[1 jl j il ijjjj jli ,

I

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

1942

AN UNSHAKEN TRUST
AND
OTHER SERMONS

AN UNSHAKEN TRUST

AND

OTHER SERMONS

BY
J. B. HAWTHORNE, D. D.
WITH INTRODUCTION BY
EDGAR ESTES FOLK, D. D.

e>-<$.-^)

PHILADELPHIA
AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY
1420 Chestnut Street

Copyright 1899 by
American Baptist Publication Society

ifrom tbe Society's own press

CONTENTS
SERMON PAGE
Introduction 7
1. An Unshaken Trust 19
II. Ebenezer 36
III. God's Appreciation of Humble Service 47
IV. The Church Built on Peter 57
V. Final Reward 73
VI. True Friendship and its Counterfeits 85
VII. Our Social Problems 99
VIII. Paul's Reprobation of Idleness 111
IX. Receiving Divine Blessings 123
X. Ingersoll and his Infidelity 136
XL What is Sin? 152
XII. Lessons From a Converted Harlot 164
XIII. The Star of Bethlehem 176
XIV. The Greatness of John the Baptist 189
XV. Judas, the Traitor 207
XVI. The Old and the New in Religion 222
XVII. Christ's Accomplished Work 238

6 CONTENTS
SERMON PAGE
XVIII. Instability of Character 253
XIX. The Two Marys at the Sepulchre 266
XX. Power of a Despised Doctrine 281
XXI. Spiritual Freedom 294
XXII. Deliverance from Evil 304

INTRODUCTION

De. J. B. Hawthorne, the author of the fol
lowing sermons, stands easily as the prince of South
ern Baptist preachers ; and if I should leave off
the qualifying word Baptist, and even the word
Southern, I should not perhaps miss the mark very
far. At the meeting of the Baptist Young People's
Union of America in Chattanooga, in July, 1897,
Dr. Hawthorne preached what was called the Con
vention sermon. It was in his best style. A
brother from the North afterward remarked to a
Southerner : " I didn't know you had anybody
down here who could preach like that." "Oh,"
replied the Southerner, " we have plenty of them."
But I rather doubt it, though admiring the loyal
pride of the Southerner.
Dr. Hawthorne comes by his eloquence honestly.
His father, Rev. Kedar Hawthorne, was a sturdy
pioneer Baptist preacher of Alabama. As the re
sult of his labors he baptized more people than any
minister who ever lived in Alabama — between five
and six thousand. A prosperous planter, he preached
at first without salary. He was a constituent mem-
7

8 INTRODUCTION
ber of the Southern Baptist Convention. The son
entered the ministry at about twenty-two years of
age. He had received a liberal education for those
days, at the Military Academy, Camden, Ala., and
at Howard College, where he took both a literary
and a theological course.
His eloquence early attracted attention, and pulpits
all over the land were open to him. He filled succes
sively the pulpits of the Broad Street Baptist Church,
Mobile, Ala. ; the First Baptist Church, Selma, Ala. ;
Franklin Square Baptist Church, Baltimore, Md. ;
Broadway Baptist Church, Louisville, Ky. (of which
he was the first pastor, and whose beautiful house of
worship was erected under his ministry) ; Taberna
cle Baptist Church, New York City ; the First Bap
tist Church, Montgomery, Ala. ; the First Baptist
Church, Richmond, Va. ; the First Baptist Church,
Atlanta, Ga. ; and the First Baptist Church, Nash
ville, Tenn., where he is now, and where I trust he
will long remain. All of these pulpits he filled with
distinguished*ability, large congregations attending
upon his ministry. The members of the various
churches grew in numbers and in all Christian
graces. His last three pastorates — in Richmond,
Atlanta, and Nashville — have been notably success
ful. His audiences at the First Baptist Church,
Nashville, are only limited by the capacity of the
building.

INTRODUCTION 9
Dr. Hawthorne is a natural orator. In person
he is six feet four inches in height, with a massive
frame, which gives him a commanding presence, and
secures attention before he utters a word. He is a
very Apollo in appearance, as well as an Apollos in
eloquence. His face is smooth shaven, mobile, and
expressive. His features are classic, not unlike those
of Edwin Booth. In repose they are strong and
manly. In the heat of speech they are capable of
expressing every emotion, from a smile of sympathy
to a storm of passion. His voice is round and full,
highly cultivated, well modulated, and always under
perfect control. In fact, with him, as it was with
Spurgeon, his voice forms no small element in his
success as an orator. His enunciation is clear and
distinct, so that each word can be easily heard by
every one in the audience. His manner at first is
slow and deliberate. He moves off with the calm
dignity of an ocean steamer, or of an avalanche
just loosed from its moorings. But as he wrarms up
to his subject he becomes like the steamer in mid-
ocean, proudly plowing the mighty waters, or like
the avalanche as it rushes onward and sweeps all
before it. He reminds one in his manner, not of
the foaming, dashing mountain torrent, but rather
of the broad, majestic river.
His mental characteristics correspond with his
physical. He is a strong, clear thinker. He is

10 INTRODUCTION
more the rhetorician than the logician, more the
poet than the historian, more the orator than the
debater. But he is by no means lacking in the
qualities of the logician, the historian, and the de
bater. He knows what he wants to say and he
says it — says it beautifully, says it grandly, but he
says it, and says it so that every one understands
what he meant to say. In the preparation of his
sermons he is most painstaking, spending hours and
often days upon them. Most of them are written
in full, but many of them are either extemporaneous
or only partially written. He is fortunate in hav
ing his son, Mr. C. W. Hawthorne, as his stenog
rapher. To him he dictates his written sermons
after careful study upon them. They are taken
down on the typewriter in large letters. Dr. Haw
thorne then goes over the sermon, underscores a
catch word or two in each sentence, and takes the
manuscript to the pulpit with him, but he has so
familiarized himself with the sermon that he makes
but little reference to the manuscript, and the lis
tener is scarcely aware that he has it before him at
all. His style is smooth, elevated, dignified, never
low or vulgar. He seldom makes attempts at wit,
or tries to play upon the emotions. But not infre
quently smiles light up the countenances of his
audience and tears steal down their cheeks. He
abounds in illustrations, but they are always of a

INTRODUCTION 1 1
high order, often either scriptural or historical. He
is more of a topical than a textual preacher, dis
cussing great themes rather than specific texts.
But while nature has done much for Dr. Haw
thorne, grace has done more. His sermons are not
simply cold, beautiful, intellectual compositions.
They come from his heart as well as from his head.
He is more of a preacher to the head than to the
heart, perhaps, but he reaches the heart also —
reaches the heart through the head. In all that he
says there is an atmosphere of spirituality, a tone
of devotion. Back of the beautiful sentences ut
tered in so eloquent a manner you feel the throb
bing brain and the pulsing heart of a man, drawing
you into close sympathy with him. It is said that
when people heard iEschines they would go away
saying, " Isn't he a splendid orator ? " When they
heard Demosthenes they would exclaim, with clenched
fists and flashing eyes, " Let us fight Philip." Dr.
Hawthorne, in these respects, is a combination of
both iEschines and Demosthenes as an orator.
People admire him and at the same time they are
moved to want to be and do better. Dr. Broadus
says that " Eloquence is so speaking as not merely
to convince the judgment, kindle the imagination,
and move the feelings, but to give a powerful im
pulse to the will." Dr. Hawthorne has all these
elements of true oratory, including the last.

12 INTRODUCTION
The writer remembers very vividly an experience
of his own which illustrates this point. It was at
the meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention,
at Montgomery, Ala., in 1886. Dr. Hawthorne
preached the Convention sermon. His text was :
" Where is the Lord God of Elijah ? " The sermon
was a plea for courage and boldness in dealing with
the foes of the Living God all about us now. At
its conclusion he asked : " Who will be an Elijah
to stand against the foes of God?" The young
preacher sitting on the front seat and listening in
tently to every word of the sermon, was wrought
up to the point of enthusiasm, and it was all he
could do to keep from jumping up on the seat and
exclaiming, "I will, doctor, I will." This experi
ence is probably only one of many others of a sim
ilar nature which might be related by those who
have sat under the ministry of Dr. Hawthorne.
A large part of Dr. Hawthorne's power consists
in his intense earnestness. He evidently feels every
word he says^ and he wants you to feel its impor
tance also. He does not speak simply to please, but
to move, to help. He has a practical aim in it all,
which he keeps, and makes you keep, constantly in
view. He drives continually to that end. He is
of a very positive nature. He always takes his
stand on one side or the other of any question. And
he goes all the way, whichever way he goes. He

INTRODUCTION 13
has convictions, and he is absolutely fearless in ex
pressing them. He may not always be right, but
he is always positive. His disposition is of the
combative order. His " hot Southern blood," as he
calls it, makes him somewhat impulsive. He is
never so much at home as when attacking some
thing, especially the evils of the day, and above all
the liquor traffic, which is his pet abomination.
When denouncing these evils his sarcasm is most
biting, his invectives withering. At such times, as
some one said of Daniel Webster, " each word
weighs a ton." His sentences crack like a whip
and cut like a knife. He seems the spirit of elo
quence incarnate, the genius of oratory in the midst
of a battle, where thought is powder, words are
bullets, and he himself is the heavy artillery, vol
leying and thundering against the foe. At other
times, when there is no special battle against sin
raging, he is as smooth as a river, but always inter
esting, always helpful, always elegant and eloquent.
Many of his sentences are polished until they shine
with resplendent beauty, but the beauty is that of
the mountain rather than of the flower, a lofty
grandeur rather than an insipid prettiness. He is
an orator ; but he is pre-eminently a pulpit orator,
discussing noble themes in a manner befitting their
dignity. He believes thoroughly in those grand
old Baptist principles which have come down to us

14 INTRODUCTION
from Christ and his apostles, often through fire and
through blood, and which he has loved to preach
for so many years. But in his advocacy of them
he never forgets that he is a Christian gentleman.
He puts Christ before the church, the blood before
the water always. He prefers the spirit of Chris
tianity to its form, the substance to the shadow.
Rites and ceremonies he abominates, and hypocrit
ical pretensions his soul abhors.
His private character is of the purest and loftiest
type. He loves virtue, loathes vice ; admires hon
esty, and despises meanness or trickery. It is this
high character which gives him to a large extent his
popularity both as a man and as a preacher, and
which adds weight and dignity to his utterances.
He is oftentimes regarded as cold and haughty,
holding his brethren at arm's length from him.
People at first are disposed to stand somewhat in
awe of him. But never was there a greater mis
take made about a man. He is as simple and un
affected as a child, easily approachable by any one,
companionable in the highest degree, warm-hearted,
loving, and lovable, with a sincerity and trans
parency about his character which make it very,
beautiful. I do not know any one who has received
as much praise that is as completely unspoiled by it,
and as apparently unconscious of it. Through it
all he is the same simple, genial Christian, the same

INTRODUCTION 1 5
noble, manly man, brave as a lion, but tender as a
woman and generous to a fault. It is this individ
uality, this strong personality, this manliness of
character, that constitutes one of the chief sources
of his power. For after all, our sermons are simply
the reflection of our characters, the projection of
ourselves into the pulpit. He is a man among
men. But his manhood is subdued, refined, enno
bled, guided, dominated by the principles of Christ.
To him to live is Christ. Christ lives in him, and
the life he now lives is the Christ life. When he
speaks he speaks for Christ, and Christ speaks
through him.
Preaching is hard work, the hardest work in the
world. It brings into play every part of a person,
physical, mental, and spiritual. The half-hour
during which he stands before the people to preach
puts a tremendous strain upon the preacher, a draft
upon all his forces. It is a supreme test of the
man. But while hard it is glorious business when
it is glorious, though most inglorious when it is in
glorious. The privilege of being an ambassador
for Christ, of standing before men and beseeching
them in Christ's stead to be reconciled to God, is
one which angels might well covet. What preacher
worthy of the name is there who does not "love to
tell the story of Jesus and his love," whose soul
does not thrill with rapture as he repeats the mes-

16 INTRODUCTION
sage entrusted to him ? Oh, the joy of that hour !
What joy can compare with it? There is no hap
piness on earth to equal it, and I doubt if there
will be any in heaven superior to it. And then
when he who delivers the message is one who has
sat often at the Saviour's feet and dwelt in his in
ner chambers and learned his holiest secrets, who
has looked into the King's face, who is himself a
master of assemblies, and can sway people with his
words as the grain is swayed in the breeze, what
sacred bliss, what infinite joy ! Such is the experi
ence of Dr. Hawthorne.
Dr. Hawthorne has a lecture on the subject of
" The World's Great Orators," which he recently
delivered in his own pulpit on a week night to an
audience which filled the large house, despite the
fact that an admission fee was charged. Of course
he did not include himself in the list of the world's
great orators. But he might have done so. For
among them all there have been few who have com
bined more of the graces and beauties and at the
same time the triumphs of true oratory than are
combined in him.
He is now sixty-one years of age. But despite
some recent ailments resulting from malaria and
grip, his general health, is good. His constitution
is strong and robust. For one who has done the
work he has he is a well-preserved man. The gray

INTRODUCTION 17
hairs are just beginning to show plainly in his long,
black, glossy locks. He ought to have ten or even
twenty years more of good solid work for the Mas
ter in him. I trust he may be spared to accom
plish it. But it can be only a few years at most that
he shall be with us. When he falls it will be like
the falling of a giant oak in the midst of the forest,
like the falling of some bright particular star from
the heavens. Those of us who are living will hardly
look upon his like again. He seems
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm ;
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.
John of Antioch was called Chrysostom, " the
golden-mouthed"; Bossuet, "the eagle of elo
quence " ; Edward Everett, " the silver-tongued
orator." All of these expressions might be applied
to Dr. Hawthorne. It seems to me, though, that
there is one adjective which peculiarly fits him —
magnificent. Magnificent in appearance, magnifi
cent in diction, magnificent in character, magnificent
as a man, magnificent as a preacher — " Hawthorne
the Magnificent," so let it be.
The following sermons, after being preached in
his own pulpit, were published in the " Baptist and
Reflector," where they were read with the greatest

18 INTRODUCTION
delight and profit by a large circle of readers.
Among them, it should be stated, are some of the
best sermons of his life, which he has been especially
requested to put in permanent form. The published
sermons lack much in losing the commanding pres
ence of the author, the force of his personality, the
fire of his flashing eyes, the modulation of his voice,
all of which go far toward impressing them upon
his audience. But still one finds in them his elo
quent diction, his elevated thought, his classic illus
trations, and breathing through all his earnest pur
pose and his noble spirit, which make even the
written sermons exceedingly interesting and helpful.
That those published in this volume may prove
such to the reader, leading him to a higher, better,
truer, more consecrated Christian life, I most earn
estly join my prayers with those of the distinguished
author. Edgar Estes Folk.
Nashville, Tenn.

1
AN UNSHAKEN TRUST

"Let come on me what will. . . Though he slay me, yet
will I trust in him." Job 13 : 13, 15.
God delights to honor a true man. He takes
pleasure in placing him where the world may see the
excellence of his character and feel the power of his
life. But before he sets him in a regal place and
encircles his brow with a crown of glory, he suffers
him to be tried. He subjects him to a baptism of
fire. He lets the world and Satan smite him with
manifold afflictions. In this way he prepared such
men as Chrysostom, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Carey,
and Judson for their exalted stations and work.
Having suffered with Christ, they now reign with
him over the hearts and lives of men.
God saw in his servant Job a man in whom he
was well pleased. " Hast thou considered my serv
ant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a
perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God
and escheweth evil ? " Such integrity must not be
permitted to dwell in obscurity. It must be exalted 19

20 AN UNSHAKEN TRUST
and made visible to men of every land and age.
But as a preparation for such exaltation, Job must
pass through great tribulation.
What God loves the devil hates. What God de
lights to honor the devil loves to defame. When
God said, "Hast thou considered my servant Job, a
perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God
and escheweth evil," the devil answered, " Doth
Job fear God for nought ? Hast thou not made a
hedge about him, and about his house, and about all
that he hath on every side ? Thou hast blessed the
work of his hands, and his substance is increased in
the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch
all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face."
By this Satan means that Job is a hypocrite, that
selfishness is behind all his piety and fealty to God,
and that if deprived of his temporal prosperity he
would be utterly wicked and faithless.
The devil to-day is just what he has ever been.
The same sneer is on his face and the same venom
is on his lips. Where is the man in this city, in
this country, or in the wide world, who fears God
and eschews evil in the midst of a crooked and per
verse generation, against whom some emissary of
Satan has not brought the charge of insincerity and
hypocrisy ? How often we hear the remark, " Such
a man belongs to the church because it helps him in
his temporal affairs. He gets the patronage of the

AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 21
church in his business. But let misfortune come
upon him, let him lose his custom, and let his busi
ness go down, and he will make shipwreck of his
faith." Who has not heard the mean indictment
that ministers of the gospel are mere hirelings, that
they are preaching for pay, that they are making
merchandise of religion, that they have no faith in
what they preach, that they care nothing for the
souls of men, and that if their emoluments were
taken from them they would desert their flocks, go
over to the ranks of infidelity, and curse the Christ
whose gospel they have preached ?
If the men who make these charges are sincere,
they not only repudiate Christianity, but pronounce
themselves utterly faithless toward men. They be
lieve that man is too selfish to be able to approxi
mate an act of disinterested goodness. They believe
that all his conduct toward God and his fellow-men
is inspired solely by the desire and purpose to advance
his own earthly interests.
Just that is what the devil professes to believe,
and you know what the devil is. He has neither
pity nor respect for man. He is man's enemy. His
work is to degrade and damn him. Men who have
no confidence in their fellows have none in them
selves. Believing the whole human race to be en
tirely selfish, all their transactions are inspired solely
by the love of self. They use their fellow-men only

22 AN UNSHAKEN TRUST
as instruments to accomplish their selfish ends. If
it is to their interest to applaud a man they bind the
laurel on his brow, but if they can put money in
their purse or elevate themselves to political office
by detraction and slander, there is nothing in their
depraved hearts to restrain them.
No man is better than his faith. He who has
faith in mankind, he who sees among the ruins of
the fall traces of a primeval glory which through
God's infinite grace may be recovered, he who be
lieves that there is human pity that is real, and hu
man love that is pure, he who believes that there is
a Godward side to man's being which is capable of
real fellowship with the true and good, is man's
friend. But he who believes that the central and
ruling principle of every human heart is the love
of self and that human aspiration can rise to nothing
higher and nobler than the gratification of self, is
man's enemy. Like Satan, conscious of his own
depravity and vileness, he would drag earth and
heaven down to a level with himself.
How miserable must such a man be ! In all the
broad world of humanity he sees nothing that is
worthy to be loved and honored, and nothing in
which he is willing to confide and look for sympathy
and support in the day of trouble. Satan said he
was going to and fro in the earth and walking up
and down in it. He is the most miserable being in

AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 23
the universe because he loves nothing and confides
in nothing. Peace has forsaken the breast of that
man who believes that the regnant principle of every
human heart is unmitigated selfishness. Such a be
lief unfits him for the enjoyment of any blessing.
He looks upon every man as his enemy. He re
gards all human conduct as deceptive and every
offer of kindness as the forerunner of a base be
trayal. Regarding himself as a devil incarnate in a
world of devils, he walks up and down the earth,
hoping to find some grains of comfort in reviling
and cursing his fellow-men. His years are all win
ter, his world all hollow and false, and his universe
all gloomy and ghastly.
Young men, the days are evil. The moral atmos
phere which you breathe is laden with poison. All
around you are men whose material prosperity de
pends upon your degradation. Just to the extent
that they corrupt your minds and lives they add to
their ill-gotten gains. These men would tell you
that man is incurably selfish, and therefore incapable
of disinterested goodness. They would tell you that
those Christian temples are only monuments to the
hollowness and hypocrisy of the men who built
them. They would tell you that religion is only a
cloak, under which men seeking their own aggran
dizement conceal the iniquity of their hearts. They
would tell you that even the men who have been

24 AN UNSHAKEN TRUST
leaders of our sacramental hosts, and whom the
world has loved and honored for their Christian
virtues, were deceivers of mankind and went down
to their graves with a lie on their lips.
They would teach you to despise the faith of the
Christian mother who nurtured your childhood and
to despise the counsels of the Christian father who
breathed upon you his dying benediction. They
would persuade you to forsake the Christian sanctu
ary and spend your Sabbaths in club rooms. They
would tell you that Ingersoll's tracts are better than
the Bible, and the lascivious songs of the beer saloon
sweeter than the songs of Zion. They would entreat
you to hate and cry down every man who would put
restraints upon unholy lust or who would insist
upon honesty in business and fair dealing at the
ballot box.
These are the men who set themselves up as your
teachers, and who would give direction to your
lives. Will you accept such a leadership ? Will you
allow them io destroy your reverence for all things
sacred ? Will you suffer them to pluck from your
hearts the faith that was planted there by a mother's
love, and the lessons of honor and rectitude received
from a father's lips ? Will you exchange the cup
of the Lord for the cup of devils ? Will you for
sake Christ for Belial? If not, then join in holy
alliance with those who are fighting the worst ad-

AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 25
versaries of God's truth and man's welfare, and help
to generate a moral atmosphere in wliich this upas
tree of infidelity, blasphemy, and dishonesty cannot
live. Are there any honest men in the world ? The
devil says there are none. Among the millions of
men and women who wear the Christian regalia and
follow the crimson banner of the cross, are there any
who love truth and righteousness more than them
selves, and whose allegiance to God's cause cannot be
shaken by any tempest of adversity? The devil
says there are none. He is a liar, and the truth is
not in him. His indictment is a libel as black as
the starless night to which eternal justice has con
signed him.
I am not blind to the world's depravity. I rec
ognize the fact that among the millions who claim
to be believers and followers of the Lord Jesus
Christ, there are many whose hearts and lives are
stained with the deepest hypocrisy. But virtue has
not forsaken the world ; honesty, honor, and patriot
ism still live. In the marts of trade there are
thousands of men whose moral integrity has with
stood every temptation to wrong dealing. The as
sumption of certain political henchmen that every
American voter has his price is absolutely false.
That there is a large element of our population who
have no appreciation of the dignity and responsi-

26 AN UNSHAKEN TRUST
bility of citizenship, I do not deny. That vast
sums of money have been raised to corrupt the bal
lot, and that thousands of ignorant and impecunious
wretches have bartered their birthright, I am com
pelled to admit. But patriotism lives; and I be
lieve will live forever in the hearts of the American
people. The majority of the property holders of
this country in the last Federal election voted for
what they believed to be for the welfare of the
whole country. And there are millions of the
horny-handed sons of toil in our workshops and fac
tories, on our farms and in our mines, who would
resent as an unpardonable insult to their manhood
any attempt to purchase their ballot or to intimidate
them in the exercise of their constitutional right to
vote according to their honest convictions.
Unselfish devotion to Christ's kingdom is one of
the most manifest realities of this world. The
pages of history are luminous with the names of
men who were loyal to God in the midst of affluence
and luxury; and who were equally loyal in the
depths of poverty.
I have gone to the almshouses of this country
and found men who were once merchant princes.
They were Christians in the heyday of their tem
poral prosperity, but still better Christians in the
dark day of adversity. All such facts demonstrate
that man is capable of disinterested fealty to God,

AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 27
and that when he plants himself by faith on the
foundation of God's eternal truth, not even the
gates of hell can prevail against him.
In the sacred narrative before us Satan declares
that selfishness is at the bottom of Job's upright
ness and piety, and that if Job's material posses
sions were taken from him he would not only forsake
religion, but curse the Holy Being whom he had
worshiped and served. God accepts the challenge
and suffers the test to be made. All that Job has
of temporal treasure is placed within the power of
Satan. From what follows we may judge what
would become of the possessions of any God-fear
ing and upright man, if Satan were allowed abso
lute control of them. If it were proclaimed to-day
by the civil authorities of this country that for the
next week all laws against vice and crime would be
annulled, and that all evil-doers should, within that
period, be absolutely free to do whatever their
malign passions should prompt them to do, what a
reign of terror would ensue. Scarcely a Christian
home would escape the torch. Stores would be
rifled, banks robbed, and factories and churches de
molished. That such results would follow the removal of all
restraints from evil-minded men we can readily be
lieve when we see how the upright man in the land
of Uz fares in the hands of Satan. At a time when

28 AN UNSHAKEN TRUST
he had no thought of evil, and imagined himself
secure beneath the protecting arm of Him whom he
had served so faithfully, there came a messenger
and said : " The oxen were plowing and the asses
feeding beside them, and the Sabeans fell upon them
and took them away ; yea, they have slain thy serv
ants with the edge of the sword, and I only am
escaped alone to tell thee."
Hardly had this messenger finished his sad story
before there came another, who said : " The fire of
God is fallen from heaven and hath burned up the
sheep and the servants, and consumed them, and I
only am escaped alone to tell thee."
While he was yet speaking there came another
messenger, who said : " The Chaldeans made out
three bands and fell upon the camels, and have car
ried them away, yea, and slain the servants with
the edge of the sword, and I only am escaped alone
to tell thee."
What next ? Before this man had uttered the
last word of his fearful message there came another,
who said : " Thy sons and thy daughters were eating
and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house ;
and behold, there came a great wind from the wil
derness, and smote the four corners of the house,
and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead,
and I only am escaped alone to tell thee."
Terrible agents were these in the hands of the

AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 29
arch-demon. Sabeans, Chaldeans, whirlwind, and
fire combined their fury against one defenseless
man. What is the result upon Job's mind, upon Job's
faith and integrity ? Sheep and camels all stolen,
servants burned to ashes, the bodies of his children
mangled and dead beneath the ruins of a dwelling.
Surely, if it be possible for temporal calamity to
make a godly man faithless, Job will now fulfill the
prophecy of Satan, renounce his religion, and curse
the God whom he had worshiped.
But how does this servant of the Most High de
port himself as he contemplates the wreck of his
earthly fortune and hopes ? Does he fall out with
religion and proclaim it a vain thing to serve God ?
Nay. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God
foolishly, but fell to the ground and worshiped him,
saying : " The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken
away ; blessed be the name of the Lord."
What is the significance of this story ? It is
God Almighty's refutation of a lie. Satan says man
worships his maker only for temporal advantage.
God answers, " It is false," and proves it by the
conduct of his servant Job.
From the birth of true religion to this hour,
Satan, speaking through human lips, has charged
that men who worship God are inspired with no
higher motive than the desire of temporal aggran-

30 AN UNSHAKEN TRUST
dizement; and though the contradiction has been
made by millions of holy men who preserved their
moral and religious integrity in the depths of pov
erty, amid the gloom of the dungeon and the flames
of the stake, the lie still lives and men still repeat
it with all the malignity and venom of their Satanic
master. As the old patriarch Job stood upright and un
swerving amid the desolation that surrounded him,
God said : " Still he holdeth fast his integrity, al
though thou movedst me against him to destroy
him without cause."
The Lord God is proud of the triumphs of his
people, and when the registering angel records a
victory for the least of his flock banners wave from
all the hills of heaven and the enraptured millions
of the blest tune their harps anew and rise to higher
notes of praise.
Satan, discomfited in his first attempt to over
throw this righteous man, proposes to renew the
attack and challenges the Almighty to subject Job
to another test : " Put forth thine hand now, and
touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee
to thy face."
God knows his people. He knows that neither
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature, can separate them from him.

AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 31
He is not afraid that they will forsake him in the
hour of their darkness and distress. Having this
confidence in their loyalty, he accepts this new chal
lenge. " So Satan went forth from the presence of
the Lord and smote Job with sore boils from the
sole of his foot unto his crown."
Poor Job ! Behold him, pity him. Covered
with disease the most foul and loathsome, his flesh
rotting and falling from the bones, stinking with
corruption, he sits down in ashes and scrapes him
self with a potsherd. Conscious of his integrity,
knowing that he had done nothing to merit such
suffering, doubtless his breast was the arena of bit
ter conflicts and the temptation to renounce God
came upon him with tremendous power.
But to add to the severity of his trial, the devil
enters into the wife of the patriarch. So loathsome
has he become, so sickening and horrid the stench
of his running sores, that she, the partner of his life,
the wife of his bosom, and the mother of his children,
is constrained to forsake him. Sick, disgusted, and
horrified, she turns away from him with the ex
hortation to curse God and die. But under the
pressure of all this suffering, desolate, forsaken, an
object of loathing even to the wife who up to this
hour had been loyal and faithful, Job did not sin.
The loss of property, the loss of servants, the loss of
children, the loss of health, the loss of all human

32 AN UNSHAKEN TRUST
affection and sympathy, presented a mighty tempta
tion, and yet he serenely faced it and conquered it.
Still another trial awaits him. Worse than pov
erty, worse than disease, worse than the death of
children, and worse than the desertion by one's own
flesh, is the loss of one's good name. As Job was
a great sufferer, men looked upon him as a great
sinner. They regarded his calamities as only the
just and inevitable penalty for some villainous trans
gression which he had sought to hide beneath the
covering of a religious profession.
The pangs of dying are sweet in comparison with
the anguish which an upright man feels in being
subjected to a base-born suspicion which he is pow
erless to remove. And yet, when God laid this
burden upon the heart of Job, his faith did not fail
him. Loving and serving the Lord for the Lord's
sake, cleaving to the truth because it was truth, and
holding on to the right because it was right, he
said : " Let come what will, . . . Though he slay
me, yet wilt I trust in him."
When men stand up before the world and declare
that the Christian's faith is unreal and that his
Christian labors and self-denials are inspired only
by the hope of temporal advantage I almost wonder
that the sheeted dead do not rise from their graves
and rebuke them.
Was it for temporal gain that Paul was obedient

AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 33
to the heavenly vision which called him into Mace
donia ? Was it for temporal gain that he submitted
to five Jewish scourgings and three Roman flagella
tions? Was it for temporal gain that he endured
the prolonged insolence of provincial magistrates
and the gnashing fury of frenzied mobs ? Was it
for temporal gain that he wore for three years a
felon's chain and slept in a felon's cell? Was it
for temporal gain that he suffered the loss of all
things and at last expired at the hands of a Roman
headsman ? Was it for any earthly good that
Francis Xavier carried the gospel into India?
Was it for any temporal reward that he suffered
among the poor, degraded pearl fishers of the straits
of Manaar ? Was it for any hope of earthly gain
that he preached the gospel where earthquakes,
pestilence, and savagery imperiled his life at every
moment ?
No ! No ! It would be flattery to call that man
mean who would question the sincerity of such a
life or attempt to cast a shadow upon such a name.
In the present generation there are moral heroes
who will not suffer by comparison with those whose
names illumine the pages of history. Immediately
around us are men and women who, amid conflicts
dark and dire, hold to truth and virtue and God
with a faith as unflinching and firm as that of the
patriarch Job. Go with me to-morrow and I will
c

34 AN UNSHAKEN TRUST
conduct you into a chamber where lies the wasted
and skeleton form of a man who for months and
years has not had one hour's exemption from pain,
and yet he is uncomplaining and peaceful. With
the cold sweat of agony standing on his brow and
his whole body quivering with anguish he is wont
to say : " It is the Lord ; let him do what seemeth
him good."
Follow me again and I will lead you beneath a
humble roof where the deepest and saddest poverty
dwells, poverty unpitied because unknown to the
world. There a frail woman, too noble to beg,
plies her needle from morn till midnight that her
fatherless children may not lack for bread to-morrow.
No word of complaint drops from her lips ; but grate
ful to God for a little meal in the barrel and a rude
shelter above her head, and looking forward to a
heritage of peace and plenty beyond the stars, she
exclaims : " What shall I render unto the Lord for
all his benefits?" "Bless the Lord, oh, my soul,
and all that is within me bless his holy name ! "
Go with me to yonder city of the dead. There
beneath a weeping willow a mother kneels at the
grave of her only child. Sorrow has plowed deep
furrows on her face, but the light of hope is* in her
eye. As her tears fall and mingle with the dust
we hear her say : " The Lord gave, the Lord hath
taken away ; blessed be the name of the Lord."

AN UNSHAKEN TRUST 35
I dare say that in the secret solitude of hearts
before me to-day there are wounds and aching griefs
which only heaven can cure. There are some here
whose cup is all bitterness, and yet day by day they
look up to God and say : " Let come what will. . .
Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." Such
men and women are the salt of the earth and the
light of the world. They are witnesses for God
and his truth whose testimony can never be refuted.
May God multiply their seed and their triumphs
until the last infidel voice is silenced and the last
skeptic shall lift his eyes to the cross and exclaim,
in the language of the Roman soldier : " Truly this
was the Son of God."

II
EBENEZER
" Hitherto hath the Lord helped us." 1 Sam. 7 : 12.
The condition of the Hebrew commonwealth when
Eli the priest died was very deplorable. The people
were not only sadly ignorant, but had wandered far
from virtue and God. Their country was often in
vaded by the armies of surrounding nations. Their
most sacred treasure, the ark of the covenant, had
been captured and carried away. They were op
pressed, broken in spirit, given to idolatry, and im
mersed in vice. Such was their condition when
Samuel became their priest and judge.
Commiserating their degraded and suffering con
dition, this good man called the people together, re
counted their sins, and revealed to them the will of
God. He told them that if they would sincerely
repent and put away their strange gods, the Lord
would deliver them out of the hands of the Philis
tines. They hearkened to his voice, forsook the wor
ship of idols, and returned to the service of the true
and living God.
36

EBENEZER 37
While they were gathered together at Mizpeh,
they drew water from the wells and poured it out
upon the ground before the Lord, saying, " We have
sinned against the Lord." This ceremony was a
symbolic act by which they expressed their deep
contrition for their apostasy. In this repentant
state Samuel found it easy to settle all difficulties
among them. Their quarrels and feuds were readily
adjusted, and peace and harmony reigned throughout
the camp.
When the Philistines heard that they were gath
ered together at Mizpeh, they at once moved up in
great numbers against them. The Israelites were
alarmed, but Samuel soon quieted their fears. He
took a sucking lamb, made a burnt offering of it,
cried unto the Lord for help, and the Lord heard
him. When the Philistines drew near, God spoke
in a mighty roll of thunder from the heavens.
Smitten with fear they fled. The Israelites pursued
and smote them until they came to Beth-car. Then
Samuel took a stone and set it between Mizpeh and
Shen, and called it Ebenezer, saying, " Hitherto
hath the Lord helped us."
This rude stone was a simple and inexpensive
device, but no monument ever reared by human
hands was more pleasing to God.
That stone was put there in no boastful spirit.
It was not a reminder of what they had done, but

38 EBENEZER
of what God had done for them. " Hitherto hath
the Lord helped us."
If troubles should come again, if another enemy
should march against them, that little stony monu
ment would help them to remember what God had
done for them in a season of great peril and inspire
them to look to the same divine source for succor
and deliverance.
There are events in every man's life that are
worthy of special recognition. There are signal
interpositions of divine power which shield him
from peril and save him from suffering. He owes
it to God and to himself to commemorate such
events. It is well for every one of us to keep in
mind every special manifestation of God's guiding
and preserving care. We should never begin a new
year without raising an Ebenezer, to testify that
hitherto the Lord has helped us.
In the history of our households there are events
which mark the genesis of new and potent influences
for good or evil. Births, marriages, deaths, loss of
property, sicknesses, escapes from imminent peril,
are events which have a vital bearing on the char
acter and destinies of families. Every man among
you can remember occurrences which deeply stirred
his inner being and helped to strengthen his love of
virtue, or helped to sink him to a lower level of
moral life. These things he should never forget.

EBENEZER 39
The Christian should persistently cultivate the
recollection of the beginnings of his spiritual life.
Every day he should go back in thought to his first
conviction of sin, his mourning over divine goodness
and mercy rejected and despised, and his despair
when it seemed to him that there was " no eye to
pity and no arm to save." Every day he should
recall the hour when God responded to his cry for
help, when the darkness that shrouded his soul dis
appeared, when he saw the Lord God, merciful and
gracious, bending over him, and heard his pitying
voice, saying, "Thy sins, which are many, are all
forgiven thee." Every day he should review his
spiritual life, and celebrate the occasions when God
empowered him to overcome mighty temptations
and "put to flight the armies of the aliens." Every
day he should recall his seasons of spiritual exalta
tion and rapture. Every day he should sing :
Through many dangers, toils, and cares,
I have already come ;
'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will take me home.
Man's truest and deepest life is in the unseen
realm of his spiritual being. No events in his
history deserve such celebration as the victories
which he wins on the battlefield of his own soul.
In comparison with his triumphs over his own un-

40 EBENEZER
righteous thoughts and affections no outward achieve
ment is worthy of notice.
When a man is elected to a great political office
how promptly his friends come forward and shower
congratulations upon him. Bonfires, illuminations,
booming cannon, and vast processions are employed
to celebrate his victory.
If the newspapers should announce to-morrow
that a rich uncle had died and left me a million
dollars, or that by some bold financial adventure of
my own I had become immensely rich, I imagine
that my friends would be almost drunk with joy.
But how few would congratulate me if it were known
that I had triumphed over some mighty temptation
to wrong-doing, and had risen to some higher level
of moral and spiritual power.
God's greatest gifts are bestowed upon the soul.
While we should never despise external blessings,
while we should not undervalue wealth, office, and
distinction, we should remember that the things that
are not seen are vastly better and more enduring
than those which come within the range of our mor
tal vision.
Man's first and strongest aspiration should be for
imperial sway over his own inner being. To uproot
some unholy affection, to extirpate some ignoble
ambition, to triumph over some revengeful feeling,
to crucify some lurking jealousy — these are achieve-

EBENEZER 41
ments which, in God's eye, eclipse the conquest of a
nation. My brother, if you have won such victories
raise your Ebenezer, and thus testify to the world
that hitherto the Lord has helped you.
We are constrained to confess that we are shame
fully forgetful of the favors which God's helping
hand has bestowed upon us. We imagine that we
are the architects of our own fortune. We seldom
think of God as having anything to do with our suc
cesses in life. We are almost blind to the mani
festations of his guiding, protecting, and supporting
presence. I have spent whole nights in gazing into heaven.
The glory of God beaming from the silent stars
would not let me sleep. I felt that it would be a
sin to close my eyes beneath that magnificent display
of Jehovah's wisdom, power, and goodness. What
are man's inventions and creations, what are all the
productions of human power and skill, compared
to those frescoes of light and beauty which God has
painted on the midnight sky ? But while day speaks
to day, and night to night repeats the story of God's
goodness and love to man, how feeble are the ex
hibitions of our appreciation of what he has done
for us !
God keeps a record of the blessings with which
he enriches our lives, and what is worthy of record
in heaven is not unworthy of remembrance on earth.

42 EBENEZER
Let us make some external record of the special
displays of God's love and mercy along our earthly
pilgrimage. Let us set up some visible memorial
somewhere that will serve to remind us and others
of the great things the Lord has done for us. There
are many ways in which this can be done. Every
man's home should be a sort of museum, a place for
the exhibition of souvenirs — things that will keep
alive the memory of every year and month of the
family history.
I have a large collection of photographs in my
home. They are the likenesses of persons connected
with the churches and congregations which I have
served. Sometimes my wife and I open the big box
in which these things are preserved, take them out
one by one and carefully study them. Each one of
them revives a hundred blessed memories, and in
going through the collection we pass through forty
years of history. We have numerous pictures of
our own children — pictures taken at intervals be
tween their*infancy and the present. In looking at
them, we go over the history of our two boys. As
soon as our eyes fall upon one of them, we recall
the place where it was taken and group around it a
hundred events in that period of the child's life.
There is one peculiarity of the Germans that has
always pleased me. If a German is able to have a
private art gallery, he builds it apart from his resi-

EBENEZER 43
dence. On the walls of his dwelling you see no
landscape paintings, no pictures of animals, no por
traits of kings, warriors, philosophers, poets, and
scientists. You see nothing there but the faces of
those who belong to his own household, and of their
ancestors for many generations. As he walks
through his home and gazes upon those faces, a
thousand blessed recollections are revived.
I have sometimes found a Bible which the owner
had converted into a record of his spiritual life. I
can show you the Bible of a Christian mother that
has two or three thousand passages marked, to de
note that they had been especially comforting and
precious to her.
The most sacred treasure preserved by my father's
family is my mother's Bible. In all the world there
is nothing that stirs my emotional nature more pro
foundly than a look into the well-worn pages of that
dear old book, which was the light and solace and
strength of my mother's life.
Christian mother, set apart some copy of God's
word to be known in the family as " mother's Bible,"
and when you read a passage of it which opens a
fountain of comfort to your soul, mark it with your
pencil or write something on the margin which in
years to come will remind you, your children, and
your children's children, how the Lord helped you
as you meditated upon those sacred words.

44 EBENEZER
Nothing is more beautiful to me than a home
filled with mementos — a home in which almost
every object is a reminder of some special manifes
tation of God's loving-kindness and tender mercy.
Blessed is the child that is reared in such a home.
The sons and daughters who go out from it will be
the truest witnesses for Christ and the brightest
ornaments to society.
Let us make our piety thoroughly practical. Let
us transmute every religious sentiment into some
thing useful to the world. If you wish to com
memorate the goodness of God to you in answering
your prayer for the recovery of your sick child, go
out and bestow some substantial and lasting benefit
upon the unfortunate child of some poor neighbor.
Give crutches to some little cripple, or educate some
widow's son or daughter, or send some young man,
divinely called to the Christian ministry, to a theo
logical seminary, or build a chapel for one of our
foreign missions. Such a token of your grateful
remembrance of divine favors to you would be more
pleasing to God than a monument of stone or brass.
Let us begin this new year by looking back over
the mercies of the years which preceded it, and by
such a consecration of ourselves to the Lord's cause
as will express our gratitude for his past favors.
If in the year that has just fled sorrow shadowed
your home, do not think of it as a year of calamity.

EBENEZER 45
We can never know the best things until we enter
the shadows of sorrow. Remember that the Master
said, "Blessed are they that mourn." There are
blessings rich, deep, and satisfying which we never
can know until we mourn. You would never see
the stars if the sun continued to shine all through
the twenty-four hours. The glare of human joy
hides from our sight ten thousand blessings which
we cannot see until our lives are darkened by some
great grief. Some of the richest and most precious
words of the Bible can be understood only when
the soul is passing through some keen and lonely
anguish. The monuments which some of you have reared
in yonder cemetery over the resting-places of your
dead serve only to commemorate your troubles and
to keep alive your grief. Oh, that you had the
Christian faith to convert those monuments into me
morials of God's wise and merciful discipline of
your souls ! Oh, that you could stand by them and
fully realize the blessedness of the truth that,
" Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth ! "
The surest way to get rid of the anguish which
comes from looking back is to turn our faces to the
future, with the determination to be, more than we
have ever been, helpers and healers of our suffering
fellow-men. Look through love's eyes upon your
neighbor's troubles, and in your eagerness to bless

46 EBENEZER
him you will receive a blessing on your own soul
that will lift it into a realm of peace and gladness.
One of the noblest sentiments to be found in the
world's literature was written by Kossuth, the great
Hungarian patriot and martyr. He said : " If I had
to choose my place among the forces of nature, do
you know what I would choose to be ? I would be
the dew that falls silently and invisibly over the face
of nature, trampled under foot and unconsidered,
but perpetually blessing and refreshing all forms of
life." In this losing of one's self in desire and
effort for the good of others one finds the truest
peace and the sweetest happiness which the human
heart can know.
If I can live to make some pale face brighter, if
I can give a second lustre to some tear-dimmed eye,
if I can impart one throb of comfort to an aching
heart, if in passing through the world I can cheer
some way-worn soul, if I can lend a helping hand
to the fallen, if I can discrown some wrong and
diadem some right, my life will not have been in
vain. The joy that is farthest from earth's alloy
and nearest to the bliss of heaven is realized when
conscience says, "You knew your duty to your
fellow-man and you did it well."

Ill
GOD'S APPRECIATION OF HUMBLE
SERVICE

"Whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my
name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you,
he shall not lose his reward." Mark 9 : 41.
To me everything that belongs to Christianity
is precious, but there is no feature of it which I
admire and love more than its sympathy with the
weak and lowly. When Jesus Christ entered upon
his mission he sought neither favor nor recognition
from men of authority and influence. Herod sat in
his golden palace at Tiberias in dissolute splendor,
but of him he took no notice except to say to his
disciples : " Go ye and tell that fox." He wanted
Herod to understand that he neither courted his
favor nor dreaded his frown. He despised him, not
for the office he held, but for the corrupt life which
he lived.
The Pharisees were the dominant religious party
of Judea and were recognized as the religious aris
tocracy of their time. They swept through the
47

48 GOD'S APPRECIATION OF HUMBLE SERVICE
temple courts in their fringed robes with supreme
haughtiness and with sovereign contempt for every
body who did not belong to their sect. For them
Christ had no words but rebuke and reprobation.
Their smiles and patronage he did not covet.
The dreaded emperor was all-powerful at Rome.
To him Jesus sent no appeal ; of him he sought no
favor. He had no more regard for his influence than
for that of the humblest subject of his empire. For
worldly pride and display, for despotic power and
cruelty, for extravagance and lust, he had nothing
but frowns. But for suffering, weakness, and hum
ble fidelity, he had infinite compassion and love.
To the haughty and self-sufficient he was wrath
ful as the storm, but to the feeble and lowly he was
gentle as the summer's breeze.
He pitied and loved the sick and the poor. He
loved children, he loved sinners, and of all sinners
he loved most those who had suffered most and those
who were divorced from human respect and sym
pathy. True Christianity stretches out its hands, not to
the mighty, but to the weak, and its victories have
been won, not only without the help of the world's
power, but in utter disregard of it.
Christianity and not philosophy has taught us
the inherent dignity of man. Christianity and not
philosophy has taught us to appreciate man for

god's appreciation of HUMBLE SERVICE 49
those faculties which connect him with God and a
boundless future.
He who did not blush to sit at the banquet of the
publican, who shrank not from the white touch of
the leper, and who felt no pollution from the harlot's
tears, has done more to secure for man the respect,
sympathy, and affection of his fellows than all other
people combined.
From the life and teachings of Christ we learn
the lesson that each man is as great as he is in God's
sight and no greater. This thought is full of con
solation to those who are obscure and who feel that
their individuality is lost in the multitude.
God is no respecter of persons. Before him the
world of mankind is but as the small dust of the
balance. Is it anything to the ocean whether one
foam speck upon its great bosom be larger or smaller
than another? Gradations and eminences among
creatures infinitesimal are not regarded by Him
whose vision sweeps the infinite.
The chief of a nation dies and cities drape them
selves in mourning; the great bells toll, requiems are
sung, solemn processions march through the streets,
and a thousand other things are done to signalize the
fact that a great man has fallen ; but to the great
God, before whom his soul passes in all of its naked
ness, he is of no more importance than the little waif
who dies on the street unpitied and unnoticed. Let

50 god's appreciation of HUMBLE SERVICE
us thank God that in his sight all are equally great
and equally small.
When we die the few who love us may build us
a humble monument and write upon it a brief epi
taph. But in a few years the monument will decay,
the inscription will be illegible, and we shall be for
gotten. But let us not be unmindful of the coun
terpart to this sad truth. Within each one of us
there dwells an immortal spirit which is akin to
God and infinitely precious in his sight. To him
this is neither common nor obscure.
God appreciates everything for the purposes for
which he gave it existence. Every drop of rain
has its mission. The shadow made by the tiniest
insect's wing has its mission. For every human
being upon this planet there is a divinely appointed
mission, and in proportion to his fidelity to it he is
worthy of approbation and honor. The only real
and permanent greatness possible to us is in the
line of duty and usefulness, and this is as open to
every one of us as sunlight and air. When Jesus
Christ says, "Whosoever shall give you a cup of
water to drink in my name . . . shall not lose his
reward," he teaches that God's eye is upon his
humblest servant, that he accepts the most incon
spicuous service, if inspired by benevolent motives,
and that he will as truly reward the little gift of the
pauper as the great gift of the millionaire.

GOD'S APPRECIATION OF HUMBLE SERVICE 51
The same lesson is embodied in the parable of
the talents. That parable teaches us that God
values us, not for the magnitude and splendor of
the gifts which he has bestowed upon us, but for
the fidelity with which we use them. It teaches us
that, however small our talents and however meagre
our opportunities, if we faithfully use them our re
ward shall be infinite.
To the man who had wisely employed the two
talents he gave the same plaudit which he bestowed
upon him who had rightly used the five talents :
" Well done, good and faithful servant." He re
ceived the same honor and was bidden to enter the
same joy. The same reward would have been be
stowed upon the man who had received one talent
if he had been as true and loyal as those to whom
greater gifts were given.
My friends, every man among you has a divinely
bestowed talent, and by the wise and faithful use of
it he can honor God, bless his fellow-men, and win
for himself a joyous welcome to the skies.
In the light of this truth every one should aspire
to usefulness here and blessedness hereafter. O
ye humble, feeble, hidden, unrecognized ones, look
up and bless God that there are eyes above you that
do see the light that is in you, and that your gift,
though it be but the widow's mite or a cup of water,
is registered in heaven.

52 GOD'S APPRECIATION OF HUMBLE SERVICE
To-night, if you will lift your eyes to the sky,
you will see some stars pre-eminent for their magni
tude, while others in the far-off milky way are al
most lost to vision. But though " one star differeth
from another star in glory," all are of the same pure
essence, all are the offspring of the same eternal
sire. So it is in the kingdom of grace. There we be
hold towering men, kingly men, men upon whom
God has lavished his richest gifts, men who shine
with dazzling effulgence ; and there we behold ob
scure men, men endowed with but one talent, and
whose light is as dim as that of the scarcely dis
cernible star. But they are children of the same
father and servants of the same master. Their
lights were kindled at the same fountain of glory.
Each is fulfilling the mission to which he was called,
and in the end they shall receive the same rapturous
plaudit and be crowned with the same imperishable
honor. I thank God when a rich man is truly converted
and brought into the church. Houses of worship
cannot be built without money. Colleges for the
education of our children cannot be established
without money. The preaching of the gospel can
not be sustained without money. Missionaries can
not be sent to China, Africa, Italy, and Mexico
without money. Homes for the aged, retreats for

GOD'S APPRECIATION OF HUMBLE SERVICE 53
the sick, and asylums for the poor cannot be erected
without money.
I praise God when he puts his grace into the
heart of a rich man and makes him a true disciple
of Christ, because that man, inspired by the love of
God and humanity, may enlarge and multiply the
agencies for the extension of Christ's kingdom and
the redemption of the world.
But let me assure you that poverty is as truly a
talent as wealth. Some are called to be rich and
others are called to be poor. In respect to the
acquisition of worldly possessions, "there is a
divinity which shapes our ends."
There are two kinds of poverty. One is envious
and idle. It sits down in dirt and wretchedness,
bemoans its hard fate, and curses the man of enter
prise and thrift. Such a poverty deserves neither
sympathy nor respect. The other kind is manly,
noble, and helpful. Having little besides daily
bread, it possesses also the virtue of contentment,
which makes happy the humblest lot.
If any have come up to this house from homes of
poverty, if any who have recently put on Christ in
baptism and been admitted to fellowship in this
body of Christians are struggling with the incon
veniences of penury, I would say to them that there
is no disgrace in honest poverty and that they can
make it a beautiful and happy lot.

54 GOD'S APPRECIATION OF HUMBLE SERVICE
There are some men and women in this world
whose estimates of other people are not only unjust,
but disgustingly vulgar. They look with contempt
upon self-denial, whatever be the motive behind it.
They sneer at the scant table and the threadbare
garb of the honest laborer, forgetting that such a
man may be rich in every element of a noble life;
forgetting that our divine Lord placed on the
pinnacle of human greatness one whose raiment
was coarse camel's hair and whose meat was locusts
and wild honey ; forgetting that some of the greatest
of the apostles were poor fishermen of the Galilean
lake, and that their divine Lord and master was so
poor that he had not where to lay his head. I
would rather have the virtues of such men than the
wealth of " Twenty seas, whose shores were pearl,
whose waters were crystal, and whose rocks were
gold." Poverty is no barrier to usefulness. The lips of
contemptuous Pharisees might curl when the poor
widow dropped her two mites into the temple
treasury, but in the eyes of Him who sees the hearts
of men that poor widow gave more than all the
Pharisees. The poverty of Luther did not disqualify him for
fighting and winning the battles of the Reformation
and for establishing principles of truth and righteous
ness that shall live forever.

GOD'S APPRECIATION OF HUMBLE SERVICE 55
Those whose intellectual gifts are meagre and
feeble, and who realize their incompetence for great
and conspicuous undertakings, I would exhort to
work on without discouragement and without one
thought of the inconspicuous character of their serv
ice. Fidelity is better than greatness and fame.
Do your best, assured that God would not love
you more if you had the genius of a Milton or a
Newton. Work with the same manly self-respect
that you would have if you knew that senates were
listening to your words and empires were being
molded by your counsels. Work hopefully and
confidently, knowing that God approves and angels
applaud, and that when your task is done the gates
of glory will open to receive you. The secret of
success and happiness in this life is to be just where
God would have you and to do just the work which
God has committed to your hands. Before him,
Honor and fame from no condition rise ;
Act well your part ; there all the honor lies.
There is a Christian ceremony which signifies
that those who submit to it have merged their wills
into the will of God, their thoughts into the thought
of God, and their lives into the life of God. This
is what is meant by being " buried with Christ in
baptism." The man who has thus identified himself
with the limitless resources of the Infinite cannot

56 GOD'S APPRECIATION OF HUMBLE SERVICE
fail to be good and great. The possibilities of such
a man's life cannot be measured by any human
mind, and neither the highest art nor the highest
eloquence can depict the glory of the immortality to
which he is destined.

IV
THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER

"Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my
church ; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of
heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be
bound in heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth
shall be loosed in heaven." Matt. 16 : 18, 19.
At the time Jesus spoke these words Peter had a
clearer conception of his character and mission than
any other disciple. The common idea among the
Jews was that the Messiah would be simply a
divinely commissioned man, under whose leadership
they would regain their former power and prosperity.
Some of the apostles, while they believed Jesus to
be the Messiah, did not exalt him much above the
Messianic conception of the average Jew.
When Christ put to the disciples the question,
" Whom say ye that I am ? " Peter, remembering
all that he had heard him say, and all the wonder
ful things that he had seen him do, and illumined
and uplifted by the divine influence which at that
moment radiated from the person of the speaker, 57

58 THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER
promptly and fervently replied, " Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God."
It was this exhibition of superior intelligence,
zeal, and courage in Peter that drew from the lips
of the Master the words of our text : " Thou art
Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church ;
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom
of heaven."
Paul says, we " are built on the foundation of the
apostles, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner
stone." In the visible organization of his kingdom
in the world Christ began with Peter. He had two
reasons for beginning with him. Peter was the
first disciple to declare the true conception of his
Messianic character, and more than any other dis
ciple he possessed those qualities which were needed
to advance the triumphs of his gospel.
I think that Jesus meant to say about this :
" Peter, you are the first of my followers to dis
tinctly comprehend and announce my true character
and mission, and you, more than any other man,
have developed those traits of character which are
to distinguish my subjects from the subjects of Satan.
For these reasons, in building my church, I will be
gin with you. I am the foundation and you are the
first stone that I will lay upon it. By giving you
the first place, I will let the world know what sort

THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 59
of material is needed for this sacred edifice. I will
give unto you the keys of my kingdom. When I
have left the world, you shall be the first to declare
to guilty men the terms of salvation. I will endorse
your proclamations of my truth. As you will speak
for me, and by the direction of my Spirit, those who
accept your words shall be admitted into my king
dom, and those who reject them shall be excluded."
There is not a fragment of Scripture which sup
ports the idea that Peter had more authority than
the other apostles. There is not a word in the New
Testament that warrants us in believing that Peter
was the head of the church, and that the other
apostles and disciples were subordinates who obeyed
him. That doctrine is the invention of priestcraft.
Against the church "the gates of hell shall not
prevail." The word hell in this passage is a trans
lation of the Greek word " hades," and means the
grave, or the unseen world. The gates of the grave
shall not prevail against the church. That means
that the church shall never be annihilated by the
death of Christian believers. There shall never
come a time when Christians cannot be found on
the earth. There shall never come a time when
there will not be organizations of human beings who
will believe just what Peter believed concerning
Christ, and who will be like him in character and
conduct.

60 THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER
In our interpretations of this passage we may be
far apart at many points, but all of us believe that
Jesus meant to confer a special distinction upon
Peter, and to present him to the world as a man of
exceptionally great virtues.
I wish you to consider with me those elements of
Peter's character which rendered him worthy of the
honor bestowed upon him by his divine Master.
He was not a perfect man. He had weaknesses, and
some of them were very conspicuous and offensive.
But notwithstanding his infirmities he possessed cer
tain virtues in a degree which rendered him pre-emi
nently noble. What were those virtues ?
1. One was his freedom from cunning duplicity.
He was as transparent as the day. He attempted
no concealment of his feelings and purposes. He
meant what he said and said what he thought and
felt. If he loved a man he would let him see it
at once. If he disliked him, there was no delay or
indirection in making him sensible of the fact. His
loves and -animosities, joys and griefs, hopes and
fears, always came to the surface.
He was not a politician. He got office, but did
not seek it. It sought him. In this respect he was
very unlike James and John, who counseled with
their ambitious mother, and then sent her secretly
to ask the Master to give them the two highest
offices in his Messianic kingdom.

THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 61
Contrast this simple-hearted, undesigning, un-
calculating, straightforward man with the modern
political office-seeker. Contrast his transparent
methods with those of the average politician who
covets an office in the gift of the Legislature. I
have observed that when a man has determined to
be a candidate before that honorable body, he does
not immediately announce his purpose, but hides it
for a season in the solitude of his own innocent
breast. He first goes out on a campaign of dis
interested patriotism, to educate the people into sym
pathy with his views on certain political measures.
Just what his views are depends very largely upon
the political complexion of the locality where he
rises to speak. If he strikes a community that is
about evenly divided on the silver question, he can
straddle that issue and make his auditors believe
that the only salvation for the country is in tariff
reform. If he goes into a manufacturing district
where there is a strong protection sentiment, he can
be grandly eloquent in declaiming against the rob
beries of the " Gold Bugs," and produce the im
pression that all our country's woes are traceable to
the demonetization of silver. If he visits a com
munity where the feeling is bitter against corpora
tions, his slogan is, " Let us have a railroad com
mission." If he enters one where the railroads
are in favor with the people, he passes over the

62 THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER
commission question and pours out a torrent of in
vective upon the federal administration, because it
refuses to recognize the belligerent rights of the
struggling and long-suffering Cubans.
He performs all this patriotic work at his own
expense and at an enormous sacrifice of his private
interests. A few days before the assembling of the
Legislature he writes a letter to each member of
that patriotic body, telling him of the great work
that he has done, of the self-denials he has practised
for the good of the country, and begging his support
for a certain office, that he may continue to make an
oblation of himself.
If by such means, or any other device, he secures
the place which he covets, he is profoundly sur
prised. He declares that it was an honor he did
not seek, and that he accepts it, not to gratify any
ambition of his own, but to please his friends and
to strengthen the cause of his oppressed and bleeding
country. In these, latter days such frankness and sincerity
as were illustrated by the Apostle Peter are looked
upon as weaknesses. Inscrutability is the ideal
virtue in modern politics. To conceal your real
purpose and reach the prize you covet by indirection
and circumlocution is the favorite wisdom. To be
open and ingenuous is foolish. Look wise and say
but little ; wrap yourself in a veil of mystery ; in

THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 63
the presence of a newspaper reporter be as silent as
a mummy and as frigid as an iceberg, and you will
be credited with more than Solomonic wisdom and
greatness. A man who is disposed to be very frank in every
thing may sometimes go too far and do wrong.
Peter was wrong when he said to the Master, " Thou
shalt never wash my feet." But when he was re
buked for it and saw his mistake, with the deepest
humility and penitence he exclaimed, " Not my feet
only, but my head and my hands." He was wrong
when he ventured to rebuke Jesus for saying that
he must go up to Jerusalem and be put to death.
But with all of his indiscreetness and rashness
Christ preferred him to other men, who though
more cautious and prudent than he, were less candid
and transparent. He wanted for his most conspicu
ous standard-bearer a man whose motives were
always visible, and who could always be relied upon
to say just what he believed and felt.
2. Another virtue which endeared Peter to our
Lord, and rendered him worthy of the honor be
stowed upon him, was illustrated by the promptness
with which he obeyed every conviction and seized
every opportunity to serve the cause of truth and
righteousness. He lost no time in protracted de
liberation over anything. He thought rapidly and
reached his conclusions quickly.

64 THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER
When the apostles were questioned about any
matter he was always the first to answer. When
Jesus said to them, " Will ye also go away ? " Peter
instantly responded, " Lord, to whom shall we go ?
Thou hast the words of eternal life." On another
occasion, when the Master said, " Whom say ye that
I am ? " the same disciple promptly replied, " Thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living God." When
he and John ran to the sepulchre, John paused be
fore the open door to consider the propriety of enter
ing. He shuddered at the thought of doing anything
that had the appearance of presumption or irrever
ence. But Peter debated that question while he
was running. When he reached the grave his mind
was made up. Without a tremor or the slightest
hesitation, he stepped down into the hallowed place
to see if his beloved Lord had risen from the dead.
When messengers came to him from Joppa, request
ing him to go to that city and comfort those who
had been plunged into sorrow by the death of Dor
cas, he arose at once and returned with the messen
gers. With the same promptness he responded to
the summons of Cornelius.
Peter's disposition to act quickly sometimes led
him into serious mistakes. When the mob went
into the garden to arrest the Master, the first im
pulse of this apostle was to defend him and resent
the indignity, and without taking time to confer

THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 65
with any one or to forecast the consequences of the
act, he drew his sword and severed a man's ear from
his head. This was a very grave mistake, and he
was severely rebuked for it. But notwithstanding
the haste of his temper, which rendered him liable
to commit such hurtful blunders, he had the quali
ties of a great leader, and in the judgment of our
Lord he was better suited than any other disciple to
guide the little sacramental band in pioneering the
cause of his gospel and kingdom.
It is very easy to criticise Peter and to deplore
his lack of deliberation and prudence ; but it is an
undeniable fact that only men of his type have
made any great and enduring contribution to the
world's advancement.
John the Baptist was a man of the same tempera
ment. If he had been what the modern world calls
" a prudent man," he would not have branded the
high-church aristocracy of Judea as " a generation
of vipers." If he had been what we are wont to
call " a discreet man," he would not have rebuked
the royal Herod for his unlawful marriage. His
lack of modern tact, shrewdness, and caution ex
posed him to many troubles and finally cost him his
life. If John the Baptist were on the earth to-day there
are many churches that would not admit him to
their pulpits. They would be afraid to turn him

66 THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER
loose on the Pharisees and Sadducees of the nine
teenth century. Such a deliverance as he would
make on the extravagances, sins, and hypocrisies of
modern social life could not fail to disturb the sensi
bilities of many a pew-renter, and sadly diminish
the revenues of the congregation with which he
worships. But without the very qualities which
made him so offensive to the Pharisees of his time
and which provoked the wrath of Herod and his
household, he could not have accomplished the work
that God commissioned him to perform.
Who doubts that if John the Baptist should come
out of his grave to-day, and preach one such sermon
in Nashville as he was wont to preach along the
banks of the Jordan, it would do more to renovate
our social life and to promote true repentance
toward God than all that will ever be said by that
class of ministers who are too gentle, tender, and
politic, to denounce any exhibition of fashionable
vice and folly.
If Martin Luther had waited to take counsel of
the wise men of his day, or until he could proceed
without peril to himself and his sympathizers, he
would have wrought no reformation. He was a
minute man. He waited for nothing but God. It
was the celerity as well as the boldness of his
movements that startled the world and secured for
him the backing which made him victorious.

THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 67
What was the most conspicuous quality of the
men who followed George Washington in the battles
of the Revolution, and who won for American
soldiery immortal fame? It was promptitude.
They did not wait to see how the tide of war would
turn, or until they should be forced into service by
conscript laws. They were patriots and heroes, who
answered to the first bugle blast, hastened to the
front, and felt the first shock of battle.
Men and brethren, in the honor which Christ
conferred upon the hasty-tempered Peter we see
God's profound appreciation of the virtue of prompti
tude. "Why stand ye here all the day idle?"
Whatsover your hands find to do, you should do
at once and with all your might. I say to you
who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, but have
never confessed him in baptism, that in God's
righteous judgment your delay is not only unwar
ranted but unmanly and ignoble. I say to church-
members who have never gone down into the smoke
and flame of a single battle for the Lord's cause
that Jesus Christ has no honors for the mere Sunday
morning dress-parade soldier. "No labor, no re
ward ; no cross, no crown," is a law of his kingdom
that shall stand forever.
3. Another reason that Christ had for conferring
such distinction upon Peter was that he was as
brave as he was frank and prompt. He dared to do

68 THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER
his duty in the face of difficulties and dangers. I
anticipate a criticism upon this assertion. You will
say, " How do you reconcile your statement with
Peter's denial of Christ ? " It is a sufficient answer
to your objection to say that a brave man is not
absolutely fearless. The most courageous man may
sometimes be smitten with fear. He may even run
from danger. There is not a battle-scarred soldier
among you who will not bear witness to the truth of
this statement. Some of us have seen the heroes
of a hundred bloody conflicts retreat in disorder and
with dismay when pressed by overwhelming numbers.
Peter was panic-stricken in the presence of the
howling mob that gathered around the judgment
hall. Overcome by the peril of his situation, he
denied his Lord and Master. I am not his apolo
gist. I do not excuse him. I condemn him. But
justice and truth require us to admit that it was
the only occasion in his long and eventful Christian
career where fear kept him from doing his duty.
Let it be admitted also that he was not the only
apostle who was panic-stricken in that awful crisis.
When Jesus was arrested, all of them, save Peter
and John, forsook him and fled. These two men
followed him back into the city and even into the
judgment hall. There it was that Peter denied
him. I am almost sure that John too would have
denied him if he had been questioned as Peter was.

THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 69
When we place before us the whole history of
Peter, we must admit that he was a man of extraor
dinary courage. Look at him as he stands before
the council after he has enraged the Jews by charg
ing them with the murder of Christ. He stands
there and speaks the truth in utter defiance of that
august tribunal and the howling populace which
surrounds it. When he is told that he must not
again speak in the name of the Lord Jesus, he looks
calmly into the faces of the judges and replies :
" Whether it be right, in the sight of God, to hearken
unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we
cannot but speak the things which we have seen and
heard." Surely that was not the conduct of a coward.
The man who will speak the truth where it is
despised, and when he knows that his fidelity will
be punished not only with social and religious ostra
cism, but with bonds, imprisonment, and stripes, is
not a coward.
Peter's courage sometimes degenerated into rash
ness ; but notwithstanding this weakness, Christ
honored him more than any other disciple. Jesus
knew that he was a hero, and that he would carry
his crimson banner into the darkness and fury of
any conflict. By putting this heroic apostle in the
most conspicuous position, by elevating him to the
highest pinnacle of distinction, Jesus knew that he

70 THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER
would emphasize and magnify, throughout all genera
tions, the importance of Christian courage.
Brethren, that quality is just as essential to
Christian integrity and success in these latter days
as it was in Peter's time. Our power to touch
human hearts, to transform human lives, and to
cleanse the moral atmosphere about us of its foul
pollutions, is in proportion to the courage which
we exhibit in speaking and acting the truth in the
presence of opposition and danger.
Courage ! courage ! Oh, for more of that virtue
which made the most conspicuous element in the
character of the greatest apostle ! I would rather
have the power which that virtue imparts to the
human soul than to wield the sceptre of earth's
proudest monarch.
Here, then, are the three qualities which in com
bination made Peter the ideal Christian and the
ideal preacher — sincerity, promptitude, and courage.
When Jesus Christ said that he would build his
church ort Peter, and that the gates of the grave
should never prevail against it, he meant that in
every subsequent age there would be Christians in
the world as honest and prompt and brave as Peter.
Look over the long roll of the Christian martyrs,
and you will find that, up to the present date, this
prophecy has been fulfilled.
Paul was such a Christian. His dying testimony

THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER 71
to his own fidelity was : " I have fought a good
fight ; I have finished my course ; I have kept the
faith." Polycarp was such a Christian. As he stood
upon his funeral pile, and the flames were kindling
about his naked feet, he was exhorted to save his
life by denying Christ. His reply was : " I can
never deny him who was too brave and too noble to
save himself by denying me."
Chrysostom was such a Christian. When threat
ened with exile, he stood in his pulpit and anathe
matized the licentiousness of the clergy and the
wicked despotism of the crown.
John Bunyan was such a Christian. Twelve
years of confinement in Bedford jail did not cure
him of his determination "to preach the gospel
without the license of the king."
Carey, the pioneer of modern missions, and Jud-
son, his dauntless and long-suffering co-laborer in
the same sacred cause, and Charles Spurgeon, who
could neither be flattered off nor frightened off from
the straight line of gospel integrity, were such
Christians. Heroes as dauntless as they may be found even
in this wicked generation. " Till time's last thun
der shakes the world," God will have brave and
faithful witnesses among men. The perpetuity of
this type of men insures the perpetuity of the

72 THE CHURCH BUILT ON PETER
church. The church stands to-day towering in
strength and grandeur above the wreck and ruin of
ten thousand opposing institutions. It will live and
flourish under the smile and guidance of its divine
Founder, when all who now malign and smite it
lie buried in their graves, epitaphed with the repro
bation of the world.
Happy Zion ! What a favored lot is thine.

V
FINAL REWARD

"Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast
been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over
many things : enter thou into the joy of thy lord." Matt.
25 : 21.
"Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness:
there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Matt.
25 : 30.
In this chapter there are three parables, but they
illustrate the same subject. They set forth the
principle or law which will regulate the judgment
of the great day. In that day those who have
served God wisely and faithfully shall be rewarded
with honor and happiness, but those who have been
slothful, wicked, and unprofitable shall be condemned
and punished. Against that law no human con
science will rebel. The principle embodied in the
parable of the talents is universally accepted.
What is it that is rewarded here ? It is industry
and faithfulness — an honest effort to make the most
of life. "Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five
talents : behold I have gained beside them five
talents more." 73

74 FINAL REWARD
This servant had been thoughtful, active, and
frugal. In every respect he had been true and
loyal. He had used his master's money so wisely
and faithfully that he was able to return twice the
amount which he had received. The master, recog
nizing and appreciating his fidelity, said : " Well
done, good and faithful servant : thou hast been
faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler
over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy
lord." He that had received the one talent came and
said, " Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man,
reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering
where thou hast not strawed : And I was afraid,
and went and hid thy talent in the earth." To him
the master replied : ' ' Thou wicked and slothful
servant. . . Thou oughtest to have put my money to
the exchangers, and then at my coming I should
have received mine own with usury. Take there
fore the talent from him, and give it unto him
which hath ten talents. . . And cast ye the un
profitable servant into outer darkness : there shall
be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
More than eighteen and a half centuries have
passed since that parable was first spoken, but during
this long period not one human being has ever
questioned the wisdom or justice of that master who
commended and rewarded his faithful servant, but

FINAL REWARD 75
condemned and punished the one who was wicked
and slothful.
" Well done, good and faithful servant." It is
faithfulness and not success that is here rewarded.
If the servant to whom the five talents were given
had come to his lord and said, "I have labored
long and diligently, but have acccomplished noth
ing," the master would have replied, " Well done,
my servant ; it was not success that I required of
thee, but fidelity. Enter thou into the joy of thy
lord." This parable is a miniature picture of the final
judgment. In it is set forth the principle which
will determine the character and destiny of every
human being at that august tribunal.
In that day men shall be rewarded not for success,
but for faithfulness.
Let us not misuse this comforting truth. While
it is true that it is not success but fidelity that God
will reward, it is also true that faithful service in
God's kingdom is never unproductive.
A man may try to be a mechanic and fail. If he
has no aptitude for mechanical work, he is sure to
fail. I know a poor fellow who has been trying for
thirty years to make a physician of himself and has
not yet succeeded. Sad, seedy, and forlorn, he sits
at his office window, looks out upon the world, and
bewails not only his hard fate, but the folly of those

76 FINAL REWARD
who refuse to confide in his medical skill. There
are contributors to the poetical columns of our city
newspapers who will get neither money nor fame for
their labor. There are some dear women who sit up
all night to write odes to posterity which posterity
will never see. That a man may make an honest
effort to be a statesman and fail is a proposition
which no one will deny who has studied the history
of the Tennessee Legislature.
I am sure that no man ever honestly tried to be a
Christian and failed. " Ask, and ye shall receive :
seek, and ye shall find : knock, and it shall be opened
unto you. Every one that asketh, receiveth, and he
that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh, it
shall be opened."
There is not the possibility of failure in this di
rection. Any man who wants the great salvation
revealed in the gospel of Christ can have it if he will
humbly and honestly seek it. Cast yourself as a
suppliant at the feet of him who pitied publicans
and harlots and opened the gate of paradise to the
penitent thief, and it shall be instantly written in
heaven, " Thy sins which are many are all forgiven."
No Christian ever failed in a scriptural effort to
grow in spiritual strength and usefulness. You can
not go into a gymnasium and systematically exercise
your limbs for twelve months without increasing
your physical strength and activity. Neither can

FINAL REWARD 77
you systematically labor in God's vineyard without
promoting your spiritual vitality and power.
Fidelity in any department of Christian work
succeeds. These Christian women who consecrate
themselves to the service of the poor, the sick, and
the helpless, do not labor in vain ? The Christian
men and women who strive to be useful in Sunday-
school and mission work, do not fail ? They may
accomplish much less than they desire and hope to
accomplish, but their divine Master has decreed that
their labor shall not be unfruitful.
Working for God is never an experiment. It is
not casting seed on unproductive soil. In God's
kingdom no effort at usefulness is lost. Paul wrote
to the Corinthian Christians : " My beloved brethren,
be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the
work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your
labor is not in vain in the Lord."
The faithful servants in this parable were justly
treated. Who can doubt that our heavenly Master
is just in bestowing eternal honor and happiness
upon those who devote their lives to his service?
But look at the treatment received by the un
profitable servant who hid his master's money in the
earth. He was branded as unprofitable and cast
into outer darkness because he had made no use of
his master's money. His punishment was as just as
the reward bestowed upon the faithful servant.

78 FINAL REWARD
The excuse which he made for his idleness was
that he had received only one talent, and that with
so small a capital he was unable to do anything in
the great world of trade. In reply to this fallacious
defense the master said, "Thou oughtest to have
put my money to the exchangers." He meant that
if the servant felt that he was incompetent to trade
successfully with the small amount of money which
he had received, he should have taken it to a bank
ing institution, where it could have been consolidated
with other funds and loaned for a good per cent.
He was perfectly competent to do that much, and
having failed to do it he was condemned and
punished. God does not condemn any man for having failed
to do what he had not the capacity to accomplish.
His wrath falls only upon those who stubbornly re
fuse to make any wise use of their talents and
opportunities. To all his people, in all ages, Christ said, " Go ye
into all the.world, and preach the gospel to every
creature." There are some Christians who have
neither the capacity nor the opportunity to do the
work of a foreign missionary, and yet they are not
exempt from responsibility in this great enterprise.
What you cannot do in person, you can do through
others. You can put your money to the exchangers.
You can place your talent with some organized body

FINAL REWARD 79
of Christians who will use it in sending the gospel
into " the regions beyond."
The money that I am able to give would not sup
port a missionary, but that does not relieve me of
responsibility. What I cannot do alone, I can do
by acting in concert with others. I can put my
little talent to the exchangers. I can drop it into
the treasury of some missionary body, where it will
be added to a thousand other contributions and used
for the furtherance of the Lord's cause.
There are persons in this church who will not
give anything to its support on the ground that their
poverty prevents them from making such a contri
bution as would be creditable to them and helpful
to the church. They imagine that this relieves
them of all obligation to give. They deceive them
selves. The poor man's gift alone would not sup
port the church, but added to a hundred other gifts
it would support it.
It is not what one man alone is able to do that
makes his responsibility, but what he can do in
combination with a thousand other men. In associ
ate effort each man's labor, whether great or small,
becomes important and effective.
I cannot go out here and single handed overthrow
these dirty dens of iniquity which are the fruitful
sources of vice and crime. If I could, they should
not live another day. But this does not relieve me

80 FINAL REWARD
from all responsibility for their existence. What I
cannot do alone, I may accomplish in combination
with the thousands of virtuous men and women of
this city who are ready to join me in a crusade
against any social evil.
We find in this parable the same law of judgment
contained in each of the other two parables of the
same chapter.
The unprofitable servant is cast into " outer dark
ness " because he failed to make use of his talent.
He had doubtless done many wicked things, but
here mention is made only of the wickedness of
his idleness.
Why were the "foolish virgins" shut out from
the marriage supper ? This punishment was not in
flicted upon them because they had done certain evil
things, but because they had neglected an important
duty. " They took no oil with their lamps."
Jesus Christ points us to the final application of
this law in another parable, where the righteous and
the wicked are divided, as a shepherd divideth his
sheep from the goats. " Then shall he say also unto
them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed,
into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his
angels." -
For what were they thus punished ? Not for
wicked deeds which they had performed, but simply
for their neglect of duty. " I was a hungered and

FINAL REWARD 81
and ye gave me no meat : I was thirsty, and ye
gave me no drink : I was a stranger, and ye took
me not in : naked, and ye clothed me not : sick, and
in prison, and ye visited me not."
A few years ago I spent a day in hunting with
the Nimrod of the Virginia mountains. We had
not gone far into the forest when he dismounted and,
seizing one of the most quiet and seemingly in
offensive dogs I ever saw, slipped a rope over his
neck, suspended him from the limb of a tree, and
left him there to die. As we rode away from the
tragic scene, I asked him for an explanation of his
conduct. His reply was, " Anything as worthless as
that dog has no right to live." For the very same
reason our Lord and Master pronounced his curse
upon the fruitless fig tree. God's immutable law is,
that whatsoever is unprofitable must perish.
Who questions the right of a merchant to dis
charge a lazy and worthless clerk ? Who questions
the right of the State to dismiss from its service an
official who habitually neglects the duties of his
position ?
If the chief executive of our republic should
leave the seat of government and wander over the
country to the utter neglect of the affairs of his
great office, public sentiment everywhere would
demand his impeachment.
While this principle is recognized and enforced

82 FINAL REWARD
by all human government, there are people in every
community who cling to the delusion that it is left
out of God's administration. They admit that jus
tice and the welfare of the universe demand the
punishment of every positive and willful violation
of divine law. They do not doubt that God's
righteous indignation will be inflicted upon liars,
swindlers, drunkards, adulterers, thieves, and mur
derers. They concede that such characters deserve
to be cast into " outer darkness," but they indulge
the vain hope that the spiritual idler — the man who
has simply failed to be useful — will escape the
retribution of the wicked.
How incompatible is this thought with God's re
vealed will ! How can men cherish it and believe
in the words of God's Christ ? It is a contradiction
not only of the Bible, but of their own God-given
instincts. Idleness is wickedness, and God says,
" The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the
nations that forget God."
My friend, what are you? Are you a faithful
servant or an idler? You may be the busiest of
men in secular pursuits ; you may be a merchant
burdened with all the cares and complications of an
extensive trade, or you may be a lawyer engaged in
the most extensive practice ; but if your secular voca
tion is divorced from religion and you are doing
nothing to advance God's kingdom of truth and

FINAL REWARD 83
righteousness, you are an idler, an unprofitable serv
ant whose reward will be an eternal heritage of
shame and anguish.
Where art thou? Where do you stand with
reference to God's Messiah? Have you received
him as your Saviour, and bowed to him as your
Master? Can you look up into his face to-day and
say, " Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest
that I love thee?"
Where art thou ? Are you still in the kingdom
of Satan, still impenitent, unregenerate, without
God, and without hope? If so, you are an un
profitable servant, whose end is destruction.
"Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer
darkness : there shall be weeping and gnashing of
teeth." What is meant by these figures of speech
I will not attempt to explain. Outer darkness, the
smoke of torment, the undying worm, and the fire
that is never quenched, are horrors which my
imagination is too feeble to depict.
We know that one element of the perdition of
ungodly men is remorse. Every one of us has felt
the sting of a guilty conscience. Last night as you
walked out on the thoroughfare and watched a long
procession of human beings go by, you saw the face
of one whom you supposed to be dead, and instantly
the brightness went out of your life. The pave
ment beneath you seemed to sink, and everything

84 FINAL REWARD
above you threatened to fall upon your defenseless
head, as the old sin, committed years, ago, stood be
fore you, and the voice of your guilty conscience
whispered, "Son, remember! remember!" That
was only a touch of the worm that dieth not, and
of the fire that is never quenched.

VI
TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS
COUNTERFEITS1

"I have called you friends." John 15 : 15.
The First Baptist Church of Nashville welcomes
this morning to her sanctuary a large company of
visitors from the State of Alabama. I am happy
to be the medium through which this welcome is
extended, because I first saw the light of day on
the soil of that commonwealth, and because in this
gathering of her sons and daughters are many
friends who stood by me in the earlier years of my
ministry, cheered and strengthened me in my efforts
to overcome the wrong and establish the right.
I think it will be profitable to us, in view of the
peculiar circumstances which have brought us to
gether this morning, to consider the basis of true
friendship, the functions of it, and the value of it.
Friendship is independent of blood. I do not
have to consult the history of my progenitors, and
1 Delivered before the Alabama refugees from yellow fever,
October 3, 1897. 85

86 TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS
look through the various branches of my family
tree, to find out whether a certain man is my friend,
and whether I am under any obligation to be his
friend. Blood is a tie, and in some instances a very
strong one, but friendship is something higher, finer,
and more divine than the tie of blood.
Friendship is not familiar acquaintance. I may
spend half of my life in the company of a man,
live in the same house with him, travel with him,
and participate with him in a thousand pleasures
without approximating the feeling or state which we
call friendship. "Let me introduce you to my
friend," is a conventional expression which in
ninety-nine cases in a hundred contains a falsehood.
You call thousands of men friends only because you
see them often and your relations with them are
agreeable and pleasant.
There may be the truest friendship where there is
but little personal acquaintance and intercourse.
We are reluctant to come close to some people
whom we sincerely love, and for whom we would
sacrifice property, comfort, and peace, and even im
peril our lives. The fact that we keep away from
them, make no demands upon them, and secretly
promote their interests, is the best proof of the
genuineness of our friendship.
Let me recall a very pleasing incident of my own
history, which illustrates the truth that familiar

TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 87
acquaintance and personal intercourse are not essen
tial to true friendship. About thirty-four years ago
I stood before a great assemblage of people in the
city of Montgomery, pleading for a great cause.
At the conclusion of my sermon a distinguished
public man, occupying the highest place in the gift
of the people of his State, a man to whom I had
never been introduced and whose face I had seldom
seen, approached me quietly and modestly, laid his
hand upon my shoulder, and said, " God bless you,
young man ! " With a tropical suddenness, the
impulses excited in that moment budded and blos
somed into an undying friendship.
Between that occasion and his death we had only
a few brief conversations. Our homes were not far
apart, and for nearly four years I was his pastor,
but we were never intimate. Only two or three
times did we exchange visits, and yet for more than
thirty years we were as loyal to each other as David
and Jonathan. Each was on guard for the other,
and each eagerly and gladly seized upon every oppor
tunity to advance the other in his chosen vocation.
His tongue is silent, his great heart beats no more ;
but the memory of his sweet friendship lingers with
me like a dream of heaven.
Friendship is not sympathy for one of the same
age, nor for one of the same tastes and habits, nor
for one pursuing the same vocation.

88 TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS
I have seen the young ivy cling tremblingly but
tenaciously to the gnarled oak. I have seen the
tender honeysuckle come and kiss the gray buttresses
and twine itself around the cold stone of a massive
Corinthian column. So too I have seen the frail
and timid child cling to a stalwart and rugged man,
whose face was like the frowning front of Mars. I
have seen men hoary with age and stored with wis
dom turning away from their peers to seek compan
ions and friends among children that were as playful
as lambs and as gay as butterflies.
Friendship is not agreement in political and re
ligious views. There are thousands of men standing
close to me around the same political banner, and
marching with me in the same religious procession,
for whom I have about as much affinity as water has
for oil.
Friendship is compatible with the widest diver
gences of opinions, both in politics and religion.
Every honest Democrat believes that there are
thousands of> honest Republicans, and every honest
Republican believes that there are thousands of
honest Democrats, and where men are mutually
honest they can be to each other the best of friends.
There are Alabamians before me to-day who well
remember when William L. Yancey and Henry W.
Hilliard were central and colossal figures in Alabama
politics. The former was a Demosthenes in the

TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 89
cause of Democracy, while the latter was a Cicero
in the ranks of Whiggery. A hundred times they
faced each other in the forum of public debate. It
was a battle of giants. Roman gladiators never
fought with more courage and determination. But
these men, who stood so far apart in politics, and
who inflicted such herculean blows upon each other
in political warfare, were personal friends. Each
believed the other to be honest, pure, patriotic, and
brave. Where men have such confidence in each
other there is no barrier to friendship.
God pity the man whose friendships are limited
either by his political affiliations or his religious
belief. What, then, is friendship? It is the inter
marriage of two human souls that are inspired by
mutual respect, confidence, and love, and by a desire
and purpose to live for each other's welfare.
Some theological writer has spoken of friendship
as a development of the principle of the incarnation.
God became man that he might save and exalt man,
and enrich him with all the blessings which the
Infinite can bestow upon the finite. God became
man because he loved man, and because, by taking
man's nature into fellowship with his own, he could
more fully manifest and communicate to him his
infinite love.
I see no objection to this doctrine. In the light

90 TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS
of it we can see more clearly the meaning of friend
ship, the sacredness of it, and the magnitude of the
purposes to be accomplished by it.
The love of God for us, revealed in the incarna
tion, is an incomprehensible mystery. The angels
desire to look into it, but it is as impenetrable to
them as it is to us. What did God see in us to
love? What did he behold in us to love so well
that he was willing to take upon himself human
flesh, and in human flesh suffer and die for us?
What have we in common with him, that he should
desire our friendship and companionship? These
are problems which baffle all human philosophy.
But while we can never understand this mystery,
we know that nothing is more real than the God-
man's love for us, and that nothing is more real
than the friendship which exists between him and
those who trust and obey him.
Was he not a friend to Lazarus, Martha, and
Mary — that little family at Bethany, beneath whose
roof he so" often slept? Were they not friends to
him? Were they not a refuge from care, and a
solace to his troubled spirit ?
The same intimate, tender, and sacred relation
existed between him and his apostles. Mutual
confidence and affection had brought them so close
to him that he was constrained to say : " Henceforth
I call you not servants : for the servant knoweth

TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 91
not what his Lord doeth ; but I have called you
friends, for all things that I have heard of my
Father I have made known unto you."
In the light of our Lord's teaching and example
let us consider what a friend is expected to do.
1. A friend is expected to give advice. You are
not bound to accept it, and he has no right to be
offended if you do not accept it. You should never
part with the freedom of your own judgment and
will. To be bound absolutely by the judgment of
your friend lays on him unlawful responsibility, and
takes from you the conduct of your own affairs.
Even if you do not take your friend's advice,
you may be helped by it. Only to know that an
other thinks about our difficulties is helpful.
Jesus was the only infallible counsellor. His
infinite wisdom and holiness rendered it impossible
for him to mislead a friend. The wisest and best
man in the world is liable to misguide those who
come to him for counsel. But this fact does not re
lieve any man of the obligation to advise his friends
when serious difficulties arise in their pathway.
To counsel a fellow-man in some real emergency of
his life is to assume a painful responsibility, but he
who refuses to take that responsibility is not a friend.
2. The man who claims to be your friend is ex
pected to be your defender when you need to be
shielded from wrong.

92 TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS
When the Pharisees dragged an adulterous woman
into the presence of our Lord and insisted that she
should be stoned to death according to the law of
Moses, he instantly threw himself between her and
her pursuers, and administered to them a rebuke so
withering that they dropped their heads and went
away from him.
" He that is without sin among you, let him first
cast a stone at her." That was a home thrust, be
cause there was not one of them who had not been
guilty of the very crime for which they would con
demn and punish this defenseless woman.
Christ did not excuse her, nor did he apologize to
the Pharisees for her shameful conduct, and yet he
was her friend. Her helpless condition appealed to
the sympathy and nobleness of his great nature, and
he promptly responded by putting his own manly
breast between her and death.
Such is the degeneracy of our times that thousands
of men will not defend even the innocent women of
their own household. In this respect the age of
knight errantry was incomparably better than our
own, for then every boy, when he reached the age
of twelve years, was led to an altar where he took a
solemn oath to defend, even unto death, the person
and name of every deserving woman in the circle of
his acquaintance.
In our day it is not uncommon to find boys and

TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 93
men who are too pusillanimous to extend such pro
tection to the women of their own homes. Of all
the criminals in this wicked world, the defamer of
women is the meanest ; and of all the cowards that
are permitted to live, the most contemptible is he
who shrinks from defending an innocent woman
against the assaults of a villainous traducer.
To defend your name and reputation is what you
expect of every man who claims to be your friend.
A few summers ago, in a watering place in the
mountains of old Virginia, a company of guests
were engaged in discussing some of Virginia's pub
lic men. One of them, in the heat of debate, made
an unwarranted assault upon the name of Fitzhugh
Lee. Instantly another man rose to his feet, and
said : " Sir, Fitzhugh Lee is present in the person
of his friend. If he were here in his own person,
he would resent your malicious falsehood; in his
absence, I will do for him what he would surely do
if present." The result was a prompt retraction of
the false accusation and a humble apology.
If such courage and fidelity were common — in
other words, if men everywhere were loyal to the
obligations of true friendship — the cowardly de-
famers of the pure and the good would have but few
opportunities for moral assassination.
Christ said, " Greater love hath no man than this,
that a man lay down his life for his friends."

94 TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS
When he spoke these words, he knew that his pur
pose was to lay down his own life for those upon
whom he had bestowed his love. That purpose he
fulfilled. "He died for us." "He was wounded for our
transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities;
and by his stripes we are healed." The sacrifice he
made for his friends rises to an inconceivable height
of sublimity above any human sacrifice, because
there was in it not only the physical pangs of death,
but all the righteous wrath of an infinitely holy God
against the sins of the world.
The example of Christ in making such a sacrifice
for our redemption shows us what true friendship
will inspire us to do for those we love when their
interests and lives are imperiled.
3. It is expected that the man who professes to
be your friend will show his appreciation of your
good qualities and good deeds. Appreciation does
not express itself in conventional flattery and exag
gerated applause. It is simply a fair and candid
recognition of your real merits. Such appreciation
of you will impart new vitality to your faculties
and inspire you with increased heroism in all your
virtuous undertakings.
What some persons need more than anything
else for their development is a candid and just ex
pression of appreciation from their friends. They

TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 95
need the sort of recognition and encouragement that
will make them realize their actual worth and
strengthen them for new and higher endeavors.
Many years ago I saw a poor country boy stand
ing on a platform before a large company of his
schoolmates, trying to declaim one of the patriotic
speeches of John Quincy Adams. The boys laughed
at his awkwardness, and the flushes on his face
showed that his heart resented their cruelty. When
he had taken his seat the teacher arose and said :
" You may laugh at him now, but the day is coming
when you will rend the air in applauding his
achievements." That boy never forgot the prophecy
of his teacher. He determined to fulfill it, and he
did fulfill it. To-day his fame is national and his
power is imperial.
4. You expect of the man who claims to be your
friend reproof when he beholds you in a course of
wrong-doing. Jesus had no better friend than
Peter, and yet he more often rebuked him than any
other apostle. This is one of the gravest and most
delicate duties of true friendship. No man attempts
it without fear and trembling, because he knows
how unwilling poor human nature is to receive
reproof. Anybody can denounce an enemy, but it takes a
hero to rebuke a friend. It is an exceedingly pain
ful duty and often results in the loss of the good

96 TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS
will of those to whom the rebuke is administered.
But if you evade an obligation so important and
sacred as this, you are not worthy to be called any
man's friend.
I believe that all friendships based upon mutual
confidence and love, and guided and sanctified by
the verities of God's word, are imperishable.
Nothing on the earth or above the earth can ever
destroy them. They will go with us through the
gates of death.
I love to think of heaven as the place where
" those who meet shall part no more, and those long
parted meet again." In that bright land beyond
the starry heights, next to the rapture of meeting
my risen and glorified Saviour will be the joy of re
union with those whose friendship has been the
medicine and solace of my life in this world of
suffering and sorrow.
In that radiant company of friends, to whose
blessed fellowship I hope to ascend when my earthly
cares and toils have ceased, are many of the men
and women of Alabama, who were my loving, faith
ful counsellors and helpers in the long ago.
The terrible scourge which is sweeping through
many communities of my native State, driving
thousands of her noblest people from their business
and homes, and consigning many to untimely graves,
not only brings an aching sorrow to my heart, but

TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS 97
inspires me with a new and stronger affection for
those upon whom this calamity has fallen. In
Mobile, Selma, and Montgomery, where the pesti
lence is now doing its deadly work, where homes
are draped in mourning and thousands of hearts are
wrung with keen and lonely anguish, the earlier
years of my ministry were spent. The men and
women of those communities are my people. Their
troubles are my troubles, their cares are my cares,
their sorrows are my sorrows.
My Alabama friends, let me assure you that in
this capital city of Tennessee there are thousands of
good people who cherish for you a generous and
tender sympathy, who commend you daily to God's
loving and keeping care, and who stand ready to
give substantial aid to those who have not been able
to flee from the destroyer. Be of good cheer ; trust
in God ; submit meekly to the discipline of his
hand, and you will find a blessed compensation for
all your present ills and anguish.
"Weeping may endure for a night,
But joy cometh in the morning."
' ' Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace."
In other days and in other places I have been
your friend. Allow me to be the same friend to
you now and here. Let me guide your troubled

98 TRUE FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COUNTERFEITS
spirits to a divine Friend, who " sticketh closer than
a brother," a Friend who is responsive to all your
sighs and griefs, and whose blessed invitation is,
" Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest." Let me beguile
your thoughts from the things that now distress
you to the beauty and blessedness of that serene
abode into which our redeemed spirits shall pass
when life's cares and battles have ceased. On that
bright shore beyond the inky sea there is no pesti
lence, no death, no partings, no tears. There beauty
smiles eternally and pleasure never dies.

VII
OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS

" Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor,
that ye through his poverty might be rich." 2 Cor. 8 : 9.
The introduction of sin into the world made every
human being a pauper. Sin separates man from
God. It prevents intercourse with God. In this
condition the human soul is in darkness and bond
age, and utterly destitute of nourishment and
comfort. This is poverty a thousand times more
deplorable and wretched than that which comes to
our doors in rags. I would rather be as poor as the
homeless and sore-footed tramp than be a spiritual
pauper, going through this world of conflict and
sorrow without God and without hope.
The infinite Jehovah, maker and ruler of all
things, saw the poverty of this world and pitied it.
He was rich, rich in himself, rich in attributes which
rendered him infinitely higher and more glorious
than any other being, and rich in having the homage,
affection, and praise of all the unfallen intelligences
of the universe. 99

100 OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS
Moved with pity for our poverty he became poor
that we might be rich. He became a man, and the
poorest of men. The foxes had their holes, the
birds of the air their nests, but he had not where to
lay his head. He stooped to the position of a
servant. He came not to be ministered unto, but
to minister. He was obedient unto death, even the
death of the cross.
By this poverty and humiliation he made it
possible for us to be rich and glorious. By faith in
him we become heirs of God and joint heirs with
Jesus Christ to an inheritance that is undefiled, in
corruptible, and that fadeth not away.
In this scheme of recovering mercy we see the
highest possible exhibition of unselfishness. He
enriched the world by the sublimest self-denial that
man or angel ever witnessed. We avail ourselves
of the benefits of his sacrifice by imitating his
example. " If any man will come after me, let him
deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me."
" If we buffer, we shall also reign with him."
As he loved us, so we are to love one another.
As he came into the world and lived and suffered
and died for us, so we are to live and suffer, and, if
need be, die for one another. "Look not every
man on his own things, but every man also on the
things of others." " Bear ye one another's burdens,
and so fulfill the law of Christ."

OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS 101
The spirit which prompted Cain to ask the ques
tion, "Am I my brother's keeper?" is the spirit of
Antichrist. It is the spirit which says, " Let every
man take care of himself." It is the spirit which
inspires a man to labor solely for his own advance
ment. It is the spirit which instigates all injustice,
oppression, and cruelty. It is behind all man's in
humanity to man. It arrays neighbor against
neighbor, class against class, community against
community, and nation against nation.
That spirit dominates the age in which we live.
It threatens this great nation with the crisis of the
centuries. If there is not a reaction in the near
future, it will culminate in such a social upheaval
as the world has never seen. The voices of its
millions of victims are calling to heaven, as the
blood of the murdered Abel cried from the ground
for divine vengeance upon Cain.
The power which propels the wheels of our
present civilization is not love, but greed. In poli
tics and commerce there is a premium on shrewd
ness and deception, while honesty and generosity
are sneered at as virtues too sublimated and ethereal
to be practised by creatures who wear earth about
them, and who have to grapple with such problems
as, " What shall I eat ? and what shall I drink ?
and wherewithal shall I be clothed ? "
A civilization that is based on selfishness, and

102 OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS
that magnifies and rewards men who succeed by their
superior cunning, has no power within itself to
secure justice.
There is nothing that needs saving so much as
a civilization that is guided by no moral principle,
and that marches on without regard to God and his
righteousness. The country that boasts of such a
civilization is on the highroad to anarchy and bar
barism. Civilization is not a cause, but an effect. It is
the product of character. It expresses the good and
evil in the hearts of the people. Any government —
national, State, or municipal — is just what the
people make it. If a government tolerates such an
iniquity as a bull fight, or a gambling house, or a
bar-room, it is because the people are depraved
enough to want such things.
The fountain of any civilization is in the moral
character of the people who support it. If it is
corrupt, it is because the people are corrupt, and it
can be cleansed only by cleansing the people. The
passage of more stringent laws will not stop the
abominations to which I have referred. As long as
the people do not rebel against indecent theatrical
exhibitions they will continue to occur in all our
theatres. As long as the people make no protest
against obscene papers they will continue to be sold
on our highways and at our news-stands.

OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS 103
We have already laws against these things.
Why are they not enforced? Because the moral
sentiment of the people is too weak to demand it.
As long as the people are morally stupid, as long as
they have but a feeble appreciation of the distinc
tions which God makes between right and wrong,
vulgarity, uncleanness, and knavery will go un-
whipped of justice. As long as the people are
unjust there will be class legislation, despotic
monopolies, political rings, bribery, and ballot-box
stuffing. A righteous civilization can be established
and maintained only by a people who love and
practise righteousness.
We are like those foolish Galatians to whom Paul
said, " Ye are bewitched." We have been bewitched
by political teachers who have made us believe that
the cure for all our social troubles is wiser legisla
tion. Each of them has his economic theory and
tells us that if we will send him to Congress, and
he can get his theory transmuted into law, he will
put an end to our social woes.
He may be sincere, but his proposition is absurd.
Economic legislation deals only with things that
are external to man's being. That is not what is
needed. We need something that will touch the
souls and transform the characters of our people.
The State does not make the people, the people
make the State. The State is the expression of the

104 OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS
thought of the people. It is the product of the
people's faith. It is the realization of their moral
ideas. When the people are personally honest, the State
will be honest; when the people love justice, the
State will be just ; when the people abhor oppres
sion, then oppressive legislation will be obliterated
from our statute books. When the people are right
eous enough to demand it, we shall have a faithful
administration of every righteous law in our civil
code. Good laws cannot be executed among a cor
rupt people.
Not long ago I read a very learned and beautiful
oration on the old Roman law. The principles em
bodied in that great system of law emanated from a
few great men. They did not come from the body
of the Roman people. Those laws were in exist
ence during all that dark period when the Roman
government gave but little protection to life, liberty,
and property.
Alfred trrfe Great incorporated the Ten Command
ments and the Golden Rule in the English constitu
tion, but they have been openly violated by every
administration of the English government from
King Alfred to Queen Victoria.
A great writer on sociology has said that : " Laws
written on tables of stone and printed in statute
books are but the playthings of politicians, if they

OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS 105
are not written in the hearts of the people. Laws
cannot make men unselfish ; police righteousness is
not divine righteousness ; the State cannot establish
justice and righteousness on the earth. But justice
and righteousness must establish the State."
What then is our hope ? How can society be ren
ovated? How can our civilization be purified?
How can the State be so reconstructed as to furnish
adequate protection to its subjects and all of their
legitimate interests ?
My answer to each of these questions is, By sub
stituting for the law of self-interest, which now
rules our social life, the law of self-sacrifice, the law
by which God acts, the law which he illustrated
when he became poor that we through his poverty
might be rich.
The cross of Christ is the solvent of all the great
social problems of the world. There God unveils
his heart to men ; there he reveals his redeeming
love, a love which expresses itself in absolute self-
renunciation. " He who knew no sin, was made sin
for us." " He bore our sins in his own body on the
tree." " He died for us." " He was wounded for
our transgressions ; he was bruised for our iniqui
ties, . . and by his stripes we are healed."
In that complete oblation of himself God teaches
us that the highest expression of love is self-sacri
fice, and that it is only by the sacrifice of ourselves

106 OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS
that we can touch and supply the world's pro
foundest needs. The human race has never ad
vanced one inch without human sacrifices. In
every past age the men who pushed the world on
and up to something better were martyrs. They
suffered persecution, and in many instances death,
for what they did for righteousness' sake.
Every great truth has secured public recognition
only through the self-denials and heartaches of some
moral hero. The world's darkness has been il
lumined only by the blaze of martyr-fires. What
we have and enjoy to-day is the blood-bought wealth
of the centuries. We can never pay to the genera
tions that come after us more than an infinitesimal
part of the debt which we owe to the generations
that have preceded us. Any future progress must
be secured by obedience to the same law, the law
of self-sacrifice. Every inch must be gained and
held by some struggling, suffering, unresting brain
and heart.
My friend, is it the purpose of your life to be use
ful ? If that is not your purpose and your domi
nant purpose, you have no claims upon the homage
of the world. If you intend to be a disciple of Cain
and repudiate all obligation to care for your brother
man, you deserve to be treated as Cain was — branded
as an outlaw. If you will not be your brother's
keeper and burden-bearer, you are his enemy. You

OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS 107
will seize every opportunity to defraud, oppress, and
degrade him. The principle which controls you
will make you a monopolist, or a gambler, or a
bank-robber, or an anarchist, or a nihilist.
But, if your purpose is to be useful — useful not
only to yourself and your own family, but to the
world — your life must be a sacrificial life. You
must look out on this wide world and recognize
every man in it as your brother and acknowledge
your obligation to help him, as far as God gives you
the ability and the opportunity. To serve your day
and generation according to the will of God, to
make any substantial and enduring contribution to
the welfare of the race, you must make an oblation
of your possessions and of yourself.
My brother, you sing,
' ' In the cross of Christ I glory,
Towering o'er the wrecks of time,"
but do you understand what you sing? Do you
know the meaning of the cross ? The cross does not
release you from the law of sacrifice, but binds you
to it by considerations that are immeasurable in
their importance and solemnity. You must not only
be reconciled to the cross, but reconciled to the law
which it proclaims and to all the burden of toil,
struggle, and sacrifice which it lays upon you.
The cross is not only the symbol of Christ's bur-

108 OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS
den, but also of your own. You glory in the cross
he bore, but do you glory in the cross which he of
fers you ? If your heart is throbbing with the pas
sion that burned in him who hung upon that instru
ment of shame, your life will be in some degree a
repetition of what he endured, and your favorite
sentiment will be :
Must Jesus bear the cross alone,
And all the world go free ?
No ! There's a cross for every one,
And there's a cross for me.
The consecrated cross I'll bear
Till death shall set me free ;
And then go home, my crown to wear,
For there's a crown for me.
" Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he be
came poor, that ye through his poverty might be
rich." This text should have a larger application
to men of wealth than to the poorer classes, because
they have larger possessions and more abundant
opportunities for sacrifice. The rich men in the
churches of this country have it within their power
to solve our problems and save us from the fearful
disasters which so seriously threaten us. Let these
rich men become truly Christlike — let them become
living sacrifices in the service of their God and
country and race, and our clouds will disappear.

OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS 109
Jesus was no more under obligation to give him
self wholly to the task of saving men than the
Christian capitalist of Nashville is to consecrate
himself and his possessions to the same work. God
had no more claims to the service of Christ than he
has to the time, talents, and labors of every Chris
tian lawyer of this city.
The manufacturer has no more right to operate
his factory solely for his own benefit than Jesus
Christ had to work miracles for his own profit.
The Christian has no more moral right to an uncon-
secrated business or capital, than Christ had to an
unconsecrated cross.
Whenever the business men in our churches
heartily accept this doctrine and conform their lives
to it, we shall see Christianity grow as it never has
grown. We shall see society quickly cleansed of
its present abominations. We shall see the State
purged of all favoritism and injustice ; we shall see
the strifes between capital and labor cease, and
throughout all our borders a reign of righteousness,
contentment, and prosperity.
God is calling to-day for men of capital who are
willing to be financially crucified in order to estab
lish the business of the world on the basis of the
Golden Rule : " Whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you, do ye even so to them."
In putting your own business upon that basis

110 OUR SOCIAL PROBLEMS
you may suffer great loss for a time, your profits
may be enormously decreased, it may even bankrupt
you ; but in making the sacrifice you will gain the
fellowship of Christ, you will manifest his spirit,
magnify his truth, and extend the conquests of his
kingdom. If every Christian man in business would
do this the whole commercial world would be revo
lutionized and established upon principles that would
insure steady and permanent prosperity to all classes
of every community.
The world has never been more prolific of golden
opportunities for Christlike deeds than it is to-day.
You can make the counting room as sacred as the
sanctuary. You can make the legislative hall as
hallowed as the mount on which Moses talked with
God and received the law on tables of stone. You
can make every gathering of the people, whether for
religious, educational, political, or commercial pur
poses, as holy, harmonious, and happy as the dis
ciples were on the mount of transfiguration. You
can convert ,the din and roar of your industrial
activity into a perpetual coronation hymn. You
can be the knights of a nobler and grander chivalry
than ever unfurled a flag or unsheathed a sword on
any of the world's historic battlefields.

VIII
PAUL'S REPROBATION OF IDLE
NESS

"We commanded you that if any would not work, neither
should he eat." 2 Thess. 3 : 10.
The Apostle Paul was an indefatigable laborer.
In this respect he made himself an example unto
others. While he preached the gospel among the
Thessalonians he supported himself by his own
manual labor that he might emphasize the obliga
tion upon every man to be industrious.
He regarded idleness, whether physical, mental,
or spiritual, as ignoble and disgraceful. So thor
oughly and intensely did he reprobate it that he
published an apostolic edict that Christians should
not feed those who refused to work. Paul wrote
this commandment by divine inspiration, and we
should regard it as an expression of God's will.
God, himself, is the greatest worker in the uni
verse. I sometimes wish that the veil of nature
could be lifted that we might see the Eternal Father
at his work, busy throughout all space, slighting m

112 paul's reprobation of idleness
nothing, exercising his wisdom and power where-
ever a star floats or an ocean rolls or a lily blooms.
We speak of the power of the sun, and how it
made the forests which stood millions of years ago ;
how these forests were crushed by natural forces
into beds of coal ; and how the heat of the sun made
all the verdure and beauty which bedeck the globe
to-day. But the sun explains nothing. It simply
tells us that there is a mind somewhere which makes
the universe tremble with life and array itself in
magnificent loveliness.
Could we look back of the ocean, we should see
some hand holding it and hear some voice saying,
" Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther." Could
we gaze back of the approaching cloud, we should
see some loving heart pouring out great streams of
color in the west. Notwithstanding the mystery of
the universe, one thing is clear : it is doing its work
under the guidance and loving care of some great
Being of infinite wisdom and power. It is he who
supplies the burning fountains of the sun ; it is he
who pilots the stars ; it is he who paints the vernal
blossoms and carries perfume to the summer rose.
God, who is never idle, will not tolerate idleness
in creatures made in his own image. Work is life.
Man is dormant until he begins to labor. An idle,
lazy person, is brainless, for sleepy brains are not a
positive quantity.

paul's reprobation of idleness 113
Work is not simply doing, but being. When Sir
John Lubbock was traveling among the South Sea
natives, he found them so averse to any kind of ac
tivity that they did not care to talk upon new sub
jects. They had been asleep so many generations
that the discussion of a new idea was painful to
them, and Lubbock's happiness was their misery.
Mere existence is not life, and life is not measured
by days and months and years. Activity is life.
We live in thoughts and deeds, and he lives most
who thinks most and does most.
Sometimes in naming the reasons why certain
persons attend Sunday worship so seldom, the prin
cipal one, intellectual and spiritual indolence, is
omitted. Such people know that if they go where
an earnest and intelligent man expounds and ap
plies the living word of the living God, they will be
provoked to think, and probably to act, and the pros
pect of coming out of their intellectual and spiritual
torpor is very painful to them.
On a recent tour through Florida I had an oppor
tunity of studying the characteristics of the turtle
and the alligator. All they seem to care for is
existence. They move only when they are com
pelled to move. They aspire to no higher blessed
ness than that which they find in lying on a sand
bank and sleeping in a sun-bath. For no better
reason some people will not put themselves within

114 paul's reprobation of idleness
reach of the living ministry. They are afraid of
the risk of being shaken out of their moral indo
lence. They covet nothing better than the bliss of
spiritual torpidity.
" In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,"
is a law under which God has placed the whole
world of mankind. Upon obedience to this law he
has conditioned the welfare of the family, the stabil
ity of the State, the peace of society, and the pros
perity and glory of the church. The disorders and
miseries that afflict the world come from men's dis
regard of this primal law. I am confident that I
do not exaggerate when I say that the world's huge
and costly machinery of charitable relief, all our
vast and expensive system of correction ahd punish
ment, our large police force, the oppressive taxation
to which we are subjected, and the high prices which
we pay for what we eat and drink and wear — may
be traced to the prevalence of idleness, to the indis
position of thousands of men and women to bear
their just ^proportion of the burden of labor which
needs to be performed.
There is a definite weight of obligation overhang
ing every human life. If that obligation is not
borne by the life to which it belongs, it must fall
on other lives. When a man who belongs to some
commercial, or political, or benevolent organization,
refuses to do his part in supporting it, he thereby

paul's reprobation of idleness 115
increases the burden of every true and loyal mem
ber of that institution. Who are the vagrants, dead-
beats, and criminals, that vast army of non-producers
everywhere visible? They are the men and women
who have repudiated God's primal law, quit the
ranks of honest toilers, and left their burdens to be
carried by other people.
How successful and happy the home in which
there is a wise and equitable distribution of respon
sibility, care, and labor ! Where father, mother,
sons, and daughters, take counsel of each other and
agree upon a well-defined plan of life for the house
hold, and where each performs with patience, fidelity,
and cheerfulness the part assigned to him, and is as
intent upon promoting the welfare of others as he
is upon his own pleasure and advancement — there is
a prosperous and happy family.
But how clouded, inharmonious, and unlovely the
home where there is no such agreement, no just dis
tribution of labor, and one or two are struggling
beneath the burdens of all. In many families there
are vagrants who submit to no law, idlers who lift
no load, insubordinates who recognize no authority
and discharge no duty. These make wretchedness
for all the household.
The world is cursed to-day with drones and cow
ards, who shirk their burdens and stand aloof from
their places in the alignment of human service.

116 paul's reprobation of idleness
Such persons not only multiply the cares and labors
of others, but restrict their own freedom and in
crease their own misery. Disowning their obliga
tion to perform any part in the conflicts and toils
incident to social life, they soon learn that such a
policy of existence leads neither to happiness nor
freedom. Who are the men that vociferate most against the
order of society ? They are the men who have found
out by sad experience that they cannot be idlers and
obstructionists without bringing down upon their
heads the just penalties of the laws which society
has enacted for its government and protection. The
moonshiners, the counterfeiters, the bank-robbers, and
the gamblers, belong to the class which anathema
tizes government. They curse it because it inter
poses its authority and power to prohibit them from
pursuing lives that not only are worthless to society,
but multiply its burdens and woes.
There are some applications of this subject which
are easily discernible by any thoughtful mind.
There is a great work to be done ; there are great
battles to be fought and great burdens to be borne
for the needy world in which we live; and this
work can be done successfully and speedily only
when all whose duty it is to help, step into line with
an honest purpose to meet their share of obligation.
No informed man doubts that certain reforms are

paul's reprobation of idleness 117
needed in the government of this country. There
are bad laws on our statute books which enrich and
exalt one class of our people and impoverish and
oppress another class ; and these laws breed discon
tent, insubordination, and crime. These iniquitous
statutes exist and operate from year to year and
from decade to decade, not because a majority of
the people are in favor of them, but because so few
of them are disposed to accept their share of the
conflict and labor needed to wipe out such unright
eous legislation. They are afraid of the political
henchmen and the subsidized newspaper men who
are interested in the preservation of these unjust
laws. In many of our Southern States we are confronted
by a reign of mob law. Men suspected of crime
are taken out of the hands of civil government and
put to death in the most barbarous and brutal
manner. In the keeping of sheriffs and constables,
and even in the presence of judges engaged in the
investigation of the charges preferred against them,
they are clubbed into insensibility or perforated with
bullets. The men who constitute these mobs defy
government and go unwhipped of justice. They are
able to do this, not because a majority of the people
sympathize with their conduct and favor the admin
istration of mob law, but because so few are willing
to burden themselves with the trouble of bringing

118 paul's reprobation of idleness
these offenders to the bar of justice and demanding
of the courts the infliction of the punishment which
they so richly deserve.
If the brutal South Carolina mob which recently
slaughtered a Negro and his household for no other
offense than his acceptance of a postmastership from
the Federal goverment, is not duly punished for the
crime of murder, then South Carolina's civilization
is a failure and her boasted manhood is a sham. If
the present generation of Tennesseeans will not rise
up and demand the just punishment of similar law
lessness in their own commonwealth, their blood is
degenerate, and they are unworthy to claim kinship
with the sturdy men who made the administration
of Andrew Jackson a terror to evildoers.
A vast majority of the people of this city are op
posed to gamblers and gambling institutions, and
yet the current opinion is that Nashville is under a
reign of gamblers. They prosecute their nefarious
vocation in utter defiance of law and public senti
ment. Why are they able to do this? For the
simple reason that the people do not rise up in their
majesty and demand of those charged with the ad
ministration of law the punishment and expulsion
of this infamous combination of criminals and crimi
nal-makers. In every community there are hundreds of unfor
tunate men, women, and children who need relief

paul's reprobation of idleness 119
and whose condition is not provided for by any gov
ernmental system of help. This is a burden upon
the community that could be easily borne if every
person whose duty it is to help would bear his part.
It weighs heavily upon some because the selfishness
of many prevents an equitable distribution of it.
There is a certain weight of obligation upon every
local congregation of believers in the Lord Jesus
Christ. A definite amount of money must be raised
for the support of their own worship, and for the
relief of their own destitute and suffering members.
In addition to this, money is needed to support
missions, both at home and abroad ; and another
large sum is required for the support of schools in
which young men are being trained for the solemn
duties of the gospel ministry.
There is a vast amount of work to be done in the
Sunday-schools. Fathers and mothers send their
children there to be instructed in the wisdom of
God. This requires an army of men and women
who have the grace and industry and patience to
study and teach. It requires also a large force to
operate our city mission stations, and to perform
the work of religious visitation from house to house.
It is the large dormant element in every church
that renders it so difficult to compass all of the obli
gations imposed by divine authority upon a con
gregation of believers. It is the refusal of so many

120 paul's reprobation of idleness
to bear their just proportion of the burden that
makes it so heavy upon the shoulders of those who
are willing to do their duty.
If there is one principle which a thoughtful, self-
respecting, Christ-loving church-member should em
phasize more than another, it is that no other mem
ber shall be allowed to bear the burdens which
belong to him. He should stand up and manfully
claim it as his sacred right and privilege to pay his
just proportion of the money and to do his just
proportion of the work required for the furtherance
of the Lord's cause.
What shall I say of those who, convinced of the
truth of the Christian religion and that the world's
civilization is pivoted upon it, refuse to bow their
necks to the yoke of Christ? There are men and
women of this class before me this morning. To
these I would submit a few questions. How can
you reconcile your present attitude toward Christ's
cause with your conceptions of right, obligation,
honor, and -self-respect? Is it not as truly your
duty as mine to serve God? Has not the Son of
God, who died for the sins of the whole world, done
as much for you as he has for me ? If the highest
good of humanity depends upon the prevalence and
maintenance of Christianity, upon what principle
of ethics can you excuse yourself from giving your
name, your example, and your resources to the sup-

paul's reprobation of idleness 121
port of its sacred cause? In your heart you wish
success to that cause ; but is it just, is it noble, is it
honorable in you to stand aloof and take no part in
the toil and conflict by which Christ's kingdom is
advanced ?
If you believe in an equitable distribution of the
burdens of society, if you believe that in the great
work of improving the world every virtue-loving
and humanity-loving man should do his part, if
you believe that the progress of the world and the
highest welfare of men, both for time and eternity, de
pend upon the regenerating and conserving influences
of Christian truth, how can you honestly claim to
be a friend to either God or man while you refuse
to give to the gospel the support of your own name
and example? How can you satisfy your con
science, or even respect your own manhood, while
you permit others to bear the burdens which legiti
mately belong to you ?
" Why stand ye here all the day idle ? " Some
of you are in the evening of life. Your sun will
soon set on a world which so far it has failed to
bless. We appeal to you by every motive that can
be drawn from the past, the present, and the future,
from time and eternity, from the great God and the
solemnities of approaching judgment, to make the
most of the little hour that remains. Put into that
hour a sincere repentance for your sins, a true and

122 paul's reprobation of idleness
living faith in him who died to make atonement for
your sins, and the consecration of all you have and
are to the work of promoting the salvation of your
fellow-men. How delightful to contemplate the sequel of a
life that has been well spent, a life that has done
its legitimate work and accomplished its divinely
prescribed mission!
It gives us real pleasure and satisfaction to look
upon something that is complete. We love to be
hold a picture in which the artist has slighted noth
ing. We are charmed by a speech replete with
thought, truth, beauty, and eloquence from the first
sentence of the exordium to the closing sentence of
the peroration.
When we read a poem like Gray's " Elegy," or
Tennyson's " In Memoriam," or Virgil's " iEneid,"
or Homer's "Iliad," we feel that its thoughts,
words, and rhythm have all come through the hand
of the finisher and that the work is complete. But
how much more delightful to contemplate a finished
life, a life which illustrates all the virtues that can
adorn and dignify human character, a life full of
useful service to God and man, a life that dis
appears like the sun at evening, followed by the
benedictions of a grateful world, a life which angels
applaud and over whose record God himself is heard
to say, " Well done, good and faithful servant."

IX
RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS

"Blessed be . . . the God of all comfort, who comforteth
us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort
them which are in any trouble." 2 Cor. 1 : 3, 4.
These are the words of the most thoroughly
poised and symmetrically developed man, save One,
the world has ever seen. The human heart has
never cherished a nobler and holier feeling than that
to which he here gives utterance. He thanks God
for comforts which he had received in great trials —
thanks him, not so much for the relief which they
gave him, as for the new strength which they im
parted to him for the comforting of others in dis
tress. He gloried in his tribulations, because in
them he had experiences of God's presence and
power which enlarged his capacity for instructing,
comforting, and strengthening other men, and es
pecially other Christians.
To covet gifts for the use we can make of them
in promoting the world's welfare is the best proof of
a regenerated heart and a Christlike character. So
123

124 RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS
much more did this man Paul love others than him
self, that he was willing to be accursed from God if
by bearing a divine malediction he might save the
apostate Jewish people.
Blessed is the man to whom God has given the
secret of rejoicing even in tribulation. Blessed is
the man who can see and enjoy at all times what is
good in the world, and who can transmute what is
evil in itself into elements of strength and happiness.
It is the condition of a man's heart that makes the
world what it is to him. He sees things as he is.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
I sometimes meet a person to whom the world is
a great picture gallery. Wherever he turns his
vision he beholds a panorama of bewitching beauty.
If you should pluck out his eyes it would not de
stroy his happiness, because his heart is full of bright
and beautiful pictures. The conditions of happiness
are not without but within him. This fact gives
him the mastery of his environment and makes all
things contribute to his felicity.
I suppose you have not forgotten the fable of the
firebrand and the lamp. One day they went out to
see what they could find. The firebrand came back
and wrote in its journal : " The whole world is very
dark." When the lamp returned it made this entry

RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 125
in its journal : " I did not find any darkness in all
my journey ; it was bright everywhere." The ex
planation of this difference between the observation
of the firebrand and that of the lamp is, that the
latter carried a light and the former did not.
Every man in going through the world will find
just what he takes with him. If he takes darkness
he will find darkness, and if he takes light he will
find light. If there is beauty in his soul he will
find beauty in every spot and in every object on
which his eye rests. If he is selfish and mean he
will find selfishness and meanness everywhere. If
he has a heart whose sympathies embrace the whole
world, he will find a kindly sympathy and a sweet
charity greeting him in every community that he
enters. Two men came from a distant city to visit our
Tennessee Centennial Exposition. When they re
turned to their homes each gave his impressions of
the " White City." One said, " Oh, it's a big show
and big crowds go to see it, but I got very tired of
it." The other, with a feeling akin to rapture, ex
pressed his appreciation of everything that he saw.
He described every building and the exhibits which
it contained. When he spoke of the Parthenon — an
exact reproduction of the original — and of its beauti
ful specimens of painting and sculpture, the crea
tions of the world's best genius, his eye flashed

126 RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS
with the inspiration of his theme. He passed rapidly
from wonder to wonder of the great pageant, and
concluded with a description of the music, which he
declared to be so sublimating in its influence that
he could scarcely tell " whether he was in the body
or out of the body." One of these men had appropri
ated nothing. The other had absorbed everything.
The great scene was photographed in all its beauty
on his inner being, and there it will remain to be
studied and enjoyed through all the days of his
coming life.
If a man has music in his soul, he hears music
everywhere. Some men can walk through a forest
on a May morning and find more inspiration in lis
tening to the warbling of the birds than some other
men would get from the grandest music that human
voices can make.
Give me the man who sees and enjoys all the
good in his earthly allotment. Give me communion
with the soul that extracts honey from every flower
that blossoms along its homeward journey. Give
me for a friend and companion the man who finds
nuggets of gold in the rocks over which his feet
stumble. Give me for a counselor and guide the
man who beholds objects of beauty and loveliness
all along the pathway of toil and conflict. Give me
for a fellow-traveler in life's pilgrimage the man
who finds that,

RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 127
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods ;
There is a rapture on the lonely shore ;
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
Give me for a comforter in distress the man who
sees angels in the disguises of earth, and gets a bless
ing from them ere they spread their radiant wings
for homeward flight.
There is a great building in Europe, whose dome
is so shaped that sounds uttered beneath it come
back in a delightful response of melodious music.
Even a discord is converted into harmony as it floats
up into the resonant vault and returns to the ear.
Such a* dome hung over the soul of that grand
old apostle who said : " I have learned, in whatso
ever state I am, therewith to be content," and who,
while incarcerated in a Roman dungeon and stained
with the blood of his own lacerated flesh, sang
praises to God. Beneath that dome, visible only to
the eye of faith, Paul's groans and lamentations
were converted into anthems, and every discordant
sound was transmuted into sweetest harmony.
What are the causes of your discontent and un
happiness? You think that if you had more
money, more distinction, and more power, the
trouble would be cured. You are under a delusion,
a Satanic delusion. The causes of your discontent
are not in your circumstances, but in yourself. Let

128 RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS
God into your soul, let him be your constant guest,
and you will easily master your circumstances. Let
the glory of his love shine through your sorrows,
and they will be converted into joys. Get a sweet
song in your heart, and melody will fill all the air
about you. Even the wailing storm will make
soothing and restful music to your troubled spirit.
Get God's beauty into your soul and you will see
beauty everywhere, in the heavens above and in the
earth beneath. Get God's peace into your life, and
you will find peace all along your journey to the
skies. Put yourself by faith in such relations with
Jesus Christ that he will be " all the day long your
joy and your song," and then, like Paul, you will
bless God even in adversity and extract comfort
even from the bitterest tribulation.
My second remark is upon the nobility of the
man who uses every divine blessing bestowed upon
him in blessing his needy fellow-men.
Paul sought comfort from God that he might use
it in comforting his brethren. The bed-rock prin
ciple of Christianity binds us to live for the welfare
of others. Christ came " not to be ministered unto,
but to minister," and he taught his disciples that in
the judgment of the last day he would measure their
fidelity to him by what they had done in caring for
the poor and sick and distressed of this world.
In that great day he will say to those upon the

RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 129
right hand of his throne : " I was a hungered, and
ye gave me meat : I was thirsty, and ye gave me
drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took me in ; naked,
and ye clothed me ; I was sick, and ye visited me ;
I was in prison, and ye came unto me." And when
in amazement they reply, " Lord, when saw we thee
a hungered, and fed thee ? or thirsty, and gave thee
drink ? when saw we thee a stranger, and took thee
in? or naked, and clothed thee? or when saw we
thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?" he
will say, " Ah, you did not know it, but every time
you fed a hungry pauper, or gave a cup of water to
a thirsty pilgrim, or cared for an orphan, or nursed
a sick neighbor, or comforted a prisoner, or opened
your door to a stranger, you ministered unto me."
I endorse the sentiment of a distinguished Chris
tian writer, who says : " The incense which God
loves best is not that which is burned in a golden
censer and wastes its perfume on the air, but that
which is burned in the habitations of the needy, to
cheer some human weariness, or comfort some hu
man sorrow."
My brethren, I seriously fear that many of you
are under the fatal delusion that you are doing the
vital thing in religion and meeting your obligations
to God by simply coming to a religious service in
this sanctuary on the Lord's Day. Some of you
seem to be utterly blind to the truth, that our Sab-

130 RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS
bath worship here is only preparation for the real
work of religion. Oh, that God would give me
power to strike the scales from your eyes !
Your divinely appointed task lies not within
these sanctuary walls, but outside of them. Your
real battles for God and his cause must be fought,
not within this sacred enclosure, but out yonder in
the great wailing world of sin and suffering.
Abou Ben Adhem awoke one night from a dream
of peace, and saw, by the moonlight in his room,
an angel writing in a book of gold. He asked,
" AVhat writest thou ? " The angel answered, " The
names of those who love the Lord." "Is mine
there?" "Nay," replied the angel. Then Abou
softly but cheerily said, " I pray thee, then, write
me as one who loves his fellow-men." The next
night the vision came again, disclosing the names of
those who loved the Lord ; and lo ! Ben Adhem's
name led all the rest. The obvious meaning of this
legend is, that we love God when we love and serve
our fellow-men.
Lying out on the very surface of revealed religion
is the great truth that God enriches no man, tempo
rally or spiritually, without laying upon him at the
same time the obligation to use the blessings be
stowed on him in supplying the needs of other men.
My brother, why has God given you material
wealth? Why does he prosper you in business,

RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 131
and permit you year after year to add to your al
ready ample fortune? That you may live in a
mansion, fare sumptuously every day, move in a
fashionable circle, and be courted and flattered by a
fawning world ? If this is your interpretation of
God's goodness to you, you are worse than blind,
and need conversion from an error that is mischiev
ous and ruinous in the last degree.
You are simply God's steward. Your money is
God's money. If you squander it in the gratifica
tion of unholy pride and ambition, you rob God,
defraud the world, and doom yourself to incurable
wretchedness. What is true in this respect of material wealth is
equally true of knowledge. Knowledge is a talent
which God requires us to use, not for our own
pleasure and aggrandizement, but for the elevation
and happiness of those who are inferior to us in in
tellectual attainment.
There is a Baptist church in one of our Western
cities which has among its members a distinguished
gentleman who is a specialist in the English classics.
He is regarded as very high authority in that de
partment of learning. That man has organized all
the young people of his church and congregation
into a class for the study of English literature. He
gives one evening of every week to this work. He
receives no pecuniary compensation for the service.

132 RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS
His Christian zeal is as fervent as his learning is
profound. His unselfish use of his intellectual cul
ture has given him great religious influence over
the young people of that community, and when he
comes before his Bible class, on Sunday morning, he
finds there the young men and the young women of
his literary class, eager and impatient to hear him
expound the word of God.
Paul thanked God for the comfort bestowed upon
him, because it increased his power to comfort his
afflicted brethren. It was a great thing to feel the
warmth of God's love permeating his own heart,
and the benediction of God's peace settling upon his
own soul ; but the joy of this experience was almost
forgotten in the greater gladness of knowing that he
had gained new power for comforting and cheering
the hearts of his fellow-toilers and fellow-sufferers.
O Paul, noble, Christlike Paul ! there is no place in
human admiration and affection that is too high
for thee. Thou didst call thyself "less than the
least of all Saints," but we are persuaded that of all
the jeweled crowns in heaven, thine is the brightest,
save one.
Peter, overcome by fear, denied his Lord, and
thus brought upon himself disgrace and anguish.
Foreseeing that he would repent and be forgiven,
Jesus said to him, " When thou art converted,
strengthen thy brethren." By this he meant that

RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 133
Peter, in going through the pangs of remorse, and
in finding forgiveness for his terrible sin, would
learn lessons that would be very helpful to his
brethren, both in resisting temptation and in recov
ering from sinful mistakes.
Who doubts that Peter did strengthen his brethren
when the joy of salvation was restored to him. I
sometimes imagine that I see him standing in a
group of his fellow-Christians, and that I hear him
saying : " Brethren, let no man among you follow
my example by denying the Master, because such
moral dastardy is a crime against the best being
that ever breathed tlie atmosphere of earth, and be
cause it will bring upon him an indescribable spir
itual darkness and anguish. Save yourselves from
such an affliction, by standing up bravely for your
Lord in the face of every difficulty and clanger.
But if, through the weakness of the flesh, any of
you should, like me, fail and fall away, do not de
spair ; do not follow the example of poor Judas ; do
not let your remorse drive you to madness and self-
destruction ; but remember that the Master still
loves you and intercedes for you, and that if you
will only return to him and fall at his feet, he will
lift you up, enfold you in the arms of his love, be
stow upon you his forgiving grace, and breathe upon
your troubled spirits the benediction of his unspeak
able peace."

134 RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS
David fell, and when he fell, darkness covered
him and peace forsook him. But he still believed
in God's recovering mercy, and in the midst of his
deepest distress, he prayed : " Restore unto me the
joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free
Spirit; then will I teach transgressors thy ways,
and sinners shall be converted unto thee."
Brethren, in prayerfully studying the condition
of this church, I have reached this conclusion :
Many of you, through worldliness and neglect of
duty, have lost "the blessedness you knew when
first you saw the Lord." You are walking in dark
ness ; you are without comfort, without peace ; the
spirit of prayer has forsaken you ; your service of
God is the deadest formality ; you get out of it no
inspiration, no help. In this condition you are
clogging the wheels of Zion ; you are making it
almost impossible for the church to move forward
and win a victory for God. Not until you follow
the example of David and Peter by retracing your
steps, not until you have felt the pangs of a godly
sorrow for your sins, not until you have sought and
found forgiveness, and God has restored to you the
joy of salvation, can this church make a move to
wards the enemies of Christ with any reasonable
hope of success. Not until then can she teach trans
gressors the way of truth and life, not until then
will God use her for the conversion of sinners.

RECEIVING DIVINE BLESSINGS 135
An awful responsibility is upon you. If you can
be made to feel it, and can be persuaded to put
yourselves once more in touch with God, and in the
line of Christian rectitude and duty, there is in re
serve for us a victory that will make gladness
throughout all the camp of Israel on earth, and pro
voke even the glorified hosts of heaven to lift up
their myriad voices in higher and sweeter notes of
praise !

X
INGERSOLLAND HIS INFIDELITY1

"The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. . .
The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart." Ps.
19 : 7, 8.
Mr. Ingersoll is a very successful trimmer.
He would not say in this latitude what he has said
in other regions of our country. Down here in the
South, where Christian sentiment prevails, he is
simply an agnostic, and refrains from much of the
blasphemous ribaldry that has characterized his ut
terances in some sections of the North. Among the
infidel Germans of the Northwest he is more than
an agnostic, he is an atheist, unsparing in his denun
ciations of everything sacred to the Christian.
The fact that this man is heard by multitudes of
people, and that some have had the faith of their
childhood disturbed and even uprooted by his as
saults upon Christianity, is a sufficient warrant for
a brief discussion of some of his views.
Mr. Ingersoll assumes that belief in God is in-
1 Delivered as a reply to Ingersoll' s lecture, in Nashville, on
"Why Am I an Agnostic?"
136

ingersoll and his infidelity 137
compatible with reason, and that men who cherish
this belief are weak and foolish. The Bible de
clares that " the fool hath said in his heart, there is
no God," and it requires only a moderate exercise
of our reason to prove this true, and that Mr. Inger
soll, and not the believer in God, is the fool.
Every rational man must and does admit the
eternal existence of something. If Mr. Ingersoll
denies that the universe came from something he is
the only infidel who does. Only a lunatic or an
idiot Avould say that something came from nothing.
It is incontrovertibly and everlastingly true that
" from nothing nothing comes." This being true,
we are compelled to believe that something has
always existed, and that in that eternal something
which antedates all other things, the universe had
its origin. If Mr. Ingersoll is not at variance
with all other infidels he accepts this conclusion.
What is that something which antedates all other
things, and from which all other things derive their
existence ? The Bible calls it God, but Mr. Spen
cer has named it the " unknown and unknowable."
The name is not essential ; but whether you call it
protoplasm, or fire-mist, or force, or the unknown
and unknowable, or God, you must admit that it is
eternal, and that out of it all other things have come
into existence.
If that original something is the parent of all

138 ingersoll and his infidelity
other things, it has intelligence. If that original
something is protoplasm, it is thinking protoplasm.
If it is fire-mist, it is intelligent fire-mist. If it is
force, it is rational force.
Why do I say this ? Because it is a self-evident
truth that a thing can communicate only what it
possesses. Was that first thing protoplasm ? Then
you and I came from it, and if you and I are intel
ligent beings there is intelligence in protoplasm. If
it has intelligence, it is supreme intelligence, for there
is nothing anterior or superior to it.
What was the origin of matter ? Was it created ?
If it was, there must be a personal creator, because
a creation without a creator is unthinkable. If you
say that matter was not created but has always ex
isted, I will ask you another question, What was
the origin of motion ? Was it created ? If it was,
there must be a personal creator, because there can
not be a creation without a creator.
If you say that motion is eternal, that it never
had a beginning, I will ask you a third question,
What is the origin of thought ? Is it a creation ?
If it is, there is a personal creator. If it is not a
creation and has existed from all eternity, then we
are compelled to admit the existence of an eternal
thinking being.
I challenge this infidel teacher, who comes to en
lighten the benighted minds of our people for a con-

ingersoll and his infidelity 139
sideration of five hundred dollars a night, to inject
into his next performance an answer to this ar
gument. In common with other materialists, Mr. Ingersoll
claims that human life is transmitted. I will not
controvert that proposition. But let him tell us
from what the first man's life was transmitted.
Perhaps he would answer, "From the monkey."
If that is true, from what was the monkey's life
transmitted? Perhaps he would answer, "From
the alligator." If that is true, from what was the
alligator's life transmitted ? From the lizard. Then
from what was the lizard's life transmitted ? Thus
we may go back and back until we come to proto
plasm. What a relief to men like Ingersoll if the human
mind would stop there. But it will not stop there.
No sooner has the infidel declared that human life
had its origin in protoplasm than I, and all other
men who think, want to know where protoplasm
got its life.
Who then is the fool? The man who believes in
a personal creator or the man who goes through the
world selling his atheism for a consideration of five
hundred dollars a night?
In one of his lectures Mr. Ingersoll declares that
the miracles of the Bible are frauds — the mere tricks
of men who made their living by imposing upon

140 INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY
human ignorance and credulity. He claims that
Jesus Christ was " only a sleight-of-hand man,"
and that he gained his pre-eminence among his
associates only by his superior skill in feats of leger
demain. No man who admits that the universe is a creation
and that it came from the hands of a personal crea
tor, can with any show of reason deny the possibility
of miracles. To declare that a miracle is an im
possibility is equivalent to saying that God is inca
pable of performing a miracle. It is unmitigated
folly to assume that God cannot do anything that
he chooses to do.
If it is admitted that God has performed one
miracle, it is perfectly compatible with sound rea
soning to believe that he has performed other mira
cles. " In the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth." " The worlds were made by the
word of God." The fact here recorded was a mira
cle. Creation, whether by evolution or otherwise,
was a miracle* The creation of the germ or the
germs out of which the whole physical universe has
grown, was a miraculous work, because it brought
into existence something at a period when nothing
existed but the divine Creator.
Did Christ perform miracles? Nicodemus be
lieved that he did, for he went to him in person and
said, " No man can do these miracles which thou

INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 141
doest, except God be with him." Nicodemus was a
member of the great ecclesiastical high court of the
Jews, a man of intelligence and learning, and one
not liable to become the victim of a base trickster.
The evangelists tell us that Jesus performed
miracles ; but Mr. Ingersoll says no one knows
who wrote the four Gospels. When he says this he
convicts himself either of stupidity or dishonesty.
He does not doubt that John Milton wrote " Para
dise Lost," or that Newton wrote " The Principia,"
or that Tom Paine wrote the "Age of Reason."
Why does he not doubt it? Because he accepts the
testimony of history and tradition.
Our belief that the Gospels were written by Mat
thew, Mark, Luke, and John rests upon the same
kind of evidence. The testimony which sustains
the authenticity of these sacred books is not only of
the same kind that Mr. Ingersoll accepts with refer
ence to " Paradise Lost," " The Principia," and the
" Age of Reason," but it is much more voluminous
and conclusive, because the Gospels have occupied a
much larger space in the thought of the world, and
have been subjected to a more thorough investiga
tion. When Mr. Ingersoll says that no one knows who
wrote the four Gospels, he charges all the earliest
writers of the Christian era who quoted from these
books, believing them to be the works of Matthew,

142 INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY
Mark, Luke, and John, with disgraceful ignorance
and stupid credulity.
Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian hated Christianity
as bitterly as he, but their writings abound in quota
tions from the New Testament, and they never ques
tioned its authenticity. They never insinuated in
the remotest degree that Christians of their day
were mistaken as to the authorship of the four Gos
pels or any other part of the New Testament.
I defy this infidel traducer to furnish one jot or
tittle of evidence to show that any opponent of
Christianity, during the first four centuries after
Christ, ever questioned the genuineness of the New
Testament, or expressed even a doubt as to the hon
esty of the men who claimed to be eyewitnesses of
the miracles which they recorded.
Mr. Ingersoll says that if Jesus had wrought the
miracles which it is said he performed, the Jews
would not have crucified him. This is a specimen
of his ignorance of history. Every student of the
Bible knows that the Jews did not deny the reality
of the miracles of Jesus, but claimed that he worked
these miracles through Satanic power.
Mr. Ingersoll does not deny that Christ claimed
to perform miracles, but declares that he was a de
ceiver, a sleight-of-hand man, a peripatetic trickster,
who bamboozled the ignorant and unsuspecting rab
ble that followed him.

INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 143
What respect can any rational man have for such
an indictment ? Can you believe that the man who
taught the purest morality ever given to the world,
and who lived the most benevolent life that men
ever witnessed, and who died to bear testimony to
what he taught, was a mere wandering vendor of
tricks which he had learned from Egyptian magi
cians? No, you cannot believe it. Neither does
Mr. Ingersoll believe it. Why then does he say it ?
Ask the ticket man when you go to purchase your
next admission to his lecture.
When Mr. Ingersoll says that " the Bible is the
most infamous book in the universe," he means,
evidently, that of all the books in the universe, its
standard of ethics is the lowest. Is there any basis
of reason or fact for this accusation ? What is the
morality of the Bible ? We may learn what it is,
not by listening to a man who gets five hundred
dollars a night for misrepresenting the Bible, but
by going directly to the book itself.
Here are some samples of Bible ethics. " Honor
thy father and thy mother." " Children, obey your
parents." "Thou shalt not commit adultery."
" Thou shalt not steal." " Thou shalt not murder."
" Thou shalt not bear false witness." " Love thy
neighbor as thyself." " As ye have opportunity do
good unto all men." " As ye would that men
should do unto yoii, do ye even so to them."

144 INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY
"Love your enemies." "Above all things have
fervent charity." " See that none render evil for
evil unto any man." " If it be possible, as much
as Heth in you, live peaceably with all men."
" Keep thyself pure." " Shun the very appear
ance of evil."
In these passages we have an epitome of biblical
morality. Is there anything here that will warrant
this man in calling the Bible " the most infamous
book in the universe " ? What manner of man
would Mr. Ingersoll become if he should obey all
of these righteous precepts? A good man? Or
the bad man that he is ?
Jesus Christ, in his incarnate life, was the perfect
embodiment and illustration of the ethics of the
gospel which he preached. What was there in his
life that deserved condemnation from any man ?
Set over against Mr. Ingersoll's reprobation of the
morals of the New Testament the words of Mr.
Lecky, one of the most intellectual and learned
men of mqdern times. In his history of "Euro
pean Morals " he says :
" It was reserved for Christianity to present to
the world an ideal character, which through all the
changes of eighteen centuries has inspired the hearts
of men with impassioned love ; which has shown
itself capable of acting on all nations, ages, tempera
ments, and conditions ; which has not only been the

INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 145
highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incen
tive to its practice, and has exercised so deep an
influence that it may be truly said that the simple
record of his three short years of active life has
done more to regenerate and soften mankind than
all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the ex
hortations of moralists." This is the testimony of
a great scholar and critic, a man whose learning is
as much deeper than Mr. Ingersoll's as mid-ocean
is deeper than the little artificial lake on the grounds
of our late Tennessee Centennial Exposition.
An infallible and universal standard of right and
wrong is an absolute necessity to mankind. There
must be such a standard somewhere. But where is
it ? It is not in ourselves. It is not what we feel,
or think. That would make as many standards as
there are individuals in the world, because no two
human beings feel and think exactly alike.
If every man were a law unto himself, there
would be nothing but social chaos on the earth.
The infallible and universal standard is the morality
of the Bible, the essence of which is expressed in
the Golden Rule, "As ye would that men should
do unto you, do ye even so unto them." Neither
man nor angel can conceive of anything higher and
better than that.
As Mr. Ingersoll does not admit the existence of
God he does not believe in any universal law of

146 INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY
human rectitude. If there is no God, every man
must decide for himself what is right and what is
wrong. This is Mr. Ingersoll's doctrine. He
claims to be the ultimate judge for himself as to
what is good and what is evil. What he commends
is right, and what he condemns is wrong.
This infidel is perfectly consistent with himself
when he says, " I do not believe in the New Testa
ment doctrine of non-resistance." He believes
that a man ought to resist anything that infringes
on his natural liberty, the liberty to do whatever
he desires to do.
Society, in its organized capacity, is ever infring
ing upon man's natural liberties. It demands, as a
consideration for the protection which it gives an
individual, that he surrender his right to do any
thing that he wishes to do. Theoretically, at least,
Ingersoll is an anarchist. He is against all exter
nal government, human or divine.
He is consistent with this doctrine when he de
fends suicjde. He believes that any man who is
tired of life has the right to blow his brains out,
and leave his dependent wife and children to endure
the woes of poverty. Some years ago one of his
disciples poisoned himself, and beside his dead body
was one of Ingersoll's books containing his damna
ble defense of suicide.
But Mr. Ingersoll was strangely inconsistent with

INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 147
himself when he said, " Slavery is a crime that in
cludes all other crimes ; it is the joint product of
the kidnapper, pirate, thief, murderer and hypo
crite." I suppose there is not a man among us who does
not rejoice at the downfall of slavery in this
country, though he may deprecate the methods by
which its overthrow was accomplished. But we
are not prepared to believe that every man in this
republic who owned a slave was a pirate, or a thief,
or a murderer, or a hypocrite. We do not believe
that Patrick Henry, James Madison, Thomas Jeffer
son, and George Washington, were pirates, thieves,
murderers, and hypocrites. We do not believe that
even Mr. Ingersoll's New England's ancestors, the
first slaveholders on American soil, were a combi
nation of pirates, thieves, murderers, and hypocrites.
" There is no God, or if there be one, we cannot
know it. The Bible is a lie ; Jesus Christ was a
sleight-of-hand man ; whatever a man believes to
be right is right ; death is an eternal sleep ; or, if
there be another life, we cannot know it."
This is Mr. Ingersoll's creed. Does any man in
his right mind believe it is better than Christianity ?
Mr. Ingersoll said here : " I hate your religion ; I
hate your God ; while I live I am going to try to
civilize Christians ; I always hated Jehovah, and
used to wish that somebody would kill him."

148 INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY
Does any man, who is not bereft of reason, be
lieve that the universal adoption of such blasphe
mous sentiments would advance the world in virtue,
happiness, and prosperity? Would it reform the
drunkard? Would it make virtuous and useful
men of thieves, bandits, and murderers? Would
it elevate our characters, dignify the objects of our
pursuit, and render us patient and cheerful in ad
versity ?
Would it improve our social condition ? Would
it subdue wrong and establish justice? Would it
enlarge our sympathies, harmonize discordant ele
ments, and bind together the dissevered races of
mankind in the bonds of a great, virtuous, loving,
and happy brotherhood ?
No man, who has mind enough to understand the
influence of principles upon conduct, believes that
the prevalence of Ingersollism would accomplish
these results.
Mr. Ingersoll himself sees in this proposed sub
stitute for Christianity no real benefit to the world.
The only tangible blessing to any one which comes
within the range of his agnostic vision, when he
discusses these questions, is the five hundred dollars
wliich he is to receive for his blasphemous work.
I make no hasty and reckless assertion when I
say that the desire on the part of thousands and
hundreds of thousands of men and women to re-

INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 149
organize society on the basis of Ingersoll's infidelity,
is at the bottom of the evils which now threaten
the existence of this government.
All this unjust legislation in the interest of
monopoly had its origin in the hearts of men who
repudiate moral government and the doctrine of
retribution after death. All these wild anarchistic
methods, which certain elements of the oppressed
classes are adopting for the redress of their griev
ances, are inspired by a belief in the utterances of
Mr. Ingersoll.
Ingersoll may harbor in his breast no revolution
ary purpose. I am inclined to believe that he has
nothing in view beyond the accumulation of money
and the gratification of his mad passion for vulgar
notoriety. But the doctrine which he teaches, fall
ing as it does upon the ears of millions of ignorant
and already dissatisfied people, if not counteracted,
is destined to bring forth an unprecedented harvest
of debauchery, lawlessness, and crime.
Christianity is not an experiment. It has been
tried, and it has not failed. Wherever it has been
taught in its original simplicity and purity, it has
made men better and advanced every interest of
society. As authority upon this subject, every intelligent
person would put James Anthony Froude immeasur
ably above Robert G. Ingersoll. In a recent work

150 INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY
he says, " All that we call modern civilization, in a
sense which deserves the name, is the visible ex
pression of the transforming power of the gospel."
Gladstone, the most colossal man of modern Eng
land, was persistent in declaring that all that is best
in the civilization of this century is traceable di
rectly or indirectly to the gospel of the Man of
Galilee. Bismarck, who was a diligent and devout reader
of the Bible, said that he could not understand
how any one could endure existence unsustained by
a belief in its teachings.
How foolish to turn away from the mature wis
dom of these majestic men to listen to the rhetori
cal vaporings and silly ribaldry of an infidel hire
ling. " The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the
soul." It puts into earthy, corrupt, groveling
human nature a new principle of life. It quickens
and unfetters all the higher and finer faculties of
the human' soul, starts it on a career of noblest
service here, and fits it for an immortality of honor
and blessedness in a life to come. A religion that
does this is surely not "the most infamous thing in
the universe." A God who has given us such a
religion does not deserve to be " hated and killed."
Run a parallel between the life of Robert Inger
soll, a hired defamer of the Christian's God and

INGERSOLL AND HIS INFIDELITY 151
Saviour, and the life of Florence Nightingale, who,
animated by the spirit of him who "went about
doing good," devoted every capacity and energy of
her existence to the relief of human suffering, and
went to her grave laden with the benedictions of a
grateful world. Make the comparison and you will
see something of the infinite superiority of the gos
pel of love and immortality over the gospel of dirt
and suicide.

XI
WHAT IS SIN?

"Sin is the transgression of the law." 1 John 3 : 4.
Here we have God's definition of sin. This is
what the human conscience everywhere declares it
to be. This is what human history proves it to be.
Men have made many fruitless efforts to overthrow
the doctrine that sin is a violation of divine law.
Some have tried to maintain the foolish philosophy
which says that there are two Gods ; that sin is the
offspring of one and virtue of the other ; that good
and evil are essential to each other, and must there
fore exist forever. Other men have belabored them
selves to prove that sin is inherent in matter, and
therefore is physical ; that it belongs entirely to the
body ; that it is strong when the body is strong, and
weak when the body is weak, and that the soul is in
no degree responsible for it.
If either of these philosophies be true, it is worse
than folly in us to be concerned about sin. If we
are not responsible for it, and it is something en
tirely beyond our control, then our guilt is only im-
152

WHAT IS SIN? 153
aginary, and the men whom we are wont to call
felons are as innocent as angels of light.
But if the Bible is true, and the human con
science does not lie, sin is the transgression of divine
law ; and if it is the transgression of divine law, to
commit sin is to incur guilt, and all who are guilty
before God are under sentence of death.
" Sin is the transgression of the law." Paul is
here speaking of God's moral law, a law written on
the human constitution and clearly revealed in the
sacred Scriptures. This law forbids us to do certain
things, and lays uj>on us the obligation to do certain
other things.
To reach some conception of your guilt you have
only to take the Ten Commandments as interpreted
by Christ's Sermon on the Mount, and in the light
of them ask yourself this question : " How often
have I done what is here forbidden and failed to do
what is here required of me ? " You cannot recall
one transgression in a thousand, and yet you can re
member enough to keep you counting for the rest of
your life.
Why do men violate the law of God ? Is not
that law wise and just and good ? Does not obe
dience to it render human character beautiful and
lovely ? Should not every human being covet a life
in harmony with the perfect law of God ?
Is not virtue more desirable than vice? Should

154 WHAT IS SIN?
not every man desire moral cleanness? Is there
anything more beautiful than innocence ? How
bewitchingly lovely is a young life from which
the morning dew of purity has not been brushed
away by the hand of corruption ! If conformity to
divine law is the very essence of good character, and
makes life peaceful, happy, and luminous, why do
men despise and violate that law ?
Sin, as seen in its last analysis, is selfishness. Any
revolt against God, any violation of his holy law, is
simply the assertion of self, the determination to do
what we like to do and not what we ought to do.
What is behind murder ? What begets murder ?
Nothing but a selfish passion that must be gratified,
even at the cost of a human life and the destruction
of a human home. What is theft? It is self, ap
propriating what does not belong to it. What is
lying? It is self, seeking to mislead for its own
advantage. What is drunkenness? It is brutal
selfhood feeding its own vile passions. What is
the drunkard-maker? The incarnation of a selfish
ambition. To gratify his greed of gain he would
wreck a human life, corrupt a human soul, drown a
peaceful home in sorrow, multiply widows and or
phans, debauch a city, destroy a nation, and turn
paradise into pandemonium.
To the selfish man the world is nothing but
a great mirror, in which he sees nothing but a

WHAT IS SIN? 155
million-fold reflection of himself. Nothing interests
him but the sound of his own name, the cry of his
own lust, and the sight of his own possessions.
All sin, in its ultimate analysis, is the sin of self.
You break God's law only because you want to dis
place it with a law of your own. You reject the
God of the universe only because you want to be a
god unto yourself.
What are the fruits of sin ? We shall never ab
hor sin as it deserves to be abhorred until we have
an intelligent conception of the terrible mischief of it.
Sin makes us debtors to divine justice. To me
debt is one of the ugliest words in the English
language. When I was a little boy my father came
home from business one day, sat down by my mother,
and uttered the most distressful moans I had ever
heard. When she asked for an explanation of his
conduct, he said, " My dear wife, I am in debt." I
was too young to know the meaning of the word,
but supposed it to indicate some very serious bodily
ailment that required the immediate attention of the
family physician.
Not many months after this incident, my father
returned from market with the proceeds of his cot
ton crop and, taking a number of papers from one
pocket and a roll of money from another, he said
to my mother, in a voice that was simply jubilant,
" Wife, I'm out of debt." I did not know what

156 WHAT IS SIN?
that was, but supposing it to be some great deliver
ance, I ran as fast as my little feet could take me
to every member of the household, exclaiming at
the top of my voice, " Father's out of debt, father's
out of debt."
Oh, the moaning and groaning of the world to
day over debts — debts that were so easy to make,
but which are now so hard to pay !
Young man, I solemnly warn you against the
ruinous folly of burdening yourself with debts. I
beseech you to record a vow that you will never
put upon yourself this harrowing affliction. If you
have an income of only a hundred dollars a year,
live within it. Live within it, if you have to sleep
in a garret, wear second-hand clothing, and subsist
on bread and water. As you value your own self-
respect and manhood, and the proud satisfaction of
standing before the world and saying, " I owe no
man anything," give a wide berth to those who
would persuade you to live beyond your income.
The bitte*r experiences which we have under the
burden of financial obligations, are but faint inti
mations of the incomparably deeper misery of con
scious indebtedness to divine justice. That is a
debt we can never pay. That is a debt which
accumulates daily and hourly, and with fearful
rapidity. See if you can arrive at any definite con
ception of its present proportions. Calculate the

WHAT IS SIN? 157
indebtedness incurred by the commission of just one
sin. But how can you calculate it without being
able to measure the majesty and holiness of God's
law, and the endless consequences of your sin upon
the order and happiness of God's universe? If
you had the exact data with which to begin, if
you knew the indebtedness incurred by one trans
gression, and the whole number of your transgres
sions, it would require the rest of your life to cal
culate your present indebtedness to God's justice.
My friend, what you owe must be paid, even to
the uttermost farthing, or the penalty will be in
flicted upon you. The magnitude and awfulness of
that penalty cannot be expressed in the language of
mortals. It is " everlasting destruction from the
presence of the Lord and from the glory of his
power." But no human mind can compass the sig
nificance of these inspired words. If you knew
what Christ suffered in that hour when he turned
his dying eyes to a darkened heaven and cried,
" My God ! My God ! Why hast thou forsaken
me ? " you might measure the agony of a human
soul, banished from the " presence of the Lord and
from the glory of his power " into everlasting dark
ness. Sin not only lays upon us a burden of a debt
which we can never remove, but it fastens upon us
the chains of a bondage from which we can never

158 WHAT IS SIN?
emancipate ourselves. A few years ago I visited a
State prison. As I looked upon the poor creatures
incarcerated there, I tried to fathom their anguish.
I thought of their fruitless sighing for liberty, their
constant yearning for pure air and the gladdening
sunshine, their loathing of the prison food, and
their sense of isolation from everything beautiful
and good.
I went into a cell occupied by a man who was
under sentence of death. The only light that re
lieved the darkness of that cell came through a
little opening in the wall. The air was freighted
with impurity. I looked into the face of that
doomed man, aud read there the record of the ter
rible struggles through which he had passed. His
once stalwart form had wasted to a skeleton ; the
dungeon darkness, the foul air, and the unwhole
some food, added to the woes of conscience and the
pangs of an incurable grief, had sapped the founda
tions of his strength. All that was only a shadow
of the bondage of sin. No chains are so real and
so galling as those whicli bind the guilty soul, and
no darkness is so dense and horrible as that whicli
envelops the slave of sin.
O ye who profane God's name and desecrate
God's Sabbath, and ye who deceive and defraud in
business and politics, and ye who frequent bar-rooms,
gambling houses, and other places of uncleanness,

WHAT IS SIN? 159
I am guilty of no extravagance of speech when I
say that ye are the devil's galley slaves. The last
vestige of your freedom is gone. Every day and
hour ye do the bidding of the same taskmaster
whom devils and damned spirits serve. This ter
rible bondage grows worse and worse as the years
come and go. Every day you sink to some lower
depth. Every sin which you commit to-day will
be prolific of greater sins to-morrow. Every act
of uncleanness whets your appetite for something
still more foul and loathsome.
If this is your bondage in the present world,
what must it be in that other world, which is the
dumping-ground for all the filth of God's universe ?
Who can measure the possibilities of a human
soul in a career of depravity where all restraints
upon its devilish passions are removed? What
imagination can depict the horrors of existence in
such a place ? What artist can paint the abomina
tions of that receptacle of all uncleanness, and the
terrors of that gulf of outer darkness, through
which no star will ever float to tell of coming day ?
Another of the baleful fruits of sin, is alienation
from God. The man who is under the dominion of
sin is absolutely without fellowship with God.
A wicked man once said to a Christian minister,
" You may speak to me on any subject but religion."
That man was not an infidel ; his convictions were

160 WHAT IS SIN?
on the side of religion ; but loving sin and serving
Satan, he shrank from contact with that Holy Being
in whose nostrils sin is an intolerable stench.
This is what keeps so many men away from the
house of God. This is why the drunkard, the
gambler, the whoremonger, the forger, the swindler,
the demagogue, the ballot-box stuffer, and the po
litical trader do not come to the Lord's sanctuary.
They have no fellowship with God, and they do not
care to go where they will be reminded of him.
Such alienation from God in this world will ripen
into an everlasting separation.
My impenitent friend, the voice of God to you
to-day is, " Come unto me. Come and abide with
me, and I will be a Father to you, and will bestow
upon you a heritage of everlasting blessedness."
But your response is, " No ; I will not come. De
part from me." By and by there will be a day
when God will cease to invite you, and when he
will turn upon you with words borrowed from
your own lips, "Depart from me." From that
hour between him and you there will be " a great
gulf fixed." Then will come the " horror of great
darkness," and the wail of woe to which no voice of
pity will ever respond.
I have presented a frightful picture of the present
condition of the ungodly man. That picture is not
overdrawn. No mathematician can calculate and

WHAT IS SIN? 161
no figures can express the magnitude of the sinner's
indebtedness to divine justice. Worse than his in
debtedness is the slavery into which he has sold
himself. All this debt and bondage and degrada
tion have so alienated his heart from God that he
will not have God in all his thoughts. What shall
we say to those of whom this is a truthful picture ?
Shall we tell them that they are beyond the orbit of
hope? Shall we tell them that there is no eye to
pity and no arm to save men who have fallen so
low? No, no ! Thanks be to God, it is our great privi
lege and our unspeakable joy to tell them of One
" able also to save them unto the uttermost." God's
infinite mercy has provided for them a great Debt-
payer who is competent to meet all of their obliga
tions to divine law.
What is the significance of such words as these :
" For Christ also hath once suffered for sin, the
just for the unjust"; "he hath made him to be
sin for us who knew no sin " ; " who died for us " ;
" in due time Christ died for the ungodly " ; " while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us " ; " who
his own self bare our sins in his own body on the
tree"? The obvious and unmistakable meaning of these
scriptures is that Jesus Christ became our substitute,
that he took our place under the law of God and met

162 WHAT IS SIN?
all of its demands against us, that by the sacrifice
of himself he paid all of man's indebtedness to eter
nal justice.
Having accomplished all this by his atoning work,
he is now " the end of the law for righteousness to
every one that believeth." Mark the condition —
" to every one that believeth." Christ died for you,
but his death availeth nothing on your behalf until
you believe. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved." " He that believeth on
the Son hath everlasting life," and " He that be
lieveth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath
of God abideth on him."
Lift your eyes to-day to him who sits yonder on
the great white throne of justice and mercy, and
let this be your prayer : " O righteous Judge, my
debt is infinite, and I have nothing with which to
pay even a fraction of it. My plea, my only plea,
is that Jesus paid it all — all the debt I owe." Do
this, and up there where the records are kept, God
will say tg his registering angel, " That man's
account is settled. Let it so appear in the book of
remembrance." But the great salvation revealed to us in Jesus
Christ provides not only for the obliteration of our
debts, but for our freedom also from the love and
power of sin. The same mercy which pays the
debt will bestow the freedom ; the same love that

WHAT IS SIN? 163
saves us from hell will prepare us for heaven.
Every true believer in Jesus Christ has received a
new birth. " If any man be in Christ, he is a new
creature ; old things have passed away, behold, all
things have become new."
When you think of the degradation and wretch
edness from which men are saved, and the dignity,
freedom, purity, happiness, and glory to which they
are lifted by God's great scheme of redemption, can
you doubt the reality of what the Scriptures call
" the joy of salvation " ? Can you wonder that re
deemed men rend the air with shouts of gladness ?
Can you wonder that these Christian sanctuaries re
sound with hosannas and hallelujahs? Can you
wonder that men to whom this great salvation has
come would Soar and touch the heavenly strings
And vie with Gabriel while he sings
In notes almost divine.

XII
LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED
HARLOT

"To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little."
Luke 7 : 47.
One of the greatest of our Lord's discourses was
listened to by a despised outcast. Her reputation
was bad enough, but her character was worse. A
rich Pharisee, who heard the same sermon invited
the Master and his disciples to dine with him, and
the invitation was promptly accepted.
The guilty woman was profoundly stirred by the
Saviour's gracious invitations and promises. All
that was left in her of moral sense was aroused and
active. She was so absorbed in what she had
heard, and her heart was so full of penitence for
sin, and of gratitude to him who had spoken such
merciful words to the sinful and degraded, that
when our Lord and his disciples went into the
Pharisee's house she unconsciously followed them.
When Jesus sat at the table she crawled to his feet,
clasped them with her hands, and bathed them with
164

LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT 165
her tears. Not content with this expression of
gratitude and affection, she took a fragrant oil which
she had been accustomed to use in her wicked voca
tion, and poured it upon the Saviour's feet.
The Pharisee was greatly offended by our Lord's
toleration of this woman's attentions. He said
within himself, " If he were what he professes to
be, he would know who this woman is and would
not allow her to touch him."
It was nothing to this Pharisee that the woman
was penitent, that she had abandoned her unclean
habits, and that her tears were expressive of her
gratitude to him whose merciful words had led her
into a better life. He could see only the fact that
Jesus had violated a conventional regulation which
made it improper for a Jew to be touched by an
impure person.
That Pharisee was a typical character. He was
a representative of a class whose name is legion. I
know men who would be shocked at the sight of a
violation of a church canon, but who would bet on
a horse race without any disturbance of their moral
sensibility. I know men who think I am very pro
fane because I do not lift my hat when I pass a
church that has a cross on its steeple, but whose
consciences give them no trouble when they swindle
the public treasury or buy votes at a political elec
tion. Nothing is more despicable in the eyes of

166 LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT
right-minded men, and nothing more offensive to
God than a merely technical, ceremonial, and con
ventional piety. The Bible gives us the true test
of godliness when it says, "He that doeth right
eousness is righteous."
Jesus explained to the Pharisee the conduct of
this woman. She had been a great sinner, and she
was deeply conscious of the fact. She felt that she
had been the guiltiest of the guilty and the vilest
of the vile. But knowing her sins to be forgiven,
she was overcome with the sense of divine compas
sion and mercy. The pouring out of the aromatic
oil upon the feet of her Redeemer was her heart's
loving tribute to his condescending goodness. She
loved and adored him in proportion to the guilt
which he had removed from her troubled spirit.
From the conduct of this penitent, believing, and
grateful woman, so strongly commended by our
Divine Teacher, we derive lessons of pre-eminent
value. 1. It is «good for any one to have a deep and
painful experience of personal guilt. If a man has
passed through a spiritual struggle which made him
feel the power of evil in his own heart, and revealed
to him not only the hatefulness but the destructive-
ness of sin ; if he has been made to see himself in
the grasp of the mighty Apollyon, and to realize his
nearness to the gates of hell — great will be his

LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT 167
appreciation of God's grace, and great will be his
gratitude and love, when he is conscious that divine
forgiveness and redemption have been bestowed
upon him. No man who has a wrong conception
of sin can have a right conception of grace. Our
appreciation of God's forgiving mercy is in propor
tion to our conviction of sin and our consciousness
of the peril from which we have been saved.
There is great advantage in having a deep con
viction of our depravity and sin. A shallow sense
of personal guilt makes a shallow Christian char
acter. A profound sense of moral turpitude will
produce a corresponding sense of obligation to God.
But just at this point we are in danger of falling
into a serious and fatal error. It is not uncommon
to hear some one say, " I do not feel my sinfulness
so keenly as I ought to feel it. I cannot become a
Christian until I am more deeply convicted. I am
praying and waiting for more remorse of conscience."
Such a person will linger for months and months,
and year after year, on the threshold of the king
dom, hoping and waiting for an experience that will
make him more worthy of God's forgiving and sav
ing grace.
This is a fearful mistake. What is conviction of
sin good for but to help one to turn from sin, and
to seek pardon of him whose prerogative it is to for
give iniquity, transgression, and sin.

168 LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT
If your conviction is deep enough to make you
desire to be a better man, begin with that. Is it
strong enough to take you to God in prayer?
Begin with that. If you honestly desire to live
under the dominion of higher principles, motives,
and feelings, begin with that. Begin with what
you have, and as you go forward in the path of
obedience your moral sense will grow stronger, and
your conviction of sin will become deeper and more
intense. There is not an old Christian in this com
munity who will not tell you that his sense of sin
and his consciousness of personal unworthiness, are
many thousand fathoms deeper to-day than they
were when he began to follow Christ. These ex
periences will intensify as you go on in the divine
life. Your conceptions of the vast accumulation of
personal guilt from which God's mercy has relieved
you, will enlarge, day by day, up to your last hour.
2. Another lesson taught us by the conduct of
this converted harlot is, that pre-eminently wicked
persons, when converted, ought to be pre-eminently
earnest and active Christians. By this remark I do
not mean that those who have been moral from
childhood should not be conspicuously useful Chris
tians. I mean that there are special reasons why
men who have been shamefully and notoriously
wicked, should be zealous workers in the vineyard
of the Lord.

LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT 169
Great wickedness is usually indicative of great
natural strength somewhere. Men given to great
dissipation have strong passions. Cruel and brutal
men have usually marked ability in some direction.
Strength and violent wickedness go together, except
where wickedness takes the form of meanness.
I have great hopes of a man who sometimes gets
on a desperate spree, has a fight or two, and comes
out of his debauch hatless, coatless, bruised, and
bloody. If you can get him from under the damn
ing despotism of drink there are elements of power
in him that may be developed into greatness. Hun
dreds of such men have been lifted out of the pit
and have become heroes for truth and God on a
thousand battlefields. Murphy, Gough, and Sam
Jones, in their earlier years, belonged to the most
degraded and desperate class of drunkards. But
when God broke the fetters of their bondage and set
them free, they became Christian athletes, and the
bravest of leaders in Christian warfare.
But for the man whose depravity sinks into mean
ness there is scarcely any hope. When a man per
mits me to meet pecuniary obligations for him which
he is amply able to provide for, when his selfish
ness culminates in dishonesty and rascality, I con
sider his case about hopeless.
Usually, where there is great power displayed in
wrong-doing there is great power to react from

170 LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT
wrong and to move in the opposite direction. If a
man has been going away from God with gigantic
energy and force, when he turns he ought to come
back with something like the same determination,
vigor, and impetuosity. The world expects one who
has defied and outraged the public conscience to be
brave and enthusiastic as a Christian when he is
converted from the error of his way.
It is very pitiful to see a man who was once
valiant for Satan timid and cowardly in the service
of God. Passion is doing its legitimate work only
when it impels us in the path of duty. Its function
is to go behind conscience, faith, and love, and make
them potential and fruitful. When a notoriously
wicked man is converted we expect him to be note-
worthily good. One whose associations have long
been with bad men is in possession of knowledge
which he ought to use in the cause of truth and vir
tue. If a man has been rescued from drunkenness
he has an experience which qualifies him for being
very serviceable in delivering others from the grasp
of the merciless fiend. He knows the pangs of an
unnatural and direful thirst. He knows what it is
to sell the shelter over the heads of dependent and
helpless children. He knows what it is to mortgage
even the marriage ring, placed upon the finger of a
loving wife as a token and reminder of plighted
vows. He knows what it is to hear a child cry for

LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT 171
bread when there is not a morsel of meal in the
barrel. He knows what it is to feel slimy vipers
crawling over his flesh, and to see a thousand furies
whirling before him. When that man is redeemed
by the grace of God from the despotism of alcohol
he is in possession of a knowledge which qualifies
him to be an apostle of temperance.
Gambling is worse than drunkenness. It sends
its ruthless plowshare through a family until the
wife is a ragged beggar on the streets, and the
daughters sell themselves into disgrace, and the sons
grow up to be thieves and outlaws. The gambler
is unrestrained by any influence. The sweet calls
of love bound back from his iron soul, and all en
dearments and tender ties are consumed in the flame
of his devilish passion.
I rejoice to know that it is possible for a gambler
even to be saved. When man comes out from such a
bondage into the liberty and blessedness of the king
dom of God, who can estimate his power for good ?
What a weight of obligation is upon him ! With
what fervid zeal and supernal eloquence he ought
to plead with men who are the slaves of the same
tyrant that once dragged him through the mire
and filth of degradation and wickedness.
What a pitiable conception some people have of
Christian life ! They think of a Christian as one
who has been cleansed like a garment that has

172 LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT
passed through a laundry. Divinely washed and
polished, he is hung up in the Lord's wardrobe,
where no smoke nor dust of earth can get at him.
Some of our churches are dying from an excess of
these wardrobe Christians.
When a man is called out of a worldly and
wicked life he is called to work; he is called to
war ; he is called to suffer ; he is called to go out
into the lanes and alleys and down into the slums
and rescue the fallen and perishing.
When a man is converted — truly converted — and
looks with an enlightened conscience and a glorified
understanding along his past life, if he has been very
wicked, how wonderful to him must be the mercy of
God ! When the prodigal son, who had squandered
all his substance in riotous living and sunk to com
panionship with the swine, got back to the old home
stead and felt his father's arms entwined about his
neck, and saw the feast that had been prepared for
the celebration of his return, how wonderful to
him were his ¦father's love and goodness.
If you feel that you have been " snatched as a
brand from the burning," it will be pleasing to God
and profitable to you to sit down again and again
and meditate upon the mercy that saved you from a
terrible doom.
I carry in my bosom to-day a secret concerning
a man which, if I should reveal it, would make him,

LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT 173
his children, and his children's children infamous in
the eyes of the world. Of that dark deed 1 know
that he has repented a thousand times. If tears of
blood are possible to mortals they have fallen from
his eyes. God has forgiven him, but he has never
forgiven himself. The recollection of his crime and
the realization of God's pardoning mercy have made
him not only one of the humblest of men, but one
of the most zealous of Christian workers. He feels
that he has been the chief of sinners, that his sal
vation was God's greatest miracle of mercy, and
that nothing less than a martyr's zeal will express
his sense of obligation and the depth of his grati
tude. Shame on the man who is content to be a dwarf
among Christians after he has been a giant among
sinners. Shame on the man who, after having
been a master workman in the kingdom of Satan,
prefers to be a drone and an idler in the kingdom
of Christ.
When a man who has fought under the banner
of sedition and treason has been pardoned for his
crime and restored to the fellowship and confidence
of his fellow-countrymen, so far from being ashamed
of his nation's flag, he delights to stand beneath its
folds, and bear it aloft as the symbol of the security
and freedom which he enjoys.
Are there not some here to-day who, though they

174 LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT
claim to have received pardon from God for their
numberless transgressions of his holy law, are
ashamed to put on the Christian's uniform and
march behind the flag of the divine Captain of their
salvation ? They are ashamed to step before this
multitude and say, " Jesus Christ is my Redeemer
and my Master." They cherish the hope of endless
blessedness up yonder, where the flowers never
wither and the rainbow never fades, but they will
make no public confession of him whose love and
mercy have kindled that precious hope in their sin
ful breasts.
O thou ungrateful recipient of divine mercy,
will you carry your religion as you carry a dark
lantern, and use it as a light only to your own feet?
After a life in which you have done and suffered
nothing for Christ, will he meet you at the gate of
heaven and say, " Well done, good and faithful
servant " ? Do you expect that after such a life is
over, your friends will write upon your tombstone,
" Blessed are ^the dead who die in the Lord ; that
they may rest from their labors ; and their works do
follow them " ?
3. We learn from the example of this converted
harlot how to perpetuate our names and influence
in the world. What we do for ourselves in the
gratification of worldly pride and ambition shall
perish, but what we do for Christ will live forever.

LESSONS FROM A CONVERTED HARLOT 175
Great scientific specialists, who have spent their
lives in the study of Egyptian relics, tell us that
the pyramids are monuments to Egyptian kings.
But who built them ? We do not know. We shall
never know. For whom were they built? We do
not know ; we . shall never know. Their whole
history is an obscuration and a mystery.
There were men in Thebes, Tyre, and Babylon,
who strove for earthly immortality, but they are for
gotten. Not so with the humble woman whose con
duct has furnished the theme for this occasion.
The tears which she shed, and the precious oil
which she poured upon the feet of Jesus, will cause
her name to be held in everlasting remembrance.
There have been more brilliant women than
Florence Nightingale, but none whose memory is
more fragrant, and whose influence for good is more
potent and enduring. Millions of men who had
more genius than Adoniram Judson are forgotten,
but his name and deeds will go down to the latest
generation. Up yonder, in the temple of heaven, the names
of all who have lived, labored, and suffered for
Christ, are inscribed in letters of living light, and
there they will appear, to the eyes of admiring mil
lions, when every monument of earth has perished
back to dust, and the sun himself has grown dim
with age.

XIII
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM

"When they saw the star they rejoiced with exceeding
great joy." Matt. 2 : 10.
Great historical critics and chronological ex
perts assure us that Jesus Christ was not born on
the twenty-fifth day of December, but at some time
during the latter part of the spring. If it were defi
nitely known that he was born on the twenty-fifth
day of December there is nothing in the Scriptures
to warrant the special observance of the day. There
is no more divine authority for the observance of it
than there is for the celebration of St. Patrick's
Day. According to the Scriptures the Sabbath is
the only day which we are required to observe dif
ferently frorn other days. But while we care noth
ing for the day upon which Christ was born, the
fact of his birth and the signs and wonders attend
ing it are worthy of eternal celebration.
If the death of Christ is a great mystery, his birth
is a greater one. A great writer says : "In my
wondering I can scarcely get past his cradle to
wonder at his cross."
176

THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 177
I am not surprised that the birth of such a being
was signalized by supernatural phenomena. If at
his death the earth trembled, the veil of the temple
was rent, and the sun refused to shine, we should
not think it strange that at his birth a star rolled up
the eastern sky and stood over his cradle, while a
great multitude of the heavenly host sang, " Glory
to God in the highest ! "
The magi were the astronomers and astrologers of
Persia and Babylonia. They read the secrets of the
earth in the movements of the stars. They inter
preted the appearance of the new star which they
had seen to mean the birth of a great king, and
some of them set out toward Jerusalem to find him.
They went to that city and inquired for him, but he
was not there. As they departed from Jerusalem,
the star which they had seen in the east went before
them and stood over Bethlehem, Judea, and there
they found the infant Christ.
Some scientists have tried to explain away the
supernatural features of this astronomical wonder.
Kepler attempted this as far back as 1630. He re
ferred to the fact that in the year when our Lord
was born there were three conjunctions of the planets
Jupiter and Saturn. The first occurred in May,
the second in October, and the third in November.
He thinks that the astrology-loving magi may have
connected these conjunctions of the planets with the

178 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM
birth of a Jewish king. He supposes that after the
May conjunction they set out on their journey to Je
rusalem, and when they reached that city they saw
the October or November conjunction, either of
which, at certain hours, would have been in the di
rection of Bethlehem.
Dr. John A. Broadus, in his great commentary
on Matthew, disposes of Kepler's theory by simply
reminding us that the Greek word here is aster, a star,
and not astron, a group of stars, and that the two
planets could not have had the appearance of a
single star, because they were never nearer to each
other than one degree, a distance which is equal to
twice the diameter of the moon.
Luteroth attempts to get rid of the miracle by
saying that there are variable stars — stars which,
after being invisible for a long time, reappear, and
that such a disappearing and reappearing star was
probably seen by the magi. This theory is irrec
oncilable with the words of the Scriptures, "The
star went before them till it came and stood over
where the young child was."
If a natural star went before or in advance of the
magi from Jerusalem it was certainly in advance of
them when they reached Bethlehem. The language
of the sacred historian is, that " the star stood over
where the young child was." If we believe this
statement we are compelled to believe that the star

THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 179
and its movements through the heavens constituted
a miracle, and that God wrought such a miracle to
emphasize the dignity and divinity of the character
and mission of the child Jesus.
When the magi saw the star going before them
toward Bethlehem, "they rejoiced with exceeding
great joy." As astronomers they were happy over
a phenomenon which marked an era in the progress
of their science. They rejoiced because they be
lieved that they were about to witness the fulfill
ment of the prophecies which they had made in
their own country when they first saw this new lu
minary in the heavens.
It is recorded that when they found the child
Jesus " they worshiped him." Evidently they did
not worship him as a divine being, because they had
then no true conception of his character and mis
sion. They did homage to him as an infant king —
as one who was destined to wield a mighty scepter
and exert a commanding influence upon surrounding
kingdoms. If those heathen astrologers, with their crude
ideas of the mission of this wonderful child, rejoiced
over his advent, how much greater should be our
joy, knowing him to be the long-promised Messiah,
the Divine Redeemer of sinful and lost humanity,
and the Almighty Ruler of a spiritual kingdom
against which the gates of hell shall not prevail.

180 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM
That miraculous luminary which guided the magi
to the manger was symbolic of the exalted mission
of him whose advent it announced. In the Scrip
tures he is called " the star that should come out of
Jacob," and also " the bright and morning star."
There is nothing that we contemplate with more
curiosity and wonder than a star shining in the far
away depths of ether. The person who wrote —
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are ;
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky,
expressed something deeper than the thought of a
child. The greatest astronomer of this age, when
looking through the mightiest telescope upon one of
those distant orbs, can scarcely refrain from ex
claiming, in the language of the child song, " How
I wonder what you are ! " The more he beholds it,
studies it, measures it, the more the wonder grows.
An old *prophet who foresaw the advent of the
Messiah said, "His name shall be called Wonder
ful." In our spiritual infancy we marveled at the
wisdom of Jesus, and at every act that he per
formed in his great drama of redemption. We
were amazed at his gentleness, meekness, forbear
ance, condescension, goodness, and mercy. After
years of meditation upon these things, we realize

THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 181
that they have grown a thousand-fold more wonder
ful to our spiritual eyes.
That little fixed star shining off yonder in the
depths of space is an object of wonder, but if you
should take wings and fly a few thousand times the
distance of the earth from the sun nearer to it, how
much greater it would seem to be than it now
appears. There you could tarry and spend a life
time in studying features of it you never saw before.
But suppose you were a million times that distance
nearer to it than now, how would it impress you ?
You would be so overwhelmed with the vastness
and glory of it, that all earlier conceptions of it
would vanish from your mind.
As we " grow in grace and in the knowledge of
our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ," he is magni
fied before our spiritual vision. The nearer we get
to him by faith and love and fellowship, the more
immeasurable and ineffable to our souls are the
heights and depths of his adorable perfections.
When Paul was in the flesh he was wont to write
about the length and breadth and depth of the love
of Christ. I wonder what he would write now,
after a residence of eighteen hundred years in
heaven ? In these earthly sanctuaries we listen with
rapturous appreciation to the music of the old mas
ters which celebrates the birth of Jesus ; but who
can conceive of the higher heights of song into

182 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM
which their music-loving spirits soar to-day, as they
stand in the immediate presence of the glorified
Christ and look back to that advent scene in the
manger of Bethlehem ?
Jesus is compared to a star because he is the
guide of his people. Some years ago, while on a
hunting expedition with some friends, night over
took us in the depths of a pathless wilderness. We
were lost, and the experience was an exceedingly
sad one. After discussing our situation for some
time, the leader of our party said, "Look for the
north star." We did look for it, and soon found
it ; and with that for our guide, we made our way
out of the wilderness to the point from which
we had started. How many a storm-tossed mariner
has blessed God for the polar star ! Before the
invention of the compass, how many a vessel,
guided by that star, shunned the hidden rocks and
dangerous coasts, outrode the tempest, and came
safely into port.
In the moral and spiritual world Christ is the
infallible guide. To follow him is to walk in paths
of pleasantness and peace. To be guided by him
is to escape the wrath to come, to live in fellowship
with God, and to secure for ourselves an eternal
heritage of blessedness beyond the tomb. To
make his will the law of our lives, is to attain to
the noblest manhood, to enrich the generation in

THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 183
which we live, and to leave behind us a name and
an influence that shall descend as a precious legacy
to coming generations.
Christ taught certain great ethical principles
which should underlie all political government.
Any nation whose government disregards these
principles will sooner or later disintegrate and per
ish. That the government of this country is drift
ing farther and farther away from the eternal laws
of rectitude embodied in Christ's Sermon on the
Mount, is evident to every observant and thought
ful man among us. The supreme question with the
average American legislator is not, What is right ?
but, What is expedient? In his political creed
there is no place for the Ten Commandments and
the Golden Rule.
To the guilty soul, conscious of its peril and
wrestling with the question, " What must I do to
be saved ? " Christ is the only infallible guide.
He is " the Way, the Truth, and the Life." That is
a truth as old as the hills; but to those of you
who know it by actual experience it is eternally new
and precious. Oh, where shall rest be found,
Best for the weary soul ?
Some of you remember Avhen these words ex
pressed the profoundest longing of your being.

184 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM
You remember when you wandered everywhere in
search of spiritual peace, and did not find it. You
looked for it in science ; it was not there. You
looked for it amid the mazes of human philosophy ;
it was not there. You looked for it in the beauti
ful, in music and painting, in landscape loveliness
and sunset halos ; it was not there. You turned
your eyes within and looked for it in your own
ruined nature ; it was not there.
When you were on the verge of despair, when
neither light nor comfort came from any source,
and you felt that you were of all men most miser
able, you heard through some messenger of God
the words of the pitying Christ : " Come unto me,
all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest."
You hearkened to his voice ; you came into his
presence weary, and worn, and sad, and looking up
into his face with aspirations which your own poor
words could not express, you simply said, " Lord,
help me," aryd in response to this plea, the blessed
Saviour looked upon you, and there came into your
life, for the first time, the light and bliss for which
you sighed.
Christ is called the Morning Star because he is
the forerunner of peace and joy. He is like the
orb which heralded to the wise men of the East his
own coming into the world.

THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 185
My friend, has Christ come to you ? If he has,
put on the garment of praise and lift up your voice
in a song of triumph, because his coming means
cleansing, pardon, freedom, resurrection, ascension,
coronation, and everlasting life in that better kind
where " eternal day excludes the night and pleas
ures banish pain."
Has he come to your family ? Has he bestowed
upon your sons and daughters tlie spirit of adop
tion ? If he has, domestic purity, tranquillity, and
happiness here and everlasting reunion in " the
land that is fairer than day," shall be the portion of
your cup.
When Jesus was born the angels sang, " On
earth peace, good will toward men." That was a
prophecy of the glory that shall be revealed in the
latter day, when all nations shall bow before him ;
when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together,
when wars shall cease from pole to pole, and every
man shall love his neighbor as himself.
In most of us, Christmas will serve to revive
many tender memories, memories that will " bring
the light of other days around us." It is a time
when tears will come even amid scenes of gayety
and mirth. Our eyes fall upon some object in the
household which reminds us of loved ones vanished
out of sight. It may be a picture on the wall ; it
may be a book ; it may be an old family clock ; it

186 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM
may be our mother's chair. Long live the name of
that gifted woman who wrote "The Old Arm
Chair": I love it, I love it, and who shall dare
To chide me, for loving the old arm chair ?
I've treasured it long as a sainted prize,
I've bedewed it with tears and embalmed it with sighs.
'Tis bound by a thousand bands to my heart ;
Not a tie will break, not a link will start.
Would you learn the spell ? A mother sat there ;
And a sacred thing is that old arm chair.
In childhood's hour I lingered near
The hallowed seat with list'ning ear ;
And the gentle words that mother would give,
To fit me to die and teach me to live !
She told me that shame would never betide,
With truth for my creed and God for my guide ;
She taught me to lisp my earliest prayer,
As I knelt beside that old arm chair.
I sat and watched her many a day,
When her eyes were dim and her locks were gray ;
And I almost worshiped her when she smiled,
And turned from the Bible to bless her child.
Years rolled on, but at last one sped —
My idol was shattered — my earth-star fled ;
I learned how much the heart can bear,
When I saw her die in that old arm chair.
'Tis past ! 'Tis past ! But I gaze on it now,
With quivering breath and throbbing brow ;
'Twas there she nursed me ; 'twas there she died ;
And memory flows with a lava tide.

THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 187
Say it is folly and deem me weak,
While the scalding tears run down my cheek ;
But I love it, I love it, and cannot tear
My soul from my mother's old arm chair.
It may not be your mother's chair, but your
father's Bible, that has turned your thoughts back
ward to the old homestead and the scenes of your
childhood. That old faded book, from which he
was wont to read the sweet promises of God ere he
bowed his knees to commend his household to the
Lord's guiding and keeping care, will be to you the
most precious of all the books. That book was the
companion of your father's best and holiest hours.
It was that which made him the saintly man he
was. As his steps tottered in the advancing pil
grimage of life, and his eyes grew dim with age,
dearer and dearer to him were the well-worn pages
of that ancient book. One morning, just as the
stars were fading into the dawn of a beautiful
and serene Sabbath, the aged pilgrim passed on
beyond the stars and beyond the morning, and en
tered into " the rest that remaineth to the people
of God."
But, beloved, when we have looked back and
shed tears of affection for the dear ones gone from
the circle of home, let us look forward and upward,
where he whose birth we celebrate to-day has gone
to prepare for us a resting-place, a place

188 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM
Where those who meet shall part no more,
And those long parted meet again.
Let us look above to the realm where the rain
bow never fadeth, where the flowers never wither,
where the fountains never cease to flow, and where
beauty smiles eternally, and pleasure never dies.

XIV
THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE
BAPTIST

"Among them that are born of women there hath not
risen a greater than John the Baptist." Matt. 11 : 11.
The wisest man on earth is liable to mislead us
in estimating the character and worth of another ;
but Jesus Christ, who was too wise to err and too
holy to deceive, could not mislead us. He has
placed John the Baptist on the loftiest pinnacle of
human greatness. Every well-meaning and virtuous
person to whom I speak to-day aspires to greatness ;
but your aspirations are worthless unless you have
right conceptions of greatness. How blest we are
in having before us on these sacred pages a model
of greatness which has the unqualified endorsement
of the highest wisdom of the universe !
Let us bring to the study of this great man the
inspiration of a virtuous ambition. Let us see if
there was not something in him which we may re
produce in ourselves. Let us at least determine to
so truly comprehend this divinely approved model
189

190 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST
that hereafter we may know greatness when we
see it.
In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, when the
universal Jewish heart was aflame with hatred of
Roman tyranny and with desire of deliverance from
it, when the voice of no living prophet had been heard
during a period of four hundred and fifty years, when
religion existed only in forms that were as dead as
the grave, when the despotism and cruelty of civil
governors were equaled only by the hypocrisies and
vices of the priests of the temple and synagogue,
just six months before the manifestation of the
Saviour of the world, this strange, stalwart preacher
came forth from a mountain wilderness, and in a
voice that vibrated the air like the blast of a brazen
trumpet, exclaimed, "Repent ye, for the kingdom
of heaven is at hand."
Let us consider first the essential elements of
John's greatness. He was great in everything
which enters into real manhood.
Physically he had the vitality, vigor, and strength
of an athlete. He had kept himself as pure as the
air he breathed. His manly form was untouched
by vice. He knew not the taste of any food which
men call luxury. His great iron will was master of
every appetite and impulse of his animal nature.
He had spent years in developing his physical con
stitution under the most favorable conditions. He

THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 191
had strengthened his limbs and hardened his mus
cles by climbing steep and rugged mountains. He
had expanded his lungs and enriched his blood by
inhaling freely the purest mountain atmosphere.
He had disciplined his voice until it was deep as
distant thunder and shrill and clear as the bugle's
blast. To a man who is called to lead in any great
reformation, nothing is more essential than a physi
cal constitution of exceptional strength and endur
ance. He needs it. for self-protection when some
ruffian opposes his argument with a club. Without
it he is in danger of prostration and collapse at times
when his presence and voice are most needed.
What would have become of that great reforma
tion immediately preceding the manifestation of
Christ if its success had depended upon a man of
ordinary physical capacity? In that mighty relig
ious movement which convulsed and subdued all
"Jerusalem, Judea, and the region round about
Jordan," there was but one person to preach and
baptize. Who but a man of John's bodily strength
and toughness could have endured the strain ? Oh,
that there were more muscularity in the manhood
of the Christian ministry of our day !
John was intellectually great. Nature endowed
him with faculties which, when developed, were ca
pable of gigantic feats. It is apparent that his
mind was superbly disciplined and stored with

192 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST
knowledge. He had evidently acquired all the
learning of the most cultured classes of the Jews.
The whole history of Israel, and the wisdom of her
patriarchs, rulers, and prophets were as familiar to
him as the alphabet of the language he spoke.
He had spent not less than twenty-five years in
preparing himself for a ministry that lasted but
little more than six months. The greatest work of
every man who truly enriches the world is his prepa
ration for service. If I had only seven days more
of life I would spend six of them in study and
prayer and the other in preaching the everlasting
gospel. In God's vineyard it is not the amount of
labor performed by his servants, but the quality of
it that tells upon the characters and destinies of
men. To such knowledge as John had acquired from
communion with books he added the fruits of many
years of original thinking. Under the stimulus of
the inspiring scenery about him and the electrify
ing grandeur of the sacred and momentous mission
for which he was fitting himself, his naturally great
mind penetrated and mastered problems untouched
by any of his illustrious predecessors. I suppose it
was his unrivaled originality of thought and speech
that Jesus referred to when he said that John was
" more than a prophet."
He was great in tender, generous, and noble

THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 193
affections. In some of the old paintings he has the
appearance of a wild, fierce, vindictive, selfish, and
savage man. This conception is grossly erroneous
and unjust. While he had the courage of a lion, he
was as tender as a woman. Unconquerable and un
yielding in his purposes, he was also as humble and
teachable as a child. In the zenith of his power
and fame we hear him speaking of One to come
after him the latchet of whose shoes he was un
worthy to unloose.
He was great in his spiritual development. He
endured and labored " as seeing him who is invisi
ble." To him God was an ever-present reality. He
saw him in all the shifting panorama of earth and
sky. He heard his voice in the roaring wrath of
every passing storm and in the cheerful notes of
every singing bird. He felt his power in the shock
of every earthquake and in every quiet pulsation of
his own heart. Disciplined into the most exquisite
sensibility to spiritual things, he recognized the
presence of the Saviour at the Jordan before his
natural eyes had beheld him. You remember that
he said to the multitude gathered there, "There
standeth one among you, whom ye know not."
To these attributes and attainments of his physical,
intellectual, and spiritual nature were superadded in
a pre-eminent degree, the influences of the Holy
Spirit. His whole spiritual being was divinely in-

194 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST
habited, divinely illumined, and divinely empowered.
This gave the crowning glory to his manhood. It
was this that enabled him to come to his difficult
work with more than the power and spirit of Elijah.
John the Baptist was a man, in the highest sense,
before he was a preacher. This is God's order, and
our disregard of it has let into the pulpit thousands
of ecclesiastical parvenus, dudes, and dead-beats.
You cannot build a palace out of straw. You
cannot paint a great and enduring picture with mud.
You cannot develop a toad into a nightingale, nor a
snail into a race horse. It takes something more
than a mere human biped to make a jurist, or a
statesman, or a preacher. It takes a man. That
creature on the bench who like necessity knows no
law, or who, if he knows it, is morally incapable of
an impartial administration of it, is not a judge.
Why ? Because he is not a man. That individual
who goes to the ballot box and votes for what he
knows to be an unpatriotic and unrighteous measure,
is not an American citizen. Why? Because he is
not a man. He is a mere' chattel that is always
ready to be put on the market and sold.
That something up there in the pulpit, in clerical
attire of the most approved and conventional pat
tern, that mild-mannered, soft-toned, and timid
creature, who straddles every question that agitates
the community and who makes no issue with the

THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 195
forces of evil, is not a preacher. He is no mouth
piece for God. Why ? Because he is destitute of
the most essential elements of true manhood. He
is a mere pulpit automaton or weathercock, whose
movements are directed by those from whom he
receives his pay.
Let us consider, in the next place, some of the
exhibitions of John's greatness.
His greatness was seen in his manifest indiffer
ence to the voice of detraction and calumny. He
came to the work of preaching unheralded and un
known. Obscure in his origin, a denizen of the
wilderness, untaught by the doctors of the law, what
claims had he as a public teacher of men ? That
he was sneered at is implied in a question which
Jesus put to the multitude, " What went ye out into
the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the
wind ? " That evidently was their first conception
of John. They regarded him as a mere upstart, a
breeder of cheap sensations, a fluttering thing in the
air that would soon exhaust itself and disappear.
We infer from another question which Jesus
asked them, that they had done more than sneer at
the wilderness preacher. They had maliciously
slandered him. They had charged him with work
ing for selfish ends. " What went ye out for to
see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold
they that wear soft clothing are in king's houses."

196 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST
John was unmoved and undisturbed by these
foolish and slanderous criticisms. Conscious of his
strength and the rectitude of his motives, he con
tinued to declare the message of God to the people,
" Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
From still another question propounded by our
Lord to the same multitude, we infer that John's
critics finally changed their minds. " But what
went ye out for to see ? A prophet ? Yea, I say
unto you, and more than a prophet." This, my
friends, is substantially the history of every true
reformer in religion, or philosophy, or science, or
politics. He is at first looked upon as an upstart, a
maker of cheap notoriety, a sensation that will live
only for a day. By and by those who have laughed
at him will become serious. Yes, they will get mad,
and say, " He is a rascal. He is morally rotten.
He is working for money, or office." Still later,
when they see that they have accomplished nothing
by their unrighteous abuse, they get over their
madness, Eftid say, "Well, is he not a prophet in
deed ! Yea, he is more than a prophet. We never
saw his equal."
O ye prophets, ye reformers, ye men of real merit
and high resolves, destined to power and fame, do
not be afraid of your traducers. Do not be fright
ened by the newspapers. They will belittle you
to-day and magnify you to-morrow. They will

THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 197
curse you to-day and crown you to-morrow. They
called Napoleon a pretender, a Corsican, and a thief,
but, a little later, they put the imperial coronet on
his brow and shouted, " Long live Napoleon ! "
If your cause is just, your motive pure, and you
are conscious of capacity to compass the object you
have in view, do not fear the critics. Hold on,
John the Baptist ! Let your truth-proclaiming
voice ring out in trumpet tones through all the wil
derness of error and corruption, and by and by the
critics will cease their fruitless carpings, and from
every housetop proclaim you " a prophet, and more
than a prophet."
John's greatness was felt in the attractive and
transforming power of his preaching. The people
who heard him were shaken as by an earthquake.
The scales fell from their eyes, and in deep peni
tence of soul they were baptized in Jordan confess
ing their sins. Every new trophy of his power was
"a fresh evangel of his fame." Tidings of the
preacher and his work were carried from Jordan to
Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem to every nook and
corner of Judea. Soon every highway and path was
thronged with pilgrims, pressing on with eager and
impatient desire to see and hear this mighty prophet
of God, whose wonderful words were reviving the
dead hopes of a people from whose temple the She-
kinah had disappeared, and upon whose necks the

198 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST
galling yoke of Roman despotism seemed to be riv
eted forever.
In modern parlance, John's preaching would be
called " sensational." It was sensational, and yet
in every particular it was legitimate preaching. In
every act of his wonder-working ministry he was
obedient to the will of God. He said and did only
what he was divinely commissioned to say and do.
He held with unflinching fealty to the task which
he was appointed to perform, the preparation of a
people for the Lord. The sensation attending his
ministry resulted from no studied eccentricity of
manner, or impassioned appeals to the prejudices of
men, but from the nature of the message which he
bore, and the deep earnestness with which he ap
plied it to the hearts and consciences of his auditors.
Martin Luther was sensational, but who will say
that he was unlawfully so? How could such a
man, acting in a crisis so momentous, and speaking
for a cause so transcendently great, avoid sensation?
Chrysostom, Savonarola, Knox, and Whitefield
were sensational ; and so are all the men of our
day who are wise, consecrated, and successful lead
ers of spiritual warfare.
John's greatness was seen again in the righteous
audacity and dauntless courage with which he
smote iniquity in high places. When the religious
aristocracy, which constituted the high-church party

THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 199
of Judea, came out to hear him, they supposed that
he would be profoundly impressed by the compli
ment which their presence bestowed upon him.
They imagined that he would recognize in a befit
ting manner their condescending kindness, that he
would repay them by giving them reserved seats,
and by telling them that they were too refined, holy,
and exalted, to be touched by the vulgar common
people, and by the unwashed and uncircumcised
sinners gathered about them.
They were sorely disappointed. Seeing their
pride, insincerity, and hypocrisy, knowing how
they were attempting to conceal by a robe of
sanctity the dishonesty and sensuality of their lives,
he assailed them with a righteous fury that was
simply appalling. "O generation of vipers, who
hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abra
ham to our father, for I say unto you that God is
able of these stones to raise up children unto Abra
ham." The veriest coward and time-server who has
" stolen the livery of the court of heaven to serve
the devil in," can rebuke the sins and vices of the
poor and obscure of his community ; but to face the
dwellers in mansions, the wearers of soft raiment,
the social and religious aristocracy, who claim a
monopoly of intelligence, refinement, respectability,

200 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST
and virtue, and tell them of their sins and their
vices and their shams, and paint the horrors of the
pit into which their feet are sliding, is a task which
requires the faith, courage, and strength of a spirit
ual athlete.
John the Baptist was a Christian radical. To say
that of any man is to pay the very highest tribute
to his personal character. He laid the axe to the
root of the tree saying, " Every tree that bringeth
not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the
fire." Sometimes he arraigned whole classes of men,
uncovered their iniquities, and foretold their doom.
At other times he pointed to some individual sinner,
unmasked him, and held up his deeds of darkness
to public reprobation and scorn. Inspired by the
consciousness that he was the oracle of the living
God, and regardless of consequences to himself, he
dared to confront the royal Herod, who had Roman
legions at his back, and solemnly rebuke him for his
adulterous connection with the wife of his own living
brother. •
If a man is inherently great God will not let
him die until he has had some opportunity to show
it. Demosthenes had his opportunity. When he
entered the arena of public affairs in Athens the
State was a wreck ; public virtue was at the lowest
ebb ; the laws had lost their authority ; the austerity
of the earlier manhood had yielded to the inroads of

THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 201
luxury ; activity had succumbed to indolence, and
probity to venality. Of all the virtues of their fore
fathers there remained to the Athenians naught save
an enthusiastic attachment to their native soil, a pas
sionate and undying affection for a country the pos
session of which even the gods had contested.
It was in exciting and intensifying this feeling
that Demosthenes climbed to the pinnacle of ora
torical fame. He knew the ambitious designs of
Philip of Macedon. He felt that there was but one
hope for Athens, and that was in war. This was the
one theme of his orations and the one object of his
public career — war, war with Philip, the Macedo
nian despot and robber, and for the space of fourteen
years did the matchless eloquence of the Athenian
orator obstruct the path of the Macedonian con
queror. Cicero had his opportunity in the conspiracy of
Catiline, and wisely and grandly did he use it.
Chrysostom had his opportunity when they at
tempted to banish him for preaching against the
licentiousness of the priesthood and the corruptions
of the court, and so well did he improve it that the
world has applauded him ever since.
Patrick Henry had his opportunity when the re
peated outrages of British tyranny made it necessary
to kindle the fires of revolution throughout the Amer
ican Colonies, and so well did he use it that posterity

202 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST
will never cease to call him " The forest-born De
mosthenes." But " among them that are born of women there
hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist."
That implies that no man ever used more faithfully,
wisely, and successfully the opportunities of his life.
Sometimes we find in a man possessed of that ag
gressive, impetuous, and vehement spirit so conspicu
ous in John, a fatal lack of the softer and milder
virtues. No man is truly great who is selfish, en
vious, harsh, and vindictive. No man is great
without a good degree of tenderness, pity, modesty,
and humility. Every intelligent reader of the New
Testament must admit that John had these gentler
virtues in a pre-eminent degree.
In the eyes of that admiring throng gathered on
the banks of the Jordan, John the Baptist was in
comparably greater than any man of his day. But
hear him compare himself with another. "One
mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes
I am not wbrthy to unloose."
Picture to your minds, if you can, another scene.
Standing before that admiring multitude, he points
with his right hand toward a Galilean stranger, and
in a voice heavy with the profoundest emotion, utters
that exclamation which generations and centuries
had listened in vain to hear : " Behold the Lamb
of God, which taketh away the sin of the world ! "

THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 203
But how amazement deepens as that stranger,
that divine being, God's Messiah, approaches John
and asks for baptism at his hands. See the great
preacher's head droop and his eyes grow dim with
tears. Hear his voice break with emotion as he
responds : " I have need to be baptized of thee, and
comest thou to me?" Who can look upon that
picture and think that John the Baptist was lacking
in tenderness or modesty or humility?
This great man closed his earthly career in a
Roman dungeon. Amid the darkness and dreariness
of that place he had a brief season of weakness, if
to doubt be always a sign of weakness. Surely if a
servant of God ever had cause to doubt John had it
during his confinement in that prison.
Material environment has much to do with our
mental conditions. There is a subtle mystery about
atmospheric influences. There are points in space
at which we can receive no temptation. There are
other points which seem to be hell's favorite battle
fields. That Roman jail was a favorable place for
infernal visitations. A man cannot see far in a
prison light. He cannot see much with dungeon
walls for a horizon. There is not much poetry
in a loathsome, vermin-breeding cell. Those mass
ive stone walls, barred windows, iron doors, and
stern, sullen Roman sentinels, were not fruitful of
holy and comforting suggestion.

204 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST
Why is John the Baptist in such a place ? He
has committed no crime ; he has violated no law.
Why is he there ? He is there " for the word of
God and the testimony of Jesus." The iron hand
of guilty power is upon him because he dared to
rebuke the king for his foul and incestuous mar
riage. It must have seemed strange indeed to him,
that God would permit a servant so innocent and
faithful to endure such treatment. Two other facts
helped him to doubt. One was that the multitude
of people who once crowded around him, admired
and applauded him, had forgotten him. The other
was that Jesus, whom he heralded and baptized,
had never been near him, or even inquired after
him, during all the dreary days of his incarceration
and suffering. These circumstances conspired to
depress John's mind to the point where he could
entertain doubts in reference to the character and
mission of Jesus.
But his doubts were short-lived. Calling to him
two of the few disciples who had clung to him in
his distress, he told them to go directly to the Mas
ter with this question : " Art thou he that should
come, or do we look for another ? " They did as
they were commanded, and the message which they
brought back from their divine Lord removed the
last doubt from the mind and heart of his imprisoned
servant.

THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 205
Soon after this the end came. It was tragic,
bloody, horrible ; and yet for him it was glorious.
Committing his soul for the last time into the hands
of his Heavenly Father, without a tremor, supremely
calm in the assurance that death for him would be
only transition from gloom to glory, he received the
murderous blow which severed his head from his
body. While the crimson tide of life ran over that dun
geon floor, and the poor, ghastly, gory head was
borne in a vessel to Herod's palace, his freed spirit,
unharmed, untouched, peaceful, radiant, triumph
ant, sped upward to its eternal dwelling-place in
the sheltering bosom of God.
Farewell, great prophet. Thou hast left the
world laden with the benedictions of grateful hearts.
Thy blood is an imperishable seed from which, in
every age, a harvest of heroes and martyrs shall
spring. The echoes of that voice crying in the
wilderness, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord,"
shall live until this wilderness world has become
the kingdom of Christ.
Friends, if there be men among us who approxi
mate, in any good degree, the lofty ideal to which I
have directed your thoughts this morning, honor
them, love them, magnify them, crown them, for
they are the hope of your country and the world.
If a pure gospel is to be preached ; if spiritual

206 THE GREATNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST
religion is to be preserved ; if the macadamized
bigotry of modern Phariseeism is to be pulverized
and destroyed ; if the soul-degrading infidelity of
Ingersoll and his satellites is to be smitten with
deadly blows ; if communism, socialism, free-love-
ism, new-womanism, and all their kindred evils are
to be uprooted from American soil ; if this disgrace
ful travesty upon democratic government is ever
stopped ; if ballot-box stuffing, false registration,
and bribery, now practised under the eyes and with
the approval of men who claim to be patriots and
Christians, are ever abolished ; if the despotism of
monopoly and privileged classes is ever to be over
thrown ; if we are ever to repeal those infamous
laws which are golden girdles to one class and gall
ing shackles for another ; if the power of the
whisky ring is ever broken, so that men can be
elected to a city council, or to a State legislature,
without taking an oath of fealty to the barkeepers ;
if the church of the living God is ever to be
cleansed of her defilements and made worthy to be
called the bride of Christ ; if these reforms are pos
sible, they are made possible only through the dar
ing and deathless devotion of the few, who are
dominated by the same spirit and purposes which
made John the Baptist the matchless man and the
peerless prophet that he was.

XV
JUDAS, THE TRAITOR

"Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own
place." Acts 1 : 25.
Of all the pictures of the final condition of the
wicked, Dante's "Inferno" is the blackest and
most terrible. In "the place of outer darkness"
he sees everything that can contribute to the
torture of damned spirits. After making the
whole circuit of that vast realm of uncleanness
and anguish, he comes at last to the bottom of the
nethermost pit. There he finds the worst class of
sinners wailing and howling with nameless agony.
Chief among them is Satan ; and next to him in
guilt and woe is Judas Iscariot.
Dante represented the Roman Catholic theology
of the Middle Ages, a conspicuous feature of which
was the doctrine of a hell of material fire — a hell
in which betrayers of Christ and his people are the
chief sufferers.
In our day opinion is swinging toward the oppo
site extreme. The tendency is not only to reject
207

208 JUDAS, THE TRAITOR
the material features of the medieval hell, but to re
duce sin to a mere imperfection rendered unavoida
ble by our environment, and future punishment to
such pains as are incident to wholesome discipline
and preparation for a higher and happier state. To
men who hold to such views nothing appears to be
very bad. The hypocrites, adulterers, thieves, ty
rants, and murderers who have received the world's
reprobation, were grossly misunderstood, and were
much better men at heart than those who judged
and condemned them. They say that Judas Iscariot
was not a criminal, but a hero. What seems to us
a betrayal of Jesus was in reality an act of friend
ship, and what appears to be damnable hypocrisy
was simply a mistaken method by which Judas at
tempted to accomplish a great and holy purpose.
These apologists and defenders of the arch-traitor
would have us believe that for more than eighteen
centuries the world has wronged him by charging
that it was for money that he betrayed Jesus to his
enemies. They say that the smallness of -the sum —
only about fifteen dollars in our money — proves that
he must have had another and a stronger motive.
They declare also that Judas' conception of the
character and mission of Christ did not differ from
that of the other apostles. All of them believed
him to be the divine Messiah promised in the Jewish
Scriptures. They believed that he had come to re-

209
store the kingdom of Israel, and that he would soon
sit upon the throne once occupied by David. The
only difference between Judas and his brother apos
tles was that he was more impatient than they.
They trusted Jesus to choose the right time and the
right means for the organization of his kingdom,
while Judas thought that his delay was unwise and
unwarranted. He was disappointed in the Master.
He thought that he was lacking in energy and prac
ticality ; he was too spiritual and unworldly to be a
successful schemer and leader in a great and perilous
political movement ; he allowed golden opportunities
to pass unimproved ; his delay had caused the lead
ing men among the Jews to believe that he was des
titute of the wisdom and courage requisite to success.
Judas was not only disappointed, but indignant,
because Jesus did not proclaim himself king when
he was the idol of the populace and could have
commanded them for any purpose. He knew that
Jesus was invested with divine power. He had seen
him heal the sick, cast out devils, quell the storm,
and raise the dead. He knew that by the exercise
of the same power he could crush all opposition and
make himself the world's greatest king. His pur
pose in betraying him was to compel him to use
that power. He intended to bring things to a crisis.
He knew that the chief priests and elders were
eagerly watching for an opportunity to destroy

210 JUDAS, THE TRAITOR
Jesus. He thought that by betraying him into
their hands he would put him in a situation that
would make it necessary for him to assert his king
ship and exercise his divine power. Inspired by
this motive, he regarded his treachery as an exhibi
tion of the loftiest virtue, and expected Jesus to re
ward him for it as soon as he ascended the throne.
The apologists of Judas contend that he meant
well from beginning to end, but that he was unwise
in the choice of his methods. They say too, that
the intensity of his sorrow over his mistake and over
the death of the innocent Christ demonstrates that
he was not a man of bad heart.
This I believe to be an impartial statement of the
position of moderate defenders of Judas Iscariot.
It is a position that cannot be maintained. It is
unsupported either by revelation or reason. There
is not an allusion to Judas in the sacred Scriptures
which furnishes the slightest foundation for the be
lief that he was a man of good motives. Upon their
testimony we are compelled to believe that it was
for " thirty pieces of silver " that he betrayed his
Lord. John branded him as a thief. He brought
this indictment because he believed that Judas had
appropriated to his own purposes a part of the
" poor fund " with which he had been entrusted.
There are a great many kinds of thieves ; but the
most degraded and contemptible of them all is the

211
one that steals from a charity fund. He is meaner
than the wretch who exhumes a coffin and robs a
dead body of its winding sheet.
How can we doubt that the treachery of this man
was inspired by the love of money, when it stands
upon the sacred record that he went to the chief
priests and said, " What will ye give me ? " He
made a specific bargain with them to betray the
Master into their hands, and the only compensation
that he demanded for his infamous service and the
only compensation that he received was money —
" thirty pieces of silver."
Chronologists place the miracle of feeding the
multitude with the few loaves and fishes just one
year before the crucifixion. That miracle made
Jesus so popular that the people were about to lay
hands upon him and compel him to be their king.
But when he rebuked them and began to preach to
them about spiritual food, many of them went away
and walked with him no more. It was at that time
that Jesus gave the first hint concerning the real
character of Judas. " Have not I chosen you
twelve, and one of you is a devil ? " I think it was
then that Judas began to steal from the bag contain
ing the charity money.
It is certain that he began to follow Christ with
the expectation of material reward. He had left a
good business to become an apostle. He thought

212 JUDAS, THE TRAITOR
that he deserved some compensation for his trouble
and sacrifice. What he was taking from the poor
fund was much less than he could have made at
his old business, and much less than he deserved.
I suppose that these were about the excuses which
Judas made to his conscience as he began his down
ward career.
From certain brief utterances, dropped at inter
vals, Judas suspected that Jesus knew that he was a
thief. With the birth of this suspicion he began to
dislike the Master.
As long as a bad man can conceal his meanness
from you he is not apt to be hostile toward you ;
but when he discovers that you are cognizant of his
bad character and iniquitous deeds he begins to hate
you and to seek opportunities to inflict injuries upon
you. A distinguished gentleman in one of our
Southern cities invited me to dine with him that he
might have a favorable opportunity to assure me of
his warm sympathy with my temperance principles
and work. His protestations of fealty to me and to
the cause with which I was somewhat conspicuously
identified were very emphatic and impressive. A
few months afterward I came unexpectedly upon
that man just as he was emerging from a bar-room.
For months he did not speak to me when we met.
My accidental discovery of his hypocrisy made him
my enemy. So it was with Judas. As long as he

213
supposed Jesus to be ignorant of the baseness of his
character he cherished for him no ill-feeling ; but
when he realized that Jesus understood him thor
oughly, he hated him and was ready to seize the first
opportunity to betray him.
A corrupt man cannot long disguise his charac
ter. He will not go very far before he will betray
himself either in word or deed. Judas unwittingly
uncovered his knavish spirit at Bethany, when Mary
broke the alabaster box and anointed our Lord with
costly oil. That scene, so beautiful and tender to
the other disciples, brought to the surface all that
was mean and wicked in the heart of the traitor.
" Why was not this ointment sold and given to the
poor ? " This utterance of Judas was inspired by
two feelings ; one was hostility to Jesus, and the
other a craving to put more money into his purse.
It angered him to see such a tribute bestowed upon
one whom he hated and desired to destroy. It dis
tressed him because it had deprived him of another
chance to steal. His words betrayed him. The
apostles then saw what the Master had known from
the beginning; and John, acting as spokesman for
his brethren, said that Judas had protested against
the conduct of Mary, " not that he cared for the
poor, but because he was a thief and had the bag."
We do not declare the whole truth concerning the
conduct of Judas, when we say that it was for

214 JUDAS, THE TRAITOR
money that he turned against Christ and betrayed
him into the hands of his Jewish enemies.
Judas was an intense Judean. He started out
with the Judaic conception of the Messianic char
acter and mission of our Lord. When he discov
ered that Jesus had no thought of a temporal king
dom, and that he had no political offices and honors
to bestow upon his followers, he was disgusted and
angered, and determined that he would align him
self, at the proper time, with the enemies of the
Master. He was angry too, because Jesus knew
his iniquitous spirit and purposes. He wanted to
get rid of him because his presence was exceedingly
embarrassing. But while all this is true, I see no reason to
doubt that the love of money, more than any other
feeling, inspired Judas to betray our Lord. No
other human passion is behind so many crimes as
the love of money. Those who surrender them
selves to it constitute the very worst element of
society. Nothing but the fear of the prison and
the gallows keeps them from theft and murder.
When this master lust took possession of the mind
and heart of Judas he was prepared not only to
steal the money of the poor, but to betray God's
Messiah, and thus become a party to that infernal
deed which makes the blackest page in the world's
history.

JUDAS, THE TRAITOR 215
The modern apologists of Judas tell us that his
repentance shows that he was not a thoroughly bad
man. My reply to this is, that his repentance
shows nothing more than that he had a conscience
which lashed him most terribly for his stupendous
crime. That is nothing in his favor, for the devil
and his angels suffer in the same way. They are
full of remorse for their folly in rebelling against
God ; but they are devils still. For thousands of
years they have been wailing under the pangs of
conscience, but they are as rebellious against truth
and God to-day as when they were first placed
under the chains of everlasting darkness.
It is true that Judas took the thirty pieces of sil
ver, which he had accepted as a bribe, back to the
high priests, threw them down at their feet, and ex
claimed, " I have sinned, in that I have betrayed
the innocent blood." It is evident that in this act
he was moved by no higher and holier feeling than
a desire to relieve his aching conscience. That
money in his hands was a witness and a reminder
of his terrible guilt. Every glittering coin was an
eye through which infinite justice and holiness be
held his crime. The thirty pieces of silver were
like so many tongues, crying to heaven for ven
geance upon the man Avho had betrayed the Saviour
of the world. He could no longer hold them, for
their touch was like the sting of fire.

216 JUDAS, THE TRAITOR
A man who is utterly destitute of the love of truth
and virtue, can suffer remorse for his misdeeds. The
most incurable criminals the world ever saw have
died howling with remorse. What good thing did
this traitor's aching conscience inspire him to do?
Did he follow the being whom he had so cruelly and
infamously wronged into the court of the Jews and
there fall at his feet, testify to his innocence, and
implore his pardon in the presence of his accusers ?
No. Did he follow him when they took him before
Pilate and Herod, and plead for his release? No.
Did he intercede for him when they clothed him
with mock royalty, spat in his face, and beat him
with loaded thongs ? No. If he had gone with
his confession of guilt to the innocent one against
whom this sin was committed, and in the presence
of judges and people had said, " Oh, my innocent
Lord and Saviour, forgive me for this terrible
wrong," methinks the gentle face of Jesus would
have forgotten its crown of thorns, and that those
sacred lips* which Judas had treacherously kissed,
would have tenderly and lovingly said, " My poor
heart-broken Judas, be of good cheer, weep no
more ; thy sin is forgiven thee."
More than from any other being, Jesus deserved
public confession from the lips of Judas. If Judas
was the man that his modern defenders claim that
he was, he would have sought the victim of his

217
crime and in the presence of his accusers poured
out his soul in penitential confession at his feet. If
he had done this, Christ would have been as merci
ful to him as he was to the penitent thief on the
cross. If he had done this, he would not stand to
day in the pillory of history as the meanest of man
kind. His repentance lacked the element which is
most essential. He did not turn to God. True re
pentance is not the mere excitement and horror of
a terrified conscience. It is bringing the guilty soul
to God. It is sorrow looking up to the mercy of
the infinite Father.
The weakest argument in defense of Judas is
based upon the fact that he committed suicide. It
is claimed that he destroyed himself to emphasize
before the world his own condemnation of the
wrong he had done, and to repair, as far as possible,
the mischief resulting from his treacherous deed.
Now the truth is that this last act of Judas was
unmitigated selfishness. It was inspired only by
a desire to escape from suffering. He leaped into
the arms of death hoping to find in them the angel
of relief.
One of the most despicable products of this age
is a sentiment which invests suicide with a glamour
of romance and lauds it as an exhibition of heroic
courage. No harsh words should be spoken of in
sane persons who take their own lives ; but where

218 JUDAS, THE TRAITOR
there is no insanity it is the most cowardly act of
which a human being is capable. The man who de
liberately takes his own life knows that by so doing
he leaves a heritage of shame to his family. What
could be meaner than that ? The man who commits
suicide knows that by so doing he is laying his bur
dens on other shoulders. What could be more ig
noble? A merchant becomes bankrupt, and to
escape the labor and struggle of rebuilding his for
tune he puts a pistol to his head and blows his
brains out. He knows that by that act he will dis
grace his wife and children, fill their hearts with
incurable grief, and doom them to a lifelong strug
gle with poverty. Such a man is the meanest of
cowards, and his grave should be epitaphed with the
world's contempt.
The suicide not only deserts the post of duty and
all of his obligations to his family, neighborhood,
and country, but he practically denies the existence
of God. Can one who believes that he will meet
the Almighty in the other world dare, in this dis
orderly way, to rush into his presence?
It is a significant fact that the " thirty pieces of
silver " for which Judas betrayed Christ were used
to purchase a burying ground for criminals, and
that he, the arch-traitor, the world's blackest villain,
was the first criminal that was buried there. The
" Field of Blood," purchased by the price of infamy,

JUDAS, THE TRAITOR 219
is the melancholy monument to the memory of the
betrayer of Jesus Christ. " He fell that he might
go to his own place." The doctrine of the Bible
concerning the state of the wicked in the future
world is in perfect harmony with natural law.
Nothing that men believe has a better rational
foundation. About twenty years ago I went over from New
York to Brooklyn in the afternoon of a summer's
day to witness a contest between two baseball teams.
Before the play began I noticed about a hundred
men confined in a pen that was separated by a high
wall from the terraced seats occupied by the main
body of spectators. I asked a friend sitting near
who those men were and why they were confined
in that pen. He informed me that they were
gamblers ; that they were there to bet on the game,
and that the law required them to keep to them
selves. It at once occurred to me that that was a very
reasonable, wise, and just law. Birds of a feather
must flock together. Let gamblers go by them
selves. It is not only unnatural, but embarrassing
for them to sit down with honest men. It is still
more afflictive to pure-minded men and women to
be brought into immediate contact with characters
so vile and loathsome.
The doctrine of the future life is founded upon

220 JUDAS, THE TRAITOR
the same principle which underlies that New York
law. In the world to come every man will gravitate
" to his own place." In death there is no trans
formation of character. If you are corrupt in this
world you will be corrupt in the next. "What
soever a man soweth that shall he also reap." This
life is the sowing time and the next will be harvest.
In the future state you will go into a moral at
mosphere in keeping with your own moral character.
By a law which inheres in its own being everything
will seek its kind. Every soul will rise or sink to
its own place. Liars must to liars go, drunkards to
drunkards, whoremongers to whoremongers, tyrants
to tyrants, thieves to thieves, murderers to mur
derers, and traitors to traitors. This is the eternal
and immutable decree of the God of the universe.
Jesus said to his disciples, " I go to prepare a
place for you." Followers of the Lamb, toilers in
the vineyard of the Lord, soldiers of the sacramental
host — all ye who bear the burden and heat of the
day and serve your generation according to the will
of God, rejoice in the assurance that there is a place
which your loving Lord has prepared for you. It
is a place where nothing entereth that defileth or
maketh a lie ; where " the wicked cease from trou
bling, and the weary be at rest," and where the
pure in heart shall see God.
My friend, my neighbor, let me, in concluding

JUDAS, THE TRAITOR 221
this discussion, make it as practical as possible for
you. Let me put this question to your conscience :
To what place in the next world are you going?
In the light of divine truth study your heart and
consider your ways, and you cannot fail to discover
Mrhither you are drifting.
Lord God of truth and grace, teach us, cleanse
our souls, discipline our lives, and guide our foot
steps, that we may go to the place where thou art
and from which the glory of thy presence shall
never depart.

XVI
THE OLD AND THE NEW IN
RELIGION

"Ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk
therein." Jer. 6 : 16.
In this chapter the prophet bewails the wander
ings of the Jews from the ways of truth and right
eousness, and exhorts them to return to the "old
paths." The corruption of their faith had resulted
in a corresponding corruption of their morals.
This degeneracy was universal. The prophet says :
" From the least of them even unto the greatest of
them, every one is given to covetousness ; and from
the prophet even unto the priest, every one dealeth
falsely." -Holding this picture of their wretched
condition before them, he exhorts them to repent
and get back into the old paths of truth and virtue.
You will readily concede that the same exhorta
tion might be very appropriately delivered to the
present generation. We are living in an age in
which there is a fierce conflict between the old and
the new. This conflict is not confined to things
222

THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 223
temporal, but extends into the realm of religion.
In the churches of the Lord Jesus there are men
who are attempting to lead us away from the faith
and practice of our fathers, and to commit us to a
view of Christianity which contradicts every great
fundamental doctrine of the Bible.
Many of these men do not deny the past effi
ciency of the old faith. They admit that it has been
a blessing to the world, but contend that we have
reached a period of development when it can be no
longer serviceable. They tell us that the historic
Christ must give place to the ideal Christ, the ob
jective to the subjective Christ, and the personal to
the imaginary Christ. They say that in the church
of the future Jesus will not be the divine Son of
God, but the ideal man, and that preparation for
the life to come will consist simply in the cultiva
tion of the virtues illustrated by the life of Christ.
I am sure that it will not be a difficult task to
convince you that you have nothing to gain, and
much to lose, by forsaking the old faith for the new.
The Apostle John had been more than half a
century in Christian life when he wrote, " This is
the victory that overcometh the world, even our
faith." Faith in what? What is the object upon
which this conquering faith is centered ? Hear him
again. " Who is he that overcometh the world but
he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God."

224 THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION
John was warranted in making that declaration,
not only by his own personal experience, but by his
careful and diligent observation of the fruits of this
faith in his fellow-Christians. The only men in all
the range of his acquaintance who were conquerors
of their own passions and of the world's temptations
were the few who believed with all their hearts that
the despised and crucified Jesus was the eternal Son
of God.
Many of the new religionists of our day do not
deny that John was warranted in making this state
ment. They admit also that from his age down to
the present time a sincere faith in the absolute di
vinity of the man Christ Jesus has purified the
hearts and lives of thousands, and made them vic
torious in every conflict with the world's ungodli
ness. But while they make these admissions, they
assert that a new era has dawned upon the world,
and that new forces have come into the lives of men
to take the place of the old faith. They tell us
that we have outgrown the conditions wliich made
the old faith a necessity. I am not more confident
of my existence than I am that these would-be re
ligious reformers are "blind leaders of the blind,"
and that the womb of hell contains nothing more
false than the new creeds which they offer to men.
In a few weeks we shall witness in this city a
sort of ecclesiastical menagerie, called a " Congress

THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 225
of Liberal Religions," that for variety of shapes and
colors will exceed any similar combination upon
which seekers of curiosity in our community have
ever been permitted to gaze. The beasts, birds, and
reptiles in Barnum's great traveling show were not
more numerous or more dissimilar than the sects
which are to constitute the great " Congress of
Liberal Religions." It is hoped that their exhibi
tion will continue with us a little longer than the
average menagerie is wont to do, for there will be
things in it that will require a much more protracted
observation than is generally bestowed upon the
circus hippopotamus or unicorn. Among the ele
ments which will constitute this variegated combi
nation are Mormons, Spiritualists, Christian Scien
tists, Unitarians, Universalists, Theosophists, Deists,
Atheists, Buddhists, Free Thinkers, Free Lovers,
and Agnostics. A love feast in such an assemblage
of human beings is rendered possible by the fact
that they are all hostile to the great primal doc
trines of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I affirm, and can prove, that overcoming evil
within ourselves, and successfully resisting it in the
world without, is just as difficult now as it ever was,
and that these results can be accomplished only
through faith in Christ as the divine and eternal
Son of God.
What is it to overcome the world? It is to
p

226 THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION
understand the moral laws of the universe and to
so adjust ourselves to them that we may derive from
them the blessedness which they were ordained to
bestow. In adjusting himself to these laws, a man
must first overcome himself, and this is his most
difficult task. Man's appetites and lusts to-day are
just what they have ever been. They are imperious
and unreasoning. He is selfish, and intensely so.
His selfishness manifests itself either in a denial of
God, or in worshiping a god which is the mere
creature of his corrupt imagination.
In trying to become upright, his first problem
is how to dethrone self. Those of you who have
never tried to bring yourselves into subjection to
law and conscience and God, and to gain the mastery
of the evils which tempt the soul, have no just con
ception of the severity of the struggle. As the
power of a great stream of water is revealed only
when it is resisted, so the strength of our depraved
passions and of the seducing influences of the world
are discovered only in our attempts to subdue them.
Some of you may imagine that it is an easy
undertaking to uproot the habit of profanity. Try
it the next time you get mad with your servant or
your neighbor, and you will find that your little
will is as weak as some frail reed when it is shaken
by the wind.
If it has long been your practice to conceal your

THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 227
thoughts and purposes by deceptive words and
actions, you will never know the hold which this
unrighteous habit has upon you until you attempt
to become perfectly honest and transparent in all
your dealings with men.
If the love of money is your master passion, you
will never realize how complete and deplorable is
your bondage until you attempt to disenthral your
captive spirit.
How to master these sordid elements of your
nature, how to become monarch of your own un
godly thoughts and passions, and silence every voice
of temptation that comes to you from a world at
war with truth and virtue, is the great problem
which confronts you.
I find in other books than the Bible codes of
morals which contain many things worthy of our
observance. I find them in the writings of Plu
tarch. I find them in the meditations of Antoninus.
I find them in the works of Lamartine and Voltaire.
I agree with these writers in the main as to what I
am and what I ought to be. The difference between
us is, that they believe that by taking these univer
sally accepted rules of conduct as my guide, I can, by
a process of self-culture, become morally pure and
good, while I believe that I can accomplish this end
only by the intervention of a divine Person, who
empowers men to become pure and upright.

228 THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION
Believing on Jesus Christ as the Son of God, I
look up to him in prayer, and he communicates to
me the grace which enables me to live in harmony
with God's moral law. The hope of the new re
ligionist is based upon power inherent in himself,
but mine is founded on the merciful help of a per
sonal God and Saviour.
Man's conflicts with himself and the world, in the
present age, are just as fierce and bitter as they have
ever been. Science and art have made real contri
butions to our welfare. One has discovered, and
the other has applied, many hitherto unknown
means of advancing the world in goodness and hap
piness. But notwithstanding these things, human
life is still an arduous and painful struggle.
Men are everywhere exposed to mighty tempta
tions. Our sons go forth from the parental roof to
face a thousand foes to their virtue and happiness.
In the realm of business they encounter maxims
that are false, and customs deceitful and dishonest.
The impression is made upon them at the very be
ginning that uncompromising moral integrity is an
ideal that can never be realized, and that business
of every sort has been reduced to such a fine point
of competition, that the men who succeed are com
pelled to be tricksters.
They soon discover that money is king, and that
in social life intellectual and moral culture weighs

THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 229
but little against stocks, bonds, and bank accounts.
They find that the veriest moral leper can mount
to the pinnacle of social distinction, if he has the
money to support his pretensions. They find that
in the sphere of politics but little consideration is
given to the Ten Commandments and the Golden
Rule. They find that in the race for political office
and honor, men loyal to truth and conscience are
easily defeated by sharpers and demagogues.
In the realm of social pleasure they see allure
ments to vice on every hand. If they refuse to visit
a beer-garden, where men and women gather under
the inspiration of music to drench themselves with
intoxicating beverages and to feast their eyes upon
the vice-breeding movements of the immodest ballet
dancer, if they decline to participate in a game of
progressive euchre, or refuse to accept from the
hand of beauty the cup that is beaded with death
and damnation, they are tabooed as boobies or Puri
tans or cranks.
If they walk the streets of our cities, they are
never out of sight of the gilded bar-room, an institu
tion established and fortified by the suffrages of
their own fathers and patronized by men who are
called by "the grand old name of gentlemen."
If they go into an art gallery, they find the most
conspicuous places given to pictures which delight
only the eye of sensuality. If they go into an opera,

230 THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION
or theatre, there are nine chances to one that they
will see a performance which has as its theme the
love of lust, and whose chief attractions are its sug
gestions of uncleanness.
Who will say that this is an overdrawn picture of
the dangers which beset the young men of this gen
eration ? Who will venture to contradict me when
I affirm that all the discoveries of modern science,
all the appliances of modern art, all the blandish
ments of modern literature, and all the passion-
breeding customs of modern fashionable society,
have multiplied the perils which threaten the purity
and honor of our sons and daughters ?
The moral needs of mankind in this latter day
are just as profound and urgent as they were in any
former generation. Requisite provision for these
needs can come from no mere human source.
Comfort, luxury, social elegance, and refinement,
cannot cleanse the human soul of its pollutions.
Depravity js as rank in the palace as in the hovel.
Hatreds and discords are as common in high life as
in humble life. The strifes of science are sometimes
as bitter as the brawls of the fish-market. The
meannesses of the literary man are as common and
despicable as those of the milk carrier or the street
scavenger. Conscience is still an element and faculty of the
human constitution. Science, education, and higher

THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 231
civilization have not destroyed it. Remorse is as
common among men to-day as it was a thousand
years ago. The enlightened and cultured feel the
sting of it as keenly as the rude and unlettered.
Human sorrow is just as prevalent and poignant
now as it was in any previous age. Wherever we
go, in our wanderings up and down the earth, we
find hearts smitten with grief and bleeding with
anguish. When I follow my child to the grave and
hear the sad words, "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes,
dust to dust," my distress is just as deep and lonely
as it would be if I were as ignorant as the peasant
and poor as the pauper.
Death, in this age of science, luxury, and material
splendor, is just as inevitable and unrelenting as it
was in the earlier periods of the world's history.
The learned are as reluctant to die as the ignorant.
Death is as much the "king of terrors" to the mil
lionaire as it is to the penniless beggar. The greatest
man among us, in the dying hour, will feel as pro
foundly as the humblest and obscurest his need of
divine consolation and support.
To eradicate the evil within us, to withstand the
temptations without, to overcome sorrow, and meet
death with a shout of triumph, what do we need ?
A new religion? A modified Christianity? A
Christianity without a divine Christ ? A religion
which, when reduced to its final analysis, is nothing

232 THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION
but a system of self-culture? A religion which
promises victory over the world by the develop
ment of personal energy and the growth of intelli
gence and wealth?
No. To renounce the old faith for such a system
is to enter upon an experiment that will end in con
fusion, darkness, and despair. We must look for
the " old paths " and walk therein. We must cling
to the faith in which our Christian fathers lived and
died. " Who is he that overcometh the world but
he that believeth that Jesus Christ is the Son of
God ? " You need more than personal intelligence
and personal energy. You need divine help, the
help of infinite love, mercy, and power. Not until
your human weakness is joined to deific strength can
you master the forces of evil in your own nature
and put the world's temptations beneath your feet.
We do not need a new religion, but a more faith
ful teaching and a more fearless application of the
old religion.
Moral law has no power over the conscience and
life, except as we connect it with a divine and
supreme Lawgiver. It is not the love of right
that will make a man obedient to divine govern
ment, but his regard for that divine and infinitely
righteous Personality who sits upon the central
throne of the universe. The man without faith in
a personal God and Saviour cannot be relied on in

THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 233
any contest between right and wrong, because he
has no inherent love of right and is destitute of the
inspiration of any great and unselfish motive.
Jesus Christ is the rightful sovereign of the
world. That is what the apostles taught and the
martyrs preached. Get men to believe that, and
they will be sober, chaste, and upright ; get them
to believe that, and " holiness unto the Lord " will
be written on everything in commerce, in science,
in philosophy, in literature, in politics, and in
domestic and individual life.
We need more men in the living ministry who
will not shirk the responsibility of declaring every
where that Christ, the universal Monarch, will up
hold the majesty of his government by visiting
everlasting condemnation and wrath upon those
who reject him and despise his authority.
That is a feature of the old religion which the
apostles of the " new theology " are attempting to
modify and soften. They cannot get rid of the
doctrine of future retribution, because it is not only
written in the Bible, but stamped upon the human
conscience. Men instinctively know that there are
distinctions between right and wrong, and that God
will maintain these distinctions by rewarding the
right and punishing the wrong. They instinctively
know that a future judgment is needed for the
vindication of the pure and faithful, whose portion

234 THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION
in this world is poverty, persecution, and anguish,
and for the condemnation of the wicked and vicious,
whose lives are comparatively free from pain and
sorrow. We need a Christian ministry that will zealously
insist upon a rigid and faithful application of the
precepts of the old religion to all the affairs of men.
A wire-pulling and trick-inventing politician said,
in a recent conversation : " I like my pastor better
than any other minister in the city, because he
preaches a gospel which never touches business or
politics." Such a preacher is unworthy of his
sacred livery, and should either repent of his
cowardice or surrender his credentials and retire
from the pulpit.
What does the prophet mean by " the old paths " ?
Evidently he means paths that have been opened
and established by divine wisdom and authority.
We instinctively feel and believe that there is some
thing accessible to man that is infallible. We
realize profoundly the necessity for an infallible
standard of truth, wisdom, justice, love, and right
eousness. What is that infallible standard ? It is
not human philosophy ; it is not human tradition ;
it is not any human priesthood ; it is not even the
church of the living God. What is it? I believe,
and I trust that you believe, that the only infalli
bility to be found in this lower world is in these

THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 235
sacred Scriptures, which contain the thought and
will of God, communicated to us by men who spoke
and wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
I accept this divine book, and I trust, that you
accept it, as the only infallible standard of religious
faith and practice. If you charge me with heresy,
I simply demand that you test my belief and prac
tice by the teachings of this book. If you charge
the denomination to which I belong with heresy, I
only ask that you subject its faith to the same
divine test.
Hitherto, in every quarter of the globe, the slo
gan of the Baptists has been, " The Bible, and the
Bible only, our rule of faith and practice." With
that motto inscribed upon our banner, we have
conquered in a thousand bitter conflicts with priest
craft and traditionalism.
In this latter day men have risen up among us
who would lead us away from " the old paths " by
an amendment to the old standard of Baptist ortho
doxy and by the invention of a new test of Baptist
fellowship. Certain books purporting to be Baptist
history have been written, and self-constituted
heresy hunters tell us that unless we accept the
statements of these historians as true, we are here
tics and are unworthy of Baptist fellowship.
To this new test I will never submit. My faith
is anchored on no human history or tradition. I

236 THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION
am planted not upon what Donatists, Novatians,
Albigenses, Waldenses, Petrobrusians, or Anabap
tists believed and practised in the remote past, but
only upon what Jesus Christ and his inspired
apostles taught. To depart from God's word to
follow any human authority, history, or tradition is
to enter a path that will lead to hopeless confusion
and disaster.
Whether the Anabaptists in England under the
pressure of a terrible persecution did for a century
or more abandon immersion and practise sprinkling
and pouring for baptism is a question which does
not affect in the remotest degree the faith and prac
tice of the Bajjtists of the nineteenth century. If
believers' immersion is wrong, it is not wrong be
cause the Anabaptists of England renounced it for
a period ; and if it is right, it is right independently
of the belief and practice of any Christian sect. It
is right because our divine Exemplar submitted to
it and required his disciples everywhere and in
every age to do the same.
I am constrained to believe that the present de
fection upon this question is but local and ephem
eral, that it will pass away under the influence of a
clearer statement and understanding of the founda
tion principles of our denomination, and that when
the present controversy is ended the great Baptist
army will be seen marching in the same old path,

THE OLD AND THE NEW IN RELIGION 237
and exalting, above all other wisdom and authority,
the book whose every line is full of light and whose
every page is stamped with the " eternal heraldry
and signature of God Almighty."

XVII
CHRIST'S ACCOMPLISHED WORK

" It is finished. " John 19 : 30.
This was next to the last utterance that Jesus
made on the cross. In the Greek it is only one
word. On the lips of the dying Christ that was the
most pregnant word that ever fell on human ears.
It was an epitome of divine revelation. It expresses
the substance of God's great scheme of recovering
mercy. It is the rock on which every rational hope
of heaven is built.
Some are weak enough to imagine that Jesus
meant simply to inform his friends that he had
reached the point of insensibility to pain ; but to us
who look at this dying exclamation in the light of
all that he had previously said concerning his death,
it is apparent that he meant infinitely more than
this. To us it is clear that in crying aloud, " It is
finished," he signified that the work which he came
into the world to do was accomplished, and that all
the sufferings incident to that work had ceased.
His emotion at that moment was akin to that
238

Christ's accomplished work 239
which the philosopher feels, when after years of in
tense struggle with a great problem he reaches the
solution, and exclaims, "I have it ! I have it! And
a sweet relief comes to my aching brain." It was a
shout like that which goes up from a faithful crew,
when, after battling all night with a storm that has
raged like the fury of fiends, they reach the harbor,
see the dawn gilding the eastern sky, furl the tem
pest-torn sails, cast anchor in peaceful waters and
in sight of a shore where loved ones are waiting and
Avatching for their return.
I hope, this morning, not only to interest you,
but to quicken your spiritual life and promote your
spiritual joy, in speaking both of the work and
sufferings of our divine Redeemer that were com
pleted on the cross.
1. Let us consider first the work. When Jesus
was only twelve years old he was conscious that his
life was destined to be an exceptional one. He
felt that some great work was committed to him.
Inspired by this conviction, he said to his parents,
" Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's
business?" If there is a boy among your children who is
chosen of God to be a leader of men, and to accom
plish a great mission in commerce, or science, or
literature, or art, or statecraft, or religion, he will
give indications of it at a very early age. He real-

240 Christ's accomplished work
izes that he was born for something great, and that
feeling makes him more thoughtful and serious than
his brothers and sisters. At school he is a marked
boy. His teachers see that he is taking life more
seriously than any of his classmates. He is more
to himself and more thoughtful about the future
than his associates of the same age.
Jesus was such a boy. He felt that his Father
in heaven had chosen and anointed him for some
great mission to men. What that mission was, and
how it should be accomplished, he but dimly com
prehended in the days of his childhood. It grew
upon him as he grew in years and strength. Every
hour of communion with God and of meditation
upon the Hebrew prophecies rendered his concep
tions of it more distinct.
He saw around him a world lying in wickedness.
He saw that men everywhere were violators of di
vine law, and that having transgressed that law they
were condemned and under sentence of death.
The world needed a divine Redeemer. Such a
deliverer was promised in the sacred Scriptures.
As Jesus read the prophecies concerning the Mes
siah, and studied the types and ceremonies which
prefigured his work, the conviction grew upon him
that he himself was the being who was destined to
fulfill all the law and the prophets. He realized
more and more that he was " the seed of the woman "

Christ's accomplished work 241
that should bruise the serpent's head ; that he was
the one typified by the brazen serpent which was
lifted above the camp of the dying Israelites ; that
he was the one concerning whom Isaiah wrote, " He
is despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows,
and acquainted with grief. . . Surely he hath borne
our griefs, and carried our sorrows : yet we did es
teem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities : the chastisement of our
peace was upon him ; and with his stripes we are
healed." When Jesus said upon the cross, " It is finished,"
he meant that he was God's Messiah, and that by
his life, sufferings, and death, he had fulfilled all the
Messianic types and prophecies of the Old Testa
ment. From the beginning of his public life he was
thoroughly dominated by the thought and convic
tion that a great task was upon him. His purpose
to perform that task possessed him completely. He
gave to it all the resources of his body, mind, and
spirit. On one occasion when the disciples offered
him food, he turned them away, saying, "I have
meat to eat that ye know not of. . . My meat is to
do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his
work." As he drew near to the completion of that
work, he exclaimed, " I have a baptism to be bap-
Q

242 Christ's accomplished work
tized with ; and how am I straitened till it be ac
complished ! "
He had a work to do, and it was something
greater than any other human being had ever at
tempted. Men consecrate themselves to science
and bless the world by multiplying its discoveries.
Some devote themselves to the liberation of their
country from the galling yoke of despotism. Others
wear themselves out in grappling with great ques
tions of philosophy. Some enrich the world with
imperishable contributions of sculpture, or painting,
or music. Others imperil their lives in opening up
unexplored continents, and die with their faces to
the task. But no one ever undertook a task worthy
to be compared to that which engaged the mind and
heart of Jesus, the task of saving a lost world.
The consciousness that his was a work for God
was the chief source of our Lord's inspiration. " I
must work the works of him that sent me." " The
Father hath not left me alone ; for I do always those
things which please him.''
At the close of his ministry he looked up into the
face of his Heavenly Father and said : " I have
glorified thee on the earth ; I have finished the work
which thou gavest me to do."
The highest and holiest feeling that can inspire
human activity is a desire to please God and glorify
his name. As this feeling was supreme in the heart

Christ's accomplished work 243
of Christ, we know that we are lifted into fellowship
with him when we are conscious that our regnant
purpose is to advance the triumphs of God's truth
and righteousness in the world. The highest arch
angel in heaven is not more thoroughly in sympathy
with Jesus Christ than the man on earth whose
ruling desire is to please God.
The satisfaction which we experience in finishing
a great task is generally in proportion to the diffi
culties we have encountered and mastered in the
performance of it.
When Christopher Columbus, after a long and
perilous voyage, saw at last the sunlight on the
peaks of the New World and realized that his life-
work was about accomplished, the memory of all
the difficulties he had met in securing pecuniary aid
for his undertaking, and of all the dangers he had
faced in battling with storms and contending with a
mutinous crew, made success a thousand-fold sweeter
than it would have been if the enterprise had been
free from struggle, peril, and suffering.
What must have been the joy of the heroic and
patient men who followed George Washington
through all the scenes and suffering of a seven
years' war, when they received the announcement
that Great Britain had acknowledged the independ
ence of the American colonies, that their patriotic
task was finished, that the long and bitter struggle

244
was over, and that they were free to return to their
homes and enjoy all the rich fruits of the victory
they had won ?
There are some men-destroying and God-defying
institutions in this country which I have been fight
ing for more than thirty years with almost the en
ergy of desperation. If my heavenly Master spares
me to see them die I shall have a feeling akin to
that which old Simeon had when he said, " Lord,
now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for
mine eyes have seen thy salvation."
I sometimes try to imagine what would be the joy
of that old temperance hero, Neal Dow, if he could
live to see the downfall of every bar-room and dis
tillery on American soil. I think he would want to
get hold of the tongue of another " liberty bell " and
ring out to the world tidings as glorious as the
message which went forth from Independence Hall
in 1776. I have tried to imagine what my own
feeling would be if I should wake up some morn
ing and hear that the accursed liquor traffic had
perished from our soil. It would be a rapture
which the highest of the angelic throng could afford
to covet.
These, my friends, are biit feeble suggestions of
what Christ saw and felt when from the cross he
exclaimed, " It is finished ! " We are wont to
dwell upon the agony of our dear Lord as he hung

Christ's accomplished work 245
upon the tree ; it must beget in us a sweet relief to
believe that he had there also an experience of joy,
a joy equal even to that which he felt when he
ascended from Olivet and the everlasting gates were
opened to receive him. What other emotion could
have filled him in that moment when he said, " It
is finished"? These words were spoken to two worlds, heaven
and earth. To God and the angels they meant that
the mission on which he had left the celestial world
was accomplished. He had revealed God to man.
He had brought to light every attribute of the in
visible Jehovah. He had declared his righteous
displeasure against sin. He had revealed God's
fatherly pity and mercy for the sinner. He had
laid himself as a victim upon the altar of divine
justice, and thereby magnified the law and made it
honorable. He had planted a kingdom in the
hearts of men that could not be overthrown, and
that was destined to revolutionize and bring into
subjection to God's will every other kingdom. In
all this he had glorified his Father on the earth.
Finished ! To men this meant that he had
bridged the chasm which was made when sin
entered* the world and heaven and earth went
asunder. By bearing their sins in his own body on
the tree he had paid their indebtedness to divine
justice, and not only saved them from the wrath to

246 CHRIST'S ACCOMPLISHED work
come, but provided a righteousness by which all
who believe on him are justified and made meet for
the kingdom of heaven.
In announcing the consummation of this sublime
work there must have been in the heart of Christ a
satisfaction infinitely deeper and stronger than any
joy which earthly victor ever felt in being crowned
and sceptered amid the resounding acclamations of
an admiring and grateful nation.
When his quivering lips exclaimed, "It is fin
ished ! " this poor blind world did not know what
he meant. Heaven understood him, and up there
in the realm of glorified beings there was such a
demonstration as had never been witnessed before.
Every banner was lifted higher ; every face kindled
with the brightness of a deeper joy ; every crown
glittered with a more resplendent beauty ; and there
was such a chorus of hallelujahs as had never rent
the air and shaken the vault of heaven.
2. Having spoken of his work, let us consider
also his sufferings, for he meant that they too were
finished. The life of Jesus was one of unprece
dented struggle and anguish. No other being had
ever accomplished his life-work under conditions so
unfriendly. The people whom he came to seek and
save had the grossest misconceptions of his character
and mission. One of the most pathetic statements
to be found in the Gospels is, "He was in the

CHRIST'S ACCOMPLISHED WORK 247
world, and the world was made by him, and the
world knew him not."
Inconceivably distressful must have been his
sense of isolation. He needed human sympathy,
and he longed for it, but, " He came unto his own,
and his own received him not." His purpose was
so beneficent, and his desire to do good to men so
obvious, it seems utterly inscrutable that he should
have met with anything but encouragement and
furtherance in his mission.
But the more his great heart opened to the world
the more the world shut its hard heart against him.
In planting the standard of the purest and most
helpful religion that was ever offered to men, it
seems that sincere religious teachers would have
hailed his coming and rallied to his support. But
priests, elders, and doctors of the law, not only stood
aloof from him and despised him, but confederated
with every evil element to destroy him. As he
breathed the spirit of the truest and loftiest patriot
ism, it does seem that his fellow-countrymen would
have greeted him everywhere with tokens of sym
pathy and appreciation ; but they treated him as a
conspirator and traitor.
He was so philanthropic, so devoted to the work
of relieving human want and suffering, we cannot
understand the opposition of the people. He healed
their sick, cleansed their lepers, made their lame

248 Christ's accomplished work
walk and leap with joy, opened the eyes of their
blind, and unstopped the ears of tlieir deaf; but
when they might perhaps have saved his life, they
cried out : " Away with him ! Crucify him ! "
Everything that was influential in his age and
country was against him. Civil government, ecclesi
astical rulers, and the people, combined to thwart
and crush him.
Who can tell what his sensitive spirit suffered in
contending with all this opposition to his peaceful
and merciful mission? Who can tell what he
suffered when Judas betrayed him and Peter denied
him? Who can fathom his sense of humiliation
when the mob came upon him and he received that
staggering blow from the servant of the high priest ?
How his heart must have bled when they clothed
him with mock royalty and spit in his face ! Think
of the torture he endured when they scourged him
with loaded thongs until he was too weak to carry
his cross to tjie place of execution.
Think of all the physical agonies that he experi
enced in having the rugged iron spikes driven
through his hands and feet. Think of the terrible
pangs that shot through his frame when they lifted
the cross, to which they had nailed him, and jerked
it into the mortised rock. Think of the loss of blood
and the consequent dizziness and fainting, and the
burning, maddening thirst.

Christ's accomplished work 249
But what he suffered up to that point was almost
insignificant in comparison with what he endured in
that hour of utter darkness, when he cried, "My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " For
saken of God ! That men should forsake him was
not so strange. Must he endure not only the malice
of mobs, the denial of friends, the fury of fiends,
the desertion of earth about him, and the murmur
ing heavens above, but have mingled with the un
utterable cup the hidings even of his Father's face ?
Why did God forsake him? That is a matter
which it behooves us to look into. Why did God
the Father desert his Son in that hour of his greatest
trial ? I am absolutely sure that I do not mislead
you when I say that it was because sin rested upon
him. It was not his own sin, but the sin of the
guilty and ruined race which he came to seek and
to save. " He hath made him to be sin for us who
knew no sin." All human guilt was laid upon him,
and that made an object so revolting that God would
neither look upon it nor allow his sun to shine upon
it. Think, if you can, of what would be a just
punishment for a single transgression of the infi
nitely holy law of the infinitely holy God and then
multiply it by the whole sum of human transgres
sions. If you could do this, you might have some
thing like a true conception of what Jesus suffered
when he " tasted death for every man."

250 Christ's accomplished work
Take the agony which David felt when he
thought of his double crime of adultery and mur
der, and exclaimed, " Against thee, thee only, have
I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight ! " or take
the maddening woe of Judas, when he threw down
the price of his infamy in the temple and went out
into the night and put an end to his life, and multi
ply it by the drops of water in the ocean or the
atoms of matter in the universe. If it were pos
sible for you to do this, you might approach some
thing like a just conception of the " horror of great
darkness " that came upon the soul of Jesus when
he cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou for
saken me ? "
What speech, human or superhuman, could ex
press the blessedness of the relief which he experi
enced when he exclaimed, " It is finished ! " When
he said that the anguish was over, the burden had
dropped, the cloud and darkness had passed, legions
of ministering angels were about him, God's smiling
face was before him, and the whole universe re
sounded with " Gloria in Excelsis." As a reward
for this finished work and suffering, God has exalted
him and given him a name that is above every
name, a name to which every knee shall bow and
every tongue confess, in the heavens above and the
earth beneath.
In beholding the inauguration of a great civil

Christ's accomplished work 251
ruler, in witnessing the bonfires, illuminations, and
processions, and in listening to the blasts of brazen
trumpets, the thunder of cannon, and the deafening
acclamations, which gave expression to the admira
tion, joy, and fealty of the people, I tried to transfer
my thoughts to that infinitely grander scene where
a redeemed world and a rejoicing universe of sinless
and exalted beings shall gather to pay tribute to
Jesus Christ. There not only every kindred and
every tribe on this planet, but all angels and arch
angels, cherubim and seraphim, thrones, dominions,
principalities, and powers, will join the everlasting
song and crown him Lord of all.
Brethren, is there not unspeakable inspiration
and joy in the thought that we, who now patiently
labor and suffer with Christ, and whose unfaltering
purpose is to be faithful unto death and finish the
work committed to our hands, shall be with him,
and share the rapture and glory of his coronation ?
No prophet has foreseen, no artist has painted, and
no poet has sung of a destiny more exalted and
blissful than that which awaits us in that life be
yond, unmeasured by the flight of years. If pres
ent dreams and visions of it are so sweet, who can
express the rapture of our souls when we come to
the realization of this long-cherished hope, when
mortality is swallowed up of life, and we see not as
now, " through a glass darkly," but face to face.

252 Christ's accomplished work
There is but one word in our language that expresses
the felicity of the state to which we are tending.
That word is satisfied. " I shall be satisfied when
I awake with thy likeness." " Ne plus ultra."
Beyond and above that human aspiration cannot go.

XVIII
INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER

"Meddle not with them that are given to change."
Prov. 24 : 21.
These inspired words of caution commend them
selves to our judgment and common sense. Both
reason and experience teach us that it is unwise and
unsafe to involve ourselves financially, politically,
socially, or otherwise, with men who are unstable
and capricious. It is unsafe to make them leaders
or counselors or confederates in any cause.
The man who is anchored to nothing, and is adrift
in the wide world of human thought and activity,
having no settled purposes or convictions, not know
ing one day what he will do or what he will be the
next, is not the man to be our adviser or guide in
any sphere. The unstable man is sure to fail in
everything that he undertakes. He begins many
things but completes nothing. He staggers under
the weight of high conceptions and big schemes
which never materialize. He is a crusader to-day
for a cause wliich he will renounce to-morrow. He
253

254 instability of character
follows nothing to a successful issue. He carries no
banner to complete and final victory.
Only a few days ago I was asked to express an
opinion as to the qualifications of a certain well-
known man for the management of a newly organ
ized religious movement. My reply was :
" The only thing which disqualifies him for the
position is his instability of purpose. He speaks
well, he writes well, his ambition is vaulting, his
enthusiasm intense, and his energy uncommon ; but,
in a public career of thirty years, every enterprise
committed to his care has perished because he
would not hold to it long enough to make it suc
cessful." I imagine that it was just such a character that
Solomon had before his mind's eye when he wrote
the words of the text : "Meddle not with them that
are given to change."
Look anywhere and you will see illustrations of
our subject.
1. Instability of character is seen in the restless
and roving disposition of men who go from country
to country. I do not deny that circumstances arise
which justify men in removing from one locality to
another, and in transferring their allegiance from one
nation to another.
The Pilgrim Fathers, who came hither and built
their homes in a wilderness infested with savages

instability of character 255
and wild beasts, were not unstable men. It was
their steadfast devotion to a great principle that
brought them here. They came to preserve their
birthright. They came to establish a community
and to found a nation in which they could be free to
worship God in their own way. This magnificent
fabric of free government stands to-day an eloquent
and enduring witness to their wisdom, their energy,
and their unflagging devotion to a sacred cause.
The thousands who have come to these shores
because they found it impossible in their own native
lands to provide for themselves and their families,
have simply obeyed a virtuous instinct implanted in
their breasts by their benignant Creator. I have
nothing to say against the multitudes of young men
who, with manly and patriotic motives, have left
the habitations of their fathers in these older States
of our republic, and have gone West to the very
borders of civilization.
The unstable man is he who changes without an
adequate reason, roves just because he loves to rove,
and is never satisfied with any country, because he
imagines that somewhere under the sun there is a
better one.
I will say to the present generation of young men
in the South, that no spot on this globe offers a bet
ter opening to-day for the successful prosecution of
almost any legitimate business than the territory

256 instability of character
which lies within the precincts of these Southern
States. The man who cannot succeed in such a
country is incapable of success anywhere. The
young man who gives up a moderately good busi
ness situation in Alabama to seek his fortune in
the far-off gold fields of Alaska, makes a mistake
from which he will never recover. If he should live
to return, he will never forgive himself for believ
ing the seductive stories of the sharpers and knaves
who took advantage of his ignorance and credulity.
2. Instability of character is illustrated by men
who shift from one occupation to another and who
stick to no trade or profession long enough to suc
ceed at it.
If a man has entered a vocation for which he has
no natural aptitude, and has gone far enough to be
thoroughly convinced of his inability to succeed, it
is not only wisdom, but duty to forsake it for some
other employment.
If a man has tried farming for ten years and
made nothing, he owes it to himself, his family, and
the cause of agriculture to quit the business. There
are many lawyers who might change their occupa
tion without any serious detriment to the cause of
justice and humanity. There are physicians who
might abandon their profession without incurring
any suspicion of cruelty to their patients. There
are musicians, some vocal and some instrumental,

instability of character 257
who could withdraw their talents from public view
without impoverishing the profession, or afflicting
the communities to wliich they have devoted their
services. There are statesmen out of a job who
might continue in a state of involuntary retirement
without inflicting any serious injury upon the coun
try. As a rule men do not change from one occupation
to another on account of their inability to succeed,
but from a love of novelty, from a desire to vary
their experiences and activities. The same routine
of employment, from year to year, becomes monot
onous, and they crave the excitement incident to new
endeavor in a new field. I once read of a Western
man, who having tried farming, teaching, literature,
dentistry, medicine, law, politics, and preaching,
closed his inglorious career as a peripatetic peddler
of cheap tombstones.
Paul says, "Let every man abide in the same
calling wherein he was called." He declares it to
be your moral and religious duty to hold on to your
vocation, if it be one to which you are adapted by
natural endowment. By your patient and untiring
pursuit of any honest and honorable business, and
by your continued success in it, you not only enrich
yourself and help your fellow-men, but please and
glorify God.
I have heard a man give as his excuse for
R

258 INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER
changing his business that it was surrounded by too
many temptations to wrong-doing. We can readily
conceive of cases in which this would be a valid
and sufficient reason for a change of occupation.
If I were in the service of a merchant or manu
facturer who required me to go into bar-rooms and
gambling houses to solicit custom, I would give
up my situation without a moment's hesitation. I
would go in rags, live in a log hut, sleep on a
pallet of straw, and suffer the pangs of cold and
hunger, rather than defile and debase my manhood
with any such ignominious work.
But if you keep out of business until you can find
employment free from temptation you will be an
idler for the rest of your life. You may change
from place to place, but until you get beyond the
stars, you will not be out of gunshot of the devil.
Evil spirits surround men in every situation and
condition. The poor man is sorely beset with temp
tations incident to hardships, and the rich are en
compassed by a thousand influences unfriendly to
virtue. He who toils with his hands feels the
pressure of temptation, but he who toils with his
brain feels it more.
I do not doubt that virtuous living is easier in
some pursuits than in others. It seems to be com
monly conceded that politicians, newspaper men,
tax collectors, plumbers, and undertakers, are more

INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER 259
susceptible to Satanic suggestion than the generality
of mankind. No vocation is free from malign in
fluences. Whether our work be secular or sacred,
in the counting-room or the prayer meeting, on the
rostrum or in the pulpit, the devil is there with
his old bribe : " All these things will I give thee,
if thou wilt fall down and worship me."
3. Instability of character is seen in the frequency
with which some church-members change from one
post of religious service to another. A man who
has successfully occupied a certain position in his
church sees a higher place and, without considering
the question of fitness for it, is impatient and un
happy until he is put into it.
I do not doubt that in some instances men who
make such changes act wisely. If a Christian
worker has outgrown his place and is manifestly
qualified for a higher and broader one, it is his
privilege and duty to change. The church will not
be slow in recognizing his growth and his fitness for
a larger work, and will advance him as rapidly as
he ought to go. It is better to do a little thing
perfectly than a great thing imperfectly. It is bet
ter to be a success as a bootblack than a failure as
a painter. It is more honorable to be a skillful
cobbler than a briefless lawyer. An intelligent and
active church-member who holds no office is regal
in comparison with an ignorant and inefficient dea-

260 INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER
con. If there is one thing the world needs less
than another it is the preacher who cannot preach.
A pastorless church is a sad spectacle, but a preacher
without a pulpit because no church is poor enough
to need him, is an object which calls for still deeper
commiseration. My brother, be not impatient to change your
sphere of Christian activity. Restrain your aspira
tions for a higher place in the synagogue. Curb
your craving for the uppermost seat at the feast,
lest you get into a place for which you are un
fitted and from which the Lord and your brethren
would have you step down.
4. The most mischievous and deplorable exhibi
tions of instability are seen in the frequent radical
changes which some men make in their religious
beliefs. During my brief residence here, I have
been amazed at the number of men in this city who
have drifted from solid Christian orthodoxy either
to unmitigated agnosticism or to practical atheism.
If there were anything worse than agnosticism and
atheism they would go to that.
When men cease to believe in an almighty and
eternal Father, who lives and reigns everywhere in
the boundless universe, and who governs all things
in wisdom, righteousness, and love, there will come
a wail of never-dying sorrow from every nation,
kindred, tongue, and tribe, a cry that will declare

INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER 261
human existence to be a burden and a wrong, for
which the only relief is a sleep which knows no
waking. That men who have ever known the blessedness
of trusting the Lord Jesus Christ, that men who
have heard his gracious voice speaking peace to
their secret souls, should turn away from him to the
empty cisterns of human philosophy is to me the
most perplexing of all problems. "Lord, to whom
shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life."
Where shall we find another refuge from sin, and
guilt, and aching care? We are like Noah's dove
that went out from the ark, and found nowhere,
amid all the waste of waters, a resting-place for its
feet. Where in all the world, or in all the limitless
universe, can we find rest for our souls away from
the cross of Christ?
I have had rationalistic moods, I have gone forth
for a season to explore new fields and to find some
new food for my craving spirit, but from every such
excursion I have returned with a sad heart; and to
get back the old peace and joy for which I longed,
I have had to sing the old song over and over
again : Nothing in my hands I bring,
Simply to thy cross I cling ;
Naked, come to thee for dress,
Helpless, look to thee for grace.

262 INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER
Stability of character is something whose worth
we cannot measure. It is Godlikeness. As man
develops morally and spiritually he rises toward
equality with God. One of the most beautiful and
adorable attributes of the Deity is his immutability.
He is "the same yesterday, to-day, and forever."
What he loved and what he hated when the morn
ing stars sang together and the sons of God shouted
for joy over the birth of a new world he loves and
hates at this moment. Sin is as black and repulsive
to his eye now as it was when he drove Adam from
paradise or when he hurled Satan from the battle
ments of heaven.
If we are conscious that we are becoming more
and more fixed and immutable in our hatred and
intolerance of all uncleanness and unrighteousness,
we may know that we are rising toward equality
with God.
Diogenes, the philosopher, lived a life of great
simplicity .and self-denial. When he reached his
eighty-fifth year his friends said : " Now, Diogenes,
take your ease, dismiss care and labor, and live after
the manner of the Epicureans." The old philoso
pher's reply was : " One so near the goal as I can
not afford to falter in the way of virtue."
A few months ago my heart was deeply wounded
by some unknown enemy, who caused to be pub
lished in more than a hundred newspapers the

INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER 263
statement that I had forsaken the pulpit for the
lecture platform. It was extremely harrowing to
my soul to know that any man in this broad land
could believe me capable of such unfaithfulness to
the Lord who bought me with his precious blood
and put me into the work of the Christian ministry.
Thanks be to God, I am too near the shining goal
to think of faltering now. With my eyes lifted to
the pearly gates of the eternal city, where I shall
soon sit, robed, crowned, and sceptered at the right
hand of Majesty, and join with the millions of the
redeemed in an eternal anthem of victory, no temp
tation to forsake the work of Christ could move me.
Paul said that " neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present,
nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any
other creature," could separate him from Christ.
In these eloquent words he simply expressed his
unconquerable determination to persevere unto the
end. He did persevere ; he was faithful unto
death, and when the end came he exclaimed : " I
am now ready to be offered, and the time of my
departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight ;
I have finished my course ; I have kept the faith ;
henceforth there is laid up for me a crown."
Brethren, let us covet and seek a stability of
Christian purpose that neither the wrath of men nor
the fury of fiends can shake.

264 INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER
In the latter half of the third century, Arcadius
suffered martyrdom rather than worship the gods of
pagan Rome. The order of the magistrate was
that he should be slowly dismembered. His fingers
were first taken off', joint by joint ; then his toes ;
then his hands at the wrist ; then his feet at the
ankles. When this had been done, he looked up to
heaven and said : " O God, keep me faithful to the
end." The executioners then cut out his tongue.
They threw him upon his back and amputated his
legs at the knees and his arms at the elbows. He
expired in a pool of blood, steadfast to the last.
My brother, can you look upon such an exhibi
tion of fealty as that and not blush for your own
cowardice in turning aside from the path of Christian
rectitude and duty to escape the jeers and ridicule of
a giddy and godless throng?
We have come to a time when the church of God
must have more stability in the character of her
members or else retire from many of her battle
fields. She needs more men who are rooted and
grounded in the truth, men whose faith is eternally
anchored, men whose courage will abide the pres
ence of any opposition or any danger, men who will
wear the colors of their divine Captain in the face
of any foe, men who will stand and suffer all that
infidel malignity and Satanic enmity can lay upon
them, men who at any moment would part with

INSTABILITY OF CHARACTER 265
property, liberty, and life itself, rather than prove
false to any principle of the gospel of Christ.
I thank God that we have in our churches a few
men and women of this type. They are the salt of
the earth and the light of the world. It is their
hold on the eternal verities of God's word that ren
ders possible the final overthrow of all unrighteous
ness and unbelief, and the conversion of the whole
world to the faith of the gospel. It will be in an
swer to their prayers and to reward their fidelity
that the Lord God will, by and by, open the gates
of the morning and fill the whole earth with the
light and beauty of his truth and grace.

XIX
THE TWO MARYS AT THE
SEPULCHRE

"And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary,
sitting over against the sepulchre." Matt. 27 : 61.
Neither in the New Testament nor in the
writings of the apostolic Fathers is there the faintest
trace of the celebration of Easter as a Christian
festival. The sanctity of special times and places
was an idea absolutely alien to the early Christian
mind. Easter observance is purely of human origin.
To that class of Christians who accept the sacred
Scriptures as the highest authority and the only rule
of religious faith and practice, every Lord's Day is
Easter. Every Sabbath's sun reminds them of the
adorable being who on that day rose in triumph
from the grave. The celebration of the resurrec
tion of Christ is a service appropriate to any Sun
day in the year. Every Lord's Day, by songs
and prayers and sermons and floral offerings, we
should commemorate Christ's victory over the grave.
Every administration of the ordinance of baptism is
266

THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 2G7
a commemoration of that glorious event. Just as
the observance of the Lord's Supper commemorates
his death on the cross, so does a burial with Christ
in baptism remind us that after his crucifixion he
was buried and rose again.
Joseph and his companions had rolled the great
stone to the door of the sepulchre and retired in
sorrow to their homes ; the mob that surrounded
the cross had dispersed ; the disciples had gone
every one to his own house ; and around the tomb
in which the body of Jesus was laid there was
silence, broken only by the sighs and sobs of two
women who lingered there to indulge their grief.
"And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other
Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre."
" The other Mary " was the mother of James and
Judas — not Iscariot — and Joseph. Two of her sons
had been appointed to the apostleship. It is not
strange that the mother of such children loved
Christ, and that one whom he had so highly honored
was among the last to leave his grave.
Her companion was Mary Magdalene. I will
venture to express the opinion that great injustice
has been done to the memory of this noble woman.
All through this country and Europe there are
asylums for fallen women which, by bearing the
name of Magdalene, convey to the world the im
pression that she was a converted harlot. There is

268 THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE
not a word in the New Testament that supports any
such conception of her character. She was at one
time possessed of seven devils, but that does not
indicate that she was an outcast, because even inno
cent little children were subject to demoniacal pos
session. Whether she had been a great sinner or
not, we know that she had been a great sufferer.
Both in mind and body she endured agonies akin to
the tortures of the damned.
Have you ever seen an incarcerated madman
fighting with phantoms, grappling with all manner
of imaginary horrors, shrieking with pain, and cry
ing for help? A hundred- fold worse than that was
the condition of Mary Magdalene when she was
crazed, maddened, and tortured by infernal spirits.
Could anything be more natural than her gratitude
and her lingering at the tomb of the benevolent
being who had delivered her from Satanic bondage?
Approaching night compelled these women to
leave the .sepulchre. They went home to prepare
for the anointing of the sacred body. They had no
thought of embalming it, because that was a service
which belonged exclusively to men. It was their
purpose simply to anoint the face and hands and
feet with fragrant oil. That was a beautiful sug
gestion of love. We are moved by a kindred im
pulse when we plant flowers and evergreens on the
graves of our precious dead.

THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 269
They prepared for the anointing on Friday night.
The next day was the Jewish Sabbath. The sacred
historian says, they " rested the sabbath day accord
ing to the commandment." What an exhibition of
reverence for that sacred day ! They felt that it
would not be in keeping either with the character of
the day, or the spirit of the divine Master, to spend
even a part of it in going to his grave to anoint his
body. It seems to me that tlieir example should be
taken as a solemn rebuke to the thousands of Chris
tian men and women who visit cemeteries on that
holy day to decorate the tombs and weep over the
dust of their dead kindred.
Have you ever sat down and quietly thought of the
situation on that memorable Sabbath ? The Prince
of Life was in the grave. The eternal Word that
was in the beginning with God, and that was God,
after a life of thirty-three years in the flesh, was
numbered with the dead and locked up in a sepul
chre of stone. Did ever the earth revolve upon its
axis with such a strange and priceless treasure in its
bosom? In that tomb was not only the body of
our Christ, but our life, our hope of heaven, and
the keys of death and hell.
Imagine the world's condition to-day if he were
still in the grave. If he had not fulfilled his
promise to rise from the dead, we would not be here
to honor him with anthems of praise, but to denounce

270 THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE
him as the arch-impostor of our race. We would
not be here to sing of a glorious immortality, but to
join the great army of unbelieving sensualists in
shouting, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow
we die."
" While it was yet dark, on the first day of the
week," Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went
to the sepulchre to anoint the body of Jesus. How
dared they go to that tomb ? How dared they even
speak of putting their hands upon that body ? Had
not Pilate, the Roman governor, at the request of
the priests and elders, sent a band of Roman soldiers
there to watch it? Were not these soldiers told that
an attempt would be made to steal it from its burial
place? Were they not commanded to guard it to
the last extremity? Did they not know that they
would forfeit their lives if they permitted any hu
man hand to touch it? In view of these facts it
did seem that the undertaking of these women was
reckless and foolish.
But there is nothing that love, and especially a
woman's love, will not dare to do. There is no
peril and no suffering that can deter her when her
heart is set upon ministering to one upon whom her
highest affection is bestowed. The most heroic
things in Christian martyrology were done by
women. If she was first to sin, she was first in
her devotion to the great remedial scheme by which

THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 271
sin can be overcome and destroyed. If there had
been a lake of fire between Jerusalem and the grave
of Jesus those women would have attempted to
cross it.
They had other barriers to overcome besides the
Roman guard. They had seen the huge stone
placed before the door of the sepulchre. They
knew that their arms were too feeble to remove it.
Did that deter them? Nay. They moved on as con
fident of success as if each possessed the strength of
a Samson. In physical strength the average woman
is inferior to the average man, but in courage and
determination she is not the weaker vessel. When
the three Hebrew women stood by the cross of the
dying Christ, where were the men who a few days
before had scattered palm branches in his path
way and shouted hosanna to his name? Where
were the apostles, the men who had followed him
for three years and who had received the highest
office in his kingdom ? Alas ! they had forsaken
him and fled, all save one, and he of all men was
the most womanly in his nature.
Inspired by faith and love, Mary Magdalene and
her companion went in the early morning to the
tomb with the determination to face any difficulty.
But they found no obstacle, either in the Roman
guard or in the massive stone before the door. God
had gone before them. "And behold, there was a

272 THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE
great earthquake : for the angel of the Lord de
scended from heaven and came and rolled back the
stone from the door and sat upon it. His counte
nance was like lightning and his raiment white as
snow : and for fear of him the keepers did shake
and become as dead men."
Brethren, I believe that every true believer in the
" Lord of life and glory " has for his helper in this
lower world some ministering angel, and wherever
there is a task too difficult for his own strength that
ministering angel stands ready to accomplish it for
him. Sometimes questions like these will come into
our minds : Why did not this great angel who
rolled the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre
interpose for the rescue of the innocent Christ?
Why did he sit quietly in heaven while Jesus was
in the hands of the mob ? Why did he not come
down on Calvary and smite his murderers and take
him from the cross ? In answer to these questions
it is sufficient to say that the death of Jesus Christ
was a necessity of God's moral universe. It was
an indispensable part of the great scheme of re
demption "that he, by the grace of God, should
taste death for every man." It was not until he
cried, " It is finished," and " bowed his head and
gave up the ghost," that helmed cherubim and
sworded seraphim could interfere. Jesus himself

THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 273
said that he must needs go up to Jerusalem, and
suffer many things of the priests and elders, and be
crucified, and rise again on the third day.
The appearance of a solitary angel at the sepul
chre shows how economical God is in the use of his
resources. There was a band of brave soldiers to
be overcome and a great stone to be lifted from the
entrance to the tomb. How was it done ? Not by
an army of angels. Only one of that innumerable
company around the throne of the Almighty was
sent to perform this task. His appearance was
sufficient to paralyze with fear the hearts and arms
of the Roman guard, and his hand alone was suffi
cient to break the seal and roll away the stone.
You remember that when God executed ven
geance upon all the people of Egypt it was done by
a solitary angel.
When the Israelities were dying from the sting
of the flying serpent, how did God save them ? By
simply lifting a brazen serpent above their camp.
In setting up a kingdom on the earth that should
outlive and overthrow all other kingdoms, Christ
did not call a council of great and mighty men and
invoke their sympathy and aid. He simply com
missioned a few Galilean fishermen to go out and
reiterate the truths which they had received from
his lips.
Happy angel must he be who was commissioned

274 THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE
to unseal the tomb and to behold the resurrection of
the world's Redeemer. How thrilling must be the
story wliich we shall, by and by, hear from the lips
of that angel ! If, as Daniel Webster says, " elo
quence is in both the subject and the occasion,"
what may we expect from that celestial orator when,
surrounded by the white-robed millions of heaven,
he stands up to speak of what he felt on that morn
ing of the first day of the week, as he stooped down
and looked into the sepulchre and saw the dead
Christ revive, lay aside the grave-clothes, and come
forth ? If there is ever to be silence in heaven, if
lute and harp and trumpet are ever laid aside for an
hour, it will be when God's angel tells the story of
the resurrection of Jesus. Not one of the sacred
writers attempts any description of the resurrection.
How could they describe a scene which was wit
nessed by no human being and that was too sublime
to be depicted by any human speech ?
Christ was crucified publicly, but he rose from
the dead secretly. No mortal eye beheld him
coming out of the tomb. Why were not the Sanhe-
drin and all Jerusalem gathered around the sepul
chre to witness his victory? What an opportunity
to convert his enemies and to remove the last vestige
of doubt from every honest mind. Why was not
his resurrection as public as his crucifixion? And
when he had risen from the dead, why did he show

THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 275
himself only to his disciples ? Why did he not go
out to some mountain height and invite all Jerusa
lem, Judea, Samaria, Galilee, and the whole world
to come and see that he had risen from the dead ?
My only answer is, that God has ordained that, in
reference to some things, we shall " walk by faith
and not by sight." In the exercise of his sovereign
wisdom and will he has made our salvation de
pendent on faith. He gives us only such evidence
as is required to constitute a basis for faith. He
will give us no more than this. To cultivate faith
there must not be too much sight. To any man
who loves the truth, the evidence of Christ's resur
rection is sufficient. There were more than five
hundred witnesses to it. The character of these
witnesses who saw him again and again after he
came out of the grave, the pure and self-denying
lives they led, the sacrifices they made, and the
sufferings they endured in bearing testimony to the
resurrection, will remove every rational doubt from
any mind that has an honest desire to know the
truth. The angel that had terrified the guard spoke
kindly to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, and
sent them away to tell the disciples what they had
seen and heard. Inspired with ecstatic joy, they
immediately ran back into the city and began to tell
their marvelous story. What was the effect of it

276 THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE
upon the disciples ? Though Jesus had said, " The
Son of man must be crucified, and the third day
rise from the dead," the words of these women were
to the most of them like an idle tale. Peter and
John, however, were curious enough to investigate
the matter. They ran with all their might to the
sepulchre. When they arrived, seeing that the
stone had been rolled away, they looked in and
found nothing but the grave-clothes. The body of
their Lord was not there.
Convinced that he had risen, they went back to
their homes and to their fishing nets. Mary Mag
dalene remained and wept before the door of the
empty grave. Why did she linger there? What
more did she want ? Peter and John had told her
that they had looked into the grave and that it was
vacant. Why did she not return with them? She
did not go away, because it was there that she got
the last glimpse of her beloved Lord. Her heart
clung to the spot with all the infatuation of an un
controllable and deathless affection. See the fond
mother as the body of her darling child descends
into the deep, cold grave. See her as she bends
over, with aching heart, to take a last look at the
coffin which contains the precious dust. See her
when the burial is over and the multitude has dis
persed. See how she lingers to weep and pray. It
was with a sorrow deeper and keener than this that

THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 277
Mary Magdalene tarried at the spot where she had
the last sight of her divine Benefactor.
As she wept she stooped down and looked into
the sepulchre. What did she see ? Not the empty
tomb which Peter and John had found, but " two
angels in white, sitting, one at the head and the
other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain."
Oh, what a sight was that ! And what a recompense
of all her constancy of love. As in the holy of
holies the cherubim stood over the Ark of the Cov
enant, so over the place where the body of Jesus
had slept these two angels sat face to face. Why
were they there ? Why was that place so dear to
them? Why did they look down with interest so
intense upon the cold gray stone where Jesus had
slept the sleep of death? Well, it was a matter
which it behooved them to look into. The Christ
who had lain there was their God as well as our
Saviour. In that tomb his gospel had received its
last confirmation. There he was declared to be "the
Son of God with power." There he had seized and
carried away the keys of death and hell.
As Mary sat there, indulging her bitter grief, the
angels said, "Woman, why weepest thou?" Her
reply was, " They have taken away my Lord, and I
know not where they have laid him." While she
was thus communing with the angels she heard a
voice from behind : "Woman, why weepest thou?"

278 THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE
Supposing it to come from the gardener she turned
around and said to him, " Sir, if thou have borne
him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him." But
when she heard that same voice pronounce the word,
" Mary," she knew it was Jesus, and throwing her
self at his feet, she cried, " Master, Master, Master ! "
Addressing her in the same affectionate tone, he said :
" Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend
unto my Father and your Father, and to my God
and your God."
When Mary Magdalene had delivered this sweet
and comforting message to the disciples, she and
" the other Mary " dropped out of view. They ap
pear no more in the sacred record. But I am per
suaded that, in the great company of the redeemed
in heaven, there are none who stand closer to the
glorified Christ than these two women.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ insures the resus
citation of all the dead. " Christ is risen from the
dead and become the firstfruits of them that slept."
" If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even
so them also that sleep in Jesus will God bring with
him." Nothing less than this glorious assurance
could comfort us in the loss of our loved ones.
The ancient pagans sorrowed without hope. A
shattered pillar, a ship gone to pieces, a harp broken
and tuneless, and a flower-bud crushed, were the sad
emblems of their hopeless grief. But when we look

THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE 279
upon the mounds beneath which sleep the ashes of
our dead, faith sees them sown with the seeds of im
mortality. Deathless flowers shall spring up there,
and where we sowed with sorrow we shall reap
with joy.
We died in the first Adam, but we shall live in
the second Adam. We sink with the earthy, but
we shall rise with the heavenly. The resurrection
of Christ is God's pledge and proof of our own
resurrection. He rose representatively, and as a
specimen of renovated humanity, and we rise in the
regular process of moral causation. " This corrup
tion must put on incorruption, and this mortal put
on immortality." " Then shall be brought to pass
the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up
in victory."
Is it possible for the human mind to conceive of
a future more glorious than that which awaits the
people of God ? The " Elysian Fields " of Virgil,
Homer's " sparkling rills of nectar," and the " Par
adise " of Milton, with its perennial flowers and its
eternal harps and hymns, are unattractive and re
pulsive in comparison with what this earth shall be
when death and the grave have given up their prey
and the tabernacle of God has descended to abide
with men.
Then let our joy to-day be unconfined. Let sor
row cease and gladness rule the hour. Let our re-

280 THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE
deemed spirits rise on wings of faith and love and
join the songsters of the skies.
Awake, thou wintry earth,
Fling off thy sadness ;
Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth
Your ancient gladness.
Wave woods ! Ye blossoms all !
Grim death is dead !
Ye weeping funeral trees,
Lift up your head.
For " Christ is risen, and become the firstfruits of
them that slept."

XX
POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE

" We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-
block, and unto the Greeks foolishness ; but unto them
which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power
of God, and the wisdom of God." 1 Cor. 1 : 23, 24.
It was not so much the Christ as Christ crucified
that offended the Jews and Greeks. The Jews
looked for a Messiah, and their dearest hopes were
centered upon his mission ; but a Messiah who
would submit to arrest, insult, and scourging, and
who would allow himself to be crucified between
two thieves, they would not have. The Greeks
would not have objected to a Messiah if he had
come as a great statesman, warrior, and philosopher ;
but to call a peasant Jew, who had expired like
other criminals on a Roman cross, the Messiah, was
an insult to their pride and intelligence.
This despised doctrine Avas the one great theme
of Paul's preaching. It was the very heart and
soul of the faith for which he contended and suf
fered so heroically and died so gloriously.
The opposition of those ancient Jews and Greeks
281

282 POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE
to this feature of the gospel has been reproduced
in every subsequent generation ; but it has survived
every assault, and to-day is the banner of a host
which defies the world and the very gates of hell.
Recently one Mr. Buchanan, an English in
fidel, wrote a dolorous epitaph for the gravestone
of the Christian religion. Other men have done
the same thing in every age since Jesus on the cross
bowed his head and gave up the ghost. David
Hume's favorite exclamation was, "Christianity is
dead ! " Voltaire said that in fifty years there
would scarcely be a trace of the religion of Jesus
left in the world. But here it is before us to-day.
If it is a corpse, as Mr. Buchanan declares it to
be, it is a marvelously animated one. If we are
in the midst of its funeral obsequies, there is an
unaccountable jubilation in the ceremony. The
procession is moving with a quicker step than was
ever seen at any other funeral. The music is very
unlike a requiem. Joy to the world, the Lord is come.
All hail the power of Jesus' name.
Children of the heavenly king,
As ye journey sweetly sing.
Jesus, I love thy charming name ;
'Tis music to mine ear ;
Fain would I sound it out so loud,
That earth and heaven might hear.

POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE 283
These are strange songs for the world to be sing
ing if Christianity is ready to be buried and epi-
taphed. " We preach Christ crucified." Paul put the
emphasis on crucified, because he knew that the
saving power of the gospel was in the fact of the
crucifixion. " I determined not to know anything
among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified."
"God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ."
He could have preached about the purity, gentle
ness, compassion, courage, and manliness of Jesus,
but he knew that in such a discussion of him there
was no power to convict, transform, and save. He
knew that a man might believe anything that was
true of the life and character of Christ, but if he
omitted the fact that Christ was crucified, and that
his death was a propitiation for the sins of the
world, he would be untouched by the redeeming
power of the gospel.
Paul did not undervalue any feature of oilr
Lord's character, nor any saying of his lips, nor
any act that he performed ; but when he would
show lost men the way of salvation, he saw nothing
but the gory cross, the dying Lamb, and the cleans
ing blood. In fixing his mind and heart upon the
death of the sacred victim, in giving it a sublime
pre-eminence, in putting it into the very center of

284 POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE
God's great scheme of recovering mercy, he was in
perfect harmony with the teachings of the divine
author of the gospel.
Jesus, when unfolding the way of salvation to
Nicodemus, said : " As Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be
lifted up." Only a week before his crucifixion lie
said, " And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will
draw all men unto me " ; and the evangelist de
clares that Jesus said this to signify "what death
he should die."
" The Son of man must be lifted up." The lift
ing up was an absolute necessity. It was in God's
eternal plan of redemption, and if Jesus Christ had
not been lifted up on the cross, not a human being
could be saved. It was not essential to the scheme
that Christ should preach a definite number of ser
mons and perform a definite number of miracles,
but it was essential that he, "the just, should die
for the unjust." Of this necessity he was pro
foundly conscious. He said to his disciples that he
must go up to Jerusalem and be crucified and rise
from the dead.
It was a terrible ordeal which he foresaw, and
the night before his death the thought of it brought
out a bloody sweat upon his brow, and constrained
him to pray, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup
pass from me." But as it was not possible for sal-

POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE 285
vation to be accomplished without it, and loving a
guilty world better than himself, he bowed himself
to the earth and said, "Nevertheless, not my will
but thine be done."
It is this lifting up of the Son of Man, his igno
minious death on the cross, which renders the gos
pel we preach "foolishness" to some and a "stum
bling-block" to others. They cannot see why a
God of infinite resources should adopt such a
scheme for redeeming the world. I suppose that
the bitten and dying Israelites had about the same
thought concerning the brazen serpent that was
lifted up over their camp. "The Lord said unto
Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon
a pole : and it shall come to pass, that every one
that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live."
That was a strange device to save people from
the effects of a deadly poison in their veins. A
strange thing to set before the eyes of men already
filled with consternation and horror ! The image of
a serpent would serve only to remind them of their
desperate condition, and to aggravate, rather than
mitigate, their terrible sufferings.
Strange sermon it must have been that Moses
preached to those wailing and despairing Israelites.
" Ho, Israel ! Look yonder ! See lifted on that
pole a picture of the loathsome, .horrible creature
which has bitten you, and injected into your blood

286 POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE
its deadly venom ! Look at that forked tongue
darted into the air ! See those keen fangs ! Look
at that head thrust out, ready to make the fatal
dart ! Look ! Look ! Look, and live ! "
Strange sermon ! Does it not sound like a mock
ery of the woes of the sick and dying people to
whom it was delivered? And yet it was nothing
less than a message from the living God. It was
the revelation of God's remedy for their terrible
scourge. Those who believed and obeyed the di
vine proclamation were instantly healed.
When they turned their dying eyes upon the pole
in the midst of the camp they saw the serpent, but
there was no anger in its eye, there was no venom
on its lips, there was no fury in its tongue, and
there was no enmity in its twisted form. To the
eye of the believer, that image was transformed
into an object that was radiant with divine love and
mercy. Looking upon it, he felt at once the heal
ing power of a good and gracious God.
The* brazen serpent, lifted up above the bitten
and perishing Israelites, was a type of Jesus Christ,
who many centuries afterward was lifted up on Cal
vary. He was lifted up for the redemption of a
guilty and lost world. He was lifted up that " who
soever believeth on him should not perish, but have
eternal life." If the lifting up of the serpent was
a strange device, this is infinitely stranger.

POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE 287
How are guilty and wrath-deserving men to be
saved? By looking at an object far more revolting
and harrowing to human sensibility than a brazen
serpent. They are saved by fixing the eye of faith
on a cross, a huge gibbet, dripping with human
blood, and upon which hangs a man charged with
crime, a supposed conspirator, mocked, derided, and
hooted out of the world.
Paul stood in the midst of Jews and Greeks and
said, " That despised being, who hung upon that
instrument of shame and torture, is the world's only
hope. He is the only being in all the universe who
can pardon your sins and save your guilty souls.
Whosoever believeth on him shall not perish, but
have everlasting life."
In every subsequent age men commissioned of
God have gone through the world with the same
message. Eighteen centuries have passed since
Paul fell asleep, but I can stand here to-day and
face men with the same confidence and boldness in
declaring that the despised Nazarene, who was cru
cified between two thieves, and who was deemed
less worthy of life than Barabbas, is man's only
Redeemer, and " that he is able also to save them to
the uttermost that come unto God by him." We,
the living ministry of the nineteenth century, are
commissioned to say to men covered with the lep
rosy of sin, and sinking down into the darkness and

288 POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE
woes of the second death, " Lift up your heads and
look at him who hangs on yonder cross, and ye shall
be healed and saved."
No other view of him will bring salvation. It
is important that you view him in every event of his
earthly history and in every act of his mediatorial
career. See him as a babe in the manger, when
that new star appears and rolls up the eastern sky
and shines immediately over his birthplace. See
him in the temple at the age of twelve years, a
prodigy of earnestness, asking questions of the doc
tors of the law. See him descending into the Jor
dan to be baptized of John. See him as he comes
up "straightway out of the water," while the Holy
Spirit in the form of a dove rests upon him, and a
voice from the " excellent glory " exclaims, " This
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."
See him on the mountain speaking a wisdom sur
passing all that the world had ever heard, words
which inspired men to say, " Never man spake like
this mari." See him feeding the multitudes with a
few loaves and fishes. See him healing the lepers,
opening the eyes of the blind, treading the mad
waves of Galilee, quelling the storm, and raising
the dead. See him in the splendor of his trans
figuration, enrobed in blinding beauty, his coun
tenance shining as the sun, and his whole being
luminous with the glory of the highest heaven.

POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE 289
But you will never know his saving power and
feel his divine life communicated to your secret
soul until you see him crucified. You will never
know the joy of salvation until you see him lifted
up to the malice of earth, the fury of hell, and the
wrath of heaven. It is only in such a vision of
him that you see your own sins in all of their hid
eous vileness. Beholding him there, as the victim
of your iniquity, you see your guilt not only con
demned, but forgiven and obliterated forever.
That in which we who are called and whose
spiritual eyes have been opened, see the wisdom
of God and the power of God unto salvation, is
and ever will be, to the Jew spirit, "a stumbling-
block," and to the Greek spirit, " foolishness."
Infidels may call the preaching of salvation by
the crucifixion of Christ " foolishness," but they
dare not say that those who believe in it are fools.
They dare not say that such men as Lord Bacon,
Sir Isaac Newton, John Milton, Sir William Hamil
ton, William E. Gladstone, George Washington,
Stonewall Jackson, and Robert E. Lee are fools.
It is a significant fact that millions of living men,
who once joined the haughty Greeks in pronoun
cing Christ crucified foolishness, now see in it the
saving wisdom and power of God. How do you
account for the conversion of such men ? Do you
say there was some unaccountable paralysis of their

290 POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE
intellectual powers which rendered them capable of
believing an absurdity ? The facts warrant no such
conclusion. How do you account for the fact that the nations
whose civilization is shaped by this doctrine are pre
eminent in intellectual culture and power? How
do you account for the fact that the nations which
have sunk into weakness, ignorance, and stupidity
are those that reject this doctrine, and that the na
tions which receive it as the wisdom of the living
God have developed into magnificent prosperity and
strength ?
A Chicago newspaper, which is the organ of
American barkeepers, gamblers, and adulterers, con
tains the following editorial paragraph :
"Churches, whose preaching and worship have
become a chestnut, cannot reasonably hope to com
pete with Sunday baseball, Sunday picnics, Sunday
theatres, and Sunday saloons."
I am ready to admit that the church in which
" Christ and him crucified is preached," does not
attract as many people as the Sunday baseball, or
the Sunday theatre, or the Sunday saloon. But I
ask the Chicago editor who gives vent to his fiend
ish delight over this ignominious fact, to compare
the effects of the Sunday baseball, the Sunday the
atre, and the Sunday saloon upon human character
and social order, purity, and peace with those of the

POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE 291
gospel of the crucified Christ. I suppose that such
a comparison would open the eyes of such as he even
to the truth that Christ is a better friend to hu
manity than Belial.
No, the gospel does not draw so many as these
Sunday iniquities which are so dear to the Chicago
editor ; but, thank God, those whom it does attract it
draws in a different direction. It draws them from
darkness into light, from bondage into freedom,
from uncleanness into purity, from the grossest ani
malhood into the noblest manhood, from the agony
of fear into the joy of hope, from confusion and un
rest into order and peace, from self to God, and
from earth to heaven.
The Sunday saloon, the Sunday baseball, and the
Sunday theatre are the devil's incubators which are
hatching out the numerous villainies that curse the
countries in which they are tolerated. They are the
devil's training-schools, in which young men and
young women are fitted for a life of degradation and
infamy. Christ crucified is the magnet which has lifted
into purity and strength the men and women who
have put into the world's civilization all that gives
to it brightness, beauty, and permanence. It is the
divine force that has established the colossal pillars
that support the whole fabric of refined and virtu
ous social life.

292 POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE
The preaching of the doctrine of Christ crucified
has generated the agencies and influences which have
thrown open prison doors, unfettered slaves, and
given to many of the nations of the earth civil and
religious freedom. In this despised doctrine is the
power which is destined to smite every form of in
fidelity and skepticism with a deadly paralysis, and
that will, sooner or later, make this corrupt and
apostate world as pure and beautiful as it was when
God looked out from the heavens and pronounced
it good. "We preach Christ crucified." Why? Because
it is the only doctrine that can save a soul from
death. I am sometimes told by one man to preach
the justice of God, and by another to preach the
love of God. I do preach divine justice and di
vine love ; but you may believe in both and never
be saved. You must believe in and rest upon that
exhibition of God's love and justice which is seen
in the sacrificial death of God's beloved Son.
It would have availed the poor Israelites nothing
if they had looked to Moses or to God himself and
refused to look at the provision which divine love
and mercy had made for their healing. They re
covered from their deadly malady only when they
turned their eyes upon the brazen serpent which
Moses lifted up in the wilderness.
Look not to God in the flowers ; look not to God

POWER OF A DESPISED DOCTRINE 293
in the stars ; look not to God in rainbows and sun
set halos. Seeing him there will bring no redemp
tion to your guilty souls. Look to God on Cal
vary's gory summit ; look to God in the person of
the man, Christ Jesus, who bare your sins in his
own body upon yonder cross, and by whose cleans
ing blood you may be made as pure as the whitest
seraph that sings in the heavenly choir.
Look ! Look ! Look ! Oh, there is life in a
look at the crucified One ! Look ! Look ! And
presently you will feel the touch of a power that
will send a vibration of joy to the deepest sources
of your being. Look ! Look ! And presently
there will be a flash of glory from that crown of
thorns that will turn your darkness into day.
Look ! Look ! And presently, beyond that cross,
you will see a golden gateway opening into a world
of cherubim. Look ! Look ! And presently
within that temple of beauty you will see an
archangel writing your name in the book of ever
lasting life.

XXI
SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you
free. They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and
were never in bondage to any man : how sayest thou, Ye
shall be made free ? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily,
I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of
sin." John 8: 32-34.
Our Lord was speaking of spiritual bondage
and freedom when he said, " The truth shall make
you free " ; but the Jews were too carnalized to
perceive his meaning. They supposed that his
words had reference to political bondage, and they
quickly resented the insinuation that they were
then, or ever had been, politically enslaved. They
said, " We are Abraham's children, and were never
in bondage to any man." They were blind to the
facts of their temporal condition and history.
Had they forgotten Egypt, and the four hundred
years in which they groaned under the yoke of
Egyptian taskmasters ? Had they forgotten Baby
lon, where they were carried captive, and the sev
enty years in which they hung their harps on the
294

SPIRITUAL FREEDOM 295
willows and prayed God to restore them to their
native land? What was their condition at the very
time at which they boastfully declared that they
were never in bondage to any man? Had they
forgotten Caesar and Pilate and Herod ? Were they
oblivious of Roman eagles looking down upon them
from towered heights? Were they deaf to the sound
of Roman bugles, and to the tramp of Roman le
gions along their highways? To whom did they pay
tribute ? Who was their royal master ? A son of
David ? or an alien, a stranger, an intruder, and a
pagan ?
Jesus recognized the reality of moral slavery
throughout the whole world of mankind, and offers
his gospel to men as the only means by which they
could secure moral emancipation. But the average
man resents the idea that he is morally enslaved,
and those whose bondage is the most abject and de
plorable are the most boastful of their freedom. In
this " land of the free and home of the brave,"
where every man claims to be " lord and monarch
of himself," we find the extremest types of moral
servitude and debasement.
Far be it from me to undervalue political free
dom. I believe that not only the humanity-loving
millions of earth, but the angels and glorified spirits
of heaven rejoice, when any people rid themselves
of the galling yoke of political despotism.

296 SPIRITUAL FREEDOM
When all Greece had assembled to behold the
Isthmian games, a crier stood up in the center of
the vast multitude and read the following decree :
" The Senate and people of Rome, and Titus, their
general, do give liberty and immunity to all the
cities of Greece that were under the jurisdiction
of Philip." This proclamation was received with
shouts and hosannas that shook the solid earth and
made the welkin ring. The historian says, " The
birds, flying in the air above the scene, were so
affected by the acclamations of the rejoicing multi
tude, that they fell dead to the ground."
Freedom ! How that glorious word warms our
blood and quickens our pulse.
Go ring the bells and fire the guns,
And fling the starry banner out ;
Shout, freedom ! till your lisping ones
Give back their cradle shout.
Better to dwell in freedom's hall,
With a cold, damp floor, and moulding wall,
Than bow the head and bend the knee
In the proudest palace of slaverie.
Alas ! Millions echo these sentiments who are
slaves in a sense they know not of. Millions who
would open their veins and pour a libation of their
blood on the altar of civil freedom, are in abject
bondage to their own depraved appetites and pas
sions. Loaded with chains of corruption, and led

SPIRITUAL FREEDOM 297
captive by the devil at his will, they yet boast of
their freedom, and tell us that they were " never in
bondage to any man."
If I should go to the palace of yonder million
aire, who is clothed in purple and fares sumptuously
every day, and before whom a sycophantic world is
ever bowing to the dust, he would spurn me from
his presence if I should intimate that he was sub
ject to any bondage. But notwithstanding he is so
proud and boastful, I know him to be the meanest
of slaves. His whole mind and moral being are
utterly servile to an evil passion, a corrupt purpose,
and a tyrannical habit.
Take another illustration. Take Robert G. In
gersoll, whose free-thinking has carried him to the
point not only of rejecting revealed religion, but of
denouncing it as the source of the world's greatest
evils. With an air of contempt for our weakness
he tells us that he has verified the proposition of our
text as to the emancipating power of truth. He as
serts that by the exercise of his own reason he has
satisfied himself that any belief in a divine revela
tion is a delusion, that what we call a revelation
from God is an imposition on human ignorance and
credulity, that the New Testament account of the
miracles of Christ is a fabrication of lies, that the
judgment to come and heaven and hell are the cre
ations of priestcraft, and that human immortality is

298 SPIRITUAL FREEDOM
a superstition which should not be dignified with a
serious thought. He declares that he is supremely
proud of his own freedom from the fetters of all of
these mischievous delusions. All this has Mr. In
gersoll said, and a thousand things besides, too pro
fane and irreverent to be repeated in this presence.
Alas ! His infidelity has done more than eman
cipate him from the fear of God, judgment, and
eternity. It has freed him from the fear of doing
wrong, and from all reverence for virtue, rectitude,
and honor. He stands before this nation to-day as
the apologist and defender of vice and crime. He
glories in the privilege of using the witchery of his
eloquent speech in defending and promoting princi
ples and practices, the prevalence of which would
utterly destroy social purity, order, and happiness.
The primal function of truth is to reveal to men
their moral condition. It is only in the light of di
vine truth that they discover the degradation and
bondage into which sin has brought them. But as
this discovery is only the beginning of moral eman
cipation, how vast and difficult is the work to be
accomplished by gospel truth ! We live and move
and have our being in a world of slaves. Who
can number the prison doors to be opened, the bars
of brass to be cut asunder, and the bands of steel
to be broken ?
If the gospel of Jesus Christ is the divinely ap-

SPIRITUAL FREEDOM 299
pointed instrument for the deliverance of the en
slaved millions of our race, what friend of human
ity can refrain from saying, "O Lord God, merci
ful and gracious, send forth the light of thy truth
into all the world."
There is a slavery of misconception and delusion,
from which men are freed only by the light of the
gospel. There was a period of my childhood when
I lived in constant dread of an imaginary monster
which my Negro nurse had named " Raw-Head-and
Bloody-Bones." To me that imaginary monster
seemed to be a reality. One night I saw him, as I
looked up the stairway into the garret. Under this
bondage I lived, a nervous, gloomy, unhappy
child, until my Christian mother told me that there
was no such creature as " Raw-Head-and-Bloody-
Bones," and that what I had seen as I looked up
into the garret, was something which the servant
had put there to frighten me.
The untutored savage is in bondage to fear when
he witnesses an eclipse of the sun. Give him the
scientific explanation of this phenomenon, enlighten
him with scientific truth, and he will be freed from
the pangs of fear. The superstitious Negro flees
from the marsh-lamp's fitful flame, believing it to
be the ghost of his grandmother. Reveal to his
mind the natural causes which produce that flame,
and it will be no longer to him an object of terror.

300 SPIRITUAL FREEDOM
Papal Rome sways her scepter over millions of
human beings who are kept in bondage to priest
craft by the delusion that to their spiritual masters
are committed the keys of heaven and hell. Set
before their minds the gospel truth that there is but
"one mediator between God and men, the man
Christ Jesus," and that "he openeth and no man
shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth," and
they will break away from their bondage into the
liberty of the true sons of God.
When John Knox began the Reformation in
Glasgow, the Romanists of that city believed that
if a heretic should touch the bell in the great tower,
he would instantly fall dead to the ground. John
Knox told them that if they would lower the bell
into the street, he would not only touch it, but smite
it. They accepted his challenge, believing that they
would thus easily dispose of an arch-heretic. They
removed the bell from the tower to the street, and
Knox, in the presence of a vast crowd, approached
it, smote it again and again, pronouncing at every
stroke his anathema upon the pope and the priests.
By this peculiar device Knox freed the people of
that city from a pernicious delusion, and prepared
them to receive the truth which made them forever
a community of Protestants.
Truth is essential to salvation. Men must have
right conceptions of God. Belief in an imper-

SPIRITUAL FREEDOM 301
sonal, pantheistic deity, will not lift the sinful soul
out of its degradation and bondage. Men who be
lieve that God is fitly represented by that pagan
image in the British Museum, which has twelve
hands, and in each hand an instrument of torture,
will never abhor vice and love virtue. Not until a
man sees the personality, fatherhood, holiness, love,
and mercy of God, revealed in the person of the
man Christ Jesus, can he have any desire to obey
and honor God.
But the truth of God, to be effective, must be
applied to the heart and conscience by the Holy
Spirit. The truth is the sword, and the Spirit is
the power that wields it.
Jesus Christ said, " If I be lifted up, I will draw
all men unto me." He means not literally every
man in the world, but men of every class and con
dition. The lifting up of Christ is our work ; the
drawing is the work of God's Spirit. Both are in
dispensable. If Christ is not lifted up by the
preaching of the gospel to lost men, the Holy Spirit
will not draw them, and without his drawing power
the lifting up will be in vain. We cannot over-es
timate the quickening, subduing, and transforming
power of gospel truth, when it is applied to the con
science by the Holy Spirit.
When I look about me in this depraved world, I
see some types of moral servitude which men call

302 SPIRITUAL FREEDOM
hopeless. I see the miser hugging his gold with an
affection that is absolutely blind and stupid. At
midnight, when good men sleep, and light-winged
dreams ascend to God and heaven, he sits bending
over his heap of glittering dust, wrapped in rags and
from vigilance and fasting worn to skin and bones.
I see the drunkard. On his bloated face all the
hideous heraldry of vice is stamped. Unmoved by
the tears of his wife and the cries of his beggared
babes, he goes on from debauch to debauch, from
madness to madness, until he would barter the
blood in his veins for one more drink.
I see the harlot, lost to virtue and dead to shame,
defying alike the scorn of men and the frown of
God. In the frenzy of her sin and woe, she curses
her natal day, curses the mother who gave her
birth, curses the dumb earth beneath her feet, and
the gentle stars that shine above her head.
I see the felon whose feet have slipped in human
gore, and on whose face the darkest histories are
written.. To-morrow he will ascend the scaffold
and die a felon's death ; and yet there is no tear in
his eye, nor contrition in his heart.
Do you tell me that for such there is no re
demption? If you do, you limit the power of
God's truth and need a better faith. The annals
of our blessed Christianity contain the names of
misers, drunkards, harlots, thieves, and murderers,

SPIRITUAL FREEDOM 303
who, under the influence of the glorious gospel of
the Son of God, became new creatures, attained to
great purity and beauty of character, and went
down to their graves with words of triumph.
My friend, what is your condition to-day? Are
your fetters gone? Are you free?
He is the freeman whom the truth makes free,
And all are slaves beside.
"If the Son, therefore, shall make you free,
ye shall be free indeed." In the light of God's
truth, have you seen and felt your guilt and folly,
and with true penitence of heart lifted your eyes to
him who said, "Look unto me, and be ye saved all
the ends of the earth " ? Do you grasp with appro
priating faith the blessed truth that "the blood of
Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin" ?
Is there a principle of life within you which impels
you in the path of obedience to God, and that em
powers you to say, " Get thee behind me, Satan " ?
With confidence and joy do you look forward to
the day when death shall be swallowed up in vic
tory, and when you shall be caught up in the air to
meet your glorified Lord and Redeemer? If to these
questions you can answer yea, I pronounce you free.
You know the truth, and the truth has made you
free. You are in God's keeping, and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against you.

XXII
DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL

" Deliver us from evil." Luke 11 : 4.
The existence of evil in this world is a problem
with which no philosophy has successfully grappled.
It stands before us a wall of darkness on which
there falls not one beam of light. In their unsuc
cessful efforts to explain the mystery some men have
reached the conclusion that the universe is godless.
Others have become misanthropic and abandoned
themselves to a career of dissipation and self-de
struction. Why God permitted evil to come into the world
is a secret which he holds in the infinite depths of
his owp bosom. Neither in his written revelation
nor in the volume of nature has he given the faint
est clue to this mystery.
While it is an insoluble mystery it is a tremen
dous reality. We cannot ignore it. It stands out
distinctly before us in a thousand different forms.
All of our material senses take cognizance of it. It
is in our flesh and blood and bone and brain. The
304

deliverance from evil 305
earth is full of it. Wasted lands, blight and fam
ine, plague and earthquake, angry seas and sink
ing ships, burning cities and bloody battlefields, are
objects too real and appalling to be ignored.
In the Bible we have the record of the entrance
of evil into the world, an epitomized history of its
progress through a period of four thousand years,
and prophecies of its future career up to the time
when the great globe itself and all that it inherits
shall dissolve and pass away. Every page of secu
lar history is stained with crime and blotted with
blood. There we see how tyrants' feet have slipped
in human gore, and how the best and noblest of our
race have suffered the many ills to which flesh is
heir. All about us to-day are faces lettered with sorrow
and stamped with shame. Nothing but the fear of
the iron fist of law keeps a large element of the
very best of communities from riot and sedition.
The existence of three or four hundred dens of vice
in the city in which I speak is enough to convince
us that devils still tabernacle in human flesh and
that much of this world's territory is under Satanic
dominion. Our daily newspapers are chronicles of current
evil. Their chief business is to tell us how nations
defraud nations, how politicians victimize each other
by unrighteous trickery, how huge business monopo-

306 deliverance from evil
lies enslave the toiling masses, how lust clamors
for unrestrained freedom, how bank vaults and
State treasuries are depleted by embezzlement, how
drunken husbands murder their wives, how women
despise motherhood, and how by assassination gov
ernments are deprived of their executive heads.
Stranger than the existence of these evils is the
fact that so many men live in comparative uncon
sciousness of them. Immersed in sensuality, or in
sane with the greed of gain, or bewitched by siren
songs of splendor and pleasure, they seem not to rec
ognize the fact that they are out on an ocean of
merciless whirlpools. They seem not to know that
they are tenants of a world where every pathway
leads to peril, where every human habitation is
shadowed by sorrow, where all beauty is fading
into darkness, and all life is sinking into dust.
Not until men awake to a sense of these awful re
alities can they comprehend and appreciate the tre
mendous significance of the prayer, "Deliver us
from e¥il."
In discussing this subject, my first endeavor will
be to help you to recognize the dread reality which
God calls " evil," and the awful disasters with
which it threatens us, both in this life and in the
vaster life to come.
I prefer the Revised version, which reads : " De
liver us from the evil one." Our danger is from

DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 307
something more formidable and fearful than evil.
It is from the evil one, a mighty and malignant per
sonality who stands behind all that men call evil.
In the absence of this personality nothing would be
evil, everything would be good.
Whenever I touch upon the doctrine of the per
sonality of the devil, some objector is heard from
who seems never to have thought of the subject in
the light of divine revelation. They seem to be
utterly forgetful that they have ever read that Jesus
was tempted of the devil on the mountain, and that
he said to Peter, " Get thee behind me, Satan," and
that the inspired writers always speak of the devil
as a person.
Who is this evil one ? He is the enemy, for that
is the meaning of the word Satan. He is the
tempter who deceives, seduces, and entraps the
human soul. He is the accuser who brands, black
ens, and blasts men with the very sins into which
he leads them. He is the Apollyon, the destroyer
who scorches men with his envenomed breath and
pierces them through with his deadly darts.
Young man, the invisible enemy that drags you
every night into a gambler's den is no myth. A
hundred times, perhaps, you have resolved that you
would never enter that den again ; but something
mightier than your own will gets into you and com
pels you to go.,

308 DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL
Go to that young bank cashier, once the idol of a
fashionable social circle, but now an incarcerated
felon, loaded with infamy and despised by the people
who helped to destroy him, and he will tell you that
some malign spirit entered into him, dethroned his
will, and constrained him to do what his own judg
ment and conscience condemned.
Forty years ago there was a little girl in south
ern Alabama whose beauty and loveliness were al
most angelic. If I had wanted to paint a picture
of human innocence I could not have found a better
model. She was the child of wealthy, cultured,
and distinguished parents. She was reared in an
atmosphere of Christian piety. The influences
which surrounded her childhood, girlhood, and
young womanhood were exceptionally pure and
helpful. Twelve years ago she was sentenced by
an English court to lifelong imprisonment for the
crime of taking the life of her own husband. Ask
her to account for the commission of that horrible
deed, and she will tell you that some invisible fiend
took possession of her, deprived her of self-control,
and forced her to the fatal step.
Young man, the evil one has not yet dragged you
into a criminal life. No court has sentenced you to
wear a convict's garb and sleep in a felon's cell ;
and yet your life may be one of real subjection to
Satanic power. If you are habitually untruthful,

DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 309
or dishonest, or intemperate, or licentious, you are
the devil's captive ; you are doing his unrighteous
bidding ; you are completely in his power ; and you
are in imminent danger of becoming as degraded
and vicious as the men whom public justice has
branded with felony.
Young woman, your record so far may be unsul
lied by any disgraceful act. In the eyes of men you
may be as pure as the white flowers with which you
are wont to adorn yourself; and yet the evil one
may at this moment possess your mind and heart.
If your master passion is the love of social distinc
tion and the fleeting pleasures of the gay and giddy
throng, if the novel has more charms for you than
the word of God, and the festive hall is more at
tractive to your soul than the sanctuary of prayer,
then may you well pray to be delivered from the
evil one, for his power is over you.
If there is one before me to-day in whose breast
avarice or malice or the lust of worldly power and
fame is the reigning passion, I hesitate not to say to
him : " You are Satan's fettered slave ; you are
in danger of incurable degradation in this life and
of remediless wretchedness in the endless life be
yond the tomb."
I rejoice that I am divinely commissioned to stand
here to-day and declare that God's infinite mercy
has provided deliverance for every one who will

310 DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL
penitently and gratefully accept it. What that de
liverance is and how to secure it are questions which
demand immediate and most thoughtful considera
tion. The old Epicureans made evil identical with dis
comfort and the avoidance of personal pain the chief
end of life. Their only idea of deliverance from
evil was escape, as far as possible, from every pain
ful or unpleasant experience. Their theory was
utterly false. The man who attempts to hide from
or go around disagreeable things does not escape
them. It is painful to resist temptation, but sub
mission to it will bring experiences still more pain
ful. It troubles you to discipline your disobedient
child, but the neglect of discipline will bring upon
you more serious troubles.
The theory of the Stoics was, that pain is no evil
and that happiness is no good. No relief is found
in this doctrine, for the simple reason that no man
of sound mind can believe it. When I have tooth
ache, n»t even an angel from heaven could convince
me that the anguish of such an affliction is not evil.
When I am peaceful and happy, it is impossible to
convince me that it is not good to be in such a state.
The Christian Science theory is, that evil is a
myth. The apostles of it would tell you that any
one who believes in it can step into a fire and re
main there for an indefinite period without any sen-

DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 311
sation of pain. If the Christian Scientists of Nash
ville will furnish a man who will undertake such a
demonstration of the utility of their religion, I will
invite this entire congregation to witness the exhi
bition; and if it should prove successful, I will ex
hort each one of you to become a Christian Scien
tist. Until such a demonstration is made, I shall
continue to affirm that only people of unsound
minds can be persuaded to subscribe to such a creed.
Christianity is free from all such absurdities. It
recognizes the reality of evil and utters no word of
protest against those natural emotions which are ex
cited by contact with it. When from the brow of
Olivet Christ looked down upon Jerusalem and
foresaw its destruction, he wept. If he had been
a Christian Scientist, he would not have wept. To
him the suffering and slaughter of half a million
human beings was evil — a stupendous evil — and he
could not contemplate it without the deepest emo
tions of sorrow. He believed, and he taught, that
death was an evil. Hence we see him weeping at
the grave of his Bethany friend. He pitied the
sick, the poor, and persecuted, because he believed
sickness, poverty, and persecution to be evils. He
denounced lying, hypocrisy, theft, adultery, and des
potism, because he knew them to be evils.
How does Christ deliver us from evil ? Not by
removing evil from the world in which we live.

312 DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL
He has nowhere promised to remove it. Until the
end of time there will be disease, famine, strife,
war, persecution, tribulation, and anguish.
Christians are as liable to all these forms of evil
as infidels. Moody is just as liable to be caught in
a railroad wreck as Robert Ingersoll. A ship
freighted with Christian missionaries is just as much
exposed to ocean storms as one carrying a band of
merciless pirates. "Evils, in their external forms,
happen alike to the good and the bad, to the wise
and the foolish." Christ does not deliver us from
evil by removing us from contact with it, but by
uniting us to himself by a living faith, by letting
his life into our life, and thereby raising us above
the dominion and power of the evil one. Deliv
ered from Satanic power nothing that is evil can
overcome us or prevent us from being peaceful and
happy. To the wicked and godless man persecution is
unmitigated evil. There is nothing in him to mol
lify the» anguish of it ; but when the Christian is
"persecuted for righteousness' sake," he can rejoice
and be exceeding glad. The joy which comes to
him from his union with Christ, and from the con
sciousness of Christ's supporting grace, more than
compensates him for the wrongs which he endures.
Physical sickness, to the ungodly man, is unmit
igated evil. Conscious that he deserves it and with-

DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 313
out faith in a divine Helper, he has not one drop of
comfort. To the child of God physical sickness is
a " light affliction." It is light because of the re
lief which comes to him from the consciousness of
God's presence, and from the belief that his suffer
ing is a divine discipline that will work out for him
" a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."
Look at Byron. He was young, beautiful, and
famous. As a poet he had gifts which lifted him
above every other poet of his time.
He seemed to stoop to touch the loftiest thought,
Stood on the Alps ; stood on the Apennines ;
And with the thunder talked as friend to friend.
He laid his hand upon " the ocean's mane,"
And played familiar with his hoary locks.
But never was there a life more wicked and
wretched than his. His years were all winter, his
rest all labor, and his sleep all nightmare. At the
age of thirty-three he wrote these plaintive lines,
expressive of his own experience :
My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone ;
The worm, the canker, and the grief,
Are mine alone.
The fire that on my bosom preys,
Is lone as some volcanic isle.
No torch is kindled at its blaze —
A funeral pile.

314 DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL
Verily, "there is no peace to the wicked." Why?
Because they are under the power of the evil one,
whose mission it is to disturb them, to make their
evils doubly evil, and to instill into tlieir every cup
of pleasure drops of anguish.
Contrast their condition with that of the Lord's
people, who are continually saying, " The lines have
fallen unto me in pleasant places, yea, I have a
goodly heritage." "What shall I render unto the
Lord for all his benefits toward me ? " " Bless the
Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless
his holy name." "Goodness and mercy shall follow
me all the days of my life ; and I will dwell in the
house of the Lord forever."
Every day we hear of suicides committed in
prisons. Under the burden of disgrace which such
bondage imposes upon them, men feel that life is
not worth living and, rather than endure the ills
they have, they fly to others they know not of.
The man who is delivered from the power of the
evil one «an never be provoked to take his own life.
Paul and Silas were publicly whipped and then
thrust into a Roman prison ; but the cowardly
thought of suicide had no place in their heroic
minds. The faith that was in them transmuted
their humiliation into glory, and their anguish
into rapture. The presence of their living Lord
illumined the darkness of their dungeon, and

DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL 315
turned their mourning into joy. Verily, they were
delivered from evil. Their lives were hid with
Christ in God, and Satan had no more dominion
over them.
Look at Francis Xavier, in the midst of all the
degradation, squalid wretchedness, and crime of the
darkest region of India. See him there in the
deepest poverty, and without access to a solitary
human friend. Was he despondent? No. Did
he murmur at his hard fate ? No. At the point
of his greatest extremity he wrote to his friends
that his joy in the Lord was almost unbearable.
Christ had so delivered him from the evil one that
no adversity could disturb the sweet serenity of his
exalted spirit.
Poverty is not an evil in itself. The best be
ing that ever honored the earth with his footsteps
was so poor that he had not where to lay his head.
The winding sheet in which his dead body was
wrapped, and the grave in which it was buried,
were the gifts of charity. He chose poverty as a
condition more desirable than wealth.
Martin Luther did not regard poverty as an evil
per se. When about to die, he exclaimed : " I
thank thee, O God, that thou hast made me a beg
gar on the earth."
Poverty is an evil only when it is connected with
sin and unbelief. When a man is not only poor

316 DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL
but profane, wicked, unclean, and faithless, he is
wretched indeed. The most joyless and pitiable
being in all the world is a drunken, licentious,
filthy-mouthed infidel pauper. AVhat is true of
poverty is equally true of every other earthly trial.
No experience can be evil to us, if we are free from
the evil one and are living by faith in the Son of
God. To have Christ in us, the hope of glory, is to
have a source of serenity and joy that will not fail
us in any of the exigencies that are possible to mor
tals here below. Thou bounteous Giver of all good,
Thou art, of all thy gifts,
Thyself the crown.
Give what thou wilt,
Without thee we are poor,
But with thee rich,
Take what thou wilt away.

3 9002 08844 3222