UCSB LIBRARY ECCE CLERUS OR THE CHRISTIAN MINISTER IN MANY LIGHTS A STUDENT OF THE TIMES NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS CINCINNATI : CURTS & JENNINGS 1899 Copyright by EATON & MAINS, 1899. TO THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD, TO WHOM DURING MANY YEARS OF VARIED LITERARY AND MINISTERIAL LABOR HE HAS BEEN INDEBTED FOR MUCH HELP AND MANY COMFORTS, THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. PREFACE THIS treatise is an attempt to deal with some pressing present-day problems having their incidence within the sphere of religion and holding peculiarly intimate relation to the ministerial calling. Fidelity to its aim in this regard makes it a more or less free and candid criticism of the spirit, status, functions, methods, and achievements of the Christian ministry, viewed in the light of the New Testament and the special requirements of the age. Some of its chapters were read as essays within recent years at meet- ings of evangelical associations, pastors' unions, and other ministerial gatherings held in various cities of the United States where the author has resided, exciting at the time considerable discussion, and eliciting a wide variety of opinion on the questions mooted. Such was the case with Chapters V, VI, VIII, and X, dealing respectively with " The Theme of Preaching," " The Bugbear of the Modern Evan- gelical Pulpit," "The Ministry and the Masses," "The Itin- erant Ministry and the Settled Pastorate Compared and Contrasted." The book is a word from the watchtower of a waning century a century whose significance for science, philoso- phy, invention, for historical and critical research, for com- mercial expansion and industrial development, for moral, social, and penal reform, for educational, religious, and politi- cal progress, is probably greater than that of any two pre- ceding centuries which have contributed any kind of a record to the annals of the world. In the nature of things the retrospect and outlook ob- 5 6 Preface tained from the point of elevation on which the closing year of such a century places us could not but be broad, varied, and profoundly interesting. And it would be won- derful indeed if many dogmas in every department of thought did not seem different to us near its close from what they appeared to those whose mature life was lived at its beginning. With one feature only though an immensely important one of the general forecast thus obtained, namely, with religion in its administrative and practical aspect, is the present treatise concerned. Though thus restricted in their scope, however, it is pos- sible that many of the views which find expression in this volume may provoke demurrer, some on account of their novelty and strangeness, others on account of their extreme conservatism. The writer has only to say that, in either case, what he has written simply expresses his well-consid- ered and mature convictions, and for these, as being part and parcel of his intellectual individuality, whether they be right or wrong, he can hardly be expected to apologize. Like every other period of the world's history, only per- haps in intenser degree, the times we are passing through are transitional. A quiet but profound change has been and is taking place in opinion on many subjects, and there is a natural preference, even in departments of thought and belief not seriously influenced by such change, to have even old truths presented in the intellectual vogue and fashion of the time. The Ewiggeist and Zeitgeist -the Eternal Spirit and the Time Spirit are not necessarily at war. They are only irreconcilable when the latter, instead of taking its cue and complexion from the former, assumes to be the dominant and determining factor. The author, while putting in a plea along with many of his contem- poraries for the retention of old truths, beliefs, and insti- tutions, earnestly desires their rehabilitation and forcible presentment in forms adapted to the needs of a busy, Preface 7 enterprising, inquisitive, and restless age, and he will be happy if, in any degree, his work shall prove an effective, even though nameless and impersonal, appeal of the spirit of eternity to the spirit of time. It may be that in the revolu- tion that has for some time been proceeding in the domain of science, philosophy, historical method, and religion some opinions and doctrines of frail foundation and doubtful value have gone or are going, but the eternal facts and veri- ties of religion "the things which cannot be shaken" remain. Religious doctrines and institutions emerge from times of criticism and controversy in altered shape, but the change does not reduce their value or their necessity to the spiritual life of man. And so long as it is an impera- tive requirement confronting those who propose by new creeds gnostic or agnostic to supplant Christianity in the faith and affections of mankind that they " go and get themselves crucified," there is no real ground for alarm. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY CONSIDERED AS A FACTOR IN THE CIVILIZATION OF THE WORLD. 1. The Birth of a New Moral Force 13 2. A New and Nobler Doctrine of Human Destiny 18 3. The Preacher's Distinctive Gift 19 4. The Secret of His Power 21 5. Notable Examples 25 6. Measurable Progress 29 II. DOMINATION OF TYPE IN THE MINISTRY. 1. Rise of Type 34 2. Its Forms Pronounced 35 3. Its Rule, Rigid and Absolute 42 4. Application of the Screw 44 5. Neither Breadth nor Sublimity in Liberalism 54 6. Manifest Destiny of the Ministry 56 III. THE MINISTER IN THE MAKING. 1. The Raw Material 59 2. The Molding of Environment .... 70 3. The Training of the Schools, which (1) Must adapt itself to conditions of the age 75 (2) Must not be fearful of science nor jealous of man's intellectual freedom 77 (3) Must be varied, comprehensive, and thorough 80 (4) Hence, fitted to impart the secret of power required by the times 84 IV. THE CARDINAL FUNCTIONS AND LEADING REQUISITES OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTER. 1. Proclaiming the Evangel 86 2. Christ the Prince of Heralds 88 3. Manhood is Requisite . . . 90 4. Conviction is Indispensable 93 5. Persuasive Power 95 6. Definiteness of Aim 98 10 Contents CHAPTER PACK 7. A Standing Attestation of the Spirituality of the Chris- tian Religion 99 V. THE THEME OF PREACHING. 1. The Only Saving Name 105 2. The Person of Christ 106 3. Our Great Exemplar no 4. Teacher of His People 113 5. Pacifex Maximus 116 6. Pledge of Our Completed Manhood 121 7. "Our Most Worthy Judge Eternal" 123 VI. THE BUGBEAR OF THE PRESENT-DAY EVANGELICAL PULPIT. 1. An Important Question 126 2. Significance and Bearings of the Inquiry 128 3. Doctrine of Future Retribution, no Figment of Me- diaeval Fancy 129 4. No Lack of Definite Statement in the New Testament. . 130 5. The Doctrine Essential to a Complete and Well-artic- ulated System of Christian Truth Fourfold Apocalypse 133 6. No Theodicy in Science 135 7. Causes Operating toward Alleged Neglect : (1) The absence of any vivid sense of sin 137 (2) The tendency of reason to usurp the place of faith . . 138 (3) General theological unsettledness 139 VII. HOMILETICAL CRAFTSMANSHIP. 1. Personality of the Craftsman 146 2. Power of the Ideal in Sermon-making 148 3. Unity of Theme and Thought 151 4. Selection of Materials 153 5. Simplicity of Structure 156 6. Homeliness of Illustration. , 158 7. Adaptedness to the Spiritual Needs of the People 162 VIII. THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY AND THE MASSES. 1. Condition of the Masses 165 2. The Problem Stated 171 3. Failure of the Church to Solve the Problem 174 4. Remedies Suggested 177 5. The True Solution 183 IX. MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. I. Christianity an Apocalypse 192 Contents 11 CHAPTER PAGE 2. A Hundred Years of Missions 194 3. Present Outljok 198 (1) Educated heathen assume the role of reformer and apologist 198 (2) Adopt a policy of imitation 200 (3) Try the old experiment of persecution 201 4. Policy of Success 203 (1) There must be careful study of ethnic systems and the relation of Christianity thereto 203 (2) Such systems must be contemplated not as rehabil- itated by philosophic genius, but in their stay-at- home aspect and attire, and in their practical tend- encies and actual effects on the lives and morals of their votaries 205 (3) There must be adaptation of teaching to various heathen types, as affected by race,religion, historical antecedents, present political condition, degree of civilization reached, etc 209 (4) Missionaries must not lose sight of the primary object the evangelization and salvation of heathen peoples 211 (5) Must make larger and freer concessions to the in- tellectual idiosyncrasies and social usages and cus- toms of heathen communities 214 X. THE ITINERANT AND SETTLED PASTORATES COMPARED AND CONTRASTED. 1. The Itinerant Ministry not an Institution of Modern Origin 218 2. Founder of the Methodist Itinerancy 220 3. Itinerancy Defensible on the Plea of Past Utility and of High and Ancient Example 221 4. Develops a Noble Type of Character and a Fine Sense of Brotherhood 224 5. Present Practical Value, an Item Worthy of Attention. . . 227 6. Drawbacks as Compared with the Settled Pastorate 230 XI. THE POPULAR PREACHER. 1. Popular Eloquence not the Primary Qualification of the Christian Preacher 235 2. Popularity no Infallible Sign of Public Usefulness 239 3. Antipopular Elements Inhere in the Essence of Christianity 242 4. Christianity Nevertheless a Religion for the People 248 12 Contents CHAPTER PAGE 5. Elements of Power 248 XII. THE MINISTER IN AUTHORITY. 1. No Divinely Authorized Form of Ecclesiastical Polity.. . 251 2. Early Christian Leaders Indifferent as to Names, Titles, and Specific Forms of Ecclesiastical Authority 253 3. The New Testament Doctrine of Authority 256 4. Forms of the Embodiment of Authority in Apostolic and Subapostolic Times 259 5. Abuse of Power 263 XIII. SOME ELEMENTS AND PHASES OF MINISTERIAL LIFE AND CHARACTER. 1. Past and Present 276 2. Facing Initial Difficulties 279 3. The Consciousness of Worth 284 4. The Courage of Conviction 286 5. The Sense of Humor, Pathos, and Romance 288 XIV. MINISTERIAL HEALTH AND HYGIENE. 1. Importance of Attention to Hygiene 296 2. Influence of Health on Character and Temperament. . . . 297 3. The Inner World of Thought and Feeling Acted on by the Outer World 298 4. Health and Longevity Largely within the Limits of Indi- vidual Control 301 5. Moral Value to the Minister of Sound Bodily Health.. . . 303 6. Notable Instances of Early Physical Breakdown 304 7. Necessity of Regular and Systematic Exercise 310 8. Benefits Secured Amply Compensate for Cost in Time . . 311 9. Errors to be Shunned 313 10. Physical Gifts and Graces not to be Despised 315 XV. THE MINISTER IN AGE, RETIREMENT, AND DEATH. 1. Retiring to the Shadows 3 ID 2. Premature Senility 317 3. Verdure and Sunshine on Autumn Hills 319 4. The Glow of Sunset 328 5. He Being Dead yet Speaketh 333 ECCE CLERUS OR THE CHRISTIAN MINISTER IN MANY LIGHTS CHAPTER I The Christian Ministry Considered as a Factor in the Civilization of the World Christ came. The soul the most full of love, the most sacredly virtuous, the most deeply inspired by God and the future that men have yet seen on earth ; Jesus. He bent over the corpse of the dead world and whispered a word of faith ; over the clay that had lost all of man but the movement and the form ; he uttered words until then unknown love, sacrifice, a heavenly origin. And the dead arose. A new life circulated through the clay which philosophy had tried in vain to reanimate. From that corpse arose the Chris- tian world ; the world of liberty and equality. From that clay arose the true man, the image of God, the precursor of humanity. Joseph Mazzini. J. The Birth of a New Moral Force, THE birth of Christian civilization, properly so called, was coincident with the beginning of preaching, and the leading factor in the moral and intellectual progress of mankind, since the hour when "times of refreshing" began to be given " from the presence of the Lord," has been the Christian ministry in all that wide and varied field of activ- ity and conquest in which it has progressively unfurled the flag of occupation. The walls of the " City of God " (^ Trohia fj ayia of St. John) only began to be builded when the fisherman Simon, having discovered by dint of superior prophetic insight the superhuman nature and quality of its great Corner Stone, exhorted his expatriated co-religionists, 13 14 Ecce Clerus many of whom had been drawn to Jerusalem from their far-away homes for the celebration of the feasts of Passover and Pentecost, to take advantage of the favored moment that was upon them to secure a personal and experimental initiation into " the mysteries of the kingdom of God." The special feature which was permanently to distinguish the Christian Church and the new order of things it repre- sented, not only from the temple and synagogue and the social and religious ideas for which they stood, but also from the philosophical schools and religious cults of pagan- ism, was the revival, rehabilitation, and wider distribution of the prophetic faculty of which in the Jewish Church there had been no trace for hundreds of years. Careful students and diligent redactors of the inspired records like Ezra had not been wanting. Distinguished scholars like Simon the Just, Hillel, Shammai, and Gamaliel had ap- peared. Pious patriots like the Maccabees, daring and de- vout enthusiasts like Bar-Cochba, saintly souls like the aged Simeon, whose attitude of prayer and earnestness of hope prepared them to perceive and welcome the earliest rays of Him who was to be at once a light lifting the veil of dark- ness from the nations (<(>&<; eig dTTOKakv^iv etfvwv) and the consolation and glory of his people Israel of these, also, there had been many during the post-exilic ages ; but there had been no soul endowed with the penetrating insight and bold utterance of the ancient seer with that liberty and faculty of prophesying which is the first essential qualifica- tion of the Christian herald and teacher, enabling him to influence the life, thought, and motive of the individual and the community at their hidden springs. The nation in its age of decrepitude had wandered for more than four hundred years in a moral and intellectual desert, barer and drearier than that in which, according to its traditional and accepted records, it had spent forty years of its youth. During this un- productive period men had been subsisting timidly and The Christian Ministry 15 doubtfully on the sacred depositum of the past on manna grown stale and innutritive with age. The ripest wisdom of those gloomy centuries found expression in the three cautious and conservative principles attributed to the men of the Great Assembly: " Be discreet in judging ; train up many scholars ; make a hedge around the law." As Bishop Westcott re- marks : " The fence was necessary because the law was not only fixed, but dying. Religion seemed capable of being defined by rule; duty had ceased to be infinite."* The sorrows and disappointments already encountered not only gave a somber color and complexion to the passing phase of national history, but also tinctured with melancholy and despair every forecast of the future. And not alone in the dismal traditions of the Talmud, but in the apocryphal literature also, this spirit of apprehension and despondency is apparent. " Behold," says the author of the (so-called) Fourth Book of Esdras, " the days shall come that . . . the way of truth shall be hidden and the land shall be destitute of faith (sterilis erit a fide) . . . . Then shall wit hide itself and understanding withdraw into secret chambers, and shall be sought of many and yet not found For the world hath lost his youth and the times begin to wax old."f No more was the living prophetic word spoken for the edification, guidance, comfort of the people of God. The light of inspiration was withdrawn. The seer's vision had vanished. The sacred oracle was dumb. Beyond the pale of Judaism " outer darkness " was the phrase not inaptly applied to the moral and social condition of the nations. In the course of the seven centuries that had passed since the founding of the city, Rome had marched her legions from the Tiber to the Rhine and the Danube in the north, and had made herself mistress of the fair and fruitful regions lying between those rivers. Southward she had extended her empire as far as Mount Atlas and the * Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, p. 61. t Ibid., p. in. 16 Ecce Clerus cataracts of the Nile ; west and east from the waves of the Atlantic to the banks of the Euphrates. Universal empire was her ambition, and war and conquest the means ruth- lessly employed to gratify it. During the thirty years of our Lord's quiet and secluded life in Nazareth the theater of war extended over considerable portions of Asia and Africa, and the Emperor Tiberius found nothing worthier of his restless energy than holding Europe, from the Adri- atic Sea to the skirts of the Black Forest, in the flames of a deadly, continuous, all-consuming strife.* And the people who were harassed and plundered by Rome in time of war were hardly worse off than those who were ruled by her in times of peace. Romans of the patri- cian grade who had squandered their patrimony and private fortunes by dissipation in the city were accustomed to look to proconsulship in the provinces as a means of replenish- ing their exhausted treasures and retrieving their social position. Leaving Rome deeply involved in debt, they often in three years the limit of their term of service re- turned home the envied possessors of enormous wealth. They were allowed to prey upon the defenseless peoples without check or restraint, and grew rich by extortion and fraud, f When Tiberius asked Bato the Dalmatian why he made war on the Romans the brave barbarian indig- nantly replied, " You affect to treat every nation as your flocks and your property, but you intrust the care of them to ravenous wolves and not to shepherds and their dogs." The masters of the world oppressed and fleeced the van- quished races over whom they exercised control, and for their temerity often had to pay dearly out of the best blood of their free citizens. " O tempera ! O mores ! " is Cicero's lament over the social and political degeneracy of * See A. Ferguson, History of the Roman Republic, p. 444. t See art. " The Fall of the Roman Empire," by Thomas Hodgkin, in Contemporary Review, January, 1898. The Christian Ministry 17 an age of which Sallust's Sempronia and his own relentless and unprincipled adversary, Cataline, were unexaggerated types.* " Hardly any of the elements of an unsound state of society were absent."! Upon such a condition of affairs both within and outside the household of the chosen people there suddenly broke from the Judean wilderness the startling announcement of the herald of the New Covenant : " The time is fulfilled ; the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent ye and believe the good news." The dispensation of the Christian prophet and proclaimer (icripvt;) had dawned. At the very outstart of his great work of " preparing the way of the Lord " the Baptist proved the genuineness of his commission quite as much by his tender reverence for the truth, purity, and beauty of the past as by his courageous and condemnatory attitude toward the sin and error of the present. He at once set suspicion at rest by assuming the integrity and con- tinuity of God's purpose, and by exemplifying in himself the close and vital relation that subsists between the successive stages of God's work through all the world's ages. He took up the broken thread of prophecy just where it had been dropped. In his dress, diet, and chosen haunts, as well as in his teaching, he harked back to an earlier time, recalling the striking figure, the simple manner, the heroic spirit, and the divine mission of Elijah. While showing that the old prophetic word had a wider scope and a deeper import than had heretofore been thought of, he claimed for it at least a partial and provisional fulfillment in what was taking place around him. The Gospel dispensation, with its roots in the past, was the introduction of a new order of things. It in- augurated the reign of moral forces. Through its simple and unostentatious ministry it placed before the eyes of men the most exalted of ethical ideals, and subjected the popular * Gratia Prima. Contra Cat. t E. Hatch, D.D., Organization of the Early Christian Churches, p. 32. 2 18 Ecce Clerus mind to the direct action of the noblest and most elevating of intellectual and spiritual influences in a manner and to a degree never before possible. It was essentially a call to repentance. 2, A New and Nobler Doctrine of Human Destiny. To mold the living character and control the present con- duct of mankind by means of motives mainly drawn from a world out of sight had always been a difficult undertaking, and one which, so far as it had been tried, had never been attended with any marked success. As a matter of fact, during the Old Testament ages the experiment had seldom or never been attempted on any appreciable scale. The considerations by which poet, priest, prophet, and lawgiver had endeavored to move men to sentiments of piety and praiseworthy moral exertions were almost exclusively of a temporal nature. The strain of exhortation invariably ran as in the extremely beautiful words of Eliphaz the Temanite in the Book of Job: "Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace: thereby good shall come unto thee [mark what kind of good]. Receive, I pray thee, the law from his mouth, and lay up his words in thine heart. If thou return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up, thou shalt put away iniquity far from thy tabernacles. Then shalt thou lay up gold as dust, and the gold of Ophir as the stones of the brooks. Yea, the Almighty shall be thy defense, and thou shalt have plenty of silver. For then shalt thou have thy delight in the Almighty, and shalt lift up thy face unto God. Thou shalt make thy prayer unto him, and he shall answer thee, and thou shalt pay thy vows. Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be established unto thee: and the light shall shine upon thy ways." * i history. The Christian Ministry 19 Rare were the souls who were capable of discerning the inner beauty and intrinsic blessedness of the divine service, of perceiving the limitless scope it offers for the growth and development of man's higher nature, and of choosing it for its own sake, regardless of its apparent temporal disad- vantages, on the one hand, or its obvious present recom- pense, on the other. But the capability of appreciating this loftier plea of faith the argument drawn exclusively from the nature, needs, dignity, and unmeasured capacity of the soul and of building on the higher ground is to be the rule rather than the exception under the r'egime of him who has " brought life and immortality to light through his Gospel." Those who habitually think and act in presence of the eternal future, and in lively anticipation of its promised good, are to have, by virtue of their spiritual insight and elevation, the greatest power to influence and control the present. The princes of the spiritual empire are they who steadily subordinate the visible to the invisible, the essen- tially provisional to the essentially permanent. The wisest and noblest are ordained to reign. The meek are to inherit the earth ; the saints are to judge the world. 3. The Preacher's Distinctive Gift. The preacher's significance and value, therefore, for his particular age his power to mold its life and thought lies in the fact that as one possessing prophetic and interpretive insight, he is authorized boldly to proclaim the mind and will of God. He discerns in the interminable and appar- ently aimless conflict in which generation after generation eagerly expends its thought and energy, the working of eternal principles which make for righteousness, and is able to forecast and foretell the general issue with absolute certainty. He looks far behind him for hints of action and clews of guid- ance, and far before him for his goal. He sees, as it were, the dark veil that persistently clings to the face of things 20 Ecce Clerus partially removed, so that the grand motives and issues of life stand disclosed in their eternal nature. For him spirit- ual truth, moral beauty, enduring blessedness, though con- cealed, yet essentially exist beneath the suffering, sorrow, sin, and disorder which are spread over the world within and the world without over man and over nature. In the in- carnate Son of God he sees the great Prophet of all time. In his spotless and perfect humanity he sees the glorious possibility which lies back of all the degradation, igno- rance, and misery of the race. He discerns in him who "lighteth every man coming into the world" the true moral dignity and completeness of man's nature, and is encour- aged to hope for his restoration to personal holiness and to perfect harmony with God. Studying carefully the great moral conflict going on around him, he perceives, with in- creasing vividness, the spirits of men, their motives and aims, the springs of individual and national life, till all the relations of time no longer exist in his vision, till all passing strife is referred to the final conflict of good and evil, fore- shadowed in the great judgments of the world, and all hope is centered in the triumph of Christ and in the completion and fullness of his kingdom. He thus draws hope and in- spiration from the certainties of the future in fighting the seemingly doubtful battle of the present. He appeals "from Philip drunk to Philip sober ; " from the delusive dream and specious appearance of the moment to the eternal reality; meanwhile resting confidently in the grand conviction of One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event To which the whole creation moves. 4. The Secret of His Power. And precisely in proportion to the closeness and fidelity with which the influence of the preacher on the intellectual problems and social and political life of his time has con- The Christian Ministry 21 formed to the type of Christ it has been deep, all-pervasive, fruitful, and enduring. Offering himself freely for service or sacrifice, as the bond- slave (6 dovAoc) * of his Master, he has been, in proportion to the completeness of his self-subjugation and self-sur- render, the salt of society and the salvation and enrichment of the world. He has won an empire whose scepter has not dropped from his grasp with the dissolution of his earthly being. His influence for good, as one who has worthily occupied a place, however lowly and obscure, in " the glorious company of the prophets," abides. Like the morning star, his modest fame does not go down Behind the darkened west, Nor hide obscure amid the tempests of the sky, But melts away into the light of heaven. He ascends to join the " choir invisible " and take rank with Those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence ; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude ; in scorn Of miserable aims that end with self ; In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge men's minds To vaster issues. His allotted sphere has been now narrow and circumscribed, confined to the care of a handful of souls ; now indefinitely extended so as to be ecumenical, including "all people that on earth do dwell," like the wisest and the noblest of the popes of Rome. He has spoken for the instruction of mankind from within the walls of a prison, like St. Paul from the traditional Mamertine, or Bunyan from the over- crowded and insalubrious dungeon that once stood on the piers of the old Ouse bridge at Bedford, or St. Cyran, en- couraging, counseling, directing, the Port Royalists from * This is the significant and deliberately chosen term used by the apostles to express their personal relation to Christ. Christianity dignified service. _ A word which signi- fied the lowest degradation among men became, under its teaching, a term of highest honor in the kingdom of God. 22 Ecce Clerus his captivity at Vincennes. He has found his chosen em- pire in some dismal cave, like St. Jerome's retreat at Beth- lehem, or in some lonesome haunt of the forest, like that of Peter the Hermit near mediaeval Amiens. He has been hunted into exile like Cyprian, Athanasius, and Chrysostom. He has voluntarily immured himself within the walls of a monastery, self-bound thereto by ascetic vow, or romantic sentiment, or religious love of solitude stronger than chains or bars or doors of iron, like the earlier and later founders of the Benedictine rule, like the Bernards of Clairvaux and Cluny and the lofty souls that made Port Royal famous, such as Arnauld and Pascal. He has found the weapon of his spiritual warfare in the gift of tongues or the translator's pen, like the author of the Vulgate, the Gothic Bishop Ul- philas, Wyclif, Tyndale, Luther, and the learned and devout De Saci, who toiled for years at his incomparable French version amid the gloom of the Bastile. He has constructed systems of theology which have tinctured the faith, colored the creeds, and controlled the thought of Christendom for centuries, like Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm, and Calvin. He has contributed to the growing light and freedom of the world from the pulpit, like the " Golden-mouth " of Antioch and Byzantium, like Basil, Savonarola, Knox, Whitefield, and Chalmers ; or from the bishop's throne, like Leo I, Gregory I, and Gregory VII; or from the professor's chair, like Melanchthon at Wittenburg, with two thousand of the noblest youth of Europe at his feet, and Arminius at Ley- den, elaborating, amid the fierce fires of enmity and intem- perate controversy, a reasonable and credible doctrine of God and of redemption for the religious mind of our time, and Schleiermacher in Berlin recalling the attention of his coun- trymen to the heart and essence of religion in his Reden iiber die Religion, thus reviving for a moment the dying faith of the Fatherland, and Neander in the same university resist- ing the onslaught of Tubingen criticism with its own chosen The Christian Ministry 23 weapons. He has relieved the cares and sorrows of the hearthstone and brought a ray of heavenly light to the bed- side of the sick and dying, like Richard Baxter, Samuel Rutherford, and Jonathan Edwards, and a thousand other faithful pastors who have played the part of " sons of con- solation " to their people. He has organized world-embrac- ing crusades for the salvation of the neglected masses of the people, like General Booth ; or started an evangelizing impulse which remains unspent after the lapse of a hundred and fifty years, like John Wesley. He has made the world better and brighter for the songs he has sung, like George Herbert, Isaac Watts, John Newton, Bishop Ken, John Keble, and Charles Wesley, whose hymns have helped to enrich the religious life and experience of thousands. By the force of his character as a spiritual man, by the depth and strength of his convictions as a diligent student of God's word, by the loftiness of his calling as the spokesman of heaven, by the intimate relation between his official duties and the most vital concerns of those who have confided in him as their spiritual counselor and guide, he has been able to mold individual character, to influence public sentiment, and to largely shape the destiny of nations. He has been the steadfast friend of popular enlightenment, freedom, and reform, and the foe alike of private wickedness and public wrong. He has enriched the world's literature with books of lasting fame and value, has averted social and political disaster, crowned and discrowned kings,* arrested the tri- umphant march of conquerors,! and made powerful tyrants * Apart from the subjugation of Henry IV by Hildebrand, " a king of England con- sented to hold his kingdom as a fief from the pontiff's hand . . . a king of Aragon resigned his realms to the apostle Peter, and Naples beheld her throne conferred by the same all-commanding power on a family wholly foreign to her soil." Ranke's History of the Popes, vol. i, p. 23. t ''Already Attila had reduced Aquileia to a heap of ruins and driven her people to seek shelter for themselves in the lagoons of the Adriatic, where they founded the fa- mous city of Venice. He now resolved to force his way over the Apennines . . . and pass in vengeful triumph up the sacred way which had seen the imperial people trample for so many centuries upon the necks of barbaric kings. Rome, however, deemed it best to anticipate Attila's arrival, and sent an embassy to deprecate the victor's wrath, 24 Ecce Clerus turn pale and tremble at his words.* He has not talked about new heavens and a new earth " wherein dwelleth righteousness " without putting forth strenuous personal efforts to realize the golden dream, nor gone about with preoccupied air, ultra-solemn mood and mien, cold, narrow, self-absorbed, supramundane, intolerant of the erring, im- patient of the weak, indifferent to the anxieties and sorrows of the poor, contemptuous of the sins and follies of the proud and powerful, as if he were something far too wise or good For human nature's daily food.f There have been occasionally prominent in the ministry and service of the Church, it is true, men of earthly and alien spirit, swayed by the love of power and public fame, fond of the tinsel and glitter of material wealth, of social prestige and distinction, preferring " fleshly wisdom " to the " simplicity of Christ," and willing, in despite of that apos- tolic touchstone, "As many as are led by the Spirit of God they are the sons of God," to employ the dubious arts of intrigue, diplomacy, and double dealing. There have been shepherds of crime and blood and violence like Alexander Borgia, Julius II, Clement VII, and Innocent III, who of- fered thanks publicly to heaven for the massacre of the Huguenots; and successors of St. Peter steeped in low, sensual pleasures like Leo X men who have brought dis- the principal place in which was occupied by the venerable pontiff Leo I, canonized by the Church of Rome with the name of ' Great.' Leo was a man of rare ability, elo- quence, firmness, and knowledge of the times. In the curious taste of his day he was styled the Cicero of Catholic rhetoric, the Homer of theology," etc. Sheppard's Fall of Rome , p. 207. * Lorenzo de' Medici entreating Savonarola to moderate the tone of his denunciations is a case in point. t A stenographic report of a speech delivered in Wilmington, Del., by a recent can- didate for the presidency of the United States makes him to use the following lan- guage of " some ministers of the Gospel : " " Tell them the people are hungry and starving, and that men out of work are driven into crime, and they cannot understand why everybody is not as well off as they are. . . . The common people were never aided in their struggle upward by those who were so far beyond them that they could not feel their needs and sympathize with their distress." _ The character here alluded to has always existed, especially in prosperous and luxurious times, but everything is against his ever becoming a prevailing type. The Christian Ministry 25 credit on their profession and reproach and scandal to the Church. There have been those who, while publicly and professionally magnifying divine truths and exalting spirit- ual virtues as worthy always of an immediate and prime consideration, have personally treated them as of less than second-rate consequence, thus producing irritation, resent- ment, and confusion in men's minds, or bringing about the still worse result of swelling the ranks of the already large army of cynics, infidels, and atheists, and giving pertinence to the words addressed by Ophelia to her brother Laertes, when he sought with some excellent counsels to fortify her virtue and womanhood against possible temptation : I shall the effect of this good lesson keep, As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven ; Whiles like a puffed and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks not his own rede. Of these hirelings of the fold it may be affirmed that they entered not by the door of the sheep, but climbed up some other way. Their claim to a recognized place in the great brotherhood of believers is disputed, and an impartial yet exacting posterity offers to their memory nothing but the doubtful tribute of a sincere regret that, sharing the honor of the loftiest calling and the stimulus of the greatest possi- bilities, they despised their day of opportunity and played the part of the unworthy. 5. Notable Examples* That the force and effectiveness of the Christian religion as a civilizing factor has ever been proportioned to the fidelity of its ministry and discipleship to its central idea its one imperative requirement a severe and self-restrain- ing yet self-oblivious and cheerful purity of heart and life, history bears ample and indisputable witness. Herein has 26 Ecce Clerus lain the simple and sure solution of every problem social, industrial, ethical, religious that has seriously engaged the attention and thought of mankind. The quiet and unos- tentatious martyrdom or witness-bearing of noble natures such as Wesley, Spurgeon, Finney, Miiller, has given men within the limits of a human lifetime a deeper and truer estimate of the practical value of truth and righteousness than science, philosophy, and theology combined, supported by all the aids and arts of eloquence and the powerful prestige and sanction of the schools, have imparted in the course of centuries. The world owes, to-day, a deeper debt of gratitude to the man who, clad in the coarse garb of the desert and sustained by its homely fare, said, at the cost of his head, to a licentious despot, " It is not law- ful for thee to have her," than to the man who stood in holy places, wore sacred vestments, was the recipient of great public veneration as the high-priestly head of the Jewish Church, and saw the authority of the "ten holy words " trampled in the dust without a syllable of protest. And while among the most precious of the world's literary treasures, sacred or profane, none has a higher value than the writings of the man who esteemed himself " less than the least of all saints," the world has been willing to forget the very name of the magnate to whom unwittingly, in a moment of noble indignation, he said, " God shall smite thee, thou whited wall." * The royal science of religious thought, not less than the present spiritual condition of Christendom, is more indebted to Athanasius, harassed, per- secuted, impoverished, evil-spoken of, three times banished from his attached people and from the work he loved so well, than to the tall, handsome, eloquent presbyter f whose *Acts xxiii, 3. t By orthodox writers of this day Anus is described as tall of stature, with a down- cast look, and " a figure composed like that of a subtle serpent to deceive the guileless by his crafty exterior." Epiphanius speaks of him as simple in his attire, with an address " soft and smooth, calculated to persuade and attract, so that he had drawn The Christian Ministry 27 praises were sung in the streets, in serio-comic strains of his own composing, by the women and children of Alexandria.* As far as a fragrant memory and an enduring fame are concerned, there are few persons who would not prefer the fate of the devout, labor-loving, narrow-minded Cyprian, obliged on account of the Decian and later persecutions to supervise his diocese from a place of concealment,! and ultimately condemned to a martyr's death as an enemy to the gods of Rome and her religious laws (inimicus Diis Romanis et sacris legibus), J to the easy and luxurious life of the affable, diplomatic, liberal-minded Eusebius of Nico- media, or of him of Csesarea, basking in the smiles of Con- stantine, and betraying " the faith once delivered to the saints" and the interests of the " kingdom " which is "not of this world " into the hands of the emperor and the ladies of the imperial court. We are richer at this hour for the life, toil, and hardship of Jerome, with his hermitlike in- stincts, his unremitting ardor in the pursuit of sacred lore, his fondness for study and retirement, than for the violence, cruelty, intrigue, and restless ambition of Cyril of Alexan- dria, whose name Milman felt obliged to brand with infamy, and whose stern spirit and stormy methods Charles Kingsley has so vividly depicted in Hypatia. For all the higher in- terests of morality and religion, Bishop Latimer, sending a New Testament to his concupiscent and crafty sovereign, away seven hundred virgins from the Church to his party." We may accept th of course, without the sinister hint they are employed to convey. ic facts See Reg tNeander's History of the Christian Religion and Church. Fifth edition, p. 78. \ Pontus, in Vita Cypriani, p. 13. Roman jurists distinguished three kinds of law ; Toward Jews, pagans, and heretics, or what he considered such, Cyril showed no :rcy. Dean Milman thus characterizes him: "He may be a hero or even a saint to 5se who esteem the stern and uncompromising assertion of certain tenets the one paramount Christian virtue, but while ambition, intrigue, arrogance, rapacity, and vio- lence are prescribed as unchristian means; barbarity, persecution, bloodshed as unholy and unevangelical wickedness, posterity will condemn the orthodox Cyril as one of the worst of heretics against the spread of the Gospel." Latin Christianity ^), and to emphasize the important fact that, while preaching is necessarily an announcement of great historical facts, it is still more the utterance of such truths transmuted into vital elements of experience and per- sonally attested by the preacher's own spiritual life. This purpose evidently influenced both the author's selection of materials from the common evangelical tradition and his mode of treating them. In the Synoptists Christ is a preacher of good news to the people ; in John's gospel he is uniformly in conflict with the Jewish authorities a witness against their moral and intellectual obtuseness and organized hypocrisy. In the former he is the Herald of the king- 104 Ecce Clerus dom ; in the latter he is both in intention and effect a martyr to the cause of truth. But whatever may have been the motive of this marked de- parture from the fixed terminological vogue and usage of the early Church, or its passing effect on contemporary Chris- tian thought, it evidently produced no permanent impres- sion, nor has it perceptibly tinctured the subsequent current of Christian literature. Christianity is characteristically and essentially an evangel, boldly and aggressively pro- claimed to the world, and not merely a conviction cour- ageously and faithfully attested by the believer when called upon or compelled to appear before the bar of the world. It is more an ever-living and spontaneous, message to the ignorant and indifferent multitude than an occasional and involuntary testimony against a few powerful gainsayers who are willing to use their influence and authority as repre- sentatives of the civil power for its suppression. The Theme of Preaching 105 CHAPTER V The Theme of Preaching Tlaadv re f]/ipav kv T6iTov^ opav ov6' dfj./j.a ^paiveiv 6avaaifj.oiaiv EK irvoalz 6pH) 6e a' j?J# rovde irl-rjaiov KO.KOV. Hippol., v. 1437. 122 Ecce Clerus the Cimmerian men," but the noble Greek finds life in the world of shades so empty, poor, and pitiless that he scorn- fully rejects the well-meant consolations of his living friend and expresses his very decided preference for the meanest and most miserable pauper's lot in the world of the living to the princeliest place and power in the realm of the dead.* Such were men's views of death and of the state of being beyond its dark veil before the " Day-star" arose in their hearts and the thick mists were lifted from everlast- ing scenes by Him who Captive led captivity, And robbed the grave of victory And took the sting from death. And apart from faith in the Risen One the eternal out- look is as gloomy and forbidding as ever. " What went before me and what will follow me," says one of the most refined and most scholarly of modern skeptics, " I regard as two black, impenetrable curtains hanging down at the two extremities of human life and which no living man has yet drawn aside. Many hundreds of generations have stood between these curtains with their torches, guessing anxiously what lies behind. On the curtain of futurity many see the shadows of themselves, the forms of their own passions enlarged and put in motion, and they shrink back in terror at this image of themselves. Poets, philosophers, and founders of States have painted this curtain with their dreams, more smiling or more dark as the sky above them was cheerful or gloomy, and their pictures deceive the eye when viewed from a distance. Many jugglers, too, make profit out of this our universal curiosity ; by their strange mummeries they have set the outstretched fancy in amaze- ment. A deep silence reigns behind this curtain. No one once within will answer those he has left without. All you can hear is the hollow echo of your question as if you * Odyssey, book xi, 474. The Theme of Preaching 123 shouted in a cavern."* Thus sad is the plight and pre- dicament and comfortless and cold the confession of mod- ern skeptical philosophy. With this depressing note of de- spair it is the noble privilege of the proclaimer of " Jesus and the Resurrection " to contrast the bright and exhilarat- ing hope of " the Gospel of the grace of God." By him who brought life and incorruptibility to light the "black, impenetrable curtain " of materialism is rent in twain from the top to the bottom. " I commend you to the care of divine Providence," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, in bid- ding affectionate farewell to his parish in the city of Boston, in 1832. " May he multiply to your families and your per- sons early genuine blessings and whatever discipline may be appointed to you in this life, may the blessed hope of the resurrection which he has planted in the human soul and confirmed and manifested in Jesus Christ be made good to you beyond the grave." 7. "Our Most "Worthy Judge Eternal." Once more : As the risen Redeemer of men and Perfecter of their souls, whose sphere of mediatorial activity is the in- visible realm of thought, will, conscience, and affection, Christ is also the only sure discerner of spirits and the only competent arbiter of human destiny. His assumption of our nature made him perfectly familiar with all the most trying situations of our life and with all the deeper prob- lems of the soul. All the essential elements of our proba- tion found their burning focal point in his personal con- sciousness. His experience was full, comprehensive, and varied enough to be typical and to provide the clew for an accurate and just judgment of every man's character and desert. It gave him in his own personality a standard in which spotless purity and perfect pity, truth and tender- ness, justice and mercy, meet and blend. " He was tempted * G. J. Holyoake's, Logic of Death. 124 Ecce Clerus in all points like as we are, yet without sin." He learned obedience by the things which he suffered. " For it be- came him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering." Hence to him are given "the keys of Hades and of death, and he is ordained to be the judge of quick and dead. In his glorified manhood men will see themselves approved or condemned according as they have assimilated to or de- generated from the divine ideal embodied in the 'Son of man.' " Within the cycle of truths thus briefly outlined, dominated by the love of God as revealed in Christ and appropriately designated the good news (rd evayye/Uov), minds the most refined and most cultivated, and minds narrow and undis- ciplined, find ample room to roam, and hearts laden with sin, sorrow, and anxiety find exhaustless springs of consola- tion. Beyond this there is no need to travel. " A Chris- tian preacher ought to preach Christ alone and all things in him and of him. If he find a dearth in this ; if it seem to him a circumscription, he does not know Christ as the TrA^pw/za the fullness. It is not possible that there should be aught true or seemly or beautiful in thought, word, or deed, speculative or practical, which may not and which ought not to be evolved out of Christ and the faith in Christ; no folly, no error, no evil to be exposed or warned against which may not and should not be convicted and denounced for its contrariance and enmity to Christ. To the Christian preacher Christ should be in all things and all things in Christ; he should abjure every argument which is not a link in the chain of which Christ is the staple and the staple ring." * Beyond the group of vital and saving verities of which Christ is the source, center, and subject, the Spirit of God re- * R. W. Church, in Masters in English Theology, edited by Dr. A. Barry. The Theme of Preaching 125 fuses to bear witness ; for he is only concerned to teach, dem- onstrate, attest, and administer the truths which relate to him " who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, that he might purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God; " he witnesses only to the things of Christ, and he who is ever eager to escape from the inspiring and exhaustless theme of Christ and his salva- tion is doomed to a ministry of sterility and failure. Once away from this center of light and solace the preacher is like the camels which bore the dead body of the distin- guished Jewish scholar, philosopher, physician, and rabbi, Maimonides, across the Egyptian desert from Cairo to Tibe- rias. It is said that the noble animals on leaving the tomb traveled round and round, in a wide circle, till, hungry and exhausted with their wanderings, they dropped down and died. The man who abandons that deep and inexhaust- ible fountain of salvation Christ and him crucified to dis- course on topics of limited range and ephemeral interest hews out for himself and for his people "broken cisterns that will hold no water." He spends "money for that which is not bread, and labors for that which satisfieth not." He wanders in waste places, fertile only in disappointment and despair. 126 Ecce Clerus CHAPTER VI The Bugbear of the Present-day Evangelical Pulpit The prevalence of doubt about all truths and to some extent, also, the general eagerness of preachers to find out and meet the people's desires and demands, these two causes together have created the impression that the ministry had no certain purposes or definite message ; that the preacher was a promiscuous caterer for men's whims, wishing them well, inspired by a general benevolence, but in no sense a prophet uttering positive truth to them which they did not know before, uttering it whether they liked it or hated it. Is not that the impression many young men have of the ministry ? Bishop Phillips Brooks. I have said preach plainly and preach earnestly ; I now say preach with moral courage. Fear no man, high or low, rich or poor, taught or untaught. Honor all men ; love all men ; but fear none. Speak what you account great truths frankly, strongly, boldly. . . . Put faith in truth as mightier than error, prejudice, or passion, and be ready to take a place among its martyrs. William E. Channing's Advice to a Preacher. I. An Important Question. "Is the doctrine of future retribution neglected by the evangelical pulpit of our day ? If so, why ? " was the ques- tion the present writer was asked to introduce at the fort- nightly meeting of a large association of evangelical min- isters of all denominations in an old and beautiful New England city a few years ago. Interest in the subject was evinced by a much larger attendance than usual, and the opening essay was followed by a warm and general discus- sion. In the absence of the laity and of reporters (by a rule of the association) a full and free expression of opinion was elicited, and a much wider diversity of view was disclosed than anyone anticipated. Even men who had labored side by side for years, and esteemed each other to be veritable Abdiels in loyalty to evangelical truth, Bugbear of Present-day Evangelical Pulpit 127 and each other's pulpits to be faces et foci the fires and the hearthstones of orthodox zeal, seemed surprised at the wide departure from the recognized and traditional faith of their respective denominations as to " last things " (TO, Sahara) which the discussion brought to light. One thing was clear : a large landslide from the old lines of teaching on the subject of eschatology had taken place, al- most without anyone being aware of it, beyond a vague feeling that the doubt and uncertainty of one's own mind were only a part of the general consciousness. One spoke of the inevitable recoil from the harsher features of Calvinism, and read copious extracts from Jonathan Edwards's sermon on " Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God;" which he had raked from the "dustheap of oblivion," or picked from some "wormhole of long-vanished time." Another pastor of venerable aspect eloquently emphasized the instinctive shrinking, from every form of pain, that is so marked a char- acteristic of the age. A third pointed out what he con- sidered a growing conviction of the essential weakness of all appeals to an inferior order of motives, such as fear, self- love, other-worldly prudence. Several nodded a vigorous as- sent to the old position who did not speak, while Sweden- borgians present and Adventists of various shades of opinion seized the occasion to exhibit the superiority of their re- spective theories of " the world to come." The argument of the paper, which was commended in terms which the writer felt to be hardly warranted, was not discussed at all, on its merits, except by one or two. Feeling after the lapse of several years an increasing conviction of the gravity and importance of the question for the pulpit of to-day, the au- thor ventures to insert the essay here substantially as it was read before the association, but supplemented with some references to present-day developments of opinion. An ex- haustive and complete discussion of the problem it did not then, and does not now, pretend to be. 128 Ecce Clerus 2. Significance and Bearings of the Inquiry* The question which forms the subject of this paper is one very difficult for a minister in harness to answer with any degree of confidence. Working up to the collar all the time, as most of us are doing; wholly preoccupied with the manifold and various duties that daily claim attention and thought, with no inclination to meddle with other men's affairs, and with very few opportunities of hearing each other preach, how shall anyone say what doctrines are regularly taught from evangelical pulpits ? in what relative proportion taught ? and according to what rule of theological perspec- tive ? And what are neglected consigned to that limbo, large and broad, in which things transitory and vain only should be received ? The very fact, however, that this ques- tion is suggested by an association of evangelical pastors must be allowed to have its own significance. Men do not pause and deliberately and anxiously propound such in- quiries without sufficient reason. The question is a solil- oquy in which the soliloquist challenges his own faith and courage aloud, and such challenge, unprovoked by charge or insinuation from any hostile source, always creates suspicion of a condition of unsettledness and unrest in the mind of the questioner. By the first interrogatory the allegation of neglect is tacitly admitted, and in the second a hint is given not of rebuttal, but only of condonement or justification. The mere mooting of such an inquiry then, taken in con- junction with the general trend of modern religious thought, and especially the prevailing tone and character of present- day eschatological literature, is our warrant for concluding, without attempt at formal proof, that the doctrine of last things has been allowed to drop out of its proper place in a true perspective of Christian teaching. We do not openly disavow our faith in a "wrath to come" (jueAAowa 6py^). We offer no argument for its disproof. We are simply afraid of it as an item of Christian doctrine, and are willing Bugbear of Present-day Evangelical Pulpit 129 to contribute toward its painless extinction by taking part in a conspiracy of silence against it. There are doubtless exceptions to the truth of this statement, but it is believed they are notably few. As to the causes which have led to this uncertainty and hesitation of the religious mind in regard to an important article of Christian faith, it is much easier to say what they are not than what they are. We shall endeavor, however, to state them both negatively and positively. 3. Doctrine of Future Retribution, no Figment of the Mediaeval Fancy. The evangelical pulpit of to-day is not silent as to the eternal fate of the finally lost, because, as has often been erroneously alleged, the doctrine of future punishment is discovered to be a figment of the mediaeval imagination. The early creeds of the Church up to the Council of Nicsea are simplicity itself, being for the most part recitals of his- torical facts, but it is indisputable that the hopeful and in- spiriting representation of the eternal state of the just has always been attended by this foil this shadow of gloom and despair overhanging the ultimate destiny of the unsaved. If Christian thought on this problem during the last few centuries has been morbidly apprehensive and fearful, the distemper which afflicts it is a very inveterate one, for it has been inherited from the very earliest ages of Catholic Chris- tianity, as the writings of the earliest Christian fathers clearly show.* Nay, it has a deeper seat still. It is inherent in our in- tellectual constitution, springing from a far-reaching psy- chological root which makes our whole mental experience a * Kat npiffiv SiKaiav h roZf -navi iroirjoriTai, TO. /IEV irvevfiaTiKa TTJ$ irovrj- piaf Kal dyye/lovf rovq Trapa/fe/^Koraf Kal kv anoaTama jEj6vraq Kal Tovg dfjp.ov<; TUV avdpu-rruv e'tf TO aluvtov wvp Trs/tipy. Irenceus Contr. Hcer., lib. i, c. IO, 1. Et judex eorum, qui judlcantur, et mittens in ignem seternum transfiguratores veri- tates et contemtores Patris sui et adventus ejus. Contr. Har., lib. iii, c. 4, 3. 9 130 Ecce Clerus series of contrasts. All our abstract ideas exist in pairs and stand over against each other in sharp antitheses. We could have no notion of high without low, of great without small, of power without weakness, of pleasure without pain, of sweet without bitter, of light without darkness, of rest without labor, of holiness without sin, of order without con- fusion, of good without evil, of heaven without hell. No doubt many errors, half truths, and abnormities in philoso- phy, ethics, and religion sprang up during the intellectually active times of Erigena, Scotus, Bernard, Abelard, Anselm, and Aquinas, but this idea of a world of eternally lost souls was not one of them. " The clause about the " descent into hell," indicating Christ's dominion over the souls in prison, though not found in the Apostles' Creed earlier than the age of Rufinus, exists in one or other of its forms descendit ad infer os, vel ad infer a, vel ad inferna, vel ad infernum in many early symbols, and was certainly a part not only of premediaeval, but of apostolic, teaching.* 4, No Lack of Definite Statement in the New Testament* Nor is the doctrine of a " wrath of God revealed from heaven "f neglected because it is not definitely and fre- quently taught in Holy Scripture. The magnitude and gravity of the problem, the solemn and far-reaching issues that depend on its settlement, call for care and exactness in its treatment, and demand a devout sense of dependence on the eternal Spirit, whose promised light and guidance alone can secure the most scholarly, critical, and cautious investi- gation against erroneous interpretation of the inspired word ; but the limits of this paper do not admit of a full and ex- haustive discussion of the question here. We will only say that recent attempts, as in Row's Eternal Retribution, for ex- ample, and very recently in Dr. Beet's Last Things, to elim- * See Hahn's Bibliothek der Syntbole und Glaubensregeln der Alien Kirche, and Dr. SchalFs Creeds of Christendom. t Rom. i, 18. Bugbear of Present-day Evangelical Pulpit 131 inate the idea of endless duration from such phrases as ? rovg aitivag rtiv ai&vuv, to the ages of ages ; %p6voig aluvloig, through times eternal ; aiuviog 0eoc, the eternal God ; ?) aiuviog, eternal life ; oXrjdpov aluviov, eternal destruction ; TO 7ri)p TO ai&viov, the fire which is eternal, taken in con- junction with c rrjv yeevvav rov m;p6c, into the Gehenna of fire ; aiuviov a^apT^a, eternal sin ; aiwwoc /tpi'oYc, eter- nal judgment ; noXaaiq atowoc, eternal punishment ; TO TTvp TO dafteoTov, the fire unquenchable the elimination from these and similar phrases of the idea of a proper eternity can only be regarded as an exhibition of pitiable exegetical perversity. For though it cannot be denied that aiw often signifies an age or dispensation of indefinite limit, and that the adjective atwvtoc, formed from it, often has a similar signification, it is equally indisputable that altiviov) in eternal fire (? TO Trvp TO aluviov), which is not annihila- tion either swift or slow, but an eternal chastisement (it6haoi<; euwvfoc) under an eternal judgment or condemnation (di&vtog Kpioig), then there is no place found for the doctrine of universal restoration or of conditional immortality, or the theory of the eternal hope, which, after all, is only another name for everlasting despair; and, curiously enough, even Dr. Beet, while denying the natural immortality of the human soul, admits that the duration of the penalty reserved for the wicked "extends to the utmost limit of man's mental horizon," and that there is "no ground to hope that the agony of the lost will ever cease."* If the original Scriptures, construed according to strict grammatical law and in harmony with the usus loquendi of the writers, are to decide this much-debated question, there is no escape from the conclusion that men's destiny in an- other world is eternally determined by their character and conduct here, and that as no peril after death overshadows the well-being of the saved, so there is no hope of deliver- ance -post-mortem for the finally lost. Both good and bad reap in eternity what they have sown in time. As to what that future harvest is there is no dispute. In the case of the " holy" it is life everlasting actually possessed now; in the case of the wicked and lawless it is not some arbi- trarily inflicted punishment, but the natural result of a known law working now. Men live by law " the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus." f And men morally degener- ate and die by law " the law of sin and death." \ Scrip- ture simply corroborates and confirms the inference drawn * See the further discussion of this point in Appendix to this chapter. t Rom. viii, 2. t Rom. viii, 2. Bugbear of Present-day Evangelical Pulpit 133 from the facts of life, " that sinful character means retribu- tive character, and that permanent and sinful states mean permanent penal states." The fixed and eternal doom of the unrenewed soul is death (Bdvaroq) and moral corruption ((/)6opd) the inevi- table concomitant and consequence of death. It is an in- curable depravation arising from a hopeless deprivation. In the God-abandoned consciousness of the hopelessly cor- rupted and lost soul the worm that does not die gnaws and the fire which is not quenched burns. In enunciating this solemn fact the manifest object of Jesus is not to gratify our curi- osity or to terrorize our minds with the possibility of some in- definite and dread calamity, but to stimulate us to a right use of life and impress us with a due sense of its responsibility. 5. The Doctrine Essential to a Complete and Well-articulated System of Christian Troth Fourfold Apocalypse. But if it is not for want of definite inspired authority that the pulpit of the day plays the part of a muffled drum on this most solemn question, neither is it because of its non- essentiality to a complete and thoroughly articulated system of Christian truth. Christianity is essentially a revelation of the eternally existent, a disclosure (enro/td/U/i/tfc) of cer- titudes. And as regards the future, this apocalypse or un- veiling is distinctly fourfold: i. There is to be an unveil- ing of the glorified Christ, whose kingly majesty here was hid- den, being enshrined in our lowly human form and obscured by his humiliation and sorrow (i Pet. iv, 13). 2. There is to be an unveiling of the sons of God (a/nQnakv^iq ru)v vi&v 6ov), whose present subjection to various trials and temp- tations and prejudgments and manifold mortal ills con- ceals from view their destined royalty and blessedness (Rom. viii, 19; i John iii, 2). 3. There is to be an unveil- ing of the New Economy (olKovpevr]), " the new heavens and new earth " the divinely adjusted environment or new 134 Ecce Clerus conditions of existence which are to conserve and enhance the joy of those who have demonstrated their desert and capacity for blessedness in a world of temptation, sin, and sorrow. Accordingly the Christian prophet who sees the " Holy City, New Jerusalem," descending out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, is the author of an apocalypse (Rev. xxi, 1-4). 4. Lastly, there is to be an apocalypse " in the day of wrath " (ev fjfiepa 6py??c) f the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his work (Rom. ii, 5, 6). Now, these apocalypses are integral and necessary parts of one great providential scheme of the future, of which the whole past history of the world, with its drama and melodrama, tragedy and comedy, trials and triumphs, declen- sion and advancement, is nothing more than a sort of pro- logue or preparatory rehearsal ; and such is the vital con- nection and close interdependence of these several disclo- sures that to omit or suppress one of them is like breaking a link in a chain. It dismembers and disturbs the entire system of revealed truth and interrupts the gracious pur- pose of God. While theological system may be artificial and arbitrary in its arrangement, its several parts being de- veloped, displaced, or even dispensed with at will, as has always been the case more or less, no such method can be applied without serious mischief to the scheme of redemp- tion, which grows according to laws of its own like a " tree of life" out of the nature of God. Each apocalypse is the unveiling of previously existing facts ; of truths, laws, rela- tions that, having their root and reason in Eternal Being, cannot be altered, but become successively and seasonably ripe for disclosure like the leaves, blossoms, and fruit of a tree. Now, the systematic neglect of any of these essential phases of the divine scheme of the future produces a maimed and mutilated type of Christianity, and presents in Bugbear of Present-day Evangelical Pulpit 135 place of the God-given evangel, where the harshest note is essential to the fullness and completeness of the music, a parody and a caricature which requires all the training, ability, eloquence, courage, tact, and adroitness a man can muster to save it from becoming jejune, tedious, and tire- some to the common mind beyond all mortal endurance. The biographer of Paganini tells us how, when playing before a large and critical audience in Cremona, the home of the great makers and masters of the violin, his first string broke. The musician, with the dogged pertinacity and love of charlatanry that characterized him in spite of his consummate artistic skill, seemed not to notice the mishap, but proceeded to play out the piece on three strings. But it was admitted that, while the performance did credit to the matchless courage and incomparable art of the violinist, it scarcely did equal justice to the music, to the sweet-toned and precious Stradivarius he pressed against his jaw, or to the audience which had come expecting not so much to see and applaud the expertness of Paganini, for whom personally the people of Cremona had no special liking, as to hear the thrilling strains of his peerless and almost perfect music. If Paganini had paused and secured his broken string, the delay might not have enhanced his fame, but what the performance would have lost in brilliance and bizarreness the music would have gained in fullness and harmony. And surely no one called to the high and honorable ambassadorship of the Gospel ministry can afford to withhold from his people from any motives of fear or prudence, or personal ease or prospect of temporary advantage of any kind, what he has reason to believe is a vital item in the divinely inspired counsels of salvation. 6. No Theodicy in Silence. Nor is there to our mind an excuse for silence in the alleged difficulty of reconciling the execution of eternal pen- 136 Ecce Clenis ally on the ultimately lost with the infinite compassion and goodness of God. Those who really feel this difficulty ought to find it at an earlier stage, namely, in the introduc- tion and continued existence of sin in the world. The objection squints in the wrong direction, inasmuch as it looks forward instead of backward. It ought to be dated from the point where the great epic poet begins his beauti- fully sad and tuneful strain, namely, with Man's first disobedience and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world and all our woe With loss of Eden. The greatest evil conceivable is not the suffering which naturally follows sin, but the sin which ever leads to suffer- ing. And this is true whether the suffering be of long or of short, of endless or limited, duration. Suffering does not corrupt the soul and atrophy its moral powers, but sin does. Nor is it conceivable that to a moral being, whose essential happiness must ever largely consist in the sanity and free play of moral faculty and function, any element of pain or disaster extraneous to the soul itself can materially add to that essential anguish which must always be consequent on its own self-chosen or self-caused deterioration. Singularly enough, the future fate of lost souls is described as a harvest of corruption of blasted and putrescent grain reaped under the domain and action of natural law.* We look around us and we see natures as noble and strenuous as our own, capable of as large and lasting a happiness as we are hoping ourselves to attain, defiled, degraded, ruined, by the giant vices of idleness, intemperance, lust, the love of mammon, etc., and every thoughtful man accustomed to look beneath the surface of things feels that endless pain, as such, is nothing compared with this apparently hopeless and eternal corruption of a moral and responsible being. That is * Gal. vi, 8. Bugbear of Present-day Evangelical Pulpit 137 merely the shadow; this is the dark substance that casts it. That is an accident only; this is the essential fact. Yet this ruin wrought by sin is something that confronts us every day, and if we believe in the existence and reign of a wise, holy, and gracious God at all, we are compelled to be- lieve this mystery of mysteries sin to be consistent with his spotless character, universal supremacy, absolute and beneficent rule. As Dr. Salmond observes: "The greatest thinkers have felt that if the problem of the existence of sin and sinners could be made clear to us, we should the more easily understand the problem of their continuance" Mean- while, if we admit the root of evil to be consistent with God's wisdom and love, why find any difficulty in admitting the fruit of it to be so too ? The objection should be taken earlier, otherwise we "strain out the gnat and swallow the camel." 7. Causes Operating Positively toward Alleged Neglect. Looking now at the question on its positive side, there are doubtless several considerations operating powerfully to bring about the doubt and hesitation which tend to seal the preacher's lips as to the future of the lost. We can only advert briefly to the chief of these. i. There is perhaps it is only a passing mood the ab- sence even in the religious, but much more in the unrenewed, mind of any vivid sense of the exceeding sinfulness and ill- desert of sin. Its eternally offensive nature, its corrupting and polluting power, its far-extending and eternal conse- quences are not clearly apprehended nor deeply felt in our day. Even in its worst forms it is condoned as misfortune, as the result of human frailty or false environment, or both; often as the error of noble but misdirected impulses, meriting more the pity both of God and man than the severe blame of either. It is a missing of the mark (apzpTia) through the ignorance, infirmity, want of moral precision of 138 Ecce Clerus the marksman ; or it is a false step, a blunder rather than a deliberate stepping over the forbidden line (rrapd/totwf) a conscious and intentional disregard of divine authority, or a habitual contempt and defiance of law (dvo/zm), or a wrong with a double aspect (dSiKta) a course of con- duct unjust alike to God and to men. And this failure to discern the real inwardness of moral evil this tendency to emphasize sin in its character of error and weakness, and to minimize or ignore its preponderating scriptural aspect of moral offense, perversity, guilt, and condemnation makes the holy and unceasing antagonism of God's nature to it seem "much ado about nothing," and the preacher's faith- ful denunciations of its inevitable doom a vain beating of the air. 2. There is, too, more than ever a tendency of reason to usurp the place of faith. Not reason disciplined and sobered by the difficulties of life, of science, and philosophy rever- ently cognizant of mystery alike in nature, providence, and religion, and instructed by divine revelation. To this God makes his appeal. But it is reason arguing over-confidently from her own dubious and fallible premises, and acting as the self-constituted judge of those universal, eternal, and in- comprehensible principles which are the essence of God's moral character and the immovable basis of his moral gov- ernment.* * Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes quotes, in his delightful volume, Over the Teacups (pp. 253, 254), the words of Mr. John Morley, concerning " the horrors of what is per- haps the most frightful idea that has corroded human character, the idea of eternal punishment," and remarks, " All the reasoning in the world, all the proof-texts in old manuscripts, cannot reconcile this supposition of a world of sleepless and endless tor- ment with the declaration that ' God is love ! ' Where did this frightful idea come from ? We are surprised as we grow older to find that the legendary hell of the Church is nothing more nor less than the Tartarus of the old heathen world. It has the mark of coming from the cruel heart of a barbarous despot." To this it may be answered : i. The "reconciliation" of eternal punishment with God's essential love is not more " hopeless " than the reconciliation of many other coexistent and indisputable facts, such, for example, as the tender mercy and absolute power of God with the indescrib- able " horrors of the middle passage, as it was called, or the miseries of the modern slums, where the present well-being of thousands of helpless children is sacrificed to adult intemperance, improvidence, and debauchery. But God is no more responsible for the hells of the future than for those of the present, both being obviously the result Bugbear of Present-day Evangelical Pulpit 139 3. Then the natural result of this tendency to enthrone reason in its narrower sense where faith should reign is a state of general theological unsettledness affecting the whole of Protestant Christendom. Everywhere traditional beliefs are being overhauled and theological conviction is in a state of flux. The most conservative of Churches are tear- ing their old confessions and standards of faith to pieces. Already the age has seen some of the most familiar and venerable of dogmas Fold their tents like the Arabs, And silently steal away. Many have felt the old homestead of faith coming down over their heads and have left it before the roof fell in, and not having found either time or inclination to build them- selves another shelter, are out in the cold. And like ^Eneas, who stands afar off and sees Troy sink in flames,* they are doomed apparently to encounter many storms, to be tossed on waves of doubt, and to wander in desolate places abound- ing only in anxieties and sorrows. In periods of great intellectual activity in the history of the Church each of the cardinal doctrines of Christianity has come in succession into the hot crucible of controversy, of the perverseness of the human will in resisting the necessary and benignant laws of the divine government. 2. There is absolutely no evidence that either the Hades or the Gehenna, of the New Testament was adopted from heathen mythology. Even were it so, Christianity never claimed a monopoly of fact and truth. The word Tartarus is met with only once in the New Testament writings, namely, in the Second Epistle of Peter (ii, 4), which was received late into the Christian canon, but the idea of hell long antedated Peter's adoption of the term Tartarus. 3. So far from having "every mark of coming from the cruel heart of a barbarous despot," the autho_r and chief exponent of the doctrine is Jesus Christ, in whose authentic teaching it is firmly imbedded. Is it a sign of cruelty of disposition when a mother reminds her beloved child that fire burns and sharp instruments inflict hurtful wounds when carelessly handled, and when she warns him not to play with them ? Does the teaching of Jesus and of his apostles go beyond the simple unveiling (aTTOKa/lw^f, Rom. i, 18) and definite statement of the eternal law which governs the relation of the sowing of to-day to the reaping of the hereafter the link which insep- arably connects present character and eternal destiny ? Christianity does not create the facts and laws it unfolds. Neither is he a despot who, himself knowing, mercifully makes known the morally inevitable to men blinded by vice and passion, and not only provides a reasonable method of escape, but urges them to use it by accepting the conditions. * " Turn vero omne mihi visum considere in ignes Ilium et ex imo verti Neptunia Troja." Vergil, Lib. ii, 634, 140 Ecce Clerus but somehow, without taking the precaution to mark the heated vessel with a crux, in the manner of the old chemists, to prevent the devil from marring the refining process, Christian thinkers have ever got the precious deposit of re- vealed truth out of the testing jar in an improved rather than in a deteriorated condition. At one time the subject of in- vestigation and dispute has been the divinity of Christ, leading slowly but surely to the development of the doctrine of the Trinity and the formation of the Nicene Creed. At another it has been the nature and extent of the atonement, resulting in the construction respectively of the Calvinistic and Arminian systems of Soteriology. At another it is, as at present, the literary composition, age, authorship, value, and validity of the documents of the Christian faith, mainly of the Old Testament, or, again, it is the doctrine of the life to come. To-day it may be said that there is scarcely any Protestant Church or denomination within the limits of Christendom that is not more or less agitated by the ques- tion as to the final state of unrenewed souls ; and of course the natural consequence of this uncertainty is silence all round profound, oppressive, ominous, almost unbroken silence. Is this silence excusable ? It may be true, as Dr. Sal- mond, Professor of Theology in the Free Church College, Aberdeen, contends in his able and scholarly discussion of " The Christian Doctrine of Immortality," that " a true theology will confess its own limitations, and will not pre- sume to give an answer to every difficulty ; will recognize that the Christian revelation is given not to utter all the secrets of another world, but to make God known to us and to bring him near; will seek to be positive up to Christ's word ; will not be ambitious to be wise beyond it ; will be satisfied to be silent where Christ's voice has not spoken, and will leave much that is dark in man's life, here and here- after, to the eternal wisdom that keeps so much in reserve ; Bugbear of Present-day Evangelical Pulpit 141 in a word, it will be content to see that all is in the hand of a God of grace, and its assurance will be that the farthest future can discover nothing that will not be consistent with the perfect love and righteousness which are revealed in Christ." But, on the other hand, as Dr. Salmond is careful to observe, we are warranted in concluding that " Christ's own teaching gives the significance of finality to the moral decisions of the present life. If there are possibilities of change, forgiveness, relaxation of penalty, or cessation of punishment in the future life, his words, at least, do not reveal them. He never softens the awful responsibilities of this life even by the dim adumbration of such possibilities. His recorded sayings nowhere suggest the provision of min- istries of grace, whether new or continued, in the after- existence. They nowhere speak of a place of repentance unto life in the other world. They nowhere open the pros- pect of remedial discipline in the disembodied state, or of terminable award in the condition which follows the great day. They bring the two events, death and judgment, into relation, and give no disclosure of an intermediate state with untold potentialities of divine love and human sur- render. They never traverse the principle that this life is the scene of opportunity, and this world the theater of human fates."* APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI. It is possibly a fact of some consequence in this con- troversy, as Dr. Beet, the author of Last Things, seems to insist that Plato, indorsing the opinion of his master, Socrates, teaches in the Ph75-* The incumbent of All Hallows, Barking, receives a stipend of $10,000 a year and a further $3,000 a year for the maintenance of the church, while the total population of his parish is 447. At St. Andrew, Undershaft, with a population of 218, the clergyman has a house, $10,000 a year, and an additional $1,750 for the church. On a recent occa- sion when the congregation was counted it amounted to 45. At St. Edmund-the-King the incumbent has a house, $6,500 a year, and $1,500 annually for the church account, with 172 parishioners; the Sunday congregation recently amounted to 31 out of the 172. At St. Ethelburga, Bishops- gate, the stipend is $5,250, with a church account of $1,500, the population being 158. At St. Margaret, Pattens, the stipend is $5,300, with a house; there is a further income for the church of $1,500 a year ; the total population is 116, and the congregation on a recent Sunday was 36. At St. Catharine, Coleman, the stipend is $4,150; church account, $1,450 ; population, 237. In this case the incumbent actually receives a grant from the ecclesiastical commissioners for the stipend of a curate. At St. Mary, Woolnoth, the stipend is $6,000 a year; church account, an additional $1,000; popu- lation, 208 ; congregation, as recently counted, 19. At St. Stephen, Walbrook, the stipend is $4,750 ; population, 124 ; congregation, 13. At St. Olave, Hart Street, the parson has $10,400, a house and $1,250 for church expenses, with a population of 364. At St. Peter-upon-Cornhill the stipend is $10,750, a house, with $1,750 for church expenses, * The city of London proper extends only about a mile in every direction from St. Paul's Cathedral as a center. The Christian Ministry and the Masses 177 and a population of 162. When most of the churches be- tween the Tower of London and the Bank of England were recently visited it was found that three of them were actually closed. St. Magnus, London Bridge, with a stipend of $2,900 and a church account of $2,500, was closed. St. Mary-at-Hill, with a stipend of $2,000, a church account of $2,500, and a population of 173, was closed. St. George, Botolph Lane, was closed, and on the door, barred by an iron rod, was the following notice: "By order of the Bishop of London, with the consent of the rector and church warden of the parish, this church will be closed in consequence of the unsafe condition of the fabric and the lack of funds with which to repair it." In this case the rector, Rev. M. Mac- Coll, M.A., a well-known writer in various first-class maga- zines, receives $2,455 a ye ar a house, which presumably was not so much out of repair as to be unfit to live in, and $1,250 for the maintenance of the church. Inquiry as to what Mr. MacColl was doing to repair the fabric and reopen the doors of his church failed to elicit any satisfactory information. While these and other incredible scandals exist in one form or another in most of the Churches is it any marvel that Chris- tianity fails to reach and reform the wage-earning classes ? that a sullen alienation and apathy, if not latent antagonism, hold them far aloof from all elevating or consolatory moral and spiritual influences ? that intemperance, improvidence, and want, with all the ghastly catalogue of miseries that follow in their train, abound ? and that infidelity and atheism exult and triumph ? Is it not clear that lukewarm and worldly churches and church members are often, without knowing it, by far the most dangerous and deadly enemies of the religion they profess ? 4. Remedies Suggested, The age in which we live, however, while markedly one of doubt, criticism, and studied reserve of judgment, is also 12 178 Ecce Clerus one of courage, hope, and enlightened altruistic sentiment. Thousands of thoughtful men and women have grown rest- less under social and industrial arrangements which are practically nothing better than organized abnormities, dooming the toiler to a condition of hopeless poverty, priva- tion, and dependence, and forcing the weak to the wall; making it increasingly difficult for even the virtuously dis- posed to do right, and increasingly easier for the viciously inclined to do wrong. There probably never was a time when so much earnest, practical attention was given to the question of the people's salvation in the broadest and most comprehensive sense of the word. The last few decades have witnessed a genuine renaissance of philanthropy a philanthropy inspired by nobler feelings and pledged to wiser methods than the old charity organizations which may be said to have had their day. To this new and deeper sense of humanity and brotherhood that has come we are indebted for the parliamentary exertion of such men as the late Lord Shaftesbury with a view to the protection of factory workers and children under age, the efforts of George Mtiller, C. H. Spurgeon, J. T. Barnardo, George Peabody, Loring Brace, and others, and the ambitious social betterment scheme of General Booth. It has created a distinctive school of social and political economy. It has produced a literature of its own in fiction, philosophy, and economics, varying in style and method of treatment from Jenkins's Ginx's Baby and Riis's How the Other Half Lives to the more philosophical Social Evolution of Mr. Benjamin Ridd. It has influenced legislation, has stirred the pulpit, and tinctured more or less deeply the current of common thought and feeling. To be sure, the remedies suggested are often crude, Utopian, impracticable, but few of them are without some intrinsic value as steps toward the ultimate solution. By three classes chiefly, each of which ought to be a powerful factor in their moral and social elevation, the people have The Christian Ministry and the Masses 179 been "severely let alone " (i) by the wealthy, (2) by the intellectual, (3) by the conventionally devout. And in each of these cases the law of reaction is vigorously asserting itself to-day. The protest against the exclusiveness of aristocratic and plutocratic principles has come in the form of socialism. The reaction against contemplative, not to say barren and contemptuous, intellectualism is found in the University Settlement movement in such cities as Lon- don, Boston, Chicago, with its object of " relieving the over- accumulation at one end of society and the destitution at the other, as these are most sorely felt in social and educa- tional advantage." The recoil from a self-absorbed and churchly piety declares itself in the resolute and noisy evangelism in the drum, tambourine, and stained and tattered banner of the Salvation Army barracks and street procession. Curiously suggestive was the reception the "Army " met with at first from some of the most prominent leaders of the religious world. After visiting the barracks of the " Army " for the first time, during his stay in London, Bishop Phillips Brooks wrote to his brother thus: "I went on Thursday to a tremendous dinner party at the Baroness Burdett-Coutts's, with swells as thick as huckleberries. Then for variety I went on Thursday night with K to an all-night meeting of the Salvation Army, what they, in their disagreeable lingo call ' all-night with Jesus.' They close the doors at eleven and do not let anybody go out till half past four A. M. The meeting was noisy and unpleasant, but there was nothing very bad about it, and I am not quite sure that it might not do good to somebody."* The transi- tion from "swells as thick as huckleberries," not one of whom probably had ever felt himself called upon to forego a single meal or deny himself the expense of a choice button- hole flower for the benefit of others, to " an all-night with Jesus," whose object was to bring divine strength and con- * Letters of Travel, p. 292. 180 Ecce Clerus solation to those who by sin and vice had forfeited their inheritance of hope for time and eternity, was evidently too sudden for the good bishop. But curiously enough, though no communion in Christendom cultivates more assiduously stately ecclesiastical forms and imposing ceremonies than that of which Bishop Brooks was so distinguished an orna- ment, unless, indeed, it be that of the Milk-white hind, unspotted and unchanged, that Church is the only one that has cared to attempt any direct imitation of the organization and methods of the "Army;" and from it the "Army" has obtained some of the ablest and most successful of its recent leaders. Speak- ing of her first acquaintance with the movement, Mrs. Maud B. Booth says : " I heard them sometimes when the singing sounded muffled through the stained-glass windows of our church, and it could hardly have been said to break the sacred stillness, yet I could catch the oft-repeated words, *O you must be a lover of the Lord,' and sometimes they would come to my ears mixed in a strange way with the familiar sentence, ' Lord, have mercy on us miserable sin- ners.' Ah, little did I know then that these people were sinners forgiven seeking sinners lost. "But I pass at once to days when I learned to look anxiously and lovingly through the rectory windows for the approach of their blue-bordered flag, until I pause at the day when I myself, in an 'Army ' hall, saw Jesus my Saviour as I never had seen him before, and gave up my life entirely to God my God, the ' Army's ' God, and the drunkard's God. Then I received into my heart the love and fire that have sent me forth to do God's will and to follow the steps of Christ of Calvary.* " The whole secret of the "Army's " success, as General Booth assured the present writer during some pleasant hours spent together, some years ago, on the * Beneath Two Flags, pp. 6, 7. The Christian Ministry and the Masses 181 eastern coast of England, is its absolute freedom from con- ventional forms of reverence and solemnity. 1. Now, as to all schemes of salvation which look toward a reconstruction of society on a socialistic basis, it may be objected that, though of the most comprehensive and most radical character, and consequently difficult of realization, they yet propose to risk everything on a doubtful experi- ment; and, further, that they propound legislative, economic, and industrial remedies for what, after all, is, at root, a moral disease. u So far," says Mrs. Ward, "as socialism means a political system the trampling out of private enterprise and competition, and all the rest of it I find myself slipping away from it more and more. . . . As I go about among the wage-earners the emphasis do what I will comes to lie less and less on possession, more and more on character. I go to two tenements in the same building. One is hell the other heaven. Why ? Both belong to well-paid artisans with equal opportunities. Both, as far as I can see, might have a decent life of it. But one is a man, the other, with all his belongings, will soon be a vagabond." 2. Precisely the same objection of inadequacy may be urged against the University Settlement scheme. It is doubtless quite true that " the best speculative philosophy," to use the words of Miss Addam, " sets forth the solidarity of the human race; that the highest moralists have taught that without the advance and improvement of the whole no man can hope for any lasting improvement in his own moral and material individual condition ; " that " nothing so deadens the sympathies and shrivels the power of enjoyment as the persistent keeping away from the great opportunities of help- fulness and a continual ignoring of the starvation struggle which makes up the life of at least half the race."* Still it is important that we recognize the real nature and full extent of the work we propose to do, and resolutely prepare ourselves, * Philanthropy and Social Progress, p. n. 182 Ecce Clerus at whatever cost, to comply with the only conditions which promise genuine and enduring success. Nothing is more certain of ultimate failure than a scheme of amelioration which makes no direct appeal to man's spiritual nature and ignores his need of moral transformation by the grace of God. 3. With the immense advantage conferred by this con- viction the Salvation Army has brought new life and hope to thousands who must have perished without its aid. During the three decades of its existence it has ex- tended its operations to every continent and to almost every civilized country of the globe. And yet, though by no means lacking in courage, resolution, and fertility of expedient, its poverty of material sources, the few- ness of its steadfast and reliable adherents in any given locality, and the backward state of education among its local leaders will always be in marked contrast with the magnitude of its plans and of the problem that confronts it. While scarcely anything could be better adapted to save men from the slum and the gutter, hardly any form of Christianity could be more ill suited to develop the many- sided nature of man when once restored to himself. It is, in fact, as it professes to be, an empire under despotic military rule; not a Christian Church after the New Testa- ment type, seeking under constitutional spiritual government and the sacramental forms and ministries instituted by Christ* to develop individual character and leaven the world with eternal principles of morality and religion. As an autoc- racy it is opposed to the whole genius and spirit of Christian- ity, and is a glaring anachronism in an intensely democratic age. Nor are there lacking evidences within its own ranks of its want of harmony with the requirements of the time.f * Eph. iv, 11-14. t Since this chapter was written the rebellion of Mr. Ballington Booth, leader of the sister, Mrs. Booth-Tucker, of New York. The Christian Ministry and the Masses 183 Even among those who were born in the household in which it also had its birth, whose natural and spiritual life was cradled to the strains of its rude but rousing music, who have labored, planned, and prayed for its expansion, who have born its "banner with a strange device" through many a storm and carried its message of life and salvation into many a dark and dismal alley of the city, there appear symptoms of dissatisfaction with its rigid and inelastic polity its unyielding and merciless despotism. 5. The True Solution* The more thoroughly the problem of the salvation of the unreached majority is considered the more plainly will it appear that responsibility for its true solution rests with the ministry and membership of the organized Christian Church. It is not the manner of God to impose obligation where there is not sufficient power and opportunity to meet it. The rule of heaven, in this as in other things, is a law of truth and equity. " To whom much is given of him will much be required." The Churches have the talent, the education, the moral stamina, the spiritual experience, the social prestige, the historical antecedents, the pecuniary resources, the unbroken record of mercy and philanthropy, and the divine authorization required to inaugurate and sustain a general movement for the moral, social, and spiritual redemption of the people. All that is needed is a full and frank recognition of their responsibility and the intelligent and hearty adoption of some course of action in harmony therewith. The first result of such recognition will be an effort to get near the people and devise some practical method of reconciling the obvious social tendencies of Christianity, on the one hand, with its avowed spiritual mission and sym- pathies, on the other. These tendencies and sympathies are QOW in hopeless conflict. Religion tends legitimately and 184 Ecce Clerus inevitably toward the creation of wealth and the promotion of education, intelligence, refined taste, exalted character. The most natural result of its active principles is to quicken thought, encourage noble aspiration and endeavor, and con- fer reputation, capacity, status, manhood. On the other hand, it is part of its very essence to insist on self-denial and self-sacrifice; on tenderness, pity, and considerateness toward others; on genuine sympathy with the lowly, the needy, the fallen, and the lost. It calls for the cultivation of a warm and vivid sense of brotherhood and positively forbids the creation of a social chasm between the Church and those outside her pale. Jesus affected no carefully guarded seclusion like Buddha or Mohammed ; no superiority of caste like the modern Brahman. He loved the people, encouraged their approach, lived, taught, dispensed his healing ministrations in the midst of them. The companions of his choice were taken from the masses and remained in loving touch with them. "The common people heard him gladly." As of the im- personal Wisdom of the Old Testament it is said, " His delights were with the sons of men," so at the close of the New Testament canon it is solemnly reiterated, " Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them their God." * Among the people Christianity, as a vital and active force, had its start, and with the people it is destined for- ever to abide or perish. " To help the world," says Miss French, " we must take it as we find it, and we find men and women with trivial perplexities and interests ready and longing for the life which is of God. . . . " To reach the people who are, in some senses, below you, you must touch them first on their own plane, show that you are interested in the things trivial though they * Rev. xxi, 3. The Christian Ministry and the Masses 185 often are that interest them, and then you can by degrees raise them to your own plane. This mounting a stage, stretching a hand down to some one on the ground, and ex- pecting that person to keep pace with you as you run along, is not practical ; it is too much of a strain on the other per- son's muscle." To get back to the people, then ; to take Christ to them in our living personality in our whole life as having to do with society, politics, and trade ; with science, art, and lit- erature ; with legislation, government, industrial improve- ment, and church enterprise that is the first necessary step toward reaching and reclaiming the, as yet, unevangelized millions of the people. Along with this sympathy with the unchurched multi- tudes will come the power and facility to recognize their ideals and to interpret their best thoughts and aspirations without insisting on translating them into the, often to them, unintelligible lingo of religion. Whoever will study carefully the political watchwords and party cries of wage- earners will find that they are not such total strangers to noble conceptions of life as they are sometimes supposed to be. Often they will be found to be blindly craving the very boon religion offers as its highest good. For example, on every public structure of any pretensions in the city of Paris the visitor sees inscribed the gospel of the Revolution Lib- erty, Equality, Fraternity, Could anything be grander than the ideal of social relation embodied in those potent words? As one of the most scholarly and influential of English bishops has recently pointed out, that revolutionary triad which captured the imagination of millions of workingmen in Europe are nothing more than the social application of the Pauline triad, " Righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." And when the religion which yields right- eousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost in the indi- vidual soul dominates public as well as private life, then 186 Ecce Clerus will have come safely and beneficently the reign of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, in a deeper and broader sense than has been hitherto dreamed of. The people are not slow to appreciate any genuine effort to understand and benefit them. "The child of the peo- ple," says Paul Sabatier of St. Francis d f Assisi ; " he knew all their material and moral woes and their mysterious echoes sounded in his heart." * Was not this the secret of Paul's power over men wherever he went the key to such scenes as that which transpired at his parting with the Ephesian elders on the Milesian shore ? Was it not the secret of Wyclif s success in sowing broadcast, by means of his poor friars, the word of God in the England of his day ? The secret, too, of Luther's, of Wesley's, of Whitefield's, of Bunyan's, of Spurgeon's, of Moody 's, of General Booth's work ? From first to last the religion of Jesus has in view the sorrows, temptations, trials, and spiritual necessities of the people ; and, instead of crying to them from afar, it hastens to the spot where they suffer to offer its help and leave its quenchless ray of light and joy. As Professor Drummond points out, "Its purpose is by means of the Chris- tian society to give the world liberty, comfort, beauty, joy. This program deals with a real world. Think of it as you read, not of the surface world, but of the world as it is, as it sins and weeps and curses and suffers and sends up its long cry to God. Limit it, if you like, to the world around your door, but think of it of the city and the hospital and the dungeon and the graveyard ; of the sweating-shop and the pawnshop and the drinkshop ; think of the cold, the cruelty, the fever, the famine, the ugliness, the loneliness, the pain. And then try to keep down the lump in your throat as you take up his program and read, 'To bind up the brokenhearted ; to proclaim liberty to the captives ; to comfort all that mourn ; to give unto them beauty for ashes, * Life of Francis