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THROUGH MAN TO GOD

THROUGH MAN TO GOD

BY

GEORGE A. GORDON
i ¦ i
MINISTER OF THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH, BOSTON

EraJtBftfrgiOcEreag

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
<€\>t Kiuersi&e $>vc0, Cambridge

COPYRIGHT 1906 BY GEORGE A. GORDON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published October /006

TO
THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH IN
TEMPLE MAINE WHERE I BEGAN MY
MINISTRY; TO THE SECOND CONGRE
GATIONAL CHURCH IN GREENWICH
CONNECTICUT WHERE MY MINIS
TRY WAS CONTINUED ; AND TO THE
OLD SOUTH CHURCH IN BOSTON
WHERE FOR NEARLY THREE AND
TWENTY YEARS I HAVE SERVED
SUPPORTED BY THE DEVOTION OF
A GREAT PARISH I DEDICATE THESE
SERMONS IN HONOR AND LOVE

PREFACE
Toward the close of his life Tennyson said to
a friend, "My chief desire is to have a new
vision of God." In this desire the great poet
is the prophet of all serious men. What is
final ? What is sovereign ? Who is God ? Up
into these questions all other human questions
are at length gathered. Man's destiny is in the
keeping of man's Maker, whether that Maker
be mud or mind, cosmic force or Eternal Spirit.
The ancient question ran, " When shall I
come and appear before God?" To-day we
modify that question and ask, " How shall we
appear before God ? " Is the character of the
Eternal accessible to man? And if so, how?
Along what path may we approach that char
acter? Where shall we look for the greater
witness ?
There are, finally, but two ways of approach
to the character of the Infinite, — cosmic nature
and man. It is true that these exist together in
a kind of sacramental union. It may seem that
in any attempt to regard them as opposites,
there is a violation of the great law, what God
hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

Vlll PREFACE
Still, they stand to each other as higher and
lower, and they speak a different word concern
ing the Mystery that is within them and behind
them. Some years ago John Fiske published an in
teresting book under the title " Through Nature
to God." Many men whom I honor found light
in that book. When I read it, I felt that my
convictions were fundamentally opposed, not so
much to the isolated ideas of the book, as to
the plan expressed in its title. The title of my
book originated in this fundamental opposition
to Mr. Fiske's plan. " Through Man to God "
is the expression that sums up my conception
of the heart and soul of Christianity. Chris
tianity is the interpretation of the Eternal, not
through nature, but through human nature, not
through the lower expressions of the creative
power, but through man, the highest expression.
The creation at its best gives us the Creator at
his best ; the highest man is the supreme revela
tion of God.
The sermons in this volume have their unity
here. They are variations upon this one per
sistent theme. The incarnation of God in Jesus
the perfect man, in all men as moral beings,
in all good men as the life of their life, is the
fundamental idea in my philosophy of existence.
In this volume that idea is presented in the free-

PREFACE IX
dom of discourse and in relation to the human
needs which it is fitted to meet.
The justification for the publication of a vol
ume of sermons is in the ideas that they contain,
the vitality with which these ideas are pervaded,
and the literary conscience with which they are
expressed. If in this sentence I have not vindi
cated the appearance of the present volume, I
have at least indicated my ideal, and I have fur
ther written the law in accordance with which
my book may be condemned.
George A. Gordon.
Old South Parsonage, Boston, Mass.
May 6, 19Q6.

CONTENTS

I. God and Hope
II. The Humanity of God
III. Man the Apostle of God
IV. Personality and the Truth
V. Nature and Humanity .
VI. Life and Love and Time .
VII. The Servant of Abraham
VIII. The Untroubled Heart
IX. Belief and Fear
X. The Inheritance of Faith
XL The Grace of Kindness
XII. The Great Question .
XIII. The Romance and the Reality
XIV. Wise Men and Their Ideals .
XV. The Final Theodicy
XVI. The Upper Room
XVII. God the Comforter
XVIII. Toward Evening
XIX. Some Continuities of Individual
istence 
XX. God All in All .

Ex-

PAOE
. 1
23
. 4264
. 88
108
. 135
152
. 167184
. 199
215
. 230248
. 271
286
. 305329347
372

THROUGH MAN TO GOD

GOD AND HOPE
*' Having no hope and without God in the world.'* B/i/iesians ii, 12.
The apostle finds among the facts of existence
what he calls the hopeless life. He traces this
hopelessness to what he considers its source and
cause. Hopeless men are Godless men. And
this atheism is not the mere intellectual denial
of the Divine existence ; it is also, and far more,
the moral, the practical denial. The apostle is
thinking of a mind with no clear and serious
belief in the Eternal goodness, of a will with no
high purpose of service, of a heart outside the
joyous visitations and sympathies that are the
life of faith. His explanation of this haggard
existence is that it is without the conscious
presence of the living God, and therefore with
out hope. For him, God and hope are bound
together as cause and effect. He would as soon
expect daylight without the sun as to find hope
in man without God.
Great persistent emotions have their sustain-

2 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
ing origin in great persistent ideas. Men seek
because they believe that they shall find, they
knock because they believe that it shall be
opened unto them. Certain things belong to
gether in the way of cause and effect, and where
this connection is not obvious, we may still see
that one without the other is incomplete. We
can think of a pedestal without a statue and of
a statue without a pedestal ; but neither is com
plete without the other. The statue is useless
without the pedestal ; the pedestal is vain with
out the statue. The complete work of art de
mands the presence of both. It is so with hope
and God. Hope may exist without belief in
God, or the sense of his reality, but it is a vain
hope. Belief in God may exist without hope,
but this is abnormal. Where there is the con
sciousness of God, there is the ground of hope,
valid, reasonable hope. Where there is no con
sciousness of God, there is no ground of hope.
When we are clear, we conclude that life with
God is life with hope, that life without God is
life without hope.
1. Without God there is no hope of under
standing nature. It is indeed true that through
the courses of the cosmos there is no revelation
of the moral being of the Infinite. Moral life
alone can reveal moral life ; soul alone can speak
for soul. But this is not the whole case. Con-

GOB AND HOPE 3
science and love are not the whole of God. God
is power, thought, beauty, the terrestrial and
cosmic disposition that on the whole favors life
in this world.
If there is anything clear and certain, it is the
existence of power out and beyond ourselves.
In every breath, in every breeze, in every gale,
in all the milder and in all the fiercer attacks
made upon our life, we are conscious of the ex
istence of power other than our own. Any other
confession is confusion. Any other conclusion is
a contradiction of the original and final decision
of the sound mind. Native force of mind is a
great thing, and here the farmer is not infre
quently a better authority than the naturalist.
The sense of what exists is the beginning of
wisdom ; it is like the lamp in the dark room.
Again, the cosmos looks as if it were the
expression of thought. What a Greek thinker
long ago discovered in nature would seem to be
there. There seems to be among the individual
things that we know an aspiration after the
complete life. In the flower, in the tree, in this
bird, in the beast of the field and the fish of
the sea, there seems to be the persistent struggle
upward toward completeness. All individuals,
all groups of individuals, seem to be pursuing
ends, and these ends seem to be embedded in
the order and structure of their being. There

4 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
may be countless failures; there may be few
successes. Still, this struggle toward the attain
ment of ideal ends is impressive. Evolution
when it is sane is little more than a new and
mightier edition of Aristotle's doctrine of ends.
All that we see, all that we know, is in move
ment toward the complete existence ; and cosmic
ends without cosmic intelligence is cosmic non
sense. There is beauty in the world. What shall we
make of it? It has been said in an interesting
book that beauty is pleasure objectified. Is that
enough ? Is that the full and adequate account
of a beautiful face or a glorious sunset ? Does
the statement that beauty is altogether a thing
of the pleased and generous mind, that it is the
shadow upon the world cast by the rapt soul,
account for Milton's sorrow over the loss of his
sight ?
" Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But clouds instead and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank
Of nature's works to me .expunged and rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out."
The beauty is in the perceiving mind and in the

GOD AND HOPE 5
feeling heart. The inspiration of it is out and
beyond, in the light of setting suns. The cosmos
bears the character of an inspirer of beauty ; and
when our receptivities are dull, or closed, or
taken away, the vision and the passion of beauty
revisit us no more.
There is the cosmic disposition favorable to
life on the earth. One can imagine a storm in
which no ship could live, a hurricane which no
human habitation could survive, a degree of
heat or of cold destructive of every living thing,
a blast from some cave of the Furies that would
spread death everywhere. There is restraint upon
cosmic hostility to life ; otherwise life would
cease. On the other hand, there is cosmic favor,
sympathy, benignity. What shall we do with
this chastened cosmic hostility and this high
sympathy ? Natural selection is the phrase that
leaps for utterance. Nature has bred life from
the life best adapted to her strange environ
ments till she has arrived at races largely har
monious with her stern caprices. Her wily off
spring know how to dodge her blows and feed
upon her bounties. It is strange that a metaphor
should mislead the world. Man the breeder and
improver of life we know as a person of superior
mind and skill, but nature the breeder and im
prover of life we know as without mind, working
in the dark, without aim, by sheer luck arriving

6 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
at the stupendous result of life adapted more
and more to its environment. Of all the poor
sophisms that have ever passed for reason, this
is one of the meanest ; of all the instances where
scientific bread was demanded and a common
vulgar stone given, this is the supreme example.
If in all our adjustments and improvements we
do nothing more than act in sympathy with the
cosmic process, then why is our struggle full of
mind and that process mindless ? Nothing can
disturb the sound mind in its sense of the power,
the thought, the beauty, and the order of favor
to life in the cosmos. To say that the thoughts
and feelings of the individual man are the sole
realities, is the same as saying that the prisoner
of Chillon in his dungeon is as high in privilege
as Byron and Shelley on the wondrous lake or
among the great mountains. The cosmos is not
simply vision ; it is at least the vision of power,
thought, beauty, and favor. If we cannot say
that the power is cosmic will, that the thought
is cosmic intellect, that the beauty is cosmic
soul, that the order favorable to life is cosmic
sympathy, if we cannot describe as Spirit the
wondrous whole that so answers to our spirit,
we must be dumb. We have then a cosmos
that is a sphinx, — nameless, inscrutable, eternal
mystery. 2. Without God there is no hope of under-

GOD AND HOPE 7
standing the goodness in man, and in man's
history. Man is not his own maker. It is true
that character is an achievement. Still, certain
powers and aptitudes for this achievement are
born with the soul. The capacity for discerning
truth from falsehood, right from wrong, human
ity from inhumanity, comes with us into the
world. The capacity for love in all its high
forms is a native capacity. There is the lover's
love, the parent's love, the child's love, the
patriot's love, the philanthropist's love, the saint's
love. The capacity that in certain great instances
bursts into this world of bloom and fruitfulness
is native to man. So, too, the capacity to serve.
The heavenly vision is first discriminated from
the vision of hell, then follows the love of the
eternal solemnity, then comes the life of ardent
and happy service. Man is born with a profusion
of exalted aptitudes. He comes to the moral task
of life as the sun comes to its daily duty. It
comes with a fiery heart, with a radiant nature,
with a luminous and illuminating being. It has
but to rise and shine, to lift itself above the hori
zon and then to let itself go, to appear and to sow
the earth with its God-begotten beams. This
is the life of the normal man. His nature is
stored with aptitudes for his vocation. He has
a soul with eyes, a heart with a thousand splen
dors in it, a will capable of wondrous service and

8 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
endless loyalty. Unbind him, set him free, let
his capacities out, let his powers go, and his
moral achievement is an inevitable achievement.
When this does not take place, ignorance and
perversity contradict and baffle the clear inten
tion of our being.
All these things we have inherited. True,
but that only moves the mystery out of the
present into the past. A man does not explain
the production of his wealth by the remark that
it came to him by inheritance. Wealth is a
human creation. It implies in its existence some
where, labor and sorrow and gladness. The
thousand high capacities of the soul are not
explained by the fact of descent. These capa
cities are creations ; they are an accumulation
of creations through the action and reaction of
human life in the order of the world, and in
this action and reaction of our human life,
under the order of the world, there moves the
originating spirit of God. The river is not ex
plained by its course. Its volume at the end
is not accounted for by the remark that it has
come a thousand miles. It is not explained by
the number and the size of its tributaries, nor
by the country which it drains, nor by the foun
tains from which it first issues. The elements,
the forces, the laws, and the spirit of the whole
world are needed to account for that great,

GOD AND HOPE 9
beautiful, triumphant river. So it is with man.
Nothing can account for him but the spirit of the
whole, the soul of the universe, the best at the
centre of the Infinite, the heart of the Eternal.
There is the goodness of the individual per
son. In this person pursuing some great ideal,
many of these exalted aptitudes are in process of
realization. The process of realization is serious,
strenuous, sometimes tremendous. Still, it is a
victorious process. In it the great souls advance
" by the armor of righteousness on the right hand
and on the left, by glory and dishonor, by evil re
port and good report; as deceivers, and yet true;
as unknown, and yet well known ; as dying, and
behold, we live ; as chastened, and not killed ;
as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing ; as poor, yet
making many rich ; as having nothing, and yet
possessing all things." And the profoundest note
in this glorious tumult of triumphant manhood
is the confession of help out of the unseen, of the
grace of the Infinite, of the Strength that perfects
itself in human weakness. The history of a great
soul is an absolute enigma in a Godless universe.
There is the family life of man, with its sancti
ties and felicities. Here will is much, but nature
is more ; and at times nature seems the mightier
witness of God. The efficient will conforming an
outward environment to its own great purpose
may have the aspect of self-sufficiency. From

10 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
the outside and for those who do not search its
depths, the efficient will may seem the negation
of God. The flight of the bird is accounted for
by its own strong wings. But in the rush, the
surprise, the persistence, the sovereignty, and the
sweetness of domestic instincts we see a will other
than our own. The home once established, chil
dren born, here to be cared for and loved, here
to be defended and led up to the threshold of
manhood and womanhood, the human heart be
comes master. The economic activity and worth
of man, the political genius and service of man,
the religious vision and passion of man, come out
of the heart of our human homes. The goodness
here is the best that we know; it is our own,
and again it is not our own. The heart of a great
workman in any vocation, the heart of a patriot
like Lincoln, of a father like Luther, of a mother
like Monica, is more than an achievement made
possible by family life. Without the grace of the
Eternal, it is an absolute mystery. Without God,
there is no hope of understanding this supreme
blossom and excellence of our humanity. The
best education in faith is to revere the hallowed
family of the world, and to endeavor to perpetu
ate this happiness. The true human home, in
its possessions, love, service, and hope, speaks for
itself. Here the heart of honor seems to utter
like an aeolian harp the Eternal honor : —

GOD AND HOPE 11
" Speaks not of self that mystic tone,
But of the over-gods alone.
It trembles to the cosmic breath
And as it heareth so it saith."
Here, too, the high souls of the race speak.
The final refutation of the universe of Buddha
is Buddha himself. That great, pure, compas
sionate, victorious soul is the negation of the un
thinking, unfeeling, and impotent Infinite. Such
a soul lights the universe to its heart, and shows
there power and grace equal to the production of
a spirit thus firm and high. This is the great
service of the high souls of our race. They are
not self-made. They are not originations in the
teeth of fate, in protest against the character of
the universe. They are one and all the work of
the Eternal Spirit, one and all apostles of the
Infinite mystery, one and all witnesses of the
heart of honor and fire at the core of being, one
and all revelations of the moral life of God.
Jesus Christ is the issue of the sympathetic soul
of the universe. He drew his being from the
heart of the Eternal Being. He is the apostle
and high priest of our confession. The universe
consented to his existence, it was able to give
him his existence, it must be as good as its best
issue. 3. Without God, there is no hope of deliver
ance from man's great enemies. It sometimes

12 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
seems to be true that man is a self-deliverer.
This power of self-deliverance is the best gift
that the universe has bestowed upon him. He
seems to be a self-deliverer from ignorance, eco
nomic waste and wrong, physical dishonor and
pain, vice and crime, and from all uncleanness
and outrage. It sometimes appears as if the
prospect of self-deliverance for man were bright
and alluring.
But how is this deliverance to. be wrought ?
By insight into the laws governing our being
and by obedience to them. By the vision of the
path of life and by walking therein. Self-deliv
erance is thus through the power of something
other and greater than man. It is through the
vision of law and obedience to law ; it is through
the grace that law breathes into the beholding
and serving soul.
This reverses our notion of self-deliverance.
After all, we are not our own saviours. We
cross the deep with our ships. The sea becomes
the great field for the carrying power of a pro
ductive race. We triumph on the sea, as else
where, by our obedience. Our triumph comes
through our knowledge of nature's power, our
invocation of nature's help, our willingness to
allow nature to fight for us. We achieve by
laying hold of power other than our own and
infinitely greater.

GOD AND HOPE 13
This is the case when we come to the sphere
of character. There is man's sin. No soul has
ever torn itself from the meshes of error and
wrong without the sense of help from God. No
such soul would dare face the task of bringing in
a new moral habit to replace the old habit of sin
and shame without the promise and prospect of
Divine help. Moral reconstitution is the task of
multitudes. It is a task that has two aspects. It
is an achievement and it is a rescue. The power
of rescue is out of the Infinite. Indeed, those
who stand in this tremendous process seem hardly
to know what we mean by vagueness and uncer
tainty about God. He is the new thought in the
intellect, the new love in the heart, the new tide
of strength in the will, the new reservoir of power
behind all the lines of supply coming into their
lives. He is the breath of their being, the soul
of their soul. In the awakened, forgiven, eman
cipated, victorious soul, God is an ever-present
reality. In this direction and current of personal
life God lives, in this tidal movement upon noble
ends God moves. Those mighty emancipations
from sin, such as we find in Paul, Augustine,
Luther, and a multitude of others less impressive,
take from the subjects of them all doubt about
God. Those steady ongoings of the soul in honor
and service are the continuous witness of God's
presence. How can he doubt God's presence
whose cry is : — r

14 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
" He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the
miry clay;
And he set my feet upon a rock, and established my
goings.
And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise
unto our God."
Wrhen good men look upon the task of making
the world good, it becomes hopeless without God.
If there is no sympathy at the heart of things with
the teacher, the prophet, the reformer ; if there
is no eternal gracious presence mediating itself
through good men in the lofty service of their
kind, what can we do ? Look out upon the lust
and greed and cruelty of the world and behold
our task. Who is sufficient for this task ? Un
less we can say our sufficiency is of God, we must
abandon all high work in despair. I stood once
in the citadel that overlooks the city of Cairo.
It was evening. There lay the city on the plain,
teeming with men and women, ignorant, unclean,
sinning, and suffering, holding within its compass
an epitome of the tragedy of the world. There it
spread till it crumbled in the surrounding desert,
lost in the desert's loneliness and gloom. And
towering there in the afterglow of sunset on the
edge of the boundless waste of sand stood the
Pyramids, ancient, weird, solemn, preternatural
witnesses of immemorial wretchedness, desolation,
and despair. What man, what company of men,

GOD AND HOPE 15
what church, what order of churches, can match
this ancient and nameless sorrow ? I came from
this vision to the Christian mission in the great
city. There I found the ground of hope : —
" God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change,
And though the mountains be moved in the heart of
the seas ;
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled,
Though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved :
God shall help her, and that right early."
There is, finally, man's greatest enemy, death.
Death is the enemy of man because man is a lover.
He has an instinctive love of life ; when true to
himself, he rises into the love of the dutiful life ;
when he is reasonably fortunate, his existence is
at its heart a network of noble attachments.
The vital instinct hates death ; the conscientious
servant stands opposed to death ; the lover of
his kind, of his kindred, of his home, is at war
with death. Wherever you find a nature burn
ing with vitality, a conscience supreme over the
courses of thought and conduct, a heart with
a thousand dear interests and a few immortal
loves, there you find the spirit that refuses the
comfort of extinction. Wherever human life is
great, it must wish to go on ; wherever it has
the capacity for worth, it should go on ; wher-

16 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
ever it is a high and beautiful character, if the
Eternal cares for such things, it must go on.
For what does the universe care ? We may
answer, only for the endless transformations of
its own energy. In that case the universe is
beneath contempt. Honor and worship of it, to
a clear mind, are impossible. On that basis re
ligion could not have begun ; on that basis the
great religions could never have come into exist
ence. If the universe cares for nothing but the
endless transformation of its own being, it is
simply brutal and contemptible.
Let us assume that this is its character. How,
then, can we account for the beauty into which
this contemptible universe bursts in the great
souls of the race, in the normal human homes of
our kind, in the heart of the faithful the world
over ? Here is a contradiction too great for the
sound mind to accept. Can the clean come out
of the unclean, the high soul out of the brutal,
the spirit all love, all service, all sympathy,
whose whole being is a holy sacrificial fire, rise
up out of the depths of an immoral or unmoral
universe ? If we must choose among mysteries,
we must, while we follow reason, set this one
aside as incredible and impossible.
High capacities such as we find in men, high
character and service such as we find in good
men, would seem to be, if the universe has any

GOD AND HOPE 17
moral sense in it, lasting utilities, enduring val
ues, abiding splendors. And this is what we
mean by God. He is the conscience of the uni
verse. He surveys our human world. He sees
as we do, but with an appreciation infinitely
deeper, the high capacity of man. In a multi
tude of cases it is held down to the form of mere
capacity by ignorance, perversity, and the tragic
courses of society. Still, high capacity it remains ;
shall not a wise and noble universe rescue and
conserve that capacity ? God surveys our human
world again, and notes moral excellence, distinct
worth, honor in head and heart. He sees the
vision, the service, and the worth of love. He
sees men caring for one another, life dear be
cause others are alive, and a world of joy born
out of this reciprocity of noble human hearts.
This is a vision found only in man's world. Is
it not worth more to a universe with a conscience
than the entire realm of physical being ? Is it
not a value to the universe, a splendor in it ?
Shall not the Infinite conscience keep forever
this fair result ?
Individually, men may be willing to die and
sleep in eternal silence. They are unwilling that
their beloved should pass out of being. They
are unwilling not only because of the bereave
ment to themselves, but also because of the sac
rifice to the universe, the outrage upon the work

18 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
of the Infinite. A lost soul, especially when that
soul is a soul of worth and beauty, is more than
the Eternal can well sustain. As Plato said, if
souls should die, the spiritual being of the uni
verse would finally become extinct. It would
be hard to show that spiritual creation without
spiritual conservation might not come to this, —
a universe become a body of death, sunk to a
rubbish-heap. For this result we cannot look, if
there is sense and power in the processes of exist
ence. Weeds and flowers alike are gathered by
the gardener's hand, but for different ends. The
weeds are waste, the flowers are joy. Men and
all living things are under the power of death,
but, we must believe, for different purposes.
Men would seem to belong to the heart of the
universe; to be among its permanent values,
splendors, delights.
I have said nothing of the suffering that
death brings to the living. If it were believed
by all bereaved mothers and fathers that death
is the end, that belief would either degrade and
corrupt the human heart, or it would drive it
insane. Destroy hope here and you make exist
ence too heavy to be borne ; destroy hope here
and you break down our humanity ; destroy
hope here and you call the suffering race to
arms against the pitilessness and horror of the
universe. For it is not mere ideas with which we

GOD AND HOPE 19
are here dealing ; it is flesh and blood, it is
the loving and suffering heart of man ; it is the
forces essential to the existence of a living and
an ascending humanity.
But how shall this be ? Kill the optic nerve
and you quench sight, paralyze the auditory
nerve and you hear no more, destroy the sensory
nerves and you become dead to the world, fix
the brain in the frost of death and the mind is
gone. How plausible and complete it sounds.
We are still the slaves of sense and not its mas
ters. Souls have appeared among us in bodies
blind, deaf, and dumb ; they have awakened to
the glory of our world, shared the best life of
our kind, spoken to us burning words out of the
night, and we see in this no testimony to the
independence and sovereignty of soul. We close
the eye, the ear, the mouth, and leave only feel
ing as the outlet of thought, and look how it
comes forth a river of light and joy. We wish
to close all means of exit and still to demand
the response of mind. We destroy the brain-
habitation, and after that we still expect the
soul to answer our call. When you take away
the workman's tools, you do not expect him to
work. When you pull his house to the ground,
you expect him, if he is wise and alert, to get
out of it before it falls. Souls speak through
the senses. When one sense after another fails*

20 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
they still speak through the sense that remains.
When all the senses are gone, they still make
signs to us, they signal to us like ships in the
darkness plunging in heavy seas. More than
this we have no reason to expect.
We do not yet understand the meaning of
our greatest discoveries. Consider the miracle
of wireless telegraphy. There is no mind with
out brain ; so runs the light atheistic epigram.
Here in the wireless electric force is something
as invisible as any soul. It leaves the body that
you have made for it and goes in search of a
body in the unseen. While out on its errand it
is bodiless, flying along the constitution of the
world. Consider this current with intelligence
in it leaving a body here, seeking and finding a
body there. So much for a cosmic current.
Shall we look for less in the human soul ?
When it leaves its body in time, shall we not
think of it as a current sweeping the unseen,
searching eternity for the body which it has
pleased God to prepare for it there, and in that
body reporting the memories, the thoughts, the
achievements, sufferings, and hopes of its entire
earthly career? If with man these wondrous
transitions are possible, are the transitions of
souls from the tent here to the house not made
with hands, eternal, in the heavens, impossible ?
Ye do greatly err, O hopeless soul.

GOD AND HOPE 21
The last word is between a soulless and a
soulful universe, a moral and an unmoral Infi
nite, an Eternal whose attitude toward man is
one of total indifference, or one of boundless love
and pity. At heart the universe is either a uni
verse of woe or of joy. And this comes round
to the great antithesis with which we began. It
is either God and infinite hope, or atheism and
absolute despair. We choose God and infinite
hope as our faith because they light up nature
to the heart, because they account for all the
precious things in our human world, because
they cover man in the day of battle and assure
him of final triumph. We reject atheism and
despair because they leave nature in the black
ness of darkness, because they turn man at his
best into the burning criticism and condemna
tion of the universe that brought him forth, and
because they convert the future into life's grave
and love's horror. We abandon atheism and
inhumanity for faith in the Lord God of our
fathers, for the God and Father of Jesus Christ.
For no God and no hope we substitute the Eter
nal God and infinite hope. We cry with the
Psalmist : —
" Nevertheless I am continually with thee :
Thou hast holden my right hand.
Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel,
And afterward receive me to glory.

22 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
Whom have I in heaven but thee ?
And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.
My flesh and my heart faileth :
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion
for ever."

II
THE HUMANITY OF GOD
" He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.'1 John xiv, 9.
The greatest thing that we know is man ; the
greatest man that we know is Jesus Christ.
When, therefore, we hear him say, " He that
hath seen me hath seen the Father," we have a
guide to the heart of the Eternal of infinite
moment. These words have been used to prove the
divinity of Jesus Christ ; I intend to use them
as indicating the humanity of God. They have
been used mainly, one might almost say ex
clusively, as giving a supremely exalted vision
of Jesus ; I think they lead to a supremely
exalted and consoling vision of God. Jesus no
longer needs vindication or exaltation ; we can
not think of a wiser or better than he. He is
the best that we know, and by his sovereign
goodness we judge individuals, families, na
tions, and races ; by it we judge the universe.
There is something wonderfully impressive in
this instinctive retreat in our time upon human
ity. When human nature is true to itself, there

24 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
is nothing equal to it, there is, indeed, nothing
that will bear comparison with it among things
that we see. It appeals to sense by its helpful
ness. Men are needful to men ; the industry of
the world, with all its cruelty, is still organized
brotherhood. Men could not sow and reap, spin
and weave, cross the land and cover the sea, as
they do, but for the help of their kind. Civili
zation is a witness to the helpfulness of man to
man. Every building, farm, factory, locomotive,
ship, store, bank, is a presentation to the eye
of the sympathy in which man fives. Our city,
with its schools, churches, hospitals, asylums,
and with all its avenues and homes steeped in
a thousand stirring and tender associations, is a
revelation to sense of the power of our hu
manity. This human nature reflected in history makes
its appeal to imagination. Men have done great
things : they have set bounds to the ferocity of
nature ; they have turned the cosmos at a thou
sand points of antagonism into the servant of
society ; they are now whispering their thought
into instruments of mechanical device, and the
whisper pursues and overtakes the traveler by
land and by sea ; they have wrought out lan
guages of great fullness and beauty; they have
entertained splendid visions and recorded them
in imperishable words ; they have construed the

THE HUMANITY OF GOD 25
meaning of the nature beyond them, the nature
within them, and they have created by their
insight and sympathy great literatures. They
have taken form, as in sculpture and building ;
color, as in painting; sound, as in music and
in poetry, and they have made these the finished
and impressive representatives of the deepest
thoughts and the holiest feelings. They have
established governments, and striven for the
realization in human society of sublime ideals.
When one adds to this achievement the greater
religions, — the religion of Buddha, the religion
of the Hebrews, the religion of Jesus Christ, —
and considers these religions as creations of the
human soul, one is overawed in the presence
of the range, the splendor, and the majesty of
man. When one allows these great reflections of
man in the vast and precious mirror of his
tory to enter and possess the imagination, it is
impossible not to think of him as the superlative
wonder. There is in life besides all this, love. Man
counts to man more than all else because of
love. Every successive generation of lovers hal
lows anew this weary world. The light of their
eyes is brighter than the sun, the treasure in
their hearts is beyond estimate. They perpet
ually renew the meaning of existence, and con
vert the old earth into a scene of endless ro-

26 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
mance and tenderness. Where is there a hill or
valley, stream or lake, city or shore, that is not
thus invested with the sanctity of the lover's
dream and passion? The planet rolls in an
atmosphere fifty miles in depth, but deeper far,
purer and richer infinitely, is that other atmos
phere in which it flies, created out of the heart
of the immemorial succession of lovers. This
treasure that invests nature with new meaning is
increased by every true human home. A child
is frail, it is indeed nothing, measured against
the cosmos, but in value it is infinite. Here is
a possession that makes great the human heart.
The love of a parent for a child reacts upon his
sense of the worth of humanity ; human nature
is greatened in this passion ; every extension of
love issues in a new consciousness of the value
of man. The love that counts the lives of others
precious, that serves them in the light of a lofty
ideal, that identifies its good with theirs, that
holds itself as the sovereign value in existence
and of more worth infinitely than all that can be
set against it, that love which is the core, the
highest working power, indeed nearly the whole
constructive force in human history, makes the
nature that it glorifies a unique approach to the
Eternal. I have said that this instinctive retreat upon
our humanity is impressive. Consider the times

THE HUMANITY OF GOD 27
in which we live : only a few years since, man
was leveled down to the animal, or the animal
was leveled up to man. How old and how fool
ish that error now seems ! Where men begin is
one thing ; to what they come is another. Ori
gins are nothing ; ends are everything. In the
fight of the end the beginning is transformed, as
the fire of sunset sometimes sweeps backward
and transfigures the east. The full-grown man
shows the differentiating soul that lived in the
infant that seemed but a bundle of animal wants.
The full-grown man, in clear and serious recog
nition of moral ideals, in earnest and undis-
couraged pursuit of them, strong with the ten
der strength of a great and wide-reaching love,
carries the origin of life back into the heart
of the Infinite. The man whom we select as
hero, whom wise and good men delight to
honor, who wins and keeps the confidence of
the enlightened and the upright, differentiates
the humanity that he wears from the animal
order beneath him by the whole diameter of
being. The harvest is the great discriminator ;
the grain, the fruit from the garden and the
orchard, the various products of the soil, are a
kind of final judgment upon the character of
the seeds and beginnings whence they came.
They may look alike at the first ; at the last
they are of widely different values and uses.

28 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
Because man has an animal life, he is not there
fore in that order. Look toward the end, con
sider the full-grown Christian man, weigh the
worth of his soul, and you will find it easy to
believe in the unique origin, mission, and des
tiny of man.
Perhaps the deepest words in the Parable of
the Lost Son are these: "When he came to
himself." He had gone away, far away from
himself, he had gone into the life beneath him,
where for a time he lost all memory of the exist
ence for which he was made, and where all vision
of the heights above him and the world of love
that he had left behind faded out. That could
not last ; his nature was divinely made, and it
could not permanently endure this outrage upon
it. His shame, his want, his isolation, his suf
fering, was the clear note of his nobility. It was
this that gave him no rest, that bred thought,
that brought about the great return. " And
when he came to himself," — until that was
done, nothing of any avail could be attempted ;
when that was done, all high things became pos
sible. Then the vision returned of his old home,
his father's love, the possibility of reinstatement
in it, at least of service in the order of his
father's home ; then, and greatest of all, came
the resolve : " I will arise and go to my father."
When he came to himself, he returned to his

THE HUMANITY OF GOD 29
father, and when we come to our humanity, we
come to our God. For an entire generation,
scientists, scholars, thinkers, students of current
literature, and reading men and women went
away from themselves ; they dwelt with delight
among the forms of life beneath them, biology
was everything, anthropology was nothing, or
only a branch of the great tree of life. So the
sense died away of the august meaning of our
human existence. So men and women became
skeptical and hopeless. So the sublime beliefs
of the world, and the high wisdom of suffering
and aspiring genius, took on the character of
noble fiction. There was nothing left but natu
ral history, as of the bee or the ant or the tiger,
invested with a halo by the creative imagination
of man.
Parallel to this is the immemorial departure
of man from himself. Of the path of selfishness
it is still true that broad is the way and wide is
the gate, and many there be who go in thereat.
The standing sorrow and disgrace of our race is
this immersion of man in the life foreign to him.
Listen to an ape scraping a Stradivarius violin,
and you have an image of what takes place when
man adopts from the animal order unmodified
the law of the survival of the fittest ; listen to
an Ole Bull using the same instrument, and you
have a suggestion of the way in which the harsh

30 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
and terrible order beneath man is transfigured
by man when his heart is full of love. Men
borrow the maxims of the brute for the regula
tion of much in life, — domestic, commercial,
political, and international. War is always the
ape tearing discords out of the heavenly violin.
Conflict of every kind, the unbrotherliness of
man to man, is a departure from self. It entails
sorrow, degradation, loss ; it brings with it in
evitably the ever feebler sense of the soul in man
made for righteousness, and the soul in the
universe that we call God. It comes to regard
with ill-concealed contempt all spiritual beliefs,
all spiritual institutions, all thoughts and forces
that witness to the dignity of mankind. So far
as I can discover, the only two doctrines that
appeal to men and women who thus degrade
themselves, who spend their strength in a vital
slander upon the race to which they belong, are
the doctrines of total depravity and of a salva
tion that is simply the dead lift of Omnipotence
of a humanity, or elected portion of it, out of
the gutter to which it has sunk. The number
of rascals who have found these two doctrines
credible and comfortable is, I believe, very
great. The word to all is the old message : " Repent
ye ; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand ; " re
turn to yourself, come again to your abandoned

THE HUMANITY OF GOD 31
humanity. Nowhere but here can you find God,
nowhere but here can you see the meaning of
human existence, nowhere but here can you
behold the ideals that roof in the true Church
like the starry order of a Syrian midnight. Come
back to the sense of relation to your kind ; come
back to the social order in which you have been
placed, and there acknowledge duty, behold the
standard of it in Jesus Christ, and bend yourself
to obedience. Then, finding your own human
soul, you will surely find God.
Look at Jesus. Consider him simply as the per
fect man. There is no higher name than that.
The language of the creeds seems unreal in the
presence of his spotless and sublime humanity.
We gain one or two glimpses of his childhood,
and how full of wonder and beauty it is ! We
have one clear glance into his boyhood, and we
mark the thirst for knowledge, the reverence for
authority, the flow of deep questions, and the
high spirit that fill it with grace and charm.
When we see him again, he has become a man,
he has risen into the consciousness of his Father
in heaven, into the consciousness of his Sonhood
to God. We see him at the Jordan, accepting
baptism as the sign of the new world that has
risen into clearness in his soul. We follow him
into the wilderness, and watch him under his great
temptation. In trial he is so patient, so strong ;

32 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
and out of trial he comes so pure and mighty.
We hear his teaching, we listen to his parables,
we go with him in his errands of mercy, and try
to count his countless acts of compassion and
healing. We retire with him for prayer, we come
again with him to the solemn business of living.
We keep close to him while the great misun
derstanding concerning him grows blacker and
blacker, we are with him in the heart of the
awful tragedy. We watch the supremely good,
apprehended, tried, condemned, and crucified as
the supremely bad, and in it all we behold com
prehension so clear, pity so absolute, strength
so victorious. This is man at his highest; this
is our humanity carried to its best. This is the
glory of human history. Nothing is wanting
here that the wise and noble mind can ask for ;
everything is here that should be present in
human character. And it is this perfect human
reality that gives to Jesus Christ his unique
influence over men, that lends to his character
its endless interest for men. You may call him
divine or semi-divine, God or the Son of God ;
these are names, significant for some, insignifi
cant for others. What you must note is that
the sovereign soul of Jesus is his humanity ; that
is the reality, that is the truth of his being.
Human nature, the greatest thing that we know,
becomes in him the highest and best.

THE HUMANITY OF GOD 33
The method of approach to God in the text
implies an ascent through man to God, and also
a descent of God in man.
1. There is the ascent through man to God. We
survey all things that we know, all forms of life
that we know ; we survey man. We know that
we are bounded by the infinite as some island
might know itself bounded by a shoreless sea.
We know ourselves as living in the infinite, as
this planet might know itself as living in the in
finite spaces. We long to be able to reach and
read the character of the Eternal. We look at
all things, at all forms of life, as expressions of
the Eternal ; we look at man. Shall we construe
the character of the Eternal by what is lowest or
by what is highest, by the beast of prey or by
the apostle of love, by cosmic hostilities to man
or by the human heart, by the mystery ¦of pain
and death or by the glorious epoch of sacrifice
and gladness in history, by what is darkest and
most terrible or by what is most luminous and
most precious ?
If God is wholly like the cosmic hostility to
man, if He is wholly like the beast of prey, how
could there flow from Him all the gentleness and
beauty of the world ? If He is dark and cruel,
if He is loveless and pitiless, how could He have
made the human heart ? If we say that He is
dark and cruel, we can no longer hold Him to

34 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
be the Maker of noble men ; if we hold Him
as the wise and good, we find in Him the Author
of our human love, and if we cannot reconcile
his love with other things that we see, we can
wait until more light shall arrive. If we read
God's character in the fight of the lowest order
of life, we have nothing in Him to account for
man ; if we read God wholly by the highest, we
fail to reconcile the forms of cruelty with his
character. But the future may make all this
plain. Now this ascent to God through man receives
its highest expression in Jesus Christ. There is.
nothing in God to account for Jesus unless God
is love ; there is nothing in all the universe to
account for Jesus unless at the heart of the uni
verse there is a love equal to his. The cause
must equal the effect ; Jesus is not self -created,
he points backward to his origin in the Eternal.
In accepting Jesus in his full humanity, we rise
to a God who is equal to the task of creating
such a being as Jesus, and we are justified in
holding that our God is as good, as kind, as
inexhaustible in compassion and hope for man
as Jesus was. A God as good as Jesus; that
we obtain by the method of the text ; that result
is the illumination and consolation of human
history ; for a better than Jesus we do not need,
a better than he we cannot conceive.

THE HUMANITY OF GOD 35
2. This ascent through man to God implies
a previous descent of God in man. If we can
find God through man, it is because God lives
in man. In man's passion for truth, in the laws
of his intellect that guide him in his search for
truth, and in the intellectual integrity that is
his dearest mental possession, God has set up
his order. In man's passion for righteousness,
in the laws of his conscience and will that lead
him on in the attainment of righteousness, in
the sincerity and chastity of heart that is his
most precious moral possession, God has again
set up his order. In man's passion for beauty,
in his wonder and joy in its presence, in his
consolation and hope as he beholds the beautiful
aspects of the universe, and in his sweet oblivion
as he stands in the vision of beauty, God again
reveals his order. In the heart of man as lover,
parent, son, friend, citizen, in the great and
constant tides of affection, in the sincerities,
loyalties, endearments, and most holy ardors of
the soul, God has made an amazing disclosure
of himself. In Him we live and move and have
our being, as the bird in the air, as the fish
in the sea, and in us God lives and moves and
has his being, as the air in the lung of the fish
and of the bird, as the living fire of a living
universe burns in the blood of everything that
breathes. In the structure of the intellect, in

36 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
the plan of the conscience, in the order oi
ajsthetic feeling, and in the outgoings of the
human heart, God dwells. The kingdom of God
is indeed within you, the King is within you,
our God is Immanuel.
Here again in Jesus we see the great revealer.
There is the intelligence of Jesus. We are be
ginning to understand something of its range,
richness, depth, originality, and, better still, its
absolute integrity. Men are more and more
thankful for the comprehension, the calmness,
the confidence, and the perfect sanity of the
mind of Jesus. His thinking is a new intima
tion of the Sovereign Mind ; it is self-conscious,
self-directed, perfectly normal, and yet there is
in it the inevitable hint of the power of the In
finite, such as one gains from the approach of
morning or evening. In sunrise and sunset, in
the ebb and flow of the tides, in the coming and
going of the great constellations, in the whole
cosmic order and movement, we recognize the
power of the Eternal ; and in the intelligence of
Jesus, in its wide, wise, conclusive, and benign
operation, there is the intimation of God's pre
sence. We come with awe to the conscience of
Jesus. He holds the world to the highest stand
ard ; he is boundless in compassion, and yet he
will rest in nothing but righteousness. God is

THE HUMANITY OF GOD 37
to him the righteous Father ; righteousness is
the burden of his greatest discourse, the right
eousness in man that beholds and that tries to
reproduce the righteousness of God. The moral
nature of Jesus is incomparably great ; the moral
universe that lives in the conscience of Jesus is
the sublimest possession of mankind. And here
there is even a stronger suggestion of Another.
You open a letter that has come to you from
afar, and in the familiar characters you see a
soul; the letter is not complete in itself, it is
a message to one soul from another. You look
at the picture of some dear friend ; the picture
calls up the reality that it represents. You hear
the voice of a friend, full of melody and tender
ness, and you think of the rich and tender
heart whose beat is in that awakening and con
soling voice. Now just as that letter, that pic
ture, that voice, is incomplete in itself ; just as
it brings in the vision of another, so the con
science of Christ in its order, in its sublimity,
and in its instinctive and unerring action, brings
in the vision of God.
There is in Jesus the sense of beauty. We
have noticed all too slightly and slowly this
aspect of his character. His receptivities are
fitted to the loveliness of the universe ; the
spirit of beauty in nature passes into his being
and lives in his entire manner of thinking and

38 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
speaking. His parables are bathed in the fresh
ness and charm of the morning ; his words
carry in them the reflected color and tone of
beautiful things, as the bird carries in its plum
age the burning mystery of light. The soul of
Jesus is alive to all beauty, — sea, mountain,
wilderness, the lilies of the field, the birds of
heaven, the singing industries and cheerful ways
of men, the sun that shines equally on the evil
and the good, the rain that falls alike on the
just and the unjust. In this vision in which his
soul so often found rest, in which he so often
met God, we meet God. God is within him in
this wondrous capacity, in this wondrous expe
rience. The beauty of the Lord our God is
within him and upon him.
There is the heart of Christ. Who may
speak of that ? Ask the little children who can
never forget his face as he took them in his
arms and blessed them, the mothers who came
to him when in deepest anxiety, the centurion
who appealed to him for his son, the centurion
who besought him for his servant ; ask Mary
Magdalene, whose distress he healed, whose self-
respect he restored ; Peter, whose disloyalty he
forgave, whose weakness he replaced with the
strength of grateful love ; John, whose whole
being he filled with a celestial passion ; the sis
ters in Bethany, whose joy and sorrow he trans-

THE HUMANITY OF GOD 39
figured ; the publicans and sinners, whose lives
he redeemed from shame and despair ; the men
who nailed him to the cross, over whom he
prayed : " Father, forgive them, for they know
not what they do ; " the penitent thief, who re-
received from him as he entered the great mys
tery the immortal assurance : " To-day shalt thou
be with me in Paradise ; " the soldier who stood
guard under the cross, who saw it all, and who
said : " Truly, this man was the Son of God; "
— ask all these, and the multitude that no man
can number whom they represent, what they
think of the heart of Christ ! The answer rolled
back with a voice like the voice of many waters
and mighty thunderings must be : " The heart
of Christ is the sanctuary of humanity, and the
presence that fills it is the presence of the King
Immortal, invisible, eternal, the only wise God,
our Father in heaven."
Science tells us of atoms and their motions,
and the world is indeed a wonder as it is thus
surveyed; but we refuse to believe that this
view leads in any way to a final account of
being. Science tells us of force, that it is for
ever changing its form and forever remaining
the same, boundless, perdurable, eternal, defining
its life like Shelley's cloud : —
" I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores ;
I change, but I cannot die."

40 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
but all the force of which we have any direct
knowledge issues from intelligent will, and even
this carried to infinity cannot account for our
human world. We read of the Eternal as King
and Judge. Most true and most solemn are
these designations of the reigning and judicial
presence in the soul and in human history ; but
we cannot allow the King and Judge to dim our
vision of the Highest. The eye of the climber
on the great mountain seeks the summit ; thither
he tends, there and there alone can his nature
rest. The vision of the beholder of God sweeps
ever upward, past God in wood and stone, past
God in the light of setting suns, in the wonder
that invests all the spheres of life, beyond God
in the law and order that express themselves in
the lofty offices of king and judge ; the eye
travels up to the utmost height of the moral
being of God. There and there alone can the
vision of God end in peace. The greatest thing
that we know is man, the greatest man that we
know is Jesus Christ ; and our worthiest thought
of God regards Him as the God and Father of
Jesus Christ. The humanity of God is given
in the humanity of man ; it is given supremely
in the humanity of Jesus. We ascend to God
through man and his sovereign leader ; through
man and his sovereign leader we receive God.
This is our faith. Against the wild indifference

THE HUMANITY OF GOD 41
of the cosmos, the inscrutable mysteries of moral
wrong, pain, and death, and the fearful inhu
manities of man to man ; in the presence of the
worthy, in the presence of the Worthiest, we
believe in the dear, eternal humanity of God.

m
MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD
" There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John.1' John i, 6.
We speak of the twelve apostles, and we do well
so to speak. We picture to ourselves these men
going forth from Jesus, by the will of God, with
a message for mankind. The picture is one of
the loftiest, one of the most inspiring in human
history. So much definiteness, dignity, scope,
power, and permanent meaning enter the lives
of these famous and happy men.
But there is an earlier and broader apostle
ship. Here it is in John the Baptist. He pre
ceded Jesus ; yet he was an apostle. An apostle
of whom? God. An apostle for whom? God
in the service of Jesus. An apostle for what?
That he might witness to his time of the High
est. And here in the apostleship of the Baptist
we have the apostleship of humanity : " There
came a man, sent from God, whose name was
John." Was this the belief of his parents and kindred
about the Baptist? Was it the belief of this
biographer of Jesus, who had been, at one time,

MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 43
a disciple of the Baptist ? Or was it the belief
of the Baptist about himself ? If the text em
bodies the opinion of his father and mother and
kindred, it is interesting ; if it records the opin
ion of the author of the Fourth Gospel, it is still
more interesting ; if it holds the conviction of
the Baptist about himself, it is of the highest
interest. Let us assume that .this is the case,
that the Baptist solemnly believed that he was
a man sent from God. On the ground of this
assumption we must ask several questions, and
we must try to answer them.
1. How did the Baptist reach his assurance of
God ? How did he move into this consciousness
of God ? How did he become clear and sure and
serene about this infinite concern of the soul?
He was born of religious parents. His home
was a home of faith. His father and mother
believed that all that came to them came by the
will of the Highest. The boy was accustomed to
this way of thinking. He was led to behold all
things in God. He had been told that of all the
good things that had come from God to his par
ents, he was the best. He himself had come from
God. All life, all love, all great endowment, all
high opportunity, all things in the world, except
sin, had come from God. In this view of exist
ence the Baptist had been bred.
It cannot be too often repeated that the loss

44 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
of early religious training is a loss that can
never afterward be made good. If indeed be
lief in God is a superstition, if it is indulgence
in a mere dream, if it is the creation of reality
out of the pious but foolish imagination, it is
infinitely better to grow up without education
in faith. But if there is any least probability
that there may be something great answering
to our thought of God, it is a loss unspeakable
to miss habituation in that thought in our earliest
years. For it was observed by a Greek philo
sopher, more than two thousand years ago, that
the difference is not slight, but immense, and
indeed of sovereign moment, whether one is or
is not trained from earliest years according to the
truth. The young mind, like fine wool, takes
into itself forever the dye of great ideas.
This son of priestly parents would be versed
in the history of his people. He would come
to know his nation as founded by Moses, as led
by Joshua, as judged by Samuel, as ruled by
David, as interpreted by Isaiah, as consecrated
in the great Psalms, as pondered in the sublime
mystery of its existence in the epic of Job.
Here is a nation in unbroken association with
God. Its history, as understood by those who
made it, is a manifestation of God. Its origin,
its great epochs, its great leaders, its great ex
periences, its vast hopes, are bound up with the

MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 45
belief in God. The nation is inseparable from
this faith in God ; it is penetrated with the con
sciousness of his justice and mercy ; it fives and
moves in Him as the planet lives and moves in
the bosom of infinite space. This boy cannot
read a page of national history without meeting
the idea of God ; he cannot understand a char
acter or an event in that history without assum
ing the reality of God. As this boy absorbs the
history, he absorbs the sense of God ; as he
reproduces the best life of his race, he repro
duces their highest faith.
Is there nothing here for us? Do the great
epochs of history mean nothing for our time ?
Do we not see in the origin of Christianity the
involvement of the life of its Founder and the
lives of his apostles with the being of God ? In
all the teachings of Jesus, in all the conduct
of Jesus, in all the sufferings of Jesus, in his life,
and in his death, he is God's. How can we
understand this man or his religion apart from
the reality of God? How can we understand
Christianity as a force in human history apart
from the power of God in it ?
Does the Reformation mean nothing on its
spiritual side? The liberation that it wrought
for the intellect we acknowledge; the freedom
that it achieved for the spirit we confess. When
Luther stands before the Diet of Worms and

46 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
pleads for the life of reasonable manhood, when
he there and then opens wide the iron gate that
for a thousand years had kept the intellect of
Europe in bondage, when he at a single stroke
inaugurates the modern epoch with its free hu
manity and its vast hope, are we to detach this
service from the idea that made it possible for
the strong man to do his work ? It all came from
the happy and triumphant sense of God. For
Luther, God was in it all. The man who did this
monumental deed believed that he did it by the
inspiration of God. Does this count for nothing?
To many Cromwell's piety has seemed pure
hypocrisy. Why? Because they desired no
change ; because they were satisfied under Charles
I ; because they did not revolt at tyranny ; be
cause they were without the aspirations of
freemen. To others Oliver Cromwell means
something great and noble. Here was a nation
to be delivered. Here, as Milton said, was the
people of England to be defended. Here was a
system of despotism, controlling church and state,
and standing like a monster with its heel on the
neck of a great race. And here is Oliver Crom
well confronting all that. He cannot right this
hideous wrong in his own strength. He can do
it only in the strength of the Lord of Hosts.
The deed is done, the nation is freed, the new
epoch of English democracy is inaugurated, and

MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 47
Oliver Cromwell says it is the Lord that hath
done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Is
no respect due to the consciousness of the man
who brought about this vast and wholesome
revolution? To him God was wisdom, power, and
triumph ; shall He be to us only the pure dream
of a strong man ?
When in the Continental Congress meditating
great things the chaplain is called, and the whole
assembly joins in prayer to Almighty God, when
out of this mood begotten by faith and worship
there issues the manhood that makes, that sup
ports, that forever establishes the Declaration of
Independence, are we to accept the gift of a
nation born in the sense of God, defended in
the consciousness of God, educated into strength
by men who confessed that God is the final
refuge of afflicted peoples, and are we to reject
or regard as weak, or vain, or empty the solemn
feeling for the Eternal in which the country
lives ? When we read Abraham Lincoln's Sec
ond Inaugural, when we hear the man speak
who had done most, who had suffered most, that
this nation might continue one and indivisible,
are we not moved in sympathy when he lays
bare the foundations of his mind as a mind rest
ing in God, built up out of God, filled with the
consolation and hope that faith in the Highest
alone can bring to man ?

48 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
But this Hebrew boy came yet nearer to the
great mystery. He became a man. He found
within himself the war between desire and duty,
between the flesh and the spirit, between the
high moral ideal and the baser passions of his
being. Here in his mind is the sublime image
of what he ought to be. That image is his ideal.
It lays upon him the obligation to become a just
and good man. Here are his passions. They care
nothing for the just and good life, they want
only their own gratification. And here is the
youth conscious of this war in his being. Here
he stands, looking toward his ideal with honor in
his eyes, with strong resolve in his heart ; there he
is sore beset, baffled often, turned back, brought
almost to despair by his sense of weakness. He
finds himself as far behind his ideal as when in
awe and in tears he first beheld it rise in his soul.
His moral career is arrested. He is unable to
advance, the hope of his conscience begins to
fade. He is unable to become the man that he
yet knows that he ought to become. Here he
returns to God. He tests the reality of his faith.
He opens his nature to God. More and more he
lives and moves and has his being in the con
sciousness of God, and he comes forth clad with
conquering power, free, joyous, able to follow in
the fiery path of his flying ideal.
Has the youth of to-day no such experience?

MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 49
Has he not his high moral ideal ? Has he not
his contrary winds, his opposing passions ? Are
not his resolves often broken in defeat ? Are not
his efforts often rewarded with despair? Who
can give him the victory over himself ? Who can
enable him to become a just and good man?
Who can give him a pure heart ? Who can fill
him with reverence and tenderness in the pre
sence of human life ? He tries the old faith. He
puts to the test the thought of God. He does it
like a man, deeply, devoutly, persistently, with
the whole energy of his nature. He puts himself
under the sway of the thought of God. Look at
his face ; it is not the same face. Look at his
character and note its strength. Look at his ex
perience and mark its growing harmony. Look
at his life and behold the freedom, power, and
joy of it. This man has found God, like Jacob
of old. He has wrestled with God for the con
servation of the ideal, for the reconciliation
of duty and desire, and he has prevailed. He has
gone forth with the blessing of the Eternal upon
his invigorated and prevailing spirit. He cries
with the energy of the apostle, " I know him
whom I have believed." Again he cries, "That
which we have heard, that which we have seen
with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our
hands handled," declare we unto you. The exi
gency of the spiritual life has made the faith of

50 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
the ages, the faith of his fathers, his personal
faith. For religion at second hand, he has re
ceived, through the moral struggle of existence,
an original revelation, a personal vision of God.
2. Our second question is this : How did
the Baptist come to believe that he was sent of
God ? Did this faith come to him all at once ?
If it came to him as a vision, was it not a vision
that disclosed its meaning slowly ? Did not
doubts now and then assail him ? Was he not
tempted at times to conclude that his existence
was too mean and brief to sustain any high
relation to the Eternal ? If it was a prevailing
faith, a struggling and yet victorious belief,
like the ship that holds on her way in spite of
head winds and heavy seas and cloudy skies,
how did he reach it? Was it a theory of fife,
a philosophy of his personal existence ?
It was this. Like other men, he was bound to
study himself ; like them, he was bound to find
his special vocation. Like all true men, he was
bound to relate his special vocation to the God
in whom he believed, and to the higher life of
the people whom he served. As he became the
object of his own thought, as his nature stood
in the vision of his own intelligence, he saw that
his special vocation was that of a preacher of
righteousness. This was the thing for which he
was best fitted ; this was the work to which his

MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 51
strongest desires led him. And this task of pro
claiming the fundamental interest for his race
of righteousness related him as servant to the
righteous will of God. He went to his task. He
gave himself to it. He suffered for it in a thou
sand ways. More and more he took refuge in
the Almighty righteousness. Here he found his
message, and here he was clothed with power
to declare it. He came to see that here lay the
highest significance of his existence in this world.
He was sent forth from the Eternal conscience
with a message to the conscience of his race.'
No believer in God and in the tremendous
moral need of man can doubt that the Baptist
was right in his high faith about himself. But
how is it possible to believe that ordinary per
sons are, in any true sense, apostles of God?
How can we reach the consoling assurance that
we are sent into this world on a high errand
from God?
We must ask what is the highest function,
the chief end of man ? Is it simply to eat and
to drink, and to-morrow to die ? Is man's essen
tial life one of sensuous enjoyment ? Is he ful
filling all the capacities of his being when he
gathers food like the ant or bee, when he herds
with his kind like the beasts of the field, when
he organizes himself into a society for purposes
of trade and physical comfort, when he reads his

52 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
own history as part of the animal life of the
world, when he considers himself in purpose and
conduct wholly in the power of pleasure and
pain, and concludes that in origin, career, and
destiny he is altogether of this world, a mere
creature of space and time ?
No believer in God can accept this account
of human existence. Man has a supreme end.
That supreme end, according to an ancient phi
losopher, is activity in the line of the highest
excellence. That activity at length carries the
mind upward where, in rare moments, it can
share the beatitude of the Eternal mind. Ac
cording to the old catechism, man's chief end
is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.
These definitions call up a range of experience
of which all true men are conscious. The deepest
need of man is the need of a sound mind and a
clean heart. The deepest need of society is the
same. The sound mind and the humane heart, in
the industrial sphere, in the social realm, in the
world of politics, in the vast and complicated
life of mankind, would issue in a new heaven
and a new earth.
In our final account of ourselves we find that
we stand face to face with the vocation of the
Baptist. What was his special vocation turns
out to be our final vocation. Our last, our
supreme interest is in righteousness. If we are

MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 53
lovers, our love must be filled with rectitude ; if
we are husbands and wives, our existence in that
august relation must be under the dominion of
righteousness ; if we are fathers and mothers, our
privilege must be fired with the sense of duty.
For what can be said in honor of parents, if
they fail to train their children in moral power,
if they fail to set them in the centres of moral
influence, if they do not give them the sense of
the transcendent worth of clean hands and a
pure heart? If we are related to one another
as masters and servants, our fundamental inter
est is still righteousness. In that great relation
the final question is this : Are we just in it ?
Are we faithful as servants? Are we humane
as masters ? And when we come to politics, we
shall not differ. If there is any one thing for
which above all other things the statesman
should stand, it is righteousness. The states
man cannot, perhaps, avoid mistakes. He may
not always be able to see the thing fittest and
best. And here good men may differ and differ
widely. But the purpose should be straight, the
aim should be true. This is the deepest lesson
in the career of Mr. Gladstone. He made many
mistakes. He saw them, and like a man he con
fessed them with regret. And yet he held, and
could truthfully hold, that his eye had been single.
By those who differed from him, no less than by

54 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
those who agreed with him, it was confessed
that here was a great Christian statesman. His
vocation as a politician was national, interna
tional, human righteousness.
What, then, is our conclusion ? That the last
and highest intention of our being is that we
become wise in mind and sound in heart ; that
man becomes man by dealing justly, loving
kindness, and walking humbly with God. Here
is the final meaning of our being, — a society of
men living in righteousness. And in the service
of this solemn end, all true thoughts, all ex
alted feelings, all high endeavors, are subject to
the inspiration of God. As one purposes in his
heart to be just and to help to make the world
just, he entertains God's thought concerning
him when God created him. This man becomes
more and more inspirable under God as the poet,
true to his poetic gift, becomes more and more
inspirable under the appeal of nature and under
the vision of humanity. We know that we are
sent from God because God is a righteous God,
and because the supreme and endless interest of
man is righteousness. We come from God to
repeat, as far as we may, in the fields of time
the eternal righteousness. As the needle in the
compass turns toward the pole, as it knows its
function however wide and wild and lonely the
sea may be, as it keeps in all zones and in all

MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 55
seasons, and in all the vexed courses of its life
the sense that it is a witness to a greater than
itself, so man trembles toward the Infinite.
When true to himself, he knows, in all gales of
passion, on every sea of interest, on the bound
less stormy ways of ambition, on the shoreless
human meanings of home, industry, citizenship,
and racial fellowship, that he was made to tes
tify of another, a mightier, a juster, and a
kinder than himself. The vocation of the mag
netic needle is to point toward the pole; the
vocation of man is to bear witness to God.
3. What did the Baptist mean by his apostle
ship? This is, after all, the deepest question.
We must not linger long among words ; we
must go to the realities which they represent.
We must descend into the world of meanings.
There is the home of the intellect, there is the
inspiration of the heart.
We may well believe that this great man saw
clearly that only a moral being can reveal the
moral God. If the Supreme Being were power
and only power, the cosmos would be a mightier
apostle of the Infinite than man. If the Eternal
were power and wisdom and no more, again the
heavens would declare his glory, and the firma
ment would show his handiwork, as man could
not. But if we do not reach the core of the
Eternal until we come to his conscience, until

56 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
we touch his love, then not nature but man, not
the cosmos but humanity, is the great apostle of
his being. In the order that on the whole favors
the good, and that goes against the evil, in the
law that ordains that the wicked shall perish
from among men, and that the meek shall in
herit the earth, there is indeed one great witness
to the conscience of the Most High. Even this
witness is a witness through society. Besides, it
leaves us at the threshold of the vast subject.
And other similar observations lead little nearer
the heart of the matter.
It is undeniable that only a moral being can
mediate a moral God. If God is spirit, if He is
both hidden in the order of the universe and an
infinite excess of goodness over and above that
order, where is the path for this lightening of
the Divine love, if man is not ? Only the intel
lect of man can discover and declare the thoughts
of God; only the conscience of man can behold
and reveal the conscience of God ; only the heart
of man can receive and proclaim the love of
God; only the moral will of man can apprehend
and utter the moral power of God. God as
might, as wisdom and might, lives and speaks in
the cosmos ; but God as a moral being lives and
speaks only in a moral humanity.
Can your home, ever so richly and artistically
furnished, tell your guest the whole of your char-

MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 57
acter ? At best, there is in that home only a hint
of your soul. Can your sweet canary bird, your
faithful horse, or your devoted dog express your
character? Can anything or any creature below
your own humanity reveal the essential truth
of your spirit? Can any order of things, can
any race of creatures, declare about you what
your lovely child can declare? If you are to
reach your friend by means of another, here is
your Mediator. Here is the child that has lived
in your mind, seen the honor of your conscience,
rejoiced in the love of your heart, grown strong
under the might of your character. That recep
tive, responsive, obedient, happy child can repre
sent you to your guest. That child can reveal
your thought, interpret your honor, express your
love, utter your strength and dignity. In that
gracious filial revelation your guest beholds your
soul. This universe is God's house. It is ordered
in an infinite profusion of great and beautiful
things. It is crowded with countless races of
living creatures. The things and the creatures
may tell us wonderful stories about the house
whose builder and maker is God. But the soul
of our Eternal host, the inmost character of the
Infinite, can be told to man only by man. Only
the men who live in the thought of God, who
behold the moral integrity of God, who dwell in
the consciousness of his loving-kindness, who

58 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
rise up into strength under the inspiration of
his spirit, — only they can reveal the intellect,
the conscience, the heart, the deep soul, the-
eternal humanity of our God. God speaks in
the stone, but not to it ; God declares himself in
the animal world, but not to it; God reveals his
soul in man, and He reveals it to man through
man. Think of the man who went down from Jeru
salem to Jericho. That wild road has little to
say about the God and Father of men. The
robber who beats the wayfarer, strips him, and
leaves him half dead, seems a not too severe
representative of the wild and pitiless nature
that looks upon him in his distress. The priest
*md the Levite again remind him of the utter
sphinx-like indifference of the cosmos to man's
need and man's agony. The good Samaritan
changes the horror into joy. He speaks and acts
for something in the universe like himself, but
infinitely higher. In that wild path, in that
tragic scene, he is the only speaker for the God
of love. That lonely and perilous road is the
path of mankind from the cradle to the grave.
There is no God in this modern descent from
Jerusalem to Jericho till the good Samaritan
comes upon the scene. Our good Samaritan
undoes the atheism of limited and helpless
nature, the atheism of the brutal robber, the

MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 59
atheism of the scornful and indifferent priest
and Levite. He reveals through his own just
and humane soul the just and humane soul of
God. Here we see the central meaning of the career
of Jesus. Jesus stands for a method of reve
lation and its ideal use. The supreme path of
God is through the humanity of Jesus ; the per
fect humanity of Jesus supplies the ideal path.
This is the heart of the Gospel. God who in
sundry times and in divers manners spake unto
the fathers by the prophets hath in these last
days spoken unto us in his son. The humanity
of the prophets leads to the humanity of Jesus,
as the foot-hills lead to ever higher ranges till
the sovereign summit is at last reached. The
path to God has ever been to man through man.
Jesus takes this universal and immemorial
method of God in speaking to men, lifts it to
an ideal use in his own career, bequeaths it to
his disciples, and calls upon them to become, as
he had been, the light of the world.
Think of the splendor of our humanity ac
cording to this faith. We speak of the cathedral
window. We speak of its richness in color, of
its variety and majesty in figure. But the win
dow is only glass, made of sand and seaweed,
dust and ashes, lifted into coherence, curiously
wrought, yet with one great redeeming capacity.

60 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
It is so made as to become a prism for the fight.
In the unfolded glory of the light it fives ; in
that unfolded glory it glows and burns with its
hundred fires and hues. In the light whose
heart it opens there is the distinction and dignity
of its existence. That is humanity. It is of the
earth earthy. It is made of flesh and blood. It
is of the animal order, but not wholly so. It is
born to die, and yet it holds within itself a
transcendent capacity. It stands in the great
flood of light that falls from the Creator upon
his universe. It becomes the prism for that
light. What is but pale common light as it falls
upon things and upon creatures, becomes in man
the ruby of love, the gold of truth, the blue of
an eternal tenderness, the thousand glorious
colors and gracious tints of the heart of our God
who is the Father of lights. To stand in God as
the window stands in the sunlight, to reveal God
in our moral character as the window reveals
the light, here is the mission, here is the splen
dor, of man.
There is, however, a solemn side to this privi
lege. Where there is no sense of God, it is not
the cosmos, it is not the wild beast, that is to
blame ; it is the man who has become as mechan
ical as the cosmos, as merciless as the wild beast.
For the revelation of the moral Deity the cosmos
was not commissioned, the wild beast was not

MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 61
sent. The human soul alone can give us the
human God. And where man fails in love, God
fails in revelation. Usually, therefore, atheism
and lovelessness go together. The loveless heart
sees in itself no evidence of God ; the loveless
heart in a pitiless society sees no evidence any
where of a Father in heaven. Should love and
pity die out of humanity, all high evidence of
God's being will also die out of humanity's
thought. Oh, the atheisms that are due to the
failure of men in kindness one to another, to
the failure of men in their own love and pity to
suggest, to reveal, the love and pity of God!
Deal justly, love kindness, and walk humbly
with thy God. Justice comes first, not because
it is the more fundamental excellence, but be
cause it opens the door into the temple in which
it is transfigured. Kindness comes second, not
because it is inferior to justice, but because it is
nearer to God, because it makes human rectitude
a finer thing, and fits it for the utterance of
God made possible through fellowship with God.
Here is the solemn lesson to the Church.
The Church is a society of Jesus. It is a society
formed for the expression of the spirit of Jesus,
that the sense of the God and Father of Jesus
Christ may continue in the world. The world
cries, " Where is thy God ? " What does that
cry mean ? It is a demand upon the Church. It

62 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
asks, Where is your spiritual mind, your enlight
ened conscience, your sympathy, your compas
sion? Where is your enduring kindness ? Where
are your good deeds, your devout and devoted
lives ? Only through these can we keep God
for ourselves ; only through these can we give
the sense of God to the world. The only avail
ing evidence for a spiritual God is the spiritual
life of the children of God ; the only adequate
witness for the humanity of God is the kindness
of those who believe in Him.
Our world is a kind of colossal feudal castle.
It is in its substance matter ordered, matter
built into form, stone and lime wrought into a
vast structure, holding within itself indeed the
design of its Maker, but providing at first only
chinks and holes and no windows for the Eternal
light, the Infinite spirit who is other and more
than the realm of nature. In this natural world
we build a human world. On this colossal feu
dal castle our Master built the tower that stands
forever in the open day. Thither men go up for
the vision of God. The true disciples of Jesus
open windows in the great structure ; the succes
sion of disciples means a succession of windows.
The issue of this succession is man in the reveal
ing power of his humanity standing in the heart
of nature ; the old castle thus becomes the
enduring framework for the countless windows

MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 63
that have been set in it. The order of the cosmos
is the frame for a new and a translucent human
ity. Human goodness is the terrestrial prophet
of the goodness of God.
But if goodness builds windows through which
God may shine upon men, wickedness, inhuman
ity, puts in the place of the window the wall
of stone. Here one sees the tremendousness of
an unkind life. It shuts God out of the world.
It reduces man to the level of the cosmos.
The mechanism and the pitilessness of physical
nature claim and consume our humanity as the
lean kine in Pharaoh's dream devoured the fat
kine. And when the distinctive world of man is
gone, God is gone ; ¦ when you have destroyed the
army of finite lovers, you have banished the Infi
nite lover ; when you have degraded man to the
level of the animal, you have abandoned the hope
of a translucent society turned toward the
Eternal light, you have broken all the windows
in your colossal feudal castle, you have filled the
vacant spaces with the opaque and unreveal-
ing stone. The hope of a continuous witness for
the Eternal love stands or falls with the hope
of a race putting itself more and more under
the dominion of love. The society of lovers is
the kingdom of God; the kingdom of God is tha
oTeat human witness for God.

IV
PEESONALITY AND THE TRUTH
"Jesus saith unto him, I am ... the truth." John xiv, 6.
The deepest question ever put to Jesus was put
by Pontius Pilate. Even if he did not stay for
an answer, even if he spoke in jest, Pilate, when
he framed his great question, became for one
supreme moment the representative of humanity.
And it is profoundly interesting that not from a
Jew, nor from a Greek, not from a believer in
special revelation, nor from an upholder of the
insight of reason, but from a Roman politician
came the great demand : What is truth ? That
the demand is a human demand appears with
extraordinary impressiveness when we see it issu
ing from the damaged humanity of a man like
Pilate. We are not surprised when we hear Job
sighing : " Oh that I knew where I might find
him ! " We expect the just and the good to
seek after God. When we hear the same vast
sigh upon the lips of weak and sinful men, we
are amazed. Nicodemus the Pharisee and Zac-
cheus the publican both seek Jesus ; they seek
him that they may find the Highest. Facts like

PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 65
these lead us to a deeper knowledge of man.
They compel us to believe that our race in its
error and sorrow is in movement upon great
ends, that it is, oftenest indeed by the path of
tragic mistake, in quest of God. We cannot
deny this when before our eyes, out of the mire
of a vulgar and vicious life there bursts the
fountain of clear aspiration. " My soul is athirst
for God." That is the habitual language of the
saint ; in supreme moments, that is the lan
guage of the depraved heart. Augustine, when
he had won his freedom, did little more than
repeat with new emphasis and with happier feel
ings the great discovery made in his bondage :
" Thou hast made us for thyself, and we can
not rest until we rest in Thee."
Something of the same kind of surprise is
felt when we hear the ageless questions of phi
losophy upon the lips of children and youth,
when we hear them in the words of men of the
world. And this surprise is keenest when, as
in the case of Pilate, the profoundest demand
issues from a mind wanting in seriousness, in
nobility, and in depth. It is the image of the
sun that gives to the dewdrop its lustre ; it is the
seriousness of human existence that gives dignity
to Pilate. Even unworthy men stand to their
race as the seolian harp to the wind. The poor
crude nature, in moments of high visitation,

66 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
gives utterance to the still sad music of human
ity. Was not Saul among the prophets, and
Balaam ? A crisis in the history of a worthless
character lifts it into an interpreter of univer
sal human need. The crisis in Pilate's life
makes him for one moment the representative
of man.
We are not unfamiliar with the idea that truth
and goodness belong together. That gospel was
preached by a Greek philosopher four centuries
before our era began. That great soul con
tended that no one sins with his will. He held
that the fountain of evil is tragic mistake, that
men do wrong because they are ignorant. He
declared that if they only knew the things
that pertain to their peace, they would love
righteousness and pursue it. And we have come
to look upon this contention of the ancient seer
as one of the great commonplaces of the spirit
ual life. Truth as wisdom and wisdom as truth
are found nowhere except in the ways of honor ;
in the paths of shame we meet only endless and
hopeless error. So preach both the ancient
Greek and the ancient Hebrew seer.
But in the words of Jesus, which I have taken
as my text, there is something more than this.
Jesus says : " I am the truth." What does he
mean ? What is truth ? In considering this
question, let us move toward the sublime answer

PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 67
of Jesus through forms of expression with which
we are familiar.
1. We sometimes speak of truth as agree
ment of word with fact. We say that the tide
is at the flood, that the day is at the morn, that
the year is at the spring. Each of these state
ments is susceptible of comparison with fact. If
what is said agrees with what is, there is the
truth. Let us suppose that we are the witnesses of
certain occurrences. A horse runs away on the
Speedway and no harm is done ; a lion breaks
out from the menagerie, leaps over a fence into
a playground full of children and nurses, and
no one is frightened ; a great building twenty
stories high is on fire, all the occupants get out
in safety, and although the entire building is
destroyed, the contents of it are saved ; a pleasure
yacht sails down Niagara River and over the Falls
with no other discomfort than the sense of a rather
heavy jolt in making the leap of the cataract ; the
politicians of all parties meet and declare their
enmity with one another upon every point of
public policy, in terms of universal benevolence ;
these politicians further declare that the doctrine
that to the victors belong the spoils is in har
mony with the severest civil service reform.
These are the reports ; they may or they may
not be easy of belief. If, however, they corre-

68 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
spond with the facts, they are true ; if they do
not correspond with the facts, they are not true.
Here truth means accuracy, and the great les
son is plain. An inaccurate mind is a danger
ous possession, and may easily enough become a
calamity. It is true that the absurdly inaccurate
mind has for mankind an unfailing charm, and
it is turned by the miraculous touch of humor
into a servant of life. Of a host of inaccura
cies and exaggerations it may be said that they
are simply ludicrous ; they are nourishment for
laughter. Their name is legion, and yet they
may be recalled by the famous report concerning
a prisoner who was sentenced to four months in
the " House of Commons."
The thing to be dreaded is the habit of inac
curacy in serious affairs. When the fact is the
signal to stop to the engineer of an express, the
identification of a coast light or headland by the
master of a ship, the exact reading of a physi
cian's prescription by a chemist, the discernment
of the path of the knife in the case of the sur
geon, we see at once the indispensableness of
accuracy. Wlien we think of the banking trans
actions of the country and regard them as an
instance in illustration of the world of trade, we
again see the essentialness of accuracy. When
we visit our public schools and consider the
subjects taught and the methods of teaching

PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 69
employed, we can think of no higher human
necessity than the habit of an exact mind.
Think what the habit of mental exactness
would do for knowledge ; how it would dissolve
the vast compound of fact and fancy, truth and
superstition, that in every department of human
interest goes forth under the august name of
knowledge; how this habit of exactness would
generate in human beings the love of science.
Science means exact observation, and exact judg
ment upon the things observed. Think how this
habit would aid the process of civil justice. Few
witnesses mean to lie; vast numbers of them are
incompetent. Think how this habit would put
an end to gossip. The accurate mind will refuse
to repeat as fact what it knows to be only rumor,
and it will refuse to aid in that circulation of
rumor by which the mere guess of the gossip
attains to baleful certainty. On his death-bed,
John C. Calhoun said of Daniel Webster, his
great antagonist in constitutional law : " Show
him a fact in the path of his argument, and Mr.
Webster is dumb." There could not be a higher
witness to intellectual integrity. The fine thing
about the guest who appeared without the wed
ding garment was that when confronted by the
fact, he was speechless.
How much damage to human feeling may come
from the inaccuracy of man may be readily im-

70 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
agined. " There came a messenger unto Job, and
said, The oxen were plowing, and the asses feed
ing beside them : and the Sabeans fell upon them,
and took them away; yea, they have slain the
servants with the edge of the sword ; and I only
am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was
yet speaking, there came also another, and said,
The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath
burned up the sheep, and the servants, and con
sumed them ; and I only am escaped alone to tell
thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also
another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters
were eating and drinking wine in their eldest
brother's house : and, behold, there came a great
wind from the wilderness, and smote the four
corners of the house, and it fell upon the young
men, and they are dead ; and I only am escaped
alone to tell thee." Now suppose these three mes
sengers mistaken ! They have caused by their
blunder needless and nameless pain. Worlds of
needless and nameless pain are rolled every day
upon poor suffering mortals by the wretched in
accuracies and exaggerations of men and women.
Our Gospel is a report ; is it an essentially ac
curate report ? That question has roused and in
flamed the intelligence of the world. In this day
of universal and unsparing criticism, nothing
that is inexact can stand. The modern world has
set its heart upon accuracy. It is subjecting to

PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 71
the severest tests the inherited intellectual pos
sessions of mankind ; it is subjecting religions
and the records of religions to the severest exam
ination ; it is subjecting Christianity and the re
cords of Christianity to the severest critical pro
cess. The modern world has come to believe with
Socrates that the unexamined life is not worth
living. It is therefore of infinite moment that
the records of Christianity shall prove essentially
accurate. It is the belief of those who know
most on this point that the Christian record is
substantially sound ; the reporters of Jesus were
essentially accurate men; what they said abides
after all the waves and billows of criticism have
gone over it, because it is at heart a record
of fact. There could not be a more impressive
example of the peril of inaccuracy, or of the
exceeding felicity of an accurate mind. In the
light of it we can approve the sentence passed
upon the London publisher who issued the
Bible with the negatives left out in the Ten
Commandments. His work was destroyed and
he was sent to the Tower, not only for sacrilege,
but also for inaccuracy.
2. We sometimes speak of the truth as agree
ment of statement and thought. The comparison
here is between what a man puts into words and
what he holds in his heart. We recall here the
exclamation of the Homeric hero : " I hate as

72 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
the gates of hell the man who says one thing
with his lips and conceals another in his heart."
That is to the Homeric hero the ideal of an
untrue man ; one whose words are in dead antago
nism to the thoughts and intents of his heart.
We recall the Old Testament story of the treach
ery of Joab to Amasa : " And Joab said to
Amasa, Is it well with thee, my brother ? And
Joab took Amasa by the beard with his right
hand to kiss him. But Amasa took no heed to
the sword that was in Joab's hand." Under
the pretense of the most loyal friendship, Joab
killed this man. The outward act was the act of
a friend ; the inward thought was the thought
of an assassin. Judas comes to the Garden of
Gethsemane to betray Jesus. He has given a
sign to the enemies of Jesus, who are not famil
iar with his personal appearance ; the man whom
Judas shall kiss they are to apprehend, that
man is their prisoner. Judas kept his promise,
and as he advanced, Jesus recoiled from him
with horror : " Judas, betrayest thou the Son
of Man with a kiss ? " Dost thou employ the
symbol of love as the cover for treason ? Thou
appearest in conduct as my devoted friend ; in
thought, in feeling, in premeditated deed, thou
art my betrayer. And in all history there is
nothing more odious than that. Here is lying
reduced to a fine art ; falsehood taking the

PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 73
utmost pains to conceal its hideous features ;
treachery stealing the livery of heaven. This
awful contradiction, this black and hideous anti
thesis between the act and the mind of Judas,
stands as the monumental lie of human history.
Under it are gathered the unspeakable infideli
ties of domestic life, the glaring dishonesties of
trade, the vile hypocrisies of social fellowship,
the nameless corruptions that pollute the great
word " patriotism," and the historic interna
tional treacheries against an afflicted humanity.
We say of a poem, of a speech, of a philo
sophy, that it is true when it answers to the
thoughts and feelings of the poet, the orator,
the philosopher. Tennyson's " In Memoriam "
is true because it is the genuine utterance of
genuine feeling. Milton's " Samson Agonistes "
is true because it is a faithful expression of
Milton's mood at the time. Dante's " Divine
Comedy " is true because he put his sincerest
beliefs and convictions into this poem. Demos
thenes, when he spoke against Philip, Burke,
when he pleaded for conciliation with America,
and Webster, when he expounded the Constitu
tion, spoke the truth ; that is, they spoke their
sincerest thoughts and beliefs. Hume and Kant
are true philosophers because they both put in
order their profoundest and most serious con
clusions; there is no contradiction, no discord,

74 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
between the thought in mind and the thought
in the book.
Here the great lesson is sincerity, and in sin
cerity we touch another of the fountains of a true
humanity. Indeed, without sincerity, great char
acter is impossible. What are all our orthodox
ies, if they do not represent the mind of the
Church to-day ? They are a vast construction of
falsehood. What are all the great historic forms
of faith in dogma, in hymn, in sacred oracle, in
philosophic system, in the free utterance of liter
ature, if the spirit of to-day is not in accord with
them ? David found that Saul's armor did not fit
him, and therefore he refused to wear it. He
went forth against the great enemy of Israel with
the sling of the shepherd and the five smooth
stones from the brook. It is of infinite moment
that we should fight for the highest in this way.
The first of all questions concerns what one holds
in his heart as the truth. He must stand by
that and by nothing else. It may be but a beam
in the darkness ; if he is true to it, it will grow.
Men conceal their real thought for many rea
sons. They conceal their real thought because
the free expression of it may injure their pros
pects ; or because it may give offense to friends ;
or because of personal weakness. These and all
other reasons for the suppression of individual
judgments are unworthy. The thoughts and in-

PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 75
tents of the heart are suppressed oftenest on
account of weakness and dishonesty. The classic
instance of suppression of judgment through
weakness is Shakespeare's : —
"H. Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape
of a camel ?
P. By the mass, and 't is like a camel, indeed.
H. Methinks it is like a weasel.
P. It is backed like a weasel.
H. Or like a whale ?
P. Very like a whale."
An example of the suppression of real opin
ion likely to become classic is found in Kipling's
" The Truce of the Bear." On the one hand we
have a Hague Convention for peace, and on the
other an imperial policy of national aggrandize
ment supported by armed force. The hunter
comes upon the bear : —
" There was a charge in the musket — pricked and primed
was the pan —
My finger crooked on the trigger — when he reared up
like a man.
And my heart was touched with pity for the monstrous,
pleading thing.
Touched with pity and wonder, I did not fire then. . . .
I have looked no more on women — I have walked no
more with men.
Nearer he tottered and nearer, with paws like hands
that pray —
From brow to jaw the steel-shod paw, it ripped my face

76 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
Sudden, silent, and savage, searing as flame the blow —
Faceless I fell before his feet, fifty summers ago.
I heard him grunt and chuckle — I heard him pass to his
den.
He left me blind to the darkened years and the little
mercy of men."
3. We sometimes remark that truth is the
agreement of thought and fact. The mind of
Copernicus is dominated by a certain image of
the solar system. In the mind of this great man
the sun is at the centre of the system, and the
earth and its sister planets move in separate
orbits and in nearer or remoter circles round the
sun. This is the picture in the brain of Coper
nicus, and we believe that it answers to the solar
fact. The mind of Darwin is controlled by the
idea of the development from one kind of life
of all the manifold varieties of existence now on
this earth. The image is of an inverted pyra
mid, self-generating, self-building, spreading as
it rises into the vast contrast which the base of
this mighty inverted pyramid presents to its apex.
This is the thought in the mind of Darwin, and
many believe that it answers substantially to the
biological fact. There is the history of Rome
for fifteen hundred years, and there is Gibbon's
mental picture of that history which he trans
fers to his book ; there is the Republic of Plato
and the moral and social constitution of man;
there is the total moral order of the universe and

PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 77
the mind of Christ. Where the mental picture
and the natural fact, the human insight and the
moral order, the state of the mind and the state
of the case, the interior world of thought and
the exterior world of nature, agree, there we say
is the truth. When you read the parables of
the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost
Son, when you see how the owner in each case
seeks his own and will not cease to seek it until
he find it, and then learn that this is the
feeling of Jesus toward erring humanity, you
are ready for the question, Is this the way that
God feels and acts toward men ? If this is the
case, the parable is true ; it is an image in essen
tial agreement with the mind and heart of God.
When you read further our Lord's parable of
Dives and Lazarus, when you see the noble beg
gar after death in bliss and the royal rascal in
torment; when you ask if this represents the
division of the good and the bad into separate
worlds at death, into heaven and hell, you are
ready for the question, Is this parable in essen
tial accord with the fact? If things there an
swer to this picture, then the parable is true.
So we may reason of all perceptions, memories,
imaginations, judgments, beliefs, and hopes ; if
they agree with the independent order beyond
them, they are true, if they do not agree with
that order, they are false.

78 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
Here truth means reality, independent of the
will of man. Sincerity is essential, but it is not
enough. There is an order of nature indepen
dent of human volition. Man can observe times
and seasons, days and years ; but he cannot con
trol them. The world of science is infinitely
fruitful because it is the perception of the world
of nature; the teaching of Jesus is infinitely
fruitful because it is the revelation of the moral
world of man. One's thoughts, fancies, feelings,
volitions, may be sincere ; the whole state of
one's mind and the entire intent and content
of one's heart may be without guile, but this will
not save one, if one is not in accord with the
order of the world. The law of gravitation is
independent of man ; it exists, it operates, it
rewards life and destroys life, whether perceived
or unperceived, acknowledged or unacknow
ledged. The somnambulist who walks out of his
window on the fourth story of his house meets
the same fate with the deliberate suicide. Cya
nide of potassium will kill the man who takes it
by mistake as quickly as the man who takes it
knowing what it is. There is a physical order
that we do not make, and that we cannot un
make. Parallel to this is the independent moral order.
There is the cosmic nature and its law of gravi
tation that must be honored ; there is the human

PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 79
nature and its moral law that must be honored.
It is there by the decree of the Highest, and
no weapon formed against it can prosper. The
Lord's parable of the Two Builders touches life
here. The foolish builder was as sincere as the
wise builder ; he, too, wanted life, home, a safe
dwelling, for the rich content of existence. He
built sincerely, but he did not build in accord
ance with the moral order. He forgot that he
lived in a searching universe ; he forgot that a
covenant with the everlasting alone can save
man. He made no provision against the rains
that descended, the floods that came, and the
winds that blew. His house fell, not because it
was insincerely, but because it was foolishly
built ; not because it was an evil device, but
because it was not founded on reality.
Carlyle speaks of " a soul too much based
upon laughter." We cannot too often remind
ourselves that we live in a universe of the ut
most seriousness ; that law in the realm of na
ture and in the sphere of the spirit is ultimate
and implacable ; that good intentions cannot
bring immunity from disaster, that, indeed, as
the great poet saw, hell is paved with them ; that
only the reverent and devout recognition of the
independent and inviolable order of God without
and within can give to a man a fruitful, progres
sive and secure existence.

80 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
4. We sometimes speak of the truth under the
form of personality. We speak of the true father,
the true mother, the true friend, the true man.
What do we mean ? We mean that a given per
son stands in a definite number of relations to
his fellow men, and that in these relations he is
invariably all that he should be, or he is in
them in a very eminent degree what he should
be. We look at an American like Abraham
Lincoln, we mark him as son, father, friend, as
lawyer, statesman, President, and we can say
from the heart that in all these relations he is
in an extraordinary degree what he should be ;
he is a true man.
This is the meaning of Jesus in the text. The
truth is not a system of opinion ; it is a system of
relations, and a man in them all that he should
be. Jesus is son, brother, teacher, friend, citizen
of Israel, servant of his people, prophet of God.
This is the circle of relations in which he lives ;
in them all he is all that he should be. He is the
perfect man, and therefore he is the final form of
the truth.
Look now at some of the implications of this
view of truth. According to this conception of
truth, the sovereign force in the world is the per
sonal soul ; man is the ultimate reality in time.
Color is but his vision ; sound is but his sensa
tion ; taste and smell are but his experiences ;

PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 81
the world upon which he builds and works and
walks is but some Sovereign Will answering to
his own. In the heart of this Will he lives ;
within that Will all men and all things live. Yet
in that Will the central reality known to us is
the human soul. The world as vision, sound,
taste, smell, touch, is carried on by the perennial
race ; otherwise it would vanish when the soul
vanishes at death, like the baseless fabric of a
vision. The world as we know it is kept in being
by man ; and what in it is more than man is but
the Sovereign Will that answers to man's will.
The soul that perceives, that remembers, that
weaves its thoughts into strange devices, that rea
sons, that finds in itself the moral ideal, that is
bound by that ideal to service and love, is the
sovereign reality in this world of shadows. The
capacity for discovering an ideal, for lifting it
higher and ever higher, is among the great things
in the human spirit. The incapacity for evading
the sense of obligation when standing in any re
lation under the full light of the ideal, is among
the greater things of the soul. The power by
which the heavenly vision is entertained, pursued,
overtaken, and put into the obedient will, the
thankful heart, the well-ordered and beneficent
life, is the greatest thing in man, and it is the
greatest thing that we know. When we hear the
Hebrew servant cry, How can I do this great sin

82 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
against God ? we see youth possessed of a moral
ideal, and we see that ideal sovereign in the will
and conduct of its possessor. When we hear
from the lips of the Christian apostle : " This
one thing I do, forgetting the things that are
behind, and stretching forward unto the things
that are before, I press on toward the prize of
the high calling in Christ," we see a soul pursu
ing a flying ideal as an eagle might fly in the
fiery path of the retreating sun. The man is in
movement through love and service offered to
an infinite ideal.
If we turn and look at the souls that have
failed in obedience, at Judas in his remorse, at
Peter in his tears, at Pilate washing his hands,
at Richard Third alone in his tent the night be
fore the battle, at Lady Macbeth and the spots
upon her hands, at the volcanic woe of the con
science face to face with its own shame, we learn
again how profound, how abysmal, is the reality
of the moral nature of man.
" Which way I fly is hell ; myself am hell ;
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep,
Still threatening to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven."
If we look at man in his sense of moral need,
we see again how trivial all other things are com
pared with the reality of the soul. Look over the
world, look into the hearts of suffering men and

PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 83
women, look into the conscience crazed with the
sense of unworthiness and shame, and listen to
the great modern interpreter of a moral human
ity as he puts into words the terrible, inarticulate
moan : —
" Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart? "
If to himself each man is the centre of all
reality, next to this is the reality of his fellow
men. We live in personal relations. We are
souls, thinking, feeling, and acting one with an
other. We are moral realities, conscious spirit
ual forces, either at war with one another or at
peace. Next to himself, man is to his brother
the sovereign reality in the world. If he thinks
honorably of his brother, if he feels kindly
toward him, if he deals justly by him, his
brother's soul comes to his with messages of joy
and peace. See how these souls come to Jesus.
They come out of the past. Moses and Elijah
on the Mount of Transfiguration are symbols of
the grateful dead that flock to Jesus to bless
him. The sad, defeated, broken-hearted past be
comes victorious and glad in him. They rise at
his side ; the souls of little children, of weary

84 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
mothers, of publicans and sinners, of broken
households that he has restored, all pour upon
him their reverence and their gratitude. They
come to his prophetic soul from the vast future.
Millions of unborn spirits fly like doves to their
windows, to empty into his the sacred thankful
ness of their lives. Thus, in his measure, the
true man always fares. He is alone and yet not
alone ; he reveres and serves the souls of men.
The souls of men in one way or another testify
to him who serves them their august reality.
They testify by their gratitude and their most
sacred trust. And if a man deals unjustly by
man, how terrible the curse ! Robespierre's way
to the guillotine is accompanied by the' terrific
imprecation : " Go down to hell with the curses
of all wives and mothers." That cry of wild
justice is a symbol of the scourging reality that
man's brother becomes to him when he has out
raged his brother's humanity. His punishment
is harder than he can bear ; the blood of the slain
soul cried to the Infinite out of the ground.
Both in benediction and in malediction we learn
that we are persons in a vast moral fellowship,
and that souls in moral fellowship are the ulti
mate reality of our world.
We deal with our fellow men, and we deal
with the Infinite. When we are at the height of
moral being we whisper in profound est awe : —

PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 85
" Whither shall I go from thy spirit ?
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence ?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there :
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ;
Even there shall thy hand lead me,
And thy right hand shall hold me."
The Eternal is intelligible only as an " I," a
personal Soul, a Being who entertains an infi
nite moral ideal, who has for it an infinite love,
and who gives to it in his character an infinite
fulfillment. Further, when we are at our best,
the great realities of the universe are not atoms,
nor elements, nor the combinations of atoms and
elements that form things and stars and constel
lations, nor the vast aggregate of these that
constitute the material universe as it lives in the
vision and science of man; when we are at our
best, the supreme realities are souls in fellowship
for better and for worse, through weal and
through woe, and in fellowship with the Eter
nal Soul that we call God. When we think
clearly and at our best, the permanent core of
the universe discloses itself as a fellowship of
persons in the order of conscience and love, in
the pervading presence and the comprehending
being of the Eternal conscience and love.
Jesus therefore spoke honestly and profoundly
when he said, " I am the truth." Truth as ac-

86 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
curacy lived in him ; never man so ordered
his words to the facts of existence. Truth as
sincerity lived in him; never man so moulded
speech into the image of his thought. Truth as
independent reality he confessed ; never man so
recognized beyond him, about him, and above
him the will of God. All these forms of truth
were lifted into the ultimate and supreme form,
— the personal soul. He stood to men in man
ifold relations, and in them all he stood just
and merciful. He stood to God as Son, and he
stood as the perfect Son. He acknowledged in
the comfort of those who returned upon him
for his services to them their thankful love and
trust, and in the blind and brutal hatred of
those who filled him with grief, the reality of the
souls of his brethren. In his obedience and in
his victory he knew and declared the reality of
God. In his transcendent personal soul he is in
time the truth of our human world, he is in time
the truth of the universe. Henceforth, when we
use the great word "truth," we shall not dwell
among things or words or thoughts ; we shall
rise to the sphere of character ; we shall look
upon the face of saint, reformer, martyr, hero ;
we shall apply the word to the soul that has
stood in human relations for the highest. When
we use the sublime phrase " the truth," we shall
lift our vision to the perfect person, to the soul

PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 87
that stood toward men and toward God in ideal
justice and love, and in an ideal service of justice
and love ; and we shall look up through this
divine personal mediator who is the truth of
our human world to the personal God who is
the truth of the universe.

NATUEE AND HUMANITY
" And Jacob's well was there." John iv, 6.
The well was there, a fountain from the heart
of the earth, clear, abundant, beautiful, fit to
represent nature in the whole range of its bene
ficent ministry to life. The grand total of forces
other than human that we call nature lifts itself
into the imagination as we think of this ancient
well, as we sit beside it weary with the journey
of existence and under the heat and burden of
the day.
This well, however, is not isolated and inde
pendent. It is not a nameless fountain. It is
Jacob's well. It was dug by the father of a
nation. The water is still held in the place
that he made for it. It has an association with
his career, ancient, pathetic, continuous, endless.
Rachel in her beauty visits that well. The sons
of Jacob, in youthful gladness and manly hope,
gather round it every morning and evening. The
flocks and herds come near it. The old man, in
his shame and in his love, in his often unwor
thy and yet always strangely fascinating charac-

NATURE AND HUMANITY 89
ter, has stamped his humanity upon the well
that bears his name. Nature comes before us in
that well ; humanity comes before us in it. Hu
manity rebuilds the well, uses it, bequeaths it,
through it enters into covenant with nature, and
sets in the heart of nature's abiding order the
fortunes of the human race.
The Ampezzo valley in the Austrian Tyrol is
a modern picture with the same meaning. En
circling the valley there are the enduring moun
tains. They are something in themselves. They
were there before man ; they are primeval, ever
lasting. They surround and watch over the
valley. Among their high places the clouds
gather, blacken, and almost daily break in
storms that drive as if they would destroy and
desolate, but that only refresh and beautify the
world upon which their fury is spent. Into this
frowning and terrible order, touched with high
restraint, is set man and his world. Nature be
gins to burn with humanity; humanity begins
to covenant with and to go beyond nature. The
green fields sweeping up the valley from the
river-banks to the edges of the eternal rock,
the response of the soil to the skillful and labo
rious hand of man, the human habitations that
tell of man's triumph over heat and cold, the little
village that speaks of the power of social fellow
ship, the church with its campanile in the centre

90 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
of all that testifies of the thirst of the soul after
the living God, — all repeat the same wonderful
story, the obligation of man to nature, the obli
gation of nature to man, and his complete tran
scendence of nature in the range of his powers,
in the vastness of his needs, in the purpose of
his being, and in the consciousness of his union
with God. In that valley, as in many another,
we see the humanizing of all nature, the place of
man in nature's stern order, and the spirit that
on river and sea, on hill and plain, is forever an
alien, creative, prophetic, alive with the moral
image of God, and living up into his eternal life.
I am to speak, therefore, of nature and humanity,
at a few of their thousand points of intersection.
1. There is first the dependence of nature upon
man, and of man upon nature. Without man,
what a strange ghost nature becomes ! We know
that colors, sounds, tastes, and smells are due to
human sensibility. We further know that hard
ness and softness, cold and heat, moist and dry,
owe their character to our peculiar human organ
ization. When you strip from nature all that
it is. in consequence of its association with man,
it is left as constant, invisible, sublime, eternal
order, and no more. This is the boundless un-
sheeted ghost, the infinite sightless and impal
pable order in which we live. When we take
man out of nature, the outgoings of the morning

NATURE AND HUMANITY 91
and the evening are no more ; the glorious mir
acle of color is gone ; the sounds that are the
sphere melodies, the tastes that are zest to life,
the freshness and the perfume of the rich earth,
are vanished. We have left as nature, when man
is gone, only the aboriginal, formless, viewless,
eternal power.
On the other hand, man apart from nature is
helpless. He cannot breathe except in nature's
air ; he cannot move except in her spaces ; he
cannot subsist except on the food that she brings
him ; he cannot appear to his brethren except
in a body that has been built up out of her deep,
mysterious stores. Apart from nature man dies,
passes out of the fair world of time, leaves the
smile of love behind him, ceases to speak to his
brethren in the color and sound, in the whole
varied and wondrous sensuous appeal of his kind,
falls out of the ranks of visible human fellow
ship, withdraws into the world of spirit, fades
into the eternal, dwells with God, and, until we
join him there, exists only for God.
Again, nature comes to her best through man.
The well is nature at her best at a single point.
That eminence is bestowed by man. The story
of the Garden of Eden is another illustration.
Nature is improved by man's hand, improved
in range and excellence of life, in richness and
diversity of beauty. By the hand of man the

92 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
wilderness and the solitary place are made to
rejoice. The hillsides of Italy and Switzerland,
and the valley of the Nile, tell the story of the
whole earth. Man's ideas and man's toil and
man's life bring nature to her best. The wild
rose is fair, but it is not to be compared for
richness and beauty with the same flower lifted
to perfection by man's care. So with fruits of
every name. The landscape architect comes into
nature with man. Even the ranges of nature
untouched by man, inaccessible to man, are yet
lifted into greater sublimity because they are in
association with man, because they are part of
man's world. It is doubtless true that
" There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar.''
And yet the singing poet, it is easy to see, car
ries these great things in nature to their best.
He gives them a voice ; he supplies them with
new power; he lifts them into an ampler and
nobler life.
It hardly needs to be said that man rises in
civilization through his insight into nature.
Take all the knowledge of nature which civilized
man possesses, all his skill in using nature's
power, all the discoveries of nature's secret
stores, and all the inventions that extend human

NATURE AND HUMANITY 93
control over these stores, and you have done
much to explain his vast advance over savage
man. This is so true that the man who first
became fully aware of it won an endless fame.
Bacon is simply the literary prophet of physi
cal science. His distinction is in his vision, and
in the rich magnificence of his utterance. His
vision is narrow, indeed, compared with that of
the great ruling thinkers of the race. In extent
and in value, Bacon's vision is immeasurably in
ferior to that of Plato and Aristotle, upon whom
he never lost an excuse to pour his contempt.
One thing, however, Bacon saw with surpassing
clearness. He stood with his eyes turned earth
ward. He beheld the amazing possible service
of physical things to the human race. He pro
phesied throughout his long career of the untold
utility for man in the heart of nature. He put
himself, his vision, his prophecy, and his pas
sion into the modern mind. The consequence is
an unparalleled devotion to nature, an unparal
leled conquest over nature, and an unparalleled
advance in the whole existence of civilized
man. For his vision of this promised land, for
his power to captivate the mind of man with his
vision, Bacon has won his renown. Nothing
could more clearly attest the truth of the remark
that conquest over nature means for man the
power of civilization.

94 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
2. Thus we may speak of nature in man, and
of humanity in nature. Man shows everywhere
the marks of his temporal environment. His
greatest thoughts have a provincial air about
them. When he uses words, he employs sounds
that ring with the suggestions of time and space.
When he speaks of God as Father, he borrows
a word from human society that carries in it
worlds of high meaning and round it huge clouds
of infirmity and sorrow. The word even drags
up with it the associations of the animal origin
of man. We speak of eternal love, and the great
conception comes like the sun, but like the sun
blazing a path for itself through the shadows
of night ; it comes with associations of fleshly
origin, sentimental meanings, mixed character,
wide-reaching and doubtful report. We speak
of the kingdom of love, and that word kingdom
is unable to free itself from suggestions of the
oppressions that have cursed mankind. We
speak of the moral order, and again the associa
tions of law, custom, immemorial usage, sometimes
good, sometimes evil, always far enough from
ideal, cling to the august conception. Again the
treasure is in the earthen vessel, again the vast
idea is exposed to meanness and confusion by its
temporal expression. Thus it is with heaven, one
of our greatest and most consoling thoughts. It
is in vain that we call it the world of spirit, the

NATURE AND HUMANITY 95
sphere of perfected moral service and fellowship,
the realm where in full and happy consciousness
just men live and move and have their being in
God. Thus exalted, thus held aloof from our
experience here, the great and beautiful thought
becomes vague, insubstantial, powerless. It must
die to live. It must put on a body of humiliation.
It must clothe itself in metaphor. It must glow
and burn in the fires of time. It must become
our Father's house of many mansions, a sublime
repetition of the fairest of human homes. And
as the midnight sky in the lake is but an image
of the starry vault above it, so, and conversely,
our heaven must become another, ampler, holier,
diviner earth, a vast and glorified picture hung in
eternity of our life in time, — a holy city, a new
Jerusalem, a place where they need no light of
the sun nor of the moon, where the Lord God is
himself the light, a world where the anthem is
that of a company that no man can number, the
voice of many waters and mighty thunderings.
The tumult of time, the endless multitudes of be
lieving, purified souls lifted out of pain, glorified
in the eternal, that is the form which our thought
of heaven must put on. All our greatest thoughts
must follow the example of Christ : they must
lay aside their native superhuman glory. As far
as pure intellectual form is concerned, they must
make themselves of no reputation. They must

96 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
descend upon man through images and asso
ciations that have power over man. They must
assume the character of a servant; they must
become obedient unto death, yea, the death of
the cross. In return for this limitation upon our
highest thoughts, this humiliation of our sub-
limest conceptions, there is wrought the exalta
tion of humanity, the sovereignty of man, under
God, over the interests that belong to man.
Under the same law stands our rational and
moral character. Our thinking is done at lucid in
tervals. We vegetate. Our food must be digested,
and that process arrests thought ; we must sleep,
we must play, we must attend to the business
of living. Physical existence is a constant and
harassing problem. Our thinking is done' under
these limitations. It is broken, patched, rolled
in all the associations of our temporal existence.
And when we attain to moments of freedom, how
few and how fleeting these moments are! An
immortal moment, an ineffable hour, a heavenly
vision, a pure glance into the soul of the universe,
a prayer, a song, and then the return of the cloud,
then back again to the wheel of fire. Aristotle's
idea of blessedness, for God, was pure, continu
ous, untroubled, eternal vision; and for man,
those high moments when he could share that
beatific vision.
Not only as thinkers, but also as doers of the

NATURE AND HUMANITY 97
will of God we suffer here. We work for right
eousness in time and space, we work in our gen
eration and in our small neighborhood. We serve
the cause of justice as hewers of wood and drawers
of water, as food producers and transporters, as
buyers and sellers, as battling with winds and
storms in all the mean and small business of
the world. Our ideals are set, like the stars,
" in the black bosom of night." The character
that we win, like the food upon which we live, is
gathered in the fields of time. And again, we
must not push too hard ; otherwise we shall defeat
the high purpose of the soul. Insanity comes
through vice and crime, through selfishness and
shame ; it comes, too, through all forms of igno
rance. It comes through unwise religious pas
sion. We that are in this tabernacle do groan,
being burdened. The marks of nature, obstinate,
unconquerable, mysterious, are upon our whole
human existence in this world.
On the other side, if nature limits man, man
gives to nature a meaning not her own. For
uncounted ages she has been in closest associa
tion with man. She is thus steeped in humanity.
Look into the Bible for examples. Is it nature
as mountain? There are Mount Moriah and
Abraham, Nebo and Moses, Carmel and Elijah,
Tabor, Calvary, Olivet and Jesus. Is it the sea ?
Jesus and Galilee, Paul and the Mediterranean,

98 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
are in endless association. Is it the river ? The
Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Jordan, Abana
and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, are again full
of human color and character. Is it the sun ?
The outgoings of the morning and the evening
are dyed in the humanity that has watched with
immemorial admiration this double diurnal mir
acle of splendor. Is it the starry sky ? Job, and
the millions whom he represents, look up and
note Arcturus, Orion, and the Pleiades ; look up
and fill those bright and peaceful worlds with
the pathos and the aspiration of human hearts.
The poet's song, called secular only by those
who see nothing to revere in human love, repre
sents the association of man with the whole realm
of nature : —
" I see her in the dewy flowers —
I see her sweet and fair.
I hear her in the tunefu' birds —
I hear her charm the air.
There 's not a bonie flower that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green,
There 's not a bonie bird that sings,
But minds me o' my Jean."
Every object in nature is thus touched with fresh
meaning through association with human love.
Take the river. It flows on to-day as if it had
just begun ; think of the ages of its life. In its
source there is the inevitable suggestion of the
beginnings of man in mystery and in weakness.

NATURE AND HUMANITY 99
In its swift, ceaseless movement there is the image
of the unresting, everlasting generations of men.
In its murmur there is the intonation of human
ity in its love and grief, in its victory and defeat,
in its weariness and hope ; the sound of the river
is the voice of the countless thousands who have
lived upon its banks, who in its clear and calm
current have found the mirror of their happiness
and peace, who in its wild and dark floods have
beheld an image of their passionate and tumult
uous lives. Oh, the pathos of that ongoing, whis
pering, singing, moaning river ! The heart-beats,
the heart-breaks, the morning songs, and the
unsilenceable hopes of a vast and vanished human
world are there. And down to the sea goes the
river. Onward to the end go the generations
of men. The great sea waits for its own ; the
Eternal God is our refuge and hope. This is but
a hint of the epic of an immemorial humanity
that is sung by Nile and Ganges, Tigris and
Euphrates, Jordan and Tiber, Thames and Doon,
Hudson and Mississippi. These are indeed parts
of the river of God ; they make glad the city of
man. Thus it is with all nature. It is filled with
the humanity of man. And Jacob's well was
there. Yes, Jacob's well is everywhere. Nature
is fair, divinely fair, to the child. Wordsworth
has spoken for the childhood of the world : —

100 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
" There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream."
And for this testimony we thank the noble poet.
But we cannot accept him as representative of
humanity when he adds : —
" It is not now as it hath been of yore ; —
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more."
The vague dream of childhood matures into the
splendid vision of manhood. The child sees only
the sun ; the servant of God sees the angel
standing in the sun. The child beholds only the
tumultuous sea ; the servant of God sees again
the mighty angel, and this time standing with
one foot on the sea and the other on the earth,
filling the world with his humanity, filling it with
the revelation of the humanity of God. The sun
and moon and stars have in their bright faces
the image of all the lovers that have transfigured
the earth, the lustre of all the saints that have
hallowed it. The triumphant shout of all the sons
of God is preserved in the endless song of the
morning stars. The life, the love, the struggle,
the victory, the defeat, the hope, the fellowship,
the dear and divine humanity of the whole race,

NATURE AND HUMANITY 101
has risen into the heights of nature, has sunk
into her heart, and for all thinking men she is
immeasurably more and greater than she can be
to the child. She is burdened with the pathos,
the mystery, and the endless tragic prophecy of
man's existence. The cloud rolls into the path
of the setting sun. It is touched, shot through
with light, changed into a burning mass of in
expressible splendor ; it is filled with the glory
of the sun that is passing. Something like this
has happened to nature. It has rolled into the
path of humanity ; it is laden with the fires of
human love, it is burning with the splendors of
human faith and hope, it is transfigured in the
meaning and mystery of the race that is on its
way to God.
3. Finally, we learn here what nature can give,
and what she cannot give. She can give water
from her deep, abundant, beautiful well. In that
bounty we see her large and precious ministry to
man. But there is a limit to this ministry of
nature. The water of life she cannot give. Man
cannot live by bread alone, but by every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. There
is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the
Almighty giveth him understanding. " In his
will is our peace." He has made us for himself,
and we cannot rest till we rest in Him.
Three pictures rise upon the vision as we stand

102 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
by this old well in Samaria. There is first of
all the well and its founder and his family, his
flocks and herds. In this picture the well seems
to be all that the Patriarch needs. Under its
abundant and refreshing ministry the sense of its
limitation becomes vague. We are so delighted
with what the well can do that we cease to think
about what it cannot do. Thus when we see child
hood in the heart of nature, among its singing
birds and springing flowers ; when we see youth
delighted with the existence that breathing and
sleep and food renew ; when we see men living
a vigorous and happy life in gathering wealth, in
commanding the material order, in drawing water
for the thirsting world from the open fountains
of material prosperity ; when we see human beings
pleased with mere amusements, contented with
the mere social excitement, satisfied to be in the
whirl of things, like the unprotesting driftwood
in the eddy of the river, we are apt to think that
the outward realm is everything, that Jacob's well
is all that humanity needs. Ideals conform to
this picture. The great sigh goes up : what shall
we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal
shall we be . clothed ? The picture in the vast
popular imagination is of Jacob and his cara
van at the well, resting there, and refreshed from
its ever-flowing fountains, and contented in this
refreshment and rest.

NATURE AND HUMANITY 103
As we dream this mere sensuous dream, an
other picture disturbs us. There comes a woman
of Samaria. Once she was a beautiful child.
At her birth she brought joy and awe into the
world. The sweet tidings of her advent sped like
light from heart to heart, from home to home.
She was given to God in the thankful love, in the
joyous faith of her parents. She brought into her
home' a new world of love. She fed that sacred
flame by her needs, by her promise, by the gra
cious ritual of childhood. She grew in personal
grace and charm. She put forth the fair prophecy
of womanhood. She stood on the threshold of
mature existence a vision of loveliness and hope.
Look at her now. Her life is blasted. It is filled
with shame. Honor is gone. All regard for truth
is gone. All hope of good repute is departed.
All expectation of noble love is dead. What a
wreck is here, what reversal of hope, what blast
ing of promise, what outrage upon humanity !
What can Jacob's well do for this woman ? Is
there in its waters any full and adequate help
for her ?
" What hands are here ! . . .
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green — one red."
This is the other side of the shield. We are other,

104 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
we are more, than nature. We are not under a
law from which we cannot break. Man is, and
nature is not, self-governing. He ought to be
true to the law of his being ; he can disregard
that law ; he has done it, he is doing it, and that
is his heritage of woe. We have done evil where
we were bound to do good. Our hearts condemn
us, and God is greater than our hearts and know-
eth all things. We need forgiveness, and no man
looking into mere natural law can say, " I believe
in the forgiveness of sins." We need the effu
sion of divine power, the inspiration of the Al
mighty, and no man looking into the mere order
of nature can say, " I believe in the Holy Ghost."
We need the might that comes through fellow
ship in the vision of the sublimest ideals, through
the discipline of a common service, through the
consolation of union in worship, and no man
looking into the unrenewed society of our time
can say, " I believe in the communion of saints."
Wre need the sense of the life that is endless, that
is without break or pause, that carries in its heart
the consciousness of its infinite meaning for God,
and again, no man looking into the mere laws of
the cosmos, into the graves of the race, can say,
" I believe in the life everlasting." To the well
of Jacob we come for water ; for the water of
life we must go elsewhere. Nature as cosmos,
nature as the world over against man, nature as

NATURE AND HUMANITY 105
the name for the sum of the forces and laws
other than man, can give us bread, but she can
not give us the bread of life.
The well that we need as men is the well of
the spirit. The water that we need for our souls
is the water of life. Our deepest need is the need
of moral order, social justice, human unselfish
ness, personal integrity. We come for the power
to rise from the natural man into the normal, into
the spiritual man. We come for help to secure
the high and proper attribute of humanity, —
love. We cry for the birth of love, the growth
of love, the manhood of love, its ascendency, its
sovereignty, its endless and cloudless reign. And
in man we come to know the character of the
Power that is underneath Jacob's well, that is
underneath our humanity, who of nature and of
humanity in himself constitutes the divine uni
verse. We come in vain to mere nature, we come
with gain only when in man crowned with the
attributes of love we behold the image of our
God. Thus the final picture is of Jesus at the well.
There you see nature living in the vision of
Jesus, there you note what her birds of heaven
and her lilies of the field owe to his senses, and
there you see him rejoicing in the great and con
stant ministry of nature. There you see the su
preme human soul, the soul that in itself is higher

106 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
than the heavens, weary with its journey, resting
by the well, accommodating its sovereign thoughts
and feelings and purposes and acts to the capaci
ties of the body, to the law and manner of a pro
vincial and passing world, making itself of no
reputation, becoming obedient to this mystery of
humiliation ; and there you behold mountain and
stream, city and village, fruitful field and barren
waste, the earth and the sky, the whole order of
nature, hallowed in the memory of his divine hu
manity, burning and yet unconsumed in the holy
fires of his love. There you note what nature
can do and do well; there, too, you note what
she cannot do. She is playground for the chil
dren of men ; she is battleground for the sons of
men. She is the rich condition of physical exist
ence. She is the deep and dear old well to which
all the generations come in gladness for refresh
ment and rest. But for the soul of Jesus, nature's
hands are empty. He lives upon God. His meat
is to do the will of God and to accomplish God's
work. His bread is his Father's wisdom, his
drink is his Father's love. His being moves in
the sustaining strength of the Eternal. His per
fect humanity is at an infinite height above nature.
His thought answers to the thought of God, his
love to the love of God, his will to the will of God.
His thought is truth, his passion is love, his will
is righteousness, his deed is power. He is the

NATURE AND HUMANITY 107
perfect human soul, and therefore, he is the com
plete human utterance of God. Here is some
thing that the cosmos cannot give. Here is the
mind of God in the mind of man at his best ;
here is the heart of God in the heart of man at
his highest ; here is the will of God in the will of
man in its sublimest mood ; here is the Eternal
Father in the Son who represents the origin, the
mission, and the destiny of our humanity. Here
with him at the well let us rest ; here through
his sovereign soul let us look upon God ; here let
us ask of him that he may give us the living
water.

VI
LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME
"And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto
him but a few days, for the love he had to her." Genesis xxix, 20.
Good men, as they grow older, become more and
more sympathetic and grateful toward youth.
And no grateful friend of youth can look un
moved upon the meeting of these two cousins,
Jacob the son of Rebecca, and Rachel the
daughter of Laban. The freshness, the beauiy of
morning is in the scene. The touch of a mystic
humanity is in it ; the profound and tender feeling
of kindred is there, the feeling of kindred in the
deepest-hearted race that ever lived. Jacob is a
wanderer, an exile from his home because of his
misdeeds. We can imagine what the vision of
this fair cousin in the bloom of youth was to him.
Rachel is at the monotonous task of a shepherd's
daughter ; and we can imagine her appreciation
of the young man who rolled the stone from
the well's mouth, and who that memorable day
watered the flocks for her. " And Jacob kissed
Rachel and lifted up his voice and wept." The
power of blood, the joy of kinship, the instinc
tive gladness and tenderness of concordant hearts,

LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 109
the religious awe and delight of unnamed and
unconscious love, took possession of both. Then
comes the dust of the actual blown in the clean
and shining face of the ideal. The commercial
nephew speaks to the commercial uncle. For the
prophetic father of Israel was not carried away
by sentiment, at least he was not so carried away
by it as to be incapable of making a contract.
The contract with the father and uncle was that
Jacob should serve for Rachel seven years ; and
we are told that they seemed to him but a few
days, for the love he had for her.
In' this profoundly beautiful Old Testament
story there is a path to some of the greatest
things in human life ; there is a path to the
sources of our whole human world ; there is an
introduction to the living order of our humanity.
The story seems to suggest for our subject the
revelation of God through youth, and our discus
sion falls into two divisions, — love and life, and
love and time.
I. We note in the story the great word love
upon the lips of life. It was the love first of
cousin for cousin, second of youth for youth,
finally of man for woman and of woman for
man. What did it mean ? That question should
not be difficult to answer. The experience is
so genuinely, purely, beautifully human that it
should not be hard to discern its character.

110 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
There is in it the vision of the ideal, the passion
for the ideal. Jacob saw before him the beauty
of the universe embodied, not wholly embodied,
indeed. He was a sane lover, and doubtless felt
that Rachel, fair as she was, could become fairer
still. The embodied ideal suggested the ideal to
be embodied, the ideal unembodied, fugitive, im
measurable, infinite, eternal. Jacob found, too,
that he was able in the presence of this woman
to revere all women. Rachel redeemed the race.
In a degree all women were fair and sweet because
they wore her nature. The ideal that glorified
the nature, that sweetened the flesh and blood
of this woman, lived in womankind with hallow
ing power. Further, this man found that he could
respect himself. He had fallen from that height.
His deceit and lies had cast him down. But he
has soniehow found reconciliation with his con
science. Doubtless in his case it was not a hard
master. Still he has gone forth into the disin
terested life. He has become a lover ; and love
gives the sense of worth ; it gives strength and
boldness. This man found the ideal in himself,
giving to his being exaltation, refinement, dignity,
composure, and hope. He looked upon mankind
with new eyes. The ideal was in all men ; they
were wanderers like himself, and in one degree
or another they were lovers. A further discovery
yet this man makes. Here is the universe. It

LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 111
must be the final home of the ideal. Somewhere
that soul of fire resides in it. Perhaps that eter
nal spirit of loveliness fills it, and is the fountain of
all its worth. Arcturus, Orion, and the Pleiades
are perhaps but the high and shining symbols
of it ; the countless stars are perhaps but the
bright and sovereign eyes with which the eternal
ideal watches the ways of men. Thus in the
vision of the ideal and in the passion for it this
man has been led to the fountains of home, of
human brotherhood, and of faith in God.
The true human home rests upon love. That
love is the vision of an embodied ideal and the
passion for it. This revelation of God is renewed
in every fresh generation. The minister lives by
the side of this great fountain of our humanity.
He sees with Wordsworth the native endowment
of childhood ; the boundless surge of the Divine
nature he notes behind it. With the exultant
poet he sees the children sport upon the shore,
and hears " The mighty waters rolling evermore."
He sees and hears, however, more than this. The
tabernacle of God is with men. The minister be
holds the boys and girls become young men and
maidens. Their love of life, their intense desire
for pleasure, their keen sense of humor, their
aptitude for laughter, their unstable and fugitive

112 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
seriousness, their exposure to imposture, and their
genius for mistakes do not hide from his penetrat
ing and sympathetic vision the vast consecration
of existence which love brings. Even in unmoral
natures love issues in reverence for the object
of it. It gathers itself into promises, it goes
out in pledges, it offers up instructive prayers,
it calls upon manhood to stand upon its honor, it
summons the soul to a new and a responsible
life. And where children have been fortunate
in their childhood, where young men and young
women have been fortunate in their youth, where
their environment has been wholesome, and
where their friends have been high, nothing on
this earth is more beautiful or more significant
than the flowering of the nature in honest human
love. There is what we call the idealization of
the woman by the man, and of the man by the
woman. Upon the part of both there is insight
into the awful beauty of the human soul. There
is the discovery in the beloved life of an ideal
embodied, and still unembodied, hovering over
existence, and calling, " Come up higher." In
each for the other, flesh and blood are sweetened
by this ideal, indwelling and yet transcendent ;
in each for the other, personality is touched with
awe because of the loving soul within, and yet
more because of the fathomless capacity for love
there. Here one comes to understand the majesty

LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 113
of Kant's great dictum : Never use personality,
your own or another's, as means, but always re
vere it as an end. When you read the story of
Jacob and Rachel, Hsemon and Antigone, Dante
and Beatrice, Edwards and Sarah Pierrepont,
Burns and Highland Mary, you are sure that
the heart of all true love is reverence, and that
reverence is the only assurance of honor. Stand
in awe and sin not. Nothing less and nothing
other than the force of gravity can keep our
planet to its orbit; nothing less and nothing
other than the awe born of love can assuredly
and peacefully control the passions of man.
Into this high mood the youth of each new gen
eration are brought. They are brought hither in
preparation for the greatness of family life. The
consecration of love is a consecration in moral
awakening, in moral purpose, in moral power.
The family life of mankind is the first great rev
elation of the moral order of the world. The
lover alone is justified in founding a home, the
lover alone can keep his vow, the lover alone has
the reverence that exalts the soul, that protects
the inviolable rights of united personalities, that
surely promises a harvest of happiness. Look at
the trees in your orchard in the month of May.
Is there any tree there undowered with blossoms,
whose life has not flowered into this miracle
of stainless beauty ? That tree might as well be

114 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
dead. Those others, tossing their boughs tipped
with exquisite life, sweetening the air with deli
cious perfumes, are the living trees. From them
the golden harvest is to come. If you can think of
a procession of loveless youth on the way to the
marriage altar, you have over again, and this
time in humanity, the dead tree. The human pre
paration for the august relation does not exist.
The new life that consecrates for the new estate
is not there. The fountain that is to quench the
family thirst for all high bearing and all noble
deeds is choked. Humanity there is denied,
desecrated, put to open shame. Only the proces
sion of lovers are qualified to found homes ; only
they whose natures have flowered in a great and
beautiful ideal and who see each in the other the
presence and prophecy of that ideal, only they
whose souls have beheld each other in mystery
and awe, are fitted to establish the greatest of all
institutions. For the first revelation of normal
youth is just this : the awakening of man is in
love, the heart of love is reverence, and reverence
is the last and the mightiest assurance of a just
and good life.
It is true to-day that the lover is the source
of all high social feeling. Self-respect is the sum
mit of the soul, and when one has risen to that
elevation, he finds in corresponding elevations a
multitude of men. The fine thing about the sum-

LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 115
mit of a towering alpine height is the discovery
that it is not alone, that it is one of a vast range
of similar heights, that it beholds rising about it
sister peaks, on whose crests it watches with joy
the play of morning and the glow of evening.
The man who has found his own conscience has
little difficulty in finding conscience in other men.
The bad man lives in a valley. He is sunken in
the deep and narrow defile of his own sordidness.
He mistakes his misfortune for the order of hu
man nature. There are, indeed, multitudes with
him in his calamity. Still, the facts of their lives
do not give the truth about man. They cannot see
the mountains that tower all about them because
they are lost in the abyss of their own selfishness.
If they would but rise, in honor, in friendship,
in the sense of obligation, in disinterested man
hood, they would behold towering about them
kindred spirits. It was one of the worst of poli
ticians who said that every man has his price. He
had spent his life in giving and in taking bribes ;
he had lived among those who were hungry for
bribes ; hence his generalization. If he had been
himself a just man, he would have lived else
where, he would have met other men, he would
have looked into the faces of kings.
Self-respect is found in love. The lover knows
his worth, and his capacity for immeasurable
worth. He beholds other lovers and notes their

116 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
worth, actual and possible. It is therefore easy
for him to live, in open vision of all the mistakes
and imperfections of men, with a prevailing sense
of the majesty of the human soul. Here is a
swamp maple. The autumn has come and turned
it into a living, burning splendor. It knows the
glory of its life and rejoices in it. It looks abroad
and sees other trees of its kind. There they
stand, all touched with the same fire, all burn
ing in the same splendor. One swamp maple in
the autumn differs in glory from another swamp
maple. But the racial distinction is in every one
of them. Each, as it burns in the autumn sun
light, sees that all the others are touched with the
same beauty ; therefore they are a brotherhood
and preach the community of beautiful lives.
The man who loves one woman reveres woman
hood. Womankind through that special woman
commands honor. The nature of the race is
read in a single instance, the capacity of the race
is seen in this particular member, the high func
tion of all is beheld and revered in the sacred
humanity of the individual person. The lover
is the knight ; he is the true seer of the order of
womanhood. In the same light he reads the nature of men.
They are capable of his vision of an embodied
ideal, his passion for it, his self-consecration in
its presence. If his life is dyed in the color of

LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 117
this dayspring from on high, if his nature is
warm and resplendent with the presence in it of
a hallowing affection, he is able to look abroad
and to discover a host of men standing in the
sun. Social sentiment in its purest character and
in its highest power is the issue of love. Play
mates, schoolmates, classmates, comrades in this
profession and in that, citizens of the same great
country, come to the divine fountain of love
for the consecration of youth into the complete
sense of human brotherhood. The older men and
women have loved, their existence has been hal
lowed by it, their losses and sorrows are sacra
ments of it. They lead out to the older contempo
rary humanity of the world, carrying its flaming
memory in the cloud of present grief. They lead
backward to the humanity that has loved and
suffered and gone. And here are the children,
the young men and maidens of to-morrow, the
lovers who are coming, who are to bless the world
with their brightened lives. In between the older
generation and the younger, between the retreat
ing lovers and the advancing, are the present pos
sessors of this divine charm. They unite in their
own anointed humanity the past and the present
and the future of mankind. In their shining faces
we see the race reflected, and in spite of all bru
tality, we know that the race is one.
Here, too, is the fountain of all living faith.

118 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
The Bible is not the first witness for God. The
world, the cosmos, the universe, is not the first.
The soul alive through love is the aboriginal wit
ness for God. Does color mean anything to the
blind ? Does great music signify anything to the
deaf ? Do Assyrian characters convey to you or
to me the least knowledge of the hands that
formed them or the minds that breathed thought
into them ? For the world at large the Scriptures
must be translated from Hebrew and Greek into
the language of the people. Still another trans
lation must be made. The Bible is the lover's
book. It is the greatest expression of the great
est love that has ever visited mankind. The lov
er's vision of the ideal is in it, and how sublime
that vision is ! The lover's passion for the ideal
is in it, and how great that passion is! Now
it is as soft and gentle as the zephyr, again
there is in it the rush of the hurricane ; here it is
the low, sweet evening song of the bird, there it
is the peal of thunder. The Bible is an elemen
tal book, — elemental in the vastness of its vision
of the ideal, and in the fullness and splendor of
its passion. And this book is a sealed book until
the angel of love breaks the seal.
Coleridge made a remark about the Bible
which has become a proverb. He said that the
Bible found him, and found him at greater depths
of his being than all other books ; therefore he

LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 119
believed in it as he believed in no other. But
this remark shows that Coleridge was alive. He
had become a lover ; he had seen with his own
eyes the divine ; he had felt its power upon his
own heart. And the Bible came in to interpret,
to expand, to exalt, to purify, and to breathe
into his soul, in greater fullness, the Holy Ghost.
Understandest thou what thou readest? said
Philip to the Ethiopian. How can I, except some
one shall guide me ? was the Ethiopian's reply.
What was the obstacle ? There was the story of
a supremely good man treated as if he had been
supremely bad. That was plain to the reader. The
puzzle was to know who the person was to whom
the language applied. Philip's task was easy.
He had only to recite the story of the ministry and
the sufferings of Jesus, and the passage became
clear. But suppose the Ethiopian had been with
out the sense of suffering love. Suppose him never
to have known anything about the higher hero
ism of the human soul. Suppose him to have
been mean, sordid, self-centred, destitute of the
least experience of the illuminating power of love.
In that case Philip's task would have been hope
less. You can as soon explain color to the blind,
or a Beethoven symphony to the deaf, as you can
expound to a loveless heart the greater things
in the Bible. For the Bible is born of love ; it is
the sovereign historic expression of it, and that

120 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
one may understand it, he must bring to it the
lover's mind and heart.
For the beginnings of faith we come back to
youth. The ideal is in the beloved ; it is not
wholly there. The maddest lover will confess
that. The ideal is in contemporary humanity, in
so far as it loves, in so far as it has the capacity
to love. The statue of Memnon sang when the
morning light touched it ; but all through the
dark hours of night the capacity of joyous re
sponse to the appeal of the new day slumbered
in its marble heart. That capacity made it a
wonder. The youth who at the touch of the
heavenly person breaks into the song of love,
carried in his heart from the beginning that
divine capacity. Thus the ideal lives in con
temporary humanity because of love and because
of the capacity for love. Any moment the light
may come that shall inspire with song these
multitudes of silent, statuesque lives.
The ideal is in contemporary humanity, but it
is not wholly there. Love is as old as man. It
began with the earliest beholding eyes, and the
beating of the first human heart. It has been the
romance of each new generation. It has held
worth and joy in life against all brutality and all
misery. It has hallowed the career of man. It
has been through the whole terrible tragedy of
history the prevailing presence of the Holy Spirit ;

LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 121
we can hear the successive generations singing,
sometimes from the heights, and sometimes from
the depths : —
" All hail ! ye tender feelings dear !
The smile of love, the friendly tear,
The sympathetic glow !
Long since this world's thorny ways
Had numbered out my weary days,
Had it not been for you ! "
However hard, however cold, however cruel it
may have become at times, the race is carried in
youth into the vast and beautiful kingdom of
love. The ideal is in mankind ; but it is not wholly
there. It is here, and it is afar ; it is at our side,
and it is higher than the heavens. It is indwelling
in man, and at the same time transcendent, fugi
tive, immeasurable, eternal. It fills the universe.
It is the order, the beauty, the goodness, of all
that exists. It is the true animus mundi, the
ineffable Soul of the universe. Its shadow has
been in the lover's heart since love began. Its
shadow is in the heart of lovers still. We chase
the flying loveliness, and still we remain in
that awful shadow. At length we perceive that
we are in the secret place of the Most High.
and under the shadow of the Almighty.
Thus youth in its dower of love reveals the
rock on which the family life of mankind rests ;

122 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
thus it discovers the bonds that bind into one
brotherhood the whole race of man ; thus it finds
in its own heart the word of God, and is able to
receive that word in sovereign power back from
the Book of faith. And thus youth in its love,
when it understands itself, may sing to the world :
"Mighty the Wizard
Who found me at sunrise
Sleeping, and woke me
And learn'd me Magic !
Great the Master,
And sweet the Magic,
When over the valley,
In early summers,
Over the mountain,
On human faces,
And all around me,
Moving to melody,
Floated the Gleam."
II. Love is of God; so wrote the beloved
disciple in his old age. In his youth there
had come to him through Jesus the revelation
of God. As a young man the supreme aspect
of that revelation had been love, and the or
ganic structure of human life. Working in
the fires of his passionate youth; living in his
ideals as a son, brother, and disciple ; flam
ing in his sympathies as a human being, Jesus
had shown to John the love of God. Youth has
left him long since. The Eternal loveliness in

LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 123
the form of his Master has long ago vanished
from the earth. For more than the half of a
long life, the conflict in his heart has been be
tween love and time. When life has reached its
maturity, when the tumult of passion has sub
sided, when the world is passing away from us
into the power of the coming generation, does
love last? The spread of the eagle's wings is
great and beautiful, but wholly dependent upon
the strength of its spinal cord. Is it so with love ?
Its wide-reaching sympathies begin, as we have
seen, in the mysterious fires of youth. Are they
withdrawn, do they droop and fail, when the
prime of physical life is past ? Is the material
ist right, whether philosopher or novelist, when
he contends that love is the incident of physi
ology? When we grant to the materialist that
love begins with the bloom of youth, are we
bound to accept his conclusion that it fades with
that bloom ? May we not contend that, in the
case of the true man and woman, there is evolved
from the lower, sensuous love, a higher, a self-
sustaining, a divine love, even as from the creep
ing caterpillar there is evolved the life that no
longer needs the feet of its former self, that has
wings to bear it upward from the earth?
Plato has dedicated one of his immortal Dia
logues to love. Many friends meet at a great ban
quet. Around the table where so much genius and

124 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
good-fellowship is gathered the theme of conver
sation is love. Speeches are made upon this
theme by a variety of persons. At last Socrates
speaks ; and his general thought is true for all
time. Love is the life of the , cosmos ; it puts
on a multitude of forms ; it is subject to fright
ful abuses ; it has, besides, lower forms and
higher. Its inmost character is found in its
power of ascension. It pushes ever upward, and
still upward. It is defeated unless it flowers at
last in the adoration of the Eternal loveliness. It
begins in God, and, when free and unimpeded,
through animal life, through human life, through
the soul of the rapt lover of wisdom, it returns
to God. What love is when it enters humanity,
you may know when you see it issuing from
humanity in the glorious passion of the philoso
phic soul. The last of love is the revelation of
the first of love ; the revelation of God through
the youthful lover is perfected through the vet
eran lover.
In this great Dialogue, Alcibiades describes
Socrates as like the bust of Silenus kept in the
rooms of artists, outside huge, coarse, ugly, but
containing within images of the gods. Nothing
could better represent the life of any true man
in his contest with time. Time takes the young
Apollo and turns him into the bust of Silenus.
And if the outward is everything, when youth is

LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 125
gone, all grace, all charm, all strength is gone.
But the exterior is not everything. Inside that
bust of Silenus is the fair image of God, inside
that body from which the strength and grace
have gone there is a soul of loveliness looking up
in awe and in hope to the Eternal. Look upon
the outward, but do not stop with that ; look
inward and behold there the love that is grow
ing deeper, richer, fairer, every day, that in its
hiding-place prays for the coming of the king
dom of love, that waits for the freedom and the
triumph of the City of God.
In the story of Jacob and Rachel, love meets
time and service, meets them as obstacles in its
way. Our interpretation of that wonderful idyll
will be incomplete if we do not consider for a
few moments this conflict of love and time.
That lover of the ancient world was compelled
to wait and to serve. He made light of both time
and service. The years were as days in the joy of
his full heart. The present was so crowded with
gladness that concern for the future was impos
sible. The service exacted of him was not even
mentioned. It wrought within him chastity of
heart ; it gave him worth and self-reliance ; and
it was one great form of communion between
him and the object of his love. Love conquered
time, it conquered everything ; sovereign in life,
it -became sovereign over all.

126 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
Is this high disdain for youth, and only for
youth ? Is this revelation of God through youth
limited in its inspiration to youth ? Does the east
that gives the sun keep the sun ? Does not the
sun roll forward, spreading his light through the
whole sky ? Still rolling onward, does he not go
hence in the west, revealing his soul of fire there
as he could not reveal it in the east? This is
the truth about the course of the sun ; this is the
truth about the path of the just. Maturity takes
the ideals of youth and holds them with a
quieter and surer strength. It sees the three
great objects of youthful love, — the family,
the social whole, the Infinite, — and follows them
with a vaster and purer veneration. The morn
ing song of the bird is louder, but infinitely less
sweet and tender, than its evening song. Love
has more passion in youth, but it has more
pathos and piety in age. Love's all hail is great,
its farewell is greater.
The first great advantage of the veteran lover
over love's raw recruit is that he understands
something of the power that has been with him
all these years. He sees that the domestic fife
of man is an order of lovers. It is a vast, it is
an immemorial institute. It has been burdened
with error and smitten with sorrow. It has been
girt about by fearful enemies ; these enemies have
fiercely assailed it, and often they have prevailed

LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 127
against it and inflicted upon it the most seri
ous injury. Still it has survived. It is bound to
survive. It is in movement from the more to the
less imperfect. It is under the ceaseless attrac
tion of the ideal born of the highest love. To
this it is held ; toward this it is rising ; into
the likeness of this it will be transformed. You
look at the star when it sparkles on the dim
horizon line, when it sends its half -baffled gleam
through the mist and smoke that lie round it on
the lower levels of its career. That is not the
whole star. Wait and watch it as it climbs. Slowly
it creeps upward away from the foul vapors of
the earth ; steadily it escapes from limitation and
distress, surely it reaches the zenith, and there,
it shines in pure, untroubled splendor. Look at
the family life of the world in early times ; look
at it in later times. Mark in it this one feature,
its steady improvement, its constant ascent. The
Eternal lover whom we have found is lifting the
human home out of the dust and darkness of ani
malism ; he is carrying it upward into his own
presence. He will bring -the lover's home to its
state of purity and light and peace at last. For
this the older lover sees that he must serve and
wait. And because of the love that he has toward
that consummation of the human home, he dis
counts the services and disdains the years.
The veteran lover has another advantage. He

128 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
is established in the sense of history. Visions
that brighten life for a moment and then vanish
like the fires of morning in the east greatly dis
courage youth. Deferred hope, postponed fulfill
ment, makes the heart of the youthful idealist
sick. The descent of the ideal into human exist
ence is as slow as the descent of the glacier. This
is a discouragement to youth. It was the youth
ful prophet who cried, "O Lord, how long!"
The peril of every successive generation of youth
is here. The thirst of young life is for immediate
realizations. Eonian fulfillments through eonian
struggle take the moral heart and hope out of
thousands. The sun is up ; why should it not
ripen the grain before sunset ? The ideal of bro
therhood is here; why should it not at once
mature the whole race in "love ? This postponed
fulfillment quenches the light of the ideal in
multitudes of the young. Thus the multitudes
forsook Jesus ; thus they abandon his cause to
day. The hunger for immediacy overcomes them.
They gladly entertain the vision of Christ ; they
are unequal to the service and the patience of
Christ. Here the older lover makes a great return to
the younger. The mills of the gods grind slow ;
the years bring one into that sorrowful con
sciousness. The mills of the gods grind slow, but
they grind exceeding small ; time brings one into

LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 129
the happy sense of this inevitable process of the
Eternal spirit. We look backward to-day as
men in other days were unable to do. The vista
of history is immensely extended. And the vet
eran lover surveys this immeasurable field with
chastened joy. He sees on the far horizon a race
made but little above the beast of the field. He
watches the advance. It is out of the brutal state
into something better ; it is up from the savage
into the barbarian ; it is away from the barbarian
into some rude form of civilization. The move
ment sways to this side and again to that ; some
times there is demoralization and temporary
retreat. The advance is, however, soon renewed.
Impediments are shed in the successive epochs, in
the successive stages of the march. The man is
advancing, the brute is retreating. And our vet
eran lover is a being who looks " before and after."
The backward look has become a vast justifica
tion of hope. Behind the sheep is the shepherd
driving his flock toward the uplands. The sheep
that hitherto have been driven are here and there
beginning to see the goal, here and there they are
in headlong pursuit of it. Instinct and moral
necessity are issuing, in the leading communities
of mankind, in insight and choice. The race
under compulsion is becoming the race under
freedom ; the shepherd is appearing in the van
of his flock, and his sheep know his voice. Some

130 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
day the weary epoch of approach upon brother
hood by impulsion will become the happy epoch
of advance by attraction. The slow movement
under constraint will yet issue in the eager, vic
torious rush for the summits of human good.
This is the vision of the older lover. He knows
something of the greatness of history. Into this
sense of the humanizing process of time he has
come'; therefore he is undismayed. When it was
the single human course that he was considering,
he was like one watching the ascent of a solitary
star. Now he is thinking of the race, and it is
as if he were watching the slow ascent of a con
stellation. Perhaps it is Orion gleaming through
the smoke of the city from the south ; perhaps
it is the Wain defining its starry order through
the vapors of evening on the north. Here not a
single star, but a system of stars, must rise. Now
they are veiled from sight, and again they show
their bright faces. Here one seems victorious ;
there the rest of the group seem lost. Is the
salvation only of the remnant ? Are those stars
in the belt of Orion alone to go on ? Are those
two in the Wrain that look up to their shining
comrade in the north alone to ascend? As the
mists rise and fall, as the clouds come and go,
it seems a doubtful case for this constellation and
that. But the night grows clearer, the hours move
forward, and the watcher beholds each group

LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 131
becoming more resplendent. The heavens are
half scaled ; the zenith is yet afar off, but the
way to it is open and fair, and the ascent is sure.
Such is the vision of the veteran lover con
cerning the brotherhood of man. He sees the
obstacles in the way ; but they are the mountain-
tops, the earthly vapors, the flying clouds, that
only seem to cross and obstruct the path of the
serene, ascending stars.
The veteran lover has a yet greater advantage.
The younger lover has God with him and hardly
knows it. The older lover has God with him
and rests his cause upon God. There is something
very noble in the love that is conscious only of
itself, that notes neither time nor toil. Jacob lost
in the pure delight of loving, and unconscious
both of the years and their burden, is a picture
of infinite charm. It is a mood precious and full
of power ; it is not the highest mood, nor is it
possessed of the highest power. The lover, so
the Apostle John tells us, is born of God, " for
God is love." And the older lover looks to the
Eternal source of his being and his hope. He
passes over to the side of the Divine lover ; he
learns to live and to work with God.
Here, surely, is a fundamental difference be
tween youth and maturity. Youth is self-suffi
cient, nobly so. It is conscious of vision and
power ; it is still the morning hour. The work

132 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
to be done is great ; but the strength is great,
and the hour is at hand. Freedom, obligation,
responsibility, personal achievement, the large
plan, the confident campaign, the restless, rush
ing energy, the boundless and urgent hope, the
kingdom of God at hand, — these are the great
notes of youth. Let them ring forth from every
new generation of youth. They blend in a great
song of faith for mankind.
Maturity makes a different contribution. The
consciousness of power is less keen, the conscious
ness of the work to be done is deeper. The sense
of the self-reliant soul passes into the sense of
the trustworthy God. The refrain comes to be,
" Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit,
saith the Lord." The sense of a world-plan,
the sense of history within this world-plan, the
consciousness of the Eternal power not our
selves that makes for righteousness, the vision of
the Infinite lover of men, — these are the notes
of the older believers. They blend in a psalm ;
and in return for the song of the youthful lover,
this psalm is sent back from the heart of the
veteran lover. Here men rely less on the light of
this day, and more on the sun that will endlessly
renew the day. This day must end, it must end
soon ; and when it is done the work will still re
main unfinished. The day is brief for the youth
ful lover because of his joy in his beloved ;

LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 133
the day is brief for the veteran lover because so
much remains to be done for his beloved. Both
lovers meet in the sense of the brevity, the
nothingness of time ; but they meet in different
moods. Jacob with Rachel to love laughs at
time ; Jacob blessing his sons at the end of life,
with part of his human treasure on earth and
part in the unseen, looks upon time with serious
eyes. The victory of love over time is easy until
time brings up his dark ally, death. For the
conflict of love and time issues in the conflict of
love and death. And it is here that the veteran
lover is strong. He has gone to the source of
his own love ; he has ascended to the spring of
all the love that has blessed his days. His trea
sure has driven him to God for protection.
He has risen into the presence of the Eternal
love, and into his almighty hands he has com
mitted the burden of his heart, and the burden
of all hearts. " Love is and was my lord and king,
And in his presence I attend
To hear the tidings of my friend,
Which every hour his couriers bring.
" Love is and was my king and lord,
And will be, tho' as yet I keep
Within his court on earth, and sleep
Encompass'd by his faithful guard,

134 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
" And hear at times a sentinel
Who moves about from place to place,
And whispers to the worlds of space,
In the deep night, that all is well."
Flight means for the bird three things : plum
age purified, wings invigorated, the goal won.
The flight of time means for the soul that keeps
alive within itself adoration of the Highest three
things : humanity sanctified, faith strengthened,
vision surer of the coming of the kingdom of God.
Time brings the philosophic mind, leads the intel
ligence to the ultimate origin of the forces that
work through life. Time carries the love of man
up to the love of God as source, inspiration, and
endless assurance. Time enables the faithful soul
to trace the beauty of the world up to the Eternal
beauty, to follow the streams of human worth
up to the Eternal worth, and at the close of the
day, with the toil unfinished and the great con
summation unattained, to trust in perfect peace
our whole human world — the bright and dear
world of youth become the vast and sacred
world of age — to the Infinite lover of men.

VII
THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM
"As for me, the Lord hath led me in the way to the house of my mas
ter's brethren." Genesis xxiv, 27.
We have heard in our time a great many things
said against human nature. Indeed, there is an
immemorial tradition against its trustworthiness.
Our humanity has descended to us wrapt in a
cloud of scandal leagues in depth, which only
the wind of regeneration can disperse. We have
come to entertain serious suspicions of our hon
esty and of the honesty of our fellow men. Per
haps this mood is not altogether without rea
son.* Our behavior and the behavior of others
have not always been true. On this ground of
justifiable disappointment with ourselves and our
friends we have come to think meanly of human
nature. The errors, the follies, the vices, the
crimes, and the sins of men are laid at the door
of human nature. That is the fountain of all
our woe. Corrupted in Adam, or in our pre
human ancestors, or in the polluted stream
of vast and regular inheritance, we have come
to think there is no health in us. Nothing good
is to be expected for mankind until this cor-

136 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
rupted humanity is renewed, re-created, glorified
in God.
It requires some courage to question the truth
of this tradition in the face of all the weaknesses,
vices, crimes, and inhumanities that seem to sup
port it. These terrible things are here ; but they
should be counted, not against human nature, but
against the abuse and outrage of it. Before go
ing to Switzerland I had heard about the beauty
of the Rhine. When I first saw it, I was greatly
disappointed. I saw it again and yet again, and
its character suffered still more in my esteem.
Its waters were not simply turbid ; they were
the color of mud. They looked as if they carried
dissolved in their tide the uncleanness of the
whole region through which they flowed. I saw
the river once again, and this time I was fortunate.
There it swept onward, green as an emerald, swift,
full, living, beautiful, worthy of the awful heights
from which it issued, worthy of the spirit of
romance that dwells on its banks, its sleepless
current matching well the Watch on the Rhine,
worthy of the sea toward which it went on its
way singing. Unfortunate experiences have led
men to think poorly of human nature. One-sided
views have led men to elaborate the scheme of
the innate depravity of the race. The stream of
our humanity discolored in the freshet of selfish
ness has stood for the whole character of the

THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM 137
stream. In this way it has come to be an accepted
truth that the unrenewed man is at heart a villain.
He may be unconvicted ; he may be unconvict-
able ; all the same the vicious nature is there.
Against all this it must be said that human
nature is the greatest thing we know. When we
condemn ourselves, when we judge adversely our
fellow men, we do so in the light of the ideal that
shines in our own nature. When we complain
of the mysterious order of the world, when we
arraign the dumb indifference of the cosmos to
human need, when we confess to a great moral
disappointment as we survey the law of life and
death under which we exist, we are searching
in the universe for something as good and high
as the soul of man. When we look for God, we
look for the face that answers to our face and
that is infinite, for the nature that corresponds
to our nature and that is eternal. When we look
for God, we look for something, for some one, wor
thy of the complete love and the perfect trust
of our humanity. We condemn ourselves and
others, we arraign the cosmos, we seek God, be
cause our nature is great and high ; our nature
is great and high because God is evermore in
it. This is what regeneration means ; it is the
renunciation of the godless life as false to our
humanity; it is the affirmation of the life in
God as the truth of our existence as men.

138 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
When I think of the civilization that has come
out of the mind and character of man, I cannot
but confess the majesty of human nature. The
race started with nothing, and with a heavy
inheritance from the animal. Out of this brute-
encumbered humanity came ideals for the gov
ernment of the personal, domestic, social, indus
trial, and political life of men. The ideals have
grown into more and better ; and in their strength
the race has risen out of the depths up on to the
heights. Science, art, philosophy, and religion
have arisen out of human nature to serve human
existence. Great, surely, is the nature out of
which these worlds of high and wondrous and
serviceable thoughts have come. We owe to
human nature all that we possess. Man is made
by the entrance of God into the animal; the
history of man is the record of immeasurable
achievement, of immeasurable sacrifice, of im
measurable hope, and of dauntless courage in the
face of immeasurable difficulties. Christianity is
the sovereign possession of the race ; and it is
the product of the humanity of Jesus Christ.
When we read our nature and the nature of
our fellow men in the presence of the humanity
of Jesus, we cease to accuse the Maker of it, we
no longer blaspheme God's order in the soul and
his perpetual presence in it, we behold in awe
and in penitence the Holy Ghost moving in the

THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM 139
living stream of our being. For God and man
are not two but one; when we separate our
selves from Him, we do not follow our nature,
we depart from it, and we sin against it. It is,
therefore, a fresh introduction to human nature
as it stands in the vision of God to look upon its
pure representatives, to behold it mirrored in the
clear morning traditions of a great race. I am
persuaded that Christianity is to become the
religion of man, because it is the sovereign ex
pression of the humanity in which God lives.
It is a study in human nature to which we are
introduced by the words of the text. The words
are the words of the servant of Abraham. They
present a piece of humanity worthy of serious con
sideration, and illustrative of the richness and
truth of which human nature is everywhere capa
ble. This servant of Abraham is an expounder
of the nature that we wear, an example of the
religious use of existence, an inspiration to all
high, disinterested, and peaceful bearing toward
the Infinite and toward men.
The twenty-fourth chapter of the Book of Gen
esis is one of the loveliest stories ever written by
the hand of man. Those of you who are familiar
with it will wish to read it again. Those of you
who have never read it have in store a delightful
experience. The chapter is complete in itself.
Every word in it is as pure as a dewdrop, and

140 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
the whole story shines with the peace and lofty
light of a star. Every lover of youth must feel
the beauty of it, the delicacy of it, its exquisite
and rare touch. Every one who reveres noble
parenthood must feel its pathos and dignity.
Let us recall the outline of the story. Abra
ham is an old man, and his end is near. He has
one bright, prophetic son. His lovely mother has
been laid to rest. In this bright image of that
vanished soul all the old man's love and hope are
centred. The son is of age, and the time has
come for him to found a home of his own. The
venerable father, infirm and with the feeling of
death creeping over him, aware that he cannot
much longer guide the career of his prophetic son,
calls his faithful servant, and asks him to put his
hand under his master's thigh and swear that he
will not take a wife for his son from the daughters
of Canaan. They are sensuous, and wholly so.
They are base-minded. They are without great
ideals. They five from hand to mouth, immersed
in sense and time, with no vision of the future,
with no clear consciousness of the sacred office
of their humanity, with no controlling and trans
figuring religious passion and hope. Go to the
home of my kindred far away in Mesopotamia.
There my brother has a child pure and exalted
as my son. Ask that fair cousin to come and join
her destiny with that of my boy. Then comes the

THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM 141
touch of humor in the heart of the deepest and
tenderest seriousness, the humor that shows how
little human nature in its essential features has
changed in the course of the ages. The old ser
vant is willing to swear, and he is willing to go
on the rather uncertain errand, but he mildly sug
gests : Perhaps the young woman will not come !
The father sees at once the point of this sugges
tion, and he replies : Well, if she does not come,
you will be clear of your oath. But God will
send his angel and dispose her to come. This is
one of those high friendships that are made in
heaven, that are created in human hearts by the
breath of God. Go and see.
I cannot pursue the story further. It all turned
out with complete success, and with exquisite
beauty, and according to the religious vision and
faith of the father. There was the long jour
ney ; the unslackening perseverance ; the time
at which the company arrived at its destination,
the time at which the young women came out
to water the flocks ; the beautiful picture of
Rebecca at the well, her sweet courtesy, the depth
and grace of Eastern hospitality, the grave dig
nity and high manner of the servant. There was
the quiet joy of that home to which the message
was delivered, the turning over of the question
for Rebecca to answer, the appeal of the parents
for delay, the insistence of the victorious servant

142 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
upon dispatch, and the long, prosperous, happy
journey back. But I must send you to the story
as told by the inspired writer. It is one of the
fairest poetic pictures of domestic life, touched
and transfigured by love, lifted and glorified by
religion, that is to be found in the records of
mankind. We return to the servant. In him we find
seriousness and humor, prompt and intelligent
obedience, the mind to entertain a clear purpose
and the will to carry it into complete realization,
the fine sense of subordination and the high
feeling of self-respect, the power of command,
the gift of gracious speech, the character to in
spire confidence, the force that cannot be di
verted from its goal, the honor that stands guard
over the fair young woman committed to his
care, and the absolute disinterestedness of a soul
that has but two fundamental desires, one the
desire to serve, the other the desire to serve well.
This delightful person describes in a strange
way the conditions of his success. He says that
he went, and he says that he was led. " As for
me, the Lord hath led me in the way to the house
of my master's brethren." These two ideas did
not seem to him to be incompatible. Indeed, they
seemed essential to the great and happy expe
rience through which he had passed. On the
one side, everything seemed to come by Divine

THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM 143
guidance and help; on the other, human wis
dom, effort, and fidelity were assumed as indis
pensable. The two forces that brought success
were the strenuous, self-dedicated soul, and the
sense of God's help in this faithful soul. Look
for a moment at this commanding combination.
Here is a man who sets his heart upon suc
cess in business. That shining goal of business
success stands out before him bright and allur
ing. How can it be gained? In the first place,
he must join his race doing business in the world.
No man can make business successful all by
himself. Isolation from the trade of the world
means failure. A man must be where he can
buy from others and sell to others, where he
can work with others. He must stand in the
great centres of trade, he must be joined to
his kind, if he would succeed. And more than
that, he must in fellowship with his kind do
his best. Here is a piece of work to be done.
He must do it with all his might. He is
working for a certain firm ; he must think and
feel and work as if that firm were his • own.
There is a man in the path of success. Then
comes the flood, then come the opportunities, the
appreciations, the rewards, the sense that he is
essential to the business that he is serving, and
the man is carried on toward success. Shake
speare says : —

144 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
" There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune."
That is true only upon condition that the busi
ness man is first of all in union with the business
world, and that, in the very best meaning of the
phrase, he is there for all that he is worth.
Look at this essential combination in educa
tion. A man sets before him as the aim of his
spirit an educated mind. That goal shines in the
distance and commands his desire and excites
his hope. But he can never become an educated
man in separation from his kind. A mere star-
gazer, a moonstruck person, one wandering
alone in fields studying flowers, looking upon
brooks and streams, lifting his eyes abroad upon
the vacant earth and up toward the vacant sky,
dwelling aloof from mankind, cannot compass
a cultivated mind. The path to education is
first of all through fellowship with one's kind.
Think what a child learns from its child contem
poraries. Think what a precious and indispen
sable part of its education comes through play,
through dreams, through high fictions, through
the make-believe social world, through the amaz
ing conversations and communions of child with
child all over the broad earth. When the child
becomes youth, its contemporaries again are
its educators. Youth plays upon youth through
imagination, sympathy, and all subtle instincts ;

THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM 145
and again there is a fresh development of intel
lectual power. When teachers are sought, what
does that mean ? It means that the single human
being is putting himself in league with the older
generation, with the wiser, larger, better mind
there. When it is a call for books, the same prin
ciple holds. What are books ? The most fiving
things in the world. As Milton said, they are
the precious life-blood of the master spirits of
mankind. When you read the pages of a great
book you are in communion with a great mind.
Thus we see that education at every point implies
fellowship with the minds of other men in a rising
order of wisdom and power. And the person who
is in communion with the mind of the world
must again do his best. It is not enough for the
child to be among children, for youth to be with
youth, for the younger generation to be in the
presence of the great and wise of the older gen
eration, or to have near them the highest books
of the world. There must be individual alert
ness, receptivity, docility, eagerness, passion,
persistence, the throwing open of the whole
mind to the high object in devouring desire.
What is the chief value, from an educational
view, of that wonderful book " Up from Slav
ery " ? It is an entertaining, it is a marvelously
human book. What is its philosophical value ?
It is this. It shows the desperate effort of

146 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
an eager soul to get out of the impotence of
its own isolation, the desperate endeavor of
a poor, starved life to get into fellowship with
the great, resourceful and powerful race of man.
When Booker T. Washington got to Hampton,
he knew that he had reached the point where
he could touch the soul of the world, where he
could feel the soul of the world passing into
him. His education was assured the moment
that his weary feet crossed the threshold of that
benign institution.
We are now ready for the application of our
principle to the life of the spirit. How can one
acquire a noble character ? How can one secure
the exaltation and refinement of one's human
ity? How can one realize within the soul the
best that God has made possible for the soul ?
That is the great question before us. And this
much is clear, that it cannot be done in isolation
from the best life of our time, from the highest
endeavor of the world, from the Holy Spirit in
human history.
1. In this servant of Abraham there was
first of all the aim, the errand. This old servant
undertook a long journey, a journey from the
Mediterranean sea-coast to Mesopotamia. But
the goal was before him from the first. He
knew what he wanted, and his life was commanded
by the thing that he wanted. His was not an

THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM 147
aimless, errandless life. It had a path as definite
as the channel of the river, a goal as sure as the
sea toward which the river moves. That aim,
that errand, was the beginning of the servant's
significant humanity.
As I watch the fives of men, older and
younger alike, the gravest defect I find at this
point. On the serious side of existence men
are largely without aim. What becomes of the
stream that cannot find a channel, that has for
gotten its fountain, that has lost its vision of the
sea whither it is bound ? It becomes a swamp,
a breeder of disease, a disseminator of death.
And the man who has no sense of having come
from God, no sense of an errand in life, no
sense of a quest for what is worthy and endur
ing; the man who is aimless and errandless
as a moral being, is a human swamp, a gener
ator of the plague that curses mankind. The
day cannot begin until the sun is risen ; man
hood cannot begin until the will is up in a great
resolve, until the soul is pursuing a great end.
2. We must note the beauty of the end
toward which that old servant journeyed. He
traveled that he might bring that lovely cousin
from between the two rivers to the shores of the
Mediterranean. The Greeks had an alluring
conception of the Muses. They were nine in
number, supernatural in grace, all beauty, all

148 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
purity, all joy. What did these immortal women
represent? Beautiful ideals, beautiful ends, to
be striven after, to be served, and in some
measure secured. When Herodotus wrote his
wonderful history, he wrote it in nine books
to correspond to the nine Muses. Every book
had hovering over it one of these exquisite
superhuman figures, an ideal commanding the
historian at his task. His whole work rose up
in love and sincerity as an offering to the ideal.
And if the father of history could see an ideal
through a work of art, may we not see in that
fair life between the two great rivers the beauty
of heart, the grace of spirit, the dignity of
nature, the glowing, prophetic humanity which
God made us to behold, to pursue, and finally to
possess? Beautiful is the errand of the soul,
fair and high is the end of man. Ye shall be
perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Be
ye imitators of God as dear children. Look up
into the heights of your humanity, and you will
see splendors that put to shame the starry sky.
3. There was the romance of the servant's
errand. We must think of him traveling those
seven hundred miles singing every morning and
every evening. He was on an errand of love ;
fountains were playing in his heart, and birds
were singing beside them.
There have been many souls in history who

THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM 149
have sought the Lord in this way. And I regret
to add that there have been multitudes of those
for whom the search for godliness, the quest for
a sacred existence, for the beauty of the Lord our
God, has been a dismal enterprise. Such carica
tures of the highest human mood we have seen
and we have deplored. There is no darker or
sadder shadow cast upon the loveliness of man's
supreme privilege than that which is cast by
these deplorable persons. Think not of them, but
of their opposites. Think of the souls that have
found the sovereign romance of existence in seek
ing and in serving God. Think of Paul traveling
over the whole civilized world of his time, with
the light of eagerness in his eyes, with the sense
of a sublime romance in his heart, seeking every
where the Eternal grace, the Infinite love. What
ever may happen to the outward life, however
we may fail or succeed there, let us keep our
hearts forever young, forever singing on our way
to God, traveling in the dawn, under the heat
of noon, and in the dusk of evening on a high
behest, with the gladness of a great and gracious
enterprise in our souls, and with the sense of a
vast and sacred romance upholding our lives.
I must pause here to remind you that the goal,
the lovely goal, the divinely romantic goal, can be
found only along the royal road. We cannot find
it in the saloon, in the gambling den, in the paths

150 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
of shame. The beautiful Mesopotamian maiden
lives not there. The ideal for which she stands
to us does not shine over those dark waters, over
those hideous wastes ; nor over the low book, the
vile companion, nor over the ways devious and
ugly that tempt youth to depart from honor.
The church stands for all those forces of wis
dom, sentiment, prayer, and mystic response
from. the Highest that take the seeker after God
into the fellowship of man at his best, that pour
upon him the power of an availing humanity. Let
the seeker after the highest for himself and his
kind journey not alone ; let him fare forward in
the great chorus of a singing humanity, in the
great concert of the prophetic minds of history,
in the mighty fellowship of the kings and priests,
the heroes and saints, of mankind. In that vast
and inspired communion the individual resolve
will become like the inevitable will of God.
As we part from this noble servant of a great
man, we see again the clean and high and peace
ful heart in which true service forever issues.
The man who took the oath of service and kept
it, whose errand was unselfish from the beginning
to the end, when he returned in the triumph of
an accomplished mission, handed over to his
master's son the vision of beauty that rode by
his side those seven hundred immortal miles, and
went his way in silence, but with the sense of

THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM 151
honor in his heart, and the deep and dear con
tent which they gain who serve God well, and
who are true in the great and small things alike
to their solemn obligation to man.
We go our several ways through time. Again
and again we part from high friends. We seem
to be left alone at last. But when we serve with
truth, run our errand with honor, bring some
work of beauty to its fair consummation, and
pass into silence, and out of sight of men, we are
not forsaken. Our nature is alive with the great,
singing, prophetic voices of our service. The
dignity of farewell is the note of the humanity
that God has made seff-sufficing. The disin
terested soul is the supreme possession ; the
benignity of history, the beauty of the Lord
our God, the grace of Jesus Christ, goes with it.
The last and highest beatitude in this world
of the faithful seeker after God and servant of
man is an honorable soul, a great, rich, singing
human heart, the power to go one's way in dear
memory, in devout hope, in deep and divine
content.

VIII
THE UNTROUBLED HEART
Let not your heart be troubled : believe in God, believe also in me.
John xiv, 1.
Man's great and proper human interests are
his treasure and his burden. They are his joy
and they are his sorrow. You see a hen and
her brood. There you have man and his essential
and dear human interests. The brood are the
delight of the mother bird ; they are also her
dismay. Their safety is her peace ; their peril is
her trouble. And her poor heart is seldom free
from dread, for out there in the field the hawk
may at any moment appear. The brood are so
heedless, and her sheltering wings are so insuffi
cient. Who does not see in this image a picture
of his own life? Certain things, certain causes,
above all, certain persons, are inexpressibly dear
to him. They are the living extensions of his own
being. They are bone of his bone and flesh of his
flesh. They are to him fairer and dearer than
his own life. He goes abroad with them in the
fields of time. They are his delight and they
are his distress. They are his delight because they

THE UNTROUBLED HEART 153
make existence rich and great. They are his
distress because they are insecure.
Here we touch the deepest source of human
anxiety. Love's alarm is the profoundest fear.
It is the recurrent note in all loving hearts in
all the relations of life. Parents tremble over
the children of whom they are fond, and when
children are worthy, they look toward then-
parents with a presentiment of trouble. It is so
with noble friend and noble friend everywhere.
So it was with the disciples. They loved their
great Master with a desperate attachment, and
now he was about to leave them. Oh, the possible
pain of a loving heart ! How awful it is ! How
can we allow ourselves to love uncertain lives
when love's loss brings such inexpressible pain?
There is a figure that recurs several times in the
Old Testament that impresses one deeply, —
a bear robbed of her whelps. Poor beast ! who
does not pity her ? Who does not see working
through her fury the elemental passion of love ?
If that brute heart could speak, what a wail it
would send forth ! The desperate distress is all
unutterable. Turn from the poor animal to man.
Watch the face of King David as he receives
the announcement of the fate of Absalom. " And
the king was much moved, and went up to the
chamber over the gate, and wept : and as he
went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son,

154 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
my son Absalom ! would God I had died for
thee, O Absalom, my son, my son ! " What is
one to do with this fearful capacity, this heart
that loves, that loses, that suffers ?
It must be said that this is no new question.
It is the question of our humanity. The most
urgent of all practical questions for a loving
humanity is this : How can we reach the beati
tude of the untroubled heart? That question is
old, it is as old as man, and I must now mention
several great historic answers to it.
1. There is the answer of despair, — curse God
and die. That is one of the oldest answers, and
one of the most recent. It is the answer of the
suicide. From how many defeated lives this
answer has gone forth, no tongue can tell. It
is indeed appalling to reflect how many hearts
find existence unbearable. "End it when you
will " is for many the only hope. Such despair is
indeed seldom the product of pure sorrow. Sin
has brought ruin to character. Life has become
a waste wherein wander the tormenting presences
born of an evil conscience. Jesus was in the wil
derness tempted of the devil. He could bear it
because he was unf alien and true. These terrible
fives are themselves the wilderness, and their
misdeeds are their sole and intolerable compan
ions. Oftener than we think, this is the history
of the fife that ends itself in despair. There are

THE UNTROUBLED HEART 155
also many cases where disease is the cause. There
are not a few overwhelmed with disaster. Still,
there is no reason why we should refuse to look
at the answer, whether it comes out of the heart
of disease, or sudden over-mastering misfortune,
or pure, irreconcilable sorrow. Despair is despair.
Its answer is the same : —
" O length of the intolerable hours !
O nights that are as reous of slow pain t
O Time, too ample for our vital powers,
O Life whose woeful vanities remain
Immutable for all of all our legions
Thro' all the centuries and in all the regions,
Not of your speed and variance do we complain.
We do not ask a longer term of strife,
Weakness and weariness and nameless woes;
We do not claim renewed and endless life
When this which is our torment here shall close,
And everlasting conscious inanition!
We yearn for speedy death in full fruition,
Dateless oblivion and divine repose."
Out of books written in the dim dawn of his
tory, out of books written yesterday, and, more
impressive still, out of thousands of human
hearts suffering and dying at our side, comes
this tremendous, ageless answer of despair.
2. The Stoic answer next demands our atten
tion. The path to peace is through apathy. Let
all strong desire, all affection, pass out of your
nature, as the moisture of the earth evaporates
under the burning power of the sun. Under the

156 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
heat of the sun the earth becomes fruitless, care
less dust. Thus under the influence of reason let
all affection, all kindness, all fondness, all pas
sionate attachment and devotion steam up out of
your being until it shall become as dead and un
responsive as the desert. The desert can produce
nothing ; the apathetic heart can love nothing.
No harvest ever disturbs the peace of the desert ;
no bereavement ever distresses the loveless heart.
Where nothing is loved, nothing can be lost.
The Stoics at their best were a great race.
They were full of composure and high disdain.
They accepted the humanities, but failed to under
stand them. They accepted them, and then tried
to transcend them. They sought peace through
reduction of desire. The sweet society in which
the individual human being is set — the solitary
in families — gave place to stern individualism.
Epictetus seeks for personal freedom. Marcus
Aurelius seeks for the government of his spirit ;
but in this noble quest affection dies a slow death.
The Stoics came to believe that their hearts un
manned them, that tenderness undermined their
strength^ that all sweet affections were in the
way, that they must shed them as impedimenta.
They sought strength, therefore, by the path of
lovelessness. They sought peace by parting with
their humanity. This is the great mistake of the
Stoics. It is the mistake that many men are

THE UNTROUBLED HEART 157
making to-day. We all have seen young men and
women going out into life with the most precious
of all possessions, a sympathetic, sensitive, pro
foundly feeling human heart. We have seen them
eagerly and persistently devising ways and means
for getting rid of their tenderness, for hardening
the sensibilities, for casting out that painful but
divine capacity for attachment. How shall we
attain the untroubled heart ? The Stoic answers,-
Through apathy ; love less and less till sensibility
shall pass away.
3. The next answer that merits attention is
the Epicurean answer. It is indeed strange that
the Greek word used by our Master in the text
is a favorite word with Epicurus and his dis
ciples. He uses the noun arapagia, which means
repose, untroubled repose, the repose of the
untroubled heart. This beatitude Epicurus was
seeking in that old world, just as we are seek
ing it in this new world. According to what plan
did Epicurus seek it ? The way out of pain, he
contended, is by the path of pleasure. He meant
by pleasure not sympathetic, social pleasure, but
individual, egoistic pleasure, refined or coarse,
of the mind or of the body, as the case might
be. Personally, Epicurus preferred the refined
and intellectual pleasure. The way out of pain
is by seeking, each individual for himself, the
pleasure that gives him repose.

158 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
Does not that sound very much like a chap
ter from the social life of our time ? Epicurus is
still with us, and he is far more popular than the
Stoic. For what consolation do afflicted people
seek, if they are not noble, if they are not com
manded by the heavenly vision ? They drown
grief in pleasure. They seek escape from them
selves, from their losses, from their distresses.
They drink, they gamble, they plunge into the
vortex of a dissolute social life, they spend their
hours of leisure in excess or in devising new
excesses. They destroy their humanity. For the
surest and shortest way to an empty and inhu
man heart is the path of individual self-seeking.
This immolation of humanity, and especially
of youthful humanity, so occupies the vision
of serious lovers of their kind that the motive
behind it is less clearly seen. The immolation
is indeed appalling. The ruthless destruction
of the native outfit in fineness of feeling, in
capacity for fond and enduring attachment, in
golden enthusiasm, in high and tender hospi
tality of soul, is a calamity. Burns is nowhere
more impressive than when he sings of a certain
deadly misdeed : —
" I waive the quantum o' the sin,
The hazard o' concealing ;
But, och 1 it hardens a' within,
An' petrifies the feeling I "

THE UNTROUBLED HEART 155it
This horror of a petrified humanity we see all
about us. It is the most serious thing that we
have to face, this blight of the race through
pleasure in the successive generations of youth.
For in each successive generation of youth there
is a fresh apocalypse of God. Youth is a fresh,
divine sunrise in humanity, and when all those
fires are quenched, when that light is put out,
God is in a serious sense banished from the
contemporaneous world. We live upon the light
that was, upon the light that shall be, but the
present is overcast and heavy with gloom.
This horror of our generation and of each
new generation should not blind us to the main
motive behind it. This worldis still a troubled
world. Human hearts are here doomed to much
suffering. The longing for relief from pain is
indestructible, and when misguided it drives men
and women into fearful errors. These seekers
after peace take the wrong way. It is their error
that brings destruction.
" What, without asking, hither hurried Whence t
And, without asking, W hither hurried hence !
Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine
Must drown the memory of that insolence !
" Earth could not answer ; nor the Seas that mourn
" In flowing Purple, of their Lord forlorn ;
Nor rolling Heaven, with all his Signs reveal'd
And hidden by the sleeve of Night and Morn.

160 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
" Then to the Lip of this poor earthen Urn
I lean'd, the Secret of my Life to learn :
And Lip to Lip it murmur'd — ' While you live,
Drink ! — for, once dead, you never shall return.' "
Immolate your humanity, and faith becomes
impossible. Men believe in God because of what
they find in man. When personal manhood is
gone, the power to see God in the manhood of
the race is greatly impaired. By and by the man
hood of the race fades into a legend. The reality
that remains is the interior horror of the disso
lute soul. Then comes the quest for relief in
the abyss of vanities.
4. In the fourth place, there is the Buddhist
answer. The universe is against us. Fate is
everywhere against the lover. The universe has
decreed that everywhere and in all things the
fond, human heart shall be defeated, and its hope
forever blasted. The path into peace is the path
of quenched, annihilated desire. Give it all up.
Expect nothing, long for nothing. Fast and
pray. Live in the reverent and compassionate
service of your fellow men. Reduce your being
to a vanishing-point, and expire at last, a desire-
less, spirit, in the eternal unconsciousness.
" Take me, and lull me into perfect sleep ;
Down, down, far-hidden in thy duskiest cave; *
While all the clamorous years above me sweep
Unheard, or, like the voice of seas" that rave

THE UNTROUBLED HEART 161
On far-off coasts, but murmuring o'er my trance,
A dim vast monotone, that shall enhance
The restful rapture of the involate grave."
This mighty religion, the noblest of all faiths
outside our own, has no hope for love. Its best
word to love is, by the path of compassionate
service, to cease to be. This is its best word
and its last. There is no path to peace for those
who love except the path of surrender. Dark
and infinite despair is the thunder-looking sky
that overhangs millions of our fellow men who
love and suffer. The universe has for them no
sympathy, no pity, no regard. The Eternal is not
on their side ; the Eternal is against them. In
such straits, what can the bravest and the deep
est-hearted do but serve and mourn, pity and
pray, " lifting up dumb eyes to the silence of the
skies," and by every high and sweet device to
hasten the great deliverance : —
" Come, lead me with thy terrorless control
Down to our mother's bosom, there to die
By abdication of my separate soul :
So shall this single, self-impelling piece
Of mechanism from lone labor cease,
Resolving into union with the whole."
5. Finally, there is the Christian way into the
untroubled heart. That way is through belief in
God, the Eternal lover of man. " Believe in God,
believe also in me." That is the great imperative.

162 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
Believe that the. universe is on the side of the
man who loves, that the universe is our Father's
house, that his supreme gift is the loving human
heart, that his overwhelming witness in time is
the heart that loves Him and those whom He has
made, that a community of loving hearts is God's
great orchestra, set in the centre of this boundless
and terrible immensity, rolling out the. psalm
that is in his heart. The community of lovers,
the revelation of God, the Eternal lover, — that
is the Christian way into the untroubled heart.
How completely opposite to the Buddhistic faith
is that ! " God is our refuge ! " The Eternal
soul is our " present help in time of trouble ! "
" Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be
removed ! " " The Lord is my shepherd ; I shall
not want. He maketh me to lie down in green
pastures : he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul. Yea, though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no
evil ; for thou art with me : thy rod and thy staff,
they comfort me."
The Eternal God is the source of peace to the
loving heart in the great Hebrew faith, and when
we come to the Christian faith, Paul speaks for
us : " Who shall separate us from the love of
Christ ? " The whole world was dear to the Apos
tle, and he saw this dear world dying every day.
You must enter into his hope and fear, his pos-

THE UNTROUBLED HEART 163
session and his sense of peril, if you would know
the majesty of his words : " Who shall separate
us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation,
or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or naked
ness, or peril, or sword ? Nay, in all these things
we are more than conquerors through him that
loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death,
nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be
able to separate us from the love of God, which
is in Christ Jesus our Lord." The heart of Christ
is the revelation of the heart of God. From the
power of this eternal love we cannot be torn away.
The inseparability of man and the sacred pos
sessions of man's soul from the Eternal lover of
mankind, — there is the way into peace. There
is the peace that passeth understanding.
Look now at Jesus as the incarnation of the
truth of his own words, — " Let not your heart
be troubled." When he uttered these words, he
was on his way to prison, judgment, and death.
He who deserved the best was on his way to
receive the worst. He who had done the world the
supreme service was about to be driven out of
the world through ignominy, contempt, and cruci
fixion. And as he treads this via dolorosa, here
is his song : " Let not your heart be troubled :
believe in God, believe also in me." How great

164 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
that song was, sweeping up against the blackness
of the night ! We dishonor the Lord by our
pity ! " Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for
me, but weep for yourselves, and for your chil
dren ! " Jesus went forth a conqueror. His
spirit is the mightiest that has ever appeared
among men.
What are the notes of the true hero ? Com
posure in awful peril, consideration for those
weaker than he, the maximum of regard for
others, the minimum of concern for himself, con
fidence in his cause, joy in living for it, peace
in dying for it. These are the notes of the true
hero ; these are the notes of Christ as he faces
the end. He had himself an untroubled heart
under the shadow of the cross. That is the first
note of our hero. The second is that he thought
of those who were weaker than he. Was it not
a time for the disciples to be consoling the
Master ? Was it not an hour when they should
have turned to pour balm into his spirit? He
thought of them, and gave them his compassion
ate, his divine regard. He thought of those who
were weaker than he, even when their trial was
infinitely less than his. As he went forth, —
and this is another note of the hero, — there
was in him the maximum of concern for others
and the minimum of concern for himself. And
finally, he went forth confident in his cause,

THE UNTROUBLED HEART 165
securely centred in the austere benignity of
God's will, glad to live for it, and through the
agony and bloody sweat lifted into eternal
triumphant reconciliation to it.
I call attention to the infinite humanity of
Jesus Christ, and to his sublime heroism. Both
his treasure and his strength were born of God,
and in God he found eternal protection and
peace. Our Lord's humanity was infinite in its
tenderness, in its reach, in its burden, and he was
full of peace in this perilous possession because
he was full of God. " Father, into thy hands I
commend my spirit." There is peace for man
nowhere else. You recall Dante's great line : —
" In his will is our peace."
This is the way home. We must not sur
render to despair; we must not seek strength
through contempt of love ; we must not try to
drown pain in forbidden pleasure ; we must not
blaspheme the Soul of the universe, nor imagine
that it is deaf to our prayers and dumb to our
needs. We must keep our human hearts. The
supreme possession is the true human heart. In
its possible depth, range, tenderness, and mystery
past finding out, lies the image of the heart that
beats eternally at the centre of the universe.
Nothing but life can generate life ; nothing but
love can create love. And whoever loves, even

166 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
if he fares forward, often in wild and solitary
places and far from home, may know that God
is with him ; for since God is love, his love is
God. " Keep thy heart with all diligence ; for out
of it are the issues of life." Keep it, increase it,
carry it up to the heights, down to the depths,
and abroad as wide as morning from evening;
and if it seems that you cannot live in such a
world as this with such a capacity for fondness,
go with the prophets to the secret place of the
Most High, hide with them under the shadow of
the Almighty; walk with your Master on his
way to the cross, and listen to his triumphant
song : " Let not your heart be troubled : believe
in God, believe also in me."

IX
BELIEF AND FEAR
" The devils also believe and tremble." James ii, 19.
This fact I have always regarded as highly
creditable to the devils. They had sense enough
to believe, and they had conscience enough to
fear. Our devils are in a worse plight. They
neither believe nor tremble. This is vastly to
their intellectual and moral discredit. It shows
them to be much lower down in the scale of
existence than the beings to whom reference is
made in the text ; it shows them to be nearly
without sense and almost without conscience.
My purpose is to read a lesson from the
demons of St. James. Ministers are sometimes
accused of preaching over the heads of their
congregations, of selecting ideal persons, and of
deducing the laws of life for ordinary mortals
from the veritable saints and heroes of mankind.
There can be no such complaint against the sub
ject for to-day. The beings about whom I am
to reason are, to put it mildly, hardly up to our
level. Few of us would care to be addressed in
the vivid language of the text. We are ready
to grant that we live far beneath our privilege as

168 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
men, but hardly low enough to be classed with
demons. Yet from these strange beings we may
learn something. I am to speak of the intellect
ual and moral dignity implied in reasonable
belief and fear.
What is the object of belief, the great, abid
ing, purified object of religious belief ? It is the
world's best thought as wrought out by all the
generations of religious genius. It is the solemn
discovery and announcement of the highest and
sanest minds of the race. There is the existence
of one Supreme Being, in whom all men live, in
whom all worlds consist. There is the conscious
ness of his goodness, the sense of his tender mer
cies, the assurance that He is the Eternal lover
of man. There is the moral order of the world.
Here it is forever true that God is not mocked.
Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
He that soweth to his flesh shall reap corruption ;
he that soweth to the Spirit shall reap life eternal.
The character of the harvest depends upon the
nature of the seed sown. The men who sow to
the wind reap the whirlwind. Cause and effect
constitute for the unjust a wheel of fire, and for
the just a shining stairway to freedom and joy.
No man can do evil and not suffer, no man can
do good and not receive recompense ; the invio
lability of the moral order is absolute. There
is in man the sense of obligation. He is under

BELIEF AND FEAR 169
bonds to do what is right, and he is answerable
to the Highest for his deeds. That sense of ob
ligation may be abused, but it cannot be bribed ;
it may be ignored, but it cannot be overawed ;
it may be for a time suppressed, but it cannot
be expelled. There is the permanence of the
human spirit, its involution with the life of
God. And there are the person, teaching, career,
and achievement of Jesus Christ as the sover
eign expression of the religious belief of man
kind. In the presence of this august order of thought,
vaster and more solemn than the starry heavens,
we live. As we look up into its measureless
heights, consider its shining and unfathomable
fullness, think of it as the glorious firmament
raised over our humanity by the sublimest spirits
of our race, and by them in the creative strength
of insight and love, and in an agony of earnest
ness and noble sorrow ; as we survey this sur
passing achievement of man at his highest, what
shall be our attitude toward it ? Shall we deny
and disregard, or shall we believe and fear ?
I. What does belief in it imply as to the
mind of the believer ? It implies many things,
only a few of which I can name. It implies sen
sibility in the presence of this high human world,
susceptibility to its vastness and beauty. In
a way, belief implies the power to take it in.

170 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
There is doubtless much superficial belief. Few
indeed reflect in a rational way the great beliefs
of the gospel. Yet these beliefs are in the feel
ings, in the instincts, in the sympathies, of every
genuine believer ; they are in his heart, and he
knows that they are there, even as the sailor
knows that the full moon and the great stars
have their image in the sea through which the
ship that absorbs his attention sails. Thus God
has set eternity in the heart of sincere and
believing men.
Unbelief is much more likely to be shallow.
It does not start from the great premise that
something must be true. It does not heed the
fact that on the whole the race is a believing race.
It does not pause over the weakness of the indi
vidual thinker in comparison with the strength
of the whole body of creative historic thinkers.
Unbelief does not dream that it is as impossi
ble for the individual mind to replace the best
thought of the race upon the fundamental things
of faith as it would be for the individual person
to wipe out of existence all government, all laws,
all social customs, all business methods, all dis
coveries, all adaptations of science to the task
of living, and in absolute independence of
their influence, to put in their room something
worthier. We inherit our human world. We
inherit business, science, art, literature, social cus-

BELIEF AND FEAR 111
tonis ; we inherit our language, our country, our
religion. We inherit to use and to improve ; but
our first duty is to measure, if we can, the great
ness of our inheritance. The human world that
we have inherited is infinitely rich. The unbe
liever does not take it in. He rarely gives the
things of faith a chance to speak for themselves.
His denial is apt to be extempore ; his unbelief,
even at its best, is unsympathetic, and it is
always in danger of shallowness.
The profound believer reverses this process.
He sees the magnitude and impressiveness of the
religious interpretation of existence. He opens
his intelligence to its appeal. He allows it to
speak for itself ; he allows it to reflect itself in
imagination as the great lake reflects calmly
and patiently the shining order of the midnight
sky. He knows that he is doing intellectual jus
tice to Christian faith. He knows that he has
the power to take it in. He knows that its
magnitude and splendor give range and lustre
to his intelligence. So much he can say in favor
of his belief.
The radical believer takes another step. He
accustoms himself to imagine what the race would
be without faith. He denudes the race of its
faith in God, its belief in a moral order, its sense
of obligation, its hope of endless life, its vision
of Christ and his kingdom of love. He pictures

172 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
to himself what the racial intellect would be, if
all high faith were extinguished ; what the racial
heart would be, if all the sweet affections, all the
generous sympathies, all the ennobling hopes, all
the hallowed worlds of feeling inspired by Chris
tianity, should be consumed ; what the racial will
would be, if all the great incentives to righteous
ness originating in the Christian view of existence
should be abolished ; what the racial instincts
would become, if there could be no impact
upon them through the consciousness of God, of
the Holy Spirit. Thus the awful picture rises
before the serious believer of a humanity denuded
of its religious faith, bereaved of its ideals, shorn
of its sovereign spiritual possession, robbed of its
proper humanity, and smitten with everlasting
sterility and sorrow. It is the vision of the liv
ing, beautiful, fruitful earth turned into a desert.
The wilderness and the solitary place are every
where. Death has taken the place of life, and
the cheerful and hopeful world of men has sunk
into the kingdom of the brute. Denude the earth
of its forests, and you end its prevailing appeal
to the clouds for the early and the latter rain,
for seedtime and harvest, for the storms and
tempests that keep it fruitful and beautiful ; de
nude the race of its highest expression, its fairest
growth, its religious faith, and you deny to it the
dews of heaven, you isolate it from the gracious

BELIEF AND FEAR 1?3
touch of the Infinite, you smite it with sorrow
and despair.
The thoughtful believer takes still another
step. When he has called in question the funda
mental things of faith, turned religious vision
into a dream, reduced the great insights of Chris
tianity to an order of pious hallucinations, a sys
tem of beautiful but groundless imaginations, a
benign but baseless fabric of poetic genius in the
teeth and eyes of the inflexible, protesting reality
of the world, he recalls one solemn obligation
of the reasoner. He must not only pull down ;
he must also build up. He must not only deny
the truth of belief ; he must also prove the truth
of his unbelief. Prove that there is no God.
Prove that God is not good. Prove that there
is no moral world, no moral universe. Prove that
man is not under moral obligation to the Eternal.
Prove that there is no permanence to the human
spirit. Prove that the character of life here has
no consequences of weal or woe beyond the grave.
Prove that Jesus Christ and his vision and passion
and influence do not tell the highest truth about
man, and about man's universe. Prove our denial.
That is impossible. If you could prove your denial,
you would be omniscient, you would be God.
Can you prove that this earth is the only world
in infinite space that is the abode of life ? Can
you prove that there is intelligence nowhere in

174 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
the universe except in man ? Can you prove that
love beats only in the human heart? Can you
prove your denial that love has in it the sugges
tion of the Infinite, as there is in day the reference
to the " sweet approach of even or morn " ? These
propositions cannot be proved. They presuppose,
in order to prove them, infinite knowledge. They
may be true, and they may not ; lower than that
mood you cannot reasonably go.
At this point men fall back into the despair of
knowledge, the despair of clear and reasonable
opinion. They give up the problem of existence
as beyond them, as beyond man. They take
refuge in ignorance. They surrender the hope
of a reasonable view of human life to absolute,
unmitigable mystery. The race becomes an infant
crying in the night, with no language but a cry.
They cannot trust the full meaning of this com
parison. They cannot see in man the power of the
infant, the awakening, moving force of that cry ;
they cannot discern in the infant with no lan
guage but a cry, round whom the whole house
hold is ordered in tender and anxious ministry,
the suggestion that around the soul and its need,
and in its pathetic, inarticulate appeals, there
gathers a divine universe, and a love that can
save even when it is not understood. This strange
mood cannot last. It is an exaggeration of the
frailty of man. We are not so badly off as an

BELIEF AND FEAR 175
infant crying in the night. It is a mood wanting
in courage, and man is a being essentially cour
ageous. When his hour comes, man can take his
fate with composure and hope. He is born to
contend, and not to surrender, to overcome, and
not to suffer defeat. And a race conscious of
the gift of insight, sensible of the growth of
knowledge, aware of the marvelous rapidity with
which at favorable moments nature yields up
her eonian secrets, will not surrender because
the puzzle is great, because the battle is severe.
Agnosticism is doomed for these two reasons.
First, it is an exaggeration of man's impotence.
Second, it leaves no room for the full display of
man's courage and hope. Man has in his long
wrestle thrown a thousand giants supposed to be
invincible. He will never own defeat. He will
quail before no contest. He will wrestle the
secret from the Infinite, as Jacob did, and in the
morning light go forth, the possessor of an Eter
nal blessing.
To this, then, the intellectual problem of be
lief comes. Shall I march or refuse to march
with my kind ? Shall I or shall I not cast in my
part with humanity as interpreted and as carried
up out of the depths on to the heights by the
supreme spirits of the race? What shall be my
attitude toward the loftiest wisdom, the purest
sentiment, the wisest and bravest character in

176 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
human history ? Shall I decline to join this high
fellowship? Shall I make light of the tremen
dous thing that it is for the individual man to go
against the race at its best ? Or shall I say : I
was born a man, I suffer as a man, I love as a
man, I go as a man under the heat and burden
of the day, I shall die as a man. I have been a
participant in the general life of my kind ; let me
become a communicant in the highest experiences
of my race. Let me cast in my lot with man in
everything worthy; let me cast in my lot with
the humanity that entertains the heavenly vision,
that repents, that obtains forgiveness, that lifts
itself up in the moral grandeur of struggle and
hope, that goes in the pathos of a mournful weak
ness, and in the solace of a quenchless faith ?
II. What shall be the moral attitude toward
this purified world of belief ? In the text, on
the part of the demons, it is fear ; and I wish to
show the moral dignity of that attitude. As
belief implies that something is true, so fear
implies that something is precious. If nothing
were dear to man, and if what is dear were in no
danger, there would be no place for fear. Life
is smitten with fear because it is precious, and
because it is under ceaseless menace. When the
mother bends over her sick child, when she sees
that child as a young man going into a strange
city, when she sees his nature putting forth its

BELIEF AND FEAR 177
full power in the presence of a thousand seduc
tions, when she is aware that he is bearing re
sponsibilities heavier than man can endure,
when she sends him into battle for his country,
in each case she fears for him because he is
dear to her, and because his life is in danger.
And so it is throughout the animal kingdom,
throughout the human kingdom, wherever you
find these two things, — something that is pre
cious, and what is precious in peril. Reasonable
fear is the quickened pulse or the fever heat
that sounds the alarm, that calls attention to
grave conditions, to possible loss. Reasonable
fear for others is the beacon light that flashes
its warning to the mariner over the wild sea,
or the fog-buoy that in the darkness moans its
monotonous dirge. Precious is your life, there
fore that wild pulse, that strange fire, must be
heeded ; precious is the life of others, therefore
that solemn light, that mournful cry, must not
be disregarded.
The fact that one is sinking as a moral value,
that one is becoming less of a man, that the
highest qualities in one's character are suffering,
that in one's humanity one is losing strength
and tone, is a legitimate object of fear. What
shall we think of the man who is not afraid to
lose worth, who has no dread of moral descent,
to whom the brutal life that is coming upon him

178 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
by stealth is no horror ? Can you think of any
mood more degraded ? Oh, the men who have no
pity upon themselves, whose precious spiritual
being is departing and who are without fear !
As we look at them, we recall Christ's words :
"Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves,
and for your children." Men sorrow over the
wrong things. They are grieved over material
ftss, over outward reverse and disaster. The
nobler among them weep over the sorrows and
losses of the good, and the tragedies that some
times involve the sublimest lives. These are
not properly objects of sorrow. These men have
within their hearts the eternal consolations.
Christ upon the cross did not weep for himself ;
his soul went out in pity for the poor, brutal
men who were putting him to death : " Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do."
Milton sings for all the brave when, in recount
ing his sorrows, he discovers his conquering
sense of God and declares his singing voice
" Unchanged
To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days,
On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues ;
In darkness, and with dangers compass'd round,
And solitude ; yet not alone while thou
Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when morn
Purples the east."
Fear of sin, fear of the loss of worth, fear of
the loss of the ideal, fear of any surrender to

BELIEF AND FEAR 179
lust or shame, a deep-seated and abiding fear
of the mutilation of one's humanity, of every
thing that hardens the heart, is a reasonable
fear, and the man who is destitute of this fear
is sinking into the kingdom of the brute.
The thought that one's family may lose in
moral vigilance and vigor, that one's children
may fail to live in their finer instincts, that they
may miss the best training in conscience and
in will, is surely something worthy of fear;
the dread lest those for whose existence you are
responsible shall grow up with no share in
the world's best vision of God and man, with
no participation in the world's highest feeling
toward the universe and human life, with no
place in the sublime fellowship of the servants
of righteousness in all generations, with no com
munion with the saints and heroes of the earth,
is surely enough to fill with anxiety the heart of
the reasonable parent. What is the best thing
that you can do for your children ? Enable
them to live in strength when you are gone.
Make them able to meet with serious courage
and hope the inevitable in existence. Accustom
them to draw upon the Eternal for strength,
serenity, and joy. Cultivate within them the
habit of reasonable trust in God. Give your
children faith in the moral meaning of existence,
in the moral purpose of history, in the moral

180 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
character of God, and in the Gospel of Jesus
Christ as the sovereign expression of these
things. When we look at our country, and still more
when we regard our humanity in its relation to
the universe, the same principle holds good. We
are afraid of unrighteousness because we know
that it will entail untold dishonor to the land
that we love, inexpressible suffering to our kind.
Job said : " When I consider, I am afraid." Seri
ous thought over the preciousness to man of a
noble soul, and a high bearing toward the Infinite
in the heart of this seductive world, is surely
troubled with fear. The mother is in perpetual
subdued alarm over the helpless, prophetic in
fant in her arms. It is so precious and so frail,
and a thousand terrors surround its life. When
she considers, she is afraid ; and her fear is the
impulse to a ministry that shields and saves.
When we consider the unimaginable calamities
that may issue from an evil will, from inhuman
feeling, from wanton selfishness of any form ;
when we allow the unmeasured possibilities of
suffering as the consequence of iniquity to
reflect their black and terrible character in the
mind, when we try to calculate the whole awful
issue of a loveless existence, it can only be with
fear. And the depth of our fear will measure
the height of our humanity. The man without

BELIEF AND FEAR 181
reasonable fear comes near being the worst of
men. He cares neither for God nor his kind.
The man who counts existence precious, and
who sees the peril encompassing it, who loves
his kind and who marks its temptations, must
fear to do wrong, must tremble at the issues
of wrong-doing, must pray that his mood and
that of his brothers may be : How can I do this
great wickedness and sin against God?
Thus belief and fear in the presence of the
purified faith of mankind are a sign of intel
lectual power, and a witness of moral elevation.
We dare to hope, even for the rich man who
found himself in Hades and in torment, when
we find him concerned about his brethren still
living in the earth. There is hope for the man,
in torment because of his sin, who still loves
his brethren, and who desires to keep them out
of that torment. The power to picture the stern
truth of the universe, to feel the preciousness and
the peril in the life of his kindred, his solemn
apprehension of the immutable order of God,
and his concern for those whom he has left in
the upper world, lift Dives, in comparison with
brutish men, into moral grandeur. How immea
surably higher in the scale of being this man is
than those who have no beliefs about the moral
order of the world, and who are without moral
fear either for themselves or for their fellow

182 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
men ! How low down is intellectual inhospital-
ity toward the highest moral faith ; how repul
sive is indifference to it! How near to the brute
man descends when he loses the power to reflect
the sovereign spiritual thought of the world, its
purified vision of the meaning of man and his
universe !
It is the brutish mind that is the tragedy of
the world. The inhuman lives are the supreme
sorrow. When they die who with their human
ity have served humanity, we employ Milton's
words, we give "immortal thanks." We cry
with strong delight : —
" Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast ; no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble."
When they live whose humanity has become
inhumanity, whose mood has hardened into
indifference to all faith and all righteousness,
then we must grieve. That is the last and worst
phase of man's career under the sun. The rea
son that is impotent in the presence of the
highest religious thought and the conscience that
is callous in the presence of the sovereign obli
gation of man are the lowest limit that human
nature can reach. So long as men have intellect
enough to reflect the august moral order of exist
ence and conscience enough to fear it, so long as

BELIEF AND FEAR 183
they are not lower down than the demons of St.
James, so long as upon the vision of the world's
supreme insight and character they believe and
tremble, there is ground for hope. Nothing but
insensibility to the highest, insensibility harden
ing into permanence, is ultimately discouraging.
A frozen, an extinct humanity is the really ter
rible abyss. Great wickedness with great sensi
bility of itself, and with great eagerness toward
the highest, is at an immeasurable distance from
the final horror of a dead humanity. "Dost
thou not even fear God, seeing thou art in the
same condemnation ? And we indeed justly ; for
we receive the due reward of our deeds : but this
man hath done nothing amiss. And he said,
Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy
kingdom." Oh, how faith in the Highest expands
and ennobles the intelligence ! Oh, how awe in
the presence of the Highest cleanses the soul,
makes the thief ready, as by the renewing hand
of God, for the great salutation and assurance :
" Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be
with me in Paradise."

THE INHERITANCE OF FAITH
" Blessed be the Lord God of our fathers. "
Ezra vii, 27.
When we first think of it, faith seems to be some
thing with which sentiment and tradition have
absolutely nothing to do. Faith is the personal
vision of God. The vision of other men, of other
generations, would seem to have little to do with
this personal beholding of the Eternal. Can any
dearest friend see or hear, taste or handle, for
one ? If one is blind, what avails it that other
men see ? If one's eyes are wide open upon the
beauty of the world, what need is there for
pondering the things that other eyes have seen ?
Is not the sight of the eyes independent of
history ? And is not the sight of the soul inde
pendent of the past ? If God is our refuge and
strength, a very present help in trouble, need we
consider what He has been to other generations ?
Is not faith born anew in the personal soul ? Is
not God sufficient as He stands in the vision
of the individual mind? Is not the idea of
the inheritance of faith a contradiction, like the
idea of the inherited knowledge of Greek, or

THE INHERITANCE OF FAITH 185
mechanics, or navigation, or war, or any other
subject that men master by personal effort ? Is
not faith a kind of inspiration, and, as in breath
ing, must not every man gain it for himself?
What addition can be made to the reasonableness
and power of belief in God, by confessing Him
as the Lord God of our fathers ?
When the sun comes up in the east and floods
the world with light, and when it goes down in
the west and leaves the world transfigured in its
evening glow, we think mainly, if not exclu
sively, of the sun. We lift our thought to the
light, we give thanks for the light, we praise it,
and we rejoice in it. And all that is well, but
it is not the whole truth or the true attitude
toward the phenomenon. The sun comes through
leagues of soft and sweet and wholesome and
blessed atmosphere, the atmosphere in which
our world rolls and lives, and through the service
of the atmosphere there is daily wrought the
miracle of morning and evening. God is the
sovereign reality of the universe ; the thought
of God is the sovereign thought of mankmd. It
is the master light of all our seeing ; it is the
illumination and consolation of the race. And we
do well, when we think of life's last refuge and
beauty, to lift our thought to the Infinite Father
of men. And yet this is not the whole truth.
God comes to the individual believer through

186 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
the race of believers ; He comes through our
humanity, through its need, its aspiration, its
love, its struggle, its sorrow, its tears, its hope;
through its pathos and its prophecy ; its whole
sphere, its whole history. The heart, not of the
individual man, but of the historic man, is the
great prism in which is unfolded the glory of God.
We stand in a great solidarity of distress.
Because we are men, we inherit defect and disa
bility of many kinds, we inherit ills of various
sorts, we are fated to certain woes, and we are
doomed to death. The words of Paul are for
ever sounding in our ears, "As in Adam all
die ! " All die because all stand in solidarity
with the first man. This half-truth is to-day
crushing the heart out of thousands. Men see
the inheritance of sorrow and nothing else ;
they read the doom of death and nothing more.
The race has power to transmit the reign of
sorrow, it has the power to perpetuate the au
thority of death. " As in Adam all die " is the
half-truth under which men to-day groan. Why
not recognize the other half of the truth ? We
stand in a solidarity of privilege. We inherit
health and vigor. We inherit a world whose
productive power has been heightened under the
cultivation of many generations. In a large
sense we inherit the ways and means of doing
business, the ways and means of living; we in-

THE INHERITANCE OF FAITH 187
herit the deepest wisdom, the purest sentiment,
the highest ideals, of the loftiest souls of all
time. We inherit the capacity for love, the love
of man and the love of God. We inherit our
religion. Before it becomes ours through per
sonal choice and character, we belong to it by
descent. It becomes ours by personal endeavor ;
we are its children by nature. It is in our
blood and bone, our brain and tissue. Our
being is alive with the benign power of a his
toric religion. We are in debt to the race ; it is
an infinite debt. It is, therefore, unjust to say
that we stand only in a solidarity of pain. We
stand in a solidarity of sorrow and of joy, in
the discipline and in the hope, in the struggle
and in the conquest, of existence. The whole
truth is this : " As in Adam all die, so in
Christ shall all be made alive."
There are two great tendencies of our nature
that seem to me very significant and beautiful,
the tendency toward our kindred and the tend
ency toward our kindred's God. These tend
encies are not fatalistic. They do not exclude
self-direction. They are the basis of it.
1. There is the tendency toward our kindred.
It is a movement of heart full of utmost rich
ness, utmost meaning, and with a divine depth
of tenderness in it. It has three epochs. The
child is the example of the first epoch. It lives

188 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
and moves and has its being in its home, in its
mother's love, in its father's strength. How
easily it looks at the world through parental
eyes! How easily it thinks as its father and
mother think, feels as they feel, takes on the
tone of their thought and the color of their char
acter ! How easily it is moulded by them into
the spirit of the home ! And I need not pause
to remark the world of joy and strength that
comes out of this discipline to the fortunate
child, or the world of delight and solace that
comes out of it to the wise and reverent parent.
Childhood is succeeded by youth. Here is the
second epoch in this tendency. In youth there
is, however it may be disguised or chastened or
sweetened, a temporary alienation from parental
fife. New worlds dawn upon youth, new interests,
new fascinations, new friendships, bright worlds
into which the young soul passes. However fine
and true and tender the young soul may be, there
is a, decided alienation from the dear, early home.
The vast and beautiful world of love opens to
the young ; they pass into it with music in their
hearts. Father and mother are no longer all-
sufficing ; the son and daughter found homes for
themselves. The time was when the old home
with father and mother in it was the centre of
existence, and now it has become incidental.
The new home is the centre of existence, and

THE INHERITANCE OF FAITH 189
all other interests and relations wait upon this.
There is this undeniable, inevitable, pathetic
alienation of the dear heart of childhood from
father and mother. Childhood has become youth,
and has gone into another world, a world of its
own. It is all as it should be. It is inevitable.
This process, however, presents the supreme
problem of life. How the passage is made, in
what spirit, from the old world into the new, is
of infinite moment to youth.
There is the third epoch. This describes the
return to the old home. The young mother, in
the presence of her growing children, with the
urgent, anxious problems of her family forever
before her, standing under the burden of her
responsibility to these souls, — how inevitably
she goes back to her own mother, whether liv
ing or dead, communes with her in spirit, raises
from the grave worlds of forgotten wisdom, and
recovers so far as she can all the healing, in
fluential ways of that vanished mother! The
father lives anew in the maturing manhood of
his son. Twenty or thirty years after the father
is in the unseen world, his intellect and will, his
wisdom and courage, his hope and power, are the
resource and power of his son. In the strength
of his dead father the son is able to run through
a troop and to leap over a wall. Whether in
the flesh or in the spirit only, the son is again

190 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
in the early home, talking with his father. And
this goes on to the end of life. We spend
our last years in reuniting our separated lives
with the beloved who are gone, in making fast
our souls to the dear souls from whom we have
been parted. An old man of ninety-five was once
asked how the distant past seemed to him. The
old man replied : " Every night when I retire I
can hear my mother's voice, I can feel her touch,
and I can hardly believe that more than a few
years have intervened since I was a child under
her heavenly care." We recall the exquisite
touch with which Ian Maclaren closes his de
scription of the doctor of the old school. He
is dying, and his wandering thoughts are back
with his mother. He is a boy again, in the early
home, learning his psalm that he may repeat it
to his mother, calling to her when he thinks
that he has it, and going hence at her side with
the great whisper upon his lips : " And in God's
house forevermore my dwelling place shall be."
And that you may not think this is mere fancy,
let me remind you of Carlyle's last hours as
reported by the nephew and niece who were with
him, and who cared for him with great tender
ness. When the old man was dying, he thought
his niece was his beautiful mother once more by
his side ; he put his arms round her, spoke to
her as to his mother, and wept as in a mother's

THE INHERITANCE OF FAITH 191
consoling and hallowing presence. He took his
nephew for his father, and spoke again as in the
noble presence of the old mason of Ecclefechan.
Carlyle at eighty-five is dying, not in Cheyne
Row, Chelsea, London, but in the humble home
in that little village in Dumfriesshire, Scotland.
And this return we all make, when we are true
to our humanity. We all come back at last to
our kindred ; we are finally gathered to our
fathers, as in the pathetic and wondrous words
of the Bible. We begin our being in home, in
the heart of it. For a little we are alienated
from that early home because we have founded
one of our own. Then by the high and solemn
interest of our new home, by its burden, its
sanctity, and its hope, we are brought back to the
voice that we first heard, and to the heart that
first loved us. If Rachel still weeps for her
children, she shall not weep forever. If she still
refuses to be comforted because they are not,
she shall not be comfortless forever. They shall
come again to her, they shall gather round her,
they shall greet her with their bright eyes and
their true hearts, they shall be with her again,
and with her forever.
2. There is the other tendency of which I
spoke, the tendency to return to our father's God
and to rest in Him. For religion is as natural
toward the Eternal as love in our homes. It is

192 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
the feeling for the Infinite to whom we stand
as creature to Creator, as dependent to Abso
lute, as child to the Eternal Father. That there
should be feeling of a certain kind for God is
as natural, as inevitable, as that there should be
feeling of a certain kind for a father or mother.
And that we should go with our kindred here,
that we should discover a tendency to trust and
serve the Lord God of our fathers, is surely not
at all strange. Here again we note, in a general
way, three epochs.
Look at the child once more. It lives in the
life of its parents. It looks out upon the world
through their eyes. It beholds the universe in
their vision. It kneels with them in prayer ; its
first devout utterance is through the Lord's
Prayer. It is led in reverence to Jesus as the
great Teacher. It unfolds its life in the con
sciousness of God. It fives and moves and has
its being in the circle of Christian faith ; it
accepts God as it accepts the common heritage of
existence. Kindred is one of the precious facts
in the existence of the fortunate child. With
the sense of kindred comes the happy experience
of good, the consciousness of life as beloved.
And God, the lover of children, their defender
and friend, is bound up with the deep and loving
hearts of kindred. In this way the normal and
fortunate child comes to believe in God.

THE INHERITANCE OF FAITH 193
How natural religion is to such a child ! How
easily its mind is turned into the stream of a
mother's devotion ! How easily and completely
it joins in the reverence and faith of the home !
How thoroughly such a child feels that religion
is part of the life of the home, that God is the
soul of the world's order, beauty, and being!
How touching it is to listen to the prayers of
a child ! They are so real. They so completely
carry the child into the divine world. This is
the first epoch. The child awakes in the deep,
sweet, mystic sense of the Lord God of its
fathers. This God is part of its treasure ; He is
to be loved, trusted, rejoiced in, as the song-bird
rejoices in the deep, infinite sunshine.
Then follows youth, and this child-religion is
transcended. I have never known a person in
whom there was not some kind of a break with
the past when youth came. The social world is
one great disturber. It absorbs the young life,
feeds it with excitements that make religious
feeling less apt to flow, that make religious feel
ing seem tame when it does flow. The world of
books and of intellectual problems rushes in to
engage and to perplex the awakening mind. The
youth begins to question and to doubt. A nega
tive mood takes the place of the old positive
faith, and a cold heart waits upon this negation.
The world of business puts in its great claim.

194 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
Manhood has a struggle here. New prospects
dawn upon youth. New ambitions rise in its
heart; glorious seas of passion come beating
in, as from the Infinite. Here is a world to be
conquered, to be possessed, to be enjoyed. It
tends to break up that old world of childhood ;
it is apt to throw into insignificance the reali
ties of faith. Religion gives way to a strenuous
humanity; it is not distinctly seen among the
forces that make up the great, seething world
of youth. Religion, at this period, for many
of our finest youth, fades into a memory, — a
sweet, a gracious, a hallowing memory, but only
a memory. Time, sense, temporal ends, earthly
interests, worldly ambitions, human tastes, at
tainments, passions, and hopes make the troubled
but tremendous world of youth.
One thing must be said here. The problem
presented at this period of transition is one of
the most fundamental and vital in human exist
ence. Whether we shall be victorious or de
feated, successes or wrecks ; whether our human
ity shall be a blessing to us or a curse ; whether
all the grace and melody shall go out of it, or
it shall become richer in great, singing voices
with the passing years, depends upon how we go
into our new world of enterprise, of thought, of
love and joy and suffering. Shall we master this
new world in the name of the Highest ? Shall

THE INHERITANCE OF FAITH 195
we possess and govern it in the name of the
ideal ? There is no deeper or more vital ques
tion than that. Look at that fair young woman
floating out from the piety of her kindred into
an enchanting world of her own. Is she to go
from good to better, from better to best ; or
is she to become a poor, soiled butterfly on the
dusty ways of life? Look at that young man
going forth radiant and resolute as the morning ?
Lrhe going to victory or defeat ?
The third epoch is dependent upon our be
havior in this second epoch. If we keep truth
with ourselves during this period of alienation
from the historic Christian faith, if in the world
of our wild and serious interests we keep our
heart with all diligence, if in this scene of con
fusion and contamination we strive for the life
of the undefiled, if we attain to what we call
our God, our ideal, our governing and consoling
faith, we shall at length begin a return to our
fathers' God. In that historic faith, in that high
religious experience, in that supreme life of our
race, we shall find ourselves at our best. We
shall find there, deep in the holiest heart of our
kindred, our kind, the sanctuary of our souls.
We shall find there the infinite solace and peace.
As we deepen in humanity, as our best sym
pathies grow and come to the command of our
being, as we become greater and finer in the ser-

196 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
vice of man, we shall inevitably, in one way
or another, become sharers in the best life of our
kind. As the burden of the good and pure heart
grows heavier, it becomes as natural to believe
in God as it was when we first spoke his name
at our mother's side. When things are as they
should be, we gravitate toward God as the fall
ing body gravitates toward the earth. His reality
then comes upon us with an amazing sweetness
and an overwhelming convincingness. Time,
that takes away so much, may leave us with the
sense of closer, surer, happier life in the dear
life of God, our fathers' God, the God of our
kindred and our kind, in whose strength we were
born, in whose love we were nurtured, in whose
being our minds were formed through the gra
cious humanities of home before we awoke to
the problem and sorrow of the individual will.
To come back to that faith, deep, vast, tender,
sublime with the testimony of the supreme spirits
of the race behind it, with the record of all the
triumphant sons and daughters of sorrow set in
its light, is a return which may be made by every
man. Oh, that journey back to the Eternal
Father, back to the Lord God of our fathers,
back to the Heart out of which came the hearts
of our fathers and mothers, back to the abo
riginal source of all love, all tenderness, and
all hope ! What a return is that ! Our human-

THE INHERITANCE OF FAITH 197
ity at its best came from God, and when it is
true to its deepest tendency, it returns to Him.
Both of these tendencies of which I have
spoken receive illustration and sanction from our
Master's life. He was a child ; he lived in his
mother's world. Then came his own vast world,
of which he took possession by the spirit of his
Father. On the cross he returned to the dear
world into which he was born, his mother's
world, and whispered from the centres of pain :
" Woman, behold thy son ; son, behold thy
mother." Is it not profoundly moving and pro
foundly beautiful to see Jesus dying in the
strength of the old home in Nazareth? Then
there is the other return. Jesus was the flower
of a great race, its consummate expression ; and
another of the great utterances that fell from
his dying lips was this : " Father, into thy hands
I commend my spirit." These are words from
one of the Psalms, repeated before him by many
generations of the wise and brave of his race.
Back to his mother's home and heart ; back
to his mother's God, to the Lord God of his
fathers, Jesus came ; and in the strength of an
historic humanity transfigured in the life of
God, no less than in the strength of his own
spotless soul, he went as the sun goes when
the day is done.
I sometimes think that we do not know the

198 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
stuff of which we are made. Oh, the fires of love
within, hidden and unsuspected, the slumber
ing music, the unawakened manhood! Oh, the
unsounded depths of this rich, dear, and awful
humanity that God has given us ! How cheap we
hold our priceless possession ! How far we travel,
seeking good, and forgetting the angel at our
door, the Divine presence in our own being !
When this mysterious humanity stirs within
us, let us wait upon it.~ This stir is our life and
our hope. When the tide sets back to our fathers,
let us go with it ; when, with deep, silent strength,
it sets toward our fathers' God, let us begin upon
it the great return.

XI
THE GRACE OF KINDNESS
"And be ye kind one to another." Ephesians iv, 32.
What is the highest human excellence? If
you should put that question to a group of men
and women, you would note in the replies that
might be made a very great difference of opinion.
Some would say one thing, some another. Put
the question to a normal child, anywhere on the
face of the earth, and there could be but one
answer. Go back into the fair morning of youi
life, recall the time when the world was new,
when everything came to you in the mystery
of fresh experience, and ask the question, Who
were they that interested and delighted you
most in that golden age ?
Personally, I have done that a hundred times.
I have gone back into the morning of life,
and looked again upon the men and women who
then compassed me about. There were men and
women saintly, truly so, and I regret to say that
I did not like them. There were the supremely
conscientious persons, whose worth and grandeur
I can now see, and they impressed me then as

200 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
among the gloomiest and most unattractive peo
ple in the world. They took the brightness out
of the day, the zest out of life. There were the
men of courage, and they were better. This fault,
however, I found in them : a scorn of weakness,
a careless contempt of children. Then came the
patriots, the men who loved their country with
a great love, and who filled my mind with inspir
ing tales of their country's power and majesty.
I remember the passionate interest with which
I listened to these tales, although I must con
fess that I had my doubts about the truth of
some of these glorious traditions. But high
above all the persons of that early period are the
kind people. I can see them, at the far end of
a long vista, with the light of God shining in
their faces. There they remain in that silent
world, images of beauty and humanity, wearing
looks that then seemed, and that still seem, the
best symbol of heaven, playmates, some of them
forever vanished and yet unforgettable ; dear old
mothers and grandmothers, who were fascinat
ing simply because of their unweariable kind
ness. The king of them all was an old soldier,
who had fought through the Crimean war, and
from whom, during the long, long days of the
happiest of all the summers of my life, I never
received anything but kind looks, kind words,
and kind deeds. How this man could be so kind

THE GRACE OF KINDNESS 201
for so long a timex has always seemed to me an
inscrutable mystery. The man whom a child,
from sunrise to sunset, cannot torment into an
unkind look or word or act is a great man.
Such a man was the king of the realm of my
childhood. I have seen again and again the
meadows in which he toiled, and in their lonely
loveliness fives the beauty of his spirit ; I have
wandered among the farm-buildings where he
spent so much of his time, and the silent and
vacant places still seemed to belong to him. I
have stood by the river on whose banks he sowed
and reaped, and the ceaseless rush of the waters
over their stony bed seemed to be a kind of
requiem for the repose of his soul. What is the
highest human excellence? All the children in
all the world answer, Kindness. Lift this answer
and call it Christian kindness, and I believe it
will stand as the final answer.
In considering the Grace of Kindness we can,
perhaps, best get at the heart of the matter by
asking, and by trying to answer, certain questions.
1. The first question is, What is kindness ? The
word is one of the very greatest in our language.
It has suffered a good deal from misuse. It has
lost something of its strength and dignity from
careless tongues. It is sometimes employed to
denote the inoffensiveness of a useless person,
the gush of a mere sentimentalist, the ready and

202 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
happy assent of an individual whose desire is to
sit still, or the emotional excess of perfect physi
cal health. There are persons whose physical ex
istence is so perfect, and whose pleasure in them
selves is so abundant, that the overflow of their
emotions is sometimes mistaken for kindness.
We must recover this great word to its natu
ral meaning. Kindness stands for the feeling of
one for his race, and that feeling the highest ;
it stands for one's interest in one's kind, and
that interest the loftiest. Kindness implies in a
man toward men an attitude of the intelligence,
an attitude of the heart, an attitude of the will.
The kind man holds in a considerate intelligence
the lives of other men and their varying fortunes
in this world. The kind man holds in a pure and
sympathetic heart the rights and wrongs of other
men under the burden and heat of the day, and
their joys and sorrows. The kind man has a
grave and humane purpose ; that is the attitude
of his will toward his race. He is full of respect,
full of honor, full of high consideration for his
fellow men. The thoughts and feelings and pur
poses of the kind man have in them a sweet
reasonableness, a healing grace, a high benignity.
Kindness is the seed and the flower of all human
excellence; it is like the seed from which 'the
magnolia-tree comes, and it is like the flower
into which that tree lifts itself in the early days

THE GRACE OF KINDNESS 203
of June. It is the great, vital expression of all
excellence, the deepest root of the noblest human
ity, and its consummate flower.
We can all see that it implies fellow-feeling,
racial sympathy, family love set free from family
limits and encircling the world. And this pri
mary element of racial sympathy may be either
natural or acquired. All men do not possess it
naturally, in any large way. All may possess it.
The man who wrote the Odyssey, for example,
had a natural delight in human beings. Those
gods and goddesses, so full of faults, are yet
warm and rich, and often beautiful with human
ity. His women charm forever, — Nausicaa and
Penelope. Read again the eleventh chapter of
the Odyssey, and note once more this man's
deep, pathetic, and mystic interest in man and
man's world. Shakespeare's world is a world
of human beings. Part of the witchery of his .
genius is in making us share something of his
insight into man's world and his delight in it.
The songs of Burns, — what are they but jets
from the perennial fountain of his humanity ?
There are many high souls to whom this inter
est in man is not native. Wordsworth says of
Milton : " Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt
apart." Milton was not naturally kind. He
was austere, majestic, solitary, exceptional in his
tastes and character. If he ever became kind, it

204 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
was through achievement. And Wordsworth him
self was not naturally fond of human beings. He
loved the hills, the meadows, the streams, and the
rainbow that comes and goes ; he preferred the
great solitudes and the sweet and austere voices
of nature to those of man. He came, indeed, to
sing of the " still sad music of humanity," but this
he did through discipline and achievement. And
supreme in this class stands the author of the
text, — Paul. He was naturally exclusive. He
went for years in the proud consciousness that
he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, of the tribe
of Benjamin, a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He
was proud, self-conscious, masterful, magnificent,
as a Pharisee, but he was not kind. It was the
vision of Jesus Christ that made this aristocratic
soul one of the most democratic that ever lived.
One can imagine the strangeness to him of his
Lord's command, " Behold, I send thee far hence
unto the Gentiles." "What? To the Gentiles ?
Not to my own nation ? Not even to the Samari
tans ? " " No ; but to Greeks and Romans, Bar
barians and Scythians, bond and free ; I have
chosen you to be the far-sighted and deep-hearted
servant of the whole- race." Paul was not dis
obedient unto the heavenly vision. And to-day
he stands, as he will forever stand, an example
of the racial sympathy that is the primary force
in kindness.

THE GRACE OF KINDNESS 205
The second thing in kindness is the sense
of the greatness and pathos of human life. The
sense of the greatness of life comes first. Life is
so great from every point of view, — its achieve
ment, loss, sin, capacity, hope, — that the poetry
which prefers nature to man seems to me mere
vaporing. Man's world is so intrinsically and
tragically great that one finds it difficult to
tolerate the writers who abandon humanity for
nature. They are indeed seekers after strange
gods, with a sad and wanton perversity in them.
Take science. It is the one word for the vast-
ness, the order, and the splendor of the physical
universe. Certain persons cry out, How little is
man in the presence of the universe unveiled by
science ! Yes, and how great is the intelligence
that has discovered that same universe ! The
universe of science is first of all the shadow of
man's greatness. Every extension of the bound
aries of science is a new witness to the magni
tude of man.
There is literature. How great is literature,
English, German, Italian, Greek, and, above all,
Hebrew literature ! What a wondrous thing is
the literature, the classic literature, of the world !
And in its final meaning, what is it but the wit
ness to the tragic and transcendent greatness of
man ? When we appeal to the fine arts, do they
not all sing the same song ? Poetry, music, paint-

206 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
ing, sculpture, building, — can you call the race
other than great that has articulated its thought
and sentiment, its intelligence and passion, in
forms so high and beautiful ?
There is, too, the world of industry. As an
organization of the instinctive reason of man it
is amazing. Kipling calls the ships that carry
the commerce of the world the flying shuttles of
the loom that is weaving into one many peoples.
Vast wrongs, needless sufferings, are inflicted by
man upon man in the world of trade ; yet trade
is a civilizer. The great loom is forever active ;
these flying shuttles are threaded with some
thing finer than greed, they are threaded with
the sense of man's needfulness to man ; they are
moving to and fro over the wide earth ; the fabric
that is slowly issuing is the unity of the race,
and the pattern in this fabric is the brotherhood
of our kind. This Institute of trade that at spe
cial points is so inhuman, that over wide fields of
activity appears so wanting in moral worth, that
in general seems sometimes to be a scene of wild
and endless contention, an embodiment of mad
egoism, and yet of an egoism whose madness is
under severe restraint in order that it may the
more completely plunder and desolate, is other
and greater than we know. It is set in the moral
order of the world ; it is set for the help of man.
It is one vast expression of the instinctive reason

THE GRACE OF KINDNESS 207
of the race ; it is one of the most impressive wit
nesses to the greatness of mankind. Civilization
as the sum of the material and spiritual acquisi
tions of man is a monumental witness to the dig
nity of human life. Survey this achievement, and
you will, with the Hebrew Psalmist, assert the
sovereign place of man in the universe ; survey
it, and you will with him declare that God has
made man only a little lower than himself-
The kind man carries about with him the
sense of the majesty of the race to which he be
longs. He is grateful that he was born a human
being, happy to have been made a sharer in the
ideals, the sympathies, the hopes of a great race,
glad to think and love and serve as the inheritor
of sublime achievements.
There is, however, another side. There is the
pathos of life. Burke's great words are an im
age of life : " What shadows we are, and what
shadows we pursue ! " The greatness of man is
in part the greatness of a tragedy. Agamemnon,
Antigone, Hamlet, Lear, are poor in the pre
sence of the eonian misunderstanding, perver
sity, conflict, heartbreak, defeat, and death of
humanity. These classic dramas are windows
through which the student looks upon the tragic
world ; the world itself is beyond, wide-reaching,
wild, mysterious, terrible with woe.
It is the function of tragedy to excite pity and

208 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
thus to purify the heart. The kind man cannot
look upon this vast scene of error and pain with
out pity. His heart is moved with compassion.
He beholds the sorrow of the world ; it becomes
his sorrow. It is this that makes him the pure
and tender friend that he is. He lives near to
the suffering souls of his fellow men ; he sees the
wreck and the heartbreak in life ; he notes the
swiftly passing beauty of it all, —
"like the rainbow's lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm," —
and his compassionate heart elects to suffer
with his kind and wait in benign pity upon its
need. There is still another element in kindness that
we must note, — service. This is the meaning
of the Good Samaritan story. The Priest and
the Levite may have had many virtues, although
no record of this possession has come down to us,
but there was one thing in which they were
deficient, and that one thing was kindness.
They refused help to a fellow man in distress.
They refused it in the name of religion ; they
count for nothing, and they stand for those
who count for nothing in the holy and humane
service of man. Whatever his defects, the Good
Samaritan had this one superlative excellence :
he knew an unfortunate human being when he
saw him, he knew, when he heard it, the divine

THE GRACE OF KINDNESS 209
call of humanity, he knew, when it confronted
him, the supreme privilege of his life, and he
took the bleeding victim of robbery and outrage,
poured oil and wine into his wounds, set him on
his own beast, carried him to an inn, took out
two pence and gave them to the host, and closed
the service of compassion with this fine charge
and pledge : " Take care of him ; and whatso
ever thou spendest more, I, when I come back
again, will repay thee."
2. The second question has been somewhat an
ticipated in these last words : What is the spe
cial power of kindness ? We break new ground,
however, in answering this question. The special
power of kindness is that it abolishes a world of
pain, and brings into the vacant place a world
of joy. There is so much irremediable suffering
in the world. There are so many bodily ills
that .cannot be cured or even alleviated, so many
mental troubles that cannot be removed or even
mitigated, so many sorrows that cannot be done
away or even sweetened. That tragic world we
wander in, helpless, or nearly helpless. That
world of woe must be rolled back upon the
heart of God. It is his problem, and we cannot
doubt that He will meet it to the supreme satis
faction of every reasonable soul. That world of
irremediable pain we leave with Him ; we await
his dealing with it.

210 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
There is a world of pain that need not be;
a world born of sour looks, ungracious speech,
unmanly action, a world that harrows the hearts
of millions. Kindness wipes that vast and dismal
world out of existence.
We read about fashionable society. We hear
that in London, Paris, Berlin, and Boston there
is such society. We hear that certain persons
are anxious to get into this society, and if half
that is said of its spirit is true, these persons
might with more safety cherish a desire to get
into a nest of hornets. Oh, the lies that people
tell of one another! Oh, the cruel falsehoods
that they utter and scatter ! The power to sting,
to inflict pain, to add to the burden and misery
of fife, is carefully cultivated, and the methods
by which it works reduced to a fine art.
What is the trouble with our family life?
Unkindness. What is the bane of business life ?
Unkindness. What is the central shame of our
American social life ? Unkindness. Job had his
Satan — accusing him, dogging his steps with
suspicion and unbelief, smiting him first in his
property, second in his family, and last in his
health, snatching from him in the end his capa
city for resistance, taking as it were the rudder
from the ship, after having destroyed her power
of propulsion. This same Satan, in the form
of unkindness, is still walking to and fro in the

THE GRACE OF KINDNESS 211
earth, unbelieving, cynical, frivolous, heartless,
relentless, and armed with power to afflict and
curse mankind.
Kindness meets this vast and lurid world of
needless pain, and annihilates it. Kindness de
stroys its sources. Kindness abolishes sour looks,
malicious speech, wicked deeds ; and where these
do not exist, that world of needless pain cannot
come into being. When the sun is low, winter
comes, and the earth is dead, and the streets are
cold ; and while winter reigns, multitudes lead
a shivering existence. When the sun is high, the
world of winter vanishes ; the world of summer
comes, with its song-birds, its blossoming trees,
its opening flowers, its green earth, and its happy
humanity. Kindness is like the sun. Its absence
means a frost, a killing frost ; it means blight
and gloom ; it means a world of pain that need
not be imposed upon a world of pain that must
be. It means day-labor, light denied, — the light
of human sympathy and brotherhood. Every
thing that Midas touched became gold. Every
thing that the kind man touches becomes bright
with tender and shining humanity. Everywhere
that the kind man goes he brings into being price
less things, — golden sympathies, radiant faces,
glowing and grateful hearts. The kind man, the
kind woman, is the magician for whom the world
waits.

212 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
3. Finally, how shall we increase this form of
human excellence ? In many ways this can be
done, but chiefly by living with the Lord Jesus
Christ. He took twelve quarrelsome fishermen,
subdued them to his own spirit, and sent them
forth apostles of kindness. Jesus is himself the
incarnation of kindness. Look at his human
sympathy. When he appeared among men, the
world was divided into Jews and Samaritans and
Gentiles. The Jews were divided into Sadducees
and Pharisees, publicans and sinners. Inside
these divisions there were others still, bitter as
death. Jesus overswept all these unhallowed
limits. He took the whole world to his heart.
Look at his delight in men. He loved men, —
Levi the publican, Zaccheus the publican, Nico-
demus the ruler, and Joseph of Arimathea, the
family at Bethany, the weary race of sorrowing
mothers and their sick sons and daughters, and
the little children. You cannot think of the
Teacher who took the children into his arms and
blessed them as other than fond of the race of
which he was the head. And did he not have a
sense of the greatness and pathos of life ? What
are his words for these aspects of our existence?
Sons of God ! There is the greatness of men.
And Jesus has lifted Christendom into the sense
of sonhood to God. That Christian conscious
ness of aboriginal and inalienable sonhood to

THE GRACE OF KINDNESS 213
God has broken up and swept away a whole sys
tem of theology opposed to it, notwithstanding
fifteen centuries of existence and influence. Sons
of God by the native dignity of the soul ; that is
Jesus' way of declaring his sense of the great
ness of man. And for the pathos of life hear his
words : " Come unto me, all ye that labor and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." His
life is the ideal of service. He went about doing
good. He was the sunshine of the world.
Think of this mind that held in such divine
regard all orders and conditions of men, — little
children, frail women, invalids, sinners, outcasts,
all classes of human beings, just as the great sky
holds in its serene heart the entire earth. We
should be willing to rest the supremacy of Jesus
upon the sovereignty of his concern for mankind.
He had greater consideration for the world than
any one else, a diviner sympathy, and his whole
life was pitched upon the key of service. His
ministry as the ideal expression of his mind and
heart has won for him among all reasonable
and aspiring spirits recognition as the leader
and master of men. To live with Jesus Christ,
to be subject to his soul ; that is the great assur
ance of kindness. And the more intimately and
devoutly we live with him, the swifter and surer
will be our growth in kindness.
What is our religion ? It is the grace of

214 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
the Lord Jesus Christ, who, though he was rich,
yet for our sakes became poor, that we through
his poverty might become rich. What is our
religion ? It is the loving-kindness and tender
mercy of God revealed to the world iu the
teaching, ministry, life, death, and resurrection
of Jesus Christ. What is our religion? It is
the loving-kindness of Jesus Christ as the assur
ance of the tender mercy of the Most High.
We have a human God, one whose highest attri
bute is not justice, but kindness, not supreme
regard for law, but supreme concern for man.

XII
THE GREAT QUESTION
What is your life 1 James iv, 14.
A greater question than this no man can put
to himself, no man can put to another. The
question concerns the real and not the conven
tional man, therefore the conventional answers
do not meet the case. Wealth, position, learning,
power, fame, significant for the undiscerning,
are superficial. The real man is in the depths,
the infinite depths. We are inquiring now not
for the pomp and circumstance of existence, but
for its essential and veritable character. We
wish to know not its dress, but itself, its inmost
heart. The writer from whom the words of the text
are taken gives one answer : " What is your
"life? For ye are a vapor, that appeareth for a
little while, and then vanisheth away." What
he meant by this comparison we may perhaps
discern in the feeling of another writer upon
life. Dr. John Brown, in his inimitable " Rab
and his Friends," describes with the fidefity of
science and with the pathos of a Christian the

216 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
death of the old carter's wife, Ailie. The old
man is not sure whether his beloved wife is still
with him. There is no pulse at the wrist. The
beat of the heart cannot be heard. He takes
a mirror and holds it before the parted lips of
the dying woman. One small spot of dimness
appears on it, and no more. The faithful mirror
has caught the final breath. What is your life?
It is a vapor that appeareth for a little while,
and then vanisheth away. That is one answer,
and all human history attests its great and
pathetic truth.
That is, however, only one answer among
many. What is your life ? Just what you
please to make it. It is your life, it is largely
in your own hands. You can make it a thing
of honor or of shame, a blessing or a curse, a
fountain of joy or a burden of woe, a centre
oi light or a source of gloom. You are the
master of your fate ; you are lord of yourself.
You may become believer or unbeliever, theist,
atheist, agnostic, Christian, Buddhist, material
ist. You may adopt any theory of existence'
that you please ; you may conform your exist
ence to whatever standard you like. You are
free to make your life high or low, fine or
coarse, full of love or full of brutality. You
are free in this greatest of all the processes of
experimentation; but you must abide by the

THE GREAT QUESTION 217
inevitable result. " Whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap." God is not mocked.
Be not deceived. We must not think to sow to
the flesh and to reap to the Spirit. Sowing and
reaping are always in one and the same kind.
The courses of conduct that gratify the beast in
man will never issue in the power of the Spirit.
Choose your standard ; act under it ; then face
the inevitable. When all the restrictions upon
freedom that go with heredity general and spe
cial, and environment universal and particular,
are noted, it is still true that life is what we
choose to make it. The loom is here, ready for
our use ; the thread is here, awaiting our indus
try; the shuttle is here, too, in the inevitable
impulsive soul ; but the pattern in the interest
of which the loom runs, the shuttle flies, and the
threads are woven, each man must supply. The
character in the piece is from the weaver, and
not from the machine. The controlling purpose
is from the soul, and not from its circumstances ;
and it is this purpose that gives character to life.
In the presence of this freedom, at once pre
cious and perilous, I shall name four answers to
our question.
1. We take first the best possible answer.
What is your life? It is an existence of moral
worth, without flaw, clear, pure, shining, golden
worth. We can imagine a man so good that he

218 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
is able to make that reply. Evil thoughts come
not near him. Base feelings find no room in his
heart. Selfish designs and a self-seeking career
are foreign to him. His thoughts are true, his feel
ings are reverent, his purposes are high, his con
duct is like the Lord's robe, without seam, con
sistent, whole, and wholly good. If one might
borrow an image from the life of some planet,
his life is not fire-mist, it is not solidity in heat
and darkness. It is all light, all fire, pure, burn
ing splendor, such an existence as Dante beheld
in Paradise. It is goodness, goodness every
where, and nothing but goodness. Such a char
acter is at least conceivable.
Is such a character only a dream ? Wre know
well that few among the sons of men answer to
this description. Looking over the Old Testa
ment, considering only the greater names of a
great race, one might place here Moses, Nehe-
miah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, among historical char
acters, and perhaps ideal persons like Joseph
and Daniel. Perhaps one might place here the
best of a great civilization, and again perhaps
not. It may be that they belong elsewhere.
Should the chief among the first disciples stand
here ? It is difficult to say. Looking over the
wide fields of history, one might consider suitable
for this category Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and
Buddha. We are sure that one should be placed

THE GREAT QUESTION 219
here, and we are completely sure of no other, —
Jesus Christ.
Even upon the most generous judgment, how
few among the children of men can be classed as
men of pure, clear, unalloyed worth! Let us be
thankful for the few. They are the great moral
reserve of our humanity, like the gold which is
the reserve of our national currency. Think of
the volume of business done in this land every
day, every year, and how seldom you see a gold
coin passing from hand to hand. Business is
largely done in paper, in check or bill ; only now
and then a gold eagle, a double eagle, appears.
But in all this transaction through paper we
know that the gold is in reserve, and that it
holds solid and sure the financial system of the
entire country. Few are the worthful among us,
yet are we thankful for the few. They hold us
to the sense of the strength and dignity which
belong to the race, and to which we may come.
We are thankful for Jesus Christ, who through
out Christendom lives in the vision of all meii
as the perfect human worth. What a boon it is
to be able to think of him as the great reserve,
the great backer, the great assurance, the golden
basis of humanity's life, struggle, and hope !
" Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul,
both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into
that within the veil." When the ship is caught

220 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
offshore in storm and tempest, she takes the
anchor that is part of herself and drops it into
the wild deep beyond her. There it finds the
rock, and there it holds her till the storm abates
and the sea is calm. So we find Christ, the stay
and assurance of man. We are caught in the
gales of passion, doubt, meanness, brutality.
We wonder if faith in the intrinsic nobility of
man can live. We fling out of our own heart
our confidence in the divine humanity of Jesus,
and through the wild sea on which we are tossed
that confidence sinks, anchor-like, till it finds
him. Such is the worth to weak and sinful men
of the . flawless goodness of the Master of the
Christian world.
2. We come now to the answer that is second
best. What is your life? An issue of useful
work. This answer covers more. There are
many men whose thoughts are not all true,
whose feelings are not all noble, whose purposes
and actions are not all high, who nevertheless
are the great and good servants of their kind.
You may deny Cromwell a place in the first
class ; you cannot deny him a place in the sec
ond class. Think of that life, and its high utility
to the political life of mankind ! You may deny
Lincoln a place in the first order; you cannot
deny him a place in the second. Again it is true
that the soul of the man went forth in a great

THE GREAT QUESTION 221
service. Here Luther stands. He was a man
of many imperfections, yet has he done the world
an immeasurable service.
Here we place our elect citizens. The maker
of a wholesome human home belongs here ; for
that is a public, a racial utility. The man who
carries on a great and honorable business be
longs here, for he is an immense utility to man
kind. Those who sow and those who reap, those
who raise and those who gather the crops of
the earth, those who direct the manufacturing
energy of the country, those who run its carry
ing power by land and by sea, in a sense belong
here. Their lives are indispensable to an ongoing
world ; and if you and I think it is good to live,
good to have a living world, we should be will
ing to confess that they who keep the world
alive are at least useful. The beloved physician
belongs here, the just jurist, the journalist who
aims to create and to maintain a sound public
opinion, the educator who brings to bear upon
the successive generations of youth a strong and
a benign manhood.
When the farmer brings home from his
orchard the fruits of the season, and looks care
fully over what he has gathered, he sees indeed
only a few perfect apples ; but he sees a great
many that are useful. And when you survey
mankind, you find few indeed upon whom you

222 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
can put without qualification the mark of worth,
but you find many whom you can describe by
the honorable term of usefulness.
3. We must now listen to the third best answer.
What is your life? It aims at the highest, it
means well most of the time, it pursues, haltingly
indeed, but with a sad sincerity, a lofty ideal.
This, I think, covers more than either of the other
two answers. Indeed, I am inclined to put in
this class the majority of those whom we respect
and love.
I spoke of the apostles as belonging in the first
order of men, perhaps. Surely they must be put,
if anywhere below the first order, in the second.
Yet the chief among them placed himself in the
third order. He thus describes his career, " not
that I have already obtained, or am already made
perfect : . . . but one thing I do, forgetting the
things which are behind, and stretching forward
to the things which are before, I press on toward
the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God
in Christ Jesus." Paul's greatness lies in the
intention, movement, direction of his life, and
not in its attainment.
That makes one breathe more freely. If this
hero of the faith belongs in the third order, the
whole order is hallowed by him. What an order
it is ! It is composed of the men who make no
pretenses because they know that none are justi-

THE GREAT QUESTION 223
fiable ; of those who are seekers after truth, who
move in a great quest, who have in their vision
the ends that strengthen and console the race. To
belong here is high honor, to move in the tides
of humanity represented by the men of this order,
faint yet pursuing, baffled but not defeated, set
back but, like the stream behind the dam, gather
ing volume and force to go on again. How great
and deep and full of God this is ! It is not the
best ; it is not the second best ; but it is the third
best, and it is admirable.
The weather is not always good ; far from it.
The sun never fails to rise, never fails to run
his course, never fails to shine, always intends to
fill the earth with light and beauty, but clouds
gather round him and defeat him, storms beset
him and turn to failure his best intention, his
most glorious endeavor. There are thousands of
men who mean to make their lives beautiful, who
mean to make home beautiful, who mean to spread
through the world sunshine and good cheer, but
they are involved in bad weather. The light of
their life is thrown back upon them, they are de
feated in their best intention and endeavor. The
great steamers, I believe, always intend to cross
the ocean in the shortest time possible. That is
the ideal of good business ; but these great ships
do not always succeed. They are overtaken by
storm and tempest. They are held back by stress

224 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
of weather, they plow forward, beaten by terrible
seas and sorely pressed. Days late they come
into port. But even in the wildest storm they
head homeward, and they arrive at length.
This is a picture of the great majority of the
good people whom I know. They mean well
most of the time, but they fail in doing well.
They are caught in the storm, they are over
burdened with anxiety, they are blown back by
the gales of passion and misfortune, and all that
you can say of them is that they are headed
homeward, that they mean well. Dr. Johnson
says that hell is paved with good intentions ;
which shows that Dr. Johnson could fail in in
sight. Good intentions are among the best things
in life. The good intention- is all the difference
there is between a mistake and a crime ; it dif
ferentiates the mistaken person from the crimi
nal as far as the east is from the west. There
are no good intentions in hell. All good inten
tions are the breath of the Infinite in man ; and
they find their home at last in the house not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For the
best that we can sometimes say of the best men
is that they intended well.
4. We come now to the final answer. What
is your life ? It is an indestructible capacity for
worth, for usefulness, for the pursuit and service
of the highest ideals. It is an indestructible

THE GREAT QUESTION 225
capacity for the divine life. That is the heart
of our humanity. Below that no man can sink.
He may be worthless, useless, unmoved by the
ideal, but he can never be without the capacity
for the highest.
Here we see the power that sets man apart
from the orders of life below him. Just as the eye
is made to see, and in normal cases does see, the
ear to hear, the palate to taste, the hand to touch,
as the design of our Maker lies in the adjust
ment of organ to function, so the capacity of the
soul for a life of worth, utility, high intention,
shows the plan and presence of God in the
soul. This enduring capacity for the highest is
what the Bible calls the image of God in man.
He is fitted, and he- alone is fitted, to share the
Universal life. Some creatures have feet only,
others have feet and wings. Man has the men
tal powers of the inferior orders of life, and he
has that which they do not have, the capacity to
rise into the life of God. The Greek Hermes
had winged feet ; the human soul has this swift,
soaring distinction.
Here we learn the true ground of self-respect.
The sense of self-respect is indispensable to man
hood. Without self-respect no man is strong, no
man is brave. Without it honor is impossible.
There is hardly a noble quality of human charac
ter that is not rooted in self-respect. How men

226 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
struggle to maintain this precious feeling! To
what devices, to what delusions, they resort to
keep or to recover self-respect ! They tell us
that they are high-born, that they know so much,
that they have been so very successful, that their
friends are so distinguished. All the while they
are aware that these things do not count. Your
character is thin ice ; it will not support your
heavy pretensions. Retreat to the firm-set earth.
You can respect your nature when you cannot
respect your character. Stand on your human
nature as God made it, stand on your capacity
for goodness, stand on your capacity to utter in
your fife the moral life of God, and you shall
look the whole world in the face.
Here, too, we learn the ground of hope for our
kind. If only men of worth go to heaven, it will
be a lonely and forlorn place. If only lives that
are signally useful go there, it will still be a
sparsely populated and a weary land. If only
they go to heaven who pursue consciously a high
moral ideal, even on this ground the majority
of our fellow men will be excluded from that
sphere of radiant rest. This I cannot accept.
As this old planet at midnight and in the dark
est night of the year, when the city is asleep,
when whole nations are asleep, still moves
silently and resistlessly sunward, so the great
world of toil, borne on by the Holy Ghost,

THE GREAT QUESTION 227
carries toward the eternal light all true workmen
everywhere, even if they never look up, and
think of God hardly once a week.
Do you think that is too broad? What are you
going to do with these multitudes unconscious
of the Christian ideal? Here are the millions
who are doing the hard work of the world. They
tumble out of the cradle into the workshops of
the world ; they tumble out of the workshops
of the world into the grave ; and their life from
beginning to end is in the service of their kind.
And is there no God living within them because
of their work, as the lightning lives in the
cloud ? Where men gain the worth of which
they are seldom conscious is not in church or
Sunday-school, precious as these servants of the
Spirit are, but in the stern process whereby they
help their fellow men to live. An idle world
would be a hopeless world. A toiling and suffer
ing race has the worth of God in it, however
dumb about the divine it may be. A serving
and suffering race, even a race that serves and
suffers under compulsion, is great with hope,
because it is, although it know it not, the suffer
ing servant of God.
I am not pleading for contentment with the
lower forms of man's life. I am showing the
ground of hope in the kingdom of God. Did
you ever find the nest of a skylark ? It builds

228 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
its nest in the field, in any tuft of grass that
it may find. You look into that nest, and you
discover there, at first, three or four tiny eggs,
with the potentiality of a skylark in each one.
Survey the human race, and what is your first
discovery? The great, sweet capacity of man
hood brooded by the sable wings of the world's
work, with the Holy Ghost in the wings. You
look into that nest a second time, and you see
three or four mouths wide open. There are in
the nest now only mouths. You consider again
the masses of mankind, and you note hunger
everywhere, greed, clamoring appetite. Human
ity has become one vast, ravenous mouth. You
look into the nest a third time. It is empty.
The young birds are hopping on the ground, they
are on the fences, they are exercising their
wings in short flights. They are a utility to
themselves and to the parent birds. Consider
men again, and this time you find them work
ing, thinking of others ; the father is living for
his wife and children, the wife and mother is
living for her home, the children are working,
too, and they are full of sympathy for their
parents and for one another. Usefulness is
changing into something fine and high the clam
orous selfishness of the mere animal. You look
once more at your birds, and you see them on
the wing. They are rising in the morning

THE GREAT QUESTION 229
against the purpling east, pouring forth their
song to the dawn, beautiful as the dawn itself,
or, as in Shelley's living words, they are greet
ing the sunset : —
" In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun."
That is the bird at its best ; that is man at his
highest. Here is man's life, — capacity, inten
tion, utility, worth, flight, song, joy, and God
over all, under all, and in all blessed forever.
What is your life, O my brother? It is
capacity for the highest. Rest not there. Make
it pursuit of the flying ideal ; make it a noble
utility ; make it worth, song, freedom, joy ;
make it the conscious, winged, happy, singing
life in God.

XIII
THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY
Lttkeli, 8-12.
In this account of the birth of Jesus we have
the romance and the reality, the poetry and the
truth, the pageant of faith and the awful beauty
of the Divine Child. The angel that appeared
to the shepherds inspired fear, hope, obedience,
and discbvery. In the presence of the angel the
shepherds were overcome with awe ; they were
lifted with a vast hope ; at once they were obe
dient to the heavenly vision ; and this obedience
led them to the great discovery. In awe and
hope and obedience they came with haste, and
found both Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying
in the manger. We may share the same feelings,
we may enter the same experiences, inspired not
by the angel, but by the Divine Child.
1. The true object of awe is not the angel and
his heavenly host, but this Divine Child. Think
what he has done to lead men to God ! Think
how he has made the world know that God cares
for it ! Suppose that Jesus had wielded an equal
power in leading men away from God ! Two
possibilities lie in the soul of that wondrous

THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 231
Child, the possibilities of racial salvation and ra
cial perdition. Look into the manger, and behold
there the awful power of a possible Saviour and
a possible destroyer.
The solemn hope of life lies in its permanent
interests. Men were made to live with one an
other according to justice, in the mood of kind
ness, and in devout communion with the Eternal
life. Within the compass of justice and kind
ness and religious trust are very many great
human interests. We have interests physical,
intellectual, political, artistic. Our great inter
ests are largely in the keeping of great men.
They may lead us wisely, and again they may
lead us astray. They may mould our intelligence
in the forms of a false philosophy, crush our
humanity by a false science, corrupt our sense of
beauty by pressing upon us unworthy standards,
enslave us by their political control, degrade
us by their atheism and despair. Great men make
the world ; great men mar it. Fall under the in
fluence of one sort of greatness, and your whole
nature rises into strength ; fall under the power
of another kind of greatness, and your life is
ruined. Here we see our debt to the noble great.
A few great thinkers in Greece, in France, in
Germany, in Great Britain, and one or two in
America save the intellectual life of the race. A
few sane scientists become the pledge of perma-

232 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
nent sanity in the interpretation of nature. A few
poets, a few painters and builders, a few musi
cians, become sovereign over the artistic life of
the world. A few great rulers lift the nations into
political manhood and hope. What Moses, Peri
cles, Caesar, Charlemagne, Cromwell, and Wash
ington have done for the political well-being of
the world it would be difficult to measure. And
here is the tremendous thought : all who have
served wisely might have served unwisely, all who
have lifted human life might have dragged it down.
Suppose that Jesus had used his power in
leading men away from God! Think of that
mind ! . Imagine it to have framed a religion of
despair, what compass and grandeur and wild
fascination he could have given to it ! To what
empire over the thought and feeling of the race
he could have lifted it ! All the teachers of
pessimism, Ecclesiastes, Lucretius, Omar, Swift,
Schopenhauer, Thomson, would seem but vagrant
clouds against the noonday sun, compared with
the eternal night which his mind and sympathy
might have made the home of mankind. Even
Buddha would seem a small calamity compared
with this, for Jesus possessed such creative power
in the world of thought, and such genius for in
vesting his creations with fascination, that had
he been himself misled, he would have misled
mankind.

THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 233
We begin to see with what awe we should
stand at the manger in Bethlehem. The possibil
ity of the world's salvation or perdition is here.
The great order of thought that tells us that
the Eternal God is the Father of men, that his
mercy surrounds every soul, that He has in each
human being a purpose of infinite love, that the
dark side of existence is but discipline in the in
terest of personal righteousness, inward wealth,
and final joy, that almighty wisdom and good
ness rule over all, may rise out of that Child's
mind to illumine, to guide, and to console the
world ; or some scheme of inconceivable power
and gloom may come forth from that same mind
to cover the race with the horror of great dark
ness. At this manger we stand in awe. Here is
the most fateful thing in history, the undeclared
mind of the Child Jesus.
The leaders of the race were once children.
Standing at the benign issue of their finished
careers, how great they seem as they lie in the
cradle, and how fateful ! Washington and Arnold
were once children, Lincoln and Davis, John
and Judas. Paul was once a child, and Paul's
nameless schoolmate whose life became a plague.
Augustine was a child, and here is that forgotten
friend of his whose power was spent in degrading
his kind. Luther was once a child, and that other
monk, who hated the light and served darkness.

234 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
Cromwell was once a child, and Charles I. The
saints were once children, and the same is true
of all the criminals and vagabonds in history.
In this mood of seriousness we look upon the
children of to-day. They are not mere play
things. They are not simply for the entertain
ment and comfort of kindred. They are charged
with terrible power. They may raise the nation
into new greatness, and they may pull down and
destroy the work of our hands. They may honor
and advance the Kingdom of God, and they may
bring on the reign of darkness. In our children
we discern these two tremendous possibilities :
they may become saviours of men, or destroyers.
2. The inspiration to hope is not in the angel
and his heavenly host, but again it is in this
Divine Child. In that young life carefully edu
cated, piously trained, completely possessed by
the spirit of God, is the beginning of a new day
for mankind. There is the beginning of the
mightiest human life in history. There is the
true ground for hope. The angelic host may be
but a vision ; Jesus is real. The vision may fade
or even become incredible ; the reality of Jesus
is an abiding and mighty reality. Look at him
in the manger. There is Divine humanity, with
worlds of strength, tenderness, beauty, insight,
love, authority, awaiting revelation. Look at
him, and see in that Divine soul the sure pro-

THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 235
phecy of the new heaven and the new earth
wherein dwelleth righteousness. Old Simeon
might well sing as he took this Child in his arms :
" Now lettest thou thy servant depart, 0 Lord,
According to thy word, in peace;
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples;
A light for revelation to the Gentiles,
And the glory of thy people Israel."
Old Simeon said nothing about the vision of
angels. The salvation for which he waited was
a human salvation. He was sure of that salva
tion when he held in his aged arms that glorious
Child. This Simeon story is the rendering of the de
vout heart of one generation ; it is the rendering
of the devout heart of all the generations. All the
wise and devout in Judea, when Jesus was born,
felt as Simeon did ; all the wise and devout in
all the generations have felt in this way as they
stood in the Temple and saw this Child in the
arms of the aged servant of God. It is a beauti
ful sight that we have here. A man old, infirm,
awaiting the end, who has spent his strength in
the service of his people, who sees the immense
and infinite need of his nation, who longs to
die not without some vision of the coming salva
tion, stands one fair morning at the Temple-door.
Up from Bethlehem sleeping there on the hill-

236 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
side a few miles south of Jerusalem come Joseph
and Mary, bringing with them the Infant Jesus.
There is something in that Infant that speaks to
the old man. He sees a goodly, a Divine Child.
The power to work the salvation for which the
old saint has been waiting is in the soul of
that Child. The coming from God of this life
is the sure pledge of the great deliverance.
Simeon is done, but here is the beginning with
out end.
We must not think that Simeon knew or even
dreamed what theology would say about Jesus.
He simply saw before him an infant, an infant
with the light of heaven in his face, with the
presence of God in his soul. He saw a Divine
soul, and knew that God had come anew into
the world. Simeon felt about this Child as good
people always feel in the presence of a rarely
beautiful infant life. The saints always rejoice
when a man is born into the world. The greatest
thing in the world is the birth of a child, coming
from God in the strength of unsearchable possi
bilities of service. The saints have learned the
ways of God in bringing into human society
more and more of his light and love and author
ity. They know that the cradles of the race are
the east, where the new and divine day is break
ing. They look thither and behold the increas
ing glow, the spreading fire, the great silent

THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 237
oncoming day of the Lord. They know that
souls bring to souls the sense and assurance of
the soul of God, that new souls bring the new
sense and the profounder assurance, that the
great souls just born are glorious in prophecy
for the race to which they have come.
You can imagine Israel in bondage, groaning
under burdens too heavy to be borne, appeal
ing blindly to Heaven, expecting God to rend
the heavens and come down. The wild multitude
would think nothing of the little boy that was
born to Amram, would smile at the ark of bul
rushes floating there in the river, would discover
there nothing but pathos and the tragic love of a
mother's heart in the desperate effort to save the
child's life from the horrible decree of Pharaoh.
Yet there may have been some pure prophetic
soul, some one old in years and in suffering,
and old in the knowledge of God's way of help
ing man, who beheld in the infant in the ark
of bulrushes floating in the Nile the hope of a
coming deliverer. In all the ages of distress, can
we not believe that the wise and the pure waited
for the coming of God in the coming of children ?
You can think of them, turning away in sorrow
from the poor philosopher, the miserable priest,
the still more miserable demagogue, turning away
sad at heart from all the old and helpless leaders
of the time, and going forth on a pilgrimage to

238 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
the cradles of their race. Look at them as they
visit home after home ; look at them as the lines
of care and distress vanish from their faces, as
the light of dead hopes begins to shine again in
their old eyes, as they go away at last 'with the
sure vision of God's fresh advent in the advent
of new human souls.
The tabernacle of God is with men. Ye are
the Temple of God. That is Christianity. Men
come from God, and they bring God with them.
Jesus is our Lord because he once for all set
God's method of revealing himself in ideal, in
perfect fight, the ideal and perfect light of his
Divine humanity. Henceforth we look for God
in human lives, in the intellect of the wise man,
in the heart of the good man, in the conscience of
the pure, in the will of the strong. Here in the
succession of good lives dating from the Divine
life of Jesus is the river of God, and it is full of
water. What the Nile is to Egypt the religious
soul of man is to man. The great river created
the country, it keeps it alive, it makes it fruitful
and beautiful. On either side is desert, wild,
wide, terrible. Whithersoever the river goes
everything lives. The Nile is a kind of deity to
that land, a thing so solemn, constant, supreme,
that it might be worshiped. Such is the career
of man in this world. On either hand are the
immensities of space and time, to right and left

THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 239
are the material orders of the cosmos, a bound
less desert so far as any hint of love is concerned,
an infinite waste wherein is found no sign of con
science, no single flower of regard or pity for
man. Through this wild wilderness, in which
live fearful things, there runs forever the great
stream of our human life. Here is the river that
makes our world and all worlds live. Here is
the force that creates, that sustains, that forever
guards the higher faith of man. Here is the
power that is sovereign in this whole sphere in
which we live, that brings God from beyond the
stars, from behind the cosmos, from the un
searchable depth of eternity, and reveals Him
as the life of our life, the love of our love, the
soul of our soul. Greater than all the wonders
of Egypt is the solemn, silent, sovereign river;
greater than all the wonders of time and space
is the succession of wise and good men. ' God is'
there, the living God, the God and Father of
Jesus Christ, our fathers' God.
The picturesque forms of faith may fade.
Many things in the early faith of the Christian cen
turies may lose their power as the ages come and
go. A whole world dear to us, dear to other gen
erations, may pass utterly away ; but one thing
is sure. God in Christ is here forever. God in
the lives of Christian men and women shall never
pass. God in the successive generations of chil-

240 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
dren is the abiding God. Here in the Incarnation
of God in Jesus, and in his disciples, is the per
petual, unassailable gospel, the Christianity that
forever lives, forever vindicates its reality, that
can never die. The heavenly host may be but
a dream; Jesus we know is real, and God is
with him.
3. Here is our inspiration to obedience. Look
at the power of Jesus over his mother. Her
best education was in loving and in training him.
Think of the new interest in life which he gave
to all, and the new sense of power. Over the
shepherds and the wise men, over all the good
people in the little town where he was born, over
the two Temple saints, and later over the doc
tors, he wielded the same charm. He imparted
to his mother, he imparted to all, fresh interest
in living and a profounder sense of being and
power. ' The education of Jesus was largely the
work of his mother ; the mother's education was
in the vision she obtained of the soul of her
son, in her ever-deepening love and in her ever-
devoted service.
So it is to-day. What is the greatest of all eco
nomic motives ? The hope of wealth ? . No, for of
that there is no hope for thousands. The desire
for bread ? No, for many come to think so little
of life that bread as the means of living loses its
incentive. Happiness ? No, for great as the quiet

THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 241
content is that comes from honest work honestly
done, we cannot forget the drudgery that much
of the work of the world is, or the suffering
that is inseparable from it. Companionship ? No ;
for much as man depends upon man, and consid
erable as is the comfort of the companionship in
work of like-minded men, yet we must not over
look the inhumanity of workman to workman.
None of these motives, nor all of them together,
could keep this old and sorrowful world of sow
ing and reaping, buying and selling, producing
and transporting, alive for a year. If you would
know the power behind the plows and reapers,
the looms and stores of the world ; if you would
know the sufficient inspiration of miner and
sailor, the man who lives in the heart of the
earth and the man who spends his strength in
the heart of storms and tempests, you must look
into the homes, into the cradles of the race. Men
work that they may get bread and shelter and
education and comfort for the children. The
power of the child over the father, over the
mother, — there is the great, persistent inspira
tion of the world of work. Men and women will
dare anything, will do anything, will endure
anything, that the children whom they love may
live. It is love, love of the amazing child, that is
the mainspring of the world's best activity. In
that love is coiled the power that keeps the old

242 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
world running, that will keep it running better
and better, and running forever.
li this is true, we owe our character largely to
our children. Three fourths of good character are
born of honest work, and honest work is sustained
by our love for our children ; therefore to our chil
dren we are indebted for the best part of our life.
We may work for our own children ; we may
work for the children of others. So far we are free
to choose. Beyond this there is no choice, if we
would attain to our highest estate. Our highest
nature will never awake from slumber, will never
rise into power and joy, till the voice of the child
rings in our ear. Then our work will have among
its motives human love, and work into which
human love enters becomes a school, a church, a
sanctuary of the Most High.
We hear about the new education for the child.
It is good to hear about it. But let us under
stand that it is not for the child alone. It is also
for the parent, for the brother and sister and
friend ; it is for the entire generation of adult
life. The capacity to love and serve children
comes near being man's highest capacity. At all
events, it is the capacity to gain character from
the family life of the world, the capacity to win
for one's self the supreme education, — the vision •
of worth, the passion of love, the title of servant.
It was no fanciful picture that Isaiah drew

THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 243
when he said, " The wolf shall dwell with the
lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the
kid ; and the calf and the young lion and the
fatling together ; and a little child shall lead
them." The brutal world is still in the control
of the cradles of the world. The wild forces in
man's soul answer to the gentle voices of the
children. The fierce passions of men, passions
for pleasure, idleness, show, vanity, sensuality,
and numberless shameless things are subdued
into working energies, converted into capacities
for a fellowship of service and reasonable living,
by the divine charm of childhood. In the vision
and love and service of childhood the wild beasts
within us are tamed ; we become men. We have
given to the children our life; we have received
it back with God in it.
4. Finally, the Divine Child is our great in
centive to discovery. The nature of Jesus is the
inexplorable and rewarding mystery. Jesus is
continually saying that he is the path to God.
He is the way, no less than the truth and the
life. He is this in a unique manner, and at the
same time he is this in a representative manner.
One of the greatest achievements of Jesus is the
sense which he created in men of the unfathom
able meaning of human nature. His vision of
men as sons of God was a vision of beings with
the divinest endowment, and capable of put-

244 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
ting forth the very greatest powers. Jesus saw
in men indestructible affinities to the Eternal,
indissoluble bonds of brotherhood, plans of God
lying deep in the soul for an existence, personal
and social, of the greatest range and worth, and
endless capacities for all noble growth, all ex
alted achievement, all serious fellowship, all high
delight. Jesus was himself the supreme wonder
of the world ; he was this as the Divine Man. And
the greatest thing on the earth for Jesus was not
nature, but humanity, not things, but souls, not
systems of opinion or religion, but man. To man
Jesus devoted his whole strength. For Jesus man
was the sovereign fact in creation, the key to the
character of God. And one thing he has done
of immeasurable moment. He has stimulated
among all peoples the sense of humanity, inspired
man to the study of man, set the human soul
in the centre of all high interests, and built the
intellectual world round this centre. Jesus sur
veyed our world, considered the fruitfulness of
its various parts in relation to the Infinite, looked
into many of the barren excavations, the vain
searchings of men, held within the compass of
his vision the whole field of possibility, put his
hand upon the human soul, personal and social,
and said, "Mine here. Here is the inexhaust
ible vein. The wealth of the world, the riches of
the universe, are to be approached and gained

THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 245
from this point. God comes to men in me, God
comes to men in man."
Our generation is earnest over this teaching of
Jesus. We hold the child in higher value. We
believe that wonders await us in the study of the
soul of the child. We believe that there are
depths and heights of wisdom in the unconscious
spirit of a normal child that bring God anew
into the world ; we look to this psychic wonder
and behold a mystery of personality only barely
conscious of itself, yet moving forces and show
ing implications of itself over immeasurable fields,
developing surprises, revealing capacities, that
amaze the student, and that call upon him for
profounder search and devotion. Here in the
children are our future prophets, teachers, schol
ars, statesmen, citizens, and masters of trade,
lovers, husbands, wives, makers and moulders of
the nation. As they are, it will be. As they may
be, it may become. The possibilities of the child
are the possibilities of the nation, the possibilities
of the world. Every spring the farmer goes forth
upon a new venture ; every new seedtime is the
promise of a yet better harvest. In every new
generation of children there is a chance for a new
and better nation. In every new generation of
children there may be the assurance of a nobler
country. Here is the seed-time of citizenship ;
here is the assurance of a mightier harvest. Men

246 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
of economic habits are grieved as they see in
Niagara so much power running to waste. Their
grief is a sordid grief. The aesthetic wonder more
than compensates for the economic loss. Let
grief be turned in wise directions. Let us grieve
that the fresh accession of Divine power sent to
society in each new generation of children is
allowed so largely to run to waste, that only a
fraction of the innate nobility of children is ever
saved to the world, that the vast volume of its
love, honor, fellow-feeling, moral insight, and
might has never yet been put to the service of
man. That is the wild cataract whose thunder
may well awaken grief and despair ; that is the
rolling and tremendous flood whose perpetual
waste may well be the supreme sorrow of mankind.
We come back to this conclusion. The people
who revere childhood, who enter into the vision
of its hidden wealth of capacity and possibility,
who secure that wealth by wise training, who
thus improve their own stock from generation
to generation, providing with the lapse of
the centuries nobler lovers, better husbands, and
deeper-hearted mothers, will surely aid in the
achievement of two things. They will provide
the better race to command the future, they will
build the nation upon the better-understood and
better-served childhood: they aid in securing
an ascending national life.

THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 247
This is one of the two things, and the other is
the greater faith. The best man brings us near
est to God. The sovereign man carries the world
into the very presence of God. This is the work
of Jesus. He was able to take the world with
him into the consciousness of God. And when
he left the world, he left his disciples in it to
continue his work. He works for the coming of
the better child, the ideal child, the race lifted
into truth and goodness. He waits for a social
whole so wise, so clean, so devout, so sure of
God itself, that it will like a mighty tide take
up souls everywhere and carry them to God.
We do not look to the angels for new light.
We look to the cradles of the land. We watch
by the young life of the race for the consolation
of the race. In the freshness of its endowment,
in the conservation of its grace through the
wiser training, in the steady unfolding of its
divine humanity, in the rhythm and song of its
devout and exalted life, we hear the notes of a
new Gloria in Excelsis.

XIV
WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS
" For we saw his star in the east, and are come to worship him."
Mattliew ii, 2.
There are many questions concerning this star
that we cannot answer. Was it a veritable
outward illumination, or only an inner guiding
light? Did it belong to those great bodies that
travel and shine in space, or to those ideal splen
dors that give distinction to all wise and serious
human life ? Is this story about the star the his
tory of some miraculous heavenly appearance, or
is it poetry, a beautiful parable of something
great in certain human souls? These are ques
tions about which we may have opinions, but
which we cannot answer. We were not there
to share the vision, and therefore we cannot
tell what it was that the wise men saw.
Some things, however, are clear. The star was
the star of wise men. It was seen in the East,
that is, it appeared in the firmament under which
these men lived, it moved in their environment,
it looked down upon them in their places of toil
and suffering. It was a guiding star ; it con
nected the East with a better West, it led them
on from one form of wisdom to a higher, it brought

WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 249
them at length to the birthplace of the Highest.
And in all these respects this star is of permanent
moment for mankind ; it is of clear and shining
significance for us to-day.
Wise men cannot live without beholding great,
moving, guiding lights. The anthem oftenest
upon the lips of the wise is, " To him that made
great lights ; for his mercy endureth forever."
The wise man is always a star-beholder, a star-fol
lower. He lives by the splendor of ideals. These
fill his inner sky with their bright order and their
solemn beauty. They appear to each wise man in
the region where he dwells. They look down upon
him in his toil, and love, and suffering, and prayer.
They transfigure the night of his animalism and
raise within his spirit new dreams of the dignity
of his nature. They expand his narrow world ;
they give him the sense of the Infinite and Eter
nal. They connect his partial and fleeting exist
ence with something great and enduring ; they
call him onward to the fulfillment of his deepest
longings ; they bring him step by step to the su
preme manifestation of God. When we are wise,
we see and follow shining ideals ; when we see and
follow shining ideals, we come at last, after long
journeys,. it may be, and much weariness, to the
vision of Christ. For Christ is the great answer
to the ideal longings of man ; he is, in the pro-
f oundest sense, the desire of all nations.

250 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
1. There is the ideal thought of the world.
How wise men have striven for the deepest and
the most satisfying insight into this mysterious
existence, into this mysterious universe ! Let the
search be properly conditioned, let it be wise, let
it be for a thought that best accounts for what
is of most concern in man's world. Such a man
was Augustine, who went the round of all the
teachers of the day, who longed for a wise and
true thought about this strange life of ours, and
who, when he came to the New Testament, found
himself at home. Take all the philosophers of
the spirit in our Christian era who have known
anything about Christianity. They started far
enough away, many of them, from Christ's in
terpretation of existence ; they toiled, suffered,
grew; they came, the permanent names among
them, to see in the great thoughts of Jesus the
profoundest insight into life. It is impressive in
the highest degree to find Fichte teaching the
way toward the blessed fife in the terms of Chris
tian thought, and to watch John Stuart Mill in
his old age standing in admiration before the sub
lime genius of Jesus Christ. The thought that
presents the Eternal as our Father in Heaven,
that makes of our human race one family, that
looks upon the universe as our Father's house,
that regards the earthly sojourn of man as life in
one room of that house, and man's career in the

WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 251
unseen as life in another room of the same dwell
ing, is for the spiritual intellect the ideal of all
wise thought.
We do not know that it is true. It may seem
too good to be true. We are unable to prove
that it is true. But hither we come in our quest
for the best, here we rest in our wanderings, here
by the sublime teaching of Jesus we wait. It is so
wise and so worthy. It meets the demands of a
reasonable mind, and it holds for the intelligence
a reasonable universe. We can see our fathers
and the great company whom they represent
standing here. They were led hither by their
parents and teachers and the custom of their
times. They were led by something greater.
They were led by the desire for an adequately
wise thought, and they were led through the
stern discipline of life. Famous men leave to
posterity many portraits. The generations exam
ine these one by one, and finally gather about
the best. This they hold is the most speaking
likeness of the famous spirit now in the unseen.
So men examine and select among the likenesses
of Luther, Cromwell, Milton, and Lincoln. They
examine, select, and wait upon the best. So we
deal with man's thoughts about the universe.
They are portraits made by an immemorial suc
cession of artists differing greatly in insight
and power. Wise men examine these portraits

252 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
because of their profound desire to know the
character of the world in which they live. They
examine, select, and finally gather in fixed admi
ration and faith about the best. The thought of
Jesus is the great portrayal of the character of
the universe. This, we believe, is the true like
ness of the Eternal. Hither we have been led by
our desire for the wisest human thought of exist
ence. Here by this sublime image of existence
we will wait till the day break and the shadows
flee away.
2. There is the ideal beauty in the world. It
sometimes seems to us strange that the incom
parable painting genius of early modern Europe
should have been so engrossed with sacred sub
jects. We explain it by saying that the world was
then under the domination of Catholic Chris
tianity, and that artists sought their subjects
in what lay close to the popular heart. That is
one explanation, and there is perhaps some truth
in it.
There is, however, a deeper explanation. The
lover of beauty, if wise, must go on to the high
est. Take a soul like Raphael or Michelangelo.
Consider the passion for beauty in that spirit.
Where can it rest but in the vision of the beauty
of the Lord our God? There is no beauty in
Greece that can satisfy the vision that appears
in the Sistine Madonna. There is no beauty

WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 253
anywhere save in the life of Christ that can
meet the soul of Michelangelo. When Da Vinci
selects for his greatest picture the Last Supper,
he is wise. He can do nothing else.
Beauty has its home in character. The most
beautiful thing in Greek literature is Antigone.
A lofty, loyal, dauntless human soul conducts
to the true sphere of beauty. You cannot think
of Antigone, beautiful and loving beauty, as
anything else than a pilgrim to the cradle of
Christ, a pilgrim finally to the cross of Christ.
In tragedy her character shines out in beauty ;
in tragedy Christ's heavenly grace appears. He
is, therefore, no lover of beauty who never sees
it as it burns in the highest human character.
Those who worship only sensuous beauty dwell
in the land of shadows ; they are like men who
see the stars reflected in a pond, and who dive
for them there. They dive after reflections, they
pursue shadows, they worship images. Wise lov
ers of beauty look up. There in the inaccessible
heights the real eternal stars shine. There is the
poetry of heaven. And in human character, in
brave, benign, self-sacrificing service, in souls
devoted to the highest, is the true beauty of the
world. Whoever sees that will travel onward till
he comes to the character that is the grace and
the truth of human history.
If you have ever seen a beautiful soul in man,

254 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
in woman, or in child ; if you have ever stood
before the apocalypse of a true mother's heart,
or a noble father's spirit, if you have ever in this
world actually beheld a beautiful human char
acter, you know that there is nothing in the
heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the
waters under the earth to match that loveliness.
Thenceforth, grateful for every vision of beauty,
you seek for the beauty of a great soul, and
seeking for the beauty of a great soul you find
yourself at last by the side of the supreme soul
of Christ.
3. Others are moved by pity. In the religion
of Buddha pity is fundamental. The image of
Buddha is always an expression of painless com
passion. And this is the secret of his power over
the uncounted millions of suffering men and
women in the hopeless East. He cannot remove,
he cannot mitigate their sufferings, he cannot
change the law of misery under which all exist
ence moves, but he can behold it in loving, sub
dued, gracious compassion. That enfolding com
passion of the Buddha, although it can change
nothing, is nevertheless an inexpressible comfort
to the hopeless sufferer from the misery of being.
Perhaps this is the point of contact between
what is highest in the East and in the West.
Perhaps the pity of Jesus has not been ade
quately presented by our preachers in foreign

WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 255
lands. The sufferings of these peoples are very
great, and if it could be shown that the compas
sion of Jesus is deeper far than that of Buddha,
diviner far, efficacious also over mind and body,
the channel of a redeeming grace, the pathway
and agent of an endless hope, perhaps these
vast inert populations would more willingly open
their hearts to the power of the Christian gospel.
First there comes to the cold earth, locked under
the stern hand of winter, the warm spring rain ;
the heavens pour this living tide into the ground
until it is filled with it, softened, made aware of
a new visitation. Then comes the sunshine, and
then new fife and hope everywhere. So it is with
these suffering continents. Present first of all the
compassionate Christ. Flood the being of these
peoples with the heavenly sympathy of the Lord.
Let it rain down upon them until they know
that a divine power has entered into their ex
istence. Then throw upon them the glowing
illumination of Christian truth. Perhaps in this
way the wilderness and the solitary place might
rejoice, and the desert blossom as the rose.
Perhaps in this way compassion might be the
channel of a hope that would stir to effort these
stagnant races and create in them a desire to live
forever, that forever they might climb into the
blessedness and the strength of good men.
Pity in the form of sympathy is indeed the

256 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
only path to a multitude of hearts among our
selves. Thousands are so concerned and ab
sorbed with their sufferings that they see no
thing and hear nothing that does not first of all
ring into their thoughts the notes of sympathy.
They live as it were within the sound of the
church bell, but the bell is unheard, or heard
only as a disturber of the peace, till it becomes a
chime of bells and plays some soft melody laden
with the memories of other years, or some refrain
of sorrow that pours upon the. air the burden
in their own sad souls. The voice that arrests
attention, that gains a hearing, that finally
opens the sealed receptivities of the soul, is, in
a multitude of cases, the voice of compassion.
So Jesus moved among men. His nature en
folded the existence of children and mothers,
of publicans and sinners, of rich and poor, of
suffering men and women everywhere, and they
felt that in his presence they were understood
and their burden of sorrow justly measured and
weighed. What Jesus was in this aspect of his
character we are too gross to dream. We try to
figure that mighty, self-oblivious soul, with its
divine outward look, everywhere scanning the
faces of the men and women whom he met, read
ing the great secrets of their hearts, and pouring
in unbidden the tides of a benign sympathy, en
folding all in the heavenly comfort of a sublime

WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 257
compassion ; but in our best endeavor we fail of
any adequate image of what must have been the
heavenly grace of his approach to men.
If we look into the Gospels, we see at once
how very few came to Jesus because of a hunger
for goodness, and how many because of the cry
of the heart for sympathy. The Syrophcenician
mother and the centurion came, as others did,
for their children. Something in their human
existence was inexpressibly precious ; something
had gone wrong at the heart of this joyous
possession. Something there was in Jesus that
drew such people toward him. He might or he
might not be able to help them ; of one thing
they were sure, they would be encircled in his
sympathy. Perhaps, in a way, this was the at
tractive power of Jesus over his disciples. We
are not sure that any one of the twelve Apostles
was drawn to Jesus by the great and baffled
passion for righteousness. Paul is the only Apos
tle, so far as we know, whose first interest in
Jesus was an exalted moral interest. The other
men who became the disciples and apostles of
Jesus came to him because of his illuminating
and comforting sympathy. They found in him
other things,' and they developed for him other
interests. But this was the aboriginal interest.
Rabbi, where dwellest thou? Come and see.
The lesser and feebler natures came that they

258 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
might stand in the comfort and hope of the
greater. Nicodemus was of this order. He was
torn with perplexity and unrest. He could not
understand himself. He was not moved by any
decided desire for personal goodness. He came
that he might be understood, he came for the
illumination and peace of a great compassion.
And so it was all through the ministry of Jesus.
He had an inexhaustible fund of noble sympa
thy. Men and women sought it in their dis
tress, as one might seek perpetual summer.
Christ's mood of compassion toward man is still
mighty. In this world there are so many hard
attitudes toward life. There is brutal indifference.
How many among rich and poor alike, how many
among resourceful natures of all classes, are bru
tally indifferent toward the fate of their fellow
men ! Like the priest and the Levite, they pass
by on the other side. Suffering is a thing to be
shunned and forgotten. There is the cynical
attitude. Here there is interest, but it is that
of the mocker under the cross. Ha, thou that
destroyest the temple and in three days buildest
it again ! There is the mood of blind criticism.
It is not brutal, it is not cynical, it is simply
blind. He saved others, himself he could not
save. There is the attitude of moral justice.
Its maxim is: Whatsoever a man soweth, that
shall he also reap. It is just, but oh, how severe !

WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 259
Men seldom start on equal terms with the moral
order. There is nearly always a handicap some
where. And the justice that notes all this rises
into compassion. This higher justice was the
habitual mood of Jesus. He saw the tragedy in
which all human life is caught. The ideal asks
for perfection ; the soul is made for perfection,
but the soul is in alliance with a body of death.
This confusion of higher and lower in man, of
the will to follow the best and the impulse of the
animal, the strength and the weakness that make
up this great and pathetic humanity of ours,
Jesus completely understood. He saw it all, and
the sea of troubles that rose through it, and he
was filled with compassion. The help that man
needs is the help of the compassionate teacher
who can wait and work for the far distant end.
This is the sublime compassion of Jesus, and
all who love it follow that love till it brings
them to him. What is there in any other way
of regarding the world at all comparable to this ?
Is not this the way to think of our fellow men?
Do we not occasionally pray that into this high
and pure spirit we may be lifted ? And when
we are, for a moment, thus minded, is there any
being in all history who appeals to us, and who
draws us toward him, as Christ does ? Is he not
like music ? I recall the effect of a German band
upon the life in one of our great thoroughfares.

260 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
It struck up the simple refrain, " There 's a land
that is fairer than day, and by faith we can
see it afar." Every person, every wagon, every
car, every moving object stood still, all windows
were opened, and silent, eager faces crowded
them ; the business of the street for a few great
moments was absolutely suspended. There was
something in that music that arrested, that
found, that comforted every man. One might
have spoken to those souls, or sung to them, or
gotten up a show for them, but the multitude
would have paid little heed to it. It was that
strain of music that hushed all hearts into peace.
Something like this is the effect upon the world
of the compassion of Jesus. It is so unearthly,
and yet it is what the world needs. It is so
unlike the strife and cruelty among men, and
yet it finds in man the greater man that cries
out for it. It opens the depths in the human
soul, and calls out hidden capacities and long
ings. It wields upon men the power of great
music. Here is something which, for a brief
space at least, men cannot resist. Here is a
spirit that compels the world to stand still, and
that wins to itself every seeker after a higher
justice in the world.
4. Some are led to the Master by the vision
of that which I think is highest in his character,
— his magnanimity. When the world is wiser,

WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 261
when it learns to value things in wisdom, it will
be profoundly affected by the magnanimity of
Jesus. At present this aspect of his character
is too high ; it is like the far-soaring summit of
some great mountain. It is seldom seen. It is
lost in cloud and storm. Our human atmosphere
breeds these clouds and tempests, and therefore
what is loftiest is seldomest beheld. A better day
will surely come, a serener air, when the highest
in Jesus can stand over men in all the power of
its sublime beauty. Offer to feed the poor, and
your tables will be crowded; offer to entertain
the rich, and your feast of wit will gather a mul
titude ; offer to teach men the way of wisdom,
and the number will diminish ; offer to men a
great opportunity for goodness, and fewer still
will come ; offer the highest, the magnanimity of
Christ, and men will say, with Peter, " I under
stand not what thou sayest." This is the pathos
of the world. The highest is not so dear to man
as the lowest ; the highest is not so sweet to good
men as the lower. Many will read a worthless
romance and never open Shakespeare or Milton.
Many will read the Sunday newspaper and never
look at the great words of psalmist, prophet, and
apostle. Strait is the gate and narrow is the
way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that
find it. But to those few, how exhilarating, how
divine, is that narrow way !

262 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
The magnanimity of Christ is higher than his
pity. The power to deal justly with men is
great, the power to pity men who deal unjustly
is greater ; the power to regard them with no
bitterness when one is the victim of their injus
tice is the greatest. Jesus always dealt justly
by men. His fairness is one great power in his
character. He looked upon men and women in
their wickedness with profound compassion. He
was able, when he received no justice, when he
received instead injustice and outrage, humilia
tion and contempt of the last and worst degree,
to rise above it all, to regard the world without
bitterness, to carry it in its blindness to God in
his prayer. In the tragedy of life we all stand.
Some men deserve much good, and they get more
than they deserve. This they know, and this is
their cross. Some men deserve much good, and
get less than they deserve, and this is their bit
terness. Some men when they are good are
treated as if they were bad. They belong among
the honorable servants of mankind ; they are
placed among the malign forces. One there was
who deserved the best and who received the
worst, who was the supreme servant of the race,
and who was crucified between two thieves. Here
in this tragic world we all live. Somewhere
our bitterness lies. Are we less deserving than
the world thinks? Are we more guilty than the

WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 263
world knows ? Are we worthier than it believes?
Are we wrongly placed ? How under these con
ditions do we behave ? Here is the sovereign
test of man, here is the sovereign test of man's
world. Oh, the tragedy in which we all are in
volved! Oh, the pain to good men of overesti-
mation, of underestimation, of mistaken estima
tion, of infamous estimation! In this tragedy
Jesus fived his life. He is bone of our bone and
flesh of our flesh. He is with us in the great
waters, and they smite him as they do us. He
is with us in the fiery furnace, and it consumes
him as it consumes us. But in this tragedy we
behold in him what we long to see in our
selves, and cannot see because it is not there.
We behold in him the sense of justice outraged
by the treatment which he received, and yet with
out bitterness, without losing his high regard for
men, without uttering one unseemly word, with
out giving expression to one thought or feeling
lower than the highest. We see in Jesus one who,
when he has done the best that man can do for
his brother, and receives as w.ages the worst, is
able to look down upon those that put him to
death and say, " Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do ! " This is the highest
in Jesus; when we love magnanimity, as one
day men will, that love will guide to the Lord.
5. More general than the guiding ideals men-

264 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
tioned are the ideals of life's fulfillment and
life's worth. Men who are conscious of a soul,
of a great and happy range of powers, who are
aware that in the humanity that they bear they
have the secret of a wonderful existence, who
come to look upon themselves as they regard
some rare musical instrument, usually ponder
the paths of their feet. They seek knowledge,
insight, skill ; they seek teachers, exemplars, wise
and inspiring leaders. The desire for fife's ful
fillment gives them a wide and vigilant outlook.
They look for help as the eagle does for prey.
They fly high, circle wide, and with keen vision
see from afar. When any light traveling the
way of Christ meets their sight, they follow it.
They seek the rest of the heart in the highest,
and every path and every guide bring them on
their way to the Lord. The Ethiopian whom
Philip met in the desert south of Jerusalem is
an example of the whole class. He was a seeker
after life's fulfillment. He found in Philip a
shining guide, and he followed this guide to the
heart of Christ.
The ideal of life's worth is of still more gen
eral power. Where there is love there is the
sense of the worth of existence. It is impossible
for human beings to be members of happy homes,
without the consciousness of life's worth. Fathers
and mothers would like to believe that the chil-

WISE MEN AND' THEIR IDEALS 265
dren who are so fair and dear to them are fair
and dear to the Eternal. Every fortunate son
and daughter would like to believe that God
estimates even more highly than they do the
noble father, the beloved mother, who has passed
out of this world. Find anywhere a lover, and
you find one who would gladly believe that his
beloved is the beloved of God. And when the
heart is great, when it is burdened with more
and more of the precious things of love, it
instinctively looks about it for support. It can
not bear the burden of its own love, unless God
is with it. Who can bring it to God ? Who can
give it the best insight into the character of the
Infinite ? Whoever can in any measure meet that
demand becomes to that soul a guiding star, and
that guiding star leads naturally to the Lord,
who gives the vision of the God without whom
not a sparrow falleth to the ground, who num
bers even the hairs of our head, to whom men
are joined in the deathless bond of Fatherhood
and childhood. To that protection for the lov
ing heart men of love come at last.
Here we see plainly why some men move
toward Christ with the profoundest interest, and
why others turn away from him. Men turn away
from him because they desire none of the things
that he has to give. They are not wise men.
They do not desire wisdom. Some one asked Dr.

266 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
Mayhew why it was that the Song of Solomon
was in the Bible and that the Wisdom of Solomon
was left out. His answer was that as a general
thing people are fonder of songs than they are
of wisdom. Men without wisdom behold no
shining ideals, and without ideals men do not
search for the Highest. The hardest thing that
the best physician has to do is to create an appe
tite where there is none. Feats in surgery, in
wise prescription for the elimination of the
poison of disease, are as nothing compared with
the task of creating appetite in a desireless and
impotent organism. Yet without some degree
of eager receptivity, all the food in the world is
worthless. The hardest task of the man of God
to-day is to create the taste for divine things, to
awaken an interest in them, and a longing for
them. Teaching those who desire to know, com
forting those whose hearts are open to comfort,
supplying with thought and inspiration these
noble men and women under the stress of exist
ence, is easy, is indeed nothing, to the task of
getting men without interest in the things of the
spirit to care for them. It is like raising the
dead. We do not expect the dead to wait upon
the Lord in these earthly courts ; and we can
hardly expect those whose inward fire has sunk
to a mere smoking cinder to flame with passion
for things divine. The widest and most tragic

WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 267
contrast among men is not between the rich and
the poor, the joyous and the sorrowful, those in
outward comfort and those in outward misery,
but between the soul that sings, " My heart and
my flesh cry out after the living God," and ' the
soul that sighs, " My heart and my flesh are as
dust and ashes within me when I think of God."
Son of man, can these dry bones live ? O Lord,
thou knowest ! What can make them live but
the breath of the Eternal? What but the breath
of the Holy Spirit can rekindle the dying flame
of high desire ?
That serious and aspiring men should move
into an ever deeper appreciation of Jesus, is of all
things the most natural. The force of gravity
pulls irresistibly the smaller body to the greater,
and where souls are kindred, the weaker moves
toward the stronger by a similar inevitableness.
If a man is deeply concerned about the quality of
his existence, if moral excellence fascinates him,
if the greater ideals of human goodness greet him
from afar, if his soul discovers in merely animal
pleasure a circle of death, if the hunger and thirst
of his being rise into a hunger and thirst after
righteousness, and if he is eager for illuminations
and inspirations in his quest for moral peace, he
is almost sure to end his quest in the school of
Christ. So it is with the seeker after wisdom in
all her forms. Such a soul is like the iron that

268 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
cannot resist the magnet. In the sphere of Christ
the devout lover of wisdom is irresistibly drawn
to Christ. His aim is one with that of Christ, his
moral being is one with that of Christ, and he is
but going to his own better self when he is going
to Christ. He is seeking the highest manhood,
and how can he help moving toward Christ ? Can
one seek light, and not desire the full day ? Can
one love the highest human goodness and not love
Christ ? You see in your child the sense of beauty.
You watch your child under the charm of the
beautiful things in your home, and in the nature
that lies round your home. You take your child
to some of the great sights of the world. You
travel through the natural wonders of our own
land, you stand before some masterpiece in paint
ing, you hear great music in the land of the great
composers. You know in advance what the effect
will be upon your child. The love of beauty is
there, and when beauty comes in surpassing form,
the love rises to greet it. So it is in the sphere
of the spirit. When we see men who are lovers
of goodness, we are sure that when they behold
him they will become lovers of Christ. The mood
is there which impels towards the highest, and
when the Highest appears they cleave to him as
the goal of desire. " Your father Abraham re
joiced bo see my day; and he saw it, and was
glad." He saw the heavenly ideal, and he looked

WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 269
forward to the day when in some great human
soul it would find complete embodiment. What
is the Messianic hope of Israel but the star that
wise men beheld in the east? As all the stars
travel toward the zenith, so all goodness leads
up toward the supreme Christ.
I must remind you again of the profound par
able in the words of the text. Wise men saw the
star ; only the wise see these shining and mov
ing ideals that are the assurance of all progress
and all peace. Wise men saw the star in the east,
in the place where they lived. In the region
where they live and labor and suffer it is still
true that wise men see everlasting lights. They
do not need to travel far to see them; in the
heart of life's toil and weariness they need only
to look up and behold them overhead in serene,
prophetic brightness. A mother in sorrow for her
child, the sorrow that is the great obverse of her
love, a father longing for a deeper and tenderer
heart, young men and women in the world's work,
close to the world's uncleanness, praying for a
strong and an uncontaminated humanity, the
anxious by the bed of pain, the bereaved by the
open grave, and the lonely heart under the awful
burden of its solitude, have but to pause, look
up, and behold the heavenly ideal that guides
the feet of the faithful to the light that never
was on sea or land, and into the peace that

270 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
passeth all understanding. In the east, where you
are, as you are, and in the heart of your toil and
pain, look up, and behold that serene and beckon
ing star. It is the great tie between us and the
Highest. Jesus is not foreign to us. He is each
soul at its best, each soul as God meant it should
be. He is our ideal realized, and when we follow
that ideal, we come at length to him. Our ideals
are the moving lights that connect our poor,
isolated souls with the life in Christ, with the
life in God. We live in the east, but our ideals
travel until they stand over the cradle, over the
manhood of Christ ; and when we follow them,
we move away from our isolation into the great
ness of the life in God. We have come again
to this great Christmas season. Oh, that we
might be wise ! Oh, that we might see in the
east some heavenly and moving illumination !
Oh, that we might follow it across all wild and
sorrowful places, through all lonely valleys, over
all weary plains and looming mountains, till life
is blessed in the vision of God in Christ !

XV
THE FINAL THEODICY
" And he hath said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee : for my
power is made perfect in weakness." 2 Cor. xii,'9.
When we first begin to consider it, the order
of this world is not at all to our minds. If we
ever come to think well of it, if we ever come to
like it, without exception it is through a great
reconciliation. We pass from disapproval to
quiet acceptance through a profounder insight, a
nobler wisdom, a loftier experience, a vaster and
surer hope. At the first, the order of this world
is for all honest and serious persons a supreme
disappointment. Without audacity, without hypocrisy, in all
sad sincerity, we declare that if we had made
this world, we should have made it differently.
If we had made this world, we should have put
no winter in our sky, no storms on our seas, no
volcanoes in our islands and continents, no reign
of death over the empire of life. If we had made
the human race, we should have put into it no
physical defect, no mental eccentricity, no bias of
will toward evil. If we had made this world, we

272 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
should not have wrapped it in impenetrable
and appalling mystery.
Our disappointment here is deep and sad. It
is more. It takes the form of revolt. We have
seen a child — beautiful and gifted — on some
radiant morning looking out upon the world in
perfect admiration and joy. We have seen the
change pass over the countenance of that child as
it comes to realize, for the first time, the cruelty,
the suffering, and the death that reign in that
fair world ; still more, as it comes to know man's
inhumanity to man, the child's joy is turned to
grief, its admiration is changed to horror. For
the moment, sympathy with nature and man
kind is changed into fierce hatred and revolt.
At the beginning we are equally disappointed
with our Master Jesus Christ. His programme
is not our programme for ourselves. He does
not at first fulfill our expectations. He does not
keep his promises as we understand them. He
does not remove our diseases nor heal our sick
nesses. Only fanatics believe that ; and for men
who value sure thinking, fanaticism is too great a
price to pay for peace. He does not remove our
weaknesses all at once. He does not lift the fixed
boundaries of existence, or change the order in
which we live. He does not transport us to the
Paradise in which there is no forbidden tree, in
which there is no serpent, no possibility of fatal

THE FINAL THEODICY 273
deceit, and no fall from honor. This is not our
Master's method with us. He leaves us where he
found us, in the world of toil, misunderstanding,
contradiction, sorrow, and death. He leaves us
here, and he works upon us slowly. Slowly along
the avenues of thought, along the paths of feel
ing, by the power of his spirit upon our spirit,
slowly he works upon us, almost imperceptibly.
¦ Sickness is still sickness, temptation is still
temptation, the severity of the world is the same
relentless thing, loss is still loss, the passing of
youth is the immemorial fact, unchanged, the
coming of age with its infirmity, with its inca
pacity, and, most melancholy of all, with its all too
frequent breakdown and wreck, is the old, unal
tered, hateful, mocking face of fate. What ad
vantage hath the wise over the fool ? What gain
is there in Christian discipleship ? What does
Christ do for those who love him ? It is clear
that he does not change their world or their fate ;
nor does he change them at a stroke.
Here come in the great endeavors of high minds
to justify the ways of God to man. One of the
noblest of all Plato's discussions is that in which
he meets the original bewilderment of the young
mind as it surveys the world. Great and beau
tiful is his showing of the interior strength
and peace of the righteous soul. He had laid to
heart the great utterance of his dying Master :

274 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
No evil can happen to a good man, whether he
be alive or dead. Wide and daring is the reach
of thought of Leibnitz in the same great service.
Milton's motive in " Paradise Lost " and " Para
dise Regained " has its elevation here, and at the
same time its closeness to human need. We
must recall his solemn invocation : —
" And chiefly thou, O spirit that dost prefer"
Before all temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know'st, . . . what in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,
And justify the way of God to men."
Milton is thinking not primarily of the fall of
Adam, but of the fall of Cromwell's Common
wealth, the wreck therein of English freedom,
and the great contradiction of God that rises out
of the depths of this disaster. Milton was driven
back upon the universal disappointment of man
in God's world by his own bitter disappointment
as a freeman. In this way we all live. The per
sonal sorrow sends us to raise questions in the
heart of the human and ageless sorrow. We must
seek peace to-day with this stern order through
finding fight. We go with Paul in his quest;
we join "him in his discovery ; we seek to rest in
the great vindication, the great theodicy in which
he rested.

THE FINAL THEODICY 275
There comes a time when noble and candid
men are willing to confess that perhaps God
knew better than they how to make the world.
There comes a time when serious disciples of
Jesus Christ are willing to admit that perhaps
their Master knows his work better than they.
Paul had come to this mood. He had been tor
mented with some strange experience. There
was a thorn in his flesh; it was cutting and
tearing there every moment. It was a messenger
of Satan sent to buffet him. That this thorn
might be removed, Paul threw his whole soul
into prayer. It was an intense, a passionate, and
persistent cry to God for relief from terrible
pain. It was a cry for a changed environment.
It represents the great burden of the world's
prayer in all ages. Ninety-nine out of every
hundred prayers that have been offered since the
morning of time have had reference to environ
ment. We pray to be delivered from pinching
poverty, from uncongenial tasks, from the pre
sence of people who are unfriendly and unsym
pathetic. We pray that failure may be averted,
that sickness may not come near our beloved,
that the shadow of death may be turned back.
We pray for a heavenly environment, for a lot
in life accordant with our dreams of good, for a
Paradise without a forbidden tree and without
a serpent. These are the burden of the world's

276 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
prayers ; and these are the prayers to which the
great denial comes. Tennyson puts the case with
truth and pathos : —
" O mother, praying God will save
Thy sailor, — while thy head is bow'd,
His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud
Drops in his vast and wandering grave."
To our first reflections, there is something appall
ing in the absolute negative which God returns
to most of the prayers that are offered to Him by
mortal men.
Paul's prayer was not granted, but something
better came than that for which he prayed, —
enduring strength, victorious manhood, the joy of
the Lord, the sense of a triumphant God working
in the very heart of his human weaknesses and
sufferings. Thus it was that the world as God
made it became for Paul the best of all possible
worlds. Here Paul came upon the great vindica
tion of God's ways to men, the final theodicy.
Upon this discovery several remarks must be made.
1. This world, as it stands, as God made it, is
man's supreme opportunity. It is his opportu
nity for what ? For heroism, for the highest type
of manhood. One thing is clear, absolutely clear,
that this world was not made for cowards. For
them and for all their kin it is the worst possible
world. It calls for endurance, self-denial, devo
tion, magnanimity, brave service with no stipula-

THE FINAL THEODICY 277
tion about wages. It runs counter, in its great
tragic currents, to the entire egoism of man.
From the egoistic position it appears a shocking
world. On the other hand, this world as it stands is
the best possible world for all who would be daunt
less, chivalrous, of a temper fine and high. The
bird that flies in the storm and prevails, the ship
that sails in the tempest and outlives it, the hard-
pressed toiler who can yet make both ends meet,
the business man consumed by anxiety who is
yet able to control his business and make it a
success, the person who is up to the neck in temp
tation who still keeps his head above the flood,
the individual who has laid in the hungry earth
his beloved and whose great cry is " The Lord
gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be
the name of the Lord," is surely a conqueror and
possessed of a conqueror's joy.
In your Paradise for cowards you find no pa
triarch walking with God, no great idealist going
out " not knowing whither he went," trusting in
the Infinite, none enduring as seeing Him who
is invisible. In your Paradise for cowards there
is no Hebrew psalm, no epic of Job, no oracle
of prophet, no sweet Bethlehem, no Gethsemane,
no Calvary, no Mount of Ascension. In the hate
ful world where everything makes for luxury,
idleness, effeminacy, you have no heroes, no mar-

278 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
tyrs, no reformers. In such a world there can be
no such figure as the Greek Antigone, pure, vic
torious in the arms of death, a vision of strength
and glory forever. If we had made this world,
we should have made tragedy impossible ; and in
so doing we should have made the human race
poor indeed. For the tragedy of the world is the
garden of the Lord. In that awful movement of
cross-currents between ideals and experiences,
dear hopes and blank negations, to which we give
the name of tragedy, the supreme achievements
and possessions of man are found, — strength,
love, dauntless courage, inward victory, and the
sense that below the waves and billows that have
gone over us is the tide that will carry us, alive
or dead, to our own shore. The world as it is has
brought to men and women the vision of home.
The world as it is has somehow permitted love
and its sacrament. The world as it is has wrung
from the human heart the great psalms. It has
brought from the human mind its great light.
It has somehow given us great character. The
world as it is has given us Jesus Christ and all
his worthful followers.
2. This world as it is, is God's opportunity.
When Paul began life, he had many things in
him that he needed taken out of him. He was a
proud man. His joy in existence consisted largely
in his sense of superiority to other men. That

THE FINAL THEODICY 279
is a tremendous weakness. It means isolation
from much of the best life of the race ; it means,
therefore, sore limitation, inevitable impoverish
ment, incapacity for certain great experiences,
and along all true lines diminished capacity for
growth. Pride is, at the same time, a stain upon
the best character, like an ink spot on a piece of
tapestry, like a poison working in a strong and
otherwise sound body, like a hidden falsehood
corrupting the integrity of an honest intellect.
This was one of Paul's weaknesses; it shut
him in from the great life of humanity, it gave
him a mean delight.
In this world as it is God took Paul, and so
wrought upon him that his chief joy was found
in the common possession of Christian men, —
in his intelligence directed upon God with devout
and grateful homage, in his heart open to the
empire of Christ and invoking his presence, in
his life given in service to the kingdom of God.
Paul came to have his chief joy in the God who is
the Father of all, in the Christ who is the Saviour
of all, in the kingdom that ruleth over all.
Was not that a great thing to do for Paul ?
Was the world not a good world in which so
great a thing was done? Was not the proud
man in his proud isolation God's opportunity?
Did not the stern order of things serve God as
a field for the accomplishment of his great work ?

280 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
He found the proud man upon his poor perch,
not fit for an owl, and he brought him down to
the sense of equality with the humblest of his
kind. For, after all, the best gift is humanity,
and every human being shares in that. You recall
Browning's great words in " Paracelsus." The
proud man has come at last to his strength : —
" I want to be forgotten even by God.
But if that cannot be, dear Festus, lay me,
When I shall die, within some narrow grave,
Not by itself — for that would be too proud —
But where such graves are thickest ; let it look
Nowise distinguished from the hillocks round,
So that the peasant at his brother's bed
May tread upon my own and know it not ;
And we shall all be equal at the last."
Another weakness of Paul, akin to that de
scribed, was his abnormal sense of tribal and
sectarian distinction. Was he not a Pharisee of
the Pharisees ? Was he not of the tribe of Ben
jamin ? Was he not a Hebrew of the Hebrews ?
And did any man ever wrap his garments about
him in the sense of exclusive privilege with
more joy than he? In this mood, living in this
world, God found Paul. Hear him speak when
he had been delivered from this weakness. " How-
beit what things were gain to me, these have I
counted loss for Christ. Yea verily, and I count
all things to be loss for the excellency of the
knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord : for whom

THE FINAL THEODICY 281
I suffered the loss of all things, and do count
them but refuse, that I may gain Christ : . . . that
I may know him, and the power of his resurrec
tion, and the fellowship of his sufferings." This
man has entered the highest life of his kind.
He has surrendered exclusiveness for community
in the sorrow, service, and hope of a redeemed
race. He has abandoned aristocracy under law
for democracy under the spirit of God. In this
world God has turned this Jewish aristocrat into
the supreme democrat of his age ; so that now
he goes everywhere, to Jews, Greeks, Romans,
barbarians, bond, and free, as the debtor of all,
struggling through monumental services to dis
charge this debt to. the race through fellowship
with whom God has given him a supreme life.
Who would not live in this world for this end?
Who would not suffer that he might become,
like Paul, the broad-breasted, high-souled, daunt
less servant of man ? And who that has become
a free communicant through service in the best
life of the race would not find in this experience
a witness for the divine order of the world ?
Paul was naturally an irritable man. Almost
all persons worth anything are troubled with this
form' of weakness. It is the defect of their virtue.
They are sensitive, full of zeal, full of insight
and power. The tendency to impatience and
irritability goes with these high qualities. Irri-

282 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
tability is simply unusual capacity to stimulation,
to inspiration. The men who feel quickly and
profoundly the appeals from the wise feel quickly
and deeply the appeals from the foolish. A dis
cord is a disaster to a Beethoven, because to him
a harmony is a kind of heaven. The great, keen,
intense, responsive soul has unusual privileges
among the wise and unusual miseries among the
foolish. There is little credit to an oyster for its
calm ; but there is a great deal of credit to a
high-strung man or woman in the exercise of
benign self-control.
There is one incident in Paul's life that shows
his temper. He was called before the High
Priest to answer for his behavior. The High
Priest stood to Jewish society very much as the
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United
States stands to our citizens. The High Priest
said something that was morally wrong ; he com
manded some one to smite Paul for what he had
been saying. This outrageous command ignited
a powder magazine in Paul's manhood. He
shouted to the High Priest : " God shall smite
thee, thou whited wall ! " Imagine a citizen
using that style of address to the Chief Justice.
Paul apologized and withdrew the offensive re
mark; nevertheless, the remark is illuminating,
as it shows the capacity in him for sudden and
terrible rage. And here was God's opportunity.

THE FINAL THEODICY 283
Before life was done, under the divine discipline
Paul had become one of the most patient, one of
the most magnanimous, one of the most com
pletely self-controlled men that ever trod the
earth. Are these things not worth considering?
Just as this world is the hero's chance to show
himself a hero, so this world is God's chance to
show his power in the redeemed manhood in it.
Think well of the world that gives this chance
both to man and to God.
Two contrasted conceptions of the highest
human character appear in the ancient world.
To the highest Greek thought the best human
life was the self-sufficient. It is a noble con
ception with many elements of truth in it. It
fails of completeness because it isolates man from
the sympathetic heart of the universe, from the
store of strength that exists for man in the In
finite soul. The self-sufficient life is unattainable ;
its ideal carries with it something of pride and
disdain, and it does not reckon with the weak
ness of mortal existence. A few rare souls, be
cause of fortunate instinctive receptivities toward
the Eternal helper of men, may climb high in
the composure of self-sufficient manhood. Alas !
for the vast majority, if man must be his own
maker, if there be no One mightier than he
working with him and in him. Indeed, there is
no such thing as self-sufficiency. While we live,

284 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
we nourish the body out of the infinite ; when we
live our best, we nourish the heart out of home,
friendship, history, humanity ; we live in God.
The gospel has nothing to say of self-suffi
ciency. Jesus says, " I can of my own self do
nothing." Paul says, " Our sufficiency is of
God." For the self-sufficient life of Greek
thought we have the God-sufficient life of the
gospel. In God we live and move and have our
being. God is our refuge and strength. There
is no hope for man but in God. " The eternal
God is thy refuge, and underneath are the ever
lasting arms." This is the ideal that answers to
human need. The weakness, the pain, the limita
tion, the thorn in the flesh is here ; here it re
mains, destroying all hope of self-sufficiency, but
making ready the soul for God's sufficiency.
We shall attain the self-sufficient life when we
can put our hand upon the hilt of Orion's sword ;
every morning we may awake in the conscious
ness of the sufficient grace of God.
Here is our difficulty. The world as it is,
without God, is too much for us. We take our
opportunity and we forget to give God his oppor
tunity. You have seen a cloud in the shadow
toward evening, cold, dark, unsightly, and you
have seen that same cloud float into the path of
the setting sun. You beheld it then no longer
cold and dark, but all fair, all dyed, all glorified

THE FINAL THEODICY 285
in the blazing west. That cloud in the shadow
is man without God. That cloud all light, all
fire, all splendor in the path of the setting sun is
man's humanity in the path of God, shot through
with his love, purified and transfigured by his
glorious Presence. For those who live in God
the vain aspiration of Faust becomes experi
ence and hope. Watching the setting sun Faust
sings : — " But still doth he survive,
Still speeds he on with life-diffusing beam —
Oh ! that no wing uplifts me from the ground
Nearer and nearer after him to strive!
Then should I the reposing world behold
Still in this everlasting evening glow.
In vain the rugged mountain rears his breast
With darkening cliff and cave to bar my way,
Onward in heaven still onward is my flight, —
Before me day — behind me is the night."

XVI
THE UPPER ROOM
" And when they were come in, they went up into the upper room,
where they were abiding." Acts i, 13.
What are some of the human sources of wisdom
and peace ? That may seem to be a vain question
to those who seek for the great answer to the needs
of man's spirit outside the sphere of man's being.
It is not vain to those who connect the best in
man with the deepest in God. The horn of the
old Norse god could not be emptied because the
lower end of it rested in the sea ; whoever tried
to empty that horn tried to drain the inexhaust
ible sea. Man's soul is like that horn. In de
tachment it is weak, in isolation it is nothing.
In its normal life it rests in God. It is great be
cause it rests in Him. God stands in an eternal
flood tide in the instincts, capacities, and experi
ences of prophetic souls. When we sound them
for wisdom, inspiration, and peace, we find that
we are sounding in God. When we seek a God
beyond humanity, we are pursuing an illusion, we
are chasing a shadow ; when we turn to God in
humanity, we find the Eternal help at our door.

THE UPPER ROOM 287
The upper room stands at the heart of the
New Testament. It is touched with an abiding
and an inexpressible sanctity. It is involved with
the highest thoughts,, the loftiest feelings, the
most exalted fellowships, and the divinest hopes.
It is the sanctuary of the world's greatest faith ;
it is the centre of the world's profoundest sor
row and hope. It is only a symbol, but it is a
symbol for the whole range of what is highest
and best in faith and in life.
The upper room is first of all associated with
Christ. There with his disciples he for the last
time kept the Passover and turned that feast
into the Lord's Supper. It is the sign of the sub
limity of his teaching and spirit. There is the
association of which the text speaks, the associ
ation between the upper room and the disciples.
It is the token of the exaltation of purpose, expe
rience, service, and fellowship to which they had
been lifted. To these two, which in a sense cover
everything, a third must be added. There was
the upper room in which Dorcas, that dear friend
• of the poor, was laid after death, in which she was
restored to life. It is the emblem of the world to
which we raise the beloved and venerated dead,
in which they come back to us with living power.
1. The sublimity of Christ is the fundamental
and growing insight of all true readers of the
New Testament. Great is the thought of God

288 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
which the last and greatest of Greek philosophers
gave to the world. To have been able to sum up
the universe in a Divine Thinker for whom all
things exist, and who is infinitely above all things,
was a great achievement. And yet the thought
of God entertained by Greek philosophy at its
best is far below the conception of God found in
the prophets and psalmists of Israel. To have
conceived of God as the Righteous Ruler of the
world, inviting men into communion with his
life, and compassionating the weak and sinful
as a father pities his children, was a wondrous
advance upon all preceding forms of faith. Into
these old words Jesus put new worlds of meaning.
Think what Jesus meant by righteousness, by
pity, by fatherhood. Personality, love, compas
sion, the reign of righteousness, meant infinitely
more for Jesus than for all other teachers. He
often uses the words that they use, but his
thought, his transcendent vision, is his own. The
child uses the word love ; it is a beautiful word,
and carries a beautiful meaning upon its tongue.
The mother uses the same word, but does it not
stand for a vaster and holier world ? In 1856
there were boys in England who used the word
brave, and they put sincere passion into it; but
what comparison is there between their use of
the word and that of the men who made the
charge of the Light Brigade ? The Lord's Prayer

THE UPPER ROOM 289
on the lips of Carlyle, when a child by his mother's
side, in Ecclefechan, and the Lord's Prayer upon
the lips of the lonely old man awaiting death in
London fourscore years afterwards, are surely
infinitely different. The question is, after all,
one of meaning and not of words. Originality
does not lie in phraseology, but in insight. The
subjects of human thought were old even when
Christ came. His originality lies where all true
originality must ever lie, in the depth, the ade
quacy, the finality of the meaning which he put
into the old words. He took the old words about
God and the kingdom of God, about the soul
and sin and righteousness, about forgiveness
and service and life after death, and he filled
them with a new and heavenly content. It is
the same old table round which he gathers men,
but the bread is now the bread of heaven. It
is the same cup that he passes to his disciples,
but it is now running over with the water of
life. One man shows us a real, but poor, pic
ture of Niagara, and we are thankful for that.
Another with wondrous gift of speech describes
the stupendous thing : and we add this to the pic
ture and feel that we have gained much. Still
another takes us to see the cataract itself. That
is the supreme service. Greek philosophy is the
picture real but imperfect, Hebrew prophecy is
the inspired description, Jesus Christ is the im-

290 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
mediate, awestruck, and overwhelming vision of
God." But the sublimity of the teaching is less
impressive than the sublimity of the character
of Jesus. Thought is always easier than action,
and therefore the perfect will is higher than the
perfect vision. And no one can think of the
upper room without thinking of the exaltation
of the life that first conferred all its meaning
upon that place. The wonder of its beginning,
the one beautiful vision that we have of it in
boyhood, the silence of its youth about which we
can only dream, the last and greatest epoch in
human history introduced on the day that Christ
began his public ministry, the union in that
ministry of an unspeakable service to the bodies
and the minds and the souls of the multitudes
who followed him, the revelation which he made
at every step forward, not only of the glory of
his intelligence, but also of the heights of his
character, the revolution in faith, in ideals, in
obligations, and in conduct that he inaugurated,
the enmity that he encountered, the infamy to
which he was subjected, the suffering as the per
fect servant of God and man which he endured,
are the great chapters that tell of the sublimity
of the Founder of Christianity. The upper room
stands for the sublime teaching and, yet more,
for the sublime soul of Christ. Look upon him

THE UPPER ROOM 291
at that last supper, and behold in his face and
speech and spirit and manner the highest in
human history. The first thing in our thought
to-day is the sublimity of the Master who brings
us to God that he may bring us to ourselves.
The upper room tells first of all of the teaching
that is the perfection of the world's faith about
God and about man, and of the life that is
wholly from above.
2. The second great meaning of the upper
room is the inspiration of the disciples. They
doubtless thought, as they gathered there, of the
former gathering with their Master. The apos
tolic upper room took on depth and tenderness
from the upper room of Christ, to which it an
swered. The first stood for the solitary glory of
their Master; the second stood for the power of
that Master out of the unseen over their souls.
Inspiration, that is the first great meaning
of Pentecost. There came upon the Apostles
through their faith and their fellowship and
their prayer a flood of new power. New and
wondrous insights into the meaning of Christ's
mission came flocking in upon them like winged
messengers from heaven, new appreciations of
all that they had seen their Master do, of all
that they had heard him speak, of all that they
had beheld him endure. A whole world of
interpretation rose upon them through their

292 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
thought and their worship, an interpretation of
the career of Jesus Christ. And in closest
union with this new and wondrous insight was
intense and holy passion. The heavenly vision
had come to them, and the power to follow it
thrilled their whole existence. Out of this in
spiration, an inspiration that involved both a
heavenly vision and a heavenly passion, came
the entire service, character, and power of their
lives. The upper room was to the disciples the
sign of a new and permanent inspiration, an
inspiration that gradually changed all their
thoughts, that slowly shaped all their feelings,
that ultimately controlled their whole being and
hope. Have we no upper room? Did the first disci
ples alone possess this correspondence with the
Master? Are his inspirations spent? Is there
no place where we can gather, where we can
open our whole being to the Highest, where
through sincere penitence and honest prayer and
brotherly fellowship and devout and reverent
worship we may receive power from above ?
Surely we need this inspiration from on high.
All our instincts, all our feelings, all our powers,
and all our opportunities may be taken hold of
in either of two ways. We may run the higher
down into the lower, or we may lift and transfig
ure the lower by the higher. Are not the noblest

THE UPPER ROOM 293
among us the most deeply conscious that they
are not dealing honorably by their life ? How
painfully conscious the best parents are of the
fact that they have never yet risen to the upper
ranges of parenthood ! How profoundly true this
is of noble friends, noble lovers, noble business
men, noble citizens ! We are living in relation
ships in which God has placed us ; his purpose ap
pears to us in these relationships as a mountain
which we have never yet had strength to climb ;
and yet we know that until we do stand upon the
summit of this mountain of the Lord, we shall
never behold God's world as it is, we shall never
be able to rejoice before God as we should.
Here is our terrible peril. For want of inspi
ration, for want of courage and strength, we miss
the best in our life. We fail to rise, we sink.
We take low visions of our own nature, low views
of the order of relations in which men live, low
views of our privileges, our joys, our opportuni
ties and obligations. The highest and best use
of life eludes us, we take our entire existence by
the under side. Everywhere you see men missing
the rich and high possibifity. The capitafist lets
humanity slip from his mastership, the laborer
lets high-mindedness go from his service, the
friend loses disinterestedness from his friendship,
the lover allows honor and chivalry to fly from his
love, the father fails to keep the awe and the joy

294 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
with which God filled his heart when he made
him a father, the son drops from his sonhood the
high respect that made it great, the citizen has
consented to become conformed to the standard
of the self-seeking politician. There is the sad
story. The fall of Adam may be a myth; the
fall of his descendants is the deepest and saddest
thing in human experience. That old garden
story with which the Bible opens has an ever
lasting symbolic value. It tells the story of the
race through its story about the first man and
woman. The high possibility was allowed to
go ; life was not taken to the loftiest level. The
business of existence was permitted to drop, and
all its interests lost their character, their influ
ence, their power and joy. That is our life. We
are unequal to life's highest possibility. It is
capable of infinitely better things than we have
done with it. It has ranges of truth and honor
and love and joy that we have hardly seen, and
upon which we have never set our dominion.
Here is our need of inspiration, the inspira
tion of the Holy Ghost. Here is the significance
of our weekly gatherings in this place. We are
here in fellowship, we are here to give thanks,
to speak our inmost thought and want to the In
finite, to join in the worship that man may offer
to the Eternal Father. We come here under the
sense of the momentousness of living, sure that

THE UPPER ROOM 295
this is a great universe in the bosom of which we
are gathered, surmising at least that there is
a hidden dignity in our souls, and somewhere,
awaiting our discovery, a grandeur about our op
portunities. Under this burdening sense of the
greatness of life, with this confident guess about
the possible worth of existence, with the sublime
surmise that the universe may at any hour be
come for us a manifestation of Infinite Love, or
with the desperate hope that all things may prove
altogether better than our fears, we gather here.
We look for insight and for passion. We need
to see our path and to love it. The flood of light
and the flood of love ; for these we wait in this
upper room. And as of old, the sanctuary is
still one of the places where men are lifted above
their low views, their tormenting doubts, their
terrible fears, their unspoken blasphemies against
the Highest. There men still see the horror of
wickedness, and the truth and peace of a good life.
Insight and enthusiasm, — these are our needs.
Life must become great in the discovery that it
was made to be the servant of the righteous God.
The routine of our days, the dull task, the unro-
mantic duty, the prosaic fellowship, the whole
order of existence from which all novelty, or even
the hope of it, has long since fled, shines in won
drous light when with open eyes we look into the
h^art of God's law. Then there come together

296 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
two surprises, the surprise that what has been
given us to do is so great, and the surprise that
our hearts answer this call with fullness of power.
Think of some wondrous singer, a Jenny Lind,
singing the same piece over and over again till
through wearing repetition it has shrunken to a
petty thing, all at once, on some bright morning,
upon taking the first notes of the really great
song, as by a flash of light seeing into the heart
of its greatness. What happens? Instantly
the voice greatens to the greatness of the task.
The new insight awakens the new passion, and
calls forth the new power. Range after range of
voice reveals itself, new capacities rise up out of
the depths and sing out of the heights. The
inspired instrument runs up and down the scale
like angel feet upon the ladders that reach from
earth to heaven. The singer, lost in the sense of
the greatness of the song, is amazed at the com
pass, the character, the fire and power of her own
voice. She found God in the piece, and she is
overawed as she looks inward to find God in her
own power. That is the surprise of life. While
we wait in the upper room, while we wait in
prayer and fellowship, the great light comes.
The poor petty task looms up into unspeakable
greatness, and while we look on it in wonder and
delight, the great answer forms itself in our
hearts. As we take up the old song of existence

THE UPPER ROOM 297
in this new revelation of its transcendent mean
ing, the great inward surprise comes. New con
centrations of mind, new comprehensions issuing
in high and settled wisdom, new depths of love
and strength of purpose and power of execution,
amaze the soul. In finding God in our duty, we
discover God in the range and richness and
mastery of our own powers. In the upper room
we wait for the inspiration of the spirit of God.
3. And up into that sanctuary we should
carry our dead. The Dorcas story has a won
derful hint in it for all who stand in the great
succession of sorrow. In the upper room the
dead was laid, in the upper room the dead came
back to life. I believe that if we carry our dead
to the highest in our nature, they will assuredly
live again for us in ever richer power.
Where shall we lay our dead ? Shall we put
them as soon as we can in the dark chamber of
forgetfulness? Shall we lower them into the
dungeon of doubt ? Shall we retain them in the
room of regret and grief, that we may forever
cover them with our tears? Surely our noble
dead, they who have fought the good fight,
deserve something better at our hands. Let us
show our immortal honor for them by carrying
them to the highest within our souls, and there
in the uppermost room of peaceful faith in God,
in sweet reconciliation to his will, in devoutest

298 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
thankfulness and in dearest remembrance of the
good that they have done us, let us lay them
there. In highest honor and gratitude and hope,
let them forever rest. They deserve to rest there.
And while they seem dead, while the absent apos
tle tarries, and they look as if they had bidden
us an eternal farewell, they will still fill the
whole of that fife in whose highest venerations
they are laid with the peace of God.
" Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop,
Seek we sepulture
On a tall mountain, citied to the top,
Crowded with culture 1
Thither our path lies ; wind we up the heights :
Wait ye the warning ?
Our low life was the level's and the night's,
He 's for the morning.
Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,
'Ware the beholders;
This is our Master, famous, calm and dead,
Borne on our shoulders.
Here 's the top-peak, the multitude below
Live, for they can there :
This man decided not to live but know —
Bury this man there?
Here — here 's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
Lightnings are loosened,
Stars come and go ! Let joy break with the storm,
Peace let the dew send !
Leave him — still loftier than the world suspects,
Living and dying."

THE UPPER ROOM 299
But this is not the end. In a way so easily
and grossly caricatured the dead do return to
life. They come back in wisdom, in love, in all
high faith and deep feeling. They come back in
power. The dead fathers and mothers of the
world, through the pious and loving memory and
imagination of their children, still do much to
guide and bless the world. Any soul that one
has ever really known, any spirit from whom one
has really drawn wisdom and courage for the
struggle of life, cannot be taken away by death.
We miss the touch of a vanished hand, and the
sound of a voice that is still, but upon the heart
the hand is mightier, upon the soul the voice is
deeper. Nothing is more true, nothing is more
a part of the higher life of mankind, than this
increase of power after death of those who have
been revered and loved upon those who have
revered and loved them. Our Lord told his dis
ciples that it was expedient for them that he
should go away. They did not, they could not
believe it. But before they came to the end of
life, they felt the truth of his words. The unseen
Christ was the mightier Christ. The disciples
laid their Lord in their highest veneration, in
their most thankful love, and he returned to
them, and filled their lives with the tokens of
his power. This is the law of the kingdom
of God. We live out of the invisible. When we

300 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
are at our best, the unseen God, the unseen
Christ, the unseen dead whom we dearly love
and gratefully remember, are a part of our exist
ence. If power is the final test of reality, our
dead are most real, they are at our side in the
great spiritual communion in which we stand.
I have spoken as if there were three upper
rooms, that of the divine Christ, that of the
inspired disciple, that of heavenly sorrow and
resurrection. The three are really one. Christ
is in the first; that is plain. He is in the sec
ond, for the inspiration is from him. And he is
in the third, for in his name the dead Dorcas was
restored to life. He is in the third, for without
him, — his teaching, his personal triumph over
death, his power over the soul, his representative
value Godwara and manward, — sorrow cannot
be lifted to the eternal light and transfigured
there ; without him our dead cannot five again
for us. The three are one, and that one upper
room is a possibility in every life.
The upper room is indeed part of the consti
tution of our human nature. It is assumed as
real for man in the great appeal, " Seek the
things that are above." It is the great basal
assumption of all religion. It is indeed here
that Christianity is strongest. It reveals the
heights in man's soul, and it calls him up on to
the heights. It fills- him with two great convio-

THE UPPER ROOM 301
tions : first, that it is possible for him to become
a good man ; and, second, that he is able so to
govern the trials of his existence in this world as
to make them issue in strength and richness of
heart. Christianity is first revelation and second
deliverance. The revelation becomes deliverance.
The upper room is shown, and then begins its
endless appeal.
Christianity as revelation is to-day accepted
among all serious minds. It is the best account
that we have of man and man's interests. It
brings into view more of man and more of the
better man than any other teaching. As the
intellectual valuation of human existence, Chris
tianity is supreme and without a rival. Oar
best thinking in all spheres of the humanities
is but the new adaptation of the fundamental
ideas in the teaching of Jesus. In the face of
the entire revolution of opinion concerning the
Bible, wrought chiefly by historical criticism, it
is still true that Christianity as revelation, as
the final account of man and man's interests,
has won the serious judgment of the world.
Where is the deliverance? Where is the deliv
erance from the weakness of the will, from the
disease of the intellect, from the baseness of the
heart? We seem to have the vision, and still
we are without the power ! And we ask why it
is that the revelation which at once became

302 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
deliverance in the days of Jesus and his Apostles
with us remains revelation and nothing more.
We believe, we entertain the vision, and we are
still in our sins.
What is the source of this woe ? Insincerity,
that deadliest enemy of man, secret, subtle, per
vasive insincerity. Our Christianity lies outside
of us, like food on the table which we see, but
which we have not yet eaten. Our vision is of a
foreign substance ; we are playing at believing.
We build ourselves into compartments ; the in
tellect is one compartment, the heart is another,
the will yet another. We open the intellect to the
Christian vision ; occasionally we expose feeling
to the Christian appeal ; the will we protect
against the Christian law, we reserve it for the
selfish and base uses of life. Here is our trouble.
We let the light into the front room of our
dwelling ; we bar the door against its advance
upon the bed of the sleeper. Light opens closed
eyes ; light rushes through opened eyes in upon
the brain, rousing into action every organ in the
body, and setting the man upon his feet. Unless
it is checked, Christianity as vision becomes inev
itably Christianity as action. Unless we bar its
path, Christianity as light rushes through the
intellect, through the feelings, on into the will.
Unless we divert it, Christianity as faith issues
in Christianity as works. If we believe, and

THE UPPER ROOM 303
still are held in the gall of bitterness and in the
bond of iniquity, we may be sure that there is
in us some deadly insincerity. It is this that is
holding us down. It is this inward, subtle dis
honesty that is depriving us of the whole mighty
practical blessing of the gospel. Deliverance is
the last and greatest aspect of our faith, the
deliverance of them that are bound. Freedom
is the deepest cry of the human spirit, freedom
is the sovereign blessedness of the human soul.
" Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free," but there must be no compart
ments in the life of the knower, the tide of truth
from the Eternal must be allowed to sweep into
the inmost recess of the personal will.
I have said that the upper room is part of the
constitution of human nature. It is sad to reflect
that in multitudes it is a vacant room. There is
no Christ in it, no inspiration, no sacred sorrow,
no resurrection. This is the deepest tragedy in
the world, that the highest in man is in disuse.
Where is that vacant guest-chamber ? The Mas
ter desires to keep the Passover there in your
soul, and in that upper room of your nature
reveal the sublimity of his nature and love.
There he desires that you should abide. Live on
the heights. There through the prayer, and the
human fellowship, and the ineffable communion,
wait for the coming of the great inspiration.

304 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
And there he directs that you should carry your
dead. Lay them in your highest faith, in your
loftiest veneration and dearest love. Be sure
your sorrow will then become a heavenly sorrow,
and your dead will return to you in the power
of an endless life.

XVII
GOD THE COMFORTER
" I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that
he may be with you for ever." John xiv, 16.
Wondee and awe are among the earliest re
sponses of the soul to the appeal of the Infinite ;
they remain among the latest. We have seen in
the clear and happy eyes of a child just begin
ning to note here and there some great feature
of our strange world, the sense of fascination
and mystery as it locked up into the infinite
spaces ; and we have seen in the dim and sorrow
ful vision of age the image of the same feeling.
The thing that forever fascinates and baffles,
that draws us on to inquire into it, and that
covers us with the shadow of a vast dread, is
this solemn, beautiful, mysterious universe. We
wrestle with it in the darkness, we call to it,
" Tell me thy name ; " the morning comes, the
mystery with which we have wrestled eludes us,
and we are left blessed, it may be, but bruised.
The manna in the wilderness was not understood ;
its name was a question. What is it? — that
was the cry of the people as they beheld this
desert wonder. They could not account for it,

306 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
it remained an enigma ; therefore they named it,
What is it? If we consult our sincerest and
deepest thoughts about the universe, we shall
find them mainly interrogations. The sum of
things in heaven above and on earth beneath,
other than man, the total life of the race in the
present and in the past, and the power by which
this wondrous whole is pervaded, we call the
universe, and the inmost meaning of the name
is, What is it ? Like the manna, it is sweet and
it supports fife ; but the final and full account
of it we are unable to give. The first act of
worship, the act that includes all serious and
noble men, is the worship of the Inscrutable.
This mood, however, does not remain unfruit
ful. Men investigate and think ; they live and
reach conclusions ; they come to look at the uni
verse in a great variety of ways. To one man it
seems at heart matter ; all thought, all feeling,
and all character are incidental ; the substance
of the universe is physical, it is an ever changing
physical show, with here and there a strain of
thought and feeling, like the band that now
and then plays in the grim hour of battle. To
another it is force ; to still another law ; to yet
another fate. The force is there, its ways are
fixed, and it is operated by a necessity blind,
dumb, eternal.
In contrast with all this, in the text the uni-

GOD THE COMFORTER 307
verse is said to be, at its heart, mind; it is
assumed to be personal, it is named the Com
forter. This is the Christian way of looking at
the universe.
1. First of all there is the audacity of this
interpretation. In the face of all disorder, all
silence, all apparent indifference to man, all
pain, all loss, all death, the universe is gathered
into the Infinite Comforter ! Could there be a
more audacious conception than that ? Is it not
as if one were to look for pity from the tempest,
or sympathy from the cold and speechless stars ?
Is it not as if one should regard the wild and
angry sea as a friend, and the more of a friend
the wilder and the angrier it is ? Is not the uni
verse essentially hostile ? Its boundlessness, its
mystery, its silence, and its settled disdain, are
these the tokens of its regard ? When men hunt
the wild beast, or go among savage tribes, or ven
ture among unfriendly forces, they go armed ;
they do not expect mercy from a tiger, sympathy
from a Hottentot, consideration from a cannibal.
When the California gold was first carried from
the mines, the bearer was preceded and followed
by a soldier, rifle in hand; the environment
was hostile, the guarded treasure alone was safe.
Should we not imitate this procedure ? Should
we not fortify ourselves against our enemies ;
build towers like that of the men of Babel, only

308 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
stronger ; proceed on the supposition that our
human treasure is under constant menace, that
the eye of an infinite robber is upon us, and
that there is no security except in the vigilant
and militant arm?
Look at the situation. We are born in ut
most frailty. If left to the tender mercy of the
woods, the winds, the seasons, the wild beasts,
if abandoned to the sympathy of nature, we
should perish in a day. The homes into which
we were born were built to shield us from the
angry cosmos ; clothing is prepared for us as
a further protection. Our liability to sickness
means that our frail life is beset with countless
enemies. The climate is too severe, or the air is
foul with the germs of disease, or the water that
we drink holds death in solution, or the foods
that we eat conceal the life that means pain to
us and perhaps destruction. What is civiliza
tion but the strenuous, eonian effort to overcome
the hostility of nature, to mitigate her antago
nism, to crowd her back from our properly hu
man domain, to pile up the instruments and the
material resources whereby we can reduce her
power to work us harm, whereby we can repair
the unpreventable injuries which she inflicts
upon man ! What is civilization but the glori
ous record of man's victory over the unrelent
ing enmity of the cosmos ! What is our whole

GOD THE COMFORTER 309
achievement inside the bounds of nature but the
confession that nature is never enough, that she
is never wholly to be trusted, that we can never
safely meet her except with our harness on our
backs! The Hollander has rescued his country
from the sea ; he holds it in defiance of the sea,
and the thunder of its tides against the walls
that he has built reminds him that his enemy is
still close at hand, and wild with greed to invade
and recover. Such seems our human world, a
domain snatched from infinite hostility, held by
high device and amazing stratagem against the
never ceasing attack of the cosmos, a world of
justice and love encircled by a boundless waste
of wild, implacable enmity. While the race
holds this domain in defiance of the cosmos, the
individual loses ; generations of individuals per
ish, and the end would seem to be the defeat
not of the cosmos, but of man. Even Gibraltar
could not stand out forever ; even that fortress
could be starved into surrender. Is not our
human world a sort of mighty fortress under
siege at the hands of the universe ? We are
many, we have learned the methods of cosmical
attack, we are well provisioned and at present
comparatively secure; but what hope is there
in the endless contest that we shall be victo
rious ? Is not our enemy too much for us ? In
view of all this, is it not an audacious thing

310 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
to regard the universe as at heart the Infinite
comfort ?
In reply to this it should be said that there is
nature and there is human nature. And the uni
verse that is revealed in nature as against us is
revealed in human nature as on our side. God is
against us, in part at least, in nature ; He is for
us, in part at least, in human nature. It is He
who has taught our hands to war in our campaign
against nature ; it is from Him that the spirit
of insight, discovery, use, and power has come.
And this outward antagonism may be but inspi
ration to the inward friendliness; even as the
eagle, whose eagle nature is in her brood, stirs up
the nest under them, breaks it to piecesj that the
royal spirit in them may leave the earth for the
sky. The Infinite is in the pure air, the favoring
seasons, the fruitful earth, the amenableness of
nature to cultivation, the elasticity with which it
may be turned to human uses ; the Infinite is in
the biting wind, the wild sea, the malarial swamp,
the polluted well, the germs of disease, the black
wings of death as they beat about us, to rouse,
to educate, to force man back upon himself, to
compel him to seek the society of his kind, to
drive him in upon the resources of the soul ; and
the Infinite is in man in his expansive and mar
velous intelligence, in his capacities for love and
sympathy, in his conscience and its law of right-

GOD THE COMFORTER 311
eousness, in his will and its power to subdue the
wild cosmos, in its power to incarnate in human
society the vision of the City of God. God in
nature is both against us and for us ; God in
man is both against us and for us ; and the vast,
ceaseless antipathy is in the interest of the still
vaster and sublimer sympathy. It is therefore a
reasonable audacity that claims the universe as
the Comforter of man.
2. In this conception of the universe as at heart
a universe of comfort lies much of the power of
Christianity. Christianity is indeed the religion
of the morally victorious soul; it is in an em
phatic sense the religion of righteousness. It calls
for the new heaven and the new earth ; it gives
the vision of the righteous God, and it lays upon
those who entertain this vision the obligation
to reform human society. The call to serve, to
achieve, is the trumpet call of the gospel. Chris
tianity has the utmost fascination for the morally
capable, for all those who are conscious of achiev
ing power, who exult in the sense of a sound and
an aspiring humanity, whose reforming instinct
rises to passion, and who delight in life because
it holds within itself the energy that would re
new the world.
We must never forget that religion has always
begun here. The religion of Moses was a religion
of righteousness. Here was his race in bondage,

312 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
that bondage was an outrage upon their human
ity, an injustice that cried to heaven. The reli
gion of Moses began in the vision of the righteous
God and in the passion for reform under that
vision. Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, every great
soul in the history of Israel, followed in the
footsteps of Moses. John the Baptist, when he
came, repeated the same sublime experience ; re
ligion was the vision of the righteous God, and
the obligation under that vision to renew the
world. Christianity is here only another and
a vaster version of the same thing ; its initial
words are : " Seek first God's kingdom and his
righteousness." The sublimity of its vision of
God made obsolete the earlier visions ; it fasci
nated the elect youth of the time of Jesus ; it
fascinated Stephen and Paul ; it has exercised
a resistless charm over the highest spirits in
every succeeding generation. Christianity is first
of all an appeal to the morally fit.
It is more. It is an appeal to the morally
unfit. It is the religion of reconciliation. It finds
man with a vision of the better life and with an
incapacity for obedience. It finds him like the
eaglet, with eyes for the free heaven, but with
no wings to lift it thither ; it finds him like
the paralytic, with the vision of the ideal, but
without the power of attainment. Here it revolu
tionized the life of Paul; it gave him a sublimer

GOD THE COMFORTER 313
vision, and it gave him a power of achievement
wholly new. And from that day to this Chris
tianity has gone on its way imparting vision to
the blind, and creating power in the heart of
moral paralysis and despair. The spring comes
and the frozen earth is free ; the spring comes
and the meadow, ugly with its burden of dead
grass, blooms again ; the spring is here and
every blackened tree with its leafless boughs is
covered with life and beauty ; the spring is here
and the face of the world is lifted into accord
with the vision of loveliness. So Christianity
works. It goes like a great tide of life ; it re
news the fountains of human nature, opens the
springs of moral power in man's heart, puts crea
tive might in the soul, moves a despairing human
ity into song. It is the religion of reconciliation.
It is more. It is the religion of comfort. There
is surely comfort in the vision of the righteous
God and the passion for reform set free in human
hearts under that vision. There is indeed comfort
in the wonderful experience whereby despairing
men are made capable of the noblest life, whereby
the sinful and erring are filled with moral hope
and charged with moral power. Christianity as
the religion of comfort does not exhaust itself
in these great inspirations. Man has needs as a
suffering being, as a lover and as a loser.
One of the profoundest of all human necessi-

314 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
ties concerns the treasure of the loving heart.
The fortunate human being has made a vast
investment of himself in other human beings ;
he is a lover, it may be an intense, a devoted,
and a grateful lover. The treasure of life is
not money, it is not fame, it is not power, it
is love ; and whether it is the child's life in the
life of its parents, or the life of the parents in
the life of their children, the consciousness of a
divine possession under fearful menace is at
times the acutest of all pains. The call of the
heart is for protection. The need of the heart is
protection. Can you trust your child to wander
unprotected in the jungle ? Can you live with
the sense of the dear lives in whom you have
invested your soul under a menace unmitigated,
a peril between which and them there is no
shield ? Can you live in peace without the con
sciousness that the Giver of life is the Protector
of it, without the faith that the heart's greatest
interests are God's greatest interests, without
the assurance that all things work together for
good to them that love God?
Christianity comes, then, with its message of
comfort to man the lover ; it assures him that
what is dear to him is infinitely dear to God.
The father whom you revere, the mother whom
you honor, the child to whom the whole tender
ness of your soul goes out, the friend whom you

GOD THE COMFORTER 315
count part of yourself, the many noble fellow ser
vants in whom you have allowed yourself to make
a permanent investment of affection, — for all
these there is a cover in the Eternal Lover, for
all these there is a refuge in the Eternal Friend.
How beautiful is that Old Testament concep
tion of the City of Refuge ! Thither in their
error and misfortune and weakness men could
fly ; once there, they were safe from the pursuer.
According to Christian faith, such a city of
refuge is our God. Thither in all ages loving
souls have gone ; inside its golden gates they
have laid the precious burden of their hearts.
Thither the young have gone in moments of
extreme anxiety, weeping and wondering whether
the horror was to be theirs of the untimely loss
of father and mother, and there they have
found rest. Fathers and mothers looking upon
their children in health and reading the record
of the daily work of death, looking upon their
children in sickness and watching the curtain
trembling between them and the unseen, have
gone up into that city of comfort and there have
entered into the infinite peace. When households
have been sundered by the cruel hand of fate,
when brothers and sisters have been driven to
the ends of the earth, the old mother, left to
think of her brood wide apart as east and west,
has gone for comfort to the infinite sheltering

316 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
presence of God. In the shadow of his wings
there is peace.
Christianity is first of all the religion of lovers.
It is the religion for those who feel the precious
ness of existence ; it has been to all who love an
infinite comfort. It was so while Jesus lived. He
early made his religion the religion of home ; he
put it to the service of anxious and deep-hearted
parents ; he poured it as comfort into the souls
of the troubled and the loving men and women
of his time. What he did for those whose trea
sure was love, and whose love was under menace,
cannot be told. It was a service immeasurable in
amount, and inconceivably precious. Since Jesus
lived, parenthood and love have been easier. The
life of the lover, if there be no infinite comfort,
is of all lives the most tragic. The most awful
of all relations is that of parent in a universe
without love and sympathy. In a universe where
this is not clear, where it is not sure, where
it is only a dim guess, a pale and fitful hope,
surely the fate of the lover is hard. To receive
from the universe the supreme gift, the gift of
a great, disinterested, undying love, and not to
be able to believe that the universe has for the
human heart thus visited any sympathy, any
refuge, must appear in moments of vivid feeling
an appalling condition. Could there be for the
human parent a worse fate than that pictured in

GOD THE COMFORTER 317
Niobe ! That story of the mother and her chil
dren in a universe not only unsympathetic but
cruel, is to me the most awful in the annals
of the race. Love and parenthood in such a
universe are the supreme calamity ; there is no
place for them, they are too good for the brutal
world. Under ideas like these millions of our
fellow men have suffered ; to such suffering mil
lions the gospel of the eternal comfort came;
the family life of Christendom became a new
thing, parenthood and love became the supreme
human privilege, and God offered himself as
the city of refuge for all anxious, loving souls.
Man is not only a lover ; he is also a loser.
Death comes, and the souls that are as parts
of one organism are torn asunder. Death is the
great desolator. It is still the king of terrors,
the supreme horror of all who love. Its ravages
cannot be averted. Men are born to love, and
they are born to die. In this order of birth
and love and death and loss the generations of
men move. What comes but hopeless grief,
absolute despair, when this order is unillumined
out of the Eternal? What religion is possible
other than the religion of pity in the presence of
the infinite tragedy in human history ? If the
sentence, " Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt
thou return," covers the whole man, what can
virtue do with the life of a worm or a fly ? If men

318 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
in their grief count for nothing to the Eternal,
existence is misery, the supreme calamity is to
be born, the supreme sin is parenthood. If this
life is all, it is not worth having ; it is a calam
ity to all who love while they live. If this life is
all, those who continue the succession of births
are the most reckless and heartless among human
beings. How can they be unmindful of the ten
der hearts of those whom they bring into being !
How can they live regardless of the woe to which
they introduce helpless souls !
Christianity comes to the lover who is a loser
with its vision of the Infinite Father and his
house of many mansions. Thither go the dear
dead fathers and mothers ; thither go the youth
slain in the service of the race, run down by the
awful car of human civilization ; and thither
go the bands of little children, — look up and
see them dressed not in swaddling-bands, but in
singing-robes. The child choir in heaven is the
only part of earth's music translated from this
world to the heavenly that even the angelic songs
cannot match. Look up and listen. That is
the vision that sustains the bewildered mind of
sorrowing parenthood; that is the music that
finally makes the grief of fathers and mothers
an infinite solace.
Christianity is kept in the world by the re
former ; it is kept in the world by those who

GOD THE COMFORTER 319
seek escape from the hell of their sins and weak
nesses ; but more than all, it is kept in the world
by loving men and women who know that life
has in it infinite treasure, and among these the
lovers who have lost, hold with the strongest hand
the gospel of the Eternal Comforter.
3. This great faith is offered to experience.
It submits itself to the process of proof in the
course of experience. We are called upon to
put to the test this conception of the infinite
comfort ; we are to test it nobly, deeply, to the
end, in the whole endeavor of existence ; we are
to accept it as an ideal for the regulation of
existence ; we are to receive it as a faith to be
verified in the history of the soul, in the history
of all believing souls.
We believe that we may know ; that is the
fundamental mood of the intelligent disciple of
Christ. It was not at the beginning, it was at
the end of his career that Paul said, " I know
him whom I have believed." His life had begun
with the acceptance of a vast and precious faith ;
his whole career had been a process of experi
mentation, whereby what he received as faith
had been verified in experience as the truth.
He began with the belief, he subjected his life
to his belief, his life thus subjected took on new
strength and broke like the morning into joy ; he
ended with the belief verified, turned into know-

320 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
ledge. The method of the Apostle is the method
of all sound science. Science begins with belief ;
the great process of observation and experiment
eliminates false belief, purifies and expands
sound belief, and turns it at last into clear and
accurate knowledge. If the attitude of the scien
tist is sound, the attitude of the disciple of Christ
is sound. He accepts as faith the idea of the in
finite comfort, he gives it a chance to verify its
truth in the process of human endeavor and
suffering ; if it stands the test of life, it is true.
It is impossible to imagine any other path to
certainty. No one can tell in advance whether
or not food of a certain kind will be found whole
some in an individual case ; to settle that, we
must eat and drink. We use the experience of
our parents, the advice of our friends, the general
wisdom of the ages about human foods ; but the
wholesomeness of a particular food for a particu
lar person is not proved until it is eaten. A sur
geon cannot say in advance that a critical opera
tion will surely be successful ; he may think it
likely, extremely likely, almost certain, but the
result alone can banish all doubt. The wisest
lawyer in the land cannot be sure of winning his
case ; he may believe that all law is on his side,
that all justice is there ; he may be confident
and full of hope, but until the judge has delivered
his opinion, he cannot know. The captain of a

GOD THE COMFORTER 321
great steamer is never sure when he leaves
one port that he will reach another. He knows
his ship; he knows the sea. The ship is not
new ; she has weathered under his command the
gales of many winters, but this voyage may prove
her last.- The captain does not believe so ; he
believes that she will trace again her victorious
path from shore to shore. In that faith he goes
forth. The faith is so strong that head winds
do not disturb him, thick fogs do not discour
age him, seas beating upon him with the force of
hurricanes in them do not bring dismay. He is
a confident and a brave man ; his ship is good,
and he believes that he can weather the roughest
gale that ever wind did blow. We admire his
faith, but we see clearly that he cannot know.
When the revolutionists founded this country
on the principle of equality and brotherhood in
citizenship, they believed that the nation they
founded would endure ; they believed that the
minds and hearts of the colonists were prepared
for it, that there was in them a race fitness for
self-government, that the conception of a vast
democracy would more and more command their
intelligence, root itself in their affections, sup
port itself out of the resourceful will of the
great body of free men. So far, time has proved
that they were right in their faith. But in ad
vance of the test of time, proof is impossible.

322 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
Jesus said, " Heaven and earth-shall pass away,
but my word shall not pass away." What proof
could there be of that statement ? Doubtless he
saw into the souls of men ; doubtless he knew
the supreme harmony that exists between his
gospel and the best in man ; but the vision of a
divine adjustment between his gospel and the
human heart is not proof that his kingdom or
his word shall last forever. It has lasted ; it is
likely to last ; it is nearly sure to last ; all this
we may say, but that it shall certainly last is a
proposition that cannot be proved. Time alone
can determine.
No one can say with certainty what books
produced in our generation will find readers in
the next. The classic is known to after-genera
tions ; it is never known to the generation that
witnessed its production. One might as easily
say who, if any, among a million children are
born to fame, as to tell which, if any, among a
million books are destined to live. No one can
say what the absorbing interests of the next
generation will be, or what will be its literary
tastes, its scientific attitude, its philosophical
mood, its political ideals, or in what paths its
highest energies shall move. These are things
about which we may have beliefs, and the be
liefs may have in their favor very high likeli
hood ; but certainty is impossible until the next

GOD THE COMFORTER 323
generation shall arrive. In his farewell words
.to his judges Socrates says : " The hour has
come to go away, I to death and you to life ;
but which of us shall fare the better is hid from
all save God." That covers the entire life of
man ; in advance of the fact we cannot know ;
we believe, and we wait for the verification of
belief. Our hearts are in our keeping, but what the
universe has appointed us, we do not know until
our years are fully told. The Greek conception of
Destiny is an abiding conception ; we know our
destiny when we have reached it. The threads
of existence are spun, the web of reality is woven
by hands other than ours ; what is ordained we
learn through the courses of life. The silken
threads, and the bold and beautiful devices of
those that spin and those that weave, the fine
ness and the splendor of the great fabric of
being, are known alone to the eyes that look
upon them out of the courses of a great Chris
tian experience. With our eyes upon the ever-
coming thread, the ever-flying and ever-weaving
shuttle, we may have the best of reasons for
hope, but we cannot know what the completed
design will be.
What does all this mean ? That the proof to
which our religion of comfort is open is the only
kind of proof obtainable upon any subject what-

324 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
soever. It all comes up out of the achieving and
suffering life of man. A Hebrew psalmist sings :
" Oh, how love 1 thy law ! " In the wildness of
youth if some one had told him that in the hap
piest life love and law were one, he would have
regarded the remark as incredible. Law is com
pulsion, love is freedom ; how can these unite ?
There is no logic by which the union can be
made clear ; but life, the courses of experience,
the hours of bitterness and of hope, the whole
sweep and discipline of existence, issue in this
fair conclusion that love and law are one in the
supremely happy soul. Another Hebrew psalm
ist sings : " Thy statutes have been my songs
in the house of my pilgrimage." Possibly in his
early and reckless years that statement would
have seemed to him foolishness. Those musty
old rules about behavior, those maxims for the
regulation of thought and feeling and conduct,
with the mildew of centuries upon them, those
words that seem but the jargon of persons who
have outlived their zest for nature and the spon
taneous life of man among his kind, how can
they become songs ? Can you make poetry out
of modern statutes ? Can you make diamonds
out of dust-heaps ? Can you lift into the realm
of art the vulgar life of vulgar men ? Can you
transmute into songs the severe compulsions of
the moral law ? Experience alone can answer

GOD THE COMFORTER 325
that question. Experience does answer it. Moral
law through the experience of the dutiful soul
becomes the sublimest of all human songs, the
profoundest of all human inspirations. Hear
Wordsworth : —
"Stern Lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face:
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, arc
fresh and strong."
Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?
That was the question of Nathaniel when Philip
said to him, " We have found the Christ." That
question any sincere man may put concerning
all high beliefs about the universe. The uni
verse often seems like an infinite Nazareth; it
is boundless but mean. It seems sterile as the
desert, and men have suffered so much under the
sun that they have become profoundly skepti
cal, profoundly unbelieving. Can any good thing
come out of this vast, hollow, empty, mocking
universe? The reply is the reply of Philip to
Nathaniel, " Come and see." Come with honest
eyes to the great thought of the universe as the
eternal comfort, come and do its bidding as it
speaks to you in the teaching, in the example,

326 , THROUGH MAN TO GOD
and in the spirit of Jesus ; take his yoke upon
you, learn of him, become his disciple, walk in
the paths of his service, submit to the high
moral discipline to which he submitted, accept
his thought of the eternal comfort as your faith,
live under it, live by it, give it a fair chance to
prove its truth, open your heart to the highest
of all human conceptions. It may be that it will
prove itself the eternal truth. Come and see.
Accept as faith the eternal comfort ; work as a
great-hearted servant ; suffer as a believer, and
open all the windows of your being to the eter
nal sympathy. It may be that in life and in
death you will discover that you are the Lord's.
The universe is great, life is deep, and things
are not what they seem. The universe is great,
and hiding in its heart of mystery, waiting there
for the fitting human mood, stands the eternal
comfort. Life is deep. I sqmetimes think that
as the sea in its unfathomed depth is to that
which the greatest ship touches and cleaves, so
is the abyss of the human heart to the mightiest
understanding. The understanding at its pro
foundest is shallow compared with the unsounded
depths of the moral nature of man. When this
mysterious human soul becomes a servant of
moral ends, when it walks in reverence and holds
itself for the coming of the kingdom of love and
as the refuge of weakness and distress, its own

GOD THE COMFORTER 327
nature begins to reveal its grandeur as the struc
ture of the earth rose when the flood began to
abate. Then man becomes aware of the range
and mystery of his being, of the laws and forces
that live and work within him, of the moral will
of God articulated in the order of his spirit.
Then the heart is filled with awe under the sense
of the infinite benignity that now and then blows
through it, sometimes in the soft winds and again
in the strong gales of high delight. Then the
human heart becomes a great musical instrument,
on which at times are played all sweet melodies,
all heroic strains, through which is given the
mystic sense of the eternal harmony at the heart
of God. In the pilgrimage of duty the heart
breaks into song ; a dutiful and tender human
ity becomes inevitably a singing humanity. Woe
leaves the faithful soul on the wings of glad
ness ; weeping may endure for a night, but joy
cometh in the morning. When the heart is thus
sustained at its task, comforted in its sorrow,
and drawn out in song, men find it easy to believe
in the Eternal consoler. In the suffering and
serving life of good men there are moments
when the highest faith receives complete attesta
tion. So it was with Moses on Horeb ; Isaiah
in the Temple ; Paul on his way to Damascus ;
John in Patmos. So it has been with all the true
and the brave.

328 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
The great moments of fife are few and brief,
yet by these we are to believe and serve. If the
fortunate mariner were to count the bright days,
clear from morning to night, which have come
to him in his service upon the ' deep, he would
find them few compared with those that are dark
and troubled. He thinks himself happy if no
day pass without some bright moment at noon
or at sunset. That is enough ; that one moment,
that brief glance, is worth all the rest of the
day. By that he discovers again the order of
the world and finds his place in the pathless sea.
Through the moments of insight, of inward tri
umph, of reconciliation to the will of the Highest,
we are to reach the character of the universe, we
are to assure our hearts. These few supreme mo
ments are of more worth than all the long, unin
spired years. Then our eyes rest on the infinite
order of life, on the infinite sanctity of life, on
the infinite benignity of the universe. By these
sovereign sunlit moments we are to determine
what to believe, what to do, what to expect ; by
them we are to verify our faith in the eternal
comfort, and hold to our course when the wild sea
is again blackening under the frowning heaven,
home to the waiting heart of God.

XVIII
TOWARD EVENING
" It is toward evening, and the day is now far spent." Luke xii v, 29.
What a great day that had been ! The morning
had found them in the heaviness of a universal
sorrow. As the dreadful hours passed, the two
disciples roused themselves sufficiently to under
take the walk to Emmaus. They went slowly,
for there was solace in the utterance of their sad
thoughts. A mysterious stranger joined them as
they journeyed onward. He drew from them the
complete confession of their confusion and de
spair. He made their hearts burn with surprise
and hope by the profoundly beautiful view which
he took of the cause of their grief. He put his
new and unexpected thought about the death of
Jesus into their minds, to the absolute exclusion
of their own. And when they came to their jour
ney's end, it seemed to them that they had been
walking in a divine dream. They could not
allow their mysterious fellow traveler to go un
invited to their home. Something inexpressibly
great had taken hold of them, and in the name
of that they constrained the wondrous stranger,

330 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
saying, " Abide with us : for it is toward evening,
and the day is now far spent ; and he went in to
abide with them." The morning heaviness, the
walk and the human relief, the divine companion
and interpretation, the full and mighty answer
of the heart, the evening with the risen Christ
standing in its reddening glow and peace, — such
were the supreme things in that great day. And
that one great day in the experience of those two
disciples of Christ sets a type for all the disciples
of Christ. As was the day, so may be the life.
1. The morning heaviness was the first thing.
For the third time those two disciples had awak
ened to a world that had no Christ, or only a
dead Christ, in it. A divine presence had been
taken out of the world. The loveliness of nature
seemed to be tarnished, Jerusalem had become
the city of despair, Israel was again hopeless,
love and friendship were bereaved of their great
consecration, and the heart of the individual dis
ciple was vacant and disconsolate. Such was the
tragedy under which those two disciples awak
ened on the morning of that eventful day.
For how many disciples of Christ in the last
century that is typical of the beginning of their
spiritual life ! How many have come to man
hood in the fellowship of a traditional faith, to
discover then that their faith was dead! Ro
manes through the influence of physical science

TOWARD EVENING 331
wakes to that horror ; John Stirling through
inability to find his way comes to that heavi
ness ; Tennyson loses everything in the loss of
his friend ; Carlyle looks upon a godless uni
verse under the power of a false philosophy.
For the best youth of the nineteenth century
the beginnings of spiritual life were hard. For
thousands of young men and women in the
colleges of the land there has been this ter
rible awakening. The Lord's Prayer which they
learned in infancy, the Beatitudes whose music
has been in their hearts from their earliest
years, the Divine Christ to whom they have
looked in awe and love, the Eternal God, their
fathers' God, in whom they have steadfastly
believed, become all at once uncertain, unreal,
powerless. They awake to find them gone.
There is no room for prayer in their world, the
Beatitudes are an embarrassment in the struggle
for existence ; Christ has no place in the order
of the universe ; and in the mechanism of the
sum of things there does not seem to be any
Heavenly Father. They have dreamed the ter
rible dream of Richter; they awake with the
awful announcement ringing in their hearts:
Children, you have no Father.
This is the trouble with many of our young
men and women. Christianity is beautiful, but
it does not answer to the stern realities of life.

332 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
It is too good to be true ; the order of existence
accords with no such dream. For those two dis
ciples, on that morning, Christ was in his grave.
For many young persons, terribly in earnest,
Christianity is a sublime vision at war with the
nature of things. They cannot believe. The
faith that they have inherited has become in
credible. They do not boast of this incapacity
for belief ; the nobler among them mourn over
it. Many console themselves with the melan
choly conclusion : —
" This little life is all we must endure.
The grave's most holy peace is ever sure,
We fall asleep and never wake again;
Nothing is of us but the mouldering flesh,
Whose elements dissolve and merge afresh
As earth, air, water, plants and other men."
What shall we say to these things ? Let us
remember that these suffering souls are only in
the first stage of spiritual life. They have the
sense, as never before, of the beauty of the faith
that they have lost. They are asking questions
that endless time alone can fully answer. They
are planting their feet upon the real world.
They are getting ready to become men. Do not
grieve over them, only try to keep them pure.
The peril of the loss of faith is that it so often
leads to the loss of honor. Goethe has drawn
this danger in Faust. Faust as the believer in

TOWARD EVENING 333
knowledge is pure; Faust defeated in his en
deavors to compass the truth turns to a life of
shame. There is here the revelation of a law.
The loss of faith tends toward the loss of charac
ter. " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we
die." Life's high significance is bound up with
faith ; and life's high significance once gone, the
tendency is downward. Call upon the young to
resist that tendency. Remind them of F. W.
Robertson's fine resolve. In the blackest hour
of doubt he saw that right was right, that honor
was honor, and to that he bound his spirit. The
voice of despair wild with mad joy still cries : —
" And now at last authentic word I bring,
Witnessed by every dead and living thing;
Good tidings of great joy for you, for all :
There is no God."
Many noble young souls are saying in reply to
this voice that, if there be no God to love them,
no Christ to own them, no eternal righteousness
to crown them, they will so live that the beauty
of their life shall be a nameless rebuke to the
brutal universe that would degrade them before
destroying them. Only keep these fine souls
from following in the footsteps of Faust, only
hold them in the mood of Robertson of Brighton,
and you may well give thanks over their per
plexity and pain.
No man who has not won his faith through

334 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
suffering can to-day count for much. He cannot
understand our time ; that time is a call away
from mere conventions to eternal realities. It
insists that men shall live in the strength of
things, go in the immediate vision of them, lean
upon them without intermediary of any kind —
tradition, creed, miracle, or high personal au
thority — for support. The times have taken our
crutches from us and hidden them. If we walk,
it must be on our feet and by our own strength.
The man who has not thus been thrown back
upon the Eternal cannot understand the deep
need of the time. He cannot get down under the
trouble of the generations. Niagara from above
and Niagara from the Cave of the Winds are
different. Look at the cataract from above and
tremble; look at it from beneath, hear its inces
sant roar, and feel under your feet the everlast
ing rock. Look at the doubt of the times from
above only, and you will be full of alarm ; through
the heroism of your own soul go down below it,
and, while your feet stand upon God, listen to
the tumult and the thunder, and you will cry :
" I will fear no evil, for thou art with me." The
true teacher of youth to-day is the man who has
been in an abyss below theirs, and who has found
under the cataract of doubt and despair the eter
nal ground of hope.
2. The second stage in the day's experience

TOWARD EVENING 335
was the walk and the human relief. How natural
that is ! These disciples pull themselves together,
as we say, and start for Emmaus. The exercise
sets their thoughts free ; the influence of nature
breaks mildly in upon them; past associations
open up the fountains of their mind ; a strange
human love and tenderness toward each other
comes into their hearts. They talk, and the
relief thereupon begins. Full, rich, tender, con
fiding, and communicative humanity is a solace
to humanity.
Much of the talk of the suffering world is of
this description. It has no earthly value in
itself ; it is good only as an escape for pain.
The talk of those two disciples was foolish, and
the Lord did put a stop to it eventually, but he
allowed it to run on. He knew that it was a
temporary necessity. The mind of man is some
times like a reservoir : you must get out the flood
of folly before you can occupy it with wisdom.
There is something divinely wise and patient in
the delay of Christ. He did not join those dis
ciples too soon. He allowed them to have their
talk out. Exhaustion is sometimes the only con
dition of receptivity.
In every generation the young are new to the
ageless problems of the mind. Their hearts are
new to the ancient sorrow of the world. Debate
has great fascination for brilliant youth. Debate

336 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
of all things in earth and in heaven is a kind
of apostolical succession for gifted minds in each
new generation. These youthful discussions have
little or no value in themselves. They are ways
of escape for the undisciplined and unmatured
power within. Let these debates over belief and
unbelief, optimism and pessimism, free will and
necessity, the hopes of immortality and the fears
that would quench all hope, go on. These es
capes for serious power are indispensable ; thus
is prepared the way of the Lord.
In the bond of friendship, in the confidence
of home, in the freedom of congenial society,
talking is a great blessing. The hurt that one
receives in the hard struggle of life is thereby,
in a measure, healed, the pain of disappointment
is lessened, the blows of adversity are for the
moment disregarded, and the wounds of sorrow
are done up in the oil and wine of tender human
sympathy. Carlyle's doctrine of silence is true,
but it is not the whole truth. Frequently the
best way to get rid of a foolish mood is to let
it expend its force in talk. When a group of
persons have talked for hours over the situation
of human life, with all the enthusiasm of youth
and all the confidence of inexperience, the mass
of talk, as it rolls into view a huge cloud of crude-
ness and irrelevancy, is apt to induce readiness
to listen to a wiser voice.

TOWARD EVENING 337
The method of Socrates was to get young
men to talking. Many of them came to him
sure that they understood all about holiness,
courage, temperance, friendship, knowledge, and
justice. He made them utter themselves, and
if he did not make them wiser, he did draw
much of the folly out of them. In the Gos
pels one is often amazed at the foolish sayings
of the disciples, and one wonders how these
things came to be recorded. It was part of the
method of Jesus to make men talk. " Whom
do men say that I, the Son of man, am?"
The gossip of the multitude had for Jesus a
human interest, inasmuch as he came to make
men wise.
In this way we are to look at much that calls
itself literature. It is neither deep, nor strong,
nor wise. It is in no way a masterful or even
a useful dealing with the great tragic situations
of human life. Human suffering and loss lie
far away from these poor interpretations. Were
it not for kindly intention, or the absence of
unkind intention, these poor writings would be. a
kind of blasphemy against the majesty of human
pain. " Knowest thou that the Lord will take
away thy Master from thy head to-day ? " " Yea,
I know it; hold ye your peace." These utter
ances are currents of weakness, and folly. Let
them flow. They may help to drain the bog.

338 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
In writings upon religion the same fact must
be noted. There are the men who deal only in
the changes in theology, in the loss of authority
in the Bible, in the unfavorable attitude of the
people toward the church. Whole libraries of
books are devoted to that in Christian faith
which never was important except to men in
their folly. These writers wander in negation,
settle down in the heart of the transient, culti
vate the friendship of the perishable in the great
faith of the world, become melancholy over the
loss in the situation, speak only of the dead
Christ in Jerusalem. Religion has its perpetual
tragedy, — its questions about God, his character,
his government of the world ; its profound soli
citudes for man in his battle with evil and death.
And oh, the foolish tongues that add to the great
tragic mystery their painful Babel ! The litera
ture that they create is doubtless to be looked
upon with patience and benignity. It is one of
the ways that the poor world has for lessening
its grief, for getting clear of its folly, for pre
paring the way of the Lord.
3. The mysterious companion and his inter
pretation of the tragic event is the next aspect
of the day. The disciples had talked themselves
out. They were ready to hear another voice
upon the subject, and that voice seemed at once
to master them and their theme. Slowly the

TOWARD EVENING 339
movement of history prior to Christ seemed to
shape itself for culmination in his cross ; slowly
the significance of Moses and all the prophets
appeared to be in their love and sacrifice ;
slowly it began to dawn upon them that a suf
fering Messiah was the answer to the best hope
of Israel, that a sacrificial Christ was the goal of
the best teaching and of the best character of
the past, and the divine hope for their race and
for mankind. They received this thought because
they could not help it. It seemed so full, so ade
quate, so divine, that they could not resist it.
And the strength, the confidence, the beauty of
the speaker carried them away.
Under the supreme believing minds of the
race, under the sovereign teacher, Christ, under
the living disciples who mediate his wisdom and
grace, belief comes in this way. The situation
of human existence and the universe is looked
at through other eyes than our own ; we hear
the great believers speak ; we listen to the monu
mental witnesses for the things of the spirit ;
we ponder as their interpretation is put before
us. And we receive it at last because we cannot
help it ; that view of man and man's history and
man's universe seems to be the truth. It comes
to seem wiser, deeper, more adequate, nearer the
heart of things, than all unbelief or doubt. When
the spring is here, the dead grass disappears one

340 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
knows not how ; it really goes because the mul
titudinous spears of living green are resistlessly
pushing it out of the way. Life takes the place
of death, and the forlorn earth is once more
in the bloom of the year. In that way the old
unbelief goes ; in that way the new faith comes.
The mind that had spoken its own speculation
until it got wearied is somehow hospitable to the
thought of the highest. And when to that mood
that thought is spoken, it wins its way like the
Son of God.
Personality somehow gathers about the great
positive thought of the world. Faith centres in
sublime personalities. Isaiah andTaul still teach
the world, and soul speaks to soul. In the same
way Christ is inseparable from his teaching.
We listen to him as we read the Sermon on the
Mount ; we hear him as we study his parables ;
the Lord's Prayer still carries in it his accents ;
the entire sum of his teaching, the whole vol
ume of his ministry, is a word spoken by him on
the journey of life ; and the gracious and sublime
presence is somehow deeper than all thought,
stronger than all argument, and still carries the
candid and earnest spirit away. When the best
in the soul, in the church, in human history, in
the universe comes to one with the persuasion of
the voice of Christ and the power of his hallowed
presence, a wondrous step has been taken into

TOWARD EVENING 341
faith, a great event has occurred in the journey
of existence.
4. The full and mighty response of the heart
was unnoted at the time, but the disciples re
turned to it afterwards. They could not do other
wise, for the way in which Christ sounded and
satisfied their whole being was a supreme wit
ness to his truth.
If a musical instrument could speak, whom
would it claim as master? Would it not judge
by its own nature, would it not go by the witness
of its heart ? The persons who merely make a
noise upon it, or who set one register of power
in it at painful variance with another, or who
call only for what is weakest in its character,
the great organ would brand as impostors. But
the person whose touch from first to last liberates
melody, whose knowledge and skill explore and
bring into play the whole compass of its varied
and wonderful nature, whose purpose and piece
are suited to the entire fullness of its capacity,
who gives it an existence of order, harmony,
power, and joy, and who makes it support and
blend with the chorus of human voices, — the
mighty instrument would crown him master.
The same experience leads to the confession of
Christ as Lord. What he does for his disciples
who walk with him, and who listen to his inter
pretation, and who yield themselves to his spirit,

342 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
is the final reason for their faith in him. He
plays upon life as no one else does. His touch
is divine. He draws out the great incentives
of the intellect, he sets free the vast, melodious
feelings of the heart, he brings into action the
sublime forces of the will, — patience, fortitude,
faithfulness. He makes the soul of his true dis
ciple sing for joy. For those who live closest
to him fife becomes a chant. The great notes
of trial, disappointment, disillusionment, sorrow,
and despair are rolled up into the mightier com
binations of courage, achievement, wisdom, love,
faith, joy, and they become but the sweet soul of
pathos in the triumphant song of Christian experi
ence. The person whose heart burns under the
power of Christ has the best of reasons for call
ing him Lord.
The trouble with us all is that we know well
only the forces that are not divine. The hands
that have played upon us to our hurt, we know.
The promises which the various aspects of the
world have made to our devotion and which have
not been kept, we understand. We have found
many impostors, because we have allowed the
wrong things to appeal to us. The invitation of
a score of various pretenders we have accepted
to our sorrow, the invitation of Christ we have
not put to the proof. We have found out what
is not good, what does not satisfy, what fails to

TOWARD EVENING 343
make the heart burn with a divine fire. We
have walked with selfish pleasures, selfish ambi
tions, social dreams, business schemes, scientific
aims, artistic purposes, finite ends ; and we have
missed the zest upon which we had set our hearts.
We have wasted our supreme devotion. It re
mains to seek the Lord with our whole strength,
to make our religion central and governing, to
give our Master an opportunity to awaken in us
the witness of the burning heart.
5. The last thing in that great day was Christ
standing in the peace and glow of the evening.
Here is the climax of the day at its close. All
doubts, all fears, all sorrows had lifted, and
rolled away ; all hopes and surmises and dreams
had come to their fulfillment ; the best of the day
was the last. The Christ who had been absent in
the morning, who had been unseen but strongly
felt during the progress of the hours, stood in
the sunset, framed in by its farewell fires and
more glorious than they. The evening with
Christ in it, the risen Christ about to reveal him
self fully to his disciples, is the supreme felicity
of one of the happiest of days.
May we not hope for this in our life ? May
we not expect the morning heaviness to depart ?
May we not anticipate something better than
the walk and the relief that comes from the mere
expression of sorrow ? May we not look for the

344 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
divine companion on the journey and his burning
power upon the heart? Shall manhood not come
to this ? Shall it not rise into fellowship with
the best that meets it, the mysterious highest
that joins it on the way ? And when it is toward
evening, shall we not look for something higher
stiU? How easily we shall let the world go, if we
possess something infinitely worthier than it !
How easy it was for those disciples to shut out
the world when they were shutting in Christ !
It is always easy to surrender the less for the
greater ; the weakness of childhood for the power
of youth, the immaturity of youth for the disci
plined strength of manhood, the unseeing eyes
of manhood for the vision that in the evening
is full of the glorious Christ. Christ kept back
from these disciples his best to the last. If we
walk with him, if we listen to him, if we give up
our nature to him, if we constrain him when it
is toward evening to come in and abide with us,
we shall see him at his best when our day is at
its close.
The way from Jerusalem to Emmaus is still
there. Those eight miles from city to village
have more of high and tender humanity in them
than any similar distance on the face of the
earth. That path winding among the Judean
hills is alive with the pathos of man's loss, with

TOWARD EVENING 345
the beauty and peace of man's hope. It may
well serve as a symbol for the journey of life,
irom the mystery of birth to the mystery of
death, from the crowded city of life to the soli
tary abode at fife's end. And as the risen
Christ glorified that walk from city to village,
as his presence filled it with unfading beauty,
so it may be with our journey. He will join us
somewhere on the way. He will go with us to
the journey's end. He will make himself known
to us at the last. He will change our whole view
of our human world. He will show us that it
belongs to him.
Many sad tales are told in these days about
life's end. Eminent servants of the body tell us
there are no ecstasies in death. That is hardly
true. Even so, there is something better than
ecstasy. There is light in the soul, peace below
the reach of pain, a voice that can be heard in
the tumult, a sense of his presence who said,
" Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end
of the world."
Death should be a sunset with Christ in it.
The sun goes, but wherever he goes it is day.
He blazes a path for himself through the forest
of night. Darkness rests only upon the world
that he has left. So the disciple of Christ may
go. The Lord is his light and his salvation.
The gloom of Christian death is confined to this

346 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
earth ; it is for those who remain behind. The
ongoing soul has a different fate. " The sun
shall be no more thy light by day ; neither for
brightness shall the moon give light unto thee :
but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting
light, and thy God thy glory."

XIX
SOME CONTINUITIES OF INDIVIDUAL
EXISTENCE
"And through it he being dead yet speaketh." Hebrews xi, 4.
The question of the duration of the individual
human existence is one of great and grave con
cern. The question is of great concern because
on the whole life is good, and still further, be
cause fife is involved with love. The desire to
go on is nearly universal, and almost every life
is dear to some other fife. The question is of
grave concern because death confronts every
man. The deepest conflict known to man is that
between life and time, love and death. Life
has no wish to come to its limit, to arrive at its
goal, to attend the end and cease to be. Life
and death are in absolute antagonism. They
are inevitable, irreconcilable enemies, and love
sides with life against death. Life and love stand
together, supporting the same great cause. We
see them this morning, fair, full of joy and yet
touched with fear, raising the question that man
has pondered since the world began : If a man
die, shall he five again ?

348 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
That the duration of individual existence is
not arrested by the fact of physical death is the
plain teaching of this story about Abel. Accord
ing to the belief of this writer, his hero had been
dead several thousands of years ; and yet he was
cited as a witness for true sacrifice against false.
Although forty centuries had passed since he
lived, he had continued in the earth a speaker
for the Highest. His existence on the earth was
brief ; his death was a tragedy ; but his fife did
not end at the grave. It continued a potent
influence down to the time of Christ ; it has
continued a good influence from that day to
this. The text calls attention to this survival of
life's power when life in this world has run its
course ; it brings out the fact that the duration
of individual existence, in one form or another,
transcends the grave, and lasts on into future
ages. It therefore fitly presents to our thought
this morning the subject, Some Continuities of
Individual Existence.
1. There is first of all racial continuity. Par
ents live in their children, they continue to live
in their descendants. They do not cease to live
while any drop of their blood flows in the veins
or builds the tissue of any living man or wo
man. If Abel had left children, if his children
had given to the world other children, if the line
of descent had gone on without break to our

CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 349
time, then it could have been said that in one
sense this great ancestor was still alive. This is
the secret of much of the charm and vitality of
the story of Adam and Eve. They are the foun
tain of the race ; they live forever in the end
less organic existence of the race. Their blood
is renewed in every generation; and they are
potent for weal or for woe in the continuous
stream of man's being.
Does this sort of continuous existence mean
anything? Is it capable of entering into the
mind as serious fact and governing considera
tion ? Is man so made that the thought of the
perpetuation of his physical being in the physi
cal being of an endless line of descendants may
operate as motive ? No noble man can doubt
it. This elemental form' of immortality is of
the most serious concern. If a life-saver on
this stormy coast could believe that forever his
heroism as a life-saver would continue to repeat
itself to the end of time, that it would continue
to rescue countless thousands from the terrors
of an angry sea, would it not operate upon his
spirit as motive? If some train- wrecker could
believe that his train-wrecking crimes would
perpetuate themselves to the world's end, if he
could see the millions of mutilated bodies rolled
together as the issue of his wickedness and hear
other millions weeping over the bereavement

350 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
that he had caused, would it not do something
toward arresting him in his mad career ?
Precisely analogous is the case of descent.
There is nothing more appalling to an awakened
mind than the idea of the perpetuation of indi
vidual wickedness in the organic tendencies of
descendants. To be wicked is to do all that
one can to make one's children curse the day
in which they were born, and to curse the father
or mother who thus ruthlessly smote them with
pestilential misery. Youthful honor starts back
in the presence of iniquity, at the thought not
only of the disgrace that the wrong deed may
bring to the person doing it, but also and yet
more at the thought of the shame and suffering
it may bring to those unborn. Parental love is
here face to face with the deepest fact in exist
ence. No fondling of your child, no education,
no advantages, no wealth or position, can alto
gether undo the organic injury of an unhallowed
parenthood. Here the disaster is in the seat of
life. You can mitigate it, but you cannot remove
it. And on the other hand, is there any wish of
the human heart nobler than that which seeks
to provide for children clean blood, organic
health, native honor, sweet humanity, a physical
existence full of harmony, with endless music
locked up in every fibre of it ?
Here again the Adam and Eve story is vital.

CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 351
The disgrace of the parent becomes the calamity
of the child, and the foreseen calamity of the
child should avert the disgrace of the parent.
How many, under the old-fashioned belief, have
hated Adam and Eve for the woe that they
wrought upon their descendants ; and now that
we no longer live under that order of belief, we
still see what woe and what glory parents may
work out for their children and their children's
children to the latest generation.
This, it is said, is a trivial kind of immortality.
It is not so. It is a momentous kind of immor
tality. If there were no other immortality, here
is something intrinsically great and moving.
Blood is the basis of life, good blood of good
life, rich and rare blood of rich and rare life.
The stream of blood is continuous from parent
to child to the end of the line of descent. Shall
it be a river of God, or a stream of ink ? Shall
it be cleansed as it passes through you, or still
further polluted? Shall you serve as filter or as
sewer to the vital current ? Shall you bless or
curse your kind, live as angel or devil, as saviour
or blaster, in the future life of your race ? Shall
you hang millstones about the neck of your
children, or give them wings to fly in the world
of truth and love ? If this is not a noble immor
tality, there is none, and if this is not motive,
again motive does not exist.

352 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
2. There is continuity of individual existence
through literary record and achievement. Great
men live in the historic record of their great
ness ; other great men live on account of their
literary achievement. Perhaps there should be
included the class who live in great monuments
and those who live because they designed and
executed these monuments. Monumental fame,
whether in art, science, philosophy, political ac
tivity, historic record, or religious worth, may
serve as a generic phrase to cover those who have
achieved greatness and those who have become
great by the fitting commemoration of greatness.
In the narrower sense of monumental fame,
how few of the countless multitudes of our race
are chosen for this honor. Ten poets there may
be who are sure of immortality. Perhaps there
may be an equal number of philosophers, artists,
scientific pioneers, orators, historians, rulers, and
supreme religious leaders whose name and fame
will endure to the end of time. To any sane
view of history the number of these elect spirits
is small. The stars are many, but the vacant
spaces as one looks up into the infinite night
reduce the multitudinous stars to insignificance.
The stars are many, but how few of them are
visible to the naked eye and visible everywhere.
Limited in number, mostly local in power, seldom
of universal significance, — such is the fact about

CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 353
the shining contents of space, such is the fact
about the glorious and abiding names in human
history. There is, however, a vastly larger view of the
subject than this. Monuments are for humanity.
The hero is the representative of humanity. The
individuals of the generation in which the hero
lived and achieved live in the monument that
perpetuates the memory of his greatness. The
Pyramids tell not only of the heroic kings of
Egypt, but also of the heroic race that lived and
achieved under them. The great music of the
world uplifts into life and power not only the
soul of the dead master, but also the countless
souls among whom he lived and from whom he
drew his interest in existence, and whose sorrow
and hope became the vast minor and major of
his mightiest harmonies. The historian is at his
best when he writes of the people. In the pages
of Thucydides, the Greek race fights, suffers,
and goes down ; in Tacitus, races live, taste the
sweets of victory, and drink the bitterness of
defeat. In Carlyle, hero- worshiper that he is, the
French people rise and light the fire that con
sumes a thousand years of misdeeds and crimes.
In Green, the English race displays its strong
and hopeful existence. In all the greater works
of man, the ultimate voice that one hears is the
voice of the people. If we listen to Cromwell,

354 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
we hear the stern notes of outraged English
manhood ; if we listen to Washington, we catch
the firm tones of the American colonist ; if we
listen to Lincoln, the voice of the American
people is again ringing in our ears. You cannot
forget the people, the nation, the humanity, that
the great man represents. The great thing about
the earthly immortality of Jesus Christ is that
one hears in his voice the articulate conscience of
a purified humanity. When we remember him,
we remember the race for whom he stands.
When we pay our homage to his person, we offer
veneration to the manhood of the world.
The best example of this universal blending
of the hero and those whom the hero served,
one finds in the anonymous in literature. Who
wrote the Psalms? No one knows, no one will
ever know. They are monumental utterances of
the religious soul of the nameless writer and
his nameless contemporaries. They are, I some
times think, a better introduction to the deep and
beautiful heart of those early centuries because
they are nameless. They are no longer a merely
individual monument ; they have general, racial,
universal significance. The beholding eye, the
rapt soul, the suffering and singing heart of a
whole people live in those incomparable lyrics;
the countless individuals of that age, as at least
capable of rising to this height, live in them.

CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 355
There is the Book of Job. Who wrote it no
man can tell. No man will ever be able to tell.
It represents indeed the fortunes, the epic, of an
individual soul ; and at the same time it utters
the epic significance of a suffering and achieving
humanity. It is as good for the modern world
as it was for the ancient. It is a monumental
book, perpetuating the meaning and the power
of the unnumbered lives of a vanished world,
taking up into itself the fleeting generations of
never-resting time, giving continuity to their
brief existence through its own endless and age
less utterance of the deepest and the highest in
man and in the fortunes of man's race.
I am inclined to think that this capacity of
the Bible to take up into itself the meaning of
the swift-coming and swift- vanishing generations
of men is its supreme capacity. Who wrote the
various books of the Bible is a fair and an in
teresting question. A thousand other questions
concerning its origin, contemporary significance,
and limitations are interesting. But the su
preme question concerns its fitness to serve as
the monumental inspiration of the religious life
and the monumental witness of the religious
heart. In this book are the prophets, the psalm
ists, the apostles, and the Master ; in this book
are the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Roman races,
the Latin, the Teuton, the Anglo-Saxon, and the

356 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
American peoples at their best. In it will be
gathered and perpetuated the best life of Europe,
Asia, Africa, America, and the islands of the
sea; it is destined to become the one supreme
literary monument of a spiritual humanity.
Does this kind of continued existence mean
anything? What thoughtful man would say
that it does not ? Does the shaft on Bunker Hill
take on no additional meaning from the fact that
it represents a nation in arms ? Is the Declara
tion of Independence a monument only to the
political genius of Jefferson ? Does it not mean
infinitely more because in it we can hear the
eloquent manhood of the American people ? Is
the Constitution simply a device of Hamilton,
Madison, and other wise leaders, or the organ of
a race of freemen ? Is our history the record of
the achievements and triumphs of solitary genius
only, or at the same time a record of a social
achievement and triumph ? And does it not mean
infinitely more to us to look upon the supreme
monuments of the race as standing for the best
life of the race ? These monuments gained their
power over us from their racial significance.
When we look at them, we are surrounded by
a great cloud of witnesses. The dead, the count
less dead, live again, and cheer us on at the high
and serious task of existence. And if monuments
gain their power in this way, if they become great

CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 357
only as they continue the race in living influence,
surely there is here inspiration for heroic char
acter. We can help to make Washington stand
for a nobler America. We can do somethmg to
enable Lincoln to rule over a greater America.
We can do something to add to the significance
of every great monument in the land, every
great monument in the world. We can do some
thing to increase the mass and the worth of that
for which the great poem, the great history, the
great oration, the great philosophy, the great re
ligion speaks and sings. We can do something
toward the enrichment and splendor of that ideal
kingdom for which Christ stands. Thus, when
we shall have ended life and gone the way of
all preceding generations, we shall continue to
be in the greatened monumental records, achieve
ments, ideals, and hopes of mankind ; we shall
five continuously in the living and growing
power by which humanity is interpreted, inspired,
and carried toward its goal.
3. There is, inside this continuity of individual
existence through monumental forms, the conti
nuity that the individual obtains through insti
tutions. Here the family comes again into our
thought, and in a new way. It is the oldest
institution in the world. In it the memory of
individuals is longer preserved than in any other
institution ; in it the character of individuals

358 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
operates for good or for evil in a unique manner.
The memory of those who died in childhood,
before they acquired any distinct recognition
beyond family connections, is lovingly cherished ;
the memory of infants who came into this sphere
of mystery for a few brief days, or even hours,
continues part of the treasure and sorrow of
family life. Who has not heard a deep-hearted
mother whisper to friendly ears the story of her
dead children, and who has not observed that in
such a mother the whisper became more reveren
tial and tender with the lapse of time ? The
dead infant that never saw the light, the dead
child, continues in the mind and heart of the
noble mother while life lasts. Carlyle at four
score years of age, writing to console a niece on
the death of her child, recalls his mother's sor
row more than sixty years before over a simi
lar calamity. Thus in the third generation the
memory wrought with tender power.
The business of the world is another institu
tion. Great men are remembered here, and when
they are no longer remembered, their business
achievement and spirit continue. The organized
business of this city has in it the ability and
fidelity of a million noble men ; it rests upon the
insight and power of the past ; it is the monu
ment to the achievement of the past, and in it
in some measure the existence of those vanished

CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 359
thousands of leading men is perpetuated. Every
vocation was organized by some man, some Tu
bal Cain started the new form of social service.
Every vocation is developed and perfected by
the ability and fidelity of the successive gener
ations that pursue it. Farming, mining, ship
building, navigation, all forms of production,
exchange, and transportation, carry in them the
power and character of the worthy who served
man in this manner. The maxim that the blood
of the martyrs is the seed of the Church is of
universal application. The color of the rose is
drawn out of the earth and out of the sun, out
of the invisible and infinite, and in the same
way the bloom of the world's enterprise carries
in it the character and tone of the world's great
workmeu. The school and college are other institutions
that perpetuate the lives of individuals. Schools
like Rugby and Eton and Harrow do more
than tell of the great men who studied or taught
there. Arnold, the great master of Rugby, stands
for a multitude. Stanley, the beautiful disci
ple, suggests another multitude of invisible but
perpetuated lives. Eton recalls not only Wel
lington and Gladstone, the great soldier and the
great statesman, but many centuries of aspiring
boyhood. John Morley tells in his life of Glad
stone of the ovation given to Dr. Keate, an old

360 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
and severe master of Eton. The responses to the
toast to the Queen and to the Queen Dowager
vanished into insignificance before the cheering
given to this old master. He rose among many
hundreds of eminent men whom as boys he had
taught and flogged. So overwhelmed was he by
the universal outburst of reverence and affection
that he could not speak. The rough old school
master stood there a king, representing a king
dom of vanished life. In his severity he has
stimulated humor for a century. " Write down
Hamilton to be flogged for breaking my win
dow," said the master. " Sir, I did not break
your window," cried Hamilton. " Write down
Hamilton to be flogged for breaking my window
and for lying," shouted the master. " Upon my
soul, sir, I did not break your window," protested
Hamilton. " Write him down to be flogged for
breaking my window, for lying, and for swear
ing," concluded the master. So the generations
of schoolboys live in the strength and roughness
and devotion of great teachers.
We have near us a college great by the pre
sence in it of nearly three centuries of noble
graduates. While it stands it will conserve the
lives of its worthy sons, doing its work by the
strength of the living and the dead. Part of
the power of Harvard College is in its associa
tions. The Puritan has left upon it his inef-

CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 361
faceable mark. The colonist, the revolutionist,
the daring patriot in the war for the preservation
of the Union, each has dyed its name in the fair
and brilliant colors of his own devotion. The
great succession of educated, gifted, and high-
minded youth has hallowed the college yard, the
trees, the old buildings, and charged Alma Mater
with the sacred strength of unnumbered lives.
Great men appear in her history like distinct,
familiar stars ; but the light in the firmament
in which these stars move is not all from them.
Thousands and tens of thousands of invisible
shining lives are there as points of light ; they
are known by no special sign, they exist in the
general illumination and peace which they help
to maintain.
Political institutions are another form of per
petuation. History in a living nation and for a
living people is power. Japan is to-day, doing
battle by the virtue of the living and by the
strength of the dead. Her national life has con
served the noble devotion of an immemorial
succession of brave and patriotic men. In this
American republic we look for the same kind
of continuity. The republic will never be too
great to remember the founders and their gen
eration, the redeemers and their militant hosts ;
it will never be too great to recall the successive
generations of its lovers and servants. The old

362 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
flag will grow more and more precious and mov
ing the older it becomes. When the dear burn
ing love of sixty generations of boys and girls is
seen in its crimson bars, when the pure sweet
wisdom of sixty generations of the aged and
venerable is beheld in its silver stars, and when
in its field of blue the loyalty is felt of a mul
titude that no man can number, the power of
the flag will be a still vaster delight, and the
nation whose majestic ensign it is will be greater
because of the presence in its memory and heart
of an unseen and countless host.
The supreme institution is the Christian
Church. What a perpetuater it has been ! The
precious literatures of the Hebrew and the Greek
races have been preserved and handed down by
the Church. Great men, the succession of great
men, great races, and their work have been con
served to the modern world through the media
tion of the Church. We owe immortal thanks
to this institution, not only for the kingdom of
love for which it stands, but also for bringing
down to our time the lost treasure of ancient
races overwhelmed in calamity.
The Church is an institution with the sub
limest vision. It observes All Saints' day ; it
observes All Souls' day. All the human beings
that have breathed this atmosphere of ours in
any century of time, in any zone of our globe,

CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 363
are annually recalled in its prayer. Their names
are forgotten ; all distinct trace of them has van
ished ; but the effect of their life is still in the
world, and this consciousness of the continuity
of their being in the life of their race is thus
seriously confessed. I rejoice in All Saints' day.
It does me good to recall the great and the
good who wrought mightily for our humanity,
who rose through the purgatorial fires of time
into spotless character and benign love. I re
joice in All Saints' day, but I rejoice still more
in All Souls' day. I think then of all the chil
dren that have seen the light, of all the human
beings that have ever lived, of their sin, sorrow,
love, despair, and death, and I can see this
cloud of humanity, vast, dark, terrible, yet shot
through, here and there transfigured, its wild
and broken circumference edged with the gold
of unforgotten and unforgettable service to pos
terity, and by posterity's pity, gratitude, and
hope. The one humanity is to me, I confess,
a sublime vision, the whole might of the past
living in the life of to-day, and for this one
humanity the Church is the great witness.
What is there here to greaten our hearts?
Much, I believe. Institutions conserve and per
petuate what is best in human life; they pro
long indefinitely the influence of good men and
women. We have in our own church an impress-

364 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
ive example. We worship every Sunday with
seven generations of the members of this church
and congregation. The building is alive with
the dear humanity of the past. The dead speak
with a voice deeper, more tender, and mightier
far than any living voice. The hush of their
finished career is upon us, the awe of the unseen
in which they are gathered rests upon us. The
stone cries out of the wall, and the beam out of
the timber, the character and spirit of our entire
past is active and potent upon us to-day. Oh, that
we might live to increase this holy spell, to add
to this majestic influence, to greaten the church
when we are no longer visible here ! Oh, that we
might so live as to become worthy to be numbered
among those whose spirit shapes, and will for
ever shape, the best life here ! Oh, that we might
so live that in this Church of Christ we shall find
our silent, beautiful, monumental witness !
4. These continuities of individual existence
lead up to the question of personal continuity.
The human spirit is able to lay hold of other
lives, make them the bearers of its meaning, and
carry down the stream of time its power. When
the soul can no longer go on here, it is able to
deposit its energy in the living world, and thus
continue its influence in the earth. All this is
fact, clear, certain, undeniable. These continui
ties of which I have spoken as matters of fact

CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 365
raise the great question of faith, the capacity and
likelihood of the individual soul to live after
death in the unseen.
Something has already been said in favor of
personal continuity in the great facts to which
I have called attention. If it is true that in
the few brief years of his earthly career an Abel
can speak forever in behalf of the Highest, that
he can forever ennoble the blood of the race,
add to the depth and pathos of its literary monu
ments, increase the volume of meaning and spirit
in its institutions, it would seem that in such
a being we are dealing with an amazing and a
priceless value. If God is moving mankind out
of the depths of brutal life up and on toward
the heights of spiritual being, it would seem that
those who help Him, who enter into this world-
process as servants of God, must be dear to
Him. When men seek noble ends over long dis
tances of time and against adverse forces, those
who come to their aid and who stand by them
become permanently dear to them. If a captain
is battling with hurricanes and high seas, and
if some expert navigator among the passengers
comes to his aid when his staff of officers is ex
hausted, and helps him to bring his ship safely
into port, we expect that captain to love that
helper forever. If a son or daughter is in grave
moral peril, and if a minister speaks a word,

366 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
or shows a kindness, or exerts an influence that
saves to faith and honor that son or daughter,
do you think noble parents can ever cease to
remember and love the helper ? Is not this the
way of humanity? The domestic that serves
you in faithfulness, the merchant that has always
done fairly by you, the engineer that has for
years taken you to and from the city in safety,
the family physician whose devotion is beyond
praise, who has been with you in the great crises
of family life, the writer of the noble book, the
teacher of your mind who . is at the same time
the friend of your heart, — all become dear to
you. The greater you are in character, the closer
you hold to your grateful heart the servants
of your life. And shall mortal man be more
just than God? Shall a man be more pure than
his Maker ? Shall we read the character of the
Eternal in the wild and devouring sea, or through
the appreciations, thanksgivings, friendships, and
dear loves of the human heart ?
In so far as the Infinite has great ends, they
must be dear to him who serves those ends.
In so far as the universe has meaning, to that
extent it is seeking the realization of great ends.
In its mighty movement upon its exalted ends,
some things must be precious to it. And can
there be anything so precious as the enlight
ened sympathy, efficient devotion, and suffering

CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 367
love of good men ? If Abel can forever speak
for the cause of God, then if God is as good as
good men, He will not allow this faithful speaker
to die. If pure and loving hearts are essential to
God in the lifting of society into higher moods
and conditions, God will not pay them with
death and the grave, with the fife of a worm or
a fly, but with an endless opportunity to love
and serve Him. If one may believe in the hu
manity of God, one must believe in the immor
tality of the servants of God's humanity. The
hero, the saint, the prophet, the humble witness
for righteousness everywhere, must be a price
less value to the God of honor and love. The
worth of good men to men leads to this con
clusion : the priceless and endless worth of good
men to God. The first premise of faith in per
sonal continuity after death is the heart of the
Eternal. It is a heart of honor ; and therefore
life's worth is guarded by God's honor.
But most men are not good. What shall we
say about them ? There is the wheat, and there
is the chaff. What shall we say about the chaff ?
God winnows humanity as the farmer winnows
his grain. If we say the good are dear to Him,
must we not say that the bad are the reverse of
dear? Again we return for an answer to our human
ity. God made the human heart at its best, and

368 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
He must be as good as the best that He has
made. If a mother cannot surrender a mistaken
child, if she still holds to it through good report
and evil report, if she follows it with prayers
and tears and strong cryings unto God when she
can serve it in no other way, if, when her last
breath is leaving the poor body worn down to
death with sorrow for this faithless child, that
last breath is a remembrance of the dear sweet
eyes of its infanthood, the clear and high instincts
of its early years, the undeniable capacity for
goodness that has never been lost, that cannot
be lost, and a solemn appeal, " Father, into thy
hands I commend the soul of my erring child,"
— do you think that God will do less ? Perhaps
no soul is or ever can become chaff. Perhaps
the chaff is the evil in the good and in the bad.1*
Perhaps the task of God's fan is to get the chaff
out of the wheat, and to get the wheat out of
the chaff, to winnow the wickedness out of the
good, and to recover the goodness that lives in
the bad. Perhaps capacity counts with God as
a priceless value. You see a diamond flashing in
the crown of a king. That is beautiful ; that is
nearly priceless. You see a diamond new from
the mine, fastened in the rock which was dug
up with it, covered with the mire in which it
was found, shapeless, unsightly, apparently dead.
The expert knows that the stuff is there. Cut

CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 369
it out, put it on the wheel. Turn the capacity
to character. In that dull, dead stone there is
the capacity to flash and shine like the jewel
in the crown of the king. That capacity makes
it precious. You will not throw it away, you
will save it because of the splendor that it may
become. So God must regard the multitudes
to whom the name of good cannot be applied.
They are here with the rock of brutality adhering
to them and with the mire of animalism staining
their whole existence, they look no better than
the beast of the field, and they act in many in
stances far worse. But they have the capacity to
become men, men of honor, devotion, heroism,
love. And that capacity must restrain God from
allowing them to perish.
It need not be for them at first a desirable
continuity. Here we come to the great idea of
retribution. Cain must five and suffer to atone
for his crime. The universe is not done with him
when he has sinned against it. The universe
is not done with a bad man at death. He must
face God, law, justice, the fearful reality of a
just order; he must live and suffer, and settle
his account with the Eternal. Between the begin
ning and the end of a sinful will there is plenty
of room for a retribution more terrible than
even the imagination of a Dante can paint.
We sometimes marvel at the strength of the

370 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
Puritan's belief in the reality of the fife after
death. His confidence in it is so amazing to us
in our hesitation and doubt about it. His sense
of its reality, its overwhelming reality, is scarcely
intelligible to us in our vagueness and uncer-"
tainty. We wonder how he could talk so long,
and with such sustained and solemn interest,
about heaven and hell, how he could bring those
pictures of the future to bear upon the details
of his earthly life. What was the secret of it ?
Belief in God. He lived in the most solemn
certainty of God's presence in this universe, of
God's searching presence in every human con
science, and of his infinite claim upon every
human soul. He lived in the awful consciousness
of the living God. The truth and falsehood of
his thoughts, the right and wrong of his con
science, the love and the hate of his heart, the
nobility and the baseness of his life concerned
God. His existence concerned God above all
and beyond all ; and what thus stood of infi
nite moment in the esteem of God he saw could
not die. He might rejoice in heaven forever ;
he might suffer in hell forever; but whether
for good or for evil, for weal or for woe, live he
must, perish at death he cannot. To me, this is
the sovereign lesson of Puritan faith. It is this
that gives to the Puritan immortal distinction.
He took his life from God. He held it in

CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 371
God's light, he read its meaning by its con
cern for God, and stood by the issues of his
great faith.
There can be no real belief in personal con
tinuity apart from befief in God. The secret
of faith in man's worth is in the higher faith in
God's humanity. Those who see God, who read
his character through the best that He has made,
who dwell with God, speak to Him, serve Him,
love Him, form the habit of the intellect in the
sense of his supreme reality, and who stand in
the awe of a sovereign accountability to Him,
will not find it hard to believe in the life ever
lasting. They see that men are born for God,
that they are born for life in terms of the Eternal
conscience, that they must live and mount by
the serene path of joy or by the fiery discipline
of woe, till they become the conscious, perfected
sons of God, continuous and endless servants in
his continuous and endless kingdom of love.
" Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and
thy dominion endureth throughout all genera
tions." Within the compass of that kingdom
all men live. They are there the subjects of the
divine conscience and heart ; they are there
under the inspiration of just praise and under
the discipline of just pain ; they are there that
they may rise into the endless joy of perpetual
and perfect service.

XX
GOD ALL IN ALL
" That God may be all in all."
1 Corinthians^ xv, 28.
All great religion is a kind of tidal interest
in God, an unreturning, endless Godward sweep
of the soul. The character of the soul in death,
in Tennyson's great lyric, is the character of the
soul in all profound religious experience : —
" When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home."
The sea departs from itself in the incoming tide ;
it returns to itself in the tide that goes seaward.
The animal, the sensuous, the merely temporal
life carries man away from his true self, away
from home. When man considers, when he comes
to himself, his first great resolve is, " I will arise
and go to my Father." And the greater a man's
religious experience becomes, the vaster is his
interest in the Eternal, the mightier is the return
of his whole being to God. Return unto thy
rest, O my soul. Lord, thou hast been our dwell
ing place in all generations. Thou hast made us
for thyself, and we cannot rest till we rest in thee.
Listen to the song of the river. It is now the

GOD ALL IN ALL 373
song of the mountain torrent, again it is the
lyric of the collected and chastened stream, still
again it is the subdued music of the greater
volume and the steadier current, once more it is
the peace and hope with which it meets the
mighty sea. From first to last, through all its
notes, the song is of the river that longs for the
sea. Such is the religious soul. It begins, it con
tinues, and it ends in the great sigh, " When
shall I come and appear before God? " Religion
is the sense of God in life, the quest for more
and more of God, the increasing current of life
Godward, the final rescue of existence from its
own littleness, its rush into the tides of the Infi
nite, who takes it forth into the boundlessness
and peace of his own being.
There is something very impressive in the
solemn interest with which all the greater think
ers of the race regard the Infinite. Plato is no
where so great as when he is struggling to express
his vision of the Eternal goodness at the heart
of the universe. As the great sun is to the
whole visible world the source of light and life
and joy, so is the Eternal soul of goodness to the
whole invisible realm. It is maker, sustainer,
perfecter. It is the fight and fife and joy of the
eternal sphere. It is God in his boundless be
nignity and power sending forth the eternal tides
of his blessed life upon all the orders of being

374 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
in his abiding world. Even more impressive,
when one considers the sober and unimaginative
cast of his intellect, is the quiet and free delight
into which Aristotle rises, at the close of his
ethics and elsewhere, as he faces the sovereign
life and joy of the Eternal mind. There is then
in his cold speech a glow as of the morning, a
touch of the fire and splendor of the evening.
The beatitude that lures him onward is the hope
of the supreme moment when man may share
God's vision of his world. Spinoza continues
this tradition and strengthens it. He has been
called, what every great religious soul must ever
be, a God-intoxicated man. And it is still possi
ble to worship with Spinoza, so sovereign is his
conception of God, and so great and pure his love
for the Eternal. Even Kant, who is so shy in
the presence of the Infinite, so critical of every
scheme of thought that professes to conduct man
thither, so agnostic in dealing with the world
of the intellect, when he comes to the human
conscience breaks forth into song. Here is some
thing that will not be confined, that takes the
philosopher beyond all boundaries, past all fini-
tude, into the moral being of God. In Hegel, as
in Edwards, God is the Alpha and the Omega, the
beginning and the end. So it is with the entire
succession of the greater thinkers of our race.
Either at the beginning of their thinking or at

GOD ALL IN ALL 375
the end they are fascinated, carried away by the
vision of the Eternal. And this great tradition
of the loftiest intellect of the world is another
witness to the fact that in Him we live and move
and have our being. The mystic, and the philoso
pher come at last to the same confession : I have
seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.
In the great words, " that God may be all in
all," the Apostle sets forth his aim and hope for
himself, for all like himself, and for all rational
beings in all worlds, and at the same time he
utters the deepest thought of his intellect. In
the text Paul is both saint and philosopher.
His heart's desire is that God may be all in all
in his own soul, that he may be all in all in the
souls of all men, that he may be all in all in
the whole rational universe. A vaster or higher
aspiration there could not be. It is the vision of
all sin, wrong, error, infirmity, woe, forever lifted
and banished from the universe. It is the vision
of the love that is Infinite and Eternal passing
through all spiritual life in the strength and
sweetness of its own tides, cleansing all hearts,
keeping all souls, lifting all into perfect obedi
ence and perfect peace. The Apostle longs for
one eternal day, light everywhere, light without
darkness or cloud or shadow, light over all and
in all ; a universe dwelling in the light Eternal.
This is Paul the saint. This is the longing of

376 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
his soul that God, the Eternal Lover of all souls,
may be all in all.
Paul the philosopher keeps company with Paul
the saint. There is a hierarchy of beings. There
are the bare worlds ; there are the various forms
of life in these worlds ; there are the uncounted
multitudes of human souls ; there is the one
Lord of all human souls, putting all evil under
his feet, subduing all the wild forces in the race
that he came to save, reigning till the kingdom
of love is forever sure, and then gathering up
his kingdom in himself, delivering all for the
whole eternal future into the dear and bound
less life of God. Thus in a few words, from a
profound and teeming mind, Paul indicates his
thought concerning the fate of man, the fate of
the kingdom of God in time, and the fate of the
sovereign Person in that kingdom, our Lord Jesus
Christ. All moves forward into the eternal be
atitude in the heart of God. There all is ordered
in perfect truth and in perfect love and in per
fect fellowship.
How can we picture Paul's great thought?
We can say with Origen that God has many
finite worlds, that all finite worlds are a kind of
santa scala, a holy stairway, a path of ascension,
in the divine discipline by which God prepares
his sons for his eternal glory. We may think of
the process of discipline as long, hard, weighty

GOD ALL IN ALL 377
with solemn experience, and for many souls full
of woe, and yet not endless in woe or in pain or in
sin for any creature that God has made. We may
figure a redemptive universe, changing its forms
in the interest of righteousness, passing from one
degree of perfectness to another, dissolving its
discords and shedding them forever, and resolv
ing itself at last into one eternal rhythm of
rational being and love in the infinite soul of
God. Whatever form imagination shall devise,
Paul's central thought is the thought of order.
And this order is set at last in the heart of God.
The song in the whole range of its notes is all
order, all truth, all light, all fire, all soul ; it is
the voice and utterance of the Divine Soul. This
is the goal toward which Paul sees the universe
tending. The consummation is the eternal song.
This passion for God of Paul the saint and
of Paul the philosopher is one that Christianity
must forever renew in the disciples of Jesus.
Our Lord said that the pure in heart shall see
God. He said that we must love God with the
whole strength of our being. The vision of God
and the love of God are the heart of the gospel.
They give to the intellect great and increasing
interest in God. We wonder and dream how
God fives, and while our thought must fall infi
nitely short of his eternal life, we cannot deny
ourselves the privilege of thinking about God.

378 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
There are three epochs in the life of God,
his life before all worlds, his life in all worlds,
his life after all worlds have been recalled into
himself. Let us look up with awe to the Infinite
life, and let us for a few moments wonder and
dream about God.
1. There is the life of God before all worlds.
One of the vexing and recurring questions in
the early days of Christian teaching was this:
What was God doing before He began to make
the world? The impatient answer was that He
was preparing a place of torment for those who
should ask foolish questions. The question may
be unanswerable ; it is nevertheless legitimate.
Indeed, it is inevitable. If we care for God, we
must continue to wonder about his life. And there
is no aspect of the Eternal life that moves us to a
deeper wonder than God's life before all worlds.
We know that our lives are recent. A few years,
a few decades, ago we were not. The sight of our
eyes, the hearing of our ears, the imaginations of
our heart, the forces of our personal soul, were
then no part of this world. Our parents, our kin
dred, our traceable ancestors go farther back, but
measured against the centuries their existence
is as it were of yesterday. The nations of the
world are divided into the new and the old, and
of the older some carry the line of a living human
ity into the dim, distant past. Even here we are

GOD ALL IN ALL 379
overwhelmed with the sense of recentness. The
peoples in the valley of the Nile, in the valley
of the Euphrates, are so recent. Their works of
art, their pyramids, tombs, city walls, temples,
are the ancient works of a recent race. If we say
that man has been on this earth for fifty thou
sand years, even that is nothing. " A thousand
years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it
is past, and as a watch in the night."
Preceding the advent of man in the earth were
numberless forms of animal life. The teeming
energy of the Creator was visible in their power
and fertility. Even they are new upon the stage
of existence. The earth which they claim as
their playground, their battlefield, and their home
is young. The planets that accompany it in its
march, the moon that waits upon it like some
bright and sweet attendant, the sun that gives
light and life to it, and that glorifies the whole
order to which it belongs, — all are of recent
birth. The countless shining worlds of space,
the numberless glorious contents of the stellar
universe, are young when measured against the
eternity that preceded all the forms of being
now in existence. Thought is great. It is the
magician that with a single stroke can wipe time
and space clean of all worlds, as one might rub
out the curious figures on a blackboard. Thought
is great. It is the enchanter that can present us

380 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
in the Eternal presence when there were as yet
no morning stars to sing together, when there
were as yet no sons of God to shout together for
joy. Back into this region of pure Deity man's
intelligence takes him, back to the eternity when
God was all in all, when beside Him there was
nothing, beyond Him nothing ; when He was the
universe, when the universe was He.
How did He live in that lonely eternity?
Could He be content with his own thoughts ?
Could He be satisfied with the dreams of the
worlds that were to come into being ? Could the
eternal designs in his intelligence of the coming
forms of the universe, like the prior and beauti
ful designs of some great artist, sufficiently de
light his soul ? Could an archetypal universe, a
universe modeled in thought, forever existing
in his intellect, forever blazing in beauty and
splendor, forever expressing his creative purpose,
holding in its vast order images of the coming
multitudinous forms of created beings, meet all
the demands of God's heart ? Our God is love.
Whom did He love ? Our God's delight is the
delight of the lover. And how could this lonely,
Eternal God know either love or joy ?
Then, too, the race that was to be, the race of
man, was to be a social race. It was to consist
of young men and maidens, old men and little
children, lovers, husbands, wives, families, kin-

GOD ALL IN ALL 381
dreds, nations, a social humanity. How could this
social race, this race of lovers, come out of an
individual God whose best attempt at love was
the love of himself ?
Thus are we thrown back upon the glorious
mystery for which the Trinity stands. It is a
poor word. It is in no sense a Biblical word, and
yet it has come to stand for the New Testament
conception of God, the conception of God that
saves the reality of Go$l to mankind. It makes
real the eternal love of God and his eternal joy.
It tells us that God is in himself a mystic,
unfathomable, social whole, that his unity is not
the unity of the bare individual, but the unity
of harmonious difference. It tells us that God is
eternally the Father, and the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, that He is in himself the ineffable society,
that in himself there is eternally the living
whole according to which He is to make our
human race, our human world.
Thinking of God not as eternally solitary, but
as forever an incomprehensible society in himself,
we look upon the epoch of his being before all
worlds with wonder and joy. Forever in himself
there are those exchanges of thought, those mu
tualities of love, those reciprocities of being, that
are the heart of our happiest existence. We can
dream over the eternal society in God before
sin or weakness or woe was in the universe,

382 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
when all was light, splendor, and peace, when no
where was there any darkness or cloud or shadow,
when only the Eternal wisdom, the Eternal love,
and the Eternal strength were, and were all in
all. O happy universe ! O blessed Eternal Being !
The finite has not been born. The finite does
not exist. There is no limitation upon the Life
that is all in all, there is no wrong, no cruelty,
no sad struggle, no heart-break anywhere ; there
is no death in all the universe, no voice of weep
ing, as of Rachel weeping for her children, and
refusing to be comforted, because they are not ;
no death, no grave, no despair ; nothing but the
morning without clouds, the fair eternal morn
ing, nothing but boundless vision, boundless love,
boundless life and joy. O blessed universe, last
forever ! Break not forth from the beatitude of
thy perfect and unshadowed bliss. O Eternal
God, who in thyself art all in all, continue to
be all in all, content forever with thy perfect
Fatherhood, thy perfect Sonhood, and thy Holy
Spirit. Be thou the blessed universe; let the
blessed universe be thy life and thine alone.
2. The prayer is vain ; there is the second
epoch in the being of God, his life in all worlds.
Day unto day uttereth speech, night unto night
showeth forth knowledge. The heavens are here,
declaring the glory of God. The cosmos is here,

GOD ALL IN ALL 383
ordered, advancing, living, the solemn and amaz
ing embodiment of the mind and will of God.
Life is here spreading into endless varieties,
climbing into new and higher forms. Man is
here with his dual nature, his sense and reason,
his flesh and spirit, his kinship with the animal
and his affinity with God.
The second great epoch in its highest form
has begun. The conscience of God seeks expres
sion in the existence of this dual creature man.
There is the birth of the ideal in the human
soul. -Over the personal life, over the life of the
family, over lovers' communion and marriage
altar, over the cradle and the school and the
house of prayer, the ideals gather ; over the socie
ties of trade and the nation they assemble, with
a bright, particular star for every relation, for
every interest, for every vocation, with a galaxy
of stars for the total social existence of man, an
inward firmament ample as the outward, crowded
as that is with unsetting worlds that burn for
ever in the heights of man's being, and that
form the heights, overawe and fascinate, amaze
and hallow, command and bless, the weary race
of mortal men.
With the birth of the ideal there comes the
beginning of moral struggle. That heavenly
vision will not allow man to rest. The ideal is
with man, and he can no more outrun it than he

384 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
can outrun his own shadow. It is the image, the
shadow, the spirit and presence of God in the
heart of our. existence.
" Whither shall I go from thy spirit ?
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence ?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there :
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ;
Even there shall thy hand lead me.
And thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, Surely the darkness shall overwhelm me,
And the light about me shall be night ;
Even the darkness hideth not from thee,
But the night shineth as the day :
The darkness and the light are both alike to thee."
Omnipresent is the ideal. Its light is every
where. By it we know that error is error, that
wrong is wrong, that sin is sin. We know its
presence in regret and grief, in remorse and de
spair, in the whole descending bitterness of the
selfish life, in all the circles of the moral inferno,
in the utmost depth of malice and shame. By
the ever-present ideal we know that we are men,
and that we have outraged our humanity. By it
we know the sweetness of repentance, the con
solation of the new purpose, the high and solemn
joy of moral manhood victorious in temptation,
strong in service, undismayed in adversity, fear
less in death, at peace with the universe, upheld
by vast hopes in the heart of mystery. The ideal

GOD ALL IN ALL 385
is the glorious presence of God in the human
mind. The struggle and the suffering of man in
the presence of the ideal are the struggle and the
suffering of man in the life of God.
What a great epoch this is ! We think first
of all of this awakening of a race of animals
by flashing in upon the members of it an image
of higher good, of better things, of mightier
ranges of being, of the moral life of God. This
is the first movement in the vast process. A race
of animals is arrested ; something has touched
it from above ; something from behind the skies
has passed into its heart. It was a race of ani
mals ; it is now a race of men. It is a race
awakened to the sovereignty of the moral order.
It is a race with a conscience summoned to the
vision and the service of God. It is as if we
heard in the thick darkness of animalism the
words ring out, " Let there be light : and there
was light." The conscience of God has now a
sphere of expression and operation beyond him
self. He is the Creator of a morally awakened
race, He is the God and Father of men.
The next thing that strikes one is the waste
in this epoch. So many lives there are that look
up once or twice, and then forever afterwards
look down. So many souls there are that never
come to anything, that waste their power in sin
and shame, that follow paths of evil and disgrace

386 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
into despair, that go at last to swell the awful
volume of human failure. What a dead sea is
this ! What a depth of waste and. shame, what a
charnel-house set in the light of the ideal ! There
in the light of the eternal ideal are exposed for
recognition the sweet children that ended exist
ence in crime, the fair youth that became the
plague of society, the men and women who in
their headlong career of vice abandoned all honor,
the men and women of genius who lent imagi
nation to transfigure lust and glorify the beast,
and the countless company who simply became
sordid and mean, and who sank at last, helpless,
worthless, hopeless, into the dark embrace of
death. What a multitude that is, lying in the
morgue of history awaiting recognition ; and there
is none to recognize or pity or put them out of
sight but God.
Then comes the tragedy in the life of the
good. They mean well, they make mistakes, and
they suffer from mistakes. They did not know
the time of their visitation, and they have thus
brought upon themselves enduring distress. They
aim high, and the arrow falls far short of the
mark. They aim again and again, and they do
not attain. The pursuit of the moral goal breeds
a kind of despair. Who is sufficient for these
things ? We fight with beasts as Paul did at
Ephesus, and we carry through life the marks of

GOD ALL IN ALL 387
their teeth upon our nature. Everywhere our
ignorance and weakness conspire to limit our
attainment, sometimes to defeat our endeavor.
We rise fresh every morning, salute with devout
hearts the shining hours full of good, full of
God, and we retire every evening weary with
the consciousness that mistake has again kept
us from complete and glorious victory. Paul be
gins his Christian fife with the challenge, " Am
I not an apostle ? " He ends it with the confes
sion, " I am the chief of sinners ; " and he adds
the great tragic note, " I did it ignorantly in
unbelief." Oh, the tragic mistake of the good
soul ! Oh, the intellect, unequal servant of the
good will ! Oh, the poor device that defeats or
limits the victory of the good intent ! This is
the pure tragedy of the world, — this ignorance
and weakness by which our best purposes and
endeavors are beaten back in defeat. The tra-
gady of the world is not given in the sin of Judas.
That is pure crime. That is unmitigated waste
and shame. The tragedy of the world is given
in Peter's denial. Weakness overwhelmed him.
There was no vision left, no strength to support
the generous resolve, " I will go with thee to
prison and to death." The man went down with
love alive in his heart, with a noble purpose
keeping its hold upon his will ; he went down
through ignorance, through weakness, through

388 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
the surprise that overwhelmed the mind unequal
to the service of the noble intent. This is the
tragedy of our time. The good man in temp
tation, in a difficult duty, in a great crisis of
existence, falling from his goodness through mis
take. He is the soldier on picket duty, who
never means to be unfaithful, whose soul shrinks
with horror at unfaithfulness, and who yet in an
hour of weakness falls asleep at his post. When
he is called, court-martialed, sentenced, and led
forth to be shot, do not his comrades see the
tragedy in his life ? Do they not see how differ
ent his case is from that of the wretch who never
meant to be true, who is shot because he is a
wretch ? Do they not feel the pity of it when
they see him fall, pierced by a hundred bullets ?
That is part of the vision of this world, — the
suffering, sometimes, the fatal suffering, that
comes from the ignorance and the weakness of
the brave.
We stand at a distance and survey this mighty
epoch of human history. If we stand too near,
we shall be dismayed by the horror of the battle
field, its slaughter and its agony. If we stand
where we can see it all, we shall feel that the
God of battles is in it, and that the forces of his
spirit are supreme. He has made man. He has
made man aware of his manhood. He has made
man know himself in the descent of shame, in

GOD ALL IN ALL 389
the inferno of the wicked life. He has made
man know himself in the struggle upward, in the
sense of limitation and defeat. He has made
the race of man, and through the fiery courses
of woe, through the heart of the world's deepest
tragedy, He is greatening within man the sense
of his humanity. As we survey this tremendous
epoch, we cry out for our own comfort, and for
the comfort of mankind : —
" O love that will not let me go." We look
upon a scene, — confused, wild, tragic, tremen
dous, but beating high with life, pulsing with
the presence of God. Our sinful, erring, suffer
ing race is here, and God is with us, God is in
us. We shall not be moved ; God shall help us,
and that right early. We are here in this wide
and terrible desert wherein are nameless dis
tresses, and we are the flock of God, and He is
our shepherd. Yea, though we walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, we shall fear
no evil ; for He is with us, He is within us.
3. There is the final epoch in the life of God.
In the first epoch God was the universe; in
the second the universe reaching its climax in
man was other than God, while living upon his
strength ; in the final epoch the universe "is taken
back into the Eternal life, and God becomes all
in all.
Here is the hope for the wasted existence on

390 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
the earth. Human history is less than an hour in
the great and terrible day of the Lord. Human
life with its threescore years and ten is less than
a moment in the vast redemptive process of our
God. The souls that have turned life here into
shame are on the fiery courses of woe. None
may say how long or how terrible their punish
ment may be. They were made for the vision
and service of God; they have unmade them
selves. On the potter's wheel they have gone
to pieces ; they are thrown to the rubbish-heap.
But the clay is good, the wheel whirls forever,
and the potter loves his task. The broken ves
sel will soften into the new lump, the old clay
will be put upon the wheel again, the old eter
nal design will forever seek the perfect embodi
ment of its high beauty. Such must be our
hope. Souls made in the image of God may not
die ; souls that have outraged their being may
not enter the kingdom of God. Souls that are
outside that kingdom are in the realm where
God recovers the waste of our world, where He
remakes the broken, worthless human life.
" I stood at Naples once, a night so dark
I could have scarce conjectured there was earth
Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all :
But the night's black was burst through by a blaze —
Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore,
Through her whole length of mountain visible :
There lay the city thick and plain with spires,

GOD ALL IN ALL 391
And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea.
So may the truth be flashed out by one blow,
And Guido see, one instant, and be saved.
Else I avert my face, nor follow him
Into that sad obscure sequestered state
Where God unmakes but to remake the soul
He else made first in vain; which must not be."
If this is not too good to be true, if life that
here has been an expense of being in a waste of
shame may not forever lie as a mere rubbish-
heap in God's universe, we may well believe that
all the sorrowful issues of mistake and weakness
shall at last be healed, that God shall abolish
thei tragedy of our existence by abolishing its
cause. And He shall conserve the great human
issues of this tragic world. All the pity for suf
fering souls, all the horror of the black issues
of mistake, all the sympathy and tenderness, all
the pure aspiration and high prayer, shall be
kept forever. The wealth of soul that has been
gained in this process of blood and tears shall
not be lost. The tragedy shall end because igno
rance and weakness shall be done away, and
the great heart of the brave who fought and
suffered defeat, who were caught in meshes of
error that they could not rend asunder, shall
beat with a heavenly joy. And the joy shall be
a song in which the major notes of final victory
and peace shall be set in the vast minor of re
membered mistake and sorrow. Oh, that song

392 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
of Moses and the Lamb ! the triumphant peal of
a redeemed humanity, singing in the memory
of this scene of tragedy, singing with a voice
like the voice of many waters, as if all the tears
and all the sorrows of all time were pouring
their pathos into it. The process of tragedy is
in God ; its issues are with Him.
Here, too, we may see how clear the hope of
the deathless life burns. God shall recall the
universe into his own life ; worlds shall dissolve
into their elements, mere physical individuality
shall pass away. All life that is without the
capacity of rational being must run its brief
course, but souls made in the image of the moral
Deity, made for his heart, created children of
God, shall last forever. They shall be recalled,
like a constellation of wandering stars, into the
deep bosom of the Eternal Being. They shall be
recalled into the centres of the light ineffable.
The dead are with God, as stars unseen at noon
are in the heavens ; the dead are with God,
recalled to the life ih Him, moving on higher
courses, but covered by the light that is inacces
sible. The dead are in God, concealed in light,
serving in the centres of a glory into which mor
tal vision may not penetrate. The dead shall be
with God, the small and the great, recalled
to his heart, placed there as the permanent em
bodiments of his creative love, kept in being

GOD ALL IN ALL 39S
that they may behold, serve, and enjoy Him for
ever. Is there no comfort in this vision ? If it is
true that God shall again be the universe, it is
true that all in God must accord with his soul.
All sin, all sorrow, all weakness, shall pass away.
The terrible discords of existence shall be shed
forever. The vision is of the Holy City. And
they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any
more, neither shall the sun strike upon them,
nor any heat, for the Lamb that is in the midst
of the throne shall be their Shepherd, and shall
guide them unto fountains of waters of life, and
God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.
Oh, that stainless, tearless universe ! Oh, that
universe in God! Oh, the tenderness and the
strength in our God ! Like the dear mother long
since vanished from us, He shall take us soul by
soul in our mistakes and fears and heartbreaks,
and with his own hand wipe away our tears.
Like the father who put his strength round us,
He shall compass our being with his Almighty
love. Oh, the vision of the redeemed and sorrow-
less race of mortal men, what sweetness, what
solace it brings !
Is there here no inspiration for the soul that
would be just and pure? Whence come our
paralysis and despair ? From doubt concerning
the victory of good over evil. When we lose our

394 THROUGH MAN TO GOD
faith in our own possible nobleness, when we
surrender our befief in the possible nobleness of
our fellow men, when we have no longer high
confidence in the power of truth over human
hearts at home and abroad, then we abandon
endeavor. When hope dies, endeavor ends. Doubt
of the victory of good over evil is the thing, and
the only thing, that cuts the nerve of moral
service. This is our supreme calamity. Moral
discouragement is the source of all but a small
fraction of the sins of men, moral discourage
ment is the origin of the greater part of the in
difference of good people to the claims of the
kingdom of God. Take all hope of goodness out
of the heart of man, and to-morrow you will find
him herding with the beast of the field. The
vision of God triumphant, — not that, but the
horror of the devil triumphant, is the great de
stroyer of moral endeavor. The vision of eter
nal sin, defiant forever, is the supreme dismay.
For, as Maurice said, we need then a new Te
Deum, a chant in infinite gloom, — " We praise
thee, O Devil, we acknowledge thee to be the
Lord." As our hope is in God, so our inspiration is
from Him. He is on the side of every soul that
seeks the righteous life. And when we join Him
in service for the coming of his kingdom, we
trust to his power to win our cause and to reward

GOD ALL IN ALL 395
our labor. When we are c6nfident that we shall
not fail, how earnest we become in our personal
devotion, how large and free we become in our
public service, how generous and how joyous
as sustainers of the great causes of mankind!
When we rise to the vision of the truth that
no falsehood can defeat, of the right that no
wrong can crush, of the goodness that no evil
can overpower, we rise to our best estate as mem
bers of the Church of Christ. Serious but not
hopeless, difficult but not uncontrollable, tre
mendous but subject in the long eternal years to
God, is the moral being of this race of ours.
And we bless God that the universe has never
escaped from his control. We bless God for the
vision of the angel standing in the sun, the spirit
ual splendor in the heart of splendor, the re
deemed humanity become all light, all fire, and
set forever in the infinite glory of God. We
bless God for the hope of a universe recalled to
himself, for the dream that hears again the song
of the morning stars, the shout of the sons of
God, for the fitful, but solemn, expectation that
again in all worlds, in all souls, in sovereign
power and grace God shall be all in all.

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