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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

GIFT OF
Dean Luther A.Weigle

TRANSPLANTED TRUTHS

TRANSPLANTED TRUTHS
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BY
ALVAH SABIN HOBART, D. D.
Professor of New Testament Interpretation in Crozer Theological
Seminary. Author of " Tillage of the Heart," " Our Silent
Partner," " Seed Thoughts for Right Living "

PHILADELPHIA
THE GRIFFITH & ROWLAND PRESS
BOSTON ST. LOUIS
CHICAGO TORONTO, CAN.

Copyright 1914 by
A. J. ROWLAND, Secretary

Published December, 19x4

PREFACE

The Scripture is an ancient book. From some
standpoints it might be said to be out of fashion.
But it has a vitality about it that refuses to be put
aside. This is because it contains great, eternal
truths and principles that are like perennial plants,
that may be transplanted into new soil or removed
to new climate and still bear their flowers and shed
their native perfume.
The truths of the New Testament, when adapted
to modern life, do for people just what they did
for those to whom they were at first written. All
that is necessary is to clothe the ideas in our phrase
and apply them to our circumstances, and lo! the
old songs of praise and the ancient peace of heart
reappear. These sermons are attempts thus to trans
plant the ideas that gladdened the heart of Paul and
of his Ephesian brethren.
The Author.
Crozer Seminary, December, 1914.

Introduction  i
I. The Christian's Inheritance  13
II. The Christian's Sources of Re
ligious Knowledge  26
III. Three Special Requisites  38
IV. Together  59
V. The Authority and Scope of Paul's
Preaching  74
VI. The Preeminent Message of the
Church  87
VII. The Reason Why Things Are as
They Are  98
VIII. The Unity of the Spirit  114
IX. The Church an Organism  127
X. The Perfecting of Self  143
XI. The Christian Warfare  155
XII. The Christian's Armor  166

INTRODUCTION

The Essentials of Exposition
In the study of Scripture it is important to have
some general knowledge of the. situation under which
the various books were written, and the main pur
pose the writer had in his writing.
It is especially necessary to avoid taking words
and sentences out of their connection.
It is equally important to give each writer his own
use of words. Then, as now, individuals flavored
their words with their own conceptions. It would
be poor interpretation to take Jesus' word "' right
eousness," in Matthew 6:1, to mean the same
thing that Paul meant in Romans 3 : 5, or Philip
pians 3 : 9, when he used the same word.
When the actual ideas and conceptions of the
writer have been fairly well ascertained, there re
mains for the teacher or the preacher the task of
transposing them into modern forms of speech so
that the expositions will not themselves need an
expositor to make them effective.
And when the Scripture idea has been expressed
in modern phrases, there remains the need of show
ing the practical connection with our own daily life.
a

Transplanted Truths

For we meet a very common difficulty in keeping
the value of Scripture at par. Just as, when some
financial " investigation " has been started, the price
of a stock falls, so, owing to some modern inves
tigation of the Scriptures, many people hold them
in less esteem and study them with less zeal, think
ing they may not be always relied upon.
It would be useless to complain at this deprecia
tion of authority. It is as inevitable as the tides of
the ocean. Every man under such conditions must
come to see the value or he will not feel the au
thority. He must see how the Scripture teaching
touches his own life wisely and helpfully, or he will
neither care for its study nor listen to its exposition.
What cannot be verified in experience, and does not
when verified bring any good, will not — and it does
not matter if it does not— interest men.
The Scriptures as a whole are adopted as an
authority not because of any outside testimony to
their inspiration. Some parts of the Scriptures are
properly so accepted ; but in the main their author
ity is like that of the multiplication table, or the
fundamental rules of hygiene — they " work well "
and " fit life to a T." This volume is a contribution
to an experiential estimate of Ephesians.
When we meet a person for the first time we take
in at a glance some of his general features; after
ward his mental, moral, and spiritual characteristics.
In these swift and almost unconscious studies there
is a sifting out of things common to all men, and an

Introduction

estimate of what we may call the individual marks —
the looks, tones, and view-point peculiar to him. It
is these dissimilarities, these margins of difference
from others, that make people interesting or help
ful to us. We value them by the cargo of indi
vidualities they bring.
The processes by which we become acquainted
with literary writings are quite similar to those by
which we become acquainted with people. There is
a general idea at first, then grasp of the literary
form, then a study of the peculiar views of the
author which underlie and predetermine his ex
pressions. The study of the Bible proceeds in a similar
way. Each book has its general purpose and its in
dividuality. Its style and argument are determined
by the purpose and the personality of the author.
If these are difficult to discover, still the effort must
be made, or the flavor of the book will be lost, and
with it a large part of its value in life be unused.
The 'Author of this Letter
It comes to us as the letter of " Paul an apostle
of Christ Jesus by the will of God," and to that
fatherhood the letter has been ascribed by the tradi
tions of the church. There are, however, some very
inquiring — not to say hypercritical — writers who try
to make the writing out to be a bastard epistle which
its father for some reason was unwilling to own, but

Transplanted Truths

to which some kindly churchmen gave a name and a
family. But for ourselves, we shall be as well off,
and feel better off, to take it as it has been called
by tradition, and as it claims for itself to be, a letter
from Paul, leaving the burden of finding some
other authorship to those who desire to find it.1
To Whom Addressed
It comes to us directed to the " saints in Ephesus
and to the faithful in Christ Jesus." There is a
slight cloud resting upon its title. In some of the
old manuscripts the words " in Ephesus " are not
found; and so its proper owners are not certainly
identified as those living in Ephesus. But the next
clause has no uncertainty. It says, " the faithful in
Christ Jesus." That is broad enough to include
us all.
The variety in the manuscripts grew naturally
out of the character of the letter. Its contents are
so suitable for any church in any generation that
those who desired to use it elsewhere than at
Ephesus were justified in leaving out that special
designation, and thus making it general.
But we must unwind this word " saints " from
its ecclesiastical cerements, as the friends of Lazarus
loosed him and let him go from the realm of the
grave to the realm of the living. The Roman
1 See "The Pauline Letters," by Robert Scott, for the non-Pauline
authorship.

Introduction

Catholic Encyclopedia gives a good account of the
ecclesiastical saint. He must have been sinless,
and a miracle-worker, and have been dead a long
time. The " saint " of the New Testament is a
person who, having heard of the Lord Jesus, has
deliberately chosen to live his life in trustful obedi
ence to him. He is a living, not a dead man. Such
persons are at once enrolled, while living and still
imperfect in holiness, in the list of " saints," and
have a part in this letter.
General Characteristics of the Letter
It is fundamentally religious, and speaks only of
" spiritual " matters. There were struggles for
wealth there, and fightings to " keep the wolf from
the door." There were civil enormities and political
tyrannies that needed reformation. There were
matters of discipline in the church. There were
heresies, and more or less true philosophies. But
all these matters were ignored except as they were
affected by the spiritual teachings Paul gave. He
was not a reformer, nor a civil agitator except by
indirection. Spiritual in Paul's use does not mean other
worldly. It means that which has to do with a
man's spirit here or anywhere. It does not con
cern the coat a man wears, nor the food he eats,
nor the house he lives in; but it is concerned with
the man who wears the coat and eats the food and

Transplanted Truths

occupies the house. Paul knew better than most of
us that the spirit controls the comfort of men very
largely. A new house does not make a new man,
nor does a clean shirt give a man a clean heart, but
a clean heart will seek a clean shirt and a clean
body. Paul did not, as some say, " deflect " the
gospel, but he did " divert " men's thought from
that consideration of the material side of life which
seems, in the minds of the first three Gospels, to
have somewhat overshadowed the consideration of
the spiritual side. But it was not because he be
littled earthly matters, but because he saw with a
true insight that the permanent sources of im
provement in sociological conditions are to be found
in the recognition of the " spiritual blessings " of
which he writes and in the redemption first of the
individual. If we study the last part of the letter
we shall see that he does not at all neglect the
social relations, nor the social duties of people. He
did not even mark out the path that men's minds
must travel, as the gospel he preached would begin
to remake society. He frankly said in his letter
to the Corinthians that he only " laid a foundation."
The adjustment of life to the new relations of the
Christian family would be made later as occasion
and opportunity arrived. " But let every man take
heed how he builds." Only he must build on the
Christian foundation. If in our imagination we
should build a community in which Paul's sugges
tions and practical ideas about brotherliness were

Introduction

consistently carried out to their full application, we
should have a community identical in all its essen
tials of justice and sympathy with the one that
the critics of Paul would ascribe to Jesus only.
Paul went deep, and laid good foundations. He
was religious and spiritual all the way through his
letters. But he was never unsociological. With him,
as with Wesley, " Christianity is a social religion."
This letter is timeless. Paul deals with continu
ous things. No blessing mentioned by him was
for them and not for us, and no word of promise
to us which was not for them. No " better cove
nant," no types and shadows, no dispensation in
which they had no share. Every honor, every joy,
every duty, every hope for them is just as real and
fresh and inspiring for us. He says, " You are
being built upon the foundation." The mystery of
Christ is " now revealed." My wbrk is " to make
all men see." " Ye were darkness, but now ye are
light." And all this is " in Christ!' To seek the bless
ings of which he writes outside of that glorious
one would be to preannounce a failure. Paul was
not a mere moral reformer, he was a Christian
preacher. He was not preaching merely a new
morality or a new code of morals. He had gone
through all the unsatisfactoriness of those things as
he has told us in the seventh of Romans. The
experiences that he and his brethren in Ephesus
and in Galatia had passed through had come to

8 Transplanted Truths
them in no other way than by faith in Jesus ; 2 and
therefore Paul could not be anything else than a
preacher of Christ Jesus. In his letter to the
Corinthians he said : " I determined not to know
anything among you save Jesus Christ and him
crucified" (i Cor. 2:2). He would not have
denied that there are good things in good morals
and philosophy, just as there are good uses for feet
and hands. But the usefulness is conditioned on
subordination to a head. Christ to his people is
"head over all" (Eph. 1:22). To follow a sys
tem of morals having Christ as its ideal and inspira
tion is salvation; but a system of morals without
him fails for want of definiteness and of helpful
power. A philosophy of life with Christian ideals
as the basis is good, but without him it gives the
soul nothing but what Hume called an " inexpres
sible loneliness."
It is universal. There is nothing there which is
not open to the whole world on the same conditions.
Paul speaks about Christian things, but Christ in
his estimate is no local Lord, nor some enlarged
man that has been " deified " by men, nor " the
greatest man, but one having the limitations of
humanity." To him Christ is the one around whom
it is the plan of God to gather together in one
all things in heaven and in earth. (1 : 10.) When
2 " Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or the hearing
of faith?' (Gal. 3: 1-9.) "Having heard of the faith in the
Lord Jesus which is among you." (Eph. 1 : 15.) " By grace have
ye been saved." (Eph. 2 : 5.)

Introduction

this is to be fully accomplished may not be known
to us, but from Paul's view-point the sweep of
God's mercy is so wide that somehow, in some way,
the work and care of Jesus touches for good all
things in heaven and in earth. The whole creation
groaneth, waiting for the full manifestation of the
sons of God. (Rom. 8:20-23.) We at times hear
men say : " This religion is not for me, it is for
those that have a special aptitude for it " ; others
say : " This is for certain races, and is not fitted for
other races " ; but Paul says that all men and all
creatures have something in Christ, and Christ has
something in all men and all creatures.
The Danger and the Method of Defense
Ephesus was a city in the west part of Asia
Minor, and in Paul's time was an important city.
The people of that region had been taught that a
wooden image of Diana had once fallen from heaven,
and a temple had been built for it; and therefore
Diana was mightily pleased with the city and coun
try of Ephesus. The temple at that time was one
of the "seven wonders of the world." A great
temple had been built five hundred years before
Paul's time. That had been burned by one Heros-
tratus, who " fired the Ephesian dome " to make
himself famous. But a new one, built three hun
dred and fifty years before Paul's day, stood in its
place. It was a thing of beauty and riches. One

10 Transplanted Truths
hundred and twenty-seven columns entered into its
construction, each one of which is said to have been
contributed by one of the princes of Asia. Croesus
of Lydia, the richest man of the ancient world, was
one of the large contributors to its cost. It was
the depository of rare paintings and statuary. And,
as temples were sacred places, it became a sort of
safety vault for the jewels and money of the rich.
Festivals were held there to which the people of
the surrounding country came with their friends
and families, bringing gifts to the priests and taking
relics back as souvenirs. Thus the business of the
city depended largely on the worship of Diana.
Luke, in Acts (19: 23-28), tells us that the city was
greatly disturbed at one time by the success of
Paul's preaching. He was shutting up the image
factories as great revivals shut up the saloons in
our day. The zeal of the citizens for Diana con
tained the reverence of the Jew for Jerusalem, the
hankering of the aristocratic for London, the love
for Paris by the devotees of pleasure, and the desire
for New York by the money-seeker, all combined
in one great enthusiasm. There had once been a
philosophic community there, but in Paul's time the
city was superstitious and licentious. Vile practices
were associated with the temple worship, and the
general morals of the place were low.3

3 See Farrar,
son, " Life and jopisucs oi
Traveler and Roman Citizen.

_"£'Kio£ Pfuk" P,hap- 3i; or Conybeare and How-
I Epistles of Paul"; or Ramsay, "Saint Paul the

Introduction ii

In the midst of these surroundings a few Chris
tians were trying to live their lives in devotion and
trust to another God, who had no temple there,
whose public worship furnished no financial gain
for the worshipers and had no social or fashion
able influence to bolster it. They were not only
laughed at for worshiping a crucified criminal, but
they were persecuted by the community and de
serted by their friends for their seeming folly and
madness. Paul had led these people to Christ. And he was
no traveling gospeler who, when he had counted the
converts for advertising purposes and received the
collection, moved on to new harvest fields. In
every city where he preached he left a part of his
heart, and took the affections of some of the peo
ple with him. Being anxious for their welfare he
writes this letter. In it he does not ridicule the
Diana religion. Probably we should have told them
that they were a lot of foolish, deluded people to
believe in an old chunk of rotten wood; that their
religion had the silliest superstition behind it, and
had nothing to offer to a soul hungry for the
favor of God. All that would have been true. But
Paul does not say a word in contempt of Diana. He
seems to think that if he can tell them the facts
about the " riches of God in Christ Jesus," they
will have a permanent reason for staying faithful.
His method commends itself to us very heartily.
Men are not permanently changed in conduct or

12 Transplanted Truths
faith until they see the advantages of a change.
Therefore Paul, confident that if they see the case
clearly they will have a permanent motive to " walk
worthy of their calling," shows them what they have
" in Christ."

CHAPTER I
THE CHRISTIAN'S INHERITANCE
" Even as he chose us in him before the foundation
of the world, that we should be holy and without
blemish before him in love; having foreordained us
unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto him
self, according to the good pleasure of his will, to
the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely
bestowed on us in the Beloved; in whom we have our
redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our
trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which
he made to abound toward us in all wisdom and pru
dence, making known unto us the mystery of his will,
according to his good pleasure which he purposed in
him. . . In whom also we were made an heritage, . .
in whom ye also, having heard the word of the truth,
the gospel of your salvation, — in whom having also
believed, ye were sealed with that spirit of promise . . .
unto the praise of his glory." — Eph. i : 4-14.
We are to consider the specific blessings springing
out of God's grace.
First, "He chose us in him, that we should be
holy and without blame before him." Look at the
framework of that sentence a moment. " He,"
that is, God, " chose us . . . that we should be holy."
If that means anything, it means that the God
of heaven is interested in all our efforts to be good 13

14 Transplanted Truths
men and women. The endeavors we make to put
away all smallness and meanness, to rise up into a
high, clean, honest air, and live there, so that we
can look men in the face with open eyes and frank
countenance — the daily effort to live with a con
science void of offense — how many-sided the battle
is ! — in it all God is a prime mover. Paul tells us —
what we all believe but often forget — that the
heavenly Father has chosen us and brought us into
Christ on purpose to bring about the fulfilment of
those very desires — " Chose us in him to be holy
and without blemish."
Our forces for righteousness then are not limited
to our own powers. He is a " silent partner " in our
endeavor. This is not mere theory. Every man knows that
when we search our hearts to find the root and foun
tain of our endeavors to be good we find that some
thing in us which is not of us began the work. Re
ligious life is our response to a call within us.
We cannot trace it to its source. But, as when
our thought follows back a great river up through
the valleys, and into the creeks and rivulets, until
it ends in an area of moist land, which somehow
finds its outlet for surplus moisture through the
springs and streams, so this purpose to be holy
has its origin and supply in a wide extent of in
fluences that come from God, working in us to will
and to do his good pleasure. And the conviction
that God not only wants us to be holy, but that he

The Christian's Inheritance 1 5
is working with us to be so is a constant source of
strength and courage.
Secondly, " He predestinated us unto the adoption
of children."
A close look at this shows that what is printed
second was really first. " What is first in intention
is last in execution." Having predestinated us he
chose us.
The predestination was first. How we stumble
over that word " predestinate " ! The memories of
discussions, even of wars and lifelong hostilities,
come like doves to their windows. One is almost
afraid to call attention to the word lest he cannot
succeed, after once having opened the flood of mem
ories, in getting the mind back to the truth in the
passage. We shall find relief from all the trouble
if we note and hold exactly to what is said. Pre
destinated to what? He does not say to salvation.
Much less does he say to condemnation, but to be
" children1 of God."
It will not be considered irreverent if we per
sonify the thoughts of our heavenly Father in the
precreation days. He sees that some people will
in the face of difficulty and temptation become
followers of his Son, and his thought is, What shall
be done with them ? One thought says : " Let them
be made to control the world ; give them the domin
ion of sea and land, make them kings and priests
for the world." But that is not enough to satisfy
the Father's heart. Another thought says : " Let

16 Transplanted Truths

them be made to live forever. Give them to eat
again of the tree of life, make them physically con
querors over all disease." But the Father says:
" No, that is not sufficient; it would tie them to
earth." Another says, " Make them like unto the
angels of heaven." But he says, " No, I desire
something better than that." And when all have
exhausted their best wishes, the Father says : " I
will make them my children. Adopt them as sons."
As Paul afterward says, we are to receive the
" adoption as sons," and have the " spirit of adop
tion." That is, we are to be like children of God
and feel like his sons, not like his servants. That
word " children " we must take in the sense that it
had in New Testament times — likeness to God in
character. We say to a boy, " You are your father's
boy," because he is like his father. A more common
expression tells the same story, " A chip out of the
old block." That is the idea in " children of God."
Peter tells the same story when he says we are
made " partakers of the divine nature." Now what
is here declared is not that God predestinated this
man and that woman to be saved, but that the saved
should be like himself in character and in holiness.
Not who are to be saved, but unto what they are to
be saved. We were made in the image of his being,
and are to be conformed to his character. It was
the divine purpose to people heaven with beings in
his own image, having likeness to his character.
That is what was predetermined.

The Christian's Inheritance iy
Then the question of how came up for considera
tion ; and in the wisdom of God it was decided that
Christ should come into the world and show the way
of life. Men should become his followers, and thus
following him come into the likeness of God, which
was the ultimate aim of it all. To the " adoption of
children." Not creatures, not servants, not subjects
of a king — these words are all too small to tell the
whole truth; they have no room for love and trust
and eternal fellowship — but " Father " and " son " ;
these have a meaning that approaches the truth.
" Adoption of sons ! " It seems to me that if we
dwell upon that we shall see that it involves all the
rest. But it is rolled up very close. It needs open
ing and spreading out in detail to make its fulness
to be clearly seen.
Thirdly, "we have redemption." There has been
much discussion about redemption. This metaphor
has been conscripted into service for the defense of
a certain theory of the atonement. But all that is
foreign to Paul's thought here. He defines his own
word by saying as an explanatory phrase, " The for
giveness of our trespasses." That makes it read,
as our third blessing, " We have received the for
giveness of our trespasses."
Up to this place in the inventory the blessings are
spoken of simply as having been provided for us.
Now they are regarded as already come into our
possession. We begin not simply to hope, but to
have. The old-fashioned way of stating it was,
B

18 Transplanted Truths
"Justification is the great gospel blessing." The
old-fashioned question of the convert was, " Have
you made your peace with God ? " That question
has partly gone out of fashion. It will come in again
because it seeks a great truth. As soon as the heart
becomes really alive to its sinfulness and to the
beauty of holiness, it finds the sense of doing wrong
and of feeling wrong, and of loving wrong even
when we do not do it, is a high barrier between us
and our God. No man wants to praise or pray
when he does not feel forgiven. Somehow the
fact of our disturbed relations with God is
troublesome. We may be unwilling to admit it to
others, but when we are alone we dot not look up.
Our countenance, like Cain's, is fallen. Before we
can make any progress in goodness or have any
real peace, we must get an assurance that we are
right with God. Jesus knew what he was about
when he pictured the returning sinner under the
figure of the prodigal son. He did not make him
return in the night, and sneak around to the quar
ters of the servants and tell them not to tell his
father. We might have told it that way. We could
have made him say to his father's head servant:
" I've had enough of the world. Let me have some
work on the old homestead. Give me what you
please for wages. I am half dead with hunger. But
don't tell the old man. If you can get word to
mother, do it, and she will keep mum. When I have
got cleaned up and begin to look like my old self

The Christian's Inheritance 19
again, then we will see the old gent, but not now."
Well, if we were disposed to tell it that way it would
show how little we know about human hearts. Do
you remember the story of Absalom? (2 Samuel 14.)
He was permitted to come back from Egypt and not
see his father. But he could not stand it long. He
set fire to his father's grain to obtain admission to
his presence. Jesus makes the prodigal say : " I will
go to my father, and I will say to him, I have
sinned." No peace was for him until the relations
with his father were restored. All the preparatory
experiences bore fruit when his father fell on his
neck and kissed him. He then " received redemp
tion, even the forgiveness of sins." So now the
Christian sings: Happy day, happy day,
When Jesus washed my sins away.
Strip it of all poetry, come down to the coldest and
most careful statement, and a sense of the forgive
ness of sin is the first and most needed, as it is the
most inclusive of all blessings. And that is what
we are said to have received. It seems to me that
many believers in Christ lack a clear sense of the
value of this blessing. The doctrine of " assurance "
has fallen into disrepute ; but there is a most blessed
treasure waiting for the man that does not have a
sense of forgiveness. And if he has it, what bless
ing is there which is not included in this? It im
plies that we are now on such terms with our Father

20 Transplanted Truths
that he can do for us what his heart prompts. Be
fore this we stood in our own light ; we hindered his
grace; now the way is open, and all good is free
to come as fast as we are able to take it.
Fourthly, we are made his confidants. " Having
made known unto us the mystery of his will." This
recalls the words of Jesus to his twelve disciples:
" No longer do I call you servants, for the servant
knoweth not what his lord doeth ; but I have called
you friends, for all things that I have heard from
my Father I have made known unto you " (John
15:15). The argument is that we are shown to be
friends by the fact that we are taken into con
fidence. That is Paul's thought here. God is said
to have made known unto us the mystery of his
will concerning mankind. This is a truth that is
likely to stumble us. It seems altogether an excess
of pious conceit to say or to think that the Creator
has communicated anything to us except what we
can gather from the created world. It involves the
whole question whether any real revelation has
been, or will be, made to us. This is not the place
to discuss that great question. It certainly is an
important question. But Paul assumes that a reve
lation has been made to us in Christ Jesus. All
the New Testament has the same assumption. (And
we are not now defending the New Testament.
We are studying it to see what it teaches us.) And
I think that many Christians feel themselves more
in the dark than they need to. It is not an in-

The Christian's Inheritance 21
frequent thing to hear people speak of life as a
" journey through an unexplored wilderness " and
of death as " a leap in the dark." But Paul does
not so consider it. And we, if we credit his teach
ings, need not so consider it.
Suppose we should forget everything we have
learned out of the teachings of Jesus, what should
we know about the origin or nature of our own
souls? What about the future? Are we to live or
not, when we have " shuffled off this mortal coil "?
Is wickedness to trouble us always? Will death
forever threaten us, and smother our most alluring
plans and ambitions? What will be the outcome
of human history? Are there any definite plans
and principles that we may follow with assurance
that they lead to peace and life? If, I say, we were
to lose all that the teachings of Jesus tell us about
these matters we should be plunged at once into the
chill of an unrelieved agnosticism, or the dead,
hopeless condition of fatalism.
But, while much is left unrevealed, we have given
to us the repeated assurances of an attainable im
mortality of peace and usefulness. We are given
principles of conduct that are safe and already-
tried and proved. We are assured that this life is
destined to culminate in a kingdom of God on
earth as obedient and as pure as the kingdom in
heaven. And we are assured that God will
"gather together in one all things in Christ," and
that the various branches of the human family

22 Transplanted Truths

will be united in one Christ-centered community,
controlled by the spirit of brotherhood. And at
some time this " mortal will put on immortality,"
and with bodies and souls transformed into the
image of Jesus, will live and serve in peace and
joy. It is therefore the privilege of the Christian
not to live in the shadows. He may not think that
an unfriendly power controls even this life. He is
taught that all things work together for good to
them that love God, and that some time we shall be
transferred into conditions that are beyond our
present power to realize.
It will be a great comfort for us all to think
much of this part of our inheritance. It will
banish the pessimism that at times makes us
wretched, and will give us great sense of triumph
over fear of the so-called and miscalled " king
of terrors." It will put into our mouths Paul's
triumphant outburst: " O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?" (i Cor. 15:56.)
Fifthly, we are taken as his heritage. We notice
the change in translation. The old reads, " received
an inheritance." The new reads, " are made an in
heritance." But the new is correct. The idea under
the figure is that of a son who is the great treasure
of his father's love. The same idea under another
figure is found in the Old Testament. " Jehovah's
portion is his people " ( Deut. 32:9). " Save thy peo
ple and bless thine heritage" (Ps. 28). "Blessed

The Christian's Inheritance 23
be Israel, mine inheritance" (Isa. 29:25). The
Christian people as a whole are thought of as God's
peculiar treasure — the company he delights in. I
am hesitant to press this thought because it so far
transcends the common thought of man that it
seems like an extravagant or a meaningless expres
sion. But Paul was not an extravagant writer.
And this is not an accidental thought that flitted
through his mind and was gone. It was a deep-
seated idea of his. He speaks about the church
being the " body of Christ." He tells us that " Christ
loved the church and gave himself for it." He says
that his own ambition is to present the church a
spotless and " chaste virgin to Christ." Let me
speak as if we were not involved in the case. This
is the thought: God has a plan in human life and
history. Does this seem at first a statement with
out foundation? Yet- a second thought dispels the
doubt. If God is not less intelligent than a man
he has plans and purposes in all he does. In New
England it used to be said that if a boy whittled
on a stick and did not make anything but whittlings
he revealed a great deficiency in his make-up. He
was expected to know what he was making, and
then to make it. Is God a mere whittler? Is
human history, is the Old Testament history as it
converges toward the cross and the despoiled tomb,
merely a lot of whittlings? Is God thus deficient
in sight and purpose? No man that thinks of It
calmly will take that position. No ! God must have

24 Transplanted Truths
a plan for humanity. He has set his heart to do
something. And that something is to redeem men
from sin and glorify them. If that is true, then he
sets his heart on the people he is to redeem. It
will be to him a cherished plan. The Christian
people are a treasured heritage.
But this truth has value also as an inspiration
to watchfulness over our conduct. The Roman
Catholic counts it a glory to belong to the " world
church." He rejoices that he belongs to an organ
ization that dates from the apostles, that has one
head, one creed, one liturgy, one language. In any
country he hears the same prayers and the same
anthems in the familiar language of his home. It
is an inspiration toward being worthy of such a
company. Some of us also feel a kind of pride in
the church we belong to. It reen forces our motive
power, as sails reenforce the power of the engine in
the steamer. Paul would remind us that we are
members of the " church of God, the pillar and
ground of the truth " ; the body that is called the
" bride of the Lamb." And it prompts us with no
little spurring to " walk worthy of our calling."
And he also adds, that the "Holy Spirit is the
' earnest of our inheritance.' " That is, the work
of the Holy Spirit in us is the first result of his
purpose to make us, and to fit us to be his heritage.
In Romans (chap. 5) Paul says that our hope will
not "make us ashamed, because the love of God
is shed abroad in our hearts." That is, we are

The Christian's Inheritance 25
not following a will-o'-the-wisp or groundless ex
pectations when we anticipate the future glory.
The results are already experienced in part by the
changed spirit of our lives. The love that char
acterizes the heavenly Father has some place, and
a growing one, in us. Our sense of forgiveness,
our increased kindliness toward people that are not
in themselves lovable, our delight in doing good to
others, our increased interest in things spiritual, our
new liking for the Bible, our broadening views of
God's kingdom, our exalted and growing appre
ciation of Jesus — all these and many more of the
same kind are the first-fruits of the work he is
doing in us — the " earnest of our inheritance." The
full harvest is not yet ripened, but it is ripening.
Heaven will not be generically different from this
life, but an extension in a more unhindered form
of our best experiences here.
Such then are the " riches of his grace toward us
in Christ Jesus." If those Ephesians saw the truth
they must have been wonderfully helped to stand
against the allurements of the old associations, and
to endure the persecutions for the faith's sake. And
we, if we can receive it, shall find help to meet our
responsibilities by often considering what is given
to us also as the legitimate successors of those
ancient believers.1
1 See Col. 1 : 23; Acts 23 : 6; 24 : 10; 26 : 26; 28 : 20; Rom.
5 : 2; 8 : 20; 12 : 12; 15 : 13; 1 Cor. 13 : 13; 2 Cor. 3 : 12; Gal.
5 : 5; Eph. 1 : 18; 2 : 12; 4:4; 1 Peter 1 : 7; 1 Tim. 6 : 14;
? Peter 1 : 10.

CHAPTER II
THE CHRISTIAN'S SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE
After his " inventory," as given in the first verses
of the chapter, it would seem almost unnecessary for
Paul to have said anything more about the " riches
of grace in Christ Jesus." But he was well ac
quainted with the mind and heart of mankind, and
knew that a mere single utterance of great truth is
not always effective. He also knew that in his effort
to uplift his fellow, men he was not working alone.
Himself an " ambassador for Christ," he sought
help from his Master. So he wrote :
" I cease not to make mention of you in my prayers
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give unto
you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge
of him; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that
ye may know."
The same uncertainty hovers about men now.
We are all told about the riches of God, and the
good things of the Christian life, but yet the appre
ciation of them is often too small.
A great proportion of the Christians live in a
sort of poverty-smitten spirit because they do not
really know their riches. They are sincere and
26

Sources of Religious Knowledge 27
zealous, but they are only slightly conscious of their
opportunities and powers. This will appear if we
think of some of Paul's expressions, and see how
extravagant they seem to be: "I rejoice and will
rejoice " ; " O the depth of the riches, both of
the wisdom and knowledge of God " ; "I am per
suaded that nothing can separate us from the love
of God.'' Or take the words of the psalmist:
" The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want " ;
" My soul shall make her boast in the Lord " ;
" Bless the Lord, O my soul." These people all
knew the Lord, and to them these expressions were
feeble attempts to tell what they felt and knew, while
to many others they seem to be extravagant or
poetic exaggerations. And in some people's mouths
they would be such, for their knowledge and ex
perience is small. We have all been told the facts
just as the Ephesians had; but we have not esti
mated the facts at their full value. There is need
for our best friends to pray for us, as Paul did for
us all, that the " God of our Lord Jesus Christ may
give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
knowledge of him . . . that we may know."
Let us consider more carefully his words. He
recognizes two great channels through which the
knowledge about religion comes to men : namely, wis
dom and revelation. These are parts of one plan.
They supplement one another. A man with wisdom
only does not know by experience the riches of the
Christian life. One may be a very learned theo-

28 Transplanted Truths

logian and a very ignorant Christian. Henry Ward
Beecher once said that he knew the doctrines of
theology as a woman knows the pins in a paper of
pins, and was utterly disgusted with the whole busi
ness. John Calvin, regarded merely as a logical
reasoner about the alleged facts of religion, is con
sidered the best theologian the world has ever seen.
But he could order a fellow man burned at the
stake for differing with him about a doctrine. Mere
wisdom does not soften the heart of man.
And, on the other hand, revelation does not meet
all the demands. Both are needed.
Wisdom is said to be " the best use of the
best means for the best ends." A spirit of wisdom
in a farmer would be a good exercise of good
judgment in determining what is the best crop to
raise on his farm, and how is the best way to raise
it. That sort of farmer will read the magazines
that discuss such things. His house will have some
thing besides an almanac for reading. He will get
the bulletins from the Agricultural Department of
the government. He will attend farmers' institutes,
and compare notes with the men of his vicinity.
He will keep accurate records of his own fields and
crops for future reference. That is the " spirit of
wisdom" in agriculture.
In business life the " spirit of wisdom " leads a
man to read the literature of the subject. He will
watch with an alert mind the movements of his time
that may affect trade. He will be a student of the

Sources of Religious Knowledge 29
commerce of the world and its conditions. He will
keep accurate accounts of profits and losses.
A more complex subject is the training of the
family. A " spirit of wisdom " in the knowledge of
child nature leads parents to observe carefully, to
read, and to think. They will not forget the im
portance of self-training. Men put wisdom at work
in every occupation that interests them. A man
does not raise chickens or puppies without it. How
can we expect, then, to cultivate Christian character,
and to Christianize the community in which we live
without putting our best thought in its most effect
ive form into use?
I take it that this is about Paul's idea when he
prays that they may have a " spirit of wisdom." It
implies that they will make the best use of the
best means to gain that knowledge.
Whence comes this wisdom? The first thing we
notice in this connection is that our Creator has
appointed as chief among the means of obtaining
knowledge our thinking faculties. We must use theni
well. He gave us lungs to breathe with ; and ordained
that no man can have good health that does not
use his lungs to their proper efficiency. There is
no substitute for the " natural way." There are
some foods that are the natural supply for the
waste of our bodies. There are no substitutes.
That is God's way. Predigested foods are not
the best foods. A man's stomach was not made
merely for ornament or amusement.

30 Transplanted Truths
Children can be brought up in an orphan asylum, by
hired nurses ; but there is always a lack in the child
that was not brought up by his own loving parents
in a home where religion was in the air all the
time. Under the same principle we may say that
some religion may be acquired without much think
ing. But there are great truths which a man must
know intellectually if he has the strongest faith
and the most substantial character. And these
truths can only be known by a thoughtful study of
them. That is the heaven-ordained channel by
which they come into the soul. If a man does not
get these truths into his mind he cannot have the
confidence such things beget.
There are certain qualities of mind that are pro
duced by meditation, others by acts of devotion.
These are important and should be cultivated;
but these alone cannot give the man or the woman
who faces the active and pungent facts of life a
steadfast courage. A man may meditate like the
monks, or the priests of India; but he will never
by that exercise alone understand how great and
good a thing is the Christian hope. Nor will he be
able to regulate his active business life by Christian
principles, or to discharge his duties as a Christian
citizen with wisdom and efficiency.
We see how Jesus laid stress on this thinking ele
ment of life. He has been called the great Teacher.
The record makes that quality very plain and
emphatic. He went about in all Galilee, " teaching

Sources of Religious Knowledge 31
in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of
the kingdom " ( Matt. 4 : 23 ) . " He opened his mouth
and taught them" (Matt. 5:2). "He departed to
teach in their synagogues" (Matt. 11 :i). " I sat
daily with you teaching in the temple" (Matt. 26:
55). He made three teaching tours throughout the
land besides the time spent in teaching in Jerusalem.
But what does it imply to say that he " taught " ?
What is it to teach ? It is quite different from say
ing that he told them things; or that he awakened
their sympathies, or answered their curiosity, or
tickled their fancies. To teach is to wind up the
wonderful machinery of men's minds, and set it
at work making ideas for itself from the material
furnished it. When a man teaches he lays some facts
down before another, and induces that other to take
up the facts and weave them into ideas and activ
ities himself. The attention must be secured, the
imagination energized, the memory awakened, the
laws of association invoked, the reasoning powers
enlisted. The real teacher does not impart knowl
edge, he only imparts information, and thrills the
pupil with a life that transmutes information into
knowledge and self-activity. To say then that Jesus
taught is to say that he set men to thinking. He
honored the thinking faculties and intellectual
forces of men. If a preacher should say, " There
is no use in trying to teach this congregation," it
would be at once called the same as saying that
the congregation was not intelligent enough to be

32 Transplanted Truths
taught. I knew one church that had a minister who
preached very high sermons. I suppose they were
above the heads of a large part of his congregation.
But they liked him, because they said he gave them
credit for being intelligent whether they were or
not. Jesus honored the intelligence of men in all
his teaching. He did not seek assent without
reasons. He did not reason about what everybody
knew and assented to.
It is this fact about " wisdom " that gives value
to all Bible study. Sunday-schools, sermons, re
ligious books, systems of truth are all implied in
Paul's idea of " wisdom in the knowledge of God."
The study of theology is included in its boundaries ;
and of course schools where theology is taught.
The family circle where the Bible is read and re
ligion is discussed is a part of it. Every man
that studies divine things is helping to answer the
prayer Paul here records.
But wisdom alone does not meet all the necessities
of the Christian life. One may concentrate his mind
on the Bible, and on the subject of religion, and yet
have a very inadequate idea of God's goodness and
of his own worth. The " enlightening of our
hearts," as Paul puts it, is a great mystery; but it
is a most certain and oft-experienced fact of life.
A young man is away from home, full of his busi
ness. He is not a disobedient son nor a prodigal
son ; he has a fair sense of his father's worth. But
some day as he is thinking about it, he gets a vision

Sources of Religious Knowledge 33
of his parents that is new. He sees the sacrifice
they made to give him an education. How they
ofttimes restrained him when he was angry about
it; how they denied him things he wanted, for
which he thought them stingy. But this afternoon
all that comes into his view as a part of their
thoughtful discipline, fitting him for the very busi
ness efficiency he now has. His eyes fill with tears
as he thinks of it. " I never had so high an esti
mate of my parents before," he says. Whence
came this vision of his parents?
Or here is a traveling man, away from home, in a
hotel, on Sunday. He has not received any letter,
nor had any special reason for it, but, as he thinks,
a vision comes into his soul. He sees his wife in
a new light. She has cared for the family — his
family — in his absence. All the responsibility for
the training of the boys and the girls she has borne.
She has economized and labored without any com
plaint. She has given up pleasures and company
that she might help him in the task of supporting
the household. And he says to himself : " I have
been thoughtless and selfish; I have kept back the
words of appreciation ; I have been a cold, heartless
fellow, and I am ashamed of myself." So he
writes a letter and tries to tell her his new vision.
He makes poor work of it, for he is unaccustomed
to the language of compliment as a Scotchman. But
he tries, and she is astonished and tearful when she
gets it. Now the mystery of it is, why^th^vision
c

34 Transplanted Truths
of things ? It was not sought for, but it came down
upon him. That is a hint of what is meant by having
the " heart enlightened " and by " a spirit of revela
tion." In the realm of religion the same process is com
mon. Men come unexpectedly to see beauties in
Christ that they had not seen. Paul once wrote:
" I have known Christ after the flesh, but now
I know him so no more." Henry Ward Beecher
once had such a vision of Jesus that he said he never
forgot. It was a mount of transfiguration to him,
an experience of monumental gladness and awe.
So men have visions of their own sinfulness.
Paul said : " I was alive without the law once, but
when the commandment came, sin revived, and I
died" (Rom. 7:9). Many of us have had such
visions. We call them " convictions of sin." We,
who have thought of ourselves as rather above the
average in goodness, had some taint of the spirit
that the Pharisee had of whom Jesus spoke: I
thank thee that I am not as other men, especially
like this neighbor of mine that belongs to the other
church. One day the glory of ourselves departed,
and we said : " Oh, how mean and selfish I can
be if I give way to what is in me. It seems as if
my heart is as full of evil possibilities as a garden
is of weeds." That is an "enlightenment of the
heart." Sometimes we see life itself in a new light. We
have been saying, What does it all amount to, any-

Sources of Religious Knowledge 35
way? A man just works and eats and gets food
for others to eat, and then dies. What does it
profit? Is life worth the bother? If we could get
out of it easily, would it not be the best thing? Why
not " shuffle off this mortal coil " ? But then we
might dream. " Aye, there's the rub." Then some
notable day there comes down on us a new vision.
The kaleidoscope of life presents a new picture to
our minds. Human history looks no longer like a
sort of aimless wandering of the race like an orbit-
less comet, but it appears great divine purposes are
being wrought out. Some time God's kingdom will
come in the earth. Wickedness will be done away.
Love will reign. The forces of earth will become the
servants of man to make all men see what is the
abounding goodness and wisdom of God. And we
are a part of that history.
Or, to change the figure, a man sees himself as one
note of that great coming chorus of earth to the
praise of God and the delight of all creation. He
is one of that numberless company that is being
recruited from earth to share in future conditions
so glorious that the best of apostles said of it : " It
is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We
know that if he shall be manifested, we shall be
like him, for we shall see him even as he is "
(1 John 3:2).
Or a man has been thinking of the Bible as an
old-fashioned book outgrown by the intelligence
of the age. But one day it dawns on him that it is

36 Transplanted Truths
the oldest history of the world. It gives the noblest
type of men its highest sanction. Parts of it set the
fashion of living and thinking about God three thou
sand four hundred years ago, and its fashion is get
ting more and more to be the fashion of the world.
It is the only book that tells us anything about the
future life of individuals, or the future of the
human race on earth. Then it seems to him to be
in fact as well as in the rhetoric of its admirers
" the Book of books," incomparable in its wisdom, its
beauty, and its moral excellence.
Another day we saw the church of God with its
glory on. It appeared to be the company through
which the noblest ideals are being realized in life.
It contains all God-loving souls in all countries and
all ages. It is the one only company that is organ
ized with no other purpose than to make men good
and the world happy. It is the pattern association
for the world to follow. All family teaching is in
its curriculum, all sociology is fundamentally taught
by its great leaders. It is the " church of the living
God, the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim.
3:i5)- So through all the various departments of life,
we get these mysterious " revelations " of things.
We may live much of the time in the fog, or the
gloom, but there are occasions when the sun shines
and we see things in clear light. Our progress and
our steadfastness in Christian faith and service are
always dependent on this element of enlightenment.

Sources of Religious Knowledge 2>7
Paul prayed that such enlightenment might be
given us. We shall be in line with the best suc
cess if we too keep open hearts toward the Father,
and ask him daily for such revelation and enlighten
ments as will enliven and encourage us.

CHAPTER III
THREE SPECIAL REQUISITES
" That ye may know what is the hope of his calling,
what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the
saints, and what the exceeding greatness of his power
to us-ward who believe." — Eph. i : i8, 19.
In a former study we found that two sources of
information are both open and needed for us to
obtain a full appreciation of what are our Christian
possessions : namely, human thinking and help from
above — " wisdom " and " revelation." Now we will
try and put our own thinking powers at work, and
also humbly ask, as Milton asked in writing his
" Paradise Lost " : O Spirit that dost prefer
Before all temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou knowest.
I
And the first requisite is that we " know the hope
of his calling." That is, the hope which is implied
and involved in the fact that God calls us to our faith
in Christ. This takes for granted, what every
thoughtful Christian assents to, that he is a Christian
38

Three Special Requisites 39
primarily in response to some sort of " call " from
above. Our whole Christian life as a whole does not
consist of a painful search for God, but is a re
sponse to his searching for us. The Saviour was not
careless in his expressions when he compared men
to lost sheep, and himself to a shepherd seeking
them. Our answer to his call is the substance of
our Christian life. Paul does not argue that point,
for he did not need to. Into our life has come a
" call." What is implied in that fact ?
The " hope of his calling," such as it is, is meas
ured by the character of the one that calls. If I
should get a letter from Giovanni Anotelli, asking me
to meet him in New York to-morrow at three o'clock,
the first question I should ask would be, " Who is
this Giovanni Anotelli? " And if I was told that he
is the organ-grinder who cheers our streets in the
springtime, I should say : " I cannot take the trouble
to go there. Let him either come to me, or tell
me what he wants and who he is." If the letter
was signed by the chairman of the pulpit committee
of some important church I should probably wire
him that I am not in the field for a pastorate, but
will meet him as desired. If the letter came from
President Wilson I should go at once ; and I should
tell my wife that as soon as I find out whether it is
a call to be chaplain to the House of Representatives,
or to go on a special mission to China, to persuade
Yuan Shi Kai not to establish the Confucian Church,
I will wire her. A call from the President awakens

40 Transplanted Truths
the keenest expectations. A call from the organ-
grinder does little but provoke a smile.
What then is implied when a man feels that some
persistent mysterious voice within him that he calls
God's voice, has called him to any sort of task or
duty? It must be some good destiny; for nothing
else could come from the Divine. It must be some
great destiny, for he does not deal in small matters.
It must have some good purpose in this life, for
his kingdom is to come in earth as in heaven. It
must reach into the next life, for nothing human
perfects itself or is perfected here in this world.
And it must be something in which we have a part
and a task ; for while it is " God working in us to will
and to do of his pleasure," we are to " work out " —
that is, finish up — " our salvation with fear and
trembling." And it is important that we do not miss his thought
for us. If a man were to think that he is called to
be the avenger of crimes against humanity and
should begin to persecute he would lose his time
and labor ; for vengeance is not man's. If one were
to think himself called to build up a great educational
system, and it turned out that no such thing was
in his call, he too would lose his time and his house
of wood and stubble would be burned, though " he
himself would be saved, yet so as by fire." If one
should think it his only business to get ready for
heaven, he might utterly neglect and waste the op
portunities for good that lie all about him. If he

Three Special Requisites 41
should forget that he is to have a future life, he
might give excellent attention to this life and be
poor in all that he can take with him to the next
life. If one hopes for too little he falls short of
his opportunities. If he hopes for the wrong thing
he wastes his time and effort.
And how much vagueness there is about this
matter ! If you were to write a friend to-day what
you regard as the substance of the Christian hope,
what would you write ? Would you say, " I hope to
become a perfect man " ? "I hope to have a com
fortable life in the future " ? "I look forward to a
life of ease " ? or " a life of work " ? Will you meet
all the world's people or a few of them? Is this
world to become trjily Christian or to be destroyed ?
Is society here to be regenerated or not? Unless
we have some rather definite answer to these and
similar questions our own efforts at Christian living
will be very much like the work of a boy with a new
knife — he just whittles without making anything.
In all personal and political relations we need the
guidance and the concentration that comes from
knowing what we have a right to expect in our
Christian life.
What then may we hope for? We have a right
to expect that now we have taken our stand on the
Lord's side he will help us to be faithful. If we
had begun the Christian life " on our own hook,"
we might not feel at all certain that we should have
grit enough and patience enough to hold out. But

42 Transplanted Truths
" he that begun a good work in us will continue it
until the day of Jesus Christ." We are told at the
outset, " He that believeth in the Lord Jesus shall
not perish, but shall have eternal life " ; and again,
" He will with every trial find a way of escape."
So the youngest and the weakest may confidently
hope that in no conflict with evil need he be worsted,
in no responsibility of life will he be left to carry
the load alone.
We may hope that the Spirit of God will work
in us to remove and subdue the evil that remains
from the old life. John wrote, "Of Christ's fulness
have all we received." Paul wrote : " We, behold
ing the glory of the Lord, are changed into his
image from glory to glory." So that those of us
that find the old Adam in us still troublesome need
not despair. The fact that it troubles us is a hope
ful sign. We all brought over into the Christian
life much baggage from the old life. Like the wife
of Jacob, we brought some of the family gods
stowed away in the luggage. But this will be elimi
nated. If we were satisfied to let it remain in con
trol it would be discouraging ; but the struggle is big
with hope for victory. It is " God working in us
to will and to do of his good pleasure."
The converted drunkard may hope that the grace
of God will set him triumphant over his enemy.
The man in whose tongue there remains some sedi
ment of the old profanity may hope to have it all
dissolved away. The quick-tempered man may hope

Three Special Requisites 43
to come into full control of himself. The covetous
man may expect that the estimates of values he now
has will give place to much better ones, and that
the glitter of gold will not always dazzle his eyes.
The man or woman that cannot now judge the
neighbor charitably may be rid of the habit of
harsh judgment. The man that sees the world
through blue glasses, and thinks all is going wrong,
the church is unfaithful, business all dishonest,
politics hopelessly corrupt, may come to see that the
church is the family of God; that business is car
ried on the shoulders of the righteous ; that politics
are sweeping on, in spite of eddies where the cur
rent runs backward, toward a higher and broader
sense of human rights and of divine righteousness.
This is what is going on all the time. Men, like
the hard, sour apples of June and July, are getting
mellower and sweeter and larger as the August
and September of life approaches. The hard and
troublesome qualities about us are not necessarily
permanent. It is the very business of our Lord
to remove them, and we may hope that he will
help us to succeed.
We may hope to be useful. The conception of
the Christian life that has become in the last twenty-
five years one of the most prominent, is that it is a
life of usefulness. It is the common idea now that
every one should be doing some good to some one.
John Wesley used to say, in simple words filled
with thought of big things :

44 Transplanted Truths
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.
That is the commonly accepted program of a right
life. It was not always so. Jesus said, " The Son
of man came not to be ministered unto, but to min
ister." His followers have always known that;
but it has a new emphasis of late. It is no longer
left for practice to the ministers, and the specially
good folks, but it is expected of all.
But many Christians feel that they have no use
fulness, and because of their meager talents cannot
have much. But every one may be of use. Prob
ably Job never knew, or suspected what use he
would be to the world of troubled men and women.
He had great trial. Tortured by his awful sores,
that made him almost grovel in corruption, he met
the sneers of his wife and the false accusations of
his friends and the long delay of his justification.
But in all of it he stood like the rock of Gibraltar
against storms, and would not mistrust his God.
He sinned not with his mouth.
I knew a poor Greek in Yonkers, who came into
church one Sunday, and without knowing the cus
tom of the place, went into the far end of a rich
man's pew. When the rich man came in, being a

Three Special Requisites 45
true Christian man, he welcomed him. For twenty
years the Greek has occupied the inner end of that
pew. One day the collection for missions was taken,
and this poor man, who had a small income from
tinkering watches, put a dollar bill in the basket.
The rich man saw it. The next day I was in
the rich man's office, and he said to me: "I was
made ashamed of myself yesterday when that poor
man gave his dollar bill. Here is a hundred dol-,
lars for the collection." Now I say that that humble*
man, by doing his duty quietly, was useful in bring
ing the one hundred dollars next day, and I tell ;
this story now to enlarge his usefulness by its in
fluence on you.
A poor widow in Jerusalem had saved a very little
for some emergency. It was for her what a very
snug savings-bank account is to you. But one day
she went to the temple with a very grateful heart
to worship God, and while there she thought of her
mercies, and her heart was glad. Then she remem
bered that some were even poorer than she was,
and seeing the box for the offerings in the temple
she went over and put her whole savings in the
box, and prayed : " O Lord, who hast been so kind
to me, bless this to the good of some other needy
widow, and may it lead her to trust thee." It was
all done in a quiet, unostentatious way. But Jesus
saw it, and so called attention to it, and it has
been helping the poor ever since. The faithful
man— faithful in his own sphere of action— is never

46 Transplanted Truths
useless. He may be but a brick in the wall of so
ciety, or a stone in the foundation of a great build
ing, but the tone of society and the righteousness of
a community are composed of the conduct of the
common men and women.
Such are the hopes we may rightfully cherish be
cause God has called us to be saints.
II
The second thing to know is " the glory of his
inheritance in the saints." Paul has said (ver. 11)
that we " are made a heritage " of the Lord. We
are his treasure. Here Paul thinks it a great glory
to be the heritage of God. It makes a great differ
ence whether a man thinks himself as a member of
a rowdy club, or a band of gentlemen. Last night
I saw in the subway three boys. One of them
had a revolver, and he was going up and down the
well-filled car brandishing it like a robber. Now
he was not a vicious boy, but in his imagination he
was a member of the Jesse James gang, and he was
regulating his conduct by what he conceived was
the way that Jesse James would act. If he had
been a member of the Scouts he would have been
a very different boy. He would have given his
seat to the old men or women. He would have
kept out of the way of other passengers, and been
a gentleman. It has been found that the uniform
of a scout or a brigade-boy holds boys up to a
dignified and prompt obedience with great success.

Three Special Requisites 47
The minister that wished he did not have on his
robe of office so that he might whip his stubborn,
balky horse ; the minister that said he needed a week
at home to get off the negligee manners of his sum
mer in the woods — both these felt the same in
fluence that Paul had in mind when he wrote this
sentence. The true American when abroad, recalling
that he is an American and as such a representative
of his country, feels it. The fifty thousand Chris
tian Endeavorers that marched the streets of New
York at one of the conventions when only one man
in the whole company dishonored his company by
getting disorderly — those young men and women
off on a pleasure trip without chaperons, but held
to dignity by the sense of being part of the Chris
tian host, by the glory of being his inheritance in the
saints — all these knew what Paul was talking about
in this verse. They felt themselves exalted by the
reflected glory of the church. And their sense of
exaltation was dependent on the view they had of
the church's glory.
Suppose a man thinks his church encircles the
earth, having one liturgy in one holy tongue, gov
erned by one head, making confession in one symbol,
that view will produce one set of feelings and one
kind of conduct in him who has it. Or suppose
he does not think so much about that as he does
about the fact that it fosters and exemplifies the
Christlike character everywhere, that it is the com
pany of men who are to make known to angels

48 Transplanted Truths
and principalities what sort of people they are who
are led by the teachings of Jesus, and who are to
make known what is the " manifold wisdom of
God " — then he will have another set of feelings,
and be another sort of a man, and have a different
sort of conduct.
If a minister thinks the glory of the church is in
its bigness he will rejoice in numbers, and be a great
gatherer of statistics. If he thinks it " glorious in
holiness " he will only rejoice at his best when he
sees men and women being more than usually holy;
and his highest joy will be when he finds that his
church is reckoned as the most Christlike one in
his city.
This subtle but sure connection between what a
man thinks about God's heritage and what he does
in his own life is certain to determine what sort of
activities and spiritual effort will take the leading
place in his life.
If, therefore, he does not rightly conceive of the
glory of his heritage he will choose the wrong path
and labor in the wrong way, and thus make no real
addition to the forces of righteousness in his com
munity. He will labor honestly, it may be, but vainly. He
will be " saved," but " his work be burned."
What then is the true glory of the church?
First, it is the excellency of its aim. In April,
1900, a great missionary conference was held in
New York City. Missionaries and mission sup-

Three Special Requisites 49
porters from all the world were there. John G.
Paton, who had lived among the cannibals thirty-
four years and tamed them by his preaching; Dr.
William Ashmore, who had preached to the Chinese
fifty years; J. Hudson Taylor, who had pushed
farther into the heart of China than others ; bishops
from foreign countries; noted pastors from all
Christian lands — such were the persons in attend
ance. Ex-president Harrison presided. President
McKinley was there to speak, Theodore Roosevelt,
then governor of New York, and several hundred
other men of less note but not less worthy, right
from the face-to-face contact with heathenism in its
darker and lighter phases, gave addresses on various
related themes. For ten days not only was Car
negie Hall filled to overflowing, but scores of other
sessions were held outside. No gathering so large,
and so truly ecumenical was ever held anywhere,
with perhaps the exception of the Congress of
Religions in Chicago in 1893, and none so vital to the
world's interests. If one were looking for bigness
he might have gone there, and looking on that great
company have said : " This is glorious ; I am proud
to be here as one of them."
But there was something else than bigness there.
What brought that company together? The motive
of their coming must be greater than the meeting
as cause must be greater than results. Was it to en
courage the sale of some commodity? Was it to
make a world treaty of commerce? to plan a big
D

50 Transplanted Truths
banking scheme? to regulate freight rates for world
trade? to promote peace treaties? No, not these,
great as they are, but something that underlies all
these. It was to plan for united effort to send
men to all the world with the truths and influences
that will bring them up to their true destiny as
men. It was to preach a doctrine, and tell them of
a Saviour that would comfort their sad hearts ; bring
kindness to their homes and health to their bodies;
quiet their vain fears ; awaken new joys ; kindle new
hopes for this life and the next. It was, to use Paul's
language, " To gather together in one all things in
Christ to the praise of the glory of his grace."
If they succeed in their endeavor all nations will
become as one family ; they will get a common lan
guage; trade will be unrestricted; wars will cease;
three- fourths of the cost of the government will be
saved. " The world will escape from the bondage
of avarice and luxury which now torments our com
plicated artificial life. Instead of loading themselves
down on life's journey with so many boxes of super
fluous luggage and bric-a-brac that they are forced
to sit down by the roadside and gasp for breath;
instead of wearing themselves out in the dirty ways
of competition and show because they cannot escape
in the race for wealth and fashion, they will turn to
quiet ways, lowly pleasures, simple joys, plain liv
ing, and high thinking. They will find their happi
ness in the knowledge that God loves them, and
Christ died for them, and heaven is sure. Their

Three Special Requisites 51
hearts will be set free to rejoice in the light of the
sun, in the blue of the sky, in the splendor of the
sea, in the peace of the hills, in the song of the birds,
in the beauty of flowers, in the taste of good food,
in the charm of music, in the blessings of love and
friendship." (Henry Van Dyke.) To be engaged in
such an undertaking, that is the glory of the church;
and to be a part of such work is itself glorious.
And the church is engaged in this work for the
same reason that all Christian hearts are interested
in it — because they are inwardly, spontaneously
moved to it. No missionary goes because he is
ordered by his church to go. It is voluntary. That
is what makes it glorious. God has so wrought in
the hearts of these people that they turn to the task
of uplifting men. To be a real member of the herit
age of God is to have some of that inner hunger
to do good. One of the speakers at the con
ference said : " Life means infinitely more than idle
ness. And the most certain way of failing to gain
any pleasure is to take pleasure as your aim in
life. The life worth living is the life of the man
who at the end can look backward and say: I
have stumbled, I have blundered, I have left un
done, I have done what had better been left undone ;
but I strove to leave the world a little better than
I found it." (Theodore Roosevelt.)
The reputed worth of a man in the present-day
practical world is measured by what he actually
accomplishes; but the true worth of a man is not

52 Transplanted Truths
wholly measured except by considering also what
he attempts. So the church is not to be wholly
measured by what it has failed to do, but by what
with its inmost soul it has sought and is seeking
to do. Its special business is to uplift men. What
larger aim can we think of than to preach the
gospel of the grace of God to every creature, and
to try and make the kingdom of God come in the
whole earth as it is come in heaven ? Let no young
man or woman hesitate to be known as one that
belongs to a church having such an aim as that.
There is also a great glory to the church in the
men and women that compose its leadership. The
writer of Hebrews said : " We are come unto the
general assembly and church of the firstborn who
are enrolled in heaven and to the spirits of just men
made perfect." In this company is Moses, the
greatest lawgiver of history. The moral code he
promulgated has more people acknowledging its wis
dom and authority than any or all others. The
prophets of Israel have no equals among the preach
ers of the world. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and
Zechariah have no peers in history. The pulpits of
the Christian church tower above all orators. The
poets are led by David, Milton, Dante, and Shakes
peare. The music that thrills and enchants has come
from the Beethovens, the Handels, the Mozarts, and
the Christian tunemakers. Human prosperity has
flourished best where the Christian ideals have been
expressed in the governments. Families are happiest

Three Special Requisites 53
when Jesus is the friend of the household. It is
good for us to recall this often, and let it stimulate
us to our part in the great procession of the good
and kind.
And it is a glory that the church is the chosen in
strument for the uplift of the world. Other agencies
help in the task. But the one agency that has no
other business in the world, and that makes requisi
tion on all other businesses for its help, is the
"church of the living God, the pillar and ground
of truth." Does any secret society exist for such
a purpose? Is there any political party with such
an aim? Was the Great Commission given to any
special nation or race? No. We have no com
petitors in our business. The people that believe in
Christ are the only ones that can propagate his
doctrine, for they alone know it. Other agencies
may build the railroads, and sail the seas; others
may seek to unify the moral standards, and to stop
the wars; but to the church is given the task of
propagating a truth that underlies and sustains all
these other aims and of teaching men the manifold
wisdom of God.
And the church has glory in its success. Think
of it a moment. It has continued since Abraham's
time without a break. Success ? If time and growth
make success there is no success like the success of
the church. The religion of Babylon? No one lives
to tell us what it was. Not more than six men in
the world can read the tablets that record its his-

54 Transplanted Truths
tory. Egypt? Its ceremonies must be read on the
tombs. No voice chants their funeral dirges. Rome
and Greece? Their temples are in dust or utilized
as places for worship by Christians.
Down the ages the church of Jesus marches with
its strength unabated, its eye undimmed, and its
shoes unworn by its travels. Other religions have
grown, blossomed, and died, and their stumps have
turned to dust, but this stands like a green bay tree,
planted by the rivers of water, whose leaves fade not
and whose fruit appears in its season.
Ill
And the third thing we need to know is " the
power of God toward us who believe." This is the
more important because the task we have on hand
is great and difficult. Only the man that has not
really tried to be a wholly good man will say that
it is easy to live the Christian life. We have heard
evangelists say, and the hymn-book tells us to sing:
Nothing either great or small
Remains for me to do.
Jesus died and paid it all —
All the debt I owe.
It would be difficult to get more nonsense into so
few words than is contained in them. The only
sense in which' they are true at all is that so far
as a sacrifice of a life for us was needed, Jesus has
made that sacrifice. He has fulfilled whatever there

Three Special Requisites 55
was to be fulfilled in a typical ceremonial law. But
he did not tell men there was nothing to be done.
He taught that except a man leaves all that he has
he cannot be his disciple. He said, " Take my yoke
upon you." That does not mean, " Go along with
me when it is good traveling." It means, " Asso
ciate your life with mine for service and for guid
ance." It is giving up self as the supreme master
and taking him as pilot and master.
The other hymn, made when it was not financially
profitable to write pious verse at three dollars a
hymn, is nearer the truth :
A charge to keep I have,
A God to glorify,
A never-dying soul to save,
And fit it for the skies.
When we see the case clearly our cry is, " Lord,
who is sufficient for these things ? " We are more
like the young man at Dothan who, when he saw the
Syrian hosts, was afraid. But the prophet said,
" Lord, open the young man's eyes." Then he saw
the mountain full of horses and chariots round
about the prophet.
Paul's prayer was the same in substance : " Lord,
make them know the power of God toward them."
Is God willing to give me power to live the Chris
tian life in my peculiar surroundings ? Is he willing
to give such power to his churches that they can
withstand the subtle influences that threaten their

56 Transplanted Truths
life? Will he exert his power to overcome the in
tense and many-sided hostility of the worldly en
vironment? Paul prayed that we might see the
power, and the willingness of God to exert that
power. And, as if he wanted to help us see it, God
gives us a sort of yardstick with which to meas
ure it. "According to the mighty power that he
wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead
and set him on high." That is the measure.
Men have faith and courage for a friend while he
lives. But death marks the limit of their hope.
When the breath is gone we go away, saying, " It
is over now. Let us adjust ourselves to the fact
that henceforth the word ' never ' has a new mean
ing." But right here when we lose all hope, God
begins. Jesus was dead. All that his disciples had
hoped for faded out as the rainbow fades when the
rain stops. It was all beauty and no substance.
Jesus was buried. But that first Sunday morning
when the tomb " gave up the dead that was in it," a
new power was launched in the world, a new reen-
forcement enlisted for the disciples. That is our
hope now.
Mr. Spurgeon once said he never laughed when
studying a text but once. He was thinking on the
words, " My grace is sufficient for thee," and as
he thought there came into his mind the picture
of a great group of Egyptian granaries in Joseph's
time, where grain to supply Egypt for seven years
was stored. And down in one corner was a little

Three Special Requisites 57
mouse worrying whether there was enough for
him to live on. So here, when we think it over,
there is a sort of humor in the thought that we
may not have power to make life a success. It
is not wholly unnatural that we should ask about
the supply. We see what is to be done in our
own hearts before they are completely right. We
see the forces of rum and rottenness in the world
about us, and the great combination of men for
every purpose and for all purposes except spir
itual ones. But look at Christ. He was dead
and is now enthroned. Look at this Jesus and
tell me, is there power to help these Christians
against Pilate and the Jewish council? The resur
rection is the answer.
Think of Peter denying his Lord with oaths.
Will that man ever repent and be a good man?
The answer is Jesus standing by him and saying,
" Peter, feed my lambs."
See this Saul persecuting the church and haling
men and women to prison and to death for faith
in Jesus. Will he succeed in smothering the faith
of men? Find the answer in the flash of Jesus'
eye on the way to Damascus, and hear Paul's
meek reply, " Lord, what wilt thou have me
to do? "
Can that power help us to stand and win our
fight? There were and are great thrones hostile
to the kingdom of Jesus ; will they prevail ? Jesus
is set at God's right hand far above all authority

58 Transplanted Truths
and power. Will he not make the wrath of man
to praise him?
The church has problems large and difficult. Its
doctrinal tasks are many, its mission work is world
wide, its task in making the customs of men con
form to the principles of Jesus are to mere human
strength unattainable. But the power that raised
Jesus from the dead and set him on high is fully
competent. So these three things let us try to know well : The
hope of our calling, the glory of the church, the
power available for us. And may the spirit of
both wisdom and revelation be our channel of knowl
edge.

CHAPTER IV
TOGETHER
" God, being rich in mercy, . . quickened us together
in Christ . . . and raised us up together . . and made
us sit together in heavenly things. . . So that now in
Christ Jesus ye who once were far off are made nigh
in the blood of Christ ... for he brake down the mid
dle wall of partition. . . So then ye are no more stran
gers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the
household of God." — Eph. 2 : 4-19.
The central shrine of the Jewish worship was at
Jerusalem. There was the temple built after the
pattern of the tabernacle in the wilderness. Around
it gathered the most sacred associations of the people,
and worship to be complete must be observed there
It was incumbent on faithful Jews to go yearly if
possible to that temple for worship. In Paul's time
the doctrinal authorities lived there. Religious ques
tions were settled by the Sanhedrin having its ses
sions in Jerusalem.
The temple building had its inner court, where
was the holy of holies into which only the priests
could ever go, and that under the strictest of regu
lations. An outer court was open for all Jews to
come and worship. Around that court was a wall, 59

60 Transplanted Truths
through which was a gate of entrance. Over that
gate was a stone set, on which was this inscription :
" Let no stranger pass this gate, for if he does he
must give account for his life, for he will certainly
lose it." This stone was found in the last century
among the ruins of Jerusalem. A plaster cast of it
can be seen in many libraries. It was there when
Paul went in and out. In the twenty-first of Acts
we read how infuriated the Jews were because they
supposed that Paul had brought a Greek through that
gate into the court made only for Jews. That wall
was a symbol of the separation of Jews from all
others. It impressed its lessons indelibly on all that
saw it. Even the Gentiles that were permitted to
come into the more outer parts of the temple area,
and to have some small share of the worship could
not miss the lesson for them, that they were " aliens
from the commonwealth of Israel." These ideas of
separation were well known in every city where
Jews lived.
The more ceremonious of the Jews had never
been accustomed to go into public assemblies with
Gentiles, much less join them in a social gathering.
We remember how Peter was called to account by
his Jewish brethren because he went into the house
of a reverent heathen, Cornelius. (Acts n : 3-8.)
They said, " You have even eaten with Gentiles."
And Peter could only defend himself by showing
that he went reluctantly and under divine instruc
tions.

Together 61
The church in Ephesus was not a social club with
a selected membership. The gospel was announced
to all classes ; and all believers were at once admitted
into the company, " having all the rights and privi
leges " of membership. Some of them had been
idolaters ; some had been Jews ; and some had come
from the serious-minded of no faith. But they were
brought together in one organization. The mem
bers met in the private houses of the believers to
worship and to hear instruction. And as to some
extent community of goods existed, there they sat
down and ate together at the common meals and at
the Lord's Supper as members of his church. And
the world over, to eat together is the symbol of
equality. You may remember how some of the
people of this country in this late age of Christian
teaching were greatly disturbed because one of our
presidents once invited a noted Negro citizen to
remain to lunch with him instead of sending him out
to a restaurant. It seemed too much like recog
nition of what is called " social equality." And it
was deemed of enough importance to receive atten
tion by a great political convention. But here in
Ephesus it was not a single event that might never
be repeated, but was the adoption of a custom that
was to continue. And with the same emphasis Gen
tiles had been taught to think that the Jews were
the special people of Jehovah, the race from which
the Saviour came. Paul, in his preaching, quoted
to them Jewish prophecies, and he taught them

62 Transplanted Truths
Jewish ethics in all his instruction on moral conduct.
They had first heard of this new religion in Jewish
synagogues. It came from the lips of a Jewish
preacher. And now they themselves are counted
as among the followers of this Jewish Messiah, full
partakers of the ripened fruit of a Jewish tree.
What are their relations to these people that they
have been taught to think were nearer to Jehovah
than themselves? They were like a Negro man in
our Congress. What will he do ? How will he feel ?
What recognition ought he to claim ? He is a Con
gressman; is he also a man? or something less than
a man? We now have many phases of the same difficulty,
growing from the same root. Especially here in our
cities where different races mingle. It is not with
us so much racial antagonisms and prejudice as it is
race indifference. It is a lack of care rather than
a dislike. But in every church there is need to
awaken fellowship with others than those of the
Anglo-Saxon race, which in some quarters assumes
a superior attitude toward the rest of the world as
if its record had not been as much stained by
cruelty and wickedness as any other record.
Then there are theological antagonisms. Not
long since I heard the pastor of one of our largest
churches say that there was room in the world for
Mohammedans and Unitarians and Christian Scien
tists, but not an inch of room in a Baptist church
for the man that did not interpret the Scriptures

Together 63
as he did, or that denied the full verbal inspiration
of all that we call Bible! No room in the church
for such as differ in their understanding of Scrip
ture! Cannot eat the Lord's Supper with such as
think inspiration is real but not verbal! So there
are inequalities in social conditions that hinder the
fullest fellowship of the church, and denominational
antagonisms that hinder the fullest Christian ac
tivities and usefulness. And there is a sort of sepa
ration between old and young that deprives the
churches of some very blessed mutual good that
would be attained if these mingled more together.
It will be worth while therefore for us to consider
how Paul dealt with the fundamental questions.
We may find help in our own tasks.
He had no precedent to follow. There was no
book of church etiquette for him to consult. There
was no council of ministers for him to ask wisdom
of. He must assume the responsibility. He alone
must instruct the people; they looked to him for
authoritative teaching.
On the other hand, Paul was not in his own
mind halting between two opinions. He was a Jew,
but he had long before that gotten past the feeling,
or the opinion, that he must maintain Jewish cere
monies. Yet he was not so much in sympathy with
Gentiles that he did not have a sense of sympathy
with the Jews. He was unprejudiced. But with
him it was not so much a matter of reasoned con
clusion as of instinctive decision. He was so carried

64 Transplanted Truths
away with the enthusiasm of one great idea that he
lost sight of all difficulties or diplomacies in his zeal
to declare the truth and let the great idea have the
right of way. His mind having accepted the funda
mental facts, and being alert, enkindled as it was,
and his heart being in full sympathy, he by reason
ing as quick as an intuition saw the conclusion and
wrote it without hedging or apology. And here
the idea stands like a mountain on the plain so clear
that none who read can miss it. And this is it, God
is gathering into one all things in Christ, (i : io.)
That is the ultimate result at which the whole dispen
sation aims.
And how reasonable such an aim appears. A
loving father would not be content to have some of
his children hostile to others. Nor would he en
courage the idea that some of them might sit with
him at his table and others be kept away. The
very name " Father " contradicts all such thoughts.
" Father " is itself a prophecy of what Paul says
is the aim of the dispensation, for it implies " chil
dren," and " children " means equality of rights.
Paul would make this feeling of equality in the
family emphatic. He would say or do something
to cause the feeling to arise in their hearts so that it
would have some basis other than the dictum of the
apostle himself.
Some time ago Count Aponyi, from Austria, was
in this country in the interests of international
peace. He said to his audience in Philadelphia that

Together 65
we in America do not fully appreciate the hindrances
to peace among the nations of Europe. Our idea
that nations of Europe can work together as
smoothly as the States of our republic is not well
founded. Here in our country we have State laws
that are homogeneous, and customs that are very
similar. Our population has come from one State
into another. They have mutual confidence. But
European nations have had centuries of mutual sus
picion, and generations of tyranny on the part of
the strong. They have religious differences that are
very fundamental. They have laws very different
in different states. No mutual peace can exist until
there is mutual confidence; and that does not now
exist. That, the count said, can only come by ac
quaintance and by gradual approach to similarity in
religion and customs. Two things help this: Com
merce and the institutions of religion. We must
keep up the church; send out its representatives;
approach each other as churchmen, not as nations,
until by reason of common faith and common re
ligious undertakings we create a condition of good
feeling between the common people; then we can
have peace.
It was this same method that Paul was following
in this letter. He knew that there must come the
good feeling. And the way to have that was to show
them their common interest in necessary and blessed
things. So the word " together " may be taken as
the keyword of this part of his argument. He goes

66 Transplanted Truths
on to point out the things and experience in which
both the Jew and the Gentile are jointly interested.
Let us follow the thread of his thought. Speak
ing as a Jew, he says : " We were both of us dead
in trespasses and sins." " Dead " does not mean
physically dead; but has the metaphorical sense of
" unresponsive to spiritual things." The selfish and
self-centered passions had control. The higher
things of religion made no impression. " We were
all by nature children of wrath, even as others."
But " you hath he quickened." This word " quick
ened " has not the meaning commonly given it by
us. We tell a boy to go quickly when we mean
that he is to hurry his steps. We say, I want a quick
reply. But in the New Testament it means, as the
Greek word does, to make alive that which was not
alive. It stands over against the word " dead," and
means just the opposite of what " dead " means here.
Those people had been made sensitive to the appeals
of the higher life. It was not their own power, but
it was God's power working in them. And in that
experience both Jews and Gentiles shared alike.
Neither was better than the other; Jews and Gen
tiles were " together " in their hopeless condition,
and they are now " together " in their alive con
dition. This is a fact to be kept in mind now. All classes
of men and women, if they are spiritually alive, have
been made so by the grace of God. In many things
our experiences, like our temperaments and our

Together 67
education differ; but we all owe to the quickening
grace of God the sensitiveness of our souls to
Christian truth. This foundation fact we may not
safely overlook. All sorts and conditions of men are
by nature in one condition. Measured by some
standards they differ. Some are more refined than
others; some are more wicked in act and feeling;
some more brutal ; some more worldly-minded. But
we are often surprised to find that under the right
kind of circumstances the thought and perhaps the
very acts of the hardened sinner are possible to
ourselves. We are unlike others because of restrain
ing influences rather than because of a purer nature.
Tested by the supreme standard, we are by nature
in the list of those that need the help of God to be
right in heart and life. If we do not start from a
common condition Paul's reasoning applied to us
would be inconclusive. But we were " together '' —
common members of the " short-comer family."
The man and his coachman, the woman and her
maid, the business man and his customer, the white
man and the yellow man, the American and the
Japanese are together in the start, and all owe their
Christian faith, if they have it, to the quickening
influences of the truth and the spirit of God. It
goes up from the child and the servant through the
whole family.
But he lists another common blessing, " He raised
us up together. This " raised us up " does not mean
bodily resurrection, for we were not bodily dead.

68 Transplanted Truths
Paul gives it the metaphorical use. Our Christian
life is, in his thought, a life as new to us as the
resurrection life of Jesus was new to him. Paul
has this vivid conception of the Christian life. He
thinks of it as succeeding the deadness of which he
speaks. In one place he says: " If any man be in
Christ Jesus all things are become new, old things
have passed away." John has the same use when
he says, quoting Jesus (John 5 : 25) : "The hour
is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the
voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall
live." He speaks there, not of the bodily dead, but
of the spiritually dead, for in following verses
(28, 29) he says, " And the hour is coming " — but he
does not say and now is — " when all that are in
the graves " — the bodily dead — " shall come forth."
So I take it Paul here means to say that we Chris
tians have all been raised into the Christian life to
gether by divine help. We are living on a higher
plane than formerly. These New England Amer- •
icans, these followers of William Penn, these Italian
converts, these Hungarian immigrants that have
learned the new song — all these came out of the
tomb of irreligion into the life of the Christian world
by the riches of divine grace.
As Lowell somewhere said of some " thrown-to-
gether" travelers who found they all could speak
English :
The wars the centuries interposed,
Abolished in the truce of common speech.

Together 69

We read in the accounts of the Dayton flood how
all classes from the dependent poor to the very
wealthy stood in line and received their supplies
from the common fund — all on a level.
And then the apostle records another thing in
which all are " together." " Made us sit together in
heavenly things in Christ Jesus." That is, we who
are in Christ all may share in the heavenly blessings.
One man sings, " Happy day when Jesus washed
my sins away " ; and his coachman joins in the
chorus. The wealthy lady goes to the prayer-meet
ing and sings :
Oh, to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be;
and her seamstress or her kitchen help are there, anu
they sing it with her. The captain of industry says,
" By the grace of God I am what I am"; and his
factory men say, " God's grace is our only hope."
The President of the United States says : " I look
for a city that hath foundations, whose maker and
builder is God " ; and his chauffeur says, " This
world is not my home."
The company of believers meet, having all degrees
of intellectual culture, and from every shade of,
aristocracy and variety of material circumstances,
and they find the story of Christ and the love of
Christ equally for them all. The songs, the prayers,
the praises, the hopes are alike. They " sit together
in heavenly things." In intellectual things they can-

JO Transplanted Truths
not be together, nor in financial matters; in social
tastes they are still foreigners to one another ; but in
things Christian they " sit together " !
We cannot be overcareful in getting this thought
clearly in mind. This man who was ignorant and
depraved and had a long experience at it, who was
an expert in meanness and a prince in wickedness,
and this other man who has been all the time you
have known him a good man, as you call him —
yet Christ died for both, and in that sense they
stand " together." One owed his master ten talents
more than he could pay, and the other owed his
master ten thousand more, but both were bank
rupts. One paid nothing on the dollar, and the
other paid nothing. The creditors of one lost all
they had loaned him, and the creditors of the other
lost all they had loaned. If these m.en begin busi
ness again, they start at the same level. By the
grace of the State they are set free from the bond
age of debt. Neither of them can call the other
names; and it would not be a fine trait of charac
ter for one to feel above the other. In some such
sense all Christians have come through the proceed
ings of spiritual bankruptcy. And each one is now
given a new start. Each has the help of Jesus ; all
have the promises, and the hopes, and the help alike,
under a new regime. Thus does Paul show that all
classes are together; together in need, together in
quickening, together in the new life, together in the
enjoyment of Christian experiences, and his thought

Together 71
is, " What God hath joined together let no man put
asunder." And now, as if he would drive home his thought
more thoroughly, he addresses the Gentile portion
of the church : " Wherefore remember, that once ye
the Gentiles . . . were strangers from the covenants
of promise; . . but now ye are made nigh. . . For
he is our peace . . . who brake down the middle wall
of partition."
That partition wall, and with it all that it sig
nified, is broken down. He does not say it ought to
be broken down, nor that they ought to break it
down. But he says it is broken down. God him
self has broken it down. When he showed mercy
to Gentiles he was breaking it down. When he sent
Paul out to preach to them he was breaking it
down. But when he gave to Gentiles the same
blessings, forgiveness, and peace, that he gave to
others, he laid it flat and showed that henceforth
the way was alike open to all. This is now verified
in experience. A doctor in Cincinnati, who was in
trouble about his theology, came to me for counsel,
and told me he was about to conclude that he was
not a Christian at all. He was a wealthy man,
moving in the best society, brought up to think the
slaves of the South were less than men, and he held
to the social segregation of the Negro tenaciously. I
said to him: "Doctor, if you were in the heart of
Africa and found a native who in broken language
made you to know that he had heard Jesus and

72 Transplanted Truths
believed in him, what would you do ? " He replied
at once, " I would give him my hand in fellowship."
The middle wall of partition was broken down in
that man's heart. At a meeting of the Home Mission
Society in St. Louis there were on the platform to
gether representatives of nine tribes of American In
dians, all having perfect equality in Christian stand
ing and privilege. I saw one Indian with a face as
black and about as expressionless as a kitchen stove,
stolid, stoical, unreadable. But one White Arm, a
chief of the Crow tribe, who had been brought there
to show him the Christian way, and who had never
before acknowledged Jesus, was moved to say a
word. He stood up and said, through an interpreter,
" White Arm wants to go in the Jesus road." That
was his first confession of interest in the matter.
I sat where I could see the face of the stolid In
dian of whom I spoke. It lit up with a joy and
sympathy that I have never seen excelled in any
face. And, turning toward White Arm, he spoke
in sign language some word of congratulation to
him over his confession of Jesus.
At the same meeting representatives of eleven
European nationalities were introduced, and all
" sat together in heavenly things " ; they were al
ready gathered into the " Christ-centered family."
" Having slain the enmity thereby." What a won
drous fact that is ! The death of Christ the weapon
to slay the enmity between races ! Age-long hatreds
dead before the love that was crucified !

Together 73
And now comes Paul's conclusion : " So then ye
are no more strangers and foreigners, but are fel
low citizens and of the household of God." It was
not enough that they were citizens. There is a
stronger tie — the family tie. They were " of the
household." They were built upon the foundation
of the apostolic teaching, and the supplementary
teaching of the New Testament preachers — the
spirit-bearing men of that time — Jesus Christ him
self being the chief corner-stone.
This chapter then shows us the great basis of
Christian unity. Such unity is based upon our com
mon relation to Jesus. It stands not upon a com
mon intellectual conception of things, nor upon a
common sociological basis. It rests upon our com
mon debt of gratitude to Jesus for having quickened
us and made us " sit together " in matters heavenly.
As we come therefore to have better view of Jesus
we shall come nearer to our fellow Christians. The
human distinctions that spring up in the church will
vanish as we see him more clearly.
And there is a corollary to this. If we feel hos
tile to any Christian people it is because we do not
see Jesus and our relation to him as we ought. Our
remedy is to seek closer union with him and better
understanding of his ways.

CHAPTER V
THE AUTHORITY AND SCOPE OF PAUL'S PREACHING
" Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints,
was this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles the
unsearchable riches of Christ." — Eph. 3 : 8.
Paul seems to have been a good deal concerned
lest some one might be thinking, even if he did
not say it : " Why, Paul, what brings you to us with
so much assumption of wisdom? You are a born
Jew. Your nation and your church authorities de
spise us Gentiles. What is your motive in coming
to us with so much enthusiasm ? " Paul, I say,
seems to have had a vague fear that some one would
think such thoughts. And so he inserted in his
letter as a sort of parenthesis (3 : 2-13) the words
I have chosen to consider at this time.
The words of the passage contain three elements :.
I. The authority of Paul's teaching.
II. The limit of his commission.
III. A suggestion about the content of his mes
sage. Of his authority it is natural that we should make
some careful inquiry. Many men have said they had
commissions from God to do things. Every age has
74

Authority and Scope of Paul's Preaching 75
had its false prophets, and its deluded individuals,
and its conceited characters. Ephesus was overrun
with men of that sort. One writer says : " Super
stition was rampant ... it was preeminently the
city of astrology, sorcery, incantations, . . and every
form of magical imposture." (Farrar's " Paul," Vol.
II, p. 16.) And so the mere fact that a man says
he is commissioned from God to do or say anything
may not be evidence sufficient to justify us in ac
cepting his teaching. Paul, like any other man, must
not skip the test of Matthew 7 : 20.
And our first test is the character of the man's
record. If we take the book of Acts, and beginning
at the thirteenth chapter read it through as a record,
without trying to apply it to ourselves as a sermon,
we shall get mightily interested in the man Paul.1
We are impressed that no man would or could go
through his experiences and persist in his mission
as he did for the sake of notoriety or any other
motive except to obey what he thought was an inner
divine call to do so.
" To me was this grace given " tells the story of
his own conviction about his duty. In Galatians he
claims to be an apostle " not from man, neither
through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the
Father who raised him from the dead " ( 1 : 1 ) .
" I make known to you, brethren, as touching the gos
pel which was preached by me, that it is not after
man. For I did not receive it from man nOr was I
1 See A. Deissman, "St. Paul," Chap. III.

76 Transplanted Truths
taught it, but it came to me through revelation of
Jesus Christ" (i : ii, 12). "It was the good
pleasure of God to reveal his Son in me that I might
preach him among the Gentiles" (1 : 15, 16).
Again he says, " We have the mind of Christ," and
" we know the things that were freely given to us
of God. Which things also we speak, not in words
which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit
teacheth" (1 Cor. 2 : 12, 13). Again, "^planted,
Apollos watered ; but God gave the increase "
(1 Cor. 3:6). "According to the grace which
was given to me I laid a foundation " ( 1 Cor.
3 : 10). "Let a man so account us as . . .
stewards of the mysteries of Christ" (1 Cor. 4 :
1). This claim to a divine commission is so woven
into all his teachings that to take it away leaves
nothing of importance undisturbed.
And we are further convinced that he had an au
thority for his message by the fact that it accords
with the moral teaching that is contained in the four
histories of Jesus' teaching. We are utterly without
record of how Paul preached to a congregation of
men ignorant of the gospel. No reports of his ser
mons have come to us. We have only letters to
the Christians. But so far as we can get any idea
he taught the facts of Jesus' life and death in sub
stantial agreement with our Gospel records. He
laid a historical foundation. He says in Romans
1 : 3 that Jesus was born of the seed of David;
in Galatians 3:1, that he had " set forth Jesus

Authority and Scope of Paul's Preaching 77
Christ before their eyes openly crucified." And in
Corinthians (1 Cor. 15 : 12-18) he insists that the
bodily resurrection of Jesus is the very corner-stone
of the Christian's hope. His letters are endeavors
to teach the kind of life that men ought to live who
have accepted that historical Jesus as their God-sent
Saviour. And the strong testimony to the authorita
tive quality of his teaching is the consistent reason
able line of conduct and feeling that he deduces
from the teaching of Jesus. At this late day, with all
the light of investigation and microscopic penetra
tion into the subjective side of his letters, no in
harmonious ethical note has been found. It may not
be possible for us to tell how he was so accurate
in his development of the principles of Jesus ; but
that he was so accurate, and that no leading prin
ciple of Jesus was either twisted or left out is a
stubborn fact.
And another evidence to his divine commission
to preach to Gentiles is the fact that his gospel is
adapted to them and has been accepted by them
with great Christian results. If he is not in line
with the divine will then he has outwitted that will ;
for it is unmistakably true that the Christianity
that has won the Gentiles, and is winning them, is
the Christianity that Paul preached. So we may
accept bis word at full value. He was given the
grace to preach the unsearchable riches to Gentiles.
But if Paul was thus commissioned to preach to
Gentiles — that is, to us all, for we are Gentiles — then

78 Transplanted Truths
God is interested in our hearing the message. If
the Spirit of God sent him through " perils of rivers,
and perils of robbers, perils from his countrymen,
perils from the Gentiles, perils in the city, perils
in the wilderness, perils in the sea, perils among
false brethren, in labor and travail, in watchings
often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in
cold and nakedness" (2 Cor. 11 : 26, 27), then
there is a divine desire that we accept the message.
In view of this statement oi the apostle we cannot
be indifferent to his great endeavor.
But what was Paul's divinely given commission?
" To preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches
of Christ." No man that has read Paul's letters fails
to see that he as much as Jesus was intensely in
terested in making the society of mankind to be
holy and loving. He was interested in govern
ment (Rom. 13 : 1; 1 Tim. 2:1), and in the
condition of women (Eph. 3 : 18 to 4 : 1), and
in the education of children, and in the welfare
of his countrymen. (Rom. 10 : 1, 2.) In caring
for the poor (1 Cor. 16 : 1-4) no one could
utter the clause of the Lord's Prayer, " Thy king
dom come in earth as it is in heaven," more sin
cerely than Paul. And yet when he is summing
up in crystallized form his own part in bringing
that kingdom to reality, he says his divinely ap
pointed business, his assigned part, was to preach
Christ's unsearchable riches. That was the weapon
he was to use. He was not commissioned as a polit-

Authority and Scope of Paul's Preaching 79
ical agitator. He taught righteousness with no un
certain sound and no common courage. He re
buked lawlessness everywhere. But it was not his
commission to upset governments by force, nor by
revolution, but to " preach Christ " and to preach
him to the Gentiles.
This gets expression in various places, but in none
more forcibly than in Corinthians, where he says:
" I determined not to know anything among you
but Jesus Christ, and him crucified." This has been
often minimized by careless explanation. It has
been read as if he said, " I determined not to know
anything but a crucified Christ." But that is not
his word. Nothing but Christ! That is a great
knowledge. It includes all about him from his life
in a manger to his place at the right hand of God.
It means his divine nature; his preexistent career;
his boundless love; his wise administration of the
church ; his duty as judge of all the earth. It must
have included the stories of his earthly deeds and
teachings. Nothing but Christ! The more one
thinks of it, the more immeasurable that knowl
edge appears. And then he adds, " and him " — this
all-glorious Christ — I will not leave out the most
wondrous of all the glorious story, " him crucified."
Tempted as I might be to conceal his death as a
criminal along with real criminals, I will not let it
be out of sight for a single occasion. The glory
or the shame, whichever men may call it, I will
never conceal.

80 Transplanted Truths
And this resolution he faithfully kept. When he
went to Antioch in Pisidia he said to the Jewish
people, " We turn to the Gentiles " (Acts 13 : 46).
When he returned to Antioch in Syria and made his
report of the first missionary journey, he " rehearsed
all things that God had done with them, and that
he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles "
(Acts 14 : 27). In Athens, before the philosophers
of that philosophical city where he might be tempted
to take some other line of thought, he preached
" Jesus and the resurrection," and that God had
" appointed a day in which he would judge the
world in righteousness by the man whom he had
ordained, of which he had given assurance in that
he had raised him from the dead" (Acts 17 :
31). In Ephesus at his first preaching "the
name of the Lord was magnified" (Acts 19 : 17).
When he returned to Jerusalem after many years
of service in what we should call the foreign field,
" He rehearsed one by one the things that God had
wrought among the Gentiles through his ministry "
(Acts 21 : 19). When, as a prisoner, he stood
before Agrippa to defend himself, he said : " I testify
to both small and great that Christ must suffer, and
how he first by the resurrection of the dead should
proclaim light both to the people and to the Gen
tiles" (Acts 26 : 23). And after he was put in
prison at Rome we read, he " abode two whole years
in his own hired house, and received all that came
in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and

Authority and Scope of Paul's Preaching 81
teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus with
all boldness " (Acts 28 : 30).
Such are the statements of the book of Acts, and
when we examine his own writings, the same
purpose is very plainly seen. This letter to the
Ephesians gives in the first chapter, as we have seen
in former studies, an inventory of what the Christian
has. But they are all said to be received " in Christ."
We are " chosen in him " ; " foreordained unto adop
tion as sons through Jesus Christ " ; God's grace is
" freely bestowed on us in the Beloved " ; in Christ
we " have our redemption " ; God purposes to
" gather together all things in Christ " ; in Christ
" we are sealed unto the day of redemption " ; thus,
as he stated in 1 : 3, we are " blessed with all spir
itual blessings in Christ."
And what is so prominent in this letter is equally
so in Galatians. There he says : " If any man preach
any other gospel, let him be reckoned a curse to you
instead of a help." When he went up to Jerusalem
he met the leaders, and they approved his doctrine.
(2 : 6-9.) He writes, " Christ redeemed us from
the curse of the law" (3 : 13) ; "Ye are all sons
of God through faith in- Jesus " (3 : 26) ; if they
forget the gospel there is no rest for him "until
Christ be formed again in them " (4 : 19) ; and if
they lean upon the law " Christ profits them noth
ing" (S : 2)- 1° Romans the whole argument
is to lead men to be trustful in Jesus. In Philip
pians he rejoices if only, " whether in pretense or in
F

82 Transplanted Truths
truth, Christ is preached," and he bears trouble
patiently if only " Christ is magnified in his body,
whether it be by life or death." And he declares
that " every knee shall bow, and every tongue con
fess that Jesus Christ is Lord." In Colossians, Jesus
is the " Son of God's love, in whom we have re
demption; and he is the firstborn of creation, the
head of the church, the firstborn from the dead,
the one preeminent, in whom dwelleth all the ful
ness of the Godhead bodily." In Thessalonians,
Paul says we are to obtain our salvation through
our Lord Jesus Christ.
This note persists in all his writing like the melody
or motif in a piece of music. And he insists that
he followed that course because he was divinely
guided to do so. It was not his own way, but the
divine way. It is still the divine way. The min
ister of the gospel is not to be a minister of law,
nor a leader of sociology. He is not disinterested in
these, but his special weapon is preaching the riches
of Christ. Let him not be in the least ashamed of
it. For the great need of mankind is what " Christ
and him crucified" alone can furnish. It is not
difficult to see what men ought to do. The dif
ficulty is to get some power at work in them that
will get them to do it. We know well enough what
is right in most cases. We approve the good and
leave it undone ; we dislike the evil, and yet it clings
to us. It is what Dr. John Watson called " a
dynamic " that is needed. And Paul knew the

Authority and Scope of Paul's Preaching 83
dynamic equal to the need. It was not a system
of theology, nor a set of ceremonies, nor a new
sociology. All these have their value. But it was
the constraining power of a personal Saviour. No
man is nearly all bad. Every man is almost good.
There is a conflict going on, a struggle for right
with the balance on the wrong side. It needs a cer
tain kind of reenforcement to turn the tide of vic
tory the right way. And that reenforcement comes
in response to the faith that a great loving heart
of an infinitely wise Saviour is in sympathy with us.
That is what Paul taught. Jesus, he said, is the
expression in human form of a divine love, and a
readiness to help. And when any man gets that
in his soul all the forces of his nature are quickened
like the fields in spring, and begin to take on new
life and beauty. The unsearchable riches of Christ!
Not the beauties of his ethics — though they are
without flaw ; not the systematic basis of his teach
ings, nor the soundness of his underlying philosophy
of life ; but the riches of Christ — that son of Mary,
who lived with men, and died for them, and now
sitteth -at the right hand of God watching over the
souls of all that believe on him — that is what Paul
preached, and that was his margin of power.
And the efficiency of his method has been mani
fested by the history of preaching. The great move
ments of human progress, and the great deliverance
of society from its worst faults have come about
more by the preaching of Christ than by any other

84 Transplanted Truths
agency. We are not disposed to deny efficiency to
other agencies, nor to say that all the church has to
do is to preach a " simple gospel." It has a great
deal more to do. But we say that the great results
in human history have been accomplished by having
at the bottom a knowledge of Jesus Christ, the Son
of God. That knowledge has been the controller
of the other forces and the inspirer of other agencies.
It is generally acknowledged that in China the great
changes that are now taking place are due to fifty
years of preaching of the unsearchable riches of
Christ by missionaries. It has been like leaven in
meal. Henry Ward Beecher used to say that after
he once caught a glimpse of the real Jesus he could
not preach anything else. Men used to say of him :
" Why go to hear him ? He is a smart young man,
but he has but one chord, and he plays that all the
time. All he has got to say is about Christ." '
But Mr. Beecher was a great contributor to the up
lift of the morals of this country. Mr. Moody
was noted for the singleness of his message. It was
all about Christ. Sometimes such preachers have
been called narrow, or men of one thought. It was
so in Paul's time. The Greeks sought after wis
dom and the Jews after signs, but Paul preached
"Christ crucified" (1 Cor. 1 : 22), and was not
ashamed of the gospel, for it was " the power of
God unto salvation" (Rom. 1 : 16). This commis-
2 Beecher' s address at his withdrawal from the Congregational Associa
tion in 1882.

Authority and Scope of Paul's Preaching 85
sion of Paul's is well worthy our own consideration,
We may not say that because he had that limited
commission therefore every pastor is thus limited.
There is a division of labor in the kingdom. And
our commissions as well as our gifts may differ.
But it is of great significance, that may not wisely
be overlooked by us, that when the new kingdom
of God — the Messianic kingdom — was to be started
out on its course, the Lord himself said, " Go and
preach the gospel." When he was telling his dis
ciples about the experiences the kingdom would
pass through, he said it would be like leaven in the
meal. It would work by transformation, not by the
upheaval of revolutions. Paul's preaching over
turned Rome, and yet no preacher donned a military
uniform or led a political revolt or encouraged a
rebellion. I suppose if the truth were told the
preachers did more than any other set of men to
produce revolt and the overthrow of old institu
tions. But they did it by preaching the riches of
Christ. We may not say that the example of the
early church is binding on us now, but we may, and
if we are wise we must, estimate the efficiency of
their methods and learn what we can from them.
And Paul's method was to know nothing but Christ
and him crucified. Would he be likely to adhere
to that if he were here now?
Our missionaries face the problem of methods
continually. With a zeal that is heaven-born, a
courage that is dauntless, they inquire how best

86 Transplanted Truths

can they establish the kingdom among the nations.
Some would begin with hospitals, some with public
schools, some by subjugation and reducing to civil
order, some by new sociology. We are not disposed
to decide against the value of these, but we feel
justified by history in saying that if Paul's method
is not made fundamental the work will fail — " other
foundation can no man lay than Jesus Christ."

CHAPTER VI
THE PREEMINENT MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH
"Unto me . . . was this grace given to preach . . .
the unsearchable riches of Christ." — Eph. 3 : 8.
Paul must have had a well-thought-out conception
of the great qualities of God and of Jesus. He
was not uncertain nor indefinite about Jesus' au
thority or wisdom. He had well-established ideas
of what God does for us, in us, and with us. He
also had his ideas of the part Christ Jesus has in
our salvation. We know this because while no
writing of his deals with a " system " of theology,
yet all the allusions and fragmentary statements that
come in his letters are in harmony with one another,
which could not be true if his underlying thought
had been chaotic or varying.
But while this is true Paul did not preach a the
ology. He says : " To preach (not the fathomless
mysteries of Christ, but) the unsearchable riches of
Christ." Rev. John Watson, in his " Cure of Souls," says
(p. 78) : " There are those who can so deal with the
sacrifice of the Lord as to make us think of a
work, not a person; and others who so plead for
almsgiving as to bring us face to face with him 87

88 Transplanted Truths
who knew not where to lay his head." Doubtless
Paul was one of this latter sort. We have no ser
mon of his given in any detail, but judging from
allusions we may feel sure that what he says here
describes his preaching. " The riches of Christ "
were set forth ; that was his great theme. But there
is one modification which we must make if we
seek the completest view of Paul's preaching. He
always observes in his letters the preeminence of
the Father. In this letter to the Ephesians he writes :
" Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual
blessing in Christ " (1:3); then he goes on to
specify some of these " spiritual blessings." He
chose us in him (1 : 4), foreordained our sonship
(1 : 5), made known to us the mystery of his
will (1 : 9), we have a heritage " according to the
purpose of him who worketh all things after the
counsel of his own will" (1 : 11). When he re
cords his daily prayer for them, it is that the God
of our Lord give them a spirit of wisdom. (1 : 17.)
When he would give them a measure of the power
God is willing to exercise on their behalf, he says :
" According to the working of his might . . . when
he raised Christ from the dead," and made him to
sit at his right hand. (1 : 20.) So through all his
writings there runs this undercurrent of the suprem
acy of the Father.
But while no man can read Paul's letters with an
open mind, unafraid, and escape the thought of

The Preeminent Message of the Church 89
" God, the Father almighty," so also he cannot
escape the complementary thought that Jesus Christ
is the " way " to that Father, and the " truth " about
him, and the giver of " life " before him.
But granting this modification, the riches of Jesus
Christ exhaust Paul's language.
We shall find profit in taking a swift inventory
of these riches as he saw them.
His riches of nature reach back into depths that
are left unfathomed. He was " in the form of God."
That is, our acquaintance starts at that point. That
state of dignity and honor equal with God was his
by right. Jesus himself alludes to it by saying,
" The glory I had with thee before the world was "
(John 17 : 5). Back of that Paul does not go.
He knew, better than, some since then, when the
water was too deep for him. Had he ventured to
write a creed, he would hardly have written the
longer form of the so-called " Apostles' Creed."
Had he been wording a prayer for his people, he
would not have written, " Mary, mother of God."
Probably when he thought about that preexistent
state of Christ he said, as we may well say : " Oh, the
depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowl
edge of God" (Rom. 11 : 33). He preached the
riches, not the mysteries of Christ. And these riches
of condescension and love are measured by the
height of Christ's honor before he came. He was
the one through whom all things were made ; by him
all things "hold together." He is appointed heir

oo Transplanted Truths
of all things. To him every knee shall bow, and
every tongue confess his authority. He is the " ex
press image," that is, the exact miniature of God's
character and nature; so Paul could say, He that
knows Jesus knows God, and the future will not
show us anything about God that has not been con
tained in Christ Jesus. He was the very effulgence
of divine glory. He was to God what sunlight is
to the sun. He was God manifest, not in stars,
or flowers, but in the flesh. I can but wish and pray
that in all our preaching and living this " glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ " may be seen with
increasing clearness ; for upon that depends the true
dynamic of our life.
And he was rich in the qualities of his human in
heritance. He was " made in the likeness of men."
He was " tempted in all points like as we are," and
" touched with a feeling of sympathy." But in addi
tion to that general human experience he was of
the " seed of David." That is, he gathered into him
self the best qualities of humanity. There is no
nation whose history, taken as a whole, has been
marked by so continuous and great excellence as the
people of Israel. Up to the time of Christ that
people marched at the head of the procession of
peoples in their moral ideas, their religious concep
tions, and their family life. Jesus came from the
best part of that race — the middle class of pious
Israel. His family was neither weakened in morals
by the corruptions of wealth and position, nor

The Preeminent Message of the Church 91
depressed in ambition by abject poverty. As in every
country the health of the nation is found in the
middle class, so then Joseph and Mary were among
the best people. And what a family record they
had ! It is a most interesting study to follow up in
the Bible the names that come in that record. It
shows Jesus to have been related to the best of his
nation's history. If there is anything of honor to
come from family history, none had a longer line
of noble ancestry than he.
He was rich in his mediatorial work. We may be
sure that Paul preached everywhere as he said he
did at Corinth. " I determined not to know any
thing among you but Christ and him crucified."
And again, I preached the gospel which I also
received, and which you received : that " Christ
died for our sins according to the scriptures, and
that he was buried, and that he hath been raised
on the third day according to the scriptures." So
in this letter he says : " In whom we have our re
demption, even the forgiveness of our sins." So
in Romans, when he sums up the whole way of
peace with God, he says : " Being justified freely
by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus" (Rom. 3 : 24). "He bore our sins in his
own body on the tree," said Peter; and Paul says,
"Christ became a curse for us" (Gal. 3 : 13);
" O foolish Galatians, . . before whose eyes Jesus
Christ was openly set forth crucified " (Gal. 3:1).
It is true that he does not make his teachings into

92 Transplanted Truths
dry formularies, but he made the Christ crucified
central. And he was rich in his mediatorial influence. It
is by an appeal to his life and love that Paul moves
the hearts of men for all sorts of activities. Among
students of the Bible many have seen this influence
so fully that they have denied all other value to
the cross. They have said that the " work " of Jesus
is to have, by his love, such a moral influence on us
that we become reconciled. As the hymn says :
I sink by dying love compelled
And own thee conqueror.
It is not necessary to deny the other for the sake
of seeing this. It is a great present-day work of
Jesus to influence men for good. Oh, how many-
sided and mighty-powered his influence is ! A clear
vision of Jesus will generally lift a man out of his
meannesses and start him on a better road. Visions
of Jesus are the inspiring influences that keep the
courage of men along the whole Christian experi
ence. Unsearchable riches of holy influence!
He was very rich in his practical wisdom. Some
times we hear it said that preachers and churches
are idealists, and lack adjustment to facts as they
are. Well, perhaps we are. Most preachers who
amount to anything more than superintendents of
church activities, must be idealists in large measure.
They must study their books and men and ideas.
So they may lose touch with what we call affairs.

The Preeminent Message of the Church 93
But be that as it may, Jesus, our pattern, was
rich in practical wisdom. It is plain that Paul sought
practical religion. His letters finish up with words
to parents and children and masters and servants.
He talked about churches and their various prob
lems. But his great aim was to " present every man
perfect in Christ Jesus," because he thought that if
a man was truly in Christ he would become a prac
tically good man.
Consider Jesus' counsel to Nicodemus. Unless
a man be born from above he cannot be what he
ought to be. Could anything go more directly and
truly to the root of things than that? David said,
" Create within me a clean heart." The proverb
said, " Out of the heart are the issues of life." As
a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. If you had
only one prayer for your son, would you not say,
" Lord, give him a clean heart " ?
Or, take the whole Sermon on the Mount, and
see how it shows just how to make society en
joyable. Stand up for righteousness. Do your
duties for divine approval. Ask for help of God.
Build your house on facts, not professions. Judge
doctrines by what fruit they bring.
Or consider the larger matter: He wants the
world to become right. How is the way to secure
it? Satan on the Mount of Temptation would get
it by doing wrong. But he represented not only
wickedness, but foolishness ; " for the man who sins
knowingly, not only sins, but blunders, for every

94 Transplanted Truths
sin has in its own self the seeds of its own defeat."
(Horace Greeley.) Jesus said, Go out and preach
what I have taught you. Was that not the most
effective thing to do? Where it has been done
has not the world grown better? And where the
world has failed is it not where the teaching of
Jesus has not been preached? Is it not a fact that
whenever a family, or a community, comes into a
more submissive relation to Jesus' teaching, condi
tions always improve? Enmities lessen, mutual
helpfulness increases. Folks quarrel less and help
one another more. They are more patient with one
another. They speak more carefully about one an
other. In business, if a new instalment of true Chris
tian obedience should arrive, it would give us a full
pound's weight if we had not been getting it; men
would be more careful to pay promptly, and a gen
eral condition of comfort would prevail. If Chris
tian men on both sides were in charge of affairs
the so-called " labor questions " would get quicker
and happier settlement. Every year of our history
adds to the testimony that for practical wisdom the
teachings of Jesus cannot be excelled. They are
justifying themselves continually, and men are say
ing, " Why didn't we see this wisdom sooner ? "
He was rich in his character. Isn't it a remark
able fact that all the best traits that men anywhere
have found reside in Jesus in full measure? We
all value truthfulness, but he was flawless in truth.

The Preeminent Message of the Church 95
We value kindness, but not a trace of unkindness is
in him. We delight in a man who has the courage
of his convictions ; but Jesus sets us all an example.
We respect the grace of forgiveness in others; but
he taught and practised it fully. In the record we
see him under many different circumstances.
Among friends, and how friendly he is! With the
sorrowing, and how he comforts them ! He preaches
to the listening crowds, and with what wisdom!
And then we find him among enemies who watch
every word to find fault. Not a look or tone escapes
their sharp criticism. We find him in the presence
of the governor, and on the cross; but in every
place he says the right thing. Calm, fair, coura
geous, patient, plain-spoken! What an example of
practical sense! Patience with others is a virtue,
and how patient he was with men! Every virtue
we can think of he possessed to the full measure.
Think along any line of goodness, and there at the
end of our thought is Jesus meeting in his own
character our highest thought. Of him it was truly
said, " He is altogether lovely."
He was rich in his wisdom as a teacher. How
wonderful he was ! It is said that the common peo
ple heard him gladly. That was because he knew
how to teach. He was always teaching with his
preaching. In our day we are hearing and read
ing much about the science of teaching. All the
ideas that teachers have picked up by long experi
ence are formulated, classified, and put into books

96 Transplanted Truths
on pedagogy. And they are very helpful — some
times. But it is a striking fact that if we take the
Gospels as we have them, and apply these peda
gogical tests that are found in our books, Jesus'
teaching meets them all. Four great things are
said to be the corner-stones of good teaching:
(1) To impart knowledge of facts; (2) to awaken
interest; (3) to present ideals; (4) to enlist the will.
All good teachers must have these; and every dis
course of Jesus bears evidence that he sought to do
these very things. He is the Prince of teachers.
One of our great teachers, the superintendent of
schools in Philadelphia, in his book, " The Making
oi a Teacher," gives two chapters to pointing out
this feature of Jesus' teaching ability. Rich in the
knowledge of teaching! When President Ebenezer
Dodge, of what is now Colgate University, died,
Prof. Edward Judson spoke at the funeral. Among
other things he said was this : " We students found
that when we went to him with our problems he
had thought all around them and all through them
beforehand, so we had confidence in his answers."
So it was with Jesus. He had thought the human
problem all through. Preachers and teachers need
not fear that in his answers any part of the case has
been overlooked.
He was rich in his victory. Our Easter Day is
the token of that. He was crucified, and died, and
was buried. The soldiers were sure of it. The
friends were sure of it. The grave was sealed.

The Preeminent Message of the Church 97
The guard was appointed. But behold ! the tomb is
empty, and the voice of tenderness that they sup
posed was silent forever spoke again to Mary and
the others. "Jesus hath broken the bars of the tomb!"
The powers of death have done their worst,
But Christ their legions hath dispersed.
The Prince of hope with death hath striven ;
To cleanse the earth his blood was given;
He rent the vail and opened heaven.
Now he has returned to the glory he had with the
Father, and has sat down on the right hand of the
majesty on high. Rich in his wondrous victory!
But more than all else, he is rich in his present,
active interest in mankind. " He sitteth at the right
hand " as the " head of all things to the church."
That is, the mind of Jesus is now daily watching us
and superintending our lives.
Such is an outline of the " unsearchable riches of
Christ." It was the substance of Paul's message.
It must be the substance of ours if we contribute our
share in that " gathering together in one all things
in Christ," which is the far-off but God-appointed
destiny of our race.

CHAPTER VII
THE REASON WHY THINGS ARE AS THEY ARE
"To make all men see what is the dispensation of
the mystery which for ages has been hid in God, who
created all things, to the intent that now unto the
principalities 'and powers in the heavenly places might
be made known by the church the manifold wisdom of
God, according to the eternal purpose which he pur
posed in Christ Jesus our Lord." — Eph. 3 : 10.
One of our great problems is to harmonize our view
of things as they are with our view of things as we
think they ought to be. Nearly all men think that
a Being of goodness and power made and rules the
world. Such a belief underlies all our plans and
reasonings. But we see much that does not harmo
nize with such an underlying belief. There are some
philosophers who, because they cannot harmonize
these conflicting views, cry out in despair:
There is no good, there is no God,
And faith is a heartless cheat
That bares the back for the devil's rod
And scatters thorns for the feet.
An English writer has said that he would be
miserably ashamed of himself to have made a world
so full of wretchedness as this one is. An aged
98

The Reason Why Things Are as They Are 99
lawyer said to me when his daughter died, leaving
a little babe to the awkward hands of its father:
" If I were God, I think I could find a better way
than to take a needed mother, and leave a semi-
useless old man like me."
A mother told me that her little five-year-old boy
was so full of questions which she could not an
swer, that she took him to Sunday-school. I asked
her to give me a sample of his questions. She re
plied : " He asked me if God was good and power
ful, and when I said, ' Yes,' he replied, ' Why
doesn't he kill the devil and be done with it? ' " That
is a child's way of stating your problem. Men would
not be so bald in the statement because they would
hesitate to impugn the character of the Creator.
A savage Bushman, when told the gospel story
by the missionary, replied, " Why have you not told
us this before? "
And this is no modern problem. The writer of
the Seventy-third Psalm said that when he saw the
sorrows of the good and the prosperity of the
wicked, he thought : " Verily I have cleansed my
heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency."
In later days the poet Milton began his immortal
poem, " Paradise Lost," with this prayer to the
Spirit of God: What in me is dark,
Illumine. What is low, raise and support,
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal providence
And justify the ways of God to men.

ioo Transplanted Truths
Everywhere the whole creation groaneth and
travaileth in pain together until now. The philoso
pher and the stupidest man alike find trouble in ex
plaining why a good God should have made a world
so full of what, to us at least, seems to be evil, and
that the remedy for it is so late in coming.
An English writer 1 points out six common dis
turbing elements in life: Imperfections in body,
feeble mental power, hindrance by surroundings,
occupations unsuited to our capacity, pains of vari
ous kinds, struggle for existence. We all know
something about each of these.
And besides these, Paul had his own questions to
answer. He must have heard men ask : " If your
God is so gracious toward all the world, why has
he not revealed himself to others? If he is so
good, why has he been so long getting things done?
If he is powerful, why does evil have so good
success here ? "
But Paul thought he had the key that unlocked
the " mystery that for ages had been hid in God," as
he expressed it. He was commissioned to give Hght
on that mystery, and to make other intelligences than
human ones — intelligences that have been puzzled as
much as we about it — to make them know the mani
fold wisdom of God. He hoped to enable Christian
men to rebuke the subtle slanders against God that
rise at times from the trials of life like fatal miasmas
from the dismal swamps of Florida, and to awaken
1 W. W. Peyton, in " Contemporary Review," Sept., 1911.

The Reason Why Things Are as They Are 101
in their place the song : " Oh, the depth of the riches
both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how
unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past
finding out ! " He thought he had the key that un
locks the gates of fear and lets in the light of hope.
The gospel he was to preach, when it had been ac
cepted and had wrought its proper work in men,
would by its doctrines and its results acquit the
Creator of the charges that troubled, perplexed souls
sometimes make against him.
This is a very large claim, but it is justified. Mil
ton said in writing his poem that he would " pursue
things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme." But he
was in error. Paul had undertaken to justify the
ways of God to men a long time before Milton's
time, and he did it much better than Milton did,
both here in Ephesians and in Romans.
His words here imply that there is a good destiny
for men, and that in time that destiny zvill be
reached, and reached in such a way that all the
created universe will see and say, " He doeth all
things well."
That destiny is told us in several places. In
Romans (8 : 22) he wrote that all " creation groan
eth, waiting for the redemption"; for it will be
" delivered from the bondage of corruption into the
glorious liberty of the children of God." To the
Philippians (2 : 11) he wrote: " Every knee should
bow . . . and that every tongue should confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the

102 Transplanted Truths
Father." In this letter (chap, i), he says: It is the
purpose of the Father to " gather into one all things
in Christ." There is a promise of a universal defeat
of wickedness. In some way, at some time, sin and
sorrow will not only have disappeared, but they will
have disappeared in such a way that all will say
that God is wise and good.
The traveler from Scranton to Philadelphia on the
Lackawanna road comes to a place where one can
see away beyond him Delaware Water Gap. Some
upheaval of nature cut a deep notch in the moun
tain ridge. It shows against the sky in marked
outline. Through it the river flows out toward the
sea. One does not think for the moment that his
route will bring him there. He winds about among
the mountains back and forth for an hour or more,
and then finds himself gliding along close beside
the river and slipping through a narrow opening to
the other side of the mountains. So it is with our
destiny. It lies far away. There are many turns
and many grades, but we shall come at last not
only to see it, but to be it. " It is not yet made
manifest what we shall be. We know that if he
shall be manifested, we shall be like him, for we
shall see him as he is " (i John 3:2). There is a
promise that in the individual cases all things shall
work together for good to them that love God. By
some sort of spiritual alchemy he will bring good
out of evil and light out of darkness so that which
appears to contain only evil will be found freighted

The Reason Why Things Are as They Are 103
with good. So far as Paul's teaching can do it,
God is shown to be at heart nothing different from
what we inwardly feel that he ought to be — both
good and wise.
But Paul now opens to us another view of the
case not so easy to understand, but more rich in
its content than any we have heretofore seen. He
says that the wisdom of God is to be made known
to others "through the church." How is that?
Bible readers are familiar with the idea that in
telligent beings other than men exist. Peter in his
letter said that angels desired to know what manner
of things were in mind when they learned about the
coming of Christ. When they went to announce
the birth of the Saviour they burst out in a common
hymn : " Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth
to men of good will." These heavenly intelligences
are learning some things in these days of our trials.
To them is to be made known the manifold wisdom
of God. Earth is an object-lesson for angels to con
sider. They are to learn it by looking on and seeing
how God deals with the whole problem of our human
life; learn it by seeing what he does in the church,
by the effects of his gospel plan. We must not be
disturbed by the fact that these great problems
are talked about as if they were just mathematical
problems to be worked out, and had no mystery in
them. Paul only sketches the plan in bold lines that
we may see it. The gist of his thought is, as Peter

104 Transplanted Truths
wrote, that angels desire to look into these things
(i Peter i : 12), and in looking, they learn the wis
dom of God. We learn from this passage that the
right place to search for a knowledge of divine
wisdom is in the facts of the Christian life. Chris
tian experience is the book. We ourselves are God's
letters of commendation — the certificates of his
wisdom. If the gospel does not work material
changes in the lives of its followers, if it does not
uplift and help, then the wisdom of God is not
manifest. If the gospel fails to make a good man
of me and another of you, then so far as our case
is known God's wisdom is folly. But if it does lift
us; if in its manifold influences it elevates the tone
of life for all that have it, then it shows the wisdom
of the plan.
See how it works. We are cheered in trouble
by the assurance of divine care. We are in a world
of seeming heartlessness. In the plan of the world,
interest in men is apparently wanting. We are sub
ject to the action of social laws that toss us about
like corks on the current of Niagara. At times we
feel like nobodies. In opposition to this, Paul
teaches us that we are not only somebodies, but we
are the heritage of God. We are of great value to
him and to his plans. That view, once seen, puts a
new song in one's mouth and changes a hopeless
hour into one of joy. For a man to walk abroad
amidst the works of God in the heavens, or in the
earth with its landscapes and seas and flowers, and

The Reason Why Things Are as They Are 105
there think, " The author of all this personally cares
for me," brings a sense of the worth of life, and
the worthwhileness of living which scatters despair.
The psalmist wrote :
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man, that thou visitest him?
One great aim of the Christian teaching is to im
press this upon us. All things have been arranged
" for the praise of his grace." That is, to make us
feel how gracious he is. A man can endure when
he knows that God cares. The psalmist wrote,
" God is my refuge, of whom shall I be afraid ? "
And again :
If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me,
And thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say surely the darkness shall overwhelm me,
And the light about me shall be night;
Even there shall thy hand lead me,
But the night shineth as the day.
It is a pearl of great price to know the care of
God. Paul prayed that they might come to " know
the love of God that passeth knowledge." A sense
of that love calms our fears in conflict. It gives
courage in danger. It comforts in sorrow. It stirs
all the best in us. It is not overstatement to say
that if life does nothing but make us to know the

106 Transplanted Truths
grace of God and usher us into the next world with
hope it is not wasted. " This is life eternal, that
they should know thee the only true God, and him
whom thou didst send" (John 17 : 3). And it is
equally true that for a man to have no knowledge
of God or to have an utterly wrong conception of
him is to have life without any fulness. The great
est fountains of joy and comfort and hope and
inspiration are as yet undiscovered by such a man.
But how are we to know the exceeding gracious-
ness of God? We learn the grace of God through
trials. Suppose there was no sin to be overcome,
no pain to be borne, no danger to be faced, no
displacements in life, no struggle for anything; sup
pose we had no aims that called for strenuous
effort, and no sin that made us ashamed, and no
ignorance that handicapped us, what could we know
of the graciousness of God ?
Suppose I have a friend to whom I wish to make a
gift. But he is very rich. There is not a picture
he admires but he has bought it for his drawing-
room; not a rare flower that does not find a place
in his garden or hothouse. The booksellers send
him early copies of all new books. Jewels for his
personal adornment are common as buttons. All
that he wants he buys. What can I buy to show
him my appreciation? The fact that he does not
have a thing is evidence that he does not want it
much. How can I by a gift make him realize how
much I care for him? My grace to him cannot

The Reason Why Things Are as They Are 107
make itself known until he has some need that I
can supply. And I am not sure but that the rule
works as certainly the other way. The sense of
the grace of God can remain only so long as there
is need to be supplied. If we needed nothing we
should not pray. If we received nothing we should
not be thankful. If we had no obligation we
should not be obedient. The very sense of our
dependence is the channel through which we learn
God's grace. And it is this sense of his grace that
binds us to him.
Oh, to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be !
We sinned and asked him for forgiveness, and he
gave it. We were in moral struggle, and he helped
us. We walked where the shadow of death chilled
us, and he was with us with his rod and staff to com
fort us. We mourned, and he gave us consolation.
Indeed, the very alphabet by which we learned the
story of his grace is made up of letters learned in
the experiences of trouble or need or struggle.
Now this is what I would notice. No philosopher
of any age ever thought of a plan by which the
sweetest things would come from the bitter things.
No one of us would have imagined that a man
would get his best sense of his own worth, and the
greatest inspiration for his life by reason Of his
imperfections and hindrances and ignorances and
pains and sorrows. But those that get a clear per-

io8 Transplanted Truths
spective of this plan of God see that which acquits
him of harshness or neglect in creating us as he
did. And they learn to praise him for his far-seeing
wisdom and his unmeasured goodness. Our com
plaints are smothered in the abundance of his grace.
And again, in his plan trials perfect our charac
ters. We are to be made holy. That is a definite
central part of his plan concerning us. " He hath
chosen us in him that we should be holy." That
is, we should have clean, pure, honorable characters.
And what are the characteristics of holy men?
They are not the masculine qualities only, but the
gentler traits as well. Moral courage and con
scientiousness and loyalty to friends — these are the
stalk and branches. The delicate flowers are pa
tience with the erring, sympathy with the sorrow
ing, gentleness with the froward. The beauty of our
relations with others is due to tact in recognizing
others' rights and promptness in granting them.
But how are these qualities cultivated? Can a
man cultivate patience who has nothing to try him ?
How will loyalty to friends prosper if one is never
tempted to desert? What sympathy will develop
if there be no pain or sorrow ?
A community where all the neighbors are on
salaries, and these substantially secured ; where they
have no great sicknesses, and are not engaged in
any common work that binds them together, is the
hardest place to live and keep alive the best traits
of the Christian life. Sympathy tends to become

The Reason Why Things Are as They Are 109
atrophied. The art of saying kind and helpful
things has a hard time to maintain itself. One's
hands lose their cunning in gentle ministry, and
his eyes dry up for want of tears. Were it not for
some families of the poor into which one can go
and be of some use, life would fall to the low grade
of comfortable selfish existence.
The dearest friends and the warmest friendships
are not produced under sunny skies and upon
smooth seas of health and prosperity, but in the
times when the " cold storms rack the worn cordage
of the heart." There are many friendships born
in the depths of sorrow that are worth their cost.
The quality of moral courage can only grow where
there is resistance to the right, and it must be fought
for. Love of truth comes into prominence only
where it meets the contrast of falsehood. Love of
God comes only when love of other things competes
with it for the loyalty of the heart. If he were to
take away from each of us every virtue that has not
come from oppositions of evil of some sort we
should become what J. G. Holland called :
Powerless pulpy souls
That show a dimple for each touch of sin.
In art there is a background to bring out the colors
and shadows, to make emphatic the light. And so
in character-building there is a background of evil.
Paul wrote the Corinthians (2 Cor. 12 : 9) that if
his thorn in the flesh would make him better to

no Transplanted Truths
know the grace of God, he would glory in his in
firmities. And when we see how trials make proud-spirited
women into saints of God, how sorrow melts the
hearts of the heedless business man, how the de
lays of God in answering prayers make some men
patient with him and with the world; when we
hear the sweetest songs of trust from the valleys
of sorrow and the most confident praise from the
men that are in the fight for righteousness, then
we say : " What human philosophy would have
thought out that way to perfect in men and women
the image of Jesus? " It was such views as these
that made the prophet say : " My ways are not your
ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher
than the earth, so are my ways higher than your
ways" (Isa. 55 : 8, 9).
Jesus wins by his wounds. And what a weapon
is the cross to overcome the hostility of men to
Jesus ! David could slay Goliath with a sling and a
stone. Solomon could subdue the Queen of Sheba
with his magnificences. The United States may con
quer a lot of simple-minded Filipinos by killing
off the best of them; they may possibly awe the
world into decency by an overmastering navy. But
Jesus wins by his wounds. That way to get his
honor is the divine invention. He may be said to
have a copyright on it. On the mount of tempta
tion Satan sought to substitute another easier way
for Jesus to win. He said, Worship me, or Satisfy

The Reason Why Things Are as They Are in
the multitude with prodigies. But Jesus said, No!
and went on toward the cross to win by his wounds.
Jesus unites by his cross. Another element of
wisdom is manifest in the gospel plan. It seems to
us that all God's reasoning creatures should lov
ingly honor him as one family. It does not seem to
be right that enmities and jealousies and divisions
and animosities should exist between the parts of his
common family of men. It seems far from ideal
that nations should have different aims and differing
moral standards and different religions. They are
of one blood and going to one destiny ; why should
they not be united ? Paul says that it is the one far-
off culmination that all shall be together in Christ
(Chap. I : io.) But how are these national preju
dices to be overcome ? By what sort of providence
will he unite the diverse elements? One might
think of Alexander's way — conquer the world with
his troops. But the world never in heart submitted
to Alexander. And at his death his kingdom was
quartered and soon went out of existence.
One might say, " Teach them a common theology."
But no one is able to formulate a theology that
all will accept. The Roman Catholic Church has
tried that, with no success except bloody persecu
tions and eternal inner strife smouldering like the
fires of volcanoes.
But Jesus said, " I, if I be lifted up, will draw
all men unto me." And that has been the result.
That humble man in a little Jewish province under a

112 Transplanted Truths
foreign ruler became a nucleus. And what has come
of it? To-day there are more people in earth — not
to mention those that have gone on before to await
the consummation — that honor Jesus and count his
people brethren than any earthly king ever had as
his followers. His people own his authority more
loyally than the subjects of any other king ever
own their ruler's authority. His people pay costlier
tribute to him than was ever paid to any other ruler.
His subjects listen for his word as they never do
for any other word. There is a sense of solidarity
among his people more complete than even races
have in themselves. And it is growing with won
drous strides. One of our noted public men used to
talk about " My policies," and measure things by
their contribution to those " policies." The policies
of Jesus are being advanced in world-wide circles.
His ideals of righteousness and square dealing are
coming into vogue in all nations. Lord Russell once
said in the presence of the Bar Association of New
York that he had hope that the Golden Rule would
eventually be the rule of international law. The
chief official of the islands of Chusan, off the coast
of China, not long ago issued a proclamation, in
which he said Christianity should be " gladly heard,
greatly honored, and highly protected." The high
est officials of China ask the Christian people to
pray for them. The doors of all the nations are
open to the work of the missionary of the cross.
Now what wisdom it was that saw the way to melt

The Reason Why Things Are as They Are 113
down national prejudices by the story of a crucified
Lord! In the ancient days of our country — I say
ancient because we have so far advanced that we
cannot think easily that it was so recent — in 1853
Wendell Phillips said in Boston that the only way
that the Negroes of this country would ever get
their freedom would be by their own hands in con
flict with their masters. But how different was the
case. God's ways are not our ways. And so the
way of God in gathering into one all nations is not
our way, but above it as heaven is above earth.
The Greeks asked for wisdom, and the Jews for
signs, but Paul preached Christ crucified — to the
Greeks foolishness, to the Jews a stumbling-block,
but to them that are called the power of God and
the wisdom of God. (1 Cor. 1 : 23.)
And all this complex providence is that the mani
fold wisdom and the boundless grace of God may
be revealed to the universe.

H

CHAPTER VIII
THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT
" I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you
to walk worthy of the calling wherewith ye are called,
with all lowliness, and meekness, with longsuffering,
forbearing one another in love, giving diligence to keep
the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is
one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one
hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of all. . . But unto each one was
the grace given according to the gift of Christ . . . and
he gave some to be apostles and some prophets, and
some evangelists, and some pastors, and teachers;
for perfecting the saints unto the work ... of build
ing the body of Christ, until we all attain unto the unity
of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God."
—Eph. 4 : 1-13.
In these active, progressive days we are all in
terested in what goes by the name of " church
unity." For the past twenty-five years the trend
of Christian thought and desire has been toward
unity. In the Episcopal Church conferences have
been held to promote it. Baptists and Free Bap
tists have already united in one missionary organ
ization, and their churches recognize one another in
perfect equality. In missionary fields the practice
of " comity " is quite general, and logically compels
114

The Unity of the Spirit 115
the recognition of members from all denominations
on a common footing.
In 19 10 the General Convention of the Protestant
Episcopal Church in the United States adopted the
following resolution :
" Whereas, There is to-day among all Christian
people a growing desire for the fulfilment of our
Lord's prayer that all his disciples may be one ; that
the world may believe that God has sent him:
" Resolved, That a Joint Commission be appointed
to bring about a conference for the consideration
of questions touching Faith and Order, and that all
Christian communities throughout the world that
confess our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour
be asked to unite with us in arranging for and con
ducting such a conference."
This movement has the hearty support of the
bishops, and has a generous amount of funds for
carrying on the work.
Besides these and many similar efforts, the spirit
of friendliness has been cultivated by the Christian
Endeavor societies, and by union evangelistic serv
ices. Our apostle's letter shows us that neither the
danger of disunity, nor the endeavors to prevent it,
are modern. The German poet, Goethe, said, " Men
change, but man remains the same." This is true in
churches. The same roots of evil appear in every

116 Transplanted Truths
generation. Each new set of initiates into the
Christian church has to run the gauntlet of the
same tendencies. And it is not confined to the
churches. Public men have the same experiences.
In Isaiah's time they justified the wicked for a bribe,
and took away the righteousness of the righteous
from him. In Amos' time they swallowed up the
needy, and caused the poor of the land to fail.
They begrudged the working man his Sabbath ;
they made the bushel small and the shekel large ; and
sold the refuse of the wheat for good grain. There
are no really new sins or new virtues. If a man
wanted to do it, he could become an expert in wick
edness by studying the sins recorded in the Bible
history. They say that if you dig a well in the country,
thistles will spring out of the clay that comes from
twenty feet below the ground — seeds are there.
And so the seeds of this kind of disunity are in the
soil of human nature, and need to be uprooted. It
is for this reason that Paul's words to a church far
away and long since, have value to us. The tend
encies of human nature remain the same. He did
not find any such trouble as denominational disunity,
for denominations had not yet begun. It was not
trouble between churches, but trouble in churches.
He found in the churches various elements of dis
unity. In chapter two, as we have seen in former
studies, the cause was racial prejudice, and he there
showed how the " middle wall of partition " is now

The Unity of the Spirit 117
broken down. But there was trouble growing out of
jealousies between members because one member had
" gifts," or, as we should call them, " talents," that
another had not. This showed itself in heartburnings
and complaints. Some said, as we see in 1 Corin
thians 12 : " Well, if I am not able to prophesy, I
am not a real member of Christ." Another would
say: "If you were as much honored as I, you
could do what I do." And still others moved by
envy would criticize the man that had the " gift."
We are not strangers to that kind of disunity.
So let us see by what sort of instruction Paul
dealt with the case in Ephesus.
I. He points us to the great vital blessings in
which we all share alike. " There is one body " —
that was a favorite figure with Paul. His thought
seems to be the church is the organization by which
the Spirit of God makes itself manifest in the world.
Our spirit may have kind desires toward our fel
low men, but suppose a man has no voice to express
his affection, and no eyes to reveal his feelings, and
no hands to work kindly service, and no feet to take
him to his friend, what good comes from his spirit's
intentions ? He must have a body to give his spirit
expression. So the church is the organization
through which God makes his kind intentions toward
men known. And Paul says there is only " one
body." We all are members of that company
through which he shows his love. The President of
the United States and his chauffeur, if they are

118 Transplanted Truths
Christians, have common rank in that particular.
The wealthy woman and her maid meet together.
When the church meets, they both come; when the
church is honored, they both share in it. If it is
dishonored, they bear the shame.
And we have " one hope of our calling." There
is no honor involved in the Christian hope that does
not avail for every member. Will Mr. A  have
the care of God in his Christian journey? So will
Mr. B  ¦. Is God working in Mr. A  to over
come his faults ? So is he in Mr. B  . Is there
a glorious resurrection for one ? So there is for the
other. One hope of our calling !
" One Lord " — and that is the Lord Jesus.
" One faith " — the essence of faith is the same
in all the members. You may have different opinions
and different theologies and different explanations
of many problems, but your faith is the old-fash
ioned article. Eve did not rock Abel in a cradle,
nor swing him in a hammock. She did not sing
to him as all New England sings to its babies:
Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber,
Holy angels guard thy bed,
Heavenly blessings without number
Gently falling round thy head.
But she loved him just as you love your babe. Her
heart, when she looked at him, felt just as yours
does when you look at your child. Love remains
the same. So our faith is identical with Abraham's.

The Unity of the Spirit 119
That eleventh chapter of Hebrews is a wonderful
chapter in many ways. And one of its wonders is
the string of folks it talks about. Here is Abel
bringing his sacrifice, and Enoch walking with God,
and Noah preaching to the people and overseeing
the building of the ark. Then comes Abraham,
leaving his country and its growing idolatry to go
out where his God would lead him; and Isaac,
wonderingly climbing the mountain to be offered
up; and Moses, leaving the pleasures of sin to
cast in his lot with the people of God; then Gideon,
daring to chop down the groves his neighbors wor
shiped in; and David going out to meet Goliath.
All these had the same old-fashioned faith. We
all have the same kind if we have any, for there is
only one faith. Some have more of it, others less,
but it is all the same kind.
But lest we should fail to see clearly what the
aim is, let me state it more fully. There are three
parts to it, all twisted together like the strands in
a cord. " Unity of the faith." This implies first
some formulated conception of the great doctrines
of the Christian religion. "The faith" does not
here, as in many places, mean the mere attitude
of trust in God, whatever he may be or require.
Paul means, when he says we are "justified by
faith," that we have an obedient and trustful atti
tude toward God as he has been made known to
us, and on that ground we are justified. But when
he says "the faith," he has some definiteness of

120 Transplanted Truths
doctrine in mind. " Unity of the faith " must mean
a common idea of what faith is and of the place
that faith has in our salvation, and that Christ has
in our faith. Some men think of their own good
ness as a part of the foundation of their justification,
and the grace of God as the other part. Faith only
supplements their own works. They are partly
paid for their goodness, and partly they are the
recipients of heavenly charity. But " the faith "
holds heavenly charity as the sole foundation. So
far as being accepted with God is concerned, it is
all " of faith " " through grace." Unless brethren
have a common idea about that, they will work dif
ferently, and rejoice differently, and lack harmony.
They do not have unity that belongs to " the faith."
And again, " the faith " is that trust in God that
arises from a knowledge of Jesus. Abraham had
faith, but he did not have " the faith " that Paul
writes about here. " The faith " trusts God as
he is revealed to us through Jesus. It is " the
glory of God in the face of Jesus " that has won
men to that kind of faith. And in proportion as
men see that glory they will have " the faith."
For this reason there must be teachers of " the
faith," who by wise and patient endeavor will lead
all into the right ideas, and thus into the right
faith. The second part is the " knowledge of the Son
of God." The church cannot work up to its full
efficiency while there is an ignorance about Jesus.

The Unity of the Spirit 121
It would not be an ideal condition if some of the
members thought Jesus was only the best man that
ever lived, while others thought he was the very
Son of God. Nor would it work for good to have
some think he died for our sins, and others think
his death was wholly due to his plainness of speech
to a hard-hearted generation; to have some think
him a good example to follow, and others think
him a " ransom " for us. I think it quite possible
for persons to hold any of these views, and be very
loyal disciples of Jesus. But a church made up
of all such disciples would not be ideal. It would
be better if it had the " unity of the knowledge of
the Son of God." Then its work would have a
homogeneousness that is desirable. No energy
would be wasted in competition of ideas. But to
have this unity there must be " prophets and evan
gelists, pastors and teachers," to instruct.
And the third element of this unity is the " unity
of the Spirit." That is, a common disposition of
peaceableness and mutual forbearance. It was this
feature of unity which Jesus had in mind when
he prayed that his apostles might all be one, even as
he and his Father were one. It was this that
characterized the early church when it was said of
them that they were all of " one mind." And it
was this that the apostle meant when he wrote,
" Be of the same mind one toward another." And
that " one mind " is described in Philippians as
" that mind which was in Christ Jesus."

122 Transplanted Truths
This kind of unity — the unity of the faith, and
of the knowledge of the Son of God, and of the
Spirit — is the special need of the church in all ages.
It never has been complete, it has never been main
tained at all without difficulty. But it is to be
continually cultivated. Our text says walk worthy
of your calling, " endeavoring to keep the unity of
the Spirit." " Endeavoring " — giving diligence — that
means to study the grounds of unity and the need
of unity. And it means making personal sacrifices
of pride and surrender of ambitions, and assuming
other folks' burdens for the sake of it.
"And one baptism." Some folks think this is
a proof-text for the Baptists. Well, it is in one way.
But Paul was not discussing the form of a ceremony.
In his days the question had not arisen. No one
thought bap tism anything but immersion. But what
he was saying was that the blessing of baptism was
alike to them all. The same conditions, the same
obligations, the same symbolism.
" 4.nd one God and father of all, who is over all,
and in all, and through all."
Oh, what a galaxy of blessings common to every
member of that church — to every member of every
church ! In the great vital things all alike. Equality
there in abundance! Holy communism! Divine
socialism !
II. Paul's second thought is, The church is not
simply a passive company, receiving all and doing
nothing. It has a work to do of two kinds. One

The Unity of the Spirit 123
is its missionary work. " Disciple all nations "
was the commission. But the other work was in
the church. He writes that something was to be
done to equip the church for efficiency in building
up itself until all should come to a mature man —
that is, the Christian life and character is to be
cultivated. I fear that this part of the work is overshadowed
by the other part. We often see in our papers the
statement that a church has " built a parsonage," or
" burned a mortgage," or " increased the salary,"
or " met the budget." The associational statistics
tell us how many have been added by profession,
and how many have been received by letter. I
would not be understood as reflecting upon such
work, but only as saying that there is a work more
fundamental — and I say it deliberately because from
it the other will grow more important — the work of
perfecting the individual character of the members.
There must be organization for this task if the
church is to accomplish much. There cannot be
any great efficiency in a mere congregation. A
mob, no matter how well-meaning, cannot do much
but destroy things. It has no constructive force.
A church of the best kind of saints will do very
little in any country unless there is a division of
labor, and some sort of orderly arrangement of its
activities. Those denominations that have failed
to organize their forces have lost efficiency. For
example, the Friends, who have the very essence

124 Transplanted Truths
of personal faith, but how feeble they are as a
people ! The Roman Catholic Church has very little
of the personal faith, and yet by their organization
what efficiency they have! In between those ex
tremes are various denominations, some with little,
others with more organization. It is always de
sirable. And so Paul points out that the Lord
had given some to be apostles, and some prophets,
and some pastors and teachers. We now have
minor differences. Some are preachers. That is
their calling — let them magnify it thankfully. Some
can sing. Singing is good — if it is the right kind.
It prepares the soil for the word; it soothes; it
calms; it awakens holy memories; it echoes in our
hearts after we go home from church. Some have
the gift of teaching the young. Some have a social
gift. Some have the gift of greeting strangers.
All these various abilities are the result of our
Lord's superintendence of the church. But says
Paul — and this is important — these various " gifts "
are not distributed, or apportioned without grace to
perform them, but " unto each one of us was
given grace according to the measure of the gift
of Christ." That is, if the gift of Christ is to
teach, he will give us grace to teach. If we are
to minister to the sick, he will give us grace to do
it. If a man is called to be a pastor, he will have
help to do it. A man called to sing is not promised
grace to preach, and some preachers have never
received grace to sing.

The Unity of the Spirit 125
But the more important part of this teaching is
that the distribution of tasks and the assignment
of duties are not made to satisfy men's ambitions.
We sometimes hear it said that offices in the church
should be passed around — men take turns. But
that is not Paul's idea. Gifts are not complimentary
honors, like votes in political conventions. They
are weighty responsibilities. And they are assigned
on an entirely different basis from compliment or
personal vanity. Not given as rewards for work
done, but given because of work to be done.
The principle of distribution is this: For the
perfecting of the Christians, for the work of build
ing up the church. The church is to be built up just
as a body is built up, all parts growing together.
A child does not grow his legs this year, and his
hands next year, and his head the next, but he
grows all over and all through him all the time.
That is the way the church is to be built up — all
its members, all the time, in all the requirements of
the Christian life. And these gifts are assigned
with reference to that purpose — that it may be
fully equipped, fully provided with what is needed
for its own upbuilding in love. This implies that
some churches need a large committee to care for
the poor; others have no poor, and do not need a
committee. Some need an evangelist, others do not.
Plain, prayerful common sense must determine the
kind of organization for each. But it must be
suited to the upbuilding.

126 Transplanted Truths
If the church were a hospital it would need
surgeons and nurses. If it were governing the
world it would need police and tax-collectors. But
the upbuilding here is k until we all come to the
unity of the faith, and the knowledge of the Son
of God," unto full-grown men and women. That is
the dominant aim of our Lord in all our church
organization — to bring the whole church to the
unity of the faith, the unity of the Spirit in the
bond of peace. That is, to build the church in a
peaceful unity, as the Spirit of God both creates
and approves. And as a tree is all the while active
to produce fruit, and fruit dominates all the roots
and branches, so the desire for the unity of the
Spirit should be allowed to control all its activities.

CHAPTER IX
THE CHURCH AN ORGANISM
"Speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all
things into him who is the head, even Christ; from
whom the whole body fitly framed and knit together
through that which every joint supplieth, according to
the working in due measure of each several part,
maketh the increase of the body unto the building up
of itself in love." — Eph. 4 : 15, 16.
Every cause that wins men's support to any great
extent has some sort of organized effort to propa
gate its principles. We see this especially exem
plified in the field of politics. Nothing can be
undertaken with hope of success unless there is
an organization to present the case. Information
must be given, the indifferent must be interested,
the errors of the other party must be refuted. The
fact that an organization may become a " machine,"
or a " steam roller " — to use the political word —
and may use improper means, does not make it less
necessary to have an organization. The tariff ques
tion, the temperance question, the trust question, the
question of what are called clean politics, must have
organized effort.
The same is true about religion. We all came
into the world empty-headed. What we know at
127

128 Transplanted Truths
any time in life is what we have learned. The
truths of religion are not spontaneously generated
in our minds, they must be taught us. We are
" begotten again by the word of truth," and to
have it well taught there must be an organization
to do it. It must be somebody's business, and the
somebodies must be qualified in some way for their
work. So the old Jewish church had its organization.
Moses, who had been brought up at the court of
Egypt, which was a highly organized nation, did
not set out to lead a nation into independent life
and prosperity without having an organization to
teach the things of God. There was the tabernacle,
and the priests who made it their business to care
for it, the sacrifices and the ritual, the hymns of
praise and the didactic hymns that kept fresh the
memory of the Lord's guiding providences.
So a church, that is, not a mere crowd of folks
but an organized body of people, has always been
on hand making it its business to teach the things
of God. One has to compare the work of Doctor
Talmage, a great pulpiteer but no organizer, with
Doctor Behrends, who had both the pulpit and
organizing gift. Mr. Talmage's church disbanded
in a few weeks after he left them ; Doctor Behrend's
has been a virile force all the time since he died,
calling to its leadership Mr. Cadman, who has not
only pulpit power, but also a great genius and
successful experience in organizing Christian work.

The Church an Organism 129
In some places the organization has been very
complex and strong, like the Roman Catholic; and
at other places there have been only independent
congregations with the simplest organism. But
organization has always come into being as soon as
a few men united to propagate a doctrine. The
" nature of things " provides its own tools. Given
a people like the Wesleyan Methodists, or the Sal
vation Army, whose dominating purpose is to evan
gelize, and they will grow their own agencies for
doing it. If education is the main purpose, schools
will come up as naturally as blossoms come of
fruit trees. The Salvation Army, of one hundred
thousand, gathering an income of more than half
a million a week, having eighty-two periodicals, and
great numbers of homes and refuges for men and
women, carries its messages to nearly every nation,
and it was organized under one man, him who was
rightly called the " benevolent despot." The Czar
of Russia might envy the autocratic authority of
Mr. Booth. But the work could not be done in
any other way.
It therefore follows that the institution or or
ganization assumes a great importance. The men
who have it on their hands get to thinking that
the organization is the main thing, and before any
one intends it men are working for the church
as an organization and overlooking the purpose for
which it exists. Then there grows up an opposition
from those who see only the purpose of the church

130 Transplanted Truths
and overlook the necessity for its organization.
They are like men who should say : " Oh, fie on
your agricultural schools, and your spraying-
machines, and your pruning-hooks. We want
grapes, luscious grapes, lots of them."
So in the Old Testament times some of the
prophets preached : " Away with your incense and
sacrifices. They are an abomination. Cease to do
evil and learn to do well. Put away your evil
from before our eyes, wash you and make you
clean. Then you shall eat the good of the land "
(Isa. 1). But Malachi, feeling the need of public
worship, said : " Ye have been robbing God in
offerings ; come to the temple ; bring ye all the
tithes into the storehouse, and see if I will not
pour you out a blessing until there is not room to
receive it." In all history a sort of mutual antago
nism has always been impending, if it did not actually
break out, between the " organization " and the " in
dependents " ; between those that believe in what
we call " team work " and those that emphasize
" individual liberty of action."
In this church at Ephesus the question was not
quite the same as among the ancient prophets, nor
exactly as in our day, but it had a similar root.
Here they were envious of one another because of
the different parts that they had in the organiza
tion. So we get Paul's discussion of the case, which
contains some good words for our day. He had
begun by saying that in great things there is no

The Church an Organism 13I
partiality shown to any one by the Father. We
Christians have but one Lord, one faith, one bap
tism; one God and Father of all. As all the chil
dren of a proper family share alike in the love
and care of the parents, so all Christians are of
the household of God. (See 2 : 19.)
But when it comes to organization, he says the
church is like the body of a man. It has its various
parts, and they have various functions, but they
are all parts of the same body. (See 1 Cor. 12 :
12-30.) But these parts were designed by the
Lord. He planned to give us two feet and not
four, to give us five fingers and not six. We
must walk and not fly, because he so planned it.
In like wisdom and authority he gave some to be
apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists,
for perfecting the church, to do a helpful service
in building up the body of Christ, till we come to
unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son
of God.
But now in this latter part of the chapter he con
siders what we might call the companion of organiza
tion. Or we may say he considers the church as
an organism. The difference is this : In our organ
ization some outside authority is assigning the parts
and the tasks for each. He says to one, " You do
this"; and to another, "You do that." But in
our organism the parts do their proper duties by an
informing spirit — as in the flowers the stalk, leaves,
buds do their own part automatically. A regiment

I32 Transplanted Truths
has its organization — a colonel, the captains, lieu
tenants, corporals, privates; but for full efficiency
there must be what is called esprit de corps, that
makes every man seek to do the unassigned things
wisely and bravely.
So the church, considered as an organism, is
actuated by a common spirit that works spontane
ously toward the true aim of the Christ.
But as an organism the aim of the church is to
build itself up in love. That is not the same as
building up in numbers. Numbers are important.
Would that we had twice as many as we have. But
if a church should double its numbers and halve its
loving spirit, it would weaken rather than help the
cause. And if a church was halved in numbers
and doubled in the spirit of love, it would accom
plish more than with the whole number.
And it is not to build up in wealth. Money is
important. I would that all the members were so
well off that they would be freed from anxiety,
and be able to help others that are in need. But
wealth is not the aim of the church.
And it is not culture, that is, intellectual culture.
The cause needs cultivated men and women, but one
may be very well cultured in soul and not be learned.
And it is not to build itself up as a political power.
We hear and read much of late about what the
church ought to do in the way of legislating for
reforms. One would think the church owned the
legislatures. But the church cannot do its work as

The Church an Organism 133
a political party. Its members ought to be in the
right party and be active there, but as a church we
have no adaptation for that kind of work. The
Roman Catholic Church, which always gets its
fingers into politics, has made a failure in that line.
Every country on the globe where that church has
meddled with politics has disfranchised the church.
The South American countries, where the Catholic
Church had full sway for centuries, nearly every one
of them in a reform movement separated the Church
from the State. They did not and do not con
demn the Catholic religion, but only the meddling
by the church with politics and government.
The church is not a business corporation. Our
State laws have provision for " corporations not for
profit." That is the kind of corporation the church
is. Sometimes churches have undertaken to be busi
ness concerns. One that I knew of was running
a shirt factory to furnish work for the members.
This was a laudable purpose, but a poor method.
The church is not organized for that kind of ac
tivity. Organ music cannot come from a jews-harp.
And the church is not a sociological club. It is
not organized to care for musical teaching, or
farmers' institutes, or library management, or nur
series for working-women's children.
It is organized for the " building up of itself in
love." That is, for calling out in all its members the
great dominating quality, of which the thirteenth
chapter of First Corinthians tells so beautifully:

134 Transplanted Truths
" Love suffereth long and is kind. Love envieth not.
Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up ; rejoiceth
not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth
all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things.
Love never faileth."
To " build up " the members and all the com
munity in that is the special ministry of the church.
That is its " profession." It is an expert in that
line. We are to keep that in mind as the aim of
our church work. Any success in any direction
that does not do that is not success, but failure.
Great congregations are good, desirable, useful. But
if they are not built up in love, that is, if their
coming together does not create among them a
helpful spirit, the ministry of the church has failed.
And the method of securing this aim is said to
be, " Speaking the truth in love." We have no good
equivalent word for the Greek used here. Some
have translated by " truthing it in love." Others
read it, " adhering to the truth." We shall not be
far from the idea -if we say, " living the truth."
Truth is not a mere statement. Truth is what Jesus
meant when he said, " I am the truth." It is a
life in which God's ideas are incarnated. And any
expression of the divine idea is " speaking the truth."
We are to " live out the truth in love." In the
family, in the office, in the shop, in all relations of
life to be regulated by a loving spirit. In that way
we build up the church in love. In that way we
grow up into Christ.

The Church an Organism 135
The mature Christian is satisfied with Jesus. And
as that state of mind and heart increases in us
the church organization works more smoothly. We
cannot too clearly realize the splendid efficiency of
this for accomplishing the mission of the church.
We might think that if we can enforce the discipline
of the church, or agree upon certain rules, or get
into one great organization, or have one liturgy,
that it will best promote the aim of the church. But
experience shows us that so far as regulating our
kindly intercourse with each other it comes best
when every man tries to be in touch with Jesus.
It is a striking fact in history that when the Bible
was given to the people in Germany and in Eng
land, they came without conference with one another
to a very great uniformity of morals and theology.
The conductors of a great railroad each and all
consult the standard clock. They do not get their
time from one another, but from the head timepiece.
And thus through the many hours and places har
mony and safety prevail. So when we grow up into
Christ as our head, that is, as we come to take him
as our pattern and helper, we come to think alike
about the common duties of kindness and honor and
integrity. Ideas about the policy of work may differ,
but ideas of right come to about the same standard.
What is the next step in Paul's thought? " Com
pacted by that which every joint supplieth." (I am
following the Common version here because, while
the translation is difficult, the Common version is, on

136 Transplanted Truths
the whole, more understandable.) For the sake of
comparison I give the leading versions. " The)
Standard " reads : " From whom all the body, fitly
framed and knit together through that which every
joint supplieth according to the working in due
measure of each several part, maketh increase of
the body unto the building up of itself in love."
" The Twentieth Century " reads : " From whom
the whole body closely joined and knit together by
the contact of every part with the source of its life
derives its power to grow, in proportion to the vigor
of each individual part; and so is being built up in
a spirit of love."
Weymouth's " Modern Speech " reads : " Depend
ent on Christ the whole body — the various parts
closely fitting and firmly adhering to one another —
grows by the aid of every contributory link with
power proportional to the need of each individual
part, so as to build itself up in a spirit of love."
Paul has in mind as the basis of his extended
metaphor the body of a man full of health and
physical vigor. He seems to see in imagination one
of the fine physical men of the arena, having muscles
knit firmly, limbs moving freely, vigor in every
pulse-beat, perfectly adapted to his duties. And this
man supplies the framework of Paul's language. The
church is the body of Christ. All its parts are knit
together, and as a whole it has its strength, not as
the result of one part, or of two parts, but com
pacted by that which every joint supplieth. If some

The Church an Organism 137
part were damaged, or paralyzed, or neglected, the
body as a whole would be damaged in its working
force and efficiency. My father by an accident lost
his little finger on the left hand. He used to say he
never knew that a little finger was of any use until
he lost it.
Paul asserts what we all assent to, that all the
members of the body are needed. In the church this
is well worth our attention. " Compacted by that
which every joint supplieth." Every member of
the church has a useful function in this building up
of the church in love. And in proportion as each
one works effectively will the church be a strong and
healthy church.
There are two directions in which error is liable
to creep in. First, members are liable to think that
their conduct and spirit, because they occupy no
prominent position, is of little importance. All
agree that the minister's conduct is weighty in
compacting the church, and the deacons', and the
trustees', and the teachers'. They are like cities
set on a hill whose light cannot be hid. But others
are not greatly important. Paul, however, says
" every joint."
The least conspicuous member of the church
strengthens and helps to build up the church in
love when he is in touch with Jesus. I would
not belittle the splendid helpfulness of prominent
people in the churches, but here we are not dis
cussing the building up of the church in numbers or

138 Transplanted Truths
social standing, but the building up of it in love.
And in this the least prominent sometimes con
tribute most. Let me tell you what I mean in the
language of the concrete case.
I think I have some experience to justify what I
say. My first pastorate was in a country church. It
was a blessed little company. For such churches we
are constantly thankful. Then I went for about
seven years to Cincinnati, to a small church, but one
in which all were well-off. Only one family of
poor in it. Then to Toledo, to a church down-town,
with the great intermediate element in abundance.
Then to Yonkers for twelve years, where we had
millionaires at one end and many factory people at
the other. And in each of these churches we had
wealthy men. And I bear my testimony that no
more loving members were there than they were.
They were in the prayer-meeting, and they were
cordial. The women dressed plainly. They did
not think of the church as the place where they were
to show their finery. They did not by dress make it
difficult for the poorer people to come. I have no
sympathy with the campaign of envy that has swept
over our country for the past few years against men
of property. Wealth does not make Christians,
but Christian men can be wealthy and do great
good with their money. I have had no better help
ers than wealthy men.
But in each of these churches we had very poor
men. And I bear my testimony to their usefulness

The Church an Organism 139
too. My first lessons in the duty of giving pro
portionally to Christian work came from an Eng
lish tailor. He made a very close living, cutting
and making the clothes for the villagers. He used
to lay aside ten per cent of his earnings as a fund
for the mission work of the kingdom. He sometimes
borrowed of the fund, but he said he always paid
interest on it.
There was another man there, an old man who
had a bedridden wife. He used to care for her
himself. He cooked his own meals and hers. He
made his living by sawing wood and doing chores
for the neighbors. I learned that he was paying
ten cents a month toward my salary. I was ashamed
to take it. I said to the treasurer, " It will burn a
hole in my pocket." But he said : " No, the old
man would feel hurt if you refused it. He comes
in here the first week in the month and gives me
ten cents, his first earnings in the month. He
enjoys it." That man taught us all what it is to
love the church, and to be manly about it.
In another church we had a poor man — poor in
money but rich in character. He was an engineer,
with five children. But they were always in church
and in the family pew. That was many years ago.
Now the children are married, and with wives and
children all come to church, about fifteen in all.
That man was one of the " joints." That church
knew what it is to be strengthened by what each
" joint supplies."

140 Transplanted Truths
And in another church, where I now live, I have
noticed an Englishman who loved the word. He
was always in his place. He had a kind word that
made his poverty to be overlooked. He went up and
down the aisle, and left the fragrance of a godly
memory wherever he went.
The church is always " compacted by that which
every joint supplieth," and weakened when a joint
fails to work according to its due measure.
In Cincinnati there was a German woman, not a
member of my own church, but a Lutheran. She
was poor, aged, bedridden with rheumatism. With
her daughter she lived in one room. The daughter
supported both by work in some store. After getting
their breakfast the daughter used to put the lunch
for her mother on the stand at tlie head of the bed,
where her mother could reach it, and then leave
her until evening. That old woman had great faith
in God. She lived " under the shadow of his wingl"
She spoke not the common language of Cincinnati,
but of the kingdom of heaven. She was visited
by women of health and wealth and culture, partly
to comfort her, but they used to say it was a bless
ing to go and see Mrs. Armbruster. They brought
away more than they took to her. She was a supply
to their need. Through her the church was built up
in love.
In the city of Toledo lived a similar case, only
the woman was a French Catholic. (Oh, how low
the fences are between the denominations when

The Church an Organism 141
Christ appears among them!) My wife used to
visit her, and she said it was a help to herself to visit
that cheerful, bedridden, poverty-smitten sister in
the Lord.
In Chester we had — for all the Christians had a
share in her — a woman of culture and wealth smit
ten with a long-drawn-out painful malady. But she
was so patient, so uncomplaining, so thoughtful of
others that she was called a " perpetual sermon."
That is what Paul meant by " compacted by that
which every joint supplieth." " Every joint ! " The
poor, the rich, the strong, the weak, the great, the
small, Gladstone and his butler, President Wilson
and his doorkeeper. " Every joint " has its part in
the body ; each one something to do in giving com
pactness and vigor to the church.
" According to the effectual working in the meas
ure of every part." That is, when every joint does
its appropriate work well. If some little joint objects
to doing its part, the whole may suffer. A lame
ankle may cripple the man. A deaf ear, or a blind
eye may almost make a man useless. So a big
Christian, or a little one, may cause a church to limp
or almost cripple it. The " effectual working " of
every part is important.
And so we are turned back in our thought to
see how this effectual working is to be maintained.
It reads : " Grow up into him in all things, from
whom the whole body . . - maketh increase of itself
in love." That is, in proportion as we are closely

142 Transplanted Truths
associated with him we make our various contribu
tions to the growth of the church in love.
We have all heard of men whose life is an irrita
tion to the church where they live. They are like
the sand that gets in the machinery. They say
sharp things, they criticize others unsparingly, they
get easily hurt, and they hold their griefs a long
time; or they hold back their support when things
are being done. Such people are not in touch with
Jesus very much, they have not contact with the
" supply," and in proportion as they do these things
they do not " compact," but rather disintegrate the
church, and it does not grow in love ; or, if it does,
it is in spite of them. No one is without his in
fluence for good or bad in this matter.
It is to me one of the sweetest things about our
Lord's way of doing things that the humblest of his
people are sometimes chosen for the most delicate
and important ministries. Summing up the thought
of the chapter then, we see that all Christians are
alike in the great mercies of God. But various
ministries are given us, all looking toward the build
ing up of the church in love. And in this work
each one has some special contribution to make.
The social station is not the regulator of our useful
ness, each one contributes toward the great end,
and contributes in proportion to his own close rela
tions with Jesus.

CHAPTER X
THE PERFECTING OF SELF
" And be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but
be filled with the Spirit; speaking one to another in
psalms and hymns and spiritual songs; making melody
with your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for
all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God,
even the Father; submitting yourselves one to another
in the fear of Christ." — Eph. 5 : 18-20.
This chapter deals with a subject about which
whole libraries of books have been written, and much
of which had better been left unwritten. The fun
damental error from which the others have grown
is the mistaken idea that the phrase " filled with the
Spirit," as used here, means the same that it did
in Acts 4 : 8. But there is quite a difference in
meaning, a difference also in the Greek words used.
In Acts, as generally in Luke's writing, the phrase
means to be so overmastered by the Spirit of God
that it is not the man, but the Spirit that speaks.
The speaker is like the captain of a ship when
the pilot comes aboard. He goes below, and the
pilot takes the ship into port. One of our Home
Mission secretaries, in visiting the churches of his
district, went to the home of the Indian pastor of
143

144 Transplanted Truths
an Indian church. He found the family all away
except a little boy. So he told the boy who he was,
and asked to be allowed to remain until the family
returned. The boy was full of questions, and took
the opportunity to settle some queries of his own
mind. He had gotten the idea that ministers spoke
by inspiration, so he asked the secretary if he
" could tell when it was coming on." Some people
have the idea that it " comes on." And, indeed,
that was the promise of Jesus to his disciples when
they were brought before kings and governors.
(Mark 13 : 11.) But it is, as we shall see, a
different idea that has place in this teaching of
Paul. Let us study it independently of any pre
possessions gained from Luke's writings.
We have an exhortation contained in two pic
tures suggested by the apostle's words.
" Be not drunken with wine." What picture does
that suggest? It is a company met together for
what they call a " good time." They are seeking
what they call pleasure, and are drinking wine to
obtain it ; filling up their cup of enjoyment. Memory
tells us of the songs we have heard from such occa
sions. Perhaps some of us have sung that kind of
songs and had that kind of pleasure. That is the
scene Paul had in his mind when he wrote this
part of his letter. It is no modern invention. It
was common all over the Roman Empire. It went
back to the time when Isaiah wrote about " them
that rise up early that they may follow strong drink,

The Perfecting of Self 145
and tarry late into the night until wine inflame
them." They sung what was not good. They used
the name of God as they should not use it. The
evil was so common as to give occasion for the
proverb :
Look not thou upon the wine when it is red,
When it sparkleth in the cup,
When it goeth down smoothly:
At the last it biteth like a serpent,
And stingeth like an adder.
Thine eyes shall behold strange things,
And thine heart shall utter perverse things.
—Prov. 23 : 31-33.
And not less clear though in less figurative language
is the condemnation of drunkenness in the New
Testament. Paul says no drunkard shall inherit the
kingdom of heaven.
And the result of these drinking-parties is, in the
old translation, called " excess " — " wherein is ex
cess." In the " Standard " version the reading is,
" wherein is riot." In the " Twentieth Century " it
is translated, " leads to profligacy." Weymouth
translates it in his " Modern Speech New Testa
ment " : " Do not overindulge in wine — a thing in
which excess is so easy." It is with some hesitation
that I differ with all these. The word itself is
" asotia." If I may be pardoned for introducing
a bit of Greek, the word soso means " I save " ; soter
means " saviour " ; soteria means " salvation " ; soteos
means " the condition of safety." Now the Greek
K

146 Transplanted Truths
language used to put the letter " a " before a word
to mean what we mean when we put the prefix
" un " before it. For example, " known, unknown " ;
" likely, unlikely " ; " sound, unsound." Here, then,
we have the word a-sotia, that is, " a condition of un-
savedness," and that is practically destruction. " Be
not drunken with wine wherein is self-destruction,"
expresses the idea quite accurately.
And this not only translates the Greek correctly,
but it fits the case perfectly. All good in you will
become less if you are drunken with wine. If
you make any good resolutions they will be less
frequent, and you will be less likely to keep them.
If you have any high-toned principles they will be
lowered. If you have any affections for good people
they will cool. If you have any of the image
of Christ in you it will be marred. If you pray
some you will pray less. Companions will be of
a worse grade, hopes less bright, conscience less
virile; all that is in you of good will shrink and
sink and rot. All will go on toward destruction —
self-destruction. That is the picture. You have
seen it when it was only sketched in outline; and
you have seen the detail gradually filled in until
it was all there — a full picture of self-destruction.
How familiar and how sad it is ! Body, mind, home,
family, soul destroyed by wine. Surely " wine is a
mocker and strong drink is raging, and whosoever
is deceived thereby is not wise." All that picture
was in Paul's mind. What he saw most vividly

The Perfecting of Self 147
was not the wine, nor the revelry, but the outcome
of it — destruction, self-destruction. So he really
meant, " Do not destroy yourselves, do not destroy
yourselves ! "
But now he suggests another picture. It is a
company of people met together like the former, for
pleasure. They talk quietly and helpfully about
many things. They sing, but their songs are not
like the others. If they do not sing, but are
sweetly silent, there is melody in their hearts unto
the Lord. And what is the outcome of this gather
ing? Men and women are not destroyed, but are
perfected. Here again I ask your patience with a
word of Greek. The word is ple-ro-o. It is used
many times, and with two very distinct meanings.
It has a use like our word " fill " a cup with water ;
or, if we may use the common term for drunken
ness, a man is " full " of whisky. So far as
the word alone is concerned, it might mean here
that we are to be filled with the Holy Spirit in
the same sense that men are filled with new wine.
(Acts 2 : 13.) That is the common way of read
ing it. But Luke uses a different word when he
says, Peter was filled with the Spirit. There is
another use of Paul's word, more common, and
better fitting this place. That is " fulfil." Thus
fifty-four times it is translated " fulfil," and means
that the things prophesied in the Old Testament are
now completed. " That it might be fulfilled which
was spoken by the prophets " (Matt. 1 : 22; 2 : 15 ;

148 Transplanted Truths
5 : 17, etc.). " That your joy may be full " (John
16 : 24). " Ye are complete in him " (Col. 2 : 10).
" I have not found thy works perfect " (Rev. 3 :
2). If this be the idea, then we have here, "Be
completed, be perfected by the Spirit." Instead of
being destroyed, be perfected. The contrasted pic
ture is one in which the contrast is not between
wine and the Spirit (the order of the Greek words
shows that), but between the results of wine and
the results of the Spirit — between self-destruction
and self-perfection. In this latter kind of filling men
become more kind, more forgiving, more godly.
They grow in grace and in likeness to Christ. They
" perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord." As
we say of the moon, it " fulled " last week, so we
say of the Christian, he is being " fulled." He is
rounding out ; he will be full soon. Be " fulled " by
the Spirit, would be accurate. While I know very
well that this is not the interpretation given by
many men of note and piety, I must differ with
them. And I have the comfort of thinking that this
clears up the passage, and makes it of value to us.
It gives us help and hope. Here is a man begin
ning his Christian life. He is very immature in his
knowledge of the Christian way. Its great motives
are only just getting their hold upon him. His eyes
are getting their focus so as to see things in the
right perspective. He is a babe in Christ. But if
he follows the lead of the Spirit he will become a
full-grown, clear-visioned, sure-footed man. He

The Perfecting of Self 149
will be filled out, completed. Now he is a new
moon, only a little rim of a Christian — only the
barest outline of the full moon is visible. But he
will become full, his character will be full-orbed.
" In him ye are complete ! " Paul has the same
idea in other words when, in Philippians, he writes,
" Work out your own salvation " ; that is, finish up
your salvation.
Such, then, seems to be the meaning of Paul's
words. He does not exhort us to a passive waiting
for the Spirit to fill us and carry us, as it were,
unconscious and without making effort into the holy
life, but calls on us to " be fulled." It is something
for us to do. The connection shows that, for
without finishing his sentence he goes on to say:
" Speaking one to another in psalms and hymns
and spiritual songs . . . giving thanks . . . sub
jecting yourselves," etc.
All these are the means to be used in " fulling "
ourselves under the guidance of the Spirit. It is
not mere emotionalism, but action.
When I was in school I used to go here and there
preaching a Sunday or two in a place as supply.
I heard many comments about other ministers.
Some were called " smart," others were " old-fash
ioned preachers," others were " doctrinal." Of
one they said, " He feeds us " ; of another, " He is a
' spiritual preacher.' " I learned that when a man
made people cry they called him " spiritual." Spir
ituality and emotionality were synonymous.

150 Transplanted Truths
It is difficult to speak helpfully about the Spirit
because of its very nature. The word is used freely,
but I fear that often it has not much meaning.
One year I had a class that contained several men
who had been for a time in one of the " single-
idea " schools. They were constantly injecting their
notions about the Spirit into the discussions of the
classroom, and we made little headway. Finally
I said to them : " Now to-morrow we will give the
day to a consideration of what we actually know
about this matter. We will hear you tell the actual
experiences you have had that you can positively
say are due to the Holy Spirit. We want no
theories and no guesswork." I waited for the next
day with a sort of holy curiosity. When we got
together and opened the class, we had a " silent
meeting," like the Quakers. Not a man had any
thing to say. Their thought had made them careful.
This was not a sign that they had no experiences,
but when they looked carefully at the cases they
were impressed that they had been parroting others'
language and ideas rather than expressing their own
ideas. But we are not to be disheartened by the
subtleness of the subject. It is real, even if it be
subtile. We may say that the Holy Spirit as our guide does
not give us explicit information. It does not reveal
things without the use of other agencies. It works
through our education, and it works in conjunction
with the Scripture teaching. We learn from that

The Perfecting of Self 151
what sort of people we ought to be. As a painter
by many strokes of his brush brings out the por
trait, so the Scripture by precept and illustration,
by law and by individual histories, gives us the
spiritual portrait of the good man. The Spirit
makes us feel that we ought to be like that portrait.
I cannot explain the mystery. I simply know from
Scripture and experience that men have within
them after they yield to Jesus a certain something
that responds to the teaching of Jesus as one harp
responds to another.
Thus the New Testament becomes a guide. But
I take it that in practical life the nearest approach
to the voice of the Spirit will be found in our judg
ment of what the other fellow ought to do. The
woman that wants to know the will of God for her
self will be safe in doing what she thinks the pas
tor's wife ought to do. If the business man wants
to know what is righteous, let him ask what he
thinks his competitor ought to do, and he will get
a pretty safe reply. This saloon man, does he know
what is right? Well, I wish I could be as good
a man as he says I should be. He can find a flaw
in a Christian's life as quick as the scales will dis
cover short weight. Let him be what he thinks
I ought to be. Let him do what he would respect
me for doing. This voter, let him vote as he thinks
all Christians should vote, and he will be in the
party of righteousness. Practically the Holy Spirit
is the spirit of courageous loyalty to our very best

152 Transplanted Truths
ideas of right. The man that has that courage is
led by the Spirit, and will be " fulling " his life.
I have spoken of the view that makes the Spirit
the same as the emotions. It is true that the emo
tions are moved by the Spirit; but the emotions
are not to be our guide. They are the response
the soul makes to the best ideals.
The Spirit has various works and ways. In our
own hearts we find this mysterious agency leading
and impelling us. But if we examine its influence
we shall find that it mainly does its work by
constraining us to follow what we think is the high
est ideal. And that ideal has come to us through
instruction. I do not attempt to explain the mys
tery of the Spirit's action, I only hope to point out
some of its ways. It impresses upon us this : " You
must do what you are sure is right." And when we
ask, " But how am I to be sure ? " we are led to the
example of Jesus and the Scripture record of his
teachings. Paul goes on in his letter to specify what the right
things are. He says in substance : " In perfecting
yourselves you are to seek your success in this
way: Speak to one another in psalms and hymns
and spiritual songs. Have melody in your hearts to
God. Give thanks to God always. Submit your
selves to one another in the fear of Christ."
But Paul does not leave us to the uncertainties in
application of his words. He goes right on without
putting in a period between his sentences to describe

The Perfecting of Self 153
in full what kind of things the Spirit through in
struction will prompt us to do. Recall how it reads.
Counsel for all classes. Wives, husbands, children,
parents, servants, masters, all get a word suited to
them. And all this is what he means by being
" fulled out " by the Spirit. If a church does these
things it will be a joyous company — a pocket edition
of the kingdom of God.
This is not mere word exercise. It is verified all
the time by experience. A man once had turned
to God from a drunkard's life. I found him weep
ing in his shop. " What is the matter, Tom," I
said, " has the old habit got you down again ? "
" Oh, no," said he, " I could not help weeping to
think that God would forgive such a bad man as
I have been." A physician, a bitter opposer of the
gospel of our Lord was converted in Cincinnati.
He went to the church meeting on Sunday morn
ing. Another doctor with whom he had been in
enmity was there. This new-born Christian went up
in front of the pulpit and said : " Brethren, I have
been forgiven by the Lord for all my bitter hostility
to him. There is a man here whom I have hated
and injured. I ask him here and now to forgive
me, and to come here and take my hand in token of
our friendship in the future." Such things are the
result of the Spirit " fulling out " a man's life. Did
you ever go on your own initiative and ask a man
to forgive you? If you did, was it not a happy hour
for you? Were not your feet light, and was not

154 Transplanted Truths
your heart glad? There was melody in your heart
to God. When you have been patient with others,
or obedient to your parents, or faithful to your em
ployers, or kind to your help, has there not always
come into your mind and heart a sweet conscious
ness that you were growing toward what you want
to be? You have had under your breath a little
whispered : " Lord, I thank thee for this ; it is good
to do thy way."
And when a church has been exceptionally
obedient to these instructions, it has been fulfilling
its mission, and has had songs of sweet satisfaction.
As the sun in spring makes old leaves drop off,
and sets all the tree into motion toward fruitage,
so the Spirit, when followed thus, sets all our souls
into motion toward a good holy life. It warms us.
It shames us. It helps us. It gives us tastes of
goodness, and creates in us an appetite for it. May
we all be thus filled out by its influence.

CHAPTER XI
THE christian warfare
" For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but
against the principalities, against the powers, against
the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual
hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." — Eph.
6 : 12.
There is a certain kind of incongruity in Paul's
words here. That the herald of a gospel of peace,
which was ushered in by angelic songs, " Peace on
earth, good will to men," should have so much
to say about war and warfare seems at first a little
unusual at least. He writes : " the weapons of our
warfare," " the armor of righteousness," " God
leadeth us in triumph," " a law in my members
warring against the law of my spirit," " let us put
on the armor of light," "having despoiled princi
palities and powers," " bringing into captivity every
thought," " take the sword of the spirit," " put on
the whole armor of God."
There is reason for this, however. Probably
every day of his life he had seen Roman soldiers.
The Roman Government was largely a military one.
So it was natural for him to get his figures of speech
from what was going on around him. And we
155

156 Transplanted Truths
have the same habit, or perhaps the same neces
sity. Our hymns have a martial air about them :
Stand up, my soul, shake off thy fears,
And gird the gospel armor on.
Arm these thy soldiers, mighty Lord,
With shield of faith and Spirit's sword.
The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain.
Am I a soldier of the cross,
A follower of the Lamb?
Sure I must fight if I would reign;
Increase my courage, Lord.
Onward, Christian soldiers,
Marching as to war.
My soul, be on thy guard,
Ten thousand foes arise.
Oh, watch and fight and pray,
The battle ne'er give o'er.
Stand up, stand up for Jesus,
Ye soldiers of the cross.
What a militant tone all this has! And there
is a deep reason for this. The Christian life was
battle, is a battle, and always will be in this world.
Christian life is a strenuous affair. We make no
mistake in thinking of it as a conflict. There is no

The Christian Warfare 157
going to heaven on " flowery beds of ease." There is
plenty of delight in it, but it is the delight of ex
pected victory. But we may err in our idea of what
the battle is for, and what is the kind of battle,
and what is the enemy we have to contend with.
Our conflict is not for the church. There is great
need to keep up the organization of the church. Un
less we do keep up the services of the church the
virility of our religious life gets less. We need the
service to' bind us together in the bonds of the king
dom. We need the regular ministry of instruction to
keep us in mental trim for the necessary judgments
of life. We need it for the opportunity it affords to
reach others with the gospel. But, after all, the
church is only an agency for winning the real battle.
Our conflict is not for some set of doctrines, or
some system of theology. There has been much
battling about such things, and it has its justifi
cation sometimes. Doctrines are necessary. No
man has consistent Christian life without having a
consistent set of doctrines that holds him to duty
and hope as a rudder holds a ship up against the
wind. We need " sound doctrine," the " faith once
for all delivered to the saints." It is often necessary
to oppose false doctrine, as Paul did in his letter
to the Galatians. But these are not our main battle.
They are only skirmishes for position.
And the fight is not for social conditions. No
doubt Christians ought to combine to secure better
social conditions than we have. There is a large

158 Transplanted Truths
field for Christian sociology. We are very much
interested in questions about the corporate activities
of the " church." From a time when public men
were disposed to sheer at the church we have passed
into a state of opinion that seems to regard the
church as chiefly a tool for some semipolitical serv
ice. It is thought that the church should solve the
temperance question by legislation, and equalize the
opportunities for labor, and regulate the hours of
service, and fix a minimum wage, and wipe out
the vice of cities, and practically take the government
over into its hands and run it. And certainly the
Christian people ought to be a controlling element
in such matters. But our great fight, as considered
in Paul's words, is not of that sort.
All these things demand what we have learned to
call " team-work." That is, consolidation of effort,
a unity of action. But " team-work " amounts to
little if the individuals are not strong. The indi
vidual ultimately determines the team. And these
Christian movements in society are, in the last anal
ysis, dependent for their virility on the individual
Christians. It is Paul's purpose here to encourage
the individuals to cultivate and maintain a high grade
of godly life, the correct habit of the inner life.
That of which he wrote is a struggle to maintain a
thoroughly good, pure, gentle, forgiving, hopeful,
courageous, loyal, righteous life; to be a business
man and not lose honesty in the sharp competition ;
to be a car-conductor and not forget to ring up the

The Christian Warfare 159
fare; to be a companion meet for the husband, not
simply a dependent on him; to be a mother to the
children and not a mere chaperon; to be a young
man active and joyous without becoming either a
dude or a rowdy ; to be a pastor, and not shrink up
into an ornament for afternoon teas, nor become a
high-grade graphophone that sings to a congrega
tion whatever song some so-called scholar has sung
into his plastic soul; to be a church-member and
not a dead limb bearing no fruit and giving no
help to the other limbs ; to be all this, and to do all
this, and having done all to stand — that is the task
we have on hand. It is no holiday performance to
live the Christian life well. The conflict goes on all
the time in all places. We sometimes hear a man
say, " All you have to do is believe, just believe."
We sometimes sing, " Jesus died and paid it all."
There is little but nonsense in that view of things.
To be a Christian was an undertaking that made
Jesus say, " Watch and pray " ; and Paul said he had
" fought the fight," and he exhorted others to " run
with patience the race." It is not a joyless life.
There are resting-places; and there is the joy of
frequent victories, and of expected perfect victory.
The fact that there is strenuous effort is not against
the idea that it is joyous. The man that plays
football is strenuous; he may become weary, but
there is a joy in honest effort which makes the toil
seem pleasure. God gave blessing, much more than
a curse, when he gave man work.

160 Transplanted Truths

the character of the warfare
That ye may "stand against the wiles of the
devil." We do not find our enemy out in the open
with his flag flying and bidding us come and try
our strength with him, as Goliath challenged David.
Our battle may be won or lost when we least expect
it. A man may think his weakness is speaking
guile, and he means to be on his guard against it,
but at the same time he may cheat a widow. One
may say, " I strive to pay my debts promptly."
And he does pay some of them. But he does not
see that he owes a debt of kindness to his fellow
men, and another of gratitude to God that he does
not even acknowledge. Another man tries to gov
ern his temper, and succeeds so well that he is not
even angry at sin. When an adversary can turn
attention to some side issue he is winning. One
may spend so much time overcoming pride in a
pretty bonnet that she forgets to struggle against
a bad disposition. Some men fight against waste
fulness who could not be wasteful if they tried.
They are so born and bred to economy that they
overlook the inherent stinginess that is rooted in
them. A man may fight false doctrine so hard
that he overlooks false living. Such people are sin
cere. They are brave, but they are deceived by
the wiles of the enemy. They fight straw enemies.
They waste their tears and prayers on the least of
their faults. We need to be on guard against the

The Christian Warfare 161
faults that skulk and hide in the bushes, and sneak
around nights. Put not on a look of horror about
things that are not half bad. We need to be send
ing out what we may call mental and moral pickets
every little while to find the enemy, and make
some strong reconnaissance to discover the strong
positions, and the concentrated forces of him with
whom we contend. Or to return to Scripture
phrase, we may pray with the psalmist : " Search
me, and try me, and see if there be any wicked way
in me." THE ENEMY
"Not with flesh and blood, but with spiritual
hosts of wickedness in high places." It is not neces
sary for us to know whether Paul really thought
there are spiritual beings hostile to us, or whether
he simply personified the tendencies to evil that were
common in his day as they are in ours. The lesson
is the same in either case. His purpose was to teach
that the warfare concerning which he was speaking
is not with men. He was in prison when he wrote
this letter. He was often opposed by men, and
wrote with great vehemence against the teachings
of some men. But the great aim of his life was not
to defeat men but to be found in Christ and to have
the prize of the " upward calling of God." In that
battle man had little part. Paul could be a kind
man in his prison. The very wickedness of men
might be the arena where he could win his victory.

1 62 Transplanted Truths
He could, and did, love the Jews that hounded him
to his death. John Bunyan was in prison when he
wrote his immortal allegory, " Pilgrim's Progress,"
which has cheered and guided millions of men in
their Christian life. His battle was in the jail, but
not with the jailer.
What are some of the real hindrances that we
meet in our endeavors to live godly lives? There
are hindrances in the moral atmosphere of our
times. Suppose, for example, that a man under
takes to keep the Sabbath in the old, and as he
thinks the right, way — New England fashion.
Saturday night all work is put away. Good books
are read in the evening. Sunday morning,
Peace is on the world abroad,
'Tis the holy peace of God.
The family go quietly to church and sit in the
family pew. They all sing a hymn of praise; the
minister reads a portion of Scripture and offers
prayer; another hymn, and then the sermon about
God and the Saviour (no politics or sociology) ; a
closing hymn, and they go home talking over the
sermon. The house is quiet. No visiting neigh
bors, no worldly books ; but a sort of holy calm that
rests both soul and body, and gives them a look
of peace for the next day. How almost impossible
that is now. Saturday night full of activity, and
we are late to bed. Sunday morning nature de
mands her rest, and the best hours of the Sabbath

The Christian Warfare 163
are spent in bed. At church all is more active than
thoughtful; the Sunday-school is filled with stir.
The streets are full of people ; the cars are crowded
with folks going on various errands. It is a day
of wide-awakeness. A man has his battle inside
his own heart. He asks : " Am I right in wanting
a quiet Sabbath? Am I willing to break with cus
tom and be called Puritanic, and in spite of re
marks keep the day as I think it ought to be
kept?" That is a case of battle. Or suppose a
man says : " I will not be in such a rush. I will do
business in a temperate way." Then he finds that
business is a sort of procession; if a man does
not keep up with it he is soon out of it. What
shall he do ? Will he choose less money and more
life; or less life and more money?
Suppose he says, " We will live the simple life."
He finds extravagance appeals to him on every side.
From the toys for his children to the rental of his
house and the silver plating on his auto, everything
demands expense far above the necessities. If he
tries to live for the next world, behold, this one
clamors for his attention. Then there are plausible
philosophies that men bring to us, the soothing plati
tudes about the goodness of God, and the helpless
ness of poor mankind, and the irony of fate, and
the elective will of God. All these which would
not only reduce the battle of life to the strenuosity
of parlor croquet, but would cut the nerve of our
best endeavors and condemn us to a hopeless life.

164 Transplanted Truths
And there are hindrances from the depths of our
hearts. Perhaps an ambition for success in busi
ness, or for reputation among men, or for social
standing, becomes so strong that it pushes aside the
rights of others, and the important duties to one's
own soul and to God. Perhaps it is a sensitiveness
to criticism that frets and scolds at remarks that
have been made. It may be a love for personal
comfort that neglects to consider others' comfort.
With some it is a love of power and authority
that leads one to be domineering, and to ride rough
shod over those that will endure it. It may be
a tendency to " go it alone " that leads him to neglect
the sense of dependence on God.
When one has examined himself carefully he may
find that the great enemy is concealed very deep in
the heart, and he will be brought into sympathy
with the psalmist when he prayed : " Create in me a
clean heart, O God, renew a right spirit within me."
It needs the quiet hour to discover the location
of our enemy. But when we have found it we are
in shape to antagonize it.
OUR GREAT ALLY
For victory in this kind of struggle we are not
left to our own strength nor even our own devices.
The apostle pointed out that source of help. He says,
" Put on the whole armor of God." That implies
that God has a way of assisting us to victory. It
is in religion that we have hope. The man that

The Christian Warfare 165
attempts to win this kind of battle without calling
upon his heavenly Father is depriving himself not
only of the most available and suitable help, but
ultimately of the victory itself. But with that help
we may hope to " stand, and having done all to
stand " against the wiles and the allurements of the
evil. Therefore let us
Watch and fight and pray ;
The battle ne'er give o'er;
Renew it boldly every day,
And help divine implore.
Ne'er think the victory won,
Nor lay our armor down ;
Our arduous task will not be done
Till we obtain the crown.
It is neither a hopeless nor a joyless task. It
would be a misrepresentation to say that the Chris
tian life is a hard life. It is a strenuous one, a watch
ful one. But it is hard only when we try to live
it in a half-hearted fashion or to live it in partner
ship with evil. It is hard for a woman to carry
her child in arms when she is weak. But when
she is strong she delights in it. It is hard to
work when the work is too heavy ; but work within
our strength is the most delightful of experiences.
The joy of doing things is the chiefest joy of the
world. And the Christian life is the most joyful
of all lives because, when in earnest about it, we
have help to live it triumphantly.

CHAPTER XII

THE CHRISTIAN S ARMOR

" Stand therefore, having girded your loins with
truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteous
ness, and having shod your feet with the preparation
of the gospel of peace; withal taking up the shield of
faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the
fiery darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of
salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word
of God; with all prayer and supplication, praying at all
seasons in the Spirit and watching thereunto in all
perseverance and supplication for all saints." — Eph. 6 :
14-18.
After setting forth the fact that the Christian has a
battle on hand, Paul goes on to point out the way
of defense and victory. His method is remarkable.
In our modern studies on health it has been found
that the air is all the time more or less occupied
with bacteria and germs of many kinds which, if
they find suitable conditions of the human body, at
once propagate and cause diseases hard to over
come. And the experts tell us that the surest and
best way to avoid these diseases, and to cure them
when they do attack us, is to build up the general
health. One must breathe as he ought, and eat as
he ought, and sleep his full time; he must have
166

The Christian's Armor 167
exercise for his muscles, occupation for his mind,
and good objects for his affections; body and soul
must be active in worthy things, and then the
germs are eliminated as fast as they get possession.
We may become in a large measure immune to the
diseases that are about us. We do not need to
fight specific diseases with specific remedies, but we
fight them all at once when we build up the general
health. Paul has the same idea in mind in this passage,
but he expresses it in the language of the military
man instead of the physician. He has spoken of the
enemies we have to contend with, but in giving the
figure of the armor he does not name weapons
adapted against special kinds of sin, but describes
what may be called a defensive armor against all
sinful things and tendencies. To have this sort of
armor is to have a sort of preparedness that does
not so much win us the victories over sins as it
keeps the sins from troubling us at all. It is the
ounce of preventive instead of the pound of cure.
It is having peace because we are prepared for war.
Now let us consider this armor. The whole pas
sage is what we call an extended metaphor. Lest
your rhetoric may not be fresh in mind, let me recall
the nature of a metaphor. It is a figure of speech
in which some object in one realm of existence is
used to express an idea in another sphere. It grows
out of poverty of language. We are compelled
to borrow words to make our ideas plain. For

168 Transplanted Truths
example, we say a man is a " pillar " in the church.
(It does not say pillow.) What do we mean by
that ? Certainly not that he is made of wood or that
he is a part of a church building. But we mean
that there is a certain analogy between what the
pillar does in the building and what he does in the
church. It holds up some part of the building. And
this man holds up — cares for — some part of the
church work. ' Or if we say, " The Lord is my
shepherd," we mean that there is a kind of likeness
between what a shepherd does for his sheep and
what the Lord does for us. This thing that is used
in the figure is the " basis " of the metaphor. And it
is necessary for us to be familiar with the " basis "
if we get the meaning of the metaphor. I knew a
man once who said he would not try to teach
children in the city the Twenty-third Psalm because
they did not know anything about sheep. His
theory was right, but he underestimated the amount
of information that comes to children through pic
tures. Or to illustrate further, take the saying, " The
kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven." Sorne men
think that the analogy the Saviour has in mind there
is the corruption of the leaven and the meal. They
say leaven is a product of active corruption ; put into
the meal, it " spoils the meal." So, according to their
reading, it is intended to teach us that evil gets into
the church and spoils it. The world itself is getting
worse and worse. Another class of men think that
it is only the method of the leaven's work that is

The Christian's Armor 169
in the Saviour's mind. A woman puts the yeast
into the flour and sets it overnight in a warm place,
and lo, while she sleeps it works without any noise,
or fuss, or help, and in the morning the flour has
all been leavened. So, they say, the great Teacher
meant to teach that the kingdom of God in the world
does much of its work in the quiet, unobtrusive, but
effective, way that the leaven does its work. The
disciples may not expect to see it all, or to know
how it is done. It will work when they are asleep.
But it will leaven society. So we see how important
it is to get the right notion of the " basis " of the
metaphor. In this metaphor we have as the basis a Roman
gladiator. It was the custom of those bloodthirsty
Romans in Paul's time to sort their prisoners in
war and train the best of them to fight one another
for the amusement of the crowds as the Spanish now
amuse themselves with bull-fights. They had a
streak of bloodthirstiness about them that made
them relish their meals, as some men do now, a
little better if they had killed some animal before
breakfast. These gladiators wore a short skirt like
the Scottish Highlanders, held in place by a belt.
They were protected with a shield, a breastplate,
and a helmet. They were armed with a short sword.
On their feet they wore a kind of shoe, such as
the baseball men wear in our day, with spuds on the
sole to keep them from slipping. They were alert,
well trained, physically strong and well. It was

170 Transplanted Truths
such a figure that the writer had in mind when he
wrote this passage. And it is such a contestant that
he gives as the ideal Christian man.
And now he seems to be seeing that gladiator get
ting ready for his contest. The armor is laid out
for him, and he is to put it on preparatory to his
contest for life. The writer here thinks of the
armor as one that God has furnished for his own
contestants. What shall we think and say about
this suggestion? Is the armor of the Christian
something that grows on him as the shell of the
tortoise grows on the creature ? Is it brought to us
by some heavenly messenger? In what sense is it
called the "armor of God"? It will not be amiss
if we think of it in this way : divine wisdom tells us
what sort of preparation we need to equip us, and
divine grace helps us to " take up " this equipment.
We are to think of ourselves daily as the gladiator
thought of himself when he was going into the con
test. He must be prepared. So, we are to make a
daily preparation for our daily contest. We do not
know just what special kind of attack the enemy will
make, but we must be ready for any that he does
make. To put on this armor is to make certain definite
and controlling resolutions, to adopt and cultivate
certain great moral qualities such that inducement
to wrong-doing will run off from us as water from
a duck's back, without really affecting us. We may
well stop and consider for a minute how great a

The Christian's Armor 171
defense such resolutions are. A young woman who
had been obliged to live where her surroundings
were a constant influence to lead her into frivolities
that would have ruined her Christian usefulness,
but who nevertheless remained faithful to the
higher ideals, was asked how she had been able to
keep herself. She replied that her "won't" was
bigger than her " want to." No better statement
can be made concerning the power of resolutions.
The man that resolves he " won't " is the man that
has the first great advantage in the conflict. When
the young Hebrew men were told to worship the
golden image in Babylon, they said : " We have no
need to answer thee in this matter"; but "be it
known unto thee, O king," that we won't " serve
thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou
hast set up" (Dan. 3 : 18). The man that goes
out now daily with such a resolution in his heart
is already half victorious over the enemies of his
soul. I think that the reality that lies back of the
metaphors of this armor are these resolves to be
and to do, — " the wills " and the " won'ts " of life.
Resolve to gird the loins with truth. The ex
pression " gird the loins " is full of suggestiveness
to those who are familiar with Eastern customs,
or with the habits of working men. It is written
that when the prophet Elijah, after defeating the
prophets of Baal at Carmel, was about to accom
pany Ahab to his home, he " girded up his loins and

172 Transplanted Truths
ran before Ahab unto the entrance of Jezreel."
That is, as a preparation for a strenuous task he
tied his girdle tight about him. When Jehovah
was about to address Job with some searching
words, he said, " Gird up now thy loins like a man
and answer me." Paul, when he wrote to the
Philippians, said : " Gird up the loins of your minds,
watch, and be sober." A friend of mine, who was
caring for cattle in the far West, told me that some
times the droves would take fright and run away
into the deserts. Then the drovers must follow,
and sometimes became separated from the camp
and the food supply for a long time. I asked him
what was to be done in such cases. He replied,
" We take up a hitch in our belt."
Men having hard labor to perform, gird them
selves with a tight belt. It has the effect of stiffen
ing the muscles for a hard strain. So this resolve
to be truthful gives a man a great support in time
of trial. Truthfulness is more than refraining from
telling falsehoods. It implies sincerity in speech
and look and conduct. It says : " I will not pretend
to an interest I do not feel; I will not pay com
pliments that are hollow; I will not make state
ments about my religious life that are extravagant;
I will not pretend an affection that is not in my
heart." Ministers have great need to gird them
selves with such a girdle. They are expected to
have an emotional life hard to be maintained. With
some people emotion means spirituality, and if a

The Christian's Armor 173
minister is not emotional he is accused of lacking the
one element he ought to possess. But this assuming
any attitude of life or speech or feeling that is
not sincere has far-reaching consequences. It be
gins by causing men to mistrust one another; then
they mistrust the Bible, then doubt themselves, and
finally mistrust all good things. This girdle of
sincerity will lead us to speak with exactness, to
give only such compliments as are genuine, to seek
to bring the feelings up to the language or keep
the language down to the facts.
Again, resolve to be righteous. The breastplate
covers the vital parts. So this resolve will keep
the centers of life safe. It says: "I will not be
unjust in my speech about others ; in business I will
not seek to get gain by any except straight business
methods; I will not seek or accept credit for what
I did not do. I will not try and be pushed forward
beyond what I deserve; in my estimates of others
I will not form unkind opinions without having
all the facts ; I will not hear a rumor and at once
accept it without giving the man a chance to be
heard in his own defense; I will not prejudge any
man; it shall be the habit of my very life to be
just in dealing, in speech, in thought, and in affec
tion." Again, seek the comfort and assurance of being at
peace with God. The passage reads : " Having your
feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of
peace." What is the root of the suggestion in this

174 Transplanted Truths
rather strange figure? As a boy I somewhere got
the idea that it meant to go around, as it were, in
" stocking feet " or woolen slippers, to be a quiet,
inoffensive sort of man that never gets into a fuss
with anybody. Later, I used to read that it meant
to be prepared for missionary work. This was sus
tained by the statement that the soldier had his
feet shod with strong boots to stand the marches of
the campaign. But as I came to study the passage
for myself I saw that the soldier the writer had in
mind was not going on a march, neither is this
exhortation directed to us as missionaries. The
soldier here is the gladiator. It is the man going
into the arena to fight for his life. He puts on the
shoes with spuds so that he will not slip. He must
be able to spring aside to avoid the thrusts of his
antagonist. Or he may need to stand against the
charge of his enemy. He must have a sure footing,
for if he slips he is at once disadvantaged. What,
then, is the analogy that comes over into our conflict ?
It is this : We must have a sure footing for our
own courage. And nothing gives us that like a
sense of being at peace with God. It is not here
peace with men. Jesus said, " My peace give I
unto you." And Paul wrote, " Being justified by
faith, we have peace with God" (Rom. 5:1).
There is nothing that gives more courageous feel
ing toward our own inner temptations than to feel
that we are at peace with God. " Here I stand, I
cannot do otherwise," said Luther, when tempted

The Christian's Armor 175
to deny the truth. It is a great uplifting inspiration
to walk the streets in company with God. The
world does not see the company, but a man may
know he has it. Samuel Rutherford, writing from
his prison where he was put for his faith, said:
" Whoso can take up his cross handsomely will
find it such a burden as sails are to ships and wings
to a bird. My prison is a palace to me and Christ's
banqueting-house." The old-fashioned question to
inquirers after fellowship with the church was,
" Have you made your peace with God ? " Peace
with God ! " If God be for us, who can be against
us ? " When we have that we sing from the heart :
Should earth against my soul engage,
And fiery darts be hurled,
Still I can smile at Satan's rage,
And face a frowning world.
Therefore seek that peace each day as a preparation
for the day's conflicts.
And again, resolve to have faith — " The shield of
faith." Sometimes we hear it said, We cannot sum
mon faith, it must come to us. But Jesus said,
" Have faith in God." We are to remember that faith
is not an involuntary attitude of soul. It comes to
those that seek to have it. Professor James, the
great psychologist, has a lecture, called " The Will to
Believe," that it would be well for young men to
read. He points out with great appropriateness
that in cases of personal moment the man who

176 Transplanted Truths
refuses to believe some great religious truths lest
he should be duped, is really a man that fears to
be called credulous more than he fears to lose the
good of religion. Christian faith has its enemies.
The apostle well calls them fiery darts. These are
some of the darts : " There are so many indifferent
Christians I do not believe it is worth while for
me to try any longer." " There are so many things
in God's providence that seem to me hard and in-
explainable that I will not keep up the fight any
longer." " The scholars are finding errors in the
Bible." " There are so many denominations that I
cannot tell which one is right, so I think I will wait
until the matter is settled." " Taking the world as it
is, I do not think it practicable to live the Christian
life consistently, and I will not go any farther."
" The truth is, we are all the creatures of circum
stance and environment; we are what we are by a
subtle law of necessity; I may as well drift with
the current, and not fight it any more; what the
Almighty intends me to be I shall become at last."
All these and many more from the same source
come flying toward us. Our reasonable duty is to
resolve that we will believe in God and in Jesus,
and in the underlying trustworthiness of the Bible,
and in the solvability of man, and in our own pos
sibility of victory. For one to fall into a frame of
mind that doubts everything is to rob oneself of
all victory. I am not pleading for a credulous mind,
but for a mind with a virile faith. I am pleading

The Christian's Armor 177
for the mind of the disciples when they said,
" Lord, increase our faith,'' and the mind of the
man who said, " Lord, I believe ; help thou mine
unbelief." We may fairly assume after the begin
nings of our Christian life that the burden of proof
against the reality of it rests upon those that dis
pute it. And before we give in to the doubts that
assail us, let the enemy prove his case by an ex
perience as substantial as the experience we have
had of its truth. If some siren of doubt whispers:
The day is quenched, the sun is fled,
God has forgotten the world;
The moon is gone, the stars are dead,
God has forgotten the world.
There is no God, there is no good,
And faith is a heartless cheat
That bares the back for the devil's rod
And scatters thorns for the feet.
Then let the grace of God reply :
The day will return with a fresher boon,
God will remember the world;
Night will come with a newer moon,
God will remember the world.
Let the psalmist lead our song :
Jehovah is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
Jehovah is the strength of my life ;
Of whom shall I be afraid?
... In the day of trouble he will keep me
secretly in his pavilion. —Psalm 27.

178 Transplanted Truths
"And take the helmet of salvation." Evidently
the writer had some definite element of preparation
for the daily conflict which was suggested by the
helmet. It is a subtle idea. But if we remember
that the breastplate suggested justness of heart and
purpose, we may reasonably think that what he now
has in mind as he writes " helmet " has to do with
the intellect. It is some sort of defense against
errors of the head that work our damage in Chris
tian life. These are numerous enough to keep us
alert. Errors that give us wrong conceptions of
life and duty. What, then, is his idea of " salva
tion " ? It meant to the Christians of that day to be
forgiven their sins (Eph. 1 : 7) and taken into
the company of those that were to be the special
care of Jesus until he should come (John 6 : 37-40)
and receive them into an inheritance incorruptible,
undefiled, and reserved in heaven for them. ( 1 Peter
1 : 4, 5.) It meant that in their cases "all things
work together for good" (Rom. 8 : 28). That
they were the very treasure of God. (Eph. 1 : 10.)
To " take the helmet " is then to consider this in
heritance, and to keep in mind the fact that such
a hope is ours.
If a man goes out with that in mind, what a
stimulus it is to all his mental activities! How
often have we seen men of very limited education
and mediocre mental activities awakened to thor
ough mental activity. They became studious and
efficient. They felt that life was a noble thing.

The Christian's Armor 179
They estimated themselves as beings of importance
who had no right to live thoughtlessly. They
saw that God had estimated them at great worth,
that Christ had died for them. It is said that
when at one time John Adams was about to leave
home on public business, his wife said to him,
" Now, John, don't shilly-shally." She felt that he
was carrying responsibility that needed his best
thought. So, if a man feels himself to be the object
of God's thought, he will not want to " shilly
shally." It also gives a man a clear idea of his own
inherent weakness when he thinks that his salvation
comes not by his own excellence, but that only by
the grace of God is he kept from pride of opinion
and from self-righteousness which would interfere
with the humility befitting his place.
And again, a thoughtful consideration of his " sal
vation " will keep him from those errors of philos
ophy that have in every age been the temptation of
thinking men. He sees that the scheme of life is
too great for man to have wrought out or fully to
understand. He must trust and wait.
And take " the sword of the Spirit, which is the
word of God." We are to go out daily with the
fresh memory of God's word to all believers. It
may be a word of caution or a word of command. It
is always a word of encouragement; and, when it is
needed, a word of comfort. We may not say that
the writer had in mind our Bible, which we call the

180 Transplanted Truths
" word of God," for it had not then all been writ
ten. The New Testament — a part of it — he was
then writing. But the Christians of that day had
the substance of the word orally delivered to them;
and they had the Old Testament, which contained
the words of promise and direction. Unless one
has given thought to it, he will be surprised to find
what a defense against many temptations is to be
found by taking a little thought and time every
morning to read and think of some part of the
written word. (See 2 Tim. 3 : 15-17.) It will stay
in the mind like the perfume of flowers and come
back in many an hour of trial. The psalmist long
ago wrote : " Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse
his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy
word" (Ps. 119 : 9). And Paul wrote, "Let the
word of Christ dwell in you richly" (Col. 3 : 16).
It was by the written word that Jesus defeated the
tempter on the mount of his trial. (Matt. 4 : 4, 7,
10.) It is, indeed, a sword of good metal and fine
temper. With this word in the heart and these resolutions
fixed in the will a man stands forth every morning
with a fair prospect that he will be a victorious
Christian this day; he will be a good soldier of
Christ, and he will stand in the conflicts with a
good degree of firmness. At first reading it would
seem as if the writer had stated his case fully,
and the next part of the passage appears to be a sort
of anticlimax. But a further comparison of it with

The Christian's Armor 181
the facts of life shows that the climax of wisdom
for us is not yet reached. He goes on to say:
" Praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching
thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for
all saints." Which we may translate into our way
of saying things by this : " Watch for opportunity
to lift up prayers for other Christians that are
engaged in conflict similar to yours." Observation
shows us that a very efficient help toward living
the Christian life ourselves is an active, sympathetic
interest in the Christian welfare of others. If a
man is praying for his children or his neighbor,
he will find that it is made much easier for him
to keep straight himself. A woman once said to
me : " Pastor, you told us we ought to seek to have
our servants converted to Christ, and I have been
trying to lead my servant girl to him, but I find it
is pretty hard on me. I felt like scolding her
several times, but I could not, for if I did, I should
lose my influence for her conversion." That ex
presses the facts in all our relations. To have
a great desire for others to be truly Christlike is an
unfailing fountain of help for ourselves. It gives
nerve and persistence and virility to our use of the
armor. But this does not exhaust the counsel given us.
Fie adds : " And for me, that utterance may be given
unto me in opening my mouth, to make known with
boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am
an ambassador in chains."

182 Transplanted Truths
That is, the Christian is to have an interest in the
great unconverted world as the final element of his
own equipment for his daily struggle to be a con
sistent Christian. This is a very subtile thought.
Interest in the whole world the climax of strength
for one's own personal godliness! Interest in for
eign missions a crowning element in the equipment
for one's own full Christian life ! And yet experience
shows that it is true. One who has a large aim that
possesses his thoughts overlooks a thousand little
things that might otherwise irritate and disturb him.
The man that is bent on building a new house feels
no sense of deprivation at the economies he practises
for the sake of it. The man that seeks to bring his
neighbor to Christ does not notice the slights that
he may at times meet in doing so. So the man
that is interested in the kingdom at large is neither
discouraged, nor too self-satisfied, at the smaller
concerns of his own surroundings.
Peter has the same thought when he writes : " Add
to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and
to knowledge temperance, and to temperance godli
ness, and to godliness brotherly kindness." But he
does not stop with this kindness to the brethren ;
he goes one round of the ladder beyond, " and to
brotherly kindness love." And the love he speaks
of is the kind that Jesus had — unlimited by race or
condition — love for mankind.
And now we have surveyed some of the great
teachings of this " prisoner of Jesus " — this " am-

The Christian's Armor 183
bassador in chains." There is not a teaching that
has gone out of fashion, none that has been super
seded since Paul's times. They are to-day the funda
mentals of all Christian life. May the blessing of
God rest upon this endeavor to transpose the teach
ings, and upon the hearts of those who have read
them, that the kindly and loving purposes of him
who died for us may be attained.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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