O ':■ ^""- 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 FROM 
 
 S.H.Burnhara 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BV4510 .G82 
 
 What will you do with Jesus Christ. 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 344 854 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://archive.org/details/cu31924029344854 
 
WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH 
 JESUS CHRIST 
 
What Will You Do 
 With Jesus Christ 
 
 BY 
 
 WILFRED T. gRENFELL 
 M.D. (dfoH.) 
 
 Superintendent Labrador Medical Mission 
 
 THE PILGRIM PRESS 
 
 BOSTON BEWTOM: CHICAGO 
 
Copyright, 1910 
 By Wilfred T. OrenfeU 
 
 IHK • PLIMPTOP • PRX0S 
 HORWOOD • MASS • U • B • 4 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 J)URING his latest visit to the United States 
 Dr. Grenfell was asked to occupy the 
 pulpit at the regular formal service of worship 
 held every Sunday morning at Harvard Uni- 
 versity. He accepted the invitation and 
 utilized the opportunity not to describe his 
 many-sided work for fishermen on the coast 
 of Labrador, but to speak to that great company 
 of college men and their friends concerning 
 their personal relations to Jesus Christ. 
 Appleton Chapel was crowded to the doors, 
 many of the professors with their families 
 as well as citizens of Cambridge and vicinity 
 manifesting their desire to hear the well- 
 known missionary. President Lowell read 
 the Scriptures, as he regularly does, and from 
 the time Dr. Grenfell entered the pulpit 
 until he left it this congregation, representing 
 so much in the way of culture and attainment, 
 [5] 
 
listened attentively to his unconventional but 
 exceedingly forceful appeal. It was indeed 
 "a good word for Jesus Christ," to quote from 
 Ian Maclaren's famous story "His Mother's 
 Sermon." No preacher among the many 
 distinguished ones at Harvard ever presented 
 his Master's message more lovingly or with 
 apparently greater effect. The depth of 
 feeling recalled the memorable days when 
 Phillips Brooks was in this same pulpit. 
 
 [6] 
 
WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH 
 JESUS CHRIST 
 
Let us pray: Grant, Lord, we beseech thee, 
 
 that the words of our mouths and the 
 
 thoughts of our hearts may be 
 
 now and always acceptable 
 
 in thy sight, through 
 
 Jesus Christ, our 
 
 Lord. 
 
 I 
 
WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH 
 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 JN standing before you today I realize 
 that I am in the presence of men who 
 must have studied the philosophy of 
 Christianity far more than I have. My 
 role in life is that of surgeon, and I never 
 have had time to devote to the study of 
 theology. I can speak about Christianity 
 not as a philosophy but only as a rule 
 of life; about Christianity and the fol- 
 lowing of Jesus Christ as a power and 
 a factor, whatever else they may be, in 
 human concerns. It is as a man of faith 
 that I want to speak this morning. And 
 this is the definition of faith that I always 
 [9] 
 
like best to have myself, because I under- 
 stand it. It is one of the translations of 
 the only definition of faith given in Scrip- 
 ture, viz., " Faith is the giving of sub- 
 stance to things hoped for." 
 
 [10] 
 
AN EXPERIENCE IN THE EAST END 
 
 Twenty-six years ago I stood in the 
 position which a great many members of 
 this audience must be in today. You 
 have been preparing for many years; and 
 many of you are soon going to start out 
 on your definite lifework — if there is 
 ever such a thing as a beginning of a life- 
 work. It was at that time I found my- 
 self confronted, quite unexpectedly, with 
 practically the question Pilate put to the 
 Jews, when they wanted to have Barabbas 
 released to them: "What shall I do 
 with Jesus, that is called the Christ?" I 
 do not know that I had ever thought of 
 it before ; I had attended quite a number 
 of services during my boyhood and young 
 manhood. But they had never inter- 
 ested me, and it never occurred to me that 
 the life of Jesus Christ and the personality 
 [11] 
 
of Jesus Christ bore any relation to my 
 own life at all. But as I say, through 
 circumstances which I won't describe 
 now, I was then suddenly brought face 
 to face with that thought, " What shall 
 I do with Jesus that is called Christ?" 
 I did not decide it immediately. But 
 shortly after I did do so; and I decided in 
 this way, viz., that I would give my sub- 
 stance to following him. That is what I 
 call faith. Oddly enough I was sharing 
 lodgings in the East of London; at that 
 time I was at the largest hospital in Eng- 
 land; with a man who was working out 
 his education and spending his time, 
 when he was not at his studies, as a 
 Christian Evidence Lecturer. His shelves 
 were filled with books on all sorts of 
 philosophical subjects — Darwin's books 
 and many similar ones — from which he 
 [12] 
 
sought to find evidence for the faith that 
 was in him. But my own shelves were 
 filled with surgical books and other books 
 of that kind, which occupied all the time 
 I could give to head work. I had to just 
 take my Christianity on faith, and that 
 is all I can stand for here today. Jesus 
 Christ said, " If you want to make your 
 faith knowledge, be willing to do the 
 things I say and then you shall know." 
 This is the only line of reasoning I have 
 followed. 
 
THIS PRESENT WORLD AND ITS CLAIMS 
 
 The aspect of Christian life that ap- 
 pealed to me then, and has always 
 appealed to me, was life on this earth. 
 For I never worried my mind much 
 about God's dealings with me or any 
 other human soul when this life is over. 
 The salvation that I was after was the 
 salvation of this life — which is prac- 
 tically the same question which you must 
 all now be propounding to yourselves — 
 How am I going to make the most of the 
 short stay on this earth? That is all I 
 have that is my own. My silver and my 
 gold — all such things are not mine ; as 
 the man who tried to swim ashore with 
 a belt of gold, from a sinking ship, found. 
 He didn't have it, it had him: as it has 
 had many another man who was not 
 either in or on the sea. But my life is 
 [14] 
 
mine, and the salvation I was after was 
 how to save for the best purpose such life 
 as God gave me. I sought it by giving 
 my substance to the things hoped for, 
 and I certainly, honestly hoped, as I 
 had seen life, that there was something 
 better after its brief day here was 
 over. 
 
 Eight years in the slums of White- 
 chapel, in Wapping, and the East India 
 docks, among the sick and poor and 
 degraded, between Poplar and the Mile 
 End Road, left me with a very sincere 
 hope that there was something better 
 than the lot in Ufe that was open to the 
 people I lived among and learned to love. 
 They did not wear silken hose and 
 broadcloth, but they had human hearts 
 and I learned to love them. I hoped 
 that all that has been built up on the 
 [15] 
 
teachings of the Christ, especially that 
 there is eternal life for all of us, was true. 
 I was willing to put my faith into it any- 
 how. 
 
 What again is this definition of faith? 
 Faith is the giving of substance to things 
 hoped for. There are men who despise 
 the Christian faith as they see it today; 
 but no man despises that kind of faith 
 which makes a man willing to give what 
 he has, and all he has. It is quite possi- 
 ble we may be mistaken; there may be 
 nothing afterwards. But Jesus Christ 
 says, through one of his disciples, "He 
 who believes in him shall have no cause 
 for shame." And the man who puts his 
 hands in that of the Christ's and is will- 
 ing to follow him, may possibly meet 
 such shame — if you call it shame — that 
 Jesus Christ had to bear. It may cost 
 [16] 
 
him something, it may cost him the 
 carrying of a cross; but who can say, 
 that though it costs a cross, it ever brings 
 a man real shame. 
 
WHAT THE TEARS HAVE SHOWN 
 
 It is only twenty-six years truly that I 
 have tried, and then feebly and as any 
 other man might try, to give my substance 
 to him whom I believe gave himself for 
 me. And yet I should say that had I been 
 trying, as a surgeon, a remedy for twenty- 
 six years, and had found it had not failed 
 me, so far as my intellect and my common 
 sense were able to judge, that I wotild be 
 justified in commending that same thing 
 to others. And it is with that hope that 
 I venture to stand here this morning and 
 to commend to this large audience the 
 faith in Jesus Christ that vdll just take 
 him at his word. I wish further to say 
 that I believe it true that that will bring 
 no man to shame. 
 
 The first question, of course, that comes 
 to a man when he is accepting a new r&le 
 [18] 
 
in life like that is, What am I to do? I 
 remember talking that over, because like 
 all men we hear so many things said — 
 as a Christian you ought to do this — 
 you ought to do that — you should not do 
 this, and should not do the other. I 
 always think that one of the beautiful 
 things about the Bible is, it never gives 
 itself away by telling you not to do things 
 or to do things. Instead it always gives 
 you the underlying principle such as 
 " love one another," and it puts into 
 your mouth the simplest of all prayers, 
 " Teach me to do the thing that is pleasing 
 to thee." 
 
 If we are to be made preachers of this 
 gospel, how are we to doit? How are we 
 to command this teaching of Jesus Christ 
 that we believe in? "By this shall all 
 men know that you are my disciples, if 
 [19] 
 
ye do the things I command you." And 
 how are we best to satisfy the Master? 
 It seems to me we have graded our 
 preachers wrongly sometimes. We think 
 the man who has the clearest intellectual 
 apprehension and the greatest capacity 
 for intellectual reasoning shall be the 
 best preacher. I wonder whether it 
 struck many of us that Jesus Christ's only 
 disciples were never graded in that way; 
 nor were they ever admitted to this ser- 
 vice for their correct opinions. Christ 
 never asked a man first what he believed, 
 but he just set him to work. 
 

 i 
 
 LIFE NOT OPINION THE TEST 
 
 It seems to me it was only at the very 
 end of his life that he asked them what 
 they did believe, and then only one of 
 them answered and said, " Thou art the 
 Christ!'' and a few minutes later even 
 he had to be called down with a " Get 
 behind me, Satan." His faith was not 
 the valuable asset that he thought it was; 
 and out of the twelve that Christ was will- 
 ing to be allied with under the name of 
 disciples, not one of them had the ability 
 to say that he believed what so many 
 men think necessary that we should 
 say we believe, before we dare look upon 
 ourselves as Christ's followers. 
 
 If the Christ could permit Judas to be 
 
 one of his disciples, I thought also the 
 
 Christ would permit me. " Not every 
 
 one that saith thou art the Lord shall enter 
 
 [21] 
 
 
the Kingdom; but he that doeth the will 
 of my Father which is in heaven." 
 
 What do men in this audience think 
 today is the best gift that God on high 
 could give a human being? I do not 
 think we think much about it, perhaps. 
 But if we do think about it I am sure no 
 one in his senses would get up and say, 
 " the best thing God could give a human 
 being is a large income," for of course 
 it involves many other things to make a 
 large income of the least good to a man — 
 even Solomon saw that, and so he asked 
 for wisdom. 
 
 The best gift that I can conceive that 
 God could give to one human life is 
 opportunity. A man may be an excellent 
 surgeon and may know his work at his 
 fingers' ends — but if he never finds any 
 one who needs his help, he can never 
 [22] 
 
attain to success in life. Only the men 
 that God gives in life opportunity to do 
 things can make success of life. One 
 of my colleagues on a very small salary 
 was offered double to leave us. He had 
 a young wife and family. His answer 
 was, *' I would not trade my opportunity 
 here for ten salaries." 
 
 Success seems to me in human life to 
 be not in what we have, but what we do 
 with what we have, i.e., on the opportunity 
 to use it. We see the truth of this when 
 men look back on life. What, after all, 
 shall appear to have been the real source 
 of joy in life? Christ says in one place, 
 " Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." 
 What was Christ's joy? It certainly was 
 not in ease and comfort; it was not in 
 long life or in the applause of men; it 
 was not in riches and things of that kind. 
 [23] 
 
 ^ 
 
Who will question, when we come really 
 to think of it, that those things are paltry 
 things compared with the lasting joy of 
 having done things ? 
 
 6i'( 
 
 [24] 
 
FAITH A GREAT DYNAMIC 
 
 What is it that makes men do things? 
 Is it philosophy? That may be so. 
 But for my part I do not see how any 
 man can do anything without faith. 
 You cannot find a new cure for evil or 
 pain or sorrow without faith. You can- 
 not run a business without faith. In the 
 business world while some men are 
 doing exactly what a great many men 
 are doing with Jesus Christ — waiting 
 to know this and to know that and to 
 know the other before they venture on 
 some undertaking, another man with 
 only faith steps into the position and 
 their opportunity is lost. 
 
 I think the trouble with many of us is 
 
 that we think that by much learning we 
 
 shall find out God! We think that we 
 
 shaU get sure of the premises on which 
 
 [25] 
 
to base our relationship to Jesus Christ 
 by the study of books and the hearing of 
 lectures! Christ said, " If you are willing 
 to do, you shall know." His spirit will 
 still animate our hearts and lives and 
 dwell within us, if we are willing. To me 
 it is a question of whether we are will- 
 ing to follow the Christ, whether we are 
 willing to pay the price of following the 
 Christ or not. It is a terrible thing to 
 read, as I read last week in the story of 
 Judge Lindsey's work in Denver, in that 
 book called "The Beast," that out of 
 one hundred and fifty churches only five 
 churches came to his help in his fight 
 against the brothel and the dive; and the 
 reason was, apparently, that they were 
 afraid of the consequences! In reality 
 they had no faith. 
 
 [26] 
 
A GOOD RULE IK SURGERY 
 
 But I say Christ does do for men today 
 what he promised to do, and what these 
 accounts tell us he did do. He took then 
 a fisherman who was ignorant and un- 
 learned, who lied before a handmaid and 
 ran away from a handful of soldiers, and 
 made that man into the Peter that the 
 world has ever since honored. And he 
 does it again now. If as a surgeon I 
 stood before you today and advocated a 
 remedy that 1900 years ago made great 
 cures, and you were to say, " Well, I 
 don't see that it ever does it now," and 
 I were not able to point to any such results 
 now, I should appear to be either a knave 
 or a fool. What sane man would spend 
 his time in advocating that which had not 
 for centuries fulfilled its promises in the 
 benefits it claimed to be able to perform? 
 [27] 
 
All I can reiterate as I stand here is that 
 I am sure that to make our lives worth 
 while we must be filled with faith : that I 
 have seen myself over and over again, 
 just as I have seen the temperature fall 
 and life restored as some course of treat- 
 ment benefits a dying man, so have I seen 
 the cruel man made kind and the drunken 
 man made sober, and the impure man 
 made pure, and the feeble man made 
 strong, and the coward made brave, just 
 as I read you out of the letter to the 
 Hebrews that faith in God did those 
 things of old. 
 
 [28] 
 
CHRIST THE MAKER OF MEN 
 
 I thank you for this chance to stand be- 
 fore you. I shall close, as I began. I am 
 only able to commend the service of Jesus 
 Christ to you, because I believed in him, 
 and experience has convinced me that 
 what Paul said is true; that our lives, by 
 "being in union with Christ, can be made 
 to diffuse the fragrance of the knowledge 
 of him in every place." By union with 
 him I have seen men making these tiny 
 homes in Whitechapel and on the Labra- 
 dor coast that were little better than hells 
 on earth into places where God's love 
 dwelled, where men gave as well as took, 
 where poverty did not make the world 
 look half so blue as riches often do, 
 where tender and fearful people were 
 enabled to meet calmly crises in life, be- 
 fore which many of us today would fail. 
 [29] 
 
I have seen this faith make men strong 
 and women tender, giving them in these 
 prosaic days the power to be true and 
 self-forgetful; just as in that long list 
 of men of which we read this morning 
 men were made pure and powerful and 
 unselfish and successful by faith. 
 
 If I might leave with you one question, 
 it would be the question that I faced in the 
 same way all of a sudden twenty-six years 
 ago : What shall I do with Jesus, that is 
 called the Christ? 
 
 [30] 
 
Let us pray: Our Father in heaven, faith 
 has brought us into this chapel this morn- 
 ing, and in faith we raise our voices and 
 our hearts, believing that thou hearest. 
 Grant that we may not be con- 
 founded : hear our humble prayers 
 and help us to stretch out lliat 
 hand of faith which has never 
 been stretched out in vain. 
 And answer and bless and 
 forgive us our feeble 
 following. We ask it 
 for Jesus Christ's 
 sake. Amen. 
 
' Jf> 
 
 I itAVE SEEN TEE CRUEL MAN MADE KIND, 
 ^ND THE DRHI^KEN MAN MADE SOBER, 
 AND THE IMPURE MAN MADE PURE, AND 
 THE FEEBLE MAN MfADE STRONG, 
 AND THE COWARD mAdE BRAVE, JU§T 
 AS 1 READ YOU OUT OP THE LETTER 
 TO THE HIEBREW? THAT FAITH IN 
 GOD DID THOSE THINGS OF OLD 
 
TSE BEST GIFT THAT I CAN CONCEIVE 
 THAT" GOD COULD GIVE TO ONE 
 HUMAN LIFE IS OPPORTUNITY 
 
 TO MAKE OUR LIVES WORTH WHILE 
 WE MUST BE FILLED WITH FAITH