ACQUIRED BY EXCHANGE

Practical Christianity
By Rufus m. Jones, Litt. D.
Professor in Haverford College, Editor of "The American Friend "

•' He that DOETH the truth cometh to the light.'

Philadelphia
JOHN C. WINSTON & CO.
189?

Copyright by
John C Winston & Co.

33i>6I-a'. j att

TO THE STUDENTS OF HAVERFORD COLLAGE WITH WHOM
IT HAS BEEN MY PLEASURE TO SEARCH FOR TRUTH
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Supreme Demonstration . . 17
II. Things Which Cannot be Shaken . 21
III. The Good Fight of Faith  24
IV. The Test of a. Church  27
V. The Man Within The Man .... 30
VI. Wrestling for the Blessing ... 33
VII. The More Excellent Way .... 36
VIII. The Gift of Listening to God ... 39
IX. The Mission of the Church . 43
X. Coming to God — The Atonement as
a Practical Truth . . 47
XI. Heart, Soul, Strength, Mind ... 51
XII. A Postponed Heaven ... 54
XIII. Wrought for the Self-same Thing 57
XIV. No Sign Shall be Given . 60
XV. Pisgah Views of Life . . 65
XVI. The Vine-stock . 68
XVII. The Place of the Home in Civiliza
tion  71
XVIII. The Eternal Nature of Things . 74
XIX. Diversions and Recreations 77
(ix)

x CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XX. A Religion of Power .... 80
XXI. Pentecost in our Christianity 83
XXII. Worshiping God . . . 86
XXIII. Christians in the World . 89
XXIV. IF Christ Came to the Home ... 92
XXV. Christianity and Reform Work 95
XXVI. Our Thought of God ... 99
XXVII. The Father and the Son . . 102
XXVIII. Beatitudes in the Gospel . 106
XXIX. What Would We Ask Him ? 109
XXX. Robes of Righteousness . 112
XXXI. Two Typical Conceptions of Salva
tion . 115
XXXII. Putting Off and Putting On 118
XXXIII. To Whom Shall We Go ? . . . 121
XXXIV. The Rarest Human Quality 124
XXXV. Not Cunningly Devised Fables . . 127
XXXVI. Sabbath Observance 130
XXXVII. The Gospel of the Son of God 133
XXXVIII. A Faith That Honors God . 136
XXXIX. What Might Have Been, But is Not 139
XL. The Peace of God ... 142
XLI. Is True Religion Emotional ? 145
XLH. The Downward Pressure . . 149
XLIH- Does God Really Love Us ? . 152
XLIV. The Incarnation 155
XLV. A Religion of Four Anchors . 158

CONTENTS

CHAPTER XLVI

Practical Holiness ...
XLVII. Applied Christianity and What It
Seeks 
XLVIII. Christian Holiness
XLIX. The Founding of the Church .
L. The Gospel of the Kingdom .
LI. The Test of Christianity
LII. The Message of Quakerism
LIII. The Effect of Discouragement

PAGE 162

16s 168172
179 184 188
203

INTRODUCTION

TT7"E do not mean to imply in the title of
this book that there are two kinds of
Christianity, — one kind which is " practical "
and one that is not. We simply mean that this
book does not deal with speculative problems,
but with the facts of life.
It is said of Socrates that he brought phil
osophy down out of the heavens to the earth.
The statement means that Socrates abandoned
the fruitless speculations of the early Greek
philosophers concerning the origin of the
universe and the constitution of the heavens
and the earth, and sought instead for a prac
tical method of life. How can a man realize
in his own life the highest Good ? This is the
all important question with him.
In a much truer sense Jesus Christ brought
religion out of the heavens to the earth. He
does not speculate, He does not theorize, He
(xiii.)

xiv INTR OD UCTION
announces and illustrates and exemplifies a
way and method of life. Religion and life
with Him mean the same thing.
We have since put His teaching, with that
of His immediate followers, into a system
which we call Christian theology, but the
moment we go back to the primitive facts of
Christianity, we find not a cold and rigid sys
tem of thought and belief, but a Life, a mes
sage, a Personality — a manifestation of God
and a revelation of the true meaning of
humanity. In Him we have a Son of God
and a Son of man living among men to show
life on its true scale.
There is nothing in His message which does
not bear directly upon our human life. He
took not the nature of angels, He talked not
of the angelic, the seraphic, the celestial
realm, He admitted us into none of the secrets
of a foreign world ; He took the nature of
men, He showed how a man might become a
son of God and He unfolded the method and
laws of the kingdom of heaven — the ideal
social order in which men shall be sons of
God and brothers one to the other.

IN TROD UCTION xv
Christianity is not Christianity until it is
applied to life. It cannot be reduced to a
bloodless theory, an abstract scheme any more
than a pressed flower can be a genuine violet.
It must not stop short of its purpose, which is,
as a vital force, to reconstruct man and society
and to work out as a fact the spirit of Jesus
Christ in the individual, and in the social
organism. One may almost take as Christ's
final message his own great words, " Know the
Truth" and "Do the Truth." The two go
together, and together they complete the cir
cuit, for the truth can never be completely
known except through a practice \of it in the
process of life.
It is a characteristic of our age to care only
for that which can be applied to some use.
We have slight taste for the abstract. But it
is also true that our age is concerned for the
expansion of the individual life and for the
regeneration of society. Now it is precisely
here that the Gospel of Jesus Christ meets our
need and fits our condition. His purpose is to
give abundant life and to make all things new
and we find His message constructive at every

xvi INTRODUCTION
point. It simply needs to be applied as we
are applying the other forces which are pro
gressively being discovered for our uses.
This book is not a systematic treatise or ex
position of Practical Christianity ; it is rather
a series of short essays, which illustrate and
interpret phases of the Practical Christian
life, which indicate the method of the king
dom and which seek to manifest the Spirit's
power in the life and society of our time.
Most of these chapters have already been
printed as editorials, but it is hoped that they
may have a further service in this collected
form. Chapter LII, on the Message of Quak
erism is now printed for the first time. It is
not intended to be a complete interpretation
of Quakerism, nor is the point of view here
set forth confined to Quakersism by any means.
It is merely an attitude of life and teaching
which has been characteristic of Friends and
which for want of a better title is here called
the Message of Quakerism.
" Forgive them where they fail in truth
And in thy wisdom make me wise."
Haverford, Pennsylvania, 1899.

CHAPTER I
THE SUPREME DEMONSTRATION
/CHRISTIANS are continually being asked
^ to prove that Christianity is true, and
they generally point to the various books of
"evidences" as an answer. There are historical
proofs, monumental proofs, literary proofs, so
that the events of the life of Jesus are as well
authenticated as any events of antiquity. But
we are told that Christianity makes assump
tions of a Divine origin and a Divine mani
festation which no amount of historical evi
dence could ever prove after nineteen hundred
years. It claims an Incarnation, and it assumes
that through Christ God gives men eternal
life. How can any book of evidence prove
such claims as that ? Must we not admit that
no proof is possible ? The two leading expo
nents of apostolic Christianity — Paul and John
— have given us a method of proof or demon
stration which is peculiarly suited to the tem
per and spirit of our modern ways of thinking
and of testing truth. John says, " He that
believeth on the Son of God hath the witness
2 (17)

18 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
in himself," and Paul, on the top wave of his
great inspiration, says, " The Spirit itself bear
eth witness with our spirit, that we are the
children of God." In other words the supreme
demonstration of spiritual truths is an internal
evidence — a witness within the soul itself.
We know by immediate, first-hand knowledge
that two and two are four, or that the shortest
distance between two points is a straight line,
or that a thing cannot both be and not be at
the same time. These things are self-evident,
we say. The mind is of such a nature that
we cannot doubt them. In the same way we
" prove" our own existence — we have the wit
ness within ourselves, and no amount of argu
ment could ever shake us out of the conviction,
for it is based on first-hand evidence. Now
our two apostles bring the whole content of
spiritual revelation — the mighty message of
eternal life — down to a test of a similar dem
onstration. It is not dependent upon histori
cal evidence alone ; it is open to the same
proof as our axioms of mathematics, or even
our own existence.
Christianity professes to be a revelation
from God; it proclaims salvation from sin,
and a new life in Christ; it offers the privi
lege of sonship with God, and it promises to
fill believers with the spirit of love. Now the

THE SUPREME DEMONSTRA TION ig
only possible proof of such claims and pro
mises is the demonstration of personal experi
ence. " Try it and see," is all we can say to the
skeptical. It would be impossible to prove
that two and two are four to a person who had
no internal faculty of perceiving mathemati
cal truth ; it would, too, be impossible to
prove to a man that he existed if he had no
self-consciousness of it. So, too, the only
proof that we have power through Christ " to
become sons of God," is to become one ; the
only demonstration that He can save from sin
and give new life is to become saved and to
receive the new life. Does anybody want
any better evidence of the greatest spiritual
truths of Christianity ? The only evidence of
the sunrise is that you see it with your own
eyes ; the only evidence that one's mother is
good and loving is that one feels her love.
Thus in our last resort we fall back upon
the " demonstration of the Spirit," and cry
back with this witness within, "Abba, Father."
We know Christ is Divine, for He has worked
a divine work within us; we know He has
power over sin, for He has taken away ours;
we know that He brings spiritual life, for He
has quickened us, and made us sit in heavenly
places ; we know that the atonement is a
reality, for we have been reconciled with God,

20 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
and are at peace with Him. Scholastic the
ology dealt with abstractions, and based its
doctrines on logic and authority ; apostolic
Christianity bases itself on the demonstration
of the Spirit of God to the spirit of man, on
the witness within, the supreme evidence — the
soul's grasp of first-hand truth. The revival
of this apostolic position characterizes primi
tive Quakerism.

CHAPTER II
things which cannot be shaken
TN this world of ours all our spiritual truths,
all our eternal realities, have to be expressed
in temporal, human and changing forms. No
matter how pure and exalted the truths, its
embodiment must be more or less imperfect.
In fact, it is absolutely impossible to find a per
manent and unvarying expression for any
idea. There have been stagnant centuries
which have kept unchanged the crystallized
forms which they inherited, and they have
supposed that faith would cease to be if this
particular form of truth should vanish away.
The Pharisee could not imagine a true religion
without circumcision and the blood of bulls
and goats ; the Roman Catholic of the fifteenth
century could not believe that real religion
would survive if the doctrine of trans-substan
tiation — the real presence in the bread and
wine — should be given up. The Calvinist
supposed that his articles of faith were a per
manent embodiment of truth and his plan of
salvation the only possible one. fzi)

22 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
They all conceived of truth as something
which could be expressed once for all in
a form which all coming ages must keep
unchanged. As well might we expect to
bottle up the daylight to preserve it, or fix this
infinite life about us in nature into one
unchanging form, to be preserved through all
seasons, years and centuries. The moment one
tries to "fix" life and crystallize into a set
shape, it ceases to be life. The characteristic
of life is its power to make its own form and
expression, ever changing, ever developing, ever
modifying its form, and yet keeping its essence.
Truth is never some dead thing which can be
"laid out;" it is living, moving, quickening,
outgrowing its old forms, taking on new ex
pressions and preserving itself, as life does, by
endless variations and by infinite embodiments.
There are transitions going on in every age.
The things that can be shaken are removed,
and the things that have waxed old vanish
away. These things always bring trial to
faith, for it is difficult for most persons to dis
tinguish between the temporary form — i. e.,
the human embodiment — and the eternal and
abiding truth which lives on in the midst of
change and vanishing forms.
Here comes the great test of spiritual power
and insight. Those who have " short vision "

THINGS WHICH CANNOT BE SHAKEN 23
and a traditional faith build on the temporal,
and cling to the form which has grown familiar
and dear to them, but if anything shakes this
their faith is shattered, and they suffer ship
wreck. Those, however, who have real spir
itual vision look through the temporal and
fleeting, through the transitory forms and
embodiments, and settle their hearts and their
faith upon the eternal reality, — the Infinite
Self who abides and works through all
changes. Their faith blooms in the midst of
transition periods; they look calmly on while
" the things that can be shaken " are being
removed, and they have no fear when the
things which have "waxed old" are vanish
ing away, for they know that those things
which cannot be shaken must remain. There
is no safety in this present time of transition
and of changing form and expression to be
found by closing the eyes or hiding the head
in the sand, as the ostrich is said to do. The
only safe and sure course is to reach through
the outward and find the eternal, to rest back
upon the everlasting arms, to have a personal
initiation into the riches of the glory of this
"mystery" "which is Christ in you, the hope
of glory," to get free in the living truth. The
things which we see are temporal, the things
which the spiritual vision finds real are eternal.

CHAPTER III
THE GOOD FIGHT OF FAITH
\ N old man — " Paul the aged," — who was
¦^"*- " ever a fighter," is writing to a young
man who is just learning what it means to be a
Christian soldier in the Roman Empire in the
First Century. His message has the nature
of a battle call— " Fight the good fight of
Faith," — and for himself he says, " I have
fought the good fight, I have kept the Faith."
"The fight of Faith," what does that mean?
What is this exultant cry, " I have kept the
Faith V" It means, of course, that " the Faith"
is not something which can be kept as one
keeps a jewel or a money bag, or as one keeps
a pressed flower between the leaves of a book.
It is something which must be struggled for,
fought for and won to the very end of life.
The easier way is to have the church decide
what " the Faith" is, and to have it fixed once
for all, so that there shall be no necessity for
struggling for it or fighting for it. The indi
vidual has then only to take it and hold it.
This course the historic church took. But it
(24)

THE GOOD FIGHT OF FAITH 25
paid a tremendous price for the peace and
ease. It kept the Faith as the mummy tombs
kept the Egyptian wheat. Its members had
no necessity to fight the good fight of Faith,
and their religion became a dead, nerveless,
unproductive thing, a something put on from
the outside like a coat, instead of something
vital, springing out of the heart and permeat
ing the whole personality.
Paul's battle call embodies a fundamental
law of the spiritual life. Settle down to a
life of slippered ease, with no fight for Faith,
no struggle for Truth, no course to run, no
goal to press toward, no reach beyond the
grasp, and the soul's religion loses its color
and its sap as the pressed flower does. What
is more pitiable than the Christian who has
no onward life, who knows that he is a
Christian only because he remembers the date
of his conversion, and who has no clearer
evidence than his signature to the creed of his
church? Paul wrould certainly not call this
" keeping the Faith." " Keeping the Faith "
for him is always bound up with action. It
cannot be separated from fighting the good
fight and running the course to the finish.
What should we think of a mother who
should discover a method of keeping her baby
always a baby — who should hold up the poor

26 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
dwarfed and stunted thing and say, " See, I
have kept my child ! " No, the way to "keep"
a child is to let it take its true life-course, to
let it battle with the obstacles which beset us
all in this world, and so let it win an ever-
increasing power. It is a course which has its
dangers. The child may tumble, it may get
bruises, it must have its bitter cries and its
pains ; but it can be a man with a man's
strength in no other way.
The whole question turns upon this point :
Is Faith to be something passive or something
active ? Is it something done once for all or
a never-ending action like breathing or heart-
throbbing ? Is it the medal won by a single
victory and kept in a case, or is it the uncon
querable spirit of the fighter who never lays
down his weapons, but goes from victory to
victory. Paul takes the second view. It is
the throb of the heart, it is the act of the soul,
it is the spirit which wrings victory after vic
tory from the enemy — in fact, faith itself is the
victory.

CHAPTER IV
THE TEST OF A CHURCH
OOONER or later everything in this world
^ gets tested. The things that shoot up and
spread like a green bay-tree not seldom die
down and pass away as soon as the real test
comes. " The survival of the fittest " is a
wonderful law of life, and yet we are all veiy
slow to recognize it We like to see things
"go" at once. Prosperity and popularity
dazzle our eyes, and we forget to ask, "Is it
right ? " But in the end we always have to
learn that God has so made this world that
only the excellent is permanent, only what is
eternally right abides.
The Master showed clearly that the real
test of a life is not popularity, not accumula
tion of riches, not " success," not even profes
sions of faith — not that we have said, "Lord,
Lord," — but it is the measure in which we do
God's will and make our life count in prac
tical service. " I was sick and ye visited me,"
" I was thirsty and ye gave me a drink."
Visiting the fatherless and widows in their
(27)

28 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
affliction and keeping spotless from the world
is James's test of true religion. Everywhere
in the New Testament the test is a practical
one, — the tree is judged by its fruits.
Well, the test of a church must be of the
same practical sort. The first question is,
What is it doing to meet the world's needs?
Is it carrying on Christ's work, the work He
went about doing ? Is it interpreting Him to
the world and showing that His followers
have taken up His mission ? Is it casting out
devils, and feeding the hungry and binding
up the broken-hearted, and freeing the cap
tive and preaching the gospel to the poor and
making all classes in the community believe
in the present reality of God and eternal
things ? Or is it quibbling over some ancient
tradition, or advocating some empty ceremony,
or glorying in its sacred customs, or trying to
" keep the faith " by shutting eyes and mind
to the real questions and issues of this present
time ?
There are, after all, only two kinds of
churches, though hundreds of sects. There
are the churches which are alive in the Spirit,
and are doing in a more or less perfect way
what Christ would be doing if He were here
n person, and there are the churches of vari
ous forms which seek the living among the

THE TEST OF A CHURCH 29
dead. Tliese latter all live upon and are
devoted to certain things which history or
tradition has made sacred. They worship
"relics" of one sort or another. They are
supremely concerned about these " holy things,"
and they suppose that Christianity will be
destroyed if any of these ancient landmarks
go. They limp along on crutches and wonder
what would happen if one of the crutches
should be lost. They never get beyond the
" garments " of the Lord, and if they lost
these garments everything would be gone.
They are using counters instead of the real
coin. Those who compose the other class
have one sole and single purpose — to find
Christ, to partake of His life, and to do His
will. They push by all " relics " and " gar
ments " to get to the Person Himself. They
look upon the church as the body through
which Christ still reaches and touches and
ministers to humanity. Its work is His work.
It can be done only in His spirit and in His
power. It is a practical work, as His was, and
its true test is its effect upon humanity. It
" keeps the faith," not by crystallizing it into
a form, but by continuing and maintaining in
the world, the spirit, the activities, the power,
the influences, which were so completely and
Divinely expressed in the life of Jesus Christ.

CHAPTER V
THE MAN WITHIN THE MAN
/CREATION does not stop with the making
^"¦" of a perfect human body, wonderful as
that is. The eye, with its delicate adjustment
for vibrating to color rays ; the ear, with its
thousands of harp-strings stretched to beat in
response to the waves of sound ; the wonderful
brain, reaching down through its myriad net
work of nerves that carry out and carry in the
messages; the heart, with its intricate systems of
veins and arteries for reaching every cell of the
body — these are as perfect as material organs
can be ; and the work of material creation
seems complete with the production of the
human body. But, alas ! that which is perfect
and complete is ready to vanish away, and
the body no sooner gets finished than it begins
to run down and wear out and waste away.
It has no future ; no bud of farther hope lies
within it. It is the most marvelous organism
and the most perfect form in the visible crea
tion, but it dies daily until it is reduced to the
dust from which it is made.
(30)

THE MAN WITHIN THE MAN 31
If this body of death were the crown of
creation then there would be only one word
for it — failure. Make the body never so per
fect, and it must still come woefully short of
any worthy goal. In fact, we soon find that
it is the man within the visible man that we
really care for. It is not the hundred or more
avoirdupois pounds of flesh that we love — not
the dust wreath — but the self that uses this
visible form and speaks to us through it.
The creation and perfection of this man
within are the highest ends of life so far as we
have any revelation of them. This spiritual
self can have but one origin — it must be born
from above. It is not a thing of decaying
flesh or of disintegrating matter, nor can it
come from them. It comes from God, who is
its home, and its perfection must go on by a
divine plan — according to the law of the spirit
of life which was in Christ Jesus. Like any
thing else, it grows by what it feeds on. It
has its hungers and its thirsts which must be
satisfied with real things, not with shadows.
It is clearly evident that a spiritual self
cannot be forced ; it must make its own choices.
Its life must be formed by its own resolves and
decisions. It goes up or down as it chooses.
The light shines for it, the gifts of God are all
about it, the heavenly visions are granted it

32 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
the cords of an infinite love pull at it ; but it
decides for itself what its response shall be,
and thus it chooses what its attainment shall
be. The law of its being is to go from more
to more. Every time it uses the light and
appropriates the gift and sees the vision and
responds to the love, it expands, and increases
its range and scope. Every attainment is thus
a prophecy of something more beyond. It
can never come to its goal as the body does —
that is, to the point where it must begin to
run down — for its end and perfection is noth
ing short of likeness to Jesus Christ and the
fullness of God. Its very imperfection is its
glory, for it points it ever on to something
which lies before. It is never left high and
dry as a finished and completed thing with no
more capacity for increase. The making of
the man within the man is thus a continuous
creation, and the desire to attain perfection is
the measure of the man.
Body may go to pieces, but this spiritual
self continues to be what it has made itself by
its choices and its loves. The tree that grows
toward the light forms its center of gravity oil
that side and finally falls toward the light.
The soul that choose to be a son of God may
wait with perfect assurance for the time when
Christ shall be seen as He is, and the likeness
shall be completed.

CHAPTER VI
WRESTLING FOR THE BLESSING
TTOW many of us want our blessings with-
-*--*- out the struggle ! If God is our loving
Father, we fondly say, then he will surely
give us what we need for our spiritual develop
ment without any strenuous exertion on our
part. Hold up the cup, as the lily does for
the dew, and it will be graciously filled. But
no one can fail to find in the experiences of
great spiritual souls something quite different
from this — even the Captain of our salvation
is made perfect through suffering and struggle.
No, the spiritual stature does not come with
folded hands and calm content and peaceful
ease. When Jacob is to be transformed to
Israel, the prince — when he is to rise to a new
spiritual self — he finds that the divine form
which confronts him in the dark will give no
blessing until he wrestles for it.
Two of the Master's great parables embody
the truth that God gives his blessings to those
who show persistence and even importunity
in making their desires known. Not that
3 (33)

34 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
God must be teased as weak human parents
often are before they grant favors to their
children, but it is surely best for us, for our
spiritual development that all the virility and
force and earnestness of our nature should go
into our prayers for spiritual blessings, and
that we should ask as though we meant to
receive. There was once a poor heathen
woman who met Jesus, the only time He ever
crossed over the border of the little country
which He called His earthly fatherland, and her
heart was heavy with trouble. She had faith
enough to come to this traveling Teacher, and
to ask Him to cure her daughter. She poured
out her request as a mother can. " And He
answered her not a word." There was no
sign of any help from Him. But here was a
woman who would not go away without a
blessing, though it might consist only of
crumbs. She got not only her heart's desire,
but also the beautiful words : " O woman,
great is thy faith, be it unto thee as thou
wishest." It is, we believe, a mistake to suppose that
the heart worships best when it is passive.
The highest worship is reached when the soul
goes out actively to wrestle with God in silence,
it may be, in groanings that cannot be uttered,
or in loud cryings for a truer, noblier, worthier,

WRESTLING FOR THE BLESSING 35
holier self, for the higher spiritual stature. This
is what Gladstone once called " the holy work
of worship."
God cannot be worshipped idly, sluggishly,
lazily, and we need to realize that the great
reason for failure in spiritual development
comes from the lack of earnest, valiant wrest
ling for the highest good our soul can see.

CHAPTER VII
THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY
''"TVHERE is a great passage in Paul's first
-*- Corinthian letter in which he sets forth
the various gifts that have been conferred upon
individuals by the head of the Church for
the perfecting of believers and the upbuilding
of the whole body. But after unrolling the
long list of lesser gifts and greater gifts and
their interrelation, he suddenly sees, with his
heavenly vision, the supreme thing which
makes a man a son of God, and which makes
a church the bride of Christ, and without
which best gifts are unavailing, and he bursts
forth with the words, " but I will show you a
more excellent way." We all know, or should
know, His more excellent way. It is better
than tongues of men and of angels, it is
greater than gifts of prophecy and all knowl
edge of mysteries, it surpasses even faith that
could remove mountains, it outreaches the
philanthrophy that gives and sacrifices. It is
the perfect which comes when the things that
are "in part" are done away. It is the face
(36)

THE MORE EXCELLENT WA Y 37
to face life with God when the dark mirror,
which gives only distorted reflections, has been
given up. It is the completed thing which
comes after the childish things have been put
away. It is the last, best, highest, divinest,
heavenliest fruit the soul ever wins and that
toward which the whole Divine purpose moves
— love. " Follow after love," he says, and the
other apostle of love says that this is the test
of sonship — " he that loveth is born of God."
There can be no perfecting of saints without
it, there can be no bride of Christ without it.
It is easy to sprinkle with water, it is easy to
eat the bread and drink the wine, it is easy to
sing the psalm and chant the hymn, it is easy
to wear the garb and say the phrase, it is easy
to pray with the lips and to speak words; but
the finished Christian is known by the love
which suffereth long and is kind, which bear
eth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all
things, endureth all things — and that is hard
to attain. It comes not by an easy method.
It comes not from the laying on of hands, it is
not given as a prize for strict orthodoxy, nor
for eagerness in pursuing what is new, it is no
gift of priest or church.
It is the fruit of being born of God, it is the
perfume which comes from a transformed life,
it is the glorious sign that a human life has

38 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
been changed until it has received the mark
of the divine nature — love ; for God is Love.
It is not puffed up, it is not provoked, it
vaunteth not itself, it seeketh not its own ; it
constructeth, it cements, it unifies, it vitalizes.
Christians are told to love even as Christ
loved ! If they once fulfilled this command
they would become an irresistible spiritual
power, and the realm of the King would
widen beyond all conception. This is " the
more excellent way," and yet we try every
other way instead !

CHAPTER VIII
THE GIFT OF LISTENING TO GOD
T^vEAF children are always dumb. It is not
possible for a child to speak human lan
guage until he has heard it spoken. We speak
because we have heard. The same law is true in
spiritual things. It is not possible to commu
nicate until we have heard. The great voices
that " cry " to our generation, or to any other
generation, the men that are reaching the ears
and the hearts of the people, the message-
bearers of our time, or of any other time, must
first have listened and heard. The word
"prophet" means one who " speaks for " God.
A prophet is dumb until he hears God; he
opens his lips only when he hears.
These are very old truths, and probably
everybody agrees that they are true in the ab
stract, but yet they are very much ignored and
neglected in fact. It seems to us that one of
the supreme gifts conferred upon man is the
gift of listening to God, but it is a gift that is
sadly neglected, and through this neglect the
(39)

4o PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
spiritual life of the individual and of the
church suffers loss.
There has been among the Friends a strong
reaction from " silent meetings " because they
proved lifeless and profitless to most persons.
They seemed dead and formal to all but an
elect few, and meetings where there were no
vital messages slowly diminished until they
ceased to be. The result was that the pendu
lum swung to the opposite extreme, as so often
happens, and silence became " a byword and a
hissing," and a synonym for deadness and con
servatism. Then, too, there was a practical
difficulty. The times of silence gave occasion
for all the unbalanced and undesirable speakers
" to free their minds " at the expense of the
patient congregation. The easy remedy seemed
to be to have the time " filled " either with
singing or with " profitable speaking." The
result is that "the meeting for worship"
which our fathers knew is going out of exist
ence, and in its place we are getting " preach
ing meetings," " prayer meetings," " praise
meetings" and "testimony meetings." The
great fact remains that there is no greater gift
than the gift of listening to God, and that
there is no greater spiritual power than that
which comes when a whole congregation is

THE GIFT OF LISTENING TO GOD 41
fused and melted in silent waiting and soul
worship before the living God, when God's
presence can be felt and His voice heard so
distinctly that no audible words are needed.
There is nothing the Christian Church more
needs than such living, convincing worship,
and such times of holy hush before the Father
of spirits, but it is apparently becoming a
"lost gift," and there are many Friends who do
not believe there is anything in silence. Of
course there is not anything in empty silence,
nor is there anything in empty speaking,
but it is certain that we shall never get
prophets until we learn to listen, and we shall
never get mighty, convincing messages which
make the congregation vibrate like " harps of
God" until we learn to worship together in
living silence. Nobody wants to see formal
silent meetings. Every congregation needs
ministry, teaching, exhortation, interpretation ;
but the speaker should speak because he has
heard, and he should make his hearers realize
that he has listened before his lips moved. We
have an abundance of prayers in our meet
ings, and we have much that is properly called
worship, but we believe that a new power
would come in most of our congregations if
we could increase in every member the gift of
listening to God, and if every meeting could

42 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
have seasons of hush and of united worship
undisturbed by human voices. While we are
eager to cultivate the gifts of utterance, as is
fitting, let us by no means neglect the gift of
listening to God.

CHAPTER IX
THE MISSION OF THE CHUECH
TT is plainly evident that many Christians,
perhaps most, do not yet begin to realize
the full extent of the mission of the church to
the world, and some do not seem to comprehend
that it has any mission at all. The church ?
" Why it exists for its own members ; it is the
congregation of the faithful." The church?
" It is an organization for guarding and pre
serving the heritage of spiritual truth com
mitted to it." The church ? " It is the ark
of safety in the world for the salvation of the
few who flee into it." " Its mission is to keep
itself pure and true to its faith ; to maintain a
high standard ; to add to its number such as
are suitable to be members, and to preserve in
the earth some representatives of its founder."
These are some of the inadequate concep
tions which find expression among Christians.
The church will never be greatly effective
until its membership is possessed with Christ's
idea of its mission. In His mind the body of
believers are organic with Himself, branches (43)

44 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
of one vine, members of one body, with pre
cisely the same mission He had. They are
revealers of God to men. They are the light
in the world as He is the Light of the world.
No less a task than interpreting Christ to the
whole human race devolves upon the church.
Something is wrong when a company of
worshippers meet week after week to enjoy
communion with the Lord, and sit uncon
cerned about the multitudes who in the same
city live in misery, in hunger, in squalor, in
vice and in sin. The contrasts of society are
too great, and while they are so great there
can be no honorable ease in the church, no
excusable pride in its own purity and ortho
doxy. " Ye say, ' Lord, Lord,' but ye do not
my will," is the condemnation. There are
people all about us who have no idea of what
love is. They have never had any love. It
is only a word to them. They have never had
human love enough to understand what Divine
Love could be. If Christ is ever to become a
reality to these people, and be a power in their
lives, His spirit must first reach them through
a human face and in the loving service of
human hands.
The church has a twofold service towards
such souls. It must take up the task of
reforming the evils of a social system which

THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH 45
makes such lives possible in the midst of our
boasted civilization, and its members must
take upon themselves the responsibility of
interpreting Christ and the Christ-spirit to
these sin-environed lives.
The tramp who crawls up to the back door
for his unearned meal, and the drunkard who
reels home to turn a family circle into an
earthly hell, are both products of our social
system, and there can be no pious ease for the
church until such a system is destroyed. But
this same tramp and this same drunkard
might have made good, steady, valuable citi
zens if at the critical periods of their lives
they had had some loving attention and
uplifting influence, and had been made to
feel that there was a better life within their
reach. It is a fact that we always feel our
selves helpless to do anything to meet the
hard situations that confront us in society as
at present constituted, but it would be some
thing gained if Christians could be made to
realize that these are tasks which really belong
to the church ; that its mission is more than
teaching orthodoxy and holding up a pure
standard of membership. Christ had the
reputation of associating with publicans and
sinners, and with wine-bibbers. It was His
mission to show the Divine life to these people,

46 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
and to make their old life forever impossible
afterwards. Our mission to-day should be
as wide as His was, and all the sadness and
hopelessness and sin about us should make it
forever impossible for us to rest in the satisfac
tion and joy over our own salvation. The
church must become Christ's body that His
Spirit may finish the work of human redemp
tion.

CHAPTER X
COMING TO GOD  THE ATONEMENT AS A
PRACTICAL TRUTH
TT will be admitted by everybody, we believe,
-*~ that God's revelation of Himself, His deal
ings with us, and the death on the Cross, all have
one end in view — to bring men to God. God
sent forth His son that we might become sons.
No simpler or clearer statement of the Divine
movement for man's redemption can be made
than that. This is the problem — man has
sinned, has followed his own will, has put him
self away from God, and has made himself an
alien. How shall he get back to God and real
ize that the enmity is past, and that he is made
a son? We are speaking now wholly of the
problem from our human point of view, which
is, in the deepest and truest sense, a practical
one. God's method was to show Himself and
reveal His love, and thus to draw men to Him.
He came to us as a Person, and spoke in human
terms. He wrought with human hands. He
lived a perfect life in the midst of sin and
temptation. He illustrated the meaning of life
(47)

48 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
on the highest spiritual level. He showed the
significance and power of sacrifice and sympa
thy. He fulfilled all that was partial and
incomplete in the past. He was Emanuel —
God with us — in such a real and literal sense
that those who saw Him saw God, and those
who knew Him knew the Father's will.
But the most of those who saw and heard
refused to believe ; they did not go through him
to God. They asked for impossible signs. They
failed to see in him the fulfillment of Scripture
and prophecy, and the holy ideals of the race.
The mere showing of Himself as Life and
Light did not draw them to God. There was
one supreme step which remained. He could
die for men and pour out his love with His life.
If that failed to reach human hearts nothing
could reach them. But he believed it would
not fail. " I, if I be lifted up shall draw all
men unto myself." He gave Himself. He
gave Himself solely for others. His dying was
in every sense vicarious. He took upon Him
self the whole burden of sin, and He bore it
for us. But He did it that we henceforth
might see, in this crucified Christ, the length
and breadth and depth and height of God's
love, and that we might be drawn by it to for
sake all sin, and come to Him for the new life
of sonship. Speaking still on the human side,

COMING TO GOD 49
the atonement is made when Christ brings
us to God by this gift of Himself. When a
soul living in sin and an alien from God, and
under comdemnation, realizes that Christ died
for him, and that that loving heart is seeking
for him, and drawing him from sin to sonship ;
and his own heart is touched, so that he sets his
face, through love to this Christ, to begin a new
life as a child of God, he gains an immediate
sense of the practical meaning of the atonement
which is worth more than a thousand volumes
of theological discussion on the subject.
So far the subject is clear and plain. Christ
came and died that he might draw us to God.
When we yield to the drawing we become as
one with God. " We know that we are of
God," and '•' we know that the Son of God has
come." There is nothing metaphysical or mystical
here, nothing which a child who has once felt
the power of a mother's love cannot appreci
ate and respond to. It comes as a holy mes
sage to anyone who realizes the defects of sin
and the power of evil habit. It is an
announcement of a greater power — the power
of God unto salvation to everyone that be
lieves. It is as practical and as much related
to the needs of our lives as the bread for our
body, or the light for our eyes.
4

50 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
Far be it for us to imply that we can fathom
or describe all the meaning of That Life and
That Death. We would not take the rough
tools of scientific investigation into Gethsem-
ane or to Calvary to report that there is no
mystery there which we have not explored.
We do not understand entirely the meaning
and significance of any life or any death. The
moment we try we are beyond our depth.
What this sacrifice, this crucifixion, meant
on the Divine side, or what place it had in
the eternal Nature, is not our question or our
concern, and we do not wish to explore it or
pronounce upon it. Our Gospels are silent on
these metaphysical questions, and deal every
where with Christ's practical purposes, viz.,
" to give men life, and to give it in abundant
measure." It is life, not theory, which brought
the Son of God to us. Life and not specula
tion is His gift to us now.
This practical, positive meaning is as clear
as the sky above us ; God's method of bring
ing men to himself culminated in a Personal
coming, and that coming culminated in an
agony and a death. This Divine movement
to bring men to God is the supreme appeal to
human hearts, and its significance as an atone
ment with God is realized positively by those
who respond to it and find peace.

CHAPTER XI
HEART, SOUL, STRENGTH, MIND
TT is always well to consider carefully how
Christ dealt with inquirers, for His method
of solving religious difficulties must be our
guide in similar situations, There are many
instances recorded where He talked with seek
ers, and all these passages are full of illumina
tion. He never speaks as a theologian, as
though with a logical phrase he could help a
hungry soul, but He always goes straight to
the heart of the situation with a few vital words
which are just as fresh and true and satisfy
ing to-day as when they were first spoken.
Take the case of the young lawyer with the
right Scripture passages always at his tongue's
end. He wants to know how to " inherit
eternal life." He soon learns that eternal life
is not "inherited" as ancestral lands or gov
ernment bonds are. It comes not by right of
elder sonship or family connection. It is no
heirloom for certain privileged families.
The Master makes His questioner give the
right answer with his own lips. " What are
(Si)

52 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
the conditions to eternal life ? " " Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy
strength, and with all thy mind, and thy
neighbor as thy self." This is of course no
complete theological definition of the plan of
salvation, but it is a practical statement of the
conditions of eternal life. What a compre
hensive sweep it is ! and what a message of
breadth it has for some of us narrow, modern
Christians !
We have just been listening to a sermon
against " creaturely activity," — a plea for pas
sive waiting on the Lord. We hear again and
again that the mind, i. e., the intellect, the
thought, must be repressed in order that the
soul may commune with God, and we not
seldom listen to solemn cautions against the
emotions of the heart. In fact, too many
persons think that to be religious one must
kill out or suppress most of the faculties of
the being. Not so the Master. He has a use
for every part of the nature. He tells His
questioner that if he wants to come into eter
nal life he must have heart, soul, strength,
mind vibrating with love to God and to man.
Afraid of " creaturely activity " ! fearful lest
the heart shall swell and grow warm ! timor
ous above thought ! Why, Christ says that

HEART, SOUL, STRENGTH, MIND 53
the very condition of entering eternal life is
to love with the heart, love with the soul, love
with the strength, the physical activities, love
with the powers of the mind. This means
that these faculties of our being are to turn
toward Him as the flower turns toward the
sun, and let their activities move in joyous
accord and harmony with His will.
It is impossible to keep a healthy child
from activity ; the life within it makes it
active. Tie its hands and fetter its activities
and you kill it by slow process. It is impos
sible for a genuinely religious being to keep
from spiritual activity. Its mind is after
truth, its heart is warm with love for Him
who has loved even to death, its strength is
consecrated to the service of lifting others, its
soul is responsive to the Will of the Spirit.
We do not forget that Christ has many things
to say to one who is seeking eternal life, but
this is His first word, His practical answer,
" Love with the whole being. Let God have
and tune every power and faculty until their
activities move rythmically to His will."

CHAPTER XII
A POSTPONED HEAVEN
TT is not easy to talk or write on the "doc-
-^ trine" or "experience" of holiness so that
anybod}' else shall be satisfied with what we
say. In fact it is very much like trying to
give a good definition of "Love," or of "Life."
When we approach these supreme subjects the
best we can do is to stammer out our meaning,
and we either say too little or too much.
There surely has been a good deal of unwise
teaching on this subject, as there has on almost
every phase of spiritual experience, but that
ought not to blind our eyes to the real fact —
the mighty truth — that Jesus Christ expects
us to be complete in Him, and that the burden
of His prayer, — which Christians of all ages
have used, — is that God's will may be done in
earth even as it is in heaven.
It is certainly true that the Christian stan
dard has been kept too low rather than too
high. Most Christians apparently never ima
gine that they are expected to be " perfect."
They quote the old proverbs glibly : " To err
(54)

A POSTPONED HEA VEN 55
is human," " man is as prone to err as the
sparks to fly upward," and they conclude that
the line of life is bound to be a wavy one, full
of bends and curves — never straight onward.
They believe that this world is a vale of sin ;
it is no place for white robes and palm
branches, and triumphant songs. These will
come only when we get to the heaven beyond
the stars, and temptations no more assail us.
Heaven is always postponed ; it is a place
always hoped for, never realized.
It is our personal opinion that this "easy
creed," this low standard, this postponement
of heavenly joys, is just the reason why the
church has no more spiritual power in this
present world. He who expects little, gets
little ; he who thinks that Christian life is
bound to be streaked with black and white
like a checker board, will of course never rise
beyond that kind of life, and he who never
realizes that Christ's purpose is to make a
"new creature," can only testify that "the
kingdom of heaven is at hand," he can never
say, "the kingdom of heaven has come ! "
There are dangers of course when mortal,
human beings go around declaring themselves
to be " above sin," " free from law," and " per
fect," but all this comes from misunderstand
ing what holiness is. Holiness is perfect love

56 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
of God's will, and a perfect determination to
live in His will. It does not take the Chris
tian out of this world, it does not make him
infallible, it does not relieve him of tempta
tion, it does not make him a law unto himself,
it does not allow him to boast of his sinless-
ness or his spiritual power.
It is simply a condition of heart into which
Christ brings His disciples, where sin is hated
and God's will is chosen, so far as it is known,
above everything else. Love becomes the law
of life, and the soul realizes that heaven is
not a remote place, but a present fact. The
kingdom of heaven has come wherever the
King holds sway. This is no impossible doc
trine, it is no experience reserved for a few
rare saints. It is the privilege and should be
the attainment of us all.

CHAPTER XIII
WROUGHT FOR THIS SELF-SAME THING
TT THAT does God mean and what can His
" purpose be, or is it some enemy who
has done this? Thus we stand and question in
the presence of the inscrutable mystery which
settles down over our lives and shuts out from
our sight all that is dearest and best to us. It
is the old, old question, rising occasionally
into Abraham's complaint, " Dost thou well,
Lord?" But no one who really believes in
God can long blindly question or sit complain
ing in cold sackcloth and ashes. There must
be an answer, if God is God, and He cannot
mock us or leave us with no voice of Hope.
The real answer is one which goes down
into the very heart of the mystery of life, and
grasps its purpose, for we cannot fathom death
until we fathom life. Paul puts his finger on the
nerve of it when he says that mortality shall
be swallowed up of life and God hath wrought
us for this self-same thing. With God, mor
tality is only an incident in the life-process.
It is a brief stopping-place, a hostelry, on the
(57)

58 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
way to a less unencumbered life. It is just
our chance at the prize of learning love ; it is
our opportunity for becoming distinct, indi
vidual selves and of being shaped into the
image of God. Mortality is not an end in
itself, it is not an absolute good. It is only a-
tent to be used while the house is being made ;
it is only a means to an end which is beyond ;
it is not the height, but the ladder by which
the height is reached. At length life swallows
up mortality, as the growing, winged creature
within bursts the chrysalis and mounts up to
its new sphere. It is only as we bend over
the empty chrysalis that we cry out, " An
enemy hath done this," or " hast thou done
well, Lord ? " When we lift our eyes and
vision returns, we see that there is no break in
the infinite, loving purpose, and we hear Him
say again, " It was wrought for this self-same
thing; to be clothed upon that mortality
might be swallowed up of life." Life is not
dependent upon any one particular expression
of itself; it is rich in means and in forms.
What seem to us breaks and chasms are only
invisible links in an unbroken chain, hidden
arcs in an ever-renewed and vital process and
movement which is fed continually by the one
source and fountain of all life. When we look
down and think of our side, it is all loss and

WROUGHT FOR THIS SELF-SAME THING 59
mystery ; when we look up and think of the
Divine purpose, it is all light and victory. If
God is Love, then so surely He hath wrought us
to be clothed upon, and mortality is swallowed
up of life.

CHAPTER XIV
NO SIGN SHALL BE GIVEN
k I \HERE is but one occasion on record which
-*¦ drew a deep sigh of discouragement from
the heart of Jesus. Twice He wept ; once in
sympathy with mourners, though not in hope
less grief, because He was conscious at the same
time that He was the resurrection and the life,
and again over Jerusalem, because He saw that
only on the ruins of the Jerusalem He loved
could the more perfect Jerusalem arise. But
this "deep sigh" was different. It was called
out by a hopeless situation which came before
Him in His ministry. The people who failed
to feel the power of the truth He taught, and
were incapable of appreciating His spiritual
revelation, came demanding that He should
authenticate or prove His revelation by a physi
cal " sign." " He sighed deeply and said,
* No sign shall be given.' " In fact, from the
nature of the case no sign could be given.
Spiritual truth must be taken at first-hand
or not at all. No physical sign could be given
to prove, or authenticate Christ's message of
(60)

NO SIGN SHALL BE GIVEN 61
Divine love, of forgiveness of sin, of sonship
with God, or the possibility of a life hid with
Christ in God.
One of Christ's severest temptations was
the suggestion that He should miraculously
make bread for Himself out of stone. It was
a temptation to use His marvelous powers, but
it threatened His very Messiahship, for if He
had yielded He could have brought no redemp
tion to man. If bread is made out of stones
by a miracle for Him who comes as a Saviour
of men, it at once puts Him out of relations
with those whom He came to save. We must
toil and struggle, and eat our bread in the
sweat of our brows, and if He refuses to taste
man's hardship and want, and eats the bread
of miracle, He ceases to be in all points like
us, and, not sharing our life, He cannot be our
complete Redeemer. He could not yield and
still be the Saviour.
The impossibility of yielding to the cry for
a physical miraculous " sign " is made still
clearer during the crucifixion. The mocking
priests and scribes ask for a last sign : " If He
be the Christ, let Him come down from the
cross that we may believe." It was the very
thing which would have proved Him no Christ
at all. The gift of Himself, the manifestation
of Divine love, His faithfulness unto death did

62 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
prove His Sonship and attest His message, but
the sign they demanded was forever impossi
ble for Him, who even on the cross proves His
spiritual power, not by coming down Himself,
but by lifting a dying thief out of his old,
ruined life, up, up, until he sees the meaning
of love and sonship, and can be with Christ
in paradise.
This power to transform a life, and bring it
into Divine relation, is the supreme sign ; it is
the only sign by which Christ could attest His
spiritual message. Magdalen is a " sign ; "
Simon, the wavering, fickle, impetuous fisher
man, changed to Peter, the apostle of Jesus
Christ is a sign ; John, the son of thunder,
wishing to call down fire on the Samaritans,
transformed into the apostle of love, is a sign ;
Saul, breathing out threatenings and slaughter,
hauling men and women to prison, changed to
Paul with his life hid with Christ in God, who,
also " crucified with Christ," can say in truth,
" I live by the faith of the Son of God, who
loved me and gave himself for me," he is a
sign. Every soul since, which through Christ
has turned from its prodigal life, and cried,
" Abba, Father," has found Christ's truth true,
and has become a living sign to others. No
other sign shall be given to this or any other
generation.

NO SIGN SHALL BE GIVEN 03
Each generation in its own way asks for a
sign. Crowds gather around the spiritualistic
" medium " to get a material " sign " that the
soul lives after death, but not thus shall the
great truth of immortality be proved. One
generation expects the astronomer with his
telescope to find an indisputable sign in the
starry heavens ; another asks the geologist to
dig up one from the strata of the earth's crust,
or the biologist to find a sign in the cells of
living forms. It is because of the failure to
find God in material things that a modern
poet has cried out in hopelessness :
"The God I never once behold,
Above the cloud, beneath the clod ;
The unknown God, the unknown God."
— William Watson.
The trouble is, he is looking in the wrong
direction for Him, and he is asking for a sign
which cannot be given. " God is love," let us
remember, and He can be found only where
love can be, and the sign must be sought in a
human heart that can feel and test a spiritual
truth. That is the meaning of Tennyson's great
lines in " In Memoriam," written when his
own heart was yearning for a sign that God is
love and that life goes on. He says :

64 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
" I found him not in world or sun,
In eagle's wing or insect's eye ;
Nor thro' the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun.
" If e'er when faith hath fallen asleep
I heard a voice, ' Believe no more '
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep ;
" A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason's colder part,
And like a man in wTath, the heart
Stood up and answered, ' I Have Felt.

? n

This first-hand knowledge, by experience-
is the only all-sufficient attestation of a spirit
ual truth, and however much we may long for
tests through our senses, and for signs that are
tangible, we must at last get where we can
receive His beatitude, " blessed are they that
have not yet seen, yet have believed," and cry
out, because our hearts know Him, " my Lord
and my God."

CHAPTER XV
PISGAH VIEWS OF LIFE
" Now I see all of it,
Only I'm dying ! "
T T7HAT lives we might live if we could only
" begin life with the wisdom which we
shall possess when we stand at its close, and look
back on it and realize that our earthly oppor
tunities are at an end I How trivial much of
one's life must seem viewed from its farther
end, and how strenuous and earnest it would
be if it could be lived over in the light of the
experience which these closing moments bring !
It is not well to be haunted by the shadow of
death, and it is an indication of an unhealthy
and morbid condition; but it might be well
occasionally, if we could take Pisgah views of
life, and see it — see our own lives — in what
the philosophers call an "eternal aspect."
Most of us live for the hour ; we do what
pleases us at the time. We see a pleasure or a
task close at hand, and we enjoy the one and
brace ourselves to perform the other, and we
live largely as the creatures of circumstance,
5 (65)

66 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
having our lives shaped by the things and the
persons about us. Some of us toil and struggle
with work and poverty and daily cares until
life seems one long grind and death a happy
release; others of us dabble and play with
questions and problems, and lose sight of the
great clear truths which we ought to see ; still
others of us refuse the drudgery of life, with
its strenuous burdens, and devote ourselves to
catching phantoms and ghosts while the real,
serious things of life are neglected. How all
this would be changed if we could really see
the meaning of life as it will break upon us
at the extreme verge ! We all know how some
great hope or purpose suddenly changes —
transforms our life, and makes the work or the
pleasures become totally different things.
Work is no longer hard because its brings us
nearer our fixed hope and purpose ; frivolous
pleasures become hateful to us, for they hinder
us in the pursuit of our goal ; the petty things
that used to vex are brushed away with un
concern, because the vision of our realized hope
is full upon us, and obliterates the little shadows
which we used to know. Much more would
life readjust itself, and the pettiness of it vanish
if we could enter it with our eyes full of the
" eternal aspect ; " if we could keep with us
some foregleams of the Pisgah view. A modern

PISGAH VIE WS OF LIFE 67
poet has given a remarkable picture of Lazarus
after his return from the grave with the new
meaning of life revealed to him, a few lines of
which we give :
" He holds on firmly to some thread of life
Which runs across some vast distracting orb
Of glory on either side that meagre thread,
Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet —
The spiritual life around the earthly life :
The law of that is known to him as this,
His heart and brainmove there, his feet stay here."
Now there is such a thing as getting the
gaze so fixed on the celestial city that the
things of earth are neglected, and of getting
so full of visions and dreams that plain, every
day duties and joys are ignored. We write no
word to encourage anybody in that mistaken
course, but we would emphasize the truth that
daily life and daily tasks and duties should be
transfigured with foregleams of a light upon
them from the eternal day which will break
in fullness on the Pisgah heights of life.

CHAPTER XVI
THE VINE-STOCK
/CHRISTIANITY is a religion of thought; it
^— ' is a religion of faith ; it is a religion of
belief; it is a religion of love, but above every
thing else it is a religion of life. It is not enough
to think correctly ; it is not enough to believe
rightly ; it is not even enough to love deeply.
The first question is one of life. " If any man
be in Christ, he is a new creature." It all
turns on that one question, and this distin
guishes Christianity from every other religion
on the globe. The New Testament has a
hundred ways of saying this supreme fact of
Christianity, and yet we often fail to realize
how it underlies the whole method of salva
tion. Union loith Christ, and not an opinion
about Christ, is what we mean.
It is all told in one beautifully clear figure
of our Master : "I am the vine-stock, ye are
the branches." Spiritual life, and all that
flows from it, begins when a soul comes into
vital and organic relations with the living
Christ, and there is no possible substitute for
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THE VINE-STOCK 69
such a vital union, Paul at once fixed upon
this as the central truth of Christianity, and
he put it in one form or another before all the
churches he established. Ask Paul what
makes a man a Christian, and you will hear
him say, " To be in Christ." He never thinks
of salvation as something which goes on in a
man's head, as the acceptance of certain for
mulas or " views." He is not interested in
dried and pressed specimens of truth. For
him truth is always a living thing with its
currents flowing and its fruit ripening.
We now know that it is impossible to think
a single thought without a flow of blood to
the brain, and we also know that it is impos
sible to get the blood without putting food
into the system. The grain of wheat, the
piece of beef, must be organic in the brain
before we can think our thought, and it must
be organic in the muscle before we can put
forth our strength of arm. Until Christ is in
a man's life and organic with his deepest self
— not remote in time or space — the man is not
in the truest sense a Christian.
The dynamo does not make electricity ; it
only furnishes a medium for electrical force
to work through. The electricity is in the
dynamo, though it did not originate there.
A Christian is merely a medium for Christ,

70 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
and the work begins and the power appears
when Christ is in the man. The end and
purpose of life is to " grow up into Him in all
things."

CHAPTER XVII
THE PLACE OF THE HOME IN CIVILIZATION
'TAHE Christian home is the highest product
¦^ of civilization ; in fact, there is nothing
that can be called civilization where the home
is absent. The savage is on his way out of sav
agery and barbarity as soon as he can create a
home and make family life at all sacred. The
real horror of the " slums " in our great cities
is that there are no homes there, but human
beings crowded indiscriminately into one room.
It is the real trouble with the " poor whites "
of the South that they have failed to preserve
the home as a sacred centre of life. One of the
first services of the foreign missionary is to
help establish homes among the people whom
he hopes to Christianize. In short, the home
is the true unit of society. It determines
what the individual shall be, it shapes the
social life, it makes the church possible, it is
the basis of the state and nation. A society of
mere individual units is inconceivable. Men
and women, each for self, and with no holy
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72 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
centre for family life, could never compose
either a church or a state.
Christianity has created the home as we
know it, and this is its highest service to the
world, for the kingdom of heaven would be
realized if the Christian home were universal.
The mother's knee is still the holiest place in
the world, and the home life determines more
than any other one influence, and perhaps
more than all influences combined, what the
destiny of the boy or girl shall be.
We may well rejoice in the power of the
Sabbath School, the Christian ministry, the
secular school, the college, the university, but
altogether they do not measure up to the power
of the homes, which are silently, gradually
determining the future lives of those who will
compose the Sabbath School, the church, the
school and the college.
The woman who is successful in making a
true home, where peace and love dwell, and in
which the children whom God gives her feel
the sacredness and holy meaning of life, where
her husband renews his strength for the strug
gles and activities of his life, and in which all
unite to promote the happiness and highest
welfare of each other — that woman has won
the best crown there is in this life, and she has
served the world in very high degree. The

THE HOME IN CIVILIZATION 73
union of man and woman for the creation of
a home breathing an atmosphere of love is
Christ's best parable of the highest possible
spiritual union where the soul is the bride and
He is the Eternal Bridegroom and they are
one.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE ETERNAL NATURE OF THINGS
r I \EERE is a strong tendency in our day
-*- toward what is sometimes called a
"soft" or "easy" theology. The harsh and fear-
inspiring features are eliminated, and we hear
little of the old-time theology which made the
world to come such a stern reality. We are
told of the love which woos and forgives, until
we almost, or quite, forget that there is any
thing to fear. If God is love, indeed, we are
told, why should there be anything to fear?
and we hear the question asked, Were not the
threats and the terrors for an age which could
not comprehend a God of love, and which
needed to be frightened into goodness? and
has not the time come for an easier religion,
stripped of all aspects of terror and harshness?
We do not profess to be able to say what the
Allwise One will do with this particular
soul or that, when it comes into that world
which lies so entirely beyond our experience,
nor are we authorized to " speak for our Crea
tor;" but we believe that our so-called "soft
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THE ETERNAL NATURE OF THINGS 75
theology " of modern times is not true to the
nature of things, nor does it square with the
revelations which have been given of God's
nature and His purposes.
An ancient Hebrew poet says that " the stars
in their courses fought against Sisera," — the
very nature of things were against him. In
fact, every page of history gives us a stern
lesson of the futility and impossibility of
ignoring the distinction of right or wrong —
righteousness and unrighteousness. It is one
long story of men and women who " dashed up
against the thick bossed shield of God's judg
ment," and who were broken against this
impenetrable shield.
Nature has the same story to tell. You
must learn her laws and obey them, or suffer
for it. She is never "easy" with those who
will not learn her ways. The unplumb build
ing topples over, the rotten foundation brings
the structure down, the badly built scaffolding
crashes down, regardless of who gets hurt.
The ship which is not steered by compass and
chart grinds to pieces on the reefs, unmindful
of the precious lives aboard ; and the train, as
we learn this morning, which comes behind
time and finds the track blocked, crashes into the
obstruction, careless of how many are killed.
There is nothing "soft" in the eternal nature of

76 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
things, if so be we blindly dash against things
as they are. The only safe and wise way is to
adjust one's course to fit the nature of things,
otherwise the punishment comes irresitibly.
Why, in the light of this, or in the light of
anything else, should we suppose that all will
come out right, no matter how we shape our
lives ? It will not come out right. Evil is not
good, however we juggle with names, and God
cannot be God and treat unrighteousness, or even
carelessness, as though it made no difference.
Does anybody suppose that love is " soft "
and devoid of sternness. The father who
loves his child the most is the one who is
most afraid to be " easy " with him when he is
on the wrong course. It is just because God
is love that He is also " a consuming fire." It
is not possible that the stubborn, the willful,
the erring, the vicious, or even the thought
less, should go on "in their ways" forever.
It would destroy all the purpose and meaning
of the universe. The universe makes for right
eousness, and those who will not learn this
fact by easy methods must have harsh meth
ods, — " the thick bossed shield of God's judg
ment." "The tissues of the life to be
We weave with colors all our own,
And in the field of destiny
We reap as we have sown."

CHAPTER XIX
DIVERSIONS AND RECREATIONS
TTTAS there ever a Christian outside the
" monastery, who did not have to ask at
some time in his life, "What kind of diversion
is consistent with my Christian profession?"
Was there ever a Christian parent who did not
find it hard to know just where to draw the
line of permissions and prohibitions for the
unformed boy or girl ?
Every growing person, perhaps every per
son, needs some recreation, some relaxation
from the strain of work, some diversion from
strenuous life. It is a necessity to good,
healthy, genuine living, and without it the
sap of life dries up and the man becomes like
a machine. Alternation is woven everywhere
in the Divine plan for the universe. Ebb and
flow, day and night, summer and winter, joy
and sorrow, toil and refreshment are involved
in the structure of things.
Take away the recreation and the periods of
unbending and you cut the nerve of genuine
effort and shrivel the muscles of toil. But on
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78 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
the other hand almost every form of recreation
and diversion is open to abuse, and some forms
lead to positive immorality. We must have
the world to live in, and we have to use it for
our needs ; but we find at once that it often
soils where we touch it, and that too often,
when we go to it for recreation, it takes advan
tage of us and unmakes rather than recreates
us. So that it becomes a difficult problem to
find proper diversion without at the same time
carrying away upon us the dark touch-spots of
the world. Every game can be gambled with,
every harmless pastime may be pushed to a
dangerous extreme, and joyous play may lead
to an unsuspected sin. There is nothing on
earth that is not open to excess, and the pleas
ure-seeker is always walking a path beset with
pitfalls and intersected at every point with
bye-paths, which lead gradually into real sins.
It may do some good to mark out a few
forms of recreation as peculiarly bad and dan
gerous, and to warn all Christians away from
them, and there are certain diversions and
amusements which must be prohibited to the
young while they are undeveloped and imma
ture. But the only real remedy for this diffi
culty which we are discussing is the develop
ment of a strong spiritual life and a genuine
moral character. A person will eventually

DIVERSIONS AND RECREATIONS 79
sag down and drift into a low and harmful
form of diversion if he has not cultivated a
taste for something higher and purer. You
cannot keep people out of sin in this world by
preaching sensational sermons against certain
forms of evil, while sometimes the very descrip
tion of the evil kindles a desire to try it. The
only way to keep a boy out of the lurking
traps of sin is to get him in love with some
thing holy, and get his soul set upon a high
aim and a true life. He must be made to feel
that there is no pleasure or recreation in any
thing that makes him less manly, and pure,
or that interferes at all in his purpose for life.
The best way to steer a young person through
the dangers attending recreation is to help
him see the positive side of life, and go to
work to help him put on the whole armor of
God, that he may withstand in the evil day.
The formation of spiritual character — putting
on Christ literally — is the only sure way to be
ready to meet the open doors to forbidden
pleasures, and this is the first business of
every Christian parent and of every Christian
church.

CHAPTER XX
A RELIGION OF POWER
'HpHERE have been many ways of regarding
¦*¦ religion, and different persons to-day
think of it differently. It is very common to
speak of it as some thing which one "gets" or
"accepts." "He got religion," the neighbors
say, or " he has always kept his religion through
every trial." It is not uncommon to think of it
as a statement of belief or faith which a person
holds. " I accept the doctrine of the Trinity,
of the atonement, and of eternal life, and
eternal punishment, therefore I have religion ;"
thus many a person explains his religion. To
such a one it consists largely of correct defini
tions. Another class of persons care nothing
for definition; they consider religion to be a
good life; they say: "I do about right, I live
up to my light and I do not believe God will
be hard on me."
There is still another way of viewing religion.
It is the power of God manifested in life. It
does not begin with definitions, it does not
consist of living about right, it is not sorae-
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A RELIGION OF PO WER 81
thing one "gets." It comes and gets the per
son. He does not keep his religion, but his
religion keeps him. It is a power, a force,
just as real and just as persistent as that which
we call gravitation, and its effects are just as
sure. No definitions of electricity would ever
light a man's house, or move a trolley car.
The first step is to let the current in and the
house becomes light, or the car moves. Every
thing bases itself on the ultimate, invisible
power, which is simply received. This is
true of religion as it is of mechanics. There is
no religion apart from God, and until a man
comes to God and God gets him, the man is
not truly religious. It consists first and last
of possession — God's possession of us and our
joy in the sense of His ownership. A religion
without power would be like a gravitation
which did not draw anything, or like electric
ity that had no force. Religion is spiritual
gravitation. It draws the soul away from
everything else to its true Central Sun. The
first effect of it on a person is to beget love.
Love is the unfailing sign of religion. A love
less religion is as impossible as a waterless
ocean, or a treeless forest. If a man's religion
does not flood him with love, it is the wrong
kind of religion.

82 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
We have been speaking of what religion
seems to us to be, now a word about how it
comes. There has been in our world but one
Person who was perfectly divine and perfectly
human. He revealed God and He showed
what it means to be a son. He also showed
how to be a son, and he plainly said to the
whole race, " I am the Way." Religion means
getting to God, Christ is the way and love is
the sign.

CHAPTER XXI
PENTECOST IN OUR CHRISTIANITY
T>ENTECOST was a definite date and a defi-
nite experience in the early church. It
came fifty days after the crucifixion, and the
second chapter of Acts gives us all the inform
ation we have of the event, as there is no other
reference to it in the New Testament.
So far as we know, much that occurred on
that particular day has never been repeated.
There were visible and audible phenomena
which nobody can now clearly explain and
which are generally considered to have been a
special dispensation for the benefit of the little
group of believers who had it laid upon them
to carry the Gospel to an unbelieving world.
The one feature of Pentecost which is as
possible for us to-day as for apostles and friends
of Jesus ten days after their Master had left
their sight, is the reception of the Holy Ghost.
We apparently do not need the gift of tongues,
and the visible fire no longer sits on the head
of a modern Christian. Every Christian does,
however, need to have a consciousness of the
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84 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
presence of the Spirit of God, and not one of
us can afford to miss the power which comes
when the Divine Spirit breaks through a
human life. All that was really vital in the
Jerusalem Pentecost may be repeated in the
experience of every Christian, and our belief is
that no one can be at his best until the Spirit
of God floods his life and makes him see that
salvation is infinitely more than the mere
escape from the just penalty of sin.
"He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit,"
i.e., he who apprehends Christ and puts Him
on, he whose life is hid with Christ, finds that
his human spirit is taken up into the Divine
Spirit and the Spirit-life becomes natural and
habitual, but the Pentecost experience does
not mean that Christ has gone and that we
have gained something better. Christ is never
gone out of the Christian's life. The very way
to gain the full life of the Spirit is to be joined
to the Lord ; there is no other way to it. Those
who profess to get beyond the morality and
the teaching and the drawing of Christ into a
state above law and order are sailing without
chart or compass and are steering straight for
the rocks.
We do not say that the minister needs a dif
ferent kind of experience than the humblest
member of the body. No attainable degree of

PENTECOST IN OUR CHRISTIANITY 85
life or of baptism is too good for the Christian
with the one talent or the half of a talent, if
they are ever divided. The ministers, tbe
teachers, the evangelists, need a "gift" which
perhaps the ordinary member does not have.
We call a man a minister because we recognize
his gift, but the man who picks stones in the
field, who builds the house, who sits at the
receipt of custom in the bank, needs to be filled
with the fullness of God, as well as the minister
does, to enable him to lead the overcoming life,
which is after all the only true life. There is a
striking difference between the diamond, the
sapphire and the opal, but it is the same light
which makes all three beautiful. We are all
different in our make-up and character, but the
thing which makes any Christian, in any walk
of life, a man of power is his union with
Christ, and his life in the Spirit. Whether we
can tell of the rushing, mighty wind or not,
we all ought to be able to show that the Spirit
has come and has made Pentecost a present
reality for us.

CHAPTER XXII
WORSHIPING GOD
'HpHE Christian Church has made great pro-
-*- gress in this century. The preaching of
the Gospel is much more vital and convincing
than at the beginning of the century, and there
is a genuine effort apparent to apply Christi
anity to all the problems of real life rather than
to discuss metaphysical and unknowable ques
tions which only perplex the listeners and leave
them farther from the heart of God. The
Church has been gradually awakening to the
needs of the unsaved part of society whether
at home or in foreign fields, and a more effect
ive missionary work has been done in this
century than in any since the days of the
primitive Church. In no other age of the
world, either ancient or modern, has the Bible
received such thorough and intelligent study.
Not only are the millions of children studying
it, but every thoughtful Christian, whether a
profound scholar or not, studies this Book, and
it has become to us a more living message
than in any other period of history, while
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WORSHIPING GOD 87
every new discovery helps us understand it
better. But while all this is true, it is perhaps
doubtful if we are learning how to worship
God more truly. In a certain sense all sincere
service is worship, and all appreciation of God's
goodness must be pleasing to Him whether
expressed in words or in deeds, but there is a
deeper worship which belongs to the life of
every growing Christian. Neither singing, nor
speaking, nor listening, nor doing, can take its
place. It is a conscious sense of the Divine
Presence enveloping us, and a response of the
heart to His holy communing. No Christian
life can be complete without these times of
genuine intercourse with God.
When we pray we have our requests to
make ; we come seeking and asking ; when we
praise we give voice to oar feelings of joy in
his goodness, and when we witness we tell
what He has done for us, but there are times
when the soul needs to get deeper than any
of these states.
The little child runs to the father expecting
some present, and then he pours out his thanks
for the pretty thing which he has brought, but
there comes a time when the little heart learns
that the father himself is better than any
present, and that his love is more than a gift.
So we come to learn that above everything

88 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
else, we need just God. The soul that never
comes directly to Him to enjoy His love will
miss the deepest gift, and our manner of wor
ship ought to provide for these occasions of
true communion. The Friends have erred in
the past in thinking that Christian life could
progress best in prolonged silence, when really
all Christians need teaching and expression for
healthy progress, but it is a no less fatal mis
take to suppose that worship must consist of
vocal expression, and that Christian life can
progress healthily without times of hush when
God speaks to the congregation. The minister
who rises to speak will have a new power if
he and his hearers have just been hearing God
speak before he rises, and it steadies and il
lumines every man to go down, or up, into God
Himself, where requests cease and where the
heart feels the pulsing of the Great Heart.
This should not take the place of prayer or
praise, or teaching, or service, or deeds, but
this soul communion with God should be a
part, and it is a necessary part, of true worship,
for after all, the main purpose of a meeting is
to make the members acquainted with God.

CHAPTER XXIII
CHRISTIANS IN THE WORLD
/^vNE of the earliest Christian writers after
^-^ the apostolic days used to teach that
Christians should be in the world what the
soul is in the body. They are, according to
this teaching, in the world not simply to per
fect their own salvation, or to have rapturous
experiences ; they are here to fulfil a peculiar
mission to the world. They are to give light
to others who are still living in darkness, and
they are to be as the salt of society, sweetening
and "curing" the world.
That is a beautiful idea that Christians are
to be in the world what the soul is to the body.
We know only too well what happens to a
body when the soul leaves it. Corruption and
decay work away unhindered now the soul is
gone. There is nothing left to repair the waste
and to build up what the corrupting forces
tear down.
When the soul goes out, we see at once that
it never was the body we cared for; it was the
invisible "self" which animated the body, and
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90 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
gave it expression and made it lovable. In
fact, the real thing which makes a human
being a being at all is the soul within it, and
when this goes the body is nothing but a shell
— a ruined chrysalis.
Now, what would the world be without
Christians in it? We know what it used to be
before ever there were Christians in it, and
none of us would want to have a real experi
ence of that kind of life. The French revolu
tion is the most stupendous illustration of
modern time of what the world easily becomes
when Christianity is gone out of it. It corrupts,
it decays, it teems with wickedness, and those
who preach against Christianity and proclaim
a Christless gospel would be horrified could
they but see what the world would become
when Christ was really gone, and Christians
no longer remained to warm and sweeten life.
We know that Christians are imperfect
enough ; they come fa..- short of their calling,
but they, nevertheless, form the mightiest fac
tor in modern civilization. Their influence
reaches almost every corner of the world and
every walk of life. When miners rush to the
Arctic circle to wash gold from the frozen soil,
Christian influences travel over the same
mountain trail, and beautiful flowers of holiness
and love bloom in sight of the tents of wicked-

CHRISTIANS IN THE WORLD 91
ness. Where the carcass is there are the
eagles. Where corruption seems to poison the
air, God's birds come to cleanse it. Oh, this is
a great world, and God has not left it to
putrify and "spoil." Sometimes it seems very
bad and the smell of its sin shuts out all
"odors of sanctity," but soon again the odors
of a broken alabaster box reach us, and love
proves mightier than sin. When shall we
Christians learn that all true life is vicarious,
that we are not here to storm at sin and to say,
"Oh, Oh," at it, but to help put it down by
doing in our sphere what our Master did in
His sphere. We shall not die on crosses, and
it would not help the world if we did, but
beholding the spirit which was in Him who
gave Himself in one great sacrifice for sin, let
us realize that if we would complete the work
which is left for us to do, we, too, must in a
real sense, be crucified with Christ. The world
does not care for our discussions of theology,
and it laughs at our bickerings and hagglings
and hair-splittings, but it acknowledges at once
the conquering force of the true Christian life
and unselfish love. Still, as in the second
century, Christians are in the world what the
soul is in the body.

CHAPTER XXIV
IF CHRIST CAME TO THE HOME
c I O AY the word, for I am not worthy that
^ Thou shouldst come under my roof."
We can easily appreciate the centurion's mod
esty and his feeling that he was not worthy to
have the Master come into his house; but is there
not something besides humility in the request ?
Suppose that Christ should come unexpectedly
into any of our homes and sit among us as our
guest, would He find our homes all ready for
His presence, or should we need to spend some
months beforehand preparing for His coming?
There were a few homes in Judea to which He
went, though it is plainly evident that He did
not feel at home in them all, as He did in the
one at Bethany. He found much that had to
be changed in Simon's house and in Zaccheus's
house before He could abide there and be at
home. Even in Bethany the odors from the
broken alabaster box do not cover up the notes
of strife between the sisters over the questions
of service and housework.
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IF CHRIST CAME TO THE HOME 93
The foxes had holes and the birds of the air
had nests, but there was no home in Palestine
for the Son of Man. We find Him praying on
hill tops, in the wilderness, in the garden ;
never once in some harmonious, congenial
family circle. We read again and again of
His spending the night under the sky, gener
ally alone ; but never once of His being com
fortably housed under a roof where loving
hearts made the Great Burden Bearer feel that
He was at home with them, and His cares and
burdens lightened by sympathy. Perhaps He
did find shelter and rest and loving sympathy
and true communion in some unnamed homes
in the so-called "Holy Land," but we can only
imagine the scenes ; they are not in the picture
preserved for us. There is something peculiarly
touching in the request of this old Roman
soldier who wants his boy healed, but who is
conscious that his home is not just the place
for the Saviour to go to. The desired work is
to be done, if possible, at long range. It is an
old story. We go to the church or the meet
ing-house to meet the Lord, but too often we
do not expect Him to come to our homes.
Things are not in shape there for Him. We
have our thousand perplexing home cares and
fretting problems. We mean to be sweet and
loving to each other ; we know we ought to

94 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
make our homes altars on which the vestal
fires of love are never extinguished — but, but,
but I Well, we fail to do it.
If Christ should come to-day ws should
probably want Him to help us at long range,
at least until we could get the home fixed over
so that He would not find it jarring upon His
calm and peaceful spirit. Think what it means
to have a home where Christ could rest and
refresh Himself and of which He could say,
as He began His journey again, "These same
are My mother and My brothers and My
sisters I "

CHAPTER XXV
CHRISTIANITY AND REFORM WORK
A S there is no conflict between religion and
-^^ morals, so there is no conflict between
philanthropic, or reform work, and Christianity.
Some people are afraid of speaking much of
mere morality for fear they are dishonoring
religion by doing so, and in like manner it is
felt by some that there is no place for mere
reform work or philanthrophy, because it is on
too low a plane, our business in this world
being to preach Christ and His power to save,
and that only.
There can be no doubt in the mind of any
Christian that the all-important thing is to
present to humanity the Saviour from sin, to
induce as many as possible to yield to Him
completely, and if they fully experience the
cleansing, sanctifying power with which He
fills a surrendered life, the questions of
morality and of reform are settled so far as
those lives are concerned, for in the accept
ance of Christ, His standard of life must be
adopted, or it is only a half-way step. While (95)

96 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
it must ever be the supreme thought with the
ripe Christian to make it possible for men and
women to become " new creatures," there can
be no controversy with those who find it their
mission to educate, to improve the condition
of things by reform movements or by legisla
tion, and who make life purer and easier by
removing temptations and the causes of evil.
The half-taught disciples restrained those
casting out devils because they did not follow
the Master, but he rebuked them and gave
them to understand that it was a victory for
Him every time a devil was dethroned, in
whatever way it was accomplished. " He
that is not against us is for us." We often
forget that broad teaching, and feel some
times that the work must be done in our
way or at least by those who have a like
faith with us, or it cannot be a service for
Christ ; but His words are unmistakable, that
no work which makes this a better world,
which makes it easier for men to live a true
life, is to be condemned. A defeat of Satan is
a victory for Christ, a removal of the darkness
means the incoming of the light ; therefore,
let us not relax any effort to work directly in
His name for the salvation of the world
through the Saviour, but let us have no word
to say against any effort of individual or

CHRISTIANITY AND REFORM WORK 97
society for the overthrow of evil, or for the
amelioration of suffering and the effects of
sin. We can see how inconsistent it is to
allow a cause to exist which makes the land
abound with drunkards, paupers, criminals,
and mentally incapacitated, but while it does
exist we must find out how to deal wisely
with those whom our imperfect civilization
has wrecked. Meanwhile, we ought to devote
all our powers, mental and moral, to the con
ception of some method that will forever
remove the cause of the evil. The man or
the woman, or the multitude, as the case
may be, — who strikes successfully at this root
of woe and ruin and crime, will have served
God in casting out devils, whether it be done by
a political method or a legal act, or by a cam
paign of education or on a definite religious
basis. During the great crusade against slav
ery the work was interrupted by dissensions
between the mere reformers and the churches.
The churches would not work with the
reformers because they did not put their oppo
sition on a Christian basis, the reformers con
demned the churches for not endorsing their
methods. When Christ forgives us and makes
us His He does not make us less truly, but
more truly men than we were before. He does
not call us apart from the problems of human

98 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
improvement and progress. He puts us rather
in the forefront of the great battle of Arma
geddon, and we are under orders " to ride
abroad redressing human wrongs," to smite
evil and sin and crime, and to aid the right
and the truth. We have still living among
us two valiant souls whom God has greatly
blessed, a Moody and a Parkhurst. One has
worked ceaselessly to bring men to Christ for
salvation, the other has, with lance in hand,
attacked the corruption and crime of his city.
Both are knights of God, and they have no
conflict with each other. The arrows of both
are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies.

CHAPTER XXVI
OUR THOUGHT OF GOD
TT is an old and much-discussed question,
whether it is our thought, or our will, or our
emotions that determines our life, and makes
us what we are. One man maintains that the
"thought" is the root and spring ofthe whole
being. " Only think right and the life will be
all right." Another man finds this teacher
entirely wrong, and concludes that the " feel
ings " are the main thing. " The life is shaped
by the emotions, by what we care for, by what
we love." " Oh ! no," says the third man,
"not at all. The life is determined by the
choices you make, by your resolves, by your
decisions, by what you will."
Now the mistake in all this comes from
breaking the man up into three distinct parts
and treating one of them as though it were
the whole man. Thought and Will and Feel
ing never work singly or independently. They
are all three together in all our acts and in all
our life. They can no more be separated than
(99)

loo PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
the sky and air, or light and color can be
separated. The question has never been settled which
one of these functions lies at the root of char
acter, or of religious life, for it would be impos
sible to get a complete character or a genuine
religious life with any one of the three func
tions gone. Anyone who has difficulty in
comprehending the doctrine of the Trinity
will find, if he looks at it, the same difficulty
in comprehending how one self in his own
nature can have three indissoluble, interwoven
strands — in fact, three entirely different mani
festations, which together make one conscious
ness. But notwithstanding all this, we want still
to emphasize the fact that it is tremendously
important how a man thinks. Wrong thought
and wrong belief make imperfect lives every
time. "My people will not think!" is Isaiah's
constant burden.
Analyze an imperfect, weak, unproductive
Christian life, and you will always find his
thought of God is wrong, or at least very crude
and imperfect. Let a man, on the other hand,
once get his mind filled with Christ's concep
tion of God, and his life begins to unfold and
expand. It is like bringing a plant out of the
cellar into the sunlight. Go back without any

OUR THOUGHT OF GOD 101
prejudices and preconceived ideas and see how
simple Christ's idea of God is. He is a
heavenly Father and His will is to have all
His children like Himself. His kingdom comes
wherever His will is done. True life consists
in being about the Father's business. He is
like the light which floods the earth, and He
seeks to penetrate every dark spot. His heart
is touched with all our burdens and sorrows,
grieved over our errors and our waywardness,
and He gives His own Son, His very self, to
win us and draw us to Him. The essence of
His nature is Love, and He reveals Himself
and His Love that we may learn Love and so
become like Him.

CHAPTER XXVII
the father and the son
DOME of our friends have been much per-
^ plexed about the ever new question of the
unity of Father and Son. If there is only one
God, they ask, how can there be three persons ?
If there is only one God and Jesus Christ was
God, then, when we say He died on the cross,
does not that seem like saying that God died?
which is an impossibility. Again, why should
Christ need the Holy Ghost who descended
upon Him, and what was the effect of this
upon Him? Those who have studied the
never-ending discussions on these speculations
know how impossible it is to fathom the
mystery of the Divine Nature, and they will
feel as we do that in speaking at all on the
subject one must do so with uncovered head
and with no dogmatic confidence. We speak
only that we may possibly help some, who are
perplexed, to get a clearer idea of what revela
tion teaches us to think, and our words must be
taken only in that sense, for a complete exposition
would require a volume or a set of volumes.
(102)

THE FA THER AND THE SON 103
There is but one God ; we must hold fast to
that truth. This God is Love. In our human
thought, love implies a beloved object ; there
fore from eternity God generated the Son, who
is the express image of His person. In the
beginning, this expression of Himself existed
— this Logos, which we translate Word. It is
the self-revealing aspect of the Divine self. It
is that in Him which can be manifested. We
know that the undivided ray of light can
without ceasing to be light or effulgence mani
fest itself as color ; yet light and color are not
two things but one. So Father and Son are
not two essences, but one. This eternally
generated manifestation of Himself, — this ob
ject of His love — in the fulness of time became
incarnate, became flesh and dwelt among us,
and we beheld in Him the glory of the only
begotten Son. If God were to express Himself
truly to human beings, He could do it only in
a perfect human life, which should perfectly
unite Divinity and humanity. Some persons
refuse to think of Jesus Christ as really human
at all ; they think it destroys His divinity to
think of Him so, and therefore they conceive
of Him as only going through the motions of
human life while He knew all the time that
He was not human at all. This idea is entirely
foreign to the Gospels and to the facts, and

104 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
would make the incarnation unreal. He, the
very God, became man. He lived a perfect
human life. He learned by experience as we
all have to do. He suffered privations. He
felt and deeply tasted the hard realities of
slighted love, of disappointed hopes, of mis
understood kindness and sacrifice. He endured
•real temptations. He felt human limitations,
and plainly said so. Having accepted the
limitations of human life and becoming in a
true sense a Son of Man that He might make us
sons af God He needed and constantly received
the enduement of the Holy Spirit. It was
given him without any limit or measure. His
Father filled Him and gave Him power, as no
prophet of old had ever received illumination.
On the mountain of transfiguration the glory
seemed almost too great for the flesh. But it
must not be forgotten that His experiences
under the unparalleled illumination of the
Spirit were still in a true sense human ; other
wise the real idea of the incarnation is lost,
and He could not be a true mediator. We
cannot penetrate the mystery of death in the
slightest degree, and we must not speak as
though we could tell what took place in the
death of this unparalleled Personality, but in
this gift of Self, atonement is made for us. It
is, however, certain that the death of the body

THE FA THER AND THE SON 105
in no way ended the Life. Christ, the Word
of God, has never ceased to be, and He is proved
to be the Son of God by the power of His end
less Life. It always has been difficult to see
how Christ could be both human and Divine,
and some over-emphasize one phase of His
nature, and some the other, but if we knew all
about Divine Nature and human nature, we
should see that One Person could in perfect
degree express them both to man, and we
should also see that Father, Son and Holy
Spirit are one God in simple unity from the
Divine point of view, but from our human
point of view expressed in three forms; as
each ray of light is to us light, color and
energy, though in perfect, indivisible unity.
It in no way affects the continuity of the
infinite circle of Divinity that at one arc it
breaks out in human form, and shows us the
Divine glory in the face of Jesus Christ, and
we must not fail, by being perplexed over the
mystery of His nature, to let Him bring us to
the Father. Some day we shall understand
what our deepest faith now tells us is true, that
Jesus Christ is in deepest truth Divine.

CHAPTER XXVIII
BEATITUDES IN THE GOSPEL
A I \HERE is a great spiritual law, that it is
-*- impossible to get something for nothing.
This seems at first to contradict the teaching
that "grace is free," that "whosoever will, may
come," and that salvation is " without money
and without price." But the minute we look
below the surface, we find that there is no
contradiction here.
In many of our institutions of learning in
America " education is free," but that does not
mean that education is conferred upon the
student without effort and co-operation on his
part, or that he can sit with folded hands and
" receive " an education. In the same way
character is free — i. e., it does not cost a man
any money -fee to have a good character ; but
nevertheless, no man can "receive" a charac
ter ready made, or have it supplied to him,
without moral effort and a struggle with, and
victory over, temptations.
All the beatitudes of the Gospel are of this
same nature. In one sense the "blessings"
(106)

BEATITUDES IN THE GOSPEL 107
are as free as air and sunshine, but we see at
once that they come only when a certain spir
itual state, or condition of life, has been
realized. In other words, it is impossible to
have the wider view until the mountain is
climbed, though the view above is just as "free"
as it is below, on the ground level. Look at
the beatitudes and see how they all illustrate
that spiritual law of which we spoke at first.
There is the beatitude of seeing God, but it
is granted only to " the pure in heart," which
means, of course, that seeing God is the nor
mal result of getting the heart pure ; it be
comes then " second nature " to see God. God
does not confer this beatitude as a free gift.
What He does give freely is the opportunity
of making the heart pure; and the spiritual
eyes open to see God, just as fast as we climb
up into the life where such vision is possible.
The blessedness comes with the quality of life.
There is again the beatitude of being filled,
but it comes only to those who have been feel
ing the sorrow and emptiness and the pangs
of hunger and thirst. It is the passion for
righteousness which God blesses, and without
the passion, the beatitude which attaches to
it cannot be received. There is the beatitude
of " having the kingdom of heaven," but there
is a spiritual state required first which is called

108 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
"being poor in spirit." You get the blessing
only as you enter the state. " Poor in spirit "
does not mean being depressed or despondent,
or of no account in the earth ; but it does
mean coming to the condition where we realize
our poverty of soul and our need of God and
His riches. It is the sense of incompleteness
and worthlessness, followed by the incoming
flood of God's completeness and fulness. When
God comes, of course the kingdom of heaven
comes. Then, too, there is the beatitude of being
" comforted," but it comes only to those who
have gone down into the baptism of some hard
experience. It is " light after darkness, peace
after pain." It is not too much to say, that
God never could be fully known or enjoyed by
one who had never been in a furnace of trial.
Love is never fully revealed, so long as its
"course runs smooth." It is when Love
comes to comfort that we catch its real heart
and meaning. It is when God comes in to
heal and bind up our wounds and to fill a
great void in our lives that we learn the mean
ing of this beatitude. Every experience has
its own beatitude. At each point on the
slopes of Pisgah we get the vision according
to our height.

CHAPTER XXIX
WHAT WOULD WE ASK HIM?
TT is interesting and instructive to notice the
-*-" kind of questions which the disciples and
others asked the Master when He was with
them in person. They very seldom came to
Him to ask about the great central truths.
We hear no question about the life of the
Spirit, about union with Christ, about the
mystery of love and sacrifice, or how to become
pure in heart, how to overcome, how to put
down all love of sin. They are concerned
with times and seasons. When is this new
kingdom coming? Are we to sit on exalted
seats in the kingdom ? Whose sin made this
man blind? Ought we to pay tribute to
Caesar? What does He mean by "a little
while " ? Whose wife shall she be in the resur
rection? Why could not we cast the devil out?
In what mountain shall we pray ? These are
some of the familiar questions, and they often
break in upon Him when He is unfolding
some deep spiritual truth, with a question
which shows that their thought was about the
(109)

no PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
husk, while his was concerned with the inner
kernel. How often the parent smiles as he
listens to the artless questions of the child
who is never tired of asking, and whose ques
tions show what the little mind is busy with.
So those who gathered round the Lord plied
Him with the childish problems which filled
their thought, and missed their opportunity
to ask Him of the deeper things which our
hearts so desire to have unveiled.
But what should we ask Him to-day, if He
stood in our streets, or came to eat at our
tables ? Many of our questions would still be
about the husk, and we should still fail to
learn those deeper truths of which He had to
tell His disciples they were not yet ready to
hear. One can imagine the pushing crowd
about Him to-day, asking the questions which
are uppermost. Shall we sprinkle or immerse ?
Shall we use fermented or unfermented wine in
our communion service ? Lord, when art Thou
coming a second time ? Shall we have pastors or
silent meetings ? Are those who are eternally
punished in sight of the blessed? Is the
Bible really an inspired book, and is every
word literally true ? Is it right for Christians
to sing? Can infants go to heaven if they
have never been baptized ? Shall we employ
doctors or shall we be healed by faith ? He

WHAT WOULD WE ASK HIM? in
would undoubtedly look sadly upon us and
say : " I have many things to say unto you,
but ye cannot bear them now." The ques
tions we ask show better than anything else
the height of our lives. An ignorant person
can hardly ask intelligent questions, and the
wiser a man is the wiser will his questions be.
So, too, the more spiritual a man is the more
profound and important will his problems be.
Paul saw Christ for one blessed moment, and
his question concerned his whole career :
" What shall I do, Lord ? " and the answer
came, " I will show thee." He had no curi
osity about husks, he wanted to know how to
be obedient to his "heavenly vision." The
trouble with Christians to-day, wherever there
is trouble, is that they have too shallow con
cerns, their thoughts are on surface matters.
They do not plow down to the core and essence
of religion and penetrate the crust so that the
glowing stream of life may break through.
Let us put away childish things and ask for
light on the subjects which really concern our
soul and our relation to Him who is Life and
Love.

CHAPTER XXX
ROBES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
TTARDLY any other word has held a greater
-*- place in the spiritual and moral history
of our race than righteousness. There are a
few words of higher meaning, but righteous
ness is one of the coinages of the spiritual
kingdom of mighty significance. It was the
burden of the message of the great Hebrew
prophets ; it was the keynote of the Fore
runner's call to the Jews ; it is in the warp
and woof of Christ's teaching ; it is the very
substance of Paul's doctrine, and it is the great
principle of Luther's Reformation — "Right
eousness by faith."
Therefore, any type of Christianity which has
righteousness left out is weak and nerveless,
as would be a man without bones or an oak tree
without fibres. The very kingdom of heaven
itself is Righteousness, as the Apostle of
righteousness tells us, and the crown which
awaits God's true saints is no crown of fading
leaves or flowers, but a crown of Righteous
ness. And yet there is a kind of righteousness
(112)

ROBES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 113
which is called " filthy rags," no garment at
all, but only patches and tatters, and strangely
enough it has been a very popular kind in all
the ages. This ragged righteousness is a self
ish sort, which men expect to get by their own
unaided efforts, and to use solely for their own
ends, and for this reason it is properly called
self-righteousness. It feeds pride and at the
same time hardens the heart. It makes its
possessor cold and narrow and loveless. He
does right very much as a machine would.
If there is any man in the world that needs to
be saved it is such a self-centered righteous
man, who thanks God he is not like other
men, or who boasts like the " elder brother "
that he has stayed at home and done his duty.
The world is somehow so made that no man
can be " self-made," or live unto himself. The
self-righteous man is one who boasts that he
is morally " self-made ; " he owes nothing to
anything but his own efforts. Now it is just
as impossible for a man to be righteous alone
by his own efforts, as it is for a merchant to do
business alone. No person begins to be spir
itual until he loses himself, until he finds
something better than himself to worship and
serve, so that the first step for salvation and
toward real righteousness is to realize one's
insufficiency and incompleteness alone, and to

n4 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
find another centre of life, for there is no
salvation possible for a man until his heart
goes out beyond himself. As soon as Christ
possesses a man, he no longer does right by
rule and as a machine. His heart kindles
with love, and it is first nature to do right to
those he loves. Righteousness is a necessary
fruit of love, and the deeper the love the wider
the sway of righteousness. If a man loved
absolutely, he would become absolutely right
eous, for it would become his greatest pain to
harm anybody in the universe. Christ's right
eousness is, then, not to be sought as an end
in itself; it comes with love. It is " put on"
as fast as we put on Christ. It is no more a
thing of patches and rags ; it is a robe which
covers the whole man. It is, too, a vital spir
itual principle, which links the Christian into
union with the interests of all other men, and
makes a complete network of relation, and
this kind of love-born righteousness is not
merely for earthly society ; it is as well an
essential quality of the kingdom of heaven,
and it is a most fitting crown for those who
" keep the faith."

CHAPTER XXXI
TWO TYPICAL CONCEPTIONS OF SALVATION
u A RE you saved ? " is a question often
-^*- asked at revival meetings, and often
answered in a vague, uncertain way : " I hope
so," or " I think I am." " Saved " has always
been a great word in Christianity, and most
Christians would feel that the power of Chris
tianity was gone if it should lose its message
of salvation. We are Christians not because
we believe a beautiful philosophical theory,
but because we have found a way of salvation,
and because in very fact men are " saved."
But it is pretty evident that opinions differ
as soon as we ask what is meant by salvation,
by being saved, and we find that many per
sons say they do not know whether they are
saved or not, which means, of course, that
they do not know what salvation is.
There have been in the history of Christian
thought two typical conceptions of salvation.
To a certain number of persons " being saved "
means being sure of heaven. Salvation is an
escape. Sin got into the world through the
("5)

116 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
fault of our first ancestor. It was then entailed
upon the race, and the whole family came
under the judicial condemnation of the Sov
ereign. His justice demanded punishment,
but His love found a means of escape. Those
who accept the Divine plan of escape have
their sins covered and the consequences re
moved, and they are saved by grace. Salva
tion, according to this thought, is essentially a
judicial plan, a method to repair the breach
which our fallen nature has made. There are,
of course, a great many different ways of ex
pressing this view, and it is held in a very
great variety of phases, but at bottom it is
essentially judicial.
The other conception is best illustrated by
the parable of the Prodigal Son. It considers
personal, voluntary sin as the only possible
separation between man and God. A man
without sin is a child of God. But sin imme
diately separates, and it puts its own mark
upon the sinner. He is unsaved because he is
away from God, because he is a servant to sin,
and because he has put himself out of Divine
relationship. He has gone to the enemy's
country and God seems foreign to him, and he
is afraid of Him. Sin always produces sepa
ration and fear, and any man living in sin is
" lost." How can such a man be saved ? The

TWO CONCEPTIONS OF SAL VA TION 117
only way he can be saved is by finding God
and getting free of sin. Jesus Christ expresses
God's love, which reaches the most desperate
prodigal. He is the Incarnation of God, liv
ing among men to show them how the Divine
Heart yearns for them to become sons of God,
and then suffering and dying to make His
love reach all who in any land or in any age
hear how He died for them. This mighty
love breaks across any separation which man's
sin makes and tells every prodigal that he
may be a son, for God is a Father.
The essence of the Gospel on the Divine
side is this expression of forgiveness and love.
The essence of the Gospel on the human side
lies in the fact that it turns the face to God
and sets free from sin. It makes the man a
new man. It makes the slave to sin a free
man. It makes the prodigal a son. It does
nothing short of transforming a human soul
by linking it to its Divine source, and by
waking in it the joy and love which belong to
life with God. Salvation, according to this
thought, is essentially a transformation. It is
much more than an escape. It is a present
consciousness of Divine possession, and the
enjoyment of freedom and sonship. Those
who are saved with this kind of salvation
know it.

CHAPTER XXXII
PUTTING OFF AND PUTTING ON
'TVDO many persons want to put on before
¦*- they put off. They want to dress in
white robes before they have disrobed them
selves of their filthy rags. They want the
new man without losing the old man. They
want the angel wings and the flesh-pots too.
There is a proverbial expression that certain
people "want the earth with a gold fence
round it." There are very many of these
persons iu the church.
It is surely all right to expect large things,
to have high aims and wide-reaching pur
poses, but there are impossible attainments
even for Christians, for there are Divine Laws
which operate in the realm of the spiritual
life, and which must be obeyed. One of these
laws is the unalterable truth that the old man
and new man cannot live and flourish in the
same person. It is impossible for a caterpillar
to be both a caterpillar and a butterfly at the
same time. It cannot both eat cabbage leaves
and suck honey from flowers. There comes a
(118)

PUTTING OFF AND PUTTING ON 119
sharp moment in its career when the cater
pillar nature ends. The old hulk cracks open
and the empty case is left, as the new creature
enters upon a new career, with new tastes and
desires and loves. It leaves its cabbage plant,
for it has found the honeysuckle. It does not
miss its numerous legs to crawl with, for it has
wings to soar with. Well, this is a parable, as
everything in nature really is to those who
have eyes to see.
We lose both worlds when we try to get both
at the same time. We must choose between
rags and robes, between holiness and easy
worldliness, between the old man whom we
know so well and the new man who " after
God is created in righteousness and true holi
ness." Now, sanctification does not mean
pulling a white robe on over the old dress
which the world and sin have stained and
defiled. It is both destructive and construc
tive. It begins with the sloughing off of
the old. It comes with fan and fire. It win
nows and burns. But this is only that there
may be a genuine constructive work. No saint
is made by the putting off process alone. It
would be like trying to make a butterfly by
cutting off the legs of a caterpillar. A pro
cess of life must split the old hulk and work
a recreation. The destruction of the old and

120 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
the putting on of the new is a part of the same
Divine process We often wish we might know
beforehand of God's resurrection power. It
seems such a far-off and miraculous thing!
Well, we may know about it. It is just the
marvelous thing about our Christianity that
every one of us may now have an experience
of the working of the mighty power which
raised Christ from the dead and set Him in
the Heavenlies (Eph. 1 : 19, 20). The power
of His resurrection is revealed when a new
man is created and an old man is put off.

CHAPTER XXXIII
TO WHOM SHALL WE GO?
T)AUL could say in his ringing words,
"Neither life nor death can separate me
from the love of God in Christ Jesus."
Strangely enough the life test is much harder
to stand than the death test. Most converts
in the power of their new-found Lord would
stand like a rock if they had to face death for
their faith. They would say with Peter, who
could not face a simple maiden's question,
"I will die for thee." But then comes the
daily life. Neighbors are mean and hateful.
Every day has its vexatious trials. The fervor
of the first consecration wanes. Christians
themselves prove to be imperfect and their
profession runs ahead of their practice. Those
who used to speak encouraging words are now
silent, and one feels that nobody cares whether
he goes ahead or slips back. Hot impulses
come and do not get checked. The narrow
way seems hard and the old life looks more
attractive. So the slipping goes on step by
step, and generally without any willful turning (121)

122 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
of the back the feet have drifted into the old
path again and the " possible saint " has be
come an actual sinner. Sometimes it is the
man's own fault that his lamp burns low, but
probably more often it is the fault of other
Christians. We are our brothers' keepers and
they need endless patience and help and over
sight until they are rooted and grounded
themselves. The sheep in the great parable
represents the sinner who drifts away step by
step without intending really to leave the fold.
The sheep feeds away and suddenly realizes
that it is out of the pasture and lost. It was
one out of a hundred. The lost coin rep
resents the sinner who gets lost through some
body's carelessness. It is no fault of the coin
that it lies hidden in the dirt in the dark cor
ner of the room instead of being found on the
cord round the brow of the wife, as the Eastern
custom is. Here the proportion is one out of
ten. It is a sad fact in our Christianity that
we cannot keep all we win, that our deserters
are so numerous, and that such a multitude of
people straggle along half way between both
camps and own no hearty allegiance to either.
Much of this trouble is due to the fact that
they never really were "joined to the Lord,"
to use the beautiful apostolic phrase. They
never actually found the pearl. They saw

TO WHOM SHALL WE GO? 123
their Lord a long way off and felt a joyous
rapture at the sight, but never drew any nearer
to Him. They never honestly faced the situ
ation and decided to " lose themselves to find
themselves." It is only those who have dwelt
with Him who can say " To whom shall we
go ? " when He asks if they expect to leave
Him. Some Christians teach a doctrine which
they call " once in grace always in grace." It
is hard to tell just what they mean by it, but
if they mean that one who is really born
again can never go back afterwards, we do not
agree with their position, nor do we find any
support for such teaching. But we do believe
that the most of those who go back do so be
cause they never really went far enough to
find the jewel. They are like the gold seekers
who never go over the Skaguay Pass and when
they come from Alaska they bring no Klondike
gold dust with them, for all the gold dust is
on the other side of the pass I

CHAPTER XXXIV
THE RAREST HUMAN QUALITY
T /TUCH has been written to show how love
¦^-*~ is the greatest thing in the world, but
there is one human quality much more rare
than love — we mean sympathy. It is not
difficult for human beings to love, for we all
love the lovable when we see it. " We needs
must love the highest when we see it." Then,
too, love has a sure reward. Love is almost
never one-sided. We love because we are
loved. It is a mutual, reciprocal quality. It
is a kind of spiritual double-entry, in which
the sides balance. It is give and receive.
There is no state or experience so rapturous
and joyous as that of loving. It is second
nature to love, and almost nobody gets through
life without having loved sometime, on a
higher or lower level. But sympathy is a very
different thing. One has to be almost angelic
to sympathize. It is possible for selfish per
sons to love, but it is not possible for them to
feel genuine sympathy. It is an absolutely
unselfish quality. Most persons think they
(124)

THE RAREST HUMAN QUALITY 125
are sympathizing when they are not at all.
They see some one in trouble, and they say
with a sad, solemn tone, " Poor fellow, I am
very sory for you, you have my hearty sym
pathy," and they go to their house "justified,"
but down deep in their hearts they were rejoic
ing all the time that they were not like that
" poor fellow," and they were exulting in their
happier fortune. That is not sympathy.
Another class of persons say nothing to the
one in trouble, because they do not know what
to say. They act awkward and restrained
when they are with him, but try hard all the
time to be natural and easy, and to talk of
everything else but his trouble, so as not to
hurt his feeling or stir his deeps. Still other
persons avoid those who are in trouble, and
say in hushed voices to their neighbors, " Poor
So and So is having a hard time, isn't he ? "
Of course this is not sympathy. The result is
that a person in deep trouble in this world
feels pretty much alone, and when he finds
real sympathy he is as surprised as a desert
traveler is when he finds a beautiful flower,
and he is sure it must have had a divine origin.
Some of the most beautiful passages of the
Gospel tell of Christ's sympathy. Like the
transfiguration, they show us at once the
divine nature which was in Him, and no

126 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
human title more truly glorifies Him than
that of the " Great Sympathizer." He shared
the troubles and sadness of others, and this is
the essential element of sympathy. The word
means " feeling or suffering with." The easy,
well-meant words of pity are like a cold crust
thrown as alms. One genuine pulse of fellow
feeling, a true sharing of the burden of the
heart are worth more than a million words of
sentiment. But alas, that other is so hard to
realize, is so rare, is so divine. It is the one
lone flower which we hardly know except as a
pressed specimen between the leaves of a book.
Those who give it are most like Christ of all
human beings.

CHAPTER XXXV
NOT CUNNINGLY DEVISED FABLES
TTTE have no difficulty in putting our faith
" ^ in things which we know are real,
and the moment we establish the reality of
any fact, it at once affects our actions accord
ingly. Nobody starts for the Klondike until
he has evidence which convinces him that the
coveted yellow dust is really there. But as
soon as the reality is established the gold
seeker forgets every obstacle and acts upon
his belief. People laughed at the theory of
Columbus until he gave convincing evidence
of its reality, and then ship after ship was
pointed toward the west and the new world
became as definite a country as the old world.
The Church tried to make Galileo take back
his statement that the earth moves, but as
soon as the fact was clearly established every
body adopted the idea, and now a man would
be thought insane if he should maintain that
the earth had no motion. So we might go on
with illustrations, but it is clear to everybody
that the world believes in a thing as soon as
(127)

128 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
its reality is established, and this belief im
mediately affects action.
Now, why are not more people genuinely
religious ? Why do so few persons seek first
the kingdom of God ? It is because they are
not certain of the reality of unseen things.
The trouble with all half-hearted, compromis
ing Christians, is that something else is much
more real to them than God is. They look at
the things that are seen and they find them
real ; they look at the things which are not
seen and they are not quite sure whether they
are real or not ; and the result is that they
seek first the things they are sure of. All who
are honest with themselves will agree with us
that this is just their difficulty.
Now, the transcendent thing about Chris
tianity is this, that for those who are willing to
see, it establishes the reality of God and makes
His kingdom one of the surest facts in the
world. God is no longer an " unknown God."
We are not left blindly to guess about Him
and His will and nature. He has dwelt among
us. This is the Christian message ! The Sun
has risen and we have seen its light. The
curtain is forever pulled back from before the
mercy-seat, and we know the reality of the
love of God. It is as much a fact as the orbit
of the moon is. The kingdom of God is no

NO T CUNNING L Y DE VISED FABLES 129
longer a dream of poets or a vision of seers.
The most matter-of-fact man may see the king
dom of God extending its sway. It is present
wherever in the name of Christ a man over
comes sin and becomes holy and righteous.
Wherever darkness and evil are driven back,
and light and truth conquer, wherever saintly,
Christlike lives are made out of weak, tempted,
sin-stained human beings ; wherever souls are
renewed and transformed, there the reality of
the King and of the kingdom is established.
The Incarnation of God in Christ, and the
unmistakable spread of His kingdom, are two
central facts. A person's first business in life
should be to grasp their reality. No man can
live an easy, compromising life after he has
established the reality of these two facts. Let
him see the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and
let him realize that the grain of mustard seed is
really growing into a mighty tree, which is
filling the earth, and his whole life will be
lifted to a higher plane of living.
9

CHAPTER XXXVI
SABBATH OBSERVANCE
'T^HE observance of the Sabbath is older
¦*¦ than the records of history, and it is
now certain that the setting apart of one day
in seven did not originate with the promulga
tion of the Mosaic law, but that law simply
gave emphasis and definiteness to an old, time-
honored custom, and the book of Genesis sig
nificantly traces its origin back to a day of
rest after six creative days " in the beginning."
The Puritans made a stern effort to re-estab
lish a " holy day," a day of rest, a day of
solemnity, on which all the wheels of toil
should cease and all gaiety and jollity be for
gotten. They were partially successful, though
they never reached the complete standstill
which characterized a Jewish Sabbath, where
stoning was the penalty for picking up sticks
for a fire, and the carrying of a rug-couch was
a dreadful offense. The reaction from the
Puritan Sabbath has carried us far toward the
other extreme, and it has become a serious
(130)

SABBATH OBSERVANCE 131
question with all earnest Christians how prop
erly to keep the Sabbath holy.
We may as well recognize at once that the
old Jewish Sabbath can no more be restored
than can the practice of circumcision, and the
early Christians certainly looked upon the
Jewish Sabbath, as kept in their day, as a part
of the intolerable bondage of the old system.
In fact, Paul speaks clearly against its legal
istic observance, and the early church swept it
forever away with the other ceremonials of the
law which Christ's cross nullified.
But the infant church from its first begin
ning took one day out of the seven and called
it the Lord's Day. It was the First-day of the
week, the day forever glorified and consecrated
by the Resurrection of the Christ, who thus
proved himself the Son of God with power
and the true Head of the church. This
"Lord's Day" is our Christian holy day, and
its true observance must be determined in the
light of Christ's revelation. It is not meant
for bondage but for freedom. It is set apart
and consecrated to man's highest uses. No
man can be at his best if he slavishly toils
seven days in a week and has no period to
rest his body and to commune with his God.
That is a way to make life brutish. The
whole world needs a time of hush. The rush

132 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
and turmoil, the grind of labor, and the search
for enjoyment, the clink of wine glasses and
the indulgence in dangerous pleasures — with
no break or interruption — would leave man
a distorted wreck. Upon every life under the
blue sky the peace and quiet of the Lord's
Day should fall and let the reality of higher
things impress itself. Spiritual life demands
one day at least in seven, and no people can
remain long spiritual if the world gets every
day. This holy day is necessary for preserving
the sweet influences of the home circle ; the
hard pressed laborer must have it unless he is
to be made a blind machine with no higher,
sweeter life. Around this Lord's Day a circle
of separation should be drawn. We must not
let it become like other days. It should be to
our souls what the spring showers are to the
flowers, and we should make it a Lord's Day
to all who are weary and heavy-laden. It is
to save life, not to destro3r. It is to lift hearts
into an ampler and diviner life. It is to make
earth a holier place, and though we cast no
stone at him who picks up sticks on this day,
as in the old dispensation, yet it is our sacred
duty to make it a day of holy uses for the
higher life.

CHAPTER XXXVII
THE gospel of the son of god
OOLDIERS are always talking about the
^ enormous " waste " of powder which is a
feature of every battle whether on land or sea.
For every bullet that takes effect hundreds are
shot into the air or into the ground. If this
were not so an attacking army would be
annihilated before it reached the position it is
attempting to carry. The wildness of the aim
is therefore one of the merciful features of a
battle. Strangely enough this wildness of aim, this
same waste of ammunition, characterizes all
our great spiritual contests as well. In the
hot and prolonged fight with the forces of sin
nothing is more discouraging than this same
false aim and waste of energy. Read the history
of our nineteen centuries of Christianity and see
how few of the shots have been straight at the
enemy's head. Look at the militant church
to-day and see what a tremendous waste of
force there is. Christians seem bound to fight
everything but the real enemy, and when they
(133)

134 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
find a man who does open fire on the central
fortress, the others are quite likely to open fire
on him, because he isn't shooting nine-tenths
of his weapons into the air.
Jesus Christ always refused the random
aims and went straight to the mark. The air-
shooters of His day were always trying to
turn Him off the main line to an attack on
phantom enemies, but He never swerved an
iota. They came with their metaphysical
question, whether hereditary sin made a poor
man blind, or whether it was his own sin.
Christ brushed away the whole logical quibble
and showed them that the main thing was the
present opportunity to work the work of God
on the man who needed help. They never
ceased to buzz about Him with hard problems
about the Messianic kingdom. He refused to
waste force on idle discussion with those who
were too blind in their own conceits to appre
ciate any new truth, and He simply announced
that "the pure in heart see God," and the
poor in spirit are in the kingdom. Tricky
questions about the resurrection and tribute
money were simply occasions for Him to unfold
the great truth that God is the God of the
living, whether in the visible or invisible
world, and that we can safely trust Him, and
that neither is to be slighted.

THE GOSPEL OF THE SON OF GOD 135
It is easy for us to get over our depth on
every subject connected with spiritual things
if we only allow ourselves to tumble into the
slough of speculation. But what is gained by
it ? Religion wants to keep out of all these
quicksands and deal with facts tbat can be
tested. The Gospel of the Son of God is the mes
sage for to-day as it was when the " blessed
feet " trod the hills of Judea. Tell men as He
did of the Father's love. Declare everywhere
His power and His readiness to forgive sin.
Show as He did that the pure heart has an
immediate evidence, an unmistakable proof
of God. Herald the kingdom of God as a
fact, and make men see its reality. Preach
the Gospel of Redemption — Christ giving His
life for sinners and in infinite love showing
how the Divine Heart yearns for every soul.
Make men understand that Christianity is not
a web of metaphysical and abstract theories,
but God revealing Himself in a Son and so
giving Life to the world. Oh, friends, the
Gospel of the Son is too precious a truth to be
wasted in sham battles. Let us present it
straight to men's hearts.

CHAPTER XXXVIII
A FAITH THAT HONORS GOD
/^vNE of the most striking characteristics of
^-^ the great Hebrew prophets was their
steady faith that God was at work in the world
and that His truth and righteousness would
triumph. They looked at the dark foregrounds
of their own time and clearly saw the shadows,
but they refused to conclude that this was all
of the picture. In calm faith they all saw a
light breaking over the hills in the background
and they declared that the dawn, the morning
star, the faint light, held the promise of a full,
bright day to be.
This steady faith in God, in even fuller
degree, characterized the Apostle Paul. No
heaped up total of evils ever swerved him
from his belief in ultimate victory. The big
otry of the Jews, the fickleness of the Gala-
tians, the idolatry of Athens, the corruption
and immorality of Corinth, the brutality and
sin of Rome, the hardships of his own life,
never for a moment clouded for him the heav
enly vision. Hear him say, "All things work
(136)

A FAITH THAT HONORS GOD 137
together for good to them that love God." "If
God be for us, who can be against us?" "The
whole creation is groaning and travailing,
waiting for the manifestation of the sons of
God." And the author of the Epistle to the
Hebrews shows the same heroic faith. " We
see not yet all things put under His feet, but
we see Jesus." A more modern Christian,
living in a period of turmoil and strife and
when spiritual religion had few voices, showed
his spiritual kinship with God's faithful of
earlier times in these beautiful words of hope :
" I saw an ocean of darkness and death, but I
saw an infinite ocean of life and light flow
over the ocean of darkness and death. And
in this I saw the goodness of God." *
Too many Christians to-day, lack this pro
phetic and apostolic faith. They deliver hope
less Jeremiads over the condition of things.
They are pessimists through and through. They
see only the dark foreground, with no rising
sun lighting up the hills of the background.
They are very sure of heaven, it may be, but
they have no faith that God can do anything
for this poor wreck of a world. They are
afraid that the Bible is going to lose its place
of influenee. They are afraid Christ is going
to lose His divine authority. They fear God
• George Fox's " Journal."

138 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
is going to lose the glory of being Creator.
Those who take this gloomy view need to
go to Horeb and hear " the still, small voice "
again. There is no place for a pessimistic
Christianity. It sounds too much like the
despair of the men on the way to Emmaus :
" We trusted that it had been he which should
have redeemed Israel," but now He is cruci
fied and the hope is gone ! All such dark
outlooks and despairing views grow out of a
faith which really dishonors God. It implies
that God is " asleep, or, peradventure, He
taketh a journey ; " at any rate He is absent
and is not busied in the events of our world.
We need to get back to the earlier, truer faith
in God. Not a sparrow falls, not a lily is
made without His care. Does He, peradven
ture, care less for America than for Israel?
Does He make revelations in one age and let
it all go for naught in a later age ? Does He
give His son to redeem the world and then let
the Redemption become outdated and ineffec
tive ? Impossible ! He is the God of the
living. He is with us to-day. His victories
are sure. He is making saints now. His
kingdom is coming. " He is working all things
up to better," as Clement used to say. All
things work for good under His hand. Christ
has risen, the Spirit is with us.

CHAPTER XXXIX
WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, BUT IS NOT
'TVHE ancient Romans used to say that even
-*- God himself cannot undo what has been
done. How often we see too late that we
might have made our life and our world
entirely different if we had only known, but
now the opportunity has gone ! These too-late
discoveries, our useless hindsights where we
needed foresights, are among the hardest ex
periences of life. If we could only go back
over our steps and make our choice over again,
how different the outcome would be. But in
this world of ours this can never be done.
The decision of a moment determines a whole
lifetime, and no amount of sorrow or wishing
turns the shadow back on the dial. How
stubborn and unyielding the laws of the uni
verse seem, and the change of one little cir
cumstance would make us so happy 1 But just
that " little circumstance " cannot be changed
after it has come to pass, and our lives must
flow in different channels accordingly. (139)

140 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
A very slight " water-shed " determines
sometimes the course of the rivers of a conti
nent ; a child's foot on a tender sappling has
caused the twist which mars the oak of a
hundred years' growth ; and that one deed
which we cannot undo has made the curve in
the direction of our human life. The lost
opportunity comes not back to us, the spilled
milk on the ground flows not back into our
pail, the missed train does not come back to
take us on. Well, is this a blind, hard fate,
or is it the will of a loving Father ? The
ancients called it Fate. We see in it a sure
token of love. How could we learn the lessons
of life, how could we become men and women
of character, if our deeds brought no sure con
sequences, and if the past could be undone at
a wish ? Is that mother kind and loving who
changes her will to suit every wish of her
child ? No, the kindest mother teaches her
child the meaning of consequences, and she
trains the child to make good choices by show
ing the inexorable result of bad choices. So
God deals with us. His main purpose in his
" dealings " is to make men of good will. He
does not want fickle, unstable men with wills
as variable as the wind. But if life had no
stubborn and unyielding laws, if we could at
will retrace our steps and gather up our lost

WHA T MIGHT HA VE BEEN, B UT IS NO T 141
opportunities and try over again as soon as we
began to feel any uncomfortable consequences
we should never attain the measure of man
hood. The product would be a jelly-fish type
of man with no stamina. The child must
learn that fire will burn, the traveler must
find out that trains do not wait for his con
venience, and we must all gain the experience
that life is made beautiful and successful not
by late hindsights, but by wise foresights.
Even in these hard and trying " conse
quences " of life God is thinking only of our
good, and in our sad and bitter " might have
beens" He teaches us how to achieve the
"may bes" of the future.

CHAPTER XL
THE PEACE OF GOD
t i^HpHE Peace of God " is used in two senses
¦*- — as the Peace which pervades the
Divine nature and the Peace which He gives.
We sometimes wonder, with our narrow vision,
how a Being who sees all the wrongs, all the
sins, all the blunders, all the struggles and
failures of the world, can have Peace. If our
human eyes could run to and fro through all
the earth and see all its miseries, would it not
distract us and drive all Peace from our mind ?
But the infinite Mind sees the goal of all
things, knows that it is all working together
for good, foresees the ripe fruit where we see
only bud, and to His ear the myriad sounds of
the universe make a perfect harmony where
we, in our narrow range, hear jarrings and dis
cords. He who saw more deeply into life than
any other soul who has ever walked the earth,
who felt the harsh and tuneless jangle of lives
out of harmony with God, and who knew the
glory of life attuned to the Divine Will, talked
(142)

THE PEACE OF GOD 143
much of His Peace. His great desire for His
followers was that they might have His Peace,
and He promised to " give " His Peace to
them. Now here is one of the miracles of
Christianity that a human heart in the midst
of afflictions and trials and misunderstandings
may have the " Peace of God." But it can
come only with surrender. When a human
will runs at an angle with the Divine Will
and refuses to go parallel with that will, when
it refuses to accept the terms and conditions of
God, Peace is impossible. Most of us are like
the little child who resists and fails to see the
father's good purpose, who storms and cries
and kicks instead of accepting the father's will
and trusting his goodness. As soon as the
child learns and says : " I will, dear father,"
a peace comes which was impossible while it
maintained its own will against the father's.
Beyond all understanding is the Peace which
comes when a soul learns the Father's good
purpose and accepts it joyfully, without resist
ance or reserve. The surface-life, like the
surface of the ocean, is heaving and restless,
it is at the mercy of every breeze and every
storm-cloud. There are hours of sunshine,
moments of joy, yet no true Peace. But enter
deeper into the life of God, as the diver does
into the ocean, and there is Peace. It is the

144 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
Peace of God. It is not a life of dead calm,
of sluggish inaction. There are onward mov
ing currents, but the storms and turmoil of
the surface are felt no more. At the heart of
things there is Peace. Peace is declared !
There is no hostility on the Divine side, and
yet we do not accept the terms uncondition
ally, we do not have the Peace of God. The
jangle of our lives grates upon us and jars
upon the ears of our neighbors. The harmony
will not come. Over our restless, ruffled lives
the Master of the Galilean lake says: "Peace,
My Peace I give unto you."

CHAPTER XLI
IS TRUE RELIGION EMOTIONAL?
r I \HERE is no part of man so little under-
-*- stood as what we generally call his
"emotional nature." Why, under certain cir
cumstances, should the lip quiver and the
tears flow, and under other circumstances the
heart beat high, the eyes flash, the cheeks
color? Nobody, in the midst of an emotion,
ever stops to investigate his feeling, but even
if he did he would find that it was indescrib
able. The most noticeable thing about it is
the plain fact that the body is moved, generally
the heart is affected, and almost always the
face reveals the mental state.
Now, is religion intellectual, or is it emo
tional ? Does it consist in believing certain
truths and understanding and accepting cer
tain facts, or is it rather an intense feeling of
love and adoration, a heart moved with a
sense of God's grace and mercy, which ex
presses itself in the face, a rapturous emotion
which swells through the whole being ? Some
persons take one view and some the other.
10 (145)

146 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
There are Christians whose religion is a calm,
cold and bloodless belief, which moves them
no more than their belief that Columbus dis
covered America. They are shocked at every
sign of emotion. They are able to set forth
logically the whole plan of salvation and to
distinguish clearly between what is orthodox
and what is unsound, but they would stand
unmoved before the holy of holies and the
wings of the cherubim. There are, on the
other hand, Christians who would not call this
religion at all. For them religion begins and
ends in emotion. They do not want " intel
lectual preaching ; " they want heart preach
ing. They like meeting where the tide rises
high, and they estimate the spiritual worth of
a meeting by the amount of enthusiasm and
intensity manifested. Frequently they tremble
with feeling, and it is hard not to shout or in
some way give vent to the overflowings of the
heart. This type of Christian reaches the
climax, as everybody knows, in the negro
revival, but he is found in some degree in
almost every church. It seems to us that there
is very little choice between these two extreme
views, for they seem to us both wrong.
True religion is neither coldly intellectual
or purely emotional. It consists of correct
belief, an apprehension of God's truth, and an

IS TRUE RELIGION EMOTIONAL? 147
intense love and devotion, a profound appreci
ation of His forgiveness and unbounded love.
Leave out either element and the religion is
warped and one-sided. There must be a
heavenly vision, a revelation in the knowledge
of Him, a fixed idea which runs through the
life and steadies it, but with this there must
be also a heart full to overflowing which throbs
out its " Praise God." A religion with this
heart side, this love part left out, is like a
brookless desert. It would be much like a
family in which each member shows intelligent
respect for the others, but no warm, beating
love. Yes, religion must have genuine emotion.
But there is no part of our nature so hard to
control and keep balanced as the emotions.
Children have no control over their emotion,
and a good part of the education of life lies in
the direction and control of emotion and pas
sion. The earlier love is demonstrative and
passionate ; the later, deeper love is calm and
mighty. A religion that runs into excessive
emotion often gets but slight hold of the inner
being, of the man, and it not seldom fails to
keep him firm in the hour of test. It evapor
ates after the emotional excitement is over.
But the man of spiritual power is one who
clearly sees the truth and is established in it,

148 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
and at the same time feels that calm and
mighty throb of love, which grows out of per
sonal experience of God's unspeakable gift,
and who directs this vision of truth and this
emotion of love and joy to the making of a
noble, beautiful and holy life.

CHAPTER XLII
THE DOWNWARD PRESSURE
' I \HERE is a pressure of fifteen pounds
weight on every square inch of our
bodies, caused by the weight of the column of
air which reaches from us perhaps fifty miles
up into space. Every one of us carries day
after day this enormous load of air. Multiply
the number of square inches on the surface of
the body by fifteen, and you have the number
of pounds. It gives a novel sensation when
we stop to think that we are bearing on our
head and shoulders a tower of air taller than
the highest mountain, rising into a cold and
lonely region which no living thing has ever
penetrated. And yet we never feel this pres
sure, and it does not weigh us down or hinder
our work, because there is an upward pressure
equal to the downward, a pressure from within
equal to that from without. In other words
the pressures are perfectly balanced so that we
are buoyed up as much as we are weighed
down. (149)

ISO PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
There is something beautiful in this balance
of pressure, and it is this which really makes
life possible. Some of us have discovered that
this balance of pressures is not confined to the
material world ; there is something very much
like it in spiritual experience. Nobody gets
very far on in life without feeling a tremen
dous pressure from without, — the burdens, and
cares, — the world's great load which settles on
us, and almost threatens to crush the life down.
It does break the spirit of many a poor fellow,
and he goes to wreck under it.
The only way to find relief is to over-bal
ance this weight by a contrary pressure which
buoys up the life, and enables one to go steadily
on without being crushed by the weary weight.
This overcoming force, this buoying power is
indispensable for all true living. It does not
take away the loads or the burdens or the
trials, but it enables a " heavy laden " soul to
find rest in the midst of struggle, for the buoy
ing power overcomes the weight. Emerson's
advice has long been a proverb : " Hitch your
wagon to a star." That is good advice for those
rare souls who hardly live on the earth any-,
way, and who are not freighted and weighted
with such a load of real difficulties that the
stars seem too far away to be harnessed to with
success. But most of us want to feel that a

THE DO WNWARD PRESSURE 151
tender, loving Person is close within our reach,
that He shares our load, and gives us an easy
yoke, that a union with Him brings with it
the overcoming force which more than bal
ances the pressure. Every living thing that
grows rises upward in spite of the force of
gravitation, and overcomes its " law." The
law of life has dominion over this law of
weight, and the tiny hare-bell pushes up to
ward the sun by the force of the life within
itself. So also the law of the spirit of life in
Christ Jesus makes a soul free from all down
ward pressures, and enables him to carry his
loads as easily as he bears the high column of
air. If one goes up even two thousand feet on a
mountain, the downward pressure is less, and
the air grows much rarer. Breathing is quick
ened, the pulse beats faster, the cheeks grow
redder, and the bodily temperature becomes
higher. Life in high altitudes has a vigor
which is strange to the lower levels. It is
possible, too, to live a spiritual life on a high
level, to overcome the stagnation and low
pulse and half-vigor, and to rise, like God's
sky-lark, into an ampler air, until that tri
umphant note breaks out of the full heart,
"Thanks be unto God who giveth us the vic
tory through our Lord Jesus Christ ! "

CHAPTER XLIII
DOES GOD REALLY LOVE US?
'TpHE main message of the Gospel is the
¦*- Love of God to men. The proclamation
of this Love has always characterized genuine
Christianity in every age and in every country.
Nobody who rests his faith on the New Testa
ment revelation can doubt the fact of God's
Love. But there come times in the personal
experience of many when this early faith in
God's Love and Goodness is severely tried,
when they find themselves clinging in the
dark to a single spar, while the billows of
doubt break over them. Such times perhaps
never come in prosperity. It seems very easy
to believe in God's Love when He is giving us
just what we want, when all our prayers are
answered as soon as we ask.
But when the heavens are as brass and the
earth bars of iron, when some hard trial settles
over us and we pray and plead for relief and
none comes, when the plowshare resistly tears
down to our primitive rock and our cries and
groans prove ineffectual, then it is that the
(152)

DOES GOD REALLY LOVE US? 153
sensitive heart finds it hard to go on with the
happy faith in God's Love. " If He loves me,
why does He not help me ? If He cares for
me why does He not ease me of this too heavy
burden ? " Such words sometimes almost force
themselves to the lips, when " He answers not
a word." Those who have had no taste of
this hard experience can hardly understand
the feeling, and they very naturally take the
position which Job's "comforters" did, but
many a heart knows what it means to stretch
lame hands of faith.
Is there any way to help such perplexed souls
who are struggling to keep their faith in the
furnace of trial, when no rift seems to open in
the brazen sky? The first step must be to
show that God's Love is not to be measured
by the amount of temporal prosperity and
comfort which He bestows, nor would it be an
evidence of His Goodness if He always gave
just what we want. Such treatment would
make " spoiled children," not saints ! We must
strive, too, to help our perplexed friends see
the supreme importance of the spiritual over
the temporal. While in our short-sightedness
we clutch after things which would give us
temporary joy and comfort, God is training us
to look only at the things which are unseen
and eternal. His method of training often

154 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
seems like a hard one, but no other method
would succeed in weaning us from the things
of sense and in preparing us for the enjoyment
of spiritual things. Finally we must help our
perplexed friends to interpret their lives in the
light of Christ's life. His life is the supreme
revelation of God's Love and yet His Father
never once relieved Him of a hard cup or of a
baptism of trial. " If it is possible let this
cup pass" is immediately followed by the
words, "Thy will be done." The cry, "My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? "
gives place at once to the calm and trustful
words, " Father, into thy hands I commend
my spirit." The whole mystery seems solved
in that remarkable sentence, " It became Him
in bringing many sons to glory to make the
Captain of their salvation perfect through
suffering." If we suppose God has no ultimate
purposes in view for us, then of course the
hard dispensations would indicate that He did
not love us or care for us, but as soon as we
look beyond the moment and see His purpose,
we can join the chorus : " All things work to
gether for good to them that love God I "

CHAPTER XLIV
THE INCARNATION
The time draws near the birth of Christ.'
"IV /TEN in all ages have longed for a revela-
-1V-L TI0Nj for ^ has proved a baffling and
hopeless struggle to climb up to God, and to
find out God by human searching. Plato
spoke for all the ancient searchers after truth
when he said, " We shall never find the com
plete truth until God or some God-sent person
comes to us." The glory of Christianity is its
message that God has come to us. This is the
central fact which gives Christianity its over
coming power, and it is this fact of the Incar
nation which opens for man the door to life,
truth, salvation and spiritual victory.
The moment we make the Incarnation a
metaphysical puzzle, the moment we drift out
into a sea of speculation about the Trinity,
we lose the mighty significance of the fact.
The New Testament nowhere treats it as a
puzzle or a problem. It simply announces the
crowning fact that God tabernacled with men,
and manifested His Grace and Glory, and it
(iSS)

156 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
sets forth the end and purpose of this Divine
showing — that we also may become sons.
God comes to us that we may come to Him.
The Word was with God ; the Word was with
man, and man with God completes the circle.
" I am come, that they might have life," sums
up the whole purpose of the Incarnation.
It can never be reduced to a cold and logical
doctrine ; it must never be pressed as a dead
flower and put away in a collection of abstract
theological definitions. Let us keep it warm
and vital, the perfect blossom whose fragrance
still comes as fresh and full of healing as when
it broke into flower under the " Syrian blue."
"God with us" is the first half of the great
message; "we with God" is the second half,
and no one fully comprehends the first half
until he experiences the second half as a fact
in his own life. He who comes to live his life
in God no longer wonders and puzzles over the
problem, How could God come to us ? He
realizes that perfected humanity and Divinity
are not alien terms. The Divine nature can
express itself in a perfect human life. God
does not cease to be omnipresent and omnis
cient, though He at a definite period shows
forth His glory and love in a Person who
walks among men and teaches with human
lips, who loves and suffers, who blesses and

THE INCARNATION 157
heals, who forever makes love and sacrifice
and sympathy, and grace and gentleness the
supreme realities.
In no other way could God speak to us, and
make His revelation comprehensible. If He
wrote His thoughts on the vault of the sky
we could not understand or interpret them.
We must have some one, to reveal Him fully,
who understands Him and us, and who speaks
in terms common to both, one who completely
closes the gap, one who brings God to us and
us to God. " He became flesh and dwelt
among us." " As many as received Him, to
them gave He power to become the sons of
God." These two sentences complete the cir
cuit. The Incarnation is a twofold revelation, —
a revelation of God and a revelation of human
nature, a manifestation of what God is, and a
revelation of what man is to be when he comes
to God. We know well enough of ourselves
what we are, away from Him ; the Incarnation
reveals what is the hope of our calling, and
what the riches of the glory of God's inheri
tance in us !

CHAPTER XLV
A RELIGION OF FOUR ANCHORS
TN the midst of the racking storm on the
¦*~ Adrian waters, in the darkness of the
night, the captain of Paul's vessel cast out
four anchors, and waited for the day. It may
be only a fanciful symbol, but Paul's words on
the ship indicate that he, too, had put out four
anchors, which steadied him, and gave him
his spiritual solidity amid the storms of his
life. "I believe God;" "His I am;" "Him
I serve ; " " God hath given me those who sail
with me." This is what we have called a
religion of four anchors, and the person who
has those four cables out can calmly wait for
the day to break.
All religious life and power of high quality
spring from a faith which believes God. The
old-time strength — the quality in Peter which
makes Christ call him the rock-man — comes
not from a verbal faith, from a belief in second
hand testimony of any sort, or from "flesh
and blood," but from a personal acquaintance
with God, and an experimental certainty of
(158)

A RELIGION OF FOUR ANCHORS 159
Him. The persons who are really anchored
are the ones who reach up through all the
lower stages of belief and reliance, and rest
unshaken in a faith which goes behind the
vail — " I believe God." That is the first step
in the making of a spiritual " rock-man."
The second anchor is hardly less important,
and that is, the sense of possession — "His I
am." Our Quaker poet was expressing this
sense when he said :
" I know not where God's islands lift
Their fronded palms in air,
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care."
What a life a man might live if he could
walk the earth possessed of the unfailing con
viction, " I am God's !" It is not simply that
he cares for me, nor even alone that He loves
me, but " I belong to Him " — that sense of
relationship ought to make a Christian as
different from ordinary men as a Prince is
different from a peasant, for it puts him at
once into the rank of nobility, and makes it
incumbent upon him to live as a son, not as a
hired servant. This consciousness of the
divine possession is surely the second step in
the making of a spiritual "rock-man."
Then out of our belief of God, and our
sense of belonging to Him comes the beautiful

i6o PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
certainty that He trusts ms and gives us His
work to do — " whom I serve." Many persons
never get grounded in religious experience
because they never attain to this certainty that
God trusts them and makes them co-workers
with Him. Hardly anything strengthens one's
life, and solidifies one's faith like active ser
vice of some sort. "Backsliders" are gener
ally those who never got to the point of being
girded for service, and so never realized how
necessary they were to God. It is very signifi
cant that after Christ told Peter that he was
rock-like, he added also, " I will give unto
thee the keys," for the keys in Oriental coun
tries, were the the badge of a trusted servant.
Our fourth cable of spiritual strength is the
realization that our personal faith is not con
fined in its effects to the narrow circle of our
own lives, but that it has a wonderful influence
over the destinies of others — " God has given
thee those who sail with thee." No man of
faith can live unto himself. The mother's
faith affects the destiny of her child ; the saint
in the neighborhood "affects" the neighbors
as though holiness were contagious. Much of
the power of singularly spiritual men and
women comes from their realization that the
destiny of other lives is in some measure upon
them. This sends the missionary and the

A RELIGION OF FOUR ANCHORS 161
slum- worker to their task ; this kindles the zeal
of the reformer and the prophet, and this is no
slight element of strength in the religious life
of every profoundly spiritual man. I believe
God, I am God's, God trusts and uses me, and
I am responsible for others, — these are four
anchors, and they are four strands of faith
which make solid spiritual character.
11

CHAPTER XLVI
PRACTICAL HOLINESS
/"A OD never does things by halves. His pur-
*•-*" pose is to carry all His work to comple
tion. This is true in the natural world, and
it is no less true in the spiritual world. God
did not undertake the redemption of man to
leave him after all a sin-loving, fluctuating,
irritable Christian. He meant him to become
a sin-hating, immovable, sweet-natured, posi
tive, spirit-filled man, ready for Life with all
its demands and perplexities.
It is too much the custom of easy-going
Christians to postpone to the world beyond
the triumph over sin, and the overcoming
Life. It is no glory to anybody to be an over-
comer, when there is nothing to be overcome.
This is the proper sphere for the victory to be
won. Right here in the face of the enemy,
with all the forces arrayed for a real Armaged
don contest, is the opportunity for the strenu
ous effort to put down sin and to win the
victory. (162)

PRACTICAL HOLINESS 163
But, as we are so often told, no spiritual
victory can be won except through spiritual
forces. The more a man glories in his own
strength the weaker he is, for alone he is only
an atom against powers that attack him at
every point, but when he becomes one with
Christ through the Spirit he has all the forces
of the universe with him. Hold a straw par
allel to the current, and the waters of the
Gulf Stream will flow through it ; hold it
across the current, and it is broken to pieces.
The first step toward spiritual victory is union
and parallelism with the Divine Currents.
Holiness is, then, something real. It is the
triumphant Life. It is not a theory or a
scheme or a creed. When we find such a Life
we go to work to explain how such a life is
possible, and we have our theory of it, but the
holy Life itself is the real thing, and it is the
only thing that can convince the world of the
truth of the theory.
Holiness which is not real and practical, is
not holiness, any more than sickness is health.
What does practical holiness mean? It
means that the man is saved from sin; that
his life is centred and controlled; that he has
the power of the Spirit, and that it makes his
daily life victorious. He is not necessarily
ecstatic; he may be the calmest man in the

164 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
town, but he knows the secret of life, and he
makes his life correspond with his message.
He ceases to slander or even criticize his
neighbors ; his only business is to show them
the Christ-centered life. He has learned not
to call down fire from heaven upon those who
do not agree with him, for it does not concern
him whether others agree with him or not.
That is not his affair, but he is bound to prove
that he is in full agreement with the will of
God, and that he has the Christ spirit. By
that he is tested. He is a good neighbor; he
is a good family man; he is a good man to
work with in the Church ; he seeketh not his
own ; is not puffed up ; doth not behave him
self unseemly. All who know him say, Would
to God there were ten thousand such. But
some will say, Does anybody live such a life ;
is not all this imagination? Yes, such lives
are lived, and such a life is possible for every
one. God never does anything by halves.
No man can live such a life alone, but God can
bring any man into such a life, and it is for
this that He redeems us.

CHAPTER XLVII
APPLIED CHRISTIANITY AND WHAT IT SEEKS
TT never does for any church to content itself
¦*- with setting forth the theory of Christi
anity. That would be very much like saying
to the hungry man, " Be warmed and filled,"
without opening the cupboard or storehouse.
The great function of the church is to illustrate
applied Christianity.
No one would think of studying the theory
of electricity, or physics, or mathematics, with
out going on to a further practical study of
applied electricity, or physics, or mathematics.
It is for the sake of the latter that we study
the former.
Who would have confidence in the doctor
who should devote his whole time to dissect
ing dead bodies and to the critical study of
the structure and parts of the body ? We go
to the man who has learned by successful ex
perience how to restore health and defeat
disease. The church holds a position of power in the
world only in proportion as it applies the
(I6S)

166 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
Christianity it teaches in theory, and if it does
not succeed in the practical service, something
is wrong with its theory.
As advocates and exponents of primitive
Christianity revived, it especially becomes us
to be sensitive to the needs of those who are
" out of Christ," to use that forcible expression
of the early church. We cannot possibly
remain unconcerned about those who are in
this conditio'n, without forfeiting our claim to
be members of the body of Christ, for He
knew nothing about a religion which did not
save men. This purpose is the alpha and omega
of His mission.
But the church has suffered loss in every
age because of a too superficial conception of
salvation. Whole races of barbarians were
taken into the church in bulk, and bore the
name of Christ while they practiced their old
life and hugged their ancestral customs.
They, of necessity, lowered the standard of
the church, and it soon became the accepted
teaching that membership in the church in
sured salvation, which meant an escape from
hell and an ultimate entrance into heaven.
Everybody knows now how this conception
fostered immorality and made the church a
whited sepulchre, full of corruption.

APPLIED CHRISTIANITY ify
Some of the revival work of our own day
has erred in the same direction. It has con
sciously or unconsciously given the impression
that a man can become saved without becoming
changed. Any encouragement in that direction
is recruit work for the enemy of souls. A
burning ship is not saved simply by having a
tugboat fasten to it and tow it along over the
swelling sea. It is saved by having the fire
put out, so that it can pursue its course,
whether long or short, to its desired haven.
A man in whom the old fire is burning, who
hugs his idols, and loves the same things he
has always loved, cannot be saved by joining
a church, or by groaning, or by saying he
hopes he has found mercy. There is no limit
to the mercy, and anybody can find it who
really seeks it, but the mercy cannot reach
him effectively until he is ready to cut all the
cables of his old life, and take God as his
choice above everything else. The saved
man is a changed man ; the change begins
within, and works out through him and
penetrates every fibre of his being. We are
not primarily after numbers or after more
church members. We are carrying Christ to
those who are " out of Him," and we must
not rest satisfied with any soul until it finds
Him and He possesses it.

CHAPTER XLVIII
CHRISTIAN HOLINESS
'TpHERE are many Christians who do not
-*- believe in the doctrine of holiness, and
who can hardly conceive of such a state in
this life, though they expect to be perfectly
holy as soon as they enter heaven. They look
with pity or perhaps with disgust upon those
who declare that holiness is intended as a state
of life right here in the midst of sin and
temptation, and they consider that as making
life altogether too serious.
Holiness has never been a popular doctrine,
for it implies the destruction of all the old
idols which fill a very large place in the life
and thought of mankind, and it generally
seems, though most people would not confess
it in plain words, that life would be pretty
empty with only God.
But we cannot find any other teaching in
the New Testament than this, that God expects
men to be holy here in this world. There is
no hint that any other kind of life is possible
for the Christian. With Christ the choice is
(168)

CHRISTIAN HOLINESS 169
always between the undivided life with Him
or a rejection of Him. He knows nothing of
that method, which very many try to make
successful, of carrying the world in one hand
and holding Christ with the other. It is a
perversion of the text, " Let not thy left hand
know what the right hand doeth."
But the real reason that very many people
fail to be influenced by the teaching of holi
ness is that they know nothing of it except as
a doctrine. They do not behold it manifested
in a life, and they demand facts before they
will be convinced. We must accept this test.
No one can expect that his teaching of holi
ness will make much impression if at the same
time he does not illustrate the doctrine in
his life.
In all teaching, experiment makes more
impression than lecturing does, for truth is
caught by the eye more easily than by the ear.
People are not hungry for theology in our
day, and they pay very little attention to cold
and logical doctrine. They, however, are
ready to be convinced by positive facts, and
there never was a time in the world when
more people would believe in experimental
holiness than now.
The person who under all circumstances and
all testing gives the true ring and shows no

170 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
flaw, who is satisfied -with, just God and has no
ulterior purpose, who amid all the currents of
life points straight toward the pole, such a per
son quietly knocks the props from under skepti
cism, for no one can doubt what he really sees.
It is wonderfully easy to hold a doctrine
after you have once made up your mind to it,
but to prove your faith by living out the doc
trine in your life is the hard thing. Most
people prefer to postpone holiness for heaven,
where it will be easy. But it is a fatal mistake
to make. It is just as unwise as for a student
to postpone his study until examination time.
This life is admirably fitted to train the spir
itual athlete and test him at every point. A
cloud of witnesses surround us as we bend
forward toward the goal, but there is no vic
tory for him who will not lay aside all weights
and cast from him the sins which are like
close-fitting garments to beset him.
Holiness is not a theory any more than
health is, — it is a condition of life. A person
is holy only when he fulfills the conditions
and enters into the life, and then there will be
no chance for deception, for the fruits of holi
ness are as distinct and real as the fruit of
vine or tree.
If we want to be powerful teachers of the
doctrine of holiness we must simply be holy ;

CHRISTIAN HOLINESS 171
there is no other way to teach it. And we
must be careful not to deceive anybody into
thinking he is holy when he is not, for it is
infinitely worse than making a man think he
is well when he is sick.

CHAPTER XLIX
THE FOUNDING OF THE CHURCH
'HpHE Gospels do not set forth simply God's
-*- purpose for the individual life ; in fact
it is one of the deepest truths of life that no
man can live unto himself.
The first confession of personal faith — made
by Peter near Csesarea Philippi, to the fact
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God — was
the occasion for the announcement of a pur
pose reaching beyond the individual — namely,
the building of a church — a permanent
Christian structure in the world.
This famous passage in Matt. 16 : 18-19, is
the text which has formed the basis for the
papal system, and it is inscribed in gigantic
letters on the dome of St. Peter's Cathedral, in
Rome, as the absolute authority for an infalli
ble earthly vice-gerent of Christ. Strangely
enough, this text which unfolds the Saviour's
conception of a Christian fellowship of indi
vidual responsibility and freedom has been
made a proof text for the worst religious
tyranny in history. It is really a magna
(172)

THE FOUNDING OF THE CHURCH 173
charta of spiritual liberty, it has been made a
warrant for the establishment of an unlimited
despotism, which leaves no soul free access to
God. Let us consider the meaning of the passage
which more than any other reveals Christ's
thought concerning the church fellowship
which He purposed to found, to continue the
work which He personally began.
He was on His way to Jerusalem for the last
time. His words in Galilee had convinced the
people that He had not come to fulfil their
Messianic hope. He had told them that His
kingdom was a spiritual one, and not a glori
fied revival of the Israelitish monarchy. His
followers began to drop off, and it became only
too evident that the people were not ready for
His messages of eternal life
The disciples tell Him in answer to His
question that the general impression is that
He is a prophet — Elias, Jeremiah — but no one
ranks Him higher than these great figures of
Jewish history. "But whom say ye that I
am?" "Thou are the Christ, the son of th'e
living God," answers Peter. It is the first
spontaneous confession of faith that He is the
Divine One and, as Jesus said, it was no super
ficial statement, but a conviction revealed in
the heart by the Spirit, a revelation from the

174 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
Father and not a conjecture of the brain — ¦
"Flesh and blood hath not revealed this to
thee." Then follows the answer: "Thou art Peter
and on this rock I will build my church, and
the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom
of heaven. Whatsoever thou shall bind on
earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatso
ever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed
in heaven." It means that as this man's per
sonal faith in Christ as the son of God has
wrought in him a transformation of heart and
life, and made good that early promise that he
should one day be Peter — a rock — so on this
very rock-nature which is Christ-formed, the
visible church is to be builded. In the midst
of a disbelieving world there is at least one
man who can be a nucleus for the Christian
fellowship ; for coming unto the living stone,
He Himself has been made a lively stone, and
of such the church is to be built. This first
living believer is to become a center of spirit
ual power to call into existence a whole com
munity of believers in Christ ; not as the
offical bishop of Rome, but as the recipient of
Pentecostal fire and spiritual power.
The church is, then, to be a community of
brothers who have individually, by a similar

THE FOUNDING OF THE CHURCH 175
faith and confession, seen Christ as the Son
of God — in whom, as in Peter, the vital trans
formation shows the rock character forming —
men and women who are living stones through
union with the Rock of Ages.
The sole qualification for authority is the
evidence of special spiritual power, and that is
what the bestowal of the keys means. It is
decidedly not an authority of official position,
but an authority which rests wholly upon per
sonal faith and deep spiritual character. To
Peter, and to every man who has by a like
faith gained a similar spiritual insight, Christ
confers power in the kingdom — authority in
the direction of the propagation of the truths
of the Gospel.
Whatever such a community of spiritually-
enlightened believers, gathered in the name of
Christ, and agreeing together in an agreement
born of the mind and spirit of Christ shall
ask, it shall be given ; for under such condi
tions they could ask for nothing which was
not heaven -prompted ; and furthermore, what
soever under those conditions they shall " bind
or loose," shall be bound and loosed in heaven.
"Binding and loosing" are expressions
which the rabbis of the time constantly used
in the sense of declaring something forbidden
or permitted. The idea conveyed in the famous

176 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
passage is that those who compose the com
munity of believers, the citizens of the king
dom, acting in the name of Christ and in His
power, are authorized to determine what is
consistent and what is inconsistent with fellow
ship in the church — what is to be permitted
and what is to be forbidden. It gives no occa
sion for lordship and tyranny, but it makes
the clarified, illumined souls who have unhin
dered access to God through Christ by the one
Spirit, the bearers of the keys — the centers of
authority. Acting on this authority, the apostolic
church " loosed " circumcision, but " bound "
fidelity to the marriage vow. They " loosed "
the Jewish Sabbath, but " bound " the fitting
observance of the Lord's day. They "loosed"
Mosaic sacrifices, but " bound " the necessity
of a living faith in Him who is a High Priest
forever after the order of Melchisedec.
This conception of the church — and it cer
tainly is Christ's conception of it — would
make it impossible for the church ever to be
fossilized or its truth crytalized. Christ con
ceives the church as a vital organism, and as
such it must be progressive — i. e., it must suc
cessively adapt itself to the changed conditions
of society, and make its message drawing and
vitalizing as new situations confront it. Its

THE FOUNDING OF THE CHURCH 177
message of redemption from sin and of new
life in Christ, is an eternal message, for the
need of this is, and will remain, a continuous
need ; but for all practical matters and for all
its methods and practices, the body itself,
under the immediate guidance of the Head
of the church, is commissioned with authority
— an authority, however, which comes not
through an unbroken line of historic bishops,
but which comes from the fact that the indi
viduals composing the structure are living
stones set upon the living Foundation. This
idea of organic union with Christ is again and
again taught in the New Testament, and it is
put as a necessary condition for bearing fruit.
Christians cannot perform their functions if
they try to live an exclusive life. Union with
Christ brings all Christians into a oneness of
organism like that of the branches of a vine.
The promise that Christ's followers should do
even greater works than He did, is followed
by the significant words : " In that day shall
ye know that I am in my Father and ye in
me and I in you." That is a union and in
corporation which would make a powerful
church. Why do not we have it at once?
Because the bulk of Christians have, strangely
enough, made little of this idea of corporate
union with Christ and with one another, and
12

178 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
have instead divided their forces by petty dif
ferences of opinion on things that have no
vital effect upon the condition of the soul,
such as whether one can preach authoritatively
without a surplice, whether water should be
put on the man or the man put in the water,
whether the external communion should be a
common meal or an individual partaking of
bread and wine. No wonder that Paul, who
knew — if any man ever did — the meaning of
this vital union with Christ, cried out : " The
kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but
righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy
Ghost ; " and again, " Neither circumcision
nor uncircumcision availeth anything but a
new creation." This is a key-note of New
Testament Christianity — a new creation, a new
creation for each soul, and a new creation for
society. In other words, it is the fulfilment
of the Divine purpose, "Let us make man in
our own image."

CHAPTER L
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM
/CHRISTIANITY is not a new philosophy.
^-' It is a " way of life," and this expression
was the common name for the new religion
among its early adherents — " Those of the
Way." Again it is called, " The power of
God unto salvation ; " that is, it is a revelation
of God's power at work in the world to save
men and to fit them for higher ends. It is
the evangel of the kingdom, as it always
appears in the parables of Christ. It is, in
the simplest statement, God's plan to recon
struct man and society, and it is this sense, it
seems to us, that Christ uses the great expres
sion, " Kingdom of Heaven," " Kingdom of
God," " the Kingdom," " My Kingdom." It
is the perfect, original order of things which has
its home in heaven, coming down from hence
and realizing itself on the earth ; it is the ideal
condition of humanity, existing first only in
God's thought, and then wrought out by Him
as an existing fact ; it is the realized sway of
God as the beginning and end of all things. (179)

180 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
The expression was a common one to the
Jews of the period, and John the Baptist's cry,
"the kingdom of heaven is at hand," meant
to those who heard it the setting up of the
temporal messianic kingdom under a king
who should break all foreign yokes and make
Israel in very truth the people of God. They
conceived a kingdom which should perfect the
law and ceremonies, which should make the
Temple, the holy of holies, the central spot of
the globe. Their fundamental idea was the
establishment of an Israelitish theocracy,
which should extend itself politically over all
the nations, as Rome had extended its sway.
Christ, however, never ceased to declare and
demonstrate that he had not come to break
the Roman yoke or establish a Jewish suprem
acy. Little by little it dawned upon the dis
ciples that this kingdom of which they so
often heard from their Master's lips was totally
unlike the " perishable husk " for which the
people yearned. It was not a thing of " lo
here or lo there ; " it was not the establish
ment of a new external kingship, or the set
ting up of a more perfect Temple service and
a purified ritual, but the proclamation of a
new life to be entered by a birth from above —
a fact which the great Jewish lawyer, Nico
demus, could not possibly comprehend. It

THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM 181
comes whenever a soul yields to the wooing of
God, and lets His light break in. It estab
lishes itself not in a temple or a capital city,
but in a heart that yields to the sway of the
King. The kingdom itself is perfect as it
exists in the thought of God, and if it could
have been realized by a magic act and set up
ready made, Christ's work could have been
finished in a moment, but it was rather God's
plan to realize the kingdom on the earth pro
gressively — to draw men to it by Grace and
Love, and to increase its realm by silent vic
tories over soul after soul, and then to make
each transformed soul a propagator of the new
life and power to other souls. Its conquests
are never by force or compulsion, but by the
diffusion of light, by the manifestation of love,
by awakening hunger for righteousness. You
may know that it is at work in the world
when you see evil defeated and corruption
cleansed away. " Where the carcass is there
are the vultures," said Christ, — i.e., wherever
the old dead and corrupt things appear there
are scavengers to remove it and make the air
wholesome and pure. As God provides ways
of keeping His world clean, so you may see
the kingdom coming when evil is put down
in a life and Christian graces appear ; when
ever a corrupt custom is purged away, when-

182 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
ever a sinner is changed into a saint, whenever
sin is conquered by the power of God the circle
of the kingdom widens, and the truth of
Christ's many parables of illustration is proved
to all who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
The setting up of this kingdom is not the
work of a day or of a year, but the kingdom is
like a man who sowed seed in his field and
slept, and rose night and day and the seed
grew, he knew not how, first the blade, then
the ear, then the full corn in the ear.
But the fundamental conception of the
kingdom of God, as made known in our Gos
pels, is the truth that it is founded on purity
of heart — a heart-purity which is attained
only through apprehension of Christ, the Son
of God, as the revealer of sin, the redeemer
from sin, and through the indwelling and life
of God by the Holy Spirit. It is a kingdom
in which blessedness comes only with holi
ness. Every beatitude attaches to a condition
of the heart, and can be realized in no other
way. No performance of any acts or cere
monials which custom and tradition have
authorized and rendered sacred, can in the
slightest degree affect one's standing before
God. The pure in heart, the meek, the poor
in spirit, the peacemaker, the thirster after
righteousness — all these have a condition of

THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM 183
heart to which a blessing of God immediately
follows, as the rain falls when the air is satu
rated to the deposit point. But the fasting
and praying and giving of alms of the Phari
see on the other hand, as well as his scrupulous
washings and purifications, his avoidance of all
things ceremonially unclean, his spirit of self-
righteousness, and his hard, mean nature are
far beneath the standard of admission to the
kingdom of heaven. " Unless your righteous
ness exceed the righteousness of the scribes
and pharisees ye shall in no wise enter." This
means that the Gospel knows nothing of an
acquired goodness — a goodness of effort a
goodness which is put on from the outside —
which fits for the kingdom. It is a changed
heart, a cleansed life, a transformed nature, a
purified being which is required.

CHAPTER LI
THE TEST OF CHRISTIANITY
TTTE have learned that it is never safe to
v " estimate the worth and value of a man
by the number of cubits which measure his
stature. No foot-rule test gives the real
capacity of a man, because personality cannot
be measured by the yard.
Nevertheless the similar mistake is continu
ally made of estimating a man's Christianity
by some such inadequate foot-rule test. It
would be well for us, if we could, to get back
to the standards of Christ and the Apostles
and see how they tested religion. The ques
tion never is, What kind of a coat do you
wear ? or what are your " views " on creation
and sin and inspiration ? or what do you think
about the Sacraments? In fact, Christ never
asked a man a theological question during his
whole ministry. "Art thou desiring to be
made whole ? " " Dost thou love God with all
thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself? "Go
and sin no more." " Her sins are forgiven,
for she loved much," are some of the wonder-
(184)

THE TEST OF CHRISTIANITY 185
ful words which came from His lips when He
was dealing with individual cases. When the
Jews tried to catch Him with metaphysical
and theological questions, such as " what sin
caused this man to be blind ? " or " whose wife
will this woman be in the resurrection ? " He
immediately brushed away the fruitless abstrac
tions and gave clear, practical answers : "This
blind man is an occasion for the exhibition of
God's power " — i. e., for working a work of
God, and " If you read the Scriptures aright
you would understand that God is the God of
the living, and that you must not measure the
heavenly life by the limitations of the earthly
life." John's tests of Christianity are quite different
from those which we use to-day. He again
makes no reference to things which we con
sider tests of soundness : " Every one that
loveth is born of God." " We know that we
have passed from death to life because we
love." " We kfiow that we dwell in Him, be
cause we have His Spirit." " Whatsoever is
born of God overcometh the world." " Who
soever is born of God sinneth not." " He that
hath the Son of God hath life."
It can be quickly seen that these are no
light and easy tests, and that a man who
could answer all our articles of belief and

186 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
make a great display of theological orthodoxy,
might at the same time fail in every point of
John's tests. He that loveth, he that has the
Spirit in his heart and life, he that overcometh
the world, he that does not commit sin — what
a sifting !
Now there has been and still is great danger
of making so much of theological tests of
soundness that these deeper, truer and more
spiritual tests — which are the only ones of
importance to Christ and the Apostles — should
be overlooked. There are Christians to-day
who decide upon a man's Christianity by his
intellectual opinions and conclusions, rather
than by the spiritual condition of his heart
and his life, though it is an unscriptural posi
tion to take. The end and aim of religion —
we cannot say it too often — is to bring men to
God and to make them Christlike, and religion
has never done its perfect work in a man until
it fills his life with the Holy Spirit and his
heart with love. Right belief upon questions
which directly affect the spiritual life is tre
mendously important, and faith is the very
hand by which we grasp and appropriate the
divine realities ; but we have no more right to
rule men out of Christ's kingdom on the test
of an intellectual shibboleth than we have to
count devils in, simply because they believe

THE TEST OF CHRISTIANITY 187
and tremble. The time has come when men's
minds must be left free to look at every fact in
God's world, and to come to the best conclu
sions they can upon them, and we must esti
mate their Christianity by New Testament
tests, which are invariably spiritual tests, and
measure the life and faith by Christ's standards.

CHAPTER LII
THE MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM
EVERY great religious movement starts
out of some single fundament religious
principle, but if it is to have extensive and
permanent effect upon human society, it must
ultimately ramify and illumine the whole
realm of thought and the entire range of life
and activity. The significant periods of his
tory are those ages when men have caught a
new and clearer glimpse of God and have set
their lives by new and higher standards.
There is a widely accepted theory that the true
religion is forever fixed and unchangeable.
It is a rigid system of doctrines, mysteriously
communicated, not to be questioned by reason,
to be accepted by faith and to be guarded as
the absolute truth, crystalized into a form
suited to every age and every race of men.
A very slight study of history undermines
that theory. The moment a religion becomes
only a system of thought or a crystalized truth,
its service to the world is over, it can no
longer feed living souls, for it offers only a
(188)

THE MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 189
stone where bread is asked; and furthermore,
such a religion becomes a dangerous hindrance
to the advance of truth and a menace to a free
access of the individual soul to its living God.
On the contrary, religion can never become a
fixed and unchangeable thing, for religion is
the soul's life in God and its response to Him ;
and therefore it must be as free as life, and it
will have its high tides and its low, its ebbs
and its floods, as history shows us has been
the fact.
Religion always begins with a manifestation,
a revelation of God and the soul's answer to it.
Heathen religions sprung from a sense of awe
awakened in the presence of manifestations of
power, in thunder and lightning, in mighty
storms, in sun-rise, in the rush of a great river,
in the sublimity of the dome of the sky. The
Christian religion begins with the revelation
of God's love, in an Incarnation, in a Person
ality. "Think, Abib, dost thou think ?
So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too —
So, through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying, ' O heart I made, a heart beats here !
Face, my hands have fashioned, see it in myself !
Thou hast no power, nor may'st conceive of mine,
But love I gave thee, with myself to love
And thou must love me who have died for thee ! '" *

" An Epistle."— Kobert Browning.

190 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
Christianity begins with the appearance of
a. Being who is genuinely human so that he
can speak to human conditions and genuinely
Divine so that he can reveal God. This
revelation through Personality — the Word
made flesh — shows the Divine thought i. e.
that man was meant to be in the Divine image,
to be a son, and it shows the Divine heart
beating for us in our errors, our struggles, our
sins. The whole gospel is summed up in the
story of the Prodigal who comes to himself
and goes to the Father and finds His love still
warm and His arms still out for the embrace
that welcomes to sonship. Christianity, then,
was meant to be a free river to grace and life
flowing from God through human lives and
making all things new.
It soon crystalized into a church that was
partially paganized by contact with the old
world. It shut out all approach to God ex
cept through its narrow channels. It claimed
that God could speak only through the hier
archy of priests, that grace could come only
through certain fixed sacraments, that truth
could be found only in one book. God became
a distant being, Christ became a mystical
messenger from Him to found an infallible
Church. The Virgin and the saints became
the real intercessors between human hearts and

THE MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 191
the distant God. The glowing truths given
to the world at such tremendous cost and
sacrifice hardened into cold dogmas which had
to be accepted on pain of condemnation for
heresy and those who thought were forced to
agree with the interpretations of the past or to
stop thinking altogether. The world sank in
to decrepitude, a condition still preserved in
Spain. Christianity seemed dying a natural
death. Then came an age of awakening, an
emancipation. A new world was discovered.
Printing was invented and books were made
for rich and poor alike. Copernicus made a
complete revolution of thought by his dis
covery that the sun is the centre of our system
of worlds, and the earth only a planet which
revolves about it. This discovery made modern
science possible. Luther inaugurated another
revolution in thought in his profound spiritual
discovery that "justification is by faith." It
seemed a simple truth, but it broke the power
and dominion of the Latin Church and exalted
at once the importance of the individual.
Each man stands in an individual relation to
God and he is responsible directly for his soul
and for his faith. Protestantism is the gospel
of individuality. Like the discovery of Coper
nicus, it finds a new centre. Before, every
thing revolved about the Church and the

192 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
hierarchy. Henceforth, Christ is the centre
and each man's orbit is determined by his
relation to Christ. But it was impossible for
the Reformers to break entirely with the his
toric Church. They were the creatures of
their age, and their roots had grown deep in
the soil of mediaeval thought. The time had
not then come, perhaps it has not yet fully
come for the realization of the Christian ideal.
But in the middle ofthe 17th century in Eng
land, an honest effort was made to set forth a
constructive principle which should transform
man and society and which, when worked out
in practical life should affect the entire race,
and it contains, I believe, the seeds of apostolic
Christianity transplanted in new soil and after
long centuries of waiting.
The central note of Quakerism, as it was
originally promulgated, is the truth that man's
salvation and higher life are personal matters
between the individual soul and God, that
the living Christ brings the soul into newness
of life in Him, and that there is a clear wit
ness of the fact established in the conscious
ness of the believer and in his changed life
and nature. It is what the Apostle calls "the
demonstration of the spirit."
It is the kind of evidence a man has of light
when he opens his eyes and the sunlight

THE MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 193
streams in. It is the kind of evidence an artist
has of beauty when he stands caught by the
glory of a sunset ; it is the kind of evidence
an experimenter has of the power of electri
city when the current from the dynamo thrills
through him to the ends of his fingers and the
roots of his hair. It is an evidence not from
external authority but from the immediate
perception of the soul. Paul dates his religious
life from an experience which he compares to
a. fiat lux of creation. "God," he says, "shined
into our hearts to give the light of the know
ledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ." In language which means almost
precisely the same thing, George Fox dates his
religious crisis. " When all my hope was
gone so that I had nothing outward to help
me, then 0 ! then, I heard a voice which said
' There is one, even Jesus Christ, that can
speak to thy condition ' and when I heard it
my heart did leap for joy." The whole spirit
ual life springs immediately from God and
that is why there is no danger that religion
will come to an end. So long as God con
tinues to surround our lives and break in
upon sensitive hearts, there will be those who
find in Christ an incarnation of God who is
near us all and who only waits for a window
to open when his light breaks in and makes
13

194 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
life seem clear and real. As Sabatier has said,
men are " incurably religious," and sincere
and earnest souls will continue to find God
and know Him when He reveals Himself to
to them in the face of Jesus Christ. We live
in an age when the worth and meaning of
everything are tested. We do not care how
old a theory is, or how sacred it was in the
middle ages ; we ask at once, is it true ? Does
it meet our need, does it speak to our condi
tion ? Now the message of Quakerism carries
men beyond the props and scaffoldings and
stands them face to face with a living God.
It declares that men were meant for God and
that a man can never be his true self until God
possesses him. That his darkness is made,
like that of the earth, because he lives in his
own shadow. Wheel about and the light fronts
you, and has been shining all the time. You
made your own darkness. Now, no amount of
ceremony or of subscription to theological dog
mas will save a man who still keeps his face
away from God, and still lives in the dark
while he is holding in his lean hands the rags
of his external profession. Life, religion, son-
ship begin with the creation of a new man
within a man, and there is no substitute for this.
The Christian religion is not a theory, not a
plan, not a scheme, but a dynamic force, i.e. the

THE MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 19S
power of God unto salvation, and every soul
who comes to himself and goes to the Father
has a more immediate consciousness of God as
a reality than the most philosophical man has
of the reality of the earth on which his feet
stand, for the earth must always be a foreign
object of inference, while the Quaker message
tells of a Christ who becomes a part of our
very life and "is closer to us than breathing,
nearer than hands and feet." There, then, the
Quaker message comes with sure help to our
agnostic age, to men who have seen the old
land marks vanish one by one. It begins by
saying, put Christianity to a practical test.
Try it as you try the great laws of science.
How do you know that the law of gravitation
is true ? You feel it tug upon you. You see
every particle of matter in the visible universe
obey it. It swings satellites and planets before
your eyes. It draws the whole ocean and
dashes it up the beach twice each day. You
cannot doubt it. How do you know there is
any spiritual power, any Divine truth, any
God of love, any Christ who can redeem from
sin? There is only one sure test. Try it.
Throw yourself on God as you plant your foot
on the rock. Act as though God walked by
your side every minute. Turn your face to
Christ, follow Him, obey every gleam of light

19G PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
you get. Set yourself stubbornly against every
shadow of a sin that crosses your track and re
solve that if there is a God in the universe,
you will find Him, know Him, \ove Him.
The result is — the testimony is universal — the
soul that does that always finds God, always
does get led into the truth, always does become
renewed and transformed. Quakerism builds
upon this demonstration of the Spirit, and in
so doing, it is in harmony with all the great
leaders of modern philosophy, notably, Des-
Cartes, Kant, Fichte and Hegel, all of whom
build their systems on the immediate testimony
of self-consciousness. No discovery of science,
no conclusion of criticism, no possible ad
vances of thought, no separations by time from
Divine transactions on which the historic
Church is builded, can for a moment endan
ger this immediate and dynamic faith. In
place of external sacraments, which at best
could never be more than outward symbols
of some reality, and which could only have
had a use in the transition period when the
Church was hampered by its Jewish swaddling
clothes, the Quaker message substitutes an effi
cient baptism, a direct incoming of Divine forces
for the transformation and control of the whole
man, and a feeding of the soul with spiritual

THE MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 197
bread which shows its effect in deepened life
and an ever increased spirituality.
This means, then, that the Quaker message
is a 'call for a perfected man and a perfected
society. It builds on the belief that man was
not meant to live in sin. That salvation does
not mean a scheme for escaping the penalty
due for our sins ; but it is a power by which we
are enabled to destroy sin itself, subdue it, put
it down, triumph over it in the strength of a
new life which comes from participation in the
Life — the Vine of which we should be organic
branches. Its goal is to put man in the con
dition Adam was in before he fell, or rather
into a higher condition still, for the man who
has faced the moral struggle, who has tasted
the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and
has through Divine grace won his way up
ward to the shining height where he is a king
and priest — crowned and mitered — is almost
inconceivably higher than a being that has
not yet felt the tug of temptation.
Quakerism does not limit the promulgation
of this truth to any single channel. It draws
no hard and fast line between clergy and laity.
Every person, whether male or female, who
receives the demonstration of the Spirit and
finds himself joined the Lord, as a member, is a
propagator of this holy order, this spiritual

198 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
society, this City of God, this Kingdom of
Heaven, this priesthood of saints.
It is not dependent for its faith on anything
which investigation or criticism can touch or
weaken. We stake our whole case on the fact
that our lives are circled by the Divine Life,
that the Christ who was in the flesh at a definite
period of history is a living Christ and forms
Himself within all souls who turn to Him,
that religion begins with an immediate con
sciousness of our need of Him and a voluntary
choosing that He shall be our Redeemer and
Controler. It mounts higher and higher as
our creative faith lays hold of Him as a pres
ent reality and works its effects in transfor
mation, in victory over sin, in manifest power,
in fruits of character and the production of
Christlikeness. Out of this consciousness of
Christ, already found and His will revealed to
us, we have an absolute ground to build on.
Every line of Revelation, every lesson of
history, helps us see God's purpose. In the
New Testament we have revealed the life and
mission of the Christ who still works as of old.
We see there the Divine Heart, His sorrow
for sin, His method of redemption, His idea
of society, His estimate of the worth of man.
This whole story unfolds with overwhelming
power upon those who know its truth in the

THE MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 199
experience of their own lives, for it comes as
the word of the Father whom the child knows
already. Everything about this religion is
vital. Its test is life ; it begins in a birth ; it
proves itself true by its increasing life and it
is as sure of eternity as God is, for it is what
it is through living union in Him.
This is a religion which not only makes us
sure of heaven ultimately, but free in the
truth now, conscious of His forgiveness and
immediate presence now, able to withstand
temptation now, victorious over sin now, pos
sessed of peace and secure from fears now,
triumphant in the power of the living spirit
and in present possession of an earnest of
eternal life.
We are not called to the other wordly but
this wordly. Here is our sphere, here is our
arena. We are not to stand gazing up into
heaven. We are rather to build in our layer
in the walls of a new Jerusalem here on the
earth. Our knighthood is not to be spent, or
our spurs won in searching for some mystical
Holy Grail, some sacred cup which would heal
disease, and transform society and usher in the
new and perfect order, if we could only find
it. We are rather called to manifest the
power of God in a practical Christian life.
Let disease and misery find from our own

200 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
hands a healing and comforting touch. Let
the sore-tempted and erring learn from our
life how sin can be conquered and victory
gained. May our faith burn and glow so that
some hard beset and doubting one may kindle
his faith from ours. Let our fight with sin
and evil and corruption be so genuine and
strenuous that we shall use only the weapons
of righteousness and truth. Let us never for
get that we are serving God and truly engaged
in religious service when we are working and
struggling to uplift and enlighten mankind,
and to create a better and a truer citizenship
and a cleaner political life.
Religion is not a one-seated chariot, with
horses of fire to carry us safely to heaven
above and apart from the din and the stress of
this imperfect world. The palm and the robe
are won by the saints who fight the good fight
and lift at the real burdens of the world.
It is a part of our business to demonstrate
that modern thought, and scholarly research
do not undermine religion and that Chris
tianity is not outdated and superseded. We
must stand for and illustrate a type of Chris
tianity which affects and vitalizes the whole
man, which animates and vivifies every strata
of society and which expands to meet the
growing need of the world.

THE MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 201
Instead of closing our eyes let us see all the
facts and go where the truth leads us. So
long as God reigns and our Alpha and Omega
is alive forever more we are not going to suffer
shipwreck simply because we are discovering
that some of the notions which the mediaeval
church taught us must be revised in the light
of further thought. It used to be believed
that the earth rested on an elephant and the
elephant on the back of a tortoise. Alas, we
have had to give up this childish theory, and
now we find that nothing holds us, except an
invisible and intangible power of gravitation,
whatever that may be ! But who would prefer
an elephant and tortoise and who feels afraid
that this unseen cord will break or that some
thing will unbind the sweet influence of the
pleiades or loose the bands of orion ?
Little by little we have been pushed back
from one material outpost to another until at
last we find that our faith must ultimately rest
upon an invisible and intangible God, an
impalpable Spirit of Life and Love, who never
writes on the sky with His finger, who never
shows His face to telescope or microscope, who
never lets us catch Him at work.
" Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky and in the mind of man —

202 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."
But who that has seen the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ, who that has felt his own heart
drawn by that manifestation of Love, who
that has had his own life transformed and
made victorious by that spiritual power wants
the material sign, or feels afraid for his religion
because he has only God left? No, the founda
tion stands sure, having this seal, the Lord
knoweth them that are his. Let us
" Correct the portrait by the living face,
Man's God by God's God in the mind of man."

CHAPTER LIII.
THE EFFECT OF DISCOURAGEMENT
"pEW of us realize how much our view of
¦*- things is affected by our sense of success
or of defeat. People who are continually
prosperous, and who have no knowledge of the
dead strain of pushing on in the face of in
superable obstacles, naturally have different
views of life from those who tug day after day
at a great burden which their human hands
cannot roll off, and who see failure and defeat
follow their best efforts. The successful man
finds it hard to sympathize with those who
are steadily unsuccessful, for he cannot put
himself in their place, he cannot possibly feel
as they feel, and consequently he does not
understand how they can hold such views.
Consciously or unconsciously, our ideas of
God and of heaven, and all our religious con
ceptions, grow colored as we look out through
successes or through defeats. The theology of
the Puritan was in harmony with the gloom and
struggle which filled such a place in his life.
He found himself in a world where the good
(203)

204 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
seemed to be defeated by the bad, in a world
where everything had to be gained by des
perate struggle with manifold enemies, and
the sunshine of life went out, the gloom settled
down, and out of his view of life came his idea
of God and of the unseen world.
We are told over and over again that we
must not let the things of life affect us, that
we must throw off our burdens and quit
ourselves like men even though difficulties
crowd thick about us. And this is right.
The true Christian may pray earnestly to have
his thorn in the flesh removed, but whether it
is removed or not, he will learn that there is
sufficient grace to enable him to get a rich
blessing even out of the ever present thorn,
yet in spite of himself he will not see things
in the same light as though no thorn had come
to him. A person with a whole body, free
from pain or ache, and with tireless vigor for
all the calls and duties of life, cannot see things
just as one does who is hindered in every effort
by a body which constantly makes its weak
ness felt, and which quivers with pains that
cannot be removed. Humanly speaking, the
defeat that brings discouragement, and the
bodily disabilities which fasten upon us, make
life take on a color which otherwise it would
not have; but as there could be no rainbow of

THE EFFECT OF DISCOURAGEMENT 205
promise without a cloud or without the falling
rain so, often, the richest colors of our life are
made out of the very things which at first seem
to shut down over us and completely darken
us. A person's real success depends on how
he can make use of his trials.
There is no rainbow without sunshine and
no man can see a bow of hope and promise in
the dark things of life unless he has somewhere
a source of light. There is something magni
ficent in the way the early Christians painted
the clouds with pictures of hope and images of
glory, but it was because of the brightness of
the light which came from their Christ. The
only way any one can keep his life and thought
from being warped and distorted by defeats
and hindrances is to have the "mind of Christ"
which kept Paul's faith so clear and vital amid
difficulties which would have crushed a self-
centered man. In Christ there is no defeat.
In Christ a man may rise victorious over the
thorn which enters deepest into the flesh.
This may sound like preaching, and may
seem to some a good theory, but an impossi
bility for experience. We write it as one of
the clearest facts of Christian experience, and
one of the essential truths of the Gospel of
Christ.

206 PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
The Christianity which does not make a
person victorious has an essential element left
out. It is no especial glory that a man's Chris
tianity keeps him strong when he is on the
floodtide of prosperity; it is its glory that it
can send light and strength into the darkest
hour of seeming defeat.

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