GIFT OF . / i~ /Xt* ftp jFrancic <$. fleafcotrp, ©.2). SUNDAY EVENINGS IN THE COLLEGE CHAPEL. MORNINGS IN THE COLLEGE CHAPEL: First Series. Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion. MORNINGS IN THE COLLEGE CHAPEL: Second Series. AFTERNOONS IN THE COLLEGE CHAPEL. SUMMARY OF THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF FIFTY ON THE LIQUOR PROBLEM. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY Boston and New York College Ojapci ^untiap Ctoenmgs in tfje College Cfmpel SERMONS TO YOUNG MEN BY FRANCIS GREENWOOD PEABODY, PLUMMER PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN MORALS IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY • * » . BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY $\)t tttoerjri&e ipxtij Cambridge 1911 P&3 COPYRIGHT, 191 1, BV FRANCIS G. PEABODY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published October iqij To C. W. E. Severest critic, best of listeners, Questioning all things with perennial youth, Quick to detect when faulty logic errs, Yet quicker to discern each note of truth ; Men call you unimpassioned, cold, and stern, The last survivor of the Puritan, They little know the sympathies that burn For every worthy cause or troubled man. Straight to its mark your candid counsel flies, Its shaft of judgment tipped with kind desire, And those it pierces still unwounded risk, Chastened but strong, and purified by fire. Along the coast where we have lived together, There comes at evening-time, in summer weather, A hush of Nature, when the sighing firs Cease their complaining, and no land-breeze stirs The drowsy ocean; while the burnished bay Mirrors the splendor of the dying day. so, after many and tempestuous years, and many an angry gale of doubts and fears, The hostile breezes slacken and then cease; The harbor-lights are lit, of love and peace ; And life's calm evening settles over you As sunset gathers over Asticou. The prolonged vitality of three little books of Chapel Addresses (" Mornings in the College Chapel," 1896; " Afternoons in the College Chapel," 1898 ; "Mornings in the College Chapel, Second Series" igof) tempts me to add a concluding volume to the series. Daily Morning Prayer with a five- minute talk, Thursday Afternoon Vesper Service with a ten-minute address, and Sunday Evening Service with a full-sized sermon, made the weekly routine of worship during the twenty happy years of my administration in the College Chapel; and the volumes of which this is the last are my testimony of gratitude for an opportunity such as few preachers have ever been permitted to share. The continual challenge of a completely voluntary system of wor- ship, the offering to religion of a fair chance — and nothing more — among the competing interests of University life, and, more than all, the perennial romance and surprise of religious experience as it is met, and often rediscovered, by young men in the course of their education, — their self-assurance and self-abasement, their confidence and diffidence, their doubts and dreams, — all these incidents which create the atmosphere of a University, give to preaching a peculiar exhilaration. " After all" Phillips Brooks said one Sunday evening after one of his most irre- sistible of sermons , " this is the greatest of preach- ing-places." vii In sifting out the present collection from the ser- mons of twenty years, I have repeatedly recalled another remark of this unapproachable master. Speaking in our Preachers' Room just before one of his visits to England, he said: " I have been trying to pick out some sermons to use over there, but I find on looking them over that I have only one sermon" What seemed at the moment nothing more than playful self depreciation was in one sense profoundly true. Even his marvelous versatil- ity of method and inexhaustible wealth of illustra- tion did not disguise from him the fundamental unity of his message to the world. An observant hearer once said that Phillips Brooks never preached without using the word "Richness" The prof usion and increment of powers and resources to be attained by the human soul through communion with the living God was his constant theme. He could not preach without preaching his whole gospel. The text of all his sermons might have been the sublime promise : " I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" In a much more superficial and obvious way this little book turns out to contain but one sermon. When its contents were preached, they seemed to deal with many subjects ; but now that they are collected they look like fragments of a message which was never fully given. To interpret to young men the story of their own experience, and then to set this limited experience in its place among the spiritual problems of the modern world, — this must always viii be the aim of University preaching; and it prescribes a form of treatment which is inevitably somewhat fixed. Not to begin with the special problems of edu- cation is to fail of contact with the academic mind ; not to make connection between this experience of education and the great trunk-lines of human pro- gress and desire is to remain academic, provincial, and side-tracked, as though one's train of thought had no terminal at tide-water. Here, at least, is the reason — even though it be not an excuse — for a uniformity of type which, on looking over these ser- mons, I have found rather disconcerting. Some of the following sermons are expansions or variations of themes briefly stated in short talks at Morning Prayers: and for the sake of curious stu- dents of homiletics who may care to trace the devel- opment — or dilution — of an idea, J have in such instances made a reference to earlier volumes in this series. Finally, and in order to indicate the histori- cal tradition of Puritan piety which Harvard Uni- versity inherits and cherishes, I have set at the end of this volume a sermon preached at the 250th an- niversary of the founding of the College. Cambridge, September, 191 1. IX CONTENTS ^ FAGB I. The Great Waste-Product i II. The Revealing of the Heart .... 19 III. Work and Revelation 35 IV. The Opening Doors 57 V. The Prodigality of Providence .... 74 VI. The Comfort of the Truth 90 VII. The Wedding-Garment 106 VIII. The Shallows and the Deep 124 IX. The Writing on the Corner-Stone . . 142 X. Discipline 160 XI. The Parable of the Vacuum 176 XII. Pilate. A Sermon on Palm Sunday . . 197 XIII. The Power of the Endless Life. A Ser- mon on Easter Sunday 215 XIV. The Christian Doctrine of Social Ser- vice 233 XV. The Signs of the Times 252 XVI. A Broad Place. A sermon at the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of harvard college . . 273 College Cfmpel THE GREAT WASTE PRODUCT Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.— John VI, 12. |NE of the most striking characteris- tics of modern business is the new importance given to the prevention of waste. Along with the prodigious increase of production procured by new inventions, new processes, and new machinery, a further source of profit has been found in utilizing material which was once thrown away ; and in many forms of industry these waste-pro- ducts, or by-products, which were once merely slag or refuse, have become as valu- able as the product originally sought. In the close competitions of modern business it may almost be said that the difference between Hwirtrap (EbedJiffS in t&e College C&apel profit and loss is not infrequently determined by the utilization of waste. A company is or- ganized, for example, to make illuminating gas, and the manufacture is obstructed by a de- posit of coal-tar. When, however, this waste- product is applied to industry, it is discovered that its use in the processes of dyeing is as profitable as the gas of which it was once the refuse. In the same way a packing house, in addition to the meats it cures, finds a new source of profit in utilizing every scrap of waste, for lard, or cottolene, or glue ; or a com- pany organized to refine oil enormously in- creases its income by adding to its primary intention the sale of by-products, such as naphtha, benzine, or paraffine. Rags, cinders, parings, husks, seaweed, — all have become worth saving. Fuel, manure, paper, cloth, — all may be made of waste. The same discovery of unutilized values is illustrated on the largest scale in the national enterprise known as the Conservation Move- ment. Rivers have been for centuries running to waste, deserts have been left unpopulated, waterfalls have spent themselves in wearing away rocks, forests have been devastated by fire or reckless cutting ; until at last the enor- §>tmUap €uentiiff0 in t&e College C&apel mous dimensions of this wastefulness have been realized, and the nation, with new fore- sight, proceeds to tame its rivers, to irrigate its deserts, to transform its water-power into light, and to save for posterity its outraged forests. When the historian of the future nar- rates the events of the present generation it is not improbable that this conservation of the nation's wealth may seem the achievement most worth recording. Thousands of millions of dollars are being saved from total loss to enrich hundreds of millions of citizens as yet unborn. But what is the great waste-product ? That question was, in part, answered some years ago by the leading political economist of Great Britain, in an address to the Coopera- tive Congress at Ipswich. The assemblage represented more than a million of the work- ing people of England ; and their vast organ- ization, expending many millions of pounds each year, was the direct descendant of the simple scheme of mutual aid devised in 1844 by twenty-eight poor weavers of Rochdale. Speaking to these plain working-people, Pro- fessor Marshall said that they " had utilized the great waste-product." It was, as he ex* 3 §>tmfcap (Kbeninas in t&e College C&apel plained, the capacity for business sagacity and management which great numbers of people might possess without its ever being discov- ered and set to work. The Cooperative System had promoted the discovery of this unsuspected force of initiative, thrift, foresight, fraternal- ism, and leadership. Men might enter the ser- vice of some modest rural Society, where the principles of the organization gave them a chance to rise, until the same persons who be- gan in the ranks might come to very large re- sponsibilities and prove themselves competent to conduct vast business affairs with astonish- ing success. To demonstrate the existence of such capacity among plain people and to put it to use, should be regarded, this teacher said, as " the greatest achievement of wage- earners in the history of the world." The great waste-product, that is to say, is not tar, or rags, or hide, but human character, — the unutilized intelligence, ambition, or skill, which many a man may possess without knowing it, and which, if it can be found and used, may be the most profitable of invest- ments. Here is a test of wisdom which often meets an employer. If a manufacturer were asked 4 §>tmUap dutoenitifffi in t&e College Cfoapel on what single item of cost his profits chiefly depended, he would be likely to reply that it was not so much on the wage-scale, or the price of material, or the cost of plant, as on the maintenance of a continuous maximum of production. Intermittency, periodicity, a shifting market, an insufficient supply of labor, strikes and rumors of strikes, — these risks which reduce production are the con- stant dread of employers. But how shall one secure this maximum of production ? Can ma- chinery be made so perfect that the human fac- tor in production may be ignored ? Is it pru- dent to regard the loyalty and capacity of the wage-earners as a valueless waste-product ? Cannot a corporation be as sagacious as a Co- operative Store ? Most employers persistently believe that the appeal to thrift, economy, or fidelity will meet no response from their em- ployed ; that business is a vast machine, in which the working-man has become a wheel interlocking with the rest ; and it must be admitted that a dehumanized, anonymous, mechanical industrialism is the most alarming characteristic of the present time. Precisely here, however, is the opportunity for wisdom. The humanization of industry is the next 5 gmntap Ctoenuiff* in t&e College Cfcapel step in economic progress. Administrators of business who are devising ways of utilizing initiative, intelligence, and efficiency, and who give to these contributions to production their just reward, are not only finding a new source of profit, but are insuring themselves against strikes, class-hatred, and revolution. To neglect the great waste-product may mean, not only commercial loss, but suspi- cion, conflict, and disaster. To utilize the great waste-product may mean, not only com- mercial advantage, but humanity, fraternity, and peace. These lessons of commercial and economic experience are, however, but suggestions of a much more serious and personal problem. The principle of conservation, which has been so lavishly applied to our national resources, and which is now an accepted principle in business affairs, has hardly been approached in the much more vital concerns of the physical, or moral, or religious life. We have learned to save our forests, but we still waste our nerves. We make the desert blossom into fertility, but we permit thousands of children to lose the bloom of life by premature labor and unwhole- some homes. The same person may with infi- 6 ^unUap CucntnffB til the vCollcffr vCbapcl nite care breed his cattle, and then make the great venture of marriage with no foresight beyond a passing fancy or a commercial gain. We teach our farmers to raise hundreds of bushels from land which had been thought hopelessly sterile, but we permit thousands of young people to grow up without trade or dis- cipline, like abandoned and untilled soil, and in the end to be unemployed because they are unemployable. We train our dogs in special types of color or shape, of scent or speed, but we train our children in a rigid uniformity of lessons and examinations, which levels tal- ent with dulness and leaves the unusual mind quite undiscovered even by itself. For centu- ries infinite pains have been taken to produce the best horses, or cows, or chickens, while it has remained for this generation to make the first approach to a science of eugenics, or the producing of healthy children and of sound family stocks. A still stranger fact about human waste is this, — that it is most reckless and prodigal in those concerns which are most vital and permanent. In the care of the body conserva- tion has been to some extent achieved. The solemn truths of heredity, and the extraordi- 7 i&mn&ap ©toemiiffS in t&e College C&apel nary capacity of physical life to mould and transform its tendencies, are at least recog- nized as science, even if not applied in prac- tice. When, however, we turn to the interests of human life which are unseen and eternal, the great waste-product seems to be not only unutilized, but hardly suspected. Sensible people have learned enough of eugenics to check or mitigate many physical disasters ; worldly-wise people have learned to save their money and to guard their health ; business people have discovered that a penny saved is a penny earned and have organized on an enormous scale for the prevention of waste ; working-people have learned, often by bitter experience, that overwork is wasteful extrava- gance, and are demanding legislation and reg- ulation to conserve their ability to earn. But how is it with the moral and intellectual life, for the sake of which — it may be supposed — health and money are accumulated and prized ? No one can observe the signs of the time with- out being struck by the enormous capacity for spiritual efficiency of whose existence even its possessors are often altogether unaware. The English Chancellor of the Exchequer has lately called attention to the waste of power 8 £>tmUap (Etjcntnfffi in tfce College C&apel involved in the training of the rich. They re- ceive, he said, the best that money can buy ; their bodies and brains are disciplined ; and then " they devote themselves to a life of idle- ness." It is " a stupid waste of first-class ma- terial." Instead of contributing to the work of the world, they " kill their time by tearing along roads at perilous speed, or do nothing at enormous expense." The same story might be told, in somewhat different language, of many American lives. A youth, for instance, of sound inheritances and wholesome tastes, comes to his manhood with a fund of health, friends, education, and money, and enters the life of the modern world. What potential leadership and service- ableness are put into his hands ! What a chance is his to guide, to serve, to lift, to redeem ! In the great crisis of our civil war men no older than he, and of no better stuff, found them- selves suddenly colonels or generals, with the fate of an army committed to them ; and the new and not less ominous conflicts of indus- trial and social life are now waiting for just such disciplined and generous men to take command. Now watch this youth as the world's work and play lay hold on him and he 9 §>tmUai> €benm&;s in ttje College Cbapd becomes immersed in the routine and fri- volity of life. Money and sport, getting and spending, office and club, overwhelm his ideal- ism and sweep him into the current of com- monplace, until he sinks into the monotonous ocean of mediocrity. Nothing that is base or discreditable need be reported of this submerg- ence of a soul. The man may emerge at last a respectable, comfortable, portly citizen, to be described in the commercial phrase of our obituaries as " successful." But what a waste has there been of the finest stuff ; what pre- cious by-products have remained unutilized ; what undiscovered strength of character and unsuspected resources of nobility and wisdom, have been drowned by the rising tide of pros- perity or indolence! Does it need a bloody war to reveal the heroic traits which exist in young men to-day as surely as they were latent in the young men of 1861, or shall some new science of spiritual conservation rescue from waste the undiscovered character which is needed for works of peace not Jess than for deeds of war ? Or a girl finds herself swept into the re- volving circle of social obligations, until her days and nights are exhausted by the give S>tmUap Ctoctuiifffi in tbe College Chapel and take, the shuffling and winning, of the social game. It may be a harmless part she plays, it may even be a frivolity appropri- ate to her age, yet she becomes more and more aware of unsatisfied ideals, and unful- filled consecration. A disturbing sense of waste invades her self-centred carelessness, and reveals to her the insidious approach of selfishness, despondency, and despair. "Oh, for some imperative call," she cries, " of duty or desire, of service or sacrifice, which may rescue me from this progressive paralysis of my own soul, and give me, not merely a pleas- ant use of half my life, but the full use of powers and gifts of which I am dimly and oc- casionally aware ! " The same sense of unutilized resources con- fronts one in the larger relations of associated life. The vast work of public charity, for ex- ample, in which a fortune is sunk each year, is in most places a monument of extravagance and recklessness, loosely organized, wastefully administered, and reducing to permanent pauperism a considerable proportion of its recipients. In a well-organized modern State there would remain, no doubt, suffering and sickness, old age and death, and these trage- ii Smirtiap ©toning;* in t&e College Cfcapel dies of life would bring with them destitution ; but in such a State there would not be pau- perism in the sense of a permanently depend- ent and unemployable class. The poor, as Jesus Christ said, we have always with us ; but the pauper, as an English writer has remarked, is a work of art, the creation of wasteful sym- pathy and legislative inefficiency. What is true of public relief is not less evi- dent in private charity. When Mr. Charles Booth's monumental study of London first ap- peared, it seemed to many readers to reach a very shocking conclusion. One third of the population, it appeared, were earning incomes so small and precarious as to leave them below the margin of self-support. An opposite state- ment of the same facts may, however, be equally suggestive. If it be true that one fam- ily out of three is below the poverty-line, it is not less true that two families out of three are above that line, ranging from those who barely maintain self-support to those who live in affluence. In other words, if two such families could combine to bear the burden of one less fortunate home — procuring work, advising in trouble, training children, relieving temporary distress — the whole vast and por- 12 gmntoap €toentng;c in t&e College Cfcapel tentous enterprise of London charity would cease to exist. The problem remains unsolved and threatening simply because the capacity for personal service which already exists in the prosperous classes has not been recognized or applied, and because great numbers of prosperous citizens have not the least idea that they have a personal duty to do, or give any portion of their time and means to do it. If this be true of the huge aggregation of lives which London holds, it is much more obvious in the less overwhelming conditions of smaller towns. Effective relief of the poor cannot be secured by official bureaus or dele- gated responsibility. It is a personal, individ- ualized and continuous task, to be accom- plished only as the social conscience of the entire community, which has so long been a neglected by-product of modern life, is set to fulfil its proper work of saving persons through persons, and applying the force of compassion through the machinery of scientific charity. When we pass, finally, from physical and moral illustrations of the waste-product of humanity, and come to the religious interests of modern life, the case is the most serious of all. As one surveys the activities of the re- *3 Stm&ap <£toening0 in tbe College Chapel ligious world, he recognizeslwith appreciation and gratitude the enormous volume of zeal, generosity and consecration which are de- voted to the maintenance and extension of the Christian Church ; yet he cannot fail to see at the same time how vast a force of spiritual energy and efficiency is left unutil- ized by prevailing methods, and what a mul- titude of persons who ought to be contributors to Christian efficiency are regarded, and even regard themselves, as waste-products, inapplicable to the supreme work of human redemption. To a great and increasing number of thoughtful persons, the Christian Church has become little more than a social organization which is a survival of other ages, or a social club which is of interest to its members alone. Such persons go their way, like the men of the parable, one to his farm, and another to his merchandise; one to his golf, and another to his trade-union ; and leave religion to the sentimentalists, the theo- logians, and the reactionaries. At such a time, what is organized Christianity called on to do ? It is summoned to overhaul its machinery and ideals, and to take new account of its efficiency and aims. Are its teachings and methods 14 §uitfjap CDrntntro in t&e College Chapel utilizing the entire volume of spiritual power which is at its command? Has it not rejected resources which are its legitimate possessions ? Has it not deterred from cooperation rather than won to loyalty ? Problems of ritual, con- troversies of creed, rivalries of sects, claims of authority, exhilarating as these activities of the Christian Church may be to the ecclesi- astical mind, are to persons bred in the hab- its of the modern world as remote and unreal as the concerns of another planet. A church must have a doctrine as a body must have clothes, but to regard details of doctrine as the essentials of the Christian life seems to great numbers of people to-day like study- ing one's necktie and neglecting one's soul. Must it then be confessed that the life of the present age is destined to remain outside the work of religion, — a discarded waste-product, to be given over to irreligion, indifference, and contempt ? On the contrary, there never was a more poignant cry than goes up from the modern mind for light on the way of life, for a rational faith, a justified hope, a redemp- tion from sin, a practical Gospel. The soul of the modern man has an unconquerable crav- ing for communion with the Eternal, and cries '5 iSmnUap Cneninga in t&e College C&apei with Augustine : " My heart is restless until it finds rest in Thee." The possibilities of the religious life, instead of being limited or out- grown, have never been fairly realized or ap- plied. The greatest of waste-products is the spiritual nature of man. To discriminate be- tween the accidents of faith and its essence, to bring to the service of religion, not a part of a man but the whole of him, to consecrate home, business, politics, art, and science in the name of Christ, to take people just as they are and make them believe in their own spirit- ual capacity, — this is the work of spiritual conservation which confronts the religion of the future ; and this work, if it be undertaken with open minds and genuine faith, may ex- pand and refresh the work of the Christian religion, as some great work of irrigation in the West lets loose the refreshing water upon a desert and makes it wave with an unim- agined harvest. To what conclusion, then, are we led as we trace this waste of power, in forests and in faiths, in the material and spiritual life of man ? The first impression one must receive is that of grave disappointment and disillu- sion. The pride one may have had in his sci- 16 &tmfcap ©bentnfffi in t(je College C&apel ence, his education, or his religion becomes supplanted by self-reproach. The opportuni- ties put into one's hands have not been half used. Precious waste-products have been neg- lected or even unknown. The resources of life have been met by ignorance or stupidity. Yet, not less reasonably, this consciousness of a vast volume of unutilized power may jus- tify, both in individuals and in society, a new and reasonable hope. If it be true that the resources of human character are not half employed ; if many a life, which fancies it- self irretrievably condemned to routine and commonplace, has in it the capacity for lead- ership and heroism ; if the springs of human efficiency have as yet hardly been tapped ; if religion has been cultivated as an exotic, in- door plant, instead of being sown broadly in the soil of modern life with the confident faith that its field is the world ; — then the time that is coming, when these waste-products shall be set to work and the meagre use of great possessions supplanted by the conserva- tion of spiritual energy, may be great days both for the world and for the Church. To discover in one's life that which it was meant to be ; to rescue it from inefficiency and save *7 &tmfcap ©toemnas in t&e College Cljapel it for others' sakes ; to set people at work to save the world instead of expecting to have it saved by the machinery of State or Church ; to view the religious life not as a technical and dogmatic possession, but as a rational and human redemption, — that is the task of spir- itual conservation which is committed to the present generation to perform. It is like the miracle of the grain, when the soil which has produced a scanty crop responds to science and industry, and surprises its owner with a marvellously abundant harvest. It is like the miracle which the Gospel reports of the feed- ing of the multitude. The people were hun- gry, and what was the food they had among so many ! But the Master takes the little and makes it much. Out of what seems a morsel he creates a meal ; across the centuries he speaks again to many a self-distrustful, hesi- tating, half-utilized modern life : " Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost " ; and as the fragments of truth or duty are gathered up and freely offered for the service of men, a multitude may be fed by what seemed not enough for one. t8 II THE REVEALING OF THE HEART 1 That the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. — Luke u, 35. *$ HIS is the prophecy of the aged Sim- eon as he stands in the Temple, a few days after the birth of Jesus, holding the baby in his arms. There is hardly any more beautiful scene in history. The old man has been waiting for the consolation of Israel; he is a just and devout man; the Holy Ghost is upon him; and now in his old age he is permitted to see the hope of his nation fulfilled. The lingering past holds the new-born future in his arms, and the old man sings : u Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, ... for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." Then, still holding the child high before the people, the old man goes on to tell what is to happen, now that this boy is born. He " is set," says Simeon, " for 1 Cf. Mornings in the College Chapel, First Series, p. 78. 19 Smirtap Ctoetiinffg m t&e College C&apel the fall and rising again of many in Israel " ; and we remember how soon it came to pass that fishermen rose to be apostles, and Phari- sees fell under the judgment of Christ. He is to be a sign, goes on Simeon, " which shall be spoken against " ; and we remember how soon it happened that the way of Jesus was beset by misinterpretation, slander, and shame. Then, finally, and with a still finer instinct, old Simeon prophesies that, as the last sign of the Messiahship of Jesus, " the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed." People, that is to say, who should come into relation with Jesus would not only learn many and wonderful thoughts out of his heart, but they would also have revealed unto them- selves the thoughts of their own hearts ; and he, on his side, would not only understand these thoughts of other hearts, but he would en- able people to understand their own thoughts, and would reveal to them the self which lay within themselves. The gift of Jesus to many a life was to be, not only a revealing of the mysteries of God, but a revealing of one's own spiritual capacity, a consciousness of one's power, a renewal of one's self-respect, the discovery that within one's heart lay 20 Smn&ap (Ktoentngs in tlje ColUje C&apel thoughts which were better than one had ever dreamed were there. So stands the man of the old order look- ing into the promise of the new; and few things are more wonderful in the story of Jesus than the way in which this prophecy of Simeon soon came to be fulfilled. One after another the people of the New Testament come into the presence of Jesus, some of them sympathizers, some enemies, some puzzled, some impetuous, some neutral, some timid ; and to many of the questions which they ask of him they get no satisfying reply. They often remain bewildered about the relation of Christ to his Father and the mission of Christ to the world. Yet, as they pass out of his presence, one thing has been revealed which was per- haps the last thing they had expected. It is the thoughts of their own hearts. They have had themselves disclosed to themselves ; and their interior characters, motives, capacities, and sins, which had been hitherto only half un- derstood even by themselves, are clarified, in- terpreted, and illuminated by their intercourse with Jesus Christ. Here, for instance, comes Nathanael, doubt- ful, wary, asking, " Can there any good thing 21 gmntoap ©toeninps in t&e College Cfcapel come out of Nazareth ? " and Jesus looks on him and through him, and reading his char- acter — faithful, pure, fit for discipleship — says of him, " Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile !" and Nathanael, who fancied that he was observing and judging Jesus, is turned back upon himself, and says, "Whence knowest thou me?" Then Peter comes, inconstant, wavering, more like shift- ing sand than solid rock, and Jesus looks through him also, and, beneath all the blunders he is to make, and the self-reproach which is to be his, perceives the underlying capacity for ultimate leadership, and says of him, fickle and impetuous as he seems to himself, "Thoushalt be called a rock." Then Pilate comes, wary, sagacious, anxious to be unentangled in the case of Jesus, and his temporizing, worldly wisdom is laid bare at a stroke as Jesus says, "Thou sayest that I am a king," and instead of judging Jesus, Pilate is judged and con- demned. So they come, and so they pass : the woman of Samaria, touched with a wonder she had not thought was hers to feel : the woman who was a sinner, recalled to the virtue she had thought was lost. It is as though these figures came up out of the shadow and passed before Smntoap (Btoentnpi in t&e College C&apel the penetrating rays of the person of Jesus, and he shone on them for a moment and re- vealed to them a self within themselves, and they passed on with a sense of significance and power given to their obscure and insignifi- cant lives. Such was the extraordinary fulfilment of the old man's prophecy, and it remains a pro- mise which gives courage and hope to many a modern life. This is a wonderful time and a wonderful America in which it is our privilege to live : a time, we are told, of the greatest diffusion of general prosperity recorded in the history of the world ; a time of quite unpre- cedented transformations in industry, and of amazing increase in productiveness and power. Never before was the world so highly organ- ized or so mechanically perfect ; and yet out of this aggregated life there issues one new peril, which threatens to rob all these gains of half their glory. It is the peril of a suppressed and undiscovered personality, the merging of the individual in the movement of the mass, the risk that in this vast organization of effi- ciency the thoughts of many hearts shall re- main quite unrevealed. Here is this mighty movement of industrial 23 gmnfcap (EtoenuiffB in tjje College C&apel and political life, with its huge aggregation of material forces and of masses of men ; but in this complicated mechanism of the modern world, where is the place for the individual soul? What is it but one part of the great machine, one little wheel interlocking and revolving with the rest ? A workman, a clerk, a factory hand, a teacher, a scholar, looks at his life, so fragmentary, so mechanical, so impersonal, and cries out : " Why should I have any thought in my heart ? Why should I have any heart ? What am I but one shuttle in the great mill of modern life as it weaves the rich product of the modern time ? " I stood once by the death- bedof such a man — a clerk in avast establishment — and we talked together of the death that seemed ap- proaching, and the man looked up into my face out of his sad experience of a de-per- sonalized and mechanical life and said, "Sir, I have been dead and buried for twenty years." That is the seamy side of our material develop- ment. It is what the economists call the "cost of progress," or the "anonymousness of in- dustry," where a human life, instead of having revealed to it the thoughts of its own heart, is simply one more cog in the great machine. 24 §>tmtoap (frjeniitfffi in the College Chapel " Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more." When one turns to the other end of life, from its work to its play, from the routine of industrial life to the routine of social life, is it not much the same ? How mechanical, formal, oppressive, unreal, it often seems ! What is it that brings to many a young man or woman a great sense of recoil from the habits and de- mands of modern life, its conventionalism, its uniformity, its incessant round of social obli- gations and routine ? It is the same fear that the thoughts of one's own heart may be crushed by the weight of the mass, so that personality, individuality, originality, liberty, life itself, may be lost. The very slang of the day exhibits the social world as an aggregate and impersonal movement, in which the indi- vidual sinks. One person says that he "keeps up with the procession," as though the prob- lem of his life were that of a little boy who keeps step with the band ; another person says that he is "in the swim," as though he were a kind of conscious chip in the middle of a resistless current ; and out of all this 25 Stmtoap (Sftjemiiffs in t&e College Cfjapel submerging civilization many a young life lifts itself up and cries : " Oh, to be myself ! Oh, to be taken out of this stream of things and to find a place where I may stand on my feet ! What shall it profit me if I gain all the world and lose my own soul ? Somehow, somewhere, Oh world in which I seem irrevocably set, re- veal to me the thoughts of my own heart ! " What is it, then, which can rescue such lives as these ? It is a revival of moral courage, a renewed sense of capacity, a restoration of faith in their own thoughts. They may de- serve the rebuking of mistakes, but they need much more the fortifying of self-respect. They have a conviction of sin, but they lack a conviction of power. A great flood of con- ventionalism and conformity has swept over the modern world, and bears on its crest a wave of personal discouragement and impo- tency, until many a life finds itself almost drowned beneath the choking pressure of the world's work or the paralyzing ennui of the world's play ; and the recovery of faith, not in God or in Christ alone, but in one's self, the rescue of the life from the things that crush the life, becomes the elementary desire and prayer of many a modern soul. 26 ^untoap CtirnmsD in tbc CoUc^c Cbaprt Now, to people living thus in an age of ma- chinery, to people thus swept along by the swift stream of living yet thirsty for the wa- ter of life, there comes this first message of the religion of Jesus Christ. The Christian religion begins with one great assumption — that human beings are children of God; that neither dulness nor hardness nor lack of op- portunity altogether robs one of the right to be good and to do good ; that this is what people are made for ; that when any child of God, even in a far country of sin and shame, turns to the Father, then, as was said of the Prodigal, " he comes to himself " ; that it was not his true self which had wandered away, but that he had wandered away from his true self; that the thoughts of one's own heart which call one to his best are the call of God to the inheritance which all the time belonged to the child. Believing all this, Jesus believed in people just as they were. He believed in them even when they did not believe in them- selves. He believed in Peter, though Peter denied him ; he believed in Thomas, though Thomas doubted him ; he discerned the po- tential capacity of men before they had re- cognized it themselves. He took them just as 27 Smitfrap (Ebeninffs tn t&e College Chapel they were, and through his faith in them created in them the character which they had not supposed they could assume, until the secrets which were hidden from them in their own hearts were through his faith in them finally revealed. It was a pedagogical instinct in Jesus. He had the mind of the born teacher. He knew that little can be got out of a life by a teacher except by the teacher's faith that each life is made for something, and that to draw out the Divine intention for that life is the teacher's task and joy. That, in- deed, is what millions of people have meant by being saved by Jesus Christ. It is not that they have been saved from torment, or saved from themselves, but that they have been saved to themselves, so that the possi- bilities of their own nature have been revealed to them, and the thoughts of their own hearts which they had lost have been found. I was reading a while ago a little book in which the author told the story of his own life, and in the preface he had written : "This is a book with but one intention — that in being read, it may read you." That is what might be said of the influence of the Gospels. They are the story of a life ; but, in being read, they read 28 gmnHap (Ktoenrnps in t&e College Cfcapel you. They report to you, not only the story of Jesus, but the story of your own experience. It is not only you that find their meaning ; but, as Coleridge said, they "find you." In his letter to the Corinthians the Apostle Paul tells the same story in a striking figure. It is, he writes, as though the Christian were set be- fore a wonder-working mirror, in which was reflected the glory of God. At first the image of this glory dazzles the beholder, and he puts a veil between it and himself ; but gradually, as he looks again into the mirror, he discerns his own features reflected back to him, but touched with something of that glory which was itself too bright to bear, until at last his own image is changed into the image of the Divine likeness, so that the looker-on becomes like that on which he looks. " Beholding," the Apostle says, " as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image ... by the spirit of the Lord." That, he thinks, is what may happen as one looks steadily into the mirror of God. It is not that he shall be all at once made perfect, but that by degrees the veil shall be drawn away be- fore the magic glass, and he shall see his im- perfect thoughts touched with the glory of 29 gmnlrap (Ktoeninfffi in t&e College C&apel God's intention, until that which he is changes before him into that which he prays to be, as by the spirit of the Lord. Here, then, is an aspect of the religion of Jesus Christ which may make a starting-point for rational discipleship. It is not the whole of his gospel ; it is not the profoundest part of his gospel ; but it may be the first gift of his religion to many a timid, hesitating, bewild- ered man. When one recalls the motives which through the Christian centuries have oper- ated most strongly to stir the higher life, they turn out, in the main, to have been two. On the one hand is the motive of self-re- proach, on the other hand is the motive of self-respect. One is the scorn of sin, the other is the desire for holiness. Both of these mo- tives have a legitimate part in the creation of the Christian character ; but the first and ex- pulsive force which drives out evil has had an enormously greater place than the second and attractive force which draws to good. The first is the cry of Paul : " Who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? " and it has been taken up by teachers of religion, as though the secret of holiness lay in the con- fession of helplessness. In Jesus, however, 30 ISmitfjap 6tocninpi in tjje College C&apel we hear for the most part the other note. He too understands the power of self-reproach ; he too welcomes the confession, " God be merciful to me, a sinner ! " ; but with Jesus the sense of impotency is but a step on the way to the sense of strength, like a soldier's sudden sinking of heart when he is summoned to charge. The call of God, as Jesus heard it, is the call of a commander who has faith in his men ; the call to courage, to advance, to victory. Jesus does not merely tell men that they are weak ; he makes them believe that they are strong. He bids them never to be- lieve in less than their own best. He shows them the way up the heights they desire to scale, and goes before them on that hard path, so that they follow in his steps where they had thought they could not go. That is the Christian method — the renewal of cour- age by the communication of power, the trans- figuration of life in the mirror of God, so that it is changed by that into which it looks. Discipleship brings with it self-discovery. Re- turning to the Father is coming to one's self. The Christian life develops unsuspected power. Intimacy with Jesus Christ is the revelation of one's own heart. 3* SmnUap ©toenitiffa in t|je College C&apel There are many things which people want to get from their religion and which religion does not seem to bestow. They want to be assured of their future ; they want to be saved from their past ; they want their present made easier ; and all these prayers seem to leave them just about where they were. The old routine, the inexorable machinery, still en- virons them, and they begin to wonder what their religious faith was meant to do. One of the most striking facts in the ministry of Jesus is that the same business in which his disciples were engaged when he first met them was the business in which he left them at the end. They were fishermen tending their nets at the beginning of the Gospel of Mat- thew, and they were fishermen still tend- ing their nets at the end of the Gospel of John. What, then, did Jesus do for them ? The old life, just as it was, had become to them a new life, because they had discovered within it a possible companionship with the creative work of God, so that the same per- sons who had cast their nets with the dull stolidity of many a modern fisherman found themselves called to put forth into the deep and catch men. 32 i&mtfiap (Eneninp in tlje College C&apel That is the miracle which religion still waits to perform. The work of faith is not to trans- form one's circumstances or to lessen the pres- sure of routine, but to disentangle from that routine the thoughts of the heart, as the fingers of Peter and Andrew disentangled themselves from the meshes of their nets as they rose up and followed Christ. In the midst of the inevitable routine and detail of the world a life starts up and says : "lam not a cog ; I am not a wheel ; I am not a chip ; I am a child of God, a partaker of the Divine nature, a laborer with God, a joint- heir with Jesus Christ." Then experience is transformed from prose to poetry, and the ideals of life become its realities, and the se- crets of the heart are revealed ; and as one looks into the magic mirror of God his little fragmentary, fruitless life is changed into some dim reflection of the glory of the Lord. The tapestry weavers of Paris, it is said, did their work at the back of the picture which they created, where they saw only the fragments of their task and the loose ends which were left behind; but from time to time the workman might rise from the corner 33 gmtrtap ^tnm%si in t&e College C&apei where he worked and go round to the other side and see the total picture in which each had his slight but essential share. That is re- ligion — the going round to the other side of things, the seeing the whole of that in which one has his fragmentary part ; and that is what gives to life its dignity, patience, and joy. The loose ends fall into their places when one sees the Master Craftsman's plan, and the thoughts of many hearts are at last united, interpreted, and revealed. 34 Ill WORK AND REVELATION But the servants which drew the water knew. — John II, 9. HIS sentence seems to have slipped almost by accident into the record. It is printed in our translation be- tween two parenthesis marks, as though it were not an essential part of the story. The writer seems to feel called to explain how the mir- acle of which he writes came to be known. The guests, he says, for whose sake it hap- pened, did not notice that a miracle had been performed. They took the gift of God and thought it a gift from man. "Thou hast kept the good wine until now," they said jestingly to the bridegroom. Even the ruler of the feast "tasted the water that was made wine and knew not whence it was : (but the servants which drew the water knew.)" While they were doing the work of the feast, they came to recognize the guest of the feast. They filled the water pots as he bade them, but when they 35 Stmttap ©tienmgs m t&e College Chapel drew the water it was wine. What began as a servant's task ended as a Divine revelation. They knew what those whom they served failed to learn. The bridegroom's friends received the wine, but the bridegroom's servants re- ceived the Messiah. The guests departed as ignorant as they came, but the servants which drew the water knew. One should not look for fanciful meanings in the legends which soon gathered round the early days of the great teacher. Perhaps the writer meant no more than to claim the wit- ness of the servants for the truth of the mir- acle. If any one doubted, let him ask the ser- vants who did the bidding of Jesus, for they had positive evidence that the water had been made wine. It seems like the unsophisticated report of one who fancied, as many fancy still, that to be a Messiah one must be a magician, and that the power to convert souls from sin is shown by the power to convert water into wine. Yet, even though the writer were un- aware of any deeper meaning — and indeed, the better if he was unaware of it — this in- terpolated verse brings us to the heart of the story. It was not, it says, the partakers of the feast, but the providers of the feast, who re- 36 gmntoap (Ebeninffg in t&e College C&apel cognized the miracle. The guests went their way, and as the work of Jesus broadened and his fame went " into all the villages round- about," it was perhaps these friends of his youth who said : " How can this be the Mes- siah ? Did we not sit with him at the wedding in Cana, where the wine was good ? Search and see, for out of Nazareth cometh no pro- phet" ; "And every man went to his own house." But behind the careless company in this pleasant picture of a village festival stand always these figures of the servants at their work, their bodies bending to serve the tables, but their faces aglow with the surprise of rev- elation. Knowledge had come to them through service. Their task had become their teacher. In the doing of their work their eyes were opened to the truth which others could not see. Those who received the wine might doubt or deny; but the servants which drew the water knew. However, then, one may regard the histor- ical testimony to this early tradition of the youth of Jesus, or however little the miracle itself may seem to teach of his spiritual mis- sion, this incidental allusion announces a law of experience, which is as plain in its opera- 37 J&mtirap ©toenitifffli in tfce College C&apel tion to-day as it was in Cana of Galilee. We must not misread the teaching. It does not merely set the workers of the world over against the idlers, commending work and re- buking pleasure. Jesus, it must be remembered, was himself one of the wedding guests. He was no ascetic, preaching like John the Bap- tist a stern message of self-abnegation. He shared the joys and welcomed the happiness of human life. John came, it is written, "neither eating nor drinking " ; but of Jesus it was said, " Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, the friend of publicans and sinners." The king- dom of heaven was to him a glad and happy hope ; its coming was like the celebration of a great feast, like the marriage of a king's son, like a march of maidens to meet the bride- groom. It is not, that is to say, a sign of the Christian character to be always at work, like a servant at his task ; or to find in relaxation and recreation a temptation or a sin. One of the most convincing aspects of the teaching of Jesus is the healthy-minded sympathy with which he welcomes the normal pleasures of life. "These things have I spoken unto you," he says, " that my joy might remain with you, and that your joy might be full." 38 &tmtiap CbemnffB in tbe College € bapel Yet, on the other hand, the teaching of Jesus dwells with a steady emphasis on the re- ligious significance of common daily work. No contrast between the tradition of Rome and the religion which was to conquer Rome is more striking than this. To a Roman, work was a task for slaves, and idleness a privilege of the free-born. Work was degrading, compulsory, despised. A Roman citizen spent his days at the Forum, the baths, or the games ; not at the shop, the forge, or the bench. When the Apostle Paul was writing to young Timothy of Christian duty, the very words he used must have carried to a Roman ear the thought of servitude. "Study to show thyself," he said, "a workman that needeth not to be ashamed" {pperarius non embescendus). A Roman would have changed the advice to read : " Study to avoid the shame of being a workman. Prove thyself free-born by emancipation from the slavery of work." This was one of the charac- teristics of the new religion which made it most difficult for the Roman aristocracy to accept. It was not only a theological innova- tion ; it was a social revolution. It reversed the old order of values and seemed made for slaves rather than for nobles. As was said of 39 Smnfcap <2£toemng0 in tfce College Chapel it in Thessalonica, it " turned the world upside down." Thus it happened that the beginnings of Christianity were among plain working-people, doing the common tasks of a working world. Jesus himself, in his home, his training, and his companionships, belonged neither among the luxurious rich nor, as is now sometimes said, among the outcasts and destitute, but among plain working-people, such as carpenters and fishermen. The Apostle Paul abode with Aquila and Priscilla, " because he was of the same craft ... for by their occupation they were tent-makers." From this social environment Jesus drew his parables of the kingdom. The people whom he accepted as types of disciple- ship were working-people, doing their ordinary tasks. The porter at the gate, the watchman on his tower, the sower in the field, the ser- vants guarding their lord's money, the woman sweeping her house, — these, and such as these, seemed to him ready for their Master's coming ; and ever since these parables were spoken, and however alienated from the Chris- tian Church the workers of the world may have been, the teaching of Jesus has been welcomed among them because it speaks the 40 Stmto? Ctientngs in t&e College Chapel language and honors the motives of humble, honest, daily work. That, however, is not the whole teaching of the servants at Cana. They are not merely commended as workers, but are made the in- struments of revelation, the witnesses of the miracle, the discoverers of the Divine. Had they not been at their work, the Master might have had no welcome. None but the servants knew that it was he, and nothing but their work gave them their knowledge. There is, in other words, a peculiar connection between work and insight, between fidelity and faith, between doing and knowing, which none but the workers of the world discover, and which is the final justification and redemption of the work one has to do. If that be true, it is good news for the world. For the common view of one's work, even if it be not the Roman view of contempt, is at least an impression that work, in its very nature, is restrictive and repressive, a kind of penal discipline, an enslaving of the spirit, a thing to be done and have over with if the higher life is to be attained. To learn one's lessons and to be free from them ; to finish one's work and then to have liberty and leis- 41 Smtitoap (£bemnff0 in t(jc College Cbapel ure ; to work one's way out of work and then to sit as a guest at the feast of life while oth- ers serve its tables, — that may be safely said to represent the ambition of the great major- ity of workers. And it is, of course, true that much of the routine and drudgery of work is very hard to idealize ; that much of modern industry converts a human being into a part of a great machine ; that the making of a liv- ing may easily be mistaken for the making of a life. Yet, in spite of all these perils which beset almost every kind of work, there re- mains, in the experience of a great many busy people, one surprising discovery, which re- deems life from discouragement or despair. It is the discovery that the influences which are most permanent and effective for the guidance of life are met, not as one escapes from his work, but as he does his work ; that insight, self-mastery, the total view of duty which makes one's real creed, are, in the main, the products of one's habitual fidelity or indif- ference to his daily task, the outcome of work despised or of work well done. The moment one recalls how life is neces- sarily spent it becomes evident that this must be true. Three fourths of one's waking hours 42 gmnUap