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THE GREAT APPEAL

By JAMES G. K. McCLURE
Just Published
THE GREAT APPEAL
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This cheering, inspiring message appeals to all that is
noblest and best in the young heart. It swarms with illustra
tions and examples of humanity's helpers. — The Evangelical
The thoughts presented in these few pages may well prove
an inspiration to many to place themselves on the side of the
world's helpers. — Observer
It is short, pointed, and full of illustrations from life. —
Cumberland Presbyterian

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Unusually bright and pertinent discourses, full of the Ameri
can quality of directness. — The S. S. Times
A truly inestimable manual of doctrine and devotion. — The
Expository Times (Edinburgh)
By all means let our young men and women read this volume.
It will stir up within them and stimulate many a good purpose,
and help them in the all-important process of making some
thing worth while of themselves. — The Observer
The book is most helpful in spirit, and refreshing because
of its simplicity. — The Outlook
The style is direct and forceful, and the perusal of the volume
leaves one with an increased appreciation of the dignity of man
as a creature of infinite possibilities. — Christian Evangelist

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
Publishers

THE GREAT APPEAL

JAMES G. K. McCLURE
PRESIDENT OF LAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY

CHICAGO NEW YORK TORONTO
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
MDCCCXCIX

Copyright, 1899
By FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

A Word of Preparation
The desire of God is toward the children
of men. That desire broods over human
lives and seeks a happy, cordial relation
between them and God. It even expresses
itself in an appeal to them to come into
blessed fellowship with Himself. It is that
appeal, in several of its declarations, that
is set forth in the following pages. No
one page exhausts that appeal nor fully
portrays it. It is the book as a whole that
attempts to indicate the nature and the
extent of that appeal.
The writer realizes that while he dis
tributes the different parts of the human
spirit as though each occupied a place
entirely by itself, the fact is that the human
spirit is a unit, and all its parts are inter
related, each part operating in connection
with every other part, and no one part
being uninfluenced by the others.
5

A Word of Preparation
May this book bring to every reader the
question, "What more could God have done
that He has not done to draw me to Him
self?" And may it also lead every reader
to answer to God's appeal with the dedica
tion of his life to the service and the joys
of God.
James G. K. McClure.
Lake Forest, 111.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. The Appeal to the Intellect, 9
II. The Appeal to the Heart, . 28
III. The Appeal to the Conscience, 44
IV. The Appeal to the Memory, . 61
V. The Appeal to the Imagination, 79
VI. The Appeal to the Self-Inter-
ests, ... 97
VII. The Appeal to the Will, . 115

The Appeal to the Intellect
In all the earth there is nothing so won
derful as the human mind. The first ex
pressions of that mind, in a little child,
startle and interest us; the final expressions
of that mind, in the wisest sage, astound
and enthrall us. The mere machinery
itself of the mind is amazing; the product
furnished by that machinery is still more
amazing. It is this intellectual faculty wherewith
we know, reason, and pass judgment, that
works all the marvels of progress, trans
forming rudeness into refinement and con
fusion into order. The intellect writes
the verses that inspire to heroism, paints
the canvases that are admired for a thou
sand years, spans rivers, unites continents,
and even climbs above the clouds. The
educated traveler, in the heart of Africa,
cuts lines upon a chip and handing the chip
to an untaught barbarian bids him carry it
to a distant friend. The friend sends back
9

The Great Appeal
the articles that the chip's lines call for,
and the barbarian stands aghast before
"the chip that can talk."
But what a display of intellect, as com
pared to "the chip that can talk," is seen
when Michael Angelo plans and erects
such a building as St. Peter's Church at
Rome, with all its magnitude and all its
delicacy, all its painting and all its sculp
ture! When Champollion takes the figures
of birds, beetles, and twisted forms painted
upon the walls of Egyptian tombs, and by
sheer mental force constructs a key that
unlocks the mystery of them all, and thus
reduces them to a language! When the
secrets of electricity are brought out of
the hiding-places where they have been
undiscovered for centuries, and are laid at
our feet for use so that we can speak in
intelligible words around the whole earth
in small moments of time! When a star is
detected whose light requires hundreds of
years to reach our eyes, and we can study
its place and its motion !
In view of what the intellect can do,
seeing straight through mountains that are
miles in thickness, and healing diseases
that have always been incurable, it is not
surprising that there is such a thing as

The Appeal to the Intellect
"pride of intellect." A mind that can
accumulate great reservoirs of historic
knowledge so as to be an encyclopaedia in
information; that can read and even speak
the languages of a score of diverse nations;
that is so disciplined, alert, ready, that it
fears no question of business nor of military
campaign, no problem of scientific nor of
philosophic investigation, is indeed an
object of wonderment to its possessor and
of wonderment to others. People of all
races have paid homage to mind. Because
Demosthenes could speak such stirring
words as roused the populace from lethargy
to valorous action, and because Pericles
could surmount the Acropolis with such a
Parthenon as enraptured men in all ages,
Greece reverenced Demosthenes and
Pericles as her permanent heroes. Phys
ical force impresses a few onlookers for the
time: mental force impresses vast multi
tudes for all time. Material wealth has a
glitter in its day, but its day is brief; men
tal wealth shines on forever. History de
votes ten lines to the mere millionaire, if it
mentions him at all, while it devotes a hun
dred lines to the intellectual giant whom it
is its delight to mention.
It is to this intellect in man, this know-

The Great Appeal
ing, reasoning, judging faculty, that God
first addresses Himself in all His intercourse
with man. The assertion that God's reli
gion is a thing of feeling and fancies, a
mere sentimentality with which the mind,
the reason, the discriminating judgment
have nothing whatever to do, is made with
out reference to the true facts of the case.
The true facts are that the heart is never
asked to worship "while the brain denies" ;
nor is the heart ever asked "to strangle
reason that faith may be able to believe."
Rather is it the case, that every precept and
every instruction are presented first and
directly to man's intellect; and it is on the
basis of man's rationality and of the
thought-workings of that rationality that
God unvaryingly appeals to man for obedi
ence and service. Ignorance in man is a
hindrance, not a help to God in drawing
nigh to man. The more intellect a man
has the more God expects His appeal to
reach and impress him. God can and does
speak intelligibly to the weakest intellect;
He has words and facts that He can use in
talking with the youngest child. But the
stronger the intellect, the larger the words
and the stouter the facts He presents, and
He looks to Humboldt to trust in Him as

The Appeal to the Intellect
much — yes, more — than He looks to Joan
of Arc.
The presence of this appeal by God to
the intellect is in contrast with the absence
of appeal by pagan deities to the intellect.
Much of every idolatrous religion is recog
nized by its very advocates to be false and
inadequate. Lying imposition eventually
breaks down when men become discrimi
nating: acute intellects are sure to puncture
the veil of deceit. Paganism, therefore,
makes no essential appeal to the intellect,
because no man can be a wise man, a man
of information and of keen reasoning pow
er, and still give unqualified allegiance to
what is false and insufficient. He may
believe that it is best to leave the religion
of his race unchallenged before the public,
fearing lest his race shall become wholly
irreverent and lawless if the restraints of
their religion are withdrawn ; but he him
self will not and cannot be persuaded to
believe the lie. He avers that it is the
province of the intellect to scrutinize every
religion, whatever name it may bear or in
whatever clime it may originate, and then
after scrutiny to pronounce upon it and
assert whether it is worthy or unworthy in
the estimation of the intellect.
!3

The Great Appeal
Even those statements of religion that
claim to express the appeal of God Himself
need to be studied with the keenest intel
lectuality. There is, it is true, but one
Bible, one "word of God written"; but
the phrases of that Bible have been mis
quoted and misused until in many instances
they have been made to misrepresent the
appeal of God. When in the early cen
turies the attempt prevailed to marry Chris
tianity and pagan religions, preserving
Christian names while retaining ideas that
were precious to paganism, the marriage
compromised Christianity and associated
with it teachings that have no sanction from
the God of Scripture. This man-made
system, thus contrived, does not represent
God's appeal; God never requires a blind
allegiance to any mummery, to any priest
hood, to any church. No one is to hand
over his religion to another whom he con
siders to be less intellectual in religious
penetration than himself. Flaws in argu
ments and breaks in logical processes are
to be noted, not disregarded, whoever
makes them and wherever they are made.
Non-essentials are not essentials, and are
not to be received as such. If an angel
teach a different word than that of God

The Appeal to the Intellect
Himself, it is not God's appeal, and no one
is asked by God to receive it. God's ap
peal has nothing whatever to do with hun
dreds of the matters that cause what are
called "the denominational distinctions of
Christendom." God would have the intel
lect brush them all aside as creations of
time and not of eternity, as not from Him,
and would have the intellect fasten its
vision on His single appeal, to accept Him
as King and receive Him as Friend.
When God makes His own appeal to
man's intellect He does so first, through
nature. Before the child is able to read
the writing of man, God confronts him
with the material creation. God spreads
abroad the heavens, marshals sun, moon,
and stars in their procession, breaks
courses for rivers, places bounds to the sea,
orders the recurrence of the seasons. He
causes all these forms of nature to be seen
and noticed by the child.
Straightway the child in his mind begins
to ask the questions: "Who made the moon
and sea?" "Where did they come from?"
The mind is thus summoned to a course of
investigation, and summoned, if possible,
through such investigation to find an answer
to its questions.

The Great Appeal
That answer can be obtained only through
an intellectual process. To this end, that
we may obtain the answer, God bids us ex
haust every resource of investigation, to
observe, to analyze, to compare. He calls
attention to the beauty of nature, as He
shows the mind the flower of the field and
the sunset cloud of the sky. He asks the
mind to note the order of nature, as the
centuries move on and still the planets keep
their motion and the earth swings securely
about the sun. He directs attention to the
adaptation of nature, as the bird is found to
be equipped for movement through air and
the fish for movement through water. He
causes the intellect to heed the extent of
nature, as the microscope finds infinitesimal
molecular life and the telescope detects the
stars hidden millions of miles away in the
depths of seemingly infinite space. He
asks that the force of nature be pondered,
as the cyclone crashes through forests and
through city, and the lightning splinters
the loftiest oak.
The more we know of nature the more
its wonders, beauties, energies impress us;
the more we know of it the more earnestly
it speaks, and forces the question, "Whose
handiwork is this?" Investigation into
16

The Appeal to the Intellect
nature's laws often explains a phenomenon
and makes clear a mystery. But every
explained phenomenon only widens the
domain of the unexplained; the ocean
grows broader as we move away from the
shore. The little grove at Delphi that
investigated would reveal all secrets, be
comes, as we press into it, a limitless for
est whose borders only have been skirted
and whose depths no one seems capable of
penetrating. Science makes nature greater
every new year. Each newly discovered
force, each newly discovered law declares
the more impressively the glory and the
grandeur of nature. Nature is vast, nature
is tremendous, nature is well-nigh omnip
otent, and is certainly exhaustless.
Placing Himself beside man, underneath
nature's heavens and amid all the objects
those heavens look down upon, the God of
nature speaks to man, and says: "Lift
up your eyes on high and see! Who hath
created these things?" "Yes, who hath
created them?" man's mind answers back,
a very echo of the question put by God.
Then God declares who hath created them:
"I that bringeth out their hosts by number,
I that calleth them all by names, the ever
lasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the
i7

The Great Appeal
ends of the earth, who giveth power to the
faint, and to them that have no might
increaseth strength, even I created these
things; and I ask you in your weakness to
wait upon my might as helplessness waits
upon power, and to let my resources be
your protection."
Thus having spoken to the intellect
through nature, God proceeds to speak to
the intellect through Scripture. His reli
gion is distinctively and peculiarly a book-
religion. Other religions have their sacred
books, but those books are brief and dis
jointed compared to the Bible, with its
"great extent, immense variety, and
organic connection." Each and every
part of the Bible is addressed directly to
man's mind. The first sentence in it is an
answer to the first question asked by the
intellect as it looks on nature and wonder-
ingly queries who made the heavens and
the earth: "God created the heavens and
the earth." Beginning with that first
statement, Scripture straightway proceeds
to show forth God's power, God's wisdom,
and God's goodness; and then, having
declared the worthy character of the God
of nature, and having declared, too, His
providence in all the affairs of men, calls,
18

The Appeal to the Intellect
page by page through all its record, to the
mind of man to consider the blessedness of
obedience to His will, and the sorrow of
disobedience. It never asks for faith,
except on the basis of information already
given. If God charges Abraham to leave
his native land and go out he knoweth not
whither, He charges this on the ground
that Abraham already knows God to be so
wise and good that only a wise and good
command ever could emanate from Him.
The province of faith always is to rest
its feet upon known facts. Faith is never
to be senseless nor unintelligent. No man
can exercise Scriptural faith except as he
is a thinker. Evidence is to be examined;
proofs to be weighed. God never requires
us to do anything that is unreasonable.
We may not at the moment see the benefit
that will result to ourselves or to others
from obedience to His will in some special
matter; but He never asks us to be obedi
ent until after He has assured us, and
shown us, that His will is perfect. That a
matter appears to be beyond reason does
not make it contrary to reason. We are
never charged by God to accept the man-
made philosophies that are alleged deduc
tions from Scripture, nor are any special
19

The Great Appeal
formulas concerning God's justice, or even
concerning Christ's atonement, singled out
by Him and made mandatory upon our con
victions. Such philosophies and formulas
may have been helpful to the welfare of
God's religion in the centuries; but hurt
ful or helpful, they are not made of the
essence of faith. Every one of God's dis
tinct commands, and every one of God's
distinct promises, is presented to the human
mind on grounds that are reasonable to
that mind.
The very mystery of Scripture is a part
of God's appeal through Scripture to our
reason. He purposely leaves some por
tions of His Word obscure to one genera
tion that another generation may have the
pleasure and profit of clearing them up.
The human mind cannot be strong apart
from exercise and discipline. Had one set
of men conquered all the meaning in Scrip
ture, there would be no intellectual arena
left in it for any other set. Accordingly it
is from time to time that God uncovers the
meaning of Scripture, calling attention by
excavations in each new generation to the
fulfillment of predictions, lighting up enig
matical passages by modern exploration
and study, always stimulating the best

The Appeal to the Intellect
intellectual thought of the day by the prob
lems of Scripture, and always giving dili
gent minds the delight of making discover
ies of truth; and still always keeping back
in the shadow so much yet unknown as
furnishes opportunity for investigation to
the minds of another generation. Honest,
intelligent distrust of the God of Scripture
necessarily changes its questionings every
few years. Much criticism that was enter
tained half a century ago has now been
answered. The light of new thought and
new information constantly makes some of
God's scripturally recorded dealings that
once were characterized as unfair, seem so
worthy and so necessary, that God stands
forth from Scripture increasingly beautiful
as time goes on. Time is always on the
side of God.
Even if it be impossible to fully com
prehend the God of Scripture, is not the
fact of our inability to fully comprehend
Him a forceful appeal to our reason for
accepting and obeying Him? The human
mind is of such a nature that it would not
be willing to own allegiance to a God so
small that He could be absolutely compre
hended by it. The human mind cannot be
checked in its range by walls of years ; it

The Great Appeal
leaps them. Time itself, one billion of
years if you please, is not enough for the
mind of man. It sweeps on, and on, and
on. It wishes limitless space, limitless
time. It wishes a limitless God, a God so
great that to think of Him must stretch
the mind and broaden the intellect. No
thought has ever done so much to widen
and develop the human intellect as the
thought of the boundless God of Scripture,
the all-powerful, the all-knowing, the all-
holy, the ever-living, ever-loving God.
The thought of such a God expands every
mind in which it dwells. The greatest
minds become even greater by thinking
about God. "I, even I alone," the God
of Scripture says, "answer to the capacity
and nature of the human mind, and there
fore I make my appeal to be the mind's
King and Friend."
And now God makes His third appeal
to the intellect, and this time through the
person of Jesus Christ. Christ was His
chosen messenger, who was to speak, labor,
and live as His very voice. The declara
tion, "This is my beloved Son; hear Him,"
indicated Christ to be the mouthpiece, the
exponent, the manifestation of God.
Christ appealed to the minds of men by

The Appeal to the Intellect
His words. Every one of them was rational,
every one of them was wise. Though He
taught for three years, sometimes in pri
vate and sometimes in public, sometimes
before His friends and sometimes before
His foes, He never gave expression to one
unwise thought; He said nothing that past
experience then could gainsay, nothing that
past experience now can gainsay. "Never
man spake as this man" was the judgment
of His own generation, and it is the judg
ment of every succeeding generation. He
claimed that every word was absolute truth
concerning the subject treated ; and all his
tory since His day corroborates His claim.
More and more it is evident that what
Christ said is the solution of all domestic,
social, and governmental problems. The
individual, the home, the community that
lives His words finds them to be fully and
always the truth.
Christ also appealed to the minds of men
by His miracles. Those miracles were done
openly, in the presence of the intellect, and
it was always the intellect that was asked
to ponder them and their mission. Many
of Christ's words so commended them
selves to man's intellect at the time they
were spoken, that they needed no corrobo-
23

The Great Appeal
rative testimony, no help to make them
impressive. But there were words spoken
by Christ that dealt with matters lying be
yond all human knowledge, matters of
immortality and of the nature of God's
love. To speak of such matters was to
make a revelation, to declare the unknown.
It was necessary that attention be called
to the words themselves and to the teacher
of them, in some way that would arouse
and hold thought. Miracles were means
to an end: the telescope for the seeing of
the stars. But as means they made a direct
appeal to men's minds; an appeal to con
sider that what Christ said of God's love
was true, as miracle after miracle set forth
the tender, forgiving, welcoming nature of
God ; an appeal to consider that what
Christ said of immortality was true, as the
raising from the dead of the child, of the
youth, of the man, of Himself through His
own inherent power, made life beyond death
so credible. Corroborative testimony, in
addition to words of revelation and of
promise, was needed, and through miracles
that testimony was given to man's intellect.
Christ's supreme appeal to the minds of
men was through His character. Words
and miracles alike called attention to Him.
24

The Appeal to the Intellect
The great question He presented to the in
tellect was Himself: in birth a narrow Jew,
but in nature a brother to all humanity; a
provincial in education, but a sage knowing
the life of the whole world; a peasant, but
a king; meek, but authoritative over life
and over death; gentle, but majestic; dying
to live; yielding to conquer; a man, but a
God. No such as He has ever been seen;
He fulfilled in Himself all righteousness,
He was perfect in purity, charity, kind
ness, justice, happiness. All mankind find
in Him their ideal; all mankind find in
Him their helper. As the years of His life
go on, and we study them, so wondrous, so
superior to mere flesh and blood does He
Himself appear, that for such an one to
enter the grave and conquer it becomes so
natural an event that we may even antici
pate it. Certainly such an one had life in
Himself so abundantly that "He could not
be holden by death." "Come unto the
Father, unto my Father, and your Father;
come to His safety, His peace, His immor
tality," is the appeal that He quietly but
unceasingly makes to every thoughtful
man. The God of Scripture satisfies the intel
lect. He answers its questions. He tells
25

The Great Appeal
who it was that brought about creation,
and why; He tells what man's relation to
God is, made in His very image ; He tells
what man's place is to be in the future,
when man, restored to the very likeness of
God, is to dwell with Him in peace forever.
He even assures the intellect that "what it
knows not now, it shall know hereafter,"
that clouds are to give way to light, and
man "shall know even as he is known."
He opens before the intellect the opportun
ity of an ever-broadening vision and an
ever-increasing comprehension as the years
of a blessed eternity move on.
So sure is God that His appeal to the
intellect is convincing, is mastering, that
He even asks that intellect to love Him.
Cold, judicial, as the intellect is, such is
God's belief in His power to impress it
favorably and rouse it into warmth of
enthusiasm that He bids men "love" Him
"with all the mind." He wishes the keen
est scrutiny, the sharpest penetration, the
deepest insight to center upon Him; He
does not fear them, He welcomes them all.
That love is safest, He knows, that is wisest.
That love will have least disappointment,
He realizes, that is based on surest and
completest knowledge. "Know Me," he
26

The Appeal to the Intellect
says, "know Me thoroughly and closely,
keep knowing Me, until intellectual admira
tion shall become intellectual passion, until
the cold mind shall glow, and the sober
reason flame forth, and the calm judgment
burn at white heat — the white heat of
love. ' '
The appeal of God needs intellectual
honesty on man's part if it is to be seen as
it actually is. Truth never enters a barred
mind. Do you know aught of duty? Live
that duty. Present knowledge is a gift to
be used in action; future knowledge waits
on that action, and comes only when known
duty is done. To the degree that the mind
knows God, let it obey God ; and if it so
obey, it shall grow in knowledge as surely
as God is truth.

27

The Appeal to the Heart
A blind orphan child was once asked the
question, "What is the heart?" Placing
his hand over his chest, he replied, "That
which aches so!" To him, the blind orphan
boy whose life had lacked so many joys,
the human heart was the element within
him that could be lonely, could grieve,
could know the pain of being neglected,
as well as the gladness of being loved.
This attempt at a definition of the heart
is suggestive. Within every human being
there is something that desires the interest
of others; it wishes their thought, their
solicitous attention. It wishes their sym
pathy, too, their sorrow in its sorrow, and
their gladness in its gladness. It wishes
comfort also, so that it may be helped in
times of difficulty and discouragement.
And it wishes friendship, that comradeship
that makes it feel the strengthening influ
ence of an unselfish presence at its side.
And then it wishes love, genuine, abiding,
28

The Appeal to the Heart
forgiving love, that bears toward it only
true and sweet solicitude. The human
heart desires many other things; but it
desires these preeminently. When these
desires are unmet, the heart is very vacant;
when they are met, the heart is very full.
Besides its capacity to receive interest,
sympathy, comfort, friendship, and love,
it has capacity to bestow them. When
we know what the interest, sympathy,
comfort, friendship, and love are that go
forth from us toward others, we know what
our heart is; their extent, their intensity,
their constancy all indicate whether our
heart is a great heart or a small heart.
It is to this tender, affectionate, susceptible
portion of our being that God makes
appeal as He seeks our devotion.
There are two methods used by Him in
His appeal: one is the negative method,
the method of making the heart realize
that no other object than Himself can meet
its needs, the other the affirmative method,
the method of presenting Himself as the
satisfaction of all the desires of the heart.
In the use of the negative method He
shows the heart that things cannot give it
what it desires. He never allows outward,
touchable, weighable things to make a
29

The Great Appeal
heart continuously happy. There is not a
child who has not sat down in the midst of
abundance with a weary, lonely feeling of
heart. This feeling comes like the wind ;
we do not know whence it cometh. There
seems no especial reason for it; it is not
because of any pain of body, any rebuff
from an associate, any word of instruction
upon the vanity of life. This feeling exists
entirely independent of any exterior cause.
At first it is a matter of surprise to the
child that he is lonely in the midst of his
abundance ; he cannot understand his own
feeling. He knows that he has the very
objects that he desired, and that they are
his to do with as he pleases. And still he
is not happy! He may not always voice
the questioning of his heart in the words,
"What does this mean?" but he wonders
at his disappointment, and he never for
gets those hours in early life when the dis
appointment came.
In later years, when the child has be
come a man, he thinks about the experi
ence more intelligently. He finds that
come what may of exterior good into his
life, that good does not rest and satisfy his
heart. He is much like the infant child
that may have softest blankets, and warm-
3°

The Appeal to the Heart
est food, and many nurses at hand, but
still is unhappy, and will be unhappy so
long as the mother-heart for which he
seems made, is absent. Every grown
man realizes sooner or later that all the
gold, and lands, and houses, and feasts he
may have do not meet the desires of his
heart. So soon as he looks away from his
own experience to the experience of others
he finds that every other human heart has
felt or does feel exactly as he feels. A
man like Croesus has his money, but he
declares himself unhappy. A man like
Solomon has his splendor, but he keeps
talking about the emptiness of life. A man
like Beckwith has his palace, but he thinks
by day and by night how lonely his heart
is. Whenever, in any generation, in any
land, under any circumstance, there has
been an abundance of things, the man who
had them did not have what his heart
craved. When we reason about this fact it be
comes easy for us to understand it; how
can it be possible for things to meet the
need of that which wishes interest, sym
pathy, comfort, friendship, and love?
The wanderer in the desert who, almost
dead from thirst, came upon a pitcher from
31

The Great Appeal
which he expected to drink refreshing
water, and found that it was filled with
diamonds and rubies, could not satisfy
bodily thirst with jewels; all the jewels in
the world would not, because they could
not, relieve that thirst. No more can things,
however precious, satisfy heart thirst;
they never have, and they never will. Of
this fact every one that thinks wisely be
comes convinced, namely, that there must
be water for bodily thirst, and there must be
love and comfort for heart thirst.
Then there is a second use to which God
puts His negative method: He shows the
heart that no person other than Himself can
give the heart what it desires, whether the
person be a supposed divinity or an actual
being. This failure to satisfy the heart is
the failure of every god and goddess the
world over. No divinity has ever been
imagined whose character corresponded
with the needs of the human heart. Jupiter
had unbridled anger, Hermes was a cheat,
Venus was impure ; they were not deeply
solicitous of mankind's true happiness, they
could not be taken to the heart as friends.
In spite of what a few leaders in Greece
and Rome said in order to make the best
of their sorry religious situation, the people
32

The Appeal to the Heart
of Greece and Rome believed that their
gods were drunken, passionate, profligate,
given to jealousy, lust, and war. Unre
fined paganism makes its gods the enemies
of human happiness, who must be bought
off by sacrifices, else they will do harm ; it
makes the images of its gods hideous, and
many of its temple rites revolting. Even
the divinities of the Anglo-Saxons, Woden
and Thor, were rough, harsh, reveling in
battles and killing with hammers; they
could never say "peace" to the heart when
it was disquieted because of sin and weari
ness. Refined paganism endeavored to
make some of its gods the friends of man,
like Ceres, the god of the harvest, and en
deavored, too, to make the images of its
gods attractive, and the temples of its gods
beautiful; the statue of Apollo was grace
itself, and the flowers on his altar were as
sweet as could be found. But no amount
of art could cover up the lewdness of Ceres
and the selfishness of Apollo, and when
the human heart craved disinterested
affection, and longed to give affection, it
could not be satisfied, even with the best
products of refinement. Murderers, thieves,
adulterers, courtesans, went as freely to
temples and altars as did the noblest men
33

The Great Appeal
and the purest maidens. It is a fact of
history that in those days when Tiberius
was Cassar at Rome, and every accessible
race of men had been sought, and every
divinity that could be found had its wor
ship in Rome, there was a feeling of disap
pointment in the heart of the people; their
gods wearied them, distressed them, or
repelled them. And to-day, when Bud
dhism exists as a corrective of Brahminism,
and the Abbe Du Bois says, "Every Hindu
procession presents me the image of hell,"
and "Hindu human sacrifices are frightful
and appalling," there is still a failure in
heathenism to give the heart what its sweet,
pure affections desire. Now, as nineteen
hundred years ago, the human heart
searches the known world for some divinity
other than God in whom it can have lov
ing, restful, joyous confidence, and it
searches in vain. The dove found no rest
for the sole of her foot; the waters were
on the face of the whole earth; her only
rest was in God's ark.
Similarly, it is true that no human person
can answer to all the needs of the heart.
Friends do not always remain true ; nor if
they remain true, is it possible for them to
be with us unceasingly, to understand us
34

The Appeal to the Heart
perfectly, to give the aid that we need,
and to give it so that it comforts and quiets
us. The human heart has secrets that
only an omniscient eye can see; they are
not always clearly defined to the heart
itself, so that it can say what it feels and
needs. There is a limitlessness to its crav
ings that makes it restless, even when
earthly friends are many and are studious
of its welfare; there are spaces in it which
remain unoccupied and cannot be filled,
even though multitudes do everything in
their power to make us perfectly happy.
In Dr. van Dyke's "Last Word," the noble
Hermas and the devoted Athenais, his
wife, have every earthly possession that
they can crave, wealth of love from and to
one another, as well as to their beautiful
boy, a palace rich in treasures material, and
a home life rich in treasures spiritual, in
devotion, in truth, in sweet fellowship.
But in the midst of all their joy they come
to an hour when both are conscious that
their hearts are not satisfied, that there is
nothing more to be secured from one another
or others that could satisfy their hearts;
that they must let their hearts feel gratitude
to some one greater than themselves who
has given their hearts so much ; that they
35

The Great Appeal
must worship Him, must love Him, and
must feel His love for them. But they do
not know who He is! They place them
selves before an altar. The altar has no
image on it. They realize that infinitely
great longings and infinitely great affec
tions cannot be satisfied with less than an
infinite object who is loving and lovable;
but who is that Object? They cannot tell.
They have lost the word "Christ" out of
their knowledge and cannot speak it or feel
its power. They are conscious of larger
needs than can be met by any one less than
God; but they are ignorant of Him! Like
them, every human heart comes to know
that there are cravings within it that no
mother's unselfishness can answer, no
wife's devotion can content, no friend's
loyalty can quiet.
It is when God has thus made His appeal
to us negatively, and has shown us that our
hearts cannot be satisfied apart from Him,
that He makes His appeal affirmatively,
and assures us that He as friend and helper
can give our hearts all that they wish. He
does this through general declarations of
his affection toward us, and through a
special manifestation of that affection.
In a multitude of ways he declares that
36

The Appeal to the Heart
He cares for us tenderly, solicitously,
patiently. So that we may feel the force
of this care as thus cherished for us, God
does two things: one, He teaches His
own perfection, which is complete; the
other, He teaches our imperfection, which
is very sinful. He Himself is without spot ;
his every attribute is holy. Such is His
nature that He cannot be tempted of evil;
nor can he look upon evil with the least
degree of allowance. His garments are
clean, His throne is white, His dwelling-
place is light. Sin is the disturber of His
earth; He hates it; it is the leprosy that
destroys His people, and interferes with
His plans. On the other hand, we are
spotted with evil; we even cherish sin;
our thoughts, words, and deeds are run
through and through with selfishness and
wrong. There is none that doeth absolute
good — no, not one. We turn away from
the right, we choose the lower in prefer
ence to the higher, we refuse to yield to
the best influences. All this is true in
many respects of every one; of some per
sons even stronger descriptions could be
used, as the drunkard, the thief, the per
secutor, the murmurer are mentioned. In
every instance, even though the best
37

The Great Appeal
among us be thought of, the contrast
between God's character and our own
character is very marked. He and we are
opposites; He is lovable, and we are un
lovely. In us are the very elements God
revolts from ; and they are retained within
us because we wish them there.
Here, then, is the wonder of God:s
character, that being spotless and com
plete, He feels even an agonizing interest
in us, and wishes us, soiled as we are, to
give Him our love ! He desires every heart
that hears of Him, wherever it may be, to
know that He cares for it unceasingly; it
may be in affliction, in distress, in loneli
ness, in disgrace; but He thinks of it, sym
pathizes with it, would comfort it, would
hold fellowship with it, and would shower
love upon it. He makes no exceptions in
this assurance of His care; the heart of
the lowest and the heart of the highest is
dear to Him; the heart of the prisoner, the
heart of the jailer, of the foulest, and of
the purest. Nor does He make any qual
ification in this assurance ; men may disobey
Him, resist Him, defame Him, and still He
is their friend, and is ready to do for them
everything that their hearts need.
In all the world there is nothing that so
38

The Appeal to the Heart
appeals to the human heart as the assur
ance that it is loved by one who is worthy
and is lovable. Love is the one thing that
the human heart everywhere is waiting for.
He who goes most among mankind finds
that what their hearts crave is not counsel,
not applause, not power, but disinterested
love. The knowledge that it is loved is
the most powerful leverage that can be ap
plied to the human heart to cheer it,
sweeten it, strengthen it. The man who
knows he has a mother, pure and true, that
gently but unswervingly and self-sacrific-
ingly thinks of him by day and by night, and
prizes his good above her highest joy, is
helped as he could not be helped by any
other earthly knowledge, to keep pure and
true himself. And when the human heart
is told by God repeatedly that He watches
over every step of its pathway with affec
tion, that He is touched by its hard
battling, its pain, its failure, that the
moan of its sorrow reaches Him and the
weight of its cares and responsibilities is
felt by Him, the heart has a magnet applied
to it that draws it as nothing else even
in heaven could draw it, toward the
very heart of God. Surely that God is
indeed a blessed God who comes to Elijah
39

The Great Appeal
under the juniper tree when he is weary
of body and of mind, and feeds him, and
rests him, and does everything within
His power, as carefully as a nurse with an
infant child, to buoy up his heart; He is a
blessed God who sees men toiling in dark
ness and in storm, out upon a wind-swept,
wave-tossed sea, and feels for them, and
goes through the tempest to them and
speaks soothingly to them; He is a blessed
God who, hearing that a healed blind man,
because he has confessed the truth, has
lost the sympathy even of his parents, and
is now an outcast in the streets, goes
searching for him, and then talks to him
gently and assuringly.
One element of that love of God is par
ticularly appealing. The heart of mankind
is sore and bruised; it has gone into a far
country, despite a father's desire, and has
been knocked about by many wrongs, and
is poor and soiled. Is God's love for it
such that He will forgive it? Yes, God
will forgive it! God will even rejoice to
forgive it, if it turn in penitence to Him,
and He will do for its comfort and joy all
that the heart needs. "Perhaps God can
forgive sin," said Socrates, "but I do not
see how." What no one else in all the
4o

The Appeal to the Heart
universe promises to the heart, what no
heathen divinity did promise and no human
friend can promise, God promises, that
He will forgive sin, and the wrong-doer
shall now and always be His dear, honored
child. "Yes," God says, "heart of man!
I will do for you all that comfort, and sym
pathy, and care, and love can do for you,
and I will rejoice and be happy, merrily
happy if you will only let Me be your refuge
and father. ' '
But even beyond God's general declara
tion of His affection to us, there is one
special manifestation of that affection
through which God makes His last, His
supreme appeal to the heart. That special
manifestation is through the cross of Cal
vary. He points to Him who was upon it,
the only begotten of the Father, full of
grace and glory. He asks the heart to
remember that this is His Son, His beloved
Son, His Son who came from heaven, where
His glory equaled His own. He asks the
heart to remember what a father's love for
his only and precious child is, and then
to look at the manger wherein that child
lies in poverty; to look at the child, grown
to be a man, moving along the valleys and
over the mountains, at the seaside and in
4'

The Great Appeal
Jerusalem, always loving, always helpful,
but always misunderstood, always ma
ligned; to look still further and see whither
idle questionings, and evil eyes, and bitter
lies drove that Son as He is scourged,
crowned with thorns, crucified between
thieves, and derided; to look even further,
and see the lips of the Christ open in loving
provision for John and Mary, in earnest
prayer for forgiveness for His persecutors,
in tender assurance of welcome to the pen
itent thief, and then in sublime self-sur
render to the temporary power of death!
Yes, the tragedy of the ages was wrought
out when Christ came, lived, and went up
to Calvary. There is a pathos in the scene
of his death, unsurpassed anywhere; never
was there a sorrow like this sorrow. But
the pathos is not its main feature ; its main
feature is its evidence of the nature and
degree of God's interest in our hearts. It
was that interest, that deep, pure, self-
sacrificing interest of God in us that
brought Christ into our world ; it was that
interest in us that gave His Son even to the
cross, and gave Himself to suffering and
agony through that cross. The appeal to
us from Calvary is the appeal of a love
that shares our sharpest pang, our bitterest
42

The Appeal to the Heart
tear, asking us to let God enter our hearts
and abide within them. Ever since that hour
wherein God in His omnipotence exhausted
all possible means through the cross to tell
our hearts of the height and depth, the
length and breadth of His sympathetic,
self-impoverishing love, He has placed the
cross of Jesus Christ before us, and said:
"By this and all it signifies let me be your
friend and helper. I can satisfy your
every need ; I can comfort you and cheer
you ; I can forgive you and enrich you. I
can meet every longing and answer every
craving of your heart."

i3

The Appeal to the Conscience
It is well known that it was a Roman
poet, Ovid, who once wrote of himself, "I
see and approve of the better course : I fol
low the worse." It is not so well known
what the character of this Roman poet was.
He was an intelligent man, who understood
what was safe for himself and for others,
but who did what was injurious to himself
and to others: he violated the principles of
purity, defiling his own life and defiling the
lives of those who trusted him. He was
a distinctively wicked man.
In this little statement concerning him
self he indicates what conscience is: it is
that secret testimony of the inner self that
approves what it considers right and con
demns what it considers wrong. Ovid had
within him a power that recognizing some
things as better than others, approved
those better things, and when he chose
the other and worse things, disapproved
of his choice. Ovid's statement concern
ing himself is a statement every human
44

The Appeal to the Conscience
being finds true in his own experience;
something within him passes favorable
judgment upon the doing of what seems to
it right, and passes unfavorable judgment
upon the doing of what seems to it wrong.
There is what men call an arbiter, an
umpire, within them that, according to the
rules of thought and action it acknowl
edges, declares whether thought and action
are praiseworthy or blameworthy.
The idea of a right and of a wrong, and
of the claim of the right upon his alleg
iance, exists in every one. The son of
an Indian chief had been murdered. The
murderer, unable to provide a ransom
or to escape, surrendered himself. Accord
ing to the law of the tribe, a remaining son
of the chief, in the presence of the assem
bled tribe, takes a knife and plunges it into
the murderer's heart. As the murderer
dies his wife rends the air with cries of
anguish for herself and her fatherless little
children. Immediately the chief, moved
by something within him that tells him that
while blood ransom is right according to
the law of the tribe, compassion for help
less ones is also right according to the law
of humanity, speaks out and bids the wife
come with her little ones to his lodge where
45

The Great Appeal
he will give them a home and protection.
As his words are heard by the tribe, all
their voices break forth with the exclama
tions: "Right! Right! It is right!" Some
thing within them, cruel as they might seem
while they were feasting upon the sight of
blood, determined for them a standard of
right and applauded conformity to that
standard. The man is yet to be found who
does not feel that there are some deeds
which he ought to do and some which he
ought not to do. Conscience is the inborn
and inalienable possession of every human
being. Even though the sphere of conscience
is simply the pronouncing favorably or un
favorably upon the moral nature of our
choices and intentions, and conscience is
not responsible for the ideas of what is
right and what is wrong that are furnished
it by the intellect, its sphere is important.
Every one is happier and rests more quietly
when conscience tells him he has acted a
right rather than a wrong. Approbation is
always pleasant, especially the approbation
of that voice within us that speaks oftenest
and speaks longest. "I would rather be
right than be President of the United
States," is a saying attributed to Henry
46

The Appeal to the Conscience
Clay, which has a wealth of wisdom in it;
the sense of one's own rectitude of purpose
is worth more for peace and comfort than
the applause of the whole world. The
royal murderer, King Richard, is made by
Shakespeare to say in great distress of
spirit:
" My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
" Methought the souls of all that I had murdered
Came to my tent, and every one did threat
To-morrow's vengeance on the head of Richard."
Conscience thus becomes an impelling
force to do the right and leave the wrong
undone. It makes "duty" desirable, for
when duty is done there will come a judge's
commendation of the man who has done
it, and hardship and even torture are worth
enduring for the sake of that commenda
tion. And it makes neglect of duty un
desirable, for sooner or later the judge
that is within the man who has been neg
lectful, will speak out and will condemn
the man for his misdeed. No sensible
person wishes to go through an experi
ence like that of the Earl of Breadal-
bane, whose conscience kept ever before
him the massacre he foully planned at
47

The Great Appeal
Glencoe, and took from him his bravery, his
composure and his sleep; nor does any one
wish to have Cardinal Woolsey's pitiful
lament ring in his soul, because like him he
has violated his sense of rectitude and has
sacrificed principle to expediency.
So helpful an aid is conscience to the
welfare of mankind that he who shapes his
life according to its dictates shapes that
life as wisely as he can. Conscience is not
always an infallible guide, but it is always
a guide to be followed. Under no circum
stances may a person go contrary to what
he believes to be right ; if he does, he injures
his whole moral nature. Even though the
information concerning right and wrong
that is at hand for conscience to act upon
be deficient, even though conscience itself
for some reason be unhealthy, capricious,
accommodating, conscience is still the
judge, the arbiter, whose decisions for us
must be law. Great harm to others has
been done under the leadership of con
science, as Saul for conscience' sake has per
secuted, and Torquemada for conscience'
sake has forced the Inquisition ; but a great
harm would also have been done the indi
viduals themselves, persecutors or inquis
itors, had they not responded to conscience
48

The Appeal to the Conscience
and been absolutely loyal to it. What con
science needs is knowledge and health;
knowledge, that it may know matters as
they actually and fully are ; health that it
may be vigorous, alert, quick in its deci
sions. Such knowledge and such health
must be sought by every one who would
have his conscience a perfect guide.
But faulty though man's conscience may
be through ignorance or through abuse, it
never ceases to make a distinction between
right and wrong. It continues to exist and
to exert a helpful influence, even in the
most inauspicious circumstances. When
the gods of the ancient world bade their
worshipers commit crimes, conscience
cried out that crime, even though sanc
tioned and demanded by divinities, was
wrong. If Bacchus asked for debauchery,
conscience said that Zenocrates, who would
not be a debauchee, was to be commended.
Lucretia was known to be immaculately
pure in a time when temples were honored
by impurity, and the conscience of Rome
praised her devotion to purity. The great
est men of the nation might go through the
form of bowing before images of detestable
gods, but conscience told those men that
they must not be like those gods, detest-
49

The Great Appeal
able. As Rousseau says, "The voice of
conscience, stronger than that of the gods
themselves, made itself heard and respected
and obeyed on the earth, and seemed to
banish guilt and the guilty to the very lim
its of heaven."
All history shows, too, that conscience
needs to be reverenced. The conscience of
any given moment is to be the supreme au
thority of that moment. To act contrary
to it is to injure it, destroying its sensibility
even as searing the skin destroys the sen
sibility of the skin. The man who so lives
as to dull the assertive power of conscience
until its voice becomes feeble and rings no
loud summons to duty in his soul is answer
able for the condition of his conscience.
To drink liquor contrary to the dictate of
conscience until intoxication ensues, and
no voice whatever of conscience is heard,
is to condemn one's self. The conscience
is the supremely authoritative power in
man's nature. No impulse rises so high
and pronounces itself so commandingly
toward virtue as conscience. To yield to
a supposed wrong is to oppose the best in
fluence of our moral nature. While it is a
mistake to resist any element of the soul
that cries out for virtue, it is the most
50

The Appeal to the Conscience
serious mistake that can be made to resist
the voice of highest authority that is in the
soul. To this element of conscience, God, in
His desire that man should give Him alle
giance, makes His appeal. He does this
first, through the conviction written in the
human heart that sin is unnatural. Wher
ever deformity is found it is called abnor
mal. Men with twisted feet or distorted
faces or hunched backs, and animals and
flowers with decided misgrowths, are un
natural. Lunatics and maniacs are also
unnatural. So the human heart declares
that moral deformity is unnatural ; that to
love God, the lovely, is natural, to love evil,
the unlovely, is unnatural. It is contrary
to our very conviction that when the harm
of wrong is seen we should choose wrong,
and contrary to the same conviction that
when the benefit of right is seen we should
reject right. To prefer the less to the
greater, the worse to the better, is an
obliquity of judgment. Were we stationed
in some other sphere where we could watch
what is being done upon this earth, we
should feel, every time we saw a person
committing a sin, that he was acting as a
man without control of his reason — like
Si

The Great Appeal
a fool, like a madman. It is natural for a
man to choose the beautiful rather than
the hideous, the pure rather than the im
pure, the healthy rather than the un
healthy. All this is what God calls "the
law written upon the human heart." God
now takes that law, and through it He
comes to conscience, conscience that is
ready to approve the right and the doing
of the right, and He presses home upon
conscience Himself in all His beauty, and
asks conscience to choose Him rather than
evil in its hideousness. He calls to con
science to discriminate between the natural
and the unnatural, to listen to the convic
tion of the human heart that makes the
choice of the good natural and the choice
of the evil unnatural, and to pronounce in
favor of that benevolent One who seeks
the good and only the good of man. Ma
levolence, as represented by the Evil One,
is to be feared, not chosen, God argues.
"Put yourself," He urges, "into harmony
with your being, come into conformity with
what is reasonable, and love Me, the true
and the blessed, for it is a crime against
nature to disapprove Me, and it is fidelity
to nature to approve Me."
God also appeals to conscience through
52

The Appeal to the Conscience
His revealed will. Conscience needs
knowledge; God furnishes that knowledge
in His written laws. Those laws are of
such a nature that He expects conscience
to recognize their worth and beauty, and
act upon them. They are perfect laws;
every one of them is good. The temporary
laws given through Moses to the Israelites
as they emerged from Egyptian bondage,
are based on principles serviceable to pri
vate and public welfare. The separation
of beasts into clean and unclean, with the
command to offer only the clean to God,
taught the people the need of personal
holiness if they wished to please God and
possess worthy character; and conscience
can but approve such a command. The
permanent laws that teach honesty, broth
erly kindness, purity, freedom from covet-
ousness, whenever presented to conscience
commend themselves to conscience, and
commend, too, the God who gave them,
because they are recognized as essential to
the safety of society. Here, then, is open-
eyed conscience looking out for the good,
and God presents to it statement after
statement of His desire that each and every
virtue should be chosen, and each and
every vice should be shunned. He presses
S3

The Great Appeal
home these statements by attaching to them
every possible incentive for their perform
ance. He paints the essence of evil in the
blackest of colors. He makes the person
ification of evil, Satan, a traducer, a temp
ter, an enemy. He shows that the choice
of evil eventuates in loss of character, loss
of self-respect, loss of reputation, and loss
of the peace and fellowship of God. He
sets forth the effects of evil within the soul
itself, making the soul a bond-slave of evil,
a den of demons, an abode of despair.
Then He presses upon conscience the
opposite effects of good that result from
obedience to His laws; He shows the
blessedness of having life in harmony with
the will of the universe, of having God's in
dwelling joy and doing His blissful service,
of growing into fitness for Heaven, and
finally of entering Heaven itself with its
answer to our every highest intellectual,
moral, and spiritual wish. What an appeal
all this is to conscience to pronounce in
His favor! It is a conclusive argument; it
bears in upon conscience with command
ing force. To make it the more easily
understood God adds illustrations to it, so
that concrete cases shall show that diso
bedience to His laws always ends in sorrow,
54

The Appeal to the Conscience
and obedience to those laws always ends in
happiness: Cain cherishes hatred, and be
comes a sufferer; Saul disregards wisdom,
and becomes wretched ; Judas sacrifices the
good for the evil, and becomes an outcast.
On the other hand, God shows that the
men and women who were true to His high
ideals were heroes; that even if they suf
fered like Daniel and Stephen, they had
the priceless boon of pure souls, they had
His constant benediction, and they entered
into His eternal reward. And then God
brings the statement of His revealed will to
its close in the book of the Revelation,
wherein He sets forth the conflict between
the good and the evil, and declares that
the outcome of that conflict is the com
plete overthrow of the evil, and the unend
ing triumph of the good. Thus God
assures conscience that His will shall
prosper, and all that is contrary to His will
shall fail.
God still further appeals to conscience
through startling providences. When
Luther, at Erfurt, heard one morning that
his intimate friend, Alexis, had been assas
sinated, the sudden loss of his companion
aroused him to serious inquiry concerning
the rightfulness of his life. Later, when
55

The Great Appeal
he was returning from Mansfield, and was
overtaken by a violent storm, and a thun
derbolt sank into the ground by his very
side, he saw the necessity of devoting him
self to that which in the hour of death
would be satisfying, and holiness presented
itself more attractively to his conscience
than ever before. It was a divine appeal
to Belshazzar's conscience that God made,
when in the midst of a feast, that Belshaz
zar knew to be shameless, God caused a
finger to write upon the wall the words
that declared judgment to be on Belshaz
zar's track. Similarly God spoke to Herod's
conscience when Herod, contrary to his
conscience having put John the Baptist to
death, and now hearing of the miracles of
Christ, is agitated by a sense of his sin, and
thinks, "John the Baptist is risen from the
dead," and wonders whether John has
come back to vex his murderer! Con
science never dies. It may long lie dor
mant, but God is sure to awaken it. He
sends some event to arouse it — a pestilence,
a sudden danger, a great disappointment,
a serious illness, a grave responsibility.
When Ananias and Sapphira fell dead be
cause they were wrong-doers the con
science of every onlooker was quickened.
56

The Appeal to the Conscience
"Dishonesty and deceit are to be avoided,
honesty and fairness are to be chosen,"
was the message of the event. There is no
community so quiet, and no life so hidden,
but that God sends into them events that
startle conscience and make it realize that
He is a God of judgment, who will not
suffer evil to go unpunished. Through
such events God appeals to conscience to
pronounce in favor of Him whose law is
righteousness and whose protection is
safety and peace.
God has still another means, the means
of the Holy Spirit, by which He appeals
to conscience. It is the Holy Spirit that
convinces of sin. Every time conscience
is aware that sin is in the soul, the Holy
Spirit has brought conviction to conscience.
It is a large part of the work of the Spirit
thus to quicken conscience. The Holy
Spirit leaves no conscience unreached.
The instrumentalities He uses to that end
are many and are diversified; but they,
each and all, are sufficient. Sometimes He
sends a Nathan to a man like David
whose conscience has been lulled into in
sensibility, and Nathan speaks so penetrat
ingly that David awakes to a realization of
his wrong, and beseeches God to forgive
57

The Great Appeal
him. Sometimes He sends a letter, in
which are written words that tell how a
parent, whose good wishes were despised,
loved the child, and thus summons con
science to shame and repentance. Some
times He sends an entreaty in book, or in
sermon, or in the conversation of a friend
that makes duty so clear that conscience
sees it and approves it, and feels the very
will of God urging it toward duty. When
ever in any soul there is the conviction "I
ought to be a better man than I am; I
ought to be God's man," the Holy Spirit
is pleading with conscience.
God's last appeal to conscience is made
through Jesus Christ. God presents Him
in His spotlessness before conscience. As
when perfectly white cloth is brought near
that which bears stain and soot, the con
trast makes the stain and soot the more
offensive, so the absolute sinlessness of
Jesus Christ deepens within conscience a
sense of its wrong. "Depart from me,"
said the still selfish Peter, as he saw how
stainless the Christ at his side was, "for I
am a sinful man." The perfect character
of Jesus Christ lights up in the soul, with
microscopic distinctness, the consciousness
of secret evil more perfectly than any code
58

The Appeal to the Conscience
of precepts ever devised. In the strength
and completeness of His life there is con.
demnation for all that is weak and faulty in
man. Christ brings to conscience the
greatest revelation of sin it can know; He
uncloaks the soul and shows the soul its own
sin; He makes judgment upon sin a real,
because a present and an ever-present, fact.
But Christ brings, beside a revelation of
sin, a cure of sin; He brings a pardon and
an antidote. He assures conscience that
sinful though man is, God stands ready to
create the clean heart in man and save him
from the guilt and power of all his sins.
He avows to conscience that the very blood
He shed on Calvary is evidence of this
willingness — yes, of this eager desire on
the part of God to meet all the needs of
conscience with a free, full, and eternal
pardon. "No sin," he declares, "is light;
it is wretched and ruinous." "But," He
adds, "no sin is invincible; the grace of
God can conquer it, render it powerless;
the grace of God can speak peace to the
most sin-oppressed conscience." And then
He bids conscience look upon Him, the
very Lamb of God that taketh away the sin
of the world, and know that if we confess
our sins God is faithful and just to forgive
59

The Great Appeal
us our sins, and to cleanse us from all un
righteousness. It is with earnest, tender, pleading en
treaty that God appeals to the conscience
to heed His persuasions and pronounce in
favor of Him and His beneficent service.

to

The Appeal to the Memory
A man of eighty years of age was lying
one summer day beneath a tree. It was a
Sunday morning. He was thinking of any
thing that came into his mind. Just then
a bee flew among the clover that was
around him, and began its buzzing. The
buzzing attracted his attention. Somehow,
as he listened to it, the memory of a day
more than sixty years in the past came
back to him; he remembered how the bees
buzzed in the churchyard of his youth,
how they buzzed on that special day when
a friend sat down beside him among the
clover and asked him to be true to his
highest ideals of life, and how he trifled
with conscience that day and was disloyal
to it. He was a youth in England then,
and now he was an old man in America.
But as memory called up the past, and he
heard again the earnest words of his friend,
those words came to him with great force,
and lying there beneath the tree he yielded
61

The Great Appeal
to their influence and consecrated himself
to all that those words sought.
The power of memory whereby we recall
objects and ideas that were once before
the mind is both marvelous and blessed.
It can go back into the past as into
some dark continent, and like a Stanley
searching for a lost Livingstone, it can
search for a name, for a fact, for an idea,
until at last it comes upon what it once
heard, felt, or knew, and then it can tri
umphantly bring it out from its conceal
ment and show it in clear light. It can
make days long dead thrill with life again,
can fill with people houses that have been
tenantless for generations, can hear the
voices that no mortal ear has heard for
scores of years, and can see the faces and
feel the touch of those whose gravestones
are moss-covered.
All this the ordinary memory of any one
can do. But beyond the ordinary memory
of all is the extraordinary memory of some.
Men like the historian, Grotius, and the
religious writer, Pascal, are said to have
kept in mind everything that they had ever
read or thought. Themistocles is men
tioned as calling by name each of the
twenty thousand citizens of Athens. Be-
62

The Appeal to the Memory
fore the days of printing, when traditions
were preserved only in memory, large de
mands were made upon memory, and
memory responded to those demands, re
taining with absolute accuracy dates,
places, and facts that covered hundreds of
years and pertained to minutest details.
For many centuries the whole Talmudic
literature, that includes all sorts of writing
about the Hebrew Scriptures and about the
interpretation of its laws — a mass of liter
ature exceeding many times in bulk Homer
and the Bible and the Vedas of India, was
handed down orally from one memory to
another memory. Even to-day in India,
where writing has been in use for twenty-
five hundred years, the Vedic traditions
are not trusted to it. Those traditions are
learned from the lips of a living teacher.
So perfect has been the perpetuation and
transmission of these traditions that the
teacher can open his memory and find any
passage, any word, and any accent that
may be desired. The memory is some
times, by native gift or by acquired power,
so unusual that in certain cases it can
repeat five hundred words of an unknown
language after hearing them twice; can
listen to poems for days in succession and
63

The Great Appeal
reproduce each as fast as heard, and can
read histories, and can give every para
graph and line with unerring certainty.
Such extraordinary memories simply em
phasize the wonderful nature of memory
itself. It is memory that enables us to
profit by past experience. Without it we
could never advance from failure to suc
cess — excepting by the merest accident.
The mechanic, not recalling his mistakes,
would commit them over again; the sailor
would have no home port to which his
heart and his boat could turn back; the
human mind would have in it only the
swiftly fleeting impression of the immediate
instant, and so would be without reserved
resources of any kind. Should memory
cease to have its part in our lives, prog
ress would become a word without a mean
ing, gratitude would be impossible, family
circles would have no ties of unity, all the
sentiments of mind and heart would be
without a base of support, and life would
be chaotic, each individual balancing on a
point which had no suggestion of a past
and no suggestion of a future. So essen
tial is memory to the happiness and well-
ordering of human life that it is called
"the golden thread that links together all
64

The Appeal to the Memory
the mental gifts and excellencies." Their
practical value depends upon memory.
The great importance of memory makes
it desirable that memory should be imper
ishable. So long as we live we need the
profit of experience. Memory never dies.
The seemingly forgotten is often recalled.
Deeds that have not been thought of for
half a century may start up in a moment.
A whole lifetime may pass before mental
vision in seconds. Persons falling from
windows have reviewed their entire lives
before reaching the ground. Poems unre-
cited since childhood recite themselves in
age. In special cases of disease whole
pages of books read many, many years
ago are repeated, though it was thought
not one word of those pages had been re
tained in memory. Let the proper circum
stances arise for the awakening of memory,
and memory will assert powers that were
so long dormant as to be considered dead.
Memory is, as De Quincey said, like a
palimpsest, one of those old parchments
whose original writing has been rubbed
down and obliterated so that other writing
might be placed upon the seemingly blank
page, but which upon the application of the
proper chemicals reveal their first writing.
65

The Great Appeal
Memory may be written over and over
again until only the last writing is seen
when attention first is directed to memory;
but every writing is written indelibly, and
can be brought to light. There is not a
thought, a purpose, a deed, which has failed
to stamp itself somewhere upon memory,
and all that is needed is some event that
shall uncover what is above them, and lo!
they will stand forth as clear as though
they were a part of yesterday and not of
twenty years ago.
This power, so marvelous in its nature,
so necessary to human welfare, is one of
God's chosen instruments to draw us to
Himself. The Israelites upon the farther
shore of the Red Sea looked back across
the water, and that look-back taught them
God's protection for those who had allowed
Him to guide them, and God's overthrow
for those who, like Pharaoh's hosts, had
resisted His will. And the look-back has
ever been a means used by God to enforce
the thought of His promised blessings
and of His predicted penalties. If memory
will only recall the past, God is sure that
men will see that He is the God of history,
and that they have reason for believing in
His faithfulness. At every great crisis in
66

The Appeal to the Memory
the experience of Israel He summoned the
people to "remember." When Moses was
to die, He bade Moses gather the whole
nation and then rehearse their past — their
past, with its difficulties and its deliver
ances, with its gracious interpositions for
their welfare when their heart was true to
Him, and with its firm punishment of their
misdeeds when they rebelled against Him,
and then by means of memory He showed
them that no strange god had been with
them, but a wise, good God, whose heart
was tender and patient, and whose hand
was mighty and bountiful. Again, when
Joshua is to die, and another very trying
hour has come in the life of Israel, He bids
the tribes gather as of old, and then one
by one He caused Joshua to make a re
statement of all the words God had spoken
concerning Israel during Joshua's leader
ship. When memory had all these words
before it, He asked, "What one of all these
words has failed?" Memory knew that
not one had failed; and so God, through
memory, tried to persuade Israel to rely
upon Him, the unfailing One, and submit to
His guidance. Later, God made the same
appeal to David when He brought him face
to face with Goliath, and then reminded him
67

The Great Appeal
of the lion and the bear out of whose paws
He had once delivered him, and so gave
him reason for trusting Him in this new
emergency. Later still, when Peter was in
danger of being impatient with weak hu
manity and of losing his love for them,
God reminded him how in the time of
Peter's own fall God was patient and loving
with him, and that remembrance cheered
and sweetened Peter's heart. The mem
ory of trials overcome, gives courage for
new undertakings, and the memory of in
juries pardoned, gives sympathy for the
sinful. One of the means God sometimes em
ploys to arouse memory is trouble. When
everything at their hand is just as men de
sire it, they are fascinated by the present;
when the present is somewhat unsatisfac
tory, but everything seems to be coming
toward their hand just as they desire it,
they are fascinated by the future. Such
fascination is a peril only when it so ab
sorbs the soul that the soul feels no need
for God Himself. With all our wants met
and our ambitions gratified, with the star
of hope rising higher and higher upon our
pathway, and with no pressing conscious
ness of any unfulfilled lack in our lives, it
68

The Appeal to the Memory
is easy to forget God and His ideals. Then
it is that God steps in and checks the
career of success. He brings forward cir
cumstances that make the present disap
pointing and the future uninviting. He
makes it easy and even necessary for the
thought to turn back to Him. The prod
igal son had no longing for a father's love
and all the pure joys of a father's home so
long as money held out, and companions
praised, and life was merry. But when
money failed, and friends deserted, and
food gave out, when no one helped him,
and it was evident that no one would help
him, then memory called up a picture of
the good home, the abundant table, and
the father's love, and in his distress the son
heeded the voice of memory and turned
homeward. Just as a little child wanders
in the fields, chasing the butterflies and
pulling the daisies, and never thinks of its
danger so long as daylight lasts, but when
the sun declines, and the shadows deepen,
and night comes on, becomes aware of its
loneliness, and remembering the place of
safety and love, wishes to be there, so the
human heart comes at last to hours of need
that remind it of God and make it wish
His protection. Manasseh remembered
69

The Great Appeal
God when he became a captive at Babylon.
Hezekiah bethought him of God when Sen
nacherib threatened his destruction. The
taking of a beloved child to Heaven often
directs eyes that have been looking parallel
with the earth, straight up toward the skies.
Other helpers fail, and then the unfailing
Helper is remembered. God never allows
any life to have an unchecked career of
prosperity. He gives a disappointment at
school, a failure in sport, a slight in soci
ety; He gives a loss in business, or an ill
ness in the home, or a misunderstanding
among friends. Hours of sorrow are not
sent because He is glad to send them, but
because through them He wishes to make
the thoughtless thoughtful and incline their
hearts to seek Him. In these hours He
calls to memory to remember Him and His
goodness, and then to come to Him and
have His comfort.
Another means used by God to arouse our
memory is His description of His own
memory. He never forgets. Every one
of our words, of our thoughts, of our acts
is recorded in His memory. Nothing that
men can do can efface one writing in God's
"book of remembrance." If a cup of cold
water is given in His name, the letters that
70

The Appeal to the Memory
register it are indelible; millions of foes
may attempt to ruin the reputation and
character of the giver, and may drag His
name in the lowest filth, but they cannot
blur one smallest iota of those letters.
This "book of remembrance" contains a
record of surpassing importance. Every
instance of a kindly thought of God, every
instance of a kindly reference to God is
noted there; so, too, is every feeling of
sympathy, every deed of compassion, every
step of humility. But it has its debit
column as well as its credit column. Every
instance of wrong is noted there — the lust
ful look, the hateful desire, the idle word,
the weak vacillation, the petty selfishness,
the impatient murmur. The sins unknown
to our fellows, the wrongs committed
years ago in other communities and never
mentioned to us, the mischief wrought to
tender consciences that made them weaker
ever afterward — all these and many more
may be forgotten by us for the time, but
they are never forgotten by God.
To some men their past is a haunted
chamber; all sorts of disturbing memories
are in it; to enter it is to face the specters
of evil. To all men their past is at least
condemnatory; it is stained; it needs for-
7i

The Great Appeal
giveness. The stoutest heart is dismayed
as it thinks of an hour when every wrong
ful thought and every envious wish shall be
brought forth from their concealment and
displayed in the presence of men and
angels; when God's book shall be opened
and read, and our own memory, that infal
lible autobiographer, shall tally with every
secret then declared! What shame of
spirit will be ours then, what sense of fail
ure! With this great thought of His own un
failing memory before us God now comes
to our memory, our memory that has
reason to dread God's memory, and He
tells us that if we will but repent from all
wrong and let Him be our redeemer and
advocate, He will Himself assume the shame
of our sins, He will cover them with His
hand, and they shall never be mentioned
against us; He will write our names in
imperishable letters of light in the "book
of life," and, clearing the record, will pre
sent us faultless before the throne of the
majesty on high!
God also arouses the memory by visible
objects. There may be a little worn shoe
put away in a bureau drawer, and one day
as a mother is looking through that drawer
r-

The Appeal to the Memory
the eye falls upon the shoe. In an instant
the memory of her baby child fills her
thought. She sees him as he was before
the fever came and stopped his play. She
sees his smile and outstretched arms. She
sees every incident of his sickness, every
incident of those last hours when she tried
to keep him in her arms, but was permitted
to keep him only in her heart. Edmund
Burke in the evening of public life lost his
only son, at the age of twenty-one, a youth
of the rarest genius and varied accomplish
ments. One day long afterward, the fav
orite horse of the young man came up to
Mr. Burke as he was standing by the stile,
and, as if in expression of his mute sym
pathy, put his head over the shoulder of
the bereaved father. Overpowered with
the memories thus awakened, Mr. Burke
burst into tears.
God has always known and used the
power of visible reminders. He placed a
memorial altar at Rephidim when He made
Israel to prevail over Amalek, so that all
who in after times should see it would be
reminded of the assistance given His people
in their dire need, and would trust Him as
the God of battles. He instituted the
Passover Feast, and commanded that once
73

The Great Appeal
a year every family should gather all its
members about a slain lamb, and then as
they gazed upon the lamb the father should
describe how God brought Israel out of
Egypt on the night when the lintels were
marked with the blood of a lamb. Thus
through memory of a past deliverance He
appealed to Israel still to believe in Him
as their Redeemer.
And to-day He makes use of visible
helps that shall stir memory and lead the
soul to Himself. Baptism is such a help.
Every time the rite of baptism is wit
nessed, memory is reminded that the life
needs cleansing if it is to be free from the
stain and. power of sin; and baptism calls
on every one who sees it to open the heart
to the purifying and sanctifying work of
God's spirit. The Lord's Supper is also
such a help. Over the bread and wine that
symbolize the broken body and shed blood
of Jesus Christ is the inscription, "This
do in remembrance of Me"; and the
Lord's Supper calls upon every observer to
think back to Calvary and to Him who
went up thereon and poured out His life
that sin should no longer have dominion.
Jean Paul Richter came to the Lord's
Supper for the first time, and he wrote of
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The Appeal to the Memory
it: "I left it with the purity and infinity of
Heaven in my heart, with an unlimited,
gentle love which I felt for every human
being, with affection for all who were with
me there. " God has appointed this feast
that through it He may reach memory and
bring to mind the unspeakably great love
which went through death itself to win us
to His salvation.
Nor does God cease His appeal to mem
ory with visible helps. He has an invis
ible help, in the Holy Spirit Himself, a
part of whose mission it is to put men in
remembrance of the past. He inspired the
memories of the apostles so that they
recalled the words Christ had said in their
presence months and years before, and
through those words He persuaded them to
believe in the truthfulness of Christ's
claims, and through those words He
enabled them to write out an accurate
statement of Christ's sayings. "He
brought all things to their remembrance
whatsoever Christ had said." When He
was risen from the dead His disciples
remembered that He had predicted His
resurrection; then they believed His word.
The Holy Spirit never ceases reminding
us of those things that we ought to heed.
75

The Great Appeal
He causes words spoken by a friend or
parent to reappear in our thought, and
plead with us to be true to God. He
makes us remember the affectionate coun
sel given by a teacher, the earnest entreaty
spoken by an old companion, the rebuke
sent by a holy man of God. Every time
voices come out of the past, calling to us
to be loyal to God, they are sent to us by
the Holy Spirit.
A boy only a few years old was brought
to his father's death chamber. The godly
man drew him close to the bed, gave him a
tender farewell kiss, and then laying a
trembling hand upon his head, uttered a
blessing, giving him solemnly to God.
"Remember," said he, "that your dying
father kissed you, blessed you, and gave
you to God. " All through life the memory
of that act and those words lingered with
the boy. In youth temptations came, but
he said, "No; I must not do this, for I am
the boy that was kissed, and blessed, and
given to God." Many times he thus
resisted temptation. Then later on in life
great burdens came to him. He thought:
"I must not succumb to these sore trials.
The Lord has not forsaken me. There
must be something good yet to come out
76

The Appeal to the Memory
of all this darkness and bitterness, for I am
the boy that was kissed, and blessed, and
given to God." At last he went to the
insane asylum, where he spent several
years. In his brighter moments he would
say to his daughter: "Here I am, shut
away from those I love, in this far-off
place; I am very lonely. There is no one
to sing to me. All seems dark. It is a
strange Providence!" Then would break
upon his mind again the dear old sacred
memory, which the Holy Spirit brought
him, and he would add, "Yet it must be
right, for I am the boy that was kissed,
and blessed, and given to God."
Well may we thank God for memory.
John Newton, with his health almost gone,
could remember two things: one that he
was a great sinner, the other that Jesus
Christ was a great Saviour- — two things,
but they were of greatest importance.
"When I try to make myself an infidel,"
John Randolph said, "I fancy I feel the
hand of my mother on my head, and her
voice sounding in my ear as she taught me
to say, 'Our Father who art in Heaven.' "
Yes, memory is a blessed means of good,
if used aright; but if used awrong it car
ries with it a fearful responsibility. It is
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The Great Appeal
that element which in retribution supplies
conscience with material for its remorse.
"Son, remember!" is said to him who had
wasted his opportunities, misused God's
gifts, and disregarded God's love. Mem
ory brings despair to those who ruin their
lives. And so God appeals to us to remember
His care and love, and accept them; to
remember His wise precepts, and live
them; to remember His assurance of an
eternity, and then to see to it that in that
eternity ours is the memory of a life spent
in devotion to His blessed will.

78

The Appeal to the Imagination
It was a moment of revelation to George
John Romanes when the thought flashed
through his mind that as he believed in the
love of his mother toward him, so he might
believe in the love of God toward him. He
was a hard-working, brilliant student in
natural science. He had been accustomed
to things that could be seen and handled.
He would put them under the microscope
and look at them, or would put them in the
scales and weigh them, or would compute
with mathematical figures what they could
do. It seemed to him as though human
life must be considered and explained on
the basis of visible, tangible, computable
things; as though faith in an invisible God
and confidence in His love toward him
could not be expected from an exact mind.
But when he bethought him of the love of
his mother toward him, a love that be
longed to a part of his life with which the
microscope, the scales, and the computa-
79

The Great Appeal
tion tables had nothing whatever to do, and
then let his imagination suggest to him that
the love of God was like that mother's love,
only greater, tenderer, purer, George John
Romanes gave up his doubt and entered
into happy confidence in God. This
change came about simply because he re
membered that one element of his nature
believed in things like love, that are invis
ible, and then because he let imagination
lift that element of his nature from the
mother whom he had seen, to the God whom
he had not seen.
It would be unwise for any one desiring
to influence himself or another to overlook
the place of imagination in man's inner
being. Napoleon asserted when, at the
outset of his career the government of
France, called the Directory, devised
methods of procedure that dealt only with
visible facts, that "the government could
not last because it did nothing for the
imagination." He claimed then and
always that "imagination rules the world" ;
that the thing desired is more powerful
than the thing possessed, that the changes,
surprises, glories, pictured to the mind as
possible have greater influence than what
is already realized. 80

The Appeal to the Imagination
Every period of human life is equally
under the sway of imagination. Childhood
finds its delight in arranging chairs in due
order, calling them a train of cars, appoint
ing a conductor, starting and stopping the
train, and shouting the names of stations.
The sports of children are little romances,
composed and acted out by the inborn
imagination; the "playing horse" with a
stick, the doll party with its name for
each one of the company and with its deli
cious dishes of dainties. Youth, too, finds
its delights in imagination. Richard
Whittington, when a penniless boy, sat
down beside the road leading into great
London-town, and seeing the Lord Mayor,
in rich clothes and with brilliant equipage
ride by, had a vision pass before him when
he himself would be Lord Mayor, and that
vision never faded from his sight. As
youth begins to understand the value of
power, and of wealth, and of learning,
imagination comes forward and creates
scenes in which youth does some mighty
deed, or prospers in some great venture, or
wears some crown of literary reward. Nor
is maturity uninfluenced by imagination.
Grant was a cadet, started in his manhood,
when Winfield Scott, the commanding Gen-

The Great Appeal
eral of the United States army, visited
West Point, and when Grant saw him, there
came to him an anticipation of the time
when he would occupy the very position
held by General Scott. Mr. Gladstone
once said, "I am leading a dog's life."
Lord Houghton answered, "Yes, you are
leading a St. Bernard dog's life"; and im
mediately the picture of the St. Bernard
dog, rescuing and saving the needy in the
snows of the Alps, put heart and courage
into Mr. Gladstone. Even age, too, is
swayed by imagination. Large as is the
place reminiscence has in age, it is the
future as well as the past that beckons for
attention. Promises of rest and assurances
of comfort make their strongest appeal to
the weary. Those who have been longest
on the sea are most drawn by visions of the
harbor; those who have wandered farthest
in the desert dream oftenest of the oasis.
The importance to human welfare of im
agination is incalculable. It increases the
vivacity of childhood, widens out the
horizon of youth, stimulates the purposeful
energies of maturity, and sustains the buoy
ancy of age. It is a great inventor, lead
ing into new combinations of ideas, new
views of facts, new descriptions of life. It
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* The Appeal to the Imagination
enabled John Bunyan, shut up in Bedford
jail, to see far beyond the walls that con
fined him, and beyond the persons who
were associated with him, and he beheld
beautiful meadows and bright streams,
companies of human, and superhuman
beings too — and then he pictured for
others the progress of a Christian pilgrim
as he makes his way through spiritual diffi
culties onward toward the Celestial City
of light and gladness. It guided Milton
when, with his physical eyes closed to the
objects about him, it placed before his
spiritual eyes the warfare waged by fallen
angels to overthrow the God of Heaven,
and enabled him to write out his "Paradise
Lost," with its description of things seen
and unseen that had never before been pre
sented to human thought.
The realm of imagination is as wide as
the processes of the soul. Poets sing
effectively only as they look through out
ward form, discern the inner spirit of things,
and then tell the world what that invisible
spirit is that they have seen. Painters,
too, startle or quiet us, call forth our
energy or lull us into repose according as
they put before us "a light that never was
on land or sea," and make trees to speak,
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The Great Appeal
and brooks to laugh, and stones to preach.
Raphael sat down before the few sentences
that describe the Transfiguration and let
imagination tell him what the light was
"that was above the brightness of the sun
at mid-day," and tell him, too, how the
transfigured Redeemer and His heavenly
companions appeared as they soared above
the earth, sustained, as it were, on a sea
of glory; and then he was enabled to give
the world his latest masterpiece. And
sculptors also are dependent for success on
imagination. Virgil described the coming
of serpents to the shore of ancient Troy,
which straightway find the priest Laocoon
who had opposed the entry of the wooden
horse, and finding him and his sons, wind
about them and crush them to death.
When the unknown sculptor who afterward
wrought out in marble the scene of this
death struggle of Laocoon with the ser
pents, made his marvelous production, he
put his own imagination into it so largely
that to-day the admiring world must study
long to understand all there is in "The
Laocoon." Imagination is a very useful element in
human life. Galileo saw a chandelier
swinging in the cathedral at Pisa, and then
S4

The Appeal to the Imagination
he imagined a pendulum that would swing,
and lo! he has invented the clock. New
ton saw an apple fall from a tree, and then
he imagined that some great law of gravi
tation drew that apple to the earth, and lo!
he has discovered the force which holds
the planets in their places. Sir Humphry
Davy saw that the gaseous damp caused the
miner's lamp to explode, and then he imag
ined what kind of a lamp might be made
that would be safe in the miner's work,
and lo! he has devised the "safety lamp."
Agassiz saw scratches in rocks, and won
dering how they came there, he imagined
that once a great mass of ice with stones
and bowlders in it came grinding down over
the rocks and left these marks of their
path, and lo! he has given the world its
glacial theory. Columbus imagined, and
he found an America; Whitney imagined,
and he perfected his cotton-gin; Jefferson
imagined, and he wrote a declaration of
independence. It is imagination that
causes advance in philosophy, enlargement
in business, strife after ideals as yet un
reached. Beauty, statesmanship, moral
ity, all would cease were there no imagina
tion to inspire them. Peter the Hermit,
Ignatius Loyola, Wendell Phillips, Pasteur,
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The Great Appeal
every man who has shaken the world did it
with the lever of imagination.
"If you plan to control men," said
Maurice Thompson, "you first captivate
the imagination." Imagination seems to
be prepared by nature itself for an appeal.
"She softens distance by her interposed
atmosphere, or gives unreal or picturesque
effects by her wizard mists; she gilds
the horizon with the unnatural lights of
the breaking morning, or envelops in the
glorious pomp of a splendid sunset; she in
stitutes contrasts which cannot but be
noticed, between a scene in its common
aspects and everyday garments, and the
same when it puts on ideal appearances and
wears its holiday attire."
To this imagination, thus open to appeal,
evil makes its approaches. Much of the
persuasive power of evil lies in the use it
makes of the imagination. Evil presents
sin through pictures that suggest only the
pleasurable. It makes itself alluring be
cause it promises so many and so great
delights. It causes wealth, and kingdoms,
and applause to pass before the eyes, and
then says, "All these will I give you if you
will worship me." It paints in brilliant
coloring the gratification that will come
86

The Appeal to the Imagination
from indulged passion, and thus tempts us
to be unchaste, or revengeful, or covetous.
It makes St. Anthony, even when he has
become a hermit, see bewitching forms
that call to him to do wrong. It wreathes
the wine cup, and puts a glamour on many
an object that seen only as it actually is,
would be powerless to mislead.
But God also appeals to imagination.
He disputes with evil the approach through
it to the soul. It is the great, the uncom
mon, the beautiful, as Addison says, that
cause the pleasures of imagination; the
great, because imagination loves to roam
in vast expanses and behold limitless ob
jects; the uncommon, because imagination
longs for the new or rare, and exults in the
discovery of the surprising; the beautiful,
because imagination craves that which
shall satisfy it, and only beautiful imagery
can satisfy it. The great, the rare, the
beautiful are the means by which God ap
peals to the imagination.
The Book which God uses to reach the
soul is pervaded from opening to closing
with imagination. It speaks of matters so
deep that they cannot be sounded, so vast
that they cannot be comprehended, so full
that they cannot be reduced to speech, so
«7

The Great Appeal
sublime that they cannot be described.
He makes Himself one whom no eye hath
seen nor can see, and still we are asked to
believe in Him and love Him. To believe
in Him we must imagine Him; imagine,
through descriptions given in Scripture,
His character and His care, and thus hav
ing through imagination created Him, to
believe in Him. Any reference that He
has ever made to Himself is an appeal to
the imagination. If He calls Himself a
shepherd, He immediately uses words con
cerning His provision for those he protects,
that make Him unlike any shepherd ever
known. Imagination is required to under
stand how a shepherd sets a table before
his flock, anoints their head with oil, and
causes them to dwell in the house of the
Lord forever. But through imagination
the human soul can grasp the ideas of God's
care, and love, and bountiful grace thus
expressed, and can say intelligently "The
Lord is my Shepherd."
So, too, all God's promises are an appeal
to the imagination. Two of those prom
ises stand out as preeminently strong ap
peals to the imagination. One is the
promise that this earth shall be redeemed
from every curse. 88

The Appeal to the Imagination
In all its parts this promise has to do
with imagination. The uncursed earth of
Eden was such an earth as only imagina
tion can conceive. It was fruitful and
lovely beyond any garden in which we have
walked. Every sense was gratified, and
was unceasingly gratified. There was
nothing to hurt nor make afraid. No thorn
was there nor harm of any kind. It was
ideal, a land of sunshine and gladness, of
flowers and gems, of fragrance and glory,
far fairer, far richer than our eye has ever
seen. Imagination, and imagination alone,
can picture it. But the earth that ap
peared after the word was spoken, "thorns
and thistles shall it bring forth," is the
earth that we know, an earth of evil men
and evil deeds, of sorrow and suffering and
death. No imagination is needed by us to
see the earth that now is, but it is needed
to see the earth that is promised. All cre
ation to-day groans and travails in pain.
Nothing is perfect; every beast has its
aches and pains, every brightest-hued
flower fades, every human being is touched
with weakness. We hear of wars and
rumors of wars; we see the drunkard, the
libertine, the despot; we meet with false
hood, and envy, and hatred. Yes, thorns
89

The Great Appeal
and thistles are everywhere, in the heart of
man as well as in the field. But there is to
come a change, and such a change God
promises, as shall make this a new earth, an
earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, and
where every sound, every sight, every
motive that will be known, shall be perfect.
Beasts shall no longer be ravenous, flow
ers shall no longer fade, man shall no
longer suffer. "There shall be no pain
there; and there shall in no wise enter
into it anything that defileth, neither what
soever worketh abomination or maketh a
lie; and there shall be no night there."
What this promise means no power within
us, excepting imagination, can even suggest.
Memory may recall experiences of delight
once enjoyed on earth; the view perhaps,
from Mt. Rhigi, as at daybreak the summer
sun lifted itself above the horizon of snow
capped mountains and poured its rainbow
hues upon field and stream, hill and
meadow, cottage and hamlet, lighting them
with a glory transcendently lovely; the
hour perhaps, when friendship was sweet,
and the confidences of love brought perfect
peace, and there came into the soul a feel
ing that all mankind was pure — and we
looked out on existence and exclaimed,
90

The Appeal to the Imagination
"How good it is to be alive!" But at
their best these experiences of delight were
temporary; we came down from the moun
tain to the vexations of anxiety, and we
exchanged the hour of joy for the hour of
weariness. It is to imagination that God
therefore addresses Himself when He says,
that His grace is to abound much more
than sin abounded, that the music of Eden
is to be succeeded by a sweeter, fuller
music, that every object is to be complete
and every person is to be holy, that kings
and queens are to be His devoted servants,
and that pleasure, true, sweet, abounding
pleasure is to be unceasing!
What an appeal this is to the imagina
tion ! It calls upon imagination to consider
that, little as our earth is among the vast
bodies of space, it is the theater where God
is working out a superbly sublime purpose.
Here, and here alone, has He shown the
greatness of His love; here and here alone,
has His only Son become incarnate and
died. It is toward this earth that the eyes
of all angelic beings are directed — princi
palities and powers of evil, principalities
and powers of good. Though our world is
but a speck in the limitless sky with its mil
lions upon millions of stars, and though our
91

The Great Appeal
world might seem too insignificant for the
God of the universe ever to give it more
than a passing thought, God tells imagina
tion that He has undertaken to redeem it
from every sin, and that all created intelli
gences in heaven, in earth, and under the
earth are watching the progress of His
work. He calls upon imagination to look
out and see the countless eyes that are
eagerly viewing our struggle, to look up
and see His own eye as it rests upon us in
love and desire; He calls upon us to look
forward and see the assembled hosts as in
the day of His victory they gather from
every part of His creation, great multitudes
of them, and rejoice, men and angels to
gether, over a redeemed earth and a re
deemed race. And then He pleads with
imagination by the grandeur and joy of
that day, by the interest the whole uni
verse feels in our salvation, to let His love
melt our hearts and bring us into the num
ber of those who shall be the trophies of
His grace.
There is still another promise through
which God makes special appeal to the im
agination; it is His promise of a place in
His eternal home. What that home is He
has never described; He has merely told
92

The Appeal to the Imagination
us that there is such a home, and that He
intends to bring all who are loyal to Him
into it. He leaves all that lies beyond
death merely outlined; the filling in is to
be done by imagination. No man can tell
in exact language what it is, to be away from
God in eternity, nor what it is, to be with
God in eternity. But imagination is not
left without guidance when God presents to
it the promise of endless life in His pres
ence; it is told assuredly that in life or in
death what God requires is a right relation
of the soul to Himself. His every wish
for us is a wish for our God-likeness.
Every influence He brings to bear upon
imagination is to lead us into conformity
with His will. He told Jacob that his seed
should be "as the sand of the seashore,"
that thus, through imagination's picture of
a wondrously large following, blessed
through descent from him, Jacob might be
inspired to courage, and patience, and
noble undertaking. He told Isaiah to say
to Israel that all the trees of the forest
should come to Zion to beautify it, and
camels and dromedaries should come with
treasures, and then He appealed to Israel,
through imagination, to be hopeful, and
trusting, and holy. He tells wicked men
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The Great Appeal
that they must forsake their wickedness,
else they will dwell in outer darkness, where
selfishness and sin have their habitation.
He tells imagination to picture that habita
tion and to make it anything and every
thing that will render sin fearful and hate
ful. Thus it is God makes the "outer dark
ness" or "inner light" of eternity to be
decided by one's own character. When,
then, He portrays His eternal home, He
makes its central figure to be His own Son,
who once trod this earth, veiling the glories
of His Godhead within flesh and blood, and
wearing perfection beneath the form of a
servant. Imagination always requires the
finite as the basis of its thought. It is the
man Christ Jesus, therefore, that He sets
before us as our basal conception of the
Father's house. The atmosphere, the joys,
the beauty of Jesus Christ, are the atmo
sphere, the joys, the beauty of Heaven.
Every one there shall think as He thinks,
and feel as He feels, and be holy as He is
holy; every one shall be like Him, trans
formed into His image, and forever pos
sessed of complete peace. What it means to
be delivered from every evil and to be free
to every good, to be associated in closest
94

The Appeal to the Imagination
friendship with Christ Himself and with all
who have been made perfect, to find our
selves in circumstances where the heart has
unlimited opportunity for happiness and
the mind unlimited opportunity for devel
opment, imagination, and only imagina
tion, can suggest. But God wishes imagi
nation to suggest these delights, and to
picture them in the most attractive forms
that can be devised, until the hope of
Heaven shall be a loadstone drawing us to
God by day and by night.
Here is hope's highest sphere. Hope is
eminent among life's greatest blessings.
It puts nerve into the languid and fleetness
into the feet of exhaustion. It causes the
sailor in times of peril to see the waiting
arms of his wife and little children, and
then he tries to outride the tempest and
reach his home. It causes men to perse
vere through difficulties and dangers, and
to struggle onward. Hope came to Paul,
the prisoner, when deserted by every
earthly friend and destined to be cruelly
killed, and showing him a righteous God
waiting to welcome him and place a crown
of life upon his head, kept him brave and
triumphant. So imagination takes the hope of
95

The Great Appeal
Heaven, and through it calls to us to yield
to God and let Him bring us thither. We
do not need to know one syllable more
about the Father's house; what we shall do
there, how we shall rule angels, what our
glorified bodies will be. All such knowl
edge is insignificant compared to the one
great knowledge that we shall be perfectly
holy and perfectly happy. That one
knowledge is given, and given in fullest
and clearest terms. Imagination appro
priates that knowledge, and then pictures
our very selves as we shall be when every
longing is satisfied and our manhood is
complete. The greatest, rarest, most
beautiful conception that can be presented
to the imagination is perfection of charac
ter. Thus it is that the promise of ideal
character, in ideal surroundings, with un
limited opportunity for blessed expansion,
through happy service, is the last and
mightiest appeal the God of Omnipotence
and Love can make to imagination to draw
us to Himself.

96

The Appeal to the Self-interests
In every human being there is an instinct
often called the instinct of self-protection.
It prompts us to think of our own interests
and to endeavor to secure them. It exerts
great power in leading men to decisions; it
causes them to ask concerning any matter
presented to them for acceptance, "Will
this thing profit me?"
This instinct is intended to be of great
help to us. If a child knows that pain will
result from placing his hand in the fire,
self-interest tells him not to do so. If a
man knows that financial ruin will result
from a certain kind of investment, self-
interest tells him not to enter upon it. It
is an instinct constantly appealed to; all
commerce is based upon it; so, too, are
all forms of industrial effort. It is the
instinct that is called into play in every
counting-room, every banking office, every
market-place of the world. To act irre-
97

The Great Appeal
spective of it is to be foolish, to act respon
sive to it is to be wise. A proper regard
for self-interest is not wrongful selfishness,
but is rightful self-care. Every man
is bound to consider his truest interests and
to seek them. The holiest saints as well
as the brightest angels are not blind to
their own welfare. We can love others
wisely only as we love ourselves. We
must cherish the instinct that ponders what
is helpful or harmful to us, else we cannot
know how to secure the welfare of others.
Every dealing of God with man has been
upon the basis of man's self-interests. He
would be glad to have man do right be
cause it is right, and shun wrong be
cause it is wrong. It would be pleasant if
man would choose Him simply because He
is perfect, and because man as soon as he
sees Him prefers the perfect to aught else.
But man needs an appeal to his self-inter
ests if he is to do what God wishes of him,
and therefore God makes that appeal.
When He placed man in the attractive sur
roundings of Eden He gave him the addi
tional help that came from the thought of
his own safety, as He assured him that
disobedience would cost him his life: "Ye
shalt not eat the fruit, lest ye die." It

The Appeal to the Self-interests
was a favorite way with God in dealing
with ancient Israel to make two lists: one
of specified blessings, another of specified
curses, and then say to Israel, "These bless
ings will be yours if you obey Me, and
these curses will be yours if you disobey
Me." He even asked attention to the fact
that He acted in this manner, as though it
was a kindness and a help to them to have
Him do so: "I call Heaven and earth
to record this day against you, that I have
set before you life and death, blessing and
cursing; therefore, choose life, that both
thou and thy seed may live." He assured
Peter, in whom this instinct of self-interest
asserted itself, that the man who followed
Him should have "houses and lands, broth
ers and sisters, with persecutions, and in
the world to come life everlasting." He
repeatedly said that it would pay to be His
devoted follower, and He made promise
after promise of good gifts to all who would
choose Him. He did not hesitate to say
that self-denial was involved in thus choos
ing Him, and ^that the way of His obedi
ence would necessitate the cross, and per
haps danger, and even suffering. But He
always made the benefit and the happiness
that would eventually result from choosing
99

The Great Appeal
Him to be so great that He could say,
"The advantage is on the side of following
Me." "I will forewarn you whom ye shall
fear; fear him who is able to destroy both
soul and body in hell" He said to self-
interest, that He might restrain men from
evil. "Whosoever shall confess Me before
men, him will I confess also before My
Father which is in Heaven" He said to
self-interest, that He might draw men to
the good. It is a matter that should stir us
with the profoundest gratitude that, when
we are so susceptible to temporary impulses
and hasty emotions, God lays much
material at the feet of self-interest, and
thus helps us to be prudent, to count the
cost, and to prefer the best.
There are two main lines of appeal thus
made by God to the self-interests, one, on
the nature and effects of sin, the other, on
the nature and effects of holiness. Both of
these lines spring out of the moral govern
ment of God. That government He pro
claims to be a fact, a sure fact, and a fact
forever. He assures us in very firm and
very kind tones that He is God over all,
and will never suffer wrong to go unpun
ished nor right to go unrewarded. He
thus answers to a desire inborn in every
ioo

The Appeal to the Self-interests
human creature, that there should be a
supreme government over our earth, recog
nizing the good and dealing with it as it
deserves, and recognizing also the evil and
dealing with it as it deserves; a govern
ment that commands the respect of every
intelligence at its best personal rectitude.
It does not matter where God writes His
laws, whether in nature or in Scripture,
they cannot be violated with impunity. He
who swallows poison is poisoned ; he who
jumps into Niagara is carried over the
falls. To expose one's self in nakedness
to great cold is to suffer; to stand in the
way of a falling tree is to be injured.
Nature cannot be treated with disrespect
excepting at cost. To go contrary to her
laws is to be punished. The man that
pierces his eye or stabs his heart finds that
he must suffer. Nature does not note
whether the violation of its laws was com
mitted through ignorance or through
knowledge, whether by an infant or by an
adult; nature rebukes with penalty wrong,
however and by whomsoever done. Sooner
or later every affront to the "reign of law"
is recognized, and nature, that need not
hurry because all time belongs to her, lays
a heavy hand on every reckless transgres-

The Great Appeal
sor. A man cannot take fire into his
bosom without burning his clothes, nor can
he touch pitch without being defiled, nor
can he destroy his ears and still hear.
But even more significant is God's moral
government as written in the laws of
Scripture. These laws define what God
condemns. To violate any law of Scrip
ture is to imperil one's safety and one's
happiness. It is a part of God's fixed pur
pose that evil shall not prosper. It is use
less then for any human being ever to at
tempt to thwart Him in that purpose. He
hates evil; He is bound to secure its over
throw and its extermination. All the
forces of the universe are at His command,
and He will make stars, and rivers, and
winds, and plagues do His service in thus
conquering evil. It is foolish to fight
against God by doing evil; nothing but de
feat awaits the evil-doer. Sometimes this
has been tried. A nation has attempted
it. Israel did. Israel heard God say
that the nation choosing dishonesty, impur
ity, and irreverence would perish. God
even said more; He told the particular
sorrows that should come upon His own
Israel in case Israel practiced these sins.
"The Lord shall scatter you among all
102

The Appeal to the Self-interests
people from the one end of the earth even
unto the other end. Wherever scattered,
you shall find no ease, neither shall the sole
of your foot have rest. The tender and
delicate woman among you shall eat her
own children for want of all things, secretly
in the siege and straitness wherewith your
enemy shall distress you in your gates.
You shall become an astonishment, a
proverb, and a by-word among all nations
whither the Lord shall lead you."
These were words said in love, while as
yet Israel was obedient. But Israel disre
garded the appeal to self-interest, so force
fully expressed, and hundreds of years
later thought to do evil and escape harm.
But the word of the Lord once spoken can
not be broken, and so it came to pass that
every penalty thus predicted was realized
by Israel; Israel was scattered from its lit
tle corner into every part of the earth,
until its people could be found everywhere;
Israel was disliked by every other nation,
and had no rest for its foot; in the siege of
Jerusalem by Titus, one of Israel's own
delicate women was discovered eating in
secret the child whose body she had boiled
in her caldron; and to this day the Jewish
race is an "astonishment" constantly
103

The Great Appeal
quoted with surprise, and is also a "by
word" constantly mentioned with con
tempt. It never has paid for any nation to disre
gard the will of God. Babylon had her mes
sage of warning against disobedience to
God, but Babylon paid no heed to the mes
sage, and she became the heap of ruins that
was fore - announced. Nineveh, too, was
charged to remember God's high purposes,
else she would come to nought; but Nine
veh preferred her own pleasure to God's
pleasure, and Nineveh became a desolation.
"In 1838 the State of Georgia stole the
lands of the Cherokee Indians, and drove
them in midwinter across the Mississippi.
There were sixteen thousand of them, and
four thousand of them perished in the
terrible journey. They were civilized;
half of them could read; half of their
Georgian neighbors could not read. Chief
Ross wrote at the time: 'Years, nay cen
turies, may elapse before the punishment
will follow the offense, but the volume of
history and the sacred Bible assure us that
the period will certainly arrive. We would
labor to avert the wrath of Heaven from
the United States by influencing your Gov
ernment to be just. ' A quarter of a cen-
104

The Appeal to the Self-Interests
tury passed, and the Cherokee lands
became the center of the dreadful war of
Secession. Missionary Ridge, the battle
ground, where so many lay dead or
wounded, was so named because of the old
mission station among the Indians.
Georgia in that war lost three-quarters of
her wealth. At the close of the war the
United States government sent thirty thou
sand bushels of corn to this particular
region to save the people from starving!"
Nor has it ever paid for ah individual to
go contrary to God's will. Sin is a curse
in itself. It is a disease that once received
into the system has no self-corrective
power; rather, it is reproductive of itself,
so that left to itself or uneradicated, it
increases in force and in extent. It blinds
the eyes to the beauty of holiness, it deaf
ens the ears to the entreaties of God, it
weakens the will, it brings the whole nature
into bondage to evil. Again and again the
punishment of sin in the individual case
becomes patent to the eyes of the world.
The man who digs the pit for another to
fall into, falls into it himself. Jacob de
ceives his father, and then Jacob's sons
deceive their father. David breaks up the
home of another through his lust, and a
10S

The Great Appeal
little later Amnon breaks up David's home
through similar lust. Agrippina puts her
husband to death to enthrone her son Nero,
and what does Nero do to hold that throne
but put Agrippina herself to death. The
men who originated the cruelties of the
French Revolution themselves suffered
those cruelties. The teaching of history
is that men who sin are taken in their own
sins; of all Israel's kings only eight died a
natural death, for they were slain even as
they slew others. Roman emperors
mounted to power over the dead bodies of
their rivals, and their successors stepped
upon the very bodies of these emperors
when they themselves came to office. The
man who backbites is almost sure to be
backbitten ; the man who lies finds life dis
honest; the man who injures receives
injuries. Even if outward penalty is not seen in
connection with wrong, wrong never
escapes penalty. When "Spain kindled the
fires of the auto-da-fe1, and stretched vic
tims on the rack, those fires dried the blood
out of her own heart, and through the crip
pling and mangling of others' limbs she
herself has never been able to walk erect."
When France broke her word to the Hugue-
106

The Appeal to the Self-interests
nots, in which she pledged them safety,
and having persuaded them to come to
Paris, massacred them, she brought upon
herself a fickleness that has been her weak
ness ever since. Fulk the Black, Duke of
Anjou in the eleventh century, burned his
wife at the stake, leading her to her doom
dressed in her gayest attire. For fifty
years Fulk reigned without a single mishap.
But was it not penalty, the penalty of a
corrupted, even a fiendish heart, that
caused him in old age to hate his own son
and fight him until he conquered him, and
then caused him to bridle and saddle that
son like a beast of burden, and make him
crawl, thus accoutred, to his father's feet,
while he yelled in fierce exultation, "You
are conquered, you are conquered!"
There are far worse things than those the
outside world says of us or does toward us.
The worst penalty any human life can carry
is its own corrupt, wretched self. What a
man sows that he reaps; evil produces
evil, and there is no more fearful harvest
that a nation or an individual can reap than
the harvest of envies, lusts, hates, fears,
and bitternesses. Fulk's heart was the
worst penalty sin could bring him. A
man's own nature is often his retribution.
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The Great Appeal
It is folly to think that penalty can be
escaped. It is sin's shadow. At midday,
when as yet the sobering twilight has
brought no retrospective hour, and sin has
not been pondered, the shadow is scarcely
seen at sin's side. But when at cool of
evening the voice of God is heard walking
in the garden and asking about our deeds
and bringing us to a consciousness of our
disobedience, the shadow darkens and
lengthens. No Achan, however long he
may conceal his wrong, and however undis
turbed his heart may be, can forever avoid
penalty. "All roads lead by God's judg
ment throne, and He is always found sit
ting there." Whether in time or in eter
nity, His law is the same; sin carries
penalty with it. So long as sin exists,
penalty must exist, too. An eternal sin
necessitates an eternal sorrow.
Thus it is that God, through the fearful
nature and fearful effects of sin, appeals to
the self-interest to turn from sin to Him
self. "Why will ye die?" he says to men.
He points to drunkards' homes and drunk
ards' graves, to the cells of penitentiaries
and jails, to ruined reputations and ruined
characters, and bids men see that sin does
not pay. He calls the long list of history
108

The Appeal to the Self-interests
beginning with Adam and Eve, continuing
with Cain, moving on to Pharaoh, and Solo
mon, and Pilate, and Nero, and Lucretia
Borgia, and entreats us to profit by their
experiences and avoid their errors. He
pleads with self-interest to remember that
the tendency of sin is to perpetuate itself,
and to remember, too, that character be
comes more and more fixed ; and then by
the thought of eternal sin, and eternal sor
row by reason of eternal sin, he asks self-
interest whether it can afford to expose
itself to such a ruin. He exhausts the
resources of time and eternity to persuade
self-interest to avoid evil and cling to
Him. But it is not only through penalties that
God appeals to the self-interest; He ap
peals to it also through rewards. He assures
us that godliness is profitable unto all
things, having promise of the life that now
is and of that which is to come. He tells
us that every virtue He asks of us has in it
the seed of an earthly blessing. When He
gave laws in the days of Moses, He aimed
at health of body, health of mind, and
health of spirit. The men of Israel who
obeyed His hygienic rules were more free
from disease than those who disobeyed
109

The Great Appeal
them. To-day His charge is that we look
upon our bodies as temples of the Holy
Ghost and protect their strength and purity.
His precepts call for self-control and calm
ness of judgment, and thus they minister
to mental welfare. He constantly charges
us to be joyful, and even makes joy a duty.
God means to brighten and sweeten the
hearts of all who accept His guidance, and
put rest and refreshment into their spirits.
Nor is there an active virtue omitted from
His list of requirements. He summons
men to energy, and courage, and fidelity.
He laid before Israel the difficult under
taking of conquering the promised land,
and then called upon Israel to develop all
the manliness and bravery of which they
were capable. He lays upon his people
now the still more difficult undertaking of
conquering the entire earth with righteous
ness, and thus calls upon them to be nobly
self-sacrificing and devotedly heroic.
For a nation to live God's laws is to
practice temperance, purity, and earnest
ness. Thus to live is to hold a mortgage
on prosperity. The nation that gives the
first fruits of all its increase to Him and
then sustains itself upon the rest is on the
way to material well-being. Unless some

The Appeal to the Self-interests
special event like drought, pestilence, fire,
war, or persecution comes, the nation that
is faithful to God may expect to prosper.
And still God does not ask us to count,
even in national life, material success as
His chief appeal to us. He remembers, as
all thoughtful men must remember, that
the glory of a nation, as of an individual,
is in the spirit of its life ; when a nation has
safe homes, high sense of responsibility,
large interest in public good, then the
nation is indeed blessed. God now directs
our attention to what He has wrought in
the world, bidding us compare the homes in
which His words are best exemplified with
homes in which they are disregarded, and
compare, too, the communities in which
His wishes most control with those in
which they have no influence, and then He
asks us, "Is not the balance all on the side
of God and of His will?"
The individual who lives as God directs
ceases to be a slave to sin and becomes a
free man ; ceases to be powerless and be
comes mighty to do right; ceases to be
heavy-hearted and becomes hopeful. God
calls the list of His representative follow
ers, and every one of them has admirable
traits; Abraham has courage, Moses has

The Great Appeal
far-sightedness, Joshua has daring, Samuel
has integrity, David has penitence, Jere
miah has loyalty, Daniel has fidelity. The
men and women who have been inspired
by God have had such patience, such holy
joy, such love for others, such devotion to
truth, that they could be destitute, afflicted,
tormented, and even be slain by the sword,
and still give no sign of weakening. Such
men and women appear in every new gen
eration that is affected by God's will.
"There was rapture in the heart of St. Ber
nard, St. Francis, Thomas a Kempis, Sam
uel Rutherford, Robert McCheyne; there
was chivalrous loyalty in the heart of Henry
Havelock and Charles Kingsley, Frederick
Robertson, Charles Gordon ; there was deep
piety in the soul of David Brainerd, Henry
Martyn, Coleridge Patteson. "
The coldest mind sees in history God's
great wonders. The centuries pronounce for
God. Jehoiakim tries to cut the word of
God into pieces and burn it up; but neither
he nor Decius, nor Julian the Apostate can
destroy God's truth. God had a fullness
of time in which He brought Christ to
earth; never before was the world so pre
pared for the spread of His teachings as
when with the Greek language everywhere

The Appeal to the Self-interests
intelligible, and Roman roads everywhere
safe, the Gospel was given to the world. He
had a fullness of time for the Reformation,
when the discovery of the magnet, of the
art of printing, of the telescope, and of a
new world, and the general revival of let
ters and awakening of a keen spirit of
ingenuity and enterprise opened the way for
the rapid spread of truth. The forces that
live and continue in human society are the
forces of God's truth; the words that last
and prevail are God's words; the mem
ories that are cherished and are most
blessed are the memories of those who have
been actuated by God's spirit; the joys
that most satisfy the human heart are
God's joys; the virtues that are to be last
upon the stage of action and receive the
final applause are the virtues commended
and commanded by God.
It pays to do God's will; pays for time
and pays for eternity. Every soul that
follows God here, cherishing humility and
serving high ideals, in Heaven is received
to Himself for recognition and fellowship.
That soul enters upon an estate of holiness
that is fixed. It moves on forever in lines
of supreme enjoyment. All its tastes are
elevated ; all its ambitions pure. High and
"3

The Great Appeal
noble thoughts abide within it. Every man
who has allowed God to redeem him from
sin is in eternity a joy to himself and a joy
to all others. He has at command every
pleasure and every advantage he can wish.
Pearls are there, gold, too, and song, and
joyous shouts. It is home for the wan
derer, rest for the weary, light for the
blind, comfort for the sorrowful, trium
phant character for those who long fought
with sin. Compared to these exceeding
great and eternal glories even the severest
sufferings of the present world are as noth
ing. Loyal hearts enter into and possess
the very joy that is the joy of God.
Side by side God thus places the bottom
less pit and the heights of glory. He
makes the penalties of disobedience to His
will as fearful as He'can make them; He
makes the rewards of obedience as attrac
tive as He can make them. He exhausts
even eternity itself in His appeal to self-
interests to choose life rather than death.

114

The Appeal to the Will
On almost every battle-field there is
some one spot where the issue of the bat
tle is decided. If the army of defense
continues to hold that spot, the defenders
triumph ; if, however, the army of attack
secures that spot, then the attacking army
triumphs. It was so at Waterloo. There was a
farmhouse around which the battle surged
for hours. The question was, who should
control the part of the field where that
farmhouse, with its buildings and walls,
was. If the French controlled it, they
would hold the key to the situation, and
French troops would conquer; if the Eng
lish controlled it, they would inevitably
win the day. Backward and forward went
the battle about the farmhouse. Troops
were massed against it. Cannon and rifle
were directed toward it. The thought of
two armies centered on that farmhouse.
To possess it was to succeed. When at
"5

The Great Appeal
last English troops held it and held it
firmly, English troops had won Waterloo.
Similarly in every human being there is
one element about which the battle of life is
fought. It is the will. If good secures
that will, good conquers; if evil secures
that will, evil conquers. The whole contest
of good and evil over our humanity is as
to the control of the will. The will is the
objective point of all effort to decide hu
man character and destiny. As goes the
will, so goes the man — for time and for
eternity. Character is finally a choice, and
choice is the determination and expression
of the will.
The will, when it once has made its de
cision and become persistent, exerts great
influence, whatever the sphere of its opera
tion. Douglas Jerrold was told by his
physicians that he must die. Having suffi
cient clearness of mind to think, he began
to think of his family of children who
would be left helpless if he should leave
them. Then he gathered all his will power
together and resolved that he would live, if
living were a possibility. And he did live
for years. Such a case is not singular.
Calhoun threw off a fever that threatened
to keep him from an engagement to make
116

The Appeal to the Will
a public address, as he resolved that speak
he would. Oftentimes the will power be
comes a tonic to the body, arousing vitality
and reasserting health.
The saying has become a commonplace,
that "all things are possible to him that
wills." It is an exaggerated and unqualified state
ment of a great fact. The will can do very
much; it can face difficulties of every pos
sible kind and resolve to find a way through
them or out of them, and often can succeed.
Boys who have said within themselves, "I
will secure an education," have learned to
read by a rushlight, have saved pennies
enough to buy a book or two, and have be
come educated. Youths who were bound
to get ahead in the world have made a path
for themselves where the irresolute have
said that it was utterly hopeless to try to
advance. The man of the iron will is a
fearful opponent; well may he be dreaded
in war or in any business scheme. Even if
he is baffled for the time, he soon tosses
aside discouragement as though it were a
feather, and he becomes all alert for new
plans and new efforts. What seem to be
impassable obstacles to others are to him
only whetstones to the sharpening of his
"7

The Great Appeal
purpose and energy. And if the man of
the iron will be a friend instead of an op
ponent, his aid is invaluable. He will
break chains for us that were considered
unbreakable; he will face Pharaohs, and
continue saying "Let the people go," until
he becomes a deliverer. He will open up
a road for us where otherwise we should
have been engulfed, and he will crown our
lives with gladness when otherwise we
should have sunk in despair.
It is not true, however, that "all things
are possible to him who wills." The diffi
culty with the saying is in the word "all."
That word is too inclusive. Many things —
yes, many more things than men think or
dream of — are possible to him that wills,
but not "all things." Will as he may,
Methusaleh cannot live forever. Death
may by a resolve be kept off from us for
many years, but not for all years. Weak
ness at last conquers, and the man who
would not succumb lies upon his bed with
no power whatever over his life. Alexan
der once would not listen to the idea of
"impossible"; it irritated him. But the
Alexanders, Napoleons, Bismarcks, always
find that there are some circumstances
before which they are utterly powerless,
118

The Appeal to the Will
and their wills become like weather vanes
that flutter with the wind and do not direct
the wind. We cannot by will power every
time bring the ship in safety to harbor,
nor win in contests, nor prosper in busi
ness. And still there is one sphere of life where
the will is all-decisive. It chooses good or
evil just as it pleases. In that sphere, the
sphere of moral choices, its realm is abso
lutely sovereign and unquestionable. The
will cannot decide where a person's infancy
shall be passed — in America or Asia;
whether his skin shall be black or white ;
whether he shall have wealth, power, prom
inence, genius. But it can decide whether
he shall follow the true or the untrue,
whether he shall make the good his ideal
or the evil his ideal. It can decide on his
motives, his purposes, his controlling am
bitions; it can decide the trend of his being,
and can cause his inmost thought — that
which remains written forever on his spirit
when heart and flesh fail — to be either to
ward God or away from God.
In this sphere of its actions the will is
supreme. No man nor set of men can
coerce the will of another; God never even
thinks of coercing the will of a human
119

The Great Appeal
being. Man often tries coercion. He cre
ates an inquisition; he places thumb-screws
on people; he tortures them to accept his
faith, his ideas. But with God the value
of choice is in its freedom. Mere outward
expression of accepting Him and calling
him "Lord, Lord!" is valueless to Him.
Unless the will itself, unforced, has chosen
Him, the will is not His, and the soul of
' man has not given Him a free, loyal alle
giance. God therefore appeals to the will
through persuasions, and only through
persuasions. But He concentrates all His
thought, and finally all His effort, of bring
ing man into this allegiance to Himself
upon those persuasions to man's will.
His first appeal to the will is on the basis
of the will's privilege. It may choose life
or it may choose death, just as it prefers.
It is like a bird in the air, free to move
whithersoever it wishes. God constantly
reminds the will of the inestimable privi
lege it thus possesses. He assures every
living soul that no person, nor any combi
nation of circumstances, can make that
soul evil if the soul does not choose to be
evil. Neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor powers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor height,

The Appeal to the Will
nor depth, nor any other creature can sepa
rate a soul from God's love if that soul de
sires God's love. Bad parents, bad teach
ers, bad companions, even persecutors, do
not have it in their power to compel a soul
to obey their bidding. Yes, the will's priv
ilege is great; it exalts the value of man
hood; it gives it a range of opportunity
that is as high as Heaven and as low as
hell. Every moral choice is before it for
its consideration. Planets cannot wander
from their courses; man can. Man can
resist the Almighty, acting contrary to all
the expressed wishes of God; or man can
yield to the wishes of God and put himself in
harmony with eternal and blessed purposes.
That we may realize what the privilege
of the will is, God reminds us that He cre
ated us. In our creation He made a won
derful display of His power. When He
called the earth and its inhabitants into
being, man was the crowning object of cre
ation. Thus making man He made him
for a special purpose, that purpose being
that man might answer to the divine will,
and be God's companion and friend. Even
with this definite and distinct purpose in
mind, a purpose that called forth the su
preme counsel of God as He brought man

The Great Appeal
into existence, a purpose that sprang from
a heart that longed for fellowship, still God
left man's moral choice free — and man
could vitiate the very end God had in view
in creating him, if man pleased!
That same purpose animates God in all
the work of His providential care over us.
He sends night and day, springtime and
harvest; He sends all His bounties and all
His deprivations to draw our souls into
sympathy with His own. His eye is never
off us, His heart is never asleep toward us,
His arm is never relaxed from us — and all
because He wishes that His loving kindness
might lead us to repentance and His deeds
of love might persuade our wills to draw
nigh to Him. And still He never breaks
down the door of the will and enters in
opposition to our choice. He simply stands
at the door and knocks, and though He
hungers to come in and be one with us in
fellowship, He so respects our will that He
continues knocking, as a suppliant, though
He has fed us all our life long. Thus we
may treat the King of Bounty as though
He were an unworthy beggar to whom we
disdainfully deny even a crust!
That same purpose animates God in all
the work of our redemption. He wished
122

The Appeal to the Will
to have His children come home and be
forever safe and happy with Him. To that
end He gave up the treasure of His heart,
that which lay within His very bosom, and
He surrendered His Son to every experience
of peril, pain, and death, so that man might
know the height, and depth, and length, and
breadth of His love for man, and might be
won away from sin to Himself. He told
the story of the father's yearning for the
return of the prodigal, and the story, too,
of the father's entreaty of the elder brother
to be a sweet-hearted man. He made the
outstretched arms of the Christ on the
cross the picture of His own outstretched
arms of love for mankind; and then He
sent forth His heralds, inspired by the
Holy Ghost Himself, to plead — yes, to
plead, and plead again and again — with
human hearts to let God's love enter and
fill them. And still, Creator, Provider,
Redeemer as God is, God never forces the
human will to do His bidding. Rather, He
says to the will: "Behold your privilege!
I have made you free, but I have made you
free that you might of yourself choose Me.
Surely, I who have thus honored you, and
whose love and blessedness you know, am
the One for you to choose!" 123

The Great Appeal
God's second appeal to the will is on the
basis of the will's responsibility. The will is
under necessity of making moral decisions;
it cannot avoid or escape them. A man's
choices of good or evil are finally his own.
Herein lies his individuality. The best
father in the world cannot direct his son's
will. It was not President Burr of Prince
ton College, nor President Burr's wife, the
saintly daughter of Jonathan Edwards,
that made their son, Aaron Burr; he made
himself. They could not make him. They
could advise, caution, plead; but it was
Aaron Burr on whom at last, when all their
words were finished, rested the responsibil
ity of determining whether he would accept
or reject their words. Fathers, teachers,
pastors, cannot shape the moral career of
another; he may not think that they can,
nor may he charge them with so doing.
Moral careers are the expression of pure
self-choice. Responsibility for them cannot
be evaded. Pilate may wash his hands, and
listen while the people say of his deed,
"We assume responsibility for it." But
while they carried their own responsibility
for what they did, Pilate carried his re
sponsibility for what he did, and no voice,
though it were persuasive as an arch-
124

The Appeal to the Will
angel's, could release him from that re
sponsibility. It is a very sobering fact that character
and destiny thus become a necessary self-
choice. The privilege of a free will entails
the greatest responsibility that man can
imagine for himself ; he must — whether he is
glad or sorry to do so — make decisions that
involve and determine his eternal interests
for weal or woe. He is placed in a posi
tion from which he cannot extricate himself
without a positive choice of good or evil.
This position is one in which he finds him
self every time a decision between right
and wrong is before his mind. Each time
a decision for right is made, a trend of will
is created toward the right; and each time
a decision for wrong is made, a trend of
will is created toward the wrong. Indeci
sion can, in the very nature of things, be
but brief; all people, like Pilate, find that
they must say yes or no, and eventually
take a side. Moral questions admit of no
neutrality ; we must either side with or side
against what is known to us to be right.
Harlan Page said to a band of young men
and young women who in their hearts be
lieved Jesus Christ to be their rightful lord,
"Shall I put you down as for Christ or
"5

The Great Appeal
against Christ?" and with a note-book he
went to each that their names might be
placed as they chose, on the page "for" or
on the page "against," Christ. Sooner or
later moral decisions are forced home upon
us. Even when we think we have made no
positive decisions, oftentimes we have
yielded to influences that speedily carry us
toward or away from the right, and ten
dency indicates choice.
Nor does God state merely the respon
sibility of the will to make moral choices;
He states also its responsibility to choose
what it knows to be best. The will, to
God, is more than the pilot's hand which
holds the wheel and so keeps the vessel in a
defined course. The will, to Him, is a
moral creature, capable of knowledge and
having a character of its own. The will is
the pilot himself, with eyes, and ears, and
brain, who has indeed a directing hand, but
who has also a directing spirit back of that
hand, whose duty it is to see that the hand
steers the vessel in the safe course. The
will is not blind; it knows where rocks are
and where safe waters are, where evil lies
and where good lies. The will has a moral
nature ; it can see the good and can recog-

126

The Appeal to the Will
nize the good. Therefore it is that God
lays before the will its responsibility to
make choices of the good, and pleads with
the will to be faithful to its momentous
position and ally itself once and forever
with Him.
God's third appeal to the will is on the
basis of the will's welfare. Man was made
for God, and when man is in harmony with
God he succeeds; when he is out of har
mony with God he fails. Machinery moves
jarringly when the piece within it that was
designed for one place has slipped from its
place, and it moves smoothly when every
piece is in its own place and answers to the
wish of its deviser. It is folly to go con
trary to God's will. Even though God
leaves every man's will free, still God
has everlasting purposes of His own, that
existed prior to man's birth and will exist
always. Those purposes are, in part, that
right shall always conquer, and wrong
shall always be defeated. Those purposes
pervade air, water, wind, society, govern
ment. The stars in their courses fight
against the man who resists those purposes
of God. The universe is against the evil
doer. No one can prosper that wills contrary

127

The Great Appeal
to God's will. As well might the child expect
to hold back the sun from its rising as the
human will expect to permanently obstruct
the will of God. The human will may, if it
please, strive against God ; it may raise a
clenched fist toward Heaven and defy God ;
it may violate every known good and may
make evil its god. But it will be in vain.
The man that runs against God's will runs
against the order of the universe. We only
destroy ourselves when we act counter to
God. "Whosoever shall fall on this stone
shall be broken; but upon whomsoever it
shall fall it shall grind him to powder."
But when the will of man acts in the line
of God's will, then there is security. He
who yields to God yields to Him who is
absolutely good and whose kingdom knows
no end. We put ourselves into the keeping
of the Omnipotent and Eternal when we let
God take us to His arms and heart. For
us thenceforward the stars will shine, and
the rivers flow, and the angels sing. All
things will work together for our good.
Life's harmony will be found.
" God's will is like a cliff of stone,
My will is like the sea:
Each murmuring thought is only thrown
Tenderly back to me. 128

The Appeal to the Will
"God's will and mine are one this day,
And evermore shall be;
There is a calm in life's tossed bay,
And the waves sleep quietly."
And even more than this; to the will
that yields to God's will, God gives helpful
strength. God corrects its faults, and
heals its diseases, and succors its weak
nesses. The will that was obstinate and
rebellious He promises to make meek and
gentle, while the will that was impulsive
and insecure He promises to make wise and
steadfast. Thus He appeals to every will
to let Him guide it, beautify it, bless it,
until — and this is the consummation — the
will has become perfect, even like unto His
own holy will, and every choice — yes, and
every preference — is for the highest and
the best.
Here, then, God leaves His appeal. He
closes His Bible with a last word of invita
tion, and that word is, "Whosoever will let
him take of the water of life freely."
Every persuasion that He has made to the
intellect, the heart, the conscience, the
memory, the imagination, the self-inter
ests, has been directed toward the will.
Yes, it is with the will that rests the priv-
129

The Great Appeal
ilege and the responsibility of answering
to the Divine desire and deciding eternal
welfare. All the persuasions of God at
last concentrate in the one brief question,
"Are you willing to be mine?"
As God puts that final, all-comprehensive,
eternally-decisive question, men and angels
watch with eager hearts to see how it will
be answered. There comes a time when
God can say or do no more, when even He
has exhausted every possible persuasion,
and when the individual whom He would
win must be left entirely to himself and to
the voices God has sounded in his being.
That time is the crisis in one's existence.
Some persons have been obliged to strug
gle hard with selfishness and sin before they
could say to God, ' ' I yield my life to Thee. ' '
It has cost some the surrender of their
homes, their parents, their property ; it has
meant to some a wrench that they long
remembered, as they broke away from evil
habits and hurtful companions; it has been
to some the giving up of their ambitions,
and even of their chosen pursuits; while
still others have gone to God as quietly as
the little child who said, "I heard God ask
ing me to come to Him, and I went to Him
just as I go to my mother." 130

The Appeal to the Will
Whether it be easy or be difficult to
choose God is a minor matter. The su
preme matter is that we actually do choose
Him. Whosoever so chooses Him, letting
the Divine desire have its wish, answers to
the highest possibility of his being, and
makes himself one with Him whose care,
and love, and blessedness never fail.

131

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