LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 University of California. 
 
 GII^T OF" 
 THE FAMILY OF REV. DR. GEORGE MOOAR 
 
 Class 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/divinesovereigntOOthomrich 
 
DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 AND OTHER SERMONS, 
 
 BY 
 REUEN THOMAS, 
 
 MINISTER OF HARVARD CHURCH, BROOKLINE, 
 
 Author of ^^ Emmanuel Church^'' etc. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 D. LOTHROP & COMPANY, 
 
 Franklin and Hawley Sts. 
 
 london: james clarke & co., fleet st. 
 

 COPYRIGHT. 1885, BY 
 
 D. LOTHROP & COMPANY. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I have been many times asked, by friends in 
 England and America, to publish a volume of 
 Sermons, but have hitherto refrained because I 
 was not conscious of anything specially new in my 
 way of presenting Biblical truth ; and because my 
 method of sermonizing, being a mixture of the 
 prepared and extemporaneous, is of all methods 
 least fitted to do itself credit in print. 
 
 These sermons that I now offer to my friends 
 and the public have not been re-written for publi- 
 cation, but are given, as nearly as possible, as 
 spoken from the pulpit. The first six were 
 a brief course to inquirers ; intended to be sug- 
 gestive and expository, not at all controversial. 
 The other sermons are ordinary Sunday morning 
 
 discourses. R. T. 
 
 ill 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. — Divine Sovereignty ... 7 
 
 II. — Man's Sinfulness and Inability . 20 
 
 III. — Atonement and Expiation . . 35 
 
 iy._The Divine Helper ... 49 
 
 v.— The Witnessing Church . . 62 
 
 VI.— Retribution 74 
 
 VII.— Means and Ends ... 88 
 
 VIII.— *« Worship God" . . .102 
 
 IX.— The Child and His Dues . . 118 
 
 X.— A More Excellent Way . . 136 
 
 XI. — The Pre-eminence of Christ . 148 
 
 XII. — Our Eelationships . f . 163 
 
 XIII.— The Limitations of Evil . . 179 
 
 XIV.— For His Name's Sake . . 194 
 
 XV.— Searchings of Heart . . .210 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 XYI.— The Divine Kesponsibility . 223 
 
 XVII.— Predestination . . . .235 
 
 XVIII.— Self-Improvement . . .250 
 
 XIX.— Weariness in Well-Doing . . 264 
 
 XX.— The Divine Invisibility . . 279 
 
I. 
 
 DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 
 
 And Jesus came unto them and spake unto them, saying, All 
 authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go 
 ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them 
 in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost : 
 teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you; 
 and lo, I am with you alway even unto the end of the world. — 
 Matt.^ xxviii: i8. 
 
 THE words * ' Divine Sovereignty " have often- 
 times been so used as to create a prejudice 
 against them. Man's own ideas of Sovereignty 
 have been imported into them. I am aware that 
 in using them I may put myself at a disadvantage 
 in obtaining, with some, ready receptivity for the 
 ideas which I propose to ask you to consider. 
 Persuaded as I am that many of these ideas have 
 not been correctly apprehended or adequately ap- 
 preciated, — persuaded also that there is in them 
 truth so important that if we let it slip, we shall 
 suffer in increased mental imbecility and moral 
 feebleness, it seems to me to be my duty to speak 
 to those of you whose minds are open to the 
 
 7 
 
DIVINE S0VEREIONT7. 
 
 truth which Jesus the Christ has brought within 
 our grasp, on these essential things — not theo- 
 logically or dogmatically but exegetically and 
 ethically. 
 
 The Christian Church, through its Apostles, 
 received originally a commission from its Founder. 
 
 The record runs thus : — *' The eleven disciples 
 went into Galilee unto the mountain where Jesus 
 had appointed them. And Jesus came unto them 
 and spake unto them, saying. All authority hath 
 been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go 
 ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations, 
 baptising them in the name of the Father and of 
 the Son and of the Holy Ghost : teaching them to 
 observe all things whatsoever I commanded you ; 
 and lo, I am with you alway even unto the end of 
 the world." 
 
 This is a sweeping statement. It speaks of 
 authority — of authority as deposited in a person. 
 It suggests that that person has in himself the 
 substance of the Divine nature — otherwise the 
 formula to be used in baptism is unintelligible. 
 His apostles were to go forth to make disciples of 
 all the nations. They were to administer dis- 
 ciples' baptism. They w^ere to put the name, 
 which implies the ownership of God, on those 
 who were baptised. They were to declare, thus, 
 that they belonged to God. They were to declare 
 that the nations belonged to God. In a word 
 
DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 9 
 
 they were to announce and maintain the Divine 
 Sovereignty over nations. Tliat Divine Sover- 
 eignty for this world is deposited in Jesus the 
 Christ. 
 
 This is the truth that underlies all else in the 
 commission given to the disciples. " Therefore, 
 because all authority hath been given unto me in 
 heaven and on earth, go and make disciples of 
 all the nations. 
 
 We must not Iwiit the authority and think of it 
 as confined to the church or to Christians alone, 
 and to them only so far as they are members of 
 organized Christian societies — and only to their 
 acts as members of such societies. There is no 
 such limitation in the words of our Lord. *'A11" 
 cannot mean less than *« all. " The moment we 
 begin to limit revealed truths by man's opinions 
 that moment we begin the process of belittling 
 everything which Jesus has spoken. That moment 
 we begin the exaltation of man over Christ — that 
 moment we enter on a course the exact opposite 
 of the one suggested by John the Baptist : ' ' He 
 must increase but I must decrease." We are not 
 "of the truth" when we set up the opinions of 
 men as of more worth than the explicit teachings 
 of Christ. 
 
 Authority — all authority — all Sovereignty over 
 man is vested in Christ. 
 
 We can see reasons why it should be. On the 
 
10 DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 
 
 ground ofhnowledge; He knows more of the nature 
 of Deity — more of the nature of man — and more 
 of the nature of things than any other who has 
 ever been on this earth knows. 
 
 On the ground of goodness; He has submitted 
 himself to all the tests to which the nature of man 
 can be subjected and has triumphed in all. Tried 
 and tempted by every form of evil, he remains the 
 sinless one — spotlessly good. 
 
 But goodness is not simply abstinence from 
 acts of sin or feelings that are sinful. It is not 
 merely negative. It is positive. This Jesus 
 Christ has done everything possible to be done by 
 any human, or as far as we can see, by any divine 
 being for the sake of helping others. He has 
 loved the Eternal Father with all his heart and his 
 neighbor as himself. 
 
 That is all I feel called upon to assert, at this 
 present stage, on the nature of the goodness of 
 Christ. On the grounds of knowledge and good- 
 ness, in a word on the ground of the superiority 
 and excellency of his nature, he is Sovereign. 
 It is according to all that we know or imagine of 
 the Divine Nature that Sovereignty should be 
 deposited in him who is greatest and best. 
 
 In the superiority and excellency of the nature 
 of Christ we may see a practically sufficient rea- 
 son why the Divine Government of mankind 
 should be administered through Jesus Christ, 
 
DIVINE SOYEREIQNTT. 11 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that in the ultmate 
 ordering of the Divine 'Tjrovernment superiorities 
 should be invested with authority. 
 
 In this age we are compelled to search for the 
 ground of things. We must dig down to that 
 which is fundamental. There is too much law- 
 lessness in society to allow of serious men putting 
 one set of opinions against another and in angry 
 faction fights contending that one set of opinions 
 is right because it is old, and another set wrong 
 because there is the flush of youth about them. 
 As a general principle we may assume that 
 whatever has stood the test of age has essential 
 truth in it. The seemingly new must expect to be 
 regarded with suspicion until its worth has been 
 tested. Whoever accepts an opinion simply 
 because it is new and for no other reason stamps 
 himself as frivolous. But oftentimes it happens 
 that that which seems to be new is the oldest of 
 all. A new machine is often the bringing of prin- 
 ciples which are as old as the Universe into more 
 effective operation. Nothing really new is intro- 
 duced. The old is brought into a neater 
 useableness. When the lightning shall have been 
 domesticated and made to light the girl who has 
 to sew into the weary hours of night, nothing new 
 will have been brought into the world. It will 
 only be a more perfect understanding of the old. 
 Everything new in all departments when proved 
 
12 DIVINE SO VEREIQNTT. 
 
 practical and useful is simply more perfect under- 
 standing of the old. Let us put away all fear 
 of knowledge. Ignorance is the thing to be 
 feared — ignorance of God — ignorance of our- 
 selves — ignorance of the world in which we live. 
 That the ignorant people of the country should 
 practically rule it — being the multitude, and 
 having votes to cast for those who represent 
 themselves, this is the danger. And it is 
 much more of a danger than any of us see. It 
 was ignorance which crucified Jesus the Christ ; 
 <* Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
 they do." 
 
 The Church of Christ must beware of nar- 
 rowing its mission to the world within any limits 
 more contracted than those assigned to it in 
 its original commission. We have to proclaim the 
 Sovereignty of God in an age when so many 
 are proclaiming the sovereignty of man — i. e. 
 the sovereignty of the multitude — let that 
 multitude be composed of whomsoever it may. 
 It is true, as one has said, that the idea of 
 modern democracy has become predominant under 
 the influence of the preaching of the truths which, 
 in their best expression, are in the New Testament. 
 " Heathenism had no such notion of man as man ; 
 it had no glimmer of the preciousness of a soul ; it 
 had no likeness to this, introduced and difl'used in 
 the western world, which revealed that it is not 
 
DIVINE SOYEBEIONTT. 13 
 
 for the high, nor for the philosophical, not for the 
 wealthy, not for emperors or nobles or patricians 
 of Rome, but that it is for man as man, for each 
 soul of man that God has sent His Son to shed his 
 blood, and sent his Spirit for renewal and restora- 
 tion to himself as to a Father's bosom." But 
 you have to choose between the Democracies — a 
 Christianized democracy or a demonized democra- 
 cy. In all its history the Church of Christ has 
 never been in the position in which it finds itself 
 to-day, here, on this continent. And I am afraid 
 we do not see the peculiarity of the position and 
 therefore the duty of the hour. I fear that we 
 ourselves are only half awake to our responsibilities 
 in regard to organized society. Have we any 
 definite idea of the Kingship of Christ in reference 
 to society? Has not this very idea of the real 
 Sovereignty over man, as man, being deposited in 
 Christ, a feeling of unreality about it ? Do we see 
 that if it be a truth it is the most practical of all 
 truths? When a man takes «Iesus as Christ 
 he takes him as his Sovereign — not simply as his 
 Prophet, his Teacher — not simply as his Priest — 
 but also as his King. He has to take him for all 
 he is, or he can never rise to the full stature of a 
 man in Christ Jesus. 
 
 The questions of most urgent practical impor- 
 tance in our day are such as relate not to freedom 
 but to Government, to Sovereignty, to Authority, 
 
14 DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 
 
 to Law and Order. There are some countries in 
 which the duty of the hour would be to speak of 
 Freedom, its nature and its necessity. There is 
 no such duty laid upon us in this century so 
 far as this country is concerned. In order to 
 have right ideas of freedom we must first of 
 all have right ideas of Sovereignty. If we un- 
 derstand the prophetic element in the New Tes- 
 tament Scriptures rightly, the development of 
 the spirit of lawlessness is to be one of the signs 
 of the latter days of the present dispensation of 
 things. I am fully aware that the effect of preach- 
 ing the fulness of the Divine nature — that in 
 which the gospel consists — that God is love — 
 will be in some minds, to produce laxity. And 
 yet for the sake of those who have a right to all 
 that is revealed of the Divine Nature we must not 
 withold any truth. What we need to see is that 
 Love works through law and not independently of 
 it. God is light as well as love. The word light 
 suggests holiness. It suggests purity. It sug- 
 gests intelligence. It suggests wisdom. All the 
 beneficences of the Universe depend upon law. 
 Destroy law and w4iat then? Then chaos and 
 destruction. Love is seen to demand for its sphere 
 of operation law and order. These are the ideas 
 we need to have impressed upon our minds in 
 this age. 
 
 What is the foundation of human law? Is there 
 
DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 15 
 
 such a thing as authority ? What is it ? On what 
 does it rest ? In what is it rooted ? What is the 
 ground of it ? We must ask these questions and 
 we must find answers to them. Without debating 
 the matter I venture the affirmation that there is 
 no answer to be found outside religious truth. 
 An irreligious man may say, * It is necessary. 
 It is expedient.' But why ? ' We cannot make our 
 fortunes — we cannot possess our comfortable and 
 luxurious homes — we cannot sleep well at nights 
 — we cannot pursue our pleasures quietly, with- 
 out law and order.' But supposing the great 
 multitude should be instructed enough in our 
 public schools, just enough, to lose all that natural 
 fear of superiorities which belongs to superstition 
 and ignorance ; supposing they should listen to 
 the men who represent lawlessness — the men 
 who have nothing to lose even if society becomes 
 a chaos — what would they care about these 
 material things on which we place so much value ? 
 Considerations of necessity and expediency would 
 go for nothing. If there be no Divine Sovereignty 
 — in itself righteous — with the right to rule, 
 with the right of authority, then all these lower 
 sovereignities are usurpations. Everything that 
 man has is derived. From what source is the 
 authority which is invested, for instance, in the 
 President of the United ^States; in the Gov- 
 ernor of this state ; in the Judges of the supreme 
 
16 DIVINE 80VEBEIGNTT, 
 
 court ; in Judges everywhere — derived ? Has it 
 any right to be? The Christian man, if he is as 
 intelligent as Christianity is capable of making 
 him, has his answer ready. And it is all-suflBcient. 
 It is this — * There is a Divine Order in this 
 Universe. The Creator must be the Sovereign 
 by right and in fact. We have nothing which is 
 not derived. Not a faculty, not a power but is 
 derived. We are not independent. All round 
 and all through we are dependent. We are born 
 into an established order of things ; an element 
 in it; a part of it. We do not stand alone — 
 cannot stand alone. We are related all round.' 
 There are no facts less open to question than these 
 — that we are related to certain institutions — the 
 family and the nation — yea, the Kingdom of 
 Christ, for it existed as revealed in the family 
 and nation into which we were born. We are 
 thus related to organisms which God has made. 
 We are thus related to Him. We are under the 
 Divine Sovereignty. There can be no doubt of it. 
 Our accepting it or rejecting it does not alter the 
 fact. We are in the midst of a system of laws 
 which God has established. We cannot get from 
 under them. They are in us. We are organized 
 in accord with them. Thus the Sovereignty of 
 God comes into our very nature and makes it 
 what it is. These dependencies and these rela- 
 tionships put upon us duties and responsibilities. 
 
THE DIVINE SO YEUEIGNTY. 17 
 
 Herein comes our freedom — we may intelligently 
 and voluntarily work with God (to the measure 
 to which He has revealed Himself) in the family, 
 in the church, in the nation, or we may igno- 
 rantly and wilfully (all we can) work against Him. 
 In the one case we are subjects, in the other 
 rebels. In the one case we rise into the condi- 
 tion and feeling and apprehension of children in 
 a household, and are as free and happy as chil- 
 dren at home ; in the other case rebellion grad- 
 ually but surely hardens down into that wilfulness 
 which becomes, in the process of time, total 
 alienation moving steadily toward demonism. The 
 facts of life compel us to see that irreligion 
 never stops at mere inhumanity. Its final form is 
 demonism. 
 
 Now, the irreligious man has no answer to the 
 question — on what rests the authority which is 
 vested in the parent in regard to his child ; in the 
 Governor in regard to the State ; in the Judge as 
 regards the administration of law ? When I say 
 that he has no answer, I mean that he has no answer 
 which is not like a house built on the sand. 
 
 If an eternal foundation for a temporal institu- 
 tion cannot be found it cannot stand ; it must go. 
 All permanent necessary institutions have their 
 ultimate authority in the right of the Creator 
 to govern — in a word, in Divine Sovereignty. 
 Democracy may be so regarded as to become the 
 
18 DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 
 
 hugest idolatry which has ever been set up in the 
 world — the idolatry of the will of man. The 
 Christian can have nothing to do with it under 
 that aspect. God's ultimate purpose in reference 
 to nations is declared to us in that nation of Israel. 
 That ultimate purpose is not democracy but 
 theocracy — not the rule of the many over the few, 
 but the rule of God over all. And if the Church 
 of Christ fails of seeing this, and of teaching it, 
 and of illustrating it in its own life — it so far fails 
 of comprehending the greatness of the commission 
 entrusted to it, and the basis truth on which that 
 commission rests. All rightful authority over 
 man is deposited in Jesus the Christ. He is the 
 sole Sovereign. To submit to his Sovereignty is to 
 be in right relations with God, and so, essentially, 
 to be free from guilt. To refuse to acknowledge 
 that Sovereignty is to be out of rightful relations 
 towards God, and so, to be now and as long as the 
 refusal continues, guilty in God's sight. And 
 while the Creator has revealed himself as '* long- 
 suffering, plenteous in goodness and truth — not 
 willing that any should perish but that all should 
 come to repentance, " yet has he also said that 
 " he will by no means clear the guilty. '' Let us 
 try to appreciate something of the magnitude of 
 this most practical and most necessary revelation — 
 *' All authority hath been given to me in heaven 
 and on earth, go ye therefore and make disciples 
 
DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 19 
 
 of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of 
 the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit : 
 teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I 
 commanded you ; and lo, I am with you alway 
 even unto the end of the world." 
 
11. 
 
 MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 
 
 All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. — Romans, 
 iii: 23. ^ 
 
 IN speaking on the theme of Man's Sinfulness and 
 consequent Inability I am not under the neces- 
 sit}^ of occupying your time in any elaborate at- 
 tempt at proving either the one or the other. It is 
 universally admitted that there is something defec- 
 tive, inharmonious and wrong in man's nature. The 
 best and the worst of men admit this much. Any 
 man w^ho argued to the contrary would be regarded 
 as lacking in intelligence as well as in moral sense, 
 as odd and singular, as a man whose views and 
 opinions of things were so peculiar as to cause him 
 to be regarded with something of suspicion. In 
 every one of us there is a something good which 
 perceives a something bad and wrong. There is 
 also something in every man which whispers of 
 an ideal state. There is in all a kind of reminis- 
 cence of a lost condition. This reminiscence has 
 never, I think, been more exquisitely phrased, 
 
 20 
 
MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 21 
 
 than in the poet's Wordsworth's < ' Intimations of 
 Immortality from Recollections of Early Child- 
 hood." The poet can account for the inAvard con- 
 dition which he finds in himself and in other men 
 only by the suggestion that we have had a prior 
 existence, traces of which still remain with us : 
 
 *' Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; 
 
 The soul that rises with us, our life's star. 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 
 And Cometh from afar; 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 From God, who is our home." 
 
 In order to account for what we find in our- 
 selves we need not accept the extreme explanation 
 of the poet. It suffices if we think of our nature 
 as having had, originally controlling it, a supreme 
 lovje which has been largely but by no means 
 entirely lost, which is now only a reminiscence. 
 The idea of the lost condition hides itself in the 
 soul but can never ''except in the worst of the 
 worst " be entirely killed out. That in us which 
 accuses us when we do wrong and commends us 
 when we do right cannot be fallen and sinful. 
 That must be righteous and holy. And so there 
 is in us all a viceroy asserting Kingship in the 
 name of the true Sovereign of our souls. Job 
 recognized it. David recognized it. Call it Con- 
 science, call it what you will, it is there as a fact. 
 
23 MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 
 
 And I am dealing, in the simplest possible way, 
 with facts of consciousness. 
 
 But there is in us not only this sense of righteous- 
 ness — of a lost ideal state but much else. In every 
 man there is a sense of incongruity — of dividedness 
 of nature — of disharmony. We are not at 
 one with ourselves. The Apostle Paul puts 
 the case thus — **The flesh lusteth against the 
 spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and these are 
 contrary the one to the other." There is a 
 depravity, a degeneration in our nature. And as 
 the several parts of our nature are so intimately 
 associated that if one part sufiers all the other 
 parts sufier with it, so the depraved condition is 
 not moral alone or intellectual alone, or physical 
 alone. All departments are weakened from their 
 original strength, and corrupted from their original 
 purity. The intellect, the aff*ection, the will, are 
 not in that condition which is seen to be possible. 
 As a matter of fact we look upon one another as 
 beings not entirely trustworthy. Every man puts 
 every other man upon trial, and does not entirely 
 trust him until he has had considerable experience 
 of him. If man be not a depraved creature, why 
 this universal suspicion? Surely no one would 
 choose to live in a perpetual state of distrust, for it 
 is an exceedingly uncomfortable state. And yet, 
 the men and women who are naturally at the 
 farthest remove from this suspiciousness of dis- 
 
MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 23 
 
 position, are compelled by the experience they have 
 of life to exercise no little of caution. Without 
 parading the acknowledged vices of society before 
 your gaze, there is enough of evidence among the 
 most decent and well-behaved people of the world 
 to testify that we have in us the conviction that all 
 men everywhere are in a depraved condition. 
 And yet they are not so depraved as not to know 
 that they are depraved. 
 
 It is often argued that we are here in a state of 
 probation. But man as man has had his probation 
 and has fallen. It would seem that innocence 
 apart from experience cannot stand. The repre- 
 sentation of the case in the Book of Genesis is that 
 Adam's *'tree of knowledge of good and evil" 
 tested his obedience. Our Tree of Life — Jesus 
 Christ — tests our obedience. Only with a differ- 
 ence. The first man of whom we read, knowing 
 only good, w^anted to know what evil was. We, 
 having in ourselves the knowledge of good and 
 evil, are put upon trial, whether we will adhere 
 persistently to that which is good — not simply 
 good in the abstract — good only as an idea — 
 but good in the concrete — good personalized in 
 Christ Jesus. Nothing appeals to our whole nature 
 until it becomes personalized. 
 
 Taking these simple facts, which are undeniable, 
 — what does this condition mean ? Is there any ex- 
 planation of it ? There is suggested the explana- 
 
24 MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 
 
 tion of mcompleteness. Our nature, say some, is 
 moving on gradually towards unity, harmony, per- 
 fection. Give it time and it will come out accordins: 
 to the highest idea that the best and most intelli- 
 gent man has of it. Theoretically this looks plausi- 
 ble. And if we could ,shut ourselves away from 
 ourselves, and from all the facts of society, the 
 idea of simple imperfection might seem large 
 enough to cover the case. The apple is green 
 and tart, but leave it alone for a month or two, and 
 it will be pleasant to the eye for its color, and 
 sweet to the taste. Unhappil}^ except under 
 certain conditions, and in a certain environment, 
 man as he grows older does not grow better. The 
 generosity, the trustingness, beauty and sweetness 
 of youth, seem to fade awa}^ and nothing quite so 
 good comes in the place of them. In most cases 
 the whole of this life of ours seems to be occupied 
 with the scattering of illusions ; with the proving 
 that our views are short-sighted ; that our opinions 
 are false ; that our pleasures cannot last ; that 
 the things which seem to be blessings are very 
 often curses in disguise, so far as their relation 
 to individuals is concerned, and worst illusion of 
 all, that which relates to our own view of our own 
 nature. There is something else than incomplete- 
 ness. This idea does not account for our sense of 
 guilt — a sense belonging to every man — the 
 most pitiable form of misery, and yet, strange 
 
MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILTT. 25 
 
 to say, the deepest possible sense of guilt is not 
 half so appalling as would be no sense of it at all. 
 Whether the restlessness and the superabundant 
 activity of the world are not more due to the 
 inward sense of guilt in man, from which, in one 
 way or another he is striving to free himself, than 
 to anything higher, is a question worth w^hile our 
 considering. " The wicked is like the troubled 
 sea which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire 
 and dirt. There is no peace, saitli my God, to 
 the wicked." The idea of incompleteness as 
 accounting for what we find in ourselves is not 
 large enough. It leaves out too much. There are 
 too many facts which lie outside of it. 
 
 It covers a part of the ground but only a part. 
 It needs along with it the idea of depravation — 
 an idea which satisfies the Conscience as well as 
 the Intellio^ence. The sense of not being: right — 
 of being wrong — of being at war with something 
 -^ with SOMEONE, is in us all. This is what we 
 call the sense of sin. This sense is not consistent 
 with inward happiness. It is an internal trouble 
 which men would get away from if they could. 
 But no man can get away from himself. He may 
 change his place of abode — his associations — his 
 surroundings, and for the time be so occupied with 
 the newness that presents itself, as to get a partial 
 and temporary relief. But the old internal state 
 is there, and soon re-asserts itself in all its power. 
 
26 MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 
 
 No external condition can eradicate it. Men try 
 all sorts of devices to rid themselves of this inter- 
 nal sense of something wrong. Sometimes they 
 change their opinions, putting off one set, and 
 adopting another. But the taking up with that 
 which is more lax, or that which is more thorousrh, 
 does not alter the inward condition. The bad 
 consciousness is there all the time. It is deeper 
 in the nature than the region to which opinion be- 
 longs. It is not wrong opinion simply but some- 
 thing more inward which troubles us. There is 
 on other word but sinfulness which will express the 
 nature of the trouble. We have from the past 
 inherited a depravity — a degeneration of nature. 
 And it has corrupted the intellect — the affections 
 
 — the will. We think wrongly — we feel wrongly 
 
 — we act wrongly. And we are all in the same 
 state. No man can set himself up as of a differ- 
 ent order of being from the rest. *' God be 
 merciful to me a sinner " — is a prayer suited to 
 everyone. 
 
 While I am carefully abstaining from the use of 
 scientific theological expressions, and interpreting 
 the simple facts of consciousness, yet I can find no 
 word that will stand in the place of this word 
 * sinfulness.' For it is quite certain that there are 
 in man not only defects which mean weakness, but 
 that there is also a parent defect which means 
 guilt. There is no man living who has not this 
 
MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 27 
 
 sense of inward guiltiness. And those who, to us, 
 seem the best and the truest are the readiest to ac- 
 knowledge that it belongs to themselves equally 
 with others. So generally is this the case, that 
 the claim of perfectionism, on the part of any, is 
 met with a general incredulity not unmixed with 
 scorn. The man is suspected all the more because 
 of his claim. It seems to be indecent as well as 
 impossible. Apart then from the gross vices of 
 the disreputable among men and women, we per- 
 ceive that there is, in this nature of ours, a degen- 
 eration which is not simply a defect, not simply 
 an entrenched ignorance, but a condition so radical 
 that all efforts of self upon self are insufficient for 
 the freeing of our nature from it. 
 
 And this degeneration is total — by which I 
 mean, it affects the whole nature. No part is 
 untainted. It is not possible that any part should 
 be. Our nature is so connected, part with part, 
 that degeneration in one region means degenera- 
 tion in every region. If a man be unjust in his 
 feelings he will be unjust in his thinking and un- 
 just in his action. It is the merest rubbish to 
 talk of a man being good at heart and bad every- 
 where else. If the fruit of the tree be bad the 
 tree is bad. And sinfulness means corrupted 
 feeling, corrupted thinking, corrupted willing, 
 corrupted action. The unity of our nature neces- 
 sitates this. Great thinkers in all times, and in 
 
28 MAN' 8 SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 
 
 all countries, have perceived that if that centre we 
 call the heart be depraved all other parts of our na- 
 ture are lowered thereby. In his Ethics the old 
 Pagan philosopher Aristotle writes " For depravity 
 perverts the vision and causes it to be deceived 
 on the principles of action, so that it is clearly 
 impossible for a person who is not good to be wise 
 or prudent." *' The pure heart makes a clear 
 head" says another of the ancient celebrities. So 
 Carlyle in modern times, to quote only one of 
 many, writing of Mirabeau asserts, ''The real 
 quality of our insight, how justly and thoroughly 
 we shall comprehend the nature of a thing, es- 
 pecially of a human thing, depends on our patience, 
 our fairness, lovingness, what strength soever we 
 have ; intellect comes from the whole man, as it is 
 the light that enlightens the whole man." 
 
 Let us bear in mind this, then, that whatever 
 affects the centre of our nature affects also every 
 part of it to the outermost extremities. If there be 
 impure blood in the heart there will be impure 
 blood in every vein of every part of the whole 
 body. And so, if there be depravity in the affec- 
 tional region of our nature there will be depravity 
 in the will region, in the region of the intellect, in 
 the action. Nothing will be what it would be 
 if that depravity were not there. I want that our 
 young people especially should recognize that a 
 degenerated heart means a degenerated intellect. 
 
MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 29 
 
 This degeneration means not only bad disposition, 
 it means biassed and depraved intellectual quality, 
 inability everywhere. And this must of necessity 
 be so, because of the unity of our nature. So that 
 on the highest themes, the thinking of a man out 
 of right relations to God is not trustworthy, can- 
 not be, nor on any themes which involve char- 
 acter. To say that there is no difference in the 
 moral quality of opinions, and that one set of 
 opinions is as good as another, is surely to speak 
 so as to draw away from us the intellectual respect 
 of all thinking men. There is more depravity in 
 one set of opinions than in another. There are 
 some views of man's nature and of life which make 
 it much easier for a man to sin than other views. 
 Now I do not think that there is any mercy, or any 
 kindness, in any teaching which leads men to as- 
 sume that sinfulness is only an eruption on the 
 skin and not a disease of the heart. Only '' fools 
 make a mock at sin." There are countless instan- 
 ces of men so coarse and vulirar in feelincf, so far 
 away from all true refinement of mind, that, seem- 
 ingly, they have no perception of sinfulness as a 
 spiritual malady. Until it externalizes itself in 
 vice, until it shows itself in acts of degradation 
 and shamefulness, they do not recognize it as of 
 any consequence. They take no note of tlie dis- 
 position to folly and stupidity which belongs to 
 the depraved condition ; no note of the terrible 
 
80 MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 
 
 moral torpidity which belongs to it. Sinfuluess 
 when it becomes vice, disease in the body, de- 
 struction of tissue, spoliation of form, making 
 loathesome that which God made beautiful — that is 
 the only aspect in which sin stirs their natures 
 into any feeling of antipathy. And even over 
 that they can jest. 
 
 I venture the assertion that anyone who has 
 mind and heart orreat enouirh to look under the 
 surface of things, and not simply at the outside 
 of things, must perceive that there is sin and 
 sin. Do we not make a distinction in our own 
 feeling between sin which indicates infirmity and 
 sin which indicates a self-assertive determina- 
 tion to do and be something which involves pride, 
 envy, malignity and the utmost of want of 
 consideration for others? The New Testament 
 speaks of " sins of the flesh" and *' sins of the 
 spirit. " The devil sins, we must remember, 
 were not committed in the flesh, and yet they are 
 of all sins the most heinous. 
 
 Now it cannot be doubted that the view we 
 take of this flict of sinfulness, universally admitted 
 in some form, will influence our estimate of every 
 other vital truth. If sinfulness be only ignorance 
 we need only a Teacher. If sinfulness be only 
 the inward condition which has gradually been 
 w^rought in us from our misconception of things, 
 we need only an Instructor. If sinfulness be only 
 
MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILTY. 31 
 
 disease we need only a Physician. If sinfulness 
 be only error we need only an Example. But if 
 it be something more than ignorance, something 
 more than disease, something more than error, we 
 need in Him who is to deliver us from it a power 
 other than that possessed by the Teacher, the 
 Physician, the Exemplar, as I believe that the 
 New Testament distinctly teaches. If I were to 
 occupy myself in trying to make you believe that 
 the sinfulness in this nature of ours can be swept 
 out by any amount of education of the intellect, 
 by any degree of culture, however thorough, which 
 stops short of the culture of the heart, I should be 
 false to the deepest convictions of my nature. 
 And whatever comes of it I must be true to these ; 
 and especially so when I think that others may be 
 misled by my underestimating of how much is 
 involved in this word * sinfulness.' Sinfulness 
 means ignorance, yes ; it means error, yes ; 
 it means disease, yes ; but it means a great deal 
 more. In many and many a case it means that 
 state of heart in which the idea of God is more 
 hateful than the idea of the Devil. I look upon 
 those who ^re vicious, the fallen man, the fallen 
 woman, the drunkard, the libertine, the debau 
 chee, and it is sad enough, God knows. But I 
 have known fallen men and fallen women and 
 drunkards who have never from their youth up 
 ceased from praying ' God be merciful to me a 
 
32 MAIV'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 
 
 sinner.* I do not want to forget the lines of 
 the hymnist : 
 
 ** Think gently of the erring one I 
 
 And ]et us not forget 
 However darkly stained by sin. 
 
 He is our brother yet. 
 
 Heir of the same inheritance, 
 
 Child of the self-same God ; 
 He hath but stumbled in the path, 
 
 We have in weakness trod." 
 
 I want to live in that spirit and temper of mind 
 as long as life shall last. I dare not trust my own 
 short-sighted views of sin. On all these questions 
 I want to be a learner from Him who is of all 
 Teachers on vital matters incomparably the great- 
 est. I cannot forget his words spoken to men 
 whose place in the society of his day was not the 
 lowest — ' ' The publicans and harlots enter the 
 Kingdom of God before you." There are sins of 
 the flesh which pollute, which destroy reputation, 
 which bring wretchedness and misery, social de- 
 gradation and much else. There are sins of the 
 spirit which bring none of these, and yet, if Jesus 
 of Nazareth be a true prophet, which put men and 
 women at even a farther distance from God. 
 The teaching is not mine, it is His. Of what 
 condition of heart is he who is amiable and 
 placid until someone speaks to him such a truth 
 
MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 33 
 
 as is contained in these words ' God is Love. 
 God is Light. God so loved the world that he 
 gave His oilly begotten Son that whosoever be- 
 lieveth in Him should not perish but have ever- 
 lasting life." Then, his whole soul is filled with 
 aversion to the speaker, with wrath, with disdain. 
 To err is human. But to gnash with the teeth 
 when the claims of Deity are put before the mind, 
 that is not human. It is not simply inhuman, it 
 is fiendish. I hate the word, but I am obliged to 
 use it. No one has ever taken a true measure of 
 what sinfulness is until he has considered it in 
 this, its most terrible form. 
 
 And yet even at this stage of it, we need not 
 hang our heads in despair. I am no advocate of 
 that shallow theology which is simply a formulat- 
 ing of the opinions of sinful fallible men. I hope 
 that God will keep me from the insufferable con- 
 ceitedness which denies that which transcends my 
 very finite understanding. I have no wish to be 
 frivolous or to help any of you to a capability of 
 jesting in this charnel house of corruption into 
 which we have been looking. I want you to feel 
 more than ever you have done *'the exceeding 
 sinfulness of sin," for only then will you be able to 
 appreciate the exceeding goodness of God who 
 ' ' willeth not the death of a sinner but that all 
 should come to repentance." 
 
 " Where sin abounded grace did superabound." 
 
34 MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 
 
 No man who looks away from his sin to his 
 Saviour need despair, but then he must look to 
 him as Saviour, not simply as Teacher, not simply 
 as Exemplar, not simply as Physician, as the 
 strong Son of God, the only personalized power 
 strono^er than sin itself. "When the strons: man 
 armed keepeth his palace his goods are at peace, 
 but when a stronger than he cometh upon him, he 
 taketh away that wherein he trusteth and divideth 
 his spoils." If a man can grow out of this condi- 
 tion of sinfulness by natural development ; if every 
 highly-cultured man be an unsinning man ; if 
 every old man be nearer to the ideal of manhood 
 than when he was young ; if these be facts and 
 experiences everywhere met with ; then a Teacher, 
 a Physician, an example, is needed ; but if other- 
 wise, if it be seen that man acting on himself, is 
 helpless to free himself, helpless to deliver himself 
 from the presence and power of sinfulness, and 
 from the inward sense of guiltiness, then he who 
 is to meet the necessities of the case, must be 
 human to understand him, but more than human 
 to redeem and deliver him from an enemy stronger 
 than man himself. 
 
m. 
 
 ATONEMENT AND EXPIATION. 
 
 But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever, 
 sat down on the right hand of God. — Hebrews, x : 12. 
 
 OUR theme this morning is Atonement and 
 Expiation. I could not satisfy my sense 
 of reverence for that which is peculiarly sacred, if 
 I should enter upon our brief consideration of the 
 thoughts suggested by these words controversially . 
 In days when so many religious people have given 
 over sober and steady thinking, and have taken to 
 dogmatizing, it becomes pastors to feed their sheep, 
 not to set the dog of controversy at them. In 
 order to vigor of body there must, in each of us, 
 be a good steady appetite for wholesome and 
 nutritious food. And so likewise in order to vigor 
 of mind and heart, there must be a good steady 
 appetite for such truths^ as tend to enlarge the 
 mind, and such facts, as tend to vitalize the 
 heart. Let us not be scared at names and words 
 which to many have been made odious by being 
 used as party watchwords only. Our duty is to 
 
 35 
 
36 A TONEMENT AND EXPIA TION. 
 
 try to understand what they mean. Do they 
 stand for a trutJi'^ Not simply for an opiriion. 
 An opinion is the product of a man's mind ; a 
 truth is the product of the Divine mind. It is in 
 accord with the nature of things. Opinions 
 change all the time. Truth never changes. Our 
 little systems have their day and cease to be. Truth 
 is not of a day, or an age, it is from eternity to 
 eternity. Our apprehensions of it may change — 
 will change if we grow at all — but the change will 
 be, not from larger to smaller, but from less to 
 more. The change from larger apprehensions 
 to smaller indicates moral deterioration. The 
 change from less to more indicates spiritual 
 growth. 
 
 These words *' atonement" and *' expiation" 
 have become party words. Consequently many 
 persons have never taken the trouble to try to un- 
 derstand them. But the man or woman who in 
 religion is a mere party man or woman is certain 
 to be so full of prejudice that he will shut out 
 much truth which his soul needs. That condition 
 of mind is not fair nor honest. The man who is 
 sincere, open, candid, wants to know the truth as 
 far as the limitations of the present time will 
 allow. Consequently, he is always a disciple, 
 always a learner, becomes assured of some things 
 — feels the ground under his feet firm as far as 
 he has gone — but is still moving onward and 
 
A TONEMENT AND EXPIA TION. 37 
 
 upward. He is a growing man all the time, and 
 the sign of growth is an increasing humility, that 
 is an increasing teachableness, which amounts to 
 the same thing as perpetual youthfulness of spirit. 
 He never becomes hardened in intellect or fossil- 
 ized in heart. Life is full of interest because of 
 the immense area which is still unknown. *' At the 
 best, our knowledge is but a little island floating 
 on and amid an infinite sea of mystery." After 
 all, it is the mystery which lies all around the little 
 we know which makes our life so unspeakably 
 interesting. I am thankful that that which I do 
 not know is so immeasurably more than that which 
 I know. I am thankful that I am only at the 
 beginning of things. I am thankful for the ability 
 of recognizing that this life is only a life of 
 beginnings, that we know nothing yet in any other 
 than a rudimentary way. 
 
 If this be true of life as it is in the lowest 
 organism, how much more of the life of man, the 
 highest organism of which we know anything? 
 Tennyson plucks the little flower out of the cran- 
 nied wall, and as he holds it in his finger, addreses 
 it in this way : — 
 
 " Flower in the crannied wall, 
 
 I plack you out of the crannies ; 
 Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
 Little flower — but if I could understand 
 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
 
 I should know what God and man is. " 
 
38 A TONEMENT AND EXPIA TION. 
 
 If there be no rhapsod}^ no exaggeration there, 
 if the littte poem be only the ornate dressing up 
 of a simple true thought, ^rkat shall we say when 
 speaking of great facts concerning our own life, 
 such facts as these which come to us in these two 
 words — * ' Atonement and Expiation " — words. 
 let me say, more for the heart than the intellect? 
 I adopt as my own, the language of a thoughtful 
 speaker and say — "If, as we believe, Christ is both 
 God and the Son of God ; (and to suppose any be- 
 ing less than God perfectly manifesting forth God, 
 is a contradiction,) if moreover he is Man as well 
 as God, and if this Son of God and Man has made a 
 sacrifice, in virtue of which the sin of the whole 
 world is taken away (so far as God himself is 
 concerned) , then surely the Atonement effected by 
 this mysterious person must itself be a mystery, 
 the full import of which we cannot hope to 
 fathom. No man however wise, or learned, or 
 devout, should affect to comprehend it ; no man 
 whatever his attainments, should venture to speak 
 of it save w^th modesty and reverence, and with a 
 profound conviction that he knows it *' but in 
 part," that he sees it but as *' through a glass, 
 darkly." I adopt this language as my own. It 
 exactly expresses my own feelings. Atonement 
 is not a New Testament word. It belongs special- 
 ly to the Old Jewish dispensation. It is 
 represented by a Hebrew word which means to 
 
ATONEMENT AND EXPIATION. 39 
 
 cover up. When the old Hebrew did that which 
 was appointed to put himself into right relations 
 towards God — when he offered the sacrifice which 
 meant that his will was to do God's will, then he 
 was said to be atoned — that is, brought into 
 oneness with God. In the sacrifice offered, he 
 regarded himself, his blood, that is to say his life, 
 as offered in consecration to God. He knew, 
 however, that this sacrifice had no meaning in 
 itself. It stood for another great sacrifice which 
 one day should be offered, a perfect sacrifice, the 
 sacrifice of a spotless and sinless one who should 
 be his representative, who should do for him what 
 he could not do for himself. But this symbolic act 
 of sacrifice of his did something for his heart and 
 conscience, which required to be done. The 
 devout Isi aslite could not rest until he had done 
 something to indicate that he was not willingly a 
 rebel against God. His heart was pained, his 
 conscience was uneasy, so long as he had not 
 performed an act which 'ndicated the sorrow of his 
 soul, and the submission of his will. The mere 
 general proclamation that God was merciful and 
 gracious, was not enough. If only Jehovah had 
 himself appointed something to be done, how 
 gladly would he do it, if only He had declared 
 that there was some deed, the doing of which, 
 indicated that He was at one with the man who had 
 sinned, and the man at one with Him, how gladly 
 
40 A TONEMENT AND EXPIA TIOK 
 
 would the devout Israelite do it. And so, in 
 answer to the necessities of this nature of ours, 
 Jehovah appointed a sacrifice which at one and 
 the same time, should be prophetic and expiatory. 
 The devout Israelite offered the appointed sacrifice 
 
 — it satisfied his heart, it appeased his conscience, 
 and he went to his home rejoicing that he was at 
 peace with God. 
 
 I want that we should note these simple things : 
 
 — 1st, that the sacrifice oflfered was required by 
 the necessities of this nature of ours, which is 
 never satisfied by a mere declaration apart from 
 an act. *' Lord what wilt thou have me to c?o?" 
 was the cry of the awakened soul. *' What shall 
 I do to be saved?" was the question of the aroused 
 jailor of Philippi. This is human nature all the 
 world over. And they who affirm that a man's 
 soul ought to be satisfied by mere inferences as to 
 the nature of Deity, by mere inferences as to the 
 mercy of God, can never have sufficiently consid- 
 ered what human nature is. No soul but the 
 meanest could be satisfied with a mere verbal 
 declaration of this nature — " I forgive you, but I 
 don't want to have anything to do with you." 
 The little child in the household would teach us a 
 better theology than that. If the father says, '* I 
 forgive you " and then coolly turns his back on 
 the child, is it satisfied, does it feel the forgive- 
 ness ? Does it realize it ? No ; it realizes it when 
 
A TONEMENT AND EXPIA TION. 41 
 
 the father puts his arms around its neck, and the 
 child its arms around the father's neck, and the 
 kisses of the father bring the tears. There must 
 be an act of forgiveness as well as words of for- 
 giveness, or our nature is not satisfied. And all 
 theories to the contrary proceed on a very shallow 
 and inadequate apprehension of what human na- 
 ture is. The heart and conscience of the devout 
 Israelite demanded some act which breathed for- 
 giveness, but more than forgiveness — restoration 
 to communion — and the act of sacrifice was both 
 these. 
 
 2nd, I want that we should notice further that 
 the act must be an appointed one. It must indi- 
 cate God's will, not the self-will of a sinner. 
 Self-will is the root of all sin. And so, even an 
 act of worship which indicated the perpetuation of 
 self-will would only be a continuation of rebellion. 
 That is the explanation of the difterence in the 
 acts of the first two men of whom we ever read as 
 off'ering sacrifice, Cain and Abel? Abel's offering 
 is represented as being acceptable, that of Cain as 
 not acceptable. Why? Abel offered that which 
 was appointed to be offered. Cain offered what 
 he chose. The one man honored the will of God 
 as supreme, the other honored his own will. We 
 can never understand an act until we get down to 
 the principle which is in it. When the sinning 
 man has done the appointed thing, then the heart 
 
42 A TONEMENT AND EXPIA TJON. 
 
 and conscience are satisfied ; they are assured, 
 because God himself has appointed the act. There 
 is no satisfaction to heart and conscience where 
 there is no assurance. 
 
 Eemembering these two ideas, we can have no 
 very serious difficulty as to the meaning of 
 sacrifices in the Old Testament times. The Crea- 
 tor knew the necessities of our nature better than 
 the theorists know them, and he met those 
 necessities in the appointment of the mosiac 
 sacrifices. 
 
 But human nature is the same now as then. It 
 is conscious of sinfulness. The consciousness is 
 nlways a troublesome one ; it may even be acutely 
 painful ; yea, it may become positively agonizing. 
 It has never been satisfactory to any but torpid 
 souls to issue simple, general declarations of the 
 Divine mercifulness. And, especially, when 
 mercifulness is made to mean easy good nature, 
 which does not much discern the difference between 
 good and evil, and does not much care for the 
 difference. Any man who thinks, perceives that 
 on this earth the most selfish, the most useless, 
 and the most unreliable people in any community, 
 are these easy good-natured people who don't care 
 how things go, so that they are not disturbed. 
 To take the idea of mercifulness which belongs to 
 these, and transfer it to God, is to give men a 
 Deity for which the most earnest among them 
 
A TONEMENT AND EXPIA TION. 43 
 
 cannot feel even respect. Men have in them the 
 intuition that the nature of God must contain, 
 that which is represented to us by the words, 
 Justice and Eighteousness. They have an intuition 
 that He cannot be man's enemy, for He preserves 
 him in life, and loads him with benefits. They 
 have also a distinct recognition that a Righteous 
 Being — a Just Being, cannot move down from his 
 Eighteousness and Justice — cannot compromise 
 it, cannot be ashamed of it, can do nothing to 
 deny it. He must be at unity with Himself. 
 Abraham felt all this when he exclaimed, " Shall 
 not the Judge of all the earth do rigid. Job felt 
 it when he said, *'I know that my Eedeemer 
 liveth." Paul, too, when he exclaimed, '' Let 
 God be true though every man be a liar. " 
 
 The question forces itself upon every earnest 
 man's soul, sooner or later — How shall this 
 Eighteous, this Holy God, who cannot change 
 from his holiness, be still just, and yet enter into 
 fellowship with his men and women who are all 
 confessedly sinners and rebels? He loves their 
 humanity, for he is the Author of it. But He is, 
 and must ever be, at war with their sinfulness. 
 There is the problem. It is too deep for you and 
 me. Man has free-will. It cannot be forced. 
 How shall God and man be made one again ? We 
 cannot look into the profundities of this question. 
 The theories of the theologians as to Atonement 
 
44 A TONEMENT AND EXPIA TIOK 
 
 and Expiation all foil short of a full explanation. 
 That being so, is it not wise to take the simple 
 revealed facts, and leave the theories alone. Xo 
 one but He who can look into human life, and all 
 life, as it is from the beginning of the Creation, 
 till now, and on endlessly ; no one but He who can 
 see our relation to other beings, and other worlds, 
 can fathom the theme. But Scripture has taught 
 me this — and I am sure that I have been willing 
 to learn ; I am sure that I have been w^illing to 
 have no opinions of my own, and no views that 
 might intercept my clear recognition of w^hat it does 
 teach, it has taught me that it was necessary that 
 Jesus should offer Himself as a sacrifice in order 
 that He might deliver us from **the captivities 
 of evil. " It was necessary that Jesus should 
 off'er Himself as a sacrifice in order that the gov- 
 ernment of God should be so administered that 
 there might be no stain on the Divine purity, and 
 yet the man who turns God ward might have full 
 and free pardon and deliverance from the evil 
 which is in him, and its consequences. It has 
 taught me that it was necessary that Jesus the 
 Christ should put Himself at the head of our 
 humanity and be its Representative and do for us 
 completely and perfectly what w^e can do only in 
 a very imperfect and rudimentary way. 
 
 It has taught me that He came not to alter the 
 will of God — not to set it aside — but perfectly 
 
A TONEMENT AND EXPIA TION. 45 
 
 to do it — and that no one but Jesus has done that 
 will perfectly on this earth. It has taught me, 
 that when the Eternal Father of our Spirit, saw 
 his will perfectly done on this Earth, He made 
 the One who did it the custodian of all who could 
 not do it — gave them into his hand — made them 
 his possession and his heritage — and so we are 
 Christ's. We belong to Him. We are his people. 
 And neither can the sins of this world slay our 
 immortal spirits, nor can the terrors of the dark 
 side of the other world touch our real life, if we 
 cling to Him. That much Scripture has taught 
 me. And my heart is satisfied. My conscience 
 is satisfied. And if my intellect refuses to be 
 satisfied I don't care. It has never yet been 
 satisfied and probably never will be — because we 
 can know only in part. 
 
 But the intellectual light of to-day will disap- 
 pear before the intellectual light of to-morrow, as 
 the stars disappear when the sun rises, swallowed 
 up in the brighter light. Man is not all intellect. 
 There is something more precious in him than 
 iiitellect, although this proud, haughty part of his 
 nature, like an ill-bred and unrefined man, is ever 
 asserting itself as supreme. Religious teaching, 
 which is simply addressed to the intellectual in 
 man, may make disputants and controversialists 
 and conceited sectarians, "ever learning and 
 never coming to the knowledge of the truth," but 
 
46 A TONEMENT AND EXPIA TION. 
 
 in order to wake the whole of our nature into 
 healthy life, we need no diminished Christ, no 
 Christ reduced to the stature of a fallen man, a 
 man Avho was not here yesterday and will not be 
 here tomorrow. We need something else than a 
 candle, yea, than a thousand candles of man's 
 manufacture, if we are to make the flowers ffrow 
 in our gardens, the trees to be bright with foliage, 
 and heavy with fruitage, we need the full orbed 
 Sun. And so too, if we are to have in our 
 churches. Christian men and Christian women, not 
 simply religious controversalists and religious 
 wranglers, we need the full-orbed Christ ; He who 
 spake, as never man spake, to the Intellect ; He 
 who whispered to the Conscience and it ceased its 
 upbraidings ; He, who in the might of His unbend- 
 ing integrity, stood before Pilate and Herod the 
 world's Judges, and even they found no fault in 
 Him ; He, who on Calvary, mutely appealed as 
 none other ever did or ever will to the human 
 heart, and that heart w^ept in penitence and joy 
 and gladness. For we cannot refuse to recognize 
 this, that those who think only of the Sacrifice 
 which Jesus made of Himself as a manifestation of 
 the Love of God, may only too easily come to 
 rely on that Love without responding to it. In 
 that case, so far as the individual is concerned, the 
 greatest of all facts ever revealed to the human 
 mind is outside of us. It is something looked at. 
 
ATONEMENT AND EXPIATION. 47 
 
 not appropriated. Every unappropriated good 
 necessarily becomes a condemnation. The soul, 
 not capable of responding with its love to God's 
 love, is in a lost state now, and must, by whatso- 
 ever discipline and affliction God may send, be 
 brought into another state before it can see the 
 Kingdom of God. 
 
 I do not wonder that the great soul of the 
 Apostle of the Gentiles should test the condition 
 of every man by this simple but all-sufficient test. 
 Does the love of his heart respond to the wondrous 
 love which Jesus has shown towards men ? I do 
 not wonder that the holy indignation within him 
 should glow and burn until it voiced itself in 
 these words, *'If any man love not the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, let him he Anathema!'' 
 
 You and I, brethren, need not concern ourselves 
 about Adam and his sin, and its consequences, 
 that is all done and done with. The question for 
 each man, to whom the gospel of the grace of God 
 is preached, is this, *' why is there no loving re- 
 sponse in my heart to the love which is in Christ 
 to me?" If there be one truth taught in the New 
 Testament more clearly and more frequently than 
 another, it seems to me to be this — that Jesus 
 Christ came into this world to put away sin by the 
 sacrifice of himself. Is it not enough ? Is it not 
 what we need? In this turbulent world, this 
 world of strife, this world of bitter enemies and 
 
48 A TONEMENT AND EXPIA TION. 
 
 false friends, this world of uncertainty and change, 
 this world in which we know not what a day may 
 bring forth, this world in which so many prefer 
 the fellowship of devils to the fellowship of God 
 and good men, it must surely be a necessity for 
 the heart to have some centre where it can rest 
 and find peace. For if the heart be at rest the 
 man is strong and brave in trials and afflictions 
 which ruffle the outside. That centre is given us 
 in Him who has taught us all of our Father God 
 we know. And it seems to me our true attitude 
 is that expressed in the words of the hymn ; — 
 
 "My faith would lay her hand 
 
 Ou that dear head of thine. 
 While like a penitent I stand 
 
 And there confess my sin. 
 
 My soul looks back to see 
 
 The burdens thou did'st bear. 
 When hanging on the accursed tree. 
 
 And trusts her guilt was there. 
 
 Believing, we rejoice 
 
 To see the curse remove; 
 We bless the Lamb with cheerful voice 
 
 And sing his bleeding love.'* 
 
IV. 
 
 THE DIYIKE HELPEE. 
 
 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Com- 
 forter, that He may abide with you for ever. — Johtiy xiv : i6. 
 
 OUE thoughts this morning are all contained 
 in the one thought of the " Divine Helper." 
 In speaking within such limitations as are forced 
 upon me, I have preferred that general title, for 
 the Holy Spirit of God to others, because it keeps 
 closer to the meaning of the original word, than 
 any other. The word used by the Apostle John, 
 to designate this Divine Helper, is translated both 
 in the Authorized and Eevised Versions of the 
 New Testament as Comforter, Literally the word 
 means '' One called alongside for help." Bearing 
 in mind that this is the radical idea, I propose to 
 ask your attention to a few considerations which 
 may be of some practical service to inquiring 
 minds. Only suggestions can be made. A lono- 
 course of sermons would be necessary for anything 
 like a respectful expounding of the ^Scriptures, 
 which bear on this theme. And even then the 
 
 49 
 
50 THU: DI VINE HELPER. 
 
 dimly perceived but unspeakable would still be 
 the greater. For, in order to growth in knowledge, 
 and growth in spirituality, we have to force our 
 proud intellectuality to its knees — yea, if in true 
 Eastern fashion, it lies prone on the earth biting 
 the dust, the attitude is far more becoming than 
 that of erect self-willed ignorance with its innocent 
 absurdity, "I don't believe in anything that I 
 cannot understand," the only fitting reply to 
 which innocent absurdity is, '' Then you believe 
 nothing at all, not even your own existence, 
 for most assuredly you do not understand it." 
 When the nature of that Source of life, from which 
 all spiritual life comes is the theme, we bow our 
 heads and listen to anyone who can teach us as 
 much as we are capal)le of receiving, and there is 
 but One who is competent to teach us authorita- 
 tively. If we have humility enough to sit at His 
 feet, and learn of Him, we shall eventually arrive 
 at such perceptions as are necessary to enable us 
 to live a life of practical Christian usefulness. 
 That is all that our God requires from us. 
 
 The first thing we have to recognize, when we 
 think on a theme of this kind, is that man. has a 
 body and is a spirit. Therefore he is capable of 
 thought on spiritual things — things above the 
 material. If he were not a spirit, he would not be 
 capable of such thought. As the Rev. E. H. 
 Sears, in his helpful book, ''The Fourth Gospel 
 
THE DIVINE HELPER. 51 
 
 the Heart of Christ," says, ^* Man is natural and 
 supernatural. By his natural organs he is placed 
 in open and necessary relations with time and 
 space. By his immortal faculties he is placed in 
 necessary relations with a supersensible world. 
 * * * All men have intuitive notions 
 of spiritual and Divine things. Into every soul 
 comes an influx of the supernatural, and breathings 
 from the Lord which are deeper than all human 
 teachings, and without which all human teachings 
 were in vain. Were it not for these inspirations, 
 the eternal life might as well be preached to trees 
 and animals as to human beings." We have to 
 recognize that we are taught from within as well 
 as from without. We have to recognize clearly 
 and distinctly that our life is not self-originated 
 and self-derived — that we are not independent, 
 but dependent beings — that we live because 
 it is God's will that we should live — that 
 underneath our mind, supporting and sustain- 
 ing it, is the Divine Mind — that our personality 
 needs to account for it another personality — that 
 thus our life is permissive and not entirely or 
 chiefly in our own keeping. These truths have 
 to be recognized before we can touch this theme. 
 Now, would it not be an altogether strange and 
 unaccountable thing if the Author of our Being 
 had so closed it up that He could gain no entrance 
 to it ? Would it not be a strange thin^ if He had 
 
62 THE DIVINE HELPER. 
 
 SO made us as that we could really exist altogether 
 cut off from Him ? Would not that indicate that 
 He made us in sport? That we were mere toys, 
 to be thrown aside after a while? That He 
 created us for some other reason than that we 
 might hold fellowship with Himself, and enter 
 into the uses, and joys, and delights of His 
 Universe ? Would not the Creator have volunta- 
 rily destroyed the unity of his Creation if he had 
 made us so that we could exist independently of 
 Himself? In the light of these and such like 
 considerations the revealed facts of inspiration and 
 spiritual influence become not probable simply, 
 but necessary. 
 
 The idea of the olden time, ** There is a spirit 
 in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth 
 him understanding," is in agreement with what we 
 see must be. 
 
 Now when in the development of revelation as 
 given us in the Scriptures, we find a Trinity in 
 the Godhead, it naturally starts discussion and de- 
 bate, because at' first it seems to militate against 
 the idea of the Unity of the Godhead. And that 
 idea seems to us very necessary and very precious 
 if we are to be kept from going in the old heathen 
 direction of polytheism. But the more we think 
 of it the more we perceive that a mere solitary 
 oneness is not unity. Unity implies and demands 
 something of variety. The unity of our own na- 
 
THE DIVINE HELPER. 63 
 
 tiire demands it ; the unity of Creation demands 
 it. The idea of Trinity in Unity disturbs us. 
 And so, instead of accepting the fact, and culti- 
 vating a modesty and reverence which forbids us 
 to dogmatize on facts beyond our reach, we begin 
 to try and get the fact put into some form in 
 which we can understand it. And so in time, 
 human speculations and opinions come to occupy 
 the place of Divine Eevelation. 
 
 I acknowledge that it is natural for men to 
 reason and argue and speculate and form opinions. 
 A living mind is full of movement and activity. 
 And the movement and activity within it are suf- 
 ficiently accounted for only by the recognition of 
 a Power external to the mind moving it. Does it 
 not, however, become us to recognize that great 
 spiritual truths, which out-measure the capacity of 
 all human minds, have never originated in them 
 and are not to be explored by them? And no 
 controversies have been more useless, certainly 
 none more irreverent, than those in which mere 
 debaters have occupied themselves in settling the 
 nature of that Trinity which is revealed as in the 
 Godhead of the Creator. 
 
 I do not propose to be drawn into this theme as 
 a controversalist. My business is very simple — 
 to make such suggestions as shall help inquirers. 
 In prosecuting that business, I would ask you to 
 recognize that the human mind needs for its own 
 
54 THE DIVINE HELPER. 
 
 satisfaction the revelation of an Original Source 
 of Life, corresponding in its powers to that which 
 is objectively infinite. It needs that that Original 
 Source of Life should so limit itself that it can 
 be known. 
 
 It needs further that being known under limi- 
 tations, it should still be able to so distribute itself 
 that all can be visited, directed, helped. There 
 cannot be any doubt of this triune necessity. Is 
 it not provided for, in the revelation of the nature 
 of Godhead — in the three terms used as express- 
 ing Deity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? 
 
 I admit that there can be no analogies in the 
 material creation to illustrate this great fact. 
 Material nature is too unelastic, too stiff, too for- 
 mal to be used in this connection. And yet is 
 there not something which looks towards this 
 truth in what we know of light? Men sometimes 
 have thought that they had the laugh on the old 
 historian and legislator, Moses, because in the 
 book of Genesis the record intimates that light 
 was created before there was any sun in the 
 heavens. Accordingly all superficial minds, from 
 Voltaire, the genius of sarcasm, down to many of 
 the knowing youths of our own day, have made 
 merry over this remarkably ignorant old world 
 hero. Unfortunately, however, for Voltaire and 
 those of his disposition and temper, science pa- 
 tiently marching on from fact to fact, has event- 
 
THE DIVINE HELPER. 55 
 
 ually arrived at the conviction that light is in its 
 nature entirely independent of the sun. *< It is a 
 vibration of the ether in which the sun is in our 
 time, no doubt, the chief agent, but which may be 
 produced by the action of many causes." And so 
 •of other discoveries which tend to show that Moses 
 knew what Science has only recently found out. 
 How he knew it is a question to which we wait for 
 an answer. 
 
 Now take these facts about light. First, it was 
 diffused, then gathered up, as far as our world is 
 concerned, into the sun, and yet, by the sun, it is 
 distributed everywhere, so that every flower gets 
 its portion and every spring blossom is what it is 
 in beauty and fragrance because of the influence 
 upon it, of an orb more than ninety millions of 
 miles away. To my mind there is something in 
 this fact which looks as though it might be used 
 to help us in our thought on this theme. I do not 
 call it a simile or metaphor or any kind of an illus- 
 tration, only a helpful suggestion in the region of 
 material things. 
 
 Still, if it be a fact of our every day life, a fact 
 so common as to lose its wonderfulness to all but 
 the most reflective and thoughtful minds, that 
 every tiny bud and flower all through the earth 
 is what it is because of the influence on it of an 
 orb more than ninety millions of miles away, are 
 we asking you to receive anything absurd, any- 
 
56 ' THE DIVINE HELPER. 
 
 thing impossible or improbable, when we aver 
 that it is revealed that every soul of man every- 
 where, owes its best thonghts, its purest impulses, 
 its noblest aspirations to the influences of the 
 Spirit of God upon it? And as personality in 
 man demands and proves personality in God, s(t 
 these influences of the Spirit of God upon the soul 
 are personal. They are such influences as a 
 person produces on a person. Silent as the light, 
 they are none the less powerful because of their 
 silentness. In the quietude of the soul that Holy 
 Spirit of God is operating, as our Lord taught us, 
 convincing of Sin, of Righteousness, of Judgment, 
 creating within us, that is to say, a sense of Sin, a 
 sense of Righteousness, a sense too that the pres- 
 ent order of things is not to last forever, that 
 there is a period when the great decision will be 
 made, that there shall not continuously be this 
 present confusion of Sin and Righteousness, of 
 Truth and Falsehood, the Bad often lauding it 
 over the Good. There is in us all a sense that 
 this cannot last, that it must come to an end. 
 And this sense of sin in us, this sense of Right- 
 eousness, this feeling that there must be a judg- 
 ment which shall reveal and deliver, is the sign of 
 the action of the Holy Spirit of God on our 
 spirits. 
 
 Who of us does not see how much of dignity 
 
THE DIVINE HELPER. 57 
 
 and worth is added to this life of ours by this 
 revelation that the spirit of man is ever open to 
 the influences of the Holy Spirit of God ? Why 
 can man think thoughts that never occur to an 
 animal ? Why can he write books like MiUon's 
 Paradise Lost, Dante's De Coelo et Inferno, that 
 wondrous book of Job, those ever-mspiring 
 Psalms of David, Tennyson's In Memoriam, 
 Longfellow's Psalm of Life, uncounted volumes 
 on a life above the material life ? Because he is a 
 spirit. Because being a spirit, the push of the 
 Eternal Spirit is ever on his, moving him, stirring 
 him into thought and feeling, making him aspire, 
 suggesting pra^^er, which is only devout aspiration. 
 This is why. We all of us have done our best to 
 sink into the animal life and find our satisfaction 
 there and have failed. We have failed because 
 our God would not let us succeed. By the 
 influences of His Holy Spirit He has been brooding 
 over us, moving in us, keeping our conscience in 
 life, stirring up our feelings. The reason why the 
 sap in all the trees is being vitalized just now and 
 sending out bud and leaf, is because the beams of 
 the sun are in more energetic operation within. 
 And the reason why any of us have at any time 
 been stirred into religious thought, and devout 
 aspiration, is because the energetic influences of 
 the Spirit of God have gained access to our minds 
 and hearts. The light has been poured into us 
 
58 THE DIVINE HELPER 
 
 from an unseen hand. It is because of the 
 undying energy of this Holy Spirit of God that 
 we have any devout thoughts, any filial feelings 
 God ward, any disposition to pray, any delight in 
 praise, any faith Christward, any love to our 
 fellow-men. It is not our doing; it is His, 
 '' Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, 
 saith the Lord." What have we that we have not 
 received'^ What have we orio^inated? Xothinor 
 but sin. Everything else has its root in the Holy 
 Spirit of God. Our ability of perceiving that 
 Jesus is the Christ of God is of God. No man 
 can call Jesus Lord, but by the Holy Spirit. Of 
 all gifts of God, this practically is the greatest. 
 There is nothing good in human nature that is not 
 traceable to it. 
 
 Now, this era in which we live, is peculiarly the 
 dispensation of the Spirit. The New Testament 
 seems to indicate that while there is a general, 
 what w^e may be allowed to call a natural, creating 
 and sustaining energy of the Spirit of God, for all 
 men, in all places and times, according to their 
 ability of receiving it, there is in this era since the 
 coming into this world's life of the Christ of God 
 a much more copious exercise of Divine energy 
 upon the soul of man, so much so that ** where sin 
 abounded, grace did much more abound." No 
 one can doubt this, that since the advent of the 
 One who stands before us as God's Christ, the 
 
THE DIVINE HELPER. 59 
 
 world has had new energy in it, new movement, 
 new life, purer amliition, loftier aspiration. 
 Tha¥ ** power from on high " which was promised 
 to the Apostles of Christianity, and which made 
 itself specially felt at Pentecost, was not an 
 exceptional gift to them. It belongs to all who 
 could receive it. I believe that we should under- 
 stand this truth more if we were less self-dependent 
 and less dependent on material things, than we 
 ever can understand it in the present condition of 
 society. The greatest as well as the best man, is 
 he who has the largest receptivity. An Apostle 
 speaks of the old man and the new man. The 
 new man is the Christian man. The old man is 
 the mere selfish materialist, the man who is the 
 centre and circumference of his OAvn world. 
 When a man is brought to act from new motives, 
 new principles, and aims at a new and higher life, 
 when his own birth and death are not the bounds 
 of his horizon, but he perceives the necessity for 
 Eternity in order to develop the larger life which 
 is in him, and of which he is conscious, is he not 
 a new man ? Is it not clear that he is born from 
 above ? There is nothing in the flesh to account 
 for these new views and aspirations. There is 
 nothinor in the animal to suirsrest to his mind the 
 spiritual. There is nothing in the finite to suggest 
 the infinite. Why has he these thoughts and 
 feelings, these cravings and aspirations, these 
 
60 THE DIVINE HELPER 
 
 dissatisfied longings, these soarings beyond and 
 above the terrestrial ? He has them because of tlie 
 visitings to his Spirit of the Holy Spirit of God. 
 And if he does not yield to them, if he resists them, 
 if he puts them among dreams, if he tries to rid 
 himself of them, if he goes into societies where 
 nothing of them will be recognized, if he exercises 
 himself in the opposite of these, dDing everything 
 he can to materialize and sensualize his mind, 
 he is fighting against God ; to use Apostolic 
 speech he is grieving the Spirit of God, he is try- 
 ing to put out the fire lit within him ; he is doing 
 what in him lies to '' quench the Spirit." Thus 
 the case is represented to us by our Lord and 
 His Apostles. 
 
 Their teaching explains to us the meaning ot 
 our inward dissatisfactions. This nature of ours 
 must ever be a problem to us, *'the flesh lust- 
 ing against the Spirit and the Spirit against the 
 flesh," a problem insoluble until we recog- 
 nize that the nature of God is round about 
 us, that " in Him we live, and move, and have our 
 being," as much and as really as the flowers and 
 birds live, and move, and have their being in the 
 sun-impregnated atmosphere. Then we begin to 
 understand why conscience will not rest, why the 
 heart within us is not at peace, why the mind 
 cannot be kept from thinking, why unsyllabled 
 prayers move noiselessly within our souls. It is 
 
TEE DIVINE HELPER. 61 
 
 the voice of the Holy Spirit within saying to us, 
 * ' This is not your rest ; there remaineth a rest for 
 the people of God." 
 
 That which M. de Laveleye has written of so- 
 ciety in general is true of every individual life : 
 *' There is in human affairs one order which is the 
 best. That order is not always the one which 
 exists ; but it is the order which should exist for 
 the greatest good of humanity. God knows it 
 and wills it; man's duty it is to discover and 
 establish it." 
 
V. 
 
 THE WITNESSING CHUECH. 
 
 Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. — 
 Ephesians, i : 23. 
 
 THE questions, what is a Christian church? 
 what its relation to the Christ from whom 
 it takes its name ? what the conditions of mem- 
 bership in it? what its relation to society in 
 general, and all such questions, have to be 
 answered in the light of the Person and work of 
 Him who is its Head. The Church is called the 
 body of Christ. Through his body a man holds 
 communication with the outer world and works in 
 and on that outer world. So through His church 
 Jesus the Christ acts upon society, upon men in 
 general. I do not say that this is the only me- 
 dium through which He works and acts, but it is 
 the principal medium. A church, then, mu,st be 
 organically fitted to express the mind and will of 
 Christ. Every thing ecclesiastical which is not so 
 fitted is an encumbrance, a hindrance, and not a 
 help. 
 
THE WITNESSING CHUBCE. 63 
 
 So far as any church expresses only the mind of 
 man in any age or generation, so far it is defec- 
 tive. Ecclesiastical constitutions exist in which 
 our Lord has no direct and immediate influence. 
 There is so much put between Him and His 
 church that His aspect to the members must be 
 like that of a man at the small end of an inverted 
 telescope. Everything \Vhich comes between the 
 soul of man and the Christ which is not transpa- 
 rent, yea, which has not in it the power of 
 bringing this Christ nearer to the soul, is so much 
 hindrance to a human spirit in its strivings God- 
 ward. 
 
 In inquiring as to the nature of the Church of 
 Christ, the following ideas demand recognition : — 
 
 1. Christ Jesus is its head; its sole head, its 
 source of doctrine, of law and of order. He only 
 has authority. '* One is your Master even Christ, 
 and all ye are brethren." 
 
 Of course in every society there must be a 
 head. Even a mob must have a leader. There 
 must in every society be law and order. Other- 
 wise there can be no peace and no progress. The 
 self-will of the individual becomes everything. 
 And in such a state of things there can be no co- 
 operated movement. The simpler any organiza- 
 tion is the more catholic it is, and the more 
 competent for the highest ends. The sole head- 
 ship of Christ in the Church is the basis doctrine 
 
64 THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 
 
 of all law and order. That headship was distinctly 
 acknowledged by the Apostles. Passages from 
 the Gospels and Epistles might be quoted if it 
 w^ere necessary, to prove how jealously this head- 
 ship was guarded, both by our Lord himself and 
 by his Apostles. '' No servant can serve two mas- 
 ters," is our Lord's warning to those who would 
 try the experiment of a double allegiance. 
 
 In the Epistle to the Eomans, St. Paul almost 
 indignantly repudiates the idea of one member of 
 the church claiming authority over another when 
 he asks: **Who art thou that judgest another 
 man's servant ? To his own master he standeth or 
 falleth." In the light of such passages as these, it 
 is strange that such abuses as exist should have 
 crept into the ecclesiastical world. Lordship in 
 the Church, says Wycliffe, is forbidden, brother- 
 hood is commanded. I know of nothing of more 
 practical importance than that we should never 
 forget that Headship and Authority in the Church 
 are vested in One and in One only. Let us not 
 abuse the idea by inferring that there is no 
 Authority, and that men can do in the church as 
 the whim takes them. Nothing could be farther 
 from the truth of things than such an inference. 
 There are law and order in the Church, but the 
 law is not derived from man, and the order is not 
 such as he has instituted. Therefore is the law so 
 sacred and the order so impressive. Its very sim- 
 
THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 65 
 
 plicity may mislead us ; not having our eyes open to 
 perceive that the simplest ideas are parental, that 
 they contain in them no end of fruitiul and legiti- 
 mate applications. There cannot be room for a 
 doubt, that our Lord, in giving two sacraments, 
 and in instituting a ministry, intended a visible 
 Church on earth. There can be as little room for 
 doubt that He intended that the acknowledijment 
 of His sole headship over them, should be the first 
 and chief sign of membership in that church. 
 The man who has no ability of owning the master- 
 ship of any one but himself and his own will, has 
 no place and can have no place in the Christian 
 Church. He is self-excluded. 
 
 If we are willing to submit to be taught by 
 Christ, to be guided by Him, to be controlled by 
 Him, we are of his Church. That willingness is 
 God's call in us. And whatever special experiences 
 we may have or may not have, they are entirely 
 unreliable, entirely deceitful indeed, if we have 
 not that willinofness. Havino^ that willingness 
 however inexperienced we may be, however 
 uninstructed, however spiritually dull and incapa- 
 ble, or however richly endowed with the capacity 
 of spiritual perception, we are without doubt 
 under the influences of the Spirit of God and are of 
 that numberless number who constitute the church 
 of Christ. Let me say plainly that genuine self- 
 depreciation is no disqualification for membership 
 
66 THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 
 
 • in the church of Christ ; rather is it of the nature 
 of qualification; the consciousness of ''not be- 
 ing good enough," is no disqualification but 
 otherwise ; if that feeling be genuine and not 
 assumed, it is an element in self-knowledge. The 
 feeling ' I shall never be able to be consistent ' is 
 no disqualification, or the whole membership 
 would have to step down and out. Christ is able 
 to keep us from falling away from Himself, and that 
 is the crucial thing. Our ability is not self- 
 derived, it is imparted. Willingness to be led 
 and guided, and saved from sin and its 
 consequences by Him who is the Head of the 
 Church — this is the essential thing in qualification. 
 Without this willingness we have no place and no 
 right in the Church of Christ. 
 
 2. The membership of the Church is a brother- 
 hood. If we have the ability of the subordination 
 of our own wills to the will of Christ, the practical 
 result will be, that we shall be of the same feeling 
 and disposition as all others dowered with the 
 same ability. The spirit of brotherhood will be 
 in us. For when anything of the love of God 
 enters the heart, the love of man comes with it. 
 The one is the result and the sign of the other. 
 And the love of man is not some sentimental 
 feeling which is here to day and gone tomorrow. 
 It is that disposition which shows itself in 
 sympathy and goodwill, which is pained when it 
 
THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 67 
 
 pains others, which seeks to be united with others 
 in all such acts of generous helpfuhiess as are 
 feasible. It is the diametric opposite of the spirit 
 of judgment and accusation. It takes note of the 
 Master's words, ** Judge not that ye be not judged ; 
 condemn not that ye be not condemned." When 
 circumstances forbid it to do good it resolutely 
 refuses to do evil to any man. If it can find a 
 good motive for an action it refuses to believe in 
 a bad one. It seeks to be in unity with all who 
 in sincerity submit to our Lord Jesus Christ. It 
 is ever mindful of the Savior's prayer, ** That they 
 all may be one as thou, Father, art in me and I in 
 thee, that they may be one in us, that the world 
 may know that thou has sent me." To be brothers 
 of all who will have us for brothers, brothers of 
 all ' ' who name the name of Christ and depart 
 from iniquity," this is the aim, the hope, the 
 ambition of the true Christian. Our minds and 
 hearts need society. God has so constituted us 
 that we cannot stand alone. The individual as an 
 individual is not God's idea of man but the 
 individual in family relationships. We know this 
 because God has made family relationship 
 necessary to the perpetuation of the human race. 
 Yea, he speaks of the church as a family, **0f 
 whom the whole family in heaven and earth is 
 named." So a disciple of Christ standing apart 
 in his individualism is not God's idea of a Christian, 
 
68 THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 
 
 but a disciple in the family, one of many. 
 " Members of one body, every act of separation 
 and self-will, is an offence against that body and 
 against its head." <'One is your master, even 
 Christ, and all ye are brethen," this brief sentence 
 covers the whole ground. All else in practical 
 church life is included in, and derived from, these 
 two abilities, the ability of the subordination of 
 our own self-will to the will of Christ, and the 
 ability of persistent untiring brotherliness in 
 speech and conduct. 
 
 It is necessary to add that the members of the 
 Church of Christ are called by other names than 
 this of " brethren." This indicates the tone and 
 temper of their minds. They are called 
 " believers " and "disciples," which words indi- 
 cate their standing towards their Lord. They are 
 called *' saints," that is, separated ones, which word 
 implies that they refuse to be controlled by the 
 world's ideas and fashions, whenever those ideas 
 and fashions militate against the simplicity 
 and sincerity of their allegiance to Christ. It 
 is necessary to add further that the Church of 
 Christ is not democratic, but theocratic. The 
 people are not the fountain of law and order. 
 They have no right to affirm who shall be the head 
 of the Church ; that is settled — settled forever. 
 Nor have they any right to say what truths shall 
 be taught, and what doctrines affirmed ; that also 
 
THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 69 
 
 is settled and settled forever. The Church of 
 Christ is a witnessing church. '* Ye are my wit- 
 nesses," saith the Lord. '' Thus it is written that 
 the Christ should suffer, and» rise again from the 
 dead the third day ; and that repentance and re- 
 mission of sins should be preached in his name 
 unto all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 
 And ye are witnesses of these things." This from 
 St. Luke. And again in the beginning of the 
 Acts of the Apostles : ' ' But ye shall receive 
 power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you, 
 and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem 
 and in all Judea and Samaria and unto the utter- 
 most parts of the earth." 
 
 The Church of Christ is not charged with cre- 
 ating or inventing anything. It has to be the 
 witness to the facts and truths revealed concern- 
 ins^ God and man in and through Jesus Christ. It 
 is charged with the grand and glorious responsi- 
 bility of taking these revealed facts and truths to 
 all who bear the name of man, from one end of 
 the earth to the other. For God Almighty never 
 gives a man a truth for his own private use. 
 Every revealed truth belongs to the whole hu- 
 manity. Wherever the sun shines there it is 
 God's will that His revealed truth should shine. 
 It is necessary that we should distinctly recognize 
 that though these facts and truths may suggest 
 views, and start opinions in men's minds, yet that 
 
70 THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 
 
 those views and opinions are not the foundation 
 on which the Church is built. Otiier foundation 
 can no man lay than that is laid, Jesus Christ. 
 Endless confusion has arisen in the ecclesiastical 
 world from a non-recognition of the distinction 
 between men's views and opinions on the facts and 
 truths of Holy Writ, and the facts and truths 
 themselves. However many sects and denomina- 
 tions you may have, there is but one Church of 
 Christ. However multitudinous the views and 
 opinions of men on religious themes, there is but 
 *' one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and 
 Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and 
 in you all." The Church derives its facts and 
 truths, its law and order from Christ, not from 
 the people — it is theocratic, not democratic. 
 
 This also must be added, that the church is the 
 dwelling place of the Holy Spirit of God, which 
 fact is evidence by these fruits of the Spirit 
 Avhich hang thick and threefold upon it, as upon a 
 tree of life. *'The fruits of the Spirit are love, 
 joy, peace, long-suifering, kindness, goodness, 
 faithfulness, meekness, temperance (or self-con- 
 trol.)" These abound in every true Christian 
 Church. 
 
 We must not omit to add, that the Church is 
 Christ's great Teacher to the nations. The last 
 great command to the Apostles runs thus: ''Go 
 ye and make disciples of all the nations^ baptizing 
 
THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 71 
 
 them into the name of the Father and of the Son 
 and of the Holy Ghost ; teaching them to observe 
 all things whatsoever I commanded you ; and lo, 
 I am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
 world." If the Church abdicates this position, or 
 does not recognize it, it lives outside its commis- 
 sion and opportunity. I venture to say that there 
 is no other power adequate to educate the mind of 
 a nation or a man. I need not remind you how 
 far short of its opportunity and commission the 
 Church of Christ has fallen, when we take into 
 consideration its relation, not only to individuals, 
 but to nations. The truth of the Gospel has even 
 been so used as to promote selfishness. Many a 
 man has been taught that the beginning, middle, 
 and end of Christianity is to save his own soul. 
 Of course that is the beginning of Christianity, but 
 it is not the middle and end. When once a man 
 has been brought into right relations toward God, 
 by the acceptation of Jesus Christ as his Redeemer, 
 Lord, and Master, practicall}^ he is brought into 
 new relations towards men. He begins to recog- 
 nize that he owes duties to the family, and to the 
 nation. He begins to feel the misery and mean- 
 ness of a life which lives to get and not to give. 
 His eyes are opened to see that this is the kind of 
 life most antas^onistic towards the life of God. 
 The parasite on the tree which drains away its life 
 but adds nothing to the life of the tree, is the fit 
 
73 THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 
 
 symbol of the man who gets everything out of the 
 nation he lives in, and gives back nothing so far 
 as his own will and purpose is set to do it. The 
 Church's commission includes the teachership of 
 the nation in all highest things pertaining to 
 national life. 
 
 And lastly, the church is the beginning of that 
 permanent society which God is organizing to 
 embody and express his will. The Book of the 
 Revelation of St John gives intimations of a 
 perfected society into which there enters nothing 
 that defileth, neither that which believeth or 
 maketh a lie, a society of the pure and true, or 
 rather of those who are purified and made true, men 
 from all ages and all nations, all kindreds and all 
 tongues, a society of men like in sympathy and 
 disposition though various in many other ways. 
 The Christ of God is the centre of that society ; 
 its inspiration ; its archetype ; a society based on 
 inward character not on anything else, the inward 
 character being attested by outward allegiance to 
 this Christ of God. In that society we shall get 
 the perfection of communion, the ideal fellowship, 
 all lovelessness gone, no envy there, no hatred, 
 nothing that leads to schism, no insincere man 
 there, no unbrotherly man, the society of which 
 the church on earth has been, in its best estate, 
 only the promise and prefiguration. John the 
 Divine saw it in vision, and he wrote ** Behold the 
 
THE WITNESSING CHURCH 73 
 
 tabernacle of God is with men and he shall dwell 
 with them, and they shall be his people, and God 
 Himself shall be with them, and be their God. 
 And he shall wipe away every tear from their 
 eyes ; and death shall be no more ; neither shall 
 there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more ; 
 the first things are passed away." 
 
 *« And there shall be no curse anymore; and 
 the Throne of God and of the Lamb shall be 
 therein ; and his servants shall do him service ; 
 and they shall see his face, and his name shall be 
 in their foreheads. And there shall be night no 
 more ; and they need no light of lamp, nor light 
 of the Sun, for the Lord God shall give them light, 
 and they shall reign forever and ever." 
 
YI. 
 EETEIBUTION. 
 
 Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man 
 soweth, that shall he also reap. — GalatianSy vi : 7. 
 
 THE fact of Retribution is necessarily a very 
 serious one to all who are not *' past feel- 
 ing:." We find the law of retribution workins: 
 here in our life. It cannot be denied. The nat- 
 ural inference is that a law here indicates a 
 similar law beyond the period and condition we 
 call temporal. Ostrich-like, we may hide our 
 heads in the sand and refuse to see that which is 
 disagreeable. It is wiser and better always to 
 face facts, never to ignore them, never to close 
 our eyes to them. Interrogate them. Ask them 
 what they mean and what they have to teach. 
 Let us take what we do know and let it lead us to 
 inferences consistent with it as to that which we 
 do not know. Let us have the courage resolutely 
 to stand by the laws and facts which are revealed. 
 We recognize in ourselves, and so in other men, 
 a sense of a righteousness which ought to be 
 
 74 
 
RETRIBUTION, 75 
 
 obeyed and maintained ; and we recognize also a 
 condition of feeling, mind, will, life, that is not 
 according to righteousness. All our efforts to 
 make righteousness and unrighteousness the same, 
 or the one a modification of the other, are failures. 
 We recognize also that unrighteousness brings 
 penalty. It is so in society, although society may 
 set up a very untrue standard of right and wrong, 
 artificial, not according to the standard which God 
 has set up in our consciences and in the Christ. 
 Yea, material rewards may come to men who are 
 persistently acting on principles of unrighteous- 
 ness, acting selfiishly, i. e. in an ungodly manner. 
 Very often it is so. This brings in confusion of 
 mind. It creates perplexity. So much so that 
 many men are led by it to the illegitimate infer- 
 ence, that verily there is no special reward for 
 the righteous, verily there is no God that judgetli 
 in the Earth. And as material rewards are the 
 only ones that men of perverted minds and cor- 
 rupted feelings appreciate, the acting so as to get 
 these material rewards is common. Not only do 
 industry and faithfulness bring these material 
 rewards, but oftentimes dishonesty, shrewdness, 
 heartlessness in bargaining and in taking advan- 
 tage of men, bring them. Gambling brings 
 them ; gambling in many forms. Herein is the 
 source of one of the strongest and most universal 
 temptations of our life. A man does not seem any 
 
76 RETRIBUTION. 
 
 the worse, so far as the outside appearances of his 
 life are concerned, because of transactions that are 
 not honorable and honest. Oftentimes he seems 
 better ; he has acquired wealth and seems to have 
 acquired importance. 
 
 And this fact alone ought to be enough to assure 
 us that material rewards are not the only or the 
 chief rewards which God gives. Man looks at 
 the outward appearance, God looks at the heart, 
 at that which is inward. Intellectual shrewd- 
 ness and uuscrupulousness often bring gold to 
 the coifers, but they never bring sensitiveness 
 to the conscience, nor purity into the feeling, 
 nor piety into the heart. Much otherwise. The 
 man who has educated himself into that state in 
 which he has ceased to be a tender-hearted, humane, 
 brotherly man , and has sunk into a mere trafficker, 
 to whom there is only one hell, to be poor, and 
 only one heaven, to be rich, that man is not to be 
 admired. If you have any feeling to expend on 
 him, let it be pity, although even that will by no 
 means be appreciated. If we are to understand 
 anything about Eetribution, about the law of 
 rewards and punishments, we must look deeper 
 than the outside, into the heart and intellect and 
 conscience, the inward condition. 
 
 Righteousness and unrighteousness, happiness 
 and misery, are not expressible in terms of ma- 
 terial gifts. The kingdom of God is within you. 
 
RETRIBUTION. 77 
 
 saith the Lord ; so is the kingdom of the Devil. 
 
 Thus, it is evident that in considering this theme 
 of lietribution, we have to look below the surface. 
 We have to school ourselves into the recognition 
 that a man is rich or poor really not according to 
 what he has but according to what he is. 
 
 Every one knows how vigorous, of late years, 
 has been the assault upon the idea of a material 
 hell. And many there be who seem to have 
 explored the Universe and have not found it. If 
 they would explore some of the courts and alleys 
 of our great cities, if they would go into some of 
 the dens and dungeons which, to thousands of 
 people, supply the only place they can call home, 
 if they would acquaint themselves with the horrors 
 of society in some of their most terrific, loathesome 
 and appalling forms, it would surely dawn upon 
 them that there was a use even yet for the word 
 **hell," even in its material expression. I am 
 quite ready to admit that nowhere in the Universe 
 can 3^ou find GocTs Hell^ but you can find that 
 which man has made. I hope that none of us may 
 ever find that which was prepared for the devil 
 and his angels. Men have heen determined, I 
 know, to make the idea of hell ridiculous. 
 Granted that the materialism is only imagery, 
 taken from the refuse heaps and the purifying fires 
 which consumed the putrefying carcases of the 
 Judean valleys, yet imagery has something behind 
 
78 RETRIBUTION. 
 
 it which it bodies forth. The whole material world 
 is, I apprehend, but a parable of the spiritual 
 world. 
 
 You know how valorously men have contended 
 against the continuousness of the punishment of sin, 
 but every man who sees below the surface of 
 things must recognize that a man can sooner be 
 divorced from his shadow than punishment can 
 be separated from sin. Sin is self-willed separa- 
 tion from God, unrepentant lawlessness of soul, 
 and as long as sin continues the punishment which 
 is inherent in it, the punishment which comes from 
 the indwelling opposition of the soul to God, 
 whatever it be, must continue. The proof that 
 one form of the presentation of a fact cannot be 
 the true one, is no argument that all presentations 
 of it are untrue. No one has ever yet discovered 
 a way to make a hardened, unrepenting man 
 righteous or happy, so long as he continues 
 in that condition. 
 
 No one has ever yet discovered a method to 
 prevent the working of the law, "whatsoever a 
 man soweth that shall he also reap." No man has 
 ever discovered where there is an element of 
 injustice in the principle on which judgment turns, 
 that a man should receive the deeds done in the 
 body according to that he had done, whether it 
 be good or bad. 
 
 Nor has any one discovered a way w^hereby a 
 
RETRIBUTION. 79 
 
 man shall still be a man and yet be deprived of his 
 power of choice, so as to be made righteous 
 against his own will or w^ish. While it is 
 altogether unbecoming of us to dogmatize on the 
 only partially revealed future, yet we must not 
 shrink from utterance of truth and fact as revealed 
 in us, in the recognized laws of our nature, 
 especially when they are clearly corroborated by 
 the teachings of Scripture. The soul needs 
 medicine as well as food. 
 
 I am not competent fully to expound all our 
 Lord's words on retribution. As ftir as my own 
 preferences are concerned, I should rather always 
 quote them in their literalness and let them stand 
 unmodified and unaltered by anything I might say. 
 Thus the man who has any objection to urge, 
 would have his controversy transferred from the 
 servant to the master. 
 
 That there is, on the part of some of us, 
 preachers and hearers, much of disgraceful trifling 
 with these utterances on retribution, and on behalf 
 of others much equally disgraceful dogmatism, I 
 cannot omit to notice. But there are some facts 
 which w^e cannot but recognize, unless we wilfully 
 blind ourselves to their existence, such facts as 
 that everywhere sin brings some kind of misery, 
 misery physical and misery mental. This and 
 other like facts are as patent as the noon-day. 
 We recognize that there is a destructive power in 
 
80 RETRIBUTION. 
 
 this world, steadily and persistently working. 
 Oftentimes men seem madly bent on their own de- 
 struction. Nothing stops them, nothing arrests 
 them. Judgment seems to be lost and reason to 
 be dethroned. All badness has an accompanying 
 madness concealed in it. It would seem as 
 though mankind was preyed upon by some power 
 outside itself, bent on destroying it. Apart from 
 all Scripture revelation, that would be the conclu- 
 sion at which serious students of the problem 
 would arrive. We shrink from acknowledojin^? an 
 invisible Satanic personal power, operative upon 
 the spirit of man, and yet nothing short of this can 
 account for that terrible tendency to self-destruc- 
 tion, which we find in our race. The New Testa- 
 ment acknowledges this power. It represents its 
 concentrated malignity as focussing itself to de- 
 stroy this Jesus Christ of ours. Our Lord says of 
 it, ^it is able to destroy both soul and body in hell ' 
 and He tells us to fear it. It is revealed that 
 Jesus the Christ came to destroy the works of 
 the devil. There are some who jest at these 
 ideas ; but there cannot be any doubt of their ex- 
 istence on the New Testament page. That which 
 our Lord has revealed, accounts for so much which 
 we recognize in our human life that it seems to me 
 to offer a solution of a very dark problem. 
 
 Perhaps some one is saying within himself, — 
 what a terrible thing it is to be born exposed to 
 
RETRIBUTION. 81 
 
 such a power ! It would be if it were an Omnipo- 
 tent power, or a power which we could not resist, 
 a power from w^hich we could get no deliverence. 
 But man is not left in this wretched and helpless 
 state. The Deliverer is revealed ; the One who 
 comes between him and it to rescue all who put 
 themselves under His protection. I cannot delay 
 to remind you of that fact. At this point a ques- 
 tion leaps into form — can the human lose its 
 character as human and actually become devilish ? 
 The three stages of sinfulness as set forth by the 
 Apostle, are these, ' earthly, sensual, devilish!* 
 And we ourselves, in our common speech, recog- 
 nize these three grades. 
 
 There are some things which men do which 
 cannot properly be characterized as either < earthly' 
 or ' sensual ' ; we are driven to the use of the third 
 term because neither of the others is felt to be 
 accurate. When we consider such cases as I 
 could name, such cases as will occur to you all, 
 they compel us to face the question : ''Is it possible 
 that there can be such an inversion of human 
 nature that good should always appear evil and 
 evil good?" Is it possible for men to be perma- 
 nently fixed in a spiritual condition in which 
 malice, envy, and hate banish all possibility of 
 love, esteem and affection? For myself I don't 
 know ; I cannot answer these questions. They 
 have to be faced. Till they are answered, we 
 
83 RETRIBUTION. 
 
 cannot affirm, as of clear knowledge, the terniin- 
 ableness of sin or the terminableness of its inherent 
 and inevitable punishment of itself beyond that 
 point in life we call death. Every man who speaks 
 on this theme should first pray God to give him 
 humility and to take from him the cantankerous 
 spirit of the controversialist. I am sincere when 
 I say that I do not wish to speak as an opponent 
 of any sectarian of any kind. If any brother man 
 has had a revelation from God, either through 
 Scripture, or independently of it, which has 
 assured his mind that ' * not one life shall be 
 destroyed, nor perish in the formless void, when 
 God hath made the pile complete, " he is of all 
 men to be envied. No such revelation has come 
 to my own mind from any source. While no one 
 present can shrink from the unfeeling dogmatist 
 on this question of the future of the man who calls 
 evil good and good evil, more than I do, yet if I 
 were to affirm that I had met with a full revelation 
 of the final rescue of every soul of man from sin and 
 its consequences, I should put on record in the 
 most solemn act of my life a dreadful falsehood. 
 This is not a matter of one man's opinion or 
 another's ; it is a matter of revelation. 
 
 I admit that it seems certain that all revelation 
 on all themes which concern man and the possibili- 
 ties of his nature, may not belong to this world, 
 cannot belong to it. A fuller revelation doubtless 
 
RETRIBUTION. 83 
 
 will greet us on the other shore, for we have only 
 the beginning of things here. The unfolding will 
 go on forever and ever. This is only according 
 to the laws we reco£rnize as existinsr for our minds 
 now. That condition of mind in which men de- 
 mand that everything be revealed to them, here 
 and now, about the future of all who constitute 
 this human race, or they will have nothing to do 
 with God and religion, seems, I should think, to 
 us all, about as proud, tyrannical, wilful and un- 
 reasonable a state as any man can be in. There is 
 really nothing to be done with a man in that con- 
 dition, except to let him alone. Such a state is 
 at the very antipodes of all teachableness. It is a 
 compound of ignorance and wilfulness. A man 
 says to me, 'I can't believe in a God who delights 
 in damning men.' Nor can I. There is no such 
 God revealed in the New Testament, from the lips 
 of Jesus or his Apostles. '' I have no pleasure in 
 the death of the wicked, but i'ather that the 
 wicked should turn and live." We damn our- 
 selves, we damn one another, we unite wdth that 
 Satanic power whose delight is rebellion against 
 God. We worship the devil rather than God, — 
 we do all this and thus destroy ourselves and our 
 fellow-creatures, but the God revealed in Jesus 
 Christ is in eternal antagonism to all this. There 
 is no sin in God ; God is light and in Him is no 
 darkness at all ; God is love, in him is no hate to 
 
84 nETUIBUriON. 
 
 you or me or anyone. That which is not in the 
 Divine Nature can never come forth from it. 
 Nothing is more simple and incontrovertible than 
 that. We want clearly to understand, in these 
 days, that there is ever a distinction to be made 
 between the revelations which have come to us in 
 Jesus Christ and the inferences which men have 
 drawn from them. We must take good heed 
 never to be so w^edded to our own views and 
 opinions, simply because they are ours, as not to 
 be willing and ready to be led by the action of the 
 Holy Spirit on our spirits into higher perceptions 
 of truth. If we get into that state we shall be as 
 a man who should put iron shutters up to every 
 w^indow in his house so that the sunlight should 
 not interfere with his enjoyment of the light of his 
 own candles. There is nothing more fatal to men- 
 tal growth and to growth in grace, than proud, 
 self-willed opinionativeness. The sincere mind is 
 an open mind ; the truthful mind is open — not 
 a vacillating one — far from that. It holds 
 what it has, but it reaches forth to that which is 
 beyond. A man without principles and convic- 
 tions is the prey of the next evil man or evil spirit 
 that assaults him. God has more light and truth 
 to break forth from His Holy Word, but from that 
 Holy Word, Jesus Christ has broken forth this 
 light and this truth already, that union with Him 
 is life, separation from Him is death, whatever be 
 
RETRIBUTION. 85 
 
 included in that word. It will be proved yet to 
 demonstration that whoever is of the truth^ear- 
 eth Christ's voice ; that no true man ever yet took 
 sides against God's Christ when that Christ was 
 fully and fairly presented to his heart and under- 
 standing. And this also I believe will be shown, 
 that there has never been any decree of God's 
 which has condemned men to sin and suffer. 
 
 The sin and suffering are our own, the rescue 
 and deliverance are God's. Separated from Him 
 in whom the father of our spirits is revealed, we 
 become a prey to evil spirits in the flesh and evil 
 spirits out of the flesh. Not to be afraid of sin 
 and sinners, and the arch-sinner of all we call 
 Satan and the Devil, and to be afraid of God, the 
 God revealed in Jesus Christ, this of all things 
 betokens the extent of our removal from the 
 orio^inal ri«:hteousness. What can be more 
 frightful to a human soul than the loss of God ? 
 The word Atheism itself is a bottomless pit. '* I 
 will not leave you orphans," said our Lord to his 
 disciples ; fatherless ones. Oh no, He would not 
 leave us in doubt that over us at all times, and in 
 us by the gift of His spirit at all times was a 
 Father, the Father of such a Son, the Father of 
 Jesus Christ; is not that enough? What more 
 dreadful mission is conceivable for a lost soul than 
 to go about the world to try to rob other souls of 
 their hope in a Father in heaven ? Who of us 
 
86 RETBIBUriON. 
 
 would not prefer annihilation to this dreadful 
 mission ? And yet no man would or could believe 
 it, but he who had so sinned himself into 
 wretchedness as to want to believe it. And even 
 he would doubt his own belief. Let us never 
 lose sight of this fact that union with God in 
 Christ is heaven, for the soul of man was made for 
 that; separation from God in Christ is hell, the 
 soul of man was never made for that. Whatever 
 brings us nearer to God brings us into the sphere 
 of ineffable reward, such as eye hath not seen, nor 
 ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of 
 man to conceive ; whatever separates us from Him 
 brings us into that sphere of retribution into which 
 we cannot look ftir, where the selfish and the 
 loveless find those of their own order and kind. 
 They go there, God does not send them ; such is 
 the revelation. There is no change in God, none 
 in Christ. *' He is the same yesterday, to-day and 
 for ever." While I am persuaded that no man 
 living is able fully to interpret the whole of this 
 theme, yet I think we can say this much with 
 confidence : — 
 
 1 . That the Eternal One can make no compro- 
 mise with sin. " If God were not sure to punish 
 the evil, and to make it bear, so far as it remains 
 evil, the weight of his Condemnation, the good 
 would lose for us its reality." 
 
 2. As to duration, that as long as the sin 
 
RETRIBUTION. 87 
 
 lasts, so long will its appropriate punishment last. 
 
 3. That no punishment will be inflicted which 
 will throw the Divine Character as revealed in 
 Christ into discord with itself. 
 
 4. That, as there is no malice in the Divine 
 nature and no cruelty, all punishment will have as 
 its purpose an end worthy of the divine nature. 
 
 5. That future punishment will be to present 
 sin as consequence to cause. 
 
 6. That it will be inevitable and not arbitrary. 
 
 7. That it will be of such a nature, that no 
 enlightened mind in the Universe of God can offer 
 any objection to it that shall not be unreasonable. 
 
 Ought I not to add for every perplexed soul on 
 this and all other vital themes, "Come unto me 
 all ye that labor and are heavy laden and ye shall 
 find rest unto your souls." 
 
YII. 
 MEANS AND END. 
 
 And why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I 
 say ? — Luke, vi : 46. 
 
 ON February 20th, 1844, in the Supreme 
 Court at Washington, a great speech was 
 made by a man who must ever be allowed the 
 first rank among the statesmen and orators of 
 America. The speech is remarkable not alone for 
 the purity of its English, not alone for the manli- 
 ness of its style, for these remarks apply to all the 
 speeches of this great man. It is noteworthy for 
 the passionateness and evident genuineness of the 
 sympathy which the speaker manifests with the 
 truths and facts of the Christian religion, and with 
 the means which are used and which are inevitable 
 for its propagation. 
 
 A sum of money had been bequeathed to found 
 a college in Philadelphia from wdthin whose walls 
 all Christian ministers were to be excluded. 
 Daniel Webster argued that this exclusion virtu- 
 ally amounted to the ostracism of Christianity 
 itself, and that it followed that in no true legal 
 
MEANS AND END. 89 
 
 sense could this college take rank as a charity. 
 The speech is memorable as embracing the views 
 of the most statesmanlike mind, the most robust 
 nature, this country has ever produced, on this one 
 point, the relation of the means to the end, and the 
 inevitable inference that must be drawn in regard 
 to their judgment of the value of the end by those 
 who neglect the means employed for the accom- 
 plishment of it. The end in view is the diffusion 
 of Christianity among the people. The means 
 used are; 1, the establishment by our Lord him- 
 self of the Ministry ; 2, the bringing into existence 
 of the Church; 3, the compilation of the Scrip- 
 tures ; 4, the ordinance of the Sabbath. This 
 statesman, jurist, orator, this man of the first 
 rank in each department, contends that so long as 
 we treat the means that are inevitable for the dif- 
 fusion of Christianity w^ith contempt, it is vain and 
 frivolous to be talking of any respect we may have 
 for Christianity itself. Our actions give the lie 
 to our words. 
 
 "There is a positive rejection of Christianity; 
 because it rejects the ordinary means and agencies 
 of Christianity. He w^ho rejects the ordinary 
 means of accomplishing an end means to defeat 
 that end itself, or else he has no meaning. And 
 this is true, although the means originally be 
 means of human appointment, and not attaching 
 to or resting on any higher authority." 
 
90 MEANS AND END. 
 
 Webster contends that there is nothinor in the 
 New Testament more clearly established by the 
 Author of Christianity than the appointment of a 
 Christian ministry. He asks, "Did a man ever 
 live that had a respect for the Christian religion 
 and yet had no regard for any one of its 
 ministers?" 
 
 He contends further that religion is ** the only 
 solid basis of morals," and that moral instruction 
 not resting on this basis is only a building upon 
 sand. He contends that the moral law of the ten 
 commandments includes the whole ten in its idea 
 of morality. He suggests that the man who moves 
 away the foundation of morals is aiming at the 
 destruction of morality as well as Christianity. He 
 further contends that Christianity is of such a 
 nature that it l>e]ongs as really to children as to 
 adults, and that there is neither religion, nor 
 morals, nor reason in any course of action which 
 sets aside the means that have been verified as 
 necessary to the diffusion of that truth which is 
 included in the word * Christianity.' 
 
 He further remarks that '' the observance of the 
 Christian Sabbath is a part of Christianty in all its 
 forms;" that ''where there is no observance of 
 the Christian Sabbath there ^vill be no public 
 worship of God," and he quotes with cordial 
 approval and hearty endorsement an address which 
 
MEAN8 AND END. 91 
 
 had just been delivered, in which are these 
 words : — " you might as well put out the sun and 
 think to enlighten the world with tapers, destroy 
 the attraction of gravity and think to wield the 
 Universe by human powers, as to extinguish the 
 moral illumination of the Sabbath and break this 
 glorious main-spring of the moral government of 
 God." And when, with his strong manly 
 eloquence, and his clear great intellect, he has 
 examined the argument brought on the other side 
 for allowing Girard College to be accepted as a 
 charity, although from six years old to eighteen 
 the youth there are to have no religious instruc- 
 tion, the orator seems to grow impatient with 
 himself at the development of his argument, and 
 lets himself out in one passionate sentence as he 
 realizes what is involved in depriving these youths 
 of their rights, and adds : * « Why Sir, it is vain to 
 talk about the destructive tendency of such a 
 system ; to argue upon it is to insult the 
 understanding of every man ; it is mere, sheer, 
 low, ribald, vulgar deism, and infidelity." 
 
 Now I have made this copious reference to one 
 of the most powerful orations that ever Webster 
 made, because it contains the deliberate judgment 
 of the greatest New Englander, the one who will 
 be remembered and read and quoted, in the gen- 
 erations to come, oftener than any other, that I 
 may have the best backing I can get for the 
 
93 MEANS AND END. 
 
 enforcemeut upon your attention of the principle, 
 that he who neglects the means conspires to defeat 
 the end. One of the most unpromising features 
 of our time is the seeming inabilit}'' of so many 
 people to perceive this very thing, the connection 
 of means and end. Neglect the means and you 
 are doing your best to defeat the end. I will not 
 venture upon giving my opinion as to the causes 
 of the condition in which so many find themselves, 
 of having a sort of decent respect for some indefi- 
 nite type of Christianity and yet to them Chris- 
 tianity is not necessary to morality, not necessary 
 to good government, not necessary to citizenship, 
 not necessary to personal development, not 
 necessary to character, not necessary to anything. 
 On its practical side, Christianity is bound up 
 with the Sabbath, with the Church, with the 
 Scriptures, with the Ministry of the Gospel. 
 Through these, it gets voice, body and form. 
 Without them it is a disembodied spirit. These 
 are to it, what the lungs and limbs and nerves and 
 veins and arteries are to the body. In this mate- 
 rial world the spirit in man operates through 
 these. There is no influence of the Spirit in man 
 on this present order of things apart from these. 
 
 I am aware that there are very many persons 
 over whom the irresistible reasoning of this most 
 Titanic of Americans whom I have quoted, would 
 have no influence. They have listened to tell-tale 
 
MEAN8 AND END. 93 
 
 Eumor which is always busy, and have heard this 
 and that about him which, if true, indicates that 
 he was by no means a perfect man. This is not a 
 lecture on Webster. This is not the time nor 
 the place to search into these reports. But this I 
 will say, that I am ashamed for our intelligence ; 
 I am ashamed for our honesty ; I am ashamed for 
 our candor, I am ashamed for our Christianity, if 
 we can allow a few beldame stories, such as are 
 invented against all great men, to obscure our 
 vision as to the real greatness of mind and heart, 
 which dwelt in that imposing form. 
 
 The fruit of a choice apple tree is none the less 
 luscious because for one month of the Spring time 
 the canker-worm disfigured many of the leaves. 
 I wish that with as much of truth we could all say 
 as he said : — 
 
 *«I thank God, that if I am gifted with little of 
 that spirit which is able to raise mortals to the 
 skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other 
 spirit which would drag angels down." 
 
 It is no answer to the principle here asserted by 
 this great man, the principle that the man who 
 neglects the means aims to defeat the end, that 
 sometimes the orator was not himself quite correct 
 in his conduct. Who is ? Which of us can stand 
 up in that presence which searches the heart, and 
 say that we have always been correct in our con- 
 duct? But does that make Christianity untrue ? 
 
94 MEANS AND END. 
 
 Nay, it verifies its truth, when it says < that there 
 is not a just man upon earth that doeth good and 
 sinneth not.' The inconsistencies of Christians 
 have nothing to do with the truth of Christianity, 
 or rather Christianity has nothing to do with them. 
 It is not accountable for them. If we are to wait 
 for perfect specimens of Christianity before there 
 is any utterance of it, or any teaching of it, total 
 sihmce must forever reign. Some knowledge is 
 necessary to utterance but not perfect knowledge. 
 Some experience of Christianity is necessary to 
 the appreciation of its greatness, its grandeur, its 
 benevolence, but not perfection of experience. 
 Our preaching of it may often be, as Sheridan 
 once remarked, *'a poulterer's description of a 
 phoenix," still any preaching of Christ and Him 
 crucified is better than none, as St. Paul suggested 
 when some were vile enough to preach Christ out 
 of envy and strife, only to cause the Apostle 
 pain, *' Notwithstanding, w^iether in pretence or 
 in truth, Christ is preached, and therein will I 
 rejoice." 
 
 I wish that in these days Webster's great speech 
 could be printed as a religious tract to be distribu- 
 ted broad-cast among people who credit themselves 
 with intelli2:ence. Do we not need it? Are there 
 not many who assume that they are, in some sort 
 of way, and in some sense of the word * Christians' 
 and yet who do not study the Scriptures, and do 
 
MEANS AND END. 95 
 
 not use the means of grace , and have no reverence 
 for the Sabbath, and seldom put themselves under 
 the influence of any ministry of the Gospel ? Such 
 persons would feel aggrieved if it were said to them 
 that they were seeking to defeat those ends which 
 to Jesus Christ wxre so momentous that he held 
 not himself back from agony and death that He 
 might accomplish them. Yet, if these arguments 
 of this greatest of Americans are unanswerable, it 
 is true. No man is promoting the ends which our 
 Lord came to accomplish, who is neglecting the 
 Church, the Scriptures, the Ministry or the 
 Sabbath. I wish to be reasonable. I would not 
 press a man so hard as to create antagonism in his 
 mind towards the truth. But, I think that 
 none of you, I Jiope that none of you, would 
 care to listen to any Minister who does not regard 
 his allegiance to Christ as the first thing. There 
 is no man whom 1 should myself more despise than 
 he who standing in a Christian pulpit would say the 
 thing which would make him popular, regardless 
 of whether he believed it to be true or not. We 
 have been hearing of late very much about the Old 
 and the New. For myself I am not interested, as 
 to whether a thing be old or new, I want to know 
 if it be true. Is it in accord with the mind of 
 Christ and the will of God? And this principle 
 which the foremost statesman of New England has 
 brought into the happiest form of expression, 
 
96 MEANS AND END. 
 
 appears to me to be true. In neglecting the 
 means we are aiming to defeat the end. Men who 
 are not intelligently observing the Sabbath, elevat- 
 ing it in its uses above other days, are co-operating 
 to defeat the ends for which the Sabbath was 
 ordained. In not systematically and diligently 
 using the means of grace, we are co-operating to 
 defeat the end for which the means of grace were 
 ordained — the spiritualization of the charac- 
 ter. If we are at heart Christians and are 
 not confessedly of the Church, w^e are silently 
 (perhaps unintentionally and unconsciously), but 
 really, aiming to defeat the end for which the 
 Church of Christ was called into existence. What 
 is lawful for one Christian must surely be lawful 
 for all. Anyway, there must be something very 
 special in the case of a Christian heart to justify 
 its position of aloofness from a Christian church. 
 I know that all Christian churches, in their 
 administration, partake of human infirmitiy. But 
 wherever there is the simple acknowledgment of 
 Christ as supreme, the presence of human infirmi- 
 ty is reduced to a minimum of influence. There 
 is however a blessing special to the church, a 
 blessing of God which belongs to his disciples, and 
 can belong in the nature of things to none other. 
 Obedience always brings blessedness. 
 
 Is it not so in Nature? The mariner never 
 thinks of entering into conflict with the laws of 
 
MEANS AND END. 97 
 
 nature ; he conforms to them, he obeys them. 
 There is a blessing in obedience. There is 
 destruction in disobedience. And so on land as 
 on sea ; — the farmer's prosperity depends upon 
 his understanding the laws of vegetable and ani- 
 mal life and co-operating with those laws. There 
 is a blessing in obedience which can be obtained in 
 no other way. It is so everywhere; in regard 
 to our own personality ; in regard to mental health 
 and bodily health. Obey sanitary laws and you 
 get the blessing, disobey them and you miss it. 
 Now, it would be a strange inconsistency, if the 
 Almighty should teach us of the way of obtaining 
 a blessing in Nature, and contradict that truth in 
 the highest region of all. Would it not be aston- 
 ishin«r if obedience to material laws brouo;ht 
 blessing, and disobedience to spiritual laws did 
 not bring the opposite of blessing ? If our Lord 
 says to us, Do so and so, rely upon it that there is 
 some benevolent reason why we should do it. All 
 Divine commands are founded in benevolence. 
 All Divine institutions are founded in benevo- 
 lence. That is true of the Church ; it is true of the 
 Sabbath ; it is true of the Scriptures ; it is true of 
 the Ministry ; of all these four things to which 
 Webster referred as means to the end of diffusing 
 Christianity. No man of you is more sensitive 
 than I am to the unchristian elements wdiich have 
 been introduced by fallen and fallible men into 
 
98 MEANS AND END. 
 
 church life. So oppressive have they been at 
 times to my spirit, so hateful have they seemed, 
 so hot has been my aversion to them, that I have 
 had fight after fight with myself to keep in the 
 Ministry. I believe in Christianity with all my 
 intellect and with all my heart. Nothing is so 
 dear to me as Christian truth. It grows upon me 
 all the time. The more I look into the New Test- 
 ament the more I believe in its inspiration. It is 
 incalculably nobler in its temper, immeasurably 
 higher in its spirituality than anything I find else- 
 where. Men wrote it, but it is free from the 
 weaknesses, the meannesses, the jealousies, the sec- 
 tarianisms of men. God ruled while men wrote, 
 that is what I mean by inspiration. God's mind 
 dominated man's. God's mind was uppermost 
 and man's undermost. God's thought dominated 
 man's opinion and held it in subjection. The men 
 who wrote were so full of God that they could do 
 no other than write his thoughts. It is like as 
 when a lawyer has been living day and night in 
 Blackstone. He becomes so dominated by him 
 that his own thought is permeated by Blackstone. 
 Or, as when a surgeon has been submitting him- 
 self to the influence and teaching of Sir Astley 
 Cooper, he is controlled by him. These men were 
 what Schleirmacher would call, *' God-intoxicated 
 men." They were filled full of Christ and so 
 spake the Divine thought. They could do no 
 
\B R A R y? 
 
 or THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 MEANS AND END. 99 
 
 other. They spake as seeing Him who is invisi- 
 ble, and they acted as seeing him who is invisible. 
 And so, you have only to take any volume of 
 Divinity written by man, any church articles for- 
 mulated by man, and compare them with the 
 spirit and temper of the Scriptures to see the 
 incomparableness of the Scriptures. They are 
 for all time, and not for any single age. 
 
 And here in these Scriptures we find Christ's 
 idea of the Church, and the Apostolic idea. We 
 do not realize them. The Scripture idea of the 
 Church is entirely free from all such divisions as 
 we have in denominationalism. The Church of 
 the New Testament is the fraternity of all who love 
 and serve Christ. If a man will not submit his 
 will and spirit to Christ, he does not belong to the 
 Church, if he does submit his will and spirit to 
 Christ he belongs to the church. But, in 
 Scripture, faith always means character, internal 
 character, the internal character which recognizes 
 Jesus when it sees Him and clings to Him. It is 
 nothing less than a perversion of Scripture to 
 identify faith with opinion. Now, while we are 
 living below the Scripture idea of the church of 
 Christ, yet we are aiming at it and trying to 
 realize it, and under this constant aim, the Church 
 will grow more and more Christlike in its spirit. 
 And it is the duty of all who are Christian in hope 
 and in heart to unite with it openly and unabashed. 
 
100 MEANS AND END. 
 
 Why call ye me Lord, Lord and do not the thing 
 which I say? Church membership is not a matter of 
 personal perfection or imperfection. It is a matter 
 of obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. I am obliwd 
 to put it on that simple ground. I should not be 
 truthful to my own convictions if I put it on any 
 other. It is a means of grace, if we use the means, 
 we are manifestly aiming at the end. 
 
 And then again as to the Sabbath — another 
 means for the diffusion of Christianity. It is 
 founded in benevolence. I could not believe in a 
 God who made it necessary for five-sixths of this 
 human race to earn their bread by the sweat of 
 the brow, or the sweat of the brain, if he let them 
 work on and on without any authoritative command 
 periodically to stop. That would indicate him a 
 slave-master, not a God. Three-hundred and 
 sixty-five days in every year devoted to unbroken 
 toil, who could believe that such a command ever 
 came from a good God ? Not that I believe that 
 hand work is in these days of ours the most ex- 
 hausting work. No! — brain- work, continued on 
 and on, is the wear and tear of life. The brain- 
 workers more than the hand-workers need to stop 
 every seventh day, and shut down business and 
 bolt and bar the door on it, and turn their atten- 
 tion to something entirely different. For relief 
 comes to the brain, not from total cessation of 
 thinking, that is impossible, but from other think- 
 
MEANS AND END. 101 
 
 ing. And the more entirely different the theme 
 the more recuperative it is. That is the reason 
 why some of our greatest English statesmen, yes 
 and our greatest American lawyers, have been 
 among the healthiest and strongest minds. Glad- 
 stone can sit and listen to a sermon with as much 
 enjoyment of it as though it was a revelation to 
 him. A late Lord Chancellor, who presided over 
 the House of Peers, taught a Sunday School class. 
 The great pleader at the American bar, Choate, 
 could continuously and untiringly enjoy the simple 
 evangelical ministry of Dr. Adams. Webster was a 
 constant attendant on worship. These men used 
 the means as seeing that the only way to accom- 
 plish the end was to use them. How is it possible 
 to believe that any one sees the momentousness of 
 Christianity and its relation to our life here and 
 hereafter if he neglect the means appointed for its 
 propagation? Even Charity, hard as she may try, 
 cannot believe it. To every such person the ques- 
 tion comes direct from the lips of Jesus. — *' Why 
 call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things 
 which I say ? " 
 
ym. 
 
 ** WORSHIP GOD." 
 
 Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not : for I am thy fellow- 
 servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep 
 the sayings of this book : worship God, — Revelations, xxii : 9. 
 
 IT may seem strange to some of you that I 
 should introduce such a simple theme as this 
 to a congregation assembled for the avowed pur- 
 pose of worshipping God. I do not wish to insult 
 your intelligence ; very far from that. I have 
 always tried to give all proper deference and 
 respect to intelligence, believing, as I do, that true 
 and real Christian preaching is certain to deepen, 
 broaden, elevate and ennoble the intelligence of 
 those who submit themselves to it. Why not? 
 Is it not occupied with the profoundest of all 
 themes? What theme can be profounder than 
 the nature of God, the nature of man, and the 
 relation of man to God ? If there be any theme 
 profounder than that I would like to know what it 
 is. And should there be anyone here inclined to 
 say that we can know nothing about it, or next to 
 
 103 
 
'WORSHIP gob:' 103 
 
 nothing, or only a very little, I beg to join issue 
 with that individual. lie is not speaking intelli- 
 gently, not speaking out of his own individuality, 
 only reiterating phrases which he has learnt from 
 others. Supposing I never see the artist who 
 painted that interesting animal picture ** Dignity 
 and Impudence." I have never looked on his 
 face, never talked w^ith him, never asked him as 
 to his likes and dislikes. But I look on his picture, 
 study it, not its coloring only or chiefly, or its 
 drawing, but its expressiveness. 
 
 And as I look and look I say to myself — Land- 
 seer evidently had a wonderful fondness for dogs. 
 He must have had it, or he could not have put 
 that expression into the faces of those dogs. 
 Those eyes are almost human in their expressive- 
 ness. And so, take any work of any man, and 
 study it, and you will learn something about the 
 man. Not everything, by any means, but something. 
 If however in addition to that picture you had 
 studied other pictures of Landseer, your knowledge 
 of the man would have grown more and more ; if 
 then you had talked with people who had visited 
 him, held social converse with him, walked with 
 him, ate with him, been with him in trouble and 
 joy, your know ledge would have grown into a kind 
 of intimacy, and yet you have never seen the man. 
 But without seeing him, you have true knowledge 
 of him. And so it is in respect to every one. So 
 
104 ''WORSHIP QOBr 
 
 it is in respect to God Himself. You can know 
 much of Him. All his works speak of Him. 
 There is strength in Him says the mighty mountain. 
 There is majesty in Him say the Niagaras as they 
 roar. There is light in Him, says the sun. 
 There is order in Him say the stars ; such order, 
 says the comet, such punctuality in fulfilling His 
 appointments, that I will be back again from my 
 measureless orbit to a second. There is love in 
 Him says Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ is as 
 much a fact as is this American Nation. We can 
 know enough about God to occupy us for the 
 years we have here. Yea : we can know more 
 about Him than these few years can ever 
 exhaust. 
 
 Of course no one knows a thing, much less a 
 person with any respectable degree of knowledge, 
 who does not come into some kind of personal 
 relationship with the thing or person. Our 
 relationship to God must be personal. It must 
 be somethino^ more than ors^anic. The beasts that 
 roam the forests, the cattle on a thousand hills, 
 have some sort of relationship to God. He 
 provides for them. He must delight in them. 
 The song of the bird, the mild content of the 
 domesticated cow, the proud beauty of the Arab 
 steed, the majesty of the lion, these must delight 
 Him. They express some thought and feeling in 
 the Divine mind, very imperfectly, very blunder- 
 
*' WORSHIP god:' 105 
 
 ingly, very distantly, but still enough to start us 
 thinking and inquiring. And is not that an 
 excellent use ? Is it not much to be preferred that 
 a man should be perplexed with mysteries than 
 that he should be uninterested in anything, torpid 
 and indifferent to a most shameful degree ? It is 
 even to be preferred that a man should pass along 
 the way of life grumbling at everything he meets 
 than that he should not exist at all, although you 
 and I perhaps do not want to meet that man too 
 often. But still, God has some use for him, as 
 He has for a mosquito, although I have never 
 discovered what it is. Do you suppose that the 
 Almighty has to give an account of everything he 
 does and makes to you and me ? I believe that 
 the mysteries of life have a use and service in 
 regard to man which is by no means despicable. 
 The fact that there is so much unknown makes 
 life doubly interesting. I am persuaded that one 
 reason why this country is at the present day 
 perhaps the most interesting country on the 
 face of the earth lies iu the fact of its being 
 only partially developed, and in the other fact 
 that we are trying experiments all the while, 
 the great experiment of making all nations into one 
 nation. And the very fact that our politicians 
 and others make such emphatic assertions as to 
 our greatness and our excellency is a sign that we 
 are a little bit afraid as to where the experiment 
 
106 " WORSHIP god:' 
 
 will land us, and those who are to come after 
 us. There is this consolation, however, that we 
 cannot with our democracy do very much worse 
 than others have done with their monarchies and 
 aristocracies, but if we do not do better, and very 
 much better, a heavy cloud of disappointment will 
 hanoj over the whole earth for aojes to come. 
 Perhaps some are inclined to say, ** Well, we shall 
 know nothing about it ; we shall be away from 
 here." Don't be so sure, my friend. If Moses 
 and Elijah knew what was being transacted on this 
 earth /after they had left it, and came to that 
 Mount of Transfiguration, we have more than a 
 suircfestion that we are to know about this earth 
 after we have left it. The putting off this prison- 
 house of a material body is not going to produce 
 total separation between this earth and our future, 
 unless all the hints of Scripture are misleading. 
 The doctrine of the solidarity of the human race — 
 that what affects one affects all — is full of meaning. 
 There is more in Scripture than any of you 
 suppose upon the connection of the eternal future 
 with the present, and the carrying of the present 
 into the future, But I will not be tempted along 
 that line now. 
 
 We know enough of God t6 enable us to 
 worship Him and serve Him. That is the practi- 
 cal thing. What is worship ? Admiration leading 
 to imitation. Nothing short of that. That is our 
 
"WOBSHIP GOD." 107 
 
 Lord's idea of it as you will find in the Sermon on 
 the Mount. In Wordsworth's poems there are 
 some excellent hints on this subject, which I 
 cannot quote. So also in Tennyson. So also in 
 Longfellow. These men will all help you to get 
 into that state of mind in which you are capable of 
 worship. For not all men are capable of such 
 admiration as will lead to imitation. God made 
 man capable originally. This state of admiration 
 leading to imitation was the easy, natural state of 
 the first man. That is the Mosaic idea. But our 
 fathers fell out from that ability, and we have 
 fallen out still more, till men and women have lost 
 this ability of admiration to the point of imitation. 
 There are many things in the writings of Thomas 
 Carlyle which none of us can accept. But there 
 is one feature in the rui2:£red old man which I 
 have always appreciated, his intense admiration 
 for his heroes, Cromwell, Frederick the Great, 
 Knox, Mahomet, and others. He delights in 
 their power and ability, and in their love of 
 righteousness. If only we could search suflS- 
 ciently into character to verify the remark, I 
 think we should find that no man was ever really 
 good or really great who had not in him a strong 
 tendency to idolize somebody. For what does 
 this tendency mean? It means that in the indi- 
 vidual there is great receptive power, great heai^t 
 power, great love power. And what does that 
 
108 - "WORSHIP GOD.'' 
 
 mean, but great power of goodness? A man's 
 judgment may be at fault and lie may choose an 
 unworthy object, but there will be something in 
 his object that fascinates and holds him. A man 
 who has the capacity of great admiration has not 
 and cannot have the ability of great enviousness of 
 disposition. For the two traits are psychologically 
 incompatible. The one excludes the other. 
 
 We may laugh at Carlyle's hero-worship, but 
 was it not much better than no ability of worship 
 at all ? There is the terrible defect, no ability of 
 worship at all, indicating, as it does, low intellectu- 
 alism, low heart power, low imaginativeness, low 
 ideality, general inferiority all through. The 
 ability of admiration must be in us, and it must be 
 in us to the degree of imitation, or Jesus Christ 
 Himself will have no power to fascinate and hold 
 us. And if even the heroic character of Jesus, 
 the masculine character of Jesus, the feminine 
 character of Jesus, the superlatively human char- 
 acter of Jesus, the Divine character of Jesus, if 
 that have no power to win us, and hold us, and 
 draw us out, and bring us to our knees in w^orship, 
 then, I know not what to say. Something terri- 
 ble is the matter with that man's nature which 
 does not respond to the ineffable excellency which 
 is in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is of no use 
 deceiving men. That is cruel. I say, wherever 
 there is no response to the fully presented char- 
 
"WORSHIP GOD." 109 
 
 acter of Jesus Christ, wherever it does not win 
 admiration, leading to imitation, in a word wor- 
 ship, there is something seriously wrong in that 
 nature. St. Paul, one of the most gifted men of 
 the world, one of the most considerate, one of the 
 most loving and humane, even he could not refrain 
 himself when he thought of Christ Jesus rejected, 
 and said, '*If any man love not the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, let him be anathema." 
 
 I admit that it does seem as though everi/ nature 
 ought to have in it this ability of worship. We 
 see it to a most pitiful extent in many heathen 
 people, giving up for the sake of their false deities 
 so very, very much ; so very much more than we 
 give up for the sake of our Christ. And I think 
 God Almighty respects and loves them and will 
 not be hard upon them, probably put many of 
 them into higher service in the hereafter than you 
 and I shall reach. But the lesson we ought to 
 learn from these heathen people is, that theology/ 
 is not to be despised, that men wdll be this or that 
 in life and feeling according to their theology, 
 that to get a true theology is, after all, worth 
 while. Doubtless there are people who assume 
 that the theologic disputations of all ages are 
 frivolous. But, let us not be in a hurry to concur 
 in that opinion. If it be true that men will be 
 this or that according to their ideas of what God 
 is and what He requires of them, is it not worth 
 
110 "WORSHIP god:* 
 
 while to be very careful lest we should get wrong 
 views and opinions as to the nature of Diety? If 
 I believe that the Almighty is simply Almighty, 
 that that is His chief attribute, the result will be 
 fear. My soul will crouch in His presence. I 
 shall be but a slave. I cannot rise any higher 
 than that. If on the other hand I believe that 
 Deity has as its chief attribute easy good nature, 
 no indignation in it, no hostility to anything ; 
 then I shall be sure to infer that good and evil are 
 only names, words only, not things. And 
 righteousness of thought and feeling will be 
 impossible to me. The idea will help on the 
 corruptness of my nature. It was so in Greece 
 and Rome ; their ideas of Deity were so corrupt 
 that they corrupted the people. So long as Mars 
 was worshipped as a Deity, war was perpetual. 
 So long as Venus was a goddess, lust was inevita- 
 ble. So long as the gods were treacherous the 
 people were treacherous also. When religion's 
 self is of such a nature that it corrupts the people, 
 the decline and fall are very rapid. And so, it 
 would seem that the disputations of theologians 
 are not meaningless or useless. They are vital. 
 To get at the truth is worth in its result all that 
 we can sacrifice of ease and peace. If we do not 
 care what the truth is, then, well then — God help 
 us — that is all I can say. 
 
 Eecognizing this ability of worship as being in 
 
"WORsnip god:' in 
 
 our constitution, a part of our manhood, that 
 which lifts us above the animal, that which 
 bespeaks us of a higher order of being ; and stat- 
 ing it, as we have done in this formula, ' admiration 
 leading to imitation' — does it not appear that 
 whatever we admire to the point of imitation we 
 worship ? Please to be careful in taking into your 
 memory the whole of this phrase, admiration to 
 the point of imitation. There may be admiration 
 of so feeble a kind that it does not produce any 
 desire to imitate. There may be imitation which 
 does not involve admiration. It is mere slavishness 
 and weakness, the inability to be even amiably 
 individual. The extent to which the thing which 
 is temporarily fiishionable in dress or anything 
 else is adopted shows how slavish and how weak 
 we all are. Imitation there may be without 
 admiration, admiration without imitation, but 
 when we get admiration up to the point of 
 imitation then we have worship. 
 
 And this worshipfulness in us may produce very 
 disastrous results to character when the object is 
 unworthy. We have read of devil worship. Of 
 course we assume that in an advanced civilization 
 like our own, we are leagues away from this. I 
 wish with all my heart that I could believe it. 
 Scripture reveals to us an Evil Personality which 
 it calls the Prince of Darkness. It tells us that 
 He is the Father of Lies, the Accuser of the 
 
112 "WORSHIP GODy 
 
 Brethren, the Devourer, the One who offers to 
 men (as he did to Jesus) power and wealth if only 
 they will take it in his way, if only they will 
 fall down and worship Him. He is represented as 
 being the enslaver of the human soul, as being 
 the arch-enemy of Christ, as great in wiles and 
 snares, as inciting to sin, as serpentine in his 
 nature, as not only at one time a roaring lion, but 
 at another as a snake in the grass, the arch-traitor, 
 the arch-deceiver. This is the New Testament 
 revelation of the character of this Prince of Dark- 
 ness. You say you don't believe in him. I hope 
 not. But some do, for they imitate him. They 
 admire his methods and adopt them. If, you 
 mean, that you don't believe in his existence, then 
 you know more than Jesus Christ knows. About 
 which I for one have an honest doubt. This 
 Prince of Darkness has been very successful in 
 this world. From the time of Adam he has been 
 at work here, injecting into the minds of men 
 wrono: views about God, and about themselves. 
 He cannot eradicate from the constitution of man 
 the propensity to worship and so he says ' ' worship 
 me ; I like to l)e worshiped. Admire my methods, 
 imitate my way of action," (for that is worship.) 
 Worship is not simply bending the knee. It is 
 admiration to the point of imitation. And so it 
 comes to this that if we adopt the methods which 
 are not approved by Jesus the Christ but are 
 
''WORSHIP god:' 113 
 
 approved by the Tempter of Jesus, we worship, I 
 do not like to admit it, I shrink from the admis- 
 sion, but I cannot see any way of escape, we 
 worship the devil. I am compelled to go a step 
 farther yet and say that if our souls were so 
 purified that evil would be a positive pain to us, as 
 much of a pain to the soul as the stab of a poniard to 
 the body, our perceptions would be so spiritualized 
 that the extent to which devil worship prevails 
 would appear to us frightful and horrible. That 
 I may not seem to be making vain and vague 
 general charges against an impersonal somebody 
 about whom none of you are concerned, let me 
 ask you to recall some of the acknowledged facts of 
 common life. This evil one against whom our Lord 
 warns us is called *' Tlie Father of Lies." Think 
 how many people there are who do not shrink 
 from falsehood when there is anything to be 
 gained by it. Whom do these worship ? Whom 
 do they imitate ? 
 
 This Evil Personality is called, ** The Accuser of 
 the Brethren." Are there no persons living in the 
 world who seem to take a malicious and cruel de- 
 light in insinuations which undermine the character 
 of others — specially of Christian men and women? 
 Whom do these worship ? They who systemati- 
 cally betray others and deceive others, who lay 
 traps for them and snares for them — whom do 
 these worship? They worship Him >yhom they 
 
114 '^WORSniP GOD." 
 
 imitate ; there is no other answer. We really 
 need not take ship and cross the seas to find 
 devil-worship. Unless the teaching of Jesus is 
 not reliable, it is nearer home than that. 
 
 But I must turn away from it ; — it is too pain- 
 ful a theme to dwell on for more than a moment. 
 Jesus the Christ by the gift of the Holy Spirit can 
 deliver us from this frightful worship, but no one 
 else can. It is His mission on this earth, to 
 deliver us from it. Let us learn more and more 
 to admire and imitate Him that we may overcome 
 it. For the full consequences of it are not seen 
 here on earth. The end is not by and by. 
 
 My time is passing, but it would not do to stop 
 at this point. I must detain you a minute or two 
 longer while I say that there is nothing that you 
 and I need for our enlightenment and enlivenment 
 so much as a more simple and earnest worship of 
 God. Our minds grow languid, our intellect 
 becomes torpid, our afi'ections loose their youthful 
 freshness and energy if we do not keep before us 
 some one to admire and imitate, some one to wor- 
 ship. Practically, to us, God is Jesus Christ. 
 We cannot get above what He has revealed. If 
 you think otherwise try it. In the Church we 
 need a more simple, hearty, enthusiastic worship 
 of God. I hope you will not be frightened at that 
 word * enthusiastic' It does not mean fanatic. 
 Fanaticisn^ is bljnJ emotion, uncurbed by reason, 
 
"WORSHIP GOD." 115 
 
 unchecked by intellect. It is the steam in the 
 engine uncontrolled by the hand of the engineer. 
 But enthusiasm — it means the Spirit of God in 
 the intellect, the Spirit of God in the reason, the 
 Spirit of God in the heart and so in the whole 
 personality and in the whole life. I was telling 
 some friends the other night about a clergyman in 
 London, sitting in the retiring room of a Cemetery 
 Chapel, waiting patiently for a funeral which was 
 much behind the appointed time, when suddenly 
 the sexton opened the door, and said to the clergy- 
 man, **If you please. Sir, the Corpse's brother 
 wants to speak with you." The astonished 
 clergyman was for a moment appalled at the idea 
 of meeting a Corpse's brother, hardly knowing 
 whether it would be a live or dead man. I have 
 sometimes thought that some of our churches 
 might not inaptly be designated as a Corpse's 
 brother. I have no ambition to be tied to any 
 such church. If there be any place where the 
 smell of death is not only unpleasant but repul- 
 sive, it is in a church whose very foundation is 
 life from the dead. As one has said, ''Our 
 churches as mere organized bodies are comely 
 enough, and they are not without some degree of 
 life and strength. They work easily, quietly, 
 philosophically, and cautiously, like a man of 
 seventy years of age who is careful in all his 
 movements, and afraid of domg too much. But 
 
116 "WORSHIP GODr 
 
 you must excuse me when I say that we are want- 
 ing in the strength and vigor and energy of a man 
 of twenty-five. We are old before our time." 
 
 We need to worship God, That is all. Every- 
 thing we need would come if only we could 
 worship. The coldness would leave the region of 
 the heart. There would come more thinking 
 power into the intellect. The glories of the Apo- 
 calypse would not be too glorious for the 
 regenerated imagination. Much of the Scripture 
 which is now dark to us, because out of the reach 
 of our experience, would become clear. Our 
 horizon would stretch out and out beyond the 
 present limits of vision. How often it is with us 
 as with those painters who paint a beautiful little 
 bit of country all shut in with rocks and hills, not 
 even a glimpse of luminous sky above to speak 
 of something else than this ornate little prison. 
 The greatest painters never do that. They leave 
 an outlook. They suggest infinite distances. 
 Our life, the life of every Unchristianized man is 
 shut in. It has no outlook. What would the 
 New Testament be without the Book of the Eev- 
 elation of St. John? That gives it artistic 
 completeness. The end of the Book of Revelation 
 is, **Theendof the great tragedy of life. The 
 beast has vanished ; the hissing of the unclean 
 spirits has been silenced ; the Dragon, the old 
 serpent called the Devil and Satan, is bound ; the 
 
*'WOESmP GOD.'* 117 
 
 tempest has ceased ; the thunders are hushed ; 
 the smoke and the clouds are swept away ; the 
 light shines, and the pinnacles of the New Jeru- 
 salem come forth to view. Life is blessed in that 
 city. There shall be no more curse, no more 
 sorrow, no more crying, no more pain. God 
 shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." 
 
 You call that poetry, do you? Suppose it is 
 poetry, what then ? No poet ever yet equalled the 
 fact which he poetized, as no painter ever yet 
 mixed colors equal to those in nature. When 
 the poetry is gone out of our life, it is like the 
 sappiness gone out of the tree ; all that is left is 
 sawdust. *' Worship God" and the poetry will 
 return into your dried-up lives, as the Psalmist 
 suggests in the words, *' Bless the Lord, O my 
 soul, and all that is within me bless His holy 
 
IX. 
 
 THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 
 
 " Do not sin against the child." — Genesis, xlii : 22. 
 
 THESE words were spoken by the eldest born 
 of Israel's sons when there was a conspiracy 
 among them to deprive Joseph of his birthright in 
 the family. There are so many aspects of the 
 great theme of the Incarnation that one must neces- 
 sarily feel no little perplexity when obliged to 
 select the ideas to be presented on any special 
 occasion. So much must be left unsaid. Our 
 theme at the best must be wretchedly incomplete. 
 The Incarnation is the miracle of miracles. It is 
 too subtle a theme for the Intellect. When we 
 try to satisfy the mind we come to a point beyond 
 which we cannot pass by any intellectual process. 
 And yet, this limitation ought not to produce any 
 kind of scepticism as to the fact itself. For all life 
 in its origin is mysterious. And if the facts about 
 it were not so common, if men were not born into 
 the world every day, we should doubtless perceive 
 more readily than we do how very little indeed 
 
 118 
 
THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 119 
 
 man's part is in the production of any thing. 
 All vital facts elude us. They are; but we cannot 
 tell how they are. 
 
 This we know, however, that intellect is not 
 everything in us. Our nature comprises much 
 else than the intellectual. There are facts for the 
 heart of man which once apprehended never leave 
 us. And this of the Incarnation is one. How 
 shall Deity so reveal Himself to man as to win his 
 confidence and love ? That is the great practical 
 question of religion. The answer to that question 
 is the Incarnation — God manifest in the flesh. 
 If we were inclined to look at this fact philosophi- 
 cally, it would be easy to show that in man's 
 nature there is the inwrought expectation of an 
 Incarnation. For what is idolatry but an attempt 
 on man's part to bring God within human limita- 
 tions ? Jesus Christ satisfies that instinct in man 
 which leads to idolatry. The instinct must be 
 gratified. The Incarnation is the Divine answer 
 to that instinct. Jesus coming into humanity 
 becomes the heart of humanity. You cannot now 
 put any one else than Jesus Christ at the centre of 
 our life. In the Kingdom of Heaven, superiority 
 of nature gives superiority of position. There is 
 nothing arbitrary or forced in the supremacy of 
 Jesus. 
 
 In the Incarnation, God joins himself to our 
 humanity as never before, joins himself to 
 
120 THE CniLD AND HIS DUES, 
 
 our childhood as well as to our manhood. And 
 the fact that I want to put above every other in 
 this morning's meditation is this, that God can 
 and does speak through childhood as well as 
 through fully developed manhood. Childhood is 
 no hindrance to the work of the Spirit of God, 
 but a necessary stage in the work, a stage which 
 if lost can never be fully recovered. And as I am 
 sure that we have never given sufficient thought 
 to the meaning of the impressibility of childhood, 
 and have never enough apprehended that our 
 great religious opportunity is in the first few years 
 of a child's life, — I shall use the brief time allotted 
 to me at this Christmas service in a presentation of 
 such ideas as may help towards a revision of our 
 creed on this point. When we look at the babe 
 of Bethlehem, is not the thous^ht irresistible, God 
 can speak to us through the helplessness of the 
 babe. And when we watch that babe as it is 
 hurried away from persecution, and think that 
 it is carried in the fostering arms of motJierhood, 
 can we resist the thought, that the preservation of 
 the Kingdom of God in the earth is dependent on 
 the sanctification and consecration of motherhood ? 
 The Incarnation is the elevation of mother- 
 hood to a place it had never had in any heathen 
 or pagan country. The preservation of God's 
 Kingdom in the world is dependent, so it seems, 
 on the sanctification of those human instincts which 
 
THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 121 
 
 the Creator has sown in our nature. Surely that 
 is a great enough truth to justify the Kingdom of 
 God being hidden away in the infanthood of a 
 babe. The tendency of religion has often been 
 to say, crucify your social instincts. They are 
 unholy and unclean. Christianity says, conse- 
 crate them and they immediately become holy and 
 clean. Christianity began with a consecrated 
 childhood and a consecrated motherhood . Through 
 these relationships God spake his first parental 
 word in this dispensation in which we now live. 
 
 If you will allow me the expression — all the 
 gentlenesses and delicacies, all the modesties and 
 sweet refinements of the Kingdom of God, were 
 brought into human expression in that babe and 
 that mother. That child stood for all children, 
 that mother for all mothers thenceforth. God 
 spake through that child in order that we might 
 learn that He could speak and did speak through 
 childhood. Why should God limit himself to the 
 conditions of a child's nature ? Because there is a 
 language to be spoken through the child which 
 can never be spoken except through the child. 
 Because there is a rebuke to be given to our proud 
 grown-up intellectualism which arrogates to itself 
 the prerogative of being God's voice and his only 
 voice. And the reason why we have so often 
 and so sorely missed the meaning of this childhood 
 of Jesus as a part of the revelation of God is in 
 
123 THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 
 
 this — that we have thought of religion as 
 something intellectual, simply — a matter of 
 doctrines and creeds, and logical propositions. 
 And have we not asked what can a child know of 
 the truth or falsity of these ? A sufficient answer 
 would be. — * It will know just what its father and 
 mother tell it, for a child is so constituted that it 
 believes in its father «nd mother.' But we will 
 not give that answer. We go deeper than that, 
 and first of all deny that religion consists in 
 doctrines and creeds and intellectual propositions, 
 any more than a dinner consists of the printed 
 receipts of a Cookery Book. Religion is aback of 
 these literary productions. It consists of love to 
 God and love to man. 
 
 Love is not an intellectual thing at all. The 
 essence of the Christian religion is love. That 
 elevates it above every other religion the human 
 race has ever known. Can a child love ? Can it 
 love father or mother ? Can it depend on father 
 and mother ? Can it confide in father or mother ? 
 If so, it can love God. If so it can love man, for 
 father and mother represent mankind to it. We 
 who are adults love mankind to the extent (and 
 only to the extent) to which we love the represen- 
 tatives of it whom we know. 
 
 Set God as He is in Jesus Christ before the 
 heart of a child, and will there be no response in 
 that heart? Then there has been somethinor 
 
 o 
 
THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 123 
 
 terribly atheistic in the secondary parenthood of 
 that child. The primary parenthood is in God — 
 the secondary parenthood in man. I go aback of 
 secondary parenthood, aback of all ideas — opinions, 
 creeds and formularies of man's devising, and I 
 aver that it is absolutely impossible in the nature 
 of things that Almighty God can so form the 
 spirits he puts into human bodies as that in them 
 from the first there shall be a negative of Himself. 
 The root of the error is in this assumption, that a 
 child's nature is animal and irreligious, an idea 
 that never originated in Christianity but in 
 paganism and gross materialism. A too narrow 
 view of religion, and a too narrow view of child- 
 hood, have landed us in ideas and in practices 
 which are most assuredly Anti-Christian. The 
 view that religion is something to be learned from 
 without and not something to be evolved from 
 within, something intellectual, not affectional and 
 vital, is at the root of this most serious error, an 
 error so radical and serious that I verily believe , 
 that such themes as that recently discussed over 
 the Andover professorship, are the veriest trifles in 
 comparison with it. If religion be a mere 
 intellectual acquirement like a knowledge of the 
 history of philosophy, of course it would be 
 useless to expect children to know anything about 
 it, or to have any experience of it. But if religion 
 has its seat in the heart and in the will, if it be 
 
124 THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 
 
 far more affectional than intellectual , then wherever 
 affection and will are operative, religion is alike 
 capable of being brought into operation. If there 
 be no affection and no will in a child there can be 
 no religion, if there be affection and will there can 
 be religion also. On this point there cannot be a 
 doubt as to what is the Scripture position. The 
 Book which contains such sentences as these 
 *' Out of the heart are the issues of life," '« With 
 the heart man believeth unto righteousness," 
 " Whosoever receiveth one such little child in my 
 name receiveth me, but whosoever shall be a 
 stumbling block in the way of these little ones 
 which believe in me, it were better for him that a 
 millstone were hanged about his neck and he 
 drowned in the midst of the sea," I say as to the 
 position of that Book on this question there can 
 be no doubt. Then, why has the other position 
 been held by so many, that religion is an intellec- 
 tual and mental acqurement for adults and not an 
 affectional relation towards God on the part of 
 everyone? There is but one answer, *' we err, 
 not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of 
 God." So long as any of us are under the blight 
 of the error that in order to be in an}^ degree 
 religious, it is necessary to be capable of judging 
 and weighing evidence pi^o and con, so long we 
 shall feel justified in holding that a Christian 
 church is a confederation of adult persons, or 
 
THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 125 
 
 persons who have arrived, as we say, at years of 
 discretion. But if once we went to the Bible and 
 bathed our souls in its baptismal waters, saturated 
 ourselves with its spirit, it would be impos- 
 sible for us to take that position. Many things 
 would stand in the way, many facts, many passages 
 of Holy Scripture, but chiefest of all obstacles 
 would be that which we think of to-day, the great 
 fact of the Incarnation of our Lord and Savior 
 Jesus Christ. The babe at Bethlehem is the 
 Divine Word in its tenderest and gentlest expres- 
 sion. 
 
 Now, this mistake as to the seat of all true 
 religion, that it is in the intellect and not in the 
 heart, is by no means trivial. It must, of neces- 
 sity, influence all our practical church life. If 
 children have divine relations and rights God- 
 ward, and we do not recognize them, and in our 
 ignorance defraud the children of them, their 
 whole life is likely to be of a different color and 
 tendency from what it would otherwise be. It 
 is easy to see this. If we believe that religion 
 has its seat in the affections and not in the intel- 
 lect, we shall perceive that the religious education 
 of the child begins as soon as its affectional nature 
 is capable of receiving impressions. How soon is 
 that? How soon does a child know enough to 
 distinguish between its own mother and a stranger ? 
 The first years of a child's life are years of 
 
126 THE CIIILB AND HIS DUES. 
 
 impressions and nothing else. The age of reflec- 
 tion has not come, nor will for some time. The 
 plastic age is the first. Every day, every hour, 
 every moment, impressions are being made on the 
 affectional nature of the child, impressions which 
 will last as long as that nature lasts. That being 
 so, is it possible to over-estimate the value of 
 those first years for the highest purposes of life ? 
 I wish that it were a proper thing for me to 
 reproduce in your hearing some of the glowing 
 words of an American Divine not long since de- 
 ceased, whose influence on the ministers of our 
 English Churches has been greater than that of all 
 other American divines put together. Speaking 
 on this theme, to which I have been led this 
 morning, he says — '*I have no scales to measure 
 quantities of efiect in this matter of early training, 
 but I may be allowed to express my solemn 
 conviction, that more, as a general fact, is done, 
 or lost by neglect of doing, on a child's immor- 
 tality, in the first three years of his life, than in 
 all his years of discipline afterwards." And again 
 he says still more emphatically, *'Let every 
 Christian father and mother understand, when their 
 child is three years old, that they have done more 
 than half of all they will ever do for his character." 
 It is very remarkable that the greatest of all 
 Pre-Christian philosophers, Plato, held substan- 
 tially the same view. And when He whose word 
 
THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 127 
 
 to us is law, before whose utterances our opinions 
 hide their diminished heads in the dust, when He 
 said, ''Suffer the little children to come unto me 
 and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom 
 of Heaven," was He not saying the same thing, 
 only in a divine way, as this Plato of the American 
 pulpit ? 
 
 But, some one might ask, how is it possible to 
 give religious insti'uction to a child of three years 
 of age? Religious instruction can be but little, 
 but it is always safe to postpone religious 
 instruction when the child is in the constant 
 presence of religious character. Religious or ir- 
 religious imp7'essioiis are produced from the 
 earliest times. And of these we are now speak- 
 ing. They are the most important. Religious 
 inst7'uction is only a part of religious education. 
 All education begins at the cradle and continues 
 as long as life lasts. Connecting the two dispen- 
 sations once again, the greatest mind of Pre- 
 Christian times will help us as to this matter when 
 he says, "The best way of training the young, is 
 to train yourself; not to admonish them, but to be 
 always carrying out your own principles in prac- 
 tice." And our modern theological Plato says : 
 ''In this charge and nurture of infant children, 
 nothing is to be done by an artificial lecturing 
 process. The defect of our character is not to be 
 made up by the sanctity of our words ; we must 
 
128 THE CniLD AND HIS DUES. 
 
 be all that we would have our children feel and 
 receive. Thus, if a man were to be set before a 
 mirror, with the feeling that the exact image of 
 what he is for the day, is there to be produced 
 and left as a permanent and fixed image forever, 
 to what carefulness, what delicate sincerity of 
 spirit would he be moved. And will he be less 
 moved to the same, when that mirror is the soul 
 of his child?" 
 
 Thus it comes to pass that though parents may 
 withhold religious instruction from their children 
 they cannot withhold religious education. For it 
 goes on by a Divine law, over which we have no 
 control. Whenever a stronger, a more fixed and 
 determined nature comes into perpetual contact 
 with a younger and more plastic nature, the latter 
 is educated by the former. The former impresses 
 itself upon it. Hence the importance of the 
 associations which children form. Hence the sol- 
 emn duty which is laid upon parents to discrimi- 
 nate between the influences to which they subject 
 their children. The more plastic the child the 
 nobler in the long run will be his life, but the more 
 care is necessary in its beginnings. I know that 
 there is the Unseen Spirit of God working on the 
 spirit of the child all the time. That spirit is 
 stirring the mind into thought and the heart into 
 feeling. But God has decreed that the ordinance 
 of parenthood shall be the most powerful in all 
 
TEE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 129 
 
 this world. Richard Baxter, the author of the 
 Saint's Rest, gave it as his judgment that "Family 
 instruction and government are God's appoint- 
 ed means of conversion — public ordinances of 
 edification." 
 
 That may be the law to which practically there 
 are exceptions, but this we may say unhesitat- 
 ingly, that never can the Church of God do its 
 Divinely-appointed work till there is intelligent 
 co-operation between it and the family. And this 
 also, that nothing outside the family can ever be 
 powerful enough to neutralize the influence of 
 family life if it be irreligious or to thoroughly 
 undo its influences if it be religious. It is not 
 conceivable that any one should ever love a child 
 as a parent loves it, and therefore it is not 
 conceivable that parents should ever deliberately 
 do anything whereby their children may be in- 
 jured. But error and love may dwell together in 
 the same heart ; ignorance and love may dwell to- 
 gether. There may be no perception of the rela- 
 tion of religion to happiness, no perception of the 
 relation of the Christ of God to the development 
 of character. 
 
 Men and women of average goodness, who would 
 do anything in the world they thought necessary 
 for the world-life of their children, have not got 
 their eyes open to perceive that happiness depends 
 on the within more than on the without. They do 
 
130 THE CniLD AND HIS D TIES. 
 
 not for a moment despise Jesus Christ and His 
 work, but they assume that religion can be left to 
 take care of itself. They do not see that the presen- 
 tation of Christ to the soul awakes into life some- 
 thing which is otherwise dormant. The question 
 whether there is anything in Christ to touch into 
 feeling and hope and confidence, a child's heart, 
 has not been seriously considered. How it is, I 
 know not, but the fact remains that even christian- 
 ized people do not see how studiously our Lord 
 identifies himself with the cause of the little child, 
 and the cause of the poor and unfortunate, and 
 every true minister will do the same. Our clients 
 are those who cannot speak for themselves — 
 the little child that cannot speak what it feels, the 
 little child with its innate ideas, ideas not orig- 
 inated by teaching, ideas which are emotions strug- 
 gling within, which God has inwrought into the 
 soul ; and the poor who dare not speak out what 
 they feel, who have so generally in the past ages 
 of the world been robbed and wronged ; Christ 
 identified himself with these. Let us not forget that 
 w^ierever there is relisrious feelino^, there is relis^ious 
 life. This religious feeling in childhood is to be 
 developed as the basis of religious action in man- 
 hood. It is in the soul of man as it was in the 
 creation of this material world. First of all there 
 was the chaos, the sweltering surging waters, and 
 the spirit of God moving on the face of the waters. 
 
THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 131 
 
 But out of it came the Cosmos — the Divine or- 
 der — the solid earth with its mineral wealth and 
 its treasures of coal ready for the habitation of 
 man ; but the solidity followed the liquidity ; and 
 so it is with a human soul. At first there is relig- 
 ious feeling, out of which under proper culture and 
 the o'erbrooding spirit of God, will grow the solid, 
 indestructible convictions of manhood and woman- 
 hood. But, if you repress the feeling, and throw 
 cold water on it when it glows in childhood, how 
 are you to get your convictions in manhood ? You 
 have destroyed the material out of which convic- 
 tions are made. 
 
 Before the animal passions begin to assert them- 
 selves, as in youth or early manhood, there should 
 have been evolved in the soul a religious love which 
 shall control and moderate them and bring them 
 under the power of reason. And so it should be 
 evident that there is no possibility of beginning too 
 early with religious culture, providing we mean by 
 it Christ and his spirit and temper. Everything 
 of an abstract nature, and especially everything 
 controversial must be postponed. Jesus — what 
 he was, what he said, what he did ; this is all 
 that a child needs, and it really does seem as though 
 God had made special provision in the method of 
 the New Testament literature, in its parables and 
 miracles for the child's nature. While the deep- 
 est meaning is profound enough for the philoso- 
 
133 THE CHILD AI\'D HIS DUES. 
 
 pher, the surface teaching is simple enough for 
 the child. 
 
 But I must not take liberties with your atten- 
 tion, although no theme is of greater practical 
 importance, and none deserves more thorough 
 treatment. 
 
 So long as we are in fetters to the idea that 
 religion has its seat in the intellect, so long the 
 children of our day will be defrauded of their 
 rights in the kingdom of Christ. When once we 
 are converted to the scriptural position that the 
 seat of religion is in the affectional region, then 
 children will begin to have their souls recognized 
 as well as their bodies ; never till then. The in- 
 tellectual view of religion limits God's relation to 
 the soul of man. It limits the sphere of the oper- 
 ation of the Spirit of God. It limits the area of 
 Christ's atonement by virtually making it depend 
 on intellectual apprehension, thus confining its 
 results to adult life. It limits and pauperizes 
 human nature. It puts religion on the same level 
 with mathematics, biology, geology, philosophy, 
 something to be acquired mentally. It makes 
 God's will to be limited by man's will, and makes 
 the Almighty w^ait as a servant at man's door to 
 ask permission of his creature to begin his work 
 on the soul. Thus, this intellectual view of relio:- 
 ion is dishonoring to man and God both. The 
 Ptolemaic system of astronomy was superseded 
 
THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 133 
 
 geDerations ago. The Ptolemaic system of re- 
 ligion remains still — man with his proud intellect 
 at the centre, not God with his unchanging love. 
 When our Lord took a little child and set him in 
 the midst of the disciples and said that that little 
 child was the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 He, by that act, overturned the religion of mere 
 intellectualism and established a religion in 
 which the affectional was uppermost. The affec- 
 tional was predominant in that child. Greatness 
 always has its seat in the affections. There never 
 yet was a great nature in which the affectional was 
 not predominant. Of course if there be no affec- 
 tion in your child there can be no religion. And 
 the depth, the strength, the force, the fervor, the 
 glow of religious conviction in any soul will be in 
 exact relation to the depth, the force, the strength 
 of the affection in that soul. Selfishness, schem- 
 ing, and calculation eat out the capacity for 
 religiousness in a soul because they eat out its 
 capacity for affection. 
 
 Let us not forget that there is only one be- 
 ginning to any life, and everything in the life 
 begins then. You cannot begin a religious life at 
 forty or fifty without beginning it under disadvan- 
 tages which are serious. Nor can you begin it at 
 twenty without some disadvantages that need not 
 be. The beginnings of religion or irreligion are 
 in tiie earliest years, and long before its existence 
 
134 THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 
 
 is recognized. Even Calvin, speaking of infancy, 
 says, *' The work of God in the soul is not without 
 existence because it is unobserved and not 
 understood by us." We forget that everything 
 that is in manhood is in germ in childhood — 
 everything. There is nothing added in after 
 years, no new faculty, no new power. It is all 
 there from the first. And that which is strongest 
 in manhood is that which has been fed and tutored 
 into predominance. The whole Kingdom of 
 Christ lay folded up in that babe at Bethlehem. 
 It was there in its quietest, its gentlest and 
 sweetest expression. And in every babe there is 
 religious capacity. If not, in the babe there will 
 never be in the man. Oh then, do not sin against 
 the child. Do not rob it of its place in the family. 
 Do not defraud it of its birthright. As soon as it 
 can know anything let it know that it has a father 
 and mother on earth because it has a father in 
 Heaven, a Deliverer from all evil in Jesus the 
 Christ, let this be the basis truth on which its 
 nature is built. And then if in the stormy years 
 of temptation that follow, it should ever be 
 tempted to the folly and madness of the prodigal, 
 and leave the shelter of a Father's House to spend 
 its substance in riotous living, there is a hope, 
 amounting almost to an assurance, that when it 
 conies to itself, the first truth it knew will assert 
 its power and the erring soul will turn its footsteps 
 
THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 135 
 
 back with the resolve, *' I will arise and go to my 
 Father and will say unto him , * Father I have 
 sinned against Heaven and before thee, and am no 
 more worthy to be called thy son.'" ^ 
 
X. 
 
 A MOEE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 But covet earnestly the best gifts. And yet shew I unto you a 
 more excellent way. — i Cor., xii: 31. 
 
 THESE words of the Apostle have a backward 
 and a forward look. There is the way 
 which he has just trodden and the *'more excel- 
 lent way" which he is about to show. We must 
 know both ways before we can estimate the greater 
 excellency of the one over the other. Searching 
 into the chapter at the very end of which are the 
 words of our text, what do we find as its theme ? 
 *' Now concerning Spiritual gifts." These words 
 contain it. Following, step by step, the leading 
 of the Apostle's thought, we learn that these men 
 and women to whom he writes had been Gentile 
 idolators, much in the same condition of mind and 
 life as we find the Hindoos and Chinese to-day. 
 But they had been changed from this condition, 
 had been converted as we say, and were disciples 
 of Christ. The Apostle attributes this discipleship 
 to the operation of the Holy Spirit of God upoii 
 
 136 
 
A KOBE EXCELLENT WAY, 137 
 
 their minds. **No man speaking by the Holy- 
 Spirit, (under His influence) calleth Jesus anath- 
 ema, and no man can say that Jesus is the Lord 
 but by the Holy Spirit." And that which was 
 true of these men and women of Corinth is equally 
 true of us. If Jesus Christ be Lord to us we have 
 the evidence in ourselves of having been and being 
 under the power of the Holy Spirit of God. Then 
 the Apostle proceeds to speak of spiritual gifts, 
 the results of the unseen operation of the Spirit of 
 God as manifested in the Christian church of that 
 day. There would naturally be among new con- 
 verts a propensity to assume that some one class 
 of gifts was orthodox and others questionable. 
 Perplexity and confusion would arise. And so 
 the Apostle warns them against ' limiting the Holy 
 One of Israel.' He tells them there are 'diversi- 
 ties of gifts,' 'differences of administration,' that 
 as in material nature so in spiritual nature, variety 
 is not inconsistent with unity. One man is wise, he 
 has excellent judgment ; another man seems to 
 have an intuitiveness of knowledge ; another man 
 has strong faith ; another the gift of healing ; 
 another the gift of prophecy ; another can work 
 miracles ; another discerns spirits ; another has 
 the gift of tongues ; and still another the interpre- 
 tation of tongues. Now, we cannot stay this 
 morning to inquire particularly as to the nature 
 of these gifts, how far they were the quickening 
 
138 A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 of the natural by the intense action of the super- 
 natural upon it, so that each gift followed the law 
 of the natural propensity of the individual, that or 
 something else. All that is necessary to our pur- 
 pose is to point to the truth emphasized by the 
 Apostle, that the power underneath all, was the 
 self-same Spirit of God, and that the Sovereignty 
 of God was show^n in the distribution and operation 
 of the gifts, *' dividing to every man severally as 
 He will" 
 
 The Apostle goes on to show that the diversity 
 is not simply consistent with Unity, but required 
 in order to Unity. Oneness is not unity. 
 Individualism is not unity. Many there be who 
 contend for the unity of the Godhead, but all the 
 while they mean the Individualism of the Godhead. 
 Unity comes of diversity. The Apostle illustrates 
 this by reference to the human body. The foot, 
 the hand, the ear, the e3^e, the members, are all 
 different. The eye cannot hear. The ear cannot 
 see. The foot has no ability of doing the work 
 of the hand. Every part has its own special 
 ofBce, and the total result is not schism but unity. 
 If the hand were to put out the eye the hand itself 
 would be a loser. Pain in one part means 
 discomfort everywhere. Each part serves every 
 other part, and serves it all the more effectively 
 by being different from it. ** Whether one mem- 
 ber suffer, all the members suffer wdth it ; or one 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAT. 139 
 
 member be honored all the members rejoice with 
 it." This is so in the material body which the 
 Apostle uses as an illustration and suggests his 
 ideal of a perfect church, though the ideal be far 
 ahead of present attainment. In the church there 
 are Apostles, but all are not apostles ; there are 
 teachers, but all men are not teachers ; there are 
 times of miracle, but all times are not conditioned 
 for the miraculous ; there are gifts of healing, but 
 very few men have them, all do not speak with 
 tongues, all have not the interpretation of tongues, 
 and yet some have. These are the gifts, in all 
 their manifold variety, all when genuine and true 
 tending towards unity. These gifts have been of 
 great value to the church. Those we differentiate 
 by the word 'miraculous' belong to times when, 
 without some unquestioned sign of the Divine 
 presence and power, men could not stand before 
 the terrific opposition brought to bear against them. 
 There are ages in which the excellency of a thing 
 is not enough to win acceptance for it, ay, ages in 
 which the more supernal the excellency, the more 
 violent will be the opposition. In such ages men 
 and their message have to be protected by some 
 such aureole of glory as only God Himself can 
 throw around their brows. Miracles, wonders 
 and siofns are not so much for the conviction of the 
 unbeliever as for the protection of the believer. 
 We do not find that even the raising of Lazarus 
 
140 A MORE EXCELLENT WAT. 
 
 was of much, if any use, for evangelistic purposes. 
 Men only deceive themselves when they assume 
 that their disposition Godward would be changed 
 by any visitations from the world of spirits. If 
 there be anything in what is called " Spiritualism" 
 it is certain that its effect has been all the other 
 way. It has demoralized men instead of promo- 
 ting in them holy character. And so, while the 
 miracles of our Lord were revelations of Divine 
 Power and of a Kingdom of Heaven, while they 
 overawed many unbelievers , they did not convert 
 them. 
 
 Now, in these days of oifrs, we are often in a 
 state of rebellion because we cannot command 
 signs and wonders. God's promises are that he 
 will come down *' as rain upon the mown grass," 
 '*as showers that water the earth," ** I will be as 
 the dew unto Israel " a gentle, constant, fructifying 
 influence. But we want freshets to bear away the 
 bridges, and make a loud report. We have very 
 little fiiith in what our Lord Himself says, that 
 " the Kingdom of God cometh not with observa- 
 tion."" We want Pentecost, with its tongues of 
 flame, and its mighty rushing wind, but are we 
 ready for the outside persecutions, the tortures, 
 the deaths, the Herodian tyrannies and all the 
 terrific opposition which in the one direction cor- 
 responded to Pentecost in the other? Pentecost 
 was God's answer to man's demoniac hatred. No 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY, 141 
 
 men, without a Pentecostal baptism, would have 
 dared to face such a frowning world as that which 
 glared upon the Apostles. And when you and I 
 are called to face the fires of martyrdom we shall 
 have Pentecostal power in which to face them. It 
 is enough for all ordinary purposes if our Lord be 
 with us *'as the dew," "as the rain," *' as the 
 showers that water the earth," if we live spiritu- 
 ally in a dispensation of the Spirit as we live 
 Qaturally in a dispensation of the sunlight. Our 
 God never acts arbitrarily. Not only the times 
 and the seasons, but the spiritual proprieties and 
 necessities of the times and seasons are in His 
 hand and under His sovereisrn control. He sfiveth 
 to every age as to every man, ** severally as He 
 will." 
 
 And now I want that we should specially notice 
 that this Apostle says there is '' a more excellent 
 way" to the attainment of the end sought by God, 
 than this way of miracle and wonder and sign. 
 He says, " seek earnestly the best gifts," but the 
 time will come when it will appear that these gifts 
 are inferior to something else. The time will 
 come when speaking with tongues, gifts of healing, 
 working miracles, all these signs and wonders 
 will be seen as provisional and temporary. In 
 the very nature of things they cannot be continued. 
 Their continuation would make them common- 
 place. They would lose their uses and cease to 
 
142 A MORE EXCELLENT WAT. 
 
 be of service. That which God seeks for man 
 can be accomplished when the world is ready for 
 it by some agency whose permanency will not 
 make it commonplace — viz., by the existence 
 and cultivation of that state of heart which is 
 expressed in the one word '* charity." It is a 
 very remarkable thing, and will appear more and 
 more noteworthy, the longer we ponder it, that 
 this Apostle, living in the time of miracle and 
 wonder and sign, and able to estimate the exajct 
 result of these, should yet boldly subordinate 
 them, as evangelistic agencies, to the power of 
 Christian charity, giving them an inferior and 
 temporary place. These Pentecostal manifesta- 
 tions, for which we so often sigh, thinking, in our 
 ignorance that if only we had them, the supremacy 
 of the church as a Divine Institute would be 
 universally acknowledged, and *'a nation born in 
 a day," St. Paul counts as provisional and 
 inadequate to the ends which, we assume, they 
 would further. We want something for the eye, 
 something for the ear, something sensuous, the 
 Kino^dom of God comins: with observation. Better 
 than all these if only you could get it, says the 
 Apostle, would be charity — that Christian love 
 which is the strongest and most powerful of all 
 Divine creations. '' For though I speak with the 
 tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, 
 I am become as sounding brass and tinkling cym- 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 143 
 
 bals. And though I have the gift of prophecy and 
 understand all mysteries and all knowledge ; and 
 though I have all faith, so that I could remove 
 mountains, (for there is trememdous energy in 
 faith) and have not charity, I am nothing." He 
 goes further still, and John the Baptist like, lays 
 the axe to the root of the tree. — ** Though I 
 bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though 
 I give my body to be burned and have not charity, 
 it profiteth me nothing." This is startling doctrine, 
 startling, but undeniably Apostolic. A man may 
 have these gifts referred to, and yet may fall 
 short of having attained to any possession 
 of the central thing in Christianity, that which 
 distinguishes it from every false religion, and 
 every corrupt form of a true religion the world 
 has ever known. Men may have the energy ol 
 faith and very little if any charity. What seems 
 stranger still, they may be large and liberal givers 
 of money to the poor, and not have charity. 
 They may even go to the martyr's stake and not 
 have charity. All donations of money are 
 not acts of charity. All martyr-deaths are not 
 evidences of pure love to God and love to man. 
 Many a man has been so self-willed, and so con- 
 sumed with passion, so obstinate that he would rath- 
 er die than give in. Many a man has willed away 
 money to the poor simply because he could not 
 hold it any longer, or because the solicitation was 
 
144 A MOBE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 too urgent, or because he must save appearances, 
 or because his conscience was not very easy as to 
 the way in which he obtained his money. For as 
 one has recently said in a published exposition of 
 the Lord's Prayer, when we pray, <' Give us this 
 day our daily bread," our bread. '' Bread that 
 we beg is not ours ; bread that Ave take as lazy 
 pensioners on some one else's bounty, is not ours ; 
 bread that we steal is not ours ; bread that we get 
 from other people by % fraud and extortion and 
 over-reaching is not ours ; only the bread that we 
 have earned by honest work and fair traffic is 
 ours." That which a man gives heartily and 
 lovingly is perfumed with the incense of chjirity 
 — not that which he gives grudgingly and of 
 necessity. 
 
 I dare not take liberties with your time, and 
 therefore it is not possible for me to enter into 
 any adequate analysis as to what this charity, 
 exalted to the highest place and to the grandest 
 power by this Apostle, is. All we can say about 
 it is, that whatever " suffereth long and is kind, 
 whatever envieth not, whatever vaunteth not 
 itself and is not pufted up, whatever doth not be- 
 have itself unseemly, whatever seeketh not her 
 own, and is not easily provoked, whatever disposi- 
 tion is in any of us to think good and not evil, 
 always putting us on the side of the best construc- 
 tion of a deed and not the worst, whatever does 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 145 
 
 not rejoice in iniquity, whatever rejoiceth in the 
 truth, whatever beareth all things, believeth all 
 things (good that is), hopeth all things, and en- 
 dureth all things," that is charity. The opposite 
 of all these is not charity. Charity is inconsistent 
 with petulance, with unkindness, with envy, with 
 boasting and self-conceit and self-importance, 
 with unseemliness in behavior, w^ith the attribu- 
 ting of evil motive, with self-seeking, and all 
 these ugly and evil things. A man may have zeal 
 and no charity, yea faith enough to be very ener- 
 getic and have no charity, have sundry useful 
 gifts and no charity. Charity is eternal, undying, 
 everlasting ; it never faileth. The nearest thing 
 on earth to it is a mother's love. It is the atmo- 
 sphere of the society of Heaven. It is the 
 dominating characteristic of redeemed, godlike 
 souls. It gives a certain type and flavor of 
 character wherever it exists. It gives to the mind 
 broadness and comprehensiveness. It gives to 
 the heart tenderness and loveableness. It is the 
 concentrated essence of all the Evangelistic forces 
 that have ever been in the church from the first 
 day of its life to the day that now is. 
 
 And if the Church of Christ were richly 
 dowered with the will and ability to tread this 
 more excellent way it would not need to sigh for 
 Pentecostal si(/ns and wonders. Its power would 
 be irresistible. But it would be the power of 
 
146 A MORE EXCELLENT WAT. 
 
 life, not the mechanical power of any ecclesias- 
 tical instrument that has ever been formed or 
 can be. 
 
 By means of artificial heat, kindled in glowing 
 furnaces, with the frost shut out, it is possible to 
 have flowers and fruits in winter, but when once 
 the summer sun pours down its June rays no 
 artificial contrivances are needed. And so when 
 once there is the reality of the religion of Jesus, 
 the Divine charity of which this inspired Apostle 
 speaks, the excellency of the way will be 
 perceived. Some there be who ever cry, "we 
 want more faith." But faith, my brother, cannot 
 be a substitute for charity, and can perenni- 
 ally live only in an atmosphere charged with 
 charity, as plants in an atmosphere charged 
 with oxygen. 
 
 Others say we want more zeal, but zeal may 
 be only like a galvanic battery moving the muscles 
 of a corpse. Charity will do all and everything 
 that zeal can do, or that faith can do, or that 
 tongues can do, or that even miraculous gifts can 
 do. And yet how few believe it. But no man, 
 without twisting Scripture, can deny the Aposto- 
 licity of the teaching. 
 
 Who then, in the light of this teaching, are the 
 men and women who are most truly representa- 
 tive of the church of Christ, who really embody 
 its spirit, and carry forward its work? The 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY, 147 
 
 answer can only be — they who have the charity 
 of which the Apostle speaks. Paul and eTohn 
 were the greatest apostles because they were 
 most richly dowered with charity. 
 
XI. 
 
 THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST. 
 
 "That in all things he might have the pre-eminence.'' — Col.^ 
 i: i8. 
 
 NO one reading the opening passages of this 
 letter of the great Apostolic letter-writer 
 can be in doubt as to the estimate he formed of 
 the personality of Jesus ; his mind and heart are so 
 possessed with Him that all things in heaven and 
 earth are viewed as having their interpretation in 
 Him. The Eternal One is spoken of as ''the 
 Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." That is 
 enough for the mind of Paul. That is all he wants 
 to know. All creation cannot tell as much of God 
 as is told in the simple fact that He was " the 
 Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." The mind of 
 Paul is at rest as regards the Divine disposition 
 towards him. His awe remains, but all base fear 
 has gone. There is happiness enough in this one 
 fact, that he and those to whom he wrote had been 
 *' delivered out of the power of darkness and 
 translated into the Kinojdom of the Son of his 
 
 148 
 
THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST. 149 
 
 love." And then he proceeds to heap up thought 
 upon thought as though he could not get the in- 
 ward feeling into anything like adequate utterance. 
 *' In Him we have redemption," «' In Him we 
 have forgiveness of sins," '' He is the image of 
 the invisible God," He is " the first-born of every 
 creature." " In Him were all things created, in 
 the heavens and upon the earth — things visible 
 and things invisible — whether thrones or domin- 
 ions or principalities, or powers ; all things have 
 been created unto Him and through Him ; He is 
 before all things ; in Him all things are held 
 together. 
 
 He is the head of the body, the church, who is 
 the beginning, the first-born from the dead , that in 
 all things he might have the pre-eminence. For 
 it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him 
 should all the fulness dwell ; and throus^h Him to 
 reconcile all things unto Himself, having made 
 peace through the blood of his cross ; through 
 Him I say, whether things upon the earth or 
 things in the heavens." 
 
 I would like to ask Paul what he meant by 
 some of these utterances. It takes a Paul fully to 
 interpret a Paul. But this much we may say, 
 without any possil)ility of being in the wrong, 
 that to the Apostle Paul Jesus Christ was 
 immeasurably more than He is to you and me. 
 Great natures are certain to be the depositaries of 
 
150 THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CEBIST. 
 
 great ideas, great feelings, great hopes, great 
 aspirations. Greatness does not mean bulkiness. 
 It means the ability of thinking great thoughts, 
 letting in great ideas, following in the line of 
 great aspirations and doing it continuously as long 
 as life shall last. It is a question whether upon 
 earth a greater man has ever lived than the writer 
 of this letter. He has been before the world, with 
 his bundle of letters, for 1800 years, and every 
 generation of Christians has found Him ahead of 
 them. I question whether there be a man living 
 who can say as much about Jesus Christ in the 
 same number of words as St. Paul has said in that 
 passage I have read. 
 
 I think, however, that if there be any one 
 expression which holds in it all the rest, it is this, 
 '* that in all things he might have the pre-emi- 
 nence." Let us analyze this pre-eminence and see 
 in what it consists ; — 
 
 1. He is pre-eminent as to His personality. In 
 the midst of all who have ever been in this world, 
 He stands unique as to human character ; — leaving 
 out, for the moment, all thought of everything 
 that rises above the human ; if we had time to go 
 into a detailed search after all the elements in His 
 make-up to which the word human could properly 
 be applied, we should be compelled to say that 
 He is pre-eminently human. He came into the 
 world through the gateway of the Hebrew nation, 
 
THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST, 151 
 
 and yet lie is not a Jew. He belonged, so far as 
 time could put a date upon Him, to the period of 
 1880 years ago, and yet He is of no age. He 
 spent His days and nights under those insufferably 
 bright eastern heavens, and yet He is of no clime. 
 As we study His character, and then study the 
 records of character which have come down to us 
 of other peoples, w^e are obliged to confess that He 
 gathers up into Himself all the best elements in 
 Jewish life, in Grecian life, in Roman life. The 
 characteristic Hebrew elements were such as we 
 indicate by the words, *' moral" and "devotional." 
 Grecian life was elegant, refined and sensuous. 
 It was occupied with feelings of natural beauty. 
 Roman life was swayed by ideas of law, of empire 
 and world-wide dominion. Your memory will 
 furnish 3^ou with illustrative passages in proof of 
 what I say that all these ideas were in the mind 
 of Jesus Christ, not excluding or controverting 
 one another, or jostling one another, but holding 
 fellowship one with another. They were there in 
 their purest and best expression. We need not 
 stay upon the proof that He was pre-eminently 
 moral and devotional ; enemies as well as friends 
 admit that. But He was devotional without being 
 formal, and moral without any approach to pru- 
 dishness. But how about His gathering up into 
 Himself the best elements in Grecian life ? Search 
 and see how all things beautiful affect Him. 
 
153 THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST. 
 
 *' Behold the lilies how they grow, they toil not, 
 neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that 
 even Solomon in all his glory, was not arrayed 
 like one of these." His love for country scenes, 
 never once sleeping in a city ; His retirement into 
 the recesses of nature for devotional and teaching 
 purposes ; His unconcealed admiration of the white 
 marble temple which rose lustrous and massive in 
 the midst of the squalor of the streets of Jerusa- 
 lem, His love of garden beauty, His constant use 
 of natural sym])ols to illustrate His teachings, 
 these are evidence enough of His being in sympa- 
 thy with all that was beauteous, a very Greek for 
 sensitiveness. But how about His gathering up 
 into Himself all the best elements in the life of 
 Eome, its appreciation of law and rule and domin- 
 ion ? His glorification of the moral law ; and His 
 refusal to utter one word that would be seditious, 
 though a Csesar was on the throne. His ready 
 payment of the usual poll-tax when asked of Him 
 and His disciples, these are sufficient to illustrate 
 the first. And but one quotation is necessary to 
 prove the truth of the assertion that with all that 
 w^as pure and great in the aspirations of Rome, for 
 Empire and world-wide dominion He was in 
 sympathy. AVith Rome it was the simple ambition 
 for power, with Jesus the aspiration of universal 
 benevolence — a sympathy with all men every- 
 where, and thus a burning desire to bring them 
 
THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CUBIST. 153 
 
 under the rule of One God and Father, that uni- 
 versal brotherhood might be established. ** When 
 the Son of man shall come in His glory and all 
 His Holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon 
 the throne of His glory and before Him shall be 
 gathered all nations." Thus we see how pre-emi- 
 nent was His personality. He was neither Jew, 
 nor Greek, nor Eoman, and yet all that was dis- 
 tinctive and characteristic in Jew and Greek and 
 Eoman w^as illustrated in Him. 
 
 2. Then again he w^as pre-eminent as to his 
 ideas of God and man. Let me say that this is 
 always the test of pre-eminence of nature, large- 
 ness of idea on these two all-absorbing themes. 
 The man wh(i is pre-eminently great and good, 
 will necessarily have the most ennobling ideas 
 on these two themes. And you may be very 
 sure that the instinct in our nature to regard with 
 suspicion and distrust the Satanic school who first 
 of all, deprive God of His personality, and then 
 man of his spirit, is ingrained and inborn. It is 
 the same kind of instinct which the dove has when 
 the bird of prey comes into sight. If any one 
 says " It is only an instinct of self-preservation," 
 what of it ? Is not that saying a great deal ? If 
 there were no lust of sinning in our nature, and 
 no desire to have doubts enough to allow us to do 
 it unrestrainedly, there is not an Infidel Lecturer 
 in the world who could pay his travelling expenses 
 
154 THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST, 
 
 out of his earnings. The right idea of God is 
 always an inspiration to a good man ; it is a 
 restraint, a fetter on an evil man. Jesus Christ 
 came specially to give us right ideas of the nature 
 of God and man. The idea He gave us of God 
 was pre-eminent. No one had ever approached 
 it. To be able to utter it and live it, gives this 
 Jesus a pre-eminence as a thinker who personal- 
 ized his own thinking as no one else ever did. 
 He gave us an idea of God that made God ** an 
 absolutely new being to our race." There had 
 been many attempts to name God, to put the 
 nature of God into a word, but every attempt had 
 fallen short of this which Jesus made, and must 
 fall short, for the reason that it takes a Jesus 
 Christ to give such utterance to the word 
 ^' Father'^ as shall make it mean what it does 
 mean. Words are variable as to their quality and 
 quantity, according to the quality and quantity of 
 the speaker. The words of Scripture on your 
 lips and mine — how poverty-stricken, compared 
 w^ith the same words as spoken by Jesus of 
 Nazareth ! So much of religious effort has been 
 occupied in emptying the words of Jesus of their 
 spiritual content, that they may be made to fit the 
 poverty of our ideas. " The thought of an Eter- 
 nal Father, ruling in love, through righteousness, 
 towards lovely and righteous ends — rthat thought 
 of the Eternal, brooding in ceaseless pity, working 
 
THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST. 155 
 
 in untiring energy in all the units for the good 
 alike of the single person and the collective race, 
 that idea was the splendid gift of Christ to man." 
 There was never any such large idea of God in the 
 world before Christ came, but since, such ideas 
 have been struggling into form, and other ideas 
 wjiich naturally flow from them, and now men 
 who make no confesssion of mental and spiritual 
 allegiance to Christ are often found uttering 
 thoughts which had no existence in the speech of 
 the world in Anti-Christian times. Infidel minds 
 are sometimes found clothed in raiment of 
 Christian ideas, and are innocently unconscious 
 from whence they have plagiarized their clothes. 
 Indeed, as one has said, *' Christ's idea of God has 
 so entered into and possessed the spirit of man 
 that he cannot expel it or escape from it. It is 
 now His, even in spite of Himself, for ever." 
 
 Add to the idea which Jesus has given us of the 
 nature of God, His idea of the nature of man. In 
 the Anti-Christian days the noblest man among 
 the Jews was the chief of the Pharisees or the 
 chief of the Sadducees. Among the Greeks the 
 noblest man was the most physically beautiful 
 man, the Apollo Belvidere was the type of him. 
 Among the Romans the noblest man was one of 
 the type of Julius Coesar, the simply strong man, 
 the man of achievement, though in order to 
 achieve he trampled everyone who was in his path 
 
156 THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST. 
 
 in the dust. How is it now in Christian lands? 
 Under the influence of Jesus, the noblest man is 
 not simply the bravest man, but **the gentlest, 
 the humanest, the chastest, and the most charita- 
 ble." It is a new idea of man, and entirely 
 Christian in its completeness. This kind of man 
 is man with the lost image restored. This kind 
 of man must be immortal, for the life of the 
 immortal God is in him. Why should he die? 
 He is in harmony with the Universe. Everything 
 in it conspires to say to him, live ; and to help 
 him to live. And so the revelation of Immortality 
 naturally and necessarily comes with the emergence 
 into being of this Christian type of man. It takes 
 an immortal spirit to hold in it the idea of 
 immortality. 
 
 Take one or two other ideas characteristically 
 Christian which will help us to see how pre-emi- 
 nently Christ Jesus is the world's greatest thinker 
 as well as holiest man. The idea of the universal 
 brotherhood of man ; the idea that love of God is 
 expressed in service of man ; the idea that the 
 original image of God, though lost to sight in so 
 many, may be latent in the worst, a jewel at the 
 centre of a dung-heap; — these are ideas floating 
 up and down the world to-da}^ and wherever they 
 enter the soul of man, entering it to stay, and 
 making men restless until society is harmonized 
 with these ideas. Many men wilfully refuse to 
 
THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST. 157 
 
 live under the shadow of this Tree of Life, Jesus 
 Christ, but unconsciously they are eating of the 
 fruit of the tree. Viewed intellectually as well as 
 morally, this Jesus of Nazareth has the pre-emi- 
 nence. His ideas of God and man are immeasur- 
 ably vaster than any other ideas which have been 
 flung into the world's life. Intellectually He has 
 the pre-eminence. 
 
 And yet once more He is pre-eminent as to His 
 mission in the world. No other ever came on 
 such a mission ; no other was ever capable of 
 entertaining the idea of it. The very conception 
 of such a mission puts Him into the place of pre- 
 eminence. What was it? To bring a revolted 
 world back as^ain into alles^iance. Think for a 
 moment what that means. Into allegiance — into 
 such allegiance as is worthy of God to accept, and 
 of man to give. Not forced allegiance. Not the 
 allegiance which the conqueror gets when the 
 commander-in-chief on the other side delivers up 
 his sword. Not simply the allegiance which the 
 slave, beggared in spirit as in everything else, 
 gives to the Master whom he has no power to 
 resist — No, no such allegiance is unworthy of 
 a God to receive. Nothing satisfies love but love, 
 nothing satisfies reason but that which is endorsed 
 by reason, nothing satisfies sincerity but sincerity, 
 and so it would be unworthy of God to receive 
 from man anything short of that sincere, reasona- 
 
lo8 THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST. 
 
 ble, intelligent, loving allegiance, which is the only 
 true allegiance. But we need not complicate the 
 matter, wherever there is one spark of real love 
 all else follows. And so we hear our Lord saying 
 in justification of His receiving the sinning woman, 
 *'Her sins which are many are all forgiven for 
 she loved much." 
 
 To bring a world into this sincere, reasonable, 
 intelligent, loving allegiance towards God is the 
 mission which Jesus the Christ set Himself. It is 
 either the work of a God or of a madman. But 
 as a madman could never even conceive of such a 
 mission, the conception in itself shows the pre- 
 eminence of the nature in which it dwelt. 
 
 The accomplishment of this mission seems to 
 you and me impossible. Think what is involved 
 in it. Nay, you cannot. We often use the word 
 *' regeneration," but we know not what it ina- 
 plies. It is a word expressing some spirit- 
 ual process which lies out of the region of our 
 observation. We know the signs of it, but of 
 the process we know nothing. When a man 
 adheres through all temptations and persecutions, 
 through all the flatteries of prosperity, and the 
 despondencies of adversity to the Christ of God 
 as his Eedeemer and Savior, we know that he is 
 regenerated. When like Job, he says, (meaning 
 it), *' though he slay me, yet will I trust in him," 
 we know he is regenerated. But when and how. 
 
THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CnRIST. 159 
 
 that we know not. We say, by the power of the 
 Holy Spirit of God, because it is so revealed, and 
 because it must be by a power greater than the 
 human, greater than any power that man can 
 exert. Yet this is the mission which this Jesus 
 has undertaken : to regenerate the alienated heart 
 of manhood, to bring it in loving, glad allegiance 
 to the throne of God. Knowing what man is, 
 knowing, as Solomon said ages ago, that *'a 
 brother offended is harder to be won than a strong 
 city," knowing how much the human will can 
 endure and not bend, knowing how even a preju- 
 dice, when it gets into a human spirit, can hold out 
 against the strongest arguments, the most forcible 
 reasons, the most persistent acts of benevolence 
 and kindness — knowing all this, does it not seem 
 more easily possible to swing the Universe out of 
 its orbit, destroy its balance, and bring back chaos 
 and old night, than to accomplish this restoration 
 to lovin<? alleo^iance of the alienated heart of man ? 
 Certainly this Jesus Christ must see in the deeps 
 of man's nature more than we see, and He must 
 know of forces in the spiritual realm, behind this 
 material realm, stronger and more persuasive than 
 we know of. Leaving all that is merely specula- 
 tive, we assert that the very conception of such a 
 mission puts this Jesus Christ pre-eminently above 
 all other men who have ever lived on this earth. 
 The theme is only half finished, not half 
 
160 THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHBIST, 
 
 indeed, for I have given you nothing more than a 
 few suggestions, but I must leave it. It is only 
 a portrait in outline, nay, not so much, only a 
 few sketchy strokes. 
 
 If only it helps any human soul struggling into 
 the light, any soul fighting the billows of doubt 
 and trying to get to land, to some trri'a firma on 
 which the foot can rest, it will not be in vain that 
 we have tried to make it clear how in His person- 
 ality, in the greatness of His ideas of God and 
 man, and in His mission to this w^orld, this Jesus 
 Christ was not simply eminent as many men have 
 been, but emphatically and unapproachably 
 pre-eminent. A theology of abstract ideas is no 
 theology at all. It is but the shadow of a 
 theology. The substance is elsewhere. A theol- 
 ogy which has not in it, in the place of pre-emi- 
 nence, the person, the ideas, the mission of Christ 
 is chaff and not bread. And so while we cannot 
 measure the nature of Christ, if only we can see 
 that He is pre-eminent in these particulars I have 
 specified, we have enough for a foundation for all 
 the religion of which our nature is capable. 
 
 I know of but one conspicuous man in the world 
 of literature, the bitterness of whose malignity 
 was such as to blind his eyes to all moral and 
 spiritual beauty and allow him to cry out 
 '^ Ucrasez V infame^' — Crush the wretch. If 
 that man lives on in eternity no other punishment 
 
THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST. 161 
 
 could surely be asked by his bitterest enemy than 
 that it should be for ever remembered that he 
 used those words in writing of Jesus the Christ. 
 
 Other great sceptics have seen the pre-eminence 
 and have acknowledged it ; as though God 
 employed one sceptic to shame another. Even 
 Eousseau, *' that soul ever floating between error 
 and truth," lost its hesitation, and with a hand firm 
 as a martyr's, forgetting his age and his works, the 
 philosopher wrote with the pen of a theologian a 
 page which was to become the counterpoise of 
 Voltaire's blasphemy, and concluded it with words 
 which will resound throu^^hout Christendom until 
 the last coming of Christ, *' If the life and death of 
 Socrates be those of a saint, the life and death 
 of Jesus Christ are those of a God." 
 
 Even Napoleon I. — the embodiment of milita- 
 ry ism, the old Roman back again in the Christian 
 centuries, meditating on men and things in the 
 lonely isle of St. Helena — cannot keep his mind 
 off this man and His history. The fallen con- 
 queror asks one of the few companions of his 
 captivity if he could tell him what Jesus Christ 
 really was. The soldier begged to be excused. 
 He had been too busy in the world to think about 
 that question. *'What! you have been baptized 
 in the Catholic church and cannot tell me what 
 Jesus Christ was? Well, then, I will tell you." 
 Then the man of Austerlitz and Jena began speak- 
 
163 TUE PRE-EMINENCE OF CERIST. 
 
 ing of the great generals and emperors and 
 conquerors of the world and ended with these 
 words, *'In fine, I know men, and I say that Jesus 
 Christ was not a man." And so Goethe, the great 
 literary dandy among men of genius, confesses 
 Christ's pre-eminence when he says, 4' the moral 
 majesty, the spiritual culture in the gospels can 
 never be excelled." And so Schiller when he 
 names the religion of Jesus *'the Incarnation of 
 the Holy ; " and even Strauss acknowledges His 
 pre-eminence when he praises Him as the ** su- 
 preme religious genius of time;" and Renan too, 
 diseasedly self-conscious as he ever is, confesses 
 that He merits Divine rank. And so in all things, 
 and from all sorts of men, St. Paul's words have 
 been and are being fulfilled, ''that in all things 
 He might have the pre-eminence." Has He it in 
 our hearts ? Then to us belongs the joy that St. 
 Paul felt when he uttered the words — ' ' who hath 
 delivered us out of the power of darkness and 
 translated us into the Kingdom of the Son of 
 His love." 
 
XII. 
 OUR RELATIONSHIPS. 
 
 " At the hand of every man's brother will I require the Kfe of 
 man — Genesis, \y.'. 5. 
 
 THE subject of the Inspiration of the Old 
 Testament Scriptures has often been in 
 debate. Such debate every generation of men 
 has to take part in. It is natural for us to accept 
 the teachings of those who are in parentage to us, 
 natural and right. So long as we are children we 
 are under tutors and governors. These tutors 
 and governors have to do their duty by us accord- 
 ing to the best light they have. But the inevitable 
 period of self-assertion comes. We arrive at the 
 time when we have a right to our own individu- 
 ality. The mind is conscious of itself. The 
 generation ahead of us has to endure oftentimes 
 a disagreeable amount of self-assertion. Exam- 
 ine into thins^s for ourselves we must. It is an 
 anxious time for those who have had the responsi- 
 bility for us. Our inclination towards scepticism 
 or faith will depend now upon the moral forces at 
 
 163 
 
164 UR RELA TIONSHIPS. 
 
 the back of us and in us. Our opinions will be 
 colored by our sympathies. If there be in us a 
 natural goodness this period of debate is not dan- 
 gerous. Of many a young man you hear it said 
 by those who know him best, **oh, never fear, 
 he'll come out right." Of others, ^'I'm not so 
 sure about him,'* with a significant shake of the 
 head. There is another kind of young man con- 
 cerning whom not even so favorable a view as 
 that is expressed. It is at this period of life that 
 such questions as that of the inspiration of the 
 Scriptures come up. And generally external evi- 
 dence is thought to be that which is necessary to 
 prove it. And so there is a great marshalling 
 of facts and evidences which establish the probabil- 
 ity. At this age the eye is not wide open to the 
 internal evidence. It is not perceived that that is 
 the strongest, and that without it all external evi- 
 dence is well nigh useless. When you see outside 
 the walls of a building a number of props to keep 
 those walls from falling, there needs no other 
 evidence of a bad foundation or wretchedly poor 
 building. External evidence is often like prop- 
 ping up an ill-constructed and dishonestly built 
 house. It is like asking a young student to sup- 
 ply you with proof that Agassiz was a great 
 naturalist or that Descartes was a great philoso- 
 pher. Agassiz and Descartes must supply the 
 evidence themselves ; no one else can do it. And 
 
UR RE LA TIONSEIPS. 165 
 
 SO it is always. You cannot prove by any exter- 
 nal evidence that Beethoven was a great composer, 
 or Homer a great poet. These men must supply 
 the evidence themselves. And so you cannot 
 prove the inspiration of the Scriptures by any ex- 
 ternal process simply. Nor can you by any 
 process to the mind not itself capable of receiving 
 high inspirations. This is forgotten, that the 
 mind of the individual must be itself capable of 
 receiving inspiration from that in which inspira- 
 tion dwells, or all attempts at proof are necessarily 
 defective. 
 
 A blind man can receive no impulse from the 
 verdure of nature, the blush of the rose, the deli- 
 cacy of the lily, or the blue of the sky. A deaf 
 man is not soothed when the music of *' Oh, rest 
 in the Lord, wait patiently for Him,** ftills upon 
 the ear. It finds no entrance to his soul. The 
 *' Hallelujah Chorus" wakes no triumph in his 
 heart. And so it is in relation to the inspiration 
 of Scripture. If it cannot inspire me, move me, 
 rouse something in me into response, you cannot 
 prove to me its inspiration. Now when I find a 
 declaration like this at the very threshold of the 
 history of man's Ijfe " At the hand of every man's 
 brother will I require the life of man," I feel the 
 inspiration. How did this cosmopolitan truth get 
 there ? If it sprung up out of the soil of man's 
 nature, then man w^as in an exceedingly advanced 
 
166 Xm BEL A TI0NSHIP8. 
 
 spiritual condition. Why, we are not up to it 
 now. It is aliead of all but the most spiritually 
 minded Christians. No other people are abreast 
 of it. It is Pauline in its character. It would 
 not surprise us to find it among the words of St. 
 John in the ripeness of his old age. But to meet 
 it in the early chapters of the Book of Genesis, — 
 it creates somethino^ of the feelino: which arose 
 in the heart of a friend of mine who in the huts of 
 a tribe of Maoris in New Zealand came upon a face 
 like to some of the most beautiful he had seen in 
 his native Scotland, and addressing her found that 
 she was Scotch, but how she had got there he 
 could not discover. And here we find a Christian 
 truth of the most advanced kind in the opening of 
 the book of Genesis : a truth which inspires every 
 inspirable Christian heart, and so proves its own 
 inspiration. *' At the hand of every man's 
 brother will I require the life of man." 
 
 The terms of the passage are too general to 
 make any narrowing of them down within family 
 limits legitimate. They contain the very advanced 
 truth that every man belongs to every other man ; 
 that there is but one great human family ; and that 
 our action is not accordinoj to the will of God 
 when it is conducted on lines of exclusion. 
 Whether we see it or not the fact is everywhere 
 assumed in Scripture, that that which is good for 
 the whole humanity is good for each member of it. 
 
UR RE LA TIONSHIPS. 167 
 
 Our policy is to be broadly sympathetic. In 
 church, in state, religiously, politically, every- 
 where. The charge is put upon us to preserve 
 human life, not simply our own individual life, 
 but to do all Ave can to preserve human life 
 everywhere. And this is every man's duty. I 
 beseech you to notice how singularly inclusive as 
 well as how unlimited the terms of this passage 
 are : — *' At the hand of every man's brother will 
 I require the life of man — " I know not how 
 words could be better ordered so as to prevent 
 any of us finding a way of escape from their 
 inclusiveness. 
 
 " The life of man," what is it ? The true human 
 life, what is it? That which is fitting and proper 
 to you and me and all men, what is it? Because 
 that is the life we have to preserve. We are not 
 allowed to live in the front of great human prob- 
 lems we never so much as touch with the tip of 
 our finger. Almighty God will not have that. It 
 is contrary to His idea of man and His responsi- 
 bility. Whatever occurs in a community or 
 nation we have some sort of relation to it ; we 
 have an interest in it. There was one sublime 
 moment in the history of the Koman people when 
 one of their orators lifted the whole crowd to a 
 higher plane than common as he exclaimed, "I am 
 a man, nothing that is human is foreign to me." 
 Overstepping all individual interests and all selfish 
 
168 OUR BEL A TIONSniPS. 
 
 feeling, leaping all bounds of place and time, lie 
 embodied in that one sentence the noblest aspira- 
 tion that had ever moved in the heart of the 
 noblest Roman citizen. 
 
 But how many, how very many, even now, in 
 these Christian times, live on a very much lower 
 plane than that ! How often do w^e find ourselves 
 saying, *'It's no concern of mine whether people 
 are this, that, and the other ; if only I can be let 
 alone to do my own business and enjoy my own 
 life, that is all I ask." But that is not all that 
 God asks ; it is not all of which our nature is 
 capable ; and every man is accountable to God for 
 the capability within him. We live in a world 
 indefinitely improveable. In a right condition of 
 society we live in a world capable of supporting 
 an almost countless population. Man is here, even 
 according to his natural endowments, to dress it 
 and to keep it. Society is capable of being very 
 different from what it is. And God has put 
 upon each generation the responsibility of moving 
 this world towards a completeness never yet at- 
 tained, towards an order never yet reached, 
 towards a sympathetic co-operativeness of man 
 with man never yet approached. 
 
 Now, in this movement the Christian Church 
 has a very important place to fill, and for this 
 simple reason that it is the Trustee of the truth 
 which is to leaven the mass of human opinion and 
 
UR RE LA TIONSEIPS. 169 
 
 feeling. If some one else is in possession of more 
 advanced truth, let them give it us. We have a 
 right to it. We need it. It has not yet appeared 
 that anyone has. Much talk has been of recent 
 years as to the wonderful change which is to pass 
 over the lot of men generally by the discoveries 
 of Science. And it would be a very foolish atti- 
 tude for Christian men to take, — that of depre- 
 ciating anything which Science can do to improve 
 the lot of men. But Science is occupied simply 
 with material forces. It does not pretend to step 
 beyond them, although it has to do it, but then it 
 is not strictly scientific. Supposing that every- 
 thing which the most enthusiastic scientific 
 optimists predict should come to pass ; supposing 
 that our material life should have everything 
 provided to make it comfortable — what does it 
 amount to ? The telegraph brings us into closer 
 neighborhood to men at a distance. The telephone 
 has a similar use. The steam-engine transports 
 us at a quicker rate from here to elsewhere. The 
 steam-ship ploughs the main in saucy independ- 
 ence of the winds without whose favor sailins: 
 ships can make no progress. There is more of 
 movement, more knowledge, more stir, more 
 expenditure of nervous energy. The people who 
 have nothing to do in the world (so far as 
 they have made discovery) can move about the 
 surface of this broad earth more rapidly under the 
 
170 OUB BEL A TI0NSHIP8. 
 
 delusion that they are really doing something. 
 Facilities for travel have promoted the vagabond 
 spirit and made it a little more respectable. 
 
 The merchant finds his customers in China and 
 Japan as well as at his own doors. And has to ; 
 for our very material progress, this very inven- 
 tiveness for which we are noted, is multiplying 
 our difficulties. The Secretary of the Treasury 
 of the United States has just told us in his report 
 that our manufactures can thrive no longer by 
 simply supplying the home market. *'We can 
 produce much more and much faster than we can 
 consume : the existing iron, woolen, and cotton 
 mills w^ould meet in six months, perhaps in a 
 shorter time, all our home demands." Our fields 
 grow more wheat, and produce more corn, than we 
 can sell ; our factories make more clothes than 
 we can wear ; our cattle yield more meat than we 
 can eat. And yet we are not content, far from it, 
 our discontent grows wdth our abundance. We 
 are verifying on a large scale the truth of the 
 words that ' ' a man's life does not consist in the 
 abundance of the things which he possesses." We 
 need something else than material prosperity, to 
 make material prosperity a blessing. 
 
 It becomes us to make a calm estimate of what 
 science can do for us ; to note its limitations, and 
 how soon we reach them. It may give us houses 
 in which we can get ventilation without draughts, 
 
UR EEL A TIONSniPS. 171 
 
 a temperature that is comfortable without being 
 enfeebling ; it may attend properly to all sanitary 
 matters ; it may even keep us from being made 
 universally dyspeptic by wholesale adulteration of 
 that which we eat and drink, though that seems 
 very far off. For, in regard to obtaining these 
 things on which our physical health depends, 
 perfectly free from everything that is deleterious, 
 we are almost under the necessity of doing as he 
 was advised to do who asked a Portugese wine 
 grower how he was to obtain in his cellars in 
 England a cask of pure Port wine. Said the man, 
 ** I would advise you to come here and see the 
 grapes grow ; and watch them in every stage until 
 their juice is in the cask : then to keep your eye 
 on that identical cask marked with your own mark, 
 and never for a moment allow it out of your sight 
 until you deposit it in your cellar. I know no 
 other way than that." So much of our misery 
 comes from physical causes that in speaking of 
 the ''life of man" it is necessary to recognize 
 them, and our own relation to the causes of much 
 of the misery of this human race. No man but 
 he who is blind in perception and judgment can 
 close his eyes to the fact that so very many of our 
 miseries come from causes over which w^e have 
 control, and it is our duty, as servants of God and 
 as being charged with the responsibility referred 
 to in the text, to remove them if we can. Let us 
 
172 OUR RELATIONSHIPS. 
 
 welcome all that science can do for us, but let us 
 remember that its limits are soon reached, and 
 this also, that neither science nor anything else is 
 of any use to those who are too ignorant or too 
 indolent to use it. There are men within one 
 hundred miles of this place who have built into 
 their houses everything which the latest knowledge 
 supplies ; who can command the most scientific 
 physicians in the land, who can have everything 
 that money can buy, and yet there is many a 
 laboring man earning his few dollars a week who 
 is both healthier and happier than they are. It is 
 little better than sheer nonsense to talk of science 
 supplying everj^thing that our life needs to make 
 it comfortable. Ko life ever yields comfort to its 
 possessor, until it is conformed to the idea which 
 He had for it who originally gave it. Everything 
 has its state of fixity and there is no content and 
 no satisfaction until that state is reached. This is 
 specially and emphatically true of the life of man. 
 We are members of a great human race in every 
 one of whom there is the feeling of something 
 attainable which has not yet been attained. As 
 to what the something is there is endless diversity 
 of opinion. But when the Apostle says, *'The 
 whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in 
 pain until now," he recognizes the inward life of 
 man seeking after something not yet reached. 
 And this is not true alone of the ungodly, it is 
 
UB RELATIONSHIPS. 173 
 
 true also of the godly, *' And not only they but 
 we ourselves also who have received the first fruits 
 of the Spirit even we ourselves groan within 
 ourselves, waiting for the adoption." And yet, 
 in another place, speaking of himself alone, he 
 says, '*Not as though I had already attained, 
 either were already perfect, but I follow after if 
 that I may apprehend that for which I am appre- 
 hended of Christ Jesus." The Biblical view of 
 life is very much higher than the man of the 
 world's view, or the moral view, or the scientific 
 view. Says Froude, speaking of Carlyle — these 
 lines were often on his lips to the end of his life : 
 
 "It is an old belief 
 
 That on some solemn shore, 
 Beyond the sphere of grief, 
 
 Dear friends shall meet once more: 
 
 Beyond the sphere of time. 
 
 And sin and fate's control. 
 Serene in changeless prime 
 
 Of body and of soul 
 
 That creed I fain would keep. 
 
 This hope I'll not forego; 
 Eternal be the sleep 
 
 If not to waken so." 
 
 Now the church has something more to do than 
 to take care of itself. Very little good can it do 
 on the principle of simply caring for itself. It 
 has to sound in the ear of humanity, of men every- 
 
174 OUn RE LA TI0NSHIP8. 
 
 where, the truth that is in these words, ** At the 
 hand of every man's brother w41l I require the 
 life of man." It has to illustrate by its spirit and 
 temper and by its deeds this fact — that all men 
 belong to all other men. Missionary it must be 
 or die. When Israel of old, elected to a hio:h 
 service to the world, fell below the level of its 
 calling — then said the Apostle, and he but spake 
 the mind of God, **Lo ! we turn to the Gentiles." 
 The doctrine of election, about which there has 
 been so much needless wrangle, does not refer to 
 personal salvation. It has nothing to do with 
 that. It refers to a service, to a purpose, to a 
 mission. The people of Israel were elected to 
 a special dignity and mission to the whole world. 
 They fell below it. They did not *'make their 
 calling and election sure ;" then the mission was 
 put into other hands. And every nation has had 
 some special mission to the world. When it has 
 fallen below it, then its period of decay has begun 
 and it has hurried to its doom. It is so of the 
 church of Christ. That church has to declare 
 God's ideas, God's favor, God's will to the world 
 as these have come to us in Jesus. It has to live 
 those ideas before the world and thus gradually 
 but surely renew the world. It is to be the leaven 
 in the meal. It must be that every man is 
 accountable for the right use of the noblest ideas 
 which ever came into his soul. Quench them he 
 
UR BEL A TIONSHIPS. 175 
 
 must not. Stifle them he must not. He must 
 nourish them into growth, or his soul will be a 
 graveyard in which are buried the murdered inno- 
 cents which would have grown into manhood but 
 for the strangling hand of his scepticism. And 
 so, while I speak of the Church as the collective 
 of all God-inspired souls, I beseech you to note 
 that in our text there is no absorption of the indi- 
 vidual into the mass. *'At the hand of every 
 man's brother will I require the life of man." 
 The whole life of man concerns each of us — all of 
 us. That is the truth at the base of universal 
 suffrage. We are responsible for the high or low 
 tone of the life of man in the community in which 
 we live, in the town, in the city, in the state, in 
 the nation. "At the hand of every man's brother 
 will I require the life of man." Why, says one, 
 should I be punished for what another man does ? 
 Because we are all partakers of one life, and are 
 related, and are a family, and the law is that if 
 one member suffer all the members shall suffer 
 with it. And so, if there be small-pox in the poor 
 streets, you who live in the better streets begin to 
 be concerned, you don't ask what have I to do 
 with that man's small-pox? You say to the 
 authorities, *'Get the man off to the hospital; 
 disinfect his house. Go in and do it." But Avhat 
 right have you to enter that man's house and haul 
 him away to the hospital ? What right have you 
 
176 OTTR BEL A TIONSHIPS. 
 
 to send the health officer with his disinfectant? 
 You see, your doctrine of individualism breaks 
 down in presence of a contagious and desolating 
 disease, and very properly so. But is it not a 
 miserable confession to make, that we have to 
 learn the doctrine of our relationship to others 
 on the lowest side of it, because we will not recog- 
 nize it on its highest side? Now, while we really 
 do more as churches than is done by the un- 
 churched in the community in regard to the men 
 and women who are, through ignorance and 
 shiftlessness, at a great disadvantage, yet as 
 churches, we are apt to separate between the ma- 
 terial and the spiritual and to say, ''Our work is 
 spiritual not material." But how can 3^ou separate 
 these ? You never saw a man's body walking on 
 one side of the street while his spirit was w alking 
 on the other side. Soul and body are so closely 
 married in this life that no one can divorce them. 
 They act and react on each other. Organization 
 does not produce life ; — life produces organiza- 
 tion. We cannot separate the material and the 
 spiritual. The life of man is too much of a unit 
 to allow us to do that. And, says the Almighty 
 One, *' At the hand of every man's brother will I 
 require the life of man." We are parts of a na- 
 tion's life. All its questions are our questions. 
 All its struggles are our struggles. All its fail- 
 ures are our failures, all its triumphs are our 
 
UB RE LA TION SHIPS. 177 
 
 triumphs. Not till the regenerated brotherhood 
 of the Church rises above its sectisms and boldly 
 puts itself in the fore-front of the nation's life as 
 the truthteller, the Evangelizer, claiming the life 
 of man for Christ and testing everything by the 
 principles of life He has given us, does it do its 
 duty or fulfill its mission. Of course, a man 
 begins with his individual wants, but the man who 
 takes no interest in any one but himself, and even 
 when he is voting his vote on a great national 
 occasion is still voting for self, regardless of the 
 great life of man, is a man not affiliated to the 
 cause of Christ in the world and his end is defeat. 
 But *'our Father hears the man who cries to 
 Him, however clumsily, for light and strength 
 to do his duty. He may be utterly puzzled, utter- 
 ly downhearted ; utterly hopeless ; but in acting on 
 the higher plane introduced to us in this text, he 
 is baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire. 
 God meets his willingness and endows him with 
 power. He begins to have a right judgment : to 
 see clearly what he ought to do, and how to do it. 
 He grows more clear-sighted, more prompt, more 
 steady than he has ever been before. And there 
 comes a fire into his heart such as he never had 
 before, a spirit and a determination which nothing 
 can daunt or break, which makes him bold, cheer- 
 ful, earnest in the face of the anxiety and danger 
 which would, at any other time, have broken his 
 
178 JJR BEL A TI0N8HIPS. 
 
 heart. The man is lifted up above his former 
 self, and carried on through his work, he hardly 
 knows how, till he succeeds nobly, or if he fails, 
 fails nobly." 
 
 But the inspiration of the Spirit of God, meet- 
 ing His willingness, makes him to see and feel that 
 he is allied to the life of man. And he acts from 
 a higher view and on a broader plane of things 
 than before. He hardly knows himself again. 
 Seeing farther, feeling more deeply, life enlarges 
 to his vision, and you hear him hymning this 
 glorious petition : — 
 
 " Father, bear the prayer we offer. 
 
 Not for ease that prayer shall be. 
 
 But for strength, that we may ever 
 
 Live our lives courageously." 
 
 • 
 
 To save life, not to destroy it, is thenceforth 
 his aim, and whatever the line he take, whatever 
 the work he do, according to his possessions, his 
 opportunity, his talent, he realizes a blessedness 
 unknown before, and to such an one there is no 
 harrassing rebuke ever tormenting his soul even 
 in words like these, '* At the hand of every man's 
 brother will I require the life of man." 
 
XIII. 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL, 
 
 But I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill 
 the body, and after that, have no more that they can do. — Luke^ 
 xii : 4. 
 
 IN those times when the air is full of war and 
 rumors of war, *' distress of nations with 
 perplexity, — the sea and the waves roaring, men's 
 hearts failing them for fear," — in such times men 
 have to seek out some truth which shall help to 
 steady the mind and keep it hopeful. For no 
 man but he who is heartless can keep himself from 
 shuddering at the idea of warfare, wholesale 
 carnage, men mown down by hundreds and thou- 
 sands, wives turned into widows, children made 
 fatherless, mothers left to mourn their only sons, 
 the tender humanities of life ruthlessly trodden 
 under foot, the hard earned money of the people 
 compulsorily exacted from them and spent for the 
 direst purposes man knows, in doing devil's work, 
 not the work of God. All this is terrible to look 
 at and think of. How should we view it if we 
 
 179 
 
180 THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 
 
 were introduced to it for the first time ? If the 
 history of man had not been one of warfare, if 
 now the idea and the purpose of it were suddenly 
 sprung upon us, what a howl of indignation there 
 would be from one end of the world to the other 
 against any one of any nationality who should 
 propose to use Intellect and Science in preparing 
 means and methods for man's destruction ! In our 
 unimpassioned moments we are all, surely, on 
 the side of un warlike statesmen, men who on 
 their shoulders have the heaviest kind of respon- 
 sibility, men who will do anj^thing and every- 
 thing that can be done rather than draw the 
 sword. Such men have oftentimes to hear them- 
 selves charged with vacillation, cowardice, want 
 of heroism, and I know not what else, but if you 
 or I were in the place of such a man should we not 
 do everything doable to make war impossible, 
 and if we failed, to make it on behalf of those who 
 were responsible for the failure criminal. In our 
 day there are so many commercial interests which 
 make a pecuniary profit out of war. These are 
 clamorous all the time. Men who deal in money 
 on stock-exchanges are clamorous too. And the 
 newspapers, through which we get our information, 
 have a pecuniary interest in war. These clamor- 
 ous interests make it extremely difficult for 
 statesmen, who are at heart peace-makers, to get 
 a fair hearing or fair-play. 
 
THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 181 
 
 One of the blessings for which we cannot be too 
 grateful, is that this continent from the Atlantic 
 to the Pacific is not to be split up into rival 
 nationalities, jealous of each others' power and 
 progress, preyed upon by treacherous diplomats 
 in league with professional soldiers who can get 
 promotion only through war. The division 
 between North and South would have been the 
 open gateway to the introduction of all the old 
 world evils to this continent. The perpetuation 
 of the Union meant very much more than the 
 perpetuation of the American idea, it meant the 
 exclusion of the Italian and Spanish Machiavellian 
 idea, the exclusion of the German imperial idea, 
 the exclusion of the Eussian autocratic idea, that 
 the country is to be sacrificed to the interests of 
 the Czar, the exclusion of the English aristocratic 
 idea that God made the many for the sake of the 
 few, all these ideas would have got footing and 
 power and permanency here if the South had been 
 allowed to assert and establish its independence. 
 JVbw, the whole force of the national mind can be 
 turned toward internal improvements, to the condi- 
 tion of the people generally and how to elevate it. 
 The professional soldier becomes only a superior 
 kind of policeman, the defender of personal 
 liberty not the assailant of any one, as such to be 
 respected and honored. We ask, however, will 
 the time never come when the professional soldier 
 
182 THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 
 
 shall be the soldier of Conscience and of Civiliza- 
 tion and thus the embodiment of the Old Chivalry? 
 Will he never be the man who prevents instead 
 of foments war? Will the time never come w^hen 
 Christianity shall have conquered the militaryism 
 of the civilized nations of the world, and when 
 there shall among those nations be a holy league 
 and covenant to prevent war? When a dog 
 becomes mad everybody in the region is interested 
 in preventing his biting men, women and children. 
 And when a nation is suddenly seized with the 
 war frenzy, all other nations should combine 
 against it. There is no other way to make war 
 the disgraceful and hateful thing it is. Despots, 
 using huge armies for the avenging their own 
 private quarrels with other despots, or for the 
 promoting their own insatiable ambition, or for 
 the creating interests outside the nation for the 
 sake of calling off attention from the deplorable 
 condition of things inside, these men should 
 be given to understand that they have had their 
 day, and for humanity's sake, must cease to be. 
 
 The New Testament is remarkable for its brief 
 recognition of all the facts of life and its sugges- 
 tions as brief, and effective, of thoughts which 
 should brino^ some deo^ree of comfort even in the 
 presence of the direst difficulties and the most 
 doleful degradations. While we cannot undertake 
 to give anything that could be called an exhaus- 
 
THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 183 
 
 tive interpretation of this text to which our 
 attention is called, yet it introduces to us certain 
 ideas which may, in times of trouble, be of some 
 help and comfort to us. 
 
 The first of these ideas is this — that there is a 
 limit to the power of evil. ^'Fear not them 
 which kill the body, and after that have no more 
 that they can do." It would appear to us in those 
 moments in which we are most sympathetic, that 
 there is nothinof more diabolical than war. It has 
 been characterized as the sum of all human vil- 
 lainies. Any form of government which makes 
 war easy is condemned as in itself evil. No other 
 word need be said. No apology for it ought for a 
 moment to be listened to. Abolish it ; for hu- 
 manity's sake, abolish it. That form of govern- 
 ment which in the nature of the case is most 
 pacific, is the form which a God of Love must 
 mean to exist. But even war is not the worst of 
 evils. It would be better for men to go to war 
 bclie*ring that they were doing something thereby 
 for God and His Kingdom, than to have perpetual 
 peace with no belief in God at all, just as it is 
 better for a man to die in doins: somethin": that 
 calls out the fulness of his life than for his powers 
 to rot in indolence. That which Divine Provi- 
 dence permits here on this earth, is a part of the 
 condition of human freedom. It is part of 
 the discipline of life. But there is a limit even to 
 
184 THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 
 
 the worst things that a man can do. When he 
 murders me he comes to the limit of his ability. 
 He releases my soul from its fetters, he unbinds 
 me from this earth, he hurries me into the spirit- 
 ual world. It is an immense thing to do for me ; 
 it may be, as far as I am personally concerned, a 
 great blessing conferred ; as far as the doer of the 
 deed is concerned it must be the weightiest curse, 
 for he has done his worst on me. 
 
 The Christian view of death does not make 
 murder any the less of a crime, it does nothing to 
 justify war, but it does a great deal to relieve our 
 minds when we think upon Divine Providence. 
 What meditative mind is there that has not been 
 on the edge of disbelief in a Divine Providence in 
 times of dire calamity, when human life seemed so 
 cheap as almost to be Avorthless, blood poured out 
 like water, and for what? To gratify human 
 ambition, to avenge some fancied injury or slight, 
 even to help depopulate a country because of 
 angry growlings arising from internal discontent. 
 Nine-tenths of the wars of the world have been 
 criminal. They have» been wars which have left 
 nations sadder, poorer, more demoralized, than 
 when they began. They have left behind them 
 no stable government, no freed slaves, no possibil-r 
 ities of improvement, nothing of any value. And 
 when we think of such wars and the men who are 
 responsible for them, we can hardly refrain from 
 
THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 185 
 
 thankino: God for tho words, *' After death the 
 judgment." No moral order could eternally exist 
 in a universe in which such monstrosities and such 
 monsters were not punished. And yet, looking 
 all the facts of life full in the face, sympathizing 
 as none other ever did with the myriads of torn 
 and bleeding hearts which war has rent and 
 broken, our Lord could say to us, *'Fear not 
 them which kill the body and after that have no 
 more that they can do." He could say so because 
 He knew the beyond. He saw the limit to 
 evil. He saw the line beyond which it could not 
 go. He was in the secret of the councils of the 
 Almighty One who had said, *'Thus far shalt thou 
 go and no farther." It was not heartlessness 
 which spoke. This is not the language of a soul 
 devoid of sympathy, not the language of one capa- 
 ble of saying, "Let them go on with their wars, 
 it will make it better for trade." Oh, no ; nothing 
 of this, it was the language of one who could 
 march straight up to Calvary, who, hanging there, 
 refused the anodyne that would have lulled His 
 physical pain, because He saw clearly the beyond, 
 and so, for the joy that was set before Him, 
 endured the cross, despising the shame. Have we 
 not a right to all the help His words give us ? 
 Nay ; do not those who refuse this help, defraud 
 themselves? It is impossible in the present de- 
 veloped state of the human mind, to believe in a 
 
18G THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 
 
 Divine providence apart from the revelation of 
 Immortality. I think that I am justified in saying 
 it is impossible to believe in it apart from the 
 revelation of a judgment beyond the line we call 
 death. One of the great intellectual arguments 
 for the truth of the Christian doctrines is their 
 coherence, the way in which they form a whole, 
 the way in which one necessitates the other. The 
 same Holy Spirit which convinces the mind of 
 Sin, convinces it of a Righteousness which is 
 absolute and of a Judijment which cannot be evaded 
 or avoided. The three ideas cohere ; they tenant 
 the mind together. They belong to one another. 
 In this state of existence man cannot develop 
 without freedom, without a measure of freedom 
 which seems to us dangerous, even, at times, 
 appalling. The fact that a man should have the 
 liberty and the power to kill his fellow man seems 
 to us, when w^e are meditative, dreadful. The 
 fact that it should be possible for men to organize 
 armies for the express purpose of wholesale 
 slaughter of each other seems more dreadful still. 
 The attendant fact that men should be so capable 
 of deluding themselves as to assume that on this 
 field of slaughter, virtue and heroism can be most 
 appropriately and conspicuously shown, is astound- 
 ing. And yet there is no denial of the facts. Our 
 Lord knew them as well as we know them ; saw 
 the battle-fields bristling with bayonets ; the smoke 
 
THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 187 
 
 of their artillery ; the red of their carnage ; heard 
 the groans of dying men, and the moans of dying 
 horses, heard it all, saw it all, shuddered at it all, 
 and yet He could calmly say to us, ''Fear not 
 them which kill the body, and after that have no 
 more that they can do." There is a limit to the 
 power of evil. It is not almighty. It is not infi- 
 nite. It has its sphere, and within that sphere can 
 do its dire work. Murderers may murder the 
 body ; the aggressive military spirit may take up 
 its abode in nations and get itself legalized and be 
 made honorable even, but it is not of God. It 
 may *« kill the body, and after that it has no more 
 that it can do." 
 
 The second idea, a still profounder idea, is this, 
 that death is a rescue from all evils which are not 
 demoniac in their character. It seems to me quite 
 impossible to read the New Testament with that 
 attention which it demands and deserves, and fail 
 to notice that there are two kinds of evil spoken 
 of, that which belongs to man as possessing an 
 animal nature and that which does not belons: to 
 him as of his own humanity, but which enters into 
 him and takes possession of him, that which we 
 call Satanic. It does not seem to me possible to 
 read the New Testament references to evil intelli- 
 gently, unless we keep this distinction in mind. 
 The Church of Rome has tried to preserve the 
 distinction in the well-known words '* mortal and 
 
188 THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 
 
 venial sins." It does not seem to me that the 
 terms are well chosen. But the fact that such a 
 distinction in the quality of sins has been made, is 
 instructive and noteworthy. Protestantism has 
 often spoken of sins of infirmity, and sins of will. 
 In the one case a man errs not meaning to err, he 
 sins not meanin^: to rebsl a2:ainst God. The roots 
 of his sin are in his ignorance, in his non-percep- 
 tion of the nature of certain acts. Some sins are 
 fallen virtues. But other sins have no affinity 
 with virtues. They are of such a nature as to 
 take possession of the inner spirit and dry up the 
 very springs of repentance. In such a case a 
 man's heart never melts into sorrow and his lips 
 never utter the word of contrition. Our humanity 
 when it is Christianized readily recognizes that 
 some sinners are more to be pitied than blamed. 
 Now, from all sins of this class and from the evils 
 they bring, death will come as a rescue. That 
 part of the man in which the inherited tendencies to 
 these sins reside will drop away. The soul enters 
 into new surroundings and conditions. That 
 which injures and tends to kill the body may still 
 leave the soul, if not unstained, yet not separated 
 from God. The man who has never meant to be 
 a God-defier and hater, who has never meant to 
 injure his neighbor, must be of a different quality, 
 whatever his natural infirmities, from the man 
 who has been both a God-defier and a man-hater. 
 
THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 189 
 
 Those who fear not God, nor regard man, are in a 
 condition far more hopeless than many whose sins 
 are more outspoken in their gliaracter. Search 
 into our Lord's life, notice how He speaks as he 
 comes into contact with different types of sinners, 
 how pitiful he is towards one class, how full of 
 insuppressible indignation in the presence of 
 others, a holy defiance trembles in His tones — what 
 is the meaning of this destinction ? In the one 
 case he meets sin which is almost all infirmity, in 
 the other case sin, calling itself virtue, whose core 
 is unrepenting malignity. In the one case he is 
 the physician to human helplessness, in the other 
 case he confronts that kingdom whose darkness 
 enters into the very spirit of man destroying faith 
 and hope. In the one case he touches the sin 
 which belongs to fallen humanity, in the other he 
 finds men in league with the Evil One, acting like 
 children of the devil, and he came to destroy the 
 works of the devil and to give man his deliverance 
 from the devil power. I think we are justified in 
 the inference that death indicates the time of 
 deliverance from all evils which are not Satanic in 
 their quality. ' ' Fear not them which kill the body, 
 and after that have no more that they can do." 
 
 The third idea is — that of a more dreadful 
 enemy than those who kill the body. We are, in 
 this world, occupied chiefly with evils which 
 report themselves in the body. Not everyone 
 
190 THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 
 
 recognizes that there may be evils more dire and 
 dreadful than these, whose seat is the soul, deliv- 
 erance from which w^ould not come with rescue 
 from the conditions which bind us while we are in 
 this material bod}^ There is a Personal Power, 
 says our Lord, which prompts the murderers of the 
 body to do their dire work. That is the dreadful en- 
 emy ; you cannot regard that enemy with too much 
 dread and horror. It is a power which delights 
 in condemnation and destruction. Its sphere of 
 operation is not confined to this world. It has 
 access here through the worst men and women 
 who are in the world. They are the gateway 
 through which it enters. I know how we all 
 shrink from lookins: into this re«:ion. It is a dark 
 and doleful realm. We seem helpless when called 
 upon to fight an enemy who works in the dark. 
 Even murder has its degrees and assassination is 
 the meanest form of murder. An enemy who 
 gives you no chance of flight or defence is the 
 lowest specimen of an enemy. Now, when social 
 reformers plead with men to forsake their vices, 
 they almost invariably point to results which are 
 of the earth, earthy. They say to the chronic 
 drunkard, look at the social disgrace which you 
 bring upon yourself, the desolateness of your 
 home, the poverty of your children, disease lurk- 
 ing in your blood, and so on. All these are 
 material results and possibly, in most cases, they 
 
THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 191 
 
 are the only results which can be talked about. 
 But there are subtler and worse results than 
 these. Supposing the poverty and beggary should 
 be avoided and the coarser material results 
 should not press themselves upon the attention, is 
 there nothing else in the home deplorable, nothing 
 else in man still more deplorable ? Think of a 
 woman of natural nobleness of soul, with delicate 
 refinement of taste, and educated mind, whose 
 chief pleasures would be in the mental and affec- 
 tional regions, bound hand and foot to a man who 
 is a chronic drunkard, and then conceive, if you 
 can, of the unspoken misery of such a state. It 
 is not the misery of wanting bread, or the misery 
 of *' looped and windowed raggedness," but a far 
 deeper misery than that. Then think again of the 
 meanness of soul which comes to the man himself, 
 of the loss of all nobleness and all real refinement 
 and consideration for others ; these, the moral and 
 spiritual results, are far worse than the material. 
 We begin to touch that region which our Lord 
 opens to us when the soul becomes the prey of a 
 malignant power from which it cannot rescue 
 itself. Not that this is by any means the only or 
 chief gateway through which that malignant power 
 gets access to the soul ; I quote it only to show 
 that there are worse evils than the material to 
 which social reformers point. 
 
 These I have named are the dire facts of life ; 
 
1D2 THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 
 
 there is no fancy here ; no invention ; no specula- 
 tion ; we are face to face with facts, enemies who 
 kill the body, men of the slaughter-house, but 
 after that have no more that they can do ; and 
 revealed to us more fully by Jesus the Christ 
 than it was ever revealed before, a power whose 
 aim is to destroy both body and soul, a malignant 
 power, the whole of whose nature and history we 
 shall never know in this world. But notice now, 
 I beg of you, what follows ; notice what is the 
 next word which falls from our Lord's lips. He 
 anticipates the dismay which will come to human 
 hearts as he utters these words about the men 
 who kill the body and the more malignant power 
 which aims to destroy the soul. He sees the 
 hopeless look. He hears the groan of the 
 sympathetic heart. He notes the question shaping 
 itself into form. Alas, what is a man to do in 
 such a world and in presence of such powers of 
 evil ? And so, immediately, with a haste that seems 
 like an abrupt transition from one subject to 
 another. He asks, *' Are not five sparrows sold for 
 two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten in 
 the sight of God. But the very hairs of your 
 head are all numbered. Fear not, ye are of more 
 value than many sparrows." He meets all the 
 fear and apprehension of the soul in presence 
 of these appalling facts by a declaration of the 
 minuteness and universality of the Divine Provi- 
 
THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 193 
 
 dence. Where is the protection from this malig- 
 nant power of evil ? 
 
 Utter, absolute trust in God — that is the refuge 
 from the evil and destroying spirit. In the 
 presence of great destructive forces you feel your 
 own insignificance. But you are not more insig- 
 nificant than the birds, are you? God cares for 
 them. You cannot deliver yourself from these 
 destructive powers, but God can deliver you from 
 them. That is the connection between one thought 
 and the other. The Providence of God is so 
 deep, so broad, that it can allow to men and 
 devils a freedom which seems appalling, and yet 
 it can put up insurmountable barriers beyond 
 which these evil powers cannot go. That is our 
 Lord's teaching. And it is teaching that every 
 mind needs, specially minds that are imagina- 
 tive, brooding, thoughtful, contemplative, otherwise 
 these minds will relapse into darkness, into 
 unbelief, into godlessness. Poor Cowper (the 
 poet) mused and mused and mused till he went 
 mad, but he recovered himself and wrote ; — . 
 
 God moves in a mysterious way 
 
 His wonders to perform; 
 He plants his footsteps in tlie deep 
 
 And rides upon tlie storm. 
 
 Blind Unbelief is sure to err, 
 
 And scan liis work in vain; 
 God is His own interpreter, 
 
 And He will make it plain. 
 
XIY. 
 FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 
 
 I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven 
 you for His name's sake. — i John^ ii : 12. 
 
 TPIIS language of St. John is somewhat hazy. 
 A kind of mist hangs around it as around a 
 landscape when the all but imperceptible golden 
 veil of an Indian summer is thrown over it. Some 
 land is naturally so rich that it throws up its veil 
 of modest mist and then when the Sun permeates 
 it, everywhere is a whisper of color, but it is color 
 which reveals not conceals, like the color on the 
 peach which reveals that it is luscious to the very 
 centre. And so the mind of St. John throws off 
 its own enriching atmosphere, simply because it is 
 itself so rich and mellow through its easy permea- 
 bleness. The human love of Jesus found a restinjr 
 place in this disciple's heart, and in that fact is the 
 secret of the sweet mysticism of the Apostle. 
 Each heart throws off its own atmosphere, as each 
 flower its own perfume. In the company of St. 
 Paul men would feel able to do and to dare. In 
 
 194 
 
FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 195 
 
 that of St. John they would feel the deep need of 
 fellowship, of being in loving sympathy with each 
 other and with God. Inspiration did not change 
 each of these men into the other, it used that 
 which was best in each individual and thus brought 
 all into sympathetic fellowship with the Christ 
 of God. 
 
 Living in the joy and light of the Divine Father- 
 hood, the Apostle John had come to regard all dis- 
 ciples of Jesus as children ; and as the beauty of a 
 child is in its childhood, its littleness, its unassert- 
 iveness, its dependableness, the Apostle seems to 
 have a delight in speaking of the disciples of Jesus 
 as little children, remembering doubtless the little 
 child that Jesus took and set in the midst of those 
 disciples who were wrangling about greatness and 
 place and position. These three terms which he 
 uses — fathers, young men, little children — are not 
 picked up at random, but chosen de/iberately and 
 with design — " fathers " for knowledge ; " young 
 men " for strength ; ** little children " because of 
 their complete dependableness. We must bear 
 this in mind or we shall perhaps be somewhat 
 inclined to find fault with the Apostle when he 
 associates the idea of sinfulness with little children. 
 Their small naughtinesses do not seem of sufficient 
 gravity to be called sins. And yet, inherited 
 sinfulness of disposition is at the root of most 
 of them. But if we look carefully at the form of 
 
196 FOB HIS NAME'S SAKE. 
 
 this passage it suggests to our minds not a lament 
 over sins, but a congratulation on the fact of sins 
 forgiven. * ' I write unto you because your sins are 
 forgiven you for His name's sake." The idea in 
 the passage which attracts us is the association of 
 sin with forgiveness, and specially the association 
 of forgiveness with Jesus Christ. 
 
 In this week on which we have entered and 
 which is regarded by the sacerdotal churches as 
 specially a holy week, it does not seem to me that 
 there is anything to prevent the Evangelical 
 Churches from approaching Easter day by the 
 gateway of that sacrifice of Himself which our 
 Lord made. Indeed, there seems to be a kind of 
 incongruity about celebrating the Resurrection 
 unless we first of all dwell upon some of the facts 
 and thoughts which made the Resurrection the 
 great triumphant centre of all life. As we intend, 
 on Sabbath next, to turn our thoughts to the 
 Resurrection of our Lord, would it not be as 
 appropriate for us, as for those who belong to the 
 sacerdotal churches, to make this week a time for 
 meditation on the sacrificial work of our Lord and 
 its relation to our deliverance from sin and its 
 consequences ? 
 
 He made a sacrifice of Himself, and so, in some 
 real and true sense. His life and death must have 
 been sacrificial. He sacrificed Himself in order 
 that we might have our human life preserved to 
 
FOB HIS NAME'S SAKE. 197 
 
 US, and so in some real and true sense His life and 
 death must have been substitutionary. And as 
 His death had relation to the forgiveness of our 
 sins, in some real and true sense, it must have been 
 expiatory. These three elements, the expiatory, 
 the substitutionary, the sacrificial must have 
 entered into what our Lord was and did. Often- 
 times, I know, these facts are stated in a very 
 crude and inadequate way. But that is the fault 
 of the statement not of the fact. There is a deep 
 philosophy in the fact. When a citizen dons the 
 garb of a soldier, and goes out to fight for his 
 country, if he dies, he dies that some one else may 
 not die, he sacrifices himself that some one else 
 may live. He does not fight his own private 
 battle. He is a representative. And so Jesus 
 Christ was our representative, and sacrificed Him- 
 self for us. Not that this illustration covers the 
 ground. It only helps us to make a little pro- 
 gress towards the place where we can see farther 
 into this death of Jesus. But all our explanations 
 leave much unexplained, for we cannot look into 
 the deeps of sin or the deeps of life, or what is 
 necessary in order to God being just and the justi- 
 fier of Him who believes in Jesus. 
 
 I think however, that there is much of instruc- 
 tion, and no little of comfort for us if only we will 
 try to see things as the Apostle John sees them. 
 
 He acknowledges the dark fact of sin, the 
 
198 FOR niS NAME'S SAKE. 
 
 bright fact of forgiveness, and the brightest of all 
 facts — that forgiveness is based on the relation 
 which Jesus Christ has established between 
 Himself and us. 
 
 Believino: that we do not make enouo^h of this 
 brightest of all bright facts, that forgiveness is 
 based on the relation which Jesus the Christ has 
 established between Himself and us, I would ask 
 you specially to fix your attention on this. 
 
 Not that I mean to suggest that we make too 
 much of the dark fact of sin. On the contrary 
 we talk about it too much and think about it too 
 little. If we had any deep apprehension of what 
 sin is, we could never jest about it as we do so 
 often. We should feel it to be the radical defect 
 in our nature, so radical that nothing that we 
 could do ourselves, if left to ourselves, could pre- 
 vent its being fatal. That shallow theology which 
 says *'If only a man repent of his sin it is all 
 right " would not find much favor from us. The 
 sin of man is so radical that if left alone he never 
 will repent of it ; for he will never see sin as sin. 
 He will see it only as defect, — defect excusable 
 on the ground that to err is human. In old times 
 leprosy was the disease which stood for sin, for 
 the reason that it was an incurable disease. 
 Christ touched the leper to show men that what 
 was incurable with man was curable with God. 
 There was a world of suo^srestion in that touch of 
 
FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 199 
 
 Christ. There is no possibility of man curing his 
 own sin by his own repentance. Repentance is 
 an effect not a cause. It is the effect of the Spirit 
 of God entering a human spirit and starting a new 
 life in it. 
 
 I do not mean to offer any words that are 
 saturated with reproachfulness, but in our most 
 thoughtful moments I think we must, some of us, 
 be surprised at the pitiful poverty of much which 
 passes for thinking on some of these vital themes. 
 One is weary of hearing of secular education as a 
 cure for the radical sinfulness of man's nature. 
 I am sure that an eloquent w^riter of our day is 
 right on this — that if the influence of the outpoured 
 life of Christ were withdrawn from our world, 
 sins would not only increase incalculal)ly in number, 
 but the tyranny of sin would be fearfully aug- 
 mented, and it would spread among a greater 
 number of people. Falsehood would become so 
 universal as almost to dissolve society ; and the 
 homes of domestic life would be turned into the 
 wards, either of a prison or a mad-house. We 
 can not be in the company of an atrocious criminal 
 without some feeling of uneasiness and fear. 
 We should not like to be left alone with him, even 
 if his chains are not unfastened. Withdraw the 
 outpoured life of Christ from the world and why 
 should not such men be the majority ? Some one 
 says, Educate, Educate ; Education (of the mind 
 
200 FOB HIS NAME'S SAKE. 
 
 only apart from education of the heart) 
 multiplies and magnifies our powers of sinning. 
 Tiiat refinement adds a fresh malignity. Under 
 the power of the education of the intellect only 
 you but sharpen the claws of the lion and whet 
 the fangs of the tiger. Under the power of 
 secular education only men may become more and 
 more diabolically and unmixedly bad, until at 
 last earth would be a hell on this side of the grave. 
 There would doubtless be new kinds of sin and 
 worse kinds. Education would provide the 
 novelty, and refinement would carry it into the 
 region of the unnatural. All highly refined and 
 luxurious developments of heathenism have fear- 
 fully illustrated this truth. A wild barbarian is 
 like a beast. His savage passions are violent but 
 intermittent, and his necessities of sin do not 
 appear to grow. Their circle is limited. But a 
 highly-educated sinner, without the restraints of 
 religion, is like a demon. His sins are less confined 
 to himself. They require others to be offered in 
 sacrifice to them. 
 
 If only we had read more carefully our histories, 
 the history of Greece, refined linguistically and in 
 regard to Art beyond anything accomplished 
 since ; the history of Rome with its legal education, 
 its military discipline, its aesthetic training in 
 oratory and the art of poetry, so that even now 
 Horace and Virgil stand all but peerless in their 
 
FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 201 
 
 ranks, we should not too much exalt education so 
 far as it means the sharpening of the intellect. Or, 
 if we went to the Orient, is the Buddhist SiU uned- 
 ucated man? The subtlest-thoughted people in 
 the world are in the Orient. If you doubt it, ask 
 Emerson. He knew. And yet these educations 
 produced a wide-spread despair. And what does 
 that mean ? Despair, it means always and every- 
 where, "rage, madness, violence, tumult, blood- 
 shed." Verily we are saved by hope. But how 
 to get the hope. Hope does not come to men 
 who need it, simply by telling them it is a good 
 thing and brings brightness into the soul. Flowers 
 are good things and bring brightness into our 
 gardens, but they never come except you can pour 
 sunlight, and not frosty sunlight either, into the 
 beds in which the seeds lie slumbering. Christ- 
 ians ought to have reached an order of intelligence 
 which would restrain them from giving their 
 endorsement to that kind of thinkins: which seems 
 to have something in it because it is so well- 
 dressed. All the classics and mathematics in the 
 world cannot touch the root of the evil which 
 curses man. It is a new disposition, a new heart 
 which man needs, and the outpoured life of God 
 in Christ is necessary to produce that ; as neces- 
 sary to produce it as the outpoured radiance of 
 the Sun is necessary to produce the fruits of the 
 earth by which our physical nature is sustained. 
 
202 FOR mS NAME'S SAKE, 
 
 Has not God given us in nature parables illustra- 
 tive of the great facts of spiritual life ? At times 
 God seems to be at a great distance from us, at so 
 great a distance that we can live our life without 
 taking Him and what He can do for us into the 
 account. We even think that it is problematical 
 whether He have any touch upon us or not. We 
 seem to live from earth-born forces and within 
 earth-born conditions. Ought not such musings 
 to be seen in their true nature when we think that 
 we are really dependent upon light and heat 
 generated ninety millions of miles from us, for 
 every violet gathered by a child's hand in the early 
 spring-time, for every blushmg rose in June, even 
 for every common potato which comes to our 
 table. If it were not for that great furnace ninety 
 millions of miles off, our globe would be an icicle 
 glittering in the semi-darkened depths of space, a 
 dimly visible gem on the sable bosom of night. 
 There is nothing which lives on the life generated 
 within itself. Man cut off from the outpoured 
 radiance of the Divine Nature would be as the 
 earth cut off from the Sun. The man who curses 
 God, the man whose profanity declares the innate 
 vulgarity of his mind, is obliged to inhale from 
 God's reservoir of life the very breath with which 
 to curse his Maker. In God's Universe the dis- 
 tant and the near are in fellowship, and so, too, in 
 God's spiritual realm, the Kedemptive forces which 
 
FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 203 
 
 often seem far off, are not really so. *'I am with 
 you alway, even to the end of the world," was no 
 mere figure of speech. As the sunlight enters 
 into every flower that blooms and every fruit that 
 ripens, so Christ's life enters into every soul 
 that breathes the prayer, *' God be merciful to me 
 a sinner." Therefore it is that the Apostle John 
 goes far deeper than to connect the forgiveness of 
 sin with repentance for sin, he connects it with 
 the relationship we sustain to Christ and the rela- 
 tionship He sustains to us. And if only you will 
 think of it, there is much more of consolation in 
 this fact than in anything we can say about repent- 
 ance. There is always room for doubt as to the 
 reality and sincerity of our repentance. There is 
 always room to doubt its genuineness, its suffi- 
 ciency, its quality. Will such repentance as I can 
 give ever satisfy the Divine Holiness ? If it will 
 not, what is the good of it ? What use to torment 
 myself about it? If I cannot be sure of anything 
 I offer being the genuine and right thing, what 
 comfort can I get out of anything I do? The 
 human mind is sure to reason in this way. If a 
 man builds his house on the sands and there is 
 nothing beneath but sand, he will tremble when 
 the tempest-driven tide thunders in. All our 
 experiences, all our feelings, all our ideas of 
 ourselves are poor, sandy foundations on which 
 to build hopes for Eternity. So long as a man is 
 
204 FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 
 
 playing with religion, almost anj^thing that sounds 
 religious will do for him ; but once let real 
 thoughtfulness sieze him, once let him look into 
 the depths of his own nature and see '*what in- 
 credible possibilities of wickedness we have in our 
 souls," then nothing but the real thing will do. 
 Henceforth his repentances, his experiences, his 
 feelings, anything and everything belonging to 
 him are regarded as poor foundations on which to 
 build hopes. He asks — is there no reason out- 
 side myself why God should forgive my sins ? All 
 these changeful inner experiences are treacherous 
 as a quicksand. I want something that is not 
 treacherous, something that remains, something 
 that man cannot take away from me, something he 
 has not given me. It is this state of mind to 
 which the Apostle John appeals when he says, *'I 
 write unto you little children because your sins 
 are forgiven you for His name's sake." I do not 
 for a single moment assume that I have the vision 
 to look into the profundities of the Divine and 
 Human natures so as to see to the depths of this 
 theme. Some one asks — why is it necessary 
 that Jesus the Christ of God should put Himself 
 into the relations towards us which have been 
 established, in order that the Everlasting Father 
 may forgive sins? Why cannot He say to the 
 sorrowing man "I forgive you," and have done 
 with it? Well, it seems to me there are reasons 
 
or TH 
 
 univer: 
 
 FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 205 
 
 in His own nature ; there are reasons in man's 
 nature ; there are reasons in the Divine Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 There are reasons in His own nature, Wlien 
 God undertakes io forgive sin He pledges Himself 
 to rescue the forgiven man from his sin. In a 
 word, He undertakes to regenerate his nature, to 
 renew it so that he shall eventually live the unsin- 
 ning life. And in order to that, Jesus Christ 
 and His work are necessary. 
 
 There are reasons in the nature of man. To 
 forgive a sinner and leave him to the helplessness 
 which has come from his sin is only AaZ/* forgive- 
 ness. Man needs to be brought into such an 
 understanding of God and into such a love of 
 God that he will hate to sin against Him. In 
 order to that, Christ Jesus and His sacrifice of 
 Himself are necessary. Mere words w^ill not do. 
 There must be some Divine Act which will stand 
 unapproachable, and incapable of being paralleled. 
 Jesus the Christ has supplied that act. 
 
 There are reasons too in the Divine Government, 
 but we have not time tx) state them beyond saying 
 that it must be made universally evident that there is 
 no righteous reason for rebellion against God on 
 the part of any. This we may be sure of — that in 
 its most serious moments, w^hen thouo^ht surofes 
 within like a sea la,shed with tempest, the heart of 
 man must have from God something: more than 
 
206 FOR EI8 NAME'S SAKE, 
 
 mere words to still the storm. On Galilee's lake 
 there is a boat's crew battling with tempest. They 
 can do nothing with the winds and waves. The 
 gusty howl of the wind, the frothy fury of the 
 waves, blanch their cheeks and still their tongues. 
 But, walking on the wave, One comes with a 
 quietude which is itself sublime, and there is a 
 o^reat calm. Not for nothin^r was that scene «:iven 
 us. The tumult that rages within this human life 
 of ours seems endless. Nothing abates it. Every 
 age has its controversies. Every life has its 
 storms. The moan of the sorrowful and the 
 distressed, the whine of the restless and dissat- 
 isfied, the demoniac howl of the bad, are all heard 
 — heard by every generation. Only the miracu- 
 lously frivolous and the supernaturally stoical do 
 not hear them. Mere words will not allay our fears 
 or excite our hopes. We need a man who is more 
 than man to come and walk on these waves and say 
 to us, ^* That which is impossible with man is pos- 
 sible with God." And so Jesus comes. He comes 
 to us to be one of us. He comes and steps into 
 the boat. He says, *' If you perish I will perish 
 with you." He comes to put Himself at our head. 
 He comes and takes on Himself the responsibility 
 for our beinsj born with sinful tendencies. He 
 says — Let the sin do its worst on me, I will be 
 the guilty one, by identifying myself with the 
 guilty. If sin has any rights let it take them out 
 
FOB ins NAME'S SAKE. 207 
 
 of me. If it has a right to kill, let it kill me, 
 Then^ I will bring all the forces of mj Immortal 
 Being into operation to rescue men from it. As 
 David stood for all Israel in presence of Goliath, I 
 will stand for all humanity. Single-handed I will 
 fight its battles. The Goliath of Sin shall fall 
 before me. And then I will demand forsriveness 
 of sin for all who are willing to take it at my 
 hands. And so it is. As was said to Paul in the 
 ship, * God hath given thee all who sail with thee,' 
 so to Jesus Christ it can be said, God hath given 
 thee all for whom thou didst die. Hence, ''He is 
 the Savior of all men, specially of those who be- 
 lieve." Hence St. John's congratulatory words, 
 "I write unto you, little children, because your 
 sins are forgiven you," inasmuch as ye have re- 
 pented enough ? No, no. Inasmuch as ye have 
 had correct spiritual experiences ? No, no. Inas- 
 much as ye are strictly orthodox in all points of 
 theology? No, no. Inasmuch as thero is a strong 
 probability that you will be found worthy to 
 receive the Divine endorsement at the last? No, 
 no — ''I write unto you, my little children, because 
 your sins are forgiven you for Ilis name's sake.'''' 
 I am glad St. John wrote these words rather 
 than any of the other Apostles, because he it was 
 who stood it out beneath the Cross and saw what 
 sin could do. He saw it erect that Cross. He 
 heard its vulgar reproach, its mockery, its w^ords 
 
208 FOB HIS NAME'S SAKE. 
 
 of scorn, and though his heart must have been 
 nigh to breaking, he endured it. Brave, good, 
 gentle soul, the King of his heart was there, on 
 that Cross, crowned with thorns it is true, with 
 thorns which ''the unsuspecting earth had grown 
 for its Creator. They had grown up into matted 
 bushes, and the sun of autumn had hardened their 
 soft spikes into tough barbs. Perhaps the honey 
 bees had come to these flowers to extract sweet- 
 ness, and the restless butterflies had been attracted 
 for a moment by their aromatic fragrance, or the 
 birds had rifled their golden berries with their 
 beaks," but when the sun, that had hardened their 
 soft spikes into tough barbs, saw that to such uses 
 they were put, the very sun hid his face in 
 despair, and there w^as darkness over all the land 
 from the sixth to the ninth hour. Crowned with 
 thorns, but yet the King of all human hearts, as 
 John felt. Glad am I that it was John, the disci- 
 ple whom Jesus loved, the disciple whose love 
 never failed, even when his faith received the 
 rudest shock ; the disciple who saw what sin could 
 do, who wrote these words, "your sins are for- 
 given you, for His name's sake." 
 
 And so we are delivered from the harassing 
 questions as to the sincerity, the genuineness, the 
 sufficiency of our repentance. Repentance has its 
 place, not an obscure one, in Christian experience. 
 But, I repeat, it is an eflfect not a cause. If only 
 
FOR ni8 NAME'S SAKE. 209 
 
 we can read these words with that understanding 
 of them which comes from the possession of a 
 Christianized heart, they will be far more satis- 
 iQictory to us than any other; *'Your sins are 
 forgiven you for His name's sake." The first 
 moment after death is a moment which must infal- 
 libly come to every one of us. Earth lies behind 
 us silently wheeling its obedient way through the 
 black-tented space. Will it make no difference 
 then, as the measureless Eternity stretches before 
 us, and the thought of a life which will seem a 
 failure lies behind, that these words have been 
 sent us by the lips of him who knew how to love 
 but not how to desert the One he so much loved, 
 **your sins are forgiven you for His name's 
 
xy. 
 
 SEAECHINGS OF HEART. 
 
 " Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow." — 
 Lamentations of Jeremiah, i : 12. 
 
 THE greatest natures are capable of the 
 greatest sorrow. It is utterly inconceiva- 
 ble to man of how much sorrow a nature like that 
 of Jesus is capable. The prophet saw Him in 
 vision, and His visage was more marred than that 
 of any man's. What sorrow would be ours if, for 
 a single day, we were endowed with a power of 
 vision which enabled us to see underneath all the 
 coverings of life, into the heart of things; if all 
 persons were laid bare to us, and we saw the 
 stern reality below the veneer and polish and dress 
 and shows of things ! Yet the Divine Eye traverses 
 that region, and none can cover up the interior 
 life from His burning gaze. Is the Divine heart 
 impassive and unmoved by what it sees ? Has it 
 no suffering on account of it ? 
 
 There are two kinds of suft'erinij, two kinds 
 of sorrow. There is the suffering and sorrow 
 
 i 210 
 
BEARCniNGS OF HEART, 211 
 
 of guilt — dry, hard, and without contrition ; there 
 is also the suffering and sorrow of love, which 
 faintl}'' represents the inner movements of the 
 Divine heart. We cannot say what compensations 
 of joy are in the Divine Nature, but that it is an 
 impassive nature, that we cannot believe so long 
 as we hold by Scripture. To no one so thor- 
 oughly as to a Divine Being has this question such 
 broad and deep application — *' Behold and see if 
 there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow." 
 
 Let us dwell for a short while on this thought. 
 Let us not forget that the sufferings of our Lord 
 historically recorded, are but part of His suffer- 
 ings. To the Colossians the great Apostle speaks 
 of '* filling up that which is behind of the afflictions 
 of Christ." There are sorrows for the Son of 
 man still, for he has identified Himself with us, 
 and become one with us. To Paul, afflictions and 
 trials were radiant with a golden light of privilege, 
 because, more than ought else they brought him 
 into such close fellowship with the great Sufferer. 
 
 And does not our Lord suffer now? Does not 
 His church cause Him sorrow ? Is it not like raw 
 material, so very hard to his hand as to be almost 
 incapable of being moulded into any shape or form 
 of beauty ? Does He not sorrow over our igno- 
 rance? Our mental dullness? Our pride of 
 knowledo^e which is often worse than io^norance? 
 Our assumptions of something so like infallibility 
 
212 SEARGUmOS OF HEART. 
 
 that no one can distinguish it from the real thing 
 itself? Our unteachablenes ? Our cantankerous- 
 ness? Our unloveliness of spirit and unlovea- 
 bleness? Our hard thoughts of others? Our 
 want of charity towards them that see not with us, 
 eye to eye, in opinion? Do not these things cause 
 Him sorrow ? 
 
 Again, our want of patience in doing His 
 work? Our expecting to reap on the very day 
 we sow? Our pettishness and peevishness with 
 one another ; our ill-humor, which gives a dis- 
 eased color to our eye so that everything seems to 
 have a jaundiced and fading look ; everything 
 seems to be'* in the sere and yellow leaf," and 
 we find no cause of thankfulness to God anywhere. 
 Does He not sorrow over our suspicion, that spirit 
 which is the opposite of the charity which thinketh 
 no evil, the spirit which sees nothing in those who 
 are not with us but whited sepulchres and platters 
 clean but on the outside ? Does He not sorrow 
 over our self-importance, that spirit which leads 
 us to suppose that we must always be right and 
 others always wrong ; that we are called to sit on 
 thrones not only to judge the erring and wander- 
 ing twelve tribes of Israel, but the tribes of the 
 spiritual Israel also. 
 
 Does not our Lord sorrow over our legalism — 
 that old Jewish spirit of slavishness to mere forms 
 and customs which are of human device — the letter 
 
SEABGHINQS OF HEART. 213 
 
 which killeth ; the rigidity which knows not how 
 to bend or adapt itself to weakness and feebleness 
 and infirmity ? 
 
 Must He not sorrow over our sectarianisms — 
 our thinking more of mere sectional names than of 
 the real unity which underlies all these? Must 
 He not sorrow over that mental and spiritual 
 obtuseness which cannot, or will not, see that a 
 man may be a very rigid sectarian and a very bad 
 Christian ; that he may be most scrupulously 
 excellent at such work as *' tithing mint,anise, and 
 cummin," but for the weightier matters of justice, 
 judgment, and truth he may have no very sincere 
 appreciation? Must He not sorrow over our inju- 
 dicious, oftentimes almost untruthful speech ; 
 over that very great freedom that we allow our- 
 selves, even in the presence of young children, to 
 criticise, severely and unkindly, our fellow-mem- 
 bers, our deacons, our ministers? The tongue is 
 a fire, a world of iniquity, says the Apostle James. 
 And he calls the man who has perfect control over 
 his speech a perfect man. ** In many things we all 
 oifend ; if any man offend not in word the same is 
 a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole 
 body." Must not our hard speech, speech desti- 
 tute of love and feeling and tender consideration 
 for others, be a cause of sorrow to our Divine 
 Lord? 
 
 Yea — sometimes, must not our very j^rayers be 
 
214 8EARGHINGS OF UEAUT. 
 
 a source of sorrow to Him ? *' Ye ask and receive 
 not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume 
 it on your lusts." Have we had no lust at the 
 root of our desire ? No lust of power ? No lust 
 of influence ? No lust of lording it over others ? 
 No lust of impressing our own peculiar individual- 
 ism on others ? Have we longed to see the poor 
 crowding into our church courts ? Have we not 
 secretly prayed that this and that person of influence 
 might be brought in ? But have we felt glad — 
 rejoiced — when some poor servant girl has come? 
 Have we ? Have we thought that all our prayers 
 and anxieties were more than answered by such a 
 result as that? 
 
 If there had been but that one soul lost, still 
 Redemption's work must all have been given for 
 that one soul. Have our prayers been winged by 
 Lazarus at the gate, or by Dives in the palace? 
 Must not our Lord have had sorrow oftentimes 
 over our limiting the Holy One of Israel ; over 
 our very defective appreciation of the diversity of 
 His operations ? Have we not dug out our chan- 
 nels, and laid our waterpipes and connected them 
 with some favorite reservoir of opinion, and said 
 within ourselves, ''Come, O Spirit of Grace, into 
 these — or, I can have no delight in thee?" But, 
 instead of that, oftentimes the influences have not 
 come down our channels. They have been dry. 
 Yet in other ways God has sent His blessing, have 
 
SEARCIimOS OF UEART. 215 
 
 we delighted in it? Have we not too often had 
 that Naaman-spirit, which was not humble enough 
 to receive a blessing just in the way which God 
 had designed it should come, *' Surely, I thought," 
 has been our reply. And then, has not some 
 weak and gentle voice whispered in our ear, *'If 
 the prophet had bid thee do some gy^eat thing, 
 wouldst thou not have done it ? Have we never 
 been proudly ambitious to do some great thing? 
 Have we never sought reputation simply and been 
 heedless of character? And has not our Lord had 
 continual sorrow because of this? 
 
 Have we not been, like Peter, sometimes imper- 
 tinently officious about others, instead of careful 
 about our own spirits ? '* Lord and what shall this 
 man do ? " Have we not forced our Lord to be 
 sharp with us? — "If I will that he tarry till I 
 come, what is that to thee ; follow thou me?" 
 
 Instead of simply being disciples, and cherishing 
 the spirit of disciples, have we never done any- 
 thing, or said anything to convey to others the 
 impression that we are models of Christian attain- 
 ment, paragons of excellenc}^, just what others 
 ought to be, in short, the guardians and watch-dogs 
 of the church, licensed by our very nature to 
 snap and bark at all intruders, or, like Scotch 
 sheep-dogs, trained to worry the sheep into the 
 fold? Have none of us given just cause for men 
 to say, < if it were not for such hard men as that 
 
216 8EARCHIN0S OF HEART. 
 
 man, and that man, such unlovable men, I should 
 think better of Christians? ' Dear brethren, are we 
 free from that spiritual Pharisaism, that ill-na- 
 tured spiritual conceit which repels, from which 
 even contrite souls recoil? Often, very often, no 
 one but God knows how often, I have to compel 
 my own spirit just to take its proper position, that 
 of a sinner at the foot of the Cross. I dare not 
 approach God as a saint. I believe that I know 
 something of what the Apostle felt when he wrote, 
 '*less than the least of all saints." Are we 
 Christian brethren, content to be simply disciples 
 of Jesus, sinners saved by grace, to stand where 
 Paul chose to stand, a position dignified enough 
 surely for any man, not boasting ourselves of how 
 much we love Christ, but rejoicing in this, that 
 He loved us, '*who loved me, and gave Himself 
 for me ? " 
 
 Yes, truly, our Lord may well say, as He looks 
 into the hearts of the members of His professing 
 Church, <' Behold and see, if there be any sorrow 
 like unto my sorrow." When, in a court of 
 Justice, a man's own witnesses seem to damage his 
 cause, the case is indeed pitiful. 
 
 And yet, our Lord's deepest, profoundest, 
 tenderest sorrow does not arise from any inconsist- 
 encies, or defects, or blunders, or ignorances, or 
 wilfulnesses which He sees among those who 
 believe in Him, trust Him and look to Him, 
 
8EABCHIN0S OF IIEABT. 217 
 
 many of whom do their feeble, blundering best, 
 to serve Him. For, every man who names the 
 name of Christ, and departs from iniquity, honors 
 Christ. Just as every young man who enters a 
 school honors that school, by the trust he reposes 
 in its teachers. Just as a tyro in art honors a 
 great Master by copying his works. Christ's church 
 is practically a school ; not a museum in which to 
 deposit specimens of antique theologies and dead 
 saints ; not a gallery of painting and sculpture in 
 which to display finished productions ; it is a 
 school for Christians in the making. There are no 
 finished specimens to be found in it. This world 
 is God's manufactory, not His show-room. But 
 wherever there is trust in God and confidence 
 towards God, there is reconciliation with God. 
 There is no Christian man without his inconsisten- 
 cies, but these are the mere unfinished parts of 
 character. And yet, between the soul that trusts 
 itself into Christ's hands, and the *soul that 
 witholds itself for itself, there is a whole gulf of 
 difference. Naturally, one may be a finer specimen 
 of man than the other, intellectually superior, 
 more refined in sensibility, more companionable, 
 and yet as to the interior possibilities there is no 
 comparison. Christ in a man, as Paul puts it, 
 may be but as a seed in him, but it is a seed which 
 shall rend the rock, and split the mountain in its 
 growth. Christ in a man is a germ in Him which 
 
218 SEARCHING8 OF HEART, 
 
 demands Eternity for its development. Therefore 
 is it that to get the idea of Christ uppermost in the 
 mind renews the mind, to get the love of Christ 
 supreme in the heart renews the affectional nature. 
 As to those who trust Him, our Lord can wait the 
 perfect development of Himself into dominion 
 over all w^eaknesses, ignorances, wilfulnesses, 
 inconsistencies whatsoever. It is a mere matter 
 of time. His chief sorrow is from another source. 
 His chief sorrow was not over Peter w ho denied 
 Him ; not over the two disciples who wanted to be 
 the greatest in His kingdom ; not over Magdalene 
 whose soul He cleansed of its seven-fold tyranny of 
 evil — for she loved much, having much forgiven — 
 not over Nicodemus who came secretly, under the 
 deep shadows of night ; not over the disciples who 
 slept in Gethsemane and could not watch with 
 Him one hour ; not over the men who forsook 
 Him and fled ; not even over the dying thief. His 
 chief sorrow was not over these, but over the 
 people of the city who rejected Him — *' Oh, Jeru- 
 salem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, 
 and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how 
 often would I have gathered thy children together, 
 even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her 
 wings, and ye would not!" — over Judas who 
 betrayed Him, ' ^ good for that man had he never 
 been born." And, in these days. His chief 
 sorrow is not over His Church, with all its multi- 
 
8EARGIIING8 OF HEABT. 219 
 
 plied inconsistencies, ignorances, and wilfulnesses, 
 but over others ; over you young man, to whom 
 He has given a godly fiither and mother, who 
 daily pray for you, though you hear it not, who 
 love you with a love that as far as a finite thing 
 can represent an infinite thing, is like the love of 
 God. Oh, to be born in Heaven and to descend 
 into Hell ; to be cradled in Bethlehem and thence 
 to sink into an inhabitant of Sodom ; to breathe 
 your first breath in the land of Promise, and to 
 choose in preference the bondage of Egypt ; to 
 resist successfully the undying solicitude of a 
 heart beating with a pulse that is timed to God's 
 love ; to be the child of a house on the lintel and 
 side-posts of which the blood of Calvary had been 
 sprinkled ; to be dedicated to God in Baptism ; to 
 have all the privileges of the Kingdom of Heaven 
 claimed on your behalf; to be a child of God's 
 Covenant made with your parents, and to break 
 away, finally and forever from this, it seems to me 
 at times impossible. It seems to me at times as 
 if the power of God as well as the grace of 
 God were pledged to your arrestment. Our 
 Lord looking ^n you may well say, ** was any 
 sorrow, like unto my sorrow ? " 
 
 Over you also, fathers and mothers, men and 
 women bearing the holiest names that this world 
 knows ; into whose arms a gift has been placed than 
 which this earth can furnish none so marvellous or 
 
220 SEARCHIN08 OF HEART, 
 
 wonderful — have you appreciated that gift at its 
 true value ? Have you realized that the flesh was 
 only a platform for an immortal spirit to stand upon ? 
 Must there not be sorrow in the heart of Christ 
 as He sees fathers and mothers treating children as 
 though they were mere animal forms, or at the 
 most, mere children of this world, to be trained 
 for this world, everything nurtured in them except 
 that which is highest, that which is distinctive, that 
 which makes them men ? In every child there is 
 a religious instinct, and it largely depends upon 
 what the parents are as to whether that religious 
 instinct shall be cultured or crushed ; whether it 
 shall become conviction, or remain for a while in 
 an undeveloped condition and eventually become 
 an accusino: Conscience. I believe that most of 
 the sad disappointments that parents meet with in 
 their children are simply Nature working its own 
 revenge for this insult offered to the religious 
 instinct. Have those of you who are fathers and 
 mothers not brought much sorrow into the heart 
 of Jesus by refusing to train the religious instinct 
 in your child ? That which fathers and mothers 
 do, children naturally want to do. Are you, 
 fathers and mothers, just exactly where you ought 
 to be, considering what your opportunities and 
 responsibilities are? You love your children, 
 why do you not love them all through, soul as 
 well as body, spirit as well as soul? I have 
 
SEARCHINOS OF HEART. 221 
 
 sometimes met with cases of parents who said to 
 their children, *'go," but not '^comc." Better, 
 far better life than speech. Better example than 
 precept. But more human and kindly the spirit 
 which says, "go" than that which resists the re- 
 ligious instinct of childhood in its feelings after 
 God. What must have been the sensations of 
 that mother, whose son, in the condemned cell, 
 turned upon her, almost with the rage of a tiger, 
 and said, *'If you had been a better woman I 
 should never have been here." 
 
 When our Lord looks from the height of His 
 Inlinite Knowledge upon the world of fathers and 
 mothers, and sees how, by their example, they are 
 bending their children's souls away from Him, 
 how often must His feeling be like to that ex- 
 pressed in these words, *' Is any sorrow like unto 
 my sorrow." 
 
 But we cannot pursue this line of reflection 
 into many of its details. And yet does it not 
 touch every one of us? What sorrow greater 
 than that of being perpetually misunderstood? 
 And who knows this sorrow as the Son of God 
 knows it? Have we not misunderstood Him 
 most egregiously? Have we not thought of 
 Him as the condemner? Yet is He the Saviour. 
 Have we not regarded Him as though He came to 
 destroy ? Yet He came to stand between us and 
 destruction. What sorrow is more cutting and 
 
222 SEARCniNOS OF HEABT. 
 
 lacerating and torturing to the heart than to be 
 suspected? Has not Jesus been the object of 
 our suspicion? Have we not said by our conduct, 
 * I dare not trust Him, I dare not commit myself 
 to Him?' Have we not exalted men above Him? 
 Plave we not feared men ? Have we not allowed 
 the frowns of men to be more to us than the 
 smiles of the Savior? Have we not steadily re- 
 fused to follow our best inclinations ? Have we 
 not done our best to put out the light which was 
 in our consciences? Have we not resisted our 
 own tenderest impulses? Have we not thought 
 that we might have too much of Christ ? Have we 
 not persisted in thinking that the call of Christ 
 was to gloom, and despondency and joylessness 
 and narrowness of life ? Have we not ignorantly 
 misinterpreted the plainest truths of Holy Writ ? 
 Have we not resisted the Holy Spirit's movements 
 in our souls? Have we not almost forced our- 
 selves into darkness? And all this has been so 
 much of sorrow poured into the lot of the Son of 
 Man. Yet still He broods over us, with a love 
 that many waters cannot quench. Still He shows 
 us His Crown of Thorns, His garments all red 
 with blood, His pierced hands and feet. His spear 
 thrust side ; still He reminds us of Calvary, and 
 of Gethsemane and asks us still, ''Was any 
 sorrow like unto my sorrow ?" 
 
XYI. 
 THE DIVINE EESPONSIBILlTY. 
 
 But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and He 
 that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not, for I have redeemed thee, I 
 I have called thee by thy name: thou are mine. — Isaiah, xliii: I. 
 
 THE subject of Responsibility has recently 
 occupied our attention. First, the Respon- 
 sibility of the Ungodly for his ungodliness 
 and all its consequences. Secondly, the Respon- 
 sibility of the Christian — consisting mainly 
 in loyalty to Christ. And now I am about 
 to venture upon an extension of this thought 
 of Responsibility. I purpose to pursue it into 
 a region, the most sacred of all — and to 
 speak — I hope without presumption, I hope with 
 reverence, I hope so as not to expose myself to 
 any just charge of rashness or impiety — I propose 
 to speak of the Divine responsibility. 
 
 For, surely. Responsibility is not a word that 
 can be limited to man. It must belong to those 
 higher orders of created intelligence known to us 
 as angels of various degrees. It must belong to 
 
 223 
 
224 THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 the Eternal One Himself. It must be that He 
 holds Himself responsible for the Creation and its 
 consequences. This is not a thought that often 
 comes within the sphere of our meditation — nor 
 should it. Such a thou^rht is not to be brouirht 
 into the area of flippant discussion or heated con- 
 troversy. It belongs rather to those moments of 
 meditation when all voices are quiet but one, and 
 that one voice chastened into subduedness consist- 
 ent with the deepest reverence. And yet surely 
 we may speak on so sacred a theme without being 
 blameworthy. If responsibility belongs to the 
 creature made in the image of God, it is inherited 
 responsibility ; it comes down from Him who 
 made him. 
 
 Let us approach the subject cautiously. God's 
 revelation of Himself is intended to be a light to 
 the mind, and a joy to the heart. If the word 
 * God' means "the good one," be sure that all that 
 is made known to us of God in any way, or 
 through any medium, is for our good. Every 
 word by w^iich He has made Himself known is our 
 property — to be sacredly guarded for what it 
 contains. Everyone who knows anything of Scrip- 
 ture knows how gradual has been the revelation 
 of God to the human race. Not till we reach the 
 time of David do we get the word father as 
 applied to Deity, and then only in a figurative sort 
 of way. Isaiah prophecies that one of the signs 
 
THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 225 
 
 of the Christian dispensation shall be that the 
 name of God as revealed in Christ shall be *'the 
 Everlasting Father." Men had known Deity as 
 the Self-Existent God — the source of life. They 
 had thought of Him as the God of Providence, the 
 Great Provider, who had them in His hands, and 
 would care for them, and that is about the utmost 
 practical view attained in the Old Testament. 
 In that wonderful book of Job, the epitomised life 
 of the human race, we have the thought of an 
 unrealized Eedeemer, — but *' My Father and your 
 Father, my God and your God" is New Testament 
 language, and post-resurrection speech at that. 
 This speecli leads us to the thought of the Divine 
 Eesponsibility. It is not our invention but God's 
 revelation, that, *like as a father pitieth his chil- 
 dren so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.' We 
 have a right, then, to say that at least the same 
 measure of responsibility which belongs to a father 
 for the nourishment, education, and development 
 of his child belongs to the great Eternal Father 
 for us all. He has made us, and not we our- 
 selves. "We are not rasponsible for being here — 
 that responsibility belongs outside of us. We are 
 not responsible for the laws which work in our 
 own constitutions, for we did not create those 
 laws. We are not responsible for anything which 
 is out of our own power, that is evident — so evi- 
 dent that it is useless to av^nxQ the matter. I am 
 
 o 
 
226 THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY, 
 
 not responsible for the original tendency to sinful- 
 ness which was in my nature when born into this 
 world. Nor am I responsible for being born, nor 
 for being born where I was born ; nor for having 
 just those parents which were mine ; nor for 
 being just so high and just so heavy ; nor for having 
 the temperament and disposition with which 1 was 
 born. Nor are you responsible for like matters 
 in yourself; nor is any one. These things lie 
 beyond our election and choice. Neither you, 
 nor I, nor any one is responsible for the fact that 
 we came into the Avorld puling babes, nor for the 
 laws at the back of our life which co-operated to 
 that result — all this responsibility lies outside of 
 us. I suppose that in the generations behind us 
 there have lived people w^ho verily persuaded 
 themselves that they were responsible for the sin 
 of Adam — that the guilt of what was done thou- 
 sands of years ago rested upon them — that they 
 were doomed because an ancestor of generations 
 ago was a wilful sinner. 
 
 It is very wonderful that any one should be 
 found capable of training his conscience to the 
 acceptance of such a fallacy. Every man inherits 
 tendencies from past generations — that we know. 
 When the first of men wilfully disobeyed God, He 
 started in himself a tendency, which, if not re- 
 sisted, would become a habit of wrong doing — 
 and that habit would create a tendency in the next 
 
THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY, 327 
 
 generation, and in the next, and so on. And 
 that is what is meant by original sin — the ten- 
 dency created by generations past to wrong — 
 stamping its impress upon mind and heart, 3^ea, 
 upon the physical organism. It is so in the 
 animal world. In the past, dogs have been trained 
 to fold sheep, and the instruction has become a 
 habit, and the habit has created a tendency in the 
 next generation to do the same thing, and has 
 become fixed ^ a second nature, as w^e say. And 
 this law runs through all creation, even into the 
 vegetable world. Drunkenness in a parent creates 
 a tendency to drunkenness in a child. The thiev- 
 ing propensity in a family has been known to 
 propagate itself from generation to generation. 
 The disposition to speak falsehood, too — until 
 whole nations have lost the sense of the deep 
 disgrace of lying. Now, this is what theology 
 means by original sin. It has no idea of original 
 guilt. It is contradiction in language, and confu- 
 sion in thought to speak of original guilt. 
 
 Now He who made man is responsible for the 
 original law by which tendencies to good and evil 
 can be propagated from sire to son. The law is 
 not evil ; it is good. But good laws are often 
 used for bad purposes. An illustration may make 
 it clear. From a reservoir of pure water, pipes 
 are laid to every house in a city. Those pipes 
 were laid for the conveyance of pure, wholesome 
 
228 THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 water for the benefit of a large population. That 
 was the original design and intention. But sup- 
 pose that city should be besieged by a barbarian 
 army — suppose the army should surround the 
 reservoir and poison the waters, the very pipes 
 which were laid for the conveyance of life would 
 be conduits for the conveyance of death. But 
 that was not their original design. The city which 
 constructed, at a great cost, that water-system, is 
 not responsible for this diabolic abuse of the sys- 
 tem. And so our guilt does not extend to Deity. 
 He is responsible for the beneficent law, not for 
 the sin which has been transmitted alono^ it. The 
 very idea of intelligence involves freedom. Either 
 there must be freedom, or there can be no intelli- 
 gence and no morality. Man could not be what 
 he is without this liberty. He must have the 
 ability to go wrong, or he cannot have the ability 
 to do right. God is re^^^onsible for making man 
 what he is, or rather was, and man is responsible 
 for abusing his freedom. The law is good if a 
 man use it lawfully. 
 
 Let us go a step further. We cannot conceive 
 of an Omniscient God, without admitting that He 
 must have foreseen that the creature He made 
 would abuse his liberty. God must have foreseen 
 the fall of His creature from a condition of inno- 
 cence. Does the Divine Responsibility extend to 
 making such provision as would prevent it? 
 
TEE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 229 
 
 Clearly not. No such provision has been made. 
 We cannot conceive how it could be made, and 
 yet leave man a free moral agent, not a machine. 
 The Divine responsibility extends to the providing 
 a means whereby not simply to develop an inno- 
 cent man, but to save a guilty man from the 
 spiritual consequences of his sin. From all the 
 consequences he cannot be saved — from the fatal 
 consequences he can. That God did anticipate 
 the fall from innocence of His creature, and pro- 
 vide for meeting man in a fallen condition is evi- 
 dent from one single expression ' ' The Lamb slain 
 before the foundation of the world." In the 
 Divine purpose, plan, and intention, provision was 
 made for the sinner's escape from the fatal conse- 
 quences of his sin before there was a sinner to sin. 
 Eedemption was no after-thought. It was woven 
 into the very web of creation. It was no patching 
 up of badly-done work, as some have irreverently 
 phrased it, but the provision made by Divine Love 
 for all contingencies which should arise. Once, 
 apprehend the Divine character as revealed in 
 Holy Writ, and then it will be easy to see that 
 Eedemption is the bringing into operation of the 
 Divine Love just as creation is the bringing into 
 operation of the Divine energy. If the Creator 
 puts on this earth a creature with a liability in his 
 nature to fall, is He not responsible for making 
 provision for his redemption ^nd restoration ? If 
 
230 THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 3'ou think for a while of the question you will be 
 disposed to give but one answer. I know how often 
 it has been said that if after the fall God had left 
 man to himself, and visited him no more, he 
 would have been just. No one, it is said, could 
 possibly have impeached his justice. It may be 
 so. I do not care to argue the question. I think 
 Scripture does not naturally produce the impres- 
 sion upon the mind that the attributes of God are 
 at variance one with the other, and that there is 
 eternal discord in the Divine nature'. It has never 
 produced that impression on my own mind, and I 
 very much question if ever it can be charged with 
 producing that impression on any mind. I have 
 read a discourse in which, with fine dramatic 
 effect, the revealed attributes of Deity were 
 arraigned the one against the other. Justice came 
 with flaming sword, and demanded the execution 
 of the offender. She summoned her witnesses to 
 show that she had done this and that, and sentence 
 was about to be pronounced. But Mercy stepped 
 in and pleaded, with sobs in her voice and tears 
 in her eyes, and at last succeeded in prevailing on 
 Justice to forego her claim. And so for the sake 
 of Mercy — or by Mercy — Justice was defeated. 
 Now, for our own convenience, it may be necessary 
 at times to speak of justice and at other times of 
 mercy. But justice and mercy in God are never 
 represented as in antagonism. They ever go 
 
THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 231 
 
 hand-in-hand together — like light and heat in the 
 sunbeams. It would be nothing short of foolish for 
 me to try, in a brief sermon, to offer anything 
 upon what has been called * ' the philosophy of the 
 plan of salvation." Whether any single human 
 soul has ever been brought into fellow^ship with 
 Christ through the comprehension of ''the philos- 
 ophy of the plan of salvation," I very much doubt. 
 That part of human nature which we call the ' heart ' 
 has more to do with the realizing of the Eedemp- 
 tion wrought out on Calvary. The work of 
 Redemption excites a confidence towards God 
 wdiich the work of Creation never can. When the 
 revelation comes to the sinning soul — '' Trust in 
 Me ; hope in Me ; lean upon Me ; I have found 
 a Eansom ; I am a Just God and a Savior" — a 
 just God, because a Savior — how can such a 
 message do aught else than excite confidence in 
 the soul, and rouse faith into action? We see, 
 from the fact brought into full visibility on Calvar}^ 
 that the Creator of man holds Himself responsible 
 for man's redemption — that is to say, for doing 
 all and everything essential so to counteract the 
 eflects of inherited sin as that it shall be easier for 
 man to reach heaven than not to reach it. 
 
 When God opened the eyes of the great apostle 
 he saw this truth, that " Where sin abounded, 
 grace did much more abound," or, as it is more 
 correctly, '' superabounded," abounded over and 
 
232 THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 above. In this dispensation of things a lost man 
 has not simply to reject God as a Creator, but 
 God as a Eedeemer — God in Christ — the God 
 who has done all and everything possible to be 
 done to nullify the fatal results of sin. There are 
 physical consequences of sin — and these cannot 
 be interfered with. They become useful as chastise- 
 ments, as evangelical forces in the body of man 
 working a knowledge of what sin is, and under 
 God working repentance for sin. But the fatal 
 consequences God has provided against in redemp- 
 tion, for, like as with Paul's ship which was utterly 
 lost, but they who were in it all came safe to land, 
 so with this body of ours, sin-cursed, and there- 
 fore not fitted for the permanent body in which 
 the soul shall live eternally ; it shall be lost, but 
 the soul shall reach the home-land, and be clothed 
 upon with its house " which is from heaven." In 
 Eedemption our God comes to us and shares our 
 responsibility for sin. Oh, it is a wonderful 
 thought that, but a true one ! To a degree God 
 makes himself responsible for human sin, and pro- 
 vides redemption, provides a new attitude for the 
 soul. Formerly the law was. Do this and live. 
 Man fell out from that. Now the law is. Trust and 
 live. Have faith and live. *' I have found a ran- 
 som." As though God should say, the responsibility 
 for sin is not all yours, some of it is Mine. Don't 
 shrink back from the thought. It does not make pur 
 
THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 233 
 
 God the author of sin. But He became sin for us 
 who knew no sin. He became as though He were a 
 sinner. In other words. He took upon Himself 
 the responsibility for man's sin to the extent of 
 providing a redemption. And was it not like 
 Him ? Think of a fiither who should blot out the 
 name of his son from the family register the 
 moment he sinned, and do nothing to reclaim 
 him ! What would you think of such a father ? 
 Would you not go to him and reason w^ith him — 
 *< You w^ere the medium of that child's life, he is 
 your child, you are responsible for his existence, 
 and for doing to the utmost possible for that 
 child's redemption and restoration ? " And can 
 that which is true of an earthly father towards his 
 child be untrue of the Eternal Father ? Having 
 created our spirit's life ; having breathed into our 
 nostrils the breath of life, and made us living souls, 
 is the Eternal Father not responsible for the doing 
 all that is possible for Him to do to save us if we 
 sin, to rescue us if we fall, to educate us, to 
 discipline us, and that with all patience, with all 
 tenderness, yet with all the firmness and unyielding 
 righteousness which belong to the fatherly rela- 
 tionship? And herein, in this earthly relationship 
 of father and child, and the responsibility which 
 holds from the one to the other, we get the best 
 commentary the earth holds on the Divine 
 Responsibility. 
 
234 THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 You remember the complimentary word uttered 
 respecting Abraham : * ' For I know him that he 
 will command his children ; " and in every father 
 there is lodged the right to command — the duty 
 to command. That weak tenderness which per- 
 mits disobedience to go unrebuked and unpun- 
 ished, is not Divine tenderness. It is the frailty 
 of human irresoluteness. There is nothing of that 
 in God. The commands and precepts of His 
 Word indicate not merely the magistrate or the 
 ruler. They betoken the Father — the Divine 
 Father — who knows what His children do not 
 know, who would shield them from every harm, 
 and when they are broken and bruised, heal them. 
 Christian brethren, is there nothing for our souls 
 to rest upon in this, that we are not our own 
 creators, not our own in any sense, but God's; 
 that He having created us, is responsible for 
 redeeming us? Does it not help us to get rid of 
 those crude, almost barbaric, thoughts of God, 
 which even Christian minds have sometimes per- 
 mitted themselves to entertain? Shy lock, deter- 
 mined to have his pound of flesh, is not the Bible 
 idea of God. But the Parable of the Prodigal Son 
 is our Lord's idea ; and oh, how lovely and beauti- 
 ful the idea is ! Let us cherish it, in the full assur- 
 ance that it represents — though feint ly, yet truly 
 — the eternal disposition of our God towards all 
 returning prodigals and all sorrowing sinners. 
 
XVII. 
 PEEDESTINATION. 
 
 *' Predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all 
 things after the counsel of his own will."' — E^hesians, i. ii. 
 
 HOW often people get frightened at a word. 
 There has been no inconsiderable fright 
 at the first word in this text — * predestinated ' — 
 or, as in the New Version ' fore-ordained.' Cal- 
 vinism has been associated with such words as 
 * predestination ' and 'fore-ordination.' And 
 these words have been interpreted theologically 
 rather than etymologically. It is very interesting 
 to know what Calvin meant by those words, 
 because he was one of the rulinix minds of his 
 time. It is of more importance to know what 
 Paul meant by them — for he was specially called 
 of God to teach spiritual truth because he was 
 specially fitted to teach it — although he did not 
 think that he was. Like Moses, he had a very 
 low idea of his own competenc}' ; but the lives of 
 both men proved that there was no mistake made 
 
 235 
 
236 PREDESTINATION. 
 
 when the one was called to Leadership and the 
 other to Apostleship. The self-distrusting man is 
 generally the man to choose. His distrust of 
 himself will throw him back upon God. *'Lord 
 what wilt thou have me to do " will be his perpet- 
 ual prayer. 
 
 What is our relation to leaders in the Church of 
 Christ, leaders of thought, I mean? Tamely to 
 submit to everything they suggest, as though it 
 must he ixxxih'^ Is that our duty? 
 
 Or, to resist them simply because they are 
 leaders, in a spirit of snappish independence? 
 Neither the one nor the other. Calvin must have 
 learnt all that he knew of theology from the 
 Apostle Paul. Did he interpret him aright? 
 That *is the question. How are we to answer it? 
 By comparing one part of the Apostle's teaching 
 with another — and then comparing the whole of 
 it with what other Apostles said, and specially 
 with what our Lord Himself said and did. Only 
 thus can we know. 
 
 Every generation has its way of looking at 
 things. The generation of Calvin saw that there 
 were law and order in the world — and dreaded 
 anarchy, dreaded the uprising of the people, 
 dreaded revolution. They preached a theology of 
 law and order. God was King, absolute monarch. 
 Judge. There was no appeal from Him. So far 
 they were right. But when they went farther and 
 
PREDESTINATION. 237 
 
 said, we understand perfectly what God's will is, 
 and there is no appeal from us, then they went a 
 step too far. Still, the result of their influence 
 on their own time was very beneficial. Never in 
 the world's history, has a city been better 
 ruled than was Geneva under Calvin. 'And 
 while his interpretations of Scripture have 
 been improved upon in many particulars, yet 
 there are elements in his teaching which are 
 true for ever. Eightly interpreted, the doc- 
 trine of the Divine Sovereignty is full of consola- 
 tion. The inference from it is law and order. 
 If God be not Sovereign who is? Man? But 
 man is a myriad-headed creature. The Sover- 
 eignty of man means anarchy. And what shall 
 we say to Calvin's assertion that whatever God 
 wills is right? Read in the light of Scripture it 
 can only mean whatever God wills is good, not 
 simply because He wills it, but because it is for 
 the highest good of His creatures. You may turn 
 the sentence round and read it the other way — 
 whatever is right God wills. Calvin, I have no 
 doubt, felt at heart when he proclaimed the Divine 
 Sovereignty as absolute, and the Divine will as 
 supreme, as felt David when he prayed '' Let me 
 fall into the hands of God for His mercies are 
 great, but let me not fall into the hands of man." 
 But whatever Calvin meant, and whatever any 
 great teachers mean, you and I have the same 
 
238 PREDESTINATION, 
 
 living spring from which to draw our water of life 
 as they had. We can go to the Scriptures them- 
 selves. And the only way to arrive at that union 
 of the church of Christ which is so necessary is to 
 go back to the Scriptures. Any man and every 
 man who makes more of mere sectarian leaders 
 than of the leaders which God Himself appointed 
 is condemned by these Scriptures. Read what St. 
 Paul says about this derisive spirit — ' ' One says 
 I am of Paul, another, I am of ApoUos, another, I 
 am of Cephas." St. Paul condemns the whole thing. 
 He says, ' while you talk in that way you are 
 carnal in mind, not spiritual. Who is Paul and 
 who is Apollos ? Ministers by whom ye believed. 
 Believed in whom ? In Paul ? In Apollos ? Nay ; 
 in Christ. It was Christ who was crucified for 
 you. Not Paul, or Apollos or Cephas.' Now 
 this is the spirit which every true successor of the 
 Apostles will stand for. A leader who leads men 
 to himself and not to Christ is a usurper. None 
 of us ought to be satisfied until we are sure that 
 we have correctly apprehended the ideas which 
 these Apostolic men gave to the world. Of course, 
 the man who gives more time, and more research 
 will be likely to be nearer the exact truth. We 
 must remember this however, that the whole of 
 any truth is never apprehended by one man or in 
 one generation. In the Roman Empire, they used 
 to call a very small section of the earth the world. 
 
PREDESTINATION. 239 
 
 The word * world ' to-day means vastly more than 
 it did then. But what they had of it was good, 
 and useful for them. But it was only a piece. 
 So it is in regard to the world of mind, and the 
 world of spirit. It is being discovered all the 
 time. The opinions which the men of the past 
 held were not entirely false, they were only par- 
 tial, crude, and incomplete. We must remember 
 that the duty which Jesus Christ has laid upon us 
 is not to know everything, but to be learners and 
 followers of Him. To follow a person, to get a 
 certain type of character, not to be mentally 
 correct simply, that is what our Lord asks. He 
 asks what all can do ; His claims are of such a 
 nature that they have universal applicability. 
 Children, young men and maidens, adults and 
 old men, all can follow a person, all can aim at a 
 certain type of character. In a word, all can be 
 Christians. The beginnings of Christian life are 
 very simple, so long as we go to the New Testa- 
 ment ; they are complicated and difficult only 
 when man begins to introduce his inventions and 
 confusions into them. 
 
 The Church is at one and the same time a 
 school-house ; a hospital ; a temporary home. 
 But before we can learn what it has to teach, we 
 must be in it. The child enters and then begins 
 to learn. We come into the Church not to display 
 our perfections, for we have none ; but to learn 
 
240 • PBEDESTINA TION. 
 
 about that Kingdom of God of which our Lord 
 spake so much ; to learn about ourselves and about 
 God. For, there is nothing on which we seem to 
 exercise our intelligence so lazily as on our own 
 nature and its present needs and future possibilties. 
 Now when St Paul speaks of our being predes- 
 tinated or fore-ordained, he is speaking about this 
 nature of ours and what it was made for? He 
 says in effect, that the idea of a thing is in the 
 constitution of the thing itself — but it is also in 
 the mind of God before it is in our mind. Fore- 
 ordination is that to which the thing was ordained 
 before it w^as actually made. The idea of this 
 building was in the mind of the architect before it 
 was ever put on paper, before it was ever trans- 
 lated into material visibility. And the idea of 
 every part of it was in other minds before it was 
 in his. The idea of Gothic architecture was sug- 
 gested to the mind of the first man who attempted 
 it, by an avenue of trees, their branches hanging 
 towards each other, forming a pecular kind of arch. 
 The idea of man and the destiny of man was in the 
 Divine mind before this world was. Man was 
 made according to a divine idea and for a definite 
 purpose. Now, wdien Jesus Christ comes into 
 the world Paul sees that there is God's idea and 
 purpose for man fully and clearly revealed. And 
 so he begins to speak of that for which man was 
 predestinated ; of that for which he was foreor- 
 
PREDESTINATION. 241 
 
 dained. His mind is full of it. It does not 
 depress him ; it inspires him ; animates him, 
 makes life purer and sweeter, grander and more 
 glorious. So much so, that in speaking to the 
 Eomans with these ideas of predestination in his 
 mind, he cries out, *'If God be for us, who can 
 be against us." Fore-ordination is God for us, 
 according to the Apostle. Predestination is God 
 for us, according to the Apostle. And there can 
 be no room for doubt that to the mind of St Paul 
 these ideas had nothing in them of gloom or de- 
 pression. But they have been so used as to bring 
 gloom and depression to many minds. Predesti- 
 nation means purpose. It implies an end. And 
 it implies the provision necessary to carry out that 
 purpose and to accomplish that end. Kightly 
 viewed, it means that the Creator does not work at 
 random, nor blindly, but according to a precon- 
 ceived idea and along the line of the law which 
 leads up to making that idea into a fact. 
 
 In every department of life there is the perfect 
 type. The perfect thing is the complete thing — 
 that which cannot be improved upon. When the 
 Father of our spirits said, *'Let us make man" 
 he meant something more by man than you or I 
 mean. He did not mean simply the gardener 
 Adam, nor the herdsman Abraham, nor the smart 
 bargaining man Jacob — the aboriginal Yankee — 
 nor the huntsman Esau, nor the political economist 
 
242 PREDESTINATION 
 
 Joseph, nor the Lawgiver Moses, nor the physi- 
 cally imposing Saul, nor the philosophical 
 Epicurean Solomon, not even the magnanimous 
 David, poet, prophet, king, warrior, saint, sinner, 
 all in one, although David, to our great astonish- 
 ment is called, " the man after God's own heart." 
 I have no doubt that there are many persons who 
 would be very glad to get those six words out of 
 the record. This poet-king's great sin stands 
 there confessed. Let us remember, that his great 
 repentance stands there confessed, too. There is 
 not a doubt that David was the greatest man of 
 his day, and that in comparison with the men 
 around him he was among the best. He was an 
 all round man, physically, mentally, spiritually. 
 He touched the earth, and he touched the heavens, 
 at more points than any other man of his time. 
 His sympathies were more varied, his nature was 
 larger than any man who then lived. But even 
 this man was not the man God meant. And we 
 do not get to the perfect man until we get to Jesus 
 the Christ. When he appears — the very angels 
 of Heaven unite to cry, "Arise, anoint him, for 
 this is He " — this is the man. 
 
 You and I and all men were predestinated to be 
 according to that type and order. As to the 
 quantity of our manhood, we cannot equal the 
 Man Christ Jesus ; as to the quality, we may be 
 like Him. We may be of the same type. And 
 
PREDESTINATION. 243 
 
 it is the type after all which is the criterion. If 
 we are of the number of those who seek to do the 
 will of God, of the number of those who seek first 
 the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, then 
 we belong to the type of man which the Father of 
 our spirits meant when He said, *'Let us make 
 man." I am using scientific rather than theologi- 
 cal language because many of our theological 
 terms are worn thread-bare. They are like Saul's 
 armor, which fitted only the man for whom it was 
 made. Or, like some of those coats of mail which 
 I have seen hansfins; in the baronial halls of old 
 England, very well for the men and methods of 
 the past, but worse than useless for the present. 
 No soldier would think of wearing them in modern 
 warfare. It is of no use our trying to appear 
 respectable in the clothes of our grandfathers, we 
 cannot do it. But the same life which animated 
 them animates us. The same Holy Spirit of God 
 which brooded over their hearts broods over ours. 
 We live on the same earth, but we do not put the 
 vegetables which they grew on our tables. We 
 grow our own. And so we have the same Bible 
 that they had and a better s^'stem of exegesis. 
 We can interpret it for ourselves, and in our own 
 methods, and only thus can we, in our generation, 
 be as true to God as they were in theirs. To me 
 predestination speaks of the end which God had 
 in making man, of the type of man that the Crea- 
 
244 PREDESTINATION. 
 
 tor intended, and of the unchangeable purpose 
 that He has to produce that type — that type, the 
 perfection and consummation of which we have in 
 Jesus the Christ. A man conformed to that type 
 is a man after God's own heart, not conformed to 
 it he is breaking away from the destiny which God 
 intended for him. 
 
 In the latter part of this passage we are brought 
 face to face with a great truth, contained in 
 the words — ' ' Who worketh all things according 
 to the counsel of Ills own will." ' Will,' as 
 used in Scripture is always associated with char- 
 acter. The Divine will expresses the Divine 
 disposition. We assume often that whatever is 
 done on earth is according to the Divine will, an 
 assumption for which there is no evidence in our 
 Lord's teaching. There is a sense in which we 
 may say that whatever is done on earth He doeth 
 it, for God's laws and decrees are working here all 
 the time. But a judge on the bench may have to 
 commit his own son to prison. He is obliged 
 to do it, or be an unjust judge, and yet it is not 
 according to his will as a father. He is not dis- 
 posed to do it. His will is not done when that 
 son is sent to jail. And I think that there is no 
 more fruitful source of error and wrong feeling, 
 than the notion that all the pains and sorrows and 
 losses and anxieties and burdens and afflictions 
 of this life are according to God's will. They 
 
PBEDESTINATIOK 245 
 
 most assuredly are not. Man's will has vaulted 
 into the place of Sovereignty here on this earth. 
 It has usurped the throne. Man has been trying 
 to do his own will here for these past centuries. 
 He has been persistently refusing to do the will of 
 God. And the results are such as we see. But 
 what then, says one, do you make of the words of 
 the sacred penman, **whom the Lord loveth He 
 chasteneth?" Read on. What follows? ''JSFot 
 for His pleasure^ huiiov our profit that we may 
 be partakers of His holiness." It is not acccord- 
 ing to the will of God, to chasten us, but there is 
 no other way to bring us to thoughtfulness and 
 seriousness. And so, this world in which we live 
 does not represent what society would be if the 
 will of God were done. It is a school-house, not 
 a home. It is a place of discipline, not of rest. 
 It is a place where man has to learn a very great 
 deal which is to be useful to him hereafter. But 
 the will of God is not done here, speaking gener- 
 ally ; the will of man is. And has been for the 
 centuries past. Everywhere, man is trampling 
 upon God's laws for the body. His laws for the 
 mind, His laws for the heart. Everywhere mer- 
 cantilism is dominatins: it over riahteousness. 
 Everywhere, those who are sincerely striving to 
 do God's will are in a minority. And they are 
 often last instead of first. But in the eternal 
 future many that are last will be first and many 
 
246 PREDESTINATION. 
 
 that are first last. Those who are seeking to do 
 God's will here are to be the statesman and prime 
 ministers and leaders when God's Kingdom shall 
 come. How do I know? I know because our 
 Lord told His disciples so. What else can we 
 make of these w^ords, **I appoint unto you a 
 Kingdom, even as my Father appointed unto me, 
 that ye may eat and drink at my table in my 
 Kingdom (perfect fellowship) and ye shall sit on 
 thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." 
 These were the representatives of the Jewish race 
 who were doing God's will, and so they were to 
 be the judges and rulers of the nation that was 
 not doing it. 
 
 Now, I am persuaded that we often darken our 
 own understandings as to the will of God, by 
 carelessly saying, " It is God's will, I must sub- 
 mit." It is right, it is good to seek resignation ; to 
 be brave in the hour of trial, to force down the 
 rebelliousness of our spirits. And yet, to my 
 mind there is more consolation in believins: that 
 none of these sufferings and trials are expressive 
 of God's will, that they are the inevitable results 
 of the rebellious will of man asserting itself from 
 generation to generation, until sin and death reign 
 everywhere. God's will is not sickness but 
 health, God's will is not wretchedness but happi- 
 ness, God's will is not death but life, God's will is 
 not that any should perish but that all should 
 
PREDESTINATION. 247 
 
 come to repentance, God's will is not hatred, 
 revenge, war, and all the misery these bring. 
 Barbarians may think so. Christians cannot. 
 Judgment is his strange work, mercy is his 
 delight. Jesus Christ revealed God's will. He 
 did God's will. He died to tell us, in the most 
 emphatic way possible, that man's rebellion was 
 the trampling upon holy love ; that it was not 
 God's will we should sin and suffer and heap up 
 miseries for ourselves ; that the more we do our 
 own wills, irrespective of God, the more we add 
 to the accumulated miseries of our race. Believe 
 this, as you must, if you sit at the feet of Jesus 
 and learn of Him, and the God revealed in 
 Jesus Christ becomes the great attractive centre to 
 which the mind turns, and the accumulated cruel- 
 ties of the world — its diseases, its malignities, its 
 despotisms — its wars, and all the myriad miseries 
 which afflict it, are man's and not God's. When 
 man separates himself from God, ignores God, 
 and lives self-centred, lives independently of God, 
 lives as though he -did not belong to a constitution 
 of thins^s of which God is the centre, he is addinjr 
 fuel to the fire which the self-willed have already 
 lit ; he is storing up for himself, and for others, 
 sorrow and trouble. And then he turns round 
 upon Divine Providence and charges it with his 
 own miseries. He says '' God is cruel, God is 
 unkind." Nay ; it is man that is cruel, man that 
 
248 PREDESTINATION. 
 
 is unkind. Our Lord never said, "Beware of 
 God" but ''beware of men." We have to be 
 delivered from the tyranny of man, not from God. 
 The tyranny of man over man has been and is 
 something appalling. We call it by various 
 misleading names, that which is proper, that which 
 is the fashion and so on. The simple questions 
 of what is right and what wrong, what is healthy 
 and good, what is the will of God, these are sel- 
 dom asked. We want to get rid of the pains and 
 penalties of the present and the future, but we are 
 not filled full of the conviction that there is only 
 one way to get rid of them, to find out what is 
 God's will, and do it. When Jesus the Christ 
 was here on earth he said, *' I came not to do my 
 own will, but the will of Him that sent me." And 
 the difference between the godly and the godless 
 is here, the one are the willing, the other the 
 wilful. All law and order must rest on some 
 immovable foundation, and there is none to be 
 found but this, the revealed will of God. We 
 are drifting towards anarchy in the family, in the 
 Church and in the nation so long as we magnify 
 individualism and idolize something we call free- 
 dom, which with many, means nothing less than 
 anarchy, trampling upon all law and order human 
 and divine, and exalting the will of the creature 
 into supremacy. Those of us who are of the 
 Church of God have to proclaim the exact opposite 
 
PREDE8TmAT10N. 249 
 
 of this, for we are bound in the same bundle of 
 life with Him whose boast it was ' ' I came not to 
 do my own will, but the will of Him that 
 sent me." 
 
 \ 
 
XVIII. 
 SELF-IMPEOYEMENT. 
 
 " Take heed to thyself and to thy teaching." — i Tim., iv : i6. 
 
 GENIUS," says a modern writer, <'is the pas- 
 sion for self-improvement." While we 
 may be of opinion that this is not an adequate 
 definition, inasmuch as oftentimes we have met 
 with men and women in whom there seemed to be 
 something: of that we call c^enius, without that 
 temper which leads a man to aim at steady self- 
 improvement, yet there is enough of truth in this 
 definition to warrant the afiirmation that genius 
 is never effective unless it includes the passion 
 for self-improvement. From a merely human 
 point of view, the Apostle Paul was a man of 
 genius. This man comes before the world with 
 a life as heroic as that which any man ever lived, 
 and a few letters, written, some to churches and 
 two or three to individuals. Yet this life 
 and these letters have immortalized him. Inspir- 
 ation and genius are not the same thing. The 
 Divine Inspiration wakes the genius into life. 
 
 250 
 
SELF-IMPROVEMENT. 251 
 
 That which is best in any man, that which is most 
 characteristic of him, will arise from its dormancy 
 and latency under the influences of the Spirit of 
 God. Thus, there is in nature room for that 
 beautiful variety of Christian character without 
 which there would be an unedifying monotomy, 
 a tame uniformity in our Christian life. It has 
 been assumed that if a man has genius he does not 
 need to be careful of himself, he does not need to 
 aim at self-improvement. The very opposite is 
 the true state of the case. It is the blood horse 
 that needs the most careful training. *' Take heed 
 to thyself" is a word necessary for us all, but it is 
 especially necessary for those of full vitality ; for 
 those in whose veins the hot blood seems to course 
 rapidly ; for those of highly-strung nervous or- 
 ganization ; for those whose impulses are fiery ; 
 whose temperament is ardent ; whose souls have 
 in them a craving that seems insatiable. If these 
 do not take heed to themselves, there will be dis- 
 aster. A well-balanced nature, in which the 
 physical, mental, and moral seem to be in happy 
 equilibrium, is not always found, perhaps seldom. 
 Some one department of our organism seems to 
 predominate. The tendency is to cultivate that 
 which it is most easy to cultivate, to the neglect 
 of the other. Consequently, the whole nature is 
 thrown out of balance and a condition of chronic 
 unhappiness is the result. 
 
252 SELF-IMPROVEMENT. 
 
 I want that we should think together this morn- 
 ing of Self-improvement, though the theme seems 
 juvenile ; one more fitted for a young men's 
 debating society than for a Christian congregation. 
 We need not, however, be afraid that under the 
 leadership of the Apostle Paul, we shall keep on 
 a level that is unworthy of the most experienced 
 Christian. I would ask you to remark upon the 
 advice which the great Apostle gives to Timothy, 
 one of the earliest presbyters of the Christian 
 Church. Though this man must have had special 
 qualifications for his work, yet these special quali- 
 fications did not preclude the necessity for diligent 
 improvement of his mental powers. *'Till I 
 come (saj^s the Apostle Paul) give heed to read- 
 ing, to exhortation, to teaching. Neglect not the 
 gift that is in thee. Take heed to thyself and to 
 thy teaching." He is urged to do everything he 
 can towards self-improvement. On that must 
 depend his usefulness. There is no recognition 
 here of any supernatural grace which would relieve 
 him from the use of those means whereby ordinary 
 men bring their minds into an ability of perceiv- 
 inof what is truth and what error. There are no 
 claims such as that of *' Apostolic succession." 
 The man must learn how to use the ordinary 
 opportunities for self-improvement which are 
 within his reach, in order that he may be qualified 
 to do God's work. He must take heed to himself 
 
SELF-IMPROVEMENT. 253 
 
 first, or his teaching will not be as full of light 
 and of force as it ought to be. 
 
 And so it is with those of us who, in this year 
 of our Lord 1885, are the disciples of Christ, here 
 and now. ^^ot many men have any inward call, 
 or any outward qualification to do public religious 
 teaching. But, not one of us is released from the 
 sweep of this injunction *' Take heed unto thy- 
 self." Every man of us is a trinity in unity, 
 body, soul, spirit. We have physical, mental and 
 spiritual needs ; physical, mental and spiritual 
 abilities — these constitutionally. They are in- 
 cluded in the word ''manhood." The physical 
 is the pediment on which the mental and spiritual 
 stand. It is that which confines them to this earth. 
 It limits and modifies their use. There is some- 
 thing that we have to learn within these present 
 limitations, which will be useful to us always. 
 Everything must have a beginning, and that 
 beginning has necessarily to be conditioned. For 
 how long our nature is capable of growth we can- 
 not say. What processes it has to pass through 
 before it reaches that condition in which life is 
 blissful receptivity and enjoyment of all around 
 it — of these we are i^^norant. But ojrowth is the 
 law of our present state. We soon come to 
 the end of our physical growth ; and strange 
 though it seems, very many seem soon to come to 
 the end of their mental growth, although it must 
 
254 SELF-IMPROVEMENT. 
 
 be only in seeming. But no one ever comes to 
 the limit of spiritual growth so long as he is on 
 this earth. We seem only to begin that. The 
 most advanced Christian is but a little way on that 
 road, the end of which is perfect accord mentally 
 and afFectionally with the mind and heart of our 
 Father in Heaven. 
 
 Now, w^e have to recognize distinctly and clearly 
 that the lower is for the sake of the hiij^her. It is 
 in service to it. The physical is for the sake of 
 the mental, the mental for the sake of the emo- 
 tional, and all for the sake of the spiritual. There 
 cannot, in the nature of things, be any real self- 
 improvement so long as our ideas on the relation 
 of the lower to the higher are wrong. There is 
 no possibility of any man living the life for which 
 he was predestinated until he apprehends truly 
 something about his own nature. Xor is there 
 any possibility of improvement until that which is 
 uppermost in man constitutionally becomes upper- 
 most in thought. Inadequate views of human 
 nature are at the root of personal miseries and 
 social perplexities. The wise old sage who said, 
 * ' Know thyself " said more than he knew\ The 
 words mean more now than they meant then. 
 Man's view of himself as to what he is and what 
 destined for must affect him beneficially or other- 
 wise in all relations of life and in all that he does. 
 Supposing a man has this view of life, " I am here 
 
SELF-niPnOYEMENT. 255 
 
 to be as happy as I can make myself, here to 
 enjoy myself, here simply to have a good time." 
 That is the dominating idea. You see at a glance 
 its limitations. N^o heroism can ever come out of 
 it ; nothing really good or great or sublime. No 
 man moving under the influence of that idea has 
 ever done anything of worth or value. In the 
 olden days they would have called it the Epicurean 
 view of life. Take another view of life, that in 
 which a man sees something to be done out 
 of which comes a material reward. The idea of 
 duty dawns upon him, eventually takes possession 
 of him, masters him, and under its influence he 
 denies himself much to which other men are 
 inclined, and becomes the world's successful man 
 in that region concerning which we cannot use any 
 other words than those which convey respect — the 
 commercial. This man becomes stoical. He uses 
 one department of his nature only. He acquires, 
 it may be, that kind of wealth which is represented 
 by money, but he never acquires the ability of 
 using his wealth benevolently so that it will 
 yield the best profit to himself and others. The 
 first man is selfish in one way, and this man is 
 selfish in another way, but he is a better type of 
 man than the first. The Stoic was a better man 
 than the Epicurean. 
 
 We might bring other types of men forward in 
 illustration, but these two will suffice. In both 
 
266 SELF-IMPRO VEMENT, 
 
 cases the nature is depreciated below that for 
 which it was predestinated. Neither man will 
 ever be good or noble. There is no possibility of 
 it. The idea which these men have of manhood 
 and its meaning and purpose is very much lower 
 than God's idea written in the constitution of man. 
 The first man never could be happy and the second 
 man never can be satisfied. Why? Because, in 
 both cases, the nature is larger than the idea which 
 controls and dominates it. Man is unhappy and 
 dissatisfied when his conduct is at war with the 
 upper ranges of his nature. These two men will 
 find entertainment in their several lines. In youth 
 the epicurean style of life has its attractions, even 
 its fascinations ; in manhood a life of duty even if 
 there be in it no benevolence, no room for affec- 
 tions and emotions to exercise themselves, yields 
 a certain real satisfaction. But the more humane 
 part of the nature is beggared and hungry. ** The 
 eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with 
 hearing." The spiritual part of man is clamorous. 
 It wants its dues, or its wine turns to venegar ; its 
 milk of human kindness to gall. The physical is 
 not here for itself, but for the sake of the mental, 
 the mental is not here for itself, but for the sake 
 of the emotional and the affectional ; and the 
 emotional and the aff*ectional are here for the sake 
 of that which is permanent and indestructible in 
 man's nature — the spiritual. As a child cries for 
 
SELF IMPROVEMENT. 257 
 
 its mother so the spiritual in man cries out for its 
 Father, God — ** My soul is athirst for God, for the 
 living God, when shall I come and appear before 
 God ? " No direr source of misery can ever come 
 to a human soul than to be practically atheistic, 
 for *' without God" means *' without hope," and 
 hopelessness is the collapse of all that is highest 
 and best in human nature — the total eclipse of 
 the soul. He who makes another man an Atheist 
 has done the crudest thing of which man is capa- 
 ble. He has blotted out the Sun in the spirit's 
 firmament. 
 
 We see then that there is a limit soon reached 
 to physical self-improvement, and a limit also 
 soon reached to improvement arising out of any 
 type or style of life which is dominated by the idea 
 of pleasing one's self simply, or of doing duty 
 which has relation only to that which is seen and 
 temporal. Every man, even the smallest and 
 meanest, is larger constitutionally than his business 
 and larger than his pleasures — using that word 
 as it is ordinarily used. Man's self, what the phil- 
 osophers would call '* the ego "is that which needs 
 to be continuously improved. And with its 
 improvement everything else belonging to the man 
 will be raised, will be expanded, will be developed 
 into a higher power. Let the lower nature serve 
 the higher, and the higher will give back to the 
 lower something in return of great value. Every- 
 
258 SELL-IMPROVEMENT. 
 
 thing in a man wakes up when his spiritual nature 
 is awake. If a man be an artist, he is a better 
 artist when his spiritual nature is awakened. The 
 costliest pictures in all Europe are those in which 
 the artists have aimed at bodying forth spiritual 
 themes. It must be so. Pigments and canvass, 
 with^rushes and palets, do not make a man an 
 artist. He may be a dealer in colors, like the man 
 at the store who sells them, only on a slightly 
 higher level. But no man ever yet did the high- 
 est work of which he is capable till his heart was 
 awake, till the nature began to move and aspire. 
 And the heart will not wake, the spiritual in man 
 will not move in the regions limited by time and 
 sense. Visiting recently the picture galleries of 
 London, there was much that was pleasing, much 
 to excite interest and even wonder, but the most 
 impressive painting even in this matter-of-fact age, 
 is that which cannot be done except under the 
 high inspirations which belong to meditation on 
 Christian themes. Muncacksy's *' Calvary" and 
 Holman Hunt's '* Triumph of the Innocents" — 
 a fanciful picture representing the souls of the 
 murdered innocents of Bethlehem following Jesus 
 as He is taken to Egypt, — these were the most 
 impressive modern pictures in all London. The 
 child painting in Holman Hunt's picture seems 
 more like the old master's with the freedom and 
 freshness of modern times added. A sum equal 
 
SELF-IMPROVEMENT. 259 
 
 to three-hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars 
 was given very recently by the British Government 
 for a religious painting. Artists of all classes 
 never seem to do their utmost and best till the 
 spiritual nature comes into vigorous exercise. 
 And so it is every where. No man is really 
 himself until the spirit within him is awake. The 
 New Testament calls him *'dead" till then. It 
 admonishes him in this wise " Awake thou that 
 sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ shall 
 give thee light." It is all but literally true that a 
 man is never alive until that which is characteristic 
 of him, as man, is alive. 
 
 And the distinctive thing in man, that which 
 elevates him above all other creations is, that he 
 can consciously, and of set intent and purpose, 
 worship God. He can anticipate a future, he is 
 so constituted that he can plan and work towards 
 an ideal which fills the imagination, however vivid 
 it may be. No other animate creature can do 
 this. To do this is to act as a man, to do any- 
 thing less is to fall below the dignity of a man. 
 Self-improvement is, then, the improvement of the 
 spiritual nature. 
 
 A type of religious life has been prevalent, we 
 might say dominant, in the past which has almost 
 lost sight of three-fourths of the Pauline theology, 
 anyway of the Pauline ethics. To get a man con- 
 verted accordin^r to the Calvinistic idea of conver- 
 
260 SELF-IMPROVEMENT. 
 
 sion, and then pretty much to leave him as 
 necessarily in a condition of safety, this has been 
 dominant. Conversion means turning the life 
 Christwards instead of turning the back upon 
 Christ and His salvation. But to turn round and 
 stand still is not the Apostolic idea of being a 
 Christian. Any new truth entering the mind 
 brings light, and light means life and life means 
 activity. How is it possible for a man, into whose 
 mind has come the truth of a Eedeemer in Christ, 
 into whose heart has come a new love, the love of 
 that Eedeemer, how is it possible for him to be 
 the same he was before? To stand and gaze at 
 Christ Jesus is not conversion — to receive Him 
 is. *'To them that received Him to them ^ave 
 He power to become the sons of God." Conver- 
 sion is the first step in a new and higher life. It 
 is the man claiming that which, in God's ordain- 
 ment, belongs to him. It is the first step so far 
 as individual choice is concerned to realizing one's 
 manhood. But we do a man harm if we make so 
 much of it that all else is as nothing. The Holy 
 Spirit is a Teacher, "He shall teach you all 
 thins^s." We are at school — learninof how to be 
 men and women according to God's idea of men 
 and women. How is our spiritual nature to be 
 developed into more and yet more until it becomes 
 the undisputed sovereign of our constitution ? The 
 parable of our necessities is found in the material 
 
SELF-IMPROVEMENT. 261 
 
 frame. It can healthfully live only in an atmo- 
 sphere suited to it. It needs for its nourishment 
 food convenient for it. It needs exercise. So it 
 is with us mentally. So is it spiritually. Christ- 
 ianity is the atmosphere suited to the spirit's life. 
 That spirit needs truth to feed upon. It needs 
 fellowship with other spirits. Whatever promotes 
 faith purifies the soul. Whatever generates hope 
 puts courage into the soul, whatever intensifies 
 affection warms and vitalizes the spirit of man. 
 We know from experience of eighteen hundred 
 and more years that there is nothing in the world 
 which does this like the Christian religion. The 
 best, the strongest, the grandest specimens of 
 manhood have grown up under the inspiration 
 of the facts and truths of Christianity. There are 
 other religions in the world, and I would not 
 deprive men of them if I could not give them 
 something better. It it is better for a man to be 
 chained even to the idea of God as over him than 
 to be without the idea. It is much better to be 
 held to the allegiance we owe to Deity by an at- 
 traction which draws our spirits into loving and 
 reverent homage. It is impossible to compel any 
 man to be a Christian because it is impossible to 
 compel love. The heart of man must feel drawn 
 to the object set before it. And so we fail to do 
 any justice to the Christian religion unless its 
 relation to the heart of man be presented so as to 
 
262 SELF-IMPBOVEMENT. 
 
 wake that heart into response. Along this line 
 all self-improvement must proceed. We must 
 take heed to ourselves. 
 
 I venture to add that there is no spiritual self- 
 improvement that is worth anything apart from 
 plan and purpose. A spasmodic religiousness 
 will do little. If a young man at college should 
 study only when he feels in the humor he would 
 be disgraced. If a man of business should go to 
 his store or office only when the fit takes him he 
 would be bankrupt. Is it likely that these 
 methods of action will bankrupt men on these 
 lower levels, and save them from bankruptcy on 
 the higher? A spasmodic religiousness without 
 high purpose and intelligent plan is the bane of 
 our time. Spiritual self-improvement means so 
 using the upper regions of our nature as that there 
 shall be development and enlargement of our 
 powers. It means that this should be done in 
 recognition of the fact that we are spirits destined 
 to live on, destined to use hereafter all that here 
 we have acquired of faith and hope and love in a 
 wider and more blessed condition. No material 
 wealth can we take with us hence, but that inward 
 wealth Avhich consists in high aspirations, purified 
 aflfections, a will consenting to the Divine will, 
 faculty co-ordinated to the needs, services and 
 delights of a condition more glorious than * ' eye 
 has ever seen or ear ever heard," that we can take 
 
8ELF-IMPR0 VEMENT. 263 
 
 with us, that which shall warrant our Lord in 
 saying to us "Thou hast been faithful in a few 
 things, I will make thee ruler over many things — • 
 enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." 
 
XIX. 
 WEAEINESS IN WELL-DOING. 
 
 And let us not be weary in well-doing; for in due season we 
 shall reap if we faint not — Galatians, vi, 9. 
 
 THESE words are necessarily addressed to 
 those who are already engaged in well- 
 doing, and who, being so engaged are in danger, 
 of ceasing therefrom because of the weariness 
 which inevitably attends the putting forth of effort 
 of any kind. Weariness may be of three kinds, 
 it may be muscular, or mental, or spiritual. 
 Muscular weariness comes from long continued 
 physical effort ; mental weariness from excessive 
 attention to such matters as demand thought ; 
 spiritual weariness from loss of faith in a cause, 
 or loss of love to it, or loss of hope of any tangible 
 results. It is to this last kind of weariness that 
 the Apostle refers. It may include the others as 
 nothing w^orth the doing can be accomplished 
 unless the resources of the mind are expended in 
 the doing of it. Well-doing may be of two kinds, 
 
 264 
 
WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 265 
 
 subjective, the doing well to ourselves simply, 
 objective, the doing well towards others. It is 
 quite true that we cannot very w^ell separate these, 
 for as Seneca says, ^'Ile that does good to 
 another man does good also unto himself, not only 
 in the consequences, but in the very act of doing 
 it, for the conscience of well-doing is an ample 
 reward." If a man should set himself to improve 
 his mind and manners simply out of a desire to be 
 something better than he had been, he would still, 
 in the doing, be helping others, for he would 
 become a more valuable member of society. And 
 on the other hand, no man can set himself to do 
 good to others without receiving good himself. 
 Hence, it must appear to us that God, in His 
 providence, has so ordered it that well-doing is 
 necessary to well-being. Every one not imbecile 
 wishes well to himself. God has so appointed it 
 that well-doing shall be necessary to the develop- 
 ment of the soul to the highest degree of blessed- 
 ness of which it is capable. 
 
 It is assumed, however, that there is a strong 
 temptation to grow weary in well-doing, to cease 
 from good activities ; to let opportunities pass un- 
 improved ; to allow the best of causes to suffer 
 from want of giving them that assistance which it 
 is competent to us to give. 
 
 And this for three reasons. 1. On accouut of 
 the indolence of our nature. Unless we are 
 
266 WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 
 
 tempted to a thing by some immediate pleasure 
 belonging to it, or goaded to it by some stern 
 necessity, there is in us all a tendency to relapse 
 into a condition of indifference and repose. Our 
 physical nature seems to yield readily to the great 
 law of gravitation to which everything material is 
 subject, and oftentimes we too readily obey the 
 lowest of all forces by which we are influenced. 
 To such an extent may we yield to the material 
 part of our being that it becomes tyrannous, the 
 muscles refuse to do their duty readily, the diges- 
 tion relapses from a healthy tone, and the w^hole 
 system becomes impaired. And as saintship has, 
 somehow or other, become associated with a pale 
 face, a feeble voice, and general physical incom- 
 petence, anyone is at a disadvantage who pleads 
 for health of bodj^ as a duty, ]:)ecause of its rela- 
 tion to health of mind and health of soul. 
 
 There is the temptation to grow weary in well-do- 
 ing not only on account of the indolence of our na- 
 ture but also, 2nd, on account of not seeing adequate 
 results to our efforts. I think that probably this is 
 one of the most general reasons for weariness in the 
 matter of positive well-doing. The man whose 
 mind has been schooled and formed in the com- 
 mercial world, especially if he has achieved large 
 results in a brief period of time, assumes that he 
 and others ought to have something equally tangi- 
 ble to show for the expenditure of mind and 
 
WEARINESS m well-doing: 267 
 
 feeling in those directions which are generally 
 included under the words "well-doing." We are 
 constantly hearing of the disappointments which 
 come to all Christian workers ; indeed of the dis- 
 couragements which come to all benevolent helpers 
 of all kinds. We hear far too much of this. Let 
 it be recognized by us that the results of work on 
 mind and heart are not as immediate, certainly 
 not as visible, as the results of work in anything 
 material, and that they require in order to discern 
 them, and estimate them aright, a different order 
 of mind, and that will do something to correct 
 wrong impressions. There is a book published 
 entitled "The History of Humane Progress under 
 Christianity," which ought to be sufficient to help 
 any who read it to take a broader view of this 
 question of results than is generally done. More- 
 ov^er, no man but he who is unreasonable would 
 ever expect to measure mental and spiritual 
 results by the rules of Arithmetic. Religious sta- 
 tistics are necessary, I suppose, but they are not 
 the less misleading and unreliable. In the olden 
 times Jehovah taught Gideon and David that 
 influence did not depend on numbers. I know 
 how we are all influenced by appearances ; we like 
 outsides to be respectable. That does us no 
 harm, so long as we do not substitute appearances 
 for that which is invisible, mind, heart, character. 
 Quality is always more than quantity. I have no 
 
268 WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 
 
 doubt that some of the greatest men mentally, and 
 the devoutest spiritually, among the New England 
 clergy of to-day are to be found in villages, min- 
 istering to a small handful of people who have 
 not the first approach to an idea of the quality of 
 the man in their pulpit. And that man may be 
 the very type and synonym of faithfulness ; 
 faithfulness^ that which our Lord requires, that 
 about which he always speaks. Nothing else 
 does he ask from any of us than this — to be 
 faithful — faithful to the truth as we see it, faith- 
 ful to the opportunity he gives, whatever come or 
 do not come from our using that opportunity as 
 well as we can. 
 
 I grant you that large results are often given. 
 But the word ' ' results " is a very indefinite kind 
 of word. It may be that the results which God 
 can give are not the results which you mean. 
 ** Only one soul brought to Christ by all my 
 efforts," says a discouraged Sunday School 
 teacher. Let us look at that expression a moment. 
 Supposing that Sunday School teacher had Imilt 
 the Pyramids it would have been undeniably a 
 great result of persistent labor, but it would have 
 been such labor as would last at the longest for a 
 limited time, and its use would be problematical, 
 for we are not very sure why and for what the 
 p^^amids were built. Supposing one soul is 
 brought to Christ, and permanently united to 
 
WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 269 
 
 Christ by the love and faith of the heart, so united 
 that that 8oul becomes a faithful Christian soul, 
 living a life of love and faith, doing good to others, 
 and those others doing good to a wider circle 
 still, and so from generation to generation the in- 
 fluence broadens, how can you calculate the result? 
 Admit the Immortality of that soul, follow it 
 beyond the confines of the present, into Eternity ; 
 what then? The results are not measured, nor 
 are they measurable. Who has done the greatest 
 work, he who built the pyramids, or that discour- 
 aged Sunday School teacher who brought one soul 
 to Christ, into living miion w^ith the life-giving 
 Savior? Am I romancing in making such a 
 comparison? Is there anything unreasonable in 
 suggesting that work in that material which we 
 call " mind " and '*soul" is essentially different 
 from work on matter ? If our Lord could ask the 
 question and yet be reasonable, ** what shall it 
 profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 
 his own soul ? If He could put a * ' soul " against a 
 *' world " and appraise it as more valuable, is the 
 comparison we have made illegitimate? Results 
 are not to be estimated by material or arithmetical 
 measurements. In speaking to any who have been 
 engaged in well-doing and have become weary in 
 it, I would rather remind them that our Lord does 
 not put us upon achieving results but upon being 
 faithful to Him and our convictions. If tangible 
 
270 WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 
 
 or visible results come, we will be all the more 
 thankful, but if not, the duty of faithfulness still 
 remains. Some results are sure to come. An 
 Apostle who knew what it was to live a martyr's 
 life has left it on record, that no good, honest, 
 Christian work ever yet failed, *' Be ye steadfast, 
 unmovable, always abounding in the work of the 
 Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is 
 not in vain in the Lord." 
 
 3. And this brings me to a third source of 
 weariness and discouragement in well-doing, our 
 narrow and inadequate views of life. We con- 
 stantly forget that this life of ours is, as to every- 
 thing mental and spiritual, the sowing time, not 
 the time of reaping. Evidently this is the thought 
 in the mind of the Apostle, " for, in due season, 
 ye shall reap if ye faint not." The idea of reaping 
 involves the idea of sowing. 
 
 When a farmer sows seed he virtually commits 
 it to fructifying influences over which he has no 
 control. He cannot command the sunlight, nor 
 the rain, nor a suitable season for ingathering. 
 He is obliged to trust in a power not his own, and 
 in a beneficence which he calls Nature, but which 
 means God. And so when we sow seeds of truth 
 in a human mind, or the seeds of kindly deeds in 
 human hearts, we commit the seed to God and 
 His Providence. And as the farmer has long 
 patience, so ought we to have long patience. But 
 
WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 271 
 
 patience is one of the higher virtues — it is not 
 the same as indifference or laziness, nor is it * a 
 dogged obstinacy under difficulties ' — it is some- 
 thing else than these, the abih'ty to labor and to 
 wait ; the ability to stand in face of a mysterious 
 providence, not knowing what it means, or why 
 and wherefore it is sent, and wait those evolve- 
 ments of life which shall bring the interpretation. 
 The very word '* patience" means suffering, for 
 in all wishing and waiting and exploring there is 
 an element of suffering. What a trying time 
 is that which the affectionate watcher by the sick 
 bed has during paroxysms of pain in the sufferer, 
 when no relief can be • afforded ! If only the 
 watchful eye could see something to be done it 
 would be an immeilse relief. But to stand by and 
 let pain do its work, this is the trial, this the 
 labor. It is a question in such a case who suffers 
 most, the subject of bodily or of mental pain. 
 
 Distributed throuc^hout our life are occasions 
 which bring the need of patience. The soul, 
 needs, for its perfectness, patience as much as it 
 needs anything. And yet, let us not mistake ; 
 let us remind ourselves once more that patience 
 is not indifference. Not to care whether life 2:oes 
 this way or that, whether it be good or bad in 
 quality, whether it be spiritual or sensual, whether 
 it end in a blissful immortality or in annihilation, 
 to be perfectly indifferent to all this, that is not 
 
272 WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 
 
 patience. It is poverty of mind and heart, want 
 of vitality. To be able to feel even to the point 
 of agony, and yet not to lose hope or heart, to 
 believe on still that throus^h all these sufTerintrs a 
 God, too good to let us live like brutes and die like 
 brutes, is working out something which in the 
 glory of its end shall justify the severity of the 
 means — to hold that attitude of soul against all 
 temptations to abandon it — this is patience. 
 
 And so in regard to well-doing, I admit without 
 any debate the impossibility of continued well- 
 doing as a mere matter of policy. Apart from the 
 idea of immortality — apart from the idea of the 
 rewardableness of all well-doing, — persistency 
 in any course which costs self-denial and sacrifice 
 seems to me out of the question. How is it, then, 
 that cases are to be met with of persons who con- 
 tinue in well-doing and yet profess to have no 
 convictions of i mmor tall ity for man? We must 
 always make a distinction between that which God 
 has put into human nature, its intuitions, and that 
 which man acquires intellectually. Take, as an 
 illustration of what I mean, the most famous liter- 
 ary woman of this century — her intellect, trained 
 under the influence of a school of philosophical 
 sceptics, became infidel ; in the intuitional region 
 of her nature, so far was she from being a sceptic 
 that she was obliged to let herself out in an ode 
 on immortality. Every best character she has 
 
WEABINESS IN WELL-DOING. 273 
 
 drawn is Christian in spirit, self-oblivious, self- 
 sacrificing. All her good sentiments had their 
 roots in that intuitional region which is before and 
 above the intellectual. And so, it is not surprising 
 if sometimes w^e meet with men and women whose 
 persistent w^ell-doing is not accounted for by their 
 opinions. They have intuitions as well as opin- 
 ions. Their intuitions are not created by learning 
 or reasoning — their opinions are. A man's 
 opinions belong to the school to which he belongs. 
 The basis intuitions of his nature belong to no 
 school. It is because of this that I believe that 
 when, as is reported, Emerson said to a man who 
 started an argument with him — " I never argue" 
 he acted wisely. When you begin to argue with 
 a man you put him on the defensive. You 
 summon him to do his best to justify himself. It 
 is a simple intellectual contest. Argument has its 
 place and its use, but *' convince a man against 
 his will, he's of the same opinion still." Many 
 and many a sceptic is simply the slave of his own 
 opinions, he bends the knee servilely to his own 
 intellectual greatness. It is strange that men are 
 more anxious to appear intellectually strong than 
 morally strong, or spiritually percipient. But so 
 it is. And therefore I would advise those of you 
 who are younger in years than the rest of us, not 
 to be discouraged when you find that you do so 
 very little by the arguments which to you are 
 
274 WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 
 
 sufficient if not conclusive. Don't argue. State 
 that which appears to you to be the truth and 
 leave it. If you need a very respectable example 
 to justify you, Emerson in New England is 
 respectable enough, especially with those who are 
 oppressed with the weight of their own culture, 
 or continuall}^ living in the enjoyment of a con- 
 sciousness of being endowed with great intellectual 
 ability. Religion is the development into sov- 
 ereignty of the intuitions of our nature. To kill 
 them out is impossible. To the end of life they 
 will either trouble us or comfort us. When scep- 
 tical men continue in well-doing they but ol)ey 
 their intuitions instead of their opinions. That is 
 the explanation of the phenomenon. 
 
 Our narrow views of life account for much of 
 our weariness in well-doing. Practically, we plan 
 for this life and this only. Our sentiments may 
 embrace the beyond, our opinions, actions, plans, 
 purposes are too much controlled by the example 
 set us by the men whose creed is ' ' let us eat and 
 drink, for to-morrow we die." And so we sow 
 only that which we can reap now — or that which 
 the children in our households can reap here on 
 earth. Not entirely of course, but too much. 
 
 I do not deny that it is hard, very hard, to con- 
 tinue well-doing in the presence of those mean hos- 
 tilities which assail every well-doer. In well-doing 
 we have to encounter the want of appreciation of 
 
WEARINESS m WELL-DOING. 275 
 
 those who have no ability of appreciating anything 
 which has not its origin in themselves ; we have to 
 meet all kinds of criticism; we have to be sus- 
 pected as to the parity of oar motives ; and not 
 seldom we have to experience the ingratitude of 
 those we try to help ; and much else. But, is it not 
 enough for the servant that he be as his Master ? 
 These experiences are not new ; they do not 
 belong to this generation alone. Our Lord's sin- 
 less life was one which provoked every form of 
 hostility that the enemy could bring against it. 
 The troubles of the great Jewish lawgiver began 
 when '' it came into his heart to visit his brethren." 
 David lived quietly until God called him into 
 service. Paul was not assailed, but lived in great 
 credit until the Lord summoned him to the 
 preachership of the gospel. 
 
 That we are made for doing is evidenced by the 
 ingenious inventions by which men and women kill 
 time, as if the moment we are indolent we are 
 unhappy ; that we are made for well-doing is abun- 
 dantly manifest by the almost countless routes 
 along which we may move towards some end that is 
 in some way beneficent. One cannot contemplate a 
 life like that of the English nobleman whose 
 departure from this earth has been so recently 
 recorded — the late Earl of Shaftesbury — without 
 a sigh at the thought that among that privileged 
 class there was only one such man — a man distin- 
 
276 WEARINESS IN WELLDOING. 
 
 guished by birth, but specially distinguished by 
 his consecration of himself to every kind of benev- 
 olence by which he could help others. He did 
 not simply give money but his time — the days 
 and nights as they came, visiting the homes of the 
 poorest and most abject. 
 
 When a great orderly crowd of the very poor- 
 est and raggedest people in all London assem- 
 bled outside of Westminster Abbey as the funeral 
 services were held, a man of note, regarding the 
 character of the throng, remarked, '' There is not 
 another man in England could gather that crowd." 
 So that human nature, even at its worst, is not all 
 ingratitude. There are so many ways to do good, 
 — and with its usual largeness. Scripture leaves 
 us free to choose our own. 
 
 But there is the temptation to forget that the 
 path of active well-doing is the path of allegiance 
 to the Master — of benediction and of growth — 
 that here w^e are sowing seed whose fifty-fold 
 produce we may never see, but it shall ripen else- 
 where. ** The due season" may never come on 
 earth. But, in due season, we shall reap that 
 which we sow. That is a just and benevolent law 
 a law that none can escape. I might appeal on the 
 ground of self-interest — only in well-doing can 
 we develop our own natures into the fulness of 
 their powers. To enkindle the mind — to enlarge 
 the heart — to awake the imagination, these will 
 
WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 277 
 
 be spiritual results to ourselves, worth while surely. 
 Even here on earth, says Lord Jeffrey, '' he will 
 always see the most beauty in things whose 
 affections are warmest and most exercised, whose 
 imagination is the most powerful, and who has 
 most accustomed himself to attend to the objects 
 by which he is surrounded." How are we to get 
 that competence to feel the invisible in the visible 
 which a Wordsworth possessed so royally, which 
 makes Euskin the high-priest of the beautiful to 
 the age in which he lives ? Only by well-doing, 
 not spasmodically and occasionally, but of set 
 intent and purpose. We may, like the caterpillar, 
 spin a very beautiful cocoon and call it our home, 
 but even the caterpillar will teach us, if we will 
 listen, that if he were to remain satisfied in that 
 silken ball which he has woven, it would become 
 not his home, but his tomb. Forcing a way 
 through it, and not resting in it, he finds sunshine 
 and air and life more abundantly. Man says — 
 here will I rest. I will make my home in these 
 pleasant surroundings. I will shut out the sob of 
 sorrow, the wail of the woe-worn, the sigh of the 
 suffering, the baying and babblement of the crowd ; 
 here, spending my sympathies on myself, I will 
 enjoy all that is enjoyable. Ah ! that silken 
 cocoon ! — fastened in it you are dead while you 
 live. No : says God, that is not what I mean for 
 you. And He calls to His aid His angels, clothes 
 
278 WEABINESS IN WELL-DOING. 
 
 them in funeral robes, and they call themselves 
 Pain, Disease, Death; and they stir up the intel- 
 lect, stir up the heart, stir up the imagination, 
 compel men to think and to feel about Eternity, 
 and then, when it is all over, these disguised angels 
 throw aside the masks they have w^orn and strip 
 off the sable garb and lo, underneath is the pure 
 white of Immortality. We are sowers of seed 
 here. Let us not forget that he that soweth to the 
 flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that 
 soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life 
 everlasting. And, ** let us not be weary in well- 
 doing, for in due season we shall reap if we 
 faint not." 
 
XX. 
 
 THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY. 
 
 "Verily, thou art a God that hidest thyself." — Isaiah, xlv : 15. 
 
 WHEN John the Evangelist wrote **No 
 man hath seen God at any time ; the 
 only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the 
 Father, he hath declared him, (or brought him to 
 view)," he put two great truths into one sentence, 
 the truth of the Divine invisibility, and the truth 
 that man needed to know something definite about 
 Deity. It is impossible for us to account for 
 human life apart from a life-giver. The mind is 
 so made that it demands God. How true it is 
 then that in every nature there is evidence of the 
 existence of a Creator — a Divine Personality! 
 The mind is so made that it also demands that to 
 all worthy action there shall be a reward, and so in 
 every mind there is the truth that God is a 
 rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. Men 
 have tried, with a perseverance worthy of a better 
 cause, to shake themselves free from these ideas, 
 but in vain. Never can we be rid of them till this 
 
 279 
 
280 THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY. 
 
 nature of ours is dissolved into nothingness. Some 
 ideas crush us — such as those of the Infinity and 
 Eternity of the Divine Nature. We can do noth- 
 ing with thorn. They are represented to the mind 
 only by vague expanses without any measurement. 
 The wonder is that we can approach them at 
 all. It indicates that our nature is allied to the 
 Divine nature. The thought of the Divine invisi- 
 bility is not so oppressive as these other ideas, 
 and yet it is perplexing. There are moods in 
 Tvhich it is not a welcome thought. It comes to 
 us with no comfort and no help. I suppose that 
 we all have times in which the greater an idea is 
 the more unwelcome it is. We make desperate 
 efforts to put large thoughts away from us, and 
 confine ourselves to that which is measurable 
 and familiar. Yea, have we not often resolved to 
 have nothing to do with that which is unfamiliar, 
 strange, vast, indefinite, awful ? Why cannot we 
 live our life in perpetual disregard of everything 
 but the common-place ? I suppose that the reason 
 is that in this nature of ours there are possibilities 
 which will not be smothered, intuitions which 
 struirirle to ffet their heads out of the ocean of 
 doubt in which we try to drown them. We have 
 in us from babyhood an irrepressible desire to 
 know the unknown. Tell a child that there is a 
 cupboard into which he must not look, and he will 
 think more of that cupboard than of all the rest of 
 
THE DIVINE INYISIBILITT. 281 
 
 the house. Let there be an apple tree in an 
 orchard whose fruit is forbidden, only one tree in 
 five hundred, and that tree becomes immediately 
 invested with a fascination which is almost painful. 
 There is almost a certainty that the fruit of that 
 tree will ere long be plucked and tasted. Not 
 that which we know but that which to us is un- 
 known, that which is mysterious, only partially 
 revealed, interests us. It appeals to our imagina- 
 tion. We are discontented till we know something 
 of it. The unknown is the awful. And so in 
 heathen religions there is always some mysterious 
 place into which only a high priest enters, some 
 inner sanctuary veiled from mortal eyes where the 
 Divine presence is more perceptible than else- 
 where. Even Judaism had it and its veil of the 
 temple was not rent in twain till Christ came. 
 Sacerdotal churches maintain the idea till this day. 
 
 Idolatry — what is it ? What but the effort to 
 make the invisible visible ? There is something 
 pitiful about it. Though its tendency is ever 
 towards materialistic grossness, yet is there 
 something pathetic in it, something more calcu- 
 lated to bring the tear than the frown. 
 
 When Jesus the Christ came into this world's 
 life, He came to answer the longing of the human 
 heart after some such expression of Deity as should 
 satisfy that desire to make the invisible visible. 
 Idolatry is the cry of man to God to show himself. 
 
282 THE Bl VINE INVISIBILITY. 
 
 It is the effort of the mind of man to give definite- 
 ness to the idea of Deity. In the fulness of time 
 Jesus the Christ comes, and one of His disciples 
 expresses the longing of the whole human race 
 when he cries, *' Lord, show us the Father, and it 
 sufficeth us." And when our Lord replies *' He 
 that hath seen me hath seen the Father " He but 
 tells us that Almighty God has revealed all that is 
 revealable of his personality in Himself. If only 
 we knew the heart of God we could be satisfied, — 
 anyway, we could have a sort of restful content, 
 and could do our work in the world more hope- 
 fully and cheerfully ; we could worship with 
 more intelligence — we could work with more 
 confidence. 
 
 I think that in our noblest moments it must 
 seem to us that the demand for a full and perfect 
 revelation of Deity is unreasonable, not to use the 
 stronger word, absurd. Reasonable enough is the 
 demand, let us know the heart of Deity, the 
 Divine disposition, how God feels towards us. 
 Here we are on an earth that in itself is altogether 
 appalling, because of the material forces which 
 display themselves. We are in the midst of a 
 Providence which buffets us, disappoints us, 
 thwarts and troubles us ; a Providence which 
 seems at variance with itself. Reconcile one thing 
 with another we cannot. Generally speaking, 
 most of us seem more to be pitied than envied. 
 
THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY. 283 
 
 "We never know whether we can carry out what 
 we begin. Affliction may come and lay us low, 
 death may come and put the hand of total arrest 
 upon us. We walk by faith because we cannot 
 do ought else. Now, if only we could know that 
 the Infinite Being who sustains and controls all 
 this perplexing and involved condition were as 
 good as He is great, as loving as the best of 
 Fathers to his children, so that if we were 
 suddenly arrested in our life here, it would be a 
 surprise but not a calamity, — would it not make 
 worlds of difference to us ? We all feel that it 
 would. And it seems to be reasonable that at the 
 right time in the development of this human race 
 of ours, that demand should be met. It seems 
 to me that it has been met, fully and fairly met, in 
 the gift of Jesus the Christ to this world. And if 
 only we could clear our minds of the prejudices 
 which have been created there by theological and 
 denominational controversies, and look at this 
 Jesus Christ honestly and candidly, it seems to me 
 altogether impossible not to feel that in Him, in 
 what He was and in what Pie did, is the gospel for 
 humanity, that which every human heart needs. 
 
 And so, while it is still true that the Eternal 
 One is a God that hideth Himself, it is also true 
 that the prayer of man's heart *' Lord, show us the 
 Father and it sufficcth us," has been answered. 
 
 But can we not see that the Divine invisibility has 
 
284 THE DIVINE nV VISIBILITY. 
 
 its uses in the development of this nature of ours ? 
 One use is to train us to Eeverence. If everything 
 should become so common-place to us that we could 
 treat it with vulgar familiarity, our life would lose 
 its power of self-improvement and development. A 
 thoroughly refined and cultured mind will always 
 see far enough to be abashed in the presence of 
 that which is high and holy. But the vast major- 
 ity of minds are not refined and cultured. Nor 
 can they be. Think long enough to take in the 
 dreadfulncss of the scene — of that coarse, vulgar, 
 hideous mockery which Jesus the Christ experi- 
 enced in those days which anticipated the 
 Crucifixion. Think of men striking Him, jeering 
 at Ilim, even spitting in His face, making Him a 
 sham King and I know not what else of coarse, 
 vulo^ar, shameful conduct. Recoo^nizinoc what He 
 was — think of it all ! Here are men with no 
 ability left to recognize the divine superiority of 
 that unequalled personality. Brutalized Eoman 
 soldiers had felt themselves powerless to put a 
 finger on Him because of the unearthliness of His 
 speech, ** Never man spake like this man." 
 Lepers had felt new life pulse in them as His 
 shadow fell athwart their path. Fallen women 
 had realized a reviving purity as He spake to them. 
 Devils had trembled in His presence. In this 
 personality there was a mysterious charm, a new 
 kind of power, yet men can sink so low, become 
 
THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY. 285 
 
 SO vulgar, so coarse, as to be hideously familiar 
 with such a Presence, and treat it with contempt. 
 Now, there is nothing which so bespeaks meanness 
 of character as the ability to treat things high and 
 holy with contempt. To be capable of respect, 
 of esteem, of affection, is to be capable of that wor- 
 shipfulness which belongs to God — the witholding 
 of which amounts to treating Deity with contempt. 
 If we could see our natures as they are, w^ith all 
 the possibilities of aspiration and degradation that 
 slumber in them, we should have no Ibort of doubt 
 that every man needs something to worship more 
 than something to eat. The ability of feeling the 
 splendor, the glory, the beauty of things, and 
 especially the ability to feel the splendor, glory, 
 and beauty in the highest types of human life, this 
 ability indicates a condition of soul in which there 
 is nearness to God. <' It is of all things the most 
 melancholy (writes a man entitled to be called 
 great) to watch the moral clouding over of life's 
 early dawn ; to trace the dim veil stealing o'er the 
 artless look ; to notice how the earnest tone begins 
 to leave the voice, and every worthy enthusiasm 
 dies away into indifference ; how it comes to be 
 thought a fine thing to speak coolly of what is 
 odious for its vice, and critically of what is awful 
 for its beauty. Where this spoiling takes place, 
 I believe it is because we mingle no reverence 
 with our affection, and accept without awe the 
 
286 THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY, 
 
 solemn trust of a child's conscience." God hides 
 Himself that we may not become coarsely familiar 
 with that which is Divine and thus add to our sin 
 instead of adding to our Keverence. Further, God's 
 hiding of Himself is necessary to our freedom. 
 
 Our Great Teacher puts this thought, as is His 
 wont, into the parable of an Eastern lord going 
 into a far country and delivering his goods into 
 the custody of his servants, that, in his absence, 
 they may so use them as to increase them. In 
 order to the development of every human life, a 
 certain amount of freedom is necessary. The 
 over-awing sensible presence of God would com- 
 pletely destroy our freedom. It would paralyze 
 our activities. It is necessary that men should be 
 from under any fettering constraint if the faculties 
 they possess are to move easily and with spon- 
 taneity towards the end for which they were given. 
 Our God is no slaveholder, standing over us with 
 uplifted arm ready to bring down the lash on our 
 palpitating flesh. So much freedom has He given 
 us that it seems to be excessive ; oftentimes w hen 
 crime seems to be here, there, and everywhere 
 even appalling. Not that man is left entirely to 
 himself. Everywhere he meets law, and law 
 means a law-giver. Physically, mentally, morally 
 he is compelled to recognize law, in a word, God 
 as a God of order and not of confusion. But 
 God as law, limiting liberty, and God as Love, 
 
THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY. 287 
 
 inspiring hope, and kindling aspiration, are two 
 different stages in the revelation of Deity. We 
 are all of us anxious to recognize that God is Love, 
 and to rest in it. But our ideas of love and its 
 nature may be very weak, infantile and ignorant. 
 Love is not something that sets law aside. It is 
 not a disposition which indulges a child with all 
 it asks. '* Because I love you so, I let you do as 
 you like " — is that the inference proper to love ? 
 While the Almighty One has given us that freedom 
 without which our natures cannot develop into 
 strength and beauty, — without which there is no 
 possibility of that variety in which the idea of 
 personality comes out, yet it always seems to me 
 that our freedom is a cord w^hich allows us to go 
 so far and no farther. The most self-willed and 
 reckless of men eventually find that there is a 
 limit to their ability of recklessness. Until we 
 can see the w^hole area through which the life of 
 the spirit of man moves, I do not believe it possi- 
 ble for us to justify the appalling amount of 
 freedom which God has allowed to His creatures. 
 Still, we can see some of its uses and its necessity. 
 We can see that it gives room for each individual 
 man to show himself. He can choose this or that. 
 By the results of his choice he learns something. 
 He recognizes his mistakes, he feels his error, he 
 builds up his life. He gains experiences which 
 may be of incalculable use to him in the hereafter. 
 
288 THE DIVINE IN VISIBILITY. 
 
 All this suggests itself. But is it not easy to see 
 that if the flaming eye of Deity were visible upon 
 us all the while we should be paralyzed into 
 inaction ? Our rightful freedom makes the demand 
 upon God that He hide Himself from our vision. 
 Moreover it is necessary to our jperfectness of 
 nature. There must be a limit to the growth 
 of this nature of ours, a point attainable at which, 
 in every moment of our existence, we shall feel 
 lilve praising God for our creation. There must 
 be for man a state of life which is itself bliss — 
 harmony — music, in which the internal and exter- 
 nal are in accord. J^ow we live by effort, by 
 endurance, by overcoming difficulties, by braving 
 dangers, by surmounting obstacles, by resisting 
 evils. It is a kind of chronic warfare with men 
 and things. 
 
 But in us are ideas of something entirely differ- 
 ent and immearsurably superior. Those ideas are 
 endorsed by Jesus the Christ. But perfectness in 
 man is not simply a matter of outward condition, 
 it implies internal correspondence with an enviro- 
 ment in itself perfect. In order to perfectness of 
 inward condition there must be the ability of faith 
 in a Power outside ourselves, and of faith in all 
 around us, the ability of perpetual hope, the ability 
 of undying love. It is not possible for us to 
 conceive of a state in which these three elements 
 of life will not be needed. And it is not possible^ 
 
THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY, 289 
 
 SO far as we can see, to develop these virtues 
 unless we have room for their growth. The 
 invisibility of God is necessary to their growth. 
 Sight is very much inferior to trust. The most 
 perfect communion of soul with soul, the most ex- 
 quisite fellowship of mind with mind, are possible 
 only where undoubted trust and undying love are 
 possible, nowhere else. Now, if our God were to 
 show Himself as over us, watching us, noting us 
 all the time, every day and every hour, so that the 
 eye saw Him, would we not feel as the slave feels 
 when the Master is there whip in hand ? If the 
 Almighty One were simply an Almighty Task- 
 master, or an Almighty Detective, what pos- 
 sible room would there be for the growth of 
 these three royal virtues, faith, hope and love? 
 But now He hides Plimself, conceals His presence 
 and His workings, so that we have to bring faith 
 into exercise. And nothing so ennobles and 
 purifies a spirit as the exercise of faith in some- 
 body. The opposite of faith is fear and suspicion. 
 Train a child under the influence of these and see 
 what the result will be. Nothing good, a blight 
 will be on that child's soul for life. There are 
 some men who need watching all the time. If 
 you employ them and are to get any work out of 
 them you must keep an eye on them. Of what 
 order are these men ? The very lowest to be found 
 anywhere. Nothing noble in them. 
 
290 THE 1)1 VINE INVISIBILITY. 
 
 And yet, though God hides Himself and refuses 
 to be the Supreme Detective of the Universe, lie 
 fills Heaven and Earth. He is never absent. We 
 cannot get away from Him. We cannot escape 
 Him. He hides Himself, in the presentative 
 totality of His Being, but Pie does not hide all 
 His thoughts. Every material thing is a thought 
 of God presented to us for our recognition. It 
 used to be assumed that man would become un- 
 spiritual if he admired Nature, the heavens, the 
 earth, the cattle on a thousand hills, the birds, 
 the flowers. No man, with a Bible in his hand 
 ought to have felt so. How full of poetry is the 
 Bible ! It sings its highest revelations. And the 
 more spiritual in mind we become, the more cer- 
 tainly shall we find ** sermons in stones, books in 
 the running brooks, and God in everything." Na- 
 ture is a library of Divine thoughts to the spiritu- 
 alized mind, to no other mind, — thoughts 
 presented in forms of beauty, put there for us to 
 find them. You know how children like to 
 discover things, and so we are put upon discover- 
 ing Divine thoughts. They are spoken to us in 
 parables. These are everywhere, and what we 
 call our discoveries are simply the wider open- 
 ing of our eyes to see what w^as there all the 
 time. "All our boasted discoveries are only of 
 things that for thousands of years have stared us 
 in the face and we could not recognize them. We 
 
THE DIVINE INYISIBILITT. 291 
 
 must marvel rather at the tardiness than the swift- 
 ness of our appreliension and confess ourselves 
 but fools and slow of heart to perceive what the 
 finger of God has plainly writ." 
 
 But not His thoughts only has God spread out 
 before us. He has made us feel His feeling. He 
 has put fatherhood and motherhood into men and 
 women. He has put sisterhood and brotherhood 
 also. He has made souls capable of friendship. 
 He has put pity, compassion, sympathy, love into 
 human hearts. And though these are necessarily 
 adulterated, yet there is much of the genuine arti- 
 cle to be found. All these have to be accounted 
 for. They are not in the dust out of which our 
 bodies are made. It is next to impossible to 
 believe that any man is serious when he talks 
 as if pity and sympathy, compassion and love 
 and all these elements of moral beauty are the 
 result of <'a fortuitous concourse of atoms." 
 
 For myself, I don't care whether the physical 
 nature of man was, by what we know as the 
 method of evolution, developed from the lower 
 and the lowest, or whether, by some more sum- 
 mary process, it was created. It is the result not 
 the process with which we are concerned. It is 
 interesting to know how the rocks were stratified, 
 how the hills were cast up, how the valleys were 
 ploughed. But the result rather than the process 
 concerns me. I can plant potatoes on the hills ; 
 
292 THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY. 
 
 I can graze cattle in the valleys. I can train my 
 mind to a feeling of the beautiful by the undula- 
 ting variety all around. And so this organism of 
 ours may have come up from those otiier creatux^es 
 with four pillars to support their frame, instead of 
 two. The vertical man may once have been physi- 
 cally the horizontal animal. It makes no differ- 
 ence as to the process. Now he is man — capable 
 of love, of pity, of sympathy, of compassion, and 
 these are not animal. They are the Divine feel- 
 ings reproducing themselves in the creatures 
 prepared to incarnate them. And though God 
 hides His Infinite Personality, draws around Him- 
 self a veil which none can rend — we know some 
 of His thoughts, and some of His feelings. His 
 whisper is in our souls. We name it conscience. 
 He never leaves us, nor forsakes us. And, with 
 the Hebrew poet we can ask, ''Whither shall I go 
 from Thy spirit — whither shall I flee from Thy 
 presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, thou art 
 there ; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold thou 
 art there. If I take the wings of the morning 
 and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ; even 
 there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand 
 shall hold me." 
 
 And with Paul, ''In Him we live and move and 
 have our being." And when we come to Jesus 
 the Christ, the veil of concealment is so thin that 
 we can see through it. Are we too rash when we 
 
THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY. 293 
 
 say — Deity reduced from His Infinity, coming 
 within limitations such as we need on this earth 
 would be Perfect Humanity ? Wonderful language 
 is that '' know ye not that ye are temples of the 
 Holy Spirit." Man regenerated is the true tem- 
 ple, and at the inmost of every regenerated human 
 soul is a ray from the Central Sun of the Uni- 
 verse — God Himself. Thus God is hidden, yet 
 manifest. And so, though God hides Himself 
 from us, we cannot hide ourselves from Him. 
 " Can any hide himself in secret places that I 
 should not see him, saith the Lord ; do not I fill 
 Heaven and Earth, saith the Lord?" Here, even 
 here, is the ground of our hope and expectation. 
 The touch of God is everywhere — beyond it 
 we cannot go. 
 
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