THE HUMAN NATURE 
 OF THE SAINTS 
 
 GEORGE HODGES 
 
GIFT OF 
 
THE HUMAN NATURE 
 OF THE SAINTS 
 
CLASSBOOK OF OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY 
 
 EVERYMAN'S RELIGION 
 
 CHRISTIANITY BETWEEN SUNDAYS 
 
 THE HERESY OF CAIN 
 
 THE BATTLES OF PEACE 
 
 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS 
 
 THE PATH OF LIFE 
 
 IN THIS PRESENT WORLD 
 
 THE YEAR OF GRACE (2 Vols.) 
 
 THE CROSS AND PASSION 
 FAITH AND SOCIAL SERVICE 
 
The Human Nature 
 of The Saints 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE HODGES 
 
 DEAN OF THE EPISCOPAL THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL 
 CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 
 
 Wefo f orft 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1914 
 
 All ri^his ttserved 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1904, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
Contents 
 
 THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS I 
 
 SAINTS AND STRIKERS . . . . .10 
 
 THE WISDOM OF THE WISE MEN . . .25 
 THE PROGRESS OF ANDREW . . 37 
 
 THE DAMNATION OF DIVES .... 49 
 
 THE REALITY OF THE TEMPTATION . . .61 
 THE UNBELIEF OF THOMAS .... 79 
 
 BLIND BARTIM/EUS ...... 89 
 
 THE MISSION OF PHILIP . . . . .102 
 
 THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS . . . .112 
 
 THE RELIGION OF A CHRISTIAN . . . .125 
 
 THE RICH YOUNG MAN . . . . .139 
 
 THE WIND AND THE FIRE . . . . .154 
 
 AT THE TABLE OF ZACCHEUS . . . .167 
 
 THE LORD'S BROTHER . . . . .179 
 
 ONE FROM TEN . . . . . .192 
 
 SAINTS IN SUMMER ...... 204 
 
 THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED . . .217 
 THE SATISFACTION OF RELIGION .... 230 
 
 iii 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1904, 
 Bv THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 
Contents 
 
 THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS I 
 
 SAINTS AND STRIKERS . . . . .10 
 
 THE WISDOM OF THE WISE MEN . . .25 
 THE PROGRESS OF ANDREW . . . 37 
 THE DAMNATION OF DIVES .... 49 
 
 THE REALITY OF THE TEMPTATION . . .61 
 THE UNBELIEF OF THOMAS .... 79 
 
 BLIND BARTIM^US ...... 89 
 
 THE MISSION OF PHILIP ..... 102 
 
 THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS . . . .112 
 
 THE RELIGION OF A CHRISTIAN . . . .125 
 
 THE RICH YOUNG MAN . . . . .139 
 
 THE WIND AND THE FIRE . . . . .154 
 
 AT THE TABLE OF ZACCHEUS . . . .167 
 
 THE LORD'S BROTHER . . . . .179 
 
 ONE FROM TEN . . . . . .192 
 
 SAINTS IN SUMMER ...... 204 
 
 THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED . . .217 
 THE SATISFACTION OF RELIGION . . . .230 
 
 iii 
 
THE TOMBS OF THE PKOPHETS. 
 
 Woe nnto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because 
 ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepul- 
 chres of the righteous. Matt. 23 : 29. 
 
 OUR Lord is making no objection either to 
 architecture or to enthusiasm. His words are 
 not to be taken as a criticism of national 
 monuments or even of cemeteries. They do 
 not interfere with Memorial Day or with the 
 Fourth of July or with the festivals of the 
 saints. 
 
 What our Lord does object to is the hy- 
 pocrisy which makes so much of the prophets 
 after they are dead, while it abuses the prophets 
 who are yet alive. Carved stones for Elijah 
 and Elisha, cobble stones for John and Peter ; 
 that is what He means. " Woe unto you, 
 scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! because ye 
 build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish 
 the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If 
 we had been in the days of our fathers we 
 would not have been partakers with them in 
 the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be 
 witnesses unto yourselves that ye are the 
 children of them which killed the prophets. 
 1 
 
2 THE 'HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 And ye yourselves are filling up the measure 
 of your fathers." 
 
 The name of this old sin, in the milder form 
 which it assumes to-day, is detraction. It is 
 now aimed not against the life of the prophet, 
 but against his reputation. The great man 
 comes, and divides society into parties. To 
 those who are not of his party, he can do nothing 
 good. They make it their business to obstruct 
 and revile him. Every word and deed is in- 
 terpreted in the interests of partisan prejudice. 
 Even his intentions are accounted base. 
 
 " I am often amazed," said Mr. Gladstone, 
 "at the construction put upon my acts and 
 words ; but experience has shown me that they 
 are commonly put under the microscope, and 
 then found to contain all manner of horrors, 
 like the animalcules in Thames water." Some- 
 body said to that great statesman at the end 
 of his life, " You have so lived and wrought 
 that you have kept the soul alive in England." 
 His noblest contemporary, after he was dead, 
 called him "a great Christian." His biog- 
 grapher closes the story of his life with the 
 words, " He upheld a golden lamp." But you 
 know very well how he was persistently ma- 
 ligned. You know that there were excellent 
 people who could not say anything too bad 
 about him. 
 
THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 3 
 
 For the sin of detraction is eminently the 
 offense of excellent people. Our Lord was 
 addressing the most respectable citizens of Je- 
 rusalem. Men and women who are apparently 
 possessed of all the virtues will be so affected 
 by the person of a prophet who prophesies on 
 the other side that they will lie and steal. 
 They will eagerly believe lies and repeat them 
 to steal his good name. Some of them would 
 like to kill him. 
 
 I hope that we may have the grace, so far 
 as we are concerned, to contribute to a public 
 opinion which is against the detraction of 
 public men. A community which encourages 
 school children to honor the memory of Wash- 
 ington and Lincoln, while at the same time it 
 encourages politicians to defame the men who 
 at this hour are serving the state, differs not at 
 all from that against which the Lord spoke 
 in the text. 
 
 What I have in mind, however, more par- 
 ticularly, is the detraction of the religious, 
 the offense of the slanderous saints. Here, for 
 example, is a passage from the life of Dr. 
 Pusey : " During this time he was an object of 
 wide-spread, deep, fierce suspicion. Some 
 heads of houses would not speak to him when 
 they met him in the street. The post brought 
 him, day by day, various forms of insults by 
 
4: THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 letters, signed and anonymous. . . . He 
 once said that that sort of thing took more 
 out of him in half an hour than ten hours' 
 work ; and his frequent collapses of health 
 were probably rather caused by heart than by 
 head strain." The people who wrote to Dr. 
 Pusey were very pious persons. They said 
 their prayers and read their Bibles, and then 
 wrote their letters. 
 
 So was the Kev. Augustus Toplady a pious 
 person. You remember that he was the author 
 of the hymn " Rock of Ages." He declared 
 that John Wesley was a liar. He was quite 
 certain of it, and he announced the fact in 
 public with a loud voice yes, with a joyful 
 voice, for he was at that moment engaged in 
 a controversy with Wesley, and this assertion 
 of Wesley's mendacity was for the purpose of 
 making a point. It was a good point, as any- 
 body can see. Mr. Toplady may have after- 
 wards repented : I know not. It is unlikely : 
 the controversialist rarely repents. Even if he 
 does repent, the thing is done, the good man 
 has been hit over the heart and it hurts, and 
 apologetic words afterwards are a poor oint- 
 ment. 
 
 The author of "Kock of Ages" was an 
 abusive saint. Like Dr. Pusey's correspond- 
 ents, he was filled with bitterness and wrath 
 
THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 5 
 
 and anger and clamor and evil-speaking, and 
 with religion. It is a strange, unholy com- 
 bination ; but it exists. 
 
 Enoch walks with God, as the old record 
 says. There he goes along the country road, 
 hand in hand with God. And there, as they 
 two walk together, Noah and Methuselah and 
 Shem and Ham and Japhet hoot after them, 
 and throw stones. It happens every day. 
 
 It comes, I suppose, from the great zeal 
 which men have for the truth, or for their con- 
 ception of the truth. They are afraid that 
 something disastrous will be done to the truth. 
 They do not perceive that Enoch is walking 
 with God. All that they see is that he is 
 going in another direction than that to- 
 wards which their own feet are pointed, and 
 they have a queer idea that if they shout at 
 him and stone him, he will turn about and 
 walk with them ! Why should he ? It is 
 one of the most flagrant and foolish of errors. 
 
 Perhaps the heart of the matter is this : that 
 the good, who know by their own experience 
 how hard it is to stay good, find it easy to be- 
 lieve evil of the good. Anyhow, they do it. 
 They believe evil and speak it. And it is a 
 sin, like stealing. It is one of the sins of the 
 saints. 
 
 It is true that an argument in favor of 
 
6 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 strong language may be drawn from this very 
 discourse of our Lord out of which the text 
 is taken. " Ye serpents," He says, " ye gener- 
 ation of vipers, how can ye escape the dam- 
 nation of hell ? " It is not absolutely certain, 
 however, that He used those words. St. Luke 
 reports this same address to the scribes and 
 Pharisees, and leaves them out. He agrees 
 with St. Matthew as to the sentences which 
 precede and as to the sentences which follow. 
 This particular hard sentence is omitted. 
 
 But, anyway, even if He did assail good 
 churchmen with such bitter epithets, the ques- 
 tion still remains as to the tone of voice in 
 which He spoke. Did He speak in anger or in 
 sorrow ? Were His hands clenched, or were 
 they held out in warning, in deprecation, in 
 entreaty ? Was He pushing the pharisees over 
 the brink into the bottomless pit, or was He 
 crying out in sharp distress to tell them the 
 peril in which they stood? That, you see, 
 will make a difference in our understanding of 
 them. They must be interpreted by the tones 
 of His voice. And these we hear in the words 
 which follow, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou 
 that killest the prophets and stonest them that 
 are sent unto thee, how often would I have 
 gathered thy children together as a hen 
 gathereth her chickens under her wings, and 
 
THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 7 
 
 ye would not." This is no language of contro- 
 versy, no hurling back and forth of the hard 
 names that hurt. It is in the midst of the 
 holy week, and He who speaks stands already 
 in the shadow of death, in the neighborhood 
 of the cross. Let nobody come here for stones 
 with which to bruise his neighbor's head. 
 
 It is true that an argument in favor of 
 detraction may be found in the necessity to 
 defend the truth. Somebody will say, What 
 shall we do ? Shall we stand quietly by and let 
 error speak without contradiction ? Shall we 
 give the heretic and the schismatic the whole 
 field ? Shall we see church and state, town 
 and parish, going to the bad and let them go ? 
 Shall we surrender ? 
 
 No, friend, there shall be no surrender. But 
 let us choose the most effective weapon. Let 
 us contend for truth in the manner which shall 
 best maintain the truth. When Jesus came, 
 bringing the beatitudes with Him, preaching 
 the gospel of gentleness and courtesy and 
 brotherly love, He amazed His hearers. In- 
 deed, are we not to infer from the account of 
 the temptation that it seemed for a moment to 
 Himself that the conquest of the world could 
 hardly be attained by a campaign of peace. 
 Else what is meant by that conversation with 
 the devil on the top of the mountain. " All 
 
8 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 these will I give Thee," says the devil, " but you 
 must take possession through my help." To 
 which the Lord answers, " Get thee behind 
 Me, Satan." 
 
 All this endeavor to protect and advance the 
 truth and the right by violence, by compulsion, 
 by fierce controversy, by detraction, by writing 
 letters which make the hearts of good men 
 ache, by calling the saints liars, has always 
 and everywhere brought about the defeat of 
 the cause for which the contestant has thus 
 contended. The Christian man who has fought 
 with the devil's weapons has but cut his own 
 hands. 
 
 Persecution has always turned against the 
 persecutor. Truth makes its way by affirma- 
 tion, not by negation. It is accepted by those 
 who are fairly convinced by an appeal to 
 reason. And that appeal is assisted by sym- 
 pathy, by courtesy, by patience, by honest 
 argument, and by nothing else. Everything 
 else hinders, detraction most of all. 
 
 Let us, then, build high the tombs of the old 
 prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the 
 righteous men of the past time. But let us 
 remember that our own age has its own 
 prophets, and that the righteous are still with 
 us. The best defense against detraction is to 
 cultivate the opposite virtue of appreciation. 
 
THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 9 
 
 The best way to get out of a bad habit of 
 blame is to get as quickly as we can into a 
 good habit of praise. Let us expect goodness, 
 and a high purpose, and a pure motive, and 
 wisdom, and fine achievement; and be quick 
 to discover them in public and in private. Let 
 us deny, so far as lies in us, the ingratitude of 
 republics. When we differ with our neighbors, 
 as differ we must in a world where tempera- 
 ments are so various and truth so vast, let us 
 do it with a good spirit, without jealousy, and 
 without suspicion. Let us see to it that no 
 partisanship, whether political or ecclesiastical, 
 shall make us blind to our neighbor's virtues, 
 or dull to his achievements. If the book pleases 
 us, let us write to the author and say so. If 
 the thing that is said or done commends itself 
 to us, let us not keep our appreciation secret. 
 Let us praise our contemporaries without re- 
 luctance, and not wait till they are dead and 
 out of hearing. So shall we behave ourselves 
 as Christian citizens and churchmen, and 
 steadily encourage and increase the goodness 
 of the world. 
 
SAINTS AND STEIKERS. 
 
 Can two walk together, except they be agreed ? Amos 
 3:3. 
 
 THAT depends upon their character, and 
 upon the nature of their disagreement. 
 
 If they are nervous or narrow-minded per- 
 sons they cannot walk together with any satis- 
 faction, unless they walk in silence. The least 
 difference of opinion irritates them, because 
 they are irritable. A man who has good eyes 
 goes about in the blaze of the sun, and enjoys 
 it; but the sun hurts the man who has sore 
 eyes. The fault is in the eyes. If the red- 
 eyed man has good sense he keeps out of the 
 sun ; and if nervous and narrow-minded per- 
 sons are wise enough to understand themselves 
 they keep out of discussion. They are as unfit 
 for it as a lame man is to run a race. 
 
 The like is true of all persons who are 
 suspicious of the soundness of their own argu- 
 ments, or of the excellence of their own cause. 
 They are afraid ; and because of their fear 
 they lose control of themselves. He who is 
 sure that he is in possession of the truth ; he 
 who knows that he is right, and that being 
 10 
 
SAINTS AND STRIKERS. 11 
 
 right all the forces of the universe are on his 
 side; can afford to be serene and patient. 
 When his adversary denies that two and two 
 make four, he does not get excited. He does 
 not tremble for the foundations of the world 
 of mathematics. He remembers the philos- 
 opher who noticed that the burning of a little 
 straw would for the moment hide the shining 
 of the everlasting stars, but that the smoke 
 always drifted away without doing the stars 
 the smallest damage. It is the man who is 
 maintaining that two and two make seven who 
 gets excited ; and his excitement is much in- 
 creased if he suspects in the secrecy of his in- 
 most soul that the true answer is not seven but 
 either five or four. He cannot walk in peace 
 with his neighbor, unless he avoids the subject 
 of addition. 
 
 The nature of the disagreement enters also 
 into the question. If the difference between 
 the two is slight, or relates chiefly to details, 
 then they will walk together only the more 
 pleasantly by reason of it. Nothing is so ob- 
 structive to all rational and enjoyable conver- 
 sation as complete agreement. They who 
 agree entirely have nothing to say. The life 
 of society is in its interesting divergencies of 
 opinion. The good Lord has fortunately made 
 even honest people very different. There are 
 
12 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 as many minds as there are faces. Some peo- 
 ple in every company are conservative, others 
 are progressive. Nobody is completely right. 
 So we go on arguing, walking together and 
 debating as we walk, to our constant profit. 
 
 Even when the disagreement is deep and 
 serious, and one is right according to all prin- 
 ciples of goodness, while the other is wrong 
 according to all principles of evil, even here 
 we may not lightly permit the two to walk 
 apart. If the wise walk only with the wise, 
 what will become of the fools ? If the good 
 associate only with the good, how will it fare 
 with the bad ? Will they not grow worse ? 
 If they who have the truth and the right for- 
 sake their neighbors who are in error, how 
 shall mistakes be corrected ? Is it not the 
 business of those who see clearly to take their 
 blind brothers by the elbow, and by walking 
 with them keep them in the path ? All dis- 
 agreements are magnified and perpetuated by 
 lack of acquaintance among those who hold 
 different opinions. The personal element 
 enters into all our social problems, and counts 
 greatly. Prejudice keeps us from understand- 
 ing one another, and prejudice grows rank in 
 the soil of ignorance. Somebody said, " I hate 
 that man." To which somebody else rejoined. 
 " How can you hate him when you don't know 
 
SAINTS AND STRIKERS. 13 
 
 him ? " And the answer was, " How could I 
 hate him if I did know him ? " 
 
 So we come back to the question, " Can two 
 walk together, except they be agreed ? " And 
 we say, " Yes, if they are in good health and 
 spirits, and are persons of some sense ; espe- 
 cially if their disagreements are for the most 
 part on the surface, while they are in substan- 
 tial agreement underneath. Even they who 
 are very seriously out of accord may well be 
 advised to take a walk together, in hope of 
 better understanding." 
 
 I have in mind the relation between the 
 churches and the trade-unions. There is much 
 natural misunderstanding on both sides. 
 There are obvious disagreements. The 
 churches and the unions speak in quite differ- 
 ent dialects of the English language, and it is 
 not easy for anybody to interpret the one to 
 the other fairly. At the same time there are 
 fundamental agreements. In a true sense we 
 all mean the same thing. We are all open, as 
 I hope to show, to the same criticisms. We 
 are learning the same lessons. We are all 
 alike in being sometimes right and sometimes 
 wrong. The history of the unions is singu- 
 larly near to the history of the churches. To 
 many a man the union is the same thing as the 
 church. The union is his church. The labor 
 
14 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 movement is his religion ; it is his idea of the 
 progress of the kingdom of God. The two 
 associations have many of the same virtues and 
 many of the same defects. It will appear, I 
 think, as we reflect upon the matter, that we 
 are curiously in accord in regard to our blun- 
 ders. The only errors of the union concerning 
 which I have any qualification to speak are 
 those which I am able to understand because 
 they are equally the errors of the church. 
 For better and for worse, the church and the 
 union stand together. 
 
 The first agreement of the church with the 
 union is in the fact of variety. 
 
 People sometimes speak of the union as if 
 that name stood for a single type of the or- 
 ganization of labor ; but the truth is that the 
 unions are as different as the churches. Some 
 are large, and some are small ; some are old, 
 and some are young ; some are orthodox, and 
 some are conservative. There are unions 
 which are disposed to go into politics ; while 
 there are others which oppose such an associ- 
 ation with all their might. So it is in regard 
 to socialism : so in regard to industrial peace 
 and war. There are unions which have a 
 strike every few weeks ; there are other unions 
 which have not had a strike for forty years. 
 Anybody who begins to talk about the church 
 
SAINTS AND STRIKERS. 15 
 
 may properly be interrupted after the first 
 sentence and asked, " What church do you 
 mean ? are you discussing the Catholics or the 
 Congregationalists ? do you refer to the Pres- 
 byterians or to the Unitarians ? are you criti- 
 cising the Methodists or the Mennonites?" 
 Plainly, there are differences. So there are 
 among the unions. 
 
 The church and the union are alike in the 
 reasonable demand to be judged by their best 
 rather than by their worst, by their saints 
 rather than by their sinners, by their ideals 
 rather than by their blunders. They ought to 
 be estimated by their official statements, not 
 by the foolish speeches which were made in 
 the debate. They are represented by their 
 representative men, not by their heretics or 
 their schismatics: by Bishop Lawrence and 
 Bishop Potter, by Mr. Gompers and Mr. 
 Mitchell. There are all sorts of churches and 
 unions, but the only fair basis of praise or 
 blame of the church movement or of the union 
 movement is that which rests upon such 
 churches and unions as are well established 
 after long experience. 
 
 The second agreement of the church with 
 the union is in the fact of unity : along with 
 all this variety of character goes a unity of 
 purpose. 
 
16 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 This purpose is held in common by all good 
 unions and by all good churches. It is the 
 purpose to benefit the community. It is ex- 
 pressed in the phrase of our common Master 
 when He said that He came not to be minis- 
 tered unto but to minister. That is the ideal 
 of us all. 
 
 It is true that the churches are sometimes 
 criticised for caring less for earth than they do 
 for paradise. It is said that their energies are 
 mainly directed towards the life to come, and 
 that they are altogether too contented with 
 bad conditions in the life which now is. They 
 want to go to heaven : whereas the right de- 
 sire is to bring heaven down. 
 
 It is true that the unions are sometimes 
 criticised for an opposite defect. It is said 
 that the life of the spirit has no meaning for 
 them. That what they are exclusively con- 
 cerned about is present and material prosper- 
 ity. They want more wages and less hours, 
 and better houses and a fairer share of com- 
 fort. 
 
 That is, the churches act as if man had no 
 body, while the unions act as if he had no 
 soul. The churches treat him as if he were 
 an angel ; the unions treat him as if he were 
 an animal. It is hard to put a right propor- 
 tion of interest on all sides of life at the same 
 
SAINTS AND STKIKEKS. 17 
 
 time. It is not to be wondered at if the 
 church on the one side and the union on the 
 other have omitted matters of importance. 
 We have not done so with intention. We are 
 all intent alike on the highest welfare of the 
 whole man. But the physician has his proper 
 work in dealing with the flesh, and the priest 
 in dealing with the spirit. The union and the 
 church stand in a like relation. A man ought 
 to belong to a union in order that he may lift 
 the level of common life for himself and for 
 his fellows. Generally speaking, that cannot 
 be done in any other way. The union is es- 
 sential to the material welfare of the hand 
 worker. The same man ought also to belong 
 to a church in order that he may develop him- 
 self on the spiritual side, keep alive in his soul 
 the consciousness of the unseen and eternal, and 
 be helped to meet his daily temptations and to 
 do his daily duty. The church and the union, 
 like the priest and the physician, will each do 
 better service by coming to a better under- 
 standing. 
 
 To this criticism which the church and the 
 union are in the habit of making, one against 
 the other, is to be added another which is 
 often made by outside persons against them 
 both. When we maintain that our supreme 
 purpose is to set forward the welfare of the 
 
18 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 community, they reply with some bitterness 
 that in very truth neither of us, neither church 
 nor union, cares for anything except our own 
 advantage. What we really want, they say, is 
 power and money, and our own good. 
 
 That is at the heart of the present opposi- 
 tion of the French government to the monas- 
 teries and the church schools. These religious 
 folk, they cry, do not care for France : all that 
 they care for is the increase of their order. 
 If they were believed to be the servants of the 
 people, honestly devoting themselves in the 
 name of Jesus to the general good, asking for 
 no return, they would be blessed rather than 
 cursed by all their neighbors. 
 
 The same feeling is at the heart of the pres- 
 ent wide-spread hatred of the trade-union. 
 People look upon it as a secret society, intent 
 on its own selfish purposes, and wholly regard- 
 less of the public. They find it practically 
 impossible to distinguish between the monop- 
 oly of labor and the monopoly of capital. 
 Anyway, it is a monopoly : that is, it is an en- 
 deavor of a few to get the better of the many. 
 
 These, of course, are misjudgments. They 
 may indeed be based on facts ; there are sel- 
 fish churches and there are selfish unions which 
 deserve all the hard things that can be said 
 against them. But we know, who view these 
 
SAINTS AND STKIKEES. 19 
 
 things from within, that the church and the 
 union alike are actuated by a great, unselfish 
 purpose to do good. We are all working for the 
 Kingdom of God, for the advancement of all 
 that makes for common justice, and righteous- 
 ness and peace and joy. We are making many 
 blunders, and some of them are bad ones ; we 
 are beset not only by the difficulties of the 
 situation but by the weaknesses of our own 
 human nature ; we are abundantly open to 
 criticism. We know that. But through all 
 that we do, even through our folly, runs one 
 high purpose, never wholly lost to sight, the 
 purpose to make it possible for every human 
 being to live the life which is proper to a child 
 of God. 
 
 Among many agreements between the 
 church and the union I find a third in the 
 fact that they are learning the same lesson. 
 
 The problem is how best to advance our 
 common purpose. We all know by experience 
 that this is a most difficult undertaking. The 
 writer of the Psalms showed a good working 
 knowledge of human nature when he spoke of 
 the man who " hated to be reformed." Most 
 men hate to be reformed. Churches and 
 unions, like all other associations for improving 
 the community, find this out. But men who 
 ought to be reformed must somehow be 
 
20 
 
 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 brought under the influences of reformation. 
 The question is, How to do it. 
 
 The churches, being a good deal older than 
 the unions, were the first to undertake this 
 hard matter : and they have certain things to 
 say about it as the result of experience. The 
 chief conclusion of that experience is this : 
 that no good cause is helped by compulsion. 
 Men are brought to think aright and to act 
 aright by being convinced, not by being com- 
 pelled. 
 
 The question of the attitude of the union 
 towards the non-union man is in all material 
 respects like the question of the attitude of 
 the church towards the heretic and the schis- 
 matic. The church, like the union, is certain 
 of the righteousness of its own cause. It be- 
 lieves that the welfare of the whole commun- 
 ity is involved in the Christian organization. 
 And here it greatly exceeds the union : for 
 while the union-man claims that his society is 
 necessary to the salvation of the laboring class 
 in this present life, the churchman asserts that 
 his society is essential to the salvation of all 
 people of all classes both in this world and the 
 next. No unionist, in the very extremity of 
 his enthusiasm, has ever said so much as that. 
 
 But the heretic and the schismatic weaken 
 the church. They attack and endanger the 
 
SAINTS AND STRIKERS. 21 
 
 glorious cause. They bring into peril the im- 
 mortal souls of men. They keep back the ful- 
 filment of the will of God. I am trying to show 
 the union -man that the churchman is able to 
 understand how he feels because he occupies 
 the same position. The union has never in its 
 moments of deepest anger spoken of the scab as 
 the church has spoken of the heretic. Did 
 you ever read the major excommunication? 
 The union has never punished the man who is 
 accused of stealing his neighbor's job as the 
 church has punished the man who is accused 
 of destroying his neighbor's soul. Our custom 
 was to burn such persons over a slow fire. 
 
 We have been through it all, from the least 
 to the greatest and the worst. We have made 
 use of the strike and the boycott to an extent 
 which fills whole chapters of history. We 
 have not hesitated, when we had a point to 
 gain or an enemy to hurt, to lay a whole 
 nation under an interdict, whereby the people 
 were deprived of the necessaries of spiritual 
 life. When Mary was the Queen of England, 
 you remember what we did. We got a law 
 passed that nobody except an official of our 
 union should baptize, or confirm, or admin- 
 ister the sacrament of the altar, or marry, or 
 even bury in all the realm under pain first 
 of fine, then of imprisonment, and then of 
 
22 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 death. Cranmer, Eidley and Latimer were 
 burned at the stake as non-union bishops. You 
 know what we did as the Amalgamated As- 
 sociation of Congregationalists and Presby- 
 terians. We cut off the head of a non-union 
 king. You remember how we behaved in 
 Massachusetts in the matter of the open 
 state. There is no difference in prin- 
 ciple between the open state and the 
 open shop. The question was, Shall we 
 permit non-unionists to share with us in the 
 government ? And we said No. Not a man 
 shall hold a public office or even cast a vote 
 unless he is a member of the church. And we 
 whipped the non-union Baptists and the non- 
 union Quakers, beating them with scourges 
 through the streets of our chief cities. 
 
 It never did us any good. It never brought 
 our cause to victory. It lead straight to de- 
 feat always. We have tried the policy of 
 compulsion to the uttermost, and we assert 
 as the total result of our experience that it is 
 a policy of tragic blunder. We tried it in all 
 honesty of purpose, for the general good, with 
 a clear conscience, in the sight of God. It 
 seemed to us, as it seems to-day to many a 
 union, that it was the only thing to do. How 
 can a man stand by in silence while a strike- 
 breaker steals the bread out of the hands of 
 
SAINTS AND STRIKERS. 
 
 his hungry children ? How can a man be pas- 
 sive and peaceable while a heretic is poisoning 
 the wells of truth ? We did just what the 
 union does: we struck the heretic, intending 
 thereby to do right and serve heaven. But 
 we have to say that every such blow damaged 
 our own cause, and helped heresy. 
 
 For human nature works that way. Insti- 
 tutionalism and individualism are alike or- 
 dained of God. He has implanted in our souls 
 the instinct of association and the instinct of 
 independence. They are both sacred. Both 
 must be maintained. And in this nation both 
 will be maintained, in spite of all possible pro- 
 tests of the unions or the churches. Men must 
 be permitted to enter with all freedom into 
 any kind of legal combination, whether we 
 like it or not. And men must be permitted, 
 if they choose, to stay outside all combinations 
 unmolested. The corporation which opposes 
 the organization of its men, and the union 
 which refuses to work at the same trade with 
 the independent workman, have each of them 
 much to say for themselves, but after all is 
 said the fact remains that they are contending 
 against universal and eternal laws of human 
 nature. And it is like contending against the 
 law of gravitation. 
 
 I will not say that even the church has 
 
24 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 learned this lesson to the last page, and got it 
 all by heart. It is one of the most difficult of 
 all the lessons of the Book of Life. God for- 
 bid, then, that the church should criticise the 
 union for its treatment of the non-unionist, in 
 any other than a sympathetic spirit. It is 
 both bad and vain, and we are bound to say 
 so. But we found that out by doing the same 
 thing, and being punished for it. The union 
 is following in the steps of the church. It is 
 learning the same lesson, it is going through 
 the same experience, it will reach the same 
 conclusion. 
 
 Here we stand, the union and the church, 
 servants of the people. We agree in the va- 
 riety of our character, in the unity of our high 
 purpose, and in the slow-learned fact that that 
 purpose is defeated by compulsion, and gained 
 only by reason and sympathy and patience. 
 God bless our common purpose. God help us 
 out of misunderstanding and suspicion into 
 such cooperation as shall bring us to its best 
 attainment. 
 
THE WISDOM OF THE WISE MEK 
 
 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the 
 days of Herod the King, behold there came wise men from 
 the East to Jerusalem. Matt. 2 : 1. 
 
 THE wise men showed their wisdom by the 
 use which they made of their eyes, their feet 
 and their hands. 
 
 With their eyes, they saw the star. But 
 that was no great thing. Anybody with eyes, 
 who looks up into the clear sky at night, can 
 see a star. All the neighbors of the wise men 
 saw the star, and so did the sheep in the fields 
 and the dogs in the streets. The difference 
 between the wise men and their neighbors 
 was that while the neighbors saw the star, the 
 wise men recognized it. 
 
 "The star was so beautiful, large and clear, 
 
 That all the other stars of the sky 
 Became a white mist in the atmosphere, 
 And by this they knew that the coming was near 
 Of the Prince foretold in the prophecy." 
 
 But the white mist appeared only to the 
 wise men, and was caused by the intentness 
 with which they looked at the new star. They 
 
 25 
 
26 THE HUMAN NATUBE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 looked at it with all their eyes, till every other 
 sight became but a dim blur in comparison. 
 Other people of that town were a good deal 
 interested. They watched the sky night after 
 night, and pointed out the new star to their 
 children. But the nights were cold, and it 
 was rather hard to distinguish the new star 
 from the crowd of old ones, and presently they 
 ceased to look. They had seen only that 
 which was visible, and not all of that, the 
 wise men had seen the invisible. That was the 
 difference. 
 
 Was there really a new star? Into the 
 mathematical domains over which the astron- 
 omers keep guard did there actually enter a 
 new light, significant of an event on earth, 
 summoning those who saw and understood to 
 the cradle side of a new King ? The stars 
 used to be consulted for information. There 
 they shone like jewels in the ancient ceiling of 
 the sky, kindled by God's hand, moved here 
 and there in mystic combinations by God's 
 will, no doubt spelling out great truths, the 
 letters of divine messages, if we did but know 
 enough to read them. So men thought, as we 
 think no longer. You can still have your 
 horoscope read, and learn what is written 
 about you in the firmament of heaven. But 
 the customers of the astrologers are no longer 
 
THE WISDOM OF THE WISE HEN. 27 
 
 persons of good health and sense. All that 
 has gone by. The stars enter no longer into 
 human life. Was there a star ? Would they 
 have seen it at the college observatory ? And 
 if there was, as Kepler maintained, did it have 
 a meaning ? 
 
 We cannot help asking these questions. They 
 belong to the temperament of the time, which 
 inevitably affects us all. We cannot read the 
 story with the quiet acceptance which was 
 given to it by our fathers. The answers, how- 
 ever, whether they fall on one side or on the 
 other, are not of great importance. The visit 
 of the wise men has no place in Christian doc- 
 trine. Nothing depends upon it. Only let us 
 take care lest we treat the story as the wise 
 men's neighbors treated the star, who looked 
 at it, and were puzzled by it, and saw no 
 meaning in it, and then went on and thought 
 no more about it. Whether or not it has the 
 truth of statistics, it has the higher truth of 
 poetry. Whether or not it can be verified in 
 the realm of geography, it is blessedly and 
 eternally true in the realm of the spirit. The 
 wise men saw the star. Watchers of the sky, 
 and thus occupied about their ordinary busi- 
 ness, God addressed them in their own lan- 
 guage, met them on their own ground, spoke 
 to them from the pages of their own books, 
 
28 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 even as He came afterwards in another form 
 to men who were occupied with their nets. 
 In the stars to the astronomer, in the boats and 
 the nets to the fisherman, to each of us in the 
 opportunities of our daily tasks, God comes. 
 He still comes, and still speaks. The story of 
 the wise men is verified in our own experience. 
 Living as we do in an environment of mystery, 
 in a world of which we understand but a very 
 little, let us treat these beautiful stories of the 
 beginnings of the Perfect Life with becoming 
 humility. Especially let us see to it that no 
 new learning be allowed to rob us of our ap- 
 preciation of their ideal fitness, or to make us 
 indifferent to their spiritual truth or to their 
 divine message to our souls. 
 
 The wise men saw the star, and because they 
 were wise the} 7 knew what the star meant. 
 They saw the invisible. The secret of true 
 sight is to see the invisible. To a dog, or a 
 looking-glass, or a camera, a page of print is 
 nothing but a page of print, so many inches 
 this way and that of black lines on a white 
 ground. To a wise man, it is a message, an 
 instruction, even an inspiration. He looks 
 upon it, and is thereafter different. The sight 
 has brought a new thought into his mind, a 
 new motive into his life. The dull man, look- 
 ing over his shoulder, makes nothing of it. 
 
THE WISDOM OF THE WISE MEN. 29 
 
 He sees only the visible : a wise man sees the 
 invisible. 
 
 Jesus went about dividing men into com- 
 panies of the wise and of the unwise. The 
 sight of His face was like the sight of the 
 Epiphany star : everybody saw Him, a few 
 recognized Him. If you had asked the few 
 how they recognized Him, they could not have 
 given any adequate answer. They were like 
 the wise men who if they had been asked how 
 they knew that the star had a meaning could 
 not have answered in terms of astronomy. 
 They knew it ; that was all there was about it. 
 
 Kecognition belongs to the regions of 
 mystery, and eludes all endeavor to define it. 
 The man who comes out from the hearing of 
 great music, with his face aflame like the up- 
 turned faces of the Bethlehem shepherds, can- 
 not explain his emotion. He cannot convince 
 the doubter, or make his unappreciative neigh- 
 bor appreciate. He has seen the star, and the 
 star has brought him a message from the 
 Eternal. If the star has brought no message 
 for his neighbor, it must be that his neighbor 
 does not understand star language. There is 
 no grammar nor dictionary of that mystic 
 speech. The knowledge of it comes by nature, 
 or by the inspiration of God. It is significant 
 that on the Damascus road Saul heard a voice, 
 
30 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 while his companions heard only a sound. It 
 is another symbol of the difference between 
 people, whereby one sees and hears while those 
 who stand about are deaf and blind. 
 
 Having thus seen the star, the wise men fol- 
 lowed it. With their feet, they followed the 
 star. This was the natural result of recogni- 
 tion. He who has looked into the heart of a 
 new truth, he who has found a new hero or a 
 new saint, cannot be contented to sit still. He 
 is impelled to action. He must do something. 
 What shall we do ? cry the publicans and the 
 soldiers, after John the Baptist's sermon. 
 What shall we do? demand the hearers of 
 the apostles on the day of Pentecost. Lord, 
 what wilt Thou have me to do ? asks Saul in 
 the moment of the heavenly vision. The wise 
 men have this instinctive sense of service. 
 Beholding the star, it seems to beckon to 
 them ; it goes on across the sky ; and they fol- 
 low. They must follow. All vital truth 
 beckons to men, summons them, calls them out 
 of quiet and content to follow it. Because it 
 is vital truth it has to do with life, and affects 
 life, making it different. 
 
 Sometimes the call of truth is to go on to 
 the discovery of more truth. The man is 
 given a glimpse which fills him with desire for 
 clearer and nearer sight. He sees the star, but 
 
THE WISDOM OF THE WISE MEN. 31 
 
 that does not satisfy him : he would seek the 
 source of the star. The star shines not for its 
 own sake but as an evidence of another light 
 which the lover of light must find. The wise 
 men were brethren of the honorable fraternity 
 of scholars. The news of the coming of Christ 
 which had been brought to a maiden in her 
 chamber, to a priest before the altar, and to 
 shepherds tending their flocks, comes now to 
 men of reflection and study. And the imme- 
 diate result of it in their case is to make them 
 study harder. Out they go upon a journey of 
 investigation. To the revelation which God 
 had made in the sky they would add another 
 revelation which they trusted God would 
 make within reach of their journeying feet 
 and of their generous hands. Thus the Epiph- 
 any is the Christian festival of devout scholars, 
 and its meaning is that God is pleased to lead 
 the scholar from truth to truth, from the visi- 
 ble to the invisible, from the less to the 
 greater, from the imperfect knowledge of to- 
 day to the clearer knowledge of to-morrow, 
 from a light in the night sky to the light that 
 never was on land or sea. 
 
 It has been helpfully noticed that the direc- 
 tion of the wise men's journey is a symbol of 
 the progress of the student not only from truth 
 to truth but from the abstract to the concrete. 
 
32 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 That journey lay from east to west, and be- 
 tween the east and the west there is, and 
 always has been, a temperamental difference. 
 The man of the east is a contemplative per- 
 son ; the man of the west is an active person. 
 The Oriental is naturally a dreamer ; much 
 of the best energy of the east has gone into 
 a philosophy so subtile and intricate that to 
 the west it means nothing intelligible. The 
 Occidental is naturally a worker ; the activities 
 of the west have been chiefly exercised in the 
 perfecting of machinery, and in the adminis- 
 tration of the great affairs which machinery has 
 made possible. Accordingly, one who journeys 
 out of the east into the west passes from the 
 region of ideals into the region of realities. 
 Truth in the east is to be reflected upon, in the 
 west it is to be applied. The east is the land 
 of truth-for-truth's-sake ; the west is the land 
 of truth-for-life's-sake. 
 
 The westward journey of the Epiphany pil- 
 grims finds its counterpart in the work of the 
 student of history who applies his studies of 
 the past to the interpretation of the present ; 
 or of the student of science who increases his 
 knowledge of the forces of nature that he may 
 thereby increase the fund of human happiness, 
 and make the world a pleasanter place to live 
 in ; or of the student of literature whose de- 
 
THE WISDOM OF THE WISE MEN. 33 
 
 sire is to make his treasures a universal pos- 
 session, getting the humblest people to read the 
 greatest books ; or of the student of philosophy 
 who tries to make the thoughts of the supreme 
 minds of the race available for solving the 
 daily problems of the neighborhood : or of the 
 student of theology who would make theol- 
 ogy religious, so that the doctrines which on 
 the one hand touch the heavens shall on the 
 other hand touch the earth, and be the means 
 of communication between the two, bringing 
 heaven down and lifting men up to meet it, 
 vitally and actually influencing and determin- 
 ing life. 
 
 The wisdom of the wise men, thus evidenced 
 in the use that they made of their eyes and of 
 their feet, was further shown in the employ- 
 ment of their hands. They came with gifts, 
 with gold and frankincense and myrrh. 
 
 These offerings have long been associated 
 with mystical meanings. 
 
 " They laid their offerings at His feet : 
 The gold was their tribute to a king, 
 
 The frankincense, with its odor sweet, 
 
 Was for the Priest, the Paraclete, 
 The myrrh for the body's burying." 
 
 Let us, indeed, read into the beautiful story 
 all that we can of holy significance. He who 
 lay in the cradle beneath the star at the end 
 
34 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 of the journey was worthy of all that they 
 could bring. And, no doubt, they brought the 
 best they could, the best fruits of their own 
 land. After all is said, that is the heart of it : 
 they brought their best and laid it at His feet, 
 and themselves with it. 
 
 Let us not blame them if they hesitate a 
 moment at the top of the street. There they 
 are with their camels and their finery, in the 
 grand fashion of the splendid pictures, kings 
 seeking a king. And this is no street for the 
 dwelling of a king, this back street set about 
 on either side with the narrow and common- 
 place houses of the poor. It means much 
 that they went on and in. And when they 
 were in, what did they see ? A peasant 
 mother, the wife of a country carpenter, and 
 her new-born child. Surely, it could not be 
 for this that the star had shone in the east : it 
 could not be for this that these sages had left 
 their contemplations, that these persons of im- 
 portance had journeyed over the long deserts. 
 But the men who had recognized the star, 
 recognized also the Lord of the star. Nothing 
 else in the story so declares their wisdom as 
 their kneeling down before this little speech- 
 less child and offering their gifts. The star 
 itself was not so wonderful as that. 
 
 To see the truth beneath the surface, to per- 
 
THE WISDOM OF THE WISE MEN. 35 
 
 ceive the large importance of small things, to 
 discern the preciousness of the commonplace, 
 to behold with wise reverence that which the 
 man in the street passes by unheeding, to find 
 God in the unpromising listeners of humanity 
 this is the work and the reward of the 
 scholar. 
 
 When one undertakes a common task, and so 
 performs it as to bring out its divine meanings, 
 finding its relation to both God and man, he 
 partakes of the wisdom of the wise men. He 
 whom they sought across the deserts can be 
 found in anybody's office, or study or sitting- 
 room. 
 
 When one enters into the common life, re- 
 solved to live it in the spirit of Jesus, bringing 
 into all its occupations, even the homeliest, the 
 faithfulness, the thoroughness, the courtesy, 
 the consideration, the gentleness, of ideal de- 
 meanor, then to him is given, in answer to his 
 gift, the blessing of the wise men, and under 
 his own roof, though the street he lives in be 
 as narrow as that in which the carpenter and 
 his family were lodged, the Lord Christ shall 
 appear daily. 
 
 When one puts off his hat within the door 
 of the church, though it be the plainest of 
 churches with the simplest of congregations, 
 when he kneels there and calls upon Him who 
 
36 THE HUMAN NATTJBE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 has promised His especial benediction in the as- 
 sembly of the faithful, he bows beside the wise 
 men of the Epiphany. Like them, he looks 
 through that which is seen to that which is 
 unseen, and perceives the presence of the 
 Eternal. 
 
 Into that presence, recognized and realized, 
 the wise man brings his gifts, the best that 
 he has of strength, of facility, of experience, 
 of material means, of influence among his 
 fellows, and in the silence, kneeling and 
 praying, he holds out his hands, as the wise 
 men did of old, and offers all, all that he has 
 and is, to the supreme master of his soul. 
 
THE PEOGKESS OF ANDKEW. 
 
 One of the two which heard John speak and followed him, 
 was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. John 1 : 43. 
 
 EVEKYBODY knew Simon Peter. By the 
 time this history was written he had become a 
 man of renown. Wherever the Christian re- 
 ligion went, the fame of Simon Peter went with 
 it. He was not a scholar, nor an orator, still 
 less was he a genius, like St. Paul : his letters 
 show that. But he had the gift of leadership ; 
 and he led, as the leader will. For the true 
 leader depends not on any election or appoint- 
 ment, he leads by temperament, by instinct, 
 because he cannot help it. Thus Simon Peter, 
 at the beginning of things led ; and the others 
 followed. And everybody knew who he was. 
 
 Andrew was Simon Peter's brother. It is 
 plain that the historian felt that in presenting 
 Andrew he was introducing an obscure person 
 of whom he must give some account. So he 
 proceeded, like a good reasoner, from the 
 known to the unknown, and said that he was 
 his brother's brother. 
 
 This makes Andrew our example. For the 
 world is mostly inhabited by obscure persons ; 
 
 37 
 
38 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE 8AINT8. 
 
 congregations are largely composed of obscure 
 persons. Andrew is like us. He is our brother, 
 as well as Simon Peter's. Most of us, I sup- 
 pose, would feel some constraint in the com- 
 pany of Simon Peter. But Andrew we could 
 ask to dinner without ceremony : and let the 
 children come to the table. And that night, 
 after he had gone, we would say, He is a saint, 
 and yet he is a human being just like us. And 
 we would make a great resolution to be like 
 him. Andrew was a plain, human, ordinary, 
 approachable, and friendly saint. This was 
 the man who heard John speak. 
 
 He heard John speak, but not by chance. 
 The words came with dramatic punctuality, 
 just as the hour struck. All of the man's past 
 experience culminated in that supreme moment, 
 and his whole future was determined by it. 
 
 There were other men that day in whose 
 hearing the same words were spoken, but who 
 went on, paying no heed. The sentence which 
 changed Andrew's life made no difference in 
 them, left no impression upon them. In a 
 little while, they forgot it altogether ; and if 
 that night they looked back over the day, 
 remembering the various things which had 
 happened to them, of one sort or another, good 
 or bad, it is not likely that these words were 
 counted in. Breakfast and dinner would ap- 
 
THE PROGRESS OF ANDREW. 39 
 
 pear as events of some importance, leaving 
 marks in the memory, but the sermon which 
 John the Baptist preached would be but a dim 
 and blurred remembrance. He did say some- 
 thing ; and he certainly did look very queer in 
 that absurd skin of a camel. What did he say ? 
 What did he say ? And so, to sleep. But 
 Andrew lay awake all night, saying the words 
 over and over to himself, Behold the Lamb of 
 God, which taketh away the sin of the world ! 
 Because the words meant to Andrew more 
 than they meant to any of the careless crowd. 
 Day by day he had been preparing to hear 
 them. All his past life had led up to them. 
 They were interpreted to him by his whole 
 spiritual experience. 
 
 For the difference between different people 
 is not due altogether to the unequal distri- 
 bution of opportunity. Everybody has his 
 opportunity. Sometimes a man comes up out 
 of the most unpromising conditions and puts 
 to shame a whole multitude of his better born 
 and better bred brethren, and casts suspicion 
 on our fine theories of heredity and of en- 
 vironment. He seemed to have no chance, 
 and yet he became a man indeed, a hero and a 
 benefactor of his fellow men ; while any num- 
 ber of his neighbors, who seemed to have all 
 things on their side and in their favor, failed 
 
4:0 THE HUMAN NATURE OP THE SAINTS. 
 
 and did more harm than good. The difference 
 is not made by much or by little opportunity, 
 but by the recognition or the lack of recog- 
 nition of it. It comes ; and one is blind and 
 deaf, while by his side another hears and sees. 
 And the recognition depends on past experi- 
 ence, on the character which has been con- 
 structed day by day. 
 
 Thus there are books which have altogether 
 changed men's lives. They read them, and the 
 gates of a new world opened as they turned 
 the pages. Other readers began these books 
 at tiie first page and read them patiently to 
 the last word, and made marks on the margin 
 as they went along, and then put them away 
 on a shelf in their library, and forgot all about 
 them. Some said that they were dull books, 
 and hard to read. But to a few they were the 
 word of God : to them God spoke out of the 
 printed page, and they heard what He said, 
 and took it into their lives and lived it. This 
 they did because they were prepared to read. 
 It is Andrew's story over again. 
 
 How did Andrew do it ? That is what we 
 want to know. How did he come to attend 
 so much more closely than other men to the 
 word of John the Baptist ? How did he make 
 his way, where we would also enter, into the 
 presence of the Master of the Soul ? 
 
THE PROGRESS OF ANDREW. 41 
 
 Andrew was a fisherman who thought about 
 something besides fish. That was the first 
 stage in his progress. 
 
 The fact is made plain by his attendance 
 here, at the Jordan ferry, so many miles from 
 home, among the disciples of John the Baptist. 
 It does not imply that there was in him any 
 lack of attention to business. He was no 
 dreamy angler, who fished against his will, 
 without much luck, watching the clouds rather 
 than the nets. So far as we may guess at him, 
 from the brief record, he appears to have been 
 among the more enterprising of the citizens of 
 the fishing town in which he lived. He did 
 not go into the ministry because he had no 
 head for business. He had probably come 
 down from Galilee to the cities of Judea, with 
 John and Peter, on a business errand, to sell 
 the catch. For such a mission, a man would 
 be chosen who had judgment and energy, who 
 knew men and could make a bargain. Even 
 thus he appears as more than a mere pursuer 
 of fish. But now, we may conjecture, the 
 bartering is over, and according to the quiet, 
 slow way of that long-ago time, there are some 
 days to spare, and down goes Andrew from the 
 fish stalls to hear John the Baptist preach. 
 His mind was not altogether given over to 
 fish. 
 
42 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 That, \ve may say, was the beginning of the 
 difference between Andrew and most other 
 men of his occupation and acquaintance. The 
 streets were full of busy folk in those times, 
 as they are to-day, who were intent with hands 
 and eyes and ears and minds and souls upon 
 their daily tasks. They were absorbed in 
 business. They had no time or thought for 
 any other thing in life. There were men 
 whom Andrew knew, any number of them, de- 
 cent enough, properly behaved, present in the 
 synagogue every pleasant Sabbath day, but 
 who did almost nothing else but fish, who were 
 not really interested in anything but fish. In 
 Boston, under the dome of the state-house, 
 hangs the figure of a fish, a symbol of the in- 
 dustry by which the citizens in the colonial 
 times made themselves rich. It is to Massa- 
 chusetts what the golden fleece was to the 
 Netherlands. That would have precisely 
 suited Keuben, and Simeon and Levi and 
 Judah, and most of the other men whose boats 
 were in the Sea of Galilee. They would have 
 hung a golden fish in the Capernaum syna- 
 gogue. 
 
 If they ever heard it said, years after, that 
 one of their companions, John, the son of Zebe- 
 dee, had written a book in which he pictured 
 heaven as a place in which there was no more 
 
THE PROGRESS OF ANDREW. 43 
 
 sea, and consequently no more fish, they must 
 have received the assertion with amazement or 
 amusement. Their idea of beatific happiness 
 included a stout boat, and a strong net, and a 
 good haul of fish. 
 
 Other men were equally absorbed in other 
 ways : some in their shops, some in their 
 books. Down went their eyes towards their 
 bargains or their parchments, and down went 
 their minds in the same direction. Human 
 nature was not greatly different from that 
 with which we are at present acquainted. 
 Andrew, too, was profoundly interested in his 
 daily work, as every honest and earnest man 
 should be, but it did not constitute the sum 
 and substance of his life. He thought of 
 other things beside. 
 
 That was the first stage in Andrew's prog- 
 ress. The next advance he made was in the 
 choice of his friends. 
 
 Andrew found a few like-minded friends, 
 most of them fisherfolk, like himself. There 
 was his brother, Simon Peter, and their part- 
 ners, two other brothers, James and John. 
 Philip was their neighbor. And Philip 
 brought into the little group, a friend of his, 
 Nathaniel. These six young men, we may 
 guess, had known each other since they were 
 boys. A notable group, who are still remem- 
 
44 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 bered after all the changing centuries; who 
 made up an exact half of the twelve apostles, 
 the friends of Jesus : this was the company 
 which Andrew kept. 
 
 These young men talked together every 
 day ; sometimes, no doubt, about the fish, and 
 the weather, and their neighbors, as human 
 beings will, but often, it is plain, about the su- 
 preme matter, about those high subjects which 
 we include under the head of religion. They 
 had much confidential, sympathetic, religious 
 talk together. When such young fellows, out 
 on the water fishing, talk with their associates 
 of the eternal realities, and discuss them with 
 their own brothers, we may be sure that they 
 mean what they say, and are in earnest about 
 it. For it is easy enough to talk religion in a 
 pulpit, or in any place where one may stand up 
 by himself and make a set speech in a conven- 
 tional voice. Bat in common, daily conver- 
 sation, where we must speak familiarly, our 
 actual selves appear. Any affectation or un- 
 reality rings false. 
 
 These were Andrew's friends, these alert 
 young business men, who cared as he did not 
 for their business only but for the wide world's 
 business, and who talked of things worth talk- 
 ing about while they waited for the fish. Thus 
 they helped one another ; he assisted them, and 
 
THE PROGRESS OF ANDREW. 45 
 
 they encouraged him. That is the meaning 
 and the purpose of all society. The wise man, 
 who looks out of the windows of his office or 
 his shop, makes friends with other men who 
 like to work by a window. And they compare 
 experiences, one having seen this, and another 
 having seen that, and thus each man looks out 
 of many windows, and sees life in many 
 aspects. Thus it was that Jesus promised the 
 blessing of His special presence to the group 
 rather than to the individual. 
 
 The beginning, then, of Andrew's progress 
 was in the largeness of his interests ; and the 
 next step was in the helpfulness of his friends. 
 The third stage was in the fact that he was 
 not contented. 
 
 We may easily read between the lines that 
 these young men were deeply dissatisfied both 
 with the prevailing condition of the church 
 and with themselves. For by and by, when 
 Andrew hears John speak and follows Jesus, 
 at once he hastens to his brother Simon, cry- 
 ing : " We have found Him ! " And with the 
 same announcement, in precisely the same 
 words, Philip greets Nathaniel : " We have 
 found Him ! " Whom have they found ? 
 Evidently they had found Him for whom their 
 hearts had longed, about whose coming they 
 had conversed in their fraternal conferences, 
 
46 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 at the meetings of that primitive brotherhood 
 of six, out of which came the Christian church. 
 They had found at last the knight, the sage, 
 the saint, the hero of their dreams : the leader, 
 the teacher, the reformer of all that was mean 
 and unworthy within them and about them, 
 the Messiah who should deliver Israel, and 
 more than Israel. They were in search of 
 larger truth, had their hearts and minds re- 
 ceptively open, wished to be better men and to 
 please God, and to be taught how. 
 
 Thus they took all that the synagogue could 
 give them, and made the most of it. And out 
 of the services they carried home great sen- 
 tences read from the Word of God, and made 
 new sermons about them : better sermons than 
 anybody in the synagogue could preach, be- 
 cause they were their own, and dealt with their 
 own difficulties, their own short-comings, and 
 their own ideals. 
 
 When they heard that there was a new 
 preacher, standing at the ford of the Jordan, 
 and addressing all passengers, no matter who 
 they were, with an impartial reminder of their 
 sins, they went to hear Him. At least, An- 
 drew went, and John. This they did, because 
 it was consistent with their daily habit. It 
 was the kind of thing which they were always 
 doing: looking for more truth, listening for 
 
THE PROGRESS OF ANDREW. 47 
 
 messages from heaven. The streets and mar- 
 kets were crowded with contented people, 
 looking for nothing except their daily bread. 
 There they were when John the Baptist began 
 to preach ; and there they were, the same peo- 
 ple, in the same place, when he stopped preach- 
 ing: still as a stagnant pond. Not a word 
 touched them ; the great winds of God were 
 blowing out of all the clouds ; but where they 
 were the air never so much as stirred. These 
 were the people whom Andrew left behind 
 when he went to hear the sermon at the river. 
 
 Then, the day after, as Andrew stood in the 
 company of the new master, Jesus of Naza- 
 reth passed by, and Andrew saw Him. John 
 the Baptist pointed Him out: Behold the lamb 
 of God, which taketh away the sin of the 
 world! So there He was, for whom Andrew 
 had been looking all his life. Year by year 
 he had been making himself ready for that 
 day ; he had been preparing himself for that 
 opportunity ; he had been learning to recognize 
 Christ when he saw Him. Others who had 
 come out with him heard John speak, but they 
 did not understand. Andrew understood and 
 followed. He was looking for the best, and 
 he found the best. 
 
 You see, that all this is possible for us, be- 
 cause it was possible for him : it was within 
 
 
48 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 the reach of a person like ourselves. We can- 
 not, indeed, enter as he did into the visible 
 presence of our Lord ; but we can find Him 
 just as truly, we can be just as sure of Him, 
 we can be blessed with the same blessing. 
 
 Let us take Andrew's road. Let us steadily 
 maintain an interest in something higher than 
 our daily business ; let us enrich ourselves with 
 precious friendships ; let us be persistently in- 
 tent on the attainment of the best, reading 
 the best books, thinking the best thoughts, 
 following the best light we have, doing our 
 best. So shall we come into the supreme rev- 
 elation : we shall know Him whom to know 
 is strength and joy and life eternal. 
 
THE DAMNATION OF DIYES. 
 
 And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments. Luke 
 16:23. 
 
 HE has no name. He is called the rich 
 man ; or, as it stood in Latin, Dives. It is 
 the beggar who is named. It is true that the 
 rich man in his lack of a name resembles most 
 of the other people of the parables. Our 
 Lord almost never named the characters which 
 He introduced into these illustrative stories. 
 But He did name the beggar. So that there 
 is here presented this interesting contrast: 
 everybody knows the names of rich men, few 
 know the names of beggars ; but there was a 
 certain rich man whose name is not mentioned, 
 and there lay at his gate, in dire poverty and 
 pain, a certain beggar named Lazarus. 
 
 It is a small thing, and may be without 
 meaning. The beggar may have been an 
 actual person, whom our Lord knew. 
 Jesus was the friend of the residents of the 
 street, and must have been acquainted with a 
 good many beggars. The beggar may have 
 died that day, in his rags and sores, altogether 
 a pitiable person as it seemed ; and Jesus may 
 
 49 
 
50 THE HITMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 have meant to show His disciples that he was 
 a spiritual prince in disguise. There He had 
 sat at the corner of the street who was in 
 truth fit for the society of Abraham. 
 
 Or perhaps this distinction of a name, 
 denied to Dives and given to Lazarus, signi- 
 fies the difference between Christ's way of re- 
 garding men and the common way. It is an 
 illustration of His disregard of things artificial, 
 external and inconsequent. A friendless beg- 
 gar, covered with sores, and consorting with 
 street dogs, was at no disadvantage in our 
 Lord's sight compared with a rich man, clad in 
 silk attire, sitting at the head of his handsome 
 table. If the beggar were rich in the im- 
 perishable treasure, and the rich man were 
 poor in the currency of heaven, that made a 
 distinction which reversed all common esti- 
 mates. 
 
 At last, to Lazarus on the curbstone, and to 
 the nameless rich man in his palace, came the 
 messenger who has no respect of persons: 
 they both died. The beggar died, and so far 
 as this earth was concerned, that was the end 
 of him. The rich man, when he died, " was 
 buried " ; that is, with ceremony. He had a 
 stately funeral. So they slept, the rich man 
 and the beggar, and awoke in the world be- 
 yond. But there, what an amazing change. 
 
THE DAMNATION OF DIVES. 51 
 
 The beggar was in Abraham's bosom. There 
 he sat among the saints and patriarchs, 
 in a place of honor. It is a domestic picture, 
 quite different from the stately visions of 
 Isaiah and St. John, with their smoke of in- 
 cense, and dim forms of worshipers, and 
 cherubim with sheltering wings, and in the 
 midst One high and lifted up. Or shall we say 
 that this is a glimpse not of the heaven of the 
 church triumphant but of the paradise of the 
 church expectant? Anyhow, the beggar is a 
 person of importance in that company. The 
 table is spread and Abraham and Isaac 
 and Jacob are sitting down to supper, 
 and there is the beggar in Abraham's bosom. 
 The phrase is to be understood by com- 
 parison with the account of the Last Supper, 
 where the apostle whom Jesus loved leaned 
 on His breast. That is, in the fashion 
 of that day and place, they reclined on couches 
 at their meals, each resting on his left arm : 
 first the host, then next to him, leaning on 
 his breast, the person of most honor. There 
 was the beggar. But as for the rich man, " in 
 hell he lift up his eyes being in torments." 
 Over the way, in plain sight of the supper 
 table of the saints, with a deep cleft between, 
 burned the flames of the pit unquenchable. 
 And the beggar looked that way, and there 
 
52 THE HITMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 was Dives. That fine gentleman, that hospi- 
 table host and eminent citizen the mendicant, 
 who asked for alms beside the road is better 
 off than he. To such a pass has come that 
 easy, successful, and delightful life. 
 
 Was it because the man was rich? Was 
 that the offense for which he fell into this 
 deep misery ? 
 
 It is true that our Lord said some things 
 about the rich which they who have great pos- 
 sessions must find hard reading. It is said 
 that the eye of the needle was a narrow pas- 
 sage between rocks, which a camel could 
 squeeze through: but even then, the illustra- 
 tion is not a reassuring one. It must be re- 
 membered, however, on the other hand, that 
 Jesus chose one group of His nearest friends 
 from among the very rich. We read the story 
 of Mary and Martha in the light of our New 
 England domestic life, and they appear to 
 be maiden ladies, in somewhat straightened 
 circumstances, who are doing their own house- 
 work. But the incident of the alabaster box 
 shows them in quite a different aspect. Here 
 is one who would bring to the Master some 
 token of her reverence and love. In her room, 
 among the curious ornaments upon her dress- 
 ing-table, is an alabaster box of very precious 
 ointment. The disciples, whispering among 
 
THE DAMNATION OF DIVES. 53 
 
 themselves, and guessing at its value, make it 
 out to be worth at least three hundred pence ; 
 and since a penny, as we learn elsewhere, was 
 a fair days' wage, that would represent several 
 hundred dollars. This she takes, and breaks 
 it at His feet. It is plain that this is no family 
 of narrow means. Mary and Martha, very near 
 friends of Jesus, were as rich as Dives. It is 
 true that there was a Lazarus, who was a beg- 
 gar in the street ; but there was also a Lazarus 
 who was a man of wealth. He was rich like 
 Dives, and was a friend of Jesus. 
 
 There is spiritual danger connected with the 
 possession of wealth. The Bible has great 
 fears about men who have large means; but 
 they are like the fears of the insurance com- 
 panies about men who work in powder mills. 
 The insurance companies have no personal dis- 
 like to these men. They do not by any means 
 assert that such men will certainly be blown to 
 pieces. But they know that a powder mill did 
 explode the other day, and that other powder 
 mills have exploded before, and they decline to 
 take the risk. 
 
 The rich man is in spiritual danger because 
 it is so easy and natural for him to be wholly 
 occupied with things temporal and material. 
 Where his treasure is, there will his heart be 
 also. His thought and life will be filled with 
 
54: THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 the consideration of that which can be seen 
 and felt and weighed and measured and 
 counted. No man makes a great deal of 
 money without giving his mind to it. And it 
 is plainly possible to give one's mind so lav- 
 ishly and unreservedly to this business that 
 there is no interest or attention left for any- 
 thing else. Indeed, to one who is entirely 
 occupied with these matters, the enthusiasms, 
 enjoyments, and purposes of religion must in 
 the nature of things seem rather vague, and 
 hard to understand. He is concerned with the 
 present and the practical. When he is invited, 
 like the man in the other parable, to a great 
 supper which is the type of spiritual privilege, 
 he says at once, "I have bought a piece of 
 ground, and I must needs go and see it : I 
 pray thee, have me excused " ; or "I have 
 bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove 
 them : I pray thee, have me excused." That 
 is, the man of wealth, who has got it and so 
 is a rich man actually, or who is trying to get it 
 and so is a rich man potentially is in danger 
 of caring for nothing else. That is the tempta- 
 tion : and the more money a man has the better 
 he knows how strong the temptation is. 
 
 But no man will lose his soul because he has 
 a great deal of money. The day of judgment 
 will not be a time for the examination of men's 
 
THE DAMNATION OF DIVES. 55 
 
 bank accounts. There is no wickedness in be- 
 ing wealthy. Some people talk as if prosper- 
 ity ought to be punished, and as if everybody 
 ought to sell whatever he possesses and make 
 it over to the poor. It is true that the Master 
 did set that duty at one man's door : no doubt, 
 because He saw that that was exactly what 
 that particular young man needed for his soul's 
 health. But He preached no such doctrine to 
 other rich men whom he met. The damnation 
 of Dives was not a punishment for being rich. 
 
 What then? He had always had a good 
 time, was that it? Was it there that he 
 made his failure? 
 
 The pleasures of the rich man are recounted 
 in the parable. He wore good clothes, attiring 
 himself in the handsome and fashionable pur- 
 ple and fine linen of his time. He fared 
 sumptuously, giving and receiving banquets: 
 and living in luxury every day. 
 
 And it is plain that there is spiritual danger in 
 such a life as this. It is not only the pursuit of 
 wealth but the enjoyment of it which menaces 
 the soul. This is written large in history, 
 where again and again in the experience of 
 races, of churches, and of institutions, increase 
 of pleasure has been accompanied by decrease 
 of piety. They have been given their desire, 
 as it says in the psalm, and leanness withal has 
 
56 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 entered into their soul. So it has been with 
 nations, which have become rich, and have en- 
 tered into the joys which wealth makes possi- 
 ble, and then have fallen before some simpler 
 people, who are strong with the sturdy 
 strength of plain living. So it has been with 
 monasteries, which have begun in the fear of 
 God and in the spirit of self-sacrifice, in holy 
 poverty, and then becoming rich with the 
 gifts of their grateful neighbors, have grown 
 idle and negligent, eating and drinking more 
 and praying less, till they have come to be a 
 shame and a scandal. And the same tempta- 
 tions assail all prosperous persons. They who 
 are contented with their surroundings are 
 easily contented with themselves, and that is 
 the end of spiritual growth. It was with 
 knowledge of human nature that the petition 
 was put in the litany, " In all time of our pros- 
 perity, good Lord, deliver us." Indeed, if we 
 look for disregard of religion, for lives lived 
 without much thought of God, for days begun 
 without prayer and weeks begun without 
 praise, for devotion to that which is temporal 
 and neglect of that which is eternal, we will find 
 too much of it among those to whom God has 
 given unusual privileges and set them in the 
 midst of pleasures. 
 
 But to be happy is no sin. God has put us 
 
THE DAMNATION OP DIVES. 57 
 
 in this world that we may live this life. It is 
 His will that we take from His generous 
 hand all the good pleasure that there is : this 
 world's pleasure now, and the next world's 
 pleasure when we come to it. All happiness 
 of soul and mind and sense to-day, and all new 
 happiness which awaits us under new condi- 
 tions to-morrow. There is no merit in being 
 miserable. There is no contradiction between 
 a smiling face and the sermon on the mount. 
 The Christian religion sanctions and approves 
 of every good natural pleasure which has ever 
 entered into the heart of man. No doubt but 
 the rich man's life was merry and joyful. But 
 that was not what was the matter with him. 
 The damnation of Dives was not a punishment 
 for having lived a pleasant life. 
 
 Why was it, then, that in hell he lift up 
 his eyes being in torments? He was a rich 
 man : but that was not it. He was clothed in 
 purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously 
 every day : but that was not it. Why did he 
 lose his soul ? Dives lost his soul because, 
 being rich and happy, he had been satisfied 
 with that. He had found the material side of 
 life so pleasant that he had been content to 
 live simply on that plane. He had encoun- 
 tered the perils of prosperity, and had suffered 
 spiritual defeat. 
 
58 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 When he asks that Lazarus may be sent 
 over with a drop of water to cool his tongue, 
 he is answered, " Son, remember that thou in 
 thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and 
 likewise Lazarus evil things : but now he is 
 comforted and thou art tormented." That 
 seems for a moment to mean that there is for 
 each of us a fixed amount of good and evil 
 fortune, and that if we have pleasure and pros- 
 perity here, we must not look for pleasure and 
 prosperity hereafter. But there is plainly 
 some mistake about that. Our Lord did not 
 mean that. That is not His doctrine of the 
 providence of God. That is not His interpre- 
 tation of the fatherhood of God. 
 
 No ; the words are to be understood like 
 the sentence in the sermon on the mount, 
 " They have their reward." The men who 
 give alms or say prayers in order to be seen 
 of men have their reward, such as it is. The 
 people who devote themselves entirely to the 
 material satisfactions of life receive their good 
 things. They enjoy the blessings of the 
 senses. Dives had received his good things. 
 He had decided, consciously or unconsciously, 
 that what he supremely desired was to succeed 
 in business and to have a good time in society. 
 That is what he desired, and he got it. He 
 makes his confession in his prayer for his five 
 
THE DAMNATION OF DIVES. 59 
 
 brothers. There they are living the same kind 
 of life which he had lived, and coming inevi- 
 tably, if they keep on, to the same place. They 
 are receiving their good things. And their 
 good things are of the sort to which death puts 
 an end. Presently they will die, and at that 
 moment everything that they possess will 
 perish : because everything that they possess 
 is perishable. There they go, briskly and 
 gayly walking towards the brink of the place 
 of torment. And there are Moses and the 
 prophets standing by the side of the road and 
 telling them plainly, but in vain, where the 
 road ends. That is, there is the church and 
 the ministers of religion teaching day by day 
 that he who seeks the pleasures of the senses 
 only, shall have the pleasures of the senses only, 
 and after that the judgment. The rich man 
 had heard their sermons in a dull, conventional, 
 confused way, with his eyes shut : but they 
 had meant nothing to him. Moses and the 
 prophets had been no more to him than the 
 saints of the painted windows. 
 
 That is, the life which ended in this total 
 failure had been a life of the body only. That 
 was the cause of the damnation of Dives. The 
 man had lost his soul because he had never 
 taken the slightest pains to save his soul. He 
 had no place with Abraham and Isaac and 
 
60 THE HUMAN NATURE OP THE SAINTS. 
 
 Jacob because he had never taken the least 
 interest in the things that patriarchs and 
 prophets, and men of God care for. He was 
 no more fitted for that excellent company than 
 a tramp on a freight-car would be fitted for a 
 lecture in philosophy. He had addressed him- 
 self wholly to that which gratifies the senses. 
 To the higher part of his nature, to that which 
 survives the body and is everlasting, he had 
 paid no heed. And he went to his own place, 
 as they said of Judas. That is what happened 
 to him. He went to his own place, where he 
 properly belonged, as we all will. 
 
 It is an illustration of the great saying: 
 Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
 reap. Dives had sown to the flesh and of the 
 flesh had reaped corruption. Lazarus had 
 sown to the spirit, and of the spirit had reaped 
 life everlasting. 
 
THE EEALITY OF THE TEMPTATION. 
 
 And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilder- 
 ness. Mark 1 : 12. 
 
 OUE Lord went into the wilderness in order 
 to be alone to think. 
 
 He had come from Nazareth to the bank of 
 the Jordan to hear a new prophet preach. 
 Hundreds of others had come upon the same 
 errand. The crowd was great, and He was an 
 unnoticed member of it. Even when John 
 the Baptist said, " There standeth One among 
 you whom ye know not," nobody looked at 
 Him. It is not likely that He Himself real- 
 ized that the words meant Him. He looked 
 about, like His neighbors, wondering who the 
 Great Unknown might be. It is true that 
 when the prophet presently addressed Him, He 
 met the marvelous announcement with entire 
 composure. " Suffer it," He said, " to be so 
 now." But the event of the temptation seems 
 to show that He was taken by surprise. If 
 He had come prepared for this, expecting this, 
 there would have been no need of the wilder- 
 ness. The story would have gone on, as in- 
 deed it does in St. John's Gospel, without a 
 
 61 
 
62 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 break : after the baptism, not the temptation, 
 but at once the ministry. 
 
 Out of the Galilean hills He had come down, 
 this carpenter of Nazareth, being now thirty 
 years of age, a maker of doors, who was Him- 
 self to be the door of life eternal ; a framer of 
 windows, who was to open the windows of 
 heaven for revelation and for benediction ; a 
 builder of houses, who was to prepare man- 
 sions in the celestial country. And as He 
 stood, in all humility, amongst the throng, 
 John had singled Him out. That great 
 prophet, that new Elijah, to whose preaching 
 even the Pharisees were for the moment 
 giving their attention, had suddenly stopped 
 in his sermon at the sight of this working man 
 from Galilee, and had pronounced Him his spir- 
 itual superior: "This is He of whom I spoke: 
 this is He of whom I said that ye knew Him 
 not, and whom I knew not till the light in the 
 sky and in His face revealed Him : this is He 
 whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down 
 and unloose." And from above had come a 
 vision and a voice, verifying it all. 
 
 " And immediately," for here is where the 
 note of time is touched, " the Spirit driveth 
 Eim into the wilderness." The Spirit spoke 
 in the silence of His soul. He was conscious 
 of an inner compulsion. He heard an in- 
 
THE REALITY OF THE TEMPTATION. 63 
 
 audible but none the less imperative voice, 
 saying, " Go, get you away into the wilder- 
 ness " ; and He obeyed, and went. That was 
 what followed the strange utterance of John 
 the Baptist, and the strange sense of recog- 
 nition with which Jesus met it. He went 
 into the wilderness to think. 
 
 The gospel records and our own reflections 
 assure us that Jesus must have learned who 
 He was, little by little. The statement that 
 He increased in wisdom is a certificate of that. 
 And the fact that unless He had increased in 
 wisdom He would have been no true human 
 man emphasizes it. It must be remembered 
 that the doctrine of the incarnation is not a 
 doctrine of the divinity of Christ only. Men 
 have held the doctrine of the divinity of 
 Christ with all ardor and adoration, who have 
 nevertheless been pronounced heretics by gen- 
 eral councils of the church because they have 
 omitted or obscured the truth of His hu- 
 manity. They have made it out that being 
 God, He was somehow other than a human 
 man. The doctrine of the incarnation asserts 
 the divinity and the humanity of Christ at the 
 same time. It is essential to it that Jesus 
 Christ was truly man. He could not have 
 been truly man if as He sat among the boys 
 in the schoolroom at Nazareth, He had been 
 
64 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 composing the Sermon on the Mount. He 
 could not have been truly man, if He had 
 known at the beginning what He knew at the 
 end of His ministry. He increased in wisdom, 
 day by day learning more about the world in 
 which He lived, more about the humanity of 
 which He had become a part, more about God 
 in whose favor He grew continually, more 
 about Himself. 
 
 And now to-day beside the Jordan are 
 strange voices saying strange things. And 
 there is a strange new consciousness in His 
 own heart, a consciousness of power, of per- 
 sonality, of possibility, such as He has never 
 had before. Long ago among the hills, look- 
 ing out over the green plain, He had had long 
 thoughts, as a boy will, but they had been the 
 thoughts of a boy. Working in His shop, 
 among the shavings, breathing the clean sweet 
 odor of the wood, He had seen visions, the 
 visions of a vigorous young manhood. But 
 this which fills His mind and heart to-day is a 
 new thing. The moment is one of crisis. A 
 great, new, marvelous truth has entered into 
 His life. And He is saying over and over 
 to Himself, again and again, trying to under- 
 stand it in the fulness of its infinite meaning, 
 " I am the Messiah ! I am the Christ ! I am 
 He for whom society has all along been look- 
 
THE EEALITY OF THE TEMPTATION. 65 
 
 ing and waiting ! I am come in answer to the 
 praters of the ages ! I am the servant of the 
 Highest, the ambassador of heaven, the Son of 
 God, the Saviour of the world ! " 
 
 It is plain that a man cannot go about the 
 streets saying such words. It is plain that he 
 cannot go back to his day's work for his day's 
 wages, making carts and mending roofs. The 
 great message has set a sharp separation be- 
 tween this day and all the other past days. 
 What shall He do ? He must get away. He 
 must seek solitude ; He must find a place where 
 He can think and pray and plan. He must 
 adjust Himself to a new life. The summons of 
 the spirit is very urgent, of His own spirit, 
 and of God's spirit. He is immediately driven 
 into the wilderness. 
 
 And then, what happens ? He is tempted. 
 And tempted to do what ? To turn stones into 
 bread, to cast Himself from a pinnacle of the 
 temple, and to kneel down before the devil. 
 What does it mean ? Where is the connection 
 between the desert and the river, between the 
 temptation and the baptism, between these 
 very different voices, one from above saying, 
 " This is My beloved Son," the other from be- 
 neath saying, "If Thou art the Son of God" 
 do this and that ? The two belong together, 
 like the light and the shadow. Our Lord is 
 
66 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 entering here into a universal human experi- 
 ence. This is the common spiritual sequence. 
 First, the high ideal, recognized and resolved 
 upon: the new life entered: the supreme 
 choice definitely made. Then depression, 
 doubt, discouragement, asking of anxious ques- 
 tions. 
 
 Elijah, for example, confronts the priests of 
 Baal. In a land forgetful of God, indifferent 
 to Him, defiant of Him, he stands up suddenly 
 alone, splendidly bold, on God's side. Then 
 he goes away, and hides himself in a desolate 
 wilderness, and cries aloud to the rocks and 
 the sky that his life is a miserable failure. 
 There they are, the two voices, from above 
 and from beneath. Elijah had his bap- 
 tism, in the rain which came down in 
 answer to his prayer, and then, in the desert, 
 his temptation followed. 
 
 You know that there are three significant 
 years in the life of St. Paul of which we are 
 told nothing. He beholds the heavenly vision, 
 which suddenly stands like a pillar of fire be- 
 tween his past and his future ; in Damascus, he 
 learns in detail the truth which from that mo- 
 ment changes his whole life. And what does 
 he do then ? He goes into Arabia. He takes 
 himself out of the sight of all men, whether 
 Jews or Christians, out of the hearing of all 
 
THE KEALITY OF THE TEMPTATION. 67 
 
 human voices, into the bleak desert, into the 
 land of rocks and solitude. And there he stays 
 three years. In the history of his life the 
 space of these three years is blank, totally 
 blank. So far as we know, St. Paul never 
 spoke of that experience : he never told what 
 happened. But we may guess. He was driven 
 by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted 
 of the devil. This new truth, which summons 
 you to contradict all that you have said and 
 stood for, which calls you to a career of pov- 
 erty and difficulty and tragedy, is it true ? 
 May there not be some mistake about it ? 
 And if it is true, what does it mean ? What 
 does it mean for you ? The apostle went into 
 the desert to meet the devil. And the devil 
 asked him these questions. And it took the 
 apostle three years to answer them. That was 
 His temptation in the wilderness. First, the 
 heavenly vision on the Damascus road ; then 
 the long contention with doubt and desire and 
 the devil in Arabia. 
 
 It all belongs to human experience. Jesus 
 Christ, in His temptation, shares our common 
 life. We understand Him, and He under- 
 stands us the better for it. 
 
 " I am the Son of God," He says, over and over; 
 " I am the Son of God." Are you the Son of 
 God ? Are you sure of it ? You poor country 
 
68 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 carpenter, bred among the hills and fields, 
 thirty years old and up to this hour quite with- 
 out achievement, are you the Son of God ? The 
 splendid affirmation changes into inquiry. 
 The sun of assurance goes behind the clouds 
 of doubt. The great truth is too great even 
 for the great man. "If," he begins to say, 
 "if," "if." If you are the Son of God, prove 
 it to yourself : make these stones into loaves of 
 bread. If you are the Son of God, prove it 
 to the people : go, leap from a turret of the 
 temple, and let God your Father send His 
 angels to catch you in their hands. 
 
 You see how natural, how logical, how in- 
 evitable the temptation was. The great truth 
 about Himself comes for the first time in its 
 fulness of meaning, in its fulness of conse- 
 quence, before the human mind of Jesus, with 
 all that it implies of change, and responsibil- 
 ity, and mission, and leadership, and divinity, 
 and tragedy, and He goes away where He can 
 be alone to think about it, and as He thinks, 
 these are His thoughts, these great tempta- 
 tions. 
 
 They begin with doubt, but they do not 
 stay there. The first temptation and the 
 second open with the word " if " : but there is 
 no "if" in the third. He has got past doubt. 
 He knows now that He is verily the Son of God. 
 
THE EEALITY OF THE TEMPTATION. 69 
 
 But being the Son of God, what shall He do ? 
 How shall He live His life ? If I am the Son 
 of God, what is the Kingdom of God ? Is it 
 meat and drink, or is it righteousness and 
 truth ? Is it a material kingdom, as everybody 
 thinks, or a spiritual kingdom ? If I am the 
 Son of God, and the Kingdom of God is the 
 reign of righteousness and truth, how shall I set 
 about to advance it? Shall I speak in the 
 common words of the synagogue and of the 
 street, using in truth's behalf only the compul- 
 sion of the truth, or shall I enforce truth by 
 appealing to men's sense of wonder, appear- 
 ing to them descending from the clouds ? 
 Shall I preach ideal righteousness, and in- 
 sist that men shall live in an ideal way, 
 setting them an example, heedless whether it 
 be accounted wise or foolish, practicable or 
 impracticable ; or shall I accommodate myself 
 to the actual conditions, taking men as they are, 
 and for the impossible best substituting the pos- 
 sible good ; shall I not for the general good 
 come to some reasonable understanding with 
 the devil ? 
 
 These were some of the questions which are 
 represented by the three temptations : natural 
 questions, difficult questions, difficult because, 
 as the phrase is, there is so much to be said 
 on both sides. They were essential questions. 
 
70 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 Before He speaks a word aloud, these must be 
 settled. There He was in the wilderness, 
 fighting these things out. 
 
 Our Lord was actually tempted. That is 
 the initial fact. He was tempted like as we 
 are. 
 
 The record of the temptations makes it suffi- 
 ciently plain that what we have here is a para- 
 ble rather than a history, or a picture rather 
 than a page from a diary. This appears, for 
 instance, in the part which is here taken by 
 the devil. The devil is represented as person- 
 ally encountering the Master. He points to 
 the smooth stones; he transports Jesus first to 
 the top of the temple and then to the top of 
 the hill, and on these eminences he stands be- 
 side Him, talking with Him. This, unless it 
 has a meaning deeper than appears upon the 
 surface, takes out of the temptation all of its 
 reality. From the instant when the devil 
 actually appears upon the scene, the tempta- 
 tion ceases to be a temptation. For it is 
 essential to a genuine temptation that it must 
 be tempting. There must be something so at- 
 tractive about it, so deceptive, so persuasive, 
 that even a good man shall feel inclined to 
 accept its invitation. The choice which we all 
 make, sinners though we are, is not between 
 the known good and the known bad : it is be- 
 
THE REALITY OF THE TEMPTATION. 71 
 
 tween two courses of action each of which ap- 
 pears to be good. It is very rarely that we 
 sin, saying boldly to ourselves, "This is 
 plainly in defiance of the will of God, but I 
 will do it." No, we somehow persuade our- 
 selves that darkness is light, and evil is good. 
 We do the bidding of the devil, but in order to 
 get us to do it he has to disguise himself so 
 that we may not recognize him. If the devil 
 came, the plain devil, and said, " Do this," we 
 would not do it. It is not in that manner that 
 we are tempted. Still less, was Christ thus 
 tempted. The sight of the tempter, the conse- 
 quent knowledge that the suggestion of his 
 pointing finger was the suggestion of evil, 
 would have made any true temptation totally 
 impossible. 
 
 The account of our Lord's temptation is 
 therefore to be compared with that other word 
 where He said, " I beheld Satan as lightning 
 fall from heaven." What did that mean? 
 Plainly it meant the ultimate defeat of error. 
 The disciples came and told the Master that 
 they had gone ministering to men as He had 
 instructed them, and that the effects were 
 remarkable. " Lord," they said, " even the 
 devils are subject unto us through Thy name." 
 " Yes," He answered, " while you were gone, I 
 saw the great devil himself fall out of the 
 
72 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 sky." That is, I saw the power of evil cast 
 down from his high seat. 
 
 After the temptation in the wilderness Jesus 
 tried to make His disciples understand it. He 
 had been grievously tempted, tempted to 
 doubt His own personality, tempted to depart 
 now in this direction, and now in that, from 
 His high ideal. He wished to help His dis- 
 ciples, partly by showing them that He was 
 able to have sympathy with them in their own 
 temptations, and partly by assuring them from 
 His own experience that it was possible to 
 resist even the mightiest, even the subtlest of 
 temptations. And He did it, not in our occi- 
 dental fashion, but in the natural manner of 
 His own time and land. He did it by a para- 
 ble, or a picture. He did it, that is, in a way 
 to appeal to all people of all lands and times. 
 The devil came, He said, and spoke to Me. 
 
 True ? It was more profoundly true yes, 
 in the best sense, more practically true than 
 all the accurate statements of all the arithme- 
 tic and history that have been written since 
 the children of Cain built the first city. Let 
 us diligently disabuse our minds of the false 
 and misleading notion that nothing is true 
 except the verifiable assertions of plain prose. 
 Poetry is true, pictures are true, even fiction is 
 true, whenever the poet or the artist or the 
 
THE REALITY OF THE TEMPTATION. 73 
 
 author tells the truth. Not the fact : that is 
 another and a lesser matter. The first chapters 
 of the first Book of Chronicles are filled with 
 facts : there is nothing there but facts. And 
 nobody can read them. "And the sons of 
 Caleb, the brother of Jerahmeel were Mesha 
 his first-born which was the father of Ziph, 
 and the sons of Mareshah the father of 
 Hebron. And the sons of Hebron ; Korah and 
 Tappuah and Rekem and Shema. And 
 Sheina begat Rah am the father of Jorkoam ; 
 and Kekem begat Shammai." So it goes on, 
 one hard name after another interminably: 
 fact upon fact. The parable of the prodigal 
 son, on the other hand, has not a fact in it, 
 from beginning to end. There was no prod- 
 igal son ; there was no famine ; there was no 
 father, no fatted calf, no elder brother. This 
 was a beautiful story which Jesus told ; and He 
 made it up, every word of it. But it is never- 
 theless so true, so vitally, so eternally, so 
 searchingly and blessedly true, that all the 
 studious saints from the beginning of the 
 gospel to this present day, have not discov- 
 ered all its truth. Nothing can be more true 
 than the parable of the prodigal son. 
 
 So it is with the story of the temptation of 
 Christ. It has no place in the world of fact. 
 Taken literally, it never happened. Jesus and 
 
74 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 the devil never stood side by side looking 
 down upon the hard paving-stones of the 
 courtyard of the temple. And Jesus never 
 intended us to think for a moment that they 
 did. When we read the record as if it were 
 an account in a newspaper, He asks us, as He 
 asked His disciples on a like occasion, How is it 
 that ye do not understand ? The temptation 
 belongs not to the world of statistical fact but 
 to the world of spiritual truth. It is the re- 
 port of an experience so tremendous that it 
 could not be told in the common terms of 
 every-day narration. Every word of it is true ; 
 every syllable of it is true ; but its meaning is 
 not upon the surface, but beneath it. The 
 longer we live, the longer the race lives, the 
 more we understand how true the story of the 
 temptation is. 
 
 Jesus Christ was both truly and sorely 
 tempted, in the wilderness and out of it. It is 
 significantly said at the end of one of the ac- 
 counts of the temptation that " the devil de- 
 parted from Him for a season." Yes, for a 
 season, coming back again, with new perplex- 
 ities, new problems, new deceptions. Once 
 our Lord spoke of His whole ministry as a 
 series of temptations, saying to His disciples, 
 " Ye are they which have continued with Me 
 in My temptations." It is even said of Him, 
 
THE REALITY OF THE TEMPTATION. 75 
 
 in words much bolder than we would venture 
 to use to-day, that He learned obedience by the 
 things which He suffered : as if, even for Him, 
 obedience was a lesson hard to learn. He had 
 to learn it, as we do, taught by the divine 
 tuition of painful experience. We commonly 
 think of Him as being so perfectly good by 
 birth and nature that He never had to try. 
 But the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 says that He did have to try, and try hard. 
 And the story of the temptation illustrates it. 
 " We have not an high priest that cannot be 
 touched with the feeling of our infirmities : 
 but was in all points tempted like as we are." 
 It is true that the writer immediately adds, 
 "Yet without sin." But it is plain that He 
 was not easily without sin. He conquered in 
 the wilderness, and in every other place, but 
 never without a battle. 
 
 The story that is written in glowing color in 
 the Boston Public Library is not the only story 
 of the Holy Grail. Galahad is not the only 
 hero of that mediaeval legend. It is told to 
 the accompaniment of solemn music how 
 Parsifal achieved the Grail. The most sig- 
 nificant difference between the two is that 
 Galahad wins with ease, but Parsifal with dif- 
 ficulty. Galahad is born good, and stays good, 
 and never meets a champion who does him any 
 
76 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 serious hurt. On he goes, serene and confi- 
 dent, as if the quest of the Grail were but a 
 summer journey along a shady lane. But 
 Parsifal is one of us. He has our human 
 nature. He lights our human battles, while 
 we hold our breath wondering whether he 
 will win or not ; he meets our own tempta- 
 tions and finds them, terribly hard, as we 
 do, struggles with them, wrestles with them, 
 is weary and heavy-laden, hurt and bleeding. 
 When he achieves the vision of the Grail, 
 it is not with smiling face and shining armor. 
 Parsifal is the true hero of the search for the 
 Holy Grail, not the serene Galahad. 
 
 In the story of the temptation, the Son of 
 God shows us that He is the Son of Man. 
 The divine master, the Lord of life, assures us 
 that He is of our kin and kind, flesh of our 
 flesh. He suffers with us, as well as for us : 
 and is perfectly good, but not easily good. 
 
 Yet Christ is at the same time divine ; He is 
 the express image of the Heavenly Father ; 
 He is God, manifest in man. To such a being, 
 how can our human temptations have reality ? 
 How can they touch Him ? Did He not look 
 on, past the eyes of the tempter, into the face 
 of the eternal ? "Was not the desert crowded, 
 rank on rank, with the horsemen and the char- 
 iots of God, ready at a word to reinforce 
 
THE REALITY OF THE TEMPTATION. 77 
 
 Him ? Had He not more than twelve legions 
 of angels at His back? Did He not know- 
 well that this was but a passing trial, an inci- 
 dent of the journey, as He went on to certain 
 victory and peace ? Yonder, across the nar- 
 row desert, did not the hill of the transfigur- 
 ation shine ? Whoever is sure that He will 
 come safe out of the battle, may easily be 
 brave. Was He not absolutely sure ? 
 
 But read at the end how angels came and 
 ministered unto Him. What does that mean ? 
 Plainly, it means weariness, it means distress, 
 it means wounds to be bound up, it means that 
 though the victory is won the victor has 
 gained it only by desperate contention. 
 
 Jesus is God revealing Himself in man, not 
 God disguised as man. The infinite God 
 manifesting Himself in finite man, must of 
 necessity subject Himself to human limita- 
 tions. So He bears our sicknesses and carries 
 our sorrows ; He becomes acquainted with 
 grief ; He subjects Himself to the reality of 
 our temptations. God cannot reveal Himself 
 in man on any easier conditions. God can put 
 on humanity as a cloak, and go about our 
 streets wearing it, and looking like a man, and 
 in that form be superior to all our ills. But 
 that is not what we mean when we say the 
 Nicene Creed. We mean something far more 
 
78 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 mysterious, more intimate, more real than that. 
 God was in Christ ; the Word became flesh ; 
 the Eternal took on Him our human nature 
 and became man. Of course, He was tempted. 
 It was essential that He should be tempted. 
 He could not have become man without it. 
 
 Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world by 
 His temptation, as well as by His crucifixion. 
 In the wilderness sin meets Him, as on the 
 cross death meets Him ; and He suffers. He 
 conquers, but He suffers. He bruises the ser- 
 pent's head, but the serpent stings His heal. 
 Thus it is that He can be touched with the 
 feeling of our infirmities. He knows how it 
 is. He knows by hard experience how bitter 
 a thing it is to fight with the devil. He in 
 whom we see God, sympathizes. He who will 
 judge us tempted sinners, understands. 
 
THE UNBELIEF OF THOMAS. 
 
 Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and 
 put my finger iuto the print of the nails, and thrust my hand 
 into His side, I will not believe. John 20 : 25. 
 
 THAT is what St. Thomas said on Easter 
 Monday. 
 
 The central truth of the Christian religion 
 had to win its way against the opposition of 
 doubt. Not Thomas only but all the apostles 
 questioned and rejected it. When Jesus said 
 to them that after being put to death He 
 would rise again upon the third day, they list- 
 ened with dull minds, hearing His words, 
 which were plain enough, but not under- 
 standing them. They asked each other pri- 
 vately what this resurrection from the dead 
 could mean, but they got no satisfying answer. 
 So slight was the impression made by the 
 words that they appear to have forgotten them 
 altogether. When the women came hurrying 
 from the empty tomb, declaring that they had 
 seen a vision of angels assuring them that 
 Christ was risen from the dead, the apostles 
 gave no credence to the story, accounting it an 
 idle tale. The gospel of the resurrection was 
 
 79 
 
80 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 preached to them, and they all with one con- 
 sent refused to hear it. 
 
 You remember how Thomas persisted in his 
 doubt. After all the others were convinced 
 he still held back. Easter Day had been full 
 of wonders. Jesus had appeared to Mary 
 Magdalene, and to the little company of holy 
 women ; He had manifested Himself to the two 
 disciples who were walking home to Emmaus ; 
 some time during the day, Peter had seen Him ; 
 He had entered into the presence of the fright- 
 ened disciples who were gathered that evening 
 in the upper room and had made it plain by 
 the sight of His nail-pierced hands and feet 
 that it was indeed Himself. " But Thomas," 
 we read, " Thomas, one of the twelve, called 
 Didymus, was not with them when Jesus 
 came." And he refused to be convinced. The 
 whole apostolic company together could not 
 persuade him. 
 
 Then a week went by. The Sunday after 
 Easter came. " And after eight days again 
 His disciples were within, and Thomas was 
 with them ; then came Jesus, the doors being 
 shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace 
 be unto you. Then saith He unto Thomas : 
 Keach hither thy finger and behold My hands, 
 and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into 
 My side, and be not faithless but believing." 
 
THE UNBELIEF OF THOMAS. 81 
 
 But Thomas needs no test. The sight of the 
 face of Christ suffices him. "And Thomas 
 answered, My Lord and my God. Jesus saith 
 unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen Me 
 thou hast believed ; blessed are they that have 
 not seen and yet have believed." 
 
 This is the record of the unbelief of Thomas. 
 I desire to emphasize especially these three 
 sentences : " Except I shall see in His hands 
 the print of the nails, I will not believe " ; that 
 tells us that Thomas was an unbeliever : " And 
 after eight days His disciples were within, and 
 Thomas with them" ; that shows that in spite 
 of his unbelief he continued in the apostolic 
 company : " Thomas answered and said unto 
 Him, My Lord and my God " ; thus was his 
 unbelief changed into complete faith. The 
 presence of the unbeliever, the conduct of the 
 unbeliever, and the conversion of the unbe- 
 liever, are the three matters upon which I 
 purpose to comment. 
 
 There was an unbeliever among the apos- 
 tles : let us begin with that. Indeed, as I 
 have reminded you, there were at one time 
 among the eleven apostles as many as eleven 
 unbelievers. Only one is now left ; but he is 
 an unbeliever in good earnest. Listen to him. 
 He will not say, " If I can but touch His nail- 
 pierced hands, I will believe." That would 
 
82 THE HUMAN NATUKE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 mean that faith was at least possible. Thomas 
 sees no possibility of faith. " I will never be- 
 lieve," he says, " unless I can put my finger 
 into the print of the nails." 
 
 Fart of the unbelief of Thomas was tem- 
 peramental. It belonged to the nature of the 
 man. He did not believe anything easily. 
 He was not easily stimulated to hope, nor apt 
 to console himself in trouble with the com- 
 forting visions of a sanguine imagination. He 
 had not the good gift of seeing the world on 
 its bright side. Thomas was naturally a de- 
 spondent person, quick to discover difficulty, 
 slow to believe. Everything that we are told 
 about him shows that. 
 
 We are informed, for example, that when 
 Jesus turned His face towards Bethany, propos- 
 ing to visit the grave of Lazarus, Thomas was 
 in despair. They had threatened in Judea to 
 kill the Master if He dared to venture again 
 within their borders, and He was now about to 
 undertake that perilous journey. Thomas saw 
 nothing but death ahead. At once his mind 
 settled upon the worst. " Let us also go," 
 he said, " that we may die with Him." He 
 was a brave man, but he lacked hope. 
 
 Again, at the last supper, during our Lord's 
 long conversation with the apostles, it was 
 Thomas who broke in as the Master said, 
 
THE UNBELIEF OF THOMAS. 83 
 
 "Whither I go ye know and the way ye 
 know," and " Thomas saith unto Him, Lord, 
 we know not whither Thou goest, and how can 
 we know the way ? " It was the same refusal 
 to take things for granted, the same inability 
 to believe that everything would somehow 
 come out right, which he had shown before. 
 Thomas looked into the future, and it was all 
 black. He could see no " way " in it at all. 
 
 The temperament of Thomas constitutes 
 him an excellent witness of the resurrection. 
 Let us have an unbeliever in the midst of that 
 enthusiastic company of disciples, somebody 
 with observant and critical eyes, with a prac- 
 tical mind, not easily roused into belief, nat- 
 urally incredulous, with an invincible convic- 
 tion that dead people stay dead; give us a 
 witness with a will of his own, whose judg- 
 ment is not jostled out of its way by any 
 crowd, however big, whose best friend cannot 
 persuade him to believe what he does not 
 actually and heartily believe, who resolutely re- 
 fuses to credit what he has not seen with his 
 own eyes. Here he is, in the person of Thomas. 
 
 In the pictures and the statues he is seen, 
 a man of sober features, with brows furrowed, 
 pondering hard questions, looking down at a 
 measuring rule which he is holding in his 
 hands. 
 
84 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 See, now, how this unbeliever behaves him- 
 self in the company of the faithful, and how 
 they conduct themselves towards him, and 
 how Christ treats him. So long as there is 
 unbelief among men, it will be worth while 
 to study this relationship of the skeptic to the 
 saints. Thomas is not dead. He is alive to- 
 day, multiplied by thousands. We are all of 
 us acquainted with Thomas. What shall he 
 have to do with us, and we with him ? 
 
 If the good example of the old time is to be 
 followed, Thomas will continue in our com- 
 pany, and we will be glad to have him with 
 us. His unbelief will not hinder his associa- 
 tion with us, nor will our faith forbid him. 
 Thomas did stay away once, and that time he 
 missed something. The next Sunday he was 
 in his place, and the revelation came to him. 
 
 The best thing that Thomas can do to-day 
 is to come to church. He does not believe 
 the central truth of Christianity ; he is a 
 heretic, he is a skeptic, he is an infidel, but 
 is he absolutely satisfied that he is right ? 
 Has he got quite to the end of it, and made 
 the supreme discovery? Is he entirely sure 
 that the creed of the ages is a lie? Has he 
 shut his mind against the entrance of any 
 possible new light and truth ? Has he stopped 
 thinking ? Is he serenely contented ? 
 
THE UNBELIEF OF THOMAS. 85 
 
 A man who hears one side for six days, as 
 some men do, ought to give the other side one 
 day's hearing out of the seven. An honest 
 man owes that to himself. 
 
 It ought to be understood that the church is 
 not an ecclesiastical club, within whose doors 
 only they may come who are quite congenial 
 with all the others. It ought to be understood 
 that the act of attendance at the services of the 
 church does not commit one to entire accord 
 with the church in all respects. One may be 
 attracted by its good works, and glad to take 
 his share in them, without being in full sym- 
 pathy with its creed. He be but a little way 
 along in the Christian life, being conscious of se- 
 rious defects of character, yet setting a worthy 
 ideal before him, and earnestly desiring to 
 attain it. He may be an honest seeker after 
 truth, and in perfect fairness willing to hear 
 what they have to say who hold that the 
 truth of the ages, the truth that heaven is 
 open and God is near at hand, is true in- 
 deed. In any case, his place is in the church. 
 If there is any truth beyond that which he 
 has already, he will come to a knowledge of 
 it, as Thomas did, by keeping in Christian 
 company, by his presence in the Christian con- 
 gregation. 
 
 The lesson of that Sunday after Easter 
 
86 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 needs to be learned by believers also. Thomas 
 is a good example, but so also is Peter, so is 
 John, and the rest of those whose faith was 
 sound. Thomas did not stay away, and they 
 did not wish him to stay away. Nobody cast 
 curious and questioning eyes upon him, asking, 
 " Why is this unbeliever among us ? " They 
 made him welcome. This is worth thinking 
 about. 
 
 This lesson has often been lost sight of 
 among Christians. Thomas has many times 
 been turned out of doors, excommunicated, and 
 worse things done to him. Doubt has been 
 accounted a crime. It has been held in worse 
 esteem than the breaking of the Ten Com- 
 mandments. Prisons have been prepared for 
 it, and stakes set up in market-places, and fires 
 kindled. That was not the spirit of the 
 apostolic company. Nor of Him who stood 
 there in the midst of them holding out His 
 hands to Thomas. Jesus loved that unbeliev- 
 ing Thomas, as He loves all honest and earnest 
 men everywhere. He had no wish to put him 
 away. What He desired was to bring him 
 nearer. He knew the love that Thomas had 
 in his heart ; and the love even of a heretic is 
 a hundred times better than the cold faith of 
 an orthodox believer, St. Paul being our 
 witness. 
 
THE UNBELIEF OP THOMAS. 87 
 
 There is no room for any question as to the 
 attitude of Jesus Christ towards honest doubt. 
 When He held out His hands to Thomas there 
 in the upper room, He made that as clear as 
 the shining light. 
 
 At last, to unbelieving Thomas, in the 
 apostles' company, came the revelation of the 
 truth, and doubt was changed to faith. Down 
 he fell upon his knees, crying, " My Lord and 
 my God ! " That was faith, indeed. None of 
 the others had said that. 
 
 Sometimes the doubters make the best be- 
 lievers. When they come into the light of 
 faith they know how to appreciate it, after the 
 darkness. They value it more highly than 
 those who have always lived in the light. 
 There is a great deal of conventional believing. 
 There are people who believe because they 
 have never seriously considered the articles of 
 the creed. They were taught the Christian 
 religion, as they were taught the decent 
 customs of Christian civilization, by their 
 good parents. And they have gone on ever 
 since, taking things for granted, asking no 
 questions. There is an element of good in 
 this. It is by no means to be expected that 
 all Christians shall have a critical mind. It is 
 not absolutely necessary to ask questions. 
 Some of these contented people, however, 
 
88 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 are like persons who live all their lives in the 
 presence of some majestic mountain, or beau- 
 tiful valley, or sublime expanse of sea, and be- 
 hold daily that which others come miles to see, 
 behold without any real recognition, missing 
 the sight of God. It is sometimes not a bad 
 thing to fall into the difficulties of doubt. It 
 breaks up conventionality. It brings us face 
 to face with life. When we get a good hold 
 of the truth again, we value it, as shipwrecked 
 people value dry land. 
 
 Thomas cried, " My Lord and my God," 
 when he saw Christ. What had converted 
 Thomas ? Was it the test which he had pro- 
 posed to himself? Did he put his finger into 
 the print of the nails, and thrust his hand into 
 the wounded side, and thus believe ? No ; 
 Thomas looked into the face of Jesus, and was 
 satisfied. He tried no tests; he asked no 
 more than that. He saw Christ, and that was 
 enough. 
 
 We, too, may see Christ, and the sight of 
 Him shall help us as it helped Thomas. He 
 speaks still in the pages of the gospels. Every 
 day He holds out His nail-pierced hands to us. 
 We, too, may know Him ; and to know Him 
 is to believe in Him ; and to believe in Him, 
 to serve Him and to love Him is life eternal. 
 
BLIND BAKTIM^EUS. 
 
 And it came to pass that as He was come nigh unto Jericho, 
 a certain blind man sat by the wayside begging. Luke 18: 35. 
 
 BAEDEKER'S "Palestine" has no map of 
 Jericho. The place has long since ceased to 
 exist. Its walls lie flatter than they were ever 
 laid by Joshua. It was there, however, plain 
 enough when the matter happened of which I 
 purpose to speak. The small child was mis- 
 taken who imagined that Jericho was in 
 heaven. It stood on solid earth ; as actual and 
 homely and familiar as any common town 
 with which we are acquainted. We sur- 
 round it with a fictitious sacredness which 
 makes the miraculous easy and natural. We 
 read without hesitation that a blind man's 
 eyes were opened in Jericho. If we were 
 told that a similar healing had been enacted 
 in Jersey City we would regard the tale with 
 different feelings. But to the men of that 
 time, Jericho was like Jersey City. It offered 
 quite as unpromising a background for a 
 miracle. 
 
 Jericho lay in the Jordan valley. Up 
 among the hills, at Jerusalem, the winds 
 
 89 
 
90 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 blew ; but it was very hot at Jericho. It is 
 true, the place was called the City of Palms ; 
 but the palm is one of the least satisfactory of 
 trees. Although it grows where there is great 
 need of shade, it gives little: it is mostly 
 stem. A single New England pine or oak is 
 better than a grove of palms. So the sun 
 blazed down on Jericho; and the earth was 
 white, and most of the buildings were white, 
 and altogether it was very trying to the eyes, 
 and in consequence there were a great many 
 blind men in that city. 
 
 On the day when this wonder happened, 
 one of these blind men was sitting in the main 
 street by one of the city gates. It was in the 
 morning, for we know what had occurred the 
 night before ; and it was in the spring of the 
 year, for the Passover was near at hand. Thus 
 every sight was fair and sweet with the tender 
 beauty of the early day and of the early 
 season. And in the midst of it all the blind 
 man sat as unaware of this revelation of God 
 as were some of his dull neighbors who had 
 eyes. 
 
 From the fact that his father's name is 
 mentioned Bartimaeus meaning " the son of 
 Timseus" we may guess that he was a young 
 man. We may also infer less certainly that he 
 belonged to a respectable family : everybody 
 
BLIND BARTIM^EUS. 91 
 
 knew his father. One thing is plain, he was 
 very poor. He sat by the wayside begging. 
 
 It seems to us that the lot of a blind beggar 
 must be very hard, but there are compen- 
 sations. It is said of one of the wise men of 
 Greece that he voluntarily put out both his 
 eyes, and then saw twice as much as anybody 
 else in that part of the country. That was 
 because he was thereby freed from many petty 
 distractions, and was able to concentrate his 
 thoughts. As for being a beggar, some of the 
 best men that ever lived have adopted that 
 mode of life of their own free choice, and have 
 delighted in it. Francis of Assisi did. He 
 preferred to be poor. It was a state of blessed 
 independence. People talk about being inde- 
 pendently rich, but there is such a thing as 
 being independently poor. 
 
 Thus the blind beggar was a more privi- 
 leged person than one might naturally think ; 
 he had both leisure and liberty. He had time 
 to think, and he could think what thoughts he 
 would. 
 
 He had much to think about, that morning. 
 The day before there had come into the town 
 a person about whom everybody was talking. 
 Our Lord was now approaching the end of His 
 ministry, and, although each day brought Him 
 an increase of enemies, all people were greatly 
 
92 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 interested in Him. When He came into the 
 town, all the citizens were in the streets to see 
 Him. That was yesterday afternoon. The 
 whole roadway was crowded. Among the 
 throng was the most unpopular man in Jericho. 
 Almost everybody disliked Zaccheus ; partly, 
 no doubt, because he was a tax-collector, but 
 also, it is likely, because he was Zaccheus. 
 This unpopular person, being short of stature, 
 had climbed into a tree ; and our Lord, as He 
 passed, had looked up and recognized him, and 
 had said, " Come down, Zaccheus, I will dine 
 to-day at your house." You can see how such 
 a thing as that would set all men to talking. 
 
 There were two parties, calling our Lord by 
 different titles. Those who did not believe in 
 Him called Him "Jesus of Nazareth." Those 
 who did, called Him "Jesus, the Son of 
 David." The blind beggar, sitting by the 
 wayside, was turning all this over in his mind. 
 
 And now, on this spring morning, Bar- 
 timEeus sat in the main street near the city 
 gate, holding out his hand. And in the 
 distance he heard a crowd coming ; there were 
 sounds of tongues and feet. On they came, 
 filling the street from side to side. And the 
 blind man did what any blind man would have 
 done under like circumstances : he reached out 
 his hand and grasped the coat of the nearest 
 
BLIND BAETIM^EUS. 93 
 
 man, and said, " What does it mean ? What 
 is it all about ? " And the man answered, 
 "Jesus of Nazareth passeth by." There He 
 came along the road. Immediately, Bar- 
 timasus began to call as loud as he could, 
 "Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on 
 me ! Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on 
 me!" 
 
 This was the voice of recognition. The 
 blind man recognized the opportunity. There 
 must have been twenty blind men in Jericho 
 that day, and every one of them must have 
 known that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. 
 Nobody in the town could help knowing that. 
 But not another one was healed. Yes ; some 
 of the gospels say that there was one other, 
 but no more than that. All the other blind 
 men were blind when Jesus came, and just as 
 blind when He went away. That was because 
 they missed the opportunity. 
 
 The difference between people, whereby 
 some succeed and others fail, is due, of course, 
 in a measure, to a difference of opportunity ; 
 but still more to a difference in the recognition 
 of opportunity. Here are two men in the same 
 business ; one gets rich, while the other stays 
 poor. The rich man may have had no more 
 opportunity than the poor man ; but every 
 opportunity that came, he recognized. 
 
94 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 Here are two men in the same class in col- 
 lege. They have the same teachers, and may, 
 if they will, have the same companions. These 
 opportunities are equal. One man makes much 
 of himself, and becomes an eminent citizen ; 
 the other lapses into ignominious obscurity. 
 Here are two persons at the same service. 
 One goes away blessed ; the other goes away 
 bored. The service is the same, but the people 
 are different ; and the difference is in the mat- 
 ter of recognition. 
 
 Every day, Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. 
 In the street, in the schoolroom, in the office, 
 as we read, as we walk, as we work, He comes, 
 ready to bless us, if we will. Sometimes, we 
 are like the two who went to Emmaus, who 
 when He made as if He would go on, urged 
 Him to come in. Or we are like this blind 
 beggar, and appeal for help and blessing. 
 
 The beggar's cry was also an utterance of 
 faith. He not only recognized an opportunity, 
 but he found the opportunity in the person of 
 Jesus Christ. He was one of those who, not 
 having seen, believed. 
 
 His faith was most inadequate theologically. 
 It was sufficient, however, religiously. It was 
 enough to make him side with those who were 
 the friends of Christ, and to call out to Him 
 for help. He believed that Jesus Christ could 
 
BLIND BARTIM^EUS. 95 
 
 help him. Presently, our Lord said, "Thy 
 faith hath saved thee." We are accordingly 
 assured that the blind man's faith was saving 
 faith. The only kind of faith which deserves 
 that adjective is religious faith. 
 
 There is a great difference between theolog- 
 ical and religious orthodoxy. Theological 
 orthodoxy is an external matter, and may not 
 even suffice to make men respectable. It is a 
 thing of the brain and of the lips, and may 
 have no sort of relation to the heart or to the 
 hands. Some of the most objectionable of 
 men have been scrupulous in this recitation of 
 accurate doctrinal formulas: and then they 
 have gone out and broken the Ten Command- 
 ments. 
 
 The difference between theological and 
 religious orthodoxy is like the difference be- 
 tween botany and roses. Botany is about 
 roses, giving them scientific names and en- 
 abling us to take them to pieces understand- 
 ingly. But roses are the roses themselves. 
 Or it is like the difference between grammar 
 and conversation. Grammar is the science of 
 speech. As we talk, the grammarian notices 
 that we use nouns and adverbs, conjugations 
 and declensions. Or it is like the difference 
 between "rhetoric," as it used to be called, 
 and literature. The old rhetoric books took 
 
96 THE HUMAN NATUKE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 Shakespeare and Milton and called attention 
 to their use of zeugma, and paraleipsis, and 
 anacoluthon. Mr. Gardiner, in his " Forms of 
 Prose Literature," quotes from, a writer who 
 tried to assist his readers to an appreciation of 
 the Odes of Horace by showing how they 
 illustrated "the synectic, in its threefold 
 divisions of anastomosis, symptosis and pho- 
 netic syzygy." Out of a thousand admirers 
 of poetry, even of Latin poetry, not more than 
 two would probably be able even to define 
 these words. And yet the noble verse would 
 be a delight and an inspiration to them all. 
 
 So it is with faith. Formulas have but a 
 remote connection with it. What is the faith 
 which saves men ? It is that which makes the 
 little child hold tight to his father's hand. 
 You cannot define it. The theologians can no 
 more define it than the chemists can analyze 
 life. But you see what it is. It is that which 
 makes a man appeal to Jesus Christ. When 
 in the moment of temptation he turns to Him 
 for strength, when in the hour of sorrow he 
 turns to Him for comfort, when in the season 
 of perplexity he turns to Him for truth, and 
 takes His word, then his faith appears. It 
 may be as full of error as the blind man's ; 
 but it saves him, nevertheless. 
 
 Presently it appeared that the beggar's 
 
BLIND BARTIM^EUS. 97 
 
 voice of recognition and of faith was also the 
 voice of perseverance. Nobody could stop 
 him. " Jesus, Thou Son of David," he cried, 
 " have mercy on me." And this, not once nor 
 twice, but many times. The street was full 
 of noise, but his cry was heard above it all. 
 Those who stood about him told him in the 
 plainest Hebrew to hold his tongue ; it made 
 no difference. Or rather, it increased his 
 eagerness ; so much the more a great deal he 
 continued to lift up his voice. All the distrac- 
 tion, all the hindrance and obstruction, all the 
 indifferent and impatient or hostile folk who 
 crowded in between him and the Master, did 
 but emphasize his purpose. 
 
 Then Jesus heard the cry. He stopped, 
 and had the man brought to Him. And the 
 man cast away his long cloak, and came. It 
 was very warm in Jericho in the middle of 
 the day, but in the spring there was a chill in 
 the morning air. A week after, in Jerusalem, 
 there was a fire burning in the courtyard of 
 the high priest's house, where Peter stood and 
 warmed himself. So the beggar had a long 
 cloak wrapped about him. Begging, even in 
 warm weather, is a cold business. 
 
 The blind man cast away his cloak and 
 came. " What do you want ? " said the Mas- 
 ter. " I want to see," said the man. 
 
98 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 Blessed is he who knows thus plainly what 
 he wants. Bartimseus knew his defect dis- 
 tinctly. One reason why we make such halt- 
 ing and uncertain progress towards spiritual 
 health is because we do not know what is the 
 matter with us. We have a vague idea that 
 we are not as good as we ought to be: we 
 have various faults. But what we need to do 
 is to take our imperfections one by one and 
 definitely and patiently amend them. Let 
 the others go : take one, and bring it to the 
 Master, as the blind man brought his blind 
 eyes. Thus shall we be helped. 
 
 And Jesus touched him. He made the beg- 
 gar see. That was a miracle. The name is 
 appropriate : it means a wonderful thing, and 
 this was a wonderful thing. So far, however, 
 was it from being against nature, that it was 
 the most natural of all events. One of the 
 contributions of Christian Science to the Chris- 
 tian religion is in the fact that it is impressing 
 upon us the naturalness of the miraculous. 
 Miracles are every -day occurrences. People 
 are being healed, as this blind man was, with- 
 out medicine, by the touch of a hand or by 
 the tones of a voice, until we are coming to 
 understand that it is all as harmonious with 
 natural law as the action of medicine. The 
 old notion that in a miracle God broke in 
 
BLIND BARTIM^EUS. 99 
 
 upon the course of nature is no longer held by 
 instructed and intelligent persons. God is in 
 all nature. By His ordering there is a rela- 
 tion not only between drugs and the body, 
 but between the mind and the body. Jesus 
 understood that relation, and acted upon it. 
 Or rather, His personality coming in contact 
 as here with physical weakness brought about 
 an inevitable and natural result. He could 
 not help opening the eyes of the blind. The 
 blind man who recognized Him as He passed 
 by, opened his own eyes. 
 
 The miracles are recorded in the Bible not 
 so much on account of their marvel, as on ac- 
 count of their meaning. Of the many acts of 
 healing which Jesus did, these are selected for 
 their significance. What, then, does this mira- 
 cle mean ? 
 
 The man came blind, and went away blind 
 no longer: the fact is significant spiritually. 
 The man came a beggar, and went away a 
 beggar no longer: the fact is significant so- 
 cially. 
 
 Take first the spiritual lesson. The man's 
 eyes were opened. It is a symbol of our 
 Lord's whole ministry : that is what He came 
 to do. And that is what we need. To see 
 the difference between right and wrong, to 
 see the way of duty, to see the subtle distinc- 
 
100 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 tions between truth and falsehood, to see our 
 neighbor and ourself, and God who is there 
 that can do this clearly ? Even St. Paul had 
 to say that we see now " through a glass, 
 darkly." Jesus Christ will give us sight. 
 Many a man has come to Him blind, and has 
 gone away with such a gift of sight as has re- 
 vealed to him a new heaven and a new earth. 
 Thenceforth the world has been a different 
 world. It has happened again and again. It 
 is one of the supreme miracles, ever so much 
 more wonderful and effective than the cure of 
 Bartima3us. And we can verify it. There is 
 no uncertainty about it. We know men and 
 women in our own circle of acquaintance who 
 have been transformed by knowing Jesus 
 Christ. To-day, for every one of us, He pass- 
 eth by. He will open our eyes, if we wish it, 
 as the blind man did. 
 
 Take now the social lesson. This blind beg- 
 gar is the symbol of a present problem, the 
 problem of poverty. What shall we do for 
 the poor? There were excellent people in 
 Jericho who asked themselves that question, 
 and answered it by a distribution of alms. 
 As they passed along the street and saw Bar- 
 timasus, with his outstretched hat or hand, 
 they put something into it. And the next 
 day, they found the same beggar in the same 
 
,", i ' ' ,''' 
 
 ',',>>>>>> ** " 
 
 BLIND BABTIMJEUS. 101 
 
 position. So it went on. The poor were 
 helped in their poverty, but they were not 
 helped out of their poverty. Then the Master 
 came, and when He helped the man, He left 
 him a different man. He was a beggar no 
 longer. For Jesus addressed Himself, not to 
 the man's poverty, but to the cause of his pov- 
 erty. Bartimaeus was a beggar because he 
 was blind. Jesus opened his eyes. 
 
 It is the new philanthropy. The new phi- 
 lanthropists are trying not only to alleviate 
 poverty, but to remove it. They are endeav- 
 oring to understand it, to get at the causes of 
 it, and to change the conditions. 
 
 Then the blind man saw ; and the first thing 
 that he saw was the way before his feet. On 
 it led after Jesus Christ. The man went along 
 that way. He followed Him. He took the 
 gift which the Lord had given him, and used 
 it in the Lord's service. 
 
THE MISSION OF PHILIP. 
 
 Philip findeth Nathaniel. John I: 45. 
 
 THUS the church begins. One man makes 
 the supreme discovery and comes into ac- 
 quaintance with Jesus of Nazareth, and 
 straight he goes and tells his new truth to 
 another. Read the first chapters of the his- 
 tory of the Christian Church as they are writ- 
 ten at the beginning of the New Testament, 
 and see how many times this incident is re- 
 peated. It is characteristic of Christianity. 
 It is the instinctive motion of the Christian. 
 One finds another, and thus the kingdom of 
 God comes. 
 
 Ours is an aggressive religion. It is never 
 contented. It stands by itself among the re- 
 ligions of the race in its zeal for making con- 
 verts. It will never stop till it has discovered 
 every Nathaniel, and has brought him into 
 the presence of Jesus. It will never be satis- 
 fied until the whole race is Christian : nor will 
 it be contented then, until every Christian is a 
 good Christian. That will be a long time yet. 
 
 This aggressive spirit is seen in every Chris- 
 
 102 
 
THE MISSION OF PHILIP. 103 
 
 tian who has learned the mind of the Master, 
 and has caught the deep meaning of His re- 
 ligion, and is in spiritual sympathy with Him. 
 The Christian does not imagine that his task 
 is done when he has worked out his own 
 salvation. He does not deceive himself by 
 thinking that the chief purpose of his life is 
 to work out his own salvation. He knows 
 that salvation cannot be selfishly attained, 
 that no man can be saved alone, and that we 
 save ourselves by saving our brethren. He 
 finds his best occupation in helping, uplifting, 
 trying to save somebody else. It is what 
 Jesus said : He who will save his life shall 
 lose it ; he only who is content to lose his 
 life for Christ's sake and for the good of his 
 neighbors, shall find it. We are good Chris- 
 tians in proportion as we follow the example of 
 that apostle who, having himself found Jesus, 
 lost no time till he should bring his brother 
 also. 
 
 This aggressive spirit, this longing to go out 
 and bring some brother in, marks not only the 
 Christian but the earnest man of every creed, 
 the world over. It fired the heart of a camel- 
 driver in an Arabian desert, and made him the 
 ambassador of God to a sixth part of the in- 
 habitants of the planet. "Though the sun 
 stand on my right hand and the moon on my 
 
104- THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 left, 5? said Mohammed, " and both command 
 me to hold my peace, yet must I speak." 
 
 It moved a German schoolmaster, so that 
 he became a lever for overturning most of the 
 established institutions of his day that they 
 might be builded over again better. You 
 know how stout he stood, that honest Luther; 
 nothing could shake him. " God help me," 
 he declared. "I can do no other, speak I 
 must." All the priests and prelates, all the 
 curses, civil and ecclesiastical, all the flames 
 and fagots notwithstanding, yet must he 
 utter forth in the hearing of all men the truth 
 which God had given him. Though he were 
 confronted by as many devils as there were 
 tiles on all the roofs of all the cities of all 
 Europe, yet must he defy the whole Satanic 
 multitude and tell his errand. 
 
 The aggressive spirit makes earnest men 
 akin. The earnest man cannot be contented 
 to be right all alone. He will have no 
 monopoly of truth. He will not have his 
 brain a prison but a treasure-house of knowl- 
 edge. What he sees he would have the whole 
 world see; what he believes he would have 
 the whole world believe. His desire is that 
 of the apostle who stood before the king : "I 
 would to God that not only thou, but also all 
 that hear me this day were both almost and 
 
THE MISSION OF PHILIP. 105 
 
 altogether such as I am, except these bonds," 
 St. Paul added ; and he adds the same, mean- 
 ing his many limitations and shortcomings. 
 The truth which he possesses, he would share 
 with all ; his errors and faults he is sincerely 
 sorry for, and so much the more as they hinder 
 him from being helpful. 
 
 It is interesting and instructive to observe 
 how this aggressive spirit, which is a quality 
 of greatness, marks in Holy Scripture even 
 the humblest Christians. " The day following 
 Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth 
 Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me ; " and so 
 Philip became a Christian. And what next ? 
 "Philip findeth Nathaniel." He cannot rest 
 till he has found his friend and brought him. 
 
 It is the same in Samaria. "The woman 
 saith unto Him, I know that Messias cometh, 
 which is called Christ. Jesus saith unto her, 
 I that speak unto thee am He." That was the 
 plainest word which He had spoken of Him- 
 self. To no one anywhere had He told that 
 great truth so fully and distinctly, using no 
 parable: I am the Christ. What does the 
 woman do with this word from heaven ? 
 "The woman left her water pot and went her 
 way into the city, and saith unto the men, 
 Come, see a man which told me all things that 
 ever I did. Is not this the Christ ? " 
 
106 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 Always this word " Come." Come, cries 
 Andrew to his brother Simon ; Come, cries 
 Philip to Nathaniel ; Come, entreats this 
 woman of Samaria, stopping every one whom 
 she meets in the street. These people must 
 speak; they must get somebody else; they 
 must tell what great things Christ has done 
 for their souls. 
 
 Jesus heals a demoniac in Gergesa : " And 
 he went his way and published throughout the 
 whole city how great things Jesus had done 
 for him." Matthew leaves his custom-house 
 and follows Jesus. He gives up a good busi- 
 ness to enter into this new service. But this 
 is not enough ; he must bring his companions, 
 also. He makes a great supper, and gets all 
 his publican partners and friends together to 
 meet Him whom henceforth he purposes to 
 follow. The authorities seize John and Peter, 
 crying, you must speak no more in this name. 
 If you do, we will put you into prison, and 
 worse afterwards. But the apostles answer, 
 " Whether it be right in the sight of God to 
 hearken unto you more than unto God, judge 
 ye ; for we cannot but speak the things which 
 we have seen and heard." They simply could 
 not help it. The great truth of the Christian 
 creed had flashed in upon the souls of these 
 men, and to keep silence about it was impos- 
 
THE MISSION OF PHILIP. 107 
 
 sible. Better be put in prison a hundred 
 times ; better die, first : rather than be still. 
 St. Stephen died. They might stone him if 
 he would, but while breath was in him, speak 
 he must. 
 
 This aggressive spirit, this impulse of the 
 Christian Philip to find Nathaniel, this duty, 
 desire, necessity of open testimony and per- 
 sonal appeal, ought to characterize every 
 Christian. Every Christian ought to be mak- 
 ing somebody else Christian. 
 
 It is easy enough to speak to people on the 
 subject of religion, in the pulpit. They ex- 
 pect it there. But to address our neighbors 
 upon this matter in private conversation is one 
 of the most difficult of occupations. 
 
 One reason is that we dislike to make our- 
 selves disagreeable. We are afraid that the 
 subject may not be a pleasant one. And it is 
 very true that Philip may make himself ex- 
 ceedingly disagreeable. He may speak in an 
 unnatural tone of voice, and in a constrained 
 and singular manner, and in phrases which 
 seem affected. He may simply annoy Na- 
 thaniel, and do more harm than good to the 
 cause which he represents. Few people are 
 more uncomfortably disagreeable than the 
 men and women who are piously disagreeable. 
 They make even the saints lose their temper. 
 
108 THE HUMAN NATUKE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 There is no need, however, that the subject 
 of personal religion should repel the listener. 
 There is surely nothing in the theme itself 
 which is distasteful. It is concerned with the 
 highest, the most important, the most helpful 
 truth in the world. If we choose fitting oc- 
 casions and fitting people ; if we speak in a 
 natural tone of voice, and behave like normal 
 human beings, and if we do not preach any- 
 thing which we are not ourselves honestly fol- 
 lowing, we will not make ourselves disagree- 
 able. 
 
 In every friendship that is worth anything, 
 whether between parent and child, or between 
 friend and friend, the moment does come, 
 and not once or twice only, when it is just 
 the time for a spiritual word. Be on the 
 watch for that moment, and then speak. 
 Have the aggressive spirit in your heart, be 
 possessed with the sense of responsibility for 
 your Christian influence, seek every good op- 
 portunity to make somebody else as good a 
 Christian as you are yourself, and you will 
 find Nathaniel. Who can measure the value 
 of open, earnest, manly Christian speech ? 
 Sometimes a word has changed the whole cur- 
 rent of a life. Your words, just because you 
 speak them, will be more effective than a great 
 many sermons. What you say may not be 
 
THE MISSION OF PHILIP. 109 
 
 eloquent, nor logical nor in all respects accu- 
 rate; you may blunder in saying it; but what 
 your friend will hear will be the voice of your 
 heart. 
 
 I suppose that the real difficulty is our con- 
 sciousness of our own imperfections. Who 
 are we that we should go to another, saying 
 by the fact of our addressing hirn that we are 
 better than he is, and urging him to the spir- 
 itual life ? And if we go, how shall we begin 
 to speak ? And if our friend asks questions 
 or makes comments, how shall we answer 
 him? 
 
 Let us consider what it is that we desire to 
 do. We may put it into a single sentence : 
 We desire to bring our friend to the knowl- 
 edge, and thus to the love, and so to the al- 
 legiance of Jesus Christ. What will bring 
 that about ? Our own example will do a great 
 deal. The fact that we are manifestly devoted 
 to Jesus Christ, that we are not only regular in 
 our attendence upon those services in which 
 we are brought near to Him, but are glad to 
 go and honestly regret to stay away, that the 
 will of Jesus Christ affects our will, all this 
 is of aggressive value. Though we do not say 
 a word, it helps. Christianity on Sunday, 
 with a lack of Christianity between Sundays, 
 does not help. Devotion to the church, ac- 
 
110 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 companied by selfishness at home, does not 
 help. If we so live as to make it plain to 
 those who know us that Jesus Christ is an ever- 
 present strength and joy to us ; if they see 
 that He makes us considerate of others, cheer- 
 ful under trials, patient in affliction, self-sac- 
 rificing, and having the spirit of service, that 
 helps immeasurably. 
 
 To bring our friend where he will hear 
 about Jesus Christ is a way to effect our 
 desire for him. We may not be able to say 
 the word which we want to say ; but in the 
 church, where the scriptures are read and the 
 gospel is preached, he may hear the word 
 which he needs. If it were an appreciation 
 for music which we wished to cultivate in him, 
 we probably would not argue with him about 
 the excellence of the works of the masters, we 
 would take him to concerts, to as many concerts 
 as we could get him to attend cheerfully. We 
 would not urge him against his will, but we 
 would very persistently invite him. We would 
 not expect much at the beginning : he would 
 probably say a great many times that he would 
 never go again, and would revile music on 
 general principles, but he would go if we kept 
 after him, and by and by he would hear with 
 his ears, and rejoice with his heart, and be 
 converted musically. That is the right thing 
 
THE MISSION OF PHILIP. Ill 
 
 to do with the friend whom we would bring 
 to an appreciation of religion. We will bring 
 him at least to the service. He ought never 
 to be compelled to come in, but the Christian 
 in the house ought never to go to church on 
 Sunday without inviting the member of the 
 family who does not commonly go. That un- 
 wearying, cheerful invitation will accomplish 
 much. 
 
 That is what Philip did. He did not know 
 much about Jesus Christ himself, he had been 
 acquainted with Him only for one day ; and 
 when Nathaniel, having listened to what he 
 had to say about Him, offered an objection 
 can any good thing come out of Nazareth ? he 
 had no argument or proof to give in answer. 
 What he said was, Come and see. Only 
 come, he said, look into His face, hear Him 
 speak, get acquainted with Him, and then 
 make up your own mind. That was no argu- 
 ment ; but it was more effective than a whole 
 encyclopaedia of arguments. Nathaniel did 
 come and see, and thus another disciple was 
 added to the company of Jesus. 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 
 
 THERE is one article of the Apostles' Creed 
 whose intention is unknown. Nobody can tell 
 how it got into the creed ; and, being there, 
 nobody can say what it originally meant. We 
 recite it over and over, without denial, even 
 without question, but, I will venture to say, 
 without understanding. 
 
 Of course, the creed from beginning to end 
 is concerned with high matters of whose full 
 significance we are all ignorant. A formula 
 whose first word is an assertion of belief in 
 God, and which goes on through the mysteries 
 of redemption to the life everlasting, presents 
 not only a series of the articles of our belief, 
 but an outline of a course of study which will 
 be sufficient to occupy us to all eternity. But 
 in the case of the article which I now purpose 
 to consider the very subject of our study is 
 uncertain. Not only the meaning but the in- 
 tention of the sentence is unknown. I refer 
 to the words in which we express our belief 
 in the communion of saints. What is the 
 communion of saints ? 
 
 The Apostles' Creed, substantially in its 
 
 112 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 113 
 
 present form, was in existence at least as early 
 as the latter part of the second century. It 
 appears at that date in the writings of Tertul- 
 lian, who lived in the north of Africa, and of 
 Irenaeus, who lived in the south of France. It 
 is the creed of the church of the West, as the 
 Nicene formula is the creed of the church of 
 the East. Neither Tertullian nor Irenaeus, 
 however, include in their statement of belief 
 any such article as the communion of saints. 
 The first appearance of these words is more 
 than two hundred years later, in the beginning 
 of the fifth century. That is, for two hun- 
 dred years the service of the church contained 
 no creed at all. The emphasis in that period 
 was not on belief but on behavior. And after 
 that, for two hundred years more, the creed 
 made no reference to the saints. Indeed, the 
 assertion of the communion of saints is not 
 made to-day in any part of Eastern Christen- 
 dom. The Greek Church says the Nicene 
 Creed, in which this phrase does not occur. 
 
 In the fifth century, then, and in Gaul, or 
 as we now say, France, the words were 
 added. The creed had not yet been stereo- 
 typed. The churches were not particular to 
 recite it always in precisely the same form. 
 If they got the general sense of it, that was 
 enough. So that addition and subtraction 
 
THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 were both easy, and both were taking place. 
 One day it occurred to somebody to follow 
 the phrase, " the holy catholic church," with 
 the further phrase, " the communion of saints." 
 And the congregation liked it, and wanted it 
 said again that way next Sunday, and then 
 the neighbors heard about it, and then Nicetas 
 of Aquileia put it in a book. Thus, with 
 general approval, but without any formal 
 action, it found a place in the creed. 
 
 Now in the early part of the fifth century 
 the words sanctorum communionem had two 
 meanings, according as sanctorum was taken 
 to be a neuter or a masculine noun. The 
 words might signify a participation either in 
 holy things or in holy people. The holy things 
 were the sacraments ; the holy people were the 
 saints, especially the saints above in the joy of 
 heaven. In either case, the reference was to 
 the church, for the new phrase was not con- 
 sidered as a new article of faith. You will 
 notice in the creed, as it is printed in the 
 Prayer-book, that the articles are separated 
 one from another by a colon, but that the 
 mark between " the holy catholic church " and 
 "the communion of saints" is a semicolon. 
 These two make a single article. The com- 
 munion of saints is set in the creed not by way 
 of addition but by way of explanation. So 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 115 
 
 that as the Apostles' Creed now stands three 
 assertions are made about the church : it is 
 holy, it is catholic, and it is the communion of 
 saints. It is impossible, however, to decide 
 what was in the minds of the good men who 
 first used the new words. They may have been 
 thinking of sacraments, or they may have 
 been thinking of saints, or they may have 
 been thinking of both together. What is the 
 peculiar privilege of members of the holy 
 catholic church, according to the Apostles' 
 Creed ? Is it that they are permitted to 
 receive the sacraments of grace ? is it that 
 hereafter they will be admitted with all the 
 blessed saints into glory everlasting ? or is it 
 one joy in the present and the other joy in the 
 future ? Nobody can tell. 
 
 Why should we care ? These are both 
 narrow meanings. Neither of them satisfies 
 us. They are not only narrow, but they repre- 
 sent the faults rather than the virtues of the 
 holy catholic church. 
 
 It is true that in the church we are privi- 
 leged to participate in the sacraments. We 
 are admitted to the table of the Lord, that He 
 may dwell in us and we in Him. And that is 
 indeed a blessing. But the blessing is not in 
 the act itself : it is in the presence of Him who 
 therein blesses us, and in the new spirit with 
 
116 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 which we come out to take up the old life. 
 The church has asserted an exclusive pos- 
 session of the sources of spiritual life. It has 
 maintained that without the sacraments there 
 is no salvation ; and it has claimed to be the 
 sole dispenser of the sacraments. For hun- 
 dreds of years it successfully preserved a 
 monopoly of the necessities of the Christian 
 life. It grew rich by selling the sacraments. 
 And it treated its competitors in a manner 
 which no monopoly to-day would dare to 
 imitate afar off. It controlled legislation, and 
 carried on an unceasing and unswerving per- 
 secution. It killed its rivals. The more 
 formidable among them it burned at the 
 stake. And this it did as the communion of 
 saints ; that is, as the society whose members 
 were admitted to a participation of holy 
 things. 
 
 It is true also that the church is not divided 
 by the barrier of death. Part of it is here on 
 earth ; part of it is in paradise ; but it is all one 
 church. On we go out of the material sanc- 
 tuary into the spiritual, expecting to continue 
 there the prayers, the praises, and the religious 
 joys which we have begun here. We antici- 
 pate with confidence a day when we shall 
 enter into fellowship with the saints. The 
 time will come when we shall know the men 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 117 
 
 and women whose books we have read for our 
 souls' good, whose lives have entered into our 
 life, and whose very names make our hearts 
 warm. What a blessed thing it will be to 
 have our residence in a place where there will 
 be no clocks or almanacs, where nobody will 
 ever be in a hurry, where there will be ever so 
 many more than seven days in a week. There 
 we may converse with St. Augustine without a 
 fear lest we may be keeping him from his 
 studies ; and with St. Francis, without taking 
 his time from his prayers. There we will be 
 free from all appointments, emancipated from 
 the bondage of time. And we anticipate a 
 dearer companionship the blessed, familiar 
 fraternity of our personal friends, whom we 
 shall meet again after long parting, in the 
 light across which falls no shadow of death. 
 All this is precious to our souls. But the place 
 for it in the creed is in " the life everlasting." 
 The trouble with this interpretation of the 
 communion of saints as a definition of the 
 church is that it puts the emphasis too much 
 upon the other world. It encourages that 
 misplaced patience which endures the ills of 
 this present life in the hope of a better life to 
 come. These ills are not to be endured : they 
 are to be amended. The Christian virtue 
 which is needed in their presence is not 
 
118 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 patience ; it is righteous indignation, and a 
 militant spirit, and an earnest purpose. Here, 
 for example, is a great church in the midst of 
 a sordid town, and priests and people are daily 
 saying their prayers in it, and singing hymns 
 about the world to come, and all the time the 
 town lies still in wickedness. That means a 
 wrong idea of the relation between prayer and 
 progress. It means a false conception of the 
 mission of the Christian Church. 
 
 These two meanings of the communion of 
 saints were current in the thought of the fifth 
 century when the words were added to the 
 creed. Sometimes the phrase meant a par- 
 ticipation in holy things, that is, the sacra- 
 ments ; sometimes it meant a fellowship with 
 holy persons, that is, with the saints in the 
 world to come. 
 
 But we are not shut up to these ancient 
 meanings. When we have determined pre- 
 cisely what was in the mind of the maker of a 
 sentence of the creed, we are not obliged to read 
 the sentence just as he read it, if we can read 
 it better. Because he meant a narrow thing 
 by it in the fifth century, we need not neces- 
 sarily mean the same narrow thing in the 
 twentieth century. Else the creed becomes a 
 barrier and blocks the way. The process of 
 interpretation is attended with peril : that is 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 119 
 
 true. It is not to be entered into unadvisedly 
 or lightly. But it must be undertaken ; other- 
 wise one of two results will follow : the for- 
 mula must be abandoned, or we must compel 
 ourselves to think a lie. The right thing to 
 do, if we can, is to keep the formula, which is 
 both venerable and precious and consecrated 
 by the daily use of long generations of holy 
 people ; but to keep it close to all the truth 
 which the Holy Spirit has taught the church 
 in all the ages since. 
 
 Thus we must deal with the communion of 
 saints. It is a noble phrase, and is capable of 
 noble meanings. And these meanings are at 
 the heart of the definitions of the fathers ; so 
 that they spoke more truly than they knew. 
 
 The church is indeed a fellowship with holy 
 people, as they said, but the holy people are 
 here in the flesh on earth. The communion 
 of saints is the Christian brotherhood, the as- 
 sociation of those who are trying to be good ; 
 the Gemeinde der Heiligen, as Luther said. 
 The grammarians warn us that the words 
 sanctorum communionem cannot be so trans- 
 lated. But that does not deter us for a 
 moment. They must be so translated. That 
 is what they actually mean to-day. 
 
 The church is a holy church : that is, in pur- 
 pose, in ideal. The people who belong to it 
 
120 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 are called saints. No matter who they are, 
 they are entitled saints. That is the synonym 
 of a Christian in St. Paul's epistles. The 
 saints may not have gone very far along the 
 narrow way to sanctity. But they are called 
 saints, because they have their faces turned in 
 that direction. St. Paul addresses a letter " to 
 the saints which are in Ephesus," and in the 
 course of it he tells them that they must stop 
 their lying and their stealing. These people 
 were only beginning to be saints, and had not 
 got far enough along to have mastered even 
 the most elementary of the Ten Command- 
 ments. They were not altogether respectable, 
 but they were saints : saints for the sake of 
 their good intentions, saints because of their 
 honest purpose, called saints already in antici- 
 pation of the time when they should be saints 
 indeed. 
 
 And these imperfect persons, who were thus 
 striving after a better life, were not striving all 
 alone. They were members of a society ; they 
 belonged to a brotherhood. They were help- 
 ing one another, coming together to the sacra- 
 ment of spiritual strength, and going out 
 together to undertake the tasks which were too 
 heavy for one pair of hands. What is the 
 meaning of the rubric which forbids the cele- 
 bration of the holy communion unless there 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 121 
 
 are at least two people to communicate with 
 the minister ? It is intended to preserve the 
 social aspects of the sacrament, as the service 
 not of an individual only but of a group of 
 people, of the Christian brotherhood. 
 
 Thus it was that the Christian Church came 
 into being, as the fellowship of the faithful, as 
 the society of friends, as the communion of 
 saints. The creed says that the church is 
 holy ; that is, that the supreme purpose of it 
 is the upbuilding of character. And then it 
 adds that it is the communion of saints ; that 
 is, that one of the distinctive marks of Christian 
 character is brotherliness. The church is the 
 Christian brotherhood. It is the blessed com- 
 pany of these who in the name of Christ are 
 trying to establish the kingdom of heaven in 
 the world by being brotherly. 
 
 The church means also, as they said of old, 
 a participation in holy things. It is the con- 
 fraternity of the sacraments. It is the open 
 gate of heaven. The ancient definition needs 
 only to be filled with brotherly love. It needs 
 the spirit of that great-minded leader of the 
 people to whom they complained that certain 
 men in the camp, outside the chosen company, 
 were speaking in the name of God, and who 
 answered, " Would God that all the Lord's peo- 
 ple were prophets." Would God that all the 
 
122 THE HUMAN NATUBE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 Lord's people, whether in the ancient organiza- 
 tion of the church or out of it, stood in 
 heaven's gate. If in the barest meeting- 
 house, in the midst of the strangest eccentrici- 
 ties of faith and worship, hopelessly removed, 
 as it seems to us, from all which we call " the 
 church," if under these unpromising con- 
 ditions, God is present, heaven's gate is open, 
 and souls are blessed, then God be praised. 
 
 Here is a church out of which men and 
 women are seen coming with a new light in 
 their faces. They have been in the presence 
 of the Eternal ; they have joined their voices 
 with angels and archangels and with all the 
 company of heaven ; they have stood with the 
 enrapt apostles upon the summit of the trans- 
 figuration hill. And like the apostles, refreshed 
 and strengthened, they come to undertake 
 again the common task. That is a true 
 church. There the people who are trying to 
 be saints are fed with food from heaven. 
 
 It is a great thing for a church to minister 
 to all the needs of the neighborhood, and thus 
 to maintain an endless round of guilds and 
 clubs and schools. But the essential work of 
 a church is to open heaven's gate, to be the 
 place where tired people shall find rest, and 
 the discouraged shall find confidence, and the 
 disconsolate shall find comfort, where the per- 
 
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 123 
 
 plexed shall be directed, and the strong shall 
 consecrate their strength. There, as of old, 
 shall the angels of God be seen ascending and 
 descending, going up the celestial stairway 
 with their arras full of prayers, and coming 
 down with their arras full of blessings. 
 
 That is what we need. Busy as we are with 
 the exterior details of things, occupied of ne- 
 cessity with matters material and temporary, 
 ministering to the minds and bodies of our 
 neighbors, we need to realize how all this is 
 but the lower part of an infinite activity whose 
 higher part is in the heavens. The Father 
 works, as our Lord said, and we work, and are 
 fellow-laborers with God. We must see life as 
 a whole in order to get that ennobling and in- 
 vigorating understanding of it. We must come 
 away sometimes from the tumult and turmoil 
 of it all, and get into the serene company of 
 the saints. Thus shall we appreciate the rela- 
 tion of the present moment to the eternal 
 future, and of earth to heaven. In the early 
 church, they used to tell people to bless their 
 eyes with the bread and wine of the Lord's 
 Supper ; that is, to touch their fingers to their 
 lips after they had partaken of the holy things, 
 and make the sign of the cross before their eyes. 
 It was the symbol of that new sight, with 
 which they who have seen heaven open look 
 
124 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 about thereafter in the earth. It was an ex- 
 pression of the blessing of the communion of 
 saints. 
 
 This, then, is what those words mean in 
 the creed. To the men of the fifth century, 
 who wrote them there, they meant either a 
 participation in holy things, or a fellowship 
 with holy persons: they meant either sacra- 
 ments or saints. But the sacraments were 
 thought of as an exclusive possession, and the 
 saints were all in heaven. To us of the 
 twentieth century, the words mean more than 
 that. They define the Christian Church as 
 the place of brotherhood and of benediction. 
 Here we meet the living saints ; here day by 
 day we kneel at heaven's gate. 
 
THE KELIGION OF A CHKISTIAK 
 
 Unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. 
 Eph. 4 : 13. 
 
 THIS is the formula of the religion of a 
 Christian. All our best belief and all our best 
 behavior is included in it. Everything is here 
 which is needed both for the instruction and 
 for the inspiration of a good life. The heart 
 of the Christian religion is the Lord Jesus 
 Christ ; and more and more to grow unto the 
 measure of the stature of His goodness is the 
 height of the aspiration of the saints. That is 
 what we all want : that we may be like Him. 
 
 I have especially in mind the act of con- 
 firmation. A company of young people, most 
 of them your sons and daughters, will present 
 themselves before the bishop in your presence 
 and in the sight of God, and will thus openly 
 declare their purpose to live according to the 
 religion of a Christian. They have outgrown 
 the years of their childhood. They have come 
 to the time of serious thought, when God and 
 the world and they themselves are subjects of 
 reflection. They are perceiving with a new 
 clearness the everlasting difference between 
 125 
 
126 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 right and wrong. They are meeting new 
 temptations in a new way. They are making 
 new resolutions. Having lived thus far in a 
 natural state of dependence and subordination, 
 where the sum of all duty was to do what they 
 were told to do, they are entering now into a 
 more individual life, where they will be ex- 
 pected to look after themselves, to make their 
 own rules, and to live their own lives. 
 
 Our hearts go out to these young men 
 and women, in deep sympathy and hope and 
 longing. We trust that they are coming to 
 confirmation, not in any dull, conventional 
 way, because they are of the usual age, or 
 because of our desire, or because of the ex- 
 ample of their companions, but with a high 
 resolve, saying daily to God in their prayers, 
 " O God, I give myself to Thee ; to Thee, 
 body, mind and soul, I consecrate myself ; O 
 God, forgive my sins, help me to be better; 
 help me to be a Christian." 
 
 Confirmation is only a beginning. It has, 
 indeed, a certain value of its own. It is a 
 prayer and a blessing. They who are con- 
 firmed will kneel in the chancel, while the 
 bishop, putting his hands upon their heads 
 prays that God will help them to be good men 
 and women ; and that is much. But to be 
 good men and women is the chief thing. That 
 
THE RELIGION OF A CHRISTIAN. 127 
 
 is what it is all for. As the words are spoken, 
 the words of those who come to be confirmed, 
 promising that they will do the thing that 
 is right as well as they can all their lives long, 
 and the words of the bishop beseeching grace 
 from God that they may keep the promise, 
 our thoughts are busy with the future. We 
 are wondering what it will come to in actual 
 fulfilment, how the great promise will be 
 kept, what it will mean in a year, in five 
 years, to those who are now, with full hearts, 
 making it. Will they be devout and faithful 
 and earnest members of the church? Will 
 they be found in their places Sunday after 
 Sunday, coming because they are glad to 
 come ? Will they be regular and reverent 
 partakers of the Supper of the Lord ? and as 
 the fruit of it all will the}^ be good, between 
 Sundays, in our sight who watch them with 
 affection and anxiety, and in God's sight, unto 
 whom all hearts are open, all desires known 
 and from whom no secrets are hid ? Will they 
 grow up good ? That is what we will be ask- 
 ing of God and of our own hearts during the 
 confirmation service. Will they approach 
 more and more unto the measure of the stature 
 of the fulness of Christ ? 
 
 For to be good is the beginning and the 
 middle and the end of the religion of a Chris- 
 
128 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 tian. The organization of religion into a 
 church is of importance ; the formulation of 
 religion into a creed is of importance ; and it 
 is well to be interested, if one's mind inclines 
 that way, in the questions of philosophy and 
 of administration which arise from the en- 
 deavor after the best possible organization of 
 Christian people and the best possible formu- 
 lation of Christian doctrine. But there is only 
 one thing which is absolutely needful, and that 
 is character. The supreme thing is character. 
 There is so little in the gospels about either 
 the creed or the church that it takes a com- 
 mentator with a strong microscope to discover 
 it : but the whole New Testament is a book of 
 good living ; its message is one of righteous- 
 ness ; the chief concern is character. So the 
 young man comes to the Master running, and 
 kneels down before Him. " What good thing 
 shall I do," he cries, " that I may have eternal 
 life ? " He is the type and prophecy of ear- 
 nest youth coming to confirmation. His heart 
 is filled with fine enthusiasm; he desires to 
 make the most of himself; he looks ahead 
 along the way of his life asking to be guided 
 aright. And you remember what the Master 
 says in answer : " If thou wilt enter into life, 
 keep the commandments." Keep the com- 
 mandments! The old, ten, plain, familiar 
 
THE EELIGION OF A CHRISTIAN. 129 
 
 statements of the moral law. Do right ; be 
 good ; so shalt thou be saved. 
 
 We all know from our own experience that 
 youth goes on into maturity upon a road beset 
 with ambuscades. On all sides is temptation. 
 So difficult is the journey that few of us 
 would be willing to go back and try it over 
 again. We confess, indeed, that we have not 
 made a great success of living: God knows 
 that we are none of us so good as our neigh- 
 bors think we are. Nevertheless, we are pro- 
 foundly grateful that we have got through 
 even so indifferently well as we have, and we 
 would not venture it again lest we should fare 
 worse. So that we look at these beginners, 
 starting out over the hard way of life, and 
 there are tears in our eyes, of affection and of 
 apprehension. We say to them, as the lesson 
 which our years have taught us, that it is im- 
 possible to be good without trying, and trying 
 continually, and trying hard. Now that they 
 come by confirmation into full membership 
 with us in this Christian society, we counsel 
 them to consider the situation with great 
 seriousness. Let them not enter lightly or un- 
 advisedly into this high estate. 
 
 The first resolution in the rule of life of a 
 Christian is to be honest. I mean an honesty 
 which is not determined by the law, and which 
 
130 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 has no relation to the probability of being 
 found out, but which is maintained for its own 
 sake in the sight of God. Such a sense of 
 honesty will forbid a Christian to take any- 
 thing which is not his own. The catechism 
 mentions "picking" as well as stealing, 
 thereby applying the commandment to the 
 smallest matters. Indeed, it is a familiar fact 
 of human nature that dishonesty begins small. 
 The man who steals, so that the police get 
 after him, had at first only a notion that to 
 take somebody else's property did not matter, 
 so long as the thing taken was worth little. 
 Thus his sense of honesty became confused 
 and weakened, and by and by when a strong 
 temptation came, he fell into gross sin. I 
 have in mind here the dangers of respectable 
 life, and the cases of good men who have gone 
 wrong. The only safety is to be unfailingly 
 scrupulous, to be immaculately honest in the 
 very least things. 
 
 This applies also to the taking of advantage 
 of other people, by reason of their ignorance, 
 or indifference or incompetence. It means 
 every variety of cheating. It enforces a per- 
 fect fairness which will govern the playing of 
 a game as well as the making of a bargain. 
 It determines the transaction of all business. 
 I do not need to tell you that in the commer- 
 
THE RELIGION OF A CHRISTIAN. 131 
 
 cial world the fact that a man is a member of 
 the church is not taken as an assurance that he 
 is honest. It ought to mean honesty, but the 
 truth is that deceit and fraud have ever been 
 besetting sins of religious people. The Phari- 
 sees devoured widows' houses, and for a pre- 
 tense made long prayers. We ought to face 
 that possibility. We ought to recognize that 
 temptation. The good Christian will resolve 
 to be even foolishly fair in all his dealings 
 with his neighbors. 
 
 The second resolution in the Christian rule 
 of life is to be clean-minded. The good Chris- 
 tian is as particular about his mind as he is 
 about his face and hands. You know what I 
 mean : I do not need to go into details. 
 
 St. Paul speaks of offenses of the lips, re- 
 ferring especially to such as contradict the 
 Christian principle of purity. He says that 
 there is a kind of " foolish talking and jest- 
 ing," which is not " convenient " ; that is, not 
 becoming, not consistent with the character of 
 a Christian. Our Lord speaks of offenses of 
 the eyes. If thine eye offend thee, that is, 
 if the eye be an open gate of attack on true 
 living, if temptation comes that way, pluck it 
 out. The meaning is that we are to deal very 
 severely with ourselves. The Puritans did 
 that. They shut their eyes to works of art 
 
132 THE HUMAN NATUBE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 which they found to be perilous to their souls. 
 They set themselves stoutly against novels and 
 plays which in their judgment were in opposi- 
 tion to the life of the spirit. We say that 
 they went too far; and no doubt they did, 
 sometimes. But if they made mistakes, they 
 made them on the safe side. They were 
 dreadfully afraid of doing wrong. And 
 therein, let us be as like them as we can. 
 Is the picture, or the book, or the play good 
 for the soul ? Are we better by reason of it, 
 or worse ? Does it help or does it hinder the 
 progress of our life towards the measure of the 
 stature of the fulness of Christ ? Would He 
 like it? He who sees the heart, would He 
 approve ? These are questions which we 
 may properly hesitate to answer for anybody 
 else ; but we have got to answer them for our 
 own selves. If the thing is against your best 
 nature, stop it. No matter though all the 
 arguments of grace and beauty, of art and 
 letters, and of polite society, be for it, turn 
 you away, for the safety of your soul. Emer- 
 son said of a famous book that he was not 
 good enough to read it ; as one might say of 
 a lovely landscape in a malarious country, " I 
 am not strong enough to stand there and en- 
 joy it." 
 
 The initial thing is the clean mind. All 
 
THE RELIGION OF A CHRISTIAN. 133 
 
 hideous sins which ruin human life have their 
 beginnings in a thought of evil which seemed 
 foolish rather than wrong. That thought 
 grew into another that was worse, and that 
 into a word, and the word into an act, and the 
 act into the perdition of the man. The thing 
 to do is to guard the mind as we guard the 
 lips, and to be as resolute against thinking 
 evil as we are against speaking it aloud. " As 
 a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." " What- 
 soever things are true, whatsoever things are 
 honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever 
 things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 
 whatsoever things are of good report ; if there 
 be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think 
 on these things." 
 
 The third resolution in the Christian rule of 
 living is to heed the voice of conscience. Con- 
 science is the voice whereby God speaks in 
 our hearts. You know that you ought to do 
 this or that : you have a feeling which impels 
 you to it: then God speaks to direct you. 
 You know that you ought not to do this or 
 that ; as you turn your face or your mind in 
 that direction you have an uneasy sense of 
 transgression : then God is telling you that it 
 is wrong. The good Christian is very sensi- 
 tive to this inner voice, and very obedient to 
 it. He has a quick perception of the differ- 
 
134 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 ence between good and evil. There are many 
 things which he will not do, some of which 
 seem innocent enough, because he knows that 
 he ought not. " I ought not," he says ; re- 
 peating aloud what God has said to him in the 
 silence of his soul. " I ought not to do that 
 because it is wrong." We want men and 
 women, and boys and girls, in the Christian 
 church who have very clear and strong con- 
 victions concerning sin. 
 
 Many of those who come to be confirmed 
 have thus far depended largely upon the con- 
 victions of their elders. They have kept from 
 evil not so much because it is wrong as be- 
 cause it is forbidden. The time comes now 
 when they must face life for themselves. 
 They must make their own decisions. They 
 must say "No "at the bidding of their own 
 conscience. 
 
 This is immeasurably important, but it is 
 all negative. We expect more than that. 
 The conscientious person has what is called a 
 sense of duty. He is governed in what he says 
 and does not by convenience, not by pleasure 
 only, not by the current opinion of his class, 
 but by his perception of the will of God. He 
 asks, as Paul asked on the Damascus road, 
 " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ? " He 
 has a great desire to please God. So the 
 
THE RELIGION OF A CHRISTIAN. 135 
 
 alternatives come, and he decides them one 
 way or the other, by their relation to the mind 
 of God. Every day he says, " I don't want to 
 do this ; but I will, because God wishes me to 
 do it." That is what we mean by strength of 
 character. The strong man is ruled by his 
 ideals, by his convictions; by his high pur- 
 pose, with all his might, under all conditions, 
 to obey God. 
 
 The fourth resolution which enters into the 
 religion of a Christian is a determination to 
 increase the happiness of life. I mean that 
 the good Christian will not be content with 
 the development of his own character : he will 
 be occupied not only with the endeavor to be 
 good, but with the endeavor to do good. He 
 will minister to others. This is plainly what 
 Jesus Christ did, who came not to be minis- 
 tered unto but to minister. He gave even 
 His life for the general good. Nobody is ap- 
 proaching unto the measure of His stature 
 who is not in some way doing that sort of 
 thing. 
 
 That means, at the least, the exercise of 
 constant politeness and courtesy and sincere 
 consideration for other people's feelings. It 
 restrains the Christian from adding to that 
 heavy burden of unhappiness which is all of 
 human making. It forbids the saying of any 
 
136 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 word or the doing of any act which will make 
 life harder for anybody else. It forbids 
 frowns and pride and ridicule, and every look 
 that hurts. It controls the temper. 
 
 That is the least of it. It means also a con- 
 stant watchfulness for opportunities of service. 
 It impels to such behavior as will manifest 
 affection, regard for weakness and age, chiv- 
 alry, and every form of common usefulness. 
 It sends young people into society not only to 
 get what happiness they can for themselves, 
 but to contribute to the general joy. What 
 can I do to help my neighbor ? What use 
 can I make of myself and of my privileges 
 and possessions whereby the pleasure of the 
 occasion shall be shared by those who are 
 least likely to enjoy it ? These are Christian 
 questions, and enter vitally into the religion 
 of a Christian. I am not sure that our Lord's 
 suggestions about dinner-parties can be fol- 
 lowed literally in the complex society in which 
 we live : the guests and the host might be 
 alike uncomfortable. But the social principle 
 which He there laid down is universal and 
 eternal. Do not be content to entertain those 
 only who will in return entertain you. Be 
 kind and courteous and thoughtful without 
 expectation of return, that you may thus in- 
 crease the common stock of joy. Every day 
 
THE RELIGION OF A CHRISTIAN. 137 
 
 be as happy as you possibly can, and try to 
 make others happy. 
 
 All this has its immediate application in the 
 home, where religion is most stoutly tested, 
 and where the grace of helpfulness has con- 
 tinual opportunity. What kind of a home is 
 it, so far as you are concerned? With what 
 voice, with what face, with what degree of 
 selfishness or of unselfishness, do you meet its 
 daily duties ? You see that confirmation and 
 church membership are very practical matters. 
 They have to do with the homeliest concerns 
 of the household. They summon those who 
 enter into them to ask themselves various ques- 
 tions. What does my presence in my home 
 mean ? When I open the door do I add to 
 the anxieties or to the pleasures of the 
 family ? 
 
 These four resolutions to be honest, to be 
 clean-minded, to heed the voice of conscience, 
 and to increase the general happiness, are re- 
 lated to the religion of a Christian as the 
 foundation is related to the house. They lie 
 deep in the ground. They are not the only 
 stones in that wall: I have chosen them out of 
 many others, not because they are sufficient of 
 themselves to uphold the structure of a Chris- 
 tian life, but because they lie so close at hand, 
 and are so homely and so necessary. It is for 
 
138 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 us, friends, who have long been members of 
 the church, to consider at this season how far 
 we ourselves are giving the youth of this con- 
 gregation the assistance of a good example. 
 
THE KICH YOUNG MAN. 
 
 And when he was gone forth into the way there came one 
 running, and kneeled to him, and said, Good Master, what 
 shall I do that I may inherit eternal life ? Mark 10 : 17. 
 
 HE belonged to the privileged classes. The 
 incident is described by three of the evan- 
 gelists, and they all agree that he was rich, 
 he had great possessions; one of them adds 
 that he was a ruler, he had high position. 
 He was young, too, and was making plans to 
 live a larger life. He was looking out into 
 the world with eager anticipation and en- 
 thusiasm, making up his mind what great 
 things he would do. 
 
 The Master of men, the moment He saw 
 him, loved him. There he came running 
 and kneeled at Jesus' feet, and the Master 
 looking down into his expectant eyes, loved 
 him. Christ was in sympathy with young 
 men ; He understood them. His intimate 
 friends were young men. The Christian mis- 
 sion, the supreme adventure of faith, the 
 purpose to win the world and to bring its 
 mighty kingdoms to the feet of Christ, was 
 139 
 
140 THE HUMAN NATUKE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 undertaken by young men. The Master wel- 
 comed this young man, holding out His 
 hands. 
 
 The man had possessions and position but 
 he was not therewith content. He was pro- 
 foundly dissatisfied : dissatisfied with himself. 
 
 He was living a pleasant life, but he had 
 become aware that there was a pleasure which 
 all his money could not purchase. There was 
 a peace and joy of which he had faint, dis- 
 tant glimpses in his dreams, and which he saw 
 clearly shining in the face of Christ ; and he 
 desired it. But the world could not give it to 
 him. 
 
 He was living a good life. In spite of the 
 manifold temptations, which assail the rich as 
 stoutly as they assail the poor, he was an up- 
 right, clean, honest and honorable man. He 
 kept the commandments. His conscience was 
 congenial with the moral law. But even this, 
 which is a true source of contentment, did 
 not content him. He felt that somehow he 
 lacked something. He perceived that there 
 was a difference between his life and the life 
 eternal. 
 
 For the word " eternal," as he understood 
 it, is not an adjective of time or place. It is 
 an adjective of quality. The life which he 
 desired was not simply a life everlasting, into 
 
THE KICK YOUNG MAN. 141 
 
 which he might presently enter by the gate of 
 the grave. He did not look that far ahead. 
 He was interested, as every healthy young 
 man is, in the immediate present. What he 
 wanted was a heavenly life, to-day and here. 
 Such a life would be eternal in the sense of 
 being in accord with that which is eternal, 
 and thus independent of passing chances and 
 changes of good and evil fortune. It would 
 be eternal because it would be fitted to go on 
 without serious interruption into the life to 
 come. 
 
 Here, for example, is a house which is an 
 impertinence in the landscape. It is so mani- 
 festly cheap and temporary, and in its shape 
 and color so out of harmony with the ground 
 whereon it stands, that it is an affront to 
 nature. Here is another house which is akin 
 to all the hills and fields, strong as the rocks 
 and apparently as lasting, belonging to the 
 woods and meadows, brother to the trees, and 
 looking as if God had made it and not man. 
 You remember old cathedrals, over the sea, 
 which have that eternal aspect. The differ- 
 ence between such structures and the wooden 
 lodging-houses which stand by the side of the 
 country road in the neighborhood of the small 
 station as one looks out of the car window, 
 is elemental. It is like the difference be- 
 
14:2 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 tween the respectable life which the rich 
 young man was living and the eternal life 
 which he desired to live. 
 
 His question suggests that he had already 
 learned that life eternal is to be attained along 
 the way of social service. " What good thing 
 shall I do," he cries, " that I may have eternal 
 life ? " It is possible that the good thing to 
 which he expected the Master to direct him 
 was an offering of sacrifice, or a mortification 
 of the flesh, or some other personal matter; 
 but it is more likely that he awaited a social 
 counsel which should send him on some errand 
 of helpful ministry. Anyhow, the answer 
 shows plainly enough that in the mind of 
 Jesus the eternal and the social were vitally 
 connected. In order to live a life eternal, it is 
 essential that we live a life fraternal. 
 
 Aspiring thus to do his highest duty, the 
 man begins aright. Straight he goes to con- 
 fer with Jesus Christ. 
 
 For the heart of all right social living is the 
 spirit of Jesus. Canon Barnett, the founder 
 of Toynbee Hall, writing a book full of social 
 enthusiasm applied to social betterment, and 
 dealing in every page with the service of man, 
 entitles it the " Service of God." The idea 
 throughout is that we can serve man effect- 
 ively only in the name of God, only in the 
 
THE RICH YOUNG MAN. 143 
 
 spirit of the Son of God. This is the con- 
 clusion of long and successful experience. 
 
 Some have tried to learn their social duty 
 and to perform it by the study of economics, 
 leaving religion out. The results may be read 
 in the writings of those economists, now hap- 
 pily silent, who constructed their social theories 
 on the hypothesis that man is a machine, or an 
 animal ; that he has a mouth and two hands, 
 and no soul. 
 
 Some have tried to get a right conception of 
 their social duty by a study of ethics, some- 
 times leaving religion out, and sometimes 
 bringing in all manner of queer, fantastical, 
 remote and obsolete religions. The result, so 
 far as these imported creeds are concerned, is 
 like that which would be gained by a study of 
 the medical treatises of the Middle Ages. The 
 mediaeval books may amuse the student, but 
 they will teach him absolutely nothing. All 
 that is true in them has been brought forward 
 into modern practice. So with the queer 
 religions. They are remote or obsolete be- 
 cause they are in the place in which they 
 properly belong. Everything that is true or 
 helpful in them is in the plain gospels. 
 
 No; ethics and economics are profitable 
 studies, but what is essentially needed in order 
 that we may attain that social life, which is 
 
THE HUMAN HATUBE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 eternal life, is more than a book, even the best 
 book ; it is a life. We need the books, but the 
 one thing which is supremely needful is that 
 we enter first into the realized presence of 
 Jesus. Unless we do that, we cannot even 
 read the books aright. We cannot understand 
 the social facts. We cannot do our social 
 duty. No man ever helped another man, save 
 in the spirit of Jesus. He may not have 
 taken that sacred name upon his lips, he may 
 not have been aware what spirit he was of, 
 but that was it. Wherever good intention 
 goes astray, and they who would help their 
 fellow men do them harm instead, the initial 
 error is to be found in some departure from 
 His precepts, who is the way and the life. 
 The rich young man came to Jesus run- 
 ning, and kneeled to Him. We must do the 
 same. It is the only right beginning either of 
 social study or of social living. Look at it, 
 until you see it with the eyes of your soul : the 
 Master, standing strong and gracious, and the 
 young man kneeling to Him. 
 
 Let us see, now, how Jesus deals with the 
 rich young man. 
 
 Immediately, He stops him and asks a search- 
 ing question. The man comes running, full of 
 enthusiasm ; he kneels to Him in admiration 
 and reverence ; and Jesus loves him. It might 
 
THE RICH YOUNG MAN. 145 
 
 easily be said that Jesus needs him. The 
 young man has possessions and position. Will 
 it not be well for the new Christian movement 
 to enlist this wealthy and influential recruit ? 
 Will it not be well, for the general good, to 
 defer somewhat to this unusually desirable 
 disciple, and make it easy for him to come in ? 
 Is not this the kind of man we want, young, 
 rich, and willing ? The little group of fisher- 
 men and peasants, one would say, may wisely 
 hold out hands of cordial welcome to young 
 Master Dives. But you see what Jesus does. 
 He meets the young man, altogether over- 
 looking what he has, asking only what he is. 
 He deals with him not as a rich man, but as a 
 man. 
 
 This was Master Dives' first lesson in the 
 social aspects of the Christian religion. The 
 essential preliminary to any right social living 
 is that Christian insight which looks through 
 all material possessions to the man himself. 
 If we are to do our social duty, we must meet 
 our neighbors in the spirit of Him who cared 
 for what people were, not for what they wore. 
 A good many artificial distinctions, based on 
 dress and descent and houses and lands and 
 face and voice and occupation must be put 
 away out of our minds till they are as clear 
 and open as the mind of Christ. 
 
146 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 Jesus taught the rich young man that riches 
 are of no social account in the kingdom of 
 heaven. 
 
 This lesson, thus indicated by the fact that 
 our Lord, instead of receiving the man imme- 
 diately, stopped him and asked a question, 
 was followed by another lesson which is indi- 
 cated in the question which He asked. The 
 young man had begun politely, in the pleasant 
 manner of his kind, with a conventional word 
 of compliment. He had addressed Jesus as 
 " good Master." Jesus says, What do you 
 mean ? Why do you call Me good ? 
 
 That is, on the personal side, Christ desires 
 allegiance, but it must be thoughtful and con- 
 sidered allegiance. Whoever tenders it must 
 understand what he is about. One came to 
 Him, upon another like occasion, saying, 
 " Lord, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou 
 goest." But Jesus answered, " Foxes have 
 holes and the birds of the air have nests, but 
 the Son of Man hath not where to lay His 
 head." The undertaking of discipleship was 
 to our Lord a very serious matter, and He in- 
 sisted that men should look at it attentively 
 and face all its hard consequences before they 
 made their resolution. He never encouraged 
 any sudden, impetuous, emotional decision. 
 He tested those who came to Him in that 
 
THE KICH YOUNG MAN. 147 
 
 spirit, and was not satisfied until He had made 
 them think. There is a tombstone in the 
 Copps Hill burying-ground at Boston, in- 
 scribed, " He was an enemy to enthusiasm." 
 Our Lord was not an enemy to enthusiasm. 
 "When He beheld this enthusiastic young man, 
 He loved him. But He felt the need of car- 
 rying enthusiasm on into serious determina- 
 tion. He was in profound sympathy with the 
 visions of youth ; with the ardor, the courage 
 and the confidence with which men pass out 
 of the life of the student into the life of the 
 citizen. He looked into the eager eyes of this 
 young man who was asking for some great 
 good thing to do, and loved him. But because 
 He loved him, He stopped him with a ques- 
 tion, that he might weigh his words and think 
 what he was about. 
 
 Also, on the social side, if the man were to 
 undertake, as he seemed to intend, a larger 
 service of his fellow men, it must be a reason- 
 able service. He must enter into it not merely 
 from an impulse of the moment, but with de- 
 liberation. In order to be a helpful social 
 worker, he must be a thoughtful person. He 
 must consider what he wished to say before he 
 said it. He must have the habit of sincerity 
 and of accuracy. Then he would be likely to 
 consider what he wished to do before he did it. 
 
148 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 A good deal of excellently intentioned social 
 ministry is spoiled by precisely the defect 
 which Jesus immediately saw in this young 
 man. The social worker is full of enthusiasm 
 and sympathy and energy and zeal. He enters 
 into the social settlement or the municipal 
 league or the association for reforming his 
 neighbors in this way or in that, with a fervor 
 which sometimes makes the cautious procedure 
 of his colleagues appear cold and calculating. 
 He comes running, and kneels down in the 
 presence of the holy cause, asking, What good 
 thing shall I do ? But presently he finds that 
 the work is slow and hard ; it demands pa- 
 tience ; it is not romantically interesting. 
 And the parable of the seed growing quickly 
 finds in him another illustration. He gets 
 tired and discouraged. Our Lord tested that 
 young man in order to see what spirit he was 
 of. He tried him to find out if he had staying 
 qualities. 
 
 First, He tried him according to the law of 
 simple obedience. "If thou wilt enter into 
 life," He said, " keep the commandments." 
 
 That disappointed the young man grievously. 
 He felt like the Syrian general when the 
 prophet sent him to take a bath in the little, 
 narrow, shallow, muddy Jordan. He had ex- 
 pected to be given some spectacular, heroic 
 
THE KICH YOUNG MAN. 149 
 
 task ; he had looked for some new, engaging 
 duty ; and here was nothing but the old com- 
 mandments, every one of which he had known 
 by heart for years. " Which ? " he asked ; 
 still hoping that Jesus might have some hidden 
 meaning in His words, and might intend some- 
 thing out of the ordinary. And when he 
 learned that the commandments were only the 
 old ten, he said in a tone of impatience, " All 
 these have I kept from my youth up." For 
 he did not know the truth which is contained 
 in the allegory of the high ideals ; where the 
 explorer who is searching for the high ideals 
 learns at last that they are not a range of ro- 
 mantic mountains, but a series of populated 
 plains where men are plowing and reaping, 
 and buying and selling, and women are doing 
 the errands of the house. 
 
 The lesson is that the social duty to which 
 Christ would immediately and supremely direct 
 us is not to be looked for in the distance. It 
 is close at hand. It confronts us in the cir- 
 cumstances of our daily lives. It is a fine 
 thing to engage in the betterment of a city, 
 but there is no training for that great service 
 comparable to the exercise which is to be had 
 in the betterment of a college ; and the place 
 where the betterment of a college may most 
 effectively begin is in a man's own club and 
 
150 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 room. It is a fine thing to work in a social 
 settlement, but in the meantime every Chris- 
 tian household ought to be a social settlement, 
 a distributing centre of beneficial influences, a 
 contribution to the righteousness and the hap- 
 piness of the neighborhood. 
 
 The essential thing is the faithful perform- 
 ance of the common duties, whose importance 
 in God's sight may be inferred from the fact 
 that He has made so many of them. They 
 are nearest to our hand by His divine appoint- 
 ment, that we may the more naturally do 
 them. To be honest in the details of the 
 smallest transactions, to be true in the emer- 
 gencies of the most familiar conversations, to 
 have a strong, wholesome and masculine clean- 
 ness of speech and of thought, to be courteous, 
 considerate, cheerful and helpful under one's 
 own roof ; in a word, as our Lord said, to 
 keep the commandments, the old plain com- 
 mandments, is to render a social service which 
 is not only more acceptable to God but more 
 beneficial to men than, missing this, to be 
 the president or the vice-president or the secre- 
 tary or the treasurer of twenty societies for 
 the reformation of one's neighbors. The 
 initial thing which a man owes to the com- 
 munity is to be a good man himself. That is 
 what Christ said to the rich young man in the 
 
THE RICH YOUNG MAN. 151 
 
 gospel ; and that is what He says to-day to 
 every college man, and every other man. 
 The question is, What good thing shall I do ? 
 and the answer is, First of all, be as good as 
 you can. 
 
 Thus our Lord tried Master Dives by the 
 law of simple obedience. Then He tried him 
 by the law of an earnest purpose. The young 
 man had kept the commandments, but he was 
 not satisfied. Nobody ought to be satisfied 
 with that. "What lack I yet?" he cried. 
 And Jesus answered, " Go, sell whatsoever 
 thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt 
 have treasure in heaven." 
 
 This He said not because He held that a 
 man must be poor in order to be good. If He 
 had believed that, He would have bidden the 
 young man to destroy all that he had ; instead 
 of that he was told to give it away. He was 
 to be poor, but the poor were to be rich. This 
 He said not to the rich in general, but to this 
 rich man in particular. Mary and Martha and 
 Lazarus were rich. They were so rich that 
 one time Mary broke at Jesus' feet an alabaster 
 box of very precious ointment, worth several 
 hundred dollars. They were never bidden to 
 be poor. Neither were other rich persons 
 whose houses Jesus visited. The truth is that 
 while wealth and poverty are of immeasurable 
 
152 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 moment to us, they meant little to Him. It 
 seems incredible, but it is the fact that a good 
 many of the things to get which men are con- 
 tinually making themselves miserable, about 
 which men are going to war sometimes in 
 public, sometimes in private, for which men 
 are giving their whole lives and putting their 
 immortal souls in pawn, were totally unin- 
 teresting to Him. Whether men were rich or 
 poor, He did not care. It made no difference 
 to Him. He did care supremely whether they 
 were rich or poor in the currency of heaven. 
 And when He saw that a man was so devoted 
 to these lesser things that he was losing his 
 sense of the value of better things, He tried to 
 deliver that man out of his temptations. 
 
 So it was here. The rich young man was 
 profoundly selfish. He was so selfish that he 
 came to Jesus Christ and asked to be told 
 some good thing to do not for the sake of 
 others, nor for the sake of doing good, but for 
 the advantage of his own soul. What good 
 thing shall I do that I may have eternal life ? 
 The man was thinking of himself. Rich as he 
 was, privileged as he was, with his possessions 
 and his position, he had been brought up that 
 way. There was not in his life between dawn 
 and sunset any day, the least purpose to bene- 
 fit his neighbor. The man was dissatisfied, he 
 
THE RICH YOUNG MAN. 153 
 
 knew not why. He longed for something 
 which he had not, but what it was he could 
 not tell. He knew that he was not living an 
 eternal life, but in absolute ignorance he cried, 
 "What lack I yet?" And Jesus told him 
 plainly what he lacked. He had no earnest 
 social purpose. Honestly, in his heart, he was 
 intent upon himself. That is what was the 
 matter with him. And when he was brought 
 to the test, and it was proposed to him to do 
 good to his fellow men at his own expense, he 
 saw it, and drew back. He made the great 
 refusal. He was sad at that saying and went 
 away grieved, for he had great possessions. 
 
THE WIND AND THE FIRE. 
 
 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a 
 rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they 
 were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues 
 like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. Acts 2:2, 3. 
 
 THE wind and the fire were symbols of 
 spiritual realities. There was a sound which 
 reminded those who heard it of the noise of a 
 rushing mighty wind; and there was a sight 
 which reminded those who saw it of the flam- 
 ing of a hundred tiny tongues of fire ; but be- 
 yond this comparison, the record tells us noth- 
 ing. It is plain that we stand here in a 
 domain to which the meteorologist has no 
 access. The pentecostal wind could not have 
 been measured by the instruments which tell 
 the speed and direction of currents of air ; the 
 pentecostal fire would not have affected a 
 thermometer. They were like the halos 
 which glow about the heads of saints in 
 pictures, at which nobody could light a candle. 
 
 In the " Holy Night " of Correggio, you re- 
 member how the stable of the nativity is 
 lighted with the radiance which shines from 
 the face of the Child. That is what the 
 
 154 
 
THE WIND AND THE FIRE. 155 
 
 painter saw. Yery likely the shepherds, who 
 had already seen a celestial light in the sky, saw 
 it glowing again in the stable. No doubt, the 
 holy mother saw it. But to a casual passer-by, 
 or to a stable-boy coming in to feed the cows, 
 there would have been no light except such as 
 glimmered in the lantern. Probably the man 
 in the street, hearing a commotion on the day 
 of Pentecost in the upper room, if that was 
 the place, and rushing in, would have missed 
 all sound and hearing of the wind and fire. 
 There is a good deal of difference in the de- 
 tails of the various descriptions of Saul's ad- 
 venture on the Damascus road, but all accounts 
 agree that none of Saul's companions saw or 
 heard what he both saw and heard. To them 
 there appeared a light and a sound ; to him 
 there appeared a face and a voice. It shows 
 the difference between eyesight and insight. 
 
 On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit 
 wonderfully revealed Himself to the disciples, 
 filled them with a new consciousness of His di- 
 vine presence, and blessed them. That is, in the 
 midst of a world which is full of God, wherein 
 we live continually in the sight of God, sud- 
 denly this little company of holy persons were 
 made aware of God. Out of the infinite 
 silence, God spoke to them. And it was as if 
 the wind blew which swept across the face of 
 
156 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 Elijah in the cleft of the rock ; it was as if 
 the fire blazed amongst them, which Elijah 
 saw before he heard the still small voice. 
 That is as near as the narrator can get to it. 
 The hearts of those good men and women 
 were stirred as if a breeze were blowing from 
 beyond the stars, and there was a light in their 
 faces such as shines along the path of God. 
 
 There are two ways of describing an event, 
 one statistical and the other symbolical. They 
 are as different as photography is different 
 from painting. The statistical narrative gives 
 us the plain facts as they would have been re- 
 flected in a mirror, had one been hanging on 
 the wall. The symbolical narrative gives us 
 the facts interpreted, and to them adds still 
 other facts of an intangible and spiritual sort, 
 such as no looking-glass has ever seen, and for 
 which there is no descriptive language except 
 such as is used by poets and artists. 
 
 Take, for instance, the two accounts, which 
 Dean Stanley has significantly set side by side 
 from the Book of Genesis, of the migration of 
 Abraham. Here is first the statistical narra- 
 tive. " And Terah took Abram his son, 
 and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and 
 Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's 
 wife ; and they wen-t forth from Ur of the 
 Chaldees to go into the land of Canaan : and 
 
THE WIND AND THE FIRE. 157 
 
 they came unto Haran and dwelt there. 
 . . . And Abram took Sarai his wife, 
 and Lot his brother's son, and all their sub- 
 stance that they had gathered, and the souls 
 that they had gotten in Haran ; and they went 
 forth to go into the land of Canaan : and into 
 the land of Canaan they came." That is the 
 matter-of-fact statement of what happened. 
 That is how the thing looked to the neighbors. 
 That is what people said about it as they wa- 
 tered their camels at Ur of the Chaldees. But 
 there was more to it than that. Here is the 
 symbolical narrative. "The Lord said unto 
 Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from 
 thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto 
 a land that I will show thee : and I will make 
 of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee 
 arid make thy name great : and thou shalt be 
 a blessing ; and I will bless them that bless 
 thee, and curse him that curseth thee : and in 
 thee shall all the families of the earth be 
 blessed." You see how much higher and 
 richer that is, and in the best sense truer. 
 There was an impulse in the heart of Abraham 
 driving him out. He looked across the wide 
 plains into the far future. He had hopes and 
 purposes of which the men who pitched his 
 tent knew nothing. This is expressed by the 
 historian in symbol. He tells us that God 
 
158 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 stood by the side of Abraham and spoke to 
 him. The eternal God, maker of the universe 
 of suns and stars, spoke to this man who dwelt 
 among his flocks in Asia. Indeed, He did. 
 The statement is in the language of poetry, 
 but for the fact which is thus stated, the fact 
 that the impulse in the heart of Abraham 
 came from on high, no other words were 
 strong enough. 
 
 So it is in the account of the day of Pente- 
 cost. It is very different from the description 
 of the shipwreck in the same book. The 
 shipwreck is described statistically. Every 
 detail is set down precisely as it happened. 
 Any sailor of the crew, telling about it after- 
 wards, would have said the same things. But 
 the events of Pentecost are described symbol- 
 ically. That which happened here was too 
 great to be put into the common phrases of 
 matter-of-fact narration. To say simply that, 
 being there assembled and praying, the hearts 
 of the disciples were suddenly and wonderfully 
 affected with an unusual sense of the presence 
 of God, was not enough. The historian be- 
 comes a poet. The winds blow and the fires 
 blaze. The dullest reader perceives that some- 
 thing extraordinary is taking place. That is 
 the effect which the writer intends to produce. 
 Or, rather, that is the effect which the event 
 
THE WIND AND THE FIRE. 159 
 
 itself did actually produce in the minds of those 
 who experienced it. They came down out of 
 the chamber of the Pentecostal blessing, and 
 declared that the whole house had been shaken 
 by a great wind, and that there had been 
 tongues of fire in the room on all their heads. 
 For we have got to put our emotions into the 
 best words that we can find. The emotions, if 
 they are deep and strong, if they are inspired 
 of God, are too great for any words. How did 
 you feel in that moment of sudden joy or sur- 
 prise or grief, in that swift happiness of attain- 
 ment after long and doubtful waiting, in that 
 hour when the rapture of the consciousness of 
 God filled your soul? How did you feel? 
 You cannot adequately answer. St. Paul said 
 that he felt one time as if he had been taken 
 up into the third heaven. That was the best 
 sentence he could find to hold his thought. 
 The men and women of Pentecost said that 
 they felt as if all the mighty winds of God 
 were blowing and the fires of God were blaz- 
 ing. That was the best thing they could 
 think of to say. Even then, it did not express 
 their sense of awe and wonder ; but it had to 
 suffice, since there was nothing else to which 
 they could liken it. 
 
 The truth is that nobody knows what hap- 
 pened in that hour of exaltation. It is de- 
 
160 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 scribed in comparisons taken from the material 
 world, but the event itself was in the domain 
 of the spirit. All this about the wind and the 
 fire is the endeavor to somehow express that 
 which was essentially unutterable. It is an 
 attempt to put into words a spiritual experi- 
 ence which transcended speech. 
 
 What did they mean to say ? They meant, 
 I think, to say that there, as they prayed, they 
 became aware of God. 
 
 The blowing of the wind was a symbol of 
 the mystery of God. "The wind bloweth 
 where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound 
 thereof and canst not tell whence it cometh 
 and whither it goeth : so is every one that is 
 born of the Spirit." So too is the Divine 
 Spirit ; surrounding us like the air which we 
 breathe, as invisible, and as essential to our 
 life. The burning of the fire was a symbol of 
 the glory of God, of the brightness and the 
 majesty of God ; and it rested on their heads 
 in token that the glorious and infinite God 
 was considering them, caring for them, and 
 blessing them. 
 
 A like thing happened, in 1655, in a country 
 town in England. At Wanstead, in Essex, 
 William Penn, afterwards the founder of a 
 commonwealth, at that time a lad of twelve 
 years, " was suddenly surprised with an in- 
 
THE WIND AND THE FIRE. 161 
 
 ward comfort and as he thought an external 
 glory in the room, which gave rise to religious 
 emotions, during which he had the strongest 
 conviction of the being of a God, and that the 
 soul of man was capable of enjoying commu- 
 nication with him. He believed also that the 
 seal of Divinity had been put upon him at that 
 moment, or that he had been awakened or 
 called upon to a holy life." That was William 
 Penn's pentecost. The wind did not blow, as 
 it did at Jerusalem, but the fire burned, the 
 same fire, meaning the same thing. 
 
 It is a rare experience, but it has come 
 again and again into the life of man. Some 
 have perceived the voice of God in the rush- 
 ing of a mighty wind ; some have seen His 
 face in the blazing of a sudden fire ; some have 
 heard articulate words out of the sky ; some, 
 as they knelt in church or in their own rooms, 
 have been overpowered by a new sense of the 
 divine presence. I am not concerned to in- 
 quire whether these sights and sounds were 
 impressions made upon the senses or upon the 
 soul only : there they were. Of whatever 
 nature, physiological or psychological, there 
 they happened. St. Paul, who had passed 
 through one of these experiences, said that 
 whether it was in the body or out of the body, 
 he could not tell. The important thing is the 
 
162 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 fact of the recognition of God. And of that 
 there is no doubt. The men and women of 
 pentecost, and hundreds of other men and 
 women on other days and in other places, were 
 made aware of God. Suddenly they per- 
 ceived God. There He was with them in the 
 room. 
 
 What I am trying to do is to show you that 
 the day of pentecost is in line with all the 
 other days, and that what God did then for 
 the apostles and the holy women He will still 
 do for us. Whitsunday is the commemoration 
 not of a blessing which God gave once, and 
 never gives again, but of a constant blessing 
 which came then to those whose hearts were 
 ready and receptive, and will come now to any 
 one of us, if we will put ourselves in that posi- 
 tion. 
 
 " Henceforth my heart shall sigh no more, 
 For olden time and holier shore : 
 God's love and blessing, then and there, 
 Are now and here and everywhere." 
 
 For us too the pentecostal wind will blow, the 
 fire will burn. For the wind and the fire are 
 but symbols of the divine presence. 
 
 The Whitsunday saints were sure of God. 
 That is what made the difference between 
 that day and all the other past days of their 
 
THE WIND AND THE FIEE. 163 
 
 lives. Now at last, after long blundering and 
 questioning and waiting and doubting, they 
 were sure of God. 
 
 They had lived in the very presence of 
 Jesus Christ, and yet had been unaware of 
 God. Occasionally, their eyes must have been 
 opened to catch at least a glimmer of His 
 presence ; but still, they knew Him not. Or, 
 if they knew Him, it was but such knowledge 
 as is implied in the acceptance of a general 
 belief, and in the recitation of a common creed. 
 Of course, they knew of God's existence. But 
 they did not know God so that the conscious- 
 ness of Him dominated all their life. 
 
 There they were, good men, religious men, 
 the daily companions of Jesus, and yet un- 
 aware of God. You remember how, at the 
 very end of all His instruction of them, in the 
 midst of the last lesson, they said, " Lord, 
 show us the Father ! " And you remember 
 how, the next day, they all fled. The man 
 who is aware of God does not run away. No- 
 body can make him afraid. That is one of 
 the signs of the recognition of God. After 
 the day of pentecost, no apostle turned his 
 back on danger. 
 
 There they were, then, on the morning of 
 that day, waiting for the promise of the Fa- 
 ther, waiting for the fulfilment of the word 
 
164: THE HUMAN NATUKE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 of Christ. " I have yet many things to say 
 unto you," He had told them, " but ye cannot 
 bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit 
 of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all 
 truth." And as they waited, day after day, 
 meditating and praying, looking back over all 
 that He had said and done, trying to get it 
 into their hearts and lives, asking God to help 
 them, suddenly the Spirit came. It was as 
 when one studies a great matter for a long 
 time in vain, and one day the meaning of it 
 flashes in upon the mind. That is a coming 
 of the Spirit. It was as when one, after long 
 deliberation, reaches a decision, and every- 
 thing is cleared up and thenceforth life 
 goes on along a straight way. Then too the 
 Spirit comes. There they knelt, praying their 
 prayers, very much as we do, trying to realize 
 God ; and suddenly, nobody knows how, 
 swiftly and silently like the operation of the 
 eternal forces, a great light broke upon their 
 souls. After that, everything was different. 
 They lived on a new earth under a new 
 heavens. The wind seemed to be blowing all 
 about them, the fire seemed to be blazing on 
 their heads, and they came out new men. 
 Thenceforth, they were absolutely sure of 
 God : and they lived like men who are con- 
 tinually aware of God. 
 
THE WIND AND THE FIRE. 165 
 
 God grant us also the pentecostal blessing. 
 God give us grace to know Him ; that we may 
 live in the continual consciousness of His 
 presence. God help us, who are trying so 
 ineffectively to live the life of religion ; who 
 pray, but so often with indifference ; and who 
 go about in God's world, thinking of God so 
 little ; who fall so often into foolish tempta- 
 tions, and behave ourselves so unworthily of 
 our Christian name ; who say the creed so 
 often and realize it so seldom ; who are so un- 
 aware of God, God help us, as He helped 
 the Whitsunday congregation at the begin- 
 ning. Then when we pray, we will address 
 God as we would speak to a present friend. 
 In our daily tasks, we will increase our faith- 
 fulness and diligence and joy by the remem- 
 brance that we are fellow laborers with God. 
 In our continual temptations, we will be as- 
 sisted by the assurance that God sees what we 
 do, and hears what we say. As we walk 
 abroad, in these perfect days, we will be like 
 our parents in the oldest of all beautiful 
 stories, who beheld the Lord God walking 
 beside them under the shade of the trees in 
 the cool of the day. Only we will not fear, 
 as they did ; but will put out our hand to take 
 His hand. Then shall the wind which blows 
 along the summer road, and the fire which 
 
166 THE HUMAN NATURE ON THE SAINTS. 
 
 shines in the summer sun, be revelations of the 
 eternal God, as they were that old day in 
 Jerusalem. We will be aware of God; and 
 every common day will be a pentecost. 
 
AT THE TABLE OF ZACCHEUS 
 
 And Zaccheus stood and said unto the Lord : Behold, 
 Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor ; and if I have 
 taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore 
 him fourfold. Luke 19 : 8. 
 
 THE Lord sat at the table in the house of 
 Zaccheus. He sat often at men's tables. The 
 Son of Man, as He said Himself, came eating 
 and drinking ; and there is accordingly a great 
 deal in the New Testament about eating and 
 drinking. These necessary and pleasant acts 
 appear in these pages as intimately connected 
 with the life and teaching of Jesus, and with 
 the Christian religion. 
 
 As soon as Christ has gathered about Him 
 a little group of disciples, they are all invited 
 to dinner, and they accept the invitation : and 
 the Master not only sits at the table but con- 
 tributes to the feast. When He sees a multi- 
 tude approaching in a place remote from inns 
 or houses, His first thought is one of hospital- 
 ity : How shall we provide bread that these 
 may eat ? And He makes them all sit down 
 in order on the green grass and feeds them. 
 He is continually illuminating and applying 
 
 167 
 
168 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 His spiritual instruction by means of illustra- 
 tions taken from the table. The parable of 
 the great supper, the discourse at Capernaum 
 on the Bread of Life, the picturing of the joys 
 to come under the figure of a banquet, will 
 occur to every reader of the Bible. He in- 
 stitutes a social meal as the characteristic 
 sacred rite of His religion, and assembles our 
 most holy memories and associations about the 
 eating of bread and the drinking of wine. 
 To-day the most important article of furniture 
 in a Christian Church is a table, a supper- 
 table, for the common meal of the Christian 
 family. The homely outlines of the table may 
 be lost in the glories of carving or hidden 
 beneath embroidered cloths, but it is a table, 
 nevertheless. 
 
 We have no reason to think that our Lord 
 entered into the social pleasures of His time 
 simply from a sense of duty, or that He went 
 to dinner in order to get a good chance to 
 preach a sermon to the host. He went be- 
 cause He liked to go. He saw, of course, the 
 spiritual opportunities of society. He knew 
 that in order to speak to men effectively, it is 
 necessary first to understand them, and then 
 to be in sympathy with them ; and it is plain 
 that a natural way to gain this understanding 
 and show this sympathy is to meet men 
 
AT THE TABLE OF ZACCHEtJS. 169 
 
 familiarly, sitting beside them at their tables. 
 But Jesus at the table comes closer to our 
 common life than that. He sanctifies our 
 simplest and most natural enjoyments. He 
 brings our domestic and social interests within 
 the range of religion. He teaches us that 
 whether we eat or drink or whatsoever we do, 
 we may do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. 
 He contradicts that narrow conception of re- 
 ligion which accounts that praying is an act 
 of religion, and that the definite doing of a 
 Christian deed is an act of religion, but that 
 here religion stops. True religion never stops. 
 It takes in the whole of life. It includes our 
 commonest enjoyments. To partake of the 
 Lord's Supper is indeed to enter into a high 
 privilege of religion, but we are also behaving 
 ourselves as Christian persons when we sit 
 cheerfully at our own tables or at the tables 
 of our neighbors, when we break bread at 
 home, like the earliest disciples, and eat our 
 meat with gladness and singleness of heart. 
 
 The Lord sat at the table of Zaccheus a self- 
 invited guest. Zaccheus had gone out that 
 morning merely to see Him as He passed by 
 in the street. The idea of asking Him to din- 
 ner had not so much as entered his mind. 
 Zaccheus was a rich man, but no respectable 
 people dined with him. It was suggested some 
 
170 THE HUMAN NATUEE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 time ago that men who had made fortunes in 
 dishonest or unjust ways should be made to 
 feel the disapproval of society : that was the 
 plan which was in full force in Jerusalem and 
 Jericho. Zaccheus had made his money in a 
 business which his neighbors detested, and 
 they showed him plainly what they thought 
 of him. When in his eagerness " to see Jesus 
 who He was," he climbed up into a tree, being 
 short of stature, the crowd hooted at him. 
 At least, we may guess that it was from 
 some derisive call that the Master learned 
 the publican's name. There he was, the most 
 unpopular citizen of Jericho, looking down 
 out of a sycamore-tree beside the road, with 
 everybody pointing to him and shouting at 
 him. And when Jesus came to the place, He 
 looked up and saw him, and said unto him, 
 Zaccheus, make haste and come down ; for to- 
 day I must abide at thy house. 
 
 That shows how much our Lord cared for 
 popularity. In the midst of this crowd, ac- 
 claiming Him and deriding Zaccheus, Jesus 
 takes the part of Zaccheus. Let us under- 
 stand it clearly. Zaccheus was a publican, 
 but there are no publicans in our part of the 
 country. The name does not mean much to 
 us. Let us get at it in this way : Zaccheus is 
 a contractor, who is notorious for his extor- 
 
AT THE TABLE OF ZACCHEUS. 171 
 
 tions ; Zaccheus is a landlord, whose tenements 
 are an offense to all good citizens ; Zaccheus 
 is the keeper of the worst saloon or gambling 
 place in Jericho. That is the kind of man he 
 was. The good people of Jericho hated the 
 sight of Zaccheus, and they had reason to hate 
 him. It was not all prejudice. It was not 
 simply the natural enmity of a subdued people 
 against the man who represented their masters, 
 and collected their masters' taxes. Zaccheus 
 was a robber. Under the cover of law, by 
 false accusation, as he himself confesses, he 
 took money out of people's pockets. It is true 
 that he was very desirous to see Jesus, and 
 that may mean that already he was looking 
 towards a better life ; the fact that he made 
 haste and came down out of the tree and re- 
 ceived Him joyfully, would seem to indicate 
 that. Nevertheless, when Jesus looked up 
 and saw Zaccheus, He saw a man of whom He 
 probably knew nothing except that everybody 
 seemed to hate him. And He chose that man 
 to dine with, on that account. The great 
 spiritual Master comes to town, and declining 
 all courtesies of the clergy and chief citizens, 
 He goes to dinner with a man who ought to 
 be in jail. 
 
 Of course, everybody was scandalized. 
 " When they saw it, they all murmured." 
 
1Y2 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 That is, they began at once to talk, each with 
 his neighbor, and to say how astonishing and 
 objectionable it was. He has gone, they said, 
 to be guest with a man that is a sinner ! To 
 them that was an amazing thing : to Him, it 
 was not only natural but imperative ; it was 
 the only thing to do. That was the difference 
 between them. Religion for them was a com- 
 fortable possession of personal privilege, with 
 which a man might be content, being approved 
 of God and sure of everlasting salvation. 
 Religion for Him was a divine impulse, a 
 " passion of compassion," a spirit of fraternal 
 affection whereby whenever He saw anybody 
 whom He could help He was irresistibly 
 moved to help him. Jesus looked about in 
 every company and went straight to the person 
 who needed Him most. That is what He meant 
 when He said that He came as a physician to 
 minister not to the well but to the sick. He 
 came to Jericho as a physician, and His eye 
 lighted upon Zaccheus. The Pharisees, with 
 their satisfied and selfish souls, could not 
 understand Him. The Pharisees have never 
 understood Him. 
 
 It is plain that we have here two irreconcil- 
 able conceptions of religion. According to 
 one idea, religion is for the privileged ; they 
 are to enjoy it by themselves ; they are to en- 
 
AT THE TABLE OF ZACCHEUS. 173 
 
 shrine it in beautiful churches where strangers 
 are not welcome ; they are to thank God that 
 they are not as other men are ; and as for 
 these other men, they are to content them- 
 selves with disapproving of them ; they will 
 not dream of dining with them, or of dealing 
 with them in any fraternal or even courteous 
 fashion. According to the other idea, religion 
 is possessed by the privileged in order that 
 they may extend the truth of it and the bless- 
 ing of it as speedily as they may among the 
 unprivileged ; their hearts and their hands go 
 out to those who are less happy than they are ; 
 and finding those whom they confidently be- 
 lieve to be mistaken, whether in conduct or in 
 creed, straightway they desire to make friends 
 with them that they may persuade them into 
 the better way. 
 
 Zaccheus, being treated in this friendly 
 manner, was immediately persuaded. And 
 Zaccheus stood and said unto the Lord : Be- 
 hold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the 
 poor ; and if I have taken anything from any 
 man by false accusation, I restore him four- 
 fold. Why did he do that ? He had awaked 
 that morning without a single generous im- 
 pulse in his soul, an avaricious, keen, close, 
 over-reaching person, intent on getting every 
 possible dollar out of his neighbors, caring 
 
174 THE HUMAN NATUKE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 nothing for the poor. And here he stands, to 
 the amazement of his friends, and probably to 
 the amazement of himself, and gives away 
 more than half his fortune. What has touched 
 the heart of Zaccheus ? A fraternal word. It 
 is likely that no respectable person had spoken 
 pleasantly to Zaccheus for a year. Everybody 
 had treated him in accordance with his bad 
 name. And the consequence was that he had 
 gone on deserving his bad name more and 
 more. Nobody believed in him, and he gave 
 nobody occasion to believe in him. Then 
 came Jesus Christ, holding out His friendly 
 hand, treating him like an honest man, sitting 
 at his table, and never preaching at him a 
 single word of a sermon : and Zaccheus was 
 moved profoundly. And he stood up, saying 
 what he did, and became a new man. 
 
 That was our Lord's way. He helped man 
 after man by the influence of His personal 
 friendship. He was known as the friend of 
 publicans and sinners, of those who had no 
 friends. He won them into ways of righteous- 
 ness by going out of His way to be good to 
 them. They responded, because they were so 
 made as to respond to that sort of appeal. 
 That is human nature. The parable of the con- 
 tention between the wind and the sun as to 
 which could most quickly persuade a traveler 
 
AT THE TABLE OF ZACCHEUS. 175 
 
 to take off his coat, is very old, but it has not 
 even yet been taken much to heart. "We try 
 to change the minds or lives of others by 
 abusing them, by punishing them, by scolding 
 them, by giving them hard names, by entering 
 into angry argument with them. And we fail 
 always. We might as well contradict the law 
 of gravitation. It is human nature to stand 
 out strong and hard against that manner of 
 approach. The will asserts itself. The per- 
 son who is in error holds only the more stoutly 
 to his error. He was in some doubt about it 
 before you went at him in that belligerent 
 fashion, and would presently have changed his 
 way or his opinion : but you have prevented 
 that. You have made a bad matter worse. 
 
 Take it in the extreme case of such miscon- 
 duct as sends a man to prison. The old way, 
 the universal way until very recent years, was 
 to treat the prisoner with all possible severity ; 
 he was made to suffer ; he was regarded as a 
 reprobate in whom there was no likelihood of 
 betterment. The result was that he accepted 
 the opinion of his respectable neighbors and 
 justified it abundantly. He endured his sen- 
 tence, and came out definitely confirmed in an 
 evil life, worse than he went in. To-day we 
 are trying the Lord's plan with Zaccheus. 
 First offenders charged with minor offenses 
 
176 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 instead of being thrown into jail are being 
 met with kindness and consideration. They 
 are being set at liberty under the watch and 
 word of a wise, responsible and sympathetic 
 person whose mission is to help them out of 
 their hard places, to give them friendly coun- 
 sel, and to set them in the right way. This 
 new Christian wisdom is being brought more 
 and more into the whole system of treatment 
 of the delinquent classes. It is at the heart of 
 all the new prison reform. It has been dis- 
 covered in the prisons that better results are 
 gained by rewards than by punishments. 
 Jesus Christ knew that, and exemplified it in 
 the case of Zaccheus. 
 
 Take it in the very different matter of ec- 
 clesiastical controversy. The Zaccheus of this 
 instance is the man who teaches what we be- 
 lieve to be both untrue and dangerous. We 
 are keenly alive to the necessity of putting a 
 stop to that kind of teaching. The natural 
 thing to do, as it seems to us, is to silence the 
 teacher. Let us assail him with all possible 
 weapons ; let us inform him that he is a heretic 
 and a liar and a traitor to his sacred trusts. 
 That is an easy thing to do, but the trouble is 
 that it does not accomplish our purpose. We 
 ought to know that. The thing has been tried 
 often enough in the course of Christian his- 
 
AT THE TABLE OF ZACCHEUS. 177 
 
 tory, and it does not succeed. It does not suc- 
 ceed in reclaiming the heretic from the error 
 of his ways, nor does it succeed in preventing 
 others from agreeing with him. On the con- 
 trary, it confirms him in his erroneous position, 
 and gains him an increasing number of sympa- 
 thetic disciples. The people who employ this 
 method of assault may know a great deal 
 about theology, but they are densely ignorant 
 of human nature. What is needed is fraternal 
 feeling and patience. Let the error be shown 
 reasonably, fairly, with large and confident 
 cheerfulness, with some sense of humor, with 
 the saving grace of imagination, and without 
 foolish adjectives. Give the man a decent 
 chance to change his mind with dignity. 
 
 So it is in regard to matters much nearer 
 to us, social and domestic. Zaccheus is in our 
 neighborhood, or in our family. Anybody of 
 whom we easily think ill is Zaccheus. Let us 
 try the Christian experiment of thinking well 
 of him : not of his faults, not of his blunders, 
 that is impossible. I do not mean any such 
 artificial affection. But of him, let us think 
 well : that is, let us assure ourselves that 
 Zaccheus is not so bad as he seems, that his 
 innermost motives are right, that the thing 
 which he needs is such fraternal faith and 
 friendliness as shall take him out of his defiant 
 
178 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 attitude, and make him show the good which 
 is in him. 
 
 The truth is that other people are very like 
 ourselves. We have our faults, as God and 
 our neighbors know ; we make foolish blun- 
 ders, and say and do things for which we are 
 ashamed ; but we mean well, and the good in 
 us is in majority. If we are called very 
 sharply to account for our mistakes, we cannot 
 help resenting it, and we are likely to continue 
 in the mistakes just to vindicate our independ- 
 ence. But if we are made cheerfully to know 
 that our friends disagree or disapprove we are 
 likely, if we are left alone, to amend ourselves ; 
 and other people are very like ourselves. 
 
 Let us, then, follow the Lord's example. 
 Let us appreciate the predominant goodness of 
 the world. Let us believe in our neighbors, in 
 our employees, in our children. Let us keep 
 back the sharp word which will serve only to 
 defeat our purpose, and bring out another, 
 dull though it be, which will gain at the 
 same time our purpose and our friend. 
 
THE LORD'S BROTHER. 
 
 After that, He appeared to James. 1 Cor. 15 : 7. 
 
 CONCERNING this appearance of our Lord to 
 James, we have no other notice than these 
 words. Of the place, or time, or circumstances 
 we know nothing. But we do know some- 
 thing about James. 
 
 He was our Lord's brother. 
 
 There were four brothers: James, Joses, 
 Jude and Simon; and several sisters. The 
 carpenter's house at Nazareth was full of chil- 
 dren. Jesus referred once to the games which 
 they played. They pretended to be dancing 
 at a wedding, or to be crying at a funeral. 
 Sometimes some of them would be offended 
 and refuse to play. "Whereunto," He said, 
 " shall I liken this generation ? It is like unto 
 children sitting in the markets, and calling 
 unto their fellows. And saying, We have piped 
 unto you, and ye have not danced ; we have 
 mourned unto you and ye have not wept." 
 When Jesus took up the little children in His 
 arms He knew how to do it by experience. 
 As the oldest child He had taken care of the 
 younger. Up to the time when He was six- 
 
 179 
 
180 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 teen years of age there must always have been 
 a baby in the house. 
 
 For there is no substantial basis for the 
 theory that Joseph was a widower when he 
 married Mary, and brought these six or seven 
 children with him. That was the conjecture 
 of men to whom the monastic life was the true 
 pattern of good living. There is no reason to 
 doubt that our Lord grew up in a normal 
 household, in a large family, amidst the voices 
 of young children. 
 
 Of the sisters of our Lord, and of His broth- 
 ers Joses and Simon, we have no knowledge. 
 Even tradition is silent regarding them. St. 
 Paul, who had some acquaintance with our 
 Lord's brothers, says that when he knew them 
 they were married and that their wives went 
 with them on their missionary journeys. That 
 is a pleasant thing to know ; but we cannot 
 tell whether he referred to all four of the 
 brothers or only to James and Jude. 
 
 Jude is said to have written the epistle 
 which bears his name, in which he describes 
 himself as the brother of James. But the 
 name was a common one, and the tradition is 
 questioned. 
 
 James, however, stands out a distinct figure 
 concerning whom we have much information : 
 most of it in the Acts of the Apostles. 
 
THE LORD'S BROTHER. 181 
 
 The life of James was divided into two 
 parts by the event which St. Paul has set down 
 in the text. The only thing which we are 
 told about the first part of his life is that he 
 was not in sympathy with Jesus. This was 
 true of all the brethren, and apparently, at 
 times, of the holy mother herself. For we 
 read that as He taught the people His mother 
 and His brethren stood on the outskirts of the 
 crowd, desiring to speak with Him, evidently 
 for the purpose of stopping Him and getting 
 Him away. For there, in the presence of them 
 all He declared His separation from His family, 
 saying, " Who is My mother ? and who are My 
 brethren?" And He stretched forth His 
 hand towards His disciples, and said, "Behold 
 My mother and My brethren ! for whosoever 
 shall do the will of My Father which is in 
 heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and 
 mother." This is to be connected with the 
 statement that His friends, or, as the word 
 may be translated, His kinsfolk, went out to 
 lay hold on Him, for they said, " He is beside 
 Himself ! " That is what James thought of 
 Him. Indeed we are informed with all plain- 
 ness, and in so many words, that His brother 
 did not believe in Him. It helps us to under- 
 stand what He meant when He said that the 
 Son of Man hath not where to lay His head. 
 
182 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 He had no home, because His ministry had 
 made this separation between Him and His 
 family. There were other friends who gath- 
 ered about Him, and gave Him their faith, their 
 allegiance and their love ; but James and Joses 
 and Jude and Simon had no part in His life. 
 
 Naturally, the arrest, the trial and the exe- 
 cution of Jesus would serve only to emphasize 
 this situation. We can easily imagine what 
 they said at home. They lamented His bitter 
 fate. His mother, loving Him with a mother's 
 love, stood beside Him as He died. But they 
 all felt that He had foolishly brought His fate 
 upon His head. He should have stayed at 
 home, minding His own business, going quietly 
 to church like other people, paying proper re- 
 spect to what the rabbi said, and keeping the 
 law. 
 
 So He died upon the cross, and that was 
 logically the end. But behold, instead of 
 being the end, it was the beginning. The 
 apostles meet, and the brethren of the Lord 
 meet with them. The apostles and the breth- 
 ren, who up to this moment have been at 
 variance, are now united. And presently, 
 after a few years, when St. Paul visits Jeru- 
 salem, he finds James, the Lord's brother, the 
 accepted and revered head of the apostolic 
 company : John, the disciple whom Jesus 
 
THE LORD'S BROTHER. 183 
 
 loved, and Peter, the disciple on whose con- 
 fession of confidence the church was founded, 
 being cheerfully subordinate to him. James, 
 Peter and John, he says, " seemed to be 
 pillars"; but he puts James first. The un- 
 believer is now the chief believer. 
 
 This, of course, is a remarkable evidence of 
 the resurrection. It is the more remarkable 
 because no use is made of it in the apostolic 
 argument. We read it between the lines. 
 Nothing can be more certain that something 
 of an extraordinary nature happened to con- 
 vert James. St. Paul tells us what it was : the 
 crucified Lord, his brother, dead and buried, 
 appeared to him. I will not stop to dwell 
 upon the value of this evidence, for I am con- 
 cerned at present with the unbelief rather than 
 with the belief of the Lord's brother. But 
 everybody must see that this is a singular and 
 noteworthy witness to the resurrection. For 
 there are many stories of appearances after 
 death: dim and vague, indeed, are the ac- 
 counts, like the sights which they report, 
 sometimes plain delusion, sometimes the fan- 
 tastic result of a disorder of the mind, or of a 
 disease of the nerves, and yet to be taken 
 seriously into account by reason of the very 
 number, universality and persistence of the 
 tales. Commonly, however, the spirit beats 
 
184 THE HUMAN NATUKE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 retreat at the approach of unbelief. The man 
 of hard sense, unemotional, logical, and in- 
 stinctively incredulous sees no ghosts. Such a 
 man, among the apostles, was Thomas. But 
 Thomas may have been over-influenced by the 
 convictions of his friends. James had no 
 friends among the believers in the resurrection. 
 In the nature of things, he had disliked the 
 men who had gathered about his brother. 
 The fact that they believed was but a further 
 reason for his unbelief. That is the way of 
 human nature. It meant much to a proud 
 man like James to come forward into a 
 cornpanjr of persons whom he had alienated 
 by his bitter words, and say, " I was mistaken. 
 You who stood beside Him did the thing 
 which was right. I who showed Him no 
 sympathy was in the wrong." That was a 
 hard thing to say. "Why did he say it ? Be- 
 cause he had seen Jesus alive after the death 
 upon the cross. 
 
 But I am concerned, as I said, not with the 
 belief but with the unbelief of James. How 
 was it that a good man, a man so good that 
 after all that had happened the apostles made 
 him the head of the church in Jerusalem, 
 how was it that he lived for thirty years in 
 the same house with Jesus, and did not believe 
 in Him ? 
 
THE LORD'S BROTHER. 185 
 
 When we are told that James and the 
 others did not believe in our Lord the meaning 
 is not that they doubted His word: that 
 would have been impossible. Nor does it 
 mean that they did not love Him : of course 
 they loved Him. What it means is that they 
 did not approve of Him. They did not like 
 the things which He said and did. And we 
 may properly remember that in this they 
 agreed with the most eminent and the most 
 pious persons of that day. You recollect what 
 our Lord's own friends and neighbors did in 
 His own town after He had preached in their 
 synagogue. They rose up. these good folk 
 who had known Him well for a generation, 
 since they were boys together, and proposed 
 to throw Him over the side of the hill. The 
 mind of James was the same mind as that of 
 the Nazareth rabbi. Everybody whom James 
 knew, with but few exceptions, thought that 
 his brother was an objectionable person. 
 
 That may have made no impression upon 
 James. He had sufficient reason, as it seemed, 
 in his own convictions. For we know James : 
 we know what sort of man he was. The fact 
 that he acted as presiding officer at the 
 apostolic conference before which Paul ap- 
 peared shows that he had a strong personality, 
 that he inspired others with respect, that he 
 
186 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 had a dignified and commanding manner. He 
 decided the debate in favor of Paul ; that is, 
 he declared on behalf of the apostles that 
 Gentiles should be admitted to membership in 
 the Christian Church without being compelled 
 to keep the Jewish law. But the debate con- 
 tinued after the conference adjourned. It was 
 a question of tremendous importance. The 
 settlement of it defined the position of the 
 followers of Jesus Christ, whether they were a 
 Jewish sect, or an independent company of 
 new believers. And James personally held 
 the Jewish opinion. The life of Paul was 
 made miserable by men who followed him on 
 his journeys and opposed his liberal teachings, 
 and of these men it is significantly said that 
 they came from James. Moreover, an ancient 
 and credible tradition asserts that James to 
 the end of his life kept the old law to the 
 smallest particular. He attended the services 
 of the temple and of the synagogue with 
 devout punctuality. He was a Christian, and 
 the head of the Christian Church in the place 
 of its beginning, but he was at the same time 
 a Jew. 
 
 That is, James, with all his natural good- 
 ness, was a precise, formal, and legalistic per- 
 son. That was his temperament. He must 
 have been like that even in his youth. He 
 
THE LORD'S BROTHER. 187 
 
 was of course brought up to keep the common 
 law, and to mind the rubrics, and to follow 
 the manifold regulations of an artificial and 
 mechanical religion. That was the best train- 
 ing which Joseph and Mary, good church peo- 
 ple, knew how to give. And James liked it. 
 That was the sort of thing in which he found 
 delight. 
 
 Jesus, on the other hand, liked it not at all. 
 Nobody ever lived whose religion was more 
 natural, more free, more unconventional. The 
 difference, there in Nazareth, between the re- 
 ligion of James and the religion of Jesus was 
 like the difference between a dimly lighted 
 room whose air is heavy with incense and the 
 top of a high hill where the wind blows in 
 the trees. And the consequence was, to put 
 it with all frankness, that Jesus shocked James 
 every day. The Lord's way of looking at 
 things scandalized the Lord's brother. Indeed, 
 as we have seen, it distressed the whole family. 
 
 Then when He came out and said in public 
 what He had long said in private, when He 
 confronted and contradicted and defied the 
 social ideal and the ecclesiastical ideal of His 
 day, anybody can see how James felt. Every 
 impulse of his precise nature resented this free 
 handling of matters ancient, settled and ven- 
 erable. Jesus associated freely with publicans 
 
188 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 and sinners: He dined at a publican's table, 
 and took the publican into the company of 
 the twelve apostles. James would have cut 
 off three fingers rather than do a thing like 
 that. Jesus disregarded many of the common 
 regulations, paid no heed to the ceremonial 
 worship about which His fellow churchmen 
 were so punctilious, and said with all plainness 
 that it mattered little what men ate ; a Jew 
 might eat pork if he chose ; the thing that 
 really mattered was not the food which went 
 into a man's mouth but the words which came 
 out. It is utterly impossible for us to under- 
 stand how deeply that offended James. It 
 contradicted his most sacred prejudices. 
 
 I suppose that Mary and Martha found that 
 it was hard for them to live together in per- 
 fect peace : Martha with her active, bustling, 
 housewifely ways, "cumbered," as the book 
 says, " with much serving " ; and Mary with 
 her leisurely habit of dreaming in the day- 
 time. They were very different. It is to be 
 remembered for our admonition that Martha 
 was the one who made complaint. We may 
 be equally sure that at Nazareth the com- 
 plaints came from James. How much more 
 real is it to us, and closer to our common life, 
 than if they had all been perfectly serene 
 saints. How it illuminates that hard saying 
 
THE LORD'S BROTHER. 189 
 
 in which we are told that our Lord was 
 tempted in all things like as we are. They 
 who find the art of living with others the 
 most difficult of arts may profitably remember 
 that our Lord encountered its difficulty in His 
 experience with His brother James. 
 
 So they lived together and apart, and the 
 crucifixion came, and the resurrection, and the 
 Lord was seen of James. He sought out 
 James. There He stood holding out His 
 blessed hands of reconciliation and affection. 
 And James, we doubt not, James the pre- 
 cise, the conventional, the conservative, the 
 formal, fell down upon his knees before Him. 
 Even so, his nature was not changed. He 
 was converted, but not transformed. Conver- 
 sion may be a speedy process, as quick as turn- 
 ing round ; but transformation takes a longer 
 time, and comes only by prayer and patience. 
 It is not likely that James ever understood 
 Jesus. The formalist has always found Him 
 hard to understand. He was of the same 
 temperament still, a dry, punctilious, precise 
 person. But thenceforward James was a 
 Christian. He was a devoted disciple of Him 
 in whom he now recognized an elder brother, 
 in all senses, human and divine. The Lord 
 appeared to him, and blessed him, and took 
 him just as he was into His confidence. 
 
190 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 James is the type of extreme propriety. In 
 the middle ages he was a schoolman, pro- 
 foundly interested in microscopic distinctions 
 of doctrine, an enemy of heretics. In the six- 
 teenth century he came to Massachusetts, 
 wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a wide 
 white collar, and laid down the law of the 
 Sabbath. He was the patron saint of the 
 eighteenth century moralists. Whatever is 
 unconventional in manner, in expression, in 
 belief, in ritual, offends him still. He is easily 
 shocked. He cannot help it. He is not at 
 present a popular person, for ours is an uncon- 
 ventional generation, demanding freedom and 
 delighting in it, and liking the new better 
 than the old. We are resentful of precision. 
 
 Let us remember that the Lord took partic- 
 ular pains to bring James into the Christian 
 company. He was seen of James, in a per- 
 sonal conference. He knew that the church 
 had need of just that conservative, slow, 
 cautious, and precise spirit which James repre- 
 sented. There was need of freedom, and 
 enthusiasm, and boldness, and the radical 
 mind : St. Paul stood for all that. But St. 
 James also had his place, and has it still. Let 
 us be very respectful to St. James ; disagree- 
 ing with him at many points, but recognizing 
 and humbly imitating his profound earnest- 
 
THE LORD'S BROTHER. 191 
 
 ness, the strength of his conviction, his 
 serious mind, and the goodness of his life, re- 
 membering the courtesy and consideration of 
 the risen Christ. 
 
ONE FEOM TEN. 
 
 And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, 
 turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell 
 down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks. Luke 
 17 : 15. 
 
 men went straight on. Out of the 
 ten only one turned back to say, " I thank 
 you." 
 
 The ten had been deserted of all men. 
 They had been forbidden to live any longer 
 in the society of their friends. They had 
 been commanded to cry " Unclean ! unclean ! " 
 when they saw anybody coming their way ; 
 warning the passer-by, that he might take the 
 other side of the road. They were under the 
 ban. Both the priest and the doctor were 
 against them. That is, the two persons to 
 whom the sick and distressed turn naturally 
 for comfort, they whose whole existence is for 
 the purpose of ministering to their neighbors in 
 disease and pain, had shut their doors against 
 such folk as these. There they were in the 
 streets, forlorn and friendless. And thus for- 
 saken of all men, thrust out by all men, these 
 ten had consorted together, and had associated 
 
 192 
 
ONE FROM TEN. 193 
 
 themselves into a society of common sorrow, 
 a fraternity of desolation ten outcasts, ten 
 beggars, ten lepers. 
 
 Then one day, the ten beheld across a field 
 one of whom they had heard that He was the 
 friend of those who had no friends, the 
 friend of publicans, and of sinners, and even 
 of lepers. He was the friend of lepers. 
 He had been known once to show some 
 kindness to a leper. Some said that it had 
 happened more than once. He had actually 
 put out His hand and touched a leper. This 
 new teacher, of whom many strange things 
 were reported, had touched a leper and healed 
 him. It seemed incredible not that He 
 should heal him, but that He should touch him 
 with His hand. 
 
 And then He came along the road, and the 
 ten saw Him. The lepers saw the friend of 
 lepers. And they joined their pitiful voices 
 in a cry to Him that He would touch them 
 also, and heal them : " Jesus, Master, have 
 mercy on us ! " And He stopped, and did have 
 mercy on them. He sent them to show them- 
 selves to the priests. And it came to pass that 
 as they went they were cleansed. Then it was 
 that nine of them went straight on : out of the 
 ten only one turned back to thank the healer. 
 
 The nine went on to take up their old life 
 
194 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 again. Step by step, along the way, as the 
 bonds of their leprosy were loosed, a new 
 strength came into their arms, a new light 
 shone in their faces, and a new hope lifted up 
 their hearts. I cannot think that they were 
 altogether ungrateful persons. That is not 
 human nature. They could not have looked 
 into the unexpected future which was thus 
 opening before them, and into which they were 
 going as one goes out of bondage into freedom, 
 without a memory of Him who had made that 
 future possible, and a deeply grateful memory. 
 Jesus had not passed out of their thoughts. 
 That is quite unlikely. 
 
 The men were not ungrateful. They were 
 only silent. They were grateful enough in 
 their hearts ; they were singing and making 
 melody in their hearts. But nobody would 
 have known it, for no note of the songs got 
 into their lips. 
 
 This was partly because they knew not what 
 to say. Of all emotions, joy is the most difficult 
 to bring into speech. Sorrow seeks expres- 
 sion. Think of the notable scenes in which 
 the masters of fiction have pictured the crisis 
 of human life. The best are the pathetic and 
 the tragic. Gratitude is especially hard to 
 utter. It eludes the pen and the tongue. It 
 can be seen in the eyes, but it rarely finds 
 
ONE FROM TEN. . 195 
 
 adequate expression. We try in vain to say 
 all that we feel. There is much more grati- 
 tude and appreciation in the world than we 
 get credit for. If we should ever outgrow 
 spoken language and for words substitute 
 thoughts, so that conversation should be car- 
 ried on without words as communication is al- 
 ready effected without wires, and mind should 
 speak with mind, there would be no difficulty 
 about thanksgiving. There are few emotions 
 that would gain more in power of expression. 
 Everybody who is good to us will know in that 
 day just how appreciative we are. 
 
 This, however, was not the chief reason for 
 the silence of the men who gave no thanks. 
 They might have said something. It is not 
 likely that the one who turned back was very 
 eloquent : he probably stammered and stum- 
 bled in his speech. They might, at least, have 
 fallen at the Master's feet, and thus even in 
 silence have assured Him that their hearts 
 were full of affection and of adoration. The 
 trouble was not so much that they did not 
 know what to say, as that they did not con- 
 sider that they needed to say anything. They 
 did not think that He who had blessed them 
 cared whether they showed their gratitude 
 or not. He did care. His instant question, 
 " Where are the nine ? " makes that plain. 
 
196 THE HUMAN NATUEE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 It is true that the gratitude which He sought 
 and missed was not for Himself. " There are 
 not found that returned to give glory to God 
 save this stranger." It was God to whom He 
 would have the glory given. If, however, 
 there were no more to it than that, it is hard 
 to see wherein the nine failed. They went on 
 to the priests ; that is, to the temple, where 
 the priests performed their offices. What bet- 
 ter place could they have chosen for the gift 
 of their gratitude to God ! There in that hal- 
 lowed sanctuary, in the appointed services and 
 with the appointed offerings, let them give 
 God the glory. Was not that the natural and 
 proper thing to do ? On they go along the 
 road, obeying Christ's command ; and as they 
 go, with every step, their leprosy is cleansed ; 
 and there they are, well men. Then they stop 
 and consult together, companions now in great 
 joy as they had been companions in distress ; 
 and one says, What shall we do ? Shall we not 
 go back and thank Him? and another says, 
 " No, we are doing as He told us, we are going 
 to the priests. Let us give God the glory. 
 Let us kneel before His altar in His house." 
 And to this they all agree save one, and he, 
 curiously enough is a Samaritan ; that is, he is 
 a person who is out of accord with priests. It 
 is notorious that the Jews have no dealings 
 
ONE FROM TEN. 197 
 
 with the Samaritans. The fact that this Sa- 
 maritan was of the number of these ten shows 
 that their misery was so great that it over- 
 balanced all their natural prejudices. Nine 
 Jews in sound health would not have tolerated 
 the company of a Samaritan. Indeed, as they 
 got better they may have begun to look askance 
 at the stranger with whom in their affliction 
 they had fraternized. Anyhow, the priest 
 had nothing for him. The others might go on 
 to kneel before the altar in the temple, he 
 would go back to kneel in the dust by the side 
 of the road, and to offer his thanksgivings in 
 the presence of Him who had healed him. 
 And this was what Jesus wanted. The man 
 came, and glorfied God, but in his gift of 
 praise to God there was a human, personal 
 element. He glorified God, the gospel tells 
 us, but he fell down on his face at Jesus' feet, 
 and gave Jesus thanks. And Jesus liked that. 
 
 He liked the simple courtesy of it. He 
 showed on several occasions that He set a high 
 value on good manners. It made a difference 
 to Him whether or not He was treated with 
 the consideration which is rightly due from 
 host to guest. He saw in little things symbols 
 of large realities. It pleased Him to have af- 
 fection and regard expressed in gentle ways. 
 
 And He liked the straightforward directness 
 
198 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 of it. The man was honestly grateful and he 
 came and said so. And in that act he gave 
 Christ pleasure. That is the fact to which the 
 narrative bears witness, and which we ought 
 especially to consider as we read about it on 
 such a day as this. It is natural for us to 
 think of the saying of prayers and the singing 
 of praises from the point of view of our own 
 selves. But our Lord's pleasure in this man's 
 frank gratitude reminds us that there is an- 
 other and divine side to all this. He who by 
 precept and by example reveals to us the na- 
 ture and will of the Eternal, teaches us here 
 and elsewhere that God cares : that God has 
 pleasure in our prayers and in our praises : 
 that therein we render some small return to 
 Him for all the joy with which He fills our 
 lives. 
 
 We do thank God for most of the uncom- 
 mon blessings. A sudden danger, a sharp 
 sickness, brings us so close to the great reali- 
 ties that God seems nearer to us than usual. 
 When the danger is passed, or the crisis of the 
 disease is reached and safely turned, we think 
 of God, and the grateful feelings of our heart 
 find expression at our lips. 
 
 But we ought to thank God also for all the 
 daily blessings, for our health, friends, food 
 and raiment, and all the other comforts and 
 
ONE FROM TEN. 199 
 
 conveniences of life, for all the manifold mer- 
 cies and loving kindnesses of Him from whom 
 cometh every good and perfect gift. Christ 
 taught the truth, which was long obscured, but 
 in our day is emphasized by clearer knowledge 
 of the world of nature, that our heavenly 
 Father is forever present in the world and for- 
 ever active in it. We call the laws of nature 
 by appropriate Latin names, and are tempted 
 to imagine that we understand them because 
 we have thus named them. But so are the 
 mountains of the moon named. So are the 
 fixed stars named. So is radium, the latest of 
 the mysteries, given a name. Behind them all 
 is God. What we call natural law is but 
 God's customary way. 
 
 The Hebrews were very wise in their poetic 
 and religious histories, wherein they ascribed 
 all things to God's direct action. If the army 
 lost the battle, God had turned His face against 
 that army. If the rain descended and the 
 wind blew, God was in the wind and in the 
 rain. It was all profoundly true. God is in 
 all the experiences of common life. All is of 
 Him, in whom our life is lived. 
 
 Thus the homeliest blessings come from the 
 Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, 
 We ought to be thankful to Him for them all ; 
 for all the smallest joys of a good year ; for 
 
200 THE HUMAN NATUKE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 the divine protection ; for our prosperity ; for 
 the fact that we are alive to-day, and able to 
 be here in the house of God ; for our escape 
 from a hundred ills which we feared as the 
 weeks passed, but which did not fall upon us ; 
 for innumerable and blessed assistances in 
 temptation, by reason of which we are no worse 
 than we are, thank God ; for daily joys past 
 counting up. Praise and thanksgiving be to 
 God who has poured His benefits upon us, in 
 our own individual lives. 
 
 Then we remember the blessings which we 
 share with those nearest to us, in the family. 
 Thanksgiving Day has a distinctively domestic 
 meaning. It is the festival of the family. It 
 cannot be satisfactorily observed in a hotel, or 
 in most boarding houses, or by anybody who 
 sits alone at dinner. It needs children and 
 relatives, to fill it with the proper cheer ; or 
 the presence of dear friends. It is the home- 
 liest of our days of observation, homeliest in 
 the best sense of that word, as being sacred to 
 the home, as recalling the time when people 
 thought that God had His dwelling in their 
 home, with the hearth for His shrine and altar, 
 and the fire blazing upon it in His sacred 
 honor: and were right about it. To-day we 
 worship the God of the household, returning 
 to the simple faith of those remote ancestors 
 
ONE FROM TEN. 201 
 
 of ours who lived when every father was a 
 priest and every meal a sacrament. To-day 
 we consider with gratitude the protection of 
 God, the good guidance of God, the love of 
 God who is the Father of us all, revealed to us 
 in so many ways under our own roof. Praise 
 and thanksgiving be to Him who, during this 
 past year has poured His benefits upon us in 
 our homes. 
 
 This is the most ancient of all our holy days. 
 It is true that it had its specific beginning in 
 the experiences of our ancestors here upon 
 these shores early in the seventeenth century. 
 But it antedates the passover : it precedes the 
 pyramids ; it is before history, even before 
 civilization. It had its origin in the instincts 
 of primeval man, and was celebrated at the 
 gate of Eden. Thanksgiving Day is the most 
 ancient and the most universal of all our 
 festivals. Therein our calendar agrees with 
 the sacred year of every religion. All men 
 everywhere in this time of harvest have met 
 together throughout all ages, and are still 
 meeting for the purpose which assembles us 
 to-day, to give thanks to God for the ingather- 
 ing of the fruits of the earth. For us who go 
 back and forth about our business over paved 
 streets the agricultural aspects of this day are 
 in the remote background of our thoughts. 
 
202 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 We try to return to the sturdy joy of our 
 grandparents, to whom the harvest was a 
 personal experience, and it is like the difference 
 between the symbolic sheaves with which we 
 deck the altar and the real sheaves, acre on 
 acre, golden in the sun, silver in the harvest 
 moon, shining in the fields. But the harvest 
 is essential : let us remember that. We can- 
 not live without it. To-day we praise the 
 Lord for the kindly fruits of the earth, for 
 the labors of the husbandman wherein he is a 
 fellow laborer with God, for fire and heat, for 
 frost and cold, for the succession of the seasons, 
 and all the divine elemental forces. O, let 
 the earth bless the Lord : yea, let it praise 
 Him and magnify Him forever. 
 
 Finally, as good citizens, we give God 
 thanks for all the large mercies of the year, 
 national and international, seeing God's great 
 working there; sometimes understanding it 
 and sometimes not, but conscious, nevertheless, 
 and through all, of His abiding presence, of 
 His patient dealing with the human will. We 
 perceive, as we review the year, that little by 
 little, swinging back yet coming on like the 
 rising tide, the kingdom of heaven invades the 
 world and slowly very slowly, but surely, 
 takes possession of it. Thank God for that, 
 and for all the good men and women, who, in 
 
ONE FROM TEN. 203 
 
 the face of difficulty and defeat, in our huge 
 misgoverned cities, in our deserted villages, in 
 the perplexities of our vast problems, are bring- 
 ing the good causes forward, in His name. 
 It is His world ; that is the truth which makes 
 thanksgiving reasonable. It is His world, 
 made by Him, redeemed by Him, sanctified by 
 Him, growing year by year to fill the measure 
 of His plan. The movement of the nations 
 is like the flight of the birds, in spring and 
 fall voluntary, yet divinely guided. And as 
 we behold it, as we feel the thrill of it in our 
 own experience, we praise God: saying no 
 longer, The Lord liveth which brought up the 
 children of Israel out of the land of Egypt ; 
 but the Lord liveth which brought up and 
 which led our fathers to the shores of this new 
 continent, and here established them a nation, 
 and here prospered them and made them a 
 great people ; the Lord liveth who to-day in 
 every land, in peace and in war, is guiding the 
 peoples of the earth. 
 
 O ye children of men, bless ye the Lord. 
 O ye servants of the Lord, bless ye the Lord. 
 O ye holy and humble men of heart, bless ye 
 the Lord, praise His name, come before Him 
 with thanksgiving, magnify Him forever. 
 
SAINTS IN SUMMER. 
 
 Thon hast set all the borders of the earth ; Thou hast made 
 summer. Ps. 74 : 18. 
 
 LET us consider now some of the elements 
 of a Christian vacation. 
 
 The first is recreation. The meaning of 
 recreation is written plain in the word itself. 
 It is that which recreates us, giving us a clearer 
 mind and a stronger body. Simple rest goes 
 far towards doing that. To escape from our 
 anxieties, to put our work behind us, to get out 
 of hearing of the importunate demands which 
 prevent our peace, is both helpful and neces- 
 sary. We ought to do it. It need not be a 
 selfish act. It is for our good in order that it 
 may be for the general good. It is not merely 
 for his own sake that the teacher, the minister 
 or the merchant takes a vacation ; it is also for 
 the sake of the school, the parish, and the busi- 
 ness, all of which need a man at his best. 
 
 Indeed, there is a selfishness of self sacrifice. 
 Here is one who works and works for the sake 
 of a family, or of a community, or of a cause, 
 reaching the limit of his natural strength and 
 going consciously beyond it, and then breaks 
 204 
 
SAINTS IN SUMMER. 205 
 
 down, falls into some sort of sickness. That is 
 the poorest kind of social or spiritual economy. 
 The work which ought to have gone on, stops ; 
 and even before it stop?, it is done inefficiently ; 
 the worker has no strength nor spirit for it. 
 It looks like self-sacrifice. People say, He 
 gave himself for the good of others. Some- 
 times that is true. Sometimes, under condi- 
 tions which leave no choice, it is the sincerest 
 self-sacrifice. But commonly, it is the sacrifice 
 of the work as well as of the worker. A 
 recognition of the value of rest, a reservation 
 of strength for future use, a wise intermin- 
 gling of pleasure and play with the earnest oc- 
 cupations of life, will enable the prudent worker 
 to go on day after day, and year after year. 
 Charlemagne went to bed regularly at noon 
 and slept for an hour, and still had time to ad- 
 minister the affairs of the whole civilized so- 
 ciety of his day : there are mothers of small 
 families who feel that the demands upon them 
 are so great that they cannot take such rest as 
 that. The truth is that both the mothers and 
 the families would be the happier for it. 
 
 This is the meaning of the fourth command- 
 ment. It is the divine announcement of the 
 necessity of rest. Once a week, the com- 
 mandment says, stop work. Take a good rest, 
 you and your wife, and your family, and all 
 
206 THE HUMAN NATUKE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 the members of your household. The Sabbath 
 rest, it is true, came to be so interpreted as to 
 make the rest day not only the dullest but the 
 most difficult day of the week. But that was 
 the fault of the interpreters ; there is nothing 
 of it in the commandment. It is the word of 
 the considerate father of the family of man, 
 who would not have school keep all the week, 
 nor the mills run from Monday morning round 
 to Monday morning. You will be tempted, 
 the message meant, to take life quite too seri- 
 ously, and to work too hard and too long. 
 Don't do it. Enjoy yourselves. Bring the 
 element of recreation into your life. Establish 
 and maintain holidays, holy to God and to 
 man, in which you may be freely and blessedly 
 idle. 
 
 This is also the meaning of our Lord's sum- 
 mons to the apostles, " Come ye yourselves 
 apart into a desert place, and rest awhile." 
 They were so busy that they could not be al- 
 lowed to go on without danger to themselves 
 and to their work. Stop it, then, at once ; 
 and come, let us go a-rowing on the lake, let 
 us get into the neighborhood of the cool 
 breezes. On the further shore are trees and 
 grass, and the waves are playing with the 
 rocks, and there are no people : there let us lie 
 down in the shade and rest. 
 
SAINTS IN SUMMER. 207 
 
 "We will do that, this summer. We will 
 enter with all our hearts into the honest, inno- 
 cent joys of outdoor life. We will have a 
 good time, in the name of God. We will not 
 be ashamed of it, nor make apologies for it. 
 We will rejoice in it, as children of our Father 
 in heaven. 
 
 The second element of a Christian vacation 
 is appreciation. Appreciation, I mean, of that 
 out-of-door world in which a holiday is properly 
 spent. It is God's world, more directly and en- 
 tirely than that environment of buildings and 
 of books in which we pass so much of our 
 time. To see it aright is, in a deep sense, to 
 see God. To delight in it is to delight in God. 
 To enter into it with sympathy and apprecia- 
 tion is to enter into the realized presence of 
 God. 
 
 " For I have learned 
 To look on nature, not as in the hour 
 Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes 
 The still, sad music of humanity, 
 Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power 
 To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 
208 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still 
 A lover of the meadows and the woods 
 And mountains ; and of all that we behold 
 From this green earth ; of all the mighty world 
 Of eye and ear, both what they half create 
 And what perceive ; well pleased to recognize 
 In nature and the language of the sense 
 The author of my purest thoughts, the muse, 
 The guide, the guardian of my heart, the soul 
 Of all my moral being." 
 
 That is what we need, an appreciation of 
 the moral significance of nature, a delight in 
 it as the gift of God, as the revelation of God, 
 as the visible manifestation of God. 
 
 Our love of God has sometimes a self-con- 
 sciousness about it which takes away its joy. 
 We put upon ourselves a kind of compulsion to 
 love God. We set about the act of realizing 
 God and loving God as if it were a task. 
 This is largely because we associate God with 
 only a part of life, with prayers and churches. 
 God is in all life. We need not urge ourselves 
 into artificial affection for Him. What He 
 wants is the love which children give their 
 parents, about which they do not reason nor 
 examine themselves, but which is natural, in- 
 stinctive, spontaneous. Let us live in the 
 natural world as in the house of God, our 
 Father. Let us see in the beauty of it, in its 
 
SAINTS IN SUMMER. 209 
 
 forms and colors, in its changing lights, in its 
 adaptation to our needs, the loving providence 
 of God, who careth for us. Let us understand 
 that to enjoy it is to love God. To look out 
 across the lake at the procession of the hills, 
 to watch the moving clouds by day and the 
 moving stars by night, to walk beside the 
 water, to sail over it, to plunge under it, to 
 delight in the saltness and the coolness of the 
 sea, to sit under the shadows of the great trees, 
 and just to think that all this is given to us by 
 the hand of God, is to grow in grace, and in 
 the knowledge and the love of God. Let us 
 not anxiously ask ourselves whether we love 
 God. Let us give ourselves up to His blessed 
 presence, whom the heavens declare, and the 
 firmament showeth His handiwork. Let us 
 take it, and be glad of it, going out into it with 
 a sense of possession, as the children of God, 
 enjoying ourselves in our Father's house. Let 
 us read in it as in a book of devotion, the 
 Bible of the hills and skies, written by God's 
 hand. Let us listen in the stillness to the 
 anthem of the waters and the fields : O all ye 
 works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord. Praise 
 Him and magnify Him forever. 
 
 The third element of a Christian vacation is 
 reflection. The summer is a time for quiet 
 thinking. All the rest of the year we are sub- 
 
210 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 ject to interruption. We have, indeed, that 
 stimulus to thought which comes from the im- 
 perative demand of the immediate moment. 
 The word must be said, the thing must be done, 
 and we are compelled to think it out. But in 
 order that we may say the right word, and do 
 the right thing, the thought of the moment 
 must be based upon a strong foundation of 
 serious and continued thinking. And in the 
 summer, if we are wise, we will lay such a 
 foundation. We will apply ourselves in these 
 long days of peace to the consideration of 
 great principles. We will read great books. 
 We will lay up in stock a store of strength 
 against the coming year. 
 
 For example, it is excellent to spend a sum- 
 mer in the reading of history. Take one of 
 the long histories Gibbon, Froude, Gardiner, 
 Green, Parkman, Motley, Fiske and read it 
 through. It is significant that so large a part 
 of the Bible is occupied by books of history. 
 It means that through history we come to a 
 knowledge of God. We see God in the world 
 of human society, and we are thus prepared to 
 see God with like plainness in our contempo- 
 rary annals, in the events which are recorded in 
 the daily newspapers. Much that we read 
 there needs the background of the past for its 
 interpretation. The continual experience of 
 
SAINTS IN SUMMER. 211 
 
 the people of Israel was uplifted and dignified 
 by being thus kept in living relation with the 
 old time. Every common day had its place in 
 that splendid history. And the whole history 
 from first to last was ennobled and illuminated 
 by the consciousness of God. The annals of 
 Israel were different from those of other na- 
 tions, but a great part of the difference was in 
 the spirit in which they were written. The 
 historians of Israel were aware of the presence 
 of God in all the facts of human life. If the 
 summer can bring us into that same conscious- 
 ness of the divine in the life of our own age, 
 and in the progress of our own community it 
 will be a Christian summer. 
 
 Excellent, also, is the reading of poetry, of 
 great poetry. How long is it since we read 
 the " Iliad," or the " Divine Comedy," or the 
 tragedies of Shakespeare, or the Book of Job, 
 or "Paradise Lost," or the "King and the 
 Book " ? For most of us, these are undertak- 
 ings too vast for our busy days. The summer 
 gives us opportunity for such high privileges. 
 Let us take a poet with us into our country 
 home, and give him the freedom of the hearth 
 and of the fields, and listen to all he has to 
 say. Let us read the whole range of his verse, 
 till we get into the heart of his heart, and be- 
 hold the world out of his eyes, or better out of 
 
212 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 our own eyes, taught by him to see. Part of 
 the time we will look at the page, part of the 
 time we will look at the sky and at the hills, 
 till the new heaven and the new earth begin 
 to shine about us. 
 
 Or the summer may be used for the work- 
 ing out of some problem, some question of 
 ethics or of belief, some deep and weighty 
 matter of which we find ourselves more igno- 
 rant than we ought to be. We will take it, 
 and think about it. We will carry it with us 
 into the woods, or over the water, or among the 
 high mountains, and there meditate upon it with 
 that quietness of spirit and clearness of vision 
 which the clamor and confusion of the im- 
 portunate months obstruct but which are 
 among the most precious blessings of the 
 summer. 
 
 I have spoken now of three elements of a 
 Christian vacation, recreation, appreciation 
 and reflection. A fourth element is devotion. 
 By this I mean the religious life as it is re- 
 lated to the services and institutions of the 
 church. The privileges of the church are to 
 the Christian what the privileges of art are to 
 the artist, and of music to the musician. They 
 are the thing that he wants. Accordingly, the 
 Christian in choosing a place in which to 
 spend the summer will take the religious op- 
 
SAINTS IN SUMMER. 213 
 
 portunities into account. It is not necessary 
 to say to the good Christian that he ought to 
 go to church in the country. He will go, not 
 because he ought, but because he desires to go. 
 It is his pleasure and profit. To those who 
 call themselves Christians, however, and are 
 not so good Christians as they should be, it 
 needs to be said that church-going in the 
 country even more than in the city is a social 
 duty, and that they who neglect it harm their 
 neighbors. The Church in the country suf- 
 fers greatly from vicious division, and loses 
 thereby in dignity, and in effectiveness. 
 Nevertheless, it is one of the agencies and 
 the most potent of all the agencies for the 
 uplifting of the community. The country min- 
 ister in most instances is a faithful man who 
 is laboring at much self-sacrifice for the good 
 of the people. The privileged folk who come 
 from the great churches of the cities will 
 either help or hinder him. If they are honest 
 Christian people, they will help him. They 
 will understand that their simple presence at 
 the services encourages both the minister and 
 the congregation. It is a small thing to do, 
 at the beginning of a week of leisure and 
 pleasure, to spend a Sunday morning in the 
 village church. It may not be a beautiful 
 church, and neither the praying nor the 
 
214 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 preaching may be very good, measured by the 
 standards of polite society. But He is there 
 who promised His blessed presence wherever 
 two or three are met together in His name ; 
 and the devout soul will recognize Him and 
 rejoice in Him. There will be a benediction in 
 the summer stillness, and the bare walls will 
 shine with celestial pictures, and in the voice 
 of the minister He will speak, who cares little 
 for enticing words of man's wisdom but en- 
 trusts His messages to holy and humble men 
 of heart. The worshiper will get good as 
 well as do good. Suppose, however, that he 
 does not get much good, then let him go to 
 church as an intelligent and right-minded 
 citizen, performing an act of courtesy, of 
 social politeness, of considerate and gracious 
 good manners, of decent interest in the wel- 
 fare of one's neighbors. 
 
 These reflections upon the Christian and 
 social duty of church-going in the country are 
 applicable even when the church is not one of 
 our kind. It is natural and right that we 
 should prefer the service as it is in the prayer- 
 book. The religious exercises of our Prot- 
 estant neighbors, wherein the sermon is of 
 chief importance and is preceded and followed 
 by extemporary prayer, seems to us cold and 
 unsatisfying : we cannot help it. We crave 
 
SAINTS IN SUMMER. 215 
 
 the richness, the variety, the warmth, the holy 
 associations, the uplift and impulse of a service 
 in which the instinct of worship is recognized 
 and given utterance. But we are not very 
 good Christians if we are so dependent on the 
 forms of the service that we cannot get along 
 without them. And we are very childish and 
 foolish and narrow and unchristian Christians 
 if we cannot kneel with our Christian brethren 
 of whatever name and join them in approach- 
 ing our common Father. Partisanship is very 
 well, if one belongs to the right party, and 
 pays an honest allegiance to it : but patriotism 
 is a thousandfold better. Churchmanship is 
 very well, but Christianity is the essential 
 thing. Above all religious organizations is 
 that universal church over which no pope nor 
 bishop rules, and which no society is old 
 enough nor wide enough to contain. As 
 churchmen, we will go to "the church," as 
 we say, if we can find it ; but as Christians, 
 we will go anywhere, under whatever roof, 
 into whatever service, Eoman Catholic, Bap- 
 tist, Unitarian, Quaker, it matters not, where 
 we can find God worshiped in any way, and 
 Jesus Christ, the Son of God, loved and fol- 
 lowed. The only religious society which is to 
 be carefully avoided by all churchmen and 
 Christians is the Ancient Order of Pharisees. 
 
216 THE HUMAN NATUKE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 The churchman who stays at home on Sunday 
 because there is no other house of worship in 
 the village but the Methodist may suddenly 
 find himself a member in good and regular 
 standing of the Ancient Order of Pharisees. 
 
 Kecreation, appreciation, reflection, and de- 
 votion will admit us into the high privilege of 
 a Christian summer. Out of such a vacation, 
 spent in the society of nature, of noble books, 
 of our neighbors and of God, we ought to 
 come back strong and sound to resume our 
 work and do it better. May God bless it to 
 our needs, the happiness of it, the health of it, 
 the occupations of it, all its days of sun and 
 of storm, all its experiences. May He thereby 
 make us better men and women, better Chris- 
 tians, wiser and happier and holier. Let us 
 not say by and by in the words of the prophet, 
 " The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and 
 we are not saved." Let us rather say in the 
 words of the psalmist, " Thy righteousness 
 standeth like the strong mountains : Thy judg- 
 ments are like the great deep." " Holy, holy, 
 holy, Lord God Almighty, heaven and earth 
 are full of Thy glory. Glory be to Thee, O 
 Lord Most High." 
 
THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED. 
 
 One of His disciples, whom Jesus loved. John 13: 23. 
 
 ST. JOHN the apostle stood at the top of a 
 profession in which all good people are en- 
 gaged. He was a saint; to which excellent 
 estate we are all called. It may well be of 
 interest and profit to us, disciples like him of 
 the Lord Jesus, and members as he was of the 
 Brotherhood and Sisterhood of the Blessed 
 Life, to consider how this our neighbor, who 
 in his boyhood caught fish for a living in the 
 Lake of Galilee, became so eminent a person. 
 Think of it! a sun-browned fisherman, who 
 plied his homely trade in the waters of a 
 Syrian pond, has gained a name greater than 
 that of Alexander or of Caesar. In countless 
 cities, under all the skies of the planet, conse- 
 crated buildings, costly and beautiful, bear 
 his name. For now these many centuries, 
 words of his writings have stirred the hearts of 
 the best men and women of the world, and 
 have been an encouragement in defeat, a com- 
 fort in trouble, a shield and spear in spiritual 
 conflict, an enrichment of life, a fountain of 
 pure joy. Add together the intellectual and 
 
 217 
 
218 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 moral achievements of Aristotle and of Plato ; 
 yes, and of all the philosophers beside who 
 ever wrote in any language ; and the result of 
 all the good they ever did, of all the change 
 they ever wrought in man's believing or be- 
 having, will not compare for a moment with 
 the contribution which this fisherman has 
 made to the best wealth of the world. For 
 the sources of our Christian faith are plainly 
 these : first, the life of Jesus Christ ; secondly, 
 the interpretations of His life. The story of 
 what He did and said is set down plainly in 
 the first three gospels: the meaning of it is 
 declared by St. John and by St. Paul : by St. 
 Paul, the apostle of the atonement, and by St. 
 John, the apostle of the incarnation. St. 
 John does not tell the Christmas story : his 
 account of our Lord begins with the baptism. 
 But it is from him chiefly that we learn the 
 supreme truth with which the Fourth Gospel 
 opens, that the Word was God and was made 
 flesh. He it was, with St. Paul, who per- 
 ceived God in Christ, and taught men so. 
 How did he do it ? How did it come to pass ? 
 How did John of Bethsaida, fish vender, grow 
 up into the beloved disciple, St. John the 
 Divine ? 
 
 The father of John was Zebedee ; his mother 
 was Salome. "We are not told much about 
 
THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED. 219 
 
 either of them : of his father, very little, in- 
 deed. He was a fisherman, with some small 
 means, a master fisherman, having men in 
 his employ. He seems to have owned a house 
 in Jerusalem, to which after the tragedy of 
 the crucifixion, John took the Yirgin Mother. 
 His wife, probably after his death, is said to 
 have ministered unto Jesus of her substance. 
 It is plain, however, that he was by no means 
 rich : at least, he was not so rich but that he 
 worked with his hands, pulling at oars and 
 sails and nets. The only clear look we 
 get at him shows him with his sons and his 
 hired men, a sturdy, sunburned person, with 
 a fisherman's needle in his hands, busy at the 
 common task. We see enough to know that 
 he was industrious and frugal, of a practical 
 habit, not impulsive, not given to dreaming in 
 the daytime, nor enthusiastic, nor even hos- 
 pitable towards new ideas, intent upon the 
 lake and the weather, the nets and the fish, 
 going steadily to and fro, day after day, be- 
 tween his house and his boat. 
 
 When Jesus came and called his two sons, 
 he sat silent, not offering to go himself, yet 
 opposing no hindrance to their going. The 
 sentence in the gospel, " Then came to Him 
 the mother of Zebedee's children with her 
 sons," has been used as a text for a sermon in- 
 
220 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 tended for men who do not go to church, be- 
 ginning, " But where was Zebedee ? " Yarious 
 reasons are assigned for Zebedee's absence. 
 It is altogether likely that by that time Zebe- 
 dee was dead. Still, the fact remains that 
 while his wife was deeply interested in relig- 
 ion, and his sons devoted themselves to it, 
 Zebedee himself appears to have gone on 
 about his ordinary business. He stayed at 
 home, and attended to the fishing. 
 
 Salome, it is thought, was a sister of the 
 mother of our Lord : for St. John says that in 
 the group of women by the cross of Jesus was 
 "His mother's sister," and St. Matthew, de- 
 scribing the same group, speaks of the 
 "mother of Zebedee's children." If so, she 
 belonged to a family which was naturally 
 religious, and spent her girlhood in the com- 
 pany of one whose thoughts and words and 
 life must have been constantly devout and up- 
 lifted. That she afterwards devoted herself 
 to the service of her nephew, and attended 
 Him wherever He went that she might min- 
 ister to Him not only gives us a new sight of 
 the homely domestic relationships of the life 
 of Jesus, but serves also to bear witness to her 
 ardent spirit. There was probably a good 
 deal of external contrast between Zebedee and 
 Salome. That unlikeness between the father 
 
THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED. 221 
 
 and the mother, one saying little, the other 
 saying much ; one appearing to pay but small 
 heed to religion, the other manifestly devout, 
 is not uncommon. 
 
 Both father and mother reappear in John. 
 He was no leader, like Peter. He was no 
 speaker. In the conference at Jerusalem over 
 the questions which arose out of Paul's mis- 
 sionary experiences he spoke no word, a quiet, 
 silent man, like his father Zebedee. From his 
 mother he derived his religious spirit and his 
 depth of affection. A certain swiftness of 
 temper, a strain of jealousy in his affection, a 
 tendency to be so absorbed in a present pur- 
 pose as to be careless of the rights of others, 
 may also be the mother in the son. For it is 
 not only by the direct training of the parents 
 that the character of their children is deter- 
 mined. The children depend less on what 
 their parents do and say than on what their 
 parents are. Character goes on from one gen- 
 eration to another, now uplifted, now de- 
 graded, but inevitably handed down, a heri- 
 tage of benediction or of malediction. 
 
 It is not likely that St. John went much to 
 school. It is certain that he was quite un- 
 trained in the rabbinical philosophy which 
 constituted what was then accounted educa- 
 tion. He learned to read, and he read much 
 
222 THE HITMAN NATUKE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 in the greatest book that ever was written, 
 in the Bible. That he had an eager mind is 
 evident in all that we know about his life. 
 But beyond the most elementary sort of book- 
 learning, he got the remainder, and the greater 
 part, of his education in the world. 
 
 We make a mistake if we imagine that educa- 
 tion consists wholly, or chiefly, in acquaintance 
 with printed pages, in the friendship of books. 
 He is best educated who knows the world in 
 which he lives, and has learned to look with 
 sympathy and understanding into the faces of 
 his fellow men. The walls of the study im- 
 prison the conventional scholar. His horizon is 
 bounded by his books and pictures. Supersti- 
 tions, prejudices, heresies, narrownesses of va- 
 rious kinds, grow in the brain of him who sits 
 with his back to the window and his feet to the 
 fire, forever reading. John the fisherman, busy 
 with his work, under the wide sky, on the 
 stormy lake, minding the net and the sail, 
 casting for a draught, counting the good fish, 
 occupied with his traffic along the wharves of 
 Bethsaida and in the fish market of Jerusalem, 
 learned lessons of which the dim-eyed scribes 
 and Pharisees, studying old books, were alto- 
 gether ignorant. 
 
 One would have easily said, however, that this 
 fisher lad had but a poor chance at the prizes 
 
THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED. 223 
 
 of the world. Compare him, for example, with 
 other boys, his contemporaries in Bethsaida 
 and Capernaum, born in homes of wealth and 
 leisure, given manifold daily privileges of edu- 
 cation and opportunity. Out of all these lads 
 who have their residence within reach of 
 the winds which blow across the lake, who shall 
 be the best esteemed ? who shall be known 
 and approved by the most people ? who shall 
 take the largest place in the general life ? 
 Only the very wise would have pointed to this 
 son of Zebedee. 
 
 Wonderful, this subtle difference in the 
 destinies of men ! Out of a group of school- 
 boys, out of the clerks in an office, out of the 
 unending procession in the street, one becomes 
 a scholar and enriches the world's store of 
 profitable knowledge, or a merchant whose 
 ships are in all waters, or a citizen whose public 
 service ennobles the community in which he 
 lives. The others go on around the corner into 
 oblivion. And we wonder why : why did he 
 succeed, and make so much of himself ? why 
 did his companion fail ? 
 
 In the case of John the fisherman we can 
 see one of the reasons. This stout lad with 
 the tanned cheeks and arms has a strong long- 
 ing in his heart to know the best and be the best 
 he can. That is the beginning of difference. 
 
224 THE HUMAN NATUKE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 Others are content to take the daily haul of 
 fish : he is not satisfied with that. He would 
 have not only fish but friends. And see these 
 friends young men who stand erect, with 
 nothing mean about them, vigorous, intelli- 
 gent, thoughtful, true. James is his brother, 
 Andrew and Peter are their partners, Philip is 
 of the company, and perhaps Nathaniel of 
 Cana. These are John's companions. These, 
 in a true sense, are his teachers ; according to 
 Emerson's saying, " Send your son to school 
 and the boys will teach him." On land or 
 water, this group of young men meet every 
 day, and their lives go on together into the 
 greatest work that was ever given men to do. 
 These are his friends : such friends that Jesus 
 Christ, choosing only twelve apostles out of 
 all the multitude of His disciples, takes these 
 six, every man of them. 
 
 But even this did not content John. He 
 was not satisfied even with this society of con- 
 genial and helpful companions. He was in- 
 tent on improving himself, wanted to learn 
 more and more, and had an insatiable appetite 
 for truth, for the truth which is the source of 
 strength. When he heard of a man who had 
 a message, he went to hear him tell it. It 
 might be even at a distance, away down the 
 valley of the Jordan : nevertheless, when there 
 
THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED. 225 
 
 was bad weather so that he could not work, or 
 when he had sold his fish in the Jerusalem 
 market and had a day off in which to look 
 about him, straight he would betake himself 
 where truth was taught. Thus it was that he 
 came to John the Baptist, and found in him a 
 better teacher than he had ever heard in the 
 synagogues of Capernaum, and was enrolled as 
 his disciple. And then one day, as he walked 
 with the new master, evidently a favorite 
 pupil, there passed along the road One to 
 whom the Baptist called attention : " Behold, 
 the Lamb of God ! " And immediately the 
 fisherman obeyed. The ardent searcher after 
 truth followed the new master. He became 
 acquainted with Jesus of Nazareth. Became 
 acquainted with Him ! He was His neighbor 
 and His cousin. Yes, but now of a sudden he 
 recognized Him. Thus the true light dawned 
 within his soul. 
 
 It was Jesus of Nazareth who lifted this 
 young Galilean fisherman above the other men 
 of his generation. It was the entrance of this 
 new light into his life which made a saint of 
 John. But John was on the watch for all the 
 good that he could find, for all the truth that 
 any man could tell him : that was the begin- 
 ning of it. Without that, Jesus might have 
 encountered John a hundred times, and never 
 
226 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 have been recognized. That distance between 
 sight and recognition is one of the universal 
 distinctions. It was said of our Lord that He 
 came unto His own, and His own received Him 
 not. The star shone in the Christmas sky 
 where everybody could see it, but the wise 
 men, strangers from a far country, were the 
 only ones who followed it. The lighted lamp 
 hung at the door of the stable in Bethlehem, 
 and many men and women passed, their long 
 shadows reaching to the middle of the road, 
 their minds fixed upon their errands great or 
 small ; all these passed unheeding, only the 
 shepherds entered. And Jesus went about the 
 common streets day after day, and was seen 
 and heard familiarly of men for several years, 
 most of whom looked Him in the face and did 
 not know Him. 
 
 That happens every hour. He comes again 
 in every opportunity, in every crisis of our joy 
 or sorrow, in every call which makes itself 
 heard however faintly in the heart of man. 
 And there is still the same benediction in His 
 presence that there was in Galilee ; the same 
 strong hand is held out still to lift us up above 
 the lower levels ; to-day He waits, as then, to 
 bless us ; to-day He is ready, as ever, to make 
 saints out of sinners. As many as receive 
 Him, to them gives He power to become the 
 
THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED. 227 
 
 sons of God. But some are blind and cannot 
 see ; some will not see ; to some, His coming 
 appears so commonplace, so simple and homely, 
 that they do not believe that it is He. They 
 only who are looking patiently and eagerly, as 
 John was, for knowledge, for betterment, for 
 blessing, along the common road, recognize 
 Him and gain His benediction. 
 
 But John was no saint yet. He had, indeed, 
 become a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth, and 
 that was much, but it was only the beginning 
 of this new stage of his spiritual journey. 
 
 It is encouraging to see how much the new 
 disciple had to learn. We grow disheartened, 
 failure multiplies upon us, spiritual defeat be- 
 falls us again and again, the ideal seems as- 
 tronomically remote, dim in the immeasure- 
 able, even inaccessible, distance. At such 
 times, we may profitably note the disadvan- 
 tages of temper and of disposition which beset 
 the way of John the fisherman. 
 
 Once he met a man who was casting out 
 devils in the name of Jesus, and yet belonged 
 not to the apostolic company. John forbade 
 him sharply. He forbade him to do good, ir- 
 regularly. Again, when the people of a village 
 in Samaria refused them shelter, John desired 
 that fire might descend from heaven and burn 
 up the inhospitable people. He wanted to 
 
228 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 have them struck by lightning. Again, near 
 the close of our Lord's ministry, we have to 
 remember against John how he and James 
 got their mothers to ask the Master for the 
 best places in His kingdom, one on the right 
 hand and the other on the left ; leaving the 
 lower places for their companions. 
 
 These instances show what manner of man 
 he must have been by nature, jealous, some- 
 what narrow-minded, quick of temper, incon- 
 siderate of the feelings, even of the rights of 
 others, selfish, ambitious. These are not the 
 adjectives which are commonly used in articles 
 of beatification : they are not a good descrip- 
 tion of a saint. Yet this was true of the be- 
 loved disciple. All this, little by little, con- 
 tending as we must, he put down and under. 
 Day by day, fighting against that which was 
 unchristian in him and overcoming, he in- 
 creased in the favor of God. 
 
 And Jesus loved him. He who came to live 
 our life, beginning it in pain and poverty on a 
 chill night, cradled in a manger, so that He 
 might know by personal experience how hard 
 a life it is to live aright, loved John in the 
 midst of his faults. Jesus did not wait till 
 John became a saint. A sinner, like the rest 
 of us, weak in temptation as we are, daily 
 missing his ideal as we do, a man with a heart 
 
THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED. 229 
 
 and a will like ours, was the disciple whom 
 Jesus loved. Every striving soul, weighed 
 down under a burden of transgression but 
 struggling to get free, far from God yet trying 
 to draw near, sinning but with bitterness re- 
 penting, is loved of God as he was. 
 
THE SATISFACTION OF KELIGIOK 
 
 Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him 
 shall never thirst. John 4 : 14. 
 
 IT is a promise of complete satisfaction. It 
 is also a statement of the essential purpose of 
 the Christian religion, and explains why we 
 build churches, and consecrate them in the 
 name of God to the service of man. The 
 church is meant to be a fountain of water on a 
 dusty road, in a thirsty land. It is for the 
 sake of the greater happiness of the neighbor- 
 hood. 
 
 The promise appeals to all of us, and offers 
 that which all of us desire. Some of the first 
 explorers of this continent were seeking for a 
 well of life out of which they might drink and 
 thereafter be young forever and live in sweet 
 content. They never found it, but they never 
 ceased their search till death stopped them; 
 and then they passed the quest to us. Is it not 
 the object of our deep desire ? Is it not the 
 goal of our best hope ? We would be happy : 
 is not that the essential formula of all ambi- 
 tion? 
 
 Some, it is true, are looking for the well of 
 
 230 
 
THE SATISFACTION OF RELIGION. 231 
 
 joy in most unlikely places, along sandy 
 beaches, where there are no trees, and where 
 the water, if they found any, would not be 
 pleasant to the taste. They are disregarding 
 all the guide-posts, and defying the moral com- 
 pass and despising all experience. One would 
 think, for example, that by this time it had 
 been made sufficiently plain that the path of 
 appetite leads to the pit of destruction, and 
 not to happiness. It has been tried often 
 enough. Nobody ever got to happiness that 
 way. The condition of that road and what 
 there is at the end of it, are advertised in the 
 papers every day in the week. Nothing else is 
 given quite such prominence. There it is 
 every day in big black capitals: Appetite 
 Avenue. This Way to the Slough of Despond 
 and the Great Bad. And yet there is a con- 
 tinual procession of seekers after happiness 
 going through that gate. 
 
 Nevertheless, whatever be the road, we are 
 all in search of happiness. We may be as ig- 
 norant of moral geography, as the crusaders 
 were unacquainted with the map of Europe. 
 The crusaders thought that every strange, 
 large town must be Jerusalem. They looked 
 expectantly for the dome of the temple across 
 the fields of Germany. They hoped to see the 
 hill of Zion from the Bavarian Alps. That 
 
232 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 shows how eager they were to reach the holy 
 city. It is a symbol of our common life. We 
 are all looking for Jerusalem, the metropolis 
 of satisfaction. Instinctively, imperatively, 
 following the summons of our human nature, 
 we are all trying to be happy. 
 
 Our Lord is here distinguishing between two 
 kinds of happiness, the temporary and the 
 permanent. One satisfies for a time, the other 
 continues throughout all time. " Whosoever 
 drinketh of this water shall thirst again : but 
 whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall 
 give him shall never thirst." 
 
 The natural water of the well is a symbol 
 of our material and temporal satisfactions. It 
 means the many pleasant things about us, our 
 houses with books and pictures in them, the 
 tables at which we sit for our daily meals, our 
 comforts and conveniences, our work, our in- 
 terests, our customary pleasures, our attained 
 ambitions. It means the happiness which 
 comes from the sense of appreciation and from 
 the spirit of service. 
 
 This is good water : it quenches thirst. The 
 Master stood beside the well in Samaria, and 
 looked down into its cool depths, and seated 
 Himself on its stone curb in the shade of the 
 trees, and said to the woman with the bucket, 
 "Give Me to drink." When He took the 
 
THE SATISFACTION OF RELIGION. 233 
 
 water of the well as a symbol of the unsatis- 
 fying joys, He blessed them by that word. 
 He did not, indeed, give them the best place 
 in His esteem, but He gave them a good place. 
 He said that they were as good as cold water. 
 He said that the happiness which comes from 
 appreciation of the world and from the service 
 of our neighbors, is as refreshing as cold water. 
 He knew by His own experience how true a 
 satisfaction is to be found among the hills and 
 in the fields, in the pages of great books 
 wherein the teachers of old time have recorded 
 their adventures in the discovery of truth, and 
 in the life which they live who are giving their 
 best thought and strength to the betterment 
 of the community. He had gone along these 
 pleasant ways, and He knew that they all lead 
 into the gardens of bliss, into the realms of 
 pure delight. What He said was that none of 
 these common satisfactions satisfies perma- 
 nently. 
 
 For example, the people of an academic com- 
 munity are absorbingly interested in books. 
 They find in the quiet of a library a haven of 
 peace and joy. They are enthusiastically en- 
 gaged in reading and in writing books. Every- 
 body in the street has a book under his arm. 
 Some of them feel that the best of life is in a 
 book. But this is a form of happiness which is 
 
234 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 closely dependent on good health, and on a 
 fair amount of prosperity. In the hour of 
 pain, in the time of trouble, books are unavail- 
 ing. It is true that a scholar said, after a 
 period of deep distress, " Books have saved my 
 reason and my life." They do help. They 
 do enable the reader to forget for a mo- 
 ment even a very forlorn condition. But 
 they do this only for the literary people : and 
 not very well, even for them. No, the book 
 demands the sun. The night blots out the 
 page. A keen disappointment, a fierce pain, 
 a visitation of sorrow closes the common doors 
 of happiness. The melancholy wind comes 
 howling out of the desert, and shut they go, 
 all the customary doors into the house of hap- 
 piness, while we stand shivering without. 
 
 It is true that there is a kind of consolation 
 in work. The wise man leaves himself as little 
 time as possible for sad thoughts. He fills his 
 mind with other matters. Out he goes from the 
 scene of his bereavement, from the associations 
 of his sorrow, and plunges into work. There in 
 the midst of the importunate demands of new 
 interests, he tries to forget. How does he suc- 
 ceed ? You who have tried it know. Work 
 helps. For most people who are trying to 
 escape from grief, it helps more than books. 
 It corrects the perspective of our life. It 
 
THE SATISFACTION OF RELIGION. 235 
 
 shows us that our personal distress, which 
 looms up bigger than the eternal mountains, 
 is but a part of the universal landscape, and 
 belongs among the inevitable pains of human 
 existence. But work affords no lasting com- 
 fort. It is like the opiate which gives the 
 sick man an hour of artificial sleep. Up he 
 wakes, to find the old pain waiting for him. 
 
 That is the truth about it. Appreciation of 
 the world of nature and of letters, and active 
 service in the world of men, are blessed re- 
 sources while they last, but they are soon ex- 
 hausted. We drink of the water of the well, 
 and for the moment are refreshed: then we 
 thirst again. That is what Jesus said : none 
 of these things permanently satisfies. 
 
 But there are satisfied souls. There are 
 men and women who are beautifully and 
 blessedly and amazingly happy : and whose 
 serenity is not disturbed, so far as we can see, 
 by any of the ills of life. 
 
 Kemember, for example, the complete and 
 uninterrupted satisfaction of the supreme spirit- 
 ual Master. What a rich life He lived ! What 
 a plenitude of peace and joy was His ! Who 
 will say, Yes, but He missed so much, so 
 much that Herod had, and Pilate, in their 
 palaces ? He missed nothing. It is true that 
 He was poor ; and that He was often unap- 
 
236 THE HUMAN NATTJKE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 predated, misunderstood, and disappointed. 
 It is true that He passed through bitter crises 
 when He was reviled and rejected : and that 
 He died upon the cross. But we make a great 
 mistake if we imagine that His was a life of 
 sadness, a journey on the Way of Weeping. 
 No, He went along the Path of Peace, along 
 the sure road to happiness, wherein the way- 
 farer sees continually before him the shining 
 steeples of the City of Great Joy. Kemember 
 that day, just before the beginning of the holy 
 week that day whose anniversary, for all we 
 know, we may be at this moment keeping 
 when He set out for the last time to go to 
 Jerusalem. He walked before along the 
 country road, between the fields of early 
 spring, and the disciples followed after. And 
 as they looked at Him their hearts were filled 
 with great astonishment : they were " amazed " : 
 so quick was His step, so high His head, so 
 jubilant and victorious His manner. He knew 
 whither He went, past Gethsemane, yes, past 
 Calvary, into His true native land. He knew 
 that He was achieving the pursuit of happi- 
 ness. 
 
 Or take St. Paul : what a life he had ; what 
 a hard life and at the same time what a happy 
 life. He gave himself to the service of his 
 fellow men ; and they stoned him in the 
 
THE SATISFACTION OF RELIGION. 237 
 
 streets. Even that might easily have been en- 
 dured had he been conscious of success. Suc- 
 cess softens adversity. A man can stand being 
 stoned if he knows that he is accomplishing 
 his purpose. Even stoning may be cheerfully 
 accepted as a part of the day's work of the 
 hero. The recompense of the hero is success. 
 But St. Paul had little of the encouragement 
 of success. We know now that he was laying 
 the strong foundations of the Christianity, 
 even of the civilization, of Europe. We know 
 that the letters which he wrote are read to- 
 day, Sunday by Sunday, in splendid churches 
 which are called by his name. But of all this 
 he knew nothing. When he wrote the letters 
 he was thinking of the people of Corinth or of 
 Home ; never for a moment of any distant 
 future fame. And there were many of his 
 contemporaries who thought them very ob- 
 jectionable letters. When he laid the founda- 
 tion stones, he was quite uncertain whether 
 they would stay laid. There were jealous 
 brethren following hard after him with picks 
 and crowbars, intent on prying them up. Some 
 of them they did pry up. St. Paul was much 
 better acquainted with failure than he was 
 with success. 
 
 And yet he was happy, continually and 
 abidingly happy. You know how they shut 
 
238 THE HUMAN NATURE OE THE SAINTS. 
 
 him up in prison, Paul and Silas, in the 
 foulest dungeon of the common jail, and made 
 their feet fast in the stocks ; and how he and 
 his companion sang there in the night. No 
 voice of song had been heard within those 
 walls since the day the builders left them. 
 But Paul and Silas could not help singing. 
 They were happy and they showed it : happy 
 in their high mission, happy in the approval of 
 heaven, happy in their victory over them- 
 selves. 
 
 In spite of all the hard times that St. Paul 
 had, he kept his temper and his courage and 
 the serenity of his soul. In addition to all his 
 other troubles, he was sick : he had to have a 
 doctor go with him on his journeys. But the 
 sickness made no difference. That, too, he 
 conquered. It is plain that he had discovered 
 the supreme secret. 
 
 They who in the old time sought the well of 
 life imagined that a draught of its water 
 would enable them to live forever. But the 
 best of life is not its length : it is not the chro- 
 nological quantity of it. Better fifty years of 
 our own unspeakably interesting age than all 
 the dull centuries of Methuselah. What did 
 the patriarch do with all his weary years? 
 He was born at the beginning of them ; in the 
 midst of them he was married and had chil- 
 
THE SATISFACTION OF KELIGION. 239 
 
 dren; and at the end he died; and all the 
 dreary intervening spaces are absolutely blank. 
 He has the reputation of having been the old- 
 est man that ever lived, the emptiest of repu- 
 tations. The oldest man, and nothing to show 
 for it ! Opportunity interminably prolonged, 
 and nothing to show for it ! Let us hope that 
 the critics may be able to show that the fig- 
 ures are mistaken, and that Methuselah did not, 
 after all, live so preternaturally long ; for as the 
 record stands it is a thing to be ashamed of, 
 to live so long and do so little ! 
 
 Not the quantity but the quality of life is 
 what we need : not a well whose water shall 
 prolong our days, but one whose water shall 
 ennoble and enrich them, the well of peace, 
 the well of joy, the well in whose depths tra- 
 dition says truth dwells, the well of which 
 Christ spoke when He said that whoever 
 drank of it should thirst no more. St. Paul 
 had tasted the water of that well. 
 
 It may be objected that the example of St. 
 Paul is somewhat remote from our common 
 life. Paul was a saint, and lived a long time 
 ago. But this contrast between one's circum- 
 stances and one's state of mind is within the 
 range of our own observation. It is a con- 
 temporary matter, observable to-day on our 
 street. Here in our own neighborhood are 
 
240 THE HUMAN NATUKE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 happy people, persistently and triumphantly 
 happy, facing disaster and mastering it and 
 themselves. Who of us is not acquainted with 
 some tranquil soul, on whom the storms of life 
 have fiercely beaten, who has suffered poverty 
 or pain or bereavement, and whose nature 
 is keenly sensitive to all these ills, and yet 
 whose eyes are bright with light celestial ? 
 These persons verify and illustrate the paradox 
 of the apostle who said of himself and his 
 friends that they were "sorrowful but alway 
 rejoicing." We do not need to go back to the 
 saints of the legends and the pictured win- 
 dows : here are living saints, repeating in our 
 presence the miracle of the heavenly life. 
 Here are they who pursuing happiness have 
 found it. 
 
 Where have they found it ? How do they 
 preserve their courage, their strength, their 
 cheerfulness, their faith? In a hard world, 
 wherein they are experiencing more than the 
 common lot of hardship, how do they man- 
 age to be happy ? These persons have found 
 the supreme treasure. Nobody, I suppose, will 
 question that. Nothing can be better than this 
 abiding happiness. Nothing can be finer than 
 to be independent of the changes and chances 
 of our mortal life. Here men stand on the 
 ultimate eminence of human achievement. 
 
THE SATISFACTION OF KELIGION. 241 
 
 "We look up to these calm heights, and there 
 behold these friends and neighbors, in the light 
 of God. How did they get there? The 
 answer is that the road by which they climbed 
 up out of the mists and storms is the road of 
 religion. 
 
 Here are facts which anybody may verify : 
 persons on beds of pain, smiling ; persons walk- 
 ing in a howling tempest of adversity, pelted 
 as they go by poverty, injustice, ingratitude, 
 failure of their plans and hopes, and yet pro- 
 ceeding with a firm step and a cheerful spirit, 
 going bravely on even alone with clear eyes 
 and a good courage. And back of it all, ac- 
 counting for it all, is the comfort and inspira- 
 tion of religion. Ask them, and they will tell 
 you. All this they endure and do through 
 Christ who strengthens them. The secret of 
 it, the heart of it, is religion. They have an 
 apprehension of God, a realization of God, a 
 consciousness of the presence of God, and in 
 consequence of it they are strong and satisfied. 
 
 There are two good reasons why religion 
 satisfies : because it enriches life, and because 
 it interprets life. 
 
 It enriches life. It opens the way into a 
 new kind of joy. He who has "experienced 
 religion," as people used to say, he who has 
 got hold of this elemental truth, knows 
 
242 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 what is meant in the Bible by a new heavens 
 and a new earth. There they are : shining 
 above his head, solid beneath his feet. Thus 
 Jesus said that He came that we might have 
 life, and that we might have it more abun- 
 dantly. That is, He came to widen out the 
 circle of appreciation. The effect of religion, 
 thus considered, is akin with the effect of all 
 progress ; it teaches new truth, awakens new 
 aspirations, develops new possibilities, rounds 
 out more completely the natural life of man. 
 
 Here, for example, is one who lives beside 
 a country road, whose interests are bounded, 
 west and south and east and north, by the 
 fences of his farm. He does not respond to 
 the invitations of books, or of art, or of music, 
 or even of nature which shines for him and 
 sings for him in his narrow acres. How little 
 the man gets from the beautiful world in 
 which he lives. Help him, then ; teach him ; 
 make him hear the birds sing and see the sun ; 
 show him how to bring the homely routine of 
 his farm into relation with the life of the wide 
 world ; put poetry into his soul ; let him read 
 a book when he comes in from the field and 
 think about it to-morrow as he follows the 
 furrow. It is plain that he is more of a man. 
 He is better satisfied. He has multiplied his 
 resources, and knows better what to do with 
 
THE SATISFACTION OF RELIGION. 243 
 
 himself when it rains, and is happier than he 
 was. 
 
 Even so, he is an incomplete being. A man 
 may have sound sense and an active mind and 
 still belong to the defective classes. What 
 lack I yet? he says. The answer is the 
 awakening of his soul. He has been brought 
 into a living consciousness of the beautiful and 
 wonderful world about him, now let him be- 
 come aware of the beautiful and wonderful 
 world above him. Let him hear the inaudible 
 and see the invisible. Let him converse with 
 God. He is a new man. He is born again : 
 that is the only adequate expression of it. He 
 enters into a new life. A while ago, if he had 
 been deprived of a physical pleasure he would 
 have felt that he had been robbed of all he 
 had ; and he would have been right about it. 
 He was a poor man. They might not have 
 said so at the bank ; but that was the fact. 
 With all his possessions, he was poor. Now he 
 is rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and his 
 wealth is of the kind which no thief can steal. 
 
 Religion enriches life : it also interprets 
 life. This is its supreme and characteristic 
 quality. "Then thought I to understand 
 this," the psalm says, "but it was too hard 
 for me ; until I went into the house of 
 God." Even religion does not explain life; 
 
244 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 perhaps because we do not know enough to 
 receive the explanation. It does not make 
 the hard world plain. It does not write the 
 answer at the end of the problem. Sorrow 
 makes its inevitable entrance into our life, and 
 even religion does not tell us why. What 
 religion does is to assure us that somehow it 
 is right. The supreme revelation which Jesus 
 Christ brought with Him into the darkness of 
 human perplexity is that God is our loving 
 Father. We are as remote from comprehend- 
 ing Him as the small child is remote from un- 
 derstanding the plans of his parents. But 
 there He is ; that is the great thing. There 
 out of sight; or rather, here, here by our 
 side, is the eternal Father-God, caring for 
 us, loving us, bringing good out of ill for us, 
 somehow in His own wise way working for 
 our good. " Great are the troubles of the 
 righteous, but the Lord delivereth him out of 
 all." Keligion fills men with that conviction. 
 It makes us sure of God, of His being, of His 
 presence and His power, of His divine love 
 and care. The world is our Father's house, and 
 all that happens to us in it, whether it be good or 
 ill, belongs to His wise discipline of our souls. 
 Thus we drink of the living water of the 
 celestial well, and thirst no more. We enter 
 into the blessed satisfaction of religion. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFOENIA LIBBAKY, 
 BEEKELEY 
 
 - 
 
 Books W returned on time are 
 er volume after the 
 
 . 
 . Books not m 
 
 is made teore 
 
 k Y1971 -1PMOO 
 
 
 
 MAY 2 5 '65 -3 
 
 MAY 2 4 197183 
 
 20m-H,'20 
 
YB 22094 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY