O
 
 SERMONS TO YOUNG MEN
 
 jfiftp'Cent EeH0iou0 
 
 Price 50 cents each net. Postage 7 cents per copy additional. 
 
 The Social Message of the Modern Pulpit 
 
 By Rev. CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN 
 Sixty Years with the Bible 
 
 By Prof. WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE, D.D. 
 The Bible, Its Origin and Nature 
 
 By Prof. MARCUS Dons, D.D. 
 The Origin and Permanent Value of the Old 
 
 Testament By Prof. CHARLES FOSTER KENT, Ph.D. 
 The Gospel and the Church 
 
 By ALFRED LOISY 
 
 The Apostolic Age 
 
 By Prof. JAMES HARDY ROPES 
 
 Outlines of the Life of Christ 
 
 By Prof. W. SANDAY, D.D., LL.D., Litt.D. 
 
 The Passing Protestantism and Coming Cathol- 
 icism By Rev. NEWMAN SMYTH, D.D. 
 
 A Model Superintendent 
 
 By Rev. H. CLAY TEUMBULL 
 
 Sermons to Young Men 
 
 By Dr. HENRY VAN DYKE 
 
 Charles Scribner's Sons, New York
 
 SERMONS TO YOUNG MEN 
 
 Beta) an* enlarges Cuitton of 
 " Straight 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY VAN DYKE 
 r>. D. (PRINCETON, HARVARD, YALE) 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 <{jarlE6 trtfanci j fi Sons 
 1912
 
 Copyright, 1893, 1898, 
 Bit HENRY VAN DYKE. 
 
 All rights reserved.
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 A NOBLE MAN AMONG MEN 
 
 A FAITHFUL PREACHER OF CHRIST 
 
 AND A TRUE SHEPHERD OF SOULS 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
 
 PREFACE
 
 THE call for a new edition of this little 
 book affords an opportunity to change the 
 title (which must have been somewhat mis- 
 leading, since it was sometimes misappre- 
 hended) and to add another chapter on a 
 truth which is taken for granted through 
 the whole volume, and underlies all its teach- 
 ing, the truth that the person of Christ is 
 the foundation of Christianity. 
 
 The sermons here printed were written for 
 a church in which there are a great many 
 young men, and afterwards preached in col- 
 lege chapels at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, 
 and elsewhere. This fact is mentioned 
 merely to account for their practical tend- 
 ency, and to explain, or excuse, the circum- 
 stance that there is nothing peculiar in their 
 religious teaching. 
 
 This singularity arises from the convic- 
 tion, which I cherish, that young men are
 
 x preface 
 
 really human beings. They are not a dis- 
 tinct species. They belong to the human 
 race and are entitled to be humanly treated. 
 The best life for them is not separate and 
 artificial, but natural, simple, active, full of 
 vigorous exercise for mind and body. The 
 right education for them is not that of the 
 cloister, in which they are divided from 
 the world, but that of the home, the school, 
 the university, the camp, the workshop, the 
 athletic field, the market-place, where lib- 
 erty is joined to responsibility, and where 
 they are taught to feel that they belong to 
 the world and trained to play a noble, manly 
 part in it. The true religion to guide them 
 in this education, and fit them for this life, 
 is not something novel and peculiar, spe- 
 cially devised for young men, but simply the 
 plain religion of Christ, which is good for 
 everybody, of every age and condition, and 
 for all alike. 
 
 It is good for all of us human beings to 
 know that we are not creatures of chance or
 
 jJrefarc xi 
 
 fate, but children of God, capable of fellow- 
 ship with Him, and heirs of immortality if 
 we will only hold fast to our birthright. It 
 is good for us all to have firm faith and 
 true courage ; to pray for power from above ; 
 and to live as those who have been redeemed 
 by Christ from the bondage of sin and self- 
 ishness and moral death. It is good for us 
 all to take warning and encouragement from 
 the mistakes and adventures of other men, 
 and to bring the life-histories of the Bible 
 home to our own business and bosoms. It 
 is good for us all to refrain from harsh and 
 hasty judgment of our fellow-men, and to im- 
 itate what Francis of Assisi calls " the great 
 Courtesy of God, who maketh his sun to 
 shine and his rain to fall upon the just and 
 upon the unjust." It is good for us all not 
 to waste our time in speculating about those 
 mysteries of theology which lie beyond the 
 horizon, but rather to content ourselves with 
 proving the value of a short creed, honestly 
 believed and thoroughly applied. This, in
 
 xii preface 
 
 outline, is the kind of religion which my 
 father (of blessed memory) taught to me, 
 and which I have tried to teach in these 
 sermons. 
 
 But there is one thing in which they have 
 been distinctly influenced by the character 
 of the congregations to whom they were 
 preached. No thinking minister can stand 
 up before a company largely composed of 
 young men without a strong wish to be plain- 
 spoken and to come straight to the point. 
 They have a fine impatience of all mere for- 
 malities and roundabout modes of speech, 
 which acts as a moral tonic to brace the 
 mind from vagueness and cleanse the tongue 
 of cant. They want a man to say what he 
 means and to mean what he says. The 
 influence of this unspoken demand is whole- 
 some and inspiring, and the preacher ought 
 to show his gratitude for it by honestly en- 
 deavouring to meet it. 
 
 For this reason I have tried to write these 
 sermons, not in a theological dialect, but in 
 the English language.
 
 |Jrcfacr xiii 
 
 Their real aim is nothing else than to help 
 people to be good, which is the hardest and 
 the finest thing in the world. Their gospel is 
 simply this : that the sure way to be good 
 is to trust and follow Jesus Christ, the Son 
 of God. 
 
 THE BRICK CHURCH MANSE, NEW YOKK, 
 January 27, 1898.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 MM 
 
 I. A MAN 1 
 
 II. FAITH 27 
 
 III. COURAGE 51 
 
 IV. POWER 71 
 
 V. REDEMPTION 97 
 
 VI. ABRAHAM'S ADVENTURE .... 123 
 
 VII. SOLOMON'S CHOICE 147 
 
 VIII. PETER'S MISTAKE 167 
 
 IX. GOD OVER ALL 191 
 
 X. THE HORIZON 211 
 
 XI. CHRIST FUNDAMENTAL 235
 
 A MAN 
 '' poia mucl), tljen, is a man better tljan a sljccp '? " 
 
 Matthew xii. 12.
 
 "f)oto mttt&, t&en, is a man better t&an a 6&eep ? " 
 
 To Him who first spoke these noble words 
 they were an exclamation ; for He knew, as 
 no one else has ever known, " what was in 
 man." But to us, who repeat them, they 
 often seem like a question ; for we are so ig- 
 norant of what is best in ourselves and our 
 fellow-men, we have so confused ourselves 
 with artificial views and theories, that we find 
 ourselves at the point to ask in perplexity, 
 How much, then, is a man better than a 
 sheep? 
 
 It is evident that the answer to this ques- 
 tion must depend upon the view that we take 
 of life. And at the very outset I want to in- 
 vite your attention to two of the views that 
 are current in the world, and the necessary 
 conclusions to which they lead us in regard 
 toman. 
 
 Suppose, in the first place, that we take a
 
 materialistic view of life. We shall then 
 deny all evidence except that which we re- 
 ceive through our senses. Looking at the 
 world from this standpoint, we shall see in it 
 a great mass of matter, curiously regulated 
 by laws which have results but no purposes, 
 and agitated into various modes of motion by 
 a secret force whose origin is, and forever 
 must be, unknown. Life, in man as in other 
 animals, is but one form of this force. Ris- 
 ing through many subtle gradations from 
 the first tremor that passes through the gas- 
 tric nerve of a jelly-fish to the most delicate 
 vibration of gray matter in the brain of a 
 Plato or a Shakespeare, it is really the same 
 from the beginning to the end, physical in 
 its birth among the kindred forces of heat 
 and electricity, physical in its decay and ex- 
 tinction as the causes which sustain it are 
 gradually weakened or suddenly cut off. 
 The only difference between man and the 
 other animals is a difference of degree. The 
 ape takes his place in our ancestral tree, and 
 with the sheep we must acknowledge at least 
 a cousinship. 
 
 It is true that we have somewhat the ad- 
 vantage of these poor relations. We belong
 
 a ;f*Un 5 
 
 to the more fortunate branch of the family, 
 and have entered upon an inheritance con- 
 siderably enlarged by the extinction of col- 
 lateral branches. But, after all, it is the 
 same inheritance ; and there is nothing in 
 humanity which is not derived from, and des- 
 tined to, earth and ashes and dust. 
 
 If, then, you accept this view of life, what 
 answer can you give to the question, How 
 much is a man better than a sheep ? You 
 must say : He is a little better, but not much. 
 In some things he has the advantage. He 
 lives longer, and has more powers of action 
 and capacities of pleasure. He is more 
 clever, and has succeeded in making the sheep 
 subject to his domination. But the bal- 
 ance is not all on one side. The sheep has 
 fewer pains, as well as fewer pleasures ; less 
 toil, as well as less power. If it does not know 
 how to make a coat, at least it succeeds in 
 growing its own natural wool clothing, and 
 that without taxation. Above all, the sheep 
 is not troubled with any of those vain dreams 
 of moral responsibility and future life which 
 are the cause of such great and needless 
 trouble to humanity. The flocks that fed in 
 the pastures of Bethlehem got just as much
 
 6 
 
 physical happiness out of existence as the 
 shepherd David who watched them; and, 
 being natural agnostics, they were free from 
 David's errors in regard to religion. They 
 could give all their attention to eating, drink- 
 ing, and sleeping, which is the chief end of 
 life. From the materialistic standpoint, a 
 man may be a little better than a sheep, but 
 not much. 
 
 Or suppose, in the second place, that we 
 take the commercial view of life. We shall 
 then say that all things must be measured 
 by their money value, and that it is neither 
 profitable nor necessary to inquire into their 
 real nature or their essential worth. Men 
 and sheep are worth what they will bring in 
 the open market ; and this depends upon the 
 supply and demand. Sheep of a very rare 
 breed have been sold for as much as five or 
 six thousand dollars. But men of common 
 stock, in places where men are plenty and 
 cheap (as for example in Central Africa), 
 may be purchased for the price of a rusty 
 musket or a piece of cotton cloth. Accord- 
 ing to this principle, we must admit that the 
 comparative value of a man and a sheep is 
 a very uncertain matter, and that there are
 
 31 
 
 times when the dumb animal is much the 
 more valuable of the two. 
 
 Of course, you perceive that this view, 
 carried out to its logical conclusions, means 
 slavery ; and you call my attention to the 
 fact that slavery has been abolished, by com- 
 mon consent of the civilized world. Yes, 
 thank God, that is true. We have done 
 away with the logical conclusion. In this 
 land, at least, men and sheep are no longer 
 put up at the same block to be disposed of 
 to the highest bidder. We have gotten rid 
 of the logical conclusion. But have we got- 
 ten rid entirely of the premise on which it 
 rested? Does not the commercial view of 
 life still prevail in civilized society ? 
 
 " How much is that man worth ? " asks the 
 curious inquirer. " That man," answers the 
 animated Commercial Registry and Business 
 Directory, " is worth a million dollars ; and 
 the man sitting next to him is not worth a 
 penny." What other answer can be given 
 by one who judges everything by a money 
 standard ? If wealth is really the measure of 
 value, if the end of life is the production or 
 the acquisition of riches, then humanity must 
 take its place in the sliding scale of com-
 
 8 
 
 modities. Its value is not fixed and certain. 
 It depends upon accidents of trade. We 
 must learn to look upon ourselves and our 
 fellow-men purely from a business point of 
 view, and to ask only : What can this man 
 make ? how much has that man made ? how 
 much can I get out of this man's labour ? 
 how much will that man pay for my services ? 
 Those little children that play in the squalid 
 city streets, they are nothing to me or to 
 the world ; there are too many of them, they 
 are worthless. Those long -fleeced, high- 
 bred sheep that feed upon my pastures, they 
 are among my most costly possessions, they 
 will bring an enormous price, they are im- 
 mensely valuable. How much is a man 
 better than a sheep ? What a foolish ques- 
 tion ! Sometimes the man is better ; some* 
 times the sheep is better. It all depends 
 upon the supply and demand. 
 
 Now these two views of life, the material- 
 istic and the commercial, always have ex- 
 isted and do still exist in the world. Men 
 have held them consciously and uncon- 
 sciously. At this very day there are some 
 who profess them ; and there are many who 
 act upon them, although they may not be will-
 
 a jftan 9 
 
 ing to acknowledge them. They have been 
 the parents of countless errors in philosophy 
 and sociology ; they have bred innumerable 
 and loathsome vices and shames and cruel- 
 ties and oppressions in the human race. It 
 was to shatter and destroy these deadly false- 
 hoods, to sweep them away from the mind 
 and heart of humanity, that Jesus Christ came 
 into the world. We cannot receive his gos- 
 pel in any sense, we cannot begin to under- 
 stand its meaning and purpose, unless we 
 fully, freely, and sincerely accept his great 
 revelation of the divine dignity and inesti- 
 mable value of man as man. 
 
 We say this was his revelation. Un- 
 doubtedly it is true that Christ came to re- 
 veal God to man. But undoubtedly it is 
 just as true that He came to reveal man to 
 himself. He called himself the Son of God, 
 but He called himself also the Son of Man. 
 His nature was truly divine, but his nature 
 was no less truly human. He became man. 
 And what is the meaning of that lowly birth 
 in the most helpless form of infancy, if it be 
 not to teach us that humanity is so related 
 to Deity that it is capable of receiving and 
 embodying God himself ? He died for man.
 
 10 <a jftan 
 
 And what is the meaning of that sacrifice, 
 if it be not to teach us that God counts no 
 price too great to pay for the redemption of 
 the human soul ? This gospel of our Lord 
 and Saviour Jesus Christ contains the high- 
 est, grandest, most ennobling doctrine of 
 humanity that ever has been proclaimed 
 on earth. It is the only certain cure for 
 low and debasing views of life. It is the 
 only doctrine from which we can learn to 
 think of ourselves and our fellow-men as we 
 ought to think. And I ask you to consider 
 for a little while to-day the teachings of 
 Jesus Christ in regard to the dignity and 
 worth of a man. 
 
 Suppose, then, that we come to Him with 
 this question : How much is a man better 
 than a sheep ? He will tell us that a man 
 is infinitely better, because he is the child of 
 God, because he is capable of fellowship with 
 God, and because he is made for an immortal 
 life. And this threefold answer will shine 
 out for us not only in the words, but also in 
 the deeds, and above all in the death, of the 
 Son of God and the Son of Man. 
 
 I. Think, first of all, of the dignity of a 
 man, as the offspring and the likeness of
 
 11 
 
 God. This was not a new doctrine first pro- 
 claimed by Christ. It is clearly taught in 
 the magnificent imagery of the Book of Gene- 
 sis. The chief design of that great picture 
 of the beginnings is to show that a Personal 
 Creator is the source and author of all things 
 that are made. But next to that, and al- 
 most, perhaps altogether, of equal impor- 
 tance, is the design to show that man is incal- 
 culably superior to all the other works of 
 God, that the distance between him and 
 the lower animals is not a difference in de- 
 gree, but a difference in kind ; yes, the dif- 
 ference is so great that we must use a new 
 word to describe the origin of humanity, and 
 if we speak of the stars and the earth, the 
 trees and the flowers, the fishes, the birds 
 and the beasts, as the works of God, when 
 man appears we must find a nobler name 
 and say, This is more than God's work, it 
 is God's child. 
 
 Our human consciousness confirms this 
 testimony and answers to it. We know that 
 there is something in us which raises us infi- 
 nitely above the things that we see and hear 
 and touch, and the creatures that appear at 
 least to spend their brief life in the auto-
 
 12 
 
 inatic workings of sense and instinct. These 
 powers of reason and affection and conscience, 
 and above all this wonderful power of free 
 will, the faculty of swift, sovereign, volun- 
 tary choice, belong to a higher being. We 
 say not to corruption, Thou art my father, 
 nor to the worm, Thou art my mother ; but 
 to God, Thou art my father, and to the Great 
 Spirit, In thee was my life born. Frail and 
 mortal as our physical existence may be, in 
 some respects the most frail, the most de- 
 fenseless among animals, we are yet conscious 
 of something that lifts us up and makes us su- 
 preme. "Man," says Pascal, " is but a reed, 
 the feeblest thing in nature ; but he is a reed 
 that thinks. It needs not that the universe 
 arm itself to crush him. An exhalation, a 
 drop of water, suffice to destroy him. But 
 were the universe to crush him, man is yet 
 nobler than the universe, for he knows that 
 he dies, and the universe, even in prevailing 
 against him, knows not its power." 
 
 Now the beauty and strength of Christ's 
 doctrine of man lie not in the fact that He 
 was at pains to explain and defend and justify 
 this view of human nature, but in the fact 
 that He assumed it with an unshaken con vie-
 
 13 
 
 tion of its truth, and acted upon it always 
 and everywhere. He spoke to man, not as 
 the product of Nature, but as the child of 
 God. He took it for granted that we are 
 different from plants and animals, and that 
 we are conscious of the difference. " Con- 
 sider the lilies," He says to us, "the lilies 
 cannot consider themselves : they know not 
 what they are, nor what their life means ; 
 but you know, and you can draw the lesson 
 of their lower beauty into your higher life. 
 Regard the birds of the air : they are dumb 
 and unconscious dependents upon the Divine 
 bounty, but you are conscious objects of the 
 Divine care ; are you not of more value than 
 many sparrows?" Through all his words 
 we feel the thrilling power of this high doc- 
 trine of humanity. He is always appealing 
 to reason, to conscience, to the power of 
 choice between good and evil, to the noble 
 and God-like faculties in man. 
 
 And now think for a moment of the fact 
 that his life was voluntarily, and of set pur- 
 pose, spent among the poorest and humblest 
 of mankind. Remember that He spoke not 
 to philosophers and scholars, but to peas- 
 ants and fishermen and the little children of
 
 U 
 
 the world. What did He mean by that? 
 Surely it was to teach us that this doctrine 
 of the dignity of human nature applies to man 
 as man. It is not based upon considerations 
 of wealth or learning or culture or eloquence. 
 Those are the things of which the world 
 takes account, and without which it refuses 
 to pay any attention to us. A mere man, in 
 the eyes of the world, is a nobody. But 
 Christ comes to humanity in its poverty, in 
 its ignorance, stripped of all outward attri- 
 butes and signs of power, destitute of all 
 save that which belongs in common to man- 
 kind, to this lowly child, this very beggar- 
 maid of human nature, comes the King, and 
 speaks to her as a princess in disguise, and 
 sets a crown upon her head. And I ask you 
 if this simple fact ought not to teach us 
 how much a man is better than a sheep. 
 
 II. But Christ reveals to us another and 
 a still higher ground of the dignity of man 
 by speaking to us as beings who are capable 
 of holding communion with God, and reflect- 
 ing the divine holiness in our hearts and lives. 
 And here also his doctrine gains clearness 
 and force when we bring it into close con- 
 nection with his conduct. I suppose that
 
 91 ;fan 15 
 
 there are few of us who would not be ready 
 to admit at once that there are some men and 
 women who have high spiritual capacities. 
 For them, we say, religion is a possible thing. 
 They can attain to the knowledge of God 
 and fellowship with Him. They can pray, 
 and sing praises, and do holy work. It is 
 easy for them to be good. They are born 
 good. They are saints by nature. But for 
 the great mass of the human race, this is out 
 of the question, absurd, impossible. They 
 must dwell in ignorance, in wickedness, in 
 impiety. 
 
 But to all this Christ says, No ! No, to 
 our theory of perfection for the few. No, to 
 our theory of hopeless degradation for the 
 many. He takes his way straight to the 
 outcasts of the world, the publicans and the 
 harlots and sinners ; and to them He speaks 
 of the mercy and the love of God and the 
 beauty of the heavenly life : not to cast them 
 into black despair ; not because it was impos- 
 sible for them to be good and to find God, 
 but because it was divinely possible, be- 
 cause God was waiting for them, and because 
 something in them was waiting for God. 
 They were lost, but surely they never
 
 16 a jftan 
 
 could have been lost unless they had first of 
 all belonged to God ; and this makes it pos- 
 sible for them to be found again. They were 
 prodigals, but surely the prodigal is also a 
 child, and there is a place for him in the 
 father's house. He may dwell among the 
 swine, but he is not one of them ; he is ca- 
 pable of remembering his father's love, he is 
 capable of answering his father's embrace, 
 he is capable of dwelling in his father's house 
 in filial love and obedience. 
 
 That is the doctrine of Christ in regard to 
 fallen and disordered and guilty human na- 
 ture. It is fallen, it is disordered, it is guilty ; 
 but the capacity of reconciliation, of holiness, 
 of love to God, still dwells in it, and may be 
 quickened into a new life. That is God's 
 work, but God himself could not do it if man 
 were not capable of it. 
 
 Do you remember the story of the portrait 
 of Dante which is painted upon the walls of 
 the Bargello, at Florence ? For many years 
 it was supposed that the picture had utterly 
 perished. Men had heard of it, but no one 
 living had ever seen it. But presently came 
 an artist who was determined to find it again. 
 He went into the place where tradition said
 
 17 
 
 that it had been painted. The room was used 
 as a storehouse for lumber and straw. The 
 walls were covered with dirty whitewash. 
 He had the heaps of rubbish carried away. 
 Patiently and carefully he removed the white- 
 wash from the wall. Lines and colours long 
 hidden began to appear. And at last the 
 grave, lofty, noble face of the great poet 
 looked out again upon the world of light. 
 
 " That was wonderful," you say, " that 
 was beautiful ! " Not half so wonderful as 
 the work which Christ came to do in the 
 heart of man, to restore the likeness of 
 God and bring the divine image to the light. 
 He comes to us with the knowledge that 
 God's image is there, though concealed ; He 
 touches us with the faith that the likeness 
 can be restored. To have upon our hearts 
 the impress of the divine nature, to know 
 that there is no human being in whom that 
 treasure is not hidden, and from whose stained 
 and dusty soul Christ cannot bring out that 
 reflection of God's face, that, indeed, is to 
 feel the dignity and value of humanity, and 
 to know that a man is better than a sheep ! 
 
 III. There is yet one more element in 
 Christ's teaching in regard to the dignity and
 
 18 
 
 value of man ; and that is his doctrine of 
 immortality. This truth springs inevitably 
 out of his teaching in regard to the ori- 
 gin and capacity of human nature. A being 
 formed in the divine image, a being cap- 
 able of reflecting the divine holiness, is a 
 being so lofty that he must have also the 
 capacity of entering into a life which is not 
 dependent upon the nourishment of meat and 
 drink, and in which the spiritual powers shall 
 be delivered from the bondage of sense and 
 the fear of death, so that they may be un- 
 folded to perfection. All that Christ teaches 
 about man, all that Christ offers to do for 
 man, links him to a vast and boundless fu- 
 ture. 
 
 This idea of immortality runs through 
 everything that Jesus says and does. Never 
 for a moment does He speak to man as a 
 creature of this present world. Never for a 
 moment does He forget, or suffer us to forget, 
 that our largest and most precious interests 
 lie in the world to come. He would arouse 
 our souls to perceive and contemplate the 
 immense issues of life. The perils that beset 
 us here through sin are not brief and momen- 
 tary dangers, possibilities of disgrace in the
 
 31 ^Han 19 
 
 eyes of men, of suffering such limited pain 
 as our bodies can endure in the disintegrating 
 process of disease, of dying a temporal death, 
 which at the worst can only cause us a few 
 hours of anguish. A man might bear these 
 things, and take the risk of this world's 
 shame and sickness and death, for the sake 
 of some darling sin. But the truth that 
 flashes on us like lightning from the word of 
 Christ, is that the consequence of sin is the 
 peril of losing an immortal spirit. " I will 
 forewarn you," says He, " whom ye shall 
 fear: fear Him which after he hath killed 
 hath power to cast into hell ; yea, I say unto 
 you, fear Him." 
 
 On the other hand, the opportunities that 
 come to us here, through the grace of God, 
 are not merely opportunities of temporal 
 peace and happiness, they are chances of 
 securing endless and immeasurable felicity, 
 wealth that can never be counted or lost, 
 peace that the world can neither give nor 
 take away. We must understand that now 
 the kingdom of God has come near unto us. 
 It is a time when the doors of heaven are 
 open. We may gain an inheritance incor- 
 ruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not
 
 20 
 
 away. We may lay hold, not only on a 
 present joy of holiness, but on an everlasting 
 life with God. 
 
 It is thus that Christ looks upon the chil- 
 dren of men, not as herds of dumb driven 
 cattle, but as living souls moving onward to 
 eternity. It is thus that He dies for men, 
 not to deliver them from brief sorrows, but 
 to save them from final loss, and to bring 
 them into bliss that knows no end. It is 
 thus that He speaks to us, in solemn words 
 before which our dreams of earthly pleasure 
 and power and fame and wealth are dis- 
 sipated like unsubstantial vapours : " What 
 shall it profit a man if he gain the whole 
 world and lose his own soul ? or what shall 
 a man give in exchange for his soul ? " 
 
 There never was a time in which Christ's 
 doctrine of the dignity and value of a man 
 as man was more needed than it is to-day. 
 There is no truth more important and neces- 
 sary for us to take into our hearts, and hold 
 fast, and carry out in our lives. For here 
 we stand in an age when the very throng and 
 pressure and superfluity of human life lead 
 us to set a low estimate upon its value. The
 
 a Jftan 21 
 
 air we breathe is heavy with materialism and 
 commercialism. The lowest and most de- 
 basing views of human nature are freely pro- 
 claimed and unconsciously accepted. There 
 is no escape, no safety for us, save in coming 
 back to Christ, and learning from Him that 
 man is the child of God, made in the divine 
 image, capable of the divine fellowship, and 
 destined to an immortal life. I want to tell 
 you just three of the practical reasons why 
 we must learn this. 
 
 We need to learn it in order to understand 
 the real meaning, and gui)' _ and danger, and 
 hatefulness of sin. 
 
 Men are telling us, nowadays, that there 
 is no such thing as sin. It is a dream, a de- 
 lusion. It must be left out of account. All 
 the evils in the world are natural and inevit- 
 able. They are simply the secretions of hu- 
 man nature. There is no more shame or 
 guilt connected with them than with the ma- 
 laria of the swamp, or the poison of the 
 nightshade. 
 
 But Christ tells us that sin is real, and that 
 it is the enemy, the curse, the destroyer of 
 mankind. It is not a part of man as God 
 made him ; it is a part of man as he has un-
 
 a 
 
 made and degraded himself. It is the mar- 
 ring of the divine imago, the ruin of the 
 glorious temple, the self-mutilation and sui- 
 cide of the immortal soul. It is sin that 
 casts man down into the mire. It is sin 
 that drags him from the fellowship of God 
 into the company of beasts. It is sin that 
 leads him into the far country of famine, and 
 leaves him among the swine, and makes him 
 fain to fill his belly with the husks that the 
 swine do eat. Therefore we must hate sin, 
 and fear it, and abhor it, always and every- 
 where. When we look into our own hearts 
 and find sin there, we must humble ourselves 
 before God, and repent in sackcloth and 
 ashes. Every sin that nestles within us is a 
 part of the world's shame and misery. Every 
 selfish desire that stirs within our souls is a 
 part of that which has stirred up strife, and 
 cruelty, and murder, and horrible torture, 
 and bloody war among the children of men. 
 Every lustful thought that defiles our imagi- 
 nation is a part of that which has begotten 
 loathsome vices and crawling shames through- 
 out the world. My brother-men, God hates 
 sin because it ruins man. And when we 
 know what that means, when we feel that
 
 23 
 
 same poison of evil within us, we must hate 
 sin as He does, and bow in penitence before 
 Hun, crying, " God be merciful to me a 
 sinner." 
 
 We need to learn Christ's doctrine of 
 the dignity and value of humanity in order 
 to help us to love our fellow-men. 
 
 This is a thing that is easy to profess, but 
 hard, bitterly hard, to do. The faults and 
 follies of human nature are so apparent, 
 the unlovely and contemptible and offensive 
 qualities of many people thrust themselves 
 so sharply upon our notice and repel us so 
 constantly, that we are tempted to shrink 
 back wounded and disappointed, and to re- 
 lapse into a life that is governed by its dis- 
 gusts. If we dwell in the atmosphere of a 
 Christless world, if we read only those news- 
 papers which chronicle the crimes and mean- 
 nesses of men, or those realistic novels which 
 deal with the secret vices and corruptions of 
 humanity, and fill our souls with the un- 
 spoken conviction that virtue is an old-fash- 
 ioned dream, and that there is no man good, 
 no woman pure, I do not see how we can 
 help despising and hating mankind. Who 
 shall deliver us from this spirit of bitterness ?
 
 24 
 
 Who shall take us by the hand and lead us out 
 of this heavy, fetid air of the lazar-house and 
 the morgue ? None but Christ. If we will go 
 with Him, He will teach us not to hate our 
 fellow-men for what they are, but to love 
 them for what they may become. He will 
 teach us to look not for the evil which is 
 manifest, but for the good which is hidden. 
 He will teach us not to despair, but to hope, 
 even for the most degraded of mankind. 
 And so, perchance, as we keep company 
 with Him, we shall learn the secret of that 
 divine charity which fills the heart with 
 peace, and joy, and quiet strength. We 
 shall learn to do good unto all men as we 
 have opportunity, not for the sake of grati- 
 tude or reward, but because they are the 
 children of our Father, and the brethren of 
 our Saviour. We shall learn the meaning 
 of that blessed death on Calvary, and be 
 willing to give ourselves as a sacrifice for 
 others, knowing that he that turneth a sin- 
 ner from the error of his ways shall save 
 a soul from death and cover a multitude of 
 sins. 
 
 Finally, we need to accept and believe 
 Christ's doctrine of the dignity and value
 
 25 
 
 of humanity in order that it may lead us 
 personally to God and a higher life. 
 
 You are infinitely better and more precious 
 than the dumb beasts. You know it, you 
 feel it, you are conscious that you belong to 
 another world. And yet it may be that 
 there are some of you who forget it, and 
 live as if there were no God, no soul, no 
 future life. Your ambitions are fixed upon 
 the wealth that corrodes, the fame that 
 fades; your desires are towards the plea- 
 sures that pall upon the senses ; you are bar- 
 tering immortal treasure for the things which 
 perish in the using. The tune is coming 
 when you must lie down like the dumb 
 beast and crumble into dust. Nay, not like 
 the beast, for to you shall come in that hour 
 the still, small voice saying, " This night 
 shall thy soul be required of thee." 
 
 Thy soul, why not think of it now ? 
 The image of God is impressed upon it. 
 The one thing needful for you is to know, 
 and love, and serve Him who is the father of 
 your spirit. 
 
 Come then to Christ, who alone can save 
 you from the sin which defiles and destroys 
 your manhood. Come then to Christ, who
 
 26 
 
 alone can make you good men and true, 
 living in the power of an endless life. Come 
 then to Christ, that you may have fellowship 
 on earth with the Son of Man, and dwell 
 with the Son of God forever, and behold his 
 glory.
 
 II 
 
 FAITH 
 
 faitb it is impossible to please fitm." 
 
 Hebrews xi. 6.
 
 f attfj it ts impossible to please Tptm." 
 
 THIS is a short statement of a large truth. 
 The plain language lends force and dignity 
 to the thought. It needs no embroidered 
 words, no jewelry of speech, to set it off. 
 For truth, like beauty, shows best with least 
 adornment. 
 
 In trying to unfold the meaning of this 
 text I would fain keep to that simplicity and 
 clearness of which it gives us such a good 
 model. There is no reason why religion 
 should be made dark and difficult by talking 
 about it in long, unfamiliar, antiquated words 
 which cause people to wish for a dictionary ; 
 nor is there any excuse for seeking to win 
 the wonder and astonishment of men by ob- 
 scure sayings and curious comparisons, 
 mountains of eloquence which labour long 
 and violently to produce a little mouse of 
 practical sense. In ancient times the teach-
 
 30 
 
 ers of the people were told to read in the 
 book of the Law of God distinctly, and give 
 the sense, and cause the people to understand 
 the meaning. To reach that result no pains 
 are too great, no effort is too costly. I would 
 rather spend five days in trying to make a 
 text clear and level to the mind, to open the 
 door of it so that any one could walk in, 
 than five minutes in trying to make it strange 
 and mysterious, to cover it with all kinds of 
 ornaments and arabesques so that nobody 
 should be able to find the keyhole and un- 
 lock the door. 
 
 Religion is full of mysteries. The object 
 of the Bible is not to increase them, but to 
 remove them. If a certain amount of mys- 
 tery still remains, it lies in the subject, and 
 not in the way in which it is treated. For 
 the most part, the teachings and rules of the 
 Scriptures are so clear and direct that the 
 wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err 
 therein ; they shed light and not darkness ; 
 they disperse the clouds to reveal the sun. 
 
 Take the declaration of the text : " With- 
 out faith it is impossible to please God." 
 How easy it is to see just why the writer of 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews inserted that sen-
 
 JFaitb 31 
 
 tence where it stands ! He is writing about 
 the heroes of faith, the men and women 
 who, from the very beginning of the world, 
 have been bound together into one company 
 by this great principle of all true and noble 
 life. Among them he counts the patriarch 
 Enoch. But as we look back to the brief 
 record of Enoch's life in the Book of Genesis 
 we find that not a word is said there about 
 his faith. By what right, then, is he included 
 in the list ? Why is he counted among the 
 faithful ? "I will tell you why," says the 
 writer of the Epistle : " it is because he ob- 
 tained this testimony, that he pleased God. 
 This is proof positive that he must have had 
 faith. Where you find a flower, you know 
 there must have been a seed. Where you 
 find a river, you know there must be a spring. 
 Where you see a flame, you know there 
 must be a fire. Where you find a man be- 
 loved and blessed of God, you know there 
 must be faith. Whether it is recorded or 
 not, whether you can see it or not, it must 
 be there, germ of his virtue, fountain-head of 
 his goodness, living source of warmth and 
 light ; for without faith it is impossible to 
 please God."
 
 32 JFaitl) 
 
 How simple and how beautiful is that 
 phrase, to please God. What a sense of 
 nearness to the Divine Being it gives us. 
 How it discloses God's nature and character. 
 What a noble statement of the true ami of 
 life. 
 
 God can be pleased, then. He is not a 
 cold abstraction, an immovable substance, a 
 dull, unimpassioned, silent, joyless, mighty 
 force. He is a person, capable of affections 
 and emotions. He is a heart that feels. De- 
 light is no stranger to Him. His love is no 
 vague, blind impulse, flowing dumbly to- 
 wards all things alike. It is a seeking, choos- 
 ing love ; and when it finds the object of its 
 search, a thrill of gladness passes through it, 
 larger, purer than we can understand, and 
 yet like that which comes to us when we see 
 the fairest and the best. He approves and 
 blesses. His Spirit is filled with the music 
 of pleasure. 
 
 To waken that music, to win that ap- 
 proval, to please God, surely that is the 
 highest and holiest object for a human life. 
 
 To please men is a natural impulse. 
 There is no one who does not desire in some 
 degree to obtain the liking and favour of
 
 fatfl) 33 
 
 his fellow-creatures. But presently, as we 
 come to know by experience how shallow and 
 how fickle are the fashions of the world, how 
 false and often how impure are the motives by 
 which the liking of the crowd is influenced, 
 how easily it is gained by accident and lost 
 by chance, we begin to see that this kind of 
 surface favour is deceitful, and to look for 
 something better. 
 
 To please good men, that is a nobler 
 ambition. To win the confidence and honour 
 of those who are honest and earnest and up- 
 right ; to speak some word, to do some deed, 
 to exercise some virtue, of which those who 
 think deep thoughts, and lead pure lives, and 
 perform noble actions, shall say, " That was 
 right, that was true, that was kind, that was 
 brave," this is a motive which has always 
 been potent in the most generous breasts, 
 restraining them from evil, nerving them 
 to heroic efforts, stimulating them to dare 
 and to do. 
 
 But there is a motive deeper and more in- 
 tense than even this : it is the desire to please 
 that one among our fellow-creatures whom 
 we have chosen, it may be, as the most loyal 
 heart and true ; to pluck some flower from
 
 34 jFaitl) 
 
 the lofty crags of duty ; to win some honour- 
 able trophy in the world's great battlefield, 
 yes, even though that trophy be but the scar 
 received in warring for the right, the banner 
 which has been torn and stained in an un- 
 equal conflict, but never dishonoured ; to 
 do something, to endure something, which 
 shall really please the one who is to us the 
 best and dearest on earth, how many a 
 soul has been quickened, and uplifted, and 
 strengthened to face danger, disgrace, and 
 death by that profound desire ! 
 
 But to please God, the perfect, radiant 
 Being, the most wise, the most holy, tne most 
 beautiful, the most loving of all Spirits ; to 
 perform some task, achieve some victory, 
 bring some offering that shall be acceptable 
 to Him, and in which He shall delight; 
 simply to live our life, whatever it may be, 
 so that He, the good and glorious God, shall 
 approve and bless it, and say of it, " Well 
 done," and welcome it into the sense of His 
 own joy, that is a divine ambition. 
 
 " What vaster dream could hit the mood 
 Of lore on earth ? " 
 
 It has sustained martyrs at the stake, and 
 comforted prisoners in the dungeon, and
 
 Jattfj 35 
 
 cheered warriors in the heat of perilous con- 
 flict, and inspired labourers in every noble 
 cause, and made thousands of obscure and 
 nameless heroes in every hidden place of 
 earth. It is the pillar of light which shines 
 before the journeying host. It is the secret 
 watchword of the army, given not to the 
 leaders alone, but flashing like fire through 
 all the ranks. When that thought descends 
 upon us, it kindles our hearts and makes them 
 live. What though we miss the applause of 
 men ; what though friends misunderstand, 
 and foes defame, and the great world pass us 
 by ? There is One that seeth in secret, and 
 followeth the soul in its toils and struggles, 
 the great King, whose approval is honour, 
 whose love is happiness ; to please Him is 
 success, and victory, and peace. 
 
 There are a million ways of pleasing Him, 
 as many as the characters of men, as many 
 as the hues and shades of virtue, as many as 
 the conflicts between good and evil, as many 
 as the calls to honest labour, as many as the 
 opportunities of doing right and being good. 
 That is the broad meaning of this eleventh 
 chapter of the Hebrews, with its long roll 
 of different achievements, with its list of
 
 36 
 
 men and women of every age, of every quality 
 and condition, slaves and freemen, leaders 
 and followers, warriors and statesmen, saints 
 and sinners, and silent martyrs, and name- 
 less conquerors ; there are a million ways 
 of pleasing God, but not one without faith. 
 Numberless forms of energy, but none with- 
 out heat. Myriad colors of beauty, but 
 none without light. All is cold and black 
 until the sun shines. A universe of possibili- 
 ties of goodness spreads before you, but not 
 one of them can be realized unless you have 
 faith. For without faith it is impossible to 
 please God. 
 
 But why should this be so ? Is it an arbi- 
 trary requirement which the Divine Being 
 makes of his creatures, or is there a deep 
 reason for it in the nature of men and the 
 conditions of human life ? I do not believe 
 that God is ever arbitrary. He is indeed 
 omnipotent, and He has the power to demand 
 of us whatsoever He will. But there is al- 
 ways a wise and holy reason in his demands. 
 Sometimes we cannot understand it ; it lies too 
 deep for us. But sometimes we can under- 
 stand it ; it lies within our reach. And in 
 the present case I think we can easily see
 
 37 
 
 just why faith is necessary to the success of 
 every effort to please Him. 
 
 Faith is not a strange and far-away thing 
 which can only be explained to us by a reve- 
 lation. It is a principle of common life. 
 We exercise it every day. It is simply the 
 confidence in something which is invisible ; 
 as the Apostle says, " it is the substance of 
 tilings hoped for, the evidence of things not 
 seen." Every time you receive the testimony 
 of your fellow-men, every time you trust in 
 the qualities of their character which are be- 
 yond the reach of your vision, every time you 
 rely upon a law of logic in an argument, 
 upon a law of nature in your action, upon a 
 law of morality in your conduct, you exercise 
 faith. It is the condition of reason, of ac- 
 tivity, of human society. " All polities and 
 societies," says a wise observer, " have come 
 into existence through the trust of men in 
 each other," and, we may add, through 
 their trust in unseen principles of equity, and 
 in future results of prudence, and in One 
 higher than themselves whom they could 
 neither see nor name. Take away confidence 
 in the invisible, and the whole fabric decays, 
 crumbles, and falls in ruin.
 
 38 
 
 Thus, even from the human point of view, 
 faith is necessary. But from the Divine 
 point of view, it must appear infinitely more 
 essential. 
 
 Man is made to know as much as possible, 
 to do as much as possible, and to be as good 
 as possible. In the sphere of knowledge, in 
 the sphere of action, in the sphere of charac- 
 ter, faith is the one element that gives life 
 and power to please God. 
 
 I. Look first at the sphere of knowledge, 
 the understanding of the world and of life. 
 We stand in a strange and mysterious uni- 
 verse, with certain faculties to help us to a 
 comprehension of it. First, we have the 
 senses, and they tell us how things look, and 
 taste, and sound, and feel. Then we have 
 the reasoning powers, and they enable us to 
 discover how things are related to each other, 
 how causes are followed by effects, how great 
 laws control their action and reaction. But 
 is there not something beyond this, a depth 
 below the deep and a height beyond the 
 height? Every instinct of our nature as- 
 sures us that there must be. The lesson of 
 modern thought is the limitation of science 
 and philosophy. But outside of this narrow
 
 39 
 
 circle lie the truths that we most desire 
 and need to know. In that unexplored 
 world dwells God. Why should we hesi- 
 tate to confess that we must have another 
 and a higher faculty of knowledge ? The 
 astronomer has keen eyes, but he knows 
 their limitation, and he does no discredit to 
 them when he uses the telescope to bring 
 near the unseen stars. The entomologist 
 has quick sight, but he does not disparage 
 it when he turns to the microscope to search 
 a drop of water for its strange, number- 
 less forms of life. Reason is excellent and 
 forceful, but beyond its boundaries there 
 is a realm which can only be discerned by 
 faith. Where science ends, where philoso- 
 phy pauses, faith begins. 
 
 " By faith we understand that the worlds 
 have been framed by the word of God, so that 
 what is seen hath not been made out of things 
 which do appear." 
 
 Mark the words : By faith we understand. 
 It is a principle of comprehension, then, not 
 of confusion ; something which clarifies and 
 enlarges the vision. It discloses not only 
 the origin but also the purpose and the 
 meaning of things. It is not the contradic-
 
 40 jFatt& 
 
 tion, but the crown and complement of reason. 
 How can God be pleased with any knowledge 
 from which this element is left out ? 
 
 Suppose that you had written a book, and 
 some one should take it up and measure it, 
 and say : " This curious object is composed 
 of cloth, paper, ink, glue, and thread. It is 
 seven inches long, five inches wide, and two 
 inches thick ; it contains five hundred pages 
 and a hundred thousand words, and I wonder 
 where it came from and what it is for." 
 Would that please you ? 
 
 Suppose that you had carved a statue, and 
 some one should find it and say : " This re- 
 markable stone is composed of carbonate of 
 lime ; it is very smooth and white, and it 
 weighs about six hundred pounds, and I 
 think I have explained it perfectly." Would 
 that satisfy you ? Would you not be better 
 pleased with the child, or the ignorant peas- 
 ant, who stood and looked at your statue and 
 felt its beauty, and recognized that it had 
 been made by some one to represent a great, 
 a noble, a lovely idea ? 
 
 The world was made for its meaning, to 
 show forth the wisdom, power, and goodness 
 of God. If we do not see that, we see nothing.
 
 41 
 
 We may be able to tell how many stars are 
 in the Milky Way ; we may be able to 
 count the petals of every flower, and num- 
 ber the bones of every bird; but unless 
 faith leads us to a deeper understanding, a 
 more reverent comprehension of the signifi- 
 cance of the universe, God can no more be 
 pleased with our knowledge than the painter 
 is pleased with the fly which touches his pic- 
 ture with its feelers, and sips the varnish 
 from the surface, and dies without dreaming 
 of the meaning, thought, feeling, embodied 
 in the colours. But on the simplest soul 
 that feels the wonder and the hidden glory 
 of the universe, on the child to whom the 
 stars are little windows into heaven, or the 
 poet to whom 
 
 " the meanest flower that blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," 
 
 God looks down with pleasure and ap- 
 proval. For in such a soul He sees the be- 
 ginning of faith, which is able to pass behind 
 the appearance to the reality, and make its 
 possessor wise unto everlasting life. 
 
 II. Turn now to the sphere of action. 
 Here faith is no less necessary. There are 
 some who would persuade us that believing
 
 42 
 
 is appropriate only to infancy and old age ; 
 that it is a kind of dreaming, an infirmity of 
 the weak and visionary. But the truth is 
 otherwise. Carlyle says : " Belief is great, 
 life-giving. The history of a nation becomes 
 fruitful, soul-elevating, great, so soon as it 
 believes. A man lives by believing some- 
 thing, not by debating and arguing about 
 many things." Faith is power. It makes 
 men strong, ardent, persistent, heroic. No- 
 thing truly great has ever been done in any 
 department of the world's work without faith. 
 Think of the faith of our explorers and dis- 
 coverers, Columbus, who found the New 
 World ; the Pilgrim Fathers, who planted it 
 with life ; Livingstone, who opened a new 
 continent to civilization. Think of the faith 
 of our men of science, Galileo, Kepler, 
 Newton, Faraday, Henry. Think of the 
 faith of the reformers, Wyclif , Luther, 
 Knox. Think of the faith of the martyrs, 
 Polycarp, Huss, Savonarola, the Covenanters 
 of Scotland, the Huguenots of France. Faith 
 is a force, and those who grasp it lay hold 
 of something which is able to make them 
 mightier than themselves. 
 
 Let a man fasten himself to some great
 
 43 
 
 idea, some large truth, some noble cause, 
 even in the affairs of this world, and it will 
 send him forward with energy, with stead- 
 fastness, with confidence. This is what 
 Emerson meant when he said, " Hitch your 
 wagon to a star." These are the potent, 
 the commanding, the enduring, the inspiring 
 men, in our own history, men like Wash- 
 ington and Lincoln. They may fall, they 
 may be defeated, they may perish ; but on- 
 ward moves the cause, and their souls go 
 marching on with it, for they are part of it, 
 they have believed in it. 
 
 And if the cause be divine, if the idea 
 come from above, if the action be impelled 
 by faith in God and a resolve to do his will, 
 then how dauntless and impregnable does it 
 make the heart in which it dwells! Paul 
 standing alone against the mocking, sneering 
 world to testify to the truth as it is in Jesus, 
 " I believe and therefore speak : " Luther 
 riding into the city of Worms, though every 
 housetop were thronged with devils, and ap- 
 pearing alone before the imperial council, 
 " Here stand I, I cannot do otherwise, God 
 help me : " Morrison, the first missionary to 
 China, standing alone on the deck of the ship
 
 44 jFattb 
 
 that bears him to a strange and hostile world : 
 " Do you think," says the captain, " that you 
 will make an impression upon 400,000,000 
 Chinese ? " " No, sir," is the reply, " but I 
 believe that God will : " that is faith, 
 everywhere and always the victory that over- 
 cometh the world. 
 
 I will make a personal confession to you. 
 Very often it seems to me as if there were 
 one, and only one, great and essential differ- 
 ence among the multitudes of people who 
 inhabit this earth. Moving about among 
 them, coming into contact with them, I find 
 that some men and women seem unreal, 
 hollow, visionary, masks without faces, cos- 
 tumes without character. They run in the 
 grooves of custom, they drift to and fro on 
 the currents of fashion, they are blown up 
 and down by the winds of popular opinion ; 
 even when they seem to lead, it is only as 
 the lightest leaf is carried along foremost 
 by the gale. They are only animated shad- 
 ows, without principle or probity, without 
 conviction or consistency, without faith or 
 fidelity. But other men and women seem 
 real, and true, and genuine. There is some- 
 thing behind their looks, their words, their
 
 45 
 
 actions. They have power to touch, and 
 move, and satisfy the heart, because they be- 
 lieve. Have you never felt the difference ? 
 Do you think that God does not feel it? 
 Can a mask, a shadow, however fair or 
 orderly, please Him ? Will He withhold his 
 approval and blessing from any real, honest, 
 struggling, believing soul ? 
 
 But perhaps some may be thinking just 
 now : " This is the old story that the 
 preacher is telling us ; he is singing the same 
 old song about faith, and still faith, 
 and always the necessity of faith ! Why not 
 lay more emphasis on works? Surely they 
 are more important. He has just told us 
 that there are many ways of pleasing God. 
 There are many courses of good conduct 
 open to us all. If we follow any one of 
 them, that is enough. So long as a man's 
 actions are right it makes no difference what 
 lies behind them, it makes no difference 
 whether he believes or not." Do you really 
 think so? Is there no difference between 
 a body without a spirit and a body with a 
 spirit? Does not the thought, the motive, 
 the purpose count for something? 
 
 Here are a multitude of people giving their
 
 46 f atti) 
 
 money to support the Temple. And many 
 rich men, standing beside the treasury, cast 
 in their gifts ; from habit, from a desire to 
 appear well before the world, from a hope 
 of reward. A poor widow comes with her 
 two mites; she knows her gift will be de- 
 spised, she fears it may be laughed at, but 
 she believes that God wants her to do what 
 she can, and that He will not refuse her 
 offering. So her coppers fall in among the 
 gold and the silver, and the Lord of the 
 treasury blesses her, and says, " She hath 
 given more than they all." 
 
 Here are two women going down to work 
 among the sick and the poor. One goes be- 
 cause there is a fashion of it, because she 
 would fain have the credit which belongs to 
 the lady bountiful. She moves among them 
 like an iceberg, and they hate her. She 
 brings a chill with her which all her coals 
 and blankets can never warm away. The 
 other goes because she believes in it, believes 
 that God wants her to do it, believes that 
 the sorrowful and the distressed are Christ's 
 brethren, and that she is bound to them, and 
 that they have immortal souls which she may 
 win for Him. She moves among them like
 
 faitl; 47 
 
 a sister of Jesus and a friend of God ; and 
 of her the Master says, " Inasmuch as she 
 hath done it unto one of the least of these 
 my brethren, she hath done it unto me." 
 
 Here are two men praying. One stands 
 upon the corner of the street, correct, punc- 
 tilious; at the appointed time he lifts his 
 hands, he raises his voice that he may be 
 heard of men. The other kneels hi the 
 dust, ignorant, stammering, feeble ; he lifts 
 his face to Christ and says, " Lord, I believe, 
 help thou mine unbelief." And that broken, 
 stammering cry of honest faith pleases God, 
 and brings the blessing which would never 
 come to the Pharisee though he stood on the 
 street corner till the crack of doom. 
 
 Let us never be so foolish as to think that 
 it makes no difference whether we believe or 
 not. Faith is the soul of conduct ; faith is 
 the bloom, the breath, the vital power of 
 religion ; without it, virtue is the alabaster 
 box, empty ; faith is the precious ointment 
 whose fragrance fills the house. Therefore 
 without faith it is impossible to please God. 
 
 III. Finally, faith is necessary because it 
 is the only possible way of contact between 
 God and man, the only way in which He
 
 48 jFaitjj 
 
 can draw near to us, and save and bless us. 
 And that, if you will believe it, is the one 
 thing that He most desires to do. There is 
 no compulsion laid upon Him. He does not 
 act as one who is performing an indifferent 
 task. He is so good that He longs to deliver 
 us from sin and death, to bring us to him- 
 self, to give us a place in his happy king- 
 dom. This is liis glory and his delight : 
 to rescue the perishing, to raise the fallen, 
 to forgive the sinful, to give life to the dying. 
 He loves this work so much that He sent 
 his own dear Son into the world to accom- 
 plish it. And nothing that you can do will 
 please Him so much as simply to let Him 
 save you, and help you to be good. 
 
 Think for a moment : what can you do for 
 any one who does not trust you, who does 
 not believe in you ? Nothing. That barrier 
 of mistrust stands like a wall of ice between 
 you and the soul that you desire to help. Is 
 there anything that wounds you more than 
 to be doubted and denied, and thrust away 
 in suspicion or indifference ? Truly that is 
 the deepest and most bitter pain. Is there 
 anything that pleases you more than to be 
 trusted, to have even a little child look up
 
 49 
 
 into your face, and put out its hand to meet 
 yours, and come to you confidingly ? By so 
 much as God is better than you are, by so 
 much more does He love to be trusted. 
 
 Yes, I know you are trying to be good, 
 fitfully, imperfectly, yet still trying. But 
 there is something else that God would have 
 you do first. He would have you believe 
 that He wants you to be good, that He is 
 willing to help you to be good, that He has 
 sent his Son to make you good. 
 
 There is a hand stretched out to you, a 
 hand with a wound in the palm of it. Reach 
 out the hand of your faith to clasp it, and 
 cling to it, for without faith it is impossible 
 to please God.
 
 Ill 
 
 COURAGE 
 
 " (SSRatt on t&e LotU : be of pofl courage, anfc Ije 
 sljail ctrenstljen tj)ine Ijeart." 
 
 xxvii. 14.
 
 on tljc iorU : far of goott courage, ani 
 " etrenfft&cn tjjiiu fjeart." 
 
 THIS is a sermon about courage, one of 
 the simplest and most straightforward of the 
 virtues; necessary, and therefore possible, 
 for every true and noble human life. 
 
 It is a quality that we admire by instinct. 
 We need no teacher to tell us that it is a 
 fine thing to be brave. The lack of cour- 
 age is universally recognized as a grave de- 
 fect in character. If in our own hearts we 
 feel the want of it, if we cannot find enough 
 of it to enable us to face the dangers and 
 meet the responsibilities and fight the bat- 
 tles of life, we are not only sorry, but se- 
 cretly ashamed. The absence of courage is 
 a fault that few are willing to confess. We 
 naturally conceal it, and cover it up, and 
 try to keep it secret even from ourselves. 
 We invent favourable names for it, which 
 are only unconscious excuses. We call it
 
 prudence, or respectability, or conserva- 
 tism, or economy, or worldly wisdom, or the 
 instinct of self-preservation. For in truth 
 there is nothing that we are more reluctant 
 to admit than cowardice ; and there is no 
 virtue which we would more gladly possess 
 and prove than courage. 
 
 In the first place, it is an honourable 
 virtue. Men have always loved and praised 
 it. It lends a glory and a splendour to the 
 life in which it dwells, lifts it up and en- 
 nobles it, and crowns it with light. The 
 world delights in heroism, even in its rudest 
 forms and lowest manifestations. Among 
 the animals we create a sort of aristocracy 
 on the basis of courage, and recognize, in the 
 fearlessness of the game beasts and birds 
 and fishes, a claim to rank above the timor- 
 ous, furtive, spiritless members of creation. 
 
 And in man bravery is always fine. We 
 salute it in our enemies. A daring foe 
 is respected, and though we must fight 
 against him we can still honour his courage, 
 and almost forget the conflict in our admira- 
 tion for his noble bearing. That is what Dr. 
 Johnson meant by saying, " I love a good 
 hater." The enemy who slinks and plots
 
 Courage 55 
 
 and conceals makes traps and ambus- 
 cades, seeks to lead his opponent into dan- 
 gers which he himself would never dare to 
 face is despicable, serpentine, and con- 
 temptible. But he who stands up boldly 
 against his antagonist in any conflict, physi- 
 cal, social, or spiritual, and deals fair blows, 
 and uses honest arguments, and faces the 
 issues of warfare, is a man to love even across 
 the chasm of strife. An outspoken infidel 
 is far nobler than a disguised skeptic. A 
 brave, frank, manly foe is infinitely better 
 than a false, weak, timorous friend. 
 
 The literature of courage has always been 
 immensely popular, and the history of the 
 brave is written in letters of gold. It is this 
 that men have loved to read in the strange, 
 confused annals of war, deeds of self -for- 
 getful daring which leap from the smoke 
 and clamour of battle, and shine in the sud- 
 den making of splendid names. It is the 
 quality which levels youth with age, gives to 
 woman the force of manhood, equalizes the 
 peasant with the noble, and consumes all out- 
 ward distinctions in the flame of glory. The 
 boy Casabianca keeping the solitary deck of 
 the burning vessel rather than disobey his
 
 56 Courap 
 
 father's commands ; the brave Lady Douglas 
 thrusting her tender arm through the staple 
 of the do'or to defend her king from the as- 
 sassin ; Leonidas at Thermopyla3, and Hora- 
 tius at the bridge, and the Six Hundred at 
 Balaklava ; old Cranmer bathing his hands 
 in fire at the martyr's stake, and young 
 Stephen praying fearlessly for his murder- 
 ers ; Florence Nightingale facing fever in 
 Crimean hospitals ; Father Damien braving 
 leprosy in the Islands of the Sea ; young men 
 and maidens, old men and matrons, fighting, 
 suffering, achieving, resisting, enduring, dar- 
 ing, living, and dying it is the spark of 
 heroism that kindles their names into the 
 blaze of light, for everywhere and always 
 courage is an honourable virtue. 
 
 In the second place, courage is a service- 
 able virtue. There is hardly any place in 
 which it is not useful. There is no type of 
 character, no sphere of action, in which there 
 is not room and need for it. 
 
 Genius is talent set on fire by courage. 
 Fidelity is simply daring to be true in small 
 things as well as great. As many as are 
 the conflicts and perils and hardships of life, 
 so many are the uses and the forms of cour-
 
 Courage 57 
 
 age. It is necessary, indeed, as the pro- 
 tector and defender of all the other virtues. 
 Courage is the standing army of the soul 
 which keeps it from conquest, pillage, and 
 slavery. 
 
 Unless we are brave we can hardly be 
 truthful, or generous, or just, or pure, or 
 kind, or loyal. " Few persons," says a wise 
 observer, "have the courage to appear as 
 good as they really are." You must be 
 brave in order to fulfil your own possibili- 
 ties of virtue. Courage is essential to guard 
 the best qualities of the soul, and to clear 
 the way for their action, and make them 
 move with freedom and vigour. 
 
 " Courage, the highest gift, that scorns to bend 
 To mean devices for a sordid end ; 
 Courage, an independent spark from Heaven's throne, 
 By which the soul stands raised, triumphant, high, alone ; 
 The spring of all true acts is seated here, 
 As falsehoods draw their sordid birth from fear." 
 
 If we desire to be good, we must first 
 of all desire to be brave, that against all op- 
 position, scorn, and danger we may move 
 straight onward to do the right. 
 
 In the third place, courage is a comfort- 
 able virtue. It fills the soul with inward 
 peace and strength ; in fact this is just what
 
 58 Cottrajje 
 
 it is, courage is simply strength of heart. 
 Subjection to fear is weakness, bondage, 
 feverish unrest. To be afraid is to have no 
 soul that we can call our own ; it is to be 
 at the beck and call of alien powers, to be 
 chained and driven and tormented ; it is to 
 lose the life itself in the anxious care to keep 
 it. Many people are so afraid to die that 
 they have never begun to live. But courage 
 emancipates us and gives us to ourselves, 
 that we may give ourselves freely and with- 
 out fear to God. How sweet and clear and 
 steady is the life into which this virtue enters 
 day by day, not merely in those great flashes 
 of excitement which come in the moments of 
 crisis, but in the presence of the hourly per- 
 ils, the continual conflicts. Not to tremble at 
 the shadows which surround us, not to shrink 
 from the foes who threaten us, not to hesitate 
 and falter and stand despairing still among 
 the perplexities and trials of our life, but to 
 move steadily onward without fear, if only 
 we can keep ourselves without reproach, 
 surely that is what the Psalmist meant by 
 good courage and strength of heart, and it is 
 a most comfortable, pleasant, peaceful, and 
 happy virtue.
 
 59 
 
 Let us talk together for a while about 
 this virtue and consider what we mean by 
 it, how we can obtain it, and what good it 
 will do us. 
 
 I. First of all, let us try to understand the 
 difference between courage and some of the 
 things which are often mistaken for it. 
 
 There is a sharp distinction between cour- 
 age and recklessness. The reckless man is 
 ignorant; he rushes into danger without 
 hesitation, simply because he does not know 
 what danger means. The brave man is in- 
 telligent ; he faces danger because he under- 
 stands it and is prepared to meet it. The 
 drunkard who runs, in the delirium of intoxi- 
 cation, into a burning house is not brave; 
 he is only stupid. But the clear-eyed hero 
 who makes his way, with every sense alert 
 and every nerve strung, into the hell of 
 flames to rescue some little child, proves his 
 courage. 
 
 The more keenly we are awake to the 
 
 wrih of life, the higher and grander is the 
 
 V 1- tv of being truly brave. To drift 
 
 * some people do, through this 
 
 \vjrll of sin, as if there were nothing in it 
 
 to fear ; to slide easily downward, as some
 
 60 Cottraje 
 
 people do, to the gate of death, as if there 
 were nothing beyond it to fear ; to sport and 
 dance, and eat and drink and sleep, as some 
 people do, under the arch of heaven, as if 
 there were no One above it to fear, what is 
 this but the part of the fool who hath said 
 in his heart, " There is no God, there is no 
 sin, there is no judgment " ? But to face the 
 temptations and perplexities and dangers of 
 the world without yielding to fear ; to pass, 
 without trembling, by the dark portals of 
 the grave in a faith that is stronger than 
 fear ; to dare to live in the presence of the 
 holy, mighty God in the confidence of a 
 love that casteth out fear, that is courage. 
 Then there is another sharp distinction 
 between courage and insensibility. Some 
 natures are so constituted that they do not 
 feel pain very keenly. Their nerves are 
 sluggish and deeply hidden. This may be 
 an advantage or a disadvantage ; for cer- 
 tainly, if they escape some possibilities of 
 suffering, they must also lose many possibili- 
 ties of enjoyment. But one thing is sure : to 
 persons of this temperament, fear is compara- 
 tively a stranger. They can move forward 
 almost with indifference in situations where
 
 Courage 61 
 
 a more sensitive nature would be profoundly 
 agitated. Now we must not suppose for a 
 moment that this insensibility makes them 
 brave. It simply exempts them in some 
 measure from the necessity of courage. The 
 bravest soul is that which feels the tremor 
 and resists it, shrinks from the flame and 
 faces it. Never was a better soldier than the 
 old French marshal Montluc, who said that 
 he had often gone into battle shaking with 
 fear, and had recovered courage only when he 
 had said a prayer. A pale face, a trembling 
 hand, yes, even a heart that stands still with 
 dread, may belong to a hero who is brave 
 enough to carry them into the midst of con- 
 flict without faltering or failing, straight on 
 to victory or death. Courage does not con- 
 sist in the absence of fear, but in the con- 
 quest of it. 
 
 Take it in little things. Here is the 
 great, dull, heavy dray-horse ; what is it for 
 him to move stolidly on through noises which 
 do not alarm him, and past strange objects 
 which he does not notice ? But when the 
 high-mettled, keen-sensed thoroughbred goes 
 through the same tumult, and past the same 
 objects, with every nerve and muscle quiver-
 
 62 
 
 ing, that is courage. It demands no great 
 effort for the voyageur, who is inured to 
 hardships and trained to steadiness, to guide 
 his frail canoe through the foaming rapids. 
 But for a woman who is by nature sensitive 
 and timid, to sit quiet and silent in the boat, 
 not because she has no fear, but because she 
 will not yield to it, that is brave. 
 
 The same thing is true in moral trials. 
 There are some people to whom reproach 
 and ridicule and condemnation mean little. 
 They simply do not care ; they are pachyder- 
 matous. But there are others to whom the 
 unkind word is like a blow, and the sneer 
 like a sword-thrust, and the breath of con- 
 tempt like the heat of flames ; and when 
 they endure these things and face them, and 
 will not be driven by them from the path of 
 duty, they are truly courageous. 
 
 Do you understand what I mean? Tim- 
 idity is no more inconsistent with courage 
 than doubt is inconsistent with faith. For 
 as faith is simply the overriding and sub- 
 jugating of doubt by believing where you 
 cannot prove, so courage is simply the con- 
 quest and suppression of fear by going 
 straight on in the path of duty and love.
 
 63 
 
 There is one more distinction that needs 
 to be drawn, the distinction between cour- 
 age and daring. This distinction is not in 
 kind, but in degree. For daring is only a 
 rare and exceptional kind of courage. It 
 is for great occasions ; the battle, the ship- 
 wreck, the conflagration. It is an inspi- 
 ration ; Emerson calls it " a flash of moral 
 genius." But courage in the broader sense 
 is an every-day virtue. It includes the pos- 
 sibility of daring, if it be called for ; but 
 from hour to hour, in the long, steady run of 
 life, courage manifests itself in quieter, hum- 
 bler forms, in patience under little trials, 
 in perseverance in distasteful labours, in en- 
 durance of suffering, in resistance of con- 
 tinual and familiar temptations, in hope and 
 cheerfulness and activity and fidelity and 
 truthfulness and kindness, and such sweet, 
 homely virtues as may find a place in the 
 narrowest and most uneventful life. 
 
 There is no duty so small, no trial so 
 slight, that it does not afford room for cour- 
 age. It has a meaning and value for every 
 phase of existence ; for the workshop and for 
 the battlefield, for the thronged city and 
 for the lonely desert, for the sick-room and
 
 64 Courage 
 
 for the market-place, for the study and for 
 the counting-house, for the church and for 
 the drawing-room. There is courage phy- 
 sical, and social, and moral, and intellec- 
 tual, a soldier's courage, a doctor's cour- 
 age, a lawyer's courage, a preacher's courage, 
 a nurse's courage, a merchant's courage, a 
 man's courage, a woman's courage, for 
 courage is just strength of heart, and the 
 strong heart makes itself felt everywhere, 
 and lifts up the whole of life, and enno- 
 bles it, and makes it move directly to its 
 chosen aim. 
 
 II. Now, if this is what we mean by cour- 
 age, how are we to obtain it ? What is it 
 that really strengthens the heart and makes 
 it brave ? 
 
 Well, there are many lesser things that 
 will help us, such as a simple and wholesome 
 physical life, plain food and vigorous exer- 
 cise, a steady regard for great moral princi- 
 ples and ideas, a healthful course of reading, 
 a sincere friendship with brave and true and 
 single-minded men and women, a habit of 
 self-forgetfulness and consecration to duty. 
 But of these things I have not time to speak, 
 for there is something greater and better
 
 65 
 
 than any of these, something which in fact 
 includes them all and sums them up in a 
 a word, " Wait on the Lord." That is the 
 truest and deepest source of courage. To 
 believe that He is, and that He has made us 
 for himself ; to love Him, and give ourselves 
 up to Him, because He is holy and true and 
 wise and good and brave beyond all human 
 thought ; to lean upon Him and trust Him 
 and rest in Him, with confidence that He 
 will never leave us nor forsake us ; to work 
 for Him, and suffer for his sake, and be 
 faithful to his service, that is the way 
 to learn courage. 
 
 Without God what can you do ? You are 
 a frail, weak, tempted, mortal creature. The 
 burdens of life will crush you, the evils of 
 sin will destroy you, the tempests of trouble 
 will overwhelm you, the darkness of death 
 will engulf you. But if you are joined to 
 God, you can resist and endure and fight 
 and conquer, in his strength. This is what 
 the Psalmist means in the text, " Wait on 
 the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall 
 strengthen thy heart." So runs our trans- 
 lation. The scholars tell us that it ought 
 to read, " Be of good courage and let thy
 
 66 Cottraje 
 
 heart be strong." But the meaning is the 
 same. For the courage comes from the 
 waiting on God, and He is the giver of 
 strength to the heart. 
 
 " If it had not been the Lord who was on 
 our side, now may Israel say, then the 
 proud waters had gone over our souls." It 
 was the Lord who stood by them and sus- 
 tained them through the storm. Hear 
 Paul : " If God be for us, who can be 
 against us ? " And again, " I can do all 
 things through Christ who strengtheneth 
 me." And then hear Christ : " My meat 
 is to do the will of Him that sent me, and 
 to finish his work." That is the secret of 
 courage. The lamp that is joined to the 
 electric current glows with light. The soul 
 that is joined to the infinite source of cour- 
 age in God, burns steadfast, serene, and 
 inextinguishable through life and death. 
 
 III. And now let us ask, how will that 
 divine courage help us if we obtain it? 
 What will it do for us? 
 
 Everything. There is no good thing that 
 we really desire and need that will not be 
 brought nearer to us by this strength of 
 heart. Every day and every hour of our
 
 Courage 67 
 
 lives it will be a help, a joy, a treasure, a 
 blessing to us. 
 
 You men have to go through with your 
 daily toil, and face the perplexities of busi- 
 ness life, and resist the temptations to dis- 
 honesty and meanness and uncleanness which 
 touch you on every side. You must be brave, 
 and if you are brave in Christ you will win. 
 
 You women have to meet your daily house- 
 hold cares, and suffer the pains and trials 
 which belong to a woman's life, and re- 
 strain your lips from scandal and your hearts 
 from jealousy and envy, and keep your souls 
 up above the deadening influences of lux- 
 ury and frivolity and fashion. You must 
 be brave, never does courage shine more 
 brightly than in a true woman, and if you 
 are brave you will " adorn the doctrine of 
 God our Saviour " with the charm of pure, 
 unselfish, lovely character and conduct which 
 is a rebuke to all grossness of demeanour, 
 and an encouragement to all knighthood and 
 true chivalry. For such women men would 
 even dare to die. 
 
 You boys and girls at school, young men 
 and maidens at college, have to do your 
 work honestly, and speak the truth fear-
 
 68 Courage 
 
 lessly, and avoid evil companionship stead- 
 fastly, and live up to your principles mod- 
 estly and firmly. You must be brave, and 
 sometimes very brave, to do this, and if you 
 have the right courage in the conflicts of 
 youth you will be trained by them to play a 
 noble part in the great battle of life. 
 
 And the preacher who speaks to you has 
 to face the constant, exhausting demands of 
 a minister's life, to declare the divine mes- 
 sage without fear or favour, to search the 
 Scriptures and tell men plainly what they 
 teach, without regard to human traditions ; 
 caring nothing for old doctrines or new doc- 
 trines, but simply and solely for the truth as 
 it is in Jesus, and following it with absolute 
 loyalty whithersoever it may lead. Surely 
 the man who has to do this needs courage, 
 in order that he may be neither ashamed of 
 the old nor afraid of the new, but always 
 faithful to the true. 
 
 Indeed, we all have the same need. For 
 every one of us, there is nothing more de- 
 sirable, nothing more necessary, than real 
 strength of heart. If we can obtain it from 
 the divine and only source, it will make our 
 lives straight and clean and fine. It will
 
 Courage 69 
 
 enable us to follow Jesus of Nazareth, who 
 was not only the purest and the gentlest, but 
 also the bravest Spirit that ever dwelt on 
 earth. 
 
 And do you think, if that kind of courage 
 comes into our hearts, the courage of 
 faith, which believes in spite of difficulties, 
 and fights its way through doubt to a firmer 
 assurance ; the courage of confession, which 
 overcomes all dread of ridicule or reproach, 
 and is not ashamed of Christ nor of his 
 words, but ready to preach the Gospel at 
 Rome also ; the courage of life, which goes 
 on trying to be good in spite of failures, and 
 holding fast to the ideal in spite of temp- 
 tations, and warring for the right in spite of 
 heavy odds, and bearing the appointed bur- 
 den in spite of weariness, straight through to 
 the end : do you think the courage of death 
 will fail us ? We do not know when we shall 
 have to meet that last conflict, that ultimate 
 adventure. But when the hour comes, if we 
 have been brave enough to live aright, we 
 shall be brave enough to die at peace. 
 
 " Sunset and evening star, 
 
 And one clear call for me ! 
 And may there be no moaning of the bar, 
 When I put out to sea,
 
 70 Courage 
 
 " But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 
 
 Too full for sound and foam, 
 
 When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
 Turns again home ! 
 
 " Twilight and evening bell, 
 And after that the dark ! 
 And may there be no sadness of farewell, 
 When I embark ! 
 
 " For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place 
 
 The flood may bear me far, 
 I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
 When I have crost the bar."
 
 IV 
 
 POWER 
 
 <0oB, t&ou art mp (0o5 ; earlp totll 3T 0tc& 
 t&ee : mp soul tbtrertct!) for t&rr. . . . Co src 
 tfjp potoer anU tbp slorp, 00 ad 3 b^* &cw tfcee 
 in tjic ganctuarp." 
 
 Psalm Ixiii. 2. 
 
 Cjjat 2T map knotu pirn, anH tfjc potoer of Ins 
 wsttrrectton." 
 
 /*-4*/. iii. 10.
 
 Co gee t&p potoer an* t&p fflorp, 00 as 3T 
 seen tfjcc in t&e ganctttarp." 
 
 "C&at 3T map fcnoto |)tra, ani t&e potoet of jjw 
 resurrection." 
 
 HERE are two men separated by centuries, 
 the psalmist of the old dispensation and 
 the apostle of the new dispensation, utter- 
 ing the deepest desire of their hearts. In 
 both of them we find that there is an earnest 
 and ardent longing to see, to know, the 
 power of God. In both of them there is the 
 recognition of a place, a way, in which that 
 power is manifested and in which it may be 
 discerned ; in both of them there is the con- 
 fident expectation that the knowledge of 
 that power, when it is attained, will be 
 potent in its spiritual effect upon their lives. 
 Now we may be quite sure that the thing 
 for which David and Paul longed so ardently 
 is something which we also ought to desire, 
 and pray for, and seek after. If they needed
 
 74 JJotoer 
 
 it, we need it. If it was possible for them 
 to find it, it is possible for us. If it was 
 good for them, it will be good for us. Let 
 us think about it for a little while ; for it 
 is only by thinking about great and good 
 things that we come to love them, and it is 
 only by loving them that we come to long 
 for them, and it is only by longing for 
 them that we are impelled to seek after them, 
 and it is only by seeking after them that 
 they become ours and we enter into vital 
 experience of their beauty and blessedness. 
 
 Is not this the reason why our lives often 
 seem so narrow and poor and weak, why they 
 have such a sense of limitation and constric- 
 tion in them, why their interests seem so 
 trivial, their possibilities so small, their re- 
 sults so feeble, why we often appear to our- 
 selves barren in thought and dry in feeling, 
 empty of hope and bankrupt in power ? Is 
 it not because we think so much of the things 
 that are petty and narrow and barren and 
 transient, and so little of the things that are 
 great and fruitful and glorious and eternal ? 
 These dry and thirsty lives of ours, these 
 dull, stale, flat, and unprofitable lives of ours, 
 these paltry lives, whose fault is it that
 
 JJototr 75 
 
 they are so? Ours, and ours alone. For 
 the riches of an infinite wealth and the pow- 
 ers of an immeasurable strength are all about 
 us waiting for us to possess and use them. 
 But there is only one way in which we can 
 enter into their possession, and that is by 
 thinking about them, by considering them 
 earnestly and steadily until they draw us to 
 themselves. 
 
 The strength of your life is measured by 
 the strength of your will. But the strength 
 of your will is just the strength of the wish 
 that lies behind it. And the strength of 
 your wish depends upon the sincerity and 
 earnestness and tenacity with which you fix 
 your attention upon the things which are 
 really great and worthy to be loved. This 
 is what the Apostle means when he says, at 
 the close of his description of a life which is 
 strong, and inwardly renewed, and growing 
 in glory even in the midst of affliction, 
 " while we look not at the things which 
 are seen, but at the things which are un- 
 seen." It is while we look that we learn 
 to love. It is by loving that we learn to 
 seek. And it is in seeking that we find and 
 are blessed.
 
 76 flntoer 
 
 Let us be sure, then, that it is no mere 
 profitless speculation about mysteries of no 
 practical value to which our double text 
 invites us. It is a thought that enriches, 
 ennobles, strengthens, blesses. It is a medi- 
 tation by which our lives will be enlarged and 
 uplifted and invigorated. It is for the sake 
 of a joy which will be like music in our souls 
 among life's discords ; it is for the sake of a 
 strength of spirit which will be to us like a 
 wind from heaven sending us forward on our 
 course as ships that cleave the waves and 
 triumph against the tides ; it is in order that 
 we may " have life, and have it more abun- 
 dantly," that we are asked to think about the 
 powerful knowledge of the power of God. 
 
 I. We may inquire, first, why should we 
 wish to see and know the power of God ? 
 
 Well, it seems to me that the vision of 
 power is always wonderful an<J admirable 
 and, in a certain sense, beautiful, and there- 
 fore a thing to be desired for its own sake. 
 The perception of a mighty force in action, 
 even in the physical world, confers a high 
 and noble pleasure on the mind. When the 
 force is sudden and violent, as in the case of 
 a great tempest, our pleasure in beholding it
 
 77 
 
 is mixed with awe, it is a solemn and trem- 
 bling delight ; it may be overshadowed with 
 fear, or with pity for the misfortunes of 
 those who have been overwhelmed by the 
 storm ; yet the force in itself is magnificent, 
 and the sight of it thrills and expands the 
 soul. But when it is an orderly and benefi- 
 cent force that we behold, then the vision is 
 one of pure and unmingled joy. How glo- 
 rious, for example, is the sight of a great 
 river sweeping down from its source among 
 the mountains to its resting-place in the sea. 
 How it forces its way among the hills, cut- 
 ting through the rocks and carving a channel 
 for itself in the solid earth, leaping boldly 
 from the cliffs, and rushing down the steep 
 inclines with an energy which needs but to 
 be harnessed to do the work of a million 
 men, this is power, we say, power visible, 
 and it is a grand thing to see. And the same 
 thing is true of the resistless tides of the 
 ocean on which we look with unending won- 
 der and pleasure ; true also of the might of 
 the imprisoned giant Steam as we see it 
 whirling the wheels of some great engine 
 and driving the vast ship by day and night 
 through leagues of rolling waters.
 
 78 JJotoer 
 
 But it is far more true of those forces 
 which are more silent and secret, like the 
 heat of the sun, or the force of gravitation. 
 We become aware of these forces not so 
 much through our senses alone as through 
 our thought, our inward perception. Look 
 at a blade of corn cleaving the ground, and 
 remember that all over the world countless 
 millions upon millions of them are pushing 
 upward with a power which taken altogether 
 is simply incalculable ; and all this lifting of 
 tons of bread out of the earth to the hand of 
 man is simply the drawing of the sun that 
 shines above you. Look at the starry heavens 
 on a clear still night ; companies, regiments, 
 battalions, armies of worlds, all marching 
 without haste and without rest, keeping pace 
 in their majestic orbits ; and the force that 
 binds them to their courses is the same that 
 quietly loosens the ripened apple from the 
 bough and drops it at your feet. Surely a 
 thought like this is a vision of power, and it 
 is good for the soul. 
 
 But it is doubly good to know that it is 
 all the power of God. To understand that 
 all the mighty energy which throbs and pulses 
 through the universe, comes from Him, that
 
 flofoer 79 
 
 force is but the effluence of his will, and 
 law but the expression of his wisdom ; to 
 stand before some vast manifestation of 
 power in nature and feel that it is only an 
 infinitesimal fraction, only a passing play of 
 the omnipotence of God ; to see Him hurl 
 Niagara into the gulf more easily than you 
 would pour a glass of water on the ground, 
 is good for the soul. It humbles and 
 exalts. It begets that awe of spirit which 
 is essential to true religion. We want a 
 mighty God, one who can hold the winds 
 and the waves in the hollow of his hand. 
 And for our own sake, for the sake of a 
 deeper reverence and a firmer confidence 
 towards Him, we ought to wish to see the 
 evidence of divine power in the great ele- 
 mental forces of nature. 
 
 But there is another kind of power still 
 more wonderful, still more impressive than 
 that of which we have been speaking. It is 
 spiritual power, the power which is mani- 
 fested hi the conquest of evil, in the triumph 
 of virtue, in the achievements and victories 
 of a moral being. This is grander and more 
 admirable than any physical force that has 
 ever acted upon the universe of matter.
 
 80 $)otocr 
 
 " For tho' the giant ages heave the hill 
 And break the shore, and evermore 
 Make and break, and work their will ; 
 Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll 
 Around us, each with different powers 
 And other forms of life than ours, 
 What know we greater than the soul ? " 
 
 The vision of spiritual power, even as we 
 see it in the imperfect manifestations of hu- 
 man life, is ennobling and uplifting. The 
 rush of courage along the perilous path of 
 duty is finer than the foaming leap of the 
 torrent from the crag. Integrity resisting 
 temptation overtops the mountains in gran- 
 deur. Love, giving and blessing without 
 stint, has a beauty and a potency of which 
 the sunlight is but a faint and feeble image. 
 When we see these things they thrill us 
 with joy ; they enlarge and enrich our souls. 
 
 And if that is true, how much more satis- 
 fying and strengthening must it be to behold 
 the spiritual power of God ? For God also 
 is a soul, the Great Soul ; the essence of his 
 being is not physical but moral ; and the 
 secret of his strength is in his holiness, 
 righteousness, justice, goodness, mercy, and 
 love. To know something of the force of 
 the great Spirit ; to see that there is no
 
 flotoer 81 
 
 temptation that can even shake the strong 
 foundation of his equity, no evil that can 
 finally resist the victorious sweep of his holy 
 will, no falsehood that can withstand the 
 penetrating flash of his truth, nothing that 
 can limit or exhaust the great tide of his 
 love ; to catch sight of the workings of One 
 who is omnipotent against all foes and there- 
 fore triumphant over the last enemy, death, 
 that is a vision of joy and power far 
 beyond all others, and therefore it is to be 
 desired and prayed for and sought after with 
 the whole heart. 
 
 But, after all, we have not yet touched the 
 deepest and strongest reason why we should 
 long to see and know the power of God. 
 We have been moving hitherto upon the sur- 
 face ; let us pierce now to the centre. The 
 great reason why we need to consider God's 
 power is because we are utterly dependent 
 on that power for the salvation of our souls. 
 Without it there is no peace, no hope, no 
 certainty. Unless God is mighty to save, 
 we can never be saved. 
 
 The religion of the Bible differs from all 
 others in two points. The first is, that it 
 makes salvation the hardest thing in the
 
 82 
 
 world. The second is, that it makes salva- 
 tion the easiest thing in the world. 
 
 How lofty, how inaccessible is the stand- 
 ard of holiness revealed in this religion. 
 How immense are its requirements and condi- 
 tions. Other religions set before us ideals 
 which seem by comparison like the foothills 
 of the Jura, somewhat more elevated indeed 
 than the surrounding valleys, but still smooth 
 and easy, with gradual paths and footholds. 
 But Christianity lifts Mont Blanc before our 
 eyes, serene, remote, awful in its dazzling 
 splendour, and bids us climb to holiness 
 without which no man shall see God. " Be 
 ye perfect, even as your father which is in 
 heaven is perfect." What hope is there of 
 attaining to that shining height ? 
 
 I wonder if any of you have ever had the 
 feeling that has come to me in reading 
 Christ's Sermon on the Mount. It is a feel- 
 ing of great distance and almost intolerable 
 remoteness, a feeling as if one should come 
 to a mighty cliff, towering far up into heaven, 
 crowned with eternal beauty and radiance, 
 and hear a voice crying from that far height, 
 " Come up hither and dwell with me ! " 
 When I listen to those wonderful beatitudes,
 
 JJoterr 83 
 
 when I hear those searching demands for a 
 purity which is stainless in deed, in word, in 
 thought, and in feeling, when I see how 
 strait is the gate and how narrow is the way 
 that leadeth unto life, a sense of utter help- 
 lessness sweeps through me and my spirit is 
 overwhelmed within me. 
 
 And is not the same thing true even when 
 we take shorter and more limited views of 
 the duties and requirements of the Christian 
 life ? Here are these faults and vices and 
 evil habits with which we have been strug- 
 gling. We have used all the force that we 
 have against them, and yet they are not ex- 
 tirpated. How shall they ever be conquered ? 
 Is it not a hopeless conflict? Here we have 
 been trying to do our duty, and putting all 
 our hearts into the effort to be good and to 
 do good, and yet so little is accomplished, so 
 far do we come short. More must be done ; 
 we must be better ; we must live higher and 
 holier and more useful lives. But where is 
 strength to come from since we have already 
 used all that we possess ? How shall we over- 
 come greater difficulties when we have already 
 taxed ourselves to the uttermost in coming 
 thus far? how render larger service when
 
 84 fjJotoer 
 
 we have already strained our powers to the 
 breaking-point? Next year's temptations, 
 how shall we conquer them? Next year's 
 work, how shall we do it ? 
 
 Not even the wise and needful reminder 
 that the Christian life is gradual is sufficient 
 to deliver us from this sense of helplessness. 
 It is true, of course, that "heaven is not 
 reached at a single bound," that only to-day's 
 burdens are to be borne to-day, that growth 
 in grace is like the blade and the ear and 
 the full corn in the ear; and it helps us 
 immensely to remember this. But, after all, 
 this does not quite reach the heart of our 
 trouble. Even a power which is to be grad- 
 ually exercised has its limits. Steam can 
 do so much, and no more. Electricity can do 
 so much, and no more. But the Christian 
 life is unlimited ; it rises forever ; it ad- 
 vances without end; its goal is perfection. 
 What does it profit the blade of corn to go 
 on maturing its poor little kernels, if at last 
 it will be required to bear some celestial and 
 imperishable fruit? What does it advan- 
 tage the pilgrim to climb painfully the lower 
 slopes, if the summit of the pass is inaccessi- 
 ble ? Some little human goodness, some ad-
 
 85 
 
 vance in virtue, we may perhaps attain ; but 
 a perfect holiness is out of our reach. Look 
 at heaven, a kingdom of unsullied love ; 
 look at the life of the glorified saints, sor- 
 rowless, tearless, sinless, dwelling in perfect 
 and deathless fellowship with God, is not 
 that beyond our power ? 
 
 Yes, it is ; and yet it is the ideal set before 
 us in the word of God ; and therefore we say 
 that the Bible makes salvation the hardest 
 thing hi the world, makes it something that 
 would be impossible and hopeless, if it did 
 not at the same tune make it easy and acces- 
 sible and possible for every human soul. 
 For this is what the Bible does : it reveals 
 that our salvation is all of God ; it reveals 
 that the power that worketh in us is his 
 power, and that it is able to do exceeding 
 abundantly above all that we can ask or 
 think. 
 
 And now we can see the real reason why 
 the Psalmist and the Apostle prayed so ear- 
 nestly to know the power of God, and why 
 the truest and best of human souls have 
 always repeated that prayer in many forms 
 and in many languages, and why we ought 
 to take it up and make it truly our own.
 
 86 
 
 It is because that power is our hope and our 
 salvation. David was a strong man, but he 
 knew that he could never conquer sin in his 
 own strength. Paul was a strong man, but 
 he knew that he was often unable to do the 
 things that he would ; he knew that he was 
 not sufficient for these things ; the spirit 
 was willing, but the flesh was weak ; he felt 
 that he was bound like a captive to a body of 
 sin and death. And so they both longed and 
 cried, so we should long and cry, to know 
 something greater than human strength, even 
 the power of the mighty God unto salvation. 
 
 II. Well, then, we come to our second 
 question : How may this spiritual power of 
 God be known ? 
 
 There is a twofold answer ; and yet it 
 is really one, for both parts of it belong to- 
 gether, and the latter supplements and com- 
 pletes the former, even as the sunrise is the 
 fulfilment of the dawn. 
 
 The Psalmist says, " My soul thirsteth for 
 thee, to see thy power and thy glory, even as 
 I have seen thee in the sanctuary." By this 
 I think he means that the power of God may 
 be known in the experiences of religion. Not 
 only in his own soul, as lie has confessed his
 
 flotoet 87 
 
 sin and found pardon, as he has prayed for 
 help and been strengthened, as he has asked 
 for deliverance and been lifted out of the 
 horrible pit and the iniry clay, as he has 
 implored guidance and been led in a plain 
 path, not only in his own soul, but also in 
 the souls of his brother-men who have been 
 delivered in the same perils, and helped in 
 the same conflicts, and strengthened in the 
 same sanctuary by humble faith and earnest 
 prayer and true surrender to the Spirit of 
 God, the Psalmist has seen the workings of 
 Divine power, and so he longs to see them 
 again. 
 
 The same vision is open to us. Every 
 grace that God has given to us in the past, 
 every touch of his life that has quickened 
 us, every assistance of his Spirit that has 
 supported us and given us a victory over 
 evil, is a proof and evidence of his power. 
 Let us remember and trust. 
 
 Was it long ago, or was it but yesterday, 
 that we came to Him with that heavy weight 
 of sin, and, asking for relief, found it? Come 
 then, and, kneeling at his feet to-day, with a 
 yet heavier load, it may be, prove the same 
 almighty strength to deliver from sin. Was
 
 88 fjotoet 
 
 it Jong ago, or was it yesterday, that we felt 
 that thrill of new life, of consecration, of 
 devotion passing through us as we gave our- 
 selves to God? Come then, and, renewing 
 the gift to-day, feel again the same touch of 
 power. Was it long ago, or was it but yes- 
 terday, that we prayed for strength to per- 
 form a certain duty, to bear a certain burden, 
 to overcome a certain temptation, and re- 
 ceived it? Do we dream that the Divine 
 force was exhausted in answering that one 
 prayer? No more than the great river is 
 exhausted by turning the wheels of one mill. 
 Put it to the proof again with to-day's duty, 
 to-day's burden, to-day's temptation. Thrust 
 yourself further and deeper into the stream 
 of God's power, and feel it again, as you 
 have felt it before, able to do exceeding 
 abundantly. Remember and trust. " Thou 
 hast been my help : leave me not, neither 
 forsake me, O God of my salvation." 
 
 But there are times when these memories 
 of power experienced in the past grow faint 
 and dim, times when it seems that all we can 
 see behind us is a long succession of failures, 
 and all we can feel now is a pervading sense 
 of weakness. At such times it is good to
 
 flotoer 89 
 
 consider the mighty things which God has 
 wrought in and through other lives. He has 
 lifted the hands that hung down, and strength- 
 ened the feeble knees. He has made the 
 evil good ; the sinful, pure ; the selfish, gener- 
 ous ; the base, noble. He has made apostles 
 and saints out of men and women that the 
 world would have thrown away as rubbish. 
 Why, the whole New Testament is just a 
 record of that, Peter, the weak and way- 
 ward ; Mary Magdalen, the defiled ; Zac- 
 cheus, the worldly ; Thomas, the despond- 
 ent ; Paid, the persecutor and blasphemer. 
 What God could do in the first century, He 
 can do, He is doing, to-day. 
 
 What is it that we want ? Is it faith to 
 conquer doubt ? There are men and women 
 all around us believing in the face of dif- 
 ficulties greater than ours. Is it patience 
 under trials? There are men and women 
 all around us who are bearing trials as 
 heavy as ours without a murmur. Is it 
 usefulness ? Consider the mighty works that 
 God has wrought through the hands of man. 
 Think of the great influence of the thou- 
 sands of Sunday-schools scattered all over 
 the world. How did that begin? In the
 
 90 fJotoer 
 
 efforts of poor printer Robert Raikes to 
 teach the ragged children of Gloucester. 
 Think of the beautiful charity which carries 
 vast multitudes of little ones every summer 
 out of the crowded city into the fresh air 
 of the country. How did that begin ? In 
 the attempt of a country minister to bring 
 a score of poor children to spend a few 
 days in the farmhouses of his scanty parish. 
 What can we do ? Nothing. What can 
 God do with us ? Anything ; whatsoever 
 He wiU. 
 
 But perhaps you will say, " This does not 
 help me so much, after all. For these men 
 and women are separated from me. I do 
 not really know them, nor they me. There 
 is no bond between us, nothing to make me 
 partaker of their life. In fact, they are so 
 far above me that it humiliates me even to 
 think of them, and if they knew me there is 
 no reason to think that they could do any- 
 thing else than look down upon me in my 
 selfishness, weakness, and sin." 
 
 To one who is in this state of mind I think 
 Paul is more helpful than David, the New 
 Testament more precious than the Old. Let 
 us turn, then, to the way in which the apos-
 
 JJotoer 91 
 
 tie sought to know and feel the power of 
 God. " That I may know Him," he cried, 
 that is Christ, " and the power of his resur- 
 rection." And in another place he said : 
 " That ye may know what is the exceeding 
 greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, 
 according to the working of his mighty 
 power which He wrought in Christ when He 
 raised Him from the dead." That is the 
 true proof and manifestation of the spiritual 
 power of God ; the life and resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ, conqueror of sin and death. 
 
 Remember that it is a real human life, 
 lived in the same flesh and blood, under 
 the same conditions and limitations as ours, 
 made human in order that it might be like 
 ours. Remember that the strength of it is 
 not physical but spiritual, the same Spirit of 
 God dwelling in Jesus whom God promises 
 to give to all that ask Him. Remember 
 that its triumph over falsehood and tempta- 
 tion and sin and death is one triumph, and 
 that the resurrection is but the final working 
 of the same power which worked all through 
 the holy life of Jesus, so that He conquered 
 the grave with the same might with which 
 He overcame evil. Remember that this life
 
 92 
 
 is given to us and for us, so that we may 
 belong to it, as the branches belong to the 
 vine, as the members belong to the body. 
 Remember that Christ says : " Without me 
 ye can do nothing, but lo ! I am with you 
 alway, even unto the end of the world. He 
 that believeth on me, the works that I do 
 shall he do also. Where I am, there shall 
 ye be also." Remember these things, and 
 we shall understand what Paul means by 
 knowing the power of his resurrection. It 
 is to know that the greatest spiritual power 
 in the universe, the power which made Jesus 
 Christ perfect in holiness, is ready to enter 
 and work in us, and that He who raised 
 up Jesus from the dead shall quicken our 
 mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth 
 in us. 
 
 III. Now what practical effect will this 
 knowledge of the mighty power of God have 
 in our lives ? David thinks chiefly of one 
 effect ; Paul chiefly of another. 
 
 The prominent thought in the psalm is 
 the joy that comes from seeing God's power : 
 " My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow 
 and fatness, and my mouth shall praise thee 
 with joyful lips." And surely that is a good
 
 JJntoer 93 
 
 thing. Joy is essential to true religion. A 
 gloomy religion is far from God. A sad 
 gospel is a contradiction in terms, like a 
 black sun. " Behold," said the angel, " I 
 bring you good tidings of great joy, which 
 shall be to all people." And that message 
 was simply the news of a great power which 
 had appeared in the world for salvation. 
 David, indeed, did not hear this message 
 in its fulness, did not see this power in 
 its perfection. But he heard the promise of 
 it, he felt the thrill of its coming. His hope 
 was in God. " I have set the Lord always 
 before me ; because He is at my right hand I 
 shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is 
 glad and my glory rejoiceth ; my flesh also 
 shall rest in hope." Yes, God is light, God 
 is love, God is power ; and therefore God is 
 hope. 
 
 Little does he know of true joy who knows 
 not this. Lightly, foolishly, falsely does he 
 think of the great resistant force of evil, 
 the tremendous difficulties of being good, 
 the vast inertia of a world lying in sin, who 
 exults in aught else than the knowledge of a 
 Divine power able to overcome it all. When 
 we look at the follies and vices and crimes
 
 94 fJotocr 
 
 and shames which still exist among men, 
 when we see the immense obstacles which 
 stand in the way of the spiritual progress of 
 humanity, when we discern the dark and sul- 
 len and obstinate influences which are potent 
 in our own hearts, despair for ourselves and 
 for the world seems natural, pessimism right 
 and inevitable. Will the slender ray of light 
 that shines on the mountain-top ever conquer 
 the huge darkness ? 
 
 Well, that depends on the source from 
 which it springs. If it comes only from a 
 fire kindled there by human hands, it will 
 go out again when the fuel is exhausted. 
 But if it comes from the sun, it will grow 
 until the night is vanquished. And that is 
 what the Bible tells us. Behind every mani- 
 festation of spiritual life there is the Spirit. 
 Behind Christianity there is Christ. Be- 
 hind Christ there is God. For He is the 
 brightness of the Father's glory, and the ex- 
 press image of his person ; and the power 
 that works in Him, the power that has raised 
 Him from the dead and set Him at God's 
 right hand in heavenly places, is the power 
 that is saving every one that believeth, and 
 reconciling the world to God. When we
 
 {Jotter 95 
 
 know that, despair ceases to exist, and joy 
 fills the heart with music. 
 
 But in Paul's mind there is another 
 thought. It is the thought of the strength, 
 the vigour, the energy that come from this 
 knowledge. u This one thing I do," he says : 
 " forgetting those things which are behind, 
 and reaching forth unto those things which 
 are before, I press toward the mark for the 
 prize of the high calling of God in Christ 
 Jesus." And elsewhere, again and again, 
 he expresses the same thought. At the close 
 of that glorious chapter on the resurrection, 
 in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, he 
 says : " Therefore, my beloved brethren, be 
 ye steadfast, immovable, always abounding 
 in the work of the Lord." And again : 
 " Work out your own salvation with fear 
 and trembling, for it is God which worketh 
 in you." And again : " I can do all things 
 through Christ which strengtheneth me." 
 
 That is the secret of strength ; to know 
 the Divine power and to use it. The man 
 who does not use it cannot really know it. 
 
 The Christian who says, " I know the 
 power of God, and I am trusting in that to 
 save me, and sustain me, and make me useful,
 
 96 
 
 and bring me to heaven," and yet makes no 
 real effort to be good or to do good, is like a 
 man sitting on the bank of a mighty river, 
 and casting chips upon its sweeping tide, and 
 saying, " This river is able to bear me to my 
 journey's end." What you need to do is to 
 push your boat out into the current, and feel 
 its resistless force, and move onward with it. 
 Then you will know the power that now you 
 only know about. 
 
 Is there any reason why our lives should 
 be feeble and stagnant and worthless? Is 
 there any reason why we should not over- 
 come temptation and endure trial, and work 
 the works of God in the world, and come at 
 last to the height of his abode in heaven ? 
 Only one, that we do not know Him who 
 is able to do exceeding abundantly above all 
 that we ask or think, according to the power 
 that worketh in us. Lay hold on Him by 
 faith and all things are possible. Let us 
 clasp the hand of Christ and climb ; and as 
 we climb He will lift us out of sin, out of 
 selfishness, out of weakness, out of death, into 
 holiness, into love, into strength, into life, 
 and we shall know the power of his resur- 
 rection.
 
 V 
 
 REDEMPTION 
 ".for pe aw bottj&t toit& a price/' 
 
 I Corinthians vi. 20.
 
 " JF0r pe are bought tuttf) a price/' 
 
 THE Apostle Paul thinks so much of this 
 plain saying that he repeats it in the next 
 chapter, as if to make sure that we should 
 not forget it, nor fail to appropriate it in our 
 lives. And in this he is right. For it is in- 
 deed a word like a jewel, shining, precious, 
 imperishable. If we rightly estimate its 
 worth, if we take it into the treasury of our 
 hearts, it will more enrich and ennoble us 
 than the possession of royal gems. 
 
 And yet it may seem strange to you that 
 so much should be made of this saying. For 
 what is it, after all, this confident and posi- 
 tive assertion of the apostle, but the state- 
 ment of a great debt which we owe and can 
 never pay a tremendous obligation rest- 
 ing upon erery one of us from which we can 
 never escape? What does it tell us save 
 that we have all been bought in the open 
 market, as slaves are bought, for so the
 
 100 KeUratption 
 
 Apostle's word signifies, and that the price 
 lias been paid, and that henceforth we belong 
 to a master ? Is not this a strange thing to 
 rejoice over, as if it were a precious boon ? 
 
 Certainly, it is a strange thing, but never- 
 theless it is a true thing ; for, in regard to 
 human life at least, truth is almost always 
 stranger than fiction. That which is obvious 
 and self-evident is frequently false, and gen- 
 erally superficial. It is only by striking down 
 into the hidden depths of our nature that 
 we come to those paradoxes in which the 
 essence of truth resides. " He that findeth 
 his life shall lose it." That is a contradic- 
 tion in terms, but it is a reality in experi- 
 ence. " He that is greatest among you shall 
 be your servant." That is a falsehood to the 
 sense, but it is a truth to the soul. " He 
 only is wise who knows himself to be a fool." 
 To a little learning, that seems absurd, but 
 to a profound philosophy it is the voice of 
 wisdom. And so this saying of Paul's, 
 which looks at first like a burden, an im- 
 poverishment, a chain, is in fact an uplift- 
 ing, an enrichment, an emancipation, for 
 those who really understand it and translate 
 it into life.
 
 ReUemptton 101 
 
 Think of this for a moment, and try to see 
 what it means. There is a great truth here, 
 if we can only get it into words. 
 
 What is liberty ? It is the recognition of 
 voluntary allegiance to the highest law. And 
 what is the highest law ? It is the law of 
 gratitude and love. Who, then, is free ? He 
 who sees and feels the obligations which bind 
 him to serve the highest and the best. The 
 noblest, richest, fullest, purest life is that 
 which has the deepest and strongest sense 
 of indebtedness resting upon it always, and 
 impelling it forward along the line of duty, 
 which is also the line of joy. So, then, true 
 liberty is the highest kind of bondage. 
 
 Do you understand what I mean? Do 
 these words of mine let even a glimmer of 
 the truth shine through them ? Let us try to 
 see it a little more clearly. There are three 
 broad statements in regard to this life of ours 
 that I want to submit to you. You shall 
 pronounce your own judgment upon their 
 truth. 
 
 I. The sense of belonging to something is 
 essential to our happiness. 
 
 We are never without this sense, and there- 
 fore we do not realize its importance. But
 
 102 Redemption 
 
 let us try for once to strip it away from us, 
 and then perhaps we may feel what it means. 
 You remember the story of " The Man with- 
 out a Country." Endeavor now to construct 
 in imagination the figure of a man without a 
 world, without a fellow-man, without a God. 
 I do not mean that you should try to think 
 the world and humanity and God out of 
 existence, so that you should stand alone in 
 the universe. That, indeed, would be the only 
 complete isolation, for as long as anything 
 existed, your consciousness of it would make 
 some kind of a bond between you and it. 
 But stop short, for the present, of the hor- 
 rible insanity of absolute loneliness in void 
 space, and attempt only to cut yourself off 
 from connection with all things that exist, so 
 that you shall have no dependence and no 
 obligation outside of yourself. 
 
 You are independent. You have no par- 
 entage ; for if you had, that would create a 
 tie between you and those to whom you 
 owed your being. You are not even the 
 product of natural forces; for if they had 
 produced you, you would owe something to 
 them. You have no place in the universe ; 
 for if you had, you would be bound to fill it.
 
 Exemption 103 
 
 You are not in the thoughts of God, if there 
 be a God ; for if He thought of you, you 
 would be responsible for meeting his thought. 
 You are a rank outsider. You are superflu- 
 ous, forgotten, obsolete, "a looker-on in 
 Vienna." All this mighty sum of " things 
 forever working " goes on without you, and 
 there is nothing for you to do ; for if you 
 were needed anywhere, that need would cre- 
 ate an obligation; and since you are not 
 needed, you dare not touch a finger to the 
 work without presumption and interference. 
 All these linked lives and related intelli- 
 gences cling together and play into each 
 other, and every one has a share in another 
 and belongs to all the rest. But the chain 
 is complete without you ; you are not in it. 
 You have neither relation nor religion, for 
 both of them consist in a bond and create a 
 bondage. You are an independent atom, an 
 outcast fragment of some extinct universe, 
 dropped by chance into this world where all 
 things belong together, a foundling, a 
 homeless thing. For you alone belong 
 Nowhere, and are the forsaken child of 
 Nothing ! 
 
 Does not the mere contemplation of such
 
 104 Eetonption ' 
 
 a condition as that throw us back forcibly, 
 almost violently, upon the truth that the joy 
 of our life is a dependent joy, and that 
 we can only come into true and happy pos- 
 session of ourselves when we realize that we 
 belong to something greater than ourselves ? 
 As living beings we are part of a universe of 
 life ; as intelligent beings we are in connec- 
 tion with a great circle of conscious intelli- 
 gences; as spiritual beings we have our 
 place in a moral world controlled and gov- 
 erned by the supreme Spirit. In each of 
 these spheres there is a law, a duty, an obli- 
 gation, a responsibility, for us. And our 
 felicity lies in the discovery and acknow- 
 ledgment of those ties which fit us and bind 
 us to take our place, to play our part, to do 
 our work, to live our life, where we belong. 
 
 II. This leads us on at once to the second 
 proposition about life. The true uplifting 
 and emancipation of our life comes through 
 the recognition of the higher ties and rela- 
 tionships which bind us. 
 
 I mean that the progress and elevation of 
 the soul is a process of discovering, not that 
 it is independent and masterless, but that the 
 lower laws and conditions under which it
 
 EeHemptton 105 
 
 lives are subordinate to the higher laws, and 
 that its bondage in a certain sphere becomes 
 transformed into liberty when it is lifted up 
 into a higher sphere, where both he that 
 serveth and he that is served are subject unto 
 a supreme sovereignty which is above all. 
 That is what I understand by the reign of 
 law, not the domination of one rule alone 
 upon all that is, but the reign of law over 
 law, the higher above the lower, and the 
 highest of all supreme ; so that those who 
 rise to that last and topmost height, where 
 God forever dwells and is what He com- 
 mands, are sharers in his liberty and domin- 
 ion : they become the sons of God, not be- 
 cause they have cast off and renounced their 
 obligations, but because they have recognized 
 them step by step, sphere by sphere, until at 
 last they come with glad submission into 
 unity and harmony with that which is sove- 
 reign and ultimate ; and that, if the Bible is 
 true, is nothing else than perfect Love. 
 
 See how we can trace the steps of this 
 process in the common life of man! The 
 child, coming into existence, not by its own 
 choice and will, but out of life behind it, be- 
 becomes aware first of its physical being. It
 
 106 Redemption 
 
 takes its place among the creatures that 
 breathe and eat and sleep, and adapts itself 
 spontaneously to the laws of that existence. 
 A physical life has begun which will be con- 
 tinually dependent upon obedience to those 
 laws. But presently another life begins to 
 dawn within the first life. The child be- 
 comes conscious of powers of observation, of 
 comparison, of thought. It does not cease to 
 belong to the animal kingdom ; it becomes, 
 however, an animal who thinks, and thus is 
 subject to the higher laws of reason ; and it 
 is only by following that law that the child 
 is really lifted upwards, and grows intelli- 
 gent and free. And then comes the opening 
 of another world to which it belongs, the 
 spiritual world, a disclosure so secret and 
 vital that we cannot describe the order or 
 manner of it. But we know the three chan- 
 nels through which it comes, the affections, 
 the conscience, and the religious feeling. 
 And we know the signs and marks of it. We 
 can tell when the child begins to feel the 
 ties of love and duty which bind it to human- 
 kind, the laws of right and wrong which are 
 different and superior to all other laws, the 
 sense of awe and dependence and responsi-
 
 Hrfccmptum 107 
 
 bility which is the evidence of God unseen. 
 We know also that the growth of that child 
 into liberty and nobility will depend upon 
 the recognition of these invisible things, and 
 the allegiance to them. It will rise, it will 
 become a free and beautiful soul, only as it 
 lives in love and duty and worship. 
 
 Take another illustration, simpler and 
 more striking. Here is a slave bound by 
 artificial law to the service of a human mas- 
 ter. How shall you make that man free ? 
 Suppose you slay the master, and strike the 
 bonds from the limbs of the slave, and say 
 to him, " Go ! you are free, you have no 
 master, you belong to nobody." What have 
 you done for him ? Is he really any more 
 free than he was before ? Is he not still a 
 slave, though a masterless one? But sup- 
 pose you teach him to believe that he is a 
 human being, and that he has a service to 
 render, even in his low estate, to the whole 
 brotherhood of mankind, a service just as 
 real and true, and therefore just as noble, 
 as that of the king upon his throne. Sup- 
 pose you bring into his mind the great truth 
 that he belongs to God just as fully and as 
 completely as his master does, and that, even
 
 108 Exemption 
 
 under the hard conditions of his life, it is 
 his duty, his privilege, his glory, to serve 
 God by honesty and fidelity and diligence 
 and purity. Now, indeed, you have liberated 
 his soul ; and if the liberation of his body 
 comes, as it ought to come, as it must come, 
 it will find him already a free man, and fit 
 for liberty, because he has caught sight of 
 the true meaning of fraternity and equality. 
 It was thus that Christianity advanced 
 upon the world, and thus that it dealt with 
 the evil of human slavery. Entering the 
 mighty Roman Empire at a time when it in- 
 cluded perhaps 120,000,000 of people and 
 60,000,000 of them slaves, it proclaimed 
 no insurrection, it created no anarchy. It 
 taught the Fatherhood of God and the bro- 
 therhood of man, not merely as a doctrine, 
 but as a law of life binding all who believed 
 in it. It said in plain words, by the mouth 
 of Paul and all his fellow-servants of Chris- 
 tianity : " Art thou called, being a slave ? 
 Care not for it ; but if thou mayest be made 
 free, use it rather. For he that is called in 
 the Lord being a slave, is the Lord's free- 
 man ; likewise also he that is called being 
 free is Christ's slave." And so the Gospel
 
 ScUcmptinn 109 
 
 carries written upon its very face the great 
 truth that the only real deliverance from a 
 lower bondage lies in the recognition of a 
 higher obligation. Men are made free by 
 discerning their noblest allegiance. 
 
 III. But there is yet one more truth that 
 we must take into account if we are to grasp 
 the whole of the subject, and find ourselves 
 in a position to understand the divine beauty 
 and meaning of the text. Let me try to 
 utter it briefly and clearly. 
 
 The inward joy and power of our life, in 
 every sphere, come from the discovery that 
 its highest obligation rests at last upon the 
 law of gratitude. In every tie that binds us 
 we are made free and glad to serve, when 
 we recognize that we have been "bought 
 with a price." 
 
 Do you see what I mean? Take this 
 thought of recognizing the price that has 
 been paid for us, and carry it out into the 
 different fields of human life, and see how it 
 sheds a glory and a splendour on every rela- 
 tionship, on every duty, on every sacrifice. 
 
 Here is the family circle. You belong to 
 it. It has its obligations and responsibilities 
 for you. You are subject to your parents.
 
 110 Brtcnijpttnn 
 
 They have a right to control you and to de- 
 mand your obedience. So far, you are sub- 
 ject to a law, good and necessary, but in 
 itself external and formal. Presently you 
 come to feel, if you are worth anything at all, 
 that this family life has cost something ; you 
 catch a glimpse of the pangs of anguish, the 
 hours of watching and weariness, the count- 
 less and continual draughts on life and love, 
 that a mother has borne for your sake. You 
 think of the daily toils, the struggles with 
 adverse fortune, the cares and self-denials 
 through which a father has passed, that you 
 might be protected and nurtured and edu- 
 cated. You begin to understand that not 
 only expenditures of such things as strength 
 and money, but far greater treasures of the 
 heart, affections, anxieties, prayers, sacrifices, 
 expenditures of the very best of life, have 
 been made for you. And when that truth 
 comes to you, you feel that you are bought 
 with a price. Does it oppress and darken 
 your life ? Does it not rather ennoble and 
 gladden you ? It lifts you up into the true 
 filial relation, makes you long to be a 
 nobler son, a better daughter, more worthy 
 of the sacrifices which have been made for
 
 Eefiemptton 111 
 
 you. If they could ever be repaid, they 
 would be a burden until you had discharged 
 the debt. But just because it is so great 
 that it transcends payment, it makes you a 
 willing debtor forever, and binds you to a 
 grateful and loving life. 
 
 Is not the same thing true of our relations 
 to our country ? You are born a citizen of 
 the republic ; and that does not mean very 
 much, as a bare fact, except a duty of paying 
 taxes, and a privilege, which you may not 
 prize very highly, of voting with more or less 
 regularity. But suppose it flashes upon you 
 some day, as I believe it does flash upon 
 most honest and manly boys who read the 
 history of their country, that all the hard- 
 ships and perils and conflicts of the fore- 
 fathers all the patient endurance of pri- 
 vations and the brave defiance of dangers, 
 all the offerings of treasure and blood that 
 have been made to found, liberate, defend, and 
 preserve our country are a price paid for 
 you. Do you not see how that thought must 
 kindle the flame of patriotism upon the altar 
 of your heart ? How it must awaken that 
 strange, inward warmth of feeling which 
 glows at the very mention of your country's
 
 112 KeUemption 
 
 name ? How it will rise, if you are a true 
 man, in the hour of need, into that devotion 
 which cries, " It is sweet and beautiful to die 
 for one's country " ? Surely the very soul of 
 patriotism is this wonderful sense that we 
 have been bought with a price. 
 
 And the same thing is true of our relation- 
 ship to humanity, to the great brotherhood 
 of man. We are born into it and belong to 
 it. We are subject to the common laws of 
 human nature, and we submit to them with 
 good or ill grace. It does not mean very 
 much to us. But suppose we come to un- 
 derstand that this race of man to which 
 we belong, is bound together by something 
 deeper and more vital than subjection to 
 an outward law, that there is a vicarious 
 element in human life, that no man liveth 
 to himself and no man dieth to himself, that 
 all the efforts and aspirations and toils and 
 sufferings of humanity serve us and are for 
 our sake. This is true in the plainest and 
 most literal sense. The houses that shelter 
 us, the clothes that cover us, the food on 
 our tables, have all been won for us by the 
 labour of other hands. We have paid for 
 that labour, it is true, but there is one thing
 
 Exemption 113 
 
 that we have not paid for, and that is the 
 life that has gone into the labour. 
 
 And there is another thing that has been 
 done for some of us for all of us in this 
 congregation in some measure that we have 
 not paid for and cannot repay. I mean the 
 subjection of great multitudes of our fellow- 
 creatures to hard and narrow and oppressive 
 conditions of life, to poverty and to dull, 
 distasteful toil, in order that we should be 
 free to follow the callings which are, I will 
 not say higher, but certainly cleaner and 
 brighter and more beautiful, in order that 
 we should have the means and the time for 
 culture and refinement and an expanded life. 
 I am not concerned now to explain or justify 
 this state of things. I am taking it simply 
 as a fact, and I say that the true nobility of 
 our human sentiment can only come from a 
 sense of the meaning of that fact. When we 
 realize that every liberty, every privilege, 
 every advantage, that comes to us as men and 
 women has been bought with a price, that 
 the dark, subterranean lives of those who toil 
 day and night in the bowels of the earth, 
 the perils and hardships of those who sail to 
 and fro upon the stormy seas, the benumb-
 
 114 
 
 ing weariness of those who dig and ditch and 
 handle dirt, the endless tending of looms and 
 plying of needles and carrying of burdens, 
 
 " the fierce confederate storm 
 Of sorrow barricadoed evermore 
 Within the walls of cities," 
 
 all this is done and endured and suffered by 
 our fellow-men, though blindly, for our bene- 
 fit, and accrues to our advantage, when we 
 begin to understand this, a nobler spirit 
 enters into us, the only spirit that can keep 
 our wealth, our freedom, our culture from 
 being a curse to us forever, and sinking us 
 into the ennui of a selfish hell. 
 
 Noblesse oblige, that is the true motto 
 of a nobility worthy of the name. The 
 higher the elevation, the deeper and wider is 
 the obligation. The ideal of kingship is not 
 to be found in the luxurious and licentious 
 palace of the Shah of Persia, but in the hos- 
 pitals of Naples, where the King of Italy 
 bends to help and comfort the poorest of his 
 subjects. Every touch of beauty, of light, 
 of power, every gift of riches, of freedom, of 
 learning that is ours, has been paid for by 
 the lives of our fellow-men, and binds us to 
 their service. It is this thought alone which
 
 KrUrmptton 115 
 
 can reveal to us the immense meaning of 
 humanity, and fit us for our part in life, and 
 make us truly noble men and gentle women. 
 We are bought with a price. 
 
 And now some of you may ask why I 
 have dwelt so long upon these propositions 
 in regard to human life and said nothing 
 yet about religion, made no direct comment 
 upon the text. This is the reason.- It is 
 because life is part of religion, and religion 
 is part of life. It is because the great truth 
 of redemption by Jesus Christ is not a 
 strange, unnatural, unreasonable, inhuman 
 truth, but profoundly natural and reason- 
 able, and fitted in, by a divine adaptation, to 
 the very inmost recesses of our human na- 
 ture. It is because the beauty and power 
 of the text come not from the fact that it is 
 foreign to our experience, a mystic and 
 incomprehensible word, but rather from 
 the fact that it is cognate to our experi- 
 ence. Everything fine and pure and uplift- 
 ing in our life points to it and throws light 
 upon it. 
 
 Our physical, intellectual, and social hap- 
 piness depends on our belonging to something 
 greater than ourselves. How, then, shall
 
 116 Redemption 
 
 we find our spiritual happiness, save in be- 
 longing to God ? Our deliverance from 
 the lower servitude of life comes through 
 the knowledge of its higher and wider alle- 
 giance. How, then, shall we be freed from 
 the slavery of sin and self and sense and 
 death, save by coming into subjection to 
 God ? The inspiration of the service that we 
 render in this world to our homes, our coun- 
 try, our fellow-men, springs from the recogni- 
 tion that a price has been paid for us ; the 
 vital power of noble conduct rises from the 
 deep fountain of gratitude, which flows not 
 with water, but with warm heart' s-blood. 
 How then, shall a like power come into our 
 religion, how shall it be as real, as living, 
 as intimate, as our dearest human tie, unless 
 we know and feel that God has paid a price 
 for us, that He has bought us with his own 
 precious life ? 
 
 And this is the truth which the Gospel re- 
 veals to us. This is the price of which the 
 text speaks ; it is the incarnation, life, suf- 
 ferings and death of the Son of God. This 
 is the great ransom which has been given for 
 all. He gave himself to poverty, to toil, to 
 humiliation, to agony, to the cross. He
 
 KeScmpttun 117 
 
 gave himself for us, not only for our bene- 
 fit, but in our place. He bore the trials and 
 temptations which belong to us. He car- 
 ried our sins. He endured our punishment. 
 Through torture and anguish He went down 
 to our death. Through loneliness and sor- 
 row He descended into our grave. If it 
 were merely a human being who had done 
 this for us, it would be much. But since it 
 was a Divine Being, it is infinitely more pre- 
 cious. Think of the almighty One becoming 
 weak, the glorious One suffering shame, the 
 holy One dwelling amongst sinners, the very 
 Son of God pouring out his blood for us 
 upon the accursed tree ! It is this divinity 
 in the sacrifice that gives it power to recon- 
 cile and bind our hearts to God. It is God 
 himself proving how much He loves us by 
 the price which He is willing to pay for us. 
 It is God himself manifest in the flesh to 
 redeem us from sin and death, in order that 
 we may belong to Him entirely and forever. 
 Words fail me to express the splendour 
 and might of this great truth as it is revealed 
 in the Holy Scriptures. It is the wisdom of 
 God and the power of God unto salvation. 
 It is the supreme revelation of the Divine
 
 118 Exemption 
 
 nature, which is like the human nature, and 
 yet so far outshines it as the sun outshines a 
 taper. It tells us what God will do for us ; 
 for " He that spared not his own Son, but 
 freely delivered Him up for us, how shall 
 He not also, with Him, freely give us all 
 things ? " It tells us what we owe to God : 
 " for He died for all, that they which live 
 should not henceforth live unto themselves, 
 but unto Him which died for them and rose 
 again." It is the source and centre of a 
 true theology. It is the spring and motive 
 of a high morality. It is the secret of a new 
 life, redeemed, consecrated, sanctified by the 
 Son of God, who loved us and gave himself 
 for us. 
 
 A great deal of our religious thought and 
 teaching to-day is turned to the example of 
 Christ as the model and pattern of true man- 
 hood. And we rejoice in this, because it is 
 a high and noble doctrine. But let us not 
 forget that if it stands alone it is partial and 
 incomplete. The force of an example, how- 
 ever lofty, has its limits. The life of Christ 
 as an ideal falls short of the power to save 
 us and uplift us, unless it is also a ransom, 
 a life freely given and sacrificed for us. If
 
 E coemption 119 
 
 He were our example only, his very eleva- 
 tion above us, the purity and splendour of 
 his character, the perfection of his moral 
 triumph compared with our feeble and sinful 
 lives, would discourage and cast us down. 
 As well ask a common man to show the 
 genius of a Dante or a Shakespeare, to exer- 
 cise the power of a Caesar or a Charlemagne, 
 as to live the life of Christianity with no- 
 thing but an example to guide and bind us. 
 But because that life is something more, be- 
 cause it is given and sacrificed for us, it 
 becomes a vital and spiritual power, it lays 
 hold of us at the very centre of our being. 
 While it covers our sins and shortcomings, 
 it awakens our noblest longings and desires. 
 It sets us free to follow it, and to follow it 
 to success. 
 
 Man will never grow beyond the need of 
 that ransom. For all other ways of finding 
 peace with God, of making sure that He 
 loves us, of entering into the sense of for- 
 giveness and fellowship with Him, are vain 
 and futile compared with the Divine sacrifice. 
 Peace through the cross alone, is true for us 
 as it was for Paul. Man will never grow be- 
 yond the power of that great ransom to test
 
 120 KeUtmptton 
 
 and judge his soul, to reveal the thoughts of 
 his heart, to prove whether he will be saved 
 or lost. For here is the solemn mystery 
 of it all, that, though this price was paid for 
 every man, yet every man is free to appro- 
 priate or to reject the gift, to acknowledge 
 or deny the obligation. And those who do 
 not feel its preciousness and its binding 
 power, those who count the blood of the 
 covenant wherewith they were redeemed a 
 common thing, and deny the Lord that 
 bought them, are beyond the reach of any 
 ransom. God himself is to them as " a stran- 
 ger and as a man astonished, a mighty man 
 that cannot save." 
 
 And so, my friends, I have set the truth 
 before you by which the course of all your 
 years, stretching far on beyond this life, must 
 be determined. I point you to the Saviour, 
 who alone can set you free from the curse of 
 sin, from the bondage of the law, from the 
 fear of death, by bringing you into his love 
 and service. You are bought with a price. 
 Christ has come and borne your burdens with 
 you, and your sins for you. Henceforth 
 there is not one of you that need be anx- 
 ious about the forgiveness of your sins, the
 
 EcUcmption 121 
 
 salvation of your souls. It is all purchased 
 and paid for, if you will accept it. But 
 with it YOU ARE PURCHASED, and you belong 
 to the Lord Christ. " He has conquered sin, 
 so that you need not be its slave any longer. 
 Now let Him conquer you by his great love, 
 and so his victory will be complete." 
 
 We desire our life to be a life of freedom, 
 a life of noble service, a life of glad and 
 happy labour for that which is highest and 
 best. There is only one way to make it so. 
 and that is to live it under the controlling 
 power of the great price that has been paid 
 for us. Acknowledge the Lord Jesus as 
 your Saviour, Owner, Master, King. Con- 
 fess the greatness of your obligation to Him. 
 Confess that you can never repay it. And 
 then give yourself to Him to live as bravely, 
 as purely, as faithfully, as nobly as you can 
 in his name and for his sake. 
 
 " Were the whole realm of nature mine, 
 
 That were a present far too small : 
 Love so amazing, so divine, 
 Demands my life, ray soul, my all."
 
 VI 
 
 ABRAHAM'S ADVENTURE 
 "&n& be went out, not fcnotoins toljitljcr Ijc tofnt.' ? 
 
 Hebrews xi. 8.
 
 be toent out, not fenotoinff mlntbcr IK went." 
 
 THIS text describes a life of adventure. 
 It brings before us one of that noble com- 
 pany of explorers who forsake the beaten 
 track and push out into a new, strange, 
 uncertain course for the sake of discovering 
 and possessing a new world. 
 
 These men always appear heroic. There 
 is something in them which compels our ad- 
 miration. There is something in us which 
 responds to their daring, and follows their 
 journeyings with eager interest. I suppose 
 it is the old, migratory instinct, the in- 
 stinct which first drew the tribes of men 
 out from their original homes, and peopled 
 the distant regions of the earth, it is this 
 deep, curious impulse of wandering and dis- 
 covery which still lingers in our nature, and 
 stirs us with strange thrills of enthusiasm, 
 and fills us with wild day-dreams of adven- 
 ture as we read or hear the story of some
 
 126 Slfcra&am'a 9Hrtjentttre 
 
 famous traveller in unknown lands. There 
 is an explorer latent in almost every man 
 whose mind is large enough to have any 
 interests outside of himself ; and it is this 
 unused and frustrated explorer who sits be- 
 side the fire and pores, entranced and fasci- 
 nated, over the Arctic diaries of Dr. Kane 
 or the African journals of Stanley. He rec- 
 ognizes and applauds the heroism of these 
 men, who went out, not knowing whither they 
 went. 
 
 The power which has moved adventurers 
 is faith. This is the vital force of almost 
 all the great explorers. They have not 
 gone forth vaguely and aimlessly to wan- 
 der to and fro upon the face of the earth. 
 They have believed in something unseen, 
 something that other men have not believed 
 in, something that has seemed to the world 
 impossible and absurd, and they have set 
 forth to seek it. A new continent across the 
 ocean, a new passage from sea to sea, a new 
 lake among the forests, a new land to be 
 possessed and cultivated, a goal beyond 
 sight and beyond knowledge, apprehended 
 and realized by a heroic faith, has drawn 
 them over stormy seas and inhospitable des-
 
 127 
 
 erts, through rugged mountains and track- 
 less jungles. They have believed, and there- 
 fore adventured. 
 
 Nor has their faith been lacking, for the 
 most part, in a spiritual element. There is 
 hardly one of them not one, I think, 
 among the very greatest of the world's ex- 
 plorers who has not believed in God, and 
 in his overruling Providence, and in his 
 call to them to undertake their adventures. 
 It is wonderful and beautiful to see how 
 this religious element has entered into the 
 exploration of the earth, and how faitlr has 
 asserted itself in the most famous and glori- 
 ous journeyings of men. We see Columbus 
 planting the standard of the cross on the 
 lonely beach of San Salvador ; and Balboa 
 kneeling silent, with uplifted hands, on the 
 cliff from which he first caught sight of the 
 Pacific ; and Livingstone praying in his tent 
 in the heart of Africa. From all the best 
 and the bravest adventurers we hear the con- 
 fession that they are the servants of a Divine 
 Being, summoned and sent by Him to a work 
 for which they would give Him the glory. 
 
 Now the life of Abraham takes an honour- 
 able place in the history of adventure for
 
 128 
 
 several reasons. It seems to me that its 
 antiquity and originality entitle it to respect. 
 But apart from this, in itself Abraham's 
 adventure was momentous and significant. 
 Other enterprises may appear to us more 
 important and eventful than his ; but, after 
 all, it may be doubted whether any expedi- 
 tion that man has ever undertaken has had 
 larger results in the history of the world 
 than the emergence of the father of the 
 Hebrew race from Mesopotamian bondage. 
 Other journeys may seem to us more strik- 
 ing and wonderful than his pilgrimage from 
 Ur of the Chaldees to the land of Caanan ; 
 but if we knew the story of its hardships 
 and perils, if we understood the complex 
 civilization which he forsook and the barbar- 
 ism which he faced, we might not think it 
 unworthy to be compared with the most 
 famous travels. But the one thing in this 
 ancient story which has survived the oblivion 
 of the centuries, the one thing which shines 
 out in it clear and distinct, and makes it 
 glorious and precious beyond comparison, is 
 its imperishable and unalterable testimony 
 to the power of faith to make a brave man 
 face the unknown.
 
 129 
 
 Abraham believed. He lived in an idola- 
 trous country. Every one about him, even 
 his own father and his family, worshipped 
 idols. But Abraham's soul pierced through 
 all these falsehoods and delusions of men to 
 find and clasp the one living and true God 
 who is a Spirit. 
 
 Abraham believed. He was surrounded 
 by the unrighteousness that a corrupt reli- 
 gion always sanctions and intensifies. The 
 pollutions and cruelties of heathen life 
 touched him on every side, and must have 
 left their stain upon him. He himself was 
 far from righteous. There were flaws in 
 his character, blots upon his conduct. But 
 one thing he did not do. He did not carve 
 an idol out of his own sin and call it a God. 
 He believed in a God who was not lower 
 but higher than himself, a God of pu- 
 rity, of holiness, of truth, of mercy; and 
 that faith, having in itself the power to up- 
 lift and purify, was counted to him for 
 righteousness, yea, it was better than any 
 outward conformity to a code of morality, 
 just as religion is better than ethics, because 
 it has the promise of growth and enlarge- 
 ment and an endless life.
 
 130 
 
 Abraham believed. He was bound by 
 the ties of the world, of habit, of social or- 
 der, of self-interest, by all those delicate 
 and innumerable threads which seem to 
 fasten a man to the ground, as the Lillipu- 
 tians fastened Gulliver, and make liberty of 
 thought, of belief, of conduct impossible. 
 But in the midst of his bondage Abraham 
 heard the voice of the God who had a 
 message, a mission, a call for his soul, 
 a message which meant spiritual freedom, 
 a mission which could only be fulfilled by 
 obedience, a call which said, " Get thee out 
 of thy country, and from thy kindred, and 
 from thy father's house, unto the land that I 
 will show thee." Think what that involved, 
 separation from the past, resignation of all 
 his customs and plans of life, the entrance 
 upon an untrodden path, the following of an 
 unseen and absolute guidance, the consecra- 
 tion of his life to a journey through strange 
 lands, among strange people, towards a 
 strange goal, the final and supreme adven- 
 ture of his soul. But Abraham obeyed the 
 call. " He went out, not knowing whither 
 he went." And that was faith. 
 
 Let us think for a little while of this as-
 
 131 
 
 pect of faith. It is an adventure. It is a 
 going out into the unknown future under the 
 guidance of God. 
 
 I. All faith recognizes that life is a pil- 
 grimage whose course and duration cannot 
 be foreseen. That is true, indeed, whether 
 we acknowledge it or not. Even if a man 
 should fancy that his existence was secure, 
 and that he could direct his own career and 
 predict his own future, experience would 
 teach him his mistake. But the point is 
 that faith recognizes this uncertainty of life 
 at the outset, and in a peculiar way, which 
 transforms it from a curse into a blessing 
 and makes it possible for us even to be glad 
 that we must " go out not knowing whither 
 we go." 
 
 For what is it that faith does with these 
 lives of ours ? It just takes them up out of 
 our weak, trembling, uncertain control and 
 puts them into the hands of God. It makes 
 them a part of his great plan. It binds 
 them fast to his pure and loving will, and 
 fills them with his life. Unless we believe 
 that God has made us and made us for him- 
 self, unless we believe that He has some- 
 thing for each one of us to do and to be,
 
 132 
 
 unless we believe that He knows what our 
 life's way should be and has marked it out 
 for us, how is it possible for us to go for- 
 ward with cheerful confidence? But if we 
 do believe this, then of course we shall be 
 willing to accept our own ignorance of the 
 future, and, so far from hindering us in our 
 advance, it will encourage and strengthen 
 us to remember that the meaning of our 
 life is so large that we cannot understand it. 
 It will not fit into our broken and imperfect 
 knowledge just because it does fit perfectly 
 into the great wisdom of God. 
 
 Do you see what I mean? The man 
 who has no faith either accepts the uncer- 
 tainty of life as a necessity of fate ; he is 
 caught in the net of a hidden destiny, 
 which to him can never seem anything else 
 than a blind chance, because there is no 
 purpose and no law in it, or else he fights 
 against the uncertainty of life, and tries to 
 conquer it by his own skill and prudence 
 and pertinacity. He chooses the object of 
 his ambition, and the line of conduct which 
 shall lead him to it ; he marks out a career 
 for himself, and pushes forward to fulfil it 
 according to his own plan. And then every
 
 133 
 
 event that crosses his plan is a cause of 
 anxiety and irritation; every call of duty 
 that lies outside of it is an interruption and 
 a burden ; every change that comes to him 
 is a disappointment and a defeat ; every de- 
 lay in the accomplishment of his schemes 
 frets him to the heart ; and when disaster 
 and sickness and death come near to him he 
 trembles, for he knows that they may easily 
 wreck and destroy his life. He means to 
 be a self-made man ; he will supply the ma- 
 terial and construct the model ; he assures 
 himself that he knows what the result will 
 be. But all the time he is working among 
 forces which may shatter him and his plan 
 in a moment. Even while he dreams of suc- 
 cess he stands face to face with failure. It 
 seems to me that must make life a feverish 
 and fitful thing; a long, weary, continual 
 anxiety of heart. 
 
 But the man who has faith accepts the- 
 uncertainty of life as the consequence of its 
 larger significance ; he cannot interpret it, 
 because it means so much ; he cannot trace 
 its lines through to the end, because it has 
 no end, it runs on into God's eternity. 
 Something better is coming into it than
 
 'fl! Slltornture 
 
 worldly success. Something better is coin- 
 ing out of it than wealth or fame or power. 
 He is not making himself. God is making 
 him, and that after a model which eye hath 
 not seen, hut which is to be manifest in the 
 consummation of the sons of God. So he 
 can toil away at his work, not knowing 
 whether he is to see its result now or not, 
 but knowing that God will not let it be 
 wasted. So he can run with patience the 
 race that is set before him, not knowing 
 whether he shall come in first or last among 
 his fellows, but knowing that his prize is 
 secure. So he can labour at the edifice of 
 his life, not knowing whether it is to be 
 finished according to his plans or not, but 
 knowing that it surely will be completed, 
 and surely will find its place in the great 
 temple which God is building. Thus his 
 uncertainty becomes the ground of his cer- 
 tainty. Failure, disaster, ruin are impossi- 
 ble for him. Change may come to him as 
 it comes to other men, but it does not mean 
 calamity. Disappointment he may have to 
 meet as other men meet it, but it cannot 
 bring despair. Death will surely find him, 
 and he cannot tell when it will come ; but
 
 abraljam'6 SUtoenture 135 
 
 he knows that it will not come before the 
 time ; it will not break his life off in the 
 middle, but will finish one part of it and 
 begin another. Loss, final and irretrievable 
 loss, no, the man who believes never can 
 be lost, because he willingly goes forth not 
 knowing whither he goes, with God for his 
 leader and guide. 
 
 II. This, then, is the broadest meaning of 
 faith's adventure : it is the surrender of 
 life to a hidden guidance. And bound up 
 together with this, as an essential part of it, 
 we find the necessity that faith should ac- 
 cept the religious life as an adventure full of 
 unknown trials and tests and temptations. 
 No one can tell beforehand just how many 
 hardships he must pass through, just how 
 many sacrifices he must make, just how 
 many assaults of evil he must resist, if he 
 sets out to walk with God. 
 
 Abraham did not know what would meet 
 him on his life-long journey : the day of 
 peril in Egypt when he would break down 
 and disgrace himself ; the day of dissension 
 with Lot when he would prove his fidelity 
 and his love ; the days of conflict with the 
 Rephaim and the Zuzim and the Emim and
 
 136 
 
 the Horites, when he would overthrow them ; 
 the day of temptation when the king of 
 Sodom would offer to make him rich ; the 
 day of sharpest sorrow when he would be 
 called to show his supreme devotion by re- 
 signing his beloved son into the hands of the 
 Lord, all these days were hidden from him 
 as he entered upon the long journey. All 
 that God required of him was that he would 
 meet them as they came ; not beforehand, 
 in imagination, in promise and definite reso- 
 lution, but at the appointed hour, in the 
 crisis of trial : then, and not till then, Abra- 
 ham must face his conflict, and make his 
 sacrifice, and hold fast his faith. 
 
 Not otherwise does God deal with us. 
 He does not show us exactly what it will 
 cost to obey Him. He asks us only to give 
 what He calls for from day to day. Here 
 is one sacrifice right in front of us that we 
 must make now in order to serve God, 
 some evil habit to be given up, some lust of 
 the flesh to be crucified and slain ; and that 
 is our trial for to-day. But to-morrow that 
 trial may be changed from a hardship into a 
 blessing, it may become a joy and triumph to 
 us ; and another trial, new, different, unf ore-
 
 'a Stobentttre 137 
 
 seen, may meet us in the way. Now, per- 
 haps, it is poverty that you have to endure, 
 fighting with its temptations to envy and 
 discontent, and general rebellion against the 
 order of the world ; ten years hence, it may 
 be wealth that will test you with its tempta- 
 tions to pride, and luxury, and self-reliance, 
 and general arrogance toward your fellow- 
 men. Now, it may be some selfish indul- 
 gence that you have to resign ; to-morrow, 
 it may be some one whom you love, from 
 whom you must consent to part at the call 
 of God. To-day, it may be your ease, your 
 comfort, your indolence that you must sacri- 
 fice for the sake of doing good in the world ; 
 to-morrow, it may be your activity, your 
 energy, the work you delight in, that you 
 must give up while sickness lays its heavy 
 hand upon you, and bids you "stand and 
 wait." To-day one thing, to-morrow an- 
 other thing ; and God does not tell you 
 what it will be : He calls you to go out into 
 your adventure not knowing whither you go. 
 It is this very indefiniteness of the Chris- 
 tian life that frightens unbelief and allures 
 faith. It is this very necessity of facing the 
 unknown that divides between doubting and
 
 138 abra&am'B icUaicnturr 
 
 believing souls. If we doubt the power and 
 the love of God, if we doubt the grace 
 and the truth of Christ, we will hesitate 
 and hold back. We will demand to know 
 all about the way before we enter upon it. 
 " How much must we give up, what sacrifices 
 must we make, how shall we ever be able to 
 meet the trials and temptations of the fu- 
 ture ? No, we cannot go out after Christ, 
 because we do not know where He will lead 
 us and how hard it may be to follow." 
 
 But ifi we believe that this God is our 
 God, and will be our guide even unto death, 
 if we believe that this Christ is our only 
 Saviour and Master, our Divine Leader and 
 Guide, then we can go after Him the more 
 gladly just because He does not tell us all 
 at once what we must resign and suffer and 
 resist for his sake. That, indeed, might 
 crush and dishearten us; for if we knew 
 all at once, we could not help trying our 
 strength against it all. But since we know 
 only to-day's temptation, to-day's trial, to- 
 day's conflict, to-day's cross, to-day; since 
 we know that He who ordered it is with us 
 and will help us to bear it, we can follow 
 Him in confidence.
 
 *39 
 
 " We know not what the path may be 
 
 As yet by us untrod ; 
 But we can trust our all to thee, 
 Our Father and our God. 
 
 " If called like Abram's child to climb 
 
 The hill of sacrifice, 
 Some angel may be there in time, 
 Deliverance may arise. 
 
 " Or if some darker lot be good, 
 
 Oh teach us to endure 
 The sorrow, pain, or solitude, 
 That makes the spirit pure." 
 
 III. Once more, the adventure of faith 
 involves the going out to meet unknown du- 
 ties and to perform hidden tasks. 
 
 In one sense the scheme and outline of a 
 religious life are clear and distinct before- 
 hand ; the principles of faith and hope and 
 love by which it is to be guided, the laws 
 of righteousness and truth and mercy by 
 which it is to be governed, are fixed and 
 unchangeable, the same always and for all 
 men. But in another sense the religious 
 life has no scheme and outline at all. Its 
 responsibilities, its opportunities, its labours 
 arise from day to day. One man has one 
 thing to do ; another man has another 
 thing to do. The duty of the present may
 
 140 
 
 be changed, enlarged, transformed in the 
 future. 
 
 See how this is brought out in the life of 
 Abraham. At first he has only to bear wit- 
 ness to the true God among an idolatrous 
 people ; and then he has to set out on a per- 
 ilous journey towards Canaan ; and then he 
 has to take care of his flocks and herds in 
 the wilderness ; and then he has to deliver 
 his kinsman Lot from the sword of the 
 tyrant Chedorlaomer ; and then he has to 
 exercise hospitality towards the angels of 
 God. Abraham's duty is not written down 
 and delivered to him at the beginning. It 
 is kept secret from him, and he goes out to 
 meet it, not knowing what it will be. 
 
 That is the law of the life of faith. The 
 man who takes a principle into his heart 
 commits himself to an uncertainty, he enters 
 upon an adventure. He must be ready for 
 unexpected calls and new responsibilities. 
 
 The Samaritan who rode down from Jeru- 
 salem to Jericho had nothing to do in the 
 morning but follow that highway, and take 
 care that his beast did not stumble or hurt 
 itself, or get tired out so that it could not 
 finish the journey. He was just a solitary
 
 &Btocnttire 141 
 
 horseman, and all that he needed to do was 
 to have a good seat in the saddle and a light 
 hand on the bit. But at noon, when he 
 came to the place where that unknown pil- 
 grim lay senseless and bleeding beside the 
 road, then, in a moment, the Samaritan's 
 duty changed, and God called him to be a 
 rescuer, a nurse, a helper of the wounded. 
 
 Peter, when he rested on the housetop in 
 Joppa, was only a pastor of the Jewish 
 Christian church ; his mission was to instruct 
 and guide his kinsmen according to the flesh. 
 But when the great vision of a catholic 
 church flashed upon him, when the knocking 
 of the messengers of the Roman centurion 
 sounded up from the gate of the courtyard, 
 then, in a moment, Peter's duty was changed, 
 and he was called to go to the house of a 
 Gentile and proclaim the gospel of Christ 
 without respect of persons. Read the lives 
 of the heroes of faith, and you will find that 
 they are all like this. They set out to per- 
 form, not one task only, but anything that 
 God may command. They accept Christ's 
 commission, and set sail upon an unknown 
 ocean with sealed orders. 
 
 That takes courage. It is a risk, a ven-
 
 142 
 
 ture. But for the spiritual as truly as for 
 the temporal life the rule is, " Nothing ven- 
 ture, nothing win." And is it not infi- 
 nitely nobler and more inspiring to enter 
 upon a career like that, a career which 
 is to run so close to God that He can speak 
 into it and fill it with new meanings, new 
 possibilities, new tasks, at any moment, is 
 not that infinitely finer and more glorious 
 than to make a contract to do a certain 
 thing for a certain price, as if God were a 
 manufacturer and we were his mill-hands ? 
 It seems to me that this is the very proof 
 and bond of friendship with Him, this call- 
 ing of faith to an unlimited and undefined 
 obedience. If we will accept it, it will send 
 us forward on a life that grows and expands 
 and unfolds itself, and wins new powers and 
 capacities, as it girds itself to meet the new 
 duties that lie hidden in the future. It will 
 not be a dull and dry routine : it will be an 
 enterprise, a voyage of discovery, an explo- 
 ration of the divine possibilities of living. 
 And the joy of it, the enthusiasm and inspi- 
 ration of it, will not be the tame thought that 
 nothing more can be required of us than 
 what we already see, but the strong assur-
 
 3&uenture 143 
 
 ance that power will be given to us for every 
 task that our Master sets. "Follow me," 
 He cried, " and I will make you fishers of 
 men." How and when and where they 
 should labour the disciples knew not. They 
 knew only that He would fit them for their 
 duty when it met them. Even so He speaks 
 to us. And even so we must follow Him 
 into the unknown future, answering his call 
 in the noble words of St. Augustine : " Lord, 
 give what thou commandest, and command 
 what thou wilt." 
 
 IV. Only one word remains to be added. 
 Faith is an adventure ; it is the courage of 
 the soul to face the unknown. But that 
 courage springs from the hope and confi- 
 dence of the soul that its adventure will 
 succeed. Beyond the unknown, beyond the 
 uncertainties and perils and responsibilities 
 of the earthly future, it sees the certain, the 
 secure, the imperishable, " an inheritance 
 incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth 
 not away, reserved in heaven for you, who 
 are kept by the power of God through faith 
 unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the 
 last time." 
 
 How grandly that certainty of faith comes
 
 144 
 
 out in the story of Abraham! A pilgrim 
 and a stranger, a man without a country, 
 wandering up and down between the lands 
 of Egypt and Chaldea, involved in strange 
 conflicts and unexpected trials, his white 
 tent shining in the sunlight and shaking in 
 the wind, as it rested here and there among 
 the highland pastures and on the steep hills 
 of Caanan, for a hundred years, a sojourner 
 in the land of promise as in a land not his 
 own, yet that noble old father of the 
 faithful, that loyal friend and follower of 
 God, was never an aimless man, never an 
 uncertain man, never a hopeless man. He 
 went forth not knowing whither he went, 
 but he also looked for " a city that hath 
 foundations, whose builder and maker is 
 God." 
 
 Sublime assurance, glorious pilgrimage! 
 And is not that the type and symbol of the 
 life of faith ? Of the nearer future, the 
 future that lies among the mountains and 
 valleys, the pastures and deserts of this 
 world, it is ignorant, and yet it does not 
 fear to face it ; for it sees that the final 
 future, the blessed rest and reward of the 
 soul that serves and follows its Divine Mas-
 
 's SlBtoentttre 145 
 
 ter, is secure. It knows whither Christ has 
 gone, and it knows the hidden way. And 
 along that way it presses steadily to its goal 
 of everlasting peace. 
 
 " On through waste and blackness, 
 
 O'er our desert road ; 
 On till Sinai greet us, 
 
 Mountain of our God ! 
 On past Edom's valley, 
 
 Moab's mountain wall, 
 Jordan's seaboard rushings, 
 
 The pillar cloud o'er all ! 
 Past the palmy city, 
 
 Rock and hill our road, 
 On till Salem greet us, 
 
 City of our God I "
 
 VII 
 SOLOMON'S CHOICE 
 
 me note muftora anO knorolctisr, tljat 3T ma? 
 p out anH come in before tbta people : for tofor 
 can ittUffe this tf)p people tljat IB 00 peat ? " 
 
 2 Chronicles i. 10.
 
 me noto to tsfcom anto ftnotole&fft." 
 
 THESE words were spoken by Solomon, 
 the greatest, wisest, and in some respects the 
 meanest of the Hebrew kings. His life is 
 one of the standing riddles of history. Never 
 man began so fairly and ended so darkly. 
 The blossoms of his youth were like the flow- 
 ers on the tree of life : the fruits of his old 
 age were like Dead Sea apples, full of dust. 
 In him genius was wedded to sin, and success 
 was the mother of failure. Bright as was 
 the promise of his early years, glorious as 
 were the achievements of his manhood, the 
 clouds that gathered round his death were so 
 heavy and dark that men have remained in 
 doubt whether his final place is among the 
 saved or among the lost. The fathers of the 
 church held opposite opinions on the sub- 
 ject ; and in Pietro Lorenzetti's great fresco 
 of the resurrection, in the Campo Santo at 
 Pisa, the uncertainty of Solomon's fate is
 
 150 Solomon's Cljotct 
 
 represented by the painter, who has placed 
 him in the middle of the picture, looking 
 doubtfully around, not knowing whether he 
 is to be called to the right hand or to the 
 left. Perhaps, after all, the painter was 
 prudent, for the question of final destiny is 
 one which we can never solve in regard to 
 any human being. Wise and simple, beggar 
 and king, as they pass from our sight, we 
 must leave them to the justice and mercy of 
 the omniscient God. 
 
 But the questions of character and con- 
 duct as they arise here in this world are 
 within the reach of our understanding, and 
 it is to a study of some of these questions as 
 they are suggested by the life of Solomon 
 that I invite your attention now. The his- 
 tory of his life is illustrated in three great 
 visions which came to him at three successive 
 periods of his strange career. Three times 
 God visited him in the night watches : three 
 times the curtain which hides the future 
 was lifted, and the darkness of his sleep was 
 illumined with the secret flash of truth. 
 
 The first vision came at the beginning of 
 his career, when the untried course of life 
 was just opening before him. It contained
 
 Solomon's Choice 151 
 
 a glorious promise and a solemn warning. 
 It revealed the elements of strength and the 
 elements of weakness in one of the most 
 marvellous characters the world has ever 
 seen. The Lord appeared to him in Gibeon 
 and said, " Ask what I shall give thee." Solo- 
 mon's answer was in the words of the text. 
 
 The second vision came to him at the very 
 climax of his splendour and power, when the 
 great temple, which was the central spot of 
 glory in his land and in his reign, was com- 
 pleted and dedicated. When the echoes of 
 rejoicing had died away in the royal city, and 
 the people were returning with gladness to 
 their tents, then the Lord appeared to Solo- 
 mon the second time, as He had appeared 
 unto him at Gibeon. The awful voice, 
 sounding in the silence of the king's heart, 
 declared that the prayer of dedication had 
 been heard. The temple was accepted and 
 blessed. God would make his dwelling there 
 perpetually. " But if ye shall at all turn 
 from following me, ye or your children, and 
 will not keep my commandments and my 
 statutes which I have set before you, but go 
 and serve other gods, and worship them ; 
 then will I cut off Israel out of the land
 
 152 Solomon's Choice 
 
 which I have given them ; and this house, 
 which I have hallowed for my name, will I 
 cast out of my sight ; and Israel shall be a 
 proverb and a byword among all nations." 
 
 The third vision came to the king in the 
 decline and shame of his old age, when the 
 evils against which he had been warned had 
 come upon him, when his heart had been 
 entangled with strange women and stranger 
 gods, when the misused wealth and perverted 
 power which had been his were turning to 
 dross and corruption within his hands. Then 
 God was angry with him, and appeared to 
 him once more and said : " Forasmuch as 
 this is done of thee, and thou hast not kept 
 my covenant and my statutes which I have 
 commanded thee, I will surely rend the king- 
 dom from thee, and will give it to thy ser- 
 vant. Notwithstanding in thy days I will 
 not do it, for David thy father's sake : but 
 I will rend it out of the hand of thy son." 
 A dreadful dream, stern, angry, terrible : 
 the only gleam of mercy in it was shown, not 
 for Solomon's sake, but for the sake of his 
 dead father, who was dear to God ; a vision 
 of dishonour and darkness and swift-coming 
 disaster closing with black wings about the
 
 Solomon's C&otw 153 
 
 declining days of him who had once been 
 the brightest and most prosperous and best 
 beloved of Israel's monarchs. What is the 
 meaning of it ? How shall we explain it ? 
 How shall we read and understand its lesson ? 
 How is it possible that a dream so bright 
 and fair as that which crowned his youth 
 should turn into a dream so black and shame- 
 ful as that which shadowed his old age ? 
 
 It is to solve this mystery that I ask you 
 to turn back again to the opening vision of 
 Solomon's life. Scrutinize it more closely, 
 study it more deeply. See if you cannot 
 discern in it the fatal flaw which marred 
 the character of the royal philosopher, and 
 through which at last his life was brought 
 to ruin. 
 
 The circumstances of Solomon at the time 
 of this first and most famous dream are wor- 
 thy of our careful attention. He was, as you 
 know, the youngest son of King David, who 
 by his strong and heroic qualities, under the 
 blessing of God, had brought the kingdom 
 to a state of prosperity and power. The 
 sovereignty of Israel at the close of David's 
 long and warlike reign was something vastly 
 richer and grander and more potent than it
 
 154 Solomon's Choice 
 
 was when the big, blundering Saul was chosen 
 king ; and the sceptre which David held in 
 his weary and trembling hand was the sym- 
 bol of a wide and successful dominion over 
 a turbulent but mighty people. To whom 
 should he leave it? His two oldest sons, 
 Absalom and Ammon, had proved unworthy, 
 and were dead. The old king's heart turned 
 now to his last-born child, the darling of 
 his declining years, and to him he gave the 
 kingdom, calling him Solomon, " the peace- 
 ful one," and centring all the hope and love 
 of his heart upon the happiness and pros- 
 perity of this chosen son. 
 
 How strange it is, and yet how common, 
 for the father to desire a character and des- 
 tiny for his son different from his own ! The 
 man of war desires his heir to be a man 
 of peace. And how strange also, and yet 
 how nearly inevitable, that the father's sins 
 should entwine themselves with the life of 
 the child that he loves best ! 
 
 The mother of Solomon was Bathsheba, a 
 woman of great beauty, but of whose moral 
 character the less said the better, for she was 
 certainly the occasion, and I cannot help 
 feeling that she was at least passively the
 
 Solomon's! Cljotcc 155 
 
 cause, of her husband's death and her mon- 
 arch's crime ; and she was the only one who 
 profited by the whole shameful history, for 
 it raised her not unwillingly from the wife of 
 a common man to the wife of a king. " Now 
 in Eastern lands and under a system of poly- 
 gamy," says a wise observer, " the son is more 
 dependent even than elsewhere upon the char- 
 acter of the mother." And I believe that 
 Solomon's whole life felt the influence of 
 such a mother. Ambitious but comfort-lov- 
 ing, passionate but cold, inwardly sensual but 
 outwardly devout, fascinating but intensely 
 selfish, she was one of those whom Goethe 
 called " problematic characters," who attain 
 the greatest external success, but are forever 
 unhappy and unsatisfied because they never 
 lose or forget themselves. And from her, 
 by birth and education, Solomon received 
 the qualities which were brought out in his 
 after-life. 
 
 He was admirably fitted to rule, trained 
 in all the requirements of royalty, inspired 
 with a sense of the dignity and responsibility 
 of his position, every inch a king ; but he 
 was never taught to escape from his great- 
 est foe and final destroyer, himself ; and thus
 
 150 Solomon's Cjjnwe 
 
 his noblest actions and his greatest successes 
 were turned into failures. 
 
 But we are running before our history. 
 Let us turn back to regard Solomon, the 
 young king, not yet twenty years of age, 
 seated on the throne of his father, the in- 
 heritor of a dominion among the most splen- 
 did of the Eastern world. He desires to 
 inaugurate his reign with an act of religious 
 worship, for this is eminently proper, and in 
 no other way will his royal magnificence be 
 seen to better advantage. God has forbid- 
 den the people to offer sacrifice in the high 
 places on the mountain-tops, but custom has 
 sanctioned the violation of this command, 
 and Solomon cares more for the popular 
 usage and for a grand display than for 
 a forgotten and obsolete law. He goes with 
 a solemn procession to the top of Mt. Gibeon, 
 where stands the great brazen altar of Beza- 
 leel, and there he offers a thousand burnt- 
 offerings, filling the whole heavens with the 
 smoke of his kingly sacrifices and the noise 
 of his royal worship. 
 
 The smoke rolls away. The last echoes 
 of the solemn music die among the hills. 
 Solomon is asleep in his tent on the moun-
 
 Solomon's Choice 157 
 
 tain. And now comes that wondrous dream 
 which foreshadows the course of his whole 
 life. God appears to him, and asks him to 
 choose that which he desires more than all 
 things else. Solomon chooses " wisdom and 
 knowledge to go out and come in before 
 the people." God approves the choice and 
 promises to add wealth and honour. Solo- 
 mon awakes and the dream is true ; but, for 
 all that, he dies in sin and sorrow and dishon- 
 our. How shall we explain the mystery ? 
 
 Three questions, it seems to me, will go to 
 the root of the matter : 
 
 Why did God approve of Solomon's choice, 
 and yet not approve of him ? 
 
 Why was Solomon the wisest of men, and 
 yet one of the greatest of fools ? 
 
 Why did Solomon have all that he de- 
 sired, and yet remain forever unsatisfied ? 
 
 I. God approved of Solomon's choice be- 
 cause it was relatively right. As between 
 wealth and fame and wisdom, the young king 
 instantly and instinctively seized the greatest 
 and noblest of the three. Wisdom is more 
 than riches or fame, because it is the fountain 
 of both. An understanding heart, the ability 
 to discriminate between the good and the
 
 158 Solomon's C&otce 
 
 bad among men and causes and enterprises, 
 is certainly the most valuable possession for 
 every man, especially for one who is called 
 to rule over his fellows. For without this, 
 the richest and most powerful potentate will 
 come to nought. How strange that men, 
 even from the standpoint of this world, do 
 not understand this ! They crave wealth, 
 not thinking that wealth in the hands of a 
 fool only makes him a prey to knaves. They 
 aspire to power, not remembering that power 
 in the hands of one who is not wise enough 
 for it only makes him a laughing-stock. How 
 many a weak brother, who might have lived 
 respected in obscurity, has become ridiculous 
 by the sudden gift of riches or office ! Wis- 
 dom is the principal thing, for if a man has 
 that he can acquire and use the others. And 
 Solomon's magnificence, the prosperity of his 
 kingdom, and the fame of his reign all came 
 from his gift of wisdom, so wisely chosen. 
 
 But although this choice was relatively 
 right, it was not absolutely the best. There 
 was something better for which he might 
 have asked, and which, if he had received it, 
 would have brought down the blessing of 
 God not only upon his reign, but upon his 
 own soul forever.
 
 'fi C'jatcc 159 
 
 What was the burden of David's prayers 
 before God ? What was the deep and burn- 
 ing desire of David's heart, not only in his 
 youth, but also in his old age, growing and 
 deepening as it was answered and fed by 
 God ? It was the longing for holiness, the 
 consuming hunger and thirst after righteous- 
 ness, which is the noblest pain and the richest 
 want of the soul. Blessed are they who feel 
 it, for they shall be filled. " Create in me a 
 clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit 
 within me." This was David's prayer, the 
 highest and the best : not first an understand- 
 ing heart, but first a clean heart, cleansed by 
 the Divine pardon from the stains of guilt, and 
 freed by the Divine power from the defile- 
 ment of sin. He felt the burden of iniquity, 
 the shame and sorrow of uncleanness, the 
 slavery of self, and he cried to be delivered. 
 If God would grant him this, it would be 
 more to him than all beside. " Purge me 
 with hyssop and I shall be clean ; wash me 
 and I shall be whiter than snow." 
 
 This is the noblest choice. Wisdom is 
 good, but holiness is as far above wisdom 
 as Christ is above Socrates. If Solomon 
 had only been wise enough to choose this,
 
 160 Solomon's Choice 
 
 if he had only felt his greatest weakness and 
 his deepest need, and asked for a pure and 
 holy heart, how rich beyond expression would 
 have been the results of that vision, rich 
 not only for this world, but for that which 
 is to come : rich in the approval of the liv- 
 ing God ; rich in the salvation of his im- 
 mortal soul; rich in an entrance into that 
 heavenly kingdom which shall endure when 
 all the thrones and crowns and sceptres of 
 this world have crumbled into dust ! 
 
 Let us remember that while these earthly 
 kingdoms are founded upon wealth and 
 power and wisdom, God's kingdom is 
 founded on holiness of character. And 
 though we may achieve greatness in these 
 lower realms, though we may become mer- 
 chant princes, or political rulers, or kings 
 of thought, the least in the kingdom of 
 heaven, yes, the simplest, poorest child who 
 has known God's love and felt his purifying 
 Spirit in the heart, will be greater than we 
 are, so long as our sole inheritance is in the 
 kingdoms of this world. 
 
 II. Why was Solomon the wisest of men, 
 and yet one of the greatest of fools ? In 
 order to answer this question we must scruti-
 
 Solomon's Choice 161 
 
 nize his choice very closely. And if we do 
 this we shall see that the wisdom for which 
 he asked was peculiar and limited. It was 
 political wisdom, such as befits a king and 
 renders him able to rule successfully over the 
 minds of men. He felt that the difficulties 
 of governing his tumultuous and rebellious 
 people would be almost insuperable unless he 
 had a more than human insight into charac- 
 ter, and tact in controlling men. And so he 
 asked for wisdom and knowledge to go out 
 and come in before the people. 
 
 Now, as a king, this was what he most 
 needed. But Solomon was a man before 
 he was a king. And, as a man, what he 
 most needed was an understanding heart to 
 guide his own life. Perhaps he thought he 
 was wise enough for this already. Perhaps 
 he thought he was able to rule his inner 
 kingdom for himself, if God would only help 
 him with the outer. And herein lay his 
 folly, for a man can more easily control and 
 guide the destinies of a great nation than he 
 can bind and direct the passions of his own 
 disordered and tumultuating heart. 
 
 It is easier to take a city than to rule your 
 own spirit. History proves it in the lives of
 
 162 &olamon'0 Cboicr 
 
 hundreds of great men who have been able 
 to control the forces of politics, but not to 
 guide their own lives, not to resist their own 
 besetting sins of avarice or lust. It would 
 be strange if we could not read this lesson 
 in our own times in the dark, sad story of 
 Rudolph, the crown-prince of Austria. Heir 
 to one of the proudest thrones of Europe, bril- 
 liant in his natural gifts, and developed by 
 education into a man of many accomplish- 
 ments, skilled in art and letters, and quali- 
 fied to adorn his lofty station with extraor- 
 dinary success, he was driven by his own hot 
 and untamed passions, in the prime of his 
 young manhood, to a dishonourable death 
 and a suicide's grave. 
 
 Solomon's fatal weakness was for wives. 
 I do not suppose that we are to understand 
 that he was a gross sensualist. He probably 
 sought mental excitement and change in the 
 organization of his great household. One 
 of his chief objects was to increase his politi- 
 cal influence by contracting alliances with 
 the princesses of surrounding nations. He 
 thought he could manage the women, but he 
 was foolish, for of course the women man- 
 aged him. And still he went on adding to
 
 Solomon'* Choice 163 
 
 his burdens and entanglements, every month 
 bringing a new princess into the royal house- 
 hold, and every princess bringing a new god, 
 until at length he had seven hundred wives 
 and three hundred concubines, and I think 
 we must agree that the last state of that 
 man was worse than the first. Hated by 
 his people for the heavy burdens of taxation 
 which he was forced to lay upon them for 
 the support of his costly household, turned 
 hither and thither by wives who neither un- 
 derstood his wisdom nor cared for his great- 
 ness but only for his gold, worshipping at 
 the shrines of a hundred gods in none of 
 whom he believed, what an old age is 
 this ! It is the very mockery of greatness, 
 the supreme irony of fate, that the hoary 
 head of the wisest of monarchs should be 
 crowned by his own hands with the cap of 
 the fool. And all this because he did not 
 understand that to guide one's own life is a 
 harder and more perilous task than to rule a 
 kingdom, because he did not learn to pray 
 with David, " Teach me thy way, O Lord, 
 and lead me in a plain path ; send out thy 
 light and thy truth, let them lead me." 
 III. Let us ask, now, the third and last
 
 164 Solomon's Choice 
 
 question. Why did Solomon have all that 
 he desired, and yet remain unhappy? The 
 answer is simple and straightforward : be- 
 cause he never forgot or lost himself. He 
 tried to be happy. That was the chief end 
 and aim of his life, his own success, his own 
 felicity. He did not seek it in a low and 
 sensual way ; not in coarse pleasures nor in 
 trifling pursuits. Solomon was far too wise 
 for that. But in a high and grand and royal 
 way he sought for happiness. The delight of 
 knowing and understanding all things, the joy 
 of feeling that in him more wisdom was cen- 
 tred than in all men before or after, the pride 
 of the most splendid temple and the most 
 prosperous kingdom and the most beneficent 
 reign, thus he sought his happiness and 
 thus he never found it ; for it is a law of 
 God that they who will be happy never shall 
 be ; never shall clasp the phantom after 
 which they run so eagerly, never shall feel 
 the deep sweet calm of a contented soul, 
 never shall rest in perfect peace, until they 
 cease their mad chase, forget and deny them- 
 selves, and are lost and absorbed in some 
 noble and unselfish pursuit. Then, and then 
 only, happiness comes, as the angels came to
 
 Solomon's Choice 165 
 
 Jesus in the desert, and in Gethsemane, 
 when He had renounced all hope of joy. 
 
 " He that loseth his life shall find it." 
 The words of the Master, who was wiser 
 than Solomon, are true now as then. We 
 cannot have happiness until we forget to 
 seek for it. We cannot find peace until we 
 enter the path of self-sacrificing usefulness. 
 We cannot be delivered from this "vain 
 expense of passions that forever ebb and 
 flow," this wretched, torturing, unsatisfied, 
 unsatisfying self, until we come to Jesus and 
 give our lives to Him to be absorbed as his 
 life was in loving obedience to God and lov- 
 ing service to our fellow-men. 
 
 Let us draw this lesson from Solomon's 
 dream. If God says to us, in the bright 
 promise of youth, " Ask what I shall give 
 thee," let us make the best choice, and an- 
 swer, " Give me grace to know thy Son, the 
 Christ, and to grow like Him ; for that is 
 the true wisdom which leads to eternal life, 
 and that is the true royalty which brings 
 dominion over self, and that is the true hap- 
 piness which flows unsought from fellowship 
 with the Divine Life."
 
 VIII 
 PETER'S MISTAKE 
 
 Peter amtoerefi anft aaio to $t&ns t Barter, 
 it is pon for us to oe here : anfi let act make 
 t&ree tabernacles ; one for tjjee, anto one for 
 ana one for Cltas. Jor lie nitet not 
 
 to sap," 
 
 Mark ix. 5, 6.
 
 anstoerett anH saii to 
 
 tcr, it is poU for ns to far bere : anU let us 
 raafce t&ree tabernacles : one for t&ee, ani one 
 for ^Hocrs, anH one for Cltas." 
 
 ALL of the apostles of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ made mistakes, for they were all 
 human. But the Apostle Peter seems to 
 have been almost more human than the 
 others, and so more liable to error. There 
 is no possibility of taking him for a mythical 
 character, a demigod, or a legendary hero. 
 He is too much like ourselves. A vessel 
 filled to the brim with water is apt to spill a 
 little when it is shaken. Peter is so full 
 of human nature that, whenever he is ex- 
 cited or agitated, it seems to overflow, and 
 some word or deed comes out, which would 
 be almost childish in its impulsiveness, if it 
 were not for the virile force of the great 
 strong heart behind it. The consequence of 
 this is, that he is more often in trouble, more
 
 170 fleter'e Jfliatake 
 
 frequently rebuked and corrected, than any 
 other of the disciples. 
 
 And yet we love the Apostle Peter. We 
 cannot help it. He was a man, take him 
 for all in all. The very impetuosity which 
 so often led him into a false position was 
 a quality which, under proper discipline and 
 restraint, fitted him to become the chief of 
 the apostles, and the leader of the aggres- 
 sive work of the church. I would rather 
 have a man who sometimes caught fire at the 
 wrong time, than one so damp and flabby 
 that you could never get a spark of enthusi- 
 asm out of him. A clock which sometimes 
 goes too fast is better than one which never 
 goes at all. And there was one thing of 
 which you could be always sure with Peter, 
 he never would profess to love you while 
 at heart he was indifferent or hostile to you. 
 He never would put his arm over your 
 shoulder and call you " dear brother " while 
 he was secretly endeavouring to get hold of 
 your money, or circulating vague reports to 
 discredit your reputation or undermine your 
 influence. You could rely on seeing the 
 worst and the best of Peter at once. He 
 had not much tact, but his stock of can-
 
 ymr'0 ifltetake 171 
 
 dour was large. And it seems to me that 
 in all his errors, with one possible exception, 
 there was a root of true and noble feeling. 
 You will observe, in regard to the particu- 
 lar mistake which we are now to consider, 
 first, that Peter knew that it was a mistake ; 
 and, second, that he was not ashamed to say 
 so, and to make record of it against himself. 
 It is in order to bring out these two points 
 that I have chosen the text from St. Mark's 
 Gospel. It would have been just as easy to 
 take it from St. Matthew or St. Luke, but 
 not half so instructive. For that which we 
 call the Gospel according to Mark is in 
 reality the Gospel according to Peter. Mark 
 himself had not been a personal hearer or 
 companion of Christ, but he was the evan- 
 gelist, the scribe or, as Papias calls him, 
 the interpreter of Peter, attaching himself 
 to the apostle as a disciple and friend, lis- 
 tening with eager attention to his remem- 
 brances of the life and teachings of the 
 Lord Jesus and his intercourse with the 
 twelve, and writing down these things with 
 conscientious care in order that after Peter's 
 death they might not be lost, but faithfully 
 given to the church. In effect, therefore, it
 
 172 fleter'g ^Flustafee 
 
 is Peter himself who tells us in the text what 
 he said on the Mount of Transfiguration. 
 It is Peter himself who recognizes the folly 
 of it. It is Peter himself who explains it 
 with the humble confession that he did not 
 know what he was talking about, that he 
 said it just for the sake of saying something, 
 " for he wist not what to say." 
 
 How hard it is to make an acknowledgment 
 like this, to confess that we have spoken 
 without thinking, that we have talked non- 
 sense! How many a man says a thing in 
 haste or in heat, without fully understanding 
 or half meaning it, and then, because he has 
 said it, holds fast to it, and tries to defend 
 it as if it were true ! But how much wiser, 
 how much more admirable and attractive, it 
 is when a man has the grace to perceive and 
 acknowledge his mistakes ! It gives us assur- 
 ance that he is capable of learning, of grow- 
 ing, of improving, so that his future will be 
 better than his past ; and, especially in an 
 autobiography, it makes us feel that we are 
 reading, not a cunningly devised fable of 
 impossible excellence, but the story of a real 
 life. It is difficult to exaggerate the sense 
 of confidence which we feel towards this nar-
 
 Peter's JHistafee 173 
 
 rative when we hear Peter telling the story 
 of his own foolish saying as one of the in- 
 cidents of the scene. 
 
 " He wist not what to say ; " he was so 
 overwhelmed with wonder and awe, he was 
 so carried out of himself, that he felt him- 
 self utterly unable to express his feelings. 
 His thoughts were shaken from their bal- 
 ance by the rush of emotion, and he stam- 
 mered out the first words that came to his 
 tongue. Something very marvellous must 
 have happened to cause this confusion of 
 mind. Let us inquire what it was. Let 
 us recall the events which immediately pre- 
 ceded Peter's mistake. 
 
 Surely we must feel, as we read the sim- 
 ple, graphic account which is given by the 
 first three Gospels, that we also are like 
 Peter, and know not what to say. The 
 Transfiguration of Christ is one of those 
 wonderfully beautiful things which seem to 
 defy analysis or description. When we tiy 
 to conjure up the scene, imagination fails, 
 and fancy, dazzled by the radiance, folds her 
 wings before her eyes and is lost in dreams. 
 Vainly has the genius of poet and painter 
 attempted to depict the soft glory of that
 
 174 JJtttr'0 
 
 event. The highest achievement even of a 
 Raphael falls far short of the reality ; and 
 his great picture in the Vatican is in fact 
 only a confession of the impotence of the 
 loftiest art to rise to the level of the divine. 
 But while the actual wonder the burst of 
 splendour which irradiated and transformed 
 the body of our blessed Lord must re- 
 main for us a bright, inexplicable mystery, 
 there are many details connected with the 
 event which we can study and bring out 
 more clearly ; and this will certainly help 
 us to understand it better. 
 
 In the first place we ought to notice, what 
 may have hitherto escaped our attention, 
 the time and the circumstances of the event. 
 It was not thrown by chance into the his- 
 tory of Christ, a stray flash of glory fall- 
 ing without design into the darkness of his 
 lowly life. There was a reason why it 
 should come just then. There was a close 
 connection between the Transfiguration and 
 the events which preceded and followed it. 
 
 It was just one week after that memora- 
 ble day at Caesarea Philippi, when the noble 
 impulsiveness of Peter had led him to make, 
 before any of his brethren, that confession
 
 's ;fHt($tafce 175 
 
 of faith which Christ said should be the 
 foundation-rock of his church. " Thou art 
 the Christ, the son of the living God," cried 
 the strong-hearted apostle ; and you remem- 
 ber the blessing which followed these words. 
 But do you remember also what came after 
 that? Do you remember that Jesus then 
 began to teach his disciples " that the Son 
 of man must suffer many things, and be re- 
 jected of the elders and of the chief priests 
 and scribes, and be killed, and after three 
 days rise again " ? These were hard lessons 
 for the disciples to learn, just at the moment 
 when their faith in the Master was open- 
 ing its first buds of promise. The gospels 
 make no secret of the fact that they did not, 
 would not, could not believe them. These 
 were hard lessons, also, for Jesus to teach. 
 The thought of his shameful rejection by 
 his people, the cruel treachery of Judas, the 
 gloom and anguish of the crucifixion, the 
 bitter and inexplicable pangs of the atone- 
 ment, pressed heavily upon his soul. They 
 seemed to descend upon Him at this time 
 with peculiar force and intensity, as a dif- 
 fused mist thickens suddenly into an impen- 
 etrable cloud. And now began that long
 
 176 
 
 agony which culminated in the garden of 
 Gethsemane. It was not easy for Christ 
 to face shame and death. Not easier, but 
 harder, infinitely harder, than it would have 
 been for you and me. 
 
 The week that followed this announcement 
 of his approaching crucifixion is passed over 
 in silence by the gospels. But we can 
 easily believe that it was spent by Christ in 
 close and loving intercourse with his disci- 
 ples, trying to familiarize them with this sor- 
 rowful thought. And then, one evening, 
 when the sun was sinking in the western 
 sky and the cool hush of twilight was fall- 
 ing upon the weary world, He separated 
 himself from the larger company, and taking 
 with Him the three men who were nearest 
 to his human heart, the three who had 
 most need and most fitness for such a reve- 
 lation as was coming, He went up into a 
 high mountain to pray. He wished seclu- 
 sion, but not solitude. He shrank from the 
 pressure of the crowd, but not from the soci- 
 ety of those whom He loved. 
 
 I think there is something profoundly 
 touching in this trait of Jesus' character, 
 that He always, in every experience of the
 
 Jeter's ^tstafct 177 
 
 highest joy or the deepest sorrow, in the 
 death-chamber of Jairus' daughter, at the 
 grave of Lazarus, in the garden of Geth- 
 semane, and on the Mount of Transfigu- 
 ration, wished to have within call of his 
 voice, and within reach of his hand, some 
 friend whom He knew and trusted, some 
 one who could give Him the sense of human 
 sympathy. That is a chilly and frost-bound 
 disposition which prefers to enjoy its happi- 
 ness or bear its grief alone. The presence 
 of a friend who can feel with us, even though 
 imperfectly, the mere silent presence of a 
 friend, even though he be asleep, as the 
 friends of Jesus were, is something which 
 enhances pleasure and mitigates sorrow in 
 every true and noble heart. 
 
 It has long been a tradition of the church 
 that the scene of the Transfiguration was 
 Mount Tabor. But this has now been gen- 
 erally abandoned, because the summit of 
 that hill was then occupied by a fortified 
 city, and would not have afforded the seclu- 
 sion which Jesus sought. It seems to be 
 agreed among scholars that the high moun- 
 tain which He ascended was one of the long 
 ridges of Mount Hermon, that grand snow-
 
 178 flctcr'a ffltstafcc 
 
 clad barrier which stands between the Holy 
 Land and the country of the Gentiles, and 
 from whose slopes the pilgrim gains the 
 most magnificent prospect over Galilee and 
 Samaria, even to Jerusalem and the hills be- 
 yond it. The glories of a mountain sunset 
 are the same to-day as they were eighteen 
 centuries ago, and so we can gather from 
 the descriptions of recent travellers a pic- 
 ture of the very scene which was spread 
 before the eyes of Jesus and his disciples, 
 as they climbed the mountain together. 
 
 A deep ruby flush came over the land- 
 scape, and warm purple shadows crept slowly 
 down the valleys. The Sea of Galilee was 
 lit up with a delicate greenish-yellow hue 
 between its dim mountain walls. Then the 
 flush faded, and a pale steel-colored shade 
 followed. A long pyramidal shadow slid 
 down to the foot of Hermon and crept 
 across the plain, seventy miles away, until 
 at last it stood out as a dusky cone of 
 darkness against the glowing sky, the 
 shadow of the mountain itself outlined 
 against the illimitable heaven. The sun, 
 dropping slowly through the western va- 
 pours, slid at length into the sea and van-
 
 fleter'g ilistafe* 179 
 
 ished like a spark of fire. One by one the 
 stars shone out overhead in Eastern bril- 
 liancy, and the night rested like a benedic- 
 tion upon the world. 
 
 The disciples were weary, weighed down 
 with sleep. They folded their garments 
 about them and rested, as an Oriental peas- 
 ant can always do, upon the bare ground, 
 under the roof of heaven. But Jesus prayed, 
 prayed for them, that their faith might 
 receive some encouragement, that their eyes 
 might be opened like the eyes of Elisha's 
 servant, to see the invisible glories about 
 them, prayed for himself, that He might 
 receive some fresh assurance of his Father's 
 love and favour to strengthen and support 
 his heart. And then, as when a great 
 light is kindled within a cathedral, and the 
 dark windows are transformed into fountains 
 of radiance blazing out into the night, 
 then, by some ebullition of spiritual splen- 
 dour from within, the soul of Jesus sent out 
 a flood of celestial light and He was trans- 
 figured. The celestial form shone through 
 the earthly framework, so that his face was 
 like the sun and his raiment glistering white 
 as light. And with Him appeared Moses,
 
 180 fleter'g 
 
 whom God's own hand had laid in his secret 
 grave on Nebo's lonely side, and Elijah, who 
 had been carried in the chariot of fire into 
 the heavenly world. These two greatest of 
 the Old Testament saints, the representatives 
 of the Law and the Prophets, appeared with 
 Jesus, and " spake of his decease which He 
 should accomplish at Jerusalem," 
 
 Surely we cannot fail to see the purpose 
 of this marvellous event. It was to uplift 
 and cheer the soul of Jesus with the thought 
 of the glory into which He should return by 
 the sorrowful way of the cross. It was a 
 foretaste of the exceeding great reward of 
 his sacrificial love. It was a touch of the 
 joy of heaven to help Him to bear the suffer- 
 ings of earth. And it was an assurance of 
 the sympathy of the celestial world with 
 his great purpose of sacrifice and death. 
 His disciples did not yet understand this 
 purpose. They could not talk with Him 
 about it in any such way as to help Him. 
 They could only protest against it, and strive 
 to restrain Him. But the saints in glory 
 understood what He was doing. They bent 
 from heaven to follow with loving, wonder- 
 ing eyes his steadfast journeyings towards
 
 JJeter'0 ^Histafee 181 
 
 the cross ; and when they were permitted to 
 speak with Him, they talked of that great, 
 world-redeeming death from which his flesh 
 shrank, but for which his divine heart was 
 ready and longing. 
 
 There is a strange suggestiveness in this 
 conversation. Who can tell how much the 
 blessed dead know of our lives here upon 
 earth ! It may be that they are following 
 our paths even now with wise and tender 
 eyes, rejoicing in our victories, sympathiz- 
 ing with us in every noble endeavor, in 
 every pure resolve, in every unselfish suffer- 
 ing for love. 
 
 "There is no place where earth's sorrows 
 Are more felt than up in heaven." 
 
 It may be that some saint dearer to you 
 than any whose names are written among the 
 Old Testament worthies your own faith- 
 ful mother, the father who prayed with you 
 at the family altar, the friend who walked 
 close beside you in the journey of life is 
 looking down upon you and watching your 
 path to-day. And of this be sure : If you 
 are following in the footsteps of Christ, if 
 you are trying to do good, if you are sacrifi- 
 cing yourself for others, if you are treading
 
 182 J3rtfv'fl 
 
 the path of duty and devotion, these are 
 the things which they understand, and for 
 which they bless and love you. You may be 
 misunderstood, you may be misrepresented 
 by your friends on earth: but with every- 
 thing that is good, with all noble suffering, 
 there is perfect sympathy in heaven. 
 
 The disciples, who had been asleep when 
 the Transfiguration began, were awake be- 
 fore it ended. The radiance shining about 
 them opened their eyes ; they roused them- 
 selves ; they saw their Master in his glory ; 
 they heard the great lawgiver and the great 
 prophet talking with Him about that death 
 which seemed so incredible. It must have 
 been an overwhelming, wonderful, joyous 
 vision. It was in one sense a rebuke to their 
 own weakness and want of sympathy, and 
 yet this rebuke must have been almost swal- 
 lowed up and forgotten in the glad assurance 
 that their Master was indeed the Messiah. 
 They must have looked with unspeakable 
 awe, they must have listened with inexpres- 
 sible delight. But when the vision began to 
 fade, when the forms of the heavenly visi- 
 tants grew dim before their departure, Peter 
 could keep silence no longer ; he felt that he
 
 fitter** fflietafcr 183 
 
 must speak, though he knew not what to say. 
 He cried, " Master, it is good for us to be 
 here : and let us make three tabernacles ; 
 one for thee, and one for Moses, and one 
 for Elias." 
 
 Now you will observe that this saying of 
 Peter's may be divided into two parts. The 
 first part is all right. It is perfectly true. 
 It was good for them to be there. Other- 
 wise, Christ would not have brought them 
 there. It was a glorious and joyful and 
 profitable hour. The memory of it was to 
 remain with them all through their lives as 
 a source of comfort and encouragement and 
 strength. It was a good thing for Peter and 
 James and John that they had been with 
 their Master and seen his glory in the holy 
 mount. But Peter made his mistake when 
 he said, " Let us make three tabernacles and 
 stay here forever." 
 
 I. It was a mistake, in the first place, to 
 suppose that the building of the tabernacles 
 would have done any good. 
 
 It would not have detained the fleeting 
 vision, or perpetuated the transitory de- 
 light. Moses and Elias had to return to 
 their places in the heavenly world. Jesus
 
 184 flefer'g 
 
 had to go down to the valley to heal the poor 
 demoniac, and tread his appointed path to 
 the cross. Peter and James and John had 
 to take care of their families, and be pre- 
 pared for their work as missionaries and 
 martyrs of the gospel. The ecstasy could 
 not be prolonged. The mountain-top must 
 be deserted. 
 
 I have seen in the little English city of 
 Salisbury the great cathedral. It was built 
 when a flood-tide of religious enthusiasm was 
 sweeping over the world. Thousands might 
 worship, thousands have worshipped, within 
 that splendid fane, and its walls were not 
 able to contain the great flood of devotion. 
 But the tide has ebbed ; the ecstatic vision 
 has faded. The mighty cathedral stands ; 
 but a handful of worshippers can scarcely 
 keep a sleepy rivulet of praise flowing in a 
 corner of the building. No tabernacle can 
 detain a moment of religious enthusiasm ; 
 and if Peter and his friends had built the 
 grandest cathedral in the world on the ridge 
 of Mount Hermon, it might have been empty 
 and bare to-day. 
 
 II. It was a mistake, in the second place, 
 to suppose that the disciples had any right
 
 fitter's iHistafee 185 
 
 to remain on the glory-smitten summit and 
 to enjoy the wondrous vision at their own 
 pleasure. 
 
 It was a foretaste of heaven, but heaven 
 belongs to God, and to those whom He has 
 called to be with Him. Peter wanted to stay 
 there before his time had come. He wanted 
 to enjoy the rest, the blessedness, the glory 
 of the celestial world before he had lived 
 out his life and finished his work on earth. 
 He wanted to have the crown without the 
 cross. 
 
 How natural this is ! . How often we have 
 felt like Peter ! How often we have longed 
 to escape from the turmoil and temptation 
 of this evil world and dwell in some calm 
 and lofty region of religious ecstasy, hold- 
 ing unbroken communion with God ! This 
 is the feeling that has often withdrawn the 
 purest men and women from their duties in 
 the working world to spend their lives in 
 sweet contemplation amid the quietude of 
 convents and monasteries. I suppose Bun- 
 yan's Pilgrim would gladly have stayed in 
 the House Beautiful I suppose he hated 
 to go down from the Delectable Mountains. 
 But he had to go. The only way to the
 
 186 
 
 heavenly city led through the rough valley 
 and over the weary plain. 
 
 There is no gate into heaven except at the 
 end of the path of duty. There is not even 
 an honoured and peaceful grave for us until 
 we can say with the Master, " I have glorified 
 thee on the earth, I have finished the work 
 thou gavest me to do." 
 
 III. It was a mistake, in the third place, to 
 suppose that, because it was good for them to 
 be there at one time, it would have been good 
 for them to be there always. 
 
 Even if the -vision could have tarried, even 
 if God had permitted the tabernacles to be 
 built, it would not have been best for Peter 
 to abide on that mountain-top. It might have 
 made him selfish and cold ; it might have ab- 
 sorbed in the exercises of personal devotion 
 all the warmth of that great, generous heart 
 which God designed to use in making the 
 world purer and better and happier. There 
 was a deeper, richer blessing provided for 
 Peter in the fellowship of suffering with 
 Christ, and in the reward of faithful labour 
 for the spread of the Master's kingdom of 
 righteousness and peace and joy. So it came 
 to pass that there was no answer to his foolish
 
 187 
 
 proposal ; only a great silence, while the lumi- 
 nous cloud swept lower to enclose the three 
 shining forms ; and then a voice from the 
 cloud, " This is my beloved Son, hear Him.'' 
 Suddenly the vision had vanished ; " they 
 saw no man any more, save Jesus only with 
 themselves ; " and He led them down to help 
 a poor, sick, human child in the valley, and 
 deliver him from the evil spirits that tor- 
 mented him. 
 
 My friends, there are two kinds of religion 
 in the world, the religion that is heavy with 
 self, and the religion that is strong with love. 
 There are some people who mix opium with 
 their Christianity. It soothes and charms 
 them; it gives them pleasant dreams and 
 emotions ; it lifts them above the world in 
 joyous reveries. They would fain prolong 
 them and dwell in them, and enjoy an un- 
 earned felicity. Their favourite hymn is, 
 
 " My willing soul would stay 
 In such a frame as this, 
 And sit and sing herself away 
 To everlasting bliss." 
 
 But no one ever got to everlasting bliss by 
 that method. The world has small need of 
 a religion which consists solely or chiefly of
 
 188 
 
 emotions and raptures. But the religion 
 that follows Jesus Christ, alike when He 
 goes up into the high mountain to pray and 
 when He comes down into the dark valley to 
 work ; the religion that listens to Him, alike 
 when He tells us of the peace and joy of the 
 Father's house and when He calls us to feed 
 his lambs ; the religion that is willing to 
 suffer as well as to enjoy, to labour as well as 
 to triumph ; the religion that has a soul to 
 worship God, and a heart to love man, and 
 a hand to help in every good cause, is pure 
 and undefiled. 
 
 Try your religious emotions, your expe- 
 riences of secret inward joy and peace, by 
 this test. If they make you selfish, if you 
 seek to prolong them unduly or excite them 
 by artificial means, they are false and worth- 
 less. But if they make you kind and brave 
 and helpful, if you are willing to come down 
 from them, when you are called, to do hard, 
 and distasteful, and even menial, work for 
 your Master and your fellow-men, if the 
 vision of faith has its fruits in the life of 
 charity, then be thankful to Him who has 
 revealed himself to you more clearly in order 
 that you may love Him more dearly, and
 
 189 
 
 follow Him more faithfully in the service of 
 humanity. 
 
 Remember that in this world every moun- 
 tain-top of privilege is girdled by the vales 
 of lowly duty. 
 
 Remember that the transfiguration of the 
 soul is but the preparation and encourage- 
 ment for the sacrifice of the life. 
 
 Remember that we are not to tarry in the 
 transitory radiance of Mount Hermon, but 
 to press on to the enduring glory of Mount 
 Zion, and that we can only arrive at that 
 final and blessed resting-place by the way 
 of Mount Calvary. 
 
 Remember that Peter's mistake is cor- 
 rected and explained by Peter's own words 
 in the full experience of the school of Christ. 
 For the Spirit of Jesus was in him, and 
 taught him what to say, when he wrote at 
 the close of his life : 
 
 " Beloved, think it not strange concerning 
 the fiery trial which is to try you, as though 
 some strange thing happened unto you. But 
 lejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of 
 Christ's sufferings, that when his glory shall 
 be revealed ye may be glad also with exceed- 
 ing joy."
 
 IX 
 GOD OVER ALL 
 
 (i. bat pc map be tbc rljtlBrcn of pour father tubtclj 
 ts in bcatorn ; for F)c makctb IJIQ sun to ride on 
 tbr cuil anH on tbc ffooU, anU acnUwb rain on tljr 
 anU on tjje unjust." 
 
 Matthew v. 45.
 
 " lit mafcctb Ins can to rtsc on tbc rutl anB on tbe 
 5ooi, anfc ccnictl) rain on tljc just anU on tljc 
 unjust," 
 
 THIS is a simple statement of a familiar 
 fact. We do not need any convention of 
 scientists to assure us of its truth, nor any 
 bulletin of the Weather Bureau to bear wit- 
 ness to its accuracy. A little experience is 
 enough to convince us that what we call the 
 processes of Nature are thoroughly impartial. 
 They do not discriminate. They are quite 
 regardless of moral character. 
 
 All through the summer that is past, the 
 sun has been shining and the rain has been 
 falling on the fields without regard to the 
 moral or religious differences of their owners. 
 There is no peculiar blessing on Protestant 
 potatoes. The corn and pumpkins in the 
 stingy farmer's fields are ripening just as 
 surely and just as abundantly as those which 
 have been planted and hoed by the most
 
 194 (5oU oUer ail 
 
 generous of men. All you have to do is to 
 sow the seed and till the soil, and Nature will 
 do the rest without asking what manner of 
 man you are. 
 
 But is there not something strange about 
 this fact ? Familiar as it is, growing more 
 and more plain to us, working itself more 
 and more firmly into our experience the 
 longer we live, when we stop to look at it 
 and interrogate it more closely does it not 
 puzzle and confound us? Does it not in- 
 troduce a strange and, so to speak, irreli- 
 gious element into our conception of the 
 world and human life ? 
 
 If we regarded Nature as impersonal, and 
 the universe as a material mechanism, we 
 should find no difficulty in it. For then this 
 shining of the sun and falling of the rain 
 upon the evil and the good, this procession 
 of the seasons, this interflow of forces and 
 influences which work together in produc- 
 tiveness, this germinating of the seed and 
 unfolding of the blade and forming of the 
 ear and ripening of the full corn in the ear, 
 the same for every child of man who toils 
 and waits, all this would be to us only the 
 proof and illustration of what we should call
 
 oter ail 195 
 
 the large indifference of Nature. What 
 does she care for us or for our doings ? She, 
 the vast, impersonal, unimpassioned Being 
 who is first our unfeeling mother, and then, 
 when we have conquered her, our obedient 
 slave, we who are first her offspring, and 
 then, when we are clever enough, her mas- 
 ters, what does Nature care for us, or for 
 those dreams of ours which we call virtue 
 and vice ? It all goes on by order and un- 
 conscious law. Suns rise and set. Clouds 
 gather and sweep by. Tides ebb and flow. 
 The dews descend and the grass springs. 
 The grain-field changes from green to gold. 
 The mellow apples ripen and fall. The vine 
 feeds the deep purple of its clusters with the 
 autumn's blood, and the many-foliaged forest 
 clothes itself with a splendour of death. 
 Man comes into the great world. He is 
 weak but clever. He looks on Nature with 
 his intelligent eyes, sees his advantage and 
 follows it up. He makes the sun feed him 
 and the animals work for him. He wanders 
 through the world grasping its fruits as he 
 can reach them, gathering with painful toil 
 the slow results of a niggard year, or crush- 
 ing with eager hands the rich grapes of
 
 196 <ofc ober ail 
 
 plenty ; and then, with the cry of want or 
 song of gladness on his lips, he is gone ; his 
 place is empty, his grave is full, and suns 
 shine and rains fall upon his tombstone even 
 as they once shone and fell upon him. It is 
 a wondrous pageant, but there is no meaning 
 in it, no purpose in the play, no moral in the 
 story, and we need not try to understand or 
 explain it, because there is nothing to ex- 
 plain or understand, so long as Nature is 
 unconscious and impersonal. 
 
 But the moment we see God behind the 
 face of Nature, the moment we believe that 
 this vast and marvellous procession of sea- 
 sons and causes and changes, this array of in- 
 terworking forces, is directed and controlled 
 by a Supreme, Omniscient, Holy Spirit, 
 whose will is manifest in the springing of 
 the seed, the ripening of the fruit, the fad- 
 ing of the leaf, the shining of the sun, and 
 the falling of the rain, this indifference be- 
 comes incomprehensible and impossible. It 
 cannot be that God is indifferent. It cannot 
 be that He cares not whether the dwellers 
 upon his earth are wicked or righteous, foul 
 or pure, selfish or generous. It cannot be 
 that He looks down with the same feelings
 
 otet ail 197 
 
 upon all who move below Him, and has an 
 equal approbation for the toil of the honest 
 labourer and the crafty schemes of the thief. 
 
 You tell me that Nature is indifferent. I 
 say, Not if God is behind Nature. 
 
 You tell me that it matters not whether 
 the hand that guides the plow be pure and 
 clean, or wicked and defiled. Nature feels 
 alike and will do alike for both. I say, Not 
 if God is behind Nature, not if Nature is the 
 expression of his will. He may do alike, 
 but He does not feel alike. As well say that 
 He who made light and darkness cannot dis- 
 tinguish between them, as that He whose 
 will is the moral law ever forgets it, ignores 
 it, casts it aside, in any sphere or mode of 
 his action. Evermore He loves the good, 
 the true, the noble. Evermore He hates the 
 base, the false, the evil. Evermore iniquity 
 is an abomination unto Him, and righteous- 
 ness is his delight. 
 
 Why, then, does He not always discrimi- 
 nate in all his dealings ? Why does the earth 
 yield her increase as generously to the mur- 
 derer as to the saint ? Why do the glories 
 of summer spread themselves as freely be- 
 fore the eyes of haggard wickedness as be-
 
 198 
 
 fore the childlike eyes of innocence and love ? 
 Why is not the pathway of virtue always 
 crowned with fragrance and light, and the 
 way of vice dark and dreary with tempests 
 and thorns? Why, since God is wise and 
 just and sovereign, why does his sun shine 
 and his rain fall equally upon the evil and 
 good? 
 
 There is a meaning, there is a purpose in 
 it, as in all his dealings. And what we need 
 is the clear eye, the attentive mind, the en- 
 lightened heart, to discern and understand 
 and accept it. 
 
 I. And, first of all, I think it is evident 
 that He would thus teach us to believe in his 
 Fatherhood in its widest aspect of benignity. 
 He would manifest his abounding kindness 
 to all the children of men. In the return of 
 winter and summer, seed-time and harvest, 
 in the constant delight and glory of Nature's 
 pageant, and the bounteous results of the 
 recurring seasons, He is opening his hand 
 and supplying the wants of all his creatures. 
 The open hand, not the blind eye nor the 
 unfeeling heart, but the open hand, is the 
 true symbol of God's dealing with mankind 
 in the natural world. And this changes all,
 
 otier 3111 199 
 
 instantly and totally. Instead of the large 
 indifference of Nature, we have the great 
 beneficence of God. Instead of an uncon- 
 scious mechanism, grinding out the same 
 results and careless of the hands into which 
 they fall, we have the wise and generous 
 Father making ample and equal provision 
 for all his children, bad and good. Do we 
 not understand this? Do we not see the 
 analogy and parallel in our human life ? 
 
 In every family there may be children, 
 perhaps not more and less beloved, but surely 
 more and less approved. There are some 
 that come closer to the father's heart, obedi- 
 ent, generous, affectionate ; answering every 
 call upon their love ; rendering swift, uncon- 
 scious services of help and comfort; weaving 
 themselves into the very inmost life, and 
 growing dearer with every day and year. 
 And there are some that cannot or will not 
 come so near; cold, dull, irresponsive; set 
 chiefly upon the following of their own wills 
 and the pleasing of their own desires ; living 
 by their own choice and disposition farther 
 and farther away from those that gave them 
 birth, and sometimes wilfully wounding and 
 bruising the hearts to which they ought to
 
 200 (0oU oter 811 
 
 be most closely bound. Is it possible that 
 the father should feel alike towards both? 
 He cannot and does not. Even though he 
 does not speak of it, even though he does 
 not show it, there is a vast, a world-wide 
 difference. 
 
 And yet they are all his children. For 
 all of them his heart is tender and his care 
 watchful. And for all of them he will pro- 
 vide with an impartial benevolence. It is 
 a point of honour with him. He will do the 
 best he can for all. He will defend their 
 helplessness, and provide for their needs, and 
 keep the sweet shelter of home around them 
 all, for are they not all his children ? 
 
 Are we not also the offspring of God? 
 Yes, every one of us, the lowest as well as 
 the highest. He is the Father of us alL 
 
 We do not dare to think that there is even 
 one forgotten, despised, disowned. God will 
 not let us think so. With clear, sweet, but 
 silent voice, He is assuring every child of 
 man that the heavens above his head are not 
 empty, but filled with the presence of a Di- 
 vine Father, and that the earth beneath his 
 feet is not a strange and desert place, but 
 the soil of his own home, in which paternal
 
 oter ail 201 
 
 bounty will make provision for his wants. 
 Every ray of sunlight that falls from heaven, 
 every drop of rain that waters the fruitful 
 ground, is saying to the heart of man, " My 
 child, this a Father's impartial kindness 
 sends to thee." 
 
 If men would only hear it! Oh that the 
 deaf ear and the dull heart might be touched 
 and opened to the beautiful speech of the 
 seasons, so that plenty might draw all souls 
 to gratitude, and beauty move all spirits to 
 worship, and every fair landscape, and every 
 overflowing harvest, and every touch of love- 
 liness and grace upon the face of the world, 
 might lift all souls that live and feel from 
 Nature up to Nature's God ! This is what 
 He longs for. This is what He means when 
 He tells us, in his impartial sunshine and 
 rain, that He is the Father of all mankind. 
 
 II. But I think it is clear also that God 
 uses this large impartiality in the gifts of 
 Nature to teach us that this world is not a 
 place of judgment, but a place of probation, 
 in which the good and the evil are working 
 side by side, not only in the same commu- 
 nity but in the same character, and not to be 
 finally separated until they have produced
 
 202 (0aU ober 
 
 their fixed and final results. Discrimina- 
 tions and judgments in regard to qualities 
 and actions are to a certain extent necessary. 
 We say of self-sacrifice that it is good. We 
 say of lying that it is evil. We call some 
 men pure and noble. We call others base 
 and wicked. But we do not say of any liv- 
 ing, breathing human being, " That is a lost, 
 hopeless sinner, with nothing but evil in 
 him." 
 
 We dare not say it, for God himself does 
 not say it. The parable of the wheat and 
 the tares applies not only to the world at 
 large, but also, and just as truly, to the indi- 
 vidual soul. It is only in novels that the 
 villains are absolutely bad, while the heroes 
 and heroines are immaculately good. In 
 real life, men and women are all somewhat 
 mixed, and every soul is more or less an 
 enigma to itself. 
 
 We look into our own hearts and we are 
 puzzled. We cannot interpret all that is 
 within them. The strange mingling flow of 
 impulses and emotions and desires, the under- 
 current of half-unconscious motives and the 
 after-play of repentance and regret, making 
 the eolour of our actions change with the
 
 otocr 9UI 203 
 
 changing light, all this troubles and con- 
 fuses us. We cry in all sincerity, " I cannot 
 understand myself. There is something here 
 that I cannot judge." And from the shining 
 sun and the falling rain comes the clear, kind, 
 patient voice of God, " Neither do I judge 
 thee yet. Not yet is thy final place assigned. 
 Not yet is thy trial ended. The days of life 
 are still thine. The sun still shines and the 
 rain still falls upon thy fields. Thou mayest 
 be sunken deep in evil, but thou still hast 
 hope, for behold I spare thee still, I still am 
 waiting. I do not judge thee yet." 
 
 "Not yet," "not yet," how solemnly the 
 warning of these words mingles with the 
 sweet assurance of a lingering hope for every 
 child of man ! How clearly the patient refusal 
 to judge now, reveals the certainty that God 
 will judge hereafter ! If this world is only 
 a place of probation, then beyond it there 
 must be a place of judgment. If, in the dis- 
 tribution of this world's goods, the wicked 
 and the righteous fare alike; if it sometimes 
 seems that the wicked fare even better in 
 their iniquity, while in the proudness of 
 their heart they wax fat, then surely, in the 
 world to come, the just God must make com-
 
 204 (0oU otorr 
 
 pensation. Dishonesty, and cruelty, and 
 selfish lust will receive their punishment at 
 the end. The sweet sun will not shine for- 
 ever, and the cool rain will not always fall 
 upon the evil-doers. Nor shall those who 
 have waited patiently and lived purely fail 
 of their reward. God cannot disinherit them. 
 Their harvest will surely come in the world 
 of light. 
 
 How precious, then, how costly and invalu- 
 able, is every day and hour of this mortal 
 life in which the warm sunlight and the 
 gentle rain assure us that the upward way is 
 still open to us! We may still sow that 
 good seed which shall bear fruit unto eternal 
 life. But how long, for you and me, how 
 long shall this time of hope endure? The 
 night cometh. Who can tell? 
 
 III. Once more, I think that God deals 
 thus kindly with the evil as well as with the 
 good, in order to make known to all men the 
 length and breadth of his forgiving love. 
 The length and breadth, not the height and 
 depth of it, for that could only be expressed 
 in Jesus Christ, coming down from heaven 
 to die for the world. Thus only could the 
 fulness of God's love be manifest.
 
 oter 3111 205 
 
 But something of its largeness, some shad- 
 owing forth of its generosity and freedom, 
 can be discovered in the process of Nature. 
 
 " There 's a wideness in God's mercy 
 Like the wideness of the sea." 
 
 Yes, and like the spreading glories of the 
 sunset, and like the flowing of a great river, 
 and like the dropping of the gentle dew from 
 heaven. These all tell us, and tell us truly, 
 of the heart of God, who is willing to forgive, 
 and longing to do good unto all men. It is 
 narrated of the great novelist, Thackeray, 
 that he was once walking with a friend at 
 evening on the hills near Edinburgh. The 
 sun sank slowly to his rest, leaving a trail of 
 glory behind him, and the solemn splendours 
 of the sky deepened above the crowded tene- 
 ments, the dark, foul, noisome streets, the 
 pain and misery and want, of the old town. 
 Thackeray looked at it long in silence, and 
 then, turning to his companion with tears in 
 his eyes, he said, "Calvary." 
 
 Think of it, friends ! God bestows all the 
 beauty and all the loveliness of the world 
 upon sinners such as we are. Even though 
 we have disobeyed Him and rebelled against 
 Him, his hand still feeds us. Even though
 
 206 (Sou otocr 9UI 
 
 our hearts are filled with vileness, his pure- 
 eyed stars look down on us in tenderness 
 and compassion. Even though we should 
 wander far away and forget Him, and steep 
 ourselves in wickedness, his sun would still 
 shine, his rain would still fall for us. Look 
 up, look up, thou prodigal child, lost to thy- 
 self and to thy home, sunken in vice and full 
 of inward misery, thou art not lost to thy 
 Father. For lo ! with every morning above 
 thine evil and unhappy head, 
 
 " God makes himself an awful rose of dawn." 
 
 And even as his light follows and caresses 
 thee wherever thou mayest roam, so his love 
 is close to thee, and his mercy waiting to 
 welcome thee, if thou wilt but turn to Him. 
 
 But are there not also some practical les- 
 sons which we, as Christians, may learn from 
 God's impartial and generous distribution of 
 the gifts of nature? Is there not a sweet 
 and gentle instruction for the daily life to 
 be derived from the sun which shines and 
 the rain which falls alike upon the evil and 
 upon the good? Our Divine Master thought 
 there was, and used this lovely parable to
 
 ofcrr 3111 207 
 
 convey a most precious lesson to the hearts 
 of his disciples, a lesson of charity and pa- 
 tience and forgiving love. 
 
 For surely this proof of the Fatherhood 
 of God ought to deepen in our hearts the 
 sense of the Brotherhood of man. When we 
 see Him providing with equal hands for all 
 men, causing the grass to spring and the 
 flowers to bloom and the stars to shine for 
 the whole world, treating even the outcast 
 and despised of men with impartial kindness, 
 surely we ought to feel more profoundly and 
 more tenderly the ties which bind together 
 all those whom God hath made of one blood 
 to dwell together on the face of the earth. 
 Our artificial life, the life which seems in- 
 separable from the advance of civilization 
 and the growth of large cities, tends to 
 deepen and exaggerate what we call " class 
 distinctions." It keeps men far apart from 
 each other, creates misunderstanding and 
 distrust. Too often it awakens evil passions 
 of pride and contempt among the rich, to be 
 met by the equally evil passions of envy and 
 hatred among the poor. When we feel these 
 influences stealing over us, when we find 
 that we are learning to think of ourselves
 
 208 <23tro ofcrr 311 
 
 and our friends as the finest porcelain and 
 of the rest of mankind as common clay, 
 when we begin to reckon the worth of man- 
 hood and womanhood by the possession of 
 wealth and the richness of attire, then it is 
 well for us to 
 
 " Go forth into the light of things ; 
 Let Nature be our teacher." 
 
 See how God's great sun laughs at our 
 pride, shining with equal radiance upon the 
 cottage and upon the palace, and painting 
 for the eyes of all richer pictures than the 
 wealth of Crcssus can buy. See how God's 
 sweet rain ignores our vanity, falling as 
 gently and as generously upon the poor 
 child's box of mignonette in the window as 
 upon the costliest roses in the parterre. See 
 how all things that God has made tell us of 
 an impartial Father's love which ought to 
 waken in our hearts a brother's kindness for 
 our fellow-men. 
 
 But more than this, we ought to learn from 
 the truth so simply expressed in the text and 
 so often illustrated before our eyes. We 
 ought to see in God's forbearance to judge 
 men a lesson of forbearance to us. 
 
 We are too quick : not often too quick to
 
 otoer 9111 209 
 
 approve, but very often too quick to con- 
 demn. We think it confers a sort of dignity 
 and virtue to say of other men and women 
 that they are bad. We are in haste to don 
 the judicial ermine and put on the black 
 cap and pronounce sentence. We foster evil 
 reports, and repeat gossip, and devour our 
 fellows like cannibals. Who art thou that 
 judgest another? Remember Christ's words 
 to the scribes and Pharisees. Remember his 
 words to his own disciples, " Judge not, that 
 ye be not judged." How can we read the 
 hidden motives, how can we know the deep 
 repentance and regret that enter into the 
 lives about us? Beware of censoriousness. 
 This world of impartial sunlight and equal 
 falling rain is not the place of judgment. 
 And, thank God, you and I are not, either 
 here or hereafter, the final judges. My heart 
 would shrink in speechless terror from decid- 
 ing the destiny of a single human soul. That 
 belongs to God ; and to God not now, but 
 when the shadows of time have been lost in 
 the light of eternity. 
 
 Finally, my friends, when we see God for- 
 giving all men who have sinned against Him, 
 sparing them in his mercy, and showering
 
 210 45oli otorr 9111 
 
 his bounty alike upon the evil and the good, 
 let us take the gracious lesson of forgiveness 
 to our hearts. Why should we hate like 
 Satan when we may forgive like God? 
 Why should we cherish malice, envy, and 
 all uncharitableness in our breasts ? I know 
 that some people use us despitefully and 
 show themselves our enemies, but why should 
 we fill our hearts with their bitterness and 
 inflame our wounds with their poison ? This 
 world is too sweet and fair to darken it with 
 the clouds of anger. This life is too short 
 and precious to waste it in bearing that 
 heaviest of all burdens, a grudge. Forgive 
 and forget if you can ; but forgive anyway ; 
 and pray heartily and kindly for all men, for 
 thus only shall we be the children of our 
 Father who maketh his sun to rise on the 
 evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on 
 the just and on the unjust.
 
 A 
 
 THE HORIZON 
 
 secret tbmffg belong unto tljc Lotto our 
 : but tljotic tilings uibicl) ate rcnraI;K tie- 
 long unto us anH to oar cfril&ren foteber, tljat 
 toe map Ho all tljr toorHg of tljie late." 
 
 Deuteronomy .\.vix. 29.
 
 secret tbincjs belong unto tl)c Lorto our 
 : tut those tbintjc tulncl) ate rcuralcfc be 
 unto us anfc to nur cbtlUrrn farcucr, tfjat 
 tee map io all tljc toorO* of tbis latu." 
 
 THERE is no landscape which is not 
 bounded by the horizon. This fact is the 
 symbol of a profound truth. It reminds 
 us that our powers are finite and limited. 
 However high we may climb to win a wider 
 outlook, our vision will touch its confines 
 and the known will be ringed about by the 
 unknown. This is the Doctrine of the Hori- 
 zon. 
 
 Now the text applies this truth to religion. 
 It speaks of things revealed and declares 
 that they belong to us. And in speaking 
 thus it appeals to our religious instinct, our 
 spiritual common -sense. For a religion 
 which contained no real disclosure of the 
 divine to our minds and hearts would have 
 no meaning and therefore no value. The
 
 214 
 
 horizon must include something. It is idle 
 to talk of the religious sentiments of awe, 
 reverence, humility, and gratitude as if they 
 could exist without any known motive or 
 object. That of which we are, and must 
 remain, altogether ignorant can never in- 
 fluence our belief, our worship, or our con- 
 duct. 
 
 A religion all mystery is a light all dark- 
 ness. It does not help us in the least when 
 a philosopher spells the Unknowable with a 
 capital U and advises us to worship It. For 
 when we ask him what to believe about It, 
 he can only answer, " Believe that you can 
 never know what It is ; " and when we ask 
 him what to say to It, he can only answer 
 " Say nothing ; " and when we ask him what 
 It would have us do for Its glory, he can 
 only answer, " You must find out for yourself, 
 for It will never tell you." A religion of 
 this kind, a religion of the Unknowable, is a 
 large name for something which has no ex- 
 istence : it is an idle word dancing recklessly 
 on the brink of nonsense. Certainly it is 
 not the religion of the Bible which discloses 
 a God who has made himself known unto 
 men ; nor of Paul, who said, " Whom there-
 
 Cjje portion 215 
 
 fore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare we 
 unto you ; " nor of Christ, who said to the 
 Samaritans, " Ye worship ye know not what : 
 we know what we worship." 
 
 But the text also speaks of secret things, 
 and affirms that they belong unto the Lord 
 our God. This also is a reasonable voice 
 and one that carries conviction to our spirit. 
 For certainly a religion that professed to 
 reveal and explain everything, and to make 
 the moral order of the universe and the 
 nature and plans of God as plain to our com- 
 prehension as a map of the United States, 
 a religion that contained no mystery, would 
 be quite as incredible as a religion that 
 was all mystery. We find insoluble prob- 
 lems and undiscoverable secrets in nature, 
 and we expect to find them in theology. 
 There is something hidden even in the least 
 and lowest form of life, why not also in the 
 highest and greatest? Do you remember 
 Tennyson's poem of " The Flower " ? 
 
 " Flower in the crannied wall, 
 I pluck you out of the crannies, 
 I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
 Little flower but if I could understand 
 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
 I should know what God and man is."
 
 216 C&c |)ort^on 
 
 But that is precisely what we cannot 
 attain : a perfect comprehension, a complete 
 knowledge, a vision without a horizon, even 
 in regard to the smallest things. And if we 
 do not look for this in the realm of the 
 finite, surely we cannot dream of reaching it 
 in the realm of the Infinite. Anything that 
 a telescope could discover among the stars, 
 anything that logic could define and explain 
 and fit into an exact philosophical system, 
 would not be God. For it belongs to his 
 very essence that He transcends our thought, 
 and that his judgments are unsearchable and 
 his ways past finding out. We do not know 
 anything about God unless we know that 
 we cannot know Him perfectly. 
 
 Modest ignorance is a necessary element 
 of true theology. Bishop Butler says, " The 
 monarchy of the Universe is a dominion un- 
 limited in extent and everlasting in duration : 
 the general system of it must therefore be 
 quite beyond our comprehension." Rich- 
 ard Hooker says, " We know not God as 
 He is, neither can know Him. His glory 
 is inexplicable, his greatness above our ca- 
 pacity and reach." And this is but an echo 
 of the majestic language of the Bible : " It
 
 portion 217 
 
 is as high as heaven ; what canst thou do ? 
 deeper than hell ; what canst thou know? 
 The measure thereof is longer than the earth 
 and broader than the sea." " For we know 
 in part and we prophesy in part. But when 
 that which is perfect is come, then that which 
 is in part shall be done away." 
 
 The partial knowledge of divine things, 
 the line which divides God's secrets from 
 his revelations, the necessary horizon of re- 
 ligious thought, this is the subject to 
 which I would call your attention. Let us 
 observe the fact that it exists, and the dan- 
 gers of trying to go beyond it, and the ad- 
 vantages of keeping within it. 
 
 I. It is a simple fact that we cannot know 
 all about God. Natural theology, of course, 
 is limited. Revealed theology widens the 
 boundaries of our knowledge, but does not 
 abolish them. The Bible does not profess 
 to make men omniscient, but simply to tell 
 them enough to make them happy and good, 
 if they will believe it and live up to it. It 
 does indeed lift man above the level of his 
 natural ignorance ; but even as one who has 
 gained a wider view of the world by ascend- 
 ing a lofty mountain still finds his sight cir-
 
 218 
 
 cumscribed by a new horizon, so those who 
 receive the revelations which are contained 
 in Holy Scripture still discover a verge beyond 
 which their thought cannot pass, and find 
 themselves shut in by the secret things 
 which belong unto God. Indeed, this fact 
 of limitation is itself one of the things re- 
 vealed. Not to the sea alone, but also to 
 the questioning intellect of man does God 
 say, " Hitherto shalt thou come, but no fur- 
 ther: and here shall thy proud waves be 
 stayed." 
 
 Take your Bible, and see how far it leads 
 you on, and how firmly it holds you back ; 
 how much it discloses, and how much it 
 hides. Everywhere you can see the horizon 
 line running sharply around the things re- 
 vealed and hiding the things secret. 
 
 In regard to God himself, it seems to me 
 that his character is revealed and his essence 
 is secret. His moral attributes are made 
 known to us so that we cannot mistake them. 
 He is just and holy, merciful and compas- 
 sionate, bountiful and loving, and He dis- 
 closes these qualities so fully in his self-reve- 
 lation in Jesus Christ that they become clear 
 and distinct and indubitable to us ; they be-
 
 potion 219 
 
 long to us and to our children forever. We 
 know Him as the Father of our spirits, for 
 Jesus Christ says, " He that hath seen me 
 hath seen the Father." But his metaphysi- 
 cal attributes, the ground and mode and form 
 of his existence, are behind the veil. Om- 
 niscience, Omnipresence, Omnipotence, 
 when we speak these words we do not define 
 God, we simply name the limits of our 
 thought about Him. They are lines which 
 run out into infinity ; and when we try to 
 follow them with our logic, they lead us 
 into a region where argument is vain and 
 definition is absurd. Do you remember what 
 Moses saw in the mount? He said unto 
 the Lord, "I beseech thee show me thy 
 glory." But God answered, " I will make 
 all my goodness pass before thee." Here 
 is the boundary-line of knowledge : God's 
 goodness is revealed ; but his glory is be- 
 yond the horizon. 
 
 And does not the same line run between 
 the purposes of God which He has declared 
 in Jesus Christ and the means of executing 
 those purposes ? We believe that God is 
 the Ruler of the universe, and that He in- 
 tends that his will shall be done on earth
 
 220 
 
 even as it is done in heaven. It is his will to 
 punish the wicked and to reward the right- 
 eous; to judge the obstinate and to have 
 mercy upon the penitent ; to vanquish the 
 evil and to establish the good; to destroy 
 death and him that hath the power of death, 
 that is, the devil, and in the fulness of time 
 to gather together in one all things in Christ, 
 both which are in heaven and which are on 
 earth. Nothing could be more certain to 
 those who believe in God than this mighty 
 purpose. But nothing could be more inscru- 
 table than the manner of its accomplishment. 
 We know that God is sovereign. We know 
 also that man is free, for the whole gospel is 
 an appeal to his power of choice ; the offer 
 of pardon and life would be an absurdity, a 
 deception, a moral mockery if he were not 
 able to receive or to reject it at will. Both 
 truths are revealed, both are sure and pre- 
 cious. But they come together in a line 
 which is the absolute boundary of our vision, 
 even as the ocean and the sky meet, but do 
 not mingle, at the edge of the world. That 
 is the horizon. Beyond that we cannot see. 
 What is all this reasoning and syllogizing 
 about an eternal decree which determines
 
 t>ort?0n 221 
 
 the fate of every soul, this logical analysis of 
 the relations between the human spirit which 
 must be passive and the Divine Spirit which 
 is given unto them who are appointed unto 
 life and not unto them who are appointed 
 unto death, what is it all but a vain effort 
 to go beyond the horizon ? 
 
 Here is the sea on which you float, the 
 sea of human life, with its shifting tides 
 and currents. Yonder is the sky that bends 
 above you, the pure and sovereign will of 
 God. Out of that unsearchable heaven 
 comes the breath of the Spirit, like " the 
 wind that bloweth where it listeth, and thou 
 canst not tell whence it cometh and whither 
 it goeth." If you will spread your sail to 
 catch that breath of life, if you will lay your 
 course and keep your rudder true, you will 
 be carried onward in peace and safety to 
 your desired haven. Nay, more : if there 
 seems to be no breeze stirring near you, if 
 you feel that you are lying idle and help- 
 less in a dead calm, drifting upon the dark 
 currents which may bear you to destruction, 
 you have only to ask for the saving breath 
 and it will come. For earthly parents are 
 not more willing to give good gifts unto their
 
 222 CTjje portion 
 
 children than your Heavenly Father to give 
 his Spirit unto them that ask Him. Ask, 
 then, ask for what you can surely have, and 
 sail, and steer, and leave the secret things to 
 God. 
 
 Again, we may see the line of division 
 running between the laws of God which are 
 revealed and the final judgment of God 
 which is secret. He has shown us what He 
 would have us do. " What doth the Lord 
 require of thee, but to do justly, and to love 
 mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? " 
 He has declared that He will reward every 
 man according to his works. He has made 
 known the riches of his grace, his willing- 
 ness to forgive the penitent, and to help the 
 fallen, in Jesus Christ ; and by the same lips 
 He has made known his indignation against 
 those who will not repent, nor trust in his 
 mercy, nor show to others that love which 
 God has shown to them. Nothing could be 
 more clear and positive than the revelation of 
 duty which God makes to each one of us. 
 We must forsake our sins and deny our- 
 selves, and take up our cross and follow 
 Christ if we would be saved. 
 
 But beyond that is the region of secrets.
 
 223 
 
 When we try to peer into it and explore it 
 with our little lamps of reason, when we ask 
 how God will deal with the heathen, who 
 have not had our privileges and opportuni- 
 ties, when we inquire what is to become of 
 this man or that man in the eternal future, 
 we are simply going beyond the horizon. 
 The very attempt to pronounce final judg- 
 ment on our fellow-creatures implies what 
 Butler has well called " the infinitely absurd 
 supposition that we know the whole of the 
 case." One thing is certain, God will never 
 do injustice to a single soul, " but in every 
 nation he that feareth Him and worketh 
 righteousness is accepted with Him." The 
 rest we may leave in silence with God ; for 
 judgment is his province, and there we may 
 not intrude. 
 
 " Let not this weak unknowing hand 
 
 Presume thy bolts to throw, 
 And deal damnation round the land 
 On each I judge thy foe. 
 
 " If I am right, thy grace impart 
 
 Still in the right to stay : 
 If I am wrong, oh, teach my heart 
 To find that better way." 
 
 II. Let us think now of some of the evils
 
 224 CJje f)ori?on 
 
 and dangers of going beyond the horizon in 
 theology. 
 
 First of all, it is a dangerous thing be- 
 cause it is likely to lead to mistakes and 
 errors. When a man sets out to be wise 
 above what is written, he is in a fair way to 
 arrive at folly ; and when he endeavours to 
 deal with infinite quantities by a finite logic 
 his conclusions are apt to be absurd. It is 
 better to know nothing about a subject, than 
 to know something about it which is not so. 
 It is wiser to stand in silent awe before the 
 secret things which belong to God, than it is 
 to adventure rashly among them and dis- 
 cover truths which do not exist. 
 
 The evil genius of religious thought is 
 insatiable curiosity, and her handmaid is 
 necessary deduction, and her kingdom is a 
 kingdom of logical consistency and moral 
 confusion. The plague of Christendom has 
 been the passion of theology to define what 
 God has not defined, and to discover what 
 He has kept secret. 
 
 Take a few examples of this kind of work. 
 The sacrifice of Christ is revealed to us in 
 Scripture as a redemption of sinners. The 
 curious theologizer, fixing upon this word re-
 
 portion 225 
 
 demption, follows it out beyond the horizon. 
 A redemption is a price paid for something. 
 If God has paid a price for the soul of man, 
 it must have belonged to somebody else. 
 The only other conceivable owner is Satan. 
 Therefore, the death of Christ was a ransom 
 paid to the devil for the soul of man. This 
 amazing discovery of logic among the secret 
 things was taught in the church for centu- 
 ries. 
 
 Again, omniscience is declared to be one 
 of the divine attributes. It means simply 
 that God's wisdom is perfect, and therefore 
 beyond our comprehension. But the inquisi- 
 tive explorer takes this word as a raft and 
 pushes out into the unknown. Omniscience, 
 according to his definition, means that God 
 knows everything from all eternity. If He 
 foreknows everything, everything must be 
 foreordained. If everytShing is foreordained, 
 then the sin and death of every wicked man 
 must be predetermined. If these things are 
 predetermined, then God must have willed 
 that they should come to pass; and if He 
 has willed it, He must have decreed it. 
 Therefore, " by the decree of God, for the 
 manifestation of his glory, some men and
 
 226 
 
 angels are foreordained unto everlasting 
 death, and these men and angels are par- 
 ticularly and unchangeably designed, and 
 their number is so certain and definite that 
 it can neither be increased or diminished." 
 Thus the explorer of Omniscience reports 
 his discovery ; and when we turn from his 
 report to the Bible, which tells us of " God, 
 who is not willing that any should perish, 
 but that all should come to repentance," 
 we feel that the explorer has gone a long 
 way beyond the horizon and has discovered 
 something which is probably not true. 
 
 Again, the Bible reveals the fact of the 
 second coming of Christ, but it declares at 
 the same time that the day and the hour of 
 his advent are hidden from all men. Now 
 here is a horizon distinctly and divinely es- 
 tablished, and yet good people have not been 
 able to restrain their curiosity from trying 
 to pass over it. They have counted the num- 
 bers in the book of Daniel, and discovered 
 that Napoleon Bonaparte was the man of sin. 
 They have investigated the horns of the va- 
 rious allegorical creatures and the clothing 
 of the scarlet woman in the book of the Rev- 
 elation, and identified the Pope as the anti-
 
 227 
 
 christ. They have fixed with more or less 
 particularity the date of the millennium, and 
 have assembled in white robes to wait for its 
 arrival but it failed to arrive, because it 
 is still beyond the horizon. 
 
 Of all the activities in which men have 
 employed their intellect, there is none which 
 has produced such a large amount of incor- 
 rect information and erroneous discovery, as 
 this habit of pushing beyond the horizon 
 into the secrets of God. 
 
 Moreover, it is an undesirable habit be- 
 cause it leads to bitter strife and controversy. 
 There is no opinion for which men are so 
 ready to fight as one in regard to which 
 there is room for considerable uncertainty. 
 Almost all of the conflicts in Christian 
 thought and many of the most bloody 
 schisms in the Christian Church have 
 been in the region of speculation rather 
 than in the region of faith. In regard to 
 the great essential truths which are clearly 
 revealed there has been substantial unity 
 from the beginning. But when men have 
 begun to make their inferences and deduc- 
 tions from these truths, when they have 
 tried to run them out beyond the horizon,
 
 228 Cjje f>ori2on 
 
 and to map out the universe according to a 
 fixed system, then divisions have appeared, 
 and anathemas and counter-anathemas have 
 filled the air, and the music of worship has 
 been broken by the clash of swords. " What 
 are these people quarrelling about?" asks 
 the plain man. They are quarrelling, my 
 beloved brother, for the most part about the 
 things that none of them can understand. 
 Being unwilling to let God have any secrets, 
 they are unable to let men have any peace. 
 This is one of the results of going beyond 
 the horizon. 
 
 But even if this result does not follow, 
 even if speculation upon the secret things is 
 carried on peaceably and charitably, it is at 
 best an idle habit and therefore undesirable. 
 Vast quantities of time have been wasted in 
 pursuing investigations into the nature and 
 the plans of God which cannot possibly con- 
 cern us, or have any appreciable influence 
 upon our virtue or our happiness. I have 
 heard lately of an ecclesiastical assembly 
 which spent many hours in discussing what 
 God ought to do with idiots in the future life. 
 Not content with the question in its gen- 
 eral aspect, they specified the case of a man
 
 |)on?on 229 
 
 who had been in the possession of his reason 
 until the age of twenty-five, and then, by acci- 
 dent or disease, had been reduced to idiocy. 
 This problem they debated as gravely and 
 as exhaustingly as if it had been committed 
 to them for decision. I do not know what 
 conclusion they arrived at, nor do I think 
 that it is of any particular consequence 
 whether they arrived at any conclusion. 
 The most desirable thing was that they 
 should come to an end. 
 
 The trouble with most of our Confessions 
 of Faith and Articles of Religion is that they 
 are too long. They contain the system of 
 doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures ; but 
 they contain also a great deal more. And 
 these additions, inferences, and deductions 
 have always been the most costly to attain, 
 the most perilous to defend, the most diffi- 
 cult to believe, and the least profitable to 
 apply. 
 
 The first lesson to be learned by one who 
 would think wisely or speak truly of reli- 
 gious questions is to say, in regard to the 
 secret things, " I do not know, and I shall 
 not try to guess." The advice which Mil- 
 ton puts into the speech of the affable arch-
 
 230 
 
 angel Raphael is prudent, and as good for 
 us as it was for Adam. 
 
 " Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid ; 
 Leave them to God above, him serve and fear : 
 Of other creatures, as him pleases best, 
 Wherever placed, let him dispose : joy thou 
 In what he gives to thee, this paradise, 
 And thy fair Eve ; Heaven is for thee too high 
 To know what passes there. Be lowly wise ; 
 Think only what concerns the.e and thy being ; 
 Contented that thus far hath been revealed, 
 Not of earth only, but of highest Heaven." 
 
 III. Think now for a moment of the great 
 benefits which will come to us from follow- 
 ing this advice. Think of the large bless- 
 ings of a small theology. Think of the 
 advantages of being confined to, and con- 
 tented with, the things that are revealed, 
 without trying to go beyond the horizon. 
 
 It will deliver us from perplexing thought^ 
 which interrupt the sweetness of life. It 
 will leave us free to enjoy the good gifts 
 of God. Above all, it will enable us to 
 devote our best thought, our deepest ener- 
 gy, our strongest faith to the apprehension 
 and application of those great, simple, vital 
 truths which God has made known for the 
 salvation of our souls and the uplifting of
 
 231 
 
 the world into the heavenly life. That is 
 what we need, and that is what the text 
 means, apprehension and application of 
 the great simple truths of religion within 
 the horizon. 
 
 The things that are revealed belong unto 
 us and to our children forever, is not 
 that what our hearts desire and crave ? A 
 religion which shall really belong to us, be a 
 part of us, enter into us, abide with us, and 
 not with us only, but with our children, for- 
 ever. Not many doctrines, but solid. It 
 need not be very wide, but it must be very 
 deep. It must go down to the bottom of 
 our hearts and dwell there as a living cer- 
 tainty. To be sure of God, most wise, most 
 mighty, most holy, most loving, our Father 
 in heaven and on earth ; to be sure of Christ, 
 divine and human, our Brother and our 
 Master, the pattern of excellence and the 
 Redeemer from sin, the Saviour of all who 
 trust in Him ; to be sure of the Holy Spirit, 
 the Comforter, the Guide, the Purifier, 
 given to all who ask for Him; to be sure 
 of immortality, an endless life in which no- 
 thing can separate us from the love of God, 
 my friends, let us concentrate our faith upon
 
 232 
 
 these things. If we can get hold of these 
 profound realities, if we can gather about 
 them all the forces of reason and conscience 
 and experience and testimony to establish 
 them forever, if we can rest upon them 
 firmly and steadfastly, feeling that they are 
 ours because they are revealed, we shall be 
 satisfied. For our great need is not to know 
 more about religion, but to be more sure 
 of what we know. 
 
 There is but one way to attain this. We 
 must live up to what we know. Our text 
 concludes by saying "that we may do all 
 the words of this law." Goodness is the pur- 
 pose of religion, and its best proof. Con- 
 duct is the end of faith, and its strongest 
 support. God has revealed himself in Christ 
 in order that we may love Him and live 
 with Him and be like Him. If we will do 
 this we shall be sure of Him, and help other 
 men to be sure of Him too. The best evi- 
 dences of religion are holy and kind and 
 useful and godly lives, really moulded and 
 controlled by the divine Christ. A short 
 creed well believed and honestly applied is 
 what we need. The world waits, and we 
 must pray and labour, not for a more com-
 
 C&e 
 
 plete and logical Theology, but for a more 
 real and true and living Christianity. 
 
 The best thing that we can do to help the 
 world to believe in a Divine Revelation is 
 simply this : Trust in Jesus Christ, love our 
 fellow-men, and follow Him in the path of 
 daily duty.
 
 XI 
 
 CHRIST FUNDAMENTAL 
 
 - JFor otfjcr fotmBation can no man lap tljan 
 t&at 10 latU, toljicf) is 3fcsuc Cbnst." 
 
 I Ctrintkians iii. II
 
 " .for otbcr fotraHatton can no man lap tban 
 tjjat is lain, mljicb is Jeans Cftrtet." 
 
 ALL schools of architecture agree in one 
 point. However they may differ in theories 
 of construction or schemes of ornamentation, 
 they are at one in the doctrine that the most 
 important part of every building, home or 
 palace, temple or fortress, is the foundation. 
 
 Now the apostle Paul translates this truth 
 into the terms of religion. He declares that 
 the essential thing is to have a sure foun- 
 dation for faith, and character, and life. 
 He declares that such a foundation has been 
 laid in Jesus Christ. And he adds that 
 there is nothing in the universe to take the 
 place of that foundation as a basis for all 
 that is permanent and precious in existence. 
 
 The apostle has been dead eighteen hun- 
 dred years, but that splendid claim still 
 stands. The number of those who have 
 proved it by personal experience has in-
 
 238 C&rat f ttrrtanrcntal 
 
 creased year by year, and century by cen- 
 tury. Men have tried to lay other foun- 
 dations, but they and their works have 
 vanished. The bonfires have been kindled 
 on a thousand hills, and have burned out. 
 The floods have risen, and fallen, and swept 
 away the frail edifices that have been built 
 upon the sands of time. But the Impreg- 
 nable Rock remains unshaken, lifting all the 
 lives that have been founded upon it high 
 above the wrecks of ages, clear outlined 
 against the sky, like a crown of towers and 
 a city that hath foundations, whose builder 
 and maker is God. 
 
 Let us try to dig down into the meaning 
 of this text and take the measure of it, as 
 men have measured and admired the great 
 foundations which modern archaeology has 
 unearthed below the site of the ancient 
 temple at Jerusalem. 
 
 In what sense is Jesus Christ the funda- 
 mental reality of human life ? 
 
 I. Christ is the foundation of a reason- 
 able faith. He underlies all true theology. 
 Without him we cannot "assert eternal 
 Providence and justify the ways of God to 
 man." The moral government of the uni-
 
 JunUamental 239 
 
 verse becomes all dark and confused, "a 
 mighty maze and all without a plan," unless 
 we believe in a divine Redeemer. The 
 problem of the existence of evil under the 
 rule of an absolutely good God is insoluble, 
 and, I say it reverently, the moral character 
 of the Supreme Being is a mockery to our 
 conscience, unless we can discover a per- 
 sonal, saving, redeeming revelation of the 
 divine Love in the same world into which 
 the Omnipotent has permitted sin to enter. 
 
 " Till God in human flesh I see 
 My thoughts no comfort find; 
 The holy, just and sacred Three 
 Are terrors to my mind." 
 
 Now the trouble with men who have made 
 systems of doctrine about God, even when 
 they have believed sincerely in this reve- 
 lation of God in Christ, is that they have 
 made it supplemental, instead of fundamen- 
 tal, to their thought. They have told us 
 first what God must be, reasoning from 
 their own dim conception of omnipotence 
 and omnipresence and omniscience, They 
 have given their definitions of divine justice 
 and mercy, and laid down the conditions 
 under which they are exercised. They have
 
 240 CJjrurt JtmBaraental 
 
 planned out the scope of foreknowledge, and 
 traced the course of predestination. They 
 have explained the mystery of sacraments, 
 and made an orderly arrangement of the 
 means of grace. And then, in this vast and 
 complex system, they have found a place for 
 Christ, and they have unconsciously fitted 
 Christ to that place. 
 
 But the true way is just the reverse. It 
 is first to accept Christ, and then to fit our 
 theology to the truth as it is in Him. He 
 is the foundation already laid, and to Him 
 the outline and structure of the building 
 must be conformed. The mercy and justice 
 of Christ are the mercy and justice of God. 
 There is no predestination outside of Christ. 
 All the divine foreknowledge is summed up 
 and expressed in Him, for He is the Wis- 
 dom and the Word of God. The sacra- 
 ments are but signs and seals of Him ; and 
 He is the means of grace whereby we are 
 made partakers of the divine nature. 
 
 And what follows from building the edi- 
 fice of the faith in this way, on Christ as 
 the foundation ? Three things : First, it be- 
 comes sure and steadfast. Christ does not 
 offer us a knowledge of God half so large,
 
 fundamental 241 
 
 half so complete in logic and arrrangement, 
 as that which is offered by many human 
 teachers. He leaves many secrets untold, 
 many mysteries unsolved. But there is this 
 difference. Their complete theodicies are 
 insecure and perishable. The failure of one 
 link in the chain of logic lets the whole 
 bridge which is suspended by it fall into the 
 roaring, tide of doubt. But Christ's revela- 
 tion of God, confessedly limited and adapted 
 to our finite minds, is a revelation of fact, 
 of life, of reality, of true communion with 
 the Father through the Son, and therefore 
 it is firm and imperishable. It is not sus- 
 pended over life. It rests upon life. Second : 
 The Christian faith built upon Christ has a 
 self -rectifying and purifying power. It has 
 power to discover and reject the false ele- 
 ments which are continually thrusting them- 
 selves into Christianity from heathendom : 
 superstitions and perversions and assump- 
 tions ; cruel and unworthy conceptions of 
 God ; elements borrowed in fact from the 
 pagan religions and false philosophies. These 
 things, I say, are detected and exposed by 
 the effort to thoroughly Christianize theo- 
 logy. Every great purification and revival
 
 242 Christ JFtmtoamental 
 
 in theology has come through men like 
 Paul, like Chrysostom, like Francis of As- 
 sisi, like Martin Luther, like John Wesley, 
 whose whole intellectual being was built 
 upon personal contact with God in Jesus 
 Christ. Third : The faith built upon Christ 
 has overcome the protest which human na- 
 ture has always raised against false views of 
 God, even when they have been proclaimed 
 by ecclesiastical authority. " The God whom 
 we know through Jesus Christ commends 
 Himself to bad men as well as to good men." 
 We may not be able now to persuade all 
 men to believe in God, to love Him, to serve 
 Him, any more than the apostles were able 
 to do so ; but at least, if we can present to 
 the world the view of God which is in Christ 
 Jesus, we shall hear from all men the con- 
 fession that this is a God worthy to be wor- 
 shipped and adored and served. 
 
 II. From this point it is but a short and 
 easy step to the next proposition. Jesus 
 Christ is the foundation of a truly preach- 
 able and powerful gospel. It was of this 
 chiefly that St. Paul was thinking when he 
 wrote this text. Other preachers had come 
 into his beloved church at Corinth, working
 
 {)rifit fundamental 243 
 
 not only with new methods, but as he feared 
 on a new basis. They had attempted to in- 
 troduce personal considerations of loyalty to 
 certain parties in the church as the basis of 
 the Christian fellowship; they had taught 
 in such a way that adherence to human the- 
 ories, and minor points of doctrine, and per- 
 sonal leaders, seemed to be the principal 
 thing, and fidelity to Jesus Christ a subordi- 
 nate thing. The emphasis was wrong. The 
 foundation was displaced. The whole build- 
 ing was in danger. 
 
 Paul cried in the fervor of his conviction, 
 "Other foundation can no man lay than 
 that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." Not 
 that Paul himself never preached on other 
 subjects than the person of Christ. His 
 range of teaching was rich and generous, 
 vastly beyond that of other preachers. There 
 was no subject of thought, from the myster- 
 ies of divine preexistence to the ultimate 
 relation of the irrational creatures to the 
 manifestation of the sons of God, which was 
 beyond the interest of his faith. There was 
 no sphere of human duty, from that of the 
 ruler on his throne to that of the slave hi 
 his master's house, of which he did not dare
 
 244 CforiBt jF tmiamental 
 
 to speak, with fearless, loving, inspiring, and 
 commanding voice. But back of all that he 
 said nay, throbbing and pulsating through 
 all that he said on every subject was the 
 consciousness that God was in Christ recon- 
 ciling the world to Himself. That was the 
 deep foundation of every argument and 
 every exhortation ; and that is the secret of 
 preaching the gospel. 
 
 Nothing is foreign to the gospel. It may 
 enter, it must enter, into every region of 
 human thought and conduct. But it must 
 always be true to itself. It may not come 
 as a philosophy, a morality, a criticism, but 
 always as glad tidings. Many men preach 
 as if Christ had never really lived. What- 
 ever subject the preacher touches, he must 
 see it and treat it in the light that comes 
 from the manger-cradle, the uplifted cross, 
 and the empty sepulchre. The former things 
 are passed away, all things are become new ; 
 reason itself is transformed and recreated, 
 and conscience is reilluminated, by the fact 
 that God so loved the world that He gave 
 His only begotten Son that whosoever be- 
 lieveth in Him should not perish but have 
 everlasting life. No man in the world to-day
 
 im0t JunBamcntal 245 
 
 has such power as he who can make his 
 fellowmen feel that Christ is a reality. 
 
 It is said of David Hume, the great skep- 
 tic, that he once went to listen to the preach- 
 ing of John Brown of Haddington. " That 
 is the man for me," said Hume ; " he means 
 what he says ; he speaks as if Jesus Christ 
 were at his elbow." Yes, my brethren, the 
 man of the world was right. No preaching 
 can convince every man. But the only 
 preaching that can convince or help any 
 man is that in which every argument and 
 every appeal rests at last upon Jesus Christ, 
 the divine and immutable foundation of the 
 gospel. 
 
 III. From this it follows, in the third 
 place, that Jesus Christ is the only true and 
 sure foundation of the moral life. For as 
 the end of the gospel is to make men good, 
 and as the essence of the gospel is the set- 
 ting forth of Jesus Christ, it must follow 
 that the best means of making men good is 
 to bind their hearts in living faith to Jesus. 
 
 But is this a fact, or is it only a dream of 
 the ardent and enthusiastic Christian ? Can 
 we indeed find Christ at the foundation of 
 what is best in humanity ? I think we can.
 
 246 Cfjriat ftmSammtal 
 
 As a matter of history I think we can see 
 that all the finest and noblest things in the 
 world to-day, the hospital, the asylum, the 
 sanctities of home, the responsibilities of 
 government, the liberties of mankind, are 
 founded upon Christ. Without Christ they 
 would never have been possible. Without 
 Christ the very beginnings and foreshadow- 
 ings of them which were scattered through 
 the world, would still have been frustrated 
 and crushed. I look at every forward step 
 which the world for eighteen hundred years 
 has taken out of the darkness into the 
 broader light of a new day, and at the head 
 of the marching host I see the banner of 
 Christ Jesus, and behind the movement I 
 feel the mighty impulse of Christian faith. 
 I look at the splendid uprisings of humanity 
 against tyranny, and injustice, and corrup- 
 tion, and wickedness in high places; and 
 whether the revolution was accomplished in 
 the awful arbitrament of battle or by the 
 peaceful power of the ballot, I see that the 
 force which won the victory was the awak- 
 ened and enkindled sentiment of those who 
 acknowledge the law of Jesus Christ as su- 
 preme and call Him their Master and Lord.
 
 Christ fttnUamcntal 247 
 
 Take the Christian sentiment clean out of 
 the people of any land and see how many 
 reformations you can accomplish. Nay, let 
 your accomplished reformation once shift 
 its foundation from the law of justice and 
 righteousness and brotherhood in Jesus 
 Christ, let the agency to which you have 
 committed the power wrested from unworthy 
 hands forget the power which created it, 
 and become a mere party among the parties, 
 and see how soon it will decay and crumble, 
 and need to be swept away. 
 
 Mark you, we do not say that there are 
 no good workers in good causes except 
 those who are professedly Christians. That 
 would be contrary to Christ's own teaching. 
 He taught his disciples to welcome all who 
 would labour with them in the casting out 
 of devils, and said, " He that is not against 
 us is for us." Nor do we say that there is 
 no virtue in humanity save that which feels 
 and confesses its personal dependence upon 
 Christ. For there are many noble princi- 
 ples and beautiful characters unconsciously 
 built upon a Christian foundation, laid by a 
 mother's prayers, a father's example, though 
 the builder may not know or acknowledge
 
 248 Christ jFttnUanwntal 
 
 it. Yes, there are even larger edifices, socie* 
 ties, nations, it may be, which are uncon- 
 sciously based upon the moral ideal which 
 is in Christ, and which silently acknowledge 
 Christianity as the law of laws, even though 
 God be not named in their constitution. 
 They are like the villages in Egypt which 
 were unwittingly erected upon the massive 
 foundations of some ancient temple. 
 
 But what we say now is, that the only 
 security for the conscious and deliberate 
 building of the moral life, whether of com- 
 munities or individuals, lies in making Jesus 
 Christ the foundation. And why ? Because 
 there is no permanence of character, there 
 is no consistency of action, without a clear 
 and perfect and immutable ideal. And there 
 is no such ideal except Christ. 
 
 Men have tried to create ideals for them- 
 selves, and for a time they have seemed 
 beautiful, but they have always failed and 
 fallen. Each of these ideals has had its own 
 virtues ; but the " defects of its virtues " 
 have ultimately destroyed it. There was a 
 philosophic ideal in the days of the Stoics 
 and Epicureans. But it was perverted and 
 corrupted into the unspeakable frivolity and
 
 C&rist ftm&amcntal 249 
 
 triviality of the later Alexandrian schools. 
 There was a military ideal in the Middle 
 Ages ; but it hardened into intolerable 
 cruelty and tyranny. There was an artistic 
 ideal in the Renaissance ; but it decayed in 
 luxury and self-indulgence. There was a 
 social ideal in the French Revolution, and 
 it produced some noble and self-sacrificing 
 men, some earnest and fervent efforts for 
 the welfare of the world. That social ideal 
 still survives, and there are some who think 
 that it is the hope of the future. Its motto 
 is simply, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." 
 Its programme is to change the structure of 
 society first, and consider the truth of Chris- 
 tianity afterward. But even in a hundred 
 years how has that ideal been warped and 
 distorted into the ugly shapes of Anarchism 
 and Nihilism ! And if it should carry out 
 its programme of material equality for every 
 man, what security would that give for moral 
 elevation and purity ? What warrant have 
 we for thinking that " the new society " 
 would not be a dead level of equally com- 
 fortable, equally sensual, equally faithless, 
 and equally hopeless men and women, with 
 not a thought beyond this world, and not a
 
 250 Cfmst JTunUamcntal 
 
 care except to see that no one got a larger 
 share of the loaves and fishes than they 
 secured for themselves ? 
 
 No, my brethren, the one ideal that is 
 pure and permanent and satisfying, the one 
 ideal that actually has had power to keep 
 itself alive and prove itself victorious over 
 the disintegrating forces of sin and death, is 
 the ideal in Jesus Christ. The men and wo- 
 men who have built upon that foundation 
 have been the best men and women, and 
 have left behind them the most enduring 
 and glorious work, even in the very domain 
 where the human ideals have been erected 
 as supreme. 
 
 What contributions to human intelligence 
 have been made to compare with those of 
 Christian philosophers like Augustine and 
 Thomas Aquinas and Bacon and Leibnitz 
 and Locke and Kant and Newton ? What 
 soldiers under the Roman eagles fought like 
 the Christian legion, and what knight left 
 such a record of chivalry as Bayard, sans 
 peur et sans reproche f What poets sang like 
 Dante and Milton? What artists painted 
 like Michael Angelo and Raphael ? What 
 apostles of humanity have made such real
 
 fundamental 251 
 
 and lasting contributions to the happiness 
 of mankind as William Wilberforce and 
 Robert Raikes and John Howard and Flor- 
 ence Nightingale ? Yes, what have all the 
 social theorists and dreamers outside the 
 circle of Christian charity done that will 
 compare for a moment with the silent, cease- 
 less ministry of service to the sick and 
 wounded in great hospitals and crowded 
 cities, of protection to the helpless and com- 
 fort to the friendless, of instruction to the 
 ignorant and care to the forsaken, which 
 thousands of men and women have been 
 quietly giving, through the centuries, for 
 Christ's sake ? 
 
 Beloved, if you want to be good and to do 
 good, come to Christ and let Him teach 
 you. Form your character on his model, 
 and let the ideal of a life in Christ, for 
 Christ, like Christ, be the foundation on 
 which you build for time and eternity. 
 
 IV. Jesus Christ is the only foundation 
 of the Christian Church. The church visi- 
 ble is not confined to any one nation or 
 denomination. It is composed of all who 
 acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord and
 
 252 &bruft funUamental 
 
 Saviour. But the visible church is only the 
 framework and scaffolding of the Invisible 
 Church, the Communion of Saints, the ful- 
 ness of Him that filleth all in all. How 
 majestic, how full of flashing splendours, are 
 the words in which the inspired apostles 
 describe this glorious edifice, " Built upon 
 the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ be- 
 ing the chief corner stone." " To whom 
 coming as unto a living stone, ye also are 
 built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, 
 to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to 
 God by Jesus Christ." 
 
 Taking this description of the invisible 
 church into my hand as a torch to light my 
 way, I go abroad through the Christian 
 world and back through the ages, like one 
 who walks through the long-drawn aisles, 
 and mysterious crypts, and manifold chapels, 
 of some magnifical Cathedral. I see and 
 hear many things that astonish and perplex 
 me. There are strange pictures on some of 
 the walls, and strange incense rises from some 
 of the altars. There are sacrifices offered 
 which are carnal, and materials used which 
 are not spiritual. But these human props 
 and incrustations which have gathered about
 
 jFttnUamental 253 
 
 Christianity are disappearing and dropping 
 away. Behind them rise the mighty, aerial 
 walls. Through the passing words of error 
 and folly framed by the lips of men, like 
 the sound of the sea, like the voice of many 
 waters, rises the Creed of Christendom. " I 
 believe in God the Father Almighty and in 
 Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord, begot- 
 ten before all worlds, God of God, light of 
 light, very God of very God, who for us 
 men and our salvation came down from 
 heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost 
 of the Virgin Mary." 
 
 And then sweeter than angels' songs 
 breaks forth the solemn chant, " The Holy 
 Church throughout all the world doth ac- 
 knowledge Thee. The Father of an infinite 
 majesty, Thine adorable true and only son, 
 also the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. Thou 
 art the King of Glory, O Christ, Thou art 
 the everlasting Son of the Father."
 
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