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 This book belonged to Chauncey Wetmore Wells. He taught in 
 Yale College, of which he was a graduate, from 1897 to 1901, and 
 from 1 90 1 to 1933 at this University. 
 
 Chauncey Wells was, essentially, a scholar. The range of his read- 
 ing was wide, the breadth of his literary sympathy as uncommon 
 as the breadth of his human sympathy. He was less concerned 
 with the collection of facts than with meditation upon their sig- 
 nificance. His distinctive power lay in his ability to give to his 
 students a subtle perception of the inner implications of form, 
 of manners, of taste, of the really disciplined and discriminating 
 mind. And this perception appeared not only in his thinking and 
 teaching but also in all his relations with books and with men. 
 
HE FACE AND THE CROSS 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/facecrossbaccalaOOwellrich 
 
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THE FACE AND THE CROSS 
 
 A Baccalaureate Sermon preached 
 
 at Delaware College Newark 
 
 Delaware June 161901 
 
 also at Christ Church 
 
 Waltham 
 
 Massachusetts 
 
 November \o 1901 fry the 
 
 Reverend Hubert Wetmore Wells 
 
 Rector of Saint Andrew* s 
 
 Church Wilmington 
 
 Delaware 
 
 BOSTON 
 DAMRELL AND UPHAM 
 
 1901 
 
PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF OLD FRIENDS 
 IN WALTHAM 
 
 IN* MEMORIAL 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 • ••••• • 
 
 • i .*. • « 
 
 ••••••# •#•• • • 
 
 • • • • «• . « 
 
"THEY SAT AND WATCHED HIM 
 THERE." ST. MATTHEW XXVII. 36. 
 
 THE place is Golgotha, the watchers are 
 the "soldiers of the Governor," and Him 
 they watch is Jesus of Nazareth. Near by, one 
 on either side of Jesus' cross, are other two con- 
 demned and crucified : these are not watched. It 
 is not the crosses lifted from the hill; it is not the 
 fear "lest His disciples should come and steal Him 
 away;" it is not the gravity of His crime; it is not 
 the assembled and accusing multitude ; it is not 
 the presence of Jewish dignitaries, that moves this 
 little guard of Pilate's soldiery to look at the Cen- 
 tral Figure in this group of three rather than at 
 the rest. By the hard custom of their business the 
 executioners were indifferent to all this. Deci- 
 sions of courts, and the wild people's tumult, and 
 flocking curiosity were to them as the idle wind, 
 and by them unrespected. What, then, beckoned 
 them out of their accustomed indifference and 
 fixed their eyes on Him 4 ? I think it was His face. 
 Have you ever studied faces'? Unconsciously 
 every man studies faces. Not at his hands and feet, 
 
 3 
 
 863675 
 
but into his face we look when we put the man a 
 question or make the man an answer. The motion 
 is instinctive, and we all use it. But we do not all 
 reflect upon the habit and the instinct and follow 
 it on to its revealing conclusions. A face is a mar- 
 velous thing. From it a man's soul looks out into 
 life. There are long hours, and days together, 
 when the tenant will not venture to the window. 
 He is ashamed, or afraid, or morbid, or too much 
 given to think upon himself, and so he comes not 
 to the window. Something of the man may be 
 guessed from his absence there. And when he 
 comes he does not come ingenuously always, and 
 under his smiles some dark particular motive lies 
 concealed. But there are moments, and they most 
 frequent, when the unguarded spirit shows itself, 
 and in the man's face you may see the man. 
 Purity, integrity, sobriety, chivalry creep into the 
 face and change and hallow all the features. Lust 
 and dishonor and laxity and selfishness cannot be 
 kept forever out of it ; and it is safe to say that 
 the absence of the things we long to see there is 
 the sure sign of a battle unattempted or of a battle 
 lost: the man has never mastered the great vir- 
 
 4 
 
tues to make them his, or he has welcomed the 
 great vices and they have made him theirs. A 
 face is a marvelous thing. 
 
 Marvelous, then, must have been the face of 
 Jesus. For the characteristic of Jesus is that He 
 reveals. His spirit never leaves the window, but 
 suns itself there all the day. He has nothing to 
 conceal. He has so vastly much to declare. We 
 do not appreciate how very large a part the face 
 of Jesus plays in that delineation of His charac- 
 ter which we find in the Gospels. The author of 
 the second Gospel, with his wonderful eyes, is 
 never tired of telling us what he sees in Jesus' 
 face. In it His great soul lived. His anger, His 
 compassion, His serenity, His high-souled reso- 
 lution all were visible to the disciple that watched 
 His every motion and heard His every word. 
 Chapter after chapter in that second Gospel might 
 appropriately be named " A study of the face of 
 Christ." The tradition of that face is preserved in 
 Saint Paul's phrase forever. Men looked into that 
 face and saw " the light of the knowledge of the 
 glory of God : " the vision of God's glory — there 
 it shone "in the face of Jesus Christ." And as those 
 
 5 
 
soldiers sat and watched Him there, it was His face 
 they watched — the face that made a glory above 
 His limp and broken figure. 
 
 Let us sit with them there to-night and watch 
 Him for a season. What shall we see ? A face upon 
 a cross. If we look from the face to the wooden 
 thing on which it hangs, we shall see darkness only; 
 if we look from the cross to the face, we shall see 
 light alone. There in the two objects that the eyes 
 observe is the picture of a conflict between two 
 views of life, and the symbols of two opinions as 
 to the issue of that conflict. The cross is the sym- 
 bol of the existing order. The face is the symbol 
 of the order of God. Pilate and the Jews, who 
 represented then the existing order, thought that 
 they had done with Jesus because they crucified 
 Him. They held the common superstition touch- 
 ing death, that dead things have an end. And so 
 over the dying Christ they wrote that He had tried 
 and failed: "Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the 
 Jews." For the order of God Jesus stood alone. 
 Death could not cloud His vision. In God's econ- 
 omy death had for Him its place, but death did 
 not deceive Him. He saw in death the low begin- 
 
 6 
 
nings of a larger life. Death, for the existing or- 
 der, was the last resort. For Jesus death was just 
 the way of life ; and from the face of Jesus on His 
 cross shone down the glory born of an assurance, 
 deep as soul, that He had won. 
 
 Which of the two is right, Pilate or Christ, the 
 cross or Jesus' face ? As we ask this question 
 comes the reflection that we have been born into 
 the existing order, that we think very largely as 
 it has taught us to think, that we aim for the 
 things which it sets on high, and that we cannot 
 altogether escape aiming for them. Our real ideals, 
 beliefs, and opinions are patent in conduct and to 
 conduct we must go to discover them. Vaporings 
 about Jesus' success come to nothing. The hymns 
 we sing and the prayers we pray and the phrases 
 we adopt on Sunday morning are not the declara- 
 tion most searching and desirable as to what we 
 really think of the conflict between the existing 
 order and Jesus. Go Monday morning to the 
 banker, the merchant, the mechanic, the laborer, 
 and let the man's work answer for the man. The- 
 ological opinion turned into theological phrase 
 matters much or matters little : that depends. But 
 
 7 
 
vital opinion declared by living matters a great 
 deal, and the vital opinion of the existing order 
 says, as of old it said, that Jesus was and is a fail- 
 ure : the dark, stern cross has conquered the sweet 
 face. 
 
 When we meet the assertion, relieved of reli- 
 gious bias, there is a large measure of truth in 
 this contention. There are two ways in which a 
 man may fail : he may fail because his aim — the 
 thing he tries to hit — is judged to be other than 
 it is ; and he may fail because he actually misses 
 the thing he really tries to do. The great majority 
 of Jesus' countrymen misjudged His aim. He 
 never succeeded in freeing their minds from the 
 thought that he should be their king. His reluc- 
 tance was endured for a season, but there came a 
 time when their chafing impatience broke the 
 bonds of reverent restraint, and they determined 
 to force the kingdom upon Him. He had waited 
 for a propitious moment possibly, for a strong, in- 
 dubitable backing. They knew their strength far 
 better than did He. Now was the time. So they 
 sought to take Him by force and make Him a 
 king. Jesus withdrew, but His withdrawal did 
 
 8 
 
not convince them. Perhaps they had been a little 
 hasty: they could wait. But by and by, thought 
 they, the hour would strike and their king would 
 come to his own. If anything in the Gospels is 
 clear, it is this misconception. Nor did it stop with 
 the tumultuous people : the disciples were fully 
 persuaded of it. They walked habitual witnesses 
 to the exercise of the extraordinary power that 
 Jesus surely possessed. Such power was both a 
 sign and a guarantee — sign of 'his kingly origin 
 and office and destiny; guarantee of a throne's 
 possession. The cautioning word " See thou tell 
 no man" was vainly uttered. The knit brow and 
 lifted finger made their stern charge in vain. The 
 Twelve clung to their delusion to the last. After 
 the experience on the Mount, after the prophecy 
 of suffering imminent, after the personal seclusion 
 and confidence of the last northern journey, came 
 the mother of James and John asking for them 
 political favors : " Command that these my two 
 sons may sit, one on Thy right hand, and one on 
 Thy left: hand, in Thy kingdom." The only quar- 
 rel recorded of the Twelve is most significant in 
 the light it throws upon their thought of Jesus. It 
 
 9 
 
happened, as did Salome's request for her sons' 
 preferment, after the explicit foretelling of per- 
 sonal disaster, and as they journeyed towards Jeru- 
 salem. What was it all about? Who was to have 
 the highest position in the new government ! The 
 miserable fiasco which we call the "triumphal en- 
 try" must have been a rude shock to this state of 
 mind, but it could not dislodge the expectation. 
 " Lord," ask they, " wilt Thou at this time restore 
 the kingdom to Israel?" About the fact there is 
 for them no doubt. Only the manner of it and the 
 hour is doubtful. 
 
 The story and the character of Judas are many- 
 sided. One side concerns us in the present connec- 
 tion. This shrewd bargainer from Kerioth was an 
 office-seeker. He had watched his Master let slip 
 so many golden opportunities. Then came the 
 great procession into Jerusalem, and to the crowd 
 awaiting the fatal word only a long, compassion- 
 ate look, and then withdrawal. I believe that that 
 experience convinced Judas of his mistake and 
 that what followed was the logical result of the 
 broken hopes of the office-seeker. But it all goes 
 to show how persistent was the misconception of 
 
 10 
 
the Twelve, and just what they expected of Him. 
 With a "kingdom not of this world" the traitor 
 had no concern. His betrayal is at once < tribute 
 to his perspicacity and a revelation of the motive 
 of his discipleship. In his opinion Jesus was a 
 failure, and in this opinion they all shared when 
 they forsook Him and fled. 
 
 Over against many a name in the long roll of 
 history has the generation in which it lived and 
 worked written an adverse judgment, because the 
 high soul had seen the heavenly vision and dared 
 not disobey. Does it matter? Yes. Mistaken opin- 
 ions are seldom free from a moral taint, and nobler 
 men would have given Jesus a nobler judgment 
 than His disciples uttered when they fled and left 
 Him to His enemies. The ideal which Jesus 
 aimed at was an ideal distinctly spiritual. His aim 
 was to love God perfectly, to trust God entirely, 
 to annihilate His own will by substituting for it the 
 will of God; to love men perfectly, to make the 
 bond between them love that expresses itself in 
 service. So far as He was judged of men He 
 failed, as we have seen. Did He fail in some 
 deeper, truer sense ? The question has a double 
 
 n 
 
answer. In Jesus' relation to God He succeeded. 
 God was "with him." Nowhere in history is there 
 a life w! ose deep opinions and convictions got so 
 perfect an embodiment in conduct. Jesus loved 
 God perfectly, trusted Him entirely, put God's 
 will in the place of His own. Across this aspect of 
 His life there falls no shadow. He is the bright, 
 particular, unqualified success in the annals of the 
 spirit. Faith is His great word, and faith is His 
 great attainment. It sharply contrasts Jesus and 
 all men whatsoever. Jesus was not given to won- 
 dering, but it is written that He " marvelled be- 
 cause of their unbelief." " How is it that ye have 
 no faith ? " He asks of His trembling disciples. 
 In Jesus' discipline of His own life He did not 
 fail. 
 
 But what of His attempt to make of love the 
 bond between men — love that expresses itself in 
 service ? Jesus died some nineteen hundred years 
 ago. He left behind Him a little band of disap- 
 pointed office-seekers. With His death vanished 
 all their hope of political preferment. But for all 
 their disappointment and in spite of their failure 
 to understand the aims of their Master, they had 
 
 12 
 
for Him a saving personal attachment. In some 
 measure they had caught His spirit, and when 
 He came to them after His resurrection and sent 
 them forth instructed in the things pertaining to 
 the kingdom of God, they had made His way 
 their way — the way of love that expresses itself 
 in service. Over a large part of the earth their 
 teaching has gone. Into the common instruction 
 of youth in many a land it has entered as staple to 
 that instruction. In immeasurable quantity, so 
 subtly fused is it with other things, so concealed 
 is it under various forms, that teaching has spread 
 through the wide fabric of our Western life. Our 
 debt to it is incalculable but immense. It is the 
 fashion of leaven to work slowly, but it works* 
 and we shall not say that it has failed because we 
 find so much of the lump unleavened still. You 
 go and look at the awful absorption of great 
 administrative abilities in the personal concerns 
 of their own particular business; or you note 
 the perversion of positions of great trust into the 
 selfish scheming of self-seeking men ; or you ob- 
 serve the horrible indifference of corporate inter- 
 ests to public honor and the public good ; or you 
 
 J 3 
 
stand aghast at the maddening lust for gold, and 
 the anarchy that inspires the wild scramble after 
 it ; and it seems to you as if the world had gone 
 over to the side of those who come not to min- 
 ister but to be ministered unto. You are tempted 
 to believe that the spirit of Jesus, persuading men 
 to love one another and to serve one another, has 
 been overwhelmed like a voice crying in the 
 breaking, rushing surf. In a weak moment you 
 are tempted to think of self and to succeed for 
 self. " Success " is the cry of the existing order. 
 A successful governor, a successful lawyer, a suc- 
 cessful engineer, a successful merchant — there is 
 the common ambition of the common man. And 
 service is not always the way of this success. 
 Dishonor, and a hushed conscience, and sharp 
 practice, and a turn of chance has brought suc- 
 cess in the world's way to thousands, and the 
 temptation is to take the easy road to success 
 wherever that road may lie. You are tempted 
 to take it with the rest. And the answer to your 
 mood is Jesus' answer. He never used the word 
 " success " nor any word akin to it. He never 
 thought the thing "success." He never looked 
 
to see what others had done, or what others pos- 
 sessed, to compare Himself with them. He did 
 not seek the good opinion of men, for He knew 
 that opinions change for trifling cause, and that 
 a soul cannot intrust its happiness to men's good 
 opinion. He had no fear of failure nor to be 
 pointed at as one that failed. He knew, indeed, 
 that He must fail if human life should ever gain 
 its freedom and man's place rest secure below 
 the reach of changes and chances. His death 
 was the sublimation of failure, and its sanctifica- 
 tion ; and since He died and rose again, failure is 
 the inalienable right and the not infrequent duty 
 of noble souls. For the man Christ Jesus stands 
 for the Race, and what is legitimate in His ex- 
 perience is legitimate in your experience, and 
 what is possible for Him is possible for you. 
 Over and over again in the long human story 
 has the inalienable right of failure had its vindi- 
 cation, because always there is something that 
 cannot be had unless one dares to fail — some- 
 thing as deep as life, and as real as the soul, and 
 as eternal as God Himself. You can see it at 
 Thermopylae, immortal in its glorious possession 
 
 15 
 
of three hundred simple souls that dared to fail 
 and knew inevitably that fail they must. You 
 can see it in the Athenian prison where Socrates 
 the aged drained the poisoned cup and smiled at 
 death, and failed for love of the still small voice 
 that called him ever to the divine obedience. 
 You can see it best of all on Calvary. 
 
 The spots on God's earth that have the largest 
 power of inspiration are not the fields of battles 
 " grandly won," but the scenes of noble failures : 
 a narrow stretch of Grecian beach, a cabined 
 prison room in Athens, a little unmarked mound 
 without the city's wall. Into such soil life's no- 
 blest inspirations strike their roots. The secret 
 of it is not hard to find. The failure of the man 
 who nobly fails is not his failure but another's. 
 The failure of Leonidas is Xerxes' failure and 
 the crash of all that Xerxes stands for. The fail- 
 ure of Socrates is the failure of his judges and 
 his enemies and the illiberal, shallow spirit that 
 in them lived. The failure of Jesus is not His, 
 but the failure of the men of His nation and His 
 time — of Judas and Peter and Annas and Pi- 
 late and the rest. Somehow in God's economy 
 
 16 
 
it is written that the ignoble failures shall come 
 to light by the revealing experience of heroic 
 failures. " Except a corn of wheat fall into the 
 earth and die it abideth alone, but if it die it 
 bringeth forth much fruit." What the world 
 needs to-day is the old need, the spirit that would 
 serve rather than the spirit that would succeed ; 
 the spirit that aims at something far beyond the 
 opinions and oppositions of men ; the spirit that 
 is free enough to fail that life may be holier and 
 the sweeter made; the spirit that shone down 
 from the face of Jesus — the deathless hope of it, 
 the glorious victory of it — over the dark cross 
 until it touched the hard faces of those four exe- 
 cutioners as " they sat and watched Him there." 
 Beloved of Christ Church, — beloved still, 
 howe'er the years may pass, loved with a love 
 that time is powerless to dim or change, 1 it 
 would be unfortunate indeed if the word so 
 often uttered here to-night should sink unquali- 
 fied into your thoughts, unqualified of Christ. 
 
 1 Instead of these words of address at Christ Church, were 
 the words, Gentlemen of the Graduating Class, in the Bac- 
 calaureate Sermon. 
 
 17 
 
i 
 It is Christ's failure that I bid you watch, it is 
 
 Christ's failure that I bid you dare, it is the en- 
 nobling and enriching of life through failure such 
 as His that I urge you to consider. Love God 
 as Jesus loved God; trust in God as did Jesus; 
 surrender your will to God's will as Jesus sur- 
 rendered His, and so far succeed in the noble 
 mastery of self. But in every relation of life 
 among men, seek to make of love the bond — 
 love that expresses itself in service. If honor 
 and power and wealth and high consideration 
 are yours, see that they are the incidents of a 
 career of usefulness. If obscurity and poverty 
 and the common lot are yours, remember that 
 these, too, are incidents in a life inspired — in- 
 cidents and accidents not mattering over much, 
 and never to be weighed against a love that ex- 
 presses itself in service. Bring to your home 
 and town and land the new and redeeming de- 
 votion for which they wait and yearn and suffer, 
 and so help to fill the whole earth with the know- 
 ledge of God "as the waters cover the sea." 
 And if at times the struggle seems too hard, and 
 the end remote, and the task thankless, and the 
 
 18 
 
worth of it doubtful, go look into the face of 
 Christ, and the yoke will be easy and the burden 
 light. Let us pray. 
 
 Father, we thank Thee for the perfect love of 
 Thy blessed Son ; for His perfeet trust in Thee ; 
 for His utter surrender of his His will to Thine. 
 But chiefly are we bound to thank Thee for His 
 failure, too, in order that something nobler than 
 success may live and thrive and bloom forever 
 in the seamed walls of our so rugged life. Keep 
 us, we beseech Thee, from the awful heresy of 
 " success," and teach us day by day the beauty 
 and the power of service. Not a few of those 
 assembled here are girding sword to thigh for 
 life's long battle. By the hallowing power of 
 their entire devotion make the places in which 
 they stand to fight glorious and holy with love's 
 sacrifice, whether to the shallow minds of men 
 they lose or win the battle. May they nobly vin- 
 dicate their right to fail for the success of lofty 
 issues. Lift their eyes above the darkness and 
 the cross, until in Jesus' face they see the light 
 and power and destiny that well becomes a Son 
 of God, Whose sons they are. For Christ's sweet 
 sake we ask it. Amen. 
 
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