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Ibelpful ^bouobts
from
1benr^ 2)rummonb
" Nature is not more natural to my body
than God is to my soul."
" It is the deliberate verdict of the Lord
Jesus that it is better not to live than not to
love."
Boston
De Wolfe, Fiske & Co.
TYPOGRAPHY AND PRESSWORK BY
S. J. PARKHILL <S, CO.
BOSTON, U. S. A.
Ibelpful XTbouobts
(^Qstincnu
The expression " total abstinence " is a
strictly biological formula. It implies the
sudden destruction of a definite portion of
Environment by the total withdrawal of all
the connecting-links. Obviously, of course,
total abstinence ought thus to l3e allowed a.
much wider application than to cases of
" intemperance." It is the only decisive-
method of dealing with any sin of the flesh..
The very nature of the relations makes it
absolutely imperative that every victim of
unlawful appetite, in whatever direction, shall
totally abstain. Hence Christ's apparently
extreme and peremptory language defines the
only possible, as well as the only charitable,
expedient : " If thy right eye offend thee,
pluck it out, and cast it from thee. And if
thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and
cast it from thee."
Natural Law : " Mortification."
4 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
People often tell boys that if they seek
the kingdom of God, everything else is going
to be subtracted from them. They tell them
that they are going to become gloomy, miser-
able, and will lose everything that makes a
boy's life worth living — that they will have
to stop baseball and story-books, and become
little old men, and spend all their time in
going to meetings and in singing hymns.
Now, that is not true. Christ never said
anything like that. Christ says we are to
" seek first the kingdom of God," and every-
thing else worth having is to be added unto
us. " First ! "
{^^juetment
Nature is not more natural to my body
than God is to my soul. Every animal and
plant has its own Environment. And the
further one inquires into the relations of the
one to the other, the more one sees the mar-
vellous intricacy and beauty of the adjust-
ments. These wonderful adaptations of each
organism to its surroundings — of the fish to
the water, of the eagle to the air, of the
insect to the forest-bed — and of each part
of every organism — the fish's swim-bladder,
the eagle's eye, the insect's breathing-tubes —
which the old argument from design brought
HELPFUL THOUGHTS D
home to us with such enthusiasm, inspire us
still with a sense of the boundless resources
and skill of Nature in perfecting her arrange-
ments for each single life. Down to the last
detail the world is made for what is in it ;
and by whatever process things are as they
are, all organisms find in surrounding Nature
the ample complement of themselves. Man,
too, finds in his Environment provision for
all capacities, scope for the exercise of every
faculty, room for the indulgence of each
appetite, a just supply for every want. So
the spiritual man at the apex of the pyramid
of life finds in the vaster range of his En-
vironment a provision as much higher, it is
true, as he is higher, but as delicately adjusted
to his varying needs. And all this is supplied
to him just as the lower organisms are min-
istered to by the lower environment, in the
same simple ways, in the same constant se-
quence, as appropriately and as lavishly.
Natural Law : " Environment."
@di7ofution
Why should Evolution stop with the Or-
ganic? It is surely obvious that the com-
plement of Evolution is Advolution, and the
inquiry, Whence has all this system of things
come ? is, after all, of minor importance com-
pared with the question. Whither does all
tend ? Natural Law : " Classification."
HELPFUL THOUGHTS
@gnofltiei0m
The Christian apologist never further misses
the mark than when he refuses the testimony
of the Agnostic to himself. When the Ag-
nostic tells me he is blind and deaf, dumb,
torpid and dead to the spiritual world, I must
believe him. Jesus tells me that. Paul tells
me that. Science tells me that. He knows
nothing of this outermost circle ; and we are
compelled to trust his sincerity as readily
when he deplores it as if, being a man with-
out an ear, he professed to know nothing of
a musical world, or, being without taste, of a
world of art The nescience of the Agnostic
philosophy is the proof from experience that
to be carnally minded is Death.
Natural Law : " Death."
Charity is only a little bit of Love, one of
the innumerable avenues of Love, and there
may even be, and there is, a great deal of
charity without Love. It is a very easy
thing to toss a copper to a beggar on the
street ; it is generally an easier thing than
not to do it. Yet Love is just as often in
the withholding. We purchase relief from
the sympathetic feelings roused by the spec-
tacle of misery, at the copper's cost. It is
HELPFUL THOUGHTS /
too cheap — too cheap for us, and often too
dear for the beggar. If we really loved him
we would either do more for him, or less.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
(^ftetnatii?es
It is the deliberate verdict of the Lord
Jesus that it is better not to live than not
to love. The Greatest Thing in the World.
(gnimaf (Yttan
It is perfectly astonishing, when one thinks-
of it, what Nature can do for the animal
man — to see with what small capital, after
all a human being can get through the world..
I once saw an African buried. According to
the custom of his tribe, his entire earthly pos-
sessions — and he was an average commoner
— were buried with him. Into the grave,
after the body, was lowered the dead man's
pipe, then a rough knife, then a mud bowl,
and last his bow and arrows — the bowstring
cut through the middle, a touching symbol
that its work was done. This was all. Four
items, as an auctioneer would say, were the
whole belongings for half a century of this
human being. No man knows what a man is
till he has seen what a man can be without,
and be withal a man. That is to say, no man,
knows how great man is till he has seen how
small he has been once. Tropical Africa.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS
It is well to remember that we are to give
our bodies a living sacrifice — not a half-dead
sacrifice, as some people seem to imagine.
There is no virtue in emaciation.
How to Learn How.
Men tell us sometimes there is no such
thing as an Atheist. There must be. There
are some men to whom it is true that there
is no God. They cannot see God because
they have no eye. They have only an abor-
tive organ atrophied by neglect.
Natural Law : " Degfeneration."
The weight of a load depends upon the at-
traction of the earth. But suppose the attrac-
tion of the earth were removed ? A ton on
some other planet, where the attraction of
gravity is less, does not weigh half a ton.
Now Christianity removes the attraction of
the earth, and this is one way in which it
diminishes men's burden. It makes them
citizens of another world. What was a ton
yesterday is not half a ton to-day. So
HELPFUL THOUGHTS
without changing one's circumstances, merely
by offering a wider horizon and a different
standard, it alters the whole aspect of the
world. Pax Vobiscum.
(g>atriet0
In the dim but not inadequate vision of the
Spiritual World presented in the AYord of
God the first thing that strikes the eye is a
great gulf fixed. The passage from the Nat-
ural World to the Spiritual World is hermet-
ically sealed on the natural side. The door
from the inorganic to the organic is shut ; no
mineral can open it ; so the door from the
natural to the spiritual is shut, and no man
can open it. This world of natural men is
staked off from the Spiritual World by bar-
riers which have never yet been crossed from
within. No organic change, no modification
of environment, no mental energy, no moral
effort, no evolution of character, no progress
of civilization, can endow any single human
soul with the attribute of Spiritual Life.
The Spiritual World is guarded from the
world next in order beneath it by a law of
Biogenesis : Excejpt a man he horn again,
. . . except a man be born of water and
of the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of
God.
Natural Law : " Bioo-enesis."
10 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
(gcauti^ of C^axacUt
Under the right conditions it is as natural
for character to become beautiful as for a
Hower ; and if on God's earth there is not
some machinery for effecting it, the supreme
gift to the world has been forgotten. This
is simply what man was made for. With
Browning : " I say that Man was made
to grow, not stop." Or in the deeper words
of an older Book : '* Whom He did fore-
know, He also did predestinate ... to be
conformed to the Image of His Son."
The Changed Life.
(gcaut^ of t^t Unii?et0e
As a mere spectacle, the universe to-day
discloses a beauty so transcending that he
who disciplines himself by scientific work
finds it an overwhelming reward simply to
behold it.
Natural Law : " Introduction."
What is the essential difference between
the Christian and the not-a-Christian — be-
tween the spiritual beauty and the moral
beauty ? It is the distinction between the
Organic and the Inorganic. Moral beauty
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 11
is the product of the natural man, si^iritual
beauty of the spiritual man. And these two,
according to the law of Biogenesis, are sep-
arated from one another by the deepest line
known to Science. This Law is at once the
foundation- of Biology and of Spiritual Relig-
ion. And the whole fabric of Christianity
falls into confusion if we attempt to ignore
it. The Law of Biogenesis, in fact, is to
be regarded as the equivalent in biology of
the First Law of motion in physics : Every
body continues in its state of rest, or of uni-
form motion in a straight line, except in so far
as it is compelled hy force to change that state.
Natural Law : " Classification."
Q3e0innin00
The creation of a new heart, the renewing
of a right spirit, is an omnipotent work of
God. Leave it to the Creator. " He which
hath begun a good work in you will perfect
it unto that day."
The Changed Life,
What we are stretches past what we do,
beyond what we possess.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
12 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
QBefief in &ob
I say that man believes in a God who feels
himself in the presence of a Power which is
not himself and is immeasurably above him-
self — a Power in the contemplation of
which he' is absorbed, in the knowledge of
which he finds safety and happiness.
Natural Law : " Death."
t^t (gtst
Christ tries to make the best world by set-
ting the best men loose upon the world to in-
fluence it and reflect Him upon it.
What is a Christian ?
The Bible is a product of religion, not a
cause of it. The war literature of America,
which culminated, I suppose, in the publica-
tion of President Grant's life, came out of the
war ; the war did not come out of the litera-
ture. And so in the distant past there flowed
among the nations of heathendom a small,
warm stream, like the Gulf Stream in the
cold Atlantic — a small stream of religion ;
and now and then, at intervals, men, carried
along by this stream, uttered themselves in
words. The historical books came out of
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 13
facts ; the devotional books came out of ex-
periences ; the letters came out of circum-
stances ; and the Gospels came out of all
three. That is where the Bible came from.
It came out of religion ; religion did not come
out of the Bible. The Study of the Bible.
Q5itt$ a (jnira<jfe
Peopling these worlds with the appropriate
living forms is virtually miracle. Nor in one
case is there less of mystery in the act than
in the other. The second birth is scarcely
less perplexing to the theologian than the
first to the embryologist.
Natural Law : " Biogenesis."
Except a mineral be born " from above "
— from the Kingdom just above it — it can-
not enter the Kingdom just above it. And
except a man be born " from above," by the
same law he cannot enter the Kingdom just
above him. There being no passage from
one Kingdom to another, whether from inor-
ganic to organic or from organic to spiritual,
the intervention of Life is a scientific neces-
sity if a stone or a plant or an animal or a
man is to pass from a lower to a higher
sphere. The plant stretches down to the
dead world beneath it, touches its minerals
14 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
and gases with its mystery of Life, and brings
them up ennobled and transformed to the liv-
ing sphere. The breath of God, blowing
where it listeth, touches with its mystery of
Life the dead souls of men, bears them across
the bridgeless gulf between the natural and
the spiritual, between the spiritually inorganic
and the spiritually organic, endows them with
its own high qualities, and develops within
them those new and sweet faculties by which
those who are born again are said to see the
Kingdom of God.
Natural Law : "Biogenesis."
To fall in love with a good book is one of
the greatest events that can befall us. It is
to have a new influence pouring itself into
our life, a new teacher to inspire and refine
us, a new friend to be by our side always,
who, when life grows narrow and weary, will
take us into his wider and calmer and higher
world. Whether it be biography, introduc-
ing us to some humble life made great by
duty done ; or history, opening vistas into the
movements and destinies of nations that have
passed away ; or poetry, making music of all
the common things around us, and filling the
fields and the skies and the works of the city
and the cottage with eternal meanings —
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 15
whether it be these, or story-books, or relig-
ious books, or science, no one can become the
friend even of one good book without being
made wiser and better. On Books.
Q5ot6etfan50
The physical Laws may explain the inor-
ganic world ; the biological Laws may account
for the development of the organic. But of
the point where they meet, of that strange
borderland between the dead and living,
Science is silent. It is as if 'God had placed
everything in earth and heaven in the hands
of Nature, but reserved a point at the genesis
of Life for His direct aj)pearing.
Natural Law : " Biogenesis."
There is no analogy between the Christian
religion and Buddhism or the Mohammedan
religion. There is no true sense in which a
man can say, " He that hath Buddha hath
Life." Buddha has nothing to do with Life.
He may have something to do with morality.
He may stimulate, impress, teach, guide, but
there is no distinct new thing added to the
souls of those who profess Buddhism. These
religions may be developments of the natural,
mental, or moral man. But Christianity pro-
fesses to be more. It is the mental or moral
16 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
man plus something else or some One else.
It is the infusion into the Spiritual man of a
New Life, of a quality unlike anything else
in Nature. This constitutes the separate
Kingdom of Christ, and gives to Christianity
alone, of all the religious of mankind, the
strange mark of Divinity.
Natural Law : "Biogenesis."
Christ's life outwardly was one of the most
troubled lives that was ever lived : tempest
and tumult, tumult and tempest, the waves
breaking over it all the time till the worn
body was laid in the grave. But the inner
life was a sea' of glass. The great calm was
always there. At any moment you might
have gone to Him and found Rest.
Pax Vohiscum.
We fail to appreciate the meaning of spir-
itual degeneration or detect the terrible nat-
ure of the consequences only because they
evade the eye of sense. But could we inves-
tigate the spirit as a living organism, or study
the soul of the backslider on principles of
comparative anatomy, we should have a rev-
elation of the organic effects of sin, even of
^0 fall in love
witb a Q00t> booft
is one of tbe
Qteategt events
tbat can
befall us.
Their FRrcNDSHiP.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 17
the mere sin of carelessness as to growth
and work, which must revolutionize our ideas
of practical religion. There is no room for
the doubt even that what goes on in the body-
does not with equal certainty take place in
the spirit under the corresponding conditions.
Natural Law : " Parasitism."
Cause an5 (Effect
Things are so arranged in the original
planning of the world that certain effects
must follow certain causes, and certain causes
must be abolished before certain effects can
be removed. Pax Vohisciun.
The Christian life is not casual, but causal.
All nature is a standing protest against the
absurdity of expecting to secure spiritual
effects, or any effects, without the employ-
ment of appropriate causes. The Great
Teacher dealt what ought to have been the
final blow to this infinite irrelevancy by a
single question : " Do men gather grapes of
thorns, or figs of thistles ? "
Pax Vobiscum.
Ctxdtts
The perfection of unity is attained where
there is infinite variety of phenomena, infinite
complexity of relation, but great simplicity
18 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
of Law. Science will be complete when all
known phenomena can be arranged in one
vast circle in which a few well-known Laws
shall form the radii, these radii at once sep-
arating and uniting — separating into partic-
ular groups, yet uniting all to a common
centre.
Natural Law : " Introduction."
Nothing that happens in the world happens
by chance. God is a God of order. Every-
thing is arranged upon definite principles,
and never at random.
Pax Vohiscum.
Try to give up the idea that religion comes
to us by chance or by mystery or by caprice.
It comes to us by natural law, or by super-
natural law, for all law is Divine.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
Not more certain is it that it is something
outside of the thermometer that produces a
change in the thermometer, than it is some-
thing outside the soul of man that produces
a moral change upon him.
The Changed Life.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 19
Will-power does not change men. Time
does not change men. Christ does. There-
fore " Let that mind be in you which is also
in Christ Jesus."
The Greatest Thing in the World.
Character
It is not said that the character will de-
velop in all its fulness in this life. That
were a time too short for an Evolution so
magnificent. In this world only the cornless
ear is seen ; sometimes only the small yet
still prophetic blade.
Natural Law.
Of all unseen things, the most radiant, the
most beautiful, the most divine, is character.
The Changed Life.
The New Testament is nowhere more im-
pressive than where it insists on the fact of
man's dependence. In its view the first step
in religion is for man to feel his helplessness.
Christ's first beatitude is to the poor in spirit.
The condition of entrance into the spiritual
kingdom is to possess the child-spirit — that
state of mind combining at once the pro-
foundest helplessness with the most artless
feeling of dependence. Substantially the
20 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
same idea underlies the countless passages in
which Christ affirms that He has not come
to call the righteous, but sinners, to repent-
ance.
Natural Law : " Environment.'"
To become like Christ is the only thing in
the world worth caring for, the thing before
which every ambition of man is folly, and all
lower achievement vain. Those only who
make this quest the supreme desire and pas-
sion of their lives can even begin to hope to
reach it.
The Changed Life.
Christ t^e ^out<je of 30^
Christ is the source of Joy to men in the
sense in which He is the source of Rest.
His people share His life, and therefore share
its consequences, and one of these is Joy.
His method of living is one that in the nature
of things produces Joy. When He spoke
of His Joy remaining with us He meant in
part that the causes whicli produced it should
continue to act. His followers, that is to
say, by repeating His life would experience
its accompaniments. His Joy, His kind of
Joy, would remain with them.
Pax Vohiscum.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 21
Christ: ^^o anh OT^ete 30 ^e?
Thank God the Christianity of to-day is
coming nearer the world's need ! Live to
help that on. Thank God men know better,
by a hair's-breadth, what religion is, what
God is, who Christ is, where Christ is ! Who
is Christ? He who fed the hungry, clothed
the naked, visited the sick. And where is
Christ ? Where ? Whoso shall receive a
little child in My name receiveth Me. And
who are Christ's? Every one that loveth
is born of God.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
C^xiBi's 5nffuence
There is only one great character in the
world that can really draw out all that is
best in men. He is so far above all others
in influencing men for good that He stands
alone. That man was the founder of Chris-
tianity. To be a Christian man is to have
that character for our ideal in life, to live
under its influence, to do what He would
wish us to do, to live the kind of life He
would have lived in our house, and had He
our day's routine to go through.
What is a Christian ?
22 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
C^visfs (JHanfine00
You would be surprised when you come
to know who Christ is, if you have not
thought much about it, to find how He will
fit in with all human needs, and call out all
that is best in man. The highest and man-
liest character that ever lived was Christ.
What is a Christian ?
" Love is the fulfilling of the Law." It is
the rule for fulfilling all rules, the new com-
mandment for keeping all the old command-
ments, Christ's one secret of the Christian
life.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
Nothing ever for a moment broke the
serenity of Christ's life on earth. Misfor-
tune could not reach Him ; He had no for-
tune. Food, raiment, money — fountain-
heads of half the world's weariness — He
simply did not care for ; they played no part
in His life ; He " took no thought " for
them. It was impossible to affect Him by
lowering His reputation. He had already
made himself of no reputation. He was
dumb before insult. When He was reviled
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 23
He reviled not again. In fact, there was
nothing that the world could do to Him that
could ruffle the surface of His spirit.
Pax Vobiscum.
Unfouef^ christians
How many prodigals are kept out of the
Kingdom of God by the unlovely character
of those who profess to be inside !
The Greatest Thing in the World.
^9e d^vue (Cfristian
When a man becomes a Christian the nat-
ural process is this : The Living Christ enters
into his soul. Development begins. The
quickening Life seizes upon the soul, assimi-
lates surrounding elements, and begins to
fashion it. According to the great Law of
Conformity to Type, this fashioning takes a
specific form. It is of the Artist who fasli-
ions. And all through Life this wonderful,
mystical, glorious, yet perfectly definite proc-
ess goes on " until Christ be formed " in it.
Natural Law : " Conformity to Type."
Cfvistianit^ a ^^a)jtn
We are told in the New Testament that
Christianity is leaven, and "leaven" comes
from the same root-word as lever, meaning
24 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
that which raises up, which elevates ; and a
Christian young man is a man who raises up
or elevates the lives of those round about
him. What is a Christian ?
Content
Do not quarrel, therefore, with your lot in
life. Do not complain of its never-ceasing
cares, its petty environment, the vexations
you have to stand, the small and sordid souls
you have to live and work with. Above all,
do not resent temptation ; do not be per-
plexed because it seems to thicken round
you more and more, and ceases neither for
effort nor for agony nor prayer. That is
your practice. That is the practice which
God appoints you. And it is having its work
in making you patient, and humble, and gen-
erous, and unselfish, and kind, and courteous.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
^^e Common^ face
Nothing in this age is more needed in every
department of knowledge than the rejuvenes-
cence of the commonplace. In the spiritual
world especially, he will be wise who courts
acquaintance with the most ordinary and
transparent facts of nature.
Natural Law : " Environment."
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 25
Consumption anh 3t0 ^firituaf
(gnafo^ue
The soul undergoing Degeneration, surely
by some arrangement with Temptation planned
in the uttermost hell, possesses the power of
absolute secrecy. When all within is fester-
ing decay and rottenness, a Judas, without
anomaly, may kiss his Lord. This invisible
consumption, like its fell analogue in the nat-
ural world, may even keep its victim beauti-
ful while slowly slaying it.
Natural Law : " Degeneration."
Continuity
Probably the most satisfactory way to se-
cure for one's self a just appreciation of the
principle of Continuity is to try to conceive
the universe without it. The opposite of a
continuous universe would be a discontinuous
universe, an incoherent and irrelevant uni-
verse — as irrelevant in all its ways of doing
things as an irrelevant person. In effect, to
withdraw Continuity from the universe would
be the same as to withdraw reason from an
individual. The universe would run de-
ranged ; the world would be a mad world.
Natural Law : " Law of Continuity."
26 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
Continuous ^a)»
The Natural Laws are not the shadows or
images of the Spiritual in the same sense as
autumn is emblematical of Decay, or the
falling leaf of Death. The Natural Laws, as
the Law of Continuity might well warn us,
do not stop with the visible, and then give
place to a new set of Laws bearing a strong
similitude to them. The Laws of the invisi-
ble are the same Laws, projections of the
natural, not supernatural. Analogous phe-
nomena are not the fruit of parallel Laws,
but of the same Laws — Laws which at one
end, as it were, may be dealing with Matter,
at the other end with Spirit.
Natural Law : " Law of Continuity."
Coni?ersion 3s ^u66en
The change from Death to Life, alike in
the natural and spiritual spheres, is the work
of a moment. Whatever the conscious hour
of the second birth may be — in the case of
an adult it is probably defined by the first real
victory over sin — it is certain that on bio-
logical principles the real turning-point is
literally a moment. But on moral and hu-
mane grounds this misunderstood, perverted,
and therefore despised doctrine is equally
capable of defence. Were any reformer.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 27
with an adequate knowledge of human life,
to sit down and plan a scheme for the salva-
tion of sinful men, he would probably come
to the conclusion that the best way, after all
— perhaps, indeed, the only way — to turn a
sinner from the error of his ways would be to
do it suddenly.
Natural Law : " Death."
Communion \»itf <5o5
Communion with God — can it be demon-
strated in terms of Science that this is a cor-
respondence which will never break ? We
do not appeal to Science for such a testimony.
We have asked for its conception of an Eter-
nal Life, and we have received for answer
that Eternal Life would consist in a corre-
spondence which should never cease, with an
Environment which should never pass away.
And yet what would Science demand of a
perfect correspondence that is not met by
this, the knowing of God ? There is no other
correspondence which could satisfy one at
least of the conditions. Not one could be
named which would not bear on the face of
it the mark and pledge of its mortality. But
this, to know God, stands alone.
Natural Law : " Eternal Life."
28 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
The Christian life is the only life that will
ever be completed. Apart from Christ the
life of man is a broken pillar, the race of men
an unfinished pyramid. One by one, in sight
of Eternity, all human ideals fall short ; one
by one, before the open grave, all human
hopes dissolve.
Natural Law : " Conformity to Type."
Conffiet
Keep in the midst of Life. Do not isolate
yourself. Be among men, and among things,
and among troubles and difficulties and ob-
stacles. You remember Goethe's words :
" Talent develops itself in solitude, character
in the stream of life."
The Greatest Thing in the World.
Man's spiritual life consists in the number
and fulness of his correspondences with God.
In order to develop these he may be con-
strained to insulate them, to enclose them
from the other correspondences, to shut him-
self m with them. In many ways the limita-
tion of the natural life is the necessar}^ condi-
tion of the full enjoyment of the spiritual
life. Natural Law : " Mortification."
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 29
Politeness has been defined as love in
trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little
things. And the one secret of politeness is
to love. Love cannot behave itself unseemly.
You can jDut the most untutored persons into
the highest society, and if they have a reser-
voir of Love in their heart they will not be-
have themselves unseemly. They simj^ly
cannot do it.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
Cxiiicisvx
It is easier to criticise the best thing su-
perbly than to do the smallest thing indif-
ferently. What is a Christian ?
Cx088
The whole cross is more easily carried
than the half.
Natural Law : " Mortification."
'Btat^ in (Jtature
We are wont to imagine that Nature is
full of Life. In reality it is full of Death.
One cannot say it is natural for a plant to
live. Examine its nature fully, and you
have to admit that its natural tendency is
30 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
to die. It is kept from dying by a mere
temporary endowment which gives it an
ephemeral dominion over the elements —
gives it power to utilize for a brief span
the rain, the sunshine, and the air. With-
draw this temporary endowment for a
moment and its true nature is revealed.
Instead of overcoming Nature it is over-
come. The very things which appeared to
minister to its growth and beauty now turn
against it and make it decay and die. The
sun which warmed it, withers it ; the air and
rain which nourished it, rot it. It is the
very forces which we associate with life
which, when their true nature appears, are
discovered to be really the ministers of
death.
Natural Law : " Degeneration."
<S>eat^ a #tey in (Kbofution
The part of the organism which begins to
get out of correspondence with the Organic
Environment is the only part which is in
vital correspondence with it. Though a
fatal disadvantage to the natural man to be
thrown out of correspondence with this
Environment, it is of inestimable impor-
tance to the spiritual man. For so long as
it is maintained the way is barred for a
further Evolution. And hence the condi-
tion necessary for the further Evolution is
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 31
that the spiritual be released from the natu-
ral. That is to say, the condition of the
further Evolution is Death.
Natural Law : " Eternal Life."
How pardonable, surely, the impatience of
deformity with itself, of a consciously despica-
ble character standing before Christ, wonder-
ing, yearning, hungering, to be like that !
The Changed Life.
The punishment of degeneration is sim-
ply degeneration — the loss of functions, the
decay of organs, the atrophy of the spiritual
nature.
Natural Law : " Parasitism."
The development of any organism in any
direction is dependent on its Environment.
A living cell cut off from air will die. A
seed-germ apart from moisture and an ap-
propriate temperature will make the ground
its grave for centuries. Human nature, like-
wise, is subject to similar conditions. It can
only develop in presence of its Environment.
No matter what its possibilities may be, no
32 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
matter what seeds of thought or virtue, what
germs of genius or of art, lie latent in its
breast, until the appropriate Environment
present itself the correspondence is denied,
the development discouraged, the most splen-
did possibilities of life remain unrealized,
and thought and virtue, genius and art, are
dead.
Natural Laiv : " Death."
S>iffieuftie0
Talking about difficulties, as a rule, only
aggravates them. Entire satisfaction to the
intellect is unattainable about any of the
greater problems, and if you try to get to
the bottom of them by argument, there is no
bottom there ; and therefore you make the
matter worse. How to Learn How.
disease cinh ®e<tt^
In the natural world it only requires a
single vital correspondence of the body to
be out of order to ensure death. It is not
necessary to have consumption, diabetes, and
an aneurism to bring the body to the grave
if it have heart disease. He who is fatally
diseased in one organ necessarily pays the
penalty with his life, though all the others
be in perfect health. And such, likewise,
are the mysterious unity and correlation of
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 33
functions in the spiritual organism that the
disease of one member may involve the ruin
of the whole.
Natural Law : " Mortification."
Sanctity is in character, and not in moods ;
Divinity in our own plain, calm humanity, and
in no mystic rapture of the soul.
The Changed Life.
®ou6t an6 Un6eeief
Christ never failed to distinguish between
doubt and unbelief. Doubt is canH believe ;
unbelief is won't believe. Doubt is honesty ;
unbelief is obstinacy. Doubt is looking for
light ; unbelief is content with darkness.
How to Learn How.
We have already admitted that he who
knows not God may not be a monster ; we
cannot say he will not be a dwarf. This
precisely, and on perfectly natural princi-
ples, is what he must be. You can dwarf a
soul just as you can dwarf a plant, by depriv-
ing it of a full Environment.
Natural Law : " Death."
34 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
Dying is that break-down in an organism
which throws it out of correspondence with
some necessary part of the environment.
Death is the result produced — the want of
correspondence. We do not say that this is
all that is involved. But this is the root-idea
of Death — failure to adjust internal rela-
tions to external relations, failure to repair
the broken inward connection sufficiently to
enable it to correspond again with the old
surroundings.
Natural Law : " Death."
This earthly mind may be of noble calibre,
enriched by culture, high-toned, virtuous and
pure. But if it know not God? What
though its correspondences reach to the stars
of heaven or grasp the magnitudes of Time
and Space? The stars of heaven are not
heaven. Space is not God.
Natural Law : "Death."
The well-defined spiritual life is not only
the highest life, but it is also the most easily
lived.
Natural Law : " Mortification."
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 35
effort
A religion of effortless adoration may be a
religion for an angel, but never for a man.
Not in the contemplative, but in the active,
lies true hope ; not in rapture, but in reality,
lies true life ; not in the realm of ideals, but
among tangible things, is man's sanctifi cation
wrought. The Changed Life.
What a noble gift it is, the power of piay-
ing upon the souls and wills of men, and
rousing them to lofty purposes and holy
deeds! Paul says, "If I speak with the
tongues of men and of angels, and have not
love, I am become as sounding brass, or a
tinklmg cymbal." And we all know why.
We have all felt the brazenness of words
without emotion, the hollowness, the unac-
countable unpersuasiveness, of eloquence be-
hind which lies no Love.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
enl?ironment
All knowledge lies in Environment. When
I want to know about minerals I go to min-
erals. When I want to know about flowers
I go to flowers. And they tell me. In their
36 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
own way they speak to me, each in its own
way, and each for itself — not the mineral
for the flower, which is impossible, nor the
flower for the mineral, which is also impossi-
ble. So if I want to know about Man, I go
to his part of the Environment. And he
tells me about himself; not as the plant or
the mineral, for he is neither, but in his own
way. And if I want to know about God, I
go to His part of the Environment. And He
tells me about Himself, not as a Man, for He
is not Man, but in His own way.
Natural Law : " Eternal Life."
Whenever you attempt a good work you
will find other men doing the same kind of
work, and probably doing it better. Envy
them not. Envy is a feeling of ill-will to
those who are in the sarne line as ourselves,
a spirit of covetousness and detraction. How
little Christian work even is a protection
against un-Christian feeling! That most
despicable of all the unworthy moods which
cloud a Christian's soul assuredly waits for
us on the threshold of every work, unless
we are fortified with this grace of magnan-
imity. Only one thing truly need the Chris-
tian envy — the large, rich, generous soul
which " envieth not."
The Greatest Tiling in the World.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 37
<&itxnae Jlife: 5t0 #ofution
To Christianity, " lie that hath the Son of
God hath Life, and he that hath not the Son
hath not Life." This, as we take it, defines
the correspondence which is to bridge the
grave. This is the clue to the nature of the
Life that lies at the back of the spiritual
organism. And this is the true solution of
the mystery of Eternal Life.
Natural Law : " Eternal Life."
0tetnit^
In the vocabulary of Science, Eternity is
only the fraction of a word. It means
mere everlastingness. To Religion, on the
other hand, Eternity has little to do with
time. To correspond with the God of Sci-
ence, the Eternal Unknowable, would be
everlasting existence ; to correspond with
"the true God and Jesus Christ" is Eternal
Life. The quality of the Eternal Life alone
makes the heaven ; mere everlastingness
might be no boon.
Natural Law : " Eternal Life."
The want of connection between the great
words of religion and every-day life has be-
wildered and discouraged all of us.
Pax Vohiscum.
38 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
euofution: 'U)M 3s ^t?
*' What about evolution ? How am I to
reconcile my religion, or any religion, with
the doctrine of evolution?" That upsets
more men than perhaps anything else at the
present hour. How would you deal with it?
I would say to a man that Christianity is
the further evolution. I don't know any bet-
ter definition than that. It is the further
evolution — the higher evolution. I don't
start with him to attack evolution. I don't
start with him to defend it. I destroy by fulfil-
ling it. I take him at his own terms. He says
evolution is that which pushes the man on
from the simple to the complex, from the
lower to the higher. Very well ; that is
what Christianity does. It pushes the man
farther on. It takes him where nature has
left him, and carries him on to heights which
on the plane of nature he could never reach.
That is evolution. How to Learn How.
ei?ofution, (Uaturaf anh #|?itituaf
As the biologist runs his eye over the long
Ascent of Life he sees the lowest forms of
animals develop in an hour ; the next above
these reach maturity in a day ; those higher
still take weeks or months to perfect ; but
the few at the top demand the long experi-
ment of years. If a child and an ape are born
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 39
on the same day, the last will be in full pos-
session of its faculties and doing the active
work of life before the child has left its cra-
dle. Life is the cradle of eternity. As the
man is to the animal in the slowness of his
evolution, so is the spiritual man to the natu-
ral man. Foundations which have to bear
the weight of an eternal life must be surely
laid. Character is to wear for ever ; who will
wonder or grudge that it cannot be developed
in a day ?
The Changed Life.
0l?ofution: 5ts 5^^^^^
It is perhaps impossible, with such facul-
ties as we now possess, to imagine Evolution
with a future as great as its past. So stu-
pendous is the development from the atom to
the man that no point can be fixed in the fut-
ure as distant from what man is now as he is
from the atom. But it has been given to
Christianity to disclose the lines of a further
Evolution.
Natural Law : '' Classification."
€^i3ofution Unii?er0af
Evolution being found in so many different
sciences, the likelihood is that it is a univer-
sal principle. And there is no presumption
40 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
whatever against this Law and many others
being excluded from the domain of the spirit-
ual life.
Natural Law.
It will never do to exasjojerate one truth at
the expense of another ; and a truth may be
turned into a falsehood very, very easily, by
simply being either too much enlarged or too
much diminished.
How to Learn How.
The great God of science at the present
time is a fact. It works with facts. Its cry
is " Give me facts ! " Found anything you
like upon facts and we will believe it. The
Spirit of Christ was the scientific spirit. He
founded his religion upon facts, and He asked
all men to found their religion upon facts.
How to Learn How.
5aitf an6 (Heaaon
Faith is never opposed to reason in the
New Testament ; it is opposed to sight.
How to Learn How.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 41
It is now known that the human body acts
toward certain fever-germs as a sort of soil.
The man whose blood is pure has nothing to
fear. So he whose spirit is purified and
sweetened becomes proof against these germs
of sin. " Anger, wrath, malice, and railing "
in such a soil can find no root.
Natural Law : " Mortification."
5oo5
To sustain life, physical, mental, moral, or
spiritual, some sort of food is essential. To
secure an adequate supply each organism also
is provided with special and appropriate
faculties. But the final gain to the organism
does not depend so much on the actual
amount of food procured as on the exercise
required to obtain it. In one sense the exer-
cise is only a means to an end, namely, the
finding food ; but in another and equally real
sense the exercise is the end, the food the
means to attain that. Neither is of perma-
nent use without the other, but the corre-
lation between them is so intimate that it
were idle to say that one is more necessary
than the other. Without food exercise is im-
possible, but without exercise food is use-
less. Natural Law : " Parasitism."
42 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
5tien60^if
Friendship is the nearest thing we know to
what religion is. God is love. And to make
religion akin to friendship is simply to give it
the highest expression conceivable by man.
The Changed Life.
Jundamentaf (J}rinei|?fe
We never know how little we have learned
of the fundamental principle of Christianity
till we discover how much we are all bent on
supplementing God's free grace.
Natural Law : " Growth."
2^^e (Bentfeman
Carlyle said of Robert Burns that there
was no truer gentleman in Europe than the
ploughmau-poet. It was because he loved
everything — the mouse, and the daisy, and
all the things, great and small, that God had
made. So with this simple passport he could
mingle with any society, and enter courts and
palaces from his little cottage on the banks of
the Ayr. You know the meaning of the
word " gentleman." It means a gentle man —
a man who does things gently, with love.
And that is the whole art and mystery of it.
The gentle man cannot in the nature of
things do an ungentle, an ungentlemanly,
HELPPUL THOUGHTS 43
thing. The ungentle soul, the inconsiderate,
unsympathetic nature, cannot do anything
else. " Love doth not behave itself un-
seemly."
The Greatest Thing in the World.
(5o6 3nei?ita6fe
To every man who truly studies Nature
there is a God. Call him by whatever name
— a Creator, a Supreme Being, a Great
First Cause, a Power that makes for Right-
eousness — Science has a God ; and he who
believes in this, in spite of all protest, pos-
sesses a theology.
Natural Law .* " Death."
God is not confined to the uttermost circle
of environment ; He lives and moves and
has His being in the whole. Those who only
seek Him in the further zone can only find a
part. The Christian who knows not God in
Nature, who does not, that is to say, corre-
spond with the whole environment, most cer-
tainly is partially dead.
Natural Law : " Death."
44 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
<5o5 t^e ^tue 0nl?itronment
The true environment of the moral life is
God. Here conscience wakes. Here kindles
love. Duty here becomes heroic, and that
righteousness begins to live which alone is to
live for ever. But if this atmosphere is not,
the dwarfed soul must perish for mere want
of its native air. And its death is a strictly
natural death. It is not an exceptional judg-
ment upon Atheism. In the same circum-
stances, in the same averted relation to their
environment, the poet, the musician, the ar-
tist, would alike perish to poetry, to music,
and to art. Every environment is a cause.
Its effect upon me is exactly proportionate to
my correspondence with it. If I correspond
with part of it, part of myself is influenced.
If I correspond with more, more of myself is
influenced ; if with all, all is influenced. If
I correspond with the world, I become
worldly ; if with God, I become Divine.
Natural Law : " Death."
<5o6 itt Qtatute
We have not said, or implied, that there is
not a God of Nature. We have not affirmed
that there is no Natural Religion. We are
assured there is. We are even assured that
without a Religion of Nature, Religion is
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 45
only half complete ; that without a God of
Nature, the God of Revelation is only half
intelligible and only partially known. God
is not confined to the outermost circle of en-
vironment. He lives and moves and has His
being in the whole.
Natural Law : " Death."
It has never been as clear to us that with-
out God the soul will die as that without
food the body will perish.
Natural Laiv : " Environment."
&xabciiionB
We all, reflecting as a mirror the character
of Christ, are transformed into the same
Image from character to character — from a
poor character to a better one, from a better
one to one a little better still, from that to
one still more complete — until, by slow de-
grees, the Perfect Image is attained. Here
the solution of the problem of sanctification
is compressed into a sentence : Reflect the
character of Christ and you will become like
Christ.
The Changed Life.
46 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
<5tan5mot^er0
Boys, if you are going to be Christians, be
Christians as boys, and not as your grand-
mothers. A grandmother has to be a Chris-
tian as a grandmother, and that is the right
and the beautiful thing for her ; but if you
cannot read your Bible by the hour as your
grandmother can, or delight in meetings as
she can, don't think you are necessarily a bad
boy. When you are your grandmother's age
you will have your grandmother's kind of
religion. " First ! "
(Brabttation
When Nature yielded to Newton her
great secret, gravitation was felt to be no
greater as a fact in itself than as a rev-
elation that Law was Fact.
Natural Law: " Preface."
(&xt<xi (JUen
How do I know Shakespeare or Dante ?
By communing with their words and thoughts.
Many men know Dante better than their
own fathers. He influences them more. As
a spiritual presence he is more near to them,
as a spiritual force more real. Is there any
reason why a greater than Shakespeare or
Dante, who also walked this earth, who left
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 47
great words behind Him, who has great
works everywhere in the world now, should
not also instruct, inspire, and mould the char-
acters of men ? The Changed Life.
<5reat t[^xyxi^%
The greatest truths are always the most
loosely held. Natural Law: "Biogenesis."
The gradualness of growth is a character-
istic which strikes the simplest observer.
Long before the word Evolution was coined
Christ applied it in this very connection —
" First the blade, then the ear, then the full
corn in the ear." It is well known also to
those who study the parables of Nature that
there is an ascending scale of slowness as we
rise in the scale of Life. Growth is most
gradual in the highest forms. Man attains
his maturity after a score of years ; the
monad conapletes its humble cycle in a day.
What wonder if development be tardy in the
Creature of Eternity? A Christian's sun
has sometimes set, and a critical world has
seen as yet no corn in the ear. As yet ?
'' As yet," in this long Life, has not begun.
Grant him the years proportionate to his
place in the scale of Life. " The time of
harvest is not yet'' Natural Law.
48 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
<5to\»t^: 5t0 Con6ition0
The conditions of growth, then, and the
inward principle of growth being both sup-
plied by Nature, the thing man has to do, the
little junction left for him to complete, is to
apply the one to the other. He manufactures
nothing ; he earns nothing ; he need be anx-
ious for nothing ; his one duty is to he in
these conditions, to abide in them, to allow
grace to play over him, to be still therein,
and know that this is God.
Natural Law : " Growth."
(Btoiwt^ (noi0efe00
Do not think that nothing is happening
because you do not see yourself grow or
hear the whirr of the machinery. All
great things grow noiselessly. You can see
a mushroom grow, but never a child.
The Changed Life.
(5uifefe00ne00
Guilessness is the grace for suspicious peo-
ple. And the possession of it is the great
secret of personal influence. You will find,
if you think for a moment, that the people
who influence you are people who believe in
you. In an atmosphere of suspicion men
shrivel up ; but in that atmosphere they
TanDcr tbc riQbt conditions
it i0 as natural
tor a cbaractcr
to become
beautiful
as for a flower.
BEAUTY OF
CHARAOTEn,
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 49
expand, and find encouragement and educa-
tive fellowship. It is a wonderful thing
that here and there in this hard, unchari-
table world there should still be left a few
rare souls who think no evil.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
ga^j^tnesfl Mt^ in (Bibin^
The most obvious lesson in Christ's teach-
ing is that there is no happiness in having
and getting anything, but only in giving.
And half the world is on the wrong scent^ in
pursuit of happiness. They think it consists
in having and getting, and in being served by
others. It consists in giving, and in serving
others. He that would be great among you,
said Christ, let him serve. He that would
be happy, let him remember that there is but
one way — it is more blessed, it is more happy,
to give than to receive.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
^atmon^
It is clear that a remarkable harmony ex-
ists here between the Organic World as
arranged by Science and the Spiritual World
as arranged by Scripture. We find one great
Law guarding the thresholds of both worlds,
securino: that entrance from a lower sphere
50 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
shall only take place by a direct regenerating
act, and that emanating from the world next
in order above. There are not two laws of
Biogenesis, one for the Natm-al, the other for
the Spiritual ; one law is for both. Where-
ever there is Life, Life of any kind, this same
law holds. The analogy, therefore, is only
among the phenomena ; between laws there
is no analogy — there is Continuity.
Natural Law : " Biogenesis."
'fe'
It is the beautiful work of Christianity
everywhere to adjust the burden of life to
those who bear it, and them to it. It has a
perfectly miraculous gift of healing. With-
out doing any violence to human nature it
sets it right with life, harmonizing it with all
surrounding things, and restoring those who
are jaded with the fatigue and dust of the
world to a new grace of living.
Pax Vohiscum.
Whatever hopes of " heaven " a neglected
soul may have can be shown to be an ignorant
and delusive dream. How is the soul to es-
cape to heaven if it has neglected for a life-
time the means of escape from the world and
HELPFUL THOUGHTS
51
self ? And where is the capacity for heaven
to come from if it be not developed on earth ?
Where, indeed, is even the smallest spiritual
appreciation of God and heaven to come from
when so little* of spirituality has ever been
known or manifested here ? If every God-
ward aspiration of the soul has been allowed
to become extinct, and every inlet that was
open to heaven to be choked, and every tal-
ent for religious love and trust to have been
persistently neglected and ignored, where are
the faculties to come from that would ever
find the faintest relish in such things as God
and heaven give ?
Natural Law: " Degeneration."
What Heredity has to do for us is deter-
mined outside ourselves. No man can select
his own parents. But every man to some ex-
tent can choose his own Environment. His
relation to it, however largely determined by
Heredity in the first instance, is always open
to alteration. And so great is his control
over Environment, and so radical its influ-
ence over him, that he can so direct it as
either to undo, modify, perpetuate, or inten-
sify the earlier hereditary influence within
certain limits.
Natural Law : " Environment."
52 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
Heresy is truth in the making, and doubt
is the prelude of knowledge.
How to Learn How.
3mitation
Imitation is mechanical, reflection organic.
The one is occasional, the other habitual. In
the one case man comes to God and imitates
him ; in the other God comes to man and im-
prints himself upon him.
The Changed Life,
Smtttortafit^
No truth of Christianity has been more
ignorantly or wilfully travestied than the doc-
trine of Immortality. The popular idea, in
spite of a hundred protests, is that Eternal
Life is to live for ever. A single glance at
the locus classicus might have made this error
impossible. There we are told that Life
Eternal is not to live. This is Life Eter-
nal — to know. And yet — and it is a no-
torious instance of the fact that men who are
opposed to Religion will take their concep-
tions of its profoundest truths from mere vul-
gar perversions — this view still represents
to many cultivated men the Scriptural doc-
trine of Eternal Life. From time to time
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 53
the taunt is thrown at Religion, not unseldom
from lips which Science ought to have taught
more caution, that the Future Life of Chris-
tianity is simply a prolonged existence, an
eternal monotony, a blind and indefinite con-
tinuance of being. The Bible never could
commit itself to any such platitudes, nor could
Christianity ever offer to the world a hope so
colorless.
Natural Law : "Eternal Life."
3mperfe<Jtion0 of tfe <5o5f^
The sneer at the godly man for his imper-
fections is ill-judged. A blade is a small
thing. At first it grows very near the earth.
It is often soiled and crushed and downtrod-
den. But it is a living thing. That great
dead stone beside it is more imposing ; only
it will never be anything less than a stone.
But this small blade — it doth not yet appear
what it shall be.
Natural Laic : "Growth."
3nn?resse5 -^oxuz
According to the first Law of Motion :
Every body continues in its state of rest, or
of uniform motion in a straight line, except
in so far as it may be compelled hy im-pressed
forces to change that state. This is also a
54 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
first law of Christianity. Every nian's char-
acter remains as it is, or continues in the di-
rection in which it is going, until it is com-
pelled hy impressed forces to change that
state.
The Cha7iged Life.
3mprol?ement
No man can become a saint in his sleep ;
and to fulfil the condition required demands
a certain amount of prayer and meditation
and time, just as improvement in any direc-
tion, bodily or mental, requires preparation and
care. Address yourselves to that one thing ;
at any cost have this transcendent character
exchanged for yours.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
3na6im^
The doctrine of Human Inability, as the
Church calls it, has always been objectionable
to men who do not know themselves.
Natural Latv : " Conformity to Type."
3n<jitement
God has planned the world to incite to in-
tellectual activity.
Hoiv to Learn How.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 55
5n<jom^fetene00
Who has not come to the conclusion that
he is but a part, a fraction of some larger
whole ? Who does not miss at every turn of
his life an absent God ? That man is but a
part he knows, for there is room in him for
more. That God is the other part he feels,
because at times He satisfies his need. Who
does not tremble often under that sicklier
symptom of his incompleteness, his want of
spiritual energy, his helplessness with sin?
But now he understands both — the void in
his life, the powerlessness of his will. He
understands that, like all other energy, spir-
itual power is contained in Environment.
He finds here at last the true root of all hu-
man frailty, emptiness, nothingness, sin. This
is why " without Me ye can do nothing."
Powerless is the normal state not only of
this but of every organism — of every organ-
ism apart from its Environment.
Natural Law : " Environment."
5neon0i0ten<ji^
The result of copying Humility and add-
ing it on to an otherwise worldly life is sim-
ply grotesque.
The Changed Life,
56 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
3nffuenee
It is the Law of Influence that we become
like those whom we habitually admire : these
had become like because they habitually ad-
mired. Through all the range of literature,
history, and biography this law presides.
Men are all mosaics of other men. There
was a savor of David about Jonathan, and a
savor of Jonathan about David. Jean Val-
jean, in the masterpiece of Victor Hugo, is
Bishop Bienvenu risen from the dead. Met-
empsychosis is a fact. The Changed Life.
With the inspiration of Nature to illumin-
ate what the inspiration of Revelation has
left obscure, heresy in certain whole depart-
ments shall become impossible. With the
demonstration of the naturalness of the super-
natural, scepticism even may come to be re-
garded as unscientific. And those who have
wrestled long for a few bare truths to enno-
ble life and rest their souls in thinking of the
future will not be left in doubt.
Natural Law : " Introduction."
3ntemct
Then comes a very important part, the
intellect, which is one of the most useful
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 57
servants of truth ; and I need not tell you as
students that the intellect will have a great
deal to do with your reception of truth. I
w^as told that it was said at these conferences
last year that a man must crucify liis intel-
lect. I venture to contradict the gentleman
who made that statement. I am quite sure
no such statement could ever have been made
in your hearing — that we were to crucify
our intellects. We can make no progress
without the full use of all the intellectual
powers that God has endowed us with.
How to Learn How.
5nl7entionfl
At every workshop you will see, in the
back 3'ard, a heap of old iron, a few levers,
a few cranks, broken and eaten with rust.
Twenty years ago that was the pride of the
city. Men flocked in from the country to
see the great invention ; now it is super-
seded, its day is done.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
3©^: ^ou? (gttained
Where does Joy come from ? I knew a
Sunday scholar whose conception of Joy was
that it was a thing made in lumps and kept
somewhere in Heaven, and that when people
prayed for it pieces were somehow let down
58 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
and fitted into their souls. I am not sure
that views as gross and material are not often
held by people who ought to be wiser. In
reality, Joy is as much a matter of Cause and
Effect as pain. No one can get Joy by
merely asking for it. It is one of the ripest
fruits of the Christian life, and, like all fruits,
must be grown.
Pax Vobiscum.
It is the Son of Man before whom the
nations of the world shall be gathered. It is
in the presence of Humanity that we shall be
charged. And the spectacle itself, the mere
sight of it, will silently judge each one. Those
will be there whom we have met and helped ;
or there the unpitying multitude whom we
neglected or despised. No other witness
need be summoned. No other charge than
lovelessness shall be preferred. Be not de-
ceived. The words which all of us shall one
day hear sound not of theology, but of life;
not of churches and saints, but of the hungry
and the poor ; not of creeds and doctrines,
but of shelter and clothing; not of Bibles
and prayer-books, but of cups of cold water
in the name of Christ.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 59
Every character has an inward spring. Let
Christ be it. Every action has a keynote.
Let Christ set it. The Changed Life.
I wonder why it is we are not all kinder
than we are ? How much the world needs
it ! How easily it is done ! How instan-
taneously it acts ! How infallibly it is re-
membered ! How superabundantly it pays
itself back ! For there is no debtor in the
world so honorable, so superbly honorable,
as Love. TTie Greatest Thing in the Woi^ld.
MxnhntQB of Christ
Have you ever noticed how much of
Christ's life was spent in doing kind things
— in merely doing kind things ? Run over
it with that in view, and you wdll find that
He spent a great proportion of His time
simply in making people happy, in doing
good turns to people. There is only one thing
greater than happiness in the world, and that
is holiness ; and it is not in our keeping ; but
what God has put in our power is the happi-
ness of those about us, and that is largely to
be secured by our being kind to them.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
60 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
^irx^bortt of 6o5
The Kingdom of God is not going to relig-
ious meetings and hearing strange religious
experiences. The Kingdom of God is doing
what is right — living at peace with all men,
being filled with joy in the Holy Ghost.
"First/"
The wisdom of the ancients — where is it?
It is wholly gone. A school-boy to-day
knows more than Sir Isaac Newton knew.
His knowledge has vanished away. You buy
the old editions of the great encyclopaedias
for a few pence. Their knowledge has faded
away. And all the boasted science and phil-
osophy of this day will soon be old.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
The most popular book in the English
tongue at the present time, except the Bible,
is one of Dickens's works, his Pickwick
Papers. . It is largely written in the language
of London street-life, and experts assure us
that in fifty years it will be unintelligible to
the averas^e English reader.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 61
The world, even the religious world, is
governed by Law. Character is governed by
Law. Happiness is governed by Law. The
Christian experiences are governed by Law.
Men, forgetting this, expect Rest, Joy, Peace,
Faith, to drop into tlleir souls from the air,
like snow or rain.
Pax Vobiscum.
The fundamental conception of Law is an
ascertained working sequence or constant
order among the phenomena of Nature.
This impression of Law as order it is im-
portant to receive in its simplicity, for the
idea is often corrupted by having attached to
it erroneous views of cause and effect. In
its true sense Natural Law predicates nothing
of causes.
Natural Law : " Introduction."
(Ket^n of :Eai»
The Reign of Law has gradually crept
into every department of Nature, transform-
ing knowledge everywhere into Science.- The
process goes on, and Nature slowly appears
to us as one great unity, until the borders
of the Spiritual World are reached.
Natural Laiv : " Introduction."
62 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
^aU), (Uatutaf an5 J^f ititua^
The real problem I have set myself may
be stated in a sentence. Is there not reason
to believe that many of the Laws of the
Spiritual World, hitherto regarded as occupy-
ing an entirely separate province, are simply
the Laws of the Natural World ? Can we
identify the Natural Laws, or any one of
them, in the Spiritual Sphere ? That vague
lines everywhere run through the Spiritual
World is already beginning to be recognized.
Is it possible to link them with those great
lines running through the visible universe
w^hich \^e call the Natural Laws, or are they
fundamentally distinct? In a word, Is the
Supernatural natural or unnatural ?
Natural Law : " Preface."
Jlai» of ^(d\xxt
There is a sense of solidity about a Law
of Nature which belongs to nothing else in
the world. Here, at last, amid all that is
shifting, is one thing sure ; one thing outside
ourselves, unbiassed, unprejudiced, uninflu-
enced by like or dislike, by doubt or fear ;
one thing that holds on its way to me eter-
nally, incorruptible, and undefiled. This,
more than anything else, makes one eager to
see the Reign of Law traced in the Spiritual
Sphere. Natural Law : " Preface."
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 63
J^ai»« not ^^exatoxs
Laws do not act upon anything. Appar-
ently it cannot be too abundantly emphasized
that Laws are only modes of operation, not
themselves operators.
Natural Law : " Introduction."
^ife a Coxxts^onbc^ntt
To find a new Environment again and
cultivate relation with it is to find a new
Life. To live is to correspond, and to cor-
respond is to live. So much is true in
Science. But it is also true in Religion.
And it is of great importance to observe
that to Religion also the conception of Life
is a correspondence.
Natural Law : " Eternal Life.'
&\\t 3» ©efinite
Life is not one of the homeless forces
which promiscuously inhabit space, or which
can be gathered like electricity from the
clouds and dissipated back again into space.
Life is definite and resident ; and Spiritual
Life is not a visit from a force, but a resi-
dent tenant in the soul.
Natural Law : " Introduction.''
64 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
Light is a something more than the sum
of its ingredients — a glowing, dazzling, trem-
ulous ether. And Love is something more
than all its elements — a palpitating, quiver-
ing, sensitive, living thing. By synthesis of
all the colors men can make whiteness, they
cannot make Light. By synthesis of all the
virtues men can make virtue they cannot
make Love.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
ۤc MocUt
There lived once a young girl whose per-
fect grace of character was the wonder of
those who knew her. She wore on her neck
a gold locket which no one was ever allowed
to open. One day, in a moment of unusual
confidence, one of her companions was al-
lowed to touch its spring and learn its secret.
She saw written these words : " Whom having
not seen, Hove.'' That was the secret of her
beautiful life. She had been changed into
the Same Image. The Changed Life.
All about us, Christians are wearing them-
selves out in trying to be better. The
amount of spiritual longing in the world —
Cbaciti2 i0 onlg
a little bit of %ovc
one ot tbe innumerable
avenues of
Xove.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 65
in the hearts of unnumbered thousands of
men and women in whom w^e should never
suspect it ; among the wise and thoughtful ;
among the young and gay, who seldom as-
suage and never betray their thirst, — this is
one of the most wonderful and touching facts
of life. It is not more heat that is needed,
but more light ; not more force, but a wiser
direction to be given to very real energies
already there. Pax Vobisciun.
You remember the profound remark which
Paul makes, " Love is the fulfilling of the
law." Did you ever think what he meant
by that ? In those days men were working
their passage to Heaven by keeping the Ten
Commandments, and the hundred and ten
other commandments which they had manu-
factured out of them. Christ said, I will
show you a more simple way. If you do
one thing, you will do these hundred and ten
things, without ever thinking about them. If
you love, you will unconsciously fullil the
whole law.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
^ol?e 5mmorta^
We know but little now about the condi-
tions of the life that is to come. But what is
QQ HELPFUL THOUGHTS
certain is that Love must last. God, the
Eternal God, is Love. Covet, therefore,
that everlasting gift, that one thing which
it is certain is going to stand, that one coin-
age which will be current in the universe
when all the other coinages of all the na-
tions of the world shall be useless and un-
honored. You will give yourselves to many
things ; give yourself first to Love.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
tfioue 50 (patience
Love is Patience. This is the normal atti-
tude of Love ; Love passive. Love waiting to
begin ; not in a hurry ; calm ; ready to do its
work when the summons comes, but mean-
time wearing the ornament of a meek and
quiet spirit.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
Men sigh for the wings of a dove, that
they may fly away and be at rest. But
flying away will not help us. " The King-
dom of God is ivithin you.'" We aspire to
the top to look for rest ; it lies at the bottom.
Water rests only when it gets to the lowest
place. So do men. Hence be lowly.
Pax Vobiscum.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 67
(JUagnets
Put a piece of iron in the presence of an
electrified body and that piece of iron for a
time becomes electrified. It is changed into
a temporary magnet in the mere presence of
a permanent magnet, and as long as you
leave the two side by side they are both
magnets alike. Remain side by side with
Him who loved us and gave Himself for
us, and you too will become a permanent
magnet, a permanently attractive force ; and
like Him you will draw all men unto you,
like Him you will be drawn unto all men.
That is the inevitable effect of Love.
The Greatest Thing hi the World,
He who seeks to serve two masters misses
the benediction of both.
Natural Law : " Mortification."
(JYlatetriaffi
The lowest or mineral world mainly sup-
plies the material — and this is true even for
insectivorous species — for the vegetable king-
dom. The vegetable supplies the material
for the animal. Next in turn, the animal
furnishes material for the mental ; and lastly,
(>8 hp:lpful thoughts
tiie mental for the spiritual. Each member
of the series is complete ouly when the steps
below it are complete ; the highest demands
all.
Natural Law : " Conformity to Type."
(method
Realize it thoroughly : it is a methodical,
not an accidental world.
Pax Vobiscum.
The advantage of the ministry is that a
man's whole life can be thrown into the car-
rying out of that programme without any
deduction. Another advantage of the min-
istry is that it is so poorly paid that a man
is not tempted to cut a dash and shine in the
world, but can be meek and lowly in heart,
like his Master. It is enough for a servant
to be like his master, and there is a great at-
traction in seeking obscurity, even isolation,
if one can be following the highest ideals.
What is a Christian ?
(jnimefe
That question is thrown at my head every
second day : " What do you say to a man
when he says to you, ' Why do you believe
HELPFUL THOUGHTS G9
in miracles ' ? " I say, " Because I have
seen them." He says, " When ? " I say,
" Yesterday." He says, " Where ? " " Down
such-and-such a street I saw a man who was
a drunkard redeemed by the power of an un-
seen Christ and saved from sin. That is a
miracle." The best apologetic for Chris-
tianity is a Christian. That is a fact which
the man cannot get over. There are fifty
other arguments for miracles, but none so
good as that you have seen them. Perhaps
you are one yourself. But take you a man
and show him a miracle with his own eyes.
Then he will believe.
How to Learn How.
(JYlittovs
One of the aptest descriptions of a human
being is that he is a mirror. As we sat at
table to-night the world in which each of us
lived and moved throughout this day was
focussed in the room. What we saw as we
looked at one another was not one another,
but one another's world. We were an ar-
rangement of mirrors. The scenes we saw
were all reproduced ; the people we met
walked to and fro I they spoke, they bowed,
they passed us by, did everything over again
as if it had been real. When we talked we
were but looking at our own mirror and de-
scribino^ what flitted across it. Our listening
70 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
was not hearing, but seeing — we but looked
on our neighbor's mirror. All human inter-
course is a seeins: of reflections.
The Changed Life.
(JUiflflionar^ 6nter^risc
Science has a duty in pointing out that no
devotion or enthusiasm can give any man a
charmed life, and that those who work for
the highest ends will best attain them in hum-
ble obedience to the common laws. Tran-
scenden tally, this may be denied ; the warn-
ing finger may be despised as the hand of
the coward and the profane. But the fact
remains — the fact of an awful chain of Eng-
lish graves stretching across Africa. This is
not spoken, nevertheless, to discourage mis-
sionary enterprise. It is only said to regu-
late it.
Tropical Africa.
(JUi0un5etfltan5in5
The religion of Jesus has probably always
suffered more from those who have misun-
derstood than from those who have opposed
it. Of the multitudes who confess Christian-
ity at this hour how many have clear in their
minds the cardinal distinction established by
its Founder between " born of the flesh " and
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 71
" born of the Spirit " ? By how many teach-
ers of Christianity even is not this funda-
mental postulate persistently ignored !
Natural Law : " Introduction."
What history testifies to is first the partial,
and then the total, eclipse of virtue that al-
ways follows the abandonment of belief in a
personal God. It is not, as has been pointed
out a hundred times, that morality in the ab-
stract disappears, but the motive and sanc-
tion are gone. There is nothing to raise it
from the dead. Man's attitude to it is left to
himself. Grant that morals have their own
base in human life ; grant that Nature has a
Religion whose creed is Science ; there is yet
nothing apart from God to save the world
from moral Death. Morality has the power
to dictate, but none to move. Nature directs,
but cannot control.
Natural Law : Death."
(JUortiftiJation
The Mortification of a member, again, is
based on the Law of Degeneration. The
useless member here is not cut off, but simply
relieved as much as possible of all exercise.
This encourages the gradual decay of the
72 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
parts, and as it is more and more neglected
it ceases to be a channel for life at all. So
an organism "mortifies " its members.
Natural Law : " Mortification."
What is mystery to many men, what feeds
their worship and at the same time spoils it,
is that area round all great truth which is
really capable of illumination, and into which
every earnest mind is permitted and com-
manded to go with a light. We cry " Mys-
tery " long before the region of mystery
comes. True mystery casts no shadows
around. It is a sudden and awful gulf yawn-
ing across the field of knowledge; its form is
irregular, but its lips are clean-cut and sharp,
and the mind can go to the very verge and
look down the precipice into the dim abyss
" Where writhing clouds unroll,
Striving to utter themselves in shapes."
Natural Law : " Bio2:enesis."
(Uartoi»ne00 of QBrea6t6
If, instead of looking on and criticising
those who know a thing or two, those who
think they are wiser, and that they have the
whole truth, would throw themselves in among
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 73
Others, and back them, and try to work along-
side of them, they would get perhaps their
breadth tempered by earnestness and by zeal,
because the narrow man has much to contrib-
ute to the Christian cause, perhaps more than
the broad man. What is a Christian f
(jXairxvai ^au?0
The Laws of Nature are simply statements
of the orderly condition of things in Nature
— what is found in Nature by a sufficient
number of competent observers. What these
Laws are in themselves is not agreed. That
they have any absolute existence, even, is far
from certain. They are relative to man in
his many limitations, and represent for him
the constant expression of what he may al-
w^ays expect to find in the world around him.
But that they have any causal connection
with the things around him is not to be con-
ceived. The Natural Laws originate noth-
ing, sustain nothing ; they are merely respon-
sible for uniformity in sustaining what has
been originated and what is beinij' sustained.
They are modes of operation, therefore, not
operators ; processes, not powers.
Natural Law : " Litroduction."
The Natural Laws, then, are great lines
running not only through the world, but, as
74 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
we now know, through the universe, reduc-
ing it like parallels of latitude to intelligent
order. In themselves, be it once more repeated,
they may have no more absolute existence
than parallels of latitude. . But they exist for
us. They are drawn for us to understand
the part by some Hand that drew the whole ;
so drawn, perhaps, that, understanding the
part, we too, in time, may learn to understand
the whole.
Natural Law : " Introduction."
(Uatuvaf CKXih ^f irituaf
The Spiritual World is simply the outer-
most segment, circle, or circles of the Nat-
ural World. For purposes of convenience
we separate the two, just as we separate the
animal world from the plant. But the ani-
mal world and the plant world are the same
world. They are different parts of one en-
vironment. And the natural and spiritual
are likewise one. The inner circles are
called the natural, the outer the spiritual.
And we call them spiritual simply because
they are beyond us or beyond a part of us.
What we have correspondence with, that we
call natural ; what we have little or no corre-
spondence with, that we call spiritual. But
when the appropriate corresponding organism
appears — the organism, that is, which can
freely communicate with these outer circles —
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 75
the distinction necessarily disappears. The
spiritual to it becomes the outer circle of the
natural. Natural Law : " Death."
(UatutaC anb ^uiptvnatuxai
The mental and moral world is unknown
to the plant. But it is real. It cannot be
athrmed either that it is unnatural to the
plant ; although it might be said that from
the point of view of the Vegetable Kingdom
it was supernatural. Things are natural or
supernatural simply according to where one
stands. Man is supernatural to the mineral ;
God is supernatural to the man. When a
mineral is seized upon by the living plant and
elevated to the organic kingdom, no trespass
against Nature is committed. It merely en-
ters a larger Environment, which before was
supernatural to it, but which now is entirely
natural. When the heart of a man, again, is
seized upon by the quickening Spirit of God,
no further violence is done to natural law.
It is another case of the inorganic, so to
speak, passing into the organic.
Natural Law : " Eternal Life."
(Uature a lE)<xxxtion^
If Nature be a harmony, man in all his
relations — physical, mental, moral, and spir-
itual — falls to be included within its circle.
76 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
It is altogether unlikely that man spiritual
should be violently separated in all the con-
ditions of growth, development, and life from
man physical. It is indeed difficult to con-
ceive that one set of principles should guide
the natural life, and these at a certain period —
the very point where they are needed — sud-
denly give place to another set of princij^les
altogether new and unrelated. Nature has
never taught us to expect such a catastrophe.
She has nowhere prepared us for it. And
man cannot in the nature of things, in the
nature of thought, in the nature of language,
be separated into two such incoherent halves.
Natural Law : " Introduction."
(Statute a ^^mfiof
With Nature as the symbol of all of har-
mony and beauty that is known to man, must
we still talk of the supernatural, not as a con-
venient word, but as a different order of
world, an unintelligible world, where the
Reign of Mystery supersedes the Reign of
Law ? Natural Laio : '^ Introduction."
(Uatute anb (JHan
We find that in maintaining this natural
life Nature has a share and man has a share.
By far the larger part is done for us — the
breathing, the secreting, the circulating of
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 77
the blood, the building up of the organism.
And although the part which man plays is a
minor part, yet, strange to say, it is not less
essential to the well-being, and even to the
being of the whole. For instance, man has
to take food. He has nothing to do with it
after he has once taken it, for the moment
it passes his lips it is taken in hand by reflex
actions and handed on from one organ to
another, his control over it in the natural
course of things being completely lost. But
the initial act was his. And without that
nothing could have been done. Now, whether
there be an exact analogy between the vol-
untary and involuntary functions in the
body and the corresponding processes in the
soul we do not at present inquire. But
this will indicate, at least, that man has his
own part to play. Let him choose Life ; let
him daily nourish his soul ; let him for ever
starve the old life ; let him abide continuously
as a living branch in the Vine, and the True-
Vme Life will flow into his soul ; assimilating,
renewing, conforming to Type, till Christ,
pledged by His own law, be formed in him.
Natural Law : " Conformity to Type."
(Uature <KXih (JUotafit^
Nature and Morality provide all for vir-
tue — except the Life to live it.
Natural Law : "Death."
78 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
Religion does not consist in negatives, in
stopping this sin and stopping that. The
perfect character can never be produced with
a pruning-knife.
The Changed Life.
From the very nature of salvation it is
plain that the only thing necessary to make
it of no effect is neglect. Hence the Bible
could not fail to lay strong emphasis on a
word so vital. It was not necessary for it to
say, How shall we escape if we tramj^le upon
the great salvation, or doubt or despise or
reject it ! A man who has been poisoned
only need neglect the antidote and he will
die. It makes no difference whether he
dashes it on the ground, or pours it out of
the window, or sets it down by his bedside
and stares at it all the time he is dying. He
will die just the same, whether he destroys it
in a passion or coolly refuses to have any-
thing to do with it. And, as a matter of
fact, probably most deaths, spiritually, are
gradual dissolutions of the last class rather
than rash suicides of the first.
Natural Laiv : " Degeneration."
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 79
If we neglect the ordinary means of keep-
ing a garden in order, how shall it escape
running to weeds and waste ? Or if we neg-
lect the opportunities for cultivating the
mind, how shall it escape ignorance and
feebleness ? So, if we neglect the soul, how
shall it escape the natural retrograde move-
ment, the inevitable relapse into barrenness
and death ?
Natural Law : " Desfeneration."
Religion does not tell us to give things up,
but rather gives us something so much better
that they give themselves up. Instead of
telling people to give up things, we are safer
to tell them to " seek first the kingdom of
God," and then they will get new things and
better things, and the old things will drop off
of themselves. This is what is meant by the
new heart.
" First ! "
What was Christ doing in the carpenter's
shop? Practising. Though perfect, we read
that He learned obedience, and grew in wis-
dom and in favor with God.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
80 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
^xbtv, ^^ititua^ anb (Uatum^
The spiritual man is not taxed beyond the
natural. He is not purposely handicapped
by singular limitations or unusual incapac-
ities. God has not designedly made the re-
ligious life as hard as possible. The arrange-
ments for the spiritual life are the same as
for the natural life. When in their hours of
unbelief men challenge their Creator for
placing the obstacle of human frailty in the
way of their highest development, their pro-
test is against the order of nature. They
object to the sun for being the source of
energy, and not the engine ; to the carbonic
acid being in the air, and not in the plant.
They would equip each organism with a per-
sonal atmosphere, each brain with a private
store of energy ; they would grow corn in
the interior of the body, and make bread by
a special apparatus in the digestive organs.
They must, in short, have the creature trans-
formed into a Creator.
Natural Law : " Environment."
bxi^obox'2
It is more necessary for us to be active
than to be orthodox. To be orthodox is what
we wish to be, but we can only truly reach it
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 81
by being honest, by being original, by seeing
with our own eyes, by believing with our
own heart.
Natural Law : " Parasitism."
The exclusiveness of Christianity, sejDara-
tion from the world, uncompromising alle-
giance to the Kingdom of God, entire sur-
render of body, soul, and spirit to Christ, —
these are truths which rise into prominence
from time to time, become the watchword of
insignificant parties, rouse the Church to at-
tention and the world to opposition, and die
down ultimately for want of lives to livie
them. The few enthusiasts who distinguish
in these requirements the essential conditions
of entrance into the Kingdom of Christ are
overpowered by the weight of numbers, who
see nothing more in Christianity than a mild
religiousness, and who demand nothing more
in themselves or in their fellow-Christians
than the participation in a conventional wor-
ship, the acceptance of traditional beliefs, and
the living of an honest life. Yet nothing is
more certain than that the enthusiasts are
right. Any impartial survey — such as the
unique analysis in Ecce Homo — of the claims
of Christ and of the nature of His society
will convince any one who cares to make the
inquiry of the outstanding difference between
82 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
the system of Christianity iu the original
contemplation and its representations in mod-
ern life.
Natural Law : " Classification."
Christianity marks the advent of what is
simply a New Kingdom. Its distinctions
from the Kingdom below it are fundamen-
tal. It demands from its members activities
and responses of an altogether novel order.
It is, in the conception of its Founder, a
Kingdom for which all its adherents must
henceforth exclusively live and work, and
which opens its gates alone upon those who,
having counted the cost, are prepared to fol-
low it, if need be, to the death. The surren-
der Christ demanded was absolute. Every
aspirant for membership must seek Jlrst the
Kingdom of God.
Natural Law : " Classification."
£>ut of gpfaee
It is not worth seeking the kingdom of
God unless we seek it first. Suppose you
take the helm out of a ship and hang it over
the bow, and send that ship to sea — will it
ever reach the other side ? Certainly not.
It will drift about anyhow. Keep religion
in its place, and it will take you straight
through life, and straight to your Father in
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 83
heaven when life is over. But if you do
not put it in its place, you may just as wtll
have nothing to do with it. Religion out of
its place in a human life is the most miser-
able thing in the world. " First ! "
The place of parable in teaching, and es-
pecially after the sanction of the greatest of
Teachers, must always be recognized. The
very necessities of language, indeed, demand
this method of presenting truth. The tem-
poral is the husk and framework of the eter-
nal, and thoughts can be uttered only through
things. Natural Law : " Introduction."
Think of it ! the past is not only focussed
there, in a man's soul : it is there. All
things that he has ever seen, known, felt,
believed, of the surrounding world are now
within him, have become part of him, in
part are him ; he has been changed into
their image. He may deny it, he may re-
sent it, but they are there. They do not
adhere to him, they are transfused through
him. He cannot alter or rub them out.
They are not in his mem^ory : they are in
him. His soul is as they have filled it, made
it, left it. The Changed Life.
84 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
(perfect ^ife
Perfect life is not merely the possessing
of perfect functions, but of perfect functions
13erfectly adjusted to each other, and all con-
spiring to a single result, the perfect working
of the whole organism.
Natural Law : " Growth."
gpetrfe(jtion
Patience, kindness, generosity, humility,
courtesy, unselfishness, good-temper, guile-
lessness, sincerity, — these make up the su-
preme gift, the stature of the perfect man.
The Greatest Thing in the JVorld.
(personality
If events change men, much more persons.
No man can meet another on the street with-
out making some mark upon him. We say
we exchange words when we meet ; what we
exchange is souls. And when intercourse is
very close and very frequent, so complete is
this exchange that recognizable bits of the
one soul begin to show in the other's nature,
and the second is conscious of a similar and
growing debt to the first.
The Changed Life.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 85
(J)et0onaeit^ of C^xxsi
Of course there is a sense, and a very
wonderful sense, in which a Great Person-
ality breathes upon all who come within its
influence an abiding peace and trust. Men
can be to other men as the shadow of a
great rock in a thirsty land. Much more
Christ ; much more Christ as Perfect Man ;
much more still as Saviour of the world.
Pax Vobiscum.
gj^enomena: ^?eir Unit^
That the Phenomena of the Spiritual
World are in analogy with the Phenomena
of the Natural World requires no restate-
ment. Since Plato enunciated his doctrine
of the Cave or of the twice-divided line ;
since Christ spake in parables ; since Plo-
tinus wrote of the world as an imaged image ;
since the mysticism of Swedenborg ; since
Bacon and Pascal ; since " Sartor Resartus "
and " In Memoriam," — it has been all but
a commonplace with thinkers that " the in-
visible things of God from the creation of the
world are clearly seen, being understood by
the things that are made." Milton's question—
" What if earth
Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein ^^
Each to other like more than on earth is thought i
is now superfluous. ^^
Natural Law : '' Introduction.
86 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
\P9ra0e0
I do not think we ourselves are aware
how much our religious life is made up of
phrases ; how much of what we call Chris-
tian experience is only a dialect of the
Churches, a mere religious phraseology, with
almost nothing behind it in what we really
feel and know.
Pax Vohiscum.
(p^ea0ute*(git>ing
There is a difference between trying to
please and giving pleasure. Give pleasure.
Lose no chance of giving pleasure. For
that is the ceaseless and anonymous triumph
of a truly loving spirit.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
Man as a rational and moral being demands
a pledge that if he depends on Nature for
any given result, on the ground that Nature
has previously led him to expect such a re-
sult, his intellect shall not be insulted nor his
confidence in her abused. If he is to trust
Nature, in short, it must be guaranteed to
him that in doing so he will *' never be put
to confusion."
Natural Law : " Introduction."
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 87
True poetry is only science in another
form. And long before it was possible for
religion to give scientific expression to its
greatest truths, men of insight uttered them-
selves in psalms which could not have been
truer to Nature had the most modern light
controlled the inspiration.
Natural Law : " Environment."
^xactxcai (gefi^ion
Let me remind you that theology is the
most abstruse thing in the world, but that
practical religion is the simplest thing. If
any of you want to know how to begin to be
a Christian, all I can say is that you should
begin to do the next thing you find to be done
as Christ would have done it.
What is a Christian'^
^xaciiu
What makes a man a good cricketer ? Prac-
tice. What makes a man a good artist, a good
sculptor, a good musician ? Practice. What
makes a man a good linguist, a good stenog-
rapher? Practice. What makes a man a
good man? Practice. Nothing else. There
88 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
is nothing capricious about religion. We do
not get the soul in different ways, under dif-
ferent laws, from those in which we get the
body and the mind. If a man does not exer-
cise his arm, he develops no biceps muscle ;
and if a mau does not exercise his soul, he
acquires no muscle in his soul, no strength of
character, no vigor of moral fire, nor beauty
of spiritual growth.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
Will the evolutionist who admits the re-
generation of the frog under the modifying
influence of a continued correspondence with
a new environment care to question the possi-
bility of the soul acquiring such a faculty as
that of Prayer, the marvellous breathing-
function of the new creature, when in con-
tact with the atmosphere of a besetting God ?
Is the change from the earthly to the heav-
enly more mysterious than the change from
the aquatic to the terrestrial mode of life ?
Natural Law : " Eternal Life."
What a very strange thing, is it not, for
man to pray ? It is the symbol at once of
his littleness and of his greatness. Here the
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 89
sense of imperfection, controlled and silenced
in the narrower reaches of his being, becomes
audible. Now he must utter himself. The
sense of need is so real, and the sense of En-
vironment, that he calls out to it, addressing
it articulately and imploring it to satisfy his
need. Surely there is nothing more touch-
ino; in Nature than this ! Man could never
o
so expose himself, so break through all con-
straint, except from a dire necessity.
Natural Law : " Environment."
The problems of the heart and conscience
are infinitely more perplexing than those of
the intellect. Has love no future ? Has
right no triumph ? Is the unfinished self to
remain unfinished? Again, the alternatives
are two — Christianity or Pessimism. But
when we ascend the further height of the re-
ligious nature the crisis comes. There, with-
out Environment, the darkness is unutterable.
So maddening now becomes the mystery that
men are compelled to construct an Environ-
ment for themselves. No Environment here
is unthinkable. An altar of some sort men
must have — God, or Nature, or Law. But
the anguish of Atheism is only a negative
proof of man's incompleteness.
Natural Law : " Environment."
90 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
I would not rob a man of his problems,
nor would I have another man rob me of my
problems. They are the delight of life, and
the whole intellectual world would be stale
and unprofitable if we knew everything.
How to Learn How.
(proportion
A man may take a dollar or a half-dollar
and hold it to his eyes so closely that he will
hide the sun from him. Or he may so focus
his telescope that a fly or a boulder may be
as large as a mountain. A man may hold a
certain doctrine very intensely — a doctrine
which has been looming upon his horizon for
the last six months, let us say, and which has
thrown everything else out of proportion, it
has become so big itself. Now, let us beware
of distortion in the arrangement of the relig-
ious truths which we hold.
How to Learn How.
gpunis^ment
The punishment of sin is inseparably
bound up with itself.
Natural I^aw : " Mortification."
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 91
(putting ^ff anb ^uttxnq bn
Escape means nothing more than the grad-
ual emergence of the higher being from the
lower, and nothing less. It means the grad-
ual putting off of all that cannot enter the
higher state, or heaven, and simultaneously
the putting on o^^ Christ. It involves the
slow completing of the soul and the develop-
ment of the capacity for God.
Natural Law : " Degeneration."
If you want to get the kingdom of God
into your workshop or into your home, let
the quarrelling be stopped. Live in peace
and harmony and brotherliness with every
one. For the kingdom of God is a kingdom
of brothers. It is a great society, founded
by Jesus Christ, of all the people who try
to be like Him, and live to make the world
better and sweeter and happier.
'' First r'
ftuestions
The only legitimate questions one dare put
to Nature are those which concern universal
92 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
human good and the Divine interpretation
of things. These I conceive may be there
actually studied at first-hand, and before
their purity is soiled by human touch. We
have Truth in Nature as it came from God.
And it has to be read with the same unbiassed
mind, the same open eye, the same faith, and
the same reverence as all other Revelation.
All that is found there, whatever its place in
Theology, whatever its orthodoxy or hetero-
doxy, whatever its narrowness or its breadth,
we are bound to accept as Doctrine from
which on the lines of Science there is no
escape.
Natural Laic: " Introduction."
(Reason an6 ^6e5ien(je
There are two organs of knowledge — the
one Reason, the other Obedience. Begin to
obey Christ, and, doing His will, you shall
know of the doctrine whether it be of God.
How to Learn How.
(Redem:ption
Out of the infinite complexity there rises
an infinite simplicity, the foreshadowing of a
final unity of that
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 93
" One God, one law, one element.
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves. " *
This is the final triumph of Continuity,
the heart secret of Creation, the unspoken
prophecy of Christianity. To Science, de-
iiuing it as a working principle, this mighty
process of amelioration is simply Evolution.
To Christianity, discerning the end through
the means, it is Redemption. These silent
and patient processes, elaborating, eliminat-
ing, developing all from the first of time,
conductinor the evolution from millennium to
millennium with unaltering purpose and un-
faltering power, are the early stages in the
redemptive work — the unseen approach of
that Kingdom whose strange mark is that it
*' Cometh without observation." And these
Kingdoms, rising tier above tier in ever-in-
creasing sublimity and beauty, their founda-
tions visibly fixed in the past, their progress,
and the direction of their progress, being facts
in Nature still, are the signs which, since the
Magi saw His star in the East, have never
been wanting from the firmament of truth,
and which in every age, with growing clear-
ness to the wise and with ever-gathering
mystery to the uninitiated, proclaim that
'• the Kingdom of God is at hand."
Natural Law : " Classification."
* " In Memoriam,"
94 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
(geffection
In looking at a mirror one does not see the
mirror or think of it, but only of what it re-
flects. For a mirror never calls attention to
itself except when there are flaws in it.
The Changed Life.
(Regeneration
A few raw, nnspiritual, uninspiring men
were admitted to the inner circle of His
friendship. The change began at once.
Day by day we can almost see the first dis-
ciples grow. First there steals over them
the faintest possible adumbration of His
character, and occasionally, very occasion-
ally, they do a thing or say a thing that
they could not have done or said had they
not been living there. Slowly the spell of
His life deepens. Reach after reach of
their nature is overtaken, thawed, subju-
gated, sanctified. Their manners soften,
their words become more gentle, their con-
duct more unselfish. As swallows who
have found a summer, as frozen buds the
spring, their starved humanity bursts into
a fuller life. They do not know how it is,
but they are different men. One day they
find themselves like their Master, going
about and doinoj good. To themselves it is
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 95
unaccountable, but they cannot do otherwise.
They were not told to do it, it came to them
to do it. But the people who watch them
know well how to account for it — "They
have been," they whisper, " with Jesus."
Already, even, the mark and seal of His
character is upon them — "They have been
with Jesus." Unparalleled phenomenon,
that these poor fishermen should remind
other men of Christ! Stupendous victory
and mystery of regeneration, that mortal
men should suggest to the world God!
The Changed Life.
(ge%ion
Religion is not a strange or added thing,
but the inspiration of the secular life, the
breathing of an eternal spirit through this
temporal world.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
(ge%ion ^^en to (gff
Religion must ripen its fruits for every
temperament, and the way even into its
highest heights must be by a gateway
through which the peoples of the world
may pass.
Pax Vobiscum.
96 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
(genuneiation
It is not hard to give up our rights. They
are often external. The difficult thing is to
give up ourselves. The more difficult thing
still is not to seek things for ourselves. After
we have sought them, bought them, won them,
deserved them, we have taken the cream off
them for ourselves already.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
(He0t t^xoxxc^^ 1X)orft
" Learn of Me," He says, " and ye shall
find rest to your souls." Now, consider the
extraordinary originality of this utterance.
How novel the connection between these two
words " Learn " and " Rest " ! How few of
us have ever associated them — ever thought
that Rest was a thing to be learned ; ever
laid ourselves out for it as we would to learn
a language ; ever practised it as we would
practise the violin ! Does it not show how
entirely new Christ's teaching still is to the
world, that so old and threadbare an aphor-
ism should still be so little applied ? The last
thing most of us would have thought of
would have been to associate Hest with Work,
Pax Vohiscum.
2)lvmitie is m our
own plain,
calm bumanit^
anD in no
mystic rapture
ot tbe soul.
The Changed
LIFE.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 97
^^e (gesutteetion
On what does the Christian argument for
Immortality really rest ? It stands upon the
pedestal on which the theologian rests the
whole of historical Christianity — the Resur-
rection of Jesus Christ.
Natural Law : " Eternal Life."
(Retn6ution
If it makes no impression on a man to
know that God will visit his iniquities upon
him, he cannot blind himself to the fact that
Nature will. Do we not all know what it is
to be punished by Nature for disobeying her?
We have looked round the wards of a hos-
pital, a prison, or a madhouse, and seen there
Nature at work squaring her accounts with
sin. And we knew as we looked that if no
Judge sat on the throne of heaven at all, there
was a Judgment throne, where an inexorable
Nature was crying aloud for justice, and car-
rying out her heavy sentences for violated
laws.
Natural Law : " Degeneration."
As memory scans the past, above and be-
yond all the transitory j^leasures of life there
98 HKLPFUL THOUGHTS
leap forward those supreme hours when you
have been enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses
to those round about you — things too trifling
to speak about, but which you feel have en-
tered into your eternal life.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
(gei?efation
Revelation never volunteers anything that
man could discover for himself — on the prin-
ciple, probably, that it is only when he is
capable of discovering it that he is capable of
appreciating it
Natural Law : " Introduction."
(gei?enge
Yesterday you got a certain letter. You
sat down and wrote a reply which almost
scorched the paper. You picked the cruellest
adjectives you knew, and sent it forth, with-
out a pang, to do its ruthless work. You did
tliat because your life was set in the wrong
key. You began the day with the mirror
placed at the wrong angle. To-morrow, at
daybreak, turn it toward Him, and even to
your enemy the fashion of your countenance
will be changed. Wliatever you then do,
one thing you will find you could not do —
you could not write that letter. Your first
HELPFUL TFIOUGHTS 99
impulse may be the same, your judgment may
be unchanged, but if you try it the ink will
dry on your pen, and you will rise from your
desk an unavenged, but a greater and more
Christian man.
How to Learn How.
(Righteousness
Righteousness, of course, is just doing what
is right. Any boy who, instead of being quar-
relsome, lives at peace with the other boys
has the Kingdom of God within him. Any
boy whose heart is filled with joy because he
does what is riojht has the Kingdom of God
within him.
" First ! "
^aft>ation
There is a natural principle in man lower-
ing him, deadening him, pulling him down by
inches to the mere animal plane, blinding
reason, searing conscience, paralyzing will.
This is the active destroying principle, or
Sin. Now, to counteract this, God has dis-
covered to us another principle, which will
stop this drifting process in the soul and
make it drift the other way. This is the ac-
tive saving principle, or Salvation. If a man
100 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
finds the first of these powers furiously at
work within him, dragging his whole life
downward to destruction, there is only one
way to escape his fate — to take resolute hold
of the upper power, and be borne by it to the
opposite pole.
Natural Law : " Degeneration."
Mark well the si3lendor of this idea of sal-
vation. It is not merely final " safety," to be
forgiven sin, to evade the curse. It is not,
vaguely, " to get to heaven." It is to be con-
formed to the Image of the Son. It is for
these poor elements to attain to the Supreme
Beauty. The organizing Life being Eternal,
so must this Beauty be immortal. Its prog-
ress toward the Immaculate is already guar-
anteed. And more than all, there is here
fulfilled the sublimest of all prophecies ; not
Beauty alone, but Unity, is secured by the
type — Unity of man and man, God and man,
God and Christ and man, till "all shall be
one."
Natural Law : " Conformity to Type."
^ancti^ication
Here the solution of the problem of sanc-
tification is compressed into a sentence : Re-
flect the character of Christ, and you will
become like Christ.
The Changed Life.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 101
It is the want of the discerning faculty, the
clairvoyant j^ower of seeing the eternal in the
temporal, rather than the failure of the reason,
that begets the sceptic.
Natural Law: "Introduction."
It is quite erroneous to suppose that Sci-
ence ever overthrows Faith, if by that is
implied that any natural truth can oppose
successfully any single spiritual truth. Sci-
ence cannot overthrow Faith ; but it shakes
it. Its own doctrines, grounded in Nature,
are so certain that the truths of Religion,
resting to most men on Authority, are felt to
be strangely insecure. The difficulty, there-
fore, which men of Science feel about Relig-
ion is real and inevitable, and in so far as
Doubt is a conscientious tribute to the invio-
lability of Nature it is entitled to respect.
Natural Law : " Preface."
No single fact in Science has ever discred
ited a fact in Religion.
Natural Law : " Introduction.**
102 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
#eff^6eniae
No man is called to a life of self-denial for
its own sake. It is in order to a compensa-
tion which, though sometimes difficult to see,
is always real and always proportionate. No
truth, perhaps, in practical religion, is more
lost siMit of. We cherish somehow a lino^er-
in<T rebellion ao-ainst the doctrine of self-denial
— as if our nature or our circumstances or
our conscience dealt with us severely in load-
ing us with the daily cross. But is it not
plain, after all, that the life of self-denial is
the more abundant life — more abundant just
in proportion to the ampler crucitixion of the
narrower life ? Is it not a clear case of ex-
change — an excliange, however, where the
advantage is entirely on our side ? We give
up a correspondence in which there is a little
life to enjoy a correspondence in which there
is an abundant life. What though we sacri-
fice a hundred such correspondences ? We
make but the more room for the great one
that is left.
Natural Law : " Mortification."
Obviously, if the mind turns away from one
part of the environment, it will only do so
under some temptation to correspond with
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 103
another. This temptation, at bottom, can
only come from one source — the love of
self. The irreligious man's correspondences
are concentrated upon himself. He worships
himself. Self-gratification rather than self-
denial ; independence rather than submission,
— these are the rules of life. And this is at
once the poorest and the commonest form of
idolatry.
Natural Law : " Death."
After you have been kind, after Love has
stolen forth into the world and done its beau-
tiful work, go back into the shade again and
say nothing about it. Love hides even from
itself. Love waives even self-satisfaction.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
The Life of the senses, high and low, may
perfect itself in Nature. Even the Life of
thought may find a large complement in sur-
rounding things. But the higher thought and
the conscience and the religious Life can only
perfect themselves in God.
Natural Law : " Environment."
104 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
Causes and effects are eternal arrange-
ments,, set in the constitution of the world,
fixed beyond man's ordering. What man
can do is to place himself in the midst of a
chain of sequences.
Pax Vobiscum,
There is, for example, a Sense of Sight in
the religious nature. Neglect this, leave it
undeveloped, and you never miss it. You
simply see nothing. But develop it and you
see God.
Natural Law : " Degeneration."
The distressing incompetence of which
most of us are conscious in trying to work
out our spiritual experience is due, perhaps,
less to the diseased will which we commonly
blame for it than to imperfect knowledge of
the right conditions. It does not occur to us
how natural the spiritual is. We still strive
for some strange transcendent thing ; we
seek to promote life by methods as unnat-
ural as they prove unsuccessful ; and only
the utter incomprehensibility of the whole
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 105
region prevents us seeing fully — what we
already half suspect — how completely we
are missing the road. Living in the spir-
itual world, nevertheless, is just as simple as
living in the natural world ; and it is the
same kind of simplicity. It is the same kind
of simplicity, for it is the same kind of world
— there are not two kinds of worlds. The
conditions of life in the one are the condi-
tions of life in the other. And till these
conditions are sensibly grasped as the condi-
tions of all life it is impossible that the per-
sonal effort after the highest life should be
other than a blind struggle carried on in
fruitless sorrow and humiliation.
Natural Law : " Environment."
If sin is estrangement from God, this very
estrangement is Death. It is a want of cor-
respondence. If sin is selfishness, it is con-
ducted at the expense of life. Its wages are
Death — " He that lovetli his life," said Christ,
" shall lose it." Natural Law : " Death."
^in is (gpostas^
To the estrangement of the soul from God
the best of theology traces the ultimate cause
of sin. Sin is simply apostasy from God, un-
belief in God. ¥aturaL Law : " Death."
106 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
^ind Cfa00tfie6
There are two great classes of Sins — sins
of the Body and sins of the Disposition. The
Prodigal Son may be taken as a type of the
first, the Elder Brother of the second.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
Sincerity of purpose endeavors to see
things as they are, and rejoices to find them
better than suspicion feared or calumny de-
nounced. The Greatest Thing in the World.
There are people who go about the world
looking out for slights, and they are neces-
sarily miserable, for they find them at every
turn — especially the imaginary ones. One
has the same pity for such men as for the
very poor. They are the morally illiterate.
They have had no real education, for they have
never learned how to live. Pax Vohiscum.
All thorough work is slow, all true devel-
opment by minute, slight and insensible meta-
morphoses. The higher the structure, more-
over, the slower the progress.
The Changed Life.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 107
It is for active service soldiers are drilled
and trained and fed and armed. That is
why you and I are in tlie world at all — not
to prejDare to go out of it some day, but to
serve God actively in it now. It is mon-
strous and shameful and cowardly to talk
of seekinif the kino-dom last. It is shirkinoj
duty, abandoning one's rightful post, playing
into the enemy's hand by doing nothing to
turn his flank.
''First!''
Just as in an organism we have these three
things — formative matter, formed matter,
and the forming principle, or life, so in the
soul we have the old nature, the renewed
nature, and the transforming Life.
Natural Law : " Conformity to Type."
The soul, in its highest sense, is a vast
capacity for God. It is like a curious cham-
ber added on to being, and somehow in-
volvins^ beinoj — a chamber with elastic
and contractile walls, which can be ex-
panded, with God as its guest, inimitably.
108 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
but which without God shrinks and shrivels
until every vestige of the Divine is gone,
and God's image is left without God's
Spirit. One cannot call what is left a soul ;
it is a shrunken, useless organ, a capacity
sentenced to death by disuse, which droops
as a withered hand by the side, and cumbers
nature like a rotted branch. Nature has her
revenge upon neglect as well as upon extrava-
gance. Misuse, with her, is as mortal a sin as
abuse.
Natural Law: " Degeneration."
Source of JSife
It will be disputed by none that the Source
of Life in the Spiritual World is God. And as
the same law of Biogenesis prevails in both
spheres, we may reason from the higher to
the lower, and affirm it to be at least likely
that the origin of life there has been the
same.
Natural Law : " Classification."
Many a man thinks he is looking at truth
when he is only looking at the spectacles he
has put on to see it with. He is looking at
his own spectacles.
How to Learn How.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 109
The well-defined spiritual life is not only
the highest life, but it is also the most easily
lived. The whole cross is more easily car-
ried than the half. It is the man who tries
to make the best of both worlds who makes
nothing- of either. And he who seeks to
serve two masters misses the benediction of
both. But he who has taken his stand, who
has drawn a boundary-line -sharp and deep
about his religious life, who has marked off
all beyond as for ever forbidden ground to
him, hnds the yoke easy and the burden light.
For this forbidden environment comes to be
as if it were not. His faculties, falling out
of correspondence, slowly lose their sensibil-
ities. And the balm of Death numbing his
lower nature releases him for the scarce dis-
turbed communion of a higher life. So even
here to die is gain.
Natural Law : " Mortification."
The Spiritual World is not a castle in the
air, of an architecture unknown to earth or
heaven, but a fair, ordered realm furnished
with many familiar things and ruled by well-
remembered Laws.
Natural Law : " Introduction."
110 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
The test of spirituality is that you cannot
tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.
If you can tell, if you can account for it on
philosophical principles, on the doctrine of
influence, on strength of will, on a favorable
environment, it is not growth. It may be so
far a success ; it may be a perfectly honest,
even remarkable and praiseworthy imitation,
but it is not the real thing. The fruits are
wax, the flowers artificial — you can tell
whence it cometh and whither it goeth.
Natural Law: "Growth."
Two painters each painted a picture to
illustrate his conception of rest. The first
chose for his scene a still, lone lake among
the far-off mountains. The second threw on
his canvas a thundering waterfall, with a
fragile birch tree bending over the foam ;
at the fork of a branch, almost wet with the
cataract's spray, a robin sat on its nest. The
first was only Stagnation ; the last was Rest.
For in Rest there are always two elements
— tranquillity and energy ; silence and turbu-
lence ; creation and destruction ; fearlessness
and fearfulness. This it was in Christ.
Pax Vohiscum.
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 111
As the branch ascends, and the bud bursts,
and the fruit reddens under the co-operation
of influences from the outside air, so man
rises to the higher stature under invisible
pressures from without.
The Changed Life.
^uflmi00ion
O preposterous and vain man, thou who
couldest not make a finger-nail of thy body,
thinkest thou to fashion this wonderful,
mysterious, subtle soul of thine after the in-
effable Image ? Wilt thou ever permit thy-
self to be conformed to the Image of the Son ?
Wilt thou, who canst not add a cubit to thy
stature, submit to he raised by the Type-Life
within thee to the perfect stature of Christ ?
Natural Law : " Conformity to Type."
Souls are made sweet not by taking the
acid fluids out, but by putting something in
— a great Love, a new Spirit, the Spirit of
Christ.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
112 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
Children do not need Laws, except Laws
in the sense of commandments. They repose
with simplicity on authority, and ask no
questions. But there comes a time, as tlie
world reaches its manhood, when they will
ask questions, and stake, moreover, every-
thinof on the answers. That time is now.
Hence we must exhibit our doctrines, not
lying athwart the lines of the world's think-
ing, in a place reserved, and therefore
shunned, for the Great Exception ; but in
their kinship to all truth and in their Law-
relation to the whole of Nature.
Natural Laio : " Introduction."
^em^et: 3t0 (Reuefation
Temper is significant. It is not in what it
is alone, but in what it reveals. It is a test
for love, a symptom, a revelation of an unlov-
ing nature at bottom. It is the intermittent
fever which bespeaks unintermittent disease
within ; tlie occasional bubble escaping to the
surface which betrays some rottenness under-
neath ; a sample of the most hidden prod-
ucts of the soul dropiDcd involuntarily when
off one's guard; in a word, the lightning form
of a hundred hideous and im-Christian sins.
For a want of patience, a want of kindness,
Ubc wbole cross is more
casilg carrtcD
tban tbe bait
Natural Law
Mortification
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 113
a want of generosity, a want of courtesy, a
want of unselfishness, are all instantaneously
symbolized in one flash of Temper.
The Greatest Tiling in the World.
A rabid Temperance advocate is often the
poorest of creatures, flourishing on a single
virtue, and quite oblivious that his Temper-
ance is making a worse man of him, and not
a better.
The Changed Life.
temptation
Spiritual life is the sum total of the func-
tions which resist sin. The soul's atmosphere
is the daily trial, circumstance, and tempta-
tion of the world. And as it is life alone
which gives the plant power to utilize the ele-
ments, and as, without it, they destroy it, so
it is the spiritual life alone which gives the
soul power to utilize temptation and trial ;
and without it they destroy the soul. How
shall we escape if we refuse to exercise these
functions — in other words, if we neglect ?
Natural Law : " Degeneration."
114 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
Theism is the easiest of all religions to
get, but the most difficult to keep. Individ-
uals have kept it, but nations never. Socrates
and Aristotle, Cicero and Epictetus, had a
theistic religion ; Greece and Rome had none.
And even after getting what seems like a firm
place in the minds of men its unstable equili-
brium sooner or later betrays itself. On the
one hand, Theism has always fallen into the
wildest Polytheism, or, on the other, into the
blankest Atheism.
Natural Law : " Death."
Theologies — and I am not speaking dis-
respectfully of theology ; theology is as scien-
tific a thing as any other science of facts —
but theologies are human versions of Divine
truths, and hence the varieties of the versions
and the inconsistencies of them.
How to Learn How.
" Seekest thou great things for thyself "i "
said the prophet. ^^ Seek them not.'' Why?
Because there is no greatness in things.
Things cannot be great. The only greatness
is unselfish love.
The Greatest Thing in the World,
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 115
It is a good thing to think ; it is a better
thing to work. It is a better thing to do
good.
How to Learn How.
If we can carry away the mere lessons of
toleration, and leave behind us our censorious-
ness, and criticalness, and harsh judgments
upon one another, and excommunicating of
everybody except those who think exactly as
we do, the time we shall spend here will not
be the least useful joarts of our lives.
How to Learn How.
^ranafioftttation
I confess that even when in the first dim
vision the organizing hand of Law moved
among the unordered truths of my Spiritual
World, poor and scantily furnished as it was,
there seemed to come over it the beauty of
a transfiguration. The change was as great
as from the old chaotic world of Pythagoras
to the symmetrical and harmonious universe
of Newton.
Natural Law-' "Preface."
116 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
Great trials come at lengthened intervals,
and we rise to breast them ; but it is the petty
friction of our every-day life with one another
— the jar of business or of work, the discord
of the domestic circle, the collapse of our am-
bition, the crossing of our will, or the taking
down of our conceit — which makes inward
peace impossible. Pax Vohiscum.
^ru0t
To be trusted is to be saved. And if we
try to influence or elevate others, we shall
soon see that success is in proportion to their
belief of our belief in them. For the respect
of another is the first restoration of the self-
respect a man has lost ; our ideal of what he
is becomes to him the hope and pattern of
what he may become.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
He who loves will love Truth not less than
men. He will rejoice in the Truth — rejoice
not in what he has been taught to believe;
not in this Church's doctrine or in that ; not
in this ism or in that ism ; but " in the
Truth." He will accept only what is real;
he will strive to get at facts ; he will search
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 117
for Truth with a humble and unbiassed mind,
and cherish whatever he finds at any sacri-
fice.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
txxxi^ not a ^ixi^xx^^
There is no more important lesson that we
have to carry with us than that truth is not
to be found in what I have been taught.
That is not truth. Truth is not what I have
been taught. If it were so, that would apply
to the Mormon, it would apply to the Brah-
man, it would apply to the Buddhist. Truth
would be to everybody just what he had been
taught. Therefore fet us dismiss from our
minds the predisposition to regard that which
we have been brought up in as being neces-
sarily the truth. I must say it is very hard
to shake one's self free altogether from that.
I suppose it is impossible.
How to Learn How.
Unit^
Character is a unity, and all the virtues
must advance together to make the perfect
man.
The Changed Life.
118 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
You can take nothing greatei to the hea-
then world than the impress and reflection of
the Love of God upon your character. That
is the universal language.
The Greatest Thing in the World.
The very confession of the Unknowable is
itself the dull recognition of an Environment
for which they feel they lack the correspond-
ence. It is this want that makes their God
the Unknown God. And it is this that makes
them dead.
Natural Law : " Death."
Is it hopeless to point out that one of the
most recognizable characteristics of life is its
unrecognizableness, and that the very token
of its spiritual nature lies in its being beyond
the grossness of our eyes ?
Natural Law: " Conformity to Type."
IXnxtst
What are the chief causes of Unrest ? If
you know yourself, you will answer Pride,
Selfishness, Ambition. As you look back
HELPFUL THOUGHTS
119
upon the past years of your life, is it not true
that its unhappiness has chiefly come from
the succession of personal mortifications and
almost trivial disappointments which the in-
tercourse of life has brought you ?
Pax Vobiscum.
€^t Unseen
The true greatness of Law lies in its vision
of the Unseen. Law in the visible is the in-
visible in the visible.
Natural Law : " Introduction."
Unaeffifl^ness
I heard this definition the other day of a
Christian man by a cynic: "A Christian
man is a man whose great aim in life is a self-
ish desire to save his own soul, who in order
to do that, goes regularly to church, and
whose supreme hope is to get to heaven when
he dies." This reminds one of Professor
Huxley's examination paper in which the
question was put — "What is a lobster?"
One student replied that a lobster was a red
fish which moves backward. The examiner
noted that this was a very good answer but
for three things : In the first place, a lobster
120 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
was not a fish ; second, it was not red ; and
third, it did not move backward. If there is
anything that a Christian is not, it is one who
has a selfish desire to save his own soul. The
one thing which Christianity tries to extirpate
from a man's nature is selfishness, even though
it be the losing of his own soul.
What is a Christian f
€^t (pine
The Vine was the Eastern symbol of Joy.
It was its fruit that made glad the heart of
man. Yet, however innocent that gladness
— for the expressed juice of the grape was
the common drink at every peasant's board
— the gladness was only a gross and j^assing
thing. This was not true happiness, and the
vine of the Palestine vineyards was not the
true vine. Christ was " the true Vine."
The Greatest Thing in the World,
(gitaftt^
Vitality has much in common with such
forces as magnetism and electricity, but there
is one inviolable distinction between them —
that Life is permanently fixed and rooted in
the organism. The doctrines of conservation
and transformation of energy, that is to say,
do not hold for Vitality. The electrician can
demaiiuetize a bar of iron — that is, he can
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 121
transfer its energy of magnetism into some-
thing else — heat, or motion, or light — and
then re-form these back into magnetism. For
magnetism has no root, no individuality, no
fixed indwelling. But the biologist cannot
devitalize a plant or an animal and revivify
it again.
Natural Law : " Conformity to Type."
There is the voice of God and the voice
of Nature. I cannot be wrong if I listen to
them. Sometimes, when uncertain of a voice
from its very loudness, we catch the missing
syllable in the echo. In God and Nature we
have Voice and Echo. When I hear both,
I am assured. My sense of hearing does not
betray me twice. I recognize the Voice in
the Echo ; the Echo makes me certain of
the Voice ; I listen and I know.
Natural Laio : " Eternal Life."
n^^ofe or %<xi\
The failure to regard the exclusive claims
of Christ as more than accidental, rhetorical,
or ideal ; the failure to discern the essential
difference between his Kingdom and all other
systems based on the lines of natural relijj-
ion, and therefore merely Organic; in a word,
the general neglect of the claims of Christ as
122 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
the Founder of a new and higher Kingdom,
• — these have taken the very heart from the
religion of Christ, and left its evangel with-
out power to impress or bless the world.
Until even religious men see the uniqueness
of Christ's society, until they acknowledge to
the full extent its claim to be nothing less
than a new Kingdom, they will continue the
hopeless attempt to live for two Kingdoms at
once. And hence the value of a more ex-
plicit classification. For probably the most
of the difficulties of trying to live the Chris-
tian life arise from attempting to half-live it.
Natural Law : " Classification."
The authority of Authority is waning.
This is a plain fact. And it was inevitable.
Authority — man's Authority, that is — is
for children. And there necessarily comes a
time when they add to the question, What
shall I do ? or, What shall I believe ? the
adult's interrogation — Why? Now, this
question is sacred, and must be answered.
Natural Laiv: "Introduction."
Each day, each hour, demands a further
motion and readjustment for the soul. A
telescope in an observatory follows a star by
HELPFUL THOUGHTS
123
clockwork, but the clockwork of the soul is
called the Will. Hence, while the soul in
passivity reflects the Image of the Lord, the
Will in intense activity holds the mirror in
position, lest the drifting motion of the world
bear it beyond the line of vision. To " fol-
low Christ" is largely to keep the soul in
such position as will allow for the motion of
the earth. And this calculated counteracting
of the movements of a world, this holding of
the mirror exactly opposite to the Mirrored,
this steadying of the faculties unerringly,
through cloud and earthquake, fire and sword,
is the stupendous co-operating labor of the
Will.
The Changed Life.
In the Spiritual World he will be wise who
courts acquaintance with the most ordinary
and transparent facts in Nature.
Natural Law : "Environment."
If God is spending work upon a Christian,
let him be still and know that it is God. And
if he wants work, he will find it there — in
the being still.
Natural Law : '-Growth."
124 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
All the work of the world is merely a tak-
ing advantage of energies already there.
Natural Law : " Growth."
What is the relation between growth and
work in a boy ? Consciously, there is no re-
lation at all. The boy never thinks of con-
necting his work with his growth. Work, in
fact, is one thing, and growth another ; and it
is so in the spiritual life. If it be asked,
therefore, Is the Christian wrong in these
ceaseless and agonizing efforts after growth ?
the answer is. Yes, he is quite wrong, or at
least he is quite mistaken. When a boy
takes a meal or denies himself indigestible
things, he does not say, " All this will min-
ister to my growth " ; or when he runs a
race he does not say, " This will help the
next cubit of my stature." It may or it
may not be true that these things will help
his stature, but if he thinks of this, his idea
of growth is morbid. And this is the point
we are dealing with. His anxiety here is
altogether irrelevant and superfluous. Nat-
ure is far more bountiful than we think.
When she gives us energy, she asks none of
it back to expend on our own growth. She
will attend to that. " Give your work," she
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 125
says, " and your anxiety to others ; trust me
to add the cubits to your stature."
Natural Law : '^ Growth."
There is a great deal in the world that is
delightful and beautiful, there is a great deal
in itthat is great and engrossing; but it will
not last. All that is in the world— the lust of
the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride
of life — are but for a little while. Love not
the world therefore. Nothing that it contains
is worth the life and consecration of an immor-
tal soul. The immortal soul must give itself
to something that is immortal.
The Greatest Thing in the Worlu.
It is " life in this world " that is to be
hated. For life in this world implies con-
formity to this world. It may not mean
pursuing worldly pleasures or mixing with
worldly sets, but a subtler thing than that —
a silent deference to worldly opinion ; an al-
most unconscious lowering of religious tone
to the level of the worldly-religious world
around; a subdued resistance to the soul's
delicate promptings to greater consecration,
out of deference to "breadth" or fear of
126 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
ridicule. These, and such things, are what
Clirist tells us we must hate. For these
things are of the very essence of worldliness.
Natural Law : " Eternal Life."
The world is only a thing that is ; it is not.
It is a thing that teaches, yet not even a thing
— a show that shows, a teaching shadow.
However useless the .demonstration other-
wise, philosophy does well in proving that
matter is a non-entity. We work with it as
the mathematician with an x. The reality is
alone the Spiritual. "It is very well for
physicists to speak of * matter,' but for men
generally to call this ' a material world ' is
an absurdity. Should we call it an ic-world
it would mean as much — viz., that we do
not know what it is." When shall we learn
the true mysticism of one who was yet far
from being a mystic — " We look not at
the things which are seen, but at the things
wdiich are not seen ; for the things which are
seen are temporal, but the things which are
not seen are eternal " ? The visible is the
ladder up to the invisible; the temporal is
but the scaffolding of the eternal. And
when the last immaterial souls have climbed
through this material to God, the scaffolding
HELPFUL THOUGHTS 127
shall be taken down, and the earth dissolved
with fervent heat — not because it was base,
but because its work is done.
Natural Law : " Introduction."
No matter what may be the moral upright-
ness of man's life, the honorableness of his
career, or the orthodoxy of his creed, if he
exercises the function of loving the world,
that defines his world — he belongs to the
Organic Kingdom. He cannot in that case
belong to the higher Kingdom. " If any
man love the world, the love of the Father
is not in him." After all, it is by the general
bent of a man's life — by his heart-impulses
and secret desires, his spontaneous actions
and abiding motives — that his generation is
declared.
Natural Law : " Classification."
Christ saw that men took life painfully.
To some it was a weariness, to others a
failure, to many a tragedy, to all a struggle
and a pain. How to carry this burden of life
had been the whole world's problem. It is
still the whole world's problem. And here
is Christ's solution : " Carry it as I do. Take
life as I take it. Look at it from My point
128 HELPFUL THOUGHTS
of view. Interpret it upon My principles.
Take My yoke and learn of Me, and you
will find it easy. For My yoke is easy,
works easily, sits right upon the shoulders,
and therefore My burden is light."
Pax Vobiscum.
%oU of C^xiBi
Did you ever stop to ask what a yoke is
really for ? Is it to be a burden to the ani-
mal which wears it ? It is just the opposite.
It is to make its burden light. Attached to
the oxen in any other way than by a yoke
the plough would be intolerable. AYorked
by means of a yoke it is light. A yoke is
not an instrument of torture : it is an instru-
ment of mercy. It is not a malicious contriv-
ance for making work hard : it is a gentle
device to make hard labor light. It is not
meant to give pain, but to save pain. And
yet men speak of the yoke of Christ as if it
were a slavery, and look upon those who
wear it as objects of compassion.
Pax Vobiscum.
THE END
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