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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92402931 31 98 
 
THE RELIGION OF A LAYMAN 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
 ATLANTA • SAH FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 UBLBOURNB 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd, 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE RELIGION OF A 
 LAYMAN 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES R. BROWN 
 
 Dean of the Divinitt Scbooi. 
 Yale Univebsitt 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1920 
 
 All right8 reserved 
 
OOPYEMHT, 1920, 
 
 bt the macmillan company 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published November, igao. 
 
 J^3 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This is not a commentary — it is an interpretation 
 of the Sermon on the Mount. I have turned quite 
 away from all technical, critical questions of exegesis 
 to indicate, if I might in terse and modem phrase, 
 the main content and bearing of the more vital 
 portions of this well-known and widely quoted pas- 
 sage of scripture. My indebtedness to that excellent 
 treatise on " The Sermon on the Mount " by Bishop 
 Gore will be manifest to anyone who reads both 
 books. 
 
 We cannot make too plain the fact that religion is 
 not primarily a system of beliefs to be cherished — 
 it utilizes beliefs but they are altogether secondary. 
 Religion is not a set of forms to be observed — it 
 utilizes forms but they too are secondary. Religion 
 is not a tremendous emotional upheaval through 
 which a man may pass on his way to glory — it may 
 utilize this as a line of approach or as a point of de- 
 parture but such an experience is altogether inciden- 
 tal. Religion is a life to be lived seven days in the 
 week in all those relationships which make up human 
 existence. The man who is striving with all the 
 grace God gives him to live the life of obedient trust 
 and of unselfish action is religious and no other sort 
 of man can be. It is this sort of religion which 
 
VI PEEB'ACB 
 
 makes steady and telling appeal to the righianinded 
 layman. 
 
 " What does God want men to do ? " we are some- 
 times asked in blunt fashion. The ready, conven- 
 tional answer may be, " He wants them to go to 
 church and to be baptized. He wants them to take 
 the sacrament regularly and to say their prayers 
 and read their Bibles." 
 
 Well and good ! Thou hast answered right ! He 
 does want men to do all of those things provided al- 
 ways that it be kept clearly in mind that these 
 things are means to an end and not ends in them- 
 selves. If all these worshipful activities aid men 
 in doing justly, in loving kindness and in walking 
 humbly before God, then they are beautiful. If 
 however, they are put forward as substitutes for 
 upright, useful and unselfish action in the ordinary 
 round of daily interest then they are worse than 
 useless — they are hateful in the eyes of Him with 
 whom we have to do. 
 
 How the great Master spirits have brushed aside 
 that which is trivial and incidental to lay hold upon 
 the vital, essential elements of real religion! 
 
 Hear Micah ! " He hath shewed thee, O man, 
 what is good ; and what doth the Lord require of thee 
 but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly 
 with thy God." 
 
 Hear James ! " Pure religion and undefiled be- 
 fore God and the Father is this, To visit the father- 
 less and widows in their affliction and to keep one- 
 self unspotted from the world." 
 
 Hear Paul ! " The fruits of the Spirit are love. 
 
PEEEACB Vll 
 
 joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, fidelity, 
 mildness and self-control." 
 
 Last of all and best of all, hear the Master of all 
 the higher values in life ! " Thou shal.t love the Lord 
 thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as 
 thyself." 
 
 In such clear-cut, cardinal statements of spiritual 
 truth is to be found what I have ventured to call, 
 " The Eeligion of a Layman." 
 
 Ohaklbs EBrmouos Beown. 
 Yale TTniversity. 
 
 October 1st, 1920. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I The Mim Sources of Happiness .... 1 
 
 n The Inwardness of Character 19 
 
 rn The Simplicty of a Good Life 36 
 
 TV The Primacy of the Moral Values ... 53 
 
 V The Goal of Moral Effort 68 
 
THE RELIGION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 THK MAIN SOTJEOES OF HAPPINESS 
 
 The Master began to teach in a little synagc^ue at 
 Nazareth. Then he appeared in the larger temple at 
 Jerusalem. Here he stands on a mountainside under 
 the open sky. He enlarged his audience room as the 
 scope of his own message broadened. 
 
 He saw before him a multitude. It was just a 
 plain ordinary crowd, such as one might see in these 
 days on the Fourth of July or Labor Day, an acre or 
 two of human beings massed together. The rich and 
 the poor were there, drawn by a common curiosity 
 to see this teacher of religion from Nazareth, the 
 cultured and the simple, the successes and the failures 
 — they were all there. And the very sight of them 
 with discontent in their faces and with unsatisfied 
 longings in their hearts appealed to the Master like 
 a cry in the night. It was the appeal of life in the 
 mass and he promptly met it with the best he had. 
 He opened his mouth and out came the Sermon on 
 the Mount. 
 
 He saw that all those people wanted one thing — 
 
 they wanted to be happy. But the great majority of 
 
 1 
 
2 THE EEMQION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 them were faced in the wrong direction. They were 
 looking in the wrong places and they would not find 
 happiness because it was not there. He therefore 
 showed them where to look — he faced them right- 
 about. 
 
 It is significant that the first word in the Sermon 
 on the Mount is the word " happy." It is translated 
 " blessed " in the stiffer and more formal language 
 of the King James's version, but the earlier and sim- 
 pler meaning of the word is happy. It is the same 
 word used in that passage in the fourth Gospel — 
 " If ye know these things happy are ye if ye do 
 them." And the Master showed those people once 
 for all where the Inain sources of happiness are to 
 be found. 
 
 He laid down two propositions: first, happiness 
 springs from character rather than from circum- 
 stances. Men must look within rather than without. 
 Many people were saying in that day, as people say 
 now, " Happy are the rich who live on the Avenue. 
 Happy are the famous whose names are in ' Who's 
 Who.' Happy are the successful whose achievements 
 are heralded abroad with headlines and pictures." 
 
 Some of them are, and some of them are not — it 
 all depends on what they are inside. The big bank 
 account says, " It is not in me to make people happy." 
 And the Hall of Fame says, " It is not in me." And 
 Success, with a capital 8, widely worshiped by many 
 shortsighted people as a kind of up-to-date deity, 
 says, " It is not in me." Happiness comes not so 
 much from one's surroundings or from one's outward 
 
THE MAIN SOURCES OF HAPPINESS 3 
 
 achievements, as from a certain inner quality of being 
 which may or may not be linked up with wealth, 
 fame, and outward success. 
 
 Happy are the poor in spirit, those who hunger 
 after righteousness ! Not the poor-spirited — crawl- 
 ing is not the Christian's gait or attitude. We no 
 longer sing that wretched hymn. 
 
 Great God how infinite Thou art, 
 What worthless worms are we. 
 
 We never had any right to sing it — it strikes a false 
 note on the lips of those who were bom to be the 
 children of the King and were meant to wear the 
 likeness and image of the Most High. 
 
 Happy are those who are poor in spirit, conscious 
 and mindful of their spiritual needs. They feel 
 their lack; they want forgiveness, cleansing, renewal 
 at the hands of the Divine Spirit. They do not go 
 about puffed up with self-satisfaction. They hunger 
 and thirst after righteousness ; they want to be better 
 than they are. They crave righteousness as they 
 crave food three times a day and every day in the 
 year. They have a keen zest and relish for goodness. 
 And that appetite of theirs is a sign of health and a 
 prophecy of growth. " As having nothing, yet pos- 
 sessing all things." 
 
 Compare them with the Pharisee in the parable, 
 who went into the temple to pray. He strutted down 
 the aisle like a drum major in a bearskin. He 
 " pointed with pride," as they say in political con- 
 ventions, to his own spiritual achievements. " He 
 
4: THE EELIGIOBT OF A LAYMAN 
 
 stood and prayed thus with himself," the Master said 
 with terrible accuracy. His prayer was entirely sub- 
 jective: it was aU with himself — it never rose as 
 high as the ceiling; it did not get beyond the top of 
 his own swollen head. " God, I thank Thee that I 
 am not as other men are, unjust, extortioners, adult- 
 erers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the 
 week. I give tithes of all that I possess." He was 
 not poor in spirit ; he did not hunger and thirst after 
 righteousness. He was so full of righteousness al- 
 ready, according to his own estimate, that he could 
 not have held another mouthful of goodness. And he 
 went out of the temple unblessed. Not a man in the 
 city envied him or wanted to be like him. 
 
 Happy are the poor in spirit who hunger after the 
 finer quality of life — the whole world loves them and 
 God loves them. Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 " If we want righteousness seriously " — as we want 
 food and drink — " we can have it." Spiritual appe- 
 tite is a sure symptom of a wholesome advance in 
 moral condition. 
 
 Happy are they that mourn! This seems at fiirst 
 like a contradiction of terms — it seems like speaking 
 of a white blackbird or a sour lump of sugar. It 
 seems to put a premium on sorrow. But that is be- 
 cause you take the letter of the statement which kills 
 rather than the spirit of it which makes alive. 
 
 Happy are they who have the capacity for grief 
 when occasion arises. Happy are they who can and 
 do mourn. Men are not blessed when they undertake 
 to cushion themselves from the common lot of grief 
 
THE MAIN SOTJECES OF HAPPINESS 5 
 
 and pain either by the upholstery of wealth or by 
 the hard indifference of a callous heart. 
 
 "'Tis an iU cure 
 !For life's worst ills to have no time to feel them. 
 When sorrow is held intrusive and turned out 
 There wisdom will not enter nor true power 
 Nor aught that dignifies humaaiity." 
 
 Humane sons and daughters see their fathers and 
 mothers growing old. They see their strength fail- 
 ing, their eyes growing dim, their sense of hearing less 
 acute, the mental faculties becoming less alert. All 
 this grieves them. And when the dear old people 
 die these sons and daughters mourn the loss of those 
 they love. 
 
 There are sons and daughters who do not mourn 
 when their parents die — they are glad the old people 
 are out of the way so that they can go in and enjoy 
 the property. I once spent a summer on an Indian 
 reservation where my only neighbors for weeks to- 
 gether were Modoc Indians. The Modoc on the res- 
 ervation in Oregon sees his mother growing old and 
 he does not mourn. If the old lady becomes too 
 feeble to move about easily with the tribe, he quietly 
 strangles her some dark night or shuts her up in a 
 hut to die alone while he goes out fishing or hunting. 
 He does not mourn. 
 
 Sympathetic people walk through the slums of a 
 great city, and when they see the need and the dirt, 
 the sin and the pain, it grieves them to the heart. 
 They cannot get it out of their minds. They feel 
 a sense of responsibility for it. They want to do 
 
6 THE EKLIQIOISr OF A LAYMAIT 
 
 somethmg to relieve and change all that. The 
 thoughtless, careless people sometimes ride through 
 these same streets in their motor cars on the way to 
 the steamer dock to sail for Europe, and what they 
 see never costs them a pang. They do not give it a 
 second thought. 
 
 How frightful is that lack of capacity for grief ! 
 The unloving sons and daughters, the heartless Modoc 
 Indians of the world, the thoughtless, careless people 
 who have no feeling of sympathy for the struggling 
 poor — they are not to be envied. We pity them 
 because of their callous hearts. Alas for the people 
 who show serious limitations in their power to feel ! 
 Happy are those who can and do mourn when occa- 
 sion arises. 
 
 Happy are the gentle — this is a better transla- 
 tion of the word Jesus used than the word " meek." 
 The word " meek " has come to have certain unfortu- 
 nate associations. Happy are the gentle-men and the 
 gentle-women! The temper and disposition they 
 show become a source of happiness and benefit to all 
 the lives they touch. 
 
 The counsels of the worldly-wise to-day do not 
 look toward gentleness as the crowning excellence. 
 " Stand up for your rights," they say. Have a keen 
 eye for the main chance! Make the most of every 
 opportunity! Learn well the Gospel of getting on 
 and do not allow any man to put one over on you ! 
 
 But in a burst of optimism which almost took away 
 the breath of those people gathered on the hillside, 
 Jesus said, " Happy are the gentle, for they shall 
 
THE MAIN SOTJECES OF HAPPINESS 7 
 
 inherit the earth." It seemed to his hearers that the 
 fierce, the cruel, and the grasping were more likely 
 to inherit the earth. The people He addressed lived 
 under the rule of the Koman Empire. 
 
 Jesus did not say that the gentle would enter into 
 immediate possession of the earth — they would " in- 
 herit " it after a few more timely deaths, which 
 were inevitable, had taken place. He was picturing 
 a process which is as universal and as resistless as the 
 power of gravitation. 
 
 We see it in the animal world. The huge and aw- 
 ful monsters of prehistoric times, the saurians, the 
 megatheria, and the mastodons, which once possessed 
 the earth, are all gone. They are only fossil remains 
 to be found deeply buried in the earth or in museums. 
 And the fierce, blood-thirsty animals, the lions and 
 the tigers, the wolves and the hyenas, are fast going 
 or gone. You must travel far afield to find them, 
 or pay to see them in menageries. But the gentler 
 animals, the sheep and the cows, are on the increase. 
 There never were so many of them as there are right 
 now. In a hundred years there will be still more 
 of them. Gentleness is more useful than cruelty, 
 and thus it has the future in its hands. It is des- 
 tined to inherit the earth. 
 
 The same sound principle holds with the races of 
 men. The cannibals who killed their fellows and 
 ate them are all gone. They had to choose between 
 extinction and conversion to a more gentle mode of 
 life. The gentler races are constantly winning out 
 against the more savage races. The most powerful 
 empire on earth to-day in its military and naval 
 
8 THE EELIGION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 strength, in its commercial and industrial resources, 
 in its intellectual and moral capacity, is the British 
 Empire ; and a well-known essayist has characterized 
 it as " a government of gentlemen." It would never 
 have occurred to anyone to refer to the late govern- 
 ment of the German Empire as a government of gen- 
 tlemen. The representatives of three of the gentlest 
 nations on earth, Great Britain, Erance and the 
 United States, recently met together in Paris to de- 
 cide what should be done with the more savage and 
 brutal governments of Germany, Bulgaria, and Tur- 
 key. The decision was in their hands. The Master 
 spoke with the insight of a prophet when he said, 
 " Blessed are the gentle-men and the gentle-women, 
 for they shall inherit the earth." 
 
 Happy are the merciful! It is an active, not a 
 passive, virtue. It does not mean an easy-going tol- 
 erance, allowing anything and everything to slip 
 by without opposition. The optimist has been de- 
 fined as a man who does not care what happens so 
 long as it does not happen to him. The quality here 
 named means heroically doing the thing that is both 
 wise and kind. " Mercy is compassion in action — 
 pity which does nothing is only hypocrisy or emo- 
 tional self-indulgence." 
 
 I know of no finer manifestation of genuine 
 mercy than that which we see in the surgeon's art. 
 He takes knives with the keenest edges that steel can 
 be made to bear and fearlessly cuts away the tumor 
 or the cancerous growth which threatens the life of 
 his patient. In doing this he is an apostle of mercy ; 
 
THE MAIN SOTJECES OF HAPPINESS 9 
 
 he is engaging in an action which is both wise and 
 kind. 
 
 During the last five years we have been engaged 
 in showing mercy to the human race by performing 
 a capital operation — capital in every sense of the 
 word — upon the Central Powers. We were cut- 
 ting away the cancerous growth of Prussianism which 
 threatened the life of Europe and the very existence 
 of the higher form of civilization. This form of 
 intelligent and efficient mercy which fearlessly does 
 the right and kind deed is blessed. 
 
 Here in our broad land multimillionaires are de- 
 voting whole fortunes to foundations for medical 
 research. These foundations undertake to root out 
 the hookworm disease from the South, to combat the 
 plague of tuberculosis of the lungs, to make yellow 
 fever and cholera things of the past, and to reduce the 
 menace of typhoid fever. The white-robed nurses 
 who go side by side with the skilled physicians upon 
 their errands of mercy are held in the highest esteem 
 because they are active exponents of the quality here 
 named. 
 
 When the Master drew his picture of the Last 
 Judgment he said that the people who had been 
 feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, ministering 
 to the sick, and visiting the imprisoned, would stand 
 on the right hand of God to enjoy the happiness pre- 
 pared for them from the foundation of the world. 
 Happy are the merciful, for they shall obtaiu mercy. 
 The reactions which come from men and from our 
 Maker upon that mode of life are characterized by 
 an unalloyed and grateful kindness. 
 
10 THE EEXIGION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 Happy are the peacemakers! The Master did 
 not say, " Happy are those who never fight." He 
 knew that situations arise where fighting is inevitable 
 and morally obligatory. Eesolute men must at times 
 clear the ground so that the seeds of peace may be 
 sown in good soil to bring forth thirty, sixty, or a 
 hundred fold of human well-being. 
 
 In the very heart of the Fourth Gospel, which is 
 pre-eminently the gospel of tenderness, we find this 
 statement, " The good shepherd layeth down his life 
 for the sheep." He does not die at home in a com- 
 fortable bed — he dies with his boots on fighting the 
 wolf. He meets his death in heroic and bloody war- 
 fare against the enemies of those interests which were 
 committed to his care. The hireling does not fight 
 — he flees because he is a hireling, and leaves the 
 sheep to be scattered and killed by the wolf. 
 
 Blessed are the men who, by the method of their 
 fighting and by what they do when the fighting is 
 over, " make peace." In the hearts and in the homes 
 they touch, in the lines of industry they control, and 
 in the political policies for which they become re- 
 sponsible they make peace. 
 
 I am a southern man myself — I was bom in the 
 old state of Virginia. But I always feel that Gen- 
 eral Grant was a great peacemaker. It is altogether 
 fitting that on his tomb yonder by the Hudson these 
 four words from his own lips are inscribed : " Let 
 us have peace." When he had won his victory at 
 Vicksburg, he was called East to take supreme com- 
 mand of the Union armies. He believed that peace 
 could only come by conquering the forces of disunion 
 
THE MAIN SOltfRCES OF HAPPINESS 11 
 
 by superior power. He therefore started in to fight 
 it out on that line, take what time it might. North 
 Anna, Cold Harbor, Spottsylvania, the Wilderness, 
 battle after battle! He kept stubbornly at it, giv- 
 ing the enemy no rest. But the moment the Con- 
 federate soldiers laid down their arms at Appomattox 
 he became a great peacemaker. He would not hu- 
 miliate General Robert E. Lee, whom he respected as 
 an able commander and a fellow West Pointer, by 
 taking his sword. He treated him on that occasion 
 with the most delicate consideration. 
 
 When Lee remarked that many of his men in the 
 cavalry owned their own horses, Grant said, " Let 
 them keep them and take them home. They will 
 need them for the spring plowing." When Lee said 
 that many of his men had received insufficient rations 
 for the last ten or twelve days, owing to the shortage 
 in his commissary department. Grant turned to an 
 orderly and gave directions that rations should be 
 issued by his own quartermaster to Confederate and 
 Union soldiers alike. Before an hour had passed, 
 the Blue and the Gray were eating from a common 
 store. 
 
 Grant would not allow his men to fire any salvos 
 of artillery over the great victory whicli had been 
 won. " We are all citizens now of the same repub- 
 lic," he said, " let us have peace." He remarked 
 near the close of his life : 
 
 " Though I have been trained as a soldier, and have 
 participated in many battles, there never was a time in 
 my judgment when some way could not have been found 
 to prevent the drawing of the sword. I look forward con- 
 
12 THE EELiaiOlT OF A LATMAN 
 
 fidently to the day when all questions which arise between 
 nations will be settled by great international tribunals 
 rather than by the appeal to arms." 
 
 In these times on which we have fallen, there is 
 sore need of men who are willing and able to " make 
 peace." Peace will not come because people ad- 
 mire it and desire it and send forth streams of earnest 
 talk about it. It has to be made. It can only be 
 made when strong men, wise men, good men, put 
 their heads together and their hearts together and 
 their wills together, and make it for themselves and 
 for all the nations of the earth. 
 
 It is the supreme hour in the history of the race 
 for the making of a just and lasting peace. We have 
 behind us as the background for our efforts the hor- 
 rors of the Great War. We find the common people 
 of all lands in a higher mood. The representatives 
 of the leading nations of earth have been assembled 
 together at Paris. If we could recover the interna- 
 tional relations of all these countries from the rule of 
 the Saracen and bring them under the reign of reason 
 and the domain of law, it would become the highest 
 and holiest crusade in all history. Blessed are those 
 who make peace, for they shall be called the chil- 
 dren of God! 
 
 Then as the fitting climax of those conditions which 
 make for happiness, the Master said, " Happy are 
 Ithe pure in heart ! " Happy are the men and women 
 whose hearts are free and clean from lust, from 
 hatred, from malice. " They shall see God," not 
 as a reward for their purity, but as a result of it. 
 
\ THE MAIN SOUECES OiP HAPPHSTESS 13 
 
 \ 
 
 They shall see him because they have something to 
 see God wit^ in their own pure hearts. By the fine 
 quality of tlseir inner lives they are qualified to be- 
 hold and recognize the divine. They may not stand 
 in any more fayored location for such a vision than 
 do the impure — it is not a question of position 
 but of disposition. 
 
 If men would see the Statue of Liberty they must 
 stand on the Battery in New York or on Staten 
 Island, or on the shores of Jersey or of Brooklyn, 
 or upon the deck of some outgoing or incoming 
 steamer. They cannot see the Statue of Liberty if 
 they happen to be in Missouri. But men can only 
 " see God " as their hearts are freed from lust and 
 hatred so that they have eyes in their souls to behold 
 him. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. 
 God is Spirit, and he must be seen in spirit and in 
 truth. Happy are the pure in heart, for they shall 
 see God here, now, anywhere, everywhere. 
 
 You see the method ! These are the qualities which 
 the Master named as the main sources of happiness. 
 Find the springs of your happiness, he said to that 
 crowd on the hillside, inside rather than outside. 
 What you are is of more importance than where you 
 are. 
 
 You feel at once the soundness of his claim. 
 When people are striving to be better than they 
 are, and are gentle in spirit, when they have the 
 capacity for grief if occasion arises, and when they 
 go about showing mercy to all they meet, when they 
 make peace by whatever method may be needed in 
 the situation where they find themselves, and when 
 
14 THE EELIGIOW OF A LAYMAN 
 
 they are pure in heart, they are on the main traveled 
 road which leads to happiness. 
 
 The people on that hillside long ago knew that 
 it was so. They whispered among themselves, " We 
 never heard it on this fashion. This of a truth is 
 that prophet that should come into the world." He 
 spake not as the scribes, but as one having the au- 
 thority of immediate, first-hand knowledge of spirit- 
 ual reality. 
 
 There was a king once who had conquered all his 
 enemies. He had amassed a huge fortune. He lived 
 in a palace where gold, silver, and precious stones 
 were as common as the dust of the ground. He had 
 a horde of men and women to minister to his com- 
 fort and pleasure. But for all that he was not happy 
 — he had lost his health, his peace of mind, and his 
 joy of soul. He sent for all his physicians and for 
 all his wise men, but not one of them could bring 
 him relief. Finally a strolling soothsayer said that 
 if he would sleep for three nights in a shirt which be- 
 longed to a perfectly happy man he would be cured 
 of all his ills and would become happy himself. 
 
 The king immediately sent out his couriers into 
 ,all parts of his kingdom to find a perfectly happy 
 man, that he might borrow his shirt. But every man 
 they found seemed to have spots on his sun or a fly 
 in his pot of ointment. Not one of them would say 
 that he was perfectly happy. The quest was in vain 
 and the king's hopes were dashed. 
 
 One morning, however, as the king was traveling 
 in state, he saw a peasant on his way to work in the 
 
THE MAIN SOUECES OF HAPPINESS 15 
 
 fields. The man was singing lustily and his face 
 was radiant with joy, so that the king felt that here 
 at last he might find his man. He called the fellow 
 to his royal chariot and asked him if he was per- 
 feectly happy. The man replied that he was. " I 
 have a little home," he said, " and a good wife and 
 six children. I have my work and strength to do 
 it. I am at peace with God and man — why should 
 I not be perfectly happy ? " 
 
 Then the king made known to him his own sorry 
 plight and asked him for the loan of a shirt. 
 " Alas," the man said, " I am poor. I have been 
 buying clothing for my wife and children and I have 
 not a shirt to my name. I wear but this " — and he 
 pulled aside his rude blouse and there was his bare 
 skin. Then the king knew that happiness comes 
 from within. 
 
 The Master added to this statement about the 
 sources of happiness another principle — each man's 
 personal holdings in character-values, as in outward 
 possessions, must be held in trust for a wider service. 
 When once you are possessed of these fine qualities 
 which bring happiness, you are " the salt of the 
 earth," the saving principle of human society. Salt 
 does not find its honor and its usefulness by being 
 kept apart to rejoice in its own saltiness. It finds 
 itself by losing itself. It gains its distinction by 
 yielding itself up for the benefit of that which is to 
 be preserved through its unselfish action. 
 
 Here, as everywhere, the method is the method of 
 indirection. He that saveth his life in selfish, nig- 
 
16 THE EELIGION OF A LAYMAIT 
 
 gardly fashion shall lose it. But he that loseth his 
 life in the right way shall find it and keep it unto life 
 eternal. 
 
 "Heaven doth with us as we with torches do. 
 
 Not light them for ourselves: for if our virtues 
 
 Did not go forth of us, 'twere all the same 
 
 As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched 
 
 But to fine issues. Nature never lends 
 
 The smallest scruple of her excellence 
 
 But like a thrifty goddess, she determines 
 
 Herself the glory of a creditor. 
 
 Both thanks and use." 
 
 The great main issues with Abraham Lincoln were 
 not the fame or political success or personal aggran- 
 dizement of Lincoln. The main issues with him 
 were the abolition of slavery, the preservation of the 
 Union, the healing of the breach between the North 
 and the South, the welfare of the entire American 
 people. He desired, not that he might save the 
 country, but that the country might be saved, let 
 the credit for it go where it would. He lived in 
 the spirit of that Book which John Hay, his Secre- 
 tary, tells us lay always on his desk, a Book in which 
 he was accustomed to read every day. The Book 
 says, "He that saveth his life shall lose it; but he 
 that loseth his life for My sake shall find it." Lin- 
 coln found himself, he found his place in the hearts 
 of his countrymen, he found his secure niche in the 
 Temple of Fame because he lived and died to serve. 
 
 When once you are possessed of these fine quali- 
 ties which bring happiness, you are " the light of the 
 world." Light is meant to shine in the dark places 
 
THE MAIliT SOUKCES OF HAPPINESS 17 
 
 of earth. Men do not light candles and put them 
 under bushels. They light candles and put them on 
 candlesticks that they may burn to the socket while 
 they give light to all that are in the house. The 
 candle finds its honor and its usefulness in giving 
 itself to the task of furnishing light. " Let your 
 light so shine before men that seeing your good 
 works they may glorify your Father which is in 
 Heaven." Be sure that what you have in you is 
 light and not darkness, and then just let it go forth 
 as it will, so that men may see their way about and 
 walk toward Heaven. 
 
 How plain and straightforward all this is! I 
 have called this little book " The Eeligion of a Lay- 
 man," for the religion taught in the Sermon on the 
 Mount is pre-eminently a religion of plain common 
 sense. Here no technical understanding of intricate 
 theological problems is required. Here no profound 
 insight into the esoteric meaning of mysterious sym- 
 bols and ceremonies is demanded. Here those un- 
 utterable experiences which belong somewhere in the 
 third heaven of spiritual ecstasy are not in evidence. 
 A plain man with his feet on the ground and his eyes 
 on his duty can find his way and move ahead in the 
 line that goeth forever upward. 
 
 We cannot all be rich — there is not wealth enough 
 in the world. If all the wealth in the world were 
 equally divided, nobody would be rich. We cannot 
 all be famous. We cannot all succeed in pre-em- 
 inent fashion strive as we may. The outcome of our 
 efforts varies because our abilities vary. To one man 
 
18 THE EEXIQIOW OF A LATMAJST 
 
 is given five talents, to another two, to another, one ; 
 and when these varying measures of ability are used 
 with equal fidelity the results will vary. 
 
 But we can all be happy. If we are striving for 
 that quality of life which hungers after righteousness 
 and is gentle in spirit, which has capacity for grief 
 in its sympathetic nature, and habitually shows 
 mercy, which goes about making peace, and keeps its 
 heart pure from malice and from lust, we shall all 
 enter into a sense of peace and joy which passeth all 
 understanding, to go no more out. 
 
II 
 
 THE rN"WABDNESS OF CHAEACTEE 
 
 " I CAME not to destroy but to fulfil." The role 
 of the destroyer is easy. All he needs is an ax. His 
 work does not require brains nor conscience nor skill 
 — brute force will suffice. He moves about like a 
 bull in a china shop unhindered by any constructive 
 purpose. 
 
 The ruthless critic of the church who is forever 
 indicating her faults; the sore-head who sees noth- 
 ing of the splendid service rendered by the Young 
 Men's Christian Association to our men in uniform, 
 but dwells solely on some unhappy word uttered by a 
 tired secretary ; the scoffer who handles the minor de- 
 fects of the Bible without gloves, ignoring its majestic 
 service to the higher life of the race; the chronic 
 faultfinder damning the whole social order because 
 of certain unhappy conditions in it and showing no 
 mercy to the spirit of competition as a source of 
 motive; the red-mouthed demagogue who calls down 
 fire from heaven to bum up all public men and pub- 
 lie measures which do not fit into his particular 
 scheme ; the sour-hearted cynic who is always looking 
 for knot-holes in the board and for defects in his 
 fellows — all these men seem to enjoy themselves 
 
 while they are smashing something. But when they 
 
 19 
 
20 THE EEMOIOIT OF A LAYMAN 
 
 have completed the series of knocks, the poor world 
 is no farther along than it was when they began — 
 it is not quite so far along. The Master of men 
 lived in quite another mood. He came not to de- 
 stroy but to take the incomplete and fill it full. 
 
 He saw the defects in the current morality of his 
 day. " Except your righteousness exceed the right- 
 eousness of the scribes and Pharisees," he said to his 
 disciples, " ye shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of 
 Heaven." But he would not destroy the dotting of 
 an " i " nor the crossing of a " t " in the old system 
 until he had made clear how something better was to 
 be secured. " Till heaven and earth pass not one 
 jot or one tittle shall be destroyed till all be fulfilled." 
 He patiently gathered up the fragments which re- 
 mained from those older systems which were being 
 superseded by his own bounty so that nothing should 
 be lost. And by that constructive method he was con- 
 stantly building up a finer quality of being in the 
 lives he touched. 
 
 Here in the passage before us he shows the weak- 
 ness of trying to be good by keeping rules. The good 
 people of his day were keen on rules and regulations. 
 They had reduced righteousness to a science as they 
 believed, and it took a well-posted man to remember 
 all the moves in the game as the Pharisees played it. 
 There were thirty-three different ways in which a 
 man could break the Sabbath. He was allowed to 
 walk on bare ground or on the sidewalk, but he must 
 not walk on grass on the Sabbath because he might 
 break off some of the blades of grass, which would 
 
TTIffi IWWAEDW3B8B CW OJJAIlAOTBB 21 
 
 be mowing; and mowing was included in that work 
 wliinh was prohibited on the Sabbath, He might 
 walk in the open, but be must not walk through the 
 wood.i lc8t he break off some of the twigs, which 
 would bo ciittirig wood; and that would be breaking 
 tlu! Sabbath. 
 
 You will find it all in the sacred books of that 
 day. There wore more than flfty-seren varieties of 
 mint, aniwo, and cummin which had to be carefully 
 tithed. Those priests had bound upon the consciences 
 of mon burdens grievous to bo borne by their insist- 
 ence upon endless details in the art of being good. 
 Religion had become legalism, Eighteousness was 
 an affair of riiloH and the whole system had become as 
 dull as a piigo torn out of a trigonometry, 
 
 Now that sort of goodness is always weak and 
 thin. The man who tries to pay his way with the 
 Lord by proper attention to outward observance 
 while his heart remains far from that joyous obe- 
 dience whieii belongs to sonship in the Divine Family 
 never finds his way into the Kingdom. The young 
 fellow who is always thinking when ho should put 
 hiH right foot foi*ward and when his left never 
 becomes easy and graceful as a dancer — he can 
 8car(!ely walk across the floor without falling over 
 the flowers in the carpet. The young woman who is 
 always trying to remember Rule 48 or Eule 97 in 
 Bomo "Guide to Deportment" or "Book of Eti- 
 quette " never becomes a lady — she is not cultivat- 
 ing that spirit of kindly, thoughtful, delicate consid- 
 eration for others which is the essence of good breed- 
 ing. And the people whose eyes are forever on 
 
22 THE EELIGIOKT OF A LAYMAN 
 
 rules of conduct graven on tables of stone rather 
 than upon the temper and disposition which should 
 possess the heart never become genuinely good. 
 
 The Master set himself against that whole system. 
 Except your righteousness becomes more vital and in- 
 teresting than the righteousness of the scribes and 
 Pharisees, you will never enter in. " A good tree 
 brings forth good fruit." It does it naturally, spon- 
 taneously, inevitably. It cannot otherwise. It does 
 it just as a bird sings, because it cannot help itself. 
 Therefore make the tree good and let the fruit come 
 as it will. If the tree is all right, the fruit will be 
 all right. 
 
 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart 
 brings forth good deeds. He does it naturally, inevi- 
 tably, spontaneously. Therefore make your heart 
 right and let your conduct come as it will. Love 
 God with an honest heart, and love your neighbor as 
 well as yourself, and then do as you like. With that 
 sort of heart within, your own spontaneous action 
 will be right. 
 
 " Love works no ill to his neighbor ; therefore love 
 is the fulfilling of the law." " Out of the heart are 
 the issues of life." " With the heart man believeth 
 unto righteousness." Therefore keep thy heart with 
 all diligence. 
 
 The night has a thousand eyes 
 
 And the day but one, 
 Tet the light of the whole world dies 
 
 When the sun is gone. 
 
 The mind has a thousand eyes 
 And the heart hut one, 
 
THE rCTWAHDNISS OP OHARACTEE 23 
 
 Yet the light of the whole life dies 
 When love is done. 
 
 This, therefore, is the first and great command- 
 ment. " Thou shalt love." And love "where it is 
 warm and pure fulfils the law. 
 
 The Master applied this principle of inwardness in 
 four directions — to the sacredness of human life, 
 to the interest of purity, to the matter of speech, and 
 to the attitude toward wrongdoers. 
 
 " It was said by them of old time," as it is said 
 by the law of God and man to-day, " thou shalt 
 not kill." We feel the force and value of that com- 
 mand the moment it is uttered. It needs no com- 
 ment. 
 
 But murder is not confined to the physical act of 
 striking down a fellow-being in cold blood. The 
 ill will which would destroy any man's peace of mind, 
 the thoughtless gossip which would injure a woman's 
 good name or bring a cloud upon her honor, the 
 harsh word which would dash the cup of joy out of 
 another's hands, all become murderous. They take 
 life. If any man is angry with his brother, or calls 
 his brother a fool, or cherishes a heart of malice to- 
 ward his brother, he is in danger of the judgment. 
 
 You may kill a man in ten seconds with an ax. 
 You may kill a woman or a child in ten months by 
 an unsanitary tenement, or with adulterated food, 
 or with infected milk. You may kill an employee in 
 ten years by maintaining a factory or a sweatshop 
 where the conditions are inhuman. However these 
 acts may be posted on the books which men keep, on 
 
24 THE EEIIGION OF A LATMAK 
 
 the book which God keeps they are written down as 
 murder. They destroy life. They show that ugly 
 contempt for human well-being which is fatal. 
 
 The Master was not content to look upon the out- 
 ward appearance of an act — he looked upon its heart. 
 He could not rest until he had plucked out of the 
 heart all malice, ill will, disregard for the sacred and 
 beautiful interests of human existence in all the 
 various fields of action where hatred becomes deadly. 
 
 The Master held that worship could not be offered 
 by a heart of ill will. " If thou bringest thy gift to 
 the altar and there rememberest that thy brother 
 hath aught against thee " — even though his grudge 
 may be ill-founded, an effort must be made to remove 
 it — " leave there thy gift before the altar and first 
 be reconciled to thy brother. Then come and offer 
 thy gift." So far as in us lies the horizontal rela- 
 tions must be made right if we would have these 
 perpendicular relations of worship become fruitful. 
 If we would ascend unto the hill of the Lord and 
 stand in that holy place, we must come with clean 
 hands, no blood on them, and with pure hearts de- 
 void of malice. " Thou shalt not kill " — the ful- 
 filment of that law means a steady honest regard for 
 all the elements and interests which enter into the 
 lives of our fellows. 
 
 " It was said by them of old time, thou shalt not 
 commit adultery." The unlawful act is wicked. 
 The ugly desire which would crawl into action if it 
 could and dared is also wicked. " The greedy gaze 
 which is intended to keep alive and warm an un- 
 
THE INWAKDNESS OF CHAEACTEB 25 
 
 seemly longing " is a thing hateful in his eyes. 
 Every one that looketh on a woman in order to excite 
 nnholy desires which are only restrained from action 
 by lack of opportunity or by fear of the consequences 
 is already guilty in the sight of Him unto whom all 
 hearts are open. 
 
 The Master was a gentleman, and he pleaded for 
 an inward, instant, chivalrous regard for woman- 
 kind, which would hold her too sacred to be degraded 
 for the satisfaction of any dishonorable desire. Find 
 pleasure in demeaning a woman's life? To him it 
 was unthinkable. The character of a gentleman is 
 inward and vital, and no mere matter of outward 
 conformity to law. 
 
 The evil action is just a symptom. It is a symp- 
 tom of wrong conditions within. The wise physician 
 studies symptoms, for they enter into his diagnosis, 
 but he treats conditions and causes. If a woman has 
 a headache, ten cents' worth of phenacetine or anti- 
 pyrin or some other wretched coal tar preparation 
 which thoughtless people take, will stop it. But the 
 wise physician never thinks of pausing there; he 
 ascertains the cause of that headache and treats that. 
 He goes to the root of the matter so that there may 
 not be a fresh supply of headache to be drugged into 
 insensibility the following week. It is this line of 
 action which distinguishes the physician from the 
 quack. It lifts his treatment above the use of cheap 
 concoctions advertised in the newspapers and sold 
 to the unthinking. 
 
 The Great Physician, who came not to those who 
 were well but to those who were ill, pursued the same 
 
26 THE BELIGION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 wise course. The outward deeds may by some form 
 of compulsion be brought into agreement with certain 
 rules, but if the springs of action within are left un- 
 changed then little is accomplished. In that case 
 the symptoms are altered, but the underlying cause 
 of the evil action remains the same. We have the 
 legalism of the Pharisee rather than the renewed 
 character of a child of God. 
 
 " The law of the Lord is perfect," facing us upon 
 a set of ideals which are altogether right. But the 
 grace of the Lord is mightier in that it renews the 
 heart, causing right action to spring inevitably and 
 joyously from a rightened nature within. 
 
 In similar fashion the Master considered the mat- 
 ter of speech. 
 
 "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, 
 Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unt-o 
 the Lord thine oaths. But I say unto you, Swear not at 
 all! Neither by heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by 
 the earth, for it is His footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it 
 is the city of the Great King; nor by thine own head, for 
 thou canst not make one hair white or black! Let your 
 yea be yea and your nay, nay." 
 
 Of all the raw, senseless, useless habits into which 
 empty-headed, empty-hearted men fall, profane 
 swearing has the least to say for itself. There are 
 forms of wrongdoing which do yield a certain low 
 grade of satisfaction, but what is to be gained by the 
 coarse and irreverent use of the name of the Deity 
 or the name of Jesus Christ? The man who feels 
 that his natural speech is so weak and futile that he 
 
THE INWAEDNESS OOP CHAEACTER 27 
 
 must try to bolster it up by interlarding it witb these 
 sacred names is an object of pity as well as an oc- 
 casion for disgust. 
 
 You have all seen the reproductions of that frieze 
 on the temple enclosure at Nikko, Japan. There are 
 three monkeys, one carefully covering his eyes with 
 his hands, another covering his ears, and a third cov- 
 ering his mouth. They are resolved to " see no evil, 
 hear no evil, speak no evil." They are intent upon 
 guarding the whole output and intake of life from the 
 taint of wrong. 
 
 Let your yea be yea and your nay, nay, clear, 
 straight, exact. The man of sense and conscience 
 rejoices in a close fit between what he says and the 
 facts in the case with no frills or exaggeration or 
 bluster. He puts his common 'Speech upon that high 
 level of veracity where it needs no attestation by 
 vulgar oaths. 
 
 The eschewing of all oaths, of all titles, of all 
 showy forms in social intercourse and in religious 
 worship has given to a certain group of people in this 
 country, not numerous but widely influential, a sim- 
 plicity, a directness, and a sweetness of spirit upon 
 which the busy bustling world sets high value. 
 
 The Master would have each man observe the same 
 principle of inwardness in his bearing toward those 
 who have done him vsrrong. " You have heard that it 
 was said by them of old time, an eye for an eye, a 
 tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. Thou shalt love 
 thy neighbor and hate thine enemy." Do unto others 
 as they do unto you, only do it first. This is the 
 
28 THE EEXIQION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 line of conduct enjoined upon us from Leviticus to 
 Thomas Huxley, and from Huxley to David Harum. 
 
 There is a certain rough justice in it. And when 
 that old law, " an eye for an eye, a tooth for a 
 tooth," was given, it marked an advance upon the 
 current practice in retaliation. An eye for an eye 
 is not ideal, but it is better than a head for an eye. 
 A tooth for a tooth is not the best that can be done, 
 but it is better than a life for a toc|th. The law 
 provided for a limited and measured form of retal- 
 iation in that rude age to take the place of the reck- 
 less, wholesale, indiscriminate vindictiveness which 
 was common. It brought the savage instinct for ven- 
 geance under some measure of restraint. And as 
 such it was " a word of the Lord " to that morally 
 undeveloped race. 
 
 But the time had come for a great advance upon 
 that low standard. 
 
 " I say imto you, Love your enemies. Bless those who 
 curse you. Do good to those who hate you. Pray for 
 those who despitefully use you, that ye may be the chil- 
 dren of your Father in heaven." 
 
 God does not retaliate — He causes the sun to 
 shine on the evil and on the good; he sends rain on 
 the just and on the unjust. He treats all men with 
 a certain broad, patient impartiality in the hope of 
 awakening the unjust and the evil to a better dis- 
 position toward him and toward all mankind. The 
 Master summons us to take that line that our lives 
 may become round, complete, entire, even as the life 
 of our Father in heaven is round. 
 
THK INWAEDNESS OF OHAEAOTEEI 29 
 
 Here is the principle underlying all these high com- 
 mands, as William Newton Clarke has indicated, 
 " Take your own standards of action from within 
 rather than allow some base man to furnish them to 
 you by his meanness." The man who says, " I paid 
 him back in his own coin ; I gave him as good as he 
 sent; I showed him that I could be as mean as he 
 was," is allowing that wrongdoer to furnish him his 
 standards of action. The man of conscience will not 
 allow his own spirit of good will to be destroyed by 
 the wrongdoing of another. He takes his standards 
 of action from within his own best self. 
 
 " If ye love them who love you what reward have 
 ye? Do not even publicans the same? And if ye 
 salute them who salute you, what do ye more than 
 others ? " He would have his followers gain some- 
 thing more than a commonplace, mediocre type of 
 morality. 
 
 You will remember that in the liiew Testament two 
 different words are used for " love." We translate 
 them by the same English term, but in the Greek they 
 are distinct. There was the love of personal affec- 
 tion, warm, tender, and sweet. " He that loveth 
 father or mother more than me is not worthy of me." 
 When the Jews saw Jesus weeping at the grave of 
 Lazarus, they said, " Behold how he loved him." 
 They spoke of John as " that disciple whom Jesus 
 loved." When Jesus asked Peter, " Lovest thou 
 me ? " he used the same term. In all these cases the 
 word was phileo, the love of personal affection. 
 
 Then there was the love of an intelligent good 
 will. " God so loved the world that he gave his only 
 
30 THE EELIGION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 begotten Son." " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
 thyself." " A new commandment I give unto you 
 that ye love one another." Here the word wa8 
 agapao, the love of an intelligent good will. When we 
 are bidden to " love our enemies," it is with the love 
 of good will. It is impossible for a man to feel for 
 an enemy the love he would cherish for his wife or 
 for his child; but he can maintain the spirit of 
 good will toward those who would injure him by 
 their wrongdoing. 
 
 Then to make this teaching effective, the Master, 
 according to his custom, added some of those bold, 
 paradoxical statements which were often on his lips 
 as an oriental. 
 
 Resist not evil. If a man takes away your coat, 
 let him have your overcoat also. If he compels you 
 to go one mile with him go two miles. If he smites 
 you on the one check, turn the other. Give to 
 everyone that asketh thee, and from him that would 
 borrow (this seems to many hasty readers like the 
 very climax of sentimental nonsense) turn not thou 
 away. 
 
 Now what can we make of all that ? What would 
 be the result of taking all these commands literally ? 
 " Resist not evil ! " It would wipe all the police- 
 men off the map and turn over the town to thugs and 
 thieves. I would be interested in seeing the city 
 of New York or of Chicago a month after the police- 
 men had been removed. 
 
 " Give to everyone that asketh thee." That would 
 fill the streets with ablebodied beggars, for wherever 
 
THE INWAEDNESS OP CHAEACTEB 31 
 
 a living can be had for the asking there are a consid- 
 erable number of people who will promptly go into 
 the asking business. If a man steals your watch and 
 your jewelry, hurry after him and offer him the sil- 
 ver spoons and forks which he overlooked. 
 
 " And from him that would borrow turn not thou 
 away." This would cut the ground from under the 
 feet of prudence and thrift in order to turn over 
 their savings to the lazy and shiftless. What an im- 
 possible program ! 
 
 But we must bear in mind that the Master was 
 an oriental and that he was speaking to orientals. 
 These bold paradoxical statements rather than the 
 cool abstract utterance of ethical truth belonged to 
 his method. If he had been born in New Hampshire 
 and had been addressing a company of thoughtful 
 New Englanders, the New Testament would have 
 been a very different book. It would have been much 
 less interesting, but easier to be understood by the 
 literalist. 
 
 If we were discussing the use of wealth, we would 
 say that it is an exceedingly difficult thing for a 
 multimillionaire to administer his large possessions 
 in a thoroughly Christian way ; it requires brains as 
 well as grace. Jesus would say, " It is easier for a 
 camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a 
 rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." If we 
 were speaking of the value of faith, we would use 
 some such sober language as would come naturally 
 to our lips. Jesus would say, " If you have faith as 
 a grain of mustard seed you can say to this mountain, 
 Be thou removed and cast into the sea." We are not 
 
32 THE EELIGIOW OB* A LAYMAN 
 
 told that anyone, not even the Master himself, ever 
 moved a mountain in that way or even attempted 
 it. But that was his way of teaching. 
 
 Here in this passage He puts his truth in bold par- 
 adoxical form. But the principle is clear. Live out 
 uniformly a generous spirit toward all you meet. In 
 any situation where you find yourself maintain the 
 spirit of an intelligent and patient good will, taking 
 your standards from within your own honest heart 
 rather than have them furnished to you by the mean- 
 ness of some wrongdoer. 
 
 " Give to everyone that asketh thee," but not al- 
 ways the thing that he asks. The parents who are 
 wise as well as loving do not always give the two- 
 year-old the thing he asks. They do not give him 
 a hammer and a looking-glass or a pair of sharp- 
 pointed scissors. They give him rather what he 
 needs. They do not turn away from his requests, 
 but they give him according to their judgment rather 
 than according to his. 
 
 The man who asks for a dime on the street to get 
 something to eat will probably go to the nearest rum- 
 shop and get another drink to carry him just that 
 much farther along toward perdition. He needs 
 something other and better than a dime. 1 had best 
 give him what he needs rather than what he asks. I 
 must give according to my judgment rather than ac- 
 cording to his. But the generous spirit is impera- 
 tive. So in every one of these situations which Jesus 
 named I am to act generously in the light of the 
 man's needs rather than according to his immediate 
 requests. 
 
THE IKWABDIirESS OF CHAEACrTKR 33 
 
 You notice how the principle holds in the very il- 
 lustration which the Master used. " The Heavenly- 
 Father sendeth his rain on the just and on the un- 
 just." His broad impartiality goes a certain dis- 
 tance and then stops. A man can be rained on, no 
 matter what kind of a man he is, but there are certain 
 things which God does not send alike upon the just 
 and the unjust. He does not send forgiveness, re- 
 newal, and the gift of hia grace upon the man who 
 persists in being unjust. He cannot. Here are 
 transactions higher and more important than being 
 rained on, which cannot be carried on without will- 
 ingness and co-operation on both sides. 
 
 While you cannot love him with tender affection, 
 you can maintain an attitude of good will toward 
 tJie man who makes himself your enemy; you can 
 utter words of blessing toward those who curse you; 
 in like mood you can offer a prayer in no supercilious 
 fashion, but genuinely for those who despitefuUy use 
 you. There are certain other and finer forms of 
 relationship iato which you can only enter with 
 those who are your friends. But you have dis- 
 charged your duty when you have taken your stand- 
 ards from the best in your own heart, when you have 
 maintained a generous spirit toward all you meet, 
 no matter what may have been their attitude to- 
 ward you. 
 
 The Master practiced what he preached. He had 
 enemies and he loved them. When the Samaritan 
 village refused Him hospitality, His faulty disci- 
 ples wanted to call down fire from heaven and bum 
 it up. But Jesus said, " Ye know not what spirit 
 
34 THE EELIQION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 ye are of. The Son of Kan is not come to destroy 
 men's lives, but to save them." His action was not 
 determined by the selfish rudeness of that little tovm 
 which refused him a night's lodging. It was deter^ 
 mined by his own moral nature. 
 
 When men despitefuUy used him, hanging on a 
 cross between two thieves, as if he had been a crim- 
 inal, he prayed for them, " Father, forgive them, for 
 they know not what they do." He dealt with men 
 habitually, not according to their deserts, but accord- 
 ing to their needs and according to the great redemp- 
 tive purpose which he cherished on their behalf. 
 
 He lived in the high mood of that ancient Psalm, 
 
 " The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and 
 plenteous in mercy. He hath not dealt with us after our 
 sins nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For 
 as high as the heaven is above the earth, so great is His 
 mercy toward those that fear Him. Like as a father 
 pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear 
 Him, for he knoweth our frame." 
 
 Here then is the vital method of that religion 
 which is taught in the Sermon on the Mount. It 
 was something other and better than an improved 
 system of ethics, a more exalted set of moral rules. 
 It holds before us steadily the sublime end of lives 
 renewed, ennobled, and enriched from within by the 
 action of the Divine Spirit upon the heart. 
 
 " I will write my laws," not on tables of stone, 
 not across the face of the sky, and not in lines of ac- 
 tion prompted by the wrongdoing of others. " I 
 will write my laws upon their inward parts." The 
 purpose of God is the development of that steadfast, 
 
THE INWAEDNBSS OF CHAKACTEK 35 
 
 dependable, moral personality within, to which all the 
 interests of conduct may safely be committed. 
 
 When this end is achieved, the special action proper 
 in each situation may be left to the determination of 
 that inner life. In your attitude toward human life, 
 toward personal purity, toward the mode of speech, 
 and toward those who have done you wrong, show the 
 generous, high-minded spirit, to the end that your 
 lives may become at last round, complete, entire, 
 even as the life of your Father in heaven is round. 
 
 " The quality of mercy is not strained ; 
 
 It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the 
 
 place beneath. 
 It is twice blest — it blesseth him that gives and him 
 
 that takes, 
 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest. 
 
 It becomes the throned monarch better than his crown. 
 It is an attribute of God himself. 
 We do pray for mercy and that same prayer 
 Doth teach us all to render deeds of mercy." 
 
Ill 
 
 THE SIMPLICITY OF A GOOD LIFE 
 
 The Master never posed. He was not being good 
 to be seen of men. He never seemed to be playing 
 a part. He did not go about saying to himseK, 
 " This is what would be expected of a man in my 
 position; I must be sure to do the correct thing." 
 He was what he was without ever seeming to think 
 about how it might look to others. He was not con- 
 cerned about that. 
 
 You know Bernard Shaw says that if you go to a 
 symphony concert you will find a great many people 
 who are there not because they like classical music 
 but because they know they ought to like it. They 
 feel that it is the proper thing to be seen there, and 
 so they go. In like manner when you get to Heaven 
 you may find some people who are there not because 
 they have any particular taste or fitness for that sort 
 of thing but because they feel that they owe it to 
 their social position to be in Heaven. How mighty 
 are the conventions of society and how dull and tire- 
 some many people become because they are constantly 
 trying to keep up appearances ! 
 
 The Master was as simple, natural, and unaffected 
 
 as a sequoia tree. He also had a keen sense of humor 
 
 — he must have had for he was the Son of God. 
 
 36 
 
THE SIMPUCITT OF A GOOD 1.11^ 37 
 
 " He that sitteth in the heavens " must have laughed 
 when he created the pelicans, the monkeys, and some 
 of us. You find this element of humor in many of 
 the sayings of the Master. When he said to those 
 seK-satisfied Pharisees, " I came not to call the right- 
 eous but sinners," it was a delicious bit of irony. 
 He knew that those self-satisfied prigs were anything 
 but righteous. When he said, " They that are whole 
 need not a physician, but they that are sick," that 
 was his way of taking them off. And in the pas- 
 sage before us he pierced the swollen windbags of 
 pretense and conceit by the keen thrust of laughter. 
 It is often more effective than a serious argument. 
 
 He took up three forms of affectation which make 
 against the simplicity of a good life. He first pic- 
 tured the showy, pompous almsgiver. " Take heed 
 that you do not your alms before men to be seen 
 of them. When thou doest thine alms sound not a 
 trumpet before thee in the street." " To be seen of 
 men " — the word Jesus used was theathenai from 
 which we derive our word " theatrical." He set his 
 face against all play-acting, showy, theatrical good- 
 ness. 
 
 When you send a ton of coal or a basket of pro- 
 visions to a poor family do not hire a band to go 
 along. The least bit of showy pride in one's gener- 
 osity robs it of all beauty. Think so little about your- 
 self when you are doing good or being good that your 
 right hand scarcely knows what your left hand is 
 doing. There is not enough of self-consciousness in 
 your action to find its way across from one side of 
 
38 THE EEUQION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 your nature to the other. " Let your alms be in se- 
 cret, and your Father who seeth in secret " — it does 
 not get by him — " shall reward thee openly." 
 
 The matter of supreme concern in acts of gener- 
 osity does not lie in the fact that people are or are 
 not looking — it lies in the quality of the motive 
 which underlies the gift. " If you give a half 
 crown in a collection when there is a plate and a 
 penny when there is a bag and your gift cannot be 
 seen, then you have the gravest possible reason to 
 doubt your motive." 
 
 The desire for the applause of men is a sorry 
 source of motive. The boy who will not do his duty 
 unless he is being praised and petted for it is a poor 
 specimen; he is in a fair way to become a self-con- 
 scious, conceited little snob. The man who will not 
 perform unless he is in the limelight is all lath and 
 plaster where there should be quartered oak — you 
 cannot depend on him. The young woman who will 
 not purr unless her fur is being constantly stroked the 
 right way with compliments and bouquets and five- 
 pound boxes holds out no sure promise of ever being 
 a companion and a helpmeet. All these people are 
 only willing to do their prettiest " to be seen of men." 
 The Master who had a keen eye for shoddy and coun- 
 terfeit put them all into the discard. 
 
 Let every man do square work and square work 
 only, regardless of the presence or absence of popular 
 acclaim, simple because nothing but square work sat- 
 isfies his own sense of what is right. It was said of 
 the Duke of Wellington, " He does his duty as nat- 
 urally as a horse eats oats." It was high praise. 
 
THE SIMPUCITY OF A GOOB LIFE 39 
 
 "He that giveth let him do it with simplicity." 
 " It is more blessed to give than to receive " — a great 
 deal more blessed. It hurts any healthy, self-re- 
 specting nature to receive alms. The giver of alms, 
 therefore, who respects those whom he would aid 
 avoids the sound of the drum which might fix atten- 
 tion upon his own generosity and upon the sad ne- 
 cessities of his fellows. He clothes his kindness in 
 the quiet garb of modesty for his own sake and for 
 the sake of others. He gives with simplicity. 
 
 The Master also rebuked the man who paraded his 
 self-denial. " When ye fast be not as the hypocrites 
 of a sad countenance. They disfigure their faces 
 that they may appear unto men to fast. But ye, when 
 ye fast, anoint thy head and wash thy face that ye 
 may not appear unto men to fast but unto thy 
 Father who seeth in secret." 
 
 You are not doing it to be seen of men. The 
 beauty of self-denial lies in the fact that it is a per- 
 sonal act where the inner life is striving for a more 
 perfect sense of harmony with the infinite life of the 
 Father. The soul is subordinating its personal pleas- 
 ure or profit or convenience to some larger good which 
 is to be secured ; and the power of it lies in the sim- 
 plicity and the naturalness with which it is all done. 
 
 How impatient those soldiers who have been in the 
 trenches in France and have returned from overseas 
 become when some pompous windbag undertakes to 
 plaster them over with compliments and to put halos 
 around their heads with extravagant words about 
 their heroism and self-sacrifice! These men have 
 
40 THE EELIQIOJS^ OF A LATMAIf 
 
 laid their bare hands on the naked realities of human 
 experience. They have seen life stripped of all or- 
 nament and frill. They have looked straight into 
 the eyes of death and now this fulsome language of 
 compliment nauseates them. They did not do it " to 
 be seen of men " or to be praised of men ; and the 
 moment any suspicion of unreality shows its head in 
 the words of the man who is undertaking to parade 
 their virtues before the eyes of a multitude, they look 
 the other way. 
 
 Anoint your head and wash your face and smile 
 when you practice self-denial ! The man who draws 
 a long face and puts on a sad look when he sacrifices 
 pleasure to duty or denies himself that he may make 
 a larger gift to some worthy cause robs his action of 
 its beauty and his soul of the reward it was meant to 
 enjoy. 
 
 The principle is far-reaching. The professional 
 smile which shows more teeth than soul; the com- 
 pany manners which are put on and taken off with 
 the evening clothes; the chirping, grinning style of 
 amiability which proclaims its unreality by being 
 overdone; the affected mode of speech which shows 
 upon its face that it is no more a part of the per- 
 son's mak&-up than a badly made glass eye — all this 
 would come in for the Master's condemnation as part 
 of that which he called the hypocrisy of pretense. 
 He would have every life real to the core. 
 
 " When you fast anoint your head " — let it all 
 be done with an air of gladness. When the popula- 
 tion of a beehive becomes congested the bees swarm. 
 A great company of them under the leadership of a 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF A GOOD LIHEJ 41 
 
 new queen goes forth. They leave their home and 
 the stock of honey which they have helped to make, 
 and they go out empty-handed to find a new home 
 and to make a fresh start. And they enter upon that 
 act of self-sacrifice with a song; bees are never so 
 friendly as at the time when they are swarming. 
 
 Here in the Old Testament we find the same prin- 
 ciple exalted ! " When the burnt offerings began the 
 song of the Lord began also with trumpets." Not in 
 gloomy silence as if they were performing some hard 
 duty from which they would have been glad to es- 
 cape, but with a burst of music the people gave of 
 their best to the God they served. They covered the 
 self-denial they were practicing with that radiant 
 joy they felt in doing the will of the Most High. All 
 this is well pleasing to him who looketh not merely 
 on the outward appearance of a gift — " The Lord 
 loveth a cheerful giver." 
 
 The Master also condemned the long-winded, os- 
 tentatious prayer. "When thou prayest be not as 
 the hypocrites. They love to pray standing at the 
 street comers to be seen of men. " Verily," he added 
 with delicate irony, " they have their reward." 
 They pray to be seen of men and they are seen of 
 men. They get what they prayed for; they are set- 
 tled with on the spot and there is nothing more com- 
 ing to them as a result of their prayers. With the 
 same measure they meted out it was measured back 
 to them again. They got results but on the low 
 level of their own unworthy natures. " But thou, 
 when thou prayest enter into thy closet; shut the 
 
42 THE EELIGION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 door; pray to tliy Father who seeth in secret and 
 thy Father who seeth in secret shall reward thee 
 openly." 
 
 Enter into thy closet and shut the door! The 
 Master was not defining a physical act. He was not 
 at all concerned about the place where a man should 
 pray, but only as to the spirit in which it should be 
 done. He insisted that every prayer should be a 
 simple, direct, and genuine transaction between the 
 soul of the man and God. 
 
 The minister standing in the presence of a great 
 congregation may nevertheless enter his closet and 
 shut the door, if his prayer is offered directly and 
 genuinely to God. The Salvation Army captain 
 standing at the comer of the street with her tam- 
 bourine may nevertheless, by her complete self- 
 forgetfulness and the genuineness of her moral in- 
 terest in those lives she would touch by her appeal, 
 enter into her closet and shut the door as she prays 
 to God. It all depends, not upon the place where one 
 stands, but upon his attitude of soul. 
 
 The enterprising reporter on a Boston paper, shar- 
 ing in that oft-remarked local pride, referred in his 
 account of a religious convention to the lengthy in- 
 vocation as " one of the most eloquent prayers ever 
 offered to a Boston audience." He may have 
 builded better than he knew. Many audiences have 
 eloquent prayers offered to them in such showy 
 fashion as to banish the whole spirit of devotion. 
 
 " When thou prayest," the Master added, " use 
 not vain repetitions as the heathen do. They think 
 that they shall be heard for their much speaking." 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OP A GOOD LIFE 43 
 
 He saw the futility of certain public prayers where 
 the length and the breadth and the height of the peti- 
 tion are not equal. If the man who offers prayer 
 in public has a good flow of language it is possible 
 for him to keep it up for twenty-five or thirty minutes 
 on occasion. Any man of pious habit can shut his 
 eyes and talk indefinitely. And it is possible for 
 people to keep their heads down and their eyes closed 
 during the whole of that far-flung and long-drawn-out 
 utterance. It might not be profitable, however, to 
 inquire too closely into their thoughts during the 
 whole of that period or into the ability of the man 
 himself to maintain unbrokenly for all that time the 
 sense of direct address to God. The real height of 
 a prayer in its outward, upward, Godward reach is 
 not always in direct proportion to its length. 
 
 I have been in the active ministry for thirty years 
 and I know of no human exercise so difficult and so 
 exacting, which so takes it out of a man, as the act of 
 prayer in the presence of one's fellows. If a man 
 can take upon his own heart in sympathetic fashion 
 the needs of those for whom he would pray and carry 
 them up by his own vital faith into the presence of 
 God with a genuine and sustained sense of the august 
 nature of what he is doing and keep it up for five 
 or six minutes he has done well. The moment he 
 loses that sense of sympathetic, horizontal touch with 
 the needs of his fellows and the vital sense of a per- 
 pendicular hold upon God, he had better say 
 " Amen " and stop. It will not avail anything for 
 him or for them if he keeps on talking in pious fashion 
 with his eyes shut when he has really ceased to pray. 
 
44 THE EELIQION OF A XAYMAN 
 
 The Master fully understood the difficulty of pray- 
 ing with genuineness and he therefore said, " Use 
 not vain repetitions as the heathen do." Men are 
 not heard for their much speaking. 
 
 " After this manner pray ye " — not always in just 
 these words, but let these words indicate the general 
 scope and method of your approach to God: 
 
 " Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy 
 name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth 
 as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. 
 And forgive us pur debts as we forgive our debtors. And 
 lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. 
 For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory 
 forever." 
 
 There are just sixty-four words in that entire 
 prayer. The average speaker utters from one hun- 
 dred and forty to one hundred and fifty words per 
 minute; many speakers utter from one hundred and 
 eighty to two hundred words a minute. Take the 
 lowest figure; one hundred and forty words a min- 
 ute! Here are sixty-four words which would be 
 uttered in less than thirty seconds. The Master 
 used no " vain repetitions." He did not undertake 
 to be heard for his " much speaking," yet how the 
 Lord's Prayer covers the ground and fits in around 
 our needs like a well-made glove on the hand ! How 
 it lifts our souls into a sense of communion with God ! 
 
 When the Parliament of Religion met at Chicago 
 in connection with the World's Fair, Catholics, Prot- 
 estants, and Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Moslems, and 
 Confucianists met together day after day to discuss 
 this fundamental interest of religion. And with 
 
THE SIMPLICITT OF A GOOD JJJS^ 45 
 
 one aOcord they agreed to use each morning at the 
 opening of the session the Lord's Prayer to voice 
 their common request to the God of all. There is 
 nothing ^ual to it in human speech. Its simplicity 
 (for forty^nine of these sixty-four words are words 
 of one syllable) ; its directness (for every request goes 
 straight to the mark like an arrow from the bow) ; 
 and its comprehensiveness, all served to make it ac- 
 ceptable to those men of all races and tongues and 
 creeds, as no Other single prayer known to men could 
 have been. 
 
 Let us look at it more closely ! " When you pray, 
 say Our." Let that be the first word on your lips — 
 not " I " nor " my " nor " mine." You are not 
 praying in solitary, selfish fashion, but in the mood 
 of social interest and sympathy. You are not un- 
 mindful of the needs of your fellows, even though you 
 have entered your closet and have shut the door. 
 
 " When you pray say, Our Father." Begin with 
 these words on your lips, with that thought of him in 
 your mind, with that filial spirit in your heart. 
 'No man can ofFer the first two words of acceptable 
 prayer unless he is striving to live as a child of God 
 so that he may honestly claim his kinship with the 
 Father. " If a son asks bread " — a son, not some 
 outcast or vagabond who has cut himself off from 
 fellowship with his father — he may be sure of his 
 answer. 
 
 " We are apt to have rather free and easy notions 
 of the divine fatherhood. To call God ' Our Father ' 
 we must ourselves be sons ; and it is only those who 
 
46 THE EELIGIOH OF A LAYMAN 
 
 are led by the spirit of God who are the sons of 
 God." 
 
 Then follow six brief petitions. They fall into 
 two groups of three each. The first group has to do 
 with God's Name, his Kingdom, his Will. The 
 man's personal needs are postponed until these wider 
 needs and broader requests have been uttered. 
 " Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. 
 Thy Will be done on earth." We must put God first 
 or we shall not have him in our lives at all. 
 
 Then we come to the second group having to do 
 with man's needs — his bread, his sins, his temp- 
 tations. " Give us this day our daily bread. For- 
 give us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned 
 against us. Lead us not into temptation but de- 
 liver us from evil." Here is that subordination of 
 personal and private interest to the larger values 
 which is characteristic of all honest prayer and of all 
 right action! 
 
 " Hallowed be Thy Name." It is not a mere 
 request that we kept from profane swearing. The 
 word " name " as the Hebrews used it meant the 
 nature which was designated by that name. Let all 
 those principles, ideals, and values which belong to 
 the nature of God be kept sacred ! It was a prayer 
 that reverence might be felt and maintained for all 
 that is worthy to be revered. Hallowed be Thy 
 Name and hallowed be that which his Name denotes. 
 
 " Thy Kingdom come." The Kingdom of God 
 is not a place yonder in the sky rather than here on 
 earth. It is not a place here in the church rather 
 than yonder on the street. It is the designation of a 
 
THE SIMPLICITY OF A GOOD LIFE 47 
 
 certain quality of life. Wherever you find the sway 
 and rule of the Divine Spirit you find his Kingdom. 
 
 " The Kingdom of Heaven is vs^ithin you," if your 
 heart is right. " The Kingdom of Heaven is among 
 you," if the social relations of your group are aa God 
 would have them. " The Kingdom of Heaven is like 
 leaven " in that this quality of life communicates it- 
 self to other lives when conditions are favorable until 
 the whole lump of life is leavened. " The Kingdom 
 of Heaven is like a pearl of great price " in that a 
 man can afford to invest all he has to secure that high 
 quality of life. You see the meaning of the phrase ! 
 " Thy Kingdom come," here, now, anywhere, every- 
 where. We want that quality of life which owns the 
 sway and rule of the Divine Spirit to be universal. 
 
 " Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." 
 Here is a prayer that human life in all its interests 
 and relationships may be rebuilt and built better 
 after the pattern shown us from on High ! Thy Will 
 be done — it is not the expression of a passive resig- 
 nation, the word of a man who is ready to put up 
 with what cannot be avoided. Thy Will be done by 
 me, by you, by all hands ! Help us to do it in active, 
 effective fashion! Make us colaborers with God in 
 doing his will on earth as it is done in Heaven ! 
 
 What is his will ? It is his will that I should do 
 that which is just and right; that my home should 
 be a place of peace, joy, and love ; that my place of 
 employment should be a scene of fair dealing and of 
 intelligent good will ; that my neighborhood should be 
 a ward in the city of God; that my town should be 
 clean and wholesome as a fit dwelling-place for those 
 
48 THE EELIGIOK OF A LAYMAN 
 
 who are the children of the Most High; that my 
 nation should be a nation whose God is the Lord, in 
 whose work for righteousness all the nations of the 
 ea2rth are blessed. That is what we mean when we 
 say, " Thy Will be done." It is a prayer which 
 reaches from the Great White Throne to the darkest, 
 dirtiest street in the city slums, from the heart of the 
 Infinite Father to the last item of interest in the 
 lives of his children. 
 
 Then we come to the second group of petitions 
 which have to do more intimately with man's needs. 
 " Give us this day our daily bread." It is signifi.- 
 cant that of these six requests five of them have to do 
 solely with those interests which belong directly to 
 character. They deal solely with moral and spirit- 
 ual values. Only one with things material! And 
 that one is a modest request for just enough bread to 
 get through the day. The Christian does not pray 
 for enough of bread to last two hundred years, or 
 for a bank account big enough to buy everything he 
 sees. He does not pray for a house with twenty 
 rooms in it and an automobile and a steam yacht, and 
 all the rest. " Give us this day our daily bread." 
 It is legitimate to pray about things material as well 
 as about things spiritual, but in this model prayer 
 the ratio is five to one in favor of the spiritual. 
 
 Here as everywhere the prayer is social — it is 
 not " Give me my bread," but " give us," the people 
 in our home and on our street, and on that street 
 of need. Give us, Americans and Armenians, 
 Syrians and Serbians, Eussian and Polish peasants, 
 
THE SIMPUOITY OP A GOOD UITB 49 
 
 the famine stricken Hindus, and the starving Chinese, 
 our daily bread! It is a prayer which warms the 
 cockles of a man's heart toward those whose needs 
 are greater than his own. 
 
 " Not what we give, but what we share. 
 
 For the gift without the giver is bare. 
 
 Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, 
 
 Himself, his hungering neighbor and Me." 
 
 " Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who 
 have sinned against us." It does not mean that a 
 man purchases his own forgiveness from God by 
 showing a forgiving spirit toward those who have 
 wronged him. The Master was not setting up a bar- 
 gain counter here in the heart of his model prayer. 
 It means that no man can be forgiven unless he has 
 a forgiving spirit. 
 
 God sends his rain on the just and on the un- 
 just alike, because a man can be rained on no matter 
 what kind of a man he is. But the man who comes 
 to God with grudge and bitterness and ill-will in his 
 heart toward his fellow-beings cannot be forgiven for 
 his own sins until all that has been changed, " For- 
 give as we forgive " — a forgiving spirit opens the 
 door for the Divine Forgiveness to enter. " If ye 
 forgive men their trespasses your Heavenly Father 
 will also forgive you." 
 
 Beautiful are the reactions which come from that 
 broad-minded, large-hearted method of dealing with 
 the short-comings of our fellows ! " Blessed are the 
 ilierciful for they shall obtain mercy." It was a well- 
 known public official who had been slandered by lying 
 
60 THE EELIGION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 newspapers and attacked by a murderous assassin 
 who all but killed him, who said, " I forgive every- 
 body, everything, every night. It is the only way to 
 live." Father, forgive as we forgive. 
 
 Then as a last request, " Lead us not into tempta- 
 tion but deliver us from evil." God does not lead 
 men into temptation. We can be sure of him. It 
 was the apostle James who said, " Let no man say 
 when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God 
 cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He 
 any man." 
 
 But temptation comes from our misuse of those 
 things which God places within our reach as opportu- 
 nities. The love of gain and the desire for success, 
 the instinct of sex, and the wish for happiness — 
 these are not evil things. They are all good things, 
 but they may all be misused in such ways as to be- 
 come sources of evil. We turn them into temptations 
 to evil in place of using them as opportunities for 
 growth, for joy, and for service. Lead us, O God, 
 so that all these occasions may not be sources of 
 evil but pathways of advance ! 
 
 Here, then, is the perfect prayer as it fell from 
 the lips of the Master! It contains no vain repeti- 
 tions. The man who uses it is not trying to be heard 
 for his much speaking. It is a clear, concise, cogent 
 appeal to God. Its simplicity, its directness, its ade- 
 quacy, lift it up into a class by itself. 
 
 It was said of the One who uttered it, " The Word 
 was made flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and 
 truth." The language of religion was translated into 
 terms of life and that Life dwelt among us, winsome 
 
THE SIMPUCOITT OF A GOOD UPE 51 
 
 in its method and sound to the core by its absolute 
 veracity. 
 
 You may wish to ask me how prayer works. I am 
 frank to confess that after a life of prayer through 
 more than fifty years this august exercise of human in- 
 telligence and of the moral will is clothed in mystery. 
 
 But we live and move and have our being in the 
 presence of unsolved mysteries. When I think of 
 an X-ray piercing through my coat sleeve and through 
 the flesh of my forearm, enabling the surgeon to 
 study the bones and ascertain if any crack or fault 
 be there, I am amazed. When I think of a Mar- 
 coni telegram moving out across land or sea without 
 wires to guide it until it reaches the receiver hid- 
 den away hundreds of miles, it may be below the 
 horizon, I am awed. When I think of a single atom 
 of radium holding in its tiny clasp enough of energy 
 to keep a clock ticking for a hundred years, I am 
 filled with wonder and reverence. And when I ask 
 a thoughtful man of science to tell me the nature of 
 these subtle, mysterious forms of energy which men 
 have learned to use for their help, he shakes his 
 head — he does not know. 
 
 What is the nature of that mysterious force on the 
 wire which flows down the trolley and moves the eleo- 
 tric car, and lights it and heats it? ISTo one knows. 
 The motorman calls it " juice," and when he has said 
 that he has done just as much to express his ignorance 
 of the final nature of electricity as the scientific man 
 has done when he has used thirteen words of seven 
 syllables each. 
 
52 THE EELIQION OT' A LAYMAN 
 
 We know something of the method of its operation 
 and something of the results which can be secured. 
 The nature of electricity remains a mystery unsolved. 
 But how foolish I would be to stand on the street 
 comer on a cold dark, rainy night refusing to avail 
 myself of the help of that mysterious energy to 
 reach my home. How foolish I would be to plod 
 along in the dark and cold when I might be sitting 
 comfortably in that car reading my evening paper 
 and being carried swiftly to my destination ! 
 
 I have seen so much of the benefit of this habit of 
 prayer in my own life, in my own home, and in the 
 hearts and homes of others, that I want my prayer 
 for strength, for guidance, for comfort, for aid in 
 doing my duty, for blessings upon the lives of others, 
 to go up to God backed by all the faith and hope and 
 love which I can put into it, even though I do not 
 fully understand the final nature of the forces which 
 operate through prayer. 
 
 In this great and vital interest, I know of no one 
 whose guidance I would rather accept than the guid- 
 ance of him who said, " Ask and ye shall receive. 
 Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it -shall be opened 
 unto you." How significant it is that the Perfect, 
 the Typal, the Eepresentative Man, the Son of Man, 
 was a Man of prayer. He prayed much and oft. 
 His habit and the resultant value of it so impressed 
 his disciples that they said " Lord, teach us to pray ! " 
 Humanity at its best prays. It makes headway to- 
 ward its own best by the august exercise of honest 
 prayer. 
 
IV 
 
 THE PEIMACT OF THE MOEAl VAIUES 
 
 The wise man puts first things first, and then all 
 the other things in their proper order. He does not 
 get the cart before the horse. He does not look for 
 a crop of apples until he has planted his trees with 
 their roots in the ground. He does not expect re- 
 sults in advance of a sufficing cause. In every case 
 he gives his first attention to that which is primary 
 and fundamental, knowing that this is the shortest 
 road to that final achievement which he has in mind. 
 
 Here in the passage for our study the Master was 
 showing his disciples how to map out their lives. 
 The first question he raised was, Where are the real 
 values in life? He insisted that they were within. 
 Many of the people of his day did not think so. They 
 maintained that the real values were in bams and 
 in banks and in stores where we find an abundance of 
 things. 
 
 One man of whom the Master spoke was straining 
 every nerve and sweating at every pore in his effort 
 to build big bams and fill them with things. When 
 he had all of bis bams filled with things, when he 
 had enough laid up to last him for a hundred years, 
 he said to himseK, " Soul, take thine ease. Eat, 
 
 S3 
 
54 THE EELIGION OF A LATMAN 
 
 drink and be merry." He was talking to his stom- 
 ach under the impression that he was addressing his 
 soul. The soul does not live upon things which are 
 stored up in bams. It lives by all the great words 
 which proceed out of the mouth of God. 
 
 The Master told the man that he was a fool, inas- 
 much as a man's life does not consist in the abundance 
 of the things he has. And then he said to his disci- 
 ples, " Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth 
 where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break 
 through and steal. Lay up for yourselves treasures 
 in Heaven, for where your treasure is there will your 
 heart be." 
 
 Treasures in Heaven ! He was not thinking about 
 the hereafter; he was not speaking about some 
 celestial abode into which men might enter when they 
 died. He was speaking to a group of young men; 
 he expected them to live for a long time, and he was 
 telling them what to do then and there. Lay up for 
 yourselves those character values, those qualities of 
 mind and heart, which make a man rich, gloriously 
 and permanently rich, at any time, anywhere. 
 
 " How much is that man worth ? " we often ask in 
 blunt fashion. As a rule we are not thinking of the 
 worth of the man — we are merely asking about the 
 value of the things he happens to own. This can be 
 readily ascertained from Bradstreet or from the 
 assessor's books, or from the man's return as to his 
 income tax. The worth of the man is another ques- 
 tion altogether; it turns upon the man's qualities of 
 mind and heart, upon the amount of good he has done 
 and the sort of character he has developed in the 
 
THE PRIMACY OP THE MOBAX VALTJES 55 
 
 process. He may in addition to the things he pos- 
 sesses be worth a great deal or, on the other hand, 
 he may with all his things not be worth enough to 
 pay for the powder and shot it would take to blow him 
 up. In every case the worth of the man is a question 
 of personality. 
 
 " How much did he leave ? " one man asked an- 
 other when they were speaking of the death of a 
 well-known citizen. " He left all he had," was the 
 reply. If that were true, then the man's life was a 
 tragedy. We have only a life estate in these things at 
 best — our tenure is insecure. If a man leaves all 
 he has, he arrives in the other world poor indeed. 
 One thing is secure, one thing a man is never com- 
 pelled nor allowed to leave behind, and that is him- 
 self. He takes his own qualities of mind and heart 
 vdth him wherever he goes. That very fact becomes 
 at once his highest reward or his sorest penalty. It 
 is heaven or hell for him to be compelled to spend an 
 eternity with the sort of men he has become. 
 " Therefore," Jesus said, " lay up treasures for 
 yourself in that realm of moral accumulation where 
 neither moth nor rust corrupt, where neither thieves 
 nor death can rob you." 
 
 He saw the people of his day all fussy and busy 
 over two questions : " What shall we eat ? " 
 "Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" The Master 
 cut short all that concern with his terse statement: 
 " The life is more than meat ; the body is more than 
 raiment." 
 
 Put first things first ! What shall I eat ? It is a 
 
56 THE EELIGION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 necessary question, but it is secondary. The first 
 question to be ansvrered is, Am I wortli feeding? 
 Is it important that I should be kept alive? Does 
 the world really need another man of my type ? Can 
 it afford to use good food to keep me going? This 
 question must take precjedence, because the quality 
 of a life is more important than the question of se- 
 curing meat to feed that life. 
 
 Wherewithal shall I be clothed? If I am going 
 into society I must put on something. But that 
 question also is secondary. Is it important that I 
 should go? Will society be any wiser, any better^ 
 any happier, because I am there ? The quality of the 
 inner life is of more importance than the question of 
 raiment. Therefore, in your whole quest of values, 
 put first things first; seek first that which is funda- 
 mental. 
 
 And life has a way of asserting its mastery over 
 things. It takes up material of all sorts and makes 
 out of it what it will. Here is a cow and sheep and 
 a fiock of geese feeding together in the same pasture. 
 They are all eating the same green grass. And there 
 before your eyes the grass is becoming hair on the 
 back of the cow, wool on the backs of the sheep, and 
 feathers on the backs of the geese. Life has its way. 
 The life is more than meat ; it compels the material 
 it uses to minister to its own particular line of ad- 
 vance. 
 
 Jacob Riis goes down to the lower East Side of 
 New York City, where there is dirt and vice and 
 crime. He does not become dirty or vicious or 
 criminal by his contact with those wretched facts. 
 
THE PEIMACY OP THE MOBAl VAXTJE8 57 
 
 He becomes all the finer year by year as lie battles 
 with those conditions. Jane Addams goes over to 
 Halstead Street, Chicago, where there are thieves and 
 thugs and harlots, and she lives there. She does not 
 sacrifice one jot of her own honor and purity in that 
 sorry situation. Her own womanhood shines out the 
 more resplendent by virtue of the heroic service she 
 is rendering. Life when it is aided and replenished 
 from above has its way. Therefore, lay up treasure 
 in that finer quality of life which is supreme. 
 
 The hour is coming swiftly when it will be seen 
 that all any man is worth is to be found in the good 
 he has done and in the character he has won. No 
 matter what Bradstreet says ! ISTo matter though the 
 Chamber of Commerce may adjourn on the day of 
 his funeral, and all the flags of the city may be at 
 half-mast ! All that the man is worth is to be found 
 in his personal qualities of mind and heart. All the 
 rest are mere things from which he is now separated 
 forever. " What I kept I lost," a rich man said, as 
 he stood before the Great White Throne, "What I 
 gave away I have now." As a matter of fact, aU 
 that a man is worth at any time is to be found in 
 those character values which the Master said were 
 supreme. Therefore, lay up your treasures in that 
 bank. 
 
 In the next place, the Master asked. How are these 
 values to be gained? By singleness of aim! No 
 man can serve two masters without getting things 
 mixed. He will either love the one and hate the 
 other, or he will hold to the one and despise the other. 
 
58 THE EELIGION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 He cannot serve God and Mammon. He cannot 
 make it the supreme business of his life to get money 
 by hook or by crook and make it the supreme business 
 of his life at the same time to serve God. The man 
 who deifies money until it stands before him saying, 
 " I am the lord that brought thee up — have no other 
 god but me," cannot at the same time serve the God 
 and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. There must 
 be one supreme aim and purpose which brings all the 
 minor interests of the man's life into subjection to 
 that intent, thus giving that life unity and direction. 
 
 The light of the body is the eye ; it is through this 
 door that all our impressions of the visible world 
 reach the inner consciousness. Therefore, if thine 
 eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. 
 You will see things as they are, in their right pro- 
 portions, and in their true perspective. 
 
 It is possible to push one eye badly out of place so 
 that you see double. The muscles which control the 
 eyes may be disordered, so that they no longer pro- 
 duce a single, definite image of what you see. A 
 man came out of his club one night where he had 
 been dined and wined — particularly wined — and a 
 friend was assisting him down the steps. " You will 
 get into the first one of the two cabs which you see 
 standing there," the friend said to him ; " the sec- 
 ond one is not there." In like manner, the moral 
 vision may be deranged until a man's moral percep- 
 tions are no longer clear-cut. He sees double, his 
 impression of the finer values is all blurred and con- 
 fused. Let your eye be single, simple, straightfor- 
 ward, that your whole inner life may be full of light. 
 
THE PKIMACY OB" THE MOEiAJL VALUES 59 
 
 It is just as William DeWitt Hyde put it to the 
 students at Bowdoin. 
 
 Live in tte active rather than the passive voice, in- 
 tent upon -what you can do rather than upon what may 
 happen to you. 
 
 Live in the indicative mood, not the subjunctive, con- 
 cerned with facts as they are rather than as they might be. 
 
 Live in the present tense, concentrating upon the duty 
 at hand, without regrets for the past or worry about the 
 future. 
 
 Live in the first person, criticising yourself rather than 
 condemning others. 
 
 Live in the singular number, caring more for the ap- 
 proval of your own conscience than for popularity with 
 the many. 
 
 And inasmuch as we must have some verb to conjugate 
 we cannot do better than to take the one we all used 
 both in Latin and in English, amo, "I love." I live in 
 the spirit of an intelligent good will that all the activities 
 of my life may be brought into a unity of purpose. 
 
 The real quality of a man's life is not always indi- 
 cated by his present achievements. It is not so 
 much what you have done, it is what you want to 
 do and mean to do that tells the story. It is not 
 what you are at this moment, it is what you want 
 to be and by God's grace intend to be that marks you 
 up or down on the books the angels keep. It is the 
 upward, outward, Godward reach of a man's aspira- 
 tion and resolve that gives him character. There- 
 fore Jesus urged upon his followers that simplicity 
 and definiteness of moral purpose which would bring 
 all their actions into harmony with the will of God. 
 
 When a half-dozen carrier pigeons are suddenly re- 
 leased, they may fly into the air and circle about in 
 
60 THE EELIGION' OF A LAYMAN 
 
 ■uncertain fashion for a time. They have been under 
 cover, they have lost their hearings. Presently the 
 homing instinct makes it clear to one of them which 
 way the goal lies and they are off, straight as a die, 
 to the place where they would he. When a man is 
 lost in the woods and does not. know in what direc- 
 tion the stream lies, on the banks of which he has 
 pitched his tent, the best thing he can do is to climb 
 the highest tree in sight. From that point of van- 
 tage he can look out and get his bearings. Then 
 when he comes down to solid earth every step will 
 be in the right direction, bringing him nearer to his 
 camp,- 
 
 The oflSce of religious faith is to lift a man's soul 
 above the immediate surroundings, which may hin- 
 der his outlook upon life and enable him to see 
 where the true values are to be found. Then by this 
 uplift which comes through prayer and worship he 
 begins to put one foot before the other in his daily 
 round with some definite moral purpose. Let your 
 eye be single, simple, sincere, that your inner life may 
 be full of light. 
 
 In the third place, the Master insisted that this 
 quest should be carried on without worry. " Be not 
 anxious," he said, " for your life, what ye shall eat, 
 or what ye shall drink, or what ye shall put on ! " 
 How timely his word was — it might have been 
 spoken yesterday. There are unfortunate people to 
 whom the barest means of subsistence become an oc- 
 casion for daily, hourly worry. Our hearts go out 
 to them in sympathy. The Master was not thinking 
 
THE PEIMACT OF THE MOEAL VALUES 61 
 
 of them. He saw about him, as we see to-day, many 
 people who are not objects of charity, but they are 
 worried within an inch of their lives over those ques- 
 tions of food and raiment. 
 
 What shall we eat? How much of it? How 
 costly shall it be? How much shall we spend 
 on the diningroom where it is served and on the 
 kitchen where it is prepared? How many servants 
 shall we keep to minister to our wants? How ex- 
 pensive shall we make the linen, the china, the silver, 
 and the cut glass we use in getting our food down 
 our throats ? This question of eating and getting the 
 biUs paid is a tremendous question for many people. 
 Yet eating is a simple matter : John Muir would 
 take a bag of bread, a piece of bacon, and a handful 
 of tea and go off into the Sierra E"evada Mountains 
 for a month, and he lived in health and strength to 
 a ripe old age. We have made eating unnecessarily 
 difficult with all our elaborate dishes which are a 
 peril alike to purse and to digestion. 
 
 And that other question, What shall we put on? 
 And what is still more vital, How will it look when 
 we get it on? How numerous and how costly shall 
 our garments be? What shall be the style and the 
 make of them ? How much of ornament in the way 
 of jewels, feathers, ribbons, furs, and the like shall 
 we wrap around these bodies of ours? And what 
 shall we put on in the way of houses, furniture, bric- 
 a-brac, and all the other trappings of ordinary life? 
 How costly shall the whole outer shell of life be 
 made? We must wear something for comfort and 
 for decency, but display has become the ruling idea 
 
62 THE EELIGIOW OF A LATMAIf 
 
 rather than comfort; and the costly, irritating habit 
 of display in the matter of dress has filled the hearts 
 of millions of people with fret and fuss in flat de- 
 fiance of the Master's word and of their own better 
 impulses. 
 
 Then to make his teaching vivid, he introduces one 
 of those striking paradoxes which are so common in 
 the Gospels. 
 
 Consider the ravens, they neither sow nor reap! They 
 have neither storehouse nor barn, yet God feeds them. 
 How much better are ye than the birds! Consider the 
 lilies, how they grow ! They toil not, neither do they spin, 
 yet I say unto you Solomon in all his glory was never 
 so well dressed as one of these wild flowers. If then God 
 so clothes the grass which to-day is in the field and to- 
 morrow is cast into the oven for fuel, how much more will 
 He clothe you ! O, ye of little faith, be not anxious say- 
 ing. What shall we eat or wherewithal shall we be clothed. 
 After these things do the nations of the world seek, and 
 your Heavenly Father knows that ye have need of all 
 these things. 
 
 Now what shall we make of all that ? Sweet and 
 beautiful ideals they seem to many a practical hard- 
 headed person, but utterly futile ! When I was read- 
 ing that lesson once in a church service I noticed a 
 real estate man and a grocer sitting in adjoining pews. 
 When I came to that verse the real estate man looked 
 over at the grocer as much as to say, " Imagine being 
 a lily in the real estate business ! " The other man 
 nodded back as much as to say, " Or a raven in a 
 grocery." And so those two men threw the whole 
 passage out into the aisle as being a piece of senti- 
 mentality uttered by an oriental dreamer, but en- 
 
THE PEIMAOT OE" THE MOBAi VALTJBS 63 
 
 tirely imsuited to the needs of practical men. It 
 might have been feasible in Palestine two thousand 
 years ago, they intimated, but it would not work 
 here in the United States of America to-day. Thus 
 men take the letter of Scripture which killeth and 
 miss the spirit of it which maketh alive. 
 
 The ravens do not sow nor reap. They were not 
 made to sow and reap — they do the things they were 
 made to do. They are true to the law of their being. 
 They function according to their own natures. They 
 fly to and fro, keen of eye and swift of wing, seeking 
 their meat from God, and in the great natural order 
 which enfolds them they are fed. They live out their 
 ravenhood without fret or fuss and God feeds them. 
 
 The lilies do not toil nor spin — they were not 
 made to toil and spin. They do the things they were 
 made to do. They function according to their 
 natures. They are true to the law of their being. 
 They live out their lilyhood. They reach down and 
 claim all that the soil has for them; they look up 
 steadfastly to receive the sun and rain and dew, and 
 so they are clothed with beauty. 
 
 Do that ! You were not made to be ravens, neither 
 sowing nor reaping; you were not made to be lilies, 
 neither toiling nor spinning. Do the things you 
 were made to do. Live out your manhood and your 
 womanhood. Be true to the law of your being. 
 Function according to your natures. Strive for self- 
 realization along the line of Divine Purpose for you. 
 Whatsoever your hands and your minds find to do, 
 do it well. Labor six days wisely and usefully, doing 
 all your work — it is the command of God. Rest 
 
64 THE EELIGIOlf OF A LATMAN 
 
 and aspire one day in seven. That also is the com- 
 mand of God. And you may rest assured that when 
 the men and women of any community are thus bring- 
 ing their lives into harmony with the will of God for 
 them, in the great abiding order which enfolds them, 
 they too will be fed and clothed. 
 
 Here is the principle: " Seek first the Kingdom 
 of God " and all these things will be added. The 
 question of food and raiment is no empty idle ques- 
 tion — the Heavenly Father knows that we have need 
 of all these things for comfort, for growth, for happi- 
 ness. But he would have all these questions in the 
 right order. Put first things first. Seek first the 
 sway and rule of the Divine Spirit in all your inter- 
 ests and affairs. And wherever that quality of life 
 is attained we may be sure that in their proper order 
 all things needed for life and growth will be added. 
 
 But here as everywhere the effort must be a social 
 effort. No man can do it all by himself and enter 
 into the full realization of the promise. Seek first 
 the Kingdom of God, the sway and rule of the Divine 
 Spirit in your own heart. Seek it at all those points 
 where your life impinges upon the lives of your 
 fellows. Seek it if you are an employer in your 
 treatment of those other lives which are bound up 
 with your own in that enterprise which enables you 
 to eat and drink. Ask yourself point by point what 
 the sway and rule of the Divine Spirit would mean 
 in wages and hours, in conditions of employment, and 
 in the distribution of values. Ask yourself, if you 
 are an employee, what the sway and rule of the Di- 
 
THE PEtMACY OP THE MORAL VALUES 65 
 
 vine Spirit would require of you in tlie use of time, 
 material, and machinery, which belong to the man 
 whose administrative and organizing ability brought 
 into existence that business which offers you a decent 
 chance to earn your bread. Seek the sway and rule 
 of the Divine Spirit in the particular place you hold 
 iu the organized life of the community. In these 
 common, everyday interests say, " Thy Kingdom 
 come! Thy Will be done here as it is done in 
 Heaven ! " And as surely as God lives when any 
 community of men and women are thus minded and 
 are thus striving, all things needed for life and 
 growth will be added. 
 
 There was a man once who was a general in the 
 British army. His name was Charles George Gor- 
 don. He had an illustrious career in South Africa, 
 in China, and in Egypt where he finally laid down his 
 life in the discharge of his duty. He was not worldly 
 wise. He took great risks and sometimes did things 
 which men esteemed fanatical. He was a religious 
 mystic, and he moved about with his head among 
 the stars even when the rest of his body was in the 
 garb of a soldier. 
 
 When he was in command of the garrison at 
 Gravesend below London, he became interested in the 
 ragged little urchins of the town. He opened a night 
 school for them. He secured the use of some vacant 
 lots where they could play cricket and have their own 
 football field. On Sunday he taught them to fear 
 God and honor the Queen and love their country. 
 He did so much for them that he won their everlast- 
 ing gratitude. One morning, when the guard was 
 
bt> THE EELiaiON OF A LAYMAN 
 
 changed, the soldiers noticed that some urchin had 
 written in chalk on the outer wall of the fort these 
 words, " God bless the Kurnel." The boy spelled it 
 as I have indicated, but the soldiers knew what the 
 boy meant, and God knew. He blessed .the Kumel. 
 After Gordon had rendered his notable service the 
 British government sent to Khartoum and took his 
 body and carried it back to London to bury it in St. 
 Paul's Cathedral. When you go there to look at the 
 inscription on his tomb this is what you find, " A man 
 who at all times and everywhere gave his strength to 
 the weak, his sympathy to the suffering, his sub- 
 stance to the poor, and his heart to God." He 
 deserved his epitaph. He deserved his tomb in St. 
 Paul's. He was a man who sought first the King- 
 dom of God, and he was loved throughout the Eng- 
 lish-speaking world and beyond. 
 
 Here is the ground of our assurance ! " Seek first 
 the Kingdom of God — it is your Father's good pleas-- 
 ure to give you the Kingdom." He fijids his su- 
 preme joy in establishing the sway and rule of his 
 spirit in your ovra. inner life and in the relationships 
 you sustain to those about you. He finds his supreme 
 joy in aiding you in the realization of your highest, 
 dearest hopes. This guarantees success. 
 
 When any man is faced vn*ong, he has the whole 
 moral order and the will of his Maker against him. 
 When he is faced right, he has the wind and the tide 
 with him. He has the moral order and the power 
 of God steadily backing him up in his supreme en- 
 deavor. Put first things first. Make the moral 
 
THE PEIMACY OF THE MOKAL VALTJHS 67 
 
 values supreme in your rating. Seek first the King- 
 dom, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you 
 the mastery of all those forces and materials needed 
 for your permanent good. 
 
 We have fallen upon times when the realities of 
 war have made the laymen of the world impatient 
 touching all the frills of religion. They do not care 
 a straw whether a man says tweedle-dee or tweedle- 
 dum when he points out the intricacies of his theo- 
 logical belief. They do not care very much whether 
 a great deal of water was used or only a little when 
 the man was baptized. They remember that it was 
 John the Baptist himself who said, " I indeed baptize 
 you with water " — it was all he could do — " One 
 Cometh after me mightier than I whose shoes I am not 
 worthy to unloose; He shall baptize you with the 
 Holy Spirit." And when a man has been baptized 
 with the spirit of justice and mercy, with the spirit 
 of upright living and of unselfish service, water bap- 
 tism is of slight importance. And if he has not been 
 thus baptized with the Divine Spirit, no amount of 
 water will save him. 
 
 The laymen of our day care very little for those 
 petty, sectarian squabbles which have held Christian 
 people apart. They are saying as was said of old, 
 " One is our Master, even Christ, and all we are 
 brethren." And in'that high mood of fraternal feel- 
 ing they stand ready to take hold together to build 
 that kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy in 
 which all good men whatever their church affiliation 
 alike believe. 
 
THE GOiA.1, OB" MOEAI, EFFOET 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount is made up of passages 
 of rare beauty. They are finely phrased and they are 
 rich in content. One can hardly name any three 
 consecutive chapters in the Bible which are so often 
 quoted. Here are the Beatitudes, and the Lord's 
 Prayer, and the Golden Rule, all contained in this 
 one address ! Here are the best things to be found 
 in print on the spirit of trust and on the habit of 
 obedience ! Here are verses which throw light upon 
 the sources of happiness and upon the vital nature of 
 character, upon the simplicity of a good life, and 
 upon the primacy of the moral values! 
 
 But where does this address on fundamentals bring 
 us out ? What is the net result ? What does it hold 
 before us as the goal of moral effort ? Here in this 
 final chapter we find that question answered. The 
 goal of effort is a life fraternal, filial, fruitful and 
 stable. Let me speak of those four points as they 
 are here declared! 
 
 The right life must be fraternal. " Judge not that 
 
 ye be not judged. Why beholdest tiiou the mote in 
 
 thy brother's eye and considerest not the beam in 
 
 thine own eye? How canst thou say, Let me puU 
 
 out the mote from thine eye, when a beam is in thine 
 
 68 
 
THE GOAL OP MOEAI. EFFORT 69 
 
 own eye ! First oast the beam out of thine own eye, 
 then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote from 
 thy brother's eye. For with what judgment ye 
 judge, ye shall be judged, and with the same measure 
 ye mete it out, it shall be measured to you again. 
 Therefore, whatsoever ye would that men should do 
 to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law 
 and the prophets." Her© is the rule of fraternity 
 which takes in the words, the deeds and the very 
 thoughts of each man's life ! 
 
 "Judge not" — the Master was not suggesting 
 that we should give up the habit of moral discrimina- 
 tion. He would not have us think of thieves and 
 liars on the one hand and of men honest and true on 
 the other as being all alike. He would not suggest 
 that men should think that Belgium, France and 
 Great Britain, who were true to their pledged word 
 in the treaties they had signed when the hour struck, 
 and Germany, who was false to her word, were all 
 alike. That would be an act of moral insanity — 
 and the Master was pre-eminently sane. 
 
 Furthermore, this would not be in the line of His 
 own action — and we may be sure that here as every- 
 where He practiced what He preached. He judged 
 men. He said to some of the leading churchmen of 
 His day, who were false at heart, " Woe unto you 
 hypocrites." He told His disciples to beware of false 
 prophets, who inwardly were ravening wolves. He 
 had not taken leave of His own moral senses. He 
 knew the difference between black and white, and 
 was never disposed to mix His colors until nothing 
 should be left but a muddy gray. 
 
YO THE EELIGION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 But in that vivid fashion, which was characteris- 
 tic of Him, He warned men against the harsh, cen- 
 sorious habit of mind. The cynical, suspicious, 
 sneering spirit, which is always looking for some- 
 thing to condemn, is deadly. When the Master 
 said " Judge not " he was saying what we would or- 
 dinarily express in the words, " Do not he critical." 
 " Because a thing is strange or new to you, because it 
 does not fall in with your ideas, do not condemn it 
 off-hand, but try first of all to appreciate it with sym- 
 pathy. Make the best of everything and of every 
 person." 
 
 There is a certain recoil of judgment upon the one 
 who cherishes habitually the critical, cynical mood. 
 With what judgment we judge, we will surely be 
 judged. When anyone says, " They all do it," the 
 world feels sure that he does it. When he says, 
 " Every man has his price," the world is sure that 
 he has his price. The hard, wooden way of looking 
 upon the shortcomings of others, making no allow- 
 ance for human weakness, for mitigating circum- 
 stances, for long-continued temptation, brings inevi- 
 tably a hard, unsympathetic nature within, which is 
 fatal to the fraternal spirit. 
 
 With the same measure ye mete it out, it shall be 
 measured^ to you again. Men get as they bring. 
 The rebound from any situation is determined 
 mainly by what you throw against it and how hard 
 you throw it. The reaction you secure from any set 
 of agents, physical or spiritual, is determined in large 
 measure by what you introduce into that combination 
 by your own mood and action. The harsh, censo- 
 
THE GOAL OF MORAL EFFOE.T 11 
 
 rious spirit, which is forever calling down fire from 
 Heaven to bum men up, will be burnt up itself. If 
 any man be overtaken in a fault, you who are spirit- 
 ual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness, 
 considering thyself lest thou also be tempted. This 
 is the right mood rather than the spirit which goes 
 about condemning others right and left. 
 
 Then to make it striking the Master used that ex- 
 traordinary illustration of the mote and the beam. 
 The mote was a mere bit of chaff or dust which might 
 lodge in the eye, while the beam was a part of the 
 framework of a house which no man could possibly 
 get into his eye. It was a monstrous simile and He 
 used it to caricature the officious action of the man 
 who overlooked his own big faults in his eager desire 
 to condemn the lesser sins of his fellows. The Mas- 
 ter was speaking out of doors to a multitude on a hill- 
 side, and He had to use a large brush. With this 
 touch of irony. He pictured those censorious indi- 
 viduals who went about with forty foot beams stick- 
 ing out of their own eyes, but offering in supercilious 
 fashion, to take specks out of the eyes of their fel- 
 lows. It would be so apparent that if such an one 
 were looking for evil to condemn, he could find it in 
 abundance much nearer home. Let him sweep his 
 own dooryard first! 
 
 The Master summed up the whole spirit of frater- 
 nal action in that one fine phrase, which we call the 
 " Golden Eule." Whatsoever ye would that men 
 should do to you, do that to them. When you are 
 tempted to hurt another life, ask how you would like 
 it yourself. When you have a man or a woman in 
 
72 THE RELIGION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 your power because his daily bread depends upon the 
 employment you offer, aak yourself how you would 
 like your own methods if the teetering board were 
 turned end for end. When you are tempted to loaf 
 on your job or to waste material or to break machinery 
 by throwing a monkey-wrench into the cog wheels or 
 by sheer carelessness, ask yourself how you would 
 like it if the business were yours and you were re- 
 sponsible for making it profitable so that you could 
 pay wages and live out of it yourself. When you are 
 tempted to an act of vice, ask yourself how you would 
 like to see a woman for whom you care, a daughter, 
 a sister, a sweetheart brought to that position because 
 there are men in the world vile enough to pay her 
 to do it. You would cut off your right hand first. 
 
 In every situation when you are moved to injure 
 a man's good name, or to break up the peace of his 
 home, or to crush the effort he is maldng to carry on 
 some honest enterprise, ask yourself how you would 
 like it. You would not like it at all. Your whole 
 soul would rise up in rebellion against the meanness 
 of it. Then let your soul rise up and forbid such ac- 
 tion in advance. Do unto others as ye would that 
 they should do to you if the conditions were reversed. 
 
 Men talk sometimes in grand, swelling terms about 
 " the Fatherhood of God " and " the brotherhood of 
 man." They speak in glowing fashion of " liberty, 
 equality, fraternity," as a trinity of great ideas. 
 iBut fraternity means something. It is not an idle 
 mood, a pretty sentiment, a flow of fine feeling after 
 dinner. The word must be made flesh and dwell 
 among us full of grace and truth. The language of 
 
THE GOAL OF MORAL EITOET 73 
 
 fraternal feeling must be translated into action if it 
 is to have value. The spirit of fraternity means fair 
 dealing, a steady r^ard for the interests of others, 
 a profound respect for human personalitj whatever 
 its station. 
 
 " Slow to anger, plenteous in mercy." Put the 
 speed limit on your condemnations, give an added bit 
 of power to the merciful consideration you are will- 
 ing to show toward those who have failed. When an 
 honest merchant is patient with some thieving clerk, 
 shielding him from exposure and allowing him time 
 to make restitution and recover lost ground ; when a 
 man of truth is patient with some liar that he may 
 win him to a life of probity ; when parents who have 
 given the best of their lives for the good of their 
 children find that love flaunted by the wrongdoing 
 of those whom they hold dear, but keep on loving 
 them, not according to their deserts but according to 
 their needs; when a pure woman forgives the grave 
 misdeeds of an unfaithful husband that she may see 
 him. again a man of honor — in every such case, the 
 spirit of fraternal consideration wins out over the 
 spirit of condemnation. It is in a fair way to be 
 blessed of God to moral victory all along the line. 
 This is the course of action for which the Master was 
 pleading when He bade us do unto others as we would 
 that others should do unto us, were the conditions the 
 other way about. 
 
 The right life is filial. The Master would have 
 us make the horizontal relations of these lives of ours 
 right, and in order that they may be kept right, he 
 
Yi THE EEMQIOW OF A LATMAIT 
 
 would have the perpendicular relations right. Let 
 every man strive to live as a child of God. Let 
 there be an intimate personal relation between the 
 finite spirit of the man and the Infinite Spirit of the 
 Father. 
 
 " Ask and ye shall receive ; seek and ye shall find ; 
 knock at His door, and it shall be opened." Every- 
 one that asketh — it is in the present tense, as indi- 
 cating continuous action! Every asking man be- 
 comes a receiving man. Every seeking man becomes 
 a finding man. Everyone who goes along knocking 
 at all of Heaven's doors becomes a man to whom 
 those doors are opened. The Master was not pic- 
 turing a single effort and its instant result. He was 
 picturing a certain habit, a settled disposition, a 
 continuous spiritual process. Let that way of per- 
 pendicular fellowship be kept open by a constant pro- 
 cession of requests going up, and there will be a pro- 
 cession of gracious answers coming down. 
 
 How could a boy be on such good terms with his 
 father as to make it possible for that father to do 
 for him what he would like to do, if the boy never 
 spoke to his father ! How could a husband and wife 
 be on such terms as to make possible the fullest meas- 
 ure of wedded happiness, if they never spoke to each 
 other! How can a prayerless man, who never 
 speaks to his Father in Heaven, develop that filial 
 spirit toward God which is the heart of character! 
 Therefore, because you cannot be at your best without 
 it, ask and keep on asking ; seek and keep on seeking ; 
 knock and keep on knocking. The man of prayer 
 reaches up with an arm of faith, which is like a 
 
THE GOAL OF MOKAi EiFFOET 76 
 
 trolley laying hold of that current of power which is 
 from above. It enables him to move ahead horizon- 
 tally with that finer form of energy from on High. 
 
 The warrant for asking with assurance is based 
 upon certain broad, human considerations familiar to 
 everybody. If a son ask bread of any of you that is 
 a father, would you give him a stone ? If he asked a 
 fish would you give him a serpent ? If he asked an 
 egg, would you give him a scorpion? Notice how 
 accurate the Master is! It is a son who is asking, 
 one living in the filial spirit toward his father, not 
 a careless, disobedient vagabond ! 
 
 The son is asking in every case for good things. 
 He is asking for the plain necessities, bread, fish, 
 eggs, not for the luxuries and dainties of life. Let 
 any soul ask in the filial spirit for the plain necessi- 
 ties, for forgiveness and renewal, for guidance and 
 sustenance for his inner life, and he will not ask in 
 vain. The Master was arguing from the less to the 
 greater. If we being evil know how to give good 
 gifts to our children, how much more will the One 
 who ia not evil give good things to them that ask 
 Him. 
 
 He rests his whole case upon that great cardinal 
 tmth of His gospel, that God is our Father. " To 
 us there is but one Grod, the Father." Sin is the act 
 of a vdlful son saying to his father, " Give me the 
 portion of goods that falleth to me," and then taking 
 his life off into a far country. Repentance is the act 
 of a sinner who comes to himself and says, " I will 
 arise and go to my father." Duty is the sense of lov- 
 ing compulsion which a son feels from within when 
 
76 THE EEXIGIOlf OB" A XAYMAN 
 
 he says, " I must be about my father's business." 
 Prayer is the act of a child speaking to his father — 
 " When ye pray say, Our Father." Death is the act 
 of a child, weak, sick, tired, falling back into the 
 everlasting arms of affection — " Father into thy 
 hands I commend my spirit." 
 
 You can box the whole compass of religious belief 
 if you choose, and you will be guided unerringly by 
 the fact that the true magnetic needle in the soul of 
 man points ever to that cardinal truth of the Divine 
 Fatherhood. It is the strongest deterrent to evil do- 
 ing that one can name. If I had become drunken, 
 dissolute, or dishonest in my college days, the laws 
 of the state might have placed me behind the bars. 
 But a much more potent consideration would have 
 been the thought of the grief and shame I would have 
 brought to my father yonder in the old home by an 
 evil life. It is an awful thing for a man to lie or 
 to steal, to be unclean or ungodly, because God is 
 his Father. The filial spirit in the heart of the 
 man is the surest guarantee of a right life. 
 
 "I say to thee, do thou repeat. 
 To every man thou mayest meet, 
 That he and we and all men move 
 Under the broad canopy of love. 
 
 "And one word more, they only miss 
 The winning of that final bliss 
 Who will not count it true that love. 
 Blessing not cursing, rules above; 
 And in that love we live and move." 
 
 The right life is fruitful. Here are " life's al- 
 ternatives," as one of my students suggested! Two 
 
THE GOAL OF MORAL EFFOBT 77 
 
 modes of action, the good and the bad! Two ways 
 of life, the narrow and the broad! Two sorts of 
 prophets, the true and the false! Two results, de- 
 struction and salvation ! One line of effort leads to 
 the fruitful life, bringing forth all the fine fruits of 
 the spirit which the Apostle named, and the other 
 results in a corrupt life, bringing forth evil fruit. 
 Let every man choose for himself ! 
 
 " Straight is the gate and narrow is the way that 
 leadeth unto life." It takes definite, conscientious 
 obedience to the truth to keep the way of life. You 
 may remember the word which Jesus used for sin. 
 It was taken from the practice of archery which was 
 conmion in that day. It meant literally " missing 
 the mark." The sinner is a man who sends his ar- 
 rows anywhere and everywhere except into the target. 
 Sometimes he shoots too low, as he yields to the 
 coarse sins of the fiesh. Sometimes he overshoots the 
 mark in his pride and conceit. Sometimes he shoots 
 off to one side or the other through lack of aim. 
 He misses the mark. 
 
 This is the way those familiar passages would read, 
 if they were translated literally. The prodigal came 
 back from the far country saying, " Eather, I have 
 missed the mark before Heaven and in thy sight — 
 I am no more worthy to be called thy son." The pub- 
 lican knelt there in the temple saying, " God be mer- 
 ciful to me, a man who has missed the mark." 
 When Jesus went to dine with Zaccheus, the people 
 murmured saying, " He has gone to be the guest of 
 a man who has missed the mark." When that woman 
 of the street crept into the house of Simon and cried 
 
78 THE EELIGION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 at the Master's feet until she washed them with her 
 tears, the Pharisees said, " This man, if he were a 
 prophet, would have known what manner of woman 
 this is, for she is one who has missed the mark." 
 Jesus was called the friend of publicans and of men 
 who had missed the mark. He said of Himself, " I 
 come not to call the righteous, but men who have 
 missed the mark, to repentance "-, — that is to try 
 again and see if they could not make better shots. 
 
 Sin is missing the mark, and a man may do it by 
 firing off in any one of a hundred different direc- 
 tions. Broad is the way and wide is the gate that 
 leads to destruction and the moral fools of earth are 
 finding them all. But one can only hit the mark by 
 having aim, purpose, direction in his moral effort, 
 for straight is the gate and narrow is the way that 
 leads to life. 
 
 How sane the Master was in His insistence upon 
 concentration of effort! You cannot drive a nail 
 in to the head by hammering around all over the 
 board. You must hit the nail on the head and keep 
 hitting it on the head until you have sent it home. 
 You cannot sink a shaft as a mining engineer by dig- 
 ging around all over the side of the mountain. You 
 must dig in one place and keep on digging in one 
 place until you have sunk your shaft to the vein of 
 ore. In moral effort the same sound principle holds. 
 You can only win as you conform to those great prin- 
 ciples of right living, which are as definite and as un- 
 yielding as the statements of the multiplication table. 
 Here is the Word of One who knew what was in men 
 and needed not that any should tell him. " If thou 
 
THE QOAI. OB MORAL EFFOffiT Y9 
 
 wouldst enter into life, keep the Commandments. 
 This do and thou shalt live. Enter in at the straight 
 gate which leadeth to life." 
 
 He saw the weakness of those who are controlled 
 by mood, whim and sudden impulse. He saw the 
 futility of those lives which are governed by conven- 
 tion and usage. They rise or fall with easy uncon- 
 cern to the moral level of those with whom they hap- 
 pen to be thrown. He indicated His own better 
 method. — " I come not to do Mine Own Will, but 
 the Will of Him Who sent Me." He had the sense 
 of mission. He was building His life evenly and 
 steadily into that vast moral process which reaches 
 from the hour when the morning stars sang together 
 on to the Great Consummation. He was knitting up 
 all His activities with that Divine Purpose which is 
 to bring the City of God, the ideal social order, down 
 out of Heaven and set it up in actual operation here 
 on this common earth. 
 
 But the whole process was more vital than the 
 method of outward conformity to law. The man 
 who has a filial and fraternal heart is brought into 
 such vital fellowship with God that his life becomes 
 fruitful, as a good tree is fruitful. He brings forth 
 good deeds, as a good tree brings forth good fruit — 
 he cannot otherwise with a filial fraternal heart 
 within. His natural, unstudied, inevitable output 
 of conduct is wholesome and reliable. 
 
 Here is the ultimate test of each man's quality of 
 life — " By their fruits ye shall know them ! Not 
 by the teehnical correctness of a man's theological 
 opinions ; not by the exactness of his performance in 
 
80 THE RELIGION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 / 
 
 matters of ritual; not by the wealth of mystical feel- 
 ing he may be able to show upon occasion, but by the 
 finer fruitage of all this in upright living and un- 
 selfish service. 
 
 Not by their roots, nor by the solid trunk of wood, 
 nor by the wide-spreading branches, nor by the 
 abundance of leaves, nor by the show of blossoms, 
 which are only lovely promises of something which 
 may come later ! By their fruits, by what they are 
 finally able to give off to meet the hunger of the 
 world that waits to be fed — this was to be the test I 
 Let every life be filial and fraternal at heart that it 
 may also be fruitful, for this belongs to the goal of 
 moral effort. 
 
 The right life must also be stable. You hear it 
 said of a certain man, " You always know where to 
 find him." It is high praise. He is not here to-day, 
 morally speaking, and somewhere else to-morrow. 
 He is always here. He is not pious and upright one 
 day in the week and then a rascal for the other six. 
 He is not honest out in the open where all can see 
 and then corrupt on the sly. He is not kind and con- 
 siderate in his home and among his friends, and then 
 cruel as a Hun in his cormnercial relations. He has 
 that moral stability which carries him straight 
 through on the line of probity and honor. You al- 
 ways know where to find him. 
 
 The Master used an illustration which pitched the 
 ball right over the plate. "He that heareth these 
 sayings of Mine and doeth them, I will liken unto 
 a wise man who built his house upon a rock. The 
 
THE GOAL OF MOEAX, EFFORT 81 
 
 rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew 
 and beat upon that house." The hard tests came, 
 as they always come, soon or late. They come not by 
 our own choosing nor from forces within our control. 
 They come from those powerful forces of earth and 
 sky, the wind, the rain, the floods, which are not 
 within our control. But this wise man's house stood, 
 because it was built right — it was founded upon 
 obedience to the Will of God. 
 
 " He that heareth these sayings of Mine and doeth 
 them not, I will liken unto a fool who built his house 
 upon the sand." The same hard tests came — they 
 come to every man — the rain descended, the floods 
 came, the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it 
 fell. It was built wrong, because it was founded 
 upon moral disobedience. When a man's house is 
 built right and has a good foundation, the power of 
 gravitation, which keeps the planets true to their 
 courses, operates to hold that house in place. When 
 a man's house is built wrong and rests upon the sands 
 of disobedience, the same power of gravitation pulls 
 it down. 
 
 Germany built her house upon the idea of the 
 weakness of the world's conscience. She had no 
 moral sense, and she thought that other nations had 
 none. She supposed that Belgium would accept a 
 bribe and deny her honor by allowing German armies 
 to pass through her borders unhindered, in order the 
 more readily to strike France. Germany thought 
 that when Belgium was outraged. Great Britain would 
 stand by and look on, regarding her agreement about 
 defending the neutrality of Belgium as " a mere scrap 
 
82 THE EELIGION OF A LATMAK 
 
 of paper," Germany thought that the United States, 
 when she saw those other free nations being crippled 
 and broken in the resistance they were offering to 
 international lawlessness and crime, would not fight. 
 She thought that the American people loved dollars 
 more than they loved righteousness. 
 
 Germany found out in the autumn of 1918 that 
 she had built her whole structure on the sand. The 
 rains descended, and the floods came, and the winds 
 blew and beat upon her house for four long hard 
 years and it fell. She thought that she was intelli- 
 gent, but when she built upon the weakness of the 
 world's conscience and upon the supremacy of brute 
 force, she showed herself a moral fool. The will to 
 power, the disregard for the rights of others, the open 
 contempt for moral principle, and the flaunting of the 
 spiritual values in human life will never stand in a 
 world ruled by the Judge of all the Earth Who does 
 right. The storm of wind and rain and fearful flood 
 may last for four terrible years, but the infamous 
 structure is doomed to destruction. And that was 
 what beat Germany, as it will beat any nation which 
 undertakes to bid defiance to the moral sense of man- 
 kind and to the Will of Almighty God. 
 
 Here as everywhere the Master laid His emphasis 
 upon sound action. ISTot everyone that saith unto 
 Me, " Lord, Lord," ever so many times and in all the 
 beautiful ways which an elaborate ritual might sug- 
 gest — " iN'ot everyone that saith unto Me, Lord, 
 Lord, shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that 
 
THE GOAL OF MORAL EFFOiRT 83 
 
 doeth the Will of My Father." Not he that saith, 
 but he that doeth ! 
 
 " Many will say to me in that day " — many, for 
 the moral fools in His days were numerous and they 
 are not all dead yet — many will say to me in that 
 day, " Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy l^ame 
 and in Thy Name cast out devils, and in Thy Name 
 done many wonderful works ? " That is what they 
 will say. Then the Master, knowing that the whole 
 underpinning of their lives was framed out of dis- 
 obedience, will say to them, " I never knew you ! 
 Depart from me ye that work iniquity ! " 
 
 Here then was the goal of moral effort as He saw it. 
 It was a flying goal and no man on earth will ever 
 completely overtake it. It will lead him onward and 
 upward, forever onward and upward. The Master 
 would have every man strive for a life filial in its 
 attitude toward God, fraternal in its relations with its 
 fellows, fruitful in its ability to produce that which 
 meets the world's need, and stable in its power to 
 stand unhurt through storm and flood. 
 
 What a sermon it was as the Master preached it ! 
 He knew where to go when He was ready to utter 
 it. With a message like that within His heart and 
 upon His lips. He could not stand inside the 
 walls of any synagogue or temple. The place would 
 not have held it nor Him. He went forth into the 
 open with the sky for a ceiling and a mountain for 
 His pulpit, and the broad bosom of Mother Earth to 
 hold the congregation. 
 
84 THE EEXIQION OF A LAYMAN 
 
 It is " the Sermon on the Mount," and where in all 
 this world can a layman better look for a basis for his 
 own faith and practice ! Where can he find a surer 
 word of guidance for his thought and action in this 
 present world, or clearer light upon his path into 
 that unseen world which awaits us all ! 
 
 And it came to pass when Jesus had ended these 
 sayings, the people were astonished at His teaching, 
 for He taught them not as the scribes, who had 
 learned their lessons out of a book, but as one having 
 the authority of immediate, first-hand knowledge of 
 spiritual reality. 
 
 THE END 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OT AMEBIOA