/•v- .'y-- mm h'&*'h c^<;' ' I m »<"V, i r^--'' a SSI^ m'< 7Xv: r:»- J ; ■.}■'.■ WM'm v-i'^ ;»v:«:. <:v': V3 ::>'v:.i* 'rv.'/i': { liJ^ '■».^ ■ Vj . -.JS ■■mm mi Ex Libris C.K. OGDEN THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION BY BORDEN PARKER BOWNE LonUon CONSTABLE & CO. Limited BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 1911 COPYRIGHT, I9TO, BY KATE M. BOWNE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BX PREFACE The author of these sermons found many op- portunities to " minister to the conscience of men." He always kept a warm heart for humanity, and was absorbed by a passion for helping others. During his thirty-four years of service as a Christian teacher he was con- stantly sought, in his lecture-room and in his home, by those who needed him. And so he bound up the broken-hearted, strengthened those of feeble will, and gave inspiration and cheer to all who came in contact with him. He showed men and women, as never before, that the essence of religion lies in the filial spirit, in the desire to serve and please God, and in the daily life pervaded and sanctified by this spirit, offered up in service and worship. It was not strangle that he was uro^ed to preach, and also to publish his sermons in book form so that they might have a wider hearing; and at the time of his departure for vi PREFACE the life beyond he had nearly made ready this group for the press. Some of these sermons have been printed elsewhere — " Religion and Life" appears in " Modern Sermons by World Scholars" ; " The Church and the Kingdom of God " was one in a course of sermons delivered before the Union Theological Seminary ; " The Suprem- acy of Christ " was preached during a visit in the Orient, to crowds of eager listeners; " Prayer " was written to strengthen the faith of a member of the home circle, and at her request given to a larger audience one memor- able Sabbath at Wellesley College. Through- out this book there are famihar echoes of private and public speech. " If," to use the author's own words, " the great end of religion is a developed soul, a soul with a deep sense of God, a soul in which faith, courage, and resolution are at their highest," then the writer of these sermons had in this life entered into the fullest realiza- tion of all he taug-ht to others. His Wife. Boston, November 7, 1910. CONTENTS I. THE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST 1 11. RELIGION AND LIFE 23 in. THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS PRAC- TICAL SOLUTION ^ IV. RIGHTEOUSNESS THE ESSENCE OF RE- LIGION ''^ V. THE CHURCH AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD 97 VI. PRAYER « ^2^ VIL SALVATION AND BELIEF 161 Vni. THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE WORLD 1^'^ IX. OBEDIENCE: THE TEST OF DISCffLESHIP 209 X. OUR PARTNERSHIP WITH GOD 235 XL LAW OF SUCCESSFUL LIVING 259 Xn. THE MIRACLE OF THE RESURRECTION 287 THE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION THE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life. — JoAn 6: 68. The superficial disciples of Jesus were begin- ning to fall away when these words were uttered. He had begun to unfold the deeper truths concerning himself and his mission, and many took offense at them and walked no more with him. " Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life." In these words Peter, by implication, sets Jesus on high as the supreme Teacher, with whom no one else is to be compared and whose teachings are so great and wlorthy that they are rightly called words of eternal life. And this conviction of the apostle is more and 4 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION more justified by the religious life of the race. The religious history of humanity is daily be- coming better known. In the last century it was possible to claim that religion is adventi- tious to human nature, not even an excrescence, but rather a barnacle generated by fraud and ignorance. This is the case no longer. As our geographical and historical knowledge has ex- tended, it has become clear that man is natu- rally religious. So much is this the case that unbelief now commonly takes the form of claiminsr that all relisfions alike are the natural outcome of that religious sentiment which is instinctive in human nature ; just as the vari- ous art products of the race in all their forms are to be traced to the aesthetic instinct which is founded in human nature. But however this may be, we stand to-day in the face of vast religious systems of which our fathers never dreamed. Christianity has to confront great historic religions, older and having more adherents than itself. The Christian mission- ary finds himself in the presence of old and venerable faiths, with their bibles, their tern- THE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST 5 pies, and their supernatural history. Indeed, their sacred books have been translated in some twenty odd volumes, and we read them in our own tongue. Christ, then, is but one of many religious teachers. Along with this growing historical know- ledge has developed a still more wonderful knowledge of nature. The nature upon which the thinker of to-day looks out has almost nothing in common with nature as it seemed to men in the apostles' day. Limits have van- ished in both space and time ; and instead of the simple bodies of the senses we have a won- derful mysterious energy on which all things forever depend and from which they forever proceed. We have a threefold infinitude — infinitude of extension, infinitude of duration, infinitude of power; and then, brooding im- penetrable over all, an infinitude of mystery. But none of these things, nor all of them to- gether, have in any way returned an answer to Peter's question. Standing in the face of our increased knowledge of the world and of man, we can only repeat his word : " Lord, 6 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life." More and more it is becom- ing apparent that for knowledge and help and hope concerning the deepest things of God and life and destiny we must depend on Jesus Christ or abandon ourselves to apathy or despair. Our greatest need in matters of religion is to know how to think about God, what he is and what he means. Our next greatest need is to know how to think about ourselves, our life and destiny. This unseen being in whom more or less blindly all men believe, what is he? Is he perhaps some metaphysical perfection to which right and wrong are indifferent ? And if he be a moral being, what is his attitude toward us ? Does he forgive sin or hear prayer? Indeed, does he care for us at all ; or are we rather forever beneath his notice ? And this life of ours — does it mean anything or tend to anything ? Is there any outcome to human history; or is it only an uncared-for product of eternal laws which roll on forever and with equal indifference to life and death ? These THE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST 7 are the supreme questions to which the earnest minds of the race have ever been seeking an answer ; and the only answer which com- mands the assent of the enlightened mind, heart and conscience is the answer given by Jesus Christ. He tells us of a Father and Al- mighty Friend upon the throne. Our God is not an absentee apart from the world in self- enjoyment, but he is present in the world, in life, in conscience and history, carrying on a great moral campaign for the conquest and training of the human will and its establishment in righteousness. We are now God's children, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but we know that when God's will concerning us has been wrought out, we shall be like him and shall see him as he is. Meanwhile all good things are safe in the plan and power of God, and are moving irresistibly Godward, for nothing can thwart God's righteousness and lovino^ will. Such is the answer of Jesus Christ to our eager questioning con- cerning God and life and destiny ; and this answer in its clearness and power to produce 8 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION conviction and control life we owe entirely to him. By this I do not mean that God has no- where else revealed himself to men ; but I mean that all other revelations are obscure, uncertain, and incomplete in comparison with the revelation by and in Jesus Christ. In the confusion and groping of the childhood of the race they served a temporary purpose and were better than nothing. They furnished a bond of union for scattered and warring tribes. They kept alive a sense of the invisible, and gave to human relations and duties a measure of divine sanction. To be sure, they often erred and strayed most grievously from the way, and never attained to any clear and compre- hensive moral and spiritual insight ; but in the main we can see that they performed a beneficent function in the life of men. So much we can see in the light of Christian thought, but we can see it only in the light of Christian thought. If we may believe in God as Jesus has revealed him, we can readily be- lieve that he has never left himself without THE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST 9 a witness in the hearts of men, and that he has used these blind gropings and blurred ap- prehensions of men as means of reaching him while the way was preparing for the perfect revelation of himself in his Son. But if we must believe that Jesus was mistaken, that he did not reveal the Father, then the sure result of the loss of this his"her faith will be the loss of all low^r forms by those who have developed far enough to understand the higher. We can go back to atheism or to ag- nosticism, but we cannot go back to Moham- medanism, Buddhism, or Hinduism or Con- fucianism, or to any of the myriad forms of polytheism and superstition. In the times of human ignorance and childhood these systems may have served a temporary purpose in the divine education of the race; but in the devel- opment of intelligence and conscience a point is reached where we must go beyond them or abandon them altogether. One who has learned in the school of Christ can accept no other conception of God than that which Christ re- vealed. The Epicurean gods, the immoral gods, 10 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION the vindictive gods of the heathen pantheon, stand hopelessly condemned and repudiated by the consciousness of modern civilization. They are equally condemned by modern in- telligrence. A mind which has been formed by the study of nature and the world of law cannot tolerate the superstitions of these de- caying systems. They are doomed in any case. They are not able to think any worthy thought of God or of man. They furnish no hope and no inspiration. Hence, for us, the alternative is Jesus Christ or nothing. If he was mis- taken, then all lower religious effort was all the more mistaken; and there is nothing to do but to look upon the religious history of the race as a phase of the total cosmic process without any abiding significance, somewhat tragic indeed, when viewed from the human standpoint, but after all only a transient phase of a transient humanity. It is only as we hold the higher faith of Christianity that we can find anything divine in lower faiths. The supremacy of Jesus further appears when we turn to the study of nature to get an THE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST 11 answer to the supreme questions concerning God and life and destiny. Here, also, Jesus alone has words of eternal life. We get a great deal of valuable information from this study, valuable for practice, valuable for enlarging and correcting our thoughts ; but to those su- preme questions we get no certain answer, and for life itself we get no supreme inspiration. The study of nature has for the most part been carried on by Christian men, and the in- terpretation of nature has taken place under the influence of Christian ideas. These have steadied and directed our thought to an unsus- pected extent. The fundamental doctrine of monotheism was reached less by speculative reflection than by the positive teaching of the church. This made it a matter of course. In particular the moral interpretation of nature has been thus influenced. In the sure and set- tled conviction of a God of goodness, we have not been distressed or even disturbed at the sinister aspects of nature ; and thus we have failed to get the impression which a purely in- ductive study of nature would make upon us. 12 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION And the conviction has been very general that God's goodness and righteousness are very clearly and unambiguously revealed in the natural world. But this conviction has received many a rude shock in our day. To begin with, . the theistic conception itself is seen to involve mysteries so impenetrable that thought gropes and staggers in the attempt to grasp it. Then the doing away with all spatial and temporal limits in the cosmic process leaves us almost without the conditions of thinking. And when we study the phases and products of this pro- cess, we find ourselves equally unable to com- prehend the power and the purpose which un- derlie the whole. There is very little that we should have expected and a great deal that we should not have expected. And in the organic world we find the same unintelligibility, and, in addition, the positive fact of pain and death. The whole creation groans and travails together in pain. And in the midst of this unintelligible scene, man, a helpless and transitory creature, finds himself placed, a momentary inhabitant of a mere speck in the boundless material sys- THE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST 13 tern, and subject to the same laws as rule in all organic life, — birth, pain, struggle for exist- ence, all ended by speedy death. This is the picture which nature alone presents. It knows nothing of immortality. The recurrent spring, the chrysalis and the butterfly, and similar images, serve well enough to express a faith already possessed, but they are exasperating when adduced as arguments. Both the indi- vidual and the species perish. The immortality of a type is a rather shadowy thing at best, and such as it is, it is only a fiction. Sooner or later, individuals and types alike pass. Nature knows nothing of immortality of any sort, and it is highly ambiguous on the fundamental doctrine of the divine goodness. So much so that those who have broken away from Chris- tianity in our time have very largely fallen a prey to pessimism and despair. So far, so infinitely far, is nature from having words of eternal life. And the great and only sufficient barrier to this way of thinking is Jesus Christ. He is manifestly the Light of the w^orld, the Desire of nations, the Hope of humanity. 14 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION More and more the thought and hope of the modern world centre about Jesus Christ. Of the many religious masters of the race, Jesus Christ is the only one that lives as a present personal power and inspiration. Others have left systems and disciples behind them, but the masters themselves are dead. Their power was in their words, not in themselves. Just the op- posite is the case with Jesus Christ. His power is in himself. What he was — not what he said — is what influences men. And by simply standing in the midst of history before the eyes of men, he has become the Revealer and Searcher of hearts, the Judge of the world, the Rebuker of its iniquity, the Inspirer of its good, its great Leader against evil, and the Hope and Head of all who look for the re- demption of humanity. Anna in the temple spoke of the child Jesus to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. The course of history bids all who hope for a re- deemed world to look for him. In the biblical world Jesus Christ has be- come the centre and completion of revelation. THE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST 15 He is the supreme revealer and revelation, and the only final authority. Long since he be- came the proof of the Bible, so that now our main concern for the Bible depends on its re- lation to him. So long as we have him, we have all that is important in revelation ; and if he were taken away, it would matter little w^hat else might be left. One good result of modern biblical study has been to fix the attention of the Christian world on Christ himself rather than on the Bible, and to show, moreover, that Christ is the centre of the Christian faith. Whatever criticism has shaken, it has only brought out more fully the testimony of history to Jesus Christ. And any one whose faith may have been disturbed concerning the biblical literature should find relief in this thought, that Jesus Christ more and more appears the unshakable corner-stone against which no gates of hell shall ever pre- vail. Again, Jesus Christ has become the chief inspiration and support of the conscience of the modern world. It is a great warfare which 16 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION is waging in the upbuilding of men. A vast body of forces and impulses tend to drag men downward. Men are of the earth by one side of their nature ; and the earth draws and claims its own. Hence the sense-life proves so attractive. And many are found who persist- ently claim that the sense-life is all. On this plane selfishness and animalism soon develop ; and the strong begin to think meanly of the weak and to oppress the weak ; and caste is born ; and oppression and tyranny go hand in hand with animalism for the destruction of humanity. This tendency has been manifold in manifestation, but it is ever the same in spirit, and it is far enough from being finally cast out. And the most powerful agent against it is the life and words of Jesus Christ. He has borne the most effective testimony to the supreme worth of the individual man, and delivered the most effective rebuke to all at- tempts to degrade him. Nowadays whenever any one wishes to make a great and solemn appeal on behalf of humanity, there is almost sure to be some implicit reference to Jesus THE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST 17 Christ. And the most effective rebuke of the world's selfishness, the most searching illumi- nation of its evil, are found in simply placing them face to face with the mind of Christ. On the other hand, there is no way of arous- ing repentance and hope in the sinful mind so effective as to bring it face to face with Christ. He is the apostle of humanity. He knows what is in man. He identifies himself with all its members. The good or evil done to the least of his brethren is done to him ; and the cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple does not pass unnoticed. Against all worldli- ness, and selfishness, and oppression, the great barrier and the great condemnation are found in the teaching and authority and personality of Jesus Christ. Again, Jesus Christ is the great barrier against pessimism and despair. I have before spoken of the depressing aspects of nature, and the depression pursues us into our theory of man himself. What with the influence of heredity and environment, a great many are found who deny, and many more who doubt, 18 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION the possibility of reforming men or making much of them in any way. Here again Jesus is the great optimist and has a gospel of hope for all who will receive it. The weary and heavy-laden without exception are bidden to come to him. The resources of God are infi- nite, and whosoever will may take of the water of life. There is a divine heredity as well as a human ; and the fatherhood of God can set right all aberrations arising from hu- man fatherhood. The disciple of Buddha looks forward to unknown ages of entanglement with an evil past ; but Jesus Christ undertakes to free men from the law of sin and death. He alone can speak the word of deathless hope and almighty power to the morally lame and deaf and dumb and blind of our race. Finally, we find the same supremacy of Jesus Christ in the matter of social regenera- tion. From the standpoint of experience it is very far from clear what the future of the race will be. Malthus portrayed a crowded earth with hung-er and famine as the end. The struggle for existence readily lends evil dreams. t THE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST 19 The physicists now and then tell us the uni- verse itself is growing effete and must yet wear out. Certainly, it is far from sure that we are not using up the physical capital on which civilization depends. But apart from these dismal predictions and reflections, we find many forces at work in civilization which would suffice for its destruction if left to themselves. The wisest statesman can see but a little way, and his power is far less even than his know- ledge. Humanity is driving stormily on its perilous way, and no man knows from history or observation what the end will be. If we really think about the subject, the only reas- suring thing is the optimistic teaching of Jesus Christ based on his revelation of God. If God be indeed such as Jesus reported, if he be our God and Father, if his name is Love, if he has made man for immortal Hfe and blessed- ness with himself, then of course all must be right with the world, and the end must be di- vine. But on any other view, the only preserv- ative against deep anxiety, if not despair, is simply not to think. The God and Father of our 20 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION Lord Jesus Christ can be trusted even when we do not understand him ; but if we seek to know God apart from his Son, we are at the besrinningf of confusion and sorrow. It is a grim scene which the historical procession of humanity presents — the many races, their alienation, their wars and mu- tual slaughter, the failure to reach anything in most cases, and the scanty and insecure re- sult in all. The great mass of individuals have not had the conditions of a properly human existence — buried in ignorance, pursued by disease, persecuted by pain, and all the while, like some tremendous Niagara, pouring over into the abyss of death and darkness. We are fascinated and almost paralyzed by the awful spectacle. What does it all mean — these fear- ful methods, this silence and indifference, this apparent traversing of all our ideas of justice and mercy? Is there any justifying outcome? Jesus Christ bids us trust God and fear not. Love and wisdom rule, and we shall yet see it when the day breaks and the shadows flee away. Others have echoed his words, but his THE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST 21 is the only original voice which commands our conviction and establishes our faith. Now that these things are so, I am pro- foundly convinced. Jesus, instead of becoming less and less necessary to humanity, is more and more necessary. Our problems are larger, more pressing, more insistent to-day than ever before. Past times were in comparison times of childhood. And the solution of our prob- lems is hopeless without the light thrown upon them by Jesus Christ. The question which Peter asked in his first dim insight into the supremacy of his Lord, the disciple of to- day repeats with all the added emphasis of nearly two thousand years of history : " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life." n RELIGION AND LIFE II RELIGION AND LIFE I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, -which is your reasonable service. — Romans 12 : L In the preceding part of the epistle Paul has unfolded the divine plan for the salvation of men ; he now proceeds to sundry practical deductions. And he begins with an exhortation based upon the tender compassions of God which he has been describing, and urges his readers to offer themselves in living sacrifice to God. But a word of explanation is needed to bring out the full force of the passage. The phrase " reasonable service " but poorly translates Paul's meaning. We commonly take it to signify a duty which it is fitting we should recognize. It is meet and right and hence our bounden duty. Our "reasonable service," then, is a duty toward God which we ought to perform. Of course, every such 26 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION duty is a " reasonable service " in this sense, but still this is not what Paul meant or said. The word translated service properly means religious worship, as indeed the word service often does in English. We say, service will be held, meaning a meeting for worship. The word translated service here is latreia, the word which appears in idolatry, the worship of idols ; Mariolatry, the worship of Mary ; bibliolatry, the worship of a book, etc. And the reasonable does not mean here something right or fitting, but rational or spiritual. Paul was writing to persons many of whom were familiar with the Jewish ritual, and all of whom were livino- in the midst of idolatrous rites and practices, and he wished to show the superiority of the Christian life and worship by contrast with these other forms. The other sacrifices, whether Jewish or heathen, he re- garded as dead, irrational, unspiritual. The Christian sacrifices should be living, rational, spiritual. The Jews and the heathen offered up the bodies of slain animals; the Christian should offer up himself in living sacrifice in RELIGION AND LIFE 27 all the contents and details of his life. The body here stands for the entire personality. It is a convenient and picturable putting of the matter, and also serves to show that the details even of the physical life are to be in- cluded in our religion. The idea here is the same as when Paul urges us, whatsoever we do, whether we eat or drink, to do all to the glory of God. And this offering up of life as a whole in living sacrifice to God was to be their rational and spiritual worship, in distinction from the dead, irrational, unspiritual worship of the non-Christian world. Now we see the apostle's thought. He would have us conceive of the world as a temple in which men perpetually offer up the daily life as their spiritual worship of God. The life itself is to be the material of religion ; and when it is offered up in the filial spirit of lov- ing obedience, it is our religion, our worship. Dead sacrifices, or the sacrifice of dead things, cannot please the living and holy God ; but when life itself is offered up in continual con- secration and devotion, it becomes that true 28 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION worship of the spirit, in the spirit, which alone is well pleasing unto him. This exposition gives us our subject : The religious value of daily life. And by the daily life I mean this complex round of labor and rest, of waking and sleeping, of eating and drinking, of family and social interests, and all the multitudinous activities which spring out of human nature and which are necessary to keep the world a-going. What is the reli- gious value of these things, and what is their relation to religion ? The text has already told us. They are to be done to the glory of God by being subordinated to his will ; and when they are thus offered up in living sacrifice to God, they become our religion, our spiritual worship. On this general subject of the relation of life to religion there are three views more or less explicitly recognized in religious thought — the worldly view, the ascetic view, the Christian view. The peculiarity of the worldly view is that it stops with the daily life and fails to relate RELIGION AND LIFE 29 it to any divine meaning or plan. It discerns no spiritual life to which the daily round should minister, no supreme good which glori- fies that round by relating it to God's will and purpose. Thus life itself soon becomes de- graded, and sinks to its physical dimensions. The Gentile question, what shall we eat, drink, and wear, becomes the great if not the only question. Then life becomes mainly an affair of eating, drinking, and dressing, varying of course in grossness or refinement in different classes of society, but essentially the same in all. The life of animalism may be found every- where in society, differing only in the form of its manifestation, but not in its principle. And this life quickly develops into the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. Thus a blindness to the higher goods of life is developed or made chronic, and a sad inversion of right judgment is reached. In this view there is no sense of real values. Thinofs which minister to animal sensation or to per- sonal vanity are made the supreme goods of 30 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION life. Men lose themselves in their accidents, in things which at the utmost have only a temporary convenience, without any signifi- cance whatever for manhood here or hereafter. Men forget themselves, their real selves, en- tirely, and pride themselves on the most ludi- crous externalities. They confuse themselves with their surroundings, and judge themselves, and are judged by others, according to their surroundings. Oftentimes the person himself disappears entirely from our thought in the contemplation of the surroundings. He be- comes only a form for the exhibition of cloth- ing or a tag or label for property. The way in which this illusion haunts us is at once pathetic and grotesque. The man foro^ets himself and others also for- get him ; only the property is thought of. If we should ask how much some one is worth, only money values would be considered. What the man might be worth to God or men, what he counts for in humanity's struggle, to what spiritual values he has attained — these things are never dreamed of. And the same thing RELIGION AND LIFE 31 continues when the man dies. Here, again, our attention is fixed on the property. How much did he leave? What will the heirs do with it? These and similar questions occupy our minds, with not a single thoug^ht of the soul that has left it all and gone out on its mysterious way to a world where only real values are recog- nized. One with an eye for real values can discern many scarecrows like that of which Hawthorne somewhere writes, parading in unconscious masquerade under the solemn stars and before the watching angels ; small minds and smaller hearts disguised by showy circumstances, and hideous mental and spiritual squalor hidden in fine surroundings. Such is the worldly view of life and such its tendency. And when its devotees have been disillusionized, as commonly happens if they live long enough, they become cynics; that is, worldlings who have found the world out but have found nothing else to take its place. For the world passeth away and the lust thereof. It cannot long satisfy the soul ; 32 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION only God can do that. No one knows better than the sated worldHng that it would profit nothing to gain the whole world. The ascetic view of life arises as a revolt and protest against the worldly view. It comes about as follows : The great body of tempta- tions arises in connection with one phase or another of daily life. The physical nature is a fruitful source of temptation. Family life, social life, the life of trade, every form of human activity is attended with temptation and peril. In addition, most of these things have no lasting or valuable goods to offer. Their joys soon fail. Seeing their danger and scanty value in any case, seeing also how completely they often submerge the higher nature of men, let us abandon the daily and outward life so far as possible, and in holy retirement therefrom cultivate the spirit. This view has made deep marks on history. It is by no means confined to the Christian world ; indeed, its greatest manifestations have been in non-Christian lands. In India and China it has produced swarms of world-re- RELIGION AND LIFE 33 noiincers. In the early Christian times it filled Egypt and Syria with hermits and anchorites, and in later times built up the great monastic institutions of the medieval church. Nor are traces of it lacking among ourselves. We see it in the distinction of secular and religious. We see it in the false notions of spirituality which pervade popular religion. We are will- ing to allow that life may be controlled by religion, but still we let it appear that we think it detracts from relisfion. The ideal would be complete retirement from life and all its secu- lar interests to engage in voiceless adoration and unceasing worship. But we must suppose God's supreme pur- pose in our lives is our spiritual development ; and hence w^e cannot suppose that be has placed us in a life the great forms and needs of which are opposed to our best life. Such a thought would be impiety. This ascetic con- ception is intelligible as a revolt against the worldly view, but it is no less mistaken and pernicious. The great forms of life are not the outcome of sin, but of our constitution and of 34 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION the nature of things ; and these in turn are the ordinance of God. The entrance of the mil- lennium would change the spirit of human liv- ing, but not its essential forms. Hence any religion possible to us here must find its place in the world as God has made it, not by getting out of it, nor by withdrawing from it, but by transforming it with the filial spirit, and thus making life itself our religion and our spirit- ual worship. This brings us to the Christian view, which recoo-nizes the truth in the other views and reconciles them by uniting them in a higher view. The truth in the worldly view is that the life that now is, with all its interests and activities, is a matter of prominent concern. Christianity completes this view by bringing the life that now is into relation to eternal life, and thus gives it a significance which it does not have in itself. The truth in the ascetic view is that the worldly life by itself is a poor and mean thing, and that only spiritual goods have abiding value. Christianity adopts this truth, but corrects the error of supposing that RELIGION AND LIFE 35 life as a divine ordinance is common or un- clean, and that spiritual goods can be obtained apart from life rather than in and through the discipline which life affords. "VVorldliness, in the religious use of the term, is not the being occupied with secular things. It is rather a spirit, a temper, a way of look- ing at things and judging things. The world- liness is not in the work, but in the spirit of the worker; and it may be manifested in con- nection with any kind of work. Worldliness can penetrate even into prayer and preaching, and the most sacred work can be done in a worldly spirit. In like manner the Christian life does not consist in doing formally religious things, though these have their place, but in the filial spirit which should pervade all doing and all days and all life in all its interests. Whatso- ever the Christian does, he is to do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to man. And this liv- ing in all things unto the Lord is his religion. The questions of the Gentiles press equally on both the Christian and the worldly man. What shall we eat, what shall we drink, and 36 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION wherewithal shall we be clothed? But the Christian does not rest in this sense-life. He relates it to a divine purpose and seeks to glo- rify it by bringing into it the courage, the dignity, the honor of a child of God. Life is not irreligious, but it needs to be subordinated to the Christian spirit; and in and through this life we are to realize ourselves and glorify God. In the Christian view, then, life with all its interests is the field of the Christian spirit ; and life with all its forms and interests is the ordinance of God. And the part of Christian wisdom is to accept it as God's gift ; as the means by which he is exercising us in the es- sential virtues of the kingdom, humility, trust, obedience, unselfishness, and also the means by which he is developing us into larger and larger life, and by testing our faithfulness in a few things fitting us to become rulers over many. There are still traces among us of the notion that reliofion is a round of formal rites and observances, and concerns itself mainly, if not RELIGION AND LIFE 37 exclusively, with exercises o£ technical devo- tion and worship, such as prayer and church attendance. We still hear echoes of the ascetic disparagement of wealth, learning-, culture, science, art, and the myriad activities of civi- lized life as irrelio^ious or hostile to relij^ion. But such a view is to make religion only one interest among many, and by no means the most important. Religion becomes universal and supreme only as it is made a principle which controls all living, and is not limited to any one phase of life. Now the great forms of human life and interest are the conditions of a laroe human life, and are included, therefore, in the divine plan for men. Least of all are they to be viewed as sinful or as the outcome of sin in any way. They are founded in our constitution and our relations to things, and will be neces- sary as long as this constitution remains, even if the millennium should come. If the millen- nium came to-morrow the work of the world would have to go on just the same. All that would be eliminated would be the evil will and 38 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION the results which flow from it. Education, trade, transportation, farming, mining, the manifold productive industries of the world, the administration of government — all would go on, or civilization would perish. These are absolutely necessary conditions of any large human life as we are at present constituted ; and man could not be man without them. Not less trade, but more conscience is the need of society ; not less production, but a finer spirit in both producers and consumers. We need not less knowledge, or wealth, or taste, but far more of all of them, and all of them used for the enlargement and upbuilding of men. God's will concerning us involves activity in all these lines, an activity beyond anything yet attained, but it also involves the subordination of all these activities to the spirit of love and righteousness. And the Christian spirit, instead of withdrawing from this life, is to move out into it and possess it — into the great institutions of humanity, the family, the school, the state, and build them into harmony with the will of God. Thus the RELIGION AND LIFE 39 kingdom of God and the kingdom of man, ■which are essentially the same, will come. Nothing which I have said is to be under- stood as denying the importance of the formal exercises of religion. There is indeed a susf- gestion in the fact that the Revelator in de- scribing his vision of the New Jerusalem says, " And I saw no temple therein " ; but such a condition is not possible on earth in our pre- sent stage of development. Still it must be said that these formal exercises are not reli- gion. At best they are only one phase and manifestation of religion, and sometimes they are not even that. But the religion is in that filial attitude of the spirit which in all things seeks to do the will of God ; and this is mani- fested quite as really and religiously in the daily life as in the sanctuary. Again, if we define the Church as the organization for public re- ligious worship, for religious instruction, and the administration of religious ordinances, then we must say that it is only one of God's instruments. By far the larger part of God's work upon and for humanity lies outside of 40 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION the Church, in the great institutions of the family, the state, the school, and in the great ordinance of labor. By and through these things, also and preeminently, as well as through the Church, God is discipHning and building men into life. The Church is the highest institution, but by no means the most important. Now in this Christian view of life and its religious value we have a wholesome doctrine and one very full of comfort. We need this doctrine to broaden religion and keep it sane and sweet. Religion without the balance of the secular life tends to become narrow and silly, or fanatical and dangerous. This is abundantly shown by the course of religious history. God's method of building men by the discipline of daily life is far better than anytliing men have devised. The most dread- ful caricatures of both sainthood and human- ity have been produced by the ascetic and other-worldly inventions of good men. The only way to keep religion sane is to come out of the cloister and out of all supposed holy RELIGION AND LIFE 41 withdrawal from the world, and set ourselves on the positive task of bringing in the king- dom of God, or of making God's will rule in all our human relations. The world has little need of technical saints pr of holy hermits, but it has great and crying need of good men and women everywhere, in the family and in the community, in trade, in politics, in art, in lit- erature, — men and women who can be trusted and who will stand everywhere and always for the things that are good and true and pure, and against all things whatsoever that are op- posed thereto. One great need of the piety of our time is to overcome its narrow and ab- stract individualism, with its selfish scheme of salvation, and see that Christianity aims to bring all things into obedience to Christ. It redeems not merely the individual man, but all his activities, relations, and institutions j and not until this is done wull the triumph be complete. The renewed man must reveal him- self in a renewed society, renewed in all fac- tors and details. Alone: with the new heaven must go the new earth. And the man who 42 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION does not hold himself responsible in the meas- ure of his influence for bringing in the new earth may rest assured that he will have no part in the new heaven. This Christian view is needed to redeem life from contempt. Our earthly life, apart from some divine meaning which is being re- alized in it and through it, is petty and weari- some, and not worth living. Nerves soon grow irresponsive, and the sensibility becomes jaded. Success itself soon palls on the earthly plane, so that even for earthly success the end is vanity. Hence it is that persons living on the worldly plane so often grow tired of life and become cynics and pessimists. The only relief is to transform life by the power of Christian faith and principle. We cannot get clear of it ; we ought not to wish to get clear of it ; but we can live it unto God. To see this, to realize it, to live it, — this is the sum of Chris- tian wisdom. Ill THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS PRACTICAL SOLUTION Ill THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS PRACTICAL SOLUTION How can these thing3 be ? — John 23 : 9. What is that to thee ? Follow thou me. — John 21 : 22. The question of Nicodemus referred to the new birth ; but it is equally the question we all ask concerning the mysteries of life. The question of our Saviour was originally a re- buke and an admonition to the misplaced curiosity of Peter, but it is equally a rebuke and an admonition to the perennial question- ing of the human mind concerning the ways of God. We are reminded that these things are not our affair, and that our duty is to take up the life of obedience, instead of losing ourselves in problems which are beyond us. My subject, then, is: The mystery of life, and the solution in practical obedience. First, some words as to the mystery. If we were asked what kind of world a God 46 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION all-wise, good, and powerful would make, we should promptly reply, A perfect world, a re- flection of his wisdom and goodness, some- thing manifestly divine. If then we should compare this thought with the real world, we should find very little agreement. Almost nothing would be as we expected ; and our amazement and astonishment would increase with each advance of knowledge. First, the history of the inorganic world amazes us. We pass backward through the aeons of geology and ascend through the longer cycles of astronomy. We find immeas- urable periods of eddying fire-mist, of slag and flame, of mud and slime, of lifeless shores washed by lifeless seas. We watch the slow- moving pointer on the astronomic and geo- logic dial only to discern that past time seems to have been mainly taken up with these life- less periods. And we wonder to what purpose this slow and roundabout method. Did God take pleasure in that lifeless world ? Was there some hidden obstacle in God which prevented a speedier attainment of his purpose? How THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 47 utterly the problem is beyond us. The inor- ganic world presents a thousand questions and answers none. And when we reach the world of life again, what a surprise. We conceive it as a work of divine wisdom, but we gaze on seaweeds and fungi, on shapeless and hideous monsters, on revoltins: forms of all kinds. How little of this ancient and modern life has any obvious meaning. Meaning, indeed, there is ; these things must have their place in the divine plan ; but it is altogether hidden from us. For the great bulk of things that have lived, or that live, we see no manifest purpose. They seem to contribute nothing to the per- fection of the universe. The whole army of fungi and parasites and caterpillars and grass- hoppers and locusts could be dispensed with without any apparent damage to the world. Microbes and bacteria, fever germs and mos- quitoes, what divine purpose or perfection do they set forth ? In much of this, I said, we discern no pur- pose ; but wdien we can discern one it often 48 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION seems to make matters worse. Claws, fangs, and venom are fixed institutions of the world, and are perfectly adapted to their fell work. The arrangements for propagating disease are exquisite. The death-dealing instruments of nature are superb. The animal world is a scene of rapine and blood. If only the higher forms of life were nurtured by the lower this might seem permissible, but often enough it is just the other way. The higher forms succumb to the lower. The useful plant is killed out by the weed. The fruit-tree is destroyed by an insect or microscopic spore. The wheat-field is ravaged by a bug, contemptible in itself, but irresistible in the mass. Disease germs creep forth from every corner to destroy human life. A mildew, a blight, a drought, — and famine and pestilence follow in their wake. The or- ganic world, like the inorganic, suggests a thousand questions and answers none. But these are questions of curiosity rather than of practical interest. The matter grows more serious and the darkness deepens when we come to the human world. For now we THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 40 reach a realm where a moral meaning is pos- sible and where we expect to discern some worthy end and outcome of creation. But to our dismay the moral meaning is but dimly seen, and the moral aim appears to be largely iofnored. Consider the main facts of human history ; what a fearful image they present : the many races, their reciprocal enmities, their unending wars, their mutual massacre ; how wave after wave of slaughter has rolled again and again over the face of the earth. Confusion, blood, and the noise of conflict are ever about us as we trace the history of men. Note too the desrradation of most races and the scanty attainments of the best. How men have wandered in error and darkness ! How their minds have been blinded by ignorance and superstition ! How they have been shut in by massive necessities which could not be escaped ! And the races which have attained to some development, how soon and how utterly they have lost it. Egypt, Babylon, As- syria, Northern Africa, Western Asia, South- eastern Europe illustrate. In fact, there has 50 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION been no proper history for most human races, but only an aimless and resultless drift. No ideas, no outlook, no progress, only animal wants and instincts largely unsatisfied — this sums up the history of the vast majority of human beinsfs who have lived and who live to this day. In the face of such murderous and despair-provoking facts how can we say that God doeth all things well ? So much for the general facts of history. Let us look now at the life of the individual. Consider first the general form of our life, with its necessary prominence of the physical and animal. There seems to be something al- most grotesque in this utter subjection of spiritual beings to animal needs. Most of our thought and effort has to be given to the supply of our ever-recurring physical wants; and the great mass of men have to spend their lives in a hard and exhausting struggle for bread. And not only are we subjected to ani- mal needs, but we are strangely bound even in the highest life by physical conditions. Some organ is disordered, some nerve refuses THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 61 its function, some slight change in the chem- istry of the body, and the moral life is dis- torted or destroyed. We believe that we are the children of God, and yet we find our- selves in the closest alliance with the animal world, subject to the same general laws of existence, birth, labor, hunger, pain, all soon ended by what, from the standpoint of our high spiritual claims, can only appear as a humiliating and sinister anticlimax, the uni- versal fact of death. Consider too the uncertainty of the indi- vidual life and lot, the apparent accidents of health and fortune, the many turnings and overturnings in which we can discern no plan or justifying outcome, the things that have impressed men with the sense of a blind fate or blinder chance which sports with men, and by which our best plans are thwarted or brought to naught. If these things followed lines of moral desert, we should find some satisfaction in them, but this they rarely do. The writer of the Seventy-third Psalm de- scribes the prosperity of the wicked and the 52 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION afflictions of the righteous; and the distress which came to him over these things has come to many another since. The oppressor and the oppressed, the wronger and the wronged aUke in numberless cases have passed away and jus- tice has remained undone. How often the good and useful are taken and the bad and worth- less are left. The wise man dies even as the fool, and in spite of ourselves the cry is often wrung from us that all is vanity. It may be that we shall know hereafter ; but most cer- tainly we do not know now. God's ways in dealing with men are not as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts. The deepest mystery enshrouds them all. We may believe that God doeth all things well, but we walk by faith, not by sight. Thus the human world, both in its general historical form and in the facts of personal life, agrees with the inorganic and organic world in suggesting a thousand questions but answering none. And in the human world they are no longer questions of speculative curi- osity; they are the keen, eager, insistent, THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 53 heart-shaking questions in which sometimes hitter and rebelHous feelinof bursts forth in angry explosion, or which at other times are but the articulated sobs and tears of smitten hearts, or the protests of our moral nature. If God be indeed good, we say, how can these things be? Facts of this kind, of which I have given only a few specimens, constitute the problem of evil. They are the things we should not have expected in the world of a good God. And men have made very great efforts to ex- plain them, but with very little success. Many things may be said in mitigation and palliation in a general way, but after all a great deep of mystery remains behind, to which our pro- foundest thought can find no key. This is especially the case with the problem of the individual life. A kind of tendency to right- eousness and goodness in general may be dis- cerned in things in general, but this commonly leaves the problem of the individual as dark as ever; and this problem is the only one of any real significance. This is 54 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION " the burthen of the mystery, . . . the heavy and the wear^ weight Of all this unintelligible world." Here then we hav| the problem arising from the mystery and confusion of life; and rightly enough the question arises, How can these things be? We now turn to the answer, " What is that to thee? Follow thou me." Of cour^ I am not now constructing a philosophic discussion or carrying on a debate with the unbeliever. I am talking from the standpoint of our Christian faith. And I note in the first place that this is not the answer of heartlessness. It is the answer of the parent to the child that would busy itself with prob- lems beyond its range, and would postpone obedience to satisfy an ill-timed curiosity. It is also the answer of one who has given us all the light we need for the performance of our duty and for trust in him. With this un- derstanding let us see how the facts are met. I. The facts are recognized. We are not mocked by being told that there is no evil or pain in the world. Their presence is affirmed THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 65 and the mystery of God's providence is ad- mitted. His ways are not as our ways, nor bis thouo;'lits as our thous^hts. Ri