YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

x935

THE INFLUENCE OF CHRIST
IN MODERN LIFE

THE INFLUENCE OF CHRIST
IN MODERN LIFE
Being
rV STUDY OF THE NEW PROBLEMS OF THE
CHURCH IN AMERICAN SOCIETY

BY
NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS
PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, BROOKLYN

HODDER & STOUGHTON
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1900,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped December, 1900. Reprinted October,
1901 ; February, 1906 ; June, July, 1910 ; August, 1911.

Norfoooo $)reg0
J. 8. Gushing & Co. — Berwick k Smith
Norwood Mo.su. U.S.A.

DR. W. C. GRAY
Editor of "The Interior"
with admiration for his work, and gratitude
for his stimulating friendship

PREFACE
By way of preeminence the era now closing
has been an era of criticism and destruction.
Nothing has escaped the crucible. Scholars have
carried the method of the laboratory into the
library, the gallery, the legislative hall, and even
into the temples of religion. Old poems, old his
tories, old science, old creeds, have been pulled to
pieces, and studied part by part. With some the
analytic spirit has become a frenzy, and the love
of dissection a morbid passion. With others
analysis has represented a desire to know the
exact facts. Now that the wave of criticism has
passed by, changes many and great are found to
have taken place. Nothing remains as it was.
The old astronomy, the old medicine, the old
architecture, the old ploughs and ships, and the
old theology have passed away. We have a new
chemistry, a new pedagogy, a new psychology.
Nevertheless, the change is more apparent than
real. If the new astronomy has come, men are

viii Preface
warmed by the same old stars and sun. Our psy
chology is new, but reason, memory, and judg
ment are what they were when Plato thought and
David dreamed. The creeds may have changed,
but not the obligations of conscience and duty, or
man's relation to his God. If the gains of our
critical era have been large, the losses also have
been heavy. Criticism moves in a very limited
field. Its restraints are severe. Oft from endur
ing Truth it hears the words, " Here stay thy
proud waves ; thus far and no farther." Fortu
nately the analytic spirit soon discovers that he
who picks a flower to pieces loses it. For the
botanist, the field daisy means a mass of petals
torn part from part, while for Robert Burns "the
wee crimson-tipped flower " means a sweet poem
and hours of rapturous delight. And now that
the intellect has completed its analytic work, our
generation has come to realize that the heart with
its hunger is, as before, unappeased. Religion is
the life of God in the soul of man. The creed
is the outer, verbal photograph of that inner, vital
experience. Man's interest in those verbal pic
tures named creeds, unfortunately, seems waning,
while his interest in religion is steadily waxing.
As Edmund Burke once said, " Man is by con
stitution a religious animal."

Preface \i
Now that the destructive era has closed, from
the view-point of the new scholarship many are
beginning to feel that the critical epoch was, after
all, an epoch of mediocrity and second-rate in
tellect. All the great eras in art and literature
have been creative eras rather than critical. Just
because it was not a great age, and because the
interest in literature was at a very low ebb, the
age of Alexander Pope analyzes, annotates, and
comments upon books that another generation had
written. Conscious of its slender intellectual gifts,
that age dissected old dramas and poems, and wrote
essays upon the departed teachers. Later came
a return of the tide, in the era of Robert Burns
and Wordsworth, when the tides of genius rose
to the flood, and the creative spirit was manifest
not in analysis, but in outbursts of spontaneous
and immortal song. Swept forward upon the new
current, exultant with admiration and delight, the
generation was so busy in enjoying and transmut
ing the new ideals into terms of life and charac
ter, that it forgot the drudgery of analysis and
dissection. In his preparatory work the youth
enters the laboratory to study the human body,
counting its bones and studying the chemical ele
ments of nerves and muscles. Later, when the
young Romeo meets Juliet, he is lifted into a new

z Preface
realm by the new friendship, and never thinks of
reducing the beautiful girl to a group of small
jars marked " lime," " phosphate," and " carbon."
And there are the best of reasons for believing
that in religion the critical epoch has gone and
the creative era has come. Plainly there is a new
spirit in letters, in art, in philosophy, and in reli
gion. If once the pendulum moved far toward
doubt, now it is swinging back toward faith.
There is a growing interest in the great simplici
ties of Christianity, and these chapters, some of
which have been used as addresses before various
colleges and universities, represent an attempt to
distinguish between the transient and permanent
elements of religion. They are not written from
the view point of the scholar or the philosopher,
for treatises addressed to these classes are num
berless ; they are written for the educated young
men of the country, who are troubled by the scep
ticism of the times, and for the multitudes who
are busied with the ten thousand duties of the
counting-room, the market-place, and the factory,
but yet find time to ask what is left of the evangel
of Christ, now that the critical era has passed
away. It should also be said that every one of
these studies has grown out of a busy pastor's
friendship with some person in travail of spirit,

Preface xi
and seeking light midst the mist and uncertainty
of questioning and doubt. Each chapter, there
fore, represents an intellectual battle in some youth
for whom the pastor has cherished a great affec
tion, — a fact that explains the methods used and
the arguments that are marshalled. If, twenty
years ago, the tides of faith seemed to be ebbing
away, to-day there is a return, and the stream that
at first rose to the ankles is now deepening into
a rising flood. The most striking fact in modern
life is the growing reverence for the teachings and
character of Jesus Christ. As once his brothers'
sheaves bowed down before Joseph's sheaf, so
to-day art, literature, law, trade, reform, manifest
more and more reverence for that divine teacher
whose sublime figure already fills the whole hori
zon, and whose teachings are founded as surely as
the mountains and stars.

NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS.

Plyvouth Church,
Brooklyn,
October 25, 1900,

CONTENTS

I. The New Problems of the Pulpit and its Place
in American Life and Thought ... I
II. Social Progress and the Influence of Jesus Christ
in Civilization  39
III. "Jesus Christ the Supreme Example of Genius
in the Realm of Intellect " .... 61
IV. The Supremacy of Christ in the Realm of Ideal
Character  87
V. The Simplicity and Breadth of Christ as a Re
ligious Teacher  1 1 1
VI. God's Silence and His Voices Also : a Study of
Nature's Concealments and Disclosures . . 137
VII. The Higher Nature of Man as a Revelation of
God  157
VIII. The Old and the New Conceptions of God . 179
,' IX. Evolution and Christianity: Every Theory of
Development asks for an Infinite God to
make the Theory Workable . . . .201
X. Evolution and the New View of the Bible . . 227
xiii

xlv Contents
XI. The Swing of the Pendulum from Scepticism to
Faith : an Outlook for those who are seeking
to solve their Doubts and reconstruct a Work
ing Faith  255
| XII. Christ's Relation to the Poet, the Philosopher,
the Scientist, and the Seer .... 279
XIII. Fear, Law, and Love as Motives of Life . 311
XIV. The Automatic Judgment Seat in Man : an
Outlook upon the Problem whether Theistic
Evolution throws Any Light upon Christ's
View of Future Punishment .... 337
XV. The Church : its Problems and Claims upon
American Society  369
Index  397

Weft Nefo problems of tfje pulpit ano its pace
in American Hife ana Eijougijt

" If our religious tenets should ever want a further elucida
tion, we shall not call on atheism to explain them. We shall
not light up our temple from that unhallowed fire.''
" We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is, by
his constitution, a religious animal." — Burke.
" Man is incurably religious." — Sabatier.
"The ministers of Christianity, departing from Asia
Minor, traversing Asia, Africa, and Europe, to Iceland, Green
land and the poles of the earth, suffering all things, enduring
all things, raising men everywhere from the ignorance of idol
worship to the knowledge of the true God, and everywhere
bringing life and immortality to light through the Gospel,
have only been acting in obedience to the divine instruction ;
they were commanded to go forth, and they have gone forth,
and they still go forth. They have sought, and they still seek,
to be able to preach the Gospel to every creature under the
whole heaven. And where was Christianity ever received,
where were its truths ever poured into the human heart, where
did its waters, springing up into everlasting life, ever burst
forth, except in the track of a Christian ministry? Did we
ever hear of an instance, does history record an instance, of
any part of the globe Christianized by lay preachers, or ' lay
teachers ' ? And descending from kingdoms and empires
to cities and countries, to parishes and villages, do we not all
know, that wherever Christianity has been carried, and
wherever it has been taught, by human agency, that agency
was the agency of ministers of the Gospel ? "
— Daniel Webster's tribute to the Christian ministry.

THE NEW PROBLEMS OF THE PULPIT AND ITS
PLACE IN AMERICAN LIFE AND THOUGHT
The scope and philosophy of preaching. Christ's choice
of the pulpit as the instrument of social progress. The influ
ence of moral teachers upon social institutions. Great preach-1
ers and pulpits as springs of literature. Daniel Webster's
testimony to the influence of moral teachers. The so-called
decay of the pulpit, based upon misconception. No ground
for thinking that books, magazines, and papers are to dispos
sess the pulpit. Printed truth fragmentary and imperfect.
Preaching is the truth in personality and involves weight of
character. Great reforms less through great books than
through the great men who wrote them. Individual worth
and culture the true method of enriching the state. Preach
ing difficult because the great poets, artists, and novelists have
now become prophets and preachers. The very achievements
of the church of yesterday dictate new victories and more
difficult ones for to-morrow. The materialistic tendency and
the alienation of the very rich and the very poor. The new
intellectual and physical demands made upon the ministry.
The work of moral instruction the freest and happiest of the
professions, and one involving daily rewards.
PREACHING is man-making, man-saving,
and character-building. On the one hand
it is a science, dealing with reason, affection,
3

4 The New Problems of the Pulpit and
aspiration, and conscience. It concerns the fac
ulties of the soul, their number and nature, and
those divine laws by which the soul passes from
littleness to largeness, and from immaturity to
ripeness and perfection. On the other side
preaching is an art, and has to do with the prob
lems of right living. It teaches the art of so
carrying reason, ambition, and purpose as to
secure happiness and growth for one's self with
peace and prosperity for others. The basis upon
which preaching rests is the fundamental fact
that man begins not full-orbed, but the mere
seed of manhood, at a point named nothing.
For no other living creature is born so far away
from that point named maturity. God has or
dained that just in proportion as living things
rise in the scale of creation the period of time
involved in their development is extended. At
the bottom of creation lies the insect world.
The ephemera are born to-day, to-morrow are
full grown, and on the third day they die. Also
for the lark, with its sweet song, maturity dwells
close beside the nest in which the young bird-
ling lies beneath its mother's wing. Because
the flocks and herds are higher, the ox and
sheep ask full three years for their maturity,
while in Siam the burden-bearing elephant asks

Its Place in American Life and Thought 5
for ten summers and winters for perfect growth
and maturity. But man is the lord of creation.
He begins a little lump of flesh, a handful of
intellectual germs, a bundle of moral roots. Man
begins so far away from home that four score
years are required for his growth and devel
opment. How wondrous are these germinal
faculties named intellect, memory, imagination,
judgment, moral sentiment — faculties more than
two score in number ! And for their unfolding
homes are established, schools are founded, the
college, the library, the gallery, are made rich.
In God's providence all the duties of friendship,
with life's temptations, its defeats and victories
are educive and are instruments of development.
Slowly, therefore, man passes from ignorance to
wisdom; just as a seed becomes a golden sheaf;
just as an acorn becomes an acorn-covering oak,
so when God's truth is brought to bear upon
conduct, the child goes toward the stature of
the sage or seer, the reformer or martyr.
It is sometimes said that man is born without
original righteousness ; and man is also born
without original arithmetic, original geography,
original history, or original industry. Beginning
in ignorance, slowly the pupil climbs to the level
of his wise teacher. Beginning inexpert in mix-

6 The New Problems of the Pulpit and
ing colors, slowly the young artist climbs to the
level of his great master. By long study and
patient drill, the aspirant for wealth or fame or
power enters into the full possession of his intel
lectual and moral gifts. And we are not sur
prised that man's growth in morals requires
drill, study, and practice. If the intellect asks
for its college, the spiritual faculty must also
have its school of instruction. In reality, there
fore, the church is a university of morals for
right living. It is a school where the Bible is
the divine handbook and guide in life. It is a
lecture hall where the old Hebrew prophets,
poets, and kings stand forth to ply men some
times with words of hope and encouragement,
and sometimes with words of fear and alarm,
and where at last Christ appears, our Master and
Model, but also our Saviour and King. And what
the library and lecture hall do for the develop
ment of reason ; what the art gallery and the
great master do for taste and imagination, that
the church and the preacher are to do for con
science and the moral sentiments. And by so
much as character outweighs mere intellect, by
that much does the work of man-building sur
pass system-building. There is no art like the
art of right living. There is no science like

Its Place in American Life and Thought J
the science of character-building, winning, and
loving. Having lingered long in foreign climes and
countries, Plutarch returned home to affirm that
he had found cities without walls, without liter
ature, without coin or kings ; people who know
not the forum, the theatre, or gymnasium ;
"but," added the traveller, "there never was,
nor shall there ever be, a city without temple,
church, or chapel." Since Plutarch's time many
centuries have come and gone, yet for thought
ful men the passing years have only strength
ened the conviction that not until cities are
hung in the air, instead of founded upon rock,
can the ideal commonwealth be established or
maintained without foundations of morals and
religion. Were it possible for the ancient trav
eller to come forth from his tomb, and, moving
slowly down the aisles of time, to step foot into
the scene and city midst which we now do dwell,
he would find that, in the influence of religious
teachers upon liberty, literature, art, and indus
try, that would fully justify the reassertion of
the conviction expressed so many centuries ago.
Indeed, many students of the rise and reign of
the common people make the history of social
progress to be very largely the history of those

8 The New Problems of the Pulpit and
teachers who have lifted up before men Chris
tian ideals and principles, as beacon lights for
the human race. The influence of the pulpit
seems to justify Christ's selection of moral in
struction as his instrument of social reform.
Standing before the cathedral of Wittenberg,
Jean Paul uncovered his head and said, " The
story of the German language and literature is
the story of Martin Luther's pulpit." Webster
through stately oration, Rufus Choate through
impassioned address, James Anthony Froude
through polished essay, have alike affirmed that
the town meeting and our representative gov
ernment go back to that little pulpit in the
Swiss city of Geneva. In the realm of literature,
also, it is highly significant that Shakespeare,
Milton, and Tennyson received their literary in
strument as a free gift from those monks named
Cadmon and Bede, and those pastors who gave
us the King James version of the Bible. Modern
sermons may have become "dry as dust," yet
the time was when the English pulpit united
the functions of lecture hall and library, news
paper and book. For the beginning of our
Saxon speech, Miiller and Whitney take us back
to the cloisters and chapels of old England. But
Addison affirmed that the sermons of two preach-

Its Place in American Life and Thought 9
ers, Tillotson and Barrow, were the standards
of perfection in English writing, and projected
a dictionary that had for its authority the words
and phrases used in the writings of these two
preachers, whom the essayist thought had shaped
English speech and literature. Lord Chatham
once referred the dignity and eloquence of his
style to the fact that he had committed to mem
ory the sermons of the same Barrow.
In our own land, speaking of the pleas for
patriotism and liberty that were heard in the
pulpits of New England just before the Revolu
tion, Emerson said the Puritan pulpits were "the
springs of American liberty " ; while in the
realm of education, Horace Mann notes the fact
that one pastor in New Hampshire linined one
hundred men for the learned professions, and
another country pastor one hundred and twenty
students, including Ezekiel and Daniel. Webster.
Great indeed has been the influence of war,
politics, commerce, law, science, government ;
yet we must also confess that the pulpit has
been one of the great forces in social progress.
Be the reasons what they may, the prophets of
yesterday are still the social leaders of to-day.
To-morrow Moses will reenter his pulpit, and
pronounce judgment, and control verdicts in

10 The New Problems of the Pulpit and
every court of the city. To-morrow, as Ger
mans, we will utter the speech that Luther fash
ioned for us, or as Saxons use the idioms that
Wycliffe and Bunyan taught our fathers. To
morrow the groom and bride will set up their
altars, and, kindling the sacred fires of affection,
they will found their home upon Paul's princi
ple, "The greatest of these is love." To-mor
row the citizen will exercise his privilege of
free thought and speech, and remember that
democracy crossed over into Europe in the little
boat that brought the apostle Paul. To-morrow
educators will reread the Sermon on the Mount
and seek to make rich the schools for the little
ones who bear God's image. To-morrow we
shall find that the great arts that enrich us were
themselves made rich by teachers of the Chris
tian religion. For great thoughts make great
thinkers. It was the golden rule that shotted the can
nons of freedom against the citadel of slavery
and servitude. "The economic and political
struggle of modern society," says the great Eng
lish economist, "are, in the last analysis, religious
struggles — their sole solution, the life and teach
ings of Jesus Christ set forth through the
human voice." In his celebrated argument in

Its Place in American Life and Thought 11
the Girard College case, Daniel Webster reviewed
the upward progress of society, and asked this
question, "Where have the life-giving waters of
civilization ever sprung up, save in the track of
the Christian ministry ? " Having expressed the
hope that American scholars had done something
for the honor of literature abroad ; that our
courts of justice had, to a little degree, exalted
the law ; that the orations in Congress had
tended to extend and secure the charter of
human rights, the great statesman added these
words, " But I contend that no literary efforts,
no adjudications, no constitutional discussions,
nothing that has ever been done or said in
favor of the great interests of universal man,
has done this country more credit at home and
abroad than our body of clergymen." Weightier
or more unqualified testimony was never pro
nounced. Whatever the future may hold for the
pulpit, the past, at least, is secure !
Having affirmed the influence of the pulpit
in early and ignorant eras, some writers now
declare the pulpit has entered upon a decline,
and predict its final decay. In this age of
books and papers, men question the need of
moral instruction through the voice. Let us
confess that never before have the instruments

12 The New Problems of the Pulpit and
for happiness been so numerous or so accessi
ble. The modern devices for increasing knowl
edge are now so artful and insistent, the very
atmosphere of life is so charged with informa
tion, as almost to compel wisdom in the intelli
gent, and forbid illiteracy in the stupid. For
the training of reason, the printing-presses toil
day and night. For the training of the prac
tical sense, science has increased books and
stuffed the shelves with knowledge.
For the training of taste and imagination the
artist printer and photographer have united for
multiplying pictures, until without expense or
travel the youth can behold the faces of earth's
greatest men, visit distant cities and historic
civilization. Never before have educators done
so much for child life and culture. As soon as
the babe can walk, the kindergarten stands
forth to allure the little feet into the temple of
knowledge. For youth also the public schools
have become so powerful and so rich that pri
vate schools find it difficult to live under their
eaves. New forms of education also are devel
oping. There are schools that train the hand
to use the tool, train the arm toward self-sup
port, fit the boy for business in the office or
store, lend skill in laying the foundations of the

Its Place in American Life and Thought 13
bridge, or springing the truss over some build
ing. Technical schools have arisen, teaching the
use and control of the electric forces, the extrac
tion of iron from crude ores, the changing of
poisons into balms and remedies, the extraction
of oils and medicines from the refuse of coal
and wood. Commerce and trade, too, have be
come so complex that their mastery involves a
liberal education.
The youth who has sharp eyes and a hungry
mind can now have culture without college. He
who handles cotton goods or silk or wool, and
traces the rich texture back to the looms that
wove them, ponders the mechanical devices that
embroidered faces and flowers upon the silk,
studies the dyes by which the white wool has
become crimson or black, will find that each
step lends knowledge. In all ages, life has
been a university, and events have been teach
ers, but never before to the same degree as
to-day. Indeed, the youth who in the morn
ing goes forth to his task and walking along
watches the method by which the streets are
paved, the devices for lighting and draining
them, the means by which the taxes are raised
and streets paid for; who enters the street-car
to journey backward in thought and note how

14 The New Problems of the Pulpit and
the rude ox-cart has become the palace-car; who
enters the market-place and the forum, to buy
and sell and master the devices of production
and distribution, will find that knowledge comes
streaming in from every side. And to all these
indirect instruments of culture must be added
the new inventions called "culture clubs." Re
cently a traveller in Scotland, standing upon a
mountain cliff overlooking the sea, found him
self in great danger. It seems that the gar
dener desired to beautify even the steep cliffs
and precipices. Loading his double-barrelled
shotgun with seeds of flowers and vines, he
fired the seeds up into the crevices of the
rocks. Not otherwise, for men and women who
have a few moments for rest between the hours,
has life become dangerous. To-day, one can
scarcely turn round the street corner without
running into the president of some new society,
who straightway empties into the victim two
volleys of talk about some wisdom, old or new.
The old shotgun is less dangerous than the new
weapon. Nor must it be forgotten that practical life
itself is a university. The use of fire and wind
and water ; the avoidance of stones and ani
mals and poisons ; the mastery of the body, so

tis Place in American Life and Thought 15
as to maintain perfect health and high-pressure
brain action without nerve injury ; the develop
ment of skill in carrying one's faculties through
the home, the store, and the street, the gaining
of one's livelihood — all these are instruments
divinely ordained for the culture of the mind,
and for the increase of knowledge and wisdom.
And in this age, when ignorance is a luxury
that only idiots can afford, and knowledge is
universal, many have come to feel that the pul
pit is a waning force. It is said that the teaching
function has been superseded by the press, by
books and magazines; that the ethical ideas of
Christ are now so. fully developed as to be
organized into institutions, becoming automatic,
and therefore no longer needing a special voice
for their enunciation. Of heaven it is said,
"There shall be no temple there," nor shall
any teacher need to say, "Know the Lord," for
all shall know him. And many have risen up
to-day who assert that the pulpit of yesterday has
made unnecessary the pulpit of to-morrow ; that
Christianity has now been organized into our
social, domestic, economic, and political institu
tions, thereby becoming self-publishing. Those
kind-hearted persons who once wept lest the
loom and the engine should destroy the work-

16 The New Problems of the Pulpit and
ing people are now engaged in daily shedding a
few tears over the pulpit, soon to be sadly in
jured by the press, the magazines, and books.
Thoughtful men are not troubled lest some
agency arise to dispossess the pulpit. In the
last analysis, preaching is simply an extension
of that universal function called conversation.
It represents an attempt so to bring the truth
to bear upon conduct and character as to cleanse
the reason, sweeten the affections, and lend
inspiration to imagination ; so as to strengthen
conscience and refine the moral sentiment. The
foundation of all moral instruction is in the
family, where children are influenced, not by
attractions, but by the truth manifest in the
voice of the father and the mother, who create
an atmosphere about the child. Socrates came
speaking, as did Plato and Paul, as did the
world's Saviour; and so long as man remains
man, preaching will remain, not as a luxury, but
as the necessity of man's existence. So far
from books doing away with the influence of
the voice, they seem rather to increase it. In
ages when there were no books, men sat silent
in the cell or were dumb by the hearthstone.
Now that a new book is published, like "The
Memoirs of Tennyson," or "The Letters of the

Its Place in American Life and Thought 17
Brownings," or "The Life of Gladstone," or
"The Life of Cromwell," these books, instead
of ending conversation upon the themes in ques
tion, seem rather to open anew the flood-gates of
speech, so that a thousand readers break forth
into discussion who before were dumb and silent.
Great is the power of books ! Wonderful the
influence of the press ! But the printing-press
is only a patent drill that goes forth to sow the
land with the great seed of civilization. But
while the drill may scatter the wheat upon the
cold ground, it may not pour warmth about the
frozen clouds or shed forth the refreshing dew
or rain. When the living man called Luther or
Whitfield or Wesley or Beecher or Brooks shines
forth, then the mind lends warmth to frigid
natures, calls down dew and rain upon the
newly sown seed, lends light and inspiration to
dull and sodden natures.
Should some Plato appear to-morrow in some
hall, he need not fear lest the books have dis
possessed him of his mission. A book is simply
the mummy of a soul. A library is a graveyard
where intellects lie buried. A printed page
catches and holds the passing thought and mood.
Strawberries in June quickly pass, and housewives
preserve them until winter. Thus books are

18 The New Problems of the Pulpit and
preserved souls. Through his works Schopen
hauer has pickled himself in salt brine, just as
"The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" is
Holmes preserved in the sweetness of sugar.
The photographer makes a copy of Juliet ; but
pictures will never lead Romeo to resign the
sweet girl. Not until books on the bringing up
of children make mothers unnecessary, then the
press will begin to interfere with the moral
teachers. It is indeed given to the printed page
to teach the truth regarding axioms or the na
ture of solids and fluids, but even then the
laboratory strengthens the book. But, so far as
moral truth is concerned, the truth is never the
full truth until it is organized into personality,
and flashes in the eye, or thrills in the voice, or
glows in the reason, or guides through sound
judgment. And so long as life is full of strife
and conflict, so long as men are the children of
misfortune, adversity, and defeat; so long as
troubles roll over the earth like sheeted storms ;
so long as dark minds need light and inspiration,
and the pilgrim band, floundering through the
wilderness, needs a leader, with a pillar of cloud
by day and a pillar of fire by night, that long will
the pulpit remain the guide, the hope, the friend
and support of the people.

Its Place in American Life and Thought 19
The genius of preaching is truth in personality.
Mighty is the written word of God, but the word
never conquered until it was "made flesh."
Truth in the book is crippled. Truth in the
intellectual system is a skeleton. Truth in per
sonality is life and power. Always the printed
philosophy is less than the speaking philosopher.
Wallace and Bruce had their power over the
clansmen, not by written orders, but by riding at
the head of the host. By the torch of burning
speech Peter and Bernard kindled the ardor of
crusaders. When to Luther's thought was added
Luther's personality, Germany was freed. Savon
arola's arguments were brought together in a
solid chain of logic, but it has been said that
his flaming heart made the chain of logic to be
chain lightning. The printed truth cuts with a
sharp edge, the spoken truth burns as well as
cuts. Men have indeed been redeemed by the
truth in black ink on white paper, but the truth
quadruples its force when it is bound up in
nerves, muscles, and sinews. The soul may be
taught by travel, books, friends, occupation. Yet
these truths stand in the outer court of the soul.
It is not given to them to enter into the secret
holy of holies, where the hidden life doth dwell.
Preaching is plying men with the eternal princi-

20 The New Problems of the Pulpit and
pies of duty and destiny, so as to give warmth
to the frigid, wings to the dull and low-flying,
clarity to reason, accuracy to moral judgment,
force to aspiration, and freedom to faith. Truth
is the arrow, but speech is the bow that sends
it home.
The nature and functions of preaching grow
out of the divine method of education and
growth for men. God governs rocks by gravity,
bees by instinct, trees by those grooves called
natural laws. Man governs his locomotive by
two rails and the flanges upon the side of the
wheel. But man, made in God's image, is the
child of liberty, and God governs him through
moral teachers, into whose minds great truths
have been dropped from heaven, and these teach
ers are sent on before the advancing multitude,
to lead them away from the slough, and the wil
derness, and open up some spring in the desert.
It is possible to enrich dead things from the
outside. Soft wood may be veneered with
mahogany, nickel may be coated with silver, and
silver plated with gold, but living things must
be developed from the inside. Would the hus
bandman have a rich flush upon the rose ? Let
him feed the roots. Would the mother have the
bloom of beauty upon the cheek of the child ?

Its Place in American Life and Thought 21
Let her feed the babe with good food, and the
pure blood on the inside will lend the rosy tint
to the cheek on the outside. Men cannot be
made wise or strong or moral by exterior laws
or agencies. There are two ways to help a
thriftless man. One is to build him a house and
place him therein. The other is to inspire in
him the sense of industry, economy, and ambi
tion, and then he will build his own house. All
tools, books, pictures, laws, on the outside, begin
with ideas on the inside. Inspire the reason,
and man will fill the library with books. Wake
up the taste and imagination in young men,
and they will fill the galleries with pictures.
Stir the springs of justice, and men will go
forth to cleanse iniquities and right wrongs.
Quicken the inventive faculty, and men will
create tools, and machines. It is as useless to
seek to make men good or wise by law as to
adorn leafless trees by tying wax flowers to bare
branches. The time was when men talked about
being clothed with righteousness and character,
as if God was a wholesale dry goods merchant,
and kept great bales of integrity and cut off a
new character suit for each poor sinner. But
righteousness and character are not made for
man on the outside. Love, joy, justice represent

22 The New Problems of the Pulpit and
something done with man on the inside. Ouf
politicians talk about over-production. In reality
our industrial troubles are based upon under-
hunger. If we could open up a hundred mouths
in each living man the cry of over-production
would cease. The slave had only three mouths.
He wanted a loaf, a cotton garment, a little to
bacco. Therefore he bought little, manufacturing
languished, and the slave states became poor.
But as the free laborer became educated, he
wanted variety in foods, variety in clothes, wanted
books, pictures, comforts, conveniences, and he
bought widely, and all the Northern factories
were busy day and night to supply his hundred
fold hunger. Could we by sudden fiat of educa
tion open up a score of new wants and hungers
through the quickening of the world within, the
new spiritual awakening would appear in a thou
sand forms of industry and occupation. The
great spiritual principles of Jesus Christ are the
most powerful stimulants to material civilization
that the world has ever seen. It is said that
Shakespeare's poems bring thousands of visitors
to Stratford every year. His poems indirectly
have created more wealth for the people of Strat
ford than any of the factories or looms in that
thriving city. It is still an open question whether

Its Place in American Life and Thought 23
Wycliffe with his translation of the Scriptures did
not do more for the commerce of England than
Watt when he invented the tools that Wycliffe
had first made necessary. Lord Shaftesbury once
said that Charles Spurgeon, without discussing
problems of government, had done more for social
reform and progress than any statesman of his
era. One of the difficulties of modern preaching is
the fact that all our great authors, novelists
and poets have become preachers and prophets.
If we call the roll of our teachers we shall men
tion Carlyle, Ruskin, Lowell, Browning, and Emer
son. Of these we may say what Wordsworth
said of himself, " God hath laid his hand upon
me, and taken vows for me." Not one of these
authors entered the Christian pulpit, yet all con
secrated their lives to the task of preaching.
Here is Carlyle, who seems like one of the old
Hebrew prophets returned to earth with scourge
in hand. He hates hypocrisy, lies, and sham with
exceedingly bitter hatred. Over against the
"Nay, nay," of the sceptics he sets the eternal
" Yea " of the great God. Beholding the Epicu
rean, who loves selfishness, and makes soft his
silken nest, who eats stalled ox and drinks spiced
wine, Carlyle sets the warning to Belshazzar in

24 The New Problems of the Pulpit and
his feast : "Thou art weighed and found wanting.
Behold the axe is laid to the root of the tree, and
whatsoever tree bringeth not forth good fruit is
hewed down and cast into the fire." Emerson
has been called a Greek head screwed on Yankee
shoulders. He begins his message by saying :
" Know, O men, that God exists. Remember
that God never breaks his word to His children.
It is easier to escape from the all-embracing
atmosphere than from the unseen One in whose
presence we dwell." Without morality he de
clares " laughter holds bitterness, honey burns the
mouth, and riches bring sadness." And here is
Lowell, who is often called the poet of Christian
service and sympathy. In a recent edition of his
works published in London, the editor traces
much of social reform to the influence of James
Russell Lowell, but Lowell's greatest poems, like
" The Vision of Sir Launfal," are written from the
view point of the teacher of Christ's Gospel.
Ruskin, also, ends his volume by saying, " What
soever Christ saith unto you, do it ; this is the
sum of all my writing." In emphasizing the
importance of character, he writes : " Would you
paint a great picture, be a good man. Would
you carve a perfect statue, be a pure man.
Would you enact a wise law, be a just man."

Its Place in American Life and Thought 25
And what shall we say more of the Brownings
and of Tennyson and of the great novelists, save
that they, too, have become prophets and preach
ers ? Without entering the ministry, these men
have dedicated their gifts to an interpretation of
the evangel of Christ. Each represents a high
order of genius. Each has received from God
a harp with many strings. And having read the
gospel according to Ruskin, Carlyle, or Browning,
men come to the church with a new ideal for the
sermon and impose the severest literary tests
upon the preacher. Unconsciously these great
authors have made difficult the work of modern
preaching and laid heavy burdens upon the public
teacher. We must also confess that the very success of
the preaching of yesterday increases the difficulty
of the task that belongs to to-day. In the vision
of the new Jerusalem, John saw the city of God as
having no temple therein. To that ideal world
came all music and wisdom. All cool streams
and all fruitful trees were there. There, too,
were the sons of genius and eloquence and service
and martyrdom. Yet in this new city of God
there was no temple for instruction. And why no
church there? Because Christianity has been
successful, and has now become automatic in

26 The New Problems of the Pulpit and
thought and life. The Sermon on the Mount has
been turned into a "living gospel." Each heart
is a temple of worship. Because Christ's mission
has been absolutely successful, the necessity of the
temple has been done away with. And on earth
also the very victories, of Christianity involve new
difficulties. Indeed, Christianity is already largely
automatic in society. Men outside of churches
unconsciously obey the great principles of right
and wrong. Some of the best men in every com
munity are outside of the churches. Upon the
bare spot of ground the sun lifts up a tree or
shade and fruits. But once the tree is strong in
bough and fruit, then it is a barrier against the
sun, and forbids its warm beams to fall upon the
naked ground. There is a sense, therefore, in
which the Christianity of yesterday becomes an
obstacle for to-day. In the realm of medicine, not
one person is ill to-day, where ten suffered a cen
tury ago. Should the victory of physicians or
surgeons continue another generation, these phy
sicians will starve to death. Their very successes
are imperilling their livelihood. To the degree,
also, to which the jurist succeeds in teaching
business men the laws of commerce and the pen
alties of wrong-doing, to that degree does he
destroy his own business. The preacher, also, is

Its Place in American Life and Thought 27
a man who is engaged in making himself unneces
sary. And Christianity has been organized into
the school and home and street. Many are so
busy living Christianity on the practical side that
they begrudge any time for studying it in theory.
Through books and sermons they obtain for them
selves nutrition and guidance, yet their withdrawal
from the church involves grievous loss. When a
single match is lighted, because it is alone, it goes
out. Pile many sticks together, and the heat of
the one log lends itself to others, until the whole
mass is aglow and blazing. And to the end of
time it will be important for the multitudes to
come together, and through song and prayer and
elevated thoughts, the sacred fires that glow in one
nature may be communicated from heart to heart,
until the whole community feels the divine im
pulse toward moral earnestness. President Hop
kins once told the students of Williams College
that when a man ceases to bend his knees in
prayer, he soon ceases to bow his mind and heart.
In reviewing his long career, Robert Collyer also
affirmed that he had noticed that " those men who
find their temple in the fields, and ask nature to be
their priest, have ended by losing all sense of wor
ship until they worship less truly than do the very
beasts of the field." Nevertheless, we must con-

28 The New Problems of the Pulpit and
fess that society is being slowly permeated by the
principle of Christian living, and that noble men
live the higher spiritual life without the assistance
of the church. God's sun is so powerful that when
it has ripened the golden sheaf within the field,
it lends loveliness to the violet and the sweet brier
that springs up without the lane.
In former ages and generations doubtless men
have needed to come in from the field and factory,
store and street, and, coming together in one spot,
have sought to cleanse the grime from their gar
ments, to sharpen the spiritual faculties, to cast
out selfishness, to test the deeds of life by Christ's
principles, just as an artist, when his eye is jaded,
tests the blue tint by the sapphire or the red by
the ruby. But in these days many believe that
church-going is no longer obligatory ; that ser
mons have lost their juice and freshness, and, hav
ing gone to church once in a month, they feel
that they have placed the Almighty under ever
lasting obligations. Gone now a certain sanctity
of the Sabbath. Gone a certain reverence for the
church, a certain refinement of conscience, a cer
tain clarity and purity of moral judgment. Gone
also the old era when the beggar was unknown in
the little Christian community, when children and
youth grew up without ever having beheld a

Its Place in American Life and Thought 29
drunkard, a thief, or a murderer, and when the
door of the house or the granary had no lock or
bar. Now one-half of the community never crosses
the threshold of a church, either Catholic or Prot
estant. Multitudes, also, decline the moral obliga
tions, and there has come a time when the poor-
house overflows, when the jails are full, when
judges must work day and night to overtake
the criminals.
To-day thoughtful men believe that our republic
needs tools and culture less than it needs a revival
of the moral imperative. Our nation needs two
Sundays a week, for a time, for toning up the
jaded moral sense. A great multitude of our
people have laid the Ten Commandments on
the table by a two-thirds majority. Indeed, they
seem to have written and revised the old com
mandments so that they now read in accordance
with Ruskin's sarcastic version : Thou shalt have
gods of self and ease and pleasure before me.
Thou shalt worship thine own imaginations as
to houses and goods and business, and bow
down and serve them. Thou shalt remember the
Sabbath day, to see to it that all its hours are
given to sloth and lounging and stuffing the
body with rich foods, leaving the children of
sorrow and ignorance to perish in their sodden

30 The New Problems of the Pulpit and
misfortune. Thou shalt kill and slay men by
doing as little as possible thyself, and squeezing
as much as possible out of others. Thou shalt
look upon loveliness in womanhood to soil it
with impurity. Thou shalt steal daily the em
ployer from the servant, and the servant from
his employer, and the devil take the hindmost.
Thou shalt get thy livelihood by weaving a
great web of falsehoods and sheathing thyself
in lies. Thou shalt covet thy neighbor's house
to possess it for thyself; thou shalt covet his
office and his farm, his goods and his fame, and
everything that is his. And to crown all these
laws, the devil has added a new commandment
— Thou shalt hate thy brother as thou dost
hate thyself. Into this piteous lot have multi
tudes come. And there is restlessness in the
heart, unhappiness in the home, hate in the
task, anarchy in the street, whose end is chaos,
destruction, and death.
Plato has a pre-Christian statement as to the
function of preaching and its relation to social
happiness and progress. "The things that de
stroy us are injustice, insolence, and foolish
thoughts ; and the things that save us are jus
tice, self-command, and true thought, which
things dwell in the living powers of God

Its Place in American Life and Thought 31
Wherefore our battle is immortal. The angels
and God fight with us as teachers, and we are
their possessions."
In his Yale address ex-President White
lamented that young men were turning from
the learned professions to enter trade and com
merce. Materialism, he thought, was an evil
spirit that had given its cup of sorcery to youth,
and beguiled them from the paths of noble
scholarship and the intellectual life. Gone the
poets Longfellow, Lowell, Bryant, Whittier. Gone
the historians Bancroft, Motley, Prescott. Gone
the great orators and statesmen. Gone also the
era when young men, like Channing and Starr
King, Swing and Beecher and Brooks, entered
the ministry. And, remembering that in New
England the clergymen have founded the acade
mies and colleges, and that in scores of families
like the Emersons there had been seven genera
tions of clergymen who had wrought in the
pulpit, the lecture hall, or taken up the pen of
author or editor, the great educator predicted
disaster would befall our eager American society.
But not the emoluments of commerce alone
explain the drift of young men away from the
ministry. The ministry is not an easy life. No
profession makes demands so numerous or so

32 The New Problems of the Pulpit and
stern upon nerve and brain, upon mind and heart.
In former times, when books were scarce, reli
gious newspapers unknown, and knowledge was
not universal, preaching was not a difficult task,
and it was easily possible for a clergyman to
preach a sermon three hours long in the morn
ing and repeat it at night without the congrega
tion recognizing it. Now all the hearers have
books and libraries, and the pew of to-day is
wiser than the pulpit of yesterday. The time
has come when the preacher must be a uni
versal scholar. He must make himself an
expert in social reform ; master the facts as to
illiteracy, vice, and crime; study the tenement-
house question ; all social movements in connec
tion with settlements and methods of Christian
work. He must carry his studies into physi
ology and hygiene to note how low and abnormal
physical conditions affect the conscience and the
spiritual state.
Giving up the theological reading with which
the clergymen of a former generation have made
the people acquainted, he must study history,
politics, the rise of law, and free institutions,
the movements of art, the history of philosophy,
and, above all else, no facts in connection with
science must be permitted to escape his notice

Its Place in American Life and Thought 33
For his illustrations he must draw from the
sciences of stars and stones and animals and
plants. To keep step with his work he must
read each month several reviews that deal with the
general public, with reviews upon finance, reform,
labor, and education, not forgetting the foreign
quarterlies and magazines. In addition to all this,
there will be at least a hundred volumes each
year that he must go through thoroughly, if
possible, or hurriedly, if crowded. There are
also public duties and demands. To-day he
enters a home in which some woman, with little
children clinging to her dress and crying bit
terly, stands beside a young father, now dying.
He returns home to find some youth, the child
of poverty and orphanage, but of genius also,
who needs help and assistance. When evening
falls, there comes the intellectual stress and
task, with a thousand duties for which prepara
tion must be made.
Immeasurable the demands upon nerve and
brain. Now and then one arises who is called
to the ministry by his distant ancestors, whose
father loved moral themes, and had vision and
an outlook upon the realm invisible, whose
mother had enthusiasm, imagination, and moral
sentiment, — gateways, these, through which God's

34 The New Problems of the Pulpit and
angels come trooping, — and father and mother,
through heredity, call the child to the ministry.
For such a one, teaching is automatic and
preaching is instinctive, and the work itself is
medicinal and recuperative. But even upon
these men, like Robertson and Channing and
Bushnell, the mere strain of delivery is such
as to send them home from the pulpit in the
state of nervous collapse from which they do
not recover until Tuesday or Wednesday. With
many the recoil dismounts the cannon. In
these days no man would be equal to the diffi
culties of the ministry were it not for the hap
piest of the professions bringing its own rewards,
carrying medicine to cure its exhaustions.
No other occupation or profession offers such
liberty and personal freedom. The politician is
a thread caught in the texture of his party, and
has little freedom. The merchant must buy and
sell what the people want, and must serve them.
The lawyer must move in the groove digged by
the mistake or sin of his client, while the clergy
man is freely permitted to teach the great eter
nal principles of God, and he steers by the stars.
Great is the power of the press. But the press
writer has no personal contact with the reader;
must report things evil often as well as good.

Its Place in American Life and Thought 35
Great is the power of the law. But law is liti
gious, and the jurist must struggle oftentimes for
weeks or months to settle some quarrel or cor
rect some injustice, dealing, as Webster said,
with negatives oftentimes. Great is the power
of the physician. But, unfortunately, in influ
encing his patient, his personality must first of
all work upon an abnormal condition, and when
the patient is restored to health and ready to
receive the physician's personality, his task is
done. But this advantage adheres in the min
istry. It emphasizes the great positive morali
ties, it handles the most powerful stimulants the
world has ever known — eternal truths. It plies
men with divine inspirations. It deals with the
greatest themes life holds — God, Christ, con
science, reason, sin, salvation, culture, character,
duty, immortal destiny. When all other arts
have been secured, it teaches the art of right
living. When all other sciences have been
mastered, it teaches the science of conduct at
the home, the market, and the forum. It puts
its stamp, not into wood that will rot, not into
iron that will rust, not into colors that will fade,
but into the minds and hearts that are immortal.
Multiply the honors and emoluments of the
other occupations one hundred fold, and they

36 The New Problems of the Pulpit and
need them all to compensate for the happiness
and opportunity of the Christian ministry, seek
ing to make the church a college for the igno
rant, a hospital for hurt hearts, an armory from
which men may receive weapons, that opens up
springs in life's desert, plants a palm in life's
burning sands.
Well did John Ruskin say that the issues of
life and death for modern society are in the
pulpit : " Precious indeed those thirty minutes
by which the teacher tries to get at the sepa
rate hearts of a thousand men, to convince
them of all their weaknesses, to shame them for
all their sin, to warn them of all their dangers,
to try by this way and that to stir the hard fast
enings of the doors where the Master Himself
has stood and knocked, yet none opened, and to
call at the openings of those dark streets where
Wisdom herself hath stretched forth her hands
and no man regarded. Thirty minutes to raise
the dead in." And he who hath known the joy
of encouraging some noble youth who is dis
couraged, the rapture that comes when at least
one who hath become long snared and held in
the cruel trap hath been freed, the joy of feel
ing that blind eyes have come to see things
unseen and deaf ears to hear notes that once

Its Place in American Life and Thought 37
were unheard, or hath swung wide some dun
geon door to lead forth some prisoner of con
science, will know that there is no profession
that conceals such hidden springs, receives such
hidden messages, is fed with such buoyancy and
happiness as the ministry — the Christian teacher
who brings divine truth to men for God's sake
and for man's sake.

II

Social progress ano tije Influence of Sesus
Cijrist in Cibilijation

" In discussing the proposition suggested by this text, that
Christianity is a civilization, it will be necessary to think of
civilization in two lights — the one as the condition of the
individual, the other as a power to influence others standing
apart from its condition. What mankind needs is not simply
a picture of an elevated human life, but also an agency that
will rapidly cast men into the likeness of this ideal picture.
Individuals have always been visible here and there who
have, in their minds and hearts, reflected the features of
almost the ideal manhood, but their virtues have been unable
to multiply themselves infinitely in the outer world ; and liv
ing, they never perceived virtue to have gone out from their
garments at a world's touch ; and dying, they have taken
their moral excellence into their tombs, as Beatrice took
away her beauty with her, and as the dying songstress re
cently took with her, forever, her warm melody. History is
dotted over with names of such piety as marked Aurelius, and
Cato, and Xenophon ; but as between the stars of heaven,
there are awful solitudes across which light itself flies invisi
ble, and which no sound of even thunder or softest music has
ever blessed, so between these isolated characters of the past,
there have lived and died countless millions of the human
family, without excellence and without hope — awful solitudes
of the soul. In seeking, therefore, for a desirable civilization
it is necessary for us to find a culture that will overflow."
Swing, " Christianity as a Civilization."

•to

II

SOCIAL PROGRESS AND THE INFLUENCE OF JESUS
CHRIST IN CIVILIZATION
In all ages God maintains leaders and heroes for the
guidance of society. Each new era ushered in by a great
man who has capitalized the new form of progress. Christ
as the world's Leader and Master as well as Saviour and
Lord. His waxing influence over the greatest intellects.
The poets and philosophers, and the common people alike
unite in lifting Him to the World's throne. The influence
of Christ upon the Old World vices. The influence of Christ
upon individual life and culture. The influence of Christ
upon schools and colleges, through the emphasis of child
hood. The influence of Christ upon the fine arts. The
painters, architects, and sculptors have devoted their gifts
to the interpretation of Christ. The absence of great men
among the non-Christian races. The influence of Christ in
developing the greatness latent in individuals. Christianity
is the sole religion of to-day that has the propagating spirit.
Jesus Christ and man's upward progress.
THE soul, like the body, thrives through nourish
ment. Mind and heart hunger for food, and
find it in the best qualities of the best men who have
41

42 Social Progress and the Influence
gone before. History stores up the bravest deeds
and noblest thoughts of the heroes of yesterday
as soul food for the youth of to-day. The Greek
general bade parents bring their children up — not
upon milk, but upon the memories of soldierly
ancestors. Always it has been the necessity of
life that children and youth should look upward
toward illustrious masters and models. Each Pitt
and Burke stimulates himself by tales of eloquence
and oratory. Each young Correggio lingers long
before his master's easel. Each Keats or Shelley
turns eager feet toward the great bard's home.
History is no mausoleum where dead men He bur
ied; it is a granary storing up for future genera
tions the choicest spirits of past ages. That is
the greatest nation that has the most heroes
and illustrious deeds to celebrate.
When a nation has no heroes to nourish great
ness in its youth, God raises up some poet to create
them. Thus the blind bard hung Achilles in the
sky above the race of Grecian savages. Straight
way thousands felt the drawing of that great heart;
just as the ocean, without knowing the cause, is
lifted forward, following the planets. Soon the
ideal Achilles repeated himself in the real orators
and artists, statesmen and philosophers, of Athens.
Plutarch thought the iron and granite in the hills

Of Jesus Christ in Civilisation 43
of Sparta repeated themselves in the Spartan war
riors. We know that the single root brought from
Africa by the Spanish traveller repeated its un
exampled size and color in all the vineyards of
Spain. Thus one great man like Pericles or Cato,
like John Huss or William Tell, like Vane or
Hampden, like Brown or Lincoln, repeats himself
in the new and larger manhood of his nation.
When God wants to create a revolution or secure a
sudden forward movement in society, He sets some
great man in the midst of the people, and, looking
upward, the generations are lifted to his level. The
measure of civilization for a nation is found in the
number and quality of its heroes and leaders.
Social progress through lifting up a master and
model has always been the divine method. Here
nature lends us a thousand interpretations. Ours
is a world in which rain and snow, falling to the
ground, must be lifted up and passed through
bough and branch before water reddens in the
wine-purple flood, or drips in the golden juices of
the orange. In the forests the carbon and iron
of the soil must be lifted up to be hardened into
masts for ships or timbers for temples. In the
fields the wheat stalk lifts up the phosphates and
condenses them into the rich, brown berry. By
ropes and pulleys, Phidias lifted the most perfect

44 Social Progress and the Influence
statue of his time, the " Pallas Athene," to its place
upon the Acropolis, where its crown of gold and
ivory, reflecting the sun's rays, first welcomed the
Athenian mariner home again. Lifted from the
ground, wood and iron become cottage or palace.
Lifted from the quarries, stone and marble become
temples and cathedrals. Lifted up by the author,
meaningless words become poems and dramas.
Standing upon the horizon, the sun lifts from the
sea its whitest mists, lifts from the land golden
harvest, lifts from space heavy planets.
Naturally, therefore, we expect social progress
to be achieved through the lifting up of good men
and strong. In accordance with this method the
martyred Cranmer was made heroic, and, thrusting
his arm into the fire, he lifted up an example that
made the multitudes strong for achieving religious
liberty. This multitude of brave women, going
into the Crimea with the Red Cross movement and
mercy : these nurses kindling their fires upon the
edge of battle-fields ; these who make their homes
among the poor of tenement-house districts, re
mind us that long ago God caused Mary Ware,
serving in the fever-stricken homes of Durham,
and Florence Nightingale, nursing the English
soldiers in the hospitals of the East, to be lifted
up in the presence of the world's women. And,

Of Jesus Christ in Civilisation 45
having by this method achieved great results for
liberty and culture, and human happiness, God
caused to be lifted up before mind and heart the
soul's Saviour and Master. And it need not sur
prise us that straightway everything deepest in
man's faculties and finest in his feelings responded
to the inspiring influences and the stimulating
example. When the sun stands upon the horizon
all the birds waken, and rise to sweet song and
lofty flight : all the seeds bestir themselves, and
push upward toward the light ; all the buds unroll
their crimson secrets ; then the very sands blos
som ; and all rifts in the mountains respond with
blooms beautiful and brilliant. Passing backward
o'er the pathway of the ages, Christ's mighty,
majestic heart, glowing and all glorious, stands
forth, sowing the world with light and joy, even as
o'er the planets the sun scatters warmth and
atmosphere. The waxing fame of Christ is the most striking
fact of our era. His star is causing all others to
pale. Indeed the time seems rapidly approaching
when society will have but one Hero and King, at
whose feet humanity will empty all its songs and
flowers, its prayers and tears. In the triumphal
procession of the Roman conqueror, kings and
princes walked as captives in the emperor's train.

46 Social Progress and the Influence
Thus all the greatest men of the past generation
seem to have joined Christ's triumphal procession.
Let us call the roll of the great. Among Carlyle's
last words were these: "The tidings of the most
important event ever transacted in this world is
the life and death of the Divine Man in Judea, at
once the symptom and cause of innumerable
changes to all people in the world." By acclama
tion, John Ruskin will be voted the first place
among the English prose writers of the last two
centuries. But Ruskin says his life has been
dedicated — not to " the study of the beautiful
in face and flower, in landscape and gallery, but
to an interpretation of the truth and beauty of
Jesus Christ." Another modern humanist is
Matthew Arnold. But, dying, Matthew Arnold
said : " Christ came to reveal what righteousness
really is. For nothing will do except righteous
ness ; and no other conception of righteousness
will do, except Christ's conception of it — His
method and secret." All will confess that James
Martineau was the first defender of theism of the
century in point of influence. But Martineau
asserts that Christ must be called "the regener
ator of the human race. The world has changed,"
he says, " and that change is historically traceable
to Christ.'' We all know that Shakespeare, per-

Of Jesus Christ in Civu^ation 47
haps the greatest intellect ever known in its wide
and many-sided splendor, paid the lowliest rever
ence to Christ in passage after passage. But all
the great poets of our age, Lowell and Longfellow
Browning and Tennyson, unite in saying, —
" Thou seemest human and divine ;
The highest, holiest manhood Thou ;
Our wills are ours, we know not why ;
Our wills are ours to make them Thine."
Recently, in announcing his purpose to write a
story of Christ's life, a distinguished English
author said that he had spent all his life ac
cumulating material for this proposed book, and
that he had no higher ambition than to be asso
ciated in some humble way with the name and the
fame of Jesus Christ. By common consent, in his
old age, Mr. Gladstone was a figure sublime indeed
upon our earth. How pathetic the statesman's
eager desire to dedicate his closing years to the
study of the teachings of Christ. The revered
leader and orator seemed to feel that his laurel
leaves won in the forum, would soon fade, and
with wistful pathos he desired to " weave a wreath
for Him whose name is secure " and shines like a
star. And these facts are typical of the spirit of the
age. To-day all political economy is being re-

48 Social Progress and the Influence
written in the length of the Sermon on the Mount,
says the greatest of economic writers. Christ is
increasingly the inspiration of our charities and
philanthropies. All the great social movements
of our era are centring about Him. Already His
teachings are the watchwords of coming revo
lutions. Reform, duty, art, music, statesmanship,
philosophy — all have joined Christ's triumphal
procession. In nature, as the summer waxes the winter
wanes, and the lengthening of the days means
the shortening of the nights. This fact encour
ages within us the belief that as Christ's prin
ciples advance, man's vices will decline. In our
world, causes are invariably followed by their
appropriate results, and this law asks us to ex
pect that so prodigious a cause as the life and
teaching of Jesus Christ will be followed of ne
cessity by strange effects upon man's happiness
and character. In times of storm, rivers often
overflow their banks, and, spreading over the
rich valleys, sweep away the houses, drown the
cattle, and when the waves have retreated, leave
behind pastures buried in mud, and fields all
covered with wrecks and desolation. Thus the
pages of Juvenal and Pliny and Lucian tell us
of days when the floods of vice poured their dark

Of Jesus Christ in Civilisation 49
and turbulent streams through the streets of all
the ancient cities. History tells us that the clouds
of ashes falling from Vesuvius buried Pompeii
and Herculaneum under thirty feet of ashes.
This burial seems to have embalmed for our age
that ancient civilization. The excavations in the
streets where Pliny used to walk exhibit to us
ancient art and ancient vice ; rich homes and
defiled inmates ; beauteous statues and vicious
sculptors ; the cultivated intellect, but the dark
ened conscience.
Journeying up the Nile to Thebes and Mem
phis, our travellers are amazed to find that hid
eous vices were once worshipped as gods in those
cities, where splendor and sin were united like
gold and mud in the same image. We remember
also that Cicero, who argues so eloquently for the
rights of the poet Archias, also used his eloquence
to defend a gladiatorial fight in which a thousand
slaves were slain to satisfy the bloodthirsty in
stincts of eighty thousand of the leading ladies
and gentlemen of that so-called "golden age."
Lecky speaks of ten vices in Cicero's day, only
two of which remain — intemperance and the
social evil. It seems hard to realize that a few
hundred years ago the sale of an estate in Eng
land carried with it the people on the land, and

50 Social Progress and the Influence
that a little earlier the Saxon hero used his
enemy's skull for a drinking cup. When Charle
magne marched through France, he found multi
tudes whose religion it was to eat dirt and roll
their persons daily in the black mud. But now
at Carlisle the visitors behold young Indians who
stand often upon the platform and tell of their
ambitions for the homes and schools and churches
of their people in words of eloquence so simple
and majestic that audiences are held spellbound.
Yet from the days when Ponce de Leon first
landed in Florida, to these modern times when
the frontier line of civilization has advanced into
the Dakotas, each newly discovered tribe of
Indians has appeared offering innocent children
as sacrifices and by strange incantations trying
to appease the world devil. The Greek poet
tells us that when Ulysses was pursuing the
monster to slay it, the warrior traced the serpent
by a black mark left upon the grass and flowers.
Thus these monsters, called vices, have crawled
like serpents down the aisles of time. Upon all
the ages and nations, vices have made many deep
black marks. But some hand has slain nearly
all of these defiling monsters. With Guizot, let
us gladly confess that the advance of Christ's
teachings has been so closely followed by the

Of Jesus Christ in Civilisation 51
decline of vice as to compel the logical mind to
associate them in the relation of cause and
effect. Doubtless Christ's emphasis of individual worth
has done much to usher in the new era for hu
manity. When Queen Victoria celebrated her
golden anniversary, the gifts sent her were such
as were thought to become a queen and empress.
Each book was bound in gold, each texture held
shining threads, and the very boxes were inlaid
with pearls and jewels ; and to Christ belonged
such majesty of mingled beauty and strength
and gentleness that society felt that the human
soul could scarcely be painted in colors too rich
for which such a one as Christ had lived and
died. His enthusiasm for humanity immediately
began to make itself felt. A glorious sense of
human brotherhood moved outward over the
earth like an advancing summer. If the em
perors and the kings did not at once descend
from their thrones, the slave and the serfs did
begin to rise to the level of those who held the
sceptre. It was not so much a crumbling of
thrones or a falling of crowned heads as it was
an upbuilding of the common people. In analyz
ing Burns's song, "A Man's a Man for A' that,"
the scholars trace it back to Christ's parable of

52 Social Progress and the Influence
Lazarus and the rich man. Before Christ's
searching vision, the purple and the fine linen
fell away from Dives, and his rags fell away
from the beggared Lazarus. Christ placed His
finger upon the soul, capitalized manhood, and
made the name of man a title superior to that
of ruler and lord. Soon, because men were
equals and brothers, the church adopted the
same ritual for high and low, bond and free.
Emperor Constantine and his rude soldiers knelt
together before the same minister and in baptism
received alike the cleansing flood. The marriage
ceremony that bound with golden chains prince
and princess, was used also for servant and maid.
In the solemn hour of death the words, " I am
the resurrection and the life," were read over
the bier of kings and paupers alike. Thus
Christianity assaulted the vanity of the heart
through its outer trappings, even as the sun
assaults an armor of ice. The old proverb was,
" Call a man a thief, and he will rob you." The
new proverb becomes, " Trust a man, and he will
not disappoint you." Christ unfurled the flag
of equality above palace and slave market. He
waved the golden rule above each law and stat
ute book. He caused the state to set guardian
angels beside each sleeping babe. Above each

Of Jesus Christ in Civilisation 53
doorway for vice and crime He wrote the words,
" Blessed are the pure in heart." Soon society
began to forsake the paths of vice and crime
and turned glad feet into the way that led unto
happiness and virtue.
Those who were of royal birth felt they must
not live like slaves. The Germans have a poem
of the transformation of a cottage. While the
peasant slept in his chair, he dreamed ; and, lo !
the thatched roof was lifted up and became the
roof of a temple. The little cracked windows
became large, arched, and filled with colored
glass. The low walls gave place to glorious
paintings. The fireplace became a golden altar,
over which bowed the angel forms of his chil
dren departed and dead. Oh, beautiful story !
picturing for us that strange transformation that
passed over society after Christ taught the doc
trine of individual worth and divine sonship.
Christianity, while chiefly busying itself with
teaching the art of right living and of character
building here, as a preparation for the life here
after, has accomplished many incidental results
for man's happiness and welfare. Orchards are
planted primarily for one purpose — to secure
food and fruit against trie long winter. But hav
ing met the requirements of hunger, the orchards

54 Social Progress and the Influence
go on to delight the eye with blossoms, to fill
the air with perfume, to provide grateful shade
for man and beast, and homes for countless
birds. Thus, Christianity is a tree that bears
indeed the fruit of immortal life ; but it bears
also a thousand other fruits for the life that now
is. By reason of the great themes with which
it is concerned, — themes called God, law, mind,
conscience, truth, beauty, — Christianity early de
veloped an affiliation for education and learning.
To advance its principles, and defend them, to
secure wise advocates for its truths, it founded
colleges, schools, and literatures. Having edu
cated teachers for the sanctuary, it began to
expand its plans, and came to include the train
ing of poets and jurists, of physicians and sci
entists. From the day, when the boy Christ
remained in the Temple to converse with the
wise men, Christianity has been the friend of
the mind and an advocate of the increase of
knowledge. Nourished in its stimulating atmos
phere, such minds as those of Bacon and Milton
and Angelo, and thousands of illustrious com
peers, have come with genius enriched by the
stimulating atmosphere in which they have lived.
Where other religions have produced here and
there a single mediocre mind, Christianity has

Of Jesus Christ in Civilisation 55
produced during like periods a thousand giants
in the realm of philosophy or art or learning.
Single minds do exist in the history of China or
India or Africa, but they exist just as occasional
palm trees and springs are found, at intervals of
hundreds of miles, in the Sahara Desert. But
entering moral deserts like England in the year
590, and Germany in 700, Christianity has
changed the climate for nations, and made
genius and greatness indigenous. To this enrich
ing influence upon learning must be added Chris
tianity's natural affiliation with the fine arts. To
describe that eternal summer land beyond the
grave, John has swept together all gold for the
streets, all gems for its walls, all cool fountains
and streams, all sweet song, all noble speech. So
beautiful is that realm, said Paul, that eye had
not seen or ear heard, nor could mind conceive
its splendors. The task, therefore, of portraying
that ideal land placed every artist upon his mettle.
Architects taxed themselves to build cathedrals
worthy of Him whom the heaven of heavens could
not contain. Painters vied with each other in
creating seraphs and angels beautiful enough to
adorn the walls of Christ's sanctuary. Sculptors
went everywhither searching out marble white
enough for Christ's forehead.

56 Social Progress and the Influence
Each Handel taxed himself for music sweet
enough for His hymns of praise. Soon the great
ness of Christianity's themes lent greatness to
the minds studying them. For great thought
makes the thinker great also, while petty thoughts
make insignificant thinkers. It was the woe, the
grief of three million slaves that lent eloquence to
Wendell Phillips. It was the sorrows of the poor
of England that lent eloquence to John Bright.
It was the Madonna that made each Titian, and
the Paradise that made each Milton. Take the
seed idea and the mother principles of Christian
ity out of the last one thousand years of time, and
society's storehouses, called galleries and libraries,
would be emptied. An English jurist tells of
falling asleep and dreaming that every Christian
idea had been stricken out of his law books.
Opening the familiar books, he found one-third
of each page blank, and all pages meaningless.
Thus, if by divine fiat every Christian idea should
be blotted out of the library, the museum, the
statute books, all would become meaningless.
The very structure of civilization would crumble
into a heap of ruins. Eloquence, song, laws,
reforms, civic virtues, would all fall with the fall
of the great ideas that produced them.
This uplifted name is also exerting a profound

Of Jesus Christ in Civilisation 57
influence upon the world's hope of progress.
Frederick Schlegel was deeply impressed by the
thought that all other religious systems are living
upon the prestige of the past. Looking back
ward, they borrow their light from "a golden
age" forever gone. "The gods hate the prosper
ous," was the ancient proverb. And so with pro
found melancholy the Greeks and Romans looked
longingly backward toward a greatness that was
rapidly receding, for they felt that the future held
for them only awful and inevitable catastrophe.
Each disciple of Buddha or Confucius also speaks
wistfully of a departed glory. For Christ alone
"the golden age" is in the to-morrow. With
buoyant and aspiring spirit, with confident and
unyielding expectancy of a general and certain
progress of society toward liberty and light,
Christianity moves steadily forward into the
future. And as a plan turns a pile of bricks
into a house, turns a mob into an army, turns
scattered sounds into a symphony, turns warring
sections into a nation, so this unfolding plan and
purpose of God unifies events, constrains oppos
ing nations, gives each century its stint, gives a
definite goal to history. That conviction of
Christianity's ultimate triumph never failed the
fathers or martyrs. It lent the soldier his uncon-

58 Social Progress and the Influence
querable courage ; it lent the hero and reformer
his adamantine will ; it lent the scholar his stain
less life. Beginning a mere dot on the map,
Christianity has now subdued and bannered whole
continents. It began at Olivet with the twelve
disciples. In forty days there were three thou
sand. When John died in Ephesus there were
half a million ; to-day these have become four
hundred million. Napoleon said, " He who does
not attack and plunge his standard into the thick
of the enemy's ranks must soon pull down his
flag." Whatever system, therefore, is sending
the thousands of scholars, professors, physicians,
editors, into other nations, holds the keynote of
progress, and will sooner or later mount to the
world's throne. To-day our young lawyers study
Sir Henry Maine's "Ancient Society," "Ancient
Law," "Early Institutions."
But these are lectures written by a jurist in
the law school of Calcutta, founded by Christian
teachers only a hundred years ago. There are
three million other young men and women in
India in Christian colleges, academies, and
schools. Soon this will mean a free press, libra
ries in every village of that tropic land, railways,
manual training schools, free institutions — and
after that "the flood" of knowledge. And so

Of Jesus Christ in Civilisation 59
of Africa and China ; the columns of light are
marching straight for the heart of each continent.
Christianity is a young giant that in three centu
ries leaped to the throne of the Caesars. The rate
of progress that has prevailed since Shakespeare's
day will in three centuries more seat Christianity
upon every great throne of our earth. But can it
conquer the civilized barbarians at home ? Has it
power to stay lawlessness in the city? to check
the ravages of poverty and intemperance ? There
is a proverb that "What has been done can be
done." Did Christianity find the finest scholars
and noblest ladies of Rome attending gladiatorial
shows, and does it now guard the very horses
from cruelty ? Did it find in the finest temple of
Corinth vices worshipped and deified that now it
is shameful to mention ? The past, at least, is
secure. And because it has ideals for the city,
the forum, and the market, Christianity's future
is certain. It is urged that to-day in Europe
there are nations armed to the teeth, and soldiers
awaiting orders to march.
But what if, at one time, there were five
Christian rulers upon the thrones of London, Ber
lin, Paris, Vienna, and St. Petersburg? Would
not the barracks and citadels be emptied, the
soldiers drop their bayonets to turn toward the

60 Social Progress and the Influence of Jesus
fields with the pruning knives and sickles ?
What if all our institutions and peoples should
seek to incarnate Christ's example ? No more
war ; no more clanking of chains in prisons ; no
more lazy, thriftless poverty ; no crushing monop
oly ; no cruelty; no harsh judgments; each bear
ing another's weakness. A beautiful dream !
But ideals rule the world. And Christ's ideal is
the prophecy of what shall be when men and
events have hastened on toward " that one far-
off event toward which the whole creation
moves." True, the ideal may be realized slowly.
Nature changes no climate rapidly. Physically,
man does not sleep midst snowdrifts to waken
midst roses. The difference between the icicle
and a ripe cherry represents for the planet a
journey of many millions of miles. And in
morals, with God a thousand years are as one
day. God has time enough and to spare. Wise
men, therefore, will take no counsel of crouching
fear. The century-plant takes a hundred years
for root and trunk, but blossoms in a night. And
nations, also, shall in a day be born into culture
and character. Soon every knee shall bow to
the name that is above every name, and He
whom God has lifted to the world's throne shall
in turn lift the world to a place beside Him.

Ill

" Sesus Christ tije Supreme Example of (Genius
in tlje Eealm of Intellect"

" Truth is always holy, holiness always wise. I will that
we keep terms with sin and a sinful literature and society no
longer, but live a life of discovery and performance. Accept
the intellect, and it will accept us. Be the lowly ministers of
that pure omniscience, and deny it not before men. It will
burn up all profane literature, all base current opinions, all the
false powers of the world, as in a moment of time. It is the
office, I doubt not, of this age to annul that adulterous divorce
which the superstition of many ages has effected between the
intellect and holiness. The lovers of goodness have been
one class, the students of wisdom another ; as if either could
exist in any purity without the other."
— Emerson, "The Method of Nature," p. 210.
"There is a man whose tomb is guarded by love, whose
sepulchre is not only glorious, as a prophet declared, but
whose sepulchre is loved. There is a man whose ashes, after
eighteen centuries, have not grown cold, who daily lives again
in the thoughts of an innumerable multitude of men ; who is
visited in His cradle by shepherds and frankincense and myrrh.
There is a man whose steps are unweariedly retrodden by a
large portion of mankind, and who, although no longer pres
ent, is followed by that throng in all the scenes of His bygone
pilgrimage, upon the knees of His mother, by the borders of
the lakes, to the tops of the mountains, in the byways of the
valleys, under the shade of the olive trees, in the still solitude
of the deserts. . . . The greatest monuments of art shelter
His sacred images ; the most magnificent ceremonies assemble
the people under the influence of His name ; poetry, music,
painting, sculpture, exhaust their resources to proclaim His
glory, and to offer Him incense worthy of the adoration which
ages have consecrated to Him. And yet upon what throne
do they adore Him ? Upon a Cross ! "
— Pere Lacordaire, "Conferences,'' pp. 82-83, 86-87.

6s

Ill

"JESUS CHRIST THE SUPREME EXAMPLE OF GENIUS
IN THE REALM OF INTELLECT "
All classes confess the fascination of the story of Christ.
His career a tragedy despite His evangel of love. Christ's
supremacy not explained by His moral splendor. His influ
ence not explained by emphasizing his qualities as a hero and
leader. To all these considerations must be added His su
premacy in the realm of intellect. The weight of mentality
involved in the thoughts and themes with which He deals.
For centuries the creative minds have borrowed their mother
principles from His teachings. The tributes of the orators'
and dramatists. What is style ? The literary style of the
parables, and the Sermon on the Mount. The enormous
intellectual reserves involved in the optimism of Christ. His
intellectual supremacy indicated by His recognition of the
poor and His anticipation of the reign of the common people.
His views of God suggest His infinite superiority to other
religious thinkers. The vagueness of Plato's and of So
crates' views of death, in contrast with Christ's outlook upon
immortality. FULL nineteen centuries have come and gone
since Jesus Christ entered upon His im
mortal and pathetic career. Now that long time
has passed, poets and philosophers alike confess
that His story is the most fascinating in litera-
63

64 Jesus Christ the Supreme Example
ture, while if His teachings still inspire the
greatest intellects, His sufferings still melt the
hardest heart. Few and evil were the days of
His pilgrimage. In an era when soldiers were
brigands, and rulers agents of misery and crime,
this young carpenter dedicated His unrivalled
genius to deeds of mercy and became the knight-
errant of the poor and weak. Having poured
forth His sympathies in unstinted tides ; having
filled all His days with glorious friendships,
radiant wisdom, and gentle deeds ; having sup
ported the fainting multitudes by His golden
dreams of an age of better laws, better learning,
better liberty, and a better life, — He who had done
no man a wrong, nor thought it, became the
central figure of the most piteous tragedy in
history. Always the almoner of bounty and
benevolence, at a moment when His every hour
effulged with tenderness and mercy, He suddenly
found Himself standing in the very vortex of
hatred, while envious rulers and malignant
priests drew their weapons and closed in upon
Him. In that bitter hour friends also became
enemies, until it must have seemed to Him as if
the heavens rained slanders, while the earth
opened to pour forth falsehoods like lurid lava.
Piteous, indeed, were the sufferings associated

Of Genius in the Realm of Intellect 65
with His execution, but more pathetic still His
mental anguish. Greatness is sensitiveness. It
is the fortune of the creative intellect that it
works only in an atmosphere of sympathy. For
if hatred is poison and distrust paralysis, by so
much, therefore, as Jesus Christ surpassed other
men in His mental gifts, by that much did He
crave the sympathy and love of His brother man.
Cherishing the eager hope that when at last life's
end did come He should be esteemed as one who
had loved the poor and weak and made their bur
dens His, this most sensitive heart was doomed to
die at the hands of a mob, and ended His career
upon a cross, — a stigma so odious as to lend a
sting sharper than death itself. But now, looking
backward, behold what transformations His spirit
wrought ! No princess so beautiful but that she
seeks to enhance her loveliness by the cross that
Christ redeemed from ugliness to beauty. With
His name orators inspire heroism in the people.
Poets linger about His story as bees about a
clover field. His teachings have lent sweetness
to Handel's music, majesty to Canova's marble,
and massiveness to Von Rile's church. Vast indeed
is our earth, yet it can never overtake the sun
that journeys forward, dragging our little planet
after it. Many, too, and great, the heroes of

66 Jesus Christ the Supreme Example
history; but though future ages hold many sur
prises and new heroes arise, Christ's name and
fame, still speeding on before, are distant, and
never to be surpassed. To the end of time, great
men looking forward, shall behold Christ's radiant
figure standing in the golden haze where earth
and sky do meet.
Confessing that Christ's name is above other
names, some philosophers try to account for it on
grounds other than intellectual. They explain
His supremacy by emphasizing His moral supe
riority, — an argument based upon His stainless
character and His spotless life. Enemies have
searched His career with lighted candles, but
no hand has been found so profane or vulgar
as to tarnish His blameless name. Even those
who have reviled the church have, with Renan,
made haste to proclaim Christ's preeminence,
saying, " His worship will grow young without
ceasing, His story will call forth tears without
end, while coming ages will proclaim that among
the sons of men there is none born greater than
Jesus." If Christianity has journeyed over the
continent like a beautiful civilization, Christ's
teachings have gone forth attended by His spot
less character, and reenforced by His stainless
life. Let us affirm that His moral purity has

Of Genius in the Realm of Intellect 67
enabled Christ to lend a roseate hue to our once
darkened earth.
Another group of thinkers explain His influ
ence by the heroic qualities that have evoked the
enthusiasm of the multitudes. Of necessity the
human heart hungers for heroes. We know that
artists' pupils will go everywhere searching for
some noble master. The young soldiers, too,
long for some heroic leader and general. And
once the great man stands forth fully revealed,
his followers will for him die a thousand deaths.
Witness the enthusiasm of students for Socrates,
Arnold, and Abelard ! Witness the devotion of
Scottish clansmen to that hero, Robert Bruce !
Witness Garibaldi saying : " Soldiers, I offer you
hunger, thirst, cold, heat, no pay, no barracks, no
rations, frequent alarms, forced marches, charges
at the point of the bayonet. Whoever loves honor
and fatherland, follow me!" Soon responding
peasants followed him to the promised death. But
Christ's heroism in never betraying the cause of
the people was beyond that of any leader what
soever. His courage in fronting opposition and
tyranny excelled that of any soldier or general.
He bore Himself toward His disciple band after
the pattern of a friendship more glorious than
that of any Socrates toward his disciples, or any

68 Jesus Christ the Supreme Example
Coleridge toward his noble group. Indeed, His
planetary mind and His full-orbed heart sweep
together all possible excellences that evoke man's
admiration and call forth transcendent delight.
And at last the generations have come to feel
that they can pour forth before Him all that is
finest in thought and purest in feeling, while
aspirations deep and pure, without fear and re
straint, may go soaring and singing toward the
summit of His lofty spirit. Of old the Grecian
people celebrated the feast of the harvest. As
sembling before their temple, each harvester
brought his ripe sheaf, his purple cluster, and
his spray of flowers, and with solemn hymns they
cast all down in a golden perfumed heap before
the marble god. But to-day the unnumbered
millions feel that Christ's heart is mercy and not
marble, and assembling before Him they pour
forth their secret ideals, their hidden heartaches,
their aspirations and prayers and hopes and fears,
as if an invisible harvest had shed its richest
blooms and fruits before the god of summer.
But for those who love all the facts in any case
it is not enough to emphasize the fascination of
Christ's dramatic story, His lofty morals, and
His heroic life. Let us hasten to confess that
Christ is also the supreme example of genius in

Of Genius in the Realm of Intellect 69
the realm of intellect. Solitary in His sinlessness,
He is also supreme in His genius. In the last
analysis it is mind that conquers. Innocency has
little value in an infant. Innocency and charac
ter go toward value as they go toward maturity
and great strength. A saint or seer like Francis
of Assisi represents a mind working righteously.
Great leaders and deliverers like Luther and Paul
represent mind working heroically. Great friends
like Socrates and John represent mind working
in a glow of love. In olden times, when some
noble youth entered into his rights as prince or
king, to him came the people bringing costly gifts.
One offered his chariot, another his steeds, some
brought gold and gems. Children strewed flowers
in the way, while young men and maidens marched
before, singing triumphal songs. To-day, to the
youth entering the earthly scene comes the in
tellect offering him fire, a tool, a book, a song, a
prayer. Without knowledge man grovels like a
beast, but wisdom lends wings to the mind that
the soul may soar and sing. Society has climbed
upward upon a ladder whose bottom is in the mud,
whose top rests against the skies. Now intellect
has wrought every round in this ladder up which
ambitious men go climbing. When some traveller
finds a tribe with no clothing, no alphabet, no

70 Jesus Christ the Supreme Example
money, no marriage, no laws, he calls it barbarous.
But when a nation has fire, iron, engine, bridge.
home, liberty, religion, it is called civilized. Yet
all these symbols of progress represent achieve
ments of intellect. The naked savage who lies
in the sun listlessly gloating over his glass beads
is a creature that sits in the silent dungeon slowly
starving to death, to whom wisdom has never come
as a redeemer and saviour. Some cultured Burke
or Wordsworth represents a man whose soul has
been clothed with arts and sciences as rich, radiant
garments. Civilization itself is simply a granary
into which society has swept all the rich harvests
of the mind. Now ten-talent men are few. Thus
far philosophers have found five men whose genius
is of the first order, and whose work has been
epic-making and revolutionary. But the dizzy
space that separates these men from the rudest
savage is not so great as the space that separates
earth's five greatest intellects from this divine
carpenter, whose achievements for home and
friendship, for law and liberty, for learning and
religion, make His forehead to strike against the
stars. Christ's intellectual supremacy appears from
the greatness of the thoughts and themes with
which He enriched earth's loftiest spirits. Schol-

Of Genius in the Realm of Intellect 71
ars count the renaissance as one of the greatest
moments in the history of art and letters. If
we call the roll of the elect ones then seeking
to enrich men's lives, we mention the names of
Dante, Raphael, Angelo, with others like Milton
and his coworkers. Yet all these sons of genius
have had some great thought that they have bor
rowed from Jesus Christ as the central thought
of their glorious career. Indeed, it is scarcely
too much to say that those thoughts of Christ
called "God" and "heaven" covered all Italy
with works of art and filled all ears with sounds
of music. To the architect came Christ with
His thought of a " Father in heaven," indeed,
but who was still not "far from any one of His
children." Brooding over that thought Angelo
caused his spire to point upward, and standing
beneath the great dome of St. Peter's, the mul
titude bowed down and wept in the presence of
Him whom the heaven of heavens could not
contain. To the artists also seeking to make
beautiful the walls of the chapels Christ lent a
Madonna for the panels and angels and seraphs
for the ceilings. To the orator climbing the
pulpit stairs He lent the eloquence of those
great themes called the laws of home and hap
piness and heaven. When some publican, con-

72 Jesus Christ the Supreme Example
sumed with remorse, smote upon his breast, and
some Magdalen wept bitterly for her sins, He
lent the musician a " Miserere " ; or, when the
worshippers rose in exultant mood, a "Joyous
Gloria." Remembering also that Christ had
said, "Take heed that ye despise not My little
ones," parents and teachers founded schools and
colleges, and so attained their fame as educa-.
tors. Brooding over Christ's thoughts of the
wideness of God's mercy, Luther conceived his
reform in religion. From Christ's thoughts of the
fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man,
Hampden and Cromwell borrowed their move
ment for liberty. The golden rule of Christ also
lent Garrison and Phillips and their coworkers
their love for black and white alike. Christ's
words, "Go ye into all the world," sent Living
stone into Africa and Duff to found his colleges
in India. Christ's identification of Himself with
the poor and the weak also sent John Ruskin
and Arnold Toynbee and General Booth into the
submerged districts. Indeed, His thoughts upon
friendship, home, childhood, woman, love, self-
sacrifice, philanthropy, religion, have ushered in
an era when Christ would seem to have retained
the novelists to write pleas for the poor and weak,
the poets with the " In Memoriams," to encour-

Of Genius in the Realm of Intellect 73
age His pilgrims, the jurists to enact laws against
injustice, the reformers to overthrow those who
oppress the poor, the rich to pour out their
wealth in a golden river for the enrichment
of the common people. Though nearly three
centuries have passed, Shakespeare as yet has
conquered but few great students of four
nationalities that have given us really great
commentaries upon his immortal dramas. No
young scholar has ever felt so interested in the
bard of Stratford that he has gone forth to some
province of Africa, and, in order to give his
beloved poet to the people, formulated their rude
speech into written language. Yet during this
century alone the intellectual stimulus of Christ's
story has been such that more than two hundred
dictionaries and grammars in as many dialects and
languages have been compiled for the furtherance
of Christ's thoughts and the enrichment of man's
life. In view of His influence upon law, litera
ture, letters, and life, it seems hard not to believe
in Christ's supremacy in the realm of intellect.
For some reason, no author has ever spoken of
Christ as earth's supreme literary artist. Men
have discussed His ideas of childhood and home
and friendship and heaven, but they have held
themselves well away from all words as to the

74 Jesus Christ the Supreme Example
marvellous skill with which He formulated ideas
so melodious that, though they have been trans
lated twice, they still breathe the sound of an
ethereal music. The mystery of style has never
been discovered. It is wrapt in clouds and mys
tery. The poet Watson thought style was high
breeding. "What is it," he asked, "that we
admire in a splendid horse as it arches its neck
and lifts its magnificent limbs ? It is style. It
is the lofty bearing inherited from a select ances
try. And in literature style is a mark of purest
mental aristocracy, the most untainted intellect
ual blood." The perfect horse has style. Car
lyle goes limping with "a style," and Browning
has "a style," and Gibbon "a grand style." But
the " Sermon on the Mount " has not " a style."
It has style ; therefore, it is immortal. For, in the
last analysis, style is simply a great soul rushing
forth in words of absolutely unsurpassable sim
plicity. Christ's thoughts, injured by translators
and marred by copyists, seem like those precious
marbles from the hands of Phidias : the very frag
ments are so beautiful as to evoke the admiration
of all the beholders. Nevertheless, His words as
quoted by His four biographers represent in form
and thought the highest products of genius that
the literary art has ever produced. Charles Dick-

Of Genius in the Realm of Intellect 75
ens was the great master of the pathetic style.
When the novelist was asked what is the most
touching story in literature, he answered, "The
story of the Prodigal Son." Coleridge took all
knowledge to his province, and his conversation
sparkled with jewels of thought, yet, when asked
for the richest passage in literature, he answered,
"The Beatitudes." Edmund Kean was a great
actor and artist, but there was one passage so full
of tears that he thought no man could properly
render it — the one beginning, " Come unto me all
ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest." From the view point of the statesman,
Burke said the most impressive political document
on the rights of man was the "Sermon on the
Mount." It is a striking fact, too, that in all lit
erature the sentence best loved by children is
Christ's "Suffer the children to come unto me";
the sentence best loved by the aged, " Let not your
heart be troubled " ; the sentence best loved by
men, the one beginning, "For God so loved the
world that He gave His only begotten Son." In
hours of health and success men may love the
majestic pages of Plato, or the rhythmic beauty of
Ruskin, but in the last hour scholars and statesmen
alike proclaim, " Read me the words of Jesus Christ ;
they alone breathe the language of eternity."

76 Jesus Christ the Supreme Example
Consider Christ's enormous intellectual re
sources. Optimism is consciousness of hidden
reserves. Pessimism is poverty of resource. Vic
tory is with him who holds the last fact in the
case. The poets of despair, like Arnold and Thom
son, feel themselves unequal to the problems of
life, and the egotist exclaims, " If I go, who re
mains?" In the last analysis pessimism is igno
rance working toward fear. Ignorant, the savage
fears the storm cloud, and grown wise he wel
comes the rain for the field. In hours when vice
comes in like a flood, when crime and passion are
rampant, when sufferings seem to sweep over the
earth like sheeted storms, men grow discouraged
and fall into, depression. But Christ stands forth,
the sublimest optimist in history. Conscious of
His vast intellectual reserves, He felt Himself
equal to any emergency. The moment when He
entered this earthly scene was the darkest mo
ment in history. It was an hour when tyranny
and crime had gone upon a carnival. It seemed
as if despots had determined to leave earth not
one of the gifted children of song or eloquence or
philosophy or morals. Julius Caesar, the writer
and ruler, had been murdered. Cicero, the orator,
had been assassinated. Herod, who ruled over
Christ's city, murdered his two brothers, his wife,

Of Genius in the Realm of Intellect 77
Mariamne, slew the children of Bethlehem, and,
dying, ordered his nobles to be executed, that
mourning for the king might be widespread. Yet
in such an era, when He saw a thousand wrongs
to be achieved, Christ maintained His serenity,
and reigned victorious over life's troubles, believ
ing that with God "a thousand years are as one
day." He taught His disciples that God was
abroad everywhere, leavening society like yeast ;
that growth was the genius of the universe ; that
God can make vices virtues, pains to be medicine
and tears to be joys ; that ignorance and sin and
lying and uncleanliness shall become extinct like
ancient sea monsters. He was the poet leading
men to see " the best that glimmers in the worst,
to taste the fruit before the blossom falls, to
hear the lark within the songless egg " ; to dis
cern the wisdom of the sage in the prattle of the
child. Looking forward He saw the vices waning,
saw the earth growing roseate with benevolence
and love, beheld an era when happiness should be
universal and righteousness native unto young and
old alike. Because of the breadth of His outlook
upon the movement of man and events, He was
the sublimest optimist in history. There was,
indeed, a moment on Calvary when all the woes
and wrongs of the weary multitudes going strug-

78 Jesus Christ the Supreme Example
gling, floundering, falling through the wilderness,
seemed to pass over Him, and earth's sorrows
surged through His heart with all the might of
a pitiless storm, and in that hour He cried out,
" My God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " But the
tumultuous hours of Gethsemane and Calvary
were like these sudden summer thunder-storms,
when the night is big with terror, when each
moment is full of darkness and conflict and tur
moil, when fierce winds tugging at the trees
beat them to the ground, — storms whose darkness
passes into cloudless mornings, when the air is
steeped with sunshine, when leaves stand dripping
and motionless and every perfumed bush is full of
song and each tranquil hour is full of radiant
victory. Thus Christ passed swiftly from the
midnight of Gethsemane to the serene victory of
His ascension morn.
Consider Christ's intellectual supremacy as
manifest in His statement that the only sure
basis of social advancement is the progress of the
common people. Until His time all philosophers
had argued that the only way to elevate the multi
tude was to strengthen the patrician classes, exalt
ing as leaders the sons of strength or the sons of
genius or great generals. But Christ announced
a revolutionary principle. He came forward, say-

Of Genius in the Realm of Intellect 79
ing that the true leader is only a step in advance
of the pilgrim band ; that the great statesman and
deliverer must find in the atmosphere of the peo
ple their nourishment and stimulus ; that since
the people follow best the hero who best under
stands them, the true leader comes from among
the common people, and is lifted up upon their
shoulders. And this principle meant more to
society than Newton's principle of gravity meant
in the movement of the stars and suns. From
the very moment that Christ proclaimed the rise
and reign of the people, the generations passed
under the influence of His great impulse.
Thrones began to come down and the people
to go up. Social vices began to wane and the
virtues to wax. The sons and daughters of
strength, like Ambrose and Bernard and Dickens
and Stowe, dedicated their talents to the cause
of slaves and orphans and the neglected poor.
As time went on, it was found that events fully
justified Christ's emphasis of the poor as the real
architects of progress. From the poor have come
the great leaders, from Moses to Lincoln. From
the poor have come the great poets, from David
with his shepherd's crook, to Burns with his
plough. From the poor have come the great in
ventors, like Watt and Stevenson. In peasants'

80 Jesus Christ the Supreme Example
cottages, too, have been reared great artists, like
Correggio, Corot, and Millet; scientists, too, like
Newton and Ferguson, who have been trained in
the school of adversity. When Christ set a guar
dian angel beside each sleeping babe, waved the
golden rule above slave market and palace alike,
all society felt a new impulse, and a race that
hitherto had crept slowly forward climbed into
the golden chariot with Christ and swept swiftly
on toward those heights where wisdom and hap
piness do dwell.
Consider the supremacy of Christ's view of God.
No problem is so fascinating as the religious prob
lem. Grown gray and seventy, all men, atheists,
agnostics, and Christians alike, develop a passion
for theology. As men enter into the shadows of
life's evening, gold, bonds, books, honors, lose all
charm. Looking forward, they desire to die good
friends with God. Pathetic, indeed, the theories
men then develop about the unseen being. Some,
impressed by Nature's laws, make God to be an
infinite Watt guiding his world engine. Some,
impressed by the order and unity of Nature, think
of Him as an infinite Newton or Cuvier. Some,
marvelling at the steadiness of the stars and the
richness of the sheaves, think of Him as an infinite
householder, who feeds star lamps by night and

Of Genius in the Realm of Intellect 81
ripens the harvests by day. Interesting, too, the
ways in which men discover this divine being.
Recently a great scientist has told us how he
passed from extreme agnosticism to simple faith
in God. With his microscope he found a minute
form of amoeba in a jar of water, and dipping a
tiny wire in sugar he thrust it close to the animal
cule. At the end of a week the little creature fol
lowed the food. Then the scientist began to
deceive the amoeba with a wire that had no sugar.
Once, twice, ten times it was disappointed, but
after that it heeded not the deceit. This tiny bit
of protoplasm had perception, contrast, memory,
and will, and the scientist developed the theory
that behind the physical body stands a spiritual
body that builds it. In his laboratory this scien
tist hung tuning forks with electrical tests for
measuring musical notes that the ear could not
catch. But one day finding his instruments meas
uring the musical scale when he could detect no
sound, he went into the country and then found
that everything in Nature was vibrating the musi
cal scale, and leaped to the conclusion that all the
planets and suns are vibrating the thought of a
world mind, who is the author of a world beauty,
a world music, and a world truth.
Many and rude are man's conceptions of God.

82 Jesus Christ the Supreme Example
A theological museum reminds us of an anthrop
ological museum — full of stone implements, axes,
arrow-heads, rude war clubs, strange canoes,
the drums of the medicine man, the charms of
astrologers. But over against these conceptions,
rude and harsh and embryonic, stands Christ's
thought of God, clothed with matchless simplicity
and beauty. He affirmed that God was man's
Father, who had made His earthly child in His own
image ; that man is a miniature of the Divine
Being ; that what reason and judgment and mem
ory and love in the small are in man, that they are
in the large, in the great God. In that statement
He grounded the possibility of communion with
God as the soul's Father. If music in the hearer
answers to music in the singer, melody is possible.
If the telephone in one house corresponds to the
instrument in another, conversation is possible.
And because man's mind is keyed to God's mind,
the great truths of conscience and beauty, the new
heart, the heavenly mansions, the immortal life,
the largest truths in the universe slip smoothly
and easily into the mind of the waif, the Hotten
tot, the slave. Moving on in His thought, Christ
revealed God as the world's burden bearer, full of
an exquisite kindness and sympathy ; that what
He was through three and thirty years, God was

Of Genius in the Realm of Intellect 83
through all the ages ; that what he was to publi
can and sinner in Bethlehem, God was for all
maimed and wrecked hearts in all worlds ; that no
human tear falls but God feels it, that no blow
smites the suffering heart but that God shrinks
and suffers, that with wistful longing He follows
the publican and the prodigal, waiting for the hour
when He may recover the youth to his integrity
or lead the man grown gray in sin back to his
Father's house.
But chiefly is Christ's intellectual supremacy
indicated by His view of immortality. In the last
hour, looking upward, man gazes not toward an
empty throne. He flings his imploring arm not
into vacancy, nor does he sob out his confessions
into a heaven that is deaf and dumb. Silent
indeed seem the heavens, but that silence is elo
quent with testimony. History has preserved for
us an incident of the friendship of Heine and
Hegel. One evening after dinner the poet and
the philosopher paced to and fro in the garden,
" under the majestical roof fretted with golden
fire." Musing upon the good and great who had
gone before, the poet pointed to a sparkling planet
as a possible point for the assembling of earth's
master spirits. When Heine answered with a
contemptuous sneer, Hegel said : " Has Socrates

84 Jesus Christ the Supreme Example
then never had his wrong righted ? Has justice
never been done for Judas and Jesus ? " With
dim eyes Hegel turned to the poet and exclaimed,
"So you want a reward because you have sup
ported your sick mother and have not poisoned
your brother?" The biting reply of the great
German reminds us how for a purpose God with
holds the visions of immortal happiness from the
children of virtue and love, even as He withholds
the vision of pain and disaster from the children
of vice and crime. Here and now, character is
the all-important thing. God will not bribe man
into virtue by using the vision of heaven as a per
petual sweetmeat. He will not frighten man out
of vice by the vision of the rod of a painful
schoolmaster. But this silence in the interests of the preser
vation of character, taken in connection with a
thousand dim hints and suggestions, is eloquent
with testimony regarding the immortal life. Im
mortality does not depend upon the immediate
possession of it now, but it does rest upon the
hope of it being begotten in the soul beforehand.
By a thousand whisperings Nature intimates im
mortality for man. Here no universal appetite
is without its satisfaction. For the eye there is
light, for the ear there is melody, for the mind

Of Genius in the Realm of Intellect 85
there is boundless truth, for the heart there are
rich friendships. In a world where the fin of
fish finds its complement in the water, where the
wing of bird finds its answer in the soft air,
man with hunger and thirst for an infinite beauty
and truth looks longingly toward immortal shores.
What possibilities for the immortal life all un
touched ! What treasure in the soul all uncov
ered ! Professor Max Miiller conversed in fifteen
languages. Addison Alexander was a critical
scholar in twenty-five different tongues. La
Place could carry before his mind problems in
the higher mathematics filling whole chapters of
a book. Beethoven saw sounds moving toward
him in columns, and carried whole symphonies in
his memory. Schooled here through the neces
sity of the body, only here and there is an indi
vidual who can give himself to the culture of
the mind. But that which is unique in the
greatest of earth's children seems to be latent in
all mankind. Here what inequalities ! Often
good men eat crusts ; bad men wear purple and
live in kings' palaces. Here the reformer and
patriot starve in a garret ; the traitor and dema
gogue ascend to the throne. If in this life only
we have hope, justice is threatened and the
whole structure of civilization trembles. Is na-

86 Jesus Christ the Supreme Example of Genius
ture dumb? Will not God break the silence?
Then nature speaks and God gives voice.
Condemned to death for conscience' sake,
Socrates speaks: "Wherefore, O judges, be of
good cheer about death ! Know of a certainty
that no evil can happen to a good man, either
in life or after. He and his are not neglected
by the gods, nor has my own approaching end
happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that
to die and be released was far better for me.
Therefore the oracle gave no sign. The hour of
departure is at hand, and we go our ways, I to
die, and you to live. Which is better God only
knows." This noblest death scene in history, save
one, tells us God has broken the silence. But if
Socrates died like a philosopher, whispering hope
to our own hearts, Jesus Christ, dying, spake in
full, round tones, bringing life and immortality
to light. "It is the glory of God to conceal a
matter," said Job : it is also His glory to reveal
the mystery. Like a great bell of hope, mellow,
ceaseless, glorious in its music, the words of the
soul's Saviour ring across the world : " Because
I live, ye shall live also." " In my father's house
are many mansions. If it were not so I would
have told you."

IV

Elje Supremacy of Christ in tfje 3ftealm of local
(Character

" But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time,
But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue,
But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love,
O perfect life in perfect labor writ,
O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, —
What if ox yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse,
What least defect or shadow of defect,
What rumor, tattled by an enemy,
Of inference loose, what lack of grace
Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's, —
Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee,
Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ ? "
— Sidney Lanier's " The Crystal."

88

IV

THE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST IN THE REALM OF
IDEAL CHARACTER
Names are epitomes of life. Names as monuments of
cities and civilizations. A unique candidate for universal
fame. Christ the supreme master of the science of right
living. Obedience native to Him. An exception to the law
of environment. Nazareth a strange home for the develop
ment of purity. Christ contradicts the laws of culture,
property, and position. Unique as to the shortness of His
earthly career. Leaves no developed system or written
philosophy. His force purely personal. The living Christ.
Unique as an ideal for man and woman. The sexes repre
sent contradictory qualities. The appeal of Christ's character
and career to men of all classes and conditions. The Son of
Man. Christ a revelation of all the soul's boundless capacities
and supreme destiny.
IN calling the roll of the great ones of earth,
and in attempting to forecast the place of
Christ among the immortals, Paul asserts his
belief that Christ will sit upon the world's
throne, and "His name be above every name."
Matthew also emphasizes "the name" of Christ,
asserting that that name was based upon the
fact that He was to save His people from their
89

90 The Supremacy of Christ
sins and from sinning. The old prophet, too,
capitalized Christ's " name " as Wonderful, the
Counsellor, the Mighty God, the everlasting
Father, the Prince of Peace. Be the reasons
what they may, the sages and seers have been
strangely fascinated with the study of Christ's
"name," and their interest is not without its
philosophy and explanation.
Names stand for physical traits and moral
qualities. They are epitomes of life. They con
dense character and career. Granaries store up
material harvests, and names garner soul treas
ures. With wisps of straw husbandmen bind
wheat into bundles, with strings gardeners tie
flowers into nosegays ; and a name is a thought
band binding together heart qualities. Without
names civilization and cities would be impossible.
Individuals would be lost in the multitude as
drops in the river. For by names men make
contracts, form partnerships, assume commercial
obligations, take office, enter into marriage. By
names penalties are visited upon the guilty and
honors bestowed upon the worthy. Unnamed,
the multitudes would be indistinguishable.
The ambition to make a name is praiseworthy,
because it involves storing the name with endur
ing integrities. Cromwell, Hampden, and Pym

In the Realm of Ideal Character 91
filled their names full with heroic thoughts and
deeds, and the generations go to these " name "
granaries for soul food and nourishment. Some
names endure through centuries, as sacks filled
with wheat stand upright. Others perish out of
recollection, for empty sacks collapse. When
death pricks an empty name, it vanishes like a
bubble. The ideal plan asks the home to defer naming
the babe until the growing boy reveals the real
genius of his life. But now and then the bap
tismal name prophesies character and career.
Witness Lincoln, called at the font Abraham,
that means the liberator. Witness Whittier,
named John Greenleaf, apostle of love and the
olive branch. Witness Florence Nightingale,
for untold multitudes in prisons and hospitals,
like the sweet bird that sings songs in the
night. With exquisite precision Bunyan fitted
the name to the character — Mr. Obstinate, Mr.
Pliable, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, old Mr. Honesty,
and Mr. Greatheart. The seer tells us in life's
new morning God will give each "a new name "
that expresses not what men think we are nor
what we judge ourselves to be, but what God
knows is the very essence of our innermost life.
Happy, then, those whose "new name" shall

92 The Supremacy of Christ
glow and sparkle like a diamond upon the
brow. When the man dies, all life's scaffolding falls
away. Then only the name epitomizing the
life remains. For it stirs our wonder that
names alone survive the shock of time. Cities
become heaps and empires ruins, bronze tablets
and marble monuments are ploughed down in
dust, the seven wonders of the world perish, but
not the names of their creators. The marble of
the Acropolis wastes, but Phidias' name abides.
God has ordained the names of great men as
the enduring monuments of civilization. And
thinking of the great ones of earth, Paul asserts
that such is to be the eminence of Christ's name
that all those qualities that are distributed among
many and confer renown upon each shall be
swept in and compacted together into this one
illustrious name that is to be above all others, as
the tree is above the grass it shelters, as the
mountain is above the low-browed hills resting on
its sides, as the star is above the clouds it illu
mines. O, name of names, fulfilling this prophecy 1
Most wondrous, too, that the prophetic eye, search
ing out the candidate for universal fame, should
turn to a captive nation, to a degraded province,
to a village into which had run all jthe slime of

In the Realm of Ideal Character 95
creation, to an obscure peasant's cottage, and
therefrom select an unschooled youth, born into
poverty, bound to coarsest labor, doomed to
thirty years of obscurity, scorned by rulers,
despised by priests, mobbed by common people,
by all counted traitorous to his country and reli
gion, in death stigmatized by a method of exe
cution reserved for slaves and convicts.
Our wonder grows apace when we remember
that he wrote no book, no poem, no drama,
no philosophy ; invented no tool or instrument ;
fashioned no law or institution ; discovered no
medicine or remedy ; outlined no philosophy of
mind or body ; contributed nothing to geology
or astronomy, but stood at the end of his brief
career, doomed and deserted, solitary and silent,
utterly helpless, fronting a shameless trial and
a pitiless execution. In that hour none so poor
as to do him reverence. And yet could some
magician have touched men's eyes, they would
have seen that no power in heaven and no force
on earth for majesty and productiveness could
equal or match this crowned sufferer whose name
was to be "Wonderful." The ages have come
and gone; let us hasten to confess that the
carpenter's son hath lifted the gates of empires
off their hinges and turned the stream of the

94 The Supremacy of Christ
centuries out of their channels. His spirit hath
leavened all literature; He has made laws just,
governments humane, manners gentle, even cold
marble warm ; He refined art by new and divine
themes, shaped those cathedrals called "frozen
prayers," led scientists to dedicate their books
and discoveries to Him, and so glorified an
instrument of torture as that the very queen
among beautiful women seeks to enhance her
loveliness by hanging His cross about her neck,
while new inventions and institutions seem but
letters in His storied speech. To-day His birth
day alone is celebrated by all the nations. All
peoples and tribes claim Him. He seems
supremely great. None hath arisen to dispute
His throne. Plato divides honors with Aristotle,
Bacon walks arm in arm with Newton, Napoleon
does not monopolize the admiration of soldiers.
In poetry, music, art, and practical life, universal
supremacy is unknown. But Jesus Christ is so
opulent in His gifts, so transcendent in His
words and works, so unique in His life and
death, that He receives universal honors. His
name eclipses other names as the noonday sun
obliterates by very excess of light.
The influence of Christ's name in securing
the upward movement of society hath sufficient

In the Realm of Ideal Character 95
reasons. Persons, not abstractions, civilize and
exalt. Not his reflections upon truth and
beauty, but Socrates himself, embodying these,
transformed his Athenian disciples. Not his
theses on the church door of Wittenberg, but
Luther's flaming heart redeemed Germany. Not
Puritanism as a theory, but Puritanism incar
nated in Cromwell and Hampden transformed
England. Not a written declaration, but that
declaration organized into Washington, Adams,
and Jefferson wrought out our independence.
Indeed, the measure of Christianity's power is
the prophets and heroes it has had, whose divine
qualities have been stored up for those who
shall come after! And for the inspiration of
mankind, the name of Jesus Christ globes within
itself every idea and ideal of man ; all gentle
ness and justice ; all wisdom and all mercy ; all
sympathy and tenderness; all courage and self-
sacrifice and purity ; above all love, tropical, im
measurable, inimitable. As the flashing orb in
the sky has lifted the tides in forward flow, so the
wonderful name lifts society upward in character
and culture and will yet lift man back to his
Father's side.
Consider the supremacy of this name in the
matter of right living ! The most difficult of all

96 The Supremacy of Christ
the arts is that of living justly and charitably with
one's fellows in all the relations of life. No other
task lays such burdens upon men. Men under
stand and control acids, alkalies, fire, wind, and
water. Man tames wild beasts and makes them
burden bearers. He carries himself easily through
Africa's jungles and Alaska's icefields. He
changes poisons into magic balms and medicines.
Indeed, the time seems rapidly approaching when
he will hold the secret of every force in land and
sea and sky. But having made himself master in
every other realm, man breaks down utterly when
it comes to living justly and smoothly with his
fellow-men. The birds at one bound master their
career and attain happiness. The beasts browsing
in the clover fields have but to eat, stoop at the
cool spring, lie down in shade, and the «nd of their
creation is reached. But the animals carry slender
equipments, and instincts guide them. It is not
difficult to master an alphabet of three letters nor
even one of twenty-six. But man's alphabetic
faculties are two score and more, making all con
ceivable combinations possible. Man carries all
seasons in his brain — spring and summer, autumn
and winter. How many men are in one man :
to-day reason, to-morrow passion ; to-day sympathy,
to-morrow repugnance ; to-day charity, to-morrow

In the Realm of Ideal Character 97
vengeance ; in a single day the mind runs through
many and oppugnant moods. And then what
rivalries; what ambitions and struggles for pre
cedence ; what collisions of interests ; what flexi
bility in the tongue, at once a club for anger, a
poison for envy, a knife for hatred. No whip
hissing and writhing about the flank of horse
carrying such stinging pain as the tongue of man !
Henry Ward Beecher once said, " If our life might
be as the life of a craft on a sequestered lake,
which rude winds never disturb, right living would
be easy ; but to carry our slender bark amid cur
rents and violent winds and constant whirls and
rocks and bars, and amid fleets sailing in every
direction, that is not easy." It is just here that
the supremacy of Jesus Christ is manifest. To do
right was as natural for Him as to breathe. Obedi
ence to law was native to Him. He approached
the laws of life as one "to the manner born."
Midst hordes of men, midst all the distemperatures
of life, He maintained His peerless perfection.
The supremacy of His name further appears
when we consider the law of life is, that man's
early surroundings stand to his riper character in
the relation of cause to effect. Everywhere life
exhibits this principle. Hothouse plants have no
power of resistance. For beams and ship timber

98 The Supremacy of Christ
we go to the wind-stormed oaks on unsheltered
hills. Man finds no fruits midst arctic icebergs,
yet in the tropics he beholds a wilderness of fruits
and flowers. But this law of climate and sur
roundings holds also in the world of morals and
intellect. The poor savage in Africa, denied the
knowledge of the history of mankind and the arts,
useful and beautiful, sits in his soul dungeon and
starves to death. But some Ruskin or Webster,
planted and nourished in the rich soil and gentle
climate of universal knowledge, grows large and
strong. Oliver Twist's brief sojourn in Fagin's
den left permanent impressions of evil. Jean
Valjean could never cast off the influence of his
career as a convict. Napoleon to the last hour of
his life upon the rocks of St. Helena bore himself
as emperor. But this law of environment hath
supreme contradiction in Jesus Christ. He entered
life in a most tumultuous age, when all society
groaned with profligacy. This condition of general
corruption seemed specially aggravated in Pales
tine. Galilee was particularly renowned for disso
luteness. Nazareth, the headquarters of the
Roman legions, maelstrom-like sucked into itself
parasites and abandoned persons until it became a
proverb, " No good thing can come out of Naza
reth." All the best Jewish element fled from the

In the Realm of Ideal Character 99
town as from a pestilence. Yet midst these sur
roundings He passed His childhood and youth.
There He grew, the fairest flower that ever
bloomed, seeming like the lily in the slough to
draw delicate whiteness out of the very filth.
Some may urge that this young carpenter repre
sents a reaction against the desperate wickedness
of His age and time. But no Gladstone ever lived
to manhood midst the foul environment of White-
chapel, and then in protest against vileness,
ignorance, and coarseness reacted into sudden
refinement and sensitiveness of soul. When pure
white snow springs from July's dusty street as a
protest against fierce heat ; when sparkling water
gushes up in solid column from a filthy pool as a
protest against sewers, then, and not until then,
will reason permit us to believe a man can put off
the influences of childhood as he puts off his coat
or outer garment.
Consider how Jesus Christ contradicts all the
laws of culture, wealth, and family. His was an
untrained youth. No teacher or schools fed the
flame of His illustrious genius. He was denied
access to the riches of Grecian literature and
the Roman law. Yet, Himself untaught, He dis
covered childhood, emphasized the importance of
early training, set forth the true principles of

100 The Supremacy of Christ
education, and left behind a germinal teaching
that developed into the schools and colleges of our
day. Nor is there Bonn or Heidelberg, Oxford or
Cambridge, Harvard or Yale that was not founded
by His followers, for His disciples have always
held it to be their peculiar mission to foster higher
education. Equally strange His relation to in
dustry and wealth. He was always poor. For
thirty years He pushed the plane for daily bread.
He knew nothing of money and its increase
through handling large treasures. Yet He so
grasped the principles of wealth and property, so
related them to industry, thrift, integrity, and
universal civilization, that in proportion as nations
have accepted His principles of life are they rich
and prosperous, ranking first among the states.
He who is perhaps the leading political economist
of our age has just said: "All political economy
is being rewritten under the influence of Jesus
Christ." Unique also His relation to the family.
He had no home ; the sacred relations of husband
and father He never sustained. Yet He blessed
children, and from His arms they returned with
double worth to their mother's bosom. Homeless
Himself, He founded the Christian home ; en
throned love as law, distributed duties, and toward
His ideal home aJJ the human family is journeying

In the Realm of Ideal Character 101
The shortness of His earthly career, too, gives us
surprise. But few men have died in youth and
left behind great distinction, and these excelled
only in those natures asking for enthusiasm, physi
cal energy, hope and ambition. Time soon reveals
the faults of rashness, unripe judgment, and over-
confidence. The philosophers, scientists, and
epoch-making minds have alike asked for time
and old age in which to revise and remodel their
systems ; but this divine carpenter, whose teach
ings still guide the wisest thinkers, died at three
and thirty.
Consider that He is the one universal man. If
He was an ideal Jew, He was also our one true
cosmopolitan. In Him all the peculiar Jewish
characteristics had fullest expression and ideal
embodiment. Therefore, the people tried to take
Him by force and make Him king. The Jew
is a unique type, and is everywhere recognized.
Yet when Christ's character was held up before
the polished Grecian people, they forgot their
hatred of the Jew in their admiration of Him
who seemed the ideal Greek. Similarly the war
like Roman and the liberty-loving Teuton each
saw in Christ their own national type, their ideal
citizen. The sun above cannot be parcelled out.
Nobody's star, but everybody's ; nobody's air, but

102 The Supremacy of Christ
everybody's ; nobody's sky, but everybody's, and
one greater possession was universal — the man
Christ who globed in Himself all the qualities of
all the races. Stranger still His reconciliation of
the ideal qualities of manhood and womanhood.
We need not analyze these qualities. Enough
that sex is dyed in the wool ; that God's colors
do not wash out. With manhood we associate
strength, endurance, courage, and moral energy;
while to woman we ascribe purity, beauty, delicacy
of thought, fidelity, and self-sacrifice. The diffi
culty of combining these qualities in one character
is seen in the reproachful phrase, "a womanish
man," or "a mannish woman." Yet in Him the
two hemispheres are fully orbed. He is the ideal
for every man of oak and rock. He is also the
ideal for every woman representing vine and
flower. To these unique elements of character let
us add His emphasis of the personal element.
Other men, as Plato or Bacon, have rested all
upon their ideas. They have committed their
fame to their philosophical system. But Jesus
Christ wrote no line, no book, no chapter. He
spake and His words perished with the vibrations
of the air. He left the records and teachings
not to scholars, but to ignorant fishermen. His

In the Realm of Ideal Character 103
method was personal. His test was allegiance
to Himself ; His plan the interweaving of men's
lives with His. Think of Socrates assembling the
people of Athens and saying, "Come unto me, and
I will give you rest." Imagine Plato, when in
some favored day he had lifted his disciples by the
enthusiasm of his discourse, saying, " I am the light
of the world, he that followeth me shall not walk
in darkness." But expressions like these epito
mize Christ's words and methods. Surely in
mission and character this man's name is indeed
wonderful. The supremacy of this name is not by chance.
From nothing, nothing comes. Homage is al
ways a conquest. Christ's name is supreme, but
whence are the hidings of His power? One teach
ing alone was enough to make His name " above
every name." He made the infinite God under
standable. Man learns only by object lessons.
As the house reveals the architect, as the poem
reveals the poet, as the tool reveals the inventor's
mind, as the argument reveals the orator, so the
universe is "an enormous mind and will rushing
into shape." The world is a great picture gallery
for getting the genius of the great God before
man's mind. Each divine attribute is incarnated.
God's power is exhibited in wind and wave and

104 The Supremacy of Christ
earthquake; His goodness in fruits and berries
and grains ; His beauty is in flower and land
scape and face of little child ; His wisdom is seen
in the brain, that can at the same moment taste
the delicious orange, be conscious of the warmth
of the fire, regret the ringing of the doorbell,
recall the forgotten engagement, follow the sor
rows of Hamlet. God's providence is seen in the
strategic events of history. The material world
exhibits the infinite mind, but what of God's
heart? Is He a great "bundle of thunder
storms " ? Is He only the engineer of this vast
complicated mechanism ? Is His throne ice, His
heart marble, His arm iron ? Are His laws man
traps ? Does His justice send penalties like hur
tling cannon balls along the trackway of sinful
men ? Is He that cold, vague, far-off one, who
keeps those belts called "laws" around the sun-
wheels, and cares only that the wheels turn and
the mill grinds ? Does He love the world house,
and tend its floor, and oil its lamp, and fill its
root cellar, but neglect His children "crying in
the night, crying for the light, with no language
but a cry " ?
To all those questions there is an answer. If
the material world incarnates God's mind, Jesus
Christ incarnates God's heart. With the hand

In the Realm of Ideal Character 105
we feel the orange over. The eye is a longer
hand, feeling over the distant mountain. Jesus
Christ compresses God so that reason can feel
over His infinitude. He folds Himself together
until He lies within the diameter and scope
of man's mind. Philosophers have taught and
theologians still teach that God does not and can
not suffer ; that He sits on the world throne and
coolly beholds the thrall of mankind, its wasting
march through weakness and temptations and
trouble ; all sorrows sweeping through the world
like equinoctial storms ; the mistakes, tears, and
weltering misery that attend man as he wades
knee-deep through sorrows on his way up from
animalism to God's throne. But the three and
thirty years of Christ's life exhibit the heart of
God as full and deep as the ocean pulsing on
every shore through all time " every inflection of
feeling which springs from purity and rectitude
and love." His is indeed the "mighty, majestic
heart," effulging sympathy for all weakness and
ignorance and sinfulness. His is a parent's emo
tion in behalf of those He loves. Would you
know what is the heart of God ? Behold its in
flections in Him whose name is Wonderful. Those
who groan and travaij in poverty may see how
God would have them bear themselves and con-

106 The Supremacy of Christ
quer in that He rose above the besetments of
poverty, and fed the flame of His genius, and
in the face of adversity fulfilled His career. Men
toiling in an unrequited way should consider His
patience in obscurity and limitations, while fully
conscious of His luminous power and superiority
and His destiny to be the light of the world.
Behold His encouragement for those thralled
with weakness. Behold His exquisite sympathy.
What Jesus Christ was toward needy and sinful
men for thirty and three years — the great God is
through all time. Behold His gentleness ! All
sordid men, defiled within and without, crowded
about Him, and the nobility and sweetness of His
nature cleansed and transformed them. Then
first perhaps in all ages truth and purity were so
represented that by "an irresistible enthusiasm
the corruptest and wickedest rushed toward Him,
and depravity bowed itself down and wept in the
presence of divinity."
The supremacy of His name is also manifest in
His unique view of the worth of each life. Strip
ping off the outer husks of manhood Christ looked
at the naked soul. Brooding over the divine some
thing in each He was stirred with intensest enthu
siasm. As the mother hangs over the cradle with
pulsing love, so He lingered by prodigal and out-

In the Realm of Ideal Character 107
cast, by publican and brigand. His hot tears fell
over Jerusalem. The boy in South Africa shied a
diamond at a stranger, but the traveller picked up
the gem with beating heart. So Christ valued
what other teachers had despised. Man was
rough without, but there were flashing crystals
within. So He kindled and fed in each the undy
ing certainty that we are allied to God in such a
way as that we do not die when we die. To each
youth come great epochs, luminous hours. Then
the soul seems to be on the verge of something.
A rift opens in the sky. Voices fall and keep
falling. Man and God ensphere. The human
and the divine glide into each other, as the day
glides into the dawn. This makes man as great a
mystery as God, only smaller. It was as if He had
said to each man : " Thou art a bundle of latent
germs. Save thyself by an outlook upon the com
ing harvest. Your life is hinted but hidden. It
flashes now only in sparks. Some day it will be
full-orbed. Cherish this faith as the mariner in a
dark and stormy night cherishes the distant light
and harbor." Soon all society felt this divine im
pulse. Because man had this priceless worth he
must be redeemed back to his divineness. There
fore teachers, missionaries, reformers, set forth to
scale mountains, brave seas, penetrate forests,

108 The Supremacy of Christ
conquer the arctics, endure the tropics,- and hav
ing freed slaves from bodily chains, passed on td
include freedom from mind and heart. Surely,
this name is above every name in that He gave us
undying enthusiasm for humanity.
To the question, Can the wrong-doer ever be
happy again and at rest with God aftd conscience f
Jesus Christ makes unique reply. What a drama
is human life. The cradle rocks innocence. Child
hood means games and freedom from care. Boy
hood brings rivalries and conflicts in schoolroom
and playground. Daily temptations and sin's go
up in battle array against the boy's integrity.
Soon the youth enters store or office. Now the
fight thickens. He sees the strong take the
sidewalk while the weak go to the wall. He
finds more good than evil, but the little evil
vexes his life. He finds cotton in silk, water in
his milk, chicory in his coffee, adulteration in
his food, slag in his coal, water in his railway
stock, nothing in his silver mine. Becoming
wiser, the youth searches out causes. He beholds
iniquities organized into laws, strength oppressing
weakness, and an array of parasites living on the
industries. Becoming sordid, his motto now is,
"Every man for himself, and the devil take the
hindmost." Where once he prayed the Lord's

In the Realm of Ideal Character 109
Prayer, now he ends up each day with, "The
fittest survive." The years hurrying on bring
honor and prosperity.
At length a crisis appears. Adversity wastes
his treasure. Death enters his home. Enemies
blacken his good name. Material things seem as
apart from character as the upright pole around
which farmers stack their wheat is apart from
the golden sheaves. Often in the night he looks
wistfully back to the old childhood days. Then
in a gentle glow he lay listening to the rain
pattering on tlie low roof. Old memories bring a
half sob to the strong man's throat. A luminous
hour comes. Then he realizes that conscience,
God's ambassador, through all the years never by
day or night has taken eyes off him. Then
Plato's words come back : " Can God forgive ? Is
it right for Him to do so ? " Man looks out wist
fully upon the abiding things as a man caught
in the current of some mighty river and swept
helplessly on, sees lights on the shores, and
sends out a cry for help. Will culture help this
heart-hunger ? Not until painting a pump with
out avails for sweetening the bitter water within.
Will embellishments bring peace ? Not until a
discordant organ is tuned by decorating the pipes.
Then the man cries out, "Where shall help be

110 The Supremacy of Christ
found ? " And the answer is, " Like as a father
pitieth his children." But father and mother carry
the child's sorrows, bear his sins, heal his hurts,
receive his stripes. " And what are parents,"
saith Jesus Christ, "but interpreters of God, ever
seeking after His prodigal children ? " God is
hurt by Peter's sin. Saul has broken his father's
heart, and we are Sauls whom Christ would
transform to Pauls. This is the divine solution
for Peter and Paul and Jean Valjean and Donatello.
It is the key to the drama of man's soul. It is
the essence of the uniqueness of Christ.

V

&fje Simplicity ano Breaotij of C&rfort as
Eeliflious fteacfjer

"He, who from the Father forth was sent,
Came the true Light, light to our hearts to bring ;
The Word of God, — the telling of His thought ;
The Light of God, — the making visible ;
The far-transcending glory brought
In human form with man to dwell ;
The dazzling gone — the power not less
To show, irradiate, and bless ;
The gathering of the primal rays divine,
Informing Chaos to a pure sunshine ! "
— George Macdonald.

112

V

THE SIMPLICITY AND BREADTH OF CHRIST AS A
RELIGIOUS TEACHER
History a story of imperfect tools, customs, and institu
tions. An injured world. Long time stands between the
forked stick and the steam plough. Religious institutions ask
time for development. The complexity of the philosophers
and the simplicity of Christ as a religious teacher. Simplicity
as the test of strength. Simplicity as the test of beauty and
the arts. Complexity a sign of weakness. The simplicity of
Christ's idea of God. Unveils God not as fear, or fate, or
force, but as law, guiding providence, and love. The simplest
explanation in religion the truest. Christ's view of man.
Made in God's image. Therefore the full power of the Cre
ator pledged to assist his growth and destiny. Man's growth
dependent not upon what he is, but upon what God is.
What man shall be when time and the divine resources have
wrought their full power upon him. Simplicity of Christ's
view of ethics. Grounds man's responsibility in his moral
constitution. Separates duty from creeds and churches.
Right and wrong organized into the laws of nature and the
constitution of man. Simplicity of Christ's view of the
Church. Its basis personal allegiance to himself and the uni
versal principles for which Christ stood. Disciples not bound
together from without by creeds, but drawn together from
within by love. The simplicity of Christ's use of symbols.
Religion divine, but its ceremonies human. Christ's empha
sis of liberty, toleration, and charity. The coming church.
i 113

114 The Simplicity and Breadth of Christ
THE excavators who have uncovered for us
the streets and houses of Pompeii have
assembled in a museum all the bronzes, marbles,
ivories, mosaics they have discovered. Unfortu
nately, not one single object has escaped some
form of injury. The winged Mercury stands
forth with broken arms and legs. The white
forehead of Venus holds a black stain. All the
precious tablets are cracked, while the rolls
found in Pliny's father's tomb hold writings faded
and dim. The universal damage that has befallen
the products of man's arts and industries leads
the mind to expect that man's customs and insti
tutions will suffer some grievous accidents. And
experience wrings from us the confession, that
imperfection does attend all that man achieves.
Through some error, man's train leaves the track,
his ship strikes the rock, his bridge breaks, his
wealth takes wings, his health gives way. Even
the wisest book holds some ignorance, the greatest
oration includes some error, the sweetest music
holds some discord ; nor is there any nation whose
constitution needs no amendment. These errors
that have accompanied man as builder and writer,
as scientist and inventor, prepare us for the errors
that have accompanied him as a teacher of morals.
If the baron and lawyer of the fifteenth century

As a Religious Teacher 115
toast over the hot fire the feet of the witness in
order to elicit testimony, we may expect that the
priests and people of that dark day will rush
together in crowds to behold the burning of the
witch or the heretic. If, in the fourteenth cen
tury, the king and the prince misused their wealth
and became drunkards, profligates, and criminals,
we must expect that in the reaction from these
excesses- good men will exalt poverty, live in caves,
wear rags, and eat crusts of mouldy bread.
If the education of that far-off time must needs
wait long for the schoolhouse, if the field must
wait long for the steam plough and the reaper, if
love and marriage must wait for beautiful homes,
it seems natural to expect that religion must wait
for the waning of ignorance and superstition, and
the waxing of wisdom and character. Fascinating,
indeed, is the museum filled with stone hammers,
the war clubs, the spears and crude implements
of man's early industry and life. But what a
museum would be that stored with the symbols
of man's religious progress — the astrologer's
chart, the diviner's rod, the map with the flight
of birds, the hazel rod for detecting hidden veins
of water, the charms for warding off danger, the
secrets of medicine men, going on at last to the
Te Deum, holy aspirations, the songs, with all

116 The Simplicity and Breadth of Christ
noble arguments toward worship. The sweet
simplicity of the religion of love to-day makes
yesterday's religion, with its cumbrous forms and
grievous burdens, well-nigh intolerable.
Travellers in India tell us that when pagan
mothers are led into the light of education and
Christianity, they often weep bitterly, remember
ing the sweet babes they cast into the Ganges in
obedience to the dictates of superstition. Thus,
in the light of to-day's toleration and charity, the
sufferings of Huss and Cranmer, of Savonarola
and Luther, speak eloquently of the bigotry and
intolerance of the former days. The dawn, with
its sunshine, lends a deeper darkness to the mid
night with its owls and bats, its deep black
gloom. How refreshing, therefore, the contrast be
tween the complexity and cumbersomeness of the
philosophers and the simplicity of Christ as a
religious teacher. He rises like a white shaft,
simple, yet sublime. In every realm simplicity
is the proof of greatness. Any increase in the
number of wheels for engine, press, or loom les
sens its utility. Each inventor counts a gain in
simplicity as a gain in power. All the immortals,
Moses, Paul, and Socrates, are men plain to the
verge of harshness. History knows no preten-

As a Religious Teacher 117
tious hero. All who are " to the manner born "
carry with them a certain air of quiet repose, and
their simplicity is the finest ornament of their
greatness. Nature achieves all her strength and
beauty by the avoidance of complexity. The
strength of the bee's cell is in the use of the
fewest lines and the least wax. How simple
the lily's whiteness, shaped by a single curve!
The giant of the forest has its strength through
the trunk springing a hundred feet into the air
without a branch, crowned with a slight tuft of
green. All the great artists understand that the
line of beauty is the line of economy. Michael
Angelo once defined perfection as " the purgation
of superfluities." How chaste the lines of the
Venus de Milo. In the golden age of art each
Parthenon was a very simple temple. But when
the fine arts entered upon their decline, the Vene
tians began to ornament their statues. Each
Apollo wore a gilt crown ; the marble cheek of
Aphrodite was stained red ; the legs of the Dying
Gladiator flamed with a bright flesh color; soon
all beauty fled away before this complexity.
In their garb also the Greek women understood
that simplicity was beauty. Outdoor life and
perfect health lent each maiden an arm and
brow of marble and a cheek of purest rose. With

118 The Simplicity and Breadth of Christ
instinctive grace the girl draped herself in one
color, white, in a robe falling to the ground in
one straight line, a line with one flower at
the throat — a red rose. But when art had
declined in the fifteenth century the ladies of
the French court forsook simplicity and asked
Jacquard to weave in each robe of silk a full
hundred roses. If in Pericles' day the simple
gown was an incident for setting forth the beauty
of the Greek maiden, in the age of Voltaire all
had changed, and the young girl became only an
incident for exhibiting a mass of tulle and silk.
In literature also all the great poems, dramas,
and orations are simple. The song, "Home,
Sweet Home," is influential because it has as
few notes as the song of the nightingale. Gray's
" Elegy " influences the multitude profoundly
because it is the biography of a single emotion.
The mind wanders in a complex philosophy like
a child in a dense wood. The very simplicity of
Newton's principle becomes an argument for its
truth. An English professor in Oxford Univer
sity was quoted as saying that Longfellow had
a hundred readers in England where Browning
had one. The distinguished lecturer explained
this fact by saying that the American poet seems
like a single pasture-grown oak, while the Eng-

As a Religious Teacher 119
lishman was a tangled forest, where the very
richness of the vines hid all the trees.
In the world, therefore, in which complexity
injures the drama and the picture, where man ad
mires the single star more than the diffused light
of the Milky Way, admires Hamlet or Lear more
than Hegel's philosophy in a score of volumes ;
in a world where complexity injures the oration
and the song, and simplicity increases the value of
the tool and the mechanism, we naturally expect
that the world's greatest religious teacher will
present a very simple system of thought. It must
not be like the maze in Hampton Court, where
one searches long and in vain for some way out
of the bewildering growth, but rather a plain way,
along which each little child may run heavenward
with happy feet. For, be it instantly confessed
that if the mariner needs a pilot to guide him in
his wanderings o'er the sea ; that if each Stanley
needs some native to conduct him through the
trackless forest ; if each caravan journeying across
the Arabian sands needs some leader skilful in
journeying across the pathless desert, so the soul,
moving upward toward the heavenly heights,
needs to journey forward under the guidance of
some one who has dwelt long midst the solemn
beauty of the heavenly mountains, and therefore

120 The Simplicity and Breadth of Christ
knows where is the path to each cool spring, and
what way will avoid the most of danger and
secure the most of safety, happiness, and peace.
In words that a child could understand Christ
portrayed the simple majesty and beauty of God.
No definition was given, no philosophy was
fashioned, no articulated dogma wrought out.
He simply unveiled before man's admiring vision
the Infinite One, Whose solicitude for man was
such that none was too great or too small to
be loved ; Who was so deeply interested in the
progress of His earthly child that He could not
bear to overlook a single hour in the upward
career. History tells us of a traveller who, visit
ing Athens for a single day, went at once to
Phidias to ask him for the secret of his art. To
whom the artist replied, that while one day was
too short to unfold sculpture as a system, it was
long enough for looking upon a single statue
that embodied the beautiful. So he unveiled
his Minerva before the eye of the enraptured
Spartan, who went away to deduce from that
lustrous face all the abstract principles of beauty.
Thus Christ seems to say that, while man's
three score years and ten are too brief for a
study of the philosophy of religion, they are
long enough for the exhibition of that matchless

As a Religious Teacher 121
One, who sits upon the world's throne and counts
man His beloved child. It has been said that
all the beloved ones of history stand forth in
some alluring atmosphere of heroism, truth, and
beauty, and without any defilement of meanness
or sin. Thus, in simple speech, Christ caused
the great God to stand forth clothed with all
these alluring qualities that fascinate the intel
lect, that enrapture and satisfy the heart ; por
trayed God as one whose garments trailed in
the sunset, who whispered upon "the colossal
harp of nature," whose frame was made of worlds,
whose strings were rays of shining light ; a God
for whom the universe itself was one vast temple,
where storms and winds and cataracts, with
songs of birds and men, combined in one vast
hymn of adoration and delight.
And this simple story of God's eternal father
hood and His unfailing love, falls upon the old
views that portrayed God as fear, vengeance ;
as a black shadow ; as an iron fate. Christ
smote them as the sun smites the snowdrifts
into running brooks for the pastures, as the sun
smites the April fields and makes them bloom.
In ancient times the Greek general offered his
god in exchange for victory as many goats as
there were enemies dead upon the battle-field.

122 The Simplicity and Breadth of Christ
And Solomon, also, in dedicating his temple,
killed one hundred and twenty thousand sheep,
never dreaming in his ignorance that herds and
flocks were God's already, and that He would
be better pleased with the flocks alive and feed
ing upon the happy hillsides than with their
dead carcasses lying in the slaughter pen. In
ages when such views of God prevailed the
only way to establish an idea was to cut off the
heads of all who held to any other system. In
such an era the world seems much like a sink
ing ship, to which God draws near with a small
lifeboat to save now and then a drowning wretch.
Thus a thousand errors and fallacies entered
into and defiled the simple truths of Christ. In
the Middle Ages the Crusaders returned from
their holy wars laden with spoil. The knight
fastened a great piece of carved furniture to
the back of his horse, or collected in a huge sack
strange objects to satisfy the curiosity of wife
and child. Soon the army became impotent for
battle as soldiers, and appeared under the aspect
of travelling pedlers.
Thus the scholastics of the Middle Ages moved
across the years like these ancient soldiers, and
swept together all the curiosities of superstition
and ignorance until the theologians of that time

As a Religious Teacher 123
seem like philosophical beggars and pedlers, laden
with all the rubbish of mental ragpickers. The
simplicity of Christ was lost. His teachings be
came sadly belittered. The scholastics took away
Christ's beautiful garments and replaced them with
rags. Loyola exhibited Him as one who handled
flames in which to burn heretics. Torquemada
portrayed Him as a smith who forged fetters,
instead of one who came to set the prisoners
free. Michael Angelo, in his " Last Judgment,"
exhibited Christ as a sinewy athlete who matched
His gianthood against feeble sinners and swept
them into the fiery furnace, mid the plaudits of
admiring saints. Forgetting that each thirsty
pilgrim may take of the water of life freely, a
few Augustinians degraded Christ to the level of
one who condemned many to hell for His mere
good pleasure. In Luther's day scholasticism had
so corrupted men's minds from the simplicity of
Christ that the great German thought many had
mistaken the devil for the great God.
It is a truism with scientists that the simplest
explanation is the truest. Doubtless, clouds and
darkness will always be about God's throne, nor
will the mind ever solve all mysteries. Never
theless, in contrast with other religious systems
Christ's teachings seem simple as a sunbeam.

124 The Simplicity and Breadth of Christ
When a philosopher declares that each seed and
leaf, each babe and sage, fall back into the clouds
or rise into the clouds to return to the "all in
all" God — we have pantheism. When a writer
declares that atoms falling through a little space
could hardly come together into those forms of
beauty called an apple or a lark or a sage, but if
these atoms fall through much space they could
take on the forms of beauty found in this great
world — we have atheistic materialism.
When the excavator in Ephesus uncovers a
tomb and finds the bust of an emperor he rea
sons from the statue to the sculptor who carved
it. But when a philosopher beholds the move
ment of the seed toward the tree, the grain
toward the harvest, the adaptation of the eye
toward the light, yet denies that these thoughts
imply a world thinker and affirms that if such
a thinker exists, he cannot be known — then we
have agnosticism. When a writer declares that
man's destiny is fully determined by his heredity
and environment, that the blind force of nature
or the iron will of God dooms man to eternal
happiness or everlasting woe, then we have fatal
ism. But when God is unveiled as a Father whose
thought is the gulf stream of history, whose wis
dom is equal to each emergency in life, who

As a Religious Teacher 125
counts man as His child, who makes darkness
not less than light, suffering as well as prosper
ity, defeat as well as triumph, lead on to ultimate
victory — then we have the simplicity of Christ.
In that faith Tennyson whispered to his lifelong
friend : " There is One who guides our steps and
our individuality survives the grave. In this let
us live and die." In that simple faith also of
Christ lived Pascal and Bunyan. In that simple
faith lived Channing and Lincoln and Living
stone. That simple faith has made slaves free,
has lent a new sweetness to music, has given a
new beauty to art, has furnished a new motive
to all culture. In that simple faith the falling
statesman, the dying mother, the sweet child,
have all fallen asleep in perfect peace.
Having portrayed as an Infinite Father that
God who holds the earth in His hand and rolls
the sun like a golden ball along the pavement of
the morning, Christ made God's Fatherhood to
cause man to step into the scene, the child of
a noble and thrilling destiny. Had nature, with
its forces of the summers and the winters, stood
behind man and been his sponsor, a speedy ca
tastrophe might have been expected, and man's
future would have been full of blackness and
fear. But because the infinite mind that stands

126 The Simplicity and Breadth of Christ
back of the vast earthly scene is made man's
sponsor, the full power of this creator stands
pledged to share in all the glorious achievements
of His Father. As the sculptor who holds in his
mind a dream of ideal beauty can take a square
block of marble and shape it into the lines of
the lustrous ideal held in his mind, so there is
rich hope for man — not because of what he is,
but because of what God is in His wealth of
mind and heart, that are prophecies of what man
shall be when time and the divine resources have
accomplished their purpose upon the human soul.
Plato tells us the ancient Greeks were deeply
impressed with the beauty of forests and foun
tains and deep seas. Indeed, the earthly scene
was so rich as to make it seem incredible that the
thrilling of the harvests and forests would have
been prepared for man alone. The rich banquet
spread by the summers and the winters seemed to
ask for heavenly guests to sit down to drink at
the table spread with these viands fit for the gods.
So men explained this palace beautiful named
earth, by peopling the leafy woods and the cool
streams with fauns and nymphs and graces.
And in similar vein Christ saw a thrilling beauty
and power streaming forth from God's throne
and surrounding man with & rich and stimulat-

As a Religious Teacher 127
ing atmosphere. With words of matchless elo
quence He called about Him the multitudes, the
children of poverty and ignorance, the children
of sickness and suffering, the publican and the
prodigal, and lifted above all alike a banner in
scribed, not with those words called wisdom or
riches or birth, but with the words, "Made in
the image of God." He reminded man that am
bassadors who represented a royal court should
wear a garb befitting the greatness of the mon
arch whose power they represented ; that those
in whose veins ran kingly blood should aspire
to kingly garb, refuse to wear rags or eat crusts
of bread. With the thrilling pathos of His own
life and death, Christ exhibited man as the child
of supreme genius, because He is the child of
God and carries eternity and immortality in His
heart. It is also a part of the simplicity of Christ as
a religious teacher that He grounded duty and
responsibility in man's moral constitution and sep
arated them entirely from creeds and churches.
The only duties He taught are the duties found
in man's nature and constitution. It is the mis
fortune of our age that to-day men are urged
toward right because they have taken unto them
selves the vows of the church. But Christ called

128 The Simplicity and Breadth of Christ
men unto a life of whiteness and beauty because
all bore the image of God. The divine stamp
man carried put him under a solemn pledge to
avoid the stamp of demonhood. The motive of
duty was not fidelity to a church, but fidelity
to what man is fundamentally and constitution
ally, through his original endowment of mind
and heart. The time has come when men may
think to escape the obligations of a Christian
life by refusing to pledge themselves to a church.
But Christ affirmed that man was pledged to a
life of integrity by virtue of what he was in birth
gifts. No man can escape responsibility by stay
ing outside of a church. No man can increase
his responsibilities by entering into a church.
Duty antedates the church, and right precedes
the Bible.
The laws of right and wrong were organized
into man's mind and body. Finding them there,
Moses wrote them down for society's help. The
Ten Commandments did not begin with the Bible ;
they began with our father man. The mind ex
isted long before the mental philosophy. The
stars existed long before Newton wrote his " Prin-
cipia." This great continent lay behind the setting
sun long before Columbus first thought of a west
ern passage to India. And every principle of the

As a Religious Teacher 129
Christian life existed prior to the church and its
statements. Duty is binding upon a man, there
fore, not at all because he is a church member.
He who has never set foot inside of a church and
never recognized a single principle of the Bible, is
bound to the same law of Christian living as is the
man who, each Sunday, renews his fidelity. Nor
does any Paul or John add one iota to his duty by
recognizing his debt to God and to the commu
nity. The laws of brain and nerve and blood are
fundamental and constitutional, and whether man
denies the laws or whether he accepts them, they
work invariably and remorselessly. Christian liv
ing, therefore, is binding upon man because of the
nature of things and the facts in the case. Fire
burns, cold chills, rocks bruise — not because man
says they may, but because that is their nature.
And the Sermon on the Mount is binding on men,
not because they stand up in church and accept it,
but because prior to the cradle God organized
right into the nature of man and things.
To His sublimely simple statement regarding
God and Man, Christ added a conception of the
church that is beautiful. Without dividing the
multitude into church and non-church members,
He called the men about Him, and reminding
them that they were the children of the same
K

130 The Simplicity and Breadth of Christ
cradle and moving toward a common grave, He
bade them all alike swear fidelity to conscience.
Passing by all creedal tests of belief, He asked for
only one test — personal allegiance to Himself and
the universal principles for which He stood. Soon
the little group of disciples included all tempera
ments, all shades of belief, — those who repre
sented much virtue and those who represented
little ; those who had much faith and those who had
little. But His love united them, just as the roof
of some splendid mansion unites a hundred rooms
of different size and shape ; just as the one blue
sky overarches and unites mountains and pastures
and vineyards. In those days there was only one
church, and all the disciples were one, just as the
many boughs are one in the same tree ; just as the
planets are one in the same starry system. The
germ, indeed, of every possible denomination was
there — John, the seer and mystic; Peter, the
man of feeling and impulse ; Paul, the philosopher
and the theologian ; James, who believed in a
religion of deeds, and thought a dollar's worth of
flour would do more for a hungry orphan than a
day of praying. In their oneness of life the dis
ciples were not so much driven together by a
creedal necessity from without, as drawn together
by a love of their Master from within. Now there

As a Religious Teacher 13 1
are 140 denominations in our country. The
churches threaten to destroy the church.
Our judicial courts recognize but one or two or
three grounds for divorce between husband and
wife ; but the church has found 140 grounds for
divorcing its disciples one from another. If every
one of these 140 differences were rooted out, every
important principle would still remain — love to
God and man, and love to Him who is the soul's
Master and Saviour. To-day some of the most
distinguished teachers of our evangelical churches
have expressed the belief that the time is drawing
near when there is to be a return to the simplicity
of Christ's church, when again all shall be one.
These scholars give it as their judgment that
Christ never intended that there should be a
church roll of church membership, or a denomina
tion. Christ's thought does not seem to have been
that men should stand up and by a simple verbal
statement imagine that they had fulfilled all right
eousness. Christ's idea of the church was that men
should band themselves together, not as church
members but as men and women made in the
image of God, and bend their associated energies
to the promotion of virtue and knowledge and the
defeat of ignorance, of vice, of superstition and sin.
Out of His beautiful ideas of the church

132 The Simplicity and Breadth of Christ
grew Christ's beautiful use of symbols. Looking
toward the constitution, the state asks the citizen
through the ballot to swear fidelity to the laws of
the land. Looking toward property, the state uses
the symbol of the deed or the promissory note for
emphasizing the sanctity of property. Looking
toward the court room, society uses that symbol
called taking the oath for the purpose of empha
sizing the solemnity of the truth. Looking
toward the home and marriage, the state uses that
symbol called the wedding ring for emphasizing
the sanctity of love. And in the realm of con
science, also, Christ made a beautiful use of sym
bols for emphasizing the importance of a white
life, and setting forth man's dependence upon
God. How beautiful His use of the water that,
bubbling from some cool spring like a little poem
out of the earth, falls upon man with a cleansing
power for setting forth the cleansing grace of
God. If some scientist had searched through all
nature for some beautiful symbol of what Christ
and God are to the soul, what symbol could he
have found comparable to the bread that repre
sents all harvests, all fruits and grains upon which
man feeds, or the wine that represents the purple
flood of grapes, the dripping juices of the apple
and orange, with all rich tropic growths.

As a Religious Teacher 133
But having taught men how to move through
these symbols of nature up to nature's God, Christ
led men toward a generous toleration and charity.
Having left man free to choose what flowers he
would plant in his garden, free to choose what
grains he would sow upon his fields, free to choose
his own profession and his own occupation, Christ
also left man free to choose his church govern
ment and to make his own creeds. God makes
harvests, but not a bill of fare. And God makes
truth, but not church polity, not church govern
ment. God makes forests, but the furniture is
made by man. God makes the symbols, but their
use and government is made by men. Therefore,
Christ expresses no preference as to whether men
should be baptized with much water or little. He
leaves each teacher to decide for himself whether
he shall wear a long white robe in the pulpit or a
short black one. He gives no teaching in regard
to millinery. If a man is benefited by fasting Fri
day and feasting Saturday ; if a man is helped by
the tinkling of bells and the burning of incense,
and finds that the perfumed clouds passing
through the open windows and rising heavenward
have become chariots that lift his aspirations heav
enward, then such an one is free to burn his
incense and tinkle his bells. If the wants of one

134 The Simplicity and Breadth of Christ
individual are best served by a bishop and another
by the presbytery and another by a conference,
let each choose with the same freedom with which
he chooses to live under a republic or chooses a
limited monarchy. The one principle is, tolera
tion and charity for all. Only let not the Pope
wipe his golden-bowed spectacles and say, "The
truth is with me." And let not the Baptist say,
" I have been to the very bottom of the Jordan,
therefore the truth is with me." Neither let the
Presbyterian say, " Sprinkling is like the rain ; it
comes down from the heaven, the truth is with
me." But for all let there be sympathy, love, and
fellowship. God is ever working toward variety
and difference, and man is forever trying to rub out
the differences. Nature does not turn all flowers
into roses, but works toward a thousand varieties
of bloom and blossom, a thousand varieties of
fruit and grains in field and forest. There is
room for all.
To many the new teachings seem revolutionary,
destructive, and provocative, indeed, of grave
anxiety. For, strangely enough, many Christian
teachers have accepted the atheistic motto, "It
is safer to trust our fears than our hopes." But
God is abroad in the world, and is causing new
glowing and glorious truths to break forth out

As a Religious Teacher 135
of His word. And these new truths are work
ing great changes in the realm of philosophy
and theology. For some these changes mean
only terror and alarm. The conditions of these
frightened ones is not unlike that of the people
of the arctic region. It is said that the ice in
certain interior rivers of the extreme north some
times does not move out for an entire genera
tion. And because the ice bridge binds the two
shores together, the savages are accustomed to
fish upon these ice-locked streams. One year
the summer came early and stayed long. Slowly
the sun bored holes in the ice above, slowly the
warm currents gnawed the ice beneath. One July
day the huge mass began to move, and its move
ment threw the people into an agony of terror.
They did not know that the open river with
a boat would do a thousand times more for
them than ice-locked streams, or that summer
with its fruit was worth a thousand times more
than the wintry ice with its fish. Thus, unto
this winter-clad earth, God is drawing near.
Many a great system has been caught like an
iceberg by the rich tropic currents. Each new
influence is a wind made warm and summery
by God's heart. Soon the " systematic " ice
bergs will dissolve, and lend themselves to

136 The Simplicity and Breadth of Christ
the universal ocean that blesses every con
tinent with its dew and rain. God is working.
The light is growing. Many, alarmed, are club
bing together to resist it. But the sword and
the spear cannot drive back the south winds
and the summer. The scholars are too many and
too wise. Soon all bats and owls with their
scared cries must return to the caves of fear.
Already the song of birds is in the air. Once
more God's presence makes all the earth radiant.
The day for which the fathers prayed and
hoped, the promised land which was denied
them, has come at length unto their children.
Men are opening their eyes to the blue rifts in
the sky, they are opening their ears to the voices
that call. Once more above us is the multitude
of angels, singing, "Peace on earth, good will to
man." Already the night is far spent. The
day is at hand. Christ is abroad upon His
mission of recovery.

VI

ffioo's Silence ano P?is Uoices &lso : a Stuog
of Nature's Concealments ano disclosures

"In the great unfolding which is going on, God expands
Himself and develops Himself. History is the great revelation
of Him. While God acts with greatest force and most fruit
upon minds that are enlarged and unfolded, so that there is
a major inspiration arising from the character of the persons
inspired, there is also a minor inspiration, or the mind of God
acting upon everything that lives, having reason and moral
sensibility. That inspiration of God is the leaven of the ages.
It is the secret feeling that has been working in men, and
through them working out into experiment and endeavor, on
some sides with disaster, and on some sides with success, and
that through the sole medium of experiment through myriads
of ages has attained to relative perfectness of social usage, of
wise legislation, of successful civil government, or organized
and progressive industries throughout the world. All these
elements are divine. They are from God. They are work
ing along that great line, by which men are to be brought
back to God. . . . Whatever thoughts of God, coming into
the souls of men, are unfolded in conduct and echoed and re
echoed until they become general truths, and whatever works
toward plenitude of truth and purity and peace and joy — all
this is according to the will of God."
— Beecher's " Evolution and Religion."

'3«

VI

GOD'S SILENCE AND HIS VOICES ALSO: A STUDY OF
NATURE'S CONCEALMENTS AND DISCLOSURES
Nature reticent. Clouds and darkness round about God's
throne. Nature tells man nothing that he can find out for
himself. Mr. Huxley's wish to build an altar " to the un
known God." Overemphasis of agnosticism. What man
loses when he loses the sense of God's loving providence.
Mill's indictment of nature for cruelty. The joylessness of
agnostics, from Comte to Martineau and Clough. The soul
keyed to knowledge and certainty. The silence more appar
ent than real. Some concealments are revelations. There is
a silence that is eloquent. The voices of God in the animal
world. Instincts are revelators. For him who hath ears to
hear the days utter speech and the nights show knowledge.
Nature has not concealed the folly of iniquity. Nature
publishes the wisdom of right living. The voice of history.
The sorrows of wrong-doers. The voice of conscience. Its
warnings. Its incitements. God's voice in Christ. The
disclosures of nature more wonderful than her silence. The
full revelation in Christ.
NATURE'S concealments are numberless and
wonderful. Reticent, she keeps her own
counsel. Unlike man she never wears her heart
upon her sleeve. The clouds that wrap the
mountains about with mystery interpret nature's
139

140 God's Silence
tendency to veil her face and hold off all in
truders. By force and ingenuity alone does man
part the veil or pull back the heavy curtains.
The weight of honor heaped upon him who reads
her secret writings on the rocks, or turns some
poison into balm and medicine, or makes a cop
per thread to be a bridge for speech, proclaims
how difficult it is to solve one of nature's sim
pler secrets. For ages man shivered with cold,
but nature concealed the anthracite under thick
layers of soil. For ages man burned with fever,
but nature hid the balm under the bark of the
tree. For ages man bore his heavy burdens,
but nature veiled the forces in the stream and
concealed the fact that both wind and river
were going man's way and might bear his bur
dens. Ages have passed, but nature is so reti
cent that man is still uncertain whether a diet
of grain or a diet of flesh makes the ruddier
countenance. Also it is still doubtful whether
a log cabin and an ox or a college and a gym
nasium can do the more for each young Lincoln ;
whether poverty or wealth does the more to
foster the poetic spirit in Burns or the philo
sophic temper in Bacon. In that beautiful temple
of Jerusalem there was an outer wall, an inner
court, a holy place, and far within a most holy

And His Voices Also 141
place. Thus nature conceals herself behind high
walls and bulwarks, and God also has made thick
the clouds that surround the divine throne.
In view of the number of nature's conceal
ments, Mr. Huxley once remarked that but for
that unknown Athenian who had anticipated his
thought, he should have erected somewhere in
London an altar with this inscription, "To the
Unknown God." In all ages the savage bowing
before the fierce storm that seems the breath of
God must needs whisper his prayer to the invisi
ble one. In all ages the fire-worshipper who
counts the ascending pillar of flames to be a
chariot upon which his soul rides forth to meet
him who dwells in the blazing sun, has poured
out his penitence before an unseen being. But
in modern times it is the scientist, with his
microscope and scalpel, laying bare the nerve,
only to find that the life has fled on before,
who looks out toward the unknown source of
life. Our age has so unduly emphasized nature's
silence and mystery as to threaten faith in God
as man's guide and personal friend. The pres
ent generation has suffered losses many and
grievous. Fleets have been shipwrecked, cities
have been burned, hurricanes have destroyed
harvests, the flight of the locust has desolated

142 God's Silence
whole districts, fortunes have vanished like vis
ions that dissolve and leave not a wrack behind.
But these have not been man's greatest misfor
tunes. Society has suffered no loss comparable
to the loss of faith in a personal God of infinite
and imperishable love. If that loss has robbed
the poor of their buoyancy and spring, not less
has it robbed the children of greatness and
genius of their power and victory.
Famous now John Stuart Mill's indictment of
nature for her cruelty. Where he had looked for
voice and interpretation the philosopher found
silence and mystery. Burke himself, charging
cruelty upon Warren Hastings, was gentleness
itself compared to Mill in his fierce philippic
against nature for her refusal to explain her
mysteries. Having affirmed that nature murders
each individual sooner or later, the philosopher
affirmed that she seeks out methods of killing
that involve the torture of her victims. " Na
ture impales men, breaks them on the wheel,
burns them with fire or crushes them with
stones, starves them with hunger or freezes
them with cold ; perpetrates a death so hideous
as to exceed the cruelty of Nero or Domitian ;
the exhalations of her swamps surpass the poison
cups of the Borgias ; her epidemics are as de-

And His Voices Also 143
structive as human artillery ; her hurricanes
overmatch the horrors of the guillotine and the
reign of terror during the French Revolution."
Repudiating the name of atheist, holding that
he is the most irrational of thinkers who with
lips and heart says there is no God, Mill also
affirms that this nameless and concealed being
is not one whose face is "humanized to the
lineaments of love." Saddened by nature's si
lence, looking wistfully toward the cold, vague
depths of space, scholars have waited for the
silence to become voice, and when the curtains
have not parted the agnostics have become sadly
bitter. "The world's winter is going, I hope,
but my everlasting winter has set in." Thus
sadly wrote George Eliot. Harriet Martineau
was earnestly depressed by nature's conceal
ments. "You will feel at once how earnestly
I must be longing for death, I who never hoped
for life, and who would any day of my life have
rather departed than stayed. Well, it can hardly
go on very much longer now. But I do wish it
was permitted us to judge for ourselves a little
how long we ought to carry on the task which
we never desired and could not refuse."
Plainly, here the authoress wishes that suicide
were permitted. Speaking of his father James

144 God's Silence
Mill, his son writes, " He thought human life a
poor thing at best, after the freshness of youth
and the unsatisfied curiosity had gone by." Ar
thur Clough, the poet, also was so depressed by
nature's silence that his glad, trustful moods de
parted, and he walked through a world that seemed
sombre, joyless, and unpeopled. In the Middle
Ages the baron or king secluded himself in some
vast castle. Beyond the castle was the moat ;
beyond that a high wall. Brave, indeed, the
knight who could surmount the wall, swim the
water, break down the inner gate. For many
the clouds about God's throne have become so
thick as to seem like unto heavy granite and
impenetrable walls. Nature's silence has made
life an enigma and a puzzle.
The concealments of nature stir wonder, by
reason of the fact that the soul is keyed to knowl
edge and certainty. As a harp is made for music,
and not to discord, so man is made for confidence
and not doubt. Looking toward the sick room,
the store, the market-place, it is uncertainty and
anxiety that kills. Once the issue is known,
there is no shock man cannot survive. Even as
to unknown things like harvests, nature furnishes
a rational basis for confidence. Harvests are so
uniform as to have the regularity of natural law ;

And His Voices Also 145
otherwise man would not plough or sow. In
times of war man will not open a furrow if the
enemy's troops are to trample down the grain ;
nor build storehouse and barn if the troops are to
fire the rafters and rooftree. Thus nature accus
toms man to knowledge and certainty. She has
not left man in doubt as to how her agents will
act. Fire always burns ; water always drowns ;
acids always eat ; spring always follows winter.
Having trained him to confidence and security,
nature has also accustomed man, not to mystery,
but to masters ; not to silence, but to the voice
of teachers. From time to time she raises up
great men who are masters in art, masters in lit
erature, masters in law and philosophy. When
these great ones speak we sit at their feet and
do them homage. As the expert mountaineer
climbs to the summit of the Jungfrau, where the
avalanches hang trembling upon the edge of the
precipice, and without fear crosses crevasse and
gorge, so we behold the sons of greatness accom
plishing with consummate ease that which baffles
our utmost toil. Gladly we acknowledge their
leadership. Built for certainty and accustomed
to culture through masters and teachers, nature's
silence has seemed to baffle men. Nevertheless,
we may be permitted to urge the inquiry, whether

146 God's Silence
or not the concealments of nature have not been
magnified, whether things are not known which
are called hidden, and things plainly revealed
which are called secret. There is a silence that
is eloquence ; there is a mystery that is big
with disclosure ; there is a concealment that is
revelation. Looking toward the animal world, it is not the
silence, but the voices of God, that stir our aston
ishment. Each inventor accompanies his sewing-
machine or reaper with a handbook of explana
tions. The illustrated chart explains the wheel ;
the picture explains this bolt, this pulley, that
escapement. But a philosopher has described
the instinct of an animal as the handbook that
accompanies the animal and explains its mechan
ism. It is not a matter of doubt or uncertainty
as to what the bird or beast is to do. By instinct
the young eagle flies ; by instinct the young lark
sings ; by instinct the beaver builds ; by instinct
the squirrel gathers its store. Instinct teaches
the spider how to fashion its trap-door ; instinct
teaches the bee how to make its cell six-sided, in
the interests of the greatest possible economy of
strength and space. The vegetable world also has
its voice and proclamation. Rending away the
acorn's shell, the plantlet proclaims its oakhood.

And His Voices Also 147
Concealed under many coverings, the rosebud
bursts its wrappings and publishes its scarlet
secret. Man plants an unknown root, but pur
ple clusters soon proclaim the vine. He plants
an unknown seed, but the sharp sting hastens to
advertise the thistle. Much is said about secret
germs that turn drops of water into war-ships,
and lurk in ambush for men. But, properly
analyzed, every case of typhoid means that the
tiny germ supposed to be secret has climbed, as
it were, upon the housetop, and proclaimed its
warning to an entire city. From Newton the
sun has no secrets ; from Wordsworth the rain
bow has no hidden colors ; to Geike geology yields
up her hidden story ; to Proctor stars proclaim
their far-off elements. Upon that new eye or
ear called a spectroscope, or a microscope, or a
phonograph, all forces and facts whisper their rich
secrets. Indeed, nature is becoming one vast
whispering gallery. The earth one vast room,
where natural laws serve men ; the lightning has
become a messenger ; the sunbeam paints his pic
tures ; the very wastes give up their treasures of
healing and fragrance, until the time seems rap
idly approaching when every secret shall be
known, and man shall be lord over every force
and fact in nature. There is not one stone or

148 God's Silence
shrub or seed or bird or beast or star but breaks
into voice for man's instruction. Day unto day
hath uttered speech ; night unto night hath shown
knowledge. Nature has not concealed the folly of iniquity,
nor has she been silent as to the wisdom of right
living. Having made wide the chasm between the
snowdrift and the red rose, nature has also made
wide the difference between the murderer and
the philanthropist. To each wrong-doer she
speaks in a voice that is sharp and clear, leaving
the incautious youth without excuse. Very early
in his career does man find that nature's voice is
a still, small voice, and that her whisperings drown
man's thunders. Through frost that nips his fin
gers and feet, nature drives the boy back from the
deep drifts. .With gentle severity nature makes
the sharp pain punish the child for his gluttony.
Through an aching head and throbbing brow she
warns the youth against excesses of riotous living.
From her throne nature sends these pains forth
to warn the youth back from the precipice and
the slough. He who sets a snare for a bird so
conceals the trap that not until it is too late does
the bird perceive the net. But, so far from using
art to lead the youth into the soft, silken delights
of some Sodom, every downward step youth takes

And His Voices Also 149
is accompanied by sharp warnings from nature.
If hunger is an alarm bell warning man against
overtaxing his body, if thirst is nature's automatic
signal directing that the tissues need water to
guard against inflammation, all pains that accom
pany man's sins are automatic bells that peal out
warning and alarm. Nor is there one form of ill-
doing that is not accompanied with voices of
warning. If the youth harbor an evil thought
within, nature straightway sets the brand of evil
upon the face without, that, beholding his face in
his mirror, he may draw back from defilement. If
the youth rakes 'midst the garbage of literature
that he may discover the novel or story that min
isters to his morbid sense, nature organizes a cor
responding coarsening into the countenance, and
causes the mind's mud to show in the bottom of
the eye. In the region of Pompeii the orangery
is close to the abyss of fire in Vesuvius. If man
stands in the grape arbor, nature warns him by
the steam arising from the boiling spring. If the
traveller stoops to enjoy the fragrance of the
orange blossom, nature startles him by the smell
of sulphur rising from the heated lava. When
men have loved pleasure more than duty and have
put God far from their thoughts, then nature,
Vesuvius-like, drops some fiery mass close to

150 God's Silence
their feet, lest they finish their career as the
moth in the candle.
Long ago Cleopatra, the daughter of supreme
beauty, received sin into her arms, counting it to
be an angel of light ; but, alas ! sin broke her heart,
and soon she welcomed the viper to her bosom.
It was sin that wrecked the palace of David. It
was sin that ruined the genius of Solomon. It
was sin that stole the purple from Alcibiades and
gave him instead the robe of a slave. It was sin
that, serpentlike, crawled over the threshold of
the palaces in Rome and left its slime within court
and banqueting hall. Sin was the flame which
blackened the Doge's palace in Venice. Sin was
the earthquake that toppled down the treasure-
houses of Florence. For Bacon sin was a worm
in the bud of his heart. For Byron sin was moth
and rust that consumed the mind. For Shelley
sin was a Vandal that grew by the rapine and mur
der of the poet's soul. The ancients tell us of a
princess who, desiring a gift of the crafty court
astrologer, was told to kiss day by day for one
hundred days a beautiful picture, after which she
was to receive her heart's desire. It was a cruel
trick, for the picture contained a subtle poison.
Little by little the golden tresses of the beautiful
woman turned white, her beauty faded, her eyes

And His Voices Also 151
became dim, her lips black, until, long before the
appointed time was completed, the queenly beauty
lay dead. But nature, so far from leading man by
false pretences into evil courses, makes every step
of his downward way to be accompanied by warn
ings and voices. God has never been silent as to
sin. Kant, standing under " the polished dome, in
which the lamps of God did burn," thought nature
broke the silence in the voice of conscience. For
the philosopher the sense of duty was God's whis
per in the soul. The letter " O " in the word
"ought" enlarged into a circle that included the
whole universe. In his childhood, stepping upon
a worm, the little voice within whispered, " It is
wrong." In his mature manhood also that divine
whisper never failed to rebuke him for sinning
against his better convictions, never failed to
praise him for living up to his highest ideals.
Even in children of vice and crime the whisper is
never subdued into utter silence. Park speaks of
the mariners sailing over the sunken islands of the
Caribbean Sea, and imagining that they hear the
ringing of bells in submerged villages. Thus
man's deepest convictions often seem submerged
beneath sordidness and sin. Yet ever and anon
obscure and mysterious voices arise from the

152 God's Silence
soul's hidden depths. It was conscience that
made King David turn pale and tremble when a
prophet said, "Thou art the man." It is con
science that makes each guilty youth to have a
cheek of marble when he reads the words, " Mene,
mene, tekel." It was of conscience that Lucretius
spake when he said, "Though the dungeon, the
scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty
mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows."
It was of conscience that Juvenal said, "The
sight of a glittering sword hanging by hair over
the flushed neck of the youth is less terrible than
the individual conscience of the guilty." It was
of conscience also that Martineau was thinking
when he said : " He who follows the sense of duty
as God's messenger for to-day will find on to
morrow that two angels have come to guide him
on his way. For every duty done leaves the eye
more clear and enables gentler whispers to reach
the ear ; every brave sacrifice incurred lightens
the weight of the clinging self which holds us
back ; every storm of passion swept away leaves
the air of the mind transparent for more distant
visions." Thus the light that began as a taper
waxes into the glory of a beacon, and the voice
that was a whisper becomes full and round, guid
ing man upon his earthly way.

And His Voices Also 153
But if the stone hath its story ; if the acorn and
rosebud unroll their secrets, as does each blazing
star ; if brain and nerve rebuke self-indulgence ;
if that stream of tendency that makes for right
eousness in history finds voice in the whisper
of conscience, will not the God of mystery and
silence send forth His voice ? Well may man
exclaim, " Let all the earth be silent, if only God
will speak." Baffled by the clouds and darkness
around God's throne, man exclaims : " Is He indeed
the far-off and unspeaking One? Is His throne
crystalline ? Is He as vague and cold as the dis
tant ether ? Unheeding man, does He behold
the generations in their dumb dulness marching
to the execution ? " " He hath spoken," said the
philosopher. " Planets and suns represent His
infinite genius rushing into sight." Through his
engine the mind of Watt passes before man's
mind. Through his canvas we discern the mind
of Millet ; through his cathedral, the mind of Von
Rile. It may be said that no poet, no philosopher,
no student, through his books, hath ever so
fully spoken his mind and heart as hath the great
God. The passing seasons, with the majesty of
summer and the sanctity of winter, represent the
canvas upon which He portrays His passing

154 God's Silence
thoughts. The tropic flowers, so luxuriant upon
the plains of Africa as to clog the baggage-wagons
of Stanley, represent the richness of beauty with
which God embroiders the lap of spring. The
mountains, with their cloud-capped towers ; the
high hills, all aged with snow ; the far-lying hill
sides, waving with the wheat, and spotted with the
fire of waving poppies ; the distant plains, filled
with the hum of village and city, represent the
infinite variety and the wealth of God's mind and
heart rushing into sight and breaking into voice.
In an Alpine valley Tyndall found a huge, trian
gular boulder. Tracing it back, he came to the
very spot from whence the stone came. Thus
man, beholding the gentleness of the mother, the
self-sacrifice of the father, the heroism of the poet,
the devotion of the martyr, the disinterestedness
of a friend, traces all these qualities back to God,
from whom man borrowed his lustrous gifts. But
it is in Christ that the silence of God breaks into
full voice. As no artist can make a frame large
enough to include the evening sunset, so no voice
can compass, no pen include, the full statement of
the character of that Divine Being. We can only
say that what He was toward the sweet child and
its dying mother, toward the publican and prodi
gal, toward sinner and disciple, that God is toward

And His Voices Also 155
all men, in all time. What during His three and
thirty years Christ said, God ever says ; what
Christ did, God ever does ; what Christ was, God
is through all space, throughout all time.

VII
STfje ©tgljer Nature of JHan as a -Eebelatton
of ffioo

"Man is neither the master nor the slave of nature; he
is its interpreter and living word. Man consummates the
universe, and gives a voice to the mute creation. Man is the
microcosmos, answering to the larger word and world of
God."
— Edgar Quinet.

'58

VII
THE HIGHER NATURE OF MAN AS A REVELATION
OF GOD
Man an epitome of nature. The child of destiny. Stands
forth clothed with the impressiveness of a landscape or city.
The soul the true terra incognita. His tools, arts, and
industries suggest one a little lower than God. A pseudo-
science cheapens man. A false theology degrades him.
Man's body includes all the excellences distributed in the
rest of creation. Man is the consummation of mental gifts.
Man's moral supremacy. Christ's revelation of the human
mind as keyed to the divine mind. This makes a revelation
possible. The earthly child a miniature of the divine father.
Man's divinity argued from the ease with which he receives
great ideas. Bushnell's argument from the ruins. Man's
creative skill. The cross as a measure of man's worth.
God's love as a test of man's value.
~|\ /TODERN science has made man to step
-L»-*- into the earthly scene the child of des
tiny. Before the seer's admiring vision this
divine one stands forth, clothed with all the
impressiveness of a landscape or a city. Imagi
nation can scarcely paint in colors too rich this
being uniting in his tiny body all the excellences
of the lower animal creation, and described by
the poet as "only a little lower than God." For
'59

160 The Higher Nature of Man
man is a mystery second only to God Himself.
The psychologist can no more find out the soul
to perfection than the theologian can search out
God. In the realm of geography, the last conti
nent has been discovered, and the head waters
of the last Nile explored. But the human mind
remains the terra incognita. After centuries of
exploration, scholars are still skirting around the
edge of the human mind, as once John Cabot
explored the creeks and bays along the edge of
this new continent. Because futurity was big
within him, the seer was not afraid to eulogize
man. Ignorance cheapens the soul, but wisdom
stands in awe thereof. An acute author has dis
tinguished between conceit and sense of personal
worth. Conceit he says is based upon some
quality that makes a man to differ from his
fellows ; the sense of worth concerns itself with
what man holds in common with his fellows. At
bottom man may be an animal, but midway he
is a citizen, and at the top he is consciously
divine. That was a great day for our earth when this
fragmentary God stepped into the scene. Imme
diately man began his creative work, as did the
great God before him. Hearing sounds he swept
them into music. Seeing colors, he swept the

As a Revelation of God 161
lovely hues together in pictures. Looking out
ward, he swept his thoughts together in poems
and dramas. Standing by the cradle, in his
joy, this strange being wept ; standing by the
grave, with streaming eyes, he looked upward
and smiled. His genius shed wisdom like per
fume. His heart shed sympathy like a gushing
spring. Clothed with heroism, he walked the
earth like a young Titan. Admiring many
things, man, the wonderer, was himself the most
wonderful. The Alps are not so sublime as the
mountain-minded Humboldt. The sea itself is
less deep than the mind of the scientist who
explored its secret abyss. The heavens above
are not so sublime as the moral law in man.
The libraries are less impressive than the mind
that crowds the shelves. The stars themselves
are but sparks that flew from the anvil when
God fashioned man. Pronounce those names, as
tronomy, oratorio, printing-press, telegraph, ship,
palace, cathedral, and we seem to have been
carried in some golden chariot far above the
level of the brute world, into a realm where we
deal with the thoughts of one made indeed only
a "little lower than the great God" Himself.
To-day a pseudo-science and a pseudo-theology
are doing all they can to cheapen man. The one

162 The Higher Nature of Man
compares him with the bee and beaver, and affirms
that man is as much better than the sheep as his
facial angle is larger and his brain heavier. This
makes him out a selfish and mortal animal with
a brain that secretes ideas as his heart secretes
blood. This false theology makes man a selfish
and immortal devil, wholly opposite to all good,
wholly inclined to all evil. The first makes man
a little higher than the brutes ; the second makes
him a little higher than the demons. But this
divine book, the Bible, ascends into the highest
heavens, and ranks him only a "little lower than
God." It stirs our wonder that one group of
thinkers believes it honors man by placing him
at the head of an ascending series of brutes,
while the other thinks it honors God by debas
ing His handiwork to the level of imps. All this
is like seeking to honor a sculptor by casting
contempt upon his statues, in order to produce
a wide space between the artist and his handi
work. These false views have wrought immeas
urable mischief upon society. Nothing exalts like
the sense of personal worth, and nothing degrades
like a mean conception of personality. How true
the proverb, " Call a man a thief, and he will
prove the allegation by picking your pocket."
Contrariwise, confidence is met with fidelity.

As a Revelation of God 163
Recently, when a western city had been shame
fully misgoverned by the " machine," in sheer
desperation a group of men nominated for mayor
the town loafer, notorious for his worthlessness
By some chance this shiftless buffoon was elected.
Now, the poor creature took the honor seriously.
Confidence galvanized his manhood. He straight
way forsook the saloon, cleansed his person, coun
selled with the best citizens, found out what the
liquor laws were, enforced them rigorously, drove
out the gamblers, raided his old haunts night
after night, watched his policemen with unsleep
ing vigilance, and ended his term of office an in
dustrious and hard-working citizen.
Christ's enthusiasm for humanity, that made
him attach a value to the soul beyond that of
the whole world, was a part of His mastery over
man. With what reverential regard did He always
speak of him ! He shot life through and through
with sacredness. When man was revealed as
" only a little lower than God," the old weari
ness of life departed. The old proverb, "Better
it were to die quickly, best of all never to have
been born," the old feeling expressed by the
stoics that "the aim of philosophy is to despise
life," the old teaching that made life cheap and
suicide familiar, passed utterly away. In its

164 The Higher Nature of Man
enriching influence Christ's new conception of
the soul's worth was like the influence of the
soft south winds that push back the icy storms
and bring in the tropic summer. As when in
the fifteenth century the Greek scholars from
Constantinople brought the classic manuscripts
and the masterpieces of the great painters and
sculptors, and diffused the new learning over all
the Italian land, so Christ's enthusiasm for the
soul as something divinely rich has always brought
in the renaissance of the mind and the rejuvena
tion of the heart.
To-day scholars are asking afresh the question,
From whence came man, and whose stamp and
image does he bear? Replying, science insti
tutes comparisons and contrasts. We are told
all the excellences of the lower animal creation
are swept together in man's single person. But
when we have confessed that through ages many,
and by processes various, all excellences dis
tributed among the animals are united in man's
body, it remains for us to recognize that where
the animal life stops man's begins afresh, and
goes on to a thousand new and varied forms of
perfection. If the birds and beasts count in
stincts their chiefest treasures, man deems his
instincts to be his least and lowest gifts. The

As a Revelation of God 165
distance between this little earth and the mos:
distant star is not so great as the distance be
tween the highest animal and the lowest man.
Whether intelligence represents a slow growth
or a sudden grafting, all must confess that it is
an infinite remove from the brute. But man's
superiority is not merely in the use of fire for
food, of soft wool for clothing, or in the substitu
tion of marble houses for straw nests. Animals
are stationary. Man journeys upward by leaps
and bounds. Two thousand years have passed
since Plato enumerated the instincts of the bee,
but after all these centuries, Longstroth says
the honey-bee has added not a single new idea
to its cell. In Seneca's day man made a pet
and companion of the monkey. Despite all this
companionship, the monkey is still unable to utter
a single noble sentiment or write a single book.
When Coleridge stood before Mont Blanc he
forgot hunger, exhaustion, pain itself, and with
eyes dim and suffused with tears, the poet
thought only of that sight sublime. But his dog
was so interested in his owner's dinner that he
left the mountain to the exclusive enjoyment and
use of his master. Pity, too, is unknown in the
animal realm. The eagle pushes its sick young
out of the nest. The young tiger forsakes its

166 The Higher Nature of Man
bleeding dam. The elk will turn upon the
wounded, and kill the dying of its own kind.
Nor has the bird or beast any intelligence
beyond its own wants. The squirrel finds its
store of nuts, the spider spreads its net for prey,
the salmon searches out some nook to protect
its young, the ostriches club together to put the
eggs of yesterday in one nest under the care of
the male bird, and the eggs of to-morrow in
another nest ; the wild fowl trace the course of
migratory flight ; yet all these instincts are oc
cupied wholly with self -care and self -protection.
But when the statesman or philanthropist has
cared for himself there still remains an over
plus of intelligence, with which he may go on to
achieve liberty for some slave, or happiness and
comfort for some region devastated by disease
or famine. The best the bird can do is to leave
a few meaningless tracks upon the slab of stone,
while man is to be tracked by those names,
Hamlet, the Messiah, York Minster, the Principia,
the Republic of Plato, the laws of Moses.
But the least part of man's supremacy is that
love of beauty and truth by which he builds
temples, composes symphonies, fashions laws,
achieves liberty. Conscience and faith, love and
self-sacrifice, make up his crowning excellences.

As a Revelation of God 167
Unlike the lion, when man strikes he can feel
remorse. The lion's every deed is finished up
to date. When death comes nothing is overdue.
But man is responsible. Memory is continuous.
Conscience freshens old recollections, as a chem
ical bath brings out faded ink. As the years
speed on for Eugene Aram, his murderous deed
assumes larger proportions and takes on blacker
hues. Conscience is God's whisper in man's
soul. Across man's brow in letters of living
white is the divine handwriting. But when we
have exhausted all language, we still fall far short
of portraying the vast chasm that separates man
from animals.
Now the vastness of nature into which man is
ushered, the vast truths opening out before his
mind, the vastness of the career lying beyond
the grave, all these unite in asking man to enter
the scene clothed with a certain vastness of
nature. Only a divine mind will be equal to
the divine opportunity. Man is doomed unless
he begins large. What is behind a creature in
the way of origin will determine what is before
it in the way of destiny. Largeness must be in
the seed before largeness can be in the tree.
No additions of soil and sunshine can bring
the tiny mustard seed into the gianthood of the

168 The Higher Nature of Man
redwood tree in California. The proverb that
no man becomes a poet after he is twenty years
of age means that the greatness of Tennyson or
Browning is a unique birth gift. Many scientists
— few Newtons ; many preachers — Beecher once
in a hundred years. Greatness is an initial gift,
and so is smallness. Once a dog, always a dog;
once a thistle, always a thistle ; once born color
blind, always color-blind.
Culture can make bitter oranges sweet, but
culture cannot make a thorn bring forth figs,
nor teach an elephant to write poems. Born
upon the flat, things must remain upon the flat.
The only hope a creature has is in a large be
ginning. If a man is to achieve a sublime
destiny he must begin with a summit mind.
The secret of man's vast achievements lies in
the fact that he began a little lower than God.
Starting with that, every ideal and vision becomes
a golden possibility. The dignity and majesty
of life is the conscious possession of an infinite
capacity of learning and of germs and potencies
of an infinite good. Nothing is impossible for
a being whose genius is God-breathed — whose
spirit is filial and divine.
It is this being but little lower than God that
renders it so easy for man to receive a divine

As a Revelation of God 169
revelation. Persons who understand each other
have tastes in common. Just as the electrical
instrument in one house is delicately and pre
cisely adjusted to the telephone in the other
house, in order that the words of the speaker
may slip easily into the ears of the hearer, so
man's mind and heart are delicately patterned
after God's, in order that His thoughts and pur
poses may easily pass into the mental recognition
of man. All man's knowledge comes through
similar preparatory adjustments. His eye is ad
justed to the sunbeam ; his ear to wave sounds ;
his reason is adjusted to axioms, his taste is
adjusted to principles of beauty, and all his facul
ties are made to answer to the larger faculties
in the Divine Being. Now, once adjust the eye
to a single sunbeam and it can go on to an easy
understanding of the vast sun itself.
Once adjust the thirst to a single cup of water,
and the mind will move naturally to the under
standing of the ocean itself. But communion
ceases when there ceases to be a faculty held in
common. If crimson or gold to the artist means
black to the beholder, there can be no gallery.
And unless duty, penitence, hope, and love in
men stand for these rich qualities in God, there
can be no relationship. While Tennyson walked

170 The Higher Nature of Man
in his arbor and mused aloud over his " In Me-
moriam," he saw a caterpillar crawling up his
desk. But the little creature understood not one
whit of all the pathos of grief and weight of
love that the poet was pouring aloud in his
sweet song. There was no mental chord in the
worm that answered to the chord in the man.
Could Tennyson have endowed the worm with
reason it would have understood his thought ;
with taste and affection it would have sympa
thized with his grief ; with conscience it would
have understood his inspiring prayer.
Thus communion between two persons means
something held in common. Man understands
God by being lower, but not unlike Him. To the
degree in which the child understands his father,
he duplicates that father. In the higher realm,
to the degree in which man understands God, he
duplicates God. Grown gray and old, reading the
story of the prodigal son, Coleridge sobbed out :
" It finds me ; it finds me. This divine book is a
mould that fits my heart." In that hour Coleridge
felt that man was a miniature edition of God.
Cicero argued that the only way to save the hope
of a divine revelation was to elevate man to God's
dignity, or else bemean God to man's level. Her-
schel had the same idea when he said, "The

As a Revelation of God 171
astronomer thinks out God's thoughts after Him."
Agassiz had it when he exclaimed, " The geologist
moves along paths worn deeply by the divine foot
prints." Jesus Christ summarized all when He
said God is a father and man is a son. His rea
son, memory, affection, and conscience are small
and imperfect, to be sure, but they answer in kind
to these faculties in the Divine Being. Man
knows God because he is near to Him.
This partaking of the divine nature also explains
life's rare moments when great thoughts flush the
cheek and set the heart leaping. Then "the
vision splendid " dawns. Then the moments are
big with destiny. Then we seem to be on the
edge of something. Expectancy stirs within us.
Save in these rare hours it doth not appear what
man is. Just as an apple is never itself until the
sun strikes it through and through with crisp
golden ripeness, so the soul never stands forth
in its real majesty save in its luminous moments
and nobler moods. It is said a picture has a
right to be judged in its best light. Thus the
soul has a right to be judged, not by what it is at
its worst, but by what it is at its best. There are
hours when the mind exhales glorious thoughts, as
a fire exhales sparks. These moods alone reveal
the real nature. The inherent quality of Shake-

172 The Higher Nature of Man
speare's mind appears only in his greatest drama ;
his poorer plays do but exhibit to us how poverty
or discouragement fettered his genius and tired
its upward flight.
Call to mind earth's greatest thinkers, writers,
inventors, and jurists. Select only the choicest
qualities of these persons eminent for intellect and
heart, and Tennyson says the germs of the trans
cendent genius are latent in all common minds,
and will at last come to their fulfilment. We little
know what is in man. As the earth sweeps on
with vast treasures of gold and gems all uncov
ered, so men move forward laden with treasures
that are neither explored nor suspected. Lest we
wear our heart upon our sleeve, our best thoughts
are unspoken. Our deepest aspirations unfold
only in solitude, even as nightingales give out
their sweetest songs at midnight, while the great
world sleeps. Now and then, looking up quickly,
we see a great something, standing in the eyes of
some silent man. What the tongue could not
speak in a lifetime, the eye has revealed in a sin
gle flash. Multitudes are like the crystal caves
in the south. Enter them with a torch, and the
whole interior blazes one glorious kingdom of
diamonds. Yet through hundreds of years men
walked above all unconscious of the hidden treas-

As a Revelation of God 173
ure. Many men move through life all unrecog
nized by their fellows. Many women carry genius
all unsuspected. Vision hours are God's torches,
revealing the soul's hidden treasure. The ideals
and longings of the soul in its luminous states are
overtures from God. Mariners sailing over the
sunken island of Atlantis imagine they hear the
voices rising from the sunken city. Thus there
are great deep convictions lying low down in the
hearts of men that ever and anon send up mysteri
ous voices, reminding men that they are divine
and must not live on any level lower than God's.
Even in human sinfulness wisdom finds argu
ments for man's divineness. Horace Bushnell
thought the dignity of human nature may be
proved by the majesty of its ruins. The splendid
magnitude of the marble heaps in ancient Ephesus
argues the beauty of that once peerless temple of
Diana. If the very fragments of the Parthenon
are the despair of modern sculptors, how supreme
must have been the genius of Phidias. The mag
nificent recklessness with which man destroys
witnesses to his consciousness of his skill to
create afresh. History exhibits man as lifting
the hammer upon the ancient statues, turning
the temples into arsenals, and raging through
galleries like an insane and destroying angel.

174 The Higher Nature of Man
The sustaining thought in all iconoclasm is that
what man destroys, man can again create. The
very depths to which an Alcibiades or Catiline
falls is the witness of the height to which the
man first rose. From Loyola's Inquisition, with
its marvellous instruments of torture, we argue the
splendid latent genius the man carried, as a prom
ise for liberty or patriotism or religion. Luxuri
ant weeds argue richness of soil as truly as do
harvests. The very agony of the prodigal son
when he comes to swine and husks and rags tells
us that this prodigal boy was made not for husks,
but for the apples of paradise, not for rags, but
for the garments of God. Goethe summarizes the
argument when he reminds us that Faust can only
be as devilish actually as he was divine potentially.
The scholar saw God's thoughts of power rush
ing into stars and suns ; His thoughts of goodness
rushing into harvests and fruits ; His thoughts of
beauty rushing into faces and landscapes. There
is also much in man that suggests a similar genius
for creation. If man's body is so weak that the
clod can crush it, his mind seems omnipotent.
Before man entered the earthly arena, the world
was only a mighty engine of force that went on
grinding ?.nd clashing and destroying. The winds
waxed mighty, the lightnings blazed everywhither.

As a Revelation of God 175
Gravity pulled down the shrub and the tree.
Heat and cold filled the earth with energy, but all
to no purpose. Then man came to match himself
against the wild winds and the ungoverned forces,
even as the rider pursues the wild steeds in the
plains and subdues them to bit and bridle, and
compels them to lend their strength to his reins
and loins. Man's thought, like God's, went forth
as noiselessly as the dew, and subdued all terrific
forces that threatened to destroy him.
The rivers that separated men became high
ways that united. The trade winds bore his
burdens. The lightning flashing along his path
took his messages. The poisons that threatened
him became balms and medicines for his pains.
Having extracted the truth out of this planet, as
one squeezes the juice out of an orange, in his
thirst for new facts, man went ranging through
the starry worlds. He weighed their masses,
analyzed their elements, foretold their movements.
Soon the astronomers turned the Milky Way into
a race track for their mental gymnastics. By
playing off one force against another, man seems
rapidly approaching the time when he will be the
master of every element in land and sea and sky.
Now, it is better to have a small body with a
mind big enough to master the worlds than to

176 The Higher Nature of Man
be a big stone planet and be mastered by a
single mind. Because Newton's genius was
superior to the candle flame by which he wrote,
the philosopher was superior to the millions of
candle flames that make a sun. Nature's laws
incarnate God's thoughts, and man finds out
these laws because the mind of the discoverer
matches the mind of the Creator. Nature not
only mirrors God's face, but also portrays divine
lineaments in man's face.
A man's divineness also appears in the cross
that is the focal point of human history, the
spring of social progress. Calvary has been
beautifully defined as "God's eulogy on man,
written in letters of crimson, the temporal dis
play of God's eternal heartache." It is man's
infinite worth that explains that wondrous Being,
who lived and loved and died upon that far-off
hill of Galilee. The regard and esteem Christ
gives man matches man's worth. A man is
proud of the wagon he makes, but man loves
his child. Things God makes — man — God
loves. The prodigal son has broken his father's
heart, and we are prodigals. All the wealth of
meaning Calvary holds we may not know.
Theories "judicial," theories "commercial,"
theories that buy God from wrath to mercy,

As a Revelation of God 177
theories that weigh divine goodness over against
human badness — all these are broken arcs that
cannot contain this wondrous circle named God's
atoning love. And we utterly despair of ever
finding any theory to express so large a fact.
But we know that the mother bears the child's
sorrows and sickness, and at last his vices and
sins. We know that the patriot pouring his
blood out on the battle-field atones for the sins
of his fathers. We know that the reformer and
philanthropist who bear the burdens of their
suffering fellows arrest the progress of darkness.
We know that each new liberty is bought with
some one's martyrdom, and that each new truth
is a flame that consumes its prophet. All this
there was, and more, in that wondrous scene
when Christ threw wide His arms to lift prodigal
man back to his Father's side.

VIII
Ety ©lo ano tije Nefo Conceptions of ffiotr

" This earth too small
For Love Divine ? Is God not Infinite?
If so, His Love is Infinite. Too small!
One famished babe meets pity oft from Man
More than an army slain ! Too small for Love!
Was earth too small to be of God created?
Why then too small to be redeemed ? "
— Aubrey de Verb.

i 8c

VIII
THE OLD AND THE NEW CONCEPTIONS OF GOD
Every man paints his own picture of God. The ideas of
God as measures of social progress. Each new knowledge
or virtue a window looking out upon the realms divine.
Something in common implied in all friendship and revela
tion. Photographers photograph the mountains in sections
and men slowly construct a full conception of God. The
importance of right thinking regarding the Divine Being.
One's thought of God as a test of manhood. Those who
think of God as force. They emphasize omnipotence. The
motive fear. This the lowest level of approach. Those who
think of God as a stream of tendency toward righteousness.
They emphasize the laws of nature. The governmental con
ceptions of deity spring up in the age of feudalism. God as
love. The divine throne the throne of attraction and beauty.
Childhood develops rich associations about the term "father."
The riches of God. The name of God ought to be as a
granary, storing all treasures of the universe.
I 'VERY man paints his own picture of God.
-* — ' Speak the divine name into a thousand
ears, and each has his own different conception.
Man is indeed the noblest work of God, and
conversely a correct idea of God is the noblest
work of man. As our race increases in knowl-
181

182 The Old and the New
edge and wisdom, its ideas of God are corre
spondingly exalted. Rude and savage ages
beheld Him as a huge Hercules. Afterward as
society journeyed away from its sword and spear,
it left behind Zeus of the iron arm, and Jupiter
of the avenging heart. Monarchical ages saw
Him as a sovereign enthroned behind grim gran
ite. Later, when laws began to be formulated,
God became a judge who loved His laws and
penalties more than His children. During the
purely scientific epoch men revered Him as an
infinite Newton or Copernicus, lighting star lamps
by night and tending sun fires by day. At
length has dawned a day when the throne of
marble has become a throne of mercy. Taking
its stand by Jesus Christ, society beholds the
name of God clothed with wondrous beauty and
attraction. His throne is now a glowing tropic
centre, exhaling benefactions as the sun scatters
fruits and harvests. Each new knowledge and
integrity and sweet domestic trait has become a
revelator, opening up new and beautiful concep
tions of the Divine Being.
History tells of an Italian prince who fell heir
to a dark and gloomy fortress. Soon he cut
windows in the walls that he might look south
ward upon the villages and vineyards of that

Conceptions of God 183
storied land, and northward upon the glorious
mountains. Then the inmates of the place of
darkness found themselves looking out upon a
landscape of great beauty and delight. Thus
each new knowledge and virtue is a window in
the soul's mansion, through which man looks out
upon realms divine. The true yardstick, there
fore, measuring manhood, is one's conception of
God. As wise men go up in the scale of wisdom
and become citizens of the universe with an outlook
upon every side of nature and life, they behold
every bush blazing, yet unconsumed with the
glory of God's presence. But the fool says,
" There is no God at all " ; a very proper saying
— for a fool. Emerson tells of an Abolition
meeting in Boston, when a politician railed at
Sojourner Truth. When the man sat down the
tall black woman arose, and, tapping her forehead
very significantly, said to him, " Honey, I would
tell you something, but I see you ain't got
nothin' to carry it home in." There can be no
music for him whose hearing vanishes in deaf
ness, and the universe holds no God for him
whose wisdom has vanished away in folly. When
Humboldt mused aloud over his " Cosmos," his
favorite dog failed to understand the book.
There was no reason or memory in the animal,

184 The Old and the New
that answered to these faculties in the man.
But could the scientist have endowed his dog
with mind the animal would have followed his
master's argument ; with memory it would have
recalled history ; with humor it would have
laughed over each witticism, and with each new
faculty opened up in the dog a new range of
Humboldt's mind would have passed before the
animal's sight. Always the revelation from with
out implies a mind from within, keyed to its
level. The speaker and the listener must have
one faculty in common. The water and fin, the
air and the wing, beauty and the eye, melody
and the ear, go in couplets. The eloquence of
Burke asks an informed hearer ; the beauty of
Phidias asks a refined taste ; the wonder of truth
and goodness in God asks a responsive nerve of
truth and goodness in man. For the impure,
God is simply invisible. But happy, indeed, are
the pure in heart. Upon them hath dawned the
beatific vision. They see God.
To-day all reverent scholarship confesses that
man's knowledge of God is far from exhaustive.
Such is the weight and wealth of the divine
mentality that we know only in part. The rea
sons for this fragmentary knowledge are not far
to seek. In his reflections Job tells us that all

Conceptions of God 185
the glory of land and sea and sky are only
the whisperings of God's being, while the full
thunder of His power is yet to be revealed.
Those artists in Switzerland whose life work it is
to photograph the Alps tell us that the mountains
are too large for their cameras. They take the
Matterhorn in sections. Afterward, by combin
ing these partial views, they obtain the new and
complete picture. Thus the genius of God is
such that each red rose, each golden cloud, each
perfumed wind, each tropic forest, and each moun
tain height can only portray one narrow section
of God's wisdom and beauty. Using new tests,
scientists have discovered certain dark rays beside
the spectrum, rays all undetected by man's rude
eyes. Thus in every department of nature science
exhibits man's senses as too few and too feeble
for exhaustive knowledge. We have twilight
gleams, but no noonday wisdom. Moreover, tem
perament limits knowledge. Each mind looks
upon the truth from its own angle. He who
gives years to strengthening his talent for music
ends with an enfeebled appreciation of color.
Wordsworth loved poetry, but hated logic and
philosophy. When Newton was asked which of
his discoveries he thought greatest he could not
recall them, so fickle was his memory, but his

186 The Old and the New
powerful intellect could dissolve the present
problem. Each year the college faculties have
to excuse from mathematics a few students who,
excelling in language and literature, are helpless to
comprehend a simple problem in Euclid. History
exhibits no " all-round men," in the full sense of
that term. Each scholar must choose some little
section for his province, knowing that its mastery
will ask his full three score years and ten. For
the tallest the horizon is but nine miles away.
Our world is so vast that no foot can visit each
shrine ; no mind can record all beauty with pen
or brush. The human hand was made for a single
bouquet, not to hold the forest. The finite foot
can never overtake infinite beauty. Evermore
man knows "but in part."
The seer tells us that the importance of a
correct idea of God is beyond all computation.
Passing in review earth's great ones, he found
one form of manhood exalted above all others
whatsoever. It was said of the worshippers of
Diana that men threw their offerings at the
feet of the goddess because the human arm was
too short to enable the worshipper to place his
garland upon the forehead. With similar feeling
the seer said, "Let not the wise man glory in
his wisdom, nor the rich man in his wealth, nor

Conceptions of God 187
the strong man in his might." Earth can reach
and crown all these forms of excellence. But
there is a ground of glory and personal satisfac
tion higher than these, or than all others whatso
ever, i.e. that a man has carried his manhood up
to such ripeness of faculty and breadth of out
look, as that the great God rises before the soul's
horizon in unexampled splendor. That lofty shape
of soul is such that man can only whisper words
of homage at the feet, while God alone doth crown
the brow. Not but that wisdom in the poet and
scholar is praiseworthy ; happy he who by read
ing, conversation, and travel has gleaned knowl
edge in every field. Not but that wealth in the
rich man is admirable ; produced by industry,
conserved by economy, multiplied by thrift, it is
an almoner of universal bounty, the patron of art,
education, liberty, and religion itself. Strength,
too, in the man of oak and rock is worthy of the
highest ambition. But all these are secondary
qualities and acquirements. It was well for the
orator Cicero that he had three villas and a city
house, but his riches were subordinate. What he
prided himself on was his eloquence. It was well
for Dante that he was skilful with the harp, but
what he rejoiced in was his poetry, by which he
climbed to heaven and passed through paradise.

188 The Old and the New
It is a laudable ambition for each young man to
aspire to be an Apollo in strength, a Socrates in
wisdom, a Croesus in wealth, but all these are
secondary qualities. A man's real riches is his
heart treasure, garnered by the soul and not
the body. In the last analysis, a man who
is great toward men and things is like one who
stands on the foothills of the Alps and looks
down upon Florence ; but he who is great
toward God is like one who has climbed to the
topmost peak of the Alps, and from thence looks
out on all Italy and Europe. Happy is he who
to every form of earthly excellence hath carried
his spiritual nature up to such eminence as that
he looks out upon God and realms divine.
First is that class of men who think of God
as force, and are therefore ruled by motives of
fear. For all such God is the mighty thunderer.
Omnipotence sits in the centre of the universe,
and the earth trembles under His footsteps ; His
storms mow down forests ; His winds sink war
ships like eggshells ; His quakings shake down
the cities. From these movements in nature, rude
races think they can interpret God's mind and
heart. Thus the sun is the shining of His eye ;
the peaceful morn indicates His pleasure ; the
storm gathering in the evening sky represents

Conceptions of God 189
His anger ; the tree shattered by the thunderbolt
has incurred His wrath ; the house blackened by
fire has merited His displeasure ; the city ruined
by storm was blasted by His curse. The time
was when the great majority of men held this
conception of force, and even to-day multitudes
are still governed by motives of fear. But of
necessity the nature of the object to be governed
determines the methods of its control. God gov
erns dead things by force ; the channel controls
the river, and gravity the rocks. Living things
are controlled by fear ; the lark and the lion are
kept in their places by dread. Man, standing at
the summit of creation, is governed by hope and
love. It is only when he denies the higher law
that he passes under the dominion of fear and
force. When the drunkard benumbs his mind
with drink, and makes himself a mere log, force
holds his body in one spot. When man becomes
an animal and passes under the law of appetite
and passion, fear governs him. For each Judas
and Macbeth, volcanic fires within and blazing
lightnings without represent the inner smitings
of conscience and the outer penalties of broken
laws. Each man decides for himself at what level
he will approach God. The government of feat

190 The Old and the New
is a low and mean method of control, but it is
better than no government at all. If one will
not be reached by persuasions of right and duty
of love, then he must be reached through the
flesh and the blow that smites it. For the indi
vidual and the race living a rude and animal
life, fears are provocatives to progress. The fear
of hunger compels the lazy forest man to plough
and sow ; the fear of snow and winter forces the
shiftless man to build ; the fear of public opinion
makes brutal men decent ; the fear of old age
and want makes idle men thrifty. But if fear is
a civilizing force, its influence is very limited.
When the husbandman plants the seed he asks
help from the winter. Then the frost drives
wedges and splits away the shell. Once that is
done, the dominion of the cold is ended. Winter
has no power to awaken the sleeping germ. Only
the sun with its secret stimulus can arouse the
sleeping life. Thus fear is a force that can
release man from his animal fetters. But only
the higher influences of love can lend life and
stimulate toward growth.
Higher in the scale are those who think of
the universe as a vast mechanism of laws and
forces. For all these God is "the tendency
toward righteousness." Looking outward, men

Conceptions of God 191
find themselves moving forward under the em
brace of laws ; laws of light and heat, laws of
seedtime and harvest, laws of birth and growth.
These laws are organized thoughts; they think
for men, they offer grooves for his activities. By
law order is maintained in the world house and
plenty abounds, by law the white mists rise
from the sea, by law the night wind marshals
the clouds in battalions, by law the rain columns
march westward, by law the rich showers fall,
by law the mountain springs feed the rivers,
by law the rivers feed the sea whence they
came, by law the sea is never full. But these
laws of rivers and soils and forests and stars
are impotent to account for life's higher prob
lems. Science has rendered it impossible to
explain that symbol of modern civilization, the
morning newspaper, by referring the wheels to
iron ore, the type to lead mines, the paper to
flax fields, and the steam to the fire and water
from which it sprang. Reason asks us to refer
the mechanism to an intelligence that brought
iron and lead together in the printing-press, and
brought words together so as to make argu
ments. In man's attempt to account for the
universe, natural law has been sadly overworked.
The burdens laid on have broken the back.

192 The Old and the New
A traveller, whose journey in India must have
been imaginary, tells of a magician who waved
his wonder-working wand over the mouth of a
little jug, when lo ! a sprite came forth who
swelled into a man's stature. Then the man
planted seeds and led them forth to blossom
and fruit before the wondering spectators. Obe
dient to a signal, he shrank his trees into seeds,
and making himself a sprite, disappeared within
the jug. But this necromancy is as nothing
compared to the wonders wrought by that form
of philosophy that, asking only a pot of ink and
a steel pen, evokes dramas, symphonies, cathe
drals, constitutions, nations, planets, and suns
by a mere method of activity called laws. All
these and similar conceptions are impotent to
satisfy human reason. Moreover, they have no
power for exalted life and character. The patriot
will die for wife and babies and country, but not
for philosophic mist and moonshine. Well may
Martineau ask whether any publican smiting
upon his breast will leave his heart burdens
behind and go away in peace after a prayer to
the "Eternal not ourselves that makes for
righteousness." Will any crucified one lose the
bitterness of death in crying, "O stream of
tendency, into thy hands I commit my spirit"?

Conceptions of God 193
And to the martyr stoned to death will any
heaven open, will any vision come, when he
exclaims, "Great Ensemble of Humanity, receive
me " ? Recent events are rendering it certain
that the modern thinkers are tired of giving
their devotions to the night wind. Many are
returning to their rest to say, "O thou once
Unknown One, I thank thee that thou hast
hid these things from the wise and prudent,
and hast revealed them unto babes."
The governmental conceptions of Deity exhibit
Him as a God of judgment and penalty. His
throne is the throne of the monarch, His rule
is the rule of one whose will is law. This
view goes back to the Middle Ages, and sprang
out of what men saw about them. In that
far-off time feudalism reigned supreme. The
centre of civilization was the castle and the
prince within it. Approaching that fortress, one
came first of all to a huge wall. Beyond was
the moat filled with water, threatening each
besieger. Then came another wall, with ram
parts and towers and cannon surmounting it.
The drawbridge was studded with iron points.
At length philosophers found in the rule of the
monarch the type and symbol of the govern
ment of God. The Divine One surrounded Him-

194 The Old and the New
self with a huge webwork of laws so ingeniously
constructed that no transgressor could escape.
His throne became a thing of vast proportions,
with artillery and laws and penalties. Its foun
dations were stone ; the walls of His palace were
stone ; the windows through which Deity looked
were stone ; one tiny light did indeed flash out
from the top — the lamp of love, but that star
shone only for an elect few. Dwelling under such
conceptions, men fulfilled the law from motives
of necessity and self-preservation. To do wrong
was to be damned ; rather than be damned they
would do right. Obedience became a form of
refined self-interest. The fear of Satan below,
not the love of God above, draws men toward
the heavenly heights. Xenophon tells us that
behind the mercenary troops went the driver
with his whip. Each squad was urged forward
by the whip and scourge, and the victory came
not from love of country, but from dread of the
stinging blows. But our patriots marched unto
death, drawn forward by love of honor and
country. Strange that for some the movement
toward God is a flight before the penalties of
law and justice. How ignoble such motives !
The musician pursues his studies, not through
dread of discord, but love of harmony ; the

Conceptions of God 195
artist pupil advances, not because of a revulsion
from ugliness, but a love of beauty. "Jonathan
Edwards makes me fear and tremble," said Haw
thorne, "but Jesus Christ makes me hope and
love." The one hurried the pilgrim forward by
planting nettles in the path ; the other allured
the soul upward by making the way very beauti
ful, thick with wayside flowers, winding by
lovely streams, yet leading straight to Paradise.
Travellers in Yucatan tell of valleys from which
man long since marched away, leaving his palaces
to owls and bats and giving over his gardens
to the ivy and the cactus. The vales were very
rich, the climate was soft and fair. But man
left behind this terrestrial paradise to journey
northward under a cold, bleak sky. Oh, fatal
mistake ! like that of men who have exchanged
the tutelage of a father's love and sympathy
for the iron rule of law and justice.
According to the sublime view of Jesus Christ,
"God is love." Therein all conceptions of Deity
have their climax and consummation. For His
love includes all force, justice, duty, providence ;
it gathers up whatever is true in all other views ;
it completes that which is fragmentary. Through
Christ the unknown ceases to be mere brightness
without central orb or nucleus ; the Arch-thun-

196 The Old and the New
derer becomes a marvel of gentleness and ten
derness ; the Silent One is no longer without
voice or vision. O beautiful teaching! clothing
the Divine One with power because strength
alone can be gentle ; clothing Him with justice
because justice is an inflection of mercy ; sur
rounding Him with laws and penalties because
His penalties are medicines and His laws are
divine pathways leading to happiness and peace.
Jesus Christ caused His Father to stand forth
in an alluring atmosphere of strength and gen
tleness, of generosity and magnanimity. Then
His throne was clothed with wondrous attrac
tion. He stood forth possessed of such unex
ampled richness of mind and heart as that
whatever is admirable or striking or beautiful
in nature or life must be laid under contribu
tion and used as an alphabet for interpreting
His riches. To all other alluring and illuminat
ing names, Christ added that of Father, a name
with that of mother that showers all sweet
memories and suggestions upon the human soul.
Thereby Christ opened up, as it were, a heart
throbbing within love itself. The soul is a harp,
and every string vibrates sweet melodies when
the parental names are struck. The mother
love hovers over the cradle as the Star of the

Conceptions of God 197
East stood over the sacred manger. Human
nature is never so nearly divine as when the
cradle becomes a temple, and the babe is a
divinity for those who brood above it.
For that little, unheeding, impotent bundle,
the mere seed of life, the mother heart pours
out all the royal tides of love, asking no reward
save the opportunity of nourishing it out of
nothingness and littleness into largeness and
beauty. And though in later life the child,
through deceit and flattery, goes astray, and
flees from home only to be shattered and
wrecked, yet the sacred tide of love still flows
on, and the golden thread of love unrolling and
still unrolling holds the child fast and draws it
back out of all the confusion and storm. Hav
ing borne the child's sicknesses and infancy,
having carried its ignorance and disobedience in
youth, at length the parent bears its follies and
vices, and even its crimes. Between the cradle
and the grave there is not a single hour when
the parental heart will not open wide the arms
to protect the child by reason of the great love
she bears it. And Jesus Christ asks the word
Father and all the tender and sweet associations
of childhood to interpret God unto men. He
asked men to sit down by the stream of memory

198 The Old and the New
as by the river of water of life, and through
the image of parents loving and beloved inter
pret God's glowing, glorious mind and heart.
For His love includes the love of friend and
companion and parent and is more than all.
He is above the soul as the heavens overarch
the fields, filling the fruits with heat by day and
the flowers with cooling dews by night.
When that astronomer returned from a long
journey through the stellar spaces he cried out,
"Truly our God is a great God, for the glory
of the heavens and the handiwork of the earth
are but His outer garments." The sun itself is
not to God's greatness what a diamond ring is
to a man. Vast indeed is the world house.
Most beautiful all its appointments. But the
infinite mind that fashioned and the all-loving
Providence that adorned are a thousand fold more
than the material house. He who is the world
householder is also the world Father. But each
pilgrim child may approach God at whatsoever
level he pleases. The traitor drew near to our
martyred Lincoln as to a judge ; the soldier
came seeking orders ; the secretary came for
mandates, but Tad, the dying child, stretching
up his arms drew near to a father's heart.
Not otherwise will all high and low soon close

Conceptions of God 199
the eyes to the wondrous earthly scene. Happy
all those before whom the Name Divine stands
forth in lustrous beauty and attraction. Happy
those who behold bud, bird, cloud, sunbeam, to
find therein steps of a golden ladder leading up
to God. Thrice happy those who feel that the
regent of universal nature is also the Father
who indeed forgives and guides, but who also
makes all laws and forces almoners of bounty to
His child, shaking down each day the boughs of
infinite love, each night in vision hours setting
the heart throbbing with surging tides, until the
whole being is full of longing for the waiting
kingdom of love. For then that name — God,
granaries all the treasures of our universe.
God's name is a garden filled with sweet shrubs
and perfumed fruits. God's name is a gallery
stored with novel pictures of the past ; it is a
jewel case in which flash all gems of precious
thought ; it is a cathedral through which the
weary generations pass ; it is a medicine chest
holding all balms and remedies ; it is a belfry
from which angels ring out all celestial chimes.
God's name is love ; God's mercies are medi
cines; God's thought is man's providence; God's
heart is man's refuge and eternal home.

IX

ISbolution ano ffihristianitg : lEberg &heorg
of ©ebelopment asfts for an Infinite ffiofc
to mafce the Eheorn. SEorltahle

"Evolution is the working hypothesis of most scientific
men at the present time. In no branch of science is it with
out influence, and in the sciences which deal with life it
is dominant. We cannot escape from it. Its technical
phrases have become parts of current common speech; and
such words as 'natural selection,' the 'struggle for exist
ence,' and the ' survival of the fittest ' are on the lips of
every one. It does not matter to what sphere of human
work we turn, for in all alike we meet with the same mental
atmosphere. Are we students of physics or chemistry, we
have no sooner mastered the elements of the science than we
are plunged into questions which deal with the 'evolution'
of the 'atom' or the 'molecule' from simpler forms of matter.
Do we study mechanics, then we are brought into a sphere
where men talk of the evolution of the steam engine or of
some other machine which has slowly grown from less to
more till it has reached its present state. Are we students
of man, then we become accustomed to inquiries into the
evolution of the family, of marriage, of the community, of the
state. Morality is evolved, religion also." "It is grand and
ennobling to sweep back in thought across the hundred mill
ion years or so which separate us from the time when our
earth was only vapor, and to be led on from that point of
time, through all the intervening ages, as one science after
another guides our footsteps, until we arrive at the complex,
differentiated, integrated world of the present time, with its
life, intelligence, ethics, religion, science, art, and to have some
understanding of the process whereby this has come out of
that. But we may still have the rapture and the admiration ;
we may admire and so far revere and be thankful for the
work done in the service of evolution, and yet withhold that
final sacrifice demanded in her name."
— Professor Inverach.

aoa

IX

EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY: EVERY THEORY OF
DEVELOPMENT ASKS FOR AN INFINITE GOD TO
MAKE THE THEORY WORKABLE
Evolution a vision of the possible method by which God
secures progress for man and nature. The story of the
ascent of man. The number of the epochs in the world's
history increases the difficulty of the problem. Evolution at
first materialistic, now theistic. With few exceptions, the
great scientists have become Christian. Fiske, Romanes,
Mivart. Evolution the friend, not foe, of religion. Three
views of the universe. Atheism, pantheism, agnosticism.
Divine immanence. Evolution and the idea of God. Evo
lution and the origin of man. Evolution and conscience.
Evolution and sin. The law of force become the law of love.
Evolution and immortality. The reasonableness of God's
universe. Christ the supreme revelation.
EVOLUTION is a vision of the possible
method by which God secures progress for
man and nature. It is a history of the divine
footprints and the story of the ascent of man. In
strangely thrilling words it tells us how a ball of
fire became a home for God's children ; how stones
became soil ; how seeds became forests and vine
yards ; how huts became houses and tents temples ;
303

204 Evolution and Christianity :
how rude, hard sounds became eloquent speech ;
how signs and hieroglyphics became language and
literature. Just as conversation is necessary to
man with his unfolding thoughts, so evolution
exhibits the world with its valleys and hills, its
harvests and cities, with its stars and rolling suns,
as necessary to God and His unfolding genius.
Champollion spent twenty years in trying to
decipher the rude signs upon the tombs of Egypt,
before he found the key to the hieroglyphics. But,
small, indeed, the tombs and temples of Thebes
seem in contrast with the pages in great nature's
book. Unfortunately, also, the scientist's task
has been rendered increasingly difficult in that
many of the rock pages have been sadly injured,
the writing strangely blurred, while the language
is neither clear nor simple. Also the number and
vastness of the epochs in the world's history mul
tiply problems for the student. It is a long way
from a grain of sand to the red rose ; farther yet
from a bird to Plato and his idea of immortality.
Only once in aeons does Nature turn a new leaf in
her gigantic book. A thousand ages, and the ball
of fire cools ; a thousand ages, and a little soil
appears , a thousand ages, and the forests rise in
ranks and layers of coal appear ; then at intervals
of a thousand ages each appear the tiny fish, the

Development 205
rude saurian, the bird, the beast, and at last man,
evermore unrivalled.
In a universe so vast, scholars long have wan
dered, lost like children in a dense wood, yet ever
seeking some clew to the divine method of crea
tion. The geologist has unceasingly asked by
what furnaces of fire the earth has been melted ;
by what wheels of earthquakes it has been torn ;
by what chisels of ice it was engraven into its
final form. The botanist patiently watched the
wild rice developing into the stalk of wheat, and
the rose wild and pink becoming double and of
many colors. The astronomer studied Saturn
with its evolving rings of fire. The archaeologist
studied museums and the sites of old cities. The
historian studied man as he mastered the use of
fire, invented his first boat, tamed the first wild
horse, harnessed the steam to his plough. Thus
through many centuries scholars have been moving
forward, each along his own appointed path. At
length, just as the exploring parties searching out
the head-waters of the Mississippi suddenly found
themselves coming together and within hailing
distance of each other, so of late all the highways
of knowledge have been rapidly converging toward
the central point, and, looking up, scholars have
signalled one to another, and the secret that trem-

206 Evolution and Christianity:
bled upon the lips of one proved to be the dis
covery of all — evolution is the key that reveals
the method of God in nature.
We are told that when Columbus's voyage for
testing his theory of the earth's roundness drew
near the end, and it became evident that the new
continent would establish his brilliant hypothesis,
the great voyager became so agitated as to be
compelled to give to another officer the command of
the ship, for which his agitation made him unequal.
Thus the burst of a sudden discovery, the solution
of a world-long problem, has come to our genera
tion charged with a meaning in excess of human
strength. After long wanderings over a dark and
trackless sea of doubt and mystery, at last the
cloud has passed from the pole star of our world.
Overcome by the magnitude of the supreme
moment of discovery, a few scholars have permitted
the law to obscure the Law-maker. For the mo
ment the sunbeam, by very brightness, has obliter
ated the sun. But if there was an evolution that
was atheistic and based in materialism, the evolu
tion that now is, is theistic, and increasingly
Christian. Of John Fiske, Charles Darwin wrote, Than him
we have no stronger, clearer exponent. But John
Fiske seems to think that science is to help bring

Development 207
a greater revival of Christianity than that which
built the cathedrals of Europe in the thirteenth
century. Herbert Spencer has given no student
higher praise than Romanes. But it was evolution
that led Romanes, the agnostic, to those "altar
stairs that slope through darkness up to God,"
and made him in his last book say, Science is
moving with all the force of a tidal wave toward
faith in Jesus Christ as the world's Saviour. The
physicist, the biologist, the students of force and
life alike, in reverent voice have spoken to God
and said, "O Father, where art Thou?" And
out of rock and wave, out of herb and flower, has
come a voice answering, "God is here." The
earth cries unto the heavens, "God is here";
the heavens cry to the earth, " God is here." The
land hath Him, the sea claims Him, the clouds
are His chariots. Sitting upon the circle of the
earth, He draweth all things upward in ever
increasing cycles of knowledge and goodness and
love. Strangely enough the doctrine of evolution has
provoked bitter antagonism. Multitudes fear that
it means waste and destruction. Misunderstand
ing, they shiver lest it will relegate religion to the
limbo of exploded superstitions. But just here we
remember that the announcement of the theory of

208 Evolution and Christianity:
gravitation threw Newton's generation into a per
fect panic of fear. All now perceive that the
philosopher was a reverent and earnest Christian.
Yet during his life ecclesiastics charged Newton
with infidelity and rank atheism. It was not until
after his death that the storm began to abate its
fury, and the professors of Oxford University
succeeded in smuggling the theory of gravitation
into their classrooms under the cover of notes in
Aristotle's works.
In like manner the names of Galileo and Coper
nicus, of Kepler and Columbus, rise up in judg
ment, not against Christianity, but against its
ignorant and intolerant exponents. Taught in no
wise by the errors of the past, once more ecclesi
astics are going forth in battle array against
evolution, using texts for bullets, throwing Genesis
at the scientists, and setting the flag of faith in
defence of the flag of reason. Confessing that
there is a warfare between ignorant scientists and
ignorant ecclesiastics, let us also hasten to affirm
that there is no conflict whatever between science
and religion. God is never at war with Himself.
The divine voice through nature, and the divine
voice through conscience, can never contradict
each other. Just as the flowery bank on this side
of a river is one with the bank on the other side

Development 209
of the stream, both having the same laws of
gravity and light and heat, so science and religion
are hemispheres making up one planet, and are
controlled by the same divine laws. It was of
science and religion that Baronius said, " The one
tells how the heavens go, and the other how to go
to heaven." For a long time past science and
religion have been in the condition of two fruitful
trees, through whose branches has raged all the
fury of a heavy storm. But now that the storm is
dying out of the air, the trees are found to be
unhurt, the boughs are full of birds, and the
branches have burst into bloom and fruit.
The storm has gone, but the tree abides and
grows. Meanwhile those who have stood aside
from the dispute, and have calmly used the hy
pothesis of evolution for testing the facts of nature
and life, are now coming forth from their long
retreat with faces that shine like men who have
seen "the heavenly vision." Nor need we won
der that the surpassing grandeur of the new con
ception has exalted reason and imagination, and
caused scholars to take off their shoes, because
every bush burned, and " the place whereon they
walked was holy ground." All have come to feel
the force of these memorable words which close
the " Origin of Species." " There is a grandeur

210 Evolution and Christianity:
in this view of life with its several powers having
been originally breathed by the Creator into a few
forms, or into one ; and that whilst this planet
has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of
gravity, from so simple a beginning, endless forms
most beautiful and most wonderful have been
born, and are being gradually evolved." For
many years now, in the laboratory and in the
library, students have been tracing the develop
ment of the seed toward the blade and stalk.
Evolution has enabled the biologist to search out
the secrets of embryology. Darwin and Wallace
have used it for tracing the rise of the animal
body. Romanes has used it for explaining the
development of the mental faculties. Spencer
has found that it explains the rise of industrial
and social institutions. Bruce and Fairbairn have
found it explains the evolution of conscience and
morals. McCosh found it useful in interpret
ing the typical forms of nature. Caird used it
to interpret the development of religion. How
vast and wide sweeping has been the change of
view can be understood from this fact.
Twenty years ago the leading professor in a
certain institution always spoke of evolution as
the "theory of devilution," and now, by a singular
coincidence, not a single professor in that great

Development 211
college but reverently and joyfully teaches the
very theory that once its founder scored. Already
the time has come when almost everybody ex
claims, " Evolution — certainly ; why, I always
believed in theistic evolution."
What is the doctrine of evolution? Fundamen
tally, it is the doctrine of creation by gradualism
rather than by instantaneous fiat. In general,
there are three views of the origin of the uni
verse. The first is atheistic. It leads God to
the edge of the universe, and quietly bows Him
out of existence as unnecessary. It holds that
soil and heat and cold alone are sufficient to ac
count for harvests, cities, and civilization. Athe
ism calls the clod the creator of a rose, the author
of an "Iliad," the father of a Newton. Reason
explains an engine by some Watt, but atheism
explains each Watt by pointing to a lump of mud.
Atheism is the apotheosis of blind faith. It puts
credulity on the throne, and kicks reason and cul
ture into the street. Next in order of thought is
that theory that explains land and sea and sky by
a sudden inthrust of divine power. This view
holds that God set the sun in the centre, balanced
the planets around about, threw great belts called
laws around the fiery wheels, and in six successive
days completed the furnishing of the world house.

212 Evolution and Christianity :
Afterward, the Creator returned from the world,
never to reappear save at certain intervals, when
He breaks into the scene through special inter
ruptions of the regular laws.
Over against this doctrine of instantaneity,
Christianity places the doctrine of creation by
gradualism, teaching that God is immanent, is in all,
through all, and above all ; that His last creative
act is as new as the newly born babe ; that the
latest event in nature is God's latest thought
toward man ; that His love blushes in each apple
blossom ; that the very changes on the hillsides of
May form, as it were, a continued letter from God,
freshly written each morning : that each new day
is a creative day; that the divine dew lies as freshly
on the grass as when first the morning stars sang
together for joy; that what God was, He is; that
what He said, He says ; that what He did, He
does. Looking backward, this view exhibits the
earth as once in a condition that answered to
that of our sun. Slowly it cooled ; slowly through
billows of flame the granite was pulverized into
soil ; partly by ice, and partly by water, the earth
was made rich for the coming plants ; organic life
at first being very simple ; then the soft ferns
giving way to the hardy forests ; by ages and
long processions plants rising rank upon rank ;

Development 213
by ages and long processions animals rising order
upon order ; coming at last to our father, man ;
man himself moving up by stages toward heights
of excellence, such as the imagination of no Dante
or Milton, though strained to its very uttermost,
is able to conceive what man shall yet be, what
faculties shall be grouped within him, what heights
of wisdom and ranges of love shall be possible
to him when God and Christ and the resources
of time shall have fully wrought their divine
purpose upon him ; and that in the life that
is, and that is to come, God's presence works
like yeast, and will ever work ; that progress is
the genius of the universe ; that all creation is
out upon an upward march ; that daily, God causes
the dry crust of the earth to move up into the
herb and shrub; the shrubs to ascend into the
life of the animal ; the animal to be lifted up into
the life of man ; man to be lifted up into the mind
and life of Christ ; that earth and sun and all the
starry hosts are marching forward to the sound of
divine music, and following after One who leads
them toward a great cosmic goal, when at length
the law of love, which is the law of Christ, shall
prevail everywhere — this is that seminal theory
of the universe, called Christian evolution.
Consider how evolution affects man's idea of

214 Evolution and Christianity :
God. It is said that when Jacquard first exhib
ited his loom to the wondering spectators, and the
streams of water, by means of the belt and fly
wheel, started all the spindles upon their task of
embroidering flowers and leaves upon the silk
texture, the on-lookers were so entranced with
the wonder of the loom as utterly to forget the
inventor. The myriad spindles toiling on without
any help from without made Jacquard seem super
fluous. But soon the mechanism needed repair
ing, and then the spectators came to feel there
was no greatness in the loom that was not first
in Jacquard's mind. Thus for a brief period this
great earthly mechanism with its evolving pro
cesses seemed to abolish God. But afterward,
with knowledge, reverence grew, until the time
has now come when biologists, physicists, his
torians, alike confess that there is no theory of
evolution that does not demand a God to make
it workable. Even Darwin has never denied the
existence of a God, but distinctly assumed the
World Genius standing back of His wondrous
earthly mechanism.
Tyndall also said that sometimes in melancholy
moods his faith grew weak, but in clear and
luminous hours, when intellect was at its best,
all his doubts of God fled utterly away. To-day

Development 215
scientists, almost without exception, testify that
evolution has inconceivably exalted the idea of
God. It is one thing for an inventor to make a
watch. But the inventor must needs stand beside
that watch. When a wheel or escapement gives
way he repairs the injury, and when the time
piece wears out he makes a new watch. Now
what if some genius could invent a watch that
was self-repairing ; that by study of its wheels
could correct its own errors ? What if when
worn and old it could reproduce itself in another
watch ? What if it could endow its successor
with power not only to reproduce itself, but to
develop new improvements, substituting a jewelled
pivot from time to time instead of a pivot of steel,
and so move forward in an ever improving series
of timepieces ? Would not the mind of such an
inventor as this be inconceivably superior to him
who merely makes a watch and then makes another
one ? Now in precisely this way the theory of
Christian evolution has exalted inconceivably the
idea of God, who does not need to stop and think
about the physical wants of birds and beasts and
men, but has organized His thoughts into laws
that think for Him. Thus, slowly as man grows,
his thoughts of God grow also. In an age of
brute force, when Hercules was the ideal, the

216 Evolution and Christianity :
Greek saw the infinite as a colossal Titan. Later
on, when kings succeeded rude warrior heroes,
the Infinite was looked upon as a world monarch.
When power held sway over minds of men, He
became the Omnipotent One. When knowledge
became the ideal, He was a kind of infinite Agas-
siz. When the domestic sentiments asserted
themselves, He became goodness, purity, and love.
Each new virtue in man proved to be an added
window through which some new and glorious
attribute in God rushed into sight. The pro
gressive development of the idea of God in the
Scriptures is itself one of the most striking
examples of evolution as the divine method.
Christian evolution has also changed our idea
of man. Slowly it is undermining the old view
of the fall that sees each Aristotle as the ruins of
an Adam, substituting, instead, man as beginning
in a low and savage state, and under the provi
dential oversight of God, slowly moving upward
toward refinement, culture, and character. Even
the late president of Princeton College, Dr.
McCosh, has said that while neither science nor
revelation gives a clear statement as to how man
was created, still it should be noted as a deeply
significant fact that, "as the human embryo
grows, it becomes like a fish, a reptile, a mam

Development 217
mal, and finally takes on the human form. It
thus passes through the series of the ramified
classification of animals, the kingdom, sub-king
dom, class, family, genus, species." Le Comte,
Cope, and scores of others equally prominent
hold that the human body brings forward and
unites in itself all the excellence of the lower
animal creation.
As the infantile life develops, it enters into and
passes through the likeness of each lower animal
and, journeying ever upward, carries with it the
special grace and gift of each creature that is
left behind, sometimes a bone or muscle or gan
glion, until the excellences of all the lower animal
realm are compacted in man's little body. Many
organs useful in the lower realm are found only
in rudimentary form in man. Drummond says
the body contains some seventy vestigial struc
tures like the vermiform appendix. Indeed, the
human body seems like an old curiosity shop, a
museum of obsolete anatomies and outgrown
organs. Take away the theory that man has
risen from a lower animal condition, and these
unused organs have absolutely no explanation.
With such facts before us it is as foolish to assert
that man is not related to the animal creation as
to assert that the ferns marked in the coal strata

218 Evolution and Christianity :
and the fishes found in the layers of rock throw
no light upon the events of geology. Strangely
enough, some are unwilling to believe that God
created the body progressively through animals,
but are quite willing to believe that he created it
immediately from a clod in the Garden of Eden.
But either origin is good enough, provided the
man has journeyed far enough from the clod or
the animal and gone up near enough to the angel.
Some there are for whom no descent seems possi
ble — they are already as low as any animal.
Others seem to have made no ascent whatever,
but to be even now upon the plane of things that
creep and crawl. But let us leave the origin of
the body to the scientists. By whatever way
man's body came, mentality and spirituality have
now been engrafted thereupon. Man is no longer
animal, but spiritual. He stands forth clothed
with faculties divine that ally him to God.
Whether man is descended from one human pair
or many ; whether his body has come through a
direct fiat or a progressive creation, the important
fact is that man now bears the image of God, and
that all are brethren. Science has established a
unity of men. For the surgeon and the dietitian
the physiology or anatomy of the white race or
the black is the physiology and anatomy of all

Development 219
races. The functions of brain and nerve and
muscle are the same in all peoples. Reason and
memory, the love of beauty and of humor, imagi
nation and conscience, exist in all tribes alike.
This scientific fact establishes the doctrine of
human brotherhood, and proclaims the unity of
the race, making of " one blood," indeed, " all
who dwell upon the face of the earth."
Consider what light evolution throws upon the
problem of sinfulness and the conflict in the soul.
Primarily, it exhibits man as a double creature.
The spirit man rides upon a man of flesh, and is
often thrown thereby, and trampled under foot.
Because the physical man includes all the instru
ments of the animal realm, there are times when
the soul seems to manifest the cunning of the
fox, the cruelty of the lion, the traits of the wolf
— yea, the sting of the serpent itself. But if
there is a lower man having the appetite and pas
sion that sustain the body, there is also a higher
spiritual man with reason, affection, and moral
sentiments. And the union of the two means
strife and conflict. It is the doing by the physi
cal man what the spiritual man would not do that
leads the soul to cry out, " Oh, wretched man that
I am 1 who shall deliver me from the body of this
death?"

220 Evolution and Christianity :
Thus sin ceases to be philosophy and creed,
and becomes a concrete personal fact. Sin is the
struggle for supremacy between the animal forces
and the higher spiritual powers. Just as there is
a line between the tropics where the two zones
meet and breed cyclones, so there is a middle line in
man where the spiritual meets the animal man, and
there perpetual storm doth reign ; there it has been
said clouds never pass away and the thunder never
dies out of the soul's horizon. Now this scientific
view of sin is slowly but surely destroying the
mediaeval conception. The scholastics long have
represented God as creating inexperience and
innocence, then permitting it to be debauched,
and afterward transmitting the awful results to
the entire human race, dooming the vast majority
to endless torment. Many, for want of any other
view, have accepted what they have been taught,
not realizing the real content of the teaching. If
a physician should place his child in a plague hos
pital, and expose him to contagion, knowing that
he would transmit the awful disease to innumerable
generations, an after decision to introduce reme
dial proceedings for a very few of the plague-
stricken ones would in no wise clear the father's
garments of responsibility. Multitudes have wel
comed the new statement of the doctrine of sin — •

Development 221
not simply because it sweeps away the dreadful
nightmare of scholastic teachings, and rids the
mind of a horror of thick darkness, but also
because this view lends itself readily, first to the
facts of experience and the facts of heredity, and
chiefly because it interprets that conception of
human sinfulness as taught by Jesus Christ.
And this evolutionary view, appealing to uni
versal reason, appeals also to divine help.
Morning and noon and night it encourages in
men the hope of a divine deliverer. To men
struggling to conquer the body and to rise
above the dominion of sin these words of Christ,
" Ye may, ye must be born again," are sweet as
angels' songs falling o'er the battlements of Para
dise. For the doctrine of regeneration is by pre
eminence the doctrine of salvation.
This seminal theory also throws great light upon
the conversion of the law of strength and force
into the law of love and vicarious service. In the
inorganic world strength survives, weakness goes
to the wall. Returning to the plant realm, the
sturdy shrub weeds out the weaker growths. But
with parenthood a new principle appears. Weak
ness ceases to go down before strength. The
parent uses his wisdom and power as a shield for
protecting infancy. The law of the survival of

222 Evolution and Christianity :
the fittest is succeeded by the law of service. And
when the parental instinct has fully interrupted
the law of strength, then rude men in their wild
life begin to protect weakness in others. At a
very early era Moses enacted laws giving the
orphan the right to glean in the fields, giving the
pilgrim overcome with hunger the right to enter
the vineyards for satisfying his pressing hunger
with food and grain, forbidding the creditor to
take away the debtor's spade, plough, or imple
ment of labor, freeing the slave at stated intervals.
Finally, when the fulness of time had come, the
interruption of the law of strength had a new
exhibition in the life and death of Christ, in whom
the twilight passed into sunrise, and who con
verted the cosmic law of the survival of strength
into the law of sympathy, vicarious service, and
suffering. And slowly his influence is leavening
all society ; imitating him, the children of genius
like Stowe use their genius to plead for the slave ;
each Dickens consecrates his pen to ameliorating
the condition of orphaned Oliver Twist and David
Copperfield ; each John Brown, Lloyd Garrison,
and Wendell Phillips gives his power to the slaves
in the Southern cotton fields ; such reformers
and heroes as Howard and Livingstone give life
itself to the conquest of savagery and the en-

Development 223
thronement of civilization in some dark continent.
For this progressive interruption of the law of the
survival of the fittest has its sublimest manifesta
tion in the life, teachings, and death of Jesus
Christ, whose example is exalting all civilization
and making the world ready for the day when the
universe itself shall give praise unto Him, " who,
being rich, for our sakes made Himself poor," and
therefore has received " a name that is above every
name." Postponing for the present all discussion of the
bearing of Christian evolution upon the institution
of the church, the conception of the Bible with
the ideas of prayer and providence, and the hope
of social progress, it remains for us to note its
bearing upon immortality. Of old Socrates and
Cicero found in nature intimations of a future
life. But so faint were the glimmerings that men
never knew the joy of death or the happiness of
dying. For the multitude the grave dripped with
horrors. Death's cold chilled men to the marrow.
The skull and crossbones alone were fitting sym
bols of the future. It was Christ who brought
life and immortality to light. But at length has
dawned a day when science is beginning to ver
ify and interpret Christ's vision of immortality.
Everywhere nature exhibits the lower working

224 Evolution and Christianity :
toward the higher. Science finds that the seed's
husk first dies that the inner plant may live ; the
bud falls that the fruit may swell ; the vine gives
its sap that the clusters may grow ripe ; the heart
gives its blood that the brain may think and grow
wise ; while in every realm of life the lower must
needs die, that the higher may live again. And
having seen how plants rise rank upon rank ; hav
ing seen biennials journey toward the winter of
death, only to receive a second summer for the
bloom and blossom that the first summer denied ;
having seen that not one order of created life but
has persisted until its every force was unfolded
and developed, science has gone on to observe
that man alone is germinal at death. The summer
is too short and cold for his mental fruitage.
Even the ripest sage and seer is only in the bud
and blossom of his growth. Three score years
and ten avail but for an alphabetic development
of reason and memory and affection. The rest of
man's two score faculties must wait for a second
summer. Grave-planted, the quiescent germinal
faculties wait for a more genial clime. Indeed, the
multitudes in China and Africa, and the myriads in
the isles of the sea, go forward unto death, each like
a casket of seeds that has never yet been planted.
Why the God of silence and mystery permitted

Development 225
the populations for thousands of generations to
sweep on in number like unto the leaves of the
forest, and like the leaves rising only to fall again ;
why through untold ages He left them without
church, or Bible, or altar, or religious teacher, we
do not know. Reason may record its surprise
that men were left in ignorance of roots lying
under foot that would have cured the raging pes
tilence ; why the Heavens breathed forth no word
of instruction as to body and brain, as to reason
and memory, as to the problems of health and
happiness. But reason fails to pierce the veil. It
is enough that God has time, and to spare ; that
growth is His upon both sides of the grave, that
all instruments of power and agents of happiness
and character are God's and therefore His chil
dren's. So that beyond death He may accomplish
for the children of ignorance and superstition the
happiness and culture denied them here. Surely
He who has skill to cause the very gravestones to
go toward mossy life and beauty ; out of decaying
logs can snowdrops bring ; leads the lily's white
ness forth from the black slough and bog ; can
make the roses on the battle-fields the redder for
the ruin that has been wrought ; hath also skill to
lead the darkened mind toward light ; to turn vice
into virtue, and bring judgment to victory.
Q

226 Evolution and Christianity
Therefore, we should expel from the mind un
generous thoughts about God. If God is generous
toward man the prodigal and sinner, why should man
be ungenerous toward God, and think Him without
resource for the darkened generations ? Justice and
love are on the world's throne. Therefore all is
well. In Paris after the horrors of the Revolution
had passed, the traveller lying awake at midnight
in his hotel might hear the watchman crying,
" Midnight, and all is well ! " But the prophet who
watches under the stars for the morning of God's
coming, need not say, " Midnight, and all is
well ! " but rather, " The day dawns, and all is
well ! " Even now the King of time draws near.
He is causing Christianity, no longer disfigured
and mourning, to go forth in all the beauty
of divine and all-conquering love. Soon there
shall fall o'er the heavenly battlements the
shout of victory, from the lips of the heavenly
host, again drawing near our earth ; soon shall rise
from the redeemed human family the notes of
exulting praise and gladness ; soon earth's song
and heaven's symphony, meeting, shall unite in
one triumphant hymn of praise, that shall sound
on and sound forever, in honor of " Him who is
before all things and in whom all things consist."

X
lEfaolution ano the Nefo Uiefo of the 3Sihle

" It is true that the Bible is an inspired book . . . but in a
much higher sense than that which is claimed for it, and which
is pragmatical, pharisaic, and minifying. I have already dealt
with this, but for the young there may be a further condensa
tion of some points. The grander and truer theory of inspira
tion is that under God's providence all the moral sentiments
and noble tendencies of mankind have been growing in the
direction of divine truth ; that there has been a guidance, a
general enlightenment, of the human race, in every age, espe
cially among certain peoples ; that men have developed great
moral principles, and some to a large degree have grown into
heavenly knowledge ; that the counsel and secret thoughts of
God were thus indicated by human growth in grace ; that
exceptional persons were raised up in every period who could
see what was thus made known, and who made a faithful
record of what had transpired under this inspiration of God ;
and that statements were made by them of the experiences of
the inspired race, so far as they were unfolding out of nothing
into something, from lower to higher forms of knowledge.
This theory of the inspiration of Scripture is quite reconcil
able with the fact that there are mistakes of letters and words
and even of historic statements in it here and there, without
lessening its spiritual value.''
— Beecher's "Bible Studies," p. 35.

228

EVOLUTION AND THE NEW VIEW OF THE BIBLE
The Bible and the rise of the common people. This book
a spring of liberty. The very heart of law and literature.
No other book so popular with orators and poets. Holds
the love of the common people. Of late a storm centre.
Every treasure house, stored with wealth, invites attack.
Unfortunately the discussion has destroyed the confidence
of multitudes. The book has been be-trashed and be-
rubbished. The story of the Bible. A library of a single
volume. The Bible portrays the rise and growth of right and
wrong. Exhibits the evolution of moral ideas. The develop
ment of the Ten Commandments. The development of the
Mosaic symbolism as a revelation of God. The Bible ex
hibits the gradual development of the theistic idea. Not a
book of chemistry or astronomy. Not a book of history.
A book of morals. The story of the higher moods of the
noblest men of the best nation of the old times, preserved
for the guidance of the multitudes. The Bible the book of
refinement and culture. No other book stands in such vital
relations to the human heart. The one universal book. Its
truths eternal.
ALTHOUGH all nations and ages have had
their religious books, no other volume has
stood in such vital relations to the mind and heart
as the Bible. Since Luther's day, this book has
229

230 Evolution
been literature as well as religion, for all Europe.
The Saxon race may literally be said to have de
rived its civilization from this single volume. So
deeply has this book implanted itself upon the
household life, and so powerfully has it wrought
upon all poets and singers, that scholars and peo
ple alike find it well-nigh impossible to think apart
from its moral levels. Analyzing the traits of the
English race, Emerson remarked that the ruling
classes have their strength and culture through
having been nourished daily upon a chapter in the
Bible and a leader in the London Times. The
immortal principles of the Bible have been the
bread of life to the millions of the republic also.
Ours is an era when the divine beauty that rav
ished Milton and Dante is convincing the west
ern peoples also that duty is one with joy and
beauty. In all ages great men have gone to the
Bible as to the very spring of thought and inspi
ration. This book lent Milton his Paradise ; lent
Handel his Messiah ; lent Titian his Transfigura
tion ; lent Christopher Wren the plan of his
cathedral ; lent liberty to Cromwell ; lent Lincoln
a rule, " golden " for white and black alike.
Take the Bible out of the galleries and cathe
drals of Europe ; take it out of the world's songs
and sympathies, its laws and literatures, and only

And the New View of the Bible 23 1
an outer shell of civilization would be left — just
as taking a sweet babe out of the cradle would
leave only a few pieces of lumber. Nor has any
other book stood in universal relations to all ages
and classes. The Bible has made an ineffaceable
impression upon child life. Upon it poets have
fed their genius. Its thoughts lie like threads of
gold upon the rich pages of each Macaulay or
Burke. Orators have quoted from it so largely
that we may say that, in proportion as men
are cultured, have they been students of the
Bible. To-day its moral principles form the very
substance and body of modern law and juris
prudence. For centuries it has been the book
for patriots and reformers ; it has been the slave's
book ; it has been the book for the common peo
ple struggling upward : it has been the book of
hope for all prodigals ; it has been a medicine
book for the heart-broken, while its ideas furnish
goals for society's future progress. For the indi
vidual it teaches the art of individual worth, and
is a guide to conduct and character. For the
state it is a handbook of universal civilization.
Strangely enough, of late years the Bible has
become the centre of storm and attack. The time
was when men read and reverenced it, as though
it were a book fallen down from God. If all its

232 Evolution
pages had been printed by angel hands ; if all had
borne God's signet and seal ; if by a silver cord it
had been let down over the heavenly battlements,
men could scarcely have treated it with more pro
found reverence. Indeed, in certain quarters this
reverence has amounted almost to idolatry. A
Scotch writer of the last century tells U3 his fa
ther, after evening prayer, used to put the Bible
upon the doorsteps to keep the spooks away. For
tunately, the tendency to treat the Bible as an
idolater his fetich has now given place to a rever
ent faith and study.
But, singularly enough, to the Bible there now
has come a transition period and a critical hour.
Other centuries have witnessed attacks upon the
Scriptures, but never has the book known an
ordeal like unto the one through which it is now
passing. Never before have wit and scholarship
been used against it with such skill and force.
Never before has assault been made from so
many sides, or been so bitter. Strange as it may
seem, this hospital book, this magazine of mer
cies, has been turned into a scene of war and
strife. One party has taken its stand upon one
part of the Bible, and another party upon another
part of the Bible, and texts have been turned into
bullets, and the most precious truths have been

And the New View of the Bible 233
formed into weapons of offence and defence. If
men should go into a garden — not for shade and
shelter, not to pluck the clusters for food or the
blossoms for fragrance, but to split the apple
trees into shafts for spears, to feed the blossoms
to war-horses, to use seeds for shots, to trample
all the sweet buds into the mire, we should have
that which would answer precisely to what has
happened to this book of peace and kindness.
Always has it been the fortune of any instru
ment that makes for influence, wealth, or wisdom,
to invite war and engender strife. In every
age the palace stored with wealth and the treas
ure-house filled with jewels have encouraged
attack. In the time of Pericles, Phidias and his
school of artists toiled long to fill the Parthenon
with the most precious marbles our earth has
ever seen. But the very value of these art treas
ures engendered covetousness. In the fierce strife
to possess these marbles, the Parthenon became
an arsenal. Inside the Athenians piled the mar
bles up as barricades, behind which lay soldiers
with swords and rifles. Without, stood the Turks
hurling cannon-balls through the walls and roof.
Soon the Parthenon became a heap and the gal
lery a mass of blackened fragments. And, by
reason of its very value and influence, the Bible

234 Evolution
also has become a centre of criticism and discus
sion. Every possible sect and party have gone
to it for texts with which to buttress their posi
tion. Errors in geology and astronomy have
been charged upon the book ; as have been mis
takes in history and science, and errors in morals.
Unfortunately, the discussion has destroyed the
confidence of multitudes. Many have become
utterly indifferent to the book. For them the
Bible is as though it were not. For of what
value is a chart for passengers, if the captain
does not understand it ? Of what use is a guide
book, if even its interpreters cannot explain it ?
In some its reading still stirs sweet memories,
although it has ceased to have any binding au
thority. Of late, there has been less heat in the
conflict respecting the nature and authority of
the Scriptures. The smoke is clearing away,
and the attempt to overthrow the Bible has met
its Waterloo. If, on the one hand, the old view
of verbal inspiration, that looked upon each
chapter and sentence, each word and comma, as
inspired of God, has been rendered utterly un
tenable ; on the other hand, reverent scholar
ship meeting the critical assault on its own
grounds has established the authority of the
Bible as a book of conduct and character and a
book of God.

And the New View of the Bible 235
Never was there a book so be-trashed and be-
rubbished. Coming to it through commentators
has been like looking out upon the sun through
a window over which spiders have spun webs,
festooned with thick dust. What men have
called attacks upon the Bible have been only
attempts of scholars co clear away false concep
tions, that the book may speak for itself. With
the new views has come the conviction that the
Bible has just begun its mission as an instru
ment for regenerating human life. So far from
its oil being burned out, attacks have served
only to trim the wick. Never before did it seem
so likely to go down into the future as a light
shining in a dark place. The grass withereth, the
flower fadeth, the hills perish in their places ; yea,
" the mountain stream wearies the mountain heart
as the crimson pulse does ours ; and the natural
force of the iron crag is abated in its appointed
time, like the strength of the sinews in a human
old age " ; the grass withereth, the hills perish,
the mountains fall, but " the word of our God
standeth forever."
In a previous study we have seen that evolu
tion has done for time what Newton's " Prin-
cipia" did for space. It has shown the geologist
how a ball of fire became a home for man. It

236 Evolution
has shown the astronomer how to explain the
changes through which planets, stars, and suns
are now passing. It exhibits to scientists how
the flower, fruit, and forests, how all things that
creep, or walk, or fly, have come to their present
position through ages of change and gradual un
folding. It portrays man's rise and progress as
he leaves behind his cave and blanket, and goes
forward to the time when he exchanges his forked
stick for the steam plough, his language of signs
for the language of Socrates and Shakespeare ;
until at last his hut has become a home, his clus
ter of tepees has been turned into a city, and
ignorance and vice have given place to marriage
and commerce, to the college and library, to the
knowledge and worship of God. So great have
been the changes this theory has wrought in the
college and church that nine out of ten teachers
and preachers of America and England are using
this theory as the basis of all their instruction in
the church and forum.
The professors in our colleges and universities
have given bold and frank allegiance to this help
ful principle. And now has come an era when
even the theological seminaries are beginning to
find it a lamp of guidance. The professor of
theology in Yale University has for many years

And the New View of the Bible 237
used evolution for explaining the great facts of
man's mental and spiritual life, and the pro
fessor of theology in another seminary has
published a treatise upon the evolution of con
science and in morals. Indeed, that method of
study known as the higher criticism, that has
during the past five years turned the churches
into storm centres, is really the method of evo
lution applied to the study of the Old and New
Testaments. Having given society the new
astronomy, the new psychology, the new soci
ology, evolution is now giving us a new con
ception of the Bible, and is making it a clear,
shining light, instead of an orb obscured by
false claims and worn-out philosophies. And
so far from having weakened faith in the Scrip
tures, as many confidently predicted, it has
strengthened it. Unlike the former indiffer
ence and neglect, under the new method the
classrooms of professors in our colleges are once
more crowded with those who are studying the
Old Testament with keenest delight. Again
this divine book is becoming a book of fascina
tion, a book of guidance, and the book of God.
Now, our intellectual tread will be the firmer
if we clear away certain misconceptions about
the Bible. Many suppose it to be one book,

238 Evolution
like the "Principia," like the constitution of the
state, like a book of law and government. On
the contrary, it is not so much a single book as
a library, in which the religious views and expe
riences of many peoples are brought together and
bound into one volume for purposes of conven
ience. The Bible is made up of some fifty and
more pamphlets. It was written by more than
thirty different men, who lived hundreds of years
apart, who wrote in three different languages, were
influenced by different customs and different insti
tutions, and lived for the most part in ignorance
the one of what another had written. There
is, indeed, a moral unity that runs through all
these writings, but the physical unity is purely
of the printer — even though it be providential.
Perhaps men will never realize how truly it is
a book of God until all these pamphlets are sep
arated and each of the fifty writings is made to
have its own title-page. Between the writings
of the first book of Moses and the last book of
John, empires rose and fell, institutions waxed
and waned into nothingness, but through all
these centuries and among all these peoples con
science as the vice-regent of God did ever rebuke
sin and praise integrity. The sage and the seer,
the herdsman and the husbandman, the merchant

And the New View of the Bible 239
and tanner, the poet and prince — all alike bear
common witness to the foolishness of sin and
the wisdom of right living. It is essentially,
therefore, a history of the rise and progress of
ideas right and wrong, as they began in Abra
ham and developed into their full fruition in the
life of Jesus Christ.
For wise men the Bible is a record of what
God has done, rather than what God has said.
It is not a book of geology nor a book of astron
omy nor a book of chemistry. He who wants
the truth regarding any of the sciences must
turn to the treatises thereupon. But the Bible
is a book of morals and a book of mercy. And
this moral element unites these fifty and more
pamphlets into one book called the book of God
— just as the sentiment of the beautiful has
united in Westminster Abbey the foundations
and walls, the towers and chapels, representing
many different centuries and strangely divergent
kinds of architecture, but all through the science
of beauty made one structure, answering to all
the purposes of a noble and impressive cathe
dral. The unity of the Bible is not the unity
of a single song, but the unity of an oratorio or
a symphony. Consider first of all how the Bible portrays

240 Evolution
the genesis and growth of ideas right and wrong.
Primarily it exhibits man as beginning in a state
of animalism. Then it pictures him as moving
forward a recognition of what makes for iniquity
and what for integrity. By slow and involved
processes it describes even the best men of the
early ages as committing crimes which men
would now call unutterably wicked. So low was
the morality of men like Jacob and Solomon
that had they lived to-day they doubtless would
have gone to state prison. Jacob was cunning
and cruel and selfish, and yet the moral standard
in his biographer was such that the patriarch
escaped without condemnation. Very interest
ing is the growth of moral ideas. At an
early period men perceived that stealing discour
aged thrift and toil. Homer's ideal was Ulysses
with his cunning, and deceit also entered into
the Spartan hero. But men soon discerned that
theft was favorable to idleness rather than in
dustry. One man refused the plough or sickle,
for in one hour of theft by night he could attain
unto all the fruits of his neighbor's labor. Soon
theft was seen to be an axe laid at the root of
the vineyard and orchard. In the interest, there
fore, of commerce men came together and made
laws prohibiting theft, — a law which Moses after-

And the New View of the Bible 241
ward formally registered in a code. Very simi
lar was the evolution of the principle of truth.
Man found that falsehood impaired commerce,
while truth alone made exchanges possible.
Each patriarch found it was important to have
herdsmen whom he could believe. If the shep
herd said he had five hundred sheep upon one
side of the Jordan and a thousand upon the
other, and the sheik answered, " May be, and
may be not," and started out to investigate, he
would soon have nothing to do but follow up
his employees. Lying was seen to be very expen
sive for store and shop and street, and commerce
was found to rest entirely upon the principle that
man's word and bond could be relied upon.
Individually, also, the liar found that he could
not remember to whom he had made this false
statement and to whom that one. After a time
the weakness of memory became a fresh argument
toward truth.
Slowly the sentiment against falsehood waxed
strong, until in our day men perceive that lying is
inexpedient as well as wicked — that is, inexpedi
ent everywhere, except in making returns to the
assessor, and on nearing the custom-house when
coming from abroad, and when accepting creeds
with certain mental reservations and interpreta-

242 Evolution
tions. In these three realms untruth is still held
to be lawful. And as by slow processes there has
been an evolution of the sentiment of truth, so
have all the moral ideas been slowly developed
and registered at last into codes. But the stand
ard rose slowly. The distance traversed by so
ciety between the age of Jacob and the time of
John is equalled only by the vast distance the
earth has to travel between the period of January
and June. Very slowly does winter with its
storms go forward unto April with its faint fore-
shadowings of the summer's beauty ; very slowly
does April give place to August, when all nature
is aglow. Thus the night of moral darkness gave
place slowly unto the dawn which, in Jesus Christ,
broke into the perfect day of truth and goodness,
of hope and love.
The Bible exhibits a similar evolution in the use
of the symbols and the pictorial emblems fitted for
interpreting the ideas of right and duty and God.
Society will make a large use of emblems. With
solemn pageantry kings and emperors are crowned.
Rich and impressive ceremonies are made to lend
majesty to the new Czar's position. In the repub
lic a more modest but less impressive ceremony
is used when the President kisses the Bible and
takes the oath of office. Looking toward the

And the New View of the Bible 243
home, society sees the gold ring, classic ceremony,
music, and all rich appointments for interpreting
the beauty of marriage and the sanctity of the
home. But such dignity, simplicity, and beauty
attaches to the ceremonial machinery of the Bible
as that all other symbols whatsoever seem by con
trast bare and tame. Remember that society in
Moses' day was animal and ignorant ; that men
were serfs, slaves, and criminals. There was not
even a word for sin, nor a word for righteousness,
nor a correct idea of God. The problem was, how
to produce in the minds of savages these ideas
of right and wrong, of justice and truth. The
method that was selected was a method of em
blems and symbols. In the interests of these
savage men, who thought nothing of killing an
enemy or of enslaving captives, Moses established
a ceremonial kindergarten for the development of
the ideas of good and evil.
First of all he built a temple, with court open
ing into court. Assembling all the people upon
the outside, he closed the temple door against
them and so interpreted to the multitude the
idea that iniquity separated and shut men away
from God. Then for those who manifested deep
repentance for sin, Moses opened the inner court.
Beyond this was a holy place into which the re-

244 Evolution
pentant might enter only once a year ; and be
yond this was a holy place into which only the
high priest might enter ; while at the centre was
a place dedicated to God alone. And when at last
the sense of sin was developed in men, then to
teach the prodigal and the man of crimson hands
that pardon was possible, Moses used a solemn
ceremony in which sins were placed upon the head
of some animal, that was sent away accursed into
the wilderness. That rude folk might understand
how aspiration and love and hope may rise to
God, the smoking censer was suspended in the
temple, and the sweet incense rising in clouds and
floating through the window to pass out of sight
in the heavens became an interpreter of aspiration
as a chariot in which the soul might rise toward
God's throne.
And when, through these stately and solemn
ceremonies, through hymns and sacrifices, ideas
of sin and righteousness and God were developed,
then was evolved the machinery for the culture of
patriotism. From time to time feasts were estab
lished in the capital city of Jerusalem. These par
took of the nature of national celebrations. Out
of the wilderness and the desert came sheiks and
shepherds ; out of the distant villages and remote
hamlets came the people in multitudes, and all

And the New View of the Bible 245
flocking to Jerusalem. As the band of pilgrims
neared the great city, the crowds increased to the
dimensions of armies. Here were the children
who had never been to Jerusalem, and whose
imagination had been fed by the stories of its
magnificence ; here were the younger men who
dreamed of reforms they would work, and the
older men who prided themselves that they felt
as young as the boys whose hands they held ; here
was the mother with her sweet babe ; and the
maiden, walking beside him who would peradven-
ture be her husband ; and here were the sages
and seers who, when the pilgrims encamped, in
structed the multitudes. What schools of patriot
ism were these encampments ! What colleges of
culture !
The whole nation became, as it were, one vast
singing school for the rendition of national
hymns. In the evening, on the return journey,
those who were skilled in speech rehearsed
before the young the deeds of ancient renown.
The names of the heroes were struck off as the
harper strikes chord after chord. At these times
the tides of national enthusiasm rose very high.
This it is that enabled the Jewish race to go
through fire and flood, and persist as a separate
race, despite persecutions such as the world has

246 Evolution
never known. And when at length, through
tabernacle and temple with its offerings and sac
rifices, its ceremonies and priests had planted
and developed within the race these great ideas
of right and wrong, of truth and justice, of con
science and God, then Jesus Christ came in and
swept away the symbols and capitalized the ideas
for which they stood, substituting instead two
symbols only, that by reason of their beauty and
simplicity and universal relations must endure as
long as man remains man, — namely, the symbol
of water as the type of purity, and the symbol
of bread and wine as setting forth Him who is
indeed to man the very bread and water of life,
since in Him all live and move and have their
being. What an evolution, therefore, does the
Bible exhibit in the use of emblems and sym
bols ! The distance between the twilight and
the full moon is not greater than that covered
by society as it moves from the solemn ceremo
nies of Moses to the simple teachings of Jesus
Christ. The Bible exhibits a similar evolution of the
idea of God. John Stuart Mill says, "It must
be that the adaptations of nature afford a larger
balance of probability in favor of creation by
intelligence." Professor Tyndall adds, "I have

And the New View of the Bible 247
noticed during the years of self-observation that
in the hours of stronger and healthier thought,
it [mental doubt] ever dissolves and disappears
as offering no solution to the mystery in which
we dwell and of which we form a part." But
back of all this vast physical universe before
whose laws we were crushed as moths, the Bible
unveils a personal intelligence who guides and
governs all things, and draws all things upward
in ever increasing cycles and progress, sweeping
away at one stroke the old idea that there are
as many gods and godlings as there are natural
laws. The monotheistic idea was substituted
instead. Primarily God is exhibited as one who
seeks to enthrone righteousness of life — right
laws, right government, right administration,
right conduct, right character. And because,
when men are in a state of animalism, fear is
the motive most powerfully influencing toward
right living, God is exhibited as a God of storms.
The clouds are His chariots, the lightning is
the flash of His eye, the thunder is the whisper
of His voice, the hills tremble beneath His foot
steps. But slowly, as reason develops, man
passes out of the government of force and fear
into the government of reason. Therefore, in
Solomon's day, God is revealed as natural law.

248 Evolution
Nature speaks, and her voice is the voice of
God. In modern language it is the voice of
physiology, the voice of health, the voice of the
brain. Men are incredulous and reckless. They
give free rein to appetite and passion. By excess
they sap away the nerve force and the brain
force, and fear fastens upon them. Then Solo
mon represents the brain and nerve as breaking
into voice and saying : " I have called and ye
refused ; I have stretched out my hand and no
man regarded it ; therefore, I will laugh at your
calamity : I will mock when your fear cometh as
desolation and your destruction as a whirlwind."
To this idea of natural law and of justice, Jonah
adds the idea of mercy and compassion. The
poet exhibits God's justice as bursting into the
blossom of kindness and gentleness, just as
the rugged cliffs of the mountains burst forth
into the rarest flowers. For the book of Jonah
is not history, but is a parable of the wideness
of God's mercy. Other parables are beautiful,
but this parable stands unexcelled and well-nigh
unrivalled. How beautiful its mother idea ! That all men
might understand the wideness of God's forgiv
ing mercy a story is told of a certain man who
found the way of happiness and the way of

And the New View of the Bible 249
peace. Then God asked him to carry his secret
of joy into wicked Nineveh. Disobeying the
voice of conscience, when he should have gone
over land eastward, he set sail to the west. In
gratitude could not have been blacker, for to
disobedience toward God he added heartless
neglect of the perishing multitudes. Surely the
very waves of the sea and the monsters of the
deep will swallow up such a guilty wretch. But
such is God's kindness and mercy that He not
only saves the disobedient messenger when his
companions in the storm throw him overboard,
but commands the very monsters of the deep to
become instruments of safety and doors of deliv
erance. For a non-seagoing race like the Jewish
people, no door of mercy could be so full of mean
ing. This beautiful parable is the prodigal son par
able of the Old Testament. Scoffed at often
times, made a butt of ridicule because foolish
men have thought it to be history, this parable
of Jonah represents the crowning revelation of
the wideness of God's mercy, foreshadowing the
full revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Very
slowly, therefore, did the idea of God develop.
Slowly each new faculty in man became a win
dow that enlarged with culture, and through it

250 Evolution
some new quality of God rushed into sight
When man lived only in the realm of physical
nature, God was the sun, the great rock, the
storm. When government elements developed,
He became king, prince, and ruler. When com
merce developed, and the Roman roads united
distant nations, He became a door, a way, a wall
for protection, and the bread and water of life
for pilgrims. With the development of the do
mestic elements, He became father and brother
and friend, and when at length God had wrought
in man the qualities of truth, justice, and gentle
ness, then the terror left the divine brow, the
lightning left His eye, and Christ revealed God
as the God of mercy, the all-clasping One, and
the all-forgiving One. Fear gave place to love-
fear. For Abraham's idea of God is to the idea
of God in Christ what the wild arbutus is to the
full wealth of summer, what one cluster is to all
harvests and vineyards. For Christ sweeps to
gether all the richest ideas of nature and life,
and empties the full treasures of mind and heart
into the receptacle called the name of God, the
name of wonder, the name of love, the name
above every name.
Therefore, men should reopen this book of
morals and of mercy that of late has been

And the New View of the Bible 251
closed. Finding human elements in it, let us
find the divine also, even as we find the living
seed beneath the outer shell. Let reason come
to it for food as the disciples came to the ears
of wheat, rubbing out the grain for hunger. Let
none emphasize errors in geology and astronomy.
Does a grain of sand in some Venus de Milo
invalidate Phidias's revelation of the beautiful ?
Does Shakespeare's ignorance of the recent dis
coveries in psychology destroy the truth and
beauty of " Hamlet " ? The Bible is a lamp, but
the pilgrim of the night does not look at his
lamp for flaws, but looks rather at the dangerous
path and the precipice against which the light
doth guard. If knowledge has destroyed the old
view, that Moses was a mere pen held in a
divine hand, then let larger knowledge give the
broader view, that through father and mother
God ordained each Moses and David and Paul
and guarded him for a new task. But remember
that this broader view of inspiration renders the
Bible a thousand fold more truly binding as the
book of God than did the old view of inspira
tion. Neither let any one lose his faith because
it is not an infallible book, in the sense that all
writers were made infallible in chemistry and
astronomy ; that all copyists and translators and

252 Evolution
printers are infallibly girded and guided. Euclid
is an infallible book, having no mistake in its
axioms of geometry. But infallibility has not
made Euclid's book inspiring progress.
The heart hungers — not for an infallible book,
but for a revelation of God. And the time has
fully come when this book is seen to be a history
of the evolution of the moral sense in man, a guide
to the principles of happiness and conduct and
character, a revelation of the dispositional qualities
of God. It is of itself so unique an illustration of
the principle of evolution as to be the miracle of
all time. So far from man having outgrown it,
society is just approaching the era when it is
beginning to appreciate it, and understand its mes
sage and its mission. If, a thousand generations
from now, there is a heart that aches, prodigals
that wander, feet that stumble, tears that fall like
rain, if man remains man, and love remains love,
and character remains character, this book will
remain, shining and glowing, like the lustrous
sun. Read this book, therefore, for life and liberty ;
read it for refinement and culture. Read the
pages wet with your mother's tears and the pre
cepts your father dearly loved. Stoop to those
life springs where the patriots and reformers and

And the New View of the Bible 253
the heroes of time knelt to cool their parched lips.
It holds youth for old men. It holds maturity for
children and youth. It has medicine for the
heartbroken, the bankrupt, and the desolate. It
has life for those trembling on the brink of death.
If for one day in each week, through a period of
five years, the children and youth, parents and
patriots, could be induced to read and obey its
principles, to nourish reason and imagination and
memory and judgment upon its sublime truths,
all danger of anarchy and revolution, all fear of
the bloody street and the trampled cornfields would
pass away. The jails would be closed. The
saloons would be deserted. The schools would be
crowded. The colleges would be filled. A new
glory would fall upon the library and the forum.
A new era would dawn for music and poetry.
Architecture would tax itself for glorious temples.
Art would enter upon a new epoch, and liberty
would find a new meaning. All society would
enter upon a great forward movement. For God's
book of morals and mercy for the individual is His
book of progress for society and civilization.

XI

Ehe fining of the $enoulum from Scepticism
to tfaith: an ©utlooft for those toho are
seeking to solbe their JBouhts ano reconstruct
a Wording tfaith

"The infinite and eternal Power that is manifested in every
pulsation of the universe is none other than the living God.
We may exhaust the resources of metaphysics in debating
how far his nature may fitly be expressed in terma applicable
to the psychical nature of Man ; such vain attempts will only
serve to show how we are dealing with a theme that must
ever transcend our finite powers of conception. But of some
things we may feel sure. Humanity is not a mere local inci
dent in an endless and aimless series of cosmical changes.
The events of the universe are not the work of chance,
neither are they the outcome of blind necessity. Practically
there is a purpose in the world whereof it is our highest duty
to learn the lesson, however well or ill we may fare in render
ing a scientific account of it. When, from the dawn of life,
we see all things working together toward the evolution of
the highest spiritual attributes of Man, we know, however the
words may stumble in which we try to say it, that God is in
the deepest sense a moral Being. The everlasting source of
phenomena is none other than the infinite Power that makes
for righteousness. Thou canst not by searching find Him
out ; yet put thy trust in Him, and against thee the gates
of hell shall not prevail ; for there is neither wisdom nor
understanding nor counsel against the Eternal."
— John Fiske, "The Idea of God," pp. 166-167.

256

XI

THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM FROM SCEPTICISM
TO FAITH : AN OUTLOOK FOR THOSE WHO ARE
SEEKING TO SOLVE THEIR DOUBTS AND RECON
STRUCT A WORKING FAITH
Christianity challenges investigation. Forbids faith out
running the facts. It appeals to reason. Exhibits founda
tions founded like mountains and stars. From the beginning
God ordained reason to be man's guide. The gains for
society the gains of reason. Faith as an extended reason.
The work of imagination the function of trust. Doubt and
its tragedy. Scepticism and the fascinations of the universe
in space. Scepticism and the extension of the universe in
time. Scepticism and the mysteries of matter, force and life.
Scepticism and moral evil. Doubt and the problem of pain
and suffering. All knowledge partial. The Christian and
agnostic. " We know in part." A cup of water explains the
ocean. Man's knowledge of some things not destroyed by
the impossibility of knowing everything. Kinds of doubt.
The dissolution of doubt. The building of faith. Mental
rest and peace.
CHRISTIANITY challenges investigation. It
covets analysis and exhibits its proofs. With
the calm confidence that becometh certainties, it
takes nothing for granted, but thrusts everything
into reason's crucible. No man is asked to believe
s 257

258 The Swing of the Pendulum
against his judgment. Rather is he to withhold
faith until the argument overcomes his doubts and
compels his belief. Christianity's spirit forbids
faith outrunning the facts. Not that sound think
ing and sturdy speaking invariably go before men
tal peace and happiness. The eye sees long before
the child understands the visual mechanism. The
nostril enjoys the red rose years before the mind
can state the chemistry of the sweet brier. Never
theless, clear, crisp, robust thinking works in us
mental confidence and security. Each jurist and
orator and reformer must confess that he never
understands how strong or weak his cause is
until it has been stated in words.
The architects of the old cathedrals thrust then-
buttresses out into the light, that through the eye
men may feel the strength of the huge walls. The
sight of the arches under the Brooklyn Bridge
may not increase the traveller's safety, but that
sight does increase the sense of safety. Christian
ity's appeal is to the reason. Its foundations
are facts and arguments. When the kingdom of
God is set up in a man's soul, reason is asked to
go round about its walls and tell all its buttresses.
Ignorant faith may quake and clamor at doubt,
and bespatter sceptics with hard and bitter names.
But such fear reveals weakness. It is the poor

From Scepticism to Faith 259
swimmer that cries and splashes amidst the swift
waters, and the loudness of his cry betrays the
certainty of his sinking. He needs no loud cries,
but skill to swim to the solid shore. Newton never
quaked and trembled in the presence of one who
doubted the laws of gravity. In bidding each
marshal the reasons for his hope, Christianity be
trays its calm confidence, and exhibits foundations
of granite established as surely as the mountains
and stars.
In the beginning God ordained reason to be
man's guide. When first He sent man away for
his earthly tutelage, God called an angel named
Reason to His side, saying, " This is man, My
well beloved one ; go forth with him, guide him
through life, and when earth hath fully wrought
its ministry upon him, aid faith in bringing man
back to his Father's side." Having received this
divine charge, reason went forth to be for untold
ages man's sole friend. During two-thirds of its
history, the human race was without church or
altar, without sacrament or teacher. There were
no commandments of right and wrong, save those
fleshed in the human body. Man was left to fash
ion his own career. Stepping upon this planet
reason began to explore upon every side, as Colum
bus explored the edge of the forest. Slowly the

260 The Swing of the Pendulum
frontier lines began to recede. Each century the
unknown things diminished and the known things
increased. For reason, the hand reported upon
heat and cold and the weight of stones. For rea
son, the tongue reported upon acids and sweets.
For reason, the taste reported upon landscapes
and faces and skies. In reason's interest, the ear
tested sounds, the judgment tested arguments,
the conscience tested motives and actions. Soon
the soil gave up its secrets, the bark its balms, the
mines their tools, the herbs their medicines, the
forests their forces. The winds ceased to blow
aimlessly; reason bade them beat upon the sail.
All rivers were harnessed to millwheels.
The lightnings became errand boys. The rude
forces that once terrified men became as wild
horses subject to bit and bridle and lending
their strength and speed to man's loins. Even
terrible things lost their fear. The nymph left
the stream, the dryad fled away from the forest,
the ghost departed from the cave, and the human
brain ceased to be inhabited by serpentine fears
and superstitions. Reason also helped man to
distinguish between the illusions and the reali
ties. Before the child the rainbow stands forth
a solid arch of color. The benighted traveller
moves toward the "will o' the wisp" and the

From Scepticism to Faith 261
dangerous bog as toward the home candle.
Many a desert pilgrim has perished through
mistaking the mirage for cooling lake and river.
And reason came in as an upper faculty to cor
rect the mistakes of the lower powers. Speaking
not lies, but the truth, reason reported the affairs
of the great world about him. God ordained
that it should keep man from feeding upon husks
and empty bubbles. Analyzing, testing, compar
ing, reason cast out foolish things. It wrought
as a wind, driving the husks of error out of the
wheat of truth. It wrought as a fire, burning
up the dross of ignorance and leaving the gold
of divine certainty. So well did reason do its
work that God stamped His approval upon it
with these words, "Wisdom is better than rubies,
and knowledge than fine gold."
But the last part of reason's work is filling
man's granary, inventing his tools, building his
home, writing his books, organizing his institu
tions. God has also ordained that reason should
extend its work into the realm of conscience
and duty. Consider that faith is only a winged
reason. It is mind at its best. The tongue
tastes the orange, but cannot reach the bough.
So the arm is made long in the interests of
hunger. But the arm is too short to reach the

262 The Swing of the Pendulum
distant mountain. Therefore the eye becomes a
longer hand that feels its way into each crevice
of the far-off peak. But the eye breaks down at
the horizon. Then reason becomes a longer vis
ion and projects over the hills the laws of heat
and cold and gravity, imposing them upon unseen
lands and seas. Thus faith is seen to be reason
extending the law of God in an unseen realm.
Newton saw the apple fall, but his faith leaped
from the falling apple to the falling moon and
discovered the law of gravity.
Upon the shores of Spain Columbus found a
bit of driftwood with a grain of sand in the
crevice. From the bit of wood his mind leaped
to the distant forests from which it sprang ; from
the grain of sand he passed to the continent of
which it was a part. And every great invention
has been a faith discovery. When for the first
time Watts's rude engine worked, he exclaimed
to an admiring friend, "You see it now by the
physical, eye, but long months ago I saw it work
with my mind's eye." Imagination fashioned his
mental model, and faith set it up in iron and
steel. Similarly, by faith Garrison won his vic
tory over slavery a score of years before the
battle was fought. Without faith social progress
would be impossible and society relapse into

From Scepticism to Faith 263
barbarism. By faith we receive the knowledge
of our planet from the Bakers and the Stanleys.
Life is too short for us to tramp through all dark
continents. By faith we receive our knowledge of the rise
of civilization and the early history of mankind.
We cannot, with Layard or Niebuhr, give years
to deciphering ruins, monuments, and manu
scripts. By faith we pass through the starry
worlds, being enriched by results whose mathe
matical processes only astronomers have verified.
In sickness, by faith in physicians are we healed.
In government, by faith in officers are we
guided. In commerce, by faith in man does the
great fabric of industry move forward. Take faith
out of commerce and you have bankruptcy. Take
faith out of the home and you have hell. Take
faith from government and you have anarchy.
Faith is glorified reason. All the giants and
epoch-making men have been faith men. Faith
is intellect-illumined mind at its best.
Such is the problem of reason and faith. It
follows that the religious problem no more be
longs to the church than the mountains belong
to Humboldt or the stars to Newton. Faith is
not a question of the church, but, as Cicero said,
"of the human heart." Nevertheless, there are

264 The Swing of the Pendulum
multitudes upon whom doubt has fallen, gashing
and scorching their souls as with swords of fire.
Faith has waned, doubt has waxed. The lives of
some have become pathetic tragedies, for their
doubts spring out of their highest nature and
their noblest faculties. Oftentimes these persons
seem like mariners who once were anchored in
harbors, safe and peaceful, but who have seen
the ropes part strand by strand, until, anchor
less and rudderless, they have drifted out into
the sea and the night.
Multitudes have fallen into doubt by reason of
the vastness of the problems that front them.
Remembering that this life is but a narrow span
of four score years, man stands dumb before the
statement that for millions of years the earth
has swung in space, turning daily before the sun
fires to warm its seas and continents, its forests
and fields teeming with life. But the astronomer
is not content with such amazing statements.
Having reminded us that the sun is 90,000,000
miles away, some Proctor or Ball leads our
thought on to Sirius, — a sun moving at a dis
tance two hundred times as great as ours. There,
upon what seems the confines of space, stands
this vast sparkling orb, flooding with life and
beauty worlds a hundred thousand times as large

From Scepticism to Faith 265
as ours. Yet beyond Sirius, and still beyond, is
a space all sown with innumerable harvests of
starry systems. Remembering that nature wastes
nothing, that every drop of water teems with life,
that the rift in every mountain crag holds its
wild flower, that the very sand blossoms, the
scientist suggests that the vast orbs about us
are all populated, the inhabitants of other worlds
rising, perhaps, rank on rank and order upon
order. In the presence of such amazing thoughts many
sensitive minds are overwhelmed. Our earth is
reduced to a little clod. Man seems but a single
atom buffeted by chance. With him forces of
life and death play at battledoor and shuttlecock.
The white haired old man represents one sheaf
of earth. The deep furrows in his face are but
graves, in which his strengths lie buried. In
such a universe it seems impossible that the
infinite God should have time to think and care
for such an atom as man. For a time even
Tennyson trembled lest his prayer was lost in
the rush of worlds, even as the sweet voice of
the lark is drowned in the sweep and majesty
of the summer's storm. Oftentimes overmuch
fuel on the fire smothers the flame into cold
ashes. Thus the vastness of the universe

266 The Swing of the Pendulum
smothers the faith of some. These utterly for-
get that if Shakespeare's mind is more than one
candle, his genius is more than billions of candles
called suns; that if Newton's mind is more than
one clod, his genius is more than billions of clods
called earths. Bewildered with many thoughts
and things, obscuration passes over the intellect
and faith is eclipsed.
Other minds fall into doubt because of life's
troubles and disasters. These children of anx
iety wander in a cold, bleak, arctic atmosphere,
longing for summer, yet shivering midst the bleak
winter. There seems such an awful cruelty in
nature, so large a place is given to hook and
claw, life's inequalities are so many and so baf
fling, the calamities of life are so all-inclusive,
that some despair of ever reconciling the cruelty
of nature with the goodness of God. John
Stuart Mill was utterly overwhelmed by his
study of the disasters that have overtaken our
race. God seemed to him like one who had
invented a mechanism so large as to have passed
beyond his control. In great anguish of heart
he followed after his faith as one follows a fall
ing star. Nor is there any man of intelligence
who has not at times been agonized by the prob
lems of evil. Why is man shipwrecked into

From Scepticism to Faith 267
existence? Why does he begin utterly ignorant
of the shore upon which he is cast ? Why is each
land swept with wars like destroying storms ?
Why do enemies pass through villages with more
than the fcce of tidal waves ? Why have wars
and pestilence a power beyond the power of
earthquakes for toppling down cities ? Why does
blood flow like rivers ?
Is there an individual that can escape sick
ness, or ingratitude, or the ravages of sin, or the
agony of separation, or the final shaft of death ?
Not one. All pass into the storm. Reflecting
upon these problems, many think our world an
orb let loose to wander wildly in space. They
forget that darkness can do what daylight can
not ; that the winter puts a tang into an apple
that is beyond the power of the summer; that
an atmosphere uncleansed by the summer's
storms becomes heavy with poisons that destroy
all harvests ; that if the statue is polished, the
fire must fly from the chisel ; that character is
an achievement ; that every fall of the race has
been overruled and made to be a fall forward ;
that events that once seemed bad as heart could
wish have afterward proved to be the events for
which man is chiefly grateful. In their doubt
and fear many seem like unto children in a

268 The Swing of the Pendulum
valley wrapped in rain and storm. While the storm
lasts, the child cannot see that the hills about him
are robed in light, and that the father stands upon
the mountain in the clear sunshine, rejoicing in
the very rain over which the children weep.
Others there are whose faith is agnostic. Be
cause everything cannot be known, some think
nothing can. Materialism says there is no spirit.
Secularism says there is no other life. Atheism
says there is no God. Agnosticism says if there
is a God He cannot be known. Many perceive
that the dome of the sky is vaster than the dome
of St. Peter's, and hold that the architect of the
sky should be larger than Michael Angelo. They
also feel that it is asking too much to expect
mere particles of dust to prepare a formula for
the strawberry or the peach, or so temper the
dew and the rain and the heat as to embroider
all the fields with harvests. As no stream can
rise above its source, they confess that the men
tality in a machine cannot be greater than the
genius of its inventor. They also hold there
can be no book without an author, no watch
without a maker, no thought without a thinker,
and no world mechanism without a world mind
whose genius is fully equal to the forms of wis
dom and beauty that he has fashioned.

From Scepticism to Faith 269
But in affirming God's existence, they also
affirm that His vastness obscures His face in
some such way as the brightness of the sun
dazzles the eye that beholds it. Many seem to
forget that as the world increases in size the
difficulty in tramping over it increases. Our
eyes have never seen the Southern Cross in the
sky. But the people of Brazil have never seen
the Northern Star ; and a vast earth involves
this partial knowledge. Because man cannot
drink the ocean dry, it seems wholly unnecessary
to deny that he can understand the nature of a
drop of water. One cluster reveals the essential
nature of all the vineyards that enrich our earth.
The Bible itself encourages the agnostic ten
dency. "We know but in part." That would
be a poor form of government that a babe could
perfectly understand. How poor is that paint
ing that a tyro in colors can equal. How scant
the symphonies that amateurs can dash off. Wise
men find hope in the fact that knowledge of God
is partial. The charm of immortality is the
riches of the divine nature, and its perpetual
challenge to better things. None will ever be
disappointed in that he overtakes God. Man
must ever know but "in part."
And in sorrow let us confess that doubt some-

270 The Swing of the Pendulum
times springs from causes not wholly creditable
to man. There are thoughtful and high-minded
persons of sensitive consciences and deeply re
ligious instincts, who have been driven into exile
by the bitter intolerance of dogmatists. Unfor
tunately it is the delight of some not to heal and
help hurt hearts, but to thunder forth anathemas
upon those whose doubts are born of intellectual
honesty and an eager passion to get truth in
clear light. And some there are whose doubts
are temperamental. These are born belligerents,
questioning everything. It is their nature to
lay the axe to the root of every tree, whether the
growth be social, industrial, or religious. Others
have confused the essence of Christianity with
the outer traditions, mistaking chaff for wheat,
and judging the tree, not by its fruit, but by the
parasites clinging thereto. And there is a grow
ing number of those who are so absorbed with
the cares of life that they have neither time nor
strength for the higher life.
When a friend from the city visited Words
worth in his home near Grasmere, the poet
planned a walk across his favorite hills. Such
were the charms of lake and woods and birds and
golden boughs that the poet was in a transport
of delight. But his city friend moved through

From Scepticism to Faith 27 '1
the wondrous scene with eyes blind to all beauty
and ears deaf to all sweet sound. The counting-
room seemed to fill his thought, to the exclusion
of all else. Not infrequently, too, doubt springs
out of sin. The ancients tell us of a lake called
Avernus. From its surface clouds of poisoned
vapors rise. Inhaling this deadly air, the eagle
with its strength and the lark with its sweet
song alike fall into the dark flood. And when
self-indulgence strengthens, faith weakens. Faith
is a very sensitive plant. It shrinks back at
the very thought of sin.
There are also hypercritical doubters. Thus
Matthew Arnold's nature was so highly aes
thetic that his sensibilities were wounded by
the mercantilism of the English and the econ
omy of the Scotch. Even Plato seemed to
him somewhat crude. In that little episode,
known as his visit to Chicago, his finer sensi
bilities were so painfully lacerated by the mate
rialism of that city that whole weeks passed before
he recovered from the awful shock. When at
length Arnold died the novelist Stevenson ex
claimed : " Poor Matt ! He is in heaven, but
he won't like God." A sarcasm biting indeed,
and fitted to consume away all our supercilious
doubts. And other doubts spring from callow

272 The Swing of the Pendulum
crudeness, as in the case of that youth about to
enter Balliol College, who told Professor Jowett
that he could find no signs of God. To whom
the great Platonist replied, "Young man I will
give you until just five o'clock to find God or
leave this college." At the appointed time he
returned, having found Him for whom his soul
had sought, not long, but successfully. And
there are some whose doubts are sheer indeci
sion, like the old farmer appointed to judge of
the discussion between an infidel and a believer,
and who, unwilling to hurt the feelings of either,
rendered his decision in these words : "The first
speaker believes in God, the second does not.
The truth seems to lie between the two."
Midst all these false and foolish fancies it were
well for us to remember with Ruskin that God's
way of revealing Himself to His creatures should
be a simple way, which all those creatures may
understand. Whether taught or untaught, whether of mean
capacity or enlarged, it is necessary that com
munion with their Creator should be possible
to all ; and the admission to such communion
must be rested, not on their having a knowledge
of astronomy, but on their having a human soul.
In order to render this communion possible, the

From Scepticism to Faith 273
Deity has stepped from His throne, and has not
only, in the person of the Son, taken upon Him
the veil of our human flesh, but, in the person
of the Father, taken upon Him the veil of our
human thoughts, and permitted us, by His own
spoken authority, to conceive Him simply and
clearly as a loving Father and Friend — a Being
to be walked with and reasoned with ; to be
moved by our entreaties, angered by our rebel
lion, alienated by our coldness, pleased by our
love, and glorified by our labor ; and finally, to
be beheld in immediate and active presence in
all the powers and changes of creation. This
conception of God, which is the child's, is evi
dently the only one which can be universal, and
therefore the only one which for us can be true.
The moment that, in our pride of heart, we re
fuse to accept the condescension of the Almighty,
and desire Him, instead of stooping to hold our
hands, to rise up before us into His glory, — we
hoping that by standing on a grain of dust or
two of human knowledge higher than our fellows,
we may behold the Creator as He rises, — God
takes us at our word ; He rises into His own invis
ible and inconceivable majesty; He goes forth
upon the ways which are not our ways ; and
retires into the thoughts which are not our

274 The Swing of the Pendulum
thoughts ; and we are left alone. And pres
ently we say in our vain hearts, "There is no
God." Seeking to dissolve our doubts, we may well re
joice to-day that science is leading all feet back
into the pathway of faith. Recently the president
of the British Society for the Advancement of
Science mentioned a distinguished mathematician
as the first scientist of our century. Now, this
great electrician once said that science on bended
knee should beg the pardon of the Creator for
the blindness that could not see the existence
of the Supreme Mind. For the electrician the
ooze of old ocean could never explain this beauti
ful world house. When the peasant ploughing in
the island of Milos struck that statue of Venus
de Milo, all minds accounted for the wondrous
marble by the genius of some sculptor. Beauty
came out of the stone, and all felt that a beauti
ful mind must have wrought it in. Similarly,
under the microscope the polished point of a
needle shows rough and jagged, while the sting
of a wasp has no flaw in its fine finish. More
wonderful still is the honey-bee, with brain less
than a pinhead, yet performing twenty difficult
mental feats. We are told that on very warm
days, when the sweet comb is endangered

From Scepticism to Faith 275
through heat, the bees divide up in companies ;
they glue their feet in the passage-way and re
volve there with great velocity, sending cool
currents of air through the honeycomb.
Now, no clod holds anything that can account
for such wondrous skill. To-day science reduces
tree, bird, beast, and man to a cell, and reduces
all cells to atoms, which are precisely similar.
Some would fain have us accept the atom as the
world architect. We are told that each atom
has a diameter of one five-hundred-millionth of
an inch. Yet when this wonder-working atom
waves its wand, behold continents, seas, plants,
animals, man ! How does this put to shame the
enchanted sleeve of Aladdin, out of which, when
shaken, fell everything one wished !
"The Arabian Nights" amused our childhood
with the tale of a magician. Placing a jug upon
a table, he filled it with water and dropped in a
seed. Then, at his command, through the mouth
of the jug appeared a plant. The plant thrust
out boughs. The boughs blossomed and bore
fruit. The fruit ripened and fell at the feet of
the astonished spectators. But the magician,
with his wand, his seed, and his jug, becomes
as nothing when we think of a tiny atom that,
without the help of a necromancer, can build

276 The Swing of the Pendulum
not simply trees, but create and beautify a world.
To-day thinking men laugh out of court the
theory of "fortuitous concourse." That is a
poor science that explains the "Iliad" by sup
posing a printing-press falling through the gar
ret of a high building and " pieing " into the
story of Troy. And if there were millions of
stories through which the press could fall, how
can that increase the probabilities of type com
ing together in a cellar so as to make the won
drous poem ? What the scholar asks for in
explaining the " Iliad " is the genius of Homer.
What men ask to explain our world is not atoms
and millions of ages, but a Supreme Mind.
Wise men are no longer disturbed by the
assaults made upon Christian faith. For all
young men the time has fully come to join that
noble company of poets and seers and scientists
who are willing to wander forward upon an infi
nite shore. All should imitate the great, and
wave the torch until the Sun doth rise. All
about lies the divine truth, like an invisible con
tinent. It sparkles with beauty, and waits to be
discovered, as this continent waited for Colum
bus. Read widely and deeply, and in every
realm. Each new fact will be another round in
a ladder rising heavenward. For the eye is not

From Scepticism to Faith 277
more surely adapted to the light, the ear attuned
to melody, the heart fitted for friendship, than is
reason keyed to God's truth. Happily our gen
eration has fallen upon an age when a thousand
errors are being swept away from truth so long
be-rubbished. Reverently, sincerely, accept these
new, glorious, and glowing facts. In all men's
study there is one who will guide him — the di
vine teacher Jesus Christ. It would be strange
indeed for a man to spend his winters in a tent
were he to fall heir to some castle or country
seat. It would be strange indeed for you to
company with serfs or slaves when some Tenny
son or Emerson oft made overtures of friend
ship. Ours is a world in which the unseen is re
vealed through incarnation. The storms incar
nate the strength of God's arm. The harvests
incarnate His thoughts of bounty. The landscapes
incarnate God's beauty ; and friendships, God's
affection. Thus, also, Jesus Christ incarnates
God's mind and heart. This wondrous being is
a fact in nature as real as any mountain or star.
To each He comes with overtures of friendship.
To each He whispers, "The world is your
Father's house, the morning is His smile, the
darkness His curtains, the clouds His chariots."

278 The Swing of the Pendulum
He bids us journey forth with song, for God is
in all the perfumed air; with confidence, for as
the planet sweeps the body forward, a divine
purpose sweeps the soul upward; with penitence,
for He who sympathizes will also pardon and for
give ; with aspiration, for He who owns a million
worlds will surely provide one for him who now
seems a "god in exile"; with hope, for when
the body falls into the grave, the soul is caught
up by arms invisible, indeed, but infinite.

XII
Christ's delation to the Poet, the philosopher,
the Scientist, ano the Seer

"Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the
height
This perfection, — succeed with life's dayspring, death's min
ute of night?
Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul the mistake,
Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now, — and bid him awake
From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself
set
Clear and safe in new light and new life, — a new harmony yet
To be run, and continued, and ended — who knows? — or
endure !
The man taught enough, by life's dream, of the rest to make
sure;
By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss,
And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggles in
this.
********
So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown —
And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down
One spot for the creature to stand in ! It is by no breath,
Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with
death !
As thy love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved
Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being Beloved !
He who did most, shall bear most ; the strongest shall stand
the most weak.
'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for ! my flesh, that I
seek
In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be
A Face like my face that receives thee ; a Man like to me,
Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever ; a Hand like this
hand
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See the
Christ stand!" — Browning's " Saul."

380

XII
CHRIST'S RELATION TO THE POET, THE PHILOSO
PHER, THE SCIENTIST, AND THE SEER
Christ's use of parables and pictures. Arguments are
carpentered together. Emblems are created. The great
teachers have their supremacy through word pictures. The
parables of Homer and Dante and the parables of Christ.
Social progress and word pictures. The philosophy of the
parable. The biographies of words. The Mosaic economy a
system of symbols and pictures. Nature as an alphabet for
spelling out the infinite God. Christ's use of the " way,"
and the Roman road as an interpretation of divine nature and
government. " The way "as a symbol of civilization and
commerce. " The way " as a symbol of friendship. " The
way " as a symbol of memory and association. Christ's ap
peal to the reason. Christ and the scientists of our age.
Collapse of materialism. The attractiveness of Christ to
the common people. His appeal to the poets and artists.
Christ's revelation of immortality.
THE supremacy of Christ among men of
genius is strikingly illustrated by His use
of parables and pictures. Nothing taxes the in
tellect like the construction of emblems and sym
bols that make great principles plain and simple.
Mediocre minds can fashion arguments and car-
281

282 Christ's Relation to the Poet,
penter together systems of philosophy, but once
the scientist has discovered the world-wide princi
ple, the problem remains how to make this truth
clear to the unthinking multitudes. Then, in the
interest of simplicity, the great man goes up and
down the world seeking for some parable that will
condense his principle into a single picture. And
as men move toward greatness they go toward
skill in this divine art of illustration. In the
realm of intellect there are five sons of supreme
genius — Moses, Paul, Homer, Dante, Shake
speare. But every one of these great men has his
supremacy through the word pictures that imagi
nation paints. Would Moses, the sage, portray
man's tragic career? He condenses a thousand
pages into a few pictures ; man's life is a tale that
is told ; it is an arrow's flight, a mountain flood,
the grass that withers, the night watch of an army
out on the march. Would Paul, the seer, set forth
the limitations of the human intellect ? Since the
windows of that far-off time were made of horn
scraped thin, through which objects in the street
seemed blurred, Paul said, "Man sees through a
glass darkly," and for centuries that picture has
portrayed the concealments of nature and of God.
Homer, too, is a supreme master in this divine art
of illustration. When the voice of Agamemnon

The Philosopher, the Scientist, and the Seer 283
aroused his soldiers to their danger, the blind
poet makes the Greeks rush from their tents like
"honey-bees from a hive upon which a club has
fallen." Dante, too, deals in emblems and pictures. De
scribing Beatrice's influence upon his career, the
poet said her fine spirit was to his "intellect a
light, to his affections a loadstone, and a sceptre to
his will." All the great passages of Shakespeare
are emblems rather than arguments. Mediocre
minds would have given pages to the remorse of
Macbeth, but Shakespeare paints a picture. He
puts one drop of blood upon the hand, and then
says, "All the perfumes of Arabia would not
sweeten that little hand, but the one red drop the
multitudinous seas it would incarnadine, making
the green one red." Among men of lesser genius,
also, skill in illustration proclaims supremacy.
Years ago, reading one of Lowell's first essays,
an English critic found the note of distinction
upon the pages. What was this note? Writing
of the Cathedral of Cologne, Lowell had described
its stone arches as "soaring heavenward, like
martyr flames suddenly turned to stone." In the
realm of oratory, also, skill in the use of pictures
is the final test. The history of American elo
quence holds three supreme scenes — Patrick

284 Christ's Relation to the Poet,
Henry at Williamsburg, Wendell Phillips at Fan-
euil Hall, and Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg.
But each of these orations is simply a mass
of word pictures, just as the Sermon on the
Mount, that can be read in ten minutes, is a glow
ing canvas holding sixty different emblems and
symbols. For the essence of a thousand systems
of theology are condensed into a single picture
by Christ: "Ye are the light of the world; ye
are cities set upon hilltops." The theologian re
quires scores of volumes for outlining his system
of divinity. Augustine's works are in thirty vol
umes. Calvin's require forty volumes. The first
theological work published in this country has
these words on the title-page, " A complete body
of divinity, in two hundred and fifty lectures upon
the Assemblies' Shorter Catechism." But all
these theological systems may be reduced to
Christ's one parable of the prodigal son, just as
ten thousand sunbeams are condensed in one
shining drop named the diamond. The chemist
assembles the sweetness of an acre of crimson blos
soms into a small vial of attar of roses, and Christ
condenses innumerable theological systems into a
few parables and pictures. For that which great
men have in rude and clumsy form, was Christ's
native gift. Literary artists there are, who have

The Philosopher, the Scientist, and the Seer 285
known something of the art of parables and pic
tures. But in this realm Christ dwells apart in
His unrivalled genius. He is a solitary palm tree
waving in a desert of mediocrity.
Not without reason have poets, orators, and
artists passed by elaborate arguments and pro
found analyses to use instead symbols and em
blems. The philosophy of the parable is very
simple. Of the forty faculties of the soul, the
reason is the lowest. Reason is a bond-slave.
Imagination is the king sitting on the throne and
wielding the sceptre. Reason collects facts, im
agination constructs these facts into new art prod
ucts. Hugh Miller's reason collects the facts as
to rocks ; his constructive imagination organizes
them into a system of geology. Newton's reason
collects facts of stars and suns ; his imagination
organizes these facts into a system of astronomy.
Watt's reason assembles the iron and steel ; his
imagination transforms them into the engines,
the locomotives. The reason of Edmund Burke
collects the facts regarding India ; his imagi
nation organizes these facts into a great ora
tion. Reason collects sounds ; imagination turns
them into symphonies. Reason collects ideas of
right and wrong ; imagination turns them into
ethical systems. At best reason is an under-ser-

286 Christ's Relation to the Poet,
vant. Slowly and with infinite pains reason
works out its premises and conclusions.
Hobbling forward upon the crutches of logic,
reason arrives at the truth. But where reason
halts, there the imagination begins anew and rushes
on to search out some parable or picture that will
flame the new truth forth upon the common peo
ple. For the multitude it is hard to remember an
argument, but easy to recall a parable or a picture.
By long and difficult process of observation philos
ophers discovered that theft, lying, gluttony, and
sin of every kind were injurious to man's mind
and body. Rising up early and sitting up late, the
philosophers taught the people that the sins of to
day would reach forward and curse men to-mor
row. Yet children and youth soon forget the
arguments as to the law of the spiritual harvest.
That the common people might remember the
peril of disobedience, Christ painted a picture for
them : " If any man heareth these sayings of mine
and doeth them not, I will liken him unto a
foolish man who built his house upon the sand.
And the rains descended and the floods came and
the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it
fell and great was the fall of it." With arguments
innumerable philosophers had taught the people
that sin was destruction, and lo ! their arguments

The Philosopher, the Scientist, and the Seer 287
have gone to dust and oblivion. Christ painted a
picture of sin as peril, and lo ! his picture is
immortal. It stirs the sense of wonder that those teachers
who have used illustrations so simple that a child
can understand them have never been recognized
as profound thinkers. Yet theirs is the art that
conceals art. Contrariwise, writers who repre
sent the rudest stages of thinking, and who must
needs carpenter together arguments, often win
great repute as men of profound intellect. But
arguments are only the raw materials of thought,
the lowest form of thinking, while the parable
and picture represent the art products of the
creative imagination ! Parables simple ? There
is a simplicity that publishes greatness ! Argu
ments profound ? There is a profundity that
publishes shallowness ! Our northern lakes are
so clear and pure that a pebble is seen at the
bottom of a pool ten feet deep. Hard by, per
chance, is some shallow mud pond. Going along
the road the passer-by startles a frog that leaps
into the pool. Striking the mud a few inches
under the surface, the swimmer disappears. In
its ignorance the child thinks the pond to be
very deep. It is not depth but dirt that con
ceals the frog. In the deep, pure lake it is not

288 Christ's Relation to the Poet,
shallowness but clarity that reveals the pebble
lying at the bottom of the deep pool. Many a
philosopher has gained reputation for profound
thinking by a dexterous use of big words and
long theological terms, supplemented by a large,
gold-headed cane. But let no man think that,
because Christ deals in illustrations that a child
can understand intellectually, He is not supreme
over all the scholars and philosophers.
Now the use of mnemonics and word pictures
have their justification in the fact that all insti
tutions, political, social, and religious, rest back
upon figurative teaching. Slowly and with infi
nite difficulty man moves from the known to
the unknown. Did society but know it, every
word man uses is condensed history and poetry,
just as a lump of coal is a mass of buds and
perfumed boughs condensed into a flake of car
bon. Often a single word is a parable and pic
ture. Once the charioteer used a whip so cruel
it took away the horses' " sarx " or flesh. Then,
when a man made a scourge of his tongue and
cut a deep gash in the heart of his friend,
men called that speech "sarcasm." Once lying
architects concealed the crack in the marble
columns with wax. When several summers and
winters had passed, under the stress of heat and

The Philosopher, the Scientist, and the Seer 289
cold, the wax peeled off; soon all contracts made
in Rome contained the words, " sine cera " (with
out wax), and society gained the new word " sin
cere." Foolish stories are called " trivial." In
Virgil's day a peasant built an inn at the place
where three roads, " tres viae," met. Lingering
in the little inn, the soldier drank much sour
wine and told foolish stories. Soon man spake
of "trivial" stories, i.e. stories told at the inn
where " tres viag " met. Thus each new word
is a canvas into which are swept a thousand
social experiences.
But if the picture-making faculty gave man his
language, this faculty also gave society its law
and jurisprudence and religion. In the last
analysis the old Mosaic economy is simply a
system of symbols and pictures. In that rude
age, Moses, leading the multitude into the
wilderness, found himself at the head of a
horde of slaves and savages. It was useless to
tell men it was wrong to kill, steal, and lie,
for men knew not what right and wrong were.
Therefore, it became necessary to develop a
series of symbols and parabolic ceremonies that
would illustrate the nature of sin and wrong
doing. Beginning with the rudiments, Moses
built a temple with an outer court and an inner

290 Christ's Relation to the Poet,
sanctuary. Beyond was a holy place, and far
within a "most holy place," into which only the
high priest could enter once a year. Did some
rude man break the law of truth or purity or
honesty ? He was made to stand in the outer
court, sin having separated him from the God
of Righteousness. Did some man repent of his
theft or falsehood ? A handful of perfumed
shrubs was burned upon an altar, and as the
smoke ascended into the clouds, the rude man's
prayer and aspiration rose with the incense toward
the unseen God. Later, because men had no
sense of the solidarity of society, other sacrifices
were used as illustrations. Some brutal father
through his passion involved his innocent babe
in suffering. That he might understand how
his act brought injury upon others, a dove was
brought in and offered for his sin as a symbol
of how the innocent child was involved in his
transgression. Slowly, through solemn and elabo
rate ceremonies, the sense of right-doing and of
wrong-doing was developed, until men came to
see that obedience to law was the only road to
liberty ; that disobedience separated men from
happiness and prosperity, from conscience and
from God. The Mosaic economy, with its altars,
sacrifices, temples, is the most highly developed

The Philosopher, the Scientist, and the Seer 291
system of mnemonics for the development of
moral and ethical ideas that the world has ever
seen. Moses, its inventor, was a mountain-
peaked man of mentality all compact. Because
every legal code and constitution to-day simply
repeats his principles and Ten Commandments,
men like Goethe and Guizot count Moses the
greatest intellect our world has ever known.
Later, as society advanced, a thousand new
illustrations of the nature of God were devel
oped. The external world with all objects of
use and beauty in land and sea and sky were
pressed into service, and became symbols for
setting forth this invisible One. From sacrifices
the Hebrew seers passed to natural objects. The
sun was the shining of God's eye. The rain was
the falling of His mercy. The stroke of the
earthquake was the stroke of His arm. The
white clouds in the sky were the dust rising up
as His chariot rolled along the heavenly high
way. The mountains became altars, the cattle
upon a thousand hills were sacrifices, the golden
clouds that covered the tops of the mountains
became incense rising heavenward toward the
Unseen Being.
As civilization waxed more and more, all objects
making for admiration and delight were brought

292 Christ's Relation to the Poet,
in for interpreting the divine nature. Was there
a ruler who stood for wisdom, power, and justice ?
Then God became a king or prince. Did men
build fortresses against their enemies ? Then God
became a strong power, a refuge for the poor and
weak. In that hot climate, where the sun shone
with a deadly heat and men feared the stroke
of the sunbeam, God became the " shadow of
a great rock in a weary land." As social insti
tutions grew strong and rich, in a world where
friend loved friend, God was one whose love sur
passed that of a brother, and He became teacher,
counsellor, consoler, and friend. Man's alphabet
holds only twenty-six letters ; yet with this little
alphabet he writes the full story of his arts, his
sciences and religion. But the word " God " in
cludes infinite treasures of mind and heart ; such
volume of supreme excellence that all things use
ful or beautiful in land, sea, and sky, all names
or experiences in home or government or art or
science, became letters in a divine alphabet to
spell out the infinite God, who, being kncwn,
is still unknown, whose throne must ever be
wrapped about "with clouds and darkness."
Perchance this survey of the nature, function,
and moral uses of parables and illustrations will
help interpret the imaginative uses of Christ's

The Philosopher, the Scientist, and the Seer 293
likening Himself to a " way " and a " road." The
highest reason is at once stimulated and satisfied
when this divine teacher likens Himself unto the
"sun," and "vine," the "light," the "life," the
"truth." But since no object is more homely
than a "road" over which pass the weary multi
tudes, with all herds and flocks and caravans, it
stirs our sense of wonder that Christ should have
likeried Himself unto the "way" that leads into
some imperial city. Yet the events of that far-off
Roman era lent to the road a world-wide signifi
cance, and made the way one of the richest of
Christ's symbols. At best it was a rude, wild age.
Society was chaotic and unorganized. For reasons
of safety men dwelt in walled towns and cities.
There were brigands in the mountains and wolves
in the hills. For a merchant the journey from
one town to another was accompanied with great
danger. To-day the Kurds of Persia sweep down
from their mountain fastnesses into Armenian
villages, burning houses, looting the shops, killing
the men, and carrying off the women and children.
Not otherwise in that era property was insecure.
When the night fell the keepers hurried their
flocks toward the gates of the villages, and
the caravans made haste to find safety within
the walls of some town. In such an age Julius

294 Christ's Relation to the Poet,
Caesar conceived the idea of binding all the prov
inces together by a system of roads. With the
instinct of a statesman he set his soldiers to con
struct a highway through what we call France,
on into Italy, toward the capital. After nineteen
centuries sections of this road still remain, a
splendid highway sixty feet wide, made of pounded
rock covered with cement, and guarded on either
side by huge blocks of stone. Every twelve miles
there were relays, with soldiers and an inn, where
merchants and travellers found refreshment and
protection. Most famous of all these roads was
the Appian Way. Along that historic highway
moved emperors, with their triumphal processions ;
Alexandrian merchants, with their wheat, oil, and
wine ; travellers from the Orient, who brought
silken stuffs, with spices and myrrh; merchants
from Africa, with ivory, precious stones, and
bars of gold. And through this way and road
uniting towns and cities, levelling valleys, and mak
ing mountains low, peace followed tumult, and
danger gave way to security. Soon the road came
to stand for safety, peace, and permanency. By
reason of the associations with law, government,
and justice, it may be doubted whether any other
term could have carried more meaning to men
than the expression, "I am the way,"

The Philosopher, the Scientist, and the Seer 295
In that far-off era also, "the way " was a symbol
of friendship and of the heart's deepest affections.
It was a pastoral age. The leaders of the time
were sheiks whose tents followed their flocks and
herds as they wandered o'er the hills. Beautiful,
indeed, the picture of those old-time friendships
between sages who were called the "friends of
God." In that era Abraham led his flocks into
one rich valley, and there set up his tents and
reared his home. Beyond the range of high hills
was a second rich valley, where another sheik
fed his flocks. Separated by the low mountains,
these men were united by friendship. For if the
birds must go in flocks, the fishes in shoals, and
the cattle in herds, men are drawn together by a
hunger for companionship. Soon these two men
bade their servants make a path up the steep sides
of this range and down into the valley beyond.
Oft fleet runners, bearing now a bough of fruit
and now a measure of fine wheat, hurried along
this path.
Full oft swift runners were sent out to give
warning of approaching danger. At intervals,
also, there came family festivals, when the sons
and daughters of one house made their way
along this walk for a week's visit to the other.
Worn by many feet, this "way" became sacred

296 Christ's Relation to the Poet,
by association. At last the time came when the
two sheiks built a booth at the top of the hill, and
oft meeting there, struck hands of friendship.
Sacred, indeed, the spot where one great mind
carrying its undisclosed life of meditation meets
another great mind and heart. Recalling that
spot in the street where he met his friend, Schiller
thought of building a memorial of the meeting.
And meeting in the path upon the summit of the
hill from which they looked down upon their dis
tant homes in confidence and undisturbed by fear,
they spoke of the deep things of life and love and
God, moving "over realms and royalties of medita
tion where each had so often passed, a solitary
traveller." In such an age this path, uniting
homes, and baptized by friendships, and sacred by
a thousand associations, lends a strange interpreta
tion to these words, " I am the way."
To these associations of government, law, and
common life, the home and the domestic affec
tions lent their associations to "the way." Our
western peoples dwell in cities. With us gardens
are almost unknown. Homes are literally upon
the street. But travellers to Oriental cities
know that every home is set far back from the
streets, and the pathway from the gate to the
door is one which the householder makes strangely

The Philosopher, the Scientist, and the Seer 297
beautiful by fragrant shrubs and climbing vines,
with palms and oleanders. In the description of
this house of Ben Hur, what a pathway of beauty
and delight was " the way " leading to that house
hidden midst the trees. In that soft genial cli
mate, how beautiful the custom of serving the
evening meal on the table set in that embowered
pathway. What fascination attached to the con
versation when the neighbors dropped in for con
verse during the long twilight! What converse
between men grown old and infirm with life's
battles ! What a paradise for children loving
games and sports ! And when neighbors had
gone what young stranger is this who lingers with
the daughter of the home ? Along that way, after
the day's work was done, moved the father, jour
neying homeward. At the end of that way, also,
the mother parted with the boy, who, going forth
to make his fortune, has never returned. Happi
ness will never be hers until again she beholds
his form returning along that familiar path.
Sometimes in pensive hours the householder
walks in the gray dusk up and down that way,
reflecting that soon he will be carried along that
path to find himself in another " way " from which
no traveller ever returns. And so, through a
thousand beautiful associations "the way" and

298 Christ's Relation to the Poet,
the road took on rich meaning and significance.
It stood for safety of life and property, for peace
and tranquillity. It stood for commerce, trade,
and wealth. It stood for friendship and affec
tion and for the rich associations of the heart.
And when Christ called Himself "the way," it
seemed to weary men as if no other symbol was so
rich, so full of hidden suggestion, not one that
was clothed with such sweetness and beauty ; not
one that was so deep and serviceable. To the
multitudes lost in the wilderness, Christ became
the way home ; a highway for those who are light
of foot and those whose feet are heavy with mis
fortune ; a " way " for the children of prosperity
who sweep forward in chariots, and also for the
poor who move forward with fettered feet ; for
all men, high and low, bond and free, He was the
divine "way," leading unto the eternal city of
God. For the philosophers representing the intellect,
Christ is the way to God. Glorious, indeed, the
company of the scholars who have sought the
Unseen One. Yet after a lifetime of investiga
tion the sages have one cry, "O that I knew
where I might find Him." From Job to Herbert
Spencer God has been the Undiscovered One.
How pathetic Job's words ; God's footprints are

The Philosopher, the Scientist, and the Seer 299
not in the rock, made permanent for students ;
His footprints are not in the sno v, quickly melt
ing in the sun ; " Thy footsteps are in the
sea where waves wipe the footprints out." So
far from knowing the way to God's throne,
the philosophers have not even been sure of
His name. For Huxley He is the Unknown
God ; for Spencer He is the Unknowable One ;
for the positivist He is the Stream of Tendency ;
for Arnold He is the Power that makes for
righteousness. But with Martineau let us con
fess that these are poor substitutes for God,
man's Father. In its Gethsemane hour the
soul does not pray, " O Stream of Tendency,
let this cup pass from me!" In the hour when
fame is a vapor, when riches take wings, and
strength fails, men will not ask "the Unknowable
One " to support their sufferings. In the hour of
death the philosopher asks us to spell the word
"force " with a capital " F," but not even the font
of large type can support the hero and martyr.
Matthew Arnold defined religion as " ethics suf
fused with emotion," but mist though suf
fused with moonshine makes a poor substitute for
wheaten bread. Viewed as rhetoric, this rese
ated ethics is a highly successful phrase. Viewed
as a substitute for Christianity, it asks man to

300 Christ's Relation to the Poet,
substitute bread for a chunk of cloud-bank but
tered with the night wind.
Sad, indeed, the confessions of the philoso
phers. "The great companion is dead," sobs
Professor Clifford. " My everlasting winter has
set in," moans Harriet Martineau. Herbert
Spencer is very sad. How pathetic the introduc
tion of his last book ! Therein he doubts whether
anything he has ever written has served any man.
Yet this philosopher represents a great intellect,
a brave heart, and a noble life. Does this pathetic
confession mean that troubles have broken his
heart ? Does the world reel beneath his feet,
that he seems to wish to lean against some
strong arm that can hold all reeling worlds ?
Have agnosticism and pessimism gone into bank
ruptcy and left their creditors broken-hearted ?
We cannot praise the philosophers too highly.
If they have failed, they have failed as heroes
who struggled for the impossible. In youth and
health men read the philosophers, but in the hour
of sickness, defeat, adversity, and death men send
these volumes to the garret or cellar. Morlais
Jones tells of a famous picture of logs blazing
in the fireplace. One bleak January day a pet
monkey found its way into the room, and, see
ing the picture, ran up and lifted its shivering

The Philosopher, the Scientist, and the Seer 30I
hands before the canvas. After a few moments
the poor creature began to moan piteously. The
longer it waited, the colder the monkey became,
for the flames were only painted fire. Having
tried all the philosophies, Professor Clifford moans
piteously. It was only painted fire. Significant,
indeed, Romanes' return to a simple faith in Jesus
Christ, affirming that all modern science and the
principle of evolution have their culmination in
Christ and Christianity.
Now comes the president of the British Soci
ety for the Advancement of Science with a like
confession. For the march of the philosophers
seems like the march of the Ten Thousand.
The brave Greeks, after months of wandering
through the enemy's country, wounded by poi
soned arrows, worn by forced marches, hunger,
and thirst, tortured by cold, torn by thorns and
thickets, at last emerged from the forest, and
from the mountain tops saw afar off the glim
merings of the sea. Forgetting their rags and
misery, with shouts of rapturous joy these
soldiers rushed down the hillside, crying ¦ aloud,
"The sea, the sea!" In their search for the
clew of the maze the great men of earth have
wandered far; but Browning and Tennyson, Ro
manes the scientist, Lord Kelvin the mathemati-

302 Christ's Relation to the Poet,
cian, the great statesmen from Webster and
Lincoln to Bismarck and Gladstone, these are
leaders in a movement that seems about to be
come a contagion, as earth's greatest spirits fall
into Christ's triumphal procession as He leads on
toward God's throne. For Christ made the way
to God plain and smooth. Standing forth before
the people, Christ unveiled the Creator as a
Father ; made His throne mercy and not marble ;
made His providence seem like the gulf stream
of history ; made His laws to seem forms of love
filled with sweet solicitude, rather than nets to
trap the feet of the unwary. For the first time
in history the Divine Being wad surrounded with
fascination and allurement. If once men had fled
from this Being, whose brow had been wreathed
with lightnings that consumed men out of His
presence, Christ made the very name of God
music and medicine and wings to worn and weary
men. Not those love words that mothers sing
above their cradles to children ; not those
songs with which the lover wooes his bride ; not
those tokens of affection between friends, are so
alluring as the names that were associated with
the name of God. The old legend is that when
the angels departed from the shepherds that
Christmas night they left a rosy hue in the

The Philosopher, the Scientist, and the Seer 303
atmosphere ; thus the very name of God came to
lend a rosy, radiant glow to the mind. For the
sons of intellect, Christ has, indeed, become "the
way." For the common people, also, Christ has been
a " way " out of life's wilderness ; for the chil
dren of prosperity, blessed with leisure, luxury,
friends, and travel, the life that now is so pleasant
that they can afford to trust to Providence who
hath appointed the present to guard their future
career. But for the millions who toil in the field
and forest, in factory and mine, living upon the
edge of want, the problems of life are difficult
and dark. For the multitudes going through
life, hungering for knowledge, but all unfed ;
hungering for art and beauty but doomed to
starve ; hungering for position and influence, but
doomed to ignorance and obscurity, life is full of
care and hard problems. And for these multi
tudes worn with trouble, it is not enough that
scholars say that God is back of the stars and
suns, supporting the framework of the universe,
ripening the harvests and ordering the summers
and winters. Overtaken by poverty, despoiled
by despair, wandering as sheep without a shep
herd, in their bitterness the sheep cry out : " Is
there no one who cares for me, now that trouble

304 Christ's Relation to the Poet,
has run a ploughshare through the garden of my
life ? Is there no one who cares for me, despoiled
and heartbroken, with affections torn away, as
when rude foresters strip the bleeding vine from
the trunk to which it clings ? Is there no one
who cares for me, overtaken by sudden invalidism,
doomed to drop out of the ranks and see the col
umns march by, leaving me a wreck, a remnant
and a failure ? "
Taught by its instinct, the very bird finds a
way into tropic gardens, and is a man less than
a bird that no friends should open up a way to
that glowing tropic heart that we call God? The
children of misfortune and defeat grow very bitter,
for man cares little for his fellow-man. Nothing
in our world is so cheap as human beings. That
English company sent the ship to sea knowing
that the craft would break up. It was little that
they lost the crew, for they gained the insurance.
On land men are so cheap and worthless that
landlords are permitted to rent rotten rookeries
that ooze disease and death for the sake of the
interest on their capital. A little grove of black
walnut trees in Michigan sold recently for a
fortune, but men are so cheap that every place
is spoken for, every loaf is preengaged and be
fore the dying man is buried, his place is filled.

The Philosopher, the Scientist, and the Seer 305
And to the multitudes floundering in the wilder
ness Christ became the "way," leading men to
God and His all-comforting love. He bore Him
self toward men after the pattern of earth's most
glorious friendship.
With tranquillity He met the emergencies of
the poor, the obscure, the publican, the outcast,
the sinner, the king, the scholar, and the slave.
He touched the slave, and his shackles fell off ;
He touched the weak, and they became too strong
to be oppressed ; He touched the home, and it
became a bower of delight ; He touched the
cradle, and childhood became sacred ; He touched
music, and it became pure and sweet ; art, and
the canvas took on lustrous beauty ; architecture,
and it became worthy of man's worship. He
lent man a new heart, and the publican rose up
with the dignity of a king. He taught man the
law of love, and that law brought order into
society and the realm of morals, as Newton's law
of gravity brought law and harmony into the
realm of matter. Men came to God through
Christ with their prayers, for He sympathized
with their sufferings ; they brought their burdens,
and He dissolved them ; they brought their tears,
and His hand wiped them away ; they brought
in their dead and He made them live. For the

306 Christ's Relation to the Poet,
common people, Christ's cross and His atoning
sacrifice opened up a " way " to happiness,
progress, social strength, prosperity, and peace.
For the poets, also, ruled by imagination,
those who hear the oak within the acorn's shell,
hear the song within the egg of the lark, hear
the wisdom of the sage in the prattle of the
child. By way of preeminence, Browning and
Tennyson have been called the voices of our
generation. Both made themselves familiar with
the results of the latest scientific investigation.
Among their close friends were Tyndall and
Huxley, and some of the apostles of doubt and
despair. Recounting his movement from doubt
to faith, Tennyson tells us he was deeply troubled
and perplexed by the apparent confusion and
waste of life and by the vast amount of sin and
suffering throughout the world. Pursuing his in
vestigations, he came to feel that nature was full
of imperfections, rapine, and cruelty. Having
grappled long with anguish and darkness, doubt
and death, at last he found Him whom he said
was the "way to God." "None knoweth the
Father save the Son, and he to whom the Son
will reveal him. I am amazed at Christ's purity
and holiness and at his infinite beauty. The forms
of religion may change, but Christ will grow more

The Philosopher, the Scientist, and the Seer 307
and more in the roll of ages. His character is more
wonderful than the greatest miracle." Taught
by Christ, Browning and Tennyson say they
learned that God is love, and that the soul's love
to God in return is the true basis of " duty, truth,
reverence, loyalty, love, virtue, and work." Indeed,
it was Browning's words that seem to have lent
Professor Henry Drummond that beautiful confes
sion of his faith in Christ : " the recoverableness
of man at his worst is the gift of Christ ; the for
giveness of sins comes by Christ's cross ; the
power to set the heart right is Christ's grant ; the
hope of immortality springs from Christ's grave ;
religion means a personal trust in God, a personal
debt to Christ, a personal dedication to His cause.
These, brought about how you will, are supreme
things to aim at, supreme loss if they are missed."
For all men Christ is the way to an immortal
hope. Before Christ lived and died the Tuscans
made each tomb face the west, for the soul's
sun had set never to rise. After Christ, tombs
faced the east, for the sun had disappeared
to stand again upon the horizon, clothed with
untroubled splendor. There is a chamber in
the catacombs used about the time of Julius
Caesar, and every tomb has emblems of the skull
and crossbones. Hard by is another chamber

308 Christ's Relation to the Poet,
of a later generation, and lo! Christ's teachings
have carved upon each stone a lily, eloquent of
immortal hope. In his "Disputations" Cicero
said the endowments of the soul seem to imply
another life. The unthinking oak lives many
centuries. Even such a brute as the elephant
had a career that touched the confines of two
centuries. But if man entered the scene clothed
with the attributes of God, he had years less than
the beast and the arena of an insect. What a
creator was man ! He entered the desert, and it
became a garden ; he turned wild rice into yellow
harvests, forked sticks into great ploughs, papyrus
leaves into books, huge stones into temples and
cathedrals, made the desert a garden and the
wilderness a city. Yet, beneath the oak living
for centuries, sleeps Cicero and some twenty gen
erations of his descendants, so ephemeral is man's
career. Not until fifteen does the youth awake to
the thought " I live ! " A few days later he finds
a grave digged in the waving grass, and man ex
claims, " I shall die ! " Then comes life's greatest
thought, "Dying, I shall live again."
The Roman orators exclaimed, " If there be
a meeting place of the dead ! " Then Christ
entered the scene whispering that God was fully
equal to the emergency named "death." Unto

The Philosopher, the Scientist, and the Seer 309
God all live. Passing through the grave He
exclaimed, "Because I live, ye shall live also!"
And from that hour death was clothed with
sweet allurement. The falling statesman, the
dying martyr and mother, welcome the signs of
death as signals hanged from the heavenly battle
ments. The iron mask of death fell off, and
death stood forth, a shining angel of God com
ing for welcome and convoy. The dark river
narrowed to a tiny ribbon. It seemed but a
step to the immortal shore. The path of death
became a path of living light. Striking hands
with Jesus Christ, the little child, the sage, the
statesman, and the seer alike went joyously
toward death, and disappearing, passed on into
an immortal summer.

XIII
tfear, &afo, ano 5Looe as JHotioes of %\U

" Love is the medicine of all moral evil. By it the world is
to be cured of sin. Love is the wine of existence. When you
have taken that, you have taken the most precious drop that
there is in the cluster. Love is the seraph, and faith and hope
are but the wings by which it flies. The nature of the highest
love is to be exquisitely sensitive to the act of forcing itself
unbidden and unwelcome upon another. The finer, the
stronger, the higher love is, the more it is conditioned upon
reciprocation. No man can afford to invest his being in
anything lower than faith, hope, love — these three, the
greatest of which is love."
— Henry Ward Beecher.

312

XIII
FEAR, LAW, AND LOVE AS MOTIVES OF LIFE
Man embarrassed by over-abundance of treasure . Our earth
so vast, no foot can visit all shrines. Impossible for the mind
to harvest all truth and beauty. Therefore division of mental
labor. Fascinations of the moral realm. Heroes and saints
represent different and sometimes opposing features. The
possible motives of character. Fear the fundamental motive.
Place of fear in individual life. Fear and social progress.
Self-interest as a high motive. Ambition and personal growth.
The dream of wisdom, wealth, influence, and character. Men
allured forward from in front rather than scourged from be
hind. Law and duty as motives. A world of laws. The
ruins along the pathway of time as proclaiming the danger of
disobedience. Obedience and happiness. Love as crowning
motive. Love and the imagination. Love lends fertility to
the reason. Love arms against enmities. Love the summer
of the soul. Love as a revelator of God. Love the fulfilment
of the higher manhood.
OUR earth is so vast that no foot can visit
all shrines, and no mind harvest all of earth's
truth and beauty. Man is embarrassed by over
abundance of treasure. We are told that Herod
otus was the first to attempt a full exploration
313

314 Fear, Law, and Love
of our earth. Returning home after a long jour
ney, the Grecian reported the earth an island,
flat, fifteen hundred miles in diameter, and re
quiring a period of five years for complete knowl
edge. Since those far-off days, travellers have
caused our earth to greatly extend her shores,
and take on many islands and continents. And
the work of enlargement is still going on. Last
winter an English ship returned home from a
voyage amidst the icebergs of the Antarctic
Ocean to report the finding of an icebound con
tinent, apparently larger than Greenland. To-day,
should the old Grecian traveller revisit our
planet, he would be constrained to confess that
the earth has become so long, and life so short,
that man must be content to remain ignorant
of many storied lands and scenes. If in the
autumn we linger beside the lovely lakes of the
Adirondacks, or in winter journey into the sunny
clime of Florida, if in June we follow the sum
mer, as it advances, over the Berkshire Hills, we
shall feel that each of these realms of beauty
asks for a lifetime of study. Desirous of dwell
ing in each spot famed for loveliness, Cicero had
five country villas in addition to his city home.
When the great orator had multiplied houses,
he found that he could live but in one place at

As Motives of Life 315
a time. Building in the city, man must forego
the country, with its glorious forests, its gar
dens, its choral fields. Building his home in
the northern woods, man remembers with regret
that the city is the home of music, art, and
eloquence. Nor are the realms of knowledge less numer
ous or vast. Listening to some jurist's argu
ment, the youth covets oratory and its varied
forms of learning and power. But to-morrow,
lingering in the gallery, the boy will regret that
he had not chosen the beautiful for his life pur
suit. Growing older, man learns that his years
are all too short for him to attain unto equal
excellence in all realms of life and learning. In
Cuvier's day the scientist took all knowledge
for his province. To-day one scientist gives his
life to the oak or willow, another to the beetle
or silkworm ; while in the mental realm, one
studies reason or affections, another memory or
motives. In the vast tropic plantations in Brazil,
it is necessary for one group of servants to give
exclusive attention to the pineapple or orange
grove, or the fragrant coffee fields. Thus the
vastness of the realm of knowledge has com
pelled a division of mental labor. Holmes says
Newton or Leibnitz painted nature with a free

316 Fear, Law, and Love
hand, and standing back, admired it as a whole,
with the rapture of archangels. But nowadays,
knowledge is a vast mosaic, each scientist bring
ing his little piece and stitching it in place, but
so taken up with his petty fragment that he has
no thought for the great picture the little bits
make when put together. Indeed, through the
microscope a small piece of iron becomes as
large as a world. In the hardest steel the parti
cles stand aloof like trees in a forest. Each
molecule is separated from its fellow by a dis
tance equal to its own diameter. Journeying
outward with the telescope, we find the starry
world sown with suns, that fly out from the
Creator's hand much as sparks fly from under
the smith's hammer; and each star is replete
with beauty. Reflections like these tell us that
man's hand was made for one flower or one
golden bough, and not for the full summer.
Man's career of seventy years asks for several
books, not all the libraries ; for a group of friends,
not all humanity. Man must content himself
with visiting a few mountains and lakes, a few
ancient cities and civilizations. The finite foot
can never overtake infinite beauty.
From this overlargeness of the world-house
we pass easily to the thought that the mortal

As Motives of Life 317
realm is large enough for earth's millions, but
too large for one man. A world that offers in
numerable landscapes and faces unto an artist
whose life avails but for a few pictures, will also
present a thousand avenues of heart excellence
to the individual whose feet can move along but
one pathway. The tropical richness of the moral
realm makes each individual an eclectic. As the
traveller planning his journey is enticed westward
by the attractions of Japan and India, and is at
the same time allured eastward toward the land
of the Parthenon or Pyramids, so each heart
must choose between the excellences that make
the mind strong toward the home or the city,
or make the heart helpful toward the orphan or
the slave. As the glory of a wheatfield is one
and the glory of an orange grove another, so
there is one moral glory of the factory and
another glory of the office; one glory of the
schoolroom and another glory of the home : for
one virtue differs from another virtue in glory.
If some Howard chooses self-abnegation and
becomes a reformer toward the bottom of
society, some Gladstone, choosing self-enrich
ment and the moulding of states, will become a
reformer toward the top of society.
Recalling these apostolic heroes who gave

318 Fear, Law, and Love
Christianity its powerful impulse, we find these
giants pass before the mind clothed with dis
similarity. Paul comes before us in the garb of
a philosopher and logician. He assumes, he
reflects, he links argument to argument. With
iron logic he pulls us on toward an irresistible
conclusion. But John was a poet and seer. He
comes musing, weeping, loving, aspiring. Over
against the city Ephesus, that seemed a volcano
pouring forth passions like lurid lava, the poet
projected the city of God, with gates of pearl
and ever blooming trees, with fountains of the
water of life. But James is unlike either. He
is very practical. Reading the argument of Paul,
the apostle of works reflects that philosophy
bakes no bread. Reading the vision of John
and thinking of the widow and orphan, he seems
to anticipate General Booth's words, " One
pot of hot gruel, two petticoats, and a wool
blanket are worth a lake full of tears." Yet no
thoughtful man will be disturbed by these dis
similarities. In every age there have been two
classes in the church : the one emphasizes knowl
edge and culture; the other emphasizes affection
and sentiment. And outside of the church stands
a third class of Christians, whose emphasis has
been upon good deeds, conduct, and character.

As Motives of Life 319
In the physical realm, our sun, flooding each
root and germ with sunshine, asks each violet
or palm to move toward its own excellence.
Thus, Jesus Christ, rising in his full splen
dor upon the soul's horizon, urges each soul to
fulfil its own unique career. The unity of the
moral realm is the unity of the summer and not
the unity of a sand heap.
To man, delaying his choice of one of the
many avenues of excellence, come certain guid
ing motives. The soul is a mechanism driven
forward by its desires. Certain powerful stimu
lants called love of knowledge or friendship or
affluence act upon the soul as winds upon the
ship. If we study these motives in detail we
shall see that their number and kind determine
man's value and character. The initial motive
and the root of all excellence is fear. Of old
the sage said, " The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom." But fear is also present
in the flower and fruitage of moral excellence.
Indeed, without the instinct of fear man would
soon perish out of the earth. The world is full
of destruction. Man is threatened by fire and
threatened by water and threatened by his fel
lows. He needed a place of refuge and a coat
of mail to protect him against the arrows of

320 Fear, Law, and Love
assault, and fear was ordained as armor and cas
tle. Moving through the forest, fear goes before
man, guarding him against the thorn and the
brier. Fear warns man against wild beasts and
carries him in safety over seas and rivers.
Building a house, fear makes it fireproof. Front
ing danger, fear forges a weapon. In presence
of disease, fear searches out a remedy. Having
preserved man's life, fear goes on to become the
spring of his civilization. The fear of cold com
pels industry and stimulates the savage to build
ing a house. The fear of hunger compels
ploughing and sowing and reaping. Fear of want
in old age stimulates the youth toward economy
and thrift. Tempted toward sin, the fear of
public opinion safeguards man against vice and
crime. Misunderstanding, some affect to despise
this divine instinct. Such persons do not see
that God ordained fear as an alarm-bell for
maintaining the integrity of man's being. The
Nantucket reef, with hidden rocks that threaten
ships, is guarded with fog-bells that by day and
night ring out warning and alarm. Thus fear
is ordained as the primal impulse to secure man's
safety and urge him along the paths of growth,
prosperity, and peace.
To-day fear appears in our civilization in a

As Motives of Life 32 1
hundred forms. It is manifest in the magistrate
and the policeman, in the health board and the
physician, and also in every institution that pro
tects property or reputation or life. Allied with
duty, it appears in the intense consciousness of
good men. Allied with generosity, it lends
inspiration to the reformer. Underneath love,
fear gives solicitude and thoughtfulness to father
and mother. Lest danger may attack honor or
family or business, men are made afraid. Fear
is a sentinel standing upon the walls, watching
against the enemy. It is, to be sure, only the
beginning of character. It is a root virtue. But
while the apple tree needs a root, man can ap
proach the tree only when it attains unto the
fruit ripened in love's atmosphere. When the
husbandman plants the seed, two things are
necessary for growth. First comes the winter.
The plantlet is there, but it is shut in between
thick walls. The sunbeam avails not for liberty.
Then comes the frost to drive in its wedges,
and split the shell apart. Once freed, the
plantlet passes out of the dominion of winter.
Its continued life waits for the summer's com
ing. Thus fear is a low and wintry motive. It
is the beginning of wisdom, yet it accompanies
love unto the end. Fear is the subbass upon
Y

322 Fear, Law, and Love
which the higher and nobler melodies of life
roll and rest.
A second motive driving man along the path
way of progress is self-interest. When fear hath
driven man into one realm of excellence, ambi
tion to excel drives him into another. The
desire for precedence is a powerful mainspring
moving upon all his faculties. Man is a bundle
of aspirations. He might be defined as the
animal with the upward look. This hunger for
growth and supremacy is not confined to the
prince in his palace. In the humblest toiler
there is a germinal ambition that answers to
that passion in Napoleon that urged the great
general forward upon his career of conquest,
and drove him through hundreds of battles from
Lodi to Waterloo. Indeed, without this motive,
it may be doubted whether a man could achieve
any progress or character. Xenophon tells us
of a Grecian youth who was so eager to win
the chariot race that he added steed to steed
until there were eight fiery chargers pulling his
eager chariot toward the goal. In the interest
of his speedy progress and enlargement, man
binds himself to many powerful forces called
love of property, love of home, love of reputa
tion, love of man and God. And there is no

As Motives of Life 323
form of moral supremacy that self-interest will
not help man to secure. Ambition to instruct
others makes man a scholar. Ambition to influ
ence multitudes makes man an orator. Ambi
tion to distribute universal bounty makes one a
successful business man. Ambition to right
wrongs and correct abuses makes man a states
man. Ambition for God's smile makes him a
humble Christian. Even when selfness degen
erates into selfishness, it has sometimes been
overruled toward progress.
Thus the French kings of the eighteenth
century oppressed the people with heavy taxes.
The tithe gatherers swept the land as one
sweeps a granary. With their accumulated
treasure these French monarchs developed parks,
built palaces, brought in sculptors and painters
from foreign lands. But when the palaces were
filled with paintings and marbles and tapestries
and vases and curios from every land, the kings
were swept away, and these vast art treasures
were handed over to the people. Thus these
galleries, builded and filled by selfishness, became
granaries that sowed the land with universal civili
zation. And, not infrequently, selfishness in the
individual is also overruled for society's good.
Sometimes, when it is proposed to found a library

324 Fear, Law, and Love
or gallery, the subscription book is taken to a man
who has no interest in the proposed institution,
but who greatly needs the influence of the pro
moters thereof. Anticipating some future gain,
the selfish man does a generous deed. He invests
his generosity as a sower invests his seed, be
lieving it will return with quadruple treasure.
He will help build a statue to the poet or
statesman, not through gratitude to the world's
benefactor, but to further his own interests.
Later on the selfish man discovers that the
memory of a generous deed is one of life's
keenest pleasures. Having begun in selfishness,
he goes on to be generous for its own sake.
And thus every form of integrity is made to
bring in large returns of money and of friends.
Honesty and godliness will not quicken the
slow thought or transform dulness into genius
or give the inventor's skill to a hand naturally
clumsy ; but, given the root forces — common
sense, sane judgment, courage, and energy — and
then add moral honesty, — sterling honesty, hon
esty that is continuous in all its fidelities,
honesty that guards another's interests as its
own, honesty that is above suspicion or reproach
or temptation, — why, the money value of such
integrity is above rubies I The Latin poet tells

As Motives of Life 325
us of a goddess who rolled apples along the
pathway before a group of children. Pursuing
the celestial fruit, the children of earth went
heavenward with shouts of glee. How beautiful
this legend telling us that God sends messengers
with rewards many and rich before him who
moves along the pathway of honor and integrity!
But when fear hath guarded man against
danger, and self-interest hath taught man to
make the most possible of himself, the in
dividual enters into another realm. Moving
upward, man comes under the influence of con
science and duty. He finds himself in a world
of laws. Laws wall man around, laws dome
him over, laws make the ground solid beneath
his feet. Every star and stone is obedient.
Nothing is independent. The planets go whither
they are bidden. Rivers obey their banks. Trees
fulfil the law of growth. Laws are celestial belts
that move from one planet to another. The same
law that rounds the sun orbs the tear on the
babe's cheek. Disobedience to these laws means
destruction. Should our earth disobey the law
that moves it toward Neptune, it would soon
fall into the sun's fiery abyss. Looking back
ward over the pathway of history, we see that
those cities and civilizations that have been

326 Fear, Law, and Love
destroyed were all breakers of law. Thebes and
Athens are in ruins, because they sinned deeply
against the laws of the home and the state and
of God. Not time, not summer nor winter
lifted the destroying hammer above the temples
and marbles of Phidias. It was disobedience to
law that made the temple a heap and the city
a ruin. Three hundred years ago Italy possessed art
treasures innumerable. To-day only a few broken
fragments and a few rotting canvases remain.
But these precious art treasures would have ex
isted in all their splendor for thousands of years
had it not been for man's destroying agency.
Man has been the mildew that destroyed the
pictures, that shattered the statue, the fire kin
dled upon the fresco. Out of many reflections
like these we learn that the highest liberty
comes through obedience to law, while disobe
dience is slavery. Disobeying the law of fire,
man becomes houseless. Disobeying the law of
gravity, man falls from the dizzy height. Break
ing laws of food and rest, man's body becomes
a bundle of agonies. But going upward toward
obedience to law, man attains liberty. His
biographer exhibits the youth, Wendell Phillips,
as a timid, bashful debater. One day, after hear-

As Motives of Life 327
ing the great orator, a Southern slaveholder
exclaimed, "If we allow this man to keep on
speaking, he will soon talk the fetters off all
our slaves." Similarly, by obedience to the law
of beauty, the artist's brush became as full of
color as the summer itself. There never was a
man who attained unto any degree of excellence
or art or statecraft who did not climb up unto
excellence by obedience to laws that are rounds
in the golden ladder of success. Often these
laws are irksome, and full oft they seem griev
ous burdens. The obedience of many is only a
means of escaping disaster. They think they
will be damned if they do wrong. Rather than
be damned they do right. To all such, the laws
of right seem forms of tyranny. All such move
upward, scourged thither by conscience.
But when the sentinel fear hath guarded the
city of man's soul against its enemies, when self
ness has stored the city with treasures of wisdom
and friendship and integrity ; when laws have
restrained man from the precipice, then love
comes in to cast out fear. Then the root and
stalk condition is transmuted upward into fruit
and flower. The inspiration of fear and law gives
way to the fuller inspiration and stimulus of love.
As the summer, with its silent warmth, avails

328 Fear, Law, and Love
more for harvest than can the winter, with it:
majesty of storm and wind, so the inspiration of
love achieves what the inspiration of duty cannou
What a garden is in summer, filled with perfumed
shrubs and flowers and the song of birds, that fear
and duty and conscience are, when shone upon by
love. But, without love, law and duty are like
unto a garden in the winter, bare, leafless, for
saken of birds, beaten upon by winds. The great
violinist tells us that when he was but six years
old he practised six hours a day. He achieved
this feat of industry and mastered the laws of mel
ody because he feared his father's anger. Rather
than be whipped he refrained from discord. But
the day came when the child of ten was an orphan.
Then the love of parents was succeeded by the
love of music. He came to have an overmaster
ing passion for his violin. Rising up early, before
his taskmaster called him, sitting up late, the little
child poured out his very soul in sweet song. Love
taught him to avoid discord ; love fulfilled in him
all sweet harmonies. Love made his fingers glide
over the strings with a facility swifter than a bird's
flight in the air. Fear of blows made the child
but a mediocre musician. But love made him a
genius, and put his name in every man's mouth.
And every true man and woman knows that

As Motives of Life 329
there is no true magician like love. With what
beauty does love embellish the object of its affec
tions ! What dreams and ambitions love awakens
and afterward fulfils ! What fruitfulness it lends to
the imagination ! What springs of happiness does
it open up ! What faults and frailties does it cor
rect ! Lest they may injure its dear ones, love
subdues rage and anger and obstinacy. And later
on, love becomes a prophet. Arguments do not
always avail for proving immortality. Sometimes
reason says that, because the sun goes down in
night, perhaps the soul in death may set never to
rise again. But when man digs a grave in the
grass for her who has been the inspiration of his
life, or for the child who rose above his life like a
star in the open sky, then by the grave where rea
son's taper goes out, love flames out anew its light
and hope, and leads man along a bright pathway
toward a better land. June itself is not so full
of ripeness and beauty as is the heart that loves.
As summer fills full all seeds, so love fills full, or
as we say fulfils, all laws.
Now the transition from fear to love that asks
but threescore years for the individual, requires
hundreds of years for the race. For centuries the
rich governed man through the inspiration of ter
ror. Not only society but theology also was in the

330 Fear, Law, and Love
stage of fear and law. In the Middle Ages men
went toward heaven to escape hell, and men were
literally saved "as by fire." But as society has
moved upward unto love, theology has shared in
the forward movement. To-day all religious think
ing is in the midst of a mighty transition. The
theologies of fear are breaking up. The philoso
phy organized about terror and Satan is giving
way to one organized about love and Jesus Christ.
In the Middle Ages, government was through the
fagot, the rack, and the dungeon. The methods
of fear that influenced the throne prevailed also in
the pulpit.
In such an age even Michael Angelo painted
Christ as an avenging Hercules, bending his
strength toward vengeance upon sinners. In his
celebrated picture of the " Last Judgment," the
artist opens up a fiery pit, surrounds it with
demons, endowed with skill for every kind of tor
ture, and sweeps nine-tenths of every generation
into the fiery abyss, as a housewife sweeps flies
into a red-hot stove when the lid is off. In that
picture, even the saints manifest riotous joy over
the fate of the wicked. But this is the theology
to be expected from a rude and animal state of
society. If an age is ever in morals, it will be
governed by fear and laws. In those days the synv

As Motives of Life 33 1
pathetic element had not been developed. There
was no sense of brotherhood in suffering. Theology
had no sensitiveness. John Calvin was scarcely
more than animated syllogism. If the theologian's
heart had been as keen as his mind, he would have
lost his reason and earth become one vast mad
house. But to-day the transition from fear to
love is being accomplished with mighty pain and
great danger. Many have removed the inspira
tions of fear without supplanting them with the
incitements of duty and love. But so long as
society exhibits any trace of the serpent or wolf,
so long must fear have a corresponding place. In
man's thinking there still are reasons for fear to
be found in man's body and mind. And when it
is given us to see men whose living has returned
to barbaric conditions, we may well be profoundly
and keenly afraid.
To-day, with the great scholar we may well
exclaim, " Calvin and Edwards make me fear and
tremble ; Bishop Butler makes me to be amazed ;
Liddon and Beecher make me believe ; but Jesus
Christ makes me hope and love." O happy gen
eration ! in the midst of which stands the divine
Saviour, teaching our age how love casts out all
fear, and fulfils all law. In the realm of the state,
our citizens have become patriots — not through

332 Fear, Law, and Love
fear of the traitor's death, but through love of
home and native land. In the realm of the beau
tiful, our artists are achieving excellence — not
through hatred of ugliness, but through love of
beautiful faces and landscapes. In the realm of
higher education, our city is being profoundly
influenced — not because these teachers hate false
hood, but because they have a mighty love for
truth. In our school days, the historian astonished
us by the story of the hired Persian troops, who
went into battle followed by officers with whips.
The mercenaries conquered, not through love of a
noble cause, but through fear of a cruel scourge.
But the Athenian's march was not a flight away
from a scourge : love for his beautiful city fired his
heart with enthusiasm, made his arm invincible,
made it even a delight to die for his native city.
Thus all the columns of society are journeying up
ward — not because they are fleeing away from the
thunder of Sinai, but because they are allured
upward by the beauty of Calvary.
Each must approach God upon his own level.
The learned jurist is not the same jurist to all
men. To the criminal the jurist is fear and terror.
To the student the jurist is wisdom and authority.
To the petitioner the judge is bounty and help. To
his children the judge is a father, full of helpful

As Motives of Life 333
love. Thus, he who approaches God by his higher
faculties will find no terror in God's brow. God
will be the all-clasping God of universal compas
sion and tenderest love. To-day He comes to
each — not as one who makes the mountains
tremble ; His voice is not the voice of thunder ;
His searching eye is not the lightning. To the
pilgrim He comes, to be a guide in darkness and
danger. To man chilled by life's cold He comes
for warmth and gladness. To man smitten by
life's fierce heat He comes " the shadow of a great
rock." He comes to heal the wounded, forgive
the sinful, save the lost. To man falling in death
He comes with divine arms to receive the dying
pilgrim. Now the vast number of possible paths opening
out before man's feet renders his a very difficult
problem. His task is not simple like that of the
beaver, whose instincts confine its career to that
of building. No eagle was ever left in doubt as to
whether it was meant to creep or walk or fly.
God ordained the instincts as divine handbooks
for bird and beast. Each locomotive is guided
forward by its rails. The prepared track not only
fixes its course, but carries the engine safely over
mountains and rivers and chasm. Each bee
builds its cell without waiting to learn the ten

334 Fear, Law, and Love
commandments of duty, or listen to arguments in
favor of six-sided cells as against cells of four
sides. Sometimes man seems like a tree that can
at option bring forth figs or grapes, thorns or
thistles. It seems natural, therefore, to expect
that man would receive some indication as to
which path was the favorite one with the Creator.
When an inventor completes his mechanism, he
accompanies each loom with a book of directions,
showing the use of the wheel and escapement.
Similarly, man wonders why each little pilgrim
entering life is not accompanied by a handbook,
pointing out the career in which the little stranger
would achieve the most success. But, strange
enough, after a thousand years of experience and
history, no one to-day can prove what method of
living brings the most excellence and happiness.
We can only say that Livingstone achieves con
tent and character dwelling with savages; that
Florence Nightingale believes the true method is
to toil for wounded prisoners ; that Tennyson
found his happiness in solitude and singing ; while
the multitudes find their pleasure in toiling in
field and forest, in building houses, and engines,
and cities. Doubtless each method of living has
its own all-sufficient argument. In connection
with Adam's three sons, we are told that there

As Motives of Life 335
were three rivers in paradise, and each man was
left free to move along the beautiful shore of that
stream that appealed most strongly to him. But
to-day God has greatly increased the number and
beauty of life's enriching streams. Each tempera
ment must select its own path, knowing that the
divine way leads to a land whose climate is " ever
lasting spring, whose air is perpetual music, whose
life is endless joy."

XIV
Ehe Automatic Subgment Seat in Jlan: an
©utlooft upon the problem tohether Eheistic
!£bolution throius ang fLtgfjt upon (Christ's
Fiefo of .future punishment

:< ' So careful of the type? ' but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, ' A thousand types are gone ;
I care for nothing, all shall go.
Thou makest thine appeal to me ;
I bring to life, I bring to death :
The spirit does but mean the breath :
I know no more.' And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed,
And love, Creation's final law, —
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravin, shriek'd against his creed, —
Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills?
No more ? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music matched with him.
O life as futile, then, as frail !
O for thy voice to sooth and bless
What hope of answer, or redress ?
Behind the veil, behind the veil."
— Tennyson, " In Memoriam."

338

XIV
THE AUTOMATIC JUDGMENT SEAT IN MAN: AN OUT
LOOK UPON THE PROBLEM WHETHER THEISTIC
EVOLUTION THROWS ANY LIGHT UPON CHRIST'S
VIEW OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT
Fascination of the problem of penalties and rewards.
Monica and Augustine gazing into the open sky represent a
universal tendency in those who doubt and those who believe.
What lies beyond the horizon? Where are Socrates, Paul,
Nero, Abraham Lincoln? Thoughts of the future life have
fascinated all minds. Assuming immortality, does science
throw any light upon the problem of future rewards and
punishments? Nature and the law of growth. Nature and
the law of death. Adjustment to environment. This law big
with destiny. The law of the conservation of energy. The
problem of keeping the soul that one's ancestors have
achieved. The automatic judgment seat in man. Every day
a judgment day. This explains the warnings of God's word.
Nature of the judgment seat. Christ's statements regarding
future penalties in the light of evolution. Edwards in the
light of the new views. The Westminster Fathers and the
reaction therefrom. The new views more stern and rigorous
than the old. Ours a moral universe. Sins are seeds holding
harvests of penalty. Christ a Saviour from sinning as well
as from the penalties for sin. The fulness of his redemptive
work. AMONG life's gravest problems let us include
the problem of the life to come, with its
penalties and rewards. No other question has so
fascinated man, no other problem is so big with
339

340 The Automatic Judgment Seat
wonder and mystery, and none has so fully occu
pied the thought of the common people not less
than of the poet and the philosopher. For when
man has toiled long upon his tool, his law, his
friendship, and made ready for his old age, it
remains for him to become good friends with the
past, with his conscience and his God, and to pre
pare for his admittance into that court of universal
love into which the good and great of all ages
have been gathered. Perhaps, after their many
and long inquiries, the wisest of men can never
know with certainty what is the nature of the
future life, what occupations and duties there
await man, but certain it is, that nothing educates
man like the forecast of and preparation for a
future that confessedly must remain unknown.
All will admit that no child can know beforehand
what wisdom, wealth, and influence may belong to
three score years and ten, yet it is to the last
degree important that the boy should wonder and
dream as to what manner of home shall be his,
what tool or task he shall take up ; whether glory
and honors shall await him or poverty and neglect
discourage his labors. And if man in his youth
prepares for an unknown career this side of the
grave, man grown old and gray does well also to
forecast that realm beyond the horizon where

In Man 341
moral law must also reign. If in this life vices
and sins journey on attended by harvests of un-
happiness, perhaps beyond the grave also those
who love truth and goodness will find the angels
of God ever upon the wing.
In the old picture, Monica and Augustine clasp
hands in the twilight and look longingly into the
open sky. How comes it that the stars do fix and
hold the gaze of this gifted mother and son ? Are
they asking whether or not those stars are inhab
ited ? Whether the people of Mars reap harvests
and build cities that are homes of music, art, and
eloquence ? And whether in country churchyards
their poets write elegies full of vague longings and
dim with tears ? Nay ! Nay ! This old picture
has its fascination because every man identifies
himself with these upward-looking ones who gaze,
not at the stars, but at what is beyond them.
Now and then a single mind may be found that
doubts whether man survives the shock of death,
but the multitudes believe, and therefore ponder,
dream, and wonder over the great problem of the
hereafter. In the heart a thousand longings rise
and fall as some mountain stream rises and falls
after the storms of summer and the snows of
winter. Beyond the horizon, what ? Those Athenian

342 The Automatic Judgment Seat
judges sneered at Socrates' plea for conscience,
and gave the sage the cup of poison. But the old
Greek swerved not a hair from right, and put out
to sea in the boat of his intuitions. Where, now,
is Socrates ? Were his hopes realized ? and have
his executioners ever regretted their act ? Paul
achieved our liberty and thought. Nero hated
freedom. Paul ate crusts, wore rags, and slept in
a dungeon. Nero wore purple, drank wine cooled
with snow, and slept in a silken palace chamber.
Nero's villany was successful. Paul was re
warded by Nero's headsman. Has Paul ever had
any reward ? Has Nero come to abhor his own
cruelty ? Where is that Diocletian who hurled
his victims over the precipice ? What of the
emperor who plastered pitch over the garments of
brave men and used their flaming bodies to light
up his garden parties ? Where are Benedict
Arnold and Wilkes Booth ? Has Abraham Lin
coln, with his face seamed with sorrow, seen the
travail of his soul and been satisfied ? Has Burke
met his gifted boy over whose coffin the states
man bowed in an agony of grief? Has Robert
Burns at last expelled the discord from his song ?
Where is that young girl who moaned : —
"My false lover stole the rose,
But, oh ! he left the thorn with me.''

In Man 343
These, and questions like them, confront every
thoughtful man. Why is it that infidel and agnos
tic and secularist, not less than Christian, linger
long over these problems ? Is it that these ques
tions allure men's thoughts as the candle allures
the moth, that it may be consumed? No, a thou
sand times no ! Rather, the problem of that im
mortal realm fascinates man's thoughts as the
oasis draws the birds of paradise away from the
desert into the realm of fields and fountains.
Therefore, man's earliest, latest, and profoundest
thought has had to do with the outlook upon the
future career and its rewards and penalties. And
so long as man remains man, so long as he has
reason and memory and imagination and con
science, will the poet and the common people sit
together in life's open window, and ponder and
dream and doubt and believe and weep for joy
over events that shall be revealed when death
shall part life's rich but opaque curtains, when
"the day dawns, and the shadows flee away."
A prisoner in Patmos, John looked out upon
Ephesus, and beheld the city pouring forth greed,
drunkenness, and fiery passions like streams of
lurid lava. For this city with its abominations
there was to be a judgment day. In his dream
John saw God on His throne judging the Ephe-

344 The Automatic Judgment Seat
sians, who stood forth as accused criminals, while
outraged justice urged the condemnation. The
scene was so awful that the sun was darkened,
the moon ceased to shine, and the stars gave
forth no light. But we must not allow this rich
imagery to obscure John's fundamental thought.
In an oratorio, because the soloist's single voice
is not equal to his sublime thought, Handel asks
the full orchestra, with drum and trumpet and
flute and a score of stringed instruments, to lend
volume of sound, and, borne upon the tides of
melody, the single voice is swept forward. Not
otherwise, John asks all these thrilling scenes in
nature to lend solemn accompaniment to that
moment when the soul with its deeds stands in
the presence of its Judge and Maker. And his
central thought is that there is an automatic
judgment seat in man, and that when God sent
man forth into the world He sent him fully
equipped with reason, conscience, and moral
sentiment, and all the machinery for reward and
penalty; so that every day is a judgment day
and all the machinery of justice is in constant
operation. Unfortunately, for ages the scholas
tics and theologians have fixed their thought
upon the moon turned to blood and the dark
ened sun, and have created an imaginary inferno

In Man 345
of fiery torment. Other men have held them
selves well away from any discussion or thought
on the subject. But it must be confessed that
until evolution came in, the data for an adequate
discussion of the problems of future rewards and
penalties were lacking. If the old materialistic
and atheistic form of evolution was unsatisfac
tory, its theistic form has been the key to the
method of God in nature. All the great facts
of nature and life have been restated in terms
of evolution as God's way of creating, sustaining,
and governing His universe. God's universe is
one. The law of sacrifice, for example, is vegetable
law and animal law. It is the law of wisdom, of
finance, and of character. And so of every law
of Christ. He touched the bottom and found
the fundamentals. The laws of evolution burst
into blossom in the teachings of Jesus Christ.
The physicist, the biologist, the student of force
and life alike, in reverent voice have spoken to
God and said, " O Father, where art Thou ? "
And out of rock and wave, out of herb and
flower, has come a voice answering, " God is
here ! " Sitting upon the circle of the earth, He
draws all things upward in ever increasing cycles
of knowledge and goodness and love.
Now our intellectual tread will be the firmer if

346 The Automatic Judgment Seat
we note what evolution has to say as to the laws
of life, growth, and continuance of any organism.
Reduced to its simplest possible terms, science
tells us life depends upon correspondence with
environment. The stone is dead. It has no
nerve of connection with air or soil. A plant
lives a little. It has one nerve down to the soil
and another .nerve up toward the sun. The lark
has more life. It has mouth for food, feet for
walking, wings for the air, and song toward its
fellows. The savage adds yet more life. He is
related to soil, to seeds, to fruits, to flocks and
herds, to fire and stone and metals. The civilized
man adds to his life. He runs one nerve toward
the kingdom of beauty, one toward the kingdom
of color, and one toward the kingdom of truth ;
while for man in his noblest state there are re
lations toward the invisible realm, where hope
and love and conscience dwell. Cut off any
nerve of relation, and to that extent death has
taken place. Cut the root nerve of the plant,
and it dies.
But for the bird death involves more. Remove
the wings, it still has feet. Remove the feet,
and it has the mouth for food. But remove the
head, and life is gone. Because man has a thou
sand nerves relating him to the universe, death

In Man 347
is more difficult. Cut the optic nerve, the king
dom of beauty goes, but man lives. Cut the
nerves of hearing, also, and of speaking, man
still continues his life. Cut the nerve of con
science and friendship, and the moral realm
goes. Many men who are alive physically have
been dead for twenty years toward the kingdom
of love and conscience. Cut the nerve of mem
ory and intellect, and the body still lives. Cut
off hands and feet, the pulse still thrives. But
touch the heart — life is gone. In man, there
fore, the measure of life is the measure of rela
tion and correspondence. Obedience to the laws
of exercise and nutrition for strengthening the
nerves of correspondence increases the life.
Contrariwise, disobedience to these means death.
This is natural law. Tears will not change it ;
groans and shrieks will not interrupt it. God's
world is one world. The laws that reign to-day
will rule to-morrow and to-morrow's morrow.
And this law is big with destiny.
But evolution makes much of another law — ¦
the law of the conservation of energy. A natural
law is God's thought organized, and these laws
think and work for God and under Him. In
accordance with this principle, God governs rocks
by force, animals by fear, savage men by self-

348 The Automatic Judgment Seat
interest, good men by reason, the best men by love.
The law in the lowest realm is the law of force.
The weak go to the wall, the strong survive. But
as man approaches the realm where God dwells
he finds this law reversed. In the low animal
stage, the weak perish, and strength survives and
multiplies. But when the savage mother identifies
her babe with herself for reason of self-interest,
she wishes every part of herself to survive, and
so lifts the shield to protect her babe. In hours
of cold and rain she makes her body a shield
above the child. Soon the babe in its weakness
survives, and the strong mother perishes. But
when men saw that this was, after all, a form
of progress, then all fathers and mothers, named
the state, made a law to preserve, not simply
babes, but also the slave, serf, and debtor. A
law was made to give the slave his freedom after
seven years. So he survived. A law was made
forbidding the creditor to take the sleeping
blanket from the debtor, or to take his spade
or sickle when these were his only means of life.
At length the state lifted the shield above the
blind, the deaf, the aged, and weakness survived
more and more. Finally Christ came, and His
law of self-sacrifice, declaring that the law of force
never blossoms until the strong perish that the

In Man 349
weak may survive. From that day the teacher
began to die that his ignorant pupil might live ;
the reformer and leader perished that the multi
tudes might survive. Our great reformers died
that the slaves might live in freedom and happi
ness, while the great novelists and poets, the
great orators and discoverers and heroes to-day,
give themselves for Christ's poor and weak. In
all these events the law of the conservation of
energy reigns. Only force has changed its form.
And this law must be kept in mind as we pursue
our study of the day of judgment that must come
for all men.
Third : evolution has also thrown light upon
the development of conscience and the growth of
moral ideas. Early in his history man discovered
that theft discouraged industry and thrift, and
favored idleness. One man refused to plough
during long summer days, for a single hour of
theft by night achieved the fruits of his neigh
bor's labor. Soon stealing was found to be an
axe laid at the roots of the vineyard and orchard.
In the interest of trade, therefore, men came to
gether and made laws prohibiting theft — a law
formally recognized in the Mosaic code. And
in like manner, the other moral principles were
developed, and registered in codes and constitu-

350 The Automatic Judgment Seat
tions. But in Jesus Christ the negative laws,
"Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, thou
shalt not bear false witness," blossomed into the
great positive moralities, thou shalt love, thou
shalt hope, thou shalt trust. The distance trav
ersed by society between the age of Moses and
the age of Christ is like unto the flight through
space accomplished by our earth in journeying
from fire-mist to habitable earth.
With these principles in mind, what has Chris
tianity to say of the future life, and its penalties
and rewards ? First, life's great problem is to
keep the soul that has been achieved for you by
your ancestors and by your God. This is Christ's
question, "What shall it profit a man if he gain
the whole world and lose his own soul ? " The
problem of the bad man is : Given a body fear
fully and wonderfully made ; given a soul fully
equipped with faculties, rational, affectional, and
moral ; given nerves running out into the earth
beneath and the heavens above, how shall I,
through sin, most quickly cut the nerve toward
truth, and the nerve toward beauty, and the nerve
toward friendship, and the nerve toward Christ
and God, until I stand alone, without a single
nerve of relation — a mere lump of flesh, as truly
dead as a stone that has no nerve toward soil or
sun?

In Man 351
And the problem of the good man is this :
Given a soul, no matter from whence it came,
that now seems of the image of God, how shall
I exercise and strengthen the nerve of reason
toward truth, the nerve of memory toward a
noble past, the nerve of hope toward a great
future, the nerve of inspiration toward the immor
tal life, so that I shall be immortal through faith
and love toward God and Christ with whom I am
in communion ? For we must remember that
God's universe is one and moral ; that existence
is a struggle ; that the spiritually weak must go
to the wall ; that only the spiritually strong shall
survive. Existence is a victory after a fierce fight.
He who yields to temptation has unconsciously
sounded the retreat. Worldliness will take the
strenuousness out of the will, and leave it flabby.
Indifference will lead to atrophy of the religious
faculty as truly as neglect of his music, in Dar
win's experience, finally cut the nerve of melody.
Self-indulgence will consume the conscience as
rust the sword. There are multitudes who are
leaders in the world to-day whose splendid gifts
have been achieved for them by their ancestors,
and who are laying out their lives on the principle,
How little can I do for my higher spiritual life and
for Christ's little ones ; for my Saviour and King ?

352 The Automatic Judgment Seat
Unconsciously they are wasting all the spiritual
treasure their ancestors have achieved. They are
like men who have fallen heir to a father's fortune
and who now say, " How can I dissipate this treas
ure, and escape with only one or two hours a week
for industry and business ? " If men only under
stood this law of the spiritual harvest ; if they had
any comprehension of the grip of the great natural
forces that are sweeping them forward ; if many
of our scholars, merchants, and financiers under
stood that they were slowly reducing themselves
to the level of the oyster, in the scale of futurity,
they would reverse the method of life, grudge
every moment that they give to the body, to self
ish pleasures, to indulgent desires, and hoard all
the hours of each day for service to Christ's poor,
or self-sacrifice, for brooding upon the kingdom of
truth, in art or history or science or literature,
upon the kingdom of service and sacrifice and
sympathy. Oh ! if men were not blinded by their
self-indulgence, they would see God's angels stand
ing upon the horizon, and lifting the trumpet and
crying, " Beware ! Beware ! What shall it profit
a man if he gain the whole world and lose his
own soul ? " Battle for thy immortality. This is
nature's message as well as Christ's.
Christianity also unveils an automatic judg-

In Man 353
ment seat in man. It is as if when God would
send forth man, He called His earthly child
before His throne, and equipped him with in
struments of defence and offence against the
perils and temptations of life. And lest man
should become careless because the judgment
day was postponed until after death, God set up
within the soul all the machinery for daily visit
ing rewards and penalties upon the earthly pil
grim. Go where man will, he always carries
with him the full court of justice. Every day,
also, is a judgment day. Every night conscience
ascends her throne. The soul stands forth as
one accused. Memory offers the testimony.
Reason interprets the law. Judgment gives its
decision. And when conscience hath sent the
soul to the left, she waves her flaming sword
and stands at the gate of the lost paradise. Con
trariwise, he who does right and obeys the will
of God — giving a cup of cold water only to one
of Christ's little ones — for him the reward is
not postponed until a far-off judgment day. For
those who have eyes to see, God's angels are
ever on the wing, bringing Christ's rewards.
And but for this automatic judgment seat in
man the soul would be like a child shipwrecked
into existence at Sandy Hook and left, without
2A

354 The Automatic Judgment Seat
guide or handbook, to find its way through for-
ests, over plain and desert and mountain, with
out guide, without friend or succor, toward the
setting sun of California. But the soul is like
one of the ocean liners. The great steamer
carries instruments of self-propulsion, self-guid
ance, and self-support. It hath eyes that it may
see in darkness. It hath compass that discerns
the stars concealed by fog. It drifts not, but, —
" Behind the cold dark steel where stubborn billows part,
In low, tumultuous thunder throbs a fiery heart."
And thus equipped, even if the soul should
never return to its Maker, for every man, daily,
the hour of judgment is fully come through the
automatic judgment seat in man that John fore
saw with all its accompaniments of darkened
sun, reeling stars, and falling worlds.
Now this automatic judgment also explains the
awful warnings of God's word. What terror and
alarm in this divine book ! What separations
and descriptions that blanch the stoutest heart !
Listen ! " Because I called and ye refused, I
stretched out my hand and no man regarded;
therefore I will laugh at your calamity ; I will
mock when your fear cometh, when fear cometh
as desolation, and destruction as a whirlwind."

In Man 355
Misunderstanding, for centuries men have been
thinking chis was the voice of God speaking.
From this Scripture Dante and Milton created
their pictures of lurid, fiery torment. But the
voice of warning comes from the throne in man,
and not from the throne of God. It is the voice
of Nature. Proverbs is the book of Wisdom.
Wisdom is here personified and speaks to us.
The glutton lives for stalled ox and highly sea
soned foods. The drunkard lives for fiery stimu
lants and spiced wines. The lecherous man
lives for pleasure, and his kiss of passion sets a
blister on a forehead that hitherto was white.
And when this evil life has been persisted in,
Nature ascends her judgment seat.
The brain exclaims, " I have called to you, O ye
gluttons, and ye refused ! " The exhausted nerve
exclaims, " I have stretched out my hands, O ye
drunkards, and no man regarded it ! " And the
weakened heart cries out : " Ye would none of
my counsel ; ye mocked my reproof, and now
I," the injured brain, or nerve, or stomach ex
claims, " will laugh at your calamity ; I will
mock at your desolation. When the agonies of
sciatica and dyspepsia and all forms of physical
anguish shall desolate your life, ye shall eat
the fruit of your own devices." It is the voice

356 The Automatic Judgment Seat
of physiology. It is the voice of nerve and brain.
If the scholastic theologians once substituted
God for nature, to-day there is no scholar but
understands that the Book of Proverbs repre
sents nature and wisdom warning man. And
though the wrong-doer, when it is too late, pours
forth his tears, though he send forth prayers
and exceeding bitter cries, the laws of God will
move on. Nothing can stay the penalties. " He
that sows to the flesh shall of the flesh reap
corruption." "Whatsoever a man soweth, that
shall he reap." This is natural law. This is
true to-day and to-morrow. This law also fore
tells destiny.
But these rigorous penalties of nature that fill
a man with an earthquake of terror are, when
analyzed, forms of loving kindness and tender
mercy. Let no man think these natural penal
ties the strokes of an angry and iron God. They
are not forms of an outraged justice. Did men
but know it, the penalties of transgression are
inflections of pity and kindness. How griev
ously do men err in thinking the Ten Com
mandments are barriers fencing off sweet and
delicious fruits of sin ! In mountains there are
chasms to be crossed. And over the gorge the
ruler springs a bridge for herds and flocks and

In Man 357
peasants and the little children; and lest some
little one fall from the bridge and be dashed in
pieces, on either side of the bridge are railings
to keep the thoughtless ones from climbing into
places of peril. And shall men rebel against
the railings as cutting off liberty ? What if a
father should set his child's feet in a path
through a dangerous forest ? And what if on
either side of the path he plants a thorn hedge
with sharp briers and brambles ? If the child,
forgetting safety, would plunge into the forest
to pluck some flower or be poisoned by the ser
pent or scorpion, or when he would wander into
some dangerous quicksand or bog or slough,
then the thorn hedge is there to scourge him
back into the way of safety.
And who shall say that these stinging thorns
are not as truly forms of kindness as the smooth
pathway gay with flowers and bright with glow
of clustered food ? For God's laws are barriers
against self-destruction and death. Nature's pen
alties are medicinal. Her pains are curative. And
so far from God's laws taking away man's liberty,
they increase freedom. Disobedience is slavery.
Disobey the law of fire, and man is burned. Con
trariwise, obedience to the laws of thinking makes
man a writer ; obey the law of eloquence, and man

358 The Automatic Judgment Seat
is an orator ; obey the law of color, and man is an
artist ; obey the laws of nature and of God, and
man stands forth of goodness all compact — the
child of character, happiness, and influence. For
nature's penalties and God's punishments repre
sent not the anger of a judge, but the medicinal
love of a Father and a Friend, who will not break
the bruised reed, but who will bring judgment
unto victory.
When we read Christ's statements regarding
future penalties and rewards and interpret them in
the light of evolution, how fragmentary seem the
old teachings. Here is the " Inferno " of Dante
and the " Last Judgment " of Michael Angelo.
Passing over all other teachings of the Bible,
they select the drapery and imagery of Christ
and John, and adding the Jewish stories about
the burning flames of Sodom, they picture forth
a coming abyss of flame. Hell is a huge caldron
of fire. Billows of flame rise and fall. Lost
spirits in their agony drift on the waves, and
through the flame stretch imploring hands toward
horned devils, who with pitchforks push the tor
mented back into their abyss. Christ stands
forth a superb athlete, a glorified Achilles exult
ing in His power, to avenge Himself upon the
transgressors of His law. But every teaching

In Man 359
of Christ is outraged and destroyed by Dante
and Michael Angelo. They mistook the drapery
for the principle draped. In orchestral music
the leader includes the bass drum. This great
instrument skips most of the notes, and then
comes to lend volume to preexisting sound.
Now what if some foolish man should stop the
soloist, silence the great chorus, silence all the
violins, the cornets, the flutes, and ask the audi
ence to listen to the drum ? Can this drum
interpret Handel's theme ? And in Dante and
Milton's picture of the Inferno, the ten thou
sand voices of God and Christ and nature are
asked to become silent, while the bass drum
sounds and interprets the great theme called
the permanence of character !
Not the falling stars and the darkened sun
give solemnity to the hour when the soul gives
account unto God, but rather the fact that what
a man sows, that shall he reap, like producing
like in the kingdom of character.
Later on, Jonathan Edwards and the Calvin-
istic theologians came forward with their partial
conceptions. They took the words of Solomon,
where brain and nerve and stomach speak, say
ing to the glutton and the drunkard, "I will
laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your

360 The Automatic Judgment Seat
fear cometh," and constructed a form of future
punishment therefrom. Adam and Eve repre
sented the race. For their sin all mankind were
doomed to eternal punishment ; Christ came in
with a lifeboat to save a few of the lost wretches ;
as Edwards said: "The bigger part of men who
have died heretofore have gone to hell ; the whole
heathen world is hopelessly doomed ; against the
non-elect the wrath of God is burning, the fur
nace hot, the flames rage and glow, the devils
are awaiting for their coming like lions restrained
and greedy for their prey." On one page Ed
wards says : " God holds the unconverted over
the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or
a loathsome insect over the fire," "and from
time to time the generations in darkened lands,
without temple, without Bible, without religious
teacher, are swept into the future as the house
wife lifts the lids from the glowing coals and
sweeps flies into the flames." And to-day one
of our greatest denominations still includes that
tremendous statement in its confession of faith,
saying that certain men and angels are fore
ordained to everlasting death, these persons so
doomed, being "particularly and unchangeably
designed, and their number is so certain and
definite that it cannot be either increased 01
diminished."

In Man 36I
In his commentary on the "Confession of
Faith " (a text and reference book used to-day
in several theological seminaries), the late Dr.
Archibald Hodge, Professor of Theology in
Princeton Seminary, states with great detail the
reasons why he believes and teaches reprobation.
Thus far every attempt to revise and expel that
statement from the creed has been successfully
combated by a majority that wishes to retain
the doctrine. It would seem that if men be
lieved in reprobation reason would be shaken to
its foundation. Fortunately, preachers are asked
to accept the "Confession" "for system of doc
trine " only. Incredible that any man can charge
such infinite cruelty upon the all-merciful and all-
loving God ! The day the scholastics wrote that
chapter in the " Confession of Faith " they got
the devil confused with God. What ! read the
story of Christ's life, love, suffering, and death,
and then charge God with "particularly and
unchangeably designing" the majority of His
children to eternal torment ? The Bible says,
" Whosoever will may come " ; the " Confession
of Faith " says, " Certain men and angels are
fore-ordained to everlasting death." But of the
Westminster divines Paul's word holds, "Let God
be true and every man a liar." What epithet

362 The Automatic Judgment Seat
would one not hurl toward that stainless throne,
where sits the world's atoning Saviour, rather
than lift that creed toward God's throne and
affirm this doctrine for the elect few, and deny
God's wide, free mercy involved in "whosoever
will may come " ? For the man who does believe
in reprobation the hour of judgment has now
come. His sun is already darkened ; his moon
is turned to blood ; his stars have refused to give
their light. But, for the common people, driven
toward utter denial and atheism by such false
theology, there has risen the light of science to
reconcile contradictions, to enforce righteousness,
to convict of sin, and to recover men unto belief
and love for God revealed in our Saviour, Jesus
Christ. If science, with its new emphasis of the perma
nence of character, has taken away the dreams
of Dante and Milton, it has substituted reali
ties that are a thousand fold more impressive,
stern, and rigorous. Equipped with this auto
matic judgment seat, knitted in by ties of friend
ship and association with our fellows, responsible
for influence, how solemn the thought of that
coming judgment day ! Dante and Edwards and
the Westminster divines only skimmed the sur
face of nature's dark flood over which the mariner

In Man 363
sails. Ours is a moral universe. It is keyed to
righteousness, and not happiness. Dream be
comes thought ; thought becomes habit ; habit
becomes character ; character becomes destiny,
says the proverb. Conscience never takes a vaca
tion. The moral faculty is a judge ever on the
bench. Every hour the testimony comes in.
The laws of God hem man in on every side.
God never slumbers nor sleeps. Many there are
who dare not trust themselves out under the
skies that seem to blaze against them. For them
the heavens are brass. For them the earth is
iron and ashes. And for these broken hearts
and wrecked lives is there no place of recovery ?
What is death ? In youth the physical forces
that build up the tissues are strong, and the
forces that tear down the tissues are weak. In
extreme old age the conditions are reversed, and
the forces that tear down the tissues are strong,
and the forces that build up are weak. Soon
death comes. And what if the forces of selfish
ness and sin in the soul are stronger than the
forces of righteousness ? Is this the second
death ? If so, is there no helper, no new force
from without that can be invoked, no Saviour
that can stay the encroachments of the sins that
tear down the soul ? No Deliverer that can pour

364 The Automatic Judgment Seat
in the tides of life until that which builds up is
in excess of that which destroys ? No mariner
on a dark and stormy night, expecting every
moment to be engulfed in the yeasty sea, ever
strained his eyes toward the light guiding his
little craft into the harbor, as in sailing o'er life's
troubled sea men, heartbroken, look for the rising
of a star of hope and guidance.
And when we see Christ stretching pitying
hands toward the publican and whispering, " There
is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth" ;
when we see His tenderness toward that weeping
girl, concealing her tragedy as she wets Christ's
feet with her tears and wipes them with her
hair ; when we behold Christ's mercy toward Saul
slaying Stephen, and then Himself assuming the
responsibility of Saul's sin, raising up a new
leader in Stephen's place, and so bearing and
atoning for Saul's transgressions, and then going
on to meet Saul in a vision hour, when through
His Spirit He transforms Saul into Paul — then
we understand what glorious deliverance Christ
brings to each wicked courtier like Francis
Xavier, to the tinker, John Bunyan, to the crimi
nal, Jean Valjean. God is very tender. His heart
is full of tears. He goes weeping up the hills
of time. And men are the prodigals. Our sins

In Man 365
have broken His heart ! But in nature God
makes judgment become victory. If the withered
rose petal falls burned before the scorching heat,
it enters the root, and rising lends a deeper
crimson to the new opening bud. Out of the
black slough the lily whitens. O'er decaying logs
the wild flower springs. E'en on gravestones the
moss grows green. And sometime, somewhere,
God's love in Jesus Christ will turn man's mis
takes and sins, when repented of, into forces that
spring the soul the farther toward righteousness.
Could then personified Wisdom again return to
earth and speak to men as to familiar friends,
would not these be her words ?
" Oh ! ye that stand leaning over life's brink, and
dropping your plummet of imagination and philos
ophy down into the abyss of darkness and futurity ;
all ye whose life has become a ruin, its days
bitterness and its nights despair ; ye who for years
have been listening to the siren's voice, not think
ing it was as foolish to deny without adequate
reason as to affirm without sufficient argument ;
ye who have drifted until selfishness and indul
gence have left their slime upon the soul ; to
whose character envy and hate have lent poison,
whose greed and indulgence have brought spot and
stain ! For you no prophet need stand upon the

366 The Automatic Judgment Seat
horizon with trumpet proclaiming fear and alarm !
For you the sting of death is sin. Why will ye
die,ye sons of folly, ye daughters of blindness ? If
in the hour when you forecast that judgment day,
you shrink from the very thought of your insin
cerities, your indulgences, your enmities, your
evasions of honor ; if in that hour of shame, to
escape the sorrowing eyes you would fain call
upon the rocks and mountains to fall upon you and
hide you from the face of men and angels, then
know that there is a Deliverer ! With confidence
that is absolute, and with certainty that is un
yielding and immovable I point you to Jesus
Christ." What bread is to starving pilgrims, what cool
springs are to weary travellers, what the all-
glorious sun is to the one watching in the night
for the coming day ; that, and ten thousand times
more, Christ will be to thy life. He will stay the
tides of sin that work toward death. He will pour
in the tides that make toward life and immortality.
He will feed the nerves that relate thee toward the
kingdoms of truth and beauty, toward the kingdoms
of hope and love, and toward the realm of immor
tality. Because God and Christ live, ye shall live
also. But should you choose disobedience, until
by neglect and disuse the great nerves that relate

In Man $67
you to immortal realms are atrophied and die just
as the physical nerves die in the fleshly system,
then shall the eyes of the all-loving Saviour
become dreadful to thee. " For God shall bring
every work into judgment, with every secret
thing. And many of them that sleep in the dust
of the earth shall wake, some to everlasting life,
and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
But they that be wise shall shine as the brightness
of the firmament, and they that turn many to
righteousness as the stars forever and forever."

XV
Ehe Church: its problems anb Claims upon
American Socictg

" Many of these churches were far larger than the ancient
temples ; and if their architecture had not the stately and
simple dignity of the Doric fane, they were far richer in varied
works of art, more gorgeous in color, and infinitely more
charged with religious and aesthetic impression. Painting,
fresco, mosaic, stained glass, gilding, carved statues, colored
marbles, images, and reliefs in thousands, chased gold and
silver utensils, bronzes, ivories, silks, velvets, tapestries,
embroideries, illuminated books, carved wood, bells, clocks,
perfumes, organs, instruments, choirs of singers — every
beautiful and delightful thing was crowded together, with the
relics ci saints, the tombs of great men, the graves of citizens
for centuries.''
" So too the Church was morally a far nobler thing than
the Temple. It was no mere colonnade for processions,
lounging, and society. It was this, but much more also. It
was school, art-museum, music-hall, place of personal prayer,
of confession of sin, preaching, teaching, and civilizing. It
combined what at Athens was to be sought in Parthenon,
Theseum, Theatre, Academus, Stoa, and Agora — and very
much beside which was never known at Athens at all — sacra
ment, confession, penance, sermon."
" Christ loved the weak and the suffering. And the doors
of His house stood ever open to the weak, the suffering, the
halt, the blind, and the lame. The church of the Middle
Ages suffered little children to come unto Him. The poorest,
the weakest, the most abject, were welcome there. The
Priest, the Monk, the Nun, taught, clothed, and nursed the
children of the poor, and the suffering poor. The leper was
tended in lazar-houses, even it might be by kings and prin
cesses, with the devotion of Christian self-sacrifice. For the
first time in history there were schools, hospitals, poor-houses,
for the most lowly, compassion for the most miserable, and
consolation in Heaven for those who had found earth a Hell."
— Frederic Harrison, "The Meaning of History,"
pp. 235, 236, and 237. 370

XV
THE CHURCH: ITS PROBLEMS AND CLAIMS UPON
AMERICAN SOCIETY
The first things of the world physical and mental, and the
fascination of their story. The dawn of history and the be
ginnings of social institutions. The story of the first infant
church, and how its influence waxed. The enthusiasm of the
poor for the new Christian institution, and the final devotion
of the rich. Churches and cathedrals become treasure houses
for assembling all things rare and beautiful. Macaulay found
the spring of social progress in the Christian church. Every
thirty-three years death destroys all disciples, and the church
must conquer the devotion of a new generation. Society's
interest in the church to-day not universal, and the reasons
therefor. The claims of the church by reason of its influence
upon social institutions. The claims of the church by reason
of its emphasis of individual worth and culture. The social
problem at bottom a moral problem, to be solved by the dif
fusion of intelligence and the spirit of obedience to law. The
strife between the idle poor and the idle rich, and the attempt
to stir up hatred between the industrious poor and the indus
trious rich. The difficulty springing out of the selfishness of
some rich men who coin their strength and influence and
Sundays into gold. The difficulty springing out of the self
ishness of working men and labor leaders who use their influ
ence and their Sundays for selfish purposes. The difficulty
growing out of conservatism and an unwillingness to adopt
371

372 The Church : its Problems and
new methods. Every consideration of patriotism and love of
one's kind strengthens the claim of the church upon all classes
of the community.
/'"AUR age is deeply interested in origins and
^-^ beginnings. Historians are searching out
the genesis of arts, industries, and institutions.
Scientists are occupied with the question, how
the fire mist cooled into the solid earth, from
whence came plant life and animal life, and what
is the story of the ascent of man. Forgetting
the brilliant colors of the oriole and the scarlet
tanager, the biologist remembers only the cell
from which birds and beasts do spring. Leaving
the modern town and city, with their thousand
fold forms of comfort and beauty, the historian
turns his steps toward that heap that was once
the temple of Diana, or gives his life to the ruins
beside the Nile or Euphrates. In our own land
the passion for the antique, the enthusiasm for
old coins, old books, old tools and weapons, rep
resents man's eager desire to find out the begin
nings of progress and culture. During the
World's Fair keen observers noticed that the
rude ox-carts of old Mexico received as much
attention as the Baldwin engine ; that the forked
stick used for scratching the field in Arabia was
more interesting than the steel plough ; that the

Claims upon American Society 373
rude slings and stone hammers of savage tribes
had a fascination beyond that of the Krupp gun.
Society has now journeyed far from the point
at which our rude forefathers started. It is a
far cry from the lucifer match back to the fire
stones grinding to dust a little dry wood, a far
cry from the stone house to the bark hut, from
the wool coat to the garment of fig leaves, from
the pipe organ to the sea-shell with two strings
stretched across the mouth, from the telegraph
and the newspaper to the signal fires upon the
hilltops that in a single night flashed the news
of the Spanish Armada, from southern England
to northern Scotland, from the modern cathedral,
with songs and prayers, its emphasis of mercy,
truth, and justice, to the ancient altars, with
smoking sacrifices and rising incense.
It is easy to understand why the beginnings
of arts and handicrafts and institutions are impor
tant alike to historians and philosophers. For
Linnaeus the seed condenses the history of the
tree. For Cuvier the germ describes the bird,
Tyndall knew that the spring in the Alps would
tell the full story of the Rhine or Rhone. The
child is, indeed, the father of the man, but he is
also a handbook explaining the coming sage and
seer.

374 The Church: its Problems and
Fascinating, indeed, the story how a piece of
bark holding a few hieroglyphics has developed
into the modern book and library, but more fas
cinating still the story of the evolution of the
modern church, with its prayers and creeds, its
books and religious institutions. Lying in the
Mamertine prison in Rome, Paul asked his jailer
to bring him a candle, and wrote a letter to a
rich merchant in that far-off city named Philippi,
requesting his friend to read the letter to the
church that met in his house. It seems that
when there dawned the Sabbath day, full of
restful hours, a few families used to put on a
decent dress and make their way to the home
of this merchant, and there unite their words
of song and prayer and hope and aspirations.
With many questions and answers these citizens
conversed upon those high themes named jus
tice, mercy, law, conscience, duty, immortality,
Christ, God. But the tiny seed enlarges into
the redwood tree of California, the little moun
tain spring deepens and widens into the river
that bears up the commerce of nations. And
the little group assembled in the court of the
merchant's house in Philippi has enlarged into
a great company. The parchment that the mer
chant had borrowed from a friend in Jerusalem

Claims upon American Society 375
has multiplied and become a library upon ethics,
philosophy, and the rise and progress of morals
¦ — a library named the Bible.
The little room in which the families assembled
has widened into the dimensions of the vast cathe
dral named Milan or Cologne. The low ceiling
has lifted itself up into the arches of York
Minster and the great abbey. The open squares
for light have become arched windows, with
stained glass, rich with the faces of angels. The
cross then exhibited as the instrument upon
which their Master had lost His life has been
lifted to the summit of the cathedral and made
golden. The verse of the hesitating preacher
has deepened into the verse of Chrysostom, " the
golden-mouth," and Bernard, with flaming tongue
and heart of fire. The rude drawings with which
the first church was adorned has developed into
frescoes for the Sistine Chapel, while the great
masters have toiled to enrich the walls with
color and canvas, to fill every niche with its
statues and rich marbles.
That little group of children led into Phil
emon's house to hear one who had just come
from Jerusalem tell the story how Christ lifted
the children in His arms and blessed them,
has multiplied into innumerable millions coming

376 The Church : its Problems and
together upon each Sabbath day to linger long
upon the great truths that make for justice in
home and school and street. To the sanctuary,
also, come the youth and maiden, moving toward
a marriage altar crowned with flowers, kneeling
there to ask the unseen God to keep their lives
as white as the lilies that bloom beside them,
to cause all the years to be filled with an atmos
phere of happiness sweeter than these blossoms,
to pray that death may not be an untimely frost
falling upon their young lives. To the sanctu
ary, also, as the years go by, come kings and
emperors, subjects and servants, the lettered and
the unlearned to be consecrated by the same
symbol of purity, comforted with the same words
of consolation and in the hour of death to be
pointed to that realm above the stars into which
God doth gather all the children of goodness.
Interesting the story how the rule of Hercules,
self-appointed, has developed into the rule of
Washington or Lincoln, chosen by the people ;
but more thrilling still the story how the divine
ideas of the church have slowly permeated the
morals of Pascal, the philosophy of Newton, the
decisions of Hale, the poetry of Milton, the music
of all masters, the eloquence of all statesmen,
the song of all singers from David to Tennyson

Claims upon American Society 377
and Browning. Could we go back to the era of
Bramante and Michael Angelo, it would not be
difficult to understand the claim that the church
made upon all citizens of that time. In that
era of enthusiasm for ecclesiastical architecture
builders made their way into Africa, seeking out
marbles of yellow and green and black, and came
back with porphyry from Egypt, ivory from the
southern forests, having swept all towns and
cities for objects beautiful enough to adorn these
temples of praise and worship. The cathedral
was the very heart of civilization, being at once
library, gallery, museum, university. For its
enrichment princes returning from distant lands
brought paintings, frescoes, stained glass, colored
marbles, illuminated books and missals. Knights
and soldiers victorious in battle brought utensils
of gold and silver, with bronzes and ivory.
Noble lords and ladies brought curtains of silk
and velvet, with rich tapestries and hangings.
But let no man think this enthusiasm for the
church was a strange thing. By a thousand
achievements for humanity, the church had con
quered the devotion of kings and subjects alike.
In an era when unwelcome babes and infants
maimed and deformed were exposed, the disciple
reading Christ's words about little children went

378 The Church: its Problems and
forth to rescue the orphans, and reared homes and
schools for these deserted babes. In that era,
also, a favorite slave of the emperor spilled a
goblet of wine upon his lord's robe, and was
beheaded in the presence of the guests, his body
being thrown into the fountain as food for the
fish. And then it was that the Christians began
to plead the cause of the slaves and the op
pressed. About that time, also, one thousand
four hundred gladiators were slain in the Coli
seum for the delectation of eighty thousand spec
tators. But a young monk, Telemachus, leaped
into the amphitheatre and indicted the emperor
and the people for the murder, and though he
himself was slain the gladiatorial shows were
forever ended, and the church was again victor
over inhumanity and crime. At a time, too,
when the streets of Rome and Alexandria were
filled with the lame, the blind, and the halt, who
were left to starve, the disciples began to em
phasize Christ's kindness to the lame man and
leper, and soon Christians went forth to build
asylums for the children of weakness and in
validism. When three centuries had passed, the
whole empire was ringing words of praise for
these disciples.
What simplicity, what purity were theirs !

Claims upon American Society 379
What heroism under suffering! What fortitude
and defeat ! How beautiful the character of
Perpetua and Felicita! How unconquerable the
ardor of Ignatius and Polycarp ! When a few cen
turies have passed by the church had conquered
a thousand forms of injustice and cruelty. In
that hour rich men crowded into the temple to
empty their gold into its treasure chests. The
captain marched his soldiers in the door of the
sanctuary and, unsheathing his sword, offered his
weapon for defending the sacred altar. Soon
the princes ordered a cross, once the stigma of
ignominy and shame, to be made of gold, and
that cross lent loveliness to beauty itself. One
day the emperor ascended the throne and pro
claimed Christianity as the religion of the empire.
Without having struck a single blow Christianity
had conquered. Kings, soldiers, orators, archi
tects, musicians, jurists, and merchants of the
world, — all these became captives, marching in
Christ's glorious triumphal procession. Then fol
lowed centuries when the avenues leading to the
sanctuary were crowded with worshippers, when
king and peasant alike uncovered upon the ap
pearance of the priest, with whom were all the
issues of life and death.
But soon the gold in the treasure chests of the

380 The Church: its Problems and
church, the power wielded by popes, appealed to
the greed of avaricious men and roused the ambi
tion of men strong and crafty. Putting on the
garb of piety, selfish leaders went forth to spoil
the people in the name of religion. Then came
ages dark, indeed, and full of degradation.
Despising the body, monks wore rags and ate
dirt. Mendicant friars thought the nearer they
approached to beasts in life the nearer they would
stand to God in death. Dying as worms, they
hoped to waken as angels. The multitudes stood
in squalor and ignorance, waiting for death to
redeem them to eternal bliss and happiness. In
the era of Augustus, when the emperor appeared
in his royal chariot, the people grovelled in the
dirt and threw dirt in their hair, so as to increase
the contrast between the spotless garment of the
king and the soiled robes of the subject. Imi
tating this custom, theologians thought to cause
the divine throne to go up in majesty by making
man go down toward the depravity of beasts and
devils. In that age the people were guiltless of
any knowledge of books. Religious priests were
so ignorant that when a priest had two ideas in
one winter it made the year notable.
But with the renaissance of intellect, and the
reformation of conscience and morals, came the

Claims upon American Society 3 81
era of renewed power for the church. Luther and
Melanchthon in Germany, Wycliffe, Cranmer, and
Knox in England and Scotland, the scholars who
founded the great universities, the zealous print
ers who scattered books among the common
people, the rise of invention, discovery, the new
science, the evangelical movement under Whit
field, not only corrected the old evils, but clothed
the church with its old-time power. Soon the
abuses of priests and prelates, who had been,
indeed, wolves in sheep's clothing, were forgotten.
For when one singer makes a discord, man does
not give up his love of music. Man closes his
ears to the untaught singer or the untuned instru
ment and remembers only the hours when his ears
were ravished with notes divine. To-day the mis
rule of great cities, where the treasury is looted
and the taxes of the poor wasted, has become al
most unbearable. And yet the abuses do not rob
men of their faith in free institutions. Despite all
the abuses of priests and prelates during the
Middle Ages, for full two hundred years now, the
church has been clothed with sceptres of power,
having been the spring of education, philanthropy,
reform ; being also, as Macaulay said, " The chief
instrument that has made for man's progress in
knowledge and culture."

382 The Church : its Problems and
Now again has come an era when the multi-
tude has lost its enthusiasm for the church. No
longer do the people throng and crowd toward the
church, waiting for the cathedral doors to open.
In England, perchance, the fact that one is a
good churchman may smooth the way to political
preferment and social position — not in the repub
lic. Sitting in the windows of Oriel College,
Keble wrote his poem on the Sabbath — that
"sweet day of sacred rest." For the gifted
scholar Sunday was the library day, the day for
reason and the imagination. But could the poet
return to earth and visit a typical city some
Sunday morning, he would find the library empty,
the college windows deserted, while all the streets
are filled with young women and men bicycling,
who would be as helpless in the great library in
Oxford University as so many Fiji Islanders, and
who sincerely believe that Sunday was given to
the cultivation of their very highest faculties —
namely, the muscles of their legs. All will gladly
confess that our Christian fathers were the archi
tects of our free institutions, whose industry,
education, and Christian character laid the founda
tions of our national wealth, and handed vast
treasure over to their children. Unfortunately,
many sons and daughters who have inherited

Claims upon American Society 383
this treasure from their fathers are without
their fathers' faith, and are conspicuous for
their refusal to recognize in any way their
religious obligations. For, if Christianity lent
the fathers power to achieve position and prop
erty, the luxury they conquered has slain
their children. Many wealthy parents weep for
their children, and look and look in vain for
some agent to do for their sons and daughters
what poverty and adversity did for their noble
ancestors. Some churches in Boston and New York are
always crowded ; also, if the American traveller
visits certain great churches in London or
Edinburgh, he finds them crowded to the doors
with rich and poor, and high and low, without
regard to class or rank. If he opens the re
ports of the British Society of Scientific Re
search, he finds there a plea as to the importance
of religion for a free people made by the present
prime minister of England. If he goes to the
library to ask for some notable book of philosophy
or theology, he may be handed " The Foundations
of Religious Belief," written by the leader of the
House of Commons, Mr. Balfour. If he opens
the biography of England's greatest orator of this
century, or its greatest statesman, he will find

384 The Church: its Problems and
both saying that they made it a rule never, not
even in the most tumultuous period of their public
career, to permit any event to keep them from
their place in the house of God upon the Sabbath
day. In our own country, also, in general our
presidents, cabinet officers, our justices and great
est preachers, merchants, jurists, editors, college
presidents, are professedly Christian men. Unfor
tunately another class, our working people, have
become alienated from the church, while if our
politicians go to church, they go to ponder those
important questions of worship or duty, only pro
vided some one does not give them an invitation
to dinner — an event not to be set aside by those
slight considerations called " the laws of Almighty
God." There are thoughtless multitudes also who
go to the church at occasional intervals or in
connection with public events of striking impor
tance. Multitudes are labor-worn, care-ridden,
gold-mad, and stone-blind to vice and also virtue.
Leisure has almost gone. Through these classes
our fame as a nation of hoodlums, our reputation
for Sunday theatres and music halls, our fame
as Sunday bicyclers and horse-racers and beer
drinkers and law-breakers, is complete.
If over against this indifference of the multi
tude we set the claims of the church upon patri-

Claims upon American Society 385
ots, we shall find that these claims are many and
strong. Mark the affiliation of the church with
art, science, and literature. Because Christ taught
the child was divine, the church founded schools,
colleges, and universities for educating its youth.
Because man was made in God's image the church
founded chairs of philosophy to study the laws of
reason, imagination, and conscience. Because the
unseen God led the stars forth and called them
all by name, Isaac Newton divided his time be
tween the study of the stars, and the study of his
New Testament. Because earth's beauty was
the divine robe, men tasked themselves to write
books that should tell the full story of soils, stars,
and suns, sought out arts beautiful enough for
the expression of infinite beauty, polished poems
suitable for Christ's worship and praise. Since
God was a father and all men were brethren the
church began to discuss upon high politics, rebuk
ing the king for his pride and the subject for
his sins, discoursing upon the hearth the mar
riage tie, the market, the state, the rights of lib
erty, the duty of wealth. It soon asked the poet
to justify God's ways to man. It asked literature
to plead the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
To the minds of a thousand scholars, not profess
edly Christians, it came to color their atmosphere
sc

386 The Church: its Problems and
with the rich tints of a spiritual life. Soon Chris-
tianity entered into civilization as the summer
lies upon the warm, richly colored fields of
the earth. As that pilgrim host, marching
toward their promised lands, were comforted
by the thought that the heroes and fathers
were also marching in the sky above them,
and waving banners of victory, so the hosts
of society journey forward the more rapidly
because of the vision of the unseen God, and
that immortal realm where the hosts shall at
last encamp, and hang out the signals of vic
tory. The church also has unique claims upon the
individual. The genius of Christianity is man
making and man growing. Christianity is the
science of right living. It teaches the individual
how to make the most of himself. It asks the
youth whose ideals have been battered and marred
by the strife and tumult of the week, to go aside
one day and bow the head in the presence of God,
man's Father ; of Christ, man's Saviour, and test
himself by the higher life and ideals. It whispers
that if the arts are to be high, if the sciences are
to be rich, and the laws worthy, that the indi
vidual must be great in mind and heart. And
the history of civilization seems to justify thia

Claims upon American Society 387
emphasis of the individual. For the beginnings
of law we go back to one who lingered long years
in the desert with God — Moses. For all art and
beauty, we go back to that blind bard in Greece,
whose physical eyes were closed to the earthly
sights, but whose spiritual eyes opened upon that
unseen realm. The palaces and galleries of
Venice also go back to that blameless knight
and stainless scholar who laid the foundations of
that city of the sea. Indeed every great institu- ,
tion is explained by a great individual. Earth's
feeblings represent the insect life that busy them
selves with the forces that appear to the eye, and
the ear, and the appetite. A great man is one
who dwells apart and works up divine principles
into character. The hour of Sunday worship
therefore represents a protest against the life
that creeps and crawls. The church asks each
individual to bow the head, remembering that
when man plans God purposes, that when man
weeps God pities, that when man falls God for
gives, that when man dies the everlasting arms
receive the fainting pilgrim.
By reason of the modern social problems and
the strained relations between the classes, also,
the church has a peculiar claim upon the citizens
of this era. Our epoch is characterized by new

388 The Church : its Problems and
tools, new social forces, new forms of wealth and
poverty. Old ideas and old institutions have
slowly disintegrated. The institutions that for
merly made for social order are dissolving. All
these things are in a state of flux, and no man
can say when shall begin that era of construction
with the new political economy, the new sociology,
and the new theology. For the moment the battle
is growing fiercer. Every month is tightening
the tension between the classes. The chasm be
tween the rich and poor is slowly broadening and
deepening. The working classes, once patient,
have become irritated, and wear brows black
with hate. The very restraint of the leaders is
ominous. Tools also are multiplying so rapidly
that society cannot adjust itself fast enough to
give employment to people thrown out of positions,
through invention. New instruments develop so
rapidly that it is believed one million men are
constantly out of work, beholding schools which
their children cannot enter, foods they cannot
buy, conveniences their wives cannot possess,
asking only for work that is denied them ; the
cry of the poor has become exceeding bitter.
Nevertheless, by way of preeminence the poor
need the church.
And if many rich men and prosperous are Chris-

Claims upon American Society 389
tian in their bearing, some are harsh and heartless,
flaunting their luxury and increasing the peril.
Wise men feel that unless the church can
spiritualize wealth and property, teaching the
employer that his laborers are brethren, teaching
the laborers that the employer has rights, relieving
the tension through the law of kindness and sym
pathy, free institutions are doomed. And to-day
it is the Christian teacher that stands between the
two combatants. There are 100,000 clergymen in
the land, and it is the lot of fully 75,000 of them
to work among the children of the poor. Their
average salary is less than $900 a year. They
seek to educate children, and visit the poor,
strengthening the weak, carrying their burdens,
dissolving their hatred, plying men with considera
tions of industry, economy, and thrift, with the
laws of honor and justice and God. And these
leaders of the church work more hours in the day,
bear more burdens, know deeper anguish and tra
vail of soul, further justice and truth, suffering
unto blood for social order and peace, and their
very shoe latchets many who criticise are not
worthy to unloose. Without their self-sacrificing
labors this nation would soon be plunged into
social anarchy and ruin. Surely all who believe
in the sanctity of property, the permanence of the

390 The Church: its Problems and
home, the perpetuity of free institutions, are under
a solemn obligation to support these, who plead
the cause of the poor, affirming that there is an
unseen God at work in this world whose power
is mightier than armies, more omnipotent than
kings and presidents, before whom all the thrones
of earth and its empires and armies are but the
playthings of a child, and who is guiding the
world upward toward the new times of social
prosperity and peace.
With the increase of wealth has come luxury,
and in multitudes the iron has gone out of the
blood and the stern sense of duty has departed
from conscience. In this era, when relations
between the classes are strained to the uttermost,
the churches are suffering through the indiffer
ence of the working classes on the one side,
and of the rich classes upon the other. Recently
it was my fortune to converse with a mer
chant of national repute. Asked as to his re
ligious convictions, he expressed his belief that
Christianity was the hope of American society.
Falling into a meditative mood, he suddenly ex
claimed, " While I wish my children to be trained
in Christian principles, personally I never go to
church." When questioned as to how he spent
the Sabbath day, he said : " I use it to put myself

Claims upon American Society 391
into fine physical form and training for the duties
of the week. My competitor (mentioning a great
merchant) is a church man, always in his pew and
with the Bible class, and giving himself to many
forms of Christian activity. He is ten years
older than I. Now my idea is that he gives one-
seventh of his nerve force and brain power to the
church. I have made up my mind that by giving
the seven-sevenths of my nervous and mental
powers to business, that ultimately I can outstrip
him in the commercial world. I ride horseback
on Sunday morning, sleep and rest on Sunday
afternoon, fulfil an occasional duty on Sunday
evening, and on Monday morning I feel like a
race-horse." Meanwhile this merchant has de
serted the church, left his pastor to carry on his
work of instructing children and youth, to carry
wisdom to the poor and ignorant, not know
ing that the time must come when perhaps the
untrained poor will rise up in their envy and
hatred to burn and pillage and plunder. And over
against the selfish rich stands the demagogue who
wishes to use the poor for his own advantage.
This agitator urges upon the working classes that
the power of wealth must be met by the organized
force of labor; that often the club and the fire
brand are necessary ; that some strikes must not

392 The Church: its Problems and
be embarrassed by the ten commandments ; that
occasionally it is necessary to kill and steal and
destroy ; that moral teachers are paid servants of
the wealthy class. In many cities these agitators
have driven the working people from the church,
to the grievous loss of both parties. And between
the selfishness of the rich and the selfishness of
the poor, thirteen or fourteen millions of our chil
dren and youth are coming up in this republic as
ignorant of the ten commandments as the Hotten
tots in Africa, or the beasts of our stockyards.
The work of the church in the villages and
towns is also suddenly complicated by the very
multiplicity of intellectual interests and the num
ber of services on the Sabbath day. For the
fathers, the Sunday was the college day, the
library day, and by reason of hungry minds and
hearts they invented services many and long.
Now, every hour is crowded, and the pulpit has
ceased to be the sole source of moral instruc
tion. Conservative church officials also love the
traditions past, and are reluctant to adopt new
methods. Both pastor and people are suffering
through an excess of preaching. More preachers,
doubtless, are dying through the second service
than, as has been said, through all other diseases
together. The late Professor Swing left a deli-

Claims upon American Society 393
cious sarcasm upon the over-multiplication of
religious addresses.
In a far-off century a hermit who had reflec
ted long in the desert, returned to a village and
assembled the people to give them the result of
his reflections. Some two-score years later, when
the great orator died, he left four sermons. In
their grief, the people who stood about his grave
asked if a successor could ever be found. One
came, at last, and dying fifty years later, he left
ten sermons on the deep things of God. Once
preaching was invented, the people determined
to have much of it. The doctors say, 'Dress
warmly,' and at once each person buys a cart
load of clothes; the railway came, and all travel
all the time; like the old lady who had $1000
stock in a railway, and who was observed to be
in the cars of her line daily, and explained that
she wished to enable her company to declare a
dividend; beer was discovered by the old Ger
mans, and the modern Teuton drinks daily thirty
glasses ; a weekly newspaper was founded, and
the overworked citizen buys a morning paper,
and noon edition, an afternoon impress, two
evening papers, and then hastens home to put
a mustard plaster on the back of his much cul
tured head ; preaching came, and society said,

394 The Church : its Problems and
let us have that blessing all the time, twice or
three times each Sunday, a Sunday-school, and
two Endeavor Societies ; and now when the
preacher dies at forty, he leaves behind "the
manuscripts of four thousand sermons, each writ
ten for a small consideration."
We smile at the humor of the great man's
protest against this overpreached generation.
Fortunately the younger men have found the
way out of the difficulty. They have reduced
their Sunday services to three; for the best of
reasons they give the entire week to the careful
preparation of one morning sermon, with the
result that the thoughtful men in the commu
nity are returning to the pews. The one Sunday-
school in the afternoon is also strengthened by
the better work of unwearied teachers, and there
fore is recovering its old power and influence
and becoming a family school. The evening
service is given up entirely to the young peo
ple's service, under the general direction of the
pastor, while parents are asked to spend their
Sunday evenings at home with their little chil
dren. The gains to the sermon, for both people
and pastor, are enormous. That which the old
methods and multiplied services could not do,
the new plan is easily accomplishing. The

Claims upon American Society 395
church, through better methods, seems to be
entering upon a new era of influence in the
community. To-day every consideration that makes for the
permanence of society asks that every patriot
and citizen should formally and publicly unite
with some one of the many churches of our cities
and country. In a republic a President strength
ens reverence for free institutions by taking the
oath of office. Prosperity also is made more sa
cred for that dramatic act, the signing of a deed.
Justice is advanced in the courts by a pledge to
speak the truth. The home is guarded through
a form called the marriage ceremony. The col
lege is the more surely founded because of the
act of matriculation. And the laws of man and
God are strengthened by that dramatic event
called uniting with the church and swearing
fidelity to conscience and the highest Christian
ideals. The church has now entered upon one
of the most trying periods of all history. The
battle is to be fierce, even though the issue is
not doubtful. During the late war certain citi
zens declined to take sides either against slavery
or for it, and shame now mantles the cheeks of
their children. And when the sunset gun doth
boom and the battle end, miserable indeed will

396 The Church : its Problems and Claims
be all those who meet Paul and John, Luther
and Livingstone, Milton and Cromwell, the
heroes and fathers of yesterday, having had no
part in their battle, having received no scar and
won no spur, having never sought to correct
the weakness of the present church by lending
it their example or influence. In this time,
when the needs of the church are so many and
so important, every patriot and citizen should
join not one church, but many. Journeying to
the seashore in the summer, there in some
chapel let the patriot and Christian swear fidel
ity to conscience and culture. Returning to the
city in the winter, there in some church let
him pledge anew his interest to all the forces
that make for justice and mercy, for obedience
to the citizen, man's brother, to Christ, the
soul's Saviour, to God, the soul's Father.

INDEX

Addison, 8.
Advantages of the ministry, 35 ; its
teachings and emphasis perma
nent and eternal, 35.
Achilles, 42.
Acropolis, 44, 92.
Arnold, Matthew, 46, 67, 76; na
ture, 271 ; his view of Plato, 271 ;
his definition of religion, 299.
Archias, 49.
Angelo, Michael, 54, 71, 117; last
judgment, 123, 268, 330, 358, 377.
Alcibiades, 50, 174.
Africa, 55, 59.
Architects, 55.
Abelard, 67.
Achievements of intellect, 70.
Advancement of the common peo
ple, 78.
Ambrose, 79.
All great leaders from the poor,
Moses, Lincoln, 79.
All great poets from the poor,
David, Burns, 79.
All great inventors from the poor,
Watt, Stevenson, 79.
All great artists from the poor, Cor-
reggio, Corot, Millet, 80.
All great scientists from the poor,
Newton, Ferguson, 80.
All nature vibrating in music the
thought of a world mind, 81.
Alexander, Addison, 85.
Aristotle, 94, 216.
Adams, 95.
Apollo, 117.
Aphrodite, 117.
Ancient custom of sacrifice, 121.

Augustinians, 123.
Atheistic materialism, 124.
Agnostic's, the, view, 143.
Astrologer, the, and the princess,
ISO-
Attempts to cheapen man, 162.
Aram, Eugene, 167.
Adjustment, the, of man to God,
169; to nature, 169; to environ
ment and knowledge, 169.
Agassiz's idea, 171.
All liberty bought with martyrdom,
177.
Advance in wisdom measured by
conception of God, 183.
All our knowledge partial, 185.
All conceptions of deity climaxed
in Christ, 195.
Astronomer's, the, search, 205.
Archaeologist's, the, search, 205.
All the highways of knowledge have
converged of late, 205.
Antagonism to the doctrine of evo
lution, 207.
Atheistic view of evolution, 211.
Atheism the apotheosis of blind
faith, 211.
Advancement of man to inconceiv
able heights, 213.
Adam, 216.
Appeal made by the evolutionary
view to reason and to divine help,
221.
Atheism, 268.
Agnosticism, 268.
Absorption and indifference, 270.
Avernus, 271.
All beauty and marvel needs a
master mind to explain it, 274.

397

398

Index

Atom, the, offered as the world's
architect, 275.
Aladdin's wonders paled, 275.
Augustine, 284, 341.
All the theological systems in
Christ's parables, 284.
Arguments the raw material of
thought, 287
Apparent depth not always evi
dence of profundity, 287.
All institutions rest upon figurative
teaching, 288.
Appian, the, Way, 294.
Associations of home and affection
in the East connected with the
" way," 296, 297.
Attractiveness of God through
Christ, 302.
Athens, 326.
Approach to God different for
every one, 332.
Arnold, Benedict, 342.
Automatic, the, judgment seat in
man, 344.
Answer, the, of nature, 345.
All things drawn upward to Christ,
345-
Altruism only developed with man,
348.
Automatic, the, judgment seat ex
plains the warnings of the Bible,
354 ; how it has been misunder
stood, 355.
Adam and Eve, 360.
Attempted revision of creed, 361.
All classes drawn to the sanctuary,
376.
Attempt of theologians to increase
the majesty of God's throne, 380.
Alienation of the working people,
384- B
Bede, 8.
Bunyan, 10 ; his selection of names
for his characters, 91; his faith,
125, 364.
Browning, letters of the Brownings,
x7, 23. 2S, 47. 74. "8, 168 ; his

statement of relative greatness,
188, 301, 306, 307, 377.
Beecher, 17, 31; his statement of
life's difficulty, 97, 168, 331, 342.
Brooks, 17, 31.
Book, a, the mummy of a soul, 17.
Bruce, 19, 67, 210.
Bernard, 19, 79, 375.
Belshazzar, 24.
Bryant, 31.
Bancroft, 31.
Bushnell, 34, 173.
Burke, 42, 70 ; his view of the Ser
mon on the Mount, 75, 98 ; charge
upon Warren Hastings, 142 ; his
eloquence, 184, 231; oration on
India, 285, 342.
Brown, John, 43, 222.
Burns, " a man's a man for a' that,"
51, 79, 140, 342.
Bacon, 54, 94, 102, 140, 150.
Bright, John, 56.
Buddha, 57.
Barbarous tribes, 69.
Booth, General, 72 ; his words, 318.
Beethoven, 85.
Beauty, the, and power of God's
throne shown forth by Christ,
126.
Borgias, the, 142.
Byron, 150.
Beginning of man's creative work,
160.
Botanist's, the, search, 205.
Baronius's statement regarding sci
ence and religion, 209.
Biologist's, the, indebtedness to
evolution, 210.
Bible, no other book holds such
vital relations to mind and heart,
229 ; effect of its withdrawal from
the world, 231 ; its influence on
child life, poetry, literature, and
oratory, 231 ; its principles the
substance of law and jurispru
dence, 231 ; its universal hold
and adaptation, 231 ; recently
the centre of storm and attack,

Index

399

*3i ; its former treatment, 232 ;
transition period, 232 ; attacks of
wit and scholarship, 232; illus
tration of modern treatment, 232 ;
treasure invites attack, 232; er
rors and mistakes charged upon
it, 234; confidence of many
destroyed, 234; the smoke now
clearing away, 234 ; its authority
more firmly established, 234 ; its
mission just begun, 235 ; its per
petuity, 235 ; new conception of
it, 237; faith in it strengthened,
237; new delight in its study,
237 ; former misconceptions, 237 ;
the Bible a library, 238; when
and how written, 238; distance
in time between earliest and latest
writings, 238; its witness to the
folly of sin and wisdom of right
living, 239; a history of the rise
and progress of ideas of right and
wrong, 239; a record of what
God has done, 239; of morals
and mercy, 239; its unity, 239;
its description of man's rise and
progress, 240; the Bible re
opened, 250; its human and
divine elements, 251 ; the Bible a
lamp, 231 ; the Bible a unique
illustration of the principle of
evolution, 252; at the threshold
of its appreciation, 252; its com
fort for young and old, 253;
effect of its constant perusal by
all for five years, 253 ; God's book
of morals and mercy, His book
of progress, 253.
Buttresses evidences of strength,
258.
Baker, knowledge derived through
him, 263.
Ball, his computations, 264.
Ben Hut 297.
Bismarck,. 302.
Butler, Bishop, 331.
Booth, Wilkes, 342.
Branmante, 377.

Balfour's " foundations of belief,"
383.
Beginnings of law in Moses, 387 ;
of art and beauty in Homer,
387.
Battle, the, now fierce, 388.

Choate, Rufus, 8.
Casdmon, 8.
Commerce and trade, 13.
Culture without college, 13 ; " Cul
ture Clubs," 14.
Cromwell, life of, 17, 72, 90, 95,
230, 396-
Carlyle, 23, 25, 46, 74.
Christianity of yesterday an obstacle
for to-day, 26; its action in law
and medicine, 26 ; a preparation
for life here and hereafter, 53;
the friend of mind and increase
of knowledge, 54; its influence
on fine arts, 55 ; Christianity
moving forward, 57 ; its ultimate
triumph, 57; its future, 59; it
challenges investigation, 257 ; it
takes nothing for granted, 257;
its appeal to the reason, 258 ; its
confidence in itself, 259 ; confused
with traditions, 270 ; its view of
the future life, 350 ; a pleader for
the oppressed, 378.
Collyer's, Robert, statement regard
ing prayer, 27.
Church-going often regarded as not
obligatory, 28.
Channing, 31, 34; his faith, 123.
Correggio, 42, 80.
Cato, 43.
Cranmer, 44, 116, 381.
Crimea, 44.
Christ's waxing fame, 4S; His teach
ings watchwords of coming revo
lution, 48; His enthusiasm for
humanity, 51; He capitalized
manhood, 52 ; fascination of His
story, 64; His sufferings, 64;
His career and its results, 65;

400

Index

His fame in the future, 66 ; expla
nation of His supremacy, 66;
His teachings and character, 66 ;
His heroism, 67; His attitude
toward His disciples, 67; the
supreme example of genius in
the realm of intellect, 68 ; His
influence upon law, letters, lit
erature, and life, 73; earth's
supreme literary artist, 73; His
four 'biographies, 74 ; His opti
mism, 76 ; His serenity, 77 ; His
breadth of outlook, 77 ; His tem
porary depression on Calvary,
77; His thought of God, 82;
Christ the world's burden-bearer,
82 ; His view of immortality, 83 ;
His testimony to immortality, 86 ;
His name above every name, 89 ;
fascination of his name, 90; His
career a strange one to fulfil
prophecy, 93; His influence on
law, literature, art, and science,
94 ; His universal supremacy, 94 ;
His supremacy under stress of
events, 97 ; His early years, 97 ;
Christ a contradiction of all law,
99 ; untrained and untaught, 99 ;
His relation to wealth and pov
erty, 100; His influence upon
political economy, 100; His rela
tion to the family, 100 ; Christ the
universal man, 101 ; the ideal of
all nations, 101 ; His influence
upon manhood and womanhood,
101 ; the ideal for man and
woman, 102; His emphasis of
the personal element, 102; no
records written by Him, 102;
His method personal, 103; His
test and plan, 103; Christ the
incarnate heart of God, 104; His
view of the worth of human life,
106 ; His estimate based on quali
ties within, 107 ; His enthusiasm
for humanity, 108 ; His unveiling
of God to a child's understanding,
120 ; His portrayal of God to

man, 121 ; changed views of His
teachings in the Middle Ages,
123; His religious teachings in
contrast with other systems, 123 ;
His conception of the church,
129 ; His test personal allegiance
to Himself, 130; His disciples
united in love of Him, 130 ; His
idea of the church, 131; His
beautiful use of symbols, 132;
He leaves man free in natural and
spiritual life, 133; Christ abroad
upon His mission of recovery,
136; His enthusiasm for humanity
a part of His mastery over man,
163 ; His new conception of the
soul's worth, 164; His enthusiasm
for the soul brings renaissance of
the mind and heart, 164; His
uplifting of prodigal man, 177;
His revelation of the Father, 196 ;
His conversion of the cosmic law,
222; His influence leavening
society, 222 ; His substitution of
the real idea for the symbol, 246 ;
its evolution shown in the Bible,
246 ; similar evolution of the idea
of God, 246; Christ the only
guide, 277; Christ's revelation
of God's mind and heart, 278;
His exhortations to us, 278 ; His
supremacy among men of genius
illustrated by His use of parables
and pictures, 281 ; His condensa
tion of systems of theology, 284 ;
His supremacy over all scholars
and philosophers, 288; His use
of illustrations to portray Himself,
293; Christ "the way" for rich
and poor, 303 ; for ignorant and
troubled, 303 ; His touch upon
all emergencies and conditions,
305 ; His sympathy and comfort
for all; 305; His beauty and
purity, 306; Christ the way to
immortal hope, 307; His em
phatic statement regarding the
future, 309; Christ pervading all

Index

401

law and life, 331 ; His teachings
the fundamentals, 345; His law
of self-sacrifice, 348 ; His pitying
tenderness toward those in sor
row, 364 ; His power in our lives,
366; we shall live because he
lives, 366 ; His blessing the chil
dren, 375; His kindness to the
leper and cripple, 378.
Cicero, 49, 76, 123 ; his argument,
170; his villas and eloquence,
187, 223, 263 ; his " Disputations,"
3°8, 314-
Charlemagne, 50.
Constantine, 52.
China, 55, 59.
Confucius, 57.
Corinth, 59.
Canova, 65.
Coleridge, 68; his verdict of the
richest passage in literature, 75 ;
before Mont Blanc, 165 ; his re
turn to God, 170.
Csesar, Julius, 76, 294, 307.
Corot, 80.
Cuvier, 80, 373.
Character the all-important thing,
84.
Can the wrong-doer retrieve him
self? 108.
Crisis in man's life, 109.
Crusaders, the, of the Middle Ages
and their spoils, 122.
Columbus's discovery of our conti
nent, 128 ; his agitation at final
proof of his theory, 206, 208, 259,
262, 276.
Christian living binding because of
nature of things and facts in case,
129.
Changes wrought by the new
truths, 135.
Clough, Arthur, T44.
Clouds, the, about God's throne,
144.
Cleopatra, 150.
Cabot, John, 160.
Conceit and the sense of worth, 160.
2D

Chasm which separates man from
animals, 167.
Communion between two persons,
what it means, 170.
Catiline, 174.
Conception of God as a judge, 182.
Copernicus, 182, 208.
Champollion's study of the Egyp
tian hieroglyphics, 204.
Caird, 210.
Cope, 217.
Conflict, the, between the lower
and higher spiritual man, 219.
Czar's, the, coronation, its pag
eantry, 242.
Ceremony in the republic, 242.
Communion with the Creator pos
sible to all, 272.
Calvin, 284, 331.
Confessions, the, of philosophers,
300.
Clifford, Prof., 300, 301.
Cheapness of human beings, 304.
Conservatism of energy, 347;
changed form of this law, 349.
Confession of faith, 361.
Conscience inexorable and inces
sant, 363.
Chrysostom, 375.
Cathedral, the, the heart of civili
zation, 377.
Church's, the, winning devotion by
its achievements for humanity,
377-
Coliseum, 378.
Church, the, again clothed with
pdwer, 381 ; certain churches
always well filled, 383 ; its claims
upon patriots, 385 ; its affiliations
with art, science, and literature,
385 ; its entrance into all spheres,
385 ; its claims upon the indi
vidual, 386; its peculiar claims
upon citizens of this era, 387.
Course free institutions must take
to survive, 389.
Clergymen in our land, 389; their
self-sacrifice, 389.

402

Index

Conversation with well-known mer
chant, 390.
Complications of work in villages
and towns, 392. D
Devices of production and distri
bution, 14.
Difficulty of preaching to-day, 25.
Dives, 52.
Dream of an English jurist, 56.
Distance between savage and
genius, between genius and
Christ, 70.
Dante, 71 ; his poetry beyond all
his other gifts and acquirements,
187, 230, 283, 355; his Inferno,
358, 3°2-
Duff, 72.
Dickens, Charles, 74, 79, 222.
Darkness of time of Christ's ap
pearance, 76.
David, 79 ; his life wrecked by sin,
150; his guilty conscience, 152,
251, 376.
Divine impulse felt through society,
107.
Donatello, no.
Divine, the, solution, no.
Dying, the, gladiator, 117.
Decline of art in the 15th century,
118.
Duty and responsibility grounded
in man's moral constitution, 127.
Different temperaments of Christ's
disciples, 130.
Disciples, the, contained the germs
of all denominations, 130; all
drawn together by love of Christ
from within, 130.
Dissolving of "systematic" ice
bergs, 135.
Difficulty of solving nature's sim
plest secrets, 140.
Domitian, 142.
Dignity, the, and majesty of life,
168.
Definition of Calvary, 176.

Difficulty of the scientists' task in
nature, 204.
Distance from a grain of sand to
Plato, 204.
Darwin's estimate of Fiske, 206;
closing words of his " Origin of
Species," 209, 210; his assump
tion of a " World Genius," 214.
Doctrine of creation by gradualism,
212.
Development of infantile life, 216.
Drummond's summary of vestigial
structures found in man, 217;
his beautiful confession, 307.
Doctrine of human brotherhood,
219.
Doctrine, the, of regeneration the
doctrine of salvation, 221.
Dawn, the, of the day, 226.
Duty one with joy and beauty, 230.
Distance from Jacob to John, 242.
Dawn after night of moral dark
ness, 242.
Decrease of fear and superstition,
260.
Doubts engendered by the vast
ness of problems, 264; caused
by trouble and disaster, 266;
caused by intolerance and dog
matism, 270; some doubts tem
peramental, 270 ; some caused by
sin, 271 ; some caused by callow
crudeness, 272 ; some caused by
indecision, 272.
Death clothed in allurement, 309;
in what death consists, 393.
Dark, the, river but a ribbon, 309.
Departments of knowledge now
specialized, 315.
Differences in character of the apos
tles, 318.
Disobedience to law, 326.
Destruction of art treasures, 326.
Doubts of some, 341; others be
lieve and wonder, 341.
Distance from Moses to Christ, 35a
Daily punishments and rewards,
3S3-

Index

403

Diocletian, 342.
Destiny of them that are wise, 367.
Development of the book and li
brary, 374.
Dark ages of degradation, 380.
Duty departed from conscience,
39°-
Demagogue, the, 391.
Desirability of every one uniting
with a church, 395.

English pulpit, the, 8.
Emerson, 23; his message, 24;
ministers in his family through
seven generations, 31 ; his com
ment on the ruling class of Eng
land and America, 230, 277.
Effect, of the withdrawal of Christi
anity, 56; of Christ's teachings
on art and architecture in Italy,
71; of uncertainty and anxiety,
144 ; of confidence and trust upon
a town loafer, 163 ; of Christian
evolution upon immortality, 223,
of ambition, 323; of taxes on
the people of France in the
18th Century, 323.
Emancipation of slaves, 72.
Errors of man as builder and
writer, scientist and inventor, and
moral teacher, 114.
Errors and fallacies of former times,
122.
Every important principle retained
if all differences in denominations
obliterated, 131.
Emphasis in our age of nature's
silence and mystery, 141.
Eliot's, George, view, 143.
Ease of great men's achievements,
145.
Evidences of nature's speech, 148.
Ephesus, 173.
Exaltation of our idea of God as
we increase in wisdom, 182.
Each new glimpse of God * new
soul window, 183.

Evolution, a vision of possible
method of progress, 203 ; the key
that reveals God in nature, 206;
the, of evolution, 206 ; what evo
lution is, 211 ; how it has changed
our idea of man, 216; what it
has done for time, 236 ; changes
wrought by this theory, 236; al
legiance now given to it by
colleges, universities, and semi
naries, 236; in symbols and
pictorial emblems, 242.
Each new day a creative day, 212.
Exaltation of God by theory of
Christian evolution, 215.
Evidences in nature of life through
death, 224.
Euclid's infallibility, 252.
Each new fact another round in the
ladder of truth, 276.
Errors now being swept away, 277.
Every word condensed history and
poetry, 288.
Edwards, Jonathan, 331, 359 ; quo
tations from his works, 360, 362.
Each must go according to his
own temperament, 334, 335.
Education found in forecast and
preparation for the future life,
34°-
Every day a judgment day, 344.
Existence a victory after fierce
fight, 351.
Every teaching of Christ outraged
by Dante and Michael Angelo,
359-
Euphrates, 372.
Enlargement of the little room oi
worship into the great abbey, 375.
Era, of enthusiasm for ecclesiastical
architecture, 377; of Augustus,
380; of renewed power for the
church, 381.
Enthusiasm now waning, 382.
Excess, an, of preaching, 392.
Evening, the, service, 394.
Enormous improvement in the new
method, 394.

404

Index

Exhortation to all to preserve the
church relationship wherever
they may be, 396.

Froude, 8.
Foundation of all moral instruc
tion, 16.
Free, the, laborer, 22.
Francis of Assisi, 69.
From Gethsemane and Calvary to
the Ascension, 78.
Ferguson, 80.
Fascination, of the religious prob
lem, 80, 343 ; in picture of Monica
and Augustine, 341.
Force and consequences of Christ's
career, 93.
Fatherhood, the, of God, no.
Fatalism, 124.
Fear, of the new teachings, 134;
provocative to progress, 190, 319 ;
an alarm bell, 320 ; as manifested
in our day, 321 ; a root virtue,
321 ; a low motive, 321 ; a sub-
base, 321 ; it still needs a place
in our theology, 331.
False theology with reference to
man, 162.
Forces of nature and man's con
quest of them, 175; their ministry
to man, 175.
Few "all-round" men in history,
186.
Flight from penalty an ignoble
motive, 194.
Fiske's view of science and Chris
tianity, 207.
Fairbairn, 210.
Faith, forbidden to outrun facts,
258 ; only winged reason, 261 ;
a sensitive plant, 271.
Five sons of supreme genius, —
illustrations used by them, 282.
Functions of reason and imagina
tion, 285 ; methods of their arrival
at their goals, 286.
Famous Roman roads, 294,

Former, the, view of judgment, 344.
Final, the, judgment as represented
by Dante and Michael Angelo,
358.
Further words of personified wis
dom, 365.
Fortitude and heroism of the early
Christians, 379.
Felicita, 379.
Foundations of Venice, 387.

Geneva, 8.
Great thoughts make great thinkers,
10.
Gladstone, life of, 17 ; wish to dedi
cate closing years to study of
Christ's teachings, 47, 302, 317.
God's government of man, 20 ; His
plan and purpose, 57 ; His power
pervading everything, 77; God
the soul's father, 82; the same
through all ages, 83 ; revealed by
object lessons to man, 103; His
providence in history, 104; the
heart of God, 104 ; His patience,
encouragement, and sympathy as
revealed in Christ, 106 ; his gen
tleness, truth, and purity, as so
revealed, 106; God an infinite
father, 125 ; God in nature work
ing toward variety, 134; God
abroad in His world, 134; God
drawing near the earth, 135;
God's presence makes earth ra
diant, 136; God's voice, 153,-
his revelation through himself,
153; God the same to all men in
all ages, 154, 155 ; God's love for
man, 176; His throne seen as a
throne of mercy, 182 ; regarded
as force, 188; interpretation by
mighty movements in nature,
188 ; His love over all, 198 ; the
world father, 198 ; His name gran
aries all our treasures, 199 ; His
power drawing all things to Him
self, 207; God abolished for a

Index

405

time from earthly mechanism,
314 ; God a colossal Titan to the
Greeks, 216 ; His resources infi
nite for the darkened multitude,
226; God first exhibited as power
and fear, 274; His approval of the
work of reason, 261 ; His relation
to us as father and friend, 273 ;
His universal compassion, 333;
filling each want, 333 ; God's uni
verse one, and moral, 351; God
the invisible general marshalling
society forward, 386.
Great spiritual principles of Jesus
Christ the most powerful stimu
lants to material civilization, 22.
Great, the, novelists, 25.
Greek education, 42.
" Golden, the, age," 49.
Guizot, 50 ; his testimony to the in
tellect of Moses, 291.
German poem-legend of transfor
mation, 53.
Garibaldi's call to his soldiers, 67.
Grecian, the, feast of harvest, 68.
Garrison, William Lloyd, 72, 222;
his victory over slavery, 262.
Gray's " Elegy," 118.
Geike, 147.
Greatness a birth gift, 168.
Goethe's "Faust," 174; his testi
mony to the intellect of Moses,
291.
Government by force and fear, 189.
Governmental conception of deity,
193-
Geologist's, the, search, 205.
Galileo, 208.
Grandeur of the new conceptions,
209.
Growth of the moral sentiment
against theft, 240; of the senti
ment of truth, 241.
Gradual development of the idea
of God, 250; from Abraham's
idea of God to that of God in
Christ, 25a
Gibbon, 274.

Golden, the, rule, 252.
Government in the Middle Ages,
33°-
Gravity of the problem of the life
to come, 339.
Great distance back to our fore
fathers, 373. H
History of social progress, 7, 8.
Holmes, 18, 315.
Hopkins's, President, view of
prayer, 27.
History no mausoleum, 42.
Huss, John, 42, 116.
Hampden, 43, 72, 90, 95.
Herculaneum, 49.
Human brotherhood, 51.
Handel, 56, 65; his "Messiah,"
230; his need of full orchestra
for expression, 344; his theme
cannot be interpreted in part,
359-
Heart's, the, hunger for heroes, 67 ;
its hunger for a revelation of God,
252.
Herod, 76.
How one scientist turned from
agnosticism to faith, 81.
Heine, 83.
Hegel, 83, 119.
Heroic names, as Cromwell, Hamp
den, and Pym, 90.
Homage and conquest, 103.
" Home, Sweet Home," 118.
Hamlet, 119, 166, 251.
Huxley's desire to create an altar
" to the unknown God," 141, 299,
306.
Human, the, mind still an unknown
land, 160.
Herschel's idea, 171.
Hercules, 182, 376.
Humboldt's " Cosmos," 183, 263.
Hawthorne's comparison of Jona
than Edwards's words with those
of Christ, 195.
History, a, of the divine footprints,
203,

406

Index

Historian's, the, search, 205.
Howard, 222, 317.
Higher, the, criticism, 237.
History, a, of the evolution of the
moral sense, 252.
Homer's Iliad as supposititious
illustration, 276,282.
Henry, Patrick, at Williamsburg,
284.
Herodotus, explorations of, 314.
Hired, the, Persian troops, 332.
Hodge's, Dr. Archibald, statement
of doctrine of reprobation, 361.
Hale, his decisions, 376.
Hour, the, of worship a protest
against the life that creeps and
crawls, 387.
Heroes and fathers of yesterday,
396. I
Influence, of the pulpit, 8 ; of war,
politics, commerce, law, science,
and government, 9 ; of the press,
17 ; of Achilles's example, 42 ; of
Christ's teachings upon happi
ness and character, 48 ; of per
sons greater than of abstractions,
95 ; of Cromwell and Hampden
on England, 95 ; of Washington,
Adams, and Jefferson on Amer
ica, 95; the, of environment
universal, 99; in the state, the
beautiful, and higher education,
332-
Indians at Carlisle, 50.
Indian sacrifices and superstitions,
So-
India, 55 ; coming conditions, 58.
Ideals for the future, 60.
Innocence and character, 69.
Indebtedness to Christ of Dante,
Raphael, Michael Angelo, and
Milton, 71.
" In Memoriam," 72.
Ignorance and fear, 76; of the
clergy in the ages of degradation,
380 j of the Ten Commandments,
39*

Inequalities in this life, 85.
Inspiration in the name of Jesus
95-
Instincts, the, of animals, 96, 146;
of the vegetable world, 146.
Imperfections of man's achieve
ments, 114.
In Christ God's silence breaks fully
forth, 154.
Incident related by Emerson of So
journer Truth, 183.
Intelligence the mainspring of the
newspaper and printing-press,
191.
Impotence of the conceptions of
law to satisfy human reason, 192.
Interpretation of God through
fatherhood, 197.
Infinite, the, mind far above the
world's beauty, 197 ; treasures in
cluded in the name of God, 292.
Illustration, of the old scholastic
view of God, 220; of nature's
method of work, 267 ; from word
" sarcasm," 288 ; from word " sin
cere," 289 ; from word " trivial,"
289.
Increase of knowledge through use
of reason, 260.
Illustrations of God developed from
social conditions and institutions,
292.
Insecurity of property in dark era,
293-
Illustration, of the monkey and
painted fire, 301; from Latin
poet, 325.
Investment of generosity, 324.
Increase of life as the scale mounts
upward, 346.
Internal court of justice always with
man, 353-
Inevitableness of penalty in nature,
35°-
Interest, in origins and beginnings,
372 ; on the part of all classes in
England, 383; in our country
among the higher classes, 384.

Index

407

Importance of early 'beginnings to
historians and philosophers, 373.
Ignatius, 379. J
Jean Paul, 8.
John's vision of the New Jeru
salem, 25.
Joy, the, of helping and enlighten
ing those in doubt and darkness,
36.
Juvenal, 48, 152.
John, 55,69, 318; at Patmos, 343;
his dream regarding Ephesus,
343; his need of imagery, 344,
396.
Judas, 84.
Job, 86 ; his pathetic words, 298.
Jefferson, 95.
Jacquard, 118 ; his loom, 214.
Jerusalem, 140.
Jupiter, 182.
Jacob, 240.
Jewish festivals, attendance on the
great national feasts, 245 ; great
deeds rehearsed, 245.
Jonah's testimony to God's mercy,
248 ; his story, 249 ; what it rep
resents, 249.
Jowett's, Prof., reply to the young
student, 272.
James, 318.
Judgment become victory, 365.
K
King James version, 8.
Knowledge, universal, 15.
King, Starr, 31.
Keats, 42.
Kean, Edmund, 75.
Kant's view of nature's warnings,
151-
Keplar, 208.
Knowledge through faith, 263.
Kelvin, Lord, 301.
Knowledge a vast mosaic, 316.
Knox, 381.
Keble's estimate of the Sabbath,
382.

Literary standards of perfection, 9.
Luther, 10, 17, 19, 69, 72 ; his theses,
95, 116, 123, 381, 396.
Life, a university, 13.
Library, a, a graveyard, 17.
Lowell, 23 ; his " Vision of Sir
Launfal," 24; his influence upon
social reform, 24, 31, 47, 283.
Longfellow, 31, 47, 118.
Limitations upon the politician,
merchant, lawyer, and press, 34.
Lincoln, 43, 79; meaning of his
name, 91; his faith, 125, 140; as
approached by traitor, soldier,
secretary, and his own child, 198,
230 ; at Gettysburg, 284, 302, 342,
376-
Lucian, 48.
Lecky's " ten vices," 49.
Lazarus, 52.
Levelling power of Christianity, 52.
Long time required for develop
ment of ideals, 60.
Liberty, 72.
Livingstone, 72 ; his faith, 125, 222,
334, 396-
Leadership from the common peo
ple, 79.
La Place, 85.
Law, of surroundings, 98 ; of en
vironment has no influence on
Christ's career, 98 ; the, of the
spiritual harvest, 352 ; what would
happen if it were thoroughly
understood, 352.
Long time required for progress,
material and spiritual, 115.
Lear, 119.
Loyola, 123, 174.
Laws, the, of right and wrong, 128 ;
fundamental and constitutional,
whether denied or accepted, 129 ;
as organized thoughts, 191 ; the,
invariable, 347 ; prohibiting theft,
349-
Light, the, growing, 136; thrown
by evolution on the problem ol

408

Index

sinfulness, 219 ; thrown on trans
muted laws, 300 ; thrown on de
velopment of conscience and
growth of moral ideas, 349.
Losses of our generation, 141.
Loss of faith in a personal God,
142.
Lucretius, 152.
Longstroth, 165.
Legend, the, of the lost Atlantis,
173-
Luxuriant weeds argue richness of
soil, 174.
Limit, the, of fear, 190.
Le Comte, 217.
Line, the, of perpetual storm, 220.
Layard, 263.
Legend of the Christmas night, 302.
Leibnitz, 315.
Limitations of man's career, 316.
Love casting out fear, 327 ; love a
prophet, 329 ; love revealing im
mortality, 329.
Liddon 331.
Life depends on correspondence
with environment 346.
Life's inequalities, 266 ; great prob
lem, 350.
Like produces like in the realm of
character, 359.
Light of science has reconciled
contradictions, 362.
Linnaeus, 373.
Luxury with increase of wealth, 390.
M
Man's development, time required,
everything educive, 4, 5; his
original ignorance, 5; his re
sponse to the elevation of Christ,
45 ; man a miniature of God, 82 ;
his soul keyed to God's mind,
82 ; his control of beasts and ele
ments, 96 ; his difficulty in living
with his fellows, 96; his alpha
betic faculties, 96; his divine
traits and moods. 96 ; his tongue
a weapon, 97 ; his luminous

hours, 107; his appeal for help
109 ; his life long enough to be
come acquainted with Christ,
120; man the child of destiny,
125 ; man the child of genius be
cause the child ot God, 127;
man pledged to integrity, 128 ; his
greatest misfortunes, 142; man
made for confidence, 144; his
questionings, 153; a little lower
than God, 159; his elevation
above the beasts, 164; his dis
tance from the highest animal,
165 ; man's journey upward by
rapid strides, 165; his crowning
excellences, 167; man responsi
ble, 167 ; his memory continuous,
167 ; his vastness of nature, 167 ; ¦
he duplicates God, 170 ; his near
ness to God, 171 ; his reckless
iconoclasm, 173 ; his infinite
worth the explanation of Christ,
176; his diverse conceptions of
God, 181 ; man's real riches, 188 ;
man ruled by hope and love, 189;
by fear and force, when he de
nies the higher law, 189; his
thoughts of God grow with his
growth, 215 ; his union of lower
forms, 217; his unwillingness to
believe in evolution, 218; his
longings for one who cares, 304 ;
his task not simple like the in
stinct of animals, 333 ; his long
ings for help and guidance, 364.
Milton, 8, 54,56, 71, 230; Paradise,
230, 355, 362, 376, 396.
Miiller, 8, 85.
Moses, 9, 79, 116, t28; laws 166,
222, 251, 282; use of the courts
of the temple, 290.
Modern devices for increase of
knowledge, training of taste and
imagination by printer and pho
tographer, kindergarten, public
and private schools, new forms
of education, manual training
schools, 12.

Index

409

Motley, 31.
Measure of civilization for a nation,
43-
Martineau's, James, view of Christ.
46, IS2; his questionings, 192;
his admission, 299; Harriet,
view, 143.
Memphis, 49.
Monster vices, 50.
Maine's, Sir Henry, law works, 58.
Multitudes, the, coming to Christ,
68.
Magdalen, 72.
Mariamne, 77.
Murder of the innocents, 77.
Millet, 80, 153.
Mankind's latent talents, 85.
Matthew's emphasis of Christ's
name, 89.
Meaning, of Lincoln's name, 91 ; of
Whittier's, 91 ; of Florence Night
ingale's, 91 ; of " the way," 294 ;
of God's name for Huxley,
Spencer, and Arnold, 299.
Museum, a possible, of religious
record, 115.
Maze, the, at Hampton Court, 119.
Men as ambassadors from God's
court, 127.
Motive, the, of duty, 128.
Mill's, John Stuart, indictment of
nature, 142; his reference to his
father, 143; his testimony to an
intelligent creation, 246; his
tragedy of doubt, 266.
Masters in art, literature, law, and
philosophy, 145.
Mischief wrought upon society
through false views, 162.
Messiah, the, 166.
Marbles, the, of Ephesus, 173.
Monarchical idea, 182.
Mountains pictured only in sec
tions, 185.
Monarch, the, the type and symbol
of God, 193.
McCosh, 210 ; his statement, 216.
Maxwell's, clerk, statement, 214.

Mentality and spirituality now en
grafted upon man, 218.
Mystery of God's apparent silence
through so many ages, 225.
Macaulay, 231 ; his words regard
ing the church, 381.
Man left for a while to form his own
career, 259.
Magician in the " Arabian Nights,"
275-
Miller's, Hugh, system of geology,
285.
Mosaic, the, economy a system of
symbols and pictures, 289; a
system of mnemonics, 291.
March of the ten thousand, 301.
Motives acting upon the soul, 319;
self-interest, 322; the desire for
precedence, 322.
Monica, 341.
Measure of life the measure of rela
tion and correspondence, 347.
Moral conquests of the early Chris
tian church, 379.
Melancthon, 381.
Modern methods of employing the
Sabbath, 382. N
Necessity for Christian organiza
tion, 27.
Need of revival of the moral im
perative, 29.
Nightingale, Florence, 44; meaning
of her name, 91, 344.
Napoleon's words, 58, 94, 98, 322.
Novelists' pleas for the poor and
weak, 72.
Newton's theory of gravitation, 79,
80; his Principia," 118, 128, 147,
168, 235 ; superiority of his genius
to the forces he discovered, 176,
182, 185; his theory in his gen
eration, 208 ; his ground for con
fidence in his theory, 259; his
discoveries, 262, 263 ; his mind,
266 ; his system of astronomy,
285, 315 ; his philosophy, 376, 385.

410

Index

Nature's testimony regarding im
mortal life, 84; her simplicities,
117; her concealments number
less and wonderful, 139; after
ages her problems still the same,
140 ; she accustoms man to cer
tainty, 145; nature becoming
a vast whispering gallery, 147 ;
not silent on right living, 148;
nature's alarum, 149; constant in
her warnings, 151 ; she portrays
God and man, 176 ; she maintains
order by law, 191 ; her voice the
voice of God, 248 ; she wastes
nothing, 265 ; nature's as well as
Christ's message, 352; her pen
alties medicinal, 357.
Names epitomes of life, 90; neces
sary for distinctiveness, 90 ; some
endure, others perish, 91 ; appro
priate and inappropriate, 91 ;
new, the, name, 91 ; names alone
survive in time, 92.
Negations in Christ's career, 93.
Nothing perfect, 114.
No pretentious heroes, 117.
Need of the best spiritual guidance,
119.
No escape from responsibility, 128.
Number of our denominations, 131.
Nero, 142, 342.
No advance in bees or monkeys,
165.
No intelligence in animals beyond
their wants, 166.
No culture can change the nature,
168.
No music for one who cannot hear,
183.
Natural law overworked, 191.
Niebuhr, 263.
No result without a cause, 268.
No danger from assaults upon
Christian faith, 276.
New illustrations of God in nature,
Necessity for choice of excellence
aud occupation, 317.

No magician like love, 329.
Number of possible paths open to
man, 333.
No handbook to choice of life work,
334-
Number and beauty of life's streams
to-day, 335.
Negative laws changed to positive
moralities, 350.
Nile, the, 372.
New, a, social order, 388 ; troubles
of the working classes, 388.
Need of the church by the poor,
388.
Non-church, the, goer, 391.

Only true power from within, the,
20, 21.
Over-production and under-hunger,
22.
One of the difficulties of modern
preaching, 23.
Offerings made to princes, and
knowledge proffered to the young,
69.
Orators made eloquent through
Christ, 71.
Optimism, 76.
Obscurity of Christ's birthplace, 92.
Only, the, true help a changed
nature within, 109.
Old-time treatment of witnesses and
heretics, 115.
Old, the, and the new views of God,
121 ; view of the fall undermined,
216; farmer's verdict, 272; the
ory of fortuitous concourse, 276;
teachings fragmentary, 358.
Outward expression of every inward
thought, 149.
Our vision of God only fragmentary,
185.
One form of manhood exalted above
all others, 186.
Origin of the governmental view of
deity in the Middle Ages, 193.

Index

411

Obedience became a form of self-
interest, 194.
Opportunities in a future life, 225.
Our refusal to recognize our true
relation to God, 273.
Onward march of the philosophers,
301.
Over-abundance of our world's
treasure, 313.
Our vision of the world constantly
enlarged during each age, 314.
Obedience, to laws in nature, 325 ;
to law the ground of progress
and success, 327 ; to the laws of
exercise and nutrition increase
life, 347 ; is freedom and achieve
ment, 357.
Ours a moral universe, 363.
Our unfortunate national reputa
tion, 384.
Over-indulgence in preaching, 393.

Preaching, what it is, its basis, 3, 4 ;
an extension of conversation, 16 ;
its nature and functions, 20; not
difficult in old times, now the
preacher must be a universal
scholar, 32 ; his daily and yearly
task, 33 ; the demands upon nerve
and brain, 33; strain of delivery
upon Robertson, Channing, and
Bushnell, 34; the profession its
own reward, 34 ; none that holds
such happiness, 37.
Plutarch's comment, 7, 42.
Puritan pulpits, 9.
Pulpit, the, one of the great forces
of social progress, 9 ; its past
secure, 11; is it declining? 11 ;
injury to the pulpit, 16; the pulpit
the guide, hope, friend, and sup
port of the people, 18.
Prophets of yesterday social leaders
of to-day, 9.
Paul's principle, 10.
Paul, 16, 55,69; his prophecy re
garding Christ's name, 92, no,

116, 129, 282, 318, 342 ; letter from
the Mamertine prison the origin
of church assemblies, 374, 396.
Practical life also a university, 14.
Plato, 16, 17 ; his pre-Christian
statement as to the function of
preaching, 30, 75, 94, 102, 109;
his statement of the Greek impres
sion of nature's beauty, 126, 165 ;
his " Republic," 166.
Power, the, of books, 17.
Peter the Hermit, 19.
Passing, of great poets such as
Longfellow, Lowell, Bryant, and
Whittier, 31 ; of historians such
as Bancroft, Motley, and Prescott,
31 ; of ministers like Channing,
Starr King, Swing, Beecher, and
Brooks, 31.
Power and limitations, of the law,
35 ; of the physician, 35.
Pitt, 42.
Pericles, 43, 118, 232.
Phidias, 43 ; his marbles, 74, 92,
120, 173 ; the beauty of, 184, 232,
251, 326.
Pallas Athene, 44.
Pliny, 48, 49.
Pompeii, 49 ; her warnings, 149.
Ponce de Leon, 50.
Painters, 55.
Phillips, Wendell, 56, 72, 222 ; at
Faneuil Hall, 284, 326.
Prodigal Son, the, 75 ; he was not
made for rags and husks, 174.
Pessimism, 76.
Passion, for theology, 80; for the
antique in our own land, 372.
Pym, 90.
Prophets and heroes of Christianity,
95-
Philosophical systems of Plato and
Bacon, 102.
Philosopher's, the, view of God as
revealed through Christ, 105;
exhortations and Christ's pictured
admonition, 286.
Progress of the fightagainst sin, 108.

412

Index

Peter's sin, no.
Parthenon, the, 117, 173.
Preference in England for Long
fellow rather than Browning, 118.
Pantheistic teachings, 124.
Pascal's faith, 125; his "Morals,"
376.
Prophecies of what man shall be,
126.
Proctor, 147 ; his computations, 264.
Park and the Caribbean Isles, 151.
Pity unknown in the animal realm,
166.
Philanthropy a development in man
alone, 166.
Pure, the, in heart see God, 184.
Parental love for the babe, 197;
unchanging through the later
years, in the face of folly, vice, or
crime, 197.
Passing of the storm, 209.
Progressive development of the
idea of God in the Scriptures, 216.
Projections of reason and faith into
unseen realms, 262.
Partial knowledge involved in great
size, 269 ; and richness shown in
these limitations, 269.
Philosophy of the supremacy of the
parable, 285.
Poor, a, substitute for Christianity,
300.
Poets, the, and their imagination,
306.
Position of tombs changed since
Christ's death, 307.
Problem, the, of the bad man, 350;
of the good man, 35r.
Proverbs, the Book of Wisdom, 335 ;
its personification of Wisdom,
355-
Penalties of transgression inflec
tions of pity and kindness, 356.
Pictures of Dante and Milton show
only one fragment of the truth,
359-
Partial conceptions of the Calvin-
istic theologians, 359.

Penalty of our neglect of Christ, 367.
Philemon, 375.
Perpetua, 379.
Polycarp, 379. Q
Questionings, of man's mind, 104 ;
of man's origin,] 164 ; of the Al
mighty, 267.
Qualities and acquirements that are
good but secondary, 187.

Right living, the church a univer
sity of morals, 6.
Romeo and Juliet, 18.
Ruskin, 23 ; his exhortation on the
importance of character, 24, 25 ;
his sarcastic version of the Ten
Commandments, 29,30 ; his state
ment of the pulpit's influence in
modern times, 36, 75; dedica
tion of his life, 46, 72 ; his state
ment of the simplicity of God's
revelation, 272.
Reverence for the Sabbath and
church, 28.
Result of non-church-going, 29.
Robertson, 34.
Root from Africa in vineyards of
Spain, 43.
Red Cross movement, 44.
Response of nature to the elevation
of Christ, 45.
Rate of progress since Shake
speare's day, 59.
Rome, 59.
Renan, 66.
Raphael, 71 ; his brurh, 327.
Reward and punishment, 84.
Reputation of Nazareth, 98.
Ruined state of relics of ancient
art, 114.
Reaction from excess of the 14th
century, 115.
Reason why duty is binding upon
man, 129.
Ruin of the cities of Italy through
sin, 150.

hdex

413

Revejafion from without implies
mind within, 184.
Ripeness of faculty and breadth of
outlook, 187.
Regent, the, of nature the Father
who forgives and guides, 199.
Reasons for the multiplicity of the
student's problems, 204.
Romanes's statement regarding
Christ's universal dominion, 207,
210; his return to faith, 301.
Reversal of the " survival of the
fittest" principle in the case of
man, 221.
Result of the broader view of in
spiration, 251.
Reason man's guide, 259; reason
in the realm of conscience and
duty, 261.
Results through faith in all depart
ments of life, 263.
Richness of the " way " as symbol
of Christ, 298.
Roman orator's hope, 308.
Realm, the, of conscience and
duty, 325.
Religious thinking in a. state of
transition, 330.
Results of worldliness, indifference,
and self-indulgence, 351.
Response of brain and nerve, 355.
Realities substituted by science for
the dreams of Dante and Milton,
362.
Repudiation by many of their in
heritance, 383.
Results of too much luxury, 383.
Return of thoughtful men to the
church service, 394.
Renewed influence of the Sunday-
school, 394.
Religious, the, ceremonial running
all through society, 395.

Shakespeare, 8, 22, 46; his com
mentators, 73 ; only shown in his

best works, 172, 236; his mind,
266, 283.
Saxon idioms, 10; civilization de
rived from the Bible, 230.
Sermon, the, on the Mount, 10, 48,
74 ; Burke's view of it, 75.
Seeds planted on precipices, 14.
Socrates, 16, 67, 69, 83 ; his words
and death, 86, 95, 116, 223, 236,
342-
Strawberries in June, 17.
Schopenhauer, 18.
Savonarola, 19, 116.
Slave, the, states, 22.
Stratford, 22.
Shaftesbury, Lord, 23.
Spurgeon, Charles, 23.
Success of Christianity, 25.
Strength from union, 27.
Society permeated by principle of
Christianity, 28.
Swing, 31, 392.
Soul, the, thrives through nourish
ment, 41 ; only perfectly revealed
in its highest moments, 171 ; to
be judged by its best, 171 ; a harp,
self-propelling, 354, 196.
Shelley, 42, 150.
Social progress through lifting up
a master, 43.
Sahara Desert, 55.
Sculptors, 55.
Schlegel, Frederick, 57.
Systems of the past, 57.
State of Christianity at John's death
at Ephesus, 58.
St. Peter's, 71.
Schools and colleges founded, 72.
Stimulus of Christ's story, 73.
Style, what it is, 74.
Stowe, 79, 222.
Stevenson, 79.
Supremacy of Christ's view of God,
80.
Some make God an infinite Watt,
others an infinite New.on 01
Cuvier, 80.
Story of an amoeba, 81.

414

Index

Spiritual, the, body back of the
physical, 81.
Supremacy of Christ's name in
right living, 95.
Shortness of Christ's career, 101.
Sin and temptation, 108.
Saul, no, 364.
Simplicity of religion to-day, 116 ; a
proof of greatness, 116; the sim
plicities of art, 117 ; simplicity of
Greek dress, 117; simplicity in
literature, 118 ; simplicity of re
ligious thought to be expected in
the world's greatest teacher, 119.
Sufferings of Huss, 116.
Stanley, 119; wagons in Africa
clogged by tropic flowers, r54;
knowledge derived through him,
263.
Solomon's sacrifices in the dedica
tion of his temple, 122; his life
wrecked by sin, 150, 240 ; his rep
resentation of brain and nerve
speaking, 248.
Scholastics, the, of the Middle
Ages, 122.
Scholasticism in Luther's day, 123.
Symbols in state and society, 132 ;
those which represent Christ, 132.
Sympathy, love, and fellowship for
all, 134.
Savages, the, and the ice bridge,
135-
Scholars, the, many and wise, 136.
Silence that is eloquent, 146.
Seneca, 165.
Secret, the, of man's vast achieve
ments, 168.
Scourging and allurement, 195.
Sublime, the, view of Jesus Christ,
I9S-
Spencer's, Herbert, praise of Ro
manes, 207, 210, 299; pathos of
his later outlook, 300.
Sin a concrete personal fact, 220. \V
Sublimest manifestations of the law
of evolution in Jesus Christ, 223.
Science verifying Christ's vision,

223; leading all back to faith,
274.
Slow rise of the moral standard, 242.
Society in the time of Moses, 243 ;
his ceremonial kindergarten, 243.
Substitution of the monotheistic
idea, 247.
Smallness of earth and man, 265.
Statements of materialism, 293.
Secularism, 268.
Stevenson's sarcastic comment, 271.
Skill in the divine art of illustration
an evidence of greatness, 282.
Sacrifices used as illustrations,
290.
Special significance of " way " and
" road " in that era, 293.
Schiller's thought, 296.
Slow progress of development of
man, 308; his creative powers,
308.
Same, the, differences in the church
to-day, 318.
" Survival, the, of the fittest " in the
lower orders, 348.
Solemnity, the, of the coming judg
ment, 362.
Stephen, 364.
Sources, the, of things all searched
for by historians, scientists, and
biologists, 372.
Sistine, the, chapel, 375.
Science, the, of right living, 386.
Solemn obligations to support the
Christian workers among the
poor, 390.
Shame of those who have been
neither for nor against the church,
39°- T
Tennyson, 8; memoir, 16, 25,47;
his faith, 125, 168 ; and the cater
pillar, 170 ; his statement of man's
latent genius, 172; his question
ings, 265, 277, 301; his experi
ences in search of Christ, 306,
3°7. 334. 376.
Tributes to the pulpit by Tillotson,

Index

415

Barrow, Lord Chatham, Emer
son, and Horace Mann, 9.
Technical schools, 13.
Truth organized into personality,
18; its force in personality, 19;
truth and speech, 20.
Teaching often automatic through
heredity, 34.
Tell, William, 43.
Thebes, 49, 326.
Titian, 56; his "Transfiguration,"
230.
Ten, the, talent men, 70.
Toynbee, Arnold, 72.
Translations of Christ's story into
foreign tongues, 73.
Thompson, 76.
Testimony regarding immortal life,
84.
Teachings, of Plato and Socrates
of different order from those of
Christ, 103 ; the, of agnosticism,
124.
Traveller, the, at Athens in the
studio of Phidias, 120.
Torquemada, 123.
Ten, the, Commandments, 128.
Toleration and charity, 134.
Temple, the, at Jerusalem, 140;
and its courts, 243 ; its sacrifices
and incense, 244 ; its feasts, 244.
Tyndall, 154; his belief in God,
214; his testimony to an intelli
gent creation, 246, 306, 373.
Treasures, the, of life's crystal caves,
173-
Theories all broken arcs of the
circle of God's love, 177.
Terror usually inspired by new
theories, vide Galileo, Coperni
cus, Kepler, and Columbus, 208.
Theory, the, of "devilution," 210;
of sudden action of divine power,
211; called "Christian evolu
tion," 213; of judgment day re
stated in terms of evolution, 345.
Time too brief for full development
here, 224,

Triumphant praise to God from
earth and heaven, 226.
Tides of national enthusiasm, 245.
Tragedy of the doubters, 264.
Thompson's, Sir William, rank and
statement, 274.
Truth, the, waiting for discovery,
276.
Three, the, supreme scenes in
American eloquence, 284.
Transition to next world made joy
ful through Christ, 309.
Taxes heavy in France in the 18th
century, 323.
Transition from fear to love in the
human race, 329.
Theology of a rude age, 330.
Tremendous statement still in
cluded in its Confession of Faith
by one of great denomination, 360.
Temple of Diana, 372.
Treasures to enrich our cathedrals,
377-
Telemachus and his influence in
ending gladiatorial shows, 378.
Tendency to excess in everything,
393-
Trying period in the church's his
tory, 395. U
Ulysses, 50; the ideal of Homer,
240.
Unheard musical notes tested elec
trically, 81.
Universities as offsprings of Christi
anity, 100.
Unsuspected treasures in man, 172.
Universal acceptance of evolution,
211 ; universal longings for solu
tion of the " next world " prob
lem, 343.
Unity of man established by science,
218.
Universality of trouble, 267.
Unseen, the, revealed through in
carnation, 278.
Unity of the moral realm, 319.

416

Index

Ultimate revelation of every secret
thing, 367.
Use, the, of the symbol of the cross,
37S- y
Victories of Christianity involve
new difficulties, 26.
Vane, 43.
Vesuvius, 49.
Victoria's, Queen, jubilee, 51.
Von Rile, 65, 153.
Valjean, Jean, no, 364.
Venus de Milo, 117, 251.
Voltaire, 118.
Voice, the, of conscience within,
152 ; of physiology, 356.
Variety, the, and wealth of God's
mind and heart, 154.
Vision, the, splendid, 171; hours
God's torches, 173.
Vastness, of the world and limit of
man's grasp, 186; of our earth,
313 ; of the realms of knowledge,
315-
View of the universe as a mechan
ism of laws and forces, 190.
Vague devotion not satisfying to
the soul, 193.
Violin player's, the, genius devel
oped by love of music, 328.
W
Webster, 8 ; Daniel and Ezekiel, 9 ;
Daniel Webster's words in Girard
College case, 11, 35, 98,258, 302.
Whitney, 8.
Wycliffe, 10, 23, 381.
Whitfield, 17, 381.
Wesley, 17.
Wallace, William, 19; Alfred
Russell, 210.
Watt, 23, 79, 80, 153, 262 ; system
of mechanics, 285.

Wordsworth, 23, 70, 147 ; his genius
lay in one direction, 185 ; Words
worth at Grasmere, 270.
White's, ex-President, lament, 31.
Whittier, 31 ; meaning of his name,
91-
Ware, Mary, 44.
What would happen if Christian
rulers were on the five great
thrones of modern times, 59.
Watson, 74.
Words best loved by young and
old, 75.
Washington, 95, 376.
Wonders of man's mind, 161 ; of
necromancy as nothing to the
marvels ascribed to laws, 192.
We know but in part, 184.
World's, the, history in aeons, 204.
Watchmen at night in Paris, 226.
Wren's, Christopher, cathedral, 230.
Warfare in the Parthenon, 233.
Westminster Abbey, 239.
Work, the, of reason, 261.
Way, the, also a symbol of friend
ship, 295 ; its use in Abraham's
day, 295 ; beauty of its develop
ment, 295.
Warnings and barriers placed by
love, 357.
Westminster, the, divines, 362.
Woolsey's, President, tribute to our
Christian ancestors, 382.

Xenophon's description of the
mercenaries, 194 ; Xenophon's
story, 322.
Xavier, Francis, 364.

Zeus, 182.

illi II