DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 DURHAM, N. C. 
 
i 
 
 ane 
 Ant 
 + 
 
ek! ape een og Tee 
 
The Methovist Pulptt 
 
 THE ROYALTY OF JESUS 
 
Jidrwal Kaeo 
 
THE ROYALTY 
 OF JESUS 
 
 , By 
 
 NAPHTALI LUCCOCK, D.D. 
 
 PASTOR UNION METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 
 ST. LOUIS, MO. 
 
 138862 
 
 CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
 NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS 
 
SERMON 
 
 . THE RovALtTy oF JESUS, - - - 
 
 III. 
 
 <4 
 
 VIII. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 . THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST, - - 
 
 THE POWER OF A SURRENDERED 
 Ee = UF - = = = 
 
 . “THE Face oF JESus CHRIST,” - 
 . “THE Brook IN THE WaAy,” . 
 
 . THE GOSPEL FOR AN OPULENT 
 
 CIVILIZATION, - : x . 
 
 . THE CRY OF THE DISINHERITED, - 
 
 THE SonG oF MOSES AND OF THE 
 Meter ere as ee 
 
 PAGE 
 
 141 
 
fey 
 
 = 
 -" 
 he 
 
ft, 
 THE ROYALTY OF JESUS. 
 “Behold your King.”—Joun x1x, 14. 
 
 THESE are the words of Pilate as he presented to 
 the multitude the Man of Galilee, wearing the pur- 
 ple robe and the crown of thorns. Pilate is one of 
 the most tragic, yet pathetic, figures of history. 
 He saw his duty with sunlit clearness, and was 
 stirred by a mighty impulse to do it at any Cost. 
 For a moment the glory of Rome sits upon his brow 
 like a halo. Man is superb in battle; never more 
 so than when the champion of the innocent and 
 oppressed against the clamors of a mob and the 
 malignant forces of evil. On those lonely moral 
 heights of personal choice, where every one must 
 win or lose his soul, Pilate wavered. ‘The glamour 
 of this present world threw its spell upon him. He 
 hesitated; he began to trifle with duty, to evade, to 
 shuffle, and to compromise. Every device quickly 
 failed. Slowly the coils of destiny tightened about 
 
 9 
 
10 Tur RoyaLty oF JESUS. 
 
 him, until, forced to a decision, he surrendered his 
 imperative conviction, rejected the light within, and 
 did that deed of shame that has made his name 
 infamous. Had Pilate received a flashing premo- 
 nition of that record that will stand to the end of 
 time, “Born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under 
 Pontius Pilate,” think you he would have been 
 braced and girded even to a heroic death in defense 
 of Jesus? Certainly not. Heaven’s supreme em- 
 phasis is the clear conviction of right or wrong. 
 It can do no more for any one than to make him 
 see and feel that conviction mightily. The light 
 within is as sure to the soul that will heed it as the 
 touch of the polar star upon the magnetic needle, 
 holding the path of truth and duty. If one reject 
 it, no other sign will be given; he will go, like Pilate, 
 unarrested to judgment and to shame. This is the 
 dark warning of Pilate’s act; in the crisis of moral 
 choice, any compromise with wrong, however veiled 
 or specious in the beginning, ends at last in a full 
 surrender to evil and in crucifying Christ Himself. 
 
 Thrice Pilate pays tribute to the moral majesty 
 of Jesus,—once in his judicial declaration that he 
 found no fault in Him; once in his dramatic con- 
 fession, when, washing his hands before the mul- 
 titude, he declared, “I am innocent of the blood of 
 
 ad | ‘ue 
 ba 
 
THe RoyaLty oF JEsus. II 
 
 this just person ;” and in the scene before us, where, 
 in bitter scorn of the Jews, he proclaims Him a 
 King. 
 
 In that hour there was a strange contrast 
 between the lone and friendless One, robed and 
 crowned in hollow mockery, and the majesty of 
 Tiberius Cesar on the throne of the world; more 
 wonderful still is the contrast we behold between 
 the humiliation of Jesus in Pilate’s hall and the 
 Royalty of Jesus as it steadily unfolds through the 
 centuries, extending its spiritual dominion over all 
 lands and beyond all seas. Let us trace some of the 
 evidences of this royalty, and behold our King. 
 
 I. Jesus reigns by the Force of Spiritual Reali- 
 ties. 
 
 Often this old world has been stirred by spir- 
 itual impulses as the mighty sea is lifted into tidal 
 waves. And these impulses make history; for 
 humanity only rises to its best under the sway of 
 strong moral convictions. The Crusades were such 
 a stirring and lifting of humanity, and out of them 
 came the destruction of feudalism and the dawn of 
 the Modern Era. The planting of the dominant 
 civilization in this Western Hemisphere was due 
 to a spiritual impact. The Pilgrim Fathers, like 
 Israel in Egypt, were driven into the wilderness by 
 
12 Tue RoyaLty OF JESUS. - 
 
 a moral conviction. It was spiritual freedom they 
 sought, first of all. 
 
 Now, in all great movements of history towards 
 truth, righteousness, and liberty, Christ lives and 
 reigns. His Gospel is steadily destroying all false 
 philosophy, and is emancipating, stimulating, and 
 energizing the human, mind to every form of noble 
 achievement. Human history, it has been happily 
 said, can be summed up in four letters: B, C, and 
 A, D. The ruling ideas of the modern world are 
 to be traced directly to Jesus of Nazareth. His 
 teachings are constructive; they do not leave things 
 as they are, but reconstruct them into a higher and 
 diviner order. 
 
 How fascinating the play of constructive forces 
 in the story of human progress! When Columbus 
 discovered America, he reconstructed the science 
 of Geography. When Newton announced the prin- 
 ciple of gravitation, he reconstructed the science of 
 Astronomy. ‘The Gospel of Jesus, however, with 
 its new vision of God; with its sense of the worth 
 of man as a spiritual personality ; with its new ideas 
 of righteousness, love, and service; with its spirit- 
 ual dynamic,—is steadily reconstructing the world. 
 It is making all things new in human life,—religion, 
 politics, commerce, industry, education, art, litera- 
 
THE Royatty oF Jesus. 13 
 
 ture, social life, and service; in fact, the whole realm 
 of human interest and activity. 
 
 The influence of Jesus is the most potent force 
 in the world to-day, and is active in all lands. It 
 is giving to pagan nations the boon of freedom, of 
 power, and of progress; it is softening the barbar- 
 isms of the world’s legislation ; abolishing its cruel 
 slaveries, its private duels, its aggressive wars, its 
 loose divorces, its murderous dramshops; it is en- 
 nobling jurisprudence, establishing courts of arbi- 
 tration, maintaining rights of person, of home, of 
 property, of labor, of trade, of conscience, of man- 
 hood. Jesus of Nazareth is steadily marshaling 
 human powers, disclosing human potentialities, | 
 transforming human characters. He is the center 
 and master of the spiritual forces that move the 
 world, and will never be dethroned. There is a 
 Norse legend that one of the gods of the old myth- 
 ology challenged a stranger to run a foot-race. The 
 god was defeated in the race. The stranger’s name 
 was Human Thought. True enough, human 
 thought has outrun the old mythologies and the old 
 religions. Brahmanism, for instance, can not en- 
 dure the test of true physical science. Mohammed- 
 anism, that shot its crescent across the sky like a 
 flaming meteor, and conquered, in one century, a 
 
a eas Ye tocats ee 4 
 
 14 Tue RoyaLty oF JESUS. 
 
 wider scope of territory than the Roman legions 
 subdued in twelve centuries, halts and disintegrates 
 before a sound political philosophy. But human 
 thought will never outrun Jesus of Nazareth. He 
 is from above. Sometimes, in your evening walk, 
 when you look ahead to the rising ground, where 
 the city street straggles out into the country, in the 
 gathering darkness, you can scarcely distinguish 
 the street-lights from the stars; but on your near 
 approach the stars mount to their native heavens 
 and look down upon you, clear, shining, and serene. 
 It is so with the Gospel of Jesus; however high the 
 conceptions of men may rise, the teachings of Jesus 
 are infinitely beyond them, like the unfailing stars. 
 
 Yes, as the old indictment ran, “There is another 
 King, one Jesus,” and in Him is the hope of the 
 race. Apart from Him, the dreams of philosophers 
 and poets of an ideal human state of justice, peace, 
 and love, vanish like mist. Apart from Him, the 
 rallying-cry of human progress, “Liberty, equality, 
 and fraternity,” is false and empty. But in Him 
 the goal of the race will be realized, the most 
 glorious hopes of the human heart fulfilled. 
 
 “These things shall be: A loftier race 
 
 Than e’er the world hath known shall rise, 
 
 With flame of freedom in their souls, 
 And light of knowledge in their eyes. 
 
Tue Royalty oF JESUS. 15 
 
 New arts shall bloom of loftier mold, 
 And loftier music thrill the skies, 
 And every life shall be a song, 
 When all the earth is Paradise.” 
 
 II. Jesus reigns because He is the True Bond 
 of Unity between the Nations. 
 
 Long ago, the grand old schoolmaster, Socrates, 
 in a moment of enthusiasm, catching the true heart- 
 throb of humanity, announced himself as a citizen 
 of the world, anticipating the Roman who ex- 
 claimed, “I also am a man, and nothing human is 
 foreign to me.” ‘The lonely apostle, standing on 
 Mars’ Hill, proclaimed the great truth toward which 
 the Greek and the Roman aspired: “He hath made 
 of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all 
 the face of the earth.”' The unity of the human 
 face in a great fellowship, wherein the various 
 nations shall co-operate in mutual sympathy and 
 service for the good of all and each, according to 
 the gift of each, is 
 
 “One far-off divine event 
 To which the whole creation moves.” 
 
 Hugh Miller used to recognize the footprints of 
 a Creator in the record of the rocks; but we may 
 go even farther, and feel the heart-throbs of a 
 Father in the distributed bounty of Nature. There 
 is a hint of the Gospel in Geography; a revelation, 
 
16 THE Royaty oF JEsus. 
 
 in some degree, of the Divine purpose of “peace 
 and good will” toward the race. God has made 
 the very ends of the earth mutually dependent upon 
 each other for their full development. ‘Take an 
 inventory of yourself, of the things ministering to 
 your comfort, and you will discover that you are 
 a citizen of the world in a most surprising sense. 
 One country contributes the cotton of your ward- 
 robe; another, the silk; another, the linen; your 
 table bears the rich fruit and products of all suns 
 and climes. Now, if you could catch glimpses of 
 the vast company of human beings who serve you, 
 preparing these products and passing them on to 
 you: the toilers in the fields and mines, the work- 
 men in factories and shops, the merchants in stores 
 and offices, the army of transportation on land and 
 sea,—in such a vision you would discover yourself 
 bound by the most subtle bonds to the millions of 
 earth. The very flowers of the field signal this 
 gracious fellowship. Our Lord once made the lily 
 of Galilee speak of the Divine care of life. Enter 
 now into Shaw’s Garden, or into the Phipps Con- 
 servatory, and read the language and gospel of the 
 flowers. There all nations meet and exchange gifts 
 and courtesies. The jessamine is there, bringing 
 the beauty and good will of far-away India, the 
 
 7 
 
Tue RoyaLty OF JESUS. 17 
 
 heliotrope from Peru, the dahlia from Mexico, the 
 tulip from Turkey, the carnation from Italy,—in 
 fact, the flowers of all lands join in the shining 
 prophecy of a coming human fellowship. ‘They 
 shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into 
 it.” Into the Kingdom of God and Man, into the 
 world-wide fellowship of love and service, all 
 nations shall enter, bringing their distinct treasures 
 of hand and mind and heart. The flowers have 
 already arrived, and every other gift is on the 
 way. 
 
 There is a hint of the Gospel also in Commerce. 
 Far be it from me to suggest that there is a saving 
 principle in commerce to prevent all wars and pre- 
 serve the peace of the world. Often commerce 
 separates rather than unites, and precipitates sharp 
 collisions; yet there is a beneficent potency in the 
 heart of commerce. Co-operation is the to-morrow 
 of competition. These rasping commercial disor- 
 ders among the nations of the earth but indicate 
 the tuning of an orchestra which will, in due time, 
 pour forth the grand oratorio of peace and good 
 will. God is teaching us that the nations are not 
 always to stand apart, like angry pools, but are to 
 be connected rather, like a chain of lakes, nourish- 
 ing and sustaining each other. Commerce fore- 
 
 2 
 
18 THE Royalty oF JESUS. 
 
 shadows a beneficent purpose in human history. It 
 is breaking up the isolation of nations; it is sustain- 
 ing, by railways, through canals and on ocean path- 
 ways, a current of communication and exchange 
 between all lands; it is exerting a restraining hand 
 upon national prejudices, and upholds the balance 
 and poise of human interest. a. 
 
 There is a hint and prophecy of the Gospel in 
 Science. Pasteur makes a great discovery in his 
 laboratory, and in a short time its beneficent light 
 and healing are felt throughout the world. A 
 great practical invention, like the steam-engine or 
 the telegraph, is not a local affair, but a planetary 
 boon. 
 
 The same holds true of Literature and Art. A 
 great book, or a great picture, speaks not to a single 
 nation, but to the heart of the world. Occasionally 
 we hear one say of this nation or that, “It is suffi- 
 cient within itself.” God never made a nation 
 sufficient within itself for all things. In the matter 
 of mere physical existence, it may be independent; 
 but for all higher development it is widely depend- 
 ent. ‘Without Shakespeare, Wagner, and Ra- 
 " phael,” said one of the wealthiest men of the 
 world, “my life would be poverty-stricken.” God 
 has made His gifts of genius to the race a form 
 
Tue RoyaLty oF JESUS. 19 
 
 of large human ministry and a bond of unity by 
 widely distributing them in time and place. Hu- 
 manity is like the sea: on the surface it breaks into 
 nations as into waves, but in its hidden depths it 
 is one, and moves to the universal note, however 
 and wherever struck. 
 
 Even in political aspirations, upheavals, and 
 revolutions, we discover this prophetic note of 
 larger fellowship. When Alexander the Great 
 marched toward the conquest of the world he was 
 inspired by a dream of the unity of the race. When 
 Czsar reduced the nations of Europe to a common 
 political level, and introduced one law and order 
 for the known world, he aimed at fulfilling human 
 destiny. But these attempts at universal authority 
 and dominion failed. They lacked the true organ- 
 izing principle and a sufficient dynamic. Guizot 
 declares, in his “History of Civilization,’ that 
 ancient civilizations failed because they were domi- 
 nated by a simple interest, and that modern civiliza- 
 tion endures because of varied interests. The 
 generalization misses the mark. The stability and 
 power of progressive civilization is not found in the 
 poise and balance of various interests, but in the 
 growing dominion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Pente- 
 cost dates a new era in human history. In the new 
 
20 Tue RoyaLty oF JESUS. 
 
 vision and new life of that day is to be found the 
 fountain-head of all that is great and enduring in 
 our modern world. Z 
 
 The gifts of civilization come to us through the 
 pierced hands of our ascended Lord, and from 
 the impact of His spirit on the race. Once Cole-- 
 ridge blew a thistle-down from his hand, and re- 
 marked, “The tendency of that thistle-down is 
 toward China, but it will never arrive; the grip of 
 the earth is too strong upon it.” There are many 
 forms of human culture and endeavor having noble 
 tendencies toward the ideal order, science, art, 
 literature, commerce, government; but they will 
 never arrive; the grip of human selfishness and sin 
 is too strong for them. In the Gospel of Jesus 
 alone is there power strong enough to overcome 
 all arresting and disintegrating forces. Pentecost 
 was a signal that our Lord had arrived and taken 
 possession of His own, that all power had been 
 given unto Him in heaven and in earth. Pentecost 
 was a prophecy, also, that humanity, in due time, 
 would arrive at its appointed goal, and become a 
 true kingdom of God on earth. When our Lord 
 said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world,” 
 He by no means meant that it had nothing to do 
 with the things of this world, but that its authority 
 
Tur Royalty oF JESUS. 21 
 
 and dynamics were from above; and that it would 
 deal with all in a new and spiritual way. 
 
 There is a unity of a watch in which all of its 
 various parts are riveted together. Such was the 
 Roman Empire, a finely articulated system held 
 together by magistrates and armies. ‘There is a 
 unity of the solar system in which the planets re- 
 volve around a common center and in mutual har- 
 mony. Such is the kingdom of God, a free move- 
 ment of human life under the law of love. Its 
 highest bond of unity is not something without, a 
 creed or an organization, but rather something 
 within, the mind and spirit of Christ our Lord. 
 
 Ill. Jesus reigns in the Steady Aspirations of 
 the Race. 
 
 The world is coming to apprehend with increas- 
 ing clearness that the hope of the race is in Jesus 
 Christ and in His Gospel of love and life. Human 
 progress has always been directed by some dominant 
 personality. We sum up an age or an era in a man. 
 We can not think of Rome apart from Cesar; we 
 can not think of England apart from Cromwell. 
 That plain farmer from the Fen country laid broad 
 the foundations of constitutional liberty throughout 
 the world. You have seen the Declaration of 
 Independence so written that the features of Wash- 
 
22 THE RoyALty OF JESUS. 
 
 ington are plainly visible in it; his personality was- 
 one of the dominant forces in determining the 
 character of the Republic. Well, slowly, but cer- 
 tainly, civilization is taking on the character and 
 spirit of Jesus Christ. In that early morning Pilate 
 uttered another prophecy: “Behold the man.” 
 Steadily through the ages the new type of humanity 
 is being realized—the new man in Christ Jesus and 
 the new man is slowly, but surely, making a new 
 world. With every generation the Kingship of 
 Jesus Christ, the impact of His spirit in human 
 affairs throughout the world, become more distinct. 
 Humanity is increasingly stirred and swayed by 
 His personality and the power of His Gospel. One 
 of the most interesting views on the continent, to 
 me, is that of the rapids above Niagara Falls. The 
 waters seem so jubilant, they run so swiftly, and ~ 
 sing and flash with joy before they leap the mighty 
 barrier that shuts them from the sea. So through- 
 out the world, the signs increase that Christianity 
 is gathering and marshaling for some great forward 
 movement, in which separating barriers will be 
 forever past. Many things indicate this: the inter- 
 national touch, the arrow-flight of commerce, the 
 break-up of heathenism, the ferment of the nations, 
 the deep hunger of the spirit for health and hope 
 
Tue RoyaLty oF JESUS. 23 
 
 and life. The waters are strangely stirred; not an 
 angel, but the King Himself draws near. 
 
 I am not oblivious to the discordant elements 
 in human affairs; but Christ is on the throne. The 
 very tumults of men will but hasten the glorious 
 consummation. Sometimes we feel the shock of 
 political and social earthquakes; upheavals reveal- 
 ing the primitive rock upon which society has 
 always rested ; socialistic upheavals, arraying capital 
 and labor in irreconcilable conflict, like oxygen and 
 fire; Nihilistic upheavals, the wild presage of a 
 universal deluge which would blot out at once the 
 family, the school, the Church, and all religion and 
 civilization. But there is no need of alarm: these 
 things are but incidental to all true world building. 
 Fortified iniquities and age-long tyrannies must 
 occasionally be blasted away, that a better era may 
 be ushered in. They say that the Bay of Naples, 
 one of the most beautiful sheets of water on the 
 earth, is the cup of an extinct volcano. At last 
 the internal fires died down, the glowing lava ceased 
 to flow, clouds rolled back, and, lo! the blue Medi- 
 terranean Sea had covered the black, cavernous 
 depths with its own bosom, and the placid waters 
 reflected all the splendors of the heavens. It will 
 be so with human civilization. Always across the 
 
24 THE ROYALTY OF JESUS. 
 
 storm and through the darkest night there is an 
 assuring voice: “Let not your heart be troubled; 
 ye believe in God, believe also in Me.” Christ is 
 on the throne. 
 
 IV. Jesus reigns enthroned in the Hearts of His 
 Followers. 
 
 “Just a little deeper, Doctor, and you will find 
 the emperor,’ remarked a French soldier to a 
 surgeon who was probing his wound. What a 
 striking expression of loyalty,—another enthroned 
 within, exercising full and unchallenged dominion 
 over the life! The incident will give insight into 
 the noble expression of St. Paul: “I am crucified 
 with Christ; nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but 
 Christ liveth in me.” What a strange paradox, 
 Christ living and reigning within, yet the man 
 himself living a truer, wider, and more potent life 
 than ever before! Yet in this paradox we find the 
 wondrous secret of the kingdom of God. St Paul’s 
 great confession implies absolute faith in Jesus 
 Christ as King and Lord. It implies perfect loyalty 
 to Him throughout all the ranges of one’s being; 
 it implies complete identification with Him in will, 
 purpose, and desire; it implies constant spiritual 
 apprehension of Him in the fullness of His love 
 and grace and power. 
 
Tue Royatty oF Jesus. 25 
 
 This is true Christianity, and nothing less can 
 be. “If a man have not the spirit of Christ, he is 
 none of His.” One of the most significant facts 
 of history is St. Paul’s transfer of loyalty from 
 himself and from the world to Jesus Christ as King 
 and Lord. He did it there under the searching light 
 of the Damascene way, in that sublime choice, 
 “Lord, what wilt Thou have me do?” From that 
 hour his life became new in spirit, in aim, in pur- 
 pose. How immensely his spiritual personality, 
 Christ living in him, has told upon this world! 
 It was apparent at once in Antioch. ‘The disciples, 
 we read, “were called Christians first in Antioch.” 
 This is most significant; in that wicked and disso- 
 lute city where the vices of civilization and barbar- 
 ism met, the new type of character was first dis- 
 tinctly recognized and named. Purity, righteous- 
 ness, and love were so apparent in the lives of 
 these men and women that they said, “They re- 
 produce the spirit and life of their Master: they are 
 Christians.” Now, St. Paul was one of the leading 
 spirits of this Church at Antioch. His pure, true 
 life, his clear testimony, and his ageressive zeal 
 were first recognized there. And so the new type 
 of character began to appear everywhere; in the 
 army, in Cities, in villages, men and women, who 
 
26 THE Royatty oF JESUS. 
 
 lived in vital union with Jesus Christ as King and 
 Lord, and who brought all things in life to the 
 test of His approval, and the glorious company of 
 witnesses, have been constantly increasing through 
 the centuries. 
 
 The question arises, is this a possible or a prac- 
 tical ideal of life in this world? Well, it is not 
 an easy one, not a popular one; but is both possible 
 and practical. On occasion it may involve the 
 sharpest collisions. “These that have turned the 
 world upside-down are come hither.” At times, 
 the truth as it is in Jesus is more explosive than 
 dynamite, more lifting than an earthquake. It 
 was supreme loyalty to Jesus as King and Lord 
 that disintegrated the Roman Empire, broke up 
 feudalism, and launched the Mayfower, and that 
 is still impelling humanity forward and upward. 
 The Christian spirit is not destructive, but con- 
 structive, in human society. Christ came into the 
 world, not to destroy politics, business or social life, 
 but to purify and regulate them. The very genius 
 of Christianity is in the apostle’s words, “We ought 
 to obey God rather than man.” Life’s true im- 
 perative is ethical and spiritual. Through free in- 
 telligence, an enlightened conscience, a righteous 
 will, and a heart aglow with love, Christ lives and 
 reigns in human affairs. 
 
THe Royalty oF JESUS. 27 
 
 The earth has a twofold motion,—one on its 
 own axis, and another in a celestial orbit around 
 the sun. Only as it is loyal to both motions does 
 it attain its singing harmony, its fruitfulness, and 
 radiant beauty. It is so with human life: it requires 
 an earthly motion, turning on its own axis, amid 
 daily activities and enterprises; but it requires also 
 a celestial orbit around a heavenly center, to attain 
 its fullness of blessedness and joy. Now, the reign 
 of Christ brings human life into heavenly relations 
 and into heavenly places; He lifts the soul and 
 all that. concerns it, into the great orbit of right- 
 eousness and love, and thus the kingdom of God 
 is fulfilled on earth as it is in heaven. Prophets 
 and apostles have discerned from afar the glory of 
 the victorious King. “He shall have dominion 
 from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends 
 of the earth.” 
 
 “The Kingdoms of this world have become the 
 kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He 
 shall reign for ever and ever.” 
 
 “Alleluia! for the Lord God omnipotent reign- 
 eth!” 
 
 “BEHOLD youR Kine!” 
 
1 
 THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 
 
 “And of His fullness have all we received, and 
 grace for grace.’ —JOHN I, 16. 
 
 SomE years ago, at Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, 
 a student entered the room of the saintly Dr. Nevin 
 and found him bowing in tears over his Bible. 
 “Here is a passage,’ said the devout scholar, as 
 he turned to the student, “which has been, in a 
 good measure, sealed to me for years, but my God 
 has graciously opened it to me in this hour.” I 
 am sure many of us feel that the prologue of St. 
 John’s Gospel is, in a good measure, sealed to us. 
 We can not follow the eagle flight of the apostle’s 
 thought. But occasionally God opens unto us 
 glimpses of its wonderful vistas of grace and mercy. 
 
 “Of His fullness have we all received.” “His 
 fullness,’ who can measure that? We know some- 
 thing of the bounty of the earth, nourishing the 
 teeming millions of living creatures that have moved 
 
 upon it through countless generations. We know 
 28 
 
THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 29 
 
 something of the tireless and tumultuous sea, for 
 unknown ages pouring its solemn music in un- 
 broken cadence around the world. We know some- 
 thing of the exhaustless treasure of the sun, flood- 
 ing the world, through ages upon ages, with warmth 
 _and beauty and the potency of multitudinous life. 
 But back of the earth and sea, back of the flaming 
 light of stars and suns, is He who gave to all 
 visible things existence and form. Creation itself 
 is but a flashing symbol of His treasure, whose 
 fullness “filleth all in all.” “All things were made 
 by Him, and without Him was not anything made 
 that was made.” “Lo, these are parts of His ways; 
 but the thunder of His power, who can under- 
 stand?’ He is able to do exceeding abundantly 
 above all that we can ask or think.” 
 
 And that radiant phrase, “grace for grace!” 
 What treasure it implies of knowledge, of growth, 
 of power! At first the expression seems far away 
 and elusive, too much the language of rapture for 
 our commonplace human life. Grace for sin we 
 can understand: “Let the wicked forsake his way, 
 and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him 
 return unto the Lord, for He will have mercy upon 
 him, and unto our God, for He will abundantly 
 pardon.” Grace for human need is quite within 
 
30 Tue RoyaLty oF JESUS. 
 
 our horizon: “My God shall supply all your needs 
 according to the riches of grace in Christ Jesus ;” 
 grace for death, we can appreciate: “Yea, though 
 I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, 
 I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me, Thy rod 
 and Thy staff, they comfort me;” but “grace for 
 grace” leads us into a wider orbit and into growing 
 realms of blessedness and joy. “O, the depth of the 
 riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” 
 
 Possibly, as we meditate, the fire may burn 
 within us, and the sealed Word may open to the 
 brooding heart like a morning-glory to the sun, or 
 like the bush which Moses saw suddenly become 
 aflame with the glory of God. 
 
 I. Through Jesus Christ the Soul rises into the 
 Victorious and Triumphant Life. 
 
 Human nature is stirred by at least four great, 
 masterful passions,—the passion to possess, the 
 passion to rule, the passion to know, and the passion 
 to be. The last, the passion to be, I am persuaded, 
 is the deepest, the most imperative, the sublimest 
 passion of the soul. True, we may awake to it 
 late enough, but it is always there at the inmost 
 center cf our being, that eternal human quest, that 
 undying hunger and thirst after righteousness. It 
 is the soul’s true recognition of itself 
 
Tue FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 31 
 
 The play of these master passions in human 
 hearts and in human history is “one touch of nature 
 that makes the whole world kin.’ 
 story of Eden is neither strange nor far away. 
 
 b 
 
 To possess: that 
 
 The forbidden fruit; how near it is, how good and 
 desirable it seems, how full and fair of promise! 
 “And I did eat;” daily the tragedy of clamorous, 
 overwhelming appetite is played out around us to 
 the last act of sin and shame. Who has not heard 
 the gates of some fair Eden close in the wake of 
 disobedience? To rule: it was the passion for do- 
 minion that led the hosts of Alexander into the 
 heart of the East, that drove Czsar’s thundering ~ 
 legions beyond the Alps, that, under Napoleon, 
 threw all Europe into the mad dance of death. 
 To know: the passion for knowledge pushed the 
 ships of Columbus over the Western sea, and 
 steadily thrusts expeditions into the frozen North 
 to wrest the secret of the earth from the mighty 
 bulwarks of ice and snow. ‘To be: the passion to 
 be, to overtake one’s ideal of excellence, to realize 
 one’s noblest thought and aim, reveals at once the 
 glory and the pathos of human nature. Our likeness 
 to God and our immeasurable distance from Him is 
 the secret of our deepest woe, and the spring of our 
 highest endeavor. It was the passion to be that 
 
32 Tue Royalty oF JESUS. 
 
 kindled the altar-fires of religion, and built the tem- 
 ples of faith that mount heavenward in minaret and 
 spire and dome. Man, it has been said, is haunted 
 by the ideal. This witness is true, for “there is a 
 light that enlighteneth every one that cometh into 
 the world.” No matter how far he may go astray, 
 the light never altogether dies out. Byron exclaims, 
 
 “Ours is a false nature, 
 *T is not in the harmony of things.” 
 
 Where did he learn that but from his own heart? 
 Browning’s lines also suggest life’s true impera- 
 tive,— 
 
 “To man propose this test; thy body at its best, 
 How far can it project thy soul on its lone way?” 
 
 And Shelley bears witness also,— 
 
 “Nature, in silent eloquence, proclaims 
 That all her works fulfill the law of love,— 
 All save the outcast, man.” 
 
 “The outcast, man,’—is not that an echo of a 
 troubled soul? 
 
 Tennyson, in the prayer of one of his characters, 
 voices the wail of St. Paul,— 
 
 “OQ for a man to arise in me 
 That the man I am might cease to be!” 
 
THE FULLNESS oF CHRISt. 33 
 
 “O, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me 
 from the body of this death?” It is only when one 
 has a vision of true selfhood, and seeks to rise to 
 it, that the grip of evil within him, his impotence 
 and wretchedness, fully appear. “To will is indeed 
 present with me,”—the ideal clear, distinct, impera- 
 tive and approved,—“but how to perform I know 
 
 ? 
 
 not.” And yet how imperative is the moral ideal? 
 That pilgrim there in India, measuring with his own 
 body the entire distance to the sacred city of Ben- 
 ares, a thousand miles or more, falling full length 
 on the highway, hour after hour and day after day, 
 is seeking the moral ideal. But he will not find 
 peace at Benares. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius, 
 “the consummate flower of Stoicism,” seeking to 
 live there in the palace the royal life of the spirit, 
 and writing his brave and immortal thoughts, recog- 
 nized the worth of the moral ideal, and agonized 
 toward it, but did not fully attain it. It is said that 
 Mr. Franklin, under the pressure of the moral ideal, 
 resolved to overtake it and wrote on a new card the 
 names of the virtues, and checked his moral defi- 
 ciencies by punching a hole opposite the appropriate 
 virtue. After a few months he found the white 
 card full of holes, and threw it away in disgust. 
 “How to perform I know not.’”’ Such is universal 
 3 
 
34 Tue RovaLty oF JEsus. 
 
 experience. But is there no hope? Is man to be 
 forever defeated in his highest aspirations? There 
 is hope, but only through our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 The secret of the victorious life is not in education, 
 not in legislation, not in painful discipline, not in 
 a new environment, helpful as these may be, but in 
 anew heart. “Ye are saved by grace, through faith, 
 and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” 
 “What the law could not do”—any sort of law— 
 “in that it was weak, God, sending His Son in the 
 likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin 
 in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might 
 be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but 
 after the Spirit.” “Thanks be unto God who giveth 
 us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” “To 
 as many as received Him, to them gave He power 
 to become the sons of God.” What an amazing 
 statement !—“‘power to become the sons of God.” 
 Human progress is always a process of receiving. 
 Sunlight, passing through. empty space, neither 
 lights nor warms it. Only the rays received, or, in 
 other words, intercepted, give up their treasure. 
 Steam has been a fact ever since heat was applied 
 to water, but it was only when the mind of Watt 
 received, intercepted the significance of the fact, that 
 it became potent in the world. The electric current 
 
THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 35 
 
 has passed around the earth since Creation’s morn- 
 ing, but it was only yesterday that the mind of man 
 received, intercepted, and utilized the marvelous 
 power. It is so with Christ: it is only as He is 
 received, intercepted, appropriated, that He becomes 
 the power of God unto salvation and all spiritual 
 triumph. 
 
 To many, Christ is but a man, a teacher, an 
 example, an ideal. They do not receive His potency. 
 There is no intercepting faith to make light and 
 healing possible. “The light shineth in the darkness, 
 and the darkness comprehended it not.’ When the 
 broken-hearted father cried out in agony for his 
 child, “If Thou canst do anything for us, have 
 mercy on us and help us,” and Christ made answer, 
 “If thou canst believe’—intercept, appropriate—to 
 such an one all things are possible. Such is His 
 answer to every soul; according to your faith, your 
 power to receive, so be it unto you. How we limit 
 the Holy One! It is a weakness of the best of men. 
 Turn now to the Book of Numbers, and read the 
 story of the giving of the quails in the wilderness. 
 God said to Moses that he would give flesh to the 
 people for a whole month. At that amazing prom- 
 ise Moses apparently lifts his hands in protest, as 
 though God had, in an unguarded moment, spoken 
 
36 THE ROYALTY OF JESUS. 
 
 hastily and beyond His power to perform. “The 
 people among whom I am are six hundred thousand, 
 and Thou hast said, I will give them flesh to eat 
 for a whole month. Shall the flocks and the herds 
 be slain for them?” One can almost hear God laugh 
 as He answers: “Is the Lord’s hand waxed short? 
 Thou shalt see, now, whether My word shall come 
 to pass unto thee or not.” “And there went forth 
 a wind from the Lord, and brought quails from the 
 sea, and let them fall by the camp, a day’s journey 
 on this side the camp and a day’s journey on the 
 other side of the camp, and two cubits high, upon 
 the face of the earth.” Doubtless, as Moses stood 
 there surrounded by a wall of fluttering wings and 
 looked into the living sea of God’s bounty, he was 
 ashamed of his unbelief, and all doubt of the Divine 
 power and Divine faithfulness fled away forever. 
 May the vision of the Divine fullness and the Divine 
 faithfulness be ours! God’s word always comes to 
 pass to receiving, intercepting faith. He meets the 
 greatest emergency in human life or experience 
 promptly, and, if need be, overwhelmingly. We 
 continually limit Him, however, in His dealing with 
 us, by doubting His word and “the riches of grace 
 in Christ Jesus.” 
 
 True, it is written, “He is able to make all grace 
 
 hal Ns de Bae 
 
THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 37 
 
 abound toward you.” Now, we readily believe that 
 Abraham on Mt. Moriah might receive such a prom- 
 ise, or that St. Paul in the third heavens might ap- 
 propriate it; but we imagine that the special and 
 exceptional conditions of our particular cases take 
 us quite out of its range. But the promise is to 
 you. “The promises of God are yea and amen, in 
 Christ Jesus.” “It pleased the Father that in Him 
 should all fullness dwell.” Gravitation acts in every 
 place impartially : so through Jesus Christ, our risen 
 Lord, all the fullness of God, His wisdom, His 
 power, His love, come into action at any point of 
 time, or space, or need, or degree. The secret of 
 the higher life, of the abundant life, is in the ap- 
 prehension of the fullness of Christ, and an appro- 
 priation of it through instant and intercepting faith. 
 
 Franklin, by means of his kite and key, made a 
 simple connection with the heavens. One suggested 
 recently, as a dream, that possibly, from the highest 
 mountains of earth, a magnet might be discharged 
 upward in space until it penetrated an electric ocean, 
 _ and, being held there suspended, the earth might 
 be brought in touch with exhaustless treasure. A 
 mere fancy, perhaps; but in the realm of the spirit 
 the dream has become a reality. The highest 
 heavens have been entered by One who abides there 
 
38 THE Roya.ty OF JESUS. 
 
 forever, and through whom the human need of earth 
 has been brought in touch with exhaustless grace 
 and power. “He hath ascended up on high; He 
 hath obtained gifts for men.” Pentecost was the 
 signal that our Jesus had arrived at the right hand 
 of the Majesty on high, and had entered into posses- 
 sion and administration of all the resources of God 
 in our behalf. ; 
 
 John has a way of vitalizing his record with 
 living experience. After writing in his Epistle, 
 “Behold what manner of love the Father hath be- 
 stowed upon us, that we should be called the sons 
 - of God,” he broke out in jubilant testimony, “And 
 we are;” so, in the words of our meditation, he 
 records the testimony and experience of the com- 
 pany among whom he dwells, and we also may 
 share that experience. “Of His fullness have all 
 we received, and grace for grace.” 
 
 II. In Christ Jesus the Christian Character 
 attains Symmetrical Development. 
 
 A few years ago, Henry 
 
 ” 
 
 “And grace for grace. 
 Drummond wrote a stimulating and helpful book on 
 “The Greatest Thing in the World—Love.” A 
 book equally stimulating and helpful might be 
 written on “The Rarest Thing in the World— 
 Poise.” We speak of “all-around men,” and Ten- 
 
Tue FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 39 
 
 nyson sings of the Iron Duke as “one who stood 
 four-square to all the winds that blow.” Well, it 
 is only as we draw largely upon our imagination 
 and affections that we can speak so of any one. 
 Most people are like the leaning tower of Pisa, 
 somewhat inclined in one fashion or another from 
 a true perpendicular, or, at least, like Giotto’s Tower 
 in Florence, unfinished, still lacking a crowning 
 grace. God has implanted deep within us something 
 of His own sense of order, of harmony, of beauty, 
 of perfection. We can not rest content in anything 
 partial or incomplete. When Charles Lamb re- 
 marked of Coleridge that he was “an archangel 
 slightly damaged,” he was under the mark, for 
 human nature bears the Divine image; Divine ideals 
 are its standards, and the beauty of holiness its goal. 
 “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which 
 is in heaven is perfect.” Christian perfection is not 
 one of formal obedience to ruled points, like that 
 of the Pharisee, but, like that of the Father, a per- 
 fection of love, a Christ-filled life, flowing out into 
 all goodness, all beauty, all service. “Therefore, 
 leaving the principles of the doctrines of Christ, let 
 us go on unto perfection.” The beauty of holiness 
 is not simply a culture through knowledge merely ; 
 it is something more than self-mastery, attained 
 
40 THE Royatty oF JESUS. 
 
 through painful discipline: it is a fullness of power 
 and life, attained through the mediation of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. “And of His fullness have all we 
 received, and grace for grace.” 
 
 “Grace for grace.” The symmetry of human 
 character has always been one of the noble ideals ~ 
 of the race. “Nothing in excess,” is a maxim as 
 venerable as that other counsel of wisdom, “Know 
 thyself.” It was one of the regulating principles of 
 ancient literature and life. The philosophy of Aris- 
 totle and the poetry of Horace ring with it. Certain 
 of our own poets also have given happy expression 
 to this ideal. Tennyson sings: 
 
 “Self-knowledge, self-reverence, and self-control,— 
 These three lead life to sovereign power.” 
 
 And most happily Shakespeare says, in “Troilus 
 and Cressida :” 
 
 “Take but degree away, untune that string, 
 
 And hark! what discord follows; each thing meets 
 In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters 
 
 Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, 
 And make a sop of all this solid globe.” 
 
 The Golden Mean, however, is but a shadow of the 
 Golden Rule: the one is a measured protection of 
 life through prudence and discretion; the other is 
 Christ coming into full action in a human life, and 
 
THe FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 41 
 
 lifting it into the freedom and royalty of love. The 
 lofty ethics of the Sermon on the Mount are only 
 possible to him who has access to the resources of 
 Christ; for the secret of the victorious life is in ~ 
 coming to Christ constantly, instantly, and in con- 
 tinually receiving of His fullness, grace upon grace. 
 
 True symmetry of character is only attained in 
 a fine poise of noble qualities. It is said that 
 Paganini could get tolerable music from one string. 
 Few succeed in the undertaking, though many at- 
 tempt it. On the other hand, Wagner was com- 
 pelled to invent new instruments to get all the 
 harmonies and discords out of him. It requires the 
 full orchestra, wind instruments, stringed instru- 
 ments, and brass instruments, and the full chorus of 
 true and balanced voices, to bring out the wondrous 
 power of music to exalt, to move, and to melt the 
 soul. Instrument fulfills instrument, voice supple- 
 ments voice, “grace for grace.” 
 
 St. John, in giving the dimensions of the Holy 
 City, indicates also the ideal human character. “The 
 city lieth four-square; the length and the breadth 
 and the height of it are equal.” The driving energy, 
 the human scope and sympathy, and the aspiration 
 of life must be in just proportion. In a similar 
 harmony, the Prophet Micah sums up human ob- 
 
ee ns om 
 + 7 : 
 
 42 Tur Royalty oF JESUS. 
 
 ligations: “What doth the Lord require of thee, 
 but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
 with thy God?” How this ideal of symmetry, the 
 just poise of noble qualities, shines throughout the 
 Word. “Righteousness and judgment are the habi- 
 tations of His throne.” “Mercy and truth are met 
 together, righteousness and peace have kissed each 
 other.” “Truth shall spring up from the earth, and 
 righteousness shall look down from heaven ;” “grace 
 for grace.” 
 
 There is an element of justice in all mercy, and 
 an element of mercy in all justice. Sometimes 
 wisdom and authority are most potent through the 
 grace of silence. After God had given the Ten 
 Commandments, “speaking out of the midst of the 
 fire, of the cloud and thick darkness, with a great 
 voice,” we read, “And He added no more.” How 
 divine it is to know when to pause! Many a good 
 purpose is defeated through multitudinous direction 
 and detail. When our Lord, at Nazareth, had fin- 
 ished reading the gracious invitation of the prophet, 
 He closed the book; for the next sentence would 
 have struck a note of vengeance, and the note of 
 vengeance was not due then. With what grace our 
 Lord mingled holiness and mercy and judgment as 
 He silently wrote in the sand while the woman stood 
 
Tue FuLLNEss oF Curis’. 43 
 
 before Him, “a guilty thing surprised,” but broken- 
 hearted, and her accusers glared upon them both 
 like beasts of prey. Now, it is the thought of John 
 that, through the fullness of Christ, His disciples 
 can truly interpret any situation in human life, and 
 adequately meet it in speech, in action, or in en- 
 durance. Turn now to the thirteenth chapter of 
 First Corinthians, and read the same Gospel,—love 
 enthroned fulfilling every law of human relationship, 
 not according to any thumb-rule of ethics, but 
 through a spirit of joyous self-sacrifice. See love 
 passing into all the beauty of manifold grace and 
 service, as a ray of light breaks into the splendors 
 of the rainbow. “Love suffereth long and is kind, 
 doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her 
 own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil. Love 
 beareth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all 
 things.” “Grace for grace.” 
 
 Zeal, the apostle tells us, is a good thing, but 
 only when tempered with knowledge. The brother 
 who mistakes his prejudice for his conscience, may 
 be sincere and firm, yet all the more, on that account, 
 troublesome. “Speaking the truth in love.” Can 
 the truth ever be adequately spoken apart from love? 
 
 2 
 
 “Yes, mamma,” a child said; “you have the words 
 
 the lady spoke, but not her tone.” Love alone can 
 
44 THE RoyaLty OF JESUS. 
 
 give the tone to act or speech. Listen to the gra- 
 cious counsel of St. Peter: “Add to your faith vir- 
 tue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, 
 temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to 
 patience, godliness; and to godliness, charity.” 
 “Grace for grace.” Again he writes, “Be cour- 
 teous,”’ and he is the only apostle who uses the word. 
 Now, where did the rough, swearing sailor of Gali- 
 lee recognize and appropriate that rare grace of the 
 Spirit? Well, he caught it by contagion through 
 high fellowship with Christ Jesus the Lord. “And 
 of His fullness” may we all receive “grace for 
 grace,” and progress steadily in the beauty of holi- 
 ness until we stand “without fault, before the throne 
 of God.” 
 
 Ill. With Christ the Faithful Life attains its 
 Exceeding Great Reward. 
 
 The true interpretation of human life is a spirit- 
 ual one. The best possession one can acquire in 
 the world is the eternal one which he may take out 
 of it in his own soul, the abiding qualities the soul 
 takes on through the spiritual victories and sharp 
 discipline of life; in a word, grace. “What shall it 
 profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 
 himself?” A man’s sublime achievement is him- 
 self; not what he owns; not what he knows; not 
 
THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 45 
 
 what he does; but what he becomes. We belong, 
 even here, to an eternal order, and the true signifi- 
 cance of any thought, purpose, or act, is not meas- 
 ured by outward results, but by its touch upon the 
 soul. The full scope of human life is given by St. 
 John, “Now are we the sons of God: and it doth 
 not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that 
 when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for 
 we shall see Him as He is.” To be like Him, to 
 have the mind and spirit of Christ Jesus the Lord, 
 to enter into His joy, to attain His royalty,—that is 
 the true goal and glory of existence. The process 
 of setting the grace of Christ in the human spirit, 
 therefore, trying as it may be at times, is by far 
 the most important thing in life. 
 
 Sometimes the grace of Christ is received 
 through apparent loss. “What things were gain to 
 me, those I count loss for Christ. I count all things 
 but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of 
 Christ Jesus my Lord.” All knowledge costs, but 
 none so much as “the excellency of the knoweldge 
 of Christ Jesus” the Lord. Into that purchase price 
 St. Paul cast his pride of descent, of position, of 
 culture, his earthly prospect and possession. To 
 secure the supreme pleasure hid in the field of life 
 requires, ofttimes, the surrender of all outward 
 
46 Tur Royaty oF Jesus. 
 
 possession. The young nobleman halted at the very 
 gateway of the highest, the eternal life, because the 
 glamour of the passing life was too strong upon 
 him. Who can measure his loss? 
 
 “There came a mist and a blinding rain, 
 And life was never the same again.” 
 
 When a noble ship was launched, not long ago, 
 the crew was presented with a silver bell with which 
 to regulate the life on board. One of the committee 
 present at the casting of the bell suggested that it 
 would be interesting to be personally identified with 
 the event. Accordingly each one cast into the fur- 
 nace a bit of silver, one a matchbox, one a watch- 
 charm, one a coin, and so on; each article disap- 
 peared as to form, but reappeared as music, far 
 out on the sea. So, in life, many things disappear 
 as to form, only to reappear in the beauty and grace 
 of the Spirit. “Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes 
 He became poor, that ye, through His poverty, 
 might be rich.” That was the grace of Christ, 
 supreme devotion to the life of the Spirit. 
 
 Sometimes the grace of Christ is received 
 through suffering. After the rich colors are placed 
 on china, they must be set in fire. It is so with 
 
THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 47 
 
 the purposes of the soul and with the process of the 
 Spirit ; they, too, must be set on fire. After the bap- 
 tism and vision of the Jordan, our Lord was led 
 into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil; the 
 fixed purpose of His life to be proved by the most 
 subtle test. In those days and nights of solitude 
 His royal purpose was assailed by the sharpest 
 pangs of hunger, by the splendor of worldly tri- 
 umph, by the glory of dominion ; but it did not yield. 
 Following the victory came the angels ministering 
 unto Him, and He returned “in the power of the 
 Spirit into Galilee.” All great victories are first 
 victories of the Spirit, and must be won within, 
 somewhere in a wilderness battle. St. Paul was 
 touched and tempered into power by the thorn in 
 the flesh. For a time he was restless and impatient 
 under it, but came at last to recognize it as a gift 
 of God, and welcomed it for the grace of Christ 
 that came with it. “My grace is sufficient for thee.” 
 “Most gladly will I glory in my infirmities, that the 
 power of Christ may rest upon me.” ‘The radiant 
 ones in glory are “they which came out of great 
 tribulation.” “It became Him, for whom are all 
 things and by whom are all things, in bringing many 
 sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their sal- 
 vation perfect through sufferings.” That was the 
 
48 THE ROYALTY OF JESUS. 
 
 grace of Christ, perfect adjustment to the will of 
 God. 
 
 Sometimes the grace of Christ is received 
 through victorious submission. ‘That is a new sort 
 of victory,—to conquer through surrender. When 
 our Lord entered Gethsemane, St. Mark tells us, 
 He was sore amazed at the cup the Father gave 
 Him to drink. It did not seem possible that a 
 gracious Father could hold that bitter draught to 
 His lips. But His perfect submission to the mys- 
 terious, unexplained will of God, that step into the 
 dark, won a world’s redemption. At Verona they 
 treasure a mosaic representing the transfiguration: 
 Moses and Elias are pointing to a cross as the true 
 fulfillment of the law and the prophets and all life. 
 To die on the cross of the Father’s appointment is 
 better than to die amid the splendors of Pisgah, or 
 to be swept into the heavens in a chariot of fire. 
 Dante makes the mountain of purgatory glow and 
 tremble with gladness, when the soul, in its ascent 
 toward God, is wholly delivered and takes its first 
 step into Paradise. Up there, on the lone mountain- 
 top, our Lord chose the way of the cross, and in 
 that act of perfect submission He stepped into the 
 full light of God, and was transfigured by its glory 
 until the very earth shone with splendor. It is 
 
THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST. 49 
 
 always so: the cross which the Father appoints, 
 though it may seem to beggar and ruin life, in 
 reality exalts and transfigures it. We have seen 
 them as they pass to and fro among us, the trans- 
 figured lives, souls who have recognized the cross 
 of the Father’s appointment, and have not shunned 
 it, but have accepted it, though it seemed to con- 
 sume life utterly, sealing it from below from every 
 worldly joy, but filling it from above with all the 
 fullness of God. That is a wonderful thing which 
 science discloses to us in these modern days, the 
 correlation of forces; one force passing over into 
 and fulfilling itself in another force, power into 
 electric energy, electric energy into heat, heat into 
 light. But a more wonderful thing happens in the 
 realm of the Spirit: “For brass I will bring gold.” 
 
 Even higher yet is the transmutation of values. 
 Our God transmutes loss and pain and sacrifice into 
 grace and glory unto glory. He makes all things 
 work together for good, through Christ, working in, 
 first of all, though it may be with agony, to the very 
 center of being, until the grace of Christ is set there; 
 then, working out and on “in a far more exceeding 
 and eternal weight of glory,” for ever and ever. 
 This is St. John’s thought: over against our human 
 life stands Jesus Christ, our risen, living, present 
 
 4 
 
50 THE Royatty oF JESus. 
 
 Lord, in all His fullness, in touch with all our need 
 on the one hand, and on the other in touch with 
 all the resources of God. 
 
 “And of His fullness may all we receive, and 
 grace for grace.” 
 
ITI. 
 THE POWER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 
 
 “Vet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin 3; and 
 . if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book 
 which Thou hast written.’—ExoDUS XXXII, 32. 
 
 THE text is not any word in all the book, but 
 a certain dark line that stretches between the words. 
 We find it here in the wondrous prayer of Moses 
 when alone with God in the mountain, “If Thou 
 wilt forgive their sin ;’ then he can go no 
 farther ; he halts and sobs, and breaks down com- 
 pletely. That dash there tells it all. Prayer is 
 never so effective as when it becomes suddenly 
 heart-breaking and unutterable. The ending of that 
 
 prayer was not quite as its beginning; tender and 
 
 beseeching as that was, there was a daring of love 
 
 about it almost unparalleled. In the midst of his 
 
 prayer the appalling enormity of Israel’s sin sweeps 
 
 over Moses, and overwhelms him. For a moment 
 
 he is in despair, silent and speechless. And yet, it 
 
 is Israel, whose very existence as a people is threat- 
 51 
 
52 Tue Royaty OF JESUS. 
 
 ened; his own Israel, whom he led out of Egypt; 
 for whom he lived, and for whom he will die. Put 
 your ear down upon the black line, and you can 
 almost hear the sobbing of Moses underneath it. 
 You can see the tears streaming down his face, as 
 he bows in speechless agony. You can well-nigh 
 witness his heart breaking, in that crucial moment, 
 when the awful agony issues in a daring choice of 
 love, and suddenly you behold that daring choice 
 of love issue in a new vision of God that transfigures 
 the life and sets the halo of glory on the brow. 
 You see him meeting the inevitable and yielding to 
 it, taking that seeming step in the dark, making an 
 absolute surrender of himself, and, in that surren- 
 der, making the greatest discovery in human life, 
 the discovery of the fathomless love of God. 
 
 At the extreme point of sacrifice, Moses finds 
 God Himself awaiting him, and that he was never 
 so near God, never so precious to Him, never so 
 much like Him as when he was willing to die for 
 sinning Israel. Up there, upon the mountain of 
 sacrifice, amid clouds and darkness, Moses, like 
 Abraham, beheld the face of God; he caught the 
 dawn of human redemption; he saw the sunrise of 
 eternal love upon the world. “God so loved the 
 world that He gave His only begotten Son, that 
 
PoWER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. - 53 
 
 whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but 
 have everlasting life.” Just there, where Moses 
 thought he would die utterly, he entered, through 
 absolute surrender, into the full glory of life, and 
 thrilled with the compassion of God. Is it any 
 wonder that his face shone? The power of a sur- 
 rendered life: that, I take it, is the truth throbbing 
 under the dark line. . 
 
 The request of Moses that his own name, if need 
 be, be blotted out of the book of God's writing, 
 seems strange, very strange. Was it merely an 
 imptlsive thing, the triumph of a passing mood? 
 Did he, in a moment of despair, abandon all life 
 and hope? Would he, by a supreme act of seli- 
 immolation, challenge, if not arraign, even Divine 
 love itself? Friend, “the arrow is beyond you.” 
 Human love, it is true, in the intensity and extrava- 
 gance of its devotion, will not, in a crisis, calculate, 
 to a nicety, either its words or possessions, but will 
 fling forth all eagerly, tumultuously, and even reck- 
 lessly. The request of Moses, however, was neither 
 impulsive nor violent; in the profoundest sense, it 
 was calm, sincere, and sane. It is the paradox of 
 love that, to live, it must give, and that to the utmost. 
 Love identifies itself completely with its object, and 
 with it must bear all and endure all, even to the 
 
54 Tue RoyaLty oF JEsus. 
 
 farthest extremity. Moses, therefore, prays out of 
 a heart overflowing in love and pity: “Forgive 
 Thine Israel, my Israel ; if not, blot my name 
 out of Thy book which Thou hast written: for I 
 must share Israel’s burden, and with Israel die.” _ 
 Earth, like that circle in heaven into which St. 
 Paul was caught, has also its unutterable things, 
 
 experiences of the deep inner life, which surpass 
 the limitations of human speech. Love is one, sor- 
 row is another, sacrifice another. We can never 
 wholly utter them; we suggest them, rather, in 
 various symbols of form, of color, of sound. We 
 carve them into statues ; we paint them into pictures; 
 we set them in music; and as we look and listen, 
 “deep answers unto deep.”’ This dark line, stretch- 
 ing between the lines, in the prayer of Moses, be- 
 longs to this larger utterance of symbol. It suggests 
 what could not be expressed ; it indicates a profound 
 agitation of soul; it is the signal of an agony, a 
 crisis, a triumph of the inner life beyond the power 
 of words. As we meditate upon it, may “deep — 
 answer unto deep!” 
 
 The rare secret, the power of a surrendered life, 
 learned there by Moses in the mount, was perhaps 
 the most significant event in all his career. The 
 thread of Divine providence ran through that life 
 
PowER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 55 
 
 in a wondrous way, from the wicker basket on the 
 Nile to the sweeping vision of Pisgah. Sometimes 
 that thread became particularly luminous; it was 
 so in that hour, when he stood beside the flaming 
 bush in Horeb and heard God speaking to him out 
 of the flame. It was so when, at the bidding of 
 Jehovah, he withstood the oppressor of his people 
 in Egypt, and smote the Nile until it “ran red to 
 the sea.” It was so when, at the word of God, “he 
 stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the Lord 
 overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea.” 
 But sublimer than any of these is the great achieve- 
 ment which lies under the dark line, the absolute 
 sacrifice of himself, before God, in behalf of sinning 
 Israel, the glory of a surrendered life. 
 
 Twice Moses ascended the mountain, and was 
 shut in with God “forty days and forty nights.” 
 Time exposure is one condition of masterful power 
 in art, in literature, in life, in religion. Elijah found 
 it soon Horeb. The Lord was not in the tempest, 
 the earthquake, or the fire; but “after the fire a 
 still small voice” signaled His presence. “Though 
 the vision tarry, wait for it.’ John on Patmos found 
 it so: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” Only 
 when his heart was quiet, “like waters stilled at 
 even,” could he discern the “Holy City coming 
 
56 THE Royaty oF JESUS. 
 
 down from God out of heaven.” “Wait, I say, on 
 the Lord.” Snapshots are of no great value any- 
 where. Up there, in the silence of the mountain 
 and in the deeper silence of the spirit, Moses tarried 
 with God. It is to be noticed, however, that only 
 after the second ascent did Moses return with a 
 shining face. Ah! the secret of the shining 
 face,—it is worth searching for. When Moses 
 came down the mountain, after the first as- 
 cent, he found Israel, for whom he had prayed and 
 toiled and sacrificed so much, suddenly and deeply 
 fallen into sin and shame. He had just left the 
 mysterious presence of God on the summit of the 
 mountain, and now, at its base, so near and yet so 
 far, he beholds Israel dancing, like heathen, around 
 an idol in foolish, drunken glee, and Aaron looking 
 on in bewildered, hopeless opportunism. In an 
 instant the vision of God lost its spell upon him. 
 The natural Moses asserted itself in full power 
 and without restraint. He did what is so familiar 
 in our human experience; he lost possession of him- 
 self, and broke out in passionate wrath and violence. 
 He broke the tables of the law before the eyes of 
 the people. It was the signal of his own bitter 
 despair. All seemed hopeless. Dark thoughts ran 
 through his mind. What is the use of trying to do 
 
POWER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 57 
 
 anything for such a people? They are so low and 
 coarse, so foolish and perverse, they can never be 
 lifted into decency and righteousness; better leave 
 them in their shame, and give up in disgust the task 
 of their deliverance. And there, on the rocks, he 
 smashed before their very eyes those God-given 
 tables. That was the lowest point in the career of 
 Moses, that apparent mood of hopelessness and 
 despair. The people fled in dismay. After a time, 
 under the stroke of judgment, Israel awoke to a 
 sense of their sin. 
 
 Then follows a scene which beggars description : 
 all Israel in tears, confessing, weeping, pleading. 
 It was too much for Moses. His heart is touched 
 by their sorrow and anguish. He begins to relent, 
 to pity, and even to hope for restoration; but he 
 is not sure of God. He himself would be willing 
 to pass their failure, and begin again; but he is not 
 sure of God. The best he can do is to make a great 
 venture in their behalf, to ascend the mountain 
 again and talk with God about their sin. But he 
 is not sure of the issue. He is sure of his own 
 love and pity, else would not he venture up the 
 mountain ; but he is not sure of the love and mercy 
 of God in the face of such enormity of sin. As 
 he turns to go up the mountain, one can imagine 
 
58 Tue Royaty oF JESUS. 
 
 him passing the spot where the tables of the law 
 had been broken, and glancing at the pathetic ruin. 
 Here and there a word is still intact, “Thou shalt 
 have no other—” but the sentence runs no farther; 
 the conclusion has been broken away. “Remem- 
 ber—” but the word stands alone, a mere fragment 
 of a vanished glory. 
 
 Ah! have we not also brought strong resolutions 
 down from some mount of vision,. only to shatter | 
 them at its base, and behold them mocking us in 
 their fragments? But Moses pushes on up the 
 mountain to meet God. We will let him tell it: 
 “And I fell down before the Lord, as at the first. 
 Forty days and forty nights I did neither eat bread 
 nor drink water, because of all your sin. And I 
 prayed unto the Lord, O Lord God, destroy not this 
 _ people and Thine inheritance which Thou hast re- 
 deemed through Thy greatness. O, this people have 
 sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of 
 gold; yet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin ; 
 if not, blot me out of Thy book which Thou hast 
 written.” Now, is there a sweeter thing in all the 
 Book of God than the answer to that prayer? “And 
 the Lord said, I will do this thing that thou hast 
 said, for thou hast found grace in My sight and I 
 
 know thee by name.” It was there that Moses came 
 to know truly the living God, against whom he had 
 
PoweER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 59 
 
 been measuring his own heart of love. And the 
 Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him 
 there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord: THE 
 Lorp GoD MERCIFUL AND GRACIOUS, LONGSUFFERING 
 AND ABUNDANT IN GOODNESS AND TRUTH.” No 
 wonder that, when Moses came down the mountain 
 from that interview, his face shone; for the last 
 barrier within his heart had been swept away, and 
 God had come into it in all the fullness of love and 
 light and glory. It is a wonderful process, this 
 sweeping away the barriers within until God is All 
 in all. Slowly they yield, often one by one, under 
 the weight of new experiences, under the pressure 
 of imperious necessities. Have you read with the 
 heart, “My strength is made perfect in weakness?” 
 We should think it would be the other way, that our 
 strength, fully asserted and stretched to the utmost, 
 would touch the strength of God. So we attempt 
 the great ascent in that fashion, time after time, 
 until we are worn out with bitter failure. And then, 
 in our very weakness, we find the might of God. 
 
 “T was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou 
 Shouldst lead me on: 
 I loved to choose and see my path; but now, 
 Lead Thou me on. 
 I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, 
 Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years.” 
 
60 Tue Roya,ty oF JEsus. 
 
 The power of a surrendered life,—that was the 
 secret Jacob learned through the night of agony at 
 Jabbok. When he could no longer struggle, but 
 only cling to the angel in the dark, in daring hope 
 and trust, he prevailed; his very weakness touched 
 the strength of God. Moses, we are told, was the 
 meekest man of all the earth. Yes, meekness was 
 his last and greatest achievement. He was not 
 naturally so; men born meek are of no great value. 
 It is the acquired grace, the grafted fruit, that has 
 all the beauty and flavor. The word translated 
 meekness in our New Testament, is, in classical 
 Greek, used of the taming of horses. A spirited 
 horse is not ruined in the taming, but adjusted to 
 the noble uses of strength. Meekness is, therefore, 
 not weakness, but the right adjustment of power. 
 That was the untamed Moses who put the Egyptian 
 away in the sand so suddenly ; that was the partially 
 tamed Moses who smashed the Divine Command- 
 ments on the rocks; that was the new, the true 
 Moses who came down the mountain with a shining 
 face, meek at last, thoroughly tamed, perfectly 
 adjusted to the Divine will and method in the 
 world, and to his human task. Then it was he 
 entered into the power and glory of a surrendered 
 life. 
 
PoWER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 61 
 
 Let us hold before our minds, for a brief space, 
 the full significance of some of these things lying 
 under the dark line. And first of all this new dis- 
 covery of God. 
 
 There is a lofty mountain in China called the 
 Glory of Buddha. From its summit at times, one 
 can behold a circular rainbow ; not a mere fragment, 
 but a perfect circle of glowing color. There is a 
 point, likewise, in human experience where one gets 
 a clear vision of God; a vision not of material splen- 
 dor, but of the gracious and eternal qualities of His 
 heart. “Clouds and darkness are round about Him, 
 righteousness and judgment are the habitation of 
 His throne; mercy and truth go before His face.” 
 It is only when one takes the daring step into the 
 darkness, through heroic faith, as Moses did, that 
 he can really see God; for the large, true vision of 
 the Eternal is always a heart-vision. The intellect 
 recognizes power and wisdom as they are manifested 
 about us. The Norseman familiar with the rever- 
 berations of the freezing, cracking ice through the 
 long winter night, and the booming of trees falling 
 in the track of the storm, named the invisible 
 one Thor, the Thunderer. The Greek, living in a 
 more genial clime, and more impressed with the con- 
 trivances in the world about him for utility and 
 
62 THE ROYALTY OF JESUS. 
 
 beauty, named the invisible one Mind; but the in- 
 most nature of God, Love, was never a discovery of 
 the intellect. Man himself has never been able to 
 make sure of it. The deepest questions which have 
 ever shaken the soul are just these: Is there a per- 
 sonal Being at the center of all? Is He benevolent, 
 or malevolent? In other words, is there a personal 
 God? Is God love? After the utmost achievement 
 of the human intellect, unaided, the answer is pain- 
 fully uncertain. In all mythologies and pagan re- 
 ligions the element of fear predominates over that of 
 hope. In India, it is said, there are more idols to 
 the destroyer of life than to its preserver. The fool 
 of King Lear, crouching under the driving storm, 
 wails out, 
 
 “Here’s a night pities neither wise man nor fool.” 
 
 The human tragedy goes on under the sky, 
 generation after generation, and Heaven appar- 
 ently makes no sign. A Viennese gentleman 
 attempted a perilous ascent of the Alps alone, 
 and perished. When his body was afterwards 
 found, the icy fingers held a paper with this 
 inscription, “’T is cold, and clouds shut out the 
 view.” We can not make our way to God alone. 
 Up there on the barren heights of human specula- 
 
PoWER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 63 
 
 ce 9, 
 
 tion “ ’t is cold, and clouds shut out the view.” The 
 agnostic of the twentieth century, with all his science 
 and wealth of knowledge, has no clearer vision of 
 God than the agnostic of the first century. He 
 still writes upon the altar of religion, “To the un- 
 known God.” 
 
 Now Moses went up the mountain in trem- 
 bling uncertainty, not of the power of God, not 
 of the wisdom of God, not of the righteousness 
 of God, but of His love and mercy. Would 
 they endure the strain put upon them by human 
 sin? Could God forgive the enormity of Israel’s 
 sin? Would grace be found in Him—grace, 
 unmerited favor, and boundless love? For Israel’s 
 sake he would make the venture, even amid clouds 
 and darkness, and put the issue to the test. “If 
 Thou wilt forgive their sin ; and if not, blot me 
 I pray Thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast 
 written.” Just there, at the flaming point of self- 
 
 sacrifice, God met him and answered him. “And 
 when the burnt offering began, the song of the Lord 
 began also, with the trumpets.” Through his own 
 sacrifice of love he discovers that God Himself is 
 love—eternal, fathomless love—and that the most 
 central and potent thing in the universe, greater 
 even than power or wisdom or justice—being in 
 
64 THE RoyaLty oF JESUS. 
 
 fact, all these united and more—is love. There in 
 the mountain, through the power of a surrendered 
 life, Moses beheld the glory of God, love in action; 
 he saw God, not abandoning Israel or the race, but 
 Himself bearing the burden of human sin in utmost 
 sacrifice.. From the cleft of the rock he caught a 
 glimpse of the far-away consummation of love and 
 sacrifice in human redemption, and learned crea- 
 tion’s deepest secret, the profoundest truth of life, 
 that “God is love.” ‘“THEr LORD GOD MERCIFUL AND 
 GRACIOUS, LONGSUFFERING AND ABUNDANT IN GOOD- 
 NESS AND TRUTH.” 
 
 Under the dark line we find also the hidden law 
 of life, self-sacrifice. ‘‘He that findeth his life shall 
 lose it: and he that loseth his life for My sake 
 shall find it.’ At the very point where Moses ap- 
 parently lost all, he found all. When he seemed to 
 be putting all in a grave he was passing to a throne. 
 At the moment of full surrender he touched the 
 point of highest exaltation. The secret of power is 
 not in violent self-assertion, making one’s own will 
 the dominant and masterful thing, but in thorough 
 adjustment with the perfect will of God, and ina 
 complete surrender to the call of love, however ex- — 
 treme or consuming it may seem. This is the secret 
 of Jesus,—the power of a surrendered life: “I came 
 
POWER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 65 
 
 down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the 
 will of Him that sent Me.” “I can of Mine own self 
 do nothing; as I hear I judge, and My judgment is 
 just, because I seek not Mine own will, but the will 
 of the Father that hath sent Me.” “The Father hath 
 not left Me alone, for I always do those things that 
 please Him.” “For even Christ pleased not Him- 
 self.” The full force of Satan’s assault in the wil- 
 derness was directed against the will of Christ, 
 aiming, by repeated assaults, through appetite, 
 through the reason and the imagination, to induce 
 Him to take the direction of His life in His own 
 hands. Our Lord’s victory there was in rejecting 
 all suggestions, however plausible, and in yielding 
 utterly, without questioning and without reserve, to 
 the will of the Father. The consummation of His 
 perfect sacrifice was in that moment in Gethsemane 
 when He took the bitter cup offered Him, though 
 with a trembling hand, and deliberatelly chose the 
 mysterious cross that threatened Him, though in 
 sore amazement. “Father, all things are possible 
 unto Thee; take away this cup from Me: never- 
 theless, not what I will, but what Thou wilt.” 
 “Wherefore, God hath highly exalted Him, and 
 given Him a name which is above every name.” 
 Death is evermore the gatewav to the highest life. 
 5 
 
66 THE Royaty oF JESUS. 
 
 “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and 
 die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth 
 much fruit.” Follow the grain of wheat into 
 the dark earth. Hear it exclaim, “I must pull myself 
 together amid these unfavorable surroundings, and 
 resist to the utmost these forces closing in upon me.” 
 But Nature kindly whispers, “O, little grain, let go, 
 let go!” And as it lets go and begins to die, it 
 begins to live, and to push its way up into a world 
 of light and glory. It is the power of a surrendered 
 life. As we let go of lower things, and even die 
 to them, we rise into higher things, and enter into 
 the life of God. 
 
 History is aflame with this truth, the power of a 
 surrendered life. The turning point in St. Paul’s 
 career was there on the Damascene way, when he 
 caught a clear vision of the risen and reigning 
 Jesus, and yielded absolute loyalty to Him. “Lord, 
 what wilt Thou have me to do?” In that question, 
 there was a great surrender and a daring choice. 
 He surrendered every hope the heart holds dear, and 
 in so doing appropriated the power and glory of 
 spiritual forces. Who, now, can gauge His power 
 or measure the growing orbit of His influence? 
 That Jew of Tarsus, there on the Damascene way, 
 found the true path of life, and on it is still moving 
 
Power OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 67 
 
 upward “from glory unto glory.” The secret of 
 St. Paul’s life was the power of a surrendered life. 
 One of the sublimest scenes of history is that of 
 Martin Luther making his great confession before 
 the Diet of Worms. “Here I stand, I can not do 
 otherwise; God help me.” Like Moses on Sinai, 
 he surrendered there every human prospect; but in 
 doing so he clothed himself with thunder, and shook 
 all the tyrannies of time. The click of his hammer, 
 as he nailed his defiant theses to the old church in 
 Wittenberg, still echoes around the world. Lwuther’s 
 secret was the power of a surrendered life. When 
 John Wesley, driven from the church, preached the 
 gospel from his father’s tomb, he made a brave sur- 
 render of all this present world can offer. “He 
 went forth unto him without the camp, bearing his 
 reproach.” From that moment God wondrously 
 honored him, making even the wide world his 
 parish. Wesley’s secret was the power of a surren- 
 dered life. But the time would fail me to tell of 
 Knox, of Carey, of Livingstone, of the long list of 
 mighty ones “who dared to do great things for God, 
 and expected great things from God.” ‘Theirs was 
 the secret that lies under the dark line, the secret 
 Moses learned on Sinai, the power of a surrendered 
 life. We are weak because we are yet whole. We 
 
68 THE Royatty OF JESUS. 
 
 shrink from the humiliation, the pain, the sacrifice 
 of the highest service. We will not utterly die, 
 lacking that test, that daring step into the dark, 
 that brings the fullness of God. 
 
 Under the dark line we discover, too, the glory 
 that transfigures human life. “And when Israel 
 saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone.” The 
 deepest thing in the heart will report itself in the 
 countenance. The very history of the soul is writ- 
 ten in the face, its secret triumph or disaster, and 
 sooner or later it will be read there. Sometimes the 
 lines become suddenly luminous, as in the case of 
 Moses. ‘True personality, the real quality of the 
 spirit, can not be permanently hidden. Some sudden 
 emergency will shatter any mask that may be 
 framed about it. In some great crisis the true soul 
 will look out of the windows, in glory or in shame. 
 The life we cherish within, the companionship we 
 hold there is steadily making or marring us, and the 
 record will stand. ‘The inner chaice, the purpose, 
 the act of the soul, says with a truer emphasis than 
 that of Pilate, “What I have written, I have writ- 
 ten.” We can not see what is going on in the tulip- 
 bed, but there is a day in June when the splendor is 
 apparent. For weeks, Moses was hidden amid the 
 
PowER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 69 
 
 splendors of Sinai; but there was a day when all 
 Israel saw the glory of his great achievement. 
 “Give me a great thought,” said the dying 
 Herder, “that I may stir my soul with it.” We have 
 seen the soul stirred by thought, the mind awakened 
 and inspired, the countenance transfigured, in light 
 and joy, like a wire glowing in the electric current. 
 
 Donne thus expresses it: 
 
 “Her pure and eloquent blood 
 
 Spoke in her cheek, so distinctly wrought 
 
 That one might almost say her body thought.” 
 It was the transfiguring power of thought that 
 thrilled the poet Keats when he first looked into 
 Homer: 
 
 “Then was I like some watcher in the skies 
 
 When a new planet swims into his ken; 
 
 Or like stout Cortes when, with eagle eyes, 
 He stared at the Pacific.” 
 
 Again he wrote: 
 
 “Suddenly, a thought came like a full-blown rose, 
 
 Flushing his brow.” 
 
 There is a transfiguration of the emotions. 
 When Newton saw through the glowing figures 
 that his daring conception would be established, and 
 that a new truth was about to dawn upon the world, 
 
 ‘ 
 
70 THE Royaty oF Jxsus. 
 
 he was not able to finish the demonstration with his 
 trembling fingers, but, calling an assistant to write 
 out the result, he seemed like one inspired, trans- 
 figured with emotion of wonder and joy. One day, 
 Pasteur, at work in his laboratory, suddenly realized 
 that the experiment before him that meant so much 
 for human welfare, and which he had prosecuted 
 through long years with patience and skill and un- 
 utterable solicitude, was now about to be successful. 
 He writes, “My soul knew a moment of joy in 
 which the spirit took on, in an instant, all the 
 glories of the rainbow.” That was the transfigura- 
 tion of the emotions. 
 
 There is a transfiguration of a royal will. When 
 Wolfe received from the Prime Minister of England 
 his commission as leader of the expedition against 
 Quebec, the grandeur of the undertaking came down 
 upon him like a cloud of glory, and he registered 
 there his consecration to the splendid enterprise and 
 to death in such a frenzy of joy and exultation that 
 the timid, shrinking Pitt was appalled, and declared 
 him mad. But he was not mad. Against that 
 masterful will the Rock of Quebec became as a 
 grain of sand, and the whole continent changed 
 . position in history, and moved forward a thousand 
 years. That was a transfiguration of a royal will. 
 
PoWER OF A SURRENDERED LIFE. 71 
 
 Even more wonderful is the transfiguration of 
 10ve, love made perfect in sacrifice. It is just this 
 that makes our human life take on divine qualities. 
 What but the transfiguration makes the mother’s 
 face shine with a “light that never was on sea or 
 land?” Through pain, through anxiety, through 
 the agony of prayer and perfect sacrifice she has 
 passed, like Moses, into the very light of God, and 
 it lingers on her brow. “In thy face I have seen the 
 Eternal,” said the dying Bunsen to his noble Chris- 
 tian wife. It was true, “ for the spirit of man is the 
 candle of the Lord.” Only through a human spirit 
 can the glory of God, His moral beauty, His grace, 
 His unfailing love, shine out upon the world. In 
 the Cathedral of St. Mark’s, at Venice, the guide 
 will hold up a lighted candle behind the alabaster 
 pillars until they glow with the soft and radiant 
 beauty. So the human spirit may glow with the light 
 and glory of God. We belong to a divine order, 
 and even here there are flashes and hints of coming 
 glory. “Behold what manner of love the Father 
 hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the 
 sons of God: and we are. And it doth not yet 
 appear what we shall be; but we know that when 
 He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall 
 see Him as He is.” Moses, through the power of a 
 
72 Tue Royaty oF JEsus. 
 
 surrendered life, stepped into the very light of God; 
 through his perfect sacrifice, he was in a measure 
 like Him, and for an instant saw Him as He is, and 
 the vision transfigured him. 
 
 Now as a last word; the surrendered life is not 
 a mere passing one, it is not paralyzed by the incom- 
 ing God. To surrender the life to God is but to 
 open the channels of thought, of feeling, of action, 
 to the Divine energies. “I am crucified with Christ,” 
 says St. Paul; “nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but 
 Christ liveth in me.” St. Paul lived a larger, fuller, 
 truer life after Christ found him than ever before. 
 The ruby caught up into the sunlight loses nothing 
 of its native quality because of the light that fills it; 
 it only increases its beauty in the light. So human 
 life only comes into full possession of itself in God. 
 “They shall see His face, and His name shall be in 
 their foreheads.” Your individuality is precious to 
 God, and He will not destroy it, but preserve it 
 forever, and, by His own transfiguring light, carry it 
 up to its fullness of power and glory. This, then, is 
 the power of a surrendered life, the appropriation 
 of the true life, even of the fullness of God. 
 
IV. 
 “THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST.” 
 
 “The light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
 Christ.”—2 Cor. Iv, 6. 
 
 THERE is a wonderful picture that hangs in 
 South Kensington Museum, London. It represents 
 the death of Oliver Cromwell, the mightiest man of 
 the Anglo-Saxon race, a Hercules among the kings 
 of the earth. Shadows fill the room, falling upon 
 the bed and upon the faces of surrounding friends. 
 The center of light in the picture is a Bible lying 
 upon the breast of Cromwell, over which his hands 
 are folded, and from which the light streams up 
 into the dying hero’s face. The conception is a 
 happy one; for it was from the Word of God that 
 Cromwell, the Puritan prince, drew the light and 
 strengh of his life. In the picture a face is lumi- 
 nous from the Book. In our meditation this morn- . 
 ing, I would have you see the Book luminous from 
 a face. For the significance of the Gospel lies in 
 
 73 
 
74 THE Royatty oF JEsus. 
 
 this, that it holds for us a distinct impression of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 Only a few of the sons of men enjoyed the 
 strange and wonderful experience of gazing into 
 the face of Jesus Christ, and under that spell they 
 said very startling things. One exclaimed, “Thou 
 art the Christ ;” and another, “Thou art the Son of 
 God.” The mighty Baptist in prophetic trance cried 
 out, “Behold the Lamb of God.” Peter wailed in 
 agony as he fell on his knees before the face, “De- 
 part from me, I am a sinful man.” ‘The Samaritan, 
 conscience-smitten, exclaimed, “T perceive that Thou 
 art a prophet.” The leper prayed, “Lord, if Thou 
 wilt, Thou canst make me clean.” A Jewish ruler, 
 - looking into His face said, “We know that Thou art 
 a teacher sent from God;”’ and a Roman centurion, 
 beholding His expiring agonies, confessed, “Truly 
 this man was the Son of God.” When the profane 
 and treacherous Simon caught sight of that wonder- 
 ful face in the palace of Caiaphas, he went out into 
 the night and wept bitterly. And when, on the 
 Damascene way, that face shone out from the 
 heavens brighter than the sun, upon the fierce and 
 murderous Saul, “it reversed for him the highest 
 wisdom of the past, and canceled his inheritance in 
 the privilege and pride of centuries.” 
 
“Tur Face oF Jesus Curist.”’ 75 
 
 Every human face is a veil that partly reveals 
 and partly conceals a soul. In its mysterious 
 script there are hints of its hidden past—hints of 
 triumph and disaster, of far-reaching thoughts and 
 hopes, of fathomless depths of feeling and desire. 
 In the face, temperament, life, character, selfhood, 
 are more or less clearly depicted. The face, then, 
 is the highest expression of individuality; of its 
 essential nature; of its dominant trait, passion, or 
 desire. It flashes out with vividness the changing 
 lights of the inner life. Let us endeavor to set this 
 truth, the expressiveness of the human face, in the 
 clear light of illustration. How the human passions 
 play upon its surface! How hate and wrath, for 
 instance, are sometimes shadowed thereon! 
 
 “You have,” says one, “such a February face, 
 So full of frost and storm and cloudiness.” 
 
 What royalty is sometimes enthroned in a human 
 face! When Jenny Lind first saw Daniel Webster 
 
 2 
 
 she exclaimed, “I have seen a man;” such intelli- 
 gence, strength, and gentleness blended in his face. 
 She looked into his great calm eyes, “like waters 
 
 ’ 
 
 stilled at even,” and knew that in the silent depths 
 the lightning slept. Thorwaldsen, the sculptor, look- 
 
 ing into the same face, exclaimed, “What majesty 
 
76 THe Royatty oF JEsus. 
 
 sits upon his brow! What a model for the head of 
 Jupiter!” Marlowe, in his words to Helen of Troy, 
 has set forever in immortal lines the mysterious 
 charm and resistless might of beauty: 
 
 “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships, 
 And burned the topless towers of Ilium?” 
 
 Milton, in the Third Book of ‘Paradise Lost:;” 
 gives a pathetic hint of his own blindness and meas- 
 
 ures his own loss in an ascending scale: 
 
 “Thus with the year 
 Seasons return, but not to me returns 
 Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, 
 Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose, 
 Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine.” 
 
 Yes, the human face divine; for it can glow with 
 the light that never was on sea or land. 
 
 Who can measure the meaning of the psalmist’s 
 words, “The beauty of holiness ?”— a beauty sur- 
 passing far the charm of perfect outline, the glow of 
 passion, or the majesty of thought. The dying Bun- 
 sen, looking up into the face of his noble wife, 
 exclaimed, “In thy face I have seen the Eternal.” 
 For is it not true that just as the still waters hold 
 in their quiet bosoms the shining worlds above them, 
 so the human spirit, deep, and pure, and quiet, may 
 
 “reflect the glory of the invisible God?’ What was 
 Ome 
 
“THe Face oF Jesus CurIst.” 77 
 
 it but the “beauty of holiness,” the “face of the 
 Eternal,’ that shone in the face of Moses when he 
 came down from the dark and awful mount? What 
 was it but the “beauty of holiness,” the “face of the 
 Eternal,’ that glowed in the angel face of Stephen 
 when he looked up steadfastly into the open heavens, 
 and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the 
 right hand? And what was that radiant glory that 
 held the wondering disciples on the mountain, when 
 the Master’s face shone as the sun, and His gar- 
 ments glistened as the light? What was that but 
 the “beauty of holiness,” the “face of the Eternal?” 
 Certainly the human face is the grandest of all 
 mysteries; for it registers in a marvelous way the 
 life and power and passing glory of an immortal 
 spirit. And that passing glory the utmost art of 
 brush, or chisel, or pen can but hint, not portray. 
 For the human face is like the sea: the tides of 
 feeling run high and low upon it. The human 
 face is like the sky: light and shadow, clouds and 
 mist, come and go upon it. The human face, the 
 plainest one, is therefore unattainable in art. The 
 best portrait is but the mood of an instant, caught, 
 and that not perfectly. If this be true of any 
 face, how much more so of the “face of Jesus 
 Christ,”—‘“that face which troubled the Sanhedrin, 
 
78 Tue Royatty oF JEsus. 
 
 which hushed the murderous mob and confounded 
 the power of Rome; the face to which little children 
 turned with confiding love, and before which peni- 
 tent publicans and harlots and the dying robber 
 found the utmost consolation; the face which was 
 set against all evil, which unmasked all hypocrisy, 
 and broke the hearts of treacherous discciples; 
 the face which read all that was in man, and saw 
 into the depths of heaven,”—the face of Jesus 
 Christ. Who can portray that face in color, in 
 speech, or in stone? Artists, in their approach to 
 the impossible, have succeeded best with the child 
 Christ and with the dead Christ; because in these 
 regions they have been able to utilize two proximate 
 reserves of power. In Raphael’s Madonnas the ideal 
 child charms us by the suggestion of eternal youth, 
 by some faint touch of the Ancient of Days. In 
 Rubens’s “Descent from the Cross,” even death 
 seems to pulsate with strange hints of coming vic- 
 tory. But the living Christ, the man Christ, full of 
 truth and grace, He is beyond art. 
 
 Where, then, may we behold “the face of Jesus 
 Christ ?” 
 
 Here let us bring into view the larger thought of 
 the apostle. We have seen that the human face is 
 the highest expression of individuality of character, 
 
“Tue Facre oF JESUS CHRIST.” 79 
 
 of power. Now it is but a step from that fact to the 
 use of the word face for personality. Here, then, 
 we have the apostle’s thought in its fullness. By the 
 phrase, “the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
 Christ,” the apostle indicates, first of all, the human 
 appearance of our Lord, the incarnation by which 
 the glory of the Eternal shone in our humanity. 
 He includes also personality, all that we mean by 
 individuality, character, achievement. 
 
 The face of Jesus Christ, as a human appearance, 
 has passed from the earth. It is no longer possible 
 to know Him after the flesh. But “the face of Jesus 
 Christ” as a personality is an enduring possession, 
 the chief glory of the race. Doubtless it was a 
 great privilege to look into the human face of the 
 Son of man, but it is vastly more to apprehend Him 
 as a spiritual personality. Hence our Lord said, “It 
 
 , 
 
 is expedient for you that I go away;” expedient 
 that the human appearance pass away, that the spir- 
 itual personality might remain. Now, if you think 
 of the Apostle Peter before the ascension and after 
 it, you can measure the significance of our Lord’s 
 words. And the Apostle Paul also says, “Though 
 we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now hence- 
 forth we know Him no more,” having passed on 
 from the human appearance to the spiritual person- 
 
80 Tue Royauty oF Jesus 
 
 ality. So it is not our privilege to know Christ after 
 the flesh, but the more blessed privilege is ours to 
 know Him as a spiritual personality. In this sense, 
 “the face of Jesus Christ” is held for us in the Book 
 which records His history, His examples, His teach- 
 ing, His service, His sacrifices. If you will recall 
 the illustration with which we set out, the thought 
 will be clear. In that scene, Cromwell’s face was 
 made luminous by the Book, but here the Book itself 
 is made luminous by the “face of Jesus Christ.” 
 The Divine-human personality of Jesus Christ is 
 the center of light from which all knowledge, grace 
 and glory stream. In the light of His face and 
 personality the Book grows luminous. Hence, 
 our Lord, beginning at Moses and all the prophets, 
 expounded the Scriptures unto His disciples, 
 opening them that they might behold His face in 
 them. And the apostle declares that at the read- 
 ing of the Old Testament the veil is unlifted on 
 the face of Israel to this day through unbelief, but 
 that believing ones, with unveiled faces, are changed 
 into the same image from glory unto glory. 
 
 Have we not all known Christian men and 
 women who, by continually studying the Word and 
 living it, beheld more clearly the face of Jesus 
 Christ, daily acquiring deeper insight into His mind 
 
“THE Face oF Jesus Curist.” . 81 
 
 and quicker sympathy with His Spirit, who were 
 slowly transfigured through the years, to whom life 
 was a constant ascent of character, a continual 
 changing from glory unto glory? 
 
 That this truth may not be hazy and distinct, 
 let us draw it out somewhat in detail. Let us con- 
 sider in what respect the knowledge of “the glory of 
 God in the face of Jesus Christ” enlightens us. 
 
 We take three points. The face of Jesus Christ 
 then, His appearance among us, His personality as 
 revealed by the Gospel, illuminates for us,— 
 
 1. The natural world in which we live. 
 
 2. The ideal world to which we aspire. 
 
 3. The unseen world, of which we dream. 
 
 I, First, then, this Natural World in which we 
 live. 
 
 The vastness of this material universe had op- 
 pressed human hearts long before the telescope had 
 opened our eyes, and before science had startled 
 us with its deep analysis and broad generalizations. 
 What is man amid the huge mass of matter in these 
 vast spaces? “What is man that Thou art mindful 
 of him?” has been a standing question in all genera- 
 tions. And the question is more painful and the 
 silence more tragical as science advances. We 
 crown with honor the thinkers and experimenters 
 
 6 
 
82 Tue Royvayty oF Jesus. 
 
 who enlarge our plane of vision and conquest of 
 nature. The recent death of the astronomer Adams 
 recalls one of the signal triumphs of human thought. 
 He pushed his conjecture boldly out into space, and 
 declared that there was an unknown planet moving 
 in the dark. And when the great telescope was 
 turned to the point he indicated, the shining world 
 was seen. During this neighborly mood of Mars, 
 the whole world is waiting with interest the observa- 
 tions made by the Lick Observatory, so favorably 
 situated upon the mountains. But, after all, it is 
 not with the telescope that we get the true view 
 of the universe, but at the cross. Mere pro- 
 jection does not help us much. We grow 
 dizzy in thought and faint in spirit, as the plane of 
 vision extends. It only makes our grave the 
 deeper. What we want is not a vision of the 
 rim of things, but the center of things, and that we 
 get at the cross. We discover there that this uni- 
 verse is not a soulless mill, grinding us to powder, 
 but the threshold of our Father’s house. We learn 
 there that creation and humanity are related to God 
 ina vital way. It is doubtless true as Pascal shows, 
 that there is more value in a single thought than in 
 the whole universe of matter, and that there is more 
 value in a single motion of love than in the whole 
 
“THe Face oF Jesus CHRIsT.” 83 
 
 universe of thought. It is so with God. Above all, 
 and the center of all, is love. His supreme name, 
 His essential nature, is love. This is made real to 
 us in the gift and sacrifice of His Son, “in the face 
 of Jesus Christ.” 
 
 Let me fix this thought in your minds forever by 
 uniting two passages of Scripture, one from the 
 Psalms and one from the apostle. The psalmist 
 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” Do 
 you hear their song of power, of wisdom, of beauty? 
 Now listen to the words of the apostle, “God who 
 shined out of darkness [striking the song of the 
 stars with a ray oi light] hath shined in our hearts 
 to give the light of the glory of God in the face of 
 Jesus Christ.” There is a glory of God of which 
 the stars sing,—power, wisdom, beauty; but there 
 is a glory of God of which the stars are silent,— 
 holiness, love, mercy ; and that glory shines for us in 
 the face of Jesus Christ. And so we say the cross 
 is the center of light and healing in the universe, 
 however vast it may be. 
 
 Il. Ji illuminates for us the Ideal World to 
 which we aspire. 
 
 Man is the only creature on earth that does not 
 live contentedly in a world of sense, that does not 
 
84 THE Royaty oF Jesus. 
 
 attain his true felicity there. The flower needs no 
 voice, the bird no book. The physical processes are 
 to them final. But man is a living soul, and as such 
 dwells in a spiritual world, even while in the body. 
 He is under physical laws in the play of material 
 forces and the craving of natural appetite, but he is 
 equally under spiritual law in the necessity that is 
 upon him to harmonize his inner life, affections, de- 
 sires, and purposes with truth, righteousness, and 
 love. To be or to enjoy are the opposite poles of 
 life, the aspiration of soul and the craving of sense, 
 the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, the pride of 
 life. To be or to enjoy, that is the everlasting 
 human battle that has always been going on in 
 the world, and which we understand so well. 
 It was the issue in Eden—obedience or indulge 
 ence. It was the issue in Isaac’s household— 
 the birthright or the pottage. It was the issue 
 on the Mount of Temptation—supremacy of soul 
 or supremacy of sense. Now we honor as angels 
 of light those men in all the past who have 
 emphasized for us the worth of self-conquest, 
 and who have helped us on the way; such as 
 Socrates, Aurelius, Epictetus. But the greatest of 
 the sons of men is the Son of Mary, whom John 
 baptized, whom Pilate crucified. As Renan has 
 
“Tur Facr oF JESUS CHRIST.” 85 
 
 truly said, “Whatever may be the surprises of the 
 future, Jesus will never be surpassed.” Let the best 
 of men pass in review before Him—Moses, Con- 
 fucius, Buddha, Solomon, Socrates, Aurelius—and 
 their luster pales in His light. Confront Him with 
 the ideals of Greek or Barbarian, of Oriental sage 
 or European philosopher, and He is immeasurably 
 beyond them, yet in living touch with the lowliest 
 and most sinful of men. 
 
 Certainly, of all who have lived on earth, Jesus 
 Christ has accomplished the most for the race. But 
 how? He was no author as Plato was; no scientist 
 as Aristotle was; no conqueror as Cesar was; no 
 inventor, like Galileo, Watt, or Stephenson; no 
 founder of a State, like Peter the Great, Alfred of 
 England, or Washington. He touched the souls of 
 men. His is a Spiritual Empire. He taught men 
 what to aspire to and how to attain it, where to live 
 and how. That is a suggestive question we ask of 
 one another, “Where are you living now?” meaning 
 in what Sate or on what street; but it may probe 
 deeper. Are you living up or down? Now, Jesus 
 Christ shows us how to live, to live anywhere and 
 to live up. “From the face of Jesus Christ” the 
 human problem grows luminous. 
 
 Let us see if we can set forth briefly, yet clearly, 
 
86 Tue Royaty oF Jesus. 
 
 our Lord’s central teachings. We shall find them, I 
 think, to be these: First, that all true living begins in 
 the filial relation between God and man. Christ’s 
 thought of man is this, that he is a son of God who 
 has lost his way in this world, and who only comes 
 to himself and finds his way in God. It is very 
 simple, but very sublime. What light there is in 
 that truth, how it interprets our hidden life! It ex- 
 plains the piercing light of conscience, the unutter- 
 able longing of the soul, the deep thirst of the spirit. 
 It is because we are children of God that we can not 
 be content in a world of sense. ‘There is not room 
 for the Oceanic in our little harbor; the plan of the 
 vessel implies the ocean. So our very moral consti- 
 tution implies God and eternity. There is something 
 mightier than a planet pulling away at our hearts; 
 it is the drawing of the Father. See how distinct and 
 prominent our Lord makes this filial relation. He 
 says to Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” 
 Life is not a mere intellectual process, asking and 
 answering questions; it is knowing the Father. 
 “This is life to know the Father;” nothing 
 less and nothing else is life. “Ye must be 
 born again,” come into vital, personal, filial 
 relation with God. ‘“Knowest thou the Father?” 
 How impressively our Lord shows, in the Sermon 
 
“Tre Face oF Jesus CHRIst.” 87 
 
 on the Mount, that true religion is not a 
 matter of ceremonial observance, but a recog- 
 nition of the filial relation and loyalty to it. Prayer 
 He shows, is not a form of words, but a coming to 
 the Father. In the parable He shows that the prod- 
 igal is lost and famine-stricken because he has turned 
 away from his father and wasted his bounty. This 
 primal truth of filial relation he kept ever before us. 
 His first word to the paralytic, as He looked into the 
 
 3? 
 
 pleading face, was “Son,” and to the woman that 
 trembled before Him was “Daughter.” 
 
 The second great principle of our Lord’s teach- 
 ing is, that the filial relation is realized through faith. 
 John says of the Son of man, “As many as received 
 Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of 
 God,” bringing men to recognize the privilege of 
 sonship and to respond to it through faith. That is 
 the salvation of Jesus. Nothing is more wonderiul 
 than this power of faith in and over human nature. 
 The faith we hold sincerely makes or unmakes us. 
 A man’s whole life shapes itself according to his 
 faith, as the great ship responds to the unseen 
 rudder. You can do no greater service for a 
 man than to fix in him faith in right things. 
 Life, character, destiny, will be “according to 
 that faith.” The turning point in the prodigal’s 
 
ty ttn yea q 
 
 88 Tue Royarty oF Jrsus. f 
 
 career was the point of faith when he believed in 
 the sympathy and help of his father. Now, Jesus 
 Christ inspired the right faith in men, faith in the 
 best things. In His face men read the Gospel of 
 hope, the good tidings of better things. When He 
 lifted His face to the lost Zaccheus and spoke to him, 
 He inspired a great hope and a mighty faith within 
 him. As the little publican slid down the tree, he 
 began to believe in a better future and to get hold of 
 it. The woman that sank at His feet, “a guilty thing 
 surprised,” saw visions of a better life as she looked 
 into His face, and under His word, “Go and sin no 
 more,” went forth to a new day and a new destiny. 
 And this is your gospel. Leave the past, believe in 
 the future, look up into the face of Jesus Christ, and 
 He will help you to overtake your best self. 
 Another vital principle of our Lord’s teaching 
 was that love is the secret of life. Jesus set up the 
 highest ideal of living, not in form so much as in 
 spirit. “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is 
 perfect.” Does He mean, Aim at absolute perfec- 
 tion? Did He come all the way from heaven to tell 
 us that pious commonplace, and almost cut the nerve 
 of effort by setting us such a far-away and hopeless 
 standard? No, His words are nearer to us than that. 
 He explains them in the illustration He gives. 
 
“THE Face oF Jesus CuRist.” 89 
 
 God’s goodness is not a hard, formal goodness, but 
 a living and overflowing goodness. He makes His 
 sun to shine upon the just and upon the unjust. It 
 overflows. So let your perfection, your virtue, your 
 goodness, be not the self-poised virtue of the schools, 
 not the measured virtue of legal enactment; but 
 let it be a Godlike goodness that overflows. Let 
 your honesty be an honesty that can overflow into 
 generosity. Let your justice be a justice that can 
 overflow into charity. Let your sympathy be a 
 sympathy that can overflow into sacrifice. 
 
 Morality itself is like an iceberg in the sun, 
 brilliant but cold. Morality touched with sympathy 
 is like a gulf-stream throwing its beneficence around 
 the world. The priest and Levite passed by the 
 sufferer like icebergs, with high cold thoughts of 
 God and morality; the Samaritan flowed out to 
 his need like a gulf-stream. So love is the healing 
 of the world. 
 
 To love is to live. Love is the fulfillment of the 
 law, as the fruit fulfills the blossom. Love is the 
 secret of conquest for human hearts, as morning- 
 glories open, not to the frost or the night, but to the 
 genial sun. Love is the secret of life; not pleasure, 
 not knowledge, not power, not possession, but love, 
 to respond sincerely and supremely to the highest 
 
go THE Royalty oF JESUS. 
 
 things; justice, truth, charity, holiness, God; and 
 to live toward one’s neighbor, not cold and selfish, 
 like an iceberg, but to flow to his need like a gulf- 
 stream,—that is life. And in the face of Jesus 
 Christ we see love set, not in precept alone, but in 
 all human relations. 
 
 III. He illumines the Unseen World of which 
 we dream. 
 
 The hope of immortality has dwelt like a dream 
 in the human heart in all ages. The history of the 
 brave struggle which the race has made with death 
 is written in the Egyptian pyramids and in Etruscan 
 tombs. It is told in the myths of all nations. How 
 complete death’s victory has been! “What medicine 
 is there any for my dead child?” asked a bereaved 
 mother of Gautama. “Bring a handful of mustard- 
 seed,” he said, “from a house where no husband, 
 wife, parent, child, or servant has died ;” and in her 
 hopeless quest she learned that the living are few 
 and the dead many. Now, it is said of Jesus that 
 He brought life and immortality to light. It was 
 but a dim hope before. Jesus makes the unseen: 
 world real to us by His doctrine of the Father. 
 God occupies the future and the unknown, and God 
 is our Father. We can never drop out of His ever- 
 
“Tue Fack oF Jesus Curist.” 91 
 
 lasting arms, for all live unto Him. To die is not 
 to perish, but to go to the Father. To be with 
 the Father is to be blessed for evermore. 
 
 ““Porever with the Lord!’ 
 
 Knowing as I am known, 
 How shall I love that word, 
 And oft repeat before the throne, 
 ‘Forever with the Lord!” 
 
 He makes the future luminous by His mastery 
 of all destructive forces. At Nain, at Bethany, in 
 the Garden, He was victorious over death, and lives 
 to die no more. 
 
 And withal, He has carried our humanity into 
 the heavens, thus making a place for us in the 
 mansions of our Father. This same Jesus shall 
 come again, and we shall see Him as He is, the face 
 of Jesus Christ, for we shall be like Him. On the 
 Mount of Transfiguration the vision passed; Moses 
 and Elias ascended to heaven, the cloud of glory 
 faded away, and the disciples saw no man save Jesus 
 only. But now that human appearance, too, has 
 disappeared for a time, yet the Book is luminous in 
 the light of His face. It reflects His personality. 
 As we read it we may enter into His mind, receive 
 His Spirit, and, in a sense, look upon the face of 
 
92 THE Royatty oF JEsus. 
 
 Jesus Christ. Yet He will come again in His glory; 
 for the perfect manifestation of God must ever be in 
 the face of Jesus Christ. As David sings to Saul, 
 
 “O Saul, it shall be 
 A face like my face shall receive thee, a man like to me 
 Thou shalt love and be loved by forever; a hand like this 
 hand 
 Shall open the gates of new life to thee. See the Christ 
 stand.” 
 
V. 
 “THE BROOK IN THE WAY.” 
 
 “He shall drink of the brook in the way:”—Psa. 
 ex, 7: 
 
 You doubtless recall the beautiful imagery of 
 Washington Irving in which he compares the Hud- 
 son River in the morning light, to a thread of silver 
 winding its way among the hills. Well, the psalmist 
 speaks of a more wonderful river, “the streams 
 whereof shall make glad the city of God.” John 
 describes it as a “river of life, clear as crystal, pro- 
 ceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” 
 The prophet declares that “everything shall live, 
 whither the river cometh.” In the passage before 
 us we meet this wondrous stream that refreshes the 
 soul in the way of high endeavor. “He shall drink 
 of the brook in the way.” 
 
 The Bible is an Oriental Book; it comes to us 
 like sunlight out of the East, and shines into the 
 heart of the world. In all lands the worth of water 
 
 93 
 
94 THE RoYALty oF JESUS. 
 
 is well understood, but to an Oriental it is one of 
 the most precious and suggestive words of human 
 speech. Water means, to him, life, prosperity, hap- 
 piness. “Thou hast given me a south land, give me 
 also springs of water.” So spake the daughter of 
 Caleb to her father; for without the springs of 
 water, even the south land was of little value. No 
 wonder the Egyptians paid divine honors to the 
 River Nile; for the wealth and glory of Egypt 
 were in that narrow, fertile strip that stretched, like 
 a green ribbon, along the banks of the bountiful 
 river. When Moses would give the most impressive 
 picture, to the Israelites, of that good land to which 
 God was leading them, he describes it as “a land of 
 brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring 
 up out of valleys and hills.”” Nowhere does God 
 give more fit expression to His bounty and grace 
 than where He says, “I will be as the dew unto 
 Israel.” 
 
 Some impressive scenes in the history of Israel 
 reveal to us the supreme value of water to those 
 far-away lands. For instance, recall those days 
 when the pilgrim host was marching by toilsome 
 stages across the Arabian Peninsula. From Elim, 
 with its twelve wells of water, they had come to 
 Rephidim, panting and parched. ‘They halted at 
 
“Tae BRooK IN THE WAY” 95 
 
 noonday at what they hoped would be an oasis in the 
 desert, but bitter was their disappointment. They 
 found no water. The pitiless Asiatic sun was flam- 
 ing on them out of a cloudless sky, while only rocks 
 and sand glared on them out of the bleakness of 
 the desert. Their hearts sank in despair, and they 
 murmured against Heaven. But Moses, with the 
 tod that had reddened the Nile, touched the flinty 
 rocks in mercy, and a gushing stream broke forth 
 in the desert. That rock, says the apostle, was 
 Christ. From the smitten Christ comes the healing 
 of the world. 
 
 Mendelssohn opens his oratorio of “Elijah” 
 with the scene on Carmel. With the subtle power 
 of music he voices the despair of a whole people 
 perishing with thirst. First, there is heard a sullen, 
 restless murmuring, which deepens and gathers 
 force until it rises in terrible cumulative strength, 
 and bursts forth appallingly in cries of heart-rend- 
 ing and importunate agony. It is almost unbearable. 
 Well, so does the soul awake to its true need, lie 
 open to the heavens, famine-stricken and beseeching. 
 
 We can understand, now, why water occupies 
 such a large place in the symbolism of Scripture. 
 Its suggestive imagery is not difficult to read. 
 When Jesus said to the woman of Samaria, “Who- 
 
96 Tur Royalty oF JESUS. 
 
 soever drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but 
 whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give 
 him shall never thirst ; but the water that I shall give 
 him shall be in him a well of water, springing up 
 into everlasting life,’ He spake spiritual things, and 
 in that Oriental fashion set the truth on striking 
 imagery. The woman was puzzled for a moment, 
 and wondered what He meant; but gradually the 
 truth dawned on her. “He means to heal this 
 broken heart of mine, to take away this cancer of 
 remorse, to help me find God and be the true woman 
 I should be. O yes! that is the living water.” So, 
 when our Lord says that He will give unto us the 
 water of life, eternal life, it is this that He brings 
 to us: the secret, the strength, the joy of Divine 
 fellowship. He does this through fellowship with 
 our suffering, through sacrifice for us, through a 
 new creation within us. Thus we are urged to 
 have the mind that was in Him, to partake of Him, 
 to receive His gift. “To as many as received Him, 
 to them gave He power to become the sons of God.” 
 
 The Psalm from which our text is taken refers 
 directly to Christ. It sets forth clearly His zeal 
 in service and His deep consolation in sacrifice. 
 Gideon’s army in hot pursuit, not stooping and 
 scarcely pausing to drink, is a picture of zeal. Sam- 
 
“THE Brook IN THE Way.” 97 
 
 son, athirst, after the slaughter at Lehi, calling on 
 God for water, and finding a fountain suddenly 
 springing from the dry cleft, is a picture of 
 the stream of God that springs up to faithful ones, 
 even in unlikely places. Jesus sitting at the Well of 
 Sychar, watching the woman as she speeds away in 
 her new joy, and saying to the disciples, “I have 
 meat to eat that ye know not of,” is a picture of both 
 zeal and consolation. This, then, is our theme,— 
 The Refreshing Streams that Spring up in the Way 
 of High Endeavor. 
 
 The first need of every human life is some form 
 of high endeavor to give it unity, direction, and 
 earnestness. As Jesus said to Martha, “One thing 
 is needful.” Some one purpose must be dominant, 
 else life will be distracted, troubled, a defeat. The 
 higher that purpose is, the nobler the life will be. 
 If one, like Mary, has chosen the good part, making 
 all other duties and relationships fall into proper 
 place in subordination to it, life, while still active, 
 will be at the center calm and serene, a victory, and 
 a growing joy. 
 
 Next after a noble purpose there is need of 
 refreshment. “Are the consolations of God small 
 with thee?” “The consolations of God,’ what are 
 they? Well, there are three fountains which supply 
 
 7 
 
98 Tur Royatty oF JESUS. 
 
 this “brook in the way.” From three sources en- 
 during consolation may arise, to an immortal spirit: 
 1. From a consciousness of worth; 2. From a con- 
 sciousness of noble effort; 3. From a consciousness 
 of cheerful sacrifice. These, we say, are the con- 
 solations of God, they fill “the brook in the way.” 
 What one is, what one does, what one endures, are 
 not these the great domains of life? Out of them 
 come character, destiny, joy, or shame, “the brook 
 in the way,” or famine. 
 
 I. The Consciousness of Worth. 
 
 Let us think a few moments of this “brook in 
 the way,” Consciousness of Worth. A man only 
 gradually awakens to himself. 
 
 “The baby, new to earth and sky, 
 What time his tender palm is pressed 
 
 Against the circle of the breast, 
 Has never thought that this is ‘T;’ 
 
 But as he grows he gathers much, 
 And learns the use of ‘I’ and ‘me,’ 
 And finds I am not what I see, 
 
 And other than the things I touch. 
 
 So rounds he to a separate mind.” 
 
 The great joy of living is just this unfolding of 
 consciousness, the opening up of the soul’s life. 
 We speak of growing up. Well, it is a terrible 
 thing to grow old if one is not also growing up. 
 
“Tar Brook IN THE Way.” 99 
 
 You know it is possible to grow old and be growing 
 down all the time. There is truth in the bitter scorn 
 of Locksley Hall, 
 
 “Thou shalt lower to his level day by day, 
 What is fine in thee growing coarser, to sympathize with 
 clay.” 
 We have all witnessed this process, growing old 
 and down. It should be the other way, growing old 
 and up. The beauty of youth is wonderful, the 
 beauty of age should be Divine. 
 
 The deepest root of one’s comfort or pain is in 
 selfhood. What a man really is, his own heart 
 must be a living fountain of joy or a fire that is not 
 quenched. The glory or terror of the future life 
 must be its self-revelation. In the old Greek drama 
 one says to another, “O, mayest thou never know 
 the truth of what thou art!’ But one must know 
 the truth of what he is. In that world of light the 
 hidden, smothered self is revealed. Even here a 
 man has satisfaction from himself when he knows 
 that he is living up, when he makes his passions 
 serve his principles, when he makes his springtime 
 nourish a ripe and mellow autumn, when he makes 
 the present glorify the future. The consciousness 
 of worth is a refreshing “brook in the way;” as, 
 for instance, when a young man is frugal and eco- 
 
100 THE RoyaLty oF JESUS. 
 
 nomical that he may acquire a competence and 
 lift himself into independence and into a freer, 
 larger life; as when a student denies himself the 
 gay round of indulgence, that he may be a master 
 among those who know and a leader of men; as 
 when one catches a vision of the ideal world, and 
 lives, for years, almost a cloistered life, under the 
 vows of genius and religion—poverty, chastity, and 
 obedience—that his dreams may live and bless the 
 world in color or in marble. All this involves self- 
 denial but it has its comfort and its joy. All 
 self-denial for a noble end is a “brook in the way.” 
 This is true on the lower planes of life; but when 
 we rise to the moral realm its full force is seen. 
 The Book is true to human nature. We are sons 
 of God. Our true home is in the heavens. But 
 our moral endowment has its side of terror, as well 
 as joy. Wrong-doing closes the gate of a paradise 
 behind us, and sends us out in loneliness, shame, 
 and disgust. The curse pronounced upon the ser- 
 pent seems to have fallen upon some men. They 
 stand upright, it is true, but their spirits dwell in 
 the dark and foul places of the earth. Their 
 thoughts do not rise into the heavens, but crawl in 
 the dust, their very speech is slime. When such a 
 
“Tue Brook IN THE Way.” Io1 
 
 one awakens to his condition, his torture is extreme; 
 he is like the prodigal among the swine. 
 
 “Heaviest load by mortal borne 
 Is the burden of self-scorn.” 
 
 Self-scorn, to loathe ourselves, yet have to live with 
 ourselves,—that is as the fire of hell. But think of 
 the other side of this, the joy there is in the con- 
 sciousness of worth; not of shallow Pharisaical con- 
 ceit, but the deep consciousness of a sincere attitude 
 of soul and an unshaken purpose. Our Lord states 
 the true law of our human nature and the joy of 
 high endeavor in the Beatitudes. “Blessed,” yes, 
 evermore blessed, “are the pure in heart,” the 
 righteous, the meek, the merciful, the holy, loving, 
 and helping ones. They drink of “the brook in the 
 way.” 
 
 To live serenely we must live devoutly and 
 nobly. 
 
 “T know myself now, and I feel within me 
 
 A peace above all earthly dignities, 
 A still and quiet conscience.” 
 
 “One self-approving hour whole years outweigh$ 
 Of empty honors and of vulgar praise, 
 
 And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels 
 Than Cesar with a senate at his heels.” 
 
102 THE Roya.ty oF Jesus. 
 
 When Joseph was imprisoned in Egypt, that day 
 he was a king inwardly. “His mind to him a king- 
 dom was” by reason of his conscious integrity; he 
 drank “of the brook in the way.” Daniel went 
 down into the lions’ den with a majesty of soul 
 that made the place shine with a light more glorious 
 than a palace. Likewise, the Son of man, for the 
 joy that was set before Him, “endured the cross, 
 despising the shame.” He drank “of the brook in 
 the way.” 
 
 II. Consciousness of Noble Effort. 
 
 A second source of consolation is in the con- 
 sciousness of noble effort. Work, as well as wor- 
 ship, is a law of man’s nature. Neither body nor 
 mind will develop properly without activity; it is 
 the law of all life. 
 
 “An angel’s wing will droop if long at rest, 
 And God Himself, inactive, were no longer blest.” 
 
 It is true of the spirit also. It must realize itself in 
 achievement. One of the subtle joys of our nature 
 is in the sense of worthy work well done. It echoed 
 the joy of the Almighty Himself, as He surveyed 
 His creative work and “saw that it was good.” 
 Now, man is Godlike, and his soul can only fulfill 
 itself in great achievements. We experience a thrill 
 
“THE Brook IN THE Way.” 103 
 
 of joy over the completing of a great work like 
 that of building a railroad across the continent, or 
 laying a cable under the sea, or cutting across the 
 isthmus a pathway between the oceans. In the 
 same way, man has a sense of perfection. He is 
 not willing to leave things partial; he aims to make 
 them complete. He instinctively shuns odd num- 
 bers; not from superstition, but because odd num- 
 bers imply a defect, and, from a passion for 
 perfection, he prefers round numbers. He will 
 not guess the number in a crowd at 357; he 
 will say 350, or 360. To do otherwise would 
 require effort, a mental contortion. In _ the 
 same way, man has a passion for the infinite. 
 He protests against time. He reconstructs the 
 past, and dwells in it, he forecasts the future, 
 and works toward it. Eternity is in his heart 
 and so this longing for some great thing to do 
 is the throbbing of the infinite in us. Christianity 
 does with these strong forces of nature what the 
 nurseryman does with the wild fruits of the earth,— 
 tames them and develops them until they fulfill 
 themselves in blessing. Almost all our fruits, the 
 apple, the peach, the pear, have been thus born 
 again. 
 
 Now, the great thing in which the soul fulfills 
 
>. 
 
 104 THE Royarty oF JEsus. 
 
 itself is not found in any external thing, not in any 
 huge thing, but is found in some deep thing within. 
 The Duke of Wellington once said that the most 
 satisfying thing in life is just this sense of doing 
 one’s duty. He was right; nothing less than the 
 highest endeavor will satisfy the human spirit. 
 Worldly honor will not; it is empty and false, said 
 Chesterfield, in his old age. Wealth will not; 
 the treasure of Croesus can go but a short way in 
 the things of the spirit. Wisdom can not; the wisest 
 of men, from Solomon to Burke, were the saddest 
 of men. But listen: “My meat is to do the will of 
 Him that sent me, and to finish His work.” Life a 
 _ Divine gift, life a Divine service, and joy in obedi- 
 ence,—that is it: “the brook in the way.” 
 
 Perhaps one says “That will do for prophets 
 and saints, who are called to special work; it is 
 not the law of our common life.” It is, though. 
 There is not an honorable occupation among men 
 that is not, in some form, human service and Divine 
 service. By these occupations men live, but by 
 them they also serve. The farmer cultivates his 
 field, the miller grinds the grain, the merchant dis- 
 tributes the flour, others handle the bread; and so 
 the world is nourished. But man does not live by 
 bread alone. So builders, artisans, teachers, rulers, 
 
 ; 
 
“THe BROOK IN THE Way.” 105 
 
 and the various classes, have their place and service. 
 Without these co-workers, society would not endure, 
 and even God’s gracious promises would halt. 
 When Galileo looked through his telescope, he saw 
 that this common earth of ours was moving in a 
 splendid orbit. Just this, Christian faith does for 
 us: it lifts the plainest life into a splendid orbit. 
 Our Lord moved in a little circuit there in Judea _ 
 and Galilee, but how glorious was the orbit of His 
 love! You know something of this larger life of 
 the spirit. You are weary, at times, in your toil; 
 but when you think of the loved ones of the home 
 circle nourished and blessed by your toil, you drink 
 of “the brook in the way.” 
 
 A youth, going into battle under one of those 
 premonitions which sometimes cast the shadow, or 
 the glory, of an event before, said, “I shall fall 
 to-day.’ He was offered a detail to the rear. He 
 smiled and said: “No, it is not that. I should go 
 into this fight if I were to suffer a thousand deaths; 
 but, boys, this is it: I shall stay by the flag while I 
 live; keep the flag over me when I fall.’ When 
 he received a fatal wound at the ‘close of a heroic 
 day, he said, “I die cheerfully, for our cause has 
 won.” He drank “of the brook in the way.” So 
 Wolfe, receiving his death-wound on the Heights of 
 
106 THE Royaty oF JESus. 
 
 Abraham above Quebec, learned of the flight 
 of the enemy and drank of the “brook in the 
 way.” Was it not this deep consciousness of noble 
 effort that filled our Lord’s soul with peace 
 under the shadow of the cross? “I have finished 
 the work which Thou gavest me to do;” a life from 
 God, for God, unto God, the consciousness of 
 faithfulness, “the brook in the way.” 
 
 Ill. The Consciousness of Cheerful Sacrifice. 
 
 “T have shown him how great things he 
 must suffer for My sake;” so God spake of 
 Paul. The apostle was a great scholar, theo- 
 logian, preacher; but there was a grander thing 
 than that about him: he suffered great things. 
 It may seem strange to you, but it is a deep 
 truth of the Book and of life, that the greatest 
 service of this world is brave endurance. The 
 early Church was right about it, martyrdom is the 
 perfect crown of service. Job was a sincere man, 
 who feared God and did good; but there was a 
 higher glory for Job, that of suffering, to be storm- 
 swept without, baffled within, and his judgment 
 taken away. The highest virtues of character, like 
 pictures on china, are set in fire. 
 
 The ministry of suffering, and it has a ministry, 
 is a mystery too deep for our philosophy. Even the 
 
“Tur BrRooK IN THE Way.” 107 
 
 Book of Job has no explanation. Its great lesson 
 is, God is great and wise and good; let us trust 
 Him. We are told that all things work together for 
 good, even suffering. Just as the very mire nour- 
 ishes the lily in its spotless beauty, so sacrifice 
 works up into the glory of character. 
 
 Our Lord teaches us, by precept and example, 
 that the best work of life is long-range work. The 
 corn of wheat that falleth into the ground, unless it 
 die, abideth alone. There must be a disappearing, 
 a full surrender, a dying, before there comes the new 
 and larger life. Many things in life are like frost 
 and snow, enemies to the flower, but friendly to the 
 root. Ah, there is a stripping that is an enriching! 
 It is possible to find the “brook in the way” even 
 through sacrifice. It is one’s privilege to rise to the 
 heavenward side of loss. 
 
 When Horace Mann, when George William 
 Curtis, through the toil and privation of years, 
 without murmur or complaint, paid debts for which 
 they were not legally responsible, they lived nobly 
 and drank “of the brook in the way.’ When the 
 father and mother, denying themselves needful 
 things, toil on uncomplainingly that their children 
 may be lifted into a larger life and more favorable 
 conditions, as they think of their children, live for 
 
108 THE Royatty oF Jesus. 
 
 their children, endure for their children, they 
 “drink of the brook in the way.” 
 
 But the most touching thing in this world to me 
 is the sealed life. Ah! sealed lives—the world is 
 full of them ; lives held back by one cause or another 
 from their full fruition, and, as it would seem, from 
 their full power; like Charles Lamb, for instance, 
 whose life was a service, even a sacrifice—first to a 
 weak father, then to an afflicted sister; and yet how 
 brave and cheerful and human he was! Read his 
 “Dream Children,” and you will know what a para- 
 dise dwelt in his thought, and how deeply his life 
 was sealed. And so, from one cause or another, on 
 one side or another, many lives are sealed. ‘The 
 thing we feel we could do, the thing we would if 
 we were free, is denied us. We are held back, or 
 the opportunity does not come, and our lives are — 
 sealed. But even here we may find the “brook in 
 the way.” God never permits a life to be sealed 
 below that He does not permit it to open full and 
 wide above. It is possible to look at these things, 
 not in the shadow of restraint, but in the light of 
 privilege. We can not do the lower thing because 
 we must do the highest thing. The young man 
 may not leave the farm to win his fortune in the 
 city, although he is capable; but the old folks are 
 
“Tum BRooK IN THE Way.” 109 
 
 failing, and he alone can nourish them. He may 
 not build a home of his own, for there are invalids 
 in the household. But as he plows the paternal 
 acres and walks alone, he thanks God that he is 
 strong to endure and able to bless. He drinks “of 
 the brook in the way.” So many lives are sealed, 
 but are brave, cheerful, and helpful. The way is 
 narrow, but it is the way of the highest life. The 
 fire kindles on the sacrifice; but the trumpets blow, 
 and the heart is serene and joyous. They “drink 
 of the brook in the way.” 
 
 Our Lord’s life was a sealed life. How little of 
 His heart and thought could He share! He pleased 
 not Himself; He walked in isolation of soul; He 
 trod the winepress alone; and yet He rejoiced in 
 spirit, in His high fellowship with God, in His deep 
 human sympathies, in His precious service. He 
 drank of the “brook in the way.” 
 
 We opened our theme with a vision of the Hud- 
 son winding in the sunlight among the hills. Let us 
 close it with a vision of that river of grace that 
 flows from Paradise to Paradise, the stream of Di- 
 vine Consolation. The river of Eden was parted 
 into four heads. What does it mean but this, that 
 God’s goodness and grace shall flow to all the ends 
 of the earth? It was a bountiful and lifegiving 
 
110 THE Royatty oF JEsus. 
 
 river which John saw in the new Eden. Its waters 
 were free and abundant. “Whosoever will, let him 
 take of the water of life freely.” What does it 
 mean but this, that the highest joy of life, the con- 
 solations of God, are within the reach of every one? 
 Yours, you say, is a narrow life, a burdened life, a 
 sealed life. Very well; but you can make it a true 
 and noble life. You can be faithful in service, 
 cheerful in sacrifice, and walk with God. 
 
 “Let your high resolve sustain you, 
 
 And ever firm faith and prayer, 
 
 Like fountains of sweet water in the sea, 
 Keep you a living soul.” 
 
 Be true, be faithful, be Christlike, and you shall 
 drink of “the brook in the way.” 
 
VI. 
 
 THE GOSPEL FOR AN OPULENT CIVILIZA- 
 ZATION. 
 
 “And God said, Replenish the earth, and subdue 
 it, and have dominion.’’—GEN. I, 28. 
 
 “God, who giveth us richly, all things to enjoy.”— 
 1 TIM. VI, 17. 
 
 “But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, 
 and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no 
 sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.” — 
 LUKE XXI1, 36. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY has conquered to the very bottom 
 of human society; can it also conquer at the top? 
 It has taken men from the very lowest vices, and 
 lifted them up into the strength and beauty of true 
 manhood ; can it enable men, as well, safely to enjoy 
 and nobly use the power, and even the luxuy, of an 
 opulent civilization? We believe it can, and the 
 reason for our faith we proceed to state. 
 
 At the very outset let it be admitted that a very 
 
 Til 
 
II2 THE ROYALTY OF JESUS. 
 
 different conception of the religious life has, at 
 times, prevailed. Judaism was always a servant in 
 God’s house ; it never came to the freedom and glad- 
 ness of children; it never quite mastered the true use 
 and worth of this natural world and of human life. 
 The negative note sounded out the loudest and most 
 persistent. Righteousness seemed, to the Hebrew, 
 imperiled by the art, the music, the beauty of the 
 world, devotion to which gave such charm to the 
 old Greek life. The antagonism is well stated in 
 Zechariah’s phrase, “Thy sons, O Zion! against the 
 sons of Greece.” Commerce and foreign trade were 
 looked upon with suspicion. The commercial alli- 
 ance between the King of Judah and the King of 
 Israel came to disaster upon the rocks, and the 
 wrecking of the ships, the termination of the inter- 
 national venture, was looked upon as providential. 
 “And Jehoshaphat made ships of Tarshish to go to 
 Ophir for gold; but they went not, for the ships 
 were broken at Ezion-Geber. Then said Ahaziah 
 unto Jehoshaphat, Let my servants go with thy 
 servants in the ships. But he would not.” 
 
 During the Middle Ages man lived enveloped 
 in a cowl. He did not see the beauty of the 
 world, or, if he glanced at it for a moment, 
 he immediately crossed himself, and turned aside 
 
For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 113 
 
 to tell his beads and to pray. St. Bernard 
 traveled all day along the shores of Lake Geneva, 
 noticing neither the azure of the waters nor 
 the splendor of the mountains, with their robes 
 of light and their diadems of snow, but bending 
 all the while a thought-burdened forehead over 
 the neck of his mule, deeply buried in his breviary. 
 The mystic Tauler used to draw his cap over his 
 eyes when in the country, that the violets might not 
 withdraw his thoughts from his inward communion. 
 
 The Puritan, like the monk, emphasized the 
 supremacy of the moral ideal, but he did it in a 
 drastic way. He did full justice to the high mas- 
 teries of the religious life, its self-control, its 
 moderation, its earnestness; but he never quite 
 attained to its great emancipations; he did not find 
 its notes of gladness and joy. Doubtless he had 
 heard that “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness 
 thereof,” but his was only a partial inheritance; 
 he starved his life and multiplied his crosses. The 
 peril of abusing the world loomed so large before 
 him that he scarcely attempted its full and trium- 
 phant uses. He did, in his grim way, seek to attune 
 the world to heavenly harmonies; but he did it, 
 not by inscribing “Holiness to the Lord on the bells 
 of the horses,” but by smashing them altogether. 
 
 8 
 
114 THE Royarty oF JEsus. 
 
 Now I submit that all this is very far below the 
 conception of the religious life given us in the life 
 of our Lord Himself, and in the teaching of His 
 apostles. “I am come,” said our Lord, “that they 
 might have life, and that they might have it more 
 abundantly.” The true influence of Jesus and His 
 Gospel has been in the direction, not of restraining 
 life, but of increasing it, of enriching it, of elevating 
 its tone, of making it strong, free, and in every way 
 more abundant. It was made a reproach against 
 Him that He was so much at home in this our hu- 
 man world, and its busy activities and social fellow- 
 ships. They missed the aloofness about Him they 
 found in John. “He came eating and drinking,” 
 they said, and they stigmatized Him as a “wine- 
 bibber.” John the Baptist might not have added 
 anything to the festivities of a wedding; possibly 
 he would have frightened the guests away; but 
 certainly Jesus did not spoil the feast; He saved 
 its joy and re-enforced it. In that initial deed of 
 kindness, sustaining and increasing its notes of joy, 
 He revealed the very spirit of His mission in the 
 world,—not to condemn, but to save and to fulfill 
 its joy. In His farewell prayer with the disciples He 
 asks not that they be taken out of the world, not out 
 of home life, not out of political life, not out of 
 
For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 115 
 
 commercial or industrial life, nor out of social life, 
 but kept from the evil that may lurk in all these 
 things. Neither John the Baptist, nor the medizval 
 saint, nor the Puritan, struck the full note of Chris- 
 tian life; for that is never a negative or partial one, 
 but always a positive note, one of victory and joy. 
 In St. Paul’s Epistle we find the full true note 
 of the Christian life, the Gospel for an opulent civil- 
 ization. “God, who giveth us all things richly to 
 enjoy.” “All things are yours’—the world, life, 
 death, things present, things to come—all are yours, 
 and “ye are Christ’s.” Life truly centered in Christ 
 may sweep over the widest horizon, “using the 
 world as not abusing it.” “Let every man wherein 
 he is called, therein abide with God :” “wherein he is 
 called,” throughout the whole range of human rela- 
 tion and activity, “therein abide with God;” not 
 retreating, not compromising, not surrendering one 
 jot or title of human right, but abiding there with 
 God, at the very center of life’s power and posses- 
 sion and glowing splendor; “abiding there” in the 
 fullness of Divine life and grace, seeing all things, 
 knowing all, possessing all, enjoying all, using all. 
 “Whatsover ye do, do all to the glory of God.” 
 The essential thing in life is not its outward form, 
 nor its sharp restraints, neither its poverty, nor its 
 
116 THE RoyaLty oF JEsus. 
 
 wealth—concerning which the saints have some- 
 times missed their way—but in the regulating 
 motive. There is a true regulating motive 
 that can organize the whole of human life 
 into a divine order—its widest knowledge, its 
 richest treasure, its highest activities, its small- 
 est details—and hold them there on line with 
 the glory of God, just as the force of gravita- 
 tion holds in its place, with equal accuracy, the 
 tiny mote dancing in the sunbeam and the huge 
 planet swinging in its vast orbit. The ancients 
 sought, in all the world they knew, two things: 
 one, the Elixir of Life, something to stop all decay 
 within, and open there a perpetual fountain of youth, 
 a flowing stream of strength and gladness in the 
 human spirit; and the other, the Philosopher’s 
 Stone, that turned all to gold, something that would 
 dominate all the circumstances of life without, and 
 turn them into higher values. Well, we have them 
 both in the Gospel of Jesus: “The water that I shall 
 give him shall be in him a well of water, springing 
 up into everlasting life,” the Elixir of Life. And 
 again; “All things work together for good to them 
 that love God};” the Philosopher's Stone. All things, 
 prosperity as well as adversity, health as well as 
 sickness, success as well as defeat, joy as well as 
 
 _—— 
 
For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 117 
 
 sorrow, the fullnes of life and power as well as its 
 limitations, working together for good—the Gospel 
 for an opulent civilization as well as one for an age 
 of stress and trial. 
 
 We must not forget, however, the immense debt 
 of Christian civilization to the dark-browed Puritan. 
 For a few moments I would hold a brief for him. 
 He has become the target of ridicule as his somber 
 figure moves across the pages of history, and, as 
 such, he has contributed in no small degree to the 
 gayety of nations. For one thing, he was a man of 
 great ideals. The nation is ruled, in the long run, 
 by the ideals cherished in the hearts of its people. 
 “We live by admiration, hope and love,” by the 
 things we profoundly revere, the things we look 
 forward to, the things we cling to. Better for Italy 
 that the Cathedral of St. Peter’s, with its mighty 
 dome, should crumble into dust than that the noble 
 ideal uttered by Cavour, “A free Church in a free 
 State,” should fail to rule her destinies. An eminent 
 French jurist has lately expressed an opinion of 
 great significance. “In recent years,” he says, “re- 
 ligion has, in France, been banished from public 
 life and from many private circles. From this has 
 come—and I base my opinion on an experience of 
 many years—a wonderful retrogression. With the 
 
118 THE RoyaLty oF JEsus. 
 
 religious ideals there disappear, also, other ideals. 
 
 Fatherland, family, duty, are then as meaningless 
 as the word ‘religion.’ Nothing remains, then, but 
 the struggle for material needs, for immediate exist- 
 ence and crude instincts.” Now, the Puritan was 
 one who had a great forward and upward look. 
 When the Pilgrims sailed in the Mayflower, the 
 most important freight carried on board was not 
 supplies nor furniture, but the invisible freight of 
 great ideals which came down to them from the 
 heavens. That they might realize these, they cheer- 
 fully sailed away under the stars, through lonely 
 nights and on temptestuous seas. Put that down to 
 the credit of the Puritan: he cherished great ideals 
 of truth, of freedom, of righteousness, into the splen- 
 dor of which this modern world has in some degree 
 entered. 
 
 - For another thing, the Puritan was a man of 
 mighty appropriating faith; to him God was a 
 present reality, a ruling force in human affairs. 
 “The people that do know their God shall be strong 
 and do exploits.’ The Puritan was of this type. 
 His was not merely the traditional and inherited 
 faith of his fathers, but a conquered faith of his 
 own. He had personal transactions with God in 
 his own soul, and made brave ventures on His word. 
 
For AN OFULENT CIVILIZATION. 119 
 
 He heard the voice Abram heard and obeyed: “Get 
 thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and 
 from thy father’s house, unto a land which I will 
 show unto thee.’’ His record is written there in 
 the eleventh of Hebrews; he belongs in that list of 
 mighty conquerors with Gideon, Barak, Samson, 
 ‘David, and the prophets, “who through faith sub- 
 dued kingdoms, and wrought righteousness.” Put 
 that down to the credit of the Puritan: he con- 
 quered the world. 
 
 And, then, he had the courage of his convictions, 
 and relentlessly followed them to the end. He did 
 not always “bathe his sword in heaven,” but he al- 
 ways wielded it in behalf of humanity. He was 
 lacking in fine discrimination, and sometimes re- 
 sembled a “bulldog with confused ideas;” but as 
 wide and as ferocious as his grasp may have been, he 
 never let go his hold on the thing he felt to be right 
 and true. He heroically endeavored to bring all 
 mundane things swiftly into line with his heavenly 
 ideals, though in so doing he threw them a bit out 
 of proportion and destroyed artistic effects. He had 
 the courage of a great initiative, or, as the late 
 President McKinley happily phrased it on the eve 
 of the Spanish War, “the courage of destiny,” step- 
 ping bravely into the unknown when the light of 
 
120 THE Royayty oF JEsus. 
 
 duty shone that way. It is charged that the Puritan 
 robbed life of its beauty and spoiled its music; but 
 he only did this because of imminent peril that 
 threatened in these things, and because he was 
 not himself entirely emancipated. When the 
 yellow fever invades a country, communities 
 maintain a strict quarantine. They throw away 
 tropical fruit, no matter how inviting, because 
 of the danger that lurks within it; and if the 
 danger becomes especially threatening, they guard 
 the frontier with guns. Now, the Puritan was 
 not only a pioneer of progress, but sometimes 
 its night patrol; he met evil on the utmost 
 frontier, and met it with a brave front. You re- 
 member how, in that country church, the congrega- 
 tion, after rising to sing the hymn, turned around 
 and knelt in prayer, with their faces toward the 
 door and the open fields. In so doing they executed 
 a Puritan movement; for the custom was originally 
 a protest against bowing toward the altar and the 
 image there. Now, the Puritan turned his back 
 upon a good many things in life, because he be- 
 lieved they were inextricably mixed with evil. His 
 was not wholly a negative Gospel, but a Gospel in 
 armor, and the armor was heavy. I do not share 
 the feelings of Hawthorne touching the Puritan, 
 
For AN OPpuULENT CIVILIZATION. 121 
 
 when he says, “Let us thank God for such ancestors, 
 and let each generation thank Him for being one 
 step farther away from them in the march of ages.” 
 Nay; let us thank God for them, rather, and, like 
 them also, bravely serve our present generation, and 
 thus keep true step in the “march of ages.” 
 
 The Puritan built himself, or rather buried him- 
 self, into the future. He belonged to one of the 
 geological ages of history. Those vast growths of 
 the carboniferous era sunk into the earth, and, as 
 coal, became treasure banked at compound interest 
 against human need; and that treasure utilized, the 
 life of the past turned into motive power of the 
 present, lies at the bottom of the commerce, wealth, 
 _and splendor of these later centuries; so the life 
 and sacrifice of the Puritan nourishes and sustains 
 much that is best in our modern civilization. 
 
 But the “new wine can not be put into old 
 bottles.” The astronomy of the twentieth century 
 can not be the astronomy of the tenth century, 
 though the stars with which they deal are the 
 same. No more can the theology of the twentieth 
 century be exactly that of the tenth century, 
 though the truths with which they deal are exactly 
 the same. Each age must apprehend eternal truth 
 in new and vital ways, and in even larger horizons. 
 
122 THE Roya.ty OF JESUS. 
 
 The imperative need of the twentieth century is not 
 a gospel in armor, a gospel of defense and restraint, 
 but a gospel in motion, in masterful touch with all 
 human achievement and activity ; in a word, a gospel 
 for an opulent civilization. Where shall we find it? 
 Well, that question is finely answered in the Scrip- 
 tures that direct our meditation; the distinctive 
 note of that larger answer I take to be Dominion, 
 Reconciliation, Service. 
 
 I. First, then, Dominion: “Let them subdue 
 the earth, and have dominion.” 
 
 No chapter of human history is so enchanting as 
 the one that tells of man’s steady conquest of the 
 world about him. Gradually he has awakened to a 
 consciousness of his royalty and of his vast realms. 
 One by one he has subdued the threatening elements, 
 until they own his sway and fulfill his desire. There 
 is a hint of omnipotence in the way in which he uses 
 the mighty forces of nature. He seems almost om- 
 niscient as he opens his eyes daily upon the whole 
 earth, becoming almost instantly aware of all that 
 passes upon it, and as quickly making his thought 
 and will potent at any point upon the surface. 
 
 As one looks back over the track of time, the 
 centuries flash out their characteristics or ruling 
 
For AN OPuULENT CIVILIZATION. 123 
 
 ideas. The thirteenth, we say, was the century of 
 splendor, “when knighthood was in flower.” The 
 fifteenth was one of discovery, when daring naviga- 
 tors pushed the horizon of the world before them 
 and unveiled hidden continents. The seventeenth 
 was a century of ferment. “when the new heavens 
 and the new earth” began to appear. The eighteenth 
 was one of revolution, when the modern world took 
 form. ‘The nineteenth was the century of wonder, 
 full of unexpected and far-reaching discoveries. 
 Stay a moment, in thought, as its surprises and 
 splendors unfold: railways and automobiles, tele- 
 graph and telephone, photograph and phonograph, 
 gas, petroleum and electric light, spectrum analysis, 
 the Roentgen ray and radium, the liquefaction of 
 air and hydrogen, the foundation of geology, the 
 discovery of anzsthetics, the far-reaching, epoch- 
 making discoveries of Darwin, the world-wide ex- 
 pansion of commerce, industrial achievements 
 beyond the dreams of Oriental romance, the vast in- 
 crease of the comfort, luxury, and glory of human 
 life—these constitute a veritable galaxy of marvels, 
 and this is our world. This modern world, with all 
 its knowledge and power and wealth and achieve- 
 ment, we are to subdue. Over all its potencies we 
 
124 THE Royarty oF Jesus. 
 
 are to have dominion, and make this twentieth cen- 
 tury glorious in holiness and humanity. Can we do 
 it? We are fond of singing, 
 
 “Faith of our fathers, living still, 
 
 In spite of dungeon, fire, and sword;” 
 but the faith of our fathers must be tried by some- 
 thing more subtle and searching than “dungeon, 
 fire, and sword;” even the disintegrating and dis- 
 solving forces of an opulent civilization. 
 
 When the Pope looked upon the fair-haired 
 English captives in the Roman market, and learned 
 the name of their king in far-away England, Alla, 
 he exclaimed, “Allelulia shall be sung there.” And 
 so, in the fullness and splendor of this modern 
 world, we may sing our Allelulia of triumph. But 
 we will have dominion only as we truly and fully 
 enter into the secret of Jesus, and enthrone within 
 spiritual life and power. In every situation, in 
 every human circle, at every point of opportunity, 
 our Lord was thoroughly master of Himself and 
 of all the potencies centering there; and this not 
 through hard restraint, but through the power of a 
 full, free, and joyous life. If life is strong enough 
 at the center, it may be free at the circumference. 
 We recognize this principle and act upon it in our 
 common life. It is far better to teach the growing 
 
For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 125 
 
 boy the right use of a horse, a boat, or a gun, than 
 to discourage and enfeeble him by endless pro- 
 hibitions. As he increases in intelligence, in moral 
 enlightenment, in self-control, we give him more 
 liberty. We make life freer at the circumference as 
 it becomes stronger at the center. Ascend higher 
 in your thought, and you will discover the simple, 
 open secret of our Lord. The secret of Jesus is 
 not poverty of means at life’s circumference, but 
 fullness of spiritual power at itscenter. ‘Thou shalt 
 love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, and with 
 all thy mind, and with all thy heart, and thy neigh- 
 bor as thyself.” The life filled with the spirit of 
 love will be safe, strong, and helpful everywhere; 
 it will have dominion. Like a planet in the grip of 
 the sun, it will move triumphantly and serenely in 
 the widest orbit. Virgil takes leave of Dante at 
 the gate of Paradise with the words: 
 
 “Thus far with art and skill thy steps I’ve urged. 
 Behold the sun upon thy forehead thrown! 
 
 Thy will, henceforth, is upright, free, and sound; 
 To slight its impulse were a sin: then, lord 
 
 Be o’er thyself,—be mitered and be crowned.” 
 
 So Christianity introduces the soul into the sunlit 
 splendors of an opulent civilization with a will “up- 
 right, free, and sound,” and bids it be “mitered and 
 
126 Tue Royatty oF Jesus. 
 
 be crowned.” “Behold what manner of love the 
 Father hath betowed upon us, that we should be 
 called the sons of God, and we are.” ‘That is the 
 first note of the Gospel for an opulent civilization, 
 Dominion. 
 
 II. Reconciliation is another Note of this Twen- 
 tieth Century Gospel. 
 
 And here let us release this great word “Recon- 
 ciliation” from theological captivity. Sometimes 
 the large, sweet Gospel of God is evaporated into 
 uninviting definitions, its truths shaped into dogmas 
 and doctrines which do not reveal its full scope or 
 entire range of blessing. This word “Reconcilia- 
 tion” is a case in point. It does mean, what they 
 insisted on so mightily in the sixteenth century, the 
 restoration of the soul to God; but it also means, 
 and we must overtake the meaning in this twentieth 
 century, the restoration of all things to spiritual 
 ends and to Divine uses. It does belong to the 
 beginning of the Christian life; but it continues 
 throughout the whole course of that life, guiding it 
 into wider horizons and interpreting its deeper 
 meaning. It comes to us, not with a sword-thrust, 
 but with a song of deliverance and privilege. Its 
 large meaning is to harmonize after apparent dis- 
 cord, to reunite after apparent estrangement, to 
 
For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 127 
 
 restore again to sacred uses what had been wrenched 
 away from divinely appointed ends. In this sense 
 Paul vindicates the large charter of the Christian in 
 this present world and in human life: “All things 
 are yours ;” “the world,” with all its potencies, with 
 all its fullness ; “life,” with all its avenues of culture, 
 of joy, of blessedness. “He hath given us richly all 
 things to enjoy.” There is a way, and the Gospel 
 reveals it to us, in which we may fully enjoy and 
 nobly use God’s great gifts to us in nature, in life, 
 and in civilization. In a word, there is a Gospel 
 for an opulent civilization. 
 
 There is a reconciliation of the soul to the true 
 uses of our human life. The old Manichean heresy 
 of the essential evil of matter laid its restraining 
 hand on the Christian life for many centuries. Men 
 fled away from natural human relations because of 
 an evil taint they felt to be inseparable from them. 
 Spirit and matter were set in irreconcilable conflict. 
 The discord within was felt to be hopeless. St. 
 Paul, however, found the secret of victory : “Thanks 
 be unto God, who giveth us the victory, through our 
 Lord Jesus Christ.” “Christ liveth in me;” that 
 implies not merely the restraint of life, but its high 
 mastery everywhere. 
 
 Plato compares the soul to a charioteer drawn 
 
128 THE Royalty oF JESUS. 
 
 by fiery steeds: the aspirations of the soul, like a 
 white steed, pulling away toward the heavens; the 
 passions of the body, like a black steed, pulling away 
 toward the earth. The Epicurean would throw the 
 reins to the black horse, and lead a life of self-in- 
 dulgence; the Stoic would throw the reins to the 
 white horse, and deny the body, leading a partial 
 life. In the Christian philosophy, as voiced by St. 
 Paul, there is a reconciliation of forces; both horses 
 are held steadily upon the course, moving harmoni- 
 ously and nobly toward the divinely appointed goal. 
 Christ rides with the charioteer, teaching him the 
 enjoyment and the true mastery of life. 
 
 I have a secret, Paul writes to the Philippians, 
 
 in value far beyond the value of the Eleusinian 
 Mysteries: I have been initiated into the splendid 
 mastery of life. “I know how to be abased and how 
 to abound;” “how to be abased,” restraining life 
 where need be; and “how to abound,” holding life 
 sane and true amid all opulence and abundance. 
 Browning has caught the note: 
 
 “Let us not always say, 
 Spite of this flesh to-day, 
 I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole: 
 As the bird wings and sings, 
 Let us cry, ‘All good things 
 Are ours, and nor soul helps more, now, than flesh helps 
 soul.’” 
 
For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 129 
 
 This reconciliaion will recover the ministry of art 
 and the service of beauty to human life. There is 
 a mysterious power in the world which has never 
 ceased to captivate the human spirit, which appeals 
 to what is highest.and noblest in us, and yet again 
 to what is lowest and worst in us. The sense of 
 beauty is at once the most mysterious and most 
 fascinating endowment of our nature, and it yields 
 to us some of the most exquisite elements of bright- 
 ness and joy. A picture, a statue, a symphony, a 
 poem, are among the most intellectual pleasures and 
 touch our finest emotions. There is a profound love 
 of the beautiful in the heart of the Creator; for it 
 shines out in all parts of His creation,—in the clouds 
 of the sky, on the face of the sea, and in the splendor 
 of the earth. He makes the fields rejoice in the 
 beauty of flowers, as well as abound in the wealth 
 of harvest. When our Lord was upon the earth He 
 had an open eye for its beauty. He noticed the lily 
 of the field, the birds of the air, and the vine by 
 the door. God himself hath appointed the ministry 
 of art in human life. He endowed Bezaleel to 
 devise charming work in gold, in silver, and in 
 brass. Aaron’s robe was made for glory and for 
 beauty. There was a touch of beauty, as well as 
 5 
 
130 Tue RoyaLty oF JESUS. 
 
 strength and majesty, in Solomon’s Temple: “At 
 the top of the pillars was lily-work.” 
 
 We are told, sometimes, that the spirit of Chris- 
 tianity and the spirit of Art are opposed, because 
 Art can not free itself from sensuous associations. 
 Painters and sculptors glorify that which saints 
 and ascetics have mortified. Art, it is said, magni- 
 fying the ideals of human beauty, contradicts the 
 spiritual ideal of holiness: “Set your affections on 
 . things above, not on things on the earth.” But St. 
 Paul, at Athens, surrounded by the noblest works 
 of art, did not feel its antagonism to the spiritual 
 ideal, but recognized art itself as unconscious wor- 
 ship, and endeavored to fulfill its aspirations by 
 leading those groping children of genius to a knowl- 
 edge of the living God. Beauty is one of God’s 
 missionaries; it awakens interest in higher things, 
 and signals the way home: “For we are His off- 
 
 ” 
 
 spring.” “Art, for art’s sake,” is a flippant phrase 
 we often hear. True art must follow its own ends 
 in its own way; but they must be true ends, or its 
 highest gifts will be a snare. When its sole aim is 
 to please and to excite mere sensuousness, it has 
 begun to degenerate, and will hasten the ruin of 
 States it has adorned. Frequently, great artists 
 
 have flourished in an age of decadence. As Ruskin 
 
 Sai 
 
For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 131 
 
 puts it, “The names of great painters are like passing 
 bells: in the name of Velasquez you hear sounded 
 the fall of Spain; in the name of Titian, that of 
 Venice; in the name of Leonardo, that of Milan; 
 in the name of Raphael, that of Rome.” Only an 
 exalted purpose can preserve art from becoming, in 
 the long run, a destructive and disintegrating force. 
 Now, the Christian spirit reconciles art to its true 
 ideal, its large ministry, and its spiritual guidance 
 in human life. 
 
 Religion and art have their home in the 
 ideal. Art is man’s effort to get nearer the 
 mind of God in his work; to feel and express 
 those ideals of order, balance, harmony, and 
 beauty that have been wrought in the material 
 universe. Religion is man’s effort to get near 
 the heart of God; to feel and express similar 
 ideas, truth, righteousness, and love, in the moral 
 sphere. Beauty is the pursuit of both, beauty 
 being the earthly shadow of holiness, and holiness 
 the spiritual form of beauty. It is the mission of 
 both religion and art to lead the soul beyond the 
 temporal to the eternal, and they mutually sustain 
 each other. The steel need not be taken from the 
 blood, nor the commanding vision of righteouness 
 from the soul, when the touch becomes fine, the 
 
132 THE Royaty oF JESUS. 
 
 heart tender, and the eye sunny, in the world of 
 beauty, light, and love. 
 
 The Venetians felt the true mission of art when 
 they wrote, in the glory of mosaic, over the great 
 doorway of St. Mark’s, “I am the door.” Giotto 
 felt it when he carved the same words of the Good 
 Shepherd above the portal of his famous Campanile 
 of Florence. He desired to let every one know, who 
 might enter the little side door leading to his 
 glorious snowy-pink tower, what art was to him, 
 what art should be to every one—a doorway into 
 the power and beauty of spiritual truth. 
 
 III. Another Note of this Gospel of the Twen- 
 tieth Century is that of Service. 
 
 It has been pointed out, over and over again, 
 how our Lord changed the ideal of life from self- 
 indulgence to that of service. Nothing is more 
 beautiful in all the Gospel story than the scene 
 wherein our Lord re-enforced this lesson of service 
 by one of the last acts of His life on earth. Jesus, 
 “knowing that He was come from God and went to 
 God, laid aside His garments, took a towel, and 
 girded Himself, and pouring water into a basin, 
 began to was His disciples’ feet.” What did it 
 mean? ‘This at least, that the lowliest duties may 
 be consecrated by the highest motives; that the 
 
For AN. OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 133 
 
 splendor of life is in the quality of its spirit and in 
 human service; that the glory of position, of pos- 
 session, of ability of whatsoever character, is not 
 self-exaltation, but service. 
 
 Now, in our Lord’s words about purse, wallet, 
 and sword, we have the true program of Christian 
 service and Christian conquest. The resources of 
 trade and commerce, the machinery of organization, 
 and the forces of civil government are to be ap- 
 propriated, set in motion, and directed toward the 
 establishment of God’s kingdom on earth. In the 
 training of the disciples our Lord led them to this 
 great conception, the consecration of our common 
 life, of the whole of its manifold activities, to 
 human service. No element of power is to be 
 abandoned, but each is to be taken, to be mastered 
 and used for noble ends. Some time ago there was 
 brought to light, in a church in England, an old 
 picture of our Lord. It represented His blood as 
 flowing over the various implements of industry, 
 the reaping hook, the scythe, the shuttle, the cart, 
 implying that everything wherewith we carry on 
 the work of the home and the world is cleansed and 
 consecrated. The first note of the Christian life is 
 its inwardness; true religion is of the heart, a right 
 spirit before God. The second note is, that the 
 
134 THE Royarty oF Jesus. 
 
 inner quality of the life must work itself out in 
 serviceable action. The third note is, that all the 
 potentialities of the world and of human life, com- 
 merce, industrial progress, invention, wealth, art, 
 literature, all things whatsoever that constitute our 
 opulent and expanding civilization, are no longer 
 to be left alone, as something apart from the Chris- 
 tian life, but to be taken up by it, and to be 
 dominated and directed to the bringing in of the 
 kingdom of God. It was said of David that, after 
 he had served his generation, he fell asleep. To 
 serve one’s generation it is first necessary to under- 
 stand it, to appreciate its imperative need. Abra- 
 ham served his generation, and all generations, by 
 living faith in the living God, and built Mono- 
 theism into human civilization. David served 
 his generation by enthroning national righteous- 
 ness. Luther served his generation by empha- 
 sizing the true and simple way of salvation, justi- 
 fication by faith. Wesley served his generation 
 by setting in true relation the doctrine of the wit- 
 nessing of the Spirit, and leading believers to their 
 full privilege in Christ. Each age of high endeavor 
 in the past has been an era of progress; the age of 
 pietism, of polemics, of denominationalism, each res- 
 cued and developed an essential element of Christian 
 truth and life, to be fully realized in the final form 
 
For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 135 
 
 of the kingdom. The age of teaching, training, of 
 dicipline, has been in a good degree fulfilled, and 
 the time and opportunity for large action has come. 
 It is ours, in this twentieth century, to work out in 
 splendor into the civilization about us, the great 
 things God hath, through the centuries, worked 
 into the religious consciousness of His people. We 
 are to make spiritual realities visible and potent 
 among men. 
 
 Israel, at the sea, was commanded to stand still 
 and see the salvation of God, to pause for the up- 
 ward and forward look; then the command was 
 given for an onward and triumphant movement. 
 So the Church, like Israel at the sea, like the dis- 
 ciples in fellowship with the Lord, has caught the 
 upward and forward vision, and is summoned to 
 a triumphant advance. “After that, He appeared 
 unto them in another form.” Christ is always com- 
 ing to His Church in a new form. He comes to us 
 with a larger, fuller message. The ages past are 
 not lost, but are to be fulfilled, in a growing measure, 
 in our age. There is a triumphant call to a forward 
 movement and a mighty impulse in that word “now” 
 introducing the larger program of Christianity. 
 Again, in a new way we are called to realize the 
 chivalry of the cross. 
 
 “Now let him that hath a purse, take it.” The 
 
¥ o. eo, 
 . 
 
 136 THE Royatty oF JEsus. 
 
 twentieth century should be characterized by heroic, 
 jubilant, and hilarious giving unparalleled, except 
 by the outburst of Pentecost. “Likewise a wallet,” 
 —foresight and organization. In this modern world 
 of opportunity, of resource, of capacity and facility, 
 there should be such an organization of Christian 
 forces, such an adjustment, such equipment and 
 facilities, that every human being would be touched 
 and inspired by the possibilities of the true life, and 
 helped in the way of endeavor. “Let him sell his 
 cloak, and buy a sword.” Could human language 
 be stronger? Can one imagine a more tremendous 
 emphasis? Sell your last garment, if need be, at 
 any price; maintain the moral purpose of civiliza- 
 tion; wield the sword of civil authority relentlessly 
 in the defense of truth, righteousness, and liberty; 
 keep the upward path open and safe for the hum- 
 blest human being. That, I take it, is the meaning 
 of our Lord, the program of Christianity in this 
 world, the Gospel for an opulent civilization. It is 
 ours to dominate the fullness of this modern world; 
 to direct its manifold forces to higher ends; to lift 
 all occupations and activities into an orbit of right- 
 eousness and love, until human society shines 
 in holiness, and men become, however varied their 
 tasks, like “singing masons building roofs of gold.” 
 
 ‘ 
 
For AN OPULENT CIVILIZATION. 137 
 
 Let us strike this note of service until it rings 
 again. “He that hath a purse, let him take it.” 
 
 Money takes hold of us in many different ways; 
 its potency for good or evil is almost measureless. 
 As the wise man says, “Money answereth all 
 
 , 
 
 things ;” it may nourish and sustain every good - 
 thing; or, as the apostle declares, it may be a “root 
 of all evil.”” Our Lord had more to say about money, 
 about its use and abuse, than about any other sub- 
 ject. He did not say so much about prayer or 
 about temptation, about sin or any virtue, as about 
 this. Money touches life so closely; it provides 
 bread and comforts and luxuries and leisure. It 
 assists the operations of merchants and manufac- 
 turers and in all industrial enterprises. Upon its 
 surplus science and art, in a good degree, depend. 
 In the use or abuse of money lies a most subtle 
 test of character. Its pursuit is one of the impera- 
 tive necessities of life, and in that pursuit lurks a 
 most insidious, alluring, and deadly peril. But for 
 all that, shall its vast potency be surrendered to 
 evil? By no means; in dominion over it the Chris- 
 tian man is to win one of his noblest victories. 
 There is that in the Christian spirit which will ren- 
 der the soul immune from the deadly virus of 
 Mammon. “They shall take up serpents, and it 
 
138 THE ROYALTY OF JESUS. 
 
 shall not hurt them.” Moses, at the bidding of 
 God, took the deadly serpent in a right fashion, with 
 a wise, firm grip, and it became a shepherd’s crook, 
 an instrument of defense and support. So the 
 modern Christian is bidden to take the purse, to 
 lay hold of wealth, and transform it from an evil 
 thing in life into a defense and support of every 
 noble purpose. 
 
 “Likewise the wallet.” The world is undergoing 
 a transformation before our very eyes; it is be- 
 coming more and more collective, and less and less 
 individualistic. Down to the nineteenth century 
 the world’s work was done by muscular power, and 
 every man was his own motor. Power was individ- 
 ualistic, and therefore industry, life, and civiliza- 
 tion were individualistic. With the subjugation of 
 natural forces, the invention of machinery, and the 
 establishment of swift lines of communication and 
 travel, civilization became increasingly collective. 
 There is centralization everywhere. Competition 
 yields to combination; the one aligns himself with 
 the many in defensive organization. We think and 
 act now; not so much as separate individuals, but 
 in battalions, federations, trusts, unions, and various 
 organizations. Organization is the ruling word of 
 the hour. Just that is the meaning of the wallet; 
 
For AN OPpuLENT CIVILIZATION. 139 
 
 foresight, provision, organization. This is a new 
 world we are in, and we need continually new 
 adjustments to do the work of the kingdom in this 
 generation. Christ is saying to us distinctly, “Rec- 
 ognize your own age, study its social facts and 
 needs; think for Me, plan for Me, organize 
 for victory.”- Christianity, while not abdicating 
 its spiritual function in human society, must 
 concern itself, in large and vital ways, with 
 all that concerns human welfare: with the home- 
 life of the multitude; with the problem of poverty, 
 of toil, of suffering; with the political, industrial, 
 and all human rights; with the problem of 
 leisure, recreation, and culture. These things 
 do not constitute salvation, but are approaches 
 toward the kingdom, and aid in that growing fel- 
 lowship that signals the coming of the Lord. 
 
 “Tet him sell his cloak, and buy a sword.” The 
 sword symbolizes the Christian use of civil power. 
 There is a use of law and government to protect 
 human society, and to restrain and destroy the 
 evils that corrupt it and threaten its overthrow. “I 
 am come to send a sword on the earth,” said the 
 Son of man; to inaugurate an irrepressible conflict 
 against all evil, and to lay hold of all agencies, civil 
 as well as religious, to this end. “My sword shall 
 
140 THE Roya.ty oF JESUS. 
 
 _be bathed in heaven,” said the prophet; just that 
 every Christian does when he flashes his moral con- 
 viction in his ballot, and puts the full force of his 
 personality and influence with it. “I set a great 
 assembly against them,” said Nehemiah, in his 
 municipal campaign in Jerusalem. 
 
 Earth has no fairer sight, nor civilization a 
 brighter hope, than a city stirred with moral indig- 
 nation, with all its varied and mighty forces in line 
 for righteousness. What cities might stand upon 
 the earth, yea, will stand upon the earth, with every 
 plague-spot swept away, with streets clean and pure, 
 “more precious than gold,” and out of them driven 
 everything that “defileth, or maketh a lie!” These 
 things will be when Christian men take purse, 
 wallet, and sword, and wield them mightily in 
 human welfare. To this end we stand upon 
 the earth in the fullness of this twentieth 
 century, that we may subdue it and have do- 
 minion; that we may reconcile its manifold gifts 
 to highest ends; that we may glorify its great en- 
 dowment in human service; that over this opulent 
 civilization Christ may reign in triumph, until “the 
 kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of 
 our Lord and His Christ.” 
 
VII. 
 THE CRY OF THE DISINHERITED. 
 
 “Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the 
 inheritance with me.”—LUKE XU, 13. 
 
 Tu living problem of our day finds a voice in 
 this request of the wronged brother, “Master, speak 
 ‘to my brother, that he divide the inheritance 
 with me.” It is the cry of the poor against the rich, 
 of labor against capital, of the individual against 
 monopoly. It concerns the problem of distributive 
 justice, always a real one, and never more bitterly 
 so than now. 
 
 Observe, at the outset, our Lord’s method with 
 questioners and with questions brought before Him. 
 He directs attention, first of all, to the questioner 
 himself. Indeed, to press an inquiry upon our Lord 
 was often to invite a moral clinic upon one’s own 
 soul. Nicodemus asks, “Master, as to Thine 
 authority ?” Nay, first of all as to thine own state: 
 “Ye must be born again.” The woman at Sychar 
 asks, “Master, as to this mountain?’ Nay, as to 
 
 IAI 
 
142 THE ROYALTY OF JESUS. 
 
 that heart of thine. The disciples ask, “Master, as 
 to the number of the saved?” Nay, as to thine own 
 finding of the narrow way. The wronged brother 
 asks, “Master, as to mine inheritance?” Nay, first 
 of all, as to thine own covetousness. 
 
 And yet our Lord never evades an issue, but 
 answers every question brought before Him in the 
 largest way. He answers not in our small way of 
 exact statement, chopping the truth into neat and 
 narrow definitions, but in His own large way, re- 
 vealing the principle in which the solution lies; a 
 mere hint, perhaps, but a creative word whose seed . 
 is in itself, as the acorn holds the oak. 
 
 As to the question before us, our Lord answers 
 it fully by pointing out, first of all, the main root of 
 social disturbance and individual unrest—covetous- 
 ness. “Beware of covetousness,” of all sorts of 
 covetousness, it reads. Covetousness in the rich 
 withholds, covetousness in the poor robs, covetous- 
 ness anywhere and everywhere disturbs. It destroys 
 the peace of the soul, the harmony of social organi- 
 zation, and the grace of all life. Covetousness is 
 a delusion of soul that places a false estimate 
 upon the power and value of mere things. Covet- 
 ousness is the eager desire for possession that con-. 
 sumes the higher capacities of being. Covetousness 
 
Tue Cry oF THE DISINHERITED. 143 
 
 is the wing-footed haste to acquire, which defeats 
 the very end of life. 
 
 Would you know what a root of evil covetous- 
 ness is in the soul of a man and in the world? 
 Listen to the thunder of Sinai againt it, “Thou 
 shalt not covet;’ mark the repeated warnings 
 of our Lord: “Beware of covetousness;” watch 
 the red lights that signal its danger in all the 
 Epistles. “No unclean person, nor covetous 
 man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance 
 in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” Would 
 you survey the deadly work of covetousness on the 
 soul? Consider the Scriptural arraignment of it, 
 
 3? 
 
 “Covetousness, which is idolatry.” You have been 
 puzzled, at times, to understand the proneness of 
 Israel to idolatry. Perhaps, if you will look deeply 
 into your own heart, the matter will be clear. 
 Idolatry is, essentially, turning away from God and 
 laying hold on something visible and tangible, as 
 the stay and aim of life. It is seeking life’s support, 
 protection, and consolation in something else than 
 in the living God. Whatever usurps the highest 
 place in the soul, God’s place, dominating the life 
 and absorbing the faculties, that is an idol. It may 
 be art, literature, pleasure, power; it frequently 
 is wealth. Idolatry was not driven from the earth 
 
144 THE Roya,ty oF JEsus. 
 
 when the high places were cut down, when Olympus 
 was scaled, and when heathen temples were emptied. 
 Nay, the idolatry of civilized men takes on a hun- 
 dred forms. Its most common form is covetousness. 
 
 Covetousness is selfishness,—“lovers of their 
 own selves, covetous,” grasping and appropriating 
 things without limit and without regard to the rights 
 and needs of others. ‘Lovers of themselves, 
 covetous ;” haters of God and devourers of men; 
 steeling themselves against the touch of pity; the 
 life currents of sympathy freezing in their veins; 
 the heart petrifying into stone; the whole nature a 
 fossil, a flinty thing where once life was. “Lovers 
 
 ] 
 
 of themselves, covetous;” shut up in self; isolated 
 from responsive touch with any living thing in 
 the universe; drifting daily out from the light of 
 God and from the warmth of human sympathy. 
 
 Covetousness is self-indulgence. Drunkenness, 
 licentiousness, and covetousness are closely linked 
 in Scripture; they are all forms of self-indulgence. 
 The ordinary worldly nature flies for solace either 
 to the pleasures of appetite or to the passion of 
 acquiring. 
 
 Wealth is potential indulgence. As the solid 
 ice can be thawed into liquid, so wealth can take 
 any form of indulgence. The rich man in the 
 
THE CRY OF THE DISINHERITED. 145 
 
 parable says to his soul, “Soul, thou hast much 
 goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, 
 drink, and be merry.” Covetousness is an endeavor 
 to grasp and hold the possibility of unlimited indulg- 
 ence in all forms of pleasure, gross or refined, 
 and it gravitates downward. History shows that 
 human nature generally rots in conditions of vast 
 wealth and urtlimited leisure. Covetousness is often 
 the upper side of beastliness, as ice is the upper side 
 of the river; when it thaws out, it usually flows in 
 the lower forms of seli-indulgence. 
 
 But, you say, what has all this to do with the 
 inheritance? Everything. You say it does not 
 touch the question. Yes, it does, and at the very 
 center. Suppose, on a winter day, when the ther- 
 mometer had been for several days below zero and 
 everything was crisp and snapping, you should see 
 one hundred men marching out with picks and 
 shovels on their shoulders, proposing to loosen the 
 grip of winter and bring in the reign of summer. 
 They sink their picks into the ice and say, “See how 
 it opens up before us ;” but, “See, also, how it closes 
 after you,” you answer. Winter, you tell them, is 
 not there in the ice, but in the atmosphere. Can 
 they pick it out of that? One of the conditions is 
 
 the relation of the earth to the sun. You read the 
 I90 
 
146 THE Royatty oF JEsus. 
 
 parable; the cause of earth’s misery is not of earth, 
 but is a spiritual one, and is found in the relation of 
 the soul to God. Ah! only the Sun of Righteous- 
 ness can break the grip of selfishness on the earth, 
 and bring the joy of summer to this cold world. 
 And so Christ speaks to the heart of the question 
 and opens it to the core. His solution, the Christian 
 solution, the only ‘solution of the social problem, is 
 a reconstructed manhood, an elevation of the soul 
 to the higher atmosphere of light and love. 
 
 So Christ’s message to the contestants, to the 
 brother wronging and the brother wronged, to the 
 rich and to the poor, to capitalists and to laborers, 
 to monopolists and to individuals, the same to all, 
 is, “Beware of covetousnes;” the quarrel roots in 
 that. 
 
 See how this is so. The evil of the rich, as 
 arraigned by the disinherited, is, in a word, oppres- 
 sion. They grind the poor; they combine for the 
 control of production and of markets; they fix the 
 price of commodities and the scale of wages; they 
 direct legislation, enthroning iniquity by a law; 
 they control transportation; they poison the foun- 
 tains of justice; they take advantage of their power 
 and opportunity, and are oppressive. Why? Be- 
 cause of covetousness. It is covetousness that puts 
 
THE CRY OF THE DISINHERITED. 147 
 
 the false estimate on the worth of mere things; that 
 consumes the higher faculties of the soul and 
 hardens the heart; that, in its mad fury of acquisi- 
 tion, treads down humanity, crushing the bodies 
 and brutalizing the souls of men. 
 
 The evil of the wronged and injured is 
 violence. It appropriates and consumes all in 
 its path, as in the Reign of Terror, in the 
 Paris Commune, and in frequent strikes and 
 riots. Why? Because of covetousness, is the 
 true answer. The movement may start with a 
 grievance, but often exceeds it far enough, because 
 of covetousness, a supreme estimate of the worth of 
 things, a determination to have at any cost, or to 
 destroy what one can not enjoy. Covetousness is 
 the main root of social disturbance, whether it works 
 from above in oppression, or from below in violence. 
 
 Let us not forget here that a firm protest against 
 wrong, a manly resistance against injustice, is al- 
 ways right. Let us remember that where our Lord 
 spoke one word of warning to the poor, he spoke a 
 hundred words of blazing judgment against the un- 
 just rich. That poor criminal in the jail, or the one 
 hanged yesterday, may be no worse in the eyes of a 
 just God than the thieving millionaire, who, by a 
 corrupt use of money, has bought legislation, dis- 
 
148 THE Royayty oF JEsus. 
 
 organized legitimate trade, and forced combinations 
 that betray every human right; nor than that much 
 envied monster, who lives in a palace while he levies 
 an unjust and merciless tax on each bushel of coal, 
 on a sack of flour, on a yard of cloth, or whose 
 selfish grasp throttles the life of a town. They are 
 alike criminals, with the advantage in favor of the 
 ones in prison or on the gallows. The point I make 
 is, that mere poverty gives no man a title to the 
 kingdom of heaven, and that mere wealth excludes 
 no one; character determines that alike in rich or 
 poor, and also this, that covetousness is a root of 
 violence as well as of oppression; and the message 
 to each is pertinent: “Beware of covetousness.” 
 Again, our Lord answers the question by expos- 
 ing the delusion of covetousness. “A man’s life 
 consisteth not in the abundance of the things which 
 he possesseth.” Observe here these things: the 
 fine contrast between life and things, and the close 
 relation between them, and catch the emphasis 
 placed on the word “abundance.” Let us be careful 
 about our distinctions here. Liberty, for instance, 
 is a fine thing, license is an evil thing; but license is 
 simply an exaggeration of liberty. Justice is a fine 
 thing, vengeance is an evil thing; but vengeance 
 is simply an exaggeration of justice. So possession 
 
Tue Cry oF THE DISINHERITED. 149 
 
 of materal things is good, and covetousness is 
 an exaggeration of it. While in this moral life we 
 are prisoners of nature, we are dependent upon her, 
 and the necessity for material things is real. God 
 so recognizes it. “Your Heavenly Father knoweth 
 that you have need of all these things.” Material 
 things, therefore, nourish life, but can never 
 “measure it. “The capital error of the world lies in 
 its supreme faith in material good to measure and 
 realize the full meaning and glory of life, that, after 
 all, it really consists in abundance; and the unrest, 
 - the strain, the friction of life spring mainly from this 
 desire for a surplus, for abundance rather than 
 necessary things. “Our Lord exposes this delusion 
 of covetousness. Life is related to things, but ex- 
 ceeds them. ; 
 Some words are like Jacob’s ladder, they extend 
 up from earth to heaven. Life is one of these. In 
 the order of nature, life means sensation; man lives 
 by bread there. In the order of intelligence, life 
 means thought; man lives by knowledge there. 
 In the order of spirit, life means love; man lives 
 by sympathy there, sympathy Divine and human. 
 So, while life in its lowest form has a limited, 
 though real, need of material things, the mere 
 abundance of these can neither prolong, increase, 
 
150 THE Royatty oF Jxsus. 
 
 nor exalt life. Life has its duration, its quality, its 
 blessedness, from higher sources; it consists not 
 in mere abundance of things. 
 
 Physical life does not consist in the abundance 
 of things; in the small portion, rather, that can be 
 appropriated and assimilated. ‘The mere abundance 
 
 frequently destroys. Alexander the Great gathered 
 
 up all his success and joy in a carousal of wine, and 
 died on the spot. Attila the Hun drowned himself 
 internally with honey-water on his wedding-day. 
 Hardicanute died in an inglorious attempt to eat all 
 the supplies at a wedding-feast. He could rule 
 England, but he could not eat all the food of the 
 realm. 
 
 Mental life consists not in the abundance of 
 things. Money can not buy a faculty, a taste, a 
 feeling. These things spring not from the earth; 
 they are from above. Sydney Smith proposed as a 
 motto for the Edinburgh Reviewers, “We cultivate 
 literature on a little oatmeal.” The motto will 
 serve for all Scotland. Plain living and high think- 
 ing has kept her head clearer than her climate, and 
 made her an intellectual leader. Was it not better 
 to be Socrates, poor in Athens, with great thoughts 
 that fill the world, than Cleon, rich and sordid? 
 Was it not better to be St. Paul, a prisoner in the 
 
 . 
 ae 
 
Tuer Cry OF THE DISINHERITED. 151 
 
 old Roman jail, yet a king of the centuries, than 
 Nero, in his Golden House and beastliness? Was 
 it not better to be blind old Milton, with his great 
 thoughts of God and man, than a noisy roisterer, 
 rotten to the core, though decked in lace and gold 
 and masquerading as a lord? 
 
 Spiritual life consists not in the abundance 
 of things. The flower roots in the earth, 
 and yet opens, in beauty and fragrance, to 
 the sky. So is man. He has a narrow 
 touch with the earth, but great exposure to 
 the heavens. Our Lord makes a strong contrast 
 between a man who heaps up things for himself 
 and is not rich toward God. “Rich toward God;” 
 that is, responsive to all that is high, glorious, and 
 enduring. One of the most impressive facts of 
 history is the close touch which poverty in material 
 things often has with its rarest mental and spiritual 
 wealth. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, were poor; 
 but how rich, responsive toward life and song! 
 ’ Angelo, Giotto, and Murillo, were poor, perhaps; 
 but how rich toward beauty and art! Moses, 
 Isaiah, John the Baptist, were poor indeed; but 
 how rich, responsive toward God! What a world 
 of comfort there is in the fact that the best of 
 life is at the top, touched indeed by things, but 
 
pie oats 
 “ } 
 
 not measured by them! Notwithstanding poverty, 
 wrongs, and defeats, the higher and the truer 
 life may still go on and up. Even here, “upon 
 this bank and shoal of time,” we may catch the step 
 of the immortals. 
 
 152 THE RoyALty oF JESsus. 
 
 But, one says, that is just the way with you 
 preachers: you take refuge in eternity. You say to 
 the wronged man, “Be patient, brother, you shall be 
 happy by and by, when you are dead.” Speak to 
 the living question like a man, What about the 
 inheritance? Our Lord gives a third answer to the 
 question by indicating His relation and the relation 
 of Christianity to political and social problems: 
 “Man, who made Me a judge or divider over you?” 
 Our Lord’s words are always wonderful because 
 of what they say, and because of what they compel 
 us to think. Sometimes, like a catapult, they hurl 
 us into the very center of things. 
 
 This man had a grievance; he felt it keenly. 
 He interrupts a discourse on the last judgment, that 
 the Messiah may give undivided attention to his 
 wrongs. He has lost money and he would have 
 the brakes on the universe until he finds it. Let us 
 not be too harsh. We all feel our personal wrongs 
 sharply. “The curse ne’er struck my tribe till now,” 
 wails Shylock, as his ducats and his daughter dis- 
 
THE Cry OF THE DISINHERITED. 153 
 
 appear at once. God’s silence and delays are painful 
 trials to us. 
 
 In the case before us, our Lord declines to 
 interfere. Why? Is He indifferent to human 
 wrongs? Nay, but because He is occupied with 
 wrong in a larger way, revealing principles and im- 
 parting influences which will redress all grievances 
 and pluck up every root of evil. “My kingdom is 
 not of this world,’ He said. Not in aim or method, 
 still it is in this world and is very busy with it. 
 Observe, the very words of our Lord's answer 
 indicate to the inquirer how utterly he had misunder- 
 stood the nature of Christ’s mission and kingdom. 
 The answer recalls a scene recorded in Exodus, 
 doubtless familiar enough to the complaining one, 
 where Moses interfered, suddenly and mightily, in 
 behalf of a wronged brother; but on the morrow, 
 this very victim of injustice becomes himself an 
 oppressor, repudiates the interference of Moses in 
 behalf of justice, in a stinging protest, “Who made 
 thee a prince and a judge over us?” A sudden, or 
 even violent, use of power will never satisfactorily, 
 or finally, redress the wrongs of this world. The 
 evil lies too deep for that. The fault of Moses was, 
 too eager haste in setting about his task by the 
 swift use of power, a mistaken estimate of the 
 
154 Tue Royatty oF Jesus. 
 
 human material with which he had to deal, and, 
 above all, lack of true insight that the deep taproot 
 of all the variance and discord of the world is in a 
 spirit of evil in the human heart itself. This spirit 
 of evil is never driven out by violence, and never 
 yields to any mere human adjustment; it only yields 
 to the might of love and the transformation of 
 spiritual forces. “Not by might, nor by power, but 
 by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.” Our Lord 
 is saying here, in substance, what He said to His 
 own disciples when they would call down fire upon 
 the inhospitable Samaritans: “Ye know not what 
 spirit ye are of.” To those who complain of the 
 tardiness, the inefficiency and apparent lack of sym- 
 pathy of Christ and His Church in relation to social 
 injustice, the answer is the same. To rush in with 
 carnal weapons would end only in bitter failure; 
 only the spiritual transformation of human nature 
 will work an enduring cure of human ills, and this 
 process of spiritual transformation is, for the most 
 part, long-range work. 
 
 For all our Lord’s refusal to right that particu- 
 lar wrong, He is, by the might of spiritual forces, 
 a judge and a divider among men in the largest 
 sense. He illuminates the intellect, He enthrones 
 righteousness in the conscience, He breathes love 
 
THe Cry oF THE DISINHERITED. 155 
 
 within the heart; and in so far as courts of justice, 
 legislatures, commercial, social, and industrial insti- 
 tutions and customs yield to these things, Christ 
 reigns and is a judge and divider among men. 
 Christianity touches this world, therefore, not as an 
 absolute power above it, and without it, but as a 
 transforming power within it. Those Socialist 
 agitators are wrong who complain of Christianity 
 because it does not interfere with the social order 
 in a direct and violent way. ‘The answer is, it is 
 influencing the social order in a much larger and 
 more positive and enduring way. The language 
 of our Lord to Simon in Gethsemane was the word 
 of Victor Emmanuel to Pope Pius IX in Italy, and 
 is always the message of God to His Church: “Peter, 
 put up thy sword.” The weapons of our warfare 
 are not carnal, but spiritual and mighty to the pull- 
 ing down of strongholds. The stronghold of human 
 wrong is spiritual, and is within. Within is the 
 source of sensualism, brutal and devouring; within 
 is the source of covetousness, cruel and insatiable; 
 within is the source of that human selfishness which, 
 with all its elegance and refinement, is often hard 
 and pitiless and consuming. 
 
 Jesus Christ is the only one in all the centuries 
 who has attacked wrong in its real stronghold. He 
 
156 Tue Royaty oF JEsus. 
 
 said, “I beheld Satan falling from heaven.” What 
 is that? Worldliness driven out of His own Church, 
 as He once whipped it out of the Temple. Iam with 
 the Socialists this far: Let every Church show her 
 credentials of healing and helpfulness, or let her 
 surrender the name of Christ and be rolled up like 
 Judaism. The well-known parables of the leaven 
 and of the mustard-seed clearly reveal the relation 
 of our Lord’s kingdom to the world. The leaven 
 indicates its inner transforming power, the mustard- 
 seed its outer organizing power. “The kingdom of 
 heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and 
 hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was 
 leavened.” The chief elements of man’s misery and 
 degradation are sin, selfishness, and ignorance ; these 
 are within, and can be counteracted only by that 
 which works within. The very fountain-head must 
 be reached, if the stream is to be made pure. 
 
 When the prophet Elisha was told of the pois- 
 oned waters of Jericho, we read that “he went 
 forth into the spring of the waters, and cast the salt 
 in there,” and the waters were healed. Now the 
 leaven, like the salt, symbolizes a new force working 
 within. Leaven is a subtle, searching, and mighty 
 force, laying hold of the very life of that which it 
 touches, transforming it and imparting new qualities 
 
Tue Cry oF THE DISINHERITED. 157 
 
 to it entirely. So the Spirit of Christ, a new and 
 mighty force, enters the human heart, and lays hold 
 of all its hidden energies of thought, of aspiration, 
 of affection, of volition, and transforms them, 
 giving to them entirely new qualities. In a word, 
 Christ makes the whole man new, through and 
 through, and, by means of the new man, reaches 
 out and penetrates into all the circles of human 
 activity, subjugating and assimilating unto Himself. 
 Then shall justice and mercy prevail in all human 
 affairs, because Christ reigns within, and the “whole 
 earth shall shine with His glory.” 
 
 ~ “The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of 
 mustard-seed.” ‘That points to the organization of 
 human institutions, political, commercial, industrial, 
 and social, on the lines of the kingdom of God. The 
 spirit of holiness and love within must work out in 
 large and beneficent institutions. “The mustard- 
 seed, which indeed is the smallest of all seeds, but 
 when it is grown, the birds of the air lodge in its 
 branches.” At a time when the morality of the 
 world was at its very lowest ebb, and sociey seemed 
 rotten to the core and all hope of human welfare 
 dead, Jesus of Nazareth came quietly forward from 
 the seclusion of a carpenter’s shop, and declared, 
 with a calm, authoritative confidence, that the strife 
 
158 THE Royaty oF JEsus. 
 
 and discord, that the greed and competition around 
 were all wrong; that the true spirit of life was a 
 spirit of love and harmony and mutual helpfulness. 
 Love, He declared, was the very heart of God, and 
 the only hope of the individual and of society. He 
 declared that men would yet yield to this wondrous 
 power of love, and would no longer fight one 
 another, but would’ work with one another, and 
 build God’s kingdom on the earth. How very 
 strange, distant, and impossible the ideal seemed! 
 It dropped into a suffering and hopeless world, 
 like a tiny mustard-seed into the earth. How mar- 
 velously it has grown and spread its sheltering 
 branches to the oppressed of the world, I ask old 
 Time to tell. Steadily it has invaded one department 
 after another of human life, and reorganized it along 
 lines of the kingdom. It has abolished slavery, 
 though it was eighteen hundred years in doing it. 
 Gradually, through the centuries, it has enthroned 
 equity and just representation in civil government. 
 Constantly its influence has been at work, humaniz- 
 ing the relations between rich and poor, between 
 capital and labor; this achievement will be realized, 
 though it require another thousand years to do so. 
 The principle of human sympathy and Christian co- 
 operation has, in our own day, challenged the prin- 
 
Tue Cry oF THE DISINHERITED. 159 
 
 ciple of conscienceless and murderous competition, 
 and set the seal of death upon it. In a little while 
 the ideal of true human equation and mutual co- 
 operation will not be kept out of any business; it 
 will come into every factory; it will stand at the 
 center of every mart; it will take its place at the 
 desk of the merchant, and will be as busy as any 
 broker on the exchange. Competition, up to a 
 certain point, is a beneficent spur to enterprise ; but 
 unlimited, becomes murderous. At that point, under 
 the law of self-preservation, it issues in monopoly. 
 Monopoly, growing more and more grasping and 
 remorseless, becomes an intolerable burden; at that 
 point a mighty conviction of justice and humanity, 
 born of the spirit of the Gospel, will compel its 
 issue, in manifold forms of larger co-operation, for 
 the benefit of the many rather than the few. In 
 other words, human society is undergoing a Divine 
 evolution; it is steadily and inevitably being reor- 
 ganized on the basis of love, and the evolution will 
 go on until human society becomes a true city of 
 God, into which nothing shall enter which “defileth 
 or maketh a lie.” True Christian civilization will 
 yet defend every human right, and shelter every 
 human need, and our Lord Jesus Christ will yet be a 
 “judge and a divider among men,” not by the power 
 
160 THe RoyaLty oF JESUS. 
 
 of any external circumstances, but by the principle 
 of love enthroned within. 
 
 “And lo, in the midst of the throne, stood a lamb, 
 as it had been slain.” Love is the dominating, co- 
 ordinating, saving principle of human society. It 
 is to penetrate into all circles of human activity, 
 political, commercial, industrial, social, and blend 
 all into a spiritual unity. A new order will yet 
 obtain upon this common earth, when love will 
 dethrone selfishness, when all things will be sub- 
 ordinated to highest ends, when individualism will 
 be glorified in common service, when each shall 
 come to his own true, full inheritance, and Christ 
 shall be Lord indeed. © 
 
 “Go, tell the great world the glorious tidings, 
 Yes, and be sure each bondman hears; 
 
 Tell the oppressed of every nation, 
 Jubilee lasts a thousand years.” 
 
VII. 
 THE SONG OF MOSES AND OF THE LAMB. 
 
 “And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of 
 God, and the song of the Lamb.” —REv. xv, 3. 
 
 “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth 
 came by Jesus Christ.’-—JouN 1, 17. 
 
 St. JoHN, the Divine, is the greatest of all poets: 
 gteater than Homer, Dante, or Shakespeare; for he 
 gives profound truth expression through the large 
 and flaming utterance of the imagination. There 
 are many ways of expressing a truth; it may be built 
 into a noble structure, cast into bronze, or chiseled 
 in marble; it may be set in glowing colors on can- 
 vas; it may vibrate in the thrilling tones of music; 
 it may live and move before us in the form of 
 dramatic action. The last mode of expression is 
 the most enduring and far-reaching. Marlborough 
 was accustomed to say that all he knew of English 
 history he learned from Shakespeare's plays. Cer- 
 
 tainly, at the touch of the great dramatist, the heroic 
 II 161 
 
162 THE RoyaLty oF JESUS. 
 
 actors and eras of English history start into life. 
 Our Lord cast much of His teaching into the form 
 of dramatic action. The sower, as he takes his long 
 strides over the Judean hills; the shepherd, pushing 
 his way into the night and the storm; the good 
 Samaritan, relieving distress on the highway; the 
 prodigal, turning home,—these are as real to us as 
 the men we meet daily on the street. Now, in the 
 Book of Revelation we have the great truths of the 
 Gospel presented through the imagination, in the 
 form of dramatic action. These wondrous truths,— 
 the age-long conflict between good and evil, involv- 
 ing all nations, races, and generations of men; evil 
 in alliance with all the forces of the world and all 
 phases of human development; with the ignorance, 
 the superstition, and beastliness of heathenism, and 
 with the culture, pride, and refined selfishness of a 
 polished civilization; the cost of human redemption 
 in the sorrow, the agony, the breaking heart of God 
 Himself; the royalty of the risen and triumphant 
 Jesus, wearing all keys at His girdle, and guiding 
 all isssues to a far-off divine event; the final victory 
 of righteousness and love; the unfolding glory of 
 the redeemed; the peace, the fullness, the joy of the 
 blessed life,—these are the things writ large in the 
 flaming pictures of the imagination. The very uni- 
 
Sone oF Moses AND THE LAMB. 163 
 
 verse is taxed to supply imagery for the expression 
 of the great reality of spiritual conflict and victory. 
 Sun, moon, and stars; clouds, thunder and light- 
 ning ; the four winds of heaven; the floods, the sea; 
 the islands, the mountains, the rocks; the earth- 
 quake, the bottomless pit, the fiery lake; eagles, 
 scorpions, dragons; mourning, famine, death; the 
 serpent, the lamb; the forces of nations in mighty 
 exhibition; travail of birth; cities, temples, and 
 altars; kings and queens, angels and men,—all 
 these, in swift and terrific action, picture the story 
 of human progress and redemption. 
 
 In the Book, the drama of human destiny moves 
 across the stage of time with all forces, human and 
 Divine, in full activity. Through its pages we listen 
 to the grand symphony of heaven and earth, where 
 all the instruments meet in jarring notes of thunder- 
 ous discord, and later unite in glorious harmony, and 
 at last die away in melodies of fathomless peace and 
 joy. After the thundering cataract of Niagara and 
 the roaring, grinding rapids, corne the placid waters 
 of Ontario, calm and serene as a sea of glass. So 
 the new order appears. We behold a city lying four- 
 square, with walls of jasper, gates of pearl, and 
 streets of gold, watered hy the River of Life, and 
 nourished by the Tree ot Life, and the inhabitants 
 
164 Tue Royatty oF JEsus. 
 
 thereof, crowned and radiant, joining in songs of 
 deliverance and joy. “And I heard, as it were, the 
 voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many 
 waters, and as the voice of many thunderings, say- 
 ing, Allelulia! for the Lord God omnipotent 
 reigneth.” “And I saw, as it were, a sea of glass, 
 mingled with fire, and them that had gotten the 
 victory over the beast, stand on the sea of glass, hay- 
 ing the harps of God. And they sing the song of 
 Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the 
 Lamb.” 
 
 The Book of Revelation is, therefore, the great- 
 est poem of the ages, the Epic of Redemption, as 
 Dante’s “Divina Commedia” is the epic of the 
 Middle Ages. I do not deny the profound realities 
 with which it deals, I only insist that those realities 
 must be approached through the gateway of the 
 imagination. Some books must be read with the 
 intellect in the ascendant; as, for instance, Adam 
 Smith’s “Wealth of Nations.” Some must be read 
 with the heart in the ascendant, as Tennyson’s “In 
 Memoriam ;” and some with the imagination in the 
 ascendant, as Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress.” ‘The 
 Book of Revelation belongs to this last order, and 
 must be similarly read. 
 
 The botanist makes one use of the flower as he 
 
Sone oF Mosrs AND THE LAMB. 165. 
 
 tears it apart and analyzes it. The chemist makes 
 another use of it as, in his laboratory, he extracts its 
 gift of odor. But the humming-bird makes yet 
 another use of it, as, poised in air, with melodi- 
 ous song, he draws the nectar from the living flower. 
 I do not deny the mines of wealth the Book yields 
 to the scholar’s analysis, or to the theologian’s 
 interpretations. Ours, at present, is the task of the 
 poet, or of the musician, 
 
 “To catch the sweet, though far-off hymn 
 That hails a new creation.” 
 
 How are we to understand this large poetic 
 utterance? What is it that constitutes the song of 
 a man’s life, that lifts his whole being into true 
 harmony and music? Well, it is the masterful 
 impulse within him, the dominant ideal toward 
 which he steadily moves, the inflexible pur- 
 pose, deeply fixed, drawing all the forces of 
 his being into sublime unity, and directing 
 all his energies and activities to some great 
 end. Scatter a handful of sand on a ghass plate, 
 and let a violin be played softly near by. The 
 grains of sand immediately arrange themselves into 
 regular figures; they organize to music. So every 
 man’s life has its dominant note; his thoughts, ener- 
 
166 THE ROYALTY OF | JESUS. 
 
 gies, and acts organize to its music. If one can get 
 this keynote of a man’s life, the deepest thing in 
 his thinking, feeling, and aspiration, he can read 
 his music and write his song. Everything in nature 
 has its keynote,—the sea, the wind, the roar of 
 traffic, the hum of industry. It is so in human life; 
 the dominant note reports itself. Tennyson makes 
 the Northern farmer respond to but one considera- 
 tion, that of property. The pounding of the parson’s 
 fists upon the pulpit, and the clatter of his horse’s 
 hoofs upon the road, start no other ideas: 
 
 “Coom up, proputty, proputty,—that’s what I ’ears ’im 
 hla proputty, proputty—canter an’ canter away.” 
 When Hamilcar led the boy Hannibal to a 
 Carthaginian altar and made him swear eternal 
 vengeance to the Romans, he struck the keynote of 
 that daring and militant life; its music sounded out 
 on Alpine summits and before the gates of the 
 beleaguered city. When Cesar declared that he 
 would rather be the first man of a shepherd village 
 than second man in Rome, he sounded the keynote 
 of his life, and we hear its music in his campaigns 
 in Gaul and in his contest with Pompey. When 
 the shoemaker, Carey, sat on his bench, in England, 
 pounding pegs into shoes, with a map of the world 
 
Sone oF Moses AND THE LAMB. 167 
 
 before him, he heard the call of the benighted 
 millions, and in his great resolve to go to them he 
 struck the keynote of his life. Sydney Smith said, 
 sneeringly, that the cobbler had gone to India ‘to 
 push the Himalayas into the sea. Well, the 
 Himalayas of ignorance, superstition, and sin are 
 moving toward the sea, and they are moving 
 to the music of the cobbler’s hammer. John Wesley 
 struck the keynote of his life in that great saying of 
 his, “The world is my parish,” and the music of his 
 hymns greets the dawn as it breaks on the round 
 earth. They buried a man on a hill in South 
 Africa, not many years ago, Cecil Rhodes, who, they 
 say, thought in continents. The song of his life 
 was to rescue Africa, the whole of it, from Cape 
 Town to Cairo, for England and civilization. Well, 
 another man died in Africa some years before, 
 Livingstone, who also thought in continents ; but the 
 song of his life was to lift the Dark Continent into 
 the light and glory of the kingdom of God. 
 
 This, then, is the song of a human life, the 
 purpose that organizes, dominates, and directs it. 
 With this in mind, let us turn again and listen to 
 the song of Moses as it comes to us out of the 
 past. Listen, now, to the song of the multi- 
 tude when Israel had passed through the divided 
 
168 Tur Royatty oF Jesus. 
 
 waters, and later “saw the Egyptians dead upon 
 the shore.” “Then sang Moses and the chil- 
 dren of Israel this song unto the Lord: I 
 will sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed 
 gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He 
 thrown into the sea. . . . Who is like unto 
 Thee, O Lord! glorious in holiness, fearful in 
 praises, doing wonders? The Lord shall reign for 
 ever and ever.” With timbrel and song they cele- 
 brated the triumph of righteousness, the absolute 
 reign of the living, the mighty, the holy God. 
 And,-again, Moses set the same truth to music 
 at the close of his life. One of the last things he did 
 before he went up to the vision of Pisgah, was to 
 write a song for Israel. “The Lord said to Moses, 
 
 Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this - 
 
 people will forsake Me, and break My command- 
 ments, and go after strange gods. Now, therefore, 
 write this song, and teach it to the children of Israel ; 
 put it in their mouths, that this song may be a wit- 
 ness for Me against the children of Israel. Moses, 
 therefore, wrote this song the same day, and taught 
 it to the children of Israel: Give ear, O ye heavens, 
 . and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of 
 my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my 
 speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon 
 
Sone oF Moses AND THE LAMB. 169 
 
 the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass: 
 because I will publish the name of the Lord: ascribe 
 ye greatness unto our God. He is the Rock, His 
 work is perfect; for all His ways are justice; a God 
 of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He.” 
 The reign of the living God, the supremacy of 
 a moral order in the world: that was the song of 
 Moses. ‘To establish this truth in the heart of 
 Israel and, through Israel, to make it dominant 
 throughout the world, was the purpose, the music 
 of his life. We tell the story of his life, and sound 
 its keynote when we name him the Lawgiver. He 
 was the world’s greatest legislator. No matter 
 what he owed to Babylon, or what he brought up 
 ~ out of Egypt, under the providence of God he laid 
 the broad and enduring foundations of human so- 
 ciety. Only that civil order can be permanent that 
 rises on lines drawn by Moses. ‘True progress is 
 but the approach of civilization to the great ideal 
 first revealed by Moses, the nations learning his 
 song as Israel learned it, the supremacy of moral 
 law in the world, the place of truth and justice in 
 human life. 
 When the Israelites were led by Moses out of 
 Egypt they were separate, distinct as grains of sand, 
 having neither ideal, regulating authority, nor 
 
170 THE Royaty oF JESUS. 
 
 efficient organization. But under the chatisement, 
 discipline, and teaching of the wilderness, they 
 touched the living God and awoke to the quality of 
 righteousness. They learned the song of Moses, 
 
 ~ the supremacy of a moral order in the world, and, 
 keeping step to that music, grew into a great nation. 
 The glory of Israel and its far-reaching influence in 
 human history lie hidden there, in that moral dis- 
 cipline. This song of Moses is almost the marching 
 song of the nations as they advance through the 
 centuries toward a higher civilization. 
 
 Take up, now, the Magna Charta and the Bill 
 of Rights of England, out of which her glory and 
 dominion spring, and as you read them you catch 
 the song of Moses, the supremacy of moral law and 
 fair human justice, before which even kings must 
 bow. The first sentence of the Declaration of 
 
 Independence, drawn by the Continental fathers, | 
 
 strikes the keynote of this song of Moses,—the 
 supremacy of moral law over all political authority, 
 whether it be that of England or of Egypt. “We 
 hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are 
 created equal; that they are endowed by their Cre- 
 ator with certain unalienable rights, that among 
 these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 
 Human rights and duties, those daring men held, 
 
Sone oF Moses AND THE LAMB. 171 
 
 are not determined by the political arrangements of 
 earth, but by ideal and moral relationships guarded 
 in heaven. 
 
 We catch the same music in the thunder of battle 
 before the gates of Port Arthur and out on the Sea 
 of Japan. Japan is teaching Russia the full notes of 
 the song of Moses, the supremacy of moral law, 
 the meaning of truth and justice between nations 
 as between man and man. It is the beginning of a 
 great era in the history of any people when they 
 catch the keynote, distinctly and anew, of a moral 
 order, and reorganize their life, industry, commerce, 
 and politics according to its sublime music; when 
 they learn aright the song of Moses. 
 
 This song of Moses emancipates the human 
 spirit from the captivity of nature. The play of 
 the mighty, uncontrolled forces of the universe 
 filled the ancient world with terror. Man was 
 helpless before them, the sport of chance and 
 caprice. He felt himself but a helpless victim in 
 the grip of relentless fate. As in Egypt, he multi- 
 plied gods, darkening his mind with superstition, 
 and burdening his life with religious rites. Nor 
 has modern science, with all its knowledge, suc- 
 ceeded in setting the captive free. It has no power 
 of itself to lift our feet from the “miry clay” of a 
 
172 THE RoyaLty oF Jesus. 
 
 natural order ; it does not set our feet on the rock of 
 certainty, with a new song in the mouth. True, it 
 widens our horizon, but only to deepen our despair. 
 It makes much of the reign of law, but has no 
 vision of the Lawgiver; it sees no hope above, nor 
 light beyond. Certainly it is only of science, that 
 has broken from its theistic moorings and denies 
 the living God, that this is true; but I am drawing no 
 exaggerated picture. It was not an Egyptian nor 
 a Greek, but a contemporary poet, who wrote thus 
 reproaching nature: 
 “Thou art not calm, but restless as the ocean, 
 Filling with aimless toil the endless years, 
 Stumbling on thought and throwing off the spheres, 
 Churning the universe into mindless motion. 
 Thou crownedst thy wild work with foulest wrong, 
 
 When first thou lightedst on a seeming goal, 
 And darkly blundered on man’s suffering soul.” 
 
 What! is man’s soul nature’s blunder? Well, if 
 there be no living, personal, righteous God, who 
 rules all and guides all, most certainly man’s soul is 
 nature’s blunder. “I do not hesitate to express the 
 opinion,” wrote Mr. Huxley, near the close of his 
 life, “that if there is no hope of a large improvement 
 of the condition of the greater part of the human 
 family, I should hail the advent of some kindly 
 
Sonc oF Moses AND THE LAMB. 173 
 
 comet, which would sweep the whole affair away, 
 as a desirable consummation.” On reading that, 
 one thinks of Laocoén, writhing in the coil of the 
 serpent, and lifting a pleading face towards the 
 silent heavens. 
 
 Such is the majesty of the soul, however, that in 
 its higher moods it chafes under this ball and chain 
 of doubt and unbelief. When Professor Tyndall 
 stood on the summit of the Matterhorn, where few 
 have stood before or since, and looked out on a 
 billowy ocean of ice and snow radiant in the morning 
 sun, he felt the inadequacy of materialism, and 
 longed for a living faith in the living God. Now, 
 Moses broke this prison-house of things, and saw 
 the living God, and made Israel to know Him. 
 There, at the burning bush, the living God, the 
 source of all life and potency and present on every 
 spot of earth, revealed Himself to Moses, and 
 clothed him with power. In Egypt, Israel saw the 
 mighty works of the living God, and all along the 
 desert way he guided them and nourished them. 
 The sea fled at their coming, the heavens gave 
 bread, and the rocks gushed with water. The laws 
 of nature were no longer, to them, blind, unintelli- 
 gent forces, but became the “everlasting arms” of a 
 
174 THE Royalty oF JESUS. 
 
 Father, and they sang the song of Moses, a song of 
 triumphant faith, of thanksgiving and tumultuous 
 praise. 
 “When Israel, of the Lord beloved, 
 Out from the land of bondage came, 
 
 Her fathers’ God before her moved, = 
 An awful guide, in smoke and flame.” 
 
 The song of Moses, the certainty of a moral 
 order in the world controlling all events, great and 
 small, gives unity to history and hope in human 
 struggle. If some time, somewhere, righteousness 
 shall not prove itself to be the regulating and 
 dominating force in human affairs, life is indeed a 
 tragedy. If human selfishness, greed, ambition, 
 and caprice are to reign forever, unchecked and 
 supreme, then society will grind on its downward 
 way to chaos. Sometimes it is exceedingly difficult 
 to recognize a moral order in human affairs. God 
 Himself seems to have abandoned the field. When 
 Moses fled, a fugitive, from Egypt, he carried into 
 his loneliness no triumphant song of faith; he had 
 not yet learned it. To the Tishbite under the 
 juniper-tree, the human outlook was very dark. 
 John the Baptist, the strong man of his generation, 
 was, for an instant, like “a reed shaken with the 
 
Sone oF Moses AND THE LAMB. 175 
 
 wind.” “Art Thou He that should come, or do 
 we look for another ?” 
 “O it is hard to work for God, 
 To rise and take His part 
 
 Upon this battlefield of earth, 
 And not sometimes lose heart.” 
 
 During the long night of Egyptian captivity, 
 a space of four hundred years, the prayers and tears 
 and heartaches of Israel seem to go for naught. 
 In every generation and in every heart the bitter 
 question would arise, Does God know, or see, or 
 hear or care? At last the answer came: “I have 
 surely seen the afflictions of my people in Egypt, 
 and have heard their cry; for I know their sorrows, 
 and am come down to deliver them.” “And the 
 Lord went before them by day in a pillar of 
 cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a 
 pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and 
 night.” A portion of the way home, sometimes long 
 stretches of it, must be covered by night marches. 
 But at last those pilgrims of the night and of the 
 wilderness sing their song of triumph by the sea: 
 “Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in 
 power; Thou, in Thy mercy, hast led forth the 
 people which Thou hast redeemed.” The Mag- 
 
176 THE Royayty oF Jesus. 
 
 nificat of Mary echoes this song of Moses, God’s 
 care and vindication of His own. “He that is 
 mighty hath done to me great things, and holy is 
 His name. His mercy is on them that fear Him 
 from generation unto generation.” That glorious 
 multitude beside the sea of glass, once pilgrims 
 of the night, having come up through great tribu- 
 lation, sound out their jubilant notes of triumph 
 in this song of Moses: “Great and marvelous are 
 Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true 
 are Thy ways, Thou King of Saints.” 
 
 And they sang “the song of the Lamb.” We 
 have seen that the song of Moses, that which gave 
 to his life its purpose, direction, and music, was 
 the supremacy of moral law. Now the song of 
 the Lamb, that which gave to our Lord’s life its 
 power, its blessedness and music, was the grace of 
 self-sacrificing love. ‘The law was given by Moses, 
 but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” It 
 was the mission of Moses to show that the world 
 is united to the throne of God, and human society 
 is held together by the majesty of moral law. It 
 was the mission of Jesus Christ to show that a 
 world, lost in sin and misery, can be restored to 
 God and to holiness, through love’s great sacrifice. 
 It was the purpose of His life, the song of the 
 Lamb, to reveal the grace and truth of redeeming 
 
Sonc oF Moses AND THE LAMB. 177 
 
 love. “God so loved the world that He gave His 
 only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on 
 Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” 
 “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, 
 but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for 
 many.” 
 
 Some truths are too large for utterance in 
 human speech; their deep meaning can only be 
 suggested in pictures or flashed in symbols. The 
 wondrous love of God for the race, His atoning 
 love and mercy, are such large truths. Thus the 
 Lamb, typical of so much in the old Jewish worship, 
 suggests the spotlessness of the Son of man, His 
 gentleness and grace, and His redemptive mission. 
 “He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter,’ declares 
 the prophet. “Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh 
 away the sin of the world,” exclaims the Baptist, 
 and, in so doing, voices the deepest hope of Israel. 
 Human redemption is not wrought out through 
 moral discipline, but through sorrow, agony, and 
 death. “Ye were not redeemed with corruptible 
 things, as silver and gold, but with the precious 
 blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish 
 and without spot.” “Worthy is the Lamb that 
 was slain, to receive power and honor and glory 
 
 and blessing.” 
 I2 
 
178 Tue Royatty oF JEsus. 
 
 Holiness is never self-attained, but received 
 through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. “These 
 are they which have washed their robes, and made 
 them white in the blood of the Lamb.” “Unto 
 Him that hath loved us and washed us from our 
 sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings 
 and priests unto God and His Father, be glory and 
 dominion.” 
 
 The great truth lying in the heart of this ex- 
 pression, the song of the Lamb, is this: that some 
 day the sorrow and pain and mystery of sacrifice 
 will issue forth in joy and music. There is that 
 in our common life which will help us to rise to 
 the truth. Once upon a time, so the story runs, a 
 king commanded one of his subjects, a skillful 
 workman, to cast for him a bell whose music should 
 be perfect as its tone rang out over the waters. 
 Time after time the workman cast the bell, using 
 the most precious metals, only to fail in securing 
 the right tone. At last it was revealed to him 
 that if he would mingle the blood of a pure young 
 girl with the metal, the tone would be perfect. 
 Do you read the parable? It is the touch of sacri- 
 fice that makes the music perfect. Some one’s toil 
 or sacrifice has paid the price of every step of 
 human progress. Think of the saints, the patriots, 
 
Sone oF MosEs AND ‘THE LAMB. 179 
 
 the martyrs, the pioneers, the inventors, the stu- 
 dents, into whose labors we have entered, through 
 whose broken lives we have been enriched. True, 
 our modern civilization, while it has its songs of 
 glory and power, has also its song of the Lamb, its 
 tribute of grateful recognition of the long line of 
 martyrs who have made its present possible. In 
 the home we hear this song of the Lamb even more 
 distinctly, and behold sacrifice turning into music 
 and higher joy. Many a mother lives a scant and 
 narrow life that the child of promise may be edu- 
 cated and trained for higher service. Many a father 
 bows-under growing burdens, like an Atlas under 
 the world, that the family may be held together, 
 and that the aged and invalid may not suffer. And 
 yet these lives are not desolate; they find a joy in 
 sacrifice ; they sing the song of the Lamb. 
 
 In the old Jewish worship, when the fire touched 
 the sacrifice upon the altar, at the flaming point 
 the trumpets began to blow. This is profoundly true 
 in human experience. Paradoxical as it seems, the 
 rarest joy of life is that which sometimes starts 
 out of the fire of sacrifice; at the very point of 
 pain, the song of the Lamb begins. Those who 
 shrink away from this in selfish calculation, miss 
 life’s richest fruition, and lose what they seek to 
 
180 THE RoYALty oF JESUS. 
 
 save. The spiritual interpretation of life must be 
 the true one; no other has sufficient scope and 
 horizon. At times, faith almost staggers under 
 the mystery that falls on the world and upon in- 
 dividual lives,—the mystery of sin, with its long 
 tentacles reaching out and involving innocent lives 
 in sorrow and anguish; the mystery of pain; the 
 mystery of defeat; the failures of one’s noblest 
 plans; life’s unfulfilled purposes; its folded or 
 broken wings; its large ventures of love and sacri- 
 fice, with such scant return. But, even here, love is 
 never wholly desolate; in deepest sacrifice it finds a 
 hidden joy, and begins its song. This is prophetic, 
 the pencil of light that heralds the coming dawn. 
 Possibly the suffering and sacrifice of the individual 
 may yet work for the benefit of all mankind, and 
 help promote the full divine harmony of the world, 
 as separate instruments pour their streams of 
 melody into the grand chorus, not lost, but fulfilled 
 in it. Life is given for large use and investment; 
 its sublimest victory is not that of self-assertion, 
 but that of the cross, sacrifice for great ends. 
 This, then, is the song of Moses and of the 
 Lamb: the supremacy of moral law in the world, 
 and the redemptive order of human life. The fact 
 
Sonc oF MosEs AND THE LAMB. 181 
 
 that these songs mingle and make perfect music, 
 points to a wondrous truth. The rose-window of 
 the cathedral can be analyzed into a network of 
 mathematical lines; the thundering notes of the 
 organ, or the delicate ones of the violin, can be 
 analyzed into the mathematics of vibration ; in other 
 words, the precision of mathematical law is fulfilled 
 and made glorious in music. As Plato put it, beauty 
 is the splendor of truth. They say there is a point 
 in space where all the discordant noises of earth 
 meet in a musical note. Well, there beside the 
 crystal sea, before the throne of God, all the voices 
 and experiences of human history meet and mingle 
 in perfect music, in the song of Moses and of the 
 Lamb. 
 
 “Ten thousand times ten thousand, 
 In sparkling raiment bright, 
 
 The armies of the ransomed host 
 Throng up the steeps_of light. 
 
 ?T is finished, all is finished, 
 Their fight with death and sin; 
 
 Fling open wide the golden gates 
 And let the victors in. 
 
 What rush of hallelujahs 
 Fills all the earth and sky! 
 What ringing of a thousand harps 
 Bespeaks the triumph nigh! 
 
182 THE Royatty oF JESsus. 
 
 O day, for which Creation 
 And all its tribes were made! 
 
 O joy, for all the former woes 
 A thousand-fold repaid.” 
 
 “And they sang the song of Moses, the servant 
 of God, and the song of the Lamb.” 
 
me 
 
 as 
 
 } 
 ‘ 
 $ 
 4 
 7 
 ' 
 
Date Due 
 
 Demco-293 
 
252,07 ~ LOs4R = “4x gego 
 
wi :