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PREACHERS AND PREACHING IN 
 DETROIT 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2022 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https ://archive.org/details/preacherspreachiOOpier 
 
Preachers 
 
 and 
 
 Preaching in Detroit 
 
 
 
 EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION 
 AND LIFE- SKETCHES BY 
 
 RALPH MILTON PTERCE, D.D. 
 
 Minister, Grand River Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, Detroit, Michigan 
 
 
 
 New York CHICAGO 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 LONDON AND EDINBURGH 
 
Copyright, MCMXXvI, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 
 
IMs 
 A PREACHER FATHER, 
 William Richards Pierce, D.D. 
 
 “A man sent from God.” 
 

 
VIII. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 . TYRANT SERVANTS. (Mark 2:27) 
 
 . LIVING THE ImMortay Lire. (Luke 10:28) 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTIONMI sy Mai iil. 
 Ralph Milton Pierce 
 
 . Tue Grrt oF Peace. (Phil. 4:7) 
 
 Gaius Glenn Atkins 
 
 . THE Patriotic CuurcH. (No test) 
 
 George *Brewer 
 
 . REDEEMING THE TIME. (Eph. 5:15-16) . 
 
 Chester B. Emerson 
 
 . Future Monarcus. (Matt. 5:5) 
 
 John Wellington Hoag 
 
 . THE Heer, or Acuinyes. (J Cor. 10:12) 
 
 Lynn Harold Hough 
 
 . Imitation oF Curist. (Luke 23:34) 
 
 Edgar DeWitt Jones 
 
 . TRAITS OF THE Reticious Sour. (JI Cor. 4) . 
 
 Alvin E,. Magary 
 
 CoMING GIANTS AND THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE 
 Future. (Gen. 6:4) . 
 S. S. Marquis 
 
 . THE Eyks of a Younc Man. (JI Kings 6:17) . 
 
 Minot C. Worgan 
 
 Reinhold Neibuhr 
 
 . KEEPING THE Propuet Anive. (1 Kings 17:13). 
 
 Arthur Lee Odell 
 
 Augustus P. Reccord 
 
 Curist Is Risen. (J Cor. 15:20) 
 C. H. Ruesskamp 
 
 7 
 
 83 \ 
 
 95% 
 
 109 }"" 
 
 Snes hag til 
 
 135 
 
 . 149 
 
 163 
 
 Ae oA." 
 
 1187 
 
XIX. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Robert Wilham Woodroofe 
 
 . Brook AND Barret. (J Kings 17:16) 203 
 Merton S. Rice 
 . BEHOLD, THE SOWER. (Matt. 13:3). 219 
 Warren L. Rogers 
 . THat THry Micut Know Him. (John 17:3) . 233 
 Mark F. Sanborn 
 . ORDAINED TO ETERNAL LiFe. (Acts 13:48) . 247 
 William L. Stidger 
 . THE CHRISTIAN AS A_ VICTORIOUS PERSON- 
 ALITY. CLEMO ONE ie Td) 263 
 Robert White 
 THE Master’s Compassion. (Mark 6:34). . 275 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 This book is being printed and offered to seekers 
 after the good things of God. It is not parochial; but 
 has a widely extended mission. There is no thought of 
 attempting a systematic treatise on Christianity. The 
 sermons included represent no particular school of 
 doctrine concerning the things of the spirit; but they 
 do represent the great preaching which obtains in this 
 notable and growing metropolis. 
 
 The city of Detroit is known widely as an industrial 
 and commercial town, with myriads of huge and grimy 
 smokestacks belching their black dust up against the 
 dark blue and painting with sooty letters ‘“‘ Modern 
 Efficiency ” across the sky. There is much talk about 
 the rapid growth of the city, striding ahead every year 
 by scores of thousands. But greatness does not con- 
 sist in material splendor any more today than it did 
 with Caliph Aberrahman III of Spain, nor does it con- 
 sist in size any more than it did in the days of Nineveh. 
 Detroit is ‘‘ The Dynamic City ” in the sense that it is | 
 one of the world centers of trade and manufacture; 
 but the spiritual elements in her life are even more 
 worthy of serious thought and appreciation, for ‘‘ back 
 of the mill is the sun and the shower and the Heavenly 
 Father’s good will.” | 
 
 Great churches abound here; and multitudes attend 
 the divine services. A strong emphasis has been placed 
 
 9 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 upon evangelism—a stirring and wholesome evangelism 
 which is not incompatible with religious education and 
 the prophetic spirit. Laymen and preachers alike have 
 been faithful to this trust, lifting up Jesus Christ as the 
 Lord of all men and as the Lord of every phase of hu- 
 man life. In picking up the Saturday night newspapers 
 one does not find the startling array of non-descript ser- 
 mon subjects which once blotted the page and brought 
 contempt on religion. Some do look upon religion as a 
 circus and the church as a menagerie; but in most cases 
 there is an infallible note of seriousness and a com- 
 manding emphasis on the eternal, assisting men in 
 the strange discovery of the quiet dignity, the en- 
 nobling motives, and the timeless summons which 
 religion offers to humanity in this perplexed and 
 ungrounded age. 
 
 Another element which makes for success is the 
 notable spirit of co-operation which exists among the 
 churches. This fine spirit of unity exhibits itself in 
 the remarkable Lenten and Good Friday services; in 
 the city wide summer and winter evangelistic cam- 
 paigns; in the daily-vacation Bible schools; and in the 
 Theater meetings in the Fall. The kindly Christian 
 graces and administrative leadership of Dr. Morton C. 
 Pearson, city secretary of the Council of Churches, 
 and of the denominational Superintendents have had 
 large part in this noble expression of united mind and 
 endeavor. 
 
 Nearly four hundred Protestant preachers are pro- 
 claiming the Good News every Sunday in Detroit. 
 With unusual ability and serious application to their 
 
RALPH MILTON PIERCE 11 
 
 high tasks, these men are calling multitudes to the 
 quiet places of prayer and praise. No measure can be 
 given to the moral and spiritual impact made on the 
 city by these men of God; no limit can be placed upon 
 the value of this sacrificial service. 
 
 Standing at the head of this notable list are several 
 preachers of international or national renown. Per- 
 haps no city in America holds so many outstanding 
 preachers within her borders. These men of letters 
 and of the spirit do more than bring great prophecies 
 to their own people. They constantly challenge every 
 other preacher to do his best in the name of Christ. 
 It is a unique privilege to preach under such demand- 
 ing inspiration. 
 
 What Victor Hugo said of his day is a serious sum- 
 mons to modern America: 
 
 “The age is great and strong. Her chains are riven. 
 
 K * ok * * 
 
 Mid the vast splendour of an age that glows, 
 One thing, O Jesus, fills my breast with terror; 
 The echo of His voice still feebler grows.” 
 
 The seemingly insuperable weight of the city, with 
 its multitude of folks, its congested foreign quarters, 
 and its attendant crime and sensuality rests like the 
 burden of the Titan upon the backs and souls of men 
 until the spiritual is well nigh crushed out. And so the 
 eternal task of the preacher is to remind men of God— 
 a loving, demanding, persuading God; to make real 
 such a God to the thinking of men; and to re-emphasize 
 the fact which Browning has so well put: “ Progress is 
 the law of life; man is not man as yet.” 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 What a tremendous task it is “‘ to let God see that 
 you at least are a sound workman, with no need to be 
 ashamed of the way you handle the word of Truth.” 
 
 Paul Elmer More is quite right in his statements 
 that the cure for democracy is not more democracy 
 - but better democracy and that the need is to provide 
 for a natural aristocracy. Such is the task of the 
 preacher. He is dedicated to the proposition of build- 
 ing up a vanguard in civilization which will lead the 
 mass of the people out into the higher and larger life. 
 His task is to put spiritual motive and spiritual power 
 into present day leadership. There is a lesson in the 
 parable of the Sower which is not always stressed. 
 The lesson is that the good ground will bear a rich 
 harvest, and that we should plant the seed of Truth in 
 fertile soil. We talk about saving the world for Christ; 
 and our missionary program is never cut large enough, 
 whether it be home or foreign missions. 
 
 But before we can save the world, we must save 
 America. No word of caution is more needed in this 
 superficial day than this,—we must not become blind 
 leaders of the blind, lest through our false leadership 
 all peoples fall into the ditch of materialism. Right 
 now America needs the Idealism of Jesus, and she will 
 never be won to Him except the mind of her leaders is 
 sought and won over to His principles and spirit. The 
 preacher who fails to capture the mind of the com- 
 munity for Christ is signally failing in the great enter- 
 prise, for he is failing to utilize the good ground for the 
 seed of God’s word. On the other hand, the man who, 
 in the wise strategy of the Kingdom, reaches out and 
 
RALPH MILTON PIERCE 13 
 
 up to the high thought levels of far-visioned men and 
 presents the claims.of Christ in modern thought forms, 
 will multiply Christ’s influence many fold. The spir- 
 itual multiplication table is a truly marvelous affair, 
 for one against one in the spiritual realm is often one 
 hundred and frequently one thousand when Christ is 
 the first one and a thoughtful, reverent constructive 
 leader is the other one. 
 
 The veteran temptations which environ the modern 
 day preacher are legion. The one which besets most 
 powerfully today is the temptation to give way to the 
 tyranny of tradition and to make as absolute truth for 
 all time the beliefs and ideals of the fathers. After all, 
 openmindedness and a sense of the prerogatives of the 
 future are essential tools in the ministry. The preacher 
 who attempts to dry up the source streams of new life 
 and power is recreant to his trust. The minds of men 
 need to be deep-furrowed at times, that they may get 
 out of the fallow into the fertile. We believe that not 
 only jesting Pilate but all the world is asking the ques- 
 tion, ‘‘ What is truth? ” Certain it is that we get on 
 toward God not by backward looking but by forward 
 looking, for there is no heresy so subtle or so blighting 
 as the heresy of the closed mind. 
 
 The preacher of today finds himself in a period of 
 transition. He is in the midst of the renewal of hostil- 
 ity between science and established creed, such as 
 raged in England in the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. At that time Lord Tennyson entered into the 
 conflict by accepting the modern current of thought; 
 and, for his stand, he has been called “the poet of 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 compromise,” which is an unfortunate term to be used 
 in connection with one who wrote “ In Memoriam.” 
 Tennyson gave to his generation an interpretation of 
 the higher things of life in the thought forms that were 
 modern and in accord with the intelligence standard of 
 his time. A careful study of the teachings of Jesus 
 will reveal that He followed this method with His dis- 
 ciples. And so the man who would reveal God to men 
 in this day must accommodate his message to the mind 
 of his hearers; and he must realize the right of the 
 mind of humanity to change and grow in its appreci- 
 ation of the truth of all life. Using the word ‘ com- 
 promise ” in the sense of an appreciation of new and 
 higher values, it would be right to say that the man 
 who proclaims the Word of God in this changing period 
 must be not only a preacher of insight but also a 
 preacher of compromise. 
 
 Another temptation would lead preachers to shape 
 their ministry according to the will of the people. 
 This is a critical age; and many preachers are suc- 
 cumbing to the demand of human voices, becoming 
 mere spokesmen of men and not prophets of God with 
 a distinct spiritual charism. How often the modern 
 pulpit pitches its note to the traditions of the fathers, 
 pleasing the ear of the congregation but failing to lift 
 the souls of men to God. 
 
 The third temptation would rob a man of his right 
 to give pre-eminent place in his own thinking to the 
 spoken message. There are other things which a min- 
 ister should do; but this one thing he must do well. 
 In this day of efficiency there is a temptation which 
 
RALPH MILTON PIERCE 15 
 
 would rob the preacher of his right to think deeply of 
 life’s problems and privileges and to carry an imperial 
 message with an imperial voice. It would deprive him 
 of preaching compelling sermons by making him a me- 
 chanical supervisor of the social side of the Church 
 and a busy counselor in civic affairs. Every true 
 preacher follows Christ in these words: ‘ For their 
 sake I sanctify myself.” In this he dedicates his ut- 
 most powers to make every sermon ring out as the 
 voice of God to heart-burdened men. System needs to 
 obtain in the Church as well as elsewhere, and there is 
 a real demand for administration in ecclesiastical af- 
 fairs; but system without spirit is vain, and adminis- 
 tration without the clarion voice is powerless. 
 
 The sermons which are written here come from the 
 pens of busy men. Placed before every sermon is the 
 Driving Motive of the writer. In brief and trenchant 
 phrase he reveals the secret of his ministry, the source 
 of his power, the faith that holds him to his task, and 
 the objective of his life service. Practically every man 
 is in charge of a great church in this tremendous city 
 which is a tangled web of human triumph and despair. 
 It is also well to note that only men in the active pas- 
 torate have been selected for this book. 
 
 Against insuperable odds these men have kept to the 
 high levels of spiritual vision, and have felt for them- 
 selves as well as for others the tanging sense of spir- 
 itual power. They have been selected as worthy repre- 
 sentatives from the many effective preachers in Detroit, 
 who have established themselves as denominational or 
 interdenominational leaders. Looking from without, 
 
16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 men are bound to notice with considerable interest the 
 unusual group of younger preachers in our pulpits. 
 Their voices are now being heard with acceptability 
 and with increasing effectiveness. Many of them are 
 fast becoming outstanding preachers in this day. 
 
 One will find here the motive and momentum for 
 living the larger life in Jesus. A careful search will 
 disclose no denominational over-emphasis, no petty 
 quibbling over minor matters, no waste of thought 
 over differences in belief. On-the contrary, there is a 
 major emphasis placed upon the everlasting verities, 
 making the book a positive demonstration in Christian 
 unity and spiritual solidarity. Here we have Jesus 
 presented as the divine Son of God—God incarnate in 
 human flesh, revealing to humanity not the physical 
 power, but the spiritual glow and moral splendor of a 
 God suffering for His creation, and calling it to the 
 high ground of moral and spiritual allegiance to Him. 
 Here we have Jesus portrayed as the hope of humanity, 
 the light and life of the world. 
 
 RALPH MILTON PIERCE. 
 
 Grand River Ave. Methodist Church. 
 Detroit, Michigan. 
 
GAIUS GLENN ATKINS 
 
 Dr. Atkins holds a unique place in the life of Detroit ; 
 he belongs to the whole city. The great church in which 
 he ministers with much grace, wisdom, and strength is 
 situated on Woodward Avenue, ‘“‘ Where cross the 
 crowded ways of life;’ but the greater church of his 
 noble ministry is the city itself. Like several of the out- 
 standing preachers in America, he studied for the profes- 
 sion of law, graduating from the Cincinnati School of 
 Law. Later he studied at Yale Divinity School, and en- 
 tered the ministry of the Congregational Church in 1895. 
 New England claimed him for his first two pastorates ; 
 and, after four years in the First Congregational Church 
 in Detroit, called him back to Providence, R. I., where he 
 ministered with unusual favor from 1910 to 1917. Since 
 that time he has occupied the pulpit at First Church; and 
 his ministry has grown with the years. Dr. Atkins has 
 added a keen spiritual insight to a marked literary and 
 forensic ability. He is more than a mystic; he is a prophet 
 with moral fervor and a deep underlying motive for ser- 
 vice. The several books which he has written are widely 
 read by laymen and preachers. Perhaps the greatest con- 
 tribution made to the study of the various aspects of mod- 
 ern religion has been made by him in his book, “ Modern 
 Religious Cults and Movements,” written with a quiet 
 appeal to careful reason and without petty intolerance. 
 In reading this sermon, full of imagination, insight, and 
 poetry, one easily discovers the secret of his eminent suc- 
 cess in the ministry of our Lord. 
 
THE PREACHER AS PROPHET—The late Bishop 
 Charles D. Williams said that the Christian preacher con- 
 tinues the offices of the Hebrew prophets and the Greek 
 Rhetor. The latter, in the first and second centuries, made 
 a business of finished and winning public speaking for the 
 delectation of his hearers. The Hebrew prophet was for 
 his race and time the votce of God. As the two lines of 
 intellectual and spwitual descent were fused and reborn 
 in patristic Christianity, preaching took over the character- 
 istics of both, and the ethical and spiritual passton and 
 practical address of the prophet was given something of 
 the art and form of classic address. And this should still 
 be the preacher's ideal and the test of worthy preaching. 
 But the prophetic note and spirit are fundamental—that 
 1s the substance, the rest 1s garmenture. 
 
 The preacher as a prophet is the tnterpreter of the 
 Divine meanings of the eddying currents of the individual 
 life, or the massive sweep of the vaster human enterprise. 
 He seeks to establish conduct in the solidity of duty, in- 
 form character with God-given goodness, kindle the fire of 
 loving Good JV ill on the altars of the mner life, and make 
 it the law and force of all human relationships. He ts 
 to reason of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to 
 come, and hold up the Cross of Christ as the revelation of 
 the method of redemption which is no detached transac- 
 tion in the Godhead, but a saving particspation of the love 
 of God tn all the deeply shadowed aspects of our souls and 
 our society, and to establish men in that sense of the pres- 
 ence and power of God, which is the secret of all peace, 
 the ground of all our hope; and this is the greatest task 
 to which any man may be called —Gaius GLENN ATKINS. 
 
I 
 THE GIFT OF PEACE 
 
 GAIUS GLENN ATKINS, D.D. 
 First Congregational Church 
 
 “The peace of God which passeth all understanding, keep your 
 hearts and minds, through Jesus Christ.’—Puit, 4:7. 
 
 This text belongs to that high fellowship of texts 
 from which there is really no preaching. The great 
 benedictions and ascriptions are guarded, as were the 
 gates of the forbidden garden, by swords of flame 
 which the preacher challenges at his peril; and as if 
 that were not enough the Apostle adds here a phrase 
 which should arrest any preacher—‘ which passeth 
 understanding.” 
 
 But this benediction of St. Paul has, for all its mystic, 
 brooding quality, a central solidity; and, because it is 
 concerned with the greatest quest to which we are com- 
 mitted, we may inquire into its meaning though we con- 
 fess at the same time that it carries a range of meaning 
 beyond any power of ours to inquire into. 
 
 There are words which call us always as from afar, 
 words which carry, could we once come at the realities 
 which lie behind them, some final answer to all our 
 quests; but there is hardly anywhere such a word to 
 move and command us as the word “ peace.” We are 
 all in some fashion or other seeking peace, whether by 
 
 19 
 
20 THE GIFT OF PEACE 
 
 our own hearthstones when the day’s work is done, or 
 in our own souls when we have mastered our spiritual 
 foes, or in the contacts of the nations themselves. Our 
 very restlessness is rooted in our search therefor. If 
 you should ask a hundred different men and women 
 what they are really seeking, they will give you a hun- 
 dred different answers. They will tell you that they 
 are seeking pleasure, or profit, or a livelihood, or power, 
 or forgetfulness, or knowledge, or righteousness, or 
 salvation. But they are really seeking some inner or 
 outer peace, some reconciliation of all the forces by 
 which they are drawn or driven in a satisfaction great 
 enough to quiet their restless spirits. When, there- 
 fore, a teacher like St. Paul, rich in manifold experi- 
 ence, undertakes to tell us—though his assurance be at 
 the same time a benediction—the secret of an all- 
 sufficient and enduring peace, he is answering a uni- 
 versal need of the human spirit. 
 
 I 
 
 He goes high or deep—no matter which—for the 
 secret of it, and tells us in plain words what we are 
 always forgetting: that we shall find peace not in con- 
 quest but in surrender, not by creation but by appro- 
 priation. Peace, he says, is a gift. 
 
 We commonly think of peace as an achievement, and 
 that is true enough, for peace is really a very great 
 achievement; but it is an achievement conditioned by 
 obediences and insights. Or else we think of a peace 
 as an accommodation between competitive forces, 
 which indeed it is; but it is far more than that. Or 
 
GAIUS GLENN ATKINS 21 
 
 else we think of peace as a fruit of conquest, to be 
 gained by having our way with those who oppose us, 
 the peace, that is, of some supreme and resolute will, 
 whether it be the will of the individual or the nation, 
 which has succeeded, and often enough at tragic cost, 
 in breaking down all opposing wills and substituting 
 for their ambitions or challenges its own high and un- 
 challenged affirmations. The only trouble with this 
 kind of peace is that there is nothing permanent about 
 it. Once we have won it, we are not able for any long 
 time to keep it, and so we are always fighting for it and 
 always losing it. There is a better way than that. 
 
 I have no mind to consider, to begin with, the more 
 common applications of the word, such as industrial or 
 international peace; just now we are seeking for the 
 roots of it in the states of the soul themselves, for we 
 Shall never have peace anywhere, whether between 
 embattled social groups or embattled nations, until we 
 have discovered the secret of inner peace and have 
 made that our departure for any further quest. 
 
 So approached, peace is always rooted in some confi- 
 dence or other. I am sitting in the room in which this 
 is being written, in a reasonable sense of physical secur- 
 ity because I have confidence in the floor beneath me 
 and the ceiling above me and the walls which shut me 
 in. If any thing should disturb these very simple con- 
 fidences, I should be as restless here as Damocles was 
 beneath his sword, wondering when the ceiling would 
 fall or the floor give way. 
 
 We walk abroad untroubled because the earth is sure 
 beneath us and the stars maintain their ancient stations 
 
22 THE GIFT OF PEACE 
 
 above us. If anything should happen to shake this 
 confidence, as an earthquake, for example, which 
 might at any time be repeated, or the news of an er- 
 rant planet escaped from its orbit and likely to collide 
 with our little world, the horizons of all our enterprises 
 would be so clouded with apprehension as to make 
 peace of mind impossible. We are at peace with our 
 friends because we trust them. The merchant’s confi- 
 dence in the integrity of those from whom he buys and 
 the dependability of those to whom he sells is the secret 
 of his business place. If anything should disturb this 
 confidence he would be a very troubled merchant and 
 likely to lie awake at night with his worries for 
 company. 
 
 Children are at peace in their fathers’ houses because 
 they are kept and sheltered by their mothers’ love and 
 their fathers’ safeguarding strength. The strong and 
 the wise and the good are always a bulwark and a shel- 
 ter for the weak or the foolish or the helpless. 
 
 There is no need to follow such illustrations as these 
 too far, though they bear directly upon St. Paul’s noble 
 assurance. Peace is a gift. You possess it really be- 
 cause other persons, or the great forces of the world in 
 which we live, or the steadfastness of the human order 
 about us, reassure us and share with us their peace. 
 Each one of us is a center, as it were, around which are 
 swept always widening circles of safeguarding and 
 peace-affording realities. 
 
 The stars communicate their peace to us; they as- 
 sure us of a steadfast order, vast, unfailing, tranquilly 
 majestic and always saying to us, “Don’t fret too 
 
GAIUS GLENN ATKINS 23 
 
 much; you are living in God’s good universe wherein 
 each star has its own appointed station; sunrise and 
 sunset follow in blessed and dependable sequence, and 
 where the changing seasons, which are themselves but 
 terrestrial aspects of the cosmic order, will warm a seed 
 bed for the grain you sow and ripen your harvests.” 
 
 We are greatly in debt for what peace we possess to 
 the safeguarding strength of the city we live in, the 
 commonwealth to which we belong, or the nation of 
 which we are citizens. All night long the streets of our 
 cities are patrolled by the appointed guardians of our 
 peace. The strength of the state reinforces and safe- 
 guards the humblest citizens of the state. The pride 
 and passion which we have for our own nation is deeply 
 rooted just here, for a nation is the majestic incarnation 
 of the force of all its citizens, alert and unsleeping and 
 always at our service. We go abroad followed and 
 sheltered by the Stars and Stripes; and, if need be, the 
 entire force of the nation may be mobilized for the 
 protection of a little child. 
 
 IT 
 
 We really find peace, then, as we appropriate in 
 vaster or more intimate ways some aspect or other of 
 this encompassing and assuring strength. One may 
 rewrite the Apostle’s benediction and do it no despite: 
 “And the peace of the home which passeth under- 
 standing shall guard your hearts and minds; the peace 
 of the integrity of industry shall guard your hearts 
 and your minds; the peace of the city in which you 
 dwell shall guard your hearts and your minds.” Or 
 
24: THE GIFT OF PEACE 
 
 the peace of the commonwealth, or the peace of the 
 nation beneath whose flag you walk unafraid. Peace, 
 then, is always an appropriation; and the ultimate 
 peace to be appropriated is the peace of God. 
 
 The Apostle begins by telling us that this peace pass- 
 eth understanding, whether in the inner experiences of 
 it or in any examination of its meanings or implica- 
 tions. What words of spiritual imagination or reverent 
 approach shall for a moment penetrate even the fron- 
 tier of the secret of the peace of God? By so much 
 less may we draw near to the heart of the serenity of 
 the Infinite and All-Powerful. 
 
 One must walk here as though upon holy ground, 
 with down-cast eyes, lest looking up he be blinded. 
 But, for all that, we may reverently assume qualities 
 as of necessity implicit in the peace of God. The peace 
 of God is the peace of perfect knowledge, just as so 
 much of our restlessness is the restlessness of igno- 
 rance. We are always, as it were, pressing sheer 
 against the curtain of the unknown; we have but to 
 reach out our hands and touch it. We are always 
 facing moments pregnant with unknown fortunes. 
 True enough, we have, because of past experience, a 
 sustaining confidence in the future. We have blessed 
 reason to believe—and this is part of the sharing of 
 the peace of God—that tomorrow will, in the generality 
 of its experiences, repeat today; and we may plan for 
 some far future without being too greatly disturbed 
 about the contingencies which may interrupt or defeat 
 us. We could not live with any kind of peace at all, 
 or dare to plan, if we should surrender ourselves 
 
GAIUS GLENN ATKINS 25 
 
 wholly to the fear of the unknown; but, for all that, 
 the unknown is always there. 
 
 We do not understand ourselves or the world we live 
 in. We have at the best only broken conceptions of the 
 wonder and truth of the universe and the order of it. 
 The most commonplace things turn to mystery beneath 
 our touch and face us with perpetual interrogation. 
 The very stones by the wayside protest against our 
 ignorance and the stars reproach us for what we do not 
 know of their far and inaccessible distances. We do 
 not know the content of our own souls, and there are 
 moments when the faces of those who are nearest and 
 dearest to us are veiled with some mystery. Our rest- 
 lessness is rooted deeply in our passion for a perfect 
 knowledge; it is always being challenged by the reach 
 and quality of our ignorance. 
 
 We may reverently assume that in the vision of God 
 all things lie in perfect clarity of understanding. All 
 that has been and all that shall be are gathered up in 
 the compass of the Infinite vision. For Him there is 
 no past beyond His Divine knowledge and no future 
 veiled with mystery. The stars keep His laws; right- 
 eousness is His thought, and love, as it were, the beat- 
 ing of His heart. 
 
 Now much of this is truly beyond our power clearly 
 to understand. We may easily enough use words 
 whose full content of meaning we can never clearly 
 think through. They are words of approach, groping 
 words, over-burdened words, and yet the meanings 
 they carry are true and right and though the fulness 
 of their meaning reaches us only as the tides of the sea 
 
26 THE GIFT OF PEACE 
 
 break at our feet, with all the immensity out of which 
 they come beyond our vision; still, as in the instance 
 of the sea itself, what they bring to us is a true part of 
 a vaster reality. Omniscience, omnipotence, omni- 
 presence, are too big for us, but we must use them not- 
 withstanding. To change the figure, they are search- 
 light words casting here and there a penetrating and 
 revealing gleam of light upon the wonder of the Divine 
 nature. 
 
 But, just as we may share the peace of the lesser 
 things which surround and safeguard us we may share 
 the peace of God’s infinite knowledge. And all this 
 in ways so simple that a child may understand them. 
 Here, as everywhere else, trust is the secret of sharing. 
 Our ignorances do not so much burden us if we know 
 that there is somewhere Someone who knows and cares. 
 Once we are persuaded that the fortunes of life come 
 to us out of God’s love and wisdom, we may truly, in 
 the words of the ancient exhortation, ‘‘ cast our care 
 upon Him.” The hymns we love to sing say all this 
 for us better than we can say them for ourselves. 
 
 “What Thou shalt today provide 
 Let me as a child receive; 
 What tomorrow may betide 
 Calmly to Thy wisdom leave; 
 ‘Tis enough that Thou wilt care; 
 Why should I the burden bear?” 
 
 Or else we sing— 
 
 “We know not what the path may be 
 As yet by us untrod; 
 But we can trust our all to Thee, 
 Our Father and our God.” 
 
GAIUS GLENN ATKINS 27 
 
 If the future be God’s thought for us, we need not 
 fear it; if changing circumstance be the revelation of 
 a loving wisdom, we may go on untroubled; if we find 
 in the unfolding hours some divine purpose radiant and 
 evident, we share the secret of His peace. 
 
 We need not be too greatly concerned by the things 
 we do not know. We understand enough to go on by, 
 and we are living in an always growing understanding 
 both of ourselves and the order of which we are a part; 
 and everywhere, as we go deeper and deeper into the 
 meaning of this whole order, we find law and order 
 and supreme reasonableness, luminous simplicities and 
 depth beyond depth of understandable things. 
 
 The scientist may be always at peace in his labora- 
 tory, the scholar may be always at peace in his quest 
 for any aspect of truth. Truth is there. When we 
 have found it we can understand it, when we can un- 
 derstand it we can live by it, and when we have found 
 it it is always a point of departure for a further and 
 more rewarding search. The first gift of the peace of 
 God is the capacity to resolve our ignorances in His 
 infinite understanding, and rest content in what we do 
 not know as well as what we do know, because He 
 knows it all. 
 
 II 
 
 The peace of God is the peace of perfect power. We 
 are more fretted by our weaknesses than by almost 
 anything else. The tools we use turn in the hands that 
 would master them. Every one of us is in his way 
 baffled by his own helplessness and weary enough in 
 
28 THE GIFT OF PEACE 
 
 the sense of burdens which he should but cannot bear, 
 tasks which he should but cannot accomplish, and re- 
 sults which he would but does not achieve. But there 
 is neither haste nor hindrance in the outgoing power 
 of the Eternal; His creative process moves through a 
 plastic universe until the morning stars sing together 
 for joy that they were made. Civilizations rise and 
 fall, cities are built and forgotten; but God marches on. 
 His is the peace of a power which knows no restraint 
 save His own holiness, and realizes an absolute per- 
 fection in the ultimate conception of it, a power whose 
 capacity is unbelievably wide as its vision and whose 
 vision is clear as its power. 
 
 Now God shares this peace with us just insofar as we 
 are conscious of being co-workers with Him; every one 
 of us may go on about his own proper business in the 
 assurance of reinforcements which are ample enough 
 for every task. ‘‘ As thy day, so shall thy strength 
 be.” I do not mean to say that we can do everything 
 we want to do, or everything we try to do in the way 
 we should like to do it. I do mean to say that as far 
 as our own plain duty is concerned we do have strength 
 enough to go on with. There is a power, not ourselves, 
 which makes for righteousness and the secret of the 
 ultimate triumph of righteousness is not in ourselves 
 but in that power. We are, truly enough, its instru- 
 ments and there is something to kindle as well as to 
 awe us in the thought. God is as dependent upon us 
 for the realization of the Divine purpose in the order 
 of which we are a part, as we are dependent upon Him. 
 But always we may go on as though marching to His 
 
GAIUS GLENN ATKINS 29 
 
 music. We may await His vindication of apparently 
 defeated causes, and His resolution of hopes as yet 
 unfulfilled. 
 
 These are not the words of a mystic or the vague 
 statements of a dreamer. If our purposes be such as 
 God may own and bless, He dowers them with His own 
 power and enfranchises them by His own indwelling 
 strength. Whatever strength we have is the strength 
 of God, whether we work with a tempered tool or the 
 forces of spiritual accomplishment or the majesty of 
 the moral order. Whatever peace we have in any ac- 
 complishment is His gift because in some fashion, great 
 or small, we have learned to avail ourselves of His 
 reinforcement and be strong in His strength. 
 
 IV 
 
 The peace of God is the peace of perfect unity be- 
 tween will and desire. The uplands of our souls are 
 swept by an ancient strife between what we are and 
 what we would be, between desire and realization, be- 
 tween what we will and disturbing solicitations. This 
 also the Apostle Paul knew and this he has voiced in a 
 cry which sounds still across the years, ‘O wretched 
 man that Iam! Who shall deliver me from the body 
 of this death? ” 
 
 But may we not reverently assume that in the infi- 
 nite depths of the Divine nature there is no such strife 
 as that? What God wills He desires, and what He 
 desires He wills, and what He wills and desires He is, 
 Here, as nearly as human imagination may approach 
 the secret places of the Most High, is the unapproach- 
 
30 THE GIFT OF PEACE 
 
 able majesty of God. We may dare reverently to 
 affirm that the profoundest peace of God is the peace 
 of serene moral accomplishment. 
 
 Now God shares this peace with us. There are 
 many roads to the realization of it, the most direct of 
 which is obedience to His holy will. We are slow in 
 learning how so many of our perturbations, whether of 
 spirit or society, are due to moral disobediences, or else 
 to an embattled reluctance to obey. There are no 
 regions of true peace outside the region of moral in- 
 tegrity and the straight road to moral integrity is 
 moral obedience. In steadfastness to duty, in the 
 brave acceptance of all the challenges of righteousness 
 we discover the secret of a deep and unshaken content- 
 ment. More than that, such obedience is always at- 
 tended by a widening range of social and economic and 
 international stability. The wise and right-living have 
 always known this; long ago Dante phrased it all in 
 one luminous and deathless sentence: ‘‘ In His will is 
 our peace.” 
 
 We have always been feeling for this, we have 
 always been telling what we have found in various 
 ways. ‘The mystic has one testimony, the practical- 
 minded man another, the scientist may explain it after 
 his fashion and the moralist after his; but all those who 
 have sought any Divine help in the moral struggle have 
 found it. The Cross itself is the testimony to a saving 
 and sharing love which not only shares the moral strug- 
 gle with us, so assuring us of ultimate victory, but bears 
 itself the pain and price of fault and failure. 
 
 The peace of God is the peace of perfect love. So 
 
GAIUS GLENN ATKINS 31 
 
 much of our restlessness is the restlessness of self- 
 centered lives, over-concerned for themselves, too eager 
 for self-fulfilment and self-satisfaction; but, in the 
 heart of God, love broods eternal. In a divine self- 
 forgetfulness which passes the power of imagination, 
 in the reach of an infinite compassion of which every 
 tide of love whose ripples break on any shore of time 
 is only the broken expression, in such a tide of love as 
 this the peace of God flows secure. 
 
 And how shall we find any peace at all if we do not 
 forget ourselves, and how shall we learn to forget our- 
 selves if we are not taught of God? ‘“ Now,” says the 
 Apostle, “ this peace of God which passeth understand- 
 ing, the peace of perfect knowledge, the peace of per- 
 fect power, the peace of perfect reconciliation, the 
 peace of perfect surrender, this shall guard your hearts 
 and minds through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 
 
 V 
 
 The word translated “ guard” is really “ garrison,” 
 a word rich in the suggestion of indwelling strength. 
 Our souls are to become fortresses possessed and held 
 of God; and whatever assails us is to be beaten back 
 helpless before His power. Ignorance challenges a 
 spirit, so garrisoned, to surrender. ‘“‘ Lay down your 
 arms,” it says, “‘ ye children of time, cradled in mystery 
 and borne on toward strange destinies, you do not 
 know the secret of the dust upon which you stand, or 
 the stars which shine down upon you, or the currents 
 of life which pulse through you, or the wills which 
 urge you on. What peace can you know?” And the 
 
32 THE GIFT OF PEACE 
 
 reinforced spirit makes answer, “I do not care; my 
 Father knows and His knowledge is peace enough for 
 me; my steps are guided of Him and the unfolding 
 days are the revelation of His thought for me.” 
 
 Then helplessness comes up and challenges it. 
 ‘‘ Surrender,” say such voices as these, “to distrust 
 and fear. You are not strong enough for even the 
 common tasks of life; how shall you meet the high and 
 the eternal? ” And the reinforced soul makes answer, 
 ‘“‘T am strong in the strength of God; I am reinforced 
 in His might; a viewless strength drawn from the time- 
 less and the changeless are my confidence.” 
 
 Then from within the more subtle forces make their 
 appeal, the divisive qualities of life: divided wills, com- 
 petitive desires—and truly these are most tenacious 
 foes of all—but the reinforced spirit may turn to even 
 such as these and answer, ‘‘I am not alone in my 
 strife; God’s will has become my peace and in His 
 strength I am strong.” Selfishness beats at the gates 
 of the soul, so garrisoned; but above it the love of God 
 spreads out His banner with His sign of the Cross upon 
 it, and in that sign we are safe. 
 
 ‘“‘ The peace of God shall garrison your soul through 
 our Lord Jesus Christ.” What is the connecting link 
 between the peace of God and the troubled souls of 
 men and women? Truly the incarnate Christ. He has 
 bridged the gulf between the human and the divine. 
 How do we know that God guides us? Through the 
 assurance of His Son: “I am the way and the truth 
 and the light.””, How do we know that God keeps us? 
 Through His testimony, for He tells us that not even 
 
GAIUS GLENN ATKINS 33 
 
 a sparrow falls to the ground unnoted by an infinite 
 love. How do we know that we are the object of a 
 divine concern? Because He has told us that God so 
 loved the world as to give—. How shall we make all 
 this real in our own lives? Most truly in that disciple- 
 ship of Jesus Christ which is faith and surrender and 
 love and self-discovery and the assurance of dear- 
 bought salvation. 
 
 Those who have found such a door as this as a way 
 of nearness to the Divine, though they be much beset, 
 without and within, do possess the peace of God which 
 passeth understanding, and become living sources from 
 which some widening and transforming tide of peace is 
 always flowing out to give to all our fellowships a new 
 quality and establish us, as it were, in the everlasting 
 arms. 
 
 PRAVER 
 
 O Thou, in Whose wall is our peace, grant unto us, Thy 
 children, much beset withn by the strife of our own 
 divided souls, and besieged without by the assault of un- 
 friendly circumstances, the gift of Thy peace. May we 
 find deliverance from our tgnorance as we commit all our 
 ways to Thy wisdom; may Thy undergirding strength 
 bear us up in all our weakness, Thy loving goodness give 
 serenity and strength to our halting purposes, and Thy 
 love subdue our selfishness till our fretting concern for 
 ourselves 1s lost in holy affectson for others. And may 
 Thy pardon quiet our consciences as Thy mercy is mind- 
 ful of our troubled estate. We ask tt all in Hts name who 
 is Thy Peace drawn near to save and bless us—even Jesus 
 Christ, our Lord. Amen. 
 
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GEORGE BREWER 
 
 Dr. Brewer was born in Kingston, Ontario. On coming 
 to the United States in his youth he became naturalized, 
 and was educated at Wooster University, McCormick, and 
 Princeton Theological Seminaries, being graduated from 
 the latter in 1905. In that year he was ordained to the 
 Presbyterian ministry in Columbus, Ohio. From the be- 
 gining he has occupied prominent pulpits, including the 
 First Presbyterian Churches of Columbus and Coshocton, 
 Ohio, and of Duluth, Minnesota. ‘The Grosse Pointe Pres- 
 byterian Church, situated in the finest residential section of 
 Detroit, has called him recently. The notable thing in his 
 ministry is the earnestness, frankness, and sincere courage 
 with which he prosecutes his work. His ministry in 
 Detroit has been positive and practical; and his preaching 
 has always been informing, forceful, and inspiring, put- 
 ting the gospel of Jesus to work amid the intricate and 
 troublesome problems of human life. This sermon, which 
 is an example of the preaching at Grosse Pointe, lifts 
 Christ up before men, and does not fail to point out the 
 requirements of life and service which must be met and 
 fulfilled by a Christian church. There is great hope for 
 our nation when men catch such a vision and preach such 
 a gospel. There is one remedy for the distress of men 
 and institutions ; it is the greater patriotism of love, which 
 Jesus taught. May God raise up a Patriotic Church, such 
 as this sermon calls for. 
 
PREACH CHRIST—Dr. Jowett expressed the holy 
 ambition of all true ministers when he satd, “I have but 
 one passion, the absorbingly arduous, yet glorious work 
 of proclaiming the gospel of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus 
 Christ.’ But how shall we proclaim that gospel? Dr. 
 Patton says, “It 1s no easy task to bring high truths home 
 to moving picture minds in a day when so many have 
 transferred their worship from the Infinite to the indefi- 
 nite.’ Dr. Dods said before his death, “I do not envy 
 those who have to fight the battle of Christianity m the 
 Twentieth Century.” Then after a moment he added, 
 “Ves, perhaps I do; but ut will be a stiff fight.’ It ts a 
 stiff fight, and a fight that in stself reveals the world’s need 
 of the gospel. Therefore, I firmly believe that the hour 
 has come when preachers must consign to the flames their 
 learned lectures based on a text, but shrewdly concealed 
 ina mixture of German rationalism, superficial criticism, 
 unscriptural theology, and impractical ethics; and prepare 
 once more to preach Christ and Him crucified for a lost 
 world. We must proclaim Him with such conviction and 
 soul appeal that every hearer will know that loyalty to the 
 Deity of Christ és the foundation of our religion; that 
 progress has not undermined the necessity of Calvary, nor 
 the power of the cross; and that Christ risen from the 
 tomb is conqueror of death, the redeemer of life, and 
 Lord of all—Grorck BREWER. 
 
IT 
 THE PATRIOTIC CHURCH 
 
 GEORGE BREWER, D.D. 
 
 Grosse Pointe Presbyterian Church 
 
 A world-wide war has shaken our modern civilization 
 to its very foundation. The whole world today is rock- 
 ing under the pressure of political, social, economic, 
 and religious upheavals that threaten all nations, and 
 all people. Germany, shaken to the depths, must find 
 a new foundation; Russia is still in chaos; England, 
 France, Greece, and Italy have been stirred even to 
 symptoms of anarchy, while the ground swell of 
 Europe’s upheaval is alarmingly perceptible as it now 
 breaks in erratic theories and false standards against 
 our shores, threatening to engulf us in a new form of 
 disaster. The war in Europe was between races, and 
 the enemy was evident. The war in America is be- 
 tween classes, and the enemy is often disguised. They 
 look more like tramps than soldiers, and fight under 
 the disguised names of ‘‘ Hyphenated Americans ”’; 
 “Communists”; ‘‘ Anarchists’; “Socialists”; ‘I. 
 W. W.” soap-box orators, who talk and will not work; 
 “Radical Reformers,” drunk with wild theories; 
 “ Frenzied Fanatics,’’ who must be heard at any cost; 
 and Unnaturalized Foreigners, who like our money but 
 
 37 
 
38 THE PATRIOTIC CHURCH 
 
 not our flag. These are the self-appointed leaders who 
 are now waging the new warfare for the so-called 
 ‘awakened workers of the world,” under the battle- 
 cry: “The rights of the working man”; “ The greed 
 of the upper classes ”’; “‘ The war between capital and 
 labor.” Here is a vicious war with a real outcome; 
 but what will that outcome be? 
 
 Macaulay, the historian, with his far-sighted vision, 
 tells us the outcome. He said, years ago—‘ As for 
 America, I appeal to the twentieth century. Either 
 some Cesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of govern- 
 ment with a strong hand, or your republic will be as 
 fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the 
 twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the 
 fifth, with this difference—that the Huns and Vandals 
 who ravaged Rome came from without her borders, 
 while your Huns and Vandals will be engendered 
 within your own country, and by your own institu- 
 tions.” Was Macaulay right? That question must 
 now be answered by all loyal Americans. The new 
 war is on—the Huns and the Vandals are here, fight- 
 ing to break down our laws and institutions, to disrupt 
 our industry, and substitute the red flag for the Stars 
 and Stripes. So, as citizens, we face an alarming prob- 
 lem—as Christians, we face an eternal responsibility; 
 and I, for one, believe that this is the crucial hour for 
 the patriotic Christian Church to step right into the 
 changing order and do what Christ wants done in all 
 our national, industrial, and social relationships of life. 
 
 But what can the Church do in the changing order 
 of our day? Dr. Faunce says: “ The Church cannot 
 
GEORGE BREWER 39 
 
 pose as an authority in sociology or economics. It 
 cannot rush in where experts fear to tread. It cannot 
 settle the problems of government taxation, industrial 
 insurance, profit-sharing, and minimum wage—neither 
 can it specify the exact number of hours for work, or 
 the exact amount of wages to be paid—nor can it out- 
 line a rigid program upon which the world must run. 
 But it can speak with authority and power on the fun- 
 damental Christian principles underlying all these 
 things. It can proclaim, without fear or favor, the 
 sacred rights of the individual as related to our indus- 
 trial situation. The Christian Church must be utterly 
 and eternally opposed to all forms of labor that de- 
 grade, degenerate, or exploit the laborer.”’ Labor can- 
 not always be agreeable—work is not always play; 
 but it should never be a curse. Some men must repair 
 our streets, dig our sewers, carry our garbage, mine our 
 coal, breathe the hot air of the steel plants, and feed 
 the blazing fires of our engines and furnaces. Some 
 women must clean our floors, wash our clothes, and do 
 the daily drudgery in a thousand ways. No mass- 
 meeting orator can reverse the degree, ‘‘ In the sweat 
 of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.” 
 
 But the Church claims that in all labor there must 
 be mutual consideration, honesty, and justice; that the 
 work of the home should not crush out the soul of 
 womanhood; nor the toil of the factory crush out the 
 aspiration of manhood; that in a Christian land women 
 and children should not be sacrificed to any alleged 
 necessities of trade; that no unsanitary tenements are 
 justified for the enrichment of landlords; that no occu- 
 
40 THE PATRIOTIC CHURCH 
 
 pational disease should go without remedy; and that 
 all toil without just compensation, or a just share in 
 results, is unchristian, and therefore cannot be toler- 
 ated in a Christian land. In other words, no church 
 has a right to preach about golden streets in heaven, if 
 it has no concern for the streets and alleys of the city; 
 and no church has a right to picture the joys of the 
 sweet bye-and-bye that is not making an honest effort 
 to bring some of the joys of heaven into the industrial 
 situation that we face here and now. 
 
 And even more, the Church must proclaim the true 
 democracy that should rule all men in all relationships 
 of life. But what do we mean by democracy? We are 
 all familiar with that patriotic phrase, “ All men are 
 created free and equal.” Yet we all know that men 
 are not created equal in a literal sense. They are not 
 equal in mind, body, or in heart. Men are no more 
 equal in character, ability, or service than they are 
 alike in their looks, the color of their eyes, or the 
 amount of hair upon their heads. Men are not born 
 equal in the literal sense, and yet in spite of all differ- 
 ences, we believe in a real equality that underlies our 
 modern conception of true democracy. But what is 
 that real equality? An authority answers, ‘ Society is 
 not a sandpile, made up of individual atoms, but a liv- 
 ing organism, in which all individuals are equally neces- 
 sary to the full, complete, and harmonious working of 
 this grand and living whole which we call society.” 
 
 Let us look at this truth through an illustration: the 
 tiny muscle that compresses the tear-duct in my eye is 
 in no sense equal to the large muscle that moves my 
 
GEORGE BREWER 41 
 
 arm. One is big; the other is small. One has the 
 capacity to exert great strength; the other possesses 
 only the minimum of strength. And yet, viewed in the 
 body as a whole, both muscles are equal in that they 
 are necessary to the full and harmonious working of 
 the whole body, for if the tiny muscle in my eye fails 
 to function it may rob me of my sight, and thus para- 
 lyze the working of my arm and the usefulness of my 
 body. In the same sense, we all believe in the funda- 
 mental principle of human equality. All men are not 
 equal in character, gifts, and powers; but they are all 
 equal in the sense that every man is a necessary part 
 of the whole, and as such he should have the equal 
 opportunity for the highest individual development, not 
 for himself alone, but for the full and harmonious 
 working of the whole of which he is a part. 
 
 In a true democracy every member must feel and 
 measure up to the responsibility for the life of the 
 whole body; and, if he does not, then he robs democ- 
 racy of its real meaning, and causes trouble all along 
 the line. A little finger may not seem to be the all- 
 important member of the body, but if bruised and 
 bleeding and left to fester in pain, it will soon send 
 pain and poison throughout the whole system until it 
 reaches the heart. In the true democracy no member 
 of the living whole should be allowed to suffer; no 
 group of members of the living whole should be allowed 
 to rule, whether it is a class of radicals or revolution- 
 ists, autocrats in labor, capital or in industry. Russia 
 is an example of the neglected member; Germany is an 
 example of class rule. But in the true democracy 
 
42 THE PATRIOTIC CHURCH 
 
 there should be no class rule; there should be no suffer- 
 ing members, for ‘“‘ we are all members of one body.” 
 And this is the democracy which the Church must pro- 
 claim for all relationships of life, because it is the only 
 social order that can be built upon the fundamental 
 teachings of Jesus Christ. 
 
 And again the Christian Church must proclaim the 
 far-reaching principle of industrial co-operation. In 
 the World War we all saw the difference between the 
 materialistic and Christian conception of life. The 
 materialists said that war is a law of the eternal order. 
 Christianity said that brotherhood is the law of the 
 eternal order. The materialists said that competition 
 is the fundamental law of life. Christianity said that 
 co-operation is the fundamental law of life. Christian- 
 ity has never approved of war or material competition 
 as the fundamental basis of industrial life. We believe 
 that all honest enterprise. is a partnership in which all 
 men should work with a common purpose, mutual re- 
 sponsibility, and with co-operating share in all results. 
 This is the spirit of co-operation that was so magnifi- 
 cently manifest in the allied forces of the world. All 
 classes of all nations, fired by a common cause, were 
 co-operating to win the war. 
 
 If all classes could organize so effectively for the 
 work of destruction in war, could they not now also 
 co-operate in the work of construction in peace? Cer- 
 tainly they can; and just as certainly the time has 
 come when all business men of this country must think 
 in the terms of the laboring man, and all laboring men 
 must think in the terms of the business man, and all 
 
GEORGE BREWER 43 
 
 try to see things from the other’s viewpoint. The time 
 has come when co-operation and not conflict must be 
 the watchword of all. This is the principle that is 
 being advocated by some of our leading business men 
 of today. Listen to these words of such a man, as pub- 
 lished in a recent leaflet called ‘‘ Representation in 
 Industry.” He says: 
 
 “The soundest industrial policy is that which has 
 constantly in mind the welfare of employees as well as 
 the making of profits, and which, when human consid- 
 erations demand it, subordinates profits to welfare. 
 The day has passed when the conception of industry 
 as chiefly a revenue-producing process can be main- 
 tained. To cling to such conceptions is only to arouse 
 antagonism and to court trouble. In the light of the 
 present, every thoughtful man must concede that the 
 purpose of industry is quite as much the advancement 
 of social well-being as the accumulation of wealth.” 
 
 In other words, when hard-headed business men, 
 and experienced industrial leaders proclaim such co- 
 operation, it tells us that the new day has already 
 dawned. Competitive antagonism leads to anarchy. 
 Loyal co-operation leads to industrial prosperity and 
 peace; and this is the principle that the Church must 
 proclaim with all her power. 
 
 And, above all, the patriotic Church must proclaim 
 the redeeming religion of Jesus Christ; the religion 
 that was born at Bethlehem’s manger when the shining 
 star guided the worshiping Wise Men to the birth-place 
 of the world’s Redeemer; the religion that grew in 
 power until it burst forth as the Sun of Righteousness, 
 
aay THE PATRIOTIC CHURCH 
 
 the Light of the World; the religion that beamed upon 
 the vine-clad hills of Jud#a, Samaria, and the utter- 
 most parts of the earth until it aroused all sleeping 
 Asia, as she lay dreaming of her heathen gods, to the 
 life that is life indeed; the religion that shone with 
 sufficient light and glory upon the cold materialistic 
 formalism of northern Europe to start the conflagration 
 that ended in the Reformation; the religion that lighted 
 the path of the Pilgrims to this new world, our Chris- 
 tian America; the religion that has conquered barbar- 
 ism, violence, and superstition; that has transformed 
 the savage into the saint, the brute into the brother; 
 that has made the lame to walk, the blind to see, the 
 heart to hope, and the world to rise into newness of 
 life wherever it has been proclaimed; the religion that 
 has regenerated, comforted, and sustained human 
 hearts which have been responsive to its redeeming 
 power; the religion that manifests itself in a burning 
 passion for righteousness, a flaming fire for justice, and 
 a regenerating power sufficient to save the world from 
 its selfishness and sin; the religion that is still the 
 fourfdation for all modern civilization and upon which 
 empires, democracies, and republics may still safely 
 build and achieve for the welfare of man and the glory 
 of God. Yes, religion, the Christian religion, the 
 Christ-inspired Christian religion is the only safe and 
 abiding foundation for world-wide civilization. ‘There- 
 fore, the patriotic Church must proclaim the redeeming 
 religion of Jesus Christ. 
 
 This is the conviction of world leaders. After the 
 war Lloyd George said, ‘“ Now it is either Christ or 
 
GEORGE BREWER AS 
 
 chaos; either the Kingdom of God or world revolu- 
 tion.” Henry Watterson says, ‘“‘ The paramount ques- 
 tion underlying democracy is the religion of Jesus 
 Christ. Eliminate Christ and you leave the world to 
 eternal war.” Earl Haig says, ‘The Church of 
 Christ is the world’s only social hope, and the sole 
 promise of world peace.” Lord Bryce says, ‘‘ Nothing 
 but the power of Christianity can secure the world’s 
 peace.”’ George W. Perkins, director of the Interna- 
 tional Harvester Company, said, ‘‘ Christianity in the 
 hearts of men is the need of the hour. I believe that 
 the application of true Christianity is what the world 
 is striving for; and I believe it will achieve it.’”’ One 
 of our own labor leaders says, “ This world must come 
 back to Christ—the greatest revolutionary that history 
 has known, a revolutionary who carries out the revo- 
 lution not by strikes, mobs, and lawless slaughter, but 
 by dying Himself upon a cross.”’ 
 
 Richard H. Edmons, editor, of Baltimore, says, 
 ‘“‘ Above all else this country needs a nation-wide re- 
 vival of old-fashioned prayer-meeting religion.” Rob- 
 ert Lansing says, ‘‘ The world can only meet this grave 
 situation by renewing and strengthening its spiritual 
 life, by turning away from materialism, and implanting 
 in men’s souls those great fundamental principles 
 which Christ taught, and which He manifested in 
 His life on earth.” Roger Babson, the world-famed 
 statistician, says, ‘‘The need of the hour is more 
 religion everywhere, from the halls of Congress to the 
 factories, mines, and forests. It is one thing to talk 
 about plans and policies; but without a religious mo- 
 
46 THE PATRIOTIC CHURCH 
 
 tive they are like a watch without a mainspring, or a 
 body without the breath of life. And, remember, the 
 Christian Church is the only organization in existence 
 that supplies the motive equal to the situation.” 
 Bernard Shaw says, ‘“ Why not give Christianity a 
 trialep After contemplating the world of human nature 
 for nearly sixty years, I see no other way out of the 
 world’s misery, but the way of doing Christ’s will.” 
 
 Then why not give Christianity a trial and put Christ 
 to the test in our modern problems? 
 
 This is exactly what the president of a large manu- 
 facturing business in Cleveland is doing in his business. 
 This Christian man was first an employee, then an em- 
 ployment manager, and is now president of the concern. 
 A short time ago their company sold a bill of goods to 
 a customer in another town in Ohio. The buyer made 
 an unwarranted claim for adjustment, which the com- 
 pany refused to allow. Correspondence followed. The 
 customer was insistent; the company was unyielding, 
 and the situation was deadlocked. 
 
 A few weeks later the president went to that city to 
 call upon his customer. Entering the office, he said, 
 “Tm Clark from Cleveland, and I dropped in to 
 straighten out that account.”’ ‘‘ Oh, yes,” said the cus- 
 tomer, “and what adjustment do you propose? ”’ 
 ‘‘ Just this,” said Clark, “I’m a Christian man, and I 
 do not propose or intend to do anything that is not in 
 accord with the principles of Christ. My proposition 
 is for you to pay me just what you know to be due on 
 a Christian basis.” ‘‘ That’s a blooming funny thing,” 
 said the surprised customer. ‘I’ve never heard of 
 
GEORGE BREWER 47 
 
 such an idea in business.” ‘‘ And business is so much 
 the loser,” said Clark. “It’s the way I run my busi- 
 ness, and I’m making no exception in your case.” 
 “But you have me in a corner,” came back the cus- 
 tomer. ‘‘ How did you know that I was a church mem- 
 ber?” “TI didn’t,” said Clark. Then the business 
 man pushed a button on his desk. A clerk appeared, 
 and the business man said, ‘‘ Bring me a check for the 
 full amount of that Cleveland bill,” and in a moment 
 Clark had his money. This same man Clark addressed 
 a group of manufacturers in the East. He told his 
 theory of Christian co-operation in business. A great 
 shoe manufacturer came back at him this way: “ I’ve 
 done all the things you suggest. I’m a Christian man. 
 But in spite of this, labor has gotten into my factory 
 and have put over a strike. My whole plant is tied up. 
 Your theory may sound all right, but it doesn’t work 
 in practice. What can I doe ” 
 
 ‘Let me answer your question by asking one,” said 
 Clark. ‘‘ How many of your employees are your per- 
 sonal friends? How many of their homes have you 
 visited this past year? ” ‘‘ None,” was the answer. 
 “Yet these labor agitators that you complain about 
 have been in these homes. They know the needs and 
 the thoughts of your employees. They sympathize 
 with them. They tell them that they will secure their 
 demands. The result is the strike. Suppose you gave 
 up just one night a month to calling on your employees 
 where they live. Suppose each of your foremen and 
 superintendents did the same. Do you think it would 
 make any difference? Christ visited the homes of pub- 
 
48 THE PATRIOTIC CHURCH 
 
 licans and poor folks, obtained their viewpoint, and the 
 result is that His teaching is the marvel of history.” 
 ‘“T’m answered,” replied the manufacturer. This same 
 man, Clark, was speaking before a great audience of 
 working people with radical socialistic tendencies, and 
 he said, ‘‘ The fruits of victory for which our boys 
 fought in the World War will not be made secure, nor 
 the world be safe for democracy, until every workman 
 is honest with his employer, and every employer is 
 honest with his men and altogether loyal to the prin- 
 ciples of Jesus Christ.” 
 
 These are wise words; they bring us back to Christ’s 
 solution for our individual, social, national, and inter- 
 national problems; they open up a line of patriotic 
 service possible for all. I wonder how many of you 
 realize that you will never have a greater opportunity 
 for heroic service than in answering the challenge of 
 the hour. Our country calls for men, Christ-converted, 
 spirit-filled, conviction-moved, patriotic men, who will 
 step out into the arena of our modern conflict and help 
 to usher in the new era of individual integrity, social 
 purity, industrial honesty, national democracy, and 
 world-wide peace. 
 
 “God give us men, men who when the tempest gathers, 
 Grasp the standard of their fathers 
 In the thickest of the fight. 
 Let the cowards cringe and falter, 
 Men who strike for home and altar 
 Can defend the right. 
 True to truth, though alone and lonely, 
 Tender as the brave are, only 
 Give us men! O, God, give us men! 
 
GEORGE BREWER 49 
 
 “God give us men! A time like this demands 
 
 Great hearts, strong minds, true faith, and willing hands. 
 ~ Men whom the lust of money does not kill; 
 
 Men whom the spoils of office can not buy; 
 
 Men who possess opinion and a will; 
 
 Men who have honor, men who will not lie. 
 
 Strong men, Christ crowned, who live above the fog, 
 
 In public duties, and in serving God.” 
 
 (gd Fle WT i 
 
 Lord, bless Thy Church at work in the perplexities of 
 the changing order, and face to face with the world-wide 
 tasks. Fell Thy Church this day with the spirit and power 
 of Christ. Make every minister a champion of righteous- 
 ness and an ambassador of consolation. Draw all Chris- 
 tians into a closer and more vital relationship with the 
 Crucified, that they may serve Him in truer devotion. 
 Increase our faith, enlarge our hope, strengthen our con- 
 victtons, broaden our sympathies, and help us all to enter 
 more sacrificially into Christ’s passion for the redemption 
 of the world. We ask tt in His name. Amen. 
 
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CHESTER B. EMERSON 
 
 Dr, Emerson was born in Haverhill, Massachtisetts, on 
 July 28, 1882, from a family rich in its religious faith, its 
 patriotic traditions, its Puritan conscience, and its lofty 
 conception of social duty. He was graduated from Bow- 
 doin College in 1904 and from Union Theological Semi- 
 nary in 1909, receiving highest honors from both institu- 
 tions. Upon his graduation from Union, he was ordained 
 to the ministry in the Congregational Church at Bruns- 
 wick, Maine, and was appointed to the First Parish 
 Church of Saco, Maine, where he remained in happy 
 fellowship and honored ministry for four years. In 1913 
 he was called to the North Woodward Congregational 
 Church in Detroit, and has enjoyed through these years a 
 ministry of increasing helpfulness and popularity. A very 
 deep spiritual ideal and purpose has taken hold of his 
 marked gifts of thought and speech, and has wrought out 
 a marvelously constructed message, which receives today 
 as through the years the closest attention and highest 
 praise of people from all walks of life. Dr. Emerson 
 speaks with authority not only in his own city and among 
 his own people but in many sections of the country, for 
 he is being used constantly in the great cities as guest 
 speaker at outstanding religious and community gather- 
 ings. The strongest point in his preaching lies in its ver- 
 satility, expressing himself as mystic, poet, scholar, and 
 student of social life. Three of the colleges of America, 
 Bowdoin, Hampton Institute, and Chicago Theological 
 Seminary have placed him upon their boards of manage- 
 ment ; and the Michigan Conference of the Congregational 
 Church made him Moderator for 1925. 
 
MY PHILOSOPHY—1I believe that man és a child of 
 God wha is a loving Father and who has created the world 
 for man’s mental and spiritual maturing. 
 
 I believe that the world rightly understood and used 
 makes for happiness and is the best possible world. 
 
 I believe that character is the meaning of lsfe and that 
 this life is perfectly adapted to making it. 
 
 I believe that man’s misery in himself, his misuse of the 
 world and his misconception of life are due to the fact 
 that he has missed the way. 
 
 I believe that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the 
 life of God for men, and that in Him and through Him 
 men can find God. 
 
 I beheve He wills to share and can share these gtfts 
 with every human soul who will come asking. 
 
 I belseve enough men will come to Him ultimately to 
 make the Kingdom of God a reality in the earth, which 
 1s the sway of Hts love in the counsel and conduct of men, 
 singly and collectively, 
 
 “To win Christ and be found in Him, not having mine 
 own righteousness but the righteousness which is of God 
 by faith,” is the difficult but certain ascent of life here and 
 hereafter. 
 
 To teach men these truths and help them live in their 
 light 1s good reason and adequate reward for the Christian 
 ministry,—CHESTER B, EMERSON. 
 
ITI 
 REDEEMING THE TIME 
 
 CHESTER B. EMERSON, D.D. 
 North Woodward Congregational Church 
 
 “See that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise; 
 redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”’—Epu. 5: 15-16. 
 
 What a world we are living in! So full of truth 
 waiting a wise man’s question, so rich in treasures for 
 a strong man’s capture, so vocal to sensitive ears, so 
 beautiful to seeing eyes, so friendly to sympathetic 
 souls. And yet so fearful to the ignorant, so stingy to 
 the incompetent, so silent to the vociferous, so ugly to 
 the unappreciative, so hard to the hateful. 
 
 It is pretty much the same world as it has ever been. 
 George Eliot was thinking that when she wrote in the 
 beginning of Romola, “‘ The great river courses which 
 have shaped the lives of men have hardly changed; and 
 those other streams, the life currents that ebb and flow 
 in human hearts, pulsate to the same great needs, the 
 same great loves and terrors. We are impressed with 
 the broad sameness of the human lot which never alters 
 in the main headings of its history—hunger and labor. 
 seed time and harvest, love and death.” 
 
 We are confronted today by the same mysteries as 
 our fathers. The Sphinx might as well sit at the head 
 
 oo 
 
54 REDEEMING THE TIME 
 
 of Wall Street as at the foot of the Pyramids. There 
 she broods over the silences of the dead; here she 
 would listen to the uproar of the living. The sands of 
 the desert are no more desolate than the streets of the 
 money market. There the thinking is too slow, here it 
 is too quick. ‘There is little enlightenment in either 
 place. Both desert and market miss the answer to the 
 riddle. The old answer was man. The new answer is 
 man also—the Spirit of man. 
 
 The fable of the Sphinx is that she swallowed those 
 who could not guess her riddles. Life always swallows 
 those who are too busy with things to discover the 
 spirit that informs things. Experience was meant to 
 teach us wisdom. It is amazing how little of it we 
 have. Life, like school, is frequented by dullards. In 
 spite of the crowd of witnesses who surround us we go 
 on making the same old blunders—lust, intemperance, 
 avarice, suspicion, envy, malice, bigotry, hatred, war- 
 fare. We continue to glorify our physical achieve- 
 ments. The strong man is he who has beaten the world 
 into a temporary submission, captured its citadels of 
 treasure and defied all competitors. The great nation 
 is the one that fears no one, sometimes not even God, 
 and can and does take its own part, clutching for a 
 century or two the chaff which the winds of history 
 drive away. 
 
 But the great facts and forces of life abide. Phys- 
 ical discovery and mechanical enterprise do not alter 
 them. They are eternal. Life today is complex, 
 clothed in great luxury and fired by great ambition. 
 Yet beneath all still are the same old ugly human pas- 
 
CHESTER B. EMERSON 55 
 
 sions of anger, deceit, disobedience, jealousy, avarice, 
 fear, hate. The one great peril still is moral death. 
 The one great need is salvation. 
 
 We go to the Book to learn those truths that most 
 vitally concern God and humanity. ‘“ Here we find the 
 most about what we are and what determines our des- 
 tiny.” Man in the Bible is not a seeker of gain and 
 pleasure, though the record is there of these by- 
 interests which he followed to his moral undoing. He 
 is a traveller out of the East toward the West, along 
 the road from birth to death, possessed by “ longings - 
 that take hold of eternity,” seeking a city that hath 
 foundations. ‘‘ Man is here a sinner, but finding for- 
 giveness; a mourner, but receiving comfort; a so- 
 journer, but enabled to find a home eternal in the 
 heavens.” That is God’s truth which transcends time 
 and space, which ignores all the barriers of race and 
 circumstance among men. 
 
 Emerson says, “‘ See how the deep, divine thought 
 reduces centuries and millenniums and makes itself 
 present through all ages. Before the revelations of the 
 soul, time, space, and nature shrink away—she has 
 no dates, nor rights, nor persons, nor specialties, nor 
 men. With each divine impulse her mind rends the 
 thin rind of the visible and finite and comes out into 
 eternity.” 
 
 And that revelation which is of esters and today 
 is that God, the Eternal, whose Godhead is redeeming 
 love, is moving through time and circumstance to win 
 man’s spirit to His spirit. Through all the fleeting 
 years which are but shadow flecks upon His sunshine 
 
56 REDEEMING THE TIME 
 
 His spirit works upon the hearts of men to save them 
 from their worst to His best. To repent of our sins, 
 our disobedience, our indifference, to hear and obey the 
 voice of God speaking in the Book, in history and in 
 our consciences is the beginning of life that has real 
 meaning and permanence. 
 
 “We are all blind until we see 
 That in the human plan 
 Nothing is worth the making if 
 It does not make the man. 
 
 “Why build these cities glorious 
 If man unbuilded goes? 
 In vain we build the world, unless 
 The builder also grows.” 
 (Epwin MarKHAM.) 
 
 ‘‘ See that ye walk circumspectly, not as foolish, but 
 as wise; redeeming the time because the days are evil.” 
 
 As we look out upon our world, the first thing we 
 notice is a lack of restraint. Men and women seem to 
 know no authority but their own captious wills. And 
 the power behind these thrones of our selfhoods seems 
 to be nothing more than undisciplined impulse. Led 
 by psychology that is curiously like the adolescence 
 which is its main study, they are searching for the 
 obstacles which prevent the free exercise of desire not 
 to recognize their validity, but to destroy their 
 restraint. 
 
 One might also say that one of our chief troubles 
 today is lost complexes. ‘True enough, we do need to 
 free men from morbid introspections and laming in- 
 hibitions that they may proceed through life like the 
 
CHESTER B,. EMERSON 57 
 
 free and joyous sons of God they were created to be. 
 But there are complexes in our lives compounded of 
 negatives that are of God. There are inhibitions dic- 
 tated by the command of a self-conscious decency. 
 Good proof of this may be found in the Ten Command- 
 ments, whose prohibitions would be as improving today 
 in a society which practised them as in that far-off 
 yesterday. And if some prefer an enabling command- 
 ment instead, they may well accept that great challenge 
 of the New Testament—(I Cor. 6: 19) “ Know ye not 
 that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which 
 is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your 
 own? For ye are bought with a price; therefore 
 glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which 
 are God’s.” 
 
 Of course, it is evident that the real lack back of 
 the unlicensed conduct of the times is the loss of our 
 traditional recognition of the authority of God. We 
 no longer hear God speak to us in thunderous tones of 
 judgment. In our efforts to lighten the burdens of the 
 Calvinistic Creed we have almost lifted the yoke of 
 man’s responsibility to any higher God than himself. 
 God has become a “ weakly diffused ”’ Being with gen- 
 erous impulses. Omar Khayyam, being the philosopher 
 of the multitude, as Dr. Luccock has suggested, pretty 
 well defines their Deity when he says: 
 
 “ Some there are who tell 
 Of one who threatens he will toss to Hell 
 
 The luckless Pots he marred in making—Pish! 
 FHe’s a good fellow, and ’twill all be well.” 
 
 Have we forgotten the awe of the prophets toward 
 
58 REDEEMING THE TIME 
 
 Jehovah? Do we remember the austere love of Christ 
 for Our Father? Did Jesus not say to His disciples 
 when they went forth to preach His Gospel, “ Fear 
 not them which kill the body but are not able to kill 
 the soul; but rather fear him which is able to destroy 
 both soul and body in hell.”” We read by the hard 
 sayings of the Book too quickly. There is such a 
 thing as the wrath of God—not wrath in the likeness 
 of our swift anger and abdicated reasonableness, but 
 an implacable opposition to all that is evil in us. 
 There is such a thing as judgment. Thistle seeds 
 flower in thistles, not roses. Evil deeds grow evil being, 
 and evil being must be burned clean in the fires of 
 retribution. 
 
 All this is prefatory to saying we need to recover a 
 consciousness of sin among men—that their lusts are 
 more than vulgarities, their licenses are more than 
 carelessness; that there is a moral standard to which 
 men must conform, set by the Eternal God in the laws 
 of nature and revealed in human terms in Jesus of 
 Nazareth; that by His character are we judged, and 
 only by His mercy are we redeemed. And as we come 
 to understand this, we shall help each other back to a 
 habit of prayer so lost these days because so many 
 self-constituted leaders have assured us of its unreal- 
 ity. We shall feel a need of help and will ask for it. 
 We shall want a power not of ourselves to uphold us 
 as we fight the forces of evil that come on with hue 
 and cry unto us; we shall crave a peace that the con- 
 fused world can neither give nor take away. 
 
 We shall cease trying to be supermen, captors of 
 
CHESTER B. EMERSON 59 
 
 heaven and earth, appreciating no values that are not 
 personal and prudential, recognizing no authority but 
 our own wills. When we have stopped cheering 
 Nietzche, the pedagogue of our present-day motives 
 lecturing us on the will to power, we may hear him in a 
 bad moment lamenting the loss of his right to pray. 
 
 “Never more wilt thou pray, never more worship, 
 never more repose in boundless trust—thou renouncest 
 the privilege of standing before an ultimate wisdom, an 
 ultimate power, an ultimate mercy, and unharnessing 
 thy thoughts—thou hast no constant watcher and 
 friend for thy seven solitudes, thou livest without gaz- 
 ing upon a mountain that hath snow on its head and 
 fire at its heart; there is now no redeemer for thee, no 
 one to promise a better life; there 1s no more reason 
 in that which happens, no love in that which shall 
 happen to thee; thy heart hath now no resting-place, 
 witere it needeth only to find, not to seek; thou re- 
 fussest any ultimate peace, thou desirest the eternal re- 
 currence of war and peace—man of thy self-denial, wilt 
 thou deny thyself all this? Whence wilt thou gain 
 the strength? ” 
 
 I think we shall grow quiet and become teachable, 
 tractable, with a new wonder in our eyes, the wonder 
 of understanding, and a new joy in our hearts, the joy 
 of forgiveness, and, kneeling beside Jesus, our Saviour, 
 pray the fond old prayer— 
 
 “ Our Father, which art in Heaven, 
 Flallowed be Thy name. 
 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, 
 In: earth as it 1s in Heaven, 
 
60 REDEEMING THE TIME 
 
 Give us this day our daily bread 
 
 And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those 
 who trespass against us. 
 
 And lead us not into temptation, 
 
 But deliver us from evil.” 
 
 The second thing we notice as we look out upon our 
 world is its mad acquisitiveness. We are possessed 
 with a mania for collecting things, from easy chairs to 
 Rolls-Royces, if we are individuals, from crude oil to 
 peoples, if we are nations. Our mental resources are 
 pretty much exhausted by answering the question, 
 ‘What shall we eat; what shall we drink; and where- 
 withal shall we be clothed?” Our business is merce- 
 nary, our education predatory, our politics prudential, 
 our religion competitive, and lately combative. 
 
 And what have we for it all? Grudge labor which 
 takes no joy in God’s creative gift; profit-making 
 which keeps a man’s soul under lock and key with his 
 treasures, suspicion which marks the average face as 
 detective and not declarative, envy which sets every- 
 body in a mad scramble of imitation, hatred which 
 separates neighbor from neighbor, nation from nation. 
 Yea, verily, — 
 
 “The world is too much with us— 
 Late and soon, getting and spending we lay waste 
 our powers, — 
 We have given away our hearts—a sordid boom.” 
 
 But they need not be sordid! They may be joyous, 
 full of the lilt of life, finding the world the best pos- 
 sible of all worlds, a glorious place to live in and work 
 
CHESTER B. EMERSON 61 
 
 in, and peopled by a wonderful crowd of folk, all eager 
 to help and be helped, love and be loved, share and 
 receive share. There is enough food and to spare, 
 enough room, enough work, enough time for play and 
 worship as well. And, above all, a great goal to seek, 
 the Kingdom of God that is large enough to be inclusive 
 of all the gifts that the nations can bring to it, and de- 
 manding enough to be incomplete without goodwill and 
 effort of every man. 
 
 Here, again, back of the fact is the reason for it. 
 _ The world has lost its sense of immortality. “ We go 
 this way but once, let us enjoy it,” says the wisdom of 
 the world. “Our years may be few, let us get ours 
 while we can. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow 
 we die and we'll be a long time dead.”’ But how pa- 
 thetically the Epicurean seeks surcease from his sor- 
 row, as he picks the breaking string of his lute and 
 looks on the face of his dead beloved. How pitifully 
 he cries for power when the forces of life bruise and 
 break the body. There comes a time when he cannot 
 laugh or sing or dance. He faces the great event of 
 death and his whole being shrinks from being blotted 
 out. Then he wants to hear the dear old words, ‘‘ In 
 my Father’s house are many homes. If it were not 
 the truth, I would have told you. So let not your heart 
 be troubled.” 
 
 We must win back our assurance of immortality,— 
 that whatever in us loves as Christ loved or is capable 
 of being loved by such an One as He, cannot die. 
 Nothing can kill it. It is beyond the reach of disease 
 or decay. It is hid with Him in God. 
 
62 REDEEMING THE TIME 
 
 “Immortal Love, within whose righteous will 1s 
 always peace 
 O pity us storm-tossed on waves of ill, 
 Let passion cease. 
 Come down in power within our hearts to reign 
 For we are weak and struggle has been vain.” 
 
 “The days are gone when far and wide our wills 
 Drove us astray; 
 And now we fain would climb the arduous hill 
 That narrow way, 
 Which leads through mist and rocks to Thine 
 abode 
 Toiling for man and Thee, Almighty God. 
 
 “So may we, far away, when evening falls 
 On life and love, 
 Arrive at last the holy, happy halls 
 With Thee above, 
 Wounded, yet healed, sin-laden, yet forgiven 
 And sure that goodness is our only Heaven.” 
 
 If the world today is sadly in need of redemption, 
 how shall it receive it? There is no redemption with- 
 out a Redeemer. It was true for us who call Christ 
 Lord and Master. It is true for those who have not 
 yet found their freedom in Him. He came to us 
 through the mediation of others. Shall we not also 
 mediate His grace? Is not the redemption of our times 
 our task? Sin is too often regarded as an illusion, an 
 error of mortal mind. But it was real to Jesus. Other- 
 wise there is no meaning to the incarnation or the 
 atonement. The evil of the world is the result of 
 ignorance or wilfulness. The incarnation is for one, 
 the atonement for the other. One was to demonstrate 
 righteousness; the other was to redeem unrighteous- 
 
CHESTER B. EMERSON 63 
 
 ness, The work of redemption is our heritage from 
 Christ. ‘“ See that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, 
 but as wise; redeeming the time because the days 
 are evil.” 
 
 “ Say not the days are evil, who’s to blame? 
 And fold the arms and acquiesce. Cry shame! 
 Stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God’s name.” 
 
 Paul, who gives us our text, felt the responsibility 
 of his world’s redemption. You will remember that in 
 his epistle to the Colossians (1: 24) he confesses: “‘ I, 
 Paul, am made a minister, who now rejoice in my suf- 
 ferings for you and fill up that which is lacking in the 
 afflictions of Christ.” Anything lacking in the afflic- 
 tions of Christ? Is not Calvary enough? No! There 
 must be incarnate calvaries everywhere. Without 
 Paul, without Peter, Italy would not have set the cruci- 
 fix at every crossroad. Without us, the world today 
 will seek for salvation and seek in vain. If Jesus was 
 God’s conduit of redeeming grace then are we His 
 continuing channels. 
 
 Paul rejoiced in his sufferings because he felt Christ 
 was in him, still reconciling the world to God. And 
 that is true of every genuine disciple of Christ. If 
 Christ is in us, then are we seeking the goals of Christ. 
 He ariswered the messenger of John the Baptist, ‘‘ The 
 blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are 
 cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up and 
 the poor have the gospel preached to them.” Christ 
 asks proof of our discipleship. Can we answer, “ The 
 lost are found, the sick are healed, the poor are fed and 
 
64 REDEEMING THE TIME 
 
 clothed and spiritually led, the rich are become stew- 
 ards of the earth’s bounty, the exploiters are exposed, 
 the vicious are restrained, the burdened are relieved, 
 the sinful are recovered, the young and old and weak 
 are protected, the acceptable year of the Lord is being 
 preached to the ends of the earth”? It is to this task 
 that we must consecrate ourselves with that same 
 abandon which has marked the life of every disciple 
 who has wrought righteousness in his generation. 
 
 Have you read that wonderful page from the diary 
 of Jonathan Edwards—“ I have this day solemnly re- 
 newed my covenant and dedication. I have seen God 
 and have given myself and all that I am and have to 
 God, so that I am not In any respect my own. I can 
 challenge no right to myself, to this understanding, this 
 will, these affections. I have no right to this body, this 
 tongue, these hands, these feet; no right to these 
 senses. I have given every power to God, so that for 
 the future I will challenge no right for myself.” That 
 is a magnificent self-surrender. It is the complete 
 dedication of a soul to God. For a day in which indi- 
 vidual salvation was the supreme concern, it is the per- 
 fect expression. But something more is needed for our 
 day with its double emphasis—its other emphasis upon 
 the social obligations of Christian discipleship. 
 
 “Lord, what wouldst Thou have me do as well as 
 be,” we ask today. 
 
 The answer comes quickly, “‘ Seek and save the lost.” 
 
 Who are the lost? 
 
 Anyone who for any reason whatsoever is not grow- 
 ing with and for the Christ. 
 
CHESTER B. EMERSON 65 
 
 Where are the lost? 
 
 Everywhere—in counting-room and shop, in office 
 and in laboratory, in scholar’s study and at workman’s 
 bench, in alley and in avenue—wherever life is in dis- 
 sonance with the divine life; wherever a man’s char- 
 acter is contrary to that of Christ, wherever humanity 
 is seeking goals not found in the Kingdom of God or 
 living by motives subversive to a reign of love in 
 the earth. 
 
 The world is waiting! We have the Word of Christ 
 in Book and Church. Have we His love in our hearts? 
 Are we equal to our enterprise? “See that ye walk 
 circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise; redeeming the 
 time because the days are evil.” 
 
 PRAYER 
 
 Here in our time and place, O God, our lives are set. 
 Nor would we dream of days that seem heroic for the 
 Christian faith, either in the past when great leaders 
 preached a redeeming Lord across the world, nor in some 
 mystical future when men may find conditions once again 
 calling for Christian courage. 
 
 Show us the high adventure that awaits us in our day. 
 Reveal to us how great is the enterprise of Christ's King- 
 dom in the tangled affairs of our world. Make heroes of 
 us all, rising with courage to the challenge of evil, putting 
 on Thine armor to withstand the forces that war against 
 the virtue and happiness of our race. Bless us with the 
 increase of a noble manhood, which is the Christian’s per- 
 sonal reward, and with that visible enlargement of Thy 
 Kingdom among men, which is the goal of Thy church. 
 Amen, 
 
Wy. TURD bP 
 
 Weng 
 
 on 
 My 
 
 hee 
 
 Bink 
 
 
 
JOHN WELLINGTON HOAG 
 
 Dr. Hoag was born in Canada, but has spent most of 
 his life in the United States. Lansing, Michigan, was his 
 boyhood home ; and Kalamazoo College is his Alma Mater, 
 being graduated there in 1900. His theological training 
 was received at the Divinity School of Chicago University. 
 Opening his ministry in the First Baptist Church of 
 LaCrosse, Wisconsin, he has had a most happy relation- 
 ship to some of the fine Baptist churches of our country, 
 including the First Baptist Church of Trenton, New 
 Jersey, and the Calvary Baptist Church of New Haven, 
 Connecticut. Woodward Avenue Baptist Church, where 
 Dr. Hoag is now located, is one of the great preaching 
 centers of America. The church membership is approxi- 
 mately thirty-five hundred, and the constituency of the 
 church is exceedingly large. It is an evangelistic center, 
 with one of the largest Sunday night congregations in the 
 city; and the sane, challenging, and uplifting sermons of 
 this genial prophet of God has made this possible. Ten 
 years of such conspicuous service in the heart of Detroit 
 is a record upon which we all look with admiration and 
 respect. Many affirm that Dr. Hoag and his associate, 
 Samuel Meyers, form the best evangelistic team now in 
 the active pastorate. 
 
CALLING MEN TO CHRIST—Some one has said 
 that “ the best way to edify a saint is to convert a sinner.” 
 Surely a Church in which men are really taken and held 
 for the Lord has an atmosphere in which souls must grow. 
 Our place in a Church should mean a recognition of our 
 responsibility for calling men into the ways of the Lord, 
 to seize them and hold them as captwes of the divine 
 grace. Men are called to be saved—and to be saviors. 
 What can the Master say tf we fail of our very reason for 
 being saved, and we come home at the end of our season 
 of harvesting without any sheaves for the heavenly gar- 
 ner? Jesus was constantly calling. He preached to the 
 vast multitude; he talked with the individual; he went into 
 the temple and synagogue; he went out to the streets, the 
 markets, the lanes calling to men to come after him. “The 
 Master 1s come and calleth for thee.’ If you are not a 
 soul-winner, Christ can make you one. “Come ye after 
 me and I will make you to become fishers of men.” We 
 are “stewards of the mysteries of God.’ “Take my 
 voice and let me speak ever only for my King.” 
 
 —JOHN WELLINGTON Hoac. 
 
IV 
 FUTURE MONARCHS 
 
 JOHN WELLINGTON HOAG, D.D. 
 Woodward Avenue Baptist Church 
 
 “ Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” 
 —Marrt. 5:5. 
 
 We face here one of the hard sayings of Jesus. If 
 He had promised dominion to the resourceful, He 
 would have expressed more exactly our ideal. Or, if 
 He had changed the latter part of the beatitude, and 
 had promised the meek certain inner and mystical re- 
 wards, we might have assented more readily. Or, if 
 He had said, “ Blessed are the meek, for they shall 
 have heaven ’—that gracious world where the unselfish 
 and holy have their home—then indeed the promise 
 would seem assured of fulfillment. But to offer to the 
 meek the rewards of earth where bluster and brute 
 strength count for so much and where civilization is 
 carried forward on the end of a gun, is to make an 
 assertion that risks the charge of absurdity. 
 
 Still there must be a truth lurking in this beatitude, 
 for Jesus spoke no empty words. Every prophecy He 
 gave utterance to has revealed evident signs of coming 
 true, and there is no probability that this brief bene- 
 diction will prove any exception. Christ was not only 
 practical, fitting Himself and His message to the im- 
 
 69 
 
70 FUTURE MONARCHS 
 
 mediate needs of His time, but He was also an idealist, 
 speaking for the far-off centuries. Far more than the 
 old artists who produced their masterpieces not so 
 much for the small clan or tribe among which they 
 lived, but more especially for the delight of the remote 
 nations, so Jesus spoke for the future of the world, 
 however long it might continue. The promises of God 
 and the hopes of His children are not easily driven out 
 of history: when they are banished they have a way of 
 returning: when they are crucified they rise again. 
 The text speaks of an heir, not a possessor: a kingdom 
 assured in the future, though it may be after many 
 days. It is by the long view that we see the apostles 
 of the gentler kingdom coming into their own. 
 
 The earth even now is making rapid strides toward a 
 government swayed by this patient aristocracy. The 
 human scene today is that of vast millions trying to 
 marshal themselves under the lead of gentle methods. 
 Nations everywhere disclaim champing the war bit. 
 Arms are not now considered a symbol of the highest 
 civilization. The ‘‘ pusher” was never more apolo- 
 gized for than today. ‘“ Violence has its day, but it is 
 not a long day.” We believe as never before that a 
 peace congress is more civilized than a war camp and 
 that fraternity is preferable to barbarism. The busi- 
 ness man makes it to the advantage of his rival to go 
 with him rather than against him: to maintain the 
 market rather than break it. If the terrific animals 
 have died to make room for birds of song: if the lark 
 makes her nest in the blossoming grasses where ser- 
 pents once hissed: if sweet apples fall where once bit- 
 
JOHN WELLINGTON HOAG 71 
 
 ter fruit covered the September ground: then will the 
 human race, yet, steal away from despots, monarchs, 
 landed lords, to be governed by universal tenderness. 
 The scene is that of a war-torn world coming home. 
 
 The word translated by the English term. ‘‘ meek ” 
 demands a moment’s attention. In the Greek tongue 
 meekness implied “a peaceful and gentlemanly bear- 
 ing, a tendency to avoid violence and a desire to seek 
 the good and peace of all the community.” Meekness 
 was considered a necessary characteristic of true cul- 
 ture. Plato used the term to express the softening of 
 a character or an age; Xenophon to describe music as 
 it might die away to its quietest and sweetest tones; 
 St. Francis to express the calmness of a heart which 
 had conquered passion. In its best days, meekness 
 stood for all that was gentle, not only in the mind, but 
 also in nature. It stood for nations becoming more 
 refined; stood for grapes sweetening in the autumn; 
 stood for an orator whose bitter words were changing 
 into sympathy and pathos. It was free from every 
 element of rudeness. It pulsated with consideration 
 and thoughtfulness. It sought to “melt rather than 
 crush; to draw rather than drive; to woo rather than 
 compel.” Jesus tells us that ultimately there will pass 
 under the authority of such a spirit the many princi- 
 palities and powers of our world. 
 
 Consider the might of the meek. Meekness was 
 never other than chivalrous and was never other than 
 ready to champion the cause of the weak. Jesus was 
 not all submission. He carried whip-cords and at times 
 uttered blistering words, yet we claim that He was 
 
72 FUTURE MONARCHS 
 
 truly meek. ‘There are occasions when meekness has 
 a flash in the eye, a majesty of moral indignation, a 
 terror of righteous anger. A very gentle preacher was 
 seen, one day, hastening along the streets of his city 
 “with a face. like fury, grinding his teeth in anger.” 
 He had heard of a man who was plotting the ruin of 
 a beautiful girl he knew. ‘‘ When since the world 
 began has love ever maintained a quiet poise in the 
 presence of the assailant.of the loved one?” It is not 
 meekness to condone wrongdoing. ‘True meekness has 
 a different reason for its calmness than a prudent re- 
 gard for self-interest. It is a counterfeit of the grace 
 of meekness to claim merit in commanding one’s tem- 
 per when there is no temper to command. ‘The slave 
 is not meek when he calls some tyrannical master a 
 “blessed benefactor ” in order to keep his head on his 
 shoulders. The politician is not meek when he lays 
 aside his conscientious scruples, in order to stand in 
 with the organization. ‘The merchant is not meek 
 when he allows the man on the other side of the coun- 
 ter to say anything to him, if only he can get his trade. 
 All these things are done from shrewdness. If these 
 people were truly meek they would cling to certain 
 treasures of the soul, though driven thereby into battle. 
 
 Jesus never fought for Himself. His anger never 
 had its roots in selfishness. When men abused Him, 
 He was unruffled. When they heaped the greatest in- 
 dignities on His person, He was mute. When they lied 
 about Him, He ‘“ answered not a word.” When they 
 crucified Him, “‘ no trace of anger darkened His face.” 
 His loving heart kept on praying, ‘“‘ Forgive them, for 
 
i 
 
 JOHN WELLINGTON HOAG 73 
 
 they know not what they do.” But when He saw pious 
 men “ devouring widow’s houses ” and “ for a pretense 
 making long prayers” the manly indignation of His 
 soul flashed forth like lightning. When He saw the 
 place of prayer turned into a “den of thieves,’ He 
 drove the swarm of mercenary hypocrites into the 
 street. Anger is noble just in proportion to its un- 
 selfishness. Indignation is righteous when it is disin- 
 terested. Only. the man who in loving obedience to 
 truth has laid aside every prejudice and renounced his 
 own personal desires, has any right to go forth as 
 God’s warrior. - 
 
 “ Meekness begins its universal rulership by a victory 
 
 in the personal realm. ‘‘ Changed men will make 
 changed conditions.” The soul is called first to the 
 conquest of itself. To rule others we must know how 
 to rule ourselves.” There is to be such a complete vic- 
 tory over passion and pride and vindictiveness that we 
 are left to the triumph of principles and the enthrone- 
 ment of truth. One of the perpetual delusions of our 
 human race is that possession of externals makes for 
 kingship. We too often measure influence according 
 to one’s ownership of the glittering things that lie out- 
 side of him. There have never been so many interest- 
 ing things to take hold of, to own, to acquire, to be 
 ambitious after, to pile up, to enjoy, as now. But man 
 succeeds only in proportion as he succeeds with him- 
 self. ‘‘ Dost thou wish to possess the earth? ” asked 
 St. Augustine once: ‘‘ Beware, lest the earth possess 
 thee.” Our wealth is to be counted in the things of the 
 heart and our success by the triumphs of the spirit. 
 
ue 
 
 / 
 
 74 FUTURE MONARCHS 
 
 You and I, as human beings, have nothing so impor- 
 
 tant to attend to as the kingdom that lies within us. 
 It is our business to work on that, to pile up wealth in 
 the interior vault that no eye sees save God’s alone. It 
 is our business, in season and out, to strive to conquer 
 our spirit. ‘‘ A man that rules his own soul is greater 
 than he who takes a city.”’ That is a task possible of 
 accomplishing. We make poor work attempting to 
 change conditions. The old world is adamantine, 
 flint-like, hard as a rock. We change it very little, no 
 matter how we strive and struggle. But we can change 
 ourselves. We can change our ambitions, our scale of 
 value, our goal, our way of looking at life, our aspira- 
 tions, our conduct. The supreme social service is to 
 socialize the social unit, the individual, and then the 
 way is prepared for the coming of every good thing. 
 Religion is resignation and trust before it is accom- 
 plishment. How general the impression that power is | 
 measured by exertion; that we are effective because of 
 what we do; so that when we are not in exertion of 
 some kind, we are not accomplishing anything. But 
 entrance into the kingdom of grace is through the gate- 
 way of our power to bear and not our power to achieve. 
 ‘““We estimate men according to the amount of pres- 
 sure which they exert; Christ estimates Himself ac- 
 cording to the amount of pressure which He can 
 sustain.” Jesus stood and took what was given Him: 
 bore what was laid upon Him. ‘“‘ He was oppressed 
 and he was afflicted yet he opened not his mouth.” At 
 the end of His days He said, “ The prince of this world 
 hath nothing in me.” ‘No place in Me at which My 
 
JOHN WELLINGTON HOAG 15 
 
 strength is not matched to his assaults.”” Who is there 
 of us who does not feel that it is an achievement worthy 
 of considerable praise to so much as even stand one’s 
 ground under the tremendous attacks of evil. It is 
 commonly not difficult for men to be active, or even 
 bravely so. Action arouses activity. Enterprise thrills - 
 our powers of enterprise. But where is the inspiration 
 in standing still under a load that is almost heavier 
 than one can sustain? To bear evil and wrong, to for- 
 give, to suffer no resentment under injury, to be gentle 
 when pride clamors for redress, to restrain envy, to 
 bear defeat with a firm and peaceful mind, not to be 
 vexed or fretted by cares, losses or petty injuries, to 
 abide in serenity of spirit when trouble and disappoint- 
 ment come—these are conquests worthy the best of us. 
 “You begin to reign the moment you begin to suffer 
 well.” 
 
 Meekness is a modest word, humble, supplicating, 
 and it puts us where we must consent to stand—in debt 
 to God. It fastens the accent not on what the worship- 
 per does for himself, but on what God has done for 
 him, and is prepared to do. Have not our best hours— 
 the hours when we make some notable recovery of our- 
 selves, or make some new advance into the life of faith 
 —been hours not of striving or of wrestling, but hours 
 when something came to us; happened within us, not 
 by our own will, but by the will of another? A fine 
 spirit was let loose within us; descended from above. 
 It was never intended that our faith should be based 
 on anything we can do. That would be to keep us 
 anxious, worried, doubtful. Faith should relieve life 
 
76 FUTURE MONARCHS 
 
 of strain, not add thereto. Men must stop thinking 
 about themselves and begin thinking out of themselves 
 towards the infinite peace of God. There is a need of 
 the human soul for an element of rest and peace, for 
 an end of all worries and harassments, for a sense that 
 somehow the battle is not yet all to fight, but has been 
 fought and won and that it is ours, partly at least, to 
 sit down under our fig-tree, none making us afraid. 
 Every grace and hope of the soul depends not upon 
 our poor hold of God, but upon His hold of us; not 
 upon what we are, but upon what He is. We earn 
 nothing from God; we receive all things. It is the 
 genius of meekness to bring us into just this attitude 
 to God. 
 
 ¥ The way in which the warm air commences in April 
 and May in all gentleness, to intrude and insinuate 
 itself, moving with so velvety a tread, and with a voice 
 so muffled to a whisper that we see what it is doing 
 without at all realizing that it is doing it, seems a kind 
 of parable, teaching the lesson of the text. The cold 
 and frozen obstinacy of winter is not forced out. The 
 ice that a little while before had fettered the rivers and 
 rendered the soil barren and unfeeling is not pounded 
 into the beauteous plasticity of swollen rivers and 
 freshly flowing brooks. A bit of sunbeam pleads with 
 the frost crystal and simply by the warmth of its touch 
 subdues it into a tear. ! 
 
 In this we may read the method of future monarchs. 
 ‘Spiritual results are wrought by enticement. Man’s 
 will is not amenable to compulsion. You can compel 
 one to do what he does not want to do, but you cannot 
 
JOHN WELLINGTON HOAG he 4 
 
 compel one to will what he is not disposed to will. 
 Between Christ and those who came near enough to 
 Him to be brought within the tenderness of His 
 thought and life there was no friction. There could be 
 none. Henever attempted to crowd people to the doing 
 of what they were not in a mood to do. He took care 
 not to come where He was not wanted: did not enter 
 without being invited. He never evinces a desire to 
 have people conform their behavior to the requirements 
 He imposed because they were His requirements. It 
 was His supreme aim to work in men the subduing of 
 their wills by the coming of a spiritual summer. 
 
 God has not so much brightened the world to its 
 redemption as warmed it to its redemption so that 
 wherever the gospel has gone, a wave of spiritual 
 verdure has followed in its train, hearts have been 
 touched and in the mellowed atmosphere of it all, the 
 native obstinacy of men has begun a little to soften 
 toward God’s holy and loving will. ‘ Our inclination is 
 to seek to improve the world by chastising it, to check 
 manifestations of depravity by sharp invectives, but it 
 is to be doubted if society at large, or individuals have 
 been led to ennobled ways of living by this method. { 
 Flowers are blasted by tornadoes, not nurtured by 
 them. Salvation, whether of men or of society, is a 
 matter of the incoming of a more genial climate, in 
 which there shall be the softening of our nature; a 
 matter of the diffusion of a redeeming atmosphere. It 
 is by the wealth of our affection that we are to make 
 our richest contribution to the world and to be the 
 means of extending to the hearts of men the abounding 
 
78 FUTURE MONARCHS 
 
 sweetness that gained entrance into the world in the 
 person of our loving Redeemer. 
 
 The hope of the ultimate victory of meekness is to 
 be seen in its vast store of patience. The modern 
 scientific way of writing human history has a theolog- 
 ical and ethical advantage—it brings us a lesson in the 
 patience of God and in the durability of the human 
 ideals with which He has entrusted His children. To 
 fix one’s imagination upon the stretches of time which 
 elapsed between the arrival of humanity and the ap- 
 pearance of anything which could be called civilization 
 —it seems to tell us never to be impatient again, not 
 though the best things seem to remove themselves like 
 the horizon toward which we advance. All the delays 
 over which we fret seem tiny compared with the 
 stretches of time which it has taken to build even the 
 rough outline of a civilized world. They had long to 
 wait in the Old Testament days before their King came 
 ‘to them. They had long to wait after Christianity had 
 started upon its great adventure, before they saw re- 
 sults commensurate with the struggle and the cost. 
 “He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he has set 
 judgment in the earth; and the isles shall wait for his 
 law.” The meek have the gift of patience: they know 
 how to sow their seed and bide their time. Some day 
 they shall put in their sickles and reap, because their 
 harvest is come. 
 
 Our text gives to Charles Rann Kennedy the theme 
 for his one-act drama, “The Terrible Meek.” The 
 dramatis persone are three—a Captain, a Sergeant and 
 a Woman. As the plot unravels, the Woman is seen 
 
JOHN WELLINGTON HOAG 79 
 
 to wear the Eastern costume; the Sergeant is a Roman 
 Soldier; the Captain is a Roman Centurion; on the top 
 of the little hill three crosses are seen to stand. The 
 woman bewails the victim, for he is her son and he has 
 done nothing but speak words of truth and love. Sud- 
 denly conviction creeps through the Captain’s soul, 
 and when the woman moans “ My son! My son is 
 dead,” he answers her, 
 
 “This broken thing up here, your son, I tell you, 
 woman, this son of yours, disfigured, shamed, spat 
 upon, has built a kingdom this day that can never die. 
 The living glory of him rules it. It will take a new 
 kind of soldier to serve in his kingdom. A new kind 
 of duty. A newer courage, more like a woman’s. It 
 changes everything. . . . The earth is his and he made 
 it. He and his brothers have been moulding and 
 making it through the long ages; they are the only ones 
 who ever really did possess it, not the proud, not the 
 idle, not the wealthy, not the vaunting empires of the 
 world. Something has happened up here on this hill 
 today to shake all our kingdoms of blood and fear to 
 the dust. . . °. The meek, the terrible meek, the 
 fierce agonizing meek, are about to enter into their 
 inheritance. . . 
 
 ‘“‘T can see the end of war in this: some day... . 
 
 “‘T can see the joy of women and little children. 
 
 “TI can see cities and great spaces of land full of 
 happiness. 
 
 ‘“‘T can see love shining in every face. 
 
 “There shall be no more sin, no pain... . 
 
 ‘No loss, no death... . 
 
 “Only life, only God... . 
 
 ‘And the kingdom of the Son.” 
 
80 FUTURE MONARCHS 
 
 Meekness is indeed terrible. Slowly, steadily, irre- 
 sistibly it runs its tidal course, overwhelming one after 
 another the little sand-barriers we draw across it. 
 There is but one thing for us to do;—follow the gleam 
 till love is triumphant and the kingdoms of selfishness 
 and spite are broken like a potter’s vessel. 
 
 PRAYER 
 
 O Lord, Thou who knowest the end from the beginning, 
 make us patient in the working out of thy counsels. Grant 
 that we may never lose fasth in the ultimate victory of thy 
 power over everything that worketh destruction. When 
 we look back upon our days we learn how the night was so 
 often better than the day. We see that our tears were 
 foolish and our doubts were phantoms. We remember 
 how many tumes when the yoke was upon us and we 
 dreaded it, it became an easy yoke, and a yoke in which 
 lay our strength. We remember how often we sought to 
 overleap barriers and to choose paths for ourselves, and 
 murmured at the restraint which hedged us in; and yet 
 looking back, we see that the wisdom of thine overruling 
 providence, and thy plans for us, have been full of light. 
 Since thou hast so wisely guided us hitherto, we pray that 
 thou still should’st lead us on. We do not ask to see the 
 distant scene, one step enough for us. We pray that we 
 may not feel with any storm which comes that it is the last 
 of sunshine. May we imitate the birds that nestle in the 
 trees until the voice of God in thunder has passed and the 
 sun comes back, and then sing again. Help us to learn 
 from the flowers that though they are beaten down by the 
 storm, stul, when the rain ceases, they are lifted up, again 
 fresher and more glorious than ever. We pray that with 
 this faith we may face all that awaits us, walking in thy 
 stght, surrounded by thy presence and power, and realiz- 
 ing “if thou be for us, who can be against us?” Amen. 
 
LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 
 
 There are few men in the Church today who possess 
 the historical and theological background of Dr. Hough. 
 The stream of his thinking is crowded with significant 
 events and strategic lives, making his discourses scholarly 
 and inspiring. There is an irresistible lure in every mes- 
 sage. His sermons remind one of the compositions of 
 Liszt, combining the invaluable element of completeness 
 with brilliancy, dignity and dramatic force. As an author 
 of religious books he ranks with the best; and as college 
 preacher there is no superior in America. This past year 
 he acted as chapel preacher at Harvard; and he gave the 
 Fernley Lectures in England this summer, one of the 
 highest honors to be accorded an American preacher. For 
 some years he has been considered America’s representa- 
 tive preacher in England, preaching to appreciative audi- 
 ences in London City Temple and in Carr’s Lane, Bir- 
 mingham. It was five years ago that Dr. Hough came to 
 Central Methodist Church in Detroit after several years 
 of notable service first as teacher in and later as President 
 of Northwestern University. Central Church is the 
 mother Church of Michigan Methodism; and, while it has 
 a great tradition, it can be said truthfully that never has 
 its life been so virile and influential as now. This fact is 
 due in large part to the wise ministry of Dr. Hough and 
 his assistants whom he has so carefully selected through 
 the years. In this man of extraordinary preaching ability, 
 we have also an example of unusual fidelity to pastoral 
 activities and responsibilities, all of which go to make up 
 a remarkably fine ministry. 
 
THE MIND OF THE PREACHER—The making of 
 the preacher’s mind is the fashioning of the instrument by 
 which he 1s to do hts work among men. It must be a 
 mind all dripping with human heartiness and so it must be 
 fed by constant and sympathetic human contacts. It must 
 be a mind wise with the knowledge of the fashion in which 
 men and races have made the experiment of living and 
 so it must be enriched by a constant and brooding study 
 of the whole human adventure. It must be a mind satu- 
 rated with moral passion and so tt must know the strain 
 and stress of personal struggle and all the tale of moral 
 battle and of moral victory in the world. It must be a 
 mind glowing with the sense of beauty and so it must find 
 its way into all the tale of the fashion in which sheer lov- 
 liness has made a place for itself in the life of man. It 
 must be a mind radiant with the sense of the presence and 
 potency of God in human life and so 1t must know its own 
 hours of stlent and creative communion with the Unseen 
 Friend. It must find tts supreme imspiration in the po- 
 tency of the personality of Jesus and so it must know the 
 meaning of fellowship with the living Christ. All thts ts 
 sure to seem too high for any of us. But for less than 
 this we do not dare to aspire-—LYNN Haroip Houecu. 
 
V 
 THE HHEL OF ACHILLES 
 
 LYNN HAROLD HOUGH, Tu.D., D.D. 
 Central Methodist Episcopal Church 
 
 “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” 
 —I Cor, 10: 12. 
 
 Among those famous stories which the lovely land 
 of Greece has given to the world, the tale of Achilles 
 has a place all its own in the imagination of every 
 bright-eyed lad who has lived over those fierce and 
 tremendous struggles which still come back to us 
 through the noblest speech ever fashioned by the mind 
 of man. And the story of how Thetis, the mother of. 
 Achilles, dipped the baby form into the river Styx in 
 order that it might be invulnerable has a curious power 
 to capture the mind. What a dream this was of a 
 warrior who could never be reached by any hostile 
 weapon. But the spot where Thetis held the young 
 Achilles by the heel as she submerged his body into the 
 river was untoched by its powerful waters, and it was 
 in the heel that at last Achilles was fatally wounded by 
 Paris when his mighty days were at an end. The heel 
 of Achilles has become the symbol of that one vulner- 
 able point where a great life may be broken. And it 
 comes to our minds very vividly as we repeat the stern 
 
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 84 THE HEEL OF ACHILLES 
 
 and challenging words of Paul, ‘‘ Let him that thinketh 
 he standeth take heed lest he fall.’’ 
 
 I 
 
 fi" & bye i ° rir) e © « 
 _ Every individual has some spot in his life where he 
 * is least capable of making resistance, least able to meet 
 
 the shock of hostility, least able to withstand the allure- 
 ments of temptation, most likely to go down in utter 
 and bitter defeat. Every life has its most vulnerable 
 point. Every man has the heel of Achilles. It is just 
 in relation to this point of weakness that the suffering 
 of the world reaches one of its bitterly poignant aspects 
 of experience. The life seems so strong and fearless 
 and victorious. But somewhere is that spot where all 
 the lordly strength is likely to become incapable weak- 
 ness. And too often the mere possibility is changed to 
 tragic actuality. The weapon of the foe has found the 
 heel of Achilles, and while the life goes on there is an 
 unspeakably bitter sense of failure within. Memory 
 burns with the iIneffaceable bitterness of the hours 
 which would so gladly be cast into the darkness of a 
 perpetual forgetfulness. Life would have a great and 
 triumphant joy but for that vulnerable spot, that dis- 
 
 * . «integrating failure which puts its poison into the 
 
 , P 
 « # 
 
 ‘U"" yw’ brightest hour. 
 
 we 
 
 The most terrible aspect of the experience of the 
 Greek warrior was precisely in the fact that fate itself 
 followed him. There was nothing he could do. There 
 was no escape. And sometimes we have this same 
 feeling of a remorseless destiny which makes us in- 
 capable of resisting just where resistance would lift life 
 
LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 85 
 
 from defeat into victory. We feel as if it is useless to 
 strive and impossible to conquer. But the very genius 
 of Christianity is a contradiction of this fatal pessi- 
 mism. There is no evasion or hesitation about the 
 Christian religion. It meets squarely the ugliest and 
 most brutal facts. But it comes not with a message of 
 despair, but with a message of hope. It reminds us 
 that it is all too easy to break faith with our ideals, and 
 even with our principles. It shows us without hesita- 
 tion that the hour of thoughtless confidence is the 
 very hour when defeat lies in waiting. It reminds us 
 that when pride and boastful assurance capture our 
 thoughts, tragic failure is nearer than we think. It 
 never ignores the heel of Achilles. But, on the other 
 hand, it never admits that failure is necessary. And if 
 failure has come, it never leaves us in despair. There 
 is a way from weakness into strength. There is a way 
 from defeat into victory. There is a fashion in which 
 the most vulnerable spot may be made impervious to 
 the darts of the foe. It is in just this sense that Chris- 
 tianity is a gospel. In a unique fashion it unites moral 
 realism with infinite hope. It enables a man to be per- 
 fectly honest and yet to find a gleaming star shining in 
 the darkest night. 
 
 Il 
 
 Great institutions are being built up around us all 
 the while. They are the pride of our complex and 
 highly organized civilization. And in a sense each in- 
 stitution is a vast super-person with a life and will of 
 its own, a tremendous and vital organism. It is true 
 
86 THE HEEL OF ACHILLES 
 
 of an institution as of an individual that it needs to 
 guard itself against the tragedy of the heel of Achilles. 
 A great university may be tempted to think more of 
 the brilliant and skilful publicity which calls forth 
 large donations than of the patient experiment in the 
 laboratory and the patient research in the study and 
 library which really add to the knowledge and power 
 of the world. It may be tempted to think more of pro- 
 ducing keen and efficient men of business than of cher- 
 ishing its sacred traditions of knowledge and taste. It 
 may surrender the humanities to practical efficiency 
 instead of suffusing practical efficiency with all the 
 grace and strength of the humanities. 
 
 And so it may cease really to be a university at all. 
 Its practical ambition may be the heel of Achilles 
 which proves fatally vulnerable. A great corporation 
 may think of its material product and ignore that 
 human product which is the constant result of its 
 methods and its standards. And in the long run such 
 an institution always fails, not only in ideals, but also 
 in relation to its material products. With all its far- 
 flung power and energy the heel of Achilles has proved 
 its undoing at last. The greatest friend of any institu- 
 tion is the man who, before the day of disaster comes, 
 reveals to that institution its most vulnerable spot. 
 
 IIl 
 
 The Christian Church has a place all its own among 
 the commanding institutions of the world. In age, in 
 dignity, and in the august quality of the sanctions 
 which it represents, as well as in its age-long influence 
 
LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 87 
 
 for cleansing the ideals and uplifting the standards of 
 men, the Church is the loftiest institution which has 
 made its influence felt in the life of mankind. It is 
 also a sort of super-person whose vast proportions 
 dominate many a century. And the Church, too, must 
 beware of the heel of Achilles. There is an ever- 
 recurring temptation of loyal churchmen, a temptation 
 which returns with a deep and alluring appeal in all 
 sorts of conditions and in all sorts of places. And this 
 temptation takes the form of leading men to think 
 more of the dominance of the church than of its vital 
 authority of the kingdom of God. To be sure, at some 
 golden moments the contention of the Church is one 
 with the contention with the kingdom of God. And 
 enthusiastic churchmen always try to persuade them- 
 selves that in fighting the battles of the Church they 
 are fighting the battles of the kingdom. But the mo- 
 ment we begin to study the history of the Church in 
 the world we see that this is by no means always the 
 case. Indeed, all too often just the opposite situation 
 has existed. And so, again and again, the churchman 
 has ceased to be a Christian at the very moment when 
 he was spending everything in loyalty to the Church. 
 The ages when the Church was willing to surrender the 
 very sanctions for which Jesus stood in the battle for 
 world-wide power tell the whole story. 
 
 But it is not simply an old story. When the Church 
 divides into varied groups and each group regards its 
 own group advantage as of more importance than the 
 spread of the spirit of Jesus in the world, then the 
 Christian religion is indeed wounded in the house of its 
 
88 THE HEEL OF ACHILLES 
 
 friends. There is no more subtle test of the real qual- 
 ity of our Christian character than that which comes 
 when the interests of the kingdom of God run athwart 
 our denominational advantage. It is very easy for the 
 self-conscious ecclesiastic to forget the love which is 
 the central thing in the Christian faith. So the fatal 
 dart reaches the heel of Achilles. There is no more 
 splendid achievement than that of actually enthroning 
 Jesus Christ in the Christian Church. 
 
 IV 
 
 The nation is one of the vast and mighty organisms 
 of the world. It, too, has in a sense a life and a mind 
 and a will of its own. It, too, is a sort of super-person. 
 And it, too, must be guarded against the tragedy of the 
 heel of Achilles. It is a wonderful thing to have a 
 nation to love and serve and into which to pour the 
 very riches of our devotion. 
 
 And if we really love our nation with deep and un- 
 derstanding devotion, we will develop, out of the very 
 earnestness of our affection, a capacity to discern the 
 dangers which menace and the weaknesses which 
 threaten the land which we love best of all. It is an 
 uncritical loyalty from which a great nation is likely 
 to suffer most. This is the heel of Achilles, the one 
 most vulnerable spot where many a land has been 
 fatally wounded. When the citizens of any land be- 
 come the victims of a kind of fatty complacency which 
 is incapable of stern and honest self-criticism, the na- 
 tion has already entered upon the way which leads to 
 folly and failure and disintegration. There is an in- 
 
LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 89 
 
 sight of love which, just because it cares so deeply, dis- 
 covers faults which would be invisible to less devoted 
 eyes. It is not really true that noble love is blind. In 
 a sense it is true that only love can see. The nation 
 which is too proud to be complacent, too honest to hide 
 its faults under a protective covering of self-deception, 
 too keen of mind to rest in a fool’s paradise of self- 
 assurance has achieved a unique quality of greatness. 
 When a nation is incapable of searching self-criticism 
 its friends have cause to mourn. The heel of Achilles 
 is ready for the darts of the foe. 
 
 V 
 
 The whole civilized world is a vast and mighty organ- 
 ism. Civilization itself has a life and a mind and a 
 will. It, too, is a sort of tremendous super-person. 
 And civilization must beware of the heel of Achilles. 
 The world which we know has one outstanding char- 
 acteristic. And that is such a mastery of the forces of 
 nature as was never achieved by mankind in any other 
 age. We have enslaved nature and have become lords 
 of such power as causes our very heads to swim and 
 become dizzy. Unparalleled production, unparalleled 
 transportation, and bewildering creative uses of the 
 forces of nature characterize the civilization we call 
 our own. 
 
 And the heel of this mighty Achilles lies just in the 
 lack of a development of self-control which matches 
 this vast control of nature. We have grown in knowl- 
 edge without a corresponding growth in character. We 
 have grown in the capacity to dominate destructive 
 
90 THE HEEL OF ACHILLES 
 
 forces without growing in that quality of character 
 which makes us worthy to be trusted with such terrible 
 instruments of destruction. We are like undisciplined 
 children playing with matches in a powder magazine. 
 The heel of Achilles is all too palpably vulnerable to 
 the darts which may come against it. If this mighty 
 civilization can attain character as well as power, all 
 will be well with the world for a thousand years. And 
 then new vistas of progress will be opening before it. 
 To be as strong everywhere as he is anywhere is the 
 achievement which every individual should hold before 
 his eyes. The curious tendency of men to think com- 
 placently of their strength and to refuse to analyze 
 candidly their weaknesses is the source of an enormous 
 proportion of human failures. And institutions and 
 nations have the same curious characteristics. We 
 “rationalize” (to use the Freudian term) our weak- 
 nesses and exhibit the heel of Achilles as an element 
 of peculiar power. So far do we carry this process of 
 deluding ourselves that men and institutions at times 
 appear to be proud of their weaknesses and ashamed 
 of their strength. But this world of illusion receives a 
 rude shock when the fatal arrow finds Achilles’ heel. 
 Of men and institutions, of churches, of nations, and 
 of the whole civilized world, then, it is clearly true that 
 the story of the one vulnerable spot has a tremendous 
 significance. Each one of them needs to hear and to 
 heed the searching words of Paul, “ Let him that think- 
 eth he standeth take heed lest he fall.” But there is no 
 fatal necessity about it all. A man may be saved from 
 fatal weakness. An institution may be strong at the 
 
LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 91 
 
 very point where it is most easy for it to be weak. The 
 Church may really enthrone Christ. The nation may 
 become capable of noble and effective self-criticism. 
 The civilized world may attain character as well as 
 power. That is the very meaning of the gospel of 
 Christ. These are the mighty stakes of these astound- 
 ing days. Danger does not mean inevitable catas- 
 trophe. In spite of the heel of Achilles, it is possible 
 to be invulnerable. 
 
 Pee ilk 
 
 Our Father, with wistful desire we long for complete- 
 ness. We are grateful that we find that completeness im 
 Thee. We desire for knowledge where we are ignorant, 
 for strength where we are weak, for goodness where we 
 are evil. And we are like men who sense the coming of 
 spring after winter as we realize that we can find all these 
 things in Thee. We thank Thee for a salvation which 
 with sure mstinct finds the vulnerable point in men, sn 
 institutions, in nations, in churches and in ciwilization 4t- 
 self, and which comes with healing and strength just 
 where these things are needed most. May our weakest 
 spot become our place of strength. In the name of Christ. 
 Amen. 
 
, Or 4, 
 avai 
 AVR ity: 
 EPL) 
 
 ih) 4 ie 
 
 
 
EDGAR DeWITT JONES 
 
 The mark’ of Southern chivalry and the far vision of 
 the Texan plains is stamped upon the life of Dr. Jones. 
 He was born in Hearne, Texas, in 1876. The law pro- 
 fession lured him on in his younger days, and with this 
 goal in mind he studied in the University of Missouri and 
 at Transylvania University, where he was graduated in 
 1900. One year later he abandoned the study of law for 
 the ministry, and was immediately ordained minister in 
 the Disciples of Christ Church. For fourteen years he 
 was minister at the First Christian Church of Blooming- 
 ton, Illinois, coming to the Central Christian Church of 
 Detroit in 1920. While at Bloomington, in the midst of 
 an unusual pastorate, Illinois Wesleyan University con- 
 ferred the degree of D.D. upon him. Scholarly, devo- 
 tional, brotherly, versatile and original in thought and 
 speech, he has made a deep impression on Detroit, and is 
 in the midst of a happy and fruitful ministry. His pub- 
 lished sermons have attracted wide attention, the best 
 volume being published under the title, “ When Jesus 
 Wrote on the Ground.” The Detroit News has taken him 
 on its staff, where he has found a larger mission through 
 articles of social and political conditions at home and 
 abroad. The city owes him a great debt for these and 
 similar contributions to her social and civic life. In this 
 day of emphasis upon the mechanical, even in religion, 
 there is a great need for such preaching as this sermon 
 ‘presents. After all, the outstanding need of human life 
 is to follow Christ. 
 
THE WITCHERY OF PREACHING—There 1s a 
 word which I like to apply to preaching—the word * ‘witch- 
 ery.” It means “irresistible influence” and “ enchant- 
 ment.” Preaching is a high adventure, not for the dis- 
 covery of new contments or fabulous mines of earthly 
 treasure, but for human beings created in God’s image and 
 intended to enjoy the abundant life. No man is worthy 
 the high calling of the mintstry unless he have a passion 
 for that calling and is conscious of the witchery of 
 preaching. As long as the minister of Jesus Christ so 
 regards his ministry and the preaching of the word his 
 “opening of the Scriptures” is almost certain to be wm- 
 presswe, wmformative, tmspiring, and what is most 
 desirable, converting. ; 
 
 I offer my testumony here, modest though st may be. 
 My ministry is my life. From the day I decided to aban- 
 don my dream as a member of the legal profession until 
 this present hour, the ministry has been the biggest, most 
 alluring, most challenging of life’s objectives. Every 
 Lord’s Day has been to me a high day; every sermon a 
 spiritual adventure; every man, woman, and little child 
 etther actually or potentially a comrade in Jesus Christ. I 
 have never attained unto my ideal as a minister. It eludes 
 me; but I still pursue —Epcar DEWITT Jones. 
 
VI 
 IMITATION OF CHRIST 
 
 EDGAR DEWITT JONES, D.D. 
 Central Christian Church (Disciples) 
 
 “ Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 
 —LuKkE 23: 34. 
 
 “And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay 
 not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this he fell 
 asleep.”—Acts 7: 59-60. 
 
 “ At my first defense no one took my part, but all forsook me. 
 May it not be laid to their account.”’—II Tim. 4: 16 
 
 One of the smallest of the world’s famous books is 
 The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis. It 
 
 can be read in less than two hours, and slowly at that. 
 In the opinion of some critics, this little work is ranked ._ 
 second to the Bible. It was written by a monk about © ¢ 
 
 the middle of the fifteenth century, and is renowned 
 for its devotional and spiritual power. For nearly five 
 
 hundred years this little book has held its unique place. “4” 
 
 It is a series of eloquent meditations in making one’s 
 life like that of Christ on earth. Hence the title, The 
 Imitation of Christ. 
 
 In this connection it is interesting to note that Peter, 
 in his first epistle, the second chapter, writes, ‘‘ Christ 
 also suffered for you, leaving you an example that ye 
 should follow in his steps.” Likewise Paul, in Ephe- 
 sians, exhorts his hearers to be ‘‘ imitators of Christ.” 
 With these injunctions in mind, together with the cele- 
 
 95 
 
 ie 
 
96 IMITATION OF CHRIST 
 
 brated little volume by 4 Kempis, it may be profitable 
 to group together for study three New Testament inci- 
 dents, which indicate how impressively the early 
 Christians were affected by the example of Jesus. The 
 three passages selected are grouped about the Christ, 
 the martyr Stephen, and the apostle Paul. They are 
 like three links in a golden chain. Moreover, they 
 present three scenes full of pathos and_ sacrifice 
 sublime. 
 
 I 
 
 Scene the first is Calvary and the Crucifixion. 
 Artists have endeavored to paint this scene; but they 
 have only partially succeeded. It beggars description. 
 The long vigil is over. The agony in Gethsemane, the 
 betrayal by the traitor’s kiss, the cruel trials, the beat- 
 ing and the buffeting of the prisoner at the hands of 
 the soldiers, the mocking and the spitting in the face— 
 all are past, and the beginning of the end is at hand. 
 Jesus is nailed to the cross and lifted high “ amid that 
 wild and savage crew.” With Him, one on either side, 
 two robbers are crucified.. It is the hour of the enemies’ 
 triumph; the power of darkness reigns. The crowd 
 surges about the foot of the central cross, and they jeer 
 and taunt the Nazarene. With hoarse voices they cry, 
 ‘““Come down from the cross, if thou art the Son of 
 God.”” Others cry with cruel sarcasm, “‘ He saved 
 others, himself he cannot save. Let him come down 
 from the cross and we will believe on him.” ‘Thus the 
 enemies of Christ had their inning, and in hate they 
 taunted Him, hanging helpless on the wooden cross- 
 
EDGAR DeWITT JONES 97 
 
 beam. And oh, marvelous record—He answered; but 
 not in bitterness or in wrath. Seven times He spoke 
 from the cross; and His first saying is the greatest of 
 all. He said, ‘‘ Father, forgive them; for they know 
 not what they do.” 
 
 From whatsoever angle one surveys this saying, it 
 is altogether wonderful. It is so far above our poor 
 human prejudices that there is a wideness in the words 
 like the wideness in the sea. It is a prayer—a prayer 
 so full of mercy, so tender, that it touches the very 
 depths of our emotions. Any attempt to circumscribe 
 or limit this great utterance of Jesus is a tragic blunder. 
 I heard a distinguished minister make the attempt, 
 before a great audience on a notable occasion, and the 
 result was painful and regrettable. He attempted to 
 show that when Jesus prayed this prayer, He did not 
 include Judas nor the priests or scribes. According to 
 this distinguished minister, these men did know what 
 they were doing; and from this interpretation he 
 hastened to argue a modern application to the World 
 War and the enemies of democracy. Alas! that one 
 should tamper with this great utterance in order to 
 clinch a point or cite a moral. Did not Paul write that 
 if those who put Jesus to death had known what they 
 were doing they would not have crucified the Lord of 
 Glory? When men sin they never know fully what 
 they do. When we sin we do not know that we strike 
 at the very heart of God, and that the blow hits home. 
 Who of us ever sees sin as Jesus saw it from the cross? 
 Yea, verily, this prayer of Jesus for His enemies is the 
 climax of love and mercy. It is doubtful if any who 
 
98 IMITATION OF CHRIST 
 
 thus heard Him speak these words could ever forget it. 
 We have at least one example of the effect of this 
 prayer made upon the life of an early follower of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 II 
 
 Again, the scene is a martyrdom, and in all proba- 
 bility the environing is Calvary again, since that was 
 Jerusalem’s place of execution. Another young man 
 was looking death in the face and about to die as a 
 witness for truth—-a young man prominent in the 
 Jerusalem Church, one of the seven deacons selected to 
 serve that mother Church of Christ. His character 
 was of singular grace and beauty. Having been 
 charged with blasphemy against Moses and against 
 God, he was put to trial before the Jewish Council. 
 The defense he made before that august assembly is a 
 marvel of sacred eloquence. In it he bore testimony 
 of the promise made by the prophets and showed that 
 Jesus, whom they had crucified, was the fulfiller of 
 prophecy and the long-promised Messiah. The young 
 man was brought to the place of execution. They care- 
 fully prepared for the stoning, which was the sentence 
 against him. They took off their outer garments and 
 laid them at the feet of a young rabbi named Saul. 
 Then they hurled the stones upon Stephen; and with 
 sickening thud they crashed upon him. The young 
 man kneeled down and, almost with dying breath, 
 prayed, saying, “‘ Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” and 
 then cried with a loud voice, ‘“‘ Lord, lay not this sin to 
 their charge.” 
 
EDGAR DEWITT JONES 99 
 
 Here we have an echo of the voice of Jesus from the 
 cross. The Saviour said, “ Father, forgive them; for 
 they know not what they do.” His disciple, remember- 
 ing the words of his Lord, in like manner prayed, ‘“‘ Lay 
 not this sin to their charge.” ‘There is a similarity and 
 a difference in the prayers. Jesus prays to God; 
 
 tephen prays to Jesus. Jesus says of His execution- 
 ers that they know not what they do. Stephen, who 
 knew not their minds, prayed for their forgiveness; 
 and herein he followed the example of his Lord in the 
 all-important matter of a forgiving spirit. Here, within 
 a few years, perhaps months, the example of Jesus on 
 the cross is emulated by one of His disciples. Between 
 the stoning of Stephen and his prayer for the pardon of 
 his executioners, and the death of Jesus with His words 
 so full of tenderness and love, there is a close and inti- 
 mate relationship. Stephen learned the forgiveness of 
 his enemies in the school of Jesus Christ. They 
 gnashed on him with their teeth; they rushed on him 
 savagely. He had not a single friend to stand by him. 
 At his martyrdom there was no one to parallel the little 
 group at the foot of the cross whose hearts were full of 
 love and sympathy for Jesus. Even so Stephen prayed 
 the great prayer, and so he found fellowship in the 
 spirit with his Lord. 
 
 Was Stephen present at the crucifixion? Did he see 
 the Christ hanging there? Did he hear the words, 
 ‘“‘ Father, forgive”? Wedo not know. But if he was 
 not present, he knew what occurred; and the story of 
 Jesus’ dying words inspired him to die in the same 
 wonderful way. 
 
100 IMITATION OF CHRIST 
 
 III 
 
 Scene the third is the prison cell in the city of Rome. 
 The cell is small and lighted by a single window. By 
 the rays of light that straggle through that window a 
 man is seen writing at a table. He is prematurely aged. 
 His back bears the marks of many scourgings. His 
 face is weather-beaten; but his eyes are aflame with a 
 great light. The one time Saul of Tarsus, now the 
 apostle Paul, is the prisoner bending over the parch- 
 ment. He is come up to the end of his eventful career. 
 World traveler, great missionary, scholar and minister 
 of the gospel of Jesus Christ. How wonderful is his 
 life! This is the man who had been shipwrecked, lied 
 about, and scorned. This is the man who had spoken 
 to the philosophers in Athens from the famous Mars 
 Hill; the man who had spoken before kings and 
 queens; the man who had addressed mobs in the street 
 at the peril of his life; the man who had written letters 
 to the churches that the world would never let die. 
 
 And now this man is writing the last letter, and it is 
 directed to Timothy, his son in the gospel. As he ap- 
 proaches the close he becomes personal. He asks Tim- 
 othy for the cloak that he left at Troas. His cell is 
 damp; he would have his great coat. He tells him to 
 bring the books, when he comes, especially the parch- 
 ments. The days are drab. He would read and write 
 and so spend fruitfully the days of imprisonment. 
 Next he refers to the great trial that had come upon 
 him. He speaks of a defense that he made when no 
 one took his part but all forsook him. And then, oh 
 marvelous fact, he offers a prayer for those who 
 
EDGAR DEWITT JONES 101 
 
 wronged him. He writes, “ May it not be laid to their 
 account.” Where did Paul learn so great a spirit of 
 forgiveness? From Jesus on the cross? Nay, not 
 directly. He learned it from Stephen, who learned it 
 from Christ. Charles Lamb said that he learned pa- 
 tience from his mother, and that his mother learned 
 patience from Christ. 
 
 The memory of the death of Stephen must have ever 
 remained fresh in the mind of Paul. He was consent- 
 ing to that young man’s death; he saw his fair young 
 face shining with a great hope; he saw the executioners 
 rush in upon Stephen, and he beheld the stones they 
 hurled upon his defenseless body; he saw Stephen when 
 he knelt; he heard him when he called upon the Lord, 
 saying, ‘‘ Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’; he heard him 
 when he cried with a loud voice, ‘“ Lord, lay not this 
 sin to their charge.” That scene was indelibly stamped 
 upon the young rabbi’s mind; and years afterwards, at 
 the close of his long and useful life, while awaiting the 
 - death sentence in a Roman prison, the dying act of 
 Stephen came freshly to his mind. Writing to Timothy 
 thus, he was enabled to speak of the wrong done him 
 without any thought of revenge or malice, and almost 
 in the identical words of Stephen, he said of those who 
 forsook him, ‘“‘ May it not be laid to their account.” 
 
 Oh, blessed chain of hallowed influence. First Jesus 
 on the cross remembers His enemies, only to pray, 
 “ Father, forgive them; for they know not what they 
 do”; then the young Stephen, as the cruel stones are 
 hurled against him, remembers his Saviour’s attitude 
 under similar circumstances, and cries, ‘‘ Lord, lay not 
 
102 IMITATION OF CHRIST 
 
 this sin to their charge ”’; and finally, the apostle Paul, 
 at the end of his long service as a Christian mission- 
 ary, recalls an experience of pain and suffering, but 
 remembering the dying words of Stephen, is enabled 
 to pray that those who wronged him may be forgiven. 
 Oh, blessed emulation of the spirit of the Master of 
 us all! 
 
 IV 
 
 The early disciples were imitators of Him, or better 
 yet, they were “ followers,” for that is the meaning of 
 the word in the original. Stephen emulated his Lord in 
 dying, although his death was not by crucifixion; Paul 
 followed the example of Stephen, although the precise 
 
 circumstances were not the same. This is the point to © 
 
 remember when we speak of imitating Christ. It is 
 possible to confuse the transient with the permanent, 
 the incidental with the main course of His teaching. 
 Well it is for us to remember that the letter killeth but 
 the spirit giveth light. Copying Christ is not without 
 its perils. Jesus is usually portrayed by the artists 
 with His hair worn long and parted in the middle, wear- 
 ing a pointed beard, with His body clad in a long flow- 
 ing garment and with sandals on His feet. To imitate 
 His dress or any of the customs of His day and the 
 people from which He sprang is a matter of no impor- 
 tance whatsoever. That was the incidental, the transi- 
 tory. What He wore, what He ate, how or where He 
 slept—these matters are immaterial to us. But to pos- 
 sess His attitude toward God and man, to reproduce 
 His habits of prayer, His sacrificial love, His spirit of 
 
EDGAR DeWITT JONES 103 
 forgiveness, His love for little children, His freedom 
 from prejudice, His sensitive conscience against in- 
 justice to the poo the weak and the humble—in short, 
 to possess His mind—this is the real imitation of the 
 Christ. 
 
 What a fascinating study is this—the effect of 
 Jesus’ example upon Stephen and the result of 
 Stephen’s example upon Paul. What rich food for 
 thought it supplies. Seek ye Jesus’ mind, and from 
 that will issue Christ-like deeds. Think Christ’s 
 thoughts after Him, and it follows, as day the night, 
 that your feet will find the way of mercy. Seek His 
 mind, and your hands will respond to the manifold 
 ministerings that assuage grief and heal the broken 
 heart. And what an uplift to our souls is the example 
 of others who have sought out the Christ and have 
 given their lives in ennobling and enriching service. 
 Others have discovered the Christ spirit and have ap- 
 plied it. In turn, we take up the quest, discover the 
 Christ, and display to the world the spirit of mercy, 
 forgiveness, kindness and love. For us and for others 
 to become the imitation of Christ comes about through 
 the heart-cleansed lives of those going on before. 
 
 ‘“‘ Have this mind in you, which was also in Jesus 
 Christ; who, existing in the form of God, counted not 
 the being on an equality with God a thing to be 
 grasped, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a 
 servant, being made into the likeness of men; and 
 being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, 
 becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of 
 the cross.” 
 
104 IMITATION OF CHRIST 
 
 “TI cannot put the Presence by, of him, the crucifiea, 
 
 Who moves men’s spirits with his love as doth the 
 moon the tide; 
 
 Now I see the life he lived, the god-like death he diea. 
 
 “Again I see upom the cross that great soul-battle 
 fought, 
 Into the texture of the world the tale of which 1s 
 qrought 
 Until it hath become the woof of human deed and 
 thought,— 
 
 “And, joining with the cadenced bells that all the 
 morning fill 
 His cry of agony doth yet my inmost being thrill, 
 Like some fresh grief from yesterday that tears the 
 heart-strings still. 
 
 “TI cannot put his presence by, I meet him every- 
 
 where; 
 
 I meet him in the country town—the busy-market 
 square ; 
 
 The mansion and the tenement attest his presence 
 there. 
 
 “Upon the funneled ships at sea he sets his shining 
 feet; 
 The distant ends of empire not in vain his name 
 repeat,— 
 And, like the presence of the rose, he makes the 
 whole world sweet. 
 
 “Fle comes to break the barriers down raised up by 
 barren creeds; 
 Above the globe from zone to zone, like sunlight he 
 proceeds; 
 Fle comes to give the world’s starved heart the 
 perfect love tt needs,— 
 
EDGAR DeWITT JONES 105 
 
 “The Christ, whose friends have played him false, 
 whom dogmas have belied, 
 Still speaking to the hearts of men—tho’ shamed and 
 crucified, 
 The Master of the centuries, who will not be 
 denied!” 
 
 PRAVER 
 
 O God of infinite compassion, of love ineffable, unto 
 thee all must come. Thou hast shown us the life abundant 
 through thy son, our Saviour. Thou hast revealed through 
 him the way of peace and power and plenty. Yet we are 
 slow to apprehend and hesstant to follow the Prince of 
 Peace. Forgwe, Lord, our childish prejudices, our 
 strange and inexcusable hates, our foolish pride and 1n- 
 tolerance. By the memory of the cross and the Christ who 
 suffered there, help us to banish all hate from our hearts. 
 Strengthen us, we pray thee, m our purpose to learn 
 forgweness in the school of Christ. In his dear name. 
 Amen, 
 
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ALVIN E. MAGARY 
 
 San Francisco was the birthplace of Dr. Magary. His 
 collegiate education was received on the Pacific Coast, 
 together with his training in the San Francisco Theolog- 
 ical Seminary. Later, he was granted the M.A. degree 
 from Columbia University and was graduated from Au- 
 burn Theological Seminary. His last pastorate before 
 coming to Detroit was at the First Presbyterian Church 
 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where with infinite care and deter- 
 mined will be builded his church into the plan and spirit of 
 the great builder. It was in 1924 that Dr. Magary came 
 to the Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church; and yet 
 in such a short time he has commanded the interest and 
 respect of the religious life of the city. Without attempt 
 at display he has gone to work to lay strong foundations 
 and to build faithfully upon foundations already well laid. 
 Such is the high task of the true minister of Jesus Christ. 
 His book Character and Happiness published in 1924 and 
 his editorial writings in the Detroit Free Press have given 
 him a wide congregation of loyal friends. With a min- 
 istry so well begun there is great promise for the future. 
 
 It is not every man that can make the Scripture vivid 
 and real to his congregation, whereby it becomes applicable 
 to modern life; but Dr. Magary can do this invaluable 
 thing. And in the doing of it he is reaching a multitude 
 of people in a positive fashion, binding them to the eternal 
 truths. 
 
THE PARSON—There was a day when the parson 
 was assumed to be the most cultivated man in the commu- 
 nity. He was a student, a minister, and a man of God. 
 If any one had called him a mixer or a live wire, he would 
 have been far from flattered. 
 
 My ideal of the mister is perhaps old-fashioned. I 
 do not belteve that religion can be interpreted to this or 
 any age by men whose chief qualification 1s a fussy be- 
 nevolence and whose highest skill is in advertising either 
 themselves or their churches. 
 
 More than any other thing, our age needs preachers 
 with prophetic viston. They need not dwell in a world 
 apart; but they must be given time to dwell apart from 
 the world. The man who has an appointment for every 
 hour of the day will not grow into that grace of mind and 
 soul which has always been characteristic of the great 
 ministries—ALVIN FE, Macary. 
 
Vil 
 TRAITS OF THE RELIGIOUS SOUL 
 
 ALVIN E. MAGARY, D.D. 
 Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church 
 
 TTiCor24: 
 
 “In this ministry,” says Paul, “I never lose heart. 
 
 I may be harried on every side, yet I am free. I may 
 be perplexed, yet I am never in despair. I am perse- 
 cuted, but never forsaken. Though I am struck down 
 I know that I cannot be destroyed. The light of God 
 shines within me; the troubles of this life shall give 
 place to enduring peace; and when this temporary tent 
 which I call my body is taken down, I shall have a 
 better home eternal in the heavens.” 
 
 That is the confession of faith of the religious man. 
 He is not blind to the miseries of human life. He does 
 not deceive himself by glossing over the dark spots of 
 human experience with fugitive and meretricious col- 
 ors. He looks courageously at the real world with its 
 trials, affliction, and unhappiness; but beyond these 
 things he sees a brightening future. He knows that 
 man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward; yet he 
 believes there is a haven of peace, where the waters are 
 still. He is able to look without flinching at the fact of 
 death because he knows that eternal life is the ultimate 
 portion of mankind. 
 
 109 
 
110 TRAITS OF THE RELIGIOUS SOUL 
 
 This chapter suggests some of the traits of the re- 
 ligious soul. It is assumed that religious people are 
 good; but goodness alone is not enough to mark off the 
 man of faith from his unbelieving neighbor. Goodness 
 is by no means confined to those who profess belief in 
 God. So far as human standards are concerned, mil- 
 lions of those who profess no belief fulfill the require- 
 ments of goodness. They are benevolent, patriotic, 
 industrious, and honorable; but there must be some- 
 thing more to make the life of faith. A good man is a 
 glorious vindication of nature; but it is the glory of 
 religious faith that its fruit is goodness and something 
 beyond goodness. 
 
 One trait of the religious soul, which is clearly 
 manifest on every page of Paul’s writings, is the sense 
 of the immediacy of God. “God who commanded 
 the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in my 
 heart.” 
 
 One of the faults of Christian theology is that it 
 habitually has thrust some medium between the soul 
 and God. This medium might be a priest, a ceremony, 
 a creed, a church, or a Bible. That these things are of 
 great value we do not deny. There is a priestly as well 
 as a prophetic function. We believe in the lofty mis- 
 sion of the Church and the value of its observances; 
 we know that the Bible has been the fountain from 
 which millions have drawn comfort and assurance; we 
 believe in the preaching of the word which has kept 
 taut the moral nerve of hosts of men and women; but 
 above all we believe in that sense of God’s presence 
 which comes to men and transcends priest or Church 
 
ALVIN E. MAGARY 111 
 
 or Bible. When we are alone or in company, when we 
 are busy or idle, at work or at play, at home or abroad, 
 in the quiet house of worship or among the crowds of 
 the street, at prayer or at business, there must be times 
 when we know that the spirit of the divine bears direct 
 and immediate witness of His presence with us. 
 
 It is a trait of the religious soul that it hears and 
 recognizes this voice of God for itself. All the noise of 
 the world, with its pursuit of wealth and pleasure, can- 
 not overwhelm the still small voice of the divine. 
 Through all the discord, all man’s inhumanity to men, 
 the music of the eternal voice ought never be lost. 
 Amid the darkness and uncertainty of this human pil- 
 grimage the clear light of God’s presence need never be 
 quite hidden from us. 
 
 When the little boat was tossing perilously on the 
 sea and the frightened disciples were expecting to be 
 engulfed, it was the quiet voice of the Lord which 
 stilled not oniy the wind and waves but also the fearful 
 tumult of their own hearts. When we feel that He is 
 with us we can find quiet in. the midst of confusion and 
 conflict. And if one is to have quiet in this life, he 
 must have it within himself. There are blessed times 
 when by the shore of the sea or among the hills, we do | 
 have surcease from the noise of the world; but such | 
 hours are rare and only serve as occasional respites 
 from the grinding clamor of our daily life. It is char- 
 acteristic of the religious soul that, amid the daily 
 clamor, it is enabled to keep its poise. 
 
 We live in the midst of distracting commonplaces. 
 The average household’s solicitude about the furnace, 
 
112 TRAITS OF THE RELIGIOUS SOUL 
 
 its discipline of children, its worries about money, and 
 its anxieties about a hundred trifling things—‘‘ what we 
 shall eat and what we shall drink and wherewithal we 
 shall be clothed ’”—these are the things that wear us 
 into nervous ruin. Man awakes in the morning to the 
 barking of dogs, the rattling of bottles and the clatter 
 of the kitchen. He goes to work amid the rumbling of 
 street cars and the blowing of whistles. All the day 
 long there is the ceaseless ringing of the telephone, the 
 hammering of typewriters, the countless and insistent 
 sounds of the city. So the day goes on, coming to its 
 close at last with the banging of pianos, the raucous 
 voices of the phonograph and the diabolical shrieks of 
 the radio. 
 
 Tranquillity is the result of the deep view of life. It 
 comes only to those who have learned to live among the 
 disturbances of the world without being disturbed by 
 them. ‘‘ Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy 
 presence from the pride of men. Thou shalt keep them 
 secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.” 
 
 Our neighbors heckle us with false convictions, 
 paltry ambitions, and censorious criticisms. Even 
 when our intentions toward each other are most ami- 
 able, we irritate each other. The nervous strain of 
 mere human contact accumulates, until we burst out 
 angrily and give pain to those we love. 
 
 Being human is at times a trying business because 
 it involves constant impingements on the lives of 
 others. It is impossible to live without others, and it is 
 often hard to live with them. 
 
 “Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy pres- 
 
ALVIN E. MAGARY 113 
 
 ence.” We all love the silences of the deep woods or 
 the stretches along the beach where we can walk a few 
 hundred yards away from the crowd and feel that we 
 are alone. Some of us have felt these things; but we 
 can all feel a thing yet greater. We can know the 
 immediate presence of God in the midst of the streets, 
 where the crowds jostle us and life’s discords assail 
 our ears. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle, while peculiarly sensitive to the dis- 
 cords of life, was a man in whom there was a deep, 
 abiding consciousness of God. His sense of the divine 
 presence is revealed as he meditates on the events of 
 the night before the battle of Dunbar. He thinks of 
 the confusion of the night, of the treasons, of the strate- 
 gies and ambitions of men; and he writes, ‘‘ The 
 hoarse sea moans, swinging low and heavy against 
 these whinstone bays; the sea and the tempest are 
 abroad and all else asleep but we—and there is One 
 that rides on the wings of the wind.” 
 
 There is another aspect of this which touches us 
 just now. The religious soul has no fear concerning 
 the permanency of religion. We live in a time of 
 change and threatened change, of intellectual and moral 
 confusion. Men fear that the foundations are being 
 destroyed and that God is dying out of the hearts of 
 men. A want of trust in the future begets bitterness, 
 hate, and intolerance. Men fight most bitterly for 
 most hopeless causes; and the pious pessimist is always 
 prone to forget that love is the first of Christ’s com- 
 mandments. The religious soul is magnanimous be- 
 cause it is sure that God is both able and willing to 
 
114 TRAITS OF THE RELIGIOUS SOUL 
 
 steer His world through the mazes of doubt and failure 
 to ultimate redemption. 
 
 Courage is a trait of the religious soul. We are 
 sometimes led to think of Jesus as a mild-spoken 
 philosopher who went about uttering sweet thoughts 
 and being kind to people. We forget that He was the 
 most magnificently brave figure in history. It is when 
 we achieve the consciousness of the divine that fear 
 ceases to trouble us. It is when our hope is not in God 
 that our souls are disquieted within us. ‘ God is our 
 refuge and strength. Therefore we will not fear 
 though the earth be moved and the waters roar and 
 be troubled. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God 
 of refuge is our refuge.” 
 
 The soul that abides in Christ is enriched with the 
 unsearchable riches of God. ‘‘ All things are for your 
 sakes.”” In a day when the thoughts of men are turn- 
 ing to material gain, it is good to be reminded that life 
 does not consist in the abundance of the things which 
 we possess. It must be a trait of the religious soul that 
 it appraises the various parts of life with competent 
 discrimination. Many of us are deceived as to the rela- 
 tive value of these prizes, rewards, and accomplish- 
 ments which offer themselves to us. We toil through 
 many a weary year to get what we want, only to dis- 
 cover that it was not worth the getting. 
 
 It must be a trait of the religious soul that it knows 
 what is worth while. The true member of God’s King- 
 dom is like a merchant seeking goodly pearls. He 
 knows, with the judgment of an expert, what is genuine 
 and what is false. He cannot be deceived with imita- 
 
ALVIN E. MAGARY 115 
 
 tion jewels. About the man or woman who has really 
 attained the religious life, there is a practical grasp of 
 the meaning and worth of things. As the training of 
 the artist enables him to see things in correct per- 
 spective, so a true religious experience helps to put the 
 parts of life in their right order. ‘‘ Why spend your 
 money for that which satisfieth not? ” asks the prophet. 
 The wasting of skill and strength in the acquiring of 
 things which will never contribute to our happiness is 
 one of the mistakes which a religious view of life will 
 help us avoid. 
 
 Insight is a trait of the religious soul. ‘‘ We look 
 not at the things that are seen, but at the things that 
 are not seen.” The religious man walks not by sight, 
 but by insight, which is another word for faith. He is 
 not prepossessed by the circumference of life. He 
 knows something of what is at the center. As he looks 
 upon the multitude of men, hungry and ragged, like 
 those whom the Master fed, he sees more than a huddle 
 of human bodies, more than a mob of discontented, 
 wrangling, ineffective people. ‘The fact of Jesus 
 Christ,” with its glow of God’s own glory, is there, and 
 like the apostle he feels within himself the thrill of 
 kinship with mankind. As we walk not by sight but 
 by insight, so we love not by sight but by insight. If 
 the religious soul is marked by its power to love, it is 
 because faith opens our eyes to things pure and lovely 
 which are not seen save by the discernment of the 
 spirit. ‘‘ The light of the glorious gospel of Christ ” 
 makes humanity glow with a beauty that incites in us a 
 willingness to live and to die in the service of men. 
 
116 TRAITS OF THE RELIGIOUS SOUL 
 
 It is a trait of the religious soul that it anticipates 
 the future. It is true that we can dwell over-much on 
 the thought of heavenly bliss. There is much to be 
 done in the life we now live, and too much pre- 
 occupation with another life may become a barrier to 
 practical usefulness in the present. Yet, if man is 
 mortal, that fact must never be allowed to fade out of 
 his thinking. In the continuation of his personal con- 
 fession Paul says, “‘ We- know that if the earthly house 
 of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of 
 God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the 
 heavens.” No life can be complete in which there is 
 not a place for thoughts of heavenly things. 
 
 There will always be a suggestion of this heavenly 
 quality in the life that is close to the divine. Richard 
 Watson Gilder, the poet and editor, once wrote in a 
 letter, ‘ While in Washington I passed the Harwood 
 navy residence. If there is a heaven and I get there, 
 it will not take me long to find the Harwood house. 
 Their house has always been heaven to me. I shall 
 never forget that dear Miss Bessie.” Who this Miss 
 Bessie may have been that made a poet think of 
 heaven, I do not know; but we have all known women 
 like her. 
 
 The earthly tabernacle of this body sometimes seems 
 very frail, and yet its frailty carries promise of some- 
 thing better to come. Here we have no continuing city. 
 We are dwellers in tents, and look for a city which 
 has foundations. One is reminded of that magnificent 
 poem which Shakespeare puts into the part of one of 
 his characters in ‘‘ The Tempest.’”’ A vision of earthly 
 
ALVIN E. MAGARY 117 
 
 splendor has been called up for the entertainment of 
 the guests, and as it fades the magician speaks: 
 
 “ Our revels now are ended, these our actors, 
 As I foretold you, were all spirits, and 
 Are melted into air, thin air; 
 
 And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
 The cloud-capped towers, gorgeous palaces, 
 The solemn temple, the great globe itself, 
 Yea, and all which it inherit, shall dissolve 
 And, like this insubstantial pageant fade, 
 Leave not a rack behind, Weare such stuff 
 As dreams are made on, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep.” 
 
 The transiency of human institutions is made pathet- 
 ically vivid to us when we visit the homes of our child- 
 hood and find the old landmarks gone, the old leaders 
 dead, and all the outer aspects changed. Like an in- 
 substantial pageant the world of one generation fades 
 as the succeeding one comes upon the scene. That is 
 why the heart of man is lifted up as he sings, ‘“‘ They 
 stand, those walls of Zion, all jubilant with song.” The 
 mind finds rest in the thought of things which endure. 
 
 So the religious soul finds all the security that man 
 can know amid the insubstantialities of life. When 
 mankind reels in wrong, when blood and battle are 
 abroad, when pestilence stalks through the night and 
 arrows of destruction fly about us in the day, the man 
 who truly knows God goes confidently on, unfaltering 
 and unafraid. 
 
 ‘“ All things are for our sakes,” says Paul, “ the un- 
 searchable riches of God are ours.” It matters not 
 that we are like men who carry treasure in vessels of 
 
118 TRAITS OF THE RELIGIOUS SOUL 
 
 sun-baked clay, easily shattered by the accidents of our 
 pilgrimage. Our very weakness is our strength. We 
 are supremely fit to do the work of the Eternal because 
 we are powerless without Him. ‘ Therefore, as we 
 have received mercy, we faint not.” The religious soul 
 is confident because it is humble; fearless because it 
 fears God; rich because it is glad to be poor; and 
 happy because, like its Master, it is acquainted with 
 grief. 
 
 “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; 
 perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not for- 
 saken; cast down, but not destroyed. For which cause 
 we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet 
 the inward man is renewed day by day. And we know 
 that when the earthly house of this tabernacle is 
 destroyed, we have a building of God, a house not 
 made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” 
 
 PRAYER 
 
 Almighty God, thou friend of man, forgive us if we 
 have not known thy friendship as we should. Forgive us, 
 if in the bewildering hurry of our daily life, we have 
 failed to see thy face as often as thou hast revealed thy- 
 self. Open our eyes, O God, to the things unseen by the 
 worldling. So teach us that we may do our work as well 
 as any man, enjoy the pleasures. thou vouchsafest us with 
 the heartmess of children, take our place competently sn 
 the activities of the world, and keep free for thine occu- 
 pancy thine own place in our hearts. Grant us tranquillity 
 with peace. Help us to be gentle and yet strong, meek and 
 yet courageous, free and yet obedient. Let us walk with 
 Christ the way of service and lift up our hearts with the 
 faith that sustained him. These things, we pray thee, 
 grant us for his name’s sake. Amen. 
 
S. S. MARQUIS 
 
 The Scotch-Irish of Sharon, Ohio, have given Dr. Mar- 
 quis to us. His collegiate training was received at Alle- 
 gheny College and his theological schooling at General and 
 Cambridge Theological Seminaries, being graduated from 
 the latter in 1893. In the same year he was ordained to 
 the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church. His 
 first parishes were in Massachusetts, after which he min- 
 istered in St. Joseph’s Church, Detroit, for several years. 
 In 1906 he became Dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral and 
 was the loved leader of that great church for ten years. 
 While at Saint Paul’s he became interested in social ser- 
 vice, and finally was persuaded to become Head of the 
 Sociological Department of Ford’s Automobile Industry. 
 For five years he made an exceedingly close study of every 
 human problem that was produced in that great organiza- 
 tion and was eminently successful in that field. But his 
 call was to the ministry and he went back to St. Joseph’s 
 for a second pastorate, which was a very happy and fruit- 
 ful one. Recently he has been called to Christ Church, 
 Bloomfield Hills, where he will not only build a great 
 church but will also develop the Cranbrook School for 
 boys under the direction and control of the Protestant 
 Episcopal Church. Few men have a wider sphere of in- 
 fluence in college halls or civic bodies over our country. 
 A wide intellectual outlook has been added to his social 
 passion and spiritual vision—a rare combination and one 
 that makes him a leader in breaking down intolerance and 
 bigotry. Dr. Marquis ought to write more. His one book, 
 “Henry Ford, An Interpretation,” is certainly the best 
 book we have on that subject; and his way of handling it 
 betokens ability which he should not hide. 
 
BREAKING DOWN ECCLESIASTICAL WALLS 
 OF PREJUDICE—The sky of the religious world ito 
 which I was born was perpetually overcast by theological 
 clouds. I breathed an atmosphere filled with doctrinal 
 fog. In my youth the chief source of my unhappiness was 
 my religion. I was ordered to believe things I could not 
 believe. I was expected to subscribe to things I could not 
 understand. Much that was taught me seemed to have no 
 relatson to every-day, christian living. Agatst this there 
 flamed up within me the spirit of revolt. I felt mstinc- 
 tively that above the doctrinal fog I breathed, and above 
 the theological clouds which hid the Sun of Righteousness, 
 there was a Light on which one could look without the aid 
 of glasses that had been ecclesiastically colored. Through 
 much mental agony I came finally through expersence into 
 the presence of that Light. The urge to tell others of what 
 I had found led me into the ministry. A divided Church 
 fills me with shame and indignation. I belong to one of 
 its fragments because there seems nothing else to do. As 
 I see wt, more can be done by working from within than 
 by standing aloof. I long for the fellowship of Christian 
 men from whom I am separated by trivial doctrinal dif- 
 ferences. I want to see sectarian walls broken down. 
 The driving motive of my ministry, so far as I am aware 
 of tt—the ideal before me as a preacher—has been to 
 weaken these walls, to break down within men within the 
 reach of my voice thew unchristian, ecclesiastical preju- 
 dices. I do not believe that christian fellowship is to be 
 approached through some agreement as to faith and or- 
 ders. But I do believe that a working agreement on faith 
 and orders may be reached through fellowship. 
 
 —S. S. Margulis. 
 
VIII 
 
 COMING GIANTS AND THE ARIS- 
 TOCRACY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 Bay) ES) TT 
 Christ Church—Bloomfield Hills 
 
 “ There were giants in the earth in those days.’—GsEn. 6: 4. 
 
 “ Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” 
 —Marr. 5:5. 
 
 I. ARISTOCRACY 
 
 Traces of those changes which have taken place in 
 the outward, physical forms of life on this planet are 
 to be found buried in the rocks. Evidences of the 
 development of an inward, spiritual life are to be seen 
 embedded in human language. 
 
 Emerson has said that language is “ fossil poetry.” 
 He means by this, writes Archbishop Trench, that 
 ‘just as in some fossil, curious and beautiful shapes 
 of vegetable or animal life, the graceful fern or the 
 finely vertebrated lizard, such as now, it may be, have 
 been extinct for thousands of years, are permanently 
 bound up with the stone, and rescued from that perish- 
 ing which would have otherwise been theirs—so in 
 words are beautiful thoughts and images, the imagina- 
 tion and the feeling of past ages, of men long since in 
 their graves, of men whose very names have perished, 
 these, which would so easily have perished too, pre- 
 served and made safe forever.” 
 
 121 
 
122 THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 In this word aristocracy we have a fine specimen of 
 linguistic fossil. It is the verbal remains of a beautiful 
 idea. It is but the shell of its former self. Its original 
 meaning has gone out of it. Base ideas have crept into 
 it and made it their abode. It was created to designate 
 a ruling class chosen to be such because of character 
 and ability. It was intended to be taken literally. It 
 meant just what it said,—the rule of the best. But, 
 like many another noble word, it has been emptied of 
 its original meaning and made the vehicle of ideas 
 which are the opposite of those it originally conveyed. 
 
 Words, like human beings, have their ups and downs 
 in this world. Some, rising from the level of slang, 
 enter finally the sacred precincts of the inner literary 
 circle. Others of the most cultured and refined origin 
 get into bad company and sink at last into the linguistic 
 slums. This word aristocracy has become a degener- 
 ate. Originally intended to designate a ruling class 
 selected on account of character and ability, it came 
 in time to mean a class of people who rested their claim 
 to the right to rule on the accident of birth regardless 
 of inherent qualifications. One downward step more 
 and we find it appropriated by those who have neither 
 birth nor ability, but wealth only. Thus, from a word 
 of the highest rank in meaning, it has fallen to a level 
 where it is used as a Synonym for snobbery. But there 
 will ever remain in this word some suggestion of the 
 root whence it was derived. And to some of us this 
 suggestion will be taken as a prophecy of that which is 
 to come. For we believe that the world will come ulti- 
 mately to the recognition of moral and spiritual. leader- 
 
S. S. MARQUIS 123 
 
 ship. Some day there will rise an aristocracy which 
 shall be such in the best and highest sense of the word. 
 
 II, GIANTS 
 
 The writer of Genesis, looking backward, says, 
 ‘“ There were giants in the earth in those days.” Jesus, 
 looking forward, says, “‘ Blessed are the meek: for 
 they shall inherit the earth.” It is a far cry between 
 these statements, one of history, the other of prophecy, 
 but I have brought them together because they set 
 before us two types of man,—the first and the last. 
 The one a physical type; the other a spiritual. The 
 one a giant in brute force; the other a giant with God- 
 like strength. The one lord of the earth in the begin- 
 ning; the other the inheritor and master of the earth 
 in the end. The first ruled for an age; the second 
 shall reign through the ages. 
 
 There are three forces in man,—brute, intellectual 
 and spiritual. For this reason human history falls, 
 with broad dividing lines, into three ages,—the age of 
 the physical giant, the age of the intellectual giant, and 
 the age of the moral and spiritual giant. The rule of 
 the earth is, has been, and will continue to be, by its 
 giants. The world’s giants have been, and will con- 
 tinue to be, the types of their respective ages. 
 
 In saying what I have just said I would not be un- 
 derstood as meaning that man has exercised first one of 
 his powers and then another. He has employed them 
 all at all times, but one or another has so far dominated 
 that it has given its character to an age. One age, the 
 physical, has been; one, the intellectual, now is; the 
 
124 THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 third, the moral and spiritual, is yet to come—for I 
 believe that the meek shall inherit the earth. Because 
 I believe in God, I believe that good will triumph, that 
 Jesus Christ is the second Adam, the first born of a 
 new and spiritual race which its service, rendered in 
 meekness and humility, will become the master and 
 ruler of the earth. 
 
 Til. THE PHYSICAL GIANT AND THE ARISTOCRARY 
 OF BRAWN 
 
 ‘There were giants in the earth in those days.” 
 This is no mere fancy, but a fact. It is not merely the 
 statement of a child’s story-book, but the record of 
 history. I do not mean to say that men in the begin- 
 ning were so much bigger physically than they are now 
 that they deserved to be called giants. What I have in 
 mind is the fact that those of superior physical strength 
 ruled their fellows. Victors in physical encounter, they 
 were feared by others. They became leaders through 
 sheer brute force. They were the aristocrats in that 
 old, savage world order. They were honored, and the 
 stories of their mighty deeds were handed down from 
 generation to generation. They left upon the race in 
 its childhood an impression which even yet has not 
 been entirely outgrown. 
 
 In the order of time the physical life in man is first. 
 Of his complex being, the physical is the only part he 
 brings into the world relatively well developed. He is 
 born. He feels the pangs of hunger, but if his life were 
 to depend upon his power of mind he would perish. 
 Of the differences between right and wrong he knows 
 
S. S. MARQUIS 125 
 
 nothing. His physical life dominates him. And as the 
 physical life dominates man in the hour of his birth, so 
 did it rule the race in its infancy. The highest type of 
 man was the physical—the giants, the Samsons and 
 the Goliaths—the man with the broadest shoulders, the 
 strongest arms, and who towered highest above his 
 fellows. 
 
 There may not have been an evolution of man from 
 a lower animal, but there is no denying the fact that 
 there has been an evolution of man from a lower man. 
 It is a fact that man began life on a far lower level in 
 the scale of being than that on which he now stands. 
 Since his first appearance on this earth the changes 
 which have taken place in his physical being, and par- 
 ticularly in his mental and moral life, have been 
 enormous. 
 
 If we turn our admiring gaze from the branches of 
 our ancestral tree and begin searching among its roots, 
 we will come eventually upon a man who is little better 
 than his fellow animals. We will find him engaged in a 
 struggle very similar to that of the beasts of the jungle. 
 Compelled to measure his strength with theirs, and with 
 that of his equally savage fellow man, he is forced, as 
 the first step necessary to his existence, to develop 
 himself psysically. And we will also discover that we 
 are living today because that primitive man, down to 
 whom lead the roots of our much-boasted family tree, 
 was a better fighter, fiercer, stronger, and more cruel 
 than those who perished at his hands. 
 
 The original ruler of men was a giant,—a man of 
 brute strength, of great physical endurance, the victor 
 
126 THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 in physical encounters. The first aristocracy was an 
 aristocracy of brawn. 
 
 IV. THE INTELLECTUAL GIANT AND THE ARISTOCRACY 
 OF BRAWN 
 
 The primitive aristocracy of brawn gradually dis- 
 appeared. ‘There is an old saying to the effect that 
 each generation grows weaker and wiser. Perhaps that 
 is but another way of-saying that brute force is ever 
 being met and overcome by the force of mind. The 
 savage who trusted to his unaided arm went down 
 before his weaker but more ingenious foe armed with 
 the arrow or the sling, as Goliath fell before the shep- 
 herd boy David. The giant of brawn bowed before 
 the giant of brain. The physical aristocracy of an 
 early age gave way to the intellectual aristocracy of a 
 later time. 
 
 The change from the first to the second age came 
 gradually, indeed, taking the race as a whole, it is still 
 in progress. Brute force has by no means ceased to be 
 a power in the world. War is not a thing of the past. 
 The prospect that it will be done away is growing 
 brighter, however, and we believe that the time is not 
 far distant when the power of the spirit of the beast in 
 man, the lingering influence of the old physical giant, 
 will be broken, and brute force in no form, savage or 
 civilized, will be appealed to in the settlement of the 
 disputes between men. 
 
 We are living in the age of the intellectual giant, 
 and we have an intellectual aristocracy of two kinds. 
 First, there lingers an old titled aristocracy in cer- 
 
S. S. MARQUIS 127 
 
 tain quarters which is the product of mind devoted 
 to the pursuits of war for the purpose of conquest 
 and the enslavement of weaker nations,—an aris- 
 tocracy of mind, but of mind devoted to the devel- 
 opment and use of material force. And then there 
 has appeared more recently an untitled, moneyed 
 aristocracy—the actual ruling aristocracy of this age 
 —which is the product of mind devoted to peaceful 
 vocations. 
 
 When the intellectual giant first came on the stage 
 it was but natural that he should give much of his time 
 to the pursuit of war. The brutal methods of the first 
 age,—the ideals, the spirit, and the influence of aris- 
 tocracy of brawn still lingered. The new giant was 
 forced to meet the old on his own ground and with his 
 own weapons. In the transition period between the 
 old and the new, intelligence was compelled to become 
 the ally of brute force. 
 
 But, as centuries went by, the intellectual giant gave 
 an ever increasing share of his time to peaceful pur- 
 suits. He began to gather herds. In a crude way he 
 tilled the soil. Human relationships outside the family 
 were recognized. Families grew into tribes, and tribes 
 into nations. More time was given to agriculture, 
 manufacture, commerce, art, science, and literature, 
 and less to war. Instead of fighting for food, men 
 began to barter, buy and sell. It is the same old 
 principle of competition, it is true, but in a higher 
 and more pacific form. The struggle is gradually 
 carried up from the level of brute force to that of the 
 intellectual. 
 
128 THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 And so it comes to pass that a new type of man 
 comes upon the scene. Another inheritor of the earth, 
 the intellectual giant, arises. A new aristocracy, 
 founded on wealth, begins to take into its hands the 
 reins of the leading governments of the world. ‘This 
 latest aristocracy is a commercial aristocracy—kings 
 of the railroad, barons of coal and oil, lords of money, 
 merchant princes. Such are the rulers and inheritors 
 of the earth in these days. Such are the giants which 
 the same old principle of competition that controlled 
 men back in the jungle is producing in our time. 
 These are the latest product of the old world order 
 which, in one form or another, has obtained from the 
 beginning. 
 
 V. THE COMING GIANT AND THE ARISTOCRACY OF 
 THE FUTURE 
 
 Are we living in the last age? Is the intellectual 
 giant the highest and final type of man? Is it such an 
 one that creation has been groaning and travailing, 
 through all these geologic and biologic ages, to bring 
 forth? Is a commercial aristocracy the goal of the 
 race? Has evolution consumed so much time, gone to 
 all this fuss and preparation, to bring forth a modern 
 king of finance? Had Whitman a billionaire in mind 
 when he wrote: 
 
 “Immense have been the preparations for me, 
 Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me. 
 Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like 
 
 cheerful boatmen; 
 For room for me stars kept aside in their own rings, 
 
S. S. MARQUIS 129 
 
 They sent influences to look after what was to hold 
 me. 
 
 Before I was born out of my mother, generations 
 guided me, 
 
 My embryo was never torpid, nothing could overlay 
 St. 
 
 For it the nebula cohered to an orb, 
 
 The long slow strata piled to rest it on, 
 
 Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, 
 
 Monstrous sauroids transported in their mouths 
 
 And deposited it with care. 
 
 All forces have been steadily employed to Corp leas 
 and delight me, 
 
 Are we to regard the plutocrat as the final type of 
 man? Is he the crown of all creation and the inheritor 
 of the earth? He is far from that, if we are to believe 
 evolution and revelation, for both declare that “ man 
 is not man as yet.” ‘There are prognostics of some- 
 thing nobler yet to come. As the giant of brawn bowed 
 before the giant of brain, so will the giant of brain bow 
 in turn before the moral and spiritual giant. Not that 
 men will have less brains in their heads, or less muscles 
 on their bones, but more of the moral law in their 
 hearts. 
 
 The meek shall inherit the earth. A new age, with 
 a new type of man, shall come. A new aristocracy will 
 arise. It will laugh at wealth. In that age the million- 
 aire will be an exotic. He will be regarded by the then 
 reigning aristocracy as belonging to an outgrown and 
 lower order of human life. He will continue for a time 
 to have his admirers, just as the physical bully, the 
 belated specimen of the aristocracy of brawn, finds 
 today an admiring following in the lower stratum of 
 
180 THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 society. You will find in those days some of the ex- 
 pensive toys of the millionaire of the former age. They 
 will be kept in museums, there to be looked upon with 
 wonder, just as the millionaire of today looks upon the 
 spear and coat of mail of the knight of the Middle 
 Ages, or on the finery from the tomb of some ancient 
 Egyptian king,—relics and symbols of the aristocracy 
 which he has supplanted. It will be recalled that in 
 the earlier days of the intellectual age, men gazed in 
 astonishment on the ponderous old iron bedstead of 
 Og, king of Bashan, who was the last of the “ remnant 
 of the giants.” 
 
 The coming age will have a new standard by which 
 to measure men. It will judge them neither by the 
 breadth of their shoulders nor by the wealth they pos- 
 sess. Neither brute force nor wealth will count in the 
 Kingdom of God, but character only. For the coming 
 giant will be like Christ. The rule of the new aristoc- 
 racy will be what it was meant to be,—the rule of 
 the best. 
 
 VI. THE OLD ORDER AND THE NEW 
 
 ‘“‘ Blessed are the meek,”—the world has never taken 
 these words seriously. It laughs at those who do. 
 They are ignorant of the ways of life; they are vision- 
 ary; they are impractical. They are derided,—at best, 
 pitied. 
 
 ‘““ Blessed are the poor,” says Jesus. The world 
 smiles and replies, ‘‘ Blessed are the rich.” 
 
 “Blessed are they that mourn.” ‘The world an- 
 swers, “‘ Blessed are the gay and light-hearted.” 
 
S. S. MARQUIS 131 
 
 ‘Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after 
 righteousness.”” No,—‘‘ Blessed are they that follow 
 after the pleasures of the world.” 
 
 ““ Blessed are the merciful.’”’ No,—‘‘ Blessed are the 
 shrewd and heavy-handed.” 
 
 “ Blessed are the peacemakers.” No,— Blessed 
 are the fighters whose forts and fleets are strongest.” 
 
 ‘“‘ Blessed are the meek.” No,—‘‘ Blessed are the 
 strong: for they shall inherit the earth.” 
 
 So do the beatitudes of the new order clash with 
 those of the old. 
 
 I say that the world has not taken the Master seri- 
 ously. The same is true of the Church. We say, and 
 . do not. His words are constantly on our lips, but we 
 neither believe them in our hearts nor practice them in 
 our lives. He placed the emphasis on life. We have 
 shifted it to belief. But the time has come when we 
 must begin to take Him at His word. Foolish as His 
 sayings may seem to men of the old order, nevertheless 
 He spoke the truth. He put the emphasis where it 
 belongs. The meek shall inherit the earth. The dream 
 of the poet, the vision of the seer, the trend of evolu- 
 tion, and the life realized in the Son of Man—these all 
 point to the fulfilment of these words. Old types shall 
 pass away. ‘The new spiritual giant is in the making. 
 The old aristocracies shall fall before the new spiritual 
 aristocracy whose head is Christ. The kingdoms of the 
 world shall become His, and He shall reign forever and 
 ever, King of kings, and Lord of lords. 
 
132 THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 BRAY Ee 
 
 Grant, O Father, that Christ may so dwell in us that 
 His matchless spwrit of love and mercy and truth, together 
 with His unflinching and uncompromssing loyalty to God, 
 may become our disposition. Help us so to lwe that the 
 mind that was in Him may be in us, and that His spirit 
 may hasten the coming of His Kingdom; through the 
 same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
MINOT C. MORGAN 
 
 A forward looking preacher stands in the pulpit made 
 historic through the ministry of such stalwarts as Edward 
 Pence, Wallace Radcliffe, and Arthur T.. Pierson. Dr. 
 Minot C. Morgan was born in Princeton, New Jersey, in 
 1876, growing up under the cultural and spiritual influ- 
 ences of a Presbyterian Manse. Princeton University 
 gave him his first wide outlook on life and Princeton 
 Seminary opened the vistas still wider. After graduating 
 from the Seminary in 1900 he was ordained to the minis- 
 try of the Presbyterian Church, preaching with unusual 
 favor in Long Island and New Jersey until 1917 when he 
 was called to Fort Street Presbyterian Church of Detroit. 
 Since that time he has been making an ever widening in- 
 fluence throughout the state and nation, acting as Chair- 
 man of the Trustee Board of Alma College, Trustee of 
 Princeton Seminary, and Secretary of the Board of Edu- 
 cation in his own denomination. His ministry in Detroit 
 has been refreshing, vital, and commanding; his preaching 
 has been intellectual, forceful, and convincing. ‘There is 
 no hesitant note sounded by him in regard to industrial 
 and social justice, and the summons of Jesus Christ to 
 leave the old paths and pioneer in new and untried ways. 
 Preaching as he does every Sunday to a large group of 
 financial and industrial leaders he has revealed a binding 
 loyalty to Jesus Christ that has won for him the respect of 
 the entire city, and has actually kindled fires of glowing 
 righteousness on countless thousands of hearts. What a 
 gracious privilege to minister in such a way and in such 
 a church! 
 
LOYALTY TO CHRIST—“ Ve did not choose me,” 
 says Jesus, “but I chose you and appointed you,’ “ or- 
 dained you” the old version has tt. And tt is no dtspar- 
 agement of the rites of any ecclesiastical organization, to 
 say, that His is the only ordination that really counts. The 
 ceremonies of the Church possess a beauty and a value 
 which none may gainsay, but they are impotent to clothe 
 with spiritual power one whom Christ has not appointed, 
 and though they be dented to one of His chosen, they can- 
 not thwart his mimstry. Behind the laying on of hands by 
 Bishop or by Presbytery, is that election to service of 
 whech the Master spoke when He said, “I chose you.” 
 
 Now tf I believe that this Jesus és the Christ, the Son of 
 the Living God, who can say, “ All authorsty hath been 
 given unto me in heaven and on earth,’ then I can con- 
 ceive of no higher, no more impelling commission than 
 His. It is futile to deny that Christianity is a religson of 
 authority. One of our university professors in his dis- 
 cussion of the religion of a mature mind, says m effect, 
 that a religion, which cannot command, merits only the 
 contempt of a full grown man. I rejoice to believe that 
 my ministry is in fulfilment of a divine command ; other- 
 wise I have missed my calling. I should certainly go at 
 something else, unless I believed that He had ordained me 
 to go and bear fruit, fruit that shall abide. He has called 
 me to a task of enduring productivity, and in loyal obedi- 
 ence to His appointment, I set myself, to do His will, or 
 I am worthless. 
 
 Loyalty to Christ however wmplies not only obedience, 
 but love, love that is the response to His own and should 
 have a like expression. As John says, “ Hereby know we 
 love, because He laid down His life for us and we ought 
 to lay down our lives for the brethren.” Love is the mo- 
 tive power of all true mimstry, and finds its inevitable and 
 joyous expression in Hits service who said, “ If ye love Me, 
 ye will keep my commandments.”—Muinot C. Morcan. 
 
IX 
 THE EYES OF A YOUNG MAN 
 
 MINOT C. MORGAN, D.D. 
 Fort Street Presbyterian Church 
 
 “And Jehovah opened the eyes of the young man; ae he 
 saw.”’—II Kines 6:17. 
 
 This was God’s answer to a prophet’s prayer for a 
 young man who could not see, and who did not know 
 that he could not see. He knew rather, or thought he 
 knew, that his eyesight was flawless. It was because 
 those keen young eyes of his saw so much, that he was 
 so frightened. 
 
 Peacefully had he slept the night before in the quiet 
 little city of Dothan and calmly had he risen at dawn, 
 but before he set about his simple tasks in the service 
 of his master the prophet, he went forth from the house 
 to breathe the fragrant morning air and feast his eyes 
 on the varied beauty of the encircling hills. But so far 
 from giving him needful poise for the day’s duties, 
 what he saw terrified him. With unmistakable clear- 
 ness those piercing young eyes revealed to him not just 
 quiet pasture lands and gently waving trees on hillsides, 
 but a bristling host of soldiery with chariots and horses, 
 completely surrounding the city, blocking every road 
 and by-path, and making escape impossible. Rushing 
 to Elisha, he cries with trembling lip, “‘ Alas! my mas- 
 
 135 
 
136 THE EYES OF A YOUNG MAN 
 
 ter, how shall we do? ” To which the prophet calmly 
 answers, “‘ Fear not, for they that are with us are more 
 than they that are with them.” “Is he blind? ” thinks 
 the young man. ‘“ Have his old eyes grown so dull that 
 he cannot see the extent of this besieging army, and 
 imagines that the paltry company in little Dothan out- 
 numbers this Syrian host? ” 
 
 Ah! lad, you are the one that is blind, and those eyes 
 of yours are so keen that you do not know it. You 
 think that because you can see every flashing spear on 
 yonder hill and every restive chariot horse that you can 
 outsee the old prophet. Listen, boy, he is praying for 
 you. Hear what he says. ‘ Jehovah, I pray thee, open 
 his eyes, that he may see.” In amazement the young 
 man feels the answer of the prayer. He sees, sees as 
 he had never seen before, sees nearer than the circling 
 hosts of Syria, the inner circle of the hosts of heaven. 
 First he beheld just the threat of material force, then, 
 with opened eyes, the glory of spiritual power and the 
 assurance of redeeming love. 
 
 Now the readiness with which God answered the 
 prophet’s prayer is a revelation of the divine heart. It 
 is indicative not only of His regard for an old man’s 
 entreaty, but of His love for a young man’s soul and 
 His longing that the eyes of the soul may see. So when 
 men of old, speaking as they were moved by the Holy 
 Spirit, declared a more wonderful revealing of God that 
 was yet to be, they said, “‘ Then the eyes of the blind 
 shall be opened and the ears of the deaf shall be un- 
 stopped—and the ransomed of Jehovah shall return 
 and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy 
 
-MINOT C. MORGAN 137 
 
 shall be upon their heads: they shall obtain gladness 
 and joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” 
 
 And when at last prophetic promise found its fulfil- 
 ment in God’s highest revelation of Himself to human- 
 ity and in humanity, we behold the Man of Nazareth 
 opening blind eyes. Indeed it was so distinctive of 
 Jesus and so clear an indication of His Messiahship 
 that when discouraged John the Baptist sent from the 
 Herodian dungeon with the query, ‘‘ Art thou he that 
 cometh or look we for another? ” the Master simply 
 continued for a time His gracious ministry to human 
 need and then said to the messengers, ‘‘ Go and tell 
 John the things which ye hear and see: the blind re- 
 ceive thei sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are 
 cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, 
 and the poor have good tidings preached to them.” 
 
 Beside the road near Jericho, there sat a blind beg- 
 gar, the son of Timzus, well aware of his need and 
 wretched in the poverty of his darkened world. Sud- 
 denly his ear detects the tread of approaching feet and 
 the hubbub of many voices. ‘“ What is it all about? ” 
 he asks. “‘ Jesus of Nazareth passeth by,” is the an- 
 swer. ‘“ Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me! ” 
 he cries. ‘‘ What wilt thou that I should do unto 
 thee? ” asks Jesus. ‘‘ Rabboni, that I may receive my 
 sight,” is his eager entreaty. ‘‘ Go thy way,” says the 
 Master, ‘thy faith hath made thee whole.” And 
 straightway he received his sight and followed Him in 
 the way. ‘“ Go my way, saidst thou, Lord? My way 
 is now thy way. Clearly I see it and go that way 
 with thee.”’ 
 
138 THE EYES OF A YOUNG MAN 
 
 The Scripture gives us also the contrasting picture of 
 another blind man, a young man of unusual beauty of 
 countenance and character with eyes as clear and vision 
 as keen as Elisha’s servant. Jesus, looking upon him, 
 loved him, and longed to open his eyes, too. The young 
 man was not wholly blind, to be sure, it was an interest 
 in spiritual things that had brought him to Jesus: on 
 his lips trembled the question, ‘ Good Teacher, what 
 shall I do to inherit eternal life? ’’ Nevertheless, his 
 love for material things so blinded him to spiritual 
 values that when Jesus said to him, “ Sell all that thou 
 hast and distribute to the poor and thou shalt have 
 treasure in heaven: and come follow me,” the young 
 man, despite all the beauty and grace of character 
 which he possessed, could not see it. ‘‘ His counte- 
 nance fell at the saying and he went away sorrowful, 
 for he was one that had great possessions.” 
 
 Ah! there is a pathos in the picture of Bartimeus, 
 poor blind beggar, and fully aware of his blindness, but 
 there is pathos greater still in the blindness of the rich 
 young ruler, a blindness to spiritual values, a blindness 
 of which he was doubtless unaware. 
 
 The tragedy of the Church at Laodicea was, in part, 
 the tragedy of an unawareness of spiritual need, a 
 blindness unguessed. To her the Lord declared, ‘“ Be- 
 cause thou sayest I am rich and have gotten riches, and 
 have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art 
 the wretched one and miserable and poor and blind and 
 naked, I counsel thee to buy of me gold refined by fire, 
 that thou mayest become rich; and white garments that 
 thou mayest clothe thyself, and that the shame of thy 
 
MINOT C. MORGAN 139 
 
 nakedness be not made manifest; and eyesalve to 
 anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see.” 
 
 Ah! the pathos of it. Eyes have they but they see 
 not. And are they without their counterpart today? 
 I suppose those Laodiceans were delightful people 
 socially; they were doubtless possessed of the refine- 
 ment and culture which is more easily attainable by 
 those in affluent circumstances than by those who are 
 held down by poverty to irksome and unending toil. 
 Many of them may have been possessed of great per- 
 sonal charm, which made them delightful companions. 
 Paul evidently thought a good deal of them, he sends 
 salutations to them in the Colossian Epistle, and urges 
 that the people in Colosse get the letter which he wrote 
 to Laodicea and read it. He prays for them that they 
 may be comforted, that their hearts may be knit to- 
 gether in love, that they may know the mystery of 
 God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wis- 
 dom and knowledge hidden. Lovely people—but lack- 
 ing in spiritual vision. And such there are today. 
 Young men with as fine a physical equipment as the 
 youth at Dothan, and with as great a personal charm as 
 the rich young ruler, whom Jesus looked upon and 
 loved, but as yet they have not the vision of spiritual 
 things, and they know not their own blindness. Many 
 are they, of course, of whom this is not true, young men 
 whose eyes have been opened, and, while the old men 
 are dreaming dreams, they are seeing visions, as the 
 ancient prophet Joel had foretold, and as the apostle 
 of Pentecost proved. These are they in each succeed- 
 ing generation whose vision is of the things unseen and 
 
140 THE EYES OF A YOUNG MAN 
 
 eternal and whose obedience to their heavenly vision 
 transforms them and their world. 
 
 But, many are they, alas! whose eyes reveal to them 
 only the swords and spears and helmets on Dothan’s 
 hills, and who see not nearby the encircling God. 
 
 And who are they, these keen-eyed men who cannot 
 see? You will discover them among the rich, who have 
 found in wealth, power, position, social standing, lux- 
 ury, freedom and everything their heart desires. When 
 they say, “‘ What is such a man worth? ” they mean 
 ‘““ How great are his possessions? ” ‘Their whole life is 
 filled with that which has a monetary equivalent, that 
 which may be bought at a price. 
 
 Jesus’ comment on the episode of the rich young 
 ruler was the sad lament, ‘‘ How hardly shall they that 
 have riches enter into the kingdom of God.” Many do, 
 of course, but the reason for it that Jesus assigns is this, 
 that “ with God all things are possible.” It is He that 
 opens eyes blinded by wealth that they may see. 
 
 But you will discover unseeing eyes not only among 
 the rich, but among the poor, whose thought is focussed 
 upon the struggles for existence, whose life is made up 
 of toil and sleep in unending succession with an occa- 
 sional hour of dissipation. ‘There is no vision here, 
 just dull monotony. 
 
 Many are those, of course, among the ranks of the 
 poor, whose very hardships and heartaches have 
 brought God near; conscious of their great need, they 
 have found great peace through the vision they have 
 had of Him who satisfieth the longing soul and filleth 
 the hungry soul with good. 
 
MINOT C. MORGAN 141 
 
 But many are they also, who see Him not, and whose 
 eyes tell them only the story of a life that is hard and 
 toilsome and cruel and sordid. Oh! the pathos of their 
 lot, who, poor in this world’s goods, are blind also to the 
 riches of His grace, whose arms are ever circling us 
 in love. | 
 
 Still further, among those for whom a prophet’s 
 prayer may well be offered that their eyes may be 
 opened, are a goodly company of men of business; fine, 
 clean-cut, upright, intelligent, energetic, successful: 
 men of affairs, they are, but the affairs that fill their 
 thoughts are of the great enterprises in which they are 
 involved, commercial and industrial. Within these 
 spheres they may be men of vision; indeed, they never 
 would have succeeded if they were not. But their 
 spheres are limited and, great though they be, they are 
 not great enough to satisfy the soul of man. Utter 
 absorption in them is sure to dwarf the soul, and dull 
 the vision of finer things. 
 
 In this group also we rejoice to find a great company 
 who refuse to limit life to a business enterprise, who 
 discover spiritual values in their daily tasks, and who 
 see beyond the obvious things of a material world into 
 the reality and the beauty of the world of spiritual life, 
 into the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Yes, but what of the others, whose keen business 
 sense does not sense the things of the spirit, and whose 
 eyes see not life’s higher values? For them, with deep 
 affection and with real concern, we pray Elisha’s 
 prayer. 
 
 Another group to whom our thought turns naturally 
 
142 THE EYES OF A YOUNG MAN 
 
 are the young men of our colleges and universities; 
 splendid fellows they are, in the full vigor of youth, 
 with all its fine enthusiasm. The world of science is 
 opening before them, for the first time. It has capti- 
 vated them, it fills their mental horizons full. To them 
 it is the story of the universe and its explanation. 
 Imagination thrills with the tale of its evolution 
 through the eons of nebular formation, and then the 
 geologic ages of this earth, and then the fascinating 
 development from primordial life through countless 
 millenniums up to man. 
 
 And so to many a keen young mind evolution, in- 
 stead of being as it is, the story of the way God works, 
 becomes a substitute for God, and telescope and test- 
 tube take the place of faith. Multitudes there are, of 
 course, of whom this is not true, who though men of 
 science are also men of faith, and because men of sci- 
 ence are men of deeper, richer faith. They may state 
 their faith in terms unfamiliar to older generations and 
 unknown to many an ancient creed. But they see God, 
 that is the important thing. Nearer than Dothan’s hills 
 and all that fill them, nearer than the noisy enginery 
 of industry or commerce, nearer than all the start- 
 ling revelations of material science, they see God, the 
 personal God, the Father of our spirits. But some 
 there are who lack this vision, whose minds are so 
 flooded with truths that they have not grasped the 
 unity of truth, whose eyes are so enraptured with the 
 sight of things that they have failed to see Him, . 
 without whom this multitude of things are chaotic 
 and irrational. For them, with yearning love, the 
 
MINOT C. MORGAN 143 
 
 prophet prays, “ Jehovah, open their eyes, that they 
 may see.” 
 
 And do you know, there is no more glorious thing 
 that the Eternal God can do than just to answer that 
 prayer; indeed, in a sense, that constitutes the whole 
 story of God’s redemptive love, in the revealing of 
 Himself, whom to know is life eternal. 
 
 Here is the meaning of prophecy—God’s revealing 
 of Himself through inspired men who spake as they 
 were moved by His Spirit. Through their lips and by 
 their pens, through their minds and through their 
 hearts, God was manifesting Himself to men as a Per- 
 son, holy, strong, loving, unfailing, who forgiveth all 
 our iniquities, who healeth all our diseases, who re- 
 deemeth our life from destruction, who crowneth us 
 with loving kindness and tender mercies. 
 
 Here is the meaning of the Incarnation. Saith Jesus, 
 ‘“‘ He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” ‘“ I and 
 the Father are one.” Ever has He borne the name 
 Immanuel, God with us. ‘‘ In him dwelleth all the ful- 
 ness of the Godhead bodily.” His word is the word of 
 God. His works are the works of God. And we behold 
 “ the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the 
 face of Jesus Christ.” 
 
 Here is the abiding significance of the Cross. “ God 
 so loved the world.” ‘“ Herein is love, not that we loved 
 God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the 
 propitiation for our sins.” 
 
 “In the Cross of Christ I glory, 
 Towering o’er the wrecks of time, 
 All the light of Sacred Story, 
 Gathers round its head sublime.” 
 
144 THE EYES OF A YOUNG MAN 
 
 Here is the heart of the Gospel, without which we 
 cannot adequately know the love of God. Here was 
 the living center of Apostolic preaching. And _ here, 
 unless we are to preach another Gospel, must be ours. 
 “ Christ—Crucified”” . . . ‘‘ Christ the power of God 
 and the wisdom of God.” 
 
 Here, also, is the glory of the Resurrection. God’s 
 triumph over death and over sin, through Him “ who 
 was delivered up for our offenses, and raised again for 
 our justification.” It is God, the glorious God, that 
 ‘‘raised him from the dead and made him to sit at his 
 right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and 
 authority and power and dominion, and every name 
 that is named, Hot only in this world, but also in that 
 which is to come.’ 
 
 Here, too, is the purpose of the Holy Spirit aye 
 in our hearts, that He may make God known, guiding 
 us into the truth, revealing to us our Father’s will and 
 inclining our hearts to obey it, as we see it manifest in 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 Thus through all the story of God’s redemptive work 
 for men, there runs the increasing purpose to reveal 
 Himself to them, to open their eyes that they may see, 
 to enlighten their minds that they may know, to warm 
 their hearts that they may love with heart and soul and 
 strength and mind the Lover of their souls. 
 
 The answer, then, which God gave to Elisha’s prayer 
 was not just an exceptional miracle; rather it was the 
 characteristic expression of a gracious power, which the 
 divine Father is ever eager to give. You and I, then, 
 may offer that prayer with entire confidence that God 
 
MINOT C. MORGAN 145 
 
 will hear and answer. We may offer it for ourselves, 
 that we see Him more clearly and know Him more per- 
 fectly. We may offer it for others, for those splendid 
 young men of this generation who, keen-eyed and alert, 
 are some of them unaware of their blindness and others 
 of them groping toward the light. To that intercession 
 God will graciously respond. He may not do it with 
 that suddenness which characterized the opening of the 
 young man’s eyes in Dothan, or the blinding of the 
 young man’s eyes with the surpassing glory of a 
 heavenly vision on the road to Damascus. Ordinarily 
 the knowledge of the truth is more gradually acquired, 
 though our apprehension of it at certain crises in our 
 spiritual experience may thrill our minds with sudden 
 bursts of glory. But whether vision comes as in- 
 stantly as to Bartimzus, or as gradually as to that 
 other blind man who saw ‘men as trees walking,” 
 _and later “ saw all things clearly,” it matters not, so 
 vision comes. And then within and beneath and 
 above this wonderful universe in which we dwell and 
 all the fascinating texture of human life is seen that 
 spiritual reality, which interprets all and which shall 
 endure forever. 
 
 And I like to think that those who by the grace of 
 God have beheld this truth centering in Christ and re- 
 vealed through Him, are specially commissioned to 
 make Him known who said, ‘“‘ Let your light so shine 
 before men that they may see, and seeing your good 
 works may glorify your Father who is in heaven. For 
 this is life eternal that they should know the only true 
 God and him whom he hath sent, even Jesus Christ.” 
 
146 THE EYES OF A YOUNG MAN 
 
 ‘“‘ And his servants shall serve him and they shall see 
 his face.” 
 
 PRAYER 
 
 O Gracious Father, who hast formed the eye of man for 
 vision and the soul of man to know Thyself, wllumine our 
 minds we beseech Thee by the light of Thy truth. Help 
 us to see Thee in all Thy creation and supremely in Him 
 who is the effulgence of Thy glory and the express image 
 of Thy person, even Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant that 
 we may know the truth and that the truth may make us 
 free, free from darkensng error and enslaving sin. Enable 
 us we pray to grow in grace and in knowledge of our Lord 
 and Saviour Jesus Christ til that day when we shall be like 
 Him for we shall see Him as He is. Meantime may it be 
 our joy to take our place and do our part in Hts gracious 
 service, who would have all men to be saved and come to 
 the knowledge of the truth. In Jesus name. Amen. . 
 
REINHOLD NEIBUHR 
 
 Reinhold Neibuhr was born in Wright City, Missouri, 
 thirty-two years ago last June. Elmhurst College and Eden 
 Theological Seminary furnished him his earlier training. 
 Later on, he studied at Yale Divinity School, and Yale 
 University granted him the degree of M.A. ‘Twice has he 
 gone to Europe with the Sherwood Eddy parties, giving 
 special study to the conditions in France and Germany. 
 Apparently his schooling is only well begun; there are few 
 keener or more eager minds in the ministry. True to the 
 spirit of youth he has broken with tradition. He is never 
 satisfied with conditions as he finds them; and is ever 
 holding up the shallowness and weakness of modern civil- 
 ized life. Nevertheless, one can always find the note of 
 noble belief and high faith in his messages, for the word 
 he brings is of a new day, a better day, a day different 
 from all others in that Christ will be given right of way in 
 business, society, and religion. Brilliancy of mind, fervor 
 of spirit, and steadfast allegiance to Jesus Christ combine 
 to make his sermons and addresses among the most effec- 
 tive of the many worthy discourses brought to the people 
 of this city. His fellows honored him last year by electing 
 him President of the Detroit Pastors’ Union. 
 
REALISM AND IDEALISM—The tragedy of our 
 day ts that those who see with acute penetration the weak- 
 nesses of our civilization have little hope for mankind, 
 while those who have inherited the tradittonal hope do not 
 seem capable of analyzing the sins of our day. Our real- 
 ists are too cynical; and our édealists are too sentimental. 
 We need prophets who are not afratd to know the worst 
 about man, and who will yet maintain their faith in him. 
 In other words, we need a religion which does not gloss 
 over any ugly facts in human life; but approaches the total 
 facts of life from the perspective of spiritual faith. Wsth 
 such a religion we can preach repentance without being 
 tempted to despair and can be optimists without being 
 corrupted with hypocricy.—REINHOLD NEIBUBR. 
 
A 
 TYRANT SERV ANTS 
 
 REINHOLD NEIBUHR, M.A. 
 Bethel Evangelical Church 
 
 “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the 
 Sabbath.”—Marxk 2:27. 
 
 Man has a curious weakness for giving such unthink- 
 ing devotion to the institutions and governments which 
 are meant to serve him that he tempts them to assume 
 arbitrary power over him and to conceive their life as 
 an end in itself and not as a means to an end. Human 
 history is filled with evidences of this curious per- 
 versity. Jesus encountered it in the institution of the 
 Sabbath. Whatever motives of tabu may first have 
 caused primitive man to set aside a holy day and the 
 early Semite to keep the Sabbath, religion at its best 
 and as the prophets interpreted it, justified the Sabbath 
 for its social and human value as a day of rest and 
 worship. 
 
 The Sabbath, according to the best Jewish thought, 
 was made for man; but so great was the concern of the 
 legalist for the keeping of the Sabbath and so great was 
 the fear of the people that they might violate its sanc- 
 tity that it became hedged about with a hundred and 
 one laws calculated to enforce rest and quiet. These 
 laws interfered so much with natural, wholesome and 
 
 149 
 
150 TYRANT SERVANTS 
 
 even necessary activities that to keep the Sabbath be- 
 came a burden rather than a boon to man. Jesus, with 
 that natural regard for the wholesome and natural and 
 instinctive aversion to artificialities which character- 
 ized His whole ministry, was in constant conflict with 
 the Sabbath legalists. 
 
 At the present moment we are not interested in the 
 immediate question of Sabbath observance, except to 
 note that our own Puritanism is not always free of the 
 sins which Jesus imputed to Sabbath legalists. What 
 interests us is the wider tendency in human thought 
 and action of which the Sabbath legalism is but a 
 symptom and the wider implication of the principle for 
 which Jesus contended. Institutions are made for men 
 and not men for institutions. Except by constant and 
 jealous vigilance it is impossible to restrain the servants 
 of mankind from becoming its tyrants. 
 
 The problem of keeping our servants in their proper 
 place has been a vexing one throughout the history of 
 civilization. Governments which were meant to bless 
 human life with the virtues of social order have easily 
 become the oppressors of men; religions which should 
 have emancipated man from every tyranny elevated 
 the priest into positions of irresponsible autocracy; 
 mysteries such as those of man’s sex life in which some 
 of the best values of human life are enmeshed have 
 become the occasion for degradation, as for instance 
 in the phallic orgies of primitive religions. Nothing is 
 so good and so useful but that it cannot be corrupted 
 by excessive veneration. If it has been a problem 
 throughout human history to observe a due sense of 
 
REINHOLD NEIBUHR 151 
 
 proportion in dealing with tools and means of human 
 happiness, that problem is more urgent today than ever 
 before. Human life is more social than it once was; 
 and, therefore, the authorities which are the by- 
 products of social order are more potent; life is more 
 complex, and the institutions through which we express 
 it have therefore become more difficult to control. 
 
 It is a real question in the modern day whether the 
 nation has not become as much a foe as a servant of 
 human happiness. Democracy emancipated us from 
 the caprice of individual tyrants. But it made the 
 nation more powerful than it was in the days of per- 
 sonal government. Tyrants ceased their wars when 
 their exchequers were emptied, but democratic govern- 
 ment can levy taxes upon unborn generations and thus 
 continue warfare long after a stage of practical in- 
 solvency has been reached. Rapid means of communi- 
 cation make centralization of authority over vast 
 masses of men possible. Thus science and democracy 
 co-operate in making government at once more stable 
 and more centralized and therefore more potent for 
 good and for evil. If we cannot eliminate international 
 anarchy from world civilization, this simply means that 
 we have made government more potent for evil. Medi- 
 ceval peasants were left practically uncorrupted by 
 hatred through the feudal struggles of their day. A 
 modern war sows seeds of hatred in the hearts of even 
 the children; and our vaunted science gives us the 
 weapons to transmute this hatred into effective and 
 wholesale murder. 
 
 Nationalism is not of itself an evil thing. It is not 
 
152 TYRANT SERVANTS 
 
 evil that men should organize their social life. It is 
 natural and inevitable. But if one unit of this social 
 life, the nation, sets itself up as final and absolute be- 
 cause it happens to be larger than the others, though 
 not large enough to include the whole human family, 
 then the nation becomes a peril to human happiness. 
 It is such a peril today. It demands the sacrifice of 
 human and personal values, and makes claims upon 
 lives of eternal significance for ends that have no. 
 eternal value. Trade routes and spheres of influence, 
 markets and sources of raw material, instinctive hat- 
 reds and instinctive fears, imperial ambitions and eco- 
 nomic greed, these are the secular motives and the 
 secular aims for which human life is degraded. 
 Nothing can defeat the arrant secularism of our present 
 international order (or it would be better to say our 
 international anarchy) than an appreciation of human 
 beings as divinely and eternally significant souls. 
 
 Nations were made for men and not men for nations. 
 If we could see human beings from the perspective of 
 Jesus we would not hold them in contempt nor in fear, 
 and we would soon bring the nationalism which de- 
 grades and corrupts their life under the dominion of 
 the soul. 
 
 These big cities in which we live and of which we are 
 so inordinately proud should be regarded with more 
 suspicion and less veneration by the men whose ser- 
 vants they are expected to be. We are as foolishly 
 proud of the size of our cities as of the strength of our 
 nations. What difference does it make whether the 
 city in which I live has a hundred thousand or a mil- 
 
REINHOLD NEIBUHR 153 
 
 lion inhabitants? It means overcrowded schools, un- 
 assimilated populations, profiteering in real estate, 
 pitifully small apartments and imperiled family life 
 and all the other evils which attend the overcrowded 
 metropolis. How puerile we are in our vanity over our 
 cities. We recount the story of their rapid growth to 
 every passing stranger. 
 
 But we forget that we never built them for men. We 
 build the factories first and the men stream in from the 
 farms and from across the seas to seek work there. 
 Providing these men with homes and comforts and 
 cultural advantages is an afterthought with most of us. 
 We make it as difficult, in fact, as we know how for 
 these newcomers to gain a foothold in our city. If we 
 have a shrewd suspicion that the city will grow in a cer- 
 tain direction we make haste to buy real estate there 
 so that we may sell it to the newcomer at a profit. The 
 ethical implications of this practice seem to escape us 
 entirely. 
 
 I am not competent to weigh the virtues of rural with 
 those of urban life, but I am convinced that the imper- 
 sonal relationships of a city are not conducive to the 
 highest morality. Most of us are what we are because 
 of a certain amount of social pressure and social in- 
 fluence. If the individual is completely detached from 
 his social group and lives an isolated life, as he fre- 
 quently does in the metropolis, it is not easy to main- 
 tain the highest form of virtue. No man can estimate 
 the number of moral tragedies which the loneliness of 
 a big city occasions. We are, of course, not totally 
 blind to this problem of the city, and we try in church 
 
154 TYRANT SERVANTS 
 
 and lodge and club to personalize the relationships of 
 the city. But our efforts are hardly diligent and far- 
 reaching enough to accomplish the purpose. There are 
 social thinkers who think that the large city is hopeless 
 and that the only hope for an industrial civilization is 
 to decentralize industry and destroy the metropolis. 
 Perhaps they are right. Whether they are or not, our 
 immediate problem is to do more than we have done to 
 make the city a servant of men. If we have a sincerely 
 spiritual interest in men, we must insist with greater 
 passion and more effective social action that cities were 
 made for men and not men for cities. 
 
 Industry is another of these dangerously ambitious 
 servants of man which is constantly setting up its own 
 life as an end in itself. Ideally the modern machine 
 with its multiplied productivity should be a blessing to 
 man. It should provide him with more comforts and 
 more leisure. To a certain extent it has done that. 
 
 The eight-hour day is the fruit not of legislation, but 
 of labor-saving mechinery. Our comforts have cer- 
 tainly been increased tremendously by machine indus- 
 try. But no one seems concerned to note the price we 
 have paid for these blessings. Creative joy has been 
 taken out of work by the automatic machine. ‘The 
 cultural advantages which were inherent in many forms 
 of toil in the hand-craft period have been destroyed. 
 The more we have humanized the machine the more 
 have we dehumanized the mechanic and given him 
 nothing in return but a fairly decent wage and the 
 doubtful blessing of an automobile. We have a naive 
 delight in making and owning things. It is not easy to 
 
REINHOLD NEIBUHR 155 
 
 recognize the personality of the worker in a big factory, 
 but we have not even tried to do it. Every form of 
 industrial democracy is anathema with us because we 
 fear that it will retard production. Everything is sacri- 
 ficed for efficiency, mechanical efficiency. No indus- 
 trialist gives a second’s thought to the inevitable 
 tendency of modern industry to destroy the cultural 
 advantages of toil and leave the laborer without even a 
 desire for a richer and fuller life. If labor does express 
 some dissatisfaction with the terms of its employment, 
 we set that down as rank ingratitude. We are paying 
 good wages, and we do not see what more these in- 
 grates want. 
 
 We fail to see that the possession of the things which 
 modern industry produces is an unmixed blessing. It 
 is nice, to be sure, to have the vacuum cleaners, radios, 
 phonographs and automobiles, which are the character- 
 istic products of industrial enterprise. But we have 
 become the slaves of these things. They are in the sad- 
 dle and they ride mankind. We are more comfortable 
 than happy. We conduct our business task with fever- 
 ish diligence in order that we may have all these things 
 in proper abundance; and then we use them to live as 
 hectically in our leisure as in our business. And we 
 prefer luxurious possessions to necessary ones. How 
 many young men are buying automobiles on the part 
 payment plan, who ought to be saving up their money 
 for a house? That is one reason for the housing short- 
 age and the little apartments in which it is quite impos- 
 sible to raise a family. 
 
 Modern industry is a problem not only for the pro- 
 
156 TYRANT SERVANTS 
 
 ducer and the consumer, but for the community as 
 such. For industry aggravates national frictions and 
 is one of the roots of war. The hungry maw of the 
 great machine must be fed, and so we post o’er land 
 and ocean for raw materials and do violence to the 
 backward peoples who possess the materials which we 
 need for our industrial enterprise. Our worry only 
 starts with raw materials, for we need markets as well. 
 The big machine is constantly producing more than we 
 consume, no matter how high we raise our standard of 
 living. Consequently we must find world areas into 
 which these excess products can be thrown. Thus in- 
 evitably we find industry behind every kind of im- 
 perialism. What a vicious circle we are in. We sacri- 
 fice personality for the production of things; we 
 sacrifice serenity and quiet in the use of the things 
 made at so great a price; and then we imperil peace 
 with our brothers as we try to impose our things upon 
 the less-favored portion of mankind. Surely it is time 
 to say with force that industry was made for man and 
 not man for industry. 
 
 Of course, it is easier to say that than to reorganize 
 industry in terms of its principle. The fact is that our 
 industrialism and our nationalism and our urbanism 
 are all intermeshed so that the real question for modern 
 man to solve is whether he wants civilization to be for 
 man or man for civilization. Our conquest of nature 
 and the resulting wealth, our rapid means of communi- 
 cation and the resulting centralization of authority 
 within nations and increased intimacy of contact be- 
 tween nations, our great industrial units and the re- 
 
REINHOLD NEIBUHR 157 
 
 sulting inequality of privilege and power, all these 
 characteristics of our modern life have made civiliza- 
 tion a very dubious blessing. We are comfortable, but 
 we are not happy; we are living hectic but not abund- 
 ant lives; we have leisure, but no capacity to enjoy it; 
 we have a world neighborhood, but no world brother- 
 hood. We shall probably secure none of the things we 
 really need until we regard our whole modern life with 
 less naive delight. We are too uncritical about it. We 
 have permitted civilization to become our master 
 through the same weakness which raised servants to 
 tyrants in other days. To make civilization again the 
 servant of man will require a penetrating insight on the 
 one hand and a robust faith on the other. The people 
 who really believe in human values, and who hold to a 
 transcendent conception of the soul must be more so- 
 phisticated in dealing with the enemies of the soul; and 
 the people who know modern civilization and have dis- 
 cerned its general tendencies with acute penetration 
 need more faith in men. The soul has no victorious 
 champion because its friends do not understand its 
 enemies; and those who understand its enemies do not 
 believe in the soul. 
 
 Logically, religion should be the final champion of 
 personality. For it is only a world view which is 
 grounded in religious faith that can properly appreci- 
 ate the precious mite of personality which man must 
 defend against impersonal nature, and again against 
 an impersonal nature that it has not learned the art or 
 acquired the interest to champion the soul against the 
 oppressions of civilization. That is why so many 
 
158 TYRANT SERVANTS 
 
 humble folks. who suffer most from the weaknesses of 
 modern civilization are disavowing religion. That is 
 why labor is growing cynical throughout the world. 
 Nothing will convert it from that cynicism but a re- 
 ligion which can prove itself socially and morally 
 effective, which can bring our economic and interna- 
 tional life under the dominion of the interests of 
 the soul. 
 
 We need people with such a consistently spiritual ap- 
 preciation of human life that they will instinctively 
 oppose every social custom and every political institu- 
 tion which dwarfs and degrades men. If the factory 
 robs men of personal values it must be changed until 
 it builds character and creates happiness. If the city 
 imperils virtue it may have to be destroyed, providing 
 it cannot be reformed. If the nation outrages the 
 diviner qualities of human life and sacrifices eternal 
 values for petty ends, it must be reformed until it 
 becomes a true servant of human personality. 
 
 To accomplish these herculean tasks we need a very 
 robust faith. Only a strong faith in men as children 
 of God, rooted in a spiritual conception of the universe, 
 will prompt men to champion the cause of the soul 
 against the world. But this faith must be as discern- 
 ing as it is robust. The enemies of the soul all profess 
 friendship for it, so that naivete in the champions of 
 the soul becomes a besetting sin. It is not easy to 
 penetrate through the conscious and unconscious hy- 
 pocrisies of modern civilization. Only the force of a 
 robust faith and the keenness of a trained intellect will 
 do it. If we can maintain our faith and put in its 
 
REINHOLD NEIBUHR | 159 
 
 service the best social intelligence, we will be able, in 
 time, to refashion our civilization into something akin 
 to the Kingdom of God. If we fail in either spiritual 
 passion or moral intelligence, our vaunted civilization 
 will become a huge Moloch which will devour our 
 children. Let us look through the eyes of Jesus with 
 His cool discernment upon all our social customs and 
 traditions, upon all our economic practices and indus- 
 trial methods, upon our great communities of race and 
 class and ask: Are these man’s servants or his 
 oppressors? 
 
 lie Iaee 
 
 Our God and Father of us all, we pray Thee that we 
 may come to know the worth of man, and that we may 
 come to understand that the mission of Jesus was to bring 
 to man a way of life which is above the physical. Teach 
 us the true dignity of man. Help us to find the joy there 
 1s in gsving to our lives the wmportance which Thy Son has 
 ascribed to them. Help us to find the joy which follows 
 a definite will and program to bring abundant living to the 
 world where we ltve. Grant that the Christ may find in us 
 willing workers, ready to take determimed stand against 
 every power of tradition and. present tendency which 
 would narrow the vision and beat back the progress and 
 the larger life of men. We ask in His name. Amen, 
 
nie 
 
 FEE TES 
 Pap te WAT aT ht 
 Bye huh vee ANA 
 
 ‘ 
 
 
 
ARTHUR LEE ODELL 
 
 Dr. Odell was born on a farm in Missouri, and has 
 spent most of his life so far in the Southwest. He was 
 graduated from the Missouri Valley College in 1904 and 
 from Union Theological Seminary in 1907, having been 
 ordained in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1905. 
 His later pastorates before coming to Detroit were at 
 Kingshighway Presbyterian Church, St. Louis, Missouri, 
 and the First Presbyterian Church, Phoenix, Arizona. 
 For a short period he was President of the Henry Ken- 
 dall College, Tulsa, Oklahoma. In every situation he 
 made a splendid record for himself and the Kingdom of 
 Christ. Since 1922 he has been minister at the West- 
 minster Presbyterian Church, where he is accomplishing 
 a highly successful community service in one of the fine 
 residential districts of Detroit. However, it is as preacher 
 of the gospel of Jesus that Dr. Odell excels, as one very 
 prominent layman has said about him, “ Never failing to 
 preach a compelling message, which sends the congrega- 
 tion home dreaming of the day of Righteousness and of 
 their own part in that great day.” This sermon is char- 
 acteristic of the writer—unadorned, direct, emphatic, 
 thoughtful and challenging. It is certainly worth our 
 while to pause and enquire concerning our faithfulness 
 to the high privilege of keeping the prophet alive—the 
 prophet in our own hearts and the prophet in other lives. 
 
STANDING IN HIS PLACE—To know the peace of 
 Christ's pardoning grace “that passeth understanding”: 
 to hear God calling us to go for Him; to accept humbly 
 and in fatth the responsibility of being set apart to the 
 Gospel ministry; to see men, women and helpless children 
 suffering from sin, lost to guidance, usefulness, the fellow- 
 ship of God, and yet to have compassion on them; to stand 
 as a messenger of the Savior, trymg to live righteously 
 while seeking to proclaim the “unsearchable riches of 
 Christ; to pay the full price of such a ministry in cease- 
 less toil and sacrifice that salvation may be for all and 
 that peace and goodwill may come upon the earth; that, 
 to me, 1s to stand in Hts place. How strange and won- 
 derful that any of us should so be called of God. 
 
 —ARTHUR LEE ODELL,. 
 
XI 
 KEEPING THE PROPHET ALIVE 
 
 ARTHUR LEE ODELL, D.D: 
 
 Westminster Presbyterian Church 
 
 “And Elijah said, Fear not,—make me therefore a little cake 
 first."—I Kines 17:13. 
 
 This may seem like a pitiless and selfish request. It 
 is a man speaking. He is in good health, has no fam-. 
 ily, can wring his living from the mountains under 
 normal conditions. It is a poor despairing widow to 
 whom he speaks. She is gathering sticks to cook a last 
 meal for herself and her son before they lie down to die 
 of hunger, for a famine is upon the land. 
 
 - But the name of the man is Elijah, and that gives a 
 more sympathetic mood to our thoughts. He is a 
 prophet of the Lord. The famine has touched him, too, 
 and God has sent him to be fed by the woman and her 
 son for a season. It was a hard time to live. There 
 was much anxiety because scarcity of food and water 
 threatened all with starvation. They were also serious 
 days for Israel on account of political and religious 
 conditions in the kingdom. Ahab was king. His wife, 
 Jezebel, of foreign blood and religion, was a real ruler 
 behind the throne. She was seeking to supplant the 
 worship of Jehovah with idolatry. Obadiah was a kind 
 of prime minister under Ahab. He trusted Jehovah 
 
 163 
 
164 KEEPING THE PROPHET ALIVE 
 
 and took deep, though secret, interest in the prophets 
 of the Lord who were trying to preserve for the Jews 
 their own religion. 
 
 On one side were Jezebel and her priests of Baal, and 
 with them lay the advantage of political power through 
 being closely associated with the weak king, Ahab. On 
 the other side were the deeply religious Jews, the proph- 
 ets, among whom Elijah was the outstanding figure, and 
 with them was the advantage of having God as a helper. 
 The contest for supremacy was intense, bitter at times. 
 Driving idolatry from among the Jews was like doing 
 away with the liquor traffic in our own country. 
 
 These were weighty days. The whole religious 
 future of the Jews, in fact the ultimate spring of 
 Christianity, so far as human powers go, depended 
 upon the final issue of this contest, and God’s chief 
 agencies, through which to send victory for spiritual 
 religion, were the prophets of the day. Destroy them 
 and Baalism could reign supreme until it should die 
 down of its own infections. 
 
 It was most important, then, that Elijah be kept 
 alive by the widow at all costs to herself and her son. 
 If the prophet were kept, she would be helping to save 
 her people from idolatry to the worship of the one true 
 God. If the prophet were destroyed all was lost for 
 herself and her people. 
 
 Why was this so? Because of what the prophet 
 stood for among the people as the religious leader of 
 his time, according to the information given us over 
 and over by those who have been our teachers. Let us 
 review their instructions. 
 
ARTHUR LEE ODELL 165 
 
 He was the representative of God to them. He was 
 God’s messenger, spokesman. Through him God’s will 
 concerning the children of earth was made clear. His 
 soul was alert and sensitive to God’s spirit, becoming 
 aware of the voice of the Almighty speaking to men, 
 and through him as a mouthpiece God spoke to Israel. 
 Losing the prophet, then, would have been a hushing 
 of God’s voice among them. 
 
 The prophet was a champion of righteousness. As 
 represented by Elijah he was courageous, uncompro- 
 mising with self or others; lofty, lonely, and persistent 
 in his efforts to keep the righteousness of God active in 
 human affairs. Centuries ahead of his time in his 
 thoughts, hopes and ideals, he was a mighty lift to his 
 age, keeping a constant strain and tension of upward 
 pull on the affairs of individuals and of state. 
 
 He was the antagonist of evil. He gave and claimed 
 no quarters in his battle against wickedness. Nothing 
 bad seemed to escape his searching vision, and his 
 frank denunciation sometimes staggered sin in high 
 places. His sensitive soul never became dulled by the 
 deadening powers of ever-present corruption in poli- 
 tics and religion. Even his fervor in waging this war 
 seemed to suffer few drops in temperature. There was 
 no respect of persons in his attack upon wickedness; 
 even the king had to meet the burning words of his 
 condemnation. His warfare rose to the grandeur of 
 the battle of the giants as when he met the priests 
 of Baal on Mount Carmel. The tragic was always 
 interwoven with his challenges, his contests. It was 
 a life-and-death struggle between right and wrong. 
 
166 KEEPING THE PROPHET ALIVE 
 
 One side must lose disastrously, the other must 
 finally win gloriously. What a champion of good, 
 what a foe to evil was he! Such is every true 
 prophet of God. 
 
 The prophet was the hope of his time. Unless he 
 could be heard and obeyed all would be lost. Idolatry 
 and its attending wickedness would win the day. Then 
 would come the decline and death of those moral values 
 and religious truth which had been gathered through 
 the centuries by the Jews. In saving Elijah the widow 
 helped to save religion for the Jews and finally for the 
 world. So is religion, that greatest boon of the race, 
 ever dependent upon the prophet for its life. Thus 
 does God choose to keep the prophet among us. It is 
 His way of ever keeping His messages ringing in our 
 ears. There have been times when great prophets 
 were almost numerous, and there have been times when 
 they seemed few or quite silent among their gener- 
 ation. But always God has kept more prophets alive 
 than any one soul knew; so has religion lived on and 
 advanced in purity of type and power of influence. 
 
 Nor shall we believe for a moment that the prophets 
 are absent from our own day. ‘They are to be found 
 among men, strong and faithful for righteousness. 
 Some are business men, educators, leaders in moral and 
 social reform, ministers of the gospel and statesmen. 
 Are there not to be found in every great profession of 
 our day some who have a keen sensitiveness to God’s 
 will, who are heroic champions of right against wrong, 
 on whom we depend for keeping alive the sense of 
 God’s presence among us and of our right relationship 
 
ARTHUR LEE ODELL 167 
 
 to Him? They are the mighty pillars bearing the tem- 
 ple of civilization in these days of reconstruction. 
 
 Is not the prophet to be found among the next gener- 
 ation already rising to succeed us? It is so easy, ap- 
 parently, to think he is not among the young. Yet we 
 must believe God and know that He will not leave any 
 age totally without these high spirits of guidance. 
 Surely we cannot live sympathetically near to the youth 
 of our time without soon becoming convinced that 
 among them are the prospective prophets. God keeps 
 sending into our homes those children who are to bear 
 the cross of being the preachers of righteousness and 
 leaders in all normal lines of professional and business 
 life. How often one sees in the home the one child so 
 gifted with a spiritual sense and so sensitive to high 
 ideals as to make him or her stand out distinctly from 
 the brothers and sisters in the home! Upon these in a 
 peculiar way God has set His seal to separate them 
 unto the peculiar work of a prophet among His people. 
 Among the youth in our colleges and universities there 
 are found those who are much more aware of spiritual 
 and moral truths than are others, and their souls are 
 already aflame with the zeal of their God which shall 
 send them enthusiastically into their tasks as Elijah 
 and John the Baptist went to their work in their own 
 day. If we shall only listen to the quiet voice of God 
 speaking to us in the calm certainty of the circum- 
 stances we shall surely learn that God has more than 
 seven thousand prophets, young and old among us, who 
 have not bowed the knee to Baal. In fact, instead of 
 having settled upon us the discouraging gloom and chill » 
 
168 KEEPING THE PROPHET ALIVE 
 
 of a coming night of godlessness, we should be able to 
 understand that God’s Kingdom keeps coming on earth 
 like an everlasting dawn, as the growing light of the 
 righteous ‘‘that shineth more and more unto the 
 perfect day.” 
 
 Shall we bring the search for the prophet and his 
 blessings a little nearer home? Let us look into our 
 own hearts, to see if we are one of the prophets among 
 men, to see if the prophet born of God within us is 
 still alive and active. Did not each of us start with a 
 prophet in our being? He should still be the com- 
 manding figure within unless we have allowed him to 
 starve or be beheaded by some idolatrous Jezebel who 
 has gained the throne of our hearts. Yes, verily, there 
 is the prophet within us; that part of our nature that 
 loves right and hates evil; that trusts God and dares to 
 accept the challenge of faith in the Christ. This 
 prophet within at times comes upon us suddenly, like 
 a fearless and stirred Elijah, to reprove us for some 
 evil deed, to warn us against some contemplated action, 
 to challenge us to a test of some low-browed plan. We 
 sometimes dread to meet him, as Ahab dreaded to meet 
 Elijah. Yet, deep in our souls, we know he is essential 
 to our final victory over evil. He is the helpful better 
 self, the man of iron within us for courage, nobility 
 and sacrifice. What should we do in times of uncer- 
 tainty and barren necessity, if there were not an Elijah 
 in the upper room of our being? 
 
 And how fare these prophets among us and within 
 us today? Where are they? What are the circum- 
 stances of their existence? What is our attitude toward 
 
ARTHUR LEE ODELL 169 
 
 them? Are they cheerful and active as on Carmel’s 
 heights or do they languish in hopeless despair beside 
 the failing stream of our religious zeal? Are they 
 given the first fruits of all our attention and efforts; 
 are we, in keeping them alive, truly seeking first the 
 Kingdom of God and His righteousness, or are they 
 dying around us and within us through our selfishness 
 and neglect? Do we bake for them a cake first? 
 Alas! prophets do die, we know, though they have 
 survived hard lots. The people have not always been 
 appreciative of them or kind to them. They have 
 “had trial of mockings and scourgings, yea moreover 
 of bonds and imprisonments—being destitute, afflicted, 
 ill-treated.””, They have been stoned. How much 
 poorer mankind is today because so many prophets 
 were not received, yea, were even put to death by those 
 to whom they were sent. Like our Christ, their own 
 received them not. Yes, prophets die. Elijah, Elisha, 
 Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, Isaiah, John the Baptist all 
 ceased from one cause or another to deliver their 
 mighty notes of warning, to speak forth their words of 
 condemnation or to sing their songs of hope in God. 
 New voices had to break silence. And prophets die 
 today. They die of old age, because of overwork, 
 weary and sore wounded, early in the battle. They 
 die because of neglect, of harsh treatment and misun- 
 derstandings on the part of those who should have been 
 their friends. It is so easy for us to destroy the young 
 prophet, to make light of his sentiments, to call him a 
 dreamer, to smile at his high aims for men in whom we 
 have lost at least part of our confidence, to smother 
 
170 KEEPING THE PROPHET ALIVE 
 
 down the fiery zeal of youth which should have been 
 fanned into intenser light and heat. Alas, too, the 
 prophet may die in your soul and mine because of 
 neglect and the abuse given by the base qualities of 
 our lower selves. How many of us have let fade from 
 our inner visions the high ideals of right, of worship, 
 and of love! 
 
 Indeed, we may even discover that we are not deeply 
 troubled because the prophet is no longer alive within 
 us. The day may come when we shall hunt the waste 
 places of our souls to find our forsaken Elijah that he 
 may call down showers of refreshing salvation upon 
 our sin-parched and barren hearts. Surely the day 
 will come when we shall realize that in losing our 
 prophets we have lost all, and only by finding him and 
 restoring him to his rightful place through Christ’s 
 pardon and love shall we be able at last to save any- 
 thing at all. If, then, we can keep the prophet alive 
 within us we can be saved; if we can keep enough 
 prophets alive in our country we can save America; if 
 the Church can send out enough prophets unto all 
 peoples, she can bring salvation unto all the world 
 through Christ, who has promised to be with them unto 
 the uttermost. 
 
 Join with me, then, my friends, in the noble resolve 
 suggested by this text. Let it be with us, that no 
 sacrifice shall be counted too great for us to make in 
 order to keep alive in our day those great souls of 
 spiritual vision and courage, especially those found 
 among the youth of our homes and communities. Let 
 us give sympathy, co-operation and guidance to them 
 
ARTHUR LEE ODELL 171 
 
 like Elijah giving to Elisha, like Eli nurturing young 
 Samuel into his God-given work. With them we will 
 gladly share our last morsel of time, energy, or spiritual 
 knowledge that they may have their day of power and 
 deliverance. We shall need to read, study, pray, wor- 
 ship, and work to crush the Ahabs and Jezebels out of 
 our souls, to stand true to every good work, to make 
 sacrifices, to keep alive the prophets within us. 
 
 That we are resolved to do, for, in the end, we be- 
 lieve the barrel of meal will waste not, since He to 
 whom the prophets of old looked as one who was to 
 come, calls unto every prophet among us today, giving 
 unto us His great commission, ‘‘ Go ye therefore, and 
 make disciples of all nations, and lo, I am with you 
 always even unto the end of the world.” Shall we at 
 the last be found among the prophets? Shall we be 
 able to keep the prophet alive? ‘‘ And Elijah said, 
 Fear not—make me thereof a little cake first.” 
 
 PRAYER 
 
 O God, our Father, send Thy Spirit into our hearts this 
 hour to feed the prophet within us, giving him new life 
 and settmg him upon his feet to lead our way henceforth 
 out of the woes of sin into the joys of Thy salvation, 
 through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. 
 
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AUGUSTUS P. RECCORD 
 
 Dr. Reccord is a graduate of Brown University and 
 Harvard Divinity School. Subsequently he held pastor- 
 ates in Chelsea, Cambridge and Springfield, Mass., and in 
 Newport, R. I. Before coming to Detroit he was minister 
 of the Church of the Unity, Springfield, for fourteen 
 years. In that city he was especially active in community 
 interests, being called upon repeatedly to take prominent 
 part in charter revisions, the housing commission, and 
 many other civic affairs of exceeding importance. For 
 the past six years Dr. Reccord has been the minister at 
 the First Unitarian Church in Detroit, attracting large 
 attention in the city. In recognition of the conspicuous 
 results of his ministry in New England and Michigan, the 
 honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred 
 upon him by Brown University. It ought to be said that, 
 out of a remarkable versatility, he places his greatest em- 
 phasis upon social and religious themes. A brilliant mind, 
 a most careful diction, a brotherly spirit and a deep 
 loyalty to the truth in God, as he understands it, contrive 
 to give him a worthy place in the front rank of our preach- 
 ers. One surely finds in this sermon the evidence of a 
 truly great preaching ministry in this age of skepticism 
 and doubt. 
 
OUR TASK—The challenge of today to the ministry 
 of religion is that we give to spiritual realities the place 
 and importance which they deserve. Too long they have 
 been made to take second rank. The task of the church 
 ts to mterpret the age to itself. Material progress and 
 intellectual attainment become a menace to cwwilization 
 unless accompanted by a corresponding growth in moral 
 principle and spiritual power. Then upon the foundation 
 of material prosperity and intellectual achtevement which 
 the toil and industry and self-sacrifice of men have laid, 
 the toil and industry and self-sacrifice of other men will 
 butld a more stately mansion, builded of the things of the 
 spirit and in which God will be all-in-all. ; 
 
 —Avucustus P. REccorp. 
 
ALT 
 LIVING THE IMMORTAL LIFE 
 
 AUGUSTUS P. RECCORD,; D.D. 
 First Unitarian Church 
 
 “This do and thou shalt live.’—Luxs 10: 28. 
 
 In the passage from which this text is taken, report- 
 ing a conversation between a certain young lawyer and 
 Jesus, we have represented two distinct attitudes 
 toward the life immortal. One represents the average 
 man, “‘ the man on the street ”’; the other, the religious 
 teacher. One was thinking of duration; the other of 
 quality. One had found life so good, so abounding in 
 creature comforts and worldly satisfactions, that he 
 yearned to have it prolonged forever. The other’s chief 
 concern was to so live as to make life worthy of being 
 prolonged forever. Then one can trust God to provide 
 the means. And so, when the young man came to 
 Jesus and asked, ‘‘ What shall I do to inherit eternal 
 life? ”, He referred him to the law in which he had been 
 brought up and asked what it had to say, not concern- 
 ing man’s destiny in another world, but concerning his 
 duty in this. When He received the expected reply, 
 “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with heart and soul 
 and mind and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself,’ 
 His answer was immediate and conclusive. ‘ This do 
 and thou shalt live.” Not live forever, but live. In 
 
 175 
 
176 LIVING THE IMMORTAL LIFE 
 
 other words, he who so lives is made aware that the 
 life that he is living is eternal. As Lyman Abbott once 
 said, ‘“I had rather be mortal and have a right to 
 immortality than be immortal and not be worthy of 
 immortality.” 
 
 Not long ago I was talking with a friend about the 
 apparent indifference to the Church and to organized 
 religion displayed by otherwise respectable and highly 
 respected men. I had broached the subject deliberately 
 because I knew that he was not a regular church at- 
 tendant and was associated with a group of men of 
 similar habit. He declared that their attitude was due 
 to no opposition to organized religion or lack of sym- 
 pathy with religious ideals, but to lack of faith in the 
 Church as the interpreter of those ideals. ‘“ Do you 
 know,” he said, “that the average man on the street 
 is without any compelling faith in God or in Christ 
 or in the future life? ”’ Further conversation revealed 
 that he had convinced himself that God is a creation 
 of the pious imagination, that Jesus was a self-deluded 
 Galilean peasant, that this life is all in all. Three score 
 years and ten, more or less, and then the end. | 
 
 I find it difficult to believe that this represents the 
 attitude of all or even a majority of those who are in- 
 different to the Church. And yet the existence in any 
 community of even a considerable number of men and 
 women who entertain such opinions concerning the 
 fundamental teachings of the Christian religion consti- 
 tutes a challenge which we cannot ignore. Even if 
 there was no God, no Christ, no future life,—grant 
 that the Church has been mistaken at all these points, 
 
AUGUSTUS P. RECCORD 77 
 
 civilization cannot afford to repudiate the ideals of life 
 and conduct for which the Church has stood. And if 
 it has not been mistaken, if it has glimpsed great 
 truths which one day will receive more adequate ex- 
 pression, civilization cannot afford to become indiffer- 
 ent to the one institution which has dedicated itself 
 unreservedly to the establishment and promulgation 
 of these truths. 
 
 “ Christ,’ some one says, “ was human as we are; 
 No judge eyes us from heaven, our sins to scan: 
 We live no more when we have done our span.” 
 “Well then, for Christ,’ thou answerest, “Who 
 
 can care?” 
 So answerest thou; but why not rather say: 
 “ Hath man no second life? Pitch this one high! 
 Sits there in heaven no judge, our sin to see? 
 More strictly then, the inward judge obey! 
 Was Christ a man like us? Ah, let us try 
 If we, then, too, can be such men as He.” 
 
 This is the only valid conclusion if the man on the 
 street is right. It is the conclusion to which we are 
 driven irresistibly by the logic of human experience. 
 If there is no other life, then this life must be pitched 
 at its highest if it is to be worth while. Faith in God 
 gives to virtue an added incentive, but the virtuous life 
 is of intrinsic worth, irrespective of this faith. Loy- 
 alty to Jesus makes it easier to live the good life, but 
 the good life is rendered no less imperative by the ab- 
 sence of that loyalty. Belief in another life helps to 
 reconcile us to the disappointments and failures of this, 
 but the lack of such faith affords no sanction for living 
 this life upon anything but the highest level. Even if 
 
178 LIVING THE IMMORTAL LIFE 
 
 God is a fiction, Christ a delusion, the future life a 
 dream, we cannot dispute Browning’s verdict. 
 
 “It’s wiser being good than bad; 
 It’s safer being meek than fierce; 
 It’s fitter being sane than mad.” 
 
 But what if the man on the street is not right? What 
 if the Church, in its age-long quest for truth, has not 
 been following a will-’o-the-wisp, but has been drawing 
 ever nearer to the eternal verities? Must we not then 
 accept the poet’s conclusion? 
 
 “My hope ts, a sun will pierce 
 The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; 
 That after last returns the first, 
 Though a wide compass round be fetched; 
 That what began best, can’t end worst, 
 Nor what God blessed once, prove accursed.” 
 
 The reply which Jesus gave to the young lawyer’s 
 question is in accord with this conclusion. ‘‘ This do 
 and thou shalt live.” If we might venture a paraphrase: 
 we could say: ‘“‘ Waste no time in vain conjectures and 
 idle speculations concerning the life to come. Live the 
 life that now is in such a way that an eternity of it will 
 be worth while. Then you may be assured that an 
 eternity will be given.” 
 
 The pages of the gospel confirm this truth. The 
 disciples did not believe in immortality because of the 
 resurrection of Jesus. They believed in His resurrec- 
 tion because of their consciousness of the eternal char- 
 acter of His life. They saw in Him a quality of life 
 over which death could have no power. A life of such 
 
AUGUSTUS P. RECCORD 179 
 
 transcendent worth vindicated its right to endure. Is 
 there anything in your life or mine which is capable 
 of creating this same impression? Are we building in 
 accordance with a life plan which will require more 
 than three score years and ten for its complete real- 
 ization? Does it justify us in demanding an eternity 
 of existence? Or if our demand were denied, could we 
 accuse the world of injustice? It often seems that 
 those who clamor most for another life have failed to 
 make the best of this, while those whose lives manifest 
 most of this eternal quality are least concerned about 
 what will happen to them when “ life’s fitful dream ” 
 is o’er. The life immortal does not need to be argued. 
 Assume it and it will prove itself. 
 
 This truth needs to be emphasized repeatedly in the 
 face of the world’s skepticism and unbelief. ‘There 
 was never a time when there was such a persistent 
 demand for some inescapable evidence of the immortal- 
 ity of the soul. This is one of the results of the Great 
 War. The multitude of our dead, their extreme youth, 
 the tragic nature of their going, compelled us to alter 
 our attitude toward death. Whatever we may think of 
 others, we refused to think of these as dead. They are 
 alive forevermore. ‘The result was an increased desire 
 to penetrate the veil of mystery which had always 
 shrouded this familiar experience. We welcomed evi- 
 dence of survival from whatever source, and experi- 
 enced a new interest in the supernatural and the occult. 
 As one said: ‘We demanded enough knowledge of 
 dying to enable us to go on living.” And yet there was 
 never a time when there were so many considerations 
 
180 LIVING THE IMMORTAL LIFE 
 
 which make this belief in the life immortal difficult, if 
 not impossible. The relation of mind to matter, of 
 body to soul, of thought to the thinking brain, all as 
 parts of the same living organism, the insignificance of 
 human life on this planet itself when compared with 
 that great system of suns and stars of which it is a 
 part, the difficulty of conceiving of life apart from the 
 body and in some other realm,—such considerations 
 have been exploited-for the purpose of undermining 
 our faith in the immortality of the soul. And yet that 
 faith has risen triumphant over every obstacle and 
 vindicated its claim to be the expression of our dearest 
 hopes and deepest convictions. 
 
 It is the persistence of this faith which accounts for 
 the success of those mysterious and mystical cults 
 which appear from time to time in the religious world. 
 Christian Science, with its emphasis upon the reality 
 of mind and the unreality of matter; Spiritualism, with 
 its affirmation of the nearness of those whom we have 
 loved and lost; Theosophy, with its exaltation of per- 
 sonal communion between the human soul and its God, 
 —all these derive their power of appeal from their 
 unwavering denial of the materialistic philosophy of 
 the man on the street and their insistence upon the 
 reality and worth of the unseen world. The fact that 
 multitudes of intelligent men and women in every com- 
 munity have embraced one or another of these systems 
 of thought, admits of but one explanation. They find 
 in them, at least for a time, the satisfaction of that 
 spiritual craving which is one of the primary instincts 
 of the race and which refuses to be content with any 
 
AUGUSTUS P. RECCORD 181 
 
 philosophy of life which does not rest upon the affirma- 
 tion that man is primarily spiritual and therefore 
 eternal. Unfortunately, they have often felt con- 
 strained to go outside of the churches into which they 
 were born and the religion which has been theirs from 
 childhood in order to gain possession of a truth which 
 lies close to the heart of all genuine religion. And 
 therein lies the warning. Unless our churches place 
 less emphasis upon dogma and more emphasis upon 
 this one great cardinal truth of the reality of the spiri- 
 tual life, such cults will continue to find willing adher- 
 ents among an eager and credulous humanity. 
 
 How is this emphasis to be laid? Not by argument 
 and special pleading. Faith in the reality of the spiri- 
 tual life is a matter of experience rather than of demon- 
 stration. Jesus did not attempt to prove that the soul 
 is immortal. He assumed it and found that experi- 
 ence justified the assumption. No other hypothesis 
 explained so many of the facts of life or explained them 
 so adequately. He constructed His working theory 
 upon the assumption that life is eternal, and all of its 
 discordant facts slipped into place and ceased to vex 
 Him. The Christian world has not yet discovered or 
 devised a better method. The traditional “ proofs ” 
 of immortality fail to prove. They are based upon 
 the assumption that the soul is an original entity and 
 therefore imperishable and indestructible. But what 
 of the survival of personality, without which immor- 
 tality would be equivalent to extinction? Today we 
 draw our inferences from the quality of the soul’s life 
 as evidenced by the experience of the race,—from the 
 
182 LIVING THE IMMORTAL LIFE 
 
 instinctive yearning which is characteristic of every 
 age and race and must point to a corresponding real- 
 ity; from the human reason which demands an eternity 
 for its complete expression; from the moral life which 
 demands an eternity for its fruition, and from the moral 
 law which demands an eternity for its vindication. 
 
 Thus immortality is essential to life’s completeness. 
 The dominant characteristic of our life on earth is its 
 insufficiency. Human achievement, at its best, is frag- 
 mentary. The longest earthly life permits the realiza- 
 tion of only a fraction of our hopes and dreams. To 
 deny it any other opportunity for self-expression would 
 be to rob it of its full significance. We are painfully 
 conscious of the disparity between capacity and 
 achievement, virtue and happiness, wickedness and 
 misery. 
 
 How can we be reconciled to the blasted hopes, the 
 disappointed ambitions, the shattered affections, which 
 loom so large when we try to conceive of this life as all 
 in all, except upon the assumption that they are a part 
 of an infinite whole, an eternity of living, in which the 
 broken arcs of this present life come to their perfect 
 round? Assume that death ends all, and the world 
 becomes unintelligible. Creation ends in an anti- 
 climax. In the words of John Fiske, it ‘“ puts man to 
 permanent intellectual confusion.”” Assume that death 
 is but an incident in a life that is endlessly progressive, 
 and it presents no problem. ‘Then immortality be- 
 comes synonymous with life, growth, progress, attain- 
 ment. It is not a gift but a challenge. To accept life 
 upon such terms is a privilege. To make the most and 
 
AUGUSTUS P. RECCORD 183 
 
 best of it is an obligation. If we accept full responsi- 
 bility for the life of today, we may safely trust God for 
 the morrow. ‘‘ Whether we live, we live unto the 
 Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord; 
 whether we live therefore or die, we are the Lord’s.” 
 
 It is this faith which robs death of its sting and 
 deprives the grave of its seeming victory. What 
 Arnold hoped for and Browning affirmed, Jesus as- 
 sumed. And we are His followers. Instead of the 
 doubtful refrain, “ If there is no other life, pitch this 
 one high,” we exclaim “ Pitch this life high, and its 
 eternal character will be revealed.” Dare we ignore 
 this challenge? If you would know that God is and 
 that He is good, live as though you were living ‘‘ under 
 His eye and by His power.” Such a life will vindicate 
 itself and also the conviction upon which it is based. 
 If you would appreciate the beauty and grandeur of 
 the Christ life, follow in His steps,—Live as He would 
 have you live, love as He would have you love, serve as 
 He would have you serve. 
 
 Such a life is its own justification and its own suf- 
 ficient reward. If you would experience the power of 
 the endless life, live as though you were to live forever, 
 and that power will be disclosed. Live for this day 
 only, as though life were simply a matter of what we 
 shall eat and what we shall drink and wherewithal we 
 shall be clothed, and it will be easy to convince our- 
 selves that this life is all in all. We shall agree with 
 the man on the street. But live each day, as the philos- 
 opher says, “under the aspect of eternity,” with a 
 consciousness of its eternal values, and it will demon- 
 
184 LIVING THE IMMORTAL LIFE 
 
 strate the reality of the faith that springs eternal in the 
 human breast. Then all fear of death will be swal- 
 lowed up in the consciousness of life. We shall live 
 our lives from day to day, knowing that our ultimate 
 destiny is in our own hands. “ We are the masters of 
 our fate; we are the captains of our souls.” And we 
 shall lay ourselves down for our last sleep without fear 
 or dread, knowing that, we shall be satisfied when we 
 awake in His likeness. 
 
 “In man’s self arise 
 August anticipations, symbols, types, 
 Of a dim splendor ever on before, 
 In that eternal circle life pursues, 
 For men begin to pass their natures’ bound 
 And find new hopes and cares, which fast supplant 
 Their proper joys and griefs; and outgrow all 
 The narrow creeds of right and wrong which fade 
 Before the unmeasured thirst for good; while peace 
 Rises within them ever more and more. 
 Such men are even now upon the earth.” 
 
 PAY EIR 
 
 Our Heavenly Father, we would add our voices to that 
 great chorus of pratse and adoration which goes up to 
 Thee from all created things. We thank Thee for the 
 world in which Thou hast placed us and for all that makes 
 it beautiful and fair. We thank Thee for the life with 
 which Thou hast endowed us and for all that makes tt of 
 service to others and a satisfaction to ourselves. We 
 thank Thee especially for Him who came to reveal the 
 dignity and worth of our common human nature and its 
 oneness with the Divine. Make us heirs, with Him, of the 
 life wmmortal and give to us the blessed assurance that 
 because H'e lives forever, we can never die. In His name 
 we ask tt. Amen. 
 
C. H. RUESSKAMP 
 
 The Rhineland district of Germany is the birthplace of 
 Rev. C. H. Ruesskamp. Early in his youth he came to 
 America, receiving his primary education in the elementary 
 schools of York, Pennsylvania. His collegiate training 
 was secured in the colleges and seminary of the Missour1 
 Synod of the Lutheran Church, from which he was finally 
 graduated in 1892. It was in that year that he was or- 
 dained a member of the Synodical Conference of the 
 Missouri Synod in the city of York, and was called to 
 Little Rock, Arkansas, to take care of the Negro work in 
 that state. In 1897 he opened the English work in Buffalo 
 and served Calvary Church for fourteen years. For the 
 past sixteen years he has served Saint Mark’s Lutheran 
 Church in Detroit, which is the representative English 
 Lutheran Church of Michigan and one of the outstanding 
 churches of its kind in America. Here is a man who 
 preaches textual sermons. With no attempt at ornate 
 style he preaches to large and appreciative audiences every 
 Sunday. To judge this man correctly one must hear him. 
 It is safe to say that no man among us carries more spirit 
 into his preaching. As one man puts it, “ When you hear 
 this man preach, you know that God is speaking through 
 him.” Rev. Ruesskamp was one of the outstanding lead- 
 ers in relief work among the German charitable institu- 
 tions during and directly after the war, and he is active in 
 Detroit in social welfare among his people. 
 
PREACH THE GOSPEL—The command of Christ 
 1s to preach the gospel, which is the greatest trea- 
 sure God has bestowed on a sin laden world for tts tem- 
 poral and eternal welfare. Who would not be willing to 
 give up all for it? Justification by grace through faith in 
 Christ is a correct exhibition of that gospel. Who would 
 not do all for wt? This guiding princsple tolerates no 
 error, and enriches man for time and eternity. Who 
 would not be willing to bear all things for it? To lead 
 men to eternal life at the hand of this unerring guide, 
 when eternity will reveal who has chosen the good part— 
 this and this alone keeps me in the ministry. Though I 
 have had opportuntty to make good money in other call- 
 ings, it 1s man’s salvation, the greatest question in time, 
 which moves me to hold fast to the dearest spot on earth, 
 the pulpit of the church of the living God. 
 
 —C. H. RurssKAMP. 
 
ALTT 
 CHRIST [8S RISEN 
 
 CA HURUESSKAMP 
 Saint Mark’s English Lutheran 
 
 “ But now ts Christ risen from the dead.’—I Cor. 15:20. 
 
 ‘“O sing unto the Lord a new song; for he hath done 
 marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm hath 
 gotten him the victory. The Lord hath made known 
 his salvation: his righteousness hath he openly showed 
 in the sight of the heathen. He hath remembered his 
 mercy and his truth toward the house of Israel: all the 
 ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.” 
 
 These words will find their echo today in every con- 
 gregation. Wherever there are bells to ring, wherever 
 there are organs to play unto the Lord, wherever there 
 are lips to praise His holy name, and hearts to rejoice 
 in Him, there today’s theme will be: “ O sing unto the 
 Lord a new song.” 
 
 The hymns we have sung during the past weeks have 
 been beautiful. Even the tunes of Lent can touch the 
 heart; yea, even under the cross of Christ the soul of 
 the believer feels the joys of heaven. Willingly does 
 he listen to the cry of Good Friday: ‘ Behold Him 
 suffer, bleeding, die.” Readily does he join in the 
 mournful songs, ‘‘ O bleeding head, and wounded,” and 
 “OQ Lamb of God most holy.” These hymns of sad- 
 
 187 
 
188 CHRIST IS RISEN 
 
 ness fill the heart of the sinner with greater joy than 
 all the songs of mirth. 
 
 But if, in our hymn-books, we could find no Easter 
 hymns following the Lenten songs and in our Bibles no 
 Easter gospel next to the account of Christ’s sufferings 
 and in our churches no Easter festival after the Lenten 
 season, our condition would be sad, indeed. Then our 
 Lenten service, yea, our entire Christian life, would 
 resemble a night without a morning, a heartrending, 
 harsh dissonance without a pleasing and final finale. 
 
 Thanks be unto God! This final harmony is being 
 heard today in majestic and jubilant strains through- 
 out the Church. ‘“O sing unto the Lord a new song” 
 is the jubilant cry of Christendom. Angels were the 
 first to announce this new song. Apostles carried it 
 over the world. For centuries it has been spread and 
 handed down from generation to generation, and today 
 it is heard in more than one hundred and fifty tongues 
 on both hemispheres of the earth. Not only in the 
 churches would we sing it with sound of organ and 
 trumpet; we would summon all creation to assist in 
 swelling this mighty chorus. We would call upon the 
 earth to awaken from her winter’s slumbers and join 
 in this new song. The little brooks, freed from their 
 icy coverings, shall assist us with their murmurings; 
 the trees with the whisperings of their new green 
 leaves; the birds with their exalting songs, rising up 
 toward the heavens; the sea with her waves dashing 
 against the distant shore, that even the heathen nations 
 may hear it—all these are to join in this new song 
 which has renewed the face of the earth and which 
 
C. H. RUESSKAMP 189 
 
 even today gladdens the heart of sorrowful men and 
 fills them with new life. 
 
 ‘Christ is risen’ is the new song announced by the 
 apostle in today’s text. Let us receive from him our 
 great Easter message. 
 
 THE LORD IS RISEN 
 
 1. This message is a faithful saying. 
 
 2. It is worthy of all acceptation. 
 
 This message is true (1) because it bears the blood- 
 stained signatures of many witnesses, (2) because on 
 it is built the massive structure of the Christian 
 Church, and (3) because the heart experiences of all 
 true Christians testify of it. 
 
 Christ is risen! He who was.buried on Good Friday 
 evening has come forth out of the grave. This message 
 is so wonderful that it frightened those women who 
 first heard it; honest Thomas in plain words declared, 
 ‘“‘ Except I see, I shall not believe’; some in the first 
 Christian congregation at Corinth stated, ‘‘ There is no 
 resurrection from the dead”; and even today it is 
 doubted and severely attacked. But can this contra- 
 diction disturb our Easter joy? Shall the doubts of a 
 melancholy Thomas or the wanton jeers of the Epi- 
 cureans cause any discord in the new song which we 
 offer this day to our Easter King? God forbid! The 
 great Easter message is true—it bears the blood- 
 stained seal of many faithful witnesses; and here on 
 holy record are found the signatures. 
 
 If the Easter message rested only on the assertion 
 of a few weak and nervous women, who in the early 
 
190 CHRIST IS RISEN 
 
 dawn came running from the open grave, trembling 
 from fright, we might doubt the evidence. But it does 
 not. Here we have a large number of witnesses. 
 Cephas has seen him and declares it before all the 
 people on the day of Pentecost. To all of the apostles 
 did He appear, and even Thomas submits and makes 
 the confession, ‘My Lord and my God.” In like 
 manner He is recognized by John at the sea of Tiberias, 
 and John cries out, “It is the Lord.” More than five 
 hundred brethren saw Him at one time, and finally 
 Paul affixed his signature to this remarkable record in 
 writing. He says, ‘ And last of all, He was seen of 
 me also, as one born out of due time.” 
 
 Are these not sufficient witnesses? Are these not 
 trustworthy witnesses? Is it possible that all, includ- 
 ing the women, could have been deceived? Was it 
 nothing but the phantoms of an excited imagination? 
 In the evening at Emmaus, as well as in the morning 
 at Joseph’s garden? At the sea of Tiberias, as well as 
 in Jerusalem? On the field near Damascus in broad 
 daylight, as well as during the quiet night behind closed 
 doors? Or, if they were not deceived themselves, did 
 they intend to deceive the world? Was the preaching 
 of Christ as the Risen One a concerted plan, an in- 
 genious, well-studied scheme? ‘ Then,” cries honest 
 Paul in hot indignation, ‘“‘ we would be found false 
 witnesses of God, because we have testified of God 
 that he raised up Christ, whom he raised not up.” 
 Dare anyone assert this? Can you believe for a mo- | 
 ment that Peter on the day of Pentecost stood before 
 that vast crowd and from the steps of the temple lied 
 
C. H. RUESSKAMP 191 
 
 to the people, ‘‘ Him hath God raised up”? Can you 
 believe that Paul stood in the market-place of Athens 
 and there, under the open sky of the omnipresent God, 
 lied, “ God will judge the world through Christ, whom 
 he hath raised from the dead ”? Can you believe that 
 John should have lied in his old days, when he sat 
 down and began his first epistle with these solemn 
 words full of apostolic earnestness and paternal kind- 
 ness, “ That which was from the beginning, which we 
 have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which 
 we have looked upon and which our hands have 
 handled of the word of life—that we declare unto 
 you”’? If these men have lied, who of all creation 
 deserves to be trusted? Then no testimony is true. 
 
 But why should these men lie? No physical benefit 
 came to them because of the Easter message. Scorn 
 and contempt was Paul’s reward in Athens; and they 
 left him, saying, ‘‘ What will this babbler say?” It 
 was equally so at Cesarea when Festus exclaimed, 
 ‘Paul, thou art beside thyself.” Lashings and beat- 
 ings were the reward of John and Peter for having 
 preached the gospel of the risen One in Jerusalem. 
 Chains and fetters the apostles had to suffer. Every 
 one practically was cast in prison, and finally cruel 
 death was their portion. With but one exception these 
 men confirmed their testimony with their own blood. 
 Will anyone die for a lie? Will anyone become willing 
 to be stoned for a lie as Saint Stephen, beheaded for a 
 lie like Saint James, crucified for a lie like Saint Peter? 
 Will anyone be willing or able to suffer for a lie like 
 Saint Paul? 
 
192 CHRIST IS RISEN 
 
 Danger upon the water, danger among murderers, 
 danger among the Jews, danger among the heathen, 
 danger in cities, in deserts, among false brethren, toil 
 and labor, hunger and thirst, fasting and watching, cold 
 and nakedness, this was the lot of Paul. Could he have 
 been able, rejoicing in all these troubles, to lay his 
 grey head under the axe of the executioner with the 
 blessed assurance, “‘ I have fought a good fight, I have 
 finished my course, I-have kept the faith; henceforth 
 there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness ”’? 
 Could he have lied all along for twenty years in twenty 
 different countries? Never, no, never! We believe the 
 testimony of these witnesses. It is most assuredly true 
 that Christ has risen from the dead, for these witnesses 
 have signed this message not in ink, but in their own 
 blood. It bears the blood-stained seal of many faithful 
 witnesses. 
 
 Upon it rests the building of the entire Church of 
 Christ. ‘‘ Moreover, brethren,’ thus writes the apostle 
 at the beginning of our epistle, “ I declare unto you the 
 gospel, which I preached unto you, and which also ye 
 have received, and wherein ye stand. By which also 
 ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached 
 unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.”’ In other 
 words, the writer says that the preaching of Jesus 
 Christ as the crucified One is the foundation on which 
 the congregation at Corinth rested and stood, and it is 
 the foundation on which this present congregation here 
 assembled is founded and built. 
 
 Through this Easter message of the crucified and 
 risen Saviour the Holy Ghost has called, enlightened, 
 
C. H. RUESSKAMP 193 
 
 sanctified, and preserved in the true faith the entire 
 Christendom upon earth from the beginning to the 
 present time. It is not to be imagined that the gospel 
 would have found an abiding reception in a single soul 
 or that one stone toward the erection of the Church of 
 Christ could have been placed in position, if that first 
 word, “ Christ is risen,” had been a lie. If you could 
 possibly imagine such a thing, could the massive build- 
 ing of the Church still stand until this day, enduring 
 the storms of nearly two thousand years, if it had been 
 builded on a false foundation, builded upon sand, and 
 supported by a dozen enthusiasts or impostors? Just 
 ' look at the massive pillars of our own church building. 
 They could not stand upright through the years and 
 support those fine arches, if they were not built on a 
 good foundation. Otherwise they would have long ago 
 crumbled to pieces over our heads. Now, in your 
 imagination, behold the grand, invisible building of 
 the Church of Christ, whose pillars rest upon the soil 
 of five continents, whose walls are vaulting them- 
 selves over immense tracts of earth and sea, whose 
 domes vanish in the bliss of heaven, and in whose 
 nave millions of believers of all nations are assem- 
 bled. Do you think that this Church of Christ 
 would still stand after two thousand years, in which 
 events have occurred which have shaken the very 
 foundations of life and wrought incalculable change, 
 if her pillars had been placed upon and her wall 
 cemented with a lie? Nay, if we would refuse to 
 believe it, these very stones would be compelled to 
 proclaim it, “‘ Christ is risen.” This is a true saying, 
 
194 CHRIST IS RISEN 
 
 for upon it rests the massive foundation of the entire 
 Church of God. 
 
 And of this also testifies the heartfelt experience of 
 all true Christians. “I am the least of the apostles. 
 By the grace of God I am what I am; and his grace 
 which was bestowed upon me was not bestowed in vain. 
 But I labored more abundantly than they all; yet not 
 I, but the grace of God which was with me.” With 
 this confession full of true, heartfelt humility and of 
 noble apostolic consciousness, Paul bears a beautiful 
 testimony to the indestructible life of Jesus and to the 
 living presence and quickening influence of the risen 
 Saviour in the hearts of all His believers. And though 
 none of us would dare to compare ourselves, even at a 
 distance, with the apostle Paul, either in the dignity of 
 the office committed to him, or in the measure of grace 
 received by him, or in the depth of Christian experi- 
 ence, or in the magnitude of service rendered by him, 
 nevertheless every believing Christian may experience 
 within himself something of that inner testimony of the 
 risen and living Saviour. 
 
 Every honest man rooted in the faith will smile at 
 the demand to prove the truth that Christ is risen. A 
 simple Christian will say, ‘‘ You need not make any 
 words; you need not get excited. Here, within my 
 heart, is written much plainer and surer than all the 
 preachers could tell me that Jesus lives and that He 
 lives within me, also. Jesus is with His own through 
 all the days, and He is with me every day. I am sure 
 when I pray that He is close to me. I realize His 
 assistance when at my work, even as He was with the 
 
C. H. RUESSKAMP 195 
 
 disciples at the sea when He commanded that they let 
 down the nets. I feel His presence when I hear or read 
 His word. He speaks, and my heart burns as was the 
 case with the two disciples on the journey to Emmaus. 
 I feel His presence when I weep. He comes to me and 
 says, ‘Why weepest thou?’ as He did with Mary in 
 the garden. Yea, I feel it even when I have sinned. 
 He reproves me, and, taking me tenderly aside, He asks 
 me as He did Peter, ‘ Lovest thou me?’ Christ is 
 risen! Christ lives! This I experienced in the hour 
 of my conversion, when the new man began to live in 
 me. This, by the will of God, I expect to feel when I 
 lie down to die; and then I will beg Him as did the 
 pilgrims, ‘ Abide with me, dear Lord, for it is toward 
 evening and my day is far spent.’ Then with Saint 
 Stephen I shall see the heavens opened and will ex- 
 claim, ‘ Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ ” 
 
 Yes, Christ is risen. It is not a dead Saviour to 
 whom you pray, but a personal, living Christ, who has 
 given to His own the promise, “‘ Lo, I am with you 
 alway, even unto the end of the world.” Yes, it is a 
 true saying that Christ is risen, for the heartfelt ex- 
 perience of every true Christian testifies of this. O . 
 that we all would believe it more firmly and experience 
 it more happily! 
 
 Now, if this message is true, it is also worthy of all 
 acceptation. Permit me to remind you of this briefly 
 by proving to you from the Scripture how this accep- 
 tation enables us to believe properly, to live godly, and 
 to die happily. These are the weighty words of the 
 Scripture, “ If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; 
 
196 CHRIST IS RISEN 
 
 ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are 
 fallen asleep in Christ are perished.” 
 
 Christ is risen! It is a message which really enables 
 us to believe properly, for if Christ be not raised our 
 faith is in vain. Beloved, if Christ is not risen, in 
 whom do we believe? Do we believe in Him as a wise 
 teacher, a noble man, a pious master, but after all only 
 aman? Then upon a man we are baptized, to a man 
 we go to church, to a man we pray, and to honor a man 
 we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, it is a man whom we 
 accept as our model, following in His footsteps and 
 calling Him our Saviour and Redeemer. Is this the 
 proper faith, built upon a rock? Can a mere man 
 save us, though he be the wisest and the best? He 
 may be able to comfort and teach us, yet as such he 
 cannot save us or reconcile us to God. Dare we pray 
 to any man, though he be the noblest and the purest? 
 We may respect such a man, love, admire, and imitate 
 him, but worship, believe in and put our trust in him— 
 never, no, never. If Christ is not risen, then is our 
 faith vain. 
 
 But, blessed be God, Christ is risen; and it is this 
 which justifies our faith. He, who was taken from 
 the cross on Good Friday’s evening, and whose body 
 they placed in the grave, stands before the world 
 crowned with victory as the King of glory, as the 
 Prince of life, as the Son of the ever-living God. And 
 now the Father’s declaration, ‘This is my beloved 
 Son, in whom I am well pleased,” has been proved. 
 Now the divine Amen has been pronounced upon the 
 word of the Son, “It is finished.” Now are His ene- 
 
C. H. RUESSKAMP 197 
 
 mies smitten by their own word, “ He trusted in God; 
 let him deliver him now, if he will save him. For he 
 said, I am the son of God.” Now our faith is not vain. 
 Now we know in whom we have believed. We believe 
 in, pray to, and call ourselves after Him ‘‘ whom God 
 himself hath exalted and given a name which is above 
 all other names, that in the name of Jesus every knee 
 should bow of things in heaven, and things on earth, 
 and things under the earth, and that every tongue 
 should confess that Christ is Lord, to the glory of God 
 the father.” True is the message and worthy of all 
 acceptation, because it enables us to believe properly. 
 And it helps us to live godly. “ If Christ hath not 
 been raised, ye are yet in your sins.” If Christ re- 
 mained in the grave, who will then help us out of our 
 sins, out of our sin-guiltiness, out of our sin-service? 
 Not He, for in that case, He is Himself a poor victim 
 of sin and not a divine expiator of sin. His blood, then, 
 cannot cleanse us of sin, for it is only the blood of a 
 human martyr. Then His spirit cannot deliver us from 
 the bondage of sin, because it is not a divine, life-giving 
 spirit. If Christ is not risen, we are yet in our sins, 
 notwithstanding Gethsemane and Golgotha. In our 
 sins we will continue to live as under a heavy load, and 
 never, not even after striving for holiness, can we truly 
 rejoice in that blessed assurance, ‘‘ Thy sins be for- 
 given thee.” In our sins we shall die, and not even the 
 best among us can look hopefully beyond in the solemn 
 eternity with the assurance, “‘ Christ is here; who will 
 condemn?” But now, blessed be God, Christ is risen, 
 and by this faithful and acceptable word not only the 
 
198 _ CHRIST IS RISEN 
 
 stone from the door of Christ’s sepulcher is rolled 
 away, but also the burden of sin from our conscience. 
 
 Now we have a divine expiator of our sin, whose 
 expiatory sacrifice has been accepted of God and 
 acknowledged by Him. Now we have a loving guide, 
 who reaches out His strong hand to us to guide us in 
 the path of holiness. Now we have a mighty advocate 
 with the Father, who at His right hand makes interces- 
 sion for us. Now we have a heavenly head, on whom 
 as living members we shall continue to grow through 
 all eternity. Now we can of a truth live godly lives. 
 
 Finally, in this faith we can die happily. “ If Christ 
 be not raised, then they also which are fallen asleep 
 in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have 
 hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” If 
 the grave is our last limit, if annihilation is our eternal 
 lot, then the Christian with his forebodings of heaven 
 and thoughts of eternity, with his tender conscience 
 and his daily crucifixion of the flesh is worse off than 
 the careless Sadducee who says, ‘‘ Let us eat and drink 
 and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” Then the Cre- 
 ator has manifested more regard for the tiny midge, 
 which for a short day plays in the sunbeam, desiring 
 nothing more; more regard for the butterfly, which 
 during one short summer flies over the fields, needing 
 nothing but a little honey; more regard for these than 
 for man, living on through the years, thirsting for 
 immortality. 
 
 If all who have fallen asleep in Jesus are lost; if all 
 those faithful souls who have hopefully folded their 
 hands in the struggle of death with the pious ejacula- 
 
C. H. RUESSKAMP 199 
 
 tion of Saint Stephen, “‘ Lord Jesus, receive my spirit ”’; 
 if all the pious fathers and mothers, all the dear chil- 
 dren, teachers and friends over whose graves we have 
 comforted ourselves with the great Christian hope that 
 their bodies will be awakened by the Lord Jesus in 
 His own great day, having commended their spirits into 
 the hands of the Saviour; if all these are lost, with their 
 bodies a prey to corruption and with their spirits a 
 victim of annihilation, what a fearful loss it is. If with 
 all my believing and hoping, with all my struggling and 
 suffering I can gain nothing beyond, with my body be- 
 coming food for worms and my spirit bursting like a 
 bubble in the air, then I repeat what I said at the be- 
 ginning, that our life upon earth is like a dark night 
 upon earth with no morning-dawn to follow, a harsh 
 dissonance with no reconciling finale. 
 
 But a glorious light shines out through our gloom. 
 It is the light of an unshakable hope in our immortality. 
 We live through the toils and gains and stresses of the 
 years, reaching out to the greater, vaster, purer life in 
 Him, who is the giver of life itself. And we die happily 
 in the knowledge that we enter with Jesus into that 
 larger life which strikes out beyond the grave. 
 
 ‘“‘ But now is Christ risen from the dead and become 
 the first fruits of them that slept.” O what a beautiful 
 finale to our text. O what a faithful, precious word, 
 worthy of all acceptation. Trusting upon it we can die 
 happily. Now you mourners, with good cheer visit the 
 graves of your loved ones this day and say, “ Be at 
 rest, ye mortal bodies.” Now ye pilgrims all, approach 
 your own graves and remember for your comfort that 
 
200 CHRIST IS RISEN 
 
 after a short rest your bodies shall surely rise from 
 the grave. 
 
 PRAYER 
 
 Now, exalted Saviour, most adorable head of Thy 
 Church, we at Thy grave lift our eyes heavenward with 
 confidence. The peace of Thy grace will surround our 
 own graves. When tired of earth’s toils, we shall lie down 
 with the happy hope of a glorious resurrection. Thou 
 Prince of life, who didst break asunder the bonds of the 
 tomb, draw us through-death and the grave to the home 
 of the redeemed, where with them we shall forever sing, 
 “Glory, hallelujah to the Lamb that has reconciled us to 
 the Father.’ Amen. 
 
MERTON S. RICE 
 
 Dr. Rice was born in the state of Kansas; and it was 
 while he was a student at Baker University that he formed 
 a life long friendship with the late Bishop William Alfred 
 Quayle—a friendship which has contributed generously to 
 his remarkable ministry. Before coming to Detroit he 
 was minister at the First Methodist Church in Duluth, a 
 great church in a great city. Since 1914 he has been at the 
 Metropolitan Methodist Church in this city, where he 
 preaches to one of the largest congregations in his denomi- 
 nation, worshiping in one of the finest church buildings in 
 America. “ Dust and Destiny ” is the best of the several 
 invigorating books which he has written. Whenever I 
 hear Dr. Rice, I am bound to think of what Malcolm 
 Spencer, a gifted young English author, says about 
 preaching. He says, “ Very often it is the poetic beauty of 
 the phrase rather than its value as an instrument of defi- 
 nition, that makes it able to convey a vision of God or of 
 goodness.” ‘That is one element in the preaching which 
 attracts great audiences twice a Sunday to Metropolitan. 
 It is the gift of poetic expression, which invests common- 
 place incidents and humble texts with infinite meaning, 
 beauty, and strength. Wonderfully endowed with phys- 
 ical energy, moral earnestness, and poetic expression Dr. 
 Rice has given an invaluable ministry to this city. Prot- 
 estantism claims him as its clarion voice, crying aloud 
 against sin and summoning every man to Christ. 
 
WHY I STAY IN THE MINISTRY—I stay in the 
 ministry for exactly the same reason I entered the mm- 
 istry. I entered st with a conviction for a task. I remain 
 entered in order to spend my ltfe in geting my task done. 
 When my very dear personal friend, Wiliam Alfred 
 Quayle, came to die, after his eloquent tongue had been 
 stilled and he could no longer speak, he smpressively 
 pointed with his expressive finger to the words recorded 
 im the first book of Thessalontans in the second chapter 
 and fourth verse; and made sign to have them hewn on 
 the stone that marks his grave, “ Allowed of God to be put 
 in trust with the gospel.’ That, too, is my inspiration im 
 this task. It means more to me now than ever before; but 
 my whole purpose in the ministry may be expressed m 
 those words of divine entrustment. I dare not falter here. 
 
 —M. S$. Rice. 
 
 
 
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 MERTON S. RICE, D.D. Vi ah 
 
 Metropolitan Methodist Episcopal Church 
 
 “ And it came to pass after awhile, that the brook dried up.” 
 —I Kines 17:7. 
 “And the barrel of meal wasted not.’—I Kines 17: 16. 
 
 There is so much more in the Bible than what is 
 written there. It constantly confounds me with its 
 overplus of meaning. Simple phrases that are recorded 
 in inconspicuous manner run far in influence and in- 
 terpretation along the ways of life. 
 
 I have taken to text for this sermon two phrases, 
 each torn from a verse, descriptive in contrast of situ- 
 ations attendant upon one of the very interesting inci- 
 dents of the Old Testament. In the sweep of the 
 general narrative here, the detailed meanings of such 
 phrases as I have chosen to pause before are easily 
 lost. We get interested in the great story of a drouth, 
 and hurry on the rain of deliverance; and in our rush 
 with the general story we trample over in carelessness 
 the finest things attendant. The drouth is‘not the im- 
 portant matter here. The people in the drouth are the 
 main issue. 
 
 This chapter begins with a brook and ends with a 
 barrel. The brook failed; the barrel never wasted. 
 
 203 
 
204 BROOK AND BARREL 
 
 Elijah, by divine direction, had hidden himself from 
 the fast increasing suffering, attendant upon a serious 
 drouth, over beside a lovely little refreshing brook 
 bearing a refreshing name, Cherith. There was a 
 strange satisfaction that came over the endowed 
 prophet as he stretched himself in the cooling grass 
 that was growing close beside the assuring brook. As 
 the drouth increased its hot encroachment over the 
 land, Elijah all alone, save for the winged servants that 
 brought his scant but sufficient meals, became so used 
 to the brook’s contribution that it became a part of the 
 expected experience. It was there when he came. He 
 came because it was there. There was no thought but 
 that the brook was permanent. 
 
 Suddenly, in the midst of the narrative as it seemed 
 inclined to an easy satisfaction, there is written in this 
 verse of our text, “ And it came to pass after awhile 
 that the brook dried up.” It carries the crack of a 
 whip of compulsion, suddenly appearing in a scene of 
 endowed comfort. This man, long hidden and cared 
 for, was forced to move out. His orders were even as 
 strange as his disappointment was. He was sent over 
 to a heathen city, and even to a poor heathen widow 
 woman, who with her son had barely been able thus 
 far, amid the general suffering, to keep soul and body 
 together. He found her making ready the mixing of 
 the very last handful of meal she possessed; and dared 
 ask her to share her food even in desperation with a 
 stranger. It surprised her. She sought to explain the 
 seriousness of the request; but was finally persuaded, 
 believing doubtless that nothing but starvation was 
 
MERTON S. RICE 205 
 
 before them all, and it was little choice to starve by 
 the quicker route of a few bites less in the final meal. 
 It must have seemed strange to this wanderer, who had 
 just faced away from Cherith because it dried up, to 
 speak as though with authority, that though the brook 
 failed the barrel could not waste. But so he spake; 
 and so it happened in Zerephath. 
 
 My interest here now lies in this significant con- 
 trast—the brook dried up; the meal barrel wasted not. 
 What is the basis of this contrast? The dry brook and 
 the unfailing barrel. 
 
 One of the most interesting rides it has ever been my 
 privilege to take is along that winding road from Jeru- 
 salem to Jericho. It is interesting because of com- 
 pelled memories that attend the way. The scenery is 
 by comparison scant; but the remembrances are im- 
 pressive. The Jericho road! I saw the thieves there 
 still, but not active. The Good Samaritan I did not 
 notice; but at least missed him in response to the 
 great story our Lord wrote along that way, and got it 
 out to the world. 
 
 When we had accomplished a bit more than half of 
 the journey and were almost ready to begin the last 
 real steep descent leading from the hills down into the 
 Jordan Valley, the old sheik of a fellow, who was pro- 
 fessing to be a guide, stopped the rig in which we rode; 
 and we stepped out and walked only a few steps to the 
 easy crest of a little ambling hillock, beyond which we 
 had not been able to see from our passing carriage. 
 The suddenly disclosed view was easily the most im- 
 pressive we had enjoyed along the way. Just beside 
 
 on™ 
 a” ¥ ; 
 
206 BROOK AND BARREL 
 
 our roadway, but impossible to be seen from it because 
 of the natural concealment of the rising ridge, lay a 
 wonderful ravine, almost possessing proportions of a 
 canyon. A great precipitous gorge. It is called Wady 
 Kelt. As we stood gazing into it with the mere interest 
 of scenery, that interest was suddenly enlarged by some 
 information that transformed mere landscape into 
 significant association. 
 
 “This is the brook, Cherith, where Elijah was fed 
 by the ravens.”” The sentence was spoken in that arti- 
 ficial manner known only to guides who learn their 
 sentences, and speak them like bits of animated ma- 
 chinery might speak. But the words surely did awaken 
 my interest. The old dust-blown hills along the toiling 
 way had all been so dry. That is a dry, dead-looking 
 country even when there is no drouth around to empha- 
 size it. We had felt sorry for a few sheep and goats 
 we had seen hunting pasturage along almost bare hill- 
 sides. Some wearied-looking camels of a caravan we 
 had seen resting beside the way and smelling about 
 dried little ditches for a few mouthfuls of dead grass. 
 
 It was all magnified now by memory that came 
 painting all this in terms of a terrible drouth. As I 
 looked over the precipitous edge to see far below me in 
 the gracefully marked bottom of it all, a lovely green 
 line of vegetation just clinging affectionately to the 
 tracings of a tiny stream of water that sprang from a 
 hillside spring, the commentary of the guide’s words 
 was at hand. Whether or no the spot was exact in its 
 location was of little concern to me. Such little mat- 
 ters as that are soon dismissed by folks who depend 
 
MERTON S. RICE 207 
 
 upon professional guides. I turned to my Baedeker; 
 and all it said was one of those famous observations 
 written in cold language, ‘‘ This is not the correct 
 place.” It said nothing whatever as to where the cor- 
 rect place might be. Critics can spoil anything. Ana- 
 lyzers will wreck sentiment. I almost threw the book 
 over the precipice had I not remembered the brother 
 from India who broke the microscope for what it 
 showed him of his sacred river. So I hunted the words 
 of more critics. They told me the ravens spoken of in 
 the Bible were not birds; and that Elijah had been 
 helped in his need for food by a tribe living there who 
 were called ravens by name. Then I found a comment 
 about some old hermit who did actually live by the side 
 of that little creek, subsisting upon four raisins a day 
 until he died. I do not know how soon he died. I do 
 know that anyone anywhere can live upon four raisins 
 a day until death arrives. In fact, one could subsist 
 on one raisin a week until he died. 
 
 I put the comments of the guide books back into my 
 pocket, and asked the old guide, whose words remained 
 ever the same, to say it again, while I looked stead- 
 fastly into the chasm. Far below me and on the oppo- 
 site bluff, I could see an old monastery named after St. 
 George. It clings there like some great mud-swallow’s 
 nest, but has been built as a place of confinement for 
 troublous priests, a veritable ecclesiastical penitentiary. 
 I could tell by the well-worn path which toiled a hard 
 way up to it that they were depending there on folks 
 rather than birds to bring food to them. 
 
 But, right or wrong on mere geography, it was an im- 
 
208 BROOK AND BARREL 
 
 pressive place to stand, looking down into such scenery 
 as Wady Kelt affords and thinking of Elijah, the 
 prophet. And while I stood looking, I confess boldly 
 that it did not harm my thoughts any when I saw, 
 winging their way along that canyon’s route, three or 
 four old cawing crows. ‘The Scripture insisted on 
 memory. 
 
 ““ Get thee hence, and turn eastward, and hide thy- 
 self by the brook Cherith which is before Jordan. And 
 it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I 
 have commanded the ravens to feed thee.” 
 
 ‘So he went, and did according unto the word of the 
 Lord; for he went and dwelt by the brook Cherith. 
 And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the 
 morning and bread and flesh in the evening. And he 
 drank of the brook. And it came to pass after awhile 
 that the brook dried up, because there had been no 
 rain in the land.” 
 
 Thus the Bible graphically describes the story, which 
 turns at once to Zerephath, and brings attention to the 
 meal barrel that refused to waste. The contrast is 
 what attracts my attention now. The brook dried up; 
 the meal barrel wasted not. Why? 
 
 The brook named Cherith was a good place to hide 
 and train Elijah. Cherith means separated. It is an 
 essential training in religion. ‘The prophet was sent 
 out there alone in preparation. Not that such separa- 
 tion is an object worthy. That was the mistake made 
 by the monk. He went off alone just to be holy by 
 himself. That is no way to be holy. It would be use- 
 less holiness, even if it could be had so. Savanarola 
 
MERTON S. RICE 209 
 
 lived through a period when Paul’s description of the 
 adversaries of the true faith was perfectly worked out: 
 “World rulers of this darkness and spiritual hosts of 
 wickedness in heavenly places.”” What wonder, then, 
 that a man such as was Savanarola, of the finest moral 
 sense and deepest spiritual convictions, was driven 
 across the mountains to-Florence by a war wielded by 
 the merciless hand of an arrogant, ambitious Pope, who 
 actually died of rage because of the conclusion of 
 peace. What wonder that Savanarola did hide for a 
 while in a cell. I was glad to step into his old cell one 
 day, and seat myself in the hard old chair he used. 
 But the great meaning beyond that cell of his there was 
 that he never went there as a place for him to stay. 
 He came forth with a blazing soul, aflame with con- 
 victions to destroy forever the hated sin from which 
 he had fled. There on the walls of that old cell today, 
 in a glass case, hang a few old charred sticks of wood | 
 that have borrowed a never-dying interest from the 
 fact that they were part of the pyre that burned him 
 yonder in the Piazza della Signoria, because he insisted 
 in coming forth from that cell. 
 
 Never mind the cell unless from it you come forth. 
 That is, after all, the strange fascination to my thought 
 at Cherith with Elijah. Seclusion is no place for a real 
 life to be spent. You have no right to hide away unless 
 you expect there to make ready to come forth. “ And 
 the brook dried up.” That brought him out. As long 
 as the brook ran refreshingly to him, he stayed at 
 Cherith. The brook ought to dry up at the door of 
 every hiding-place of real human helpfulness. As long 
 
210 BROOK AND BARREL 
 
 as Elijah could be fed in Cherith he never even knew 
 there was a widow woman with a poor son about to 
 starve to death, to whom his coming meant salvation. 
 That dried-up brook drove the thirsty, hungry prophet 
 out of Cherith and selfish separation up to Zerephath 
 to find a desperation wherein he could be of help, as 
 well as to discover his own salvation. It has always 
 been, and even now it is strangely so, that dried 
 brooks and meal barrels that waste not have a strange 
 connection. 
 
 Out of Cherith to Zerephath! Let me ask now for 
 the location of contentment. See Elijah alone in his 
 secreted place. There he lies in comfortable confi- 
 dence stretched out on the green grass that grew 
 beside a trickling stream in the midst of the drouth- 
 dried land. Every morning and every evening the 
 winged breakfast and the winged supper. ‘“ Surely 
 here is contentment; I am secure,” says he. ‘‘ No man 
 sees me; I see nobody. I eat my own meals. I drink 
 from my brook.” 
 
 A reasonable amount of that might do, perhaps, if 
 some one could surely decide on reasonableness. But, 
 after all, when it comes to genuine satisfaction in life, 
 a real man had rather starve among others to whom he 
 could really be a companion and a helper, than keep 
 himself fat and even comfortable all alone in self- 
 centered indulgence. I imagine the most despised and 
 disgusting character our period of history has gener- 
 ated will prove to be, when we get far enough to see 
 the real perspective of history, that craven, fear-struck, 
 selfish Kaiser, who ran away from the results his 
 
MERTON S. RICE 211 
 
 country and people had to stand, and hid himself in a 
 little Dutch Cherith in a castle beside a canal. Wait 
 till that brook dries up. 
 
 I can see Elijah that dry, dry day wandering along 
 the parched, dried bed of that long refreshing brook, 
 turning over the hot, sun-baked rocks that only yes- 
 terday were wet and cool. The stream has actually 
 failed. 
 
 There is so much so-called faith demanding a full 
 stream. There is a challenge to the man who has to 
 stand on the edge of a dry brook. It is my purpose 
 now to hunt out a few specific lessons here to witness 
 the advance at once from a brook that fails to a meal 
 barrel that does not waste. It was God’s purpose, 
 then, and He proposes no less now for every one of us, 
 that a hidden servant was wrong. Faith in God is not 
 a condition to be hidden in some secret canyon as a 
 personal security policy. It is rather an endowment 
 to carry into the midst of life to sustain need with. 
 The great ministry of religion is not to endow in- 
 dulgence with a divine security. If this were the case, 
 every canyon would be occupied. Indulgent Elijahs 
 would be stretched out beside every available stream. 
 
 Religion has always suffered at this point. God has 
 been compelled to dry up many a brook to save His 
 people. Elijah became self-centered while the brook 
 ran full. He sent no invitations to famishing folks to 
 come and drink at his good brook. He would have 
 forgotten other folks absolutely, had the brook ran on. 
 When he got in trouble, then he thought of others. 
 “My brook is dry! ” I wonder if he had been eager 
 
212 BROOK AND BARREL 
 
 to share his brook with others, would it have failed? 
 That is the exact point of my contrasting interest in 
 the unwasting meal barrel. It was all but gone. One 
 more meal and it would have been done. The dear 
 little old mother and her underfed boy were out get- 
 ting sticks to cook the very last handful of meal they 
 could scrape from the bottom of that wasting barrel. 
 Now comes an outsider. Someone else asks for a 
 share. ‘‘ Give me to eat!” ‘‘ Who are you? ”’, asks 
 the surprised woman. ‘I am the man who has been 
 hiding out here beside Cherith. It was a lovely brook. 
 No one else knew about it. I lay myself down beside 
 it, and drank to my fill.” “ Did you ever invite any 
 thirsty folks over to drink with you?” ‘ No, I never 
 did. I was hidden; and I was never sure what sort of 
 an outcome was ahead of me, so I drank of my own 
 brook. But yesterday it dried up.” 
 
 “Oh,” said the wondering old woman, “ did your 
 brook go dry?” ‘“ Yes,” said the worn and weary 
 prophet, “‘ and I had to leave there.” ‘“‘ But why do 
 you come now to beg of me, a poor, ill-fed woman with 
 a poor, ill-fed boy, asking me to share with you the 
 very last and sparse meal we have left? There is 
 really not enough for one, and but a poor satisfaction 
 for the two of us, while for three the very idea is fool- 
 ishness.”” But the man, who by himself had seen the 
 brook go dry, now insisted that they share with him 
 and see a strange plenty. His insistence won: and the 
 meal barrel wasted not. 
 
 From that dry brook to that unwasting barrel is a 
 wonderful distance in religious meaning. God can’t 
 
MERTON S. RICE 213 
 
 build Him great and helpful prophets hidden away to 
 live in a selfish comfort. What the world has to suffer, 
 God’s people must know. What pangs are stricken 
 into the souls of the world, must also strike their mean- 
 ing into the prophet’s life. A big, successful business 
 man, whose wealth seemed to insure his own chosen 
 conduct, and make possible any manner of life he cared 
 to live, said to me one day, ‘‘ I haven’t been in ten 
 people’s homes in ten years.”’ His Cherith was running 
 full. He didn’t care. He was a good sort of a man, 
 too. He knew life all the way from poverty to plenty. 
 As a healthy young lad at his father’s death, he found 
 himself compelled to join his brother’s hands in the 
 dark, dirty job of a coal mine, to help make a living 
 for a large family of children. So when at last he did 
 get where ease and plenty were his, it would seem he 
 knew life all the way along. But his memory was not 
 good. Cherith sang in his ears. When he died there 
 was still plenty in the stream; and he died alone there 
 in its seeming comforts. God don’t always stop Cher- 
 ith. Sometimes a lonesome life is brought to a lone- 
 some death beside a sheltered and secluded place. The 
 mastery of the unfailing stream of plenty is a hard 
 task. Not because our great God is impatient with His 
 children, but rather because He wants His people never 
 to forget others does He sometimes stop Cherith; and 
 the brook dries up. 
 
 Elijah had been an exceptional man. That is dan- 
 gerous for a religionist. That is the very thing the 
 Jewish race as a whole faltered over. That is the liable 
 rock that is before them still. They were developed 
 
214 BROOK AND BARREL 
 
 as a race In a strange manner, and under the special 
 watch-care of God. Their Cherith was secure. They 
 had escaped Egypt. They were miraculously led all 
 the way. Rivers, seas, deserts, wildernesses, all were 
 mastered by the all-powerful hand for them. The Jew 
 has been beside Cherith. God may have to dry that 
 brook before him yet. If he persists in his own proud 
 aloofness, it may be necessary that his stream shall fail. 
 Careful, now, for we are very close to the most tender 
 facts of our contacts with providence. I heard a heart- 
 broken man, in the midst of unexpected loss, cry out. 
 A little competence in which he had placed his confi- 
 dence had suddenly ceased. He tried to solve his dif- 
 ficulty wrongly. He said, “‘ I haven’t been a bad man. 
 If I had been so, I could take this. I have tried to 
 serve God. I have always tried to do so. This is too 
 much for me to bear.” It was the echo of that ancient 
 struggle. The devil tried hard to get a prejudiced posi- 
 tion in his claim that Job was a good man because of 
 what he got out of life. ‘Does Job fear God for 
 nought?’ You have hedged him about. He serves 
 for pay. Cherith attracts. That is dangerous talk. 
 Cherith would buy allegiance. But let that brook dry 
 up; and then take note. 
 
 That is the fine lesson that comes creeping out from 
 that drying day and the failing stream. Elijah had to 
 come out. He came out among others who were in 
 trouble. Suffering was running down every road. 
 Cheriths were dry everywhere. He was one among 
 many. So, stopping before a desolate home wrapped 
 in real distress, he had full chance to catch the great 
 
MERTON S. RICE 215 
 
 truth. He looked there into an all but empty meal 
 barrel. The real self of the long-hidden prophet at 
 once became visible again. He never was designed for 
 ease. He was no sort of a man to send off to an easy 
 place in which to sleep his life away. ‘At once when he 
 glanced into that gaunt barrel, even just from a failing 
 brook, the faith of the prophet was challenged; and he 
 spoke bravely. ‘“‘ Don’t fear; this meal shall not 
 waste; nor shall the cruse of oil fail.”” That refreshes 
 me. Here is the new recovered man of God. Elijah 
 never lost faith. Before this new test he draws his 
 fearless conclusions. The very same God who had 
 allowed the brook to dry up was now ready to open a 
 new bounty in a meal barrel, and in a heathen city. 
 
 There was far-reaching meaning in all this. Even 
 across long centuries it would echo. When critical 
 Jews sought to persecute Jesus with questions about 
 His conduct, He said with keen memory, “‘ Were there 
 no widows in Israel, that Elijah must be sent to a poor 
 heathen? ” Elijah, the Jew, a gracious and bounteous 
 guest in a heathen widow woman’s home! It would be 
 impossible for me to over-emphasize that fact in this 
 day of ours. God got closer to Elijah, and through 
 Elijah found a new and more intimate way into a 
 whole world’s heart, after He compelled him to come 
 away from Cherith, and brought him to a poor woman’s 
 home to replenish with unfailing assurance the little 
 she knew she had. 
 
 The unwasting meal barrel with others is of far 
 richer significance than the hidden brook alone. Some 
 one has said, I wish I knew to whom I should give 
 
216 BROOK AND BARREL 
 
 credit, ‘‘ There is no blackboard demonstration that 
 God is good; you must risk it or die a coward.” 
 
 PRAVER 
 
 Oh Christ, for whom we have been speaking now, help 
 us to bring on down to our day and place the worked out 
 meaning of the brook and barrel of long, long ago. We 
 would not selfishly consume Thy gracious benefits. We 
 would share every richness with which Thou doest entrust 
 us. Through us, do Thou get applied meaning for those 
 Hees amid which we are privileged to live and work. 
 
 men. 
 
WARREN L. ROGERS 
 
 Bishop Rogers was born in Allentown, New Jersey, in 
 1877, was graduated from the University of Michigan 
 in 1907, from Union Theological Seminary in 1911, 
 and from the General Theological Seminary in 1912. 
 Bishop Williams ordained him Priest in 1911, and he en- 
 tered upon his life work as assistant in St. Joseph’s in 
 Detroit. Later he became assistant rector of Calvary in 
 Pittsburgh and still later he was made rector of St. John’s 
 in Jersey City. While at St. John’s he was appointed 
 chaplain and served in this capacity through the war. In 
 1920 he came to St. Paul’s Cathedral in Detroit, where he 
 had been Dean for the past five years. His labors in be- 
 half of his church and the city have been indefatigable, 
 holding in the church such important positions as Chaplain 
 of St. Luke’s Home, Secretary of the Standing Com- 
 mittee on the Michigan Diocese, and membership on the 
 Board of Bishops, and in the city, invaluable relations to 
 many religious and civic groups. In respect to the latter, 
 his most notable contribution was made while he acted as 
 President of the local Council of Churches. He is the 
 author of “‘ Occasional Sermons,” a book full of vital and 
 original thinking. While at St. Paul’s he has had oppor- 
 tunity to broadcast his remarkable voice by means of the 
 radio to the great delight and comfort of many thousands 
 in and out of Detroit. Quite recently he has been conse- 
 crated Bishop in his church, and is now stationed in Ohio 
 as Bishop Coadjutor of the Ohio Diocese of the Protestant 
 Episcopal Church. We are sorry to lose him. 
 
DEEP CALLING UNTO DEEP—Some there are 
 who always know they are to be ministers. They grow up 
 with that consciousness. ~ There is only one love of thew 
 lives—a consuming passion admitting of no alternative. 
 
 At times they wander afar in other fields, in business, m 
 professions, in various occupations; but there is only one 
 vocation. 
 
 The ministry consumes all interests; it merges all occu- 
 pations; it claims all gifts. It draws them as a magnet so 
 powerful that they never know any other real pull sn lsfe. 
 
 They do not have to choose, for it is all settled. No 
 sacrifice seems unnecessary, no training is long, no duties 
 are irksome. They accept all challenges. They strive to 
 the uttermost. They simply will be His ministers. It 1s 
 the dominate passion of their souls. It 1s life—their life. 
 
 I quite understand them; we are kinsmen. 
 
 —WarREN LINCOLN RoceErs. 
 
a4 
 BEHOLD, THE SOWELR 
 
 WARREN LINCOLN ROGERS, D.D. 
 “ Behold, the sower went forth to sow.”’—Marrt. 13: 3. 
 
 We have certain days in the church year for which 
 we offer special petitions, and we frequently indicate 
 them by very unfamiliar names. Such are the Roga- 
 tion seasons, as we call them. We have Rogation Days 
 and Rogation Prayers. Few people know what is 
 meant by them, although the meaning is very simple. 
 Let me give one meaning in a single phrase: “ God 
 bless the husbandman, and the fields of the earth that 
 they give their increase.” In other words, it is a prayer 
 for the farmer. 
 
 This is altogether appropriate at this season of 
 the year when the farmers of the country are busy 
 preparing the ground for the sowing of the seed. Es- 
 pecially is this so when the season has been so unpro- 
 pitious as we have experienced this spring, when 
 extremely cold weather has been followed by exces- 
 sively hot weather. Two farmer friends have informed 
 me that they have lost strawberry and tomato crops 
 because of this condition. Our newspapers reported 
 this week that millions of dollars’ worth of crops have 
 perished. So we give more than ordinary attention to 
 
 219 
 
220 BEHOLD, THE SOWER 
 
 these rogation prayers today in the service of our 
 church. 
 
 My sermon concerns the farmer, and for a text you 
 recall the parable of our Lord in St. Matthew’s Gospel, 
 the thirteenth chapter and the third verse, ‘“ Behold, 
 the sower went forth to sow.” 
 
 It is not because any of us are farmers that we 
 choose this theme. In fact, most of us never had any- 
 thing to do with the farm, although we may have been 
 born on a farm and lived there for a time. Such was 
 my own case. Yet the pity is that I never stayed long 
 enough on the farm to learn anything valuable about 
 it, nor could I be of any help in maintaining a farm. 
 Some two years ago a man offered me a finely-stocked 
 and well-cultivated farm of nearly five hundred acres; 
 and I had to say to him, ‘‘ No, thank you, I cannot 
 accept the offer.” What a miserable failure I should 
 have made trying to be a farmer. 
 
 Most of us are interested in almost everything else 
 except the farm and the farmer. Possibly it is good 
 for us to center our thought on things other than those 
 we habitually deal with every day of the week. We 
 have to do with business affairs, with the home and 
 school, the counting-house and store, the mill and the 
 factory. How refreshing to think of something else. 
 It reminds us of the dream which so many of us have 
 of how we shall spend our maturer years in some com- 
 fortable, delightful place in the country near the city, 
 but not a part of it. The present trend in the city is 
 toward the country, that is, to certain conditions and 
 pleasures of country life. Our suburban populations 
 
WARREN LINCOLN ROGERS 221 
 
 are growing with amazing rapidity and are a reflection 
 of our desire to live somewhat removed from the busy 
 and congested activities of our American life. 
 
 Our Lord talked most of the time with city folks, 
 with the people from the fishing villages and the little 
 towns of Galilee, from the large city centers and the 
 metropolis of Jerusalem. Yet you will note that the 
 greater part of His parables were taken from country 
 life; they had to do with the farm and the farmer. 
 
 I like this parable of the farmer, ‘“ Behold, the 
 sower.” As Jesus gave it, He undoubtedly had in mind 
 the soils into which the seed was cast, rather than the 
 sower himself. We have called it the parable of the 
 sower, while our Lord thought mostly of the soils and 
 of the various receptions which the seed received. We 
 shall disregard this application, and keep to the tradi- 
 tional name of the parable, that of the Sower. So our 
 theme is, The Sower. 
 
 We are thinking of the man, the sower. The sower 
 is always more important than the soils. The farmer 
 is of greater value than the farm. Men do not always 
 think this way. They try to reverse the order, and 
 imagine that it is possible to get farmers at any time, 
 but not so easy to get farms. The reason that I de- 
 clined the offer of my friend was because I could not 
 run that farm, nor could I find anyone else capable of 
 doing it, so that we could make a profit on it. And the 
 reason my friend offered the farm was because he could 
 not find a farmer who could maintain the farm with 
 profit to himself, while he was in the city making a lot 
 more money than he could hope to make on the farm. 
 
222 BEHOLD, THE SOWER 
 
 He was learning that the farmer is of the first impor- 
 tance. No farm will keep up without the services of 
 an expert and industrious farmer. ‘The best farm will 
 soon deteriorate without good management. The best 
 farms have become such because there were good 
 farmers. 
 
 In like manner, the man is always of more value 
 than his machine. We have a way of thinking in this 
 industrial age that men do not count and that machines 
 are everything. Some machines do seem to be almost 
 human in their wonderful powers. We stand in awe 
 of them as we see them with their artificial arms and 
 limbs undertaking tasks which no human strength 
 could possibly achieve. Yet it is exceedingly danger- 
 ous for any age or nation to accept the philosophy that 
 the machine is more valuable than the man. 
 
 Any nation which commits itself to that proposition 
 is sure to go on the rocks. History is full of illustra- 
 tions of such attempts, and of the ultimate failures 
 which ensued. 
 
 Personality is of greater value than any institution. 
 We laud the institutions which have come down from 
 the past, and we think that they have life and power 
 in and of themselves. There are some fine institutions 
 in this fair country of ours. We speak proudly of our 
 republican forms of government and of the institutions 
 which have grown out of our experience in the last cen- 
 tury and a half. We think our government is ideal; 
 and on the Fourth of July we glorify its institutions 
 and regard them as the last word in popular govern- 
 ment. They are ideals. They cannot perish. Yet 
 
WARREN LINCOLN ROGERS 223 
 
 every little while some one suggests a weakness and a 
 flaw. Dean Inge, of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the ‘‘ gloomy 
 dean ” of London, England, very rightly criticizes our 
 institutions and unerringly points out their weaknesses. 
 At first we are indignant with him; but when we are 
 sober and in our right minds, we know that he is right. 
 We have learned that no institution of government can 
 long maintain its high standard and ideal influence 
 unless we have strong and righteous personalities con- 
 trolling it. Free government demands an intelligent 
 and self-sacrificing citizenry. The personality of its 
 leaders and its people is far more important than any 
 form it may create. | 
 
 It is the same with the Church. We have inherited 
 wonderful institutions from the past. They have come 
 down to us, planted by Divine Grace and nourished 
 with the blood of many martyrs. They are full of 
 meaning and influence. And yet, of what avail are all 
 these forms, ceremonies, traditions, institutions, and 
 creeds, if the personality of the Divine Son of God is 
 not in them? How foolish many things are, if His 
 spirit cannot operate in and through them? What are 
 the sacraments, if the incarnate Son of God is not in 
 them? The personality of Christ must dominate them 
 all—all of these institutions which constitute the 
 Church in its multiform operations in the world—else 
 most that we have and do is meaningless and power- 
 less. Nothing we have can possibly be a substitute 
 for the personality of our Lord. 
 
 Yes, the farmer is of more value than his farm. 
 
 The man is of more value than his machine. 
 
224 BEHOLD, THE SOWER 
 
 Personality is of more value than any institution. 
 
 Behold, the sower; he is of more value than the soils. 
 
 Now, this parable of our Lord is the most pessimistic 
 He ever gave. Behold, the sower went forth to sow; 
 and some seed fell by the wayside, and it was trodden 
 under foot of man, or the fowls of the air devoured it— 
 waste effort. Some fell upon stony places and the sun 
 scorched it and it died—waste effort. Some fell 
 among thorns and they choked it—waste effort. Three 
 times this farmer sowed, and three times he failed. 
 Why continue? Our efforts are frequently futile. One 
 of the hardest lessons we have to learn is that much 
 which we have to do seems to come to naught. I well 
 remember the fine dreams we students had in college 
 and seminary. We were sure that we had the most 
 unusual group of young men and that the combined 
 results of our efforts when we were all in the ministry 
 would achieve great reforms and advancement in the 
 Church. As I look back over the intervening years, it 
 is a matter of great disappointment to me to see how 
 little we have really accomplished. Worst of all, there 
 are some of the number who have become heartily dis- 
 couraged and have abandoned the ministry. 
 
 John Oxenham tried to teach us the value of such 
 reverses and failures in life, especially during the dark 
 days of the war, when he wrote: 
 
 “In these dread times, 
 Each day we pass unscathed 
 Is one day snatched from sorrow. 
 Help us to live full-faithed, 
 Nor stoop to borrow 
 
WARREN LINCOLN ROGERS 225 
 
 From a possible tomorrow 
 
 That which may never be; 
 
 But, if it be, 
 
 If still ordained of Thee, that we 
 May learn to rise 
 
 Through sacrifice 
 
 To nobler ministry.” 
 
 How different is the tone of that verse from what 
 Shelley gives in his pathetic lament, 
 
 “TI could lie down like a tired child, 
 And weep away the life of care, 
 Which I have borne and yet must bear.” 
 
 There are failures in life. There are waste efforts 
 which come to no avail. There are children who never 
 know what loving self-sacrificing parents have given 
 all their lives. I saw such a son only recently when 
 his parents came to the college where he had gotten in 
 trouble, and with aching hearts they tried to help him 
 along. There are homes which are completely wrecked, 
 and businesses which are only a mass of ruins, crum- 
 bled about us. God does not promise us success in all 
 of our ventures or dreams. Otherwise the book of 
 Job was written in vain. There is something more 
 important than success, something more worth seeking 
 after than just our own whim or fancy, no matter how 
 great or useful it may be. It is the sense of peace and 
 contentment in our own souls and the consciousness 
 that we have labored worthily. 
 
 Success or failure are not the final measure. H. G. 
 Wells has suggested a deeper appreciation of life when 
 he sums up a most interesting argument by saying, 
 
226 BEHOLD, THE SOWER 
 
 “Yet, in the background of the consciousness of the 
 world, waiting as the silence and moonlight wait above 
 the flares and shouts, the hurdy-gurdys and quarrels of 
 a village fair, is the knowledge that all mankind is one 
 brotherhood; that God is the universal and impartial 
 Father of mankind; and that only in that universal 
 service may mankind find peace, or peace be found for 
 the troubles of the individual soul.” 
 
 Behold, the sower,—three efforts and all failures. 
 But he did not stop there. That is the best part of 
 the parable. You will recall that great painting of 
 Millet, the French artist, as he describes the sower, 
 with strident pace and enthusiastic manner, putting 
 his hand into the bag of seed he carries, and casting 
 the seed ungrudgingly in every direction, letting it fall 
 where it will. Some one has called this parable an 
 illustration of Human Imbecility, of foolish and sense- 
 less social effort which deserves to fail. Why sow 
 seed among thorns or on the wayside or on stony 
 ground? Of course, no harvest can come from seed 
 sown in a stone quarry, or on the Lincoln Highway. 
 We are told that much of our efforts in social and 
 spiritual betterment are of a similar imbecile nature. 
 No one pleads for brainless labor. We assuredly mag- 
 nify the necessary common sense that everyone should 
 exercise. God gave us brains to use and the experience 
 of the human race for the past centuries to guide us in 
 all of our work. But we have known of men who 
 spent all their time studying the soils and the weather 
 conditions, and reading reports and treatises on how 
 and when to sow the seed, and then have neither cour- 
 
WARREN LINCOLN ROGERS 227 
 
 age nor time to sow. We greatly admire those sturdy 
 farmers in Montana who, five years ago, faced drought, 
 and four years ago endured cold, and three years ago 
 suffered the heat, and two years ago saw two hundred 
 of their banks fail, and yet this year, when I talked 
 with some of them as to whether they would still farm, 
 immediately answered, “ Surely we shall sow the seed 
 this spring and labor as never before with all of our 
 brains and strength for the harvest. We are not quit- 
 ting.” This is in accord with the dominant spirit of 
 Carlyle as he trenchantly urges, ‘‘ Produce, Produce. 
 Were it but the pitifulest infinitesimal fraction of a 
 product, produce it in God’s name. It is the utmost 
 thou hast in thee; out with it, then.” Elizabeth Barrett 
 Browning, more modest yet none the less determined, 
 reveals her spirit in writing, 
 
 “T stood up straight and worked 
 My veritable work. And as the soul 
 
 Which grows within the child makes the child grow, 
 So life, im deepening with me, deepened all 
 The course I took, the work I did.” 
 
 Behold, the sower went forth to sow. He did what 
 he intended to do. He sowed the seed with a holy 
 abandon as if every seed were good and every seed 
 would assure a harvest. I like this parable of the 
 sower. It has faith and hope and work and power to 
 it. It manifests the only spirit which in the end must 
 achieve its purpose. Some one answers the question: 
 “Why were the saints, saints? Because they were 
 cheerful when it was difficult to be cheerful, patient 
 when it was difficult to be patient; and because they 
 
228 BEHOLD, THE SOWER 
 
 pushed on when they wanted to stand still, and kept 
 silent when they wanted to talk, and were agreeable 
 when they wanted to be disagreeable. That was all. 
 It was quite simple and always will be.” Behold, the 
 sower went forth to sow. That was his job, and he 
 did it. It was God’s business to bring in the harvest. 
 
 But this parable also suggests one of the finest 
 optimism we can find in our Lord’s parables. Some 
 seed fell on good ground. And it bare fruit,—two per 
 cent as we think of in our Government bonds, or four 
 per cent as some of our banks pay on savings deposits, 
 or Six per cent as we collect on mortgages, or even ten 
 per cent as we desire in the nature of dividends on our 
 investments? No, the minimum stated is thirty per 
 cent, then sixty per cent, and some even a hundred 
 per cent. I often wonder how successful a business 
 man our Lord would be. There is a real question 
 which gives us difficulty at times, 7. e., how far can we 
 put our Lord’s teachings into our business affairs. I 
 do not know. But it is worth while to try, at least. 
 Jesus is amazingly optimistic of life and in life. He 
 expresses unquenchable faith, indomitable, eternal. 
 
 John Mills pays a lovely tribute to his friend, John 
 Clifford, in his poem called ‘‘ A Memory.” 
 
 “My life grew weary, and, with toil, my spirit broke; 
 I met a man I knew, and when he spoke 
 I seemed to see the Master; heard him speak 
 His message to the weary, and the weak. 
 And now I catch his name—the man who made me 
 think— 
 Till sunlight on the field touched every clod, 
 And helped me know I lived and worked with God.” 
 
WARREN LINCOLN ROGERS 229 
 
 The religion we profess is not a mere human 
 impulse. 
 
 It is not an idle dream or a sentimental vanity. We 
 are not whistling to keep up our courage. When we 
 are confronted with the long; hard tasks of dealing 
 with masses of men in the midst of their well-nigh un- 
 answerable problems, their conflicting prejudices, their 
 inexplicable blindnesses, and their unpardonable sins, 
 there is need for the highest courage; a courage which 
 can go forth in the name and spirit of the Master to 
 seek and to save that which seems undeniably lost and 
 ruined. A spiritual dynamic of unusual power is im- 
 perative. It can be found only in this well-poised and 
 unfailing optimism of Jesus. Work with God can never 
 fail. We dare to trust our allies. As the farmer trusts 
 the kindly earth, the beneficent sun, the physical forces 
 and energies of the universe; as he had confidence in 
 the rain and the dew, the sun and the soil; so we, in 
 our tasks of life, have infinite faith in the spiritual 
 forces and energies of life. From them we receive our 
 strength and the assurance of the harvest. 
 
 And so it is that our strength shall be largely multi- 
 plied and the harvest shall be greatly increased because 
 we have the wisdom and the blessing of our great God 
 to attend us in every way of life. 
 
 After all, the question which is raised in this parable 
 is this, What kind of a sower are we? We worry about 
 the soils and the conditions when we should be most 
 concerned as to how we are ourselves. It is not the 
 farm, but the farmer. What kind of a sower are we? 
 What kind of a citizen? What kind of a churchman? 
 
230 BEHOLD, THE SOWER 
 
 What kind of a parent? What kind of a brother? Be- 
 hold, the sower went forth to sow. Not the soils, but 
 the sower. 
 
 PRAYER 
 
 Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord, that with high courage 
 and indomitable faith we may sow the seed of truth and 
 eternal life, believing in its ultimate achievement, accord- 
 ing to Thy Dwsne purposes. May we trust our Allies and 
 labor with all our heart, mind and strength. In Thine own 
 good time give the harvest; and while we toil, sustain our 
 spirits and grant us sweet contentment and a quiet. mind, 
 with the blessed consciousness of work well done and a life 
 not lwed in vain. Amen. 
 
MARK F, SANBORN 
 
 Dr. Sanborn was born in Michigan in the year 1877, and 
 received his college training at Kalamazoo and his theolog- 
 ical training at Chicago, being graduated from Kalamazoo 
 College in 1905 and from the Divinity School of Chicago 
 University in 1909. His pastorates have been as follows: 
 Underwood Memorial Baptist Church, Wauwatosa, Wis- 
 consin; Berwyn Baptist Church, Berwyn, Illinois; Judson 
 Memorial Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and 
 the First Baptist Church, Detroit, where he has been 
 preaching since 1922. For the past three years he has 
 been the popular president of the Baptist Young People’s 
 Union of America, and has given excellent service in the 
 many summer Assemblies and Conventions held by this 
 great organization of youth. There is no greater privilege 
 afforded a Christian minister than that of instructing and 
 inspiring the young people, and Dr. Sanborn is accomplish- 
 ing this high task among his own congregation and in the 
 wider field opened to him through the Baptist Union. His 
 great church is situated on Woodward Avenue and is one 
 of the Baptist meccas for Michigan. There is a real place 
 for “teaching sermons” in this day when so few people 
 have any reason for the faith that is within them. ‘This 
 sermon is of the right sort; and it gives emphasis to that 
 particular kind of thinking which ought to bring a larger 
 appreciation of the values of human life. 
 
THE YOUTH FOR CHRIST—Bishop John H,. Vin- 
 cent has wisely said, “ The church that is wise toward its 
 youth will shine as the stars.’ The minister who appre- 
 ciates the importance of work with young people will make 
 a distinct contributton to the advancement of the Kingdom. 
 
 The youth of today will lead the world of tomorrow. 
 The direction of that leadership can be largely determined 
 by the wise men in the pulpits. The church needs the 
 vision, the love of adventure, the courage and enthusiasm 
 of youth. Our youth need the miumistry, the sympathy, 
 the training and the opportunities for service in the church. 
 
 The wise preacher can lead these two great forces into 
 happy union that will add much strength to the program 
 of the Christian religion. There is no more promising 
 field of endeavor today than that offered by the eager, re- 
 sponsive young people of our generation. Win the youth 
 of the world to Christ and the Kingdom will come. 
 
 —Mark F, SANBORN. 
 
AVI 
 THAT THEY MIGHT KNOW HIM 
 
 MARK F. SANBORN, D.D. 
 First Baptist Church 
 
 “That thy might know Thee, the only true God.’—Joun 17:3. 
 
 The seventeenth chapter of St. John is the Holy of 
 Holies of the Bible. In reading this chapter one is re- 
 minded of the experience of Moses in the mount when 
 God said ‘ put off thy shoes from off thy feet; for the 
 place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” 
 
 Into this high-priestly prayer our Lord puts the in- 
 most thoughts of his soul. He leads us into the very 
 presence of God. He makes known His supreme mis- 
 sion in life. It was to lead men to know God, to know 
 Him as Father, as the God of love and mercy, and to 
 know Him as He is revealed in His Son. Thus to know 
 God is to have eternal life. 
 
 Man’s greatest need is to know God. Until a man 
 knows God he has not begun to live. He may have 
 much knowledge, may have achieved great success, 
 may have accumulated a great fortune, or even worn 
 a crown; but if he does not know God, he has never 
 entered into the true life of high purposes and chal- 
 lenging aspirations that make us worthy of our divine 
 birthright. 
 
 When Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, he 
 
 233 
 
234 THAT THEY MIGHT KNOW HIM 
 
 became conscious of his sinfulness, repented and 
 responded to God’s call by saying, ‘“ Here am J, 
 send me.” 
 
 The Book of Job has one of the greatest messages 
 of the Bible for our time. You recall how Job lost his 
 property, his sons and daughters, and then disease 
 seized his body. In a discouraged and distracted con- 
 dition Job found his way to the garbage heap outside 
 the city walls. Hither his friends came, three of them, 
 with their traditional theology, their emphasis upon 
 certain dogmas of the past, inferring that Job must 
 have sinned and that this suffering was God’s just 
 punishment. 
 
 Elihu, the younger friend, a man of more liberal 
 ideas, next presented his newer interpretation of. the- 
 ology. But traditional orthodoxy, hoary dogmas, or 
 even modern philosophy didn’t help Job out of his 
 troubles. And similar debates, statements of creeds 
 and hollow repetitions of outgrown traditions will not 
 save the distracted world of our day. 
 
 “ Our little systems have their day; 
 They have their day and cease to be; 
 They are but broken lights of thee, 
 And thou, O Lord, art more than they.” 
 
 In a way Job represents our world. The great war 
 swept away the material possessions of many nations. 
 Statisticians tell us no less than thirty millions of 
 human beings, mostly our sons and daughters, lost 
 their lives in the war and since the war, because of the 
 war. ‘Today the world is distracted. Jealousy, fear 
 
MARK F. SANBORN 235 
 
 and lawlessness everywhere abound. Like the friends 
 of Job, the fundamentalists and modernists of our 
 day are offering their suggestions, but the world still 
 suffers. 
 
 What this troubled, distracted world needs is to 
 know God. As you read the last few chapters of the 
 Book of Job, you will find that when God is revealed 
 to Job, everything is made right in his life. His prop- 
 erty is restored double, more sons and daughters are 
 born to him and he is restored to perfect health and 
 happiness. 
 
 Man can never be satisfied until he thus knows 
 God. St. Augustine was right when he said, ‘“‘ Thou 
 hast made us for Thyself and we cannot rest until we 
 rest in Thee.” When Paul preached at Athens he 
 told the Greeks that men are the offspring of God, 
 who ‘‘ made of one every nation of men to dwell on 
 the face of the earth, ... that they should seek 
 God if haply they might feel after him and find him.” 
 Man is by nature religious. Go where you will, among 
 the most primitive and backward peoples, and you 
 will find some form of religion. Man craves the 
 knowledge of God. Miaillions are saying, ‘“‘ Oh, that I 
 knew where I might find Him, that I might come to 
 His seat! ” 
 
 Thank God, it is possible for all to know Him. In 
 a thousand ways He seeks to make Himself known to 
 His children. The universe is His autobiography. 
 The heavens declare the knowledge of God. Some 
 people in these days seem to fear science. But every 
 day men who really study the laws of nature and all 
 
236 THAT THEY MIGHT KNOW HIM 
 
 the wonders and glories of our material universe 
 are being enriched by an ever-expanding knowledge 
 of God. The study of astronomy has given us a 
 vastly greater conception of God. As we grasp the 
 infinite immensity of the universe, the omnipotence of 
 God becomes evident. The study of the laws of de- 
 velopment and growth in biology and geology gives 
 us new and greater knowledge of God as an all-wise 
 Creator. 
 
 The study of psychology has revealed the reality 
 and power of faith. Our new knowledge of ancient 
 languages, records and literatures has opened to our 
 generation great vistas of new knowledge of God’s 
 self-revelation. 
 
 There is nothing to fear from the study of science. 
 Through it multitudes have been led to a real, vital 
 faith in God. Jesus said, ‘“‘I am the way, the truth 
 and the life.’ All truth, if it is sought in reverence, 
 will lead to the knowledge of God. ‘The teacher in 
 the public school, in the college or university has a 
 golden opportunity of leading the eager young minds 
 of the students into the knowledge of God. Leave 
 God out of science and there is nothing left but the 
 shell. If our hearts are in tune with the Infinite, all 
 true knowledge will reveal God. Mrs. Browning said: 
 
 “ Farth’s crammed with heaven, 
 And every common bush afire with God: 
 But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.” 
 
 All new knowledge of God should be welcomed. 
 God is the great, unchangeable reality. But men 
 
MARK F. SANBORN 237 
 
 change. Modern science and modern means of trans- 
 portation have given us a new world. And yet the 
 world is the same. It is our knowledge and experience 
 that have changed. A thousand years ago men knew 
 only a flat earth, that revolves on its axis. Has the 
 earth changed? No. We have changed; our knowl- 
 edge and experience have changed. 
 
 So in the realm of theology. Each generation gains 
 new means of Bible study and new knowledge and 
 experience of God. The old realities of religion are 
 unchanging and unchangeable. The modern historical 
 method of Bible study and the modern scientific means 
 and methods of increasing knowledge are our allies, 
 not our enemies. They have been given to us “ that 
 we might know Him.” 
 
 But the supreme revelation of God is given us 
 through His Son, our Jesus Christ. He said, “ He 
 that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him 
 that sent me.” His supreme mission in life was to 
 make God known. In this prayer, He pleads for a 
 glorified life that He may glorify the Father. As fol- 
 lowers of our Lord, we, too, must pray for a glorified 
 life that we may glorify Him. This glorified life comes 
 as we reflect like a mirror the character of God, until 
 we become transformed into the same image, and then 
 we, too, will be able to say “ He that hath seen me 
 hath seen the Father.” 
 
 Again Jesus said in this wonderful prayer, “ I mani- 
 fested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me 
 out of the world.” To manifest is to make plain to 
 sight or understanding, to show clearly or distinctly, 
 
238 THAT THEY MIGHT KNOW HIM 
 
 to make obvious, to display, to exhibit. It is as though 
 the Master said, “‘ Father, I have sought to display in 
 My life Your characteristics, in order that men who 
 see Me might see and know You.” 
 
 To manifest is more than to preach or to teach. It 
 is to exemplify God, to show Him in our daily living. 
 Christian workers can learn from salesmen or window 
 decorators. How attractively the goods are displayed 
 where people will see them and desire them. So we 
 who are ambassadors of God, to whom has been com- 
 mitted the ministry of reconciliation, we who are sent 
 ‘even as he was sent,” are to display in our daily 
 lives the character of God. We are to let our light 
 shine that men may see our clean lives and our good 
 works and come to know and glorify God. 
 
 Religious education, as a means of making God 
 known, is one of the chief functions of the Christian 
 Church. Boys and girls, men and women must be led 
 to know God. We need preaching, we need evangel- 
 ism, we need social service, but today our supreme 
 need is a new emphasis on teaching. The great com- 
 mission that says ‘‘Go preach the gospel to every 
 creature,’ also says, “‘ Teaching them to observe all 
 things whatsoever I commanded you.” 
 
 Our Lord emphasized teaching, both by precept 
 and example. In the Gospels He is referred to as 
 “teacher ” over fifty times. He Himself accepted the 
 name when He said, “ Ye call me Teacher and Lord 
 and ye say well, for so I am.” 
 
 Professor A. B. Bruce, in a large volume on The 
 Training of the Twelve, calls our attention to the fact 
 
MARK F. SANBORN 239 
 
 that most of Christ’s public ministry was devoted to 
 the training of the men who were to carry on His mis- 
 sion, were to preach the Gospel to all men that they 
 might know God, teaching them to observe all His 
 commands. Jesus was a good example of the wisdom 
 shown by Paul’s advice to Timothy when he says, 
 “The things which thou hast heard from me among 
 many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men 
 who shall be able to teach others also.” 
 
 The common people with whom Jesus mingled nearly 
 always addressed Him as Rabbi, or Teacher. Even 
 the Pharisees said, ‘‘ Rabbi, we know that thou teach- 
 est the way of God in truth.” When the multitudes 
 heard Him they said, ‘‘ What is this? A new teach- 
 ing?” Nicodemus listened to His wonderful words 
 of wisdom and of life and exclaimed, ‘‘ Rabbi, we know 
 thou art a teacher come from God; for no one can 
 do these signs that thou doest, except God be with 
 him.” 
 
 No one can overestimate the tremendous revival 
 of religion that would result if the Church would 
 take seriously her God-given task of Christian edu- 
 cation and follow its conscientiously for even a single 
 generation! 
 
 Jesus understood the needs and capacities of people 
 and, by appealing to the common experiences of their 
 life, led them to think for themselves of the eternal 
 realities of God. Everything led to the knowledge of 
 God. He spoke of the birds, the flowers, the seasons, 
 the clouds, the trees, the farmer, the merchant, the 
 women working in the home, the little children, the 
 
240 THAT THEY MIGHT KNOW HIM 
 
 man who was robbed and the Good Samaritan who 
 helped him. He told the story of the lost coin, the 
 lost sheep, the lost son, and the rejoicing when they 
 were found. Through all His teaching He is leading 
 people to know God. 
 
 The Church has reasons to take courage. More 
 and more our schools and colleges and _ theological 
 seminaries are placing emphasis on religious educa- 
 tion. The teaching function of the Church is being 
 recognized as of equal importance with that of preach- 
 ing. As people are taught to know God they will love 
 and follow Him. Educational evangelism outweighs 
 emotional evangelism. Our missionaries realize the 
 necessity of teaching. ‘To win persons to discipleship 
 through preaching and then leave them without ade- 
 quate training is wasteful folly. 
 
 What is true on the missionary fields is equally true 
 in the homeland. Provision must be made for the 
 training of the parents of our scholars. This may call 
 for a readjustment of our program and of our budgets, 
 but its importance requires that we be ready to make 
 the change, cost what it may. 
 
 As Protestants, we are far behind Roman Catholics 
 and Jews in their emphasis on the religious education 
 of children. But we are fast awaking to its impor- 
 tance. The Church Vacation School has become an 
 important means of religious education of thousands 
 of boys and girls during the summer weeks. 
 
 Week-day religious instruction by competent, paid 
 teachers, for certain regular periods each week taken 
 from public school time, and for which credit is given, 
 
MARK F. SANBORN 241 
 
 promises much for the future. The Church’s responsi- 
 bility extends to all the boys and girls of the commun- 
 ity. Many more can be reached through the week-day 
 school. The teaching is on a par with the best received 
 from the trained teachers of the public school. It is 
 more systematic, regular, and much greater in extent 
 than the usual half-hour period of instruction per week, 
 which is the average in most church schools. 
 
 Jesus not only led people to know God; He care- 
 fully guarded them. In this great prayer three words 
 stand out as indicating the Master’s interest in His 
 followers: “I pray for them. .. . I kept them in thy 
 name. . . . I guarded them, and not one of them per- 
 ished.” As our children or young people or even 
 adults are brought to know God, do we thus guard and 
 keep them? 
 
 It is not enough to baptize people and welcome 
 them into our membership, then send them out into 
 an unfriendly or even an evil atmosphere. More and 
 more must the Christian Church assume responsibility 
 for the social conditions surrounding our people. Some 
 form of group organization in the churches of larger 
 membership is essential, Every member who is led 
 to know God must be prayerfully guarded, trained and 
 enlisted in the service of the kingdom. 
 
 The organized young people’s society under one 
 name or another has been blessed of God for the past 
 forty years as a means of holding and training the 
 youth of the churches. To be most helpful it must 
 always be used as a means and not as an end. Its 
 program and form of organization will change to meet 
 
24.2 THAT THEY MIGHT KNOW HIM 
 
 the changing conditions of life and the changing 
 methods of work in the Church. Thousands of Chris- 
 tian leaders in the pew and the pulpit, in the Church 
 school and in the Christian college, in the home, in 
 business, in the trades and professions, owe much of 
 their training for leadership to some organized young 
 people’s society in the local church. 
 
 “That they might know thee” could well serve as 
 the motto for all our Christian work. All programs 
 and organizations, all preaching and teaching should 
 be a means to that great end. With such a goal in 
 mind no worker and no church can go far astray. This 
 great ideal will give the Church a new passion and a 
 new enthusiasm for our work. 
 
 The lack of an adequate knowledge of God is the 
 source of the world’s woe and misery. When we know 
 Him as the God of justice we can no longer exploit our 
 handicapped or weak brothers, it matters not what the 
 color of their skin is or to what race or nation they 
 chance to belong. From millions of toilers there rises 
 today the cry for justice. When we know the God of 
 Jesus we will want to give justice, because we will want 
 to be like Him. 8 
 
 As we come to know Him as a God of love we can 
 no longer allow hatred or fear or selfishness to lead us 
 into war. And there is little use of trying to outlaw 
 war through law, to overcome force through force. 
 Let people come to know God as He is revealed in 
 Jesus, the paragon of forgiveness and love, and evil — 
 will vanish like darkness before the rising sun. 
 
 After more than nineteen hundred years of Christian 
 
MARK F. SANBORN 243 
 
 effort, almost one-half of the human race is still with- 
 out adequate means of knowing God. The Apostle 
 Paul said, “‘ Whosoever shall call upon the name of 
 the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call 
 upon him in whom they have not believed? And how 
 shall they believe in him who they have not heard? 
 And how shall they hear without a preacher? And 
 how shall they preach, except they be sent? ”’ What 
 a mighty challenge to the Church of the living 
 Christ! 
 
 In this prayer, our Lord said, ‘‘ O righteous Father, 
 the world knew thee not, but I knew thee.” In that | 
 statement we have the best explanation of the incar- 
 nation. ‘“ Jesus Christ, who existing in the form of 
 God, counted not the being on an equality with God a 
 thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the 
 form of a servant, being made in the likeness of sinful 
 men, . . . becoming obedient even unto death, yea, 
 the death of the cross.” 
 
 Why did Christ thus come? Why did He thus die 
 on the cross? Because the world did not know God, 
 but He did. Why did David Livingstone give his life 
 in dark Africa? Why did he remain there even after 
 Stanley found him and tried to persuade him to yield 
 to the pleadings of England and almost all lands that 
 he leave Africa and accept the bounties and honors 
 that awaited him at home? Why did he remain even 
 until his lifeless body was found on that tragic morning 
 in the attitude of prayer? There is but one answer. 
 The people of dark Africa didn’t know God, but 
 Livingstone did. 
 
244 THAT THEY MIGHT KNOW HIM 
 
 What keeps Dr. Grenfell away up in Labrador? 
 We all know of his privations and also of the honors 
 and high positions he might have in his home land. 
 Why does he stay and suffer and work? Because the 
 people of Labrador do not know God, but he does. 
 
 Why does that rural pastor remain away out in that 
 home mission field? His family desire and need the 
 comforts and educational advantages of the city. But 
 still he toils on, underpaid, poorly equipped, often dis- 
 couraged. He is there because the people of that lonely 
 community do not know God, but he does. 
 
 Why do the brightest and best of our college students 
 declare their purpose, if God permit, to go anywhere 
 in any land to preach or teach the glorious good news 
 of the Christ? The answer is evident. There are mil- 
 lions who do not know God, but they do know Him. 
 
 “That they might know thee.” That was the mis- 
 sion of our Lord. That is the mission of His Church. 
 For that mission our Lord came “ not to be ministered 
 unto but to minister and give his life a ransom for 
 many.” For that mission He expects the Church to 
 give her best, her all. Let us not disappoint Him. 
 
 PRAVER 
 
 O Righteous Father, we thank Thee for light. May we 
 have the mind of Christ, remembering that we, too, are 
 the light of the world. Help us to let our light shine that 
 men may know Thee. Bless the Church and all other 
 means of extending the knowledge of Thyself until “ the 
 earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah as the 
 waters cover the sea.’ In Jesus name. Amen, 
 
WILLIAM L. STIDGER 
 
 Dr. Stidger was trained at Allegheny College; and his 
 Alma Mater granted him an honorary degree in 1923. 
 Before coming to Detroit he held successful pastorates in 
 San Francisco and San José, California. A year of obser- 
 vation at the principal mission stations in Asia together 
 with a considerable experience in Europe has given him an 
 unusual view of world affairs. Dr. Stidger has preached 
 for the past five years at St. Mark’s Methodist Episcopal 
 Church. He has taken a Church in a fine residential sec- 
 tion fully five miles from the city hall, and has made it a 
 church of city-wide influence. The popularity of St. 
 Mark’s grows out of the popularity of its preacher, who 
 has taken conspicuous part in every political venture of the 
 city during these years. With considerable pleasure have 
 I heard him say on a number of occasions: “* Woe is me, if 
 I preach not the gospel.”’ Ina strange way he has com- 
 bined in his preaching a love for the beautiful and a hatred 
 for sham and evil. Now you hear him singing such a de- 
 lightful song as his own, “ When God washed the world 
 last night ;” and, again, you hear him with scathing rebuke 
 calling down divine wrath upon social and political offend- 
 ers, This sermon is typical of the poetical side of his 
 nature, calling men away from the noise and confusion of 
 artificial life to the natural and to the eternal. It is with 
 regret that we learn of the recent appointment of Dr. 
 Stidger to the Linwood Avenue Methodist nae 
 Church in Kansas City. 
 
A NEW HOMILETICS FOR AN OLD MESSAGE 
 —One of the most pressing needs of the ministry is a new 
 homuletics. Having worked on this problem for the past 
 ten years with many attempts at something new in this 
 field, I have finally adopted, as a permanent part of my 
 preaching program, these new homuletical forms: 
 
 I—The Drama Sermon. 
 
 2—The Dramatic Book Sermon. 
 3—The Dramatic Art Sermon. 
 4—The Symphonic Sermon. ~~ 
 
 I have tried the Symphonic sermon form for three 
 years, and have discovered that this homiletic method ts 
 the most popular of all. The sermon which I have con- 
 tributed to this book is Symphonic. It was preached in 
 my pulpit on April rath, 1925. I consider tt to be my 
 most typical kind of sermon, and am glad to pass on some 
 of the things which I have learned in the laboratory of life 
 and expertence.—WILLIAM L,. STIDGER. 
 
AVIT 
 ORDAINED TO ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 WILLIAM L. STIDGER, D.D. 
 St. Mark’s Methodist Episcopal Church 
 
 “As many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” 
 —Acts 13:48. 
 
 SYMPHONIC THEME: 
 
 “He heard a voice none else could hear 
 From centered and from errant sphere.” 
 —E/MERSON. 
 
 When Jenny Lind, the great singer, was in this 
 country, she complained of the concert halls; that they 
 did not give her voice enough room; that there was not 
 space enough to unroll her voice; and she even exulted 
 when she found great halls over railroad stations, and 
 even the waiting-room because of their immensities. 
 Jenny Lind’s voice was ordained to great immensi- 
 ties. To be ordained to great immensities is one of 
 God’s gifts to the spacious souls of the world. 
 
 God’s gift to Jenny Lind, a singing throat—a great 
 organ of sound, ordained her to immensities. That 
 voice found not its habitat in parlors and ante-rooms. 
 It needed great spaces in which to unroll. 
 
 A Leviathan needs the sea to wallow in. It would 
 fill up a pond, and it would crowd a Lake Erie. God 
 made the sea for Leviathans to have room in. 
 
 It is always thrilling to a human soul to stand in 
 
 247 
 
248 ORDAINED TO ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 great immensities. To stand in the spacious reaches 
 of a St. Peter’s and to look up into that great dome 
 above is to feel the stir of spaciousness. And, back 
 of that great immensity is Michael Angelo, a man of 
 spacious soul. He was ordained to do great things 
 because he had great things in his soul. 
 
 No man or woman can look upon a Pacific Ocean, 
 with its seven-thousand-mile highway of turbulent, 
 tumbling, tumultuous, storm-tossed waters, without 
 feeling the thrill of immensities. No wonder the 
 woman from an inland town, who was visiting the 
 ocean for the first time, said, upon being asked her 
 first impressions: “ It’s the first time I ever saw any- 
 thing there was enough of.” 
 
 The Grand Canyon is one of the immensities of 
 this earth; and that is the reason why a look into 
 this abyss of beauty and wonder thrills our souls. 
 It is because our souls were made for the great 
 immensities. 
 
 We like to read about that six-mile-deep hole in 
 the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of Japan. We 
 like to think that a Mt. Everest could be dumped into 
 that hole, and a Woolworth Building on top of it, and 
 the two giants be buried hundreds of feet in that watery 
 grave; so deep that ships could pass over the peak of 
 the tower and not be ripped open. 
 
 One likes to go through the Mammoth Cave. The 
 very name thrills us. It is our size. We like the 
 calibre of that bore. It just suits us. We like to 
 frame our lips to thunder that word, Mammoth. But 
 to spend several days traveling through this unending 
 
WILLIAM L. STIDGER 249 
 
 series of underground caverns; one hundred thousand 
 miles of by-ways and tunnels in this cave region of 
 Kentucky—that is an adventure in spaciousness. Our 
 souls are framed to such. We are at home with the 
 immensities, for we have spacious souls. We have 
 been “ Ordained to Eternal Life.” 
 
 Emerson says: “The mind delights in immense 
 time; delights in rocks, in metals, in mountain-chains, 
 and in the evidence of vast geological periods which 
 give these; in the age of trees, say the Sequoias, a 
 few of which will span the whole history of mankind; 
 in the noble toughness and imperishableness of the 
 palm-tree, which thrives under abuse; delights in 
 architecture, whose building lasts so long-——‘ A house,’ 
 says Ruskin, ‘is not in its prime until it is five hun- 
 dred years old —and here are the Pyramids which 
 have as many thousands, and cromlechs and earth- 
 mounds much older than these.” 
 
 These gigantic physical things inspire great rhapso- 
 dies in the heart of mankind, from the humblest to the 
 loftiest; because it might be said of man, when he is 
 in the presence of these immensities: 
 
 “He heard a voice none else could hear 
 From centered and from errant sphere.” 
 
 Because he is ‘‘ Ordained to Eternal Life.” 
 
 THE BIBLE IS A BOOK OF IMMENSITIES FOR 
 SPACIOUS SOULS 
 The story of Creation is a story of great spacious- 
 ness. It took the whole universe as a setting for 
 
250 ORDAINED TO ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 Creation. Sky, earth, sea and space were needed. 
 The Book of Genesis is a spacious thing because it 
 deals with the immensities of the creation of the earth, 
 the sea, the sky, the things that fly in the sky, the 
 things that swim in the sea, the things that live on the 
 earth—aye, even to the colossal-brained thing called 
 man, rising to his feet, looking spacious things in the 
 eyes: the sky, and storms, and stars, and God, and 
 eternity. When God made man in His own image in 
 the story of the first dawning, He made a spacious soul 
 fit to look into the immensities of life; the greatest of 
 which are God and Eternity. 
 
 In fact, the Bible is a book of immensities. The 
 story of the Exodus of the Children of Israel is a 
 racial movement. When you get an entire race of 
 people up and moving—that is a thing of immensi- 
 ties. We get some idea of the bigness of this racial 
 movement started by Moses when we see that gigantic 
 motion picture, “The Ten Commandments.” When 
 we see Moses on Sinai, receiving the Commandments, 
 see the lightning shrieking through the sky bombard- 
 ing those great cliffs of stone with moral tenets, there 
 is a suggestion of those immensities of life that always 
 fit in with the spaciousness of the human soul, and its 
 divine Father. When we get to dealing with the story 
 of Creation, with time, skies, seas, earth, stars, racial 
 movements and chronicles of people, we are dealing 
 with the immensities; and that is the kind of stuff with 
 which the Bible is filled from cover to cover. It is 
 the Book of immensities written for the spacious souls 
 of mankind. 
 
WILLIAM L. STIDGER 251 
 
 The Holy Land is a little toy-land; small in pro- 
 portions, miniature in size, but out of its limited 
 borders came the hope of the world, the universal 
 dream of mankind, and that is an immense thing which 
 dominates the earth and the future. 
 
 The great movements of the Bible, the great dramas, 
 needed all out-of-doors for a setting. Creation; the 
 Flood; the Exodus; the Tower of Babel; the Elijah 
 Whirlwind; Storm; Prairie Fire and Earthquake all 
 of an afternoon; Job, the world’s greatest Drama of 
 Human Life; the Book of Revelation; the Life of 
 Jesus; the Carpenter of Nazareth—there is something 
 infinitely spacious about them all. They require great 
 immensities for a setting. The Bible is a book of 
 such immensities that we are appalled by them. They 
 are the great immensities for the spacious souls, the 
 souls ‘‘ Ordained to Eternal Life.” 
 
 MAN’S MIND IS BUILT FOR SPACIOUS THINGS 
 
 Man responds to spaciousness; he is framed for 
 immensities; he is ordained to eternity. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle once said, as he stood on the sea- 
 shore with his black cape flying in the wind, and his 
 grey hair tossed and sea-wet; as he looked in imagi- 
 nation back into the past as far as creation; and as 
 he projected his soul out beyond the Dog Star, and 
 as he delved with his keen eyes into the bowels of the 
 earth: ‘‘Man! Stands he not at the center of immensi- 
 ties, at the conflux of eternities? ” Carlyle knew that 
 man was “‘ Ordained for Eternity.”” He was one who 
 stood and said: 
 
252 ORDAINED TO ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 “He heard a voice none else could hear 
 From centered and from errant sphere.” 
 
 I have noticed frequently that great men, as Emer- 
 son says, do not shine in private conversation, or in a 
 small room; but give them a great hall and a great 
 occasion, and they rise like giants. To quote the exact 
 words of Emerson, I add: ‘‘ But give such a man a 
 commanding occasion and the inspiration of a great 
 multitude and he surprises by new and unlooked-for 
 powers.” ‘Then he adds a graphic figure: “ Before he 
 was as out of place and as unfitted as a cannon in a 
 parior.” 
 
 When man stands naked in a prize ring, or broad- 
 breasting the breakers of an angry sea, in the armor 
 of a life guard; or when he stands at bat with a great 
 club in his hands; or when he stands before an audi- 
 ence of twenty-five thousand people on the top of Mt. 
 Rubudeau, he is at home and in his element, like a 
 lion in the desert. 
 
 When you see him in his element, with some- 
 thing big enough to do, an environment big enough 
 to house him, and a stage large and ample enough 
 to stride and gesture on, you feel about him as 
 Emerson says of Guizot: “ What Guizot learned this 
 morning he has the air of having known from all 
 eternity.” 
 
 Why? 
 
 Answer: Because some men are moulded in the 
 mould of a mountain canyon, breathed upon by the 
 cool winds of the seas, cast forth by an earthquake, 
 and the mould destroyed in the grip of a volcano, sent 
 
WILLIAM L. STIDGER 253 
 
 by God for that specific purpose. For he is ‘‘ Ordained 
 for Eternity ”; and 
 
 “ He heard a voice none else could hear 
 From centered and from errant sphere.” 
 
 Some wise person has said: ‘“ If your eye is on the 
 Eternal, your intellect will grow.” That exactly sums 
 up for me the thought of this part of my sermon. 
 That is exactly why man’s mind grows; because man’s 
 mind is always, consciously or subconsciously, on the 
 Eternal. We think the Eternal, we dream the Eternal, 
 we pray with the Eternal in our hearts and on our lips, 
 we live for the Eternal, we plan for the Eternal, we 
 act as if we were of the Eternal, and finally, we lie 
 down and die, with great expectations that we shall 
 awake sweeping out into the eternal on the wings of 
 the “‘ Winds before the dawn.” 
 
 No wonder man’s intellect grows so rapidly. No 
 wonder he, whose mind was an animal mind a few 
 short 2ons ago, is now a walking creature, an upright 
 being that can look God, the skies and the stars of 
 dawn in the face; a man “ Ordained to the Eternal.” 
 
 CHRIST’S DREAMS AND TEACHINGS, AND HIS LIFE 
 WERE SPACIOUS 
 
 His birth was a spacious thing amid a spacious set- 
 ting. He had the sky for the dome of His birth-place. 
 He had an angel choir for His heralds, and He had a 
 star to guide Him to the earth and to announce His 
 coming. His birth had to do with the immensities of 
 time and space. 
 
254 ORDAINED TO ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 He lived and walked, and died in spacious settings, 
 for He lived in the out-of-doors all His days. He was 
 seldom in-doors. He loved the mountains and the 
 hanging stars. He loved the rugged trails, and crooned 
 like a stream of prayer through the valleys. He 
 prayed at night on mountain-tops because He liked to 
 hear answer from the ‘‘ Errant spheres.” He loafed 
 with fisherfolk beside blue Galilee. He was cramped 
 in-doors; and the only time He ever went into the 
 Temple in spectacular-réle to preach, He felt so suffo- 
 cated and so bound-in, that He bulged out the giant 
 shoulders of His wrath and literally rent the walls of 
 the Temple apart so that all the world could see its 
 inner filth and cess-pools. 
 
 Jesus was an out-of-doors man, partly by preference 
 and mostly by pre-ordination. God had such things 
 for Jesus to do that He needs must have all the out-of- 
 doors to do them in. That was His “ appropriate set- 
 ting’ to stage the events through, and in which He 
 walked and stalked with tremendous tread. 
 
 He taught of a spacious kingdom, and lifted religion 
 to new immensities. He gave religion and the king- 
 dom, about which He talked, an international scope. 
 
 Some prophet, whose name I have now forgotten, 
 said something that gives him a right to be forgotten. 
 One can afford to be forgotten if he leaves such 
 thoughts behind as his immortality in the hearts of 
 men: “ Jesus explains nothing, but the influence of 
 Him took people out of time, and they felt eternal. A 
 great integrity makes us immortal.” 
 
 Yes, Jesus took people out of time and they felt 
 
WILLIAM L. STIDGER O55 
 
 eternal. Why did Jesus do this noble thing? Because 
 He knew that human beings were, by God, His Father, 
 ‘“‘ Ordained to Eternal Life.” And how did Jesus know 
 to do this thing? Answer: 
 
 “He heard a voice none else could hear 
 From centered and from errant sphere.” 
 
 THE CHRIST CALLS US TO A SPACIOUS LIFE 
 
 ) 
 
 ‘““Come up higher” seems to be the slogan of His 
 spiritual message. He is calling up to more spacious 
 living and to greater immensities of thought. God 
 Himself gave Christ in that spirit; ‘‘ For God so loved 
 the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” There 
 was nothing small about that idea. There was nothing 
 puny in God’s mind. It was “ The World ” that inter- 
 ested Him—that tugged at His heart-strings. There 
 is a world-note in all of God’s dealings with human- 
 kind. Let the one hundred per centers take no com- 
 fort out of this: and those who would cut out of 
 civilization’s benefits those of another color, or curve 
 of cheek-bone, or kink of hair. God’s Son was given 
 for ‘The World.” 
 
 Then Jesus in turn immediately trumpeted to the 
 world His meaning and His message when He said, 
 ‘““T am come that ye might have life and that ye might 
 have it more abundantly.” 
 
 “Life”? and “ Abundance” are words that suggest 
 great immensities, and spacious things of the soul; 
 such as had never thrilled humanity’s hope hereto- 
 fore. Here was a man talking, who knew that man 
 was “ Ordained for Eternity.” 
 
256 ORDAINED TO ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 Christ, too, talked clearly and positively of a ‘“ Spir- 
 itual”’ kingdom, and not of a ‘“ Material” kingdom. 
 He was dealing in new immensities then. He was 
 lifting His world into more spacious skies of the soul. 
 He talked about a spiritual kingdom as confidently 
 and as unconsciously as most men talk of England, 
 Germany, Russia and the United States, and more so. 
 He was dealing in new immensities, in things eternal. 
 He had no time to waste in bitterness, in revenge, in 
 defending His personal dignity. He had no time for 
 “getting back ” at people and “ saving His face.” He 
 had no time to hate. He knew, with my dear friend, 
 Edwin Markham, that there is no time to hate: 
 
 “There is no time for hate, O wasteful friend; 
 Put away hate until the ages end. 
 Have you an ancient wound? Forget the wrong 
 
 Out in my West a forest, loud with song 
 Towers high and green over a field of snow, 
 Over a glacier buried far below.” 
 
 Men who have learned their divine kinship; that 
 they have been, from the beginning, if they wish to 
 accept this inheritance, “‘ Ordained for Eternity ”’; 
 men who live in these spacious soul-skies; men who 
 inhabit these immensities, know that hate is such a 
 puny thing; and that they haven’t time for such. They 
 live in the lofty regions: 
 
 “As some tall cliff that lifts tts mighty form 
 Swells from the vale and mid-way leaves the storm, 
 While ’round its breast, the rolling clouds are spread, 
 Eternal sunshine settles on its head!” 
 
WILLIAM L. STIDGER 257 
 
 Such are these men of the great immensities; these 
 men “‘ Ordained for Eternity.” 
 
 And almost the last word that Jesus left was like 
 unto the words spoken of His own coming to the earth. 
 He told His disciples to go “ Unto all the world, and 
 preach.” There was nothing local, or provincial about 
 that command! There was no racial intolerance in 
 that message! 
 
 And finally, He brought the thought of immortality 
 to earth. The Egyptians did not have it. The Baby- 
 lonians were frightened about it. The Hebrews were 
 timid about it. But Jesus talked it, taught it, brought. 
 it and proved it on Easter morning long ago. He came 
 that we might have eternal life. He came that we 
 might know to the full that we were “ Ordained for 
 Eternal life ’—-we who would accept it. 
 
 An Arabian caliph who died as far back as 845, 
 hoped, and dreamed, and prayed in the darkness of 
 uncertainty: ‘‘O thou whose kingdom never passes, 
 pity one whose dignity is so transient! ” 
 
 In his essay on “ Immortality,’ Emerson tells of 
 two of his friends who were in the United States Con- 
 gress. Both were men of great distinction, men of 
 intellect, and they took an active part in the life of 
 their day and generation. These two friends in Con- 
 gress, in addition to attending well to their duties, often 
 got together to talk over the things of earth and im- 
 mortality. When one of them left Congress the two 
 were separated for twenty-five years. Then finally 
 they saw each other through open doors, at a distance, 
 in a crowded reception room at the President’s house 
 
258 ORDAINED TO ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 in Washington. Slowly they advanced toward each 
 other, as they could make their way through the great 
 crowd of brilliant people, until, at last they came face 
 to face, grasped hands, said nothing; but shook hands 
 long and cordially. 
 
 At last his friend said, ‘‘ Any light, Albert? ” 
 
 “None! ” said Albert. ‘‘ Any light, Lewis? ” 
 
 ‘““None! ” said Lewis, and they parted, never to 
 meet again, as the crowd swerved around them and 
 closed in, and separated them. It was a sad parting. 
 
 But, there 1s light. We cry out this day: “ Any 
 light, God?” And the answer comes back through 
 the gloom, ‘‘ As many as were ordained to eternal life 
 believed.” 
 
 “ Any/light, friend? ” 
 
 Answer: “ Yes, light eternal! Light through Jesus 
 Christ. He came that we might have light and life 
 abundant, and that we might swell in the immensities. 
 This is His message, ‘ If I be lifted up, I will draw all 
 men unto me ’—into soul spaciousness forever.” 
 
 Jesus knew that we humans were “ Ordained to 
 Eternal Life.” How did He know? 
 
 He knew because 
 
 “He heard a voice none else could hear 
 From centered and from errant sphere.” 
 
 WRAY HR 
 
 We thank Thee, God, that we were ordained for eter- 
 nity. Lord God, our Light, Love and Laughter: In the 
 holy hush of the happy hour we come to Thine altars to 
 thank Thee that Thou art our Pacific Ocean, our Grand 
 Canyon, and our Spacious Skies. Thou art the God of 
 
 ik. F - 
 
 Ce De 
 
WILLIAM L. STIDGER 259 
 
 “beauty, bread and brotherhood.’ Thou art the God of 
 our wmmensities, and our imaginings. Thou art our 
 nights, star-filled; and our dawns, sun-lit. Thou art our 
 noons of peace and quiet; and Thou art our splendid sun- 
 sets of golden beauty, dripping with rose and amber. 
 Thou art the ocean over which we sail for interminable 
 days; the canyon into which we peer with awe and won- 
 der; the skies to which we look for guidance and light. 
 
 Through these, Thy handiworks, we learn that we were 
 ordained for Eternity; and for that thrilling thought we 
 thank Thee. It hushes our hearts like the sound of music 
 at twilight. Amen. 
 
A SIVA AWA satis 
 aay) phi VC 
 
 ' 
 
 he 
 
 Wy 
 i 
 ‘AN ie 
 iy 
 Ma 
 eat 
 
 
 
ROBERT WHITE 
 
 Bannockburn, Scotland, made famous by the signal vic- 
 tory of Robert Bruce, is the place of the birth of Robert 
 White, receiving his education at Dunoon College and the 
 Scottish Baptist Theological College, affiliated with Glas- 
 gow University. His pastorates in Scotland were at 
 Leith and Alexandria, at which time he was President of 
 the Edinburgh Ministers’ Union, the Christian Endeavor 
 Union of Edinburgh, and was Vice-President of the Scot- 
 tish National Endeavor. His last pastorate before coming 
 to Detroit was at the First Baptist Church of Brantford, 
 Ontario. The Northwestern Baptist Church, where he is 
 now located, is situated in the largest protestant section of 
 Detroit, in what is known as the Grand River Avenue dis- 
 trict. This church is notable for its work among men and 
 boys; and under the wise and capable leadership of its 
 present minister is making large contributions to this all 
 important part of the city life. ‘This sermon is character- 
 istic of the writer, and reveals the secret of his hold on 
 men. ‘There is devotion and challenge in it—an irrestible 
 appeal to the sacrificial spirit. 
 
LIFTING THE LOAD—The true minister is a source 
 of inspiration. Hts life is continually steeped in God. He 
 appropriates those qualities of head and heart which are 
 in Him; and then hands them on to a people through a 
 living personality. Life ts severe. Weare richer than our 
 fathers, yet we have more care. The modern minster 
 must so preach that people will be put into a heartened 
 attitude toward God and life; and, tackling the problems, 
 temptations, and duties in a hopeful and masterful way, 
 will transform them into rich food for powerful and spir- 
 itual personality. He, who brings Christ to men as the 
 burden sharer, 1s wise, for he brings to them the dignity 
 and the strength of human life ennobled by the spirit of 
 Christ—RoBERT WHITE. 
 
 a 
 
AV IIT 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN AS A VICTORIOUS 
 PERSONALITY 
 
 ROBERT WHITE 
 Northwestern Baptist Church 
 
 “ Thanks be unto Bvui: which always causeth us to triumph in 
 Christ.”—II Cor. 2 
 
 In this sermon I express my own convictions regard- 
 ing some problems of Christian living that might be 
 more easily solved if we were greater and more victori- 
 ous personalities. 
 
 A victorious personality is one who is sure of his 
 relationships with God in Christ, who knows the range 
 of his own powers, who is in complete possession of the 
 spiritual treasures embedded in the Bible, who has real 
 control over his faculties. He has no kinship with 
 the divided self or the sick soul described by Prof. 
 James in his Varieties of Religious Experiences. He 
 is neither rent, torn, nor distracted, but so organized 
 in his life as to achieve victory in every spiritual un- 
 dertaking. His qualities are positive; and the expres- 
 sion of his character is as definite as his qualities. 
 Defects of disposition are dealt with as trainers deal 
 with vices in thoroughbred horses, for such defects 
 undermine power. He understands that Christian 
 work partakes the nature of his personality; that de- 
 
 263 
 
264 A VICTORIOUS PERSONALITY 
 
 fective personality means defective work; and that a 
 strong and positive personality does strong and effec- 
 tive work. He knows that no Christian can put into 
 his work what is not in his personality, any more than 
 he can take out of his will what is not found there, and 
 that a shallow personality will do shallow and slip-shod 
 work to the end of his days. 
 
 I 
 
 Now, take the victorious personality in relation to 
 literature. I do not say that it is necessary to know 
 the connection between chemical constitution and 
 physiological action, or the principal perturbations of 
 the solar system, or even the ancient classics, to be a 
 victorious personality; but I do say that it is necessary 
 to know the Bible, and the Bible is literature supreme. 
 In this literature we have the record of a progressive 
 revelation of God given as man was able to receive it, 
 and a record of the “redemption that is in Christ 
 Jesus.” We cannot be victorious in the spiritual life 
 and remain intellectually sluggish. We cannot live 
 the life of faith in the Son of God with untrembling 
 assurance, unless these truths have become part of the 
 texture of our intellectual and spiritual life. Power 
 comes from being sure of facts, and when these facts 
 are of the highest order they beget in us a flush of 
 confidence which is always a preface to victory. It is 
 then truer of us than it was of James Watt when he 
 discovered the power and uses of steam, we have power 
 to sell. 
 
 One outstanding feature of the Bible is the grand 
 
ROBERT WHITE 265 
 
 stream of intellectual and spiritual energy which seems 
 to pour forth from inexhaustible fountains. The 
 writers are men of commanding and imperishable 
 force; their intellectual march is stately and their 
 powers have a wide range; they deal with the infinite 
 as well as with the finite. Therefore, a Christian’s in- 
 tellect, through which his ransomed soul pours all it 
 contains of God, can be keen with the keenness of the 
 mind of God, accurate with His accuracy, and forceful 
 with the throb of that infinite life which pulses in His 
 infinite brain. 
 
 The victorious personality must have as the key- 
 words of his life—progress, freedom, growth, and 
 power. No sponge he, to absorb, to bloat, to die, but 
 a being united in living mental attachment to every 
 realm of this vast, vivid, varied, teeming universe. It 
 is his to develop intellect to its supreme pitch of power; 
 his to grapple in severe application with the great 
 truths of revelation and redemption; it is his to assimi- 
 late that strong mental food which nourished the brain 
 of Jesus, and which produces a life which carries the 
 Church of God to victory. 
 
 The Church of Christ demands members of mag- 
 netic personality, of magnetic thought, with light in 
 their imaginations, and whose logic is on fire; members » 
 who are vigorous thinkers, who carry into their life 
 and work the freshness of a growing mind, the energies 
 of a capable manhood. The New Testament urges 
 that we grow up into the measure of the stature of 
 the fullness of Christ, filled with the fullness of God. 
 
 Harold Begbie says of Christians that we must 
 
266 A VICTORIOUS PERSONALITY 
 
 \ either become the greatest of people, or the most me- 
 ‘chanical and pharisaic. If in touch with divine reali- 
 ties, they shape us in spite of ourselves. We walk in 
 the light of heaven, breathe its atmosphere, and are 
 molded by its mighty powers. Like a gladdening river, 
 heaven’s life flows through us. There is nothing 
 withered or barren, or numb in our faculties; no un- 
 hallowed sleep rests upon any power. Thought and 
 speech are lit by light divine, for the mind is the radi- 
 ant scene of the operation of divine thought. Tempta- 
 tions to idleness are occasions of triumph, and over 
 every day floats the banner of accomplished tasks. 
 We are more than conquerors over intellectual feeble- 
 ness and death. 
 
 II 
 
 We must also be victorious in the realm of the heart. 
 Life will make our hearts either big and hospitable 
 as the heart of God, or partial and narrow as that of 
 a village gossip. There are customs that strive to 
 forbid free play between the Christian’s soul and the 
 Christian’s God. We are required to do team-work 
 with those who esteem etiquette more highly than 
 spirituality, who positively will not allow the regnant 
 ideas of the Gospel to govern them. There are those 
 whose moral and intellectual convictions clash with 
 ours, and who cannot clash without suspicion and bit- 
 terness. ‘There is the struggle to enforce opinions, — 
 exert influences, establish customs—there is the con- 
 scious or unconscious struggle for mastery. Amid all 
 these shall we retain our delicate sympathy? Shall 
 
ROBERT WHITE 267 
 
 we be saved from all unwise severity, all harshness of 
 judgment? Shall we issue from the struggle with a 
 roomier heart in which even our bitterest opponents 
 shall know that they have a hospitable place? We are 
 Christ’s servants, friends, disciples, and representa- 
 tives, therefore we must crush, eliminate, and expel 
 every tendency to be narrower in sympathy, love, hos- 
 pitality, richness of pure feeling than the heart of 
 Jesus; and we must resolutely cultivate the meekness 
 of Jesus, which was the restraint of a most richly en- 
 dowed personality, who had the power to be silent 
 when smitten. This is the power that breaks sin and 
 unifies the hearts of Christian people; the power that 
 refines the soul and creates a beauty of behavior that 
 wins others to Christ. 
 
 It is so easy to defend ourselves by a hard strength, 
 but difficult to keep the heart soft, sensitive, and 
 strong. It is easy to get hard when dealing with the 
 hard; coarse when associated with the vulgar; bitter 
 when misunderstood and maligned. This destroys our 
 Christ-like disposition, power, serviceableness. We 
 are kept big and broad and deep in love and sympathy 
 by entering into fellowship with the disposition of 
 Christ, who endured the contradiction of sinners, who 
 resisted unto blood, yet remained unspoiled, and was 
 able to bless and to save the very men who put Him 
 to death. When we are saved from the sins that spoil 
 our fellowship with God, we shall also be saved from 
 the sins that spoil fellowship with one another. The 
 breaking of our unworthy pride, the burning out of all 
 that is mean and selfish, the destruction of all fretful- 
 
268 A VICTORIOUS PERSONALITY 
 
 ness and unworthy fears, the utter annihilation of 
 unholy ambition, the earnest cultivation of gentleness, 
 pity, fairness and holiness of life will give us a com- 
 manding place in the affection of God and true men, 
 and will be a sure defense against the unclean purposes 
 of any heart. We are disciples of Christ who accepted 
 the unwelcome and the unpalatable in His own life, 
 and who teaches us how to make these issue in fine 
 devotion and noble character. It is ours, then, to be 
 skilled in the art of drawing His mighty power into our 
 impotent hearts, so that we may become masters over 
 the desire to become avenged on those who do us harm. 
 
 Thus shall we enter more fully into the experience 
 of His mastery over things mental, moral, material, 
 and into the mystery of His death and resurrection. 
 The sense of our relation to Christ will fill us always 
 with a saving self-respect, with a love that does not 
 behave itself unseemly, and that makes the life as 
 glorious as the Christ to whom it is related. It is 
 when the marks of Christ are discernible in our char- 
 acters that even the wicked stand in awe of us. The © 
 life that has the sweetness of love, the dignity of grace, 
 the strength that is gentle, the courage that is win- 
 some, the words that are pure and wholesome, the 
 disposition that is sunny, the touch that is sympathetic 
 will ever endear itself to those who love Christians 
 from whom all ill-feeling and unchristlikeness are 
 washed away. 
 
 III 
 There is yet another realm in which the Christian 
 
ROBERT WHITE 269 
 
 must be victorious if his life is to be of any lasting 
 consequence—the realm of prayer. Would it be put- 
 ting it too strongly to say that failure is due to power- 
 lessness with God in prayer, this powerlessness issuing 
 from defects of disposition? The glossing over of 
 secret faults continues until we lose the boldness of 
 sincerity. In this awful realm lie stupendous powers 
 that have constantly moved the world forward on 
 moral and spiritual lines. How shall these powers be 
 transferred to us, operate in us, and through us, upon 
 others? By severe discipline of character in the pres- 
 ence of God. Character is the basis of prayer—of 
 successful praying—the measure of our power. A 
 defective character means defective praying. God 
 deals with realities in our lives, and relates Himself 
 to these realities. He desireth truth in the inward 
 parts. A false life cannot reveal a true God. A vacil- 
 lating will cannot express the energy of an omnipotent 
 will. We cannot import into our praying moments 
 what is not ordinarily in our characters; therefore, a 
 disciplined character forged and hammered into har- 
 mony with the will of God as revealed in Scripture, 
 and enriched by the wealthy content of the spirit’s 
 life, is the character that triumphs in this holy sphere. 
 Perseverance, intensity, self-discipline, concentration 
 are the marks of the conqueror here. God’s refusal 
 to give except on the basis of a character in harmony 
 with His word and spirit, produces in the aspirant for 
 mastery the noblest kind of character. “If ye abide 
 in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what 
 ye will and it shall be done unto you.” 
 
270 A VICTORIOUS PERSONALITY 
 
 Mirabeau says, ‘‘ Nothing is impossible to the man 
 who can will.” Wecan will to get rid of our conscious 
 insincerities that make prayer a modern species of in- 
 cantation; and we can will to make our demands on 
 God, for life and service, keep step with the growth of 
 our characters, and our characters keep step with'our 
 demands upon God, so that our life may thrill with 
 vital force. We must, if we are to please God, have 
 the character that is at once kingly and priestly. This 
 character must rest upon and grow up from the bed- 
 rock of reality. It receives its honor, prestige, glory, 
 not from wealth, learning, position, but from its naked 
 association with God. The power and glory born of 
 this holy association are unique, inimitable, enduring. 
 This priestly character is fashioned by the conscious- 
 ness of its call to be a channel of Christ’s fullness to 
 the world, and the realization that we hear the world’s 
 need to Christ. 
 
 How shall this character be brought to the highest 
 plane of usefulness? Train it. Work out your own 
 salvation—for it is God who worketh in you. By the 
 most ruthless self-discipline bring every thought, de- 
 sire, feeling, propensity into subjection to Christ. 
 Napoleon said that “ impossible ” is a word found only 
 in the dictionary of fools. Jesus says, ‘‘ Nothing shall 
 be impossible unto you.” Surely if Napoleon could 
 get men to undertake forced marches without boots, 
 win battles without cannon, perform prodigies of valor 
 under his inspiration, Jesus Christ can inspire us to 
 be greater men and to do greater deeds, even though 
 they be in the moral and spiritual sphere. 
 
ROBERT WHITE 271 
 
 To be at home amid the sanctities of God, to move 
 harmoniously there, to know what God permits in re- 
 lation to His will and omnipotence, and to realize that 
 fully in one’s own experience is to be master and king 
 in every relation here. To achieve this we must con- 
 centrate the purpose, focus the desire, select the path 
 and tread it, control the emotions, bring truant atten- 
 tion to task, harness the intellect and stop dissipating 
 energy. The kingdom of heaven cometh not through 
 committees, but through holy personality. Therefore 
 concentrate, concentrate, concentrate. To perfect one- 
 self here, to be master here, is to make life victorious 
 in every other sphere. Crush every unregulated im- 
 pulse, discipline every desire, chain every wandering 
 fancy, follow the definite choice and life will be filled 
 with the full power of God. By making large use of 
 the Word and Spirit we can become those whom God 
 will trust with the treasures of the eternal life for our 
 sin-crippled fellows. 
 
 Turner, the painter, said: ‘I have no secret but 
 hard work. Labor changes the world from ugliness 
 to beauty.” ‘‘ The world belongs to the energetic,” 
 said Emerson. It is so here. “ The kingdom of 
 heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by 
 force.” Shape yourself and you shape others. Obey 
 God and others will obey you. Be king over your own 
 life and you will rule others. Be living enough to die - 
 as a grain of wheat dies, and you will find your life 
 again amplified, and enriched with the life of God. 
 
 Brethren, it is true that people of like passions 
 with ourselves have wielded uncanny powers through 
 
272 A VICTORIOUS PERSONALITY 
 
 prayer. So may we. Pay the price and you will get 
 the treasure. This treasure is in earthen vessels. Put 
 to death every passion of flesh and spirit that will not 
 harmonize with God’s will, and you will be filled with 
 God. He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. 
 There is, then, a community of life, power, interest, 
 grace, goodness, glory; and our characters bear a pre- 
 cision of resemblance to the character of Jesus Christ. 
 
 RRAYVER 
 Father, Thou art our life, our only source of wealth and 
 power. Work into our spirits the qualitees of Thy life, 
 so that as the flowers put on garments of gold, crimson, 
 and purple through their association with the light, our 
 spirits may be clothed with love, peace, and power through 
 their union with Christ. Amen. 
 
ROBERT WILLIAM WOODROOFE 
 
 Ingersoll, Ontario, is the birthplace of Robert William 
 Woodroofe. The University of Toronto graduated him 
 in 1902 and Kings College granted him the degree of M.A. 
 in 1905. Later he took two years of graduate work at 
 Columbia, majoring in sociology. In 1903 he was or- 
 dained Priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church. His 
 later pastorates have been in New York, Philadelphia, and 
 Cleveland. It was in the latter city that he was rector of 
 the Immanuel Church from 1912 to 1922, accomplishing 
 an outstanding piece of social ministry. For the past 
 three years he has been rector at old St. John’s, one of the 
 several downtown churches in Detroit which refuse to 
 live on their traditions. The major emphasis in his attrac- 
 tive and constructive preaching is placed on the many im- 
 plications of the social teachings of Jesus; and under his 
 inspiring leadership St. John’s is working out one of the 
 most varied and effective service programs in the city, giv- 
 ing opportunity for many outside groups doing construc- 
 tive work to function through the free use of the church 
 and parish house. His fellows have honored him this year 
 by electing him recently to the Presidency of the Greater 
 Detroit Council of Religious Education and also of the 
 Detroit Pastors’ Union. 
 
 2 
 
LIFE’S GREATEST VENTURE—When I entered 
 college, it was with the practice of Law in mind; but dur- 
 ing my college course my thought was turned to the Chris- 
 tian nunistry. All through my life I had been interested 
 in the things of God;-but I have a firm conviction that 
 there ts no vocation in life that provides greater opportu- 
 nity for service in behalf of one’s fellows than does the 
 Christian ministry. The need of the world was never 
 greater than tt is today. The solution to the problems of 
 our vexed modern civilization will be found in Christ, and 
 in Christ alone. It is my firm conviction that when men 
 come to an understanding of God’s universal Fatherhood 
 and of the Brotherhood of Man we shall see the establtsh- 
 ing of the Kingdom. To be a Kingdom Builder is the 
 finest venture of life. The mintstry needs a passion for 
 men. We must believe that the gospel of Jesus has lost 
 nothing of its power to attract, and must be able to say, 
 “TI am not ashamed of .the gospel of Christ, for it ts the 
 power of God unto salvation.” 
 
 —Rosert WILLIAM WooprooFE. 
 
ALX 
 THE MASTER'S COMPASSION 
 
 ROBERT WILLIAM WOODROOFE 
 St. John’s Protestant Episcopal Church 
 
 “And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was 
 moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep 
 not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many 
 things.”—Mark 6: 34. 
 
 The sight of a crowd is always impressive to any 
 human soul who stands and watches it. It may be 
 of any sort and gathered on any occasion. So today 
 a great crowd is gathered, and as Jesus gazes upon it 
 His great heart is moved with compassion. I like this 
 word compassion. It means suffering with another; 
 hence, sorrow or pity for another’s distress or mis- 
 fortunes. It suggests sympathy for, or kindred feel- 
 ing with. It is more than pity; it is pity in action. 
 How characteristic it is of the Master, Who Himself 
 took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses. 
 
 He is lost in meditation and prayer; having sought 
 to be alone with God in the silence. But all at once 
 He becomes conscious of the presence of the great 
 shepherdless crowd. He lifts up His eyes, and there 
 is a quick response to their mute appeal. He looks 
 down into their upturned eyes, and immediately gives 
 Himself in answer to their claim. From that moment 
 He is theirs—not even His desire for prayer must make 
 
 275 
 
276 THE MASTER’S COMPASSION 
 
 Him deaf and blind to human life appealing to Him, 
 and seeking His help. Any day the murmur of the 
 crowd would draw Him from the silence of the hillside. 
 At once He feels the impulse of service when He con- 
 fronts the world’s manifold need. 
 
 The crowd, upon which He gazes today, represents 
 a cross-section of human society. Try and picture, if 
 you will, the various reasons that had brought it to- 
 gether. Many undoubtedly are come because they 
 hope to see some miracle done by Him; for the fame 
 of Him had penetrated to the most distant hamlet. 
 They had heard how the blind had received their 
 sight; how He had made the lame to walk; how the 
 lepers had been cleansed; how the dead had been 
 raised to life. They seek Him out today in the hope 
 that He will manifest His power. It is curiosity that 
 has brought them hither. Some undoubtedly are come 
 because a hope has filtered into their hearts, that if 
 He has healed others of their diseases then why not 
 them? To experience His healing gift, they are present 
 with Him today. It may be they do not need that gift 
 for themselves, but are seeking it for a relative or a 
 friend. Again, some are come hither because some 
 great sorrow is laid upon their hearts. They know 
 that He has a message of comfort for the sad, and 
 they are anxious to hear it from His own lips. Finally, 
 many are come because of a consciousness of sin. 
 Standing there before Him today they are seeking His 
 word of forgiveness, for they have heard how He has 
 said to a paralytic, ‘‘Son, be of good cheer, thy sins 
 are forgiven thee, go and sin no more.” What a pic- 
 
ROBERT WILLIAM WOODROOFE 277 
 
 ture is presented to Him of human sorrow, sickness 
 and sin. As then, so today, the need of the world is 
 indescribably great, and Jesus proposes to Himself that 
 He will satisfy it. 
 
 Thus Jesus looks out upon the crowded world with 
 reverence and with pity. Not only does He see the 
 crowd; but He sees the individual as well. And when 
 He sees men it is with a sense of danger and of hope. 
 But as He sees them, He determines with Himself 
 that He will consecrate His whole being to their 
 service. It was true then, it is true today, that 
 “The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto 
 but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for 
 the many.” If we could but see life as He saw it, 
 we would consecrate ourselves to the service of hu- 
 manity, and in a measure share in His Saviourship. 
 For it is part of His redemptive plan for the world to 
 use men. 
 
 “Christ has no hands but our hands 
 To do His work today: 
 He has no feet but our feet, 
 To lead men in His way. 
 He has no tongues but our tongues, 
 To tell men how He died: 
 He has no help but our help 
 To bring them to His side.” 
 
 Jesus values men, and this is the reason for His 
 compassion. Every individual in that crowd that day 
 was of intense value in the eyes of heaven. He sees 
 infinite possibilities in every human soul. He knows 
 that ‘‘ Man is made for the infinite.’ In His day He 
 
278 THE MASTER’S COMPASSION 
 
 drew a contrast between a man and a sheep. He 
 knew that in the average thinking of most men of His 
 time, a sheep was estimated of more value than a man; 
 for a sheep stood for property, or that which we get 
 for our own profit. The valuations that we give to 
 things today have not changed much; for the thought 
 of “ getting ” rather than of “ being ”’ is still dominant 
 in human life. What shall it profit? is the first ques- 
 tion that we ask. In our search for things we often 
 throw human life into the discard, and consider a 
 sheep as of more value than a man. , 
 
 The value of a man’s life is uppermost in the mind 
 of Jesus. The development of a character is of first 
 importance. Even though a life has been marred and 
 scarred by sin it is still of infinite worth in the eyes of 
 Jesus. With Him the “ Lost ” man is too valuable and 
 sacred to be lost. He is in the world for social restora- 
 tion and moral salvage. No human being would go to 
 pieces if He could help it. Not only was He willing 
 to help those who came to Him, but He proposes to 
 go after those who are lost; for “The Son of Man 
 came to seek and to save the lost.” When He meets 
 the woman at the well of Sychar, He is seeking the 
 lost. He puts His finger upon the hidden sore in her 
 life. By the power of His redeeming love, He trans- 
 figures her character. Going back to the city from 
 which she had come, and in which she had been a 
 notorious character, she becomes a preacher of right- 
 eousness, and many believe because of her word. They 
 could see it in her face, they could read it in her 
 changed attitude toward life. Something had hap- 
 
ROBERT WILLIAM WOODROOFE 279 
 
 pened, and they soon understand that she has met 
 with Jesus. 
 
 Jesus never despairs of any human life; and we 
 shall be at one with the spirit of Christianity if we 
 approach all men with the expectation of finding be- 
 neath commonplace, sordid, or even repulsive externals, 
 some qualities of love, loyalty, heroism, aspiration, or 
 repentance. These qualities simply prove the divine 
 in man. 
 
 Jesus stoops to the uttermost in His mission of help. 
 No blind beggar’s prayer ever went unanswered; no 
 sorrowing mother ever crossed His path but to whom 
 He was kind; no hurt child ever cried to Him, but 
 whom He took in His arms and solaced his pain, say- 
 ing, “‘ Suffer little children to come unto me, and for- 
 bid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God”; 
 no sinning man or woman ever knelt before Him asking 
 His forgiving love but to whom He spoke the recon- 
 ciling word—‘ Thy sin is forgiven thee, go and sin 
 no more.” He, the great burden-bearer, lifted many . 
 a load and made heavy burdens light. 
 
 This is the very essence of the Gospel of Jesus, that 
 the strong must bear the burdens of the weak. How 
 different is Jesus’ message from the message of science. 
 Science says let them perish; the weak jeopardize the 
 species. It preaches ‘‘ The survival of the fittest.” 
 But Jesus says ‘No! Seek and save the lost.” He 
 preaches the survival of the most unfit. And this is 
 the glory of His Gospel. But this same Gospel does 
 not encourage weakness. It says be strong, make 
 something of yourself; have a high ambition, for he 
 
280 THE MASTER’S COMPASSION 
 
 aims too low who aims beneath the stars. In our mis- 
 sion of help to the weak, we must always have a loving 
 regard for human life. 
 
 We must have a profound sense of the sacredness 
 of life as it is seen from the point of view of God. 
 Jesus knows that personality is the one infinitely valu- 
 able thing in the universe. He has a profound convic- 
 tion of God’s care for the individual. This conviction 
 is based upon His knowledge that God is a father, and 
 that the very essence of fatherhood is individual care 
 for the children. When St. Augustine pondered this 
 great truth and thought of himself as one among so 
 many, he was led to exclaim, ‘“‘ He loves us every one, 
 as though there were but one of us to love.” If Il am 
 apt to doubt the reality of that love, and to question 
 the value that God places upon my life, I turn my eyes 
 to the Cross on yonder hill, and there I see in that 
 Cross not only the measure of human sin, but also the 
 measure of God’s love. “ For God so loved the world 
 that he gave his only begotten Son.”’ When I contem- 
 plate this evidence of God’s exceeding love I am lost 
 in wonder, because now I know that He values me. 
 It is with the thought of the Fatherhood of God in 
 mind that Jesus looks out over the great shepherdless 
 crowd today, and as He looks, His heart is moved with 
 compassion towards them. 
 
 And so the day wore on and He had done His full 
 stint of work, for He had taught them many things 
 concerning the kingdom of God. The sun is dipping 
 toward the western horizon. It is well-nigh gone 
 down, and the shadows of evening are creeping in. It 
 
 / 
 
ROBERT WILLIAM WOODROOFE 281 
 
 is now that His disciples come to Him and say, ‘“‘ This 
 is a desert place and now the time is far past; send 
 them away, that they may go into the country round 
 about, and into the villages, and buy themselves bread; 
 for they had nothing to eat.”” There are great num- 
 bers of them, they argued, and the day is far spent, 
 and this is a desert place. And so they satisfied them- 
 selves they were right in making this request of their 
 Master. And they add, “ Master, you have taught 
 them these many nours, tney nave no right to expect 
 anything more from you. Let them go now and care 
 for themselves.” 
 
 But this is not the way compassion works; for the 
 Master immediately turns and addresses Himself to 
 the disciples and says, ‘“‘ Give ye them to eat.” In 
 these two attitudes of mind, ‘ Send them away,” and 
 ‘“‘ Give them to eat,’’ we have presented to us a clear 
 distinction between the human and divine points of 
 view. The advice which the disciples gave to their 
 Master from the moral point of view was sound. They 
 were right as far as they went, but they did not go far 
 enough. They would have done their duty, and duty 
 is the great word to the moralist. 
 
 But Jesus knows another word, and this word is 
 love, and love is larger than duty. He has a feeling of 
 responsibility for the multitude, and therefore He takes 
 responsibility for them. And if we are to share in the 
 Master’s compassion, as we face the world’s need, we 
 must believe that love commands a wider horizon, and 
 entails a heavier responsibility than duty; for love is 
 the great word in the Christian vocabulary. 
 
282 THE MASTER’S COMPASSION 
 
 A self-centered morality cannot save the world. 
 Only a love which does not count the cost, and grows 
 tender at the spectacle of human want, carries the 
 spirit of Jesus. We should never forget the Master, 
 Who, when He saw the multitude, took their sorrows 
 and laid them upon His own heart. He felt He ought 
 to help them and therefore accepts responsibility for 
 them. So He turns to Philip and puts the question, 
 ‘“Whence are we to buy bread that these may eat? ” 
 And this He says to prove him, for He Himself knew 
 what He would do. And Philip answers, ‘“‘ Two hun- 
 dred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them 
 that every one may take a little.” 
 
 Then it is that Andrew comes to the rescue, and 
 says, ‘‘ There is a lad here who has five barley cakes 
 and two small fishes ”’; but adds as he looks out over 
 the great crowd—“ What are they among so many? ” 
 But Jesus immediately relieves his misgiving, for He 
 says, ‘‘ Bring them to me.” 
 
 ‘How true it is that these disciples were face to face 
 with the same difficulties as we are today when we 
 confront a great multitude that must be fed. How 
 often the suggestion comes, ‘‘Send them away”; 
 ‘Let them buy food for themselves”’; ‘‘ What are 
 these among so many; five barley cakes and two small 
 fishes’; why the thing’s impossible; ‘‘ It can’t be 
 done.” But let us, because of the difficulties and the 
 problems which we meet, turn and ask what was the 
 secret of this miracle of old? The first thing that 
 strikes us is the splendid confidence of Jesus that it 
 can be done. There He stands in the midst of it all, 
 
ROBERT WILLIAM WOODROOFE 283 
 
 and demands that their seemingly inadequate resources 
 be brought to Him. He conditions the working of the 
 miracle upon the receiving from their hands of their 
 humble resources. It is only when they said, ‘“‘ Take it, 
 Master, take it, it is only a little thing,” and when His 
 great loving hands took it and blessed it, that it went 
 the round of the multitude. 
 
 The second thing that we notice is what our Lord 
 trusted His disciples to do. He gives the food to the 
 disciples, and the disciples make distribution to the 
 companies of fifty, which had ranged themselves on 
 the green grass. Jesus did not give it directly Himself, 
 but used this ministry of the disciples. As then, so 
 now, He trusts men to carry out His projects. No 
 one ever believed in men and trusted men as Jesus did. 
 
 I have met, somewhere, a quaint old legend, that 
 when the Lord returned to heaven the angel Gabriel 
 asked Him, “ Master, did you accomplish your pur- 
 pose? Did you convert all men to be citizens of the 
 kingdom? ” 
 
 “No,” He said, ‘I only founded the kingdom, and 
 told a few men about it, and left it to grow.” 
 
 ‘“‘ But, Lord, how will the world know? ” 
 
 ‘Peter and James and John and the rest will teach 
 them.” 
 
 ‘But they may forget, or neglect or fail.” 
 
 “They will not fail. J am trusting them.” 
 
 And they did not fail. It is a solemnizing thought 
 that Jesus is depending upon you and me in carrying 
 out the redemptive purposes of His love. Let us ask 
 ourselves, ‘ Will I fail?’ Not if we do what those 
 
284 THE MASTER’S COMPASSION 
 
 disciples did—bring our humble resources to Him, and 
 after blessing receive them back from His hands, 
 and then make distribution to the hungry multitude. 
 Let us never forget that ‘“ His strength is sufficient 
 for us.” 
 
 And finally there is the resultant joy from a con- 
 sciousness of a service rendered. Don’t you suppose 
 there was joy in the heart of the Master that night as 
 He reviewed the work of the day? No task had been 
 left undone. As He saw the multitudes departing was 
 He not glad that He had had them as His guests, and 
 that He had been to them the Master of the Feast. 
 And we, too, if we accept His challenge, and out of the 
 compassion of our hearts break with the world the 
 Bread of Life, which He places in our hands, shall 
 experience the Master’s joy. 
 
 There is an incident in the Life of Dr. Grenfell of 
 the Labrador which will illustrate what I mean. I 
 shall tell it in his own words: ‘‘ Nearly three years ago, 
 I was going down south one day to answer a call in 
 the winter in regard to a young boy of about sixteen, 
 who had a diseased hip and thigh. A message came in 
 about the middle of Sunday. It was a very urgent 
 case. We started at once with the dogs, and as it was 
 very urgent and the going was very good, the ice being 
 hard frozen, I took a very light sledge and just a few 
 other things—an axe and a rifle, and some instruments 
 and started off alone. I shall never forget it. It was 
 Easter Sunday, and the weather turned very bad before 
 evening. I had to forego crossing an arm of the sea. 
 I met a number of fishermen in a little hamlet by the 
 
ROBERT WILLIAM WOODROOFE 285 
 
 side of the arm of the sea, and being Easter Sunday, 
 we read about the life after death, and about how 
 Christ’s body was recognized, and how His disciples 
 expected to recognize one another, and about the real- 
 ness that we had in our faith when life in Labrador 
 or Hampstead is done. The next morning, at day- 
 break, I crossed the ice, but as it so happened, the sea 
 that had been in over night had broken up the ice, and 
 the surface had frozen over and, without knowing it, I 
 was going over ice that would not carry. I struck the 
 ice with my whip and found it would not bear, but 
 there was no turning round. We had to gallop as hard 
 as we could, but it was no use; we all went through, 
 the dogs and myself. There was nothing to do but to 
 cut the dogs adrift and see if they could get ashore. 
 By God’s providence one of them climbed out on to a 
 piece of ice, and I had his long trace tied to me round 
 one of my wrists. We got out on the ice and we drifted 
 out to sea. All that night, and part of the next day, I 
 drifted off out of sight of land. There was only a 
 small piece of ice left, and I knew that if any moment 
 the ice broke my last minute had come. But it was 
 not so. By God’s providence the men had seen me 
 over night. I thought then of the reality of something 
 that was so real, and on looking back on life—the joy 
 of having had the honor of being allowed to serve was 
 so real, and the presence of God was so absolutely real, 
 and practical, that it bore me up. In the morning I 
 hoisted a flag. I had to kill some of the dogs because 
 I was soaked through and had hardly any clothes. I 
 made a flag-pole, and put up my shirt as a flag, and 
 
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