THE COUNTRY FAITH
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NBW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OP CANADA. Li 
 
 TORONTO
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERICK F. SHANNON 
 
 MIHISTEH OF CENTRAL CHUHCH, CHICAGO 
 
 Author of "The Infinite Artist," "The Economic Eden," "The 
 
 Land of Beginning Again," "God's Faith in Man," "The 
 
 Enchanted Universe," "The Breath in the Winds," 
 
 "The Soul's Atlas," etc. 
 
 got* 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1922 
 
 All right* reserved
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 0* AMERICA 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1922, 
 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 Set up and printed. Published September, 1922. 
 
 Press of 
 
 J. J. Little & Ives Company 
 New York. U. 8. A.
 
 TO 
 
 MR. AND MRS. 
 
 WILLIAM H. MINER 
 
 As one lingers in this blessed place, the meaning 
 of Heart's Delight Farm gradually unfolds itself. 
 Cultivation of the soil culminates in character; 
 harnessing the forces of earth and sky looks toward 
 a richer harvest of the heart; the "loving care" 
 everywhere in evidence is for the growing of man- 
 hood and womanhood. Thus are the purposes of 
 the Great Husbandman the Infinite Farmer 
 being realized through you. Blessed are the people 
 who are making money make men ! The joy of the 
 Lord is theirs indeed. May a steadily enlarging 
 company of joy-makers, possessing your spirit and 
 ideals, grow up in America! Such souls will do 
 much toward solving our national problems, as well 
 as become royal helpers in the realization of the 
 Kingdom of God on earth. Business, Education, 
 and the Church in a word, Christianity at work 
 that is the meaning of Heart's Delight Farm to 
 one to whom you have given and taught much. 
 You are true disciples of "The Country Faith," 
 and to you I dedicate this volume in gratitude and 
 thanksgiving. 
 
 FREDERICK F. SHANNON 
 
 Heart's Delight Farm, 
 
 Chasy, New York, 
 
 July 18, 1922. 
 
 13773
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PifiE 
 
 I. THE COUNTRY FAITH 1 
 
 II. THE COUNTRY FAITH (II) 16 
 
 III. THE UNPURCHASABLES 30 
 
 IV. THE TEMPLE OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION . 44 
 V. THE CHRISTIAN'S EUREKA 62 
 
 VI. THE KINGDOM OF GOD 73 
 
 VII. SPIRITUAL ENLARGEMENT 87 
 
 VIII. THE THANKFUL HEART 98 
 
 IX. THE POTTER'S HOUSE 107 
 
 X. THE VISION SPLENDID 118
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee. Job xii. 7. 
 
 ONE of man's most faithful teachers is the earth in 
 which his physical nature is deeply rooted. Always 
 the wise Earth Mother is signaling to her human child, 
 in the hope that he may hearken to her voice and 
 obey her inviolable laws. With a less scientific appre- 
 ciation of his world, the ancient man had a childlike, 
 poetic appreciation of it which the modern man can ill 
 afford to lose. In our social disorderliness we need 
 very much to get wisdom from the order and unhurry- 
 ing haste of that society of social forces always at work 
 in the physical universe. For, though a ceaseless 
 struggle is going on in Nature, there is a certain 
 quietude and harmony at her inmost centers which 
 are humanly contagious. That is one reason why elect 
 souls have ever sought woodland sanctuaries, meadowy 
 chapels, and mountain cathedrals. "The tree," says 
 James Lane Allen, "throws out its arm at you with 
 imploring tenderness, with what Wordsworth called 
 the soft eye-music of slow-waving boughs." 
 
 In these treed and flowered spaces of unwalled quiet, 
 souls seek and find a healing balm, meaningful tran- 
 quillity which restores to their ruffled intensity some- 
 thing akin to Nature's own profounder peace and 
 i
 
 2 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 majesty. Somehow the coolness of the hills drops 
 cooling quietness into the heart. And were we trained 
 to respond more wisely to Nature's medicinal min- 
 istry, we should graciously humanize and pass her 
 teachings joyously along to our fellow-learners in the 
 school of life. For whenever and wherever we speak 
 to the earth, it never fails to teach us about God, 
 about Man, about Destiny. The author of Job under- 
 stood this and would doubtless sound a grand amen to 
 the words of a modern man and lover of the universe. 
 "How idle," he says, "to choose a random sparkle here 
 or there, when the indwelling necessity plants the rose 
 of beauty on the brow of chaos, and discloses the cen- 
 tral intention of Nature to be harmony and joy." 
 
 Therefore, in our study this morning, I want you to 
 go with me into God's vast green and golden out-of- 
 doors. Yet I do not want us to go alone, blind, and 
 untaught by the Holy Spirit, as many disciples of the 
 fields and woods and waters are wont to do. Rather, 
 I want us to go in the spirit of those at the entrance 
 of whose farmhouse the title-words of this sermon are 
 cut in bronze. One dew-pearled morning, as the liberal 
 sun poured his light and warmth down upon the 
 thousands of acres composing Heart's Delight Farm 
 yonder on the shores of Lake Champlain, I lingered 
 before a bronze tablet and read these words : 
 
 Here in the country's heart where the grass is green, 
 Life is the same sweet life it e'er hath been. 
 Trust in God still lives, and the bell at morn 
 Floats with the thought of God o'er the rising corn. 
 God comes down in the rain and the crop grows tall ; 
 This is the Country Faith and the best of all. 
 
 But in illustrating our theme, I want you to journey 
 with me from northern New York to eastern Kentucky.
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH I 3 
 
 For one beautiful and salutary feature of Nature is 
 this: It does not change with changing sections. 
 Nature calmly ignores our norths and souths and easts 
 and wests, our Americas and Europes and Asias. 
 Nature cares not a fig for our Republicans and Demo- 
 crats and Socialists and Bolsheviki; she impartially 
 flogs the last one of us when we break her rules, no 
 matter how vociferously we howl about our partisan- 
 ship and patriotism which may be the last refuge of 
 a scoundrel, thought wise old Samuel Johnson. Also, 
 Nature laughs very loud at our "rising tide of color," 
 caring not at all whether the children suckled at her 
 breast are white, black, red, or yellow. Exceedingly 
 cosmopolitan, the one true Democrat, is good old 
 Mother Nature ! She plays fair with her many-colored 
 children, but she likewise demands that her many- 
 colored children play fair with her. Imagining that 
 they are fooling Nature, men and women, the world 
 around and the ages long, are stupidly fooling them- 
 selves. 
 
 For many summers I have taken a walk which has 
 added a deepening joy to existence. Out from Louisa, 
 Kentucky, there is a hill-path very courteous to pilgrim 
 feet and most obligingly rewardful to seeing eyes. 
 Only, one sometimes feels that there are not enough 
 eyes to take in all the alluring things which cry aloud 
 to be seen! That wild rose, setting its frail jar of 
 perfume amid the nourishing roots of a lightning- 
 struck, dying tree who would cheat himself out of 
 just one glimpse? That cardinal yonder who would 
 not like several pairs of eyes for his blood-red suit and 
 a like equipment of ears for his song? That pine- 
 crowned hill with trees which are green the whole 
 year through, as if to keep forever green the memory
 
 4 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 of those whose dust sleeps beneath their aromatic, 
 harplike, wind-smitten branches who does not like 
 to pause here in mid-June and watch the universe go 
 by? That old rail fence, which worms its way up hill 
 and down, like a huge, weather-bitten serpent too old 
 to crawl why, that fence shuts in the old home with 
 its childhood dreams and loves and memories! Yes; 
 that fence used to seem so far away to childish eyes 
 that it marked the end of the world. 
 
 Well, there are so many things in the dear, sun- 
 colored earth that want to be spoken to! Yet, we must 
 hurry along, or we shall never get to the end of our 
 walk. So, as simple illustrations of the country faith, 
 I want you to share with me some of the things it was 
 my privilege to see. "The more I think of it," said 
 Ruskin, "I find this conclusion more impressed upon 
 me that the greatest thing a human soul ever does in 
 this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in 
 a plain way." If we honestly see and speak to the 
 earth, it will luminously and inspiringly teach us. 
 
 The first lesson from the teaching earth was a set 
 of silent morning glory chimes. There they hung, the 
 three of them, in their rich blue tower of color. Yet, 
 on looking more closely, I found that two of the three 
 bell-shaped flowers were already fading. Unequal to 
 the growing heat of the sun, they were all doomed to 
 a transient existence. For it is just the nature of this 
 flower to curl up and wither away in the face of the 
 sun. 
 
 Looking at these flowers, faded and fading, somehow 
 I could not keep back that wail of the Hebrew prophet,
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH I 5 
 
 "0 Israel," he cried, "thy goodness is like the morning 
 dew, that passeth early away." Now, it is perfectly 
 natural for the flower to fade and for the dewdrop to 
 vanish; but how unnatural that our goodness, too, 
 should be so fickle and ephemeral! We say it is easy 
 and natural to be bad, so hard and difficult to be good. 
 But is the saying altogether true? A thousand times, 
 no! It is false to the core. 
 
 Studied wisely and with insight, the universe is 
 unquestionably on the side of goodness. Moreover, it 
 proves that it is not only not easy to be bad, but, in 
 the long run, the hardest and most difficult of achieve- 
 ments. Let us honestly face this proposition for a 
 moment. Take the thoroughly bad man; I mean the 
 clever, ingenious, brilliant student of wickedness, not 
 just the stupid, the ignorant, the brutally non-moral 
 specimen. Suppose your exceedingly capable criminal 
 invested the same amount of ability in doing noble 
 deeds that he does in doing ignoble. Instead of being 
 a fugitive from justice, a prisoner in dungeons, and 
 finally a subject for the gallows or electric chair, would 
 he not be, on the contrary, a useful, moral, and reli- 
 gious member of society? In brief, his capacity for 
 achieving bad things, if properly used, would certainly 
 carry him far along the road of honor and integrity. 
 This must be so, after making due allowance for the 
 heredity and environment of every efficient criminal. 
 Society may be partial, unjust, even cruel. But there 
 is not a scintilla of partiality in the nature of things, 
 whose light never failed to dazzle Socrates. Saying to 
 the unjust, "I will recompense you with unjustness," 
 Nature likewise says to the good, "I will make your 
 heart thrill to the awe of goodness." Wherefore, says 
 Paul, let him that stole, steal no more, but rather
 
 6 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 work. Is this just an honesty-is-the-best-policy ex- 
 hortation? By no means! It rests upon the founda- 
 tions of morality. It is better to work than to steal 
 because man is the citizen of an honest universe. If 
 tricksters put the same amount of energy into honor- 
 able schemes that they put into dishonorable ones, the 
 law of the conservation of righteousness would see to 
 it that their labor is not in vain. 
 
 0, little flower by the June highway, thanks be to 
 thee for thy beauty-blown message! Even thy fading 
 loveliness has pointed to flowers of truth that fade not. 
 Not away from the toil and the fret and the worry, but 
 in the toil and the fret and the worry, thou hast taught 
 me to look for the first article of the country faith: 
 Goodness that makes each day as fresh as silver drops 
 of dew, as deep as the blue of your drooping petals, as 
 substantial as yonder hilltops that sublimely beckon. 
 Is not this the end of the matter, and hath not all 
 been heard? "Fear God, and keep His command- 
 ments; for this is the whole duty of man." Does not 
 the truth of the wise ancient perfectly match the 
 truth of the wise modern Wordsworth who, in 
 thinking of duty, exclaims: 
 
 Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear 
 The Godhead's most benignant grace; 
 Nor know we anything so fair 
 As is the smile upon thy face; 
 Flowers laugh before thee on their beds; 
 And fragrance in thy footing treads; 
 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; 
 And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are 
 fresh and strong.
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH I 7 
 
 n 
 
 Yet, right there on the climbing slopes of those 
 morning-washed hills, are pictures forever memorable 
 to the country-grown lad. They are spider webs 
 delicate, gossamer, filmy tents set up over night. Who 
 would forget the dew-tipped dawns pouring their floods 
 of gold from over the Hills of Yesteryears? You went 
 out, barefoot boy, through the fields of morning, 
 dashing the night-dews from the soft pink globes of 
 clover, whistling and singing just because your mouth 
 was a kind of seolian harp and your voice an instru- 
 ment which Life borrowed for chanting a tune to its 
 own lyric loveliness. Yonder on the hilltop, knee-deep 
 in clover, feeds the blazed-faced old mare. At sight of 
 you, she begins to move away; for the law of associa- 
 tion, of horse sense, has taught her that you and the 
 plow waiting in yonder furrow have definite designs 
 on her comfort and energy. So, she wishes to elude 
 such an unelusive creature, and frankly says so by 
 promptly seeking other sections of the pasture field. 
 
 But where is your bridle, lad? Don't need one? 
 Bareback and bridleless to the barn, eh? Certainly! 
 Old Beck understands. That running away why, that 
 is just make-believe, downright pretense and horse- 
 hypocrisy! She will be waiting yonder over the brow 
 of the hill for you to climb on to her fat, round back 
 and dig your heels into her soft, bulging sides. And 
 then? But, ah, me! what angel with a harp of gold 
 could accompany the song of a barefoot boy, galloping 
 across luscious fields of clover, glistening with the dew- 
 hung tents of ten thousand master-workmen, and all 
 clover, spider webs, horse, and lad played upon by an 
 air of coolness wafted down from the shores of the
 
 8 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 Infinite Sea? Yet, to be concrete, take just a single 
 spider web. Let us talk to that for a little while. If 
 we are wise, it will teach us much; otherwise, it will 
 have nothing to say ; for not even Plato himself could 
 do much for a quiescent, lethargic, closed mind. Look- 
 ing at that spider web this morning in June, I remem- 
 bered reading many, many years ago that the science 
 of astronomy could not have reached its modern de- 
 velopment were it not for the help afforded by this 
 marvelous little creature, which has found a scientific 
 Homer in the great Fabre. Then I began to question 
 whether I had ever really read a statement similar to 
 the one just referred to. Perhaps it was only a vagrant 
 fancy that floated about in the atmosphere of my 
 being, ultimately taking up its home in the cobwebs 
 decorating the rafters of my brain! But the fancy 
 refused to be turned out of doors ; it fairly haunted me. 
 Troubled by this mental ghost disturbing the waters 
 of my subconscious pool, and yet all the while sturdily 
 refusing to come out into the open and declare itself, I 
 sat down and wrote to Professor Edward Emerson 
 Barnard, of the great Yerkes observatory at Williams 
 Bay, Wisconsin, telling him of my quandary. As you 
 know, Dr. Barnard is one of the foremost astronomers 
 in the world. He answered my question at once. You 
 will see, from his remarkable letter, that my fancy was 
 hardly fanciful enough ! He says : 
 
 "All accurate measurements made at the telescope, 
 and, indeed, also in measuring celestial photographs, 
 are dependent on the spider's web. I might go so far 
 as to say that our knowledge of the dimensions of the 
 universe is due to the humble spider. We measure 
 with its web the positions and distances of the stars 
 and the path of the vagrant comet. With the spider's
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH I 9 
 
 web we also measure the diameters of all the celestial 
 bodies, except the fixed stars, whose angular diameters 
 are too small for such measurements. It is indestruct- 
 ible by the heat of the sun, so that we can measure 
 objects on the sun's surface by it. For all these most 
 accurate measures of astronomy, two parallel spider 
 webs (one only of which is movable) are generally 
 used, stretched across two frames in an instrument 
 called a filar micrometer. It is not that we cannot 
 make finer threads of some other materials. Quartz 
 fibers can be made finer than a spider's web, but are 
 not so satisfactory. Indeed, nothing is so satisfactory 
 as the spider's web. So we continue to use it." 
 
 My respect for the spider has grown tremendously 
 since receiving that letter from this celebrated scientist. 
 The next time you women go about the rooms of your 
 house ruthlessly sweeping (Mrs. Shannon says that it 
 is not in good taste to even suggest such a thing, much 
 less to say it right out ! ) the cobwebs from the corners, 
 please do it a bit more gently! I know most of us are 
 by the spiders as some of us are by the mice we don't 
 like them in the least ! Indeed, some of us, confirmed 
 rheumatics that we are, can manage to throw a flip- 
 flop every time a poor, innocent, little mouse comes 
 playfully across the floor. Seated one night in a coach 
 filled with passengers, I heard a brakeman whisper in 
 my ears : "There it goes right there ! But don't say 
 anything about it; it would cause a panic; we simply 
 cannot keep the little beasts off of our trains." Well, 
 as I had been made the unwilling custodian of diplo- 
 matic information, I did not say one word about that 
 hobo mouse traveling in all the luxury of a lightning 
 express train. Moreover, I positively refuse to say 
 whether I myself surreptitiously sought another coach,
 
 10 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 or whether I waited, with terror and misgiving, to 
 share the fate of my unsuspecting fellow-passengers ! 
 
 Ah, but that little spider and his wondrous web ! In 
 the light of this great man's letter, the heavens not 
 only declare the glory of God; they declare, also, the 
 wonder of the meanest and most insignificant of his 
 creatures. Speak to the earth, man, and it shall 
 teach thee the interdependence of the infinitely large 
 and the infinitely small. As the whole vast universe is 
 a League of Relations, no wonder that mankind are 
 determined to have a League of Nations. 
 
 in 
 
 Furthermore, as I talked to the earth on that 
 summer morning, did it not teach wondrous things 
 through the caterpillar I observed crawling through 
 the dust at my feet? Truly, what a creature! And 
 what colorings what gorgeous dresses these creeping, 
 gayly-colored maidens trail right through the dirt! 
 Nor are they in the least meticulous as to what happens 
 to their golden finery. And what a career that brown, 
 black, yellow worm is doomed to follow! 
 
 The psalmist speaks of the world and man never 
 continuing in one stay; but the same may be truly 
 said, also, of the caterpillar. As we know, this mar- 
 velous creature passes through four distinct stages of 
 development. The caterpillar I saw had come from 
 one of hundreds or even thousands of microscopic egg 
 cells. Consider the prevision and foresight instinc- 
 tive, mental, or whatever you choose to call it which 
 have been made in depositing these tiny eggs on the 
 food-plant. Each egg is placed on the precise plant 
 which will best nourish the infant soon to be born.
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH I 11 
 
 Moths even pluck hairs from their own bodies to make 
 a nest for their young. Their little ones are thus 
 concealed from enemies or protected from rigorous 
 weather. 
 
 The second is the larval or grub state. This is the 
 time when, according to LinnaBus, the "insect masks or 
 hides the true character or imago of the species." He 
 was dictating the second chapter of his autobiography 
 down there in the dust when I met him ; there are still 
 two chapters to be written before his life-history is 
 complete. It may be well to add, just here, that I was 
 looking upon this suggestive creature in his most un- 
 attractive period. Herein does he resemble the gawky, 
 growing boy neither a child nor a man when nobody 
 loves him but God and his mother. For the caterpillar 
 has earned an unsavory reputation. What an appetite 
 he has! Especially fond of the food-plants grown by 
 civilized man, he deliberately helps himself to them in 
 a most uncivilized fashion. If we extend our survey of 
 the caterpillar until it includes the Lepidoptera family, 
 we shall make the acquaintance of a host of ruthless 
 destroyers. Some years they denude entire forests and 
 whole fields together. The Polyphemus caterpillar, 
 according to Trouvelot, weighs at birth only one- 
 twentieth of a grain. But his voracity is so immense 
 that in fifty days he weighs 207 grains, and has con- 
 sumed 120 oak leaves, weighing three-fourths of a 
 pound. 
 
 Or, to take another illustration from the same gen- 
 eral field, in fifty-six days the silkworm eats 86,000 
 times its original weight. If it were not for the fact 
 that caterpillars are destroyed by their countless foes, 
 they themselves would soon destroy the entire vege- 
 table kingdom, leaving not a wrack behind.
 
 12 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 The third stage is called the pupal and usually 
 quiescent stage. This is the time when the worm is 
 preparing to leave his wormlike career. The last work 
 he does as a worm is truly wonderful. He makes his 
 cocoon out of silken threads. And what threads! 
 Secreting a fluid by his spinning glands, the material 
 for his silken couch is produced by the hardening of 
 this fluid. He may make his silken couch by winding 
 these threads round and round himself, or he may bind 
 into the cocoon his "own hairs, chips of wood, or other 
 materials, or tie down rolled leaves, or form a web- 
 like network hung like a bag or a hammock from some 
 support, or make a fuzzy mass in some crevice or 
 among leaves and twigs." So, he patiently waits in 
 this chrysalis stage for the resurrection trumpets to 
 sound ! Beginning as an egg, he became a worm, and is 
 now a pupa; he lives in hope of becoming a gorgeous 
 butterfly. 
 
 The fourth stage has arrived at last. Now does he 
 come timidly but quickly forth from his chrysalis case. 
 Has he not discovered a strange new world indeed? 
 From that tiny egg his mother laid on the underside 
 of a leaf, he has journeyed up through the wilderness 
 of worm and chrysalis until he now dwells in the 
 Promised Land of the Butterfly a gorgeous, golden 
 waif of the air! Emerging from his chrysalis, he clings 
 for a little while to a rock or a twig, fanning his flaccid 
 wings, thus injecting blood into them from the thorax 
 and abdomen. But not for long does he tremble and 
 quiver on the edge of his glorious new world. What 
 purple seas of morn and silver lakes of noon and lus- 
 trous oceans of evening are awaiting his unfolding 
 wings! And now the thrilling moment has come! No 
 longer germ, worm, or pupa, he soars through the air, a
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH I 13 
 
 kind of many-colored dream embodied in golden robes 
 and flashing wings. 
 
 Yet, in speaking to the earth that I might be taught 
 through that caterpillar, did not Someone else keep 
 talking to me? "Beloved, now are we the children of 
 God" these were the very words I continued hearing 
 "and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. 
 We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be 
 like Him ; for we shall see Him even as He is." 
 
 Is not our own career also marked by four stages? 
 Biologically speaking, our bodies are fashioned by God 
 in wisdom, awe, and mystery. Whether from cell, egg, 
 germ, spore, or seed, Man, in the Creative Goodness, 
 begins his ascent from realms of majestic lowliness. 
 "Thou knowest not the way of the Spirit," says the 
 writer of Ecclesiastes, "nor how the bones do grow in 
 the womb of her that is with child." "I am fearfully 
 and wonderfully made ! " exclaims the Psalmist. "Mar- 
 velous are Thy works, and that my soul knoweth right 
 well. My substance was not hid from Thee, when I 
 was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest 
 parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, 
 yet being unperfect; and in Thy book all my members 
 were written, which in continuance were fashioned, 
 when as yet there was none of them." In his striking 
 book on "The Stages of Human Life," Dr. J. Lionel 
 Taylor has a chapter called "Before the Beginnings of 
 Being." Yet, even then, the Eternal Evolutionist was 
 marvelously working in secret and in silence. "In the 
 beginning GOD!" That is the proper way to speak 
 of origins, whether they be earth, heavens, universes, 
 electrons, cells, angels, or men. Before the beginnings 
 of being, there is always the God and Father of our 
 Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
 
 14 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 Yet, if the creation of the body is wonderful, what 
 shall we say of the creation of the soul? Very little, 
 indeed, because we know nothing as to the when or 
 how of its creation. The four theories of the genesis 
 of the soul, as stated by F. W. H. Myers, are as follows : 
 First, the Creationists, who hold that a soul is created 
 by a fresh act of God for each new body. Second, the 
 Traducianists, who hold that the soul is engendered by 
 the parents, being transmitted like the bodily charac- 
 teristics. Third, the Infusionists, who hold that the 
 soul preexisted elsewhere, but is infused into the body 
 at some given moment. Fourth, the Transmigration- 
 ists, developing the last doctrine, who hold that the 
 soul, thus infused into man, has previously inhabited 
 the bodies of other men or animals. Thus have think- 
 ers striven to account for the unaccountable. Theories 
 come and go, but the Inscrutable Fact abides. After 
 all is said, no words outtop the grandeur of those writ- 
 ten in Genesis: "And God created man in his own 
 image, in the image of God created He him" ; "And the 
 Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and 
 breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man 
 became a living soul." Whether man's physical body, 
 the temporary home of his undying soul, was developed 
 in a long or short time, in a million years or in a 
 moment, the whole, body and soul, is referred to the 
 creative work of God. That the process has been an 
 exceedingly long one there is no reason to doubt. But 
 whether long or short, the soul abides in mystery, and 
 the hour of its awakening to self-consciousness in the 
 body is one of the supreme wonders of the universe. 
 Then do awful and mysterious forces begin to stir 
 within its unfathomed depths. Here it may enter that 
 endless period of development in Christlikeness, which
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH I 16 
 
 is the goal of the worlds. Having discovered its spirit- 
 ual wings, even as the caterpillar at last unfolds its 
 rainbowed pinions, the soul begins its infinite career 
 in conscious fellowship with its God and Father. 
 "Now," it repeats in unison with its companions and 
 pilgrims of the Heavenly Way, "are we the children of 
 God; and it is not yet made manifest what we shall 
 be." Winging and singing through the purifying 
 heavens of Love, this is the refrain of the apostolic 
 song: "And every one that hath this hope on Him 
 purifieth himself, even as He is pure." 
 
 Thanks to thee, little creature of the dust! You 
 are a glowing syllable in the literature of the unde- 
 ciphered. I shall always associate my caterpillar with 
 the lines of Alice Freeman Palmer on "The Butterfly": 
 
 I hold you at last in my hand, 
 
 Exquisite child of the air; 
 Can I ever understand 
 
 How you grew to be so fair? 
 
 You came to this linden-tree 
 
 To taste its delicious sweet, 
 I sitting here in the shadow and shine 
 
 Playing around its feet. 
 
 Now I hold you fast in my hand, 
 
 You marvelous butterfly, 
 Till you help me to understand 
 
 The eternal mystery. 
 
 From that creeping thing in the dust 
 To this shining bliss in the blue! 
 
 God, give me courage to trust 
 I can break my chrysalis, too!
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH II 
 
 Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee. Job xii. 7. 
 
 GOING down the wooing ways of that June morning, 
 I also met a land-tortoise or terrapin. He was an old 
 friend. I used to meet him down on the farm. Some- 
 times he would crawl through the garden, the roadway, 
 the cornfield, or under the oak trees in the yard. But 
 he was never very communicative. Indeed, so bent is 
 he on leading the life of a recluse that he carries his 
 shell-house right along with him. On human approach, 
 he retires into this so quickly that he at once classifies 
 himself as a most unsociable creature. There was a 
 saying extant among my boyhood friends that, once he 
 closed his mouth on your finger, he would not let go 
 until it thundered. I was always careful never to test 
 the truth of the saying by experiment. 
 
 But the characteristic of the tortoise which has 
 always impressed me most is his capacity to retire into 
 himself. Wanting very much to speak with him and 
 be taught by him, yet he seemed determined to have no 
 word with me. As in other days when I drew near, so 
 now he silently shut the doors, pulled down the win- 
 dows, drew the blinds, and swiftly disappeared within 
 his striped and polished house of shell. Yet, hi his 
 abrupt refusal to talk, did he not teach me something 
 already too well known among my own kind? 
 
 16
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH II 17 
 
 "How like the religion of some folk!" I exclaimed as 
 he slammed the door fairly in my face. First, in the 
 matter of religious dress parade. Without trying to 
 force an unseemly parallel, there was an impressive 
 leisureliness in the motion of my friend tortoise. When 
 I caught up with him, he was not in the mood of hurry 
 at all. He just seemed to be going nowhere and acted 
 as if he had forever to reach his goal. Now, such an 
 attitude toward life and the universe may be perfectly 
 proper for a tortoise; but ah, me! what an accusing 
 type of self-photography it does exhibit in a human 
 being! 
 
 And yet, are there not people all around us who 
 spend their time as if life were an idle stroll? One 
 man strolls down the dollar-path. To be sure, as he 
 chases the shining phantom, he not only spells motion 
 but commotion. It is not so certain, however, when 
 we inventory his desires, purposes, and ideals, that he 
 can possibly come to anything higher than a lolling 
 loafer in the true highways of being. When a man sets 
 a dollar mark on the face of life, that face begins to 
 make paralyzing squints at him. Quickly enough does 
 he find the cosmos out of focus! And all because, not- 
 withstanding his strenuous activity, he has no proper 
 contacts with the life which is life indeed. Paradoxical 
 though the words be, the fact is: He is an energetic 
 idler in the roadways of existence. 
 
 Another man follows the notoriety path. Instead of 
 crying, "A kingdom! A kingdom for a horse!" he sells 
 his years, his genius, his soul for a name. Tremen- 
 dously active through it all, he is not one whit less an 
 idler with reference to the great and honorable and 
 unrepealable verities. I asked after a preacher in a 
 certain town. "He is still there with the brass bells
 
 18 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 on!" was the reply. "A good name is rather to rje 
 chosen than great riches," says the proverb ; but a good 
 name seldom flies about with brass bells on. The 
 explorers for cheap fame do indeed find it, but is it 
 worth the finding? Even though self-nominated can- 
 didates for notoriety are successful in their verbally 
 furious campaign, they are elected temporarily only, 
 their tenure is fortunately brief and tragically inglori- 
 ous. God has his own candidates for immortality and 
 noble renown. Checked and thwarted in a thousand 
 ways, they invariably arrive, but never "with brass 
 bells on!" Those horrible, ear-splitting, devil-twang- 
 ing monstrosities all take on the value of the dust-heap 
 when God's good-named man, white with the lilies of 
 grace and cool with the airs of faith, comes calmly by 
 clothed in the robes of Christian righteousness. "He 
 will not cry, nor lift up his voice, nor cause it to be 
 heard in the street." And why? "Behold, I have put 
 my Spirit upon him." Oh, yes, the world will brazenly 
 hang brass bells upon us for so much "per" ; but that 
 Spirit upon Whom the universe momentarily depends 
 He alone can put the secret of eternal life upon our 
 undying souls. What a terrible irony to be a loafer in 
 the midst of terrific endeavor! Yet, in the white light 
 of the nature of things, this is the doom of the dawdler. 
 This is the law which operates impartially toward 
 prince and peasant ; for 
 
 Kings must lay gold circlets down 
 
 In God's sepulchral ante-rooms, 
 The wear of Heaven's the thorny crown: 
 
 He paves His temples with their tombs. 
 
 O our towered altitudes! 
 the lusters of our thrones!
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH II 19 
 
 What! old Time shall have his moods 
 Like Caesars and Napoleons; 
 
 Have his towers and conquerors forth, 
 
 Till he, weary of the toys, 
 Put back Rameses in the earth 
 
 And break his Ninevehs and Troys. 
 
 Do not be a strenuous idler that was the first mes- 
 sage of the tortoise. But he gave me a second fully as 
 important. Instantly retiring into the hidden recesses 
 of his terrapin seclusion, he reminded me of certain 
 human types one meets every day. For example, the 
 loquacious mortals who talk about everything under 
 the sun but the big things. Mention matters pertain- 
 ing to the soul and they shut up like a shall I say a 
 clam? No; inasmuch as I was in a fragrant country 
 lane and far from the surging sea, I will still cling to my 
 tortoise friend and his facile genius for running into 
 the house and bolting the doors. 
 
 Not otherwise do people act toward the imperial 
 subject of religion. They talk politics, industry, soci- 
 ety, markets, science, and novels with amazing frank- 
 ness and ignorance, their tongues often being released 
 by the motive power named their prejudiced viewpoint 
 or selfish animus. But religion God, Freedom, Im- 
 mortality never a syllable, save the sphinxlike, 
 inarticulate mystery in which the whole subject seems 
 to be conventionally wrapped. Not always, of course, 
 is this so, but generally. The bill of exceptions is 
 usually filed by that glib, superficial, cult-mongering 
 individual, who has his physical being in countless 
 areas from Maine to California; whose mental longi- 
 tudes stretch all the way from Boston to Baalbek; 
 whose spiritual latitudes are as wide as the spaces
 
 20 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 measured by the desert of Sahara and as correspond- 
 ingly dry. 
 
 Why should this be? Must men and women always 
 escape from themselves through avenues of conven- 
 tional prattle? Were the brain, the mouth, the lungs, 
 and the atmosphere created for emitting vapid, mean- 
 ingless sounds only? Why should one lease his tongue 
 to verbal renters who pay in coppers of nonsensical 
 weariness, when he may hire it to desirable home- 
 makers whose returns are inspiringly fruitful words 
 veritable "apples of gold in pictures of silver"? Why, 
 the thing is an abomination in the sight of the Lord 
 and a fraud perpetrated against the soul itself. Are 
 we so dead, my brothers, that stocks are live talk while 
 souls are dry-as-dust nonentities? Must we always be 
 in the receiving line to Mr. and Mrs. Fad and their 
 silly progeny, and rarely or never at home to God and 
 His Way with the soul the pursuing and redeeming 
 Christ? 
 
 Two very practical considerations should scourge us 
 out of this terrapin-like attitude toward religious final- 
 ity. The first is its stark unnaturalness. We are 
 plainly abnormal when we ignore the rights of the soul. 
 Every human being who vitally comes to himself bears 
 witness to this truth. "How did I ever play the fool, 
 and so stupidly?" That is one of the first questions 
 invariably asked by the clever man who has existed at 
 the circumference of being and then been mysteriously' 
 moved in toward the glowing center of life. Gen- 
 erally speaking, this is the feeling of all those new- 
 born souls cited by Professor James in his classic work. 
 There is the sense of smiting wonder that they did not 
 make contact with God very much sooner than they 
 did. One of the memorable cases is Benvenuto Cellini.
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH II 21 
 
 Soldier, sculptor, worker in gold and silver, he had the 
 good fortune to be imprisoned in the Castle of Saint 
 Angelo. The place was horrible beyond description. 
 Rats, vermin, dampness, and cold are his grim com- 
 panions. But in that dungeon he begins to think of 
 God; in his den of squalor he has visions of a new 
 universe. During one hour in the twenty-four a shaft 
 of light plays over his gloom and doom. Getting a 
 Bible, he reads it during that single hour when the 
 daylight shone into his cell. Soon religious visions 
 come to the birth; he writes hymns; he sings psalms 
 like a human nightingale pouring forth his music in 
 the dark. Thinking of the morrow, and of the festivi- 
 ties which Rome will then observe, he says to himself: 
 "All these years past I celebrated this holiday with the 
 vanities of the world : from this year henceforth I will 
 do it with the divinity of God. And then I said to 
 myself, '0, how much more happy I am for this present 
 life of mine than for all those things remembered.' " 
 
 What a commentary on "the buried life" of us all! 
 True, we are born a long way from our deeper selves. 
 But the tragedy is that we are content to remain buried 
 beneath our mountains of mud, or else we make but 
 wan and feeble efforts to set our souls within the 
 cleansing tides of life that would bear us achievingly 
 and triumphantly toward the Harbor of Home and its 
 ever-deepening hospitality. In the true sense, it is 
 abnormal and unnatural for men not to be spiritual 
 and Christlike, because they are essentially spirits 
 destined for careers in growing Christlikeness. As the 
 telescope and photography yield the astronomer new 
 depths of space sown with blazing worlds, so do spirit- 
 ualized souls exhibit the deeper depths of reality await- 
 ing exploration by the sons of God. That veteran of
 
 22 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 the spiritual wars, that vernal old man who comes 
 with songs of joy and shouts of victory to the dawn 
 of heavenly mornings, after recounting his gains and 
 losses, after speaking of achievements and progress 
 which would dazzle ordinary folk, utters this extraor- 
 dinary and sublime disclaimer. "Not that I have 
 already obtained," says Paul, from a prison that out- 
 splendors the Golden House of Nero, "or am already 
 made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay 
 hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ 
 Jesus. Brethren" hear him call as he spiritually eyes 
 the race-course of infinity and inbreathes new inspira- 
 tions for his mounting resolution "I count not myself 
 yet to have laid hold : but one thing I do, forgetting the 
 things which are behind, and stretching forward to the 
 things which are before, I press on toward the goal 
 unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ 
 Jesus." Oh, the challenge of it! The mental sinewi- 
 ness of it! The white-hot concentration of it! The 
 soul-athleticism of it! The magnificent, forthright 
 heavenliness of it! Paul never whined about the vast- 
 ness of the universe. He rejoiced so exultantly in be- 
 ing possessed by eternal life that he felt the vastness 
 of the universe would have to become eternally vaster 
 in order to furnish him a field in which to put forth the 
 vigors and powers and purposes he had realized in 
 Christ Jesus his Lord. Winged souls are not greatly 
 perturbed by either infinite wastes of matter or infinite 
 voids of space. 
 
 The second consideration is: The very abnormal- 
 ness of a godless life is accentuated by the spiritual 
 majesty of Jesus. Our Lord did not walk straight into 
 the teeth of things with sugar-coated condiments of 
 delusion, as much of our soft-headed modern morality
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH II 23 
 
 and mentality jejunely avers. Nevertheless, He did 
 unbosom the Heart of Things, and He found It fair 
 wondrously fair and just and good. Behind all the 
 terror of a universe in the making, Christ beheld the 
 glory of the Shining Face. That Face is unutterably 
 paternal; it has the two eyes of Fatherhood and 
 Motherhood marvelously blended. When Jesus said, 
 "My Father," "Our Father," "Your Father," the music 
 of the spheres took on new color-tones. Therefore, our 
 little planet, lying like a pearl along the seashore of 
 infinity, gleamed before Him in immeasurable worth 
 and beauty. Soiled as earth is by sin, yet does He see 
 the unquenched fires of loveliness and awe burning 
 through its hidden depths. Everywhere Christ's vision 
 of God is equal to the fact of God. No matter what 
 long journeys He had made from the deeps of Godhead 
 in quest of our humanity, on every hand Jesus found 
 tokens of Divinity in the very world which chose to 
 make Him a stranger and a felon rather than its Savior 
 and Deliverer. 
 
 Nor must I forget Mother Hen, who greeted me by 
 the roadside. She had a brood of fourteen chickens, 
 As I undertook to count them, flitting about here and 
 there, I was reminded of that delicious saying of Pro- 
 fessor William Lyon Phelps: "In arithmetic I was 
 always slow, but never sure!" With her large family 
 to look after, she was as busy as a woman in house- 
 cleaning time. Yet my colored friend and philosopher, 
 John Pickerell, always said that a hen with one chicken 
 makes more fuss than a hen with a dozen. At any 
 rate, this is often true of the home having only one
 
 24 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 child. The unfortunate feature is that both parents 
 and child are frequently spoiled. 
 
 But is not that hen with her brood a concrete illus- 
 tration of the Motherhood tenderly and watchfully 
 fluttering throughout the whole creation? One of the 
 grandest strains struck from the Isaian harp celebrates 
 the Divine Motherhood nestling within the sanctuaries 
 of the universe. Speaking of Zion, disheartened and 
 discredited by her own wickedness, God says through 
 His prophet: "Ye shall be borne upon the side, and 
 shall be dandled upon the knees. As one whom his 
 mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." Borne 
 dandled comforted ! What caressing words are these ! 
 See that mother who carries her child on her hip, one 
 arm gently holding the little one in position; see her 
 fondly moving her child up and down on her knees; 
 see her comforting her fretful, ill, or mistreated babe ! 
 These are the three pictures which the prophet employs 
 to declare the brooding maternity in the nature of 
 God. "As one whom his mother comforteth." But 
 how does a mother comfort? Only two people can 
 answer. First, the comforted child, and, second, the 
 comforting mother. After all terms of endearment are 
 exhausted, after all fond and wooing words are spoken, 
 these two the comforted child and the comforting 
 mother alone know the sweetness which flows from 
 "the breasts of her consolations." 
 
 But to return to the teaching earth as it spoke to me 
 through that hen and her brood. Did not our Lord and 
 Master go to the mother hen for His figure of the 
 rebellious city which broke His heart and then crucified 
 Him? "0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the 
 prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her! 
 how often would I have gathered thy children together,
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH II 25 
 
 even as a hen gathereth her own brood under her 
 wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left 
 unto you desolate : and I say unto you, ye shall not see 
 me, until ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the 
 name of the Lord." Once it was my privilege to see 
 the reality of the Master's figure enacted in a striking 
 manner. I was driving an automobile through central 
 Kentucky. Rounding a sharp curve in the road, I saw 
 a mother hen with one chick immediately in front of 
 me. At the approach of the car, she worked furiously 
 and with all the redemptive passion of motherhood to 
 get her child out of danger. But she failed. Then I 
 witnessed something I shall remember as long as mem- 
 ory endures. After frantically trying and failing, she 
 did that which only the sacrificial love and intelligence 
 of motherhood is capable of doing. She instantly sat 
 down on her chick! By the help of God, as I think, I 
 managed to so steer the car that that feathered mother 
 and her wing-protected child were not injured. Rarely 
 have I been so thrilled and excited in my life. Of 
 course the hen was considerably frustrated for the 
 moment. But she soon recovered her motherly poise 
 and went on about her out-of-doors housekeeping as if 
 nothing had happened. 
 
 As if nothing had happened, did I say? But this 
 unutterably glorious Something is ever at work 
 throughout the universe. Have you considered that 
 behind the struggle for existence there is the Spirit of 
 sacrificial motherhood which makes for universal sub- 
 sistence? I watched a battle-royal between blackbirds 
 and sparrows over the possession of a birdhouse. Now 
 bird nature, like human nature, is not at its best in a 
 towering rage. Yet, as I watched those birds, it dawned 
 upon me for the first time that something wondrously
 
 26 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 sacred was at stake in their contest. It was nothing 
 less than Motherhood itself! Behind those chattering 
 blackbirds and quarreling sparrows, even through their 
 obstreperous behavior, Motherhood was getting its 
 valiant vindication and immortal self-assertion. And 
 is not Motherhood, whether in birds or humans, infi- 
 nitely greater than any individual or collective mani- 
 festation thereof? When Zion wailed: "The Lord 
 hath forsaken me, and the Lord hath forgotten me," 
 God asked: "Can a woman forget her sucking child, 
 that she should not have compassion on the son of her 
 womb?" This is both possible and probable, as experi- 
 ence sKbws. Yet, from in behind even this, here is the 
 Voice that echoes the golden heart of Godhood: "Yea, 
 these may forget, yet will I not forget thee." Oh, 
 speak to the Motherhood everywhere brooding and 
 dreaming and singing through the earth, and it shall 
 teach thee of the Godhead out of Whom all father- 
 hoods and motherhoods mysteriously and continuously 
 come! 
 
 m 
 
 On my return trip, I came across one of the most 
 interesting creatures in all the world. Walking through 
 a sylvan way overarched by gnarled and widespreading 
 oaks, I saw a boy standing yonder in the distance, 
 Soon I heard his voice calling: "Hey, Bud!" Little 
 thinking he was addressing me, I kept on walking 
 toward him, but made no answer. All the more vocif- 
 erously did he continue yelling: "Hey, Bud! Hey, 
 Bud!" At last it dawned upon me that I was the 
 object of his exclamations. I asked, as I approached 
 him: "What do you want, boy?" "I want to know the 
 way to town," was his quick reply. It seems that he
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH II 27 
 
 and his companion had gone out of the main highway 
 and down over the side of the hill, picking blackberries. 
 Coming back to the road, but now separated from his 
 companion, he had "got turned around," as we say, and 
 lost his sense of direction. As we walked along to- 
 gether, I asked, after telling him the right way home: 
 "But how do you know that you are on the right road 
 now?" "Gee whiz!" he exclaimed. "Didn't you say 
 that this is the road?" "Yes," I countered, "but how 
 do you know that I am telling you the truth?" There 
 was a puzzled look in his eye a curious twinkle but 
 only for a moment. "By gum!" he said, "I'm going to 
 trust you, anyway!" 
 
 Had I seen or heard anything that June morning 
 quite as fine and clean and beautiful as the brave and 
 eloquent trust of that lad among the hills? I think of 
 the loveliness of my morning glories ; of the wonder of 
 my spider web; of the prophecy of my caterpillar; of 
 the suggestiveness of my tortoise; of the energetic 
 motherliness of my hen. And yet, as I think of that 
 barefoot boy, with his innocent Junetide face, torn 
 shirt, ripped trousers, and noble confidence, I know 
 that I have reached the highest note struck from the 
 harp of nature. Moreover, all the men who have lived 
 and died were once boys. Are we not tempted to forget 
 this fact? That philosopher was a boy long before he 
 went to dwell in Platoland. That composer was a boy 
 before he moved into the realm of Beethoven melodies. 
 That architect was a boy before he lifted himself and 
 St. Peter's into heights of fame. That teacher was a 
 boy before he laid the shaping hand of Horace Mann 
 upon the educational world. That preacher was a boy, 
 hunting rabbits and watching bluebirds in the fields of 
 Litchfield, long before Henry Ward Beecher came to
 
 28 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 sway the multitudes. That biologist was a boy before 
 Charles Darwin gave to mankind the great concept that 
 evolution is God's way of doing things. I like not this 
 far fame of the men which makes us forget their child- 
 hood. For childhood is the one point between the 
 eternities hi which human life is free of responsibility. 
 It is the breathing time, ordained of God, for men and 
 women to get a good start up the Hills of Destiny. 
 Therefore, it is the period in which society should be 
 most vitally concerned. The world of to-morrow is 
 being made by the childhood of to-day. And no gen- 
 eration, it is safe to predict, ever had harder problems 
 to solve than will the one now in its barefoot stage. 
 
 Furthermore, did not my Little Seer of the Hills lay 
 the heart of the matter wide open when he said : "I'm 
 going to trust you, anyway"? Go where you will, trust 
 is the secret of the growing soul. Look where you 
 please, the need of trust shall greet you. Trust makes 
 society possible, and trust alone. Your railroads, your 
 commerce, your banks, your courts, your schools, your 
 homes, your churches all are possible only through 
 trust. Cut the artery of trust and society bleeds to 
 death. Is it any wonder, then, that trust plays so 
 large a part in religion? Why, when men and women 
 wisely learn to trust the God and Father of our Lord 
 and Savior, as they too often blindly and unwisely 
 trust each other, they will open such channels of power 
 from the fountains of heaven to the heart of mankind, 
 that wars shall cease, disease shall be banished, hatreds 
 shall die, injustice shall disappear, while righteousness, 
 brotherhood, mercy, and truth shall cover the earth as 
 the waters cover the sea. 
 
 Thanks to thee, Little Pilgrim of the Hills and 
 Merchantman of the Blackberry Fields! Good Mother
 
 THE COUNTRY FAITH II 29 
 
 Earth, as I spoke to her by the way, taught me much, 
 but thou hast been the wisest teacher of all. Thy 
 manly voice is a true accent of the Voice Divine and 
 Eternal : "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose 
 mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee." 
 
 How does the rivulet find its way? 
 How does the floweret know its day 
 And open its cup to catch the ray? 
 
 I see the germ to the sunlight reach, 
 
 And the nestling knows the old bird's speech. 
 
 I do not know who is there to teach. 
 
 I see the hare through the thicket glide, 
 
 And the stars through the trackless spaces ride. 
 
 I do not see who is there to guide. 
 
 He is eyes for all, who is eyes for the mole, 
 See motion goes to the rightful goal. 
 God! I can trust for the human soul.
 
 THE UNPURCHASABLES 
 
 And he gave heed unto them, expecting to receive some- 
 thing from them. But Peter said, Silver and gold have 
 I none; but what I have, that give I thee. In the name 
 of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk. Acts iii. 5, 6. 
 
 IT is a thrilling moment in the lives of both the 
 beggar and Peter. One has already seen the universe 
 with new eyes. Yesterday Peter's soul-faculties were 
 afflicted with a lameness as dire as the beggar's lifelong 
 physical infirmity. But to-day things are changed ; the 
 world wears a new face; men are no longer an inco- 
 herent mob, but each individual stands forth clothed 
 in divinely glistering raiment. The reason for this 
 changed complexion of things is due, of course, to a 
 radical change in Peter himself. Christ has crossed 
 his path; Christ has arrested this impetuous man; 
 Christ has touched him to spiritual fineness, and the 
 celestial strain is vigorously at work; Christ has at 
 last enthroned Himself in the deepmost centers of 
 Simon's being. And Simon is vanishing like fog before 
 the onrushing light of noonday, while Peter is rising 
 like the sun when dawn tinges the east with gray and 
 says: "This is but a ripple of silver from oceanfuls 
 of splendor and of day." For Simon has lost his night 
 and fog in the light and clarity of the Christian morn- 
 ing. Even as the earth-man has crumbled the rock- 
 man has risen, uncrumbling and sublime, in place of 
 that unstable, wind-driven human dust. That tenth- 
 30
 
 THE UNPURCHASABLES 31 
 
 hour prophecy, rich as the golden afternoon when it 
 was spoken, has come true: "Jesus looked upon him 
 and said, Thou art Simon the son of John: thou shalt 
 be called Cephas (which is by interpretation, Peter)." 
 Thus Christ makes a man of dust into a soul of dia- 
 mond! 
 
 But the lame man was entirely ignorant of the rein- 
 carnated Saviors coming his way. All men looked alike 
 to him. Why not? Coming into the world a cripple, 
 all his life long he had been a dependent; necessity 
 made him a beggar and despair made him an unrespon- 
 sive outcast. Viewing the world from a pallet of straw, 
 and eking out a precarious existence through the grace 
 of alms, is it any wonder that no morning ever broke 
 its heart of gold over the Jerusalem hills for him? 
 One upon another the long, dreary days trod through 
 his soul with iron feet, trampling life and hope and 
 the world itself into a confused jargon of shrieking 
 anarchy. 
 
 But if ours is a world in which such things are pos- 
 sible, it is also a world in which undreamed wonders, 
 unimagined beauties, unguessed goodnesses, unmeas- 
 ured riches are constantly surprising us. Ask any man 
 to open the doors of his soul and let you peep in, and 
 some of the richest treasures therein seemingly dropped 
 out of the nowhere unexpected, undeserved, unex- 
 plained. God's great gifts come to us as silently as 
 the twilight, even though they hue the heart with the 
 glory of sunset. Here are questions men might ask 
 with profit: How did the blessing of my life-work 
 come to me? Why did I pick up a certain book at a 
 certain time? Why did God's vestal gift named a pure 
 woman cross my heart's threshold on such a day and 
 hour? How did my noblest friendship begin? What
 
 32 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 were the circumstances under which I received over- 
 tures from the unseen God, then and there took the 
 vows of nobler living, or else had ever after been guilty 
 of sinning greatly? 
 
 Were we not lame enough indeed when these radiant 
 evangels of eternity came our way? And like this 
 pauper, perhaps we turned our hungry, pleading eyes 
 upon them, expecting to receive something some 
 material gift. Then did God's unannounced angel lift 
 the trumpet to his lips and blow forth these resonant 
 words : "Silver and gold have I none ; but what I have, 
 that give I thee." 
 
 We are to consider, then, some of life's unpurchas- 
 able values, the things which cannot be had for silver 
 and gold, but which are God's free gifts to men. For 
 it is always true, as Mrs. Browning said, that God's 
 gifts put man's best dreams to shame. 
 
 Mastery of circumstances, power over environment 
 this is one of the ageless necessities of men. It is all 
 so trite, I know, but it is so desperately true. The 
 paradoxical old saw reminds us that we constantly need 
 to learn the things we have known longest. And to 
 preside over the setting of his life with Christlike and 
 spiritual kingliness is one of the things man always 
 needs to learn, though he knows it with a kind of 
 theoretical perfection. The philosophy of the subject 
 is stated in the words of Emerson : "Though we travel 
 the world over in search of the beautiful, we must carry 
 it with us, or we find it not." 
 
 In other words, beauty is not found in things but 
 in souls; happiness is not found in material environ-
 
 THE UNPURCHASABLES 33 
 
 ment, paltry or splendid, but in the power of the per- 
 sonality that rises above it, that secretes a quality of 
 everlastingness from the reality upon which things 
 lean. The surroundings of the lame man before the 
 beautiful gate of the temple were, in a pure external 
 sense, all that any man could ask. The majesty and 
 beauty of the temple were indescribable. Outstretched 
 wings of beaten splendor sheltered him. All that 
 genius, silver and gold could do had contrived for this 
 man's misery a setting of superlative grandeur. The 
 massive clouds of twisted gold and shimmering bronze 
 under which he lay were rich enough to drench his soul 
 with showers and gospels of beauty. But the fact is, 
 he was a beggar; he was a lame beggar; he was a lame 
 beggar carried by kind hands and placed where he 
 might receive alms from temple worshipers. Now he 
 might have gazed upon that mountain of gold until 
 doomsday, and had not God's lightnings of health and 
 vigor smitten him through, he would have remained 
 just a lame and impotent man in the very heart of 
 loveliness and pomp. 
 
 Evidently, here is a first-century fact with a twen- 
 tieth-century meaning; or, rather, it is a truth which 
 lies behind all centuries. Men have always cried: 
 "Give us a new set of circumstances, changed condi- 
 tions, a different environment, and all will be well." 
 And some men sincerely believe that such is the case. 
 "Give us comfortable houses, good wages, abundant 
 food, ease and culture, and we will be content," they 
 say. Now, we all know that there is vast room for 
 improvement in each of these directions; and every 
 Christian man rejoices that conditions are being bet- 
 tered. They ought to be bettered; it is a stench in 
 the nostrils of the Almighty that men's social and
 
 34 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 physical surroundings are not more congenial, more 
 healthful, and more conducive to happiness. Yet any 
 man on speaking terms with human nature, or who 
 has even a shallow knowledge of history, knows that 
 such a doctrine scarcely scratches the surface of the 
 deep problems of humanity. And it is because a large, 
 if not indeed the largest, camp of socialists throughout 
 the world have taken for their creed the materialistic 
 motto, "Let us eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow 
 we die," that a great company of thoughtful persons, 
 though in hearty sympathy with some of the reforms 
 it proposes to accomplish, utterly refuse to ally them- 
 selves with the movement, either in its political or 
 social phases. Any "ism" that promises only better 
 houses and lands essential as they are but nothing 
 more, has preempted the death of its soul to fatten its 
 body, and both alike are ultimately doomed to star- 
 vation. 
 
 No; take our lame, bleeding, aching, wonderful 
 humanity and set it down in the midst of palaces, art, 
 science, philosophy, beauty, and it will be a bedraggled 
 beggar still. "Such an argument is false," interrupted 
 a socialist in a Chicago mass-meeting for men. "You 
 say that sin is the root-trouble with men. It is not 
 true. Give men a living wage, better houses for their 
 children, opportunities for an education, and you will 
 have infinitely better men. It is not sin, but social 
 inequality that is wrong with the world." "My friend," 
 replied the Christian minister, who was addressing the 
 meeting, "men ought to have better wages, better 
 houses, and better opportunities educationally. But I 
 still maintain that my proposition is true deliberate, 
 willful, persistent sin against God and themselves is 
 the root-wrong with men. You say that possessing
 
 THE UNPURCHASABLES 35 
 
 things will make infinitely better men. Let me give 
 a concrete illustration showing the falseness of your 
 attitude. There are in Chicago many, many million- 
 aires. They have art; they have culture; they have 
 palaces; they have leisure; they have everything that 
 wealth can give. But that a majority of them are dis- 
 tinguished for saintliness, or are the infinitely better 
 men which you say are produced by wealth and culture, 
 not even the most deluded materialistic socialist could 
 show by investigating their private and public life, 
 man by man." 
 
 The Tightness of the minister is self-evident. If men 
 are unredeemed, without God and without hope in 
 the world, their unmedicated spiritual pang will make 
 them writhe in agonies of despair. On the contrary, 
 if they receive the impregnating, overshadowing power 
 of the Highest into their hungry souls, their passionate 
 cry for the eternal will be satisfied by the living God. 
 Then do palaces become more palatial because new 
 souls live within them; then do cottages have roofs 
 as ample as the stars because their owners have real 
 estate more durable than worlds; and even garrets 
 and dungeons do flame, as they have ever done when 
 Christ indwelt men's souls, like hills of ruby smitten 
 by many suns ! 
 
 The simple truth is, the Christian God answers men's 
 prayers for better things and surely He has given men 
 all things richly to enjoy by giving them power to 
 make cleaner, better souls. Men know they are no 
 better because of mere things ; does God know less than 
 man in these high matters? Surely not! God knows 
 what Christ-begotten men are capable of, and has fur- 
 nished innumerable examples. Paul lay on the floor 
 of his dungeon and wrote letters beautiful and strong
 
 36 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 and lustrous enough to have been dictated in the draw- 
 ing-rooms of sundown. But within Paul's dungeon was 
 Paul's Christ. John stood on a lonely island and saw 
 visions of a city so fair that its walls and gates and 
 streets blazed like jeweled masonry. But on John's 
 lonely island was John's Christ. 
 
 Wordsworth confessed that there was something in 
 the madness of William Blake that interested him more 
 than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott. 
 Somewhere in an unmarked grave, Blake's dust mingles 
 with that of seven others. But, like Goethe, Blake did 
 not allow a grave to impose upon him, Living in a 
 poor cottage, he wrote: "Heaven opens here; on all 
 sides her golden gates; her windows are not obscured 
 by vapors; voices of the celestial inhabitants are more 
 distinctly heard and their forms more distinctly seen; 
 and my cottage is also a shadow of their houses." It 
 was this man whose body lies in a pauper's grave who 
 clearly grasped the principle of the spiritual interpre- 
 tation of nature in art, through the power of the 
 imagination penetrating to its hidden meaning. He 
 said: "I assert for myself that I do not behold the 
 outward creation, and that to me it is hindrance and 
 not action. 'What/ it will be questioned, 'when the 
 sun rises do you not see a round disc of fire, somewhat 
 like a guinea?' Oh, no! no! I see an innumerable com- 
 pany of the heavenly host, crying Holy, Holy, Holy is 
 the Lord God Almighty. I question not my corporal 
 eye any more than I would question a window con- 
 cerning a sight. I look through it, and not with it." 
 One might be disposed to take issue with some of 
 Blake's canons of art and poetic theories, but not many 
 would question his right to the Master's beatitude: 
 "Blessed are the pure in heart ; for they shall see God."
 
 THE UKPURCHASABLES 37 
 
 Now, it is the vision of God in Christ that lends 
 man power over his unfriendly environment. Because 
 this is true, Tolstoi's five conditions of happiness are 
 woefully lacking. To be happy, he said, we must keep 
 unbroken the link between man and nature; we must 
 have intellectual and physical labor; third, the family; 
 fourth, sympathetic and unrestricted intercourse with 
 all classes of men ; and the fifth condition of happiness 
 he names bodily health. To say the least, the category 
 does not do justice to that great and good man. What 
 are nature, and work, and the family, and society, and 
 bodily health to the man who is not hi vital communion 
 with the source of them all the holy, loving, empower- 
 ing God? A wise old ancient rings out his bitter answer 
 for multitudes. He made great works ; builded houses ; 
 planted vineyards, gardens and parks; made pools of 
 water; bought men-servants and maid-servants; had 
 great possessions ; gathered silver and gold ; hired men- 
 singers and women-singers. "So I was great," he says, 
 "and increased more than all that were before me in 
 Jerusalem ; also my wisdom remained with me." And 
 then follows the biting, stinging, withering, vinegar- 
 and-acid confession: "So I hated life, because the 
 work that is wrought under the sun was grievous unto 
 me ; for all is vanity and a striving after wind." Here, 
 then, is the stark result of a godless soul and a godless 
 civilization hatred of life! "My daughter is a very 
 unhappy woman" I wrote the words down in my 
 memory as they came from lips of anguish. "She has 
 everything that heart could wish; husband, children, 
 friends, gowns, automobiles ; yet she is most unhappy." 
 Knowing the daughter, I asked inwardly: "Does she 
 really have all that the heart wishes, yea, longs for 
 God, Christ, the Comforter, and the life of sacrificial
 
 38 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 service issuing therefrom?" God, and history, and 
 souls agree in this: A life without godliness is an 
 essentially perverted life, and real happiness refuses to 
 come to terms with godless men and women. On the 
 other hand, the divinely imparted mastery turns man's 
 physical unsightliness into beauty, his things into help- 
 ful instruments, because his soul-deadness has been 
 quickened into quivering, palpitant, spiritual vitality. 
 For 
 
 As man listens, one by one 
 
 Life's utmost splendors blaze more nigh; 
 Less inaccessible the sun, 
 
 Less alien grows the sky. 
 For thou art native to the spheres, 
 
 And in the courts of heaven art free, 
 And earnest in thy temporal ears, 
 
 News from eternity. 
 
 II 
 
 Unquestionably, one of the profoundest needs of to- 
 day is a definite faith. We moderns might well imitate 
 Peter, and that first disciple band, in this matter. 
 Asked for a roadside beggar's gift, Peter said to the 
 lame man: "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, 
 walk." The ghost of indefiniteness fairly haunts twen- 
 tieth century Christians, and we fear the white monster 
 so much that we are glad to make terms with it. Folk 
 are surprisingly eager to tell and to be told that the 
 true lifewalk may be enjoyed in sundry names and 
 "isms." Eddyism, Russellism, New Thoughtism, 
 Occultism are only a few of a whole brood of cackling 
 bantams professing to have been hatched in the nest 
 of truth. It is indeed the day of the fakir, and he is 
 industriously deceiving large sections of mankind. To
 
 THE UNPURCHASABLES 39 
 
 laugh him down by quoting Barnum's aphorism, which 
 he held to be especially applicable to the American 
 people, is to smile at a tragedy too deep for tears. Nor 
 is it meeting the issue to say that such cults carry 
 within themselves the seeds of self-destruction and that 
 they soon pass into nethermost oblivion. 
 
 But there is a real solution to the problem, and it is 
 this : Let every Christian exercise such a clear, definite, 
 specific faith in the power of our Lord to impart eternal 
 life to men here and now; to fill them with joy that 
 triumphs over all sorrows; to speak forgiveness and 
 peace to sinful, troubled souls; to bring hope to the 
 despairful and strength to the burden- wearied ; to un- 
 veil the richness and vitality of another world as far 
 superior to this as the mind of God is to the mind of 
 man ; to hold every soul responsible in eternity for its 
 life in tune, and such a faith will work like a contagion 
 a contagion of Christian health, and hope, and joy, 
 and victory. One man with a definite faith in Christ 
 can chase a thousand with an indefinite guess that 
 sprawls out over the universe, thinner than the mist 
 and moonshine composing its microscopically invisible 
 backbone. Much of our Christianity is afflicted with 
 a kind of spinal meningitis. Its mental therapeutics is 
 excellent ; but it is so lame religiously as to require the 
 assistance of patent crutches, gayly made to order in 
 the imposing shops of nostrum-venders. 
 
 "It is not our duty to-day," says Eucken, "to fight 
 for a new religion ; we have but to kindle into freshness 
 of life the fathomless depths of Christianity." What 
 a challenge! What a truth! What a task! Analyze 
 the philosopher's statement, and what have we? Three 
 momentous facts : First, Christianity means freshness 
 of life. When put to the test, it has always meant just
 
 40 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 that. Again and again men and nations have fallen 
 on gray days; days of the canker, the worm, the sere 
 and yellow leaf; days when noon was blacker than mid- 
 night and multitudes went stumbling headlong into 
 unlit gulfs of despair; days when men cursed God and 
 died like beasts that perish. And lo! this chaos has 
 yielded to the Christian harmony; this aching void 
 has been filled with vast meanings ; this winter of men's 
 discontent has felt the shine of God's glowing sun from 
 behind cloud-veiled immensities; this blistering desert 
 has been carpeted with laughing flowers; these lonely 
 mountains, covered with bleak, bare and massive oaks, 
 have slipped their dead oaken giants into suits of tune- 
 ful greenness; this unfertile valley has answered the 
 far-off and near-at-hand vernal pressures with efflor- 
 escent bloomings. And what was it but the Christ- 
 ocentric tidal freshness of life billowing in upon our 
 human shores from the unemp tying oceans of God? 
 
 listen, Men, how all the builders sing! 
 sap, song, green world blossoming! 
 
 White as the hand of Moses blooms the thorn, 
 Sweet as the breath of Jesus comes the spring. 
 
 Second, Christianity contains fathomless depths. 
 Tunes without number the New Testament wells of 
 truth have seemingly been stopped. The Abrahams 
 of faith have all apparently vanished into the silent 
 land, while Philistines, ancient and modern, have filled 
 the wells digged by the faithful with earth, ofttimes 
 very coarse intellectual, scientific, and unbelieving 
 earth at that. But, fortunately, the Abrahams have 
 invariably left behind the Isaacs who dig again the 
 wells of water. And in the new digging new and 
 fathomless depths are revealed. I heard Josef Hoff-
 
 THE UNPURCHASABLES 41 
 
 man, in rendering their music, evoke such strains from 
 his piano that the spirits of Beethoven, Schubert, and 
 Chopin seemed to come back from the eternal world, 
 take unto themselves bodies wrought of delirious 
 rhythms and thunderous melodies and walk straight 
 into the music-room of three thousand souls. And the 
 old masters of the Christian faith, bowing before the 
 one Master of life and death and the realms beyond, 
 come back in answer to the call of each new epoch. 
 They send the might of their conquering faith thrilling 
 and singing through the souls of all good soldiers, as 
 they charge on and up the crimson steeps beyond which 
 ten thousand times ten thousand are garbed in the 
 woven splendor of Heaven's sundawn ! For this is the 
 quality of that religion which Fichte describes as ele- 
 vating man "above time as such, above the transient 
 and the perishable and puts him in immediate posses- 
 sion of eternity." 
 
 Third, with Christianity's freshness of life and 
 fathomless depths, any new religion, compounded of 
 Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Mohammedanism, 
 Eddyism, or any other "ism," is not only inadequate, 
 but utterly puerile and outworn clouds that hold no 
 water, broken cisterns that would quickly empty if 
 water should be turned into them. Christianity is the 
 ocean; cults are the mud-colored, bickering streams 
 that rush into it and are swallowed up. Christianity 
 is the sun; cults are the tapers that are blown out by 
 one whiff of the wind of reality. Christianity is the 
 Great Physician; cults are the penurious quacks that 
 get their practice from the hopelessly inane. Chris- 
 tianity is life fresh, fathomless, eternal life. With 
 startling vividness Christ describes the mission of cults 
 and his own : "The thief cometh not, but that he may
 
 42 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 steal, and kill, and destroy; I came that they may have 
 life, and may have it abundantly." 
 
 Abundant life, then, is Christ's own conception of 
 His mission. "In vain," says Bergson, "we force the 
 living into this or that one of our molds. All the molds 
 crack. They are too narrow, above all too rigid, for 
 what we try to put into them. Our reason, so sure 
 of itself among things inert, feels ill at ease on this 
 new ground. It would be difficult to cite a biological 
 discovery due to pure reasoning." If the philosopher 
 had undertaken an exposition of Christ's great life- 
 statement, he could not have done better than in these 
 words. For just because of its freshness of life and 
 fathomless depths, Christianity is always cracking 
 man-made molds. And while the cracking process is 
 on, the cults ply their trade. Bringing their small cups 
 of theory and dipping up tiny bits of the overflowing 
 water, they tincture it with large doses of nonsense, 
 and then go hawking it through the streets with the 
 effrontery of the thief who comes but to steal, and kill, 
 and destroy. 
 
 Meantime, it is the privilege and duty of Christians 
 to exercise a definite faith in Christ. He controls the 
 entire human field. His are the centuries, the worlds, 
 the universe. In a reminiscent mood the gifted mother 
 of the Rossettis said: "I always had a passion for 
 intellect, and my wish was that my husband should 
 be distinguished for intellect, and my children too. I 
 have had my wish, and I now wish that there were a 
 little less intellect in the family so as to allow for a 
 little more common sense." And is it too much to say, 
 in these shifting days when men, if not over-intellec- 
 tualized are certainly under-spiritualized, that the 
 Jerusalem which is above and the mother of us all,
 
 THE UNPURCHASABLES 43 
 
 devoutly wishes that her earthly children may have 
 the saving grace of that glorified common sense which 
 is of the inmost essence of Christianity? Fixing our 
 faith-illumined eyes upon the lame souls all about us, 
 let us, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, show 
 them how to walk in the midst of the years by the 
 strength of the timeless, very definitely emphasizing 
 that there is no other name under heaven or beyond it 
 whereby men may be saved. For in that name is the 
 One who whispers to humanity's listening heart : 
 
 I am the Christ of the land of rain, 
 
 The Christ of the falling, falling showers ; 
 
 I call the ancient spring to life again, 
 And the land of graves is the land of flowers. 
 
 I am the Christ of the running stream, 
 That escapes from the winter and laughs and 
 sings, 
 
 Of the broken heart, and the ruined dream, 
 And all forgotten, forsaken things. 
 
 I am the Christ of the rising moon, 
 And the setting sun, and the falling star: 
 
 I am the Christ of Life's deep rune, 
 And the Country where the lost faces are.
 
 THE TEMPLE OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 1 
 
 Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is 
 the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by 
 might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord 
 of hosts. Zech. iv. 6. 
 
 TAKEN as a whole, the text and context disclose the 
 angel's approach to the prophet and the prophet's re- 
 sponse to the angel. Without undertaking to interpret 
 the fact of angels and the method of their communi- 
 cating with men, the self-revelation of Zechariah 
 throughout the colloquy is most instructive. First of 
 all, we see him as an awakened man. "And the angel 
 that talked with me came again, and waked me, as 
 a man that is wakened out of his sleep." To be 
 awakened out of physical sleep is a profound mystery. 
 Were it not so familiar to us, the wonder of it all would 
 smite us with awe. Yet to wake up a spiritually dead 
 man is more wonderful still, belonging to that un- 
 fathomable realm lying beyond the borders of sense. 
 A second viewpoint shows Zechariah not only as wide 
 awake, but as seeing. "Behold I have seen." When 
 a man can truthfully say that, he is beginning to match 
 his mind with the heart of reality. The trouble with 
 most people is that they muddle through life without 
 seeing anything of abiding worth. Oh, yes! They 
 see the stars sometimes, but they cannot very well 
 avoid this celestial jewelry. They look at the morning 
 
 1 Delivered before the Ministerial Association of Pittsburgh, Pa., 
 Monday, Dec. 5, 1921. 
 
 44
 
 THE TEMPLE OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 45 
 
 and evening sky now and then, but how can they help 
 it? Here was a man who could see things and some- 
 thing else even the Eternal Fact behind them. But 
 being awake and capable of vision, the soul is an in- 
 sistent plier of questions. "What are these, my lord?" 
 Religion does not chloroform men; it stabs them 
 "broad awake" in every part of their being. Religion 
 stands us tip-toe on the peaks of wonder as we ask: 
 "What are these, my Father these worlds and nations 
 and confusions and agonies and joys and hopes and 
 fears?" Still another glimpse, and we have the prophet 
 in the role of listener. I think this is one of man's 
 supreme achievements. The great listener is superior 
 to the great talker, because truly great talking is pos- 
 sible only through truly great listening. At last this 
 awakened, seeing, questioning man is able to hear. 
 Hence the text, expressing one of the sublimest truths 
 that ever challenged the ears of mankind: "Then he 
 answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word 
 of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor 
 by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." 
 
 With this background of twenty-five centuries, let 
 us consider the task before the modern world. Like 
 Zerubbabel, we also have our "great mountain." It is 
 not to rebuild some physical temple destroyed by the 
 shock of war. No ; the work is far deeper and greater, 
 more radical, more difficult than that. It is ours to' 
 build the temple of Christian civilization. The 
 arduousness of the work will be manifest if we con- 
 sider a few of the rooms which the temple must contain. 
 
 There is, first of all, the Room of Christian Politics.
 
 46 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 To mention such a possibility provokes laughter and 
 cynicism in some quarters. "Christian politics!" you 
 exclaim. "Why, man, you are beside yourself. Think 
 of Russia; think of Germany; think of China; think 
 of Japan; think of Italy and France and England and 
 America! Think of Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, 
 and San Francisco! Think of these facts, and then 
 how dare you mention the idea of Christian politics in 
 the same breath?" I know something of the mingled 
 feelings of derision and despair that prompt such 
 words. If you are an American, and not a mere parti- 
 san ; moreover, if you are much more than an American 
 that is, if you are a Christian American, you have 
 thought very seriously in these years immediately fol- 
 lowing the Armistice of the sinister political forces 
 operating in our own country. They have been in 
 every political party and in no political party 
 profiteers, spoilsmen, partisans, ward heelers, Socialists, 
 Democrats, Republicans, yellow journals, clerical 
 mountebanks verily all tongues and creeds and 
 nationalities have contributed to the whole seething, 
 confusing, hate-inspired, godless business. Is it not a 
 blacker chapter than the period of reconstruction fol- 
 lowing our Civil War? At a time when America should 
 have continued to play the noble part she played in 
 the World War; and at a time, also, when we were 
 entitled to one of the greatest debates in the history 
 of nations a straightforward, nonpartisan, high- 
 minded discussion of issues involving the future of 
 America and the whole world what happened? We 
 were treated to the spectacle of a personal, partisan, 
 political brawl. Some were crying: "Back to the Con- 
 stitution!" Others were shouting: "Up with Roose- 
 velt! Down with Wilson!" Others were playing Ire-
 
 THE TEMPLE OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 47 
 
 land against England, while others were and are still 
 playing Germany against France, England, America, 
 and the rest of the world. "In politics," said Bismarck, 
 "there is no room for either hatred or love." In other 
 words, the science of politics is a kind of unprincipled 
 national and social protoplasm containing all the germs 
 of villainy and death. That is what politics signifies 
 to many. There are others, however, who believe that 
 politics can be Christianized ; they believe that politics 
 must be Christianized, or civilization itself will go down 
 before shrapnel and poisoned gas. 
 
 A second room in this unbuilt temple must be named 
 Christian Industrialism. Here, again, we apparently 
 confront the impossible. Capital and Labor are the 
 gigantic wrestlers in the arena of modern life. Ours 
 is the mechanical age. Man-power has been so multi- 
 plied by the engineer that machinery has been char- 
 acterized as "the Iron Man in International Politics." 
 But this Iron Man has two managers: he cannot get 
 on with one ; he is so strong, so many-sided, dominating 
 so many activities, that he demands two managers in- 
 stead of one. They are Capital and Labor. They are 
 the two arms, the two eyes, the two ears, the two feet 
 of this industrial giant. So far, his managers have not 
 been able to control him. And make no mistake, this 
 Iron Man is difficult to handle. Everywhere his steps 
 are heard. He walks through the bank, the factory, 
 the mine, the store, the farm, the armies, the navies, 
 the church, the school, the home. For some reason, 
 the Industrial Samson refuses to obey his managers 
 Capital and Labor. Year by year he seems to grow 
 more savage, staggering through the world in a kind 
 of blind fury, at times actually pulling the pillars of 
 the temple of law and order down upon himself and
 
 48 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 others. Surely, both managers, working together, can 
 control the Iron Man. But as yet they have not 
 learned how. One says, "I will hold his right hand," 
 while the other replies, "I will not hold his left." Or 
 one says, "I will chain his left foot," while the other 
 answers, "I will not chain his right." Meantime, the 
 Iron Man goes on striking and kicking, growing more 
 violent and unmanageable every day. Watching him 
 in his fury, his managers are asking: "Well, what are 
 we to do next?" Now, it is easy enough to take sides; 
 make charges and counter-charges; to agitate and to 
 insist upon "pitiless publicity." Let us confess that 
 these are all necessary and help us get at the root of 
 the trouble. But having reached the root, have we 
 any remedy for the wrongs in the rootf That is what 
 I want to know, and what, by the grace of God, I do 
 know. There is enough healing power in the Golden 
 Rule, applied by the Spirit of Christ, to heal all the 
 industrial wounds in the world. When men become 
 wise enough to bring in the medicine they have sys- 
 tematically thrown out the window, then and not till 
 then will this nervously sick patient named Capital 
 and Labor be cured of his ills. 
 
 Another room is Christian Education. Let no one 
 imagine, in this new world epoch, that he is fitted for 
 living by a course in the arts and sciences. He may 
 know all the literatures, and speak all the languages, 
 and understand the methods of all the laboratories, and 
 be familiar with all the political economies, and in the 
 end be nothing more than a modern Mephistopheles 
 a sneering, jeering, efficient, inhuman monster, deadly 
 with the delight of destruction and diabolical with the 
 doom of death. Behind all education for this new time, 
 we must emphasize, as never before, the meaning and
 
 THE TEMPLE OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 49 
 
 ends of education. Why are men and women to be 
 redeemed from ignorance to knowledge? What is the 
 purpose of high school, college, and university? Is it 
 simply to make thinkers, and nothing more? Is it that 
 modern people shall learn how to pick the pockets of 
 Mother Nature more scientifically? When we think 
 of the appalling ignorance in the world, and in our own 
 country, it seems like a waste of breath to ask such 
 questions. And yet, have we not seen enough of the 
 capable miseducated modern man to make us abso- 
 lutely certain that another generation of such abortive 
 work spells unspeakable disaster? 
 
 Now, just because God created man to think, to will, 
 and to love, Jesus Christ alone so coordinates our 
 human powers that we are made safe for ourselves, for 
 others, and for God. Thus, while we proceed in our 
 work to humanize and to Americanize, let us increas- 
 ingly Christianize. We must have Christian education, 
 which is the Spirit of Christ in every individual, social, 
 national, and international relationship. We must 
 surely have this or just as surely have the alternative 
 ruin and destruction on such a scale that no thought- 
 ful mind can contemplate it without dismay. "Learn 
 of Me" that is Christ's diploma to the vitally edu- 
 cated human. If the cynic or atheist replies that this 
 is vague and impracticable, my answer is : When men 
 have tried Christ's way as zealously as they have 
 applied the methods of the militarist, the politician, 
 the profiteer, and the godless scientist, it will be time 
 enough to cry failure! "It has always been a race 
 between education and catastrophe," says Mr. Wells 
 in what has been termed the most comprehensive sen- 
 tence in his "Outline of History." But to-day it is 
 plainly a race between Christian education and the
 
 60 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 other kind; and the other kind guarantees disaster on 
 a world-scale. 
 
 Still another room is Christian Internationalism. I 
 need hardly say that this is not synonymous with 
 bolshevism, syndicalism, socialism, anarchism, or any 
 one of a dozen "isms" that might be mentioned. Chris- 
 tian internationalism is the Spirit of Christ in nation 
 dealing with nation; it is the passion of Christian indi- 
 vidualism expressing itself through whole peoples; it 
 is the conviction that the same law of righteousness 
 holding between man and man likewise holds between 
 nation and nation. "Until you get rid of the idea that 
 business is the exploitation of somebody or something," 
 says one of the greatest of statesmen, "you will not 
 have come even to the frame of mind which makes 
 progress possible." Is it not also true that until 
 nations get rid of the idea that secret diplomacy and 
 national rivalries, culminating in war, are not the way 
 out of our planetary wrongs, that they cannot reach 
 that frame of mind which makes national greatness 
 possible? I am not among those who feel alike toward 
 all nations. To me America is nearer and dearer than 
 any other nation could possibly be. The fact is, I 
 haven't much respect for the person who says that he 
 loves one country just as much as another. He prob- 
 ably means that he loves none and hates all. Yet 
 loving America as I do, I would rather see America die 
 for the right than live for the wrong; for in dying 
 for the right, if need be, I know that America would 
 live forevermore ; while in living for the wrong, Amer- 
 ica would be certain to die in undying ignominy. This 
 is God's inviolable law for nations as well as for indi- 
 viduals. Stars may rot in their courses, but God's law 
 of justice cannot be repealed not even by God Him-
 
 THE TEMPLE OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 51 
 
 self, for then He would cease to be God. It was this 
 law of which Senator Thomas Corwin spoke in 1847. 
 In his indictment of America in her relations with 
 Mexico, he cited numerous examples in history in 
 which the law of retribution is executed toward nations. 
 After showing that the Great Avenger drove the 
 "eagles" of France, under Napoleon, back "to their old 
 eyrie, between the Alps, the Rhine, and the Pyrenees," 
 he said: "So it shall be with yours. You may carry 
 them to the loftiest peaks of the Cordilleras, they may 
 wave with insolent triumph in the halls of the Monte- 
 zumas, the armed men of Mexico may quail before 
 them, but the weakest hand in Mexico, uplifted 
 in prayer to the God of Justice, may call down 
 against you a Power in the presence of which the 
 iron hearts of your warriors shall be turned into 
 ashes." 
 
 Nor must we overlook the room consecrated to 
 Christian Journalism. One of the most tremendous 
 forces in the modern world is, of course, the printing 
 press. Like every great power, the press is capable of 
 evil as well as good. Books inspiring and books in- 
 sidious may issue from the same pile of complicated 
 machinery. Or, to change the figure, indecent litera- 
 ture may wind itself like a slimy serpent about the 
 soul of a nation. The more outwardly subtle and 
 attractive it is, the more deadly may be its folds and 
 fangs. Just here is the terrific problem of the moving 
 picture. Compellingly attractive, it is likewise im- 
 measurably effective for weal or woe. If they keep 
 on emphasizing their vile features, the moving picture 
 interests will compel the State to protect its childhood 
 against them. And the protection will not take the 
 form of an ineffectual censorship ; it will be so drastic
 
 62 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 as to cut into the sensitive but as yet unresponsive 
 financial nerve of the screen business. 
 
 But the particular form of publicity I now have in 
 mind is journalism. Do we realize what an octopus 
 the twentieth century newspaper is? Do not we be- 
 lieve so heartily in the liberty of the press that we are 
 somewhat blind to the license of the press? One does 
 not have to accept the whole of Upton Sinclair's indict- 
 ment of newspapers to still retain a definite impression 
 of something positively sinister in large sections of the 
 newspaper world. Grateful for the high-minded jour- 
 nalists, are we alive to the menace of the other brand? 
 Some of them are obtrusively "yellow"; others are 
 "yellow" without being obtrusively so; and the latter 
 are the most dangerous of all. Respectable iniquity is 
 to be feared more than flagrant iniquity. And why? 
 Because of its very subtlety, because of the insidious 
 and insinuating manner whereby it sends its thrust 
 home. You can kill a mad-dog with a bullet; but no 
 bullet can destroy the invisible microorganism. Yet 
 while the mad-dog slays one the microorganism slays 
 thousands. It is even so of the influence of the semi- 
 respectable newspaper as compared with the sensa- 
 tional sheet run for selfish purposes. Some publishers 
 cannot read the signs of the times because their eyes 
 are blinded by dollars and dimes; the counting room 
 is too near the editorial chair; the circulation depart- 
 ment and the public welfare are miles apart. 
 
 Meantime, who can measure the power for right 
 and wrong our newspapers wield? There are a few 
 really great independent papers in the world. But in 
 thinking of the average metropolitan daily, I am in- 
 variably reminded of a Joseph's coat-of-many-colors 
 with no Joseph inside the coat; or, varying the
 
 THE TEMPLE OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 63 
 
 metaphor, I am reminded of the voice of Jacob, the 
 hand of Esau, and the silver of Judas Iscariot. To put 
 it in a word, most newspapers certainly "yawp" too 
 much for the standing room they do not pay for. 
 
 But there is another type of journalism for which 
 too much cannot be said. I mean that large number 
 of denominational and undenominational Christian 
 weeklies. They are the salt of our journalistic earth. 
 Most of them are published at financial loss; a few 
 with perhaps a slender margin of profit. Let this be 
 said to our shame! Without the inspiring tides of 
 idealism constantly poured into the world's life by our 
 Christian editors, we should suffer untold loss in our 
 politics, schools, homes, and churches. They are 
 solvents of civilization. They clear the atmosphere. 
 They lift discussions out of partisan muck up to the 
 prophetic mountains. I think every man who reads 
 his partisan daily Republican, Democratic, Socialistic 
 would greatly profit by seriously reading some one 
 of the fine and definitely Christian weeklies. They are 
 an antidote to rabid nationalism ; they are an offset to 
 violent partisanship; they foster an atmosphere of 
 brotherhood and world-vision. 
 
 If these are some of the rooms to be built in the 
 temple of Christian civilization, how are we to ap- 
 proach our task? If the question is crucial, the answer 
 is even more so. The text contains three answers. 
 Two are wrong, but one is right. 
 
 There is, first, the answer of the voice named 
 "might." "We must reckon with humanity as it is," 
 says this voice. "Man is merely the highest animal
 
 54 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 we know; he will never be amenable to anything but 
 physical power; therefore, the best temple man may 
 hope to build upon earth is by might." Strangely 
 enough, the modern voice and the voice in my text 
 are identical. For this word "might," according to 
 scholars, is packed with varied meanings. First it sig- 
 nifies army, force, that which is brought about only 
 through physical coercion. A second meaning is 
 wealth, the bribing, buying power of money. "Just 
 wave the golden wand over human hearts; money 
 talks; people can ultimately understand no other lan- 
 guage; use it abundantly, and all will be well." A 
 third meaning of "might" is valor the vast energies 
 of heart and will represented by a CsBsar or a Napoleon. 
 Perhaps our nearest modern synonyms are "kultur" 
 and "efficiency." 
 
 There is a second voice. It says the temple must 
 be built by "power." In a broad sense, we are told 
 that "power" here denotes capacity, cleverness, diplo- 
 macy. Is it not significant that the word here trans- 
 lated power is also translated by two other words in 
 the Old Testament? Once it is rendered "lizard." 
 Did you ever lean upon the handle of your hoe and 
 watch a rusty lizard run along an old rail fence in 
 corn-growing time? Well, it is a picture never to be 
 forgotten by a boy brought up on the old-fashioned 
 farm. Creeping along the rail, the lizard stops ever 
 and anon and "lifts and listens." It is a flesh-and-blood 
 exhibition of stealth. Still another translation of the 
 word power is "chameleon." This is most suggestive 
 indeed, because we are at once inducted into the realm 
 of politics. There are some fifty-nine species of the 
 chameleon, which is perhaps something near the num- 
 ber of political species extant in this and other lands
 
 THE TEMPLE OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 65 
 
 to-day. More pertinent still, the chameleon possesses 
 the extraordinary power of changing its color to suit 
 its immediate environment. Politically speaking, it 
 denotes adaptability, smartness, sharpness in a word, 
 that quick-change type of character so familiar in the 
 world of diplomacy. Is not the dress of many a so- 
 called statesman of the chameleon style? A father and 
 his son were in the visitors' gallery of the United 
 States Senate. "Father," inquired the boy, "who is 
 that old gentleman that's praying?" "He is the chap- 
 lain." "Does he pray for the Senators, father?" "No, 
 my son," answered the father, after a moment's reflec- 
 tion. "When he comes in and looks around and sees 
 the Senators sitting there, he prays for the country." 
 
 Fortunately, there is a third voice. It says: "The 
 temple of Christian civilization cannot be built by 
 might nor power; it must be built by My Spirit, saith 
 the Lord of hosts." Suppose we approach this truth 
 along two paths. Negatively, it thrusts us far beyond 
 an impersonal universe. And to break through these 
 huge walls of matter is a task of the first magniture, is 
 it not? For man has a definite setting in the cosmos. 
 He is related to stars, atoms, corpuscles, atmosphere, 
 electricity, ether indeed to all those forms of uni- 
 versal energy called magnetic, radiant, kinetic, molecu- 
 lar, and gravitational. On his physical side, also, man 
 is akin to the vegetable, protozoic, and metazoic eras 
 and mammalian kingdoms. Yet think! Before there 
 was a universe, there was the Holy One that inhabiteth 
 eternity ; before there was an electron or a world, there 
 was God. "In the beginning God created the heavens 
 and the earth." Before there was even the promise 
 of man upon the earth, there was God, and, therefore, 
 when our solar system has become a sunless ice-floe
 
 56 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 drifting through darkened seas of space, God will still 
 be God. Behind all forms of energy, all star-clusters, 
 all universes known and unknown, all forms of life 
 that have come and gone or shall yet come and go, it 
 is eternally "by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." 
 
 Yet, positively and in the light of Christ, all this is 
 scarcely more than a soulless impersonalism devoid 
 of redemptive meaning to mankind. If we believe not 
 only in the God of Jesus, but in the Jesus of God as 
 Newton Clarke was wont to say what a transfigured, 
 personal universe is this in which we live and move 
 and have our being ! Then are we assured that Some- 
 one and not merely Somewhat has broken through the 
 worlds of energy and matter into the souls of men. 
 Immanent in all things, He is personal in all hearts 
 and wills. Thus, in our Lord's going away, do we be- 
 hold the wisdom of the Divine expedience. Vanishing 
 outwardly, He becomes inwardly vital. Then do men 
 learn to walk with majesty the great ways of being, 
 because He dwells within them. Other teachers have 
 left their own scholars to interpret them to after ages. 
 When Socrates died, Plato and Aristotle caught up the 
 Socratic torch and passed it forward to waiting hands. 
 Jesus the Christ, on the contrary, left only one Teacher, 
 the Holy Spirit of God. Disciples He left Peter and 
 John and James; but they and all the millions since, 
 are learners of Christ, taught, if at all truly, by the 
 Holy Spirit. Jesus purposely left no successor in the 
 form of apostle, prophet, priest, or pope. There would 
 be multitudes of servants and witnesses and martyrs; 
 but there would be only one Teacher, one Comforter., 
 one Guide. "I have yet many things to say unto you," 
 He said in the Upper Room and still says, "but ye can- 
 not bear them now. Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of
 
 THE TEMPLE OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 57 
 
 of truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the truth : 
 for He shall not speak from Himself; but what things, 
 soever He shall hear, these shall He speak: and He 
 shall declare unto you the things that are to come. He 
 shall glorify Me : for He shall take of Mine, and declare 
 it unto you." 
 
 in 
 
 Consider, finally, the encouragement in the third 
 voice for our task. Primarily, we are made to realize 
 that God is more interested in His world-wide work 
 than all men together can possibly be. This is no 
 apology for human laziness. We cannot shirk our part; 
 we have, as men and women, something to do that we 
 must do. We are workers together with God ; and the 
 work is urgent, imperative, destiny-fraught. At the 
 same time, is it not heartening to know that there is 
 One Who runs and does not weary; that while genera- 
 tions appear and vanish, the Infinite Toiler works on 
 forever. We work according to timepieces named 
 youth, middle age, and decline. Quickly enough the 
 hands of our physical clocks come to a fateful pause. 
 But God's timepiece is Eternity; the ages and mil- 
 leniums are only minutes ski prang over the face of 
 His dial-plate. "Where we were," says Peary, recalling 
 his discovery of the North Pole, "one day and one 
 night constituted a year, a hundred such days and 
 nights constituted a century." Once only in thousands 
 of years does one man reach a place of vantage on the 
 earth where days are as years and years are as cen- 
 turies. But God is not straitened by relations of Space 
 or Time. Spatially speaking, God is everywhere, and 
 "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a 
 thousand years as one day." I think it was a high
 
 58 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 moment in the life of Zerubbabel and his fellow workers 
 when Zechariah recovered this truth for them. Their 
 undertaking was so immense; their resources were so 
 slender; at last they were so tired and weary as to be 
 on the verge of collapse. Then comes the prophet's 
 vision of the olive trees, on either side of the candle- 
 stick, close to the golden spouts, "that empty the golden 
 oil out of themselves." Important as it is, human 
 agency may be dispensed with. We modern people do 
 not think so, and from some viewpoints it is not well 
 that we should. Most of us are altogether too willing 
 to let God do it all. Nevertheless, for confused minds 
 and frayed nerves, for creatures, of a day with tasks 
 big enough for time and eternity, there is a mighty 
 encouragement in knowing that God is more pro- 
 foundly concerned in the renovation and completion of 
 the world and the universe than all the intelligences 
 within them. God buries the generations, but His 
 regenerations go unceasingly on forever and ever. 
 
 A second lesson is this: God is always using 
 "might" and "power" in the realization of His purposes. 
 Here is one of the strange facts in the history of 
 nations and individuals. Sometimes a whole society 
 apparently takes the wrong path. Selfish, brutal, non- 
 Christian, denying its own well-being, a State does 
 that which is evil in the sight of the Lord and in the 
 sight of man. Nobody would dare condone its action. 
 And yet, is not history itself witness to the truth that 
 nations in their rise and fall, even by their "might" 
 and "power," have been made to consummate the 
 larger purposes of God for mankind. It is this thought 
 at the back of his mind which causes the thinker's 
 reflection on the Hohenzollern dynasty. Behold these 
 blustering militarists as the avowed masters of the
 
 THE TEMPLE OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 59 
 
 world ! But in the day of reckoning, they are like so 
 many puppets fastened to the end of an unbreakable 
 string and made 7 to dance to a tune they never expected 
 to hear. This is not the highest kind of sovereignty, 
 to be sure; that is, it is not the paternal or Christian 
 type, such as Christ's revelation of the Divine Father- 
 hood implies. Yet it is a fact, none the less. Nations 
 and individuals may go squarely against right and 
 mercy and brotherhood; while breaking God's Heart 
 they will break their own; but even in the misuse of 
 their "might" and "power" the Almighty Spirit em- 
 ploys them in the attainment of far-off ends. Sending 
 themselves into bondage, they shall not come out of 
 their self-wrought imprisonment until they have paid 
 the last farthing of moral obligation and righteous 
 endeavor. Hence it comes that honesty is not simply 
 the best policy; honesty is imperative and ultimately 
 absolute, because the universe is governed by an honest 
 God Who cannot furnish a hiding-place for one dis- 
 honest soul. 
 
 The third lesson is: Small ventures for God and 
 man are of irresistible majesty and power. "Who hath 
 despised the day of small things?" Why, nobody but 
 the mentally blind and the wickedly weak and the 
 morally stupid ! The day of small things is none other 
 than the day of God. The big, noisy days are of man ; 
 but the quiet, untrumpeted, despicably small days are 
 of God. Was it not in a day of small things that God 
 was enfleshed; that the Church was born; that the 
 Reformation was conceived; that America was dis- 
 covered? We now speak of these as great epochs and 
 creative eras. Certainly! It is much easier to see 
 backward than forward, or than to look around even 
 now and distinguish anything Divine afoot in the
 
 60 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 world! Yet the Invisible Sower is this very hour 
 striding through the furrows of mankind. Silently He 
 sows, silently His harvest grows. God's best seeds are 
 prophets and teachers and dreamers and servants and 
 martyrs. Like the grains of wheat, except these also 
 fall into the ground and die, they abide by themselves 
 alone alone! and, therefore, unprolific. But death, 
 being the servant of life, releases their deathless ener- 
 gies and they become one with the undying. "I shall 
 have more to say when I am dead" this is the watch- 
 word of those who toil through the day of small things. 
 And why? Not, surely, because of small things or 
 large things! But, rather, because of "the Eyes of 
 the Lord, which run to and fro throughout all the 
 earth." Here are Eyes big enough for the world, for 
 the universe. Here are Eyes that can discern what 
 ought to be done, and then find a way to do it. Here 
 are Eyes that can see beyond national boundaries, 
 social circles, intellectual cliques, capitalistic schemes, 
 bolshevik class consciousness, religious exclusiveness. 
 Here are Eyes that laid the foundations of the universe 
 not on galaxies but on electrons ; that see not only huge 
 constellations but invisible atomic systems; that 
 understand how all large things grow out of small 
 things from universes to nations, from nations to in- 
 dividuals; that know the cosmos itself is compelled 
 to bear witness to the moral certitude that "many shall 
 be last that are first, and first that are last." So, as 
 the workmen go about their task, they chant the music 
 of their building-song: 
 
 Happy he whose inward ear 
 Angel comfortings can hear 
 
 O'er the rabble's laughter; 
 And, while hatred's faggots burn,
 
 THE TEMPLE OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION 61 
 
 Glimpses through the smoke discern 
 Of the good hereafter. 
 
 Knowing this, that never yet 
 Share of Truth was vainly set, 
 
 In the world's wide fallow; 
 After hands shall sow the seed, 
 After hands from hill and mead, 
 
 Reap the harvests yellow. 
 
 Thus, with somewhat of the Seer, 
 Must the moral pioneer 
 
 From the Future borrow; 
 Clothe the waste with dreams of grain, 
 And, on midnight's sky of rain, 
 
 Paint the golden morrow 1
 
 THE CHRISTIAN'S EUREKA 
 
 And hereby know we that we know Him, if we keep 
 His commandments. I. John ii. 3. 
 
 ST. JOHN was an expert in spiritual science. He 
 was a master of the forces which operate in the 
 spiritual realm. The secret of his spiritual mastery lay 
 in his profound God-consciousness. A great modern 
 saint has said: "To believe in God means something 
 fiery and glowing." And John, the beloved, was a 
 first century fulfillment of this august ideal. There 
 was something fiery, something glowing, in his belief 
 in God. As we read his words now, that inwoven fire 
 of his heart, begotten by the infolding power of the 
 Holy Spirit, flashes out in unconsuming flame. His 
 consciousness of God was more real than the physical 
 universe. The world might drop from under him. 
 Stars might be snuffed out like candles. Suns might 
 be blown out like matches. Yet one somehow feels 
 that John would still get on magnificently. 
 
 Of course, he received superior training in the school 
 of God-consciousness. For did not his head rest upon 
 the pulsing bosom of humanized Deity? Did not his 
 ear, as Hugo says, hear the beating of God's heart? 
 Did not his hand feel the grasp of enfleshed Godhead? 
 Did not his eyes behold how the Eternal looked as He 
 peered through human windows? Surely, John had 
 most excellent training in the final reality of God- 
 vividness. John Henry Newman was converted at fif- 
 
 62
 
 THE CHRISTIAN'S EUREKA 63 
 
 teen. Many years afterwards he wrote: "Of inward 
 conversion I am still more certain than that I have 
 hands and feet." Just multiply this a thousandfold. 
 Then will you begin to approach the awful, divine 
 certainty of inward conversion as manifested by the 
 son of Zebedee. 
 
 Now, one of the imperial facts of the Christian con- 
 sciousness, according to John, is this : Every man may 
 know that he knows God. Does it make us wince? 
 Does it make us stagger? It ought not. It ought to 
 fill us with a majestic feeling of bigness. It ought to 
 break upon us a sense of unrealized spiritual spacious- 
 ness. It ought to make us cry out like a man smother- 
 ing to death. It ought to make us shout like a man on 
 a desert island to a passing ship. It ought to make us 
 ashamed to sit still upon our piles of golden dirt. Let 
 us face John's colossal fact. 
 
 Knowing that we know God is a personally progres- 
 sive process. "And hereby we know that we know 
 Him." Or, better still, I think, and more in tune with 
 the original: "And herein we come to know that we 
 know Him." Or, let us make it first person, singular, 
 and the idea will be driven home : "And herein I come 
 to know that I know Him." 
 
 Assuredly, we must make full allowance for all 
 primary and instantaneous manifestations of God to 
 the soul. Christian history fairly bristles with them. 
 They fit into the Christian firmament as the stars fit 
 into the sky. The man who denies them is either a 
 fool, or a knave, or both. Spiritual revolutions, whole 
 civilizations have come to birth in the epochal hour
 
 64 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 of sudden individual conversion. Witness St. Paul. 
 Witness St. Augustine. Witness untold millions, 
 living and dead, who, in some tumultuous, crucial 
 moment have realized the. dawning of spiritual self- 
 consciousness, through Christ Jesus. But just now we 
 are to remember that John is not writing to unchris- 
 tian people. He is writing to "my little children." 
 He is writing to those of whom he says : "Beloved, now 
 are we the children of God, and it is not yet made mani- 
 fest what we shall be." These are the people to whom 
 he seems to say: "Knowing that we know God is a 
 personally progressive process. And herein we come 
 to know that we know Him." 
 
 Well, what does John mean? I think the truth is 
 inexpressibly sublime. He means just this: Every 
 soul must know God for itself. No other soul can 
 know God for my soul. No other soul can know God 
 for your soul. Every other created spirit in the uni- 
 verse may know God. Yet am I compelled to know 
 Him for myself, and not another. Compelled? Yes! 
 But O, what a glorious compulsion it is! How it 
 swings the soul out into the spaces of spiritual freedom ! 
 How it thrills one with a sense of his spiritual birth- 
 right! "But it is so hard," you say. "I have tried it." 
 Perhaps that is just the trouble, my friend. You have 
 tried it. You have insisted upon doing it all yourself. 
 Suppose you give God a chance. Suppose you subdue 
 that will long enough to push it up alongside the will 
 of God. Suppose, in a word, you surrender your life 
 to God. Mayhap you are too active, too strenuous, 
 too noisy. Suppose you practice genuine meditation 
 for a little. You will not find it an easy thing to do. 
 Liddon defined meditation as putting oneself down be- 
 fore a truth and waiting to see what that truth says
 
 THE CHRISTIAN'S EUREKA 65 
 
 to you. Suppose, then, you become wisely still before 
 God. Then pray, in Christ's holy name, that God's 
 own stillness may steal into your soul. For Eucken is 
 right in saying that the spiritual task is beset by enor- 
 mous complexities. But "in particular, the danger lest 
 spiritual work should be subordinated to the power of 
 the merely human." And the merely human, divorced 
 from the positively divine, always results in the inner 
 emptiness, the invisible anarchy. 
 
 No, my friend, knowing that you know God is not 
 hard, if you go about it in the right way. But it is 
 absolutely impossible if you go about it in the wrong 
 way. You might as well try to reach the North Pole 
 by ascending to the top of your chimney, as to really 
 and savingly know God, other than by the truth as it is 
 in Christ. "I am the truth ! " How peremptorily, how 
 majestically, how Godlike it rings out! Some phi- 
 losophers talk about truth as if it were a sky-rocket 
 shot into the night. Away up in the air somewhere an 
 explosion occurs. Then myriad, fiery globes of dazzling 
 colors coruscate and gleam and sparkle. Then the 
 globes dwindle into dots of fading flame. Then the 
 vanishing dots of fading flame vanish into nothingness. 
 And the face of night is as black as ever. Well, Christ 
 is not that kind of truth. He is not a philosophic sky- 
 rocket. He does not shoot a ray of light into the 
 brain and say: "Brain, be brilliant." He does not 
 drop a luminous spark into the will and say: "Will, be 
 obedient." He does not thrust a candle into the soul 
 and say: "Soul, be light." No : there is no such frac- 
 tional fragmentariness in our Lord. He lights up the 
 whole man. He illuminates the entire human organ- 
 ism. Instead of setting a bright light in the window 
 of one faculty, that it may signal to a pale light in the
 
 66 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 window of another faculty, He pours Himself the 
 Life, the Light, the Truth into the hidden center of 
 human nature. From that center radiates the light 
 which makes luminous the whole man the body, the 
 soul, the spirit. 
 
 Why, Christ Christianizes the soul as the sun 
 atmospheres the earth with summer. How does the 
 sun bring summer to our world? By painting the daisy 
 white and golden and forgetting to dye the rose cream 
 and crimson? By making the corn green and forgetting 
 to green the "emerald meadows"? By striking song 
 through the robin's throat and forgetting to pour music 
 through the cardinal's voice? By unfolding the peach 
 blossom and forgetting to congeal the oak's sap into an 
 acorn? By ripening the strawberry and forgetting to 
 ripen the apple? By renewing the face of nature and 
 forgetting to renew the face of man? Ah, no! That 
 is not the way the sun brings summer to our dear old 
 earth. Somehow he blows his warm breath in behind 
 everything. Then there is a stir in every seed. Then 
 there is a throb in every plant. Then there is a pulse 
 in every tree. Then there is a warble in every bird. 
 Then there is a glow in every face. Everything seems 
 to whisper: "I am in the summer time. I am in the 
 summer zone. I am in the summer atmosphere. I am 
 in the summer world. I am drinking brimming goblets 
 of summer shine. The sun hath wooed and won me. 
 I am all radiant in the richness of his life and love." 
 So is it with Christ and the soul. When He comes, the 
 complete man begins to pulse and glow. Dead facul- 
 ties begin to bud and blossom. Decayed areas of being 
 begin to sprout. Waste places begin to leap and sing 
 with joy and hope. Unrealized capacities are flooded 
 with thought. The whole man moves forward in-
 
 THE CHRISTIAN'S EUREKA 67 
 
 ward, outward, upward, Godward. For the Christian 
 is a vast sunshine recorder, because he is abidingly sun- 
 shining in the eternal summerliness. 
 
 Does it still seem hard and strange? Let me ask 
 you : Is it hard and strange to let the light-waves beat 
 in upon your eyes? For untold centuries they have 
 been on their way to meet your eye. Now, when those 
 light-waves arrive from far off worlds, is it hard for 
 your eye to enter them in, that you may behold the 
 face of your friend? Well, on the night before He died, 
 our Lord said: "Let not your hearts be troubled. 
 When I have died to redeem mankind; when I have 
 laid down my life and taken it again; when I have 
 ascended back into yonder heavens out of which I 
 came ; when I have been glorified, I will not leave you 
 comfortless. I will not leave you sunless. I will not 
 leave you lightless. I will send you another Com- 
 forter. I will be as light-waves to your souls." 
 
 ii 
 
 That every soul may know God, is one of the funda- 
 mental concepts of Christianity. The Master taught 
 it with insistent and unbroken emphasis. It is a truth 
 with which the writings of St. John overflow. He 
 states it now in one form, now in another, but always 
 with clear-cut definiteness. Knowing that we know 
 God is one of John's rock-ribbed affirmations. In one 
 great passage he gives both the fact and the method 
 of such knowledge. "Anjd herein we come to know 
 that we know Him" there is the mighty fact, a per- 
 sonally progressive process, if you please. Then he 
 states the law, the conditions of all effectual knowledge 
 of God. It is this: "If we keep His commandments."
 
 68 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 "But it is so hard to attain this definite knowledge," 
 I hear some one say. "The process is so very difficult." 
 Ah ! the trouble, then, is with the process? But after 
 all, is this personally progressive process of knowing 
 that we know God, so hard? Now, it seems to me that 
 I myself am a much harder proposition than the 
 process. It seems to me that I am much more un- 
 willing to have the process vitally and continuously 
 operative in my spirit, than is the loving Father God 
 willing and waiting to make it so. Yet St. John knows 
 that herein is life, love, and peace. That is just why, 
 I take it, he lays down this essential condition of 
 spiritual knowledge: "If we keep His command- 
 ments." There is both an internal and external sig- 
 nificance in that pregnant phrase "to keep." It sug- 
 gests a thoroughgoing aliveness of the soul to God. It 
 cannot be comprehended by ritual and ceremonial. For 
 Christianity is not a system of religious mechanics. 
 It is rather a spiritual movement in abounding vitali- 
 ties. And John is insisting, through Gospel and Epistle, 
 that knowledge of God is conditional upon hearty, 
 whole-souled obedience. 
 
 In particular, his guns are turned upon the fortress 
 of Gnosticism. Mere intellectual enlightenment is the 
 thing John is bombarding. This is one of the deadly 
 enemies we need to drive from his false citadel to-day. 
 Principal Forsyth began his great address before the 
 Congregational Union at Sheffield, England, in these 
 words : "I have often said that Christianity is at this 
 moment (all unknown to most Christians) passing 
 through a graver crisis than any it has encountered 
 since the Gnosticism of the second century provoked a 
 mortal conflict which turned Christianity into the 
 Catholic Church. The Church won then. But what is
 
 THE CHRISTIAN'S EUREKA 69 
 
 all our Christian effort worth if the decision go against 
 us now?" 
 
 For Gnosticism, whether in the Church or out of it, 
 whether in the pulpit or the philosopher's chair, is 
 always prouder of its cut-and-dried intellectualism 
 than of its Christian spirituality. Naturally, but not 
 altogether paradoxically, it fights like a Turk, when 
 confronted with this accusation. That is, it fights with 
 pneumatic words for weapons. Still, it is hardly a 
 question of inflated words, I think. It is a question of 
 tragic fact. It is a question of chilled religious condi- 
 tions. It is a question of an unspiritual atmosphere 
 which men breathe. Uproariously insisting that wis- 
 dom began and will therefore perish with them, they 
 are little other than galvanized corpses parading as 
 Christianized bipeds. Of course they get nowhere. 
 They chew over frayed and worn theories, some thou- 
 sands of years old. Then one day, after their intellec- 
 tual cud is quite hard and dry, they suddenly blow 
 these petrified theories forth upon the world. Then, 
 with their wisdom-goggles cocked at the proper 
 angle, they wait for a religious revolution. They por- 
 tend a cataclysmic intellectual upheaval. But when 
 both fail to materialize, then our modern Gnostics 
 forthwith explain what their propaganda does not 
 mean. 
 
 Now, John affirms, there is no vitalized and vitalizing 
 Christianity apart from obedience to God, as revealed 
 in Christ. Even Aristotle insisted that in morals 
 knowledge divorced from practice is worthless. The 
 Greek's virtuous man has to perform virtuous acts. 
 "First, knowingly; secondly, from deliberate prefer- 
 ence, and deliberate preference for the sake of acts (and 
 not any advantages resulting from them) ; and, thirdly,
 
 70 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 with firm and unvarying purpose." Still, Aristotle's 
 virtuous man is not so tall, from his shoulders upwards, 
 as St. John's Christianized man. Aristotle's man may 
 serve any of the warring gods of Olympus, which one is 
 a matter of small moment. John's man must obey the 
 God of Christ Jesus. Every Christian has the privilege 
 of proving that he knows God. But there is only one 
 method of making his hypothesis burn with the white 
 heat of Christian reality. It is to keep, inwardly and 
 outwardly, His commandments. 
 
 Moreover, while the apostle is a startlingly original 
 thinker, yet this truth of knowing that we know God 
 did not originate with him. I think I can tell almost 
 the very day that its germ fell into John's heart. He 
 is not the wise old man who writes this letter. No ! It 
 is away back in his springtime. His nature is just 
 beginning to feel the divine ploughshare. The Good 
 Husbandman is only commencing to tread the furrows 
 of his being. The good seed is being sown for the first 
 time in the rich, responsive soil of his soul. Ah! yes, it 
 is away down the stream of years we have to go even 
 from John the Aged to John the Younger. The heav- 
 enly songsters are only awaking to song in his heart. 
 For him the buds of the Tree of Life are just beginning 
 to unroll. I think it was upon a feast day in old 
 Jerusalem. Then and there did this ripened truth of 
 his age begin to stir in John's soul. The Jews are hard 
 upon his Master's track. He is shunted into Galilee, 
 then back again into Judea. Like a pack of ravenous 
 wolves, they are bent on having His blood. Even His 
 brethren taunted Him. Even His brethren carped at 
 Him. Nevertheless, in the midst of the feast Jesus 
 went into the temple and taught. The Jews marveled 
 and said: "How knoweth this man letters, having
 
 THE CHRISTIAN'S EUREKA 71 
 
 never learned?" His answer came clear as the noon- 
 day. It is still vibrant like the golden tones of a cathe- 
 dral bell, ringing through life's morning, noontide, and 
 sundown. "My teaching is not Mine, but His that sent 
 Me. If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know 
 of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak 
 from Myself." And young St. John heard these death- 
 less words. Their meaning shot into his inmost soul. 
 Now old St. John is writing down once again the words 
 upon which young St. John first began to live. "And 
 herein we come to know that we know Him, if we keep 
 His commandments." 
 
 This truth was never more keenly and comprehen- 
 sively phrased than by Robertson of Brighton. Ap- 
 pointed chaplain to the sheriff in 1852, he preached at 
 the assizes, which were held at Lewes. Taking for his 
 text John, vii. 17, he delivered his masterful sermon on 
 "Obedience the Organ of Spiritual Knowledge." Stop- 
 ford Brooke, his biographer, says: 
 
 "It was curious, I have been told, to watch the pew 
 set apart for the judges Mr. Justice Coleridge and 
 Mr. Baron Parke. Its occupants, on the conclusion of 
 the 'afternoon service/ expecting nothing to disturb 
 their intellect, settled themselves into decent postures, 
 full of ease, for their customary reverie. But before 
 three minutes of the sermon had passed by, their 
 attention was riveted, their position changed, and they 
 listened with evident interest to a discourse of forty 
 minutes in length. The conclusion of the first sermon 
 was remembered well : 'From the trial-hour of Christ 
 from the cross of the Son of God there arises the 
 principle, to which His life bore witness, that the first 
 lesson of Christian life is this be true; and the second 
 this be true ; and the third this be true.' "
 
 72 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 So, let us learn it once and forever: Obedience is 
 the key, obedience is the organ of spiritual knowledge. 
 There is, because there can be, no other. An old axiom 
 runs: "Obey the law of a force, and the force will obey 
 you." Obey the law of atoms, and atoms will obey 
 you. Obey the law of electrons, and electrons will obey 
 you. Obey the law of gravitation, and gravitation will 
 obey you. Obey the law of light, and light will obey 
 you. "So far, so good!" you say. But let us go on: 
 Obey the law of spiritual knowledge, and spiritual 
 knowledge will obey you. Why do we become suddenly 
 and emphatically unscientific just here? Why do men 
 become masters of atoms, electrons, and microbes, and 
 are yet naively content to leave uninvaded this definite 
 realm of spiritual truth, this enriching zone of reward- 
 ing reality? Surely they must be afflicted with a blind- 
 ness which the penetrating power of radium fails to 
 search out. They must have a dimness of vision which 
 the brilliance of electricity cannot expel. They must 
 have a cold, icelike, inner deadness, which the warmth 
 of no culture can resuscitate. Wherefore, we must seek 
 the warm, wooing, glowing light of Him who is the 
 light of the world. "There was the true light, even the 
 light which lighteth every man, coming into the world. 
 He was in the world, and the world was made through 
 Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His 
 own, and they that were His own received Him not. 
 But as many as received Him, to them gave He the 
 right to become children of God, even to them that 
 believe on His name: who were born, not of blood, 
 nor of the the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, 
 but of God."
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 Thy Kingdom come. Luke xi. 2. 
 
 WE are sometimes reminded that the petitions in the 
 Lord's Prayer are paralleled in the Talmud. Conse- 
 quently, the former lacks originality. As a matter of 
 fact, there is a striking resemblance in several of the 
 petitions, if not in the entire seven. Nevertheless, the 
 view that the Great Prayer is therefore on the same 
 level with Talmudic and other writings is not well 
 sustained. I have heard that the test of originality is 
 not in saying a thing first, but in saying it best. A 
 deeper expression of the truth, it seems to me, is not 
 either saying a thing first or best, but in saying it with 
 the accent of finality. The originality of Jesus, then, is 
 not merely a matter of words or even of thoughts. His 
 supremacy in these is unquestionable. Yet there is a 
 backlying matter of profounder import. It is the Mas- 
 ter's personality, His character, His being. What He 
 was and is constitutes the uniqueness of our Lord. 
 Therefore, whatever He touches takes unto itself a new 
 distinction. It is because they are stamped with His 
 own personality that these seven petitions have super- 
 lative worth. They may have been repeated a million 
 tunes before ; but the moment they were taken up into 
 Christ's thought and voiced by His lips, a new epoch 
 in the evolution and history of prayer was ushered in. 
 
 The petition which forms my text expresses one of 
 the great and familiar ideas of Christianity. Men's 
 73
 
 74 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 thoughts have always centered in the Kingdom of God. 
 They have looked and prayed and worked for it the 
 ages through; they will continue looking and praying 
 and working for it until it comes in all its Christian 
 reality. My purpose at present is to lay what I think a 
 needed emphasis upon the Kingdom in its wholeness. 
 When one considers the eternity and grandeur of the 
 thought, what foolish words have I spoken! For "there 
 is recognized/' says a qualified student, "in Scripture 
 Old Testament and New Testament alike a natural 
 and universal kingdom or dominfoil of God, embracing 
 all objects, persons, and events, all doings of individuals 
 and nations, all operations and changes of nature and 
 history, absolutely without exception, which is the basis 
 on which a higher kind of kingdom a moral and spirit- 
 ual kingdom is to be built." Is it because of its 
 vastness that we are tempted to think so fragmentarily 
 of the Higher Kingdom? It may be so. On the other 
 hand, our fragmentariness in this matter may be due 
 to the fact that we are developing fragmentary habits 
 of thought and life. 
 
 Consider, first, the origin of the Kingdom of God. 
 It did not originate with history or even time itself. 
 Undoubtedly the Kingdom, or Realm of God, has a 
 history in tune. Yet we sometimes forget, in our nar- 
 row and parochial outlooks, that the Kingdom of God 
 is older than history, older than the ages. We must 
 date its beginning with God and God never had a 
 beginning! I am putting the matter in this way be- 
 cause most of us need the scourge of eternal whips. 
 We hearken so much to the humming of the tiny tern-
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD 75 
 
 poral bees forever drumming their ditties at our ears 
 that we need to hear the booming surge of billows 
 rolling in from the deeps of infinite seas. Now one of 
 these billows, surely, is in the origin of the Kingdom 
 of God. Before there was a universe, or a world, or a 
 man, the Everlasting Kingdom was born in the mind 
 and heart of Godhead. Yet do not most of us treat this 
 imperial truth as if it were a kind of after-thought 
 thrust into time and history? 
 
 Take the earth and the universe as an illustration of 
 this larger concept of the Kingdom. Our planet is 
 quite old, authorities say many millions of years. Also, 
 from certain viewpoints, the earth is very large. But 
 in comparison with the universe the earth is neither old 
 nor large. Speaking after the manner of men, there are 
 worlds so much older and larger than ours that they 
 are as a grayhead to an infant, as a mountain to a 
 midget. In other words, the universe did not begin to 
 be with the birth of our world out of the firemist. Nor 
 did the Kingdom of God begin with time, or history, or 
 the Bible. It is as much older and greater than these 
 as the universe is older and greater than the compara- 
 tively youthful planet on which we live. For the King- 
 dom of God is primarily of the heavens and the eterni- 
 ties. No seer first foresaw it; no prophet first foretold 
 it ; no poet first visualized it. It began first in the Heart 
 of God ; it is the irruption of Godhead into humanity 
 and history. 
 
 Now, why dwell upon this highly speculative truth in 
 our emphatically practical day? For two reasons. 
 First, the only way to be truly practical is to be truly 
 spiritual. We know that men are spirits; but men see 
 so much of each other in their bodily forms that they 
 are tempted to think overmuch of the physical rather
 
 76 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 than the spiritual nature of human beings. Yet, in the 
 last analysis, we manifest our wisest and deepest con- 
 cerns for the physical environment of humankind in so 
 far as we truly appreciate their spiritual backgrounds. 
 Why are we so tremendously interested in the physical 
 well-being of our brothers to-day? Just because we 
 are growing a profounder conception of brotherhood. 
 But brotherhood is essentially spiritual ; and the spirit- 
 ual is not measured in terms of centuries or nations or 
 communities ; it is not old or young or little or large ; it 
 is godlike "the breath of God in timeless things." 
 Human brotherhood, a spiritual reality, is bottomed 
 upon the Fatherhood of God, and the Realm of God is 
 rooted in His Fatherhood. Does not this send us 
 straight to the origin of the Kingdom? And are not 
 the coastal regions of our human frontiers so much in 
 review that a glimpse of our spiritual hinterlands 
 proves bracing and wholesome? 
 
 A second reason for dwelling upon the origin of the 
 Kingdom is this: The big, creative souls are jealous 
 lest their circumference should split off from and lose 
 contact with their center. I find this definite centrality 
 in prophets and seers, ancient and modern. "Thine, 
 Lord," says David, "is the greatness, and the power, 
 and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all 
 that is in the heavens and in the earth is Thine ; Thine 
 is the Kingdom, Lord, and Thou art exalted as Head 
 above all." Not less loftily does Isaiah speak: "Lift 
 up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth 
 beneath ; for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, 
 and the earth shall wax old like a garment; and they 
 that dwell therein shall die in like manner; but My 
 salvation shall be forever, and My righteousness shall 
 not be abolished." Here are minds that have crossed
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD 77 
 
 the near frontiers of being to dwell in the far yet real 
 hinterlands. And why? Because, to keep the circum- 
 ference of their being true, they were compelled to keep 
 their centrality deep. 
 
 Turning from the ancients to the moderns, we hear 
 Immanuel Kant saying: "Man is a member of a king- 
 dom of ends." Yet a kingdom of ends is included in the 
 Kingdom of God, which Hort defines as "the world of 
 invisible laws by which God is ruling and blessing His 
 creatures." These invisible laws are a world within a 
 world, "a cosmos within a cosmos; they come direct 
 from Heaven or from God." Witness, also, the words 
 of Josiah Royce: "Dogmatically, then, I state what, 
 indeed, if there were time, I ought to expound and 
 defend on purely rational grounds. God and His world 
 are one. And this unity is not a dead natural fact. It 
 is the unity of a conscious life, in which, in the course 
 of infinite time, a Divine plan, an endlessly complex 
 and yet definitely spiritual idea, gets expressed in the 
 lives of countless finite beings and yet with the unity 
 of a single universal life." I have quoted, as you see, 
 from these prophets and seers almost at random; but 
 remember that there is nothing random or aimless in 
 the course of their thought. It flows, as Lotze might 
 say, with "the unity of an onward marching melody," 
 because it trickles down from fountains high up among 
 the Everlasting Hills. 
 
 Originating in Heaven or with God, the Kingdom 
 has a history. Just here the sublime Genesis Hymn of 
 Creation is of first importance. Very noble indeed is 
 this high and august major music which has been too
 
 78 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 often rendered to the mechanical accompaniment of 
 literalistic minors. Genesis was not written to give us 
 a science, but to give us a God. And in that far-off 
 beginning we see the faint outlines of the Kingdom of 
 God in its unfolding historic continuity. It begins with 
 the creation of the earth, comprising its various orders 
 and epochs to the birth of Man. Think of the count- 
 less cycles God had to toil in making the earth before it 
 could be inhabited by Man! Then, after man's com- 
 ing, something went wrong. Account for it as we may, 
 explain it scientifically, psychologically, philosophi- 
 cally, or theologically, the fact is something went 
 wrong! All through the centuries men have described 
 that wrongness by one tremendously big little ugly 
 word sin. Try as we may, the word, or more impor- 
 tant still, the fact behind the word, will not rub out. 
 It has stained the soul of humanity even as the bloody 
 drops stained the hands of Lady Macbeth. Even Dr. 
 James Martineau, liberal though he was, is profoundly 
 orthodox on this point. "For myself," he says, "I can 
 never sit at the feet of Jesus, and yield up a reverential 
 heart to His great lessons, without casting myself on 
 the persuasion that God and evil are everlasting foes ; 
 that never and for no end did He create it; that His 
 will is utterly against it, nor ever touches it but with 
 annihilating force. Any other view appears to be in- 
 jurious to the characteristic sentiments, and at variance 
 with the distinguishing genius of Christian morality." 
 Yet, notwithstanding man's tragic mischoice, the 
 Kingdom of God comes on apace. "The Giant With 
 the Wounded Heel" goes limping down the years. But 
 as he limps along he listens and hears the promise of 
 ultimate victory : "I will put enmity between thee and 
 the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: he
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD 79 
 
 shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." 
 Thus, through the passing ages, we see the developing 
 purpose of God handed steadily forward. On it goes 
 through patriarchial, Mosaic, priestly, kingly, and pro- 
 phetic stages. Like a subterranean river, it flows 
 through Seth to Shem, through Shem to Terah's fam- 
 ily, narrowing at last to a single member of that family 
 in the person of Abraham; then through Abraham to 
 the Mosaic theocracy; then on to the Judges and the 
 monarchy. With the failure of the monarchy and the 
 education gained through the exile, the thought begins 
 to dawn upon certain souls that God has His own 
 King. "By Divine revelation," says Riehm, "ideas were 
 planted in the minds of the people of Israel, so lofty, 
 and rich, and deep, that in the existing religious con- 
 dition they could never see their perfect realization; 
 Ideas which, with every step in the development of the 
 religious life and knowledge, only more fully disclosed 
 their own depth and fullness, and to look to the future 
 for their fulfillment." Gradually the world-deep lesson 
 is learned that the God of Israel is also the God of all 
 peoples. Indeed, there are few more instructive chap- 
 ters in history than God's use of the particular and the 
 universal. He is, in a special sense, the God of Israel ; 
 but He is the God of Israel only that He may better 
 teach that, in a universal sense, He is the God of the 
 whole earth. And while this special education of 
 Israel is going on, God is being sought and found of men 
 everywhere ; for "God is no respecter of persons : but in 
 every nation He that feareth Him, and worketh right- 
 eousness, is acceptable to Him." 
 
 With the advent of Jesus the Christ, there begins, of 
 course, a new epoch in the realization of the Kingdom 
 of God. "The one fact which stands out clear," says
 
 80 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 one of our accredited modern authorities, "is that in 
 the time of our Lord neither Pharisee, nor Sadducee, 
 nor Essene, had any hold of a conception of the King- 
 dom which answered to the deep, spiritual, vital import 
 of the idea in the Old Testament." So Jesus not only 
 recovered the High Aim of God from misunderstanding 
 and falsehood ; there is in Him a distinct advance, his- 
 torically speaking, over any conception which had pre- 
 ceded Him. Since the Incarnation, have not men, how- 
 ever imperfectly, been trying to grasp our Lord's sub- 
 lime vision of the Kingdom? But in our time Chris- 
 tians, I verily believe, are in the throes of this eternal 
 dynamic as never before in history. Therefore, I ask 
 this question: Do we not require a proper emphasis 
 and focus of the Kingdom in its wholeness? Thinking 
 of the eccentricity of gifted human beings, a wise man 
 said, with a note of despair: Of what use is genius if its 
 focus be a little too short or a little too long? Syn- 
 thetic thinking upon this great subject will assuredly 
 help to relieve us of the antinomies, antitheses, and 
 even antipathies so often connected with it. Suppose 
 we attempt, however inadequately, to grasp the two 
 aspects of the one truth with our spiritual and mental 
 fingers. 
 
 1. The Kingdom of God is Individual and Social 
 It is not individual alone nor is it social alone; it is 
 both at once and the same time. It seems very diffi- 
 cult for many to give a just balance to the two facts. 
 We either divorce them altogether, becoming frankly 
 individualistic or emphatically socialistic; or else we 
 join them with such thin, insufficient thought-mortar 
 that they refuse to make a solid wall in the building of 
 God. To-day we are convinced, for example, that the . 
 overemphasis of individualism in the past was a serious
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD 81 
 
 mistake. Its error is manifest in religion, in philosophy, 
 in education, in commerce, and in politics. Now by 
 way of contrast, the present is socialistic; that is, the 
 social forces of mankind are operating on a scale un- 
 equaled in the past. What, then, is the danger of the 
 present as set over against the past? Just this: That 
 we have swung to the other extreme and insist upon 
 the social without a due appreciation of the individual. 
 "I am sure," to quote Royce again, "that whatever is 
 vital in Christianity concerns in fact the relation of the 
 real individual human person to the real God." In the 
 nature of the case, vast mass movements tend to ob- 
 scure this truth. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Kingdom of God is individual and 
 social. In the order of its development, it comes into 
 the individual before it comes into the community. 
 "We cannot attempt to achieve the Kingdom of Heaven 
 politically," says A. Glutton Brock, "until it is, to each 
 one of us, a fact of our own experience, the pattern 
 which we see and according to which we would exercise 
 the common will." Paradoxical as it may seem, Chris- 
 tianity is a wholesale business proceeding upon the 
 retail fashion. Though a part of the society of all 
 souls, every soul must prove God for itself. All men 
 are rooted in God, as Plato thought, yet each man turns 
 on the faucet which supplies the particular sap flowing 
 into and making his own individual roots vigorous, 
 healthful, and a strong support to the social tree. Yet 
 why should there be a false emphasis at all? The 
 universe, the world, and civilization are every moment 
 illustrating the individual and social phases of being 
 itself. Why, then, these unnecessary contrariants of 
 thought and action in dealing with the Kingdom of 
 God? Consider two simple and human illustrations.
 
 82 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 In northern New York I saw a French Canadian boy, 
 who is a victim of infantile paralysis. Born and 
 brought up in a cabin, he drags his crippled body about, 
 while his companions run the hilarious ways of a happy 
 childhood. But a Christian man took the boy in hand 
 and began pouring upon him showers of loving care. 
 He was placed in school and taught to operate a type- 
 writer. Not yet can his twisted fingers grasp pen or 
 pencil ; nevertheless I have a poem composed and type- 
 written by that sorely handicapped lad; for already 
 his soul is bursting into spiritual bloom. Once another 
 lad ran away from his palace into the city slums. He 
 was a prince, dressed in a velvet suit. Approaching a 
 ragged boy near his own age, he began talking with 
 him. "Why do you wear such dirty clothes?" he asked. 
 "Doesn't your nurse buy you new stockings when you 
 get a hole at the knee? If you're hungry, why don't 
 you eat your dinner instead of munching that crust?" 
 "We are poor," the ragged child answered simply. It 
 was the first time the child of the palace knew that 
 there were children of poverty. When he was found 
 and taken back home, the prince said to his father: 
 "When I grow up, I am going to help the poor children 
 of Belgium to become more prosperous." And he kept 
 his word. For that runaway prince became Albert, 
 King of the Belgians. "But," you ask, "what have 
 these two boys to do with the Kingdom of God?" 
 Much very much indeed ! In the case of the French 
 Canadian boy, the Kingdom of God is individual ; it is 
 in the heart of the Christian man rescuing the child as 
 well as in the child himself. In the case of Albert, the 
 Kingdom of God is social ; it is symbolized in the head 
 of a modern State, as well as in the soul of that heroic 
 people, struggling for the liberties of the world. Wher-
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD 83 
 
 ever righteousness is enthroned industrially, politi- 
 cally, morally the Kingdom of God is individual and 
 social. To think of either without the other is to think 
 misleadingly. 
 
 2. The Kingdom oj God is Present and Future. 
 Here, again, there is demand for spiritual perspective. 
 "The Kingdom of God is within you, or in your midst," 
 said Jesus. Present and humanized within the soul, 
 wherever the King is, there the Kingdom is also. But 
 in the Master's thought the Kingdom has a future as 
 well as a present tense. "When the Son of Man shall 
 come in His glory, and all the angels with Hun, then 
 shall He sit on the throne of His glory : and before Him 
 shall be gathered all the nations : and He shall separate 
 them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the 
 sheep from the goats; and He shall set the sheep on 
 His right hand, but the goats on the left." 
 
 Why not, therefore, in the interests of truth which 
 is more important than even the most diversified em- 
 phases of truth give these ideas their legitimate set- 
 ting and articulation in our thinking and doing? For 
 wherever the human heart is in tune with the desire 
 of God, the Kingdom is present. "I was made a red 
 hot Salvationist by an infidel lecturer," confessed Wil- 
 liam Booth. "That lecturer said, 'If I believed what 
 some of you Christians believe, I would never rest day 
 nor night telling men about it.' " W T here are the red 
 hot souls to-day? Well, wherever they are the fires of 
 the Kingdom are burning. Would that there were 
 more of them, radiating their purifying heats into the 
 Church, business, and society. Are not kindled souls 
 among God's best methods of starting the fires of right- 
 eousness that burn up the chaff in politics and nations? 
 "John Wesley's place in history," says Woodrow Wil-
 
 84 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 son, "is the place of the evangelist who is also a master 
 of affairs. The evangelization of the world will always 
 be the road to fame and power, but only to those who 
 take it seeking, not these things, but the Kingdom of 
 God; and if the evangelist be what John Wesley was, 
 a man poised in spirit, deeply conversant with the 
 natures of his fellow-men, studious of the truth, sober 
 to think, prompt and yet not rash to act, apt to speak 
 without excitement and yet with a keen power of con- 
 viction, he can do for another age what John Wesley 
 did for the eighteenth century. His age was singular 
 hi its need, as he was singular in his gifts and power. 
 The eighteenth century cried out for deliverance and 
 light, and God had prepared this man to show again 
 the might and the blessing of His salvation." 
 
 Present in the Christianized personality, the King- 
 dom is also future. It has come, it is coming, it will 
 keep on coming, until "the kingdoms of the world are 
 become the Kingdom of our Lord, and His Christ." 
 Little by little, nations are being compelled to acknowl- 
 edge the wisdom and necessity of Christ's way. We 
 are learning that there is a law above all man-made 
 laws. Speaking of slavery, Seward said: "Congress 
 has no power to inhibit any duty commanded by God 
 on Mount Sinai or by His Son on the Mount of Olives." 
 Another statesman, with a world-vision and a passion 
 for justice among all peoples, appeals to the future of 
 the ever-coming Kingdom as he hurls himself into the 
 present battle for individual and social righteousness. 
 "Trust your guides," he says, "imperfect as they are, 
 and some day, when we are all dead, men will come and 
 point at the distant upland with a great shout of joy 
 and triumph and thank God that there were men who 
 undertook to lead in the struggle. What difference
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD 86 
 
 does it make if we ourselves do not reach the uplands? 
 We have given our lives to the enterprise. The world 
 is made happier and humankind better because we have 
 lived." 
 
 3. The Kingdom of God is Visible and Invisible. 
 In a special sense is it visible in the organized and uni- 
 versal Church. With all of its shortcomings, the Chris- 
 tian Church has stood for the nearest approach to the 
 Master's ideal of any institution in history. Indeed, 
 was it not founded for this very purpose? And all 
 through the ages the blood of the martyrs has not 
 only been the seed of the Church, but that crimson 
 rain has watered the quickened roots of civilization 
 itself. Visible in the Church, yet the Kingdom is as 
 invisible as thought. "The Kingdom of God is not 
 eating and drinking," says Paul, "but righteousness and 
 peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." Were nobler words 
 ever inspired by a more seemingly commonplace, if not 
 ignoble, situation? The little Christian community in 
 Rome was perturbed over a question of diet. Was it 
 right to eat meat or forego it? To observe certain days 
 rather than others? Then, as now, there was a kind of 
 conspiracy to overload the soul with "emphatic trifles." 
 Paul hangs the subject out on the golden line of Chris- 
 tian privilege and lets the airs of Heaven blow through 
 it. Yes, he says, it is one's privilege to eat meat if he 
 wants to. But, he argues, the Kingdom of God intro- 
 duces the soul to higher rights than mere personal 
 privileges. A man has the right not to do anything 
 that will injure a human being. Men are not greatly 
 Christian by everlastingly clamoring for their rights. 
 Men have the right not to take their rights. Possessed 
 by the Spirit of Christ, these have made the great ven- 
 ture from outward advantage to inward renunciation,
 
 86 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 wherein life, properly speaking, according to the seer, 
 can only be said to begin. Thus, while the Realm of 
 God is rendered visible by every church building, every 
 school house, and every institution fostering the lib- 
 erties of mankind, it is at the same time gloriously in- 
 visible as intangible as thought, as universal as air, 
 as still and deep as the everliving purpose of God. 
 
 Here, then, are a few implications of that lofty peti- 
 tion, "Thy Kingdom come." Originating with the 
 Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the King- 
 dom has invaded the highways and byways of history. 
 It has come it is coming it will come! Let this be 
 our watchword as we face the tasks of the new time. 
 Let us cultivate a large perspective rather than a lim- 
 ited outlook. Let us keep the Christian focus, laboring 
 to set every stone of truth in the rising temple of uni- 
 versal righteousness. As it took a golden reed to 
 measure the Holy City, so it takes a golden mind to 
 evaluate the Kingdom of God. More beautiful than 
 all precious stones, its walls are higher than all heavens 
 and deeper than all seas; its gates are not twelve 
 pearls, but ten thousand times ten thousand vitalities, 
 pulsing eastward and northward and southward and 
 westward; it has the symmetry of a living cube, for 
 "the length and the breadth and the height thereof are 
 equal."
 
 SPIRITUAL ENLARGEMENT 
 
 Jesus therefore took the loaves; and having given 
 thanks, He distributed to them that were set down. 
 John vi. 11. 
 
 THERE is a sense in which a preacher of the Gospel 
 is handicapped by the greatness, variety, and richness 
 of the material at hand. He is like a miner suddenly 
 come upon inexhaustible diamond mines, and yet un- 
 able to market the precious gems ; like a farmer driving 
 a lone wagon into the vast wheatfields of the West for 
 the purpose of hauling away all the golden grain ; like 
 a child bailing out the Atlantic with its tiny bucket, or 
 scooping up the sand along the shore with its toy spade. 
 The Gospel is a spiritual diamond mine, an infinite 
 wheatfield, a measureless ocean. When Jehovah set 
 the machinery of the physical universe in motion, He 
 knew that it would wear out; but when He revealed 
 the Gospel as the savior and completer of the human 
 spirit, He knew that it would wear on wear on after 
 the universe has worn out. Little wonder, therefore, 
 that a preacher of the Everlasting Gospel, as he at- 
 tempts to draw water from the wells of salvation, 
 should sometimes seem to hear the voice of an Unseen 
 Presence at his side, saying: "Sir, thou hast nothing 
 to draw with, and the well is deep." 
 
 Now, this sense of handicap through richness of 
 material is not absent from the Master's miracle of 
 feeding the five thousand. For example, one is tempted 
 
 87
 
 88 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 to pause and make a sermon on the curiosity-smitten 
 multitude; or, upon Jesus ascending the mountain, 
 where "He sat with His disciples" ; or, upon His tender 
 compassion for the crowds as He beheld them strug- 
 gling up the mountain-side; or, upon His testing of 
 Philip, whose brain was an automatic cash-register, 
 calculating to a nicety the financial resources at their 
 command; or, upon the bleak pessimism of Andrew, 
 volunteering information about the lad with his five 
 barley loaves and two fishes, and then adding: "But 
 what are these among so many?" or, upon the lad 
 himself, whose basket-meeting lunch became the live 
 wire along which the currents of the living God ex- 
 tended frugality into overflowing abundance, and of 
 his return to his home on the beach that night, proudly 
 telling his parents that he had been the hero of the 
 occasion. Seeing that all these things are here, and 
 fairly packed with suggestiveness, how is one to muster 
 the courage to march straight on down to the eleventh 
 verse before stopping? And yet, to put it briefly and 
 bluntly, that is precisely what I have done, with the 
 view of emphasizing a phase of the miracle which may 
 prove worthful in its spiritual and personal applica- 
 tions. My theme, therefore, is: "The Secret of 
 Spiritual Enlargement, and Its Accessories." 
 
 Consider, in the first place, the abiding secret of 
 spiritual enlargement: "Jesus therefore took the 
 loaves." It is always worth while to note the "where- 
 fores" and "therefores" of the New Testament. They 
 may have a rough exterior, but their heart is as soft as 
 silk and as rich as honey. And why did Jesus "there-
 
 SPIRITUAL ENLARGEMENT 89 
 
 fore" take the loaves? The very word throws us back 
 upon the moral reasons demanding the miracle. Think 
 of the men, women, children, shepherds, vinedressers, 
 fishermen, all surging up the mountain toward Christ ; 
 think of Philip's close-fisted, hopeless calculation; 
 think of Andrew's rank pessimism; think, in short, of 
 five thousand hungry mouths and five loaves and two 
 fishes with which to feed them, coupled with the de- 
 spair of His own disciples, and you have just about as 
 difficult a situation as can be imagined. But just here, 
 breaks in the light and the flame and the flash and the 
 glory of this prosaic word, Therefore ! Because nothing 
 else was to be done, because nothing else could be done, 
 because of the helplessness of the multitude and the 
 inadequacy of the disciples' resources, "Jesus therefore 
 took the loaves." 
 
 Now what did Jesus do? Why, He took the loaves. 
 "The loaves/ r you say, "and how many loaves were 
 there to take?" Only five just as many as you have 
 fingers on your hand! And, mark you, they were 
 not loaves such as your baker leaves at your door every 
 morning: they were five meager, coarse barley loaves, 
 upon which the veriest pauper of to-day would soon 
 starve to death. "And how many fish were there?" 
 Just two the same number of eyes that you have in 
 your head and ears on the sides thereof! "Well, but 
 that's a mighty small capital to commence so large a 
 spiritual business on!" That depends entirely on who 
 is at the head of the business. If you and I are at the 
 head of the establishment, unquestionably it's a mighty 
 small capital. But if the Lord God Almighty, Who 
 sows space with worlds and souls with goodness, is 
 backing the affair, why I can't see that spiritual busi- 
 ness is dependent upon the capital, large or small, but
 
 90 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 upon the Owner. When God's creative will begins to 
 operate, it is hardly becoming in me to say whether He 
 will, or will not, do this, that, or the other thing. The 
 lobes of the human brain are not large enough to 
 span the creative purposes and processes and resources 
 of the all-wise God. So that, if on the present occasion 
 the Son of God deemed it necesary to actually add to 
 the sum total of things, to the storehouse of matter, 
 and "called together from the surrounding air the ele- 
 ments needed for the purpose, just as in hushing the 
 storm He met force by that will of His which is the 
 ultimate source and ground of all force," I should not 
 like to intimate that the task was beyond Him. 
 
 But a question of commanding and immediate im- 
 portance is: What about your loaves and fishes? 
 Not, how many or how few, but in whose keeping are 
 they? You stand at one end of them: what is at the 
 other end space, force, doubt, sin, or God? Remem- 
 ber: their value is not determined by their quantity, 
 but by your getting them to God in Jesus Christ, and 
 thereby stamping them with a spiritual quality. As I 
 have just said, that lad with his five barley loaves and 
 two fishes had small enough capital to begin a great 
 spiritual business on no doubt about it. But listen: 
 If he had had only one crumb of one loaf, and one scale 
 of one tail of one fish he would have succeeded, because 
 the God of loaves and fishes was on his side. 
 
 And what is true of your individual loaves and fishes 
 your time, your capacity, your possessions is not 
 less true of the Church. At the hazard of being com- 
 monplace, I ask you: What is the Church, anyway? 
 A man says, referring to his local organization: "We 
 have a great church, and a great preacher, also. Why, 
 he's a positive wonder. He can talk on anything." I
 
 SPIRITUAL ENLARGEMENT 91 
 
 go to see this "great church," and, sure enough, there is 
 a magnificent plant: great building, great wealth, great 
 organ, great singing, great display. And then, as a 
 fitting climax to this "great church," I listen to its 
 "great preacher." It does not take long to measure 
 him. The man was right when he said he could "talk 
 on anything." He can talk on anything but the 
 Gospel! But, really, is it a "great church"? To be 
 perfectly frank, is it a church at all? Is it not rather a 
 great club, run for personal and social reasons, with a 
 few charitable organizations tacked on? At any rate, 
 it is not that divine bulwark against which Christ said 
 the gates of hell should not prevail. Ah, no! The 
 gates of lust, the gates of fashion, the gates of pride, 
 the gates of envy, the gates of jealousy all these iron 
 gates of hell do prevail against this poor, tinsel, gilt, 
 powdered, Christless thing. 
 
 What, then, is the Church? According to our Master 
 Christ, the Church is a company of faith-intoxicated 
 men and women, who, though living and toiling upon 
 earth, are able to bring things to pass in the upper 
 galaxies of the universe. Listen: "Verily I say unto 
 you, What things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be 
 bound in Heaven; and what things soever ye shall 
 loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven." Moreover, 
 according to Christ, not only shall the Church's deci- 
 sions be ratified in the courts of God, but the Church's 
 requests, when agreed upon, shall be granted. Listen : 
 "Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree 
 on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it 
 shall be done for them of my Father Who is in 
 Heaven." Furthermore, not only are the Church's 
 decisions ratified in Heaven, and not only are the 
 Church's petitions granted by the Father of our Lord
 
 92 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 and Savior, but wherever two or three spirits are united 
 in the name of Jesus Christ, there is the Church of the 
 living God. Listen: "For where two or three are 
 gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst 
 of them." Wherever Christ is, whether there be two, 
 three, or ten thousand hearts, there is the Church ; and 
 where Christ is not, there is no Church that, as I 
 understand it, is the teaching of the New Testament. 
 
 Is it not plain, my brethren, that the secret of 
 spiritual enlargement lies in our getting ourselves, our 
 dear ones, our unsaved brothers, our possessions, to the 
 Christ of God? We cannot do spiritual business with- 
 out Him. We have tried it too long and failed too 
 often. If only we yield our lives into His hand, what 
 before stood for a pinch of poverty and a tithe of 
 efficiency shall become the wealth of Heaven and the 
 power of God. 
 
 I pass now to a consideration of the second thought 
 suggested by my text: The accessories of spiritual 
 enlargement. They are three thanksgiving, distribu- 
 tion, multiplication. Let us take them in order. 
 
 "Jesus therefore took the loaves; and having given 
 thanks" let us pause, bow down, and worship just 
 here. With Professor Dods, "one would fain have 
 heard the words in which Jesus addressed the Father, 
 and by which He caused all to feel how near to each 
 was infinite resource" ; but even more important than 
 His words on this and every occasion was our Lord's 
 attitude toward things, toward persons in a word, 
 toward life. And what was that attitude? It was the 
 attitude of thanksgiving. The august reverence, the 
 beautiful holiness, the majestic sanctities with which
 
 SPIRITUAL ENLARGEMENT 93 
 
 Christ invested all life these compel me, as I walk 
 through the Gospel Gardens, to take the shoes from off 
 my feet lest I should dash the divine dew from the 
 petals of the roses which Christ's stainless fingers have 
 set in the soil of the soul. Everywhere, all the time, I 
 find, in Christ, this golden music flowing out from the 
 central, inner harmonies of life and the universe: 
 thanksgiving for the wayside flower, thanksgiving for 
 the beaming sun, thanksgiving for the silver rain, 
 thanksgiving for the homely crust, thanksgiving for 
 the humble task, thanksgiving for the unlovely life 
 still retaining the possibility of being touched by the 
 power of the endless life, and thereby raised, aug- 
 mented, multiplied into the life of God. 
 
 But you say: "I am a practical man. What has 
 Christ's attitude toward life to do with me?" I answer : 
 "The attitude which you allow Christ to sustain toward 
 you determines your attitude toward life and the uni- 
 verse, also." When a thankless spirit resides at the 
 center of a man's nature, the loaves and fishes of life 
 are received with haughty disdain, his normal mood; 
 but when they are cut off altogether, the same thank- 
 less spirit will utter curses as bitter as the waters of 
 Marah. Mistake not this conclusion! A man devoid 
 of the spirit of thanksgiving must, in the nature of 
 things, live a narrow life at its best ; but when that life 
 arrives at its worst, believe me, his thankless spirit is 
 turned in a blazing, blistering flame of hell to torture 
 him. 
 
 On the other hand, if we emulate our Lord in the 
 spirit of thankfulness, we find our souls crying aloud 
 with Charles Kingsley : "Every creature of God is good 
 if it be sanctified with prayer and thanksgiving! This 
 to me is the master truth of Christianity! I cannot
 
 94 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 make people see it, but it seems to me that it was to 
 redeem man and the earth that Christ was made man 
 and used the earth." And how did Christ use the 
 earth? Always in the spirit of thanksgiving, even 
 though the earth smote Him to the death with its cruel, 
 brutal blows. And what is the attitude of one soul 
 united to other souls in Jesus Christ? Let the great 
 apostle, one of the supreme spirits in the majestic 
 universe of souls, make answer: "For what thanks- 
 giving can we render again unto God for you, for all 
 the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before our 
 God ; night and day praying exceedingly that we may 
 see your face, and may perfect that which is lacking in 
 our faith?" With genuine pathos a dear, octogenarian 
 pilgrim told me this story. He said he had just read, 
 before my call, of a poor woman who came to her 
 humble home after a hard day's work. Soon she sat 
 down to a table upon which there was a single crust 
 and a cup of water. Notwithstanding the direness of 
 her poverty, she bowed her head and asked her Unseen 
 Host in tones of gratitude : "Well, have I got all this, 
 and Jesus Christ?" And once again the words of the 
 wise man came winging and singing down the cen- 
 turies : "Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than 
 great treasure and trouble therewith. Better is a din- 
 ner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred 
 therewith." 
 
 The second accessory of spiritual enlargement is 
 distribution: "And having given thanks, he distrib- 
 uted." Of course! That is what the Master was 
 always doing: distributing life, distributing light, dis- 
 tributing health, distributing hope, distributing com- 
 fort, distributing peace, distributing joy. And this law 
 of Christian distribution has never been repealed. It
 
 SPIRITUAL ENLARGEMENT 95 
 
 is embedded deep down in the constitution of things. 
 Undistributed activity or energy of any kind either 
 diminishes or explodes. It must either attain the 
 highest reaches of life or the lowest abodes of death. 
 In no realm is the law more steadfast and undeviating 
 than the spiritual. Because he belongs to the Lord of 
 Life, the Christian is a distributing center of life. "Ye 
 did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, 
 that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit 
 should abide." 
 
 Let me repeat it again: first and supremely, the 
 Christian is a distributing center of life. Everything 
 else is secondary. All other attainments count for 
 nought in comparison. Let me see if I can make you 
 grasp my thought. I know three men men of inter- 
 national reputation. Two are Americans, one an Eng- 
 lishman, all are preachers. I was discussing with one 
 of the Americans the other two. "What do you think 
 of Dr. Jones, of Boston?" Said he: "Dr. Jones is a 
 great philosopher. Philosophy is his passion ; but Jones 
 doesn't love men." "And what do you think of Dr. 
 Smith, of London?" "Well, Smith is somewhat of a 
 puzzle. His theological coat, like Joseph's, seems to be 
 of many colors. I would say that Smith has a passion 
 for truth, as he understands truth, but he doesn't love 
 men." Now, the words of my friend's estimate of his 
 fellow workers which still ring in my soul are these: 
 "But he doesn't love men." Let no man depreciate the 
 scholar, the philosopher, the searcher after truth : each 
 has his place in the temple of humanity and the Church 
 of God. But until the scholar, the philosopher, the 
 theorist has been made over into the Lover of Men, 
 until he has a Brain within his brain, a Heart within 
 his heart, a Spirit within his spirit until, in a word,
 
 96 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 he becomes a distributing center of the life of God, he 
 cannot invade and conquer those vast and mighty 
 spiritual realms where, and where only, is to be found 
 the life that is life indeed. 
 
 The third accessory of spiritual enlargement, as sug- 
 gested by my text, is multiplication. And this, it seems 
 to me, is in suggestiveness the uniquest phase of the 
 miracle. Go back for a moment to our base of sup- 
 plies five loaves and two fishes. They are brought to 
 Christ, blessed by Christ, distributed by Christ, and 
 now comes the question: When were they multiplied 
 into the abundance which satisfied the hungry thou- 
 sands? Ah! it is a great lesson, an essential lesson, a 
 lesson we need to learn better and better: those loaves 
 and fishes were multiplied in the distribution. While 
 the distribution was going on, not before nor after- 
 ward, the figures in God's multiplication table were 
 expressing the resource of the infinities and eternities 
 of the spiritual, and Heaven's groaning table was 
 spread in the desert. 
 
 By way of application, in closing, let me remind you 
 that it is just so our own loaves and fishes are multi- 
 plied. Undistributed, they will forever remain the 
 petty, puny, miscroscopic two and five. Distributed 
 among hungry, aching lives, they shall be multiplied 
 by the thousands, and at last only angelic mathema- 
 ticians shall be able to gather up the unwasted re- 
 mainders and appraise their limitless valuations. What 
 is it but the eternal law of the eternal Christ : "Give, 
 and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed 
 down, shaken together, running over, shall they give 
 into your bosom." Have you gold? Have you brain? 
 Have you brawn? Have you faith? Have you hope? 
 Have you love? Get them multiplied through distri-
 
 SPIRITUAL ENLARGEMENT 97 
 
 bution. And begin now ! The heart-throbs are pound- 
 ing down your bodily house ; the brain cells are wearing 
 out; the blood-vessels are being emptied, never again 
 to overflow with their rich, red currents. But you! 
 you and I are hastening on to other spheres of activity. 
 Let us leave behind those indestructible forces of 
 influence and character through which God can move 
 and work after we have been in Heaven beholding 
 God's face for a thousand years. I beseech you, in the 
 name of that Christ Who is ready to judge the quick 
 and the dead, invest your gold in ragged bodies, invest 
 your bread in hungry bodies, invest your love in hungry 
 hearts, and you shall be exalted into those spiritual 
 affinities and relationships which yield increasing satis- 
 factions forever and ever!
 
 THE THANKFUL HEART 
 
 For all things are for your sakes, that the grace, being 
 multiplied through the many, may cause the thanks- 
 giving to abound unto the glory of God. II. Cor. iv. 15. 
 
 THE Bible is like a melodious steeple set with thanks- 
 giving chimes. The variations of the tune are many, 
 the spirit, the tune itself, is one. Hearken to the music 
 of these Scriptural bells ! They ring out gloriously, and 
 they ring out unceasingly as well. To whom shall our 
 thanksgiving be offered? Unto God, our Heavenly 
 Father. Through whom shall it be made? Why, 
 through our Lord Jesus Christ. What are the reasons 
 for thanksgiving? Well, all our gifts are from God 
 our temporal benefits, our daily providences, our un- 
 failing guidance, our immortal hopes. What are some 
 of the forms of expressing gratitude to the Giver of 
 every good and perfect gift? Worship, prayer, offer- 
 ings, and praises. These are just a few of the thanks- 
 giving chimes that ring in the Bible tower. 
 
 Now, the player of the chimes in our text needs no 
 introduction. He is well known in Heaven and on 
 earth. This old master of spiritual symphonies is never 
 better than in his rendering of thanksgiving music. 
 For Paul was a great thanks-giver because he was a 
 great thanks-liver. It is this, I am sure, that gave him 
 such a vast conception of the grace of gratitude. "For 
 all things are for your sakes!" think of the immensity 
 of Christian privilege in the words! "that the grace,
 
 THE THANKFUL HEART 99 
 
 being multiplied through the many, may cause the 
 thanksgiving to abound unto the glory of God" think 
 of the solemn responsibility of so using all things that 
 our thanksgiving may glorify God ! Surely the genius 
 of the thankful heart is the highest quality of genius 
 life expressing itself in the very noblest terms. 
 
 "For all things are for your sakes!" Without at- 
 tempting to compass the inclusiveness of this thanks- 
 giving paBan, let us consider a few things which will stir 
 the thankful heart. 
 
 This American country of ours should make every 
 heart throb with gratitude to Almighty God. Think of 
 its natural resources! Think of its boundless plains! 
 Think of its fertile valleys ! Think of its hills, moun- 
 tains, streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans! Indeed, our 
 crop reports furnish a very tangible, if quite immeas- 
 urable, illustration of the fertility of our country. One 
 Sunday morning I walked across the Manhattan 
 Bridge. Always interesting, this walk is never more 
 satisfactory than in the sweet dawn of God's own holy 
 day. The spell of October was over all the rich-tinted 
 leaves; the shocks of corn, those golden tabernacles of 
 the autumntide; the robins, whose faded, tattered 
 breasts told of their approaching flight southward to 
 exchange their old garments for bright, fresh new ones ; 
 the melancholy expression brooding upon human faces 
 everywhere the October magician had left his mystic 
 touch. 
 
 Well, I thought that dense forest of skyscrapers 
 never looked more splendid than on that Sabbath 
 morning from the high arched bridge. They looked
 
 100 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 massive and high enough, too. But after seeing that 
 picture showing what would happen to those sky- 
 scrapers if our mammoth grain crop should be dumped 
 in and on and up and over them, I admire the vast 
 buildings not less, but the marvelous productiveness of 
 our farms more. Three billion bushels of corn ! What 
 cribs can hold them? Seven hundred and fifty million 
 bushels of wheat! What granaries can contain them? 
 One billion four hundred million bushels of oats ! What 
 bins are large enough for them? Two hundred and 
 forty million bushels of barley, rye, and buckwheat! 
 Why, here is material to make pancakes for the uni- 
 verse! In round numbers, the plow, the harrow, the 
 hoe, and the threshing machine have coaxed five billion 
 five hundred million bushels of grain from American 
 soil hi a single year. It is stupendous, amazing, incal- 
 culable! Why, if the American farmer should empty 
 his sacks upon Park Row, Broadway, and Wall Street, 
 immediate suffocation would set in. For he would 
 literally engulf beneath his pile of grain the Stock 
 Exchange, the thirty-nine-story Bankers' Trust Build- 
 ing, the forty-one-story Singer Building, Wall Street 
 with all its buildings, lower Broadway with all its 
 buildings, Bowling Green, the Custom House, the Bat- 
 tery, the North River piers, and the docks of South 
 Street every single one would be actually buried from 
 sight, if the American farmer should spill his grain 
 treasure over this particular area of real estate ! 
 
 The fact is, the output is so immense as to surpass 
 the powers of imagination. But we ought certainly to 
 include the fecundity of our soil among the "all things" 
 that "are for your sakes." Moreover, we ought to 
 acknowledge our debt of gratitude to the American 
 farmer. The whole world is his debtor. He is greater
 
 THE THANKFUL HEART 101 
 
 than any ruler, or potentate, or emperor, or king, or 
 president, or general that ever lived. The farmer gives 
 us our wardrobe. Witness the sheep on a thousand 
 hills! The farmer fills our meat chest. Witness the 
 lowing herds on oceanlike plains! The farmer alone 
 makes it possible for the great business of national 
 housekeeping to go on. Let the farmer die, and crepe 
 as black as midnight would hang on America's front 
 door. Some men may die and not be greatly missed; 
 but let the American farmer die, and there will be a 
 nation-wide funeral. But he is not going to die. He is 
 going to do something far harder and grander and 
 nobler. He is going to live, and out of his industry and 
 toil and sacrifice this nation will witness a new birth 
 of integrity and simplicity and devotion to the causes 
 that make for national righteousness. All honor to 
 this horny-handed, wind-smitten, sun-burned hero! 
 We thank him for the soil he vexes, for the crops he 
 raises, for the virtues that thrive in the garden of his 
 heart, for the sons and daughters he rears, for the God 
 he worships! 
 
 A second thing for which right-thinking people are 
 thankful is the Church of the living God, which an 
 apostle describes as the pillar and ground of the truth. 
 It is well, now and then, to go back to fundamental 
 things, to discover, in the midst of a world where flux 
 and change and decay are vigorously at work, what are 
 the foundations of ultimate reality. In his masterful 
 work on "The Foundations of the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury," the author leads us back, century by century, to 
 Plato and beyond. But the church of God goes back
 
 102 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 beyond Plato, beyond Isaiah, beyond David, beyond 
 Moses back to the heart of the Eternal himself. 
 
 "My church!" God's Church, Christ's Church no 
 man's church, and no sect's church that is why hell 
 and all its myrmidons must fall back before its terrible 
 might ! Do you believe in gravity? Then this truth is 
 as sure as gravity. Do you believe in the ebb and flow 
 of the tides? Then the moon does not sway the tides 
 more certainly than that the truth of Christ's words 
 shall finally sway the hearts of men. Indeed, is it not 
 high time Christian people throughout the world were 
 getting a new vision of the assured triumph of the 
 Christian Church? Again and again her altars have 
 been forsaken; the people have perished for lack of 
 vision ; quacks of every conceivable stripe have traded 
 upon the by-products of Christianity ; -multitudes have 
 bowed before pagan gods and burned strange fire upon 
 the altars of the Most High; but always, sooner or 
 later, the God of Jesus Christ has shaken the founda- 
 tions of false religions and true, and after the divine 
 earthquake was over, the floors and walls and windows 
 and towers of the Christian Church stood forth more 
 gloriously than ever before. 
 
 Meantime, there are two essential things that Chris- 
 tian people should do. The first is this: They must 
 quit apologizing for the Gospel. They must proclaim it 
 in love and with unvarnished sincerity; and they can 
 do this only as the power of the Gospel is allowed to 
 create and sustain their own souls in good works. Our 
 need to-day, my brethren, is not expert apologetics; we 
 need original, first-hand practitioners, experiencers, if 
 you will, of the unspeakable things of God in Christ. 
 I mean no criticism of legitimate apologetics. I mean, 
 rather, that we have dissected so much that the dis-
 
 THE THANKFUL HEART 103 
 
 sector needs rest. He has exhausted himself. He 
 needs a retreat, a hospital, some place where he can be 
 quiet and visionful enough to see that this patient 
 named the Gospel was never really sick at all, that he is 
 the real invalid in need of spiritual convalescence. 
 These physicians have found that they cannot heal 
 themselves, and their only hope of salvation is in the 
 very thing that they have been "scientifically" cutting 
 to pieces. It is a glorious time for men who really 
 believe in Christ to assert themselves. Away with our 
 timid guessings! Away with our analytic question- 
 ings! Away with our joyless religion! Let us give the 
 Gospel a chance, and be thankful to its Author that we 
 have such a Gospel to be deeply thankful for ! 
 
 We are not only to stop apologizing for the Gospel, 
 but the Christian Church must do another thing: It 
 must cease its unworthy competition with the world. 
 Be assured of this the world will never be converted 
 to Christ by adopting worldly methods. In every age 
 when the Church has adopted such methods, the world 
 has invariably and heartily despised the Church. Pat- 
 ting the church on the back with one hand, it has 
 thrust a hidden dagger into its inmost heart with the 
 other. No ; the world does not need, and the world will 
 not accept, what is glibly called an up-to-date Gospel. 
 I am frank to say that I need a dateless, eternal Gospel; 
 and that is what every man needs, what the whole 
 world needs, what all may have, and do have, in the 
 fathomless Gospel of the blessed God. Now, if the 
 genius of the world is capable of creating the content 
 of the Gospel, then the Gospel is a misnomer; but just 
 because "the world through its wisdom knew not God, 
 it was God's good pleasure through the foolishness of 
 the thing preached to save them that believe." Never
 
 104 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 was this more profoundly true than in our own age. 
 For, with all our cleverness, we are no match, either in 
 intellectual strength or philosophic subtlety, for the 
 Greek mind to which Paul spoke. Thus, while modern 
 Jews are asking for signs, and while modern Greeks 
 seek after wisdom, let us, in the name of Paul's God, 
 preach Christ crucified, though he be a stumbling 
 block unto Jews and foolishness unto Gentiles; for 
 unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, 
 Christ is at once the power of God and the wisdom of 
 God. 
 
 The thankful heart will not overlook the Christian 
 Church. Its toil and tears and substance will be con- 
 secrated to her service. In the best and broadest and 
 deepest sense and I am measuring my words no man 
 is a good citizen, a good father, or a good patriot; no 
 woman is a good mother, a good wife, or a good neigh- 
 bor who belittles the Christian Church ; and no son, no 
 daughter is worthy of inheriting the privileges of this 
 republic who lays profane hands of scorn and skepti- 
 cism upon that Ark of the Covenant named the Church 
 of God. Those who practice the new persecution of 
 neglect and indifference toward the Church will one day 
 confess: "I am not worthy to be called citizen or 
 disciple, because I persecuted the Church of God." 
 
 in 
 
 But I must especially mention the home-makers. 
 Of all the people who are placing heavenly mortgages 
 upon the to-morrows of life, the Christian mothers are 
 foremost. They shape the future for God and human- 
 ity by shaping their children according to high ideals. 
 Our mothers are the most potent people in the world
 
 THE THANKFUL HEART 106 
 
 to-day. We do not underestimate the work of the 
 statesmen, the physicians, the ministers, the bankers, 
 the educators, for we are all workers together; but we 
 cannot overestimate the importance of the mothers. 
 Tell me what a nation's mothers are, and I will tell you 
 what the nation itself is. God has indeed called 
 motherhood to awful responsibility; and the majority 
 of mothers, I like to think, are accepting, in fine sin- 
 cerity and holy joy, the significance of their call. Oh, 
 I like, at this Thanksgiving season, to think with grate- 
 ful heart of the humble women whose fame is not great 
 on earth, but who are well known in those radiant and 
 invisible spheres where earth's shadows are never cast. 
 No blocks of marble do they round into statues; no 
 canvases do they adorn with glowing colors; no books 
 do they write with scholarly taste; no music do they 
 compose with sweet strains; no platforms do they 
 occupy with persuasive speech. Yet are they all these, 
 and more, because they are God's disciples of the 
 unexplored and the unexpressed. Sculptors, they chisel 
 the veined marble of flesh and blood into living, 
 breathing, human statues ; artists, they paint the colors 
 of righteousness on undying souls ; authors, they write 
 the literature of godliness on the hearts of their sons ; 
 musicians, they sing the white song of chastity into the 
 souls of their daughters; orators, their lives speak so 
 eloquently of the invisible things of God that, after 
 quitting the world, they, being dead, speak on from the 
 high places of eternity. So, to-day, we chant the 
 beauty of these mothering lives which, like angel- 
 watered lilies, grow close to God, and are quiet, some- 
 tunes quaint, and .always queenly. 
 
 Look about you, then, and within you, and beneath 
 you, and above you, and you will be sure to find many
 
 106 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 things which will fit in with the liturgy of the thankful 
 heart. We should be grateful for the heavenly hurts 
 which leave no scars, for the celestial benedictions 
 which drop upon us in dark disguise. Some one has 
 said that Francis Thompson, like Lamb, was "called by 
 sorrow and anguish and in strange desolation of hopes 
 into quietness, and a soul set apart and made peculiar 
 to God." I saw a strong man kissing the cheek of his 
 dead old father, venerable with years and wealthy with 
 invisible gold. Turning away, the son said, half 
 musing: "I wonder if father is not already young 
 again, and if he has not lost even the memory of his 
 terrible pain." Yes, I think we go to the Land where 
 we grow younger the longer we stay, and where, also, 
 the younger we grow in the youth of immortality the 
 more heavenly wise and the more soulfully healthy we 
 become. Give your hearts to God, then! He will 
 answer your hard questions, give you joy for sorrow, 
 peace for pain, hope for despair, and love that knows 
 no measure. And when life's school is out, and your 
 lessons have been learned, you will run shouting and 
 singing home to the outstretched arms of God, Who 
 will solve your intricate problems, illumine your dark 
 mysteries, and wipe away your tears. For all things 
 are for your sakes all true teachers, whether Paul, or 
 Apollos, or Cephas ; all wondrous schoolrooms, whether 
 the world, or life, or death; all hopes and all experi- 
 ences, whether things present, or things to come; all 
 are yours, if you are Christ's, because Christ is God's, 
 and nothing shall be able to separate you from his love. 
 Ring out, then, your happy bells of gratitude, ring them 
 clear across the world, ring them until their golden 
 tones are heard in Heaven, and so may you cause this 
 and all thanksgivings to abound unto the glory of God !
 
 THE POTTER'S HOUSE 
 
 Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I 
 will cause thee to hear My words. Jer. xviii. 2. 
 
 GOD'S sermons are always illustrated close up to life. 
 Arguing his weakness, man stutters in abstractions, 
 mumbles in metaphysics, darkens counsel by big words. 
 Revealing His wisdom, God speaks through objects 
 familiar to all. Man would analyze the beauty of the 
 lily. But God loves the lily too much to see its beauty 
 tarnished. Truly this is God's speech : "Consider the 
 lilies of the field, how they grow." Striking his brain 
 against the clods, man says: "How do they grow?" 
 Nothing can keep a worm from drilling in its native 
 soil; placed upon a snowy marble slab, a worm would 
 die of cleanliness. But while man is burrowing about 
 the how, God is content to behold the growth of the 
 lilies. God prefers to teach in objectives, because He 
 knows the run of man's brain is not large enough to 
 deal in subjectives to any great extent. That is why 
 He sent Jeremiah to school in the potter's house. 
 There is a well-defined analogy in the house of the 
 potter and the house of man's soul. God seems to say 
 to the prophet : "Watch the potter work, and you will 
 see Me work. Look at the potter's clay, for that is 
 what I made you out of. Consider the potter's wheels, 
 for as he puts his clay upon the wheels, so do I. Ex- 
 amine his marred vessels. I have them strewn all over 
 the earth. Above all, be sure to see him remake his 
 107
 
 108 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 marred vessels, for that is what I delight in doing." 
 And Jeremiah had his sermon. It is one of the best 
 he ever had because it came from the lips of God. It 
 is worth our while, therefore, to consider what the 
 prophet saw and heard in the house of the potter. 
 
 Pottery, as you know, is one of the most ancient of 
 arts. There is a certain charm about it which has 
 endeared it to all civilized nations. Many allusions to 
 it are found in classic poetry. Homer compares the 
 rhythm of a dance to the measured spin of the potter's 
 wheel. With the exception of the cave-dwellers of the 
 Drift period, the art of pottery is said to have been 
 practiced by all known prehistoric races. Nor is this 
 at all strange when we are told on high authority that 
 "no process in any handicraft is more beautiful than 
 that of a potter molding a vessel on the wheel." Little 
 wonder, therefore, that Jeremiah forgets to scold on his 
 trip to the potter's house. It caused him to remember 
 that God is not a destroyer of men's lives, but that He 
 is rather a Divine Artist touching them into shapes of 
 imperishable beauty. No mother's cradle-song was 
 ever sweeter than these words: "0 house of Israel, 
 cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. 
 Behold, as the clay in the potter's hand, so are ye in 
 mine hand, Eouse of Israel." 
 
 I think the first thing that attracted the prophet's 
 attention was the partially molded clay. It was not 
 yet ready to be fashioned into some lovely shape. The 
 hand of the potter had touched it but slightly. And 
 that is why, as he looked, Jeremiah discovered that it 
 was clay of an ordinary character. Authorities tell us
 
 THE POTTER'S HOUSE 109 
 
 that the potter never sees his clay take on rich shades 
 of silver, or red, or cream, or brown, or yellow, until 
 after the burning. These colors come after the burn- 
 ing. The clay is beautiful after the burning. The 
 vase is made possible after the burning. 
 
 Does not Jeremiah's sermon come close to life? 
 After the burning, we own a purity that sees God. 
 After the burning, we have a wisdom that knows God. 
 After the burning, our weakness is coined into strength 
 and we lean upon God. After the burning, our faith 
 is no longer a flickering flame, but an eye set in the 
 soul through which we behold the Face of God. If the 
 burning hurts, as it always does, it is only a prophecy 
 of the strength which will be ushered into the life. 
 When the little girl told her music teacher that it hurt 
 her fingers to practice on the piano, the teacher an- 
 swered: "I know it hurts them, but it strengthens 
 them, too." Then the child packed the philosophy of 
 the ages into her reply : "Teacher, it seems that every- 
 thing which strengthens, hurts." 
 
 How wide-lying and universal is this law of life! 
 Where did the bravest men and purest women you 
 know get their whitened characters? Did they not get 
 them as the clay gets its beauty after the burning? 
 Where did your mother get that look which, as you 
 think, would add dignity to an angel's face? Already 
 God has written the answer after the burning. Where 
 did Savonarola get his eloquence, and Stradivari his 
 violins, and Titian his color, and Angelo his marbles, 
 and Mozart his music, and Chatterton his poetry, and 
 Palissy his enamel, and Jeremiah his sermon? They 
 got them where the clay gets its glory and its shimmer 
 after the burning! 
 
 I have read again the life-story of Katie Powers,
 
 110 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 who died at a home for incurables in Cleveland. When 
 her spirit left its twisted, misshapen body, strong men 
 told their strength in tears. Katie was a bright, happy 
 girl, but disease did ah 1 in its power to rob life of its 
 winsomeness for her. In the flush of young woman- 
 hood, inflammatory rheumatism left her unable to 
 walk. But when God made this girl out of the dust of 
 the earth, He did not forget to slip some of the dust of 
 character-gold into her soul. Deprived of bodily power, 
 she said: "But think how much I have left!" Then 
 her arms stiffened, her fingers drew up like claws, and 
 her jaw became so rigid that it would have been impos- 
 sible for her to eat but for the fact that her teeth were 
 extracted to permit the introduction of food. Her 
 vision forsook her also, leaving only a little sight in one 
 eye. For years she lay huddled up in an invalid's 
 chair. She could see a little, move her arms a little, 
 and that was all. 
 
 And what did she do? Why, she became a painter. 
 She would lie there and paint sunny bits of water 
 color. And the pictures revealed not the slightest hint 
 of the sufferer in the background. They laughed with 
 sunshine arid blushed with hope. People never thought 
 of pitying her, so they simply loved her. She carried 
 not only her own burdens, but the burdens of others 
 also. "Whenever I get blue," said a neighbor, "I go in 
 and see Katie; she always cheers me up." "No life 
 ever seemed to me so truly Christian," said one. "It 
 makes you believe in God," said another. And when 
 her beautiful spirit went up to receive the kiss of God, 
 many a heart in the Forest City was draped in sorrow 
 while the angels wreathed her "in a smile of white." 
 The pathos and inspiration of it all is, though helpless 
 herself, this pure, white martyr maid of pain helped
 
 THE POTTER'S HOUSE 111 
 
 others after the burning! Dr. Henry van Dyke has 
 set our truth to music : 
 
 The fire of love was burning, yet so low 
 
 That in the dark we scarce could see its rays. 
 
 And in the light of perfect, placid days 
 Nothing but smoldering embers, dull and slow. 
 Vainly, for love's delight, we sought to throw 
 
 New pleasures on the pyre to make it blaze ; 
 
 In life's calm and tranquil, prosperous ways 
 We missed the radiant heat of long ago. 
 Then in the night, a night of sad alarms, 
 
 Bitter with pain and black with fog of fears 
 That drove us, trembling, to each other's arms 
 
 Across the gulf of darkness and salt tears, 
 Into life's calm the wind of sorrow came, 
 And fanned the fire of love to clearest flame. 
 
 II 
 
 But in his visit Jeremiah saw more than the un- 
 molded clay he saw the potter working at his art. 
 "He wrought a work on the wheels." The prophet saw 
 the unshapely clay taking form. As the potter worked, 
 he observed that there was a definite plan for each 
 vessel. Some were large, and some were small; some 
 were beautiful, and some were not; some bore one 
 color, and some another. But he noticed that in this 
 formative, molding process there was an intelligent 
 purpose in the mind of the potter. And as the wheels 
 went spinning round, it was the potter's desire to get 
 that purpose wrought into the clay. 
 
 So, also, God wants our lives to be an expression of 
 His thought. After all, is not every creature a thought 
 of God, and is there not a divine plan back of every 
 life? What would you think of a potter who would 
 hold his vessel to the wheels, having no intelligent
 
 112 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 design for it? Then do you tell me that the infinite, 
 all-loving God puts human clay upon the whizzing 
 wheels of life with no governing purpose, no definite 
 plan? Let men believe such a thing and they could 
 say: "Fatalism has hoisted a fool to the throne of the 
 universe." With such a creed, men might well think 
 that God is a being tossing suns and planets in reckless 
 desperation over the fields of space, gloating over the 
 prospect of a universal calamity, when He would have 
 the supreme satisfaction of attending the funeral of all 
 worlds! 
 
 But we rest in the high consolation .that Christ un- 
 veiled no such a God. If there is design for the lily, 
 and design for the bird, and design for the dew, and 
 design for the star, surely there must be design for you 
 and me. If the sparrow can twitter, "I am a thought 
 of God"; if the flower can look upward as if to say, 
 "I am a picture of God"; if the rolling spheres can 
 strike off majestic harmonies as they sing, "The hand 
 that made us is divine," then may not we, with in- 
 finitely greater reason, look up through Jesus Christ 
 toward that throne "cushioned in splendor behind the 
 stars," and say to that loving Father who sits upon it : 
 "We are the clay, and Thou our potter; and we all are 
 the work of Thy hand." 
 
 And yet, Because the potter has design for the clay 
 as he holds it to the wheels, does not argue that the 
 clay understands that design. What if the clay could 
 hear as the potter says: "It is impossible for you to 
 know what a beautiful vase I will make of you. I 
 know you think this burning and spinning of the 
 wheels are all nonsense. But just be patient and trust 
 the skill of my hand, and when you are finished, men 
 will come from afar and carry you away to adorn some
 
 THE POTTER'S HOUSE 113 
 
 palace." And what if the clay should answer: "No, 
 potter, I won't trust you, because I can't understand 
 you. I know you can't make a beautiful vase out of 
 such material as I am. Let me alone, potter, I am sat- 
 isfied." I think we would agree that such clay ought 
 to be given the satisfaction of remaining common, ordi- 
 nary mud ! But the potter loves his clay too much to 
 be thwarted in his purpose. That fine old Flemish 
 ware, that Persian plate, that Rhodian jug, that Roman 
 cup, that Italian majolica, that French pottery must 
 gladden the world with its beauty and its service. And 
 so the fires blister, and the wheels go round, and after 
 a while in some Louvre or British Museum a glorious 
 vase looks down from its pedestal as if to say: "See 
 what the potter has done for me. I was once just 
 common clay and didn't want to be made beautiful. 
 But the potter loved me too much to heed my foolish 
 protest and fashioned my ugliness into this dream of 
 beauty!" 
 
 And that, it seems to me, is a parable of our own 
 lives. Because we cannot understand the touch of 
 the Master's hand; because we fail, in our blindness, 
 to glimpse the "far more exceeding and eternal weight 
 of glory" ; because we fail to read the intelligent design 
 back of our lives, we of ttimes grow rebellious and say : 
 "God is not in His Heaven, nor is all right with the 
 world." Then is it good for use to know of the patient 
 endurance, the mother love, the holy aspiration of this 
 heroine who was a student in one of our great Indus- 
 trial Schools. A woman fifty years old went to a 
 teacher and, with tears in her eyes, begged permission 
 to sit down with the little ones five and six years old, 
 that she might learn to read and write. She explained 
 that she had two boys in the West and desired to learn
 
 114 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 her letters so that she could communicate with them. 
 Her daughter had done this for her, but three years 
 before the daughter died, and now the hungry-hearted 
 mother was willing to make any sacrifice to keep in 
 touch with her sons. So she entered school without 
 telling any one, even her husband. Four weeks from 
 the day she entered, she was able to read through the 
 primer, first reader, and almost through the second. 
 She soon learned to write so any one could easily read 
 every word. She learned ten new words at home every 
 day, and always knew her lesson perfectly. Having 
 learned to begin and end a letter, it was not long before 
 she could write a love letter a genuine mother-love- 
 letterto her boys. Through the goodness of my 
 friend, I have in my possession a yellow sheet of paper 
 containing one of her writing exercises. Reading be- 
 tween the lines, there is something inexpressibly touch- 
 ing about it. The words are such as may be found in 
 the copy-book of any school boy ; but the mother, with 
 her hard hands and tender heart, as she copied the 
 words imagined herself writing a letter to one of her 
 sons. After writing her address and the date, this 
 imaginary epistle, brimming with a real love, reads: 
 "My dear son Hugh : 
 
 "Be the matter what it may, 
 Always speak the truth. 
 If at work or if at play, 
 Always speak the truth." 
 
 Surely, there is no ordinary clay in this vessel ! She 
 may not be able to understand the plan of her soul's 
 Divine Potter, but a brave trust and a high hope reside 
 at the center of her being. By the light of her soul she 
 follows on to overtake that glory, the very character
 
 THE POTTER'S HOUSE 115 
 
 of God inwrought in a human life, which awaits the 
 faithful unto death, who are always and evermore the 
 faithful in life. 
 
 in 
 
 Consider, finally, what the prophet heard in the 
 house of the potter. "Arise, and go down to the pot- 
 ter's house, and there I will cause thee to hear My 
 words." It is as if the Divine Potter had said : "There, 
 amid the burning clay and whirring wheels; there, 
 where the shapeless clay takes form ; there, where the 
 form grows into a thing of beauty, I will cause thee to 
 hear My words." Here is the mystery and glory of it 
 all, my friends. The clay hears the call of the potter 
 to become a vase, and at once begins to rise out of 
 unshapeliness into beauty. And the soul hears the 
 voice of its Potter, too, and thence begins the upward 
 climb. The ascent is long and slow, the pathway is 
 ofttimes studded with thorns, but away up beyond the 
 mists and shadows the summit peaks are bathed in 
 splendor. From that far height the Potter's voice sends 
 down the call: "0 Soul, meet Me here, meet Me here!" 
 And the soul, with its vision of white thrilling it 
 through and through, pushes onward and upward 
 toward that tearless city of the cloudless land ! 
 
 When Palissy saw a certain beautiful cup, it is said 
 that the sight of it disturbed his whole existence. For- 
 getting everything else, the one passion of the great 
 potter's life was to discover the secret of making white 
 enamel with which the cup was glazed. But oh, what 
 failures, what sufferings, what hardships were his! 
 Once he tended his furnace for six long days and nights, 
 without a moment's sleep, his soul singing: "I must 
 win the white, the glorious white!" When poverty
 
 116 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 came and his friends forsook him as a visionary, the 
 great heart never for a moment lost his vision of the 
 white. When at last his furniture fed the flames, and 
 his family rushed forth into the streets crying that he 
 had lost his reason, still Palissy pursued his unconquer- 
 able quest of the white. And after sixteen years of un- 
 tiring search, loneliness, and sorrow, the immortal 
 potter found the secret of the white which he had seen 
 upon the little Italian cup in the long past. But better 
 still, at the end of life's journey the whiteness of the 
 potter's soul lit up his prison walls. When Henry III 
 visited him in his cell, hoping to persuade Palissy to 
 renounce Protestantism, the monarch said : "I am con- 
 strained to leave you in the hands of your enemies, and 
 to-morrow you will be burned unless you become con- 
 verted." "Sire," answered Palissy, "I am ready to give 
 my life for the glory of God. You have said many 
 times that you have pity on me; and now I have pity 
 on you, who have pronounced the words I am con- 
 strained ! It is not spoken like a king ; it is what you, 
 and those who constrain you, the Guisards and all your 
 people, can never effect upon me, for I know how to 
 die." Having spent years and years looking .for the 
 white, Palissy found it at last in a City whose maker 
 and builder is God. 
 
 I know that to some of us life seems one prolonged 
 journey to the potter's house, where we touch the spin- 
 ning wheels of mystery and feel the blistering fires of 
 pain. But never mind, my friends, the universe itself 
 is laboring to build a City worthy to be your home. 
 According to St. John, that city is fair beyond a lover's 
 dream of love, and pure beyond the dimpled smile 
 stealing over a babe's face in sleep. In his vision, the 
 City seemed to be as airy as a sunbeam and as solid as
 
 THE POTTER'S HOUSE 117 
 
 a marble mountain. For though he beheld it coming 
 down out of heaven from God, the wall of the City 
 had twelve foundations, and on them twelve names of 
 the twelve apostles of the Lamb. It seemed as if God 
 had swept the worlds for jewels with which to adorn 
 the foundations of that wall. The first foundation was 
 jasper, and the second sapphire, and the third chal- 
 cedony, and the fourth emerald, and the fifth sardonyx, 
 and the sixth sardius, and the seventh chrysolite, and 
 the eighth beryl, and the ninth topaz, and the tenth 
 chrysoprase, and the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth 
 amethyst. 
 
 But grander than the architecture, and next to the 
 Lamb himself, I think the most majestic scene in John's 
 vision of the City is the countless throng of the kings 
 and queens of pain. Grander than the four angels 
 holding the four winds of the earth ; more commanding 
 than that mighty angel ascending out of the sunrise, 
 having in his hand the seal of the living God; more 
 magnificent than splendored foundations and jasper 
 walls and gates of pearl and streets of gold, is that great 
 multitude which no man could number, standing before 
 the throne and before the Lamb, saying: "Salvation 
 unto our God which sitteth on the throne, and unto the 
 Lamb!" When one of the elders asked, "These which 
 are arrayed in the white robes, who are they, and 
 whence came they?" John answered: "My lord, thou 
 knowest." And the elder himself made reply: "These 
 are they which came out of great tribulation, and have 
 washed their robes, and made them white in the blood 
 of the Lamb." The prevailing color in the City of God 
 is pure white, and the whitest whiteness is wrought in 
 Calvary's crimson stream. 0, let us win the white!
 
 THE VISION SPLENDID * 
 
 As He passed through it, there was a man called Zac- 
 chcsus, the head of the tax-gatherers, a wealthy man, 
 who tried to see what Jesus was like. St. Luke xix. 2, 3 
 (Moffatt's Translation) . 
 
 IN approaching our text, three facts require consid- 
 eration. The first is the city of Jericho itself. Nestling 
 in the heart of opulent groves of palm and balsam trees, 
 Jericho was prosperous, priestly, and proud. Both re- 
 ligion and commerce contributed to the famous city's 
 prosperity. Of the twenty-four courses of the Jewish 
 priesthood officiating by turns in the Temple, probably 
 one-half made the City of Palm Trees their home. 
 Their opposition to Christ was bitter and intense. Per- 
 haps He is passing through it because their enmity 
 made it impossible for Him to remain in the place over 
 night. The commercial importance of Jericho is evi- 
 denced by the large staff of tax-gatherers who resided 
 there for the purpose of collecting the revenue accruing 
 from the balsam trade. 
 
 This brings us to the second fact the man Zacchaeus, 
 chief of the revenue-collectors. As a Jewish officer of 
 the Roman government, not unnaturally he was hated 
 and despised by his own people. And now, as the 
 multitudes throng about Jesus, the little tax-gatherer 
 is buzzing in and out in his efforts to catch a glimpse 
 of Him. As he hurries first to one point and then 
 
 'Preached in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, Sunday morning, 
 November 20, 1921. 
 
 118
 
 THE VISION SPLENDID 119 
 
 another, he is physically jostled and pushed even while 
 he is at the same time verbally lashed with epithets of 
 hatred and contempt. But he was determined to see 
 Jesus! And that is the one determination absolutely 
 certain of fulfillment to the human soul. Other deter- 
 minations may and do fail, but this one the noblest 
 of all is sure of realization. So, as the Master was 
 unable to find a lodging place in the city and was 
 already passing through it, Zacehaeus bethought him of 
 a sycamore tree he knew out beyond the city walls. 
 That tree, he concluded, would at last make him tall 
 enough to see Jesus. Running around the crowd that 
 ruthlessly thwarted him, he climbed to his place of 
 vantage and waited. 
 
 This, as you see, brings us to the third fact in our 
 text. It is the Master Himself! Inasmuch as He is 
 the sole apology for this or any other sermon, our 
 third and transcendent fact will disclose itself as we 
 proceed with our discussion. For the text, in describing 
 Zacchseus' desire "to see what Jesus was like," declares 
 "The Vision Splendid" for all souls who will have it. 
 
 Jesus is like a blessed surprise. Goaded by curiosity, 
 Zacchseus wanted to see the outer, external Jesus 
 the teacher, the reformer, the miracle-worker and lo ! 
 he sees an astonishing Jesus. For the Master surprised 
 both Zacchseus and the multitude. Little did the tax- 
 gatherer imagine that, while he was being hustled to 
 and fro by the hostile crowd, there was One Who 
 thoughtfully grasped his unhappy predicament and re- 
 solved to single him out for peculiar honors that very 
 day. Before Zacchseus climbed his tree, and while
 
 120 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 words of derision and contempt were being poured upon 
 him by his fellow countrymen, the Master saw him. 
 
 And is it not always so? Even before a man ever 
 tries to see the Christ, already the Savior is watching 
 him, eager to seize the earliest moment when the man 
 will hear and understand His appeal. "But when 
 Jesus reached the spot He looked up and said to him, 
 Zacchaeus, come down at once, for I must stay at your 
 house to-day." Likewise the people, also, were sur- 
 prised at Jesus. "But when they saw this, everyone 
 began to mutter that He had gone to be the guest of a 
 sinner." In other words, much of our religion is only 
 skin-deep. We reckon that the God of the universe is 
 reducible to the dimensions of a theological capsule, 
 daintily compounded by pharisaic apothecaries. Such 
 a God, we aver, is for the elect only those neatly- 
 fitting, kid-gloved souls who fit into almost any place 
 other than the heavens of reality. But we are mis- 
 taken! The God of Christ is after "the sinner" big 
 and little, young and old, rich and poor, no matter 
 what his color, creed, or condition. So Jesus pro- 
 foundly surprised the despisers of Zacchseus that day 
 in the long ago; He has been doing it ever since; He 
 will continue to do it until human beings realize that 
 the Christian religion is not an afternoon-tea-affair, but 
 so awful and glorious that the universe must remain 
 incomplete as long as one soul is unreconciled to the 
 God of Love. 
 
 Would you, too, see what the ageless surprise of 
 Jesus is like? Well, you may! For the living, eternal 
 Jesus continues to come as a blessed surprise to the 
 souls of men. Think of that first century group 
 Peter, James, John, and Paul. One of the most arrest- 
 ing things in their companionship with the Master is
 
 THE VISION SPLENDID 121 
 
 this: Little by little He unfolded Himself to them 
 as the Great Unfathomable. Peter thought He under- 
 stood Jesus better than Jesus understood Himself; 
 and so the apostle even dared to modify the Master's 
 purpose. The scene is all the more memorable be- 
 cause it followed the great confession of Peter at 
 Csesarea Philippi. While the air was still melodious 
 with that great outburst of personal faith, Jesus began 
 to show the Twelve that He was going to Jerusalem 
 and there would be done to death by the elders and 
 high priests and scribes. But Peter at once voiced his 
 disapproval as awhile ago he expressed his immortal 
 commendation. "God forbid, Lord," he said. "This 
 must not be." That very instant Peter got another look 
 into the unsounded depths of Christ! "But He turned 
 and said to Peter, Get behind Me, you Satan! You 
 are a hindrance to Me! Your outlook is not God's 
 but man's." I think Peter never forgot that moment ; 
 yea, is it not still vivid to him as he ranges the great 
 ways of Eternity? It was like opening a golden door 
 in the Temple of the Infinite. A sudden, undreamed 
 splendor flamed out of the Soul of Jesus upon the 
 trembling disciple. Peter was dazzled as he leaned 
 over the edge of being and beheld a new apocalypse of 
 what Jesus was like. 
 
 But the surprise of Jesus is not confined to the apos- 
 tolic era. In every age He breaks upon the souls of 
 men with new and compelling wonder. And why? 
 Because, in Christ, men are able to make deeper ex- 
 plorations into the true nature of God. For humanity 
 is evermore attempting to discover what God is like. 
 Here is the one subject to which men are always re- 
 turning; it will not let them go; nor can they let it 
 go. Who is this Being Who is continuously passing
 
 122 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 through the Jerichos of history, in Whose wake the 
 millions eagerly follow, century in and century out, 
 endeavoring to understand Him? There are many 
 evidences of God in the universe; there are innumer- 
 able tokens of the Presence of God in human life in 
 all ages and peoples. Yet is it not an absolute fact 
 that the souls having the most satisfying vision of 
 God are those who came upon their vision through 
 Christ? The surprise of Jesus is in His disclosure of 
 God. As there is one supreme law of gravity holding 
 atoms and stars together, so there is one supreme 
 Mediator between God and Man the Man Christ 
 Jesus. Therefore, in seeing what Jesus is like, men 
 are made gloriously aware of what God is like. 
 
 Once more let me ask: Would you see what the 
 miraculous surprise of Jesus is like? Then be a modern 
 Zacchseus; be a spiritual pioneer; do something in 
 the name of your own soul. Climb the Tree of Trust. 
 Run around the crowd that jostles and condemns. 
 Forsake the priest, the scribe, the Pharisee; get clear 
 out beyond the city walls; make for your own syca- 
 more of faith; and there, amid the green, fragrant 
 realities of being, God shall find you and go home 
 with you. Forget your theories, your metaphysics, 
 your philosophy, even your theology; at least, forget 
 them long enough to give our soul a chance. Once you 
 are in the presence of Jesus, you will be enabled to 
 use your speculations without being hopelessly used 
 by them. If they are true, Christ will transfigure and 
 enlarge them; if they are false. He will release their 
 deadening grip upon you. This is that experience of 
 "life eternal" which Jesus imports into human nature 
 out of the Divine Consciousness. Call it mysticism, 
 call it anything you choose ; but after calling it all the
 
 THE VISION SPLENDID 123 
 
 names you can think of, remember that words cannot 
 exhaust the reality. "We don't know," says a modern 
 prophet, "how the death of Christ finds compensations 
 for the past of us. There are times when we have 
 glimpses of the method, and instantly we find ourselves 
 on the frontiers of the unknowable. We need not be 
 overwise. We know that our yesterdays are not dead, 
 that there is no funeral we can give them. Our per- 
 plexities are from the back years, the wastes, the neg- 
 lects, the slights, from riot and pride, from the ashes 
 of burnt-out fires; also from propagations and trans- 
 missions. But the life and death of Christ are trans- 
 lated into us as the confidences of redemption, and as 
 a hope that the wastefulness of life is redeemed. Then 
 it is our jubilee, a jubilation of the soul. Then for- 
 feited estates revert to their owners, the fee-simple of 
 which is not allowed to be sold. This confidence is 
 inspired by our fellowship with Christ, by the loving 
 gaze of the soul upon Him." 
 
 It is all so refreshingly big with the wonder of the 
 childlike. In company with some friends, I took a 
 doll to a little girl whose mother is "dead," as we say; 
 though this little five-year-old insists that her mother 
 is not dead, but in Heaven. Ah, I wonder if out of the 
 mouth of babes and sucklings God not only ordains 
 strength, but speaks a wisdom which the wise cannot 
 know! Well, this doll is so made that when you turn 
 it upside down, it utters a tiny, humanlike cry. "Now 
 that," exclaimed the little girl, as the doll gave a cry, 
 "is just what I wanted!" And there is something of 
 the childlike in the human soul which responds to the 
 surprise of Jesus with wonder and tears. In their 
 eager quest after God, men follow many paths. Still 
 unsatisfied and prompted by the childlike nestling
 
 124 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 within them, at last they climb their lovely tree of 
 simple trust far out beyond the conventional, beyond 
 the lifeless forms of religion, beyond the city's pride 
 and prejudice; and there, embowered within their 
 fragrant branches of eagerness and hope, the Eternal 
 Love finds them, as they adoringly cry: "Why, this is 
 just what I wanted the strong tones of Deity through 
 a tender human voice!" 
 
 ii 
 
 Moreover, Jesus is like an untold gladness in the 
 heart. Zacchseus "came down at once and welcomed 
 Him gladly." There is something very touching about 
 the new-found gladness of the tax-collector. Though 
 successful and wealthy, life had proven a disappoint- 
 ment to Zacchaeus; and now a little wind of gladness 
 begins to stir in the branches of his soul! When the 
 people protested against the unseemly relations so 
 quickly established between the Master and the social 
 outcast, Zacchseus stopped and said to the Lord: "I 
 will give the half of all I have, Lord, to the poor, and 
 if I have cheated anybody I will give him back four 
 times as much." Why, the joy of Jesus had run clean 
 down to the roots of his soul; and already that joy is 
 beginning to disclose itself in high resolves and honest 
 deeds. 
 
 Well, Jesus is still like an untold gladness to men 
 and women who have found life hard and disillusion- 
 ing. We are trying to find a moral equivalent for war. 
 It is one of the imperative necessities for mankind. 
 And we shall surely find it, if we look in the right direc- 
 tion. That direction is Christ, and Christ alone. We 
 are working for a better industrial order. But we are
 
 THE VISION SPLENDID 126 
 
 not going to find a solution by merely shifting the 
 emphasis from one phase of the economic aspect to 
 another. We must reckon with the mysterious stuff 
 of human nature; we must correct the delusion that 
 poverty and wealth are all, or the major, matters. We 
 must find a soul-equivalent for human life in all its 
 terror and glory. For life is hard, at best. Full of 
 mystery and agony and disappointment, only shallow 
 people picture life as rosy or auroral. Either they 
 have not worthily lived and thought, or else there is 
 lack of capacity for measuring the vast problems of. 
 existence. But we must add to the sheer hardness of 
 being this other dark item: The ruin which man's 
 own deliberate wrong-doing wreaks upon humanity. 
 Then indeed is the original difficulty of life indefinitely 
 augmented. Nursing a blind fury in the brain, then 
 do men cry aloud against the cruelty of nature, the 
 inhumanity of man, the impossibility of discovering 
 God. 
 
 Now, we must not only have the moral equivalent 
 for a sullen mood like this; we must have the power 
 of an endless life penetrating to the inmost core of such 
 a mood and regenerating the hidden motives of being. 
 We have such a Power! The Person of God in Christ 
 Jesus reaches down into the dry soil of humanity and 
 waters it so thoroughly that the dryness gives place to 
 a heavenly vitality. Thus, even as the wrongs of men 
 are our despair, so the joy of the Lord becomes our 
 strength. When things are so bad that hell is not a 
 theory but a fact, let us stand still and see the salvation 
 of God. And if you think it is an easy task to stand 
 still to wait and watch even while you work and 
 pray it is accusing evidence that you have never even 
 glimpsed the moral centers of the universe, much less
 
 126 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 taken your stand upon those glowing centers as the 
 ultimate meaning of life. 
 
 Would you know, then, what the untold gladness of 
 Jesus is like? Climb the Tree of Obedience. Listen to 
 the whisper of God in your own soul. Seek the thing 
 that is fair and just and beautiful. There, in the 
 branches of your tree outside the city of theory or 
 science or even religion itself, if it be nothing more 
 than a kind of palsied Jericho-priestcraft mumbling 
 about in our twentieth-century world there, there in 
 the stillness and the bloom and the wonder, God shall 
 set spiritual larks warbling in your soul larks of that 
 heavenly dawn which foretell the perfect day. 
 
 The joy of Jesus in the human heart is one of the 
 creative facts of these two thousand years. Again 
 and again men have seen everything go from this 
 earth but the joy of Jesus. Civilizations have van- 
 ished; kingdoms have waxed and waned; empires have 
 been entombed; learning and might and power and 
 genius have stood aghast at the riddle of existence. 
 Yet the imprint of Christ's joy in the soul of man 
 cannot be destroyed. Malign forces have always been 
 able to kill the bodies of men; but no power in earth 
 or hell has been able to kill the joy of Jesus in souls 
 who trust him. Like those antique harmonies orig- 
 inally played into the spheres when the morning stars 
 sang together, the Master's untold gladness is woven 
 into the fiber and fabric of Christianized personality. 
 This fact is somewhat elucidated in the history of art. 
 For generations critics have debated whether "The 
 Virgin of the Rocks" in the National Gallery was a 
 genuine Leonardo. This picture is practically a dupli- 
 cate of an authentic Leonardo in the Louvre. The 
 English gallery had paid $45,000 for its painting; so
 
 THE VISION SPLENDID 127 
 
 there was a monetary as well as an artistic value 
 attached to the dispute. The argument for and against 
 the English painting's genuineness has gone on among 
 the connoisseurs so long that there seemed to be no 
 final judgment available. 
 
 Now, however, authorities maintain that the ques- 
 tion has been settled by the aid of the finger print 
 system. Sir Charles Holmes "knew that much of the 
 exquisite modeling of the oil painting had been done 
 by softening the still wet paint with finger and thumb 
 lips." So the eminent art critic went about his task 
 in a scientific manner. First of all, he chose six of 
 Da Vinci's paintings about which there is no question 
 whatever. Scotland Yard's experts then examined the 
 finger prints of the six ; then they went to the Louvre, 
 where they studied the unquestioned Leonardo; last 
 of all, they came back to the English gallery, took the 
 finger prints of the much-disputed "Virgin of the 
 Rocks," and pronounced it genuine. 
 
 Dead for four centuries, even Leonardo's touch upon 
 canvas cannot be obliterated. But alive forevermore, 
 our Lord and Master keeps the joy-bells chiming in 
 His renovated temples of human nature. No century 
 and no civilization has been utterly deaf to their im- 
 mortal melodies; and I doubt not that their volume 
 will increase with the ages, until at last their golden 
 tollings shall ring throughout the whole of creation's 
 immeasurable bounds. With such tenderness as a 
 dying mother soothes her weeping children, Jesus 
 gathered His frightened, sorrowing disciple-band with- 
 in the vast heavens of His heart and consoled them 
 with these words: "And ye therefore now have sor- 
 row: but I will see you again, and your heart shall 
 rejoice, and your joy no one taketh away from you."
 
 128 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 Has He not been seeing His lovers again and again, in 
 joy and sorrow, in sickness and health, in poverty and 
 abundance, in youth and age, in prison and palace, 
 these sixty generations through? Would you see what 
 Jesus is like, what the vision splendid really is? Climb 
 the Tree of Obedience. In due season you will be lifted 
 so close to the City of God that the Tree of Life shall 
 mysteriously drop its luscious fruit into the lap of thy 
 soul! 
 
 in 
 
 Appraising this very human scene outside the walls 
 of Jericho, we find, furthermore, that Jesus is like gen- 
 erosity itself. Weigh the protest of the crowd toward 
 Jesus' treatment of Zacchaus; consider that the muddy 
 waters of hatred and contempt were boiling up from 
 racial and religious depths fierce, seething, oriental 
 depths at that; and then consider that the spirit of 
 restitution on the part of Zacchseus was just the tax- 
 gatherer's own reaction to the Master's magnanimity. 
 Consider this, I say, and you will be face to face with 
 one of the undying splendors of the Christian's Christ. 
 
 For what is the fact? Just this: Unnumbered mil- 
 lions of human beings have beautifully forsaken their 
 native human stinginess in the Presence of Jesus. To 
 make a mean man high-minded ; to make a selfish man 
 unselfish ; to make a vulgar man dignified ; to make a 
 parsimonious man generous ; to make a false man true ; 
 to make a lazy man industrious ; to make a lustful man 
 pure; to make an avaricious man open-handed; to 
 make a jealous man unenvious; to make an atheist a 
 believer to do this is surely the task of a God; and 
 only the Very and Eternal God, after infinite wooing 
 and manifold approaches, can perform such an ardu-
 
 THE VISION SPLENDID 129 
 
 ous task. For, mark you, once the soul has received 
 a definite bent, has taken a certain stride down the 
 road of destiny, to change that bent and transform 
 that stride, something more than high resolves and 
 sugar-coated moral condiments are necessary. Indeed 
 no work in the universe is at all comparable to this. 
 Vast modifications of matter, in comparison, are mole- 
 hill tasks. Scientific discoveries, involving all the 
 patience and skill of the finely trained intellect, are as 
 child's play set over against this essential transforma- 
 tion of the soul. Take, for example, the matter of 
 avarice and its corroding power in human nature. A 
 friend of mine sought the aid of a very wealthy man 
 in what he has termed "an exceedingly noble cause." 
 The rich man answered the plea as if he were on the 
 verge of poverty itself. "I really cannot give any 
 more!" he said. "What with one thing and another, I 
 do not know what we are coming to!" A short time 
 afterward the man died, leaving an estate valued at 
 more than sixty millions of dollars! Yet the man was 
 not insincere when he expressed the feeling that he 
 could not give another dollar to a noble cause ; he was 
 just the victim of the atrophying power of avarice in 
 the human soul. Dr. Jowett's experience recalls the 
 story that an eminent English physician related to 
 Dean Farrar. The physician said that at night his 
 patient, unable to sleep, persisted in nervously rubbing 
 his hands and twitching his fingers. The doctor won- 
 dered what it all meant. Then the patient's son ex- 
 plained the strange habit. "My father," he said, "is 
 in the habit of fondling a fifty pound note as he goes to 
 sleep." So a note was placed in the sick man's hand; 
 he went to sleep ; and he never woke up again in this 
 world!
 
 130 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 How to arrest the stain of avarice; how to uproot 
 the fungus of selfishness; how to destroy the briers of 
 lust; how to kill out the weeds of jealousy; how to 
 eradicate the stubble from which only the stalks of 
 sin have been cut; how, in a word, to change a poor, 
 stingy mortal into one of God's generous immortals, 
 homing here and now in the flesh this is a work call- 
 ing for the patience and wisdom and love of God. Be- 
 lieve me, my friends, Somebody has to wrestle with 
 Zacchseus not only as he is to-day; but with the 
 Zacchseus of to-day, plus all his crooked yesterdays, 
 that he may not carry through Eternity his yester- 
 days, his to-days, and his to-morrows multiplied by 
 failure, tragedy, and wrongdoing, even though his life 
 in this world be crowned with brilliant success. 
 
 Is there a Somebody equal to this tremendous 
 undertaking? Yes! A thousand tunes yes! Would 
 you see what that Somebody is like Somebody Who 
 inhabits Eternity even as He whispers to a defeated 
 soul: "All which the Father giveth Me shall come 
 unto Me ; and him that cometh to Me I will in no wise 
 cast out." Then climb your own Tree of Restitution! 
 Betake yourself into His presence, and you yourself 
 shall see what the generosity of Jesus is like. Why, 
 is it not like that astronomic old billionaire named the 
 sun? I have seen him billowing the west with wave$ 
 of molten splendor; and even his afterglow sets the 
 eastern skies afire with flaming islands and burning 
 mountains of color. Then I laid me down and slept 
 and lo! the glory and freshness of a new morning was 
 here. Our little planet had swung around the sun, 
 swallowing huge mouthfuls of beauty and light in its 
 journey. But is the light of the sun only for these 
 immense prairies of the West? Is it only for mag-
 
 THE VISION SPLENDID 131 
 
 nificently fronting palaces of the East? Oh, no, the 
 generosity of the sun is like the democracy of God. It 
 searches out every kink and corner, every hole and 
 cobweb, every weed and worm, as well as every pauper 
 and millionaire, and says: "I am brother to the Rain. 
 As my Sister Rain falls upon the just and the unjust, 
 I shine upon the evil and the good. We are like our 
 Father Who is in Heaven." Oh, climb your Tree of 
 Self-Giving! You may then see what Jesus is like. 
 He will translate the magnanimity of God Himself as 
 an assurance in your own soul. 
 
 IV 
 
 Finally, Jesus is like a new world. "And Jesus said 
 of him, To-day salvation has come to this house, since 
 Zaccha3us here is a son of Abraham. For the Son of 
 Man has come to seek and to save the lost." From 
 that hour the tax-gatherer began to live in a new world. 
 That hard old inhuman world, with its bitterness and 
 scorn and contempt, felt the thrill of a transfiguring 
 newness running through all its veins and arteries. 
 
 Now why is Jesus like a new world dawning upon 
 the human spirit? Because he creates the absolute 
 condition of a new spiritual world He makes the 
 human over ; He infuses the heart with a sense of new 
 values and appreciations. Life is full of such trans- 
 formations in other and lesser directions. Think of 
 Keats the hour he looked into Chapman's Homer. 
 Why did he then write his immortal sonnet? Simply 
 because Keats had experienced a literary rebirth. Why 
 was Raphael proud that he lived in the times of 
 Michelangelo? Because the master "the greatest 
 mind that art ever inspired," said Ruskin was the
 
 132 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 source of an artistic regeneration to the younger 
 painter. History and life are packed with these re- 
 juvenations wrought by man on man, by woman on 
 woman. Yet it is in Christ alone that this heavenly 
 force manifests itself with universal and redemptive 
 splendor in society and in the individual. "At the 
 Reformation," remarked Goldwin Smith, "Greece rose 
 from the dead with the Greek New Testament in her 
 hand." "The sure harbinger of a revival of religion," 
 says Professor Glover, "is a revival of interest in Jesus 
 Christ." What are these two scholars saying but just 
 this: At the Reformation men began to reconsider 
 Jesus, and the graves of a moribund society gave up 
 their dead ; and to-day, as in the past, if men desire a 
 genuine revival of religion, they must have a revival 
 of interest in Jesus. He is God's way with the soul ; 
 and is it not a fact of history to add that He is the 
 most effective way God has yet disclosed to man- 
 kind? 
 
 Estimate, then, the value of the new world Jesus 
 creates for two familiar human types of our day 
 the man or woman whose goal is worldly success. Let 
 us assume that this ideal was an inheritance, a train- 
 ing, or both. They set out from the cradle to capture 
 the so-called good things of the world. And they have 
 succeeded some of them beyond their wildest dreams. 
 What then? Why, they discover that worldly success 
 is not enough; there is an unsatisfied hunger within; 
 life is expressing itself in tones of tragedy a wild, 
 meaningless fury, an idiot's tale all too slowly and jab- 
 beringly told. To exchange such a zone of desolation 
 for a world full of budding hope and noble vision and 
 creative faith is "a consummation devoutly to be 
 wished." But how is the exchange to be made? By
 
 THE VISION SPLENDID 133 
 
 Christ in Christ through Christ! He makes all 
 things new by smiting the soul through and through 
 with His everlasting newness. 
 
 A second type is illustrated in those who think 
 change of environment is all that is required. Now 
 there is so much hideous, ugly environment which 
 ought to be transformed that we should waste no time 
 debating the subject. We must do this work, and be 
 about it now. And is there not so much of it to be 
 done that the task is of almost overwhelming dimen- 
 sions? And yet the only method of realizing the right 
 kind of a transformed environment is the method of 
 Jesus. "Change the soul," He seems to say, "and the 
 changed soul will change its setting." I do not mean 
 that this is solely an inner, spiritual matter ; it is that, 
 first and foremost, to be sure ; I mean that a dean soul 
 will send its cleanliness soaking through things. On 
 the other hand, clean bodies with unclean souls exude 
 a moral filth that sullies the most propitious environ- 
 ment. 
 
 Would you see what the new world Jesus creates is 
 like? Climb the Fragrant Tree of Holy Adventure! 
 Be a spiritual pioneer! Prove your soul! Act as if 
 God were, and you shall know that He is! You, too, 
 are a spiritual son of Abraham; God is looking for 
 you. His "lost" child; Jesus sees you in that motley 
 multitude accused by your own sins, cudgeled by an- 
 cestral clubs, mocked by heartless circumstances, de- 
 ceived by wealth and fame, and a companion of haunt- 
 ing midnights. He sees you, my friend, even though 
 you are too spiritually small to see over the tops of 
 these things to get a satisfying view of Him. He is 
 waiting for the psychological moment when, in the 
 presence of all opposition, He can invite you down
 
 134 THE COUNTRY FAITH 
 
 from your sycamore tree and go Home with you 
 Home together Home in God's Heart forevermore! 
 
 Once there went out from these midwestern prairies 
 a man who represented his country in the Unifed 
 States Senate. He was the son of a minister, like a 
 multitude of great and holy men and women through- 
 out the world. The old father was visiting his son in 
 Washington. One evening the father returned from 
 church just as a diplomat from one of the Latin coun- 
 tries was leaving his son's home. The old minister, 
 who had been deeply stirred by the services, at the 
 church, met them in the hall. The Senator introduced 
 his father and the diplomat greeted the venerable man 
 with the urbanity characteristic of his race. Without 
 a word of warning, the father asked the diplomat in 
 almost stentorian tones: "Are you a Christian?" The 
 man of the world was thrown off his guard for a mo- 
 ment, but recovering his native politeness, replied: "I 
 am a Catholic." Gently placing his hand upon the 
 diplomat's shoulder, the man of God continued: 
 "That is all right, my brother. I do not care whether 
 you are a Catholic or a Protestant. How is it with your 
 soul?" The diplomat said his good night and returned 
 home. But the very next day the old preacher was 
 taken with his last illness. Every day the diplomat 
 called to inquire, leaving a bunch of flowers. As the 
 servant of God lay dead in his casket, the statesman 
 came to the Senator's home and asked permission with 
 some member of the family to enter the death cham- 
 ber. He knelt and kissed the dead hand, placed a 
 wreath upon the calm brow, and then went out sob- 
 bing like a child as he said: "He was the first man 
 who ever asked me a question about my soul." 
 
 Ah, yes, in the final examination it is soul, and soul
 
 THE VISION SPLENDID 135 
 
 alone, that counts. And Christ is Lord and Master 
 and Savior of the soul of your soul, of all souls. 
 Have you tried and failed? Well, try it again! And I 
 pray that this golden admonition of a preacher-poet 
 may help you : 
 
 I played with my blocks, I was but a child; 
 Houses I builded, castles I piled; 
 But they tottered and fell, all my labor was vain 
 But my father said kindly, "We'll try it again!" 
 
 I played with my days what's time to a lad? 
 Why pore over books? Play, play, and be glad! 
 Till my youth was all spent like a sweet summer rain 
 Yet my father said kindly, "We'll try it again!" 
 
 I played with my chance such gifts as were mine 
 To win with, to work with, to serve the Divine, 
 I seized for myself, for myself they have lain 
 But my Father says kindly, "We'll try it again!" 
 
 I played with my soul, the soul that is I, 
 The best that is in me, I smothered its cry; 
 I lulled it, I dulled it, and now, O the pain! 
 But my Father says kindly, "We'll try it again!"
 
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