pe SEP ermamea ter nites tered tion MS Thak es 4 yy Uoaican sews bez i ‘ Ne! is BM hig eR ee be " ee ee es WEEK-DAY SERMONS IN KING’S CHAPEL THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK + BOSTON - CHICAGO - DALLAS ATLANTA - SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limitep LONDON - BOMBAY + CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lim. TORONTO WEEK-DAY SERMONS IN KING’S CHAPEL PON ‘ts Bilin AWRY si hegyy ah SERMONS PREACHED TO WEEK-DAY CONGREGATIONS IN KING’S CHAPEL, BOSTON BY Peter AINSLIE; BisHop WILLIAM F. ANDERSON; DEAN Cuarves R. Brown; Rev. James Gorpon GILKEY, D.D., Principat L. P. JAacKs; ALEXANDER Mac- CoLL; BisHop Francis J. McConNELL; Oscar E. Maurer; Witit1AM P. Merritt; FRep- ERIC W. PERKINS; Proressor Harris FRANKLIN RALL; RICHARD ROBERTS; Minot Simons; Proressor "THEODORE GERALD SoARES; Dean Wittarp L. SPERRY; WILLIAM L. SULLIVAN; PrincipAL R. Bruce TAYLor; ExLwoop WORCESTER. EDITED, WITH A FOREWORD, BY \/ Harotp E. B. SpEeIGHT jQew ork THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1925 All rights reserved CopyRIGHT, 1925, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and printed. Published October, 1925. Printed in the United States of America by J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF THE PIONEERS OF CHRISTIAN UNITY WHO PREPARED THE CHURCHES FOR THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP OF TO-DAY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/weekdaysermonsinOOspel FOREWORD A church situated in the heart of a large city is compelled to-day to face a serious problem created by changed and changing conditions. Its oppor- tunity for ministry to a permanent constituency of any considerable size is likely to be limited by the scattering of families towards the outskirts of the city; by the inevitable and natural desire of city workers, confined on week-days to indoor tasks, for a weekly day of rest that will give a complete change from the city; by the facilities for rapid transportation which bring the country within the reach of all. The down-town church may adopt either of two attitudes towards such changes. It may bemoan its fate, condemn the interests which have carried off its adherents, cling as long as pos- sible to methods which were suitable in other days, ‘and then at last realize a cash return for its site in order to build a modern “plant” in the suburbs and start life anew. Or it may examine the limita- tions involved in its location and see whether they cannot yield a hitherto unsuspected opportunity, Imagination can sometimes transfer liabilities into the list of assets. If the aim of a down-town church is not merely to survive but to serve, it can adapt its service to the conditions which surround it, opening its doors when people are within reach of 7 8 FOREWORD them, and bringing its ministrations into close touch with their daily needs. The sermons in this volume were preached to week- day congregations in King’s Chapel, Boston, where services are held every week-day except Saturday for seven months of the year. For such services the location, at one of the busiest corners of the business district, is a distinct asset. The historic building, erected in°1749 (the first stone building in Boston), the old pulpit dating from 1717 (the oldest in the country still in use on its original site), the quiet retreat to be found within the massive granite walls that shut out the roar of traffic, the inescapable sense of enduring and spiritual realities that pervades the building and takes possession of the most casual visitor, all combine to offer an equipment of a unique character. Daily the Paul Revere bell summons from offices, stores, and streets a company of worshipers who come for the inspiration they believe they may find in the quiet of the sanctuary, in the ministry of great music, in the act of faith which unites rich and poor and wise and ignorant in a common prayer, in the message spoken from the pulpit with the authority of sin- cerity and the power of sympathy, in the uplifted song of universal hope and praise. ‘The spirit of the service is carried by the radio into many dis- tant homes and hospitals, and even into workshops and factories where groups gather to listen in dur- ing the noon rest. The visiting preachers are drawn from many religious communions and from various parts of this country and abroad. The co-operation of these FOREWORD 9 leaders, willing to come for three or four days at a time, has made the venture possible. With rep- resentative preachers of different denominations succeeding one another week by week no suspicion has been possible that the enterprise is inspired by sectarian ambitions, and the notable agreement in emphasis which has marked the contributions of the visitors from so many fields of labor has demon- strated how close in spirit and purpose are the progressive leaders of Protestantism in our time. Already, at the close of the second season of the present enterprise, one or two conclusions seem to be justified—seem, indeed, to be unavoidable. In these respects results have confirmed the expecta- tions entertained at the outset. First is the con- clusion that when the Christian Faith is proclaimed in its own right as an attitude of trust and confi- dence that gives to everyday tasks a new worth and meaning, as a mood of the spirit that will bless all life if it becomes habitual, as an acceptance of the challenge of life, the good tidings are heard gladly and the pulpit is accorded as great a respect as it ever had. When the ministrations of the Christian religion are brought freshly to the hearts and souls of men and women by those who speak out of a rich experience and a great sympathy, when its message is set free from confusing, irrelevant, and debatable propositions claiming to be authoritative and essential points of belief, the response is as genuine and as grateful as it ever was in earlier days. Men and women consciously in need of a vitalizing, healing, and saving faith, for lack of which their days are spent in carrying the burdens 10 FOREWORD of anxiety with impaired energy, wrestling with despondency, trying to escape from the toils of fear, or finding new ways of killing time, are willing and glad to interrupt the day’s work and seek a new perspective, a more satisfying motive, and a more real success. And as is the life of individuals in need of faith, so is their life in its co-operative endeavors. Within the nation there is class-spirit, unyielding in its reliance upon force; there is selfish sectionalism exhibited by various groups; there is individualism which rejects all self-discipline. These are signs always of the lack of unifying and universally authoritative conceptions and motives. Everywhere there is this challenge to the Christian Faith, not so much to justify itself on intellectual grounds to a skeptical world as to validate itself in its distribution of spiritual power. Men and groups of men who understand and freely use every other known kind of power have ignored or failed to make vital connection with the ultimate and most impor- tant of all kinds of power, the power of spiritual purpose. To demonstrate anew the value of that power, to offer it to men not in suppliant appeal for their condescending acceptance, but with the authoritative and winning conviction that compels attention, to interpret it where it is not yet under- stood, to apply it where it is gravely needed for the redemption of life from triviality and foolish waste, is the appropriate function, the urgent duty, and the most rewarding service of the Christian Church in our day. A second conclusion is that the larger faith pro- claimed by those who call themselves, or are com- FOREWORD 11 monly understood to be, liberal Christians is not, as has so often been said of it, cold and intellectual in its appeal. On the contrary, when it is pro- claimed with the authority that always belongs to sincere speech, with an urgency that springs from a sense of responsibility, with a tender sympathy for wayward, sinful, blind, and burdened souls, it is a veritable evangel, moving the heart and quick- ening the reserves of energy into action. ‘“Mod- ernism,’ writes one who has no sympathy with liberal tendencies of thought, “results in a steadily diminishing ardour in the spiritual side of life.” The remark comes from one who could have found evidence to the contrary within a stone’s throw of the study in which he wrote. Emotionalism is not necessarily “ardour in the spiritual side of life’; abandonment of revivalistic methods does not neces- sarily spell decline of concern for the souls of men and women. A faith that is at least not in conflict with the ordered knowledge by which we live, a faith that rests on the certainties of our being rather than on debatable matters of historical or unhistorical record, is a faith so full of hope for men, so moving in its appeal for co-operative service, so universal in its regard for human need that its issue is not only in ardor but in action. The old Chapel was once an unwelcome intruder in the life of Boston. “His Majesty’s Chapel in New England” gravely offended Puritan sentiment. But on the two hundredth anniversary of its pulpit Dr. Francis G. Peabody could say of it that “set like a great, gray boulder amid the haste and fret of the city life’ it had “remained through all the pass- 12 FOREWORD ing years, like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” The sermons here gathered, selected with difficulty from among the many lately preached, are worthy of the traditions of a pulpit which, in the words of the same interpreter, himself a son of King’s Chapel, “has spoken the same gospel in the changing accents which the changes of time com- pelled,—one language in varied dialects, the gospel of the devout life, the message of the spirit.” They. are now offered to a wider audience as a contribu- tion from one church to the many movements which in our time are exemplifying Christian Unity. HAROLD ‘EE. B, SPEIGHAG King’s Chapel, September 1, 1925. I] III IV CONTENTS EDITOR’S FOREWORD . by Rev. Harotp FE. B. Speicut, D.D., Minister of King’s fee Boston, Massachusetts . THE PARABLE OF THE ABSENCE COOL) sonar Mn rae Ae by Principat L. ‘P; ene: adhe LL.D., Manchester College, Ox- ford, Editor of the Hibbert Journal THE FAITH OF A SOLDIER by Rev. CHARLES REYNOLDS Brown, D.D., LL.D., Dean of the Divinity School of Yale University. THE SPIRIT OF FEARLESSNESS AND REVERENCE. . by Rev. WiLL1AM PIERSON Weeet es D.D., Brick Presbyterian Church, New York City. THE HEAVENLY VISION . by Bispop WILLIAM F. ANDERSON, D.D., LL.D., Methodist Episcopal Church, New England Area, Tem- porary President of Boston Uni- versity. 13 PAGE 19 25 35 45 14 CONTENTS V. “EREASURE TROVE: by Rev. RicHArD Roserts, D.D., American Presbyterian Church, Montreal, Canada. VI THE MIRAGE AND THE POOL by Rev. Oscar Epwarp MAurer, D.D., Center Church, New Haven, Connecticut (Congregational). VITVIHE WAY WHIGHSIS spr Shh las by Rev. Principat R. Bruce Taytor, D.D., LL.D., Queen's “University, Kingston, Canada VIII THE ATTAINMENT OF FREE- DOM by Rev. Parke Aor DD.. LDS The Christian Temple, Baltimore, ‘Maryland (Disciples), President of the Association for the Promotion of Christian Unity and Editor of the Christian Union Quarterly. IX FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT . by Rev. WixiiaM L. Suttivan, D.D., Church of the Messiah, St. Louis, Missouri (Unitarian). xX / LIVING WITH OTHER PEOP ie. by Rev, ALEXANDER MacCo tt, D.D., Second Presbyterian Church, Phil- adelphia, Pennsylvania. XI WORSHIP AS INSIGHT . by Rev. ProFEssoR THEODORE GER- ALD Soares, Ph.D., D.D., Professor PAGE 53 65 73 83 go 103 XIII XIV XV XVI XVII CONTENTS of Preaching and Religious Educa- tion and Head of the Department of Practical Theology in the Uni- versity of Chicago. MORAL PREPAREDNESS . by Rev. Mrnot Simons, D.D., All Souls Church, New York City (Unitarian). IRON CHARIOTS IN THE ROAD by Rev. JAMES Gorpon GILKEY, D.D., South Congregational Church, Springfield, Massachusetts, Profes- sor of Biblical Literature, Amherst College. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE SUF- HURINGS£O Bais UiSien bo by Rev. Witiarp L. Sperry, DD., Dean of the Theological School in Harvard University. THE RESURRECTION: A _ SER- MON FOR EASTERTIDE . : by Rev. Etwoop Worcester, D.D., Rector of Emmanuel Church, Bos- ton, Massachusetts (Protestant Episcopal). THE VISION OF THE PURE. by BisHop Francis J. McConNneELL, D.D., LL.D., Methodist Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. AGW ONS AD oO LE OUR A ts by Rev. Proressor Harris FRANK- Lin Ratz, D.D.;. Professor of 15 PAGE 114 124 136 143 153 163 16 CONTENTS PAGE Christian Doctrine, Garrett Biblical Institute, Evanston, Illinois. XVIT VTHE INTERPRETING (CHR ES Tae by Rev. FrepEric W. Perkins, D.D., First Universalist Church, Lynn, Massachusetts. WEEK-DAY SERMONS IN KING’S CHAPEL ut THE PARABLE OF THE ABSENCE OF GOD. Principat L. P. Jacks, Oxford “The Kingdom of Heaven is as a man travelling into a far country.”-——Matthew xxv. 14. In these days most thoughtful persons who believe in God believe in him as an ever-present reality in their lives and in the world. There is no point in space and there is no moment of time in which God is not. He is present everywhere and always a motion and a spirit that pervades all thinking things, all objects of all thought. We call that the “imma- nence of God.” “The constant presence of God” is a familiar expression of our religious phraseology. We use it in hymns, we use it in prayers, we repeat it in sermons. We carry this thought to great lengths. We affirm that God is not only present as a spectator might be present to see what is going on upon the stage of the world, but that he is an active partner in everything that happens; so that nothing can take place in nature, or in history, or in our per- sonal experience without God contributing to make it what it is, without the event or the experience having some quality, or tone, or aspect which it owes to the operating presence of the divine spirit within it. God is present in the good things so far as we know that they are good and rejoice in them, and 19 20 WEEK-DAY SERMONS IN KING’S CHAPEL he is present in the evil things so far as we know that they are evil and hate and oppose them. He is within us as the spirit of joy; and he is within us as the spirit of grief and righteous anger. It may be that we carry a heavy cross; but the moment that we recognize that it is a cross and not a mere piece of timber that we carry the divine quality is present and God is there. In all these things God asserts his presence, not as a mere spectator, but as an active partner in what is going on. To such lengths have we carried the thought of the constant presence of God. And we have done well in that; we have obtained by it a much deeper and truer view of the divine nature than those men who thought of him as a distant ruler of the universe, observing it with an ever-watchful eye, but himself having no part in its joys and sorrows, its victories and defeats, its vicissi- tudes, dramas and tragedies. That is the “immanence.” Now for the “tran- scendence.” Though God is always ‘present, we are not always aware of his presence, and we are not intended to be. It would be impossible for beings with a nature such as ours to bear the strain of being constantly aware of so momentous a reality as God. We should be overwhelmed, blinded and paralysed, and wholly unfitted to play the part and to bear the burdens assigned us. So far as our awareness of God is concerned he is absent more often than he is present, and must be so if the work of life is to go on at all. This is the point on which the Parable of the Talents turns. The subject of it is, we may say, the absence of God. The absence of God is here THE PARABLE OF THE ABSENCE OF GOD 21 presented as the other side to his presence, and the two are so closely connected that we cannot under- stand the one unless we also understand the other. The master of our lives is represented as one who goes away: one who leaves us behind. He is as a man travelling into a far country, out of sight and out of sound of those whom he has left in charge of his goods. He is absent, he is absent for long; but he is not absent for ever. His absence is no abandonment; he will come back in his own time, and he leaves us for our own good. “It is expe- dient,” said Jesus, “that I go away.” What the divine presence means for you while he is here, depends on how you bear his absence while he is not here. Bear his absence well, and then, when he comes back, you shall enter into the joy of your lord and be made a ruler over cities. Bear it ill, misuse it, make it an opportunity to forget him and to betray him, as you easily may, and the result will be that, when he returns, you will not even know him, you will not recognise him in his true character as your saviour and your friend, but will think that he is a hard man, a tyrant and an oppressor, reaping where he has not sown and gath- ering where he has not strawed. Your loyalty in his absence is precisely what enables you to under- stand his presence and to rejoice in it. Your treachery in his absence is precisely what blinds you to his presence, and turns it into a calamity. Thus the presence and the absence of God, the immanence and the transcendence, are woven together, and the spiritual life becomes the harmonious rhythm of the two. 22 WEEK-DAY SERMONS IN KING’S CHAPEL It is the nature of all spiritual realities to be unobtrusive. They do not strive nor cry, nor lift up their voices in the street. They do not force themselves upon our observation. For the most part they are fugitive visitors. They come and go; they come without observation and they go away without noisy farewells. Just because they are so high they are commonly out of sight, like the summit of Mount Everest. They are elusive things. -They take long journeys, travel into far countries, fade into the dim distance. They touch our souls in passing, they linger a little, and they are gone. There is a certain aloofness about spiritual realities. None of us can serve the Highest unless we are prepared for occasions when the reasons for serving it are out of sight. Mostly we see only a part of the reasons; hardly ever do we see the whole of them; and sometimes we see no reason at all but have to sustain ourselves by the memory of some moment in the past, when God was actually present, when the supremacy of love, and the eternal beauty of a life devoted to its service were as plain as any visible thing could be. These absences of God are the testing points of life. Sooner or later they come to us all. Has it not often seemed to you a hard thing that the spiritual world should have faded out of sight at the very moment when you have a difh- cult part to play, and your need of the divine pres- ence is at its greatest? And yet we are not so far from the spiritual world as we think. Christ was never nearer to God than when he cried out on the Cross, ““My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ None but a loyal spirit could feel such de- THE PARABLE OF THE ABSENCE OF GOD 23 spair, and when that point is reached we know that the unseen helpers, absent for the moment, are hur- rying back to the support of the soul which has kept the faith in the hour of desolation and loneliness. Learn then to bear the absences of God. They are part of the divine discipline. Let us learn to be content with a life which is visited occasionally only by this travelling Master whose divine purposes we serve. The continual pres- ence of the spiritual realities, in all their beauty, in all their majesty, in all their insistence, is doubtless what we all desire; but such a state of things would leave no room for the free and loyal service which is at once our duty and our joy. To have no option but to serve the highest; to be forced in spite of ourselves to acknowledge its presence and to yield to its demands, that would not be the kind of education that is needed to turn us into the children of the light. We need these absences of God, these long intervals when the light has to be kept burning in darkness, and the trust has to be kept against all solicitations to betray it. They qualify us for that high and glorious moment when the Master returns, as most assuredly he will do in his own good time. The loyalty which can keep the trust under these conditions is the very service which the divine spirit asks of us all. Perhaps you remember years ago listening to some great preacher whose message touched you to the quick and opened the heavens for you and made you feel that God was near you, your saviour and friend. “Ah,” you say, “if only I could have heard a sermon like that every Sunday, how much better a man I 24 WEEK-DAY SERMONS IN KING’S CHAPEL should have been.” But no; that great preacher passed out of your life, he faded away into the dim distance and you never heard that message again. Only once! Or there was a day in your life when you stood alone amid the beauty and glory of the natural world; you gazed into the depths of the starry firma- ment above your head; you saw the mountains and the ocean; you heard the great deeps calling to one another; and then the feeling came over you, and the conviction sank into your heart, that the whole universe was alive with God. ‘Ah,’ you say, “if only that experience had been more frequent, what a religious man I should have become. But no. I returned to my business; I sank back into my rou- tine; I resumed the commonplace, and that feeling has never visited me since that day.’’ Only once! Or something more intimate. Once there was a dear soul beside me, whose touch upon my life kept me true to my better self. But death came; the tie was broken and I was left alone. “There has been no other like that one. There never has been, there never can be! Only one, and that one passed away from me into the depths of the everlasting silence! How far away the country is into which my king- dom of heaven, once so near, has travelled!’ Such are the ways of the Master of our life. These were his visits. He will come again, perhaps when the light is sinking and the world slipping from your grasp. But another light will be dawning, And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since and lost awhile. THE FAITH OF A SOLDIER DEAN CHARLEs R. Brown, Yale University How narrow we are in picturing the saints! We usually paint them in long white robes with halos around their heads, giving them a setting altogether celestial, as if they were too good for this common earth. We put them in the clouds, when they are needed most on the ground. The Master was wiser. He knew what was in man and was not misled by any shallow conventions. Here in my text he lifts a man into renown for all time as a man of marvelous faith! “I have not found such faith, no, not in Israel.” And to our surprise the man was not a priest or a prophet, he was a layman, a soldier. In our day he would have been in khaki. He comes upon the scene, crosses the stage just once, and then disappears. But in those brief moments he does that which causes him to be remembered. Look at him—he has something to say! Notice first the fine quality of his nature! He stood four square and his four main traits are here set down. He was a man who did his duty as nat- urally and as regularly as a horse eats oats. “I am a man under authority,” he said. He had his orders and he obeyed them. He had not been bitten by that 25 26 WEEK-DAY SERMONS IN KING’S CHAPEL fad which is forever talking about being “left free to live its own life,” yielding instantly to any passing impulse. He would have made short work of that sort of folderol. He did certain things because they were right, spurned certain things because they were wrong—and that was all there was about it in his soldierly mind. For all meanness he showed a scorn as fierce and as clean as fire. “T am a man under authority,” he said, “and I have soldiers under me. I say to one ‘go’ and he goes; to another ‘come’ and he comes; to another “do this’ and the thing is done.” He was orderly and thorough in his whole method of life, like the power of gravitation. When the clock struck he was there on time, not with a string of excuses, but with the task accomplished. How this must have warmed the heart of him who said, ‘‘Not every one that saith, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter into the kingdom, but he that doeth the will of my Father.” He was a broad-minded man, without a petty, bigoted hair in his head. He was an officer in the Roman army, stationed in Palestine where his deal- ings were mainly with the Jews. He saw that their main interest was religion, and he respected their worship even when he did not share in it. The Jews in that small place were poor and he had built them a synagogue. This generous action of a Roman Centurion in providing them a decent place of worship touched their hearts. When this officer came to Christ with his request, a committee of the elders of the congregation came with him. “He is worthy,” they said, “for whom thou shouldst do this thing. He loveth our nation and hath THE FAITH OF A SOLDIER 27 built us a synagogue.” He was built on broad lines. He was a humane man. He was in sound health himself, apparently, as soldiers usually are, but he had at home a sick slave. ‘My servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented.” It was not an age of kindness—one sick slave more or less what did it matter whether he lived or died? Slaves were cheap. But this man had a heart. He did not make any direct request of the Master, but the tones of his voice as he made his statement were pleading like angels on behalf of that sick slave. He was a man of reverence, as all of the best officers are. He knew about this teacher of religion who forgave men’s sins and healed their diseases. When he had laid the case of the sick slave before Christ, Jesus said, “I will come and heal him.” No hesitation, no uncertainty—He spoke as one having the power. His plain, straight word touched the heart of this soldier. “I am not worthy,” he said, “that thou shouldst come under my roof. Speak the word only and my servant will be healed.” He stood there in the presence of Christ in the atti- tude of attention, with his hand at salute, doing reverence to one who impressed him as having come from God. How fine it all was! He was an officer and a gentleman. He honored the uniform he wore, the banner under which he served, the country for whose defense he stood. He was reliable, broad-minded, kindly and reverent. We can understand how the Master’s heart went out to him instantly. Here was a man who was a man indeed. 28 WEEK-DAY SERMONS IN KING’S CHAPEL In the second place, how did this high-minded man show that faith? He did it by his readiness to act upon the bare word of Christ. He stood there looking into the eyes of the Master and he felt that he had found one who could be trusted. Jesus spoke as one who knew what he was talking about. He impressed the Roman officer as one who would keep his word. He had undoubtedly healed others and he had shown a ready sympathy for that sick slave. When he said, therefore, “I will come and heal him,” that settled it in the mind of this soldier. The Roman officer was not accustomed to argue or handy words with his men. When he said “go” the man went. That was the way he felt about the word of Christ. “Speak the word only and my servant will be healed.’”’ No rhapsodies, no ecstacies, no moist gestures of the eyes or shouting of hallelu- jahs! His faith declared itself in that firm persua- sion that in the outcome it would be just as Jesus had said. And the Master called that attitude of heart, faith of the first order. You may hear it said of some pious soul, “He is a man of wonderful faith. He believes every word in the Bible from lid to lid. He accepts all the state- ments in the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed and the Westminster Confes- sion without the least wobble of a doubt. Wonder- ful faith!” But all that has to do with theological opinion rather than with faith. It may or may not be ac- companied by religious faith. “The devils also believe,” the Bible says—they believe and tremble. They are just as orthodox as they can be, but they THE FAITH OF A SOLDIER 29 remain devils. “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness.”’ We are not told anything about this soldier’s theological opinions. I do not know whether he believed in the Virgin Birth or the Second Coming or predestination or not—the record doesn’t say. His faith lay in his readiness to move ahead upon the word of Christ as furnishing a sound basis for action. How this aspect of a vital faith fits into the pre- vailing mood of our own day! Here is Jesus Christ building himself into the thought and life of the world as no other single individual ever has! All the leading nations of earth date their calendars from the year of his birth. “Nineteen Hundred and Twenty-five,” we say—it is just that long since he was born in Bethlehem of Judea! Here he stands uttering his message in the ears of the race! He did not argue about God or specu- late or express the hope that possibly there might be such a being. He proclaimed Him and manifested Him. “Iam not alone,” he said, “the Father is with me. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” He caused the men who companied with him to feel sure of God. He did not argue about prayer, suggesting that possibly it might do some good. He prayed himself with such assurance that the men who heard him crept up and said, “Lord, teach us to pray.” They felt that they would rather learn to do that as he did it than anything else they could name. He said, “Ask and you will receive; seek and you shall find; knock at the door of a world unseen and that door will open.” And the men who heard him say it went 30 WEEK-DAY SERMONS IN KING’S CHAPEL to their knees in a venture of faith. This was his method from start to finish. Now faith is the feeling that in all this he knew what he was about. Faith is the response which our hearts make to those great verities which he pro- claimed. It is the reply we make to God and duty, to prayer and redemption, to the hope of future life and to the appeal of the coming kingdom, in terms of action. If we stand in the presence of these high claims allowing the best that is in us to answer back in trust and obedience, in aspiration and high re- solve, we show ourselves men of faith. We are ready to move out along the line Jesus suggested, feeling sure that it will be just as he said it would be. This is the way that soldier showed his faith— “Speak the word,” he said, “and I shall know that the thing is just as good as done.” Faith is the act of giving substance to things hoped for. “Sanity,” some one has said, “is the ability to interpret properly sense environment.” The sane man sees things as they are and calls them by their right names. “Godliness is the ability to interpret properly spiritual environment.” The pure in heart see God and they call Him by his right name. They call Him, “Our Father who art in heaven.” The pure in heart see Him because in their own pure hearts they have something to see him with. Spir- itual things are spiritually discerned. And obedi- ence, as that chivalrous soul in Brighton said many years ago—“QObedience is the organ of spiritual knowledge.” Our knowledge grows from more to more as we act consistently upon the word of Christ in the spirit of an obedient faith. THE FAITH OF A SOLDIER 31 Take these claims of religion into the laboratory and test them for yourself by personal experiment. Say to those habits and moods which have no right- ful place in your life, “Go!” Say to those finer qual- ities of mind and heart which you feel you ought to possess, “Come!” Say to your sense of duty, “Do the thing which ought to be done.’”’ And somehow when you begin to act with that sense of command in the spirit of a soldier’s faith, your various facul- ties will fall in and obey orders. They will line up for action and you will move forward into victory all over the field. When the Battle of Obdurman in Egypt was fought, the British troops under Kitchener were outnumbered three to one by the Dervishes. The masses of Arabs, fanatical and furious in their mistaken zeal, flung themselves again and again upon the hollow squares of English soldiers as if by the sheer force of superior numbers and desperate courage they could drive them back. But every charge they made was repulsed. What did it? Not bravery alone, nor good guns alone! Never was there more desperate courage shown than that of the Arabs and they too had good guns. The battle was won by the power of discipline and of moral faith. The British soldiers knew that they could depend upon one another and upon their com- mander. They too were men under authority, ac- customed to obey. A certain percentage of them would be killed but the battle would be won, the Dervishes would be driven back, Khartoum would be retaken and order restored on the upper Nile. 32 WEEK-DAY SERMONS IN KING’S CHAPEL This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. The religious man like this soldier in Galilee is a man under authority. He knows the value of disci- pline; he has learned to obey. The chemist in his laboratory is a man under authority. He acts habitually in obedience to the chemical laws which have been discovered. He knows that there is no other path of progress. The electrical engineer enters the power house where there are live wires of high voltage stretched about, as a man under authority. He walks about unhurt and does his work with peace of mind because he obeys the laws which govern those forces. The same sound principle holds true all the way up. If you would learn to live safely and usefully, joyously and endlessly, learn to live in obedience to ‘that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Your faith in Him and in all the forces and values for which He stands, will add cubits to its stature as you learn to live in fellowship and co-operation with Him, THE SPIRIT OF FEARLESSNESS AND REVERENCE Dr. Witt1AmM P. Merritt, New York City “When ye pray, say, Father, Hallowed be Thy name.”—— Luke xi. 2. The greatest religious teacher the world has known is here giving his most important lesson. Jesus is teaching his followers how to pray; not merely his immediate personal disciples, who sat at his feet and heard his word; but his followers down to the end of time. He must have realized the solemn importance of the act. Some of us feel very sure that, with his divine insight, he knew that far along through the centuries men and women would turn to that prayer as to one of their most precious possessions. What should be the opening petition? What is the very first thing we should desire and ask for when we pray? It would be interesting could each one here be caught in an unguarded moment, and suddenly brought to say what he would ask first, if his heart should speak to God impul- sively, without a chance for the mind’s reflection. Would it occur to any of us to put first what Christ put first? 3 “Hallowed be Thy name.” That is what he deemed worthy of being made the opening petition 33 34 WEEK-DAY SERMONS IN KING’S CHAPEL of his prayer and ours. “After this manner pray ye,” said he. And the first words of that directing prayer are, ‘Father, hallowed be Thy name.” The men to whom he spoke would be less sur- prised than we are to have the place of prominence given to such a petition. The Jews of that day had a high sense of the dignity of the divine name, and of the importance of keeping it holy. Indeed, so careful were they in their dealing with the covenant name of their God that no one today knows just how it should be spelled or pronounced. The word “Jehovah” is only an imperfect and clumsy repre- sentation of it. To men brought up in a spirit of abnormal and superstitious respect for the divine name, it would not seem strange that the opening petition of the model prayer should be an expression of earnest desire that God’s name might be kept holy. But is that why Jesus began his prayer in that fashion? Was he falling in with the ways and thoughts of his age, trying to perpetuate the slavish fear of God which made men afraid to speak his name? Such a motive could find no place in his soul. Such a teaching could find no place in his prayer. Even earlier in the prayer comes a phrase which emphatically negatives such a notion. “When ye pray, say, FATHER.” That was the strongest and most original teaching of the Master about praying. For all the many names of God, spoken or unspoken, high-sounding or simple, he substituted one name, the simple, common, homely word “Father.” Let that blessed word replace all others, that blessed FEARLESSNESS AND REVERENCE 35 conception fill all their hearts as they prayed to God or thought of him. Nor is it only in prayer that they are to be mindful of this great truth. They are to live their whole lives as in their Father’s home and presence. No! Jesus was not falling into the superstitious carefulness of the scribes of his day, when he set as the first petition in the model prayer the words, “Hallowed be Thy name.” No interpretation of that phrase can be admitted for a moment which tends to lessen the simplicity and directness of our approach to God, wherein we freely call him FATHER. “When ye pray, say, Father, Hallowed be Thy name.” What then is the lesson? It becomes more clear when we keep in mind the perfectly obvious fact that Jesus here links the two thoughts together— the calling God “Father,” and the keeping his name holy. It is as if he said, Get rid of the aloofness, lay aside the superstitious awe that fears to speak the name of God! Call him by the commonest name affection knows! Give him a name out of the home- life, and let that name be above every name. Draw near to God without fear, as a child comes to a dear and loving parent. But in losing the awe, see that you preserve true reverence. In laying aside the superstition, see that you do not lose the spirit of worship. There is a familiarity which breeds con- tempt. Be careful lest your freedom degenerate into that! Use the simplest, commonest name for God; and then hallow that name! Be intimate with God, but be reverent also. Love him so much, that you will respect him the more. When you pray, say, 86 WEEK-DAY SERMONS IN KING’S CHAPEL “Father,” but then let your first thought, your in- . stinctive desire take shape in the petition, “Hal- lowed be Thy name.” When we take it in that way, this opening peti- tion of the Lord’s Prayer begins to seem worthy of its place of prominence. It is no echo of the thoughts of that ancient time. It is more like a word of eternal wisdom, fitted especially to this day in which you and I are living, and trying to be at once human and godly. What is there we need more than this spirit which says, “Father, hallowed be Thy name’’? this combined intimacy and reverence, this blending of fearlessness and veneration, this power to make God and life and all things common, and yet keep them holy? To get the full force of this teaching, we must remember that whenever the Master talked of God, or religion, or prayer, or worship, he was not think- ing of a little realm shut off, set apart from common life. He saw life whole, and meant that we should. LIFE was what interested him, not a section of it. Religion to him was just one’s attitude toward life. God was the Power, the Wisdom, the Reality, all through life. Prayer was our contact with that reality. He made no separation between things holy and things secular, not because to him all was sec- ular, but because to him all was holy. And there- fore this teaching about prayer is a teaching about life. If we know how to pray, we know how to live; for prayer and life are one. So Jesus thought and taught. That is why he had scant use for the distinctions the Pharisees drew; why the Sabbath seemed to him like other days, and the Temple like FEARLESSNESS AND REVERENCE 37 other places, and approach to God like other simple acts of social intercourse. There was a splendid symbolism about the rending of the veil when Jesus died. The holiest lay open. Henceforth, nothing was to be kept holy by being kept hidden. Let all come to the light and be judged! But let it all be holy! Call things by their right names, refuse to call anything holy just because it is kept dark! But let the names be sacred. Look at God, and life, and facts, and religion, and every- thing, with honest truthfulness and without fear; but never without reverence. Learn that the holy need not be uncommon; that the commonest word or fact or process may be sacred, should be counted sacred. So this prayer sends us to face life with com- bined fearlessness and reverence, with free minds and worshipful souls. What does this age of ours need more than this spirit in which freedom and reverence have equal sway? Thus to pray “Father, hallowed be Thy name” guards us against the two dangers to which we are especially liable—the danger on the one hand of a reverence which be- comes superstition and fear of facing facts; and on the other of a freedom which loses the beauty of holiness in making all things common. To the Hebrew mind, “Common” and ‘“‘Unclean” were synonyms. The “holy” was something set apart. Jesus came to do away with that distinction, that artificial holiness, and to teach the sacredness of the common. But he knew well the danger that men might make the holy common, and still count the common unclean. That is just what we tend to 88 WEEK-DAY SERMONS IN KING’S CHAPEL do. Therefore he rightly put reverence high, and made our first prayer a petition that God and life might be kept holy. We are living in a time which has caught the full swing of the spirit of fearfulness. Freedom is the keynote of all we say or do. We honor the spirit that looks facts in the face and calls them by their right names. The scientist is our hero, the man who sits down before some fact, prepared to follow it wherever it may lead, no matter what becomes of his traditions, or prejudices, or former ideas, no matter if his whole system of philosophy is upset. We handle all sorts of matters with fearless inti- macy and cheerful familiarity. Young people amaze us with their careless, frank handling of all sorts of matters, including some which were usually kept in the dark when some of us were young. They plunge through thickets which we carefully skirted. They calmly break the seals on many a package carefully marked “Tabu.” The Sabbath, the Bible, Prayer, Religion, Sex, Birth, Death—these are no longer kept on the shelf, to be taken out and handled only at set times by proper persons, and with great care. They are tossed from hand to hand, freely examined, frankly discussed. Everything is made common by much handling. Some very good people are very uneasy at all this. It seems to them that religion itself is weakening, that morality and modesty are lessening, that things cannot thus become common and not become un- clean. To their minds, if the veil of the temple is rent, the Shekinah vanishes. If science comes in with explanation, religion fades with the fading FEARLESSNESS AND REVERENCE 39 of mystery. Where law is found, God is lost. Make a thing common, and it must cease to be holy. So it comes about that some Christians are mak- ing a determined, heroic, pathetic, hopeless stand against all new ideas and interpretations of life and of God; and for a blind acceptance of and insistence upon the old standards and thoughts. Never mind what science may say, or what the facts may seem to be; stand by the old ways of believing and living and thinking! Make all things common, and no religion is left! Stand for the Puritan Sabbath, or there remains no holy time. Insist on a Bible free from error, or you have no revelation of God! Admit the possibility that Jesus may have been born as other men are, and you abandon his divinity. Give up faith in any of the miracle stories in the Bible as literal accounts of actual happenings, and God fades away from the record. Accept the theory of Evolution as the best way yet found of account- ing for the world as we know it, and you make man only a developed beast. Such are the thoughts and words of many good men and women of our time, deeply concerned for the maintaining of true religion. There is cause for their concern. We are facing a grave danger, and we have not been sufficiently alive to it. One serious cause of the present up- rising of reactionary religion, one great reason for such strength as there is in the Fundamentalist movement, as it has come to be known, is to be found in the carelessness of many liberals as to religious and spiritual values. There are critics who 40 WEEK-DAY SERMONS IN KING’S CHAPEL handle the Bible as if it were a lot of old clothes and junk. There are psychologists who handle the soul of man as if it were a piece of wood. In too many cases familiarity has degenerated into con- tempt, fearlessness has become flippancy, curiosity has failed to be reverent, and facts have taken the place of God. We have let all things become com- mon, as Jesus did; but we have not made all things clean, as Jesus did. We have not let reverence grow along with knowledge. Too much, far too much, we have let the Sabbath become like our other days, instead of making all days holy to the Lord; we have been ready to admit that the Bible is much like other books, and that the men of God were much like other people; but we have too often done it in a way that means reducing the Bible and the saints to the level of coarse and ordinary living, when it should have meant seeing the glory of God all through human life and literature. We have han- dled freely sex and marriage and moral standards; but too often in a way that has made them less holy, not more pure and sacred. We have seen life in the light of an evolutionary process, and too much we have taken it to mean that man is more or less justi- fied when he behaves like the son of a brute. These tendencies to degrade all life to the level of the com- mon and unclean are very strong; and those are right who count it their Christian duty to resist them absolutely; to stand for the clean against the unclean; for morality against the immoral and the un-moral; for religion against irreligion and secu- larism; for the God in man against the beast in man. The whole Christian Church should stand like FEARLESSNESS AND REVERENCE 41 a wall of rock against this whole flood of unclean- ness, this whole tendency to make life unholy by making it common. But, brethren, while we should and must make this stand, we shall lose always and utterly if we take any other way than the way of Jesus. Our Master would have none of the reactionary religion of his day. He threw the world open to his followers and said, “It is all your Father’s; and therefore it is all yours.” He left no place in his religion for tabus. He scandalized the religious leaders by the way he acted on the Sabbath. He so used the Scriptures in the synagogue at Nazareth that they tried to throw him from the cliff as a heretic. When appealed to for judgment as to the right place at which to wor- ship God, he said, “Neither in this mountain, nor at Jerusalem ; but wherever there is spirit and reality.”’ He stood for the open mind, for the whole view of life, for the sacredness of the common, for the God of daily life. Modern science is the legitimate child and heir of his spirit. The magnificent philosophy of evolution could have come to light only where Christ had taught the souls of men to look every- where for God and truth. We are taking his way when we face facts fearlessly, when we look at the great Reality back of all life, and gladly say, “Father” ; when we look at the wonder of the world, and say, ‘“‘Home.” The more common we make re- ligion and life and all, the nearer we are to the way of the Master. To divide life up into sections, label- ing one “sacred,” the other common’; to pack it into compartments, keeping the salt of religion in one box, while the rest of life goes to the bad for 42 WEEK-DAY SERMONS IN KING’S CHAPEL lack of that saving salt; that is to follow the Scribes and Pharisees, not the Lord of Life. But, if we would take the real way of Jesus, we must learn not only how to make all things com- mon, but how to keep the common holy. We must not let familiarity breed irreverence. With our fear- lessness must go a deep sense of the holiness of all life. If we see God less in special places, we must see him more clearly everywhere. This is what we need, what we must have—the spirit which sees, as Paul saw, that “all things are of God.” He alone can safely leave the shelter of little shrines, and restricted views of God, and tradi- tional codes and creeds and standards, who has caught a vision of the potential holiness of all life, so that still he worships the best, and takes the way of the highest. He only dares look up to the Lord of all life, and say “Father,” who instantly joins to that word the prayer, “Hallowed be Thy name!” Oh, what would it not mean if into the soul of the modern world, so fearless in facing facts, so boldly set on reality, so impatient at shams and half- truths—and in all this so like Christ himself— would come in full power the other half of the spirit of Jesus, a growing sense of the holiness of life, of the sanctity of common things and acts and relationships, of the nearness and glory of Cod; if reverence went always with fearlessness! It would mean a new day for the world. Democracy would be shorn of its perils, and set free in its glory; for it would cease to be a leveling down to the standard of the lowest, and would become a passionate and joyous faith in the essential and potential glory of FEARLESSNESS AND REVERENCE 43 common human nature. We could become more democratic without losing reverence for law and authority. Religion would be what men need that it shall be, what Christ meant that it should be, a full and glad worship of the God of our life, a spirit that sees God everywhere, and walks with him in all things. We would touch and handle all good things, the Sabbath, the Bible, love, marriage, the home, the nation, beliefs, duties, God, life, with the free artless curiosity of the child, and yet with an ever-deepening reverence, a growing sense of holi- ness. We should live a wholesome life, at once nat- ural and holy. That is the life Christ meant us to live when he said, “Say, Father, Hallowed be Thy name!’ a life at once fearless and reverent. Too readily we fall into two opposing camps. The liberal is fearless, the conservative is reverent. Too often liberalism becomes an irreverent ration- alism, and conservatism a superstitious tradition- alism. It is hard to say which is further from the mind and spirit of Christ. It is useless to debate which is better or worse; for our business is to be neither better nor worse, but right; to be neither Pharisees, nor Sadducees, but Christians; Christians like Christ in the blending of intimacy with a sense of holiness, or fearlessness with reverence. Tenny- son caught the true ideal, caught it from the Master whom he loved, and in whose spirit he was so much at home. Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before ;— 44 WEEK-DAY SERMONS IN KING’S CHAPEL But vaster! We are fools and slight. We mock Thee, when we do not fear; But help Thy foolish ones to bear, Help Thy vain worlds to bear Thy light. That should be our ideal. “Let knowledge grow from more to more.” Send the human mind to range freely and boldly among all facts. Do not fear the advance of scientific thought and knowl- edge! Welcome it as a way of knowing better the truth about life and God. But, as knowledge grows, let “more of reverence in us dwell.” -So only can come that ‘“‘vaster music” for which we long, when all the varying strains of this rich, wonderful mod- ern life of ours shall be caught up into one great new song of praise to the God who is our life. One of our modern teachers has set in a simple phrase the true spirit which should be in us all: “We are not afraid to open our eyes in the presence of nature, nor ashamed to close our eyes in the pres- ence of God.” The religion for which the world waits today is this blend of fearlessness and rever- ence. And that will be our spirit, if we learn from our Master, when we pray, and when we live, and all through our days and ways, ever to say, “Father, Hallowed be Thy name!’ THE HEAVENLY VISION BisHop WILLIAM F. ANDERSON, Boston, Massachusetts “Whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.”——Acts xxvi. 10. Blessed in their ministry to their generation are those who catch the vision of heavenly things and who throw that vision upon the dusty pathway of our common life. They are ever delivering us from the domination of the material and exalting before our eyes the spiritual values. These are they who keep faith alive in the earth and without faith it is impossible to please God. Except for their ministry and contribution all life would inevitably deteriorate. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” This truth from the old world holds at full face value for every interest in our modern life. One of the most distinguished scientists has recently said that “‘the most important thing in the world is our belief in the reality of moral and spiritual values.”’ To make men believe this and proceed upon it as basic in all their operations is the only hope of progress toward a better world. Modern civilization should lay this great truth to heart. The mastery of mind over matter is one of the most notable achievements of the modern world 45 46 WEEK-DAY SERMONS IN KING’S CHAPEL and because of this men have been boasting much of the superiority of our own times in comparison with the past. It is true that distance has been eliminated and that the forces resident in the universe by the magic mastery of mind have been made to contribute to the enrichment, the enlargement, the comfort and the convenience of human life in a remarkable fashion. But when we come to examine the ethical qualities and practices of modern world progress it is quite another matter. Life does not consist in automobiles and telephones and luxurious habits and limited trains and radio communications. The ele- ments of our life in their final analysis are not mate- rial but moral and spiritual. ‘Man liveth not by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” The question as to the desirability and probable durability of the modern world order is being raised very frequently in these days. The questioning comes many times from the Orient where spiritual values receive high considera- tion. One of our own popular writers has recently set forth a characteristic condition of modern indus- try under the title “The Man in the Glass Cage.” The writer makes a visit to this man and finds him engaged in doing a certain piece of work automati- cally day in and day out, year in and year out. When the man is questioned as to the joy that he finds in his toil he seems dazed and confesses that he has but one motive back of his labor and that is to earna living. The idea of putting any personality into his daily toil is remote from his thinking. The exaltation of efficiency and mere system at the expense of the development of human personality THE HEAVENLY VISION 47 cannot be squared with Christian standards. It is quite a general condition in many quarters of mod- ern commerce and industry. Too long we have been content with the individualistic triumphs of the Christian religion. In the new day dawning we shall all see that the world is the subject of redemp- tion and herein lies the hope of the future. To persuade the leaders of modern civilization that the most important thing in the world is a belief in the moral and spiritual values is an undertaking to which the prophets and servants of God must set themselves with whole-hearted consecration. It will prove a very wholesome exercise for us to scrutinize more thoughtfully our ethical standards which have come to be taken for granted. Our long-time assumed Anglo-Saxon superiority is being challenged. And rightly so. It has been a breeder of race prejudice and race hatred, which feelings are utterly contradictory to the Christian spirit and life. The rising world-tide of race con- sciousness must be met in the days near at hand. Woe betide us if we attempt to deal with it in any other way than by the Christian method