
 ioo The Obedience of Jesus 
 
 up to the pleasant freedom of men and women we 
 become independent and may do as we please. Alas, 
 for our childish hopes of independence! They are 
 never realized, unless we go the fool's way, to our 
 own undoing. Rather do we come to see that 
 nothing noble, nothing great, nothing enduring can 
 be built up without obedience, subordination, to 
 some greater controlling and directing mind. An 
 army without subordination is a mob. A republic 
 without obedience is a chaos of license and cor- 
 ruption. A life without obedience is a life without 
 character or purpose. Some people instinctively 
 rebel against the idea of authority, and cripple their 
 lives by their self-will; but unless we are as wise 
 as God, and as good as our Heavenly Father, we 
 must be grateful for a better will than ours to guide 
 us and control. 
 
 And so we may say truly that the first of all 
 virtues is the virtue of obedience. It lies behind 
 all others, in the building up of a character or an 
 empire. And if no nation can achieve greatness 
 without this self-control of subordination permeat- 
 ing its people, no more can so great an enterprise 
 as the Kingdom of God be carried on without it. 
 Jesus came to establish the Kingdom of God on 
 earth to set it on its glorious, endless way. And 
 He lived, Himself, under the terms of this inex- 
 orable demand for unquestioning obedience. He
 
 The Obedience of Jesus 101 
 
 lived in this respect as you and I must live, if we 
 are to build up instead of break down the kingdom. 
 He left us an example, that we should follow His 
 steps; Himself not always understanding, not fore- 
 seeing the future, but trusting the wisdom of His 
 Father's will and minding it, as a child minds, who 
 is not wise enough to act alone. 
 
 Does this seem to you at all incongruous with the 
 character of Him who was called the Son of God? 
 If so, it is because we have allowed ourselves to 
 forget the unmistakable picture drawn by the New 
 Testament of His humanity. It is not that of a con- 
 scious God, originating His own purposes, or shar- 
 ing, as with a co-equal will and understanding, the 
 thoughts and purposes of the Father. Jesus plainly 
 represents Himself as a man under orders, in sub- 
 ordination to the will of another. " My Father," 
 He said, " is greater than I. The words I speak 
 to you are not mine, but his. It is he who works 
 the powers that appear through me. I keep his 
 commandments. I do always the things that are 
 pleasing in his sight. It is his will, not mine, that 
 I seek when the way is doubtful. Therefore doth 
 the Father love me, because I keep his command- 
 ments." 
 
 That is a very clear picture of a Leader who 
 set the example to all His followers, of a man 
 under authority, listening for instructions, and
 
 IO2 The Obedience of Jesus 
 
 carrying them out faithfully wherever they might 
 lead. 
 
 Notice how naturally and how gradually He came 
 to be the most obedient among all the sons of men. 
 He did not, at the beginning of His life, acknowl- 
 edge and accept for Himself the whole plan of God 
 for His thirty years, that should make Him a man 
 of sorrows and bring Him to an early death. " He 
 learned obedience " so says the writer of He- 
 brews " by the things that He suffered." He did 
 not anticipate the soul-struggle of Gethsemane when 
 He was a little lad of six. Instead, He played about 
 the courtyard and in and out of His father's shop, 
 a perfect child among children, merry in the sun- 
 shine ; but even then attentive to His mother's voice, 
 obedient and honorable in the little obligations that 
 a child of six must carry. The mysterious call of 
 the deep plans of God for the salvation of mankind 
 reached Him then only as Joseph called from the 
 workshop or Mary from the latticed window. But 
 it was divine, the way in which He answered as 
 boys and girls to-day may touch the godlike in the 
 way they meet their parents' wish. 
 
 Later, it is evident that He was thinking much 
 on God's plans for His life, and was searching to 
 know how best He could be about His Father's 
 business. You remember how this puzzling search 
 led Him to the temple when He was but twelve;
 
 The Obedience of Jesus 103 
 
 and then led Him submissively back to His country 
 home, there to be subject to His parents. 
 
 And when He had come to be about thirty years 
 old, He was well-skilled in a perfect, sympathetic 
 obedience, when the call came to Him to drop the 
 tools of an artisan and go out among the world 
 of men. Even then the way was not one of un- 
 troubled clearness ! Clouds and darkness were 
 round it at the very beginning, when the adversary 
 sought to confuse Him and mislead Him, and when 
 He could only wait for God, as did tempted saints 
 of old. He prayed there in the desert, that He 
 might see light, and that He might be strong to 
 follow it. And as He saw it, He was obedient to 
 the heavenly vision. 
 
 So the common days came and went the happy 
 expectant days of His ministry in Galilee, when the 
 multitudes followed Him, and when He could go 
 about doing good, following His heart's desire. Yet 
 even in these days He sought not His own will but 
 the will of Him that sent Him. Often He rose up 
 before day to talk with His Father, long and undis- 
 turbed, that He might better understand His will. 
 So that when the shadow began to close down upon 
 His life, and He came to realize that His way 
 was leading inevitably to an abyss of failure and 
 shame and distress, He obeyed still, as readily as 
 when a child. And so was found at the end " obe-
 
 104 The Obedience of Jesus 
 
 dient even unto death." And if He is the Captain 
 of our salvation to-day, and a Saviour even for 
 the ends of the earth, it is because He was Him- 
 self made perfect in obedience by suffering. 
 
 I am sure there is none here who can miss the 
 lesson of these facts. We do not consider them 
 for their academic or historic interest, but because 
 they are of vital concern to every one of us. We 
 also, like Jesus, find ourselves here for a few years 
 among men, set among innumerable perplexities and 
 possibilities, to overcome, or to be overcome; to 
 win our way through with joy at the end, or to 
 come to our last day with disappointment and in 
 fear. Our career is not of such consequence to 
 the world as was that of Jesus, but to us it is of 
 pathetic, infinite concern. Not all the universe is 
 of such overwhelming moment to us as is the ques- 
 tion whether we win or lose, whether our lives 
 are found worthy or worthless in the great ap- 
 praisal. 
 
 And in the career of Jesus we see the factors of 
 our own destiny writ large. The essential condi- 
 tions of our own struggle are there set forth in 
 heroic size. And if for Him, the Leader, obedience 
 was the first condition of success, how much more 
 for us who follow. If He who was the mighty and 
 sinless One had need to wait daily upon the wiil 
 of God, how ever shall we find our way througii
 
 The Obedience of Jesus 105 
 
 life's labyrinthine temptations by our own strength 
 and wisdom! Illusion is all about us! There is 
 a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end 
 of that way is death. How shall we know? How 
 shall we save ourselves from the choices that will 
 one day cover us with confusion? 
 
 If Jesus had miscalculated, there in the desert, 
 if He had sought to save His life and His future 
 work by making bread so that He might not die 
 there of starvation, He would have made shipwreck 
 of His career, as men are making shipwreck of their 
 lives about us every day. But He held inflexibly 
 to His Father's will, obeying where He could not 
 see. There is no other certain hope for us. It 
 cannot be in occasional efforts at obedience, at cer- 
 tain crises, where we are afraid to go alone: in 
 experiments with it, when we are in certain moods. 
 That is worthless. It is only in the simple yet tre- 
 mendous choice of the will of God for our life 
 a choice as deep as the unexplored depths of our 
 soul not for a day, but forever; not in one thing, 
 but in every experience of life and death. 
 
 It was so that Jesus obeyed. And yet a child 
 can do that. A weak and tempted man can do it. 
 As surely as God is in us, we can make such a 
 choice. We may falter at times, we may be shaken 
 to and fro as roughly as the shipwrecked sailor 
 being drawn ashore in the life-buoy is battered by
 
 106 The Obedience of Jesus 
 
 the waves; but the life-line does not break. We 
 shall never utterly let go; because such a choice, 
 born of God, is renewed by Him again and again, as 
 day follows day. But there is no other choice that 
 will lead us home no other than obedience. It 
 made of Jesus a perfect Saviour. It will make us 
 also ready and perfect for the mission on which 
 God would send us, whether it be to the end of 
 the world, or whether it hems us in to a cottage and 
 a kitchen, or shuts us up to the tiny ignoble king- 
 dom of an invalid's room. 
 
 We need to notice two things about this tri- 
 umphant obedience of Jesus. It was for Him a way 
 of confidence, and a way of joy. It is cruelly hard 
 to obey, if you have not confidence in the one who 
 commands if you are not sure that his order is 
 completely wise. It was a fearful predicament in 
 which Captain Bourke was placed, with his superior 
 officer facing him there on the bridge, and yet with 
 the sickening fear that the admiral was blindly send- 
 ing them to death. It must have been with a bitter 
 heart that the Earl of Cardigan, at Balaklava, led 
 his beloved brigade of cavalry on that wild, futile 
 charge that left it a pitiful remnant of its former 
 strength. 
 
 And had Jesus been compelled to walk that last 
 twelve months, steadily toward the cross, with the 
 slightest doubt as to His Father's perfect wisdom
 
 The Obedience of Jesus 107 
 
 and perfect love, it would have been a hopeless task. 
 But He was unafraid. There could be no mistake. 
 However His spirit might recoil, His confidence 
 in His Father's leading was complete. He did pray 
 that the cup might not be so bitter, but only if His 
 Father should will it so. He trusted Him. 
 
 We cannot hope for any better fortune. We can- 
 not obey, in the long run, without a perfect con- 
 fidence that we are safe in doing so, and only safe 
 as we obey. We can only accept God's will as we 
 are satisfied that it knows us perfectly, and knows 
 whither it is sending us, and sends us there in sym- 
 pathy and love. It is not enough to tell us, as did 
 some of the divines of a century ago, that God is 
 sovereign, and that His sovereign will must be 
 enough for us, even though it decrees our temporal 
 and eternal sorrow. The remnants of such hideous 
 fears still cling to men. They paralyze obedience. 
 We need to trust in God as the little daughter trusts 
 her father, knowing instinctively that he loves her 
 better than his life, and that he only seeks her hap- 
 piness : so that what God chooses for us, we know 
 He chooses as the true lover of our souls, and with 
 a perfect comprehension of our needs and our 
 capacities. 
 
 It is not so that we often think of God. We 
 fear to submit ourselves absolutely to His will, lest 
 it should ask of us something extravagant or beyond
 
 io8 The Obedience of Jesus 
 
 our power, something too hard or disappointing or 
 painful for us ever to choose. 
 
 Certain college fraternities have sometimes de- 
 manded of candidates for initiation that for several 
 days they should obey any order laid upon them; 
 and so you might see men on the streets of the col- 
 lege town going through the most ridiculous or 
 humiliating performances. Men often treat God as 
 though He would deal with them in this irrational 
 fashion if they once gave themselves up absolutely 
 to His control. They are afraid of what they might 
 be asked to do. They fear that God may give them 
 His orders through dreams, or angels, or sudden 
 strange impressions, without consulting them, or first 
 referring His bidding to their judgment, and that 
 so some astonishing and over-exacting task might at 
 any moment be laid upon them, against their wish 
 and soberer reason. But it is only through our 
 reason and our soberest judgment that God speaks 
 to us, with fullest reference to our tastes and our 
 capacities, our weaknesses and limitations ; not com- 
 pelling us and overruling us, but using our thought, 
 and our judgment, and our conscience, to make plain 
 to us what we, upon our fullest consideration, recog- 
 nize that we ought to do, and what, in the fullest 
 enlightenment of our spirit, we wish and choose 
 to do. 
 
 It is so that God's will came to Jesus, and it is
 
 The Obedience of Jesus 109 
 
 so that it comes to us. Not violently and arbi- 
 trarily, but naturally and spontaneously, as our 
 minds and wills come to perceive and appropriate 
 His thoughts. So that we may have confidence in 
 God. He will not lead us roughly or carelessly ; 
 He will make no mistakes. When the father holds 
 the little child's hand, every footstep is guided by 
 a tender thoughtfulness. And we are safe in yield- 
 ing a trusting hand to God. 
 
 But to Jesus, as to us, the way of obedience was 
 the way of joy. Not always at the moment ! It 
 is only the lower and baser animals whose only 
 thought of happiness is instant gratification. And 
 for Jesus it was sometimes the joy set before Him 
 that brightened the way of submission. But He 
 was not mocking His companions when He be- 
 queathed to them " his joy." The deepest, sweetest 
 joy that earth can know was in Jesus' heart, night 
 by night, as He turned to sleep. Would you have 
 preferred Pilate's pillow or King Herod's, or that 
 wealthy man, Simon's? 
 
 The way of joy is a strange one. You do not 
 find it quite where you look for it. We think we 
 see its presence in the luxurious home, or on the 
 white deck of the yacht lying at anchor, or in the 
 applause of the crowd, and are astonished to learn 
 that those men are morose, or disappointed, or 
 nervously broken, and that joy has passed them by.
 
 no The Obedience of Jesus 
 
 And then you may see as I have often seen a 
 Sister of the Salvation Army, whose home and life 
 is in the reeking, sodden slums of a great city; and 
 from her face looks out on you an exquisite happi- 
 ness and peace, such as Jesus knew, as He, too, went 
 on His difficult way obeying God. It is impossible 
 to say where the way of joy will lie for you. You 
 may think it is in the halls or laboratories of a great 
 city, and it may be in the loneliness of Central Asia, 
 or in the humblest of unnoticed tasks at home. It 
 is where, and only where, you can be in the presence 
 of the great Leader and Captain, loyally obedient to 
 His call. 
 
 Not long ago a lady was visiting the great leper 
 hospital in Quito, Ecuador. Back and forth she 
 went through its wards and corridors, shuddering 
 at that awful aggregation of misery, that made her 
 forget the blue sky and smiling sun without. She 
 had as her conductor the Mother Superior of the 
 house, who had been in charge for twelve years, 
 and who still had a face calm, resolute, and sweet, 
 with the light upon it of a deep content. " And 
 how can you endure it to spend your life among such 
 scenes ? " asked the visitor. In answer she led the 
 way to a tiny chapel hung in white, and pointed to a 
 picture hanging there, the picture of the Good Shep- 
 herd. No word was spoken no word was needed. 
 
 The Good Shepherd walked the way of joy in
 
 The Obedience of Jesus in 
 
 carrying out His Father's will. It was His meat and 
 drink so He said Himself. And an innumerable 
 multitude following Him, not fearing the call of 
 God, have entered into His joy in that same path 
 of obedience. 
 
 For those men and women, here, before whom 
 all the paths of life lie open, with all their tempting, 
 beckoning possibilities, there is only one path in 
 which you will find how good and satisfying life 
 may be, and that is the path in which you let God 
 lead you day by day. But let Him lead you this 
 day, lest to-morrow the heavenly vision should not 
 shine so clear.
 
 VIII 
 The Power of an Affirmation 
 
 " Reckon ye yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto 
 God in Christ Jesus." ROM. 6:n. 
 
 THIS may seem to some of us to be one of 
 the driest and most mechanical utterances 
 of the peculiar theology of Paul, beginning, 
 as it does, with his favorite word " to impute," 
 " to reckon," that has been used to introduce so 
 artificial an element into the thinking of centuries. 
 It may seem to us to be out of relation with the 
 keenly practical and matter-of-fact thinking of to- 
 day. We want not only reality, but realities that 
 are in touch with the thinking and living of our 
 own generation. 
 
 And it is for this reason that I have chosen this 
 text as one to go far with us in life, because it 
 is intensely modern in its thought, throbbing with 
 a reality that you might almost say has become new 
 to our generation. Perhaps it seemed artificial to 
 us in our boyhood to reckon something that hard- 
 headed sense affirms is not really so but in this 
 
 112
 
 The Power of an Affirmation 113 
 
 twentieth century it takes on a new significance, a 
 new pertinence. 
 
 The thought is that which seems to be the most 
 vital in Christian Science. It is that, also, which 
 lies behind all the present-day systems of suggestive 
 therapeutics. One might even call its method of 
 operation that of auto-suggestion, and not be far 
 from the fact. Of course, in Paul's thought it has 
 a far wider range than any that merely contemplates 
 physical conditions ; for he applies it to our spiritual 
 life. But the principle is the same, and if it is 
 important as it relates to the body, as millions think 
 it is, much more is it important as it applies to the 
 life of the soul. And that is what Paul was con- 
 cerned about, and that is what we are interested in 
 above all else. 
 
 What is the principle that is becoming of so in- 
 tense an interest to our generation, and that Paul 
 here enunciates for those men and women strug- 
 gling into a Christian life in that moral sink of the 
 Roman world? 
 
 It is simply this that one should proudly assert 
 and affirm a condition of health and completeness, 
 not yet fully realized, but possible and normal to 
 him, and should actually live under the control and 
 stimulus of this assertion until it works itself out 
 into actual realization and achievement. It rests 
 psychologically upon the power of a determined sug-
 
 ii4 The Power of an Affirmation 
 
 gestion to affect not only our conscious but our sub- 
 conscious life, and bring to pass changes that, but 
 for the constant pressure of this confidently as- 
 serted idea, would never come to be. 
 
 As to the physical side of this principle, I have 
 nothing now to say. It is only upon the moral and 
 spiritual side, as Paul applied it thousands of years 
 ago, that I would urge it especially upon your atten- 
 tion. The ground here has been well explored, and 
 the theories well proved through many centuries, so 
 that we cannot seriously go astray. 
 
 It is the secret of noble living, with which we 
 have to do, and none supposes that such a secret is 
 some cheap and easy short-cut to character it must 
 still call for strength and faith and firmness of 
 decision. The promises of life and death are 
 for him who overcomes, and it is a way of over- 
 coming that our text points out. What is that 
 way? 
 
 We all recognize that we are beings of a most 
 complex nature, in whom opposed and utterly in- 
 congruous elements are always struggling for the 
 mastery. If we have in us the marks of children 
 of God, we also have the inheritance of the ape and 
 tiger. Selfishness, sensuality, greed, are ever clutch- 
 ing at our nobler selves, to drag us down, to choke 
 and strangle the divine, or at least to contest every 
 step of the way by which we would rise to posses-
 
 The Power of an Affirmation 115 
 
 sion of our better selves. The animal traits battle 
 with the inheritance of the spirit God's spirit 
 in us, as it appeals to us to seize our birthright as 
 men made in the image of God. The appeal to us 
 is to overcome, to resist, to deny, to stifle the cling- 
 ing, shameful enemies of our baser self, and to walk 
 proudly, yet humbly, as men who will not bow their 
 necks to the slavery of the flesh. 
 
 There are two widely different ways of coming up 
 to this ancient battle for a noble life. One may 
 come up to it defeated already because of his apolo- 
 getic or uncertain attitude; or he may come with 
 the assurance of a victory that in the long run must 
 be his. 
 
 Let us use the illustration nearest at hand. There 
 appeared in the papers a little while ago an inter- 
 view with Elinor Glyn, the novelist. She was 
 speaking of the superb old English marriage vow 
 that has come down to us unchanged through the 
 centuries, and that by its very strength and dignity 
 has often made solemn and worthy the plighted 
 troth that might have been frivolous or careless, 
 the promise " for better, for worse, for richer, for 
 poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to 
 cherish till death us do part." Mrs. Glyn was re- 
 ported as saying, what would meet with a chorus of 
 approval from a certain class all over our country, 
 that this promise was objectionable and useless, be-
 
 n6 The Power of an Affirmation 
 
 cause intrinsically unreasonable, being against na- 
 ture. Men being what they are, with changing im- 
 pulses, it was impossible for them to forecast the 
 long future, or to put themselves under an irrevoca- 
 ble bond till death. We must take life as it is, and 
 recognize human weakness, etc., etc. 
 
 Now, here is the issue clearly joined. One man 
 comes up to his opening future, and taking his stand 
 upon his rightful strength and honor as a child of 
 God, a man, with his life and its determinations in 
 his own hands, makes a promise until death, un- 
 faltering, unafraid, denying to himself any possi- 
 bility of aught but fidelity, as an old Greek might 
 have gone out to battle assured of one thing only, 
 that in any case, come life or death, he would not 
 turn his back upon the foe. And in the strength 
 of that superb affirmation of the marriage vow, as 
 tender as it is strong, what an innumerable multi- 
 tude of men and women have never even imagined 
 the poor dastardly thought of a possible defeat of 
 their pledged honor ! 
 
 And on the other hand, here again are men and 
 women by the multitude, coming up to this same 
 place of decision, with such an eye to their own 
 weakness, and the probable instability of their own 
 choices, that if they use these words at all they use 
 them with the secret fear that perhaps it will be a 
 vain promise after all. Their defeat is already half
 
 The Power of an Affirmation 117 
 
 assured by the fact that they would leave every 
 avenue open for retreat, in case their mind should 
 change. 
 
 The one man reckons dishonor to his word im- 
 possible. The other reckons that it is quite possible ; 
 and though he would fight against it, he mentally 
 sees himself already retiring defeated from the con- 
 test. One resolutely affirms what he will have, must 
 have, true, and lives under the daily power of that 
 affirmation. The other is afraid to affirm, and lives 
 under the daily influence of the suggestion that 
 there are two courses open to him after all. In each 
 case the work of the suggestion never slumbers; but 
 in one case it is a divine suggestion of strength and 
 honor, and in the other it is one of weakness, of 
 contemptible surrender to the baser element in hu- 
 man life. 
 
 We have to-day a wide school of writers, of which 
 perhaps the Italian d'Annunzio is the chief, who 
 more or less openly profess the doctrine that human 
 life, to be complete, must live out all its elements. 
 That we may live, nay, should live, the natural life. 
 And that if the ape and tiger persist in us till this 
 day, we must recognize the necessity of giving them 
 their place in our scheme of living. To do other- 
 wise is to be unnatural; it is to cramp and narrow 
 one's own personality that should have free expres- 
 sion. Sin is a word of pedants and ascetics of
 
 u8 The Power of an Affirmation 
 
 the strait-laced killers of joy, who envy men the 
 pleasures of a natural existence. 
 
 With such a theory of life as that, one is fore- 
 doomed to moral overthrow. He may not mean, by 
 it, to give up the fight for character ; but the subtle 
 influence of its suggestion, always at work, con- 
 doning weakness and excusing indulgence, must 
 needs sap the divine life and strength in man, at 
 its very root. It may lead to a character like that 
 of the younger Dumas, naively asserting its utter 
 innocence of wrong-doing and yet marred with life- 
 long dissipation; but it could never lead to such 
 sternly honorable lives as those of Scott, or Brown- 
 ing, or Gladstone, that in the toughness of their 
 moral fibre can only be the products of a divinely 
 prompted assertion of the will, firm-rooted against 
 all the winds of temptation that can blow. 
 
 We need no further illustration of the fact that 
 life is a battle, and that one may so come up to 
 it as to invite defeat, or so as to insure a final vic- 
 tory, when the day is done. We lay the future 
 under compulsion by our predetermined attitude to 
 the fight; we decide the battle in advance, either 
 by the dogged affirmation of our will, or by the 
 wavering uncertainty that is not sure what the 
 issue is to be. 
 
 Let us return now to our text, and see the way 
 in which Paul would lay a whole life under bonds
 
 The Power of an Affirmation 119 
 
 would determine the issue of the whole struggle 
 from its beginning. He lays down a double asser- 
 tion regarding one's moral life, facing on the one 
 side toward God, on the other side toward all the 
 gathered forces of destruction that beset the soul. 
 " Reckon yourselves," he says, "to be dead to sin, 
 but alive unto God." Toward sin, count yourselves 
 insensible, unresponsive, unable to be seduced by its 
 allurements; not inviting it to a parley, to see 
 whether you are stronger than it, but denying it 
 and refusing it, as one who is done with it, as a 
 dead man is done with time. You have cut your- 
 self off from it. Live under the daily renewed 
 power of that assertion. 
 
 But toward God, reckon yourself alive in every 
 fibre of your being, sensitive and responsive to every 
 stimulus from Him : with every avenue of com- 
 munication open, with every faculty alert to answer 
 to His will; in deep essential touch with the un- 
 fathomed depths of His holiness, and love, and 
 strength; thinking His thoughts after Him by sym- 
 pathy, loving what He loves, hating what He hates, 
 doing what He wills a child of the Father. Even 
 here on earth, with the Father hidden in deep dark- 
 ness, yet daily, consciously, determinedly, holding 
 your life in touch with the Almighty and Holy 
 God. Reckon yourself, so, alive! 
 
 But and we must needs face a chorus of regret-
 
 I2O The Power of an Affirmation 
 
 ful protest we are not dead to sin! We are not 
 alive to God! Often we are dully insensible to the 
 call of God, and quiveringly sensitive to the appeal 
 of evil. Paul would have us assert what our ex- 
 perience all too hopelessly denies ! 
 
 Yes, that is so, sometimes, in some degree; our 
 affections are unstable. But is this evident imper- 
 fection of character what you wish to be? No, it 
 is not what we wish! Is it what you expect will 
 always be, as your permanent estate? No! may 
 God forbid that, else we should be lost men. Is it 
 what you believe to be your normal life, suitable 
 and proper for you as a man? No! it is neither 
 suitable nor normal, but abnormal and injurious. 
 And, last of all, is it the purpose and design of 
 God, in His great saving work through Jesus Christ, 
 that you should continue so to live, the sport of 
 opposing forces, the occasional prey of the tempter? 
 No ! He came to redeem us from all iniquity. 
 
 Since, then, this divided allegiance is neither what 
 we wish to be, nor what should be, nor what shall 
 be, then let us rise up, for all our present weak- 
 ness, and declare our freedom, our true estate, as 
 sons of God, and reckon ourselves dead to sin and 
 alive to our Father in Heaven. And though in our 
 assertion of this freedom, Satan may for the time 
 contradict us, and buffet us, and sometimes bring 
 us to our knees, as God lives, he cannot move us,
 
 The Power of an Affirmation 121 
 
 nor can any pluck us out of our Father's hand. 
 There is an affirmation that is true one to live and 
 die for! The truth is not yet wholly realized, but 
 it shall be realized, and we now are on the way to 
 such a victory. 
 
 We do not need perfect realization in order to 
 assert a truth. This United States was founded as 
 a free country, for free men, in bondage or sub- 
 jection to no king or over-lord! Tens of thou- 
 sands died to win its right to such a claim. And 
 the fight was won. And still in 1850 it was a free 
 country, and for free men. Yet there was slavery, 
 to give the bitter lie to such a claim. Did it give 
 the lie ? For a little while, yes ! But though it 
 took the life-blood of hundreds of thousands to blot 
 out the lie, it could not stand, and long since the 
 essential falsehood of it has been admitted and re- 
 pented of. 
 
 To-day, there are still those in this land who are 
 oppressed and in virtual bondage, economically, to 
 hard masters. Yet this is still a country for the 
 free, and the bondage of these men and women will 
 be broken also. It is our proud confidence that, for 
 all the need of unceasing vigilance to keep our lib- 
 erties, this land of ours is and shall be increasingly 
 a land of civic freedom. It is its birthright, and 
 no passing menace to its life can long obscure the 
 deep, unshakable determination of the people of the
 
 122 The Power of an Affirmation 
 
 land that its birthright never shall be sold or even 
 seriously put in peril. A great purpose, and a great 
 faith, take no heed of passing assaults and partial 
 failures, that assail, and threaten, and even seem to 
 deny the truth of that superb assertion. 
 
 And if any think these words of Paul are unreal 
 or artificial because they overleap by faith the weak- 
 ness of these years of earthly struggle, they have 
 misread life. They have mistaken the grandeur of 
 our human nature, made after God's image, that can 
 rise above the sneers and threats and enticements of 
 the flesh, and assert that we are God's, that God has 
 begun His perfect work in us, and that already, here 
 and now, with the enemy on every hand, we count 
 ourselves dead to sin, and alive unto our God. The 
 thrill and power and saving grace of such a divinely 
 prompted affirmation will be with us every day. Not 
 only in our thoughtful moments, but when we sleep, 
 when we are preoccupied with business, when we 
 are dulled with care, our deepest selves, that never 
 slumber, will feed upon that declaration and grow 
 ever stronger for its strength. 
 
 This is no dream ; it is no theory. It is a fact of 
 experience that has been working itself out in hu- 
 man lives, ever since Paul spoke, or ever since Jesus 
 said to a man or woman, half freed from evil sense, 
 " Go in peace; thy sins are forgiven." Weary years 
 of entanglement in old weaknesses lay before them,
 
 The Power of an Affirmation 123 
 
 but the assertion and promise of their Saviour over- 
 leaped and overlooked the days of conflict to the 
 sure issue of triumphant holiness and joy. 
 
 It is impossible to exaggerate the need of such 
 a brave, proud affirmation for those of us who have 
 their life before them. The power of a mean or 
 weak suggestion means the gradual paralysis of our 
 better selves, their gradual submergence under the 
 tide of the earthliness and pettiness of ordinary liv- 
 ing. But if we may truly take our stand as those 
 who have settled for all time the essential question 
 of our attitude to the world, the flesh, and the devil, 
 counting ourselves done with sin and just beginning 
 to live for God, we shall be like men in the saving 
 grip of a great inspiration, who cannot yield, even 
 though, again and again, we are wounded in the 
 struggle. At the university, on the street, in foreign 
 lands, we shall soon be assailed with the doubt 
 whether we are not narrow and peculiar, and 
 whether it is not the part of wisdom to do when in 
 Rome as the Romans do. Under new environ- 
 ments, with new duties and new pleasures, as busi- 
 ness life, or perhaps married life, opens to us its 
 new demands upon our constancy, we shall to a 
 certainty be urged to let down our simple standard 
 of straight obedience to God's will. Then it is that 
 we shall thank God anew if we are in the grip of 
 this great affirmation.
 
 124 The Power of an Affirmation 
 
 It takes a certain heroism to make it and maintain 
 it. But unless we are heroic, we shall never be of 
 those who overcome. In the region of the Cau- 
 casus they have a saying, " Heroism is endurance 
 for one moment more." Can we not make a fight, 
 moment by moment, through the years, to be true 
 to this declaration of our true estate? It is a sub- 
 lime thing to refuse to let go, to refuse to be de- 
 feated a thrilling thing even to witness. 
 
 In February of 1901 a German steamer went 
 ashore on a submerged reef, just off one of the 
 roughest parts of the coast of Newfoundland, where 
 the rocks rise in an unbroken precipice for three 
 hundred feet. When the fishermen on the shore 
 first saw her in the morning, her boats were all gone, 
 and only three men were still alive. Two of these 
 were soon carried away. One remained, lashed in 
 the fore-rigging. Presently they saw him loosening 
 his lashings, and letting himself down into the sea. 
 And there he battled his way heroically to the rocky 
 shore. A great wave swept him off. He fought his 
 way back again, only to be swept off a second time, 
 and then a third. They thought then to see him 
 abandon the hopeless agony of resistance to an in- 
 evitable fate, and give up the struggle. But slowly 
 and painfully he made his way back to the ship, 
 climbed into the fore-shrouds, and lashed himself 
 as before in the rigging. He would not accept de-
 
 The Power of an Affirmation 125 
 
 feat. In the morning the fishermen saw him there 
 still, but motionless, frozen in the night. He failed 
 to win his life; but what an indomitable will he 
 had, and what a fight he made ! 
 
 But, here is the pitiful suggestion. Is it possible 
 that we, making our fight to realize the truth of 
 this great affirmation, may only give an example of 
 such a heroism, failing of its hope at last? 
 
 Here is some one to object that, while we have 
 used many brave words in what we have been saying, 
 about the dignity of human nature and the power of 
 the will and the influence of suggestion, yet, after 
 all, such an affirmation is a piece of pure presump- 
 tion, in which no man is warranted ; that only God's 
 mercy could warrant such a claim, or bring to pass 
 such a conclusion of victory. And, indeed, when 
 we look in upon ourselves, we find no such power of 
 self -recovery, of moral renovation, as a proud as- 
 sertion like this of Paul's involves, as if what we 
 have been saying were frothy sentiment only, with 
 no sure, sound power of realization. 
 
 And just here we come in sight of the last three 
 words of our text and with them we come in sight 
 also of the glad tidings of the eternal gospel. Paul 
 said, Reckon ye yourselves to be dead unto sin, but 
 alive unto God in Christ Jesus. There is the rea- 
 sonable and sufficient ground for such an unwaver- 
 ing assertion on our part, the fact that God Him-
 
 126 The Power of an Affirmation 
 
 self is concerned in this matter, is engaged on our 
 behalf, to make the assertion true. The eternal mys- 
 tery of His love and sacrifice is behind it. It is 
 simply the assurance that we shall presently lay hold 
 of that for which we were laid hold of by Christ 
 Jesus ; that till the far end of the day, nothing shall 
 be able to separate us from the love of God which 
 is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
 
 He, the great Elder Brother of our race, would 
 link us with Himself, in a fellowship of sympathy 
 and trust that Paul loved to call union : saying, as 
 Paul did, that he and the young Christians were in 
 Christ Jesus. We may not grasp this thought, we 
 may have different understandings of what Paul 
 meant, but the fact remains the reality is unshaka- 
 ble that because of God's hold on us through Jesus 
 Christ He will save us unto the uttermost. He 
 will make good our faith that we are dead unto sin 
 and alive unto Him. It is no presumptuous boast, 
 it is no unsafe assertion, it is what He Himself puts 
 into our hearts, and into our lips, as the sober truth. 
 It is the assurance of inexpressible comfort, that He 
 will one day set us without blemish in His presence. 
 
 Let us then, with our eye upon that day and our 
 faith upon this gospel of God, reckon ourselves from 
 this time to be dead indeed unto sin but alive unto 
 God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
 
 IX 
 The Reproach of Christ 
 
 " The reproach of Christ." HEB. 11:26. 
 
 IT is an old old phrase, used by men who were 
 made to feel that their message was an insult 
 to the culture of their day. But the sting of 
 it, and the hurt of it, are as truly felt with us as 
 ever in Alexandria or Athens long ago. 
 
 The men of those cities were proud, and the story 
 of Jesus Christ was for many reasons humiliating 
 both to their pride and to their learning. We, too, 
 are proud, and keenly anxious to stand well in the 
 great, wise world of letters and science and academic 
 dignity, and there is still the old smarting sense of 
 a certain humiliation in any very close association 
 with so incongruous a figure as that of Jesus Christ. 
 I do not mean the popular idealized or purely intel- 
 lectual Jesus Christ of an ethical system, but the real 
 Jesus Christ, if there ever was one, of whom we 
 read in the New Testament ; the man who demanded 
 of His friends so close and intimate an allegiance 
 that they, too, were compelled to share His shame 
 
 127
 
 128 The Reproach of Christ 
 
 to bear the insult of that personal association, in 
 an unconcealed and deathless loyalty. 
 
 Jesus Christ was always a curiously incongruous 
 figure in the polite world either of Judsea or of 
 Rome, with His uncomfortable talk of the deadly 
 sores of society, which polite people cover over, and 
 of the inmost palpitating realities of the soul, which 
 cultured persons still more agree not even to speak 
 of in public. We are quite mistaken if we think 
 that it was only the cross that constituted the re- 
 proach of Christ, and that we have passed beyond 
 that, as the cross has become highly respectable and 
 even aesthetically agreeable. There was in the very- 
 nature of Jesus Christ and His message something 
 too simple and childlike to fit in with our more so- 
 phisticated and formal temper. 
 
 A child is so disconcertingly open and frank about 
 all his loves and loyalties. He does not see the 
 reasons for hiding what is in his heart, or con- 
 stantly dissembling or checking his honest emotions. 
 He is painfully direct and personal, gazing at you 
 with eyes that frankly tell and ask the truth. Where 
 he loves and trusts, his love and trust are apt to 
 be uncalculating and unreserved. 
 
 The relations of Jesus Christ with His friends 
 and disciples were very much of this childlike and 
 unsophisticated order, both in what He gave and 
 in what He asked. He stripped away the ordinary
 
 The Reproach of Christ 129 
 
 disguises and reserves of social intercourse, and 
 talked with men and women concerning the utmost 
 allegiances of the spirit, as frankly as we discuss 
 the weather. In His very look one could read the 
 innermost depths of His soul, as Peter saw them 
 that night when his Lord turned and looked on him. 
 He gave Himself to His friends absolutely, and 
 unto death. He asked of them the same unqualified 
 surrender, in personal fidelity and love. The es- 
 sence of His glad tidings, as His best friends knew 
 it, was in this vital, indissoluble union of spirit be- 
 tween the redeemed soul and its redeemer, a union 
 fused and welded for the ages of the ages by love, 
 that on either side had its unquenchable fires in 
 God. 
 
 Now all this is part of the enduring reproach of 
 Christ. It is uncomfortable and unacademic in its 
 methods. It is one thing to sit down and discuss, 
 quite apart from any emotion or personal feeling, 
 the high abstractions of the spiritual life to talk 
 together as the rabbis and fathers did, quite coolly 
 and intellectually, of the nature of God, and of His 
 ethical demands on human life. Philosophers and 
 wise men have loved such calm and elevating dis- 
 course, in all lands and ages. It refines and purifies 
 the spirit even to discuss these great ideals, that can 
 do so much for life. 
 
 But who is this that sits down among the doc-
 
 130 The Reproach of Christ 
 
 tors, and throws all their calmly ordered wisdom 
 into confusion by the sheer simplicity and intensity 
 of primitive emotions the quivering fear and ha- 
 tred of evil and oppression, evils most common and 
 half respectable; the eager, passionate sympathy and 
 pity for the unfortunate victims of these misadjust- 
 ments in society; the intense, throbbing mother-like 
 love of people, whom He calls His brothers and 
 sisters ; the intrusive and bewildering atmosphere of 
 personality that He throws around all His own rela- 
 tions to these people and problems! There is no 
 place for Him among the philosophers. Such pas- 
 sionate devotions and demands, claiming to be the 
 expression of an infinite, eternal energy of divine 
 love, upset all order and reserve in academic dis- 
 cusssion. 
 
 And so it was very natural that such a person 
 as Jesus should take a sort of refuge in the sim- 
 plicity of children, saying what was heartily 
 laughed at in His time and has amused many by 
 its naivete ever since that God had hid these things 
 from the wise and prudent and had revealed them 
 unto babes. " Babes ! " the Pharisees would have 
 appreciated that. And Jesus went on further to say 
 that except one became as a little child he would 
 never understand ; and that His kingdom was made 
 up of people somehow like children. No wonder 
 that it was mostly people of a certain class that
 
 The Reproach of Christ 131 
 
 followed Him; and that none of the rulers or of 
 the Pharisees believed His message. 
 
 A few years later, when the greatest of the apos- 
 tles was spreading mightily the glad tidings con- 
 cerning Jesus Christ, he was fairly compelled to 
 admit that it was not only offensive to the Jews, 
 but fair foolishness to the Greeks. There was that 
 about Jesus Christ, which Paul could not hide nor 
 dissemble nor escape, which made Him a reproach; 
 so that the apostle rather pathetically called the 
 brotherhood to witness that there were not many 
 wise or mighty or noble among them. 
 
 Paul himself was a scholar, and the son of a 
 scholar ; and he must have felt keenly the mortifica- 
 tion of the situation, that the Christian church had 
 so little backing from the intellectuals of his time. 
 Some here, when in a great modern university, have 
 felt the same way; Paul and they could have sym- 
 pathized with one another. The real Jesus Christ 
 is an extremely unpopular and difficult figure, both 
 because of His unphilosophic simplicity, and be- 
 cause of His terrific intensity of appeal and demand, 
 as of omnipotence and eternity combined. 
 
 It is well for us, at such a time of disappoint- 
 ment, if we can say in the next breath with Paul, 
 that we count all things but loss for the excellency 
 of the knowledge of Christ Jesus. But it is well 
 for us to remember, till our last day, that this Lord
 
 132 The Reproach of Christ 
 
 and Master was one despised and rejected of men, 
 not esteemed in His own time one from whom 
 men hid their faces. And it will be passing strange 
 if we get through life without being tempted our- 
 selves to regard Him shamefacedly, as one with 
 whom we would not have too much to do in public. 
 
 Indeed, this temptation is ever present, even if 
 unperceived, like a strong ocean current that drifts 
 a vessel far out of her course before she knows that 
 aught is wrong. And while it is always polite and 
 proper to refer to the Power that makes for 
 righteousness, and to the common religious elements 
 of the ethnic faiths, and while such remarks are 
 always blandly, even if not enthusiastically, received 
 by any audience, yet to refer directly to this Jesus 
 Christ marks a man at once as a trifle provincial 
 and narrow and peculiar, as a man somehow se- 
 questered from the broad currents of modern 
 thought. As with Gordon in the British army, or 
 Howard in our own, men smile at him tolerantly, 
 but a little derisively, as at a pietistic survival of a 
 past age. Paul knew the sting of that cultured smile 
 even better than the sting of the lash, that marked 
 his body with the reproach of Christ as the other 
 marked his soul. Some of us will carry its scars. 
 
 Not all of us may be ready to grant that these 
 things are true. I do not want to assert them dog- 
 matically, as one who has attained to a wiser view-
 
 The Reproach of Christ 133 
 
 point than his fellows. We are learners together 
 in these things, trying to be honest and sincere, and 
 plodding onward with a true longing to keep our 
 faces toward the light. It is God's truth we are 
 anxious to come at, and it is not a little shame or 
 humiliation that would make us disloyal to that 
 truth if we knew where it lay. And so I would 
 ask you to reflect on this matter, and see if it be not 
 true that there is a certain reproach of Christ, that 
 tends to make even us instinctively draw away from 
 Him, and to withhold from Him in thought and 
 speech the place that both history and experience de- 
 clare are His. 
 
 What is the place that historic Christianity un- 
 questionably gives to Him? I do not at all mean 
 creedal Christianity, or the doctrines of the church; 
 we go behind those for something more primitive, 
 more essential. We ask of Christianity as a life 
 as a living force from Jesus' day to ours. We are 
 not now concerned with metaphysics or precise for- 
 mulae, but with the vital experience and language of 
 the soul, in its reaction upon the gospel. 
 
 There is no manner of doubt, is there, as to the 
 place that Jesus Christ occupied in the life of His 
 apostles and personal friends? We have their let- 
 ters still, in which their lives are mirrored. And 
 the life they lived was the life of Christ. Paul and 
 Peter and John are alike in this. The element in
 
 134 The Reproach of Christ 
 
 which they moved, in which they labored and suf- 
 fered and rejoiced, was the fellowship of Jesus 
 Christ. In the words of one of them, the life they 
 lived was by faith in the Son of God, who loved 
 them and gave Himself up for them. The keynote 
 of their long, triumphant warfare was this, 
 " Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory 
 through our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 Mark closely that there is in all their writings 
 no trace of any possible clashing or confusion be- 
 tween the claims of God and of Jesus Christ. As 
 scrupulous Jews, they were the most intense mono- 
 theists that the world has ever known. There was 
 no trace of dualism or tritheism in their thinking. 
 I wish you would sit down and read, say, the first 
 letter of Peter, and see how utterly unconscious 
 he is of any suspicion of this abnormal growth of 
 later times. He simply rejoiced in the fact that 
 God had come to them through Jesus Christ, that 
 the life in Christ was the life with God and that 
 believing in Christ they could rejoice with joy un- 
 speakable and full of glory. 
 
 So it was with John. God had given to them 
 eternal life, and this life was in His Son. So they 
 preached a salvation that was brought to them by 
 Christ, and a following life that should be rooted 
 and builded up in Him. The more you read the New 
 Testament the more you will be impressed by the
 
 The Reproach of Christ 135 
 
 inseparableness of the new life from a constant and 
 rejoicing fellowship with Him who had brought 
 them to God. Do you feel any difference between 
 this triumphant, joyful assertion of the mastery of 
 their every phase of life by the love of Jesus Christ, 
 and the speech and temper of much of the religious 
 experience and language of our day? 
 
 In any case, no man can doubt what was the living 
 heart of apostolic Christianity, nor and here we go 
 a step further what was the dynamic centre of the 
 gospel that overthrew the old heathen empire of 
 Rome. You read it in the last words of the mar- 
 tyrs at the stake; you find it written in the endless 
 dark of the Catacombs, on the tombs of the early 
 Christians the monogram of His name, the picture 
 of the Good Shepherd, the oft-recurring fish (whose 
 Greek letters are the anagram of " Jesus Christ, 
 Son of God, Saviour ") ; and we see the triumphs 
 of that King and Saviour in every land bordering 
 the midland sea, where the world was centred. 
 
 Equally there is no doubt whatsoever as to the 
 place that Jesus Christ occupied in the message that 
 was carried by the missionaries, and endless succes- 
 sion of martyrs, out into the forests and deserts and 
 savage territories that hemmed in the growing 
 Christendom. As John R. Mott has recently said, 
 " The worth of Christianity as a missionary force 
 is measured by what it has of Christ." That has
 
 136 The Reproach of Christ 
 
 been conspicuously true, century by century, among 
 all races of men, until this day. Our ethical appeals, 
 and broad generalities, and refined ideals, apart from 
 the central message of Christ Jesus as a Saviour 
 making its appeal straight to the affections of men, 
 are much in demand for home purposes, but they 
 simply do not carry to heathen lands; like a rocket 
 apparatus that works all right on shore, but is help- 
 less in the face of a gale to reach the drowning 
 sailors just beyond the line of breakers. 
 
 And there is no doubt what you will hear if 
 you go to any of the halls or chapels where men are 
 trying to save the hopelessly lost. In our up-town 
 churches you will hear endless variations from the 
 apostolic message, but somehow there is only one 
 note to be struck when you are face to face with 
 mortal need, and that is the note of Jesus Christ 
 as a Mighty Friend and Saviour. 
 
 It is further true, is it not, that in every time 
 of spiritual revival or refreshing, it is to this New 
 Testament gospel that we return, as to living wa- 
 ters? Probably our own Christian life began in 
 a vivid appreciation of the power of this message, 
 and whenever through the years we are again lifted 
 on a wave of divine quickening, it is to heed anew 
 our Lord's command " Abide in Me," and to find 
 Him again the centre and circumference of our hope 
 and joy. History and experience alike declare Him
 
 The Reproach of Christ 137 
 
 as the author and finisher of our faith, and crown 
 Him as the actual Captain of our salvation. It is 
 through our Lord Jesus Christ that God actually 
 giveth us the victory. 
 
 And so, you would suppose that every man who 
 bears the name of Christian would be not only 
 loyal, but enthusiastically and joyfully loyal, to Him 
 through whom the love of God has reached him 
 to Him, once the Man of Sorrows, who is now the 
 supreme sympathizer and Saviour. You would sup- 
 pose that in every gathering of Christian men, where 
 the things of the spirit are under discussion, all the 
 thought would be colored by this fundamental his- 
 toric experience of the Christian faith; that all 
 would recognize the truth of their Lord's words, 
 "~ apart from me ye can do nothing " ; that the deep 
 affections of the spirit for Him who bore our griefs 
 and carried our sorrows that He might bring us 
 to God, would continually be revealing themselves, 
 by implication at least, as underlying all. 
 
 But how is it ? It is a witness to the reproach of 
 Christ that you may go to many churches and to 
 many gatherings of Christian men even college 
 Young Men's Christian Association gatherings 
 and scarce hear more than an incidental allusion to 
 Jesus Christ, if even as much as that. You may 
 hear much that is wise and good and uplifting, con- 
 fessions and exhortations and aspirations, discus-
 
 138 The Reproach of Christ 
 
 sion of ideals and duties and obligations, almost 
 everything, in fact, but allusion to the central ex- 
 perience of the soul that colors almost every utter- 
 ance of those early friends of Jesus, and that is 
 still of necessity our only weapon that is mighty to 
 the casting down of strongholds. Amid endless talk 
 of social renovation, that only is omitted in which 
 lies society's only hope. 
 
 We have this same curious condition, written 
 large, in the religious life of England in the first 
 half of the eighteenth century. We can see it better 
 there, in heroic size. It was the most arid and 
 fruitless period of religious life of which we know. 
 It was intensely respectable, scholarly, literary; it 
 was utterly ashamed of enthusiasm and all emotion, 
 and dreaded fanaticism more than the most blight- 
 ing vice. It argued incessantly and edifyingly with 
 the sceptics of its time. But its most curious note 
 was its reluctance to allow any suggestion of inti- 
 mate personal relations with God to intrude into its 
 religious experience. It shunned the very name of 
 Christ; it avoided even the name of God, and pre- 
 ferred circumlocutions and generalities when it 
 spoke of Him. A burning word of Paul's thrown 
 into one of their gatherings " the love of Christ 
 constraineth us " would have been pitifully incon- 
 gruous and disconcerting. And it was not until the 
 Wesleys came, and Whitfield, and unveiled again
 
 The Reproach of Christ 139 
 
 before men's eyes the imperishable glad tidings of 
 One who would bring men to God by melting their 
 wilful hearts with His own love, and knitting them 
 to Him as men in mortal need cling to their De- 
 liverer, it was not till then that the smothering pall 
 of affectation and unreality lifted from the Chris- 
 tian men and women of England. 
 
 We yield ourselves readily to a religion which 
 makes comparatively slight demands ; but we shrink 
 back from a leader like Jesus Christ, whose message 
 is so intensely personal, so thrilling with an infinite 
 self-sacrifice and an appeal to love no less uncal- 
 culating, and so insistent in bidding us to cleave to 
 Him as a branch cleaves to the parent stem. That 
 is the enduring reproach of Christ, that makes men 
 inclined to hide their faces from Him. He offers 
 too much He asks what it searches a man's soul 
 to give. He claims the utmost loyalty of love and 
 daily fellowship and dependence. 
 
 That is costly. That demand is a perpetual 
 searchlight upon one's honesty and sincerity. Men 
 shrink back from such a religion. There are other 
 religions not so uncompromising. But this is the 
 only religion of Christ. This is the faith that has 
 subdued the world. This is the faith that can give 
 even us the victory, and set us one day without 
 blemish in exceeding joy in the presence of God's 
 glory.
 
 140 The Reproach of Christ 
 
 We may think it a hard way. But it is not a 
 hard way. To men who were afraid of this, Jesus 
 said reassuringly, " My yoke is easy, and my burden 
 is light." Unnumbered millions have found it the 
 way of joy of such joy and gladness as life other- 
 wise could not know. And those who meet their 
 Master afresh each morning with greeting of loyalty 
 and gladness, they are the happy ones of earth. Let 
 us not fear, therefore, to go forth unto Him, if 
 necessary, without the camp, bearing His reproach.
 
 Life Through Victory 
 
 11 f fame that they may have life, and may have it abund- 
 antly" JOHN 10:10. 
 
 IF only this were true in the sense that men 
 would have it true, what a following Jesus 
 Christ would have. Not the scanty, humble 
 following that He has now, even in Christian lands, 
 of men and women who seek for glory and honor 
 and immortality; but what a rage of popularity there 
 would be for our Lord, if He would promise life 
 on easy terms, such life as the world wants. Not 
 something slowly gained and hardly won, to be 
 reached perhaps through patience and self-mastery 
 during many slow-passing days and years, but just 
 animal life and ease of body under to-day's sun, so 
 that these present days may be sweet and joyous, 
 without the shadow of any struggle or discipline 
 or disappointment. Why, even the poor stone image 
 of the Virgin at Lourdes is crowded by its tens of 
 thousands of enthusiastic suppliants; and if the 
 Good Shepherd had such pity on the sheep as to 
 
 141
 
 142 Life Through Victory 
 
 give them the life they long for, exuberant days of 
 strength and long untroubled nights of sleep, who 
 would not be one of the sheep of His flock? 
 
 Here all about us in this Southwest are great 
 throngs of those who have not the abundance of 
 life, but only a life limited and hampered and threat- 
 ened. And every day, for conscious, self -pity ing 
 hours, they long for more, and look to see if the 
 tide is coming in, or whether possibly the ebb al- 
 ready has begun. Their thought and hunger and 
 prayer, taking precedence of every other prayer and 
 hunger, is for what Jesus said He came to bring 
 more life. Only, alas! He does not bring it to 
 them. He and they seem to have been thinking of 
 different things. He did not mean, when He said 
 it, what they mean when they pray. They want, 
 what is no great thing, no wonderful possession, 
 only a few years reprieve in this body's dissolution, 
 a little longer efficiency for this machine, that wears 
 out so soon, yet through which we gather to our- 
 selves the joys of living. 
 
 But Jesus' thoughts were evidently dwelling on 
 something else; something quite different from this 
 body's pathetic hunger for the tingle and exhilara- 
 tion of abounding health. He seems to have been 
 quite unconscious of it when he spoke, so preoccu- 
 pied was He with something far greater and more 
 wonderful and more hardly won. Not indiscrim-
 
 Life Through Victory 143 
 
 inately lavished on men everywhere, even on the 
 savages and careless children of nature, but some- 
 thing divinely good, infinitely precious and lasting, 
 wrought out like steel upon the anvil an incor- 
 ruptible possession of the soul. 
 
 How good it must have been, what He was look- 
 ing at, to make Him willing to disappoint men so ! 
 To call Himself the Great Physician, and the 
 Saviour of the world, and yet leave men beset with 
 weaknesses, and sometimes persecuted with unyield- 
 ing pain. It is true that for a year or more of time, 
 in sundry mud-built villages of an obscure Roman 
 province, He healed the sick He touched, as it 
 were, for an instant a single drop in the ocean of 
 the world's pain. But in a few months He withdrew 
 Himself again from such activity, and for all these 
 centuries the processes of life and death have gone 
 on undisturbed, with life always fading away, for 
 sinner and saint alike. While yet, at the same time, 
 there has never been a day in these two millenniums 
 in which He has not been offering life abundant 
 life to all who will. How are we to under- 
 stand His promise, that seems to men so wide 
 of the world's wishes and the world's comprehen- 
 sion? 
 
 And this is not the only point where the life He 
 came to bring fails to meet the world's importunate 
 hunger. Of what good is life, say many in our
 
 144 Life Through Victory 
 
 day, if it is to be spent in unbroken drudgery. It 
 is not life, but mere dull gray existence. If I must 
 go to the mill or shop on rising in the morning, 
 and stand there over loom or machine or tool 
 through all the slowly passing hours till evening, and 
 then go home, wearied out, to sleep till the next 
 day's toil; or if I must always trudge after plow 
 or harrow, a peasant laborer, through youth and 
 manhood and even into creeping age, what boon 
 is there in life like this? Yet Jesus hardly seemed 
 to notice whether the man to whom He spoke was 
 master or slave, or poor or rich. He was thinking 
 of something else. 
 
 Can you imagine what a following Jesus Christ 
 would have in America if He really gave men what 
 in these days spells life money? Everywhere men 
 and women are struggling for money; not for the 
 sake of having dollars, chiefly, but because poverty 
 means captivity, in these days. It means limitation 
 of body and mind; it means a life cribbed, cabined, 
 and confined, in comparison with the wide, favored, 
 generous life that wealth would yield. Oh yes! we 
 hunger for means, that we may see life, and enjoy 
 life, and have life! And what does Jesus do for 
 us in this respect? He does not even seem to 
 notice the clamorous hunger that fills men's days. 
 He calmly calls Himself the life-bringer, and yet 
 leaves men bound hand and foot with poverty. Why
 
 Life Through Victory 145 
 
 does He so pass us by in our desires, compelling us 
 to life-long limitation? 
 
 And there are other needs in our life that take 
 first place in our thoughts at times ; longings so im- 
 perious that they quite crowd to the wall thought 
 of what Jesus had in mind. Desires that are with 
 us last at night and first in the morning. For what 
 is life worth in loneliness, without friends and those 
 who love us? Men and women kill themselves in 
 our cities every day, because of the blank cheer- 
 lessness of a life in which their hearts are starving 
 starving for lack of common human affection. 
 
 Abundant life, in any case, means life enriched 
 by the love and fellowship of others. And how 
 many do you think there are, even in this Southern 
 California, whose hearts are a dull ache, either be- 
 cause of loneliness or the fear of it, for the fear 
 of losing those they love, for the daily sight of 
 fading strength with those whose presence alone 
 makes life a joy. And not losing them alone 
 through illness, but losing them still more hope- 
 lessly through their follies and sins and selfishness, 
 that break up homes and effectually break men's 
 hearts the loss that fathers, and mothers, and 
 wives and husbands know ; the loss that is so much 
 worse, so much more cruel, than the peaceful death 
 that only hides from us the love that still is there. 
 What a satire it must seem to some whose lives
 
 146 Life Through Victory 
 
 are darkened and impoverished by such loneliness 
 as this, to have our Lord speak of giving abundant 
 life, which yet leaves them forlorn, to years that 
 seem stripped of joy. 
 
 We are all likely to come to times in our life 
 when we think wistfully every day of what God 
 has denied us, and little of what He gives; when 
 we think much of our self-love, and how indulgent 
 it would be, and little of God's love, and its firm 
 yet tender efforts for our infinite gain, for our 
 spiritual development and redemption. The way 
 of ease is ever in our thoughts; but a way of vic- 
 tory, God's way, we do not consider. And so our 
 whole perspective of life becomes disordered and 
 untrue. We lose sight of the ways of God, and 
 of what life is and of how hardly it is won, and 
 of how it must needs flower out of discipline and 
 struggle, an infinite possession laid hold of in com- 
 mon days of joy and pain. And if we so forget, 
 then peace leaves us, and joy, and our lives grow 
 dull and unthankful, and love withers, and the great 
 expectant hope that can light up even a gray life 
 with the gold of expectation, this also fades out 
 and leaves us in the gloom. 
 
 Let us notice in passing two things. First, that 
 Jesus did not, as a matter of fact, despise the joys 
 and comforts of life, or give us a gospel that counts 
 them of no worth. On the contrary, we must see
 
 Life Through Victory 147 
 
 that His gospel steadily and of necessity tends to 
 raise the level of material good and comfort every- 
 where it comes. It does this indirectly, and so to 
 speak, incidentally, but it does it. There is less 
 sickness, less early death, less poverty, less disap- 
 pointment, less loneliness, wherever the kingdom of 
 Christ comes on earth. The level of material com- 
 fort rises with the sway of Christ's gospel every- 
 where, and a first duty of His church is to seek for 
 others the normal level. No fear that we shall lose 
 sight of this, or ever cease to struggle for earthly 
 comforts ; the spirit of the ascetic in Christ's church 
 is dead or smitten to its death. 
 
 And yet, secondly, notice that this ease of body 
 and comfort of mind, this immunity from life's sor- 
 rows and disappointments, is wholly and of neces- 
 sity indirect and incidental. It is not the primary 
 aim of Christ's gospel; it is not at the heart of the 
 kingdom of God, as realized on earth. He does not 
 promise it, or hold it out as a bait or reward; for 
 the most part He does not even notice it or seem 
 to think of it. 
 
 Consider this, which would seem to be perfectly 
 clear in Jesus' teaching: that He did despise and 
 ignore " the ignoble happiness that consists in ex- 
 emption from life's privations and sorrows." 
 
 Why is it so ignoble the happiness we so hunger 
 for, and so frankly pray for, as frankly and as
 
 148 Life Through Victory 
 
 innocently as little children? Lord, spare me pain! 
 give me strength and health; spare all those I love 
 from pain and sickness ; let me never have the ach- 
 ing heart that dumbly suffers for seeing those I love 
 in trouble; save me from anxiety about money 
 matters, and leave me not to poverty; let me not 
 make a failure for any reason of my business or my 
 work ; never set my feet in any valley of humiliation ; 
 spare me the loneliness of life, or the creeping shad- 
 ows of any loss as years multiply; let me out of 
 the world softly. 
 
 Do we not, just because we are men and women, 
 who dread trouble as frankly as a child dreads 
 nauseous medicine and rebels against it, do we not 
 thus pray every day for God to be easy with us, 
 as a little frightened child pleads, crying, with the 
 doctor not to touch him lest he hurt. 
 
 Oh yes! that is life as we want it life as we 
 pray for it. A pleasant, smiling, easy, unbroken 
 way of peace, of fulfilled desire, unthwarted, undis- 
 appointed, undisciplined ; left alone to happiness for 
 fear of hurt. Even though we see how nothing 
 strong and nothing good was ever yet built up in 
 human character without storm and struggle, yet 
 we cannot help but pray, Lord spare me, to-day, and 
 to-morrow ! 
 
 Jesus was not afraid to face the fact that such 
 happiness is ignoble, unsatisfying, fruitless of any
 
 Life Through Victory 149 
 
 noble thing; and so, in the end, means the very dis- 
 appointment and privation that we dread. To some 
 few men and women God allots such a life; and 
 some few of them, recognizing the cloudless skies 
 as a temptation and a most subtle trial and disci- 
 pline of the soul, mount through it and in spite of 
 it to self-realization and moral strength. But how 
 few they are, and when last did you see one such? 
 And in any case we are not of their number. 
 
 No ! " life " does not mean guaranteed ease and 
 freedom from care and pain on earth. Jesus did not 
 come to bring that life; He did not speak of it or 
 promise it at all to men. He does not claim to be 
 such a Physician or such a Saviour. He cannot 
 compete with certain religionists of our day who 
 do promise exemption from ills. He fails us there. 
 Let us admit it, nor be astonished at it, nor grieved 
 by it. He will not do this for us. He is a good 
 physician, but such a good physician as will take the 
 little crying child and do for it what must be done 
 to give it back to health and joy. He will not let 
 us suffer irretrievable loss for His weak indulgence 
 of our timid selfish fears. 
 
 And though we cannot bear to let go our own 
 desires for our life a life unclouded, unburdened, 
 for ourselves or others yet confidently He points 
 our way to something else, that He says is abundant 
 life. It must be life indeed if it is better than what
 
 150 Life Through Victory 
 
 we want ! It must be ineffably better than what we 
 plead for, or He would never suffer us to go through 
 what perhaps we have to go through in finding it. 
 Yet we see it so imperfectly. It seems so far 
 away ! It does not beckon and allure, as merriment 
 does, or the world at the spring. And yet, unless 
 Jesus is a mocker, it must be, and it must be in- 
 tensely real, and marvellously satisfying, or He 
 would never have given Himself for the sheep that 
 they might find it. 
 
 What, then, is this life? " Oh yes! " some one 
 says, " it is the future life heaven's. Heaven's 
 joys against earth's sorrows. The old story; if we 
 be patient here, we shall have abundant reward here- 
 after. So we must try to live the other-worldly 
 life, in sight of the next world, being willing to go 
 without here for the sake of what shall come to us 
 in the far future." 
 
 We all feel that there is something wrong about 
 this ; something artificial and, so to speak, unnatural. 
 Surely the goodness of God and the richness of 
 His dealings with His children ought to begin here 
 and now, not to be broken or essentially changed 
 by death. 
 
 And so, in fact, Jesus spoke and thought of the 
 life He came to bring. It was for the men and 
 women who were about Him when He spoke, to win
 
 Life Through Victory 151 
 
 and to enjoy in Capernaum, say, or in Gadara, just 
 as He was sharing it then and there in their midst. 
 No fear but that anticipation was left. It was all 
 only a foretaste, a beginning; the best was yet to 
 come. But it was the beginning of the great com- 
 plete blessed life that He came to bring. And as 
 such, it was better, by an infinite, eternal distance, 
 than the pleasant, quick-passing sunshine of earthly 
 ease for which we pray. Jesus then does not offer 
 heaven's life in place of that we long for; He came 
 to bring us life for to-day; a life of strength and 
 courage and ever-growing worth. 
 
 And so we ask again, what is the life that God 
 offers men, through Jesus Christ? What can His 
 Father's love provide for us that is better than what 
 all the world's a-seeking? 
 
 We must have reality in the answer to this ques- 
 tion, or it is a mockery of our ignorance, however 
 pious it may sound. And is not the answer found 
 somewhere here, that any life, infinitely worth 
 seeking, must in the nature of the case be bound 
 up with God, must lie in some sort of genuine fel- 
 lowship with Him, and with His permanence and 
 worth? It cannot be in any of these quick-passing 
 material conditions, amid which we are just now 
 spending our few numbered days of earthly exist- 
 ence. Thus, e.g., it cannot lie in our having, say,
 
 152 Life Through Victory 
 
 five thousand more days than most men get of com- 
 fortable eating and sleeping beneath these skies. 
 We are not cattle, and our ambitions do not rest 
 in being allowed to browse contentedly in green 
 pastures without end. 
 
 All life of the spirit flows from God He is the 
 life. And all the satisfying good of life, and all 
 the joy of it, and all its abiding energy and fruit- 
 fulness, are in Him. He is the source and the sum 
 of all that we call life, forever and forever. Skies 
 and suns will wear out and be forgotten, like our 
 pains and pleasures of yesterday, but God remains 
 the source and spring of life throughout eternity. 
 And this is what His love plans for us so Jesus 
 taught that we should share His life; that we 
 should enter into fellowship with Him as His chil- 
 dren, our sin cleansed and forgiven, and our hearts 
 made responsive to His thought and to His love. 
 That would be life worth longing for! It would 
 satisfy the irrepressible hunger of our souls. 
 
 But think what it would mean! And what an 
 immeasurable victory it implies to share God's life. 
 What is that life like? It is not mere blessedness. 
 It is love! Not self-love, but redeeming love; love 
 energizing for others; love bearing such a burden 
 for men in trouble as Jesus revealed in His life 
 and death. But for such men as we, how much does 
 this mean of purification and development and re-
 
 Life Through Victory 153 
 
 demption! It is not being left alone to our love 
 of ease and comfort that is going to equip us for 
 that divine future ! Our natural indolence, and fear 
 of hardness, and love of pleasure, and selfishness, 
 and unresponsiveness to the high calls of God, these 
 are not the qualities that lead up to such life as we 
 shall need for the " ages of immortal service " that 
 lie before us. 
 
 If we could choose our own way, how ever should 
 we grow into those divine qualities of strength and 
 steadfastness and ministering helpfulness that are 
 only won out of the battle? The kind of life we 
 most often long for, would it brace our souls to 
 fortitude? Should we win from it the bravery of 
 soul, the patience, the trustfulness toward God, the 
 sympathy for men, the obedience and love, that are 
 to be found unto praise and honor and glory when 
 the long new day of service shall begin ? 
 
 Oh no! Who of us has wisdom and courage to 
 choose the life that should yield us such fruits of 
 victory as these! Only God can do that for us. 
 And in the words of Jesus Christ, He holds out to 
 us this promise that He will do it the promise of 
 abundant life. Surely it is a promise out of His 
 tender love. It is the best that He can do for us; 
 and how costly it is to God Himself we read in the 
 story of the Man of Sorrows. Do we wish that 
 He should fulfil for us that promise ? Will we have
 
 154 Life Through Victory 
 
 a life that grows through victory, even through bur- 
 den-bearing for others, rather than through com- 
 fortable ease ? It will lead us in strange ways ! It 
 may take us whither we would not choose to go. 
 It may teach us to be brave, when we would rather 
 feel no need of courage. It may make us servants 
 of others, when we would rather men should wait 
 on us. It may hold us helplessly idle for months 
 and years, when we are all eager for life's most 
 strenuous effort. 
 
 But all along it will be a way of life, because the 
 love of God is leading us. All along it will be a way 
 of peace and hope and divine cheer, because God 
 does not let His servants walk in darkness, but 
 gives them as they go the light of life. If we are 
 His and are in His hands and know we are in His 
 hands, and trustfully let Him have His way with 
 us, surely that is the sweetest and deepest joy in 
 life. The promised " abundant life " is beginning 
 to have its way with us then, and our Lord and 
 Saviour is saving our life from its weakness and 
 its fears, for His great uses yet to come. 
 
 Very likely there will be no visible glory about it, 
 or anything in sight for men to envy us. They may 
 even say of such a one, " Poor fellow ! his is a 
 hard case." But the divine, invincible life is in his 
 soul, waiting to unfold its wings. If there is any 
 good future for God, there is that much of good
 
 Life Through Victory 155 
 
 future for this man ! If there is any abundance and 
 exultance of life in God, there is that much life 
 for this man ! 
 
 That is where the comfort of Christ's promise 
 is, and its glory of majesty. That is why He laid 
 down His life for the sheep. Not to give them 
 money, or ease, or fifty years of health and pleasure, 
 but, by breaking sin, to join their life to God's 
 blessedness and ministering love forever. And so 
 we lift up our heads, even it may be in disappoint- 
 ment, and say to one another, 
 
 "Be strong ! 
 
 We are not here to play, to dream, to drift; 
 We have hard work to do, and loads to lift; 
 Shun not the battle, face it ! 
 
 ' Tis God's gift. 
 
 Be strong 
 
 It matters not how deep intrenched the wrong, 
 How hard the battle goes, the day how long, 
 Faint not, fight on, 
 
 To-morrow comes the song ! "
 
 XI 
 God First 
 
 ' ' Love not the world, neither the things that are in the 
 world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father 
 is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the 
 flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of life, is not 
 of the Father, but is of the world. And the world pas set h 
 away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God 
 abideth for ever." i JOHN 2: 15-17. 
 
 THESE words have fallen harsh and chill on 
 many a youthful heart, quick with the joy 
 of life. In days past, they must have been 
 a very sentence of death on thousands of conscien- 
 tious souls, shutting them up forever behind cloister 
 and monastery walls, from all the sweetest relation- 
 ships of life. I well remember their leaden weight 
 upon my spirit in certain moods, in the days when 
 every leisure month was spent in the ever fresh ex- 
 hilaration of travel on the sea or among the moun- 
 tains, when the fascination of God's beautiful 
 world, both of nature and of man, was at its height. 
 How we love it ! 
 
 "The light of setting suns, 
 The round ocean and the living air, 
 156
 
 God First 157 
 
 And the blue sky, . . . the meadows and the woods 
 And mountains, and all that we behold 
 From this green earth, of all the mighty world 
 Of eye or ear." 
 
 And dull and heavy on our soul falls the grim 
 refusal, " Love not the world ! " 
 
 Even if we say that these words were not meant 
 as an absolute prohibition of the love of the sunny, 
 outward world of sense, but are only meant to de- 
 mand the first place for God, yet there have been 
 times with most of us when the claims of a future, 
 of even a spiritual, world have been cold and ghostly 
 by comparison with the thrilling invitation and se- 
 duction of this pleasure-garnished visible and out- 
 ward home of the body. 
 
 How are we to think of these words most truly? 
 How far can we honestly enter into their spirit and 
 make the choice that they would have us make : not 
 many years hence, when the blood has cooled and 
 the senses no longer are imperious and domineering, 
 but now, when the call of the great beckoning world 
 is like the call of the woods in spring. We take 
 a few moments to think out these things, and to 
 declare to ourselves where we stand whether with 
 this old, old man who lived under the shadow of 
 the cross, or with more modern apostles, like Omar 
 Khayyam, who bid us drink deep from the offered 
 cup.
 
 158 God First 
 
 Half our task is to become sure what John meant 
 by the world, that he saw already seduced and 
 doomed, lying in the evil one. It is so easy to 
 juggle with the phrases of the Bible; to use its 
 words to oppose and overthrow its prevailing prin- 
 ciples. And many foolish and revolting teachings 
 have been built up on these words, wrongly under- 
 stood. It does not mean the broad, fair, sunlit 
 world of earth and sea and sky, that is so wonder- 
 ful, so glorious, so appealing to him whose senses 
 are trained and quick to see and understand. The 
 Greek word is cosmos not the word used for the 
 habitable earth, but the famous word that stands 
 for the order and beauty of the universe. John uses 
 it continually, in his gospel and in his letters. And 
 it is evident that he sometimes uses it in anything 
 but an evil sense, as when he says that the world 
 was made by God, or that God loved the Son before 
 the world's foundation. 
 
 There is nothing more sure than that this outward 
 home of our earthly body is God's world and that 
 God pronounced it very good. He is its Creator; 
 and as He made man in His own image, so He 
 made the world for man's brief home, adapted to 
 meet and gratify the senses and cravings and appe- 
 tites that also are from Him. 
 
 There would be something wrong with the man 
 who did not feel in every fibre of his being the al-
 
 God First 159 
 
 lurements and the joys of his environment. If it 
 is right and fitting to feel the delight of good food 
 when one is keen with hunger, or of cold water 
 when one's throat is parched with thirst, or of sleep 
 when one's body aches with fatigue, so it is a part 
 of God's thought that we should rejoice in the an- 
 swer of His creation to all the senses and capacities 
 with which we are endowed, from the commonest 
 universal cravings, that we share with the savages, 
 up to these highest and keenest joys that vibrate in 
 response to noble music, or art, or the ineffable 
 glories of flaming heavens at sunset. Jesus, we may 
 be sure, was keenly sensitive to the appeal of nature, 
 as it called to Him from those Galilean hills, nor 
 can we imagine Him sympathizing with those who 
 would look sourly out upon Nature's smiling face, 
 or who would even try to hold their heart from 
 too keen a response to her attractions. 
 
 A man may, of course, make a curse of almost 
 any good thing by intemperance or abuse; but I 
 think we need have no fear of any reproach from 
 Jesus if we love the world His Father made. He 
 is the blessed and happy God, the God of joy; and 
 this world, in all its joy-creating richness, is the 
 expression of His thought. We may rejoice and be 
 glad in it, all the more keenly because we are His 
 children. 
 
 Again " the world " is used of the world of men;
 
 160 God First 
 
 neither evil nor good, but simply meaning the human 
 race, the children of the Father. As John himself 
 said, " God so loved the world that he gave his 
 only begotten son." The greatest followers of 
 Jesus have been the greatest lovers of this world, 
 loving it with a true passion like Francis Xavier 
 and St. Francis of Assisi, and John Wesley and 
 Lord Shaftesbury and Colonel and Mrs. Booth of 
 the Salvation Army. As John himself says, " He 
 that loveth " in this sense " is born of God and 
 knoweth God." So we need have no fear that we 
 may go wrong through a passion for humanity. 
 
 Thus we come to the meaning of the word as 
 John used it. We see at once that it refers to noth- 
 ing outward, external, visible, as a separate entity, 
 like the earth or the world of men. It is intensely 
 ethical. It gathers up the whole of creation that 
 is in opposition to its Creator's will, the children of 
 disobedience, the present evil world, of which Satan 
 is said to be the prince and ruler. Indeed, John 
 goes on to make clear how distinct and limited is 
 his meaning when he gathers up all that is in the 
 world under three classes of evil desire the lust 
 of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory 
 of life. It covers all that is taken as an end in 
 itself without God all even that might otherwise 
 be good, but that becomes a snare and illusion be- 
 cause it is regarded as sufficient and satisfying of
 
 God First 161 
 
 itself and so comes to take the place of God; all 
 with which men try to fill their hearts to the ex- 
 clusion of Him who should have first place. 
 
 But of course it is the human element of which 
 John is thinking all the worldly aims and ambi- 
 tions and motives, unlike God's, that are colored by 
 selfishness and pride, and all the achievements that 
 are built on them, that form no part of the king- 
 dom that endures. No doubt he would have in- 
 cluded all the kingdoms of the world and the glory 
 of them, that the father of lies once said were his 
 to give to whom he would. The world-rulers of 
 whom John knew were sensual and cruel men, and 
 the great overshadowing empire of Rome was like 
 a very Anti-Christ, now that its head had arrogated 
 to himself divine honors in place of God. But even 
 where worldly dominion was not in the hands of 
 wicked men, the very ideals of this world, as Jesus 
 pointed out, were rooted in the desire for lordly 
 authority, instead of in the ministering love that was 
 the foundation of His kingdom. And as a matter 
 of fact, the age-long preference of the creature to 
 the creator, of the things seen to the things unseen, 
 had resulted in making the prevailing spirit of so- 
 ciety one at active enmity with God and with His 
 ways: one also that was degrading to the divine 
 in man, defiling to the soul; so that James begged 
 men to keep themselves unspotted from the world,
 
 1 62 God First 
 
 as though it stained and contaminated by its very 
 touch. 
 
 Not only is this world all interwoven and held to- 
 gether by undisciplined desire, but it is the world that 
 passeth away. In comparison with the world of 
 obedience to God's will, that abideth forever, it is all 
 Maya illusion its pomp and glory and wisdom 
 and power all are drifting away like passing clouds 
 that dim the sun, and that will presently drift past 
 and disappear while the sun shines on. For these rea- 
 sons, said John, because this world is drifting, un- 
 substantial, doomed to be forgotten, and because the 
 love of it straightway displaces the love of the 
 Father and so corrupts the spirit with misplaced 
 desire, for this cause, he says, " Love not the 
 world." 
 
 You remember there was once a man living a 
 sturdily honorable and courageous life as the friend 
 and associate of Paul. His name was Demas; of 
 whom we only know that he forsook that honorable 
 life, and his aged friend, having " loved this present 
 world." That is the epitaph upon his character. 
 And what an innumerable procession of men and 
 women have followed after him since that day, los- 
 ing their divine birthright, for no other reason than 
 that they loved the present world the world that 
 does without God. 
 
 Take a few moments to consider how barren an
 
 God First 163 
 
 ambition it is to build up the wealth or glory of the 
 world as an end in itself, or to link one's life with 
 it. How miserable a reward it gives to him who 
 lives for it but is not rich toward God. We do not 
 refer now to what is openly vicious or evil. But 
 many a man of honest purpose has slowly come to 
 give his life to this world alone, in order to increase 
 its knowledge, to add to its wealth, or to enlarge its 
 power over nature. And when he has done all, what 
 has he done, if he has wrought without thought of 
 God? 
 
 The achievements that make up our twentieth cen- 
 tury civilization, of which we are so overwhelmingly 
 proud, are not necessarily worth living and dying 
 for. They are not all gain. As Dean McCormack 
 has said, we are not better off than our fathers be- 
 cause we can talk by telephone across a space that 
 they could only span by letter in weeks of travel. 
 The question of gain or loss is decided by what 
 we say into that telephone whether it be nobler 
 and wiser and worthier than what our fathers might 
 have said. The great discoveries may easily be mere 
 instruments of our decay. 
 
 Consider the English race! For centuries they 
 have been among the leaders of Western civiliza- 
 tion. They have been the inheritors and users of 
 all the discoveries and inventions of modern times. 
 All the labor-saving machinery, the devices and ap-
 
 164 God First 
 
 pliances for increasing wealth and multiplying pro- 
 duction, the means of adding to life's security and 
 comfort and luxury, have been the possessions of 
 the English people; and what science and industry 
 and invention can do for a nation in these last days 
 has been done for her. Her civilization is the 
 product of these vast agencies for enriching life. 
 And how far is the result divinely good ? How far 
 is it worth these centuries of striving by unknown 
 multitudes of workers? 
 
 We need not dwell upon the fact that a large 
 share of all this product of modern civilization 
 is devoted year by year to improving ways and 
 means for slaughtering men in case of war; 
 which surely is not of the Father, but of 
 the world. But we should dwell long and ear- 
 nestly upon the fact that as the crown of all this 
 long struggle of civilization, in London, the capital 
 city of the world, nearly a quarter of its people are 
 said to be more miserably fed and housed than some 
 savage races that still live like their ancestors of 
 the stone age. Eight million people in England have 
 but the narrowest margin between themselves and 
 starvation. One in five of all the adults of London 
 die either in the workhouse, the hospital, or the 
 asylum, a public charge, going sullenly from a life 
 that has been of a leaden gray, so stripped was it 
 of wholesome joy. And conditions similar to these
 
 God First 165 
 
 are steadily making their way into all the greater 
 cities of the world, on both sides of the Atlantic. 
 
 If the inventions and discoveries and all the scien- 
 tific progress of our day is steadily to eventuate 
 in increasing the luxury of the fortunate, while it 
 grinds the unfortunate to powder, who could be sat- 
 isfied with even the career of the greatest inventor of 
 our day? And such I believe is its inevitable end, 
 so far as it has its inspiration not in God but in the 
 glory of the world. It is only the presence among 
 us of diviner motives and diviner ambitions that 
 has kept our knowledge and our wealth from mak- 
 ing of civilization a thing selfish and satanically 
 cruel. The world that John saw lying in the wicked 
 one is all about us, and the pride and power of the 
 twentieth century are largely at its service. 
 
 It is for the men who put God first to stand like 
 a rock for the kingdom of Christ among men. For 
 that kingdom of actual brotherly love does not make 
 headway against the world save by stern, indomita- 
 ble effort and self-denial, that are rooted in prayer 
 and in fellowship with God. It is not enough to 
 say that we are doing our share by adding to the 
 world's knowledge or the world's comfort or the 
 world's wealth. Who knows whether the added 
 knowledge and wealth and comfort will bring men 
 nearer God or hide Him further from their sight? 
 Nay ! if through advancing science the very last
 
 1 66 God First 
 
 secret has been wrung from nature, the very last 
 specimen found and classified, and the comfort and 
 luxury of the dominant classes of society increased 
 a hundredfold, what should keep our civilization 
 from being more material, more sensual, and more 
 selfish than it is to-day? If our life-work is to 
 go simply to increasing the sum of human achieve- 
 ments that must ultimately drift away because in 
 them is nothing of timeless value, then we are build- 
 ing a life-work upon the sands. It is piteously easy, 
 with the world's glamour fairly dazzling in our eyes, 
 to love the glory that is of men more than the glory 
 that is of God. In the words of Jesus, " The glory 
 that cometh from the only God " we seek not, be- 
 cause the world has our hearts. But when we have 
 won the worldly glory, nay, when we have fairly 
 captured the world, what shall it profit us in the 
 long, long day that is to come? It is a barren am- 
 bition and it carries a cheap reward simply to build 
 up the wealth or glory of civilization, if that is 
 all if the love of the Father is not behind it, to 
 link our work with His and bind us to Himself 
 in its doing. 
 
 So we come back to this grim prohibition with 
 which we started and ask again, What does it mean ? 
 
 It does not mean that we should not rejoice in 
 all the good things of the world to which our bodies 
 have been framed to answer. Rather are we to
 
 God First 167 
 
 use the good things of the world as not abusing 
 them. Would that our higher senses were even 
 trained to a keener sensitiveness, so that we might 
 respond more deeply to the beauties and pleasures 
 that are our proper joy. 
 
 Again it does not mean that we should flee from 
 the evil world because we recognize its dangers for 
 the soul. It does not bid us do as thousands of 
 those who first read these words thought it bade 
 them do seek out some quiet place of refuge where 
 the waves of temptation should not beat so fiercely. 
 They streamed out into the deserts and mountains, 
 living in caves as hermits, where the vainglory of 
 life should be far away and where nothing should 
 appear to tempt the eye. What they found there 
 God only knows ! But they did not find His will 
 they who thus fled away from the seducing world. 
 Their place was, like a true soldier's, at the heart of 
 the danger. 
 
 In a few years, many of us who are here will 
 find ourselves where the waves of this threefold 
 evil desire beat upon us as the sea beats upon a 
 harbor wall. Every day will make us realize anew 
 that we are in the world against which John warned 
 us. That is all right. Let us not think it strange, 
 or an impossible situation for a Christian. It is 
 what our Lord looked forward to for His disciples. 
 " As the Father sent me into the world, even so
 
 1 68 God First 
 
 have I sent you into the world." It was the right 
 place for them, even though in the world they should 
 have tribulation. To be sure, it was an alien at- 
 mosphere and environment, but it was the element 
 in which they were to do their work and win their 
 souls. They were as safe amid its uproar of Vanity 
 Fair as they could be in the peace of heaven, if only 
 they went in His spirit and with His companionship. 
 
 There is something thrilling in the sight of a 
 great steamer putting out to sea on schedule time 
 when a heavy storm is blowing. It may be a howl- 
 ing mid-winter blizzard in New York. The cold 
 is piercing, the wind roars overhead, and one thinks 
 how the ocean, but a few miles away, must be a 
 fury of raging waters, lashed by such a gale. But 
 at twelve o'clock the great ocean liner, lying com- 
 fortably and safely at her dock, slips out into the 
 stream, with all her precious lives on board, and in 
 a few hours, swept by the spray from quivering 
 stem to stern, she is battling with the North At- 
 lantic in its most deadly mood. Her designers built 
 her for that very thing, she is under orders to carry 
 the mails on that very day, and she carries them 
 unafraid, because, however she may be battered by 
 the waves, her plates are firm and the waves can 
 find no point of entrance. 
 
 So our Lord sends His disciples out into the world, 
 unafraid, where the lust of the flesh and the lust
 
 God First 169 
 
 of the eye and the vainglory of life are on every 
 side assailing. He sends them there not idly, but 
 on a great commission, as He came Himself, not to 
 judge the world, but to save the world. Not to be 
 separated from the love of the Father, but to carry 
 that love with them in their hearts, and in the 
 strength of it to plant His kingdom ever more and 
 more firmly here on earth among the men who would 
 be forgetting Him. 
 
 We see then that this prohibition is not meant to 
 rob our lives of love or joy, to make them gray or 
 cold, but to fill them with the love which enriches 
 every love, the love of the Father, and to cheer them 
 with that joy which outlasts every joy, the joy of 
 our Lord. 
 
 It is not meant to make this life grudging, but to 
 make it abundant, as God can. And holding us 
 steadfastly in the midst of alien elements on every 
 side, it gives us our share in hastening that day 
 when even the kingdoms of this world shall have 
 become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, 
 and the chorus shall go up " Hallelujah ! for the 
 Lord God omnipotent reigneth."
 
 XII 
 Simon of Cyrene 
 
 " On him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after 
 Jesus." LUKE 23:26. 
 
 THAT was Simon of Cyrene ! Coming quietly 
 into the city on a feast day, to be saluted 
 by this tragedy and insult. 
 
 It was the most astounding and dramatic mo- 
 ment of his life. He was not an African, or a 
 peasant from the fields, as some have supposed, but 
 a respectable Jew. Like Paul he was a citizen of 
 no mean city, only in his case the city was Cyrene, 
 in Libya, about halfway between Carthage and 
 Alexandria. It was a famous old Greek town, beau- 
 tiful, prosperous, and cultured. For hundreds of 
 years a large part of its population had been Jewish, 
 the descendants of old exiles who had been sent there 
 in crowds as far back as the reign of Manasseh. 
 They were so numerous and influential that they 
 had their own synagogue in Jerusalem. And this 
 Simon was one of them, who had come up to the 
 feast. 
 
 170
 
 Simon of Cyrene 171 
 
 On that bright April day he was coming into the 
 city, well-dressed, respectable, busy with his own 
 thoughts. And suddenly, to his disgust, as he turned 
 into the gate, he was encountered by the noisy rabble 
 that ever follows a party of criminals to the execu- 
 tion ground. There, before his eyes, were the three 
 poor blood-stained creatures going to their death. 
 One of the three, weak from the torture of the 
 scourging, was fainting beneath the load of the cross 
 he bore, and the procession for a moment was stand- 
 ing still. The party was in a hurry. The day had 
 worn on, the next day was the Sabbath, and there 
 was need of haste if the wretched business was to 
 be completed before sundown. So the soldiers 
 would have goaded Jesus on, as still they do in like 
 ease, so long as His strength could respond to pain. 
 But the end came while Simon was looking at Him, 
 when even the soldiers saw that He must have help 
 if the execution were not to be delayed. 
 
 What fixed their attention on Simon, out of all 
 the crowd, we do not know. He was a stranger and 
 without friends, to be sure; but that was no reason 
 why they should put on him this loathsome insult 
 of having to bear a criminal's cross through crowded 
 streets to the execution ground. Possibly he had 
 known Jesus, and some malignant voice in the mob 
 proclaimed the fact, and pointed him out as a friend. 
 More likely he had heard of Him as a good man;
 
 172 Simon of Cyrene 
 
 and coming thus face to face with Him, in mortal 
 distress, tortured, helpless, brought to bay among 
 His enemies, had uttered some generous words of 
 sympathy or indignation that angered the soldiers 
 and made them think of this scurvy retort. 
 
 If he pitied the man so much, under His load, let 
 him bear it himself and so relieve the situation. And 
 at the suggestion they dragged him out of the crowd 
 of bystanders and, silencing his angry protests, com- 
 pelled him to pick up the cross or beam for proba- 
 bly it was but a single timber and join the pitiful 
 group within the circle of the guard. And there 
 was he, Simon, an honorable citizen of Cyrene, actu- 
 ally forced along the street like an outcast, bearing 
 the stained cross of a condemned criminal. And 
 the crowd, ever quick to turn against one in a pre- 
 dicament, was following him with jeers and insults, 
 as though he really were what his shameful position 
 seemed for the moment to declare him a fellow- 
 victim. The shame of it must have entered his very 
 soul; because "on him they laid the cross, that he 
 might bear it after Jesus." 
 
 But do you think that the brutal injustice and 
 searing humiliation were all that fixed his attention 
 in those moments before Calvary was reached ? We 
 know they were not. Even if we pay no attention 
 to tradition, we know that his two sons, Alexander 
 and Rufus, were well-known Christians of a later
 
 Simon of Cyrene 173 
 
 time, and it is at least probable that his wife is 
 mentioned as one who had showed hospitality to 
 Paul. Something came over his life that made his 
 family disciples of that same crucified Jesus. 
 
 We can partly guess what it was. He was bear- 
 ing the cross after Jesus for Him. Do you sup- 
 pose Jesus ever accepted even a cup of cold water, 
 or a trifling kindness from a little child, without 
 such heartfelt thanks as stayed by the giver? And 
 now when He was at the worst, in mortal need, and 
 with no friend by to help with no Peter to help 
 Him with the cross, or John, or faithful Thomas 
 to give Him even a shoulder to lean upon and this 
 stranger was forced to come to His help and share 
 His shame, do you think Jesus was unmoved or 
 ungrateful ? 
 
 As they two walked together, and as the dread 
 moment came when Simon's share ended and he 
 laid down the cross to leave it and go back to his 
 peaceful life, leaving the Saviour with it to finish 
 there His work of love, we may be sure that some- 
 thing, never to be forgotten, passed between them 
 between Jesus Christ and the man who, for a few 
 moments, had carried His cross. It may have been 
 words, it may have been only a look, or the pressure 
 of a hand : but I believe it did its work gave him, 
 perhaps even at that moment, a glimpse of the truth 
 that no higher privilege or joy could come into the
 
 174 Simon of Cyrene 
 
 life of a human soul on earth than to help bear 
 the heavy burden of that Master, to carry ever so 
 little of the weight of that shameful cross. 
 
 At first, Simon must needs have had only a sense 
 of injustice and of grievance. He had done nothing 
 to deserve so disgraceful a burden. What propriety 
 or fitness or purpose was there in making him shoul- 
 der, even for a moment, that cross of shame ! But 
 then, had Jesus deserved it ? Was there any reason 
 or justice in His bearing it or being lifted up upon 
 it from the earth? If Jesus carried it patiently to 
 the end, unprotesting, trustful of God, might not 
 he, Simon, be called to a share in the same faith 
 and patience? 
 
 So he would see, what may we see to-day, that 
 God's thought in putting a cross on men is not our 
 thought. He has in it a higher principle than that 
 of giving us our deserts. Its weight is not propor- 
 tioned to our demerit. He does not even point out 
 the precise fitness or propriety or purpose in our 
 bearing it. He has a purpose in it, be sure! Jesus 
 knew what it was for Him, Simon did not. But 
 for both Simon and Jesus that shameful, heavy bur- 
 den was their privilege, their high honor, their sa- 
 cred service. Jesus bore it for the world's joy 
 for you and me! Joy was set before Him, at the 
 far end of the way of the cross; so He despised 
 the shame. And Simon he bore it for the Master ;
 
 Simon of Cyrene 175 
 
 and the very fact that he " bore it after Jesus " was 
 the saving of himself and of his household. 
 
 There was no mistake about it then, after all, out- 
 rage as it was. No injustice, no unreason, no acci- 
 dental or capricious fortune. The crowd might have 
 jeered itself hoarse at the ridiculous incongruity of 
 it, and his friends might have condoled with him 
 at the cruel wrong of it, but in the end he would 
 know that there was neither joke, nor wrong, nor 
 blunder there, but the plan of God to give him a 
 blessed share in his Saviour's labor of love. 
 
 Consider now several of the common principles 
 of life that are illustrated by this incident. First, 
 there are the difficulties and unkindnesses of our lot 
 in general ! Sometimes these troubles that we have 
 come to, these hardnesses of our life that we call 
 crosses, seem as cruel and uncalled-for as did that 
 outrage upon Simon. Mysterious, we call them re- 
 spectfully. It is not so much that they are painful, 
 or difficult to bear; we could muster the requisite 
 courage and strength for that, if only we could see 
 any purpose in them, could see what they were lead- 
 ing to. But they appear mere useless drags on our 
 life, mere senseless, stunning blows upon our for- 
 tune. Accidents capricious, inopportune; perhaps 
 the results of others' blundering or folly. Or our 
 cross is an obvious misfit, a misadjustment to our 
 strength and temper. Another's we could bear more
 
 1 76 Simon of Cyrene 
 
 easily, we could see some reason or discipline in it; 
 but ours is a dead weight, unrelieved by any visible 
 use or reason ; we bear it fretfully, in the dark. 
 
 Never did a man have so mockingly capricious 
 a lot to bear as Simon. It was sheer ill luck that he 
 had blundered into it. If he had been a moment 
 later or earlier, if the soldiers had not had the ill 
 fortune to turn on him, he would have escaped. 
 There was no sense or fitness in laying that disgrace 
 on him. If he had been an apostle, or a disciple, or 
 a relative, or if he were a beggar or a criminal, there 
 would have been at least some show of sense in it. 
 But as it was, he was the mere sport of circum- 
 stance ! 
 
 So he must have thought at the time. But do 
 you suppose he thought that, when his career was 
 done? On the contrary, those brutal soldiers had 
 been, little as they knew it, the means by which 
 God's grace had entered his life. 
 
 God does not deal with His children by accidents. 
 He does not blunder with the sorrows He allows in 
 their life any more than with His gifts of grace. He 
 chooses strange ways to lay crosses upon us, ways 
 that have all the marks of sheer senseless unrea- 
 son, as with Simon, ways that we can demonstrate 
 at the time to have nothing divine or loving in 
 them. But in the end, I believe we shall see that 
 they were fitted to do His work for us if we would
 
 Simon of Cyrene 177 
 
 let them; fit, if we would carry them patiently, to be, 
 like that cross of Jesus, a messenger of mercy. Let 
 us wait till we see the end before we think we have 
 excuse to be bitter, yes, or even impatient, before 
 God. 
 
 This only brings us to our main theme. Nearly 
 every one of us, no doubt, would like to follow 
 Jesus if we could choose the time and place and 
 manner of following. But you know the fact. 
 That Jesus Christ will not have any soul of man 
 as His follower on terms like these. He leaves us 
 in no doubt, He is explicit enough to satisfy the 
 most doubtful; He gives us plain terms, of dignity 
 and honor, demanding courage that true men an- 
 swer to. He said, "If any man would come after 
 me, let him take up his cross and follow me." 
 
 He does not want to discourage us ; it is not that 
 He does not want followers. He never longed for 
 them more than at the moment when He spoke 
 these words. He only wants us to know the truth, 
 that the Christian life is neither a jest, nor a merry- 
 making, nor a parade through aisles of continuous 
 applause. But that, beginning in earnestness and 
 self-denial, it carries a cross to the very end, with 
 need of patience and humility and exertion all the 
 way. There are plenty of paths to follow, to-day 
 and to-morrow, that lie just ready to our feet, how 
 indefinitely easier to tread ; they demand no bravery
 
 178 Simon of Cyrene 
 
 or courage, no honor or unflinching determination; 
 we can change our mind in them as often as we 
 choose, and be as indolent and self-indulgent as the 
 fancy of any fool could dictate. And we shall not 
 lack either leaders or good company! But Jesus 
 Christ! There is no way of disguising the fact that 
 He walked in a way of temptation, where He lived 
 His life and won His victory only with strong cry- 
 ing and tears. And for others than Himself, whose 
 troubles He need not have added to His own, He 
 bore a cross the cross made up of the sin and sor- 
 row and shame of men and women who did not care 
 for Him, and who little thanked Him for His 
 sacrifice. 
 
 And what is the prospect for one of us, who 
 honestly and doggedly will choose and follow such 
 a leader ? Surely he, too, will have to fight his fight ; 
 to endure hardness ; fighting his own battles that are 
 hard enough, and in addition, by the mercy of God, 
 fighting some battles for his fellows carrying a 
 cross for them. 
 
 You know that there are multitudes of men to- 
 day who would dodge this necessity. Who would 
 gladly let Jesus Christ, whom they call Lord and 
 Master, do all the cross-bearing and bear the whole 
 weight of the burden, making for them an easy way 
 to heaven, with no disconcerting call to courage and 
 self-denial. They would gladly follow Christ on
 
 Simon of Cyrene 179 
 
 terms like these, well back among the crowd, where 
 there should be no danger of their being associated 
 with the Saviour, or involved in His grinding bur- 
 dens, until all the cross-bearing was done, all the 
 price paid, and only the pleasant rewards of His 
 sacrifice to reap. 
 
 Some of us, in some moods, would know what 
 it is, I am sure, practically to ask the Lord to save 
 us the trouble of being a man. And thank God ! to 
 all such comes the kind and pitiful, but eternally 
 unrelenting answer, No ! He will have us as true 
 men, or He will not have us. If we are still look- 
 ing around to see if any in the watching crowd 
 would laugh at us, or if any of our comfortable 
 independence would be intruded on, then He has 
 still to wait. He would have us choose the hard 
 way of honor, if it be a hard way, and come out 
 fairly in the open as with Him. Simon was pushed 
 out clear into the middle of the street where Jesus 
 stood, and where the bystanders on either side 
 could point at him to their heart's content. And it 
 is good for a man to have, like iron in his blood, 
 like new life pulsing in his veins, the sense that he 
 and his Master stand together, identified by the 
 crowd, whether they cheer or jeer at two such com- 
 panions on such an errand. Mind you, the Lord 
 will be right true to you His companion day by 
 day, past all days, forever. God help us to stand
 
 180 Simon of Cyrene 
 
 with Him to-day, that when the heavens and the 
 earth are removed He still may stand with us, im- 
 movable and faithful to His servant. 
 
 One step more, see the privilege and the honor 
 of the task and the opportunity laid upon us. Little 
 as Simon knew what he w r as doing, he came to the 
 help of Jesus Christ; he bore a part of the weight 
 of the Saviour's cross. To be sure, he was a poor 
 sinner, himself; no infinite and sinless one who 
 could share in that perfect atoning sacrifice for the 
 world's sin. And yet, he helped the Son of Man 
 to bear His burden; some of the weight and the 
 shame and the burden of that bitter work fell on 
 him, Simon of Cyrene. Only a little an incon- 
 siderable trifle for a moment or two. And yet 
 he helped. He who must needs himself be saved 
 by his Lord's mercy, mercifully ministered to his 
 Lord. 
 
 Let us not lose any of the plain simplicity of 
 God's message to our souls at this point, by sup- 
 posing that here we begin to diverge into mere senti- 
 ment, or unpractical mysticism. For it is only sober 
 truth, and no devout exaggeration, to say that men 
 and women still are called to come up to the help 
 of their Master ; to share His burden for the world ; 
 to bear the cross on His behalf. Paul, you remem- 
 ber, uses those very words : " To you it hath been 
 granted not only to believe on him but also to
 
 Simon of Cyrene 181 
 
 suffer in his behalf." He spoke of himself as 
 " filling up what was behind of the sufferings of 
 Christ." 
 
 If you and I had lived long enough ago, we 
 might have used our money or our hands actually 
 to minister to the personal needs of Jesus on earth. 
 Should we count that a privilege? But now, if a 
 man truly loves and honors Him, what is there he 
 can do? And instantly we hear Jesus answer, 
 " Lovest thou me? Feed my sheep." '' Inasmuch 
 as ye have done it unto one of the least of these 
 my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 
 
 The sheep of His flock are scattered abroad upon 
 the mountain sides until this day, distressed and 
 scattered. He gave His life that mercy and joy 
 might reach them; but neither that joy or mercy 
 have reached them yet, and they will not, save as 
 some one comes up to His help and bears a part of 
 His burden after Him, on behalf of the lost sheep. 
 The burden-bearing is not over yet. 
 
 How do you think Jesus Christ looks out on the 
 colossal sorrows and cruelties of the heathen world ? 
 The crying in pain of tens of thousands of little 
 girls with bound feet, the growing up of millions 
 of children in such an atmosphere of killing vice 
 that before they are men and women they are 
 stained through and through with sin; the heart- 
 breaking loneliness and bitterness of the multitudes
 
 i8a Simon of Cyrene 
 
 of women in Asia, from whose ranks the crowded, 
 never-ending procession of suicides is recruited day 
 by day? The groans of bleeding Africa have come 
 up before God these many centuries, though no man 
 knew of those awful miseries palpitating there in 
 the dark, felt only by God and by the victims. 
 
 The only hands that have ever turned back the 
 great tides of human sorrow have been the hands 
 that bore the print of the nails. And still it is 
 true that hands like His, with the mark of sacrifice 
 upon them, are the only hands that will reach to 
 such a work as this. Hands with itching palms, 
 hungry for the dollar, will never do it only love 
 will share this work with the Master. And such 
 hands are stretched out to-day by the thousand, 
 ready to seize the cross. 
 
 Why, Africa, alone, within a century, has its roll 
 of unknown hundreds of men and women who have 
 come up to the help of their Master. You might 
 be able, if you relished such a search, to find among 
 them here and there a man who went to the work 
 with meaner motives. But practically every one of 
 that great company stepped out after his Lord into 
 the street called Via Dolorosa, with noblest motives 
 of divine love. When young Mackay went out to 
 Uganda, the youngest but one of a party of eight 
 stalwart Englishmen, he said to an audience before 
 he left : " Within six months you will probably hear
 
 Simon of Cyrene 183 
 
 that one of us is dead. When the news comes, do 
 not be cast down, but send some one immediately to 
 take the vacant place." Within three years he was 
 the only one left in Africa of that original band. 
 And this is but typical of all the pioneering work 
 of Christ's kingdom in the Dark Continent. Life 
 has been poured out there like water, as was the 
 life of Jesus. And it has been a willing offering of 
 joy of great cost, but worth the price. 
 
 But they who have gone out into all the world 
 after the lost sheep are not the only ones called 
 to bear a part of the Lord's burden. Are there no 
 marks of sacrifice on your life and mine? In all 
 our Lord's cross-bearing for this present living gen- 
 eration is there no part of the burden on our shoul- 
 ders? If not, if we are care-free, left unhampered 
 even by our own burdens and our own worries, then 
 we may count ourselves lucky! But are we lucky? 
 Rather do we know that we are losing the gladdest 
 and most sacred privilege of life, in that none of 
 our Lord's burden for the lost sheep rests on us. 
 The Laymen's Missionary Movement is an effort to 
 bring this fact home to the men of the American 
 churches. Not that they should give to missions 
 respectably and perfunctorily but that they should 
 come up under the burden of a great work of re- 
 deeming love, and lift at it, for love of their own 
 Master.
 
 XIII 
 The Sinlessness of Jesus 
 
 IT is sometimes said that the church, long after 
 Jesus' death, was led to put the doctrine of 
 His divinity in its creeds, simply to cover a 
 few verses in the later New Testament that de- 
 manded it for Him. But on any study of Jesus' 
 character we see how it is not a few proof texts 
 that lie behind this historic belief of the church, but 
 the whole marvellous portrait of the man. You 
 may subtract this verse and that, but so long as 
 the story of the gospels remains, to let us know what 
 manner of man He was who once walked in Galilee, 
 the world will see the beauty of the eternal holiness 
 revealed in Him, and in Him will find, as He said, 
 the very Way to God. 
 
 Under the pressure of a dogmatic denial of all 
 that seems to bring the supernatural too near, many 
 critics of our time feel the need of denying the sin- 
 lessness of the man of Nazareth, using for the most 
 part a single text of the New Testament to over- 
 throw its incontestable trend and teaching from first 
 
 184
 
 The Sinlessness of Jesus 185 
 
 to last. They say little of this denial; they break 
 the disagreeable statement to us as gently as they 
 can, speaking of the times when Jesus' will passed 
 through stages of disobedience to the divine lead- 
 ing; but they effectually dethrone Him from the 
 position that He has always held in human thought 
 and affection, as " the eternal King in the King- 
 dom of Truth.'' He is no longer " the stainless 
 type of human perfection," but one who, however 
 pre-eminent among us, must, as a German writer 
 has said, " pay his tribute, as well as we, to human 
 depravity and human weakness." 
 
 Such a view, that some would thrust upon us so 
 lightly, would be a bitter loss to all humanity. And 
 what should you and I do without Him who has 
 been to us the very truth of God ! But we are not 
 called upon seriously to consider so destructive a 
 criticism, because it is itself so untrue to the only 
 historic picture that we have of Jesus. It is not 
 exegesis, it is not criticism, it is wilful defacement 
 and destruction at the dictatorial command of a 
 dogmatic presupposition. 
 
 This is what the little circle of men who knew 
 Jesus best, have to say of Him in the matter, in 
 those earliest days before creeds or doctrines had 
 come under debate. 
 
 Peter said, " He did no sin," I Peter, 2 : 22. 
 
 John said, " In him is no sin," I John, 3 : 5.
 
 1 86 The Sinlessness of Jesus 
 
 Paul said, " He knew no sin," I Cor. 5:21. 
 
 The man who wrote the letter to the Hebrews 
 said, " He was tempted in all points like as we are, 
 yet without sin." 
 
 And, as for Jesus Himself, he asked indignantly, 
 "Which of you convicteth me of sin?" (John 8: 
 46), saying, " I do always the things that are pleas- 
 ing to God " (John 8: 29). 
 
 Those verses may serve as our text, presenting 
 as they do the universal understanding and belief 
 of the early church, and of the church of all time. 
 
 We turn now to see how, in fact, this sinlessness 
 of Jesus Christ appears. What is the character 
 from which the vast structure of historic Christian- 
 ity has arisen, like the lily from the bulb? What 
 secret of transcendent power and beauty was in it, 
 to make it the source of the world's redemption 
 from untruth and deceit, from sin and shame ? 
 
 We do not want to rest upon mere affirmations of 
 His sinlessness; we want to see and feel wherein 
 is the necessity for such an affirmation. Consider, 
 as the chief ground of our faith, the indirect testi- 
 mony of Jesus' own consciousness, in the absence 
 of a sense of guilt, and of any reaction or indirect 
 reflection of sin upon His own spirit. 
 
 A man's consciousness must in the long run in- 
 evitably betray his inward moral condition, how- 
 ever he might be unwilling to confess it. Let us
 
 The Sinlessness of Jesus 187 
 
 measure Jesus in this respect by standards that we 
 comprehend, i.e., by other good men. Not com- 
 mon men, of course, but by men uncommon, leaders 
 in the kingdom of the spirit, who are the nearest 
 to the equals of Jesus in moral elevation. They 
 represent what God's grace can do for human nature 
 at its choicest. Miracles of grace, some of them 
 were called; they represent humanity with all its 
 latent divinity called into expression, with the divine 
 spirit overshadowing them. Let us put their con- 
 sciousness by the side of the consciousness of Jesus, 
 and see if there be any essential difference. Differ- 
 ence in degree of purity of life, we know there 
 was; but look to see if there is any deeper differ- 
 ence, so radical and characteristic as to leave Him 
 in a majestic solitariness. 
 
 It is with strange unanimity that the spiritual 
 leaders of mankind confess, without reserve, in- 
 roads of evil upon their soul their ever-attending 
 consciousness of sin. Not necessarily like David, 
 bitterly remorseful for heavy crimes against both 
 God and man, but like the pure and lofty Isaiah, 
 who at the very sight of the King cried out, " I am 
 undone! for I am a man of unclean lips." A true 
 man comes into near sight of the ineffable holiness 
 of God to feel what? The satisfying purity of 
 his own spirit? Never this! But to see in himself, 
 in that searching light of truth and love, the irre-
 
 1 88 The Sinlessness of Jesus 
 
 trievable stains that are his shame. By God's mercy 
 he may be cleansed, but clean with the eternal, un- 
 spotted cleanliness of God he cannot be. Always 
 he will be the man once unworthy once forgiven 
 forever the trophy of God's compassion, rescued 
 from the grip of sin. And even though he comes 
 to be partaker of the divine nature, will he not 
 always be, above all, a son redeemed with a great 
 price, with the gratitude and humility of that great 
 deliverance upon his spirit ? 
 
 In any case it is certain that this sense of need 
 and ill-desert is an inevitable mark of the man of 
 spiritual sense and feeling here on earth; and men 
 instinctively realize that he in whom this sense is 
 lacking, lacks the very most essential quality of a 
 spiritual leader for his race. His self-confidence 
 is his condemnation. There have been men who 
 felt that they could face God with confident self- 
 possession, because of their virtues; and just so far 
 forth their fellows have shrunk away from them 
 as abnormal not more, but less than human, lack- 
 ing in self-knowledge. Rousseau made no secret of 
 his moral turpitude. But he, speaking of his reject- 
 ing with contempt God's gift of His Son, said : 
 " My virtues are sufficient to expiate my crimes, 
 and on these I will depend as my sole mediators 
 before God." But the world has not seen in this 
 the evidence of superior, but of inferior, moral
 
 The Sinlessness of Jesus 189 
 
 stature, so proper to a true man is his sense of 
 limitation and shortcoming, as he faces God. 
 
 And yet, so far as we can see from all the rec- 
 ords, Jesus stood as uncondemned and confident be- 
 fore God as though He were God Himself; and 
 none is repelled by His audacity, or counts it moral 
 hardihood on His part. 
 
 There was a man, one hundred and fifty years 
 ago, Fletcher of Madeley, a companion of the Wes- 
 leys, who, almost alone in modern times, gained 
 from his fellows the reputation of " almost seraphic 
 holiness." It has been said that never perhaps since 
 the rise of Christianity has the mind which was 
 in Christ been more faithfully copied than it was 
 in the Vicar of Madeley. His sanctity of life was 
 without perceptible spot or flaw. Indeed, one of 
 the most notable critics of Christianity in our last 
 generation has claimed that his character was more 
 perfect than that of Jesus. We might well expect 
 to find in him a close approach to the experience 
 of Jesus in his unruffled consciousness of the divine 
 approval in a conscience void of offence. Yet 
 never man heard Jesus calling Himself, as did 
 Fletcher, " a weary perplexed sinner, in the dust of 
 self-despair; a man utterly undone; wanting in love, 
 excelling in pride." We do not even need to inquire 
 how far this estimate of himself was justified 
 we only have to note its presence, so alien to any-
 
 190 The Sinlessness of Jesus 
 
 thing that can be detected in the consciousness of 
 Jesus, or that can be wrenched by inference from 
 his sayings. 
 
 Here is that shining light of a dark age, Thomas 
 a Kempis, showing us what was in his soul, " What 
 have I done, O Lord, that thou shouldst bestow any 
 heavenly comfort upon me? I have always been 
 prone to sin and slow to amendment. This is true 
 and I cannot deny it. If I should say otherwise, 
 thou wouldst stand against me and there would be 
 none to defend me. I have sinned. O Lord, have 
 mercy upon me, pardon me ! " In what another 
 world this man moved from Him who said that He 
 did always the things that please God. 
 
 You all know how we might continue indefinitely 
 this inquiry. But it is not necessary. Nowhere in 
 the world's history do we come on one like Jesus, 
 uncondemned of sin, even in His inmost soul. Not 
 callous, nor conscienceless! for He belonged to the 
 race that of all human races has had the profound- 
 est consciousness of moral evil, and of the awful 
 holiness of Jehovah. He was a Hebrew of the He- 
 brews. Yet he was a man who never made con- 
 fession of a fault, who never asked forgiveness for 
 a sin, who never sought redeemer or mediator to 
 lean upon; who never showed sign of contrition or 
 penitence or shame ; who never so much as classified 
 Himself in these regards with men, His brothers;
 
 The Sinlessness of Jesus 191 
 
 but who thought and spoke and acted, through life 
 and in death, as one as infinitely removed from the 
 universal experience of His brethren in this respect 
 as though He also shared the unapproachable glory 
 of God's holiness. 
 
 And in all this He was as miraculous an excep- 
 tion to the uniformity of natural order, as a man 
 would be with a higher structure than the vertebrate. 
 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and 
 the truth is not in us. Here is one, living a truly 
 human life, who not only says it, but who acts upon 
 it, taking upon himself honors and prerogatives that 
 go only with the spotlessness like God's claiming 
 to forgive sin, and to set Himself as the moral 
 norm for human life. What moral obtuseness and 
 what hopeless depth of pride that means, if He 
 spoke as we should have spoken in such a claim. 
 
 If that unmistakable assumption of purity were 
 not genuine, what indignation it should rouse in 
 men, that such a man should claim to be a moral 
 leader. Humility is better than vast pretensions, 
 even in a spiritual giant. But has the world felt 
 this indignant wrath with Jesus for His pride ? No ! 
 it has only seen in it a sweet reasonableness. Be- 
 cause and this leads us a step further because, 
 even after any hostile sifting of the records, He 
 stands as one having the virtues of a sinless man. 
 This is no colorless absence of sin, or absence of
 
 192 The Sinlessness of Jesus 
 
 its consciousness, but the presence of a more than 
 human sweetness and beauty. It is a character that 
 has not angered the world at Him for an enormous 
 vanity, but that has held the world's affection by 
 its loveliness. He has won the love of the vilest 
 and the reverence of the purest. 
 
 It is not exaggerating, is it, to say that we see 
 in Him as in a complete white light the virtues that, 
 in those about us whom we admire, shine in the 
 broken colors of the spectrum the strength and 
 gentleness, the dignity and meekness, the transparent 
 simplicity, and the profound depths beyond human 
 knowing? We love Him for His unsullied purity 
 and His divine compassion for the impure and out- 
 cast; for His inflexible faithfulness to duty and 
 His submission to His Father's will; for His stern 
 hostility to wrong and oppression, and His pity for 
 the distresses of the world; for His own quiet pa- 
 tience under malice and abuse, and for His superb 
 courage in the face of threatening torture and death; 
 for His self-forgetfulness, and more than all for 
 the fervent, palpitating love that led Him all His 
 life and made Him glad to lay it down at last for 
 others. 
 
 And not for these things taken singly or unre- 
 lated, but for the more than human sweetness and 
 beauty with which they were mixed up in Him, so 
 that we feel no incongruity in regarding Him as
 
 The Sinlessness of Jesus 193 
 
 the very revelation of the Father: so that when 
 we see in lives about us the choicest qualities that 
 can grow in a human soul, we recognize without 
 wonder that they have come from Him. 
 
 This is the matchless figure that we have left to 
 us, even after we have done our best to eliminate the 
 supernatural from the story of the founder of Chris- 
 tianity. Is it worth while seeking to eliminate it? 
 
 If we believe that in Him our Father was unfold- 
 ing Himself to man, then His appearance and char- 
 acter, with all the history that He has made, become 
 natural, reasonable, so to speak non-marvellous. 
 The fact that it was supernatural in origin makes 
 it natural and easy to believe and understand. It 
 affords the only natural and orderly explanation. 
 The sinless man stands out majestically alone from 
 all the members of the human race; he breaks the 
 uniform sway of the natural order, say what we 
 will; he is the sublime exception to the collective 
 experience of humanity. Why this inexplicable 
 break, as of a new creation? Evolution has no 
 more to say of it than of any other beginning of 
 matter, of life, of mind all human theories are 
 silent: and where human theories are helpless to 
 explain, there we see the natural explanation in the 
 appearance among us of the Holy One of God. 
 
 There are two inquiries in this connection that 
 are of pressing interest, because the subject of cur-
 
 194 The Sinlessness of Jesus 
 
 rent discussion. Does this unique sinlessness of 
 Jesus, so profoundly unlike the conditions that we 
 sinners know, does this put Him further from us, 
 removing Him from our sympathy? Would He 
 have been nearer to us had He, too, been overcome 
 of evil? The answer unmistakably is, No! We 
 have companions and friends enough who are weak, 
 who have been themselves defeated, and who cannot 
 wholly bid us look up in time of moral danger. It 
 is good to have, not only a Saviour, but a Friend, 
 a Companion, who can perfectly hold our trust and 
 lead us through any allurements of this earth. He 
 is bound to us as a brother and sympathizer, not 
 because He also proved unworthy under trial, but 
 because He suffered, being tempted in all points like 
 as we are, yet without sin. We have not stood that 
 test; we cannot see how we, being still ourselves, 
 should be able to stand it. But this does not re- 
 move Him from us, any more than it removes our 
 Heavenly Father from us because His love is per- 
 fect, and not frail like ours. Only the perfect man 
 can perfectly command our hearts. 
 
 And then, further, look intently far on into the 
 future. Has this sinlessness of Jesus, the great 
 Elder Brother of the race, any promise or prophecy 
 of what shall be for us? Neither science nor philos- 
 ophy has any word to help us here, we rest alto- 
 gether and alone upon faith in the revelation of
 
 The Sinlessness of Jesus 195 
 
 the New Testament. But in that revelation we have 
 the picture of Jesus as the first-born among many 
 brethren, as the One who should lead many sons 
 into glory. 
 
 Well we know by experience that no moral vic- 
 tory is won save through sore travail our own or 
 another's. And what may lie before us of long 
 discipline, or of wondrous inconceivable energy in 
 our spirits of the transforming love of God, we 
 cannot guess. Surely vast changes and achieve- 
 ments lie in the unknown future, dwarfing our past 
 into a hand's breadth; and unthinkable joys of vic- 
 tory and gladness are to be ours, if we are Chris- 
 tians, before His work in us is done. 
 
 But when the long day's work and discipline are 
 over, when our Father's image in His children is 
 complete, when our Lord sees in us of the travail 
 of His soul and is satisfied, even then, when the 
 disciple shall be " as his Lord," still He will be our 
 Lord. Still will remain the infinite and eternal dis- 
 tinction between Redeemer and redeemed, that shall 
 be our joy and praise forever. Though we are sons, 
 yet shall we not repeat the experience of the Eternal 
 Son; but even in that hour of final consummation 
 the song of the whole family of creation shall still 
 be, " Unto him that sitteth on the throne, and unto 
 the Lamb, be the blessing and the honor and the 
 glory and the dominion, forever and ever."
 
 XIV 
 A Life Purpose 
 
 " One thing I do, . . . I press on." PHIL. 3:13,14, 
 
 THE human will has infinite varieties, as we 
 see it governing the lives of men about us ; 
 but there are two strongly contrasted types, 
 at either end of the scale. One crumples up like 
 paper at the first shock of serious resistance, the 
 other stiffens itself like iron under assault, and 
 holds on indomitably until the end, as if unable to 
 let go. 
 
 Dr. Grenfell tells of a little fore-and-aft fishing 
 schooner, of less than a hundred tons, that sailed 
 from Cadiz, Spain, for a mid-winter passage across 
 the North Atlantic. Her crew were all Newfound- 
 land fishermen, of the toughest, hardiest sailor stock 
 in the world, and her captain was of the true Viking 
 breed, fearing nothing that the sea could do. Three 
 weeks out, however, one black night, they were 
 struck by a waterspout and left in a moment a 
 helpless wreck, with everything forward swept 
 clean; mast and bowsprit and bulwarks, boats and 
 
 196
 
 A Life Purpose 197 
 
 deck-houses, all were gone, and the deck itself was 
 gaping open like a sieve. The winter gales were 
 at their height, and the crew, constantly wet 
 through, unable to heat a morsel of food or drink, 
 were soon chilled to the bone and exhausted by ex- 
 posure. Their only hope was in keeping the wreck 
 afloat a few hours or days by pumping, till they 
 could be taken off by some passing vessel. 
 
 Day after day passed, the captain using every 
 conceivable argument to keep them at the pumps, 
 though half dead with misery. Days grew into 
 weeks, until two weeks had gone, and nature could 
 stand no more; the men begged to stop the useless 
 struggle, that they might all go down together. 
 But the captain would not yield. Another day and 
 another he held them to the fight, day and night, 
 even though they fell down from sheer weakness 
 at their places by the handles. At last they sighted 
 a steamer. It passed them by. Then a second. It 
 also failed to answer their signals. Still he would 
 not yield, though at the most their united strength 
 could keep the sinking craft afloat but a few hours 
 more, not even through the coming night. Then a 
 third vessel was sighted just as night was closing in, 
 and they lit a huge flare upon the deck, setting fire 
 to the vessel, as their last chance to attract at- 
 tention. 
 
 She was a towering Hamburg liner. She bore
 
 198 A Life Purpose 
 
 down upon them through the furious seas, and 
 hailed them to know if they could hold on till morn- 
 ing. No! they were sinking even then! Then a 
 different phase of the same indomitable will declared 
 itself. The life-saving crew on the steamer were 
 soon in their places, and the steel life-boat was 
 lowered; but before it could touch the water, a 
 heavy sea caught it and crushed it like an egg-shell 
 against the steamer's side. Manoeuvring into posi- 
 tion again, a wooden life-boat was this time low- 
 ered, with her crew in it; but before they could 
 dear the vessel's side this, too, was smashed to 
 kindling-wood and the men barely rescued. Was 
 that the end? 
 
 Back again the huge steamer swung into posi- 
 tion. Again the men, undaunted, took their places, 
 this time in a light, collapsible boat, that was 
 dropped from the davits on the run. And in the 
 end, every one of the sinking crew was rescued, 
 only a few moments before their schooner sank. 
 And the iron will, that would not yield so long as 
 life held, had saved against hopeless odds the whole 
 ship's company. 
 
 I dwell so long upon this commonplace incident 
 of the sea, because it fairly presents the type of 
 resolution I wish to urge upon you. To that rugged 
 sea-captain, brought up from earliest boyhood to 
 fight an unending fight against the forces of the
 
 A Life Purpose 199 
 
 cruel sea, amid fog and ice and bitter gales and 
 endless hardships and privations, the determination 
 not to yield to danger so long as life held had be- 
 come like an instinct of the soul. He must hold 
 on, even when odds seemed hopeless. He could not 
 be daunted nor shaken in his purpose. You may see 
 the same characteristic in almost all trained life- 
 savers, as with veteran firemen, who seem incapable 
 of weighing danger in the face of that irresistible 
 bent and determination of the will to rescue the 
 men and women hemmed in by the flames. Their 
 whole being is gathered up and concentrated in a 
 purpose and ambition that becomes fundamental, 
 instinctive, so that it can neither be insidiously 
 weakened nor suddenly overthrown. All the other 
 natural cravings of their life are so subordinated 
 to it that, without reasoning or reflection on their 
 part, it towers over them supreme. 
 
 Many of us will soon be going out into the world 
 to meet we know not what of the wrench and strain 
 of character that come with strenuous years. Only 
 one thing can save us from comparative failure and 
 disappointment that we should have as the deep, 
 underlying motive of life, its over- ruling, all-com- 
 prehending determination, the assertion of the will, 
 " One thing I do; I press on." 
 
 Like the sailor's resistance to the destroying sea, 
 a resistance instinctive, unconscious, unquenchable,
 
 2OO A Life Purpose 
 
 so must be our declaration of resistance to all the 
 weakening, disintegrating, corrupting influences of 
 life. We know, every one of us, by experience of 
 the past, that our resolution will be assailed, as in 
 a mortal combat; the only thing we do not know 
 is the precise angle from which the coming assaults 
 will be delivered; That, we cannot foresee. The 
 mere lapse of years, the growing cares of life, in- 
 volve wholly unsuspected changes in the enemy. 
 
 One, for instance, who has never known any- 
 thing but careless health, cannot dream of the slow, 
 sullen siege of the spirit's citadel that comes with 
 the temptation and bewilderment of ever-hamper- 
 ing weakness. He who has manfully borne the 
 pressure of irritating poverty has no sympathetic 
 insight into the dogged, iron self-restraint that will 
 be needed for him to meet unseduced the perilous 
 luxury of wealth. Some of us whose Christian 
 faith is yet simple and unafraid may have to walk 
 the way so many have trodden, where one must 
 keep faith with God, even in anxious distress of 
 doubt. We do not know, even the oldest of us, 
 what future days may whisper to us of treason to 
 our courage. The coward lurks in most of us, not 
 far from the brave man. Sometimes he does not 
 declare himself until the day is almost done. The 
 temptation to let go, to turn back, to drop out of 
 the race, will not cease until the goal is actually
 
 A Life Purpose 201 
 
 reached. Oh! for a purpose of steel, tested and 
 tempered through long years, that cries out, whether 
 in strength or weakness, in light or in the dark, " I 
 press on." 
 
 We shall almost inevitably be brought to a stand, 
 at times; we shall be baffled, and discouraged, and 
 hard beset. Oh, for a life purpose that will be like 
 rock under our feet when we seem to be sinking in 
 the quicksands! How many college-trained men, 
 do you suppose there are, this very month, who 
 are letting go of their ideals, because the call of 
 big business, or of political pull, or municipal cor- 
 ruption, is proving stronger than their will, and 
 paralyzing their nobler selves? The enemies were 
 too many for them they have given up the fight. 
 They are no more of those who press on. 
 
 We need not only to have such an overmastering 
 determination as this, but we need to know that we 
 have it, to admit it to ourselves and others, to affirm 
 it and proudly rest upon it. It is of no use to hold 
 it in a tentative way, half furtively, unconfessed, 
 as though we were secretly ashamed of what is best 
 in us. We need to magnify and honor it in every 
 possible way, so that it may stand compelling in the 
 forefront of our -consciousness. We may even 
 need to make a fight for it, as for something of 
 which we will not consent to be robbed under any 
 circumstances conceivable. Out of any entangle-
 
 2O2 A Life Purpose 
 
 ment, or defeat, or wreck of things, we must still 
 arise unconquered, saying, " I press on." 
 
 Sir Robertson Nicoll tells of a poor girl, rescued 
 from the wolves of Liverpool, dying at seventeen, 
 pitifully beset by sad memories and fears. In her 
 last moments, half conscious, fully conscious only 
 of her desperate determination, she rose up in bed 
 and lifting one arm as if to call God to witness, 
 exclaimed, " I will fight for my soul, through hosts 
 and hosts and hosts." With such a mortal earnest- 
 ness and urgency must we cling to this ambition, if 
 it is to go with us through all the deadly onsets of 
 the world, the flesh, and the devil. 
 
 But let us look more closely at what it is and 
 what it involves. We feel without argument that 
 it means the gathering up of what is best in us, 
 to go onward when the whole world drags at our 
 feet, to keep up a soldier's determination when men 
 all about us are out for plunder. But just what is 
 this supreme, life-long committal of the will? 
 
 Paul leaves us in no doubt. He does not do what 
 so many teachers do in our day, indulge in vague 
 generalities or high-sounding ethical sentiments. 
 " One thing I do," he said, " I press on toward the 
 goal." There was an end before him, clear, mag- 
 nificent, compelling. What was it? It was to an- 
 swer to God's high calling. It was to achieve what 
 Jesus Christ had made possible for him to lay hold
 
 A Life Purpose 203 
 
 on that for which he had been laid hold of by his 
 Lord. He approved that as the best thing in life. 
 He longed for it; he chose it with all his heart; 
 he would press on toward it forever. The clear 
 battle-call that had come to him through Christ 
 Jesus was the call to which every fibre of his being 
 answered. 
 
 Does this seem to any of you to be narrowing 
 unduly the resolution to press on, which every one 
 of us should share? Does it seem to narrow to a 
 distinctly religious and sharply Christian complexion 
 a purpose which should be so broad and inclusive 
 that all honorable men could share in it? It does 
 so narrow it, but for a good reason. It is to secure 
 power and intensity! 
 
 If you take a magnifying-glass and hold it in the 
 sun, you can gather up the sun's rays into a broad 
 patch of light, of a greater intensity than the ordi- 
 nary sunshine. This is what any of the great truths 
 regarding God and the soul will do for the moral 
 life, if brought to bear upon the spirit. They will 
 inspire and lighten it. Any approach to God's good 
 tidings will accomplish this illumination for the hu- 
 man soul. But if you hold that magnifying-glass 
 away, at the proper angle, in just one position, you 
 iocus the sunlight in a burning point, of a heat and 
 brilliancy otherwise unattainable. And just so, as 
 an actual matter of experience, the intensest
 
 204 A Life Purpose 
 
 energy of a divine warmth and power for the 
 human will is found at the point where the 
 light of God's truth is focused in the appeal of 
 Jesus Christ to men. One may argue about it as 
 he chooses, but the fact is incontestable. It is in 
 a personal association with Jesus Christ that this 
 high determination of the human will burns at its 
 hottest. The will to press on toward God's best 
 is immeasurably re-enforced by this wonderful re- 
 lationship between a man and Him who came to be 
 man's Saviour. If you honestly want power and 
 intensity for such a life-long choice as this, you 
 will seek for it, where numberless tempted men have 
 found it, in this personal discipleship. It is not 
 theory, or doctrine, or theology, that will carry you 
 there, but the hard logic of fact the fact that there, 
 and there only, does your weak will find its supreme 
 and sufficient inspiration. 
 
 You remember that gallant fighter, Rear-Admiral 
 Philip Captain "Jack" Philip of the "Texas." 
 In his New Testament was pasted a slip with these 
 words : " Put any burden upon me, only sustain me. 
 Send me anywhere, only go with me. Sever any 
 tie but this tie which binds me to thy service and 
 thy heart." "Go with me!" Even the great sacri- 
 fices, the costly decisions, a man can quietly make 
 in the strength of that personal fellowship. The 
 goal of achieving God's thought for your life be-
 
 A Life Purpose 205 
 
 comes possible as that thought is interpreted and 
 commended to you day by day through the Master, 
 and as His hold upon you lifts you up. 
 
 It is very easy to use brave words about life-long 
 choices and an indomitable will. It is very easy 
 to be confident in the pulpit, and to offer smooth 
 prophecies to those who cannot answer back. One 
 would be afraid and ashamed to make such a show 
 of confidence, were it not for certain peculiar quali- 
 ties about this particular determination, to press on 
 toward the goal. Let us inquire what there is about 
 this particular promise and engagement of the soul 
 that roots it in a life, as the lighthouse shaft is 
 rooted in the living rock; that makes it utterly dif- 
 ferent from many another life ambition, such as to 
 become a great artist, to attain a fortune, or to 
 achieve a commanding place in the councils of the 
 nation. 
 
 "One thing I do; I press on toward the goal." 
 This affirmation springs from the divine will, it is 
 nourished by the divine love, and it issues in the 
 divine glory. To make it and to hold it, is to have 
 been lifted up by the mercy of God ! It is not at 
 all a dramatic or spectacular resolve, to be adver- 
 tised to the world, like the purpose to fly across the 
 Alps or the English Channel. It is not the glorious 
 manifesto of a hero, or a conqueror, or a saint. It 
 is the determination of an ordinary tempted, failing
 
 206 A Life Purpose 
 
 man, like ourselves, to push on in spite of fears, to 
 weather the storm, to make the harbor. Yet 
 through and through it is bound up with that which 
 is divinely glorious and triumphantly overcoming. 
 
 First of all, though it is so commonplace, so 
 suited to the common man and so well within his 
 power, its source is in the deep eternal springs of 
 the divine will. We are in the merciful grasp of our 
 Father in Heaven if we have this purpose. We 
 may never have been so conscious of our weakness 
 or our danger; but if this thought is in our heart, 
 to press on toward that goal, God is dealing with 
 us. Just as with Paul originally, that ambition 
 grows up out of the visiting grace of the Almighty. 
 It is He that worketh in us to will and to do of 
 His good pleasure. To set for ourselves that goal 
 is to have met with the redeeming power of Him 
 who has made us for Himself. It may not seem 
 so very great or so very gracious, here at 
 its humble beginnings, when the struggle is all 
 about us and the entanglements and redoubts lie 
 all before us. But looked back upon across the 
 life-time of years, from the clear, calm morning of 
 victory and joy, shall we not see how the power and 
 guidance of God were in it, and how it was a pur- 
 pose all divine? 
 
 Again, it is sustained and nourished by the divine 
 love. It could hardly last out a year or a month
 
 A Life Purpose 207 
 
 were it not confirmed and renewed by God's gentle- 
 ness and forgiveness. It is a wonderful ambition 
 this, which only lives by virtue of God's love. Were 
 not His patience and long-suffering inexhaustible, 
 how long do you think our resolution would stand 
 the strain of failure, indefinitely repeated? He will 
 gather up our energies anew, though we should 
 stumble and fall prostrate again and again and 
 again. 
 
 This only seems strange to us because we are so 
 unforgiving, so unlike God. We need to be re- 
 minded repeatedly that even those servants of God 
 who are successfully working for lost men and 
 women, are of an extraordinary, and to us most 
 unnatural, patience and hopefulness for those they 
 seek to save. They remind us how God wins with 
 us, and how He carries our faltering will, on and 
 on, through years and years, to a steadfast and 
 ultimately conclusive choice. But it is divine 
 love that wins the battle, and not our splendid 
 fidelity. 
 
 Here, for instance, we read of a crook and horse- 
 thief, who wandered into the Water Street Mission 
 and professed to be converted. Weeks after he had 
 come out as a convert at the mission and had been 
 wholly trusted by the workers, he again stole a 
 horse and was locked up in Westchester Jail. They 
 would be pretty angry and disgusted at the mission,
 
 208 A Life Purpose 
 
 would they not ! And yet the day that man's sen- 
 tence expired, the jailer handed him a new suit of 
 clothes from John Wyburn, the superintendent of 
 the mission, and a note saying " God bless you; 
 when you get back to the city look us up." And 
 the broken-spirited man looked them up, and to-day 
 stands faithful. 
 
 Here is the man McBride who for years has held 
 a Sunday morning service in Harrison Street Jail, 
 Chicago, in spite of unimaginable discouragements. 
 One morning there was a sulky young fellow in 
 one of the cells, to whom McBride, with a cordial 
 smile, handed a hymn-book. The man spit upon 
 him, like a snarling beast. He went back to him 
 again, presently, and again the man spit at him 
 through the bars. The third time the man simply 
 turned his back. But the next morning the jailer 
 telephoned McBride that the young man was all 
 broken up and was crying for the preacher. Mc- 
 Bride went to him, and together they knelt down 
 among the crowd of policemen and lawyers and 
 bondsmen, while he sobbed out his apology and his 
 confession. He confessed that morning in court 
 to a grave forgery committed in another State, and 
 went back there willingly to a long prison sentence. 
 But there came back presently the word that he 
 was the leader of a prison Bible-class, and later 
 McBride received the word of his triumphant death,
 
 A Life Purpose 209 
 
 together with a message from him of gratitude and 
 love and hope. 
 
 That helps us to imagine God. That is the way 
 in which our Father wins with us, leading us on, 
 when our unaided purpose would have broken down. 
 This resolution of ours is rooted in His love it 
 draws its life from His continual forgiveness. The 
 whole energy and power of the eternal gospel are 
 behind our poor profession. And so the poorest 
 of us may go forward hopefully. 
 
 And last of all, it issues in the divine glory. It is 
 commonplace enough now, with the humiliation of 
 our weakness through and through it. Our prayer 
 now is, 
 
 " Keep me from turning back ! 
 My hand is on the plough, my faltering hand; 
 But all in front of me is unfilled land, 
 The wilderness and solitary place, 
 The lonely desert and its interspace. 
 What harvest have I ? But this paltry grain , 
 These dwindling husks, a handful of dry corn, 
 These poor lean stalks. My courage is outworn, 
 Keep me from turning back. 
 The handles of my plough with tears are wet, 
 The shares with rust are spoiled and yet and yet 
 My God! My God! Keep me from turning back."* 
 
 He keeps us from turning back ! We look at our 
 Helper in Jesus Christ, and we know that He will 
 
 * From the "British Weekly."
 
 2io A Life Purpose 
 
 keep us. He bids us even now rejoice in hope of 
 the glory of God. We cannot see it across the 
 impenetrable future, any more than Columbus could 
 see across the misty ocean as he pressed forward. 
 But we press on! God sees it for us, and as He 
 calls us we walk by faith toward the glory that 
 shall be. 
 
 THE END
 
 A 000110984 2