YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

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A STUDY
IN CHRISTIAN BELIEF

by
CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN
— Author if
" The Social Message of the Modern Pulpit "
" Two Parables," etc.

BOSTON
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NEWYORK CHICAGO

COPYRIGHT. 1906
BY THE CONGREGATIONAL SUNDAY-SCHOOL
AND PUBLISHING SOCIETY

To
SAMUEL T. ALEXANDER
In Appreciation of his Personal Friendship
and of his Generous Loyalty in all
the Work of our Church

Contents

Chapter Page
I. The Divinity of Jesus Christ - ;^^ 3
II. The Atonement - - , - - 27
III. The Work of the Holy Spirit - 53
IV. The Authority of the Bible - 69
V. The Philosophy of Prayer - - 97
VI. The Matter of Conversion - 119
VII. Salvation by Faith- - - - 135
VIII. The Christian Church - - - 149
IX. The Hope of Immortality - 171
X. The Last Judgment - - - 195
XI The Creed of a Christian - - 223

preface

In sending out this little book, I wish to say that it
is not intended as a learned treatise on systematic theol
ogy; it is designed for the thoughtful layman rather
than for the technical scholar. The preparation of
these chapters came about originally in this way: In
my own parish I was continually meeting religiously
reared people who had lost confidence in some of the
doctrinal statements accepted by them in earlier days as
being the very words of eternal life. They had an un
easy feeling, because "the traditional phrases of relig
ious speech did not set forth with unstrained natural
ness and transparent sincerity the facts of their relig
ious lives." Some of them had therefore thrown all
such statements away and were practically offering
their devotions at the altar of a revered but "Unknown
God." Others with more conservative instincts re
tained the phrases, but with a silent yearning to have
them interpreted anew, and thus compelled to yield
their intended help for daily life. These people knew
that within a comparatively few years many of "the
great inherited, historical statements of religion" had
come to be deemed to be inadequate ; that consequently
such truths were being restated in terms of actual life ;
and they were asking what this more modern way of
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thinking about religious matters had to say directly
about certain cardinal doctrines. It was with their
questioning attitude in mind that these chapters were
written. It may seem rather presumptuous to attempt to deal
with ten capital themes in theology within the limits
of a single small volume. But these pages were not
written for theologians, nor for students of metaphys
ics, for whom there are other books which will serve
their ends as this one does not attempt to do. These
pages were written for the busy people. The laymen
in our cities have more to do and less time to read
than had their grandfathers. As a matter of fact,
not many of them find opportunity to read such stand
ard books as Liddon's or Gore's Bampton Lectures on
"The Divinity of Our Lord"; or such works on the
["Atonement" as Dale's or McLeod Campbell's or Sab-
atier's; or such books as Fairbairn's "The Place of
Christ in Modern Theology"; or the "Outline of
Christian Theology," by Dr. William Newton Clarke ;
'or "The Christ of To-day," by Dr. George A. Gordon ;
or "The Dynamic of Christianity," by E. M. Chap
man. The pastors of the churches are familiar with
whole libraries of fresh and stimulating books which,
owing to the stress of other matters upon their atten
tion, do not come into the hands of the majority of our
laymen. There is also much good grain being har
vested every month -from the work done in theological
reconstruction in the pages of the reviews. If we can
take some of the results of our wider reading in doc
trinal theology then, and bring them in every-day Ian-

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guage to the attention of the busy people in our
churches, we shall certainly render them a useful
service. The main teaching of these pages is not original with
me or with any particular man or set of men. I have
phrased the message according to my own habit and
method, but the essential content of it has a large place
in the utterance of the modern church. In such brief
compass there must necessarily be a lack of that elab
orate and thorough handling of august themes which
one finds in truly theological books, but even though
the twenty dollar gold pieces are here converted into
small change, they may possibly attain a further useful
ness in that they can be taken and used by busy men
who make their purchases of doctrinal reading in small
quantities. The material in these eleven chapters was first used
in a series of public addresses on the somewhat ambi
tious theme, "The Message of Modern Orthodoxy."
These addresses were delivered without manuscript,
and in writing them out for the publisher I have omit
ted some illustrations and paragraphs more suited to
direct appeal; I have also inserted sentences here and
there (chiefly quotations) which were not spoken. In
large part, however, the forms of personal address
have been retained, with the feeling, so well expressed
by another pastor in his preface, "that whatever the
diction may lose in finish might be compensated by
those qualities which appear when a man in earnest
concerning the real experiences of life reads the pages
of his mind in direct speech with his fellows."
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I have here and there quoted freely from the writings
of certain eminent religious teachers. It seemed right
to give to the expression of my own thought on these
fundamental questions the confirmation, the enrichment
and the extension afforded by the words of men who
have made us all debtors to their thorough and devout
scholarship. In a time of transition and restatement like the pres
ent, no public teacher of religion can speak his mind
frankly and briefly, leaving out those explanations and
qualifications which come in to modify or round out,
and expect to carry the assent of all the company with
him. But the richer and more helpful understanding
of the great truths will not come by halting silence or
by timid distrust of fellow students with whom we may
not quite keep step — it will come rather as each Chris
tian man, striving to do the will of God and to know
the doctrine, gives out openly and honestly the best
he has.
CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN.

First Congregational Church,
Oakland, California.

XII

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CHAPTER I
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IN all our communities we find an increasing num
ber of people who desire some kind of a working
faith to live by, but they have broken with the
traditional statement of doctrinal religion taught
them in early life. Many of them feel impelled, there
fore, by their lack of full assent to certain standards,
to count themselves outside the pale of evangelical
Christianity. Their quarrel is not with the ethics of
Christianity — these they approve, even where they do
not personally practise them — but with certain state
ments of dogma which they cannot honestly profess to
accept. They do not attach themselves to the so-called
"liberal churches," which, so far from drawing in all
these people, are losing rather than gaining numbers.
They desire something fuller, richer, and warmer than
anything to be found in any type of ethical culture;
and they really look to the great branches of the
Church of Christ to speak to them, in the tongue and
the mood wherein they live, a sure word of life. If our
evangelical churches can recognize this multitude
standing beyond the group of disciples to whom we al
ready minister, meet them, interest them, and lead
them to the point where they shall see the religion of
Jesus in a more satisfying way, we can render a splen
did service. If we can restate in the language of

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present . life, clearly, fearlessly, rationally, those great
truths which the plain people regard as the staples of
religious life, we may gather to ourselves a great host
of those who wait for a real and divine gospel.
It is natural in such an approach to speak first of the
divinity of Christ. Christian life springs from personal
trust in and personal loyalty to Jesus Christ. If it be
said that belief in God is more fundamental and would
consequently be a more appropriate starting-place, I
reply that the God whom we worship, serve and trust
is the God revealed in Jesus Christ. It is "God in
Christ" with whom we have to do. For this reason,
therefore, and because all theists agree in their belief in
the Almighty and Moral Being whom we call God, I
begin with that which is at once fundamental and dis
tinctive in evangelical Christianity.
The question as to the divinity of Christ is no mere
question of historical criticism to determine the rank
of one who died long ago. It is not a speculative ques
tion of dogmatic theology to be determined and then
laid carefully on a high shelf. It is a question of pres
ent and significant fact. The frank inquiry of Canon
Liddon must confront us all : ''Where is Jesus Christ
now? And what is he?" We know well what he
was when he walked in Galilee and helped the sick, the
ignorant and the sinful, but what can he do now?
"Does he reign only by virtue of a mighty tradition of
human thought and feeling in his favor, which creates
and supports his imaginary throne ? Is he at this mo
ment a really living being? And if living, is he a hu
man ghost flitting we know not where in the unseen

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world, and himself awaiting an award at the hands of
the Everlasting? Is he present personally as a living
power in this our world? Has he any certain relations
to you? Does he think of you, care for you, act
upon you? Can you approach him now, cling to him,
receive from him mighty aid, not as an act of imagina
tion, but as a substantial fact?" Is there available for
us to-day that same powerful, loving help with which
men and women in Galilee became so familiar nineteen
hundred years ago ? Surely no inquiry could be more
practical or fruitful than this.
It may be well to remember too that this question
was not originally propounded to us by the schoolmen
or by the abstract theologians. The same Lord who in
ethics commanded men to do unto others as they would
that others should do unto them, enjoined his follow
ers to define their estimate of him. "Whom do men
say that I the Son of man am?" "Whom say ye that
I am?" And he graciously blessed them when they
returned an answer which he could approve. The
answer given by the disciples at Cassarea Philippi,
which was thus acceptable to Jesus was : "Thou art
the Christ, the Son of the living God." It was an
estimate of the person of Christ which, according to
the narrative, seemed to lift him in their minds quite
out of the purely human categories which included
John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah and other great
prophets. The question is raised by modern scholarship as to
whether those words uttered by Peter do assert the true
divinity of Christ — whether indeed they affirm anything

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more than a strong conviction as to his Messiahship
without entering into the more intricate problem as to
his person. It may be freely granted that did this con
fession of Peter stand unsupported by other similar and
stronger statements made by the contemporaries of
Jesus in their effort to account for him, the doctrine of
his essential divinity might never have obtained the
place it holds in Christian thought. But when we trace
the persistent attempt of his immediate followers to
relate his person to Infinite Being in a manner alto
gether unique — an attempt never undertaken on behalf
of Paul or John or any of the other great religious
leaders of that century — and when we find that this
attempt extends through the Synoptic Gospels, the
fourth Gospel, the Acts and the epistles, we can read
ily understand why all the main branches of the Chris
tian Church, following the lead of tho^e first apostles,
have made belief in the divinity of Christ an essential
part of their creed.
The various grounds on which these great bodies of
Christian believers rest this conviction are many, too
many for anything like an adequate statement within
the limits of a single chapter. I may, however, indicate
in a brief way the main lines of argument which are to
many minds most satisfying.
We find spread upon the pages of the New Testa
ment the outlines of a portrait of the Christ as he
stood revealed to his contemporaries. The authors
of these New Testament books were Hebrews, uncom
promising monotheists, to whom the very thought of
ascribing divine honors to a human being was an of-

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fense and a horror. Yet when they came to know
Jesus Christ, we find them, for some reason sufficient
to themselves, bracketing the name of Christ with that
of God the Father, and according to him the honors
and attributes which in all Hebrew thought had been
reserved for God alone. The formula for baptism ; the
ascription to Jesus of the right to forgive sins and of
authority to judge the whole earth in the great assize;
the statement made by Christ that no one knew the
Father perfectly save himself and those to whom he, as
Son, would reveal the Father; the confident assertion
of Christ, "Ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the
right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of
heaven," taken with the reception given this assertion
by the Pharisees who regarded it as blasphemy in that
he had assumed divine prerogatives — all this from the
Synoptic Gospels serves to indicate some of the main
features in the portrait of Jesus as "eyewitnesses of
his majesty" would paint it. The form of the familiar
apostolic benediction found at the close of Paul's letter
to the Corinthians and his repeated ascription to Jesus
Christ of divine honors in the four unquestioned epis
tles ; the salutations at the head of the epistles which
bear the names of Paul and Peter, of James and Jude ;
the place assigned to Christ in the economy of redemp
tion as proclaimed in the sermons reported in the book
of Acts — all these, as well as the familiar estimates
upon Christ in the fourth Gospel, serve to indicate clear
ly the total impression made upon the minds of those
who stood nearest and who knew him best. It is not
necessary to cite special proof texts — a method which

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has lost much of its former hold upon serious-minded
Christians — the whole composite photograph of Jesus
of Nazareth as it stands upon the pages of the New
Testament is such as to make clear the fact that his
immediate friends and followers did not hesitate to
stand before him in reverent worship, voicing both
feeling and conviction in the words, "My Lord and my
God." We find also the testimony of Jesus concerning him
self. It would seem that this would be what the law
yers term "the best evidence." Jesus gave every indi
cation of being sincere and honest. He ' betrayed no
evidence of any habit of using boastful or extravagant
language. He was so sane and clear-eyed in all his
moral judgments that the suggestion of his being a
self-deceived enthusiast wins no serious assent from
thoughtful students of the record. His own Hebrew
nature and training would have caused him to shrink
from the blasphemy involved in applying to himself di
vine titles, in accepting divine worship, in assuming
divine prerogatives, had he been but one of us, standing
in the presence of the Omnipotent to render an ac
count for the utterance of every idle word. The tes
timony therefore which Jesus gave of himself, claiming
that ultimate authority touching questions of faith and
morals was vested in him, would naturally be of the
greatest significance.
He claimed to be altogether sinless. Men who un
dertake to instruct their fellow men in righteousness in
stinctively accompany their strongest moral appeals
with some reference to their own sense of unworthi-

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ness. People turn away from any pulpit in which
they do not hear ever and anon the tones of personal
confession. They feel that if the man is not sufficient
ly clear and honest to see the need of moral better
ment in himself as he preaches of sublime duties, he is
not fit to be their moral leader. Paul, the greatest of
the apostles, near the close of his devoted life still cries,
"This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all accepta
tion, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners; of whom I am chief." The saintly John
writes, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves, and the truth is not in us." James says, ap
parently voicing his own habit, "Confess your faults
one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may
be healed." And Peter's humble word of confession is,
"Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord."
All these moral leaders of the world unhesitatingly
confess their sense of guilt and their consequent need
of forgiveness.
But with Jesus there is no record of any acknowledg
ment whatsover of moral fault. He showed no con
sciousness whatever of wrong-doing. There was no
prayer for personal forgiveness found upon his lips.
He taught his followers to pray, "Forgive us our sins,"
but for himself he never looked heavenward to say,
"Forgive me my sin," because he admitted none. On
the contrary he said boldly, "The Father hath not left
me alone ; for I do always those things that please him."
He challenged his enemies to convict him of sin, if they
could, but we have no record that the challenge was
ever successfully met. This claim of moral perfection

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either affirms something beyond the moral limitations
of humanity as we know it, or it blots and disfigures the
sincerity of a perfect man.
The assertion of his personal relation to the work of
human redemption throws further light upon his self-
estimate. It is common for right-minded leaders and
teachers to point away from themselves to Christ or to
God when they would direct others in the way of eter
nal life. Jesus came into the world to "show us the
Father," but he also invited attention and allegiance to
himself in a way that would have seemed absurd and
sinful had he been but a man of unusual intelligence
and extraordinary purity of life. Hear his words : "If
any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink."
"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest." "No man cometh unto the
Father, but by me." "In my Father's house are many
mansions : . . . I go to prepare a place for you."
"The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins."
He announced himself as the universal Judge of man
kind. He said the Son of man would come and sit
upon the throne of his glory and gather all nations be
fore him! "The Father . . . hath committed all
judgment unto the Son : that all men should honor the
Son, even as they honor the Father." In both the
Synoptics and in the fourth Gospel we find recorded
this extraordinary self-assertion. How impossible to
adjust such claims with a humanitarian theory of his
person ! How we shrink from placing them on lips
which are not truly divine !
The confident use of the capital "I," of which men
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in proportion to their goodness and wisdom grow
chary, attributed to him in the fourth Gospel will also
be recalled. "I am the way, the truth, and the life."
"I am the bread of life : . . . he that eateth of this
bread shall live for ever." "I am the light of the
world: he that followeth me shall not walk in dark
ness." "I am the true vine" — the life tree of regen
erate humanity — "without me ye can do nothing." "I
am the resurrection, and the life : . . . whosoever
liveth and believeth in me shall never die." "I am the
door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved."
What extravagant and awful egotism to thus exalt
himself unless in some way he transcended our human
ity! Try to pat such words on the lips of any other
great moral leader, Paul, Luther, Francis of Assisi,
John Wesley, Henry Ward Beecher, Phillips Brooks —
they will not stay ! The mute lips refuse them because
they know the narrower limitations of their own hu
manity. None of these would ever say, "Come unto
me . . . and I will give you rest," or, "Without me
ye can do nothing." None would think of saying, "No
man cometh unto the Father, but by me." The old
dilemma, either he was divine or, according to these re
ported utterances, he was not a sane, sincere, good
man, has been criticized, but its force remains.
It is recorded, also, that Jesus associated himself, as
no mortal could do, with God the Father. He told
men in the same breath to trust God and trust him
self — "Ye believe in God, believe also in me." He
commanded them to pray in his name — "If ye shall
ask anything in my name, I will do it." He ranked
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the honors paid to him on a level with honor paid to
God — "All men should honor the Son, even as they
honor the Father." He declared himself to be the full,
unimpaired revelation to the invisible God — "He that
hath seen rne hath seen the Father." He associated
himself with God in the work of salvation — "If a man
love me, he will keep my words : and my Father will
love him, and we will come unto him, and make our
abode with him." Who is this that tEus couples his
name with that of the Father and says, "We"? His
final commission was, "All power is given unto me in
heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore into all the
world and baptize men into the name of God and into
my name and into the name of the Holy Ghost." We
have heard extravagant boasts made by men as to the
extent of their earthly power, but we have never heard
a man claiming all power in heaven and on earth and
sending his followers to baptize believers with a for
mula where the divine name and his own name stood to
gether and equal. Therefore the sum of all this testi
mony indicates that Jesus lived and taught and died in
the faith that he was the Son of God in a sense which
entirely transcends the filial relation sustained by be
lieving men to the heavenly Father.
In these last two paragraphs, the passages quoted
have been mainly, though not entirely, from the fourth
Gospel, and I am well aware that, with a considerable
show of reason, modern scholarship does not accord
to the reported utterances of Jesus found in this Gos
pel the same title to accuracy as is accorded to the
utterances recorded in the Synoptic Gospels. It is
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boldly asserted that the fourth Gospel is rather a
philosophical interpretation than a painstaking his
torical document. "The author of the fourth Gospel
has preserved the image of his Master," it is said, "but
the picture is framed in by his own meditations and
reflections." Yet if we were to grant this claim in full, the truth
still stands that this narrative of the life and teachings
of Jesus of Nazareth came into existence at an early
period in the development of Christianity ; that no such
attempt was made to secure standing outside the human
categories for any other religious leader of the day ;that
this portrait of Jesus, retouched though it may have
been by the hands of second century scholarship, met
with ready and confident acceptance at the hands of
those who stood so many centuries nearer the original
tradition than do we and who had been nourished on
the plain statements of the first three Gospels and upon
the body of tradition passed on from "eyewitnesses of
his majesty." The very existence of such a document,
even for those who withhold from it the tribute of
thorough historicity, must have great weight as a wit
ness to the conviction touching the person of Christ,
which somehow had been produced among a people
steeped in an uncompromising monotheism, and pro
duced within an amazingly, short time after his death.
It seems to be entirely legitimate, therefore, to quote
these many sayings as throwing strong light upon the
impression he made upon the thought of his own day
as to the estimate he would place upon himself.
But in addition to the portrait of Christ as it stands
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upon the pages of the New Testament and the testi
mony of Jesus concerning himself, there is the history
of the Christian Church for nineteen hundred years to
be considered. The lower conception of Jesus as an
extraordinary man or as the first of created beings but
not divine, has had its full chance to be heard in all
the centuries' since the first. Gnostic and Arian, So-
cinian and Unitarian have offered this lower view to
those who were puzzled or perchance repelled by the
higher claim. The offer has frequently been made by
men who were winsome in character and possessed of
unusual power in literary statement. The offer has
been reinforced by the utmost of personal sincerity and
by genuine moral earnestness on the part of those who
thus proclaimed the lower view of the person of Christ.
And what has been the result ? We are not moving
here in any realm of metaphysical speculation ; we are
not even examining historical sources so remote as
those contained in the pages of the New Testament ; we
are scrutinizing the facts of history which no one thinks
of calling into question. The adherents of the lower
view are but a small company; they have somehow
failed to command any considerable following or to
develop the spiritual vigor which belongs to those great
branches of the Christian Church which hold the
higher view ;they have failed to give that evidence of an
all-inclusive, self-sacrificing love which is seen in those
missionary movements, for example, which are clasping
the whole round world in the arms of Christian interest
and sympathy — this work has been left altogether to
those bodies of Christians who deem Christ divine.
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The contrast between the varying spiritual results of
proclaiming the higher and the lower views of Christ's
person was thus recently voiced by a prominent Uni
tarian in one of their own denominational publications :
"Two curious spectacles the world sees to-day: an or
thodoxy holding fast to discredited dogmas and pro
foundly in earnest ; a liberalism intellectually secure, but
without depth of moral conviction and half indifferent
to the claims of personal religion ! The world approves
our position and forsakes our altars. The intelligence
of the age goes the way of liberal thought ; the devo
tion of the age goes the way of orthodox life."
It is a more severe arraignment of the confessed
weakness of the liberal position in producing desired
spiritual results than it might have been altogether
courteous for the opponents of that view to make, but
having been published by themselves it may not be out
of place to quote it. These words raise the question
as to whether "dogmas," which work so much better
in the production of moral earnestness and devotion
than do the denials of them, are altogether "discredit
ed." They raise the question as to whether the more
serious and aspiring part of the world does "approve"
the liberal position, since in the expression of its deep
er life it does so largely go the way of orthodox
thought. Why is it that the lower view of Christ's person thus
shows itself deficient in furnishing motive power ? Why
does history put the crown of the larger spiritual suc
cess upon the head of the higher view? "Do men
gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" The ver-
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diet of history upon those who content themselves with
the claim that Christ was a matchless teacher, a lovely
example, a great moral hero, and its altogether differ
ent verdict upon those who find in him a divine re
deemer, are highly instructive. The form, the theory,
the pattern of godliness are not the most pressing needs
of the modern world, for most' men know already what
is right and what is wrong. The greatest need is for
that divine something which will remove the sense of
guilt, renew the springs of action, invigorate the will,
furnish an unfailing source of motive and stimulus —
in a word, for "the power of godliness" which human
experience has discovered in greatest measure, thus
far, when it has fixed its faith upon Jesus Christ as
Son of God and Saviour of the world. Unless we are
ready to part with our confidence in the moral integ
rity of the universe, and with our faith in the validity
of history as a moral revelation in itself, it is hard to
bring ourselves to believe that for sixty generations of
believing and aspiring men, moral victory has been the
reward of a delusion, and that comparative failure,
wherever the higher and the lower conceptions of the
person of Christ have been brought into competition,
has been the disappointing fate of the truth. To make
such a claim would be to assert that for some inexplica
ble reason "the things that are not are mightier than
the things that are."
The feeling of essential kinship between the human
and the divine, along with the sense of profound dif
ference, has for some reason only taken deep hold upon
the moral lives of whole communities of men where
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that great truth has been proclaimed in the terms
of the incarnation. "The supreme divinity of Jesus
Christ is the sovereign expression in human history of
the great law of difference in identity, that runs
through the entire universe and that has its home in
the heart of the Godhead."1 The splendid confidence
that man is the child of the Infinite, in nature, in capac
ity for growth, in an endless destiny, seems to fade
out of the ordinary consciousness unless it is perpetu
ally sustained by a faith that "the Prototype of human
ity, lying eternally in the Godhead, has appeared in an
historic personality to vindicate the daring thought."
And this "Eternal Pattern" of our human relations and
our human capacity has been identified in the life of the
Church universal with Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of
man of the Gospels, the Mediator and Redeemer of the
epistles, and the Lord Christ of the historic creeds !
Napoleon Bonaparte was never celebrated as a theo
logian, but his wide experience made him a judge of
men, and he could estimate forces that would work
lasting results. Near the close of his life at St. Helena
we are told that he was reviewing the events of his own
career and commenting upon the great men of history.
"Can you tell me who Jesus Christ was ?" he said one
day. No answer was given, and he continued : "Well,
then, I will tell you. Alexander, Csesar, Charlemagne
and I myself have founded great empires, but upon
what did these creations of our genius depend ? Upon
force. Jesus alone founded his empire upon love, and
to this very day millions would die for him. I think I
1 George A. Gordon, " The Christ of To-day," page 112.
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understand something of human nature, and I tell you
that all these were men and I am a man ; none else is
like him ; Jesus is more than man. I have inspired mul
titudes with such an enthusiastic devotion that they
would have died for me, but to do this it was necessary
that I should be visibly present with the electric influ
ence of my looks, of my words, of my voice. Christ
alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of man
toward the Unseen, that it becomes insensible to the
barriers of time and space. This it is that proves to me
convincingly the divinity of Jesus Christ."
The claim that the Man of Nazareth, born of a wom
an, tempted in all points like as we are, taught obedience
by the things that he suffered, crucified, dead and buried
in the days of Pontius Pilate, was the divine Son of God
raises intellectual difficulties. The lower conception
seems easier to many minds, and without an adequate
study of the grounds of Christian certainty many peo
ple have hastily accepted it. Our intellects are not
built on a scale to readily and thoroughly grasp the
"great mystery of godliness" before which the great
est of the apostles stood in reverent awe, believing
that "God was manifest in the flesh,
Justified in the Spirit,
Seen of Angels;
Preached unto the Gentiles,
Believed on in the world,
Received up into glory."
The mode of God's unmanifested existence is
too high for us— we cannot perfectly attain unto it in
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our thought; and when we undertake to express "the
manifold helpfulness with which God has offered him
self to us" as we do in our doctrine of the Trinity, we
are involved in further philosophical difficulties. But
we are already bearing the burden of many unex
plained mysteries in this every-day life of ours. How
states of mind register themselves upon the body in
terms of health or of disease; how the phenomena of
hypnotism, suggestion and other strange facts recorded
by the societies for psychical research are produced;
how the energy of gravitation passes from world to
world without the aid of even such a medium as the
enveloping atmosphere of our planet ; how a thousand
forms of phenomena are related to Ultimate Reality,
our minds are utterly unable to determine.
Therefore in view of the fact that the moral honesty
and intellectual sanity of Jesus of Nazareth seem to be
bound up with the acceptance or rejection of the higher
claim as to his person ; and in view of the further fact
that the fruitage of moral energy and spiritual passion
has been a hundredfold richer on those fields of human
life where the higher claim has been received than upon
those where content was felt with a lower estimate of
him, "it seems easier for a good man to believe that in
a world where we are encompassed by mysteries, where
man's own being itself is a consummate mystery, the
Moral Author of the wonders around us should for
great moral purposes have taken to himself a created
form, than that the one human life which realizes the
idea of humanity, the one Man who is at once perfect
strength and perfect tenderness, the one Pattern of our
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race in whom its virtues are combined and its vices
eliminated, should have been guilty, when speaking of
himself, of an arrogance, of a self-seeking, and of an
insincerity, which if admitted must justly degrade him
far below the moral level of millions among his unhon-
ored worshipers."
But in speaking of all these doctrines, I desire to ask
what bearing do they have on the needs of common
life ? All religious beliefs are means to an end, and the
end is right conduct. "The natural terminus of all
experiences, bodily and mental, is action." Our time
would in large measure be wasted did we study these
questions only to decide that our positions were sound
and right, while others were not, and then leave them
with no additional help for nobler living. Professor
James' contention that there is no difference which
does not make a difference is valid. "There can be no
difference in abstract truth which does not express it
self in a difference of concrete fact and of conduct
consequent upon the fact." Unless the claim that Jesus
is divine makes some difference upon conduct, it is
purely a speculative claim, and it is scarcely worth our
while to make it.
For me the practical helpfulness of this truth of
Christ's divinity lies just here. The central fact in the
Christian religion is Christ. To be a Christian is to
wear his name, to trust absolutely in him, to follow
him, to do the will of God as he reveals it and by the
aid he lends. In dealing with him, then, as the
heart and center of our religion, are we dealing with
one who stands altogether within the human category,
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purer, wiser, finer than we are, it may be, but a fellow
mortal still; or are we coming into personal relations
with the total helpfulness of One who sustains cosmic
and eternal relations, One who could justly say, "All
power is given unto me in heaven and in earth" ? "To
deny divinity to Christ is to relegate all divinity what
soever to the far-off, shadowy realm of metaphysical in
quiry." On the other hand, to recognize in Jesus of
Nazareth, whom we know so well through authentic
history, the Son of God, the Saviour of mankind, is to
receive a pledge of the absolute and unutterable help
of God in bearing all burdens, in meeting all tempta
tions, in solving all human problems. To "know
Christ" with this higher view of his person, is to come
into living relations with that inexhaustible help. He
mediates to us nothing less than "the power of God
unto salvation." And the moral vigor, the confident
assurance, the unquenchable hope begotten of this firm
faith are well voiced in those words of the apostle,
"He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him
up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give
us all things?"
Look up, then, with eager, expectant faith to Jesus
Christ, Son of man and Son of God, the representative
Man on earth, the Eternal Prototype in the Being of
God of a perfected humanity ! How full of moral in
spiration and stimulus becomes the conception of him
as the Head of a redeemed humanity! The concep
tions which any one maintains within his own head, the
desires which he cherishes there, the determinations
which are there formed, how they all utter themselves
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in a powerful and effective influence upon the health,
the movements, the efficiency of his whole body ! So
Christ, the Head of humanity, through the concepts he
holds, through the desires he cherishes on our behalf,
through the high determinations of his eternal purpose,
becomes increasingly, according to the measure of our
acceptance of him, a determining force in the life of the
race to which he stands thus organically related.
Christ the Vine and Christian people the branches!
Out of that Vine there flows perpetually into every
branch, where no barrier of sinful will interposes, a
stream of spiritual power, making the branches alive
with the Vine's own mighty life, making them fruitful
in the terms of their individual experiences by the pow
er of the Vine's own splendid life ! The graft lives and
thrives by the vital energies of the larger life with
which it has become incorporate, but it puts upon the
manner of fruit it bears, the marks of its own original
endowment. "The blending of the human and divine
in Christ is unique in its perfection but representa
tive in its ultimate significance, for he was 'the Son of
man,' the rightful heir to all that is human, in antic
ipation as well as in retrospect." Wherever men open
their minds freely and sympathetically to this richer
conception of Christ, not as standing helpless among
us, himself looking across the chasm of difference be
tween the human and the divine, not as removed from
us in the isolation of a being purely celestial, but as or
ganized with us, the Eternal Mediator of that essential
kinship between humanity and divinity which is per
petually requisite to a vital religion, we witness spiri-
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tual advance ! Such an enlarged faith fills the soul with
new moral energy, with a fresh hope for the race, with
a magnificent confidence that the kingdom of God can
ultimately be established on earth through the Eternal
Headship of Jesus Christ!

23

©ije Qtonement

CHAPTER II
©be Qtontment

WHY has the Christian Church concen
trated so much of its attention upon the
death of Christ? Why is the cross the
leading symbol in all Christian archi
tecture? Why is the main sacrament in its worship
the Lord's Supper, the perpetual commemoration and
showing forth of his death? For some reason the
most devoted Christians have come with one accord to
feel that somehow the secret of their salvation is bound
up with the lifting up of Christ upon the cross of
Calvary. We all know that many unreal and artificial con
ceptions of the significance of Christ's death have found
their way into religious speech. Metaphors like "ran
som" and "debt" and "lamb" have been carelessly used
as if they were the exact equivalents of certain spiritual
realities. Oriental symbols have been forced to serve
as if they were scientific definitions of dogmatic truths.
The rhetoric of impassioned souls has been made to fill
the office of logic. All this has contributed to the
confusion and uncertainty which fill many a thought
ful mind whenever the subject of the atonement is
mentioned. Three main theories have been advanced as to the
significance of the death of Christ for the moral recov-
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ery of the world. The first proceeds upon the analo
gies of the civil law and is known as "the satisfaction
theory." The law of God reads, "The wages of sin is
death." Men have broken that law and consequently
stand condemned to death without remedy. They
must pay the full price of their transgression. The
justice of God is such that it can suffer no violation
of the law without meting out the appropriate penalty.
The enormity of sin is such that God would require a
satisfaction which no human power could render, for
the release of the sinner from his debt. But before
sentence is actually executed, Jesus Christ, the Son of
God, comes in as a substitute and voluntarily endures
upon the cross the penalty due to men for their sins and
thus purchases their pardon. Therefore, when guilty.
men accept this arrangement and take advantage of
what he has done for them, they are forgiven.
The second theory is cast in the forms of the criminal
law and is known as "the governmental theory." God
is ever ready to forgive penitent wrong-doers — indeed,
there is no more mercy in Christ than in God, and no
stricter justice in the Father than in the Son. But
if God were to freely forgive men simply upon con
dition of their penitence, without their suffering the
full penalty or having any one suffer it for them, the
majesty of God's government would be lowered. His
administration would be despised and its restraining
moral force weakened. The demand for an atonement
therefore lies, not in the strict justice of God, but in
the exigencies of his moral government. It was not to
pay the price of man's release, but to show how God
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hates sin, to uphold the majesty of God's government
for administrative ends, and to make forgiveness con
sistent with the maintenance of a righteous order, that
Christ suffered the penalty of our wrong-doing on the
cross. The advocates of the third theory sit in judgment
upon the two preceding theories. They maintain that
there can be no transfer of guilt or of merit from one
to another. Debts are transferable, but guilt is per
sonal and merit is personal ; to talk of imputing either,
is ethical shuffling. The once familiar words, "the
merits of Christ," were never once used by the authors
of the New Testament. And were such transfer of merit
possible, would it not bring a fearful charge against
any government to say that its penalties might be
"bought off" ? Moreover, the same sin cannot be both
punished and forgiven. If Christ suffered the penalty
due to our transgressions, then all possibility of for
giveness is excluded — we are free as a matter of justice.
And the claim that Christ suffered to show the maj
esty of God's government fares no better. Would it
reveal majesty in a government, they ask, to punish the
innocent instead of the guilty, even though the inno
cent should consent? Would it impress horse-thieves,
for a state to catch an innocent man now and then and
impute to him the guilt of horse-stealing, hanging him
to show the offenders how the state hates their crime
and how its majestic justice must be satisfied by some
victim, innocent or guilty? Even though some inno
cent man with a mistaken sense of what would be for
the good of the state should consent to be thus hanged,
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such a spectacle would tend to bring a blot upon the
state in the eyes of both the evil and the good.
The claim is made, therefore, that Christ simply came
into the world to teach, to live, to heal and to bless.
He came knowing that he would be put to death in
the midst of his holy, beneficent work. He died to
show us that the divine love stops at nothing — God
loves men even to the point of self-sacrifice. Calvary
is a revelation in time of the length and breadth and
height and depth of that love of God which passeth
knowledge. If anything is calculated to melt the
hearts of guilty men, surely the sight of Christ, dying
upon the cross for them, as the climax and crown of his
saving life, must melt them. This is "the moral influ
ence theory" of the atonement.
These three theories practically cover the ground
of that section of our traditional theology. You have
heard them all and pondered them, but somehow you
were not quite convinced. The satisfaction idea, dollar
for dollar, so much suffering endured by Christ to pur
chase so much forgiveness and mercy for us, did not
seem quite like the atmosphere of the New Testament.
"Strict justice is not satisfied if the innocent suffer:
it requires the punishment of the guilty." The mani
fest injustice of it did not commend to you such ethical
bargaining; you shrank from pressing forward to avail
yourself of such a scheme. Moreover, if Christ the
Son, whose sense of justice equals that of the Father,
could love us while we were yet sinners enough to die
for us, surely God the Father, who is one with the
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Son in character, loves enough to forgive us without
any suffering of penalty by an innocent victim.
And the second theory seems to represent God as
bound hand and foot by the exigencies of his own
government. He desires to forgive sinful men when
they turn to him in penitence, but fears for the majesty
of his administration. But does the makeshift named
tend to save that majesty? Does it not load it with a
further burden grievous to be borne? And further
more, the sufferings of Christ are nowhere referred to
in the Scriptures as having been in any sense a "pun
ishment." And the moral influence theory does not in any suffi
cient way meet and explain the many texts of Scripture
which instantly occur to you. The authors of the
New Testament certainly saw in the death of Christ
something more than the sufferings of a martyr or the
exhibition of God's pleading mercy. Thus all the
views advanced seem to fall short of a satisfactory in
terpretation of the death of Christ.
We may be sure that in Christ's work of reconcilia
tion there were "no fictions or unrealities, no transac
tions that were not expressive of eternal verity. Christ
was not regarded by God as anything that he was not,
nor are men in their relation to Christ viewed as any
thing but what they are. There is no unreal changing
of places or imputation to any one of character that
does not belong to him."1 On the one hand these tra
ditional interpretations ignore certain moral realities,
and on the other they fail to explain certain passages
1Clark, "Outline of Christian Theology," page 333.
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of Scripture. The doctrine of the atonement must be
so stated that both conscience and reason will respond.
Men will not accept something because they are told it
is the "plan of salvation" if it is irrational or absurd, if
it ignores moral facts, or brings an apparent disagree
ment between the character of the Father and that of
the Son ; nor will they rest in any view of sheer ration
alism which fails to interpret the body of Scripture
bearing upon this fundamental question, or which fails
to satisfy the profounder intimations of the moral na
ture, painfully conscious of its need of redemption.
In our whole discussion of the atonement, it is well
to distinguish between the fact and the human theories
about the fact. However we may try to explain it,
"the atonement is the work of God's love in its bearing
upon man's sin." The great fact is that God so loved
the world as to give his only begotten Son, and the Son
so loved us as to die for us. There is no dispute about
that. But when we come to theorize upon what ef
fect his death had as between him and the Father or as
between him and the moral laws of the universe, we
find ourselves in disagreement. A man could live a
worthy Christian life, however, on the great fact that
God so loved the world as to give his Son, even though
he found himself unable to frame an entirely satisfac
tory theory regarding the atonement. "Life eludes defi
nition and analysis, and grows according to its own
laws. While scholars were beating out the articles of
the Creed of Chalcedon, all through the world, in se^
rene unconsciousness, humble spirits were following
Jesus in the realization of fatherhood and brotherhood.
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While the reformed divines by every device known to
logic were packing words with 'sovereignty, reprobation
and expiation,' millions who never heard of a logical
process were yielding to the mastery of Jesus and learn
ing at first hand that he is the Way and the Truth and
the Life."1
It is well to bear in mind also that the Scriptures uni
formly represent Christ, not as reconciling an angry
God to us, but as reconciling us to God. The Scrip-*
tures show "God willing and men unwilling. Recon
ciliation is proposed between two parties, of whom one
has a heart for it and the other has little or none.
Hence, just as we should expect, if one party was
willing and the other was not, we find the willing tak
ing the initiative. God himself has given Christ to be
a propitiation, and a God who will himself provide a
propitiation has no need of one in the sense which the
word has ordinarily borne."2
The Scriptures bear uniform testimony to this view
of the matter. "God was in Christ, reconciling the
world unto himself." "If, when we were enemies, we
were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much
more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life."
"If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old
things are passed away ;, behold, all things are become
new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled
us to himself by Jesus Christ." "We also joy in God
through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now
received the atonement." This atonement — according

JAmory H. Bradford, " The Growing Revelation," page 234.
2Clark, " Christian Theology," pages 324-335.

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to the Century Dictionary the "at-one-ment," — is that
which makes us at-one with God. The word atone
ment is only used once in our New Testament, and the
Greek word there translated "atonement" is elsewhere
translated "reconciliation." In the three passages
quoted above, the word for "reconcile" or "reconcilia
tion" is the same word which for some reason is trans
lated "atonement" in this single passage. If we were
to make the translation uniform throughout, we should
find that God "hath given to us the ministry of atone
ment." We should find Paul urging a certain Corin
thian woman to be "atoned to her husband" — that is,
restored to loyalty and affection toward him. This
throws light upon what Paul had in mind when he
spoke of "atonement" or "reconciliation" — it was the
restoration of a personal relation which had been in
terrupted by wrong-doing.
Independent of any theory, the Scriptures certainly
teach that whatever barriers exist between a holy God
and sinful men, they are all cleared away when we
turn from our sins and become personal believers in
Jesus Christ. But if there were barriers on God's
part which demanded the death of an innocent victim
before forgiveness could be extended to the penitent,
Jesus does not seem to know about them. Men were
invited by him to come directly to the Father in peni
tent faith, and ask for forgiveness; and according to
his common speech they were forgiven, not because
some penalty had been paid or satisfaction made, to
which their attention was directed as the ground on
which to hope for pardon — they were forgiven be-
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cause they came in penitence and faith. The publican
went up to the temple and prayed, "God be merciful
to me a sinner." Penitence, confession, faith that God
would forgive — and he went down to his house "justi
fied," according to the account of Christ, without any
reference to a present or prospective ground of for
giveness, to be purchased only by the blood of the in
nocent. It was a fatal omission in the parable, unless
penitent and believing men are always forgiven, simply
because their Father desires to forgive them.
The woman who was a sinner was forgiven, and the
ground is stated by our Lord — "for she loved much,"
loved him enough to fall down before him in penitent
confession and faith. Christ taught us to pray, "For
give us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." "If ye
forgive men their trespasses," he said, "your heavenly
Father will also forgive you." The genuineness of our
penitence and the new attitude of faith toward God
would be indicated by our forgiving spirit toward
others ; and this penitence and faith were made by him
the sole conditions of forgiveness.
The thief on the cross prayed, "Lord, remember me
when thou comest into thy kingdom." He had already
said, "We are suffering justly for our deeds." Re-
pentence, confession, faith, again — and Jesus forgave
him, assuring him an entrance into the kingdom! It
was a singular omission that he there made no refer
ence to the connection of his suffering with the pos
sibilities of forgiveness, if that suffering constituted in
his mind the sole ground of forgiveness.
In a word, Jesus taught that the method of divine
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forgiveness finds its prototype in the method of human
forgiveness. "Forgive as we forgive," was his direc
tion as to the confidence in which we should pray. If
ye then being evil know how to forgive men their tres
passes when they turn to you in open acknowledgment
of fault, in penitence, and with confidence in you. how
much more will your heavenly Father forgive you when
you turn to him in the same way ! This was the uni
form teaching of Jesus and his own unfailing habit
iwith burdened penitent souls. Did he omit the very
fcornerstone of the gospel in teaching that the will
ing mercy of God is the sole and sufficient ground for
human forgiveness? He had not yet died, it is true,
but he knew that he was to die; he had spoken re
peatedly of the decease he was to accomplish at Jeru
salem. It seems impossible that his confident offers
of mercy were made upon a ground which in a few
months would be rendered a false and unsafe one by
his death upon the cross.
After wandering through elaborate theories and in
tricate reasonings about commercial exchanges and ju
dicial experiments, about imputation of guilt and of
merit where they do not rightly belong, we find it re
freshing to turn back to the four Gospels and to the
original Christianity of Jesus Christ. We cannot
help saying how little he seemed to know of all these
elaborations and how far from their intricacy were his
plain statements about forgiveness and mercy. If any
man should come back from the far country of wrong
doing and stand before the Father, saying, "I have
sinned against heaven, and before thee," he was for-
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given at once, without any reference to his knowledge
of or confidence in a vague something lying back, that
made it possible for a Father to forgive his penitent
child. The very words "reconciliation," "atonement,"
"propitiation," "justification," never occur in the four
Gospels at all. The great Teacher, who spake as never
man spake, lived his whole life, delivered his entire mes
sage, and finished the work which the Father had given
him to do, without ever finding it necessary or appro
priate to use one of them. It cannot be that the theories
with which these terms are bound up are such mat
ters of life and death, since he never employed the
terms at all.
The great, forgiving love of God, unpurchased by
anybody, unhindered by any governmental embarrass
ments, leaping the barriers that human sin interposes,
has been ever seeking the lost that it might bring them
salvation. We have obscured it by our clever theories.
We have dimmed its light by an unwarranted use of
certain expressions in the epistles. These expressions
were natural to Jewish men, trained in an ecclesiastical
system where the offering of bloody sacrifices bore a
prominent part. Jesus, however, transcended the
habits of thought and speech prevalent among his own
people — his mind moved upon a higher level than that
which was characteristic of the cult and practise of the
Jewish Church. Therefore when we turn to his utter
ances we find no words which would interpose objec
tions to the free, unpurchased, forgiving mercy of
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The claim has been urged that in all the references
to the blood of bulls and of goats in the Old Testament
we are to find types and anticipations of the one perfect
sacrifice offered at last in the death of Christ. But the
choicest spirits of the Old Testament knew the mind of
God sufficiently to see that he forgave men then, not
on account of the bloody sacrifice, but on account of
their penitence and faith. Hear David : "Thou desir-
eth not sacrifice ; else would I give it : thou delightest
not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a
broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart!" And
Samuel : "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt of
ferings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the
Lord ? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to
hearken than the fat of rams!" And Isaiah: "To
what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto
me ? saith the Lord. . . . Who hath required this
at your hand ? . . . Let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him
return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon
•him ; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
. . . Cease to do evil; learn to do well. , . .
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord;
though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as
snow !" And Hosea: "I desired mercy, and not sacri
fice ; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offer
ings !" And Micah : "Wherewith shall I come before
the Lord? . . . Shall I come before him with
burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the
Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten
thousands of rivers of oil? . . . He hath showed
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thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord
require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with thy God?" And Jeremiah:
"Thus saith the Lord of hosts : . . . I spake not
unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day
that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, con
cerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: but this thing
commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and
I will be your God, and ye shall be my people!"
And Ezekiel: "When the wicked man turneth
away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and
doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his
soul alive. . . . All his transgressions that he hath
committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him."
These prophetic words are taken from the lips of the
leading men in the Old Testament, the men of vision
and insight. Their combined message is to the effect
that the forgiving mercy of God is neither purchased
nor purchasable; it is freely bestowed, upon all who
seek it, as an act of grace. It cannot be said that in
speaking in this derogatory way of the idea of purchas
ing reconciliation by bloody sacrifices, the prophets
were simply emphasizing the necessity of accompany
ing these offerings by penitence and faith, and that
they, too, held to the priestly view. If they were teach
ing the same thing the priests taught, why the clear
contention between the prophets and the priests, be
tween the men of moral vision and the upholders of
ritualism ?
The prophets saw that the priestly class, with its the
ories of judicial exchange and imputation of guilt to
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innocent victims, with its notion of appeasing a wrath
which no longer exists toward sinful men when they
face about in penitence, was confusing and misleading
the people, just as priests in the Roman Catholic
Church, with their "perpetual sacrifice of the Mass,"
and all the magical, mystical accompaniments which
ignore moral facts, are doing now. When I see these
prophets, who stood at the high-water mark of Old
Testament inspiration, pointing men, not to the wring
ing of the neck of a pigeon, or to the cutting of the
throat of a lamb, as the ground of forgiveness, but
rather to the free, unpurchased and unpurchasable
mercy of God, I feel impelled to study the New Testa
ment passages, which contain expressions carried over
from a former dispensation by Hebrews still saturated
with that cult, by the aid of this prophetic school of
religious teachers.
You have all heard "plans of salvation" and "schemes
of redemption" put forward, which were no better than
fairy stories, and very wicked fairy stories, too, for
they misrepresented "the Father" and drove men into
unbelief. An earnest evangelist used to go about the
country representing the atonement after this fashion:
A father and son in a certain family had become es
tranged by the son's evil conduct. The son finally
left his home in anger, vowing he would never come
back until the father softened toward him and
asked for his return. The heartbroken mother sought
with all her love to induce him to come home, but
he refused. She pleaded with the father to request
the return, but his patience had been sorely tried by the
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dissolute habits of his boy, and he would not forgive
nor invite him back. The mother grew sick unto death
and a message was sent in her name, imploring the boy
to come home and see her before she died. He still
remained obdurate, until the father sent a message in
his own name, and then the son came. But still the
father and son were unreconciled — they stood on op
posite sides of the mother's death-bed, proudly unwill
ing to speak to each other. She saw the gulf be
tween them, and at last reaching out, took the hand of
each, clasped them together, and holding them in her
own hand passed away. The hands which she had
clasped together in her dying love the father and son
could not now unclasp in enmity, and so hand in hand
they knelt and implored forgiveness, both human and
divine, and thus were reconciled. She who had failed
in life to reconcile them, at last reconciled them in her
death. And this terrible story of a father's haughty, unwill
ing pride, withholding forgiveness even where the signs
of penitence had begun to appear, was supposed to
show how God, who so loved the world as to send his
only Son, is induced to forgive wayward but returning
children! What a caricature of him of whom Jesus
said: "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father"!
Against all attempts, whether they are made openly in
the name of the devil, or covertly in the name of what
would erroneously call itself evangelical, to put a blot
or blur on the Father's face, which shines and has al
ways shone with forgiving welcome for the man who
turns away from his wrongdoing — against all such at-
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tempts that are in plain disagreement with the teach
ings of our Lord, we must strongly protest.
If we find ourselves unable, then, to accept any of
these theories as to the significance of Christ's death,
shall we say that his death was a mere martyrdom, that
it meant nothing, more than the dramatic end of any
good man's life, who is slain by his enemies? Shall
we class it with the deaths of Socrates and Joan of
Arc, of Cranmer and Lincoln ? The Scriptures do not
so treat it. Jesus taught men; he gave us a perfect
example; he served human need by his acts of mercy;
his life was and is the mightiest moral influence in all
the world's history. But beyond all this, the Scriptures
attach special significance to his death. "I, if I be lift
ed up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." This
he said, signifying what death he should die. "Except
a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth
alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." "I
am the good shepherd . . . and I lay down my
life for the sheep." "This is my body, which is broken
for you." "This is my blood . . . which is shed
. . . for the remission of sins." All these sayings
of Christ himself must have some potent meaning. We
cannot accept his account of himself and fail to believe
that his death has some special significance in saving
men from their sins.
The death of Christ was an event in history, but it
was the revelation in time of something eternal. The
Scriptures speak of Christ as "the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world." This utterance of the Spirit
lifts the atoning work of Christ up into timeless and
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cosmic relations ; it expresses that eternal heartache and'
heart-break of the Father over the wrong-doing of his
children. It indicates that element in the divine char
acter which suffers and makes sacrifice in the work of
rescuing the children. Christ, therefore, reveals and
represents that in God which goes out redemptively at
infinite cost to himself, even as the shepherd leaves the
ninety and nine and goes after the lost one, sometimes
at the forfeit of his own life.
Jesus pictured this divine effort for our recovery as
the act of One who having life in himself imparts him
self in sacrifice, cleansing and nourishing other weaker
lives by his own offered personality. This is my body,
my very self, which is broken and given for you ; this
is my blood, my own life principle, which brings re
mission, the washing away of your sins and the renewal
of your nature in holiness.
This personal sacrifice on the part of Christ and our
personal appropriation of what he offers in his sacrifice
are vividly portrayed in those strong words, — "Except
ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink the blood,
ye have no life in you." It is an intense statement of
the way in which Jesus mediates to us the divine life
that we may become the sons and the daughters of the
Most High God. As we read in Deuteronomy, "the
blood is the life." Its office in the human body is to
cleanse and to feed the organism. The moral life of
man has become diseased and feeble. The outpoured
life of Christ, when received by us, cleanses us from sin
and nourishes our weakened natures into moral health.
This is atonement indeed. It is as though he opened
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the veins of his own rich, holy nature in willing sacri
fice and thus infused into sinful but penitent, receptive"
humanity, that new and holy life which effects our
reconciliation with God. And thus in the simple, ac
curate language of Scripture, we are saved "by the
blood of Christ." Any adequate definition of atone
ment must include "the entire work of Christ in reunit
ing man to God," which can only be accomplished by
the transformation of the inner life. It is our union
with the holy life of Jesus, offered and poured out for
the world's redemption, which restores us to the favor
and the likeness of God.
We are aided toward a right conception of this sub
lime truth by turning back to the Old Testament for a
picture of redemption through suffering, wrought out
in terms of human experience. The prophet Hosea
married a woman to whom he gave the entire affection
of his great, warm heart. She was a fickle, shallow
creature, however, and ere long she turned away from
her husband's devotion to cultivate unholy intimacies
with other lovers. Hosea saw it all ; he knew the bitter
tragedy which had fallen upon his home, but he loved
the woman still. When a babe was born in that house,
hers but not his, he rose up in anguish of heart and
gave the child a name indicative of the sad situation—
"Lo-Ammi," "not my people." Finally the unfaithful
wife left him altogether and became openly dissolute.
She sank lower and lower, until at last she was bought
and sold as a common slave.
But Hosea never forgot her nor ceased to love her.
One day as he passed through the city, he saw her ex-
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posed for sale in the slave market. His love had been
outraged and insulted until, but for the greatness of
his moral nature, it would have been dead. Yet as he
looked upon the wretched woman in her pitiable degra
dation, he loved her still. In the great compassion of
his heart, he bought her from her owner, took her to
his home and thus reclaimed her from the life of sin
and shame.
There you have the word of vicarious atonement
made flesh in the action of that Old Testament prophet !
When Hosea went up to the slave-dealer and paid the
price asked for an immoral woman, he suffered such
agony of heart as any man of honor must, were the
woman one he loved — he became sin for her ! When he
walked down the street with the disgraced woman at
his side and led her to his home, he was wounded for
her transgressions and bruised for her iniquities ! When
he shared with her the pain and sorrow of -her wrong
doing, the chastisement of her peace was upon him and
by his stripes she was healed. This devoted and unself
ish husband, who had been so foully wronged, took
up his cross and faced toward Calvary, redeeming the
sinful woman from her wicked course by his agony and
bloody sweat !
Sin is an offense against love ; it is contempt for holy
affection. Redemption is accomplished by the power1
of that patient, tender, persistent love which will not
give up its claim nor turn back defeated. In this
prophet of old there stands revealed a redemptive en
ergy which will endure pain and mortification, insult
and disgrace, that it may buy back, win back, love back,
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the sinful soul from its wrong course ! There is not an
unreal nor an artificial note in it from first to last ! And
this story of the tragedy which came into Hosea's life
and the way he suffered in the redemption of the guilty
woman, will afford us light when we come to study the
vast tragedy wrought in the world by human sin, and
the bearing of the divine mercy, revealed in the sacri
fice of Christ, upon the moral recovery of that world.
? The universe is full of this vicarious principle. One
thing lays down its life for another. A recent writer
has sought this idea far and wide, even in the physical
world. The granite mountains have been "nature's
stores of powerful stimulants."1 The heat has swelled
the flakes of granite, the frost split them, the moss and
lichens, with the rain, dissolved them, and presently
the hard stone has become soil. The rushing torrent
sweeps these mineral foods down into the valleys. The
death of the granite block becomes the life of the grow
ing grain below.
. The whole vegetable world is laying down its life
that horses and cattle may live and be useful in a way
that wheat and oats and corn could not be useful.
Ages ago the vegetable world in its most luxuriant
form laid down its life in thick tropical jungles to make
the coal-beds. To-day we sit by the glowing grate, or
read by the coal-gas, or ride upon the steam-car, be
cause the vegetable world laid down its life for us 'cen
turies ago. The lower forms of animal life, the cattle,
the sheep and the fowls, are laying down their lives
JN. D. Hillis, "The Investment of Influence," page 73.
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that human life may be fed and made effective. Every
thing is bought with a price. l
Men lay down their lives, sometimes in a single
heroic act of martyrdom, sometimes by patient years
of self-denying service. The physician robs himself
of sleep, hurries through his meals, carries the anx
iety of a hundred households at a time, and dies all
too soon, laying his life on the altar of the commu
nity's improved health. School-teachers lay down their
nerves, their health, and sometimes the gentler quali
ties of character, on the altar of education for restless,
thoughtless boys and girls. Railroad engineers, going
on ahead, watching the track with eagle eye, enduring
a nervous strain that cuts into life with sharp strokes,
ready to be the first to meet the washout or the broken
rail, are types of sacrifice, denying themselves for the
comfort of those who sleep securely in the Pullmans.
Husbands and wives who could easily support them
selves and attain a competency for old age, suffer and
sacrifice for the comfort, education, and well-being of
their children. "All this is of the nature of atonement,
and there is no corner of the world where the letters
of this word may not be spelled out, like a dim and
broken inscription on the fragments of human life."1
Everywhere the vicarious principle is at work, for
"except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die,
it abideth alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth much
fruit." When we come to the summit of all being, we should
not expect to find the Creator ignoring this vicarious
^Van Dyke, " Gospel for a World of Sin," page 135.
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principle with which he has filled the world. We are
already, prepared by our thoi|ghtful survey of these;
phenomena to accept the doctrine of atonement whei}'
revelation offers it. He, too, will suffer and make sac-'
rifices for his children. The throne of God has never
been a cold, marble throne, melted at last by what was
seen on Calvary — it has been a throne of self-sacrific
ing mercy from the first. The "Lamb which is in the
midst of the throne" is a "Lamb slain from the founda
tion of the world." It would be unthinkable that God's
attributes of justice and mercy were in a state of con
fusion or antagonism until Christ came and died on
Calvary; indeed, "law and grace are coordinate and
harmonious expressions of one and the same reality in
God, namely, of his opposition to sin and his desire that
his creatures may be free from it." Thus the total
conclusion to which the Scriptures bring us is that
there has been eternally among the attributes of God
a readiness to suffer and make sacrifices for the moral
recovery of sinful men.
The vindication of this doctrine of atonement is to
be found therefore in actual life. The schoolmen may
puzzle and confuse us with their philosophic efforts at
the adjustment of the benefits of the Saviour's sacrifice
of himself, but the active participants in the work of
saving a world that groans and travails, as it waits
for moral recovery, will bring us a sure word of inter
pretation. "Nothing short of this experience of earnest
service and unflinching sacrifice for the triumph of
God's will and the good of man can interpret to us to
day the meaning of the sacrifice of Christ. Every man
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who has tried to do these things in any degree knows
full,- well. that there can be no salvation either from sin
or irdrtr the misery sin entails on guilty and innocent
alike, save by the vicarious sacrifice of some brave,
generous servant of righteousness and benefactor of
his fellows. The doctrine of atonement is s%lf-evident
to every man who ever fought intrenched and powerful
evil, or sought to rescue the wicked from their wicked
ness. To those who have never touched the fearful
burden of human sin and misery with so much as the
tips of their dainty and critical fingers, the doctrine of
vicarious suffering, like all the deeper truths of the
spiritual* life, must remain forever an unintelligible
and impenetrable mystery."
I have here named those aspects of the voluntary
sacrifice Jesus made of "himself that seem most helpful
to me. I would not intimate that they exhaust even
in my own thought all that is suggested in that "God so
loved the world, that he give his only begotten Son."
The divine nature in all its self-relationships must of
necessity contain moral mysteries which are at present
beyond our ken. The various theories of the atone
ment have been attempts to rationalize and comprehend
what still eludes while it entices our utmost effort of
thought and aspiration. But when the returns are all
in from all the theories, it is to the great, glad fact that
we still resort for moral help — God so loved the world
as to give his Son. "The old idea that Christ died be
cause God was insulted and must punish somebody
fades out. The conception of the death of Jesus as a
mere exhibition of governmental severity for the sake
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of keeping order in the universe becomes too narrow.
The measuring of the precise amount of Christ's suf
fering as a quid pro quo for an equal amount of pen
alty incurred by human sin no longer satisfies the moral
sense. The cross itself, with its simplicity, its gen
erosity of sacrifice, its evident reforming and regen
erating power upon the heart — the cross itself leads the
race upward and onward in the interpretation of its
message." When we actually stand in the clear revelation made
by Christ of that unutterable love of God which pass-
eth knowledge and stops at nothing, we do not feel in
a mood for splitting hairs as to how the benefits of that
love will be adjusted. We shrink from any effort at
laying it out with metes and bounds. We stand thank
fully and reverently on the borders of "a vast economy
of mercy" which stretches beyond the boldest reach of
our insight and baffles all our attempts to reduce it to
a precise theological system. We simply make our
home in the inspiring presence of that Eternal Com
passion which from the first hour until now has been
waiting in an entreating attitude, that it might give
itself for all and to all who will receive the gift of new
and everlasting life.

50

06* ©ott of tfie
Hoi? ©Pint

CHAPTER III
©be ffioxk of t&e Qolp jglpirtt

SOME people fall out by the way when any
movement is made toward a deeper and
richer understanding of the divine force in
the life of the world. Men quite universally
believe in God the Creator, and a majority of them
would say that he is "the Father." But when we
advance to our belief in "Jesus Christ, the Son of God,"
some of them do not follow with us. They regard
Jesus as a noble teacher, a great leader, a beautiful
example, but the belief that "God was manifest in the
flesh," that the Son of God became the Son of man
as a revelation and a pledge of the way in which the
divine and the human cooperate in the production of
every Christian life, does not altogether win their
assent. When we go still further and speak of being "bap
tized with the Holy Ghost" ; or of tarrying in Jerusa
lem, after we have seen the life and heard the words of
Jesus, until we are "filled with the Spirit" and thus
endued with power from on high; or of "receiving
another Comforter who shall abide with us forever,"
we lose still others from the original company. There
are, no doubt, many people in all our evangelical
churches who, if they gave frank utterance to their
position, would say that the truths regarding God the
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Father and Jesus the Son bound their religious hori
zon ; and so far as any experience of practical need or
help is concerned, they have scarcely heard that there is
any Holy Ghost.
This is due in part, no doubt, to the intellectual diffi
culties involved in the fuller belief. I have never heard
nor read anything that seemed to me to answer all the
questions which instantly arise when we announce our
faith in the Trinity, or even to set the doctrine out in
perfect clearness. But if the Scriptures instruct me
as to the moral needs and spiritual privileges of men
in regions where it is possible to verify the statements,
and by actual experience I find them accurate, I am
ready to trust them when they speak of other mat
ters which cannot be at once submitted to the test of
experience, provided always that nothing is offered for
my belief which is impossible or irrational. Therefore
I accept the doctrine of the Trinity primarily as a
teaching of that Book which in all moral and religious
matters has become to me authoritative; and, I may
add, that reflection and experience have served to make
it increasingly satisfying to both mind and heart.
This truth appears in such fundamental passages of
Scripture as that where Jesus gave his followers the
formula of baptism. They were to baptize men "in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost." At the baptism of Jesus, also, the voice
of the Father commending his Son to the attention of
men and the Spirit descending upon him as a dove em
bodied the same triune conception. Jesus in his last
address said, "I will pray the Father, and he shall give
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you another Comforter"; and again, "The Comforter,
which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in
my name, he shall teach you all things." Paul says,
"Through him" — that is, through Jesus Christ — "we
both have access by one Spirit unto the Father." And
the familiar apostolic benediction, "The grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the com
munion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all" brings
before us constantly the conception those early Chris
tians entertained of the nature of God.
Shall we think of God, then, as being three distinct
persons, like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? No; we
are told that this is the heresy of tritheism. Shall we
say, then, that one true and living God manifests him
self now as Father and then as Son and again as Holy
Spirit? We are warned again that this is the heresy
of Sabellianism. The forms of life with which we are
familiar are not suitable for illustrating the conceptions
given us of the life of God. Indeed, it is a rule in the
world where we live that as we ascend the scale of be
ing the form of life grows more complex. The lower
forms of life, composed of a single cell, merely dividing
themselves into two when reproduction takes place and
performing all the functions of their lowly calling with
that single cell, are readily understood. A mollusk is
more elaborate, but is still a simple affair. But when
we come to the mode of man's existence we are faced
by many a mystery which we cannot solve. We do not,
therefore, count it strange that Jesus should indicate
in his matchless teachings that there are mysterious
self-relationships and an infinite richness of Being in
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the nature of God which our present nomencla
ture and present discernment fail to thoroughly
comprehend. The doctrine of the Trinity seems to be an expres
sion for the eternal self-companionship that God enjoys
within his own nature, and for "the manifold helpful
ness with which he offers himself to the world." The
Son embodies the eternal human life of God, divine in
character, but human in its resemblances; the Spirit
represents the active, loving communion that exists
between the Father and the Son.
An illustration used by Wilberforce has aided many
minds in picturing this truth to themselves. You hold
in your hand a flower. You find there first of all that
mysterious thing which we call "life." No man hath
seen "life" at any time. But this life manifests itself in
a visible form. The flower is white and of a certain
shape. And then proceeding from the hidden life and
from this revealing form of the flower, is a fragrance
which fills all the room where we are sitting. The life,
and the revealed form of that life, and the invisible
fragrance which proceeds from them, are three, and
yet there are not three flowers, but one flower. This
is only an illustration, and an imperfect one. We can
not press it at all points, for even the intricacies of
flower life would not bear the total strain of portraying
the divine life. It aids us, however, in having some
appreciation of what the Scriptures mean in speaking
of one God, "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."
I have referred in this general way to the doctrine of
the Trinity as being an appropriate introduction to the
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study of the work of the Holy Spirit. It seems to be
characteristic of a progressive revelation that one
person of the Trinity should reveal another, as God
educates his children into deeper fellowship with him
self. In the beginning the Almighty God created the
heavens and the earth. "No man hath seen God at any
time." Then Jesus the Son came revealing him ! "This
is my beloved Son: hear him," was the sure word
from the Father. "He that hath seen me hath seen the
Father," was Christ's account of himself. Then the
advent of the Holy Spirit revealing, the deeper meaning
of the life and work of Christ! "He shall testify of
me," said Jesus. "He shall take the things of mine and
show them unto you." "He shall . . . bring all
things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said
unto you." There was a richer understanding of God
the Father after Jesus came into the world at Bethle
hem, and there was a richer understanding of Christ
the Son after the Holy Spirit entered the hearts of be
lievers at Pentecost. The earlier revelation was not
destroyed but was fulfilled. So, as evangelical believ
ers, we are baptized into the fulness of the love of
God, and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the
communion of the Holy Ghost.
As we read the four Gospels and the book of Acts
we find that men who had believed in God the Father
from infancy, and who had followed Christ, hearing
his words, seeing his life and feeling his influence, still
received something more as they came to the fulness of
religious privilege. In the upper room, Jesus breathed
on them and said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." He
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bade them tarry and wait for the promise of the Father
— "Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem," he said — in the
heart and center of the old dispensation, in the enjoy
ment of religious experiences already attained — "until
ye be endued with power from on high."
After his ascension they all continued in prayer and
supplication for ten days. When the day of Pentecost
was fully come, they were all with one accord in one
place, and suddenly they were all filled with the Holy
Ghost. Something additional had come to them, a
fresh and vivid experience of the presence of the Divine
Spirit within. They were becoming conscious of that
quickening, transforming, guiding, abiding Presence
called by the Scriptures, "the Holy Spirit." When we
likewise know the Father as revealed in Christ, and
when we follow the earthly history of the. Son, there
comes to us further, not a mere memory of what
the Son was, not an abstract influence, but a personal
Presence to dwell within our hearts, taking the things
of Christ, his words, deeds, life, death and resurrection,
and showing them unto us, revealing their richer mean
ing and guiding us into all the truth.
In the gallery at Dresden, the Sistine Madonna
hangs in a room by itself, for no other painting in the
great gallery is deemed worthy to share its honor.
Just opposite the picture stands a bust of Raphael, as
though he, too, had taken his place in the group of vis
itors to further study his own work. Suppose that the
living Raphael could come and actually stand among
the beholders and interpret his picture to them ! Nay,
more, suppose that he could stand within each be-
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holder and that the beholder could then look upon the
picture through Raphael's eyes and interpret it by Ra
phael's spirit ! How much his appreciation and under
standing of the masterpiece would be increased by such
an interpreter within! This indicates imperfectly the
office of the Holy Spirit. What man knoweth the things
of art save the spirit of an artist? "What man know
eth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which
is in him ? even so the things of God knoweth no man,
but the Spirit of God" as he comes to dwell within the
receptive heart of a believing Christian.
The "Holy Ghost" is the Scriptural name for the
presence of the Divine Spirit in that body of people
who believe on Christ and who are seeking to follow
him into the richer experiences of Christian life. All
this is clearly apparent as we read the book of Acts.
"The Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and
Saul," when an extension of the Church's work was
proposed. "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and
to us," they said in rendering the finding of a Church
Council. "Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to
the Holy Ghost?" said Peter to Ananias when he made
a false statement to the Church. "Ye are the temple
of the living God," was Paul's word to the Corinthian
Church. It is this divine presence that gives the
Church its authority and power.
The Holy Spirit convinces men of their need of sal
vation. "When he is come, he will reprove the world
of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment." This
is done by the Holy Spirit abiding in the body of be
lievers and by none else. When men have been shown
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the way of salvation plainly and Scripturally, they do
not always face about, accept Jesus Christ as Saviour,
and begin to live Christian lives. They may not feel
any need of salvation. The offer is reasonable and
beautiful, but it meets no response on their part be
cause there is no sense of lack. The men were there,
the truth was there, but there was not that convincing
and convicting power of the Holy Spirit in the Church
which is realized by the faith and prayer of the people.
Something more is needed than merely to tell men
that they are going wrong and to show them the right.
It is the office of the Spirit to convict men of their
need, and to that end, his power is sought in all the
work of the Church.
When men have faced about and accepted Jesus
Christ, the Spirit bears witness with their spirits that
they are the children of God. "The witness of the
Spirit" is a truth which affords great comfort to believ
ing hearts. When any one makes a persistent and sin
cere attempt to follow Christ it is increasingly borne
in upon him that he is in the right way, in the way of
eternal life — he is doing what God would have him do.
By and by he knows his acceptance into the divine
family through no coldly reasoned process, but by a
glad sense of inner warmth and peace ; and this Spirit
within the heart which bestows the feeling of worth
and peace is one with the Infinite Spirit whose work
for righteousness is from everlasting to everlasting.
This is what is meant by "the witness of the Spirit,"
The work of the Spirit is not apart from but through
the mental and spiritual faculties of the man's own
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nature, and the sense of acceptance, which sooner
or later appears in all healthy Christian experience,
is the manifestation of his presence in the individual
soul. Furthermore, the indwelling presence of the Spirit
changes the whole nature of the believer progressively.
"The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the
Holy Ghost which is given unto us." The characters
of men are changed in some degree by environment,
by the homes they Uve in, by the work they do, and by
the society they meet. They are changed still more
from within, because the inner state of mind and heart
gives to, or withholds from, the environment its com
plete opportunity. The character is changed pro
foundly by the presence of the Comforter, the Guide,
the Friend, who abides with the believer to lead him
into all truth and into all holy character. The trans
forming, transfiguring power of the Spirit is one of
the most blessed aspects of his work. How many peo
ple know a warmer love for God, a greater interest
in devotion, a greater compassion for men, a more ef
fective service in the kingdom, an increased sympathy.
tenderness and helpfulness in all their conduct, all of
which has come from the indwelling presence of the
Spirit! The promise of old was, "the Spirit of the
Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy
with them and shalt be turned into another man."
Paul speaks of this progressive sanctification of hu
man life as a process where "the fruit of the Spirit"
grows out of the man. The prune tree bears prunes,
not by conscious effort and straining, now bringing out
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prunes on this branch and now on another; it simply
cherishes abundant, healthy prune life in its roots,
trunk, branches, twigs and leaves, and then with that
glad spontaneity to which Jesus once referred in de
scribing the processes of his kingdom, "it bears fruit
of itself." The fruits of the Spirit will also come in
evitably and spontaneously, Paul says, out of the char
acter of a rightly constituted believer. "Love, joy,
peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness,
mildness, and self-control" will be the natural, essen
tial result of the indwelling Spirit. Such a result could
not be accomplished in any other way. No one can be
loving by effort, nor joyous, nor filled with peace; these
states come by indirection. The quality of life which
bears these fruits is diffused in our hearts by the Holy
Ghost. The Spirit also guides us into all truth. The com
munication of truth from God to men was not closed
when the canon of our Bible was complete. God had
still many things to say unto the world, but it could
not bear them then. The work of revelation was lim
ited by the material the Spirit had to work upon. In
the richer understanding and interpretation of the
Scriptures, in the history of the Christian Church
which is a process of revelation under the tuition of
the Spirit, in the great lessons learned by the accumu
lation of Christian experience and interpreted by
moral reason, the Spirit has been guiding the world of
believers into a fuller heritage of truth. "Revelation is
not only an eternal possibility, but an eternal necessity:
it can be limited to no race, no time, no condition and
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to no phase of faith." The promise was not, to any
age or to any set of men, one of an instantaneous
vision of all truth, but of a gradual, progressive un
folding — "He will guide you into all truth." With de
vout John Robinson, we are all "confident that God
hath more truth yet to break forth out of his holy
word," and the total history of an ever-expanding
Christian experience and the richer understanding of
the whole divine word to men seem to be the appointed
channel for this guidance of the Spirit.
Our trust for the future, therefore, is in this holy
guidance promised to us in the continuous leadership
of the Holy Spirit. There are problems confronting us
which are not solved in any of the books. There are
no heads among us wise enough to map out the future
movement of the religious life of mankind. We are
sometimes told that the Church does not now adequate
ly represent the spirit of Christ. The Ritualist would
make it mainly a matter of forms, rites and sacraments.
Some clear, strong thinkers would make it merely a
place of high, intelligent, moral instruction. The So
cialist would make it a place where economic questions
are discussed and the wage-earner aided in his strug
gle. Personally I cannot hold with the Ritualist that
God intends to make the Church a mere Priest, nor
with the educational party that he would have it solely
a Teacher, nor with the Socialist that it should be a
Judge or a Divider over men ; and yet I do believe that
if the Church is to be a power in the twentieth cen
tury it must be something other and greater than it is
to-day. My trust is not in the cleverness of any plans
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as yet devised, nor in the forward reach of our present
sagacity; it is, rather, in a Church which seeks and
cherishes the Presence of the Holy Spirit, relying confi
dently upon his continuous Leadership. The Church
which turns to him for a deeper, richer baptism of real
life, will be led by him into that truer form of service
as one essential part of "all the truth."
The Day of Pentecost was no mere detached wonder,
standing at the opening of a new dispensation to com
mand attention. It was a specimen of the way in which
the powers of an unseen world may be called to the
aid of our own moral forces in establishing the king
dom of God. The discouraged hearts of men turning
away from spiritual ministry back to their fishing were
summoned once more to noble tasks by the Risen Christ
and then established in the new purpose by the out
poured Spirit. The tongues which had been timid and
denying were now invigorated and made to speak the
word with all boldness, as the Spirit gave them utter
ance. There came to the enfeebled community of be
lievers, not the false stimulus of wine, as was supposed,,
but the mighty baptism of divine power which filled
all the city with its teaching and sent out a new church
on its world-wide conquering career.
Men have sought to change themselves from sin
ners into saints, from moral deadness into moral power,
by all kinds of efforts. Baptismal rites and anoint
ings, incantations and magical ceremonies, ablutions in
sacred rivers and streams, pilgrimages to Jerusalem
and pilgrimages to Mecca, ascetic practises and hideous
self-inflictions have all been tried and none have
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availed. The change from moral disease and feeble
ness to moral health and vigor is effected by receiving
into the life, through repentance and faith, the very
Spirit of the Living God !
You have all admired the example of Christ and you
have endorsed his teachings. You have wondered how
you could incorporate these precepts into daily life. The
form of godliness you cordially approved, but you were
consciously deficient in the power of it. The new ex
perience which will enable you to make progress tow
ard the ideal that summons you will come, not by pas
sive waiting, but by active effort. After you have
turned away from your sins and offered to Christ a
consecrated life, the word of the Lord is "take."
"Take ye the Holy Ghost," Jesus said as he breathed
on his disciples in the upper room. The word here
translated "receive" in our ordinary version is else
where repeatedly translated "take." "Take this and
divide it among yourselves," Jesus said as he passed
them the cup. "Take ye him, and crucify him," Pi
late cried to the mob. And so in many other passages
the term means active, voluntary appropriation. It is in
this way that men are to "take the Holy Ghost." The
blessing of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, then, is not
to be passively awaited, but actively claimed. When
soever you will you may "take" the blessed presence
of Him who bears witness to your salvation, sanctifies
the heart and guides you into all truth and service.
The vindication of our belief in the Holy Spirit will
come, then, not from prolonged attention to the meta
physical doctrine of the Trinity, nor from merely col-
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lecting an imposing array of Scripture passages which
contain the words "Holy Spirit." It will come rather
by an ever-deepening Christian experience. To the
natural man many of these truths are unintelligible
mysteries. "When set up as independent propositions
they are often meaningless or self-contradictory. But
on the other hand, they develop themselves out of ex
perience in doing the will of God. No man can strive
earnestly to do the loving will of God, the Father,
without gaining thereby an ever-increasing reverence
for the divine character of the Christ who revealed
the fulness of that loving will as a world-transforming,
spiritual power, and for the divine quality of the Spirit
in the hearts of all our fellows who have caught from
Christ the enthusiasm for the life of righteousness and
love."

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©tfile

CHAPTER IV
C$e Quttjoritp of the ©fole

WE can readily understand why many good
people are sensitive in regard to the
work done by those scholars who in a
general way are called "higher critics."
We can understand why they are sometimes offended
when modern views of the Bible, which take
into account certain limitations and imperfec
tions, especially in the older Scriptures, are put
forward. The Bible has been their lifelong friend. Its
familiar stories and psalms were taught them in child
hood. Its parables and precepts have been subjects of
delightful and rewarding study during all the years of
their maturity. Its promises and assurances have been
their comfort in many a dark hour of sorrow and dis
couragement. It has become to them the Book of books,
not by any decree of council, but by a life of sacred
experiences. They hope to meet death with some of
its confident words sounding in their ears the blessed
messages of hope. Therefore when the modern schol
ars and higher critics seek to examine its component
parts, to arrive at just and rational views as to the
method of their production, to estimate the limited and
local elements mingling with what is an enduring
message from the Eternal, and in doing all this dis
turb certain leng-cherished opinions, these good friends
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feel annoyed. It seems to them as ungracious as if a
student had undertaken a critical examination of his
own mother, pointing out that the dear, good lady had
certain limitations in her inheritance and early experi
ence, that she had freckles and a wart or mole perhaps,
and that upon certain occasions she had spoken un
guardedly or at least without the highest wisdom. The
very suggestion of such a discriminating inquiry seems
impertinent as well as unkind.
We may sympathize with all this as a sentiment. We
are all sure that for an average congregation it is more
profitable to have the minister spend his time and
strength in teaching the people what the Bible has to
say, in urging its commands and unfolding its prom
ises, than to have him devote himself to an analytical
examination of the process of its production. But if
that dear mother referred to had been set up as without
fault or human imperfection and almost made an object
of worship ; if the claim had been put forth that in all
points she was absolutely infallible; if at a later date
her children, who had been taught this, discovered that,
as a matter of fact, this was not true; and if their
faith in her and in the whole system of holy influences
and helps which she had proclaimed was thus seriously
impaired; and if their discoveries had led them at last
to question both the intelligence and the honesty of
those who made such claims, then it would be the duty
of reverent, thoughtful, and careful men to come in
and explain; to teach the children to distinguish be
tween that which is absolute and infallible, and that
which may render us an inestimable service even

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though it stops short of infallibility. Indeed, the ex
treme conservative, advancing, as he often does, views
of the Bible which are altogether untenable, becomes
"one of the chief enemies of the faith. If his view
were simply unscholarly, we might endure it by think
ing of something else ; but it is the chief hindrance to
faith with well-meaning men and the great point of
attack by opponents of Christianity." The Bible, even
tliough not technically infallible, is beyond all question
the Book of books, and it is in the interests of faith
and of securing a larger usefulness for that book as a
practical influence on the human heart, that reverent
and thoughtful men are endeavoring to place our con
fidence in it upon foundations which stand sure.
The fact that this work is being done so widely in
the Church by earnest, devout Christian men is full
of encouragement. Confused souls that had wandered
into a far country of doubt, into a region entirely apart
from any genuine faith in the Bible, are being, brought
home by that "natural and discriminating criticism of
the Old Testament to which Christ himself has shown
us the way in the Sermon on the Mount." Some of the
very facts which are being brought to the attention of
the churches by constructive Christian scholars were
formerly brought out with a great flourish by Tom
Paine and by Robert G. Ingersoll as being death-blows
to Christian faith. They did it bitterly and sneeringly,
for their aim was to destroy. It is an easy task for any
clever infidel writer to triumph over the belief in the
equal and absolute inspiration of every part of the
Bible. In a once popular lecture on "God and His
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Book," certain passages, culled chiefly from the Old
Testament and cleverly arranged, made it almost seem
as if the God we were commanded to worship were not
a righteous being. It was no answer to say that God is
God and has a right to do as he pleases, even to the do
ing of what seems to us wrong, if he chooses. Such
a claim would be monstrous! If righteousness as he
has revealed it to us in the teaching of his Son is not
righteousness for him as well as for us, then we are
all astray and no rational worship is possible. We
cannot look up and trust him except in the confidence
that righteousness here is righteousness there.
Our belief in the inspiration of the Bible must rec
ognize and adjust itself to the facts. Scholars in the
Church are therefore explaining the Bible to us, facing
all the truth fearlessly, and building a secure confidence
in its worth and authority, not upon insecure theories
about the writings it contains, but upon the plain facts
themselves. They are doing it as Christian men who
trust in what these messages bring for their own eter
nal salvation. We may rest assured that they have no
desire to scuttle the ship in which they and we and all
believing men sail toward an unknown sea. So we
look with glad confidence to see what they are doing
in the interests of truth, faith and positive help for
human need.
Two views of the Bible are commonly advanced by
those who are seeking to make it effective in the moral
life of the world. First it is claimed, as already stated,
that the Bible is in every part the infallible word of
God ; that these words are his words as truly as though
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he had spoken them with his own mouth or written
them with his own hand ; and that his dictating them
to inspired men is what gives them their authority.
This view is not correct, as any one can see who
reads the Bible without evading or twisting the facts.
It rests upon an outside theory rather than upon any
thing the Bible says about itself. The main passage
quoted in support of it is that from Timothy, which is
said to mean that "all Scripture," that is, the entire
contents of our ordinary version, and nothing more
nor less, "is given by inspiration of God." But the
true meaning of this statement by Paul, as the Revised
Version more correctly gives it, is "Every Scripture
inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for re
proof, for correction, for instruction which is in right
eousness : that the man of God may be complete, fur
nished completely unto every good work." Paul is
not deciding upon the infallible inspiration of this en
tire body of writings — he could not do that, as some of
them, the four Gospels, for example, were not written
or circulated until after his death. He is not setting
the seal of inspiration even upon that portion of the
New Testament writings that had been written, for
no authoritative collection had then been made. He
is simply stating that all writings which are given by
inspiration of God are profitable. He is passing upon
the moral and spiritual edification to be gained from
such writings wherever they may be found.
One other passage sometimes cited in proof of the
unique and absolute infallibility of the writings in the
Bible is that in the closing verses of the book of Reve-
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lation. "If any man shall add unto these things, God
shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this
book : and if any man shall take away from the words
of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his
part out of the book of life." But as considerable por
tions of the New Testament were composed after these
words were written, and as no recognized collection had
been made during the lifetime of the author of them,
he certainly was not seeking to set a defensive seal on
all the Bible or on the New Testament, but evidently
had in mind simply the protection from mutilation or
addition of the book of Revelation which he himself
had just written.
If we turn to the plain facts we discover how impos
sible is the claim of absolute infallibility. In his twen
ty-seventh chapter, Matthew quotes a verse from the
Old Testament and states that it is from "Jeremy the
prophet." As a matter of fact it is not found in Jere
miah at all ; it is in the eleventh chapter of Zechariah.
Matthew quoting from memory and writing perhaps
with no manuscript copy of the Old Testament beside
him, such manuscripts being at that time heavy, cum
bersome and expensive, made a slip of memory. Mark
in his second chapter refers to something that David
did as he states "in the days of Abiathar the high
priest." When we turn to the account of the event in
First Samuel, however, we find that Ahimelech was
high priest. Paul in the tenth chapter of First Corin
thians refers to a certain slaughter of Israelites and
states that there "fell in one day three and twenty
thousand." When we turn back to the twenty-fifth
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chapter of Numbers where the occurrence is recorded,
we find that it was "twenty and four thousand" that
fell. The exact number had escaped Paul's mind, and
he was probably writing where he had not access to
the manuscript to verify his figures.
The inscription placed upon the cross of Christ is
also a good illustration. We might have supposed that
the sacred importance of the occasion, the fewness of
the words and the threefold repetition of them in He
brew, Greek and Latin would have so fixed them in the
minds of those who saw them, that there would have
been no discrepancy in the accounts. We find, how
ever, that Mark says the inscription was "The King of
the Jews." Luke says it read, "This is the King of the
Jews." Matthew records it, "This is Jesus the King of
the Jews." And John gives it, "Jesus of Nazareth the
King of the Jews." The general idea in all is the same,
but the wording is different in each of the four records.
As a matter of fact, the inscription contained certain
words and no others ; and three of the four cannot be
exact reports.
These variations cited do not affect the true value
and authority of the Bible at all, but they do indicate
that the claim of infallibility is not founded upon facts.
Infallibility means freedom from all error or disagree
ment and not merely a high degree of correctness which
approximates perfection. Indeed, "the Scriptures never
claim absolute accuracy for all their statements or in
any way ask us to expect it from them; and careful
reading is sufficient to show that accuracy has not been
attempted. There are frequent divergences between
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parallel narratives, as in Kings and Chronicles and in
the four Gospels."1 The assumption that inspired men
were lifted to the point where their very words were
chosen for them by the Holy Ghost stands disproved
in these plain divergences, which could not have oc
curred had the Holy Ghost dictated all the utterances.
But, yielding a little, it is sometimes said that if the
words were not dictated and if slips of memory did oc
casionally creep in, still the message itself represented
always and infallibly the mind of God. But the facts
do not bear out this assumption. An inspired man is
not always one and the same thing, any more than an
educated man is always a man of just such a degree of
wisdom. Inspiration results from the inbreathing of
the Spirit of God, and this varies according to the re
ceptivity of the man. The original apostles were surely
inspired men, but "it is certain that the inspiration
vouchsafed them did not make them infallible in their
ordinary teaching or in their administration of the
Church. They made mistakes of a very serious nature.
It is beyond question that a majority of the apostles
took at the beginning an erroneous view of the relation
of the Gentiles to the Christian Church. They insisted
that Gentiles must first become Jews before they could
become Christians ; that the only way into the Christian
Church was through the synagogue and the temple. It
was a grievous and radical error ; it struck at the foun
dations of Christian faith. And this error was en
tertained by these inspired apostles after the day of
Pentecost ; it influenced their teaching; it led them to
^lark, "Outline of Christian Theology," page 35.
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proclaim a defective gospel. This is not the asser
tion of a skeptic, it is the clear testimony of the Apos
tle Paul, as we find on reading the second chapter of
his letter to the Galatians."1 \
This Spirit-filled state may also result in varying
utterances, according to the degree of the man's origi
nal development. The inspired men did not regard
themselves as lifted to that point where their sayings
were all on the same level of authority, nor as possess
ing in all points the quality of infallibility. For ex
ample, there is a long distance to be traversed between
the psalmist who said of his enemy, "Happy shall he
be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the
stones," and the Saviour who prayed for his enemies,
"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they
do." St. Paul, the strongest personality, probably the
most scholarly man among all Scripture writers, and
one who wrote a third of the entire New Testament,
said modestly, "We know in part, and we prophesy in
part. . . . We see through a glass, darkly." He
admitted that some of that which he called knowledge
would "vanish away" in the presence of other clearer
knowledge when he should "see face to face."
When we examine what certain Bible writers ac
tually said, we find this view of the incompleteness of
knowledge borne out by the record. Jesus himself set
the example for reverent scrutiny of the sayings of
"them of old time." Moses, for instance, had given
the Israelites a certain law of divorce. If a man
married a wife and she found no favor in his eyes, he
Washington Gladden, " Who wrote the Bible," page 210.
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could give her a writing of divorce and send her away
and marry another. But Jesus told them frankly that
this was wrong. "Moses gave you that law on ac
count of the hardness of your hearts" — on account of
the low state of morality at that time. It was an ad
vance on the polygamy and the irregular unions with
which the Israelites had been familiar, but it was not
the mind of God touching marriage. Then Jesus gave
his law, which places the whole relation of husband
and wife on a holier and more stable foundation.
Jesus quoted again from the Old Testament, "Ye
have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye,
and a tooth for a tooth." This law when it was given
was not ideal, but it represented moral advance — an
eye for an eye was better than a head for an eye;
measured and limited retaliation was an improvement
upon unrestrained vengeance for wrong done. But in
place of this old, grim law of retaliation Jesus gave
them his commandment about overcoming evil with
good. And again, "Ye have heard that it hath been
said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine
enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless
them that curse you, do good to them that hate you,
and pray for them which despitefully use you, and per
secute you ; that ye may be the children of your Father
which is in heaven." All these Old Testament teach
ings Jesus set aside as not portraying the mind of God
and consequently as not being the product of infallible
inspiration. And we are carrying on the very same process. We
compare certain teachings found in both the Old and
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the New Testaments with the mind of Christ and we
do not hesitate to discount what does not seem to ac
cord with his words. Refer to the One Hundred and
Ninth Psalm, where the author prays that his enemy
may die and "his children be fatherless, and his wife
a widow; that his children may be continually vaga
bonds and beg ; that they may seek their bread in deso
late places; that none may extend mercy to him or
favor to his fatherless children; that his prayer may
be counted as sin and the sin of his mother may not
be blotted out." No Christian to-day would dare to
kneel down before God and pray in that fashion about
his worst enemy or touching the wickedest man alive.
The prayer of the man who wrote that Psalm does
not agree with the mind of Christ and so it is quietly
set aside.
Turn to the third chapter of Ecclesiastes and hear
the pessimist uttering his wail of despair: "For that
which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts ; even
one thing befalleth them : as the one dieth, so dieth the
other ; yea, they have all one breath ; so that a man hath
no preeminence above a beast : ... all are of the
dust, and all turn to dust again." Also, in the ninth
chapter, "The living know that they shall die : but the
dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a
reward. . . . For there is no work, nor device,
nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither
thou goest." Here is as flat a denial of the claim that
God has made us "a little lower than the angels" and
that if we believe in him, we "shall never die," as
might be found in some infidel book. We know, how-
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ever, that this was the writing of a skeptical, pessimis
tic, unbelieving man, and as it does not accord with the
promises of Jesus, we quietly set it aside as not being
an authoritative statement as to what man is or what
his destiny shall be.
Turn to Paul's treatment of marriage in the seventh
chapter of First Corinthians. He plainly states that in
his judgment it is better for a man to remain single,
and that it is better for a father not to allow his daugh
ter to marry. He almost coarsely suggests that mar
riage at best is a kind of concession to human weak
ness — "if they cannot contain, let them marry : for it is
better to marry than to burn." He urges as his reason
for this counsel that domestic life interferes with
serving God. "He that is unmarried careth for the
things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the
Lord : but he that is married careth for the things that
are of the world, how he may please his wife."
We do not accept that as authoritative teaching ! We
marry in fulfilment of what we regard as the divine
purpose for us, invoking upon our unions the blessing
of God. We are glad to see our children wisely and
happily married. We believe as a matter of fact that
men and women serve God all the better for entering
into honorable married relations, and that they glorify
him by establishing homes and becoming fathers and
mothers of believing families. Paul's hard words about
marriage are not only in disagreement with sacred
and elemental human instincts implanted by the Creator
for holy ends, they are also out of line with the mind
of Christ. Jesus indicated his purpose and wish for
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men when he said, "For this cause shall a man leave
father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and
they twain shall be one flesh." What therefore God
in his purpose and command hath joined together let
no man, St. Paul or any other man, in the supposed
interests of the unworldliness of celibacy, seek to put
asunder. I have cited these plain cases to show how in form
ing a practical code for our governance from the
Scriptures, the mind of Christ is the final standard. We
do not hesitate to disregard certain positive utterances
of men who wrote Scripture when they seem to dis
agree with the mind of Christ. Thus by our practical
attitude we refuse to believe that infallibility belongs
to every portion of the Scriptures.
This view would also have to reckon with these
plain facts. Suppose the writers of the original He
brew and Greek documents were infallibly inspired —
they never claim to have been, but suppose according
to the theory that they were. In that case the original
Hebrew and Greek manuscripts would have contained
the veritable words of God. But we have none of
these. We have copies, and the various copies on hand
do not always agree. Careful scholars tell us that,
in all, over one hundred thousand variations occur
in the oldest and best manuscripts we have — variations
which crept in from time to time through the process
of transcribing these sacred writings. And these dif
ferences are not always trifling. The first eleven verses
of the eighth chapter of John and the last twelve
verses of the sixteenth chapter of Mark are entirely
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omitted from the best manuscripts. We are forced
to ask which one of these many copies is the infallible
one or which among the many variations in the copies
are to be received as the exact words of the Spirit.
No sure reply could be made.
Furthermore, the common people do not read even
these copies in the original — they read translations.
The translators never claimed to be infallibly inspired
in rendering Hebrew and Greek into English. They
used their best scholarship, but wise and good men
often differed as to the exact meaning of certain
phrases, as we saw when the Revised Version was
made; questions had to be determined sometimes by
majority vote. Among the varying opinions as to
what should be the English equivalent in a transla
tion, which one should we select now as the infallible
rendering? It would require the gift of infallible in
spiration to decide, and this is something that none
of us possess.
And beyond that, we should need infallible inter
preters, inasmuch as the real meaning of the English
passage must be brought out before we can deal with it
practically. We should here again be left without in
fallibility, as no special school of interpreters has
ever claimed to have the gift of infallibility as against
all the rest. This claim of infallibility was never made
for the Scriptures until the fourth century, and it has
been disputed through alii the history of the Church.
Martin Luther, who gave direction to our Protestant
branch of the Church, did not hold to it. It will not
bear close scrutiny. The making of such a claim
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leads to evasion of the facts, to playing fast and loose
with the simple truth. It has induced unbelief much
more than it has stimulated faith.
I pass then to the second view. According to this,
the Bible is the record of the progressive revelation
which God has made of himself through the religious
experiences of a chosen people. It is the "record" of a
process conducted by the Spirit of God, and the record
is made up of history, biography, poetry, drama, song,
sermons, letters and other forms of literature, because
they all throw light on the spiritual experiences of the
chosen people. As we read, we actually come upon
them while they are seeking, praying, weeping, confess
ing their sins, preaching, discussing their problems,
acting and then noting the moral result.
It deals with a "progressive revelation," for God
spoke as men were able to hear. He revealed himself
more fully as they made moral advance. Revelation
was an educational process, and from the nature of
the case had to be progressive. We are not surprised
to find then that Moses did not have the moral insight
of St. John, nor that the author of Ecclesiastes failed to
see the truth of immortality as Paul saw it when he
wrote First Corinthians. The author of the One Hun
dred and Ninth Psalm, praying his bitter prayer and
calling down misfortunes on the widow and orphans,
had not advanced to where James was when he de
fined "pure religion and undefiled" as visiting the
fatherless and the widow in their affliction and keeping
oneself unspotted from the world. There is progress
here because the Bible was given, not by having its
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words mechanically dropped out of heaven, as if by
dictation, but by being wrought into the moral experi
ences of men by the Spirit of God. The Old Testa
ment especially "gives evidence of a gradual discov
ery of God on the part of men, which is accounted for
in the record and can be best explained in fact by a
deliberate and gracious self-revealing on the part of
God." The revelation was not made by dictation, but
through a long and varied course of "religious experi
ence." It has always been true and evidently will re
main true that "not in writing, but in living history,
in actual life God shows himself to men." By what
he did for those who trusted and obeyed him, he be-
. came known.
It was accomplished through a "chosen people."
However it came about, the Hebrews were by original
constitution strong on the religious side, as the Greeks
were strong in philosophy and art, the Romans in law
and government, and the English in commerce and
administration. God chose them to make their definite
and characteristic contribution to the total life of the
world through their religion. He increased their orig
inal five talents by providential experiences, by the
work of the Spirit in the hearts of their leaders, and
by that gracious unveiling of himself to their aspiring
gaze, which culminated at last in his sending his Son
to be born as a Hebrew.
This definition, not by any means original with me,
but gathered and summarized from the investigations
and conclusions of many Bible scholars, seems to cover
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the ground. Our Bible is a record of the progressive
revelation which God has made of himself through the
religious experiences of a chosen people. This does
not assume infallibility on the one hand — there may
have been slips of memory, errors in copying, incom
pleteness of view among the earlier men, limitations
indicating their failure to perfectly apprehend the mind
of Christ as it stands at last revealed in the Gospels.
"The free and natural method of the Bible has opened
actual experience to our sight and gives us the divine
realities in human life in all their freshness and power,
and this quality of livingness is worth more to us than
what we call inerrancy would be." But on the other
hand, this definition of the Bible does assert that the
Scriptures contain a revelation from God which the
rationalistic view does not affirm. It asserts for the
Bible substantial authority in that any man may find
there such light and guidance as will enable him to in
telligently stand before God and worship, as will put
him in the way of receiving his unutterable help,
as will enable him to shape his conduct in glad con
formity with the will of God therein revealed.
A man who holds this view of the Bible reads his
way through all trifling mistakes and variations;
through all the imperfections of moral insight that
stand on a lower level than the mind of Christ ; he lis
tens to all the objections carping infidelity may bring,
and through it all he is undisturbed. He judges the
Bible, not by single separate statements, as the claim
of entire in fallibility would compel us to do ; he judges
it by its trend and drift, by its combined message to
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man and by its total conclusions. He is willing to
stand by that. If any one can show him that the moral
conclusions to which the Bible brings us, and that the
teaching at its summit in the life and words of Jesus
are not in agreement with the moral facts and needs of
men, he will give up his Bible. But this is something
that no one can do.
This view also provides for progress in revelation
and rejoices in studying the gradualness with which
men came to understand the mind of God, until at last
they saw it clearly revealed in the words of Christ. It
tests all things by the mind of Christ. Interpreting
all things by this standard, it thus distinguishes in the
ruder ages of Old Testament times between what was
the actual mind of God and what was the imperfection
of moral insight in the men who wrote. The immo
ralities of Samson; the cruel treachery and lying of
Jael, which are frankly praised ; the skepticism of the
author of Ecclesiastes ; and the immoral, or at least
un-moral, atmosphere of the book of Esther, are all ac
knowledged as being the utterance of earnest men
speaking the best they knew, but not embodying the
pure thought of the Father. "These writings, when
they were composed, were at the front of >the religious
life of their time and led it forward," but they are to
be judged to-day in the fuller light that has come to us
by our knowledge of the mind of Christ.
This view finds the authority of the Bible, therefore^
not in some theory erected about it from without,, but
in the actual verities it contains. Its authority rests
upon "its ability to hold before the minds and hearts
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of men a picture of God, of man, and of their mutual
relations, which our reason, our conscience, and our
affections approve as true." By its authority, we
mean "the right which the highest moral and religious
truth has to satisfy the reason and to bind the con
science of man."1 Any book that can do that has au
thority. The Bible can do this, and possesses its au
thority therefore by virtue of what it can do for the
moral life of men.
The solemn contention that "we must accept it all or
reject it all" is both foolish and wicked. We have
been seriously told that if men were led to doubt a
single statement in it they could not depend on any of
it. A simple illustration would show the folly of such
an assumption. For twenty-three years a certain man
taught the truths of religion from the pulpit of the
First Congregational Church of Oakland. Thousands
of people came and listened to him ; they brought their
children and urged them to listen attentively to what
he said. Was this man infallible ? No one thought of
making such a claim. He would have been the first to
repudiate it, had it been made. He would not have
called himself an inspired man, though surely the Holy
Spirit helped him to preach his sermons and live his
life, or he never would have been able to accomplish the
splendid work he did. But suppose some morning,
in attempting to quote, as he said, from Zechariah, he
had uttered a verse from Jeremiah ; or in giving sta
tistics he had named twenty-three thousand as the
number of men slain upon a certain occasion, when

"I^add, " What is the Bible ? ", page 469.
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really twenty-four thousand were killed; or in citing
an event of history as occurring in the administration of
John Adams, he had mistaken that for the administra
tion of Jefferson. Or suppose some of his scientific
statements or references had been invalidated and dis
proved by later discoveries. No sane man would have
said to his children, "If this teacher has ever made a
slip in memory, or has not been perfect in his scientific
knowledge, we cannot go and hear him ; his moral and
spiritual value is destroyed. We must accept all or re
ject all."
The foolishness of such a proceeding would be in
stantly apparent. Doctor McLean's teaching during
all those years was, of course, taken in the main from
the Bible ; but it was his interpretation and understand
ing of the Bible, arrived at in the light of his own
study, and of the results of the best scholarship he could
command. He was neither infallible as a student nor
as an interpreter, yet we feel entirely confident that if
all who came into his church during those twenty-
three years had gone out to put into practise the pre
cepts he gave them, they would have been led safely
and certainly in the way of righteousness.
There can be worth, truth, and authority, great,
splendid and useful, without infallibility. The Cath
olics feel that unless the Church is infallible she can
not teach the people. Some Protestants feel likewise
that unless the Bible is infallible it cannot teach the
people. Both are wrong— God alone is infallible, and
neither the Church nor the Bible is God. But both
Church and Bible can teach with authority and help-
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fulness, if the sum total of the moral conclusions which
are reached through this revelation made by God,
through the religious experiences of a chosen people,
is valid as tested by human experience.
We are told that it is dangerous to allow men to read
the Scriptures and make discriminations, deciding that
this passage is the absolute truth of God and the other
is due to the human limitations of the writer. But men
have never been relieved from the peril of making
just such decisions. Other men, of like passions with
us and enjoying only such guidance as is open now to
devout men who are intent on doing his will, have been
making similar vital decisions. Men had to choose
what books should go into the collection and what
ones should be left out. Fine questions arose. The
"Epistle of Barnabas" was regarded by Clement of
Alexandria and by Origen as being inspired Scrip
ture. Barnabas is named with Paul in the book of
Acts as an apostle, and is described as "a good man,
and full of the Holy Ghost." The oldest manuscript
we have of the Bible, the Sinaiticus, found by Tischen-
dorf, in 1859, in the convent near Mt. Sinai, contains
this epistle of Barnabas. But even in the face of such
claims men decided, upon what seemed to them good
and sufficient grounds, to leave it out of the canonical
Scriptures. Other books, which to some minds have
less claim to inspiration, were allowed to stand within
the canon.
Other men, in giving us an edition of the Scriptures,
have had to decide, from the varying copies, which
reading should be accepted. Other men have had to
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weigh opposing considerations in making translations.
Wise and good men have differed and certain decisions
have been made by the weight of a majority vote. It
does not seem to have been the purpose of God to re
lieve men from the responsibility and the peril of decid
ing vital questions of faith. Young people and older
people should be given sound, wholesome principles of
judgment, and then bidden to do their Protestant duty
of reading their Bibles for themselves. There is no
place where men are relieved from the responsibility
of such decisions except in the Romish Church, and
even there at the outset every man must make for him
self the momentous decision, that the Pope is infallible,
and that he is therefore warranted in committing all
questions of faith and morals to the papal judgment.
Making discriminations in a book of Scripture no long
er regarded as infallible in every point, but as being
the record of a progressive revelation of divine truth,
may be risky, but life must be lived in the midst of such
perils. Every man must decide many points for him
self, with the best light obtainable, and at his own risk.
There is no way of making life a personally conducted
tour, where one may resign his individual responsi
bility to church or priest, to creed or book, thus re
lieving himself of the task of making decisions.
The Bible finds the great vindication of its authority
in human experience. Men hold fast to it because of
what it has wrought in the realm of Christian life. "It
is not important that the Bible should be verbally in
spired and technically infallible ; but it Ts important that
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men should find God in it and through it. And that
God can be thus found even without profound learning
and critical apparatus, is the concurrent testimony of
the saints of all ages." The spiritual fruitage of the
careful and continued study of these pages, which
is beyond all gainsaying, stands fast as an actual dem
onstration of the true inspiration which entered into
the production of them.
"You go to the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. You
take a guide, perhaps Stephen, an ignorant colored
man, formerly a slave. You know nothing of him but
this, that he has guided hundreds of travelers before
you, and has guided them safely. You enter the mys
terious passages. You pass from one chamber to an
other. Passages diverge in all directions ; still you fol
low through the great darkness the feeble lamp of your
guide. You , descend precipices, you climb ladders,
you come to a river, and cross it in a boat beneath an
overhanging roof of rock. You go on, mile after
mile, until you seem to have left forever the day and
upper air. Immense darkness, perpetual night, un
disturbed silence brood around. You are miles from
the entrance; if. your guide has made any mistake,
you are lost. But you follow him with entire confi
dence. Why? Do you believe him to be plenarily in
spired? Do you think him infallible? Not at all.
But you trust in his long experience. He has guided
travelers safely for years and that is enough. So the
Bible has guided the footsteps of travelers seeking
truth and God. It has brought generation after gen-
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eration out of darkness into light. It points out on
either side the false paths which lead to death. It
speaks with an authority far higher than that of theo
logical infallibility. It is full of the Spirit of God,
which is the spirit of truth, and its power is not de
pendent on the theories of inspiration which men may
devise, but on its own immortal life, its sublime eleva
tion, its power of bringing the soul to God and to
It is more exact, then, to say that the Bible contains
the word of God than to claim that every word, and
syllable in it is the word of God. Here is a veritable
message from God to men and its fruits are seen in the
changed lives of those who receive its heaven-sent
good news! The Bible accomplishes its supreme
work when it conducts us into the presence of Jesus
Christ. We then begin to trust for present and eternal
salvation, not in the Bible, but in the mercy of God,
made effective to us through the redemption of Jesus
Christ, into whose presence and fellowship this sure
word of the Spirit has brought us.
The Bible leads men into the experience of the for
giveness of their sins, into moral renewal by divine
grace, into all the help that comes through prayer,
trust, and obedience. It profitably equips and furnishes
men for every form of good work. It never fails
to guide men who seek light for Christian living.
These are all matters of present and personal experi
ence. And touching its utterances about the Trinity, '
^ames Freeman Clarke, " Common Sense in Religion,"
page 98. 92

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immortality, a future judgment, and other matters
which lie beyond the range of present experience, I
have this to say: If I have known a man for forty
years, and he has told me the truth, touching matters
where I could verify his statement, in nine thousand
nine hundred and ninety-nine instances, when he makes
the ten thousandth statement touching some matter
where I cannot submit his words to verification, I ac
cept his word and rest confidently upon my faith in his
already ascertained integrity. The Bible has estab
lished itself in human confidence by its faithful guid
ance, which has brought men into moral peace and
spiritual renewal; and as rational beings we trust it
even when it speaks of matters that lie at present be
yond our ken.

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fitter

CHAPTER V
C$jt Qhtlosophp of Qraper

THE moment we believe in God, we are face
to face with a strong presumption in
favor of the utility of prayer. If he is
omnipotent, he can hear. If he is a moral
being, he will make reply. This is the line
of argument suggested in the old psalm: "He that
planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the
eye, shall he not see?" The man who believes that
God is and that he is a God of character, by that very
faith affirms his further confidence that "he is a re-
warder of them that diligently seek him."
Prayer reduced to its simplest terms is the natural,
affectionate intercourse between a Father and his chil
dren. The Gospels assert that "these two mysterious
beings, man and God, have such a kinship between them
that their relationship to each other can in no other way
be so well named as by the terms 'father' and 'child.'
This conception makes room for that infinite distance
between God and man which so profoundly impresses
all whose minds dwell upon the subject. Between the
man of power, knowledge and wide range of interest,
and. the infant whose face is breaking into its first intel
ligent smile, the distance is well-nigh immeasurable,
though it in no way destroys the genuineness of the
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kinship between them. Toward the Infinite Father our
path is to be trodden in the same way the child treads
the path toward equality with the human parent."1
The true method of prayer is not to be found, there
fore, in the acts of criminals entreating a judge for
mercy, or of courtiers beseeching their king for favors,
or of adepts seeking to manipulate certain mysterious
forces in the world for their personal ends. It must
be found in the form and spirit of family- life. "When
ye pray, say, Our Father." Prayer is the act of a child
entering into companionship with his Father. This
shows how natural and rational prayer is ; it indicates
also how morbid the man is who never speaks to his
Father! If you with all your imperfections love to
have your children come to you ; if on the whole they
are benefited by coming; if you give them bread and
fish, instruction and help, affection and companionship,
because they come, how much more will your heavenly
Father give good things to them that ask him !
A further warrant for the habit of prayer is found
in the definite promises of Scripture. No other book
speaks of the moral needs and privileges of men with
such accuracy and authority as does the Bible. Its
words about prayer are always clear and confident. It
does not seem to be feeling its way. It walks with firm
tread, as in the light of ascertained facts. "Men ought
always to pray." "Ask, and ye shall receive." "Seek,
and ye shall find." "Knock,"— if you desire to advance
where the way seems closed, — "and it shall be opened
^ohn P. Coyle, "The Imperial Christ," page 74.
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unto you." These assurances as to the utility of prayer
are plain and firm.
These words are accompanied by two familiar illus
trations of what perseverance in asking accomplished,
even in the face of unfavorable conditions. A selfish,
unobliging man was in bed at midnight and angrily
unwilling to be disturbed, but because his neighbor per
sisted in knocking, the crabbed fellow got up and gave
him bread to set before some guests who had overtaken
him with an empty larder. An unjust judge also, who
neither feared God nor man, was so moved by the per
sistence of a poor widow — a type of helplessness in a
corrupt court of law — that simply through the fear of
being wearied by her continual coming, he gave her
justice. These are arguments e contrario. If perse
verance in the face of such adverse conditions gains its
end, how much more will persevering prayer secure its
object when directed to the benevolent Father ! These
are samples of the many confident assurances the
Scriptures offer us regarding the efficacy of honest
prayer. A further encouragement to our faith in the efficacy
of prayer arises from the example of Jesus. Not all
men accept our belief that he was the Son of God, but
the most enlightened portions of the globe regard him
as the best man that ever lived — in fact, a perfect man.
It is significant that the perfect man was a man of
prayer. Humanity at its best prays. The one whose
moral achievements have never been surpassed, spent
whole nights in prayer. His habit of prayer was so
manifestly helpful that his disciples came to him and
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said, "Lord, teach us to pray." We have no record of
their saying, "Lord, teach us to heal" or "Teach us to
preach." They saw that his power to heal and to speak
as never man spake sprang from the sense of vital fel
lowship with the Father, sustained by prayer — they
asked therefore that they might be taught to pray.
Jesus left one prayer so beautiful, so comprehensive,
so acceptable to the needs of the human heart, that it is
being repeated this very day in more than three hun
dred languages by prayerful men. When the repre
sentatives of all the religions of the world met in a
parliament at the World's Fair in Chicago, the "Lord's
Prayer" was by universal consent adopted as the form
of petition for the opening of the sessions. Jews and
Gentiles, Cretes and Arabians, Buddhists and Chris
tians, Mohammedans and Hindoos all spoke to the
Father through those simple words, as in a language
to which they were born. Jesus, the author of this
universal prayer, made the most confident promises we
have as to the efficacy of prayer. He saw life large and
whole, and with his clear-eyed intelligence as to moral
things, he lifted prayer, by precept and by example,
into a higher place than it had ever been lifted before.
The whole life of this perfect man was bathed in
prayer, and he prayed straight on even when his ene
mies were killing him. The disciple cannot do better
than be as his Lord. When some of our friends have
grown so wise that they do not pray, scoffing at the
idea of prayer accomplishing anything, we may well
compare their moral intelligence and their spiritual
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power with that of Jesus; and then remember that
Jesus never lost confidence in prayer.
Still another strong presumption in favor of the
value of prayer comes to us when we turn to the long
and broad lines of human experience. The scientific
way of reaching the truth is not to sit down and reason
out in advance what ought to be the fact, what is pos
sible and probable in this big world of which we even
now know so little ; the scientific method is to go and
see. Human beings have always had the habit of
prayer. There have been cities without walls, without
schools, without markets, without books, without many
things that we ordinarily associate with city life, but
never a city without its places of prayer. Prayer is a
persistent, incurable habit of the race. The fact that
it is wide-spread and has endured through all the cen
turies indicates that it has utility. When you find a
fin on a fish, a wing on a bird, an "instinct" in an ani
mal, the very fact that it is there indicates that it is
useful — otherwise it would not have been retained.
Useless organs disappear or become rudimentary. Un
less praver sustained some vital relation to man's well-
being it would not have thus endured. The verv fact
that the race has alwavs praved and that more intelli
gent prayer is being offered in this twentieth century
than ever before, raises a strong presumption that such
an exercise of one's powers is both rational and useful.
When we remember this persistent habit of mankind,
it is instructive to recall the testimony of a distin
guished evolutionist that in Nature we have found it to
be true that "everywhere the internal adjustment has
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been brought about so as to harmonize with some actu*
ally existing external fact. The eye was developed in re
sponse to the outward existence of radiant light, the ear
in response to the outward existence of acoustic vibra
tions, the mother's love came in response to the infant's
needs. If the relation established in the morning twi
light of man's existence between the human soul and a
world invisible and immaterial, is a relation of which
only the subjective term is real and the objective term
is non-existent, then, I say, it is something utterly
without precedent in the whole history of creation." If
the capacity of man for fellowship with God through
prayer were real only at our end of the line and unreal
at the other, then it is an utter break in the whole
method discovered in the ascertained uniformities of
Nature. "The lesson of evolution therefore is that
through all these weary ages the human soul has not
been cherishing in religion a delusive phantom, but in
spite of seemingly endless groping and stumbling, it
has been rising to the recognition of its essential kin
ship with the ever-living God."1
And what has been the broadly ascertained result
of this wide-spread and long-continued effort to realize
kinship with God through prayer? The cumulative
answer comes back from multitudes of praying men-
hearts have been renewed, affections purified, wills
strengthened, aspirations lifted; great and gracious
answers of peace have come back ; added security and
confidence have been enjoyed. I would not turn to

2John Fiske, "Through Nature to God," pages 189, 191.
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those exceptional and surprising "answers to prayer''
sometimes collected into books of anecdotes. Curious
coincidences have sometimes been shoved forward as
foundation-stones for confidence in the efficacy of
prayer. Fortunate occurrences have sometimes been
overworked in the supposed interests of a conquering
faith. We have all witnessed remarkable occurrences
which were apparently in response to the faithful ap
peals of God's children in times of extremity. These
are not to be slighted, but in this consideration of
prayer, I choose to rest it rather upon the broad and
ordinary lines, where, so to speak, there are uninter
rupted and unexceptional answers coming back to men
as they pray. The spiritual results of the habit of hon
est prayer are so well known and so definitely ascer
tainable as to lend strong aid in lifting this exercise
into the place of dignity and the region of high confi
dence where it rightly belongs.
These four presumptions, then, taken from the nat
ural implications of our belief in God, from the confi
dent promises of that Book which contains Supreme
Court decisions and forms the common law of spiritual
life, from the habit and the teaching of Jesus, and
from long lines of human experience, must all have
weight in determining any one's attitude toward prayer.
But still, if we are to pray joyously and effectively, we
ought to have clearly in our minds some rational the
ory as to the necessity for prayer and the method of
its operation. We must be able to love prayer with all
our minds and with all our strength, as well as with
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our hearts and souls. Therefore I shall also speak of
the philosophy or rationale of this religious exercise.
As I have heard them, the two main objections to
prayer on rational grounds are these : the one from a
scientific and the other from a philosophical point of
view. The claim is made that an answer to prayer
must involve an interruption of a certain order which
God has established; it would mean, therefore, a vio
lation of law. In the presence of the unbending con
stancy and uniformity of the physical system that sur
rounds us, and in view of the apparent unvarying and
unalterable character of its laws, which give " an over
whelming impression of moral indifference," prayer
to some minds seems like an irrational proceeding. It
appears to them as though a puny being were urging
upon the Omnipotent One that the great through traffic
of the world should be side-tracked in order to give
his little local train the right of way.
The other objection is to the effect that if God is
wise and good, he will know and do what is best for us,
and for every one, without our asking — indeed, to ask
him for anything implies a certain solicitude as to his
appropriate action and is an impertinence in that it calls
upon him to change his line of action in obedience to
our suggestion. That is to say, when we pray we must
have a feeling that God is not doing all that he might
do. I have stated the difficulties which are the practical
ones most often named to me in my contact with seri
ous people. All the lesser questions that arise are
really comprehended within these more fundamental
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In regard to the first that an answer to prayer in
volves the violation of law, we sometimes frighten our
selves unnecessarily by writing the word "Law" with
a capital letter, and then imagining that it is a kind of
second-hand deity of itself, never to be interfered with
by any one in heaven above or earth beneath. All
this is purely verbal. Law is simply a name for the
regular, orderly habits of that Creator who is over all
and in all things. We have observed certain of his
cosmic habits as being regular and have called them
"laws." But God is not bound by them. He has not
tied his own hands by certain of his own habits. On
the whole he apparently deems it best to observe them
regularly, that his creatures may depend upon his ac
tivity in certain matters — the rising of the sun, the re
turn of the seasons, the growth of seed, the bodily con
ditions of health and disease — with solid certainty.
These habits are wise and good or he would not have
adopted them. But to fancy that he will not and can
not do anything different ; to imagine, for instance, that
he could not reinforce and quicken that activity which
we have thoughtlessly called "the healing process of
nature" in the case of the sick ; to deny his power to
help by some unusual movement of his silent energy
for the relief of one of his children in an emergency,
would be to make him less than God.
Praying people have sometimes been unnecessarily
frightened by a pretentious phrase — "the uniformity
of nature." There is such a thing, but no one as yet
knows enough to completely define it. No one would
dare say that he could state all "the laws of nature."
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The interrelation of spiritual forces with physical
forces is but dimly understood. We are feeling our
way toward that total "uniformity of nature" which
includes all such interaction, but such perfect knowl
edge is at present too high for us — we cannot attain
unto it. It is therefore raw, dogmatic assumption to
claim that the few things we have learned about
"natural law" entirely block the way and make it im
possible for God to answer the prayers of his children.
These scientific laws which are often held up as
bogies to frighten the children of the Father out of
their confidence in him, are simply the best we know
thus far about some manifestations of an Eternal En
ergy. The truly scientific man never assumes to say
what may or may not be possible. He does not deny
the possibility of miracles, or the possibility of answer
to prayer — it is with him purely a matter of evidence
as to what has actually occurred. This must be so in
the nature of the case. We have been surprised so
many times that we may possibly be surprised again.
There are more things in this world of ours than men
have dreamed of, and more things wrought by prayer ^
than hasty philosophies allow. Hasty men said fifty
years ago that it was scientifically impossible to run a
heavy street car through the streets, loaded with a
hundred people, heated, lighted, and moved by a cur
rent of electricity from a single wire. They said it was
scientifically impossible to talk from New York to
Chicago and have the familiar tones of a friend's voice
recognized, or to transmit by electricity a signature
preserving its well-known individuality. They said
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it was scientifically impossible to telegraph with per
fect accuracy across the British Channel without wires.
They said that the present phenomena of hypnotism,
and healing by suggestion, recognized by scientific men
as beyond a peradventure, were scientifically impossible.
In all these and in many other cases they were entirely
mistaken in their presuppositions. We are constantly
learning more about the subtle, invisible forces in
this world we live in. We are not prepared off-hand
therefore to decide upon what is or what is not im
possible, or to pass upon the claims that many of
earth's wisest and best men have made regarding
prayer, without the most painstaking investigation.
When I begin to pray for my own physical health,
for the recovery of some sick friend, for success in my
undertakings, for moral peace and strength, or for any
legitimate object, I set in motion new forces. They be
gin to act not in violation of law ; they introduce a new
element to be reckoned with. The man drawing water
out of a well, where the force of gravitation would
cause the water to stay, is not violating a universal
law ; he is bringing to bear another force which alters
what would have been the natural position of the
water. The man who prays puts in operation a kind of
energy, invisible as electricity or as the atmospheric
waves that make possible wireless telegraphy across the
Channel, or as the force that acts in the influence of
thought upon digestion, but just as real. Prayer is
the action of a man bringing up his need by a moral act
and linking it with the offered help of God. This
brings to bear upon the situation a new force.
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When, therefore, I stand amazed on the one hand at
the results accomplished by certain invisible forces
with which we are becoming acquainted, and when
I turn on the other hand to the confident words
of that Master in the kingdom of the spirit, I am not
disturbed in my faith by these would-be scientific ob
jections as to the efficacy of prayer. A man standing
in his noblest attitude before God, turning his whole
mind and soul Godward, bending all his energy of will
and affection toward the attainment of a holy end, is a
force that we cannot readily estimate. As President
Eliot of Harvard said, "Prayer is the transcendent
effort of intelligence." Jesus did not use scientific lan
guage; he uniformly used popular language, but he
seems to have made this point clear — for moral ends
and for the purposes of rich spiritual development, God
has within his keeping certain great aids which are
only obtainable by that noble exercise of the highest
faculties, which we call prayer.
We are in no wise disturbed by the fact that we have
not reduced the possibilities of this prayer force, acting
within the larger uniformities of God, to an exact
science. We have not reduced to an exact science the
influence of a mother's love upon her children, or the
effect of a good name upon one's prospect of success,
or the physical benefits of a cheerful habit of mind.
We have not reduced to an exact science the forces at
work in a wheat-field — they are too intricate for our
present knowledge. Perfect intelligence could tell how
many grains in each bushel of wheat would sprout and
grow, but no man can tell. Perfect intelligence could
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also tell why and how certain prayers are successful
and why some are not, but such complete understand
ing of all the forces to be considered is not within our
reach. But even though in all these fields our knowl
edge stops far short of completeness, enough is known
to encourage the effort — mothers love their children, a
right-minded man guards his good name, sensible peo
ple promote health by good cheer. Farmers sow in the
confidence that they will reap, and thoughtful people
keep on praying, assured by the promises of Christ and
by an ever-increasing volume of religious experience,
that prayer works its own beneficent results.
The other objection arises from the question as to
why a wise and good God withholds action until we
ask, or how we can respectfully ask him to change
what, according to our belief in his character, must
already have been perfect action. Such a priori objec
tions might be carried into other fields as well. Why
does a good God withhold from his children a wheat
harvest until they have plowed, sowed and reaped?
Because toil is good for the moral deveiopment of men,
we are told. Why does God hide away treasures of
gold in the hills, locking it up in quartz, scattering its
grains through the clay and sand, covering it with
mountains ? Because toil is good for men, and it would
have been a foolish and fatal kindness to have laid
these values in heaps ready to man's hand. All things
have been done and are being done now for the moral
education of the race. In all that God does, whether in
cleansing and strengthening the spiritual life, in guid
ing the thought, or in healing the body and ordering
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the seasons, God has in mind the moral improvement
of his people. Certain blessings and benefits are con
ditioned upon our asking for them, because men no
where receive more effective and vital moral education
than in waiting upon God in honest prayer. The soul
never stands in such dignity of privilege, never asserts
its richest prerogative so fully as when, standing face
to face with its Maker, it talks with him of the things
that belong to its peace.
This is a strange objection to prayer when you really
think of it ! Why does a wise and good God, knowing
our needs, require us to come and ask him before he
grants his help ? That is to say, why does he not go on
and do what is wise and best, thus leaving us free to
spend our time with some one else, instead of spending
it with him ?
The objection vanishes the moment you remember
that all things are ordered with reference to strength
ening the moral bond between the Father and his chil
dren. If any of you are parents, why do you love to
have your children come to you, talk over their af
fairs with you, ask you for what they want, sometimes
wisely and sometimes unwisely ? You know that their
coming and the consequent reinforcement of the bond
between you and them is not only a joy to you, it is for
the lasting advantage of the children. Thus a wise
and good God, for the same sacred ends, waits and
withholds certain blessings until his children obediently
and lovingly come to him in prayer. It is an unspeak
able loss for children never to have known the love
and companionship of the earthly father and mother.
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It is a greater loss for a man never to know, through
heart to heart communion, the companionship of a
heavenly Father. Therefore because of the incom
pleteness of our moral development without just this,
God has made certain benefits, temporal as well as
spiritual, conditional upon our coming to him in prayer,
to the end that we may thus be attracted and encour
aged to know him whom to know is life eternal.
Prayer will bear the scientific and the philosophic tests,
and its realities can be stated in the language of the
schools. Yet the simple, familiar language Jesus used
puts it more clearly and effectively. As a boy you did
not stand waiting outside your father's door when you
were conscious of some need that he could supply. You
did not tarry, reasoning, in metaphysical fashion,
that if your father were wise and good he would do
what was best ; or that any suggested deviation would
be a violation of the family order, which must be
right, since he established it. You went in and began
to ask. It was better for you to go in and ask, even
though your requests lacked wisdom and included
things which your father could not grant. The eight-
year-old boy who asked for the shot-gun did not get
it, but he received something better than a shot-gun
through that hour of companionship with his father.
Except ye become as little children, then, ye shall not
enter into the meaning and help of prayer.
Practical business men have sometimes turned away
from prayer as a thing well enough for women and
children and ministers, but as having no attraction
for clear-headed men of affairs. But they, too, by
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reason of the stress of this work-a-day world, feel the
need of something to lift their lives to a higher plane
and give them a certain something that will consti
tute and preserve their utmost nobility. They feel the
need of knowing him whom the wisest of men called
"the Father." If they would go in, not troubling
themselves about the exact words to be used or the
particular range of their requests, not embarrassing
themselves by scientific and metaphysical questions that
once seemed to block the way, but becoming as little
children speaking to their father, the philosophy of
prayer would be cleared of its difficulties by blessed
personal experience.
Two things ought always to be borne in mind : First,
that the chief object of prayer is not to get some
thing. The claim has been made by thoughtless people
that if we have faith we can get anything we want.
Jesus had faith. He prayed, "Let this cup pass from
me." It did not pass. He drank it next day on the
cross. But he continued that same prayer until he
could say, "If I must drink it, not my will, but thine,
be done." And then he added, "Not as I will, but as thou
wilt." Prayer is not something by which we can stand
before God and say, "Not as thou wilt, but as I will."
Its deeper purpose is to bring us into that harmony
with him, where we say naturally, "Thy will be done."
That of itself is a great answer. What better thing
could come to us than that we should be made able to
say to the Perfect One, "Thy will be done in me and
for me" ? By this we do not mean a mere passive ac
quiescence in the inevitable. It implies conscious self-
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devotement to the thing to be done. Jesus prayed un
til he could say, "Thy will be done," and then added,
"Rise, let us be going," as he went to do the Father's
will. The prayer that brings us into voluntary har
mony with God has in that very fact wrought a gra
cious answer.
We are not firmly intent upon getting our wills done
in every situation, nor do we suppose that such a re
sult would be for our highest good. God has not re
signed the management of the world into the hands
of his fumbling children, whether they stand upon their
feet or kneel. It would be a strange family where
the will of the children ruled the home. Many prayers
fail to bring the specific thing sought. James said,
"The prayer of faith shall save the sick," yet he knew
there would come a last sickness when all would die,
even though prayer for their recovery might be offered.
"The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avail-
eth much" — much, but not everything which imperfect
knowledge might occasionally ask. The universe is
not a democracy where the people rule by their wishes
expressed in prayer or otherwise. It is a kingdom
where God rules in a fatherly way over the lives of his
growing but immature children. It would be a calam
ity indeed if every ignorant prayer could be answered ;
if the world were managed totally by our wishes in
stead of by his higher wisdom. So the chief purpose
of prayer throughout is not that of getting our will
done or of getting anything, but the enjoyment of the
rich privilege of being with the Father, and of being
brought into active harmony with his holy will.
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Jesus looked forward to the time when the clamor
ous, insistent kind of prayer intent upon its own ends
would become less prominent. He reminded us that
men are not heard for their much speaking. He said
of a certain time coming, "In that day ye shall ask me
nothing." The petitionary element would gradually
be overshadowed by the sense of holy companionship.
When you are praying you are in the highest company
possible. The very fact that you are there in conscious
fellowship with the heavenly Father is a wide answer
to your request, and a rich reward for your act. "Hours
are well spent when they are spent with him." When
you fail of obtaining some specific request it does not
destroy your faith in prayer, nor incline you to cease.
The eight-year-old boy who failed of the shot-gun did
not stop associating with his father. The parent who in
pleading for a child's life looked up defiantly, silently
vowing that if the child died she would never pray
again, thought better of it; she saw that in such an
attitude she was not in the spirit of prayer at all. She
recalled the fact that a larger wisdom controls all
things, and that whatever the issue, she enjoyed an
unspeakable advantage in that she was brought by her
prayer into closer fellowship with the Father.
The other consideration is that prayer is not a mere
intellectual exercise or an effort of the will ; prayer is
ethical and must be an act of the total nature. It is
the "effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man" that
"availeth much" — no promises are made as to the re
sults of the unrighteous man's attempts at prayer. The
assurance is given to "the Tightened man who is in line
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with the laws under which he makes his experiments."
"When ye pray, say, Our Father." This describes our
thought of God when we pray and it also indicates that
we must ask as his children. We are to make our re
quests with filial freedom and confidence, but they must
proceed also from a filial nature. We must stand in a
reverent, obedient, trustful, loving attitude before him
even to utter the first two words of genuine prayer. We
must find our places in his house, at his table, and in
his service as good children, before our total natures
can look up and really say, "Our Father." Even the
sinful man, in order to pray for his own forgiveness,
must come in penitence and with that new purpose
which enables him to say, "Our Father."
And Jesus added further, "If ye shall ask anything
in my name, I will do it." His name was to be used,
not as a mere endorsement or as a graceful conclu
sion of our requests. "The thought is surely not that
of using the name of Jesus as a password or a talis
man, but of entering into his person and appropriating
his will, so that when we pray it shall be as though
Jesus himself stood in God's presence and made inter
cession."1 To pray in the name of Jesus is to pray in
his spirit, and to pray for the things he would pray
for. And what did he pray for in his recorded prayers ?
Not for wealth, ease, fame, personal pleasure, or even
success, except along moral lines. The Lord's Prayer
contains one petition for material blessing, but it mod
estly limits itself to asking one day's bread for imme
diate needs. The other five petitions are for the hal-
'A. J. Gordon, " The Ministry of the Spirit," page 147.
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lowing of God's name, for the coming of his kingdom,
for the doing of his will on earth, for forgiveness, and
for deliverance from evil. This furnishes us what
might be called the "norm" of appropriate petition. The
prayer moves chiefly in the realm of moral things and
all prayer offered in the spirit of Christ will lay the
emphasis there.
I would not altogether limit prayer to spiritual in
terests. We have Scriptural warrant for praying for
rain, for health, for prosperity in temporal affairs,
but always with an eye to the bearing of these benefits
on the coming of his kingdom in our hearts and in the
world. The material advantages sought are to be subor
dinate to the spiritual benefits that stand as the supreme
ends to be gained in prayer. Pray for health, for in
telligence, for opportunities, for the success of your
legitimate plans, but always that in and through these
you may the more perfectly glorify God as a useful
servant! To pray with this subordination of private
interests to the larger demands of the coming kingdom
is to pray in the name of Jesus Christ. This shows
what an ethical act prayer must be and how it can
only be acceptably and effectively offered by those who
are bringing their lives by personal consecration into
right relations with the King of the kingdom. When
it is thus offered, the hand of the petitioner is knock
ing at a door which opens on the treasure house of
the Unseen — and he may do it in confident assurance,
for "to him that knocketh it shall be opened."

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CHAPTER VI
<&)t (patter of (Jonberaion

THE doctrine of conversion has been taught
in most helpful ways and it has also been
taught in ways that have wrought confu
sion and harm. Men have forgotten the
simplicity of Scripture and have put forward notions
which have discouraged and repelled souls that
ought to be rejoicing now in the Church of God
and in the salvation of Jesus Christ. The mischief
has frequently come from setting up certain select
types of Christian experience and making them the
sole standard. Some classical character, John Bunyan
perhaps, or some ungodly man in the community, or
some woman with a great capacity for religious feeling,
has been fixed upon and people were told that the ex
perience of such a one was the accepted method of en
trance to the kingdom, and the bold intruder who
would climb up some other way was set down as a thief
and a robber.
The soul selected as possessing ther true type of re
ligious life had felt burdened, guilty, desperate. He then
repented with great sorrow and heartfelt contrition.
He looked up and saw the mercy of God in Christ. He
accepted it by a single, instant act of faith. Immedi
ately the burden of guilt rolled away and there came
a full sense of relief in his heart. He felt lighter,
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freer, and moved out joyously with a great sense of
peace and warmth. And this was taken as real con
version, as "getting religion," while other less scenic
lines of entrance were held as doubtful and probably
spurious. Thus the mind of a whole congregation has
often been directed toward a single and perhaps abnor
mal type of experience as the necessary, inevitable road
into the kingdom.
This has produced several unhappy results. Those
whose experiences were thus dramatic have been encour
aged to tell them, giving all the details. No stories,
not even religious stories, are apt to lose anything
in the telling; and without the least conscious desire
to exaggerate or deceive, these friends went on telling
the glad story and gradually reading back into the
experience more burden, more heartfelt joy, more sense
of wondrous uplift and of instant acceptance with God,
than was originally there. It tended to beget pride in
their attitude toward those whose modest experiences
were by no means so thrilling.
It also put a false, narrow notion into the minds of
children and young people as to what ought to be ex
pected in seeking conversion. It also produced cold
ness in those who were made to feel that no steps could
be taken toward leading Christian lives without this
dramatic experience as an initiative. Henry Clay once
said, "I am not a Christian. I wish I were. Some time
I hope I shall be." He, too, was waiting for something
to happen to him, as lightning might fall out of heaven.
He reasoned that none but God could send those thrill
ing states of heart, and he was waiting coldly and pas-
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sively until they should come, all regardless of the fact
that whosoever will may come, any time, anywhere,
without reference to the accidents of emotional experi
ence that may or may not attend the coming.
As a matter of fact, what is conversion? We will
not ask John Calvin, John Wesley or John Bunyan,
great and good as these men all were, but take the high
est and best authority. The word of Jesus was : "Ex
cept ye be converted, and become as little children, ye
shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." The word
which Jesus used for "convert" means literally "to turn
around" or to change the purpose of. We use it in
common life. You "convert" the dry-goods box into
a dog-house by laying it on its side, cutting a hole in
one end, and roofing it over. Now instead of holding
muslins it shelters a dog, because you have changed its
purpose. The English "converted" the Old South
Church into a riding-school during their occupation of
Boston during the War of the Revolution. They moved
the pews about and made stalls where they stabled their
horses; they exercised them in the open space in the
center. Conversion meant the change in the use to
which the building should be devoted.
So Jesus looked upon men, and recognizing the fact
that all, in varying degrees, had gone wrong, said to
them, "You are living for the wrong things and mov
ing in the wrong direction. Except you turn around
and start with fresh, sweet, clean purposes like little
children, you cannot enter the kingdom." The total
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Here is a man who wishes to attain the sort of char
acter that is the essential element in the kingdom of
heaven. But he is going in the wrong direction ; every
year he is growing more selfish, more unresponsive to
God's Spirit, more thoughtless and irreverent. He must
turn around; the character which takes men into the
kingdom lies the other way. He must face toward un
selfishness, purity, kindness, devoutness, trust and love.
This facing about is the human side of his conversion.
But a certain other passage, where this entrance into
the kingdom is called a "new birth," is constantly
quoted. Jesus, however, never spoke of the beginning
of the Christian life as being "born again" but once,
and that was when he was talking with an expert the
ologian. Nicodemus was a master in Israel, well up
in theological phraseology, and only in that single con
versation at night with this man did Jesus describe the
entrance to the kingdom as "a new birth." Jesus met
the woman at the well, the man born blind, business
men like Zacchaeus and Matthew, fishermen like Peter,
James and John, little children and others, and upon
none of these occasions did he speak to them about the
necessity of taking the first step by being "born again."
He told them that to enter the kingdom meant to fol
low him, or to enter a door he opened, or to accept an
invitation to something good like a feast, or to receive
something which he offered as a gift. Yet, in the face
of all this, certain evangelists have gone about meeting
the young and old, the hardened sinners and the little
children, with that strange demand which staggered
the Hebrew theologian, "Ye must be born again," as if
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that was the uniform custom of Jesus with inquiring
souls, as if that form of statement was ever on his lips.
Nicodemus was a cut-and-dried man; good and
pious, regular and even in doing his duty. The theo
logian in him, however, overlaid the human being. He
came to Jesus, saying, "Rabbi, we know that thou art
a teacher come from God: for no man can do these
miracles that thou doest, except God be with him."
You have it all there, well reasoned out. It was not
the holy, beautiful life, the inspiration in his utterances,
the revelation he made of the Father; it was simply
the miracles that impressed Nicodemus. He was one
of those of whom Jesus sadly said, "Except ye see
signs and wonders, ye will not believe." His approach
to Jesus, as James Freeman Clarke described it, was
"as cold and dry as a syllogism." "No man can work
miracles without God's help; Jesus works miracles;
therefore, Jesus has God's help." John has probably
given us a summary rather than a detailed report of
the conversation, but from what he has recorded we
easily gain the essential spirit of it.
Jesus seems to say, "Nicodemus, you believe in the
kingdom of God! How will you know it when you
see it?" And the master in Israel apparently was
waiting to recognize it by some "miracle" or "wonder."
His attention was altogether there as he made his ap
proach to the One who came preaching and establish
ing that kingdom. And Jesus corrected him by saying,
"You do not know what the kingdom is; you do not
know what religion is. Unless you receive new life,
unless you are born into something different, you can-
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not even see that 'kingdom,' that new type of life
which I offer men."
This phrase about the "new birth" was therefore a
special way of describing the entrance upon a new life
to a special man, and is never used by Jesus on any
other occasion. It was a vivid way of saying that every
man needs the gift of new life from God. That is
true of old and young, of the profoundly wicked and
of innocent children. Christian character is attained by
the development of a certain form of life and that life
we receive as the gift of God. Conversion is the hu
man act of turning to God, and regeneration is just a
large word to describe the plain fact that God gives
new life to all who turn to him in faith. "A man is
born again by a new beginning in the soul's life, where
by God produces a life morally similar to his own."
In the case of religiously reared children, there ought
to be nothing dramatic or John Bunyan-like in their
conversion. When they meet with the deacons to ap
ply for admission to the church, in response to the ques
tion, "When did you become a Christian?" they often
say, "We don't know." Then wise deacons feel like
thanking God. May they never know ! Alas for those
of us who strayed away so far that we do know the
day and the hour when we turned back !
Is it necessary, then, for the children of Christian
parents to be converted? Are they ever born again?
It is necessary for every life to consciously turn to
God, and that is what conversion is. It is necessary for
every nature to receive the gift of new life from God,
and that is being "born again." The religiously reared
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children may never know the day nor the hour when
the inner life of trust and obedience emerged into self-
consciousness — it is not important that they should —
but they will know that there has been a turning to the
Father and that there has been the corresponding gift
of something bestowed by him.
The normal development of the child's religious life
is like the development of his relation to his parents.
The baby is born into the family and yet at the begin
ning his relation to the father and mother is simply a
physical fact. The baby two days old could not be said
to have love, trust and obedience toward the parents ;
there is no sufficient consciousness there to bear these
states of experience; and yet these constitute the es
sence of sonship in the family. The baby is born the
child of the parents as a physical fact, yet he must
afterward become by his own personal decisions lov
ing, trusting and obedient ; he must for himself develop
those qualities which are the true component parts of
his sonship.
Were the child asked, "When did you begin to love
your parents ?" he could not tell. He would say, "I do
not know ; I was born into an atmosphere favorable to
that form of life, and as a part of my normal develop
ment I learned to love, trust and obey my parents." The
baby also knew nothing of prayer, obedience or trust
in the heavenly Father. These, too, had to be learned
by experience. And the natural voluntary entrance
upon these forms of experience ought to constitute the
conversion of every child in a Christian home. The
parents who fail to furnish that persuasive atmosphere
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in the home into which the child shall come, and under
the gracious stimulus of which he shall grow, are rob
bing the child of his appropriate birthright.
There are certain years that are physically crucial,
as all mothers know, and mentally crucial, as all teach
ers know, and spiritually crucial, as we all ought to
know. If the years from twelve to eighteen are passed
without this conscious turning to the Father and the
deliberate consecration of the life to Christian ideals,
it is a great loss. There are parents who say they do
not desire to influence their children too much ; if the
children grow up to be Christians they will be very
glad, but they would not unduly influence them while
they are young. It is a foolish shirking of responsi
bility. One might as well say that if his children grow
up and learn to eat wholesome food, meat, vegetables,
and fruit, and do not try to live on cake and chocolate
creams; or if they grow up to speak correctly, pro
nouncing their words as they ought to be pronounced,
he will be very thankful, but he declines to influence
their choices and decisions in these matters while they
are young.
The Roman Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church
and the Episcopal Church take it for granted that the
children of their own people will be confirmed and be
come communicants when they reach a proper age. It
is a wholesome practise. The lack of deep, fine re
ligious life in many Catholics is not the fault of this
habit of expecting the children of the church to come
one and all into the church ; the lack is in the quality
of church life to which they are invited. In a Christian
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home it ought never to become an open question with
the child, "Shall I be a Christian or not?" any more
than it should ever be an open question with a girl,
"Shall I be virtuous or not?" A Christian life ought
to be regarded by parents, by teachers in the Bible
school, by the pastor, and by all concerned in the
child's welfare as a foregone conclusion. It ought
to be presented as the only natural way of life.
The fearless and thorough application of these prin
ciples which Jesus taught will save to all our Protes
tant churches many of the children consecrated to God
by devout parents in Christian baptism. People have
too often thought of the world as a penitentiary where
God was the warden and men and women were the
criminals, guilty and wicked, trying to gain their lib
erty. Or they have regarded God as governor or
judge, and have sought to cast Christian experience in
the forms furnished by such conceptions. All such er
roneous presentations have repelled and outlawed the
real children of the kingdom and the cause of Christ
has in consequence suffered a grievous loss. These
forms of statement give altogether mistaken ideas of
the atonement, of conversion and of all religious doc
trines. Jesus said, "When ye pray, say, Our Father ;"
and this fundamental conception of the divine life and
of our own relation to it was to rule all our thought.
This world of men is meant to be a divine family. The
object of all God's dealing with us is to induce us to
accept that fact and take our places in his family. The
Father is seeking to bring children, not by compulsion,
but by their conscious choice to recognize his love, to
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accept his commands as being best and right, and
through his help to obey them. Thus we come into
sympathy and fellowship with him.
Merely being born into the world is not being born
into the family of God. Some one has truly said,
"Ideally and intentionally all men are children of God,
but practically and actually they are not." In your
own home the birth of your child made him your son
as a physical fact, but when he was eighteen years old
his sonship did not rest merely on the physical rela
tionship. It consisted of the elements of love, trust
and obedience out of which he had built his real son-
ship by right choices. If he had been taken away from
you the day after he was born, and had never seen you
again until he was eighteen years old, the fact of phys
ical relationship would have remained the same, but
the true sonship would have been lacking. Thus,
even in our human families, real sonship is born of
moral experience. So while God is a Father in that
he is the Author of all our human lives, true sonship
toward God is attained by moral experience in the
heart of every man. As the child must learn to con
sciously take his place in the human family and be a
good son and a good brother, so every child born into
the divine family must take his place through the love,
the trust, and the obedience that he comes to exhibit
toward the Father. This deliberate turning to God by
definite choice, and the acceptance of a place in his
family, constitute conversion.
Referring again to that source of wholesome theol
ogy, how was the Prodigal Son converted? What
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did it mean for him to be "born again"? He was in
the far country, hungry and ragged, mean and de
graded. He finally came to himself, realizing that
this was no way for him to live, no place for him to be.
He thought of the "bread enough and to spare" in his
father's house. He announced a new determination —
"I will arise and go to my father, confessing my wrong
and asking for a field of service." He carried out this
decision, and in coming to his father, he was born into
a new life. The father's forgiveness, love and welcome
— so much greater than he had dared to hope; the
father's companionship, aiding him in keeping on in
the right way; the new conditions in the father's
house, so different from the swine field, so much more
inspiring than the situation of a hired servant, all
ielded their help. But there was also something new
in the prodigal : new purpose, new hope, new courage,
a new sense of his relation to the father — in a word,
"new life." He was born again.
You want to be converted? You can be converted
right here. It is your plain duty to come home. It
rests with you to tell the Father that you have done
wrong, to ask his forgiveness, and to begin to do what
he would have you to do. It is your part to meet
him in his house as often as you may, and at his table,
and to speak to him in prayer ; and wherever you are,
to-morrow and all the days, on the whole wide field of
human effort, to be always doing something that he
would be pleased to have you do. This is being born
again; this is entering upon the Christian life. The
spirit of God graciously assists men in doing all this.

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Therefore "regeneration may be defined as that work
of the Holy Spirit in a man by which a new life of
holy love, like the life of God, is initiated."
President Finney always spoke strongly against the
idea that men cannot be converted whenever they will ;
that they must wait until something mysterious is done
for them and in them with which they have nothing to
do. No man can come to Christ until the Father draws
him, but as a matter of fact the Father is always draw
ing him. There must be an "effectual calling" before
a man can enter the kingdom, but the call is ever
sounding forth ; the Word, the Spirit, the Church, the
man's own conscience, all unite in saying "Come."
All things are now ready for Christian life and service,
and it is the plain duty of every man to come home
and begin to live with his Father. No theories about
substitution, imputed righteousness, or other dogmatic
mysteries, dimly understood or half rejected; no ex
pectations as to emotions similar or superior to a set
of emotions vouchsafed to some other returning sinner,
can justly stand in the way for a moment of that plain
obligation resting on each man to come home. It is
not your first business to understand all mysteries and
all knowledge; it is not of great significance that you
have or have not feelings enough to move mountains;
but it is of the first importance that you rise and go to
the Father and begin through his gracious help to do
his will. This every man can do, and when he does
this he will have entered upon the experience of con
version. The Church has sometimes seemed to care more
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about theology than about religion ; more about keeping
its dogmatic theories all in running order and using
them upon all the people that came along, than about
helping people to simply live as their Father's chil
dren. This has come from following the notions of
men more than the plain words of Christ. When
great sinners who have broken every one of the Ten
Commandments and who have gotten away out to the
frontiers of ungodliness, turn around, it is like break
ing up the fountains of the great deep. But the turn
ing of a child or of a clean, upright man will not be so.
If he has been telling the truth, keeping himself pure,
acting the part of kindness, living in reverence toward
God and in useful service toward men, even though
there has been no dramatic experience, all these things
show the work of the Spirit unconfessed and unreal
ized. None of these plain, useful qualities in the man's
life are to be otherwise. His conversion will be the
clearer recognition of his place in the Father's family
and a closer fellowship with the Saviour who assists
men in maintaining that place by consistent Christian
conduct. I have tried to make it all simple, because Jesus
made it simple in his teaching and in his own method
of converting men to himself. Perhaps it has seemed
as though I gave too large a place to human ability.
I have not dwelt at length on regenerating grace or on
the witness of the Spirit. I shall have occasion to
speak later of the results of conversion in the chapter
on Salvation by Faith. I have sought to make this
point clear, that whenever you want to become a Chris-
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tian you can. You need not wait for a day or an hour
when something will happen to you, as Henry Clay was
waiting. Do your part and assuredly God will at
once do his. If you face about and turn to the Father,
he notices you. If you ask him to forgive you he does
it. If you implore his gracious help in living a new
life, you will increasingly receive it. How much emo
tion you may experience will depend upon whether
you have an ardent, sanguine temperament or a slug-,
gish one ; but to deny that a man is forgiven when he
turns away from wrong and asks forgiveness would be
to deny the moral character of God. When you start
to take your place in the Father's family, in his house,
at his table, in that part of his great circle of children
which best meets your need, and begin to do what he
would have you to do, he accepts you and begins to aid
you by his grace. These gifts of recognition, of for
giveness, and of divine grace make "a new life." And
that is what we mean by being "born again," by being
converted and becoming as little children in the family
of the Father.

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fimtfl

CHAPTER VII
gfatoatton bv gatth

ON the first reading there seem to be three
views of salvation put forward in the
Scriptures. Paul preached "salvation by
faith." "By grace are ye saved through
faith," he said. "The Gospel ... is the power of
God unto salvation to every one that believeth." "Be
lieve on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be
saved." These are some of his best known and most
characteristic sayings.
James preached "salvation by works." "Pure re
ligion and undefiled before God and the Father is this,
To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction,
and to keep himself unspotted from the world." "What
doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath
faith, and have not works ? can faith save him ? . . .
Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when
he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? . . .
Was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when
she had received the messengers, and had sent them
out another way? ... Ye see then how that by
works a man is justified, and not by faith only." These
strong words seem to set the matter of salvation before
us in quite another light.
And John preached "salvation by love." "Every
one that loveth is born of God." "We know that we
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have passed from death unto life, because we love the
brethren." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in
us." Many other words to the same effect are found
in the writings of John.
These three views, however, are not antagonistic
but rather complimentary views of the same reality.
Real faith, the kind of faith Paul preached, will utter
itself in works; as a matter of fact, steady, effective
work in the kingdom can only result from that moral
attitude toward God which we call faith. The good
work described by James can only be done right when
it is done in love ; and love, to be real love, must stand
before God in the attitude of faith, and toward men in
the attitude of useful service. So in any complete view
of salvation, faith and work and love proceed hand in
hand. But the moment we pronounce the words "salvation
by faith," many practical, hard-headed people feel
straight off that we are talking stuff and nonsense.
Perhaps this is because they forget the meaning of
"faith" and the meaning of "salvation." The confu
sion has been wrought chiefly by making faith to mean
"theological opinion." Men are not saved nor lost by
their opinions. There is no saving grace in belonging
to a certain theological party. Salvation is the renew
al and development of the moral life, the acceptance
and cultivation of a filial relation to God. This" is not
accomplished merely or chiefly by holding correct opin
ions. Indeed, "the gentle virtues are not plants that
bloom only on the soil of orthodoxy. They flourish
with a wonderful disdain of ecclesiastical restrictions
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on the unhallowed domain of heresy; nay, are some
times found blooming into a strange luxuriance on the
outlying wastes of heathendom."1 The notion of sal
vation by opinion has wrought mischief by giving peo
ple the impression that eternal destiny might turn upon
the acceptance or refusal of an opinion, instead of turn
ing as it does upon moral renewal and the acceptance
of a filial relation to God. On their death-beds, con
fused souls have been urged to say that they believed
Jesus was the Son of God, the Saviour of the world;
as if that expression of theological view would work
a magical change in their future prospects. But we
know now that salvation is by faith and that faith is not
mere intellectual assent. "It is not even the intellect
ual acceptance of what God has said as being true.
Faith is not without the element of personal confidence,
self-commitment and trust."
Faith then is a moral attitude toward God. It is a
state of trust and confidence, a position of open recep
tivity toward the mercy and help God waits to be
stow upon all who will accept it at his hands. Con
version is the voluntary, conscious turning of the soul
to God, and when this is done, God gives the life thus
offered and opened to him, forgiveness, recognition
and help in undertaking a new course of conduct. For
giveness for past sins, recognition as members of the
divine family, and help in walking as children of the
Father : these are the constituent elements of salvation,
and we receive them by faith, by simply taking them as
God offers them.
'John Caird, " University Sermons," page 4.
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Your own child has his standing in your family, not
by works, not by the value of any service he renders
you. He has it simply by accepting your love and en
joying the opportunity and help you give him for living
his life as a son. He has no thought of trying to earn
it; he simply takes it through his confidence in you,
as you desire him to do. By your love, that is, "by
grace," he has his place in your home through faith.
And that is exactly what Paul said. Salvation is the
acceptance of one's place in the family of God. You
do not earn it by work; it is not withheld from you
until the value of your service entitles you to demand
it by right. You simply take forgiveness, recognition
and help because they are offered you. "By grace you
are saved, through faith."
But we are reminded that we have all done wrong.
We cannot be dealt with as children who have re
mained obediently in the Father's house. We will say
then that your boy has left your home. He is living in
some far country with bad people who are injuring
him. He is going further and further in his wrong
career. What do you do? You go and entreat him
to come home. You assure him that you are ready to
forgive him, to recognize him as your dear son and to
help him live a new life if he will only turn from his
wrong way and come home. You offer him salvation
by faith.
But he tells you he is not good enough to come
home; that he has been drunk, been gambling, been
mixed up with bad men and bad women ; that he has
insulted you by his course of conduct; and he urges
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that he be allowed to remain where he is until he has
ironed the moral wrinkles out of himself and become
good enough to return; that when all this has been
accomplished he will come, accepting your forgiveness
and recognition and availing himself of your help in
leading the changed life. He thus advances the well-
known view of salvation by ethical culture or by good
works. But you will not hear to it. You insist that he shall
come home now, not because of any desert on his part,
but because you love him and desire to bestow on him
forgiveness, recognition and help and thus work with
him for his salvation. But he says again : "I am only a
boy. It is a mystery to me how a father can forgive a
son who has insulted and disgraced him ; who has taken
up with the enemies of his father's peace. I must wait
until I understand all this and have correct opinions on
every point in the process." But you insist that no
matter whether he understands or not, whether his
opinions all match yours or not — it may be he will
never understand a father's love until he is a father
himself — you want him simply to accept the fact of
your readiness to forgive, to grant him recognition in
the family again, and to help him in living a new life.
If he accepts it without waiting to earn it by works, or
to do anything to entitle him to it on the ground of
desert, and comes home, that is salvation by faith.
The parable of the Prodigal Son, again, will guide us
into simple, straightforward, usable theology. A mes
senger to the far country might have reminded the
prodigal that his father still loved him and would for-
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give him if he would return home and take his place
again in the family. But the prodigal said, "No, I
must work my way. If I could go home and plow
forty acres of wheat land on the farm or prune two
hundred of the olive trees, my father might be willing
to take me in." Before he went he announced a pur
pose, you remember, of asking for the place of "one of
the hired servants." When he saw his father's wel
come, however, which met him while he was yet a great
way off, he did not have the heart to mention that
matter of a hired servant's place. He made his honest
confession of wrong-doing, and his presence there in
dicated his feeling toward his father. And instantly
the father forgave him, accepted him into the family
life again, and began to aid and bless him in his new
life at home. "Bring out the best robe," he cried, "and
a ring and shoes, and kill the best calf we have; for
this my son was dead and is alive again. He is saved
by his faith in his father's love and by his return home."
And this is the Scriptural view of salvation — not by
works nor by opinion nor by ceremonies, but by faith
in the great fact that God ever waits to forgive his
children who have done wrong, to restore them to the
family and to aid them in living new lives of righteous
ness. You naturally expect good conduct of your children,
as a result of their standing within your love and help,
but they originally took their places in the home by an
act of faith. Their present good conduct flows out of
that solid fact. This justly illustrates the relation
between faith and works. We are members of the
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divine family, not because of what we have done ; not
because we have given a tenth of our income to the
Lord; not because we have been kind and pure and
true in our dealings with men; not because we have
been faithful attendants at church; we are members
of the divine family simply because we accepted the
situation as Jesus made it plain to us. We turnedj
to the Father, we opened our hearts and received his]
forgiveness, recognition and help; and now whatever]
good service we render flows out of this relation es
tablished by confidence in God's grace and goodness.
I do not know why there need have been any con
fusion. It is simple enough. Human nature, though,
has a way of gathering rubbish in its garrets and thus
occupying room needed for useful things. In the
minds of men, true and useful conceptions have often
been overlaid and obscured by unworthy accumula
tions. Away back in the time of David, the truth of salva
tion by faith was recognized. "Thou desirest not sac
rifice ; else would I give it : thou delightest not in burnt
offering. The sacrifices of God are ... a broken
and a contrite heart." David wanted forgiveness for
his sin and he could not buy it by any burnt offerings.
He could not work for it and earn it by any kind of
service or sacrifice. He could only come with a broken
and contrite heart, and freely accept it. Salvation by
faith was the one way then. But true religion was
crusted over by priestly forms. Men fell into the way
of offering sacrifices and burnt offerings, washing their
cups and pots, tithing their salt, their pepper and their
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mustard as if these were matters of life and death, as
if their salvation depended on them. And then Jesus
had to come and make known afresh the everlasting
gospel — God so loves the world as to give his only
Son ; and men are saved by believing on him, by taking
what he freely gives, and by following him in the way
of useful service.
Then the Roman Catholic Church crusted over re
ligion again, and it became a thing of penance and cere
mony, of mortifications and masses to earn the favor of
God. Again it became necessary to clean house and
burn up the ecclesiastical rubbish which was of no use.
Luther had to come, and on his painful pilgrimage up
Pilate's staircase, see for himself and for his age what
a caricature of the gospel the Roman system was. He
came back to shake Germany and all the more aspiring
parts of Europe with his doctrine of salvation by faith.
The forgiveness, the recognition, the help of God are
never bought from a priest, nor purchased through
ceremony, nor earned by penances ; they must be freely
accepted as the gift of God if they are to be had at all.
In my reading of history I have never found any
great revival of religion, any great moral awakening
resulting except through the simple, fearless preaching
to a sinful world of this very gospel of salvation by
faith. It was the theme of Paul and of Chrysostom, of
Luther and of Wesley, of Edwards and of Finney.
They never preached salvation by opinion. Wesley,
for example, strongly repudiates such an unscriptural
notion. "What is faith? Not opinion nor any num
ber of opinions put together, be they ever so true. A
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man might assent to three or to twenty -three opinions ;
he might assent to all that is in the Old and New Tes
taments and have no Christian faith at all." It is a
clear advantage where faith is accompanied by sound
opinions, but the faith itself is not opinion — it is moral
rather than intellectual. Honest faith includes repent
ance, which is turning away from wrong; it includes.
the open acceptance of forgiveness, recognition, and
help which God bestows. Salvation, therefore, is the]
free, unpurchasable gift of God, and faith is thei
human act of taking it.
We find a good illustration of salvation by faith in
Victor Hugo's best book. Jean Valjean had been a
galley-slave ; had learned to think that all men despised
him, that society would never forgive him for having
committed crime. He was released at the end of his
sentence, but he found the taverns turned him from
their doors, men refused to employ him, the very dogs
snarled upon him if he sought to sleep in their kennels.
He went to the Bishop's house and the good man took
him in. The Bishop called him "Monsieur," treated
him as a man, gave him the best place at table and the
choicest room in his house. The Bishop knew he had
been a galley-slave, but he forgave him, recognized
him as a brother man, offered his help to encourage
him in a new life.
Had Jean Valjean earned it? He had never done
anything for the Bishop. Did the convict obtain it by
his theological opinions? Heaven only knows what
his opinions were— they taught no theology in the gal
leys. The Bishop freely offered his favor and Jean Val-
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jean accepted it. It was a sure word of gospel truth
for him. It was the beginning of his salvation. He
saw in this servant of God a picture of God's own
willingness to forgive, to recognize and to help men
who have done wrong. He accepted this heaven-sent
good news and pressed forward into the splendid
Christian career that makes the book. The beginning
of it all was the Bishop's preaching, by word and by
deed, the simple doctrine of salvation by faith. By
grace — not by opinions, nor by ceremonies, nor by
works, but by grace, are men saved through their
faith. People have sometimes thought of salvation as being
simply the getting rid of old scores and gaining an en
trance into heaven when they died. Salvation by faith
seemed a very easy way of accomplishing it. But sal
vation is not that — it may include it, but it is much
more. Salvation is the attainment of personal right
eousness and the enjoyment of a true place in the fam
ily of God. We begin by the plain acceptance of
what he offers.
People have also erred by thinking of faith as some
thing which the soul could do once for all, a single as
sent to some plan or proposition upon which the man
became a saved man forever after. But no, faith is a
constant moral attitude toward God. The just shall
live by faith. It is the way to receive new life ; it is
also the way to go on and receive it more abundantly.
It is the abiding relation of the soul to God.
How plain all this is when we turn to the habit of
Jesus ! How did he save men? He went to the home
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of a stingy, grasping, unjust little tax-gatherer, who
had not even asked him to come. Zacchseus did not
know how much he needed Christ, but Christ knew and
invited himself as a matter of grace. It touched the
heart of the publican. '1'This great teacher whom men
are calling the Son of God comes to me, recognizes me,
sits down at meat with me whom men despise because
I am a publican !" In the course of their conversation
Zacchseus sees life in a new way ; he becomes a changed
man under the influence of Christ's company and
power. Before Jesus goes away the sinful publican is
moved to say, "Lord, if I have taken anything from
any man falsely, I restore him fourfold. I have lived a
grasping, stingy life, but now the half of my goods I
will give to charity." And Jesus said, "This day is
salvation come to this house. Zacchseus also is a child
of Abraham, a member of the family of God."
Salvation came because Christ came. Zacchseus had
not time to earn salvation or to do anything except to
turn from his former wrong-doing, to announce a new
intention for the future, and to gladly accept the for
giveness, recognition and help that Jesus offered. No
Roman Catholic notions about penance, ceremony or
mortification entered in ; no Protestant insistence upon
certain opinions about substitution or governmental ex
pedients or the like is named ; the one thing that had
value was the straightforward acceptance of that gift
of new life which Christ offered and ever offers to
those who v/ill take it at his hands. And it is precise
ly this gift of new life thus freely offered and freely re
ceived which brings renewed character and a filial rela
tion in the family of the Father.
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CHAPTER VIII

IN certain quarters we find a curious tendency to
speak in glowing terms of Christ and then
with the last half of the same breath to de
nounce his Church. We are often told with
hearty confidence that it does not matter whether peo
ple have ever been baptized, taken communion, or be
longed to the Church — that on the whole it is rather
better for them if they have not done any of these
churchly things. And yet these sweeping, drastic state
ments are coupled with enthusiastic praises for Christ
himself. It might be well to remind these people who thus
laud Christ and deride his Church that this was not his
own attitude. The Church of his day does not seem to
have been so sincere, so efficient along humane lines of
activity, nor so well stocked with simple, every-day
righteousness, as is the average church of our own
time. Yet it was his custom to go into the synagogue
on the Sabbath. He observed the appointed feasts of
his national church. He utilized the opportunities it
offered for moral effort.
And this same Jesus, who taught "the Fatherhood
of God and the brotherhood of man," at the close of his
life sent out his apostles "to disciple all nations, and to
baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the
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Son, and of the Holy Ghost." The only place where
this command is being taken seriously is in the Church
of Christ. The same Jesus who told men to love God
and to love their neighbors also instituted the Lord's
Supper and gave the command, "This do in remem
brance of me." The only place where this command is
being obeyed and this sacrament regularly and devoutly
observed is in the Church. So there would seem to be
a certain confusion and inconsistency in those who
praise Christ and then denounce his Church as a need
less incumbrance in the modern world.
Jesus spoke in the most definite terms of his purpose
to build a Church. Around him were many who held
various theories about him, and who in varying degrees
cherished admiration for his work. Close beside him
was one who loved him, trusted him, appreciated and
in a degree understood him. In response to an in
quiry from the Master this man made a right confes
sion of his faith. In this personal attitude Christ saw
the promise of the future. In recognition of it, he said.
alluding to Peter's name, which means "a stone,"
"Upon this rock of personal loyalty and trust
I will build my Church, and the gates of hell,
with all the opposition they can send, shall not pre
vail against it."
The Scriptures speak of "the Church of the living
God," a body of people sustaining a special relation to
him ; they call the Church "the pillar and ground of the
truth." It is further called "the household of God,"
the family circle of the heavenly Father. It is also
described as "the body of Christ," the visible organism
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through which Christ works ; the field for the manifes
tation of his glory; the chosen instrument for accom
plishing his work; the transforming agency by which
the common materials of human life are taken up
and ennobled by the spiritual energy resident in the
Church. The Church is the actual body of Christ — what a
glorious conception! The Church is a revealing-place
for the Spirit of Christ. In the attitude of the Church,
that of the members toward one another and of all
toward the need of the world, men are to see the love
of God looking out and the glory of God abiding. The
Church furnishes hands and feet, eyes and lips for the
Spirit of Christ, to go upon his errands of mercy, to
labor effectively for the relief of human need, to see
the opportunity, and to speak in clear tones the gospel
of hope. The Church is also a transforming agency
where common earthly men are taken up and by the
force of the transforming, transfiguring Spirit that
dwells in all bodies of true believers, changed and
brought into energy and power of a higher sort. The
relation which the physical body of Jesus sustained to
his Spirit of old is now to be sustained by his Church.
In proportion to its consecration, its eager faith and its
ready responsiveness to the touch of his Spirit, the
Church attains this high estate.
One special office of the Church thus seems to be to
keep alive the sense of God in the world. Its very
buildings aid in this. You pass along a certain street,
calling the attention of visitors to the residences of
various citizens. You name the men who live here and
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who live there. You pass a church and inform your
friends that this is "the house of God." He, too, is
resident among us and mingles his thought and energy
in our city Hie. The building itself and the services
maintained in it are to make men conscious of this pres
ence of God. Men felt the love of the Father when
Jesus stood among them, and to produce these spiritual
experiences to-day with power is one of the offices of
this Church which is his body.
The Church exists also to stimulate the sense of
devotion and of obligation to do God's will in all the
relations of common life. Ethics never rest upon their
surest foundation until right and wrong are seen to be
distinctions between that which is and that which is
not the will of God. And just in proportion to the
sense of companionship into which men are brought
with the Author and Rewarder of good, will they
be made strong to practise the precepts that are
right. The Church is not only accorded a high place in
/ the Scriptures, it holds high place from the very ne-
) cessities of the case. The Church is the organized
Christianity of the community. It does not contain all
there is, but it holds the larger portion ; and to continue
the figure, it brings the hands, the feet, the eyes and
the lips together and organizes them for united action.
If the Christian religion is to live and assert itself,
every practical man can see that it must be organized
and that every one who believes in the value of that
religion should be in the organization. "An impartial
examination of the influence of organized religion upon
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society abundantly discloses the fact that the most
continuous, steady, frank and powerful force in ethical
fields is exercised by the substantially uniform moral
action of our churches. Society confidently counts
upon organized religion to champion every thoroughly
ethical question which arises. Society invariably turns
to the churches when some extraordinary issue de
mands an untiring, undaunted advocate."1
Political beliefs are only made effective by organ
ized parties. Wage-earners make their cause known
and further its interests only as they stand together in
organized effort. The combination of manufacturers
into trusts is one of the astounding signs of the times.
The man who says he believes in Jesus Christ and in
his religion, but does not belong to the Church is both
disobedient to the teachings of the New Testament and
absurd in his position. If you had met a man on
Broadway during the Spanish war, carrying a musket,
but with no uniform, who told you he was a soldier
on his way to Cuba, your first question would have
been, "To what company and regiment do you be
long? Where is your uniform?" If he had replied,
"I do not belong to any regiment ; I do not want to
make any professions or put on any uniform ; I simply
want to go out myself and do what good I can ; per
haps I can shoot a Spaniard now and then," the folly
of his position would have made you laugh. He would
not only have failed in doing his own best ; his example
and presence, had he been allowed to go, would have
been demoralizing to the army itself. The men, like-
*E. Winchester Donald, "The Expansion of Religion,"
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wise, who stand around sympathizing with the pur
poses of the Christian Church and yet lacking some
how the clear-sighted manliness to come in and iden
tify themselves with some part of its organized ac
tivity, are both forfeiting a large measure of their
own usefulness and allowing themselves to become a
hindrance to the most effective work.
The Churchjis. religion organized and ready to take
the field; or, changing the figure, it_is__a, school of
Christian character ready to do its work. There are
those who claim they do not need to attend church—
they can be religious at home. They could teach their
children at home, too, but on the whole the public
schools do it better. The teachers are not all sages,
but they render the children of a community a service
that could not easily be rendered in any other way. It
would be a foolish man who would turn away from
schools, colleges, and public libraries on the ground
that a little learning could be hammered out on his
own little anvil at home. People could indeed be re
ligious at home, but how many of those who habitually
absent themselves from church spend an hour, morn
ing and evening on Sunday, in reading the Scripture,
in prayer, in attention to some phase of Christian duty
and privilege? The ministers are neither sages nor
angels, yet on the whole they are more competent to
teach the people among whom they live, sensible,
Scriptural views of life and duty than the people are
to teach themselves. They ought to be, for religion is
their major study. There would be something wrong if
the Church were not able by its music, its lessons, its
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prayers, and its sermons to lift the thought and aspir
ation of a congregation to higher levels than it would
attain unaided. Thus in addition to Scriptural sanc
tions the Church is here because of the necessities of
the pjajn_pe£pje_thanselyes. "The new life of service
and sacrifice, brought to the world by Christ and be
gotten in us by the Spirit, at once demands a socially
effective organization and expression, that those who
share this life may be bound closer together ; that the
enthusiasm of it may be kept alive ; that the members
who share it may be increased ; and that those who are
losing it may be brought to share its blessings and
its privileges. Such an organization is the church."
Without such an organized expression of its real life
and purpose for the world, the religion of Jesus could
not exert the sway over the hearts of men that it needs
in order to bless them.
Organized religion would be more effective if it had
not broken itself into so many pieces. We all de
plore the multitude of denominations and the conse
quent struggling churches, often more than the com
munity needs. The demand for variety will always
remain. Some people enjoy more ritual, some less ;
some are more hospitable to new ideas, some less so ;
some trust the people more and have simple democratic
forms of government like our own; some prefer the
rule of presbyteries or of bishops. But this principle
of variety has been more than provided for ; it has gone
too far and has created ugly rivalries. The sects are
not abusing one another as they once did, but there is,
in almost every city and town, an unseemly scram-
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ble and competition for the ear and the support of the
people. In a public conference recently, a pastor
boasted that he had just induced three Methodists, two
Presbyterians, four Baptists and one Episcopalian to
come in and be Congregationalists. He seemed to
feel that it was quite a victory. But getting four sol
diers transferred from Company A to Company B does
nothing to strengthen the army and may really weaken
it if the changes are so frequent as to subvert disci
pline. So in many places there is an undignified, un
christian strife to get the lion's share of the religiously
disposed people.
There ought to be greater unity. The platform laid
down by Paul was "One Lord, one faith, one bap
tism." Could we not all, as Christians, stand there
to-day? "One Lord" — I know we have different
theories about the person of Jesus Christ, about the
effect of his death, about several other questions con
cerning him, but look abroad among Catholics and
Protestants, the orthodox and the liberal, in all parts
of Christendom it is that "One Lord," who holds sway
over the thought, the aspiration and the obedience of
men. "One Faith" — there are many opinions, but
opinions are not faith; the one moral attitude toward
God which is saving in its effect is an attitude of trust,
obedience and love, and that sort of faith in the mercy
of God as revealed in Christ is common to all Christ
ians. "One Baptism" — not that of water, be it by
little or by much, but the baptism of the Holy Spirit,
cleansing and renewing the heart; it is upon this that
all true Christians rely. On these fundamentals we
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are all one. This might not serve as a sufficiently
definite basis for church unity, but the mere reference
to these words of Paul and the substantial unity upon
them in all the churches, show how the divisions have
come by emphasizing things which after all may not
have been essential.
There are men preaching who believe more than
I do — I have no time to be fighting them in the pulpit
or elsewhere. There are men preaching who believe
less, and I have no time to fight them either. "The
devil smiles when he sees Christian people using time
and strength fighting each other when they might be
fighting him." Instead of splitting hairs over unes-
sentials we need to move together to attain a deeper
moral enthusiasm, a richer sense of the presence of
God, a holier life and a more effective service. Dean
Hodges has well said that "the Church threatens the
world with the Presbyterian finger, and with the Meth
odist finger, and with the Congregational finger, and
with the Baptist finger, and with the Episcopalian
thumb, and the devil is not hurt. We need to have the
hand doubled up into a solid fist and then the evil
about us will feel it."
The formal attempts at church unity do not seem to
come to anything. Beyond a mutual understanding
and perhaps a general practise of Christian courtesy,
nothing at present seems practicable. But we can
serve the good cause by keeping to the front the
things whereon we agree and by leaving others in the
rear until the statute of limitations can be pleaded
against them. "It is in spiritual passion and action
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and not in speculation and argument that human be
ings find themselves marching side by side in the same
great cause, their hearts beating to the same hope and
harmony. There is no measuring the power of a
common passion for righteousness to consume differ
ences, to enlighten willing minds, to fuse and unify
self-sacrificing energy." Through this growing pas
sion for righteousness, which more and more overshad
ows doctrinal differences, we may confidently expect
that the Church of the future will be nobly careless
about many minor points touching which wise and
good men differ; it will be earnestly insistent upon
the weightier matters of character and service.
In our home missionary and our foreign missionary
work, the divided Church has exposed us to both crit
icism and difficulty. "If the grocery trade were car
ried on in country towns as the religious business is,
there would be ten stores where only three are needed,
each one full of a cheap, defective stock of goods and
on the verge of bankruptcy. If education were car
ried on in the same way, there would be one school
where all the teachers were Democrats, another where
they all believed in the nebular hypothesis, another
where they were, all anti-expansionists perhaps." The
fundamental things, reading, writing, arithmetic, and
all the rest which schools are set to teach, form one
body of elementary instruction, and likewise the essen
tial message of the churches to a sinful world need
ing the mercy of God in Christ for its forgiveness and
cleansing, its upbuilding in righteousness and guid
ance to a heavenly home, is all one.
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In the foreign missionary work especially it is hard
to understand why we have not been content to divide
and conquer, to assign certain fields to certain denom
inations by mutual agreement and then not duplicate
or overlap our efforts. It must be confusing to a
heathen to be called upon, as he is now, or will be pres
ently, to decide upon the claims of Christian baptism
by a handful of water or by a tankful ; to pass upon
the claims of a man who was ordained by a bishop and
those of one who was ordained by elders. The dif
ferences that we have wrestled over and found petty
here at home need not be exported to harass other
races of Christian pilgrims. And in home missionary
work the denominations have often been foolish and
wicked in multiplying organizations in small towns in
order to furnish every style of sectarian appetite with
the special meat for which its soul lusteth. An un
holy rivalry between the branches of Christ's Church,
and a petty insistence of his followers upon their par
ticular forms or opinions to the detriment of the wider
interests of his kingdom, have repeatedly lessened the
moral power of the church in the community.
But in the face of all the shortcomings of the Church,
which those within understand and lament much more
than those without, there is a great, glad, sense of
privilege in being a part of this organized Christianity.
We have a sense of sharing in a great, corporate life.
"We belong to the Church." Sometimes the words
are spoken so lightly, and yet how much they mean!
My hand "belongs" to my body. It is incorporated
with it for good or ill, for health or for pain, to share
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in its service, to bear its weariness and to advance with
it into whatever joy or honor may come. A man
who truly "belongs to the Church" becomes incor
porate with the body of Christ in the same vital way.
It is a distinct loss to any soul to lack this sense of
union with the body of believers. It must be strange
for any one to travel in Europe, visiting the mighty
cathedrals reared by religious aspiration; beholding
masterpieces of painting and sculpture wrought out
under the stimulus of religious emotion; hearing the
music of the best oratorios, or of the opera of Parsifal,
with religion for their theme ; and to feel throughout
that he is a stranger and a foreigner as to the mighty
kingdom where all this was produced. For some rea
son he is not a naturalized citizen in that kingdom of
God which stands for so much enrichment in the
world's history. The noblest life cannot be lived in
such a strange, detached position. All healthy and
vigorous religious life "must find institutional expres
sion. To talk of the spiritual life apart from the
church, its worship and its service, is like talking of
patriotism while refusing allegiance to any country."
Here we have an institution into which Jesus Christ
wrought his own purpose — "On this rock of personal
faith and personal loyalty to myself, I will build my
Church !" Here we have an institution commended by
St. Paul, the most forceful and useful man of his gen
eration, as "the pillar and ground of the truth !" Here
we have an institution to which some of the best minds
and noblest hearts in all history have gladly given the
service of their lives — Augustine and Origen, Francis
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of Assisi and Thomas a Kempis, Savonarola and Mar
tin Luther, John Knox and John Wesley, Horace
Bushnell and Henry Ward Beecher, Charles H. Spur-
geon and Phillips Brooks ! Here we have an institu
tion which with all its faults has stood through the
ages for "the struggle of the spiritual against the
physical, of faith against force, of the poor and ob
scure against their haughty oppressors, of that which
is founded in the divine order against that which'
springs from human self-will !" Here we have an in
stitution which at this hour is more openly pledged to
the highest spiritual ideals and more steadily engaged
in urging them upon the people than any other insti
tution on earth!
Now in the presence of an institution so founded by
Christ, so served by many of the noblest spirits in his
tory, so consecrated to the realization of the highest
ideals, how blind it seems for any one possessed of a
ray of spiritual aspiration to say, touching the wor
ship and the instruction, the fellowship and the service
of this mighty institution, "I have no need of you."
The habitual cultivation of the sense of the Unseen,
the habit of waiting for the renewal of one's strength
upon the Lord of strength, the joy of mingling one's
aspirations with those of his fellows in a hymn, a song,
a prayer, or an aspiration, the wide opportunity for
the investment of one's abilities in active service — all
these are demanded for the fullest and noblest order of
life, and into the enjoyment of them all, the Church
sets before us an open door.
The Church organizes and socializes that all but
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universal aspiration of the human to relate itself con
sciously to the Unseen. It is an aspiration as old as
time and as wide as the world. The soul which will
ingly secludes itself from that endeavor suffers un
speakable loss. I have reverently listened to the serv
ice of the Mass according to the Roman Catholic rit
ual in St. Peter's at Rome, and I have heard a choir
of Indian boys sing the Gregorian chants in a Rus
sian Church on the west coast of Alaska. I have wit
nessed the midnight service on Good Friday at the
Cathedral of the Greek Church in Athens, and I have
heard the call to prayer from the minaret and have
seen devout Moslems prostrate in worship at the
Mosque of St. Sophia in Constantinople. I have stud
ied the stolid faces of the Chinese in their joss-houses,
and I have watched the tear-stained faces of devout
Jews pouring out their hearts in prayer before that
fragment of the old temple enclosure at the "Jews'
Wailing Place" in Jerusalem. And although in every
case the mode of worship and the very language in
which it was expressed was utterly unlike my own, the
spirit of what I saw in them all was akin to what I
find in my own breast. In the sense of dependence
upon and of kinship with the Unseen, in the deep
yearning and longing after an effective fellowship with
the Divine, we were all one! How incomplete and
abnormal I should feel, if in all my purposes and
habits I had no part with them in this widespread and
persistent hunger of the heart ! The deepest and tru
est instincts of my nature bid me turn to the Church
which organizes and socializes this universal aspiration.
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Jesus told us in advance that the Church would
have its faults. The tares will grow with the wheat.
Animals will get into the fold which look like sheep
but are not. Men will go about saying, "Lord, Lord,"
whom Christ does not know nor own, because they
hear his sayings and do them not. Men who stay out
of the Church waiting until it shall clear itself of faults
and be perfect, will stay out some time. The only
way to have a Church without faults is to stop ad
mitting human beings as members. But those who re
fuse the Church on such grounds are behaving as
sensible people behave nowhere else. The man who
wants an education does not wait until he finds a school
where all the professors and all the students know
everything already; or even one where they learn
their lessons perfectly and never forget them. There
are no such schools. He finds an institution where the
teachers are intelligent, earnest and sincere about their
work ; where the students do not imagine they know all
things, but are there to learn ; and with such a school
he casts in his lot. The Church is a school for Chris
tian character and the "disciples," as Jesus called them,
the learners or pupils, are under the personal tuition
of the Master and of all the body of influences he has
established in his Church. Occasional triflers there
may be, but as a rule the students are there to learn to
be like him.
The excuses commonly offered for remaining out of
the Church are silly and weak. The people who say
they "are not good enough" to join the Church would
seem to imply that a boy should never go near a bicy-
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cle until he had learned to ride. How absurd to say,
"When I have become devout, righteous, holy, I will
join the Church, but in the meantime I cannot make
any open attempt at living as a member of the body
of Christ." The Church stands with wide-open doors
to welcome and aid those who are conscious that they
are "not good enough," in the attainment of that
higher, holier life which rises before them as a com
manding ideal.
The man who insists he can be "just as good out
side of the Church" is both stupid and wicked. If all
men acted as he is acting, there would be no churches
in any of our cities. Churches are sustained and their
work is carried on almost entirely by their members;
their ministers are taken uniformly from the ranks of
the members and not from those who felt that they
could be just as good outside. If all remained outside
therefore there would be no churches; people would
be married by justices of the peace, buried without
the Scripture lesson or the prayer ; there would be no
body of believers to welcome the little child with the
sacrament of baptism; there would be none of these
centers for worship and instruction, for religious fel
lowship and charitable activity. There are very few
people in all the millions of our population who would
welcome such a condition of affairs. They would not
want to live a year in a churchless city. Real estate
would fall in price; public morals would be lowered;
children and adults would suffer incalculable loss if the
churches were closed. Yet there are thousands of peo
ple here living in such a way that if all men acted as
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they are acting touching the Church, this would be a
churchless place. The man who stays outside on the
theory that he can be just as good a Christian without
assuming the responsibilities of church membership is
a coward and a shirk.
Yonder at the Pacific Mail Dock lies the great
steamer "Manchuria." When she comes up to the pier
she has the look of one who has accomplished some
thing. She has come all the way from Hongkong,
seven thousand miles, through storm and wind. She
has brought her precious freight of passengers, busi
ness men returning to their families, missionaries re
turning for a visit to the home land, scientists who
have been opening up new regions by exploration. She
comes with her hold full of tea and silk and all the
riches of the Orient. And down under the water, hud
dled out of sight, are also some barnacles clinging for
their lives to the side of the ship. They seem to say,
"We, too, are here; we also have come all the way
from Hongkong." It may be they feel that somehow
they, too, share in the "Manchuria's" honor.
So likewise Christian civilization under the moral
leadership of the Church of Christ, with all its pre
cious freight, with messages of hope and love, with a
mighty cargo of helps for nobler, fuller life, with
its sailing list of devoted men and women who bear
upon their shoulders the cause of human progress,
moves out to other lands, invades the frontiers, dis
charges holy influences in every community, and bears
within it the hope of mankind. There are in every city
and town many who never enroll themselves as passen-
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gers, never become members of the crew, never walk
its decks as professing to share in the movement; like
the little parasites on the "Manchuria," they selfishly
cling to this Christian civilization which holds advan
tages for their business, protection and help for their
children, and all that makes life worth living, yet re
fusing all the while to share in its deeper responsibili
ties. They are barnacles stuck on from without ; they
are the non-producers in this work of Christian prog
ress. We have laid such stress upon individualism, in this
new country of political equality and of unparalleled
personal opportunity, that we have but dimly appre
hended the value of institutionalism. The lesson must
be learned some time that the individual only realizes
himself through combination with other .individuals in
institutional life. When the Hebrews returned from
Babylon and undertook the rebuilding of the walls
there was an immediate accession to their sense of
corporate life. "Every man built over against his own
house" indeed, but with the glad sense that the por
tion of the wall laid in place by his own hands helped
to guard the commercial and domestic interests of all
the other men in the city ; and he in turn relied for his
own complete safety upon the work of all his fellows
as they built individually over against their houses.
The very task of thus performing that individual serv
ice in the accomplishment of a vaster design gave the
sense of moral solidarity.
It was this sense of connection with a larger move
ment which uncovered for each man an abiding source
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of motive and stimulus. When he took up his particu
lar brick, his act seemed insignificant — the brick was
only a bit of burnt clay. But when the brick went
into a wall, relating itself to millions of other bricks;
and when the wall surrounded a city as its main de
fense; and when the city was Jerusalem, the head
quarters of the Hebrew people who have woven them
selves into the higher life of the world as no other
race has, then the simple act took on new meaning and
significance. The building of one's personal activities, simple
though they be, into the far-reaching, solid wall of a
divine purpose is what ennobles them. Every man
as he laid his tale of bricks in place felt that there
was being worked out, now in joy and now in tears,
now in rapid progress and now in painful but educa
tive delays, now through the stately ceremonies of the
priest, now by the living word of the prophet, now by
the ordinary service of the consecrated layman, now on
the banks of the Jordan and now in the valley of the
Nile, now along the shores of Galilee and now by the
rivers of Babylon, a great divine purpose for human
ity, and that every one who yielded his life to the im
pulse to serve was aiding in the consummation of
that vast design. In like manner the individual who
builds his life into some great institution like the Chris
tian Church adds immeasurably to its significance by
thus incorporating his personal activities with a world
wide and age-long movement for the welfare of the
entire race.
It goes without saying that the perfect Church is yet
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to be. The Church has never had offered to it that
abundance and that quality of material that would
enable it to build what is wholly worthy of being called
"the body of Christ." To fulfil the high purpose that
Paul expressed for it, the Church must come to the
point where its face shall shine with the splendor seen
on the holy mount of old; its lips must speak forth
matchless words which embody the thought of God;
its feet must be swift to go on errands of love and
its hands nimble and strong to work the works of Him
who builds it. For all this it needs more and better
material offered in loving consecration. It needs more
intelligence and ability, more affection and devotion,
more money and more service placed at the call of the
Spirit of Christ who builds the Church as the body of
his habitation. What a sacred honor to offer one's life
in total self-surrender, in whole-hearted consecration,
to be thus taken up and thus built into that body which
is to be the perpetual dwelling-place of the divine
Spirit !

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Immortalttp

CHAPTER IX
Cft* Hope of XroroortaWP

ONE can scarcely ask himself a more search
ing or more practical question than the
one propounded of old by Job — "If a
man die, shall he live again?" In mak
ing our plans, in determining our principles of action,
and in stocking the heart with motives, we are pro
foundly influenced by the answer we give to this
question. Am I to live my threescore years and ten, per
haps, and then fall back into nothingness? Or am I
to live straight on, this earthly period of existence be
ing merely the first term in a course of education that
need have no end? The real reply which each man
makes is to be read, not in some high-flown sentiment
uttered upon occasion, but rather in the things upon
which he sets his heart, in the courses of action he
maps out. It may be well enough to eat, drink and be
merry, in open indifference to certain loftier interests,
if to-morrow we die and come to the end of it all.
But if the consequences of our choices and deeds
stretch on endlessly, then life is altogether another
matter. In view, therefore, of the vital interests which
are bound up with the reply we make to Job's inquiry,
it is well to consider carefully the grounds upon which
many thoughtful men base their hope of immortality.
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In reality there are no "proofs of immortality."
Even for those of us who accept the resurrection of
Jesus Christ as a historical fact,, this does not prove
that all men, good and bad, will rise again. Even the
plain declarations of inspired men and of Jesus him
self are not proofs — they depend for their force upon
the degree of moral faith which we by our own deci
sions have placed in them. Every one must decide for
himself whether these speakers were in a position to
know, whether they spoke truly, and whether we have
a correct account of their words — and this decision
carries us into the realm of moral faith.
If we should even accept the claims of the spiritists,
who some time ago professed to hold communion with
the departed spirit of John Sherman when the news
papers had erroneously announced his death, only
to discover next morning that he was still alive and
aboard ship instead of lending his ghostly presence to
needy seance-holders, we should still be no further
along. The experiences of these spiritualists, if they
were true, would not constitute proof.
In one of the Ingersoll lectures on immortality this
point has been strongly stated. "Immortality is a fu
ture event, and as such cannot be proved. Even if the
reports of the spiritist are accepted as authentic, still
the fact that some men have survived death does not
prove that all men must. A flock of sheep come to
a river. A number of them swim safely across and
bleat to their brethren behind, telling them as plainly
as can be that they still live; nevertheless the sheep
who have not yet tried the river seem a good deal
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excited. The question with them is, not whether others
have survived the beat and wash of the stream, but
whether they shall survive. That is not proved and in
the nature of the case cannot be. An intelligent mem
ber of the flock, having known the weakness of many
of its brethren who report that they have safely
crossed the flood, and wisely judging its own superior
strength, might feel comfortably sure of survival.
Spiritism, even if accepted as authentic, cannot yield
demonstration. It still leaves those who have not tast
ed death in the sphere of moral faith."1 From the very
necessities of the situation, therefore, our belief in im
mortality cannot rest on proofs, but must rest on faith
in certain considerations. Perhaps it is as well — "the
best things are felt rather than proved."
But if there is no actual proof of the truth of the
positive claim, neither is there any proof of the cor
rectness of the negative position. It is well to rid our
minds entirely of the idea that any denial of immor
tality has been based or can be based on actual knowl
edge. One of the keenest and most eminent scientific
minds of the nineteenth century said, "Science has not
a shred of evidence that the soul does not live on after
death. When denial of that claim is made, it is sheer
theory and assumption." In a word, the denial of a
future life is never based on knowledge, but is simply
a negative form of belief. Any man, in order to de
clare the doctrine of immortality false, would have
to ransack all space and know to a certainty that there
^George A. Gordon, " Immortality and the New Theodicy,"
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are nowhere in conscious existence human beings who
once walked the earth. But no one has this knowl
edge ; no one can have it — the denial is therefore mere
ly the statement of a negative form of belief. What
ever reasons there are for holding such a belief are to
be carefully considered, but it must never attempt to
throw dust in our eyes by pretending that it is a case
of knowledge against faith. The field is open, and
that form of belief, positive or negative, which shows
the best grounds for its expectation, is free to take
possession. Into this open field I will introduce four lines of
argument, allowing them to speak for themselves. The
first one I would call psychological. The wish to live
on after death, the all but universal instinct for im
mortality, is highly significant.
"It must be so — Plato, thou reasonest well! —
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?"
We have pushed back our investigations until some
scientific men are brave enough to say that the human
race has been on the earth for one hundred thou
sand years. And among those prehistoric men who
lived in an age of ice we still find the custom of bury
ing the trinkets, the weapons, the tools of the dead
man with his body — mute testimony to their belief that
he would need them and prize them in that future life
to which he had gone. For a hundred thousand years,
it may be, this belief in a hereafter has persisted and
spread into all the lands of earth.
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Are we not warranted in applying the doctrine of
the survival of the fittest to beliefs as to other forms
of life ? If all men want to breathe and keep on want
ing to breathe for a hundred thousand years, does it
not argue that there is air for them ? If all men hun
ger and keep on hungering for a hundred thousand
years, does it not raise a presumption that there is
food for them? The Creator does not perpetually
send these native and universal desires upon fools' er
rands. The divine appointments have somehow kept
faithful tryst with the profound and persistent needs
of human nature. If the idea of and longing after im
mortality has been developed, has persisted and grown
stronger through the operation of these forces which
have their way with us, without an actual reality
standing over against that desire for its satisfaction,
it introduces an extraordinary break in the method of
the universe, as we have learned to know it.
More than that, it has been the human mind at its
best, which has insisted most strongly upon the truth
of immortality. The great poets, Homer and Vergil,
Dante and Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth, Ten
nyson and Browning — how they all sang of a life be
yond the grave ! The great philosophers, Socrates and
Plato, Kant and Hegel and Emerson, who have graven
their names deep upon the pages of serious inquiry,
how they clung to the idea of the persistence of the
spiritual element in man! The great founders of re
ligions, Zoroaster, Mahomet, Jesus of Nazareth, how
strong and serene was their faith in the world to come !
The great statesmen, who by the impress of their per-
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sonalities have moulded the lives of nations, Cicero and
Cromwell, Lincoln, Bismarck and Gladstone, how
strong they were in their confidence that death does
not end it all !
The human mind has not only persisted for these
thousands of years in that hope and expectation;
when it rises to its highest levels and is accompanied
by the purest moral aspiration, it is most ready to make
positive reply to the question of living again. It would
seem like casting contempt upon the great process
which has produced these convictions, preserved them,
clarified them, to call its fruitage an empty delusion.
It would seem like not only impeaching the validity
of our mental life, but the very integrity of the uni
versal order which has wrought this result, should we
undertake to deny the truth of immortality for which
these ages of aspiring men have yearned.
The second line of argument I would call analogical.
We seem to have good reasons for accepting those two
scientific doctrines known as the indestructibility of
matter and the conservation of energy. The form of
matter may be changed, but in some form the essential
substance of the universe is neither increased nor de
creased. The form of energy may be changed from
motion to heat and from heat to something else, but
the energy persists. But do senseless atoms endure
while conscious, thinking spirits, standing so much
higher in the scale of existence, perish? Do those
manifestations of energy seen in combustion or in a
falling body continue in some form undiminished, but
the forms of energy which make up conscious per-
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sonality utterly decay? The very attempt to establish
such a theory in the face of the present mental atti
tude on these questions would be a difficult task
indeed. Matter is — let him who can, prove that it will cease
to be! No one has proved it — the best belief of the
day looks quite the other way. I am — let him who can
prove that I shall ever cease to be! The burden of
proof is upon him. In some changed form, indeed,
no longer manifesting my life through this body,
whose size, shape and look have grown familiar, but
in that form which hath pleased him, I, too, endure.
Hear, on this point, the word of John Fiske, one of
the most distinguished interpreters of the evolutionary
philosophy, in the last century : "The more thorough
ly we comprehend that process of evolution by which
things have come to be what they are, the more we
are likely to feel that to deny the everlasting persistence
of the spiritual element in man is to rob the whole proc
ess of its meaning. It would go far toward putting
us to permanent intellectual confusion. For my own
part, therefore, I believe in the immortality of the soul
as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of
God's work."
Progress is the law of life. The story of the past
is a record of an ascent to higher and ever higher
levels of finite existence. The light of investigation
reveals nothing higher than man. "In man the Creator
is in affectionate and intelligent connection with the
world." Having come so far, it seems incredible that
we should not go farther. And to urge that God is
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perpetually destroying this single sensitive bond be
tween his created world and himself, by the perpetual
extinction of souls which have learned in some measure
to know and rejoice in their cooperation with him,
makes a staggering demand upon our credulity. The
anticipation awakened inevitably within our hearts by
the eternal purpose thus far revealed points out the
way of faith in a race of immortal men, to crown and
complete the work of these mortal men around us.
The third line of argument I would call moral. The
great voices which echo against the walls of our
human hearts bid us attain that for which this pres
ent life offers no adequate opportunity. Jesus of Naz
areth, the Master of moral values, said, "Be perfect!
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is
in heaven is perfect!" Human aspiration as it be
comes strong and pure takes up his word and utters
the same call, "Be perfect !" Poetry and song speak
ing to us in tones which kindle the best within us utter
the same summons, "Be perfect !" The logic of growth
says, "Go on and on and on — be perfect!" Are all
these high commands which fall ceaselessly upon those
moral natures which are alive and sensitive never
meant to be obeyed ? Are they all intended but to mock
our incompleteness ? In a world of moral order, seri
ous men refuse to so regard it, yet the commands can
only be obeyed if a further life affords us the ade
quate opportunity.
In addition to that consideration, faith in a future
life is demanded for the higher development of the
moral nature here. Study the results of the affirmation
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of the truth of immortality upon broad fields of human
experience, comparing them with the chilling, numb
ing effects of the denial of that truth, and all this will
be plain. Men have become steadfast, unmovable, al
ways abounding in the work of the Lord, in propor
tion to their confidence that their labor is not in
vain in the Lord. Here and there a select few may
hold fast the way of duty even when the hope of im
mortality has died out of their hearts, but the great
mass of men would say, "Let us eat, drink and be
merry, regardless of the moral consequences of our
action," when once convinced that to-morrow they
would die and all consciousness cease.
Would any one choose to say, then, that this faith
in a hereafter which seems to be thus necessary to the
broad development of moral steadfastness, heroism,
self-sacrifice, is a faith founded on an eternal mistake ;
and that the denial of this claim which has ever a chill
ing effect upon spiritual enthusiasm is the sober truth ?
In such an event, it would seem that the things that
are not, are mightier than the things that are. Saints
and seers, heroes and martyrs, along with an unnum
bered multitude of plain folk bravely bearing the heat
and burden of many a hard day, unite in their testi
mony to the helpfulness of the hope of immortality.
They tell us that they could not have wrought these
results had they not lived by "the power of an endless
life." And until the world can believe that grapes
grow upon thorns and figs upon thistles, it will hesitate
to attribute such moral fruitage to an ill-founded de
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The reason for all this is plain. Raphael would never
have used the utmost of his artistic ability in painting
the Sistine Madonna had he believed some vandal
would cut it to shreds the day it was finished. Bee
thoven would have never taxed his musical ability to
the utmost in composition, had he not hoped that his
melodies and harmonies might go singing their way
down the ages. The great masters of literary expres
sion would never have poured their utmost vitality into
speech and verse had they believed their manuscripts
would be committed to the flames unread by future
generations. And men and women with the high and
serious task of living upon their hands cannot be de
pended upon to lift their ideals "up to the style and
manners of the sky," to make their adherence to prin
ciple strong as steel cords, to attempt the vaster under
takings in useful service, unless they, too, are persuad
ed that for them and for those they serve there is a
future life. Immortality is a demand of our moral
nature, and to undertake to deny it is to say that the
deepest intimations of conscience and will are false
and that the higher moral successes in history have
been made possible by the cherishing of an empty
delusion. The fourth line of argument I would call theological.
Here and there shadows lie heavy upon the fair fields
of human experience — shadows sometimes forbidding
and inexplicable. But in spite of them all we do suc
ceed in making out the presence of a moral order lying
beneath. The laws of life are good, for if these laws
were perfectly understood and perfectly obeyed, it is
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clear that life would be noble, beautiful, joyous. Then
the Author of these laws must be good, since he has
thus established them in the world we know. And in
view of everything, men have come to feel a profound
assurance that when the returns are all in, it will be
seen that the Judge of all the earth has done right.
But can he do right with individual men and women,
unless there be a future life ? Look upon the blotches
of unreason and injustice here and there, unexplained
and unexplainable, unless there be further pages of hu
man experience yet to be unrolled. Sin and meanness
unpunished as yet! Fidelity and unselfishness as yet
unrewarded! Puzzling and blinding situations which
beat down human joy in ways inexplicable! Discipli
nary experiences bravely borne by heroic souls, rea
sonable if they serve as preparation for higher and
holier states of being, but meaningless and useless if
the moral results are promptly wiped from the slate
by the extinction of those who bore them ! '"Shall not
the Judge of all the earth do right?" Shall not the
moral order which we dimly but truly discern vindicate
itself at last to every soul?
Our faith in immortality springs, then, from our
faith in the moral integrity of our Maker. If behind
all these phenomena there is neither intelligence nor
love, then might we come at last to feel that death ends
all. But the moment we rise to faith in the moral
character of God, immortality seems sure. Could you
take your own child, whom you had brought into the
world, whom you had trained by experiences, some of
them pleasant, some of them severe, whom you had al-
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lowed, nay, encouraged to believe that he would live
on to man's estate, and at some point in his incom
plete development thrust him away into eternal noth
ingness ? If ye then being evil know the moral rights
of your children, and feel profoundly your own obliga
tions toward them, what shall we say of the moral ob
ligations of Him who has created us, trained us, al
lowed and encouraged us to hope for further life,
should he thrust away his own ? I might bring myself
to believe that men could stand it, were it made plain
that we were all so doomed, but could he stand it,
whom we best describe as "Our Father"?
It is this aspect of the argument which is brought
out in Tennyson's verse:
"Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, we know not why:
He thinks he was not made to die.
And thou hast made him? Thou art just."
Take these four lines of argument, then, and weigh
them as affording substantial warrants for cherishing
the positive rather than the negative belief touching
immortality. Hold the four of them together, the uni
versal desire of men, and of men at their best, to live
on after death in a world where such universal and
persistent desires find over against them somewhere
the means of satisfaction; the analogy which springs
from the persistence of matter and energy pointing the
way toward a persistence of that higher form of ex
istence known as consciousness, as the necessary out
come of the evolutionary process we have come to
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know; the moral necessity for adequate opportunity
to render complete obedience at last to the high com
mands which are laid upon us and the moral fruitage
of the positive as against the negative attitude toward
the future life; and the plain implications of a moral
order which stands as the abiding expression of a wise
and just God — hold the four of them together and
clasp them with the serene, faith of Jesus Christ, his
confident assertions and his own resurrection from the
dead; and somehow these five considerations become
a mighty hand, clasping mind and heart in its power
ful, reassuring grip! They make us strong to will
and to do, to suffer and to aspire, knowing that our
labor is not in vain in the Lord.
The instinct and desire for immortality are so strong
that if intellectual objections are removed or even dis
armed, the fortunes of such a faith may be safely left
to the human heart. I shall therefore speak also of
two of the impediments which seem to stand in the
way of such a hope. Our inability to picture a future
existence or to see how life continues after the body
has perished in the swift consumption of the crematory
or in the slower processes of the cemetery is one. Life
seems to come to an end. The heart stops, the breath
ceases, the eyes no longer see, nor do the ears hear;
there is no response to any kind of stimulus. How
can life continue after such a change and the conse
quent dissolution?
But if we could stand at any crucial point in the
unfolding creation we should witness changes as ex
traordinary and involving as great apparent leaps.
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Take the universe when, according to scientific be
lief, it was an unorganized mass of swirling star dust!
How impossible seems the orderly system of stars,
planets and worlds we know to-day ! Take the period
when this solid earth was a molten mass such as may
be seen to-day in the crater of Kilauea, on the Island
of Hawaii. How impossible it seems that there should
come the verdure, the trees, the flowers and the count
less forms of animal life we know, upon that molten
mass of fire ! Life abundant on a globe once lifeless
is a problem that baffles the scientist. Take those geo
logical periods when the highest forms of life on
earth were the huge reptiles, so gross and brutish.
How impossible it seems that there should ever be
found here a Milton or a Shakespeare ! Advances have
been made which we would have deemed incredible
could we have stood as wondering witnesses of the
preceding conditions. In the face, then, of what has
taken place, it is not hard to believe that the Almighty
Creator has in store that still farther advance in the
scale of life, which is pictured in the Scriptures as a
race of immortal beings carrying on and completing
the lives begun here. )
We have thus far known conscious personality only
in connection with physical organism, and how the
consciousness can survive the shock of the physical
changes and destruction that death involves, proves a
burden serious to be borne by many who would be
lieve, but who ask some wiser man to help their unbe
lief. It brings us face to face with the whole mystery
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But a human being is something more than a phys
ical organism. There was a time in the history of
every man when the germ of life from which he sub
sequently developed could not have been distinguished
under the microscope from the germ of an ape or of a
dog. What made the difference? Something ap
parently that the microscope, adjusted to hunt down
the most minute particles of matter, cannot find. The
human being came to have intellectual stature, moral
life, humanity, by reason of some mysterious endow
ment not discoverable in the material organism at all
in its early stages. It is this something outside of
and beyond the material structure which differentiates
man from the lower animals, and which, as we claim,
survives the shock of death. To affirm the truth ofs
immortality imposes upon us the hard task of pictur
ing the continuance of personality after the disso
lution of a physical organism which uniformly serves
now as its home — a task which we may not altogether
succeed in performing to the satisfaction of all hands.
But to deny it, when we are surrounded with other
problems as mysterious and as unsolvable to our pres
ent insight, involves us in so much greater intellectual
and moral difficulty that the rational course seems
to be to follow our deepest instinct and thus cherish
and affirm the hope of future life.
This point has been well argued by Professor James
in his Ingersoll lecture on immortality. He makes
clear the difference between productive and transmis-
sive function. "Thought is a function of the brain,"
men have said. No brain, no thought ; no thought, no
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consciousness — and therefore, they urge, no life after
death has destroyed the brain. But it may Hot be that
thought is a function of the brain as speech is a function
of the vocal organs. These organs do not produce
the tones of song or speech ; they receive air from the
lungs; and back of that is the invisible spirit of the
man which determines whether the tones shall be those
of love or hate. The function of the vocal organ is a
transmissive function.
In like manner music is a function of the pipe-organ.
But the organ does not originate the music. It re
ceives air under pressure from outside itself, and it is
manipulated by a player altogether independent of it.
Even though the organ might be destroyed by fire,
the organist would remain to play upon another organ
which would replace it. So the distinguished psychol
ogist argues that the function of the brain is transmis
sive — upon "its delicate gray keys" the unseen organ
ist, the spirit of the man, plays life's noblest music.
And though the organ perish in the swift processes of
the retort or in the slow processes of the grave, the
organist remains. "The sphere of being which furnished
a conscious, self-directing player for this subtle organ,
which we call the brain, is still intact and able to sup
ply for it another organ in ways unknown to us." I
have only indicated, in brief, imperfect words, his line
of argument which has helped to clear the ground of
the obstacle named for many a soul cherishing "the
will to believe."
It has been suggested also that the burden of believ
ing in immortality for such countless hordes as live
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now and as have lived is also a bar to faith. "The in
credible and intolerable number of beings which, with
our modern imagination, we must believe to be im
mortal, if immortality be true, is a stumbling-block to
many." The ignorant, the base, the half-savage among
our remote ancestors, the Hottentots and Esquimaux,
why should they live ? Certain believers deliver them
selves from this embarrassing question by holding
what is called "the aristocratic view of immortality" —
eternal life only for those who are fit for it, and quiet
extinction for the rest. "Survival of the fittest" is the
scientific way of saying it and "conditional immor
tality," or the annihilation of the unregenerate, the
theological. But the majority of men, if they believe
in immortality at all, propose to believe in it for all.
"Bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh are these
half-brutish, prehistoric brothers. Girdled about with
the immense darkness of this mysterious universe even
as we are, they were born, and died, suffered and
struggled. Given over to fearful crime and passion,
plunged in the blackest ignorance, preyed upon by hid
eous and grotesque delusions, yet steadfastly serving
the profoundest of ideals in their fixed faith that exis
tence in any form is better than non-existence, they
ever rescued triumphantly from the jaws of ever-
imminent destruction the torch of life, which, thanks
to them, now lights the world for us. How small in
deed seem individual distinctions when we look back
on these overwhelming numbers of human beings
panting and straining under the pressure of that vital
want! And how unessential in the eyes of God must
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be the small surplus of the individual's merit, swamped
as it is in the vast ocean of the common merit of man
kind dumbly and undauntedly doing the fundamental
duty and living the heroic life ! We grow humble and
reverent as we contemplate the prodigious spectacle.
An immense compassion and kinship fill the heart. An
immortality from which these inconceivable billions of
fellow-strivers should be excluded becomes an irra
tional idea for us. That our superiority in personal
refinement or in religious creed should constitute a
difference between ourselves and our messmates at
life's banquet fit to entail such a consequential differ
ence of destiny as eternal life for us, and for them tor
ment hereafter or death with the beasts that perish, is
a notion too absurd to be considered serious."1
And besides all this instinct of brotherliness, we
may believe that God "has so inexhaustible a capacity
for love that his call and need is for a literally endless
accumulation of created lives. He can never faint nor
grow weary as we should under the increasing supply.
His scale is infinite in all things. His sympathy can
never know satiety or glut. . . . The tiresomeness
of an overpeopled heaven is a purely subjective and
illusory notion, a sign of human incapacity, a remnant
of the old, narrow-hearted, aristocratic creed. The
inner significance of other lives exceeds all our powers
of sympathy and insight. If we feel a sig
nificance in our own life which would lead us spon
taneously to claim its perpetuity, let us be at least
tolerant of like claims made by other lives, however
'James, " Human Immortality," page 33.
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numerous, however unideal they may seem to us to
be."
These clear, strong words seem to quite dispose of
the objection to the belief in immortality on the ground
of the magnitude of the claim it involves. The diffi
culty was never anything more than an intellectual
bugaboo conjured up by the thoughtless to frighten the
finite mind which was in simple, childlike quest of a
hope to feed its courage. These are the supposed im
pediments most commonly named as standing in the
way of such a belief, and I cannot see that they offer
any effective opposition to our faith.
There may be times when this whole question, "If a
man die, shall he live again?" holds only a speculative
interest. Youth, health, work and the presence of dear
ones seem enough to make this life suffice for all our
needs^ But when age and disease, enforced idleness
and loneliness of heart, become our lot, those deeper
yearnings have their chance to be heard. What will
we be when all the years of earthly life have gone?
And what of the dear dead who have gone before?
Has the Author of our existence found nothing better
for the strength and beauty of their precious lives than
to blot them out? Are fidelity and purity, unselfish
ness and love, so lightly esteemed by him, that, as
generation after generation brings up its share of
those high qualities, wrought out perchance in blood
and tears, with many a struggle, many a pain, he
instantly dooms them to extinction? I cannot believe
it. So long as reason and conscience testify to the
presence of a Moral Order, august, cosmic, eternal;
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so long as I see the divine glory shining in the face
of Jesus Christ, so long I shall find it impossible to
cherish the negative belief. Mind and heart recoil;
they leap in joyous assurance to the glad alternative —
"Because he lives, we shall live also and live always."
Strong and confident faith in the immortality of the
soul is ever a spiritual achievement rather than the re-
i suit of logic. Reason may clear the way, but the more
abundant life furnishes the power which carries us
along in noble assurance. As you come to know God
through trust and obedience, you will' be able to say,
"I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that
he is able to keep that which I have committed unto
him." As you enter profoundly into fellowship with
Jesus Christ through faith and service, you will be en
abled to say, "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." As you come to feel deeply
the essential worth of your own life, and the signifi
cance it has for a world ruled by spiritual purpose,
as you learn to put increasing estimates upon it as a
result of the divine grace wrought into it, you will say
inevitably, "Now are we the sons of God, and it doth
not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that
when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we
shall see him as he is."
These are the considerations, then, which I would
chiefly urge upon those who find difficulty in holding a
clear, firm hope of immortality. Jesus did not per-
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suade men of the truth of the future life by explaining
difficulties, nor by giving them details as to the
future state. There was a noble reserve in him, who
knew as we cannot know, which those who talk so
glibly and confidently about what is in store for us,
about heaven and hell and the comparative popula
tions of each, would do well to imitate. He filled men
with love and trust in the heavenly Father ; he pointed
out the unity and reasonableness of the world, which
in all its humbler forms was full of spiritual sugges
tion to him ; he brought out the real value of human
life. He abolished death as the end of human exis
tence, by bringing life to light and Christian men came
at last to think of death as a mark in the road over
which the full tide of life eternal bore them in glad and
unending progress.

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CHAPTER X
Cfre IJa*t Cfuoirment

THE question as to how the just and the
unjust will respectively fare in the world
to come, is an inquiry both serious and in
evitable for any reflecting mind. There
are three main views representing the conclusions to
which sober-minded men have come, touching the
final result of the moral processes which we see at
work. First, it is held that at death all men are at once
divided into two classes, one class destined for un
speakable and unending bliss, the other for terrible
and endless torment. This view rests mainly for its
Scriptural support upon the passage in Matthew where
the souls of men are separated as sheep from the goats,
the righteous entering into the rewards of life eternal
and the unrighteous meeting with the rejection and
penalty prepared for the devil and his angels; upon
that clear division and fixity of condition pictured in
the parable of the rich man and Lazarus; and upon
certain somewhat obscure and figurative passages in
the book of Revelation.
The Scriptural warrants for such a claim are not
many, nor are they entirely conclusive in the face of
the many other passages which make against it, yet
this view has been preached with a confidence and an
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offensiveness of detail far removed from the dignified
reserve of the Scriptures themselves. The practical
difficulties in the way of holding such a belief, which
instantly arise when we attempt to fill it in with real
people, are so great that it may be doubted if any
considerable number of the more thoughtful mem
bers of our evangelical churches really do hold it.
They may give formal assent to creeds where it stands
by implication or perhaps by direct statement; they
may not utter any open formal repudiation of it as an
abstract theory ; but as an actual program for human
ity as they know it, as a conviction to be carried into
the home and with unsparing, unflinching honesty ap
plied to such of their own loved ones as may have died,
not in outrageous wickedness, but many of them sure
ly in an unregenerate state according to the most char
itable construction of evangelical standards, how
many of them are ready to actually affirm it as an
article of faith ?
It would be passing strange if it should turn out to
be true. It would mean that while an almost endless
variety obtains here, something very like monotony ob
tains hereafter — a million different conditions for men
here and as many different degrees of moral fidelity or
infidelity, but only two conditions there! If it be re
plied that heaven may be one of degrees and hell also
a state of degrees, the conditions graded according to
the gradations of character as we know it, then the
lowest stages of heaven and the milder conditions of
hell may not be more than a step removed. A more
rational conception of the future state would be saved
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by this shift, but the old doctrine of heaven and hell
with a great gulf fixed between the two extremes, the
bliss of Abraham's bosom for all the accepted and burn
ing torments for all the rejected, would be gone.
The notion of this division into just two states with
an infinite difference between them is based largely on
the use of two words — the righteous went into "life,"
the wicked into "punishment." And yet how endlessly
varied a thing is "life." How much it means for an
intelligent, developed, mature Christian, how little it
means for the feeble, ignorant, half-hearted Christian
who nevertheless clings to the hope of mercy. And
"punishment"— you and I have endured it. In certain
consequences of our disobedience we are enduring pun
ishment now. The murderer also endured punish
ment on the gallows yonder at San Quentin on Fri
day. So the use of these two words might introduce
the law of variety and make as many heavens and
as many hells as there are individual states of char
acter. The apparent moral impossibility of separating men
into just two classes between which an infinite gulf
should yawn makes such a belief difficult. Such dis
crimination, so far as we can see, could not be based
on the degree of moral development. We can test
ships by fixed standards, and if they fail to make so
many knots an hour reject them. Men, however,
cannot be accepted or rejected, cannot be set apart as
innocent or guilty, in such rough-and-ready fashion.
The degree of moral attainment depends on environ
ment, heredity and education for which men are not
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always responsible. The poor, superstitious, ignorant
Chinese, living with a high degree of fidelity to the
best light he has, may be in actual moral attainment
far below an intelligent college professor; while, on
the other hand, the superior professor, if measured
by the degree of his fidelity to his wider, nobler, more
difficult ideals, might be outclassed by the Chinese.
In order to meet this difficulty, it is suggested
that men will be judged according to their faithfulness
to the light they had, by a kind of sliding scale. This
has a show of justice, but it would produce singular
results. Men who were not very good, but who had
evinced a considerable degree of fidelity to the glim
mer of moral truth they had, might be in heaven ; and
men more nearly in conformity in every way to the
Ten Commandments and to the precepts of Jesus, but
who perhaps had not been quite so zealous in bring
ing all their conduct into harmony with those high and
searching requirements, might be in hell. And in
that event hell would contain people who were moral
ly better than some of those in heaven.
The confusion that comes when we try to state our
belief regarding these two fixed states arises not alone
from the incompleteness of our knowledge of men's
hearts* God knows all, but it would seem to be impos
sible even for absolute knowledge to draw such a
line as to divide all men, with all their shades of good
ness and badness, into just two companies, between
whom forever after an infinite difference of allotment
should stand. Men cannot be pronounced "guilty"
or "not guilty" with no possible third verdict, on the
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total finding, as they might be on some specific
charge. They are guilty of some things, innocent of
others. And Paul says that we are to be judged
"according to the deeds done in the body" — the de
cision is "founded upon an estimate of character as il
lustrated and proved by conduct."
The claim is sometimes made — apparently in defi
ance of Paul's basis of judgment just quoted, and in
rejection of that of Jesus, who in that classical pas
sage on the final judgment in Matthew's Gospel, pic
tured the awards as resting upon men's faithfulness
or unfaithfulness to the demands made upon them for
humane service — that we are not judged upon our
conduct, but upon our personal acceptance or rejec
tion of Jesus Christ as the Saviour. But what is
meant by "accepting" him? It surely means to trust
in the mercy he reveals, and then by the grace and
help he gives, to strive to do the will of God. The
sincerity and reality of a man's acceptance of Christ
are to be judged by his endeavor to do that will of
God; that is, by his conduct. That was what Jesus said :
"By their fruits ye shall know them. . . . Not
every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter
into the kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the will
of my Father which is in heaven." Paul's conten
tion, therefore, that we are judged according to the
deeds done in the body, is in plain agreement both
with the words of his Master and with all that is im
plied in the doctrine of salvation by faith.
The whole trend of the New Testament teaching is
toward the establishment of the truth that men are to
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be judged upon the record of their deeds. The sheep
and the goats stood respectively for the people who
were humane and for those who were selfish or in
human : "those who had done the works of love out of
a free, uncalculating heart" were accepted, and those
who had shown no real disposition to render such serv
ice were rejected. The wise virgins were accepted
because they had done their duty in social service, and
the foolish ones were shut out because they had care
lessly failed to do theirs. The five-talent man was
rewarded because he had used his powers as he was
bidden, and the one-talent man was cast into the outer
darkness because he had failed to make that righteous
use of his more modest ability. The rich man's beliefs
or unbeliefs are not referred to in the parable of
Dives and Lazarus; indeed, theological belief except
as we see the fruits of it in conduct is never brought
into any scene of judgment portrayed by our Lord —
his destiny is made to turn upon his conduct. It was
clearly wrong for the rich man to allow a poor sick fel
low to starve and die at his gate ; and for that inhuman
ity he was punished. Deeds and conduct are the crite-
rions everywhere. Belief is saving in that it is a means
to that end, just as a woodman's axe is a means to an
end. We do not judge him by the sharpness, the size
or shape of his axe, but by the wood he cuts. We
judge men not by the size, the polish, the steel-like
strength and sharpness of their creeds, but by the con
duct that these opinions aid them in showing to the
world. In considering this question of judgment,
then, we must hold fast to the teaching of Jesus and of
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Paul that men are judged according to the deeds done
in the body, and not try by any theological makeshift
to transfer the stress of judgment to some easier
quarter. Now, on the basis of the deeds done in the body,
it is hard to adjust this first theory of judgment so
that it will rightly divide all men into just two classes
at death, one destined to endless bliss and the other
to endless torment. It makes a lame showing even
in the region of abstract theology, and when we at
tempt to fill it in with concrete lives the embarrassment
increases. A certain popular lecturer used to put this
illustration before the unthinking with telling effect.
A wicked man goes in to rob a bank. He shoots the
cashier, the teller and the bookkeeper, before they
have time to resist. He robs the bank, but is after
ward caught, tried for his crime, and sentenced to be
hanged. The men in the bank whom he killed were
honest, worthy men, taking care of their customers'
interests with fidelity, kind men in their homes and
useful citizens, but none of them had ever made a pro
fession of religion; none of them could be called re
generate according to evangelical standards. Each
had a vague purpose of coming sometime into closer
and more vital relations with Jesus Christ ; yet without
heing utterly and hopelessly bad, each had postponed
it until without a moment's warning or opportunity
to breathe any sort of prayer, he was shot down at his
post of duty, and went to his eternal account.
The murderer who killed them had time in the peni
tentiary, after he was sentenced and before his execu-
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tion, to repent, to believe on. the Saviour, and to ac
cept the offices of the priest who served as chaplain and
gave him in due form the absolution and blessing of
the Church. He received the sacrament and died in
all the odor of sanctity that such experiences can con
fer. And then the lecturer used to say, "You tell me
that this murderer swung off the gallows into ever
lasting glory and looked over the safe battlements of
heaven and saw in the place of lament and pain below,
the three men he had suddenly shot down in their un-
regenerate state?" The fallacy is of course apparent,
but it held enough of truth to set many uninstructed
people in opposition to what they supposed was the
religion of Jesus Christ. It is a sufficiently adequate
illustration of the difficulties involved in certain tra
ditional theories to make us all chary of outlining
in detail a future judgment based on the notion of a
separation at death of all the race into the two states,
with an impassable and infinite gulf forever yawning
between them.
The second traditional view is that of universafism.
As it is preached now it does not mean that all men
are punished for their evil doing in this life and that
when they die they all go at once to heaven. This
crude form of universalism current a century ago has
been abandoned. The modern form of this belief is to
the effect that all men reap what they have sown ac
cording to a justice which allows no slips. All wrong
doing will be punished both here and hereafter, but
always with reference to the correction of the wrong
doer. All retribution works in the interests of divine
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grace, and the hard experiences it brings serve to
accomplish what gentler treatment did not achieve.
Hell therefore is not a place of endless, hopeless doom,
but a reform school. The worm which dieth not is
made to gnaw in the interests of moral recovery and
the flames which are not quenched are to burn out the
dross, leaving the life pure as a result of this fiery dis
cipline. As men are led by the chastisement of God
to repent, to accept his mercy, and to form purposes
of living new lives, they are pardoned out. At last,
because God is greater than sinful men, because where
sin abounds grace does much more abound, and be
cause his persuasions to righteousness are simply inex
haustible and therefore destined to be finally success
ful, all men will be saved by being reclaimed to holi
ness. This view derives its Scriptural support from such
passages as the parable of the sheep, where the Good
Shepherd is represented as going out after the lost
sheep "until he finds it." He does not return without
it. Jesus also said, "I, if I be lifted up from the earth,
will draw all men unto me." He thus expressed his
confident hope of the complete success of his undertak
ing to save the world. The expression "everlasting"
or rather "age-long" punishment is understood to
mean a process of chastisement which as a process en
dures throughout the whole age or dispensation of
judgment, but which as to any individual soul is not
endless. And this contention is strengthened by the
„ fact that the word translated "punishment" means
literally "pruning"— the removing of the crooked or
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fruitless branches and the restoration of the tree to its
best self. The fact that Jesus is described as "the
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world"
is also urged as indicating complete success and as
being entirely inapplicable to one who should fail
with half the human race.
Paul is a favorite writer with the defenders of this
view. "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be
made alive" — the effects of redemption to be as uni
versal as the effects of transgression. Paul says that
"Christ is the Saviour of all men, especially of them
that believe." He speaks of a time when "every knee
shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is
Lord, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and
things under the earth :" and inasmuch as we are told
that "no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by
the Holy Ghost," this seems to indicate a universe re
deemed, with no outlying portions still in rebellion.
Paul says again, "It pleased the Father that in him
should all fulness dwell; and having made peace
through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all
things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be
things in earth, or things in heaven." This is cer
tainly a picture of a universe where the work of res
toration is complete.
Peter also speaks of "the times of restitution" or
restoration "of all things." The author of Revelation
predicts the time when "every creature which is in
heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and
such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, shall
worship saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and
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power, be unto him that sitteth upon/ the throne, and
unto the Lamb for ever and ever." The whole crea
tion of sentient beings shall worship God and pay
to the completed process of redemption.
There is something courageous and winsome about
this claim, which has enlisted the sympathy and sup
port of a host of noble hearts. Any man who can
believe that this gospel of "the larger hope" is well-
founded, must find unspeakable satisfaction in pro
claiming it. It has been set to noble music in the lines
of some of the great poets.
"Oh yet we trust, that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill.
That nothing walks with aimless feet,
That not one life will be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete."
If I were a root and branch Calvinist, I should cer
tainly be a universalist. If I held that God elects,
chooses, and wills certain men to be saved, and does
save whomsoever he will, I should certainly believe
that he would save them all. But salvation depends
on human choice. Salvation is the attainment of
holy character which can result only where men de
cide to give themselves to the pursuit of holiness.
If salvation were to be accomplished by putting all
men into a certain comfortable place called heaven,
the sheer Almightiness of God could readily manage
it. But since salvation is godly character, to be de
veloped by human choices, we cannot affirm confidently
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that all men in this world, or in any world, will choose
it. The facts around us do not seem to warrant such
a high claim. God has entreated men; Christ lived
for them, taught for them, died for them; the Holy
Spirit stands at every door and knocks, and yet men
intentionally and wilfully choose unholiness and live
in it. We stand amazed at the awful power a man has
to say to the Almighty himself, "I will not." In the
face of all the moral phenomena open to us, in the
presence of so much willing, deliberate, continued
refusal of God's mercy in Christ, I do not find sufficient
warrant for saying that all men will finally choose
holiness and consequent happiness when the great rec
ord of their decisions shows to such an extent the
persistent choice of unholiness.
Further than that, the universalist view flatly con
tradicts certain plain statements of Christ himself.
His tenderness was infinite and his confidence in the
ultimate success of his own redemptive efforts as great
as ours dare be, yet he uttered the most solemn words
to be found in Scripture touching the final outcome
of evil choices. He spoke of irremediable moral fail
ure. He pictured it by referring to fruitless trees
cut down and cast into the fire; chaff separated from
the wheat, swept up, and burned. In such event the
day of opportunity for the fruitless tree or the chaff
seemed to be over. Unfaithful men were cast into
outer darkness and the door was shut, with no men
tion made of future opening. Men who built their
houses on the sands of ungodliness found that such
houses were thrown down by the elements that came to
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test them, and swept away without remedy. The selfish
man who had lived inhumanly found himself sepa
rated from the objects of his desire by a great and
fixed gulf. Of a certain man who committed griev
ous wrong, the tender-hearted Saviour said, "It had
been good for that man if he had not been born,"
which, in the event of his final restoration to holiness
and to a consequent eternity of happiness, would
not have been true.
In the face of these plain declarations of Christ,
then, attractive and winning as is the view of an
"eternal hope" and the final success of every soul
born into the world, I cannot believe that it has suffi
cient foundation to warrant us in proclaiming it as
the gospel of the Son of God. The wide region of
failure in the physical world seems to find a counter
part in the moral failure of which the Scriptures speak
solemnly, and against which Jesus, with all his opti
mism, warned men, urging them repeatedly to strive
as those who would enter in at a strait gate, which
many would fail to find.
The third traditional view is that of conditional
immortality, or the annihilation of the unregenerate.
This is "the aristocratic view of immortality." Ac
cording to it, men are naturally mortal and immortal
ity is held out as a prize to be gained by spiritual
effort. Those who become Christians in this world
inherit eternal life, while the moral failures are sim
ply blotted out. This view is held by the Advent-
ists, by some other small sects, and by individual
Christians here and there in many of our churches.
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It finds its Scriptural support in three classes of
passages. First, those passages which indicate that
righteousness will some day be universal, with no
outlying regions of sin and pain, thus excluding the
idea of persistent wickedness and of consequent un
ending punishment ; second, passages which rep
resent the sinner as being naturally a mortal being,
simply capable of receiving immortality through his
union with Christ; and third, those passages which
state that death will be the penalty for those
who are not thus united to Christ. "The wages
of sin is death; but the gift of God is
eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." "God
so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not
perish, but have everlasting life." "He that hath the
Son hath life ; and he that hath not the Son of God hath
not life." The passages which speak of a "second
death" are also urged. The further fact is cited that
the "tares," the "chaff," the "fruitless branches'' were
all "burned up," indicating extinction of being1 rather
than eternal torment for the unregenerate who were
thus symbolized.
This view is further supported by certain scientific
and philosophical considerations. As a matter of fact,
it is simply the scientific doctrine of the survival of
the fittest carried over info the moral world* and
dressed in ecclesiastical phrases. The strong in right
eousness and faith survive; those who are weak in
these moral elements go to the wall and perish. The
philosophical claim is to the effect that evil limits
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men. As they persist in wrong-doing, they grow con
stantly smaller and have less and less significance for
a moral universe. This lessening process goes on until
the nature becomes a mere infinitesimal point without
relations to sustain it in being, and it therefore drop?
out. "Loss of personal existence is the natural end of
a life, in which sin runs its full course and brings
forth its full fruit; a man sins on and gradually re
duces himself, by the disuse and extinguishment of
power after power, to nonentity." This doctrine thus
: •¦"~dures something of the competitive principle as a
spur to moral effort, and offers eternal life as a priv
ilege to be gained by those who will make the adequate
endeavor. This view seems more humane than the first, and
in a world where moral failure is so common, more
probable than the second. I have no serious quarrel
with those who hold it as an interesting theory. I
do object when they urge it upon me dogmatically as
the one view taught in Scripture. It is not that.
Scripture can be quoted for it, as indeed Scripture
may be quoted for both the first and second views.
But it also has against it many passages which teach
a contrary theory. It errs in using Scripture with a
literalness which is unfair and inaccurate. "Eternal
life" is not, according to the definition of Jesus, or the
prevailing use of the phrase throughouf the New
Testament, "mere continuance of being: it is en
riched and elevated being, as worthy and glorious as it
is endless." The word "death," as used in many pas-
gages, is by no means synonymous with extinction —
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this is clearly indicated where the father spoke of the
prodigal son as having been "lost and dead," although
the wayward son had been in conscious existence dur
ing all that period.
The rough-and-ready way in which great masses of
our fellow beings are by this view handed over to de
struction because they have not made such attain
ments in righteousness as others have made or be
cause they have not been led to accept the offer of
eternal life, so little understood by any of us, also
gives a shock to our moral natures. This belief seems
to relegate to extinction all the heathen who have not
received eternal life in Christ, and who from the situ
ation in which they found themselves have never had
any opportunity to receive it. Thus from Scripture,
from moral reason and from the claims of Christian
humanity, so many opposing considerations arise that
I cannot enroll myself as a positive believer in the an
nihilation of the unregenerate.
If no one of these three views then can be held
dogmatically against all comers, what shall we say?
If Scripture, honestly interpreted and fully compared
part with part, does not teach any one view to the
exclusion of all the rest ; if the general indications of
all the facts attainable and the considerations ad
vanced by moral reason do not indicate one certain out
come of the moral processes at work, where shall a
thoughtful Christian stand? It seems to me the true
position is about here: It does not seem to have
pleased God to reveal to us anything like a precise pro
gram of the future world. Beyond the clear and
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powerful sanctions for righteousness and the sol
emn warnings against ungodliness, afforded by our
knowledge of a future state of rewards and punish
ments, where each shall receive its appropriate desert,
he seems to have felt that for his immature children
one world at a time was enough. Our attempts to
bring all the passages of Scripture bearing upon the
final outcome into line with either of the three tra
ditional views, fails, and must fail, for no one definite
program has been outlined. Any definite theory about
the final issues of the future world is compelled to
support itself by a partial use of Scripture. It
draws its conclusions from certain selected passages,
but fails to give due consideration to other passages
which point to a contrary view. The entire silence
of Paul, the greatest of the apostles, respecting the
method or results of punishment beyond the grave is
worthy of careful consideration by all his fellow Chris
tians. The Bible was not intended to furnish exact in
formation about the future world, nor to enable us to
say precisely what God will finally do with the bad
people or with those whose characters are indetermi
nate, whose moral unripeness is such that they have
never been competent to decide the momentous ques
tion of final character and eternal destiny. The Bible
was intended to make known to us the offer of his
grace and truth, as aids in holy living now; to guide
us in the way of such righteous activity as he can ap
prove ; to give the stimulus that comes from the over-
brooding realities of a spiritual world ; and with these
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aids to right conduct clearly in our possession, we
may go about our Christian lives leaving the future
in his great hands. When we are asked what will
finally be done with the heathen who have neither ac
cepted nor rejected Christ, because they never heard
of him, we need not hesitate to say, "We do not know."
Why should we know? What will finally be done
with those about us who are not totally or ir-
reclaimably bad, and yet who die and give no sign of
evangelical repentance and conversion? We do not
know. Why should we know? That field of inquiry
is both wide and attractive, but we shall do well "to
be faithful to our own ignorance." The cause of pure
and undefiled religion is never advanced by our pre
tending to know what we do not know. I have no
complete map of the future to hang upon the wall' of
my study or in my church. I need none. I prefer
to hang there the portrait of Jesus Christ. It is the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ with whom
we have to do both here and hereafter, and that
Judge of all the earth will do right.
We find ourselves involved in uncertainty when
ever we try to go beyond a few simple principles.
"Surely I know that it shall be well with them that
fear God. . . . But it shall not be well with the
wicked." "The way of the transgressor is hard." Any
one can see that here. The kind hands of the Al
mighty made it hard, expressly for our warning. It
grows harder the longer men travel it. We have
nothing that leads us to think that this will ever be
changed. If, at any time, anywhere, unrighteousness
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should succeed in being permanently prosperous, then
God would have ceased to be the moral ruler of his
world. We are accustomed to think of the hard way
of transgression chiefly with reference to sins against
the body or coarse crimes against the social order.
But we live under spiritual laws as well. The same
God who commanded us not to kill, steal nor commit
adultery, also commanded us to live lives of trust,
reverence, prayer and self-denial. The way of the
transgressor against these laws shall likewise be hard.
As to the final outcome of it all, I do not pretend to
know. I fall back on my confidence that "the Judge
of all the earth will do right." What that right shall
finally be, I must leave to him. When the facts are
all in and when my moral judgment has grown suffi
ciently mature to see things as they are, I am con
fident that I shall see that it is right. With that
high confidence in the moral character of God, with
the absolute certainty of the present and unending
benefits of righteousness, and with the awful conse
quences of wrong-doing made clear beyond a perad-
venture in the world about me as well as in Scripture,
I need no further program.
Indeed, these definite programs, of the future have
done a vast amount of harm. Credulous congrega
tions have been taught many things about the future
of which we cannot be sure, and men have been find
ing out that we are not sure, simply because it has
not pleased Him who knows to put the information in
our hands ; and as a result of this discovery, many of
them have been led to distrust even those parts of the
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message which are worthy of all confidence. In this
way we suffer a loss of power in speaking with au
thority and effect about the ascertained moral reali
ties in the case.
As I wrote these last words, I turned to a volume
of sermons. They were not preached by some obscure,
untaught, untrained man on a frontier station, without
books or other aids to scholarship at his command. They
were preached in the city of London to a great con
gregation of people, by one who stood foremost among
the preachers of this generation, as judged by the
hearing he secured and by the clear evidences of use
fulness. He was great and good, not because of, but
in spite of, some points in his theological teaching. I
refer to Charles Haddon Spurgeon and these were
his words: "Thou wilt sleep in dust a little while.
When thou diest thy soul will be tormented alone—
that will be a hell for it— but at the day of judgment
thy body will join thy soul, and then thou wilt have
twin hells ; body and soul shall be together, each brim
ful of pain, thy soul sweating in its inmost pores drops
of blood, and thy body from head to foot suffused
with agony; conscience, judgment, memory, all tor
tured; but more thy head tormented with racking
pains, thine eyes starting from their sockets with sights
of blood and woe, thine ears tormented with 'sullen
moans and hollow groans and shrieks of tortured
ghosts'; thine heart beating high with fever; thy pulse
rattling at an enormous rate in agony: thv limbs
cracking like the martyrs in the fire, and yet unburnt;
thyself put in a vessel of hot oil, pained, yet coming
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out undestroyed ; all thy veins becoming a road for the
hot feet of pain to travel on; every nerve a string on
which the devil shall ever play his diabolical tune of
hell's unutterable lament; thy soul forever and ever
aching, and the body palpitating in unison with thy
soul. . . . Many of you will go away and laugh
and call me, as I remember once being called before,
'a hell-fire parson.' Well, go; but you will see the
hell-fire preacher one day in heaven, perhaps, and you
yourselves will be cast out; and looking down thence
with reproving glance, it may be that I shall remind
you that you heard the Word and listened not to it.
Ah, men, it is a light thing to hear it; it will be a
hard thing to bear it. You listen to me now unmoved ;
it will be harder work when death gets hold of you and
you lie roasting in the fire."1
All this from one of the most celebrated preachers
of our time in all the English-speaking world! It
was not a hasty, hurried utterance that a man preach
ing without manuscript might unguardedly make.
He wrote it down with his own right hand, sent it to
the printer, corrected the proof, and published it for
wide circulation as his deliberate conviction. It is
not the gross materialism and cruelty of the concep
tion which offends us so much as the dogmatic assump
tion in it all. Where did he find out all that? How did
he know? Where did he learn that men will be
"roasted in literal fire," plunged now and then "into
vessels of hot oil," with nerves exposed and used by
the devil as fiddle-strings upon which to play his
1Spurgeon's Sermons, Volume II, page 275.
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fiendish music? Where did he get the idea that he
in heaven would be permitted to stand, in a strange
attitude for a man of Christian compassion, surely, on
the battlements of heaven and look "with reproving
glance," shaking his finger at tormented souls, and
saying, "I told you so." This is certainly not the
atmosphere of the New Testament. He knew noth
ing about any of those things, and the picture is a bit
of crude and awful mythology. The inhumanity of it
makes men shudder, but still worse the raw, dogmatic
ignorance and assumption touching the destinies of
those identical men gathered there before him, was
calculated to drive thoughtful people into unbelief.
Without making bold to know, what apparently God
did not intend us to know, about the final destiny of
those who persist in refusing his will concerning
them, there is enough of solid ground to stand upon
to make us realize our full responsibility to him for
our conduct. "We shall all be made manifest before
the judgment seat of Christ." Judgment day will be
a revelation of what we have become by our own acts
and choices. "The seed sown here will naturally de
termine the fruit to be gathered hereafter." The ab
soluteness of moral law; the fact that men must reap
what they sow, here and hereafter; the necessity of
personal righteousness for the attainment of peace
and happiness; the stern demand that every one shall
seek holiness, without which no man shall see the
Lord; the awful consequences of persistent disobedi
ence to a loving Father; the baseness and ingratitude
of trifling with him, or of turning one's back upon
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the pleading mercy of Jesus Christ ; the terrible chas
tisements which the Scriptures tell us plainly shall
be visited upon inhuman and godless lives — these
plain words of Holy Writ, based on ascertainable real
ities in the moral order as we know it here, are enough
to bring out the seriousness of living, and a deep
sense of personal accountability to a Moral Judge,
without conjuring up such lurid fairy stories and myth
ology as sometimes find place in evangelistic appeals.
It may be that some of us preach the positive, hope
ful side of Christianity too much, and do not dwell
sufficiently on the darker things of warning and judg
ment. Perhaps we look altogether too much on the
bright side. I confess my own sympathies have been
with the men whose message reads, "The kingdom of
heaven is at hand," rather than with those who go
about saying, "The kingdom of hell is at hand." The
former was the message of Jesus — it was the one he
put on the lips of his apostles when he sent them out.
There are many things to give us hope and confi
dence. If wise generals never fight unless there is
a reasonable prospect of victory, we may be sure God
would never have undertaken this fight with evil, this
contest with the struggling, rebellious will of man,
unless there was a good prospect of success. He
will subdue this world to himself. He will establish
righteousness. He will surely enlist in his own serv
ice a vast army of faithful men and women who
shall win a victory glorious enough to fill earth and
sky with songs of praise. He will see of the travail
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of his soul and be satisfied — and we may rest assured
that what satisfies him will more than satisfy us.
There will be cowards and deserters, alas, who
may refuse to march under his banners or to wear the
name of his Son— of these the Scriptures give noth
ing but a solemn account! Misery springs out of
wrong-doing as the plant from the seed. Retribution
follows upon disobedience naturally and therefore
inevitably. We have no warrant for supposing that it
can ever be otherwise in a universe controlled by a
Moral Being. Therefore, punishment will last as long
as sin lasts, and nothing but holiness can ever see the
face and share the joy of the Father.
Without venturing where we do not know, we may,
through that strong faith in the integrity of God,
in which Jesus has established us, feel sure that every
human being will have the fullest opportunity to attain
the object of his creation which the Almighty, who
desires that end above all things, can give him. We
may still further be assured that every human being
will receive from the providential ordering of cir
cumstances, from the revelation God has made and
will make of himself, and from the direct persuasions
of the Spirit, who goeth where he listeth, all the im
pelling influence to turn him to holiness that his na
ture can bear and still remain free to choose. And
we may be sure that no human being will be given
over to perish or to suffer endless loss and pain, while
God can see any possibility of his salvation. These
three great confidences, not original with me, but
urged by many teachers of religion as axioms of
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judgment taken from the character of God revealed
through Him who came to seek and to save that which
was lost, fill us with courage, and they give us a gos
pel of good news for all the children of men.

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CHAPTER XI
C)l)e Qreeb of a Gfjrfetian

WE find in these days a considerable
number of light-hearted and light
headed people who count it all joy to
pour contempt upon creeds. The
moment any one of them spies the word "doctrine"
or "dogma" or "creed," he feels impelled to go and
give it a kick, as one might kick an ugly dog. It is
a stupid performance; it is done chiefly by people
who apparently do their religious thinking with their
feet rather than with their heads. We all have our
creeds, simple or elaborate, positive or negative; we
must have them, unless we propose to commit intel
lectual suicide and stop thinking altogether.
The word "creed" comes, as we all know, from the
Latin word "credo" "I believe." It refers to con
victions which are held touching certain matters where
the truth or falsity of the claims advanced cannot be
instantly submitted to the test of demonstration, as we
demonstrate that two and two make four or that a
straight line is the shortest distance between two points,
or that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen.
These convictions lie in another realm, and while the
man who holds them feels that he has sufficient rea
sons for holding them, he may not be able to coerce

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the intelligence of another into accepting them, and
they therefore constitute his "creed" in this matter.
The fool who said in his heart, "There is no God,"
had a creed — that was his creed. He did not know
that there was no God, because any one to know that
would have to know everything, for if there remained
any outlying section of the universe which his intel
ligence had not perfectly mastered, God might still be
there. Such a statement of belief seems to most of us
both weak and foolish, but it was no less a creed.
Thomas H. Huxley used a great deal of time and
breath and ink in fighting certain theological creeds,
but he was personally one of the most dogmatic Eng
lishmen of the nineteenth century. He had his creeds
and he fought for them as stoutly as ever did any
Westminster divine for the statements of the famous
"Confession." The agnostic who insists that we can
not in the nature of the case know anything about God
or prayer or immortality, is a man with a creed — and
if he is a thorough-going agnostic he will sit up all
night to defend his poor, hard, disappointing creed.
The moment our minds move out beyond the things of
sense or the exact demonstrations of mathematics or
the inevitable conclusions of formal logic, we begin
to cherish convictions of some sort, positive or nega
tive, inspiring or depressing, and these convictions we
cherish make up our creeds. The whole habit there
fore of pouring contempt upon creeds is intellectual
folly. We find also certain people, whose tongues swing
easily, who are constantly saying, '.'We do not care

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what a man believes. One creed is as good as an
other to us. We care only for deeds." And then
they commonly look around as if they thought they
had actually said something, not realizing that they
were simply beating the air. "One creed as good
as another" — not unless it is as true as the other;
not unless it can show as much sound reason under it
and as much moral and spiritual fruitage growing
out of it, where for years and years together it has
been tried on by men and women, in the actual business
of living ! That is the test ; and only that creed which
can make the best showing for itself in the light of
moral reason and spiritual experience is acceptable
to the serious, discriminating mind.
"We do not care what a man believes" — this also is
a stupid statement ! Do they not care whether a man
believes the truth or a falsehood, whether he stands
on facts or on fancies? We do care — every sane
man cares! Intellectual freedom does not mean lib
erty to believe any vagary which shows its head —
it means only the fullest opportunity to discover the
truth. It is folly and weakness for a man to build
his life on beliefs which are soon to be swept away
like chaff by the wind of knowledge. It is folly and
weakness for a man to refuse reasonable beliefs,
which, if accepted, would put gunpowder behind his
aspiration, his utterance, his action. In the long run
only the truth will prove serviceable. For a time the
vain imaginations of 'some flighty individual may
work apparent results, but by the test of years it will
be found that only those beliefs which are grounded
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in reason and which match the system of things as
we find them, will be productive of strength and peace
and joy. All men of good sense care profoundly
what people believe.
We also find certain individuals who have an un
easy feeling that when they undertake to accept any
religious creed, they must, in some measure at least,
take leave of their senses or ignore the claims of rea
son. Their notion is that religion is almost entirely a
matter of sentiment, feeling and imagination. They
would agree, no doubt, with the statement of the
schoolboy who wrote, "Faith is that faculty by which
we believe what we know is not so."
This was not exactly the way Jesus regarded this
matter of belief. One of his great sayings, standing
there in the very heart of the Gospel in the fourteenth
chapter of John, was, "I am the truth." One of his
great promises to his disciples was, "Ye shall know
the truth." He furthermore stated the result to be
expected from such knowledge, "The truth shall make
you free." And when he came to utter the first of
the two great commandments on which should hang
all the law arid the prophets, his word was, "Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart"— for
religious life does include all the nobler sentiments
and affections which belong to human nature at its
best. But he did not pause there — "Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength."
Lest some near-sighted individual should fancy that
any section of our nature or any set of faculties was

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not to be included in the sphere of religious influence,
he repeated that great word "all" four times! All
thy heart, all thy soul, all thy mind, all thy strength !
He had not a shred of sympathy with the vain notion
that religious belief would not bear the scrutiny of in
telligence. He invited, nay, he commanded, men to
use their brains and all the brains they had in the dis
covery of that complete truth which was to set them
free from all that would hurt or hinder them in their
growth. "Come now," he might have said with the
ancient prophet, "and let us reason together." Bring
up all your mind and devote it to the study of these
sublime claims in his gospel, until you find yourself
firmly established in the love of God, to go no more
out. We find still other people who seem to think
that the less we believe, the better off we are. They
look into the minister's face in a kind of dyspeptic
way and say, "How much must we believe in order
to be Christians? Must we believe this? Must we
believe that?" If they can get the affirmations of the
gospel reduced down to the very lowest terms, they
seem to think they might manage it.
It is a curious attitude of mind. We do not take
that course in regard to other interests. We can
not imagine a man saying, "How much must I eat in
order to live? I want to eat the very least amount
possible which will keep me on this side of the dead
line." The famous Doctor Tanner succeeded in liv
ing for forty days on water — and he said that if he
could have been furnished with an unlimited supply
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of watermelons he might have continued for forty
days more! Perhaps! He did not recommend it,
however, as a diet for people generally. The question
is not, "What is the least amount that I can just exist
upon," but rather, "How much shall I eat for the
highest degree of health, pleasure, effectiveness?"
And in the matter of religious belief, while there are
souls all about us who are keeping along on the thin
nest kind of theological gruel — God bless them ! I am
glad they are alive — we cannot but wish that they were
better fed! They would not look so lean and sad
whenever the subject of religion is mentioned, if they
ate more.
The attitude of that man born blind was the right
one. He was conscious of a very meager equipment
when he began his Christian life. At one stage of his
experience, he did not even know whether Jesus Christ
was a sinner or not. He was only strong and clear
at that time on a single point; — "One thing I know:
whereas I was blind, now I see." And it was
this same Jesus, concerning whom his views were ex
ceedingly hazy, who had wrought this change in his
life. But the man was open-minded always — when
the Pharisees had cast him out of the synagogue,
Jesus found him, as he always finds those who endure
anything for his sake, and said to him, "Dost thou be
lieve on the Son of God ?" The man whose eyes had
been opened did not know whether he believed on the
Son of God or not. He was not ready to commit him
self until the real contents of and grounds for such
a belief were made1 plainer to him ; nor would he re-
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fuse such a belief without first looking into it. "Who
is he, Lord?" he replied. "Who is the Son of God?
I might believe on him." And then Jesus revealed
himself to the man whose eyes he had opened, as the
Son of God ; and at the end of their conversation, the
man said, "Lord, I believe." This is the reasonable
and hopeful attitude of mind. Who is he? What is
it? Whereon do the claims of the Christian creed
rest? I might believe — indeed I want to believe all
that it is possible for a rational man to believe, if it is
inspiring and helpful.
The wholesome attitude, then, is not how much
must we believe, but how much may we reasonably be
lieve. We have no desire to be absurd or supersti
tious or devotees of the impossible, but we do desire
the fullest possible creed which may be reasonably
accepted and acted upon. Life is certainly richer
and sweeter for one who believes that God is "the
Father" than for one with the fool's creed, "There is
no God." Are there not sufficient warrants to en
courage us in believing in God the Father? Life is
certainly more privileged and glorious for one who
believes in the efficacy of prayer, in the Bible as con
taining a message from the Eternal, and in immortal
ity, than for one who limps along without these aids
to aspiration and progress. Without therefore in
anywise taking leave of our senses or ignoring the
claims of pure reason, we find ourselves asking, "How
much may be rationally believed by aspiring souls?"
And even though the purely logical faculties may
not have been coerced, as they can be coerced to believe
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that the whole is greater than any part, or that water
released will always run down hill; and even though
the conclusions of the unaided intellect touching some
of the claims of religion may stop short of that per
fect degree of certitude common to mathematical
demonstration ; if those claims are manifestly for our
health and vigor, our inner cheer and comfort, it is the
part of common sense to accept them, provided always
they offer nothing impossible or absurd. The people
who take this line are in a much better way than those
who stand forever shivering on the brink of actual
faith, fearing lest they might include in their confidence
some possible item of error. This point has been
conclusively argued in Professor James* well known
essay on "The Will to Believe." "Better go without
faith forever," these timid and fumbling souls seem
to say, "than to admit the least possibility of error
into our hope." It is an attitude of mind utterly fool
ish and barren! There are many worse things than
believing too much that is good about God or about
ourselves or about our possible destiny. Believing
too little or believing nothing at all is infinitely worse
for the interests of the inner life! And inasmuch as
we stop far short of complete and exact certitude
touching so many things on this mundane sphere, the
attitude of the man whose eyes had been opened, "Who
is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?" is altogether
more healthful and promising.
Personally I find sufficient warrant for those main
beliefs which make up essential Christianity, in the
great fact that life is more successfully and happily
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lived in the atmosphere of reasonable faith than in
any other atmosphere whatsoever. If any one will
move out through the world, taking human experi
ence in the large, over wide areas and through long
periods of history, I am confident that he will come
back feeling that there is no gainsaying this claim.
Human life is most successfully and happily lived in
the atmosphere of Christian faith; it is the only at
mosphere which seems to sustain life at its best over
broad areas and for long periods. A man can live
after a fashion for years in a dark cellar, but the color
and vigor, the general effectiveness and joy of his
life would not compare favorably with the quality of
life possessed by a man who lived for those same years
in a sunny upper room. The actual results justify the
instinctive preference we all feel for the sunny room.
Men and women can live and many of them do live
for years in apartments all unlighted by the faith and
hope and love of the gospel of the Son of God, but
when we compare the color and tone, the effectiveness
and happiness of their lives, with that of people simi
larly constituted who have walked in the light of
Christian faith, the results will justify us in the pref
erence so many of us feel for the way of Christ.
I have thus briefly indicated in this little book some
of the grounds upon which I am "ready always to give
to every man that asketh a reason for the hope that is
in me." "Reasons," the apostle said, not compelling
proofs or final demonstrations ! He knew that all the
greater beliefs of the race shade off into mysteries
which human intelligence has not perfectly mastered.
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This is true touching the hypotheses we hold in regard
to the heat of the sun, the movements of the planets,
the power of gravitation, the force which turns the
magnetic needle always to the north, the interrelations
and interaction of mind and matter, and many other
familiar phenomena where science finds itself unable to
bring in a final report, but offers us instead what seems
to be a reasonable working hypothesis. We are in
the presence of unsolved mysteries at every one of
these points, but we have adjusted ourselves to the
part we know and we hold working hypotheses touch
ing the parts we do not know ; and thus we live along.
In like manner, in the absence of final proof and dem
onstration touching certain claims of religion where
definite conclusions cannot be made to appear alto
gether compulsory, we choose sides. We choose the
side which can show the largest amount of reason
under it and the largest spiritual fruitage resultant.
We choose between believing in God and undertaking
to explain things without him. We choose between
believing in prayer and undertaking to explain this
vast accumulation of spiritual experience, or the age
long, world-wide habit of prayer without any faith in
its utility. We choose between believing in the future
life, and trying to make out for ourselves a just and
rational world-order without the hope of immortality.
And when we take that course with open minds and
honest hearts, it is my firm conviction that we shall
always be able to give a reason for the hope we cherish.
In seeking to briefly indicate what may well be the
creed of a Christian, I am not sure that I could do
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better than to here quote the creed of the church
which it has been my honor and privilege to serve as
pastor for these ten years. This creed was adopted
by the church after careful consideration and full dis
cussion, without a single dissenting vote. It repre
sents in brief compass that consensus of opinion to
which a large congregation of Christian people came
under the guidance of the Spirit of Truth, who is the
Holy Spirit. It is at once so simple and so compre
hensive that it may aid some people to have it printed
here: "We believe in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ,
His Son, our Lord and Saviour, and in the Holy
Spirit." "We believe in the Bible as the divine rule of faith
and practise, and in prayer, and in the life of useful
service." "We believe in the Holy Church Universal, in sal
vation from sin, in the resurrection from the dead, and
in life everlasting."
"And in this faith we here and now declare our
purpose to live the Christian life."
There is truth enough suggested in that brief state
ment to furnish food for thought and discussion
stretching into many hours and I will only indicate in
a few words the essential content of this creed. It
does not represent all that the people of this church
believe; it does not contain all that some of them
would esteem vital ; it does not state all the truths there
named as some among them would prefer to have
them stated, but it does affirm the agreement to which
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they came touching what were esteemed "The Main
Points." We believe in God and we believe that his character
and disposition toward us, as well as his purpose for
our future, are best indicated by the term "Father."
As the apostle said, "To us, there is but one God, the
Father," and all our religious thinking must be ad
justed to that fundamental claim.
We believe in Jesus Christ his Son — a Sonship alto
gether unique in its perfection — our Lord and Saviour.
He is our Lord in that he is the final standard by
which all lives are to be judged. He is the eternal
Lord and Head of the race in that we owe to him
our ultimate allegiance. And into that great word
"Saviour" we put our fullest confidence in his power
of redemption, of moral recovery, of spiritual re
newal. It might be that theories would vary as to the
precise method by which that redemption is to be ac
complished, but that he is the Saviour of every life
committed to him, we would all agree.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the personal pres
ence of the divine Spirit resident within every heart
from which he is not shut out by a sinful will, the in
forming and guiding Presence within every religious
mind leading it into all the truth, and the hope of the
race through his Continuous Leadership from within
the truest and holiest aspirations of men. We believe
in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ, his Son our
Lord and Saviour, and in the Holy Spirit.
We believe in the Bible as the divine rule of faith
and practise. We leave to literary scholarship the de-
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termination of questions as to date, authorship and
composition of these sacred writings. We do not
affirm equal authority or inerrancy for all the state
ments contained within this literatuure of sixty-six
books, but we do affirm that any man with pure heart
and honest mind may find herein a rule for his faith
and a guide for his conduct, which will be to him noth
ing less than divine..
We believe in prayer as the normal, constant and
fruitful means of fellowship between the heavenly
Father and his earthly children.
We believe in the life of useful service ; for this life
of fellowship with the Father finds its natural and
inevitable expression in doing good.
We believe in the Holy Church Universal, which
is a Church vaster and truer every way than the Con
gregational Church or the Methodist Church or the
Roman Catholic Church or any other similar body,
though it includes all that is genuine in each one of
them. It is that Church to which all those who own
and follow the sway of the spirit that was in Christ
belong. We believe in that Church and in our atti
tude toward other Christian bodies we endeavor to
express that faith.
We believe in salvation from sin — we do not say sal
vation from hell, though the article includes that, for
sin is hell, here and everywhere. We believe that
through repentance and faith in divine grace, men are
saved from all that hurts or hinders them from grow
ing into the likeness and image of the Son of God.
We believe in the resurrection from the dead and
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in life everlasting. As to the final allotments of des
tiny in the world to come, we do not seem to find that
either Scripture or reason or experience points inevi
tably to one theory to the exclusion of all others ; and
we do not therefore dogmatize upon that point. Some
members of this church believe that after death all
souls are assigned at once either to a state of un
speakable and unending bliss or to a state of unending
pain and torment; some believe that all unregenerate
souls are annihilated, only those who are "in Christ"
attaining unto immortality; and some believe that, at
last, every soul will be brought, by penalty it may be,
severe but disciplinary, to holiness and thus to hap
piness. The liberty of interpretation is freely granted
to each one in these matters where no one claim can
show such evidence for its validity as to make impossi
ble all the rest. But we all agree that whatsoever a
man soweth that shall he also reap, and that when the
accounts are finally made up, it will be seen that the
Judge of all the earth has done right. And in this
common faith, here briefly outlined, we stand together
declaring our common purpose to live the Christian
life. Are there not hundreds of hesitating people who
are not members of any church, who have not as yet
made any public profession of their faith, who could, if
they but consulted that which is deepest and best with
in their hearts, stand up to utter together these words
of faith and hope and love? The intellect might not
be coerced by proof and demonstration, but the yearn
ing heart, the aspiring mind and the insistent will
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would stand ready to claim at least this much of Chris
tian truth as food for the inner life! A Christian
faith grounded in reason, vitalized by spiritual experi
ence and made practical by being related at every point
to ordinary duty, is the choicest, dearest possession
any one can have for the life that now is, and it
furnishes the only satisfying preparation for the life
which is to come.

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