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The Message of Religion 
 
 tO U:\::\- .".:; 
 
 the Men of Our Day./../ : : "0 : \;:\ : : : 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. CHAS. R. BROVN 
 
 1902 
 
 BAKER. PRINTING CO. 
 OAKLAND. CAL. 
 
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*THE MESSAGE OF RELIGION 
 TO THE MEN OF OUR DAY 
 
 "After the death of Moses, the Lord spake 
 unto Joshua." Josh, i; i. 
 
 |HERE is a world of meaning wrapped 
 up in those ten short words. You 
 may say that the real history of the 
 Hebrew race began with its deliv- 
 erance from Egypt under the leadership of 
 Moses. There are interesting stories stretching 
 further back but they are stories of individuals 
 rather than of a race. The Hebrew nation 
 had its birthday on that memorable night 
 when the Lord in his mercy ''passed over " 
 them, and when they in turn " passed over " 
 the Red Sea. Their feast of the Passover 
 down to the present hour is a celebration of 
 those incidents that lay at the foundation of 
 their political and religious development. 
 And the leading figure in that whole period of 
 their history was this same Moses. 
 
 He had the qualities that belong to effective 
 leadership. He stirred a race of helpless 
 
 *This sermon was first preached in the First Congregational 
 Church, Oakland. It was afterward given in this modified 
 form at Berkeley as the Baccalaureate Sermon before the Grad- 
 uating Class of 1902 in the University of California ; and also 
 at the Anniversary of the Christian Associations during Com- 
 mencement Week at Stanford University. 
 
 845667 
 
THE MESSAGE OF RELIGION 
 
 slay ejsrtm til they were ready to act. He con- 
 '. /frpated and successfully resisted their oppres- 
 .... spars. .He led the fugitives across the sea into 
 . the 'Wilderness. He conducted them in all 
 their wanderings, finding manna by the way 
 and water in the rocks. He climbed the 
 death-fence at the foot of Sinai and from the 
 top of the Mount gained a vision of God, as 
 it were face to face. He brought down out of 
 that experience the laws that were to lie at 
 the foundation of Hebrew growth and useful- 
 ness. He led the people on to the river 
 Jordan and showed them the land of promise 
 just within their reach. And then just there 
 he died. 
 
 It seemed a loss irreparable. We wonder 
 how his place could be filled and how the 
 work could go on without him. But the 
 author of the text treats the event calmly, 
 ' ' after the death of Moses, the Lord spake 
 unto Joshua." 
 
 The workers change they come and go in 
 shifts the work goes on. Moses, and then 
 after he is gone, Joshua ; David the king and 
 then Isaiah the prophet ; John the beloved 
 disciple of the inner life and Paul the sturdy 
 apostle of missionary activity ; Luther and 
 then Calvin ; Jonathan Edwards and then 
 Henry Ward Beecher so they come and so 
 they go. Each man the servant of an eternal 
 purpose ; each man doing his stint and then 
 
TO THE MEN OF OUR DAY 
 
 sinking back into the rest that remains for 
 the people of God. And into every place left 
 vacant, a new man called ! 
 
 But it is not only another man but a differ- 
 ent type of man who is called into the field. 
 The text brings out a bold contrast. Moses 
 was a man of peace, the meekest of men. We 
 never find him with a sword in his hand. He 
 was busy with the laws, the ceremonies, the 
 institutions that were to educate an illiterate 
 race in rightousness and holiness. He was a 
 man of spiritual vision. He saw the presence 
 of God in a burning bush and put the shoes 
 off his feet for the place was holy ground. 
 He saw the presence of God in a thunder 
 storm at the top of Sinai, and came out of the 
 experience with his face shining from the 
 glory he had seen. He saw the finger of God 
 in the writing of those moral laws that belong 
 to any nation's wellbeing. Along these lines 
 of effort Moses found the presence of God and 
 became the useful servant of His will. 
 
 But after this work was under way, after 
 the death of Moses, the L,ord spoke unto 
 Joshua. Work of another sort was now to be 
 undertaken. Jericho had to be captured. A 
 licentious and idolatrous people was to be 
 subdued. A footing for the Israelites was to 
 be gained in the land given to their fathers. 
 The conquered territory was to be divided up 
 and assigned to the twelve tribes. Ability of 
 
THE MESSAGE OF RELIGION 
 
 another kind was in demand ; soldierly 
 courage and administrative force were called 
 for. So when Joshua had his vision of the 
 Divine Presence it came in these terms. He 
 was standing outside the walls of Jericho 
 when "behold there stood over against him a 
 man with a drawn sword in his hand. " Upon 
 inquiry this mysterious figure proclaimed him- 
 self " The Captain ot the Host of the Lord. " 
 And this place where Joshua stood face to 
 face with the military necessities of the situa- 
 tion and face to face with the offer of divine 
 aid in meeting those necessities, was to him 
 holy ground and he too put the shoes off his 
 feet. It was anotner vision of the same God 
 in terms that belonged to a different form of 
 service. 
 
 So it is always after the death of Moses 
 the Lord speaks unto Joshua. The text gives 
 us a picture of the constant changes that have 
 been taking place and are taking place now 
 in that work which the Lord of all the values 
 there are, steadily carries forward. Many a 
 Moses and many a method has done its 
 appointed task and passed away ; then the 
 Lord has called a different type of man and 
 another sort of method into the field. These 
 changes bring not dismay but inspira- 
 tion to the children of the kingdom. They 
 indicate that we are the children of the living 
 God. And so in view of the changes 
 
TO THE MEN OF OUR DAY 
 
 that are taking place in the aspects of religious 
 work, I want to ask what are some of the 
 characteristic features of the message religion 
 has for the men of our day. 
 
 /. There has come a new insistence upon 
 intellectual accuracy and intellectual modesty. 
 
 It is part of the scientific habit of mind 
 which does not lump things but weighs, 
 measures, analyzes them. While in religion 
 we are confessedly dealing with subjects too 
 vast for complete comprehension or final 
 statement, there is an insistence that as far as 
 we go there be accuracy. In the use of scrip- 
 ture the day has gone when men try to settle 
 the question of probation after death by such 
 texts as that from Ecclesiastes, * ' where the 
 tree falleth there it shall lie. " The statement 
 about the tree is entirely true but it has no 
 more bearing on the question of probation 
 after death than that other equally true state- 
 ment that two times two are four. Important 
 New Testament doctrines are not now being 
 artificially bolstered up by the unscholarly and 
 unfair use of Old Testament texts pulled out 
 of their connection and bent out of their true 
 shape. No biblical scholar could hold up his 
 head and look the world in the face if he tried 
 now to make those warm and rosy love pas- 
 sages in the Song of Solomon represent in some 
 allegorical fashion the love of Christ for his 
 church. That whole method of compelling 
 
THE MESSAGE OF RELIGION 
 
 scripture to mean anything and everything 
 which might make for our side is being 
 abandoned as inaccurate and intellectually 
 dishonest. All straining and twisting of texts 
 is an abomination to the Lord ! " Interpret 
 the Bible like any other book," was Jowett's 
 dictum. It shocked the men of that day but 
 it is now a commonplace of biblical scholar- 
 ship. The sole question is, What do these 
 statements mean, coming as they do from a 
 certain man, out of a certain environment, 
 addressed to a certain set of needs. There is 
 a thoroughgoing insistence upon intellectual 
 accuracy. And nothing less than that could 
 be pleasing to Him who said, " I am the truth. 
 And ye shall know the truth. And the truth 
 shall make you free." 
 
 And a new intellectual modesty has also 
 come in. Men are not now making loud affirm- 
 ations as to what took place "in the Council 
 Chamber of the Trinity " when Father and 
 Son made certain agreements touching the 
 effects of the sacrificial death of Christ. The 
 teachers of religion are not now mapping out 
 the future world with detailed statements as 
 to its heaven and hell, nor giving expert 
 estimates as to the probable population of 
 each when the rolls are all made up. One 
 great Protestant Church many years ago 
 made bold to say that God by his eternal de- 
 crees had determined beforehand those who 
 
TO THE MEN OF OUR DAY 
 
 should be saved and those who should be lost 
 and that nothing men could do would in any 
 wise change the result of those decrees. And 
 now the wisest men of that denomination are 
 wishing with all their hearts that there was 
 some way of quietly shelving those statements 
 to which they can no longer heartily subscribe. 
 The over- confident assertions of other days 
 have given place to the more careful and 
 modest affirmations that the voice of religion 
 is now making. 
 
 It This fact brings a sense of discouragement 
 to some earnest people. They call our time 
 an (< infidel and unbelieving time " and speak 
 fondly of "the ages of faith." It does not 
 seem that way to me. Our age is less credulous 
 than some other ages have been. A shout of 
 laughter would go up if some Oakland 
 citizen claimed that his children were sick 
 and his cow was giving bloody milk because 
 a hostile neighbor had " bewitched " them. 
 Yet it is only a little over a hundred years 
 since the last " witch" was put to death by 
 civil process. That day, thank God, has gone 
 but after the death of such credulity, the 
 L,ord has spoken to the intellectual mood and 
 habit of our own age. Was there ever a time 
 when so many men were sure of God, sure of 
 a wise, powerful, beneficent Being who is the 
 ground and source of all finite being ? There 
 certainly never was a time when so many men 
 
10 THE MESSAGE OF REI4GION 
 
 of all races and tongues looked up into the 
 face of Jesus Christ and saw there the face of 
 the Eternal, their Master, Saviour, Lord ! 
 There never was a time when so many 
 serious-minded people, discarding perhaps 
 some of the magic which became entangled 
 with the idea of prayer, firmly believed that 
 prayer is to sweeten the world by its fragrance 
 and change the lives of men by its moral 
 force ! There was never a time when so 
 many believed that in this body of literature 
 called the Bible there lies embedded a genuine 
 message from God to men not inerrant in all 
 its scientific and historical statements but 
 abundantly able to make us wise unto sal- 
 vation and to furnish us thoroughly for every 
 good work ! There never was a time when 
 so many looked forward with serene trust to a 
 future life, not mapped out but remaining 
 still an " undiscovered country " as it must 
 remain for earthly experience, yet brought 
 upon the map and within the moral confidence 
 by the life and teaching, the death and resur- 
 rection of Jesus Christ ! This insistence upon 
 intellectual accuracy and intellectual modesty 
 may have reduced the number of points 
 on which religious people stand ready to make 
 positive affirmation but it has increased the 
 number who can join in the affirmation and 
 increased the reality and strength of it ten 
 fold. 
 
TO THE MEN OF OUR DAY II 
 
 //. There has been a change of emphasis 
 in the method by which salvation is accom- 
 plished. 
 
 Salvation means moral recovery from all 
 that hurts and hinders our growth into the 
 likeness and image of the Father. The 
 changed emphasis in this work may be 
 roughly indicated by the use of two words, 
 "crisis" and "process." They are not 
 suggested as mutually exclusive for in all 
 times the elements of each have blended with 
 the other, but they indicate how the point of 
 view has shifted. 
 
 The sacramental idea of religion made 
 much of the crisis. The unbaptized soul is 
 unregenerate but the moment the holy water 
 in the hands of an officiating priest falls upon 
 the head of babe or believing adult, he passes 
 from an unsaved to a saved condition. The 
 dogmatic view affirms that the hearty 
 assent to certain theological propositions 
 works the same change in one's standing be- 
 fore God. If the unbelieving soul can be 
 brought even upon his death-bed to murmur 
 an assent to certain vital truths, it may affect 
 his whole future destiny. The emotional type 
 of religion makes much of crisis until there 
 has come in the the emotional nature of the 
 man an overturning and overwhelming crisis, 
 he is without the benefits of religion. In all 
 these the emphasis has been strongly upon 
 
12 THE MESSAGE OF RELIGION 
 
 the crisis in the moral history rather than 
 upon the process. 
 
 You may say that all this is otherwise to- 
 day. Baptism is administered as a useful and 
 appropriate sign of a spiritual process, the 
 cleansing of the inner life by the ministry of 
 God's truth and grace. The apprehension 
 and acceptance of certain doctrinal statements 
 is valuable but only as it induces a certain 
 movement of the will and leads to certain 
 habits of action. And emotional experiences 
 depending as they do upon individual tem- 
 perament, training, the qualky and amount of 
 stimulus given in the service that seeks to 
 produce them, find whatever significance they 
 possess only in the moral attitude that results 
 and the new lines of moral effort to which they 
 introduce the soul. In every case the atten- 
 tion is directed to the process rather than to 
 the crisis which may have some small place 
 within it. 
 
 In a word religious experience is being 
 phrased to-day not in terms of crisis taken 
 from some special texts of scripture but in the 
 terms of domestic life, a Father bringing up 
 and bringing out his children into conscious, 
 obedient, joyous fellowship with himself. It 
 is being phrased in the terms of education, 
 the Master educating, leading out his disciples 
 or learners, into selfrealization through the 
 selfexpression of worship and service. The 
 
TO THB MEN OF OtJR DAY 13 
 
 appointments of the church, the spiritual 
 paedogogy of the Sunday School and nine 
 tenths of all the good religious reading pro- 
 ceed upon the principle that salvation is a 
 moral process conducted by the spirit of God 
 in the heart of the man. 
 
 This emphasis matches the mood and 
 method of those who engage in scientific or 
 historical or literary study. It helps to organ- 
 ize religion with the other forces that are 
 moulding the life of the world. It need not 
 and must not obscure the fact that salvation 
 involves the conscious, definite surrender of 
 the will to God and the establishment of filial 
 relations with Him in His kingdom. But in 
 placing the emphasis upon process rather 
 than upon crisis it gives sacredness and sig- 
 nificance not alone to the sacramental or 
 emotional moments in the man's moral 
 history, but to all that comes within the range 
 of his interest. It makes it possible for a 
 man to feel that whether he eats or drinks, or 
 buys and sells, or teaches and learns, or prays 
 and sings, he may be doing all to the glory of 
 God and giving all these activities a holy 
 place in that process of salvation which is be- 
 ing worked out within him by the resident 
 energy of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 ///. There has come a change in the form 
 of the motive. 
 
 Once the prominent motive was safety, now 
 
14 THE MESSAGE OF REUGION 
 
 it is usefulness. The rescue idea is not being 
 largely worked in religious effort for it has 
 lost its power of appeal. The cry " Repent 
 and believe or you will go to hell," does not 
 find men where they live as it once did. The 
 offer of blessed immortality or any other 
 personal advantage to those who measure up 
 to a certain standard in their righteous attain- 
 ments, is not the moving offer it has been. 
 The motive that springs from the joy of use- 
 fulness is more in harmony with the mood of 
 our day; it has more gunpowder behind it 
 than the motive that springs from the desire 
 for personal security. And it is more in line 
 with the method of Him who said, " He that 
 saveth his life shall lose it ; and he that loseth 
 his life in my service shall save it. " The 
 main attraction in the offer of salvation is the 
 guarantee it brings of an enlarged usefulness 
 in building up the kingdom of God on earth. 
 The gain of this habit is seen on every side. 
 Those ages of faith, as they are fondly called 
 what were they doing with their mighty 
 confidence? They put forth huge creeds, 
 which stand to this hour for the dismay 
 and embarrassment of more critical minds, 
 but the hard fact stands that the faith that 
 wrote the confessions was not busy on 
 foreign mission fields, leading the ignorant 
 into the light, or teaching them to treat disease 
 on a basis of medical science rather than of 
 
TO THE MEN OF OUR DAY 15 
 
 magic or bringing misguided souls into a 
 knowledge of the God and Father of our I/ord 
 Jesus Christ. The world had to wait for our 
 restless questioning nineteenth century to fur- 
 nish the missionary impulse that has planted 
 the banner of the Cross from the rising of the 
 sun to the going down of the same. The faith 
 that wrote the huge confessions was not busy 
 building hospitals for the poor, establishing 
 homes for the aged and orphaned, planting 
 day nurseries and social settlements where 
 they would work recovery, laying the 
 foundations that are enabling the strong to 
 intelligently and effectively bear the burdens 
 of the weak. In those ages, men, women 
 and children were dying like rats in the un- 
 cared for portions of the cities out of which 
 came the great plagues. To-day the money and 
 the time, the thought and the love of Christen- 
 dom is hastening into the darker places of 
 earth to come no more out until they are all 
 made bright. " By their fruits ye shall know 
 them "not by the size, thickness and shape 
 of their creedal trunk and limbs but by their 
 fruits by what they give off and hand over 
 to feed and bless a needy world. The change 
 of motive from personal security to usefulness 
 is like a tree of life planted in the middle of 
 the street, bearing its twelve manner of fruit 
 for every season of the year. Usefulness not 
 safety there is the ground of appeal ! The 
 
l6 THE MESSAGE OF RELIGION 
 
 man of God can serve his generation wisely, 
 deeply, permanently, as a godless man cannot 
 therefore Him and Him only shalt thou 
 serve ! 
 
 You remember Tertullian's picture. He 
 was an orthodox church father and in a glow- 
 ing sermon he pictured the bliss of the re- 
 deemed. In the cool of the evening they 
 walked out along the battlements of the 
 eternal city. They looked over and there 
 were the lost souls enduring the torments of 
 the under world ! As the devils prodded the 
 poor unfortunates and the flames leaped about 
 them in angry heat, the redeemed souls real- 
 ized afresh the joy of their personal security 
 and the awful fate from which they had been 
 saved ! And this moved them to burst forth 
 with new songs of praise and thanksgiving to 
 God! 
 
 Does that appeal to you ? Does it stir one 
 single atom of Christian impulse in any heart 
 here? Judged by the prevailing attitude of 
 our day does it not look altogether in the 
 wrong direction ? What would be the first im- 
 pulse of a company of genuine Christians 
 standing in that situation now? Surely this, 
 ' * Cannot we do something for the relief and 
 recovery of those poor fellows ? If it lies 
 within the power of God or of man, may we 
 not organize a rescue party to go upon that 
 mission perilous it may be, well and good 
 
TO tHB MEN OF OUR DAY 17 
 
 but let us seek to recover those unfortunates 
 from their pain." Nothing less than that 
 would find the conscience or stir the enthusi- 
 asm of the honest-hearted men and women of 
 our day. Usefulness is more to them than 
 personal security. In usefulness they find 
 their salvation ; in usefulness they are to 
 realize their heaven ; and so up out of the 
 riches of usefulness which Christian character 
 makes possible, comes the appeal that enlists 
 the active eager lives under the banner of the 
 Cross ! 
 
 IV. There is a new sense of breadth in the 
 undertakings of religion. 
 
 In other days the aim seems to have been 
 to recover out of a lost world as much as 
 might be. Brands snatched from the burn- 
 ing ; rescued souls from the sinking ship ; 
 handfuls of meal taken aside to receive the 
 leaven ; groups of people gathered out of the 
 world into the church ; favored nations made 
 wise and good while the huge pagan popula- 
 tions across the sea lay in darkness and sin 
 these familiar expressions indicate something" 
 as to the reach of the current ambition. But 
 now the undertaking is greater. Men are 
 saying, "We must put out the fire of de- 
 structive evil. We must make the ship that 
 holds our human interests seaworthy and 
 learn to sail it on all seas. We must put the 
 leaven not into a few chosen handfuls of meal 
 
l8 THE MESSAGE OF REWGION 
 
 but boldly down into the whole mass of in- 
 dustrial, political, educational, social and 
 international relationships, to the end that 
 the entire lump of earthly life may be 
 leavened." The task is not to get a few 
 people out of the world into the church but 
 to get the church with all its aims and ideals, 
 its principles and spirit out into the world, to 
 the end that the world may be changed and 
 saved. 
 
 We all feel how inadequate our present Chris- 
 tian forces are for this greater undertaking 
 but thank God for the courageous Joshuas 
 who are attempting to make " the world the 
 subject of redemption." This big, burly, 
 buzzing, blooming confusion called "the 
 world ' ' is the thing that God loved to such a 
 degree that He gave His only begotten Son 
 for its redemption. The field from which 
 the harvests that alone can fill the granary 
 of God are to grow is, as Christ said ' ' the 
 world" with all its tangled and confusing 
 problems. And nothing less than such a 
 breadth of undertaking will command the in- 
 terest or the consecration of the people of our 
 time. After the death of the men who 
 attempted less the L,ord has spoken unto our 
 time that it might attempt more ! 
 
 We have not gone far. We have made a 
 dent on the side of China which she scarcely 
 feels as she moves upon her stolid way. We 
 
TO THE MEN OF OUR DAY 19 
 
 have done more in Japan and still more in 
 India, although there remaineth much land 
 to be possessed. But the Christian leaven 
 is there working, never to be taken out 
 until those kingdoms are kingdoms of Christ. 
 We have gone a very little way in establish- 
 ing Christian ideals in industry, in politics, 
 in society or in education, but certain brave 
 men have gone into those regions as John 
 the Baptists crying, l ' The kingdom of heaven 
 is at hand." They are the forerunners of 
 something greater. In the presence of the 
 ideals they carry, all other ideals look cheap 
 and weak. Those higher ideals will remain 
 until they subdue all things unto them- 
 selves. This greater breadth of view, this 
 falling away of the walls between the sacred 
 and the secular, making all interests clean, 
 this effort to sanctify the whole of life by the 
 presence of moral purpose and spiritual 
 passion, is but the response our time is mak- 
 ing to the call of Him who said, "Go ye into 
 all the world; wash it, teach it, organize it into 
 a permanent kingdom and habitation of your 
 God." 
 
 V. There is abroad among us a more vital 
 conception of the relation of Jesus Christ to 
 humanity. 
 
 You will see what I mean if you set side by 
 side two well-known books. The first was 
 published in 1869 just ten years after Darwin's 
 
20 THE MESSAGE OE RELIGION 
 
 Origin of Species appeared and before the ideas 
 it announced had become fairly operative. 
 Canon Liddon of the English Church had 
 given at Oxford University a course of lectures 
 upon " The Divinity of our Lord " and under 
 that title they were published. Then thirty 
 years later, Dr. George A. Gordon of the Old 
 South Church, Boston, published the other 
 book called The Christ oj To-day. The 
 contrast between the two books is suggestive ! 
 
 The first emphasizes the difference and dis- 
 tance between Christ and humanity. It tells 
 us strongly that between him and us there is a 
 great gulf fixed. And the main contention 
 is, I believe, true. The over whelming majority 
 of Christian people worship Jesus Christ, yet 
 they would worship no man, not the wisest 
 nor the best. The difference was there and it 
 was well that it be brought out. 
 
 But after the death of Liddon the Lord 
 spoke unto Gordon. In his book Christ is set 
 forth as the Complete Man, the Representative 
 Man, the Son of Man and the Head of Human- 
 ity. This truth is not unrecognized in the 
 former book but it is made popular and effec- 
 tive in the later one. The leading claim in 
 The Christ of To-day is in itself an argument 
 for his divinity because such humanity, made 
 perfectly in the likeness of the Father, being 
 the express image of His Person, is Divine. 
 And the more vital relation in which it helps 
 
TO THE MEN OF OUR DAY 21 
 
 to organize Christ with our struggling, suffer- 
 ing, sinning humanity is splendidly helpful. 
 
 Jesus Christ the Head of Humanity, his re- 
 lation to all men that of the vine to the branch 
 how full of moral stimulus and inspiration 
 it becomes ! The thoughts that I think in my 
 head, the desires I cherish there, the deter- 
 minations I there form, how they flow out 
 and down affecting powerfully the health, the 
 movements, the efficiency of my whole body! 
 So Christ the head of humanity through the 
 thoughts He thinks, through what He feels 
 and wills, becomes increasingly a determining 
 force in the life of the race to which He 
 stands organically related. 
 
 And Christ the Vine, men the branches ! 
 Out of that Vine flows perpetually into every 
 branch which does not put up the barrier of a 
 sinful will, the stream of spiritual vitality 
 making the branches alive with the Vine's 
 own life, making them fruitful with the 
 Vine's own fruit ! Oh that men would open 
 their hearts to that conception of Christ, not 
 standing apart from us in dogmatic isolation 
 but organized with us ! How it would fill 
 every soul with a new moral energy, with a 
 fresh hope for the race, with a magnificent 
 confidence that the kingdom of God can be 
 established on the earth because Jesus Christ 
 is the head of humanity ! 
 
 It is the concrete and personal always that 
 
22 THE MESSAGE OF REWGION 
 
 makes the potent appeal to the many. The 
 writers of fiction are furnishing three fourths 
 of the world's literary provender at this time 
 we are told, because they attempt to give 
 us pictures of life rather than abstract dis- 
 cussion of its values. And students the 
 world over are not going off alone Faust- 
 like to study in dusty libraries ; tney 
 are hurrying to the Universities where 
 are the living teachers. And thus the 
 mightiest religious appeal comes from that 
 concrete and personal revelation of the 
 divine in Jesus of Nazareth. This wide- 
 spread interest in and new feeling for Christ 
 is therefore built upon a sure foundation. It 
 fills every thoughtful man with hope for the 
 future. Grant that the presentation of Christ 
 in much of the popular literature, in the 
 lighter studies of many schools, in the ser- 
 mons from many a pulpit, are inadequate 
 alas, whose presentation of Him, the length 
 and breadth, the height and depth of whose 
 love passeth knowledge, is adequate! And 
 grant that much of this interest is superficial. 
 Nevertheless at least the hem of His seamless 
 robe is there and needy souls are blindly but 
 expectantly putting forth that touch of faith 
 which is for their recovery. It is true that on 
 every side the presence of the spirit and power 
 of Christ in our modern life to a degree un- 
 known before in the history of the world, is 
 
TO THE MEN OF OUR DAY 23 
 
 bringing good tidings to the poor, binding up 
 the broken-hearted, preaching deliverance to 
 the moral captives and setting at liberty them 
 that are bruised ! This day, oh men of Cali- 
 fornia, that scripture is being fulfilled in your 
 ears ! 
 
 I believe then that religion was never in a 
 position to say so much or to say it so effect- 
 ively as right now in the message it has for 
 the generation to which you as young men 
 and young women belong. It is for you with 
 open mind and honest heart to receive its mes- 
 sage and help phrase it according to the habits 
 of intellectual accuracy that belong to your 
 University training. It is for you with your 
 acquaintance with the cosmic processes that 
 have made the world as we find it, to lend 
 your strength to those processes of moral re- 
 covery which are to be the salvation of man- 
 kind. It is for you, taught at the expense of 
 the State for the welfare of the State, to find 
 not in personal security nor selfish advant- 
 age but in usefulness the motives that will 
 bind you to the highest forms of effort. 
 It is for you to live with your windows 
 open on all sides and in that breadth of 
 view to see to it that all the human interests 
 are coming into the kingdom of God to sit 
 down in sacred fellowship with all the forces 
 that fire the hearts of men with moral energy 
 and spiritual aspiration. It is for you to find 
 
24 THE MESSAGE OF RELIGION 
 
 in Jesus Christ the One who somehow is tak- 
 ing the moral government of the world upon 
 his shoulder and who is making all things 
 new because He is the Head of Humanity. 
 
 Thank God for all that He said to Moses ! 
 Thank Him again that after the death of 
 Moses He spoke unto Joshua ! And thank 
 Him yet again, that after all he has said to 
 the generations that are gone, He still has a 
 message for the men of the hour bidding them 
 enter in and possess a land which the fathers 
 saw afar off. "As I was with Moses so I will 
 be with thee. Be strong and of a good cour- 
 age, then thou shalt make thy way prosper- 
 ous, then thou shalt have good success. Be 
 strong and of a good courage, for the Lord thy 
 God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. " 
 

 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY