mmmmsm!^ 
 
 
 WHAT ISA CHRISTIAN? 
 T{] R STUDYfiFTJlEISIBLE 
 A TALK ^N B^2?KS.
 
 4;ir7^^^ c/^/^cVe^t
 
 ADDRESSES 
 
 BY 
 
 Henry Drummond, F.R.S.E., F.G.S. 
 
 The Greatest Thing in the World 
 pax vobiscum 
 
 The Changed Life 
 "First I" 
 
 How TO LEARN How 
 
 What is a Christian? 
 
 The Study of the Bible 
 A Talk on Books 
 
 philadelphla 
 
 HENRY ALTEMUS 
 
 1893
 
 Copyright 
 Bv HENRY ALTEMUS 
 
 1891 
 
 Henry ALXBMUi 
 Bookbinder 
 
 PHILADELPHUi
 
 SANTA BAI^BAI^A 
 
 D7 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 OF 
 
 HENRY DRUMMOND, F. R. S. L, F. G. S. 
 
 pROF. HENRY DRUMMOND was 
 bom in 185 1 in Stirling, Scotland, 
 where his father, who bore the same 
 name, was a justice of the peace. Young 
 Henry early developed a bent for serious 
 study, and after some preliminary train- 
 ing in private schools was sent to the 
 University of Edinburg, and later to that 
 of Tubingen, in Germany. At both these 
 seats of learning his rare gifts marked 
 him out among his classmates as a young
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF 
 
 man of especial promise. Having deter- 
 mined on a ministerial career, lie passed 
 througli the Free Cliurcli Divinity Hall, 
 and after his ordination was appointed to 
 a mission-station at Malta. Here he em- 
 ployed his leisure in the pursuit of his 
 favorite studies, Theology and Science, 
 boldly grappling with the problems pre- 
 sented by the most recent researches and 
 developments of the latter in the effort 
 to seek a reconciliation with the spirit 
 and essence of the former. 
 
 The result of these studies was made 
 apparent when, on his return to Scotland 
 in 1877, the brilliant young man, barely 
 twenty-six years of age, was appointed 
 Lecturer in Science at the Free Church 
 College in Glasgow. It was yet more 
 apparent when, in 1883, the free fruition
 
 HENRY DRUMMOND, F. R. S. E., F. G. S. 5 
 
 of his thought and experience was pre- 
 sented to the world in a remarkable book 
 entitled '* Natural Laws in the Spiritual 
 World. ^ ' This book might be looked upon 
 as in some sort an amplification of the 
 theme which Tennyson also had chosen in 
 that magnificent though illy-named poem, 
 *'The Higher Pantheism,*' and might 
 have taken for its text the pregnant line, 
 
 And if God thunders by law, the thunder is still 
 His voice. 
 
 The book found at once a hearty response. 
 It ran through thirty editions in England, 
 and the presses are not yet still. It was 
 republished in America. It was trans- 
 lated into French, German, Dutch, and 
 Norwegian. ' It has already become a 
 classic
 
 6 BIOGRAPHICAI. SKETCH OF 
 
 In 1884 ^^ became Professor of Science 
 in the Free Church College. He had 
 already established a firm friendship with 
 Prof. Geikie, a man of kindred tastes and 
 abilities, with whom he soon after started 
 on an extended tour through the Rocky 
 Mountains and South Africa. Some of 
 the results of his travels were given to 
 the world in a little work entitled * ' Trop- 
 ical Africa," and in other monographs. 
 
 In 1889 he was invited to make an 
 address at Dr. Moody's college at Oxford. 
 This took the form of a brilliant essay 
 entitled *'The Greatest Thing in the 
 World.*' Its publication in book form 
 was instantly demanded. Slight as was 
 the pamphlet in bulk, its success more 
 than repeated the success of his first 
 literary effort. Nearly a quarter of a
 
 HENRY DRUMMOND, F. R. S. E., F. G. S. ^ 
 
 million copies were sold in Great Britain 
 alone. The second and third of the same 
 series, ** Pax Vobiscum " (** Peace be with 
 You'O and **The Changed Life,'' met 
 with a sale equally extraordinary. An 
 address to boys entitled ** First," de- 
 livered originally in Glasgow, together 
 with *'A Talk on Books, ' completes 
 the list of Prof. Drummond's published 
 books. It is significant of the author's 
 modesty, self-restraint, and singleness of 
 mind that while the public is clamoring 
 for every line he may choose to give them 
 he withholds the manuscript of numerous 
 addresses, spoken but never printed, and 
 that his published books represent only 
 the merest fraction of his intellectual 
 life-work. Indeed, he consented to the 
 issue of **The Changed Life" only after
 
 8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF 
 
 ■ the accidental discovery, while travelling 
 last year in California, of a mangled 
 edition taken down from shorthand notes 
 at the time the address was delivered. 
 
 Prof. Drummond has a singular union 
 of gifts. As a rule, the glory of the 
 orator is one thing, and the glor>^ of the 
 writer is another. Prof. Drummond is 
 one of the few brilliant exceptions to 
 that rule. How often do we find the 
 impassioned sentences of the orator turn 
 cold and lifeless in the printed page ! 
 How often does the brilliant writer seem 
 stilted and unnatural in spoken word I 
 
 Judged as a writer, he has command 
 of a vigorous, nervous, flexible style. 
 His words are simple, he loves monosyl- 
 lables more than polysyllables, and Saxon 
 more than "Latin. He has a wealth of
 
 HENRY DRUMMOND, F, R. S. E., F. G. S. 9 
 
 illustrations to draw upon — illustrations 
 that are worthy of the name and do illus- 
 trate, do cast a flood of light upon his 
 meaning. Yet these illustrations are of 
 the homeliest sort. They are drawn from 
 life more than from books. They are not 
 stock figures of speech. They are the 
 fruit of long and minute observation; 
 they indicate a brain that is ever active 
 to seize the multiple analogies presented 
 by the world around us. The author has 
 thought and studied much, but he has 
 seen more. He does not misjudge his 
 audience. He makes no ostentatious 
 effort to soar above them, nor is he guilty 
 of any ostentatious condescension. He 
 says his say in straight, honest fashion ; 
 his rhetoric has a robust sincerity that 
 convinces as well as thrills.
 
 10 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 For the first time these works of Pro- 
 fessor Drummond are grouped and pub- 
 lished in a single volume, with the con- 
 fidence that their merits will command 
 millions of readers and prove a source 
 of untold blessings. As a Christian peo- 
 ple we need just such originality and 
 energy of thought, and as a busy people 
 we require what we read to be in con- 
 venient and economic form.
 
 THE GREATEST THING 
 
 IN 
 
 THE WORLD
 
 Though I speak with the tongues of men 
 and of angels, and have not Love, I am be- 
 come as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 
 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and 
 iindervStand all m3^steries, and all knowledge; 
 and though I have all faith, so that I could 
 remove mountains, and have not Love, I am 
 nothing. And though I bestow all my goods 
 to fe^d the poor, and though I give my body 
 to be burned, and have not Love, it profiteth 
 me nothing.
 
 Love sufferetli long, and is kind; 
 
 Love envieth not; 
 
 Love vauntetli not itself, is not puffed up^ 
 
 Doth not behave itself unseemly, 
 
 Seeketh not her own, 
 
 Is not easily provoked, 
 
 Tliinketh no evil ; 
 
 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, 
 
 but rejoiceth in the truth; 
 
 Beareth all things, believeth all things, 
 
 hopeth all things, 
 
 endureth all things.
 
 Love never faileth : but whether there be 
 prophecies, they shall fail ; whether there be 
 tongues, they shall cease; whether there be 
 knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we 
 know in part, and we prophesy in part. But 
 when that which is perfect is come, then that 
 which is in part shall be done away. When I 
 was a child, I spake as a child, I understood 
 as a child, I thought as a child : but when I 
 became a man, I put away childish things. 
 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but 
 then face to face: now I knov»^ in part; but 
 then shall I know even as also I am know^n. 
 And now abideth faith, hope, Love, these three ; 
 but the greatest of these is Love." — i Cor. xiii.
 
 THE GREATEST THING 
 IN THE WORLD. 
 
 T^VERY one lias asked himself the 
 great question of antiquity as of 
 the modem world : What is the stim- 
 mum bonum — the supreme good? You 
 have life before you. Once only you 
 can live it. What is the noblest object 
 of desire, the supreme gift to covet? 
 
 We have been accustomed to be told 
 that the greatest thing in the religious 
 world is Faith. That great word has
 
 1 6 THE) GREATEST THING 
 
 been the key-note for centuries of the 
 popular religion; and we have easily 
 learned to look upon it as the greatest 
 thing in the world. Well, we are wrong. 
 If we have been told that, we may miss 
 the mark. I have taken you, in the 
 chapter which I have just read, to Chris- 
 tianity at its source; and there we have 
 seen, ' ' The greatest of these is love. ' * 
 It is not an oversight. Paul was speak- 
 ing of faith just a moment before. He 
 says, ' ' If I have all faith, so that I can 
 remove mountains, and have not love, I 
 am nothing.'* So far from forgetting 
 he deliberately contrasts them, ''Now 
 abideth Faith, Hope, Love," and with- 
 out a moment's hesitation the decision 
 falls, "The greatest of these is Love." 
 And it is not prejudice. A man is apt
 
 IN THK WORLD. 1 7 
 
 to recommend to others his own strong 
 point. lyove was not Paul's strong point. 
 The observing student can detect a beau- 
 tiful tenderness growing and ripening all 
 through his character as Paul gets old ; 
 but the hand that wrote, *'The greatest 
 of these is love," when we meet it first, 
 IS stained with blood. 
 
 Nor is this letter to the Corinthians 
 peculiar in singling out love as the sum- 
 mum bonum. The masterpieces of Chris- 
 tianity are agreed about it. Peter says, 
 ** Above all things have fervent love 
 among yourselves." Above all things. 
 And John goes farther, **God is love." 
 And you remember the profound remark 
 which Paul makes elsewhere, * ' Love is 
 the fulfilling of the law." Did you ever 
 think what he meant by that ? In those
 
 1 8 THE GREATEST THING 
 
 days men were working their passage to 
 Heaven by keeping the Ten Command- 
 ments, and the hundred and ten other 
 commandments which they had manufac- 
 tured out of them. Christ said, I will 
 show you a more simple way. If you 
 do one thing, you will do these hundred 
 and ten things, without ever thinking 
 about them. If you love, you will un- 
 consciously fulfil the whole law. And 
 you can readily see for yourselves how 
 that must be so. Take any of the com- 
 mandments. " Thou shalt have no other 
 gods before Me." If a man love Gk>d, 
 you will not require to tell him that. 
 Love is the fulfilling of that law. ''Take 
 not His name in vain." Would he ever 
 dream of taking His name in vain if he 
 loved him? ''Remember the Sabbath
 
 IN THE WORLD. 1 9 
 
 day to keep it holy. ' * Would he not be 
 too glad to have one day in seven to dedi- 
 cate more exclusively to the object of his 
 affection? Love would fulfil all these 
 laws regarding God. And so, if he loved 
 Man, you would never think of telling 
 him to honor his father and mother. He 
 could not do anything else. It would 
 be preposterous to tell him not to kill. 
 You could only insult him if you sug- 
 gested that he should not steal — how 
 could he steal from those he loved? It 
 would be superfluous to beg him not to 
 bear false witness against his neighbor. 
 If he loved him it would be the last thing 
 he would do. And you would never 
 drenm of urging him not to covet what 
 his neighbors had. He would rather 
 they possessed it than himself. In this
 
 2^ GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 
 
 way **Love is tlie fulfilling of the law." 
 It is the rule for fulfilling all rules, the 
 new commandment for keeping all the 
 old commandments, Christ's one secret 
 of the Christian life. 
 
 Now Paul had learned that; and in 
 this noble eulogy he has given us the 
 most wonderful and original account ex- 
 tant of the summu7n bomim. We may 
 divide it into three parts. In the be- 
 ginning of the short chapter, we have 
 lyove contrasted ; in the heart of it, we 
 have Love analyzed; toward the end, we 
 have Love defended as the supreme gift.
 
 THE CONTRAST. 
 
 XDAUL begins by contrasting Love with 
 other things that rnen in those days 
 thought much of. I shall not attempt 
 to go over those things in detail. Their 
 inferiority is already obvious. 
 
 He contrasts it with eloquence. And 
 what a noble gift it is, the power of play- 
 ing upon the souls and wills of men, and 
 rousing them to lofty* purposes and holy 
 deeds. Paul says, * ' If I speak with the 
 tongues of men and of angels, and have 
 not love, I am become as sounding brass, 
 or a tinkling cymbal.** And we all 
 
 21
 
 22 THK GREATEST THING 
 
 know why. We have all felt the brazen- 
 ness of words without emotion, the hol- 
 lo wness, the unaccountable unpersuasive- 
 uess, of eloquence behind which lies no 
 Love. 
 
 He contrasts it with prophecy. He 
 contrasts it with mysteries. He con- 
 trasts it with faith. He contrasts it 
 with charity. Why is Love greater than 
 faith? Because the end is greater than 
 the means. And why is it greater than 
 charity? Because the whole is greater 
 than the part. Love is greater than 
 faith, because the end is greater than the 
 means. What is the use of having faith ? 
 It is to connect the soul with God. Aiid 
 what is the object of connecting man with 
 God? That he may become like God. 
 But God is Love. Hence Faith, the
 
 IN THE WORLD. 23 
 
 means, is in order to Love, the end. 
 I/>ve, therefore, obviously is greater than 
 faith. It is greater than charity, again, 
 because the whole is greater than a part. 
 Charity is only a little bit of Love, one 
 of the innumerable avenues of Love, and 
 there may even be, and there is, a great 
 deal of charity without Love. It is a very 
 easy thing to toss a copper to a beggar on 
 the street; it is generally an easier thing 
 than not to do it. Yet Love is just as 
 often in the withholding. We purchase 
 relief from the sympathetic feelings roused 
 by the spectacle of misery, at the copper* s 
 cost. It is too cheap — too cheap for us, 
 and often too dear for the beggar. If we 
 really loved him we would either do more 
 for him, or less. 
 
 Then Paul contrasts it with sacrifice
 
 24 -THE GREATEST THING 
 
 and martyrdom. And I beg tlie little 
 band of would-be missionaries — and I have 
 the Honor to call some of you by this 
 name for the first time — to remember that 
 though you give your bodies to be burned, 
 and have not Love, it profits nothing — 
 nothing ! You can take nothing greater 
 to the heathen world than the impress 
 and reflection of the Love of God upon 
 your own character. That is the univer- 
 sal language. It will take you years to 
 speak in Chinese, or in the dialects of 
 India. From the day you land, that lan- 
 guage of Love, understood by all, will be 
 pouring forth its unconscious eloquence. 
 It is the man who is the missionary, it is 
 not his words. His character is his mes- 
 sage. In the heart of Africa, among the 
 great Lakes, I have come across black
 
 IN THE WORLD. 25 
 
 men and women who remembered the 
 only white man they ever saw before — 
 David Livingstone; and as you cross his 
 footsteps in that dark continent, men's 
 faces light up as they speak of the kind 
 Doctor who passed there years ago. They 
 could not understand him; but they felt 
 the Love that beat in his heart. Take 
 into your new sphere of labor, where 
 you also mean to lay down your life, tliat 
 simple charm, and your lifework must 
 succeed. You can take nothing greater, 
 you need take nothing less. It is not 
 worth while going if you take anything 
 less. You may take every accomplish- 
 ment; you may be braced for ever)^ sacri- 
 fice; but if you give your body to be 
 burned, and have not Love, it will profit 
 you and the cause of Christ nothing.
 
 THE ANALYSIS. 
 
 A FTER contrasting Love with these 
 things, Paul, in three verses, very 
 short, gives ns an amazing analysis of 
 what this supreme thing is. I ask you 
 to look at it. It is a compound thing, 
 he tells us. It is like light. As you 
 have seen a man of science take a beam 
 of light and pass it through a cr^'sta] 
 prism, as you have seen it come out on 
 the other side of the prism broken up 
 into its component colors — red, and blue, 
 and yellow, and violet, and orange, and 
 all the colors of the rainbow — so Pan) 
 
 26
 
 GRKATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 27 
 
 passes this thing, Love, through the 
 magnificent prism of his inspired intel- 
 lect, and it comes out on the other side 
 broken up into its elements. And in 
 these few words we have what one might 
 call the Spectrum of Love, the analysis 
 of lyove. Will you obser\'e what its 
 elements are? Will you notice that 
 they have common names; that they 
 are virtues which v/e hear about every 
 day; that they are things which can be 
 practised by every man in every place 
 in life; and how, by a multitude of 
 small things and ordinary virtues, the 
 supreme thing, the summtim bomim^ is 
 made up? 
 
 The Spectrum of Love has nine in- 
 gredients: —
 
 28 THE GREATEST THING 
 
 Patience . . ^ ' Love suffereth long. * * 
 Kindness . . ''And is kind." 
 Generosity . ' ^ Love envieth not. ' ' 
 Humility . . "Love vaunteth not it- 
 self, is not puffed up.'* 
 Courtesy . . *'Doth not behave itself 
 
 unseemly." 
 Unselfishness '*Seeketh not her own." 
 Good Temper'^ Is not easily provoked." 
 Guilelessness **Thinketh no evil." 
 Sincerity . . **Rejoicetli not in iniquity, 
 but rejoiceth in the 
 truth." 
 
 Patience; kindness; generosity; humil- 
 ity; courtesy; unselfishness; good tem- 
 per; guilelessness; sincerit}^ — these make 
 up the supreme gift, the stature of the 
 perfect man. You will observe that al]
 
 IN THE WORLD. 29 
 
 are in relation to men, in relation to life, 
 in relation to the known to-day and the 
 near to-morrow, and not to the unknown 
 eternity. We hear much of love to God; 
 Christ spoke much of love to man. We 
 make a great deal of peace with heaven; 
 Christ made much of peace on earth. 
 Religion is not a strange or added thing, 
 but the inspiration of the secular life, 
 the breathing of an eternal spirit through 
 this temporal world. The supreme thing, 
 in short, is not a thing at all, but the giv- 
 ing of a further finish to the multitudi- 
 nous words and acts which make up the 
 sum of every common day. 
 
 There is no time to do more than make 
 a passing note upon each of these ingredi- 
 ents. Love is Patience. This is the nor- 
 mal attitude of Love; Love passive. Love
 
 30 THE GREATEST THING 
 
 waiting to begin; not in a hurry; calm; 
 ready to do its work when the summons 
 comes, but meantime wearing the orna- 
 ment of a meek and quiet vSpirit. Love 
 suffers long; beareth all things; believeth 
 all things; hopeth all things. For I^ove 
 understands, and therefore waits. 
 
 Kindfiess. Love active. Have you 
 ever noticed how much of Christ's life 
 was spent in doing kind things — in 
 merely diOm^ kind things? Run over it 
 Vv^ith that in view, and you will find that 
 He spent a great proportion of His time 
 sim^ply in making people happy, in doing 
 good turns to people. There is only one 
 thing greater than happiness in the wotld^ 
 and that is holiness; and it is not in oui 
 keeping; but what God has put in oui 
 power is the happiness of those about us.
 
 IN TrfE WORLD. 3 1 
 
 and that is largely to be secured by our 
 being kind to them. 
 
 "The greatest thing/' says someone^ 
 * ' a man can do for his Heavenly Father 
 is to be kind to some of His other chil- 
 dren. ' ' I wonder why it is that we are not 
 all kinder than we are ? How much the 
 world needs it. How easily it is done. 
 How instantaneously it acts. How infal- 
 libly it is remembered. How super- 
 abundantly it pays itself back — for there 
 is no debtor in the world so honorable, 
 so superbly honorable, as Love. ' * Love 
 never faileth.*^ Love is success, Love is 
 happiness, Love is life. *'Love I say," 
 with Browning *' is energy of LifCc'' 
 
 "For life, with all it yields of joy or woe 
 And hope and fear,
 
 32 THK GREATEST THING 
 
 Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,— 
 How love might be, hath been indeed, and is. ' 
 
 Where Love is, God is. He that dwelleth 
 in Love dwelleth in God. God is Love. 
 Therefore love. Without distinction, 
 without calculation, without procrastina- 
 tion, love. Lavish it upon the poor, 
 where it is very easy; especially upon the 
 rich, who often need it most; most of all 
 upon our equals, where it is very difficult, 
 and for whom perhaps we each do least 
 of all. There is a difference between 
 trying to please and gwi?ig pleasure. 
 Give pleasure. Lose no chance of giv- 
 ing pleasure. For that is the ceaseless 
 and anonymous triumph of a truly loving 
 spirit **I shall pass through this world 
 but once. Any good thing therefore that 
 I can do, or any kindness that I can show
 
 IN THE WORLD. 33 
 
 to any human being, let me do it now. 
 Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I 
 shall not pass this way again. ' ' 
 
 Generosity, * * Love envipth not. ' ' 
 This is love in competition with others. 
 Whenever you attempt a good work you 
 will find other men doing the same kind 
 of work, and probably doing it better. 
 Envy them not. Bnvy is a feeling of ill- 
 will to those who are in the same line as 
 ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and 
 detraction. How little Christian work 
 even is a protection against un-Christian 
 feeling. That most despicable of all the 
 unworthy moods which cloud a Chris- 
 tian's soul assuredly waits for us on the 
 threshold of every work, unless we are 
 fortified with this grace of magnanimity. 
 Only one thing truly need the Christian
 
 34 THE GREATEST THING 
 
 en\y, the large, rich, generous soul which 
 **envieth uof 
 
 Aud then, after having learned all that, 
 yen have to learn this further thing, 
 Humility — to put a seal upon your lips 
 and forget what you have done. After 
 you have been kind, after Love has stolen 
 forth into the world and done its beauti- 
 ful work, go back into tae shade again 
 and say nothing about it. Love hides 
 even from itself. Love waives even self- 
 satisfaction. " Love vaunteth not itself, 
 is not puffed up.*' 
 
 The fifth ingredient is a somewhat 
 strange one to find in this summum 
 boniini: Courtesy, This is Love in so- 
 ciety. Love in relation to etiquette. 
 ** Love doth not behave itself unseemly." 
 Politeness has been defined as love in
 
 IN THE WORI.D. . 35 
 
 trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little 
 things. And the one secret of politeness 
 is to love. Love cannot behave itself un- 
 seemly. You can put the most untutored 
 persons into the highest society, and if 
 they have a reservoir of Love in their 
 heart, they will not behave themselves 
 unseemly. They simply cannot do it. 
 Carlyle said of Robert Burns that there 
 was no truer gentleman in Europe than 
 the ploughman-poet. It was because he 
 loved everything — the mouse, and the 
 daisy, and all the things, great and small, 
 that God had made. So with this simple 
 passport he could mingle with any soci- 
 ety, and enter courts and palaces from his 
 little cottage on the banks of the Ayr. 
 You know the meaning of the word * ' gen- 
 tleman.^* It means a gentle man — a man
 
 36 THE GREATEST THING 
 
 who does things gently with love. And 
 that is the whole art and mystery of it. 
 The gentle man cannot in the nature of 
 things do an ungentle, an ungentlemanly 
 thing. The ungentle soul, the inconsid- 
 erate, unsympathetic nature cannot do 
 anything else. "Love doth not behave 
 itself unseemly.*' 
 
 Unselfishness, ' ' Love seeketh not her 
 own." Observe: Seeketh not even that 
 which is her own. In Britain the English- 
 man is devoted, and rightly, to his rights. 
 But there come times when a man may 
 exercise even the higher right of giving 
 up his rights. Yet Paul does not sum- 
 mon us to give up our rights. Love 
 strikes much deeper. It would have us 
 not seek them at all, ignore them, elimi- 
 nate the personal element altogether from
 
 IN THE WORLD. 3^ 
 
 our calculations. It is not hard to give 
 up our rights. They are often external. 
 The difficult thing is to give up ourselves. 
 The more difficult thing still is not to seek 
 things for ourselves at all. After we have 
 sought them, bought them, won them, 
 deser\'ed them, we have taken the cream 
 off them for ourselves already. Little 
 cross then to give them up. But not to 
 seek them, to look every man not on his 
 own things, but on the things of others — 
 id opus est, * ' Seekest thou great things 
 for thyself?" said the prophet; ^'' seek 
 them noty Why? Because there is no 
 greatness in things. Things cannot be 
 great. The only greatness is unselfish 
 love. Even self-denial in itself is noth- 
 ing, is almost a mistake. Only a great 
 purpose or a mightier love can justify the
 
 ^8 THK GREATEST THING 
 
 waste. It is more difficult, I have said, 
 not to seek our ov/n at all, than, having 
 sought it, to give it up. I must take that 
 back. It is only true of a partly selfish 
 heart. Nothing is a hardship to Love, and 
 nothing is hard. I believe that Christ's 
 "yoke" is easy. Christ's "yoke" is just 
 his way of taking life. And I believe it is 
 an easier way than any other. I believe it 
 is a happier way than any other. The most 
 obvious lesson in Christ's teaching is that 
 there is no happiness in having and getting 
 anything, but only in giving. I repeat, 
 there is no happiness in having or in get- 
 ting^ but only in giving. And half the world 
 is on the wrong scent in pursuit of happi- 
 ness. They think it consists in having 
 and getting, and in being served by others 
 It consists in giving, and in serving
 
 IN THK WORLD. 39 
 
 others. He that would be great among 
 you, said Christ, let him serve. He that 
 would be happy, let him remember that 
 there is but oue way — it is more blessed, 
 it is more happy, to give than to re- 
 ceive. 
 
 The next ingredient is a very remark- 
 able one : Good Temper, ' * Love is not 
 easily provoked.'' Nothing could be 
 more striking than to find this here. We 
 are inclined to look upon bad temper as a 
 very harmless weakness. We speak of it 
 as a mere infirmity of nature, a family 
 failing, a matter of temperament, not a 
 thing to take into very serious account in 
 estimating a man's character. And yet 
 here, right in the heart of this analysis 
 of love, it finds a place; and the Bible 
 again and again returns to condemn it as
 
 40 THE GREATEST THING 
 
 one of the most destructive elements is 
 human nature. 
 
 The peculiarit)^ of ill tem.per is that it 
 is the vice of the virtuous. It is often 
 the one blot on an otherwise noble cha- 
 racter. You know men who are all but 
 perfect, and women who would be en- 
 tirely perfect, but for an easily ruffled, 
 quick-tempered, or ** touchy" disposition. 
 This compatibility of ill temper with 
 high moral character is one of the stran- 
 gest and saddest problems of ethics. The 
 truth is there are two great classes of sins 
 — sins of the Body^ and sins of the Disposi- 
 tion. The Prodigal Son may be taken 
 as a type of the first, the Elder Brother 
 of the second. Now, society has no doubt 
 whatever as to which of these is the 
 worse. Its brand falls, without a chal-
 
 IN THE WORI^D. 4I 
 
 lenge, upon the Prodigal. But are we 
 right? We have no balance to weigh 
 one another's sins, and coarser and finer 
 are but human words ; but faults in the 
 higher nature may be less venial than 
 those in the lower, and to the eye of Him 
 who is Love, a sin against Love may seem 
 a hundred times more base. No form of 
 vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, 
 not drunkenness itself, does more to un- 
 Christianize society than evil temper. 
 For embittering life, for breaking up com- 
 munities, for destroying the most sacred 
 relationships, for devastating homes, for 
 withering up men and women, for taking 
 the bloom of childhood, in short, for sheet 
 gratuitous misery-producing power, this 
 influence stands alone. Look at the Elder 
 
 Brother, moral, hard-working, patient, 
 
 4
 
 42 THE GREATEST THING 
 
 dutiful — let him get all credit for his vir- 
 tues — look at this man, this baby, sulk- 
 ing outside his own father's door. ^*He 
 was angry, ' ' we read, ' ' and would not go 
 in.'' lyook at the effect upon the father, 
 upon the servants, upon the happiness 
 of the guests. Judge of the effect upon 
 the Prodigal — and how many prodigals 
 are kept out of the Kingdom of God by 
 the unlovely character of those who pro- 
 fess to be inside? Analyze, as a study 
 in Temper, the thunder-cloud itself as 
 it gathers upon the Elder Brother's brow. 
 What is it made of? Jealousy, anger, 
 pride, uncharity, cruelty, self- righteous- 
 ness, touchiness, doggedness, sullenness, 
 — these are the ingredients of this dark 
 and loveless soul. In varying propor- 
 tions, also, these are the ingredients of
 
 IN THK WORI.D. 43 
 
 ^11 ill temper. Judge if such sins of the 
 disposition are not worse to live in, and 
 for others to live with, than sins of the 
 body. Did Christ indeed not answer the 
 question Himself when He said, **I say 
 unto you, that the publicans and the 
 harlots go into the Kingdom of Heaven 
 before you. ' ' There is really no place in 
 Heaven for a disposition like this. ' A 
 man with such a mood could only make 
 Heaven miserable for all the people in it. 
 Except, therefore, such a man be born 
 again, he cannot, he simply cannot^ enter 
 the Kingdom of Heaven. For it is per- 
 fectly certain — and you will not misun- 
 derstand me — that to enter Heaven a 
 man must take it with him. 
 
 You will see then why Temper is sig- 
 nificant. It is not in what it is alone,
 
 44 THE GREATEST THING 
 
 but in what it reveals. This is why I take 
 the liberty now of speaking of it with 
 such unusual plainness. It is a test for 
 love, a symptom, a revelation of an un- 
 loving nature at bottom. It is the inter- 
 mittent fever which bespeaks unintermit- 
 tent disease within ; the occasional bubble 
 escaping to the surface which betrays 
 some rottenness underneath ; a sample of 
 the most hidden products of the soul 
 dropped involuntarily when off one's 
 guard ; in a word, the lightning form 
 of a hundred hideous and un-Christian 
 sins. For a want of patience, a want of 
 kindness, a want of generosity, a want of 
 courtesy, a want of unselfishness, are all 
 instantaneously symbolized in one flash 
 of Temper. 
 
 Hence it is not enough to deal with the
 
 IN THE WORLD. 45 
 
 Temper. We must go to the source, and 
 change the inmost nature, and the angry 
 humors will die away of themselves. 
 Souls are made sweet not by taking the 
 acid fluids out, but by putting something 
 in — a gi eat Love, a new Spirit, the Spirit 
 of Christ. Christ, the Spirit of Christ, 
 interpenetrating ours, sweetens, purifies, 
 transforms all. This only can eradicate 
 what is wrong, work a chemical change, 
 renovate and regenerate, and rehabilitate 
 the inner man. Will-power does not 
 change men. Time does not change 
 men. Christ does. Therefore * * Let that 
 mind be in you which was also in Christ 
 Jesus.*' Some of us have not much time 
 to lose. Remember, once more, that this 
 is a matter of life or death. I cannot 
 help speaking urgently, for myself, for
 
 46 THE GREATEST THING 
 
 yourselves. * ' Whoso shall offend one of 
 these little ones, which believe in me, it 
 were better for him that a millstone were 
 hanged about his neck, and that he were 
 drowned in the depth of the sea.'^ That 
 is to say, it is the deliberate verdict of the 
 Lord Jesus that it is better not to live 
 than not to love. // is better not to live 
 than not to love. 
 
 Gtcilelessness and Sincerity may be dis- 
 missed almost with a word. Guileless- 
 ness is the grace for suspicious people. 
 And the possession of it is the great secret 
 of personal influence. You will find, if 
 you think for a moment, that the people 
 who influence 5'ou are people who believe 
 in you. In an atmosphere of suspicion 
 men shrivel up; but in that atmosphere 
 they expand, and find encouragement and
 
 IN THE WORI.D. 47 
 
 educative fellowship. It is a wonderful 
 thing that here and there in this hard, 
 uncharitable world there should still be 
 left a few rare souls who think no evil. 
 This is the great unworldliness. lyove 
 **thinketh no evil,'^ imputes no motive, 
 sees the bright side, puts the best con- 
 struction on every action. What a de- 
 lightful state of mind to live in! What a 
 stimulus and benediction even to meet 
 with it for a day! To be trusted is to be 
 saved. And if we try to influence or ele- 
 vate others, we shall soon see that success 
 is in proportion to their belief of our belief 
 in them. For the respect of another is 
 the first restoration of the self-respect a 
 man has lost; our ideal of what he is 
 becomes to him the hope and pattern of 
 what he may become.
 
 48 THK GREATEST THING 
 
 ** Love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but re 
 joiceth in the truth." I have called this 
 Sincerity from the words rendered in the 
 Authorized Version by "rejoiceth in the 
 truth." And, certainly, were this the 
 real translation, nothing could be more 
 just. For he who loves will love Truth 
 not less than men. He will rejoice in the 
 Truth — rejoice not in what he has been 
 taught to believe; not in this Church's 
 doctrine or in that; not in this ism or in 
 that ism; but ''in the Tjmthy He will 
 accept only what is real ; he will strive to 
 get at facts; he will search for Truth with 
 a humble and unbiassed mind, and cherish 
 whatever he finds at any sacrifice. But 
 the more literal translation of the Revised 
 Version calls for just such a sacrifice for 
 truth's sake here. For what Paiil really
 
 IN TUn WORLD. 49 
 
 meant is^ as we there read, "Rejoiceth 
 not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with 
 the truth, ' ' a quality which probably no 
 one English word — and certainly not Sin- 
 ceriiy — adequately defines. It includes, 
 perhaps more strictly, the self-restraint 
 which refuses to make capital out of 
 others' faults; the charity which delights 
 not in exposing the weakness of others, 
 but " covereth all things;" the sincerity 
 of purpose which endeavors to see things 
 as they are, and rejoices to find them 
 better than suspicion feared or calumny 
 denounced. 
 
 So much for the analysis of Love. 
 Now the business of our lives is to have 
 these things fitted into our characteis. 
 That is the supreme work to which we 
 need to address ourselves in this world,
 
 50 THK GREATEST THING 
 
 to learn Love. Is life not full of oppor- 
 tunities for learning Love? Bver>^ man 
 and woman every day has a thousand of 
 them. The world is not a playground; 
 it is a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday, 
 but an education. And the one eternal 
 lesson for us all is how better we can love. 
 What makes a man a good cricketer? 
 Practice. What makes a man a good 
 artist, a good sculptor, a good musician ? 
 Practice. What makes a man a good 
 linguist, a good stenographer ? Practice. 
 What makes a man a good man ? Prac- 
 tice. Nothing else. There is nothing 
 capricious about religion. We do not get 
 the soul in different ways, under different 
 laws, from those in which we get the 
 body and the mind. If a man does not 
 exercise his arm he develops no biceps
 
 IN THE WORl,D, 5I 
 
 muscle; and if a man does not exercise 
 his soul, he acquires no muscle in his soul, 
 no strength of character, no vigor of 
 moral fibre, nor beauty of spiritual 
 growth. Ivove is not a thing of enthusi- 
 astic emotion. It is a rich, strong, man- 
 ly, vigorous expression of the whole 
 round Christian character — the Christlike 
 nature in its fullest development. And 
 the constituents of this great character 
 are only to be built up by ceaseless 
 .practice. 
 
 What was Christ doing in the car- 
 penter's shop? Practising. Though per- 
 fect, we read that He learned obedience, 
 and grew in wisdom and in favor with 
 God. Do not quarrel therefore with youi 
 lot in life. Do not complain of its never- 
 ceasing cares,' its petty environment, the
 
 52 THE GREATEST THING 
 
 vexations you have to stand, the small 
 and sordid souls you have to live and 
 work with. Above all, do not resent 
 temptation; do not be perplexed because 
 it seems to thicken round you more and 
 more, and ceases neither for eflfort nor 
 for agony nor prayer. That is your prac- 
 tice. That is the practice which God 
 appoints you; and it is having its work 
 in making you patient, and humble, and 
 generous, and unselfish, and kind, and 
 courteous. Do not grudge the hand that 
 is moulding the still too shapeless image 
 within you. It is growing more beauti- 
 ful, though you see it not, and every 
 touch of temptation may add to its per- 
 fection. Therefore keep in the midst of 
 life. Do not isolate yourself Be among 
 men, and among things, • and among
 
 IN THK WORLD. 53 
 
 troubles, and difficulties, and obstacles. 
 You remember Goethe's words: Es bildei 
 ein Talent sich in der Stille^ Dock ein 
 Charakter in dem Strom der Welt. 
 * ' Talent develops itself in solitude ; 
 character in the stream of life.*' Talent 
 develops itself in solitude — the talent of 
 prayer, of faith, of meditation, of seeing 
 the unseen ; Character grows in the 
 stream of the world's life. That chiefly 
 is where men are to learn love. 
 
 How ? Now, how ? To make it easier, 
 I have named a few of the elements of 
 love. But these are only elements. 
 Ivove itself can never be defined. Light 
 is a something more than the sum of 
 its ingredients — a glowing, dazzling, 
 tremulous ether. And love is something 
 more than all' its elements — a palpitating,
 
 54 THE GREATEST THING 
 
 quivering, sensitive, livings thing. By 
 synthesis of all the colors, men can 
 make whiteness, they cannot make light. 
 By synthesis of all the virtues, men can 
 make virtue, they cannot make love. 
 How then are we to have this transcen- 
 dent living whole conveyed into our 
 souls? We brace our wills to secure it. 
 We try to copy those who have it. We 
 lay down rules about it. We watch. 
 We pray. But these things alone will 
 not bring Love into our nature. Love 
 is an effect. And only as we fulfil the 
 right condition can we have the effect 
 produced. Shall I tell you what the 
 cause is? 
 
 If you turn to the Revised Version 
 of the First Epistle of John you will 
 find these words: ^'We love because He
 
 IN THE WORLD. 55 
 
 first loved U6." **We love," not *'We 
 love Him.'''* That is the way the old 
 version has it, and it is quite wrong. 
 ** We love — because He first loved us.'* 
 Look at that word '* because.** It is 
 the cause of which I have spoken. ^^Be^ 
 cause He first loved us,'* the eflfect fol- 
 lows that we love, we love Him, we love 
 all men. We cannot help it. Because 
 He loved us, we love, we love every- 
 body. Our heart is slowly changed. 
 Contemplate the love of Christ, and you 
 will love. Stand before that mirror, re- 
 flect Christ's character, and you will be 
 changed into the same image from ten- 
 derness to tenderness. There is no other 
 way. You cannot love to order. You 
 can only look at the lovely object, and 
 fall in love with it, and g^row into like-
 
 56 THE GREATEST THING 
 
 ness to it And so look afe this Perfect 
 Character, this Perfect lyife. Look at 
 the great Sacrifice as He laid down Him- 
 self, all through life, and upon the Cross 
 of Calvary; and you must love Plim. 
 And loving Him, you must become like 
 Him. Love begets love. It is a process 
 of induction. Put a piece of iron in the 
 presence of an electrified body, and that 
 piece of iron for a time becomes elec- 
 trified. It is changed into a temporary 
 magnet in the mere presence of a per- 
 manent magnet, and as long as you leave 
 the two side by side, they are both mag- 
 nets alike. Remain side by side with 
 Him who loved us, and gave Himself for 
 us, and }^ou too will become a permanent 
 magnet, a permanently attractive force ; 
 and like Him yon will draw all men
 
 IN THE V/ORLD. 57 
 
 unto you, like Him you will be drawn 
 unto all men. THat is the inevitable 
 effect of Ivove. Any man wbo fulfils 
 that cause must have that effect pro- 
 duced in him. Try to give up the idea 
 that religion comes to us by chance, or 
 by mystery, or by caprice. It comes to 
 us b}^ natural law, or by supernatural 
 law, for all law is Divine. Edward Ir- 
 ving went to see a dying boy once, and 
 when he entered the room he just put his 
 hand on the sufferer's head, and said, 
 **My boy, God loves you," and went 
 away. And the boy started from his 
 bed, and called out to the people in the 
 house, '* God loves me! God loves me!" 
 It changed that boy. The sense that God 
 loved him overpowered him, melted him 
 down, and beean the creating of a new 
 
 5
 
 58 GREATEST THING IN THE WORI.D. 
 
 heart in him. And that is how the love 
 of God melts down the unlovely heart 
 in man, and begets in him the new crea- 
 ture, who is patient and humble and 
 gentle and unselfish. And there is no 
 other way to get it. There is no mystery 
 about it. We love others, we love every- 
 body, we love our enemies, because He 
 first loved us.
 
 THE DEFENCE. 
 
 "^T OW I Have a closing sentence or two 
 to add about Paul's reason for sing- 
 ling out love as the supreme possession. 
 It is a very remarkable reason. In a 
 single word it is this : it lasts, * ' Love, ' * 
 urges Paul, *' never faileth." Then he 
 begins again one of his marvellous lists 
 of the great things of the day. and ex- 
 poses them one by one. He runs over 
 the things that men thought were going 
 to last, and shows that they are all fleet- 
 ing, temporaiy, passing away. 
 
 '^Whether there be prophecies, they 
 
 59
 
 6o THE GREATEST THING 
 
 shall fail.** It was the mother's am- 
 bition for licr boy in those days that he 
 should become a prophet. For hundreds 
 of years God had never spoken by means 
 of any prophet, and at that time the 
 prophet was greater than the King. Men 
 waited wistfully for another messenger to 
 come, and hung upon his lips when he 
 appeared as upon the very voice of God. 
 Paul says, ''Whether there be proph- 
 ecies, they shall fail/* This book is full 
 of prophecies. One by one they have 
 ** failed;'* that is, having been fulfilled 
 their work is finished ; they have nothing 
 more to do now in the world excet^t to 
 feed a devout man's faith. 
 
 Then Paul talks about tongues. That 
 was another thing that was greatly cov- 
 eted. * * Whether there be tongues, they
 
 IN THE WORLD. 6l 
 
 shall cease.'* As we all know, many, 
 manv centuries have passed since tonp^ues 
 have been known in this world. They 
 have ce:iscd. Take it in any sense you 
 like. Take it, for illustration merely, 
 as languages in general — a sense which 
 was not in Paul's mind at all, and which 
 though it cannot give us the specific 
 lesson will point the general truth. Con- 
 sider the words in which these chapters 
 were written— Greek. It has gone. Take 
 the Latin— the other great tongue of those 
 days. It ceased long ago. Look at the 
 Indian language. It is ceasing. The 
 language of Wales, of Ireland, of the 
 Scottish Highlands is dying before our 
 e\'-. The most popular book in the 
 English tongue at the present time, ex- 
 cept the Bible, is one of Dickens's works.
 
 62 THK GREATEST THING 
 
 his Pickunck Papers, It is largely writ- 
 ten in the language of I^ndon street-life ; 
 and experts assure us that in fifty years 
 it will be unintelligible to the average 
 English reader. 
 
 Then Paul goes farther, and with even 
 greater boldness adds, *' Whether there be 
 knowledge, it shall vanish away.** The 
 wisdom of the ancients, where is it? It 
 is wliollv l;;o:. schoolboy to-day 
 
 knows more than Sir Isaac Newton knew. 
 His knowledge has vanished away. You 
 put yesterday's new^spaper in the fire. 
 Its knowledge has vanished away. You 
 buy the old editions of the great encyclo- 
 pcedias for a few pence. Their know- 
 ledge has vanished away. Look how the 
 coach has been superseded by the use 
 of steam. Look how electricitv ha*
 
 IN TH5 WORLD. 63 
 
 superseded that, and swept a hundred 
 almost new inventions into oblivion. 
 One of the greatest living authorities, Sir 
 William Thompson, said the other day, 
 •*The steam-engine is passing away.'* 
 ** Whether there be knowledge, it shall 
 vanish away.'' At every workshop you 
 will see, in the back yard, a heap of old 
 iron, a few wheels, a few levers, a few 
 cranks, broken and eaten with rust 
 Twenty years ago that was the pride of 
 the city. Men flocked in from the country 
 to see the great invention; now it is su- 
 perseded, its day is done. And all the 
 boasted science and philosophy of this day 
 will soon be old. But yesterday, in the 
 University of Edinburgh, the greatest fig- 
 ure in the faculty was Sir James Simpson, 
 the discoverer of chloroform. The other
 
 64 THE GREATEST THING 
 
 day his successor and nephew, Professor 
 Simpson, was asked by the librarian of 
 the University to go to the library and 
 pick out the books on his subject that 
 were no longer needed. And his reply 
 to the librarian was this: ''Take every 
 text-book that is more than ten years old, 
 and put it down in the cellar.*' Sir 
 James Simpson was a great authority only 
 a few years ago: men came from all parts 
 of the earth to consult him; and almost 
 the whole teaching of that time is con- 
 signed by the science of to-day to oblivion. 
 And in every branch of science it is the 
 same. *' Now we know in part. We see 
 through a glass darkly.'* 
 
 Can you tell me anything that is going 
 to last? Many things Paul did not con- 
 descend to name. He did not mention
 
 IN THE WORLD. 65 
 
 money, fortune, fame; but lie picked out 
 the great things of his time, the things 
 the best men thought had something in 
 them, and brushed them peremptorily 
 aside. Paul had no charge against these 
 thinors in themselves. All he said about 
 them was that they would not last. They 
 were great things, but not supreme things. 
 There were things beyond them. What 
 we are stretches past what we do, beyond 
 what we possess. Many things that men 
 denounce as sins are not sins; but they 
 are temporar>\ And that is a favorite 
 argument of the New Testament. John 
 says of the world, not that it is wrong, 
 but simply that it ** passeth away.*^ 
 There is a great deal in the world that is 
 delightful and beautiful; there is a greav 
 deal in it that is great and engrossing"
 
 66 THK GREATEST THING 
 
 but it will not last. All tliat is in the 
 world, tlie lust of tlie eye, the lust of the 
 Sesh, and the pride of life, are but for a 
 little while. Love not the world there- 
 fore. Nothing that it contains is worth 
 the life and consecration of an immortal 
 soul. The immortal soul must give itself 
 to something that is immortal. And the 
 only immortal things are these: "Now 
 abideth faith, hope, love, but the greatest 
 of these is love.'' 
 
 Some think the time may come when two 
 of these three things will also pass away— 
 faith into sight, hope into fruition. Paul 
 does not say so. We know but little now 
 about the conditions of the life that is to 
 come. But what is certain is that Love 
 must last. God, the Eternal God, is 
 Love. Covet therefore that everlasting
 
 IN THE WORLD. 67 
 
 gift, that oue thing which it is certain is 
 going to stand, that one coinage which 
 will be current in the Universe when all 
 the other coinages of all the nations of the 
 world shall be useless and unhonored. 
 You will give yourselves to many things, 
 give yourself first to L^ove. Hold things 
 in their proportion. Hold things in their 
 proportion, Let at least the first great 
 object of our lives be to achieve the cha- 
 racter defended in these words, the cha- 
 racter — and it is the character of Christ 
 — which is built round Love. 
 
 I have said this thing is eternal. Did 
 you ever notice how continually John 
 associates love and faith with eternal life? 
 I was not told when I was a boy that 
 "God so loved the world that He gave 
 His only-begotten Son, that whosoever
 
 68 THE GREATEST THING 
 
 believetli in Him should have everlasting 
 life." What I was told, I remember, was, 
 that God so loved the world that, if I 
 trusted in Him, I was to have a thing 
 called peace, or I was to have rest, or I 
 was to have joy, or I was to have safety. 
 But I had to find out for myself that who- 
 soever trusteth in Him — that is, whoso- 
 ever loveth Him, for trust is only the 
 avenue to Love — hath everlasting life. 
 The Gospel offers a man life. Never offer 
 men a thimbleful of Gospel. Do not 
 offer them merely joy, or merely peace, or 
 merely rest, or merely safety ; tell them 
 how Christ came to give men a more 
 abundant life than they have, a life abun- 
 dant in love, and therefore abundant in 
 salvation for themselves, and large in en- 
 terprise for the alleviation and redemption
 
 IN THE WORI^D. 69 
 
 of the world. Then only can the Gospel 
 take hold of the whole of a man, body, 
 soul, and spirit, and give to each part of 
 his nature its exercise and reward. Many 
 of the current Gospels are addressed only 
 to a part of man's nature. They offer 
 peace, not life; faith, not Love; justifica- 
 tion, not regeneration. And men slip 
 back again from such religion because it 
 has never really held them. Their na- 
 ture was not all in it. It offered no deep- 
 er and gladder life-current than the life 
 that was lived before. Surely it stands 
 to reason that only a fuller love can com- 
 pete with the love of the world. 
 
 To love abundantly is to live abun- 
 dantly, and to love for ever is to live for 
 ever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably 
 bound up with love. We want to live
 
 70 THK GREATEST THING 
 
 for ever for the same reason tliat we want 
 to live to-morrow. Wli}^ do you want to 
 live to-morrow? It is because there is 
 some one who loves you, and whom you 
 want to see to-morrow, and be with, and 
 love back. There is no other reason why 
 we should live on than that we love and 
 are beloved. It is when a man has no 
 one to love him that he commits suicide. 
 So long as he has friends, those who love 
 him and whom he loves, he will live, be- 
 cause to live is to love. Be it but the 
 love of a dog, it will keep him in life; 
 but let that go and he has no contact with 
 life, no reason to live. He dies by his 
 own hand. Eternal life also is to know 
 God, and God is love. This is Christ's 
 own definition. Ponder it. *'This is 
 life eternal, that they might know Thee
 
 IN THE WORLD. 71 
 
 the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom 
 Thou hast sent. ' * I^ove must be eternal. It 
 is what God is. On the last analysis, then, 
 love is life. Love never faileth, and life 
 never faileth, so long as there is love. That 
 is the philosophy of what Paul is showing - 
 us; the reason why in the nature of things 
 Love should be the supreme thing — because 
 it is going to last; because in the nature 
 of things it is an Eternal Life. It is a 
 thing that we are living now, not that we 
 get when we die; that we shall have a 
 poor chance of getting when we die un- 
 less we are living now. No worse fate 
 can befall a man in this world than to 
 live and grow old alone, unloving, and 
 unloved. To be lost is to live in an un- 
 regenerate condition, loveless and un- 
 loved; and to be saved is to love; and he
 
 72 THE GREATEST THING 
 
 that dwelleth in love dwelletli already in 
 God. For God is I^ove. 
 
 Now I have all but finished. How 
 many of you will join me in reading 
 this chapter once a week for the next 
 three months? A man did that once 
 and it changed his whole life. Will you 
 do it ? It is for the greatest thing in the 
 world. You might begin by reading it 
 every day, especially the verses which 
 describe the perfect character. *'Love 
 suffereth long, and is kind ; love envieth 
 not; love vaunteth not itself." Get 
 these ingredients into your life. Then 
 everything that you do is eternal. It is 
 worth doing. It is worth giving time 
 to. No man can become a saint in his 
 sleep ; and to fulfil the condition required 
 demands a certain amount of prayer and
 
 IN THE WORLD. 73 
 
 meditation and time, just as improvement 
 in any direction, bodily or mental, re- 
 quires preparation and care. A4dress 
 yourselves to that one thing; at any 
 cost have this transcendent character 
 exchanged for yours. You will find as 
 you look back upon your life that the 
 moments that stand out, the moments 
 when you have really lived, are the 
 moments when you have done things 
 in a spirit of love. As memory scans 
 the past, above and beyond all the tran- 
 sitory pleasures of life, there leap for- 
 ward those supreme hours when you 
 have been enabled to do unnoticed kind- 
 nesses to those round about you, things 
 too trifling to speak about, but which 
 you feel have entered into your eternal 
 life, I have seen almost all the beauti-
 
 74 ^HE GREATEIST THING 
 
 fill things God has made ; I have enjoyed 
 almost every pleasure that He has planned 
 for man ; and yet as I look back I see 
 standing out above all the life that has 
 gone four or five short experiences when 
 the love of God reflected itself in some 
 poor imitation, some small act of love 
 of mine, and these seem to be th.e 
 things which alone of all one's life 
 abide. Everything else in all our lives 
 is transitory. Every other good is vision- 
 ary. But the acts of love which no man 
 knows about, or can ever know about — 
 they never fail. 
 
 In the Book of Matthew, where the 
 Judgment Day is depicted for us in the 
 imager>' of One seated upon a throne 
 and dividing the sheep from the goats, 
 the test of a man then is not, ** How
 
 IN THB WORLD. 75 
 
 have I believed?'* but **How bave I 
 loved?'* The test of religion, the final 
 test of religion, is not religiousness, but 
 Love. I say the final test of religion at 
 that great Day is not religiousness, but 
 Love ; not what I have done, not what I 
 have believed, not what I have achieved, 
 but how I have discharged the common 
 charities of life. Sins of commission in 
 that awful indictment are not even re- 
 ferred to. By what we have not done, 
 by sins of omission^ we are judged. It 
 Gould not be otherwise. For the with- 
 holding of love is the negation of the 
 spirit of Christ, the proof that we never 
 knew Him, that for us He lived in vain. 
 It means that He suggested nothing in 
 all our thoughts, that He inspired noth- 
 ing in all our lives, that we were not
 
 76 THE GREATEST THING 
 
 once near enougli to Him to be seized 
 with the spell of His compassion for the 
 world. It means that— 
 
 "I^ lived for myself, I thought for myself, 
 For myself, and none beside — 
 Just as if Jesus had never lived, 
 As if He had never died." 
 
 It is the Son of Man before whom the 
 nations of the world shall be gathered. 
 It is in the presence of Humanity that 
 we shall be charged. And the spectacle 
 itself, the mere sight of it, will silently 
 judge each one. Those will be there 
 whom we have met and helped ; or there, 
 the unpitied multitude whom we neg- 
 lected or despised. No other Witness 
 need be summoned. No other charge 
 than lovelessness shall be preferred. P**
 
 IN THE WORIvD. 77 
 
 not deceived. The words which all of 
 us shall one Day hear sound not of the- 
 ology" but of life, not of churches and 
 saints but of the hungry and the poor, 
 not of creeds and doctrines but of shelter 
 and clothing, not of Bibles and prayer- 
 books but of cups of cold water in the 
 name of Christ. Thank God the Chris- 
 tianity of to-day is coming nearer the 
 world's need. lyive to help that on. 
 Thank God men know better, by a hairs- 
 breadth, what religion is, what God is, 
 vv^ho Christ is, where Christ is. Who 
 is Christ? He who fed the hungry, 
 clothed the naked, visited the sick. And 
 where is Christ? Where? — whoso shall 
 receive a little child in My name receiv- 
 eth Me. And who are Christ's ? Every 
 one that loveth is bom of God.
 
 PAX VOBISCUM
 
 'COMK unto me, all ye that labor and are 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my 
 yoke upon you, and learn of me : for I am meek 
 and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest unto 
 your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my bur- 
 den is lig-ht."
 
 PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 T HEARD the other morning a set* 
 mon by a distinguished preacher 
 upon **Rest*' It was full of beautiful 
 thoughts; but when I came to ask my- 
 self, ** How does he say I can get Rest?'' 
 there was no answer. The sermon was 
 sincerely meant to be practical, yet it 
 contained no experience that seemed to 
 me to be tangible, nor any advice which 
 could help me to find the thing itself as 
 I went about the world that afternoon. 
 
 85
 
 84 PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 Yet this omission of tlie only important 
 problem was not the fault of the preacher. 
 The whole popular religion is in the twi- 
 light here. And when pressed for really- 
 working specifics for the experiences 
 with which it deals, it falters, and seems 
 to lose itself in mist. 
 
 The want of connection between the 
 great words of religion and every-day life 
 has bewildered and ' discouraged all of us. 
 Christianity possesses the noblest words 
 in the language ; its literature overflows 
 with terms expressive of the greatest and 
 happiest moods which can fill the soul of 
 man. Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith, I^ove^ 
 Light — these words occur with such per- 
 sistency in hymns and prayers that an 
 observer might think they formed the 
 staple of Christian experience. But 022
 
 PEACE BE WITH YOU. 85 
 
 coming to close quarters with the actual 
 life of most of us, how surely would he 
 be disenchanted ! I do not think we our- 
 selves are aware how much our religious 
 life is made up of phrases; how much 
 of what we call Christian experience is 
 only a dialect of the Churches, a mere re- 
 ligious phraseology with almost nothing 
 behind it in what we really feel and 
 know. 
 
 To some of us, indeed, the Christian 
 experiences seem further away than when 
 we took the first steps in the Christian 
 life. That life has not opened out as we 
 had hoped; we do not regret our religion, 
 but we are disappointed with it. There 
 are times, perhaps, when wandering notes 
 from a diviner music stray into out 
 spirits; but these experiences come at
 
 86 PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 few and fitful moments. We have no 
 sense of possession in them. When they 
 visit us, it is a surprise. When they 
 leave us, it is without explanation. 
 When we wish their return, we do 
 not know how to secure it. 
 
 All which points to a religion without 
 solid base, and a poor and flickering life. 
 It means a great bankruptcy in those 
 experiences which give Christianity its 
 personal solace and make it attractive 
 to the world, and a great uncertainty 
 as to any remedy. It is as if we knew 
 everj^thing about health — except the way 
 to get it. 
 
 I am quite sure that the difficulty does 
 not lie in the fact that men are not in 
 earnest. This is simply not the fact. 
 All around us Christians are wearing
 
 PEACE BE WITH YOU. 87 
 
 themselves out in trying to be better. 
 The amount of spiritual longing in the 
 world — in the hearts of unnumbered 
 thousands of men and women in whom 
 we should never suspect it; among the 
 wise and thoughtful; among the young 
 and gay, who seldom assuage and never 
 betray their thirst — this is one of the 
 most wonderful and touching facts of life. 
 It is not more heat that is needed, but 
 more light; not more force, but a wiser 
 direction to be given to very real energies 
 already there. 
 
 The Address which follows is offered as 
 a humble contribution to this problem, 
 and in the hope that it may help some 
 who are *' seeking Rest and finding 
 none'' to a firmer footing on one great, 
 solid, simple principle which underlies
 
 88 PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 not the Christian experiences alone, but 
 all experiences, and all life. 
 
 What Christian experience wants is 
 thready a vertebral column, method. It 
 is impossible to believe that there is no 
 remedy for its unevenness and dishevel- 
 ment, or that the remedy is a secret. 
 The idea, also, that some few men, by 
 happy chance or happier temperament, 
 have been given the secret — as if there 
 were some sort of knack or trick of it- 
 is wholly incredible. Religion must 
 ripen its fruit for every temperament; 
 and the way even into its highest heights 
 must be by a gateway through which the 
 peoples of the world may pass. 
 
 I shall try to lead up to this gateway 
 by a very familiar path. But as that path 
 is strangely unfrequented, and even un-
 
 PEACE BE WITH YOO. 
 
 89 
 
 known, where it passes into the religious 
 sphere, I must dwell for a moment on the 
 commonest of commonplaces. 
 
 7
 
 EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 
 
 XT OTHING tliat happens in tlie world 
 happens by chance. God is a God of 
 order. Everything is arranged upon defi- 
 nite principles, and never at random. The 
 world, even the religious world, is gov- 
 erned by law. Character is governed by 
 law. Happiness is governed by law. 
 The Christian experiences are governed 
 by law. Men^ forgetting this, expect 
 Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith to drop into their 
 souls from the air like snow or rain. But 
 in point of fact they do not do so; and if 
 they did they would no less have their 
 
 00
 
 EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 9I 
 
 origin in previous activities and be con- 
 trolled by natural laws. Rain and snow 
 dc drop from the air, but not without a 
 long previous history. They are the ma- 
 ture effects of former causes. Equally so 
 are Rest, and Peace, and Joy. They, too, 
 have each a previous history. Storms 
 and winds and calms are not accidents, 
 but are brought about by antecedent cir- 
 cumstances. Rest and Peace are but 
 calms in man^s inward nature, and arise 
 through causes as definite and as inevit- 
 able. 
 
 Realize it thoroughly: it is a method- 
 ical not an accidental world. If a house- 
 wife turns out a good cake, it is the result 
 of a sound receipt, carefully applied. She 
 cannot mix the assigned ingredients and 
 fire them for the appropriate time without
 
 92 PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 prcMiucing tlie result It is not slie who 
 has made the cake; it is nature. She 
 brings related things together; sets causes 
 at work; these causes bring about the re- 
 sult. She is not a- creator, but an inter- 
 mediary. She does not expect random 
 causes to produce specific effects — random 
 ingredients would only produce random 
 cakes. So it is in the making of Chris- 
 tian experiences. Certain lines are fol- 
 lowed; certain effects are the result. 
 These effects cannot but be the result 
 But the result can never take place with- 
 out the previous cause. To expect results 
 without antecedents is to expect cakes 
 without ingredients. That impossibility 
 is precisely the almost universal expecta- 
 tion. 
 
 Now what 1 mainly wish to do is to
 
 KFFSCTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 93 
 
 help you firmly to grasp this simple prin- 
 ciple of Cause and Effect in the spiritual 
 world. And instead of applying the prin- 
 ciple generally to each of the Christian 
 experiences in turn, I shall examine its 
 application to one in some little detail. 
 The one I shall select is Rest. And I 
 think any one who follows the applica- 
 tion in this single instance will be able to 
 apply it for himself to all the others. 
 
 Take such a sentence as this: African 
 explorers are subject to fevers which cause 
 restlessness and delirium. Note the ex- 
 pression, ** cause restlessness.'* Restless- 
 ness has a cause. Clearly, then, any one 
 who wished to get rid of restlessness would 
 proceed at once to deal with the cause. 
 If that were not removed, a doctor might 
 prescribe a hundred things, and all might
 
 94 PAX VOBISCTDM. 
 
 be taken in turn, without producing tlie 
 least effect. Things are so arranged in 
 the original planning of the world that 
 certain effects must follow certain causes, 
 and certain causes must be abolished be- 
 fore certain effects can be removed. Cer- 
 tain parts of Africa are inseparably linked 
 with the -physical experience called fever; 
 this fever is in turn infallibly linked with 
 a mental experience called restlessness 
 and delirium. To abolish the mental ex- 
 perience the radical method would be to 
 abolish the physical experience, and the 
 way of abolishing the physical experience 
 would be to abolish Africa, or to cease to go 
 there. Now this holds good for all other 
 forms of Restlessness. Every other form 
 and kind of Restlessness in the world has 
 a definite cause, and the particular kind
 
 EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 95 
 
 of Restlessness can only be lemoved by 
 removing the allotted cause. 
 
 All tbis is also true of Rest, Restless- 
 ness has a cause : must not Rest have a 
 cause ? Necessarily. If it were a chance 
 world we would not expect this; but, 
 being a methodical world, it cannot be 
 otherwise. Rest, physical rest, moral 
 rest, spiritual rest, every kind of rest, has 
 a cause, as certainly as restlessness. Now 
 causes are discriminating. There is one 
 . kind of cause for every particular effect, 
 and no other; and if one particular effect 
 is desiredj the corresponding cause must 
 be set in motion. It is no use proposing 
 finely devised schemes, or going through 
 general pious exercises in the hope that 
 somehow Rest will come. The Christian 
 life is not casual, but causal. All nature is
 
 9^ PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 a standing protest against the absurdity of 
 expecting to secure spiritual effects, or any 
 effects, without the employment of appro- 
 priate causes. The Great Teacher dealt 
 what ought to have been the final blow 
 to this infinite irrelevancy b}' a single 
 question, *'Do men gather grapes of 
 thorns or figs of thistles?** 
 
 Why, then, did the Great Teacher not 
 educate His followers fully? Why did 
 He not tell us, for example, how such a 
 thing as Rest might be obtained? The 
 answer is, that He did. But plainly, ex- 
 plicitly, in so many words ? Yes, plainly, 
 explicitly, in so many words. He as- 
 signed Rest to its cause, in words with 
 which each of us has been familiar from 
 his earliest childhood. 
 
 He begins, you remember — for you at
 
 EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 97 
 
 once know the passage I refer to — almost 
 as if Rest could be had without any 
 cause: ** Come unto Me/' He says, **and 
 I will^tve you Resf 
 
 Rest, apparently, was a favor to be be- 
 stowed; men had but to come to Him; 
 He would give it to every applicant. 
 But the next sentence takes that all back. 
 The qualification, indeed, is added instan- 
 taneously. For what the first sentence 
 seemed to give was next thing to an im- 
 possibility. For how, in a literal sense^ 
 can Rest be given ? One could no more 
 give away Rest than he could give away 
 Laughter. We speak of ** causing** 
 laughter, which we can do; but we can- 
 not give it away. When we speak of 
 giving pain, we know perfectly well we 
 cannot give pain away. And when we
 
 98 PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 aim at giving pleasure, all tliat we do is 
 to arrange a set of circumstances in such 
 a way as that these shall cause pleasure. 
 Of course there is a sense, and a very 
 wonderful sense, in which a Great Per- 
 sonality breathes upon all who come 
 within its influence an abiding peace and 
 trust. Men can be to other men as the 
 shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land. 
 Much more Christ; much more Christ as 
 Perfect Man; much more still as Saviour 
 of the world. But it is not this of which 
 I speak. When Christ said He would 
 give men Rest, He meant simply that He 
 would put them in the way of it. By no 
 act of conveyance would, or could. He 
 make over His own Rest to them. He 
 could give them His receipt for it. That 
 was all. But He would not make it for
 
 EFFECTvS REQUIRE CAUSES. 99 
 
 them ; for one thing, it was not in His 
 plan to make it for them ; for another 
 thing, men were not so planned that it 
 could be made for them ; and for yet an- 
 other thing, it was a thousand times bet- 
 ter that they should make it for them- 
 selves. 
 
 That this is the meaning becomes 
 obvious from the wording of the second 
 sentence : * ' Learn of Me and ye shall 
 find Rest.'* Rest, that is to say, is not 
 a thing that can be given, but a thing to 
 be acquired. It comes not by an act, but 
 by a process. It is not to be found in a 
 happy hour, as one finds a treasure ; but 
 slowly, as one finds knowledge. It could 
 indeed be no more found in a moment 
 than could knowledge. A soil has to be 
 prepared for it. Like a fine fruit, it will
 
 lOO PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 grow in one climate and not in anotlier ; 
 at one altitude and not at another. I^ike 
 all growths it will have an orderly de- 
 velopment and mature by slow degrees. 
 The nature of this slow process Christ 
 clearly defines when He says we are to 
 achieve Rest by harning, ^* Learn of 
 Me,'* He says, **and ye shall find rest to 
 your souls.'* Now consider the extra- 
 ordinary originality of this utterance. 
 How novel the connection between these 
 two words, *^ Learn" and **Rest"? 
 How few of us have ever associated them 
 — ever thought that Rest was a thing to 
 be learned ; ever laid ourselves out for it 
 as we would to learn a language ; ever 
 practised it as we would practise the vio- 
 lin ? Does it not show how entirely new 
 Christ's teaching still is to the world,
 
 EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. lOX 
 
 that SO old and threadbare an aphorism 
 should still be so little applied? The last 
 thing most of us would have thought of 
 would have been to associate Rest with 
 
 What must one work at ? What is that 
 which if duly learned will find the soul 
 of man in Rest? Christ answers with- 
 out the least hesitation. He specifies 
 two things — Meekness and I^owliness. 
 **Ivearn of Me/' He says, *'for I am 
 meek and lowly in heart.'* Now, these 
 two things are not chosen at random. 
 To these accomplishments, in a special 
 way, Rest is attached. I^eam these, in 
 short, and you have already found Rest 
 These as they stand are direct causes of 
 Rest ; will produce it at once ; cannot but 
 -produce it at once. And if you think fot 
 
 TJNIVEPvSITY 0^ ^ - ^^ M:NI^
 
 lOZ PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 a single moment, you will see how this is 
 necessarily so, for causes are never arbi- 
 trary, and the connection between ante- 
 cedent and consequent here and every- 
 where lies deep in the nature of things. 
 What is the connection, then? I 
 answer by a further question. What 
 are the chief causes of Unrest? If you 
 know yourself, you will answer Pride, 
 Selfishness, Ambition. As you look back 
 upon the past years of your life, is it not 
 true that its unhappiness has chiefly come 
 from the succession of personal mortifica- 
 tions, and almost trivial disappointments 
 which the intercourse of life has brought 
 you ? Great trials come at lengthened in- 
 tervals, and we rise to breast them ; but 
 it is the petty friction of our every-day 
 life with one another, the jar of business •
 
 EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. IO3 
 
 or of work, the discord of tlie domeetic 
 circle, the collapse of our ambition, the 
 crossing of our will or the taking down 
 of our conceit, which make inward peace 
 impossible. Wounded vanity, then, dis- 
 appointed hopes, unsatisfied selfishness — • 
 these are the old, vulgar, universal sources 
 of man's unrest. 
 
 Now it is obvious why Christ pointed 
 out as the two chief objects for attain- 
 ment the exact opposites of these. To 
 Meekness and L<owliness these things 
 simply do not exist. They cure unrest 
 by making it impossible. These reme- 
 dies do not trifle with surface symptoms ; 
 they strike at once at removing causes. 
 The ceaseless chagrin of a self-centred 
 life can be removed at once by learning 
 Meekness and Lowliness of heart. He
 
 I04 PAX VOBISCUM, 
 
 who learns them is for ever proof agaiiivSt 
 it. He lives henceforth a charmed life. 
 Christianity is a fine inoculation, a trans- 
 fusion of healthy blood into an anaemic 
 or poisoned soiiL "No fever can attack 
 a perfectly sound body ; no fever of un- 
 rest can disturb a soul which has breathed 
 the air or learned the ways of Christ. 
 Men sigh for the wings of a dove that 
 they may fly away and be at rest. But 
 flying away will not help us. **The 
 Kingdom of God is within you,'*^ We 
 aspire to the top to look for Rest ; it lies 
 at the bottom. Water rests only when it 
 gets to the lowest place. So do men. 
 Hence, be lowly. The man who has 
 no opinion of himself at all can never be 
 hurt if others do not acknowledge him. 
 Hence, be meek. He who is without
 
 EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 105 
 
 expectation cannot fret if nothing comes 
 to him. It is self-evident that these 
 things are so. The lowly man and the 
 meek man are really above all other men, 
 above all other things. They dominate 
 the world because they do not care for it. 
 The miser does not possess gold, gold 
 possesses him. But the meek posses^s it. 
 **The meek/' said Christ, ** inherit the 
 earth.'* They do not buy it; they do 
 not conquer it; but they inherit it. 
 
 There are people who go about the 
 world looking out for slights, and they 
 are necessarily miserable, for they find 
 them at every turn — especially the imag- 
 inary ones. One has the same pity for 
 such men as for the very poor. They 
 are the morally illiterate. They have 
 had no real education, for they have
 
 I06 PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 never learned How to live. Few men 
 kn ow how to live. We grow up at ran- 
 dom, carrying into mature life the merely 
 animal methods and motives which we 
 had as little children. And it does not 
 occur to us that all this must be changed ; 
 that much of it must be reversed ; that 
 life is the finest of the Fine Arts ; that it 
 has to be learned with lifelong patience, 
 and that the years of our pilgrimage are 
 all too short to master it triumphantly. 
 Yet this is what Christianity is for — 
 to teach men the Art of Life. And its 
 whole curriculum lies in one word — 
 "Learn of Me.'* Unlike most educa- 
 tion, this is almost purely personal ; it 
 is not to be had from books or lectures or 
 creeds or doctrines. It is a study from 
 the life. Christ never said much in mere
 
 EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. IC/ 
 
 words about the Cliristian Graces. He 
 lived them. He was them. Yet we do 
 not merely copy Him. We learn His 
 art by living with Him, like the old 
 apprentices with their masters. 
 
 Now we understand it all? Christ^s 
 invitation to the weary and heavy-laden 
 is a call to begin life over again upon a 
 new principle — dipon His own principle. 
 ** Watch My way of doing things/* He 
 says. ** Follow Me. Take life as I take it. 
 Be meek and lowly and you will find Rest. ' * 
 
 I do not say, remember, that the Chris- 
 tian life to every man, or to any man, can 
 be a bed of roses. No educational process 
 can be this. And perhaps if some men 
 knew how much was involved in the sim- 
 ple *4eam*' of Christ, they would not 
 enter His school with so irresponsible a
 
 I08 PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 heart. For tHere is not only mucli to 
 learn, but mucli to unlearn. Many men 
 never go to this school at all till their 
 disposition is already half ruined and cha- 
 racter has taken on its fatal set. To learn 
 arithmetic is difficult at fift'' — much more 
 to learn Christianity. To learn simply 
 what it is to be meek and lowly, in the 
 case of one who has had no lessons in 
 that in childhood, may cost him half of 
 what he values most on earth. Do we 
 realize, for instance, that the way of 
 teaching humility is generally by humil- 
 iation f There is probably no other 
 school for it. When a man enters him- 
 self as a pupil in such a school it means 
 a very great thing. There is such Rest 
 there, but there is also much Work. 
 I should be wrong, even though my
 
 EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. IO9 
 
 theme is the brighter side, to ignore the 
 cross and minimize the cost. Only it 
 gires to the cross a more definite mean- 
 ing, and a rarer value, to connect it thus 
 directly and causally with the growth of 
 the inner life. Our platitudes on the 
 ** benefits of affliction " are usually about 
 as vague as our theories of Christian Ex- 
 perience. ** Somehow,** we believe afflic- 
 tion does us good. But it is not a question 
 of *' Somehow.** The result is definite, 
 calculable, necessary. It is under the 
 strictest law of cause and effect. The 
 first effect of losing one*s fortune, for in- 
 stance, is humiliation ;• and the effect of 
 humiliation, as we have just seen, is to 
 make one humble ; and the effect of be- 
 ing humble is to produce Rest. It is a 
 roundabout way, apparently, of producing
 
 no PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 Rest ; but Nature generally works by cir- 
 cular processes ; and it is not certain that 
 there is any other way of becoming hum- 
 ble, or of finding Rest. If a man could 
 make himself humble to order, it might 
 simplify matters, but we do not find that 
 this happens. Hence we must all go 
 through the mill. Hence death, death 
 to the lower self, is the nearest gate and 
 the quickest road to life. 
 
 Yet this is only half the truth. Christ* s 
 life outwardly was one of the most troubled 
 lives that was ever lived: Tempest and 
 tumult, tumult and tempest, the waves 
 breaking over it all the time till the worn 
 body was laid in the grave. But the in- 
 ner life was a sea of glass. The great 
 calm was always there. At any moment 
 you might have gone to Him and found
 
 EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. Ill 
 
 Rest. And even when tlie blood-liounds 
 were dogging him in the streets of Jeru- 
 salem, He turned to His disciples and 
 offered them, as a last legacy, **My 
 peace.** Nothing ever for a moment 
 broke the serenity of Christ's life on 
 earth. Misfortune could not reach Him ; 
 He had no fortune. Food, raiment, 
 money — fountain-heads of half the world's 
 weariness — He simply did not care for; 
 they played no part in His life ; He **took 
 no thought" for them. It was impos- 
 sible to affect Him by lowering His repu- 
 tation. He had already made himself of 
 no reputation. He was dumb before in- 
 sult. When He was reviled He reviled 
 not again. In fact, there was nothing 
 that the world could do to Him that could 
 ruffle the surface of His spirit.
 
 Iia PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 Sucli living, as merely living, is alto 
 gether unique. It is only when we see 
 what it was in Him that we can know 
 what the word Rest means. It lies not 
 in emotions, nor in the absence of emo- 
 tions. It is not a hallowed feeling that 
 comes over us in church. It is not some- 
 thing that the preacher has in his voice. 
 It is not in nature, or in poetry, or 
 in music — though in all these there 
 is soothing. It is the mind at leisure 
 from itself. It is the perfect poise of the 
 soul; the absolute adjustment of the in- 
 ward man to the stress of all outward 
 things-; the preparedness against every 
 emergency ; the stability of assured con- 
 victions; the eternal calm of an invulner- 
 able faith; the repose of a heart set deep 
 in God. It is the mood of the man who
 
 EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. II3 
 
 says, with Browning, ** God's in His 
 Heaven, all's well with the world.'' 
 
 Two painters each painted a picture to 
 illustrate his conception of rest. The 
 first chose for his scene a still, lone lake 
 among the far-ofif mountains. The second 
 threw on his canvas a thundering water- 
 fall, with a fragile birch tree bending over 
 the foam; at the fork of a branch, almost 
 wet with the cataract's spray, a robin sat 
 on its nest. The first was only Stagna- 
 tion; the last was Rest, For in Rest 
 there are always two elements — tranquil- 
 lity and energy ; silence and turbulence ; 
 creation and destruction; fearlessness and 
 fearfulness. This it was in Christ. 
 
 It is quite plain from all this that what- 
 ever else He claimed to be or to do. He 
 at least knew how to live. All this is the
 
 114 PAX VOBISCUM, 
 
 perfection of living, of living in tlie mere 
 sense of passing through the world in the 
 best way. Hence His anxiety to commu- 
 nicate His idea of liffe to others. He 
 came, He said, to give men life, true life, 
 a more abundant life than they were liv- 
 ing; **the life,*' as the fine phrase in the 
 Revised Version has it, **that is life in- 
 deed. ' ' This is what He himself possessed, 
 and it was this which He offers to all man- 
 kind. And hence His direct appeal for all 
 to come to Him who had not made much 
 of life, who were weary and heavy laden. 
 These he would teach His secret. They, 
 also, should know **the life that is life 
 Indeed.''
 
 WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 
 
 THBRK is still one doubt to clear up. 
 After tlie statement, ^%eam of 
 Me," Christ throws in the disconcerting 
 qualification, ** Take My yoke upon you 
 and learn of Me.** Why, if all this be true, 
 does He call it a yoke f Why, while pro- 
 fessing to give Rest, does He with the 
 next breath whisper ^'' burden'''^ f Is the 
 Christian life, after all, what its enemies 
 take it for — an additional weight to the 
 already great woe of life, some extra 
 punctiliousness about duty, some painful 
 
 devotion to obsen^ances, some heavy re- 
 us
 
 Il6 PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 striction and trammelling of all tliat is 
 joyous and free in the world ? Is life not 
 hard and sorrowful enough without being 
 fettered with yet another yoke? 
 
 It is astounding how so glaring a mis- 
 understanding of this plain sentence 
 should ever have passed into currency. 
 Did you ever stop to ask what a yoke is 
 really for? Is it to be a burden to the 
 animal which wears it? It is just the 
 opposite. It is to make its burden light. 
 Attached to the oxen in any other way 
 than by a yoke, the plough would be 
 intolerable. Worked by means of a yoke, 
 it is light. A yoke is not an instrument 
 of torture ; it is an instrument of mercy. 
 It is not a malicious contrivance for mak- 
 ing work hard ; it is a gentle device to 
 make hard labor light. It is not meant
 
 WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. II7 
 
 to give pain, but to save pain. And yet 
 men speak of the yoke of Christ as if it 
 were a slavery, and look upon those who 
 wear it as objects of compassion. For 
 generations we have had homilies on 
 "The Yoke of Christ," some delighting 
 in portraying its narrow exactions ; some 
 seeking in these exactions the marks of 
 its divinity ; others apologizing for it, 
 and toning it down ; still others assuring 
 us that, although it be very bad, it is not 
 to be compared with the positive blessings 
 of Christianity. How many, especially 
 among the young, has this one mistaken 
 phrase driven for ever away from the 
 kingdom of God? Instead of making 
 Christ attractive, it makes Him out a 
 taskmaster, narrowing life by petty re- 
 strictions, calling for self-denial where
 
 Il8 PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 none is necessary, making misery a vir- 
 tue under the plea that it is the yoke of 
 Christ, and happiness criminal because it 
 now and then evades it. According to 
 this conception, Christians are at best the 
 victims of a depressing fate ; their life is 
 a penance; and their hope for the next 
 world purchased by a slow martyrdom in 
 this. 
 
 The mistake has arisen from taking the 
 word ^*yoke*' here in the same sense as 
 in the expressions * * under the yoke, * * or 
 **wear the yoke in his youth.'* But in 
 Christ's illustration it is not the jugum 
 of the Roman soldier, but the simple 
 ** harness" or "ox-collar" of the East- 
 ern peasant. It is the literal wooden 
 yoke which He, with His own hands in 
 the carpenter shop, had probably often
 
 WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. II9 
 
 made. He knew the difference between 
 a smootli yoke and a rougk one, a bad fit 
 and a good fit ; the difference also it made 
 to the patient animal wbicb had to wear 
 it. The rough yoke galled, and the bur- 
 den was heavy ; the smooth yoke caused 
 no pain, and the load was lightly drawn. 
 The badly-fitted harness was a misery; 
 the well-fitted collar was **easy.*' 
 
 And what was the ** burden"? It was 
 not some special burden laid upon the 
 Christian, some unique infliction that they 
 alone must bear. It was what all men' 
 bear. It was simply life, human life 
 itself, the general burden of life which 
 all must carry with them from the cradle 
 to the grave. Christ saw that men took 
 life painfully. To some it was a weari- 
 ness, to others a failure, to many a trag-
 
 120 PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 edy, to all a struggle and a pain. How 
 to carry this burden of life liad been tbe 
 whole world's problem. It is still the 
 whole world's problem. And here is 
 Christ's solution : ** Carry it as I do. 
 Take life as I take it. I^ook at it from 
 My point of view. Interpret it upon My 
 principles. Take My yoke and learn of 
 Me, and you will find it easy. For My 
 yoke is easy, works easily, sits right upon 
 the shoulders, and therefore My burden is 
 light.'* 
 
 There is no suggestion here that re- 
 ligion will absolve any man from bearing 
 burdens. That would be to absolve him 
 from living, since it is life itself that is 
 the burden. What Christianity does pro- 
 pose is to make it tolerable. Christ's 
 yoke is simply His secret for the allevia-
 
 WHAT YOKES ARK FOR. 121 
 
 tion of human life, His prescription for 
 the best and happiest method of living. 
 Men harness themselves to the work and 
 stress of the world in clumsy and un- 
 natural ways. The harness they put on 
 is antiquated. A rough, ill-fitted collar 
 at the best, they make its strain and 
 friction past enduring, by placing it 
 where the neck is most sensitive; and 
 by mere continuous irritation this sensi- 
 tiveness increases until the whole nature 
 is quick and sore. 
 
 This is the origin, among other things, 
 of a disease called ** touchiness^' — a dis- 
 ease which, in spite of its innocent name, 
 IS one of the gravest sources of restless- 
 ness in the world. Touchiness, when it 
 becomes chronic, is a morbid condition 
 
 ot the inward disposition. It is self-love 
 
 9
 
 T22 PAX VOBISCUM, 
 
 inflamed to the acute point; conceit, 
 with a hair-trigger. The cure is to shift 
 the 5'oke to some other place ; to let men 
 and things touch us through some new 
 and perhaps as yet unused part of our 
 nature ; to become meek and lowly in 
 heart while the old nature is becoming 
 numb from want of use. It is the beau- 
 tiful work of Christianity everywhere to 
 adjust the burden of life to those who 
 bear it, and them to it. It has a per- 
 fectly miraculous gift of healing. With 
 out doing any violence to human nature 
 it sets it right with life, harmonizing it 
 with all surrounding things, and restor- 
 ing those who are jaded with the fatigue 
 and dust of the world to a new grace 
 of living. In the mere matter of alter- 
 ing the perspective of life and changing
 
 WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 1 23 
 
 the proportion of things, its function in 
 lightening the care of man is altogether 
 its own. The weight of a load depends 
 upon the attraction of the earth. But 
 suppose the attraction of the earth were 
 removed? A ton on some other planet, 
 where the attraction of gravity is less, 
 does not weigh half a ton. Now Chris- 
 tianity removes the attraction of the 
 earth, and this is one way in which it 
 diminishes men's burden. It makes 
 them citizens of another world. What 
 was a ton yesterday is not half a ton 
 to-day. So without changing one^s cir- 
 cumstances, merely by offering a widei 
 horizon and a different standard^ it alters 
 the whole aspect of the world. 
 
 Christianity as Christ taught is the 
 truest philosophy of life ever spoken.
 
 124 PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 But let us be quite sure wlien we speak 
 of Christianity that we mean Christ* s 
 Christianity. Other versions are either 
 caricatures, or exaggerations, or misun- 
 derstandings, or shortsighted and surface 
 readings. For the most part their at- 
 tainment is hopeless and the results 
 wretched. But I care not who the per 
 son is, or through what vale of tears he 
 has passed, or is about to pass, there is 
 a new life for him along this path.
 
 HOW FRUITS GROW 
 
 '^"^7 ERE Rest my subject, there are 
 other things I should wish to say 
 about it, and other kinds of Rest of which 
 I should like to speak. But that is not 
 my subject. My theme is that the Chris- 
 tian experiences are not the work of 
 magic, but come under the law of Cause 
 and Effect. And I have chosen Rest only 
 as a single illustration of the working of 
 that principle. If there were time 1 
 might next run over all the Christian 
 experiences in turn, and show how the 
 same wide law applies to each. But I 
 
 155
 
 £26 PAX VOBISCTJM. 
 
 think it may serve the better purpose if I 
 leave this further exercise to yourselves. 
 I know no Bible study that you will find 
 more full of fruit, or which will take you 
 nearer to the ways of God, or make the 
 Christian life itself more solid or more 
 sure. I shall add only a single other 
 illustration of what I mean, before I 
 clase. 
 
 Where does Joy come from ? I knew a 
 Sunday scholar whose conception of Joy 
 was that it was a thin^^ made in lumps 
 and kept somewhere in Heaven, and that 
 when people prayed for it, pieces were 
 somehow let down and fitted into their 
 souls. I am not sure that views as gross 
 and material are not often held by people 
 who ought to be wiser. In reality, Joy is 
 as much a matter of Cause and Effect as
 
 HOW FRUITS GROW. 1 27 
 
 pain. No oue can get Joy by merely ask- 
 ing for it. It is one of the ripest fruits 
 of the Christian life, and, like all fruits, 
 must be grown. There is a very clever 
 tri^k in India called the mango-trick. A 
 seed is put in the ground and covered up, 
 and after divers incantations a full-blown 
 mango-bush appears within five minutes. 
 I never met any one who knew how the 
 thing was done, but I never met any one 
 who believed it to be anything else than 
 a conjuring-triok. The world is pretty 
 unanimous now in its belief in the order- 
 liness of Nature. Men may not know 
 how fruits grow, but they do know that 
 they cannot grow in five minutes. Some 
 lives have not even a stalk on which fruits 
 could hang, even if they did grow in five 
 minutes. Some have never planted one
 
 128 PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 sound seed of Joy in all their lives : and 
 others who may have planted a germ or 
 two have lived so little in sunshine that 
 they never could come to maturity. 
 
 Whence, then, is joy ? Christ put His 
 teaching upon this subject into one of the 
 most exquisite of His parables. I should 
 in any instance have appealed to His 
 teaching here, as in the case of Rest, 
 for I do not wish you to think I am 
 speaking words of my own. But it so 
 happens that He has dealt with it in 
 words of unusual fulness. 
 
 I need not recall the whole illustration. 
 It is the parable of the Vine. Did you 
 ever think why Christ spoke that parable? 
 He did not merely throw it into space as 
 a fine illustration of general truths. It 
 was not simply a statement of the mystical
 
 HOW FRUITS GROW, 129 
 
 union, and the doctrine of an indwelling 
 Christ It was that; but it was more. 
 After He had said it, He did what was 
 not an unusual thing when he was teach- 
 ing His greatest lessons. He turned to 
 the disciples and said He would tell them 
 why He had spoken it. It was to tell 
 them how to get Joy. ** These things 
 have I spoken unto you," He said, ** that 
 My Joy might remain in you and that 
 your Joy might be full." It was a pur- 
 posed and deliberate communication of 
 His secret of Happiness. 
 
 Go back over these verses, then, and 
 you will find the Causes of this Effect, 
 the spring, and the only spring, out of 
 which true Happiness comes. I am not 
 going to analyze them in detail. I ask 
 you to enter into the words for your-
 
 130 PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 selves. Remember, in the first place, 
 that the Vine was the Eastern symbol 
 of Joy. It was its fruit that made glad 
 the heart of man. Yet, however inno- 
 cent that gladness — for the expressed 
 juice of the grape was the common 
 drink at every peasant's board — the glad- 
 ness was only a gross and passing thing. 
 This was not true happiness, and the 
 vine of the Palestine vineyards was not 
 the true vine. ChHst was ^* the true 
 Vine.'* Here, then, is the ultimate 
 source of Joy. Through whatever me- 
 dia it reaches us, all true Joy and Glad- 
 ness find their source in Christ. By 
 this, of course, is not meant that the 
 actual Joy experienced is transferred 
 from Christ's nature, or is something 
 passed on from Him to us. What is
 
 HOW FRUITS GROW. 131 
 
 passed on is His method of getting it 
 There is, indeed, a sense in which we 
 can share another's joy or another's sor- 
 row. But that is another matter. Christ 
 is the source of Joy to men in the sense 
 in which He is the source of Rest. His 
 people share His life, and therefore share 
 its consequences, and one of these is Joy. 
 His method of living is one that in the 
 nature of things produces Joy. When 
 He spoke of His Joy remaining with us. 
 He meant in part that the causes which 
 produced it should continue to act. His 
 followers, that is to say, by repeating 
 His life would experience its accompani- 
 ments. His Joy, His kind of Joy, would 
 remain with them. 
 
 The medium through which this Joy 
 comes is next explained: **He that
 
 132 PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 abideth in Me, the same bringeth fortb 
 mucb fruit.'* Fruit first, Joy next; the 
 one the cause or medium of the other. 
 Fruit-bearing is the necessary antece- 
 dent ; Joy both the necessary consequent 
 and the necessary accompaniment. It 
 lay partly in the bearing fruit, partly 
 in the fellowship which made that possi- 
 ble. Partly, that is to say, Joy lay in 
 mere constant living in Christ's pres- 
 ence, with all that that implied of 
 peace, of shelter, and of love ; partly in 
 the influence of that I^ife upon mind 
 and character and will ; and partl}^ in 
 the inspiration to live and work for 
 others, with all that that brings of self- 
 riddance and Joy in others* gain. All 
 these, in different ways and at different 
 times, are sources of pure Happiness.
 
 HOW FRUITS GROW. 1 33 
 
 Even the simplest of them — to do good 
 to other people — is an instant and in- 
 fallible specific. There is no mystery 
 about Happiness whatever. Put in the 
 right ingredients and it must come out. 
 He that abideth in Him will bring forth 
 much fruit; and bringing forth much 
 fruit is Happiness. The infallible re- 
 ceipt for Happiness, then, is to do good ; 
 and the infallible receipt for doing good 
 is to abide in Christ. The surest proof 
 that all this is a plain matter of Cause 
 and Eifect is that men may try ever>' 
 other conceivable way of finding Happi- 
 ness, and they will fail. Only the right 
 cause in each case can produce the right 
 effect. 
 
 Then the Christian experiences are 
 our own making? In the same sense
 
 1.34 I*AX VOBISCUM. 
 
 in which grapes are our own makings 
 and no more. All fruits ^r^w — ^whether 
 they grow in the soil or in the soul ; 
 whether they are the fruits of the wild 
 grape or of the True Vine. No man 
 can make things grow. He can get 
 them to grow by arranging all the cir- 
 cumstances and fulfilling all the condi- 
 tions. But the growing is done by God. 
 Causes and efifects are eternal arrange- 
 ments, set in the constitution of the 
 world ; fixed beyond man's ordering. 
 What man can do is to place himselt 
 in the midst of a chain of sequences. 
 Thus he can get things to grow : thus 
 he himself can grow. But the grower 
 is the Spirit of God. 
 
 What more need I add but this — test 
 the method by experiment. Do not im-
 
 HOW FRUITS GROW. 1 35 
 
 ., — . ^ ^ « *. 
 
 agine that you liave got these things be- 
 cause you know how to get them. As 
 well try to feed upon a cookery book. 
 But I think I can promise that if you 
 try in this simple and natural way/ you 
 will not fail. Spend the time you have 
 spent in sighing for fruits in fulfilling the 
 conditions of their growth. The fruits 
 will come, must come. We have hitherto 
 paid immense attention to effects^ to the 
 mere experiences themselves ; we have 
 described them, extolled them, advised 
 them, prayed for them — done everything 
 but find out what caused them. Hence- 
 forth let us deal with causes. ** To be,** 
 says Lotze, ** is to be in relations. * ' About 
 every other method of living the Christran 
 life there is an uncertainty. About every 
 other method of acquiring the Christian
 
 136 ' PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 experiences there is a " perhaps. ' ■ But 
 in so far as this method is the way of 
 nature, it cannot fail. Its giiarantee is 
 the laws of the universe, and these are 
 ^'the Hands of the Living God.^' 
 
 THE TRUE VINE. 
 
 ** I AM the true vine, and my Father is 
 the husbandman. Every branch in me 
 that beareth not fruit he taketh away: 
 and every branch that beareth fruit, he 
 purgeth it, that it may bring forth more 
 fruit. Now ye are clean through the 
 word which I have spoken unto you. 
 Abide in me, and I in you.* As the
 
 THE TRUE VINE. 1 37 
 
 branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except 
 it abide in the vine ; no more can ye, 
 except ye abide in me. 1 am the vine, 
 ye are the branches : he that abideth in 
 me, and I in him, the same bringeth 
 forth much fruit : for without me ye can 
 do nothing. If a man abide not in me, 
 he is cast forth as a branch, and is with- 
 ered ; and men gather them, and cast 
 them into the fire, and they are burned. 
 If ye abide in me, and my word abide in 
 you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it 
 shall be done unto you. Herein is my 
 Father glorified, that ye may bear much 
 fruit; so ye shall -be my disciples. As 
 the Father hath loved me, so have I 
 loved you : continue ye in my love. If 
 ye keep my commandments, ye shall 
 abide in my love ; even as I have kept 
 
 10
 
 138 
 
 PAX VOBISCUM. 
 
 my Father* s commandments, and abide 
 in his love. These things have I spoken 
 nnto you, that my joy might remain in 
 you, and that your joy might be full/'
 
 THE CHANGED LIFE
 
 We all 
 
 Witli unveiled face 
 
 Reflecting 
 
 As a Mirror 
 
 The Glory of the Lord 
 
 Are transformed 
 
 Into the same image 
 
 From Glory to Glory 
 
 Even as from the Lord 
 
 The Spirit.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 T AST autumn, in a book-shop in Cali- 
 fornia, the author found a little book 
 with his name upon the title-page — 
 a book which he did not know existed ; 
 which he never wrote ; nor baptized with 
 the title which it bore. This stray publi- 
 cation — taken from shorthand notes of a 
 spoken Address — he does not grudge. 
 Already, it seems, it has done its small 
 measure of good. But owing to the im- 
 perfections which it contains it has been 
 thought right to issue a more complete 
 edition. 
 
 143
 
 144 PREFACE. 
 
 The theme, like its predecessors in this 
 series, represents but a single aspect of its 
 great subject — the man- ward side. The 
 light and shade is apportioned with this 
 in view. And the reader's kind attention 
 is asked to this limitation, lest he wonder 
 at points being left in shadow which 
 theology has always, and rightly, taught 
 us to emphasize. 
 
 It was the hearing of a simple talk by 
 a friend to some plain people in a High- 
 land deer-forest which first called the 
 author's attention to the practicalness of 
 this solution of the cardinal problem of 
 Christian experience. What follows 
 owes a large debt to that Sunday 
 morning.
 
 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 " I PROTEST that if some great Power would 
 agree to make me always think what is true 
 and do what is right, on condition of being 
 turned into a sort of clock and wound up every 
 morning, I should instantly close with the 
 offer." 
 
 '"T^HESE are the words of Mr. Huxley. 
 The infinite desirability, the infin- 
 ite difficulty of being good — the theme 
 is as old as humanity. The man does 
 not live from whose deeper being the 
 same confession has not risen, or who 
 
 1 4?.
 
 146 THE CHANGED I.IFE. 
 
 would not give liis all to-morrow, if he 
 could ** close with the offer'* of becoming 
 a better man. 
 
 I propose to make that offer now. It* 
 all seriousness, without being *' turned 
 into a sort of clock,'' the end can be 
 attained. Under the right conditions 
 it is as natural for character to become 
 beautiful as for a flower; and if on God's 
 earth there is not some machinery for 
 effecting it, the supreme gift to the world 
 has been forgotten. This is simply what 
 man was made for. With Browning: *'l 
 say that Man was made to grow, not 
 stop." Or in the deeper words of an 
 older Book: ^'Wliom He did foreknow, 
 He also did predestinate ... to be con- 
 formed to the Image of His Son." 
 
 Let me begin by naming, and in part
 
 THE CHANGED LIFE. 147 
 
 discarding, some processes in vogue 
 already, for producing better lives. 
 These processes are far from wrong ; 
 in their place they may even be essen- 
 tial. One ventures to disparage them 
 only because they do not turn out the 
 most perfect possible work. 
 
 The first imperfect method is to rely 
 on Resolution. In v/ill-power, in mere 
 spasms of earnestness there is no salva- 
 tion. Struggle, effort, even agony, have 
 their place in Christianity, as we shall 
 see; but this is not where they come in. 
 In mid-Atlantic the other day, the Ktru- 
 ria, in w^hich I was sailing, suddenly 
 stopped. Something had gone wrong 
 with the engines. There were five hun- 
 dred able-bodied men on board the ship. 
 Do you think that if we had gathered
 
 148 THK CHANGED LIFK. 
 
 together and pushed against the mast 
 we could have pushed it on ? When one 
 attempts to sanctify hiniself by effort, he 
 is trying to make his be xt go by pushing 
 against the mast. He is like a drowning 
 man trying to lift himself out of the 
 water by pulling at the hair of his own 
 head. Christ held up this method almost 
 to ridicule when He said, ^' Which of you 
 by taking thought can add a cubit to his 
 stature ?' ' The one redeeming feature of 
 the self-sufficient method is this — that 
 those who try it find out almost at once 
 that it will not gain the goal. 
 
 Another experimenter sa5^s: ^* But that 
 is not my method. I have seen the folly 
 of a mere wild struggle in the dark. I 
 work on a principle. My plan is not to 
 waste power on random effort, but to con-
 
 THE CHANGED UFK. I49 
 
 centrate on a single sin. By taking one 
 at a time, and crucifying it steadily, I 
 hope in the end to extirpate all." To 
 this, unfortunately, there are four objec- 
 tions: For one thing, life is too short; the 
 name of" sin is lyCgion. For another 
 thing, to deal with individual sins is to 
 leave the rest of the nature for the time 
 untouched. In the third place, a single 
 combat with a special sin does not affect 
 the root and spring of the disease. If 
 one only of the channels of sin be ob- 
 structed, experience points to an almost 
 certain overflow through some other part 
 of the nature. Partial conversion is al- 
 most always accompanied by such moral 
 leakage, for the pent-up energies accu- 
 mulate to the bursting point, and the last 
 state of that soul may be worse than the
 
 150 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 first In the last place, religion does not 
 consist in negatives, in stopping this sin 
 and stopping that. The perfect character 
 can never be produced with a pruning- 
 knife. 
 
 But a third protests: ''So be it. I 
 make no attempt to stop sins one by one. 
 My method is just the opposite. I copy 
 the virtues one by one.'^ The difficulty 
 about the copying method is that it is apt 
 to be mechanical. One can always tell 
 an engraving from a picture, an artificial 
 flower from a real flower. To copy vir- 
 tues one by one has somewhat the same 
 effect as eradicating the vices one by one; 
 the temporary result is an overbalanced 
 and incongruous character. Some one 
 defines a prig as ''a creature that is over- 
 fed for its size.'* One sometimes finds
 
 THE CHANGED LIFE. I51 
 
 Cliristians of this species — over-fed on 
 one side of their nature, but dismally 
 thin and starved-looking on the other. 
 The result, for instance, of copying Hu- 
 mility, and adding it on to an otherwise 
 worldly life, is simply grotesque. A 
 rabid Temperance advocate, for the same 
 reason, is often the poorest of creatures, 
 flourishing on a single virtue, and quite 
 oblivious that his Temperance is making 
 a worse man of him and not a better. 
 These are examples of fine virtues spoiled 
 by association with mean companions. 
 Character is a unity, and all the virtues 
 must advance together to make the per- 
 fect man. This method of sanctificatiou, 
 nevertheless, is in the true direction. It 
 is only in the details of execution that it 
 fails.
 
 152 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 A fourth method I need scarcely men- 
 tion, for it is a variation on those already 
 named. It is the very young man's 
 method ; and the pure earnestness of it 
 makes it almost desecration to touch it. 
 It is to keep a private note-book with 
 columns for the days of the week, and a 
 list of virtues with spaces against each 
 for marks. This, with many stern rules 
 for preface, is stored away in' a secret 
 place, and from time to time, at night- 
 fall, the soul is arraigned before it as be- 
 fore a private judgment bar. This living 
 by code was Franklin's method ; and I 
 suppose thousands more could tell how 
 they had hung up in their bedrooms, or 
 hid in lock-fast drawers, the rules which 
 one solemn day they drew up to shape 
 their lives. This method is not erron-
 
 THE CHANGED LIFE. 1 53 
 
 ecus, only somehow its success is poor. 
 You bear me witness that it fails. And 
 it fails generally for very matter-of-fact 
 reasons — most likely because one day we 
 forget the rules. 
 
 All these methods that have been named 
 — the self-sufficient method, the self-cruci- 
 fixion method, the mimetic method, and 
 the diary method — are perfectly human, 
 perfectly natural, perfectly ignorant, and, 
 as they stand, perfectly inadequate. It 
 is not argued, I repeat, that they must 
 be abandoned. Their harm is rather that 
 they distract attention from the true work- 
 ing method, and secure a fair result at the 
 expense of the perfect one. What that 
 perfect method is we shall now go on to
 
 THE FORMULA OF SANCTI- 
 FICATION. 
 
 A FORMULA, a receipt, for Sanctifi- 
 cation — can one seriously speak of 
 this mighty change as if the process were 
 as definite as for the production of so 
 many volts of electricity? It is impos- 
 sible to doubt it. Shall a mechanical 
 experiment succeed infallibly, and the 
 one vital experiment of humanity remain 
 a chance ? Is com to grow by method, 
 and character by caprice? If we cannot 
 calculate to a certainty that the forces of
 
 FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 1 55 
 
 religion will do their work, then is relig- 
 ion vain. And if we cannot express the 
 law of these forces in simple words, then 
 is Christianity not the world's religion, 
 but the world's conundrum. 
 
 Where, then, shall one look for such a 
 formula ? Where one would look for any 
 formula — among the text-books. And 
 if we turn to the text-books of Chris- 
 tianity we shall find a formula for this 
 problem as clear and precise as any in the 
 mechanical sciences. If this simple rule, 
 moreover, be but followed fearlessly, it 
 will yield the result of a perfect character 
 as surely as any result that is guaranteed 
 by the laws of nature. The finest expres- 
 sion of this rule in Scripture, or indeed in 
 any literature, is probably one drawn up 
 
 and condensed into a single verse by Paul. 
 11
 
 156 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 You will find it in a letter— the second to 
 the Corintliians — written by him to some 
 Christian people who, in a city which was 
 a byword for depravity and licentiousness, 
 were seeking the higher life. To see the 
 point of the words we must take them 
 from the immensely improved rendering 
 of .the Revised translation, for the older 
 Version in this case greatly obscures the 
 sense. They are these: '*We all, with 
 unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the 
 glory of the Lord, are transformed into 
 the same image from glory to glory, even 
 as from the Lord the Spirit.*' 
 
 Now observe at the outset the entire 
 contradiction of all our previous efforts, 
 in the simple passive **we are trans- 
 formed.*' We are changed^ as the Old Ver- 
 sion has it — we do not change ourselves.
 
 FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 1 57 
 
 No man can change himself. Through- 
 out the New Testament you will find that 
 wherever these moral and spiritual trans- 
 formations are described the verbs are in 
 the passive. Presently it will be pointed 
 out that there is a rationale in this ; but 
 meantime do not toss these words aside 
 as if this passivity denied all human effort 
 or ignored intelligible law. What is im- 
 plied for the soul here is no more than is 
 everywhere claimed for the body. In 
 physiology the verbs describing the pro- 
 cesses of growth are in the passive. 
 Growth is not voluntary ; it takes place, 
 it happens, it is wrought upon matter. 
 So here. **Ye must be born again '^— 
 we cannot born ourselves, **Be not 
 conformed to this world, but be ye trans- 
 formed'^'^ — we are subjects to a trans-
 
 15^ THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 forming influence, we do not transform 
 ourselves. Not more certain is it that it is 
 something outside the thermometer that 
 produces a change in the thermometer, 
 than it is something outside the soul of 
 man that produces a moral change upon 
 him. That he must be susceptible to 
 that change, that he must be a part)^ to 
 it, goes without saying ; but that neither 
 his aptitude nor his will can produce it, 
 is equally certain. 
 
 Obvious as it ought to seem, this 
 may be to some an almost startling rev- 
 elation. The change we have been 
 striving after is not to be produced by 
 any more striving after. It is to be 
 wrought upon us by the moulding of 
 hands beyond our own. As the branch 
 ascends, and the bud bursts, and the
 
 FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 1 59 
 
 fruit reddens under the co-operation of 
 influences from the outside air, so man 
 rises to the higher stature under invisi- 
 ble pressures from without. The radical 
 defect of all our former methods of 
 sanctification was the attempt to gener- 
 ate from within that which can only 
 be wrought upon us from without. Ac- 
 cording to the first Law of Motion: 
 Every bod}^ continues in its state of 
 rest, or of uniform motion in a straight 
 line, except in so far as it may be com- 
 pelled by impressed forces to change that 
 state. This is also a first law of Chris- 
 tianity. Every man's character remains 
 as it is, or. continues in the direction in 
 which it is going, until it is compelled 
 by impressed forces to change that state. 
 Our failure has been the failure to put
 
 l6o THE CHANGED UJ^U, 
 
 ourselves in the way of the impressed 
 forces. There is a clay, and there is a 
 Potter; we have tried to get the clay 
 to mould the clay. 
 
 Whence, then, these pressures, and 
 where this Potter? The answer of the 
 formula is **By reflecting as a mirror 
 the glory of the Lord we are changed.'* 
 But this is not very clear. What is 
 the ^' glory" of the Lord, and how can 
 mortal man reflect it, and how can that 
 act as an ^ impressed force" in mould- 
 ing him to a nobler form? The word 
 **glor>^" — the word which has to bear 
 the weight of holding those ** impressed 
 forces " — is a stranger in current speech, 
 and our first duty is to seek out its 
 equivalent in working English. It sug- 
 gests at first a radiance of some kind,
 
 FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. l6l 
 
 sometliing dazzling" or glittering, some 
 halo such as the old masters loved to 
 paint round the heads of their Ecce 
 Homos. But that is paint, mere matter, 
 the visible symbol of some unseen thing. 
 What is that unseen thing? It is that 
 of all unseen things the most radiant, 
 the most beautiful, the most Divine, and 
 that is Charaeter. On earth, in Heaven, 
 there is nothing so great, so glorious as 
 this. The word has many meanings; 
 in ethics it can have but one. Glory 
 is character, and nothing less, and it can 
 be nothing more. The earth is '*full 
 of the glory of the Lord,'' because it 
 is full of His character. The *^ Beauty 
 of the Lord'' is character. ^*The efful- 
 gence of His Glory " is character. '* The 
 Glory of the Only Begotten" is charac-
 
 l62 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 ter, tHe character whicli is ** fulness of 
 grace and truth." And when God told 
 His people His name He simply gave 
 them His character, His character which 
 was Himself: ** And the Lord proclaimed 
 the Name of the Lord . . . the Lord, 
 the Lord God, merciful and gracious, 
 long-suffering and abundant in goodness 
 and truth." Glory then is not some- 
 thing intangible, or ghostly, or transcen- 
 dental. If it were this how could Paul 
 ask men to reflect it? Stripped of its 
 physical enswathement it is Beauty, 
 moral and spiritual Beauty, Beauty in- 
 finitely real, infinitely exalted, yet infin- 
 itely near and infinitely communicable. 
 With this explanation read over the 
 sentence once more in paraphrase : We 
 ail reflecting as a mirror the character
 
 FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 1 63 
 
 of Christ are transformed into the same 
 Image from character to character — from 
 a poor character to a better one, from a 
 better one to one a little better still, 
 from that to one still more complete, 
 until by slow degrees the Perfect Image 
 is attained. Here the solution of the 
 problem of sanctification is compressed 
 into a sentence : Reflect the character 
 of Christ, and you will become like 
 Christ. 
 
 All men are mirrors — that is the first 
 law on v/hich this formula is based. One 
 of the aptest descriptions of a human 
 being is that he is a mirror. As we sat 
 at table to-night the world in which each 
 of us lived and moved throughout this 
 day was focussed in the room. What we 
 saw as we looked at one another was not
 
 l64 THK CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 one another, but one another's world. 
 We were an arrangement of mirrors. 
 The scenes we saw were all reproduced ; 
 the people we met walked to and fro; 
 they spoke, they bowed, they passed us 
 by, did everything over again as if it had 
 been real. When we talked, we were but 
 looking at our own inirror and describing 
 what flitted across it; our listening was 
 not hearing, but seeing — we but looked 
 on our neighbor's mirror. All human 
 intercourse is a seeing of reflections. I 
 meet a stranger in a railway carriage. 
 The cadence of his first word tells me he 
 is English, and comes from Yorkshire. 
 Without knowing it he has reflected his 
 birthplace, his parents, and the long his- 
 tory of their race. Even physiologically 
 he is -H mirror. His second sentenc«*
 
 FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 165 
 
 records that he is a politician, and a 
 faint inflexion in the way he pronounces 
 The Times reveals his party. In his next 
 remarks I see reflected a whole world of 
 experiences. The books he has read, the 
 people he has met, the influences that 
 have played upon him and made him the 
 man he is — these are all registered there 
 by a pen which lets nothing pass,' and 
 whose writing can never be blotted out. 
 What I am reading in him meantime he 
 also is reading in me ; and before the 
 journey is over we could half write each 
 other's lives. Whether we like it or not, 
 we live in glass houses. The mind^ the 
 memory, the soul, is simply a vast cham- 
 ber panelled with looking-glass. And 
 upon this miraculous arrangement and 
 endowment depends the capacity of mor-
 
 l66 THE CHANGED LI?E. 
 
 tal souls to ** reflect the character of the 
 Lord.'' 
 
 But this is not all. If all these varied 
 reflections from our so-called secret life 
 are patent to the world, how close the 
 writing, how complete the record, within 
 the soul itself? For the influences we 
 meet are not simply held for a moment 
 on the polished surface and thrown off 
 again into space. Each is retained where 
 first it fell, and stored up in the soul for 
 ever. 
 
 This law of Assimilation is the second, 
 and by far the most impressive truth 
 which underlies the formula of sancti- 
 fication — the truth that men are not 
 only mirrors, but that these mirrors, so 
 far from being mere reflectors of the 
 fleeting things they see, transfer into
 
 FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 1 67 
 
 their own inmost substance, and hold in 
 permanent preservation, the things that 
 they reflect. No one knows how the 
 soul can hold these things. No one 
 knows how the miracle is done. No 
 phenomenon in nature, no process in 
 chemistry, no chapter in necromancy 
 can even help us to begin to understand 
 this amazing operation. For, think of 
 it, the past is not only focussed there, 
 in a man's soul, it is there. How could, 
 it be reflected from there if it were not 
 there ? All things that he has ever seen, 
 known, felt, believed of the surrounding 
 world are now within him, have become 
 part of him, in part are him — he has 
 been changed into their image. He 
 may deny it, he may resent it, but they 
 are there. They do not adhere to him,
 
 l68 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 they are transfused through him. He 
 cannot alter or rub them out. They are 
 not in his memory, they are in him. 
 His soul is as they have filled it, made 
 it, left it. These things, these books, 
 these events, these influences are his 
 makers. In their hands are life and 
 death, beauty and deformity. When 
 once the image or likeness of any of 
 these is fairly presented to the soul, no 
 pov/er on earth can hinder two things 
 happening — it must be absorbed into 
 the soul, and for ever reflected back 
 again from character. 
 
 Upon these astounding yet perfectly 
 obvious psychological facts, Paul bases 
 his doctrine of sanctification. He sees 
 that character i^* a thing built up by 
 Blow degrees, that it is hourly chang-
 
 FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. 169 
 
 ing for better or for worse according to 
 the images which flit across it. One 
 step further and the whole length and 
 breadth of the application of these ideas 
 to the central problem of religion will 
 st^ind before us.
 
 THE ALCHEMY OF INFLU- 
 ENCE. 
 
 T F events change men, much more per- 
 sons. No man can meet another on 
 the street without making some mark 
 upon him. We say we exchange words 
 when we meet; what we exchange is 
 souls. And when intercourse is very 
 close and very frequent, so complete is 
 this exchange that recognizable bits of 
 the one soul begin to show in the other's 
 nature, and the second is conscious of a 
 
 similar and growing debt to the first 
 wo
 
 THE ALCHSMY OF INFLUENCE. I7I 
 
 This mysterious approximating of two 
 souls who has not witnessed ? Who has 
 not watched some old couple come down 
 life's pilgrimage hand in hand, with such 
 gentle trust and joy in one another that 
 their very faces wore the self-same look ? 
 These were net two souls ; it was a com- 
 posite soul. It did not matter to which 
 of the two you spoke, you would have 
 said the same words to either. It was 
 quite indifferent which replied, each 
 would have said the same. Half a 
 century's reflecting had told upon them ; 
 they were changed into the same image. 
 It is the I^aw of Influence that we be- 
 come like those whom we habitually ad- 
 mire : these had become like because 
 they habitually admired. Through all 
 
 the range of literature, of history, and 
 
 12
 
 172 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 biography this law presides. Men are 
 all mosaics of other men. There was 
 a savor of David about Jonathan and 
 a savor of Jonathan about David. Jean 
 Valjean, in the masterpiece of Victor 
 Hugo, is Bishop Bienvenu risen from 
 the dead. Metempsychosis is a fact. 
 George Eliot's message to the world 
 was that men and women make men 
 and women. The Family, the cradle 
 of mankind, has no meaning apart from 
 this. Society itself is nothing but a 
 rallying point for these omnipotent forces 
 to do their work. On the doctrine of In- 
 fluence, in short, the whole vast pyramid 
 of humanity is built. 
 
 But it was resented for Paul to make 
 the supreme application of the Law of 
 Influence. It was a tremendous Infer-
 
 THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 1 73 
 
 ence to make, but he never hesitated. 
 He himself v/as a changed man; he 
 knew exactly what had done it; it was 
 Christ. On the Damascus road they 
 met, and from that hour his life was 
 absorbed in His. The effect could not 
 but follow — on words, on deeds, on career^ 
 on creed. The '^impressed forces'' did 
 their vital work. He became like Him 
 Whom he habitually loved. *^ So we 
 ill," he writes, *' reflecting as a mirror 
 the glor>- of Christ, are changed into* 
 the same image." 
 
 Nothing could be more simple, more 
 intelligible, more natural, more super- 
 natural. It is an analogy from an every- 
 day fact. Since we are what we are by 
 the impacts of those who surround us, 
 those who surround themselves with the
 
 174 'i'HS CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 highest will be those who change into 
 the highest. There are some men and 
 some women in whose company we are 
 always at our best. While with them 
 we cannot think mean thoughts or speak 
 ungenerous words. Their mere presence 
 is elevation, purification, sanctity. All 
 the best stops in our nature are drawn 
 out by their intercourse, and we find a 
 music in our souls that was never there 
 before. Suppose even thai influence pro- 
 longed through a month, a year, a life- 
 time, and what could not life become? 
 Here, even on the common plane of life, 
 talking our language, walking our streets, 
 working side by side, are sanctifiers of 
 souls ; here, breathing through common 
 clay, is Heaven ; here, energies charged 
 even through a temporal medium with
 
 THF) ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCK. 1 75 
 
 the virtue of regeneration. If to live 
 with men, diluted to the millionth de- 
 gree with the virtue of the Highest, can 
 exalt and purify the nature, what bounds 
 can be set to the influence of Christ ? To ^ 
 live with Socrates — with unveiled face — 
 must have made one wise ; with Aristides, 
 just. Francis of Assisi must have made 
 one gentle ; Savonarola, strong. But to 
 .have lived with Christ? To have lived 
 with Christ must have made one like 
 Christ ; that is to say, A Chrisiian. 
 
 As a matter of fact, to live vath Christ 
 did produce this effect. It produced it in 
 the case of Paul. And during Christ's 
 lifetime the experiment was tried in an 
 even more startling form. A few raw, 
 unspiritual, uninspiring men, were ad- 
 mitted to the inner circle of His friend-
 
 176 THE CHANGED UFE. 
 
 ship. The change began at once. Day 
 by day we can almost see the first disr 
 ciples grow. First there steals over them 
 the faintest possible adumbration of His 
 character, and occasionally, very occa- 
 sionally, they do a thing or say a thing 
 that they could not have done or said had 
 they not been living there. Slowly the 
 spell of His Life deepens. Reach after 
 reach of their nature is overtaken, thawed, 
 subjugated, sanctified. Their manners 
 soften, their words become more gentle. 
 their conduct more unselfish. As swal- 
 lows who have found a summer, as frozen 
 ■buds the spring, their starved humanity 
 bursts into a fuller life. They do not 
 know how it is, but they are different 
 men. One day they find themselves like 
 their Master, going about and doing good.
 
 THE ALCHEMY OF INFI^UENCE. 1 77 
 
 To themselves it is unaccountable, but 
 they cannot do otherwise. They were 
 not told to do it, it came to them to do it. 
 But the people who watch them know 
 well how to account for it — **They have 
 been,'' they whisper, ''with Jesus.*' Al- 
 ready even, the mark and seal of His 
 character is upon them — ''They have 
 been with Jesus." Unparalleled phe- 
 nomenon, that these poor fishermen should 
 remind other men of Christ ! Stupendous 
 victory and mystery of regeneration that 
 mortal men should suggest to the world, 
 God! 
 
 There is something almost melting in 
 the way His contemporaries, and John 
 especially, speak of the influence of 
 Christ. John lived himself in daily won- 
 der at Him; he was overpowered, over-
 
 17b THE CHANGED I.IFE. 
 
 awed, entranced, transfigured. To Ms 
 mind it was impossible for any one to 
 come under this influence and ever be 
 the same again. * * Whosoever abideth in 
 Him sinneth not,^' he said. It was in- 
 conceivable that he should sin, as in- 
 conceivable as that ice should live in a 
 burning sun, or darkness coexist with 
 noon. If any one did sin, it was to John 
 the simple proof that he could never have 
 met Christ. ** Whosoever sinneth,*' he 
 exclaims, '^hath not seen Him^ neither 
 known Htm,^^ Sin was abashed in this 
 Presence. Its roots withered. Its sway 
 and victory were for ever at an end. 
 
 But these were His contemporaries. It 
 was easy for them to be influenced by 
 Him, for they were every day and all the 
 day together. But how can we mirror
 
 THK ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 1 79 
 
 that which we have never seen? How 
 can all this stupendous result be pro- 
 duced by a Memory, by the scantiest of 
 all Biographies, by One who lived and 
 left this earth eighteen hundred years 
 ago? How can modern men to-day make 
 Christ, the absent Christ, their most con- 
 stant companion still? The answer is 
 that Friendship is a spiritual thing. It 
 is independent of Matter, or Space, or 
 Time. That which I love in my friend 
 is not that which I see. What influences 
 me in my friend is not his body but his 
 spirit. It would have been an ineffable 
 experience truly to have lived at that 
 time — 
 
 *• I think when I read the sweet story of old* 
 How when Jesus was here among men,
 
 l8o THK CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 He took little children like lambs to His fold, 
 I should like to have been with Him then. 
 
 *' I wish that His hand had been laid on my head, 
 That His arms had been thrown around me, 
 And that I had seen His kind look when he said, 
 * Let the little ones come unto me.' " 
 
 And yet, if Christ were to come into the 
 world again few of us probably would 
 ever have a chance of seeing Him. Mil- 
 lions of her subjects, in this little coun- 
 try, have never seen^ their own Queen. 
 And there would be millions of the sub- 
 jects of Christ who could never get with- 
 in speaking distance of Him if He were 
 here. Our companionship with Him, 
 like all true companionship, is a spiritual 
 communion. All friendship, all love, 
 human and Divine, is purely spiritual.
 
 the; AI.CHKMY OF INFLUKNCK. l8l 
 
 It was after He was risen that He in- 
 fluenced even the disciples most. Hence 
 in reflecting the character of Christ, it is 
 no real obstacle that we may never have 
 been in visible contact with Himself. 
 
 There lived once a young girl whose 
 perfect grace of character was the wonder 
 of those who knew her. She wore on 
 her neck a gold locket which no one was 
 ever allowed to open. One day, in a mo- 
 ment of unusual confidence, one of her 
 companions was allowed to touch its 
 spring and learn its secret. She saw 
 written these words — '^ IVhom having not 
 seen^ I love, ' ' That was the secret of hei 
 beautiful life. She had been changed 
 into the Same Image. 
 
 Now this is not imitation, but a much 
 deeper thing. Mark this distinction.
 
 l82 THE CHANGED IJFE. 
 
 For the difference in the process, as well 
 as in the result, may be as great as that 
 between a photograph secured by the 
 infallible pencil of the sun, and the rude 
 outline from a school-boy's chalk. Imi- 
 tation is mechanical, reflection organic. 
 The one is occasional, the other habitual. 
 In the one case, man comes to God and 
 imitates Him ; in the other, God comes 
 to man and imprints Himself upon Him. 
 It is quite true that there is an imitation 
 of Christ which amounts to reflection. 
 But Paul's term includes all that the 
 other holds, and is open to no mistake. 
 *'Make Christ your most constant 
 companion" — this is what it practically 
 means for us. Be more under His in- 
 fluence than under any other influence. 
 Ten minutes spent in His society every
 
 THK ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 183 
 
 day, ay, two minutes if it be face to 
 face, and heart to heart, will make the 
 whole day different. Every charactei 
 has an inward spring, let Christ be it. 
 Every action has a key-note, let Christ 
 set it. Yesterday you got a certain let- 
 ter. You sat down and wrote a reply 
 which almost scorched the paper. You 
 picked the cruellest adjectives you knew 
 and sent it forth, without a pang, to do 
 its ruthless work. You did that because 
 your life was set in the wrong key. 
 You began the day with the mirror 
 placed at the wrong angle. To-morrow, 
 at day-break, turn it towards Him, and 
 even to your enemy the fashion of your 
 countenance will be changed. What- 
 ever you then do, one thing you will 
 find you could not do— you could not
 
 l84 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 write that letter. Your first impulse 
 may be the same, your judgment may 
 be unchanged, but if you try it the ink 
 will dry on your pen, and 5^ou Tvill 
 rise from your desk an unavenged, 
 but a greater and more Christian, man. 
 Throughout the whole day your actions, 
 down to the last detail, will do homage 
 to that early vision. Yesterday you 
 thought mostly about yourself. To-day 
 the poor will meet you, and you will 
 feed them. The helpless, the tempted, 
 the sad, will throng about you, and 
 each you will befriend. Where were 
 all these people yesterday? Where they 
 are to-day, but you did not see them 
 It is in reflected light that the poor are 
 seen. But your soul to-day is not at 
 the ordinary angle. ** Things which are
 
 THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 185 
 
 not seen*' are visible. For a few short 
 hours you live the Eternal Life. The 
 eternal life, the life of faith, is simply 
 the life of the higher vision. Faith is 
 an attitude — a mirror set at the right 
 angle. 
 
 When to-morrow is over, and in the 
 evening you review it, you will won- 
 der how you did it. You will not be 
 conscious that you strove for anything, 
 or imitated anything, or crucified any- 
 thing. You will be conscious of Christ ; 
 that He was with you, that without 
 compulsion you were yet compelled, that 
 without force, or noise, or proclamation, 
 the revolution was accomplished. You 
 do not congratulate yourself as one who 
 has done a mighty deed, or achieved a 
 personal success, or stored up a fund of
 
 l86 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 '* Christian experience" to ensure the 
 same result again. What you are con- 
 scions of is "the glory of the Lord." 
 And what the world is conscious of, if 
 the result be a true one, is also '^the 
 glory of the Lord." In looking at a 
 mirror one does not see the mirror, or 
 think of it, but only of what it reflects. 
 For a mirror never calls attention to 
 itself — except when there are flaws in it. 
 That this is a real experience and not 
 a vision, that this life is possible to 
 meuj is being lived by men to-day, is 
 simple biographical fact. From a thou- 
 sand witnesses I cannot forbear to sum- 
 mon one. The following are the words 
 of one of the highest intellects this age 
 has known, a man who shared the bur- 
 dens of his country as few have done.
 
 THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 187 
 
 and who, not in the shadows of old age, 
 but in the high noon of his success, 
 gave this confession — I quote it with 
 only a few abridgments — to the world : 
 
 ** I want to speak to-night only a little, 
 but that little I desire to speak of the 
 sacred name of Christ, who is my life, 
 my inspiration, my hope, and my surety. 
 I cannot help stopping and looking back 
 upon the past. And I wish, as if I had 
 never done it before, to bear witness, not 
 only that it is by the grace of God, but 
 that it is by the grace of God as mani- 
 fested in Christ Jesus, that I am what I 
 am. I recognize the sublimity and grand- 
 eur of the revelation of God in His eter- 
 nal fatherhood as one that made the heav- 
 ens, that founded the earth, and that r^ 
 13
 
 1 88 THE CHANGED I.IFE. 
 
 gaids all the tribes of the earth, compre- 
 hending them in one universal mercy; 
 but it is the God that is manifested in 
 Jesus Christ, revealed by His life, made 
 known by the inflections of His feelings, 
 by His discourse, and by His deeds — it is 
 that God that I desire to confess to-night, 
 and of whom I desire to say, * By the 
 love of God in Christ Jesus I am v/hat I 
 am.* 
 
 '* If you ask me precisely what I mean 
 by that, I say, frankly, that more than 
 any recognized influence of my father or 
 my mother upon me-; more than the 
 social influence of all the members of my 
 father's household; more, so far as I can 
 trace it, or so far as I am made aware of 
 it, than all the social influences of every 
 kind, Christ has had the formation of my
 
 THK ALCHEMY OP INFLUENCE. 1 89 
 
 mind and my disposition. My hidden 
 ideals of what is beautiful I have drawn 
 from Christ. My thoughts of what is 
 manly, and noble, and pure, have almost 
 aL of them arisen from the I^ord Jesus 
 Christ Many men have educated them- 
 selves by reading Plutarch's Lives of the 
 Ancient Worthies, and setting before 
 themselves one and another of these 
 that in different ages have achieved 
 celebrity ; and they have recognized 
 the great power of these men on them- 
 selves. Now I do not perceive that poet, 
 or philosopher, or reformer, or general, 
 or any other great man, ever has dwelt 
 in my imagination and in my thought 
 as the simple Jesus has. For more than 
 twenty-five years I instinctively have 
 gone to Christ to draw a measure and a
 
 190 THE CHANGED UFE. 
 
 rule for everything. Whenever there has 
 been a necessity for it, I have sought — 
 and at last almost spontaneously — to 
 throw myself into the companionship 
 of Christ ; and early, by my imagination, 
 I could see Him standing and looking 
 quietly and lovingly upon me. There 
 seemed almost to drop from His face an 
 influence upon me that suggested what 
 was the right thing in the controlling 
 of passion, in the subduing of pride, 
 in the overcoming of selfishness ; and 
 it is from Christ, manifested to my in- 
 ward eye, that I have consciously derived 
 more ideals, more models, more influ- 
 ences, than from any human character 
 whatever. 
 
 * * That is not all. I feel conscious that 
 I have deiived from the I^ord Jesus Christ
 
 THK ALCHKMY OF INFLUENCE. I9I 
 
 every thought that makes heaven a real- 
 ity to me, and every thought that paves 
 the road that lies between me and heaven. 
 All my conceptions of the progress of 
 grace in the soul ; all the steps by which 
 divine life is evolved ; all the ideals that 
 overhang the blessed sphere which awaits 
 us beyond this world — these are derived 
 from the Saviour. The life that I now 
 live in the flesh I live by the faith of the 
 Son of God. 
 
 * * That is not all. Much as my future 
 includes all these elements which go to 
 make the blessed fabric of earthly life^ 
 yet, after all, what the summer is com- 
 pared with all its earthly products — 
 flowers, and leaves, and grass — that is 
 Christ compared with all the products of 
 Christ in my mind and in my soul. All
 
 192 THE CHANGED UFE. 
 
 tlie flowers and leaves of sympathy ; all 
 the twining joys that come from my heart 
 as a Christian — these I take and hold in 
 the future, but they are to me what the 
 flowers and leaves of summer are com- 
 pared with the sun that makes the sum- 
 mer. Christ is the Alpha and Omega, 
 the beginning and the end of my better 
 life. 
 
 '^When I read the Bible, I gather a 
 great deal from the Old Testament, and 
 from the Pauline portions of the New 
 Testament ; but after all, I am conscious 
 that the fruit of the Bible is Christ. 
 That is what 1 read it for, and that is 
 what I find that is worth reading. I 
 have had a hunger to be loved of Christ. 
 You all know, in some relations, what 
 it is to be hungry for love. Your heart
 
 THE AI^CHEMY OF INFI.UKNCK. I93 
 
 seems unsatisfied till you can draw some- 
 thing more toward you from those that 
 are dearest to you. There have been 
 times when I have had an unspeakable 
 heart-hunger for Christ's love. My sense 
 of sin is never strong when I think of 
 the law ; my sense of sin is strong when 
 I think of love — if there is any diflference 
 between law and love. It is when draw- 
 ing near the L/Ord Jesus Christ, and long- 
 ing to be loved, that I have the most 
 vivid sense of unsymmetry, of imperfec- 
 tion, of absolute unworthiness, and of 
 my sinfulness. Character and conduct 
 are never so vividly set before me as 
 when in silence I bend in the presence 
 of Christ, revealed not in wrath, but in 
 love to me. I never so much long to 
 be lovely, that I ma)' be loved^ as when
 
 194 'I'HH CHANGED I^IFK. 
 
 I have this revelation of Christ before my 
 mind. 
 
 ** In looking back upon my experience, 
 that part of my life which stands out, 
 and which I remember most vividly, is 
 just that part that has had some con- 
 scious association with Chnst. All the 
 rest is pale, and thin, and lies like clouds 
 on the horizon. Doctrines, systems, 
 measures, methods — what may be called 
 the necessary mechanical and external 
 part of worship ; the part which the 
 senses would recognize — this seems to 
 have withered and fallen off like leaves 
 of last summer ; but that part which has 
 taken hold of Christ abides." 
 
 Can any one hear this life-music, with 
 Its throbbing refrain of Christ, and re-
 
 THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. 1 95 
 
 main unmoved by envy or desire ? Yet, 
 till we have lived like this we have nevei 
 lived at all. 

 
 THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 
 
 •^ I ^HEN you reduce religion to a com- 
 mon Friendship? A common 
 Friendship — Who talks of a common 
 Friendship ! There is no such thing in 
 the world. On earth no word is more 
 sublime. Friendship is the nearest thing 
 we know to what religion is. God is 
 love. And to make religion akin to 
 Friendship is simply to give it the high- 
 est expression conceivable by man. But 
 if by demurring to "a common friend- 
 ship*' is meant a protest against the 
 greatest and the holiest in religion be- 
 
 19«
 
 THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 1 97 
 
 ing Spoken of in intelligible terms, then 
 I am afraid the objection is all too real. 
 Men always look for a mystery wheu 
 one talks of sanctification ; some mys- 
 tery apart from that which must ever 
 be mysterious wherever Spirit works. 
 It is thought some peculiar secret lies 
 behind it, some occult experience which 
 only the initiated know. Thousands of 
 persons go to church every Sunday hop- 
 ing to solve this myster>\ At meetings, 
 at conferences, many a time they have 
 reached what they thought was the very 
 brink of it, but somehow no further 
 revelation came. Poring over religious 
 books, how often were they not within 
 a paragraph of it; the next page, the 
 next sentence, would discover all, and 
 they would be borne on a flowing tide
 
 198 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 for ever. But nothing happened. The 
 next sentence and the next page were 
 read, and still it eluded them ; and 
 though the promise of its coming kept 
 faithfully up to the end, the last chapt-er 
 found them still pursuing. Why did 
 nothing happen? Because there was 
 nothing to happen — nothing of the kind 
 they were looking for. Why did it elude 
 them? Because there was no ^'it.'^ 
 When shall we learn that the pursuit 
 of holiness is simply the pursuit of 
 Christ? When shall' we substitute for 
 the **it" of a fictitious aspiration, the 
 approach to a Iviving Friend? Sanctity 
 is in character and not in moods ; Divin- 
 ity in our own plain calm humanity, and 
 in no mystic rapture of the soul. 
 
 And yet there are others who, for ex-
 
 THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 1 99 
 
 actly a contrary reason, will find scant 
 satisfaction here. Their complaint is 
 not that a religion expressed in terms of 
 Friendship is too homely, but that it is 
 still too mystical. To ' * abide ' ' in Christ, 
 to **make Christ our most constant com 
 panion, ' ' is to them the purest mysticism. 
 They want something absolutely tangible 
 and absolutely direct. These are not the 
 poetical souls who seek a sign, a mysti- 
 cism in excess ; but the prosaic natures 
 whose want is mathematical definition 
 in details. Yet it is perhaps not possible 
 to reduce this problem to much more 
 rigid elements. The beauty of Friend- 
 ship is its infinity. One can never evac- 
 uate life of mysticism. Home is full of 
 it, love is full of it, religion is full of it. 
 Why stumble at that in the relation of
 
 200 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 mac to Christ wliicli is natural in the 
 relation of man to man ? 
 
 If any one cannot conceive or realize a 
 mystical relation with Christ, perhaps all 
 that can be done is to help him to step 
 on to it by still plainer analogies from 
 common life. How do I know Shake- 
 speare or Dante? By communing with 
 their words and thoughts. Many men 
 know Dante better than their own fathers. 
 He influences them more. As a spiritual 
 presence he is more near to them, as a 
 vSpiritual force more real. Is there any 
 reason why a greater than Shakespeare 
 or Dante, v/ho also walked this earth, 
 who left great words behind Him, who 
 has great works everywhere in the world 
 now, should not also instruct, inspire, and 
 mould the characters of men ? I do not
 
 THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 201 
 
 limit Christ's influence to this. It is this, 
 and it is more. But Christ, so far from 
 resenting or discouraging this relation of 
 Friendship, Himself proposed it. "Abide 
 in Me ' ' was almost His last word to the 
 world. And He partly met the difficulty 
 of those who feel its intangibleness by 
 adding the practical clause, "If ye abide 
 in Me a7id My words abide hi you.''^ 
 
 Begin with His words. Words can 
 scarcely ever be long impersonal. Christ 
 Himself was a Word, a word made Flesh. 
 Make His words flesh ; do them, live 
 them, and you must live Christ, "//i? 
 that keepeth My conivtandinents^ he it is 
 that loveth Me.'' Obey Him and yon 
 must love Him. Abide in Him and you 
 must obey Him. Cultivate His Friend- 
 ship, Live after Christ, in His Spirit,
 
 202 THE CHANGED UFE. 
 
 as in His Presence, and it is difficult 
 to think what more you can do. Take 
 this at least as a first lesson, as introduc- 
 tion. If you cannot at once and always 
 feel the play of His life upon yours, watch 
 for it also indirectly. " The whole earth 
 is full of the character of the Lord.*' 
 Christ is the Light of the world, and 
 much of His Light is reflected from 
 things in the world — even from clouds. 
 Sunlight is stored in every leaf, from 
 leaf through coal, and it comforts us 
 thence when days are dark and we can- 
 not see the sun. Christ shines throiigh 
 men, through books, through history, 
 through nature, music, art. Look for 
 Him there. *' Every day one should 
 either look at a beautiful picture, or 
 hear beautiful music, or read a beautiful
 
 THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 203 
 
 poem.'* The real danger of mysticism 
 is not making it broad enougli. 
 
 Do not think that nothing is happen- 
 ing because you do not see yourself grow, 
 or hear the whirr of the machinery. All 
 great things grow noiselessly. You can 
 see a mushroom grow, but never a child. 
 Mr. Darwin tells us that Evolution pro- 
 ceeds by ' ' numerous, successive, and 
 slight modifications." Paul knew that, 
 and put it, only in more beautiful words, 
 into the heart of his formula. He said 
 for the comforting of all slowly perfect- 
 ing souls that they grew ' * from character 
 to character." *'The inward man,'* he 
 says elsewhere, ' ' is renewed from day to 
 day." All thorough work is slow; all 
 true development by minute, slight, and 
 
 insensible metamorphoses. The higher 
 
 14
 
 204 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 the structure, moreover, the slower the 
 progress. As the biologist runs his eye 
 over the long Ascent of Life he sees the 
 lowest forms of animals develop in an 
 hour ; the next above these reach matur- 
 ity in a day ; those higher still take weeks 
 or months to perfect ; but the few at the 
 top demand the long experiment of years. 
 If a child and an ape are born on the same 
 day, the last will be in full possession of 
 its faculties and doing the active work of 
 life before the child has left its cradle. 
 Life is the cradle of eternity. As the 
 man is to the animal in the slowness of 
 his evolution, so is the spiritual man to 
 the natural man. Foundations which 
 have to bear the weight of an eternal 
 life must be surely laid. Character is 
 to wear for ever ; who will wonder oi
 
 THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 205 
 
 grudge that it cannot be developed in 
 a day? 
 
 To await the growing of a soul, nev- 
 ertheless, is au almost Divine act of 
 faith. How pardonable, surely, the im- 
 patience of deformity with itself, of a 
 consciously despicable character standing 
 before Christ, wondering, yearning, hun- 
 gering to be like that? Yet must one 
 trust the process fearlessly, and without 
 misgiving. ** The Lord the Spirit '' will 
 do His part. The tempting expedient 
 is, in haste for abrupt or visible progress, 
 to try some method less spiritual, or to 
 defeat the end by watching for effects 
 instead of keeping the eye on the Cause. 
 A photograph prints from the negative 
 only while exposed to the sun. While 
 the artist is looking to see how it is
 
 2o6 THE CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 getting on lie simply stops the getting 
 on. Whatever of wise supervision the 
 soul may need, it is certain it can never 
 be over-exposed, or that, being exposed, 
 anything else in the world can improve 
 the result or quicken it. The creation 
 of a new heart, the renewing of a right 
 spirit, is an omnipotent work of God. 
 Leave it to the Creator. *'He which 
 hath begun a good work in you will 
 perfect it unto that day.*' 
 
 No man, nevertheless, who feels the 
 worth and solemnity of what is at stake 
 will be careless as to his progress. To 
 become like Christ is the only thing in 
 the world worth caring for, the thing 
 before which every ambition of man is 
 folly, and all lower achievement vain. 
 Those only who make this quest the
 
 THK FIRST KXPERIMENT. 207 
 
 supreme desire and passion of their lives 
 can even begin to hope to reach it. If, 
 therefore, it has seemed up to this point 
 as if all depended on passivity, let me 
 now assert, with conviction more intense, 
 that all depends on activity. A religion 
 of effortless adoration may be a religion 
 for an angel, but never for a man. Not 
 in the contemplative, but in the active, 
 lies true hope; not in rapture, but in 
 reality, lies true life ; not in the realm 
 of ideals, but among tangible things, is 
 man's sanctification wrought. Resolu- 
 tion, effort, pain, self- crucifixion, agony 
 — all the things already dismissed as 
 futile in themselves must now be restored 
 to oflSce, and a tenfold responsibility laid 
 upon them. For what is their ofiice? 
 Nothing less than to move the vast in-
 
 208 THK CHANGED LIFE. 
 
 ertia of tlie soul, and place it, and keep 
 it where the spiritual forces will act 
 upon it. It is to rally the forces of the 
 will, and keep the surface of the mirror 
 bright and ever in position. It is to 
 uncover the face which is to look at 
 Christ, and draw down the veil when 
 unhallowed sights are near. You have, 
 perhaps, gone with an astronomer to 
 watch him photograph the spectrum of 
 a star. As you entered the dark vault 
 of the observatory you saw him begin 
 by lighting a candle. To see the star 
 with ? No ; but to see to adjust the 
 instrument to see the star with. It was 
 the star that was going to take the 
 photograph ; it was, also, the astronomer. 
 For a long time he worked in the dim- 
 ness, screwing tubes and polishing lenses
 
 THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. 209 
 
 and adjusting reflectors, and only after 
 mucli labor the finely focussed instru- 
 ment was brought to bear. Ther he 
 blew out the light, and left the star 'o 
 do its work upon the plate alone. The 
 day's task for the Christian is to bring 
 his instrument to bear. Having done 
 that he may blow out his candle. All 
 the evidences of Christianity which have 
 brought him there, all aids to Faith, all 
 acts of worship, all the leverages of the 
 Church, all Prayer and Meditation, all 
 girding of the Will — these lesser pro- 
 cesses, these candle-light activities for 
 that supreme hour, may be set aside. 
 But, remember, it is but for an hour. 
 The wise man will be he who quickest 
 lights his candle; the wisest he who 
 never lets it out To-morrow, the next
 
 210 THK CHANGED LIFK. 
 
 moment, he, a poor, darkened, blurred 
 soul, may need it again to focus the 
 Image better, to take a mote oflf the 
 lens, to clear the mirror from a breath 
 with which the world has dulled it. 
 
 No readjustment is ever required on 
 behalf of the Star. That is one great 
 fixed point in this shifting universe. But 
 the world tnoves. And each day, each 
 hour, demands a further motion and read- 
 justment for the soul. A telescope in an 
 observatory follows a star by clockwork, 
 but the clockwork of the soul is called 
 the Will, Hence, while the soul in pas- 
 sivity reflects the Image of the Lord, the 
 Will in intense activity holds the mirror 
 in position lest the drifting motion of the 
 world bear it beyond the line of vision. 
 To '* follow Christ*' is largely to keep
 
 THE FIRST EXPKRIMKNT. 211 
 
 the soul in such position as will allow 
 for the motion of the earth. And this 
 calculated counteracting of the move- 
 ments of a world, this holding of the 
 mirror exactly opposite to the Mirrored, 
 this steadying of the faculties unerringly 
 through cloud and earthquake, fire and 
 sword, is the stupendous co-operating 
 labor of the Will. It is all man's 
 work. It is all Christ's work. In prac- 
 tice it is both ; in theory it is both. 
 But- the wise man will say in practice, 
 **It depends upon myself." 
 
 In the Galerie des Beaux Arts in Paris 
 there stands a famous statue. It was the 
 last work of a great genius, who, like 
 many a genius, was very poor and lived 
 in a garret, which served as studio and 
 sleeping-room alike. When the statue
 
 212 THK CHANGED IJFE. 
 
 was all but finished, one midnight a 
 sudden frost fell upon Paris. The 
 sculptor lay awake in the fireless room and 
 thought of the still moist clay, thought 
 hov/ the water would freeze in the pores 
 and destroy in an hour the dream of 
 his life. So the old man rose from his 
 couch and heaped the bed-clothes rever- 
 ently round his work. In the morning 
 wlien the neighbors entered the room 
 the sculptor v/as dead. But the statue 
 lived. 
 
 The Image of Christ that is forming 
 within us — that is life.^s one charge. Let 
 every project stand aside for that. *'Till 
 Christ be formed," no man's work is fin- 
 ished, no religion crowned, no life has 
 fulfilled its end. Is . the infinite task be- 
 gun ? Wlien, how, are we to be differ-
 
 THE FIRST EXPERIMENT, 
 
 213 
 
 ent ? Time cannot change men. Death 
 cannot change men. Christ can. Where- 
 fore put on Christ,
 
 "FIRST!" 
 A Talk with Boys.
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 ^^^NE Sunday afternoon there assem- 
 ^^ bled at the City Hall, Glasgow, 
 Scotland, the Boy^s Brigade, fourteen 
 hundred strong, in the presence of an in- 
 terested audience. Professor Drummond 
 ascended the platform, and after prayer 
 had been offered, and several hymns had 
 been sung, requested the members to 
 turn to the sixth chapter of St. Matthew 
 and read in unison the verse, **But seek 
 ye first the kingdom of God, and His
 
 2l8 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 righteousness, and all these things shall 
 be added unto you/* Afterwards, al) 
 being seated, Professor Drummond pro- 
 ceeded with his address.
 
 "FIRSXr 
 
 T HAVE three heads to give you The 
 first is ** Geography,*' the second is 
 ** Arithmetic,** and the third is ** Gram- 
 mar.'* 
 
 Geography. 
 
 First. Geography tells us where to 
 find places. Where is the kingdom of 
 God? It is said that when a Prussian 
 officer was killed in the Franco-Prussian 
 war, a map of France was very often 
 found in his pocket. When we wish to 
 occupy a country, we ought to know its 
 
 15 S19
 
 220 ** FIRST P' 
 
 geography. Now, where is the kingdom 
 of God? A boy over there says, **It is 
 in heaven. No ; it is not in heaven. 
 Another boy says, **It is in the Bible." 
 No ; it is not in the Bible. Another boy 
 says, *^ It must be in the Church." No; 
 it is not in the Church. Heaven is only 
 the capital of the kingdom of God ; the 
 Bible is the Guide-book to it; the Church 
 is the weekly Parade of those who belong 
 to it. If you would turn to the seven- 
 teenth chapter of St. Luke you will find 
 out where the kingdom of God really is. 
 *' The kingdom of God is within you" — 
 within you. The kingdom of God is 
 inside people. 
 
 I remember once taking a walk by the 
 river near where the Falls of Niagara 
 are, and I noticed a remarkable figure
 
 GEOGRAPHY. 221 
 
 walking along the river bank. I liad 
 been some time in America. I bad seen 
 black men, and red men, and yellow 
 men, and white men; black men, the Ne- 
 groes; red men, the Indians; yellow men^ 
 the Chinese; white men, the Americans. 
 But this man looked quite different in his 
 dress from anything I had ever seen. 
 When he came a little closer, I saw he 
 was wearing a kilt; when he came a little 
 nearer still, I saw that he was dressed 
 exactly like a Highland soldier. When 
 he came quite near, I said to him, * ' What 
 are you doing here?'* **Why should I 
 not be here?" he said. ''Don't you know 
 this is British soil ? When you cross the 
 river you come into Canada. ' ' This sol- 
 dier was thousands of miles from Eng- 
 land, and yet he was in the kingdom of
 
 222 ** FIRST I" 
 
 England. Wherever there is an Eng- 
 lish heart beating loyal to the Queen of 
 Britain, there is England, Wherever 
 there is a boy whose heart is loyal to the 
 King of the kingdom of God, the king- 
 dom of God is within him. 
 
 What is the kingdom of God ? Every 
 kingdom has its exports, its products. 
 Go down to the river here, and you 
 will find ships coming in with cotton ; 
 you know they come from America. 
 You will find ships with tea; you know 
 they are from China. Ships with wool ; 
 you know they come from Australia. 
 Ships with sugar; you know they come 
 from Java. What comes from the king- 
 dom of God? Again we must refer to our 
 Guide book. Turn to Romans, and we 
 shall find what the kingdom of God is
 
 GEOGRAPHY. 223 
 
 I will read it: "The kingdom of God 
 is righteousness, peace, joy *'— three 
 tilings. **The kingdom of God is right- 
 eousness, peace, joy.'* Righteousness, 
 of course, is just doing what is right. 
 Any boy who does what is right has 
 the kingdom of God within him. Any 
 boy who, instead of being quarrelsome, 
 lives at peace with the other boys, has 
 the kingdom of God within him. Any 
 boy whose heart is filled with joy be- 
 cause he does what is right, has the 
 kingdom of God within him. The 
 kingdom of God is not going to relig- 
 ious meetings, and hearing strange relig- 
 ious experiences: the kingdom of God 
 is doing what is right — living at peace 
 with all men, being filled with joy in 
 the Holy Ghost.
 
 3824 ** first!" 
 
 Boys, if you are going to be Chris- 
 tians, be Christians as boys, and not as 
 your grandmothers. A grandmother has 
 to be a Christian as a grandmother, and 
 that is the right and the beautiful thing 
 for her; but if you cannot read your 
 Bible by the hour as your grandmothei 
 can, or delight in meetings as she can, 
 don't think you are necessarily a bad 
 boy. When you are your grandmother's 
 age you will have your grandmother's 
 kind of religion. Meantime, be a Chris- 
 tian as a boy. I^ive a boy's life. Do 
 the straight thing; seek the kingdom 
 of righteousness and honor and truth. 
 Keep the peace with the boys about you, 
 and be filled with the joy of being ? 
 loyal, and simple, and natural, and boy- 
 like servant of Christ.
 
 GEOGRAPHY. 225 
 
 You can very easily tell a house, or 
 a workshop, or an office where the king- 
 dom of God is noU The first thing you 
 see in that place is that the "straight 
 thing" is not always done. Customers 
 do not get fair play. You are in danger 
 of learning to cheat and to lie. Better, 
 a thousand times, to starve than to stay 
 in a place where you cannot do what is 
 right. 
 
 Or, when you go into your workshop, 
 you find everybody sulky, touchy, and ill- 
 tempered; everybody at daggers* drawn 
 with everybody else ; some of the men 
 not on speaking terms with some of the 
 others, and the whole feel of the place 
 miserable and unhappy. The kingdom 
 of God is not there, for it is peace. It is
 
 226 ** FIRST I" 
 
 the kingdom of the Devil that is anger 
 and wrath and malice. 
 
 If you want to get the kingdom of God 
 into your workshop, or into your home, 
 let the quarrelling be stopped. I^ive in 
 peace and harmony and brotherliness 
 with every one. For the kingdom of 
 God is a kingdom of brothers. It is a 
 great society, founded by Jesus Christ, 
 of all the people who try to be like Him, 
 and live to make the world better and 
 sweeter and happier. Wherever a boy is 
 trying to do that, in the house or in the 
 street, in the workshop or on the baseball 
 field, there is the kingdom of God. And 
 every boy, however small or obscure or 
 poor, who is seeking that, is a member 
 of it. You see now, I hope, what the 
 king-dom is.
 
 ARITHMETIC. 327 
 
 Arithmetic. 
 
 I pass, therefore, to the second head : 
 What was it ? * * Arithmetic. ' * Are there 
 any arithmetic words in this text? ** Add- 
 ed,** says one boy. Quite right, added. 
 What other arithmetic word? '* First. -^ 
 Yes, T^r^^—*' first," "added.'* Now, don't 
 you think you could not have anything 
 better to seek *^ first" than the things I 
 have named — to do what is right, to live 
 at peace, and be always making those 
 about you happy ? You see at once why 
 Christ tells us to seek these things first 
 — ^because they are the best worth seek- 
 ing. Do you know anything better than 
 these three things, anything happier, 
 purer, nobler? If you do, seek them 
 first. But if you do not, seek first the
 
 228 ** FIRST I" 
 
 kingdom of God. I am not here this 
 afternoon to tell you to be religious. You 
 know that. I am not here to tell you to 
 seek the kingdom of God. I have come 
 to tell you to seek the kingdom of God 
 first. First, Not many people do that. 
 They put a little religion into their life 
 — once a week, perhaps. They might 
 just as well let it alone. It is not worth 
 seeking the kingdom of God unless we 
 seek it first. Suppose you take the helm 
 out of a ship and hang it over the bow, 
 and send that ship to sea, will it ever 
 reach the other side? Certainly not. 
 It will drift about anyhow. Keep religion 
 in its place, and it will take you straight 
 through life, and straight to your Father 
 in heaven when life is over. But if you 
 do not put it in its place, you may just
 
 ARITHMETIC. 229 
 
 as well have nothing to do with it. Re- 
 ligion out of its place in a human life is 
 the most miserable thing in the world. 
 There is nothing that requires so much 
 to be kept in its place as religion, and its 
 place is what ? second ? third ? * * First. ' * 
 Boys, carry that home with you to-day — 
 first the kingdom of God. Make it so 
 that it will be natural to you to think 
 about that the very first thing. 
 
 There was a boy in Glasgow appren- 
 ticed to a gentleman who made tele- 
 graphs. The gentleman told me this 
 himself. One day this boy was up on 
 the top of a four-story house with a 
 number of men fixing up a telegraph- 
 wire. The work was all but done. It 
 was getting late, and the men said they 
 were going away home, and the hov was
 
 230 ** FIRST r* 
 
 to nip off the ends of the wire himself. 
 Before going down they told him to be 
 sure to go back to the workshop, when 
 he was finished, with his master's tools. 
 *'Do not leave any of them lying about, 
 whatever you do," said the foreman. 
 The boy climbed up the pole and began 
 to nip off the ends of the wire. It was 
 a very cold winter night, and the dusk 
 was gathering. He lost his hold and fell 
 upon the slates, slid down, and then 
 over and over to the ground below. 
 A clothes-rope, stretched across the 
 ** green'' on to which he was just about 
 to fall, caught him on the chest and 
 broke his fall ; but the shock was terri- 
 ble, and he lay unconscious among some 
 clothes upon the green. An old woman 
 came out ; seeing her rope broken and
 
 ARITHMETIC. 231 
 
 the clothes all soiled, thought the boy 
 was drunk, shook him, scolded him, and 
 went for the policeman. And the boy 
 with the shaking came back to conscious- 
 ness, rubbed his eyes, and got upon his 
 feet. What do you think he did? He 
 staggered, half blind, away up the stairs. 
 He climbed the ladder. He got on to 
 the roof of the house. He gathered up 
 his tools, put them into his basket, took 
 them down, and when he got to the 
 ground again, fainted dead away. Just 
 then the policeman came, saw there was 
 something seriously wrong, and earned 
 him away to the hospital, where he lay 
 for some time. I am glad to say he got 
 better. What was his first thought at 
 that terrible moment? His duty. He 
 was not thinking of himself; he was
 
 232 ** FIRST I'' 
 
 thinking about his master. First, the 
 kingdom of God. 
 
 But there is another arithmetic word. 
 What is it? *^\dded." There is not 
 one boy here who does not know the dif- 
 ference between addition and subtraction. 
 Now, that is a very important difference 
 in religion, because — and it is a very 
 strange thing — very few people know 
 the difference when they begin to talk 
 about religion. They often tell boys that 
 if they seek the kingdom of God, every- 
 thing elsfi is going to be subtracted from 
 them. They tell them that they are 
 going to become gloomy, miserable, and 
 will lose everything that makes a boy's 
 life worth living — that they will have to 
 stop baseball and story-books, and be- 
 come little old men, and spend all their
 
 ARITHMETIC. 233 
 
 time in going to meetings and in singing 
 hymns. Now, that is not true. Christ 
 never said anything like that. Christ says 
 we are to ^ ' seek first the kingdom of God, ' ' 
 and everything else worth having is to be 
 added unto us. If there is anything I would 
 like you to take away with you this after- 
 noon, it is these two arithmetic words — 
 ** first *^ and ^ ' added. ^' I do not mean 
 by added that if you become religious 
 you are all going to become rich. Here 
 is a boy, who, in sweeping out the shop 
 to-morrow morning, finds sixpence lying 
 among the orange-boxes. Well, nobody 
 has missed it. He puts it in his pocket, 
 and it begins to burn a hole there. By 
 breakfast-time he wishes that sixpence 
 were in his master's pocket. And by 
 and by he goes to his master. He sa3^
 
 234 ''first!*' 
 
 (to himself^ and not to liis master), *' I was 
 at the Boys' Brigade yesterday, and I was 
 to seeky^r^^ that which was right. ' * Then 
 he says to his master, ' ' Please, sir, here 
 is sixpence that I found upon the floor. ' * 
 The master puts it in the ''till.'' What 
 has the boy got in his pocket ? Nothing ; 
 but he has got the kingdom of God in his 
 heart. He has laid up treasure in heaven, 
 which is of infinitely more worth than six- 
 pence. Now, that boy does not find a 
 shilling on his way home. I have known 
 that happen, but that is not what is meant 
 by ' ' adding. ' ' It does not mean that God 
 is going to pay him in his own coin, for 
 He pays in better coin. 
 
 Yet I remember once hearing 9f a boy 
 who was paid in both ways. He was 
 very, very poor. He lived in a foreign
 
 ARITHMETIC. 235 
 
 country, and his motlier said to him one 
 
 day that he must go into the great city 
 
 and start in business, and she took his 
 
 coat and cut it open and sewed between 
 
 the lining ^d the coat forty golden 
 
 dinars, which she had saved up for many 
 
 years to start him in life. She told him 
 
 to take care of robbers as he went across 
 
 the desert ; and as he was going out of 
 
 the door she said : ^* My boy, I have only 
 
 two words for you — * Fear God, and never 
 
 tell a lie.* '' The boy started off, and 
 
 toward evening he saw glittering in the 
 
 distance the minarets of the great city, 
 
 but between the city and himself he saw 
 
 a cloud of dust, it came nearer ; presently 
 
 he saw that it was a band of robbers. 
 
 One of the robbers left the rest and rode 
 
 toward him, and said: **Boy, what have 
 16
 
 236 *' first!" 
 
 you got?" And the boy looked him in 
 the face and said: "I have forty golden 
 dinars sewed up in my coat. ' ' And the 
 robber laughed and wheeled round his 
 horse and went away back. He would 
 not believe the boy. Presently another 
 robber came, and he said: " Boy, _ what 
 have you got?" *' Forty golden dinars 
 sewed up in my coat." *' The robber 
 said : ^ ' The boy is a fool, ' ' and wheeled 
 his horse and rode away back. By and 
 by the robber captain came, and he said : 
 *'Boy, what have you got?"" ^'I have 
 forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat. ' ' 
 And the robber dismounted and put his 
 hand over the boy's breast, felt some- 
 thing round, counted one, two, three, 
 four, j&ve, till he counted out the forty 
 golden coins. He looked the boy in the
 
 ARITHMETIC. 2^7 
 
 face, and said: **Wliy did you tell me 
 that ?' ' The boy said : ' ' Because of God 
 and my mother/' And the robber leaned 
 on his spear and thought, and said : 
 ''Wait a moment." He mounted his 
 horse, rode back to the rest of the rob- 
 bers, and came back in about five min- 
 utes with his dress changed. This time 
 he looked not like a robber, but like a 
 merchant. He took the boy up on his 
 horse and said: "My boy, I have long 
 wanted to do something for my God and 
 for my mother, and I have this moment 
 renounced my robber's life. I am also 
 a merchant. I have a large business 
 house in the city. I want you to come 
 and live with me, to teach me about your 
 God ; and you will be rich, and your 
 mother some day will come and live with
 
 238 ** first!** 
 
 tis/* And it all happened. By seeking 
 first the kingdom of God, all these things 
 were added unto him. 
 
 Boys, banish for ever from your minds 
 the idea that religion is subtraction. It 
 does not tell us to give things up, but 
 rather gives us something so much bet- 
 ter that they give themselves up. When 
 you see a boy on the street whipping a 
 top, you know, perhaps, that you could 
 not make that boy happier than by giv- 
 ing him a top, a whip, and half an hour 
 to whip it. But next birthday, when he 
 looks back, he says, ''What a goose I 
 was last year to be delighted with a 
 top ; what I want now is a baseball bat.'* 
 Then when" he becomes an old man he 
 does not care in the least for a baseball 
 bat he wants rest, and a snug fireside^
 
 ARITHMETIC. 239 
 
 and a newspaper every day. He won- 
 ders how lie could ever have taken up 
 his thoughts with baseball bats and 
 whipping-tops. Now, when a boy be- 
 comes a Christian, he grows out of the 
 evil things one b}^ one — that is to say, 
 if they are really evil — which he used 
 to set his heart upon (of course I do 
 not mean baseball bats, for they are 
 not evils) ; and so instead of telling 
 people to give up things, we are safer 
 to tell them to *'seek first the kingdom 
 of God,'' and then they will get new 
 things and better things, and the old 
 things will drop off of themselves. This 
 is what is meant by the '*new heart." 
 It means that God puts into us new ; 
 thoughts and new wishes, and we be- 
 come quite different boys.
 
 240 ** FIRST P' 
 
 Grammar. 
 Lastly, and very shortly. What was 
 the third head? '' Grammar. " Right: 
 Grammar. Now, I require a clever boy 
 to answer the next question. What is 
 the verb? '^Seek.*^ Very good: 
 **Seek.'V What mood is it in? '^ Im- 
 perative mood.'* What does that mean? 
 '* Command.** You boys of the Boys* 
 Brigade know what commands are. 
 What is the soldier's first lesson? 
 *' Obedience." Have you obeyed this 
 command? Remember the imperative 
 mood of these words, ''''Seek first the 
 kingdom of God." This is the com- 
 mand of your King. It must be done. 
 I have been trying to show you what a 
 splendid thing it is ; what a reasonable 
 thing it is; what a happy thing it is;
 
 GRAMMAR. 24 1 
 
 but beyond all these reasons it is a thing 
 that 7nust be done, because we are com- 
 manded to do it by our Captain. It is 
 one of the finest things about the Boys' 
 Brigade that it always appeals to Christ 
 as its highest Officer, and takes its com- 
 mands from Him. Now, there is His 
 command to seek first the kingdom of 
 God Have you done it? "Well," I 
 know some boys will say, "we are 
 going to have a good time^ enjoy life, 
 and then we are going to seek — last — 
 the kingdom of God." Now that is 
 mean ; it is nothing else than mean for 
 a boy to take all the good gifts that 
 God has given him, and then give Him 
 nothing back in return but his wasted 
 life. 
 
 God wants boys' lives^ not only theii
 
 243 ^^FIRSO'P 
 
 souls. It is for active service soldiers are 
 drilled and trained and fed and armed. 
 That is why you and I are in the world at 
 all — not to prepare to go out of it some 
 day ; but to serve God actively in it now. 
 It is monstrous and shameful and cow- 
 ardly to talk of seeking the kingdom lasU 
 It is shirking duty, abandoning one's 
 rightful post, playing into the enemy's 
 hand by doing nothing to turn his flank. 
 Every hour a kingdom is coming in your 
 heart, in your home, in the world near 
 you, be it a kingdom of darkness or a 
 kingdom of light. You are placed 
 where you are, in a particular business, 
 in a particular street, to help on there the 
 kingdom of God. You cannot do that 
 when you are old and ready to die. By 
 that time your companions will have
 
 GRAMMAR. 243 
 
 fought their fight, and lost or won. If 
 they lose, will you not be sorry that you 
 did not help them? Will you not regret 
 that only at the last you helped the king- 
 dom of God? Perhaps you will not be 
 able to do it then. And then your life 
 has been lost indeed. 
 
 Very few people have the opportunity 
 to seek the kingdom of God at the end. 
 Christ, knowing all that, knowing that 
 religion was a thing for our life, not 
 merely for our death-bed, has laid this 
 command upon us now: " Seek yfrj/ the 
 kingdom of God.*^ I am going to leave 
 you with this text itself. Every Brigade 
 boy in the world should obey it. 
 
 Boys, before you go to work to-morrow, 
 before you go to sleep to-night, before 
 you go to the Sunday-school this after-
 
 244 ** FIRST r' 
 
 noon, before you go out of tlie door of 
 the City Hall, resolve that, God helping 
 you, you are going to s^t^ first the king- 
 dom of God. Perhaps some boys here 
 are deserters ; they began once before to 
 serve Christ, and they deserted. Come 
 back again, come back again to-day. 
 Others have never enlisted at all. Will 
 you not do it now ? You are old enough 
 to decide. And the grandest moment of 
 a boy's life is that moment when he 
 decides to 
 
 Seek prat tl|e ^ingbom of ®ob*
 
 HOW TO LEy\RN HOW. 
 
 i. Dealing with Doubt. 
 n. Preparation for Learning.
 
 DEALING WITH DOUBT. 
 
 'T^HERB is a subject which I think 
 we as workers amongst young men 
 cannot afford to keep out of sight — I 
 mean the subject of ''Doubt." We are 
 forced to face that subject. We have no 
 choice. I would rather let it alone ; but 
 every day of my life I meet men who 
 doubt, and I am quite sure that most of 
 you have innumerable interviews ever> 
 year with men who raise skeptical dif- 
 ficulties about religion. Now, it becomes 
 a matter of great practical importance 
 that we should know how to deal wisely 
 
 247
 
 248 DEALING WITH DOUBT. 
 
 with these men. Upon the whole, I 
 think these are the best men in the 
 country. I speak of my own countr}\ 
 I speak of the universities with which 
 I am familiar, and I say that the men 
 who are perplexed — the men who come 
 to you with serious and honest difficulties 
 — are the best men. They are men of 
 intellectual honesty, and cannot allow 
 themselves to be put to rest by words, 
 or phrases, or traditions, or theologies, 
 but who must get to the bottom of things 
 for themselves. And if I am not mis- 
 taken, Christ was very fond of these 
 men. The outsiders always interested 
 Him, and touched Him. The orthodox 
 people — the Pharisees — He was much 
 less interested in. He went with pub- 
 licans and sinners — with people who were
 
 DEALING WITH DOUBT. 249 
 
 in revolt against the respectability, in- 
 te!lectual and religious, of the day. And 
 following Him, we are entitled to give 
 sympathetic consideration to those whom 
 He loved and took trouble with. 
 
 First, let me speak for a moment 01 
 two about the origin of doubt. In the 
 first place, we are born questioners. 
 Look at the wonderment of a little child 
 in its eyes before it can speak. The 
 child's great word when it begins to 
 speak is, '^Why?" Every child is full 
 of every kind of question, about every 
 kind of thing that moves, and shines, 
 and changes, in the little world in which 
 it livCvS. That is the incipient doubt in 
 the nature of man. Respect doubt for 
 its origin. It is an inevitable thing. 
 It is not a thing to be crushed. It is a
 
 250 DEALING WITH DOUBT. 
 
 part of man as God made him. Heresy 
 is trutli in the making, and doubt is the 
 prelude of knowledge. 
 
 Secondly: The world is a'Sphinx. It 
 is a vast riddle — an unfathomable m}'s- 
 tery ; and on every side there is tempta- 
 tion to questioning. In every leaf, in 
 every cell of every leaf, there are a 
 hundred problems. There are ten good 
 years of a man's life in investigating 
 what is in a leaf, and there are five good 
 years more in investigating the things 
 that are in the things that are in the 
 leaf God has planned the world to in- 
 cite men to intellectual activity. 
 
 Thirdly : The instrument with which 
 we attempt to investigate truth is im- 
 paired. Some say it fell, and the glass 
 is broken. Some say prejudice, hered-
 
 DEALING WITH DOUBT. 25 1 
 
 ity, or sin^ have spoiled its sight, and 
 have blinded our eyes and deadened our 
 ears. In any case the instruments with 
 which we work upon truth, even in the 
 strongest men, are feeble and inadequate 
 to their tremendous task. 
 
 And in the fourth place, all religious 
 truths are doubtable. There is no ab- 
 solute proof for any one of them. Even 
 that fundamental truth — the existence of 
 a God — no man can prove by reason. 
 The ordinary' proof for the existence of 
 God involves either an assumption, argu- 
 ment in a circle, or a contradiction. The 
 impression of God is kept up by expe- 
 rience ; not by logic. And hence, when 
 the experimental religion of a man, of a 
 community, or of a nation, wanes, re- 
 ligion wanes — their idea of God grows 
 17
 
 252 DEAUNG WITH DOUBT. 
 
 indistinct, and that man, community ox 
 nation becomes infidel. Bear in mind, 
 then, that all religious truths are doubt- 
 able — even those which we hold most 
 strongly. 
 
 What does this brief account of the 
 origin of doubt teach us? It teaches 
 us great intellectual humility. It teaches 
 us sympathy and toleration with all men 
 who venture upon the ocean of truth to 
 find out a path through it for themselves. 
 Do you sometimes feel yourself thinking 
 unkind things about your fellow-students 
 who have intellectual difficulty? I know 
 how hard it is always to feel sympathy 
 and toleration for them ; but we must 
 address ourselves to that most carefully 
 and most religiously. If my brother is 
 short-sighted, I must not abuse him oi
 
 DEALING WITH DOUBT. 253 
 
 Speak against him ; I must pity him, 
 and if possible try to improve his sight 
 or to make things that he is to look at 
 so bright that he cannot help seeing. 
 But never let us think evil of men who 
 do not see as we do. From the bottom 
 of our hearts let us pity them, and let 
 us take them by the hand and spend 
 time and thought over them, and tr>^ to 
 lead them to the true light. 
 
 What has been the Church's treatment 
 of doubt in the past? It has been very 
 simple. ** There is a heretic. Bum 
 him!" That is all. "There is a man 
 who has gone off the road. Bring him 
 back and torture him !' ' We have got 
 past that physically; have we got past 
 it morally? What does the moderu 
 Church say to a man who is skeptical ?
 
 254 DKAI.ING WITH DOUBT. 
 
 Not ''Burn him!" but ''Brand himP' 
 *' Brand him! — call him a bad name." 
 And in many countries at the present 
 time a man who is branded as a heretic 
 is despised, tabooed, and put out of re- 
 ligious society, much more than if he 
 had gone wrong in morals. I think I 
 am speaking within the facts when I say 
 that a man who is unsound is looked 
 upon in many communities with more 
 suspicion and with more pious horror 
 than a man who now and then gets 
 drunk. "Burn him!" "Brand him!" 
 " Excommunicate him 1" That has been 
 the Church's treatment of doubt, and 
 that is perhaps to some extent the treat- 
 ment which we ourselves are inclined to 
 give to the men who cannot see the 
 truths of Christianity as we see them.
 
 DEALING WITH DOUBT. 255 
 
 Contrast Christ's treatment of doubt. 1 
 have spoken already of His strange par- 
 tiality for the outsiders — for the scattered 
 heretics up and down the country ; of the 
 care with which He loved to deal with 
 them, and of the respect in which He 
 held their intellectual difficulties. Christ 
 never failed to distinguish between doubt 
 and unbelief. Doubt is canH believe ; un- 
 belief is won't believe. Doubt is hon- 
 esty ; unbelief is obstinacy. Doubt is 
 looking for light ; unbelief is content 
 with darkness. Loving darkness rather 
 than light — that is what Christ attacked, 
 and attacked unsparingly. But for the 
 intellectual questioning of Thomas, and 
 Philip, and Nicodemus, and the many 
 others who came to Him to have theii
 
 256 DEALING WITH DOUBT. 
 
 great problems solved, He was respect- 
 ful and generous and tolerant. 
 
 And how did He meet their doubts? 
 The Church, as I have said, says, ** Brand 
 him!" Christ said, "Teach him." He 
 destroyed by fulfilling. When Thomas 
 came to Him and denied His ver>^ res- 
 urrection, and stood before Him waiting 
 for the scathing words and lashing for his 
 unbelief, they never came. They never 
 came. Christ gave him facts — facts. No 
 man can go around facts. Christ said, 
 " Behold My hands and My feet." The 
 great god of science at the present time 
 is a fact. It works with facts. Its cry 
 is, "Give me facts." Found anything 
 you like upon facts and we will believe 
 it. The spirit of Christ was the scientific , 
 spirit. He founded His religion upon
 
 DEALING WITH DOUBT. 257 
 
 facts ; and He asked all men to found 
 their religion upon facts. Now, gentle* 
 men, get up the facts of Christianity, and 
 take men to the facts. Theologies — and 
 I am not speaking disrespectfully of the- 
 ology ; theology is as scientific a thing 
 as any other science of facts — but the- 
 ologies are human versions of Divine 
 truths, and hence the varieties of the 
 versions, and the inconsistences of them. 
 I would allow a man to select whichever 
 version of this truth he liked after" 
 wards; but I would ask him to begin 
 with no version, but go back to the 
 facts and base his Christian life upon 
 that. That is the great lesson of the 
 New Testament way of looking at doubt 
 — of Christ's treatment of doubt. It is 
 not *^ Brand him !'* — but lovingly, wisely,
 
 258 DEJALING WITH DOUBT. 
 
 and tenderly to teach him. Faith is 
 never opposed to reason in the New 
 Testament; it is opposed to sight. You 
 will find that a principle worth thinking 
 over. Faith is never opposed to reason 
 in the New Testainent^ but to sight. 
 
 Well, now ; with these principles in 
 mind as to the origin of doubt, and as 
 to Christ's treatment of it, how are we 
 ourselves to deal with our fellow-students 
 who are in intellectual difficulty? In 
 the first place, I think we must make 
 all the concessions to them that we con- 
 scientiously can. When a doubter first 
 encounters you he pours out a deluge of 
 abuse of churches, and ministers, and 
 creeds, and Christians. Nine-tenths of 
 what he says is probably true. Make 
 concessions. Agree with him. It does
 
 DEALING WITH DOUBT. 259 
 
 him good to unburden himself of these 
 things. He has been cherishing them 
 for years — laying them up against Chris- 
 tians, against the Church, and against 
 Christianity; and now he is startled to 
 find the first Christian with whom he 
 has talked over the thing almost entirely 
 agrees with him. We are, of course, not 
 responsible for everythiug that is said in 
 the name of Christianity ; but a man does 
 not give up medicine because there are 
 quack doctors, and no man has a right 
 to give up his Christianity because there 
 are spurious or inconsistent Christians. 
 Then, as I have already said, creeds are 
 human versions of Divine truths ; and we 
 do not ask a man to accept all the 
 creeds, any more than we ask him to 
 accept all the Christians. We ask him
 
 260 DEALING WITH DOUBT, 
 
 to accept Christ, and the facts about 
 Christ, and the words of Christ. But 
 you will find the battle is half won when 
 you have endorsed the man's objections, 
 and possibly added a great many more 
 to the charges which he has against our- 
 selves. These men are in revolt against 
 the kind of religion which we exhibit to 
 the v/orld — against the cant that is taught 
 in the name of Christianity. And if the 
 men that have never seen the real thins^ 
 — if you could show them that, they 
 would receive it as eagerly as you do. 
 They are merely in revolt against the 
 imperfections and inconsistencies of those 
 who represent Christ to the v/orld. 
 
 Second : Beg them to set aside, by an 
 act of will, all unsolved problems : vSuch 
 as the problem of the origin of evil, the
 
 DEALI^^G WITH DOUBT, 261 
 
 problem of the Trinity, the problem of 
 the relation of human will and predesti- 
 nation, and so on — problems which have 
 been investigated for thousands of years 
 without result — ask them to set those 
 problems aside as insoluble in the mean 
 time, just as a man who is studying 
 mathematics may be asked to set aside 
 the problem, of squaring the circle. Let 
 him go on with what can be done, and 
 Vv^hat has been done, and leave out of 
 sight the impossible. You will find that 
 will relieve the skeptic's mind of a great 
 deal of unnecessary cargo that has been 
 in his way. 
 
 Thirdly : Talking al)OUt difficulties, as 
 a rule, only aggravates them. Entire 
 satisfaction to the intellect is unattain- 
 able about any of the greater problems,
 
 262 DEALING WITH DOUBT. 
 
 and if you try to get to the bottom of 
 them by argument, there is no bottom 
 there ; and therefore you make the matter 
 worse. But I would say what is known, 
 and what can be honestly and philo- 
 sophically and scientifically said about 
 one or two of the difficulties that the 
 doubter raises, just to show him that 
 you can do it — to shov/ him that you 
 are not a fool — that you are not merely 
 groping in the dark yourself, but you 
 have found whatever basis is possible. 
 But I would not go around all the doc- 
 trines. I would simply do that with one 
 or two ; because the moment you cut oflf 
 one, a hundred other heads will grow in 
 its place. It would be a pity if all these 
 problems could be solved. The joy of 
 the intellectual life would be largely
 
 DEALING WITH DOUBT. 263 
 
 gone. I would not rob a man of his 
 problems, nor would I have another man 
 rob me of my problems. They are the 
 delight of life, and the whole intellectual 
 world would Ije stale and unprofitable if 
 we knew everything. 
 
 Fourthly — and this is the great point : 
 Turn away from the reason, and go into 
 the man's moral life. I don't mean, go 
 into his moral life and see if the man is 
 living in conscious sin, which is the great 
 blinder of the eyes — I am speaking now 
 of honest doubt ; but open a new dooi 
 into the practical side of man's nature. 
 Entreat him not to postpone life and his 
 life's usefulness until he has settled the 
 problems of the universe. Tell him 
 those problems will never all be settled ; 
 that his life will be done before he has
 
 264 DEALING WITH DOUBT. 
 
 begun to settle them ; and ask him what 
 he is doing with his life meantime. 
 Charge him with wasting his life and 
 his usefulness ; and invite him to deal 
 with the moral and practical difficulties 
 of the world, and leave t?.e intellectual 
 difficulties as he goes along. To spend 
 time upon these is proving the less im- 
 portant before the more important ; and, 
 as the French say, "The good is the 
 enemy of the best. ' ' It is a good thing 
 to think ; it is a better thing to work — 
 it is a better thing to do good. And you 
 have him there, you see. He can't get 
 beyond that. You have to tell him, in 
 fact, that there are two organs of know- 
 ledge : the one reason, the other obedi- 
 ence. And now tell him, as he has tried 
 the first and found the little in it, just foi
 
 DEALING WITH DOUBT. 265 
 
 a moment or two to join you in trying 
 the second. And when he asks whom 
 he is to obey, you tell him there is but 
 One, and lead him to the great historical 
 figure, who calls all men to Him : the 
 one perfect life — the one Saviour of man- 
 kind — the one Light of the world. Ask 
 him to begin to obey Christ ; and, doing 
 His will, he shall know of the doctrine 
 whether it be of God. 
 
 That, I think, is about the only thing 
 you can do with a man : to get him into 
 practical contact with the needs of the 
 world, and to let him lose his intellectual 
 difficulties meantime. Don't ask him to 
 give them up altogether. Tell him to 
 solve them afterward one by one if he 
 can, but meantime to give his life to 
 Christ and his time to the king^dom of
 
 266 DEAUNG WITH DOUBT. 
 
 God. And, you see, you fetch him com- 
 pletely around when you do that. You 
 have taken him away from the false side 
 of his nature, and to the practical and 
 moral side of his nature ; and for the 
 first time in his life, perhaps, he puts 
 things in their true place. He puts his 
 nature in the relations in which it ought 
 to be, and he then only begins to live. 
 And by obedience — by obedience — he will 
 soon become a learner and pupil for him- 
 self, and Christ will teach him things, 
 and he will find whatever problems are 
 solvable gradually solved as he goes along 
 the path of practical duty. 
 
 Now, let me, in closing, give a couple 
 of instances of how to deal with specific 
 points. The commonest thing that we 
 hear said nowadays by young men is,
 
 DEAI^ING WITH DOUBT. 267 
 
 * ' What about evolution ? How am I to 
 reconcile my religion, or any religion, 
 with the doctrine of evolution?" That 
 upsets more men than perhaps anything 
 else at the present hour. How would 
 you deal with it ? I would say to a man 
 that Christianity is the further evolution. 
 I don't know any better definition than 
 that. It is the further evolution — the 
 higher evolution. I don't start with him 
 to attack evolution. I don't start with 
 him to defend it. I destroy by fulfilling 
 it. I take him at his own terms. He 
 says evolution is that which pushes the 
 man on from the simple to the complex, 
 from the lower to the higher. Very well ; 
 that is what Christianity does. It pushes 
 the man farther on. It takes him where 
 nature has left him, and carries him on
 
 268 DEALING WITH DOUBT. 
 
 to heights which on the plain of nature 
 he could never reach. That is evolution. 
 *'Lead me to the Rock that is higher 
 than I." That is evolution. It is the 
 development of the whole man in the 
 highest directions — the drawing out of 
 his spiritual being. Show an evolution* 
 ist that, and you have taken the wind 
 out of his sails. ' ' I came not to de- 
 stroy." Don't destroy his doctrine — 
 perhaps you can't — but fulfil it. Put a 
 larger meaning into it. 
 
 The other instance — the next common- 
 est question perhaps — is the question of 
 miracles. It is impossible, of course, to 
 discuss that now — miracles; but that 
 question is thrown at my head every 
 second day: ''What do you say to a 
 man when he says to you, * Why do
 
 DEALING WITH DOUBT. 269 
 
 yoii believe in miracles ?' " I say, * ' Be- 
 cause I have seen them.'' He says, 
 ^*When?" I say, ^'Yesterday." He 
 says, ' * Where ?" ' ' Down such-and-such 
 a street I sav/ a man who was a drunk- 
 ard redeeraed by the power of an unseen 
 Christ and saved from sin. That is a 
 miracle.'' The best apologetic for Chris- 
 tianity is a Christian. That is a fact 
 which the man cannot get over. There 
 are fifty other arguments for miracles, 
 but none so good as that you have seen 
 them. Perhaps you are one yoursel£ 
 But take you a man and show him a 
 miracle with his own eyes. Then he 
 will believe.
 
 PREPARATION FOR LEARNING. 
 
 T)EFORK an artist can do anything 
 the instrument must be tuned. Our 
 astronomers at this moment are preparing 
 for an event which happens only once or 
 twice in a lifetime : the total eclipse of 
 the sun in the month of August. They 
 have begun already. They are making 
 preparations. At chosen stations in dif- 
 ferent parts of the world they are spend- 
 ing all the skill that science can suggest 
 upon the construction of their instru- 
 ments; and up to the last moment they 
 
 271
 
 272 PREPARATION FOR LEARNING. 
 
 will be busy adjusting them ; and the 
 last day will be the busiest of all, be- 
 cause then they must have the glasses 
 and the mirrors polished to the last de- 
 gree. The}^ have to have the lenses in 
 place and focused upon this spot before 
 the event itself takes place. 
 
 Everything will depend upon the in- 
 struments which 3^ou bring to this ex- 
 periment. Everything will depend upon 
 it ; and therefore fifteen minutes will not 
 be lost if we each put our instrument 
 into the best working order we can. I 
 have spoken of lenses, and that reminds 
 me that the instrument which we bring 
 to bear upon truth is a compound thing. 
 It consists of many parts. Truth is not 
 a jToduct of the intellect alone; it is a 
 product of the wliole nature. The body
 
 PREPARATION FOR I.KARNING. 273 
 
 is engaged in it, and the mind, and the 
 soul. 
 
 The body is engaged in it. Of course, 
 a man who has his body run down, or 
 who is dyspeptic, or melancholy, sees 
 everything black, and distorted, and un- 
 true. But I am not going to dwell upon 
 that. Most of you seem in pretty fair 
 working order so far as your bodies are 
 concerned ; only it is well to remember 
 that we are to give our bodies a living 
 sacrifice — ^not a half-dead sacrifice, as 
 some people, seem to imagine. There is 
 no virtue in emaciation. I don't know 
 if you have any tendency in that direc- 
 tion in America, but certainly we are i-n 
 danger of dropping into it now and th'en 
 in England, and it is just as well to beat 
 in mind our part of the lens — a very com-
 
 274 PREPARATION FOR LEARNING. 
 
 pound and delicate lens — with which we 
 have to take in truth. 
 
 Then comes a very important part : the 
 intellect — which is one of the most use- 
 ful servants of truth ; and I need not tell 
 you as students, that the intellect will 
 have a great deal to do with your recep- 
 tion of truth. I was told that it was said 
 at these conferences last year, that a man 
 must crucify his intellect. I venture to 
 contradict the gentleman who made that 
 statement. I am quite sure no such state- 
 ment could ever have been made in your 
 hearing — that we were to crucify our in- 
 tellects. We can make no progress with- 
 out the full use of all the intellectual 
 powers that God has endowed us with. 
 
 But more important than either of 
 these is the moral nature — the moral and
 
 PREPARATION FOR LEARNING. 275 
 
 spiiitual nature. Some of you remembei 
 a sermon of Robertson of Brighton, en- 
 titled '' Obedience the Organ of Spiritual 
 Knowledge." A very startling title! — 
 ''Obedience the Organ of Spiritual 
 Knowledge. ' ' The Pharisees asked about 
 Christ : ' ' How knoweth this man letters, 
 never having learned?'' How knoweth 
 this man, never having learned? The 
 organ of knowledge is not nearly so 
 much mind, as the organ that Christ 
 used, namely, obedience ; and that was 
 the organ which He Himself insisted 
 upon when He said: "He that willeth 
 to do His will shall know of the doc- 
 trine whether it be of G od. ' ' You have 
 all noticed, of course, that the words in 
 the original are : "If any man will to do 
 His will, he shall know of the doctrine.*'
 
 376 PREPARATION FOR LEARNING. 
 
 It doesn't read, *'If any do His will,'' 
 which no man can do perfectly ; but if 
 any man be simply willing to do His will 
 — if he has an absolutely undivided mind 
 about it — that man vrill know what tnith 
 is and know what falsehood is ; a stranger 
 will he not follow. And that is by far 
 the best source of spiritual knowledge on 
 every account — obedience to God — abso- 
 lute sincerity and loyalty in following 
 Christ. ^'If an}^ man do His will he 
 shall know'' — a very remarkable ' asso- 
 ciation of knowledge, a thing which is 
 usually considered quite intellectual, with 
 obedience, which is moral and spiritual. 
 But even although we use all these 
 three different parts of the instrument, 
 we have not at all got at the complete 
 method of learning. There is a little
 
 PREPARATION FOR LEARNING. 277 
 
 preliminary that the astronomer has to do 
 before he can make his obser\^ation. He 
 has to take the cap off his telescope. 
 j^'lan}' a man thinks he is looking at 
 truth when he is only looking at the cap. 
 Many a time I have looked down my 
 microscope, and thought I was looking 
 at the diatom for which I had long been 
 searching, and found I had simply been 
 looking at a speck of dust upon the lens 
 itself. Many a man thinks he is looking 
 at truth when he is only looking at the 
 spectacles he haa put on to see it with. 
 He is looking at his own spectacles. 
 Now, the common spectacles that a man 
 puts on — I suppose the creed in which he 
 has been brought up — if a man looks at 
 that, let him remember that he is not 
 looking at truth : he is looking at his
 
 ZyS PREPARATION FOR LEARNING. 
 
 own Spectacles. There is no more im- 
 portant lesson that we have to carry with 
 us than that truth is not to be found in 
 what I have been taught. That is not 
 truth. Truth is not what I have been 
 taught. If it were so, that would appl}^ 
 to the Mormon, it would apply to the 
 Brahman, it would apply to the Buddhist. 
 Truth would be to everybody just what 
 he had been taught. Therefore let us 
 dismiss from our minds the predisposi- 
 tion to regard that which we have been 
 brought up in as being necessarily the 
 truth. I must say it is ver)^ hard to 
 shake one's self free altogether from that. 
 I suppose it is impossible. 
 
 But • you see the reasonableness of giv- 
 ing up that as your view of truth when 
 you come to apply it all around. If that
 
 PREPARATION FOR LEARNING. 279 
 
 were the definition of truth, truth would 
 be just what one's parents were — it would 
 be a thing of hereditary transmission, and 
 not a thing absolute in itself Now, let 
 me venture to ask you to take that cap 
 ofif. Take that cap off now, and make up 
 your minds you are going to look at truth 
 naked — in its reality as it is, not as it is 
 reflected through other minds, or through 
 any theology', however venerable. 
 
 Then, there is one thing 1 think we 
 must be careful about, and that is besides 
 having the cap off, and having all the 
 lenses clean and in position — to have the 
 instrument rightly focused. Ever^'thing 
 may be right, and yet when you go and 
 look at the object, you see things alto- 
 gether falsely. You see things not only 
 blurred, but you see things out of propor-
 
 28o PREPAEATION FOR LEARNING. 
 
 tion. And there is nothing more im- 
 portant we have to bear in mind in run- 
 ning our eye over successive theological 
 truths, or religious truths, than that there 
 is a proportion in those truths, and that 
 we must see them in their proportion, or 
 we see them falsely. A man may take a 
 dollar or a half-dollar and hold it to his 
 eye so closely that he will hide the sun 
 from him. Or he may so focus his tele- 
 scope that a fly or a boulder may be as 
 large as a mountain. A man may hold a 
 certain doctrine^ very intensely — a doc- 
 trine which has been looming upon his 
 horizon for the last six m.onths, let lis say, 
 and which has thrown ever^'thing else out 
 of proportion, it has become so big itself. 
 Now, let us beware of distortion in the 
 arrangement of the religious truths which
 
 PREPARATION FOR LEARNING. 281 
 
 we liold. It is almost impossible to get 
 things in their true proportion and sym- 
 metry, but this is the thing we must be 
 constantly aiming at. We fere told in the 
 Bible to *' add to your faith virtue, and to 
 virtue knowledge, and to knowledge bal- 
 ance," as the word literally means — bal- 
 ance. It is a word taken from the orches- 
 tra, where all the parts — the sopranos, the 
 basses, the altos, and the tenors, and all 
 the rest of them — must be regulated. 
 If you have too much of the bass, or too 
 much of the soprano, there is want of har- 
 mony. That is what I mean by the want 
 of proper focus — by the want of proper 
 balance — in the truths which we all hold. 
 It will never do to exaggerate one truth 
 at the expense of another, and a truth 
 may be turned into a falsehood very, very
 
 282 PREPARATION FOR LEARNING. 
 
 easily, by simply being either too much 
 eiilarfred or too much diminished. I once 
 heard of some blind men who were taken 
 to see a memagerie. They had gone 
 around the animals, and four of them 
 were allowed to touch an elephant as 
 they went past. They were discussing 
 afterward what kind of a creature the 
 elephant was. One man, who had 
 touched its tail, said the elephant was 
 like a rope. Another of the blind men, 
 who had touched his hind limb, said, 
 *' No such thing 1 the elephant is like the 
 trunk of a tree." Another, who had felt 
 Its sides, said, ^'That is all rubbish. An 
 elephant is a thing like a wall." And 
 the fourth, who had felt its ear, said that 
 an elephant was like none of those things; 
 It was like a leather bag. Now, men look
 
 PREPARATION FOR LEARNING. 283 
 
 at truth at different bits of it, and they see 
 different things of course, and they are 
 very apt to imagine that the thing which 
 they have seen is the whole affair — the 
 whole thing. In reality, we can only see 
 a very little bit at a time ; and we must,^ 
 I think, learn to believe that other men 
 can see bits of truth as well as ourselves. 
 Your views are just what you see with 
 your own eyes ; and my views are just 
 what I see ; and what I see depends on 
 just where I stand, and what you see de- 
 pends on just where you stand ; and truth 
 is ver>' much bigger than an elephant, 
 and we are ver>^ much blinder than any 
 of those blind men as we come to look at 
 it. 
 
 Christ has made us aware that it 
 
 is 
 
 quite possible for a man to have ears and 
 
 19
 
 284 PREPARATION FOR LEARNING. 
 
 hear nothing, and to have eyes and see 
 not. One of the disciples saw a gieat 
 deal of Christ, and he never knew Him. 
 * ^ Have I been so long time with you, 
 Philip, and yet hast thou not known 
 ,Me?" *'He that hath seen Me hath 
 seen the Father also.*' Philip had never 
 seen Him, He had been looking at his 
 own spectacles, perhaps, or at something 
 else, and had never seen Him. If the 
 instrument had been in order, he would 
 have seen Christ. And I would just add 
 this one thing more : the test of value of 
 the different verities of truth depends 
 upon one thing : whether they have or 
 have not a sanctifying power. That is 
 another remarkable association in the 
 mind of Christ — of sanctification with 
 truth — thinking and holiness — not to be
 
 PRKPARATION FOR LEARNING. 285 
 
 found in any of tlie sciences or in any 
 of the piiilosopliies. It is peculiar to 
 the Bible. Christ said ** Sanctify them 
 through Thy truth. Thy Word is truth. »' 
 Now, the value of any question — the 
 value of any theological question — de- 
 pends upon whether it has a sanctifying 
 influence. If it has not, donH bother 
 about it. Don't let it disturb your minds 
 until you have exhausted all truths that 
 have sanctification within them. If a 
 truth makes a man a better man, then 
 let him focus his instrument upon it and 
 get all the acquaintance with it he can. 
 If it is the profane babbling of science, 
 falsely so called, or anything that has an 
 injurious eflfect upon the moral and spirit- 
 ual nature of a man, it is better let alone. 
 And above all, let us remember to hold
 
 286 PREPARATION FOR LEARNING. 
 
 the truth in love. That is the most sanc- 
 tifying influence of all. And if we can 
 carrv^ away the mere lessons of toleration, 
 and leave behind us our censoriousness, 
 and criticalness, and harsh judgments 
 upon one another, and excommunicating 
 of everybody except those who think ex- 
 actly as we do, the time we shall spend 
 here will not be the least useful parts of 
 our lives.
 
 WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN?
 
 WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? 
 
 "\/OUNG men are learning to respect 
 more, perhaps, than ever young 
 men have done, the word ' * Christian. ' ' 
 I have seen the time when it was syn- 
 onymous with cant and unreality and 
 strained feeling and sanctimoniousness. 
 But although that day is not quite passed 
 yet, it is passing. I heard this definition 
 the other day of a Christian man by a 
 cynic — * ' A Christian man is a man 
 whose great aim in life is a selfish desire 
 to save his own soul, who, in order to
 
 290 WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? 
 
 do that, goes regularly to church, and 
 whose supreme hope is to get to Heaven 
 when he dies." This reminds one of 
 Professor Huxley's examination paper in 
 which the question was put — "What is 
 a lobster?" One student replied that a 
 lobster was a red fish, which moves 
 backwards. The examiner noted that 
 this was a very good answer, but for 
 three things. In the first place a lobster 
 was not a fish ; second it was not red ; 
 and third it did not move backwards. 
 If there is anything that a Christian is 
 not, it is one v/ho has a selfish desire to 
 save his own soul. The one thing which 
 Christianity tries to extirpate from a 
 man's nature is selfishness, even though 
 it be the losing of his own soul. 
 
 Christianity, as we understand it from
 
 WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? 29I 
 
 Christ, appeals to the generous side of a 
 young man's nature, and not to the sel- 
 fish side. In the new version of the 
 New Testament the word ^'soul" is 
 always translated in this connection by 
 the word *^life." That marks a revolu- 
 tion in popular theology, and it will 
 make a revolution in every Young Man's 
 Christian Association in the country 
 where it comes to be seen that a man's 
 Christianity does not consist in merely 
 saving his own soul, but in sanctifying 
 and purifying the lives of his fellow-men. 
 We are told in the New Testament that 
 Christianity is leaven, and 'Meaven" 
 comes from the same root-word as lever, 
 meaning that which raises up, which ele- 
 vates; and a Christian young man is a 
 man who raises up or elevates the lives
 
 a958 WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? 
 
 of those round about him. We are also 
 told that Christianity is salt, and salt is 
 that which saves from corruption. What 
 is it that saves the life of the world from 
 being utterly rotten, but the Christian 
 elements that are in it? Matthew Ar- 
 nold has said, '^Show me ten square 
 miles in any pait of the world outside 
 Christianity where the life of man and 
 the purity of women are safe, and I will 
 give Christianity up," In no part of the 
 world is there any such ten square miles 
 outside Christianity. Christian men are 
 the salt of the earth in the most literal 
 sense. They, and they alone, keep the 
 world from utter destruction. 
 
 I want to say a word here about the 
 Young Men's Christian Associations. 
 Many have criticised them. They have
 
 WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? 293 
 
 been the target for a great deal of abuse. 
 Many of the best young men have sneered 
 at til em, and turned up their noses at 
 them, and denounced them. I am speak- 
 ing with absohite sympathy and respect, 
 and even enthusiasm, for Young Men^s 
 Christian Associations. But I will turn 
 for one instant upon those men who turn 
 against them, and tell them that it is not 
 breadth that leads them to do that, but 
 what one might call the narrowness of 
 breadth — that breadth which denounces 
 intolerance, and which is itself too intol- 
 erant to tolerate intolerance. And, as 
 some one says, it is easier to criticise 
 the best thing superbly than to do the 
 smallest thing indifferently. 
 
 It is very easy to criticise the methods 
 and aims and men of the Youag Men's
 
 294 WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? 
 
 Christian Associations. If, instead of 
 looking on and criticising those who 
 know a thing or two, those who think 
 they are wiser, and that they have the 
 whole truth, would throw themselves in 
 among others and back them and try to 
 work alongside of them, they would get 
 perhaps their breadth tempered by ear- 
 nestness and by zeal, because the narrow 
 man has much to contribute to the Chris- 
 tian cause, perhaps more than the broad 
 man. But it needs all kinds of people 
 to make a world ; it needs all kinds of 
 people to make a church, and every type 
 of young men a Christian Association ; 
 and the greatest mistake of all is to have 
 every man stamped in the same stamp, 
 so that if you met him in a railway train 
 one hundred miles off, you would know
 
 WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? 295 
 
 him as a Y. M. C. A. man. I would like 
 to find many who would not wear the 
 badge so pronouncedly, that every one 
 should know them at a glance. 
 
 There is only one great character in 
 the world that can really draw out all 
 that is best in men. He is so far above 
 all others in influencing men for good 
 that He stands alone. That man was 
 the founder of Christianity. To be a 
 Christian man is to have that character 
 for our ideal in life, to live under its 
 influence, to do what He would wish us 
 to do, to live the kind of life He would 
 have lived in our house, and had He our 
 day's routine to go through. It would 
 not, perhaps, alter the forms of our life, 
 but it would alter the spirit and aims 
 and motives of our life, and the Chris-
 
 296 WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? 
 
 tian man is he who in that sense lives 
 under the influence of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Now, there is nothing that a young 
 tnan wants for his ideal that is not found 
 in Christ You v/ould be surprised when 
 you come to know who Christ is, if you 
 have not thought much about it, to find 
 how He will fit in with all human needs, 
 and call out all that is best in man. The 
 highest and manliest character that ever 
 lived was Christ. One incident I often 
 think of and wonder. You remember, 
 when He hung upon the cross, there 
 was hf-nded up to Him a vessel contain- 
 ing a stupefying drug, supplied by a 
 kind society of ladies in Jerusalem, who 
 always sent it to criminals when being 
 executed. And that stupefying drug was 
 handed up to Christ's lips. And we read.
 
 WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? 297 
 
 ** When He tasted thereof He would not 
 dtink.-^ I have always thought that one 
 of the most heroic actions I have ever 
 
 read of. But that vras only one ver>' 
 small side of Christ's nature. He can 
 be everything that a man wants. Paul 
 tells us that if we live in Christ we are 
 changed into His image. All that a 
 man has to do, then, to be like Christ, 
 is simply to live in friendship with 
 Christ, and the character follows. 
 
 But it is only one of the aims of 
 Christianity to make the best men. The 
 next thing Christ wants to do is to m.ake 
 the best v/orld. And He tries to make 
 the best world by setting the best men 
 loose upon the world to influence it and 
 refiect Him upon it. In 1874 a religious 
 movement began in Edinburgh Univer-
 
 29S WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? 
 
 sity among the students themselves, that 
 Has since spread to some of the best 
 academic institutions in America. The 
 students have a hall, and there they 
 meet on Sundays, or occasionally ou 
 weekdays, to hear addresses from their 
 professors, or from outside eminent men, 
 on Christian topics. There is no com- 
 mittee ; there are no rules ; there are no 
 reports. Every meeting is held strictly 
 in private, and any attempt to pose before 
 the world is sternly discouraged. No 
 paragraphs are put into the journals ; no 
 addresses are reported. The meetings 
 are private, quiet, earnest, and whatso- 
 ever student likes may attend them. 
 That is all. It is not an organization 
 in the ordinary sense, it is a ** leaven." 
 In all the schools it is the best men
 
 WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? 299 
 
 who take most part in the movement, 
 and among the schools it is the medical 
 side which furnishes the greatest num- 
 ber of students to the meetings. Some 
 of the most zealous have taken high 
 honors in their examinations, and some 
 have been in the first class of university 
 athletes. It is not a movement that has 
 laid hold of vv-eak or worthless students 
 whom nobody respects, but one that is 
 maintained by the best men in every 
 department. The first benefit is to the 
 students themselves. Take Edinburgh, 
 with about 4000 students drawn from all 
 parts of the world, and living in rooms 
 with no one caring for them. Taken 
 away from the moral support of their 
 previous surroundings, they went to the 
 bad in hundreds. It is now found tha^
 
 3CX) WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? 
 
 througli this movement they work better, 
 and that a greater percentage pass hon- 
 orably through the university portals into 
 life. The religious meetings, it is to be 
 obser^^ed, are never allowed to interfere 
 witli the work of the students. The 
 second result is to be seen in what are 
 called university settlements. A few 
 m.en will band themselves together and 
 rent a house in the lower parts of the 
 city and live there. They do no preach- 
 ing, no formal evangelization work ; but 
 they help the sick and they arrange 
 smoking concerts, and contribute to the 
 amusement of their neighbors. They 
 simply live with the people, and trust 
 that their example will produce a good 
 effect. Three years ago they printed and 
 distributed among themselves the follow-
 
 WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? 30I 
 
 ing '* Programme of Christianity:'* — 
 **Tg bind up the broken-hearted, to 
 give liberty to the captives, to comfort 
 all that mourn, to give beauty for ashes, 
 the garment of praise for the spirit of 
 heaviness/* I suppose there are few of 
 us with broken hearts, but there are other 
 people in the world besides ourselveSj and 
 underneath all the gayety of the city 
 there is not a street in which there are 
 not men and women with broken hearts. 
 Who is to help these people? No one 
 can lift them up in any way except those 
 who are living the life of Christ, and it 
 is their privilege and business to bind 
 up the broken-hearted. 
 
 I want to urge the claims of the Chris- 
 tian ministry on the strength and talent 
 of our youth. I find a singular want of
 
 302 WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? 
 
 men in the Christian ministry, and I 
 think it would be at least worth while 
 for some of you to look around, to look 
 at the men who are not filling the 
 churches, to look at the needs of the 
 crowds who throng the streets, and see 
 if you could do better with your life 
 than throw yourself into that work. 
 The advantage of the ministry is that 
 a man's whole life can be thrown into 
 the carrying out of that programme with- 
 out any deduction. Another advantage 
 of the ministry is that it is so poorly 
 paid that a man is not tempted to cut 
 a dash and shine in the world, but can 
 be meek and lowly in heart, like his 
 Master. It is enough for a servant to 
 be like his master, and there is a great 
 attraction in seeking obscurity, even iso-
 
 WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? . 303 
 
 lation, if one can be following the high- 
 est ideal. 
 
 With regard to the question, how you 
 shall begin the Christian life, let me 
 remind you that theology is the most 
 abstruse thing in the world, but that 
 practical religion is the simplest thing. 
 If any of you want to know how to 
 begin to be a Christian, all I can say 
 is that you should begin to do the next 
 thing you find to be done as Christ would 
 have done it. If you follow Christ the 
 *'old man'* will die of atrophy, and the 
 * ' new man ' ' will grow day by day under 
 His abiding friendship.
 
 THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE
 
 THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 T WIIyL give a note or two, pretty 
 fflucli by way of refreshing the mem- 
 ory about the Bible and how to look 
 at it. 
 
 First : The Bible catne out of religion^ 
 not religion out of the Bible, The Bible 
 is a product of religion, not a cause of 
 it The war literature of America, which 
 culminated, I suppose, in the publication 
 of President Grant's life, came out of 
 the war ; the war did not come out of 
 
 807
 
 308 THS STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 the literature. And so in the distant 
 past, there flowed among the nations of 
 heathendom, a small, warm stream, like 
 the Gulf Stream in the cold Atlantic — 
 a small stream of religion ; and now and 
 then at intervals, men, carried along by 
 this stream, uttered themselves in words. 
 The historical books came out of facts ; 
 the devotional books came out of expe- 
 riences ; the letters came out of circum- 
 stances ; and the Gospels came out of all 
 three. That is where the Bible came 
 from. It came out of religion ; religion 
 did not come out of the Bible. You see 
 the difference. The religion is not, then, 
 in the writing alone ; but 'in those facts, 
 experiences, circumstances, in the his- 
 tor>' and development of a people led 
 and taught by God. And it is not the
 
 THE STUDY OK THE BIBLE. 309 
 
 words that are inspired so much as the 
 men. 
 
 Secondly : These rnen were authors ; 
 they were not pens. Their individuality 
 comes out on every page they wrote. 
 They were different in mental and liter- 
 ar}' style ; in insight ; and even the same 
 writer differs at different times. II. Thes- 
 salonians. for example, is considerably 
 beneath the level of Romans, and III. 
 John is beneath the level of I. John. A 
 man is not always at his best. These 
 writers did not know they were writing 
 a Bible. 
 
 Third : The Bible is not a book; it is a 
 library. It consists of sixty-six books. 
 It is a great convenience, but in some 
 respects a great misfortune, that these 
 books have always been bound up to
 
 3IO THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 gether and given out as one book to tlie 
 world, when they are not ; because that 
 has led to endless mistakes in theology 
 and in practical life. 
 
 Fourth : These books, w^hich make up 
 this library, written at inter^^-als of hun- 
 dreds of years, were collected after the 
 last of the writers w^as dead — long after 
 — by human hands. Where were the 
 bocks? Take the New Testament. 
 There were four lives of Christ. One 
 was in Rome ; one was in Southern 
 Italy ; one was in Palestine ; one in 
 Asia IMinor. There were twenty-one 
 letters. Five were in Greece and Mace- 
 donia ; five in Asia ; one in Rome. 
 The rest were in the pockets of private 
 individuals. Theophilus had Acts. They 
 were collected undesignedly. For ex-
 
 THE STUDY OF THE BIBI.E. 3II 
 
 ample, the letter to the Galatians was 
 written to the Church in Galatia. Some- 
 body would make a copy or two, and 
 put it into the hands of the members 
 of the different churches, and they would 
 find their way not only to the churches 
 in Galatia, but after an interval to nearly 
 all the churches. In those days the Chris- 
 tians scattered up and down through the 
 world, exchanged copies of those letters, 
 very much as geologists up and down the 
 world exchange specimens of minerals at 
 the present time, or entomologists ex- 
 change specimens of butterflies. And 
 after a long time a number of the books 
 began to be pretty well known. In the 
 third century the New Testament con- 
 sisted of the following books : The four 
 Gospels, Acts, thirteen letters of Paul,
 
 312 THE STUDY OF THK BIBLE. 
 
 I. JoHn, I. Peter ; and in addition, tlie 
 Epistles of Barnabas and Hernias. This 
 was not called the New Testament, but 
 the Christian Library. Then these last 
 books were discarded. They ceased to 
 be regarded as upon the same level as 
 the others. In the fourth century the 
 canon was closed — that is to say, a list 
 was made up of the books which were 
 to be regarded as canonical. And then 
 long after that tliey were stitched to- 
 gether and made up into one book — 
 hundreds of years after that. Who made 
 up the complete list? It was never form- 
 ally made up. The bishops of the differ- 
 ent churches Tvould draw up a list each 
 of the books that they thought ought 
 to be put into this Testament. The 
 churches also would give their opinion.
 
 THK STUDY OF THK BIBLE. 313 
 
 Sometimes councils would meet and talk 
 it over — discuss it. Scholars like Jerome 
 would investigate the authenticity of the 
 different documents, and there came to 
 be a general consensus of the cliurches 
 on the matter. But no formal closing 
 of the canon was ever attempted. 
 
 And lastly : All religions have their 
 sacred books, just as the Christians have 
 theirs. Why is it necessary to remind 
 ourselves of that? If you ask a man 
 why he believes such and such a thing, 
 he will tell you. Because it is in the 
 Bible. If you ask him, *'How do you 
 know the Bible is true?" he will prob- 
 ably reply, ** Because it says so.** Now, 
 let that man remember that the sacred 
 books of all the other religions make 
 the same claim ; and while it is quite
 
 314 THE STUDY OF THE BIBI.E. 
 
 enough among ourselves to talk about 
 a thing being true because it is in the 
 Bible, we come in contact with out- 
 siders, and have to meet the skepticism 
 of the day. We must go far deeper 
 than that. The religious books of the 
 other religions claim to be far more di- 
 vine in their origin than do ours. For 
 example, the Mohammedans claim for 
 the Koran — a large section of them, at 
 least — that it was uncreated, and that it 
 lay before the throne of God from the 
 beginning of time. They claim it was 
 put into the hands of the angel Gabriel, 
 who brought it down to Mahomet, and 
 dictated it to him, and allowed him at 
 long intervals to have a look at the orig- 
 inal book itself — bound with silk and 
 studded with precious stones. That is a
 
 THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 315 
 
 claim of much higher Divinity than we 
 claim for our book ; and if we simply 
 have to rely upon the Bible's testimony 
 to its own verity, it is for the same rea- 
 son the Mohammedan would have you 
 believe his book, and the Hindu would 
 have you put your trust in the Vedas. 
 That is why thorough Bible study is of 
 such importance. We can get to the 
 bottom of truth in itself, and be able to 
 give a reason for the faith that is in us. 
 Now may I give yon, before I stop, 
 just a couple of examples of how the 
 Bible came out of religion, and not re- 
 ligion out of the Bible? Take one of 
 the letters. Just see how it came out 
 of the circumstances of the time. The 
 first of the letters that was written will 
 do very well as an example. It is the
 
 3l6 THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 1st Epistle to the Thessalonians. In the 
 year 52 Paul went to Europe. He spent 
 three Sundays in Thessalonica, created a 
 great disturbance by his preaching, and 
 a riot sprang up, and his life was in 
 danger. He was smuggled out of the 
 city at night — not, however, before 
 having founded a small church. He 
 was unable to go back to Thessalo- 
 nica, although he tried it two or three 
 times ; but he wrote a letter. That is 
 the first letter to the Thessalonians. You 
 see how it sprang out of the circum- 
 stances of the time. Take a second ex- 
 ample. Let us take one of the lives of 
 Christ. Suppose you take the life re- 
 corded by Mark. Now, from internal 
 evidences you can make out quite clear- 
 ly how it was written, by whom it was
 
 THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 317 
 
 written, and to whom it was written. 
 You understand at once it was written 
 to a Roman public. If I were writing a 
 letter to a red Indian I would make it 
 very different from a letter I would write 
 to a European. Now, Mark puts in a 
 number of points which he would net if 
 he had been writing to Greeks. For ex- 
 ampl^s, Mark almost never quotes proph- 
 ecy. The Romans did not know any- 
 thiu r about prophecy. Then, he gives 
 little explanations of Jewish customs. 
 When I was writing home I had to give 
 some little explanations of American cus- 
 toms — for example, Commencement Day. 
 When Mark writes to Rome about things 
 happening farther East, he gives elabor- 
 ate explanations. Again, Mark is fond 
 cf I^atin words— writing to the Latins,
 
 3l8 THE STUDY OF TPIE BIBI.E. 
 
 who could understand them. He talks 
 about * ' centurion, " " prsetorium, ' ' and 
 others. Then, he always turns Jewish 
 money into Roman money, just as I 
 should say a book, if I were writing to 
 Europe about it, costs two shillings, in- 
 stead of fifty cents. Mark, for example, 
 says, **two mites, which make a codran- 
 tes,'' He refers to the coins which the 
 Romans knew. In these ways we find 
 out that the Bible came out of the cir- 
 cumstances and 'the places and the times 
 in which it was written. Then if we 
 will we can learn where Mark got. his 
 information, to a large extent. It is an 
 extremely interesting study. I should 
 like to refer you to Godet's *'New Tes- 
 tament Studies,'' where you will get this 
 worked out. I^et me just indicate to yon
 
 THE STUDY OF THK BIBLE. 319 
 
 how these sources of information are ar- 
 rived at — the principal sources of infor- 
 mation. There are a number of graphic 
 touches in the book which indicate an 
 eye-witness. Mark himself could not 
 have been the eye-vv'itness ; and yet there 
 are a number of graphic touches which 
 show that he got his account from an 
 eye-witness. You will find them, for 
 example, in Mark iv. 38 ; x. 50; vi. 31 ; 
 vii. 34. You v/ill find also graphic 
 touches indicating an ear-witness — as if 
 the voice lingered in the mind of the 
 writer. For example, the retention -of 
 Aramaic in v. 41 ; and in vii. 34 — ''Z^- 
 litha cttmi; Damsel, I say unto thee, 
 arise. '^ He retained the Aramaic words 
 Christ said, as I would say in Scotland, 
 **My wee lassie, rise up.** The very
 
 320 THE STUDY OF THK BIBLE. 
 
 words lingered in his ear, and be put 
 them in in the original. Then there 
 are occasional phrases indicating the 
 moral impression produced — v. 15 ; x. 
 24 ; X. 32. Now, INIark himself was not 
 either the eye-witness or ear-witness. 
 There is internal evidence that he got 
 his information from Peter. We know 
 very well that Mark was an intimate 
 friend of Peter's. When Peter came to 
 Mark's house in Jerusalem, after he got 
 cut of prison, the very serv^ant knew his 
 voice, so that he must have been well 
 known in the house. Therefore he was 
 a friend of Mark's. The coloring and 
 notes seem to be derived from. Peter. 
 There is a sense of wonder and admira- 
 tlon which you find all through the book, 
 very like Peter's way of looking at
 
 TKE STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 231 
 
 things— i. 27 ; i. 33 ; i- 45 ; ii- 12 ; v. 42 ; 
 and a great many others. But, still more 
 interesting, Mark quotes the words, * * Get 
 thee behind Me, Satan," which were said 
 to Peter's shame, but he omits the pre- 
 ceding words said to his honor — "Thou 
 art Peter. On this rock," and so on. 
 Peter had learned to be humble when he 
 was telling Mark about it. Compare Mark 
 viii. 27-33, '^^^'^ Matthew's account — xvi. 
 13-33. Mark also omits the fine achieve- 
 ment of Peter — walking on the lake. 
 When Peter was talking to Mark he 
 never said anything about it. Compare 
 vi. 50 with Matthew's account — xiv. 28. 
 And Mark alone records the two warn- 
 ings given to Peter by the two cock-crow- 
 ings, making his fall the more inexcus- 
 able. See Mark xiv. 30 ; also the 68th
 
 322 THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 verse and the y2d. Peter did not write 
 the book; we know that, because Peter's 
 style is entirely diflferent. None of the 
 four Gospels have the names of the wri- 
 ters attached to them. We have had to 
 find all these things out ; but Mark's 
 Gospel is obviously made up of notes 
 from Peter's evangelistic addresses. 
 
 So we see from these simple examples 
 how human a book the Bible is, and how 
 the Divinity in it has worked through 
 human means. The Bible, in fact, has 
 come out of religion ; not religion out 
 of the Bible.
 
 A TALK ON BOOKS
 
 A TALK ON BOOKS. 
 
 IV /r Y object at this time is to give 
 encouragement and help to the 
 *' duffers," the class of "hopeful duf- 
 fers. ' ' Brilliant students have every help, 
 but second-class students are sometimes 
 neglected and disheartened. I have great 
 sympathy with the "duffers," because I 
 was only a second-rate student myself. 
 The subject of my talk with you is 
 
 Books. 
 
 A gentleman in Scotland who has an 
 excellent library has placed on one side
 
 326 A TALK ON BOOKS. 
 
 of the room his heavy, sombre tomes, and 
 over tho«e shelves the form of an owl. 
 On the other side of the room are ar- 
 ranged the lighter books, and over these 
 is the figure of a bird known in Scotland 
 as "the dipper." This is a most sensible 
 division. The ' ' owl books ' ' are to be 
 mastered, — the great books, such as Gib- 
 bon's "Rome," Butler's "Analogy," 
 Dorner's "Person of Christ," and text- 
 books of philosoph}' and science. Every 
 student should master one or two, at 
 least, of such ' ' owl books, ' ' to exercise 
 his faculties and give him concentra- 
 tiveness. I do not intend to linger at 
 this side of the librar}', but will cross 
 over to the "dipper books," which 
 are for occasional reading: — for stimu- 
 lus, for guidance, recreation. I wall be
 
 A TALK ON BOOKS. 327 
 
 A UTOBIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 When I was a student in lodgings I 
 began to form a library, whicli I arranged 
 along the mantleshelf of my room. It 
 did not contain many books ; but it held 
 as many as some students could afford to 
 purchase, and, if wisely chosen, as many 
 as one could well use. My first purchase 
 was a volume of extracts from Ruskin's 
 works, which then in their complete form 
 were very costly. Ruskin taught me to 
 use my eyes. Men are born blind as 
 bats or kittens, and it is Ions: before 
 men's eyes are opened ; some men never 
 learn to see as long as thc}^ live. I often 
 wondered, if there was a Creator, why 
 He had not made the world more beau- 
 tiful. Would not crimson and scarlet
 
 328 A TALK ON BOOKS. 
 
 colors have been far richer than green 
 and browns ? But Ruskin taught me to 
 see the world as it is, and it soon be- 
 came a new world to me, full of charm 
 and loveliness. Now I can linger beside 
 a ploughed field and revel in the afiSu- 
 ence of color and shade v/hich are to 
 be seen in the newly turned furrows, 
 and I gaze in wonder at the liquid amber 
 of the two feet of air above the brown 
 earth. Now^ the colors and shades of the 
 woods are a delight, and at ever)- turn 
 my eyes are surprised at fresh charm.s. 
 The rock which I had supposed to be 
 naked I saw clothed with lichens — 
 patches of color — marvellous organisms, 
 frail as the ash of a cigar, thin as brown 
 paper, yet growing and fructifying in 
 s-oite of wind and rain, of scorching sun
 
 A TALK OX BOOKS. 329 
 
 and biting frost. I owe much to Ruskin 
 
 for teaching me to see. 
 
 Next on my mantleshelf was Emerson. 
 I discovered Emerson for myself When 
 I asked what Emerson was, one authority 
 pronounced him a great man ; another 
 as confidently wrote him down a hum- 
 bug. So I silently stuck to Emerson. 
 Carlyle I could not read. After wading 
 through a page of Carlyle I felt as if 
 I had been whipped. Carlyle scolded 
 too much for my taste, and he seemed 
 to me a great man gone delirious. But 
 in Emerson I found what I would fain 
 have sought in Carlyle ; and, moreover, 
 I was soothed and helped. Emerson 
 taught me to see wuth the mind. 
 
 Next on my shelf came two or three 
 volumes of George Eliot's works, from
 
 330 A TALK ON BOOKS. 
 
 which I gained some knowledge and a 
 further insight into many philosophical 
 and social questions. But my chief debt 
 to George Eliot at that time was that she 
 introduced me to pleasant characters — 
 nice people — and especially to one imag- 
 inary young lady whom I was in love 
 with one whole winter, and it diverted 
 my mind in solitude. A good novel is 
 a valuable acquisition, and it supplies 
 companionship of a pleasant kind. 
 
 iVmongst my small residue of books I 
 must name Channing's works. Before I 
 read Channing I doubted whether there 
 was a God ; at least I would rather have 
 believed that there were no God. After 
 becoming acquainted with Channing I 
 could believe there was a God, and I 
 was glad to believe in Him, for I felt
 
 A TALK ON BOOKS. 33 1 
 
 drawn to the good and gracious Sover- 
 eign of all things. Still, I needed fur- 
 ther what I found in F. W. Robertson, 
 the British officer in the pulpit — bravest, 
 truest of men — who dared to speak what 
 he believed at all hazards. From Rob- 
 ertson I learned that God is human ; 
 that we ma}^ have fellowship with Him, 
 because He sympathizes with us. 
 
 One day as I was looking over my 
 mantelshelf library, it suddenly struck 
 me that all these authors of mine were 
 heretics — these were dangerous books. 
 Undesignedly I had found stimulus and 
 help from teachers who were not credited 
 by orthodoxy. And I have since found 
 that much of the good to be got from 
 books is to be gained from authors often 
 classed as dangerous, for these provoke
 
 inquiry, and exercise one's powers. To- 
 wards the end of my shelf I had one or 
 two humorous works ; chief amongst 
 them all being Mark Twain. His hu- 
 mor is peculiar ; broad exaggeration, a 
 sly simplicity, comical situations, and 
 surprising turns of expressions ; but to 
 me it has been a genuine fund of humor. 
 The humorous side of a student's nature 
 needs to be considered, and where it is 
 undeveloped, it should be cultivated. I 
 have known many instances of good 
 students who seemed to have no sense 
 of humor. 
 
 I will not recommend any of m^^ favor- 
 ite books to another; they have done me 
 good, but they might not suit another 
 man. Every man must discover his own 
 books : but when he has found what fits
 
 A TALK ON BOOKS. 333 
 
 in with his tastes, what stimulates hiin 
 to thought, what supplies a want in his 
 nature, and exalts him in conception and 
 feeling, that is the book for the student, 
 be what it may. This brings me to 
 speak of 
 
 The Friendship of Books. 
 
 To fall in love with a good book is one 
 of the greatest events that can befall us. 
 It is to have a new influence pouring 
 itself into our life, a new teacher to in- 
 spire and refine us, a new friend to be 
 by our side always, who, when life grows 
 narrow and weary, will take us into his 
 wider and calmer and higher world. 
 Whether it be biography, introducing us 
 to some humble life made great by duty 
 done ; or history, opening vistas into the
 
 334 A TALK ON BOOKS. 
 
 movements and destinies of nations that 
 have passed away ; or poetry, making 
 music of all the common things around 
 us, and filling the fields and the skies 
 and the work of the city and the cottage 
 with eternal meanings, — whether it be 
 these, or story-books, or religious books, 
 or science, no one can become the friend 
 even of one good book without being 
 made wiser and better. Do not think 
 I am going to recommend any such book 
 to you. The beauty of a friend is that 
 we discover him. And we must each 
 taste the books that are accessible to us 
 for ourselves. Do not be disheartened 
 at first if you like none of them. That 
 is possibly their fault, not 3'ours. But 
 search, and search till you find what you 
 like. In amazingly cheap form — for a
 
 A TALK ON BOOKS. 335 
 
 few pence, indeed — almost ail the best 
 books are now to be had ; and I think 
 ever}^ one owes it as a sacred duty to his 
 mind to start a little library of his own. 
 How much do we not do for our bodies ? 
 How much thought and money do they 
 not cost us? And shall we not think 
 a little, and pay a little, for the cloth- 
 ing and adorning of the imperishable 
 mind? This private library may begin, 
 perhaps, with a single volume, and grow 
 at the rate of one or two a year; but 
 these, well chosen and well mastered, will 
 become such a fountain of strength and 
 wisdom that each shall be eager to add 
 to his store. A dozen books accumulated 
 in this way may be better than a whole 
 library. Do not be distressed if you do 
 not like time-honored books, or classical
 
 33^ A TALK ON BOOKS. 
 
 works, or recommended books. Choose 
 for yourself; trust yourself; plant 'your- 
 self on your own instincts ; that which is 
 natural for us, that which nourishes us 
 and gives us appetite, is that w4iich is 
 right for us. We have all different 
 minds, and w^e are all at different stages 
 of growth. Some other day we may 
 find food in the recommended book, 
 though we should possibly starve on it 
 to-day. The mind develops and changes, 
 and the favorites of this 3^ear, also, may 
 one day cease to interest us. Nothing 
 better, indeed, can happen to us than to 
 lose interest in a book we have often 
 read; for it means that it has done its 
 work upon us, and brought us up to its 
 level, and taught us all it had to teach.
 
 ^be Bltemus Xibrarv, 
 
 A choice collection of Standard and Popular books, 
 handsomely printed on fine paper, from large clear type, 
 and bound in handy volume size in faultless styles : 
 
 1. Sesame and Lilies. Three lectures. By John 
 
 Ruskin. 
 
 I. Of King's Treasuries. 
 II. Of Queen's Gardens. 
 III. Of the Mystery of Life. 
 
 2. The Pleasures of Life. By Sir John Lubbock, 
 
 M. P., F. R. S., D. C. L., LL. D. Complete 
 in one volume. 
 
 3. The Essays of Lord Francis Bacon, with Memoirs 
 
 and Notes. 
 
 4. Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Anto- 
 
 ninus. Translated by George Long. 
 
 5. A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with 
 
 the Encheridion. Translated by George Long. 
 
 6. Essays, First Series. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 7. Essays, Second Series. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 8. Cranford. By Mrs. Gaskell. 
 
 9. Of the Imitation of Christ. Four books com- 
 
 plete in one volume. By Thomas A Kempis. 
 
 10. The Vicar of Wakefield. By Oliver Goldsmith. 
 
 11. Letters, Sentences and Maxims. By Lord Ches- 
 
 terfield. " Masterpieces of good taste, good 
 writing, and good sense." 
 
 12. The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. By Jerome 
 
 K. Jerome. A book for an Idle Holiday. 
 
 13. Tales from Shakespeare. By Charles and Mary 
 
 Lamb, with an introduction by Rev. Alfred 
 Ainger, M. A.
 
 ^5 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
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