Gift of
George L. Fox

QUESTIONS OF MODERN INQUIRY

•• It is easy to question the authority of the greatest thoughts
that God sends to us. It is easy to darken them and to lose
them. But it is not easy to live on to the end without them.
There is happily a noble discontent which disturbs all lower
pleasure." Bishop Westcott.
" It is much easier for some to sneer at creeds altogether, and
for others to raise a cry of horror as if God's Word was attacked
when a doubt regarding them is expressed, than for both parties
to carry the burden of fair and candid men, seriously considering
the difficulty, and suggesting such a solution of it as may satisfy
our sense of truth in regard to ourselves and our sense of justice
and charity toward others."
Norman Macleod, "Life," vol. ii., p. 301.
" We cannot move toward the Christ without coming closer to
each other. Leave Him out, and His unitizing Word, and let
every man strike out for himself, and we tend to a crumbling
individualism, to endless distraction and confusion. But those
who acknowledge Jesus Christ as the supreme authority and
guide, and enter more into His all-revealing mind, are making
progress toward the harmonizing truths which He represents.
However wide apart they may be at the start, their progress is
ever on converging lines. Essential truth becomes more and
more central and manifest, the non-essential falls away to its
subordinate place, and orthodox and unorthodox move alike
toward a higher and higher unity. It is not that any one sect
is making conquest of the others, but Jesus Christ is making a
conquest of us all."
E. H. Sears, in Stevens, " Johannine Theology," p. 20.

QUESTIONS OF MODERN
INQUIRY
H Series of Discussions

BY
HENRY A. STIMSON, D. D.
* * .
PASTOR OF THE BROADWAY TABERNACLE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
NEW YORK CITY

*

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York Chicago Toronto
Publishers of Evangelical Literature

Copyright, 189s,
By Fleming H. Revell Company.

TO HER WHO HAS BEEN MY MOST WATCHFUL CRITIC AND
MY MOST SUGGESTIVE AND INSPIRING FRIEND, WHOSE
LOVING PRESENCE LIGHTENS EVERY LABOR
AND SWEETENS EVERY SUCCESS —
MY WIFE
— THIS LITTLE BOOK IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED.

"So if the tempter should persuade such a man to doubt
whether the gospel be true, or be God's Word, this believer may
have recourse into his soul for a testimony of it ; thence he can
tell the tempter by experience that he hath found the promises of
this gospel made good to him. ' Christ hath there promised to
send His Spirit into the souls of His people, and so He hath done
by me ; He hath promised to give light to men that sit in dark
ness, and to guide their feet into the ways of peace ; to bind up
the broken-hearted and set at liberty the captives ; and all this He
hath fulfilled upon me : all that He hath spoken about the power
of His Word and grace, and the nature of its effects, I have
found upon myself. The help which He promised in temptations,
the hearing of prayer, the relief in distress — all these I have
found performed; and therefore I know that the gospel is
true.'" Richard Baxter, Works, vol. xx., p. 162.

PREFACE

THESE discussions are a series of Sunday even
ing addresses in response to inquiries that came
to me suggesting the needs of my congregation.
They were delivered without notes, and without
thought of their publication. I have pleasant
testimony that they have been helpful to some
who have heard them, and I gladly and grate
fully yield to the request to write them out from
the stenographer's notes and furnish them to the
printer. The notes were not complete, and not
equally full upon all the addresses; but I have
thought better to leave the addresses as little
changed as possible, that they might retain the
flavor and character of their original delivery.
Their only claim to attention is not any novelty
of fact or argument, but that they present in a
somewhat simple and compact form truth familiar
to Christian students. I think I may say that
they may be accepted as representing upon the
various subjects discussed the position taken to-
7

8 PREFACE
day by intelligent Christians. My aim has been
in each instance so to state the truth as to make
it both intelligible and acceptable to earnest in
quirers. Of course my one purpose has been to
lead men to an immediate acceptance of Christ
— a purpose which, with deep gratitude to God,
I can say was, at least in some instances, at
tained. As the book is not for scholars in theology, it
has not seemed well to load it with notes. I had
freshly read, in particular, Bruce's " Kingdom of
God " ; Principal Fairbairn's " City of God," and
his " Religion in Modern Life " ; Liddon's " Uni
versity Sermons," and his "Elements of Religion" ;
J. M. Wilson's "Essays and Addresses" ; Mathe-
son's " Messages of the Old Religions " ; Ladd's
"What is the Bible?" ; Boyd Carpenter's "Bamp-
ton Lectures"; Cave's "Inspiration of the Old
Testament" ; Horton's" VerbumDei,"and Joseph
Parker's reply, "None Like It"; and Professor
Stearns's most helpful "The Evidence of Christian
Experience " ; and I went into the pulpit from
time to time full of the thoughts they gave me.
I desire to make grateful acknowledgment here,
though the circumstances of pulpit utterance do
not give opportunity for more than occasional ref
erence in connection with some single sentence
which has fixed itself in the mind. It has not
seemed to me important, since delivery, to return

PREFACE 9
to the various authors to mark the exact extent
of my obligations.
It should be said that these addresses were de
livered in connection with a musical service care
fully arranged with reference to the particular
theme, and so well rendered as to prepare the
minds of the hearers for an impression which
otherwise might not have been made. For this
service I desire to express my obligations to
Mr. C. B. Hawley, the accomplished musical
director of our church. Quotations from the
Bible, except in one address where the Revised
Version was of necessity used, are made from the
Authorized Version, as being the more familiar.
If the little book may prove helpful to any
who are yet undecided as to the claims of Christ,
my hope, and the hope of those who requested
its publication, will be rewarded. With that
prayer I send it on its way.
H. A. S.

" Individuals, indeed, may rescue their faith by retreating be
fore doubt into the citadel of the soul ; but the church has no
right to pursue this course : so certainly as it is its duty to seek
to possess Christianity as a whole, so certainly must it overcome
the enemy in a true manner. It must not, indeed, allow its faith
to wait on scientific demonstration, but neither can it consent to
bear about discordant elements in its existence. Were it to con
sent thereto its faith would no longer be accompanied by an hon
est and good conscience ; the object of its faith would become to
it an imagination of its own invention."
Dorner, " Person of Christ," vol. v., pp. 71, 72.
' ' The temptation of this age is to try to find a middle path be
tween faith and unbelief ; to say that ' there is much to be said
upon both sides ' ; to think that all things must be uncertain in
themselves because many of the persons around us are at sea as
to all things, as if they thought all things to be in a whirl because
they seemed so to our neighbors who had dizzied themselves ; to
be browbeaten out of belief ; to shrink from avowing a steadfast
adherence to that which must be old because it is eternal, and
which must be unchangeable because it is truth ; to pick up some
thing out of revelation which, it thinks, will not be gainsaid, and
to relegate all else to be matter of opinion." Pusey, " Daniel," p. 452.

CONTENTS

PAGE
I. The Attitude of Christianity toward In
quirers  15
II. What am I to Think about God ?  29
III. What am I to Think about the Bible ?. . . . 41
IV. Why not Give Up Miracles ?  59
V. The Story of Jesus  69
VI. How far is the Bible Inspired ?  83
VII. Jesus' Doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven 97
VIII. Why does not God Convert Men ?  113
IX. The Manliness of being Persuaded  131
X. If a Religion, why not Some Other?  147
XI. What is Faith ?  161
XII. The Truth about Prayer  175
XIII. A Saviour from Sin  189
XIV. After Death — What ?  201
XV. Some Features of Immortality  217
XVI. Paul's Idea of Heaven  231
XVII. John's Idea of Heaven  245
XVIII. The Judgment  261

" On the greatest points of all — those which relate to the char
acter and attributes of God — the Bible is not only supreme, it is
unique. The believer in the Bible has no need to exaggerate ; he
has but to state the facts as they are.''
Sanday, " Inspiration,1' p. 167.
" The language of the Bible grows more harmoniously lumi
nous with the growing light. When its words are read and in
terpreted simply, as words still living, they are found to give the
spiritual message which each age requires, the one message made
audible to each hearer in the language wherein he was born."
Westcott, " Revelation of the Father," p. 8.
' ' We do not at all know everything which we have Luther
and the Reformation to thank for. We have become free from
the spirit of narrowness ; we have, because of our progressive
culture, become capable o' returning to the source and appre
hending Christianity in its purity. We have regained the courage
to stand with firm feet on God's own earth, and to feel within us
our human nature God-endowed. Let spiritual culture continue
ever to advance, let the natural sciences grow ever broader and
deeper, and the human spirit enlarge itself as it will, yet beyond
the majesty and moral culture which shines and lightens in the
Gospels it will not advance."
Goethe, in Fairbairn, " Religion in History," p. 64.

I

THE ATTITUDE OF CHRISTIANITY TOWARD
INQUIRERS

13

" When people are really in earnest it may be better sometimes
to leave them alone, instead of calling the poor, honest seekers
hard names which the speakers themselves don't understand."
Charles Kingsley, " Yeast,'' p. 138.
" To give all men liberty to judge for themselves, and to ex
pect at the same time that they shall be of the preacher's mind,
is such a scheme of magnanimity as one would scarcely imagine
any one would be weak enough to devise in speculation, and
much less that any could prove hardy enough to avow and pro
pose to practise." Dodwell, " Freedom of Thought."
"It is easy for those who are content to live on like the rest
of the world to be orthodox. They believe what was believed
before them, and never trouble themselves with testing it. But
when a soul is anxious about the truth, and would deal with it as
with a precious jewel, then things are not quite so easy. How
wrong is it, then, to rush upon just such sensitive souls, to cross-
question and to gag and stun them, when we ought, on the con
trary, to give them liberty of speech, that they may gain confi
dence and suffer themselves to be led aright!"
Bengel, in Dorner, " History of Protestant Doctrine,"
vol. ii., pp. 228, 229.

14

QUESTIONS OF MODERN INQUIRY

THE ATTITUDE OF CHRISTIANITY TOWARD
INQUIRERS
In beginning a series of addresses which have
to do with questions that are occupying the pub
lic mind, it is not my purpose to preach a sermon,
I desire rather to speak in the simplest terms pos
sible, and as nearly as may be as a friend would
talk to a friend on matters of grave concern.
Our opening question must be, What is the
attitude which Christianity assumes toward in
quirers? We shall aim to get quickly upon
common ground as preliminary to all subsequent
discussion. People may, perhaps, be roughly divided intc
three classes. There are those whose minds are
settled, and practically closed, as to the question
of religion. They have accepted it once for all.
They know what they believe. It satisfies them.

1 6 MODERN INQUIRIES
They need no corroborative proof, and they do
not wish to be disturbed. A lawyer past middle
life, intelligent and successful, said to me the other
day : " I have no interest in these controversies.
I settled the question of religion long ago. I
cannot be perpetually going over those things
anew." It is hard for such a man to understand
the difficulties that confront other minds, or to
see the use of discussion. It is not strange that
he thinks that discussing doubts spreads doubt.
Then there are those whose minds are made up
against Christianity, either as it is or as they think
it is. They will not willingly read or hear any
thing in its favor.
Between these two classes there is the large
class of those whose minds are open to the truth,
but who are continually disturbed. They are not
wholly convinced. Many of them are sustained
in a conventional attitude of respect toward re
ligion, or even of belief in it: they are far from
being unbelievers ; they are not at all prepared to
break with the past, or with the faith and practices
of their friends ; but they are not at peace.
This is a condition arising from very varied
causes. With some we may regard it as largely
constitutional : their minds are peculiarly hospi
table to doubt; they interrogate everything.
Others feel the lack of the knowledge necessary to
settle these questions which come from one side

THE ATTITUDE OF CHRISTIANITY 17
and another. The air is full of them ; they drift
upon us from the magazines and newspapers and
the idle talk of the dinner-table. A young lady
came to me the other day in serious distress. A
friend had told her of a book he had seen, " repre
senting in colors all the different fragments of
which the Bible had been composed, and it looked
like a crazy-quilt." Hewasgoingtogetheracopy,
and she did not know what to believe. One may
smile at her perturbation, but it was serious, and
differed from that in the minds of very many only
in that it was outspoken. It may coexist with
a gracious and beautiful life, and with a faithful
performance of all religious duties. But in sensi
tive souls, under the pressure of helplessness and
fear, it breeds a feeling of hypocrisy which is in
tolerable, or it dries up the springs of a joyous
and growing faith until personal religion becomes
merely a perfunctory service or a tradition.
Doubts, to-day, appertain to far more than the
make-up of the Bible. They apply even to the
existence and character of God, the nature of
inspiration, the future life, the very philosophy of
religion, and, perhaps most of all, to the worth
of the life Christians live, as measured by what
they profess. And in all these directions they
are obstacles, great and serious, in the way of not
a few who, we may believe, are anxious to find
the truth and God.

1 8 MODERN INQUIRIES
First of all, then, I want to call your attention
to this : that Christianity makes its demand upon
every mind on the ground that its claims are both
catholic and authoritative. Christianity is not
the faith of any race, or of any class within a race.
It is a religion for everybody. In this respect it
is separated from all other forms of faith the world
has seen. It has no narrow, limited truth to
present; all that it possesses in its consciousness
of a revelation from God it offers to the whole
world, presenting this to every man, with the
knowledge that the only limitation that exists
will be found in the man himself — in his capacity
for the truth, and in his readiness to receive and
apply it. It holds that all men are in need of it.
No man is in any such exceptional position as to
have reason to hide his doubts or to be ashamed
of them, still less to think that they are insuper
able. Christianity welcomes them. It anticipates
them. It pledges itself to remove them. It
must do so, or it cannot be the universal faith it
proclaims itself.
For a similar reason the claims of Christianity
are authoritative. Because its truth is for all
men, its duties are for all men. It presents itself
as coming from God, and as the voice of God ; it
addresses men, whether as individuals or families
or communities or races, as always and every
where owing allegiance and service to God.

THE ATTITUDE OF CHRISTIANITY 19
This claim of Christianity must be accepted, or
Christianity has no claim to be accepted. It is
often admitted that religion is excellent, is valu
able in the home and in society; its laws are to
be regarded, its ceremonies observed, its doctrines
promulgated, for the good they do. But Chris
tianity never presents itself on these prudential
grounds. These are wholly incidental and secon
dary. Its message to every man is authoritative.
" Give me thine heart" is a divine command no
less than a divine invitation. God's right to the
whole man is the fundamental fact.
It is also to be observed that Christianity makes
its appeal always and everywhere on the ground
of the truth. It does not appeal to any opinion
about the truth, or to any feeling that the truth
may produce or has produced, still less to any
superstition. It rests its claims upon truth, and
truth as understood in its ordinary acceptance —
that is, facts open to examination and capable of
being proved day by day and hour by hour. You
of course are familiar with the emphasis our Lord
lays upon this ; but it may be well to turn to the
testimony of a single Gospel. Take John's, for
example : " The Word was made flesh, and dwelt
among us, full of grace and truth ;" " For the law
was given by Moses, but grace and truth came
by Jesus Christ;" "My record is true;" "Ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make

20 MODERN INQUIRIES
you free;" " Ye seek to kill Me, a man that hath
told you the truth;" "I am the way, and the
truth, and the life;" "When He, the Spirit of
truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth;"
" Father, sanctify them through Thy truth : Thy
word is truth;" " For this cause came I into the
world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.
Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice."
This, then, is the attitude which Christianity
takes toward every inquiring mind. It stands
before us, offering the truth ; and with the truth
it offers evidence. For historical facts it offers
historical testimony ; for facts of the personal
experience it offers internal evidence ; but it al
ways appeals to the man through the intellect.
It recognizes man as a thinking being, capable of
exercising judgment and choice ; capable of know
ing the truth and being moved by it. It has full
knowledge of man's nature. It knows what lies
back of the intellect, and does not fall into the
mistake of appealing only to the intellect ; but it
comes as a reasonable faith, offering itself to
reasonable minds.
Another characteristic of Christianity in ap
proaching men of inquiring mind is that it pre
sents a book — the Bible ; but it presents it as a
help, rather than as an authority. It offers the
book as a testimony and as a record.
There are many theories about the book, both

THE ATTITUDE OF CHRISTIANITY 21
as to its character and its origin. But Christian
ity requires no acceptance of these theories. In
deed, it requires in advance no acceptance of the
statements of the Bible itself. It believes those
statements ; it holds them authoritative for its own
faith and practice ; but it imposes them upon no
inquirer. It says simply, " Here is the book.
Read it, and let it tell its own story." We know
what this book has done in the past in helping
burdened and sinful men ; we know what it can
do now. There are other books of prime value —
books which have been read by successive gen
erations ; but no other book can hope to find the
acceptance which the Bible has found for its
vitalizing power. This we know. We ask you,
with or without any opinion about it, just to try
it. With so much of receptive mind as you can
command, suffer it to speak to you for itself con
cerning your own deepest needs and sorest diffi
culties. The world has never outgrown it. It
has proved itself immensely wise and immensely
comprehensive; it will be sure to prove itself
helpful to you.
Furthermore, Christianity presents to inquirers
this book as a record of the progress of truth in
the past. It says, "Here is the record." All
other records give small fragments of that story,
and those so imperfectly that no one can be sure
that he is reading aright. Outside the Bible

22 MODERN INQUIRIES
there is no record of man's progress toward God.
Here, however, is the story of the process by
which the chosen race advanced step by step
under divine guidance, from the days of Abraham
to the days of Isaiah ; from a condition of know
ledge of God as when one gropes in the darkness,
to thoughts of God so full, so large, so sufficient,
that we read them to-day feeling them unparal
leled by anything the modern world has produced.
The story of that long development is found in
this book. Christianity stands with the book in
its hand because it believes itself the product of
that process. God has thus fitted the world for
Himself; and Christianity appeals to men to-day
from the standpoint to which the world has come.
It is a present-day religion with a history. It is
that up to which the centuries have led.
The Bible tells the tale, furnishing the record
of the progress and the sure ground for the pres
ent faith. Now, because of this, the church re
quires no acceptance of the Bible in advance. It
does not say that you must believe that Adam
and Eve were in a garden by the river Euphrates,
or that Balaam's ass spoke, or that the earth was
drowned in a great flood, or that Jonah was
swallowed by a whale. It does not ask that you
shall accept these or any other single statement.
What does it ask ? It asks that you accept the
book as a trustworthy friend, and not as a fraud

THE ATTITUDE OF CHRISTIANITY 2$
or an impostor ; that you shall have reverence for
it as a book that has saved life — not physical life,
but lives that shall live on through all eternity.
It asks that you open it reverently and hear what
it has to say to you. We shall all be content
when it is allowed to bear its own testimony and
has produced its own effect. The church's con
fidence in regard to the Bible is that the Bible
will justify itself. It needs neither your defense
nor mine ; and as for doctrines in regard to it,
and theories, they have changed with the years,
but the Bible remains unchanged.
Now you see that religion, or the church, or
Christianity — use which term you will — demands
simply those things which it has a right to de
mand. It demands that a man shall be serious,
because the issues with which Christianity deals
are the greatest with which we can concern our
selves. It has a right, therefore, to demand that
a man shall be in earnest. Thomas, you remem
ber, did not believe that the Saviour had risen.
Why? He was not there to see. He did not
have evidence he might have had, therefore he
did not believe. Now the Saviour had a right
to require that Thomas should believe. He said
to him, therefore, " Reach hither thy hand, and
thrust it into My side." So Christianity de
mands, and believes it has a right to demand,
that a man shall face his doubts, and not ignore

24 MODERN INQUIRIES
them or remain helplessly overcome by them.
It demands that he shall sit down quietly and
read the Bible for himself, feeling assured that if
he does it will accomplish in him what it has ac
complished in countless hearts before.
Thomas thought he needed peculiar testimony ;
but there is no intimation that when the oppor
tunity was given he did put even his finger upon
the Saviour's wounds. Conviction and faith had
come to him already. That has been the process
ever since.
If you are in earnest, if you believe that there
are in your life possibilities of good and of evil
which are daily contending for mastery, and that
you are being carried where you would not simply
because you delay, then Christianity has a right
to demand that you decide. There is nothing
noble or noteworthy in doubt. It is simply
ignorance and indecision. The church is set in
the world to compel men to take sides in refer
ence to Jesus Christ. That is the whole object
of its preaching and its testimony. It stands as
a witness to the love of God which has made it
possible for men to be His sons. It believes men
will hear and obey, but they shall not remain in
different. " Choose ye this day " has been its
message from the beginning. The utter unreason
of unbelief is set forth in the Saviour's words to
the Jews : " And if I say the truth, why do ye

THE ATTITUDE OF CHRISTIANITY 25
not believe me?" We shall all be judged at
last on the ground of the truth which God has
given to us in the revelation of His Son, in whom
we might have believed if we would, and who,
had we believed, would have led us every one,
no matter what our sins or our fears or our per
plexities, to the Light.

WHAT AM I TO THINK ABOUT GOD?

27

" Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God j
But only he who sees takes off his shoes ;
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries."
Mrs. Browning, "Aurora Leigh," bk. vii.
" Philosophy is based on the affirmation of God's existence,
and not upon the denial of it."
Fiske, " Cosmic Philosophy," vol. ii., p. 377.
"It is easy for any one in the cloisters of the schools to in
dulge himself in idle speculations on the merits of works to justify
men ; but when he comes into the presence of God he must bid
farewell to these amusements, for there the business is transacted
with seriousness. To this point must our attention be directed
if we wish to make any useful inquiry concerning righteousness :
how we can answer the celestial Judge when He shall call us to
account. Let us place that Judge before our eyes, not according
to the inadequate imaginations of our minds, but according to
the descriptons given of Him in the Scriptures, which represent
Him as one whose refulgence eclipses the stars, whose purity
makes all things appear polluted, and who searches the inmost
soul of His creatures ; let us conceive of the Judge of all the
earth, and every one must present himself as a criminal before
Him, and voluntarily prostrate and humble himself in deep solici
tude concerning his absolution." Calvin, " Institutes," vol. iii., p. 12.

28

II
WHAT AM I TO THINK ABOUT GOD?
THROUGH many a long year the Psalms have
answered this question with the personal testi
mony of men who had come to know God each
for himself. The loving-kindness and tender
mercies of God are a blessed reality, and as an
actual experience have taught many an inquiring
mind what to think about God, in a surer and
fuller way than any argument can do. But un
fortunately there are those who, because of doubts
suggested to them from without, or by reason of
their conscious weakness before temptation, fail
to interpret God's dealings with them, and despair
of ever gaining such personal knowledge of Him
as will enable them to trust Him as their Saviour.
The Bible was originally written by men who
believed in God, for men who believed in God;
now many come to it with such preliminary un
belief that it fails to address them. For some the
authority of the church has been sufficient ; it has
dispelled doubt and given peace. There have
29

30 MODERN INQUIRIES
been times when the absolute inerrancy of the
Scriptures was unquestioned, and the written
Word was the end of controversy ; but there are
multitudes who find it no easier to accept an in
fallible book than an infallible church. Therefore
every one of us who finds his heart stirred by the
ancient Psalms, and who delights to " call upon
his soul and all that is within him to bless His
holy name," is also bound to turn to his friends
and neighbors, and at least try to give a reason
for the faith that is in him. It ought to be en
tirely possible for us all to-day to answer such
inquiries as "Where shall I find God?" and
"What am I to believe about God?"
The human mind being what it is, we ought
not to find it difficult to discover a common
starting-point. There are some things we all
know to be true. We are conscious of our own
existence: we all can say, "I am." Every man
realizes, also, that this " I am " is a personal
reality. The skull is a box containing a curious
mechanism. Hidden somewhere within dwells
the person I, myself. Our thought is so organ
ized that we cannot rest content with the con
sciousness of this fact. We must reach out be
yond ourselves. Doing this, we come to other
beings like ourselves, all equally able to say,
" I am." From them, in turn, our mind reaches
farther into the infinite universe to find some

WHAT AM I TO THINK ABOUT GOD ? 3 1
being who is not, like ourselves, limited and
finite. The spirit of man always does this and
always has done it. We are at times obliv
ious of this experience ; but in our better mo
ments we are aware that there is in us all a longing
to find this Being who possesses infinite wisdom
and unlimited resources. Our conception of exis
tence is incomplete without Him. We find our
selves dependent — strangely so — and that in
many directions. And we do not escape from
the feeling; advancing years, with increase of
knowledge or of prowess, only widen the sphere,
and strengthen the conviction that we are insuffi
cient of ourselves. We long to know One who is
not dependent — that is, God. We can stifle this
feeling, we can for a time escape from it, but it is
there, the common possession. The hour is sure
to come when, sooner or later, each will know
himself as one " Swimming at night alone upon the sea,
Whose lesser life falls from him, and the dream
Is broken which has held him unaware ;
And with a shudder he feels his naked soul
In the great black world face to face with God."
Or, to take another line of thought, we dis
cover within our hearts — we need not define just
where — a feeling which we call the sense of ob
ligation or accountability. We say, " I ought."

32 MODERN INQUIRIES
Oh, the hidden power of that word ! We awake
to it, and we believe that all men in all conditions
are under its dominion. " It is right to do right."
Who can question it ? Explain this discovery as
you will, it is there, permanently in your heart.
When, recognizing this, a man begins to ask,
" What ought I to do? " he finds his thought at
once reaching out beyond himself. He discovers
his accountability. His thought turns his face
upward. He finds that this sense of " ought," or
accountability, is not satisfied when his thought
rests upon his neighbor, for his neighbor is like
himself. There is that within which reaches into
the infinite realms above, which cannot rest until
it gathers to itself the conception of the holy God.
I ought, I am accountable, I owe obligations, be
cause there is the All-good somewhere ; and not
only somewhere, but here. I am in His presence.
He is beneath me ; He is before me ; He is above
me. " Whither shall I flee from Thy presence ?
If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there : if I
make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. If
I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in
the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall
Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold
me. Thus, along the lines of our necessary thought,
we come to the one conclusion. We do not ab
solutely prove the existence of God, but we prove

WHAT AM I TO THINK ABOUT GOD? 33
the necessity of God. There must be this Being
to whom we recognize our obligation ; who is
himself the All-good, the supreme object of our
love, the final reward of our service.
Starting, then, with this preliminary conception,
as we look out into the world we find everywhere
curious suggestion of an artificer, a fashioning
hand in nature. As Agassiz said, " Atoms look
like manufactured articles." Some men talk
about a " carpenter- God," as if the Christian's
idea is that God came with a set of tools and
made the universe and man.
Nature did not make itself; that is certain.
A letter has been recently published in which
Charles Darwin wrote to Asa Gray, the botanist,
of a certain orchid, " Does this look as if done
at a single accidental stroke ? " To this Dr. Gray
replied, " No. Does it look as if done by many ? "
No multiplication of the number of blind chances
or of the impacts of molecules will account either
for the orchid or for man.
Whichever way we look we find everywhere in
nature the suggestion of adaptation of means to
ends. Not to-day, not yesterday, but in all the
development of the world, in the parts as in the
whole, God's hand is seen, God's thought is re
vealed. Professor Dana's last word in closing his
" Geology " is, Deus fecit — " God made it." That
record, it is true, is written differently from other

34 MODERN INQUIRIES
records, but it is written everywhere in nature for
those who can read. As Carlyle puts it, " The
Infinite is more sure than any other fact, but only
men can discern it."
Quite as clear is God's hand in human history.
Can any one believe that the fortuitous collision
of molecules has been the ultimate cause there?
Life is certainly something more than a wild
dance of human atoms, like motes in a sunbeam.
Can any one doubt that there was a divine provi
dence in Marathon and Salamis, or in the out
come of the long struggle between Rome and
Carthage? Did God have nothing to do with
the smiting of the Arabs by Charles Martel at
Tours, and the consequent turning back of the
Saracen invasion of western Europe ? Was it an
accident that the empire of Charles and of Philip,
behind which was the Inquisition and the Roman
Catholicism of the sixteenth century, should grind
itself to pieces in vain struggle with the handful
of men who in the marshes of Holland were set
to save Protestantism and the modern world?
Or was the fate of the Spanish Armada a splendid
chance ?
Who prepared the way for Columbus, and led
him from the East Indies to the West, and then
apportioned his discoveries so that North America
should unwittingly be left open to settlement from
northern Europe ? Who guided the Pilgrims, and

WHAT AM I TO THINK ABOUT GOD? 35
uprooted the French, and finally drove out the
English and made America free? Has there
been no divine Hand in all this ?
And this is only the outside of history. Sup
pose we had time to look within, what strange
providences we should find in the preparation
that lies back of all these great events ! Every
where man has had free play, yet everywhere
we can see the guiding Hand. There has been
a long struggle for civilization and liberty and
knowledge and something of righteousness and
truth, with many a defeat, and often what seemed
to be doom. But what progress there has been !
How wonderful is the human story! Inexpli
cable in itself, a veritable " crazy-quilt " when
spread out, but to-day to be seen oriented to
Jesus Christ, all from beginning to end relational
to Him. He is the key to it all. Ancient history
led up to Him. He came, and at once the world
began to unfold from Him.
Thus asking, " What shall we think about
God?" we arrive always at the same result. He
is a personal God; One who has responded to our
thoughts; whose will has furnished the law for
our wills ; whose intelligence is to be read in all
His wondrous works in the world that lies about
us. Call Him by what name you will — Jehovah,
God, the Heavenly Father — it is always the same
conception: the One from whom man comes,

36 MODERN INQUIRIES
under whom and in whom man lives, and to
whom we owe that accountability which is the
fundamental fact in man's life.
It only remains to bring this conception of God
to the test of its effect upon the men who hold
it. We must go to the Bible for the record. It
is the story of a people whose conceptions were
immature and, if you will, childlike; but we find
them holding to their conception of one personal
and holy God, and advancing under its influence,
until both their conceptions of God and righteous
ness and truth, and the literature in which these
conceptions are preserved, are the grandest the
world has known. The Israelites, under the in
fluence of these views, were the only people of
all antiquity who advanced steadily to what the
world now accepts as the true idea of God. We
possess hymns sung on the Nile four thousand
years ago, many ancient writings of the Assyrians,
noble thoughts of Confucius, and lofty aspirations
in the Vedas ; but where is to be found one of them
furnishing the theme and the setting of a great
musical composition, or entering as a vitalizing
conception into modern worship or life ? Every
oratorio, every great anthem, is set to the words
of the Bible. Here alone is discovered an undy
ing energy ; here alone are thoughts of God and
man, of eternity and holiness, which, though old,
are ever new; here is a literature so lofty in

WHAT AM I TO THINK ABOUT GOD? 37
thought, so stately in expression, and through all
so sane and so simple, that it constitutes a world
of its own. Nowhere else is to be found a per
manent faith in a personal God, and nowhere else
is to be found a record of life like this. Israel
has been the one fruitful source of the religious
and moral development of the world.
We know God to-day not only as no sages of the
Orient ever have known Him, but even as Israel
herself did not know Him ; because, superadded to
all Israel had, we have the revelation of the New
Testament. Then, when you ask a Christian to
day, "What am I to think about God? " the an
swer is at once on his lips : " We are to think of
God as Jesus Christ, our Saviour and our Friend."
He cannot fail to say, " I will mention the loving-
kindnesses of my God." The all- righteous, the
all-pure, the all-wise, the all-powerful, holy God,
the Maker of the heavens and the earth, has had
compassion on me. He has sought me and found
me. He has spoken to my heart. He has an
swered my prayer. I am nothing — less than
nothing — for I am sinful ; but He has come to
me, and has given me something of His spirit to
live in my soul ; He has accepted me, with all my
failures and limitations, with all my consciousness
of sin and weakness, as a tribute and a witness to
Himself. And now what I, by God's grace, have
been led to think and know about God is what

38 MODERN INQUIRIES
God, through me His messenger, would have you,
His child and my brother, think about Him. Ac
cept Him, trust Him, love Him ; commit the keep
ing of your soul to Him, because you are His child,
and He is your Father which is in heaven.

Ill
WHAT AM I TO THINK ABOUT THE BIBLE?

39

" Of all ancient literatures, of all ancient writings possessed
by man, the writings with the largest sense of humanity, the
greatest sense of the rights of the individual, the noblest concep
tion of labor and its reward, of society and its function, are the
writings of the Hebrews. ... In a word, the ideas that make
men of you run back into the belief in God and God's law that
came through Moses."
Fairbairn, " Religion in History," pp. 138, 140.
' ' The Bible has been the Magna Charta of the poor and of the
oppressed ; down to modern times no state has had a constitution
in which the interests of the people are so largely taken into ac
count, in which tlie duties, so much more than the privileges, of
rulers are insisted upon, as that drawn up for Israel in Deuter
onomy and Leviticus ; nowhere is the fundamental truth that the
welfare of the state, in the long run, depends upon the upright
ness of the citizen so strongly laid clown."
Huxley, in Sanday, " Inspiration," p. 181.
"The more I read the Bible, without almost any thought of
questions of inspiration, but simply as a record of fact, of precept
and principle, of judgment and of mercy, of God's acts and ways
(i.e., the principles of His acts), all culminating in Christ, as a
revelation of what God is to man and what man was created to
be to God, the more my whole moral being responds to it as
being a revelation of God. The authority of the Bible is to me
supreme, because it commands my reason and conscience. I feel
it is from God. It was once otherwise with me. It is so no
more, and the older I get the more my spirit says ' Amen ' to it."
Norman Macleod, " Life," vol. ii., p. 316.

40

Ill
WHAT AM I TO THINK ABOUT THE BIBLE?
I DO not propose to add another to the many
statements of doctrine concerning the Bible as
the Word of God. There are too many already
— i.e., if you chance to be curious for proof. But
I propose to offer you the book itself, and simply
to lead you along a line of thought in regard to
it which may enable you to settle for yourself
what you are to think about the Bible.
Here, then, is the book. It is stamped " The
Bible." That word comes to us through the
Latin from the Greek. The Greek neuter plural
was transferred into Latin as a feminine noun,
Biblia, the Book. It really meant " the books,"
or " the writings." The Bible was also called at
first Bibliotheca, the Sacred Writings. This de
clares the real nature of the volume. It is a collec
tion of documents — a book only in this sense.
On the title-page of many of our Bibles you
find the statement that it was translated into
English by the authority of King James in the
41

42 MODERN INQUIRIES
year 161 1, certain learned men being invited by
the king to come together for the purpose. We
know that this was not the first attempt at an
English Bible, but it had the advantage of being
generally regarded as the best, and as such gained
wide and permanent acceptance. It was trans
lated from such Greek texts as were then extant.
We have to-day a revision of this our Eng
lish Bible, published in 1885. The reason for the
revision, as you all know, is the fact that since
161 1 nearly all the more important ancient manu
scripts have been discovered, including one or
two complete ones of the New Testament as old
as the fourth century ; and scholars have studied
and collated these with a minuteness and care
which give us a text probably more nearly correct
than any that has existed since the original writ
ings disappeared. The revision of the English
translation in the light of a better text was com
mitted, by act of the Convocation of the Province
of Canterbury, in February, 1870, to two com
panies of approved biblical scholars — one for the
Old and one for the New Testament — in coopera
tion with two similar American companies. As
a result we have the book before us, the Bible in
its latest and most perfect form.
We open it, asking, " What does it say of itself ?"
It says, indeed, very little. Here at the end is a
writing called the Revelation, bearing the name

WHAT AM I TO THINK ABOUT THE BIBLE? 43
of the Apostle John. It says he was commanded
to write the things which he had seen — things
which certainly no other man ever saw, and in
connection with which the command would most
naturally occur. The Apostle Peter, in a brief
epistle, says that " men spake from God, being
moved by the Holy Ghost " ; and the natural
supposition is that if some were moved to speak,
they or others were also moved to write. The
Epistle to the Hebrews opens with the statement :
" God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers
in the prophets by divers portions and in divers
manners, hath at the end of these days spoken
unto us in His Son." In an Epistle of Paul to
Timothy we find these words : " Every scripture
inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for
reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in
righteousness." There is little said beyond these
more or less indirect statements. Yet there is
one luminous passage in the Gospel of Luke.
He explains his writing as follows : " Forasmuch
as many have taken in hand to draw up a narra
tive concerning those matters which have been
fulfilled among us, even as they delivered them
unto us, which from the beginning were eye-wit
nesses and ministers of the Word, it seemed good
to me also, having traced the course of all things
accurately from the first, to write unto thee in
order, most excellent Theophilus; that thou

44 MODERN INQUIRIES
mightest know the certainty concerning the
things wherein thou wast instructed." He had
been a contemporary and in part an eye-witness
of these events, so he felt called upon to sit down
and write the narrative of them in the spirit of a
careful and painstaking historian. He lays claim
to so much of credibility.
This is not all the Bible has to say about itself.
It says God's hand was in the work, but it does
not say how it was in it. It speaks just as we
should if we should try to tell a friend some of
the things that have happened to us. The wri
ters are often conscious that " the burden of the
Lord " is upon them, and that they " have the
mind of Christ"; but they are never careful to
describe in what this appears, or to define its
effect upon their manner of writing. When they
are delivering a message they say so. It is enough
for our purpose to say that they regarded them
selves as simple and credible historians, or direct
and truthful utterers of the thought that was
committed to them.
Looking further, we discover a gap between
the Old Testament and the New of several cen
turies. The later writings of the Old Testament
have much to say about the future, and One
who is to come ; and this is the theme with
which the New Testament begins. The New
Testament is, indeed, simply the unfolding of

WHAT AM I TO THINK ABOUT THE BIBLE? 45
the truth up to which the Old Testament has
led — the story of the Coming One ; His birth, His
life, His teachings, His death and resurrection, with
an interpretation of their significance. So that in
the New Testament we have a small library, the
work of different hands writing in the years im
mediately following the death of Jesus, and hav-
¦ ing this as its definite purpose, to tell His story.
Some of the books bear the names of their authors.
We know very little of most of them. Matthew
was a tax-collector, Luke a physician, Paul a
scholar and by trade a tent-maker, the others
fishermen. Though it seems little doubtful, the
authorship of Acts has long been in dispute. In
regard to Hebrews, Origen said, in the third cen
tury, " Who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews is
known only to the Lord."
These writings, which with but slight modifica
tion or questioning have in their entirety been
received through all the Christian centuries, have
been the single means of disseminating the reve
lation and doing the work of God in the Lord
Jesus Christ. They have been the object of in
cessant attack by the enemies of Christ from the
first century until the present day. They have
borne the brunt of the battle against the Chris
tian church. If they were spurious they would
have been quickly disposed of, for that has been
invariably the fate of spurious writings on matters

46 MODERN INQLJIRIES
of any importance ; but through the centuries the
books in this little collection have proved their
authenticity and genuineness by the test they
have stood — both are established beyond reason
able dispute. They are not forgeries ; they were
written at the time and under the circumstances
claimed for them ; they have from the beginning
been in circulation as the trustworthy and author
itative statement of the truths which they declare.
So much for the New Testament.
In the Old Testament we find a somewhat
different state of things. The Old Testament is
translated from the Hebrew. It contains a larger
number of documents than the New, covering a
far longer period both of authorship and of his
tory. Some of the writings are confessedly com
posite : various sources of history are quoted ;
there are occasional bits of poetry ; there are
heroic songs ; there are royal decrees, as in Ezra,
Nehemiah, and Daniel ; there are long genealog
ical tables, and definite compilations, as of the
Proverbs. The Book of the Psalms is simply a
hymn-book in five parts. Many of the books
are found to be anonymous. No one knows,
for example, who wrote Esther, Job, Ecclesiastes,
Daniel, and, indeed, many others. They all bear
distinctive names, but, except in the case of the
prophets, little or no stress is laid upon their au
thorship.

WHAT AM I TO THINK ABOUT THE BIBLE? 47
The language in which they are written is
singularly uniform, considering the long period
of time they cover. There is occasional intro
duction of words that are Aramaic and Chaldaic
— languages akin to the Hebrew — but there is
very little change from first to last; the earliest
are, if not purer and statelier, in every way worthy
of fellowship with the latest.
As we begin to read we find them steadily
moving onward from the beginning to the end.
They are unde.r one dominant purpose. No
matter who wrote them, no matter when they
were collected, they are parts of a whole; they
lead up to a definite point ; they are the story of
the way in which a certain people prepared a
setting for the work Jesus of Nazareth was to do ;
they lead straight up to Christ.
But there is much else in these old books aside
from the preparation for the coming of a Saviour.
We open at Genesis. Here, in the first chapter,
is an account of the creation. With a few grand
and rapid details of creation as the work of God,
it leads up to the institution of the Sabbath. As
we read it we might imagine that it was com
posed, as some assert, to authenticate the special
holiness of that day.
We proceed to examine its detached statements.
Do these accord with science ? The question is
natural — rperhaps inevitable — but not at all as im-

48 MODERN INQUIRIES
portant as is made to appear. We know a great
deal more about the manner of the creation —
meaning by that the process by which the world
was prepared for man — than any men in the past
have known. Most of what is accepted now as
science was born in our day. The science of our
fathers was largely ignorance. Some one asks,
" Does our knowledge correspond with the know
ledge of the man who wrote the first chapter of
Genesis? " He did not know all that we know —
far from it ; but he knew wonderful things. He
knew that there was a beginning to creation ; he
knew that life came in orderly and progressive
stages ; and he knew — what some men do not
know to-day — that man is the crown of creation,
the child of the Author of all; that for him all
these things were made, and in him they are to
find their explanation and their purpose. He
knew, furthermore, that God was in it all, and
there was from the beginning a plan of God with
this as its conclusion. Many men to-day, with
all their science, have not grasped these truths.
What do we care whether in their lesser details
his broad statements minutely correspond with
the geology and biology of to-day ? They tell the
great story in as graphic a way as it could be told ;
and they tell it truthfully — that is unquestion
able — and as it is told nowhere else since the
world began. Suppose it appears — which is by

WHAT AM I TO THINK ABOUT THE BIBLE? 49
no means certain — that the writer of that chapter
thought that the world as he saw it — the benef
icent arena for the unfolding of the life of man
the child of God, the finished work of his own
Heavenly Father, the divinely ordered home for
his own God-enswathed life — was made in six
days of twenty-four hours each ; what of it ? He
knew and recorded for all time the great facts.
Is his knowledge to be belittled because it had
limitations? Think of the enlightenment it has
been to the world from that day to this. Search
the literature of antiquity for a chapter for one
instant comparable to this.
We turn to the second chapter, and find im
portant additions to the story, if, indeed, it is not
the substance of the same story told in a differ
ent way. Man is placed on the earth under most
favorable conditions. A garden is prepared for
him. He has a fit companion. He is made to
know that what God wants is character, and that
if he has right character he shall live. Now some
man asks, " Was that an apple? " What differ
ence does it make ? The temptation was real ; the
fact and its consequences are indisputable. Sup
pose we admit that the details are too brief, or
given in a form we cannot fully explain. " Did
snakes walk on their tails in those days? " The
narrative does not say they did. That incident
of the serpent we cannot explain. It is too brief,

50 MODERN INQUIRIES
and our knowledge is too incomplete. We know
nothing of the possible relations of the animal
world with the powers of evil. Here is a story
of profoundest import, told in language the most
graphic. It is strikingly akin to our own experi
ence. It holds attention to-day no less effectu
ally than when it was written. It declares that
man was blessed by being surrounded at the be
ginning with everything that heart could desire,
and that he recklessly threw himself out of that
position. It was done under temptation essen
tially the same as that he encounters to-day.
The consequences were prompt and permanent.
But the arms of God's love were at once thrown
around him, and redemptive influences set im
mediately at work. Then follows the long story,
through Genesis, Exodus, and the rest, of the
guidance and preparation of Israel for the coming
of the Saviour in whom that unfailing purpose of
redemption was at last accomplished.
The story, in its beginnings, was passed on
from father to son. It gradually became the
possession of the people in whom, more or less
consciously to themselves, it was advancing for
the ultimate blessing of the world. In time
Moses appeared. He was the man by whom
God chose to gather up the details and fix them
in something of a permanent form. Then comes
Samuel, and then David, and many another, each

WHAT AM I TO THINK ABOUT THE BIBLE? 5 I
forwarding the result and adding something to
the record. At last, after the exile, and after
several earlier efforts in the same direction, Israel
proceeds to separate these her peculiar possession
from all other writings, until they are brought
into the form in which they were when Christ
came. Then He takes* them up and begins to
quote from them. " Search the Scriptures " —
your own sacred writings. They have come
down to you from the fathers; and "they are
they which testify of Me." Does He say, " Search
them that you may get knowledge of mineralogy
or zoology or astronomy " ? No ; search them
for the divine knowledge. And the men who
were taught of Christ proceed to quote them as
being the authoritative voice of God to men on
this matter of a personal religious faith and duty.
Henry Martyn's argument was certainly a fair
one. He once sat, the story goes, discussing
with a group of Persian scholars about the rela
tive merits of the Koran and the Bible. They
were intelligent men — more astute, indeed, than
himself — and with wide information. He listened
patiently, admitting all they said in favor of the
Koran. Then he replied : " Here are some sixty-
six books. Nobody knows who wrote many of
them. They cover a period of not less than fifteen
hundred years. Manifestly no one mind could
have planned them, and no group of men, and no

52 MODERN INQUIRIES
nation or church. How, then, are they to be ac
counted for? Here is the book. It is the story
of Christianity. There is but one explanation.
God did it. Through all those years His heart
was set unchangeably upon redeeming the world.
This is the story of the process, and a chief agency
in it. Set the book alongside the best you have,
and tell me which should be your guide?"
Of course there are many questions for scholars
to settle. We have learned much of late, but we
still know comparatively little of the ancient world.
All the knowledge we gain throws wonderful light
upon the Bible. It has already cleared up
many difficulties. There are many still unsolved.
Those of to-day are not those of yesterday.
Search for answers as hard as you will ; only re
member that the validity of the book does not
turn on your answers. The great truths are
settled ; the purpose of God is clear ; the life is
there awaiting you, if you will have it.
A word in closing. God might have written a
book Himself. With a pen or a graver He could
have written the words on paper or stone. Some
people are tempted to say that the Bible was
written essentially in this way. Perhaps God
ought so to have written it. The fact is that the
book was not God's main purpose. What was
God's purpose? Life! The book is a mere in
strument. Far in the past God started a plan of

WHAT AM I TO THINK ABOUT THE BIBLE? 53
life — redemptive life — coming down to us like a
great river. It is a strong, full stream from
Abraham to Paul and John; and from them on
to us. From time to time the current threw up
to the surface various writings, and as the current
passed along these were joined one to the other,
thus forming accretions of writings. At last, in
God's good time, they were recognized as having
a special character and use, being in a measure
distinct from the stream that produced them ;
filled, indeed, with its life, but presenting the life
in a peculiar and definite form. So the Bible, in
the form in which we have it, became the posses
sion of the church, and a chief instrument in mak
ing the church what it is. In other words, the
Christian community was moved, as it believes,
by the Spirit of God, to collect the writings into
permanent and final form ; and then, as so col
lected, the writings became the ultimate law of
the Christian community. God's purpose was
with the river ; as He used men to make that, so
He used men to make the Bible, which embodies
so much of its life.
And God always uses men being what they
are — Samuel, David, Isaiah, being themselves;
consequently each man's writing is his, and not
another's. The life of Israel was very limited;
but as the centuries rolled on, the life from God
was ever deepening and widening it. So it has

54 MODERN INQUIRIES
come down to us. Therefore we say the Bible is
God's book. No other is like it ; no other has its
history. " Is the Bible inerrant? " Certainly not. Did
man ever do anything that was altogether free
from error? And there never has been a day,
from the time the first line was written, when man
has not been in some way at work upon the Bible.
" Is the Bible infallible? " Certainly not, if you
mean, " Is there no possibility of misstatement? "
" Are there mistakes in the Bible ? " Possibly ; but
it is singularly exact so far as we are able to test
it. In the lapse of years it has been so often vin
dicated, even in its minuter features, that he is a
bold man who to-day sets himself squarely in op
position to its statements. But it nowhere lays
claim to such inerrancy or infallibility, and those
claims may be left to take care of themselves.
" But were not the original writings absolutely
correct?" If so, God seems to have set small
value upon that fact, as He suffered them so soon
to be lost.
What, then, is the Bible to us? It is God's
own book, because it has been God's voice to men
through all these centuries; and it is infinitely
better than any other voice we can listen to. God
is with us always ; but it is hard for us to interpret
His voice in nature, much more in His provi
dences ; always hard surely to know His will.

WHAT AM I TO THINK ABOUT THE BIBLE? 55
Where, then, can we get this knowledge? In
the Bible. There He speaks unmistakably. Even
a child can understand it, while the wisest man
finds there wisdom infinitely larger than his own.
The Bible, therefore, is the way of life to him
who will follow it, and the word of life to every
man who longs to hear it.

IV
WHY NOT GIVE UP MIRACLES?

57

" This too is probable, according to that saying of Agathon:
' It is a part of probability that many improbable things will hap
pen.'" Aristotle, " Poetics."
" Miracles are not, as the old apologetics taught, divine cre
dentials attached externally to the revelation for its authentication.
They are a part of the revelation itself. They are not violations
of the laws of nature, but events which cannot be accounted for
by physical forces or human agencies, and which therefore are
ascribed to a higher Cause. They are not known as miracles
simply by the power manifested in them — that would not distin
guish them from the miracles of evil beings — but by their mani
festation of God's grace in redemption."
Stearns, " Present-day Theology," p. 50.
' ' The only question is whether we are to expect miracles at
the present time ; and this question is answered in the negative,
not through any doubt of God's ability — which is abundantly at
tested by the regenerative and sanctifying exercise of power to
day — but on the ground that the redemptive revelation is once for
all in the world, and that the outward evidences of divine power
which once were necessary are no longer requisite — a consider
ation which passes from presumption into proof when we exam
ine the alleged miracles of our own day, and find in them nothing
that cannot be explained as the result of God's providence. . . .
What we discover here is not our Lord manifesting God's love
in the sphere of outward nature, and doing it with that divine
economy which was intended to guard against the abuse of the
miraculous, but men invoking the miraculous for their own selfish
ends, turning the Christian church away from its distinctively
spiritual work, and endeavoring to transform it into an eleemosy
nary institution for the healing of all diseased bodies."
Stearns, " The Evidence of Christian Experience,"
PP- 333. 335-

58

IV
WHY NOT GIVE UP MIRACLES?
The question of miracles is recognized as ly
ing close to the center of the Christian position.
Skeptics sneer at them, and inquirers find them a
stumbling-block ; while believers become uncom
fortable when they are made the subject of dis
cussion. Meanwhile it is plain that they are
woven so thoroughly into the gospel story that
they cannot be taken out without destroying it;
and the Saviour himself staked everything upon
them, as in his message to John the Baptist : " Go
your way and tell John what things ye have seen
and heard ; how that the blind see, the lame walk,
the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead
are raised;" and in his farewell appeal to his dis
ciples: "Believe me for the very works' sake."
The question is not as to merely apparent
miracles, such as ice to the king of Siam, or
Nikola Tesla playing unharmed with electricity of
two hundred thousand voltage, or the latest cure
of the " metaphysical healer," or a fresh " miracle "
from Lourdes. Our concern is with the miracles
of the New Testament. Are they possible ? Did
59

60 MODERN INQUIRIES
they occur? If Hume's position is- correct, that
no evidence will suffice to give credibility to a
miracle, then we should cease to speak of them
as such, or at least we should admit that they
would not be so. called had they occurred to-day.
The New Testament miracles are a series of
events the direct result of supernatural powers
put within the control of certain persons for
the purpose of arresting attention to them and
authenticating their claims and words. Can we
believe them to have occurred ? — that is the ques
tion before us.
The notable thing in nature is that we are sur
rounded by forces arranged in an ascending series,
in which each higher force dominates a lower one,
and comes in, when it appears, with something of
an element of surprise. A grain of earth is swept
into the river and carried along by the mechanical
force of the stream. It is dissolved, and sucked
up by a rootlet, to become an element in the leaf
of a tree, yielding to a chemical and a vital force.
Another force appears in the browsing animal
that crops and eats the leaf ; and still another in
the man who kills the animal. The lower forces
persist, but in each case the higher supersedes
them. The question is, Is there any force higher
than these ; any coming from outside nature and
yet capable of acting within nature? "Nature"
— the word — is, you remember, from the Latin

WHY NOT GIVE UP MIRACLES? 6 1
nascor, and means " the begotten, the born, the
evolved " ; can that which brought it into being
still act within it, and if so can it appear and be
recognized? It is apparent that nature is to-day in consid
erable disorder. The face of nature, at least, is
roughly disturbed, as the result of man's wrong
doing. Witness, for example, the effect of human
vice and crime, as it appears, not in the devasta
tion of war, but in the condition of man's own
body. See the long and bitter struggle he has
for existence, contending with the feebleness with
which he begins life and the heredity of disease
he finds in his system. Everything seems to con
spire against a successful issue of the contest. The
selfishness of his fellows, their greed, lusts, hates,
ambitions, combine with the entail of evil that
has come down from the past, if not to destroy
him, at least to take possession of him and add
him as another to the forces of destruction in
nature. We do not need revelation to inform us
that this is the consequence of sin. On all sides we
find evidence not only that sin to-day is universal,
but that it has been, if not from the beginning, at
least for a very long period — so long that the earth
itself bears enduring and startling record of it.
It certainly is reasonable to expect that God
will at some time deliver the earth from this
dominion of evil; it is not incredible that there

62 MODERN INQUIRIES
should be evidence of a redemptive process al
ready at work. Indeed, this is most reasonable
if there is a God, and the earth is not a self-con
stituted and self-perpetuating machine. It is not
necessary to assume that God is a " tinkerer of the
world," or to say with Theodore Parker, " There
is no whim in God, and therefore no miracle in
nature." It is enough to hold that God is not un
mindful of the world, not inhuman. He has at
heart, and always has had at heart, the welfare
of his creatures. The Christian, because he
believes in God, believes that he has planned re
demption from the beginning; therefore if mira
cles play an important part in the scheme of re
demption, there is not only no presumption against
them, but there is every reason to expect that they
will occur when they are needed.
What, then, is the evidence that they have oc
curred ? The way is certainly open to receive it.
Here are four ancient writings of unquestioned
authenticity. They never have been questioned
by any one worthy of attention. They are as cred
ible as any ancient writing in existence ; as cred
ible as any ancient writing need be. They are
Paul's letters to the Romans, Corinthians, and
Galatians. Their author, the Apostle Paul, was
an intelligent man of exceptionally fine character
— the kind of man who is to be believed as telling
the truth, or at least what he believes to be the

WHY NOT GIVE UP MIRACLES? 6$
truth. We find that in these letters he refers fre
quently to miracles — " signs, and wonders, and
mighty deeds " — that were wrought by him and
others, and were incidentally accepted by him and
them as connected with the work he was called to
do and the words he was commissioned to speak.
Many of these deeds — which he speaks of in the
most matter-of-fact way, as if they were so evi
dent and so numerous that they could not be ques
tioned — we have no means of testing. They were
the direct action of mind on mind, or of mind on
matter. But some of them we can test, and all
are so closely connected that they stand or fall
together. It cannot be questioned that spiritual
forces of unusual power emanated from Paul.
They are proved by the tremendous changes
wrought in the individuals and communities with
which he came in contact. Indeed, they are forces
which, through his writings, continue to this day.
These forces may well be called miraculous — that
is, these events are not produced by anything dis
coverable in nature. New men are made to-day,
in all that pertains to life and character, just as
they were made then — by the power that went
forth from the Apostle Paul.
But we must go a step further. We have to
observe Paul's relation to Jesus. Paul is very
careful to say that this power which he possessed
did not originate with him, nor was he taught it.

64 MODERN INQUIRIES
He received it as a gift from Jesus Christ. He
says, indeed, it was the result of Jesus' being in
him. On this point, at least, Paul is to be believed.
If he possessed extraordinary powers, what more
natural than that he should have claimed for him
self the full credit of them ? On the contrary, he
claims only secondary possession.
What Paul, then, had, Jesus had in a still higher
degree. Jesus must certainly have spoken words
as rare as Paul's. Jesus must have wrought deeds
as wonderful. When we find Paul, therefore,
staking both his life and his teachings upon the
greatest of all miracles, the resurrection of Jesus
from the dead, beyond the credibility of Paul
under such circumstances as a witness is the
probability of the event, as that probability arises
in the character and life of Jesus. It is exactly
what we should expect. The life is to-day here ;
we can handle it and see. Its story is told by
credible witnesses. It goes back to Jesus of
Nazareth. In its fullness it was in him. What
more natural than that he should work miracles,
when they were needed to bear witness to him,
or that he should give like power to chosen disci
ples? What more certain than that such as he
should not be at last subject to death ?
This, of course, is not a line of argument origi
nal with me. It is the common and natural one
on the lips of the thoughtful believer. It does

WHY NOT GIVE UP MIRACLES ? 65
not prove that Paul's miracles, or even those of
Jesus, were divine, you say. No, that, perhaps,
we cannot prove; but they are the result of a
power that resembles the action of the human
spirit in its noblest movement, and they infinitely
surpass it. A fair inference, then, is that it is the
power of God.
This, then, is to be said of the New Testament
miracles :
1. They are reasonable. They are what we
should expect. Natural forces are about us in
ascending series, leading up to the human will.
That is a force in nature, but altogether unique.
It seems to stand on the confines of the unknown,
prophetic of what is beyond. These New Testa
ment miracles are the acts of a noble nature, like
Paul's, in its noblest, its most exalted condition,
when it is open to the incoming of the world be
yond. In still higher form they appear in him
who is the Christ of God.
2. They are restorative of nature. They are
invariably beneficent, and they do not discredit
nature. In this sense they are no superseding or
tinkering of nature. They are simply the inter
vening of the hand of the Author of nature to
further the end for which nature exists.
3. They authenticate and advance the work of
redemption. Of this there cannot be question.
If Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners,

66 MODERN INQUIRIES
then his rising from the dead, and incidentally his
working of innumerable beneficent miracles, were
important, if not indispensable, factors in his task.
They are the natural and, indeed, the inevitable
expression of himself. And thus revealing him
as he is, and as otherwise he could not be known,
they make it vastly easier for men to believe in
him. It is idle, therefore, for any to assert that
miracles — meaning the New Testament miracles
— are an incumbrance to Christianity, or to imply
that either the Christian faith or the New Testa
ment can be delivered from them. Paul stated
the truth for all time when he said, " If Christ be
not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your
faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false
witnesses of God." And this the greatest of the
miracles attests the others.
Thus we are crowded back to this as the final
form of the question : Do you believe that God is
in his world ? Do you recognize him ? Do you
seek his miraculous aid to undo the effect of sin
in your own soul? The two conclusive state
ments are : " Except a man be born again, he can
not see the kingdom of God," and " He that hath
not the Son of God hath not life." I would con
vince you of the truth of the miracles because I
would persuade you that the saving of your own
soul is a miracle which the Lord Jesus Christ
stands at this hour ready and waiting to perform.

THE STORY OF JESUS

67

" When I trace the unaffected majesty which runs through the
life of Jesus, and see him never falling below his sublime claims
amid poverty and scorn and in his last agony, I have a feeling
of the reality of his character which I cannot express. I feel
that the Jewish carpenter could no more have conceived and sus
tained this character under motives of imposture than an infant's
arm could repeat the deeds of Hercules, or his unawakened in
tellect comprehend and rival the matchless works of genius."
Felix, in Liddon, " Bampton Lectures," p. 195.
" How a Jewish rabbi of philanthropic mind and somewhat
Socratic morals, with a few miracles, or, at least, what others
took for such, and the ability to utter a few gnomes and parables ;
how One who was this and nothing more, and who, were he only
this, were not fit to stand before Moses or Mohammed, could
have caused such an effect as a new religion and church — to be
able to conceive how this were possible one must first take leave
of his senses." Schleiermacher, in Fairbairn, "Theology," p. 231.

68

V
THE STORY OF JESUS
What, in a few words, are the facts about
Jesus, and what evidence is there for them ? A
letter has come to me asking whether there is
reason to believe that there ever was such a per
son, and whether the story of Jesus is not a myth
like many others.
Here are four documents called the Gospels.
They were certainly extant as early as the year
150 A.D. Hostile criticism has been crowded
back by indisputable evidence ; compelled to yield
decade after decade until it admits this. They
must all, therefore, have been written consider
ably before that time in order to have gained
general acceptance. There is strong evidence
that at least three of the four were written much
earlier. In any case they all bring us within one
hundred years of the life they describe. That is,
they may 'in this respect properly be compared
with such lives of Washington as are in our hands
to-day. Is there any serious difficulty in accept
ing these, or in estimating the facts they record ?
69

70 MODERN INQUIRIES
Does not all the world, so far as these lives of
Washington are read, know the main outlines of
his story, and place him correctly ? Would there
be any reason in talking of the "Washington
myth " ? Or, with the histories now extant care
fully preserved, is it conceivable that, say two
thousand years hence, he would become mythical ?
Yet the case is hardly a fair parallel. No one is
in antipathy to Washington, or finds any gain in
discrediting him; but there has not been a day
since Jesus lived when the bitterest enmity has
not been arrayed against him, doing all in its
power to overthrow his influence and create doubt
as to his career. In every century, almost in every
decade, of all this period his story has been the
subject of the most strenuous and hostile criticism.
Could a myth arise under such conditions ? If the
original narratives hold their ground; if faith in
him is not only not discredited, but, on the con
trary, has rapidly and steadily spread, until, in the
face of every opposition, and carrying with it the
requirement of fundamental reform in society and
in individual lives, to-day it extends around the
earth, and has come to be the very warp and woof
of civilization, is it not reasonable to ask of any
man that he cease caviling, and open his mind
freely to see what these narratives tell us in detail
about Jesus Christ?
The date of his birth is fixed with sufficient

THE STORY OF JESUS 7 1
accuracy. It was in the reign of the Roman em
peror Augustus Caesar, Herod the Great being
king in Judea. There are reasons for fixing the
year as the fifth before the beginning of our cur
rent chronology. His ostensible parents (for the
narratives are at one in describing his birth as
miraculous) were obscure Jewish peasants, though
of the genealogy of David. Their home was
Nazareth, in central Palestine, though he was
born in their ancestral town of Bethlehem, to
which, under a decree of the emperor, they had
gone to be registered in the imperial census.
The conditions of his birth were not unlike those
of many a famous man — Martin Luther's, for ex
ample, the miner's son in Eisleben. The differ
ence appears in the attending events. His rela
tives, who were also plain people, were strangely
moved. Neighboring shepherds on the hills of
Judea had visions, and came to the town to tell
his parents and friends what they had seen and
heard. And certain strangers, of the class of
soothsayers or astrologers, soon appeared coming
from a distance, bringing notable gifts and doing
reverence, impelled by some mysterious intima
tions they had received. Their coming, in con
nection with certain prophecies of the Old Testa
ment, attracted so much attention that Herod,
fearing the effect upon the Jews, and having
ambitions for establishing his own line in succes-

72 MODERN INQUIRIES
sion at Jerusalem, sent to Bethlehem and secured
the murder of all the male infants born there?
about that time, whose number could not have
been large. Jesus escaped only through his
parents' timely flight into Egypt.
In connection with the announcement of the
angels to the shepherds occurs a word destined
to become a future title of the child — the word
"Saviour." It is a Greek term of such dignity
that, according to Cicero, the Latin had no single
term to convey it. Salvator was afterward in
troduced for the purpose. It implies a power of
extraordinary and supernatural intervention, and
is used to indicate One who delivers from evils too
great for men to deliver themselves.
There are certain other intimations, given in a
prophetic way, of the great importance of the event
that has happened, but silence ensues for twelve
years ; then a remarkable incident occurs. His
parents, having in the meantime reestablished
their home in Nazareth, go up with their son to
the Passover at Jerusalem. On their return they
miss him, and going back to the city find him in the
temple, in a group gathered, according to the Jew
ish custom, about some scribes who are expound
ing the Old Testament law. Instead of being
taught, to the amazement of all he is teaching,
revealing an understanding and insight far be
yond his years. His only comment in reply to his

THE STORY OF JESUS 73
troubled parents is that he is " about his Father's
business." The important fact is that up to this hour he
has given apparently no intimation of his true
character and mission. He has lived a natural
child's life, so that his parents thought him with
the other children in the traveling company. He
has shown no assumption or pretense, and has
apparently laid no claim to extraordinary gifts.
He was simply a child like the others. Even
now he sets up no claims. He makes no attempt
to overthrow the existing order, or to reorganize
the world. Whatever may be revolving in his
mind, he seems to have entire confidence in the
ultimate power of the new life. He can wait for
what he knows is hidden within in the right time
to appear and do its work. He is found study
ing the Old Testament. He accepts God's plans
as to himself.
Again there is long silence. Jesus is about
thirty years old, still living in the humble carpen
ter's home in Nazareth, when John the Baptist, a
strenuous reformer, appears at the Jordan, draw
ing crowds and baptizing many in the acceptance
of the rigorous life he enjoins. To him Jesus
goes. John immediately recognizes him as su
perior to himself, introducing and commending to
him his choicest disciples ; and Jesus' public min
istry begins.

74 MODERN INQUIRIES
As if himself somewhat startled by the sudden
ness of his call, Jesus retires in solitude for some
forty days of self- scrutiny and inward struggle.
He emerges thoroughly prepared, and throws
himself into his work, winning an immediate fol
lowing from men who are to be his permanent
disciples, and working miracles which startle the
beholders and widely spread his fame.
The subsequent story covers a period of only
three years. The first was one of comparative
obscurity. He limits his mission largely to Judea
and the immediate neighborhood of Jerusalem.
He seems to be watching the effect of his mission
upon the Jews at the center of influence, or to be
giving time for an effect he is seeking. After the
first, what attention he attracts is largely hostile ;
and eventually he withdraws, driven out by fear
of Herod, as he had taken up successfully the
work of John the Baptist after Herod had cast
that troublesome reformer into prison.
The center of his ministry was now transferred
to Galilee. The second year was attended with
great success. Crowds everywhere flocked about
him. Miracle followed miracle, each more nota
ble than the other. He healed the sick, gave sight
to the blind, made the lame to walk, restored the
leper, and even raised the dead. He does not def
initely proclaim himself the expected Messiah of
Israel, and, indeed, does not say much about him-

THE STORY OF JESUS 75
self. He seems chiefly absorbed in doing good
and in teaching the kingdom of God as come in
him and illustrated in the life he leads. He gives
a great deal of time to a small group of men he
is training for the apostolate. His addresses are
remarkable, and his character comes out as pecu
liarly gracious, beautiful, and strong. He is always
calm and self-contained, impressing all with his
sinless perfection, and manifestly filled with an
absorbing love for men. He never is too weary
or too occupied to respond to any opportunity of
service to even the humblest.
The turning-point of his success occurs at the
opening of the third year. Returning from a brief
retirement with his disciples, a multitude met him
on the northeastern side of the Sea of Galilee.
Attracted at once by their need — for it was to
ward the close of a summer's day, and they were
tired, hungry, and far from their homes — he
wrought the notable miracle of feeding them
with the bits of barley-bread and the little fish
that constituted the uneaten lunch of a lad.
Awakening to what had been done, the multi
tude burst into loud applause, hailing him as the
Messiah, and proposing to march at once with
him to Jerusalem. Aware of the superficial and
unworthy character of their conceptions, he im
mediately withdrew ; and when they saw that he
was unprepared or unwilling to accept their sup-

76 MODERN INQUIRIES
port, with the characteristic fickleness of a mob
the crowd fell away from him, many who were
beginning to call themselves his disciples turning
back. He seems to have accepted the situation with
out perturbation or dismay. He begins quietly
to talk to the innermost circle of the disciples of
his failure and the certainty of his death. He
spends some six months with his disciples in re
tirement on the northern borders of Galilee, keep
ing out of the cities and even out of the public
thoroughfares. Then in an open and somewhat
formal manner he sets out for Jerusalem. Crowds
again gather about him; his fame spreads far
and wide ; he says and does many wonderful
things; but though the people seem even more
ready than before to surrender themselves to him,
his own spirit is not expectant. When he reaches
the neighborhood of Jerusalem he retires again
into obscurity, emerging only to bring back to
life his friend Lazarus, who in his absence has
sickened and died.
As the Passover approaches and the crowds in
crease, he reappears. He ascends by the main
highway from Jericho to Jerusalem, attended by
a great gathering of people coming to the feast.
Rumor has spread that he is coming, and crowds
flock out of the city to meet him. Seized with a
sudden impulse, they begin to wave branches they

THE STORY OF JESUS TJ
have broken from the trees ; and bursting into the
Hallel — their national hymn of praise — they pro
claim him king. Seated on an ass, quietly ac
cepting the tributes of the people, he enters the
city. Several days follow, in which he appears
daily in the temple, discoursing much of his con
stant theme, the kingdom of God as at hand,
and healing all who come to him, but making no
attempt to profit by the support of the people,
or even to create a party in his own favor.
At last the Jewish leaders, watching him closely,
and noting his seeming carelessness, or his failure
to profit by his opportunity, bribe one of his dis
ciples to betray him. As he withdraws from the
city in the evening, according to his custom, he
is seized, hurried before a hastily called meeting
of the sanhedrim, promptly tried and convicted,
and then taken before the Roman governor Pilate
for formal condemnation. There the charge is
that he had refused tribute, that he had stirred
up discontent, that he had made himself king, and
finally, that he called himself the Son of God. To
all this he made no reply further than quietly to
demur to the manifest untruth of the preliminary
accusations, and to admit and reaffirm the last.
You all know the story of Pilate's painful
struggle. He seemed to be on trial rather than
his prisoner, so certain was he of Jesus' innocence,
and yet himself so unprepared to protect him or

78 MODERN INQUIRIES
to meet the consequences of his release. But
there is no escape. Pilate yields, and Jesus is
hurried away to crucifixion. We need not go
into the details of that scene, the one event in all
history. The Saviour is put to an awful death,
amid circumstances so impressive that even nature
seemed to stand still. Darkness enwrapped the
sky, and the earth quaked. His death is unques
tioned, and Christianity was, to all appearances,
ended. In fact, Christianity, the religion of the Lord
Jesus Christ, the one permanent life-giving force
in the world, then begins. For on the morning
of the third day Jesus rose from the dead. He
showed himself alive by many infallible proofs
and to many witnesses. He proclaimed his sac
rificial work accomplished and his true ministry
begun. Henceforth he is to live in the hearts
and lives of his followers. His witness is not to
be sought in miracles — for after a few utterances
of those who have personally known him, his
message is sufficiently accredited — but it is to be
had in Christianity, the new life from God that is
fast possessing the world. To that our appeal is
to-day. Here is Christianity, not so much a force
everywhere entering into human society, laying
the only enduring foundations for law, for free
dom, for growth, for all blessing, but everywhere
coming to the individual, to comfort, to restore,

THE STORY OF JESUS 79
to guide, to uplift, to make new men and women
in Christ Jesus — the life from God, which to-day
has brought God near to us all. It must be ac
counted for. The only explanation lies in the
confession of the Roman centurion standing at
the foot of the cross : " Truly this was the Son of
God."

VI
HOW FAR IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED?

" The change that has made our idea of man and society so
unlike the ancient is a change that begins with the notion of God
and his law that came through Moses. This is a simple matter
of historic fact and certainty. No code of antiquity possessed,
in anything like the same degree, so exalted a notion of man, of
the rights of man, of the dignity of man's labor, of his duties, of
his moral worth and obligations, of his claim to reap and possess
the harvest of profit or of plenty his own hands had sowed."
Fairbairn, " Religion in History," p. 137.
"It is the same narrative, and yet one would be blind not to
perceive that the signification has become altogether different.
What formerly expressed naturalistic conceptions of a singular
grossness here becomes the garb of moral truths of the most
exalted and most purely spiritual nature.
"Between the Bible and the sacred books of Chaldea there is
all the distance of one of the most tremendous revelations which
have ever been effected in human beliefs. Herein consists the
miracle. Others may seek to explain this by the simple natural
progress of the conscience of humanity; for myself, I do not
hesitate to find in it the effect of a supernatural intervention of
divine Providence ; and I bow before the Lord God who inspired
the law and the prophets. " Francois Lenormant.
" The rationalism of this day will give you good words as far
as they go, but will empty them of their meaning. It will say,
in its sense, that the prophets spake by the Holy Ghost (i.e., as
all which is good and true is spoken by inspiration of the Spirit
of God), and will ask of you in exchange to drop the words, or
at least the meaning, of the Creed, that God the Holy Ghost
' spake by the prophets.' It will say to you that the prophets
were ' elevated by a divine impulsion, ' and grant you ' an intensi
fied presentiment,' but only in the sense common to the higher
conditions of humanity, even unaided by the Grace of God. It
will acknowledge a fallible inspiration — fallible even as to matters
of every-day morality — and will ask of you to surrender the
belief in the infallible. It will descant on the love of God, if you
will surrender your belief in his awful Holiness and Justice ; it
will speak with you of Heaven, if you, with it, will suppress the
mention of Hell." Pusey, " Daniel," pp. 452, 453.

VI
HOW FAR IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED?
No question is of more living interest than the
question of inspiration. No faith is older in the
human heart than faith in inspiration. The song,
" If ye will inquire, inquire ye," has been the
voice which men have heard in their hearts from
the beginning; and in spite of all the effects of
transgression and all the allurements of the things
that are seen conspiring to shut men out from the
things that are not seen, the heart of man has in
sisted upon believing that that inclination to in
quire of the unseen is genuine, and that it brings
to him possibilities which are the noblest and the
most needed of any of which he is conscious. In
all forms of religion, in all ages of the world, men
have believed that the gods have found some way
to communicate their thoughts and desires to their
worshipers, some way of opening to them definite
knowledge of duty.
Now the question before us as Christians is not
what there may be of inspiration in other religions,
83

84 MODERN INQUIRIES
for Christianity differs from all other religions in
that it presents a book as containing a record of
all that God has vouchsafed to do in revealing
himself and in opening a way of salvation for
men ; and it holds that the book contains so full
a record of that revelation that nothing need be
added to it either for the guidance of the church
or the salvation of the individual.
We do not ask whether some hymn that we
love is inspired, such as "Jesus, lover of my
soul," for example; or some mighty poem that
has spoken to the human heart for centuries ; or
some moving piece of music ; or some ancient
liturgy; for we are persuaded, in common with
the Christian world, that all there is of worth in
the hymn or poem or song or liturgy came from
the Word of God. No new spiritual truth has
been given to the world outside of this book ; the
sources and sanction of all are to be found here.
Therefore for the Christian to-day the question
of inspiration is as to what is the evidence that
the writings within these covers differ from all
other writings, and differ to this extent.
The church — as it believes, under the divine
guidance — has been led to select these writings
and preserve them in this form, and then to con
sider the collection a complete guide and rule for
the Christian life; so that the church now only
asks for growing light to understand the Bible.

HOW FAR IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 85
One thing ought to be said at the beginning,
and that is, if any man is not a Christian the ques
tion of inspiration is not for him ; for if these
writings are the authentic record of God's deal
ings with men — that is, if they were written by
men who were honest and trustworthy — then,
wholly apart from their inspiration, they are
sufficient to mark for every man the path of per
sonal duty with reference to repentance and faith
in the love of God. The church presents the
book chiefly as the testimony of men who lived in
the times of which they wrote, and who knew that
that of which they wrote really took place; and
it now offers it to every man as furnishing a suffi
cient guide in the way of life. The experience of
men, in all lands and in all ages, has been that no
matter what may be thought of the method in
which these writings were produced, or whatever
may be their relation to the unseen God, they
are sufficient to lead any inquiring mind to the
light and to the truth. So that faith in God, re
pentance for sin, and an opening path of peace are
offered to all, wholly apart from any doctrine of
inspiration. The question of inspiration is to be
determined afterward — after the man has come to
know for himself what there is in the Bible. Then
it will be of interest to him to know more about
this book which has done so much for him. How
came it to be what it is ?

86 MODERN INQUIRIES
In answering this question we are compelled to
take the Bible as a whole. We must take it in
the light of its own history — this book which for
so many centuries has been wrapped up with the
tenderest feelings and the noblest experiences of
human hearts. In earliest days the Christians
were a group of persecuted people who gathered
about the book, to whom it spoke of their God,
who gained strength for daily service, encourage
ment for heroic action, and a beautiful serenity of
life — all of which resulted in making their faith
and their conduct entirely different from that
which the world produced. And through the
subsequent centuries the same has been true. In
any land in which the Bible is read exactly the
same scenes are reproduced. Whether among
the savages of the South Pacific, or in central
Africa, or among the Indians on our far Western
plains, or in any community in Europe, wherever
a group gathers about the Bible it is found to be
all that it has been from the beginning — a com
fort, a strength, an inspiration, alike to the in
dividual and the community. What glorious and
precious memories cluster about it! It is the
book of our childhood ; the book that has been
instrumental in regulating our own growing man
hood ; the book that everywhere is regarded as
laying the foundation of all civilized society, and
to-day means more to the world and is doing

HOW FAR IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 87
more for the world than all other literature com
bined. Now, when we begin to ask questions about
the Bible, or, more particularly, to ask questions
of it, we find it full of God. Ask about nature.
It says that nature came from God: " In the be
ginning God created the heaven and the earth."
Ask about man. God made man "in his own
image. ' ' Ask about the unfolding of the life of the
Jews. " The Lord talked with Moses," " and God
spake all these words " — as he led his people out
of Egypt. So with the Psalms. They are full of
God. " O God, thou art my God," is the joyful
testimony. The prophets came bearing the bur
den of the law on their hearts. What they had
received, whether they understood the meaning
of the message or not, they delivered as a mes
sage from God. And when, in the New Testa
ment, the Saviour begins to speak of the coming
of the kingdom of God, he represents it as fulfilled
in himself. This, then, is the first answer to the
question, Why has the Bible to-day this power
over human hearts? It is full of God. Wher
ever men open it, it always answers them with
something new about God ; and that something
new about God has always been characteristic of
a revelation. At the beginning the Bible tells us of God's
doings, of God's character, of God's purposes and

88 MODERN INQUIRIES
plans ; and no man could have derived this know
ledge in any other way than by what we call " rev
elation." It contains the record of God's dealings
with men. It is true that God sometimes spoke
to men whose names we do not know; but we
have here an authentic record of a progressive
series of revelations leading to a definite result.
And as we read the record we find that it is
characterized by a singular vitality. It is not such
truth as we read in the newspapers — a great deal
of which has no value to us. The characteristic
of these truths is that they have been marked by
a singular productiveness, and wherever they have
been given to men the lives of men have begun at
once to change for the better.
Our Hebrew Bible, as you doubtless all know,
is divided into three parts. The first is from
Adam to Moses. The second embraces the
prophets and the Psalms, forming a progres
sive revelation from Moses to Malachi. Then a
third group, made up of various miscellaneous
books — Chronicles, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Job,
etc. — gives what we may call the record of the
assimilation of this revelation.
The New Testament takes this in the first in
stance as sufficient authority, and bases its own
right to a hearing on what it finds of the pro
phecies that have proved true, adding what it has
received in the same fashion. Jesus Christ stands

HOW FAR IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 89
before his hearers and appeals to those things re
corded in the Old Testament, in which " holy men
of God spake as they were moved by the Holy
Ghost. ' ' The Bible thus gives us first-hand know
ledge about God and his relations to men, and then
it makes clear how God has been working in these
directions through all the centuries. Its purpose
is " not to show what the Jews were doing for God,
but rather what God was doing for the world
through the Jews."
Now there are two distinct sets of questions
about the Bible, just as there are two sets of ques
tions about everything with which we have to deal
in life. I receive a telegram. I open it, and find
it is from a friend. It tells me where that friend
is, what he is doing, whether he is sick or well ;
in short, all about him. Then I may ask, By what
line did the message come ? how much were the
charges? who brought it? when did it arrive?
— all questions that you recognize as relatively
unimportant. So in regard to the Bible ; there are two distinct
groups of questions: questions of high impor
tance, Who is it from? what is the message?
etc. ; questions of lesser importance, By whose
hand did it come? in what form? and at what
time ? You see at once that the latter are rela
tively secondary. We have reason to be sure
that God sent this message, and that he secured

90 MODERN INQUIRIES
the proper means for sending it. We are also
sure that men of all conditions have found it the
message which their hearts have most needed.
So the questions which are of the highest class
verify themselves.
Then we come to ask, How did God communi
cate this ? We may reply that there are two dis
tinct answers to the question of inspiration. One
is that God accomplished his purpose by " abso
lute inspiration " — that is, God spoke directly to
men, and made them write as he wished, as one
would dictate to a type-writer. But I believe that
the church never held that view ; and there is no
evidence of this method in the use to which the
Bible has been put.
On the contrary, there is abundant evidence
that God used men of widely different kinds :
now a shepherd like Amos, and now a city-bred
man like Isaiah ; now a singer like David, and now
some unknown writer like the author of the Book
of Chronicles ; now a king, and now some humble
peasant; now a learned man like Paul, and now
a man like Matthew the publican. He chose all
kinds of men, who were alike in one single re
spect : that they were men who were willing to be
wholly men of God. " God at sundry times and in
divers manners spake . . . unto the fathers by the
prophets." The one universal characteristic of all
the men through whom God has sent his message

HOW FAR IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 91
to the world is that they were men who were will
ing to surrender themselves to be used by God's
Spirit, and that God used them just as they were,
and so they spoke with their whole being ; as when
Jeremiah, for example, called to deliver his mes
sage to the people who were about to be led
away into captivity, feels himself but a child ; and
Moses delivered his message with " stammering
speech." But in every instance, when the Spirit
of the Lord came upon them their whole person
ality went into the message. John has written
for us the message which no one could have
written but the beloved disciple — he who was
nearest to the Master, and leaned upon his
breast ; Paul, one of the bravest of men, who
laid down his life, " counting it not dear unto
himself," has written another charged with all the
earnestness of his intense and consecrated nature.
The difference between the two messages is the
difference between the two men !
A friend sends to me a message of the recovery
of some dear one of whose life all had despaired.
He is anxious only that I shall receive the mes
sage quickly. What matters it if it comes on the
lips of a child or of a servant, provided I may trust
the messenger? And so God has sent to the
world this revelation of himself, giving a portion
of it to each of many different messengers.
Then, when we open to any one of these books

92 MODERN INQUIRIES
we find everywhere testimony to this fact — the
consciousness of the inadequacy of the messenger
himself. He feels himself " slow of speech," he
finds himself " as a child," or he speaks of himself,
as Paul did, as "in speech contemptible" ; and in
many instances the message is too large for the
man. Paul spoke of having seen things which it
was not lawful for him to utter, as did John in his
apocalyptic vision. In each instance there is a
divine guidance sufficient to make up for the in
efficiency of the man. It is an adequate inspira
tion ; God has a purpose, and he sees that it does
not fail.
Now that is what we are to understand by
inspiration. It is God's presence in the men
through whom he spoke, securing the truth of
the utterance in such a way that it shall be ade
quate to the divine purpose. The Bible may be
faulty because of the human instrumentalities
used, just as any message is faulty on human lips.
It is unnecessary to prove it absolutely devoid of
mistakes. It is historical, veracious, trustworthy.
This we can prove. Furthermore, it speaks to
our hearts. We hear it. We recognize it as the
voice of our Father. Now the Bible could never
have been what it is but for the Holy Spirit guid
ing men to write the truth which had at first been
made known to their hearts. It is infallible, then,
so far as is essential to lead men to God ; for God's

HOW FAR IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 93
Spirit guided it for that particular purpose. We
have proof abundant that it is true in this respect.
Beyond that we make no claim. God has spoken
to men in this way so that they might hear his
voice and know him ; and, hearing his voice and
knowing him, they find life in believing his
words. How far, then, is the Bible inspired? It is
inspired so far as to make these writings an au
thoritative message from God to man. In this
respect it differs from all other writings. Inspi
ration, if it is, as some claim, a present posses
sion of the human heart, has now this as its sole
function : not to give new messages, but to help
men to interpret the message which God has
given once for all through the men selected for
that purpose. The messenger who is sent to me
with a message from a sick friend was not sent to
teach me how to spell or how to read English.
He was sent to tell me all about that friend — his
condition, his hope of recovery. So when God's
messengers were sent to men they were sent for
the single purpose of telling them about him. In
the one case, as in the other, I must make out the
message under the limitations of the messenger.
Nor is the Bible so far inspired as to compel us
to seek evidence of the same manner of inspira
tion in all the writings. As I have shown you,
God has spoken in different ways through these

94 MODERN INQUIRIES
different men. "A little child shall lead them;"
and many a man who has been wandering from
God finds his heart touched, and his conscience
awakened, by the prattling questions of his little
child — asking him why he is not a Christian, and
why he does not pray ; and so the congregation
which has not been stirred by any eloquence is
melted to tears by the broken sentences of some
ignorant man who rises to tell what God has done
for his soul. God chooses the foolish things of
this world to confound the wise, and the weak
things to overcome the mighty. He uses igno
rant men to bear his message because he will
have us intent to hear, not man's voice, but God's.

VII

JESUS' DOCTRINE OF THE KINGDOM OF
HEAVEN

95

" The unaccomplished mission of Christianity is to reconstruct
society on the basis of brotherhood. What it has to do it does,
and will do, in and through organization. At once profoundly
individual and profoundly socialistic, its tendency to association
is not so much an incident of its history as an essential element
of its character. It spiritualizes that ineradicable instinct which
draws man to man, and makes society not a convention, but a
necessity." Hatch, " Bampton Lectures," p. 216.

96

VII
JESUS' DOCTRINE OF THE KINGDOM OF
HEAVEN
The sentiment running through all these hymns
in which we have united with the Christian world
to-day (Palm Sunday) in praising the Lord Jesus
Christ as Lord and King is enough to show to any
thoughtful mind that the conception of the king
dom as connected with Jesus Christ is something
entirely different from the conception that goes
with that word in its ordinary use. And that
idea of the kingdom of Jesus Christ has just now
gained a great hold upon the thoughts of men.
It is not only widely discussed, but it is recognized
as carrying within itself the panacea which is to
furnish healing for the ills under which the world
is suffering. This is not too much to expect of
the kingdom of God.
It is important for us to understand what the
kingdom of God is, and what are the methods by
which it is to do its work, lest we be tempted to
impatience with its ways, or mistake the signs of
the times as to our own duty. The first words
97

98 MODERN INQUIRIES
on the lips of the Saviour were regarding the
gospel of the kingdom. It was the message of
glad tidings, and yet something more than a
message. It was already the gospel, in the sense
in which we understand that word in the light of
all the Christian centuries in which the Spirit of
God has been dwelling in the hearts of men, mak
ing real to a multitude the personal experience of
the new birth. So that as the Saviour preached
to a suffering world the gospel of the kingdom,
he, at least, was conscious that he was proclaim
ing the new power and the new life for the world.
In this respect the gospel of the kingdom on
the lips of the Saviour differed entirely from the
kingdom of heaven which John the Baptist pro
claimed as at hand. The Saviour said of John
that he was the greatest of the prophets, and yet
he was only the herald of the new kingdom. He
was a Jew filled with the conception of the com
ing Messiah that then occupied men's minds, and
yet so far inspired of God as to be free from many
of the crudities and absurdities to which the Jews
were subject. Still the only gospel which John
was permitted to utter was elementary. He said
to the assembled people, " Let each do right ; op
press no man; be content with what you earn."
As he saw multitudes hanging upon his words,
only to turn away conscious that they had received
a message too heavy for them, he settled into de-

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 99
spondency, and there rested upon him that shadow
of despair and isolation which already rested in a
greater degree upon all the world. So that we
think of John the Baptist as one dwelling apart,
as " the voice of one crying in the wilderness,"
out of touch with the world, because he was con
scious that the world did not receive his message.
How different are the first utterances of the
Saviour, in which he proclaimed the kingdom of
heaven as already come! The nature of the
kingdom he announced was made plain at the very
outset. You remember his interview with the
Jewish rabbi at night, and how he summed up in
a single sentence the whole condition of things :
" Except a man be born again, he cannot enter
[cannot even see] the kingdom of heaven." Here
is one proclaiming a method new as compared with
any that John the Baptist had taught ; bringing
to men, at the very beginning, hope, as well as
the promise of pardon and a new life. And not
only was this to begin with the power of God
coming down into the hearts and lives of sinful
and despairing men, but it was also to be, in all
its relations, a spiritual kingdom ; it was to work
from within outward. " My kingdom is not of
this world," was the Saviour's final answer to
Pilate. " Neither shall they say, Lo here ! or, lo
there ! " was another ; " for, behold, the kingdom
of God is within you."

IOO MODERN INQUIRIES
This kingdom was already begun in the com
ing of Jesus himself into the world. It issued
from his heart, and was seen in his beautiful life.
It passed out from him in his deeds ; as when he
took by the hand the dead daughter of Jairus,
and said unto her, " Maid, arise. And her spirit
came again, and she arose straightway." The
method of that divine life — working outward
from within — the Saviour did not explain. He
simply illustrated it. It was left to the writers of
the Epistles to explain it more fully ; Paul sums
it all up when he says, " What the law could not
do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God
sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh,
and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." " What
the law could not do " — that is, John the Baptist
and the prophets ; because no effort on the part
of man could forgive sin — what the law could not
do even in its best estate, God sending his own Son
in the likeness of sinful flesh has done : a new life
has entered the heart of every man who believes.
The kingdom of heaven has come, and is within
you. Now what is the result of the Spirit of God com
ing into the hearts of men ? " He that raised up
Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mor
tal bodies," says Paul. Now we understand why
it is that we are called to be perfect even as Jesus
is perfect; why all are to put on the likeness of

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IOI
Jesus Christ. We are all in the church as one
body, all helping one another. We are to attain
at last to the measure of the stature of the per
fect man, which is to be like Christ. It is only
the fulfilment, the accomplishment, of the divine
Spirit working in us. You see it in the life of
every man who has accepted Christ. Go to any
mission in this city and listen to the story of one
of the saved men. He will say : " I was a drunk
ard, a prodigal, a gambler ; and so many months,
weeks, or nights ago I came into this mission, and
here I heard the story of Jesus Christ's dying to
save poor, weak, fallen men. I felt myself the
lowest of the low, the vilest of the vile ; and I got
down on my knees and said, ' O God, canst thou
save such a man as I am ? I believe thou art not
only able, but willing.' And God heard my
prayer; a new life came into my heart, and a
new song in my mouth, even praises to his name.
I went out of this place with the same old clothes
on, the same man externally ; but within all
was changed. I knew I had a new heart. Old
things had passed away ; behold, all things had
become new. Ever since that time I have loved
the things that God loves, and hated the things
that God hates. I have turned away from drink
and gambling and bad companions, and in the
place of misery and unrest I have a loving wife
and a happy home; in short, the garden of my

102 MODERN INQUIRIES
life has begun to blossom in the Lord Jesus
Christ." That story can be heard every day and night
in New York, or wherever a company of Chris
tians gather to tell what the Lord has done for
their souls. But that is not all ; for the Apostle
proceeds, in that eighth chapter of Romans, to tell
how " the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in
pain together until now. ' ' He describes the condi
tion of the world as it is to-day. But he goes on
to say it is waiting for the redemption which God
in his own good time is going to accomplish even
for nature. That, then, is the fulfilment of the
coming of the kingdom of God, of which Christ
proclaimed merely the outward fact; and this is
the method of it : it begins by making a man new
in his own eyes because he is new in God's eyes;
and the light works from him outward until na
ture itself is blessed. The darkness falls from
the eyes of the blind ; the tongue of the dumb is
loosed ; the ears of the deaf are unstopped ; and
to the poor the gospel is preached, without money
and without price. The law of the kingdom is
simply the law of love. " The Son of man came
not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to
give his life a ransom for many." This, then, is
the law of the kingdom : " Love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy strength, and with all thy mind," in

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 103
order that the new life may be realized in you ;
and then " love thy neighbor as thyself."
Here we have also the conditions of the growth
of the kingdom. How many illustrations there
were of the power of his love in the brief years of
the Saviour's ministry ! How it at once changed
the lives of those with whom he came in contact !
He is talking with the woman at the well — a
woman so degraded and hopeless that she was
despised by her companions and reduced to the
necessity of toiling drearily for a living. But how
that heart and mind enlarged under the truth
which Jesus revealed to her ! " If thou knewest
the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee,
Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of
him, and he would have given thee living water.
Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst
again : but whosoever drinketh of the water that
I shall give him shall never thirst ; but the water
that I shall give him shall be in him a well of
water springing up into everlasting life." How
her ears opened to that declaration ! " God is a
Spirit : and they that worship him must worship
him in spirit and in truth." What a revelation
to her soul! Now she is hungering and thirst
ing for a knowledge of the new life that comes
from God. A new impulse has come into her
heart. At once she forgets herself ; she leaves her
water-pot, she runs back to the city, and going

104 MODERN INQUIRIES
into the very circle where her life was a shame
and a reproach, she cries out, " Come, see a man,
which told me all things that ever I did : is not
this the Christ?" "And many of the Samari
tans of that city believed on him for the saying
of the woman, which testified, He told me all
that ever I did." "And many more believed
because of his own word " — because they had
heard him for themselves. See how quickly the
work was done ; it was like the sudden opening
of a flower.
So it was, again, with the Syrophenician woman.
She had a sick child, and she besought Jesus that
he would heal her. Jesus replied, " It is not meet
to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the
dogs." "And she answered and said unto him,
Yes, Lord : yet the dogs under the table eat of
the children's crumbs." How quick the wit !
how keen the insight ! And Jesus, looking with
amazement upon her said, " For this saying go
thy way ; the devil is gone out of thy daughter."
The transformation had begun in a moment, just
as the life begins in a man, or in a church or a mis
sion, or anywhere, when ears are opened. First
of all, believe in the divine life that is in Jesus,
and then recognize that that life attests itself by
working from within outward. The summons is
to our whole being, and the response is in new
powers. The believer grasps larger thoughts,

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 1 05
feels a larger life, and is indeed a new man in
Christ Jesus.
Now what are some of the agencies by which
the kingdom is doing its work in the world ? First
there is the family. The husband and wife become
conscious of a new power in their own hearts, with
their first knowledge of their love for each other.
The love of the husband and the wife, God-given,
centers in the life of their child; and, as that life
unfolds, the family is set up, becoming the true
unit of the kingdom. In it permanent, progres
sive life becomes possible. Then there is the
state, a combination of families for the common
good, in which the administration is of all and by
all and for the best good of all. Then there is
the necessity of daily toil, as the great gift of God
to man, and all forms of trade and commerce in
which man's well-being is promoted. Art and
literature are its servants, and science of every
kind, as they carry its message or open the way
for its progress. Then there are all the schemes
of moral reform for the elevation of politics, for
improving the condition of the poor, for the
prevention of cruelty, and the like. All these
become at once testimony to the establishment
of the kingdom among men, and the mighty in
struments by which God is doing his work in
the world.
Then we come to the church, as practically

106 MODERN INQUIRIES
identical with the progress of the kingdom. You
remember how it was announced by the Lord at
Csesarea Philippi. The shadow of the cross had
begun to reach out toward the Saviour as he talks
to his followers about his death. He asked,
"Whom do men say that I, the Son of man,
am?" And they replied in one way and an
other. "But whom say ye that I am?" Peter
exclaimed, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the
living God." Jesus replied, "Blessed art thou,
Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not
revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is
in heaven. And I say also unto thee, that thou
art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my
church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it." So the church becomes at once
identical with the kingdom. The kingdom, as
we have seen, begins with the coming of the Spirit
of God into a man's heart ; and the Saviour says
that is where the church begins. Before the man
makes his confession the kingdom is unobservable.
It may be real. The man has the gift of life, but
he is not aware of it. The moment he stands
by Peter's side and makes Peter's confession, that
moment he takes his place in the kingdom.
Now you see what the characteristics of the new
kingdom are. It is founded on Jesus, just as it
had its beginning in him. It is testified to by his
followers. In the church it finds its home. The

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN \07
much-mooted question to-day is, Is the church
really the kingdom of God? Will not the king
dom be brought about more effectually if men
turn from the church and go out into the world
to busy themselves with its reforms and philan
thropies — setting aside the question of religion
and taking up simply that of morality? Now
the fact is that those times in which morality has
been most talked about are the times when it has
been practised the least. In the last century
Bishop Butler said he visited many different
churches in London, and could not tell from any
thing he heard whether the preacher believed in
Christ, Buddha, or Mohammed. The church was
preaching the kingdom of God then as society
would have us preach it to-day. But how did
Christ answer the world which was seeking to
find the kingdom of God outside the church?
The answer came in the revival under the Wes-
leys and Whitefleld, in which the world was called
back to the central truth that there is no kingdom
except where it is found in the individual heart,
and where Christ is made its center and end.
The answer to the worldly kingdom of the eigh
teenth century is the Spirit-filled kingdom of the
nineteenth century — the most wonderful century
in all the Christian history ; the century of foreign
missions, the Sunday-school, the Young Men's
Christian Association, great and wide-reaching

108 MODERN INQUIRIES
philanthropies and educational movements, and,
above all, of that true form of Christian socialism
which is calling upon the rich and the wise to
come out of their palaces and their sanctums and
make their wealth and their knowledge contribute
to the good of their fellow-men. Men point to
the Salvation Army as an indication of what may
be done outside of the church. Where did it
arise? From what does it draw much of its
power to-day ? From men in the church. It is
only one of the many forms of the church. It is
made up of men who are giving to Christ his
proper place in their lives, and, in open confes
sion of him, working ever in the blessed conscious
ness of the indwelling power of the Holy Ghost.
What, then, are the promises of the perma
nency of the kingdom of God for the future?
Jesus said, " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto
the end of the world;" " It is expedient for you
that I go away : for if I go not away, the Com
forter will not come unto you ; but if I depart, I
will send him unto you." Because the Spirit of
God abides in the church we have the promise
and guaranty that the church of God will abide ;
that it will remain true to its Master, and that
the trust that has been committed to it will be
kept unto the end.
The Saviour illustrated this in many beautiful
ways. Take the parable of the sower. Some

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 1 09
of the seed falls into good soil, some among
thorns, some on the rocks where there is little
depth of earth. All grow together until the
harvest. You remember the parable well. So
it is with the church. How often men have said
to me, " I never could become a member of your
church while such and such a man is in it ; I never
could sit in church with such a man " ! The tares
and the wheat grow up together. " Let every
one that nameth the name of Christ depart from
iniquity," is the law; we must continue in the
world in order to meet the test.
Take the parable of the wedding-feast. Those
that were bidden would not come, and the king
said to his servants, " The wedding is ready, but
they which were bidden were not worthy. Go ye
therefore into the highways, and as many as ye
shall find, bid to the marriage;" and so the wed
ding was crowded with guests — just as to-day
you see Japan, China, and the far islands of the
sea coming into the kingdom, and many right
here in New York still without.
But the final time for the kingdom is illustrated
by the parable of the mustard-seed. Christ said
it was " like to a grain of mustard-seed, which a
man took, and sowed in his field : which indeed
is the least of all seeds : but when it is grown, it
is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree,
so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the

IIO MODERN INQUIRIES
branches thereof." These are all proofs of the
permanency of the kingdom. It is of the Lord,
purchased by his precious blood, watched over
by his unceasing love. And the triumph of the
kingdom is at hand ; " but of that day and hour
knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven,
but my Father only."
Now what are the conditions of membership in
the kingdom ? " Jesus called a little child unto
him, and set him in the midst of them, and said,
Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted,
and become as little children, ye shall not enter
into the kingdom of heaven." The kingdom
goes on its benign way, doing its blessed work
among men ; and will you continue to stand
by the wayside sneering at it? You understand
nothing of it, and never will, until you come as a
little child, freed from self-righteousness and false
pride ; come to receive and not to give ; saying,
" Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? Give me
a place in thy kingdom." Until men come in
that way they can have no part or lot in it. Nor
can they do anything that will really count in the
work of the world until they have found the life
of the kingdom in their own hearts. Without
that they are walking and working in darkness.
Without that they are building a house on the
sands; and the wind and storm will come and
beat upon it, and it will fall.

VIII
WHY DOES NOT GOD CONVERT MEN?

"If it is necessary, viewed from any standpoint, that eventu
ally men must be reconciled to God, then human freedom is only
seeming." Ulrici, " Gott und die Natur," p. 727.
"I am a nobler substance than the stars; or are they better
since they are bigger ? I have a will and faculties of choice — to
do or not to do, and reason why I do or not do this — the stars
have none. They know not why they shine, more than this
taper; nor how they work, nor what." Old Drama.

VIII
WHY DOES NOT GOD CONVERT MEN?
There are those who stumble before this ques
tion : " If God is all-powerful and all lives are in
his hand, and if he is a loving God, why does he
not make men what he wants them to be? " The
question is connected with many of the most in
tricate problems of human life — the problem of
sin, and why it exists ; the problem of pain, and
its meaning ; and of future punishment. No one
can live long in this world without sooner or later
being crowded up against these mysteries. After
the great German preacher and philosopher,
Schleiermacher, had lost his only son he said :
" Many have written me letters which they in
tended to be words of comfort. They said to me,
' God has taken away your child, perhaps to save
him from the evils of the world;' and my heart
at once replied, ' Could not God who gave him to
me keep him from those evils and still leave him
with me ? ' Others have written, ' God has taken
away your child because he would chasten you;'
"3

114 MODERN INQUIRIES
and my heart answered, ' Must God cut off the
beautiful life of my boy in order to chasten me,
his father?' No, there is no comfort for me in
such suggestions." Where did he find his con
solation ? He said : " Only when I let myself
sink as a little child into the arms of my Father,
content to rest in those arms, knowing nothing
more than that they are about me, am I sustained
and comforted."
And yet those questions do arise, and always
have arisen, and must be dealt with. An incident
in the Saviour's life shows how pertinent they were
in his day. John tells us, in the tenth chapter of
his Gospel, that as Jesus was walking in the temple,
in Solomon's porch, certain of the Jews came to
him. It was after he had been doing many of his
most notable miracles, and when everything about
him suggested the revelation which God was mak
ing. They said, " How long dost thou make us
to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly."
It was a natural desire. Men want conclusive
evidence. They want to know what God does
and why he does it. On every side there are
those who are in earnest ; why, then, does not
God do what he wants to have done ? Why does
he not disclose that concerning himself and his
ways which, perhaps, would lead men into light
and peace? This is the question before us.
In this case what had the Saviour already re-

WHY DOES NOT COD CONVERT MEN? 115
vealed of himself? It was the winter before the
crucifixion, so that his whole ministry lay behind
him. What that ministry was you all know.
At the very beginning he had laid claim to being
the Messiah, and had been recognized as such.
John himself tells us of the interview with Na
thanael, in which Jesus, seeing Nathanael coming
unto him, said of him, " Behold an Israelite in
deed, in whom is no guile!" Nathanael an
swered, " Whence knowest thou me ? " Jesus re
plied, " Before that Philip called thee, when thou
wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee;" and Na
thanael answered him, " Rabbi, thou art the Son
of God; thou art the King of Israel." Then had
come those later interviews with Nicodemus
and others, in which he opened the deepest
truths to men's hearts, and professed such divine
knowledge that there could be no question as to
what he, at least, held himself to be. He said,
for example, in the fifth chapter of John : " Verily,
verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing
of himself, but what he seeth the Father do : for
what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the
Son likewise" — claiming oneness in power, in
scope of work, with the Father himself. And
again in the same chapter he uttered the most
conclusive claim : " For as the Father hath life in
himself ; so hath he given to the Son to have life
in himself."

Il6 MODERN INQUIRIES
At the very beginning he had asserted his
oneness with the Father, and had said that he
was the center and source of that light and life
which, coming from God, had reached the heart
of man; and to sustain that affirmation he had
wrought the miracles, the effect of which was
to lead men to believe. All his discourses had
pointed out the facts concerning himself and his
mission. Yet here were men who had seen all
and heard all, but who found themselves sepa
rated from others, in that others believed while
they did not. They come and say to him, " If
you want us to believe, why do you not give us
evidence which will compel us to believe? " Just
as men say to-day, " If God wants us to be Chris
tians, why does he not make us Christians? "
This at once raises some important questions.
How is belief accomplished ? What brings about
conversion in any life? On all sides men say,
" Give us facts!" — as if the mere presentation of
facts brings conviction. But surely something
more than this is necessary.
Take an illustration. How, for example, do
you see ? In the field of vision there are always
innumerable objects — hundreds of faces before
me now ; in the street, hundreds of signs over the
shops and stores as you pass. You do not see
them all, although they are all before your eyes,
until suddenly your attention is arrested; then

WHY DOES NOT GOD CONVERT MEN? 1 17
you observe that sign or notice that person.
Something more is necessary than the mere
presence of an object.
The same thing is true of the ear. How do
you hear? I was talking, not long ago, with an
engineer in his engine-room, when suddenly he
sprang forward and turned a handle. I asked him
why he did that, and he looked at me in surprise.
"Did you not hear the click of that valve?"
" No," I said, " I did not." Now, wherein lay the
difference between us — my hearing, probably,
being as acute as his ? The difference was in the
fact that his ear was governed by something that
lay back in his purpose. The possession of what
we call "attention" enabled him to hear what I
did not hear, producing effects and movements in
him which were not produced in me.
Thus we realize that something more is needed
than the mere presentation of the object. An
object is seen or not seen, heard or not heard,
produces an effect or fails to produce it, accord
ing to the existence of something that lies wholly
within ourselves. There was a striking illustra
tion of this fact in Professor Pasteur's discovery
of important dissimilarity in the crystals of two
salts. When the announcement was made, Pro
fessor Mitscherlich, his colleague, said that he
had himself so carefully observed those crystals
without discovering any difference that Pasteur

I 1 8 MODERN INQUIRIES
could never have noticed it except his observa
tion had been " guided by some preconceived
idea," something within himself, some purpose,
some governing thought in his own mind, wholly
independent of the external facts, the effect of
which enabled him to see what lay before the
eyes of others — equally well trained, equally in
earnest — but which they could not see. Pasteur
elsewhere himself speaks of these predetermined
conceptions as " the vivifying flame of the sci
ences of observation."
This, then, may be accepted as the fundamental
fact in the mind of man : observing a fact, ap
preciating the significance of a truth, depends
upon something in ourselves. As Pascal said,
long ago, " All truth is extant, only we fail to per
ceive it." All the facts concerning the universe,
concerning the Lord Jesus Christ and his work,
are more or less apparent, only some fail to regard
them. Now what had the Saviour to say concerning
such men? And in answering this we answer
the question, Why does not God do something
more than present to us the truth? Jesus an
swered them : " I told you, and ye believed not :
the works that I do in my Father's name, they
bear witness of me. But ye believe not, because
ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My
sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they

WHY DOES NOT GOD CONVERT MEN? 119
follow me : and I give unto them eternal life ; and
they shall never perish, neither shall any man
pluck them out of my hand." In other words,
he says that the reason why some hear and others
do not is because of that something in themselves,
something in their own will, which determines
their attitude toward him. Some have what may
be called an attention, a predetermined thought or
purpose, with reference to him, while others have
not. And, furthermore, he says that the effect upon
those who will not hear is that they finally lose the
power of hearing. We long fail to observe, and
in time we lose the power of observation. We
long fail to regard the truth concerning God and
Jesus Christ, and in time that truth vanishes from
our conception, as John records, in the prophet's
words, in regard to the Jews. He says that
"Esaias said again, He hath blinded their eyes,
and hardened their heart ; that they should not see
with their eyes, nor understand with their heart,
and be converted, and I should heal them." Or
as in the parable of the sower, where the evil one
comes and snatches away the seed, though some
of it is in good soil, where, if it were allowed to
remain, it would spring up and bear fruit.
Then the Saviour adds, " No man can come
to me, except the Father which hath sent me
draw him." In other words, all the world would

120 MODERN INQUIRIES
reject him to-day, just as the Jews rejected him,
were it not for the fact that the Father moves
men's hearts, creating attention, desire, a precon
ceived determination which enables them to hear
what other men do not catch, to obtain what other
men lose. " Except the Father which hath sent
me draw " them, they will not come. Then the
promise he adds is, " If any man will do his will "
— or " wills to do his will " — " he shall know of
the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I
speak of myself." "The truth shall make him
free." If any man finds in his heart an earnest
purpose to know the truth he shall not be left to
grope without it.
Then we come to the question, What are the
characteristics of the Christian? What does
God require of you and me with regard to our
acceptance of the truth? Simply two things.
Men stumble over the question of religion, and
it is as plain as the day. God requires only two
things. The first of these is that we will to know the
truth. This we can do. A child is studying.
He does not understand a problem in arithmetic.
His attention is elsewhere, his eyes are out of the
window intent upon watching something in the
street. The teacher makes it an object to the
child to understand the lesson, and at once it be
comes plain. All that God asks of any man is

WHY DOES NOT GOD CONVERT MEN? 121
that he shall give attention to the truth ; shall will
to know it, or, as we should say, be willing to re
ceive it. In other words, he is to give the truth
which is already revealed his attention.
Now what is it that God has put within the
reach of inquiring minds to-day by which those
who are willing, who have a desire, who will give
their attention, can be won to the Christian faith ?
There are three things which sum it all up.
What are they?
First, the Bible. It contains the story of what
God has been doing through all the centuries.
The Old Testament is not a history of what the
Jews did, it is a history of what God did for the
world through the Jews; the New Testament is
not a history of what the church or the apostles
did, but it is a history of what God accomplished
through the church and the apostles. Now we
know how Jesus came into the world ; and we have
the story of his life ; and we know how, beginning
with the apostles, the early church was led — its
records are extant. A gentleman said to me the
other day, " The fact is, a great many men do not
believe in Christianity because they have an im
pression that the history of Christianity is very
incomplete, and they had better not make any in
quiries about it back of the sixth century. Before
that time it is all a mystery." I said in reply,
"There is no reason why any man should have

122 MODERN INQUIRIES
such a view." " No," he replied, " I suppose not ;
but somehow men have got the impression that
there is not much to be known of early Christian
ity." Now those earlier centuries are fairly loaded
down with facts concerning the life and progress
of the Christian church. We know with what
striking power of assimilation it took out of the
world, on the right hand and on the left, thoughts
and institutions and offices and methods to which
it could impart its own spirit, and which it, in
turn, could set at work in the various commu
nities to which the gospel had come. We have
a very substantial record of the church of God
through the first Christian centuries until the
world surrendered itself to the power of the
church — a history that is in its main features as
plain and as certain and as well attested as the
history of the English constitution, or of the
Anglo-Saxon race on our own continent.
Now God presents to every man to-day the
Bible, with its testimony of facts concerning
Jesus of Nazareth, his disciples, and those who
followed them. Then, in addition, God presents
to every man who will receive it Christianity as
it is in the world' — the organized power of the
Christian life ; not scattered believers, but the
organization which has withstood all the changes
in civilization, all the great movements of nations
from continent to continent, and has proved itself

WHY DOES NOT GOD CONVERT MEN? 123
competent to uplift every group of men on the
surface of the earth. It goes alike into the slums
and into palaces, into the heart of Europe or
America or Africa, and everywhere produces the
same results, lifting men out of selfishness and
drunkenness and idolatry and darkness, into the
truth and the light ; but always in proportion as
men receive it in whole or in part. Those who
accept the truth in its entirety, and surrender
themselves, and their fears and their hopes and
their business and their thoughts, to the Lord
Jesus Christ, are always seen manifesting the same
characteristics. They become pure and gentle
and honest and truthful and unselfish, and have a
faith that reaches to that within the veil. They
become the leaven in the lump of society.
One other kind of evidence is presented : that
is the voice in the heart. Men may try to satisfy
themselves in the world, but they are not at
rest. You business men try to be content with
what you have gained — with your power or the
riches you have piled up ; but none of these things
satisfy you. There are possessions richer, more
enduring, more satisfying than any you have yet
found. You are seeking honor in life : no matter
what a good reputation you may have won, no
matter how well you may have seemed to suc
ceed, there is an unrest that is never dormant,
never satisfied, until you come to know God and

124 MODERN INQUIRIES
gain the hope of heaven. That is the unrest
which compels men to ask, " What must I do to
be saved? " What is this feeling in the soul but
the testimony which God gives to every man con
cerning himself? And the one thing that God
requires of every man is that he shall be willing
to receive the testimony ; that he shall give at
tention to it ; that he shall have an earnest desire,
amounting, if you will, to a predetermined pur
pose, to know the truth. " If there is a God, I
would know him. If there is a Saviour for sinners,
I would be found by him. If there is pardon for
such a sinner as I am, I would receive that par
don. I would come as the publican did, saying,
' God be merciful to me a sinner.' " Now what
God requires of every man first of all is that.
Then there is the other thing, namely, obedi
ence to what follows the testimony. In the in
cident before us the Saviour said, " Ye believe
not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto
you." " My sheep " are distinguished from you,
and from all the world, by this one thing : that
they "hear my voice and follow me." So that
in order to be a Christian we must have a desire
to be a Christian ; and when we have a desire to
be a Christian, then the testimony which God
gives carries conviction; and when we find our
selves moved by the testimony, and we recognize
that God is our Father, and that the Lord Jesus

WHY DOES NOT GOD CONVERT MEN? 1 25
Christ has died to save us, and that the voice in
our hearts is calling upon us to love God and
keep his commandments, then it is that we cry,
" Lord, here am I : what wilt thou have me
to do?"
Now I think we know why God will not con
vert men — because he cannot. He wants love,
and we control our own affections. He wants
obedience, and every man is master of his own
will. Obedience is the spontaneous offering of
a converted soul. And so, dear friends, all that
God can do he has done for us. He has furnished
all these heaped-up centuries of Christian testi
mony. He has kept alive in us this feeling of
unrest, instead of allowing us to become stony
hearted and rebellious against the truth. He
pleads with us every day, for our own sake,
that we be his. He troubles us in all our daily
life, because he cannot rest content until we be
come content to be his ; and finally he brings us
to that hour in which we must settle the question
one way or the other — whether we will love, trust,
and obey him, or not. And when we are willing
to believe we find that his arms are thrown about
us, and that his love is already filling our hearts.
I remember a scene which happened some
years ago. A stranger knocked at the door of my
study, and I bade him come in. He was a man
in middle life, and evidently in great distress. I

126 MODERN INQUIRIES
invited him to be seated, and he told me the story
of his life. He was an actor, and was then con
nected with a traveling troupe. But for some
weeks he had been so troubled on account of his
sins that he could not rest. He finally decided
to leave his company ; and this he did one night
when they were playing in a distant town. He
came to me to have me tell him what to do to be
saved. I tried to find out how it was that these
thoughts came to him, and why he finally reached
the decision he did. He could not tell. He had
not been to church, nor in any way in contact
with Christian people. He came to me simply
because he knew that I was a minister, in the
hope that I could show him what he should do.
His repentance was sincere, his emotions were
genuine, his desire to lead a better life was very
earnest, but for some time I could give him no light.
At last I put this question to him : " If you did
not call these thoughts into your own mind, who
did? " He thought for a few moments, and said,
" God must have done it." " Very well," I said ;
" if God cared enough for you to follow you, to
crowd the truth upon you at every turn, and to
keep you in constant unrest until you felt that
you could not live that life any longer, do you
not think that he cares enough for you to forgive
you and make you his child, if you will but give
yourself to him now?" He looked at me for a

WHY DOES NOT COD CONVERT MEN? \2J
moment, and then answered, " Yes, I do. If God
cared enough for me not to let me lose this desire
to lead a better life ; if he cared enough for me
to follow and keep me all these days and years in
which I have wandered from him, I know I can
trust him now when I want to be forgiven, and
when I want to be a different man." With the
tears running down his face he kneeled by my
side and asked God to be merciful to him a sinner ;
and I am sure he went out of that room a forgiven
and converted soul. He was ready to obey.
Whatever God would have him do he longed to
do. Can any man doubt that he was a Christian?
Now, dear friends, apply these truths to your
selves. All the testimony concerning God is ex
tant; you need only to receive it. All the cove
nants of God for the Christian life are plain and
open before you ; you need only to obey. Begin
now to follow Christ, and immediately Christ is
yours and you are his. " My sheep " prove that
they are mine in that they " hear my voice and
follow me."

IX
THE MANLINESS OF BEING PERSUADED

129

" There is one thing more deplorable than believing in error;
that is, believing in nothing. " De Pressense.
" I feel more and more the need of intercourse with men who
take life in earnest. It is painful for me to be always on the
surface of things. Not that I wish for much of what is called
religious conversation ; that is often apt to be on the surface.
But I want a sign which one catches by a sort of freemasonry
that a man knows what he is about in life. When I find this it
opens my heart with a fresh sympathy as when I was twenty
years younger." Dr. Thomas Arnold.

130

IX
THE MANLINESS OF BEING PERSUADED
The question of the last address, If God wants
men to be better, why does he not make them so ?
is the negative side of the truth, the positive side
of which I now desire to present. I want to show
to you how the invitation, " Come unto me, all
ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give
you rest," is the crowning glory of the religion of
Jesus Christ.
In one of the supreme moments of the Apostle
Paul's life he said, in that wonderful eighth chap
ter of Romans : " I am persuaded, that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God,
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." How much
stronger, how much more satisfying that utter
ance is than if he had said, " I am compelled to
take this position," or " I have been enticed into
it " ! "I am persuaded " — not even commanded.
131

132 MODERN INQUIRIES
An appeal has been made to me, an appeal to my
entire nature, and I have discovered that within
me which has responded to it, and now I plant
myself deliberately. I am ready to stake all that
I am, all that I have, and all that I hope to be,
upon the joint act of God and myself.
Notice the dignity of this method — God's
method of saving men by persuasion. It is,
you see at once, a method worthy of the parties
concerned. It is the act of Omnipotence and
Omniscience laying aside almighty power, taking
no advantage of the unique position of the eter
nal God, and dealing with man upon the plane of
man's need and man's nature, and leading him
thus gradually, as by the united act of two lovers
— a Father and a son — out into all the good that
is possible. See what respect it shows to man as well as to
the Maker of man. God has made man in his own
image ; and this is recognition, not of the " divinity
that shapes our ends," but of the divinity that is
in us, that can join with the Creator and be a
worker together with God. And it is a dignity
that grows out of the nature of the subject. God
has the power. God can create things even as
we see them in the world about us. He can do
what he will even with the manhood that he has
formed. But back of his creative power, at the
very center of the divine Being itself, lies the

THE MANLINESS OF BEING PERSUADED 133
truth; and this is the method of conviction —
through the truth. " I am the way, the truth,
and the life," said the Saviour. " Every one that
is of the truth heareth my voice." The method
by which God would save men, then, is digni
fied. It not only reveals the glory of God, it
not only appeals to the manliness of men, but it
exalts that which in our thought we like to think
of as lying even back of God, as being the very
foundation itself of the divine character, namely,
the truth. God puts this forward in appealing
to men, and in so doing he lays the broad foun
dation upon which man's life and man's char
acter and man's immortality and man's com
munion with God for eternity are henceforth to
rest. Then see the sweet graciousness of this method.
The Almighty God, whose law has been broken,
whose power in his own realm has been defied,
lays aside the swift judgment which he might have
inflicted upon the sinner, and tries to win him back
to a life from which, in his wilfulness and rebellion,
if you will, he has departed ; thus using the gra
ciousness and winsomeness of the Saviour's life to
bring man not only into a condition of obedience,
but into a condition where the hardness shall melt
from his heart, the rebelliousness from his spirit,
and where gentleness and gratitude shall spring
up in every part of his being.

134 MODERN INQUIRIES
In the ordinary relations of life how grateful we
are for the example and influence of some great
man who has won us to higher ideals and renewed
efforts in the battle of life! But the other day
Professor Tyndall, the great scientist, died, and I
was reminded in his death that one more of that
group — young men who, thirty or forty years
ago, made English science so distinguished — has
passed away. It brought to my mind the
beautiful biography of that other member of the
same splendid group, Clerk Maxwell, who died
all too early ; and I remember the story he
tells of the vision that opened to his dawning in
tellect of the possibilities of scientific discovery,
and how it was the kindness of the great and be
loved Professor Faraday that inspired him to
larger achievement : by the humility he showed,
and the respect he paid to the powers of the
younger man, he supplied to him courage and
hope, opening to his thought truths and possibil
ities which otherwise would have been closed.
Now, think of it : not a mere man, but the Lord
of all, dealing with us by the method of persua
sion! He wooing us to inquire of him concern
ing the truth ; encouraging us to seek from him
pardon; strengthening us by his grace in over
coming temptation ; winning us to believe that
there are possibilities in the prodigal far from his
home, in the profligate lost in a great city, even

THE MANLINESS OF BEING PERSUADED 135
in the woman that is an outcast, which are worth
looking up and cultivating. Think of the great
God coming down graciously to the sinner and,
in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, seeking to
save that which was lost ! Is there any possible
relation of the divine Father comparable to this ?
Is there elsewhere such a conception of God — so
loving the world as to give his only begotten
Son to die for us, that we may be persuaded to
repent ?
See, also, the broad freedom of this method.
In all the ordinary relations of life the conditions
upon which a man is led out of his narrow life
into the larger privilege of some other man's ser
vice are that he will surrender his freedom. He
becomes the servant of some master who can give
him large wages ; he becomes the imitator, care
ful and exact, of some one who can open to him
larger knowledge than he possesses.
Now, how different is God's method as he sum
mons us, and summons the world, to the new life
in Jesus Christ! We look back to the day when
the Saviour came preaching the new gospel to the
world, and how entirely different his method is
from what we might have expected ! The world
was sunk in despair, until despair had settled upon
the philosopher in his school, upon the statesman
in the senate- chamber, upon the general in com
mand of his army, upon the emperor on his throne.

136 MODERN INQUIRIES
Now suppose the gospel had come with sharp
lashes; suppose it had sought to amend society
immediately from the outside — its social life, its
laws, its customs, its institutions, its forms of
government ; suppose it had instantly denounced
slavery and polygamy — how narrow the method
would have seemed ! " Times change," the world
would have said. " These are only passing inci
dents of the world's progress. Valuable as these
reforms may be, they will be as transient as that
which they amend. The world itself would have
got rid of these forms of vice when they had be
come unendurable." " And how impossible it is ! "
the world would have said ; " for while you mend
the practices of a man you do not mend the man."
We are perfectly familiar with this sort of dealing
to-day. I remember some years ago hearing of a
gentleman who arose to address a gathering made
up largely of newsboys. Suddenly the thought
came to him that he would seize the opportunity
to rebuke them for using tobacco. Instantly
every boy was spitting on the floor; and finally
there was such an uproar and tumult that he had
to stop. They would not listen to him at all.
Now, what has been the method of Christian
ity? We find nothing in the teaching of the
Saviour or the apostles attacking society in its
external forms ; no indignation because the Jews
at that time were under the dominion of Rome ;

THE MANLINESS OF BEING PERSUADED 1 37
nothing said about the evils of the wine-shop, or
the dangers of worldly amusements, or any of the
social habits by which the world has ever been
enthralled ; but, on the contrary, there was a uni
form effort to get into man's heart a new concep
tion of righteousness, of redemption, and of love ;
a uniform effort to change the thoughts of man,
that through his thoughts his heart and mind
might be changed ; always the attempt to plant
seed in the soul which, by its own inherent force,
as it grew, would change the outward life.
See how this method works to-day. The world
is permeated with Christianity. It is found every
where, supplying all that is most vital and valu
able in human life. The historians have hastened
to record that it was the renewing force of the gos
pel of Christ that changed Roman society, that
stopped the gladiatorial shows, that transformed
the Europe of the barbarous Goth into the Europe
of to-day. It was the leaven hidden in the meal
that worked through it ; and the same method is
the method of blessing everywhere to-day. A
whole hour might be spent in illustrating this
point. In the suburbs of a Western city there lived a
German family, consisting of a father, mother, and
two children. The father kept a saloon, and the
children attended a small mission Sunday-school
not far distant. The blessing of God fell upon the

138 MODERN INQUIRIES
school, and many of the scholars took Christ for
their Saviour. Among others were the children
of this saloon-keeper. The old story repeated
itself : not content with their own peace and joy,
they sought to win others. They went home and
told their father and mother what had happened
to them. Not long after the mother was seen
in the evening meetings, and a little later the fa
ther. One evening, when an opportunity was
given to Christians to tell what the Lord had
done for them, the German saloon-keeper arose
and said, " I sell no more vhisky." That was all
— " I sell no more vhisky." The next morning
the saloon was closed forever. There was no
excitement, no band of praying women going in
to take the place by storm ; but the grace of Christ
manifested in that little mission-school, through
the hearts of those little girls, had not only closed
the saloon, but had closed the heart of the man
to sin and opened it to the love of God.
I once knew, also, of a large manufactory in
a Western city where an order was issued for
the men to work on Sunday. After the morning
service the pastor of a small church in the neigh
borhood called a meeting of his deacons to discuss
the matter and see what action they could take.
All sorts of suggestions were offered, but finally
it was decided that they would let God use his
own method for effecting the desired end ; and

THE MANLINESS OF BEING PERSUADED 139
for some days those Christian people met regu
larly and prayed that God would change the heart
of that business man. By and by some of the
members, who had been strengthened by their
hours of communion and petition, went to the
owner of the manufactory to speak with him re
garding the matter. He replied that he had been
thinking it over himself, and had decided that it
would not be necessary to run the factory on the
Sabbath. Now notice the beautiful method of persuasion
which God employs. He comes by his gospel to
every man just where he is. He does not say to
him, " Wait first until you see your faults and
sins;" he does not say, "Wait until you are a
better man;" but he comes to a man just wher
ever he finds him, and seeks to melt the hard
heart, and appeals to the manliness not yet dead
in his soul, and awakens visions and dreams of
possibilities not yet vanished ; and a new man is
born — a new possession for the kingdom of God.
A new power of righteousness is given to every
man thus coming of his own free will ; and be
cause God has touched his heart he is born into
the glorious liberty of the sons of God.
See, also, the blessed testimony this is to the
truth. Think of that. It is easy for us to say that
God is truth. It is easy for us to think that God
knows all truth. It is easy for us to declare, one

140 MODERN INQUIRIES
to another, that religion is the method of truth.
But what is the proof of it ? The proof lies out
side of us and beyond anything in our plans. The
proof of all proofs lies in the divine method itself.
God has more at stake than we have, or than so
ciety has, or than the whole world taken together
has, in the success of his plan of redemption. God
has staked his own soul, we may reverently say,
upon saving the world, as the witness of his love.
He has done what divinity alone could conceive,
in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
What, then, does God do? He seems to stand
back and simply wait for the sure working of his
own plan. Now we judge men's integrity, we
judge their confidence in their own plans, by their
patience. Are they always trying to amend their
ways by doing something different? Ah! then
they are conscious of failure. Are they calm and
restful — steady in hand and method ? Then they
believe in themselves. Through all the centuries
God has steadily proceeded with the uniform
method of revealing himself to men as the means
of their salvation — sending prophets, lawgivers,
divine messengers to tell men the truth, and in
the fullness of time sending his Son with more of
the truth of God ; then leaving that truth to do
its own work.
Kepler, when he had discovered the wonderful
laws of astronomy, said, as he sent his book to

THE MANLINESS OF BEING PERSUADED 14 1
the press, " I can well wait a hundred years for a
reader, since God has waited six thousand years
for an observer." This is God's testimony to the
power of truth. How ample, how sure the words
when God's Word deals with the soul and its
needs! "Come unto me" — not you alone; not
you who do not know temptation ; not you babe in
life who have not been harmed by the power of the
world ; not you philosopher, shielded in your school
from contact with the world as it is. " Come unto
me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden " — bend
ing under the crushing burden of your heart —
" and I will give you rest " — deliverance. That is
the divine method.
What, then, in conclusion? Why, just see the
obligations that arise out of this! The greater
the privilege of our position the greater the re
sponsibilities. The greater the love that is shown
the greater the abuse. What is the situation to
day ? It is this : not the holy God appealing to
a world lying in darkness, but the holy God ap
pealing to a world enlightened, self-respecting,
honest, upright; affectionate men, good fathers,
good sons, loving mothers ; ladies who have honor
and dignity ; men with manliness for all the work
of life except God's work; who have love and
kindness and generosity and patience for every
one and for everything in life except God ; who
open their hearts to all worldly interests that are

142 MODERN INQUIRIES
worthy, but close them against everything that
directly concerns God and his gospel. Think of
that! If this world, the world about us, should
heed, would not the degraded, the heathen world,
quickly be won?
Now you see what sin is, and the sin of " re
spectable sin." This applies to young men
brought up in Christian homes, with all that
wealth and luxury and education and religion
can give to them, having enlightened minds for
everything that the world offers except God ;
business men proud of their strength and their
dignity and force and citizenship ; proud as fathers
and men and members of the community, but
having not one purpose of allegiance or of love
toward the Father in heaven, who has given to
you and is giving to you everything that you have
to enjoy. Think of this, not as the answer of
the heathen, not as the answer of the poor repro
bate in the slums of the city, to a God whose names
even they have never heard except in curses ; but
as the answer of men brought up in a Christian
atmosphere, sitting, as many of you do, Sabbath
after Sabbath, in a Christian church, to the God
who has been appealing to you all your lives in
the gentle, manly way of persuasion. What shall
we say of such a man? What remains for him
who has " counted the blood of the covenant
wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing,"

THE MANLINESS OF BEING PERSUADED 143
and "has trodden underfoot" the offered gospel
of his God? What more can God do? What
remains? Is his truth not true?
It was my privilege this morning to pass in
rapid review the twenty- five years in which I
have been permitted to be a minister of the gos
pel ; but who can put in words the experiences
of those years, in the testimony that they have
brought to the truth of Jesus Christ, in the home,
on the sick-bed, by the open grave, in sorrow,
in temptation, in pain, no less than in joy and in
strength and success? The "great multitude
whom no man can number " — young men and
maidens, strong men and women, aged men to
whom gray hairs have become a " crown of glory,"
because they are found in the way of righteous
ness — all uniting to bear testimony that Jesus
Christ is to them life ; that the gospel to them is
true, and that no word of it has failed. Is the
message not true?
And then as to the hearer — what more can be
done ? Men everywhere to-day say, " We are
convinced; we are not infidels. Why, we have
always believed the truth of the gospel." Yes,
but you do nothing for the gospel. You must
give yourself to the truth. You must repent;
you must stop this life away from God and find
your life in God. You must open your heart to
respond to persuasion, and then it will come true,

144 MODERN INQUIRIES
as I said at the beginning, that you will see man
liness in being persuaded. There is no manliness
in doubt. Doubt is paralysis. Delay in the face
of the truth is weakness. God summons you —
not to inquire, not to parley, not to talk about
believing; God summons you every one, dear
friends, to believe, and so to be saved. Will you
not, then, recognize the truth? Will you not
open your hearts to the graciousness of the divine
method ? Will you not regard the dignity of the
appeal of the Lord Jesus Christ, and away with
your unbelief, with your parleying, with your
procrastination, and give yourself to the Lord
Jesus Christ, and to his cause, with all your
heart ? Then shall you find peace, for then you
shall find God.

X
IF A RELIGION, WHY NOT SOME OTHER?

145

" The glory of Christianity is, not to be as unlike other re
ligions as possible, but to be their perfection and fulfilment."
Dr. Jowett of Balliol.
' ' There is but one religion of which Renan could say, as he
says of the words of Jesus at the well, that if there were religion
in another planet it could be none other than this."
Goldwin Smith, Contemporary Review.
" The difference between Christianity and all heathen religions
appears in the frequency with which their gods are changed.
The Zeus of Homer and of Plato are not only different, but an
tagonistic in conception. The gods of India are an endless pro
cession. The belief in Jesus Christ remains the same ; and the
last movement of Christian thought is the effort to go back more
certainly to the Jesus of the New Testament." Dr. Jowett of Balliol.

146

X
IF A RELIGION, WHY NOT SOME OTHER?
We take up the question of the man who, being
convinced of the need of a religion, asks, " Why
must I accept the religion of Jesus Christ? There
are many forms of religion and philosophy by
which men who have discovered their need of
something outside of themselves are assured that
they can obtain what they need. Admitting
that the way of Christ is deserving of the title
by which it was known at the beginning — ' the
Way ' — why should I regard it as the only way ?
Admitting that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of
souls, why should I be taught that he is the
only Saviour? There have always been earnest
men in the world, and it seems to me that the
same questions have been pressed on other
hearts, certainly as sincere, and often quite as
hard pushed as ourselves; and as the answers
which they have received have lived through the
centuries, why may not some of them do for us ?"
To these questions we ought to be able to give
a definite answer. Certainly they are not new,
i47

148 MODERN INQUIRIES
and we ought to be able to find sufficient evidence
in reply.
You may remember that there occurred in the
Saviour's life an incident in which just this ques
tion was raised. The people had flocked about
him, and, recognizing their needs, he had wrought
the startling miracle of the feeding of the five
thousand. The immediate effect was that the
whole multitude was stirred with the conviction
that he was truly the Messiah of Israel, and they
ought to proclaim him their king then and there.
The Saviour, seeing the emptiness of their faith,
withdrew himself from them, and disappeared.
The multitude, repelled by his unwillingness to
accept their homage, left him, and many who had
believed in him up to this time " followed him no
more." His ministry began at once to fail, and
failed continually until the end. It was then, in
response to his saying to his disciples, " Will ye
also go away ? " that they turned to him with the
inquiry, " Lord, to whom shall we go? " In mak
ing the choice which men to-day are making on
every side they came with our question. It was
a critical hour, and forced the conviction, " Thou
hast the words of eternal life. And we believe
and are sure that thou art that Christ the Son of
the living God " — thou, and no one else.
Here were men who, passing through exactly
this stage of inquiry, had reached a conclusion.

IF A RELIGION, WHY NOT SOME OTHER? 1 49
The multitude might go where they pleased ;
teachers more eloquent and more learned than
they might instruct as they chose ; but these
men, unlettered and ignorant, if you will, had
reached a conclusion that would remain with
them through life. They were sure that they
could be satisfied nowhere else in the world.
To see the reasons for their answer, and their
sufficiency for us, we must spend a moment in
considering what was the state of the world
just at that time. On the one side of them was
Egypt, that most wonderful of the ancient nations,
with her striking testimony to some of the great
est truths that the mind of man has ever grasped.
There stand to-day, as they stood then, her monu
ments — the pyramids and the Sphinx — proclaim
ing the faith of that people in the unseen, their
abiding testimony to immortality in the life be
yond the grave, and their conviction that the soul
is to go on from life to life ; that through all the
forms in which they worshiped the unseen God
they worshiped, not many gods, but rather only
one. In other words, it was a very good coun
terpart of the philosophy or faith of the men who
to-day, as agnostics, deny the sufficiency of any
actual knowledge, whether of philosophy or of
religion. They say that one may be as good as
another ; that all possess some truth ; but, far be
yond, there is something yet to be attained. For

150 MODERN INQUIRIES
them the Sphinx stands as it stood to the Egyp
tians, the symbol of the unknown; in its person
uniting the human and the animal ; suggestive of
the great fact that all life, however different its
external forms, is essentially one ; and that all
knowledge, however distinctive it may be in cer
tain relations, leads to the larger realm of truth
yet unrevealed.
Egypt had borne her testimony through the
centuries to portions of the truth, and yet Egypt
was dead. Her place in history was to be vacant
in the future ; her religion had utterly failed.
Then, on the other hand, there were all the
great forms of the Oriental religions. There was
the testimony of India to the existence of a God,
as the source and end of all being. In her testi
mony to the reality of the unseen she taught the
law of self-discipline, of self-abnegation, and of
the worthlessness of the things of this world in
comparison with those of the world that is to be
attained ; and also the possibility of attaining that
unseen world by one's personal effort. Gautama
was a beautiful character, touched to his inmost
soul by sorrow for sin, oppressed by human mis
ery. But he knew no salvation for men from
the sin he hated other than by annihilation. He
would save men by destroying man ; he magni
fied sin only, as has been said, that he might the
more pour contempt on life. With all the lofti-

IF A RELIGION, WHY NOT SOME OTHER? 15 1
ness of their aspirations, and the beauty of individ
ual character, and the self-devotion which pictures
the altruism that is the sum of religion in the
minds of many to-day, all that Buddhism and
Brahmanism could do for the world was India
with her ignorance and superstition.
Then, nearer by, there were the Persians, who
taught that there is an ever-present struggle in
the world and in every human heart between
good and evil. Now that is, to-day, the burden
of thousands of anxious hearts. On every side
are men who are crowded up against the evils
of life, because society is corrupt, or because the
laws are unjustly administered. They would
destroy society, if need be ; they would destroy
the government, if need be ; they would risk
their own welfare, if need be, in order to start
the world anew and escape this terrible outward
pressure. We know these men to be wrong be
cause their minds are centered on external rather
than on internal evils. They would remake the
world from without. But, after all, here is the
recognition of the truth which every man finds
in his own soul : there is an eternal conflict be
tween good and evil, of which this world is the
arena. Yet Zoroastrianism had no power to save
the world. What has Persia to offer of a regen
erated social order? Who would look to Persia
for even a way of life ?

152 MODERN INQUIRIES
Then there were the beautiful religions of
Greece. Her message to the world was " the
God of the present." Egypt had spoken of the
possibilities of the future; India had spoken of
the God of the unseen ; and China had already
talked, as she is talking to-day, of the God of the
past — a past that the world had never seen, but
a past whose dead hand destroyed for her the
possibility of a future. But Greece, over against
them all, had borne testimony to the God of the
present. Her ideal was of a beauty greater than
that which actually exists, and for which men
continually strive. And Greece had thus testi
fied that, whatever men may think of the future,
there is that in the present which is worth living
for. But with what result? Pier very national
life had vanished, her religion was forgotten, and
nothing remained but the ruins of her literature
and art, perishing already at home, to be pre
served at last in other lands as the monuments
of a vanished people, the most richly endowed the
world has ever seen.
Then there were the Romans. As Greece
stood for the men who pleaded for culture and re
finement, for distinction in thought and bearing,
and had failed — just as that form of culture fails
to-day when dealing with the sins of the world
— so Rome had now come on the field, with her
splendid testimony to human brotherhood. She

IF A RELIGION, WHY NOT SOME OTHER ? 153
spread her wings over all peoples. She welcomed
all gods, if only they would give their allegiance
to the state. Contemporary with Paul was that
" lame slave whom God loved " — a teacher of the
truth — Epictetus ; and later that Roman phi
losopher, Thraseas, who said he feared to hate
sin lest he might be tempted to hate men ;
and that rare emperor, Marcus Aurelius, whose
" Meditations," written for his own eyes, have
been a consolation to human hearts ever since.
And what had Rome done? Her own wise
Lucretius told the truth when he spoke of reli
gion as it was in his day as " lowering upon mor
tals with a hideous aspect, and pressing human life
down under its inexorable foot." Her national
life was already passing away. Her laws con
tained nothing of modern religion, and little or
nothing of modern philosophy.
Most important of all the men of the Saviour's
day were the Jews ; that little nation so small that
she had cut no figure among the nations of the
world, and yet was destined to give to the world
a Saviour. What were some of the peculiar characteristics
of this people ? They believed in one God ; and
so had other nations. They had some views re
garding the life beyond ; but others had seemed
to make much more of immortality. They had
observed an external righteousness; others had

154 MODERN INQUIRIES
done the same. What, then, was the distinctive
message of Israel ? It has been said that among
all the nations she alone pointed out the ne
cessity of an inward life ; the development of
the spiritual out of the carnal ; and all her story
— the story of the Old Testament — turns about
this truth. In the Garden of Eden — the picture
to the Hebrew of the beginning of the human
race — the first man failed not because he grasped
at the tree of life, but because of an inward state
that led him to disobey. Abel was preferred
before Cain because his sacrifice was more ac
ceptable as the offering of a docile and obedient
heart ; and Jacob was preferred before Esau be
cause in him the flesh was subordinate to the spirit.
And so on throughout the Old Testament. It
is the first-born who gives place to the second.
First the carnal, then the inward and spiritual, is
the great law of human existence. Jacob stands
before Esau ; Joseph before his brethren ; Samuel
before Saul ; David before Jonathan ; and so on
through the centuries. God says to us, " It is not
my power, it is not my knowledge ; holiness, the
inward life, the conscience is my characteristic."
" Be ye holy; for I am holy." Take the law of
God, write it on the soul and life ; joy and peace
and strength are to be found in walking in that
way. Now what was the result?
Men everywhere are saying that there is no

IF A RELIGION, WHY NOT SOME OTHER? 155
need of going to church, no need of cultivating
the spirit's life, no need of drawing near to God.
All you need is to do " what you think to be
right." What was the outcome of this plan with
the Jews, in their degeneracy ; with their scribes
and Pharisees, and their readiness to slay the
prophets? It is the plan which the world has
been trying ever since, while darkness and despair
have settled down upon men from the highest to
the lowest, until finally the question comes to be
asked, " Lord, to whom shall we go?" It is the
question of many a burdened heart to-day. What
is the answer? "Thou hast the words of eternal
life." No one else has. " And we know, we be
lieve and are sure, that thou art the Son of the
living God." There is no one else who can bring
God down to us or lift us up to God.
Now why is it? Because every heart has the
same needs. There is the need of pardon ; the
need of deliverance from our own past, with its
guilt, and from our own present, with its weakness
and its ignorance ; the revelation of ourselves to
ourselves, with the promise of a better self. And
the Lord Jesus Christ brought all this when he
came into our life ; being born as we are born,
and giving himself to our daily experiences.
Coming into the humblest needs of the plainest
man, not seeking the wise or the pure or the up
right, but everywhere the publicans and sinners

156 MODERN INQUIRIES
(for whom the religions of the world and the
philosophers of the world had no place), he re
veals the Heavenly Father as seeking the souls
that are his, and that were lost.
Now the life of Jesus Christ is the one sufficient
life for the world because it comes to men in their
deepest needs. It shows to every man his own
true nature, his lost estate, and then reveals to
him the true life of the soul which is to be found
nowhere else.
In all our lives there are two or three simple
but universal needs. We all have a sense of de
pendence; we cannot save ourselves. We all
have a sense of brotherhood ; we want to know
God and be found in him, and in such a way that
our friends and neighbors may find him with us.
And then we all have the desire of progress, — the
possibility of doing better ; we want to be better
men and better women ; we want to grow in
grace and in the knowledge of God. And nothing
will satisfy us unless it meets these three condi
tions. The Lord Jesus Christ, coming down into
our lives, has opened to us access to the Father.
We all receive our life from him. We have
grieved him by our sins, and yet his love is so
great that he has not cast us out, but now, even
now, he has called us to himself, to grow up in
his love, and to be his henceforth and forever.
The tasks which are given us he will help us to

IF A RELIGION, WHY NOT SOME OTHER? 157
perform, and he will be with us " alway, even unto
the end of the world."
And so the Lord Jesus Christ comes to men
who are burdened with their sins, weighed down
by care, depressed by sorrow; and what is the
message which he brings to every man ? " Be
my disciple." "Begin the new life now, and a
new heaven shall be begun in you, and shall then
spread to those about you." It tells of a heaven
to begin now ; that has commenced already in the
heart of every man who gives himself to the Lord
Jesus Christ. The Saviour said, " My peace I
give unto you " — a peace to be realized by every
guilty, sin-burdened soul ; the world cannot give
such peace, and cannot take it away. And then
he comes opening infinite growth for the soul in
" the glorious liberty of the sons of God."
It is this promise of God — to meet all our needs
— which we find nowhere else. He has proved
himself the Saviour of a great multitude whom no
man can number, out of all nations and kindreds
and tongues and people, in all the centuries ; and
there are to-day, in all parts of the world, men
who can stand up and bear testimony to the truth
that God does indeed meet and satisfy all their
needs, and to the glorious assurance of a home
with him in the life to come.
So that in answer to the question, If a religion,
why not some other? we can say that all others

158 MODERN INQUIRIES
have failed. Whatever of truth there was in any
one of them is to be found in its fullest expres
sion in the religion of Christ. All that men
can long for is to be had in Christ. All that
other religions have contributed to the best
thought and the best learning and the best life
of the world is reproduced in the religion of the
Lord Jesus Christ, and in that new setting has
gained what it never had before. " I am the
Light of the world," said the Saviour, and we
see that light realized. " I am the Way " — the
world has sadly proved there is no other. " I am
the Life" ; and the world has found nowhere else
the life of God — nowhere except in Jesus Christ.
Therefore every man who craves life ; every man
who longs for fellowship with the Father ; every
man whose soul is stirred for brotherhood with
his fellows ; every man who would know himself
and gain strength to overcome himself, will find
all he needs in the faith as it is in Jesus.

XI
WHAT IS FAITH?

iS9

" Faith is a living, reasonable confidence in the grace of God;
so certain that it would die upon such grounds a thousand times
over." Luther.
" The Christian life is begun, so far as man's part in it is con
cerned, in the entrance of the soul into a right relation to God,
and is perpetuated in the constancy and increasing closeness of
that relation. Man's part in the constitution of this relation is
faith, and his part in the continuance and strengthening of it con
tinues to be faith. . . . Faith is not a mere confidence that a
work of grace will be done for us, but a consent that a work of
grace shall be wrought in us. The power of faith thus resides,
not in its exercise, as if it were an achievement, but in its object,
because it is a personal relation of one who is helpless and de
pendent to Christ, who is able to save and purify."
Stevens, " Pauline Theology," p. 298.

160

XI
WHAT IS FAITH ?
THIS question of faith lies at the very heart of
religion; it also lies at the heart of a religious
life. The question, then, is not at all theoretical ;
it is the most practical with which any of us
can be engaged. That it is a question worthy
of somewhat careful thought, as being indeed a
question of modern inquiry, is suggested by the
fact that not very long ago an intelligent and
educated gentleman, brought up in a Christian
home, and in the habit of attending church all
his life, said to me in a thoughtful way, " I wish
you would tell me just what you mean by faith."
Of course it is easy to answer the query in the
ordinary terms of common speech. We say that
faith is " to believe." But why is faith the center
and heart of religion ; and why is it true that
"without faith it is impossible to please " God ; and
why is it that from the beginning, through all the
long Christian centuries, with all their varieties of
Christian belief, the definition of faith has always
been a central and burning one in theological dis
cussion ? 161

1 62 MODERN INQUIRIES
In attempting to answer this question use is
made of two equally erroneous definitions. One
is this : " Faith is the acceptance of a proposition
on the ground of confidence in the person stating
it." It is receiving testimony from another as
being credible wholly apart from any considera
tion of what the testimony itself may be. This
is the definition of John Locke, one of the most
powerful thinkers in the English-speaking world,
a man who has done more to mold the thoughts
of subsequent generations than almost any other
mind. But the definition is incomplete in that it
places faith on an unsubstantial foundation ; it
exalts authority ; it offers no evidence other than
the word of the witnesses ; it stakes everything
on a report, on a record, on a statement. The
result is that it leads to an idolatry of the book,
and only raises new difficulties in the way of those
who are unwilling to receive any testimony
merely on the word of men like themselves. It
has resulted in laying stumbling-blocks in the way
of some, and in leading others to a faith which
rests only upon the word of some religious teacher ;
in some communities it has exalted creeds into final
and authoritative statements ; and it always tends
to lure souls to intellectual, if not to spiritual sleep,
because the church once for all has defined for
them what they are to believe.
Another definition, quite the opposite of this,

WHAT IS FAITH? 163
is that faith is "belief in what is proved." That
is the definition of people who exalt the reason.
It stands as the justification of what we are accus
tomed to define as " rationalism." It is the war
rant for what is called " liberal" Christianity — that
is, a breaking free from the dominating beliefs
of others. Early in the century, Dr. Channing,
one of the broadest and most intelligent of men,
prophesied that there would be great value in
erecting this conception of religious faith as a bul
wark against infidelity. But he lived to see his
mistake ; it has always disappointed its advocates.
The truth is that in all the work of life we have
to walk by faith in things not proved. Sir William
Herschel says that three sevenths of the moon's
surface is always hidden from our sight, however
powerful the instruments which we may use to
help us see. We have to act without provable
knowledge of what is there ; and life goes on.
Man is not merely a reasoning animal. He is
a seeing, feeling, contemplating, acting animal, as
Cardinal Newman has said ; and in this catalogue
of man's characteristics the power of reason is
only one among others — a significant, an essential
one, if you will, and yet one that is sharply lim
ited. The testimony of the centuries has always
been that faith has its roots, not in man's intel
lect, not in his powers of reason simply, but in all
parts of his being. There is that within a man,

1 64 MODERN INQUIRIES
hidden somewhere, lying close to that which is
the very essence of himself, to which religion
speaks, and out of which faith springs. Religion
is, in the last analysis, an appeal to the deepest
needs of every man; and therefore the question
must be, What are man's deepest needs ? Before
we can know what religion is, before we can know
what faith is, we must know what that is in man
which religion comes to satisfy.
When we come, then, to inquire as to what our
needs are, we are confronted at once with the fact
that it is hard to discover. We look into our
own hearts and we discover that things are not as
they should be. We find that we cannot even
read our own character aright. We cannot clearly
understand, still less interpret, our own motives.
We are very complex creatures. We carry in our
hearts the effects of all our past experiences —
our temptations, our weaknesses. Before we
can know ourselves truly we shall need to find a
standpoint outside of ourselves, and to look down
upon ourselves as the angels look down from
heaven. How can any one measure sin, for ex
ample, when he himself is not moved with sorrow
for his own wrong-doing? How can he measure
the effect of weakness of the will in yielding to
temptation, how can he know the meaning of
remorse, when he has never known the meaning
of his own guilt? How can any man know the

WHAT IS FAITH? 165
needs of his own soul, when he has not been able
to take in the length and breadth and height and
depth of his own divinely created nature ? And
yet, under all these limitations, we must ask,
" What are our deepest needs ? " When we look
into our own hearts these are some of the things
we find :
Every man finds that he has a conscience;
often dulled and hardened, and yet never, surely,
destroyed. Every man is warned by it of the
seriousness of wrong- doing. It keeps before his
mind a sense of guilt; it brings shame; and it
awakens at times the sense of fear. As the Scrip
ture puts it, " The wicked flee when no man
pursueth : but the righteous are bold as a lion."
Why do they flee? They flee because of their
own thoughts ; for back of their thoughts there lies
the idea of a judge. We feel in our souls the need
of being set right before the ultimate tribunal.
Conscience makes cowards of us all.
Then we all have a sense of dependence. We
have not called ourselves into being. We can
make our plans for the future, but we are aware
that we cannot extend the boundaries of our
lives. In the words of the Scripture, we cannot
add one cubit to the length of our days. We are
as " the grass of the field, which to-day is, and
to-morrow is cast into the oven." "The wind
passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place

1 66 MODERN INQUIRIES
thereof shall know it no more." The nations
that were before us are gone — all of them — and
the men of to-day will be gone to-morrow; and
we are all dependent upon something without
ourselves. And this sense of dependence is real, and not
merely theoretical. There are voices in the heart
that cry as a child cries in the night. We do
not know what we need, but still there is a sense
of need with us all. We seem to live as in a void.
We may be in the midst of a multitude, and yet
we dwell alone. " The heart knoweth his own
bitterness; and a stranger doth not intermeddle
with his joy."
Every man discovers, as he searches his own
heart, this sense of dependence ; and then as we
search we discover, also, that we have a capacity
for being something better than we now are. In
other words, we all have a capacity for progress.
We call it, sometimes, the dream of youth. We
lose these dreams as we grow older; but hidden
deep within the heart there is still the possibility
of being greater and wiser and better than we are.
The psalmist says, " As the hart panteth after the
water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O
God." The thought of God brings to us the
thought of a purity better than our own, of a
holiness vaster, higher, more profound than any
thing that we know, and of a Divinity from whom

WHAT IS FAITH? 167
we came and into whose enfolding love we would
again be taken; and realizing this, we are con
scious that we have powers within us for which,
in the service of One greater and wiser and better
than we are, we should find employment.
And then we find — all of us — a consciousness
of weakness before temptation. Paul's words are
our words : " The good that I would, I do not :
but the evil which I would not, that I do." We
are all aware that the power of the will is the
noblest faculty God has given us, and yet some
how that power slips from us. We cannot hold
it to its duty. And every man longs for power
over himself — longs for the ability to come off
victor in that battle which is always being waged
about the citadel of the soul.
Now, with this survey of the needs that come
with an awakened conscience, and a consciousness
of dependence, and a longing to be better, and
the desire for an established will that shall hold
firmly and steadily to the right, we hear the voice
of religion. The voice comes to us from without.
It calls us to live a life different from that which
we are living. We have an instance in the case
of the Roman jailer who was keeper of the prison
in which Paul and Silas were confined. He was
aware that there were needs in his own heart, but,
like us, he had been able to live on from day to
day, hushing or neglecting them. Suddenly he

1 68 MODERN INQUIRIES
thought of the difference between himself and
the prisoners, who, with their feet in the stocks,
were singing songs of praise ; and the conviction
came to him that they were not dependent upon
outward surroundings or circumstances for their
happiness. Then we hear him crying out, " Sirs,
what must I do to be saved? "
We cry, " Who can show us any good ? " Who
can bring to us what will satisfy, not hunger, not
thirst, not a longing for success in business ; but
who shall satisfy for us the deeper needs of the
soul? — these needs which come to us all, men
and women alike ; and just as really to men and
women who have lived honored by all as to the
vilest outcast on the street. " Sirs, what must I
do to be saved" — from what I have been; from
what I am ; from what I may become ? Now
comes the answer : " Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and thou shalt be saved."
It is the answer of men who have themselves
been saved ; and without stopping to think out
an extended and confusing reply to the query,
they at once give answer, in the words we have
quoted, to the needs which have sprung up in this
man's heart. Faith is that acceptance of God
which the soul is capable of putting forth when it
is conscious of its own needs and learns that God
has come to meet those needs.

WHAT IS FAITH? 169
Just on this point John Bunyan tells his experi
ence. He says that he had been for a long time
in great distress on account of his sins, and that
in some way there fell into his hands a little book,
so old and worn that he could hardly keep it to
gether long enough to read it. It was Luther
on Paul's Epistle to the Galatians ; and that plain
tinker began to read. He says, " I found my
condition in his experience so largely and pro
foundly handled as if his book had been written
out of my heart." That is the experience of
every man who comes to the Bible in the same
spirit. He finds that his needs are handled so
largely and profitably in one part or another of
God's Word that he might think it had been
written out of his own heart.
John Wesley, after calling himself a Christian
for some time, fell in with some plain German
Pietists in London, who put in his hands Luther's
preface to Paul's Epistle to the Romans ; and the
result of his reading was exactly what it was in
the case of Bunyan in reading the Epistle to the
Galatians. From that moment a new light came
into his soul. He had been trying to fit himself
for God, when suddenly he became aware that
God himself was dealing with the deepest needs
of his soul ; that God's method of dealing with those
needs was sufficient; and that all he had to do

170 MODERN INQUIRIES
was to commit himself to the hand of his Saviour,
and trust in him fully, and him only, for salvation.
You see that this is an appeal to all man's pow
ers. It is not an appeal to the reason only. It
is an appeal to all that is good in us to be given
to God. It is a worthy appeal because it conse
crates all a man's powers to the service of God.
Therefore the result is that faith at once frees a
man from his old life. What is the old life? It
is the life that any man leads who has not known
the truth. He feels a longing for a bettering of
himself which he cannot obtain. His will is weak.
Now all that old life is laid aside ; what he can
not do God has come to do for him; he leaves
his old life behind, just as he would an old gar
ment when he has his new suit to put on. And
so faith not only enables us to throw the old life
off, but it makes the new life a reality.
How full the world is of testimony to this truth !
Faith reveals itself and proves itself by works. In
deed, it proves itself in two ways. " The Spirit itself
beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the chil
dren of God." If a child is lost, and you find
it, and say, " I know the way ; I will lead you
home," that child is no longer afraid. He trusts
you to do as you have promised. So it is with a
lost soul. When found, he is " safe in the arms
of Jesus," and at peace. God has found him, and
he knows it.

WHAT IS FAITH? 171
But not only is there peace in the heart, there
is also witness of faith in the life ; for the man that
has been found by God proves it by the life that
he lives. Like the child that has been lost, he no
longer walks in his own way, but in the way of
Him who is leading him back. Faith is the put
ting of all one's being in God's hands as in the
hands of a faithful Creator, asking, " What must
I do to be saved? " " Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and thou shalt be saved," is the answer that
gives both the method and the result. Recognize
that the Lord knows the guilt of a guilty con
science ; that he knows the longings of a hunger
ing and thirsting heart ; that he has come to seek
and to save that which was lost ; and that he has
come, " not to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance." Believe, and thou shalt live.
That was the method in Paul's day. It was
witnessed in the lives of the new Christians, and
commented upon by the heathen about them.
They saw that these men who but now were
prodigals and outcasts were changed. Their
faith attested itself in their lives. The witness
was triumphant. And if any man to-day asks,
"What must I do to be saved?" the answer of
the church to him, the answer of every Christian
soul out of the fullness and gladness of its own
personal experience, is not, " First try to make
yourself better;" not, "Search for Christian evi-

172 MODERN INQUIRIES
dences ;" but simply, " Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ. Lift up your heart and your hands to
him. Cry out to him for pardon, and for peace
and grace and strength, and it is given ; and then
go on your way to live for him." And none that
ever so came to him was cast out.

XII
THE TRUTH ABOUT PRAYER

173

" More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of."
Tennyson, " Morte d' Arthur."
" Prayer is the greatest power in the world — it keeps us near
to God. My own prayer has been most weak, wavering, incon
stant, but it has been the best thing I ever did. I think this a
universal truth." General S. C. Armstrong.
" God, the only good of all intelligent natures, is not an absent
or a distant God, but is more present in and to our souls than
our own bodies ; and we are strangers to heaven and without God
in the world for this only reason : because we are void of that
spirit of prayer which can alone unite, and never fails to unite us
with the one only God, and to open heaven and the kingdom of
God within us." William Law, " The Spirit of Prayer."
" O my dear friend, to pray; to pray as God would have us ;
to pray with all the heart and strength, with the reason and the
will ; to believe vividly that God will listen to your voice through
Christ, and verily do the thing he pleaseth thereupon — this is the
last, the greatest achievement of the Christian's warfare on earth.
Teach us to pray, O Lord! " Coleridge. Letter to a friend.

'74

XII
THE TRUTH ABOUT PRAYER
THERE is no Christian habit upon which mod
ern thought bears in opposition more positively
than this of prayer. There is no matter of Chris
tian belief concerning which we all need to be
more definitely convinced. A practice that meant
so much to the Saviour ought to mean much to
us. When we open the Bible we see that prayer
was the fixed habit of the Saviour's life. He be
gan with prayer, he continually turned aside to
the mountains or to the desert to pray, he some
times spent the whole night in prayer ; and of the
few facts that are recorded of him there is none
to which such frequent reference is made as this.
In his most exalted moments, as on the Mount
of Transfiguration, he did not omit it ; and in the
supreme hour in the Garden of Gethsemane he
withdrew alone to pray. His last words on the
cross were a prayer.
When we turn to his disciples we observe at
once this habit as being also characteristic of them.
The fact that any man prayed was already rec-
i75

176 MODERN INQUIRIES
ognized as a sign that God's Spirit had taken
possession of his heart. " Behold, he prayeth,"
was the comforting assurance to the believers in
Damascus concerning the enemy Saul. And as
we read the exhortations of those early Chris
tians in the Epistles, we find everywhere constant
emphasis put upon the necessity and privilege of
prayer. We are "always to pray," we are to
" pray without ceasing " ; " in everything by
prayer and supplication with thanksgiving" we
are to let our requests be made known unto God ;
and there is much illustration of the method of
prayer. The question arises, What is prayer? And the
answer that comes to our thought is that " prayer
is the act by which a man, conscious at once of
his weakness and of his immortality, puts himself
into effective communication with God." It is
to be an effective communication — one which will
meet his needs in the wants both of his heart and
of his life.
It is this act of the heart of man reaching out
toward God, and seeking to lay permanent hold
upon God, to get into enduring and effective re
lationship with God, which has characterized re
ligion in all ages and in all conditions of life,
whatever may be the form of worship. However
degraded the religion of the heathen, or however
elevated the religion of the philosopher, prayer is

THE TRUTH ABOUT PRAYER 177
its abiding characteristic. And this would seem
to be the universal experience ; for when left to
themselves men instinctively express themselves
in some form of prayer. That acute Greek phi
losopher, Plutarch, said, " You may travel in all
lands, you may find men without letters and
without art ; but you will never find them
without altars, without ceremonials, and without
prayer." Accepting this, then, as the great outward fact
coextensive with religion, we recognize that it is
a work in which religion engages all the strength
of a man's nature. Everything in the world that
is worthy, that gets a hold upon men, advances
in the respect which men have for it by the ex
tent to which it gathers up all the forces of their
being and makes them tributary to its service.
Those things which touch only a part of our na
ture — the passing thought, the mere whim, the
incidental affection — are the things which we treat
as trivial in our lives; but when, now and again,
we are confronted with some thought or power
which challenges our entire being, then, at once,
we are arrested. This, also, is the characteristic
of religion as it reveals itself in prayer.
Prayer is an act. It begins in adoration. It
is the summons that comes to a man out of his
heart, or from what he has been taught in wor
ship, calling him to bring himself to the foot of

178 MODERN INQUIRIES
the throne of God to render to God a fitting
adoration, to enlarge his thought in the presence
of the divine, to prepare himself to understand the
Almighty, and in so doing to get some under
standing of his own origin, nature, and destiny.
But not only does religion summon man in
prayer to use his intellect, it also summons him to
use his heart, because adoration without affection
is idle, and one who takes upon himself to pray,
with some understanding of the meaning of that
act, challenges his soul to feel in some measure the
thought which is given to him of his Maker and
of himself. And as his thoughts turn inward from
his first conception of God, he begins to measure
his own needs, his weaknesses and temptations,
and his own possibilities, his emotions are kindled,
and he longs to feel as well as to know.
But, after all, this is only the external truth
concerning prayer. We do not get at its real
essence until we seek to know God's thoughts and
to understand God's love, in order that we may
give ourselves to some definite service, in order
that we may summon our souls to do what the
thoughts and emotions of the hour impel us to do.
Thus the essence of prayer is importunity — " I
will not let thee go, except thou bless me." It
is shown in the parable of the unjust judge
granting the prayer of the widow because of the
urgency of her petition. The conception of God

THE TRUTH ABOUT PRAYER 179
as the one great source of supply for all man's
needs has been given to the heart. The thought
has penetrated so far into the depths of a man's
nature that he cannot be satisfied with anything
short of this. He must cry out after God until
the answer comes, that he may be at peace.
Therefore prayer must be something more than
unuttered aspiration or longing awakened in a
man's soul. It must be the gathering together
of all the powers of his being, and then the
concentrating of them upon the one purpose of
laying hold upon God, to know as he is known,
and to love as he is loved. Something like this
is the first effort of prayer. Because a man
comes from God he seeks to enter into effective
communion with God.
Then the question rises, Is all this of any use ?
What is the effect of prayer? What is the bot
tom truth in regard to this almost universal habit
of mankind? There can be no question as to
some of the effects of prayer ; for example, those
effects which are to be observed in a man's own
life. When a man is known to be a praying
man we recognize that the wavering man gains
strength and stability ; that the selfish man rises
above his selfishness; that the irascible man
secures self-control; in short, that the habit of
prayer proves itself potent in a man's heart and
life. Then, also, it is true that prayer has certain

180 MODERN INQUIRIES
of what may be called social effects, so that, as
some one has well said, " No man can think lightly
of one for whom he habitually prays." We may
cultivate thoughts of kindness toward a person;
but when we begin to pray regularly and earnestly
for him, then he enters into an entirely new rela
tion to our life, and it becomes impossible for us
to think lightly of him, still less to be indifferent
to his welfare.
So in all the relations of daily life. Tenderness
springs from prayer; cheerfulness, hopefulness,
in short, the humanizing of the heart and life, and
the building up of a life in which character
broadens and sweetens as the days go by.
But the real question arises when we come to
prayer in its upward relations — in our intercourse
with God. What is prayer in that direction ? It
is manifestly peace ; it is adoration ; it is the up
ward turning of that in a man's heart which en
nobles the man himself in his thoughts of the un
seen and eternal, whether he knows that there
is a God or not. Indeed, wholly apart from the
proofs of the existence of God, there is that which
makes a man conscious that he is rising into his
best estate when he is seeking to enter into the
thoughts of One who is above and superior to
him. But the insistent question is, Does prayer bring
answer ? Is there any direct communion between

THE TRUTH ABOUT PRAYER 181
the suppliant and the Creator? Is there any
special method by which God answers prayer?
We are confronted by what is said on every
side about natural law. And we are at once
compelled to ask, "What is natural law?" In
the earlier stages of man's intelligence all the or
dinary phenomena of nature are interpreted as
so many manifestations of the unseen powers
that dwell in the heavens ; but as man's know
ledge increases he knows that the forces of elec
tricity and of light are but ways in which the laws
of God reveal themselves. If, at the beginning,
we conceive of nature as dominated by a material
force that is self-existent and self-sustaining, then
there is no room for God in the universe, and
there is no possible place for prayer; but when
we inquire of nature concerning force we find
nowhere evidence that there is such God-exclud
ing force. We find that force is revealed in a
long series of effects which are more or less uni
form. We say they are the result of natural law.
And for all the practical purposes of life that ob
servation is adequate ; but in the last analysis we
are compelled to find some origin for force back
of nature. Therefore we must seek some other
interpretation of nature; and then the question
arises, Did God, at the beginning, in creating the
universe, determine its methods of action, wind
it up, and start it to running along certain fixed

1 82 MODERN INQUIRIES
lines? In that case he has limited himself; put
himself out of nature, if not out of existence. He
would be like the manufacturer of some great and
complicated machine which, having made, he
must leave to take care of itself, lest, if he inter
fere with it, it might destroy itself and him.
How, then, is nature related to God? He
called it into being and he sustains it in being.
So far as we have been able to observe his
methods, in certain directions we have discovered
what we call " uniformity." In other words, God
has condescended to let us read his thoughts and
understand his ways in certain directions, just as
some electrician or engineer might invite us into
his workshop, and, knowing well the limitations of
our knowledge, might condescend to explain a
certain machine in his possession, and we would
reveal our excitement and pleasure as we grasped
the principles of its construction ; but we would
not imagine for a moment that we knew as much
about it as he who invented it.
Now, like that is the divine method in nature.
God has revealed certain ways of working which
we call the laws of nature, which had a beginning,
and which may have an end, but which for the
time being mark the attention of the divine Hand.
What is there in all the universe that prevents
God from acting in accord with these methods
and still answering prayer? We pray to him for

THE TRUTH ABOUT PRAYER 183
the safe return of a friend who is on the sea. The
ship which the friend is in may be driven by the
wind; but other elements are working with the
wind — the captain who sets the sails and looks
after the crew, the pilot who determines the
course — these and a thousand other forces all
may work together in answer to the prayer we
breathe. All these powers are made to conform
to the divine will ; are, indeed, but the movement
of the divine will in response to the need of God's
child. So in all the relations of life. We expect, we
believe, that God is able to answer our call for
spiritual blessings. We know that he is more
willing to give than we are to ask. But not more
sure is his gift of the Spirit than is his gift of food
for the body. All the forces of nature are alike
but the unfolding of his will, working together to
bring out what he purposes; thus nature is but
the expression of the ever-present Creator, the
bountiful Father leading his child through the
vast machinery in the great manufactory of earth,
and using it all daily and hourly to bless those
whom he loves. This, then, is the true answer of
nature to the cry of man seeking communion with
his Maker. At once the world becomes the in
strument of God to be used in doing his will.
In the opening sentence of the prayer which the
Saviour put on the disciples' lips we are taught to

1 84 MODERN INQUIRIES
say, " Our Father which art in heaven. . . . Thy
kingdom come. Thy will be done." All prayer,
then, should be under those conditions. We do
not wait to see whether the particular prayer is
answered. The child has found its Father ; and
now, having found him, having worshiped him,
having felt his love in the heart, and having been
kindled with his thoughts, the creature commits
himself to his Creator; the child finds peace in
being in his Father's house.
Does he get an answer to his prayer so that he
knows it? Certainly! The answer comes with
the prayer. He feels that he has found God ; and
whether or not God gives him the specific thing
he asks, he gives him his blessing. Whatever
the Father gives he accepts as blessing ; what the
Father reveals he accepts as the Father's will ;
and he prays always as the Saviour has taught us
to pray — " Not my will, but thine, be done."
Now as to the result of this knowledge of our
relation to God. We find, as Canon Liddon has
said, that " prayer is what prevents religion from
degenerating into mere religious thought on the
one side, or into mere philanthropy on the other."
Prayer is what exalts sentiment into action and
service to humanity into worship. It is, as I
said at the beginning, the summoning of all man's
nature to gain effective communion with God, and
then to carry that sense of God's presence into all

THE TRUTH ABOUT PRAYER 185
one does and thinks in daily life. Prayer, then, is
indispensable to us all; for we all have to seek
the face of God. It is not alone the privilege of
the recluse, shut out from the world. It is the
means which God has given us, and to which we
come instinctively, for finding God, for living with
him, and for carrying about with us a sense of his
presence, deriving from it comfort and peace and
calmness and strength.
As we look back along the line of Old Testa
ment heroes we see that David and Samuel, Elijah
and Daniel, and all the prophets were men who
prayed ; and in their praying they laid effective
hold upon God, and God revealed himself not only
to them, but through them ; and through them
the world became conscious of God's presence.
" O thou that hearest prayer," is the cry of the
psalmist, " unto thee shall all flesh come." Why?
Because all men are born of God and must needs
find God. " I love the Lord, because he hath
heard my voice and my supplications. Because
he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore
will I call upon him as long as I live." That is
the testimony of a heart that has found God for
itself, and that is the enduring answer of the
Christian to the world in all its questionings as
to the reality of the Christian's prayer.
When life draws to its close we shall all be sure
to find that we have wasted many of its precious

1 86 MODERN INQUIRIES
hours. We have wasted them in our work in do
ing things that were trivial ; we have wasted them
in our study upon things that were but passing ;
in pleasures which even at the time we knew were
unsatisfying. We shall then discover that we used
best that time which we consecrated to finding
God in prayer. The men who, as Christians,
have done the greatest work for Christ in the
world were the men who prayed. Calvin was
the man of one book, the man who walked with
God ; John Wesley had great power in prayer ;
and Luther often said, " Because I am crowded
with work to-day, I must spend more time than
usual in prayer."
So for us all, dear friends, if we are to be
Christians indeed, if we are to do God's work in
the world, we must call upon our souls and all
that is within us — we must summon the best
energies of our life — until we too have laid endur
ing hold upon the throne of grace. When we can
say, " I have called upon the Lord, and he has
heard my prayer," then, and not until then, are
we at peace.

XIII
A SAVIOUR FROM SIN

187

" I am sure that there are many persons who believe in Christ,
who come to him and accept the salvation he offers, but who stop
there, and whose life flickers and almost goes out for their want
of realizing the position to which they are called. It is when we
abide in Christ every moment, as the branch in the vine ; when
we surrender all to him and lie in his arms ; and when we look
on salvation not as a thing we are to touch and then have done
with, or occasionally recall to mind, but a real, living, constant
union with Christ in thought, in will and object — it is thus in
deed that we have peace and calm and assurance and life."
Letter from Lord Cairns shortly
before his death.

188

XIII
A SAVIOUR FROM SIN
The distinctive feature of Christianity is that
it offers salvation, not through theology, nor
through a ritual, nor through a discipline of life,
but by a personal Saviour. In this respect it
is different from all other forms of faith. The
appeal that is made in the gospel is not sim
ply, "Come into a better life," nor, "Come into
the acceptance of a definite truth," nor, " Come
into a particular form of worship," but, " Come
unto me, and live." The one who thus addresses
us is Jesus Christ, and the story of his life is the
story of the divine condescension : God in the
person of his Son coming down into our life — born
as we are born ; laboring as men labor ; meeting
temptation in all points as we are tempted, yet
without sin ; understanding our sorrows and sick
nesses, bearing them upon his own heart; and at
last going down voluntarily into the grave, and
being raised from the dead to prove the fullness
of the life that is in him ; and then, from the
standpoint of a risen Saviour, proclaiming his

190 MODERN INQUIRIES
abiding presence in the world henceforth. This
is the gospel — the "good news" to men — from
the lips of him who accomplished it; and now
through his Word and his followers' testimony the
world is to be saved.
The question then arises, How does this
Saviour accomplish salvation for sinners? The
New Testament is the unfolding of that truth.
It does not announce a thesis which it proceeds
to prove. It sets before us a series of pictures —
suggestions — as to the way in which God finds
access to a sinful heart, and then by his own
power leads that heart out of helplessness into
strength, out of despair into hope, out of bondage
into " the glorious liberty of the sons of God."
In order to make that truth real, reference is
frequently had to the Old Testament ritual, the
sacrifices, and the law ; and yet the Saviour, com
ing to redeem the world, does not offer himself
after the fashion of the Old Testament offering.
He comes to set the law aside ; to declare that it
has been an imperfect instrument, valuable chiefly
as a symbol of the work which he is to accom
plish. He comes to establish a new covenant in
himself. We have the Saviour presenting himself as a
" great high priest " — using the figure of the high
priest of the Old Testament, who entered alone
into the holy of holies once a year, and there

A SAVIOUR FROM SIN

191

obtained remission of the sins of the people. But
not as such a priest or mediator did Jesus
come. If he had he would, of necessity, have had
to remain on earth forever ; his work would have
been incessant. He came to accomplish what
a high priest could not do. He secures a re
demption which no ritual and no sacrifice and
no service, under the most favorable conditions,
could accomplish for a sinful heart. " What
the law could not do, in that it was weak," he
has done. What the blood of bulls and of goats
could not accomplish, he has come to perfect.
When John saw the Saviour he exclaimed, " Be
hold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin
of the world ! " In the ritual of the Old Testa
ment it was not a lamb that was offered for sin,
but a bullock or a goat. John undoubtedly gets
his figure from the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah,
where the Coming One is " brought as a lamb
to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her
shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth."
" He was wounded for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities," that he might accom
plish once for all the redemption which every
soul needs. The high priest went into the holy
of holies ceremonially fitted to make atonement
for the sins of the people. This new Saviour is
without sin; he alone thinks God's thoughts and
feels as God feels and is one with the Father; and

192 MODERN INQUIRIES
he alone has condescended to plead for the sinner
with that love which knows no change or weari
ness, evermore saying, " Come unto me, and ye
shall find rest unto your souls."
The work that this Saviour of sinners has ac
complished is a redemptive work — a " ransom
ing " work, as the word so often is. " He gave
himself for us," to take the place of one who is
under bondage. We see this Saviour coming out
of that unlimited life that lies beyond the veil,
and coming into this narrow life in which we are
found, that he may bear our burdens and share
our sorrows and experience our temptations ;
doing all this of his own free will, in order that
in so doing he may win the right to bear us upon
his own heart before the throne of the Judge
of the universe ; and doing all with the full assur
ance that his prayers shall be heard.
He alone has access to the throne of grace ; he
alone has the right to secure redemption to those
who are under the bondage of sin ; and that " not
without blood," for his own blood was offered
freely as the proof of the divine Messiahship ;
and with this as a witness to his right to be the
Redeemer, he draws near to God.
Now notice that in all human sacrifices there
is the desire to appease an angry God. All that
is swept aside by the coming of the Saviour.
He comes from the Father; and when he has

A SAVIOUR FROM SIN 193
revealed the Father, and has accomplished the
Father's will, he turns back to the arms of the
Father, which are open to receive him. The
gates of death are thrown aside, that he might
win a victory and be enabled to save men from
their sins.
We come then to this as the great central truth
in the work of this new Redeemer. This Saviour,
who has been sent from the Father, and who has
done all this, comes with a message for all men
everywhere. It is either for all men or for none.
He comes not to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance. He comes to seek and to save that
which was lost. He comes to reveal the love of
the Father, not in proportion as he sees that
there is more righteousness in some hearts than
in others, but to reveal that righteousness which
no wickedness in any man's heart has interfered
with or destroyed. He comes to reveal that
Heavenly Father who, because he loves as no
man can love, can reveal in his Son a redemption
such as man cannot know.
There we have the personal Saviour first call
ing men by his own voice, and then calling them
by his message of redemption. " He is able also to
save them to the uttermost that come unto God
by him." No individual has been so great a sin
ner but that the Saviour who speaks to him can
lead him into life. Then what he does for one

194 MODERN INQUIRIES
he does for all, that all men everywhere may find
life. " The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleans-
eth us from all sin." " This is a faithful saying,"
says Paul, again and again, " and worthy of all
acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners."
This redemption which was in the personal
Saviour becomes effective when we heed his in
vitation and open our hearts to his coming ; when
we hear him say, " Come unto me and live."
Men do not know this ; therefore the need of
preaching the gospel. Therefore the Lord prayed
for his servants, " I pray not that thou shouldest
take them out of the world, but that thou should
est keep them from the evil." " Ye are my wit
nesses." Tell men of the personal Saviour, with
an individual message to every man and every
woman, however lost in darkness, however hard
ened in heart or weighed down with care.
I remember, not long ago, seeing an account
of some miners who were entombed by an ex
plosion. The rescuing-party discovered that they
were still alive, and then set to work with all
possible despatch to save them. Day after day
the reliefs worked, until they broke through the
last foot of rock that separated them from the
imprisoned miners, who were at the last gasp.
Then it was discovered that the rescuers had not
done all the work ; for the imprisoned miners had

A SAVIOUR FROM SIN 1 95
heard the sound of the tools, and had strenuously,
though feebly, set to work to meet them. While
the relief-party had cut perhaps forty or fifty
feet, they had gone but five or six ; yet that had
been just enough to complete their deliverance.
If they had not done their part, small as it was,
they would have perished.
So, many men seem to think that this divine
Saviour is now working for us ; he is tunneling
through the hard rock of the world's obduracy,
and if we are to be saved we must be working
toward him, because our salvation depends upon
what we may do to supplement his work.
All this is a mistake, and leads us to wonder
why our hearts are so hard, and why we are not
better Christians, instead of knowing that the lov
ing Saviour has come to us himself, as a father
goes to seek his lost child, and discovering him
takes him up in his arms and carries him back to
his home, doing all that needs to be done to save
him that was lost; and all we have to do is to
welcome the Saviour and commit to him the
keeping of our souls, as a little child commits
himself to his father who has found him.
This is the message which God has given
us to-day of the Saviour from sin. You see why
faith in this Saviour, who came to us himself,
bringing the life of the Father, saves us. You
see that we receive a new heart by the entering

1 96 MODERN INQUIRIES
into our lives of this new spirit, just as a new
love changes the heart. We are selfish ; we care
for nobody ; suddenly a new love comes into
our hearts ; at once it possesses us and masters
us ; we cannot get rid of it even if we would.
Like that is the love of Christ ; coming to us as
an expulsive power; driving out selfishness and
sordidness and weakness and unbelief. So that
the salvation which Jesus Christ brings to us is
made real by the change which comes over our
lives. We are turned from doing wrong to doing
right, from the things which God hates to the
things which God loves.
And this is a permanent salvation — not a
transitory one ; not depending upon our emo
tions. It is a permanent salvation because the
Lord Jesus Christ is an unchangeable Saviour.
"Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and
forever." And when he says, " Come unto me,"
we know that he is " able to keep that which I
have committed unto him against that day."
The process, then, of becoming a Christian is
very simple. We discover our need and we ask
help. We hear a voice saying, " Come unto me
and live." We accept the invitation, and then we
begin to live, not for ourselves, but for " him who
died for us, and rose again." We ask, " Lord,
what wilt thou have me to do?" — that we may
do it. We ask, " Lord, what wouldst thou have

A SAVIOUR FROM SIN 1 97
me to feel ? " — that we may call upon our soul,
and all that is within us, to praise and mag
nify his holy name. And when a man is willing
to do that he has met the Lord who has been
seeking him, and has found peace.
I have in my hand a letter written by one
who a short time ago was an unbeliever. He
says : " I do not doubt any longer. I accept the
simple fact that mankind was lost in sin; that I
have sinned ; that I am to be saved by a redemp
tion ; that to accomplish a redemption there must
be a ransom; that this ransom must be Jesus
Christ, who is its center and head; that without
him there can be no redemption, and without
redemption the Christian religion is false." The
appeal of Jesus Christ to you, dear friends, is
along this line; simply that without argument
you recognize the fact that you are a sinner,
and that Jesus Christ has died for you, and that
he now offers himself as your ransom, and pleads
with you to let him lead you into life. And this
is the authentic record: "As many as received
him, to them gave he power to become the sons
of God."

XIV
AFTER DEATH— WHAT?

199

" 'Tis not the whole of life to live,
Nor all of death to die."
James Montgomery.
" The death of the body is the separation of the soul from the
body ; but the death of the soul is the separation of the soul from
God." Augustine.
"lam most curious to get a glimpse of the next world. How
will it all seem? Perfectly fair and perfectly natural, no doubt.
We ought not to fear death; it is friendly."
General S. C. Armstrong.

XIV
AFTER DEATH — WHAT?
There is a strange fascination about this ques
tion, After death — what? And it is not simply
because death is to be the universal experience.
Rather it is because there is something in every
heart that tells us that the life which now is must
stand in some essential relation to that which
awaits us beyond the grave. For this reason
man has always busied himself with questions
concerning the life beyond. What are its char
acteristics ; and is it a fact ?
Before we can proceed to think of what we are
to be we must know what we are. We look at
a man — our friend — and we say, "What is he? "
He is so much matter, so much intelligence, so
much personal influence, so much political power,
so much in productive force ; and yet this is not
the man. We get nearer to him and gaze upon
his face, and we say, "This is my friend." He
has an individuality which answers to something
in ourselves. We separate him in thought from
all others. We recognize that that separation

202 MODERN INQUIRIES
is based upon something quite different from
what is to be seen. We love him and cherish
him and bind him to us " with hooks of steel,"
because of what we have discovered in him.
That makes him the man we think him to be.
When we have advanced as far as this in judg
ing our friend we discover that in order to know
him fully we must turn to ourselves. We are
limited in our observation of him. We are con
scious that back of all that any one can see or
hear or discover in another there is the very self
that lies within, and unrevealed.
So when we ask, "What is man?" we begin
to inquire of our own hearts, and there we find
an assemblage of feelings and impulses and affec
tions and thoughts, all controlled and held to
gether by what we call myself. Now we are
getting nearer to the knowledge of what man is.
He is myself — this person standing before you,
being what he is. And as we proceed in our in
quiries we recognize that what I am now I have
always been, so long as I have been anything at
all. Memory is the link that binds together the
experiences which make up my life. I may for
get many of the details of the life I have lived,
but I recognize that through it all I have been
essentially what I am now — myself.
But I am not simply an individual. A dog is
an individual — that is, in those particulars in

AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 203
which one dog differs from all other dogs; for
the individual dog acts under certain forces that
are in his nature, living, of course, below the plane
on which we live. But I differ from all others
of my kind in a different way from that.
I have what we call a personality. It is what
lifts man above all animals. It is that in us which
can understand the past and gather unto itself all
the forces of the present, the person.
The question, then, is, What will death do for
this person? No one comes back from beyond
death to tell us his experience, and continu
ally we are reminded that because of this all our
thoughts about death must be guesses. If they
are mere thoughts, opinions, inquiries, why con
cern ourselves about the matter? Better attend
to the practical questions of daily life. " Better
be a good man than a philosopher or a psycholo
gist," some one has cynically said. Yes; but our
being a good man, our being any kind of a man, will
be largely determined by the thoughts and con
ceptions we have not only of the present life, but
of the life that is to come. We know that what
earnest men have done for us in the past by the
thoughts they have given us is still a potent force
in the life we are living.
And what is death ? We do not know what is
beyond, but we have a very graphic and definite
knowledge of what death is here. That strange

204 MODERN INQUIRIES
hour has come which we all knew would come,
and men say, " He is dying." He lies there on
his bed. The forces of the body are ebbing.
The blood is ceasing to course in the brain. The
strong hand is palsied and nerveless. The eyes
are closed, the sight is waning. The voices in
the ear have ceased to be heard. The thoughts
are far away. He can be summoned back only
for a moment, as if already beyond our reach.
He is no longer a part of the life which he has
been living. Now he is dead.
We see all that the word means, and the ques
tion comes, Where has he gone? What has he
become? What is the relation between death
and this which we call life, with all its tragedy,
with all its unrevealed history, with all its mys
terious secrets? What is life, viewed from the
point where he is now ?
We will not be deceived by any pseudo-im
mortality, any mere suggestion of an immortality
which a critical examination does not sustain.
There are those who affirm that immortality
is everywhere ; that matter has an eternal exis
tence ; matter so strange, so stable, yet always in
flux ; changing always, yet never ceasing to be ;
as matter we shall live forever. But that concep
tion of immortality does not satisfy us.
Others maintain that force is immortal. Bind
ing all these atoms together is the force of nature,

AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 205
acting universally and never passing out of exis
tence; man as a part of that energy will exist
forever ; immortality is the discovery of that fact.
But this also does not satisfy.
Then there are those who say that life is like a
drama ; that we each in turn appear on the stage,
act our little part, and then vanish, and the play
of life goes on forever, to be enacted by those
who shall follow us ; that is the meaning of immor
tality. But we cannot accept that. No admitted
loss of the individual or person will serve to an
swer our question whether there is life beyond
death. Some contend that immortality consists in the
living thought ; that man is brought into exis
tence, and molded by God as the universe is
molded, and that thoughts are eternal. But this
again does not satisfy, because then also our indi
viduality vanishes.
Still others assert that we must be content
with finding immortality in moral force — the con
tribution which each man is permitted to make
to the sum total of good in the world. We each
live our little day, and so life perpetuates itself
and influence passes on unbroken. To claim more
than that, it is said, is egotistical. The old figure
is of the drop of water falling into the ocean ; not
lost, but simply gone back to its own; never to
be separated again, but simply having had the

206 MODERN INQUIRIES
experience of being for a brief moment with
drawn. But neither can we accept this for life
and death.
The question before us, as thoughtful men, is,
Shall I live again — being myself and not another?
How shall we find our answer to this ? We may
approach it in two or three different ways. There
is a very strong presumption that because God
has made man he has made him for himself. If
there is a God he is eternal ; he has no limitations ;
and if he has made man— as he says he has — in
his own image, to think his thoughts, the reason
for man's existence that availed at the beginning
will always maintain so long as God himself is.
So there is this presumption, I say, that if we
are the children of God we shall dwell with God
forever. But beyond this there is the striking fact that
man has always recognized in himself a perma
nent tendency to believe in such immortality.
It is the foundation-thought of all religions, the
one from out of which all religions have sprung.
Man is a worshiping creature. There has never
been an age or condition in which he has not
given evidence of this tendency of the heart to
believe that we shall live after death. Do not
think for a moment that I mean that this ten
dency should be accepted as proof of the fact.
But it has been discovered as a scientific fact that

AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 207
man has a strange tendency to believe certain
things which on other grounds may be proved
to be true ; for example, that truth is better than
falsehood, that honor is better than injustice. So
this universal expectancy becomes a strong pre
sumption that there is a corresponding fact.
There is a peculiar phrase in the Book of Eccle
siastes, which you may not have noticed, as it is
obscured in our English translation. It is in the
third chapter and the eleventh verse. The writer
says, " God has set [or hidden] eternity in the
heart of man." That is the discovery of a wise
man probing his own heart to see what curious
facts he could find there. And because God has
put that thought in our heart, as he has put the
eye in our head, there is a strong presumption
that it corresponds to some great external fact —
something that will be found a reality in the life
that lies beyond.
Another step in our thought is the plan of the
revelation by which God has been teaching men
through all the centuries, the process by which
man has ever been advancing to higher things.
This revelation brings proof of immortality as it
proceeds. In the beginning of the Old Testa
ment little or nothing is said about it. We infer
it. There is something in the story of Abra
ham that makes us believe that he was not sat
isfied with the things which he saw. He left

208 MODERN INQUIRIES
everything that men value in life — home, friends,
country — and went forth; the writer of the He
brews says that he sought another, a better coun
try, and that "he looked for a city . . . whose
builder and maker is God." Abraham is always
represented as a man strangely indifferent to the
things about him. Jacob, with all his shrewdness
and his firm hold upon the things of this world,
never is settled ; to the last he is a pilgrim moving
on to those "things to come," concerning which
his father had testified. So with Moses, who for
sook the treasures of Egypt and the luxury of the
king's palace, " choosing rather to suffer affliction
with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures
of sin for a season ; . . . not fearing the wrath of
the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is
invisible " — and all because he stood in some
definite relation to the Canaan that lies beyond
the Jordan of death.
Take such a psalm as the seventy-third. There
we have the struggle in every age, and in all
men's hearts, over the mysteries of daily life.
The wicked have all that heart can desire, and
the righteous have plenty of trouble. The
psalmist says he was " envious, when he saw the
prosperity of the wicked." "They are not in
trouble as other men; neither are they plagued
like other men." "Until I went into the sanctu
ary of God; then understood I their end." Then

AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 209
he hastens to say, " So foolish was I, and igno
rant : I was as a beast before thee. Nevertheless
I am continually with thee : thou hast holden me
by my right hand. Thou shalt guide me with
thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory.
Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is
none upon earth that I desire besides thee. My
flesh and my heart faileth : but God is the
strength of my heart, and my portion forever."
Then there is the Book of Job : it is a drama
of immortality, offering immortality as a fact — the
key to all the trouble that now is. The prophets
also are spokesmen of the other world. They see
visions and dream dreams, and come with mes
sages to their countrymen, because Jehovah, the
God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, is not
the God of the dead, but of the living.
So, as the story of revelation advances, this
underlying thought — always assumed, always
taken for granted — becomes clearer and more
definite ; always as the goal of life, always as the
ideal attainment, always as the supreme reward
for which God made his creatures. This in the
Old Testament.
When, at the opening of the New Testament,
we ask what the Jews believed, we find in their
hearts a deep-rooted consciousness that their God
lives beyond the veil; the winds are his mes
sengers, and his voice like the sound of many

21 0 MODERN INQUIRIES
waters; his eyes are as a flame of fire. Then
comes the supreme revelation of the Lord Jesus
Christ, who in one sentence says, " I am the
resurrection, and the life : he that believeth in
me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."
He brought life and immortality to light.
Now, when we add to this testimony of revela
tion the conviction of immortality which we find
in the heart of man, we come to our conclusion.
After death — what? Life! Before death the
sickness, before death the tragedy; after death
the solution of the tragedy, the light in which
there is no darkness at all, the opening of the
spiritual vision, the lifting of the veil, the revela
tion of the Father, whose face his children shall
henceforth behold.
What then? We must seek in that end the
one explanation of what we call life. How else
can we explain the pain, the disappointments, the
discipline, the labor, the daily duty of the present
life — the trials so incessant, the results so trivial,
the struggles so wearisome, the joys, at the best,
so transient ?
Look at it in the individual case : a poor girl
dying in shame — drowning her shame in suicide
— and the author of her ruin walking in honor,
having all that heart could wish. How is the
tragedy to be justified ? The prisoner executed
by mistake, lynched, perhaps, by a mob because

AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 211
of some sudden and frenzied fear on the part of
the community ; and the community losing its
fear, getting over its panic, and awakening to
discover its mistake — when too late. How is the
mistake to be corrected ? The prisoner, perhaps,
a man who had spent his life in toil and suffer
ing for others ; his wife and children now robbed
of a husband and father, the home desolate, the
family scattered ; the possibilities of growth and
blessing for them all gone. Where is the balance
of blind justice? Such things are happening
every day. In the conviction that beyond death
is to be found life, with vast possibilities of re
dress, is the only answer.
The second thought is that all doubts as to the
reality of a life beyond the grave arise from the
consciousness of sin. You remember that beauti
ful description in Wordsworth's " Ode to Immor
tality": " Trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy."
Who doubts that the babe has come from God?
Who can question that as it rests in its mother's
arms it rests in the divine arms? God has
made it for himself. That babe grows by and
by to be a young man ; and now the description
changes :

212 MODERN INQUIRIES
"... The Youth
Who daily from the East
Must travel, still is nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended.
At length the man perceives it die away
And fade into the light of common day."

This is the story of our life. If we had kept
pure it would not be so. The doubt of immor
tality is possible only as sin and selfishness and
worldliness get the mastery over our hearts. If
we should strive to live as God made us we
should always carry about with us that con
sciousness of God which many of us have left
behind. We know that we have lost the sense
of gratitude and dependence which we once had.
Otherwise the vision of infancy would have been
permanently real ; otherwise the man who longs
for knowledge of that world which lies beyond
would have had it revealed to him as it is often
revealed to dying saints. It is not so with us
because we have destroyed our power to see ; it
is given to the pure in heart to see God.
Therefore the duty of cultivating this thought
of immortality — to " lay hold on eternal life,"
as the injunction of the Scripture is, and to mea
sure all things about us in life in their effect upon
our hearts in their relation to eternity. Do they
drag us down to the level of earth? Or do they

AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 213
draw the veil aside and reveal that which is above
our heads ?
In the Homeric tale, you remember, Achilles,
the invincible hero, said, " I would rather be a
slave in the field for a poor man, than to be a
king among the dead." To him the abode of
the dead was the realm of unburied ghosts and
the unrealities of existence. To the Christian the
place of the dead is his Father's house; the end
of weariness and the reward of toil ; the city that
came down from God out of heaven, adorned as
a bride for her husband, which has no need of
the sun, or of the moon, to shine in it, for the
Lamb is the light thereof; where there is no
death or sighing or pain or tears ; where is the
river of the water of life, and where his servants
do serve him day and night in his temple.
Blessed be God for the sure revelation of the life
that is to come, and now is!

XV
SOME FEATURES OF IMMORTALITY

215

" Why, then, should witlesse man so much misweene
That nothing is but that which he hath seen? "
Spenser, " Faerie Queene."
" We do not enter into a state of happiness merely from being
buried. Many will seek happiness in the future life, and in the
infinite series of future worlds, as much in vain as in the present
life, if they think it can be found in anything but that which is
now so near to them that it never can be brought nearer, viz.,
the Eternal." Shedd, " History of Doctrine," vol. ii., p. 423.

216

XV
SOME FEATURES OF IMMORTALITY
The difference between a Christian and one
who is not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is
not simply in the fact that the one has a more
definite hold on the life beyond the grave than
the other, but also in the fact that his knowledge
concerning things beyond the grave rests on what
are to him matters of certainty. If, then, we turn
aside from the declarations of the New Testament
as to the other life, and occupy our thoughts with
such suggestions as come to us out of our daily
life, it is not because we are not satisfied with what
the New Testament reveals, but simply because
we desire to read what God has made more or less
plain in his other book — the book of nature.
I think we may say that, in our last discussion
approaching the thought in this way, we found
abundant evidence to lead us to believe that
death does not end all; that man is by nature
immortal ; and that the longings which come to
us here are to find fulfilment hereafter.
217

2l8 MODERN INQUIRIES
But this simple fact can never satisfy us; for
at once a multitude of questions arise in regard
to the nature of that other life. We are convinced
of an immortality of the conscious self. Now
what are the leading features of that immortality
— apart from rewards and punishments? What
are to be what we may call its natural and inher
ent features ?
One of them is that memory will certainly play
a leading part in that future life. Memory seems
essential to our identity on earth. Not that our
continued existence, as being always the same
person, is established or created by memory.
As we look into our hearts and take cognizance
of ourselves we find within a faculty which, not
content with recording what we are now, con
tinually runs back into the past, reviewing and
estimating it. We may not remember what we
did last year, or what we said — for memory plays
us many tricks — but we do discover in our mem
ories of the past that we were ourselves yesterday,
and were equally so in the earliest recollections we
have. It was myself who acted. It was myself
who thought. It was myself who willed. It
was myself who was responsible for what I did
in this or that. In other words, memory brings
to us evidence of the continued identity of self,
and all this in the face of the fact that memory
seems so uncertain and incomplete. We have

SOME FEATURES OF IMMORTALITY 219
lapses of memory, but when memory reasserts
itself it bears testimony to the same truths to
which it bore testimony before ; and as we come
to examine the place of memory in our lives,
the wonder is not that we remember things, or
that we remember things so minutely, but that
we ever forget things ; for memory is constantly
surprising us with the fullness of the details that
it carries with it ; and from time to time peculiar
experiences occur, as in the presence of death,
when memory proves its power by flashing upon
us all our past history in a moment. We may
be sure, therefore, that as memory plays so im
portant a part in our life on this side the grave,
it will do the same on the other side.
We are aware, also, that this condition of things
to which memory certifies has an effect in working
out character quite independently of the outward
circumstances of life. One lives in a palace, an
other in a hovel. One is learned in the knowledge
of the world, another is ignorant. But we dis
cover that the life of the ignorant man, or the life
of the poorest and most circumscribed, may have
in it elements of nobleness which are entirely inde
pendent of the external surroundings. So, then,
memory, while it comes to us freighted with a
diary of the past, also brings with it marvelous
possibilities of attainment ; and as the busy years
go by, however they may serve to strip us of

220 MODERN INQUIRIES
things which we treasure outside of ourselves,
memory will ever carry on for us all that is best
in thought, in attainment, in self-sacrifice, in
achievement, no less than all that may have been
worse. I think that this is one of the most patent
and essential facts of that immortal life for which
we all are destined.
And this leads to another question: Shall we
recognize our friends in that other world? If
our personal identity continues, then the identity
of our friends will continue ; and, startling as is
the effect of death in its manifest power to strip
man of all he has acquired in life, startling as is
its power to level all to one common experience,
so that it may literally be said of man, " Naked
was he born, and naked shall he return to the
earth," it nevertheless will remain a fact that the
hand of death will be stopped at the point of its
power to destroy our personal identity. We go
down into death ourselves, and all that death
can do is to strip us of our garments. If we are
to live again we shall live as ourselves ; and if we
live ourselves, then our friends will live them
selves. Just now not infrequent reference is made to
that passage in the New Testament which seems
to antagonize this thought. I refer to Galatians
iii. 28, where the Apostle says, "There is neither
Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there

SOME FEATURES OF IMMORTALITY 221
is neither male nor female : for ye are all one in
Christ Jesus." And the inference is drawn that
by religion all distinctions of race or sex or con
dition are obliterated, and that therefore, in con
sidering the structure of society or the relation
of man to man, it is right to ignore these rela
tions. Such interpretation is an utter perversion
of the Scriptures. If you will take the trouble
to read the epistle you will see that the Apostle
is speaking of this single truth — that all men need
the gospel. Of that there is no question. To
the Jew and to the Greek, to the wise and to the
foolish, to the male and to the female, there is one
message, one redemption, one Saviour. All dis
tinctions in this respect are banished forever. But
it was not at all in Paul's mind to ignore these
relations which God has established in nature
and life. These are permanent facts in human
history, because they are the products of the
history. And just as the Anglo-Saxon race has
its history, so that we cannot be other men than we
are, because of the blood that flows in our veins,
so other men are what they are — with their pas
sions, with their limitations, with their marvelous
gifts, so different from ours, and yet so distinct and
powerful and useful in the world — because God
has " made of one blood all nations of men for
to dwell on all the face of the earth." The same
general conditions of oneness and of diversity are

222 MODERN INQUIRIES
true of all. And while there is one Lord, one
faith, and one baptism, and all have the common
privileges of life, yet each comes as himself and
not as another, with his own history unalterable,
with his own individuality entering into and giv
ing an account of what he is. Now because of
this we find that the beauty of life and the power
of life are due to these differences. In that other
life shall all the thought of God and the plan of
God be set aside and counted as if it were noth
ing? Shall all that adorns this life be regarded
as forever banished from the life that is to come ?
Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, comforts
them over their dead with the promise of the
Lord's coming again and bringing with him " ten
thousand of his saints," to meet those who sur
vive till then on earth. And John, in the Reve
lation, sees the New Jerusalem not only as a city,
that is, a place of elect companionships, but he
sees a great multitude out of every nation and
kindred and people and clime, recognizable, there
fore, as retaining their own characteristics, each
one being himself and not some other. What we
are here, because we are conscious persons, we
shall remain there — the man carrying with him
all that goes to make up his vigorous manhood,
and the woman all that constitutes her gracious
womanhood. Let us not, then, in our concern
for the life that now is, and in our eagerness to

SOME FEATURES OF IMMORTALITY 223
get support for schemes of social reform, pervert
the Scriptures.
As we recognize ourselves, so shall we rec
ognize our friends. Memory holds the strings
of the heart forever. Dives remembers that he
has five brethren, and pleads for them that they
may not suffer the torment in which he finds
himself. And when the veil is withdrawn on
the Mount of Transfiguration, two men, Moses
and Elias — not two visionary figures — come to
minister to the Saviour, as the men who of old
opened their hearts to God, and who lived near
to God, while the world lay in darkness. Those
two men, being themselves, come to talk with
Jesus of his death which he is about to accom
plish, which they beheld far off, and which they
would now understand in the fullness of its mean
ing. Wherever you open the New Testament
you will find this as the underlying and indispu
table inference: the same individuality and the
same recognitions exist in the other world that
exist in this.
Now as to the question of the relation of the
soul to the body. It is manifest that we are not
to be disembodied spirits. We know that under
the terms of man's material constitution the
body is the soul's natural organ. We know the
soul only as in the body. Its existence outside
of the body and apart from the body is hard to

224 MODERN INQUIRIES
conceive. We know that a man in a certain
body here would become to us some one else if
he were out of that body or in a different body.
The body is not a machine on which the soul
can play as on a piano. It is not a casket in
which the soul is shut up to be kept from harm,
as a jewel in a case ; and yet we often speak of the
body as " this poor, frail, worn-out body," from
which we would gladly escape. But what is this
body ? It is so far my very self that separated
from it I could not understand myself and would
be some other than myself. As far as our ex
perience goes, the soul is always in and of the
body. The question how the soul came to be in the
body has never been answered. There are two
theories about it, the Traducian and the Creation.
According to the former the soul was born in the
same process by which the body was born. The
idea is old, and has been associated with many
great names. But there are manifest difficulties
regarding it — difficulties so great that it has- never
gained a very firm hold on the world at large.
The other theory is that while the body is
produced as all animal life is, each separate soul
is a distinct creation ; when the body is prepared
in the natural way then God bestows on it the
gift of a soul, as when God made Adam and
"breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and

SOME FEATURES OF IMMORTALITY 225
man became a living soul." There is a passage
found in the twelfth chapter of Hebrews, at the
ninth verse, which, if it be not decisive, as some
would regard it, is suggestive. It reads : " Fur
thermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which
corrected us, and we gave them reverence : shall
we not much rather be in subjection unto the
Father of spirits, and live? " It sets over against
and in sharp contrast to the "fathers of our
flesh " the " Father of spirits." The body is our
earthly inheritance, given to us in the course of
nature ; but for each one the soul is in a special
sense the divine gift, coming from the " Father
of spirits," in whom " we live, and move, and
have our being."
But be the theory what it may, the fact seems
to be perfectly clear that the soul stands in some
permanent relation to the body, which is essential
to the soul's life. Paul dwells on this very fully in
that wonderful fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians,
emphasizing the fact, but not explaining the the
ory. He says : "As we have borne the image of
the earthly we shall also bear the image of the
heavenly;" and then he promptly adds: "But
this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot
inherit the kingdom of God ; neither doth corrup
tion inherit incorruption. Behold, I show you a
mystery ; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all
be changed." That is the mystery: that this

226 MODERN INQUIRIES
earthly body, this piece of clay, is of the earth
and yet not of the earth; as flesh and blood it
does not remain, but in some strange change, as
not a terrestrial but a celestial body, it is still to
inherit the kingdom of God.
Were we asked, " How is it possible that there
can be any other conception of the body than
the material?" we answer that it all turns on
our idea of the nature of matter. We talk very
learnedly of matter. We separate matter from
spirit, and we say that matter is " impenetrable,"
"indestructible," "indivisible," and many other
things; but what do we know about matter?
Two corks, dropped into the water, slowly move
toward each other; what causes them to do
so? We call it attraction. What does that
mean? What quality has matter, that force can
act from one body to another through space?
We are told that each atom of matter is com
posed of molecules that are in incessant motion,
and the phenomena of matter are due to their
impact. What, then, is matter? Who can tell?
The mathematician talks to us about the fourth
dimension of space. We do not understand what
that can mean. All goes to show that this earth,
this footstool of God upon which we live, is a
most mysterious thing. We know really nothing
about it. How, then, shall " this mortal put on
immortality," and how shall "this corruptible put

SOME FEATURES OF IMMORTALITY 227
on incorruption " ? Who can answer? "Behold,
I show you a mystery ; We shall all be changed."
But we shall still be ourselves.
What, then, is to follow death? There cer
tainly will be no suspension of existence. As
we have no evidence of annihilation — and we
should need most conclusive evidence to believe
it — so we have no evidence of a conditional im
mortality. The presumption is strong against
both, and the testimony of Scripture seems clear.
These theories have gained credence chiefly as
convenient doctrines for escaping the force of the
many and plain scriptural declarations of a coming
judgment and eternal punishment.
Nor will there be any intermediate state of un
consciousness or of unrealized hope. The Saviour's
promise, " To-day shalt thou be with me in para
dise," and the Apostle's assurance of being "ever
with the Lord," would seem to shut out such un
certainty. The testimony of the Scripture is that
in death we pass through the veil to the imme
diate life beyond, for which every Christian heart
has yearned — longing to be unclothed that we
may be clothed upon — where for the believer all
life's pains and tears shall be left forever behind,
and where "death is swallowed up in victory."
We are all destined to a permanent existence,
carrying with us this very body in which we
have lived and loved below. And there " every

22 8 MODERN INQUIRIES
one of us shall give account of himself to God."
If this is true, then to live here is to be on trial
for the life beyond. It is to be in a state of prep
aration for that immortality which is daily open
ing before us. Earth becomes not the portal to
that life, but a part of it. In that sense life is a
time of probation. " To-day, if ye will hear his
voice, harden not your hearts." It is possible
for us so to open our hearts, so to surrender our
selves to the divine arms, that life yonder shall
come to us as a blessing and not as a dread ; that
continued existence shall be not a regret and not
a pain, but the great reward. " My flesh and
my heart faileth," said the psalmist; and our
hearts and flesh fail with the continued burdens
and cares and disappointments of life ; but as he
added, so may we add, " God is the strength of
my heart, and my portion forever."
" Thou hast made me for thyself, O God, and
my heart cannot rest until it findeth itself in
thee." That is the testimony of every truth-
telling heart, bearing witness to itself and its
destiny.

XVI
PAUL'S IDEA OF HEAVEN

229

"No; I do not want to see the heavens open like Stephen,
unless He choose to open them. No ; I do not ask to see the
New Jerusalem like John, unless He think this best. Gethsem
ane seen by faith is to me the gate of heaven, and Calvary sparkles
and shines to me, the sinner, with brighter rubies than the city
not made with hands ; it shines with the rubies of His dying love.
I have not seen them with these eyes, but He who died for me
sent me word concerning them, and I gratefully believe."
Rev. W. G. Schauffler, D.D.,
Sermon in Constantinople.

230

XVI
PAUL'S IDEA OF HEAVEN
WE have devoted two discussions to the con
sideration of the question of a continued existence
after death. We come now to what the Bible has
to say about the nature of life beyond the grave,
and more particularly to Paul's idea of heaven.
The evidence that God's hand was from the
beginning upon the children of Israel is found in
the fact that after two hundred and possibly four
hundred years of civilized life in Egypt they came
up out of Egypt entirely free from the supersti
tions of Egypt in regard to the other world. Of
all the nations of antiquity the Egyptians believed
that the things that are seen are the unreal
things. This life to them was not only wrapped
about with immortality, but was filled with the
consciousness of the presence of unseen beings.
Their vast monuments are all associated with the
dead — those who were either dead when the
monuments were erected, or were preparing to
die. The mummy was made for the chief pur-
231

232 MODERN INQUIRIES
pose of preserving the soul, which needed to have
a local habitation; and all the circumstances at
tendant upon their burial of the dead and their
ritual of worship are emblematical of that truth.
The remarkable fact is that the Hebrews could
be so long in contact with all this and come forth
untouched by it.
So one evidence of the presence of God in the
Christian church, as furnishing a positive revelation
of God to his people, is found in the fact that the
church has kept itself so free from the opinions
of men. There has always been an abundance
of people ready to tell us what heaven is ; some
times in words so excited as to be almost inco
herent ; always ending with, " It may be so ; " and
in no case furnishing a basis for an intelligent faith.
Now I say that the Christian church has, by the
grace of God, been kept free from ever making
much of this idea of the other life, and has been
able to hold itself content with what God has
chosen to reveal in his Word. Therefore it is
with confidence and with a real and grateful
sense of rest that when a question so interesting
as this — one that appeals to every heart — comes
up we turn to the New Testament and ask what
the Lord himself has to say of that blessed life
where we are to be " hid with Christ in God."
You may remember that the Second Epistle
of Paul to Timothy is apparently the last writing

PAUL'S IDEA OF HEAVEN 233
of that great apostle. He is in prison at Rome.
His life has been most eventful, and from an
earthly standpoint a failure. But he knows
whom he has believed, and is persuaded that God
is able to keep that which he has committed to
him against that day. In his farewell to his be
loved Timothy he uses these somewhat notable
words: "Henceforth," he says, "there is laid
up for me a crown of righteousness, which the
Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that
day : and not to me only, but unto all them also
that love his appearing." He is writing, as I
have intimated, his last words. About him are
all the signs of his failure and the instruments of
pain. He is in fetters in a cell. He says, " I
am already being offered;" using a word that
is associated with sacrifice — " I am being poured
out," as oil or wine is poured out. "The time of
my departure is at hand " : he adopts a nautical
term — not as a sailor going out of a harbor upon
an unknown ocean, but with a chart and compass,
knowing from whence he has come and whither
he is going, he is about to put to sea. The walls
of the prison vanish, and he sees himself once
more in the arena, as he says, " I have fought " —
not a good fight, but — " I have fought the good
fight." Then he sees the race-course stretching out
before him, and the thought of the prizes of the

234 MODERN INQUIRIES
Olympic contests comes to his mind : " I have
run the race, the goal is within my reach;" but
feeling the insufficiency of the metaphor, con
scious that it is no earthly contest in which he
is engaged, he exclaims, " I have finished my
course, I have kept the faith : henceforth [now
that all is done] there is laid up for me a crown
of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous
judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me
only, but unto all them also that love his appear
ing," and for whom he had labored and prayed
and sacrificed, and who were waiting for the
manifestation that is to come.
Here we have the Apostle's idea of heaven.
Back of it in the New Testament there lies very
little. The Saviour had come and made his reve
lation of God, and had entered into his reward ;
and how little he had said of that future ! " If
I go and prepare a place for you, I will come
again, and receive you unto myself; that where
I am, there ye may be also. "That was enough.
He was speaking to men and women who had
found their chief delight in being with him, and
the sum of whose sorrow was to be separated from
him even for the brief hours of the crucifixion.
" In that day ye shall ask me nothing," he says.
After the resurrection they pressed no question
upon him concerning that life from the portal of
which he was talking to them. It was enough

PAUL'S IDEA OF HEAVEN 235
for them to know that heaven is to be where he
is. They were to be with him and be like him,
and that was sufficient. But now the years have
gone by, and they have been called upon to
bury their dead; the apostles, the elders in the
churches, the wives, the fathers, the little children,
had been one by one laid in their graves ; and we
see in the catacombs pictured testimony to the
faith they had in the reality of the life into which
they had gone: the shepherd with his flock, the
ship in full sail, the winged dove. It is not strange
that Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians — the
first, indeed, of all he wrote — should have been
called forth by questions concerning their dead
— "Where are they, what are they doing, and
when shall we see them again?" And you re
member that Paul comforts them by such words
as " I would not have you to be ignorant, breth
ren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sor
row not, even as others which have no hope," etc.
I speak of this simply to show you that these
questions were uppermost in the minds of those
early Christians, even as hearts are constantly
torn by them. And now Paul has the future in
mind, and his last words are like his first — words
of revelation. He says, "What I have, I have
received from God;" and he goes on to show
that God has condescended to give him a revela
tion of himself and of all that he needs to know

236 MODERN INQUIRIES
of that world which lies beyond. He is in no
uncertainty and he has no further care.
What, then, do his words declare ? What is the
idea of heaven which Paul possessed ?
In the Greek contests the victor ran or strug
gled for a definite prize. It was the one particu
lar prize of that contest in his eyes. It was no
chance. And Paul now says, as the Greek shows,
" I have won the prize." Heaven is to be to
me the place of my desire, the attainment of my
hopes, the fulfilment of all my longings. It is
to be home, the place I have struggled for, and
which I have won. It is to be the crown of my
rejoicing. " Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown
of righteousness" — the sum of all that he had
hoped for. That is a strange word — "the crown
of righteousness" — a word seemingly entirely out
of place ; one we would not have anticipated in
this connection. To the Jews "righteousness"
was something external and visible ; something
that could be attained by ritual and service. But
Paul was no longer a Jew. The figures of the
Old Testament had, for him, been broken into
pieces, and recreated and filled with special truth
such as the Old Testament had not contained;
so that he says that righteousness is no longer
the possession of the law. It is that which he
had come to know in the life and teaching of the

PAUL'S IDEA OF HEAVEN 237
Lord Jesus Christ, his Saviour, his Friend; and
now, having spent the years of his service under
the dominion of Christ, having schooled himself
to have ambitions, desires, and longings all within
the conception of what had come to him through
Christ, he finds himself so saturated, so steeped,
we might say, in Christ that he longs to depart
and be with him.
In the Old Testament the holy meant to the
Jew that which God had chosen — the ark, the
altar, the tabernacle, the day, the place, the
person — whatever was characterized as holy was
so not because of any quality in itself, nor be
cause of anything that man had done in con
nection with it, but because God had chosen
it, for reasons of his own. Then the thought
advanced from that to the idea that what
God had chosen must be kept pure and
clean. Therefore the ark was to be undefiled
by human touch, and the holy of holies unap-
proached; the priests were to wear holy gar
ments ; the camp was kept sedulously clean ; and
the life of a man chosen by God must be a
cleanly life, because God's choice rested upon
him. From that the step was short to a third
consideration : whatever God had chosen must
be set apart from all other uses; the Sabbath
and the temple and the altar belonged to God,
and were not to be desecrated. These thoughts

238 MODERN INQUIRIES
underlay the Jewish conception of holiness. But
now it had been lost sight of, and the Jew had
come to think that men can make themselves
holy ; that a man can set himself apart ; that he
can make himself worthy to be chosen of God,
and therefore that God must choose him. Paul
takes this meaning of the word and shows the
weakness of it. The burden of his preaching
has been that all men are sinners : " There is none
righteous, no, not one." Righteousness is only
by the gift and calling of God, and it is in Jesus
Christ. Christians are to live for this crown of
righteousness to which they have been called of
God, and live as men set apart — righteous, holy
— because accepted of God. So that Paul's idea
of heaven is the " fulfilment of righteousness." It
is to be that place in which God's choice of him
will be manifest, and in which the surrender of
his life to God shall be finally accomplished; he
is no more to be dragged down to earth, but to
live in that fellowship with God for which, like a
prince or a king, he was born.
This conception in Paul's mind involves two
distinct things. In the first place, heaven is a
place of deliverance from sin. No man knew
better what sin is than Paul. That he might
be delivered from sin had been the prayer of his
life. He had fought it continually ; he bore the
signs of the " body of death " about with him.

PAUL'S IDEA OF HEAVEN 239
Long ago he had learned that " the sting of death
is sin." Now the final struggle is the signal of
deliverance. The angel of death comes bringing
the palm-branch and the crown. He will lay his
finger upon that bowed and battered frame, and
in an instant the fetters will be broken, the grasp
of the tempter will relax, and the soul, purified
of every spot and scar of the struggle in which it
has been so long engaged, will leap up into the
celestial radiance and find itself fitted to share
the life of those who dwell with God.
He knew that heaven could not consist of a
mere outward vision. He had seen his Lord.
He had opened his heart that it might be " the
temple of the Holy Ghost " ; and now, looking
into his heart — still scarred with the guilt of sin,
so that he should speak of himself as the chief
of sinners — he says, " Henceforth there is laid up
for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord,
the righteous judge, shall give me at that day."
We have only to look into our own hearts to
know what this means. What will it avail, dear
friends, to you or to me to have "a new heaven"
or " a new earth," unless you and I there shall
find ourselves freed from the power of tempta
tion ? Of what use are palm-branches and psalms
of praise put into the hands and on the lips of men
and women who still feel themselves weak before
their own passions, or subject to the possibility of

240 MODERN INQUIRIES
falling under some sudden temptation, or carrying
in their hearts the terrible secrets of a misspent
life ? It is because heaven will bring deliverance
that, when weary of the struggle, we long for it.
It is because there he will be " washed white
in the blood of the Lamb," and forever beyond
the contact of evil, that the believer desires to
depart and be with Christ.
Said the saintly Anselm, " If I were called to
choose between the terrors of hell and the pains
of sin I would rather be in hell and be innocent
than in heaven and carry in my heart the con
sciousness of my own guilt." Of course he
knew the impossibility of such a thing. But the
thought is that there can be no heaven to a man
who is still under the burden of his sins. To
Paul, more than all else was the thought of the
blotting out of his sin and its being remembered
no more.
But I said heaven had to Paul a twofold aspect.
Deliverance from sin was to the Apostle only the
negative side of the truth. To him heaven was
also to be a place of the sudden revelation of the
glories of righteousness. In an instant the trial
will be over, the temptation ended, the crown
awarded. " The babe, all sense, that creeps upon
the lap of earth," will become, to use the language
of another, " the being, all seraph, that basks in
the open splendors of the living God."

PAUL'S IDEA OF HEAVEN 24 1
How little we know of righteousness now!
How little we know of the glories of a holy
character! How little we can see of the mean
ing of the simple word of the Saviour, " The
pure in heart shall see God " ! Where in all the
realms of earth is there a heart pure enough for
that? And now Paul had before him the con
ception of a life in which the unrevealed glories
of the righteous God should dawn upon his soul.
What is to be the nature of that revelation?
It is to be a revelation of knowledge. The re
deemed soul is to find itself, as it were, at the
center of all God's thought and all God's doing.
As at the center of a circle all is seen harmoni
ous, while from any other point it is unbalanced
and irregular, so from that standpoint, hid with
Christ in God, the vast circumference of all God's
wonderful ways will be understood. " The weary
weight of all this unintelligible world " will roll
away before the vision of truth. Pain — that
great mystery in all our lives — will then be rec
ognized as God's blessed minister of peace and
of preparation ; and the sorrows in which we find
it so hard to see God's hand we shall then dis
cover to be the crowning acts of his tenderness,
his wisdom, and his love. We shall then see
God not only as he is, but as he has been in all
his dealings with us. We shall know what that
word "God is love" means; and as we look back

242 MODERN INQUIRIES
upon our past lives, with their weaknesses and
failures and half-hearted submission to God's
providences, we shall find that God's love has
been with us from the beginning.
Now what shall be the occupations of such a
heaven ? Why need we ask ? Surely they will be
no mere idle contemplation, no mere waving of
palm-branches and singing of psalms ; for all the
labor of life has been discipline, and all this long
striving after knowledge so hard to get, and so
hard to make use of when once acquired, will be
but the beginning of that life where we shall
think God's thoughts and find delight in doing
God's will. What room for delightful and cease
less employment does this suggest, in a world
where there is neither weariness nor pain !
All this simply sets forth this truth that heaven
begins in the heart. It consists not in externals,
but in the growth of that which is within. As
the flower is the putting forth of the life that was
in the seed, so heaven is the flowering forth of
that truth and life of God which has been hidden
in our hearts here on earth. The rewards of
heaven are to be the development of what is
within us, rather than the addition of something
from without. A perfect holiness, a crown of
righteousness! Why need we seek to add more
to our knowledge of heaven than this? If this
does not appeal to us, can it be that we are not

PAUL'S IDEA OF HEAVEN 243
ready for heaven ; that we are not fitting our
selves for that life in which the pure are not only
to see God, but are to be with God? Can it be
that any of us are praying, as young Augustine
did, " O Lord, make me pure, but not yet " ?
The mystery is how it is possible that hearts
like yours and mine, as we know ourselves, shall
ever be so changed ; shall ever be so freed, not
only from their past sins, but from their present ;
from what you and I are to-day and every day
— so freed from all this that we shall be fitted for
the presence of the holy God. And yet that is
God's sure word of promise. " They that have
washed their robes," who have been pardoned
and cleansed in the blood of Jesus Christ, who
have done as Paul did — filled their lives with
Christ — " shall enter in through the gates into
the city." For that city is their home; and the
Lord has come to take them one by one — you
and me and all who love him — unto himself, that
where he is, there we may be also.

XVII
JOHN'S IDEA OF HEAVEN

245

" Ye stars are but the shining dust
Of my divine abode ;
The pavement of the heavenly court
Where I shall reign with God."
Philip Doddridge.

->46

XVII
JOHN'S IDEA OF HEAVEN
I THINK that every one recognizes the fitness
of rendering the descriptions which John gives in
the Apocalypse of the Holy City, the New Jeru
salem, in music; for these descriptions are poetic
images, and we have no language or form of ex
pression so fit to convey the thought as that
available in music. These images were more
familiar to the Jewish mind than they are to us.
The writings of the prophets are full of them.
Many years ago I saw in the Pitti Palace in
Florence afamous painting by Raphael of Ezekiel's
vision of the cherubim, and the living creature
within the wheels. Many of you have seen it.
There were the visible figures ; but you undoubt
edly turned away from the picture, as I did, un
satisfied, and with the deepening conviction in
your heart that there was given to the prophet
an ability to depict the scene which was not
given to the painter. So it was with John in his
description of his wonderful vision. He says:
247

248 MODERN INQUIRIES
" He carried me away in the spirit to a great and
high mountain, and showed me that great city,
the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven
from God, having the glory of God : and her
light was like unto a stone most precious, even
like a jasper stone, clear as crystal." Then he
goes on to describe the walls and the gates of
the city as made of precious stones and pearls;
and lest we should think that he was describing
earthly jewels, he at once adds, "And the city had
no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine
in it : for the glory of God did lighten it, and the
Lamb is the light thereof;" and then in the most
graphic language he tells us that " the nations of
them which are saved shall walk in the light of
it : and the kings of the earth do bring their glory
and honor into it. And the gates of it shall not
be shut at all by day : for there shall be no night
there." To understand this Book of Revelation it is
necessary to grasp the purpose of it; and the
apostle is very careful that he should not be
misunderstood in this. The aim of the book is
not to describe heaven, but to counsel and
strengthen and admonish the children of God.
They were few in number, surrounded by the
vast world of heathenism, uncertain themselves
of the Christian life into which they were called,
and already in sharp controversy among them-

JOHN'S IDEA OF HEAVEN 249
selves. The aged apostle receives from the
loving-kindness of the Master this vision of the
heavenly life, that by it he may interpret to
these poor, troubled Christians the joys that are
in store for those who, having overcome, shall
enter into their reward. He declares it at the
very opening of the book, in his message to the
seven churches. Violent death stared them in
the face ; he tells them of the tree of life. Some
had given up what worldly wealth they had, and
social position ; he sets before them citizenship in
the New Jerusalem. Some were outcasts, hiding
in caves and mountains; he describes the para
dise of God, with its streets of gold and gates of
pearl. Some were forsaken by their friends ; he
tells them of the hidden manna and the white
stone with the new name written on it. They
were to endure hunger and cold and nakedness ;
he tells them of the life where the Good Shep
herd gathers the lambs in his arms and leads his
flock beside the still waters. Some were already
discouraged ; he tells them of the crowns of glory
which await those who hold fast their faith unto
the end. In other words, all his thought is to
lead them to see the blessings that shall come to
them in the final triumph of the Lord whom
they serve. He seeks to impress them with the
thought that Jesus was no mere Jewish Messiah,
living his brief earthly life and going down into

250 MODERN INQUIRIES
a grave of obloquy with an unfinished and hope
less work lying about him. He has come from
the throne of the Father, where the apostle is
permitted to see him, with the flaming sword in
his hand, and surrounded by the great multitude
whom no man can number.
This is something of the vision; and though
its metaphors are strange to us, and its imagery
unusual, yet there are certain definite truths which
I am sure, dear friends, we shall be able to grasp
and carry away with us for our daily lives.
The first of these truths is this: that all this
imagery is intended to represent a glorious ex
istence which our minds in their present earthly
condition are not adequate fully to comprehend.
It is to be a real existence, but indescribable.
Many have tried to describe it. Picture to your
self the heavens thickly studded with stars, the
horizon with its zenith, the hills clad with ver
dure, the valleys decked with bloom of flowers
and musical with the ripple of streams; try to
imagine all this, and see how it fails to fit into
the statement, " The city had no need of the sun,
neither of the moon, to shine in it : for the glory
of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light
thereof." You are not one step nearer an idea
of heaven. A vision was given to the prophet
of an existence so beautiful that even the radi
ant light of the sun is dull and commonplace

JOHN'S IDEA OF HEAVEN

251

in comparison. It suggests that which does
not belong to this earth ; it is to be a spiritual
existence. Then we ask, "What is a spiritual
existence ? " and we find that we do not know.
He speaks of "a new heaven" and "a new
earth " and "a new creation" coming down from
God to men. We do not know how the visible
universe shall end its relations to ourselves, and
we certainly do not know what shall follow after it.
"We shall be changed;" that, in Paul's phrase,
is the great mystery. That it covers a blessed
truth is manifest whenever we open this Book of
Revelation, bringing, as it does, the conception of
a life so full, so satisfying, so enduring, that all
that lies behind us shall be forgotten.
Again, we observe that, according to John, the
glory of heaven centers in none of these things
which he tries so hard to describe ; the glory of
heaven is found in the presence of God. " And
I heard a great voice out of heaven saying [just
when his hearers are ready for the description of
the New Jerusalem], Behold, the tabernacle of
God is with men, and he will dwell with them,
and they shall be his people, and God himself
shall be with them, and be their God." Then
when he proceeds to describe the New Jerusalem
he says, " And I saw no temple therein." The
most beautiful, the most imposing structure in
any ancient city was the temple; and it was

252 MODERN INQUIRIES
therefore the temple up to which all his prelimi
nary descriptions should have led — the gates and
walls are but incidents as he comes nearer to
the temple ; and when all are ready to have him
speak of that crowning glory of the city, he
stops. " And I saw no temple therein : for the
Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the tem
ple of it." He fixes our thought upon this great
truth that the life and the joy and the service of
all who enter into the life beyond are to be found
in the presence with them of God.
Now the Old Testament had taught this from
the beginning. There was that man to whom
God had revealed himself, " and he was not ; for
God took him." There was that other, led up
into the mountain, while God covered him with
his hand and caused all his goodness to pass be
fore him, and showed him, as he said, " only his
hinder parts," for "no man can see his face and
live " ; and when Moses came down from the
mountain his face shone so that the people were
afraid, and he had to put a veil over his face.
Then there was the prophet by the ancient waters
of Babylon, who had that wonderful vision of
things so hard to understand ; then the vision on
the Mount of Transfiguration ; and now this to
John, where the horizon lifts and the clouds are
changed into the walls and palaces of the heavenly
city, and the light that never was on land or sea

JOHN'S IDEA OF HEAVEN 253
shone down upon him, and he is wrapped about
with the surpassing glory of the divine presence.
This is John's conception of the heavenly city,
very real and very tangible, as you see; for he
immediately hastens to say, " And God himself
shall be with them, and be their God. And God
shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and
there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor
crying, neither shall there be any more pain : for
the former things are passed away."
Now, if we cannot tell our children that they
shall have all the pleasures which have been so
real and so precious to them on earth, we can tell
them of the Good Shepherd who calls his sheep
by name, and his sheep shall know his voice, and
he shall lead them forth, and they shall follow
him. And if we do not know where our friends
are who have already passed through the dark
waters and have vanished from our sight, and
what are their occupations and what is their
bodily form, we can still say, " Thou hast taken
them to thyself. Thou hast hidden them in thy
pavilion from the strife of tongues." And he
that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most
High shall forever abide under the shadow of the
Almighty. They have all that heart could wish,
for their life centers in him who is the center of
the heavenly home.
One thing more. John makes it very plain

254 MODERN INQUIRIES
that all these glories of heaven which so filled
and satisfied his heart depend upon personal
purity. He hastens to say, " And there shall in
no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither
whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a
lie." Now we understand why he said at the
beginning of the chapter, " There was no more
sea." From the earthly standpoint, if the sea
vanishes there will be no more earth. " But the
wicked are like the troubled sea." The sea,
which no man can master, and whose depths
none can fathom, shall give up its dead ; they
shall come trooping forth obedient to the same
voice that said, " Peace, be still."
How wonderful is the unity of the Bible!
Last Sabbath evening we dwelt upon Paul's dec
laration, " Henceforth there is laid up for me a
crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the
righteous judge, shall give me at that day : and
not to me only, but unto all them also that love
his appearing. " Then Peter tells us that we are to
"look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein
dwelleth righteousness " ; and now John, having
this vision of heaven, describes it, if not in the
same words, at least with the same thought, as the
Saviour had when he said, "Blessed are the pure
in heart: for they shall see God." John's idea
of heaven, Peter's idea of heaven, Paul's idea of
heaven, no matter along what line they traveled,

JOHN'S IDEA OF HEAVEN 255
all come back to the same truth that only those
whose hearts have been washed white and made
clean in the blood of the Lamb shall enter in
through the gates into the city ; because, being
made pure in heart, they shall see his face and
be like him.
As we close two questions arise. First, Why
is it that the Bible does not describe heaven to
us more minutely, and make the joys of heaven
more definite? The answer is not far to seek.
Definite rewards enfeeble virtue and tend to de
stroy character ; and this is at once the difference
between the religion of Jesus Christ and all other
religions. The Indian looks for the happy hunt
ing-grounds of his fathers. To the Turk, with
his Koran, heaven is a place of sensuous enjoy
ments. To the old Greeks their heroes became
their gods to be worshiped. But to the Chris
tian heaven is a place where are realized the
joys of the purified heart. It is to be life in the
soul and not in the senses. It is to be the con
summation of all that men have striven for in
their best estate, in their most exalted hours,
when they have been lifted most above the
power of temptation.
We like to recall and associate with our friends,
when they have passed beyond the veil, their
various occupations in life. We think of the
kindly neighbor and his many acts of thoughtful-

256 MODERN INQUIRIES
ness ; of the teacher in his school ; of the pastor
in his pulpit and among his people ; but we are
aware that these associations fall short of com
pleting the conception of our friend's character.
He has entered into that which we do not know.
He must be engaged in occupations larger than
any which occupied him here. There are doubt
less other occupations in heaven than singing
hymns. Shall we wonder what the Christian is
doing because the Bible speaks only of these?
What is the Christian's life but one long psalm
of praise, on the street, in the workshop, in the
school, in the home, wherever he is? I might
easily " Unleash my fancy, if you wish,
And hunt for phantoms ; shoot an airy guess,
And bring down airy likelihood,"
with regard to the service and the joys of that
other life ; but what wiser would we be ? It is
enough for us to know that " it is far better to
depart, and be with Christ. " Therefore the blessed
mystery which inwraps our friends who " are not ;
for God has taken them."
And the other question is, What is there of
practical value to be gained from all this? It
gives us the conception of a heaven which starts
with this earthly life. We are to find our re
ward there for all that we have done for God
here. No thought, no act, of service, no tempta-

JOHN'S IDEA OF HEAVEN 257
tion resisted, no Christian effort put forth, noth
ing done for Christ and in the consciousness of his
call to follow him, but shall find its place there,
as it has found already its place here in fitting
us for that life of which the very last words of
the apostle were, " His servants do serve him."
As on earth we get our best service from chosen
men, so God has taught us that he works by the
hand of fit men ; therefore by so much as we have
fitted ourselves for work here, shall we be fitted
to do his bidding there.
And as to the rewards and joys of that life —
all are to be measured by our capacity to receive
them. So we are all of us making our own
heaven every day. If the presence of Christ is
precious to us here, it will be more precious there.
If the thought of the divine righteousness is help
ful to us here, it will be the sustaining thought
there. Pain and sorrow and sickness, when they
come to us, are always accompanied with sharp
stings, because they are always associated with
our mistakes or our misdoings. What a marvel
ous meaning there is in John's description of that
other life! "There shall be no more death,
neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be
any more pain." It is proof that all sin shall be
blotted out ; buried in the depths of the sea ; re
membered no more. All this goes to show that
something more than death is necessary to pre-

258 MODERN INQUIRIES
pare us for heaven. Merely shuffling off this
mortal coil will have small part in fitting any
man or woman for the fellowship of the home
above. What is to be said, then, of men and
women who have no larger conception of the
meaning of life than the pursuits and pleasures
of the passing hour, while they indulge the fool
ish hope that the dropping of this mortal body
is going to make real the joys and opportunities
of heaven, and that losing the burden of the cor
ruptible is going to secure to them the pleasures
and triumphs of the incorruptible ? It is because
we are Christ's that we shall live. It is in him
that we are to see the face of the Father, and by
walking in his footsteps we are to find our way
into the celestial city. Think of those who, at
last, after long and weary wanderings, because
they are Christ's and Christ is theirs, are to be
blessed with a " sudden happiness beyond all
hope " !

XVIII
THE JUDGMENT

259

" Nihil amplius quserendum est quam quod tradere Christi
consilium fuit." Calvin, on Matthew xx. 1-16.
" A remark which I am convinced is true, namely, that the
dread book of account which the Scriptures speak of is, in fact,
the mind itself of each individual. Of this, at least, I feel
assured — that there is no such thing as forgetting possible to the
mind." De Quincey, " Opium-eater," p. 112.

260

XVIII
THE JUDGMENT
A VERY few words will suffice upon the theme
before us. We are but little concerned about
what man's opinion may be as to the judgment;
but we all want to know what are God's state
ments in regard to it. We have seen in previous
discussions how large is God's purpose of bless
ing for his children in the life beyond the grave,
and how that purpose centers about God himself,
the revelation of his character, and the unfolding
of his plans from the creation onward. The glory
of God no less than the righteousness of God is
to be revealed in the final judgment. It is to be
the day in which God shall set the seal on all
that he has done.
There are many verses of Scripture that refer
to the judgment; but one or two will suffice as
well as a dozen, if we can understand exactly
what their teaching is. One of the simplest
statements of the Scriptures in regard to the
judgment is in the Epistle to the Hebrews, at the
twenty-seventh verse of the ninth chapter : " It
261

262 MODERN INQUIRIES
is appointed unto men once to die, but after this
the judgment." That little word "once" is more
significant in the original than it is in our com
mon version. It is "once for all." "It is ap
pointed unto men once for all to die;" an event
which never can be repeated, and which carries
in itself all possible consequences.
We all feel the significance of an event which
happens but once. As a matter of historic fact,
Julius Caesar, when proconsul of Gaul, crossed
the little bridge of the Rubicon, which was for
bidden to him by law, with head erect, and
eager hope. His eye was fixed on Ariminum,
the first rendezvous of his troops on the soil of
Rome. He was too used to victory to be care
ful now of consequences. But as men have read
the history they have put words upon his lips :
" The enemy awaits me, the opportunity invites,
the die is cast." Instinctively we feel that the
stoutest heart must tremble before any irrevo
cable step, because once taken it is taken for all
time, and a man's destiny, if not the destiny of
a nation, is settled.
Schiller's magnificent drama of "Wallenstein"
turns on such a moment. At its opening the
great duke stands studying the horoscope in re
gard to the hour from whose decision he knows
there is no turning back. Shall he obey the
emperor and resign his command, or shall he re-

THE JUDGMENT 263
fuse and revolt? The drama thrills with the fatal
indecision. At last the step is taken and he has
tens to his tragic end.
You remember how Queen Elizabeth sat trem
bling, peri in hand, with the warrant for Mary
Stuart's execution before her; and how, having
signed it, she threw the pen on the floor in the
vain attempt to escape the consequences.
Put yourself in one of these critical hours.
Let this once-for-all event be not connected with
anything we have seen or done, but the end of
a life, the hour which, as we are taught by the
Scripture, is destined to trammel up in itself the
consequences of all the hours of the life we have
been living — how significant it becomes! For
death closes the past. However carelessly we have
lived, or however wisely ; however numerous our
years, however empty or full, the past ends all.
And not only that; death opens for us once
for all the future. And this is to be no less sig
nificant than the other. In daily life events con
stantly hurry us to consequences which we can
not comprehend. We are like travelers who are
surprised with the familiar appearance of some
foreign city. We look about astonished. We
have heard of these strange sights, we have be
lieved in them, or at least we thought we did.
We almost fancy now that we have been here be
fore ; these stores and wharves, that public square

264 MODERN INQUIRIES
and monument, those faces and costumes — surely
we have seen them before. But no ; before we
had only read of them or heard of them ; now
we see them for ourselves. Before we only had
a faint idea of them; now comes the reality.
Quickly the mind adjusts itself to these scenes,
and then follows a strange sense of loneliness.
A new life, with altogether new experiences, has
opened to us.
How significant, then, when, having crossed,
not the untried ocean, but the ocean of death,
going out of this life as we all must go, we find
ourselves in the realities of the other world !
The word of the Scripture is, then, our tran
scending thought : " It is appointed unto men
once to die " — that unknown experience, closing
the past, and bringing to light the things of the
future, is appointed once for all.
Then it is appointed once for all " unto men."
We are entirely familiar with the thought of
death as coming to some one else. It is a
strange experience only as it comes to ourselves
— to you and me. We find it hard even in our
most serious and thoughtful moments to under
stand what that experience will be. A crowd
gathers about the door, and the inquiry is raised,
"Whoisit?" "Mr. A." "What! my friend?"
" Yes." " Impossible ; he was with us but a few
days ago in church, or at my house. It seems

THE JUDGMENT 265
but an hour since I was talking with him on the
street ; and now he is dead ! "
It is appointed unto men, without exception,
to die ; and how soon every one of us shall know
the reality! In fifty years who of us will not
have experienced it? A hundred years and not
one of us will be left. And after this universal
experience comes the judgment.
It does not say immediately after, or how long
after. That is unimportant. The significant part
is that death and the judgment stand so related
to each other. At once all questions as to an
intermediate state, or as to a second and a new
probation, settle themselves. All are definitely
answered by the single statement " once for all,"
and after that " the judgment." All that is sig
nificant that can come to us gathers about those
two events; the one of which is wrapped up in
the other. As we have lived we meet death —
every one of us ; and as we meet death we meet
the judgment.
What, then, is the event which is so interlinked
with the universal experience of mankind ? Here
let us turn to another text, the twentieth chap
ter of Revelation, and the twelfth verse : " And
I saw the dead, small and great, stand before
God; and the books were opened: and another
book was opened, which is the book of life : and
the dead were judged out of those things which

266 MODERN INQUIRIES
were written in the books, according to their
works." You see how closely the statement
links itself to the previous one, simply enlarging
it — the "small and great," all who have passed
through the common experience of death, are
"judged out of the things written in the books."
We have previously considered how important
a part memory plays in life. Memory does not
constitute the identity of character, but it bears
testimony to it. We remember what we did a
year ago or ten years ago ; whether or not we
remember the details of the experience, we re
member this fact that he who did the deed or
saw the scene is this person who now remembers
it. And thus the effect of memory is to bear tes
timony to the fact that we are ourselves. As
long as we have lived we have been ourselves,
and as long as we continue to live we shall re
main ourselves. And the mystery of life is not
that we remember the past, but that, the mind
being what it is, we ever seem to forget it.
Now, in the light of this fact, comes the word
of the Scripture, " The dead were judged out of
those things which were written in the books."
A bird steps lightly on the beach, passes on, and
vanishes. But the impress of its foot is hard
ened into the rock, and long years after it tells
the story. Like that impression in nature is the
deeper and more permanent impression memory

THE JUDGMENT 267
produces in the conscious personality of life and
thought for all the future. "And the books
were opened." What is that but the opening of
the record we ourselves have kept ? Every man
becomes suddenly aware that the sphere is small.
He and God in this matter have been at one.
All the record of his life appears within him —
his very self, pronouncing in advance the deci
sion of the great Judge. " I saw the dead, small
and great, stand before God." It is to be a day
of sentence as well as of inquiry. Each heart is
to present the record of itself to its Maker.
The older we grow the more conscious we be
come of the solitariness of life. In early life we
are all together, a crowd of children playing in
the streets; but as the years go by we detach
ourselves, we become individual. We are soli
tary men and women because we are, each one,
the architects of our own character; and as such
at last we are to stand before God.
As we advance in this personal experience our
lives become also more complex and intricate.
It is harder for us to understand our own motives
and feelings ; and when any one pronounces judg
ment upon us we resent it. We say, " I do not
know myself, and what right have you to pretend
to comprehend my motives ? " Until at last we are
constrained to cry out upon ourselves, "Is it I ? "
But we shall each stand before God ! " Thou

268 MODERN INQUIRIES
God seest me." "Thou understandest my
thought afar off. Thou compassest my path
and my lying down, and art acquainted with all
my ways." So that day is to be the revelation
of every man to himself, in all that we know of
ourselves and do not speak, and in all that we
might have known and did not realize, and in all
that lies beyond our sight, but is known to Him
who looketh not upon the outward appearance,
but on the heart.
Now one verse more. Turn to Paul's second
letter to the Corinthians, the fifth chapter and the
tenth verse, and you will see how it fits exactly
into what already has been said. " For we must
all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ ;
that every one may receive the things done in his
body, according to that he hath done, whether it
be good or bad." The judgment-seat of God is
the judgment-seat of the Saviour Jesus Christ.
The question, then, that will gather up all others
as the books are opened will be put by the Saviour
himself : " How have you lived toward me ? I
gave my life for you ; what hast thou done for
me?" It will not be what we have thought of
ourselves or what others may have thought of us.
It will be simply whether we have known Jesus
Christ, have opened our hearts to his love, and
lived lives that were a tribute of praise to him.
A short time ago, while conversing with one

THE JUDGMENT 269
who desired to unite with the church, she said,
" I want to join the church because I want to do
what is right, and I would like to be better than
I am." I replied, " So far is well ; but how about
the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you know him as
your Saviour ? Is it your purpose to give your
self to him?" And as promptly as her first
statement, but with inexpressible sadness, came
the answer : " Oh, if that is what it means to be
a Christian, then I am not a Christian." The
struggle of the next two days and the final glad
surrender showed how wide the distinction is
between the self- righteousness of trying to make
ourselves better and the penitent acceptance of
the new life fully offered to us in Him who died
that we might live. "We must all appear before
the judgment-seat of Christ."
Now we know why it is that in that day the
righteous shall shine as the sun in their Heavenly
Father's realm. The joy on their heads shall be
eternal, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
For the judgment is to be the day for the
crowning of the work of the Saviour. He came
to seek and to save that which was lost, and in that
day he will present to the Father the " great mul
titude, which no man can number, of all nations,
and kindreds, and people, and tongues"; all of
whom, without exception, have the one qualifica
tion for acceptance, that they have heard his voice

270 MODERN INQUIRIES
and have followed him. Turning again to the
Revelation we read : " The books were opened :
and another book was opened, which is the book
of life." It is the book in which the names are
written of those who have loved him. It is the
record of new-born souls who have entered into
life through him whose name is written on their
foreheads, and who has their names written on
his heart.
" If any man sin," said this same Apostle
John after there had been given him this won
derful revelation — " If any man sin, we have an
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the right
eous " — one who has gone above, and stands
waiting for that last day and for our coming.
We sinners — you and I and every one of us
— have him for Intercessor and Friend; there
fore, if any man would meet that day without
fear, if any man would be ready for that once-
for-all event, the way of preparation is so plain
that the wayfaring man need not err therein.
It is simply to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
it is simply to commit unto him the keeping of
your soul, and you shall live in joyful anticipa
tion of that day which is to be the golden day
of the crowning of the Son of God, of the per
fecting of his work, and of fullness of joy for
all who have heard his voice and have loved and
trusted and followed him.

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