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 raiT TORK QglOAOO TOROKTO
 
 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 And other Talks about Christ 
 and the Christian Life . 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT E. SPEER 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revel! Company 
 
 London and Edinlorgk
 
 Copyright, 1899 
 
 by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
 
 Preface 
 
 ALL the chapters of this little book 
 were first spoken as addresses to the 
 Summer Bible Conferences at Northfield, 
 some to the young men, some to the 
 young women. They are but simple 
 talks to the heart and will of students. 
 Our Lord and our Lord's desire for His 
 disciple's life is their only theme. What 
 other theme is worthy ?
 
 Contents 
 
 I 
 
 "REMEMBER JESUS CHRIST" . . 9 
 II 
 
 THE RELIGION OF UNSPOTTEDNESS . 35 
 
 HI 
 CHRIST'S COMMAND TO BELIEVE . . 67 
 
 IV 
 THE RULE OF THE ROYAL LIFE . . 95 
 
 V 
 THE SERVING CHRIST . . .123 
 
 VI 
 PHILIP'S PROBLEM . . . .155 
 
 VII 
 THE NEW COMMANDMENT . . .187
 
 'REMEMBER JESUS CHRIST"
 
 When diverging creeds thall learn 
 Toward their central source to turn ; 
 When contending churches tire 
 Of the earthquake, wind and Jire; 
 Here let strife and clamor cease 
 At that still small voice of peace 
 " May they all united be 
 In the Father and in Me" 
 
 When as rolls the sacred year 
 Each fresh note of love we hear ; 
 When the Babe, the Youth, the Man, 
 Full of grace Divine we scan. 
 When the mournful Way we tread 
 Where for us His blood He shed; 
 When on Easter morn we tell 
 How He conquered Death and Hell ; 
 When we watch His spirit true 
 Heaven and earth transform anew; 
 Then with quicken' d sense we see 
 Why He said " Remember Mt." 
 
 A. P. Stanley.
 
 I 
 
 "REMEMBER JESUS CHRIST" 
 
 THERE are doubtless reasons for cling- 
 ing with loving preference to the King 
 James Version of the Bible. There is a 
 sweetness of phrase in it that will never 
 be surpassed, and its familiar turns of 
 expression are woven into the fibre of 
 all our thought and feeling. But the 
 reader of the Revised Version has these 
 advantages: he knows that he is nearer 
 to the exact meaning of what the Bible 
 writers said and, though he does lose 
 some of the melody of the older version, 
 now and then he comes upon a change 
 of language that brings out truth hidden 
 before and flings a lane of glory across 
 the page. 
 
 Since beginning the use of the Revised 
 
 Version, seven or eight years ago, I have 
 
 had many such experiences as this, and 
 
 one which came in the spring of last 
 
 11
 
 12 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 year has meant so much to me that I 
 wish to speak of it to you. We were 
 going on a long inland journey, on a 
 house boat, up a river in Southern China, 
 and ordinary habits of Bible study were 
 interrupted so that it was necessary to 
 invent some method adapted to the new 
 conditions. I thought of the simple plan 
 of watching each evening, when we had 
 our little gathering for family prayers, 
 for the most meaningful phrase in the 
 passage that we read together, and of 
 making that phrase the subject for study, 
 such study as was possible, the next 
 morning. One evening the old medical 
 missionary, who was the head of our lit- 
 tle party, was reading in the King James 
 Version the second chapter of the Sec- 
 ond Epistle to Timothy, and I was fol- 
 lowing him in my pocket Revised Tes- 
 tament. There seemed to be no notable 
 change until we came to the eighth verse, 
 which he read, "Remember that Jesus 
 Christ of the seed of David was raised 
 from the dead, according to my Gospel." 
 In the Revised Version I saw that the 
 verse was altogether different. It read,
 
 "Remember Jesus Christ" fj 
 
 "Remember Jesus Christ." It sent a 
 thrill through me as though heaven had 
 been opened just a little. 
 
 Remembering "that Jesus Christ, of 
 the seed of David, was raised from the 
 dead," has very different meaning from 
 " Remember Jesus Christ." I do not de- 
 preciate the facts of Christ's life, nor the 
 unmeasured significance of His rising 
 from the dead ; but I do not believe that 
 the memory of any single fact of Christ's 
 life, not even the memory of the fact 
 that He rose from the dead, can be com- 
 pared with the meaning and the joy of 
 remembering Jesus Christ Himself. 
 
 Now, Paul did not tell Timothy to fill 
 his memory with the fact or the doctrine 
 of Christ's resurrection; he did not tell 
 him that any isolated fragment of the 
 Lord's life was to have the supreme 
 place in his memory: he told him that 
 his memory was to be filled with Jesus 
 Christ. "O Timothy, remember Jesus 
 Christ." So brief was his advice that 
 any man, even now, in the busiest life, 
 can carry it with him. No long argu- 
 ment, no detailed statement "Remem-
 
 
 14 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 ber Jesus Christ." So simple; nothing 
 confusing here; nothing elaborate; noth- 
 ing of minutiae; nothing that leads one 
 off into obscurity and uncertainty. "Re- 
 member Jesus Christ." So practical 
 what could be more practical? "Re- 
 member Jesus Christ." What could Paul 
 have said to Timothy that would have 
 fitted him better for the life and work in 
 which he was engaged ? A young man 
 in a great city, surrounded by tempta- 
 tions such as had never entered his life 
 before, charged with new and heavy re- 
 sponsibilities ' 'Remember Jesus Christ." 
 Nothing mysterious in it. Many have 
 shrunk back from this or that prescrip- 
 tion for the spiritual life because there 
 was something too mystical in it; some- 
 thing altogether beyond the reach of 
 practical grasp. You are not sure that 
 following the recommended course is a 
 possible thing for you, or that following 
 it will bring you to the results that you 
 desire. But memory is a matter of a 
 man's will, just like his love. Horace 
 y Greeley once said that "the affections 
 * are the flower and fruition of the will."
 
 * Remember Jesus Christ" 15 
 
 I think they are, and memory also. You 
 may remember Jesus Christ if you will. 
 Nothing could be more feasible than this 
 advice that Paul gave Timothy, "Re- 
 member Jesus Christ." -. 
 I want to speak about these words as a 
 rule of life: " Remember Jesus Christ." 
 What we all need is something trans- 
 forming. Here it is: " Remember Jesus 
 Christ." You will not find, though you 
 seek through a long, long life, anything 
 more transforming than the remembrance 
 of Jesus. " For we all," writes the Apos- 
 tle Paul, in the eighteenth verse of the 
 third chapter of Second Corinthians, 
 "with unveiled face, reflecting as in a 
 mirror the character of Christ, ('the 
 glory of the Lord ' the literal words 
 are, but they mean the character of 
 Christ, for it was in the face of Jesus 
 Christ that the glory of the Lord was re- 
 vealed), are transformed into the same 
 image of character, from one degree of 
 attainment to another degree of attain- 
 ment, even as by the Lord, the Spirit." 
 If we should begin now to remember 
 Jesus as the rule of life; should so fill
 
 16 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 our recollections with Jesus Christ Him- 
 self that we would remember always 
 Him, can you even conceive of the 
 transformations that it would work in 
 our lives ? What would become of that 
 questionable imagination in a memory 
 stored with Jesus Christ ? What would 
 become of that harshness of speech or 
 of judgment in a life filled with Him ? 
 What a wonderful transformation it 
 would work in our lives if from morning 
 till evening, and from evening till morn- 
 ing again, we were engaged in nothing 
 else than remembering Jesus Christ! 
 
 Think of what a restraining rule this 
 would be. From how much would it 
 hold us back! From that foul compan- 
 ionship; from that darkened atmosphere; 
 from that tainted fellowship, the man 
 would be delivered at once who felt in 
 his life the restraining power of the 
 memory of Jesus Christ. How much 
 we need a restraining rule, those of us 
 >( know to whom God gave hot tempers 
 when He sent us into this world: tem- 
 pers so hot that we have trod too near to 
 the brink ever to let our memories be
 
 "Remember Jesus Christ" 17 
 
 filled with the recollections of those mo- 
 ments of peril. How much we need 
 to have introduced into these hot, im- 
 petuous, fierce, unkindly lives of ours 
 the influence of the self-restraining 
 Christ, whom Trench described in his 
 noble sonnet: 
 
 " He might have reared a palace at a word, 
 Who sometimes had not where to lay His head. 
 Time was when He who nourished crowds with 
 
 bread, 
 
 Would not one mea 1 into Himself afford. 
 He healed another's scratch, His own side bled; 
 Side, hands and feet with cruel piercings gored. 
 Twelve legions girded with angelic sword 
 Stood at His beck, the scorned and buffeted. 
 Oh, wonderful the wonders left undone ! 
 Yet not more wonderful than those He wrought I 
 Oh, self-restraint, surpassing human thought ! 
 To have all power, yet be as having none ! 
 Oh, self-denying love, that thought alone 
 For needs of others, never for its own." 
 
 Into this life of self-restraint, rather of 
 Christ-constraint, passes from this time 
 forevermore the man who decides now 
 that he will "remember Jesus Christ," 
 the quiet man, who as a lamb before 
 his shearers is dumb, so opened not His
 
 i8 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 mouth, who was reviled and reviled not 
 again, who said of Himself that He was 
 meek and lowly of heart. 
 
 Think once again of how stimulating 
 as a rule of life is the recollection of 
 Jesus. 1 once heard of a poor child, who 
 in early life was deformed so that he 
 was no longer able to move about in 
 the active work of life. When the child 
 grew he bethought himself that he would 
 sit by the open window of his room and 
 write on little scraps of paper verses 
 from the Bible, and toss these bits of 
 paper out of the window, praying that 
 some one might pick up each scrap and 
 get help from it. And one day. as he 
 sat by his window, he wrote on the little 
 piece of paper that he had in his hands, 
 these words from the Gospel of John: 
 " I must work the works of Him that 
 sent me while it is day: for the night is 
 coming when no man can work." He 
 leaned out and dropped them down, and 
 they fell on the brim of the hat of a man 
 who was passing by. By and by, the 
 man, raising his hand, felt this little 
 roll of paper there, and opened it and
 
 "Remember Jesus Christ" 19 
 
 read: "I must work the works of Him 
 that sent me while it is day: for the 
 night is coming when no man can work." 
 Those words transformed his life. The 
 recollection of the working Christ called 
 him to work. So the man who to-night 
 fills his memory with Him who had to 
 work the works of the Father that had 
 sent Him while it was day, because the 
 night was coming when no man can 
 work any mote, will go out to live a 
 new life for Him who so made it His 
 meat and His drink to do the will of 
 God. 
 
 Where will you find a more sufficient 
 rule of life than this " Remember Jesus 
 Christ " ? A man to whom Christ is not 
 as yet all that He wants to be, said to me 
 half hopelessly this morning as he turned 
 away after we had been talking together, 
 " I am all at sea." I told him that I hoped 
 he would make port soon. I should like 
 to give him these sailing orders: "Re- 
 member Jesus Christ." Dear fellows, if 
 any of you feel all at sea, there is noth- 
 ing that will be of so much help to you 
 in making the port as these three words,
 
 2O "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 " Remember Jesus Christ." Perhaps you 
 are in doubt about His deity. Perhaps 
 you are in doubt about the incarnation. 
 Perhaps you are in doubt about His res- 
 urrection. Perhaps this thing or that 
 thing in the Christian life confuses you, 
 and you have heard much that is far be- 
 yond your ability honestly to go. May 
 I say to you that if you will remem- 
 ber Jesus Christ it will be as absolutely 
 sure that you will come out where Jesus 
 Christ is, aye, more sure than the rising 
 of to-morrow's sun ? " Remember Jesus 
 Christ " is a rule of life so complete that 
 you cannot find any circumstance or 
 condition of life that can elude its satis- 
 factory reach, the reach of the memory 
 of Jesus. You will recall the saying of 
 Mr. John Stuart Mill, "There is no better 
 rule than for a man so to live that Christ 
 would approve his life." But how can 
 a man know what Christ would approve 
 and what He would disapprove save by 
 remembering Him ? I can give you a 
 better rule than that, and a shorter one, 
 " Remember Jesus Christ." 
 Let us stop for a moment to think
 
 "Remember Jesus Christ" 21 
 
 about these three words. Perhaps very 
 often in the New Testament the writers 
 use this or that name of Christ without 
 any special thought as to what name 
 they are choosing; but it does seem that 
 in most cases they selected with delib- 
 erate intent the title of Jesus of which 
 they make use. Now it is "The Lord," 
 now it is the "Lord Jesus," now it is 
 the "Lord Christ," and now the "Lord 
 Jesus Christ," and again it is "Our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, "and again "Christ Jesus, Our 
 Lord." If you will read through this Sec- 
 ond Epistle to Timothy, in the Revised 
 Version, you will see how Paul selects 
 the order of Christ's names. Every time 
 save once he uses "Christ Jesus." In 
 this verse you will notice that he arranges 
 the words in the order that has become 
 familiar to us, " Remember Jesus Christ." 
 It is the "Jesus" whom he puts first, 
 " Remember Jesus, of the seed of David." 
 He means us to saturate our memories 
 with the earthly life of Jesus, the Son of 
 David; he means us to make ourselves 
 so familiar with the story of that life and 
 the way it went to and fro among men,
 
 22 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 the atmosphere of it, the surroundings of 
 it, that Jesus Himself shall live again 
 with us. Would not this be sweet ? Is 
 not this all our cry ? 
 
 "Oh to have watched Thee through the vineyards 
 
 wander, 
 
 Pluck the ripe ears, and into evening roam ! 
 Followed, and known that in the twilight yonder 
 Legions of angels shone about Thy home ! " 
 
 Perhaps we can watch Him. Some of 
 you will recall the fine passage in Rus- 
 kin's "Modern Painters," in which he 
 describes the uses of the imagination, by 
 which he means, he says, the power of 
 perceiving with the mind that which 
 cannot be perceived by the senses. "Its 
 first and noblest use," he goes on, "is 
 to enable us to bring sensibly to our 
 sight the things which are recorded as 
 belonging to our future state or invisibly 
 surrounding us in this. It is given us 
 that we may imagine the cloud of wit- 
 nesses in heaven and earth and sea as 
 if they were present the souls of the 
 righteous waiting for us; that we may 
 conceive the great army of the inhabi-
 
 "Remember Jesus Christ" 23 
 
 tants of heaven and discover among 
 them those whom we most desire to be 
 with forever; that we may be able to 
 vision forth the ministry of our God be- 
 side us, and see the chariots of fire on 
 the mountains that girt us round; but 
 above all to call up the scenes and facts 
 in which we are commanded to believe, 
 and be present, as if in the body, at 
 every recorded event of the history of 
 the Redeemer." It was for this that God 
 gave us these imaginations, not that we 
 might go dreaming falsehoods or trivial 
 fancies or persuading ourselves that the 
 unreal is real, at least for a little while, 
 but that we should look back with clear 
 and vivid vision to the earthly life of 
 Jesus, the Son of David. Remember 
 Jesus. Have we done this once to-day ? 
 But that is only part of it. There is 
 more. "Remember Jesus Christ," says 
 Paul, "of the seed of David, raised from 
 the dead, according to my gospel." Per- 
 haps we hear more in our common sur- 
 roundings of the memory of Christ raised 
 from the dead than we hear of the mem- 
 ory of Jesus, the Son of David. Too
 
 24 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 much of the teaching of the larger life 
 knows only Him. Surely that is the 
 larger half Christ raised from the dead. 
 If a man is to know but part, let him 
 know Christ, the risen Saviour, alive for- 
 evermore. If he is to make his choice, 
 let him choose the Christ living now on 
 high at God's right hand, and standing 
 here knocking, knocking, knocking, anx- 
 ious to come in and live in our hearts. 
 But there are both sides of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ's Person and Life with which the 
 memory is to be filled. We are to "re- 
 member Jesus Christ," that Jesus who, 
 eighteen hundred years ago, walked to 
 and fro among men in Palestine, and 
 that Christ who to-day is seated on His 
 throne at God's right hand, working for 
 us, and who is here in the midst of us, 
 working with and in and through us. 
 "Remember Jesus Christ, of the seed of 
 David, raised from the dead." 
 
 Let us make quite sure that we under- 
 stand all the power of such a rule of life 
 as this. Think of the influence of re- 
 membering Jesus in our work, for ex- 
 ample. A gentleman told me recently
 
 "Remember Jesus Christ" 2 
 
 that years ago he went to Dundee, to the 
 home of Robert Murray McCheyne, who 
 died when he was only twenty-nine years 
 old, and for whom all of Scotland wept. 
 An old man took him into McCheyne's 
 study, and drew a chair for him, and 
 said: "Sit down in this chair, and draw 
 it up to that table, and put your elbows 
 down upon the table, and rest your head 
 upon your hands. Now let your tears 
 fall. That is the way my pastor used to 
 do." Then he took him into the church, 
 into the pulpit, and he said : "Stand here, 
 and put your elbows down on the pulpit, 
 and let your head rest on your hands, and 
 let the tears fall. That is the way my 
 pastor used to do." 
 
 And that was the way our Master used 
 to do. "And when He drew nigh, He 
 saw the city and wept over it, saying, If 
 thou hadst known in this day, eventhou, 
 the things which belong unto peace." 
 And most of our work fails does it not ? 
 because it is barren of the memory of 
 the weeping Christ; because it contains 
 so little of the thought of the Christ of 
 the tender heart. We never had in our
 
 26 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 lives any such hour as came in the life of 
 John Carmichael, when he stood up in 
 the free kirk of Drumtochty and preached 
 his mother's sermon. We never have 
 seen the sweet face of the living Jesus, 
 who was not ashamed when He stood in 
 the midst even of His foes to weep for 
 those after whose souls He had longed. 
 And we shall never be able to do His 
 work with His power until the memory 
 of the tender Christ fills us in all our toil. 
 And think of the power of the memory 
 of Jesus in our hours of temptation. I 
 was talking with a student in North 
 Carolina some time ago, who seemed 
 never to have thought that when the 
 writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews said 
 that Jesus was tempted in all points like 
 as we are, he actually meant that Jesus 
 was so tempted. He thought that there 
 were some points in which we are 
 tempted, in which Jesus had not been 
 tempted. I do not know all that the 
 writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 meant. I do know that our Master was 
 without any tarnish or blemish or stain, 
 and I know, also, that He was tempted
 
 "Remember Jesus Christ" 27 
 
 in all points precisely as I myself am 
 tempted. And it helps me in my tempta- 
 tions to "remember Jesus Christ"; to 
 think of Him off there in the wilderness 
 by Himself, when the devil was tempt- 
 ing Him; when, assailing Him from 
 every quarter, he endeavored to make 
 Him swerve from the clear and simple 
 path of obedience and loyalty to His 
 Father. I think the man who is remem- 
 bering Jesus Christ will find a large num- 
 ber of his temptations grow lighter, and 
 a large number of them shortly flee alto- 
 gether away. 
 
 Then consider the power of the mem- 
 ory of Christ in what we call the trials 
 and the difficulties and the disappoint- 
 ments of our lives. Was there ever a 
 man who had as much ground for de- 
 spondency as Jesus had? He came to 
 save His nation, and the nation cast Him 
 out. The little band of disciples whom 
 He gathered around Himself did not un- 
 derstand Him, so that when at last He 
 pressed His teaching home to its real end 
 they went away from Him. And He 
 was constrained then to turn to the little
 
 28 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 company of apostles who stood beside 
 Him, and to ask them sadly, "Will ye 
 also go away ? " And at last those 
 twelve did go away. One of them went 
 to betray the Master, and another of them 
 went to deny that he knew Him, and the 
 other ten forsook Him and fled, and the 
 Lord was alone. Was there ever any 
 worker for God who had more ground 
 for disappointment than that poor, soli- 
 tary figure trudging the weary road from 
 Pilate's palace out to Calvary's brow, 
 staggering under His cross ? Was there 
 ever in all the ages of history any one 
 who had more reason to look back upon 
 His life and say, "Surely, all that I have 
 done has gone for naught " ? And does 
 not the memory of that sorrow come 
 back as the .rebuke of the crucified Sav- 
 iour Himself to every mood of disap- 
 pointment and dejection and discourage- 
 ment ? Is it suffering ? We young men 
 do not suffer very much as older men 
 have suffered. But there are hours of 
 suffering coming to many of us; hours 
 of suffering which we would not under- 
 stand if any one who has passed through
 
 "Remember Jesus Christ" 29 
 
 them should describe them to us, simply 
 because there is nothing in our hearts to 
 answer to them. There will come the 
 hours of suffering, when we shall be glad 
 of every memory of Jesus Christ. 
 
 There is no need of life that cannot be 
 met by the memory of "Jesus Christ, of 
 the seed of David, raised from the dead." 
 
 There is no class in life to which this 
 is not a sufficient rule of life. As for little 
 children, who better than little children 
 can remember Jesus Christ ? 1 think my- 
 self often, 
 
 < When I hear that sweet story of old, 
 
 Of when Jesus was here among men, 
 How He called little children like lambs to His 
 
 fold 
 I should like to have been with Him then. 
 
 "I wish that His hands h,id been laid on my head, 
 
 That His arms had been thrown around me, 
 And tiiat I mi<;ht have seen His sweet look when 
 
 He said, 
 4 Let the lit'.le ones come unto Me.' " 
 
 And how gentle and precious are the 
 memories of Jesus to the tradesman! 
 He was a carpenter. Every carpenter can 
 recall his fellow-craftsman with a homely
 
 30 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 and heartsome love, how homely and 
 heartsome the quaint old soliloquy of 
 the carpenter tells. 
 
 ' Isn't this Joseph's Son ? ' Aye, it is He, 
 Joseph, the carpenter,' same trade as me ! 
 I thought as I'd find it, I knew it was here, 
 But my sight's getting queer. 
 
 " I don't know right where as His shed might ha 1 
 
 stood, 
 
 But often as I've been a planing my wood, 
 I've took off my hat just with thinking of He 
 At the same work as me. 
 
 "He warn't that set up that He couldn't stoop 
 
 down 
 
 And work in the country for folks in the town, 
 And I'll warrant He felt a bit pride, like I've 
 done, 
 
 At a good job begun. 
 
 "The parson he knows that I'll not make too free, 
 But on Sundays I feel as pleased as can be 
 When I wears a clean smock and sets in a pew 
 And has thoughts not a few. 
 
 * I thinks of as how not the parson hissen, 
 As is teacher and father and shepherd of men, 
 Not he knows as much of the Lord in that shed, 
 Where He earned His own bread.
 
 "Remember Jesus Christ" 31 
 
 And when I goes home to my missus, says she 
 Are you wanting your key ? ' 
 For she knows my queer ways and my love for 
 the shed, 
 
 (We've been forty years wed.) 
 
 " So I comes right away by mysen with the Book 
 And turns the old pages and has a good look, 
 For the text as I've found as tells me as He 
 Were the same trade with me. 
 
 i Why don't I mark it ? ' Ah, many says so ! 
 
 But I think I'd as lief, with your leave, let it go. 
 It do seem that nice when I come on it sudden, 
 Unexpected, you know." 
 
 And as for us young men, Jesus was 
 one of us. He was just the age of some 
 of us when He began His ministry. I 
 like to remember Him, that young man, 
 as He sat there on the green hills look- 
 ing down over the blue waters of Gal- 
 ilee, and the fishermen were down there 
 on the beach, and all the country folk 
 were gathered around, and He rose up 
 and told them about His Father's king- 
 dom. Some of us are perple'xed with 
 deep questionings. And He was per- 
 plexed. His soul was troubled. What 
 should He say ? Never was any young
 
 32 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 man called to think such great thoughts 
 and solve such great questions as Jesus. 
 He knows us wholly. Shall we not know 
 Him? 
 
 It is very sweet to remember Him. 
 And when the temptation comes in life 
 to do this or that that is not what Christ 
 would have done, it is good to remember 
 Him, and to turn to Him for His help. 
 
 " For evermore beside us on our way, 
 
 The unseen Christ does move, 
 That we may lean upon His arm and say, 
 ' Dear Lord, dost Thou approve ? ' " 
 
 Now, this has been very simple. 
 What could be more simple than this? 
 There has not been anything hidden 
 about it. There has not been anything 
 that it took any time to think out. It is 
 just as simple as the dear sun that has 
 been shining all day. It is as simple 
 as a brother's love. " Remember Jesus 
 Christ." 
 
 Do you know what the Holy Spirit 
 came into this world to do? "The 
 Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom 
 the Father will send in My name, He
 
 "Remember Jesus Christ" 33 
 
 shall bring to your remembrance all that 
 I said unto you. The Comforter will 
 come unto you. And when He, the 
 Spirit of Truth, is come, He shall glorify 
 Me; for He shall take of Mine and shall 
 declare it unto you." 
 
 Here is a test as to whether or not the 
 Holy Spirit is in our lives. Have our 
 minds been full to-day of recollections of 
 Jesus ? If not, then the Holy Spirit has 
 not been there doing His supreme work 
 of revealing Jesus; for that is what He 
 came here to do to hide Himself behind 
 Jesus, and to make all men to think of 
 Jesus, and to fill the minds of men with 
 the memories of Jesus. " He shall bring 
 to your remembrance Me." Are you 
 remembering Jesus Christ ? There is 
 nothing deeper than this, nor anything 
 beyond this. The whole life of Christ's 
 disciples is wrapped up in this remem- 
 bering Jesus Christ. 
 
 I think very many times of the one I 
 love best. When in the night I awake, 
 my first thought is of her; and when 
 early in the morning the sunrise comes 
 stealing into the room, my first thought
 
 34 " Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 is of her, and constantly through the day 
 my mind goes out to her. I think of all 
 the sweet things she has said, of all the 
 sweet and loving things she has done, 
 and I do remember her. I wish I might 
 as often and as well remember Jesus 
 Christ. Dear fellows, let us begin it now. 
 To-night when you lie down to sleep, try 
 to bring back some scene or word from 
 Jesus' life, and think of Him ; and if in the 
 darkness you awake, remember Him; 
 and to-morrow morning, when the sun- 
 rise softly comes, remember Him. Let us 
 begin now remembering Jesus Christ.
 
 THE RELIGION OF UNSPOTTEDNESS
 
 Weary of earth, and laden with my sin, 
 I look at heaven and long to enter in ; 
 But there no evil thing may find a home : 
 And yet I hear a voice that bids me " Come" 
 
 So vile I am, how dare I hope to stand 
 
 In the pure glory of that holy land? 
 
 Before the whiteness of that throne appear ? 
 
 Yet there are hands stretched out to draw me near. 
 
 The while I fain would tread the heavenly way, 
 Evil is ever with me day by day ; 
 
 Yet on mine ears the gracious tidings fall, 
 " Repent, confess, thou shalt be loosed from all." 
 
 It is the voice of Jesus that I hear, 
 His are the hands stretched out to draw me near. 
 And His the blood that can for all atone, 
 And set me faultless there before the throne. 
 
 S. J. Stone.
 
 II 
 
 THE RELIGION OF UNSPOTTEDNESS 
 
 MEN have always found it difficult to 
 agree upon an acceptable definition of re- 
 ligion. Some hold that religion consists 
 chiefly in the intellectual acceptance of 
 certain formulated propositions, while 
 others believe that the chief element in 
 religion is a certain form of feeling toward 
 God and unseen things. There is doubt- 
 less a large measure of truth in each of 
 these two views of religion, which would 
 have to be taken into account in any at- 
 tempt to formulate an exact and compre- 
 hensive statement of what religion is. 
 But whatever truth there is in these con- 
 ceptions, the writer of the General Epistle 
 of James wholly passes them by when he 
 comes to define religion: "Pure religion 
 and undeflled before our God and Father," 
 he says, "is this that a man should keep 
 himself unspotted." There is something 
 
 37
 
 38 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 else in James's definition, and a not un- 
 important matter, but a matter neverthe- 
 less that does not so closely concern us 
 here; so that we can afford to pass that 
 wholly by, and to take the words that I 
 have quoted as containing for us the sub- 
 stance of James's idea of religion. True 
 religion the kind that passes muster 
 with God, the sort that He will be satis- 
 fied with is this: that a man should 
 keep himself unspotted. 
 
 It is a rather startling definition of re- 
 ligion. Unspottedness is that the whole 
 of religion ? James does not say that 
 that is the whole of it, but he says that 
 that is the core of it, and that the man 
 who does not have that sort of religion, 
 does not have the kind of religion that 
 will satisfy Him who passes the only re- 
 liable judgment upon the religion of every 
 man. And even after one has thought 
 over James's definition of religion for a 
 little while, and has come to see how 
 much there is in it, it strikes him as being 
 a very unconventional way of defining 
 religion some would even say a rather 
 undignified way. Why could he not
 
 Religion of Unspottedness 39 
 
 have said that religion is purity, holiness, 
 or sanctification ? For the reason that 
 the early Christians liked to conceive of 
 things very plainly; loved to call them 
 by illuminating names. They were not 
 fond of using worn-out metaphors ; they 
 very much preferred when they spoke of 
 things concerned in the religious life to 
 do so newly and freshly. Just this first 
 metaphor that James uses is one of which 
 they were specially fond. Paul tells us 
 in one of his Epistles that the Church that 
 Jesus Christ will present to Himself in the 
 day when He comes back to wed His 
 Bride, will be a Church without spot. 
 The words that close the little Epistle of 
 Jude make up an ascription which is one 
 of the finest of all the ascriptions of the 
 New Testament: " Unto Him that is able 
 to guard you from stumbling, and to set 
 you before the presence of His glory with- 
 out spot." The Second'Epistle of Peter, 
 describing a certain class of men preva- 
 lent irfhis day, as they are prevalent still, 
 after a vivid description of them as men 
 whose tastes were lustful, "born mere 
 animals," sums up the whole charac-
 
 40 "Remember Jesus Christ " 
 
 terization by calling them " blemishes and 
 spots." And the early Christians de- 
 lighted to speak of Christ under the same 
 metaphor. They called Him a "Lamb 
 without blemish and without spot," "who 
 through the eternal Spirit offered Himself 
 up unto God without spot. " When, there- 
 fore, James defined religion as consisting 
 in spotlessness, he was only making use 
 of a conception that was quite common 
 among Christians of his day, a concep- 
 tion of religion that was prevalent also in 
 the Old Testament times. 
 
 Indeed, he was defining religion in just 
 the way in which God for centuries had 
 been ever endeavoring to get His people to 
 view it. As I read my Old Testament, it 
 seems to me almost that the predominant 
 purpose of the Law and the Old Testa- 
 ment ritual was to teach men the differ- 
 ence between cleanness and uncleanness; 
 between spottedness and unspottedness. 
 At the very beginning of the Levitical 
 Law, we are told that God called Aaron 
 aside as the high priest of the nation, and 
 told him plainly that one of his chief 
 functions was to show the people that
 
 Religion of Unspottedness 41 
 
 there was a distinction between clean 
 things and unclean things. In the next 
 section of the Levitical Law we are told 
 that God took Moses and Aaron both 
 apart and repeated the instructions that 
 He had given to Aaron, and once again 
 made it plain to them in fresh phraseology 
 that one great purpose of His dealing with 
 the people was to impress it upon the Jew- 
 ish nation that there was an eternal and 
 ineradicable distinction between the clean 
 things and the unclean things; the things 
 that are common and the things that are 
 holy. Therefore He told them they must 
 divide all animals the clean and the un- 
 clean. He specified to them the condi- 
 tions under which a fountain of water 
 was unclean, and must not be drunk 
 from, and the conditions under which it 
 was clean. He established the sanitary 
 regulations that were to govern the camp 
 of Israel, in order that it might be clean. 
 "For," He said, "the Lord thy God 
 walketh in the midst of thy camp to de- 
 liver thee and to give up thy enemies be- 
 fore thee: therefore shall thy camp be 
 holy; that He see no unclean thing in
 
 42 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 thee, and turn away from thee." And 
 they were especially enjoined not to 
 touch the unclean things; they might 
 touch only the clean things. 
 
 To make this education of His more 
 impressive, God summed it all up, focal- 
 ized it, in the leper. "The leper," He 
 provided, " is the embodiment of un- 
 cleanness; he is to be the symbol of un- 
 wholesomeness; his clothes shall be rent 
 and the hair of his head shall go loose 
 and he shall cover his upper lip and his 
 cry shall be, 'Unclean! Unclean!'" He 
 was not to be allowed within their camps, 
 he was not to be allowed within their 
 cities. And whenever walking in the 
 public roads through the country he 
 heard the sound of approaching steps, or 
 the tinkle of the camel bells that marked 
 the nearing of caravans, he must lift up 
 his hoarse, strident voice and cry, "Un- 
 clean ! Unclean ! " 
 
 And it made no difference if a man 
 said that he did not know things were 
 unclean. He might not have known 
 that the law was in force. He might 
 have said, "In the section where I live
 
 Religion of Unspottedness 43 
 
 public sentiment is not quite as high as 
 here at Jerusalem. Down in my district 
 you can do things that you cannot do here. 
 They regard some things that you regard 
 as unclean here, as clean down there, and 
 a man of high social standing, such as I 
 am, can afford to ignore such little, petty 
 regulations." It would not do. No mat- 
 ter how influential a man was; no mat- 
 ter how strong a man was; no matter 
 what the sentiment of the community 
 where the man lived was; no matter 
 how ignorant he might be of God's law, 
 God held him responsible for not know- 
 ing what was clean and what was not 
 clean, and He let fall upon him the curse 
 of the unclean man if he violated the 
 laws He had given to the priests and the 
 people. It did not matter that a man 
 had high political influence. Naaman 
 was the captain of the hosts of the king 
 of Syria. The man of God treated him as 
 if he were the vilest pauper. He did not 
 go out to see him. He sent his servant 
 to tell him that if he wanted to be clean 
 he should wash seven times in the Jordan. 
 Now, of course, most of this was only
 
 44 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 God's kindergarten, God's figure ot 
 speech, God's metaphor, to teach His 
 people that there was a moral distinction, 
 to sharpen the edge of their moral dis- 
 cernment, to make it plain to them that 
 just as between natural and material 
 things God was drawing His educative 
 line, so between moral things there was 
 a line of distinction that must never be 
 passed by the man who wanted to share 
 the cleanness of God. He meant to im- 
 press upon the people the same concep- 
 tion of religion which James phrased in 
 the last verse of this first chapter of his 
 Epistle : ' ' Pure religion and undefiled be- 
 fore our God and Father is this: that a 
 man should keep himself unspotted; that 
 he should free himself from that corro- 
 sive vileness which lies with its darken- 
 ing spot upon him." 
 
 No man in Israel who comprehended 
 the teaching of the laws of God believed 
 that he was clean. When Paul came 
 preaching the new evangel, he was not 
 deceived into believing that any man was 
 clean. He looked out over the heathen 
 world, and he described it in the scathing
 
 Religion of Unspottedness 45 
 
 terms that are recorded in the first chapter 
 of the Epistle to the Romans, asserting 
 at the close of his declaration regarding the 
 sins of the heathen that the most hideous of 
 them all was this: that the heathen world 
 had given up the love of the spotlessness 
 of God, and had come to worship instead 
 the uncleanness of flesh. And when he 
 turned away from the heathen world to 
 his own heart, he was not deceived. 
 " In me," he said, "that is, in my flesh, 
 there dwelleth no good thing." And 
 often he broke forth with some of those 
 magnificent hyperboles of which the 
 Bible is so full : " There is none righteous ; 
 no, not one. There is none that seeketh 
 after God. There is none that doeth 
 good, no, not so much as one." He 
 knew in his day, just as every honest 
 man knows in our day, that the stain and 
 the spot had fallen upon every soul. It 
 comes upon a man from without. He 
 takes up a book to read, a good book, 
 "The Cloister and the Hearth," any one 
 of a thousand "good, clean books," as 
 he is told, and before he knows it he has 
 looked on a picture that has fouled his
 
 46 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 thought. He goes into college and falls 
 in with a little company of men, fair on 
 the exterior, and before he knows it he 
 has touched the unclean thing among 
 them. We have seen, each of us, scores 
 of times, the corrosive influence of a 
 rotten man, an unclean, spotted man, in a 
 crowd of clean and healthy men. His in- 
 fluence works like vitriol, until a dozen 
 men are soiled with his contamination. 
 Whichever way a man turns in this great, 
 sad, glad world of God's, uncleanness, 
 spottedness, pollution, touch him on 
 every side. And we know as well that 
 it comes constantly upon us from within. 
 "Let no man say when he is tempted, 
 ' I am tempted of God '; for God himself 
 cannot be tempted of evil, neither 
 tempteth he any man : but every man is 
 tempted when he is drawn away of his 
 own lusts, and enticed." Say not that 
 the things from without corrode you. 
 " It is not that which entereth in through 
 the mouth that corrupts a man," says our 
 Saviour, "but the things that proceed 
 out of the mouth, they corrupt a man; 
 for out from the heart of man proceed
 
 Religion of Unspottedness 47 
 
 evil thoughts, evil images, evil words, 
 and evil deeds, and these are they that 
 corruptaman." "Oh," cried Job centuries 
 ago, "that a clean thing might come out 
 of an unclean!" It was a hopeless cry. 
 Both without and within men touch 
 spottedness every day. 
 
 Sometimes you may meet a man who 
 affirms that he is spotless, clean, both de- 
 ceiving himself and calling God a liar. 
 But the holier a man is, the more nearly 
 spotless he is, the nearer he draws to the 
 clear vision of the spotless God, the more 
 ready he is to declare that his own life is 
 foul and unclean. I suppose David was- 
 by all odds the best man of his day, and 
 yet it was out of David's heart that there 
 came the heartbreaking prayer, "Cleanse 
 me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou 
 God of my salvation! Create in me a 
 clean heart, O God, and renew a right 
 spirit within me. Purge me with hyssop, 
 and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall 
 be whiter than snow." I suppose Isaiah 
 was far and away the cleanest man of his 
 time, and yet as he stood that day in the 
 year that King Uzziah died, in the temple,
 
 48 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 and the house was filled with smoke, and 
 the foundations of its pillars rocked to 
 and fro, and he heard the voices of the 
 seraphim cry, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord 
 God of hosts," the cleanest man of Israel 
 went down into the dust, with his mouth 
 in his hand, crying, "Woe is me; for I 
 am undone; for I am a man of unclean 
 lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people 
 of unclean lips." I suppose the Apostle 
 Peter was among the cleanest men in the 
 company of the first disciples, and yet it 
 was he who in that day that they took 
 the great catch of fishes, so that their net 
 brake, fell down on the shores of the 
 Galilean sea before the face of One whose 
 stainless beauty he had never marked be- 
 fore, crying, " Depart from me, for I am 
 a sinful man, O Lord." If there is any 
 man who thinks that there are no stains 
 upon his life, it is only because he has 
 never seen the vision of the stainless life. 
 1 And the holiest men hate corrosion, 
 and shrink horror-stricken from spot, 
 because they know most fully just what 
 spottedness, uncleanness, foulness in a 
 life mean. They know that these shut a
 
 Religion of Unspottedness 49 
 
 man out of the vision of God and His 
 beauty. There stood up once, centuries 
 ago, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, 
 a young carpenter from Nazareth, who 
 came to show men the Father, and among 
 the first words that He spoke, surrounded 
 there by the throng of peasants who had 
 come up from all over Galilee to hear 
 Him, were these : " Blessed are the pure 
 in heart, for they [1 believe He meant they 
 only] shall see God." "Who shall as- 
 cend into the hill of the Lord ?" cried one 
 who went before Him, "and who shall 
 stand in His holy place ? He that hath 
 clean hands and a pure heart." Only he 
 shall ever see the vision of Him to whom 
 Habakkuk said, "Thou art of purer eyes 
 than to behold evil." And therefore the 
 men who value the vision of God and 
 His glory shrink back with white-faced 
 loathing from spottedness. They know 
 that spots and uncleanness shut men out 
 of Christ's kingdom. "Ye know of a 
 surety," wrote Paul to the Ephesians, 
 " that no unclean person hath any inherit- 
 ance in the kingdom of Christ and of 
 God." Why ? Because God loves him
 
 50 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 too much to let him in without a change. 
 I come more and more to feel that the 
 shut gates of Paradise are one of the best 
 evidences of the love of God, that He has 
 provided the outer darkness for men who 
 would not be happy elsewhere; for men 
 who have so corroded and rotted their 
 lives, that only an age-long abode of 
 corrosion will be a satisfactory home to 
 them. God shuts spotted men out of 
 His kingdom because He knows that 
 they can have no taste for it, no sym- 
 pathy with it, no understanding or en- 
 joyment of it; because He knows that 
 light has no portion with darkness; be- 
 cause He knows that to put a man who 
 loves spot in with the spotless ones of 
 Christ's kingdom, is to subject him to a 
 misery that is worse than death. The un- 
 spotted man shrinks from the thought or 
 the sense of spot, because he knows that 
 it bars him out of the kingdom of light. 
 He has read the vision of John on Pat- 
 mos, has looked forward with him to 
 that pure city toward which the hearts 
 of men yearn ever; has read his words 
 that into that city " there shall in nowise
 
 Religion of Unspottedness 51 
 
 enter anything unclean, or he that maketh 
 an abomination and a lie," and he shrinks 
 back from the very thought of anything 
 that will break the sympathies that bind 
 him to the life that is clean and holy, and 
 to the city that knows no stain. My 
 dear fellows, lift up your eyes and see 
 
 " Beyond our sight a city foursquare lieth, 
 
 Above the mists and fogs and clouds of earth, 
 And none but souls that Jesus purifieth, 
 Can taste its joys or hear its holy mirth." 
 
 And from the very thought of physical 
 uncleanness, the clean and the spotless 
 man shrinks back as from poison and 
 blasphemy. " Know ye not that ye are 
 the temple of God, and that the Spirit of 
 God dwelleth in you ? If any man defile 
 the temple of God, him shall God de- 
 stroy: for the temple of God is holy, 
 which temple ye are." 
 
 All this we know only too well, too 
 sadly well! It comes right home to each 
 one of us here to-night, and, thinking it 
 over like honest men, I am sure we want 
 to know not that we are spotted, but how 
 the spots can be wiped off of our lives.
 
 52 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 As I understand the gospel, it came to dc 
 precisely this thing which the Law and 
 the ritual failed to do. The Law and the 
 ritual were sent to teach men to love 
 purity and to hate spot, but when men 
 failed to love purity and to hate spot 
 through these teachers, God sent forth 
 His only begotten Son, that He might 
 teach men to be clean and make them 
 clean. When He proclaimed the plat- 
 form on which He was standing, He in- 
 cluded in it a plank to this effect: that 
 He had come to cleanse unclean men. 
 There is not a record in all the Gospels of 
 one leper who crossed His path whom 
 He did not cleanse unless it be Simon. 
 He wished to show His intense detesta- 
 tion of all that is foul and spotted, and 
 His intention to bring man back to that 
 which His Father had intended him 
 from the very beginning to be. There- 
 fore the message that He proclaimed be- 
 came at once a message of cleanness 
 and of purity. "Come ye out from 
 among them," cried Paul, to the Corin- 
 thians. "Come ye out from among 
 them and be ye separate, saith the Lord,
 
 Religion of Unspottedness 53 
 
 and touch no unclean thing, and I will 
 receive you, and will be to you a father, 
 and ye shall be to me sons and daugh- 
 ters." And when in another epistle, he 
 told of the purpose of Christ's coming, 
 he did it in those matchlessly tender 
 words, "Husbands, love your wives, 
 even as Christ also loved the Church, and 
 gave Himself up for it, that He might 
 sanctify it, having cleansed it by the 
 washing of water with the Word, that 
 He might present it to Himself a glorious 
 Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or 
 any such thing, but that it should be 
 holy and without blemish." To such an 
 extent did the successors of Christ carry 
 their love of cleanness that Paul wrote to 
 one of his churches forbidding its mem- 
 bers even to mention physical impurity. 
 "Why, the very thought of it," he said, 
 " ought to be repulsive to you. Don't 
 let the words that suggest it ever pass 
 your lips. Let it not be named among 
 you." Jesus Christ came that He might 
 make men clean. 
 
 And all of us know how Jesus Christ 
 proposed to make men clean. In the
 
 54 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 central part of the State of Pennsylvania, 
 on a little green hill that overlooks the 
 valley of the Juniata, there is a grave. I 
 love that spot more than any other spot 
 on earth. There is only a white stone 
 there, with a name on it, looking ever 
 toward the first rays of the rising sun. And 
 underneath that name are these words of 
 John's: " And the blood of Jesus Christ, 
 His Son, cleanseth us from all sin." 
 There never was a human grave that less 
 needed such words upon its stone but 
 the words are true words for every life. I 
 do not know how it does it. I know that 
 it does it. I know that He came that His 
 blood might do it; might cleanse men of 
 spot; might cleanse them of impurity; 
 might cleanse them of airuncleanness; 
 might make them as stainless as Him- 
 self. He cleanses men by His blood. 
 He cleanses men by the hope of His 
 coming. "And now, little children," 
 writes John, with young men who are 
 in the struggle in his mind, "and now, 
 little children, abide in Him, that when 
 He shall appear,ye may have confidence, 
 and not be ashamed before Him at His
 
 Religion of Unspottedness 55 
 
 coming." "Behold, what manner of 
 love the Father hath bestowed upon us, 
 that we should be called the sons of 
 God. Therefore the world knoweth us 
 not, because it knew Him not. Beloved, 
 now are we the sons of God, and it doth 
 not yet appear what we shall be; but 
 we know that when He shall appear we 
 shall be like Him; for we shall see 
 Him as He is. And he that hath this 
 hope in Him, purifieth himself even as 
 He is pure." Can you cross the thresh- 
 old of a polluted place; can you let a foul 
 word pass your lips; can you let the 
 wrong suggestion steal into your speech, 
 when you know that the very next mo- 
 ment He who shall come, and who does 
 not tarry, after all, so very long, may 
 stand by your side on that threshold, or 
 may hear those words or mark that sug- 
 gestion ? Let a man once conceive that 
 by his side forever moves the present 
 and the coming Christ, and he loses all 
 relish for stain and uncleanness and spot. 
 And He cleanses men by His word. 
 "Now, ye are clean," He said to that 
 little company the last night of His in-
 
 56 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 tercourse with them, "Now, ye are clean 
 through the word that I have spoken 
 unto you." "Wherewithal," said his 
 great prototype, long before, "shall a 
 young man cleanse his way ? By taking 
 heed thereto according to Thy Word." 
 By Christ's blood; by the hope of Christ's 
 coming and His ever real presence, and 
 by the indwelling of Christ's Word are 
 men made clean. 
 
 I can hear a good many men saying at 
 this point, "All that is perfectly familiar 
 to us. We have passed through the sense 
 of spot. We have passed through the 
 sense of cleansing. What we want to 
 know is how to keep clean. From time 
 to time we have bowed down and felt 
 the power of His purging blood, and 
 our sins have afresh been washed away. 
 But how can we keep ourselves clean ? " 
 And that is precisely James's point: True 
 religion and undefiled before God is not 
 getting cleansed once and then spotting 
 yourselves again. Pure religion and un- 
 defiled is this: that a man should keep 
 himself unspotted. How ? Well, neg- 
 atively, let a man bar the things that are
 
 Religion of Unspottedness 57 
 
 unclean. Let a man hate as the very 
 breath of hell every spot of foulness. 
 Let him take as a rule of his life the 
 strong words of Jude: "Hate the very 
 garments spotted by the flesh." So Paul 
 practically advised Timothy: "Flee 
 from the uncleanness that is common to 
 young men. Get out of the reach of 
 young men who are spotted by it." And 
 this is- an injunction that men do not 
 heed. Many of us belong to fraternities 
 that contain spotted men. Many of us 
 have voted spotted men into our frater- 
 nities. Many of us have been officers in 
 Christian organizations that have know- 
 ingly admitted spotted men. Many of 
 us are members of clubs which contain 
 spotted men. Do not think that you 
 can handle fire and not be burned or that 
 you can touch soot and not be soiled. 
 I know how many men there are who 
 have been deluded by the devil's lie that 
 only a man who has been himself de- 
 filed can rescue spotted men. As 
 though no doctor were fit to set 
 a broken arm without first breaking 
 his own! Let not the devil persuade
 
 58 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 any man that he cannot cleanse anothei 
 until he has first soiled himself. Let 
 men hate the things that are unclean. 
 Let men stand out and out against the 
 things that are spotted. Let men break 
 once and forever with the world that is 
 anti-Christ, full of soil, and corruption, 
 and stain, and then they may hope to 
 keep themselves clean. And, positively, 
 let men love and cherish the things that 
 are clean. Let them hate on one side 
 the things that are full of spot. Let 
 them love on the other side the things 
 that are spotless. Let them think pure 
 thoughts. " Whatsoever things are true, 
 whatsoever things are honorable, what- 
 soever things are just, whatsoever things 
 are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 
 whatsoever things are of good repcrt; if 
 there be any virtue, if there be any praise, 
 think on these things." I know quite 
 well I am not talking at random in this 
 matter. I have met at this, and other 
 summer schools, men by the score who 
 have confessed before the days of the 
 conference were passed that they were 
 spotted with wrong and vile thoughts.
 
 Religion of Urispottedness 59 
 
 There are men here to-night who would 
 willingly sacrifice one hand, if by that 
 sacrifice they might guarantee themselves 
 forever against the thinking of another 
 unclean thought. My fellow-students, 
 are we so near to beasts ; are we so close 
 of kin to them that we can think, for- 
 sooth, of only the beast-like things ? Let 
 men have pure thoughts. Let them 
 choose clean friends. The Apostle Paul 
 knew perfectly well the importance of 
 this when writing in his First Epistle 
 to young Timothy, he advised Timothy 
 to choose his friends from among the 
 pure-hearted friends of God. Let a man 
 choose his companions from clean men. 
 Let him strive as God gives him grace to 
 lift up the unclean men. Let him not 
 withdraw so far from them that he can- 
 not help them into cleanness. But for 
 the sake of his own spotlessness let him 
 not stain himself with the corruptions 
 that have ruined and wrecked other 
 lives. And let men speak clean and pure 
 and wholesome words. Let us think 
 one moment. How many of us have 
 this day allowed a questionable sugges-
 
 60 "Remembei Jesus Christ" 
 
 tion to pass our lips ? How many of 
 us have in personal intercourse this 
 day allowed the shady word to be said; 
 allowed the tainted thought to be' ex- 
 pressed ? Oh, that men might be willing 
 to speak clean, and sweet, and pure 
 words! Those of you who have read 
 Coleridge Pattison's life will recall that, 
 when captain of the cricket team at Eton, 
 his team was dining with "the eight" of 
 the boats, and after the dinner was over, 
 and some of the men were speaking and 
 talking, one of them got up and began 
 an objectionable song. Coleridge Patti- 
 son called out at once. "If that does not 
 stop, I shall leave the room." He left the 
 room and refused to go back to his place 
 on the team until personal apologies were 
 made. Dr. Trumbull once told me of a 
 similar incident in the life of General 
 Grant. There was a slight lull in one of 
 his campaigns and a lot of men were sit- 
 ting around in his tent. General Grant 
 was writing. One of the men looked 
 around and said, "I have a good story 
 to tell. 1 believe there are no ladies 
 here." General Grant looked up and said
 
 Religion of Unspottedness 61 
 
 quietly, "No, sir; but there are gentle- 
 men here." Do men lack self-respect? 
 Do men believe they were made in the 
 image of darkness rather than in the im- 
 age of the stainless and the crystal Christ, 
 that they should be willing to soil speech 
 with those things they would not be will- 
 ing to say to Christ ? 
 
 In these ways can a man keep him- 
 self clean. Fellow-students, a man must 
 do it. A man must do it. We have 
 come up to this conference to see 
 whether or not we could fit ourselves 
 for service. There are a good many men 
 here wearing buttons of the Brotherhood 
 of St. Andrew. Perhaps they were pres- 
 ent at the last convention of the Brother- 
 hood of St. Andrew in Boston, and tfiey 
 will recall what I think were the last 
 public words that Phillips Brooks ever 
 spoke. It was in the consecration serv- 
 ice, and Charles James Wills, one of God's 
 true men, had spoken, and then after him 
 Phillips Brooks came down to speak. 
 And he stood right down in the church, 
 among the men, and he spoke out of 
 that great, clean, wholesome heart of his.
 
 62 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 his last words to young men, and he 
 chose his thought from the fifty-second 
 chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah: "De- 
 part ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, 
 touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the 
 midst of her; be ye clean, ye that bear 
 the vessels of the Lord." Do you sup- 
 pose the Lord will hand over His clean 
 and stainless power, His clean and stain- 
 less message, to spotted men ? Paul said 
 this to young Timothy, to paraphrase his 
 words: "Timothy, if you want to be 
 used of God, you have to cleanse your- 
 self. You have to purge yourself from 
 all unrighteousness. God calls us not 
 unto uncleanness, but unto holiness, 
 and therefore do you shake off from 
 you everything that is unclean, that 
 you may be a vessel meet for the Mas- 
 ter's use." Only the clean man can hope 
 to be trusted by God with the clean ves- 
 sels of the Lord. We have come up here 
 desiring with great desire to see His face, 
 and to become more fully His. Do you 
 suppose we can do this and love spotted- 
 ness? "Thou art all fair, my love," He 
 says. "Thou art all fair, my love, and
 
 Religion of Unspottedness 63 
 
 there is no spot in thee." Only the clean 
 things can have fellowship and life in 
 Him. An unclean man may read a great 
 many books that he would be unwilling 
 to have an angel's eye see. He may see 
 in this great, weary, but lovely world of 
 God's, many things he would not dare to 
 speak of to others. But there are some 
 things he will never see. He will never 
 see that city in which John saw seven 
 angels, clad in jewels pure and bright; 
 that city all of whose streets are pure 
 gold, and every one of whose gates is a 
 pure jewel, while out from under the 
 throne in the midst of it there comes a 
 river of the water of life as pure as crys- 
 tal ; and he will never see the great com- 
 pany of those who have washed their 
 robes in the blood of the Lamb and, clad in 
 stainless white, stand all radiant through 
 and through in God's most holy sight. 
 
 My dear fellows, is this our sort of re- 
 ligion ? " Pure religion and undefiled be- 
 fore our God and Father is this: that a 
 man should keep himself unspotted." 
 Let every man ask himself, "Have I that 
 kind ?" It may be some men have come
 
 64 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 up here who don't like this kind of reli- 
 gion they would a great deal rather have 
 the sort that ends in intellectual assent; 
 they would a great deal rather have the 
 sort that consists of intermittent religious 
 feelings. True religion is this : "That a 
 man should keep himself unspotted." It 
 may be that some men have lost the taste 
 for unspottedness. It may be that they 
 have tasted uncleanness so long that they 
 have no desire any longer, no great, con- 
 suming, absorbing passion for cleanness 
 and spotlessness. May his fellow-men 
 have pity on such a man. He has re- 
 jected the pity of God. I doubt if there 
 is such a man here to-night. We want 
 to be clean. We want to have the kind 
 of religion that means an unspotted life. 
 With all our souls we want that before 
 this evening closes. Why not get it to- 
 night ? Will blessings come this coming 
 week to the man who goes out from this 
 evening's service with his life stained and 
 spotted ? God cannot give to any man 
 who goes away from this conference 
 that which He hungers and thirsts and 
 sent His Son to give him, unless he will
 
 Religion of Unspottedness 65 
 
 cleanse his life first. If you want it 
 cleansed, you can have it cleansed to- 
 night. If you will go back to your room 
 as soon as this evening's meeting closes, 
 and kneel down there by yourself, and 
 pray to your Father which seeth in secret, 
 He will give you cleansing for your sins; 
 and that will take place in you which 
 took place in Naaman, the Syrian, years 
 and years ago, when he went down lep- 
 rous and defiled and dipped himself seven 
 times in the Jordan, and his flesh came 
 upon him again as it had been the flesh 
 of a little child.
 
 CHRIST'S COMMAND TO BELIEVE
 
 I have a life with Christ to live, 
 But ere I live it, must I wait 
 
 Till learning can clear answer give 
 Of this and that book's date ? 
 
 I have a life in Christ to live, 
 
 I have a death in Christ to die ; 
 
 And must I wait, till science give 
 All doubts a full reply ? 
 
 Nay rather, while the sea of doubt 
 
 Is raging wildly round about, 
 
 Questioning of life and death and sin, 
 
 Let me but creep within 
 
 Thy fold, O Christ, and at Thy feet 
 
 Take but the lowest seat, 
 
 And hear Thine awful voice repeat 
 
 In gentlest accents, heavenly sweet, 
 
 Come unto Me, and rest : 
 
 Believe Me, and be blest. 
 
 J. L\ Shairp.
 
 Ill 
 
 CHRIST'S COMMAND TO BELIEVE 
 
 ONE of the most significant character- 
 istics of the temper of our day is its dislike 
 of the imperative mood. It does not like 
 to be addressed in terms of " You must! " 
 It likes to be spoken to in other terms, 
 "Will you not, if it please you?" Old 
 limitations are largely passing away. The 
 fact that very few people now build 
 walls or fences around their premises is a 
 symbol of the removal of lines of limita- 
 tion and obligation in the intellectual and 
 moral world. For the last few years in 
 this land we have had abundant evidence 
 of the dislike of great classes of men for 
 enforced limitation, for obligation, for 
 law. Many of the newspapers in New 
 York were but lately ridiculing and at- 
 tacking the police commissioners for en- 
 deavoring to enforce well-known laws. 
 We have seen in both eastern and west- 
 ern cities in the last few years many 
 manifestations of the same spirit of an- 
 
 69
 
 70 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 tagonism to obligation. To what the dis- 
 like of the imperative is due it may be 
 difficult to say. Probably it has resulted 
 from a number of causes. It may be due 
 in part to the modern conceptions of law 
 in the natural sciences, where we are told 
 that a law is not a rule, or a force, stating 
 how things must be done, and compel- 
 ling them to be done in that way; it is a 
 mere piece of information that, given 
 certain sets of circumstances, things are 
 accustomed to transpire after a certain 
 fashion. It has surely been due also to 
 other things which readily suggest them- 
 selves. The human will has never liked 
 to limit its sovereignty. But it is quite 
 clear that there is scarcely anything that 
 is so distasteful nowadays, especially in 
 the sphere of religion, as the imperative 
 mood. We are told that as far as reli- 
 gion is concerned, it must keep its hands 
 off the rest of our life; that it is a matter 
 altogether beyond reason, and having no 
 right whatever to coerce reason ; that it 
 cannot say "must," that it is a matter of 
 suasion, and that its proper mood is the 
 subjunctive, and not the imperative.
 
 Christ's Command to Believe 71 
 
 And yet, it must at once occur to us 
 that Christ speaks constantly in the im- 
 perative. We have it in these words: 
 not "It is a good thing to have faith"; 
 not "It is desirable, if you wish the 
 blessings, that you should have faith in 
 God" but "Have it." "Have faith in 
 God." Mark you, He not only uses the 
 imperative in religion, but He puts the im- 
 perative upon the most objectionable 
 sphere in the department of religion. " It 
 is all right," some will declare, "to say, 
 'Thou shalt,' and 'thou shalt not,' in the 
 sphere of conduct, but to tell us we must 
 do certain things in the sphere of belief is 
 absurd." They continue, "How can 
 God override all the laws of our lives by 
 compelling us to do things, or ordering 
 us to do things which, perhaps, in the 
 very nature of our constitution, it may 
 not be possible for us to do ? We can- 
 not intellectually assent to a proposition 
 on orders." And yet, it is precisely on 
 the matter of faith that the New Testa- 
 ment persists in putting the imperative. 
 "Have faith in God." When Jairus's. 
 servants came to him telling him not to
 
 72 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 trouble Jesus further regarding his little 
 daughter, Jesus said at once to him, 
 "Fear not; only believe." And when 
 the Philippian jailer asked Paul and Silas 
 what he must do to be saved they ad- 
 vised him in terms of command, "Be- 
 lieve!" 
 
 Now, it is not to be denied that there 
 is a difficulty here, and that this com- 
 mand of Christ to have faith is a stum- 
 bling-block to many. It is such, of course, 
 to every one who does not like obliga- 
 tion. But it is also a stumbling-block to 
 people who have no such aversion but 
 who say that belief comes to them only 
 from an intellectual examination of prin- 
 ciples or facts laid before them, and that 
 if belief does not spring up spontaneously 
 from such an examination, no amount of 
 statutes will create it. And they take ex- 
 ception to things which Christ said and 
 did on just this ground, that He did not 
 respect our mental constitution but en- 
 couraged belief by offering men material 
 advantages. They say he did not deal 
 rightly with men, in purchasing intel- 
 lectual agreement with material gain or
 
 Christ's Command to Believe 73 
 
 Jhe offer of it. It is easy to sympathize 
 with those who find difficulty in their 
 way here. 
 
 Now, there must be some relief. God 
 never involves us in a difficulty from 
 which He does not give us a way of 
 escape. A great many people make short 
 shrift of the difficulty by simply saying, 
 "There is a chasm between religion on 
 the one hand, and reason on the other, 
 and the only way a Christian can get 
 peace, is by standing on the religious side 
 of the chasm and crucifying his intellect." 
 Such people say, "There is no use what- 
 ever in a Christian's attempting to 
 straighten himself out intellectually: he 
 cannot do it; he must, once and for all, 
 make up his mind to be content with 
 keeping his religious beliefs separate on 
 the one side, and his intellectual convic- 
 tions on the other." Surely, this is a 
 very unhappy way of escape. It lands 
 us in more difficulties than it relieves us 
 from. 
 
 It is simpler and truer to deny that 
 faith is defined by calling it "intellectual 
 assent." That is in no sense an adequate
 
 74 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 definition of it at all. If it were, faith 
 could not be commanded. Faith, pri- 
 marily and essentially, is vital, moral, a 
 personal relationship. Intellectual assent 
 is a fruit of this relationship. When a 
 child believes something which its father 
 tells it, we call the child's acceptance an 
 act of faith. But is it, except in an in- 
 direct sense ? It is a fruit of faith. Faith 
 is the confidence which the child reposes 
 in its father, which leads it to believe in 
 what the father says. But that belief is 
 not so much an act as a fruit of faith on 
 the part of the child. 
 
 If you will read through the New Tes- 
 tament carefully, you will see that while 
 not seldom the words "faith," and "be-- 
 lief," and "believe" are used with a pre- 
 ponderating reference to an intellectual 
 attitude toward certain doctrines or a 
 body of doctrine, yet in the main these 
 words are used with reference to the 
 moral and vital relationship which every 
 soul is summoned to recognize between 
 itself and God. This idea is surely up- 
 permost in Christ's mind when He says, 
 " Have faith in God." With it in his mind,
 
 Christ's Command to Believe 75 
 
 the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 also speaks of an "evil heart of unbelief," 
 and Paul prays that the Ephesians may be 
 given a spirit of wisdom and revelation 
 in the knowledge of Christ, " having the 
 eyes of their heart enlightened." It is 
 with the same thought of faith in mind 
 that James pointed out that the devils are 
 the most orthodox people in the universe, 
 that there is no truth to which they do 
 not assent; and yet, no Christian would 
 like to rank himself in their company. 
 And so Christ felt He had a right to order 
 people to have faith, because it was not 
 a matter, primarily, of their minds. If it 
 were, He could not have commanded it. 
 But, because it was primarily a matter of 
 moral character, of heart, of life, of per- 
 sonal relationship, He could order it and 
 He did. "Have faith," He said, "in 
 God." 
 
 With the emphasis thus, in our minds, 
 upon the moral and vital character of 
 faith, let us consider Christ's command 
 as a fourfold call. First of all, it is a call 
 to a personal surrender to God. If you 
 will take your New Testament and read
 
 76 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 it through, marking all the passages 
 where men are bidden to believe or to 
 have faith, you will find that in pretty 
 nearly every case the root idea of the 
 writer or the speaker is that there should 
 be on the part of men a moral surrender 
 to God or to personal truths of God. 
 This is clearly the idea of Paul and Silas 
 in their words to the Philippian jailer, 
 " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ," i. e., 
 on Jesus Christ as Lord; as the one who 
 possesses you; as the one to whom you 
 must make a personal surrender. This 
 is clearly the idea of the Apostle James. 
 His Epistle is a fiery protest against the 
 preponderance of the desiccated, lifeless 
 elements in men's conceptions of faith. 
 And John, in his Gospel, has exactly the 
 same idea of what faith is, primarily: 
 "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"; in which passage very clearly 
 John has as synonymous in his mind 
 those who believe and those who re- 
 ceive Jesus as their Lord, the One from 
 whom they take their names and under
 
 Christ's Command to Believe 77 
 
 whose Name they serve. And Christ puts 
 the same two truths in the same parallel- 
 ism when He declares: " He that cometh 
 to Me shall never hunger; and he that 
 believe th on Me shall never thirst." Our 
 good old hymn so defines faith in its first 
 stanza: 
 
 " My faith looks up to Thee, 
 Thou Lamb of Calvary, 
 
 Saviour divine. 
 Now hear me while I pray ; 
 Take all my guilt away ; 
 Oh let me from this day, 
 
 Be -wholly Thine." 
 
 The first and the last lines, give us our 
 definition, " My faith looks up to Thee, 
 let me be wholly Thine." 
 
 So, when Christ turned to His disciples 
 n the presence of the withered fig tree, 
 and said, "Have faith in God," He did 
 not mean, "Accept this moment all the 
 doctrines which I have been propounding 
 to you," though He well knew that that 
 would follow from a surrender to Him. 
 What He meant was that they, person- 
 ally, should surrender their lives in the ab- 
 solute confidence of an unwavering trust
 
 78 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 to God. If they so surrendered to God, 
 and in their new relationship used God's 
 omnipotence, they would be able to say 
 unto a mountain, " Be thou removed, 
 and be thou cast into the sea," and it 
 should be done. 
 
 Paul expresses this same view of faith 
 when he writes to the Ephesians, pray- 
 ing that Christ may dwell in their hearts 
 by faith, and that they "may be able to 
 comprehend with all saints, what is the 
 breadth, and length, and depth, and 
 height; and to know the love of Christ, 
 which passeth knowledge." There is a 
 story of one of Napoleon's soldiers who 
 was shot in the chest, the bullet lodging 
 near his heart. When in the hospital the 
 surgeons were operating, cutting for the 
 oullet, he lay still, in perfect quietness, 
 until they had laid his very heart bare, 
 and he could feel the outer air beat upon 
 it, and then he whispered, "Surgeon, I 
 think if you cut much further, you 
 will touch the emperor." He had Na- 
 poleon there, dwelling in his heart by 
 faith. His faith had not meant an intel- 
 lectual agreement with Napoleon's plans.
 
 Christ's Command to Believe 79 
 
 He did not know anything about them. 
 Napoleon had not called him into con- 
 sultation. He probably did not know 
 any of Napoleon's ideas or purposes. 
 But he believed in him. He had faith in 
 him, and by faith Napoleon dwelt in his 
 heart. That is Christ's call to us, first of 
 all. When He says, "Have faith in 
 God," He summons us to an uncon^ 
 ditional, unwithholding, irreversible, life> 
 engulfing surrender to Him. 
 
 In the second place, the words, " Have 
 faith in God," are a call to intensity in 
 service. It was with something of just 
 this purpose that they were originally 
 spoken. The disciples had seen the fig 
 tree wither away. They called Christ's 
 attention to the fact, and He said to 
 them, "You would like to do great 
 things, would you not? Well, 'have 
 faith in God,' and you shall have such 
 power. You shall do such things as 
 these yourselves." Faith, He meant to 
 tell them, links us so closely with God 
 as to make us co-workers with Him; as 
 to give us His power in the world, so 
 that we work no longer with a human
 
 8o "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 soul's strength only, but with the 
 strength of God. Now, ever since the 
 day when Christ said those words, men 
 have failed to catch their significance. 
 As early as the day of the Apostle James, 
 they failed, and he strove through his 
 Epistle to correct their misconceptions 
 and errors. Men were clear enough as 
 to the necessity of sound doctrine, but 
 they overlooked the need of personal 
 surrender and the good works and love 
 of man flowing from it. In this, James 
 says, their position was not in advance 
 of that of the devils, who were intel- 
 lectually sound, but were devils neverthe- 
 less. Later, men continued to believe 
 that the life of faith was a life of con- 
 templation, rather than a life of activity; 
 and instead of conceiving Christ's com- 
 mand as a command of most intense 
 service and social efficiency, they re- 
 garded it as an invitation to fold their 
 hands and go away into convents and 
 monasteries, and cultivate a life of medi- 
 tative and secluded contemplation. And 
 even where this mistake has not been 
 made, another not unlike it has been by
 
 Christ's Command to Believe 81 
 
 those who have held that when we come 
 over into the Christian life we are to leave 
 behind us all the things we had in the old 
 life; all the powers, the faculties, the ca- 
 pacities of it; that the change is meant to 
 slay everything we possessed before, and 
 we must take nothing with us from the 
 old life to the new. Now, I cannot read 
 this in my Bible. I turn back to the Old 
 Testament, to the book of Judges, to the 
 story of Gideon, and look at the attrac- 
 tive picture of the young man Gideon 
 threshing wheat at his father's wine press 
 in Ophrah; and, as he threshes, the angel 
 of God comes down and stands by his 
 side. And the angel says to him, "The 
 Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of 
 valor." What does Gideon reply? He 
 bursts forth in very human, protesting 
 fashion. "If the Lord is with us, why 
 are we in bondage ? I have heard that 
 story many times. Our fathers told those 
 old tales to us when we were little chil- 
 dren. He was a very great God in those 
 old days when He brought our fathers 
 out of Egypt. But He has cast us off. 
 These Midianites hold us in the meanest
 
 82 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 bondage." There is the fire of a strong 
 human spirit rich in passions in Gideon's 
 bold, assertive reply. It is wonderful that 
 the angel did not rebuke him. "God 
 cannot use you. You will have to have 
 your will and spirit broken before you 
 can be used." But, no; he said, "Gideon, 
 I like you. I like the spirit, the strong 
 passion, with which you speak. Now, 
 go right out and serve God in this your 
 might, and you shall save Israel from the 
 hand of Midian." And Gideon went out 
 with his might, and struck the shackles 
 off the wrists of his people. 
 
 Turn over to the New Testament. 
 Jesus declares that a man must be born 
 the second time, becoming a double man 
 by being born a second time; and when 
 He sets up the standard of spirit for His 
 disciples, He does not say, "Except ye 
 be changed, and become as a passionless 
 old man of eighty-three, ye shall never 
 see the kingdom of God"; but, "Ex- 
 cept ye be converted, and become as a 
 little child, ye shall not see the kingdom 
 of God." Who but a little child would 
 be ambitious enough to claim the moon
 
 Christ's Command to Believe 83 
 
 as a plaything on the nursery floor? 
 Who but a little child would have the 
 strength to triumph over the well-nigh 
 insuperable obstacles which stand in the 
 way of the acquisition of that greatest of 
 all human attainments, the power of hu- 
 man speech ? When Christ picked out 
 the child-spirit as the standard of spirit, 
 as the condition of entrance into His 
 kingdom, He named the spirit of most 
 intense, assertive power. Faith in God 
 is a rest, surely enough. I would not 
 say one word to depreciate the sweet- 
 ness of the rest that comes to every man 
 or woman who surrenders self to Jesus 
 Christ. But faith in God is also a power. 
 A life of true faith is a life of power. 
 President Hastings, of Union Seminary, 
 summed up truly what Christ had in 
 mind for His apostles, when he told the 
 graduating class, several years ago, that 
 he had two pieces of advice to give them. 
 The first was, Find the place where God 
 wants you. The second was, When you 
 have found it, burn to the socket. 
 " Have faith in God," is a call to a life of 
 intensity in service, and service in which
 
 84 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 every faculty and gift of life must find 
 play, transfigured, made a thousandfold 
 more effective by the Spirit of Christ. 
 
 So with the Lord : He takes and He refuses 
 Finds Him ambassadors whom men deny, 
 Wise ones nor mighty for His saints He chooses, 
 No, such as John or Gideon or I. 
 
 " He as He wills shall solder or shall sunder, 
 
 Slay in a day or quicken in an hour, 
 Tune Him a music from the Sons of Thunder, 
 Forge and transform my passion into power." 
 
 In the third place, it is a call to posi- 
 tiveness. " Have faith in God." It was 
 not, "Have speculations about God"; 
 nor, "Have doubts regarding Him"; 
 but, " Have positive faith in Him." Obe- 
 dience to this command in this sense 
 brought mighty strength into the work 
 and life of the early Church. It had an un- 
 qualifiedly unhesitating message. " Have 
 faith," was its one word, "in God, and 
 in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ." Such 
 a message men were wanting. They had 
 had speculations put before them for years 
 and years; and I have no doubt Plato 
 only voiced the longing of many honest
 
 Christ's Command to Believe 85 
 
 hearts throughout the world when he 
 said: "We must lay hold of the best 
 human opinion in order that, borne by it 
 as on a raft, we may sail over the dan- 
 gerous sea of life, unless we can find a 
 stronger boat, or some word of God 
 which will more surely and safely carry 
 us." It was just this positiveness that 
 commended the Gospel to all honest 
 souls who were looking for something 
 in which they could safely abide. On 
 the other hand, the agnostic type of 
 mind was vexed by the positive certainty 
 of the Christian doctrine and* life. Caecil- 
 ius was much angered: " Human medi- 
 ocrity is so inadequate to the exploration 
 of things divine, that it is not granted us 
 to know, nor is it permitted to search, 
 nor is it just to force the things which 
 are upheld suspended in the heavens 
 above us, nor those which are sunk deep 
 in subterranean abysses." 
 
 But the early Church knew. It had 
 faith, and spoke. The same positiveness 
 commended Christ and His work to men. 
 People had talked and speculated. Many 
 schools of philosophers and teachers ex-
 
 86 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 isted in Jesus' day. What commended 
 Jesus was that His teaching was differ- 
 ent from theirs. He spoke as one who 
 had authority, and not as the Scribes. 
 We need the sense of confidence which 
 is faith. Have we such faith ? Or are 
 we not wavering, many of us, in our 
 Christian lives? When we attempt to 
 speak to anybody in college, or in life, 
 do we lack certitude ? Are we drifting 
 from one point to another point, so that 
 we do not know where we stand posi- 
 tively and splidly ? If so, let us have faith. 
 I like to turn back and read the paper 
 found among General Armstrong's notes 
 after he had died. It shows us the heart 
 of a man who believed. It was written 
 on New Year's eve, several years before 
 his death. Notice how fully it illustrates 
 the heart grasp of the truth of assurance 
 that was a part of Christ's command: 
 
 "MEMORANDA. 
 
 "Now when all is bright, the family 
 together, and there is nothing to alarm, 
 and very much to be thankful for, it is 
 well to look ahead and, perhaps, to note
 
 Christ's Command to Believe 87 
 
 the things that I should wish known 
 should I suddenly die. I wish no monu- 
 ment or fuss whatever over my grave ; 
 only a simple headstone; no text or sen- 
 timent inscribed, only my name and the 
 date. I wish the simplest funeral serv- 
 ice, without sermon or attempt at ora- 
 tory a soldier's funeral. I hope that 
 there will be enough friends to see that 
 the work of the school shall continue. 
 Unless some shall make sacrifices for it, it 
 cannot go on. A work that requires no 
 sacrifice does not count for much in ful- 
 filling God's plans. But what is com- 
 monly called sacrifice is the best, happiest 
 use of one's self and one's resources, the 
 best investment of time, strength, and 
 means. He who makes no such sacrifice 
 is most to be pitied. He is a heathen 
 because he knows nothing of God. 
 
 " In the school, the great thing is not 
 to quarrel; to pull all together; to refrain 
 from hasty, unwise words and actions; 
 to unselfishly and wisely seek the best 
 good of all; and to get rid of workers 
 whose temperaments are unfortunate; 
 whose heads are not level; no matte;
 
 88 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 how much knowledge or culture they 
 may have. Cantankerousness is worse 
 than heterodoxy. I wish no effort at a 
 biography of myself made. Good friends 
 might get up a pretty good story, but it 
 would not be the whole truth. The 
 truth of a life usually lies deep down 
 we hardly know ourselves God only 
 does. I trust His mercy. The shorter 
 one's creed, the better. ' Simply to Thy 
 cross I cling,' is enough for me. 
 
 "Prayer is the greatest power in the 
 world. It keeps us near God. My own 
 prayer has been most weak, wavering, 
 inconstant; yet it has been the best thing 
 I have ever done. I think this a universal 
 truth. What comfort is there in any but 
 the broadest truths ? 
 
 " It pays to follow one's best light 
 to put God and country first; ourselves 
 afterwards. Taps has just sounded. 
 "S. C. ARMSTRONG. 
 
 " HAMPTON, VA., 
 "New Year's Eve, 1890." 
 
 How good is the tone of this! The 
 firm, clear spirit of faith is here. Stand
 
 Christ's Command to Believe 89 
 
 fast. Believe. Be not tossed to and fro 
 with every wind of doctrine. Have faith 
 in the eternal and trust-deserving God. 
 
 Lastly, Christ's command is a call to 
 hopefulness. " Have faith in God." Each 
 of the two terms of it is a call to hope- 
 fulness. If He had not said anything 
 about God, but only "Have faith," His 
 words would have been a call to hope- 
 fulness. The writer of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews conceives of faith as the assur- 
 ance of things hoped for, the evidence of 
 what is unseen as yet, as a belief in better 
 times ahead. Speaking of the faith of 
 the saints of old, he declares: 
 
 "These all died in faith, not having re- 
 ceived the promises, but having seen them 
 afar off, and were persuaded of them, and 
 embraced them, and confessed that they 
 were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. 
 For they that say such things, declare 
 plainly that they seek a country. And 
 truly, if they had been mindful of that 
 country from whence they came out, 
 they might have had opportunity to have 
 returned. But now they desire a better 
 country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore
 
 90 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 God is not ashamed to be called their 
 God: for He hath prepared for them a 
 city." 
 
 And the other term commands and cre- 
 ates hopefulness: "Have faith in God." 
 What do they think God is, who speak 
 of the "good old times," or long for past 
 hours when they better knew and enjoyed 
 the blessing and fellowship of Christ, 
 who sing 
 
 " Where is the blessedness I knew 
 When first I saw the Lord ? " 
 
 What kind of a God do they think we have ? 
 Does He not always keep the best things 
 for the last ? Is His love stronger than 
 His strength, that we had the best things 
 yesterday and the day before, and are not 
 having yet better things to-day, nor to 
 have better things to-morrow ? A true 
 theology insists that this month is the best 
 month of our lives. Every day is the best 
 day, and the next day will be better. 
 Have you ever noticed in reading the 
 book of the Acts, that almost every time 
 the evangelist Luke speaks for himself he 
 says, "day and night" when he has oc^
 
 Christ's Command to Believe 91 
 
 casion to use these words ? Almost every 
 time he quotes a speech of the Apostle 
 Paul's, he says " night and day." Now, 
 this is an interesting little verification of 
 the accuracy of the writer of the book of 
 Acts. " Day and night " was the Gentile 
 order of speech, while "night and day" 
 was the Jewish order. Luke as a Gen- 
 tile used the former order; Paul as a Jew 
 the latter. The Gentiles conceived of the 
 night as coming after the day. Their 
 golden age was behind. It was darkness 
 ahead. For the Jew, the golden age was 
 always to come. It was darkness, Egypt, 
 behind. The account of the creation in 
 Genesis says that the "evening and the 
 morning," not the "morning and the 
 evening," were the first day. Have you 
 thought of this ? "The evening and the 
 morning were the first day." Day does 
 not begin when the morning comes. It 
 ends in light. Bright are the things to 
 come in a Christian's life, and the dark 
 things are behind. Every day for the 
 Christian is a better day than all the days 
 before. And every Christian can truth- 
 fully look forward to better times, better
 
 92 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 hours, better moments to come. The 
 gloom and darkness are past. Bonar ex- 
 presses the truth in one of his hymns: 
 
 " 'Tis first the true, and then the beautiful, 
 
 Not first the beautiful, and then the true : 
 First the wild wood, with rock and fen, and pool, 
 Then the gay garden, rich in scent and hue. 
 
 " 'Tis first the good, and then the beautiful, 
 
 Not first the beautiful, and then the good : 
 First the rough seed, sown in the rougher soil, 
 Then the flower blossom or the branching wood. 
 
 Not first the glad, and then the sorrowful, 
 
 But first the sorrowful, and then the glad 
 Tears for a day : for earth of tears is full, 
 Then we forget that we were ever sad. 
 
 Not first the bright, and after that the dark, 
 
 But first the dark, and after that the bright : 
 
 First the thick cloud, and then the rainbow's arc; 
 
 First the dark grave, then resurrection light 
 
 " 'Tis first the night stern night of storm and war, 
 
 Long night of heavy clouds and veiled skies: 
 Then the far sparkle of the Morning Star, 
 That bids the saints awake, and dawn arise." 
 
 I do not know which of us need to 
 hearken most to which one of these four 
 aspects of Christ's call. It may be that
 
 Christ's Command to Believe 93 
 
 there are some of us who need to heed 
 most Christ's command as a call, not 
 primarily to an intellectual attitude, but to 
 a moral atmosphere, a personal, complete 
 surrender. I do not believe in blinking 
 intellectual difficulties. The honest thing 
 is to face them honestly, if they are hon- 
 est. But, at the same time, we ought to 
 be discerning enough not to confuse this 
 incident of Christian life with the essence 
 of it. It is a personal relationship of liv- 
 ing love. "Have faith in God." Or, it 
 may be that some of us have been sloth- 
 ful in our work; that we have been idle 
 and negligent of opportunities for service. 
 " Have faith in God," is for us a call to 
 intenser activity. Or, it may be that some 
 of us are lacking in clear, positive convic- 
 tion. We do not know where we stand. 
 We have nothing to give to anybody. 
 How can we do work? Let us "have 
 faith in God." There is not one of us 
 who does not need to hear Christ's com- 
 mand in the last sense. Hot, sultry 
 weather will come, and we shall think of 
 and long for the pleasant days we have 
 experienced. Whatever kind of weather
 
 94 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 God gives us is the most pleasant kind. 
 People are always complaining about it. 
 We always want the most unseasonable 
 kind of weather. Let us believe that 
 what God gives us is the best for us at 
 the time of the gift. God gives us every 
 moment what is best for us, if we are 
 willing to take it; and if we are His dis- 
 ciples, and are "willing there is more in 
 this thought than the words convey we 
 can go through life with a smile, know- 
 ing that every experience in it is the 
 sweetest and best that could come to us. 
 "Have faith in God!" Christ knows 
 what the words ought to mean to each 
 one of us.
 
 THE RULE OF THE ROYAL LIhc
 
 I worship Thee, sweet Will of God 
 
 And all Thy -ways adore, 
 And every day I live, I seem 
 
 To love Thee more and more. 
 
 Thou wert the end, the blessed rule 
 Of our Saviour's toils and tears ; 
 
 Thou wert the passion of His Heart 
 Those three-and-thirty years. 
 
 And He hath breathed into my soul 
 
 A special love of Thee, 
 A love to lose my will in His, 
 
 And by that loss be free. 
 
 He always wins who sides with God, 
 
 To him no chance is lost ; 
 God's Will is sweetest to him, when 
 
 It triumphs at his cost. 
 
 When obstacles and trials seem 
 
 Like prison-walls to be, 
 I do the litlle I can do, 
 
 And leave the rest to Thee. 
 
 F. W. Faber.
 
 IV 
 
 THE RULE OF THE ROYAL LIFE 
 
 IT is very interesting to note the way 
 in which the different New Testament 
 writers summarize the life and service of 
 our Lord. Simon Peter, for example, 
 standing in the house of Cornelius and 
 preaching to the people there, spoke of 
 Jesus on this wise: " He passed through 
 doing good." What was foremost in 
 Peter's mind was evidently the intensity 
 and the benevolence of the service of 
 Jesus, On the other hand, the Apostle 
 Paul was accustomed to speak on another 
 wise: he wrote to one of the churches, 
 desirous that it should emulate Jesus' ex- 
 ample, "Christ pleased not Himself." 
 Or, as he put the same truth in a yet 
 more striking way to the Philippians, 
 "He emptied Himself." I think we can 
 understand in a little measure why it was 
 that this aspect of Christ's life and min- 
 istry appealed to Paul. He must have 
 97
 
 98 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 been a man of very strong passions, 
 which he found it hard to repress. He 
 was tempted to please himself, to follow 
 his own nature, and instead of emptying, 
 rather to assert himself and to retain 
 where Christ had surrendered. So the 
 element in Jesus' life that was foremost 
 in his mind shaped his method of state- 
 ment, and he spoke of the Master as one 
 who pleased not Himself. The Apostle 
 John, in his First Epistle, seems to 
 have liked best to think of Jesus as the 
 deeply loved Son whom the Father had 
 sent to be the Saviour of the world. His 
 eyes were fixed on the boundaries of the 
 Lord's unlimited mission, and on the 
 closeness of the Lord's relationship to the 
 Father out of whose presence He had 
 come. 
 
 Now the writer of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, Apollos, or whoever he may 
 have been, has a different way of speak- 
 ing about the life of Jesus and of sum- 
 marizing the ministry of Jesus. In the 
 tenth chapter of his Epistle, in a rather 
 free quotation from the fortieth Psalm, he 
 sums up the life and character of Christ
 
 Rule of the Royal Life 99 
 
 in this way : " Lo, I come (in the volume 
 of the book it is written of me) to do 
 Thy will, O God." The writer of this 
 Epistle has been speaking about God's 
 nearness to men and the methods of 
 God's expression of Himself to men, and 
 he thinks of Jesus as one who came, the 
 expression of the Father's will and the 
 image of His person, not to do any will 
 of His own, but to do the will of the 
 Father. Here we have the best general 
 summarization of the life and ministry of 
 Jesus. He came to do God's will. That 
 was the rule of the royalest life that was 
 ever lived ; and it will be the rule of all 
 the royal life that ever will be lived until 
 that day when the King shall come-back 
 in His beauty, and we shall all perfectly 
 do the will of God. 
 
 I am not sure that we need the Bible to 
 teach us that this is the rule of a royal 
 life. Surely, not one of us has ever gone 
 through a hospital ward, looking down 
 upon the white cots and the whiter 
 cheeks and the folded hands and the 
 traces of suffering, who has not had it 
 borne in upon him, that it would have
 
 loo "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 been well for men from the beginning it 
 they had done the will of God. One 
 never goes through the corridors of a jail 
 and looks through the grated doors at the 
 pale faces within, without having it im- 
 pressed on him with overwhelming force 
 that men could scarcely find anywhere a 
 better preacher than that jail of the truth 
 that it would be well for every man if he 
 did the will of God. That little blade of 
 grass under our feet, that little waving 
 leaf upon the tree tells us with all God's 
 eloquence the same truth, that everybody 
 is here and everything is here to do the 
 will of God. 
 
 And yet, far more eloquently than by 
 these inarticulate preachers was this truth 
 expressed to us in the life of Jesus. The 
 writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews had 
 just the idea of Christ's life which Christ 
 had of it Himself. "I came down from 
 heaven," He said, "not to do Mine own 
 will, but the will of Him that sent Me; 
 and He that sent Me is with Me. The 
 Father hath not left Me alone, for I do 
 always those things that please Him." 
 The doing of the will of God seems to
 
 Rule of the Royal Life 101 
 
 have been the foundation stone, as it was 
 the ultimate principle, of the life and the 
 teaching of Jesus. That was what 
 Robert Falconer came to at last, in George 
 Macdonald's novel, when, after all his 
 long struggle and his dissatisfaction with 
 the emptiness of his life, he went to his 
 box and took out the Testament that Dr. 
 Anderson had given him long before, and 
 sought for light and peace. He pro- 
 ceeded to read over the life and the words 
 of Jesus, and these were the discoveries 
 that he made in the teaching of Jesus: 
 that He taught: "First, that a man's 
 business is to do the will of God; sec- 
 ond, that God takes upon Himself the 
 care of the man; and third, therefore, 
 that a man must never be afraid of any- 
 thing." That is part of the outline of 
 what I should like to say simply to you 
 now. 
 
 It is the business of each one of us 
 we have no other business in this world 
 to do the will of God. We meet two 
 classes of people who deny this. One 
 class denies it openly; the other class, 
 not having strength of character or will
 
 1O2 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 sufficient for that, denies it by its life. 
 One class that denies this truth is made 
 up of those who do their own wills 
 rather than the will of God ; and the sec- 
 ond class is made up of those who, not 
 having strength enough to do their own 
 wills, fall in behind their fellows and do 
 their fellows' wills. These two classes, 
 and the third, those who do the will of 
 God, exhaust all the men and women 
 with whom we come in contact. The 
 slave, who does the will of somebody 
 else; the knave, who tries to do his own 
 will; and the freeman, who does the will 
 of God. 
 
 Now, oddly enough, the man who 
 tries to do his own will and the man who 
 tries to do the will of some other man 
 feel each that he is free, while they think 
 the man who does the will of God binds 
 himself to slavery. Do you think so? 
 It was a just cause of regret at the 
 World's Exposition in Chicago, that 
 President Eliot left out of the words he 
 selected for the Peristyle the whole core 
 of the sentence of Jesus, part of which 
 he wrote there. "And ye shall know
 
 Rule of the Royal Life 103 
 
 the truth," he wrote, "and the truth 
 shall make you free.* It was not a fair 
 quotation. "If ye abide in My word, 
 then shall ye be My disciples indeed, and 
 ye shall [then] know the truth, and the 
 truth shall make you free." President 
 Jordan of Leland Stanford University is 
 reported to have said once that, so far as 
 he could see, the life which declared it- 
 self free to live laxly or to live with a low 
 standard was in the most degraded sort 
 of bondage which he could imagine. To 
 do my own will is no freedom; to do the 
 will of some other man as blind as I is no 
 liberty. The only liberty to be found in 
 this world is to be found in the emanci- 
 pation of the bondage of God. They 
 are free, who, having His word abiding 
 in them, become His disciples indeed, 
 and are made free by His truth. 
 
 Now these two classes of which I have 
 spoken think also that they have this ad- 
 vantage over us: that it is not hard for 
 them to find out the will that they want 
 to do, while it is always hard for a man 
 to find out the will of God. Some years 
 ago, when shooting in the foothills of
 
 104 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 the Alleghany Mountains, I spent "unday 
 with an old farmer and his wife. As 
 the Sunday afternoon drew on to a close, 
 the farmer's son said that there was to 
 be a meeting held by some Winnebrina- 
 rian preacher on the hilltop close by, and 
 asked me if I would not like to go there. 
 So, after the sun had set, we all climbed 
 up the ridge to the schoolhouse where 
 the meeting was to be held. It was a 
 rainy night, and the people came in from 
 the bushes where the meeting was ordi- 
 narily held, and sat on the forms in the 
 school-room. I think I was never in 
 such a strained meeting. There were a 
 number of people kneeling down at "the 
 mourners' bench " in front, and there was 
 a very simple, earnest preacher holding 
 forth to them with much zeal and the 
 warmth of what was evidently a very in- 
 tense life. This was the common form 
 of expression which all the people kneel- 
 ing there were using: "I can see Jesus, 
 but I cannot quite reach Him. I can see 
 Jesus, but I cannot quite reach Him.' 
 Many people seem to feel that God deals 
 with us in that way; that the hardest
 
 Rule of the Royal Life 
 
 thing to find out in this world is what 
 God would have us do and be; that if 
 we will only drift into our own will for 
 ourselves, that will be simple and easy 
 enough, but to ascertain the will of God 
 is a painful and arduous process. Is it 
 so ? You recall the lines in which Mr. 
 Lowell expresses the truth that the best 
 things are the easiest to get; that the 
 heart of God is the openest door: 
 
 " At the devil's booth are all things sold, 
 Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold ; 
 For a cap and bells our lives we pay, 
 
 Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking : 
 'Tis heaven alone that is given away, 
 
 'Tis only God may be had for the asking." 
 
 God, instead of standing afar off, stands 
 near. The will of God is the hardest 
 thing to miss and the easiest thing to find. 
 It is seeking us. 
 
 What is that will ? So clearly, that we 
 may never miss it, the Bible suggests the 
 three great outlines of God's will. All 
 the rest is comparatively unimportant de- 
 tail. The will of God for every man and 
 woman, is this, first of all: "This is the
 
 io6 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 work [or the will] of God, that ye should 
 believe on Him whom God hath sent." 
 That is first. No one of us can ever dis- 
 cover anything else about the will of God 
 until we have taken that first step. The 
 first will of God for every man and 
 woman is that the child of God should 
 enter into Christ's life, and believe on 
 Him. There are many ways of stating 
 this truth. Jesus, of course, chose the 
 best of them all: that the will of God 
 consisted in believing in Him, consisted 
 in entering into His friendship, in getting 
 into moral and spiritual sympathy with 
 Him, in making a complete surrender of 
 life to Him. That is the will of God for 
 each of us. 
 
 What is next? "This is the will of 
 God, even your sanctification," your 
 holiness of life; that we should go on in 
 Christ's fellowship to a life of Christ's 
 fullness, to a life enriched with all that 
 Christ came to bring, to a life in which 
 Christ Himself is all that He can be to the 
 souls of men. 
 
 And what is third? "It is not God's 
 will that any man should perish." It is
 
 Rule of the Royal Life 107 
 
 God's will that all should come into life. 
 However narrow you and I may be, God 
 has a heart of universal love. He would 
 save every man if He could. His love is 
 so large that every soul in this world is 
 embraced in it, and only those fall out of 
 it who antagonize His will. 
 
 Now these three things are the will of 
 God for each one of us: believing in 
 Jesus Christ, going on into the holiness 
 of the life that is Christ's, entering into 
 Christ's service for the redemption of 
 man unto a Father who would not lose 
 any one of His children. We shall find, 
 just as surely as we let these things be 
 the great outlines of God's will to us, 
 that everything else that we think most 
 important falls into its proper place, illu- 
 mined at once by all the light that pours 
 upon the life that has accepted, first of 
 all, the great outlines of God's revealed 
 will for itself. "If any man will do His 
 will, he shall learn " more than can be 
 told to any man who has not already be- 
 gun to learn for himself. 
 
 It is our business to do this will of 
 God. Can you imagine anything more
 
 io8 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 strengthening than to have the " chance " 
 to do the will of God ? This was the 
 watch cry that Pope Urban gave the 
 Crusaders eight centuries ago, as he stood 
 in the market-place of the village of Cler- 
 mont: "Deus vult" "It is the will of 
 God," and nerved by the conviction that 
 what they were doing was the will of 
 God, they swept out from that old 
 French market-place; they filled all Eu- 
 rope's highways with the bones of their 
 dead ; they poured out the best blood of 
 the world on Palestinian battlefields ; they 
 whitened the Mediterranean with the 
 sails of their fleets, and they wrested acre 
 after acre of the holy soil from the hands 
 of the Saracens. They believed they 
 were doing the will of God. What can 
 withstand the man who is summoned to 
 do the will of God and who believes that 
 he can discover what the will of God is, 
 and let his life fall into line with that will ? 
 What can be more sweet than doing 
 the will of God ? There are other things 
 that we may wish to do that will make 
 our lives full of envy and jealousy and 
 discontent, but there is a life of perfect
 
 Rule of the Royal Life 109 
 
 sweetness and peace for the man or 
 woman who wills to do the will of God. 
 What can any one do more than the will 
 of God ? No pope upon his throne was 
 ever able to do more. And the hum- 
 blest person in all this world can do as 
 much. 
 
 And what can be more lasting and en- 
 during than the doing of the will of God ? 
 This is the indictment that John brings 
 against doing anything else than the will 
 of God, that it simply is not worth while. 
 It will not last. " For the lusts ['tastes' 
 is the Greek word] of the flesh, and the 
 lusts of the eye, and the vainglory of 
 life are not of the Father, but are of the 
 world. And the world passeth away, 
 and the lusts thereof, but he that doeth 
 the will of God abideth forever." For 
 
 " When the sun grows cold, 
 And the stars are old, 
 And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold " 
 
 then the men and women who have done 
 the will of God will see that which they 
 have done stand forth in all its true light 
 and eternal radiance as the only thing in
 
 no "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 all this world destined to last with God 
 Himself forever and ever. 
 
 It is our business to do the will of God, 
 and therefore we need never be afraid. I 
 wondered very much when I first read 
 " Robert Falconer " that that thing should 
 be put in a man's creed. Why should we 
 be afraid ? And yet the longer one stops 
 to think of it, the more he discovers that 
 fear, after all, rules most of our life. 
 We dress as we do, often most uncom- 
 fortably, through fear of breach of cus- 
 tom. We hold the opinions that we do 
 through fear of emancipation. We fall 
 into certain habits through fear of liberty. 
 We shrink from death through fear of 
 life. A great part of our life is lived un- 
 der the shadow of fear. To those who 
 have learned to do the will of God, fear 
 has become an obsolete word. What is 
 there for them any longer to fear ? Not 
 personal danger, of course, nor personal 
 sacrifice. When David Livingstone went 
 back to Africa, after getting his degree 
 from one of the Scotch universities, cov- 
 ered with honors from every side, he 
 compared men's judgment of mission-
 
 Rule of the Royal Life ill 
 
 ary sacrifice with what hundreds of 
 Great Britain's young men were doing 
 every year, going out in her armies to 
 the uttermost parts of the earth; and he 
 said, " Hundreds of young men annually 
 leave our shores as cadets, all their friends 
 rejoice when they think of them bearing 
 the commission of our Queen. When 
 any dangerous expedition is planned by 
 Government, more volunteers apply than 
 are necessary to man it. ... Yet no 
 word of sacrifice there. And why should 
 we so regard all we give and do for the 
 well-beloved of our souls? our talk of 
 sacrifices is ungenerous and heathenish." 
 There came, a few years ago, into the 
 office of one of the large magazines in 
 New York City, a young man, I think 
 less than thirty years of age. He said 
 that he wanted to go out to Africa. He 
 had been studying the slave trade and 
 wanted to give what he had of life to the 
 attempt to strike one blow against what 
 was left of it. The magazine did not 
 know him, but the editor was pleased 
 with his earnestness, and sent the young 
 man out to Africa. Glave plunged in on
 
 112 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 i 
 
 the east with a few companions, worked 
 his way steadily north toward the Zam- 
 bezi, and then west until he came out in 
 sight almost of the Atlantic coast, and 
 then lay down in an African hut and died 
 of fever. But he was not afraid. He 
 was doing, so far as he saw it, the will 
 of God for him. 
 
 What is there for the man or woman 
 doing the will of God to fear ? Men and 
 women often think that old John Brown 
 of Osawatomie was a crazy man. He 
 surely did some peculiar and unlawful 
 things, but he did this one good thing at 
 least. He furnished an illustration of 
 contempt for personal danger, for per- 
 sonal sacrifice, for the loss of good name 
 and the good will of his fellow-men in 
 the doing of what he believed to be his 
 Master's will. When he was asked by 
 Mr. Vallandigham just after his capture, 
 "Mr. Brown, who sent you here?" the 
 old man looked up into his face and said, 
 "No man sent me here; it was my own 
 prompting and that of my Maker." On 
 November 3, 1859, he wrote to "My dear 
 wife and children, every one," quite
 
 Rule of the Royal Life 1 1 3 
 
 calmly, "Yesterday, November 2, I was 
 sentenced to be hanged on December 2 
 next. Do not grieve on my account. I 
 am still quite cheerful. God bless you! " 
 On November 8 he wrote, "I can trust 
 God with both the time and manner of 
 my death, believing as I now do, that for 
 me at this time to seal my testimony for 
 God and humanity with my blood will 
 do vastly more toward advancing the 
 cause I have earnestly endeavored to 
 promote, than all I have done in my life 
 before. I beg of you all meekly and 
 quietly to submit to this, not feeling 
 yourselves in the least degraded on that 
 account. Remember, dear wife and chil- 
 dren all, that Jesus of Nazareth suffered 
 a most excruciating death on the cross 
 as a felon, under the most aggravating 
 circumstances. Think also of the proph- 
 ets and apostles and Christians of formef 
 days, who went through greater tribula- 
 tions than you or I, and try to be recon- 
 ciled. May God Almighty comfort all 
 your hearts and soon wipe away all tears 
 from your eyes. To Him be endless 
 praise! Think, too, of the crushed mil-
 
 114 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 lions who ' have no comforter.' I charge 
 you all in your trials never to forget 
 the griefs 'of the poor that cry, and 
 of those that have none to help them.'" 
 And just a few days before his death he 
 wrote to the Hon. D. R. Tilden, "I have 
 enjoyed remarkable cheerfulness and 
 composure of mind ever since my con- 
 finement; and it is a great comfort to 
 feel assured that I am permitted to die 
 for a cause not merely to pay the debt 
 of nature as all must. I feel myself to 
 be most unworthy of so great distinc- 
 tion. . . . My sleep ... is as sweet as 
 that of a healthy, joyous little infant. . 
 . . I have scarce realized that I am in 
 prison or in irons at all. I certainly 
 think I was never more cheerful in my 
 life." He was not afraid. He believed 
 he was doing the will of God. 
 
 I think if you would look into your own 
 life, you would find that any shrinking 
 that is there, is there through fear. Those 
 who stand on the edge of a full surrender, 
 those who wait for something that by no 
 possibility can ever come to them in this 
 limit of life until they step out into the
 
 Rule of the Royal Life 115 
 
 largeness of the love of God, those who 
 have confused doubts and the doubting 
 mind with the highest personal life, and 
 exalted them over the personal will, will 
 find, if they will analyze it to the last, that 
 fear is there, and that the fear springs 
 from an unwillingness to do the will of 
 God. It is our business not to be afraid. 
 Last of all, it is our business to go 
 straight forward, quietly, honestly doing 
 the thing that lies nearest to our hands, 
 which is sure to be the will of God. We 
 want the distant thing. If the man of 
 God would say to us, "Do some great 
 thing," we should be glad to do it, to 
 enter into the will of God; but to go 
 down and bathe in the Jordan, we will 
 not demean ourselves by doing any such 
 small thing as that. Abana and Pharpar 
 are better than the Jordan. We miss 
 God's large will for us because we train 
 ourselves away from the capacity to dis- 
 cern it or from the ability to do it if it 
 comes, by our neglect to do the will of 
 God that lies nearest, the present will, in 
 the surrender of our own life to Him, the 
 present will, in that loving word to that
 
 li6 " Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 other life very near us needing help at 
 this present moment. After all, we may 
 never be given any more of the glad and 
 glorious will of God to do than the bit 
 that lies nearest to us now. "Ah, think 
 not," wrote one whom some of you know, 
 who was shut out by physical limitation 
 from the larger life of Christian activity : 
 
 " Ah, think not if thou art not called 
 To work in mission field 
 
 Of some far distant clime, 
 That thine is no grand mission. 
 Every deed that comes to thee 
 
 In God's appointed time 
 Is just the greatest deed that thine could be, 
 Since God's high will appointed it to thee. 
 
 *' The present moment is divinely sent, 
 The present duty is thy Master's will. 
 
 O thou who longest for some noble work 
 Do thou this hour thy given task fulfill. 
 
 And thou shall find though small at first it 
 seemed, 
 
 It is the work of which thou oft hast dreamed ! " 
 
 For each one of us 
 
 " The trivial round, the common task, 
 Will furnish all we ought to ask, 
 Room to deny ourselves, a road 
 To bring us daily nearer God."
 
 Rule of the Royal Life 1 1 7 
 
 There is no one to whom God will ever 
 intrust any large and glorious will to do 
 in the future who is not willing to do 
 that little phase of God's will lying very 
 close and very near now. 
 
 There are two ways in which we can 
 look at this whole matter of doing the will 
 of God afar and the will of God near. We 
 can look at it in the dead way, as duty- 
 doing, the finding out what our common 
 tasks are, what our present task in life is, 
 and then setting ourselves to the doing of 
 that task. This view of it Mr. Lowell ex- 
 presses finely in his ' ' Ode to Washington." 
 
 "The longer on this earth we live, 
 And weigh the various qualities of men, 
 
 Seeing how most are fugitive 
 Or fitful gifts at best of now and then, 
 Wind-wavered, corpse-lights, daughters of the fen, 
 
 The more we feel the high, stern-featured beauty 
 
 Of plain devotedness to duty, 
 Steadfast and still ; not fed with mortal praise : 
 
 But finding amplest recompense 
 
 For life's ungarlanded expense 
 In work done squarely and unwasted days." 
 
 But there is the better view of it, not 
 as an impersonal task of duty assigned
 
 ii8 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 us to be done, but as a fellowship with 
 the Most High in the doing of His friendly 
 will, as a partnership with the Father as 
 close as the partnership between Him and 
 His Son, in which He ushers us with all 
 the privileges of His family life into the 
 warmth and tenderness of His close fel- 
 lowship and speaks to us moment by 
 moment in the doing of His will. 
 
 I was looking over very recently the 
 personal papers of Hugh Beaver, who 
 left so great an impress at Northfield the 
 last year of his life, and I found two 
 from which I want to quote. One is a 
 letter to Mr. Mott, written when the call 
 came to him in his college in Pennsyl- 
 vania to turn aside from the life toward 
 which he had been directing himself to a 
 life of complete Christian service. 
 
 " My dear Mr. Moif : 
 
 " Since receiving your letter, Mr. Bard, our State 
 Secretary has visited us, and partially as a result I 
 have decided to go into the work for the present, 
 giving them from six to nine months per year. I 
 had other plans in view, but for about three years I 
 have been calling for Hymn No. 107 of Gospel 
 Hymns No. 5 in about all the meetings I have at-
 
 Rule of the Royal Life 119 
 
 tended ' My Jesus, as Thou wilt,' and it seemed 
 that the spirit of the hymn should be a guide to me 
 in this the first call that has cost me very much to 
 obey. So you will find me next year, if God per- 
 mits, doing what I can, with His help, in our Penn- 
 sylvania colleges." 
 
 About eight months afterward, in a 
 town in eastern Pennsylvania, spending 
 the Sunday alone, he had evidently come 
 to a new stage in his surrender, for he 
 wrote this slip, which was not found un- 
 til after his death. 
 
 " November 16, 1895. 
 " ' Just as I am Thy love unknown 
 
 Has broken every barrier down, 
 Now to be Thine, yea, Thine alone, 
 O Lamb of God, I come, I come.' 
 
 "This i6th day of November, 1895, J Hugh McA. 
 Beaver, do of my own free will give myself, all that 
 I am and have, entirely, unreservedly, and unquali- 
 fiedly to Him, whom having not seen I love; on 
 whom, though now I see Him not, I believe ; bought 
 with a price, I give myself to Him who at the cost 
 of His own blood purchased me. Now committing 
 myself to Him, who is able to guard me from stum- 
 bling and to set me before the presence of His glory 
 without blemish in exceeding joy, I trust myself to
 
 12O "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 Him for all things, to be used as He shall see fit 
 where He shall see fit. Sealed by the Holy Spirit, 
 filled with the peace of God that passeth understand- 
 ing, to Him be all glory, world without end, amen. 
 " (Signed) HUGH McA. BEAVER." 
 
 How soon he finished the will of God,, 
 serving his own age and falling on sleep, 
 you know: and how to that city, that 
 after all, is not so very far away from 
 any one of us, where the servants of the 
 King see His face and serve Him, he has 
 gone in, to come out no more forever. 
 He did the will of God. 
 
 Will you do it ? It is the will of One 
 to whom we belong. It does not matter 
 that here and there there may be one who 
 has never acknowledged Christ as Master. 
 People belong to Christ whether they ac- 
 knowledge it or not. It is only a ques- 
 tion as to whether life shall be lived loy- 
 ally and honorably, or be lived in insur- 
 rection against Him, who bought us with 
 His own precious blood. Would that 
 we might come now to the point at which 
 Jesus stood, when, lifting His eyes to the 
 Father whom He tried always to please, 
 He said, " I am come not to do My own
 
 Rule of the Royal Life 121 
 
 will, but the will of Him that sent Me." 
 Would that we might say with one heart, 
 no one holding back, " Lo, we come to 
 do Thy will, O God."
 
 THE SERVING CHRIST
 
 O, Blessed Jesus, when I see Thee bending. 
 Girt as a servant, at Thy servants' feet, 
 
 Love, lowliness, and might, in zeal all blending, 
 To wash their dust away, and make them meet 
 
 To share Thy feast. I know not to adore, 
 
 Whether Thy humbleness or glory more. 
 
 Meek Jesus ! to my soul Thy spirit lending, 
 Teach me to live, like Thee, in lowly love ; 
 With humblest service all Thy saints befriending, 
 
 Until I serve before Thy throne above 
 Yes ! serving e'en my foes, for Thou didst seek 
 The feet of Judas in Thy service meek. 
 
 Daily my pilgrim feet, as homeward wending 
 My weary way, are sadly stained with sin ; 
 
 Daily do Thou, Thy precious grace expending, 
 Wash me all clean without and clean within. 
 
 And make me Jit to have a part with Thee 
 
 And Thine, at last, in heaven's festivity. 
 
 O Blessed name of Servant ! comprehending 
 Man's highest honor in his humblest name ; 
 
 For Thou, God's Christ, that office recommending, 
 The throne of mighty power didst truly claim; 
 
 He who would rise like Thee, like Thee must owe 
 
 His glory only to his stooping low. 
 
 G. W. Bethune.
 
 THE SERVING CHRIST 
 
 THE last night of our Lord's intercourse 
 with His disciples began with a quarrel. 
 He was intending to speak to His disci- 
 ples this evening more sweetly, more 
 fully, more confidentially, than ever be- 
 fore; and they made themselves ready for 
 this interview by a strife among them- 
 selves as to which of them was the great- 
 est. 
 
 He had sent two of them to make ready 
 the Passover, and apparently the other 
 apostles had followed these, Jesus Him- 
 self intending to come later to the Supper. 
 I suppose they were already assigning to 
 themselves the seats at this feast with 
 Jesus, and were unable to agree as to 
 which should have the seat of honor, and 
 which should take the seat most remote 
 from Jesus. They ought to have known 
 better than to have quarrelled over this 
 question, for they had raised this very is- 
 
 135
 
 126 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 sue several times before in their associa- 
 tion with Jesus, and each time He had 
 given them an answer to it which ought 
 to have shown them long before this 
 that the standards which prevailed in 
 Christ's company were different from 
 those which prevailed among men. That 
 answer should have rendered impossible 
 any such quarrel as this of the last even- 
 ing, producing a spirit to which Jesus 
 could not disclose those things which He 
 was longing to reveal. 
 
 Some months before they had left 
 Galilee, the disciples had quarrelled among 
 themselves over this matter. As they 
 came near to Capernaum, Mark tells us, 
 they strove among themselves as to which 
 of them was greatest, and when He was 
 in the house with them in Capernaum, 
 He asked them, "What were ye reason- 
 ing in the way? But they held their 
 peace for they had disputed one with 
 another in the way, who was the great- 
 est. And He sat down, and called the 
 twelve; and He saith unto them, If any 
 man would be first, he shall be last of all, 
 and minister of all. And He took a little
 
 The Serving Christ 127 
 
 child and set him in the midst of them; 
 and taking him in His arms, He said unto 
 them, Whosoever shall receive one of 
 such little children in My name, receiveth 
 Me ; and whosoever receiveth Me, receiv- 
 eth Him that sent Me." And as though He 
 knew that they needed a repetition of this 
 lesson, only a few days passed before He 
 once again took up little children in His 
 arms and blessed them, and said, with 
 great point, to the apostles, that except 
 they had the spirit of these little children, 
 who were nestling in His arms, they 
 should never see the kingdom of God. 
 And yet both of these lessons were fol- 
 lowed, after but a few days, by a request 
 that came from James and John, two of 
 the best of the apostles, which showed 
 that they had wholly failed as yet to dis- 
 cern the Lord's teaching. They came to 
 Jesus asking Him to do a certain thing 
 for them, and He asked them what their 
 request was, and they said, that one 
 might sit on the left and the other on the 
 right hand with Him in His glory. He 
 asked if they were able to drink of the 
 cup that He was to drink of, and be bap-
 
 128 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 tized with the baptism that He was to be 
 baptized with, and, little thinking what 
 they said, they replied, "We are able." 
 And He answered, " You may drink of My 
 cup, and be baptized with My baptism, 
 but to assign to you a place on My left 
 hand or on My right hand is not Mine to 
 give. It will be given to those for whom 
 those places have been prepared. " When 
 the other apostles learned of this request, 
 Mark tells us, they were highly indignant 
 that James and John had tried to antici- 
 pate them, and they came to Jesus, find- 
 ing fault with them, and He said to them, 
 "You know that they which are ac- 
 counted to rule over the Gentiles lord it 
 over them, and their great ones exercise 
 authority over them, but it shall not be so 
 among you; but whosoever will be first 
 among you shall be servant of all, for even 
 the Son of Man came not to be minis- 
 tered unto, but to minister, and to give 
 His life a ransom for many." 
 
 Three times then, within a few weeks, 
 Jesus had repeated this lesson of the true 
 standard of greatness, which was to be 
 observed in the kingdom of God; and
 
 The Serving Christ 129 
 
 yet so quickly did they forget it, that but 
 a few days afterward, as they drew nigh 
 unto Jerusalem, Simon Peter turned to 
 Jesus, after He had made some remark, 
 to say, " Lord, we have left our homes, 
 everything we have, and have followed 
 Thee. What are we to have?" And 
 our Lord replied, with that sublime self- 
 restraint, that sublime suppression of 
 what He might have said, that character- 
 ized so much of His teaching, " Verily, I 
 say unto you, there is no man who has 
 left house, or brethren, or sisters, or 
 father, or mother, or wife, or children, 
 or lands, for My sake, who shall not re- 
 ceive manifold more in this time and in 
 the world to come, eternal life." And 
 now, after all this, the very last night of 
 all, they quarrelled again as to which of 
 them should be first. 
 
 It must have been with infinite sorrow, 
 with infinite pity, that our Master walked 
 into that room and marked the spirit that 
 filled the place. First of all He knew it 
 was necessary that He should bring them 
 to the spirit that was the condition of His 
 further revelations to them, and so when
 
 130 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 supper was ended He Himself laid aside 
 His garments, and girded Himself, and 
 took up a towel and began to wash the 
 disciples' feet. He came last of all, ap- 
 parently, to Simon Peter. I suppose He 
 had noticed that Simon had been most 
 forward in claiming the first place, and 
 so He allowed Simon to suffer longest 
 from that vision of the humility of the 
 Highest One, of the lowliness of the Son 
 of God, washing the feet of His sin- 
 stained disciples. When at last He had 
 completed His task, and had washed the 
 feet even of Judas and Simon Peter with 
 the rest, He turned to them and said, 
 "Know ye what I have done to you? 
 Ye call Me Master and Lord: and ye say 
 well ; for so I am. If I then, your Lord 
 and Master, have washed your feet, ye 
 also ought to wash one another's feet. 
 For I have given you an example, that 
 ye should do as I have done to you. 
 Verily, verily, I say unto you, the serv- 
 ant is not greater than his lord; neither 
 he that is sent greater than he that sent 
 him." "The kings of the Gentiles have 
 lordship over them, and they that have
 
 The Serving Christ 131 
 
 authority over them are called bene- 
 'factors; but ye shall not be so; but he 
 that is the greater among you, let him 
 become as the younger; and he that is 
 the chief, as he that doth serve. For 
 whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat 
 or he that serveth ? Is not he that sitteth 
 at meat ? but I am in the midst of you as 
 one that serveth." Perhaps He meant 
 those words to refer, first of all to the 
 scene that the disciples had just witnessed, 
 in which He had washed their feet. They 
 refused to wash one another's feet. "Ye 
 refuse each one of you to be accounted 
 the servant of the rest. I am among you 
 as he that serveth." 
 
 They had a broader reference than this, 
 however, and were meant to apply, also, 
 to the great act of service that He was 
 about to perform not many hours after 
 this, when, stretched out upon the cross, 
 with the cruel print of the crown of 
 thorns still on His brow, He was as the 
 mighty servant of God, and the mighty 
 servant of man, to put His shoulder un- 
 der the world's sin and bear it all for 
 us.
 
 132 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 But doubtless His words had a wider 
 reference than this even, and were in- 
 tended in some real sense to be a sum- 
 mary of the life that had been lived before 
 these men and that was now to be closed 
 before them in such humiliation of glory. 
 From the beginning to the end it was a 
 life that could not be better described 
 than in these words of His, in the midst 
 of His disciples, on the last night of His 
 earthly fellowship with them, "I am in 
 the midst of you as one that serveth." 
 
 In calling Himself preeminently a serv- 
 ant, our Lord was not lowering His title 
 to a high place in the esteem of men. 
 " Son of Man," is a glorious title. "Son 
 of God" is a title yet more glorious. 
 Lord, Saviour, King; to all of these titles 
 Christ has a right in the lives of those 
 who call themselves His; but besides all 
 these titles, and as sweet as they, explain- 
 ing every other title of His, may be 
 placed this one, "The Servant of man." 
 "I am in the midst of you as he that 
 serveth." In calling Himself a servant, 
 our Lord only took His place, like the 
 true Son of Man that He was, among
 
 The Serving Christ 133 
 
 the other true sons of men. All those 
 who before His days had endeavored to 
 serve their own generations by the will 
 of God had called themselves servants 
 also. The last chapter of Deuteronomy, 
 which tells us of the death of Moses, the 
 man of God, relates it in these words: 
 " So Moses the servant of the Lord died, 
 and He buried him in the land of Moab, 
 in a valley over against Beth-peor," 
 
 " And no man knows that sepulchre, 
 
 And no man saw it e'er, 
 For the angels of God upturned the sod, 
 And laid the dead man there." 
 
 And he kept that title even after, lifted out 
 of his old life of service, he entered the new 
 life of glory. When John, straining with 
 ecstatic vision from Patmos, looked off 
 upon that great city which hath no need 
 of any light, "for the glory of God did 
 lighten it, and the Lamb is the light 
 thereof," he saw there a great multitude 
 who had come up from the dominion of 
 the beast, who stood by the shore of the 
 glassy sea, with the harps of God in their 
 hands ; and they sang the song of Moses,
 
 134 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 the servant of God, and the song of the 
 Lamb. So too that great servant of God 
 in the years that came afterward, David, 
 the king of Israel, called himself also 
 God's servant. 
 
 And have you ever noticed that no 
 man writes in the New Testament who 
 tells us in any place that he was one of the 
 New Testament writers, who does not call 
 himself the bondslave of Jesus Christ? 
 Paul begins the Epistle to the Romans, 
 " Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to 
 be an apostle." Simon Peter begins his 
 Second Epistle, "Simon Peter, a servant 
 and apostle of Jesus Christ." James be- 
 gins his Epistle with the same confession, 
 "James, a servant of God, and of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ." And Jude goes so 
 far, according to the old version, in the 
 beginning of his Epistle, as to call himself 
 "Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ." And 
 although in no place in his Gospel does 
 John call himself so, yet when he begins 
 the Revelation, he applies the same title 
 to himself. "The revelation of Jesus 
 Christ, which God gave unto him, to 
 show unto His servants things which
 
 The Serving Christ 135" 
 
 must shortly come to pass; and He sent 
 and signified it by His angel unto His 
 servant John." 
 
 In this long line of God's true disciples, 
 who through all the ages have attempted 
 to do His will, Jesus Christ took His place 
 as the greatest and highest and holiest, 
 and yet the humblest and the lowliest of 
 them all, when He said, "I am in the 
 midst of you as one that serveth." 
 
 The noblest picture of Jesus Christ as 
 a servant that the Bible contains, strange 
 to say, was not written by any one of 
 those who saw Jesus in the flesh. It is 
 the picture that the sublimest of all the 
 prophets, Isaiah, drew, when, lifting up 
 his eyes in one of his holiest and fullest 
 visions, he beheld the matchless servant 
 of God, in whom God was well pleased, 
 whom He has raised up by His own 
 power to sit in judgment on the earth, 
 and for whose return we are waiting. 
 And there were five characteristics of 
 Christ as a servant that specially appealed 
 to the Prophet Isaiah, looking forward to 
 the Messiah that was to come. Matthew, 
 who knew Jesus, regarded this vision as
 
 136 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 so real a description of Him, that when 
 he was taking up those prophecies that 
 were aptest in their demonstration of the 
 Messiahship of Jesus, he gave special 
 prominence to this one from the forty- 
 second chapter of Isaiah. 
 
 The first of these features of Isaiah's 
 vision was this: that Christ made the 
 touchstone of His service the pleasure of 
 God. "Behold, My servant, My elect 
 one, in whom I am well pleased, in 
 whom My soul delights." He did not 
 measure His life's duties, He did not de- 
 termine what He would do in life by 
 asking whether or not this course or 
 that course pleased Himself. He referred 
 everything to the pleasure of God. "I 
 came down from heaven," He said, "not 
 to do My own will, but the will of Him 
 that sent Me; and He that sent Me is with 
 Me. The Father hath not left Me alone, 
 for I do always those things that please 
 Him." And one of the apostles, who 
 never saw Him, looking back over all 
 that he had been told of that matchless 
 life, was impressed by nothing more than 
 by this fact, that Jesus Christ sought ever
 
 The Serving Christ 137 
 
 to please God. "Even Christ," he said, 
 "pleased not Himself." 
 
 And God was delighted to have it so. 
 When Jesus went down to His baptism, 
 and the dove abode upon Him, there 
 came a voice from heaven that said, 
 "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am 
 well pleased." And when later, on the 
 brow of that hill on which He was trans- 
 figured, His raiment became all white 
 and glistening, as no fuller on earth could 
 whiten it, and His face was so dazzling 
 that the apostles had to turn their faces 
 away, there came a voice, saying, "This 
 is My beloved Son, My chosen one; hear 
 ye Him." 
 
 The touchstone of all true service must 
 be the pleasure of God. Some one pro- 
 poses a certain course of action to us, 
 and we say, " That would be very pleas- 
 ant." But pleasant to whom? To us? 
 That is no rule of life. Pleasing only to 
 God. What pleases Him must determine 
 the course of my life. And truly there is 
 no bondage in submitting everything to 
 such a test. There seems to me to be 
 rather the largest joy and liberty in the
 
 138 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 very power to please God; that I, poor, 
 weak, sinful, unkind, can give Him pleas- 
 ure, the infinite, the eternal One, who 
 opens His hand and supplies the need of 
 every living thing; that I, here in my 
 little place, by shunning that and loving 
 this, by rejecting that and pursuing this, 
 can actually bring pleasure home to the 
 heart of Him who rules the lives of all 
 men, what can more dignify life? Jesus 
 Christ's service was so acceptable to God, 
 because He made its acceptability to God 
 the touchstone of His service. 
 
 The second thing that Isaiah foresaw 
 about the service of our Lord was its 
 constancy. "He shall not fail nor be dis- 
 couraged," Isaiah says. Now, truly, if 
 there has been one worker in this world 
 who had good cause to be discouraged, 
 it was our Lord Jesus Christ. His own 
 family refused to believe on Him. His 
 own disciples totally misunderstood Him. 
 The very last night of His life they quar- 
 relled together when He was coming into 
 their presence to give them their deepest 
 blessing; and the last confession of faith 
 that they uttered was far short of the
 
 The Serving Christ 139 
 
 first confession of faith by John the Bap- 
 tist. And the great world that He came 
 to save, instead of loving Him, pressed 
 down upon His brow a crown of thorns, 
 and crucified Him upon a cruel cross. 
 Yet from the beginning to the end, His 
 service was as constant as His unselfish- 
 ness and His love. 
 
 After Sir Battle Frere, the great African 
 explorer, had been away many years, his 
 wife got a letter from him, saying that 
 he was expecting to reach home on a 
 certain train; and she called one of the 
 servants and said, "You must go down 
 with me to meet Sir Bartle." The man 
 had entered the service of the house since 
 Sir Bartle went away, and had never seen 
 him, so he said, " How am I to know 
 him?" Said Lady Frere, "Look for a 
 tall gentleman helping some one, and you 
 cannot miss him." And the servant went 
 down to the station and looked for a tall 
 gentleman helping some one. After wait- 
 ing a short time he saw a tall man help- 
 ing an old lady out of a railway carriage 
 and he went to him and said, "Are you 
 Sir Bartle ? " "I am," was the reply. He
 
 140 "Remember Jesus Christ' 
 
 was "a tall man always helping people. '' 
 I don't know whether our Lord was a 
 tall man or not, but I know He was al- 
 ways helping people. Frere had for the 
 rule of his life the serving spirit of the 
 words that David Livingstone wrote to 
 one of his sons when he went from 
 home back to Africa; "George," wrote 
 he, "fear God. and v/ork hard." Work 
 in the fear of God is service. And David 
 Livingstone learned the secret of this 
 constancy of service and was willing to 
 pour out his life without any withhold- 
 ing after the example of his master, 
 Christ. 
 
 And the third mark of Jesus Christ's 
 service that impressed both Isaiah and 
 Matthew was this: the humility and low- 
 liness of that service. " He shall not 
 strive, neither shall He cry out, nor shall 
 His voice be heard in the street. The smok- 
 ing flax shall He not quench, a bruised 
 reed shall He not break." So quiet would 
 be the touch of the ideal Servant when 
 He came. And He Himself did not hesi- 
 tate to point out this trait of character in 
 His service. " Come unto Me," He said,
 
 The Serving Christ 141 
 
 "all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
 and 1 will give you rest. Take My yoke 
 upon you and learn of Me; for I am meek 
 and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest 
 unto your souls. For My yoke is easy 
 and My burden is light." And those who 
 were associated with Him loved in after 
 life to remind themselves of nothing quite 
 so much as this, that their Lord Jesus had 
 been a gentle and a sweet and a kindly 
 Lord to them, a mild, meek, patient, lov- 
 ing, gentle spirit, "the first true gentle- 
 man that ever breathed." Simon Peter, 
 with His life in mind, speaks to those to 
 whom he writes in his Second Epistle, 
 telling them not to clothe themselves 
 with fine raiment and jewels and hand- 
 some attire, but to put on the garment of 
 a meek and quiet spirit. And when the 
 Apostle Paul, who had never seen Jesus 
 on earth, but was impressed again and 
 again with the loving gentleness that 
 Jesus showed to him in all the mistakes 
 and failures of his life, desired to appeal 
 to the Corinthians, he said, "I beseech 
 you by the meekness and gentleness of 
 Christ." He never said one harsh word.
 
 142 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 The cry that fills the twenty-third chapter 
 of Matthew was not so much an invective 
 hurled against the people as it was a sad, 
 pathetic, ominous judgment pronounced 
 upon those to whom life had been offered 
 and who had turned away from it, who, 
 having been led to the doors of the holy 
 kingdom had refused to cross over its 
 threshold. 
 
 There is a great secret here. What 
 pleasure is there in pride ? What satis- 
 faction is there in esteeming yourself 
 highly ? What delight is there in ac- 
 counting yourself of more value than 
 those among whom you are thrown? 
 "In lowliness of mind," wrote Paul to 
 the Philippians, "let each count other 
 better than himself." I believe the 
 Apostle Paul meant that each Christian 
 man should be marked by just this spirit, 
 the spirit that leads him to esteem every 
 other better than himself; that longs more 
 to have others advanced and given posts of 
 honor, than to claim them for one's self; 
 that is anxious to shrink away into the 
 hidden places in order that others may be 
 heard and seen. " Let every man esteem
 
 The Serving Christ 143 
 
 every other man better than himself," as 
 He did "who made Himself of no reputa- 
 tion, and took upon Him the form of a 
 servant and became obedient unto death, 
 even the death of the cross." 
 
 I remember very well six or seven 
 years ago, a visit to a college in the South, 
 when I was entertained by the president 
 of the college. It was a poor little col- 
 lege, but it sought to do the work of 
 God, and it was trying to help many to 
 do His will. There were not very many 
 rooms in it, so the president of the col- 
 lege gave me his room. I was waked up 
 very early in the morning by hearing 
 some one come into the room. I did not 
 want to appear inquisitive at all, so I lay 
 quietly without speaking out; and I saw 
 the president of the college come in, and 
 he took my boots, and I saw him take 
 them to an adjoining room, and kneel 
 down there on the floor and black my 
 boots. That act went right to my heart. 
 It showed the character of that man. 
 God has exalted him greatly in his church. 
 His was too humble and true a spirit 
 for God to keep in a low place, and He
 
 144 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 has lifted him up to a position of great 
 honor. He esteemed other men better 
 than himself. "And he that humbleth 
 himself shall be exalted." 
 
 Though Jesus had a right to wear the 
 crown of the eternal city on His brow, 
 He willingly laid it all aside; though the 
 foxes had holes, and birds had nests, He 
 had no place to lay His head; though 
 He was rich, for our sakes He became 
 poor, that we through His poverty might 
 be rich. 
 
 And the fourth feature that Isaiah and 
 Matthew both noted in the service of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ was the breadth of it, 
 the absolute, unlimited breadth of it. 
 He was to establish judgment in the 
 earth. He was to send forth judgment 
 to the Gentiles, and the far distant isles 
 were to wait for His law. You could not 
 tie Christ down to a small life. He went 
 on one of the first Sabbath days after His 
 temptation to Nazareth, His own home, 
 into the synagogue and began to preach, 
 and when He came in His sermon to the 
 missionary reference and pointed out that 
 in the days of Elisha there had been many
 
 The Serving Christ 
 
 tepers in Israel but none were cleansed 
 ;;ave Naaman, the Syrian; that although 
 jn the days of Elijah there were many 
 widows in Israel not one of them was 
 visited except a woman of Sarepta, a city 
 of Sidon, who was a heathen woman; 
 they all rose up filled with wrath and 
 ^ast Him out of their city, and would 
 have hurled Him over a precipice, except 
 that He passed by and made His escape. 
 He came to reconcile to God, not a small 
 locality only, but the whole world ; that 
 He might carry the sins of great multi- 
 tudes. "He is the propitiation for our 
 sins, and not for ours only, but also for the 
 whole world." 
 
 We need to learn this thing in our own 
 Jives of service. Let us not be narrow as 
 we go out into the world. Let our hearts 
 be large enough to take in all the rest of 
 Christ's disciples, no matter by what 
 name they call themselves. Let us be 
 large enough to sympathize with those 
 who disagree with us, only so they hold 
 with us the great Head of us all. Let us 
 remember also that there can be no real 
 Christlike service that is as broad as
 
 146 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 Christ's in the spirit of it, that does not 
 go out to those uttermost parts of the 
 earth of which He was speaking when 
 the clouds came down and from the 
 brow of Olivet caught Him up from the 
 sight of men, until that great day when 
 He shall come back again, and we shall 
 see Him as He is, and be like Him. 
 
 It is said that scarcely one man out of a 
 dozen visiting Calcutta asks to be shown 
 the house where Warren Hastings lived 
 when *he was in India, scarcely one man 
 out of a hundred the houses where 
 Thackeray was born, and Macaulay lived, 
 but scones upon scores want to be taken 
 out to the little Dutch burying ground of 
 Serampore to be shown the grave of 
 William Carey, the last resting-place of 
 the cobbler who re-taught to the world the 
 glory of that service which is as broad as 
 mankind, as broad as the love of the 
 heart of Him who came not to condemn 
 but to save the world. 
 
 And the last thing about the service of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ that especially fixed 
 the attention of both Isaiah and Matthew, 
 was this; the tremendous power of it.
 
 The Serving Christ 147 
 
 "I will put my spirit upon Him and He 
 shall bring forth judgment to the Gen- 
 tiles." When men came to John the 
 Baptist, supposing that he was the one 
 who was to bring the great blessing, He 
 said, "I indeed baptize you with water, 
 but He that cometh after me is mightier 
 than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to 
 stoop down and unloose; and when He 
 is come, He shall baptize you with the 
 Holy Ghost, and with fire." "I will put 
 My spirit upon Him," so that the service 
 which that matchless servant renders 
 shall be the most powerful service of all 
 time. And it was so. The temple 
 police came to arrest Him, and they went 
 back to the Sanhedrin that had sent them, 
 and when they were asked why they did 
 not bring Him, they replied, " Never man 
 spake like this man." The throng came 
 up to the garden of Gethsemane to take 
 Him, and when He came out with sim- 
 ple, quiet, peaceful aspect, they went 
 backward, falling over one another, and 
 tumbling with fear to the ground. 
 
 All those who joined their lives to Him 
 rejoiced at nothing more than this, that
 
 148 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 they beheld mighty and glorious works 
 done by Him. There was no weakness 
 in the service of our Lord. It was a life 
 of gentle, but intense, unwithholding 
 service. He spared Himself not at all. 
 
 I received a letter some time ago from 
 some Chinamen in the city of Ning-Po. 
 It was about a friend who had just died. 
 It was a very odd letter; some good 
 friends of theirs and mine had translated 
 it. And in their letter they were express- 
 ing their great sense of loss at the death 
 of Mr. McKee; and the sentence that 
 struck me most was this: "We can tes- 
 tify that while he was with us he spared 
 himself not at all." He spared himself 
 not at all. It was the testimony that 
 Sir Robert Ker Porter bore of Henry Mar- 
 tyn, after he came back from Persia. As he 
 travelled in southern Persia, he heard 
 often of the young Englishman who had 
 been there some years before. Some 
 said they could remember that young 
 Englishman, a frail man, enfeebled by 
 disease, who had come to their city and 
 had sat down among their learned men 
 and had presented such arguments as
 
 The Serving Christ 149 
 
 they were not able to meet. Years later 
 another traveler met at Shiraz an old man 
 with a Testament, given to him. Written 
 on the fly leaf were these words, " From 
 Henry Martyn. There is joy in the pres- 
 ence of the angels of God over one sinner 
 that repenteth." He did not stop there, 
 but turned his way west; and at the age 
 of thirty-two, having, as the quaint 
 phrase of the wisdom of Solomon puts 
 it, "fulfilled a long time in a short time," 
 he lay down at Tocat and died. He 
 spared not himself. He fufilled his early 
 desire, " Let me burn out for God." And 
 any one who will walk in the footsteps of 
 Christ as a servant must spare not him- 
 self at all. 
 
 Our Lord's service was a service of 
 fidelity to the pleasure of God, of con- 
 stancy, of lowliness, of breadth of sym- 
 pathy, of power; these things marked 
 Him, who was among men as one who 
 served. He was not ashamed of it. It did 
 not grate upon Him to be called a serv- 
 ant. You and I are often ashamed to be 
 seen serving. We take the chief places 
 \n the synagogues, we desire the highest
 
 .'5o "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 places at the feasts, we do not want to be 
 counted among those who serve but 
 our Lord Jesus Christ showed through 
 the whole of His life that He came "not 
 to be ministered unto but to minister, and 
 to give His life a ransom for many." 
 
 And He finished His work. No other 
 servant ever did. Neither you nor I ever 
 finished one piece of work that we put 
 our hands to. All our. work is rough 
 edged ; and the man who comes to deal 
 with it after we have left it finds almost 
 as much difficulty in touching it as he 
 would have in starting a new work. It 
 is ragged with splinters. But our Lord, 
 finished His work. " I have finished the 
 work which Thou hast given Me to do." 
 And one of His last cries from the cross 
 was but the expression of the same truth; 
 "It is finished. It is finished." Up to 
 the very end of His life He was working, 
 not willing to let even the last moments 
 of it slip by. Even in the agony of His 
 suffering on the cruel tree, He opened 
 the gates of the kingdom of heaven to a 
 dying thief, and He made a new home 
 for His mother.
 
 The Serving Christ 151 
 
 And so all men who have learned 
 Christ's spirit and who have begun to 
 serve as Christ served, desire to finish 
 their work. When John Eliot lay dying, 
 a friend came into his room, and found 
 the wonderful old man teaching a little 
 Indian child his alphabet. And the friend 
 said, "Don't you think you have earned 
 a rest?" And he replied, " I don't think 
 I have. I prayed the Lord a long time 
 ago to make me useful in my sphere, 
 and He heard my prayer, and now that 1 
 am no longer young, He leaves me 
 strength enough to teach this little Indian 
 child its alphabet." The old man of 
 eighty was determined, if it was a possi- 
 ble thing, that he would finish his work 
 for God. 
 
 How do you feel about these things ? 
 Have you ever written above your own 
 life, "I am among men as one who 
 serves " ? Have you ever written on the 
 fly leaf of your Bible, "Like the Son of 
 Man, I am here not to be ministered unto 
 but to minister, and to give my life as a 
 ransom for many " ? The glory of life 
 is not to gain. The glory of life is to be
 
 152 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 of use. The glory of life is not to get 
 places of authority, but to put yourself 
 under the authority of others. The 
 crown of a useful life is not to acquire 
 as much influence as possible. It is to 
 throw away as much influence as you 
 can, letting it disappear into the lives of 
 other men and other women. The glory 
 of life consists in laying down your life 
 for your friends. The greater life does 
 not consist in more Bible study. The 
 greater life does not consist in clearer 
 appreciation of spiritual truth. All these 
 things are good and have their places. 
 But greater life hath no man than this, 
 that a man should lay down his life for 
 his friends; lay down his life in humility; 
 lay down his life in obscurity ; lay down 
 his life in service; lay down his life in 
 the desire to be helpful to those whose 
 lives may rest above and upon his. 
 
 Several years ago the newspapers gave 
 a thrilling account of a passenger train 
 that started down from Duluth when 
 the forest fires in Minnesota were rag- 
 ing most fiercely. It got as far down as 
 a town about halfway, and then the
 
 The Serving Christ 153 
 
 smoke became so intense that they had 
 to light the headlights of the engine, al- 
 though it was early in the afternoon. 
 And by and by the smoke was so heavy 
 that the engineer and fireman could not 
 see more than five yards in front of the 
 engine. Suddenly a great wall of fire 
 burst out in the darkness in front of 
 them, so that there was only time to re- 
 verse the engine, and run back to a 
 swamp. The fire chased along almost 
 as fast as the engine was going. The 
 fireman and the engineer could not stand 
 it. So the fireman got back into the 
 water tank, and would only come out to 
 throw water over the engineer, and 
 would creep back when he could no 
 longer stand the heat, into the tepid 
 water of the tank. At last they got 
 to the swamp, and when the great fire 
 bad rushed by, they found, still living, 
 but unconscious there on his seat, the 
 engineer, sitting with his hand on the 
 throttle. There was something there of 
 the spirit of Christ, who was willing 
 to lay down His life for His brethren. 
 Whatever the engineer's later life may
 
 154 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 have been there was the great spirit of a 
 true service in it that day amid the smoke 
 and the racing flame. 
 
 What else is there worth living for? 
 What else ? Society, a degree, the gratifi- 
 cation of certain tastes, the development 
 of certain gifts that we believe that we 
 possess? What are all these compared 
 with the life of service ? My friends, we 
 were sent, not to be satisfied, but to serve. 
 I think sometimes the words that Jesus 
 spoke in another connection, refer to 
 spiritual life quite as truly, "Whosoever 
 would save his life shall lose it, but who- 
 soever shall lose his life for My sake, the 
 same shall save it." What God wants of 
 us is that we should follow in the foot- 
 steps of His Son, and serve. Let us begin 
 to-night. Let us learn this last lesson of 
 this sweet and helpful day. Let us write 
 over our lives before the night shadows 
 nave altogether fallen, "I will be among 
 men as one w h< ^ serves."
 
 PHILIPS PROBLEM
 
 If 2 speak with the tongues of men and of angels but 
 
 have not love, 
 
 I am become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 
 And if I have the gift of prophecy and know all 
 
 mysteries and all knowledge ; 
 
 And if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains 
 But have not love, 1 am nothing. 
 And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor 
 And if I give my body to be burned, 
 But have not love, it projiteth me nothing. 
 
 Love suffereth long and is kind ; love envieth not. 
 
 Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 
 
 Doth not behave itself unseemly, 
 
 Seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not 
 
 account of evil ; 
 Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with 
 
 the truth ; 
 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all 
 
 things, endureth all things. 
 Love never failetk; 
 But whether there be prophecies they shall be done 
 
 away ; 
 
 Whether there be tongues they shall cease ; 
 Whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away. 
 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part : 
 But when that which is perfect is come, 
 That which is in part shall be done away. 
 
 When I was a child I spake as a child, I felt as a 
 
 child, I thought as a child ; 
 Now that I am become a man, I have put away 
 
 childish things. 
 
 For now we see in a mirror, darkly, but then face to 
 
 face : 
 Now I know in part : but then shall I know even as 
 
 also I am known. 
 
 But now abideth, faith, hope, love, these three ; 
 And the greatest of these is love. 
 
 Paul.
 
 VI 
 
 PHILIP'S PROBLEM 
 
 IN the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel 
 of John and at the ninth verse there is 
 recorded for us one of the many personal 
 questions which Jesus addressed to indi- 
 viduals. It was His last night with His 
 disciples before His crucifixion. He had 
 given them the magnificent object lesson 
 in service of which none of them failed to 
 catch some of the significance, when He 
 girded Himself with a towel and taking 
 a basin of water stooped down and Him- 
 self washed the dusty feet of His dis- 
 ciples. Judas had already been sent out 
 into the night, most of the disciples 
 knowing that something was wrong, 
 and Christ had just said in the presence 
 of all to Simon Peter that before the cock 
 crowed twice he should deny Him thrice. 
 All this seems to have created a great 
 deal of disturbance among the disciples. 
 One of their number had gone out into 
 
 157
 
 158 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 the darkness, many of them suspecting 
 evil from it, and they had just heard of 
 another, the most prominent of their 
 number, who was to deny Jesus within 
 a few hours. One can readily under- 
 stand that these things, added to the 
 pain of the parting which they all in- 
 definitely felt was near at hand, must 
 have made this night to all of them a 
 very anxious time, full of self-distrust 
 and general uneasiness. 
 
 This probably explains the words with 
 which Christ begins the fourteenth chap- 
 ter of John's Gospel, ' ' Let not your hearts 
 be troubled." They were troubled be- 
 cause they knew He was going away. 
 Their faith in themselves and in their 
 own fidelity to Christ had been very 
 severely shaken. "Let not your hearts 
 be troubled," He said, knowing just 
 what it was that they needed. " Let not 
 your hearts be troubled; ye believe in 
 God. Ye may have lost faith in one an- 
 other, but ye believe in God, believe also 
 in Me. In My Father's house are many 
 mansions. If it were not so I would 
 have told you. I go to prepare a place
 
 Jr/hi lip's Froblem 159 
 
 for you, and if I go, I will come again 
 and receive you unto Myself, that where 
 I am there ye may be also. Whither I 
 go ye know, and the way ye know." 
 He had something else in mind evidently 
 that He was just about to say. He clearly 
 had a train of thought along which He 
 had intended to lead His apostles; but, 
 at this point, Thomas interrupted Him. 
 It seems to us that he did it rather 
 rudely, but no doubt it was out of the 
 brusque honesty of his heart. "No, 
 Lord," he said, " we don't know whither 
 Thou art going and how can we know 
 the way?" Thomas was a man willing 
 to die for the faith he had. When Christ 
 wanted to go down to Bethany where 
 Lazarus lay dead, and His disciples en- 
 deavored to dissuade Him, but found it 
 impossible to do so, Thomas was the 
 first to say, "Let us go along that we 
 may die with Him." I say he was ready 
 to die for the faith that he had, but he 
 was not willing to profess a faith that he 
 had not; and the moment he saw that 
 Christ was assuming that all the disciples 
 were following Him and assenting, he
 
 160 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 contradicted Jesus, wanting Him to see 
 that he could not follow Him beyond 
 this point. It was a natural difficulty ; it 
 was just like Thomas to speak it out. 
 Many of us, failing to see the end, refuse 
 to be satisfied with the vision of the 
 way. Like Thomas we are not able to 
 sing, 
 
 " So I go on not knowing, 
 
 I would not if I might; 
 I would rather walk with God in the dark, 
 
 Than walk alone in the light. 
 I would rather walk with Him by faith, 
 
 Than walk alone by sight." 
 
 As always, Christ dealt patiently and lov- 
 ingly with Thomas. He had answered 
 Thomas's difficulty often before, but He 
 turns to him to answer it once again say- 
 ing, "I am the way, the truth, and the 
 life: no man cometh unto the Father but 
 by Me. If ye had known Me, ye would 
 have known My Father also : from hence- 
 forth ye know Him and have seen Him." 
 Thomas was silent, thinking over this 
 reply. 
 
 And then when Jesus was about to go 
 on, apparently with the line of thought
 
 Philip's Problem 161 
 
 which Thomas's question had suggested, 
 Philip breaks in with an interruption even 
 more vexatious than that of Thomas. 
 He said, "Lord, show us the Father and 
 it sufficeth us." Had not Christ just said, 
 " Having known Me, ye have known and 
 seen the Father"? Where had Philip's 
 thoughts been ? Christ had just answered 
 his question in the words He had spoken 
 to Thomas, but Philip breaks in, appar- 
 ently not having heard what Christ had 
 said, or only having caught the word 
 Father at the end, and says, " Lord, show 
 us the Father and it sufficeth us." If 
 Thomas's interjection was characteristic 
 of him, Philip's was not less character- 
 istic of him. Every time we are shown 
 Philip, by himself, in the Gospels it is in 
 circumstances that do not reflect credit 
 upon his intelligence, although they 
 show his sincerity and eager earnestness. 
 The first time he comes into view is in 
 his interview with Nathanael, whom he 
 wants to bring to Jesus. Nathanael's 
 first question was, "Can any good thing 
 come out of Nazareth?" Philip might 
 have told him that Jonah and a great
 
 162 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 many other noble servants of God had 
 come out of Nazareth, but poor Philip 
 was unprepared to answer him so and 
 could only stammer out, "I can't say, 
 Nathanael, come and see." A little later 
 Christ turned to the disciples, when He 
 was about to feed the five thousand, say- 
 ing, "Where shall we get bread to feed 
 so many people ? " John saw the point 
 of Christ's question, that He wished to 
 test the disciples, but Philip did not see it 
 and said, "Lord, two hundred penny- 
 worth would not buy enough to feed all 
 these." When some Greeks came up to 
 the feast, wanting to see Christ, and per- 
 haps because they had before had some 
 association with Philip or his people, (he 
 had a Greek name and he came from a 
 Greek settlement in Galilee) they found 
 him first and said, "We should like to 
 see Jesus " ; Philip did not know what to 
 do, so he found his brother Andrew and 
 said, "Andrew, there are some Greeks 
 here wanting to see Christ; what is the 
 proper course to pursue ? " It was indeed 
 a delicate situation. And Andrew took 
 the whole matter out of Philip's hands,
 
 Philip's Problem 163 
 
 not willing to trust his direct, but infelic- 
 itous ways. 
 
 And here in John's fourteenth chapter 
 we meet him once more. Christ had told 
 him all he wanted to know, and Philip 
 asked for it over again. And Christ in 
 His loving, way tries to help him. It 
 would have been a natural difficulty of 
 course, if Christ had not already cleared 
 it up. Yet what an unintended insult to 
 Christ was in Philip's words! There He 
 had been with these apostles for three 
 long years attempting to satisfy them 
 with Himself, and now one of His pupils 
 says, " It does not suffice us to have been 
 three years with you; let us see the 
 Father, then we shall be satisfied." How 
 we blame Philip! We think if we could 
 only have been there in that little upper 
 room with Christ when He spoke those 
 last loving words to His disciples, we 
 should have said. " Lord, we are satisfied 
 with Thee, don't go away from us. Just 
 stay by our side here and we shall be 
 satisfied forever." And yet, was Philip's 
 mistake such an uncommon one ? Christ 
 had said practically, "He that hath seen
 
 164 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 Me, hath seen the Father"; yet Philip 
 said, "Lord, show us the Father and it 
 sufficeth us." Is not this just the mistake 
 that the great majority of Christians are 
 making? Here stands everything al- 
 ready in front of us, and we say, " Lord, 
 show it to us." Philip had it all in front 
 of him, enfolded in Christ; he asked for 
 what was already there for him to see 
 and take. 
 
 Have you ever noticed the gentle 
 courtesy, divine in its perfectness, with 
 which Christ answered Philip? "Have 
 I been so long with you " He did not 
 put the reproach on Philip, not that, 
 Christ was too perfect a gentleman to re- 
 flect on Philip. He took all the blame of 
 Philip's stupidity upon Himself: "Have 
 I been so long time with you, Philip, and 
 yet have I failed to get this idea clearly 
 into your heart ? " He had come for just 
 that purpose, to show men the Father, 
 and now at the end of three years' care- 
 ful instruction, one of the disciples told 
 Him that He had failed in just what He 
 came to do; yet , instead of blaming His 
 disciple for his ignorance in not having
 
 Philip's Problem 165 
 
 learned what He had been so clearly 
 teaching, He took all the reproach upon 
 Himself. It must have been with infinite 
 sadness that He said these words, " Have 
 I been so long time with you, and yet 
 hast thou not known Me?" 
 
 Philip had said, "Show us the Father," 
 but Jesus said not a word about the 
 Father, " Have I been so long time 
 with you, and yet hast thou not known, 
 not the Father, but Me" and then He 
 adds his name, "Philip." There are, I 
 think, only ten cases in the Gospels where 
 Jesus Christ speaks to a person that way 
 by name. Five of them are in connec- 
 tion with Simon. "Blessed art thou, 
 Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath 
 not revealed it unto thee, but My Father 
 which is in heaven." "Simon, Simon, 
 behold Satan hath desired to have you, 
 that he may sift you as wheat : but I have 
 prayed for thee that thy faith fail not: 
 and when thou art converted, strengthen 
 thy brethren." "What thinkest thou, 
 Simon ? Of whom do the kings of the 
 earth take custom or tribute ? Of their 
 own children or strangers?" "What,
 
 i66 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 Simon, couldst thou not watch with Me 
 one hour?" "Simon, son of Jonas, 
 lovest thou Me?" Once He called 
 Martha by name, "Martha, Martha, thou 
 art careful and troubled about many 
 things: but one thing is needful: and 
 Mary hath chosen that good part which 
 shall not be taken away from her." And 
 once He called Mary Magdalene by name 
 as she stood by the door of the sepulchre 
 and mistook Him for the gardener. He 
 waited until she was done with her ques- 
 tion, and then said quietly, " Mary," and 
 she wheeled about with the words, 
 "My Master." Before the garden where 
 He had been praying, He said to the 
 traitor, "Judas, betray est thou the Son 
 of Man with a kiss ? " And standing 
 before the grave at Bethany He cried, 
 "Lazarus, come forth." Whenever He 
 wanted to draw a heart specially close 
 to Himself, He called it by name, but it 
 was very seldom. "Hast thou been so 
 long time with Me, and yet hast thou not 
 known Me, Philip?" 
 
 "Philip," He said, "any man that has 
 seen Me has seen the Father. Believest
 
 Philip's Problem 167 
 
 thou not that I am in the Father and the 
 Father in Me ? The words that I say unto 
 you 1 speak not from Myself: but the 
 Father abiding in Me doeth His works. 
 Believe Me that I am in the Father, and 
 the Father in Me." Now He had said 
 this same thing many times to His dis- 
 ciples. Time after time He had gone over 
 just this lesson which perhaps He knew it 
 would be hardest for them to learn. Yet 
 now Philip shows he has not learned it. 
 What does Jesus do ? Grow impatient ? 
 It is said that once a visitor was staying 
 with Mrs. Wesley when Charles was a 
 little boy, and Charles came in and asked 
 his mother a question, which his mother 
 patiently answered. In five minutes he 
 came back and asked the same question 
 and his mother patiently answered it. 
 The third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh 
 times Charles came back and asked the 
 same question and his mother answered 
 it as patiently as she had done the first 
 time. Then the visitor said to her, 
 " Why did you waste time in answering 
 that troublesome boy's question seven 
 times?" "Well," Mrs. Wesley said,
 
 l68 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 "because six times were not enough." 
 " She had learned patience in the school 
 of Christ," who, when He found that 
 His disciples could not catch the simplest 
 truth in ten times repetition of it, was 
 willing to repeat it again as He did here 
 for Philip. 
 
 "Believest thou not that I am in the 
 Father? Why, I should have thought 
 thou wouldst have been one of the very 
 first to believe this. Thou wast one of 
 the first to follow Me, to call Me Messiah. 
 Thou wast one of the first to appeal to 
 sight as an evidence of My claims. And 
 to think that thou hast not known that 
 the man that has seen Me has seen the 
 Father! Believest thou not that I am in 
 the Father?" It simmered down to a 
 matter of faith. The question was, did 
 Philip believe ? By belief here, Jesus did 
 not mean intellectual assent to a certain 
 set of propositions formulated for the in- 
 tellect to pass judgment upon. He meant 
 a personal, moral surrender to Christ, the 
 living appropriation of that which Christ 
 has to give. If Philip believed in this 
 sense, his difficulty would disappear.
 
 Philip's Problem 169 
 
 And then Christ came down in dealing 
 with Philip to the very grossest evidence 
 that he offered to man, and said, "Well 
 then, Philip, if you have not enough 
 of the Spirit of God in you to enable your 
 spirit to answer back to My spirit when 
 I show you the Father, if your soul's 
 spiritual response to Me does not convince 
 and suffice, why don't you believe Me 
 for the works that I have done?" He 
 descends to the lowest of all the evidence 
 upon which His claims to be the true 
 representative of the Father rested, and 
 asked Philip whether if he couldn't come 
 up to the high level where in spiritual 
 fellowship heart of man answers to heart 
 of Christ, he was not willing to accept 
 the evidence of His works. 
 
 Christ's mighty claim is in this reply 
 to Philip. He makes here one of His 
 divine and unquestionable assertions. "I 
 am in the Father and the Father is in Me. 
 He that hath seen Me hath seen the 
 Father." Let us not pare down these 
 words. Deal squarely with them. Can 
 we hold to the faith not of Christ's di- 
 vinity but of His sanity and honesty,
 
 170 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 without going on to a rich faith in His 
 deity and in the revelation in Him of the 
 living God, Father of His spirit and of 
 ours ? 
 
 "Have I been so long time with you, 
 and yet hast thou not known Me?" I 
 do not know any better question for us 
 to ask of our own hearts in behalf of 
 Christ. There are men who grew up in 
 Christian homes, with this Bible open 
 from their very earliest memories on 
 their mothers' knees, where they learned 
 their first lessons in holy living, to whom 
 Christ may fittingly speak this question, 
 "Hast thou been so long time with Me, 
 have I been so long time with thee, and 
 yet has thou not known Me ? " 
 
 Have we known Him, fellow-students, 
 as the object of our speech, as the object 
 of our thought, and as the object of our 
 life? Ask these questions in order of 
 your own heart. Have you known Jesus 
 Christ as the object of your speech? 
 Have you ever read through the Acts and 
 the Epistles of Paul to find out what it 
 was that the early Christians talked about ? 
 Luke tells us in his clear way, describing
 
 Philip's Problem 171 
 
 the early apostolic life in Jerusalem, that 
 every day they ceased not in the temple 
 and at home to talk Christ. He tells us 
 that when Philip went to Samaria and 
 spread the revival spirit there, he preached 
 Jesus to the people; then on his way back, 
 when the Spirit of God put him down 
 by the Ethiopian eunuch, he proclaimed 
 to him Christ. Turn to Paul's writings 
 and see what he preached as he went 
 from city to city. He tells us clearly that 
 the chief thing he did was to talk Christ 
 to men. When he came to Thessalonica, 
 he said, "This Jesus whom I preach to 
 you is Christ." When he got into trou- 
 ble at Athens it was because he preached 
 Jesus. When he reminded people in his 
 Epistles of what it was they had heard 
 from him when he was with them, what 
 did he say it was ? Doctrines ? Yes, in 
 a sense. Truths ? Yes, in a sense. But 
 he preached a Person. He says, " When 
 I was in the midst of you, I preached 
 Christ to you. Not myself, but Christ." 
 Christ was the conversation of the early 
 Christians. 
 Have we spoken one word about Jesus
 
 172 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 Christ this morning? Are there not 
 scores of men who have not said to an- 
 other man one word about Christ all this 
 past year ? Are there not many of us 
 who have never thought of making Jesus 
 the one object of our speech ? I know 
 that it is hard. There are many men 
 born with a constitutional disinclination 
 to speak the name of either God or 
 Christ. In Patterson Du Bois's little book 
 on " Beckonings of Little Hands," he tells 
 the story of one of his children who has 
 since died, whom he could with greatest 
 difficulty only get to mention the name 
 of God or of Christ. The child was born 
 with this holy hesitancy. It was the holy 
 place in the child's life, and he had not 
 come to the time when he was able 
 to open the doors of that place and let 
 any profane eyes gaze in ; but when the 
 child had died, a little notebook was 
 found which had been given him by his 
 nurse, and there printed in great sprawl- 
 ing baby letters, right across the page, 
 were these words, "God is love; He 
 loves lambs." If the child had lived he 
 would have fought his way to the place
 
 Philip's Problem 173 
 
 where he could have talked of the God 
 who loves lambs. But he was born with 
 a constitutional hesitancy about doing it. 
 
 Why did God make it so hard when it 
 ought to be the very life of men to speak 
 so about Christ ? Perhaps He did it be- 
 cause He did not want such speaking to 
 be cheap, because He wanted each man 
 to gain a victory over himself each time 
 he spoke the name of the great Victor. 
 So He gives us the great joy of being 
 victorious on each occasion over our- 
 selves in the act of speaking and talking 
 and teaching Christ. 
 
 Has a Christian man concern with any 
 other conversation than Christ? This 
 whole land would be swept with the 
 Christian life as no section of the world 
 has ever been swept with it if men made 
 it their business to talk Christ; if, when 
 they walked with one another they talked 
 Him, if, when they sat down for a con- 
 versation they talked Him, if they came 
 to know Christ as the object of their 
 speech. Mr. Ruskin, I think, is setting 
 forth the truth in his "Notes on the Con- 
 struction of Sheepfolds:"
 
 174 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 "Although, however, the Protestant 
 laity do not often admit the absolving 
 power of their clergy, they are but too 
 apt to yield, in some sort, to the impres- 
 sion of their greater sanctification : and 
 from this instantly results the unhappy 
 consequence that the sacred character of 
 the layman himself is forgotten, and his 
 own ministerial duty is neglected. Men 
 not in office in the Church suppose them- 
 selves, on that ground, in a sort unholy : 
 and that, therefore, they may sin with 
 more excuse, and be idle or impious with 
 less danger than the clergy: especially 
 they consider themselves relieved from 
 all ministerial function, and as permitted 
 to devote their whole time and energy to 
 the business of this world. No mistake 
 can possibly be greater. Every member 
 of the Church is equally bound to the 
 service of the Head of the Church; and 
 that service is preeminently the saving of 
 souls. There is not a moment of a man's 
 active life in which he may not be indi- 
 rectly preaching; and throughout a great 
 part of his life he ought to be directly 
 preaching, and teaching both strangers
 
 Philip's Problem 175 
 
 and friends; his children, his servants, 
 and all who in any way are put under 
 him, being given to him as special ob- 
 jects of his ministration." 
 
 There are few Americans for whom 
 some of us grew up to entertain a higher 
 reverence than for Robert E. Lee, the 
 leader of the Confederate armies. Dr. 
 Broadus used to tell a story of him that 
 had been told to him by a clergyman 
 who was accustomed to go to White 
 Sulphur Springs, after the war, to preach. 
 He met there the white-haired old man 
 whom every Southerner, every man who 
 came in contact with him, loved. One 
 Sabbath, he said, as they held service in 
 the ball-room, as was their custom, he 
 noticed General Lee coming in late. 
 Knowing that he was a punctilious man 
 and very particular about the little cour- 
 tesies of life, he inquired the reason for 
 this. After the meeting was over he 
 asked some one why General Lee had 
 not come in in time. He told him that 
 he had waited as was his custom until 
 he thought all the people who intended 
 to come to the meeting had come into
 
 176 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 the room, then the old white-haired man, 
 whom every Southerner loved, walked 
 out under the trees, and over the veran- 
 das, and wherever he could find men he 
 would lay his hands on their shoulders 
 and say, "We are going to have a little 
 service in here. Won't you come in?" 
 Few could resist that gentle, loving 
 voice. He preached Christ. He did it 
 through the war, and after the war; 
 Christ was the object of speech to him. 
 
 Many who are studying for the ministry, 
 some who have been in the ministry for 
 some time, have not as yet learned what 
 it is to make Jesus Christ the one object 
 of their speech. You remember in " His 
 Mother's Sermon," the young Scotch 
 student who came out from his divinity 
 school intending to preach such sermons 
 as many intend to preach. He finally 
 wrote his first one on "Semitic Envi- 
 ronment," the childishness of adhering 
 to the abandoned superstitions regard- 
 ing the composition of the Old Testa- 
 ment books, etc., and got it all ready to 
 lay before his people as the bread of life. 
 You recall how the Spirit of God recalled
 
 Philip's Problem 177 
 
 to him the promise that he had made to 
 his mother on her deathbed when she 
 said, "If God calls ye to the ministry, 
 ye ' ill no refuse, an' the first day ye 
 preach in yir ain kirk, speak a gude word 
 for Jesus Christ." 
 
 Do we make it the business of our 
 lives to speak such words, or do we do 
 it now and then only, or not even now and 
 then ? So many of us salve our con- 
 sciences with a little piece of personal 
 work in one month, and another little 
 piece in another. Have we made it the 
 great object of our lives to talk Jesus ? 
 " Have I been so long time with you and 
 yet hast thou not known Me as the one 
 object of your speech ? " 
 
 Have we accepted Him, as the object of 
 our thought? You know what that 
 means, you men who would be ashamed 
 to let your mothers or your own sisters 
 look into your minds. I learn more pain- 
 fully each year how much stain and 
 corruption there is on the men who pass 
 for Christian men in our American col- 
 leges. 1 remember one man who came 
 to me once and said, as we walked late
 
 178 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 at night under the pure stars, "I would 
 have both my hands cut off or my eye 
 plucked out if I might be given the pure 
 soul I had when I lay as a little child in 
 my mother's arms." Perhaps this man 
 voiced the longings of the hearts of 
 hundreds of college men. Oh the cor- 
 ruption of evil thinking; the worthless- 
 ness of it; the corroding degradation of 
 it! while all the time there stands One 
 knocking at the door of each life and say- 
 ing, " Have I been so long time with you 
 and yet hast thou not learned to know 
 Me as the one object of all your think- 
 ing?" We never can drive out the un- 
 cleanness of evil thoughts except by 
 pouring in the clean wholesomeness of 
 the thoughts of Christ. We can cleanse 
 these minds of ours from what we want 
 them freed from only by flooding them 
 with the light that shines from the face 
 of Jesus Christ. Have you tried for one 
 hour to think no thought except Christ ? 
 Have you made Christ for any length of 
 time the one object of your thought? 
 Try it, you who want to break loose 
 from the shackles that you know are
 
 Philip's Problem 179 
 
 keeping you away from the great bless- 
 ing of God, and from the pure sweetness 
 of His free and holy life. What else is 
 there to think about that is worth any- 
 thing compared with Him ? All treasures 
 of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in 
 Him. It must grieve Him to see us filling 
 our minds with passing things, worthless 
 things, dying after the fashion of the 
 world, while Christ is crowded away 
 into some bare and paltry place in our 
 lives. Let us learn to make Jesus and 
 Jesus only the object of all our thinking! 
 If we did, how we would lose taste for 
 much that pleases us now! How music 
 that perhaps takes a large place in our 
 hearts now would be put into a subordi- 
 nate place! How the taste for certain 
 classes of books or of studies or certain 
 lines of thought would vanish into an in- 
 significant place the moment we gave to 
 Jesus Christ the place to which He is en- 
 titled in our thinking! "Have I been 
 with you," says He, " for so many years, 
 and yet hast thou not come to know Me 
 as the one object of your thought ? " 
 There is nothing narrowing or belittling
 
 180 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 in this claim of Christ for sovereignty 
 over our thoughts. All true thoughts are 
 thoughts of Him. All beauty and holi- 
 ness is in Him. He is glory and power 
 and wisdom. And He deserves to be the 
 sole object of our vision. He died for us. 
 When Cyrus took captive the king of 
 Armenia and Tigranes his son and their 
 families he gave them their liberty on 
 condition that they would surrender their 
 kingdoms and go quietly hojiie. On their 
 journey they were all discussing Cyrus, 
 his power and splendor and magnanim- 
 ity, and at last Tigranes turned to his wife 
 who had been silent and said to her, 
 "What didst thou think of Cyrus ? " "I 
 never saw him," she replied. "Never 
 saw him ! " exclaimed Tigranes, " Where 
 were thine eyes?" "I fixed them," said 
 she, "upon him whom I heard in my 
 presence offer to lay down his life for 
 me." She had eyes for none but that 
 one. 
 
 Have we come to know Him, lastly, as 
 the object of our life ? I suppose that 
 Philip did not talk about much else than 
 Jesus; I suppose he did not think about
 
 Philip's Problem 18 1 
 
 mucn else than Jesus, and yet it was 
 to Philip that the question was ad- 
 dressed, " Have I been so long time 
 with you, and yet hast thou not known 
 Me?" He had been with Him for 
 those three years, he had heard all that 
 Christ had taught, he probably thought 
 and talked nothing but Jesus, and yet 
 Christ asked him whether he had not al- 
 together missed knowing Him. What 
 did He mean ? It would seem to be pos- 
 sible to associate intimately with Christ 
 for three long years and to pass for His 
 disciple and yet not really to know Him. 
 Of course what Jesus meant first of all 
 was that Philip had not come to know 
 Him as the revelation of the Father; that, 
 missing the knowledge of Him in that 
 particular, he had missed it in the first 
 and most important particular, and no 
 matter how much he talked about Him 
 or thought of Him, Jesus might appropri- 
 ately say to him, "Philip, you don't 
 know Me; I have been with you three 
 long years, and yet you have failed to 
 learn the very most essential thing about 
 Me." Is not this true of some of us
 
 182 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 also ? We have missed knowing Christ 
 as the revelation of the Father, giving to 
 each of us perfect power and perfect rest 
 and satisfying us wholly. There are 
 three grades of Christian life; there is, 
 first of all, the dissatisfied life, the life 
 that knows there is something it does not 
 have, and that wants it, and that is per- 
 petually discontented, and rightly so, with 
 itself. There is secondly the life that is 
 half and half, that now and then rises up 
 to the Mount of Transfiguration and then 
 paces for long seasons over weary wastes 
 of whitened ashes. There is a third life 
 of satisfaction and content and peace, 
 and power, and rest, the life that has 
 made Jesus Christ its one object, the life 
 that every man lives who is able to say 
 in the fine phrase of Ignatius, O Christ, 
 Thou art "my inseparable life." The 
 soul that has made Christ its one object 
 has entered into rest and has entered into 
 power; it has entered into a life of activ- 
 ity which no foe can withstand, and of 
 contentment which no storm can ruffle; 
 for over all the seas where it voyages 
 speaks that voice which quieted the tur-
 
 Philip's Problem 183 
 
 bulent waves of Gennesaret, "Peace, 
 be still." Nothing can overcome or dis- 
 turb the soul that is hid with Christ in 
 God and has made Christ the one object 
 of its life, and found the Father in Him. 
 
 Do we know Christ ? I believe in God 
 the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven 
 and earth, but what do I know about 
 Him? Christ declares, "He that hath 
 seen Me hath seen the Father. No man 
 cometh unto the Father but by Me." I 
 believe in the Holy Ghost, but what did 
 He come here for? Christ declares 
 "When He is come, He shall testify of 
 Me." Jesus Christ is life, Christ is the 
 centre of life, Christ is the object of life, 
 and, if Christ is not our life, we have 
 missed the great thing that Christ has for 
 us, and the great things that Christ is 
 waiting to be to us. 
 
 1 wish I might make His loveliness 
 stand out so clearly and distinctly that 
 every man would long to be linked to 
 Christ in such a way that nothing could 
 sever him from -Him, that he would 
 simply talk Jesus perpetually, think of 
 Jesus incessantly, and live Jesus forever
 
 184 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 and forever. For this Jesus longs and 
 waits. And this is life abundant. 
 
 His word in the Apocalypse which we 
 quote constantly with reference to non- 
 Christian men, was not spoken to non- 
 Christian men, "Behold, I stand at the 
 door and knock." It is a picture which 
 Christ draws of the relationship that 
 exists between too many Christian souls 
 and Him, Himself without, the door 
 fastened. " Behold, I stand at the door 
 and knock: if any man hear My voice 
 and open the door, I will come in to him, 
 and will sup with him, and he with Me." 
 He knocks to-day at the heart of many a 
 man. Will you let Him in ? 
 
 " Oh Jesus, Thou art standing, 
 
 Outside the fast closed door 
 In lowly patience waiting 
 
 To cross the threshold o'er. 
 We bear the name of Christians, 
 
 His name and sign we bear; 
 Oh shame, thrice shame upon us, 
 
 To keep Him standing there ! 
 
 " Oh Jesus, Thou art knocking, 
 
 And lo, Thy hand is scarred, 
 And thorns Thy brow encircle, 
 And tears Thy face have marred.
 
 Philip's Problem 185 
 
 Oh love, that passeth knowledge, 
 
 So patiently to wait ! 
 Oh sin, that hath no equal, 
 
 So fast to bar the gate ! 
 
 " Oh Jesus, Thou art pleading 
 
 In accents meek and low, 
 ' I died for thee, My children, 
 
 And will ye treat Me so ? ' 
 Oh Lord, with shame and sorrow, 
 
 We open now the door. 
 Dear Master, enter, enter, 
 
 And leave us nevermore." 
 
 Will you say this now ?
 
 THE NEW COMMANDMENT
 
 Surely He cometh, and a thousand voices 
 Call to the saints and to the deaf are dumb ; 
 
 Surely He cometh, and the earth rejoices, 
 
 Glad in His coming -who hath sworn, I come. 
 
 This hath He done and shall we not adore Him ? 
 
 This shall He do and can we still despair ? 
 Come let us quickly fling ourselves before Him, 
 
 Cast at His feet the burthen of our care. 
 
 Flash from our eyes the glow of our thanksgiving, 
 Glad and regretful, confident and calm, 
 
 Then thro" all life and what is after living 
 Thrill to the tireless music of a psalm. 
 
 Yea thro 1 life, death, thro 1 sorrow and thro" sinning 
 He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed : 
 
 Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning, 
 Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ. 
 
 F. W. H. Myers.
 
 VII 
 
 THE NEW COMMANDMENT 
 
 Little children, yet a little while I am with you. 
 Ye shall seek Me : and as I said unto the Jews, 
 Whither I go, ye cannot come ; so now I say to you, 
 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love 
 one another ; as I have loved you, that ye also love 
 one another. By this shall all men know that ye are 
 My disciples, if ye have love one to another. JOHN 
 *i. 33-35- 
 
 THERE is a saying of Mr. Ruskin's that 
 of all the pulpits from which the human 
 voice is ever sent forth, there is none 
 from which it reaches so far as from the 
 grave. We all know with what tender 
 receptiveness we listen to the last words 
 of those whom we love, as they draw 
 near to that hour when they cross the 
 bar and see the pilot face to face. It 
 must have been with much deeper re- 
 ceptiveness that the eleven disciples who 
 were left in the upper room after Judas 
 had gone out into the night listened to 
 these words of Jesus. He had been pre- 
 169
 
 190 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 paring them for this hour. Everything 
 that had transpired showed them that the 
 clouds were gathering thick and dense 
 above their Master's head. And if His 
 appearance had not told them that the 
 words He was about to speak were to be 
 words of special importance to them, the 
 way in which He began His remarks 
 must have told them: " Little children, I 
 am going away from you." It is the only 
 time as far as the Gospels tell us that He 
 used that term of address. Even in this 
 Gospel, which of them all shows us most 
 fully the intimacy of the relation which 
 existed between Jesus and His disciples, 
 the term "Little children" is used but 
 once. In the last chapter, John tells us 
 that when Jesus stood on the shores of 
 the Sea of Galilee and looked off through 
 the grey morning to where the disciples 
 were in their boat, tired after their fruit- 
 less night, He said to them, "My lads, 
 have you anything there to eat ? " It is 
 Jesus' own word, "My lads!" Here, 
 however, it was more tender than that, 
 "Little children, dear little children." 
 How sweet it must have sounded \f>
 
 The New Commandment 191 
 
 them, one can guess from tfie frequency 
 with which the beloved John repeated it 
 afterward. Six or seven times in his 
 Epistle he addresses those to whom he 
 is writing as "Little children, dear little 
 children." And one of the best attested 
 of all the legends about John tells us that 
 as an old man, when they carried him 
 each day into the Christian church at 
 Ephesus, he was wont to say, "Little 
 children, love one another." They asked 
 him once whether he was not tired of 
 repeating the same message over and 
 over again, but he replied that it was 
 the whole of the gospel, if they had 
 that it was enough. The only other 
 place in the New Testament where the 
 term occurs as a term of address, is in 
 one of the most passionately eager pas- 
 sages in all the writings of Paul, where 
 he tells the Galatians that he was travail- 
 ing for them, as a mother in childbirth, 
 that Christ might be formed in them, and 
 he begins the sentence with this word, 
 "Little children." 
 
 Jesus meant undoubtedly to draw His 
 disciples for these closing moments into
 
 192 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 the warmest personal relationship with 
 Himself. He was the Father's child, they 
 were His little children; He would re- 
 mind them of it as they gathered to- 
 gether on this last evening of His earthly 
 life. They had heard Him speak of this 
 same truth before. In the parable of the 
 Good Shepherd He had said that He 
 knew His sheep and was known by 
 them, that even as He knew the Father, 
 so the Father knew Him, and that, be- 
 cause of His relationship to the sheep on 
 one side and to the Father on the other 
 side, therefore He would lay down His 
 life for the sheep. He knew that they 
 had not understood the relationship, for 
 in this same evening's talk He told them 
 so. "I know," He said, "that you do 
 not understand this now, but the day 
 will come when you shall understand it, 
 that I am in the Father and ye are in Me 
 and I in you; ye are His little children 
 and Mine." 
 
 "Little children," He said, "I am 
 going away from you. This is the last 
 evening we shall have together. What I 
 am now about to tell you is the last
 
 The New Commandment 193 
 
 thing I shall tell you before I depart." 
 Not forever did He say that they were 
 to separate. In talking with the Jews, 
 He had said that whither He was going 
 they could never go; for they should die 
 in their sins. But He did not say that to 
 His disciples. " I am going away," He 
 said, " and whither I am going ye cannot 
 come just now, but ye shall follow Me 
 afterward. Indeed, I will come again 
 for you." 
 
 Luke shows us even mote clearly than 
 John how careful Jesus was in this last in- 
 terview to lead His disciples up to the mo- 
 ment of separation; how anxious to for- 
 tify them against all the fears which He 
 knew would come upon them the mo- 
 ment He was gone; but even with all 
 that preparation, it must have been an 
 hour of great agony both to Him and to 
 them. He knew, of course, that the 
 Father would keep them, that not one of 
 the Father's sheep would be plucked out 
 of the Father's hand, but He knew also 
 that when the Shepherd was smitten, the 
 sheep would be scattered, and He had 
 heard Satan desiring to have them. Far
 
 194 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 better than the disciples knew, torn as 
 their hearts must have been, did Jesus 
 know the significance of that hour. I 
 well recall a quiet room in an old Penn- 
 sylvania town, when more than twenty 
 years ago a father led his children into 
 its holy stillness and prayed that One 
 who had promised to be a father to the 
 fatherless might also be a mother to the 
 motherless. Very little did we know 
 what it meant, but the one who prayed 
 knew, and the knowledge was agony. 
 It must have been so with Jesus this 
 night. He knew that He who had been 
 their one safeguard through these three 
 long years was to be taken from them. 
 It must have made these last mo- 
 ments unusually sacred to Him. And 
 heavy witted as that company of fisher- 
 folk and countrymen were, they too 
 knew something of the significance of 
 the hour. They had been leaning for 
 these three years heavily on Him. "To 
 whom else shall we go," said Peter, 
 "Thou hast the words of eternal life." 
 And when they could not prevail upon 
 Jesus to avoid running the physical risks
 
 The New Commandment 195 
 
 which were involved in going to Bethany, 
 Thomas said, "Let us also go, that we 
 may die with Him. Better for us to go 
 to death with Him than to stay here 
 alone in safety and in peace." They 
 were to be separated from Him now, 
 and they knew it. If they had known 
 it from nothing else they would have 
 known it from what He said: "Dear lit- 
 tle children, I am going away." They 
 must have felt that what He was about 
 to say would be of unusual importance to 
 each of them. 
 
 One can imagine the little company 
 listening intently to catch the words that 
 might fall from His lips; James and Peter 
 expecting Him to define more clearly 
 what was to be the form of organization 
 of the new Christian kingdom or society. 
 John and James were both men of that 
 temperament. They had come asking 
 through their mother, that they might 
 have places on His right and left hand 
 in His kingdom. Over this question all 
 the disciples had quarrelled. Perhaps they 
 sat now wondering if He would not as- 
 sign them their places and give them the
 
 196 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 constitution of His society. Perhaps Bar- 
 tholomew and Thomas were waiting for 
 Jesus to give them a clearer and fuller 
 statement of His doctrine. It was to be 
 one of His most famous sayings that eter- 
 nal life consisted in the knowledge of God 
 and His Son Jesus Christ. He tells the 
 Father in the great high priestly prayer 
 that He had delivered to the apostles the 
 words the Father had sent by Him. One 
 could not wonder that Nathanael and 
 Thomas, each of them probably lovers of 
 clear doctrine, should have been anxious 
 to get from Jesus in that last hour some 
 succinct and simple statement of the new 
 truth, on which they could rest and which 
 they could use. Did Jesus gratify these 
 expectations ? " Dear little children, I am 
 going away from you now, and My last 
 word to you is just this, A new com- 
 mandment I give to you, that ye love one 
 another." 
 
 Our Lord's words gained additional 
 significance from the fact that He said 
 almost nothing else that was new. Peo- 
 ple thought He was a novel teacher when 
 He healed the sick man in the synagogue
 
 The New Commandment 197 
 
 at Capernaum. They held up their hands 
 in amazement and said, " What is this, a 
 new teaching?" But it was not. Al- 
 most everything Christ said was old. 
 Christ's teaching was almost all taken 
 out of the Old Testament. Almost all 
 of the Sermon on the Mount could be 
 constructed from the Old Testament. 
 Many of Christ's parables have their roots 
 in suggestions in the Old Testament. 
 Some of Christ's miracles are clearly only 
 the working out of Old Testament teach- 
 ings. The body and substance of Christ's 
 doctrine was borrowed, with a new spirit 
 and life of course, from the Old Testa- 
 ment. There was a marvelous divine 
 originality about Jesus which should be 
 studied deeply and never forgotten, but 
 He was constantly telling those who 
 took Him for a novel instructor, that 
 everything was in their own records and 
 temples if their eyes were only open to 
 see it. He would tell the healed to go 
 and carry out the law of Moses. Only 
 three times does He allude to the nov- 
 elty of His teaching; once in one of His 
 parables when He said that no man puts
 
 198 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 new wine into old bottles, or patches an 
 old garment with a new piece of cloth ; 
 again when He said that every good 
 scribe of the kingdom is like a house- 
 holder that bringeth out of his treasures 
 things new and old; then once again as 
 He passed the wine cup from His own 
 hand to the hand of the next, "This cup 
 is the New Covenant in My blood. I 
 will no more drink of the fruit of the 
 vine, until that day when I drink it new 
 in the kingdom of God." 
 
 It makes it the more startling that on 
 the last night of His earthly life He 
 should tell His disciples that He was 
 speaking to them something new. His 
 words are the more surprising when we 
 consider that this was the last element of 
 His teaching which one might conceive 
 to be new. The Old Testament was 
 clear enough in its commands to love: 
 "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
 self/' In what respect then was this 
 command to love, given to the disciples 
 on this last night, a new commandment ? 
 Was it new in the sense that it supple- 
 mented the old ten, making an eleventh
 
 The New Commandment 199 
 
 commandment, giving men something 
 that had never been given them before; 
 or did it abrogate the ten, giving men a 
 law of love, whereas before they had 
 had a law of stern duty only ? Clearly 
 not, because when Christ was asked by 
 a scribe as to what commandment was 
 first of all, He said plainly, "The first is, 
 Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one 
 Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy 
 God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
 soul, and with all thy mind, and with all 
 thy strength. The second is this, Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." The 
 commandment as a commandment could 
 not have been new then in the sense that 
 Jesus commanded love while the old ten 
 commandments did not contain it. Was 
 it new as being an interpretation of the 
 old, putting the emphasis now on the 
 spirit, while the old ten had put it on 
 the letter ? Clearly not that even. The 
 ten commandments were a law of love. 
 Love was their fulfilling. In what sense 
 then was the commandment that our 
 Lord gave His apostles that night a new 
 commandment ? It must have been that
 
 2oo "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 He was commanding them to possess 
 and to manifest a new kind of love that 
 had not been known in the world before, 
 and that this love was so novel that He 
 could speak of it as new. One who had 
 followed His teaching carefully might 
 have expected something of this kind, 
 for early in His ministry He had said*. 
 
 Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love 
 thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy : but I say unto 
 you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that 
 persecute you, that ye may be the sons of your 
 Father which is in heaven : for He maketh His sun 
 to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain 
 on the just and the unjust. For if ye love them 
 which love you what reward have ye ? do not even 
 the publicans the same ? And if ye salute your 
 brethren only, what do ye more than others ? do not 
 even the Gentiles so ? Be ye therefore perfect, even 
 as your heavenly Father is perfect. 
 
 Any Jew might have expected, if he was 
 an honest, sincere, open-hearted man, 
 prepared to recognize the true Messiah, 
 some word from Jesus of a positive char- 
 acter regarding love. There was need of 
 it. Hillel, one of the most famous Rab- 
 binical teachers summed up the whole
 
 The New Commandment 201 
 
 law in these words, "That which is hate- 
 ful to thee thou shalt not do to thy neigh- 
 bor: this is the whole law, the rest is 
 only commentary." It might properly 
 have been expected of Jesus that at this 
 time He would speak some word about 
 love. He gave them a command to love 
 with a larger, positive, transfigured love, 
 not as the Old Testament had said, "as 
 thyself," but better than thyself. 
 
 Sometime ago I was present at a gath- 
 ering of ministers, where the subject for 
 discussion was, " What should be the at- 
 titude of the Christian minister toward 
 the new movement in Christian sociol- 
 ogy?" A theological professor main- 
 tained that the attitude should be hostile, 
 on the ground that it was unscriptural to 
 say that we should love our neighbors 
 better than ourselves. Yet such a com- 
 mand gave Jesus Christ: " A new com- 
 mandment give 1 unto you, that ye love 
 one another; even as I have loved you, 
 that ye also love one another." A new 
 love, of new motive, new scope, new 
 sanction, establishing a new society, 
 bound not by any rites or organization,
 
 202 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 but by self-obliterating love: this was 
 what Christ commanded, and as Wendt, 
 ;n "The Teaching of Jesus," points out, 
 "The nature and intensity of this love 
 which Jesus taught and which He Him- 
 self manifested, were such as had yet no 
 sure basis in the Old Testament knowl- 
 edge of God and as had not yet been 
 recognized as belonging unconditionally 
 to the righteousness commanded by God; 
 therefore this commandment of love, as 
 Jesus Himself had practiced it, could be 
 characterized as a new commandment." 
 
 " Little children, I am going away, but 
 I will leave with you a new command- 
 ment, that ye love one another; even as I 
 have loved you, that ye also love one an- 
 other." The heart of the matter lies in 
 those little words, "even as I have loved 
 you," which furnish, first, the explana- 
 tion of the new commandment, and de- 
 fine the character of the new love; and 
 supply, secondly, the motive, the power, 
 to enable us to love as Christ loves. 
 
 Those words furnish us an EXAMPLE of 
 .how we are to love. It is a rich theme, 
 Out let us take up only three traits of the
 
 The New Commandment 203 
 
 Jove of Jesus which we are here bidden 
 to have in our own loving. 
 
 His love is a self-sacrificing love. 
 " Greater love hath no man than this, that 
 a man lay down his life for his friends." 
 With that in mind, Paul writes lovingly 
 to the Ephesians, "Walk in love, as dear 
 children, inasmuch as Christ also hath 
 loved us, and hath given Himself for us." 
 John declares the same truth, " Herein is 
 love, not that we loved God, but that 
 God loved us, and sent His Son to be the 
 propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if 
 God so loved us, we ought also to love 
 one another." This is the truth regard- 
 ing Christ's love that the German verses 
 proclaim : 
 
 " A Lamb goes uncomplaining forth, 
 
 The guilt of all men bearing ; 
 Laden with all the sin of earth, 
 
 None else the burden sharing ! 
 Goes patient on, grows weak and faint, 
 To slaughter led without complaint, 
 
 That spotless life to offer ; 
 
 Bears shame, and stripes, and wounds, and death, 
 Anguish and mockery, and saitb, 
 Willing all this I suffer.'
 
 204 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 " That Lamb is Lord of death and life, 
 
 God over all forever ; 
 The Father's Son, whom to that strife 
 
 Love doth for us deliver ! 
 Oh mighty love ! what hast thou done ? 
 The Father offers up His Son 
 
 The Son content descendeth ! 
 Oh love, oh love ! how strong art thou ! 
 In shroud and grave thou layest Him low. 
 Whose word the mountain rendeth ! " 
 
 So we are to love. There is such love 
 in the world. During the civil war, in 
 the naval battle when Farragut's squadron 
 sailed into Mobile Bay, the monitor 
 Tecumseh was struck by a torpedo and 
 began to sink. The only way of escape 
 was by a narrow ladder, and a small 
 door through which but one could go at 
 a time. The pilot and captain both 
 sprang for the ladder at the same moment, 
 but the instant Captain Craven saw that 
 another man was seeking life, and that 
 there was time for but one, he stepped 
 back with a bow and the courteous, quiet 
 words, "After you, pilot," and went 
 down with his ship into the sea. 
 "Greater love hath no man than this, 
 that a man lay down his life for his
 
 The New Commandment 205 
 
 friends." Christ loved so, and so must we 
 love. 
 
 Remember another characteristic of 
 Christ's love : it condescended. ' ' Scarcely 
 for a righteous man will one die," said 
 Paul. "Scarcely for such an one would 
 one die. Peradventure, for a good man 
 some would even dare to die, but God 
 commendeth His own love toward us, in 
 that, while we were yet sinners, Christ 
 died for us." There was no barrier too 
 high for Him to surmount, there was no 
 chasm too wide for Him to cross. The 
 Son of God reached us in His love. Think 
 over the circle of the people you love and 
 see between how many of them and you 
 there is any chasm in the social life? 
 Have you not picked those you love from 
 that sphere which will not necessitate 
 your going down to them ? It was not 
 so with Jesus Christ's love. 
 
 And He loved with an eternal love. 
 This chapter begins with these words: 
 " Having loved His own which were in 
 the world, He loved them unto the utter- 
 most." Having loved them once, He 
 loved them ever. I love to turn to the
 
 206 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 story in Matthew of the betrayal of Jesus 
 by Judas to mark the tone of address 
 with which Christ spoke to Judas when 
 he came leading the band of soldier 
 hirelings. We might suppose that Christ 
 would have turned to him with scorn 
 saying, ' ' Thou serpent ! After these three 
 years, is this My reward thatthou comest 
 to Me with this blistering kiss ? Depart 
 from Me into the eternal night and let 
 Me never see thy face or feel thy hands 
 that have held the silver coins." Have 
 you ever noticed what the Gospel of 
 Matthew says He did say ? He turned to 
 Judas with the words, "Friend, where- 
 fore art thou come ? " The Greek word 
 does not really mean "friend," but the 
 spirit of that translation is true. Treason 
 was not enough to break the bands of 
 that love. There is no such thing as a 
 love that stops. It never was love if it 
 stops. He that has loved loves still. 
 Love cannot change. Sensations and 
 convictions alter, but while God is God 
 love changeth not nor can till God denies 
 Himself. "They sin who tell us love 
 can die," says Southey. Never say that
 
 The New Commandment 207 
 
 you had a friend and have not that friend 
 still. Never let a Christian say that the 
 love he once felt is dead. No love ever 
 dies. Emotions have died, sensations 
 have died, imaginations have died, but a 
 love never. When Christ bids us love as 
 He loved, He sets us this example of self- 
 sacrificing, condescending, unchangeable 
 love. As His we must so love one another. 
 Writing on this passage in his "Dis- 
 courses on the Gospel of St. John," that 
 great prophet, Frederick Denison Maurice, 
 has said that if these words are "mere 
 precept written in letters in a book, it is 
 the crudest precept that was ever 
 uttered." We can love "in obedience to 
 no statute, from dread of no punish- 
 ment." There are two answers to that: 
 First, love can be commanded. The con- 
 tradictory proposition can be defended 
 only by resting on an indefensible psy- 
 chology. Our affections in their true 
 dignity are children of the will. Who 
 can answer Browning's teaching in "Pippa 
 Passes," that love does not depend on 
 the lovableness of the object of love ? Is 
 there anything attractive in us? God
 
 208 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 loves us in spite of our hideousness and 
 unloveliness, because He wills to love us. 
 Love is a moral attitude. God can com- 
 mand it. 
 
 But Christ Himself removes Maurice's 
 difficulty. What Christ said was, freely 
 rendered, "I command you to love one 
 another. I love you into loving one an- 
 other." First of all He bade them to do 
 it, then He said He would love them into 
 doing it. That is what John means when 
 he says, "We love because He first 
 loved us." He planted the seed in us 
 which has grown into the tree of love. 
 "As I have loved you into loving, so love 
 ye one another." George Bowen, whom 
 Bishop Taylor called the lamb of India, 
 thus expresses it in his sweet meditations 
 on "Love Revealed": "I give you a 
 new commandment, that ye love one an- 
 other. But why do you look at Me with 
 such blank unsatisfied expression of 
 countenance ? Is this a little gift (an im- 
 possible gift) ? Know then that I My- 
 self am love incarnate; I have clothed 
 Myself with flesh that I might reign in 
 your hearts. Love one another as I have
 
 The New Commandment 209 
 
 loved you (into loving one another) and 
 you will no longer find Me absent." 
 
 How good it would have been even 
 if He had stopped there! How sweet if 
 we had to rest our hearts simply on that 
 bidding to love! But how good also His 
 next words! "By this shall all men 
 know that ye are My disciples, if ye have 
 love one to another." Think of these 
 words a moment! In them He declares 
 that obedience to this commandment 
 makes up the essence, the test, and the 
 power of Christianity. 
 
 Jesus says it makes up the essence of 
 Christianity. Loving is a great thing. It 
 is the greatest thing. As one who ad- 
 heres to the old landmarks in Christian 
 thinking, I reverently urge that Jesus said 
 that the first essential element in the 
 Christian life was not sound doctrine but 
 love. As one who clings with affection 
 to the oldest and simplest ecclesiastical 
 conceptions, I lovingly mark that Christ 
 said that the essence of Christianity is 
 not in ritual or liturgy or apostolic line- 
 age of ecclesiastical organization, but in 
 love. Paul says: " Love is the fulfilling
 
 2io "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 of the law." This was realized in the 
 early Christian community. The essence 
 of the gospel was there, for they loved 
 one another. "Seeing," said Simon 
 Peter, and it gives us a new glimpse into 
 the personal experiences and struggles of 
 those early Christians, "seeing ye have 
 purified your souls in your obedience to 
 the truth unto unfeigned love of the 
 brethren, love one another from the heart 
 fervently." The fierceness with which 
 James attacks those who put aside one 
 part of the church for the men with gold 
 rings and fine clothing, and another for 
 the paupers and the poorly clad, is only 
 a testimony to the strength of the hold 
 which the gospel of love had gained 
 upon the best members of the early 
 Christian community. It was love that 
 caused the mention of Quartus in the 
 Epistle to the Romans. A poor Corin- 
 thian artisan, he happened to be present 
 when Paul was writing and said, " Paul, 
 I love them too, send my love " ; and his 
 name was put down there with the 
 wealthy members of the Corinthian 
 church, because he loved.
 
 The New Commandment 2 1 1 
 
 The test of Christianity is love. It is 
 not adherence to sound doctrine, impor- 
 tant as that is, nor membership in a 
 church whose organization is believed to 
 rest upon the authority of the scriptures 
 or of the apostles. " By this shall all men 
 know that ye are My disciples, if ye have 
 love one to another." Our discipleship 
 is our glory. " Herein is My Father glo- 
 rified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye 
 be My disciples." God and we are both 
 glorified by our meeting the test that 
 shows that we are His disciples. Read 
 from the First Epistle of John: 
 
 " In this the children of God are manifest, and the 
 children of the devil: whosoever doeth not right- 
 eousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his 
 brother. For this is the message which ye heard 
 from the beginning, that we should love one another. 
 . . . We know that we have passed out of death 
 into life " 
 
 Why ? Because we believe the creeds ? 
 I do not depreciate them. No, "because 
 we love the brethren." " He that loveth 
 not abideth in death." There are men 
 who will not speak to their brothers at- 
 tending the same church, and yet in their
 
 212 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 Bible as in ours are these words, " Who- 
 soever hateth his brother is a murderer; 
 and ye know that no murderer hath 
 eternal life abiding in him. Hereby 
 know we love, because He laid down 
 His life for us, and we ought to lay 
 down our lives for the brethren." Do 
 we love ? No ? Then we are not His. 
 It is His own test. 
 
 And Jesus said also, that obedience to 
 this commandment is to constitute the 
 power of Christianity. " By this SHALL 
 ALL MEN know ye are My disciples, if ye 
 have love one to another." This same 
 night, after having left this little upper 
 room, He spoke practically these same 
 words : 
 
 " Neither for these only do I pray, but for them 
 also that believe on Me through their word ; that 
 they may all be one, even as Thou, Father, art in 
 Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us : 
 that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me. 
 And the glory which Thou hast given Me, I have 
 given unto them ; that they may be one, even as We 
 are one ; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may 
 be perfected into one ; that the world may know 
 that Thou didst send MJ, and lovedst them, even a* 
 Thou lovedst Me."
 
 The New Commandment 213 
 
 Do we lack power? Do we love? "The 
 sight of a Christian community whose 
 members love one another is the irresist- 
 ible argument for Chistianity." Let us 
 apply these words to our hearts in the 
 narrow sense. We long to be personal 
 workers, to be able to draw souls to Christ. 
 Perhaps we have found it difficult. Have 
 we loved ? If we loved souls as Christ 
 loved them, we should be able to draw 
 them in. If we longed for them with a 
 yearning such as was in the cry of Paul! 
 
 " Oft, when the word is on me to deliver, 
 
 Lifts the illusion and the truth lies bare, 
 Desert or throng, the city or the river, 
 Melts in a lucid paradise of air. 
 
 " Only like souls I see the folk thereunder 
 
 Bound who should conquer, slaves who should 
 
 be kings. 
 
 Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder 
 Sadly contented in a show of things. 
 
 " Then with a rush the intolerable craving 
 
 Shivers throughout me like a trumpet call, 
 Oh, to save these, to perish for their saving, 
 Die for their life, be offered for them all. " 
 
 Or if we turn away from this close 
 personal application to the broad sense of
 
 214 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 Christ's words, how we must bow our 
 heads in shame that the world should 
 stand mocking at the dissensions and bit- 
 ternesses among us, while we have writ- 
 ten upon our banners the words, "A new 
 commandment I give unto you, that ye 
 love one another. By this shall all men 
 know that ye are My disciples, if ye have 
 love one to another." As good George 
 Bowen says, "When Christians love one 
 another with the love of Calvary, then 
 the people who dwell in the heart of 
 Africa, Australia, China, Japan, Tartary, 
 Arabia, Russia, Siberia, America, and 
 England will know who are the people 
 of God, and will hasten forth, ten men 
 laying hold of the skirts of one to learn 
 the way of life." Oh that God might re- 
 new among us that love which bound the 
 early Church so close together that Ter- 
 tullian could say, "The heathen are wont 
 to exclaim with wonder, ' See how these 
 Christians love one another." 
 
 How great is the need of this com- 
 mandment to-day! How greatly we 
 need to learn to love one another! The 
 poor dying world hungers for the society
 
 The New Commandment 215 
 
 of lovers. There must be hundreds of 
 brotherhoods in this land, Knights of 
 Pythias, Odd Fellows, Free Masons, 
 Knights of the Golden Eagle, all sorts 
 of brotherhoods organized to supply the 
 want of fellowship, of love. Poorly do 
 they supply it but they express the irre- 
 pressible longing. Our colleges are full 
 of fraternities to supply the need which 
 men and women feel in their hearts for 
 that which apparently the Christian life 
 as they know it has not supplied. The 
 world waits to be loved, to see the vision 
 of men loving one another, to feel the 
 touch of love. 
 
 I read a few years ago in St. Andrew's 
 Cross the proceedings of the convention 
 of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew at 
 Washington, where Bishop Potter told of 
 an effort made in New York on the part 
 of bakers who were obliged to work all 
 day on Sunday in hot holes under ground, 
 to enlist the assistance of the ministers of 
 Brooklyn and New York in their move- 
 ment to be free from work on the Sab- 
 bath day. They sent circulars to five 
 hundred ministers. One of the bakers in
 
 2l6 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 talking about it afterward said, " Do you 
 wonder we don't take much stock in the 
 clergy when I tell you that we got from 
 these letters only six replies ? " I cut 
 from the same paper recently a testimony 
 from another member of the St. Andrew's 
 Brotherhood who said : "Some time ago 
 I had an experience here much like that 
 related by Bishop Potter concerning the 
 bakers' union, in his Washington address 
 on ' The City and the Nation.' The street 
 car men were working seventeen hours a 
 day, with no rest on Sunday. They 
 struck, and a bitter struggle followed. 
 In the midst of the struggle I sent a printed 
 letter to every clergyman in the city whose 
 address I could get, setting forth the facts, 
 and among others the fact that these men 
 could not go to church if they wanted to, 
 yet no word was heard from a single 
 clergyman in support of the men. The 
 printers in the office where the letters 
 were set up were much interested. As I 
 looked over the proof several gathered 
 around me and all of them declared that 
 none of the clergymen would do anything 
 about it."
 
 The New Commandment 217 
 
 "That ye should love one another, 
 even as I have loved you, that ye also 
 should love one another." Do you won- 
 der that multitudes of men stand off from 
 the Christian Church, saying, "We can 
 get brotherhood among non-Christian 
 men. The great longing of our lives is 
 for fellowship, but the Christian Church 
 would not supply it for us, and we will 
 stay outside " ? Meanwhile the same 
 sweet voice is speaking, "That ye love 
 one another." It is a command for be- 
 lievers first, of course. But John widens 
 it to its true extent in his epistle. We 
 are to love all our brothers, and all are 
 our brothers who are brothers of Christ. 
 
 We are all of us responsible, more or 
 less, for a great deal of the feeling of an- 
 tagonism to the respectable churches and 
 also for much of the unmerited criticism 
 of the Church. We pass along the 
 street. A badly dressed man is jostled 
 by us, and we merely look around in an 
 irritated way as much as to say, "You 
 should not have been in my way." A 
 svell-dressed man is jostled by us and we 
 turn around politely to ask his pardon.
 
 218 "Remember Jesus Christ" 
 
 Is it not widening the breach between 
 the "down" and the "up," which is a 
 hellish breach, and which would not ex- 
 ist if we all loved one another ? Would 
 that we might learn this lesson, and that 
 although we separate here we might 
 hearken to the words of Christ, " A new 
 commandment 1 give unto you, that ye 
 love one another; even as I have loved 
 you that ye also love one another." 
 
 Such freedom, such satisfaction, such 
 rest, will come to us if we are willing to 
 enter into this life of love. 
 
 " I know a bush that fire does not destroy, 
 
 I know a flower that heat can but expand, 
 I know a sacrifice whose root is joy, 
 I know an altar that unbinds the hand. 
 
 Love is that altar ; in its cleansing fires 
 
 The tree of life grows green with youth again, 
 And in the fervor that its flame inspires 
 The captive heart forgets its former pain. 
 
 * Put on my fetters and thou shalt be free ; 
 
 Embrace my altar and thy cords shall fall ; 
 Become love's captive, and thy soul shall be 
 Lord of itself and master over all." 
 
 But the same truth is put more lov-
 
 The New Commandment 219 
 
 ingly, more profoundly, and in diviner 
 tones in these other words to which our 
 hearts may well turn at the close of this 
 good Sabbath day : 
 
 Beloved, let us love one another : for love is of 
 God ; and every one that loveth is begotten of God, 
 and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not 
 God ; for God is love. Herein was the love of God 
 manifested in us, that God hath sent His only begot- 
 ten Son into the world, that we might live through 
 Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but 
 that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propiti- 
 ation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we 
 also ought to love one another. No man hath be- 
 held God at any time : if we love one another, God 
 abideth in us, and His love is perfected in us : 
 hereby know we that we abide in Him, and He in 
 us, because He hath given us of His Spirit. . . . 
 And we know and have believed the love which God 
 hath in us. God is love ; and he that abideth in love 
 abideth in God, and God abideth in him. Herein is 
 love made perfect with us, that we may have bold- 
 ness in the day of judgment ; because as He is, even 
 so are we iif this world. There is no fear in love . 
 but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath 
 punishment ; and he that feareth is not made perfect 
 in love. We love, because He first loved us. If a 
 man say, I lore God, and hateth his brother, he is a 
 liar!
 
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