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Paper, 25 cents. Clotli, 40 cents. If ; s' 1 < X UJ H Ui < OQ «> The Culture ot Christian Manhood Sunday Mornings h>. Batrc!! (.'I'.apcJ Yale Univcrr.'iitV'^ Edited by William H. Sallmon With Portraits of Authors ' " St) /«/,' of f';randeiiy is our dusi, So mur ix Gtni f.j ina>i, Tkt \outli '-^J>'i>j, ■/ :,t» '" !:.Mhn\as New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company M DCCC XCVII i I;' 'I ( . '■, '/ -1 a: The Culture of Christian Manhood Sunday Mornings In Battell Chapel Vale University* Edited by William H. Sallmon With Portraits ofAuth ors " ^cf^*ll of grandew is our dust ..f" '"''^^ is God to man, WheH duty whispers loiv, ' Thou must,' I he youth replies, 'J can.'" Emekson New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company M DCCC XCVII ; m 1 i '. -1 • i 4' . 1, 1 i t i 1 i 1. BE 1 Copyright, 1897, by Fleming H. Revell Company THE NEW YORK TYPE-SETTING COMPANY THE CAXTON PRESS J Contents Preface I. Selected Lives . By Charles Cuthbert Hall, D.D PAGE • 9 . 13 li. The Part We Know . By Alexander McKenzie, D.D. III. Personality By Amory H. Bradford, D. D. IV. The Evolution of a Thinker , By George A. Gordon, D.D. V. The Great Heresy * • • By David James Burrell, D. D. VI. Christ Seeking the Lost By George Harris, D.D. VII. An Extraordinary Saint . By William R. Richards, D.D. ' VIII. The Meaning of Manhood By Henry van Dyke, D.D. IX. Strength and Courage By Lewis O. Brastow, D. D. • 30 • 47 • 63 . 81 • lor . 118 . 138 . 164 (•m !*■■ li I It Contents PAGE X. The Tkril of Protracted Temptation . 184 By Teunis 3. Hamlin, D.D. XI. The Gospel's View of our Life . . 200 By Rev. Joseph H. Twichell XII. Trophies of Youth the Safeguard of Manhood 216 By Rev. James G. K. McClure XIII. Manhood's Struggle and Victory , . 233 By S. E. Herrick, D.D. XIV. The Sabhath .... By Bishop John H. Vincent XV. I.MMUTABILITY .... By M. Woolsey Stryker, D.D., LL.D. XVI. The Sinless One By George T. Purves, D.D, 249 272 . 286 4i 8 U ww gi iH !!' .ij"lM . . i \ ■ ' '] ■■ ijM: i 111' ■ ill ' b 1 ^- } Im ■ ' r j-i i ; i 1 = '^ 1 , 1 Schxted Lives !!• lege problems are impressed with the growth and expansion of student life in this country, we ar^ all likely to overestimate the propor- tion of college men in the population of the United States. But it can be shown by most carefully prepc. ;ed statistics how relatively small is the student class, and how, for every young man entering the academic circle, hun- dreds must be denied the exalted privileges of that noble circle, save as we who have had those privileges, and have by means of them become a selected class, shall know the mean- ing of God's anointing upon ourselves, and shall go forth as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life, to those who have not been called with our calling. One difficulty stands in the way of your realizing that you are all — every one of you — selected lives, anointed and set apart for special influence in the world. That difficulty is the fact that within the university are such marked differences not only in the capacity of men to be leaders, but in the disposition of men to live nobly. There must be striking ao mm ^m Diversities of Gifts diiTerences of capacity among you. Doubt- less you have natural leaders among you : men of brilliant personality and singular forcefulness, who come to the front in your counsels and achievements by a kind of natu- ral and involuntary selection ; men who would probably have been leaders anywhere, out of college or in college. And there can be no doubt that many a quieter man, many a man less richly endowed with the fascinating gifts of personality, is often depressed as he mea- sures his own lesser influence against these born leaders, judging them to be selected to a class from which he has been left out. But the thought I am presenting to-day is larger than that which takes note of the scaling of personal gifts. It is a thought that includes every man among you in the class of selected lives, on whom God has poured a holy anoint- ing. Your academic life is your anointing. You are selected because you are here, and because of what you should be made by being here. In every grouping of men there will be gradings of power — some men more 21 m hi ■i ■ . i I i .J I c ^flii ' I SBSSS 991 Selected Lives ' I evidently born for leadership than others. Even among the twelve apostles there were gradings of power and a few natural leaders. Yet all were called and selected and set apart by Christ to go out into the world and to spread the light of his coming up and down the world. And you, whatever the gradings of power among you, are all called, even from the least to the greatest, to go out into the mass of the world from which you have been singled and set apart, that you may be chil- dren of God in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you are seen as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life. And the same is true in regard to the different dispositions which may be found among you toward living nobly. Your capacities may differ, while yet you are all called and selected ; so also your moral dis- positions may differ, while yet you are all called and selected, from the noblest to the most ignoble. There must be earnest men here, brave with a most exalted purpose, conscious that God has selected and anointed 22 fe Why were We Selected^ them for great ends. And there may be men here far less earnest, devoid of the spirit of consecration, idle, irresolute, yes, loving darkness rather than light. Yet tJiey are selected lives and anointed lives as much as the others, by virtue of their being in this academic brotherhood ; and the carelessness of their lives is a more serious and melan- choly perversion of good because it is the denial of God's anointing and the misuse of special privilege. By the rule Christ himself laid down — " To whom much is given, of him shall much be required " — it is more grievous for a college man to live ignobly than for another, for his is the greater light, his the higher calling, his the more royal anointing. But how came this selection, my brothers, to be set on us? How is it we are here, while others whom we have known are not here and can never be here ? How were we singled out and selected to live within this academic circle, closed against hundreds of our contemporaries? Ah, that is a deep question; deep and far-reaching must be its 23 f \r ^ Selected Lives answer. Dotbiless many of us are here through the consecrated self-denial of others on our behalf. There are those who love us, who think they see in us signs of God's se- lecting grace, who have borne and are bear- ing mighty burdens, that we through their poverty might be made rich with the intel- lectual and spiritual wealth of the academic life. I know the fathers who are practising heroic self-privation, some of them in remote and ill-paid pastorates, that their sons may enter manhood within this circle of selected lives. I know the young sister who is hoard- ing her scant income as a teacher, that her younger brother may- not lack the privilege of a European university. Doubtless many of us are here through the mystic influence of heredity. The strain of intellectual ten- dency is in our blood, an ancestral heritage. We were projected into this circle by the momentum of an intellectual predestination, gathering force, it may be, from colonial times. Our selection was prenatal. We are what we are because our fathers and their 24 For what are We Selected^ fathers were what they were. And doubtless many of us are here through the direct and obvious calling of the Spirit of God. I doubt whether Christ's selection of his apostles was more emphatic or more individualistic than his call and selection of some of us to come into this circle, and live his life, and follow in his train, and go out into our generation and be seen in it as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life. Can any one of us entertain the belief that he is here because of Christ's choosing, and not offer up his very life to Christ in full response, saying, with Johann SchefHer: " O Love, who ere life's earliest dawn On me thy choice hast gently laid ; O Love, who here as Man wast born. And wholly like to us wast made ; O Love, I give myself to thee, Thine ever, only thine, to be." And unto what are we selected ? What is the end and object of the distinction conferred on men by their academic training? It is — to speak the apostolic word with direct refer- ence to the national and social and spiritual 25 ! ^1 . .j T' H-Ji..^; — m^ Selected Lives i questions of our own country and of our own time — it is that we may stand in the midst of our crooked and perverse generation, our generation which has so many distorted ideas and unwholesome practices, and be as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life. It is that we may show in ourselves and pro- mote in others nobler citizenship, politically, socially, spiritually. It was many years ago that Benson, the fine-spirited Arclibishop of Canterbury, who died so suddenly at Ha- warden, said, in his impassioned way, to the boys at Wellington College : '* As citizens men despise their birthrghts." We have been c( mpelled to witness much of thit de- spising of the civic birthright on this side of the sea ; much of a corrupt citizenship, sell- ing its birthright for money, estimating the public service by its gains. God forbid that I should seem to imply that the line dividing the noble from the ignoble in the ethics of citizenship is the collegiate education; that the citizens who honor their birthright are not numerously found among those who never a6 I;! Academic Citizenship matriculated in college. Patriotism in its purest form may be found in every social order of our land. But I do affirm the pe- culiarly great opportunities given to him who combines with a pure spirit a liberiil educa- tion, to become a light in the world, a leader of his countrymen toward higher and broader conceptions of national honor and of civic duty. The college man in politics is the salvation of the present and the hope of the future. Training tells. The untrained mind may be as lofty in its intention as the mind of a scholar. But the academic discipline joined with the academic point of view are indispensable for statesmanship; and what this country chiefly needs is a race of states- men, selected lives, trained in the university to estimate upon the historic basis the trend of events, nurtured in the university upon the ideals of a fervent, white-souled patriotism, kindled in the university with that sublime ambition to serve the state for the state's sake which makes citizenship a high profes- sion and the birthright within the nation a 27 I) 1 1] ■'V f\ % il '1 1 ■' 1 1 i ;f 1 I;,, \ ' iil ' - ' ■ ' if ^ ■ ' ' ' 1 «4 i t iKm ' vSif i W^ m )l I I (I I I Selected Lives holy and unsullied trust. It is a great thing to go forth as a collegian into the vast terri- tory of philanthropic, moral, and Christian opportunity. It is a great thing to be a col- legian in these latter days, and to have part in this mighty expansion of sociology as a practical science. It is a great thing to be a collegian and to carry the skill and fire of an academic training into the moral movement of our day. It is a great thing to be a colle- gian in these times, and in the holy ministry of Jesus to go out and preach a simple Chris- tianity, a more fraternal and catholic church- manship, a gospel whose spirit is first of all and above all the missionary spirit. Selected lives, called by the Spirit and the providence of God into peculiar privilege and specialized opportunity, accept your des- tiny. It is within your grasp, to have and to hold, or to reject and to throw away. God puts your opportunity into your hand. If you use it your life will be a victory ; if you put it from you some other man will gladly seize it and conquer where you failed. May 28 Our Opportunity I not in this place speak — not into your ears only, into your very hearts — the message of a Yale man of the class of '6i, Edward Row- land Sill? It is his wonderful parable of op- portunity, a parable for each selected life to ponder: of the coward who flung away his sword upon a vain excuse, and of the king's son, he on whose brow were the drops of the royal anointing, who seized the sword the coward flung away and with it won a splendid triumph for the cause of truth : " This I beheld— or dreamed it in a dream: There spread a cloud of dust along a plain ; And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged A furious battle, and men yelled, .-ad swords Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes. A craven hung along the battle's edge, And thought : ' Had I a sword of keener steel, — That blue blade that the king's son bears, — but this Blunt thing! — ' he snapt and flung it from his hand. And lowering crept away and left the field. Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead. And weaponless, and saw the broken sword. Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand, And ran and snatched it, and, with battle-shout Lifted afresh, he hewed his enemy down And saved a great cause that heroic day." I , Ik] I ■ 1.5 I i 'I P 1'. I 29 The Part We Know s ' ,5 By Alexander McKcnzie, D.D. Minister of the First Church in Cambridge " Sihcr and gold have I none; but suck as / have give J thee." — ^cts in. 6. THESE are very simple words. The thought is neither original nor pro- found, but it has always been a popular verse. Perhaps this is because we are so often asked to give what we cannot give, or we require ourselves to do what we cannot do, that there is special encouragement in being told on high authority that we can only do what we can and give what we have. The incident itself is familiar. A man lame from his birth was laid at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple at the time of the even- ing worship. He saw the two Galileans, 30 1. I! w /oCe.^ ^ t^^S'c^ //& I !l , ^ I h t b The Value of Money Peter and John, entering in, and he looked to them for an alms. They fastened their eyes i4K)ii his longing eyes, and Peter said, " Sil- ver and gold have I none." It was .silver and gold the man wanted, and his rising hope fell into disappointment. But Peter fmished his sentence, "Such as I have give I thee," and the man was content. The first words are of little account, save as a natural begin ning. The latter words hold the force of the sentence. It was of no consequence to Peter or to the man what the apostle had not ; the strength was entirely on the positive side. ** What I have " is in itself a strong sentence. Happily, that which he had was in itself of much greater value than that which he lacked. Silver and gold are of great worth, but they cannot do all things. They can build a hos- pital, but they cannot create physicians. They can endow a college, but they cannot make scholars. When we call the physician to our necessity we do not care whether he has silver and gold or not, and men have been eminent as college professors who were 31 =1 i> f. r if A,. m t; ! I: •1 . r 'd'^ k The Part We Know ) I' { i: / I- II in no wise distinguished by their wealth. Indeed, the need of silver and gold may be a stimulus to exertion, as when the great Eng- lish lawyer spraiig suddenly into his first great cause and great fame, and assigned as the reason for his remarkable effort that he felt his children pulling at his gown and cry- ing, " Father, give us bread." On the other hand, the possession of wealth may lessen the exertion. When Thomas Aquinas visited Innocent IV., the pope displayed the great treasures of the church and boasted, "The time has gone by when the church must say, ' Silver and gold have I none.' " " Yes," was the answer of the saintly doctor, " and the time has gone by when the church can say to a lame man, * Rise up and walk.' " The wise man knows the use of wealth, while he keeps himself independent of it. It was a fine as- sertion of independence made by the English prelate at New Zealand, when the authorities in England warned him that if he persisted in his course they should cut down his salary. " You can get very good fish here in the 3a mm PM ■iPiimiiii 5991 Variety in Helpfulness bay," he said, "and I know a place in the woods where you can dig up roots that you can eat. ' What could be more absurd than the attempt to control through his salary the utterances of a man who can live on roots! But if we are not to have silver and gold, let us by all means have something. There is so great variety in the wants of men that there is great variety in the help which can be given to them. Think how many things might have been done for this lame man. He could have been furnished with money; he could have been furnished with sound feet and ankle-bones; one who could have done nothing more might have moved him into a comfortable position against the wall, or have drawn his rug over his feet, or brought him a piece of bread or a cup of water. But the man in his want represents the world and its necessities, and suggests the varied opportu- nities calling for whatever endowment of skill or strength one may possess. Peter was able to give to him the best gift when with the divine power intrusted to him he Hfted 33 h I; ' II a ,■ ,v Hi •ti i It '\M ■Pi The Part We Know 1 f ' up a man who had never stood upon his feet and gave him strength to take up the work of Hfe and to walk in its pleasant places. This was Peter's grace. It may not be yours or mine, but it is given to every one of us to have something which the world needs and which we can give as the manifesting of our life. Let us make sure, by all means, that we have something which the world needs, and that we are usiii.^; wi; ■ we have, not hindered by what we lack. Negative lives are of small value. Negative acts, if there are such things, are not worthy of men in the serious work of life. The phrase sometimes used of an act which we like to perform, that " there is no harm in it," is not v/orthy of a man. It is not what an act does not have in it, but what an act does have in it. Lhat should enlist our care. An act with nc hinn in it is a purse with no money in it; It i'^ '• >^ jqual to the needs of our daily life, while we are easily able to have money in our purse. The requirements of God do not stop at the nega- tives. "Do not covet" means' T.ove." "Do 34 The Positive Life not lie " means " Tell the truth." " Do not steal" means "Give." For our own sake and for the world's sake let us keep on this side of possession and accomplishment. A colorless life is of no honor and no use. To commend a man for having no fault is often to reproach a man for having no virtue. Stand for some- thing ; have a place and be a force in the world. They asked John the Baptist who he was. He made little account of what he was not, and we are not impressed by his words, ** I am not the Christ. I am not that prophet." It is the positive side of his declaration which marks the man and asserts his force : " I am the voice." The two great confessions in the midst of the gospel are confessions upon the positive side : " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." "Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I build my church." Stand for something. There is an expression of great strength used by St. Paul in writing to the Corinthian church : " Ye are members in particular " ; not " members," not " mem- bers in general," not " members upon the 35 t * t ! 1 1 ■■ )^^ Ml . 1 i ■H I i !; .; f: The Part We Know catalogue," but members with a definite place and work and honor and reward — " members in particular." I am walking with you, and I point to a man whom we see upon the street, and I say, " Who is that man ? " You answer, " He is nobody in particular." " But he is a man, is he not? " " Oh yes; he lives here; I meet him frequently; you will find his name in the city directory. But that is all; he is nobody in particular." Another day we meet another man, perhaps more plainly dressed, more simple in his bearing, and I repeat my question, " Who is that man? " " That man? Why, that is the fin- est lawyer in the town. That man was governor of the connnonwealth. That man is the leading professor in the college." *' Ah, I see ; you have not told me his name, but you have told me the man. He is what St. Paul meant; he is somebody * in particu- lar.' " A positive life is the life of the highest accomplishment and is lived in the highest domain. There are many things that we do 36 Knowledge More than Ignorance not know. There is a part of everything that we do not know. We are all under- graduates in the university of life. But we know in part ; that is, in part we know. So St. Paul teaches us. Use that part. What we do not know is of Httle practical value compared with the part that we do know. If I may adapt the saying, our knowledge, however small, is of greater account than our ignorance, however great. We should be very glad that it is only a part that we know. Life would be dismal indeed if we had reached the limit of truth upon any of its broad lines; if there were no more great verities than we have compassed or can soon compass ; if duty and truth and life were all held within our slender grasp ; if there were no more of glory and honor and immortality than we can see and understand and value and make our own. It is the almost limitless extent of truth which makes it divine, and the endless years that are awaiting us are to be filled with the end- less attainment of knowledge and grace and life. St. Paul, with all his visions of eternal i» ^11 The Part We Know grace and life, rejoiced to confess, reveled in the confession, that that in which he was liv- ing passed his knowledge. So St. John, ris- ing to his sublime conception of the character of the saints, poured out his exultant heart in the great confession, " Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be." But while they knew in part they used the part they knew; they rested their own life upon it ; they gave it to others for their learning; they breathed it upon the world for its inspiration ; they be- lieved in the steadily rising sun and the day that eternally shall grow brigliterand brighter. It is little to say that our knowledge, too, is in part. Our knowledge of God is very far from perfect. We believe in God, the Father Almighty. We know the love of God. We rejoice in his providence. But no man hath seen God at any time, nor can see him. Yet upon this knowledge of God which we do possess we build a life of confidence, obedi- ence, atfection, the strong life of a child of God to whom there comes the continual 38 msaasaa ^ \ The Obedience ot Our Verities growth in all that is godly and divine in the power of an endless life. We know Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. We know that the eternal Word was made flesh and has dwelt among us. We know that life of divine beauty and help. We know the parables of truth and the miracles of mercy, anci that he loved the world and gave himself for it, the Lamb of God, the Saviour of men, forever- more Redeemer and Intercessor. But the method of the incarnation we do not know. The full secret of redemption we cannot trace. The secret working of the Holy Ghost in the souls of men we cannot define. Yet we open our hearts to the Comforter; we intrust our- selves to the Redeemer; we follow him who is the light and the life of men. We know in part, but the part we know is the part we use. To use the pari we know is to know more. Not the fondling of our doubts, but the obedience of our verities leads up the heights of knowledge. Perhaps there is no better illustration of the method of life which is here commended 39 If '1 The Part We Know h\ than that which is given in the gospel in the case of the man who was born bhnd. His ignorance was very great and his knowledge was very small. Christ came that way, and spoke to him, and bade him go wash in the pool of Siloam. The man heard the voice, understood the direction, went down the hill, and in that very act made the beginning of a Christian life, for he had done at Christ's word, though he had never seen Christ, what no one else had ever done, what he had never dreamed of doing, what no other one would ever have asked him to do. He knew that he was told to go and wash in Siloam, and he went. He came back seeing, and his trouble began. His life had been an easy one, nar- row, dull, but free from great anxiety or large exertion. From that time men who should have rejoiced in the gift which came to him gathered around him to annoy him and accuse him, to make his new sight a burden to him ; and even his father and mother, to whom he might have looked for sympathy, turned upon him the hard faces which seemed to make it 40 The Wise Blind Man i) li n n hardly worth the while to be able to look upon the features of a friend. The poor man's ignorance was appalling, but shrewdly he took hold of what he knew and worked simply with that. "This man is a sinner," people said to him. They denounced, and they would have him denounce, the stranger who had given him his sight. To all their reasoning he could make no answer. He was wise in keeping himself free from what he did not know. And finally, when they had worried and badgered him to the last, he cried out with the wit and shrewdness of a man who had done much thinking, with a poor appeal to pity in this confusion of his new g'^t ; still clinging to the part he knew, he cried out in this wise : "Gentlemen, have compassion upon me. I am a poor man. I have never had any chance. I have never been to school. I cannot answer you. I do not know an5'thing about these things you are throwing at me. Whether he be a sinner or no I know not. One thing I know : that, whereas I was blind, now I see." On that 41 ■'i y iRir I i I m i' 1 'n' '1 m- ^5r ' r. i' Mk m. ■ 1 K&'- * 1 w i u !«: > 1 a y:i 'M 1 1 The Part Wo Know " pin-point of his experience " he stood, and from it nothin<^' could move hun. Well, they turned him out of the church. So much they could do. l^ut they could not turn him out of himself or away from Christ. Jesus met him, for he heard that they had cast him out, and he turned a compassionate look upon the new eyes and said, " Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" Mark the answer. " If I knew who he was, I think I should believe on him" — it was not that he said. It was a forward, straight-out confession: " Who is he. Lord, that I might believe on him?" "Thou hast both seen him, and he it is that speaketh with thee." And he said, " Lord, I believe," and he worshiped him. Thus from the first moment when Jesus spoke to him to this last moment of revelation the man born blind stood in front of his ignorance, took what he knew, used what he knew, worked what he knew into his life, and be- came the confessor, the first man to suffer for his faith in Jesus Christ. What wonder that one of our most brilliant, philosophic preach- 42 Advance in KnowUdge ! crs should say, " When I would know just what Christianity is in its last analysis I must make a careful study of what passed between Jesus and the man born blind " ? The times that we are living in greatly need this practical method. It is a day of negation. Great questions of religion and of life are under discussion. Nothing escapes the scrutiny of the eager, restless mind of man. Out of this time of removal the great truths will come, and they will not sufTer shock. Meantime it is a period of unrest, and with many a period of increased uncer- tainty. With the best intentions, they feel less assured concerning many matters of faith which they have held of great account. But study cannot be checked, searching cannot be repressed, and we must wait in faith and pa- tience, in the quiet confidence that the things which cannot and ought not to be shaken will remain. But for »i\rselves, for our personal life, for our influence in the world, the only manly rule is that which is suggested to us here by the blind man and by the apostle — 43 : \ f The Part We Know to use what we have, and in the faithful employment of what we know to gain the steady accession of knowledge, the constant increase of its truth and pov^er. If it be necessary to write over many a page " Silver and gold have I none," we certainly are able to write over many another page " Such as I have." This is the time for using what we have, and this is the place. The life in a university is too young to be mortgaged to ignorance. With the face set forward, with willing ears waiting for t^e call of duty, we are to be assured that i a positive living which is called for, the use of what is in hand. It is in this way that all advance in study is made. We go from the alphabet that we know into the literature that stretches its endless reach beyond us. We go from the few figures learned in childhood to the high reckonings which mark the courses of the planets. Let it be so in all study : from what we have on to the greater having. In the use of what we have let us come to be Christ's disciples. In the use of what we 44 The Best Gift have let us advance to higher discipleship, ever learning, ever teaching, steadily getting, steadily giving. When we take account of life let us give especial heed to that which we have. If we find that we have not the means by which we might do some work which is waiting for us, the result is not to be inactivity, but the doing some other work with the force in our hands. If we had sil- ver and gold we would give them, but often- times they cannot meet the want, and often- times they are poor gifts. Modern charity has learned the lesson, and is striving to teach it to us, that money is seldom the best gift to the poor, but the help to get money, which shall maintain self-respect, promote industry and all the virtues. If, some day, I find I have no silver and gold, then let me go down to the Beautiful Gate of the Temple and work some simple miracle. I can help some lame man ; I can read to some blind man ; I can comfort and strengthen ; I can bless ; and even wanting many things which might be of service, I can do those larger things which 45 ! f 1 ! iS If ill The Part We Know r. i \' I Christ has told me of, saying, " The works that I do shall ye do ; and greater works than these." Let us not forget that this incident at the Temple was but the picture of his life. Silver and gold Christ had none. In not one instance in the gospel did he give this kind of help, but he gave men strength and com- fort and eternal life. One thing he always had, and he gave that. That one thing every man has, and, whatever be his property, every man, like Christ, can give — himself. And no man is poor who has himself to give. Now let us away ! Let us raise the sails. There is not much wind. But let us set the sails and get the anchors up on deck. There will be a strong breeze at night, and before morning we shall be well out to sea. 46 gjiiiiHriiaTKiirKiMf I i III!' ■< HWi ■liasvitanBnmpviqmivpwinp P <■ ■if ^i; Personality By Amory H. Bradford, D.D. Pastor of tl>e First Congregational Church of Montchiir, N. J. "Bill liirhtiiig upon a pLuc zcUcic huo seas met, they r I he vessel aground."— y/cts xxvii. 41. an WHO can describe a shipwreck? — fury of waves, terror of people, howling of winds, and roaring of waters! For four- teen days this ship on which the Roman cen- turion and his prisoners hatl taken passage was driven bv the wind ; for fourteen days there was sight neither of sun nor of stars. Two hundred and seventy-six persons were on board. Strength and courage were alike exhausted. There was no cessation of the storm. The sailors imagined that they were drawing near to land, and, sounding, found first a depth of twenty fathoms, then fifteen 47 I «5 M\ I ' 1 » % I I \ i 1! Personality s I' fathoms; then, fearing lest they should be cast on a rocky shore, they put out four anchors from the stern. That method of anchoring ships was not uncommon in those times. They "wished for the day." How much is packed into those words ! But there was selfishness even there. The sailors, pro- fessing to look after the anchors, lowered one of the ship's boats and were about to try to save themselves when they were exposed by Paul. As day began to dawn he moved among the people and begged them to take food, assuring them that they should all be saved. Not until he took the bread himself and calmly gave thanks to God were they willing to eat. A ship is comparatively safe in the open sea, even if the waves are piled into mountains ; but when land is approached breakers make quick work of the strongest craft. In the dawning light they saw not far distant a bay, which they tried to reach. Having thrown overboard the wheat with which the ship was loaded, they cut loose the anchors, raised the sail, and made for the 48 «p Paul and the Shipwreck haven. Suddenly they came to a place where two seas met. Then nothing remained but to run the vessel aground. The soldiers had to answer for their charge with their lives. Therefore they advised the centurion to kill the prisoners so that none should escape. He would not consent ; thereupon both prisoners and passengers threw themselves into the waters, and all reached land. We have seen Paul facing angry mobs; going alone through the mountains of Asia ; in the presence of mocking philosophers in Corinth and Athens; before the Roman governor and the Jewish king; but we have never seen him in circumstances so trying as these. During weeks of storm he was the good angel of the ship. He cheered the sailors, comforted the prisoners, encouraged the centurion. When others expected to go to the bottom he was confident that all would be saved. Tradition represents him as of inferior presence — possibly of limping gait, very likely with some serious affection of his eyes, mean, as he has himself told us, in bodily 49 i 1 '\ ■ I ; « I ♦ f ■ ; t i ; ■ s i \\ 11 fa r.\ m ^i i ~ -l 5 *! - m 1 I. Personality appearance. His power was in his qualities of spirit, and those he never more superbly manifested than when a prisoner on his way to the imperial city. The greatness of per- sonality has seldom had a finer illustration than in his conduct in the midst of the ship- wreck. What do we mean by personality ? It is all that distinguishes a man from a thing. When one is richly endowed in mind, heart, and will he has a strong personality. When the heart predominates over the intellect he has a sympathetic personality. When am- bition prevails there is a malgn personality. The word needs little definition ; its meaning is evident. It may be a blessing or a curse. If it is used in the interests of love it is a blessing; if in the interests of selfishness it is a curse. Paul was an eager, impassioned, per- sistent enthusiast, a man of great intellect, inspired and fired with fervent love. His in- fluence was the result of what he was. Per- sonality is the sum of all the powers. Pascal, in one of his immortal " Pensees," has finely 50 Types of Heroism said : " But were the universe to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which kills him, because he knows that he dies, and the universe knows nothing of the advantage it has over him." In other words, spirit is mightier than matter, and personality- is always spiritual. Will can never be con- quered by force. A child may defy a storm ; the ocean may engulf the man whom it can- not destroy. I have never tired reading of the attempts of the late Professor Tyndall to scale the Matterhorn. He would not be pre- vented from planting his feet upon its loftiest peak and gazing upon the frozen ocean that broke into billo v's of snow and ice at its base. But personality is not so impressive when it is pitted against nature as when in a good man, alone and undaunted, it faces a throng who are strong and bad. The power one man may have over a multitude is vividly illustrated in the story of that monk who, hearing of the gladiatorial ex- hibitions in Rome, made his way to ihe ini- perial city and the Colosseum ; and who, 51 4 v.: mi I r" m I 111 Personality as the brutal sport was about to begin, leaped from tier to tier of the crowded seats into the arena. Standing before the gladi- ators with drawn swords, he cried to the spectators in a voice which rang through all the arches: "Will you praise God by the shedding of innocent blood ? " The spectacle did not cease that day, and he who tried to stop it was run through by the swords of the gladiators, but not until he had given a death blow to the barbarism that had long dis- graced the so-called Christian empire. " Ilis dream became a deed that woke the world, For while the frantic rabble in lialf-amaze Stared at him dead, thro' all the nol)ler hearts In that vast Oval ran a shudder of shame. The Baths, the Forum gabbled of his death. And preachers linger'd o'er his dying words, Which would not die, but echo'd on to reach lionorius, till he heard them, and decreed That Rome no more should wallow in this old lust Of Paganism, and make her festal hour Dark with the blood of man who murder'd man." What most attracts toward higher ideals ? The splendid utterances of orators? The finished sentences of brilliant authors? Our Master showed finer discernment when he sent 52 The Power of Character his dr:4ciples into the world to do just as he had done. He attracted others by the evident goodness of his hfe — by the power of his per- sonaHty. When he called, Peter and John left their nets and followed him. By the same methods his work is to be continued. Influence is not measured by words, but by character. No book was ever so well worth studying as a noble life. Men, not books, have lifted the world toward higher things. Some persons are so genuine, so true, so trustworthy, that in the hour of need they are always sought. The greatest figure in English history is that of Oliver Cromwell. But Cromwell did not leap into publicity at a bound. He was a coimtry squire, in appear- ance uncouth, in manner without poli.sh, with no gift of oratory ; but he could be counted on. The times demanded "a .still, strong man," who could " rule and dare not lie," and he was that man. What made Abraham Lincoln the idol of the republic and the glory of his generation? Not his eloquence, al- though few have spoken more eloquently; 53 fi ' .L' S !*• fl J<1 Personality not his achievements, although few have achieved greater things. He is remembered and loved for what he was. The little girl who pleaded for her brother found the great President's ear attentive ; the widow with the story of her only boy found his heart sympathetic. He never ceased to be a man, and in that fact was his power. Culture alone is not personality ; neither are wealth, a beautiful presence, an honored lineage, nor physical strength. " A Httle child shall lead them." We bow before strength, but that will fail; we admire intellect, but in- tellect is not always to be trusted. Show me one who will never deceive, who is hon- est as the day, unselfish as love, who never seeks his own but always another's welfare, and I will show you a man whom all who know will trust, before whom many hearts will open, and into whose keeping sacred secrets will be committed. The greatest power in the world is personal, and per- sonal power culminates when wisdom and knowledge are married to goodness and 54 The Secret of PorsonLility love. When we are what we ouf^ht to he the things which wc ought to do will be evident, and the strength to do them at hand. If Paul was reniarkal)le neither for physi- cal strength nor for learning, and least of all for grace and charm of manner, then what was the secret of his unique personality ? He would not have been long in answering that question. " The love of Christ con- straineth me." \\y that he would mean, " The secret of mv life is in the fact that the very love which was in Christ has reached down and taken hold of ine and made me its glad and grateful slave." " Christ liveth in I am crucified with Christ." The me. " (( old Saul had gone out of sight, and a new man had come in, who was impelled by the very forces which took Jesus to the cross. The secret of his power, service, and endur- ance was in " the heavenly vision." Another element in Paul's personality was his large and vital faith. That is not synonymous with belief. Faith in a person is never the same as belief in a proposition. Faith is not 55 % n %) » 1 f A » r ! n It Ml: wmm ; Personality i »:■'- \\\' I I V^ the acceptance of a series of doctrines ; it is the bond which links us with the unseen ; it is the bridge which we throw over the abyss between ourselves and the infinite. " I be- lieve in God so that I trust him" is a true description of faith. Faith is the faculty of realizing in our mortal life the unseen and eternal and love is the substitution of Christ's motives and methods for those of the world. These two graces combined in one character go far to- ward the making of an inspiring personality. Those who have " endured as seeinr. Him who is invisible," who have dared lO face a majority in the consciousness of being right, who have followed love even though it has taken them to the cross, have been leaders to whom the world has come at last. That monument on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston is typical. There was a time when the most maligned man in America was Wil- liam Lloyd Garrison. Even Boston was ready to hang him, for no reason except that he believed in God and loved man. He was 56 Faith and Love not great, except in his passion for humanity. He would not sacrifice a brother to win a world's applause. The secret of heroism is always found in faith and love. No one is heroic without them. Those who trust God seldom fear man, and will not doubt that in the end truth and righteousness will prevail. If they go down beneath the waters it will be with a song upon their lips. He who forgets himself and lives for others, though he be as humble as the Galilean, will sooner or later inspire many with a passion for his idc^'. Four characteristics are always found in those who exert an enduring and benefi- cent influence. The first is devotion to God. Where there is no vision of God the tendency is ever and inevitably downward. Those who believe in no mountain-crests will seek to climb none. Those who have stooped lowest in service have previously been lifted highest by their beliefs. Those who have been surest of God and most consecrated to him have had the most faith in man and 57 i.i i, - V 1 ! M Personality done the most for his elevation. Those who have visions of God sooner or later be- come like him. They are not attracted by- evil, because they have fallen in love with the good. No one has led the race far to- ward the heavenly heights who has not been sure of God. All are heroic who can say, " Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." The highest manhood necessitates the finest culture of mind and heart. An ignorant good man is never so efficient as one who has ample knowledge and has cultivated his faculties. Goodness is sometimes allied to coarse- ness, and culture to crime ; circumstances often make culture impossible ; but in them- selves knowledge and training are elements of strength, and, other things being equal, he who knows much and who has been care- fully trained will do most for God and man. All men are " loaded with bias." Some- thing which will develop the good and make "a balance in the faculties" is desirable. God gives his Spirit to those who can use it best. Some ignorant men have done great 58 I'he Necessity ot Purity things, and some learned men have been fools; but no man ever accomph'shed much because he knew Httle, and no man was ever a fool because he was learned. Paul spent three years in Arabia before he began to preach. All teachers of abiding influence have spent more time in studying than in teachnig. Every grace of manner, every gain of education, every charm of presence, every refinement of expression, will be sought by those who are anxious to achieve worthy things for the kingdom of God. If personality and power are synonymous, then those habits which hinder the fullest and most beautiful development of the spirit should be put away. Fineness of spirit can manifest itself only through purity of body. All ought sometime to oflfer Tennyson's prayer : " oil for a man to arise in me, That the man I am may cease to be." Whatever dulls the intellectual faculties or dims the spiritual perception limits influence. Those who have found nearness to God have 59 }' r r '' ii : ■ 11 ¥ Personality t i begun by abstinence from all that pampers the flesh. Prophets have never spent much time in parlors. Gluttony and spirituality are sworn enemies. Narcotics and stimulants do not clarify spiritual sight. The pure in heart see God. The astronomer makes ll' e that the glass of his telescope is not soiled by a single fleck. The reflector in the lighthouse must be kept untarnished. If we would know God antl thus be of some little service in making him known to our fellow-men, we must make sure that our thoughts are pure and our habits clean. But perhaps the chief factor in a beneficent personality is loss of self in devotion to humanity. Sooner or later others will seek the man who never schemes for himself. Those who exalt themselves no one else will exalt. A physician, at the peril of his life, allowed a tube to be inserted into his veins, that blood might be drawn from him to save the life of a servant. Those who will risk their lives for the lowliest are made of heroic stuff. For such this world is waiting. Self- 60 The Prerogative of No Class assertion is hateful ; self-sacrifice to save one's fellow-men, sublime. The inscription on the tomb of General Gordon in St. Paul's Cathedral closes as follows: "Who at all times and everywhere gave his strength to the weak, his substance to the poor, his sym- pathy to the suffering, and his heart to God." No wonder that Chinamen listened to him as if he were a messenger from another world! No wonder that African tribes believed that he was a superior being! All who forget themselves in the service of God and man help to make grand, sweet music in the midst of the storm and shipwreck of this mortal life. Personality is the prerogative of no class. The loftiest spirit may inhabit the frailest body and the whitest soul dwell in the deep- est poverty. All who trust God and in the spirit of Christ serve their fellow-men enter into the secret places of abiding power. Devotion to the divine, the culture of every gift and faculty, body and mind " according well " and kept pure and clean, loss of self in 6i lit : i 1 Personality the consciousness of the privilege of serving humanity — these are the characteristics of that lofty and beneficent manhood so finely designated in our time by the word "per- sonality," and perfectly illustrated for all time in the example of Him who came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and who by losing His life became the Saviour of the world. > i 02 , ■J 1j 5 I ^-^{^L, ( The Evolution of a Thinker By George A. Gordon, D.D. Pastor of the Old South Church, Boston, Mass, "I thought on my icays, /liid tinned my fat unto thy testimonies." Ps. cxix. cjcf. THE thinker is always an interestingly bcinir; but sometimes he is a sophist, and, although interesting, he is misleading. And even when he is not a sophist he is fre- quently abstract, remote, vague, and there- fore unprofitable. Here in the text we have a man who is a thinker and yet no sophist, no dreamer, but one who brings the full power of an inspired intelligence to bear upon the most urgent and tiie most momentous issues of life. In the evolution of this typical vital thinker as he comes before us in the words, 63 % I I i V ii y r ki ■ ^ r fi 1 ^ The Evolution of a Thinker " I thought on my ways, And turned my feet unto thy testimonies." there are four things to be noted. I. In the first place, his words are remark- able for the clear recognition which they con- tain of the supreme and ultimate relation of every human life. The last reference of our existence is to God. The words " my ways " and " thy testimonies " present the two terms in the great final comparison, the two persons, the finite and the infinite, who have to do with each other before all and after all. As a cathedral built in the heart of a great city rises with the other buildings round about it, keeps company with them a certain distance, and then leaves them all behind, soars away skyward, and at last, solitary and alone, looks up into the infinite spaces, so every man lives among men. He rests with them upon the same political and social foundation ; he stands with them in a wide and important fellowship ; he rises with them a certain way, and then he goes beyond them all, and the last look and reference of his spirit is to the 64 The Supreme Relation Ktcrnal. We drew our being from God, we live and move and have our being in God, ;ukI at death we breathe back our life into God's hands. The first thing in our existence is our Maker, and when we have done with all others we have still to do with him. For the clear and impressive recognition of this supreme and final relation of human life the words of the text are indeed remarkable. In the evolution of thought this thinker began at the divine beginning, and let us be thank- ful to him for that. 2. The words of this man are remarkable, in the second place, for the application which they reveal of an awakened intelligence to the business of living. Is it not strange that in a world where so much thinking is done, and where so many magnificent monuments have been erected to the triumph of human reason, so very little thought should be given to that which is of supreme moment — life itself? Every locomotive that leaves the station must have an engineer; that is, intelligence must be in command. Every ship that clears port 65 ;i^ ii V J n|: ij IK* i^ i -t^i^:^ji.r-.-.AMH. . The Evolution of a Thinker i I- must have a captain ; again, reason must rule. In all the professions the cry is for more light, for larger-minded men. And no one expects success anywhere in tlie business of the world but in proportion as he puts his mind upon his task. Our science, our art, our philoso- phy, our political institutions, our industry, our history, and our entire civilization are monuments of the greatness and triumph of the human mind. Upon every hand we behold the marvels achieved by thought. Every- where it is doing wonders, except in the evo- lution of character. Life is left to make way for itself, to go unshielded into the field of battle. Character, the supreme thing, is abandoned to chance ; it is left to grow wild ; it is given no succor, no inspiration from the power of intelligence. And one may as rea- sonably expect a child to play in safety upon the confines of a jungle, with the hiss of the snake and the irrowl of the wild beast audible from the thicket, as for a young man to hope to keep his honor, maintain his purity, and hold fast his integrity in the peril of the world 66 I A Typical Criticism without the application of Christian intelh*- gence to the business of livinn- And this criticism holds against men of genius as well as against ordinary men. Like others, they are good and bad from impulse, and moral iudgment has had but little to dc with the guidance of their lives. Take, for example, the criticism that Burns passes upon himself in his poem "A Izard's Epitaph." How much deeper, how much more severe, how much more to the point it is than the censure of any other critic! " Is therr a man whose judgment clear Can others teach the course to steer, Yet runs himself life's mad career Wild as the wave? Here pause-and, tin ough the starting tear, Survey this grave." " The poor inhabitant below Was quick to learn and wise to know, And keenly felt the friendly glow And softer flame; But thoughtless follies laid him low And stain'd his name." With what unerring insight the poet reaches to the heart of the difficulty, and with what 67 3i 1 i. It 1 : : f f [If f I' id ;i I The Evolution of a Thinker utter fidelity he lays it bare! The fiuicla- mental sin in the career of liurns was the fail- ure to put his personal life under the power of moral intcUi^^cncc. That, I do believe, is at the heart of the overwhelming^; maj(^rity of the blasted hopes and the blii^htcd careers with which every fresh i^eneralion of young men has hitherto disappointed the world and plunged it in tears. And even where thought is given to life, it is usually one-sided. There are two great partners in the business of living : the sum of things and the individual man; the universe and the single person ; God and the soul. Two questions thus arise in every earnest mind: How does God deal with us? How do we behave toward God ? Upon the first question we are marvelously free, and this may be one of the reasons for the amazing popularity in our time of the Book of Job. The absolute freedom of speech in which he indulges, the bold way in which he calls the Almighty to account, accords wonderfully well with our prevailing mood. We complain 68 i •n V. God's Problem of the weather, which is not our work, but the Ahniglity's; we are vexed at our physi- cal constitution, which is not of our doin^, but of the divino; we are sore at heart — whatever we may pretend to the world — because we are so poorly endowed in intel- lect, which cannot be laid to our account, but must be laid at the door of our Maker; we are ashamed over the evil dispositions with which our nature is infested, and for which we are in no way responsible. We call God to account for our total inheritance and en- vironment ; we ask for light upon the mystery of iniquity and the mystery of pain. All this freedom of thought is well. Let it go on. There is a fundamental faith in the reality of righteousness underneath it that makes it little short of a revelation of God. Theodicies have their necessity in the moral reason of man and in the conditions of the world. Sometimes they are a mere parade of rhetoric, like Pope's " Essay on Man " ; again, they reduce themselves to nothing by denying the facts, like the optimism of Leib- 69 I iiii m I ? ■ ' '' I I' i>\ The Evolution ot a Thinker nitz ; still further, they are epoch-making in their freeduin, magnificence, and failure, like Job; and yet once more, they create new hope, as when Milton, on his way toward a justification of the ways of God to men, emp- ties heaven and earth and hell in the presence of faith. Thcodicies there have always been ; attempts at them there always mus. be in this world. Ikit the moment we thn w the bur- den of human life, the world, '.he universe upon God we conquer gro^i.id for a new ex- pectation. God will at last construct his own justification. And what a day that will be when the l^^ternal appears at the bar of the conscience that he has made and enlightened to give an account of his purpose in the uni- verse! That will be the great and terrible day of the Lord. That is the final judgment toward which the conscience of man looks for- ward both with awe and with deathless desire. With such a cause, for such an end, with such a Reasoner, how ineffably solemn and grand the scene will be! Then surely the morning stars will renew and perfect their song, and 70 Man's Problem all the sons of God will shout for joy as they never yet have done. But if the universe has its problem, we have ours. It is our privilege to ask God to account to the conscience that he crceites and trains for his conduct of the world. But here our solicitude should cease. We may rest assured that the Infniite will give his answer, that God will accomplish what it is his to ac- complish. Meanwhile we have our funda- mental question, How are we behaving toward the Eternai ? Granted that the mys- tery of temptation, and hard tasks, and dis- agreeable circumstances, and positive disap- pointments, and occasional sweeping losses is for God to explain, is it not ours to play the man in all, under all, and through all ? There are two questions that may be asked about the great Face in the Franconia Notch, the " Old Man of the Mountain." You may ask, How does the sky deal with the Face ? Does it bite it with frost, does it snow it under, does it sweep it with storms, does it tread the great features with the feet of hurricanes, 71 I' I « ' I ^i' II •N hi T w The Evolution of a Thinker i^ \\ I } 'I ::^' , does it greet it out of an endless succession of sunrises, does the l;1o\v of innumerable sunsets, reflected from the transfigured clouds that float before it, light up the lofty profile? That is one question. But there is another. How does the Face behave toward the sky ? Is it calm ami grand and fixed and serene, sublimely expectant, and in immortal recon- ciliation with tlic infinite, and in blessed peace? IIow is God dealing witli you? What kind of blood has he poured into your veins? Of what tissue and substance has he made you, and what are the forino of trial with which he has girt you? What is your inheritance and what your environment? How is God dealing with you ? That is one side of the business of living. But there is another. What is your bearing toward him ? Are you a coward or a king, a devotee of indulgence or a hero of righteousness, a mu- tineer in the world or an unchangeable wit- ness of love and hope ? 3. This Hebrew thinker was remarkable for the way in which he discovered that he 7J The Power of the Bible , Tl was wrong. He began to think upon his personal life, and he soon found that he was not the first nor the greatest thinker in that region. A royal succession had preceded him. They had recorded their thoughts upon the greatest interests of existence. Their recorded thoughts had become the highest wisdom, the Holy Scriptures, the Bible of the nation to wliich this man be- longed. To these testimonies of God he turned, and these sustained, enlarged, and enlightened his best reflections upon his own life. He took his career to the highest, and in its presence he discovered the error in which he had been trying to live. When a young man who is gifted as a musician goes to perfect his education, the nobler his nature and the more promising his mood, the more eager he is to live in the company of such musicians as Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven, These great kings in the realm of harmony are ever about him, ever looking down upon him, and his life is rebuked and corrected by them and inspired 73 i I? 'i" 'V 'J i The Evolution of a Thinker at the same time. When a student of paintinjT really wishes to excel, to discover his defect, and to see the path to high achievement, he goes to the great European galleries where the masters will look down upon him from the walls. In the presence of Rembrandt, Titian, and Raphael he will find both the error of his work and the way out of It. There these masters stand, forever revising, forever cor- recting, forever [)ointing out the defect and forever indicating the path to true achieve- ment. Our own Longfellow, the most com- pletely poetical nature that we iiave yet j)ro- duced, owed his humility and his perfection as an artist in no small measure to the iact that he lived with Dante. The great Floren- tine revised and guided, rebuked and inspired his devoted scholar. And it is beautiful to think of Tennyson, the consummate poet and artist of our century, dying with Shakespeare in his hand, thus acknowledging his deep in- debtedness to the high excellence of that supreme poetic The Evolution of a Thinker the life of Christ, — hither we must come for the evolution of a true moral judgment upon our personal life. 4. Last of all, this man is remarkable for the ease with which, finding he was wrong, he returned to righteousness. He con- sulted the testimonies of God and found that he was wrong. Instantly the active power of his nature came into play : he turned his feet unto these same testimonies ; he grasped the right thouglit of life ; that, right thought must be embodied in his heart, in his speech, in his whole existence. Show an honest man that he is wrong ; if he sees it, and if he is an honest man, he will turn at once. If he is full of excuses he is a liypocrite. Take the difference between Paul and Felix. Paul» going like a cyclone against Christianity, against the great cause of humanity in his age, is met by the light from heaven. It struck him to the ground. He was spoken to by the Lord, and what is his cry ? " What wilt thou have me to do?" Tlie answer is, "Become an apostle; retrace your steps; 76 The Test of Sincerity wherever you have persecuted my cause go and preach it." Instantly he rose up and went, and met the sneer and the scofT and the persecution of those wlio liad hailed his fa- naticism with joy, who now hated him be- cause of his adoption of the new faith. By his immediate renunciation of a discovered error he showed his sincerity. He could not stand by a lie; he could not consecrate his power to that which God had demonstrated to his soul to be wroni^. Take now the case of Felix. Paul preached to Felix on temper- ance and righteousness and judgment to come, and he trembled in his inmost soul at the power of that preaching. What was his response ? " Go thy way for this time ; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee." He was a sneak! No other word describes it. Tell a man he is wrong ; if he is a man, he will right it. by the help of God. Show a man that he is wrong, and if he be- gins to rea.son about it, give excuses for it, procrastinate and promise amendment by and by, that man is morally unisound to the cen- 11 11 1 1 1 4 I 1 1 i i'U i r \ f ! ( The Evolution of a Thinker ter of his S(nil. When the captain of a ship has been out at sea in a fog for a week, and lias been going God only knows where, and suddenly the cloud lifts and the sun streams upon him, and he finds out that he is hun- dreds and hundreds of miles away from his true course, what does he do? He thanks God for deliverance, for the great rebuke, for the sweet discovery of the light, heads the ship the other way, and begins to beat back with a singing heart to his true course. And so when you find an honest man, and show him that he is not on the right path, that he has departed from his true course, gratitude leaps like a spring set free in his heart, and there is a new song in his soul, and he begins to beat back to ricrhteousness. o These, then, are the four things to be laid to heart. First of all, we must recognize and revere our Maker. In the evolution of the thinker, we must begin at the beginning. We come from God, we go to God, and our entire existence is supported by his will. We must see hmi face to face ; we must feel 78 The Great Opportunity him under and over and round about and within our life. Our bcini^ must be ever open toward him, as tiie windows of the devout Jew in exile were toward Jerusalem. Our nature must become alive with his presence, our character all shot throu^^h with his power. Then we shall have a divinely illuminated in- telligence to brini; to bear upon the great business of living. Christian manhood will issue from the creative presence of the Inter- nal Spirit within the soul, mediated, under- stood, interpreted, and served by the whole power of reason. And in the companionship of the Lord the secret sin, the hidden fault, the entire defect and error of existence, will lie in perpetual open revelation. Last of all, we shall leap to the grandest prixilcge given to man, the sublime chance for the return to righteousness. I cannot tell you how very great human life seems to me U) be under this conception. I hax'e looked at the tide going seaward, at the (Kean returning uj^on itself, until it seemed as if it would go away forever and come again no more. But the 79 ^ I'll i 11 ^ * ' % rli ^ m H i' f^^ Tlu- Evolution ot a Thinker moment of pause, chanpje, and return finally arrived. I^'irst in rij)plcs, then in heavier swells and hunger rolls, with the constant retrograde constatitly cliccked and overcome, with the pull of the heavens and the cry of the shore, it tiiuiulerfd lo the flood at last. So we retreat from wisdom, from gootlness, from God ; and so we return when we come to ourselves. To beat back out of the depths and from the far distances, to come home- ward in sj)ile of all reverse movements, to rise to the flood at length — that is but a poor symbol lor the march upon righteousness, the joy of the successive gains, and the hope of the final and overwhelming triumph in God. 80 1 i ^ ;■■ ( -^v .-^-^.-.-k— .^Ji. : , .!( i'l' 1» 'I I A. w . .%. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) V. 4. *^ //// ^^^ :/ 5r /^^/^ v^ <^ /i /a VI %, "^ J^ '/ /A 1.0 I.I 1:2 lis 2.5 1.25 Photographic Sciences Corporation !2.2 1.8 U ill 1.6 23 W^'T^AIN STRK: WEEiTER.N.V. 14580 (^16) 872-4503 ttp *^, w< <>'' T' J tv: \ \ \\ 19 li ]. The Great Heresy By David James Burrell, D.D. Pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York City << From that timefori'i began Jesus to show unto his dis- ciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke hir-, saying, Be it far from thee. Lord: this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an ojfcnse unto me: for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men." — Matt. xvi. 21-2}. IN the religion of the Parsees there are two supreme beings: Ormuzd, "the Good," creator and sustainer of all things bright and helpful ; and Ahriman, " the Black," who pre- sides over the regions of darkness, evokes the malignant passions, and stands sponsor for war and sorrow, disease and death. These two are perpetually arrayed against each other, the 81 I % Nit i .r %\ I i m ! The Great Heresy gage of conflict being the dominion of this world. It is like a stupendous game of chess, in which wars and truces, the convulsions of nature, and the ups and downs of history, are as the moves of pawns and castles upon the board. It is impossible to say how long the game will continue, or what the issue will be, inasmuch as the contestants are coeval and coequal. Perhaps it will go on forever. We also believe in two great powers who contend for the sovereignty of this world, but they are not coequal. One is infinite ; the other — though of immense guile and resource — is finite. And the end is to be seen from the beginning. God is always and every- where getting the upper hand of Satan. The world grows constantly and cumulatively better from century to century, from year to year, from day to day. Every time our old world rolls around, it rolls a little farther into the light. " The eternal step of progress beats To that great anthem, calm and slow, Which God repeats. God works in all things ; all obey 82 "Here am I; Send Mel" His first propulsion from the night. Wake tliou aiul watch ! Tlic world is gray With morning light!" There never was a moment, from the be- ginning of the eternal ages, when God did not intend to save this world. All things were included in his foreknowledge. Sin, suffering, salvation, the casting down of ini- quity, and the restitution of all things in the fullness of time, were from eternity present before him. In one of the boldest and most picturesque portions of Scripture we are in- troduced into the councils of the ineffable Trinity. The three Persons are represented as in earnest conference respecting the de- liverance of our sin-stricken race. The cry of the erring and suffering has come up into their ears. The inquiry is heard, " Whom shall Vv^e send, and who will go for us?" Then the only-begotten Son offers himself: "Here ami; send me!" He girds himself with omnipotence, binds upon his feet the sandals of salvation, and goes forth as a knight-errant to vindicate and rescue the 83 J' t) !i % : I- r I If i! r The Great Heresy Vli 8,1 children of men. When next we behold him he is a child, wrapped in swaddling-clothes and lying in a manger. The incarnation is the first chapter in his great undertaking, and a necessary part of it. As Anselm says in Ctir Dens Homo — " He must become man in order to suffer, and he must continue to be God in order that he may suffer enough for all." In thus assuming our nature he laid aside the form of his Godhood and " the glory which he had with the Father before the world was"; but he never lost sight of his beneficent purpose. Me realized constantly that he had come to redeem the world by dying for it. In one of the earliest pictures of the nativ- ity he is represented as lying in the manger, while just above him, on the wall of the sta- ble, is the shadow of a cross. So Holman Hunt paints him in the carpenter shop : the day's work is over ; the weary toiler lifts his arms in an attitude of utter weariness, and the level rays of the setting sun cast upon the wall yonder again the shadow of a cross. 84 "For This Cause Came I" The suggestion is true: he was born under that shadow and lived under it. He knew that he had come to die. He knew that, in- asmuch as the penalty had been passed upon the race, " The soul that sinneth, it shall die," there could be no deliverance but by death. Mors janua vitiC. A company of Greeks, on one occasion, came, saying, " We would sec Jesus." He kept them waiting while he uttered those ap- parently inconsequential words, " Now is my soul troubled." Why should his soul be troubled? Because he saw in those waiting Greeks the vanguard of a great multitude who were to come to him as the fruit of the tra- vail of his soul. At that moment he felt himself passing under the shadow of the cross — deeper, darker than ever — to pay ransom for these seeking ones. He shrank from the bitterness of his approaching death, yet knew it to be necessary for the success of his errand : ** Now is my soul troubled ; and what shall I say? Father, save vie from this hour? Nay, but for this cause came I unto this hour. 85 V iM li ' r , 1 1 ■d i i « I The Great Heresy Father^ glorify thy name ! '^ He had come to die for sinners. It must needs be. He knew that without his vicarious death the guilty race was without hope. He must give " his soul an offering for sin." It could not be supposed, however, that Satan, the prince of this world, would suffer his power to slip away without a desperate effort to retain it. He would put forth every energy and use every means to thwart the beneficent purpose of Christ. Thus we ac- count for those extraordinary manifestations of malignant energy, during the years of Christ's ministry, known as " demoniacal pos- session." Wherever a soul was open and willing to be used there the adversary entered in. The plans of Jesus must be overturned ; he must not be permitted to ransom the world ; he must not die for it. Out in the wilderness, after the forty days of fasting, the adversary met Jesus and pre- sented to his weak and suffering soul the great temptation. He led him to a high place and, with a wave of the hand, directed 86 'Gtt Thee Behind Me, Satan! >> his thought to all the kingdoms of this world, saying, " All these are mine. I know thy purpose : thou art come to win this world by dying for it. Why pay so great a price? I know thy fear and trembling — for thou art flesh — in view of the nails, the fever, the dreadful exposure, the long agony. IVAjy pay so great a price ? I am the prince of this world. One act of homage and I will abdi- cate ! Fall down and worship me ! " Never before or since has there been such a tempta- tion, so specious, so alluring. But Jesus had covenanted to die for sinners. He knew there was really no other way of accomplish- ing salvation for them. He could not be turned aside from the work which he had volunteered to do. Wherefore he put away the alluring suggesiion with the word, " Get thee behind me, Satan ! I cannot be moved. I know the necessity that is laid upon me. I know that my way to the kingdom is only by the cross. I am therefore resolved to suffer and die for the deliverance of men." The stress of this temptation was over; but 87 1 u ,. '■\ 'I i ^ f <-i ' It^l I The Great Heresy once and again it returned, as when, after a memorable day of preaching and wonder- working, his followers proposed to lead him to Jerusalem and place him upon the throne of David (John vi. 15); and he "departed into a mountain alone." We now come to the immediate occasion of our context. Jesus, with his disciples, was on his last journey to Jerusalem — that mem- orable journey of which it is written, " He set his face steadfastly " toward the cross. He had been with his disciples now three years, but had not been able to fully reveal his mis- sion, because they were not strong enough to bear it. A man with friends, yet friendless, lonely in the possession of his great secret, he had longed to give them his full confi- dence, but dared not venture. Now, as they journeyed southward through Caesarea Phi- lippi, he asked them, " Who do men say that I am?" And they answered, " Some say John the Baptist ; some, Elias : others, Jere- \nias, or one of the prophets." And he saith, •' But who say ye that I am ? " Then Peter 88 A i ''Get Thee Behind Me, Satan!" — brave, impulsive, glorious Peter — witnessed his good confession: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." The hour had come ! His disciples were beginning to know him. He would give them his full confidence. So as they journeyed toward Jerusalem he told them all — how he had come to redeem the world by bearing its penalty of death ; " he began to show them, how he must suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed." At that point Peter could hold his peace no longer, but began to rebuke him, saying, " Be it far from thee. Lord! To suffer? To die? Nay, to reign in Messianic splendor!" And Jesus, turning, said unto Peter, " Get thee behind me, Satan!" — the very words with which he had repelled the same suggestion in the wilderness. As he looked on his disciple he saw not Peter, but Satan — perceived how the adversary had for the moment taken pos- session, as it were, of this man's brain and conscience and lips. " Get thee behind me, Satan ! I know thee ; I recognize thy crafty 89 'Vi V IS Mmapmm* iti ' Jff'liUm The Great Heresy ^ ; 1' 3 suggestion; but I am not to be turned aside from my purpose. Get thee behind me! Thou art an offense unto me. Thy words are not of divine wisdom, but of human policy. Thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men!" We are now ready for our proposition, which is this : TJic vicarious death of Jesus is tJie vital center of tJie whole Christian system; and any zvord ivhicJi contravenes it is in the nature of a satanic suggestion. There is one truth before wiiich all other truths whatsoever dwindle into relative insignificance, to wit, that our Lord Jesus Christ was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniqui- ties, that by his stripes we might be healed. The man who apprehends this by fa.th is saved by it. And contrariwise, any denial of this truth is mortal heresy. The first satanic suggestion made to man was a denial of the law, when the tempter said to Adam, " Thou shalt not surely die." The last satanic suggestion is a denial of grace : " It is not necessary that 90 A Satanic Suggestion Christ should die for thee." The first ruined the race, and the last will destroy any man who entertains it. The suggestion comes in various ways, as when it is said that the gospel is not the only religion that saves: "If a man is sincere, what difTerence does it make? ' For forms of faith let canting bights fight, His faith cannot ])e wrong whose life is right.' Here is a Confucianist bowing before his an- cestral tablets; here is a Hi-.ihman bathing in his sacred river; and here an African bowing before hjs fetish. All tliese are sincere ; shall they not be saved with us? " If so, then the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only- begotten Son of the Father, was an incom- prehensible waste of divine resource, and there is no significance in the word that is written : " There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." It is said again, that w^e are saved by the life of the Lord Jesus Christ as an example of holiness, leading us on to self-culture and 91 : A rX j : 1 f m 'ki I! ■;S 1| '! 1": ' m : I The Great Heresy character-building, and his death has prac- tically nothing to do with our entrance into life. If that is true, then Christ did but mock our infirmity in setting up such an ideal. He did indeed come into the world to tell us how men ought to live, what a true man ought to be, what character means. That was inci- dental to his great redei"pptive mission, lead- ing us on fiom deliverance to righteousness. But if ihat were all, then I say he mocked our infirmity. For there is not an earnest man who does not kneel down beside his bed at night, after his most strenuous effort to imitate Christ, and say, " Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I have sinned." We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God. Again, it is said that Christ did not die vicariously, under the burden of sin, taking our place before the offended law, but died as all martyrs die. " He came into the world as a reformer, to overthrow the evil condition of things, and suffered the fate of all earnest souls. He gathered into his de- 9a 1 I ^ 1 The Voice of Scripture voted heart the shafts of the adversary, and fell." If that be so, what is the meaning of the constant statement that the death of Jesus Christ was a voluntary death? The Father gave him, he gave himself, an offering for sin. " 1 have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again; no man taketh my life from me." Life was his; he made it ; he played with it as little children play with their toys. I. To deny this doctrine of the vicarious atonement, in any of these ways or other- wise, is to set one's self athwart the whole trend of Scripture. For from Genesis to Revelation there is a thoroughfare stained with the blood that cleanseth from sin. No sooner had man sinned than the protevangel spoke of the " Seed of the woman " suffering for it. The first altar, reared by the closed gate of paradise, prophesied of the slain Lamb of God. As the years passed the prophets de- clared, with ever-increasing clearness and par- ticularity, the coming sacrifice. David sang of it in his Messianic psalms. Isaiah drew 93 ii J- 1 1 f ^ a' ; i T 2 } 1/ I ! I' i (1 The Great Heresy the portrait of the agonizing Christ as if he had gazed on the cross : " He is ... a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. . . . Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows. . . . And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." The same truth was emphasized by Moses, Daniel, Zechariah, all the prophets down to Malachi, who, waving his torch in the twilight of the long darkness which closed the old economy, said, " The Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings." Open the Book where you will, the face of Jesus, so marred more than any man's, yet divinely beautiful, looks out upon you. The rites and symbols of the Old Testa- ment all find their fulfilment in Christ cruci- fied. Their center was the tabernacle. Enter it and observe how it is everywhere sprinkled with blood. Here is blood flowincf down the brazen altar, blood on the ewer, the golden candlestick, the table of showbread, the altar of incense ; blood on the floor, the ceiling, on posts and pillars, on knops and blossoms, 94 • T ? The Philosophy of History everywhere. Lift the curtain and pass into the hoHest of all — but not without blood on your palms. Here is blood on the ark of the covenant, blood on the mercy-seat — blood, blood everywhere. What does it mean ? Nothing, absolutely nothing, unless it declares the necessity of the cross. It is an empty dumb-show except as it points the worshiper to Him whose vicarious death is the only means of our salvation. Wherefore I say the man who denies this truth must set himself against the sum and substance of the Scriptures. For if the aton- ing death of Christ be taken out of that blessed Book it is of no more value than a last year's almanac as a solution of the great problem of life, 2. Again, a denial of this doctrine involves a downright rejection of the philosophy of history. The world has been growing better ever since the cross first cast its luminous shadow over it. Progress is a fact — a fact that must be accounted for. Hume undertook to write 95 V ■ II I fr /■ ) r The Great Heresy history without Christ, and found it a laby- rinth without a clue. So did Gibbon. They saw civilization advancing through the cen- turies, but, rejecting Christ, they could per- ceive no reason for it. The " logic of events " was nothing to them. There can, indeed, be no "philosophy of history" for a man who refuses to see Constantine's cross in the hea- vens, with its great prophecy, " In Jioc signo.'' It is a miraculous coincidence that the limits of civilization on earth to-day are coexten- sive with the charmed circle known as Chris- tendom. ** The world before Christ," says Luthardt, " was a world without love." The church with the proclamation of Christ, and him crucified, has come down through the centuries, like Milton's angel, with the torch ; and all along the way have sprung up institu- tions of learning and charity and righteous- ness. The cross is the vital power of civili- zation. " All the light of sacred " and of secular story as well ** gathers round its head sublime." If the world grows better, it is because Christ died for it. 96 The Consensus 3. Still further, to deny the vital impor- tance of the vicarious death of Jesus is to contradict the universal instinct. The doctrine of the redemptive power of substitutionary pain is not our exclusive property. It has, indeed, a place in all, or nearly all, the false religions. It may be dimly seen in the hammer of Thor; in the wounded foot of Brahma treading on the ser- pent; in the fable of Prometheus, bound to the Caucasus with a vulture at his vitals, and lamenting, " I must endure this until one of the gods shall bear it for me." It is still more evident in the institution of the sacri- fice. Wherever a living thing is slain upon the altar, it means vicarious expiation, or else it means nothing at all. And why should it be thought strange that God should send his only-begotten Son to suffer in our stead? Is not sympathy the noblest as well as the commonest thing in human cAperience? Men are suffering everywhere and always for other men. Parents are suffering for their children. The 97 * ,J i .1 ' wj i I i iM v^r^mmiamBnm The Great Heresy pains which we all endure are, for the most part, not the consequence of our own acts. At this point of sympathy our nature reaches its noblest and best. We esteem above all the unselfish man v/ho voluntarily bears the burdens of others. Should we not, then, expect something of the same sort in our Father? He made us in his likeness. It would be monstrous if God did not sym- pathize with his children who have fallen into trouble. The cross is the very highest ex- pression of sympathy in the universe. The atonement is what we should expect. It is just like God. And it is God's exact response to the uni- versal need. It fits our circumstances. As Coleridge said, " The gospel finds me." It answers the deepest longing of earnest souls. Dr. Chamberlain relates that among those converted by his preaching at the sacred city of Benares was a devotee who had dragged himself many miles upon his knees and elbows to bathe in the Ganges. He had at the bot- tom of his heart the common conviction of 98 :• t Spes Unica sin and desire of cleansing. ** If I can but reach the Ganges," he thought, " this shame and bondage and fear will be taken away." Weak and emaciated from his long pilgrim- age, he dragged himself down to the river's edge and, praying to Gunga, crept into it; then withdrawing, he lay upon the river's bank and moaned, " The pain is still here ! " At that moment he heard a voice from the shadow of a banyan-tree near by. It was the missionary telling the story of the cross. The devotee listened, drank it in, rose to his knees, then to his feet; then, unable to restrain him- self, he clapped his hands and cried, " That's what I want! That's what I want!" It is what we all want; the whole creation has from time immemorial groaned and travailed for it. And it is our only hope. There are other religions and other philosophies, but none that suggests a rational plan of pardon for sin. Spes nnica. 1 remember an old crucifix, in the public square of a Brittany village, which no one passed without bending the knee. 99 I hi ill I ; i (»■: 1 i \ I i The Great Heresy Workmen on their way to the fields, little children going to school, all bowed before that stone figure of the Christ, which the storms of centuries had worn almost out of human semblance. The last night, as I was leaving the village in the twilight, I saw an old woman bent almost prostrate before it. Her hands were clasped ; her uplifted face bore the marks of suffering. I could not know the bitterness of that poor heart, but her eyes were turned toward the infinite Source of help and consolation. The dear hand upon the cross lifts every burden, heals every wound, and saves us from the penalty, the shame, and the bondage of sin. And this is why we preach Christ, and him crucified. " There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." " He was wounded for our trans- gressions, he was bruised for our iniquities ; . . . and with his stripes we are healed." He is thus made unto us wisdom and righteous- ness and sanctification and redemption. He is first, last, midst, and all in all. lOO n;1 t! t ir I 'si 1 'I )t i I Mi I !■■ Christ Seeking the Lost By George Harris, D.D. Professor of Theology in Andover Theological Seminary " For the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost."— Luke xix. lo, THIS sentence, which is so familiar, and which puts into a single phrase the whole gospel, occurs only once in the New Testament, in the narrative which describes the interview of Jesus with Zacchaeus, the publican with whom Jesus d'ned in Jericho. In the revised version of the New Testament the saying is omitted from the report of Christ's words about little children where it occurs in the received version, and we may be glad that it is omitted there. For children are not lost. When they are men and women they may be lost, but as children they are not lost. But Zacchaeus was regarded by the lOI !';)■ II IS t-t ■ ' 1% r . 'it ■' '■ft; > I- s. "' J w Christ Seeking the Lost 'i people of Jericho as lost. He was a despised man. There was no salvation for him. Yet Jesus, seeing the penitence and generosity of the man, exclaimed, " To-day is salvation come to this house." He may really have been lost before he knew Jesus, but Jesus came and saved him. I. Who are the lost? What is it to be lost? We suppose the lost are those who fail of heaven, who finally are in the outer darkness. But that is merely the end. They will not be lost at last unless they were lost before. Jesus spoke of those who were lost then — people all about him, with whom he conversed on the streets and in their homes. Because they already were lost he came to save them ; not merely to keep them from being lost by and by, but to recover them from tne lost state in which they then were, 1j save ^hat which was lost. If it was so then it doubtless is so now. He took pains to explain by parables what it is to be lost, and we :an understand best by taking his own illust. tions : I02 Three Parables A lost sheep, one from a flock of a hun- dred, gone astray in the wilderness ; A lost coin, one out of ten pieces of silver a woman had, which had rolled away into some crevice ; A lost son, one of two, who had become dissipated and was in a far country, poor and destitute. These three illustrations, explaining what it is to be lost, constitute the whole of that pathetic, tender, hopeful fifteenth chapter of Luke's gospel. A lost sheep is not destroyed, has not been killed and eaten by the wolf. Its value re- mains. The fleece may be torn by briers, but is still fine and heavy. It has gone astray, has wandered farther and farther away from home, and does not know the way back. In the forest, among the rocks, with no fa- miliar object, no trodden path to be seen, the poor animal runs hither and thither, pitifully bleating, helpless, frightened, lost. Have you ever been lost in a forest? You have been following a path, but it becomes narrow 103 H :i: £|L^ Christ Seeking the Lost hM and indistinct till at last it disappears alto- gether. You do not know what direction you should take. You wander aimlessly about. At length you find footprints and follow them, only to see after a while that they are your own tracks. Daylight dies away. In the twilight the trees seem to be moving giants. Strange sounds startle you. The deeper shadows fall ; the gloom is im- penetrable. You are utterly bewildered, till at last, exhauste'' and alarmed, you lean against a tree or sink to the ground, knowing that you are lost. Jesus was thinking of those who had wrong ideas of God, who were lost in a maze of ceremonials and observances which did not satisfy their need of God ; and was thinking of those who had strayed from the path of rectitude and purity and did not know the way back to their true life as trusting, obedi- ent children of God. They reminded him of sheep lost in the wilderness. " When he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compas- sion for them, because they were distressed 104 am Doubt and Despair and scattered, as sheep not having a shep- herd." If one is perplexed with doubts concerning God's lo^'e, or even his very existence, ask- ing, as he sees the evils of the world and suffers the disappointments and pains of his own life, " Is there a God after all?" if one can find no meaning in life, if he doubts or dreads a life beyond, and wishes with a sigh that he had a simple, unquestioning faith in God, that one is lost — not lost beyond recov- ery, but lost in the wilderness, not knowing the way back, the way home. If one has not kept his virtue, if by self-indulgence he has made himself coarse, has forfeited his self- respect, and feels that he has no right to as- sociate with good men and pure women, is full of bitter self-reproach, would give any- thing if he had not so sinned, but does not know how to recover himself, he is lost — not, as he may suppose, beyond hope, but he is wandering farther away from goodness, or in his own old tracks, and cannot find the way back. 105 I! :ii *-. if: ; ' ft 1 -1 / .1 iir'iMiri-miiii^'ii Christ Seeking the Lost .i.^lMJ J^^^l It '.' A lost coin, a lost piece of silver, is in ex- istence, represents value, but is covered with dust on the floor, or is in some dark corner, and so is useless. The owner has lost the use of it. That is precisely the way in which a great many people are lost. They are lost to their right uses. They either are doing nothing, sauntering through life blameless and good-natured enough, or are living on some low plane of selfishness to get gain and spend it on themselves. It is said, " What a pity that a young man of his talents, educa- tion, property, is a mere pleasure-seeker!" He has rolled into some narrow social crevice, or has degraded himself to company only with sporting men, — a piece of silver in a dust-heap, — and is wasting -his life on trivial interests. God has lost him, the world has lost him, for they have no use of him. He is lost to his right uses. In the disuse or misuse of his powers he is lost in some dirty corner, in which there must be diligent sweep- ing to find him at all, to find that he still exists. io6 mm^msaoBam^^ ^r-m A Lost Son And a lost son, one of two — a prodigal son. This is not so much an illustration as an instance. The prodigal was not /ike a lost man, he zvas a lost man. He was lost to his father. There was no companionship, no affection, no obedience. He might as well not have been. It was as if he had been dead, just as his father said when the son re- turned : " He was dead." And he was lost to himself, to his true self. Instead of being what he might have been in purity, honor, manliness, he was intemperate and licentious. The true self, the real man, had been usurped by the false self, the ruined man. So one may be lost to his heavenly Father, as he certainly is if by a selfish and dissolute life he is lost to his earthly father. God, who desires the trust, obedience, and affection of his child, receives no sign, no prayer, no ser- vice. God has lost his own child. One may be lost to him.self even if he has not plunged into the gross sins of sensuality and lust. In the low life of pleasure and frivolity, with- out high aims and noble ambitions, the mean, 107 i ■^' I'd: 't i 'i it Christ Seeking the Lost :i t II narrow, selfish man has banished the true, pure, magnanimous, gentle man. Why, here was a boy of sweet nature, open, bright face, quick intellect, upon whom great hopes were placed. It was expected that he would be- come a good man, a useful man, a respected and honored man, a religious man. But that boy has become a hard, contemptuous, vain, coarse, and vicious man, and the man that might have been is lost. He is not his true and proper self. No wonder, when the prodi- gal thought of what he might have been and of what he was, and determined to go home, it is said that he came to himself. It seems a contradiction when it is remarked of one that he is not himself; yet how often the vices, follies, infatuations of men oblige us to say just that! So one is lost when he is wandering in error, doubt, perplexity, like a lost sheep ; lost when he is not put to his right uses, like a lost coin ; lost when friendship and affection have nothing from him, when God has noth- ing from him, when he is lost to himself, like io8 Christ Saving the Lost a spendthrift who has wasted his substance in riotous living, a lost son. If this is what it is to be lost, then, alas! some are lost now, long before the day of judgment. 2. The Son of man came to save that which was lost. He would recover a man to him- self, to his uses, and so to God. He knew that in men, even those considered very- wicked, there was power of recuperation, power of recovery. So he came to bring to them that truth, that influence, that life, that love, on which they still could fasten, and which could restore them to themselves, to their uses, and to God. If only they would believe him and would trust him and would try, they could be saved. There are many saviors in the world. A good friend who will not give a man up when he has gone astray, who throws the protection of a generous friendship around him, saves one who otherwise might be lost. A father, a mother, has saved a child by letting the child see what a true life is, by making a child know that even if he should go astray he 109 Ip \\ c. I: \ i- >« t n ' ^ ( &m mm >*itii>wi i iiiii>iiii» ii» ri imtMM^ Christ Seeking the Lost u: ■klr ' would be welcomed back. The prodigal knew his father well enough to know that, and that was what brought him home. The world is full of saving forces as well as of def :roying forces. It has been said, " You may save any one if you will love him enough." The saviors ar? those who have the spirit of Christ, who, knowing it or not knowing it, feel some- what as he did toward men, never despairing of them, ready to suffer for them and with them. How did Christ save men? How did he save Zacchasus, for instance? He saved Zacchaeus simply by telling him that he would take dinner with him and by actually going to his house to dine. Not a reputable man in Jericho would have done that, would have put himself on a social equality with that despised and hated man who had become rich by extorting heavy taxes from the people. When this undersized man — a dwarf, per- haps — saw Jesus, whose very presence and bearing showed him noble and compassionate, yet unswerving in righteousness and com- IIO ^ ^ o i Received Him Joyfully manding in moral authority^ and when he heard his own name with the request for hos- pitality, the man's heart leaped for joy ; there was hope for him. " And he made haste, and came down, and received him joyfully." How much that act of gracious courtesy meant and cost to Jesus is not overlooked in the story. " And when they saw it, they all murmured," — all of them, — " saying, He is gone in to lodge with a man that is a sinner." Little cared Zacchaeus for that. For once in his life he was well treated by one whose regard he cared for. He was saved, — saved to himself and to his uses, — and he at once consecrated his wealth to the good of men. Jesus saved men by making them under- stand about God. " God feels toward you," he said, " as I feel. He loves you, cannot bear to lose you." Some way they did understand when they knew Jesus, as the world has been understanding ever since, and the doubts, the errors, the perplexities vanish, the sins are forsaken, the life of useful service is begun ; we know ourselves children of III Hi m- I J I it >.r\ m :-^. i;i : 11 ' Christ Seeking the Lost God ; we are carried home on Christ's strong shoulders. 3. But this is not all. The Son of man came to seek that which was lost. He did not wait for men to make their painful way to him, and so to perish if they should not find him, to say nothing of those who do not know they are lost and do not even try to find a Saviour. He came to seek that which was lost, to make his mighty way to them through all obstacles and all indifference. He was engaged in a holy, loving search for lost souls, with an eagerness which could not fail to find them. When he taught and preached he was seek- ing men. He scanned every company of hearers, searching for the^ responsive faces, the wistful, earnest faces, and addressed him- self to them, as every real teacher and preacher looks among the upturned faces before him for those who respond to his words. Then he would seek out privately one and another whom he had noticed listen- ing eagerly. In the throng around him 112 f The Loving Search at Jericho he saw one of the kind he sought looking down on him out of the branches of a shade-tree by the wayside. But words and precepts even from the great Teacher may fall unheeded — heard, indeed, but not understood. He sought men by heal- ings, by the cure of bodily ills, to get at their souls afterward, as in the case of the blind man whom he afterward found in the temple ; he had been looking for him and at last found him. He sought them in their homes, dined with them, conversed with them one by one, tak- ing great risks to himself, if need be, so that he might get at them. He sought them by his living, by showing them the true life of purity, of courage, of sym- pathy, so different from the hard, contempt- uous, selfish life of their religious teachers. He sought them by dying ; he gave up his life because he would not be turned away from that holy search for the lost and despised. Even on the cross the search did not cease, for there he found and saved the penitent thief. Ever since, and now, Christ is seeking men, "3 1 ^ J g^^g^^-^..-L^.«A^^».aa,^'^.^i,^„^^.k.t Christ Seeking the Lost t\ is seeking us, making his way to us through our prejudices, doubts, unbelief, and sin till he stands before us. Sometimes one has a thought of his true self, of what he might have been, ought to have been. ** Oh, if I could only live my life over again!" he says, and says it while he is still young in years. Thinking thus, he is ashamed of himself as he is, yet does not know how to recover, or be- lieves he cannot recover, that true self. You are the very man Christ is seeking. In that thought, that longing, that regret he has found you, and he is saying to you, " Wouldst thou be made whole?" If you will trust yourself to him, venturing out on him, you will regain what you have lost and will be a man in Christ Jesus. You have been living all to yourself, plan- ning your life so as to get pleasure and gain for your own enjoyment. You are conscious of powers by which you can succeed in your selfish ambitions. You think you can hold your own in the fierce competition. But sometimes you see that your powers can be 114 ^\ Savod to One's Uses used in a better way. You see a world of need, sufTering, ignorance, which are largely due to selfish strife. You hear the call to service. You see that the truly great men, the really good men, have devoted their gifts, attainments, knowledge to the service of others, and that such men as you are propos- ing to yourself to be have only made the world worse. Who of you has not had such thoughts of a noble, useful life? Again, you are the man Christ is seeking. In those thoughts he has found you. He would have you act on those convictions, would save you thus to your right uses, to which you now are lost in wrong and selfish uses. Or, it does not seem real to you that there is a God, or, if there is, that he knows you or has anything to do with you. You seem insignificant in this vast universe, lost in the very greatness of the world, swept along, a helpless atom, by its resistless, unfeeling forces. You are like one lost in a dark, vast forest, with no sun, no star even, to guide you. And you are far away from God by "5 Christ Seeking the Lost your sins. You say you cannot pray now as you could when you were a child. At the beginning of a day you cannot ask God's blessing on what you know you will do ; at the end of a day you would be ashamed to bring it to God. You see no path of life which does not end in darkness or in danger. Again, you are the man Christ is seeking. Thank God that you think sometimes of him, that you are not stolid, that you are not sat- isfied to be lost in his world and a wanderer from his ways. Jesus says, " God is not far away, a great power regardless of you. He is very near you. God is love. If you know me, you know God, the heart of God. I came right out from God to find you. See my life, my love, my compassion, my hope for you, and you see God, who is my Father and your Father. You know what God would have your life be. He would have it like mine. Come into that life and you art back in your Father's house. Come to yourself and you come to God. Come unto me and you shall find rest unto your soul." u6 Seeking All and Seeking Each We think that by and by, when we become religious, God will be with us. But he is with us now, in every desire for goodness, in every regret for wrong, in the wish to be of service in the world, in the desire to recover the true self in character. If we did not have such dcsJcs and regrets wc should be lost indeed. If we do not act on them we shall remain lost to ourselves, to our right uses, and to God. The shepherd out in the wilderness to find one sheep out of a great flock of a hundred shows that God seetks each one of us, no mat- ter how many there are nor how vast the world is ; and so of one piece of silver out of ten. The love of the father for one son out of only two shows how much he cares for each of us. God does not forget you, but seeks you in Christ to save you, if you are only one out of a hundred or more. God in Christ loves you and seeks you to save you as earnestly as if he had only two sons and you were one of those two. 117 f If; m hi\ An Extraordinary Saint By William R. Richards, D.D. Pastor of the Crescent Avenue Presbyterian Church, Plainfield, N. J. " ^nd the Spirit of the Lord cjnw tiiightih' upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand: but he told not his father or his mother what he had done"— Judges xiv. 6. SAMSON — the most extraordinary char- acter in the whole catalogue of saints. We are puzzled to see how he deserves to be called a saint ; yet there stands his name, canonized in the Epistle to the Hebrews: " Gideon, Barak, Samson " — one of the heroes of the faith. It is a hundred years, perhaps, since Gideon, the great judge, broke the power of the Midi- anites. The tribes of Israel, united for a little by his valor, had soon fallen asunder after ii8 .< . » am .pfl i! ;{ ill ! k iri rr ^(.1 I f i li i it i, I ii b y^ v i^ !l I Philistines his death, once more an easy prey to any new enemy. The most formidable of the new enemies were the PhiHstines, a race of strangers from nobody knows where, who had estabhshed themselves in the lowlands to the southwest of Canaan. A dull, heavy, slow-witted people, but of great bodily strength and devoted to war, they had com- pletely subdued the southern part of Canaan, reducing the wretched Hebrews there to such a state of dependence that now they could not even get a plow sharpened without going down to some smith among the Phi- listines. It was a happy stroke of wit on the part of the German student who fastened this name " Philistine " to the townspeople round about the university — the uncultured but prcsperous middle classes, whom the poor sciv liar or artist cringes to and laughs at by tuni \ Well, such was this race which had now humiliated poor Israel. For several generations to come the struggle for national existence will be against them, culminating 119 I m I' J m 4 i^ ^h; J «.:4m An Extraordinary Saint % ! i- I t at last in the glorious and triumphant career of David. Now it was Samson who began the resis- tance which David brought to such grand conclusion, and so we can understand how for Hebrew patriots ever after the name of Samson shared the glory of his more illustri- ous successor. His story reads like a series of martial songs, and perhaps that is what much of it is — a series / riirtial songs rather than prose record; but . ether you read it or sing it, the story is wonderfully interesting and may be profitable. I say we can easily understand how the name of this fearless champion against the Philistines should become glorious in patri- otic song and story. What possible religious significance it has is not so clear. Yet the tale is told religiously. This child had been supernaturally promised to his parents, we read, and no doubt in answer to prayer. The parents were to bring him up as a Naz- arite. In those days of disorder the He- brews do not seem to have followed the strict 120 V A Nazarite rules of their law concerning things clean and unclean, — if, indeed, those laws were yet enacted in their later form, — but this child must follow them ; he must be as one sepa- rate from others in touching no unclean thing. Beyond that, he must drink no wine nor strong drink, and no razor must ever come upon his head. Those were the rules of the Nazarites. So there was something religious in him — this quality of separateness. The length of his hair — a curious mark of physical prowess recently revived — was important as a chief token of this Nazarite separateness. More- over, he must drink no wine nor strong drink. I do not suppose the Hebrew writer or reader connected that rule with the dangers of intox- ication, but we cannot fail to do so to-day, knowing what we now know of alcohol and its effects on the human system. Is it not startling that this old Nazarite regulation has slowly got itself established as a rule of training for every modern Samson who wishes to excel in strength? As Milton puts it grandly in his poem : 121 i P I'll iii It !. I Hi An Extraordinary Saint " O madness, to think use of strongest wines And strongest drinks our chief support of health, When God with those forl)iddcn made choice to rear His mighty cliampion, strong above compare, Whose drink was only from the liquid brook." So Samson grew up a Nazarite from birth, and these Nazarite peculiarities made him a sort of religious personage; but, except for these peculiarities, he was as little like what we call religious as anything you could well conceive : a strong, fearless, irrepressible boy and lad and youth, true to his Nazarite vow, but in other things which we should deem more important setting no bridle to his lusts, and, above all, overflowing with a quality which we seldom associate with the Hebrew race ; for the amazing strength of this man is not a more conspicuous 'trait in him than his rollicking humor. His story is the one part of the Bible which bubbles over with irre- pressible fun. A big, overgrown boy, life was one long joke to him until it was darkened by his great disaster; and even then, the ruling passion strong in death, he contrived to make the last tragedy itself a kind of ap- 122 His Good Humor palling jest, for he first got his enemies roar- ing with laughter before he pulled down the roof on their heads. Whether he was pro- posing riddles at his own wedding to his Philistine groomsmen; or, when he lost his wager, paying it to the winners with the spoil of some of their own friends whom he slew for the purpose; or turning into their fields of grain a lot of jackals with blazing torches tied to their tails, that he might look on from the hillside and see the manifold devastation spreading itself among the grain and laugh at the comical disaster; or choos- ing a jaw-bone of an ass to slay Philistines with, and celebrating the fight in a song, and naming the place from that extraordinary weapon — in all his encounters with these heavy-witted foes Samson contrived to attain two objects : he got his revenge on them and he got his laugh out of them. The physical strength and the cheerful good humor of the youth were alike unconquerable, and it is an interesting fact that the scholars are in some doubt whether his name means strong or sunny. 123 '^ i ^ 1 h^m ! '^ " '1 1- : ■ 1 1 k. if. 1 'I ; ■ :tl \fM I 'J if'l ft t S) ■ ; »l ■ 'if f ii III -—y^- An Extraordinary Saint r Reading the Bible with our Puritan asso- ciations and antecedents, we have not always appreciated this feature of the story. Our Samson is rather the Samson Agonistes of Milton's poem, a splendid poetic creation, but by no means the same man with this Samson of the Book of Judges; for John Milton, Puritan that he was, had little time for laughter. His hero moves on sedately in majestic blank verse, fit captain for some regiment of solemn-visaged Ironsides ; but the real Samson laughed himself out of his cradle, and through one chapter of his life into another, and into his grave at last. We thank God for our Puritan ancestry and for their solemn, steadfast righteousness ; but I thank God also that the inspired list of saints finds room, somewhere between Enoch and Moses and Samuel and all the prophets, for poor Samson, the sunny and the strong. So, then, this element of humor and fun is not all of the devil, though the evil one may have contrived to appropriate such large tracts of it for his uses. There is a great 124 i* Because Ye are Strong deal of jesting that the apostle calls foolish and not convenient ; those who make a mock at sin are fools ; it is the laughter of fools that is like the crackling of thorns under a pot; the beatitude is for those who mourn. Yet in spite of all this, the Bible also sets forward this other side of the truth and tells how God himself can fill men's souls with joy and laughter, and that his appointed cham- pion may be the sunny and strong. " I write unto you, young men, because ye are strong," says the apostle; not in spite of your strength and all those cheerful ele- ments of soul which compose it— not in spite of it, but because ye are strong and sunny- hearted. Behold this champion whose name would cheer the Hebrews through genera- tions of hard struggle against the t'^rrible Philistines to final victory over them, because God had given him such mighty strength and such healthy and resolute and infectious good humor. " I write unto you, young men, because ye are strong " ; and remember these same qualities of youthful strength and "5 ^ ■* ■, iM \ f ! i ^ 1 An Extraordinary Saint good humor and natural, happy hopcfuhiess ought to be serving some good purpose in the Lord's campaign against sin, putting heart into your sadder neighbors to fight on the same side. But I would not leave the impression that this story of Samson is altogether pleasant reading. It ought to be, but much of it is not — quite the reverse ; it is laughable, but it is very sad. His life-story is so nearly a fail- ure. So far our English poet was justified in making it the basis of a tragedy. With all his strength he was so pitiably weak. Sam- son had his laugh out of the Philistine men, but their sisters avenged them on him, mak- ing a slave and tool and fool of him. The old writer tells his tale straight on without stopping to moralize much, but where can you find a sermon on the need of personal purity like this — so magnificently strong, so fatally and contemptibly weak ? Of the two forms of sin which specially assail young men, Samson may guard us from the one by way of example, and from the other by 126 I ; i Purity way of warniniT. Touching no wine, he ex- celled in strength ; but he listened to Delilah, and there quickly followed weakness, dark- ness, the prison-house, the grave. A giant for muscle, but not a strong man all round. He was a weakling beside that hero of Tenny- son's who could say : " My good blade carves the casques of men; My tough lance thrustcth sure ; My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure." But it would be a great mistake to suppose that Samson's only fault was his susceptibility to woman's beauty. That became a fatal blemish in his character because of something else that was amiss in him, or lacking in him. His great fault was of omission more than ot commission. The reason why he followed after that which was evil was that he lacked something else to follow after— something that was good. Beyond the mere obedience to his Nazarite vow, can you point out a single ennobling purpose in this man's life, a single persistent purpose of any sort, except 127 4 I I ♦ II ,1 i i {{ \h ^-i- isr^ An Extraordinary Saint to get his own amusement out of life as he went through it? lie shows a kind of patri- otism, perhaps, but of no very exalted quality ; for it appears that this valiant Hebrew slew Philistines chiefly for purposes of his own, to satisfy his own grudges. No doubt God might use the man's exploits. afterward for rousing Israel and encouraging her against her foes. But Samson himself betrays no such large purpose or expectation ; he was avenging himself, that was all, or else amus- ing himself. Ah, young men, rejoice in your strength, and laugh, if you will, when your hearts are glad; but it is a sad thing to pass through this world with nothing better to do than laughing; and the more strength, the worse for you, perhaps, if you can find no good purpose to terve with it. You see a young man developing physical prowess in his games, and so long as the game lasts you are satis- fied if he fairly wins ; but what a melancholy failure the life seems if that young Hercules carries out into the world that splendid phy- 128 \ ^ Want ot Purpose siquc, hut finds nothing there to do with it, P'^ "ort of man's work to make this world liappier and better, nothing but to go on amusing himself all his days, until he falls victim to some fatal dissipation! Or even if it be strength of mind that his studies have developed in him, how far is that better than strength of body if the man finds no manly work to do with it, no deliberate campaign for Israel against the Philistines, nothing but to go on amusing himself with his strength all his days? What Samson teaches us by way of warning is that we must get something which he had not — some steadfast, ennobling purpose worthy of whatever strength God has given us. That is the safeguard against temptation. Delilah would have had little chance at the hero if he had had something to do. Laughter is to cheer a man in his work, not to take the place of his work. Games and sports are for the spare holiday, or for evening's refreshment when day's task is done ; the long day itself is not a game or a joke. " They that sow in tears shall reap 129 MJi '■' il i.j i f if An Extraordinary Saint >» (< L s in joy. "■ So was our mouth filled with laughter." But to let other men do all the painful sowing while he spent his whole time getting his idle sport cut of theirfaults and foi- bles, like this big, playful champion of Israel, was not the way a strong man ought to live his life through, not good business for a saint. Indeed, as we keep our eyes on this strange character, the wonder continually grows how any one ever ventured to call him a saint. What did Samson to deserve the title? "Through faith," says the Epistle to the Hebrews ; but where did faith come in with a character like *his? That question was partly answered for us at the outset. This man was a Nazarite. " To touch no unclean thing, to drink no wine or strong drink, to leave his head un- shaven" — so far as it went this was matter of religious principle with him, for he be- lieved these peculiar customs to be God's will for him. I lis obedience in that one particular was matter of faith ; that was not a jest. Samson laughed at almost everything else, 130 One Thread of Faith but not at his own extraordinary head of hair; and I fancy if any unwary Philistine ever laughed at it in his presence, it was his last laugh in this world. There does not seem much piety in that — that little patch of solemn reality in a man's life, when all the rest was treated so slightingly. No, it was very little; yet see how even that little may be enough to save the man. If a man's heart is bound to the holy will of God by any frailest bond of will- ing obedience, just that may be enough yet to save the man, that is, to let God save him. All the rest of Samson's life was somewhat ignoble; not deliberately wicked, perhaps, rude and undeveloped rather; a big, playful animal, too idle to lift himself to the dignity of moral choice, l^ut here in the matter of his Nazarite vow was one moral principle, one thread of religious faith binding his big brute nature to the holy God above him ; and while that thread holds, though the whoi. man may seem more animal than angel, _. et there is hope of his final salvation. 131 kt •f . i I mu^ r If ,-) An Extraordinary Saint !> m II, 1 i I I i! i >i ) f But let Samson beware how he ever lets that one frail thread be broken. A holier man, like Moses, touching God on every side, if he had chanced to be a long-haired Nazarite and some day had lost his hair, it might not have mattered much. But poor Samson, losing that hair of his, will have lost all the religion he ever had ; the Lord was departed from him, his strength was turned to weakness. You will see people who do not impress you as very godly, and yet you do believe them loyal to some principle ; careless about other things, they have been faithful to that. Now I am glad to believe that any such faith- fully cherished principle, which a man would not betray at any cost, may be a sort of ger- minal but genuine faith binding his soul to God. But what if now the man should lose even that frail tie between his soul and heaven? Thank God if there is any one conviction or principle which in all the trials of life you have always held fast, never letting it go. 13a His Sin Ah, but what if you should let it go now ? If this Samson should wilfully break away from God by cutting- off his own hair, that might really be for him what the New Testament calls the sin against the Holy Ghost. You notice Samson was not guilty of that sin, not quite. He did not wilfully break his own vow; he did not cut off his own hair. His fault was in trusting a fair and false Philistine, letting her beguile his judgment till he told her all that was in his heart. That was fall enough for an Israelite. You have no right to give your whole heart so unreservedly to any Philistine, or any one else except the holy Lord above you. And the fault brought its swift and terrible pen- alty. The treacherous temptress etrayed him, of course, robbed him of his locks in his sleep and gave him to his enemies. They put out his eyes, and bound him with fetters of brass, and made him grind in their prison- house. At first view one would think the end of this man as disastrous as if with his own hand, with daring impiety, the Nazarite 133 i \l \' \ L ! { A ; - f i V n 1 h f 1, m i ! people to stubborn resistance and final vic- tory over their Philistine oppressors ; for God had regarded his penitence, the hair of his head grew and his strength came back to him in the prison. Oh yes, we may have hope in God, how- ever we may have been betrayed by the de- ceitfulness of sin. Yet it was a sad and tragical triumph, after all — better than nothing; and if you were speaking to a company of miserable old men, who had already thrown away the chances and hopes of a lifetime, you would be glad to hold out to them even that sort of meager encouragement. Better to be saved so as by fire than to be lost altogether. But I could not possibly satisfy myself with the thought of any such destiny for you — you men with the choice opportunities of life still looking you in the face. I chose this as a topic mainly with the purpose of urging you not to throw away your lives as that strong man threw away so much of his through his idle, aimless uselessness. Oh, 136 1/ I Walk in the Spirit be sure to find some man's work to do ; pray God to give you some man's work to do with your strength o{ body, and your strength of mind, and the natural, good-humored hope- fulness of your young manhood. That is a prayer you need not fear to ofTer in Christ's name; it is a Christian prayer. If God will put enough strong, positive Christian purpose into your heart and life you will be safe from the Philistines, I think ; but in no other way. If you are walking in the Spirit you will not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. IS(| 1^ r i '< 1 ■ ' '^ '3 « I h 1 h 1 1' 137 h\ I # The Meaning of Manhood 1 i' i i: By Henry van Dyke, D.D. Pastor of the Brick Churcli, New York " Ho-w much, then, is a nmti better than a sheep!" — Matt. xii. 12. ON the lips of Christ these noble words were an exclamation. He knew, as no one else has ever known, " what was in man." But to us who repeat them they often seem like a question. We are so ignorant of the deepest meaning of manhood, that we find ourselves at the point to ask in perplexity, How much, after all, is a man better than a sheep ? It is evident that the answer to this ques- tion must depend upon our general view of life. There are two very common ways of looking at existence that set':le our judgment 138 'A Ii 8 :l k/fit^^ r A ii-' \ S M i H The Meaning of Manhood r.^ ! I . I i H \ I vantage of these poor relations. We belong to the more fortunate branch of the family, and have entered upon an inheritance con- siderably enlarged by *-he extinction of collat- eral branches. But, after all, it is the same inheritance, and there is nothing in humanity which is not derived from and destined to our mother earth. If, then, we accept this view of life, what answer can we give to the question. How much is a man better than a sheep? We must say : He is a little better, but not much. In some things he has the advantage. He lives longer, and has more powers of action and capacities of pleasure. He is more clever, and has succeeded in making the sheep subject to his domination. But the balance is not all on one side. The sheep has fewer pains as well as fewer pleasures, less care as well ar less power. If it does not know how to make a coat, at least it suc- ceeds in growing its own natural wool cloth- ing, and that without taxation. Above all, the sheep is not troubled with any Oi" those 140 X The View of Commercialism vain dreams of moral responsibility and future life which are the cause of such great and needless trouble to humanity. The flocks that fed in the pastures of Bethlehem got just as much physical happiness out of existence as the shepherd David who watched them, and, being natural agnostics, they were free from David's delusions in regard to religion. They could give all their attention to eating, drinking, and sleeping, which is the chief end of life. From the materialistic standpoint, a man may be a little better than a sheep, but not much. Or suppose, in the second place, that we take the commercial view of life, ^^e shall then say that all things must be measured by their money value, and that it is neither profi- table nor necessary to inquire into their real nature or their essential worth. Men and sheep are worth what they will bring in the open market, and this depends upon the sup- ply and demand. Sheep of a very rare breed have been sold for as much as five or six thousand dollars. But men of common li \l I', «4« The Meaning of Manhood 'i i 1 ' 'i ,' stock, in places where men are plenty and cheap (as, for example, in Central Africa), may be purchased for the price of a rusty musket or a piece of cotton cloth. Accord- ing^ to this principle, we must admit that the comparative value of a man and a sheep fluc- tuates with the market, and that there are times when the dumb animal is much the more valuable of the two. This view, carried out to its logical con- clusion, led to slavery, and put up men and sheep at auction on tlie same block, to be dis- posed of to the highest bidder. We have gotten rid of the iooical conclusion. But have wc gotten rid entirely of the premise on which it rcstcil ? Does not the commercial view of life still prevail' in civilized society? There is a certain friend of mine who often entertains me witli an account of the banquets which he has attended. On one occasion he told me that two great railroads and the major part of all the sugar and oil in the United States sat down at tiie same table with three gold-mines and a line of steamships. 14a ■| 1 ll 1 ,\ The Money Standard " How much is that man worth? " asks the curious inquirer. "That man," answers some walking business directory, " is worth a million dollars ; and the man sitting next to him is not worth a penny." What other answer can be given by one who judges everything by a money standard ? If wealth is really the meas- ure of value, if the end of life is the production ortheacquisitionof riches, then humanity must take its place in the sliding scale of commo- dities. Its value is not fixed and certain. It depends upon accidents of trade. W'c must learn to look ui)on ourseh'cs and our fellow- men purely from a business point of view and to ask only: What can this man make? how much has that man made? how nuich can I get out of this man's labor? how much will that man pay for my services? Those little children that play in the squalid city streets — they are nothing to me or to the world ; there are too man}' of them ; they are worth- less. Those long-fleeced, high-bred sheep that feed upon my pastures — they are anu^ng my most costly possessions; they will bring U3 h I si m ' I ■■w^w I L The Meaning of Manhood .<■ k^ lO !: II I; !/• r an enormous price; they are immensely valu- able. How much is a man better than a sheep? What a foolish question! Some- times the man is better ; sometimes the sheep is better. It all depends upon the supply and demand. ^V < > r.<. i. --• .r.- , ■:, c *< - Now these two views of life, the materi- alistic and the commercial, alwavs have prevailed in the world. Men have held them consciously and unconsciously. At this very day there are some who profess them, and there are many who act upon them, althouL;h they may not be willing to acknowledge them. They have been the parents of countless errors in philosophy and sociology; they have bred innumerable and loathsome vices and shames and cruelties and oppressions in the human race. It was to shatter and destroy these falsehoods, to sweep them away from the mind and heart of humanity, that Jesus Christ came into the world. We caimot receive his gospel in any sense, we cannot begin to understand its scope and purpose, unless we fully, freely, 144 ■ i i Christ Reveals Man to Himself and sincerely accept his great revelation of the true meaning and value of man as man. We say this was his revelation. Undoubt- edly it is true that Christ came to reveal God to man. But undoubtedly it is just as true that he came to reveal man to himself. He call-d himself the Son of God, but he called himself also the Son of man. His nature was truly divine, but his nature was no less truly human. He became man. And what is the meaning of that lowly birth, in the most helpless form of infancy, if it be not to teach us that humanity is so related to deity that it is capable of receiving and embodying God himself ? He died for man. And what is the meaning of that sacrifice, if it be not to teach us that God counts no price too great to pay for the redemption of the human soul ? This gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ contains the highest, grandest, most ennobling doctrine of humanity that ever has been proclaimed on earth. It is the only certain cure for low and debasing views of life. It is the only doctrine from which we 145 ff I) The Meaning of Manhood pj \ : : i ) I can learn to think of ourselves and our fellow- men as we ought to think. I ask you to consider for a little while the teachings of Jesus Christ in regard to what it means to be a man. Suppose, then, that we come to him with this question : How much is a man better than a sheep? He will tell us that a man is infinitely better, because he is the child of God, because he is capable of fellowship with God, and because he is made for an immortal life. And this threefold answer will shine out for us not only in the words, but also in the deeds, and above all in die death, of the Son of God and the Son of man. 1. Think, first of all, of the meaning of manhood in the light of the truth that man is ^he offspring and likeness of God. This was not a new doctrine first proclaimed by Christ. It was clearly taught in the mag- nificent imagery of the Book of Genesis. The chief design of that great picture of the beginnings is to show that a personal Creator is the source and author of all things 146 i i In the Image of God that are made. But next to that, and of equal importance, is the design to show that man is incalculabl}- superior to all the other works of Gud— that the distance between him and the lower animals is not a difference in degree, but a difference in kind. Yes, the difference is so great that we must use a new word to describe the origin of humanity, and if we speak of the stars and the earth, the trees and the flowers, the fishes, the birds, and the beasts, as "the works" of God, when man appears we must find a nobler name and say, " This is more than God's work; he is God's child." Our human consciousness confirms this testimony and answers to it. We know that there is something in us which raises us in- finitely above the things that we see and hear and touch, and the creatures that appear to spend their brief life in the automatic workings of sense and instinct. These powers of reason and affection and conscience, and above all this wonderful power of free will, the faculty of swift, sovereign, voluntary 147 * uHliki. ! I / '. 'A I 1 ) ! The Meaning of Maniiood choice, belong to a higher being. We say not to corruption, "Thou art my father," nor to theworm," Thou art my mother" ; but to God, "Thou art my Fatlier," and to the great Spirit, " In thee was my Hfe born." " Not only cunning casts in day : Let Science prove we are, and then What matters Science unto men, At least to nie? I would not stay. " Let him, the wiser man wlio springs Hereafter, up from childhood shape His action like the greater ape; But I was />oni toother things." Frail as our physical existence maybe, in some respects the mt st frail, the most defenseless among animals, we are yet conscious of some- thing that lifts us up and makes us supreme. " Man," says Pascal,- " is but a reed, the feeblest thing in nature ; but he is a reed that thinks. It needs not that the universe arm itself to crush him. An exhalation, a drop of water, suffice to destroy him. But were the universe to crush him, man is yet nobler than the universe ; for he knows that he dies, and the universe, even in prevailing against him, knows not its power." 1 48 V The Direct Appeal Now the beauty and strength of Christ's doctrine of man lie, not in the fact that he was at pains to explain and defend and justify this view of human nature, but in the fact that he assumed it with an unshaken conviction of its truth, and acted upon it always and every- where. He spoke to man, not as the product of nature, but as tiie child of God. He took it for granted that we are difTerent from plants and animals, and that we are conscious of the difTerence. " Consider the lilies," he says to us ; " the lilies cannot consider them- selves : they know not what they are, nor what their life means ; but you know, and you can draw the lesson of their lower beauty into your higher life. Regard the birds of the air; they are dumb and unconscious depen- dents upon the divine bounty, but you are conscious objects of the divine care. Are you not of more value than many sparrows? " Through all his words wc feel the thrilling power of this high doctrine of humanity. He is always appealing to reason, to con- science, to the power of choice between good 149 ^ n\ I ^^^^ I '):! I H \ ; ' ! 'i, li<^ ■if i ( I 1 I V s kk m The Meaning of Manhood and evil, to the noble and godlike faculties in man. And now think for a moment of the fact that his life was voluntarily, and of set pur- pose, spent among the poorest and humblest of mankind. Remember that he spoke, not to philosophers and scholars, but to peasants and fishermen and the little children of the world. What did he mean by that? Surely it was to teach us that this doctrine of the meaning of manliooil applies to man as man. It is not based upon considerations of wealth or learning or culture or elocpience. Those are the things of which the world takes account, and without which it refuses to pay any at- tention to us. A mere man, in the eyes of the world, is a nobody. But Christ comes to humanity in its poverty, in its ignorance, stripped of all outward signs of power, desti- tute of all save that which belongs in common to mankind ; to this lowly child, this very beggar-maid of human nature, comes the King, and speaks to her as a princess in dis- guise, and lifts her up and sets a crown upon >5" The Capacity of Fellowship her head. I ask you if this simple fact ought not to teach us how much a man is better than a sheep. 2. lUit Christ reveals to us another and a still higherelementof the meaningof manhood by speaking to us as beings who are capable of hokling C(MTimunion with God and reflecting the divine holiness in our hearts and lives. And here also his doctrine gains clearness and force when we bring it into close connec- tion with liis conduct. I suppose that there are few of us who windd not be ready to ad- mit at once that there are .'^^onie men and women who have high sj;irilual capacities. For them, we say, religion is a possible thing. They can attain to the knowledge of God and fellowship with him. They can pray, and sing praises, and do holy v/ork. It is easy for them to be good. They are born good. They are saints by nature. But for the great mass of the human race this is out of the question, absurd, impossible. They must dwell in ignorance, in wickedness, in impiety. But to all this Christ says, "No!" No, m ii m .^i II! :'(1 M Ml! I: 4«j ■^ ; ; i t I'hc Meaning of Manhood to our theory of perfection for the few. No, tu our theory of hopeless degradation for the many. I le tal