w , ^ 
 
 ^^ PRINCETON, N. J. ^% 
 
 Presented by Dr. F. L.Pa^^or\. 
 
 BX 7233 .S8 B43 1910 
 Stimson, Henry Albert, 1842 
 
 1936. 
 Behind the world and beyond 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2009 with funding from 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/behindworldbeyOOstim 
 
W^ J^mxp ^. ^timsion, ]©.5©., ^M.IB. 
 
 THE NEW THINGS OF GOD. SI. 25 net. 
 
 THE RIGHT LIFE AND HOW TO LIVE IT. $1.20 
 net. 
 
 THE APOSTLES' CREED IN THE LIGHT OF 
 MODERN DISCUSSION. $1.25. 
 
 QUESTIONS OF MODERN INQUIRY. $1.25. 
 
 U 
 
BEHIND THE WORLD 
 AND BEYOND 
 
 HENRY A. STIMSON 
 
 MINISTEB OF THE MANHATTAN CONQREGATIONAU CHURCH 
 NEW YOHK CITY 
 
 NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
 CINCINNATI : JENNINGS & GRAHAM 
 
Copyright, 1910, by 
 EATON & MAINS 
 
TO THE MEMORY 
 
 OF THOSE DEAR FELLOW 
 
 WORKERS WHO HAVE BEEN MY 
 
 LOVING HELPERS AND PARISHIONERS IN A 
 
 LONG AND HAPPY MINISTRY, WHO HAVE ALREADY 
 
 PASSED INTO THE BLESSED REST, AND WHOSE 
 
 SPIRIT AND LIFE GO TOWARD THE MAKING 
 
 UP OF THAT CHRISTIAN TESTIMONY 
 
 IN WHICH LIES THE ONLY SOLVING 
 
 OF THE world's GREAT 
 
 PROBLEMS 
 
^^E il suo volontade e nostra paceJ' 
 
 — Dante. 
 
 VI 
 
CONTENTS 
 I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 WHAT LIES BEHIND THIS PUZZLING WORLD? 1 
 
 "For in him we live, and move, and have our 
 being; as certain even of your own poets have 
 said, For we are also his offspring." — Acts 17. 28. 
 
 II 
 
 WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF LIFE ? 13 
 
 "As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of 
 the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth 
 over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall 
 know it no more." — Psalm 103. 15, 16. 
 
 Ill 
 
 CAN SIN BE FORGIVEN ? 25 
 
 "Two men went up into the temple to pray; the 
 one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The 
 Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, 
 I thank thee, that I am not as the rest of men, 
 extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this 
 pubHcan. I fast twice in the week; I give tHhes of 
 all that I get. But the publican, standing afar off, 
 would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, 
 but smote his breast, saying, God, be thou merciful 
 to me a sinner." — Luke 18. 10-13. 
 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 IV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 WHAT GOD HAS DONE FOR THE WORLD 38 
 
 "God hath at the end of these days spoken unto 
 us in his Son." — Hebrews 1. 2. 
 
 ON WHAT CONDITION IS HEAVEN TO BE AT- 
 TAINED ? 48 
 
 "In my Father's house are many mansions; if it 
 were not so, I would have told you; for I go to 
 prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare 
 a place for you, I come again, and will receive you 
 unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be 
 also."— John 14. 2, 3. 
 
 VI 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 FAITH.— I 69 
 
 "Neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, There! for 
 lo, the kingdom of God is within you." — Luke 
 17. 21. 
 
 VII 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 FAITH.— II 74 
 
 "For I delivered unto you first of all that which 
 also I received: that Christ died for our sins accord- 
 ing to the scriptures; and that he was buried; and 
 that he hath been raised on the third day according 
 to the scriptures." — 1 Corinthians 15. 3, 4. 
 
CONTENTS ix 
 
 VIII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 FAITH.— Ill 88 
 
 -'If Christ hath not been raised, then is our 
 preaching vain, your faith also is vain." — 1 Corin- 
 thians 15. 14. 
 
 IX 
 
 WHY NOT SIMPLY THE MORALITY OP JESUS? 101 
 
 "And as he was going forth into the way, there 
 ran one to him, and kneeled to him, and asked him, 
 Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit 
 eternal life? And Jesus said unto him. Why callest 
 thou me good? none is good save one, even God." 
 —Mark 10. 17, 18. 
 
 X 
 
 THE SEARCHING QUESTION Ill 
 
 "He saith unto them. But who say ye that I 
 am?" — Matthew 16. 15. 
 
 XI 
 
 THE MEANING OF A NEGLECTED CHRIST 121 
 
 "And we esteemed him not." — Isaiah 53. 3. 
 
 XII 
 THE CALL OF THE WORLD 131 
 
 "Jesus answered them, My Father worketh even 
 until now. and I work." — John 5. 17. 
 
X CONTENTS 
 
 XIII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE WINNING OF THE BEST 143 
 
 i'O Lord Jehovah, thou hast begun to show thy 
 servant thy greatness, and thy strong hand: . . . 
 Let me go over, I pray thee, and see the good land 
 that is beyond the Jordan." — Deuteronomy 3. 
 24, 25. 
 
 XIV 
 
 THE TEST OP THE JORDAN 157 
 
 "They said. If we have found favor in thy sight, 
 let this land be given unto thy servants for a pos- 
 session; bring us not over the Jordan." — Numbers 
 32. 5. 
 
 XV 
 
 CHRIST'S CURE FOR " THE BLUES " 169 
 
 "And Jesus answered and said unto them, Go 
 and tell John the things which ye hear and see: 
 the blind receive their 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. And blessed is he, whosoever 
 shall find no occasion of stumbling in me." — 
 Matthew 11. 4-6. 
 
 XVI 
 
 THE MANLY SIDE OF TEMPTATION 183 
 
 "There hath no temptation taken you but such 
 as man can bear." — 1 Corinthians 10. 13. 
 
 XVII 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONVERSION 193 
 
 "I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly 
 in imbelief." — 1 Timothy 1. 13. 
 
CONTENTS zi 
 
 XVIII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 GOD'S USE OF THE USELESS 205 
 
 "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, which art 
 little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of 
 thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be 
 ruler in Israel; whose goings forth are from of old, 
 from everlasting." — ^Micah 5. 2. 
 
 XIX 
 
 THE VOICE OF GOD IN OUR DAILY LIFE ; 215 
 
 -'The multitude therefore, that stood by, and 
 heard it, said that it had thundered: others said, 
 An angel hath spoken to him." — John 12. 29. 
 
 XX 
 
 THE KINDNESS OF GOD 229 
 
 "And the king said, Is there not yet any of the 
 house of Saul, that I may show the kindness of 
 God unto him?"— 2 Samuel 9. 3. 
 
 XXI 
 
 LIFE'S GREAT TRUSTS 240 
 
 "For in the resurrection they neithCT marry, nor 
 are given in marriage, but are as angels in heaven,'* 
 —Matthew 22. 30. 
 
 XXII 
 
 THE SETTING UP OF THE ARK 250 
 
 "And David went and brought up the ark of 
 God from the house of Obed-edom into the city of 
 David with joy." — 2 Samuel 6. 12. 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 XXIII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHRIST'S LOVE FOR THE CHURCH 261 
 
 "Christ also loved the church, and gave himself 
 up for it; that he might sanctify it, having cleansed 
 it by the washing of water with the word, that he 
 might present the church to himself a glorious 
 church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such 
 thing; but that it should be holy and without 
 blemish." — Ephesians 5. 25-27. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 THE SUPREME POSSESSION 272 
 
 •'In Christ."— Ephesians 1. 10. 
 
 XXV 
 
 THE CHALLENGE TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 281 
 
 "And I lifted up my eyes, and saw, and, behold, 
 a man with a measuring Une in his hand." — Zech- 
 
 ARIAH 2. 1. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The title of this book, while suggested by 
 the opening chapter, is justified by the subject- 
 matter of the book. It deals with spiritual 
 realities, with what Plato called the noumena 
 as distinct from the phenomena of life. The 
 latter are what most absorb men's attention, 
 but back of them and beyond them is the realm 
 of the great truths which, while easily over- 
 looked or disregarded, persist through all 
 change, and are eternal. They never are alto- 
 gether fathomed, and nothing can be better 
 worth attention. 
 
 I have long enjoyed the privilege of minis- 
 tering in a pulpit which, in a loving and gen- 
 erous sense, is absolutely free. A church that 
 desires the truth is not afraid of it in any form. 
 A congregation that contains not a single 
 member who would consciously hinder his 
 pastor in any utterance he might make, be- 
 cause he loves him and trusts him, is one to 
 encourage outreaching thought. These ser- 
 mons are, therefore, not apologetic. The 
 preacher is not conscious of any pressure to 
 conceal or repress any expression that might 
 
 xiii 
 
xiv PREFACE 
 
 be necessary to convey his thought; nor is he 
 aware of having had convictions in the past, 
 or of having any now, which he is not free to 
 utter. He is limited only by the range of his 
 own knowledge ; but he has taught the truth he 
 knows and, as far as possible, has experienced. 
 He wishes his experience were fuller and 
 deeper, and regrets that his knowledge is not 
 greater ; but such as it is, it has declared itself, 
 and it has ever been spoken with the interested 
 expectation that he would so speak; while on 
 his own part his belief has been constant that 
 he has had the guidance of the Spirit of God, 
 which is promised to those who seek him. 
 
 Imperfectly as his work is done, he believes 
 it to be the truth, which in the times in which 
 we are living God wants declared — the old 
 truth, of course, but expressed in the light of 
 modern thought and adapted to present needs. 
 Not only is it "certain that the world is not 
 made to the measure of any science or philoso- 
 phy, but on the scale which perpetually sum- 
 mons philosophy and science to reconstruct 
 themselves anew"; but it is also certain that 
 the Christian life is not made to that measure. 
 The law of its nature is fixed, and the pattern 
 is established in Jesus Christ; but it has the 
 duty of continually adjusting itself to that 
 pattern, and of making sure that it is obedient 
 
PREFACE XV 
 
 to the law given once for all. It is called con- 
 tinually to interpret Christ in the terms of 
 daily life, and to apply his teachings to the 
 doubts and fears, the questions and the tasks 
 which each new day presents. 
 
 This is the function of the pulpit; and, be- 
 cause this function cannot be exercised by any 
 other agency, I believe that whether men "bear 
 or forbear" there is a perpetual need of the 
 preacher and his work. Because as a preacher 
 I long for witness to this, and the sign of the 
 Lord's approval of it which is found in hearts 
 that respond to it and lives that are helped by 
 it, I have given it to the press. As John Bun- 
 yan said of his "Grace Abounding," "I could 
 have stepped into a style much higher than 
 this in which I have discoursed, but I dared 
 not." "God did not play," he further said, "in 
 dealing with him"; therefore he might not 
 play in telling his story ; but "be plain and sim- 
 ple, and lay down the thing as it was." 
 
 I would add to the prayer with which my 
 message was delivered the earnest prayer that 
 in this form it may be accepted of the Lord, 
 and made useful to its readers. 
 
 Henry A. Stimson. 
 
 August 1, 1910. 
 
"Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide. 
 Like all created things, secrets from me. 
 And stand a barrier to eternity. 
 And I, how can I praise thee well and wide 
 From where I dwell upon the hither side. 
 Thou little veil for so great mystery? 
 When shall I penetrate all things and thee 
 And then look back? For this I must abide, 
 Till thou Shalt grow and fold and be unfurled 
 Literally between me and the world. 
 Then I shall drink within beneath a spring 
 And from a poet's side shall read his book. 
 Oh! daisy mine, what will it be to look 
 From God's side even of such a simple thing?" 
 
 — Alice Meynell. 
 
 XVI 
 
WHAT LIES BEHIND THIS PUZZLING 
 WORLD? 
 
 "For In him we live, and move, and have our being; 
 as certain even of your own poets have said. For we 
 are also his offspring." — Acts 17. 28. 
 
 Either there is something behind this puz- 
 zling world, or there is not. There is no third 
 in the alternative. There is a God, or there is 
 not. Every man's life shows on which side 
 of that alternative he is; and he must be on 
 one side or the other. 
 
 Let us admit at once that when we speak of 
 proof, in the accepted scientific and demonstra- 
 ble sense, we cannot prove the existence of 
 God. But it is equally true that the nonexist- 
 ence of God cannot be proved. We have come 
 to know that the field of science and of logical 
 demonstration is limited. We have passed the 
 age when the contrary was held. The last half 
 of the last century witnessed the great scien- 
 tific awakening which may be regarded as hav- 
 ing constituted the birth of modern science. 
 We were all carried away by it. A new world 
 of thought had opened, and undreamed-of 
 
 1 
 
2 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 powers were discovered to be in the hands of 
 scientific men. As is the case with every dis- 
 covery of a new power, the claim made for 
 them was all-embracing. Religion and science, 
 no less than physics and chemistry, the unseen 
 world no less than the seen, were all haled be- 
 fore their tribunal, and accepted beliefs were 
 as violently cross-examined as is the accused 
 in the French criminal courts, and were in 
 most cases ruthlessly swept away. Ruskin 
 protested that men no longer believed in God 
 because they did not "find God in a bottle." 
 No truth was accepted except on the authority 
 of the test-tube and the laboratory. 
 
 But the day for that has passed. It wrought 
 havoc with the peace of many good men. Leslie 
 Stephen, in his biography, says that Tennyson 
 "all his life was troubled lest men of science 
 should some day do away with God, and, there- 
 fore, with the basis of morality'' ; as if science 
 and the duty of living a decent life rested 
 on scientific proof. Long ago Frederick W. 
 Robertson wrote, "In the darkest hour through 
 which a human soul can pass, whatever else 
 is doubtful, this at least is certain — if there is 
 no God, no future state, yet even then it is 
 better to be generous than selfish, better to be 
 true than false, better to be brave than to be a 
 coward.'' 
 
WHAT LIES BEHIND ? 3 
 
 The fact is, we have come to know that there 
 are many other methods of knowledge than 
 that of physical demonstration or logical proc- 
 ess. The mind of man is open to the whole 
 circle of truth, certain broad ways leading 
 to him at its center. We are glad to know 
 them. The men of science have cast them 
 up as highways, and made paths, easy and 
 straight. 
 
 But on either side, and sweeping the en- 
 tire field, is a vast territory, through which 
 many other ways wind, many yet perhaps to 
 be cleared, but all open to the ingress of a 
 world of truth in many instances vital to man's 
 needs and already essential in his daily life, 
 but which are not labeled, and are perhaps 
 little known to many wise men of science. Dr. 
 James Martineau through the whole period of 
 scientific contention did not fail to claim that 
 it is a part of a sound philosophy to hold that 
 truth can be comprehended by the heart no 
 less than by the head. We have many a clear 
 comprehension, which we call instinct, or feel- 
 ing, or what you will, in the aggregate con- 
 vincing, satisfactory, conclusive, and the pos- 
 session of all men. Paul appeals to this in his 
 address to the Athenians. He says, You all 
 are worshipers. You all are seeking to know 
 the gods, all of them. You even set up an altar 
 
4 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 to the Unknown, and you do it because we are 
 all a common humanity, bound to seek God, 
 "if haply we may feel after him and find him, 
 though he is not far from each one of us : for 
 in him we live, and move, and have our being." 
 Your own poet, as you know, has put it, "For 
 we are also his offspring." He held the atten- 
 tion of his Athenian audience, and the same 
 truth holds the attention of men to-day, for 
 there is that in every heart which responds 
 to it. 
 
 We are aware, however, that a multitude 
 may think a thing, or believe a thing, or unit- 
 edly need a thing, and yet that thing not exist. 
 Thought may have slight connection with 
 reality. Human history is a long tale of egre- 
 gious superstition and unfounded traditions. 
 But in this instance we do well to look a little 
 deeper, and to consider what man is in himself, 
 who thinks these thoughts and is everywhere 
 conscious of these needs. 
 
 We know pretty accurately how man came 
 to be. There was a day, or, as certain books 
 put it, "once upon a time" a living cell existed. 
 Perhaps there were many of them, but one is 
 enough for our purpose. That cell was more 
 wonderful than anything else that has existed 
 since, as the acorn is more wonderful than 
 the oak. For the acorn not only contains the 
 
WHAT LIES BEHIND? 5 
 
 oak potentially, but it contains all oaks and all 
 trees, and, like the "flower in the crannied 
 wall," to one who can understand, would give 
 the story of all vegetable life. That cell had 
 the power of reproduction, multiplying itself 
 in others like itself. 
 
 Then there came a day when the outer world 
 made an impression of a definite kind upon the 
 cell. For example, rays of light began to beat 
 upon it. The cell commenced to respond, and 
 sensation appeared. Out of that sensation, 
 which was the response of the cell to the outer 
 world, arose, in turn, the developed eye, as its 
 answer to the light, the eye of the ant in its 
 microscopic power, and the eye of the eagle, 
 the splendid telescope; the ear, its response to 
 sound, so fine that it can hear the faintest 
 sound, and so intricate that it can comprehend 
 the very harmonies of heaven; the organs of 
 smell, of taste or touch, wonderful in their 
 variety and boundless in their scope. 
 
 Soon there was occasion for the living or- 
 ganism, possessing some of these faculties, to 
 turn in one direction or another, to accept or 
 reject — in short, to make what appeared to be 
 the beginning of what we know as choice. The 
 tendril of the bean began to wind about the 
 supporting stake in one direction, and not in 
 another, and maintained that direction. The 
 
6 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 rootlet stretched out through the dry ground 
 toward the distant moisture ; the tender sprout 
 spent its young strength in a desperate strug- 
 gle to escape from darkness into the region 
 of the neighboring light. This is not the whole 
 story; much lies between, much of which we 
 know nothing. But these events are like the 
 mountain peaks from which we survey a wide 
 territory, aware that much life and many an 
 eventful history lies hidden in the intervening 
 valleys. 
 
 One day there awoke the consciousness that 
 the organism was itself making these decisions. 
 Then it had for the first time the reality of 
 choice, the possession of self-knowledge and of 
 will ; then at once appeared the foundations of 
 character, and the path opened for that devel- 
 opment which we now recognize as the spirit- 
 ual beauty of the creature who can do right 
 as opposed to wrong, and can win to himself 
 the approbation of virtue. The most startling 
 moment in history was when that strange or- 
 ganism possessing this new consciousness, and 
 beginning to ascend by this wonderful path 
 of character, coming to himself, suddenly 
 turned and, addressing the world about him, 
 said : "I am not of you. By your aid I came 
 to be what I am. I am your kin, but you are 
 not my creator. Your companionship is not 
 
WHAT LIES BEHIND ? 7 
 
 enough for me. I must look up and not down, 
 forward and not backward. I must reach out 
 for God." 
 
 We recognize it as the voice not only of a 
 man, but as the voice of humanity. It was 
 the first confession, and it remains the com- 
 plete prospectus. It declared the native en- 
 dowment, and proclaimed the ultimate attain- 
 ment, the final goal toward which all life is 
 directed. 
 
 At once we ask. Where did that first man get 
 that idea? Does it not correspond to the ac- 
 tual fact? Is not here indeed the explanation 
 of a long history? Everywhere the response 
 of the living organism has been to the truth 
 of existence. Step by step those responses 
 have come, and in making them life has ad- 
 vanced from the lower to the higher. This 
 result is not the outcome of a process which 
 has been ruled by chance. Here is no record 
 of the "fortuitous concourse of atoms"; here 
 is no "witches' dance of molecules" in empty 
 space. Here are plan, and purpose, and result. 
 The cry of man standing on the summit is the 
 declaration of the truth that has dominated 
 all from the beginning. God is behind his 
 universe. This is the moment for which God 
 has waited. Here is the earth with its inhabit- 
 ants, the sufficient result. 
 
8 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 What, then, is behind this world? A rational 
 universe requires a rational God. Mind is the 
 highest product of the evolutionary process, 
 and mind is rational ; that is, it has this as its 
 natural, its normal trait; it acts in a system- 
 atic way. It discovers and establishes laws 
 of thought. It never is content with discon- 
 nected fact. It is only satisfied when its com- 
 prehension of fact moves on to the discovery 
 of the relations of facts. It calls its acquisi- 
 tions knowledge only when this relationship 
 is established. However life began — the life 
 which has resulted in man endowed with these 
 powers of mind and heart — it requires a God. 
 There must be this counterpart to our moral 
 and spiritual natures, as there is everywhere 
 about us a counterpart to physical nature. 
 Man is an outreaching being. His life is not 
 complete without this search for, and this 
 effort to attain, what is above and beyond him. 
 He yearns to know that being who is 
 
 "A Presence that disturbs me "vVith the Joy 
 Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused. 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns." 
 
 Hence he has always and everywhere made for 
 himself a religion. The old Greek historian, 
 Plutarch, said : "You may find people without 
 morals, without laws, without manners, but 
 
WHAT LIES BEHIND ? 9 
 
 you can find none without altars, without sac- 
 rifices, without worship/' 
 
 The phenomenon of an instinct, an impulse, 
 a general conviction, call it what you will, of 
 the mind of man to reach out after God is too 
 vast for any other explanation than that it is 
 true to fact. 
 
 "Looking from the finite to infinity, 
 From man's dust to God's divinity," 
 
 is a true impulse. There is a God adequate to 
 meet man's needs, and the mind of man in its 
 superior moments cannot escape the sense of 
 his presence. Clerk Maxwell said, "I have 
 looked up many strange theories and have 
 found that none of them will work without the 
 intervention of God." In the height of the 
 scientific storm of the last century Professor 
 Tyndall delivered a famous address before the 
 British Association of Science at Belfast, in 
 which he swept away the foundations for faith 
 in everything beyond the material world. 
 Years after a friend asked him, "When at the 
 bound of things what did you find?" He re- 
 plied, "I stood before the Eternal." "Why, 
 then, did you not say so in your Belfast ad- 
 dress?" was the inevitable question. And there 
 came the slow reply, "It w^as a great mistake !" 
 Faith in God, then, is something more than 
 a religious experience, which may be the pos- 
 
10 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 session of a few, and is always open to the in- 
 credulous distrust of the many. It is a re- 
 sponse, normal and compelling, to the primary 
 facts of life. It rests on "confidence in the 
 world as an honest world, in which form it 
 corresponds to fact and to truth; confidence 
 in the searchings of science and the inspira- 
 tions of hope; confidence in the goodness of 
 the good and the badness of the bad ; confidence 
 that the rational order is grounded in the 
 Eternal Eeason, and the moral order in the 
 Eternal Kighteousness ; confidence in the evi- 
 dence of our own souls in their better hours; 
 confidence, in a word, that the worthiest ex- 
 planation of existence is the true one.'' This 
 is the final conclusion of the scientific theo- 
 logian, and is none the less the conclusion of 
 the man in the street who opens his eyes to 
 the facts of existence, and turns his thoughts 
 in upon the needs of his own soul and the 
 voices of his own heart. 
 
 Bear in mind, then, what is the alternative — 
 either God and his world, or the world unac- 
 counted for. There is no third to this alterna- 
 tive. Whatever your mood or your purpose of 
 indecision, every one, as a matter of fact, is 
 ordering his life one way or the other. You 
 recognize God as in all and over all, or you 
 are acting as if there were no God. Here is 
 
WHAT LIES BEHIND ? 11 
 
 the justification of the Christian faith. Re- 
 ligion is a way, and the man who believes in 
 God walks in it. Eeligion is a life, and the 
 man who believes in God strives with all his 
 might to live that life. God is revealed in 
 Christ. He is a living Presence, and the Chris- 
 tian is the man who believes it and knows it 
 and rejoices in it, and every day is trying to 
 live in the full consciousness of that divine 
 Presence. The Christian faith is the faith of 
 a man who believes that existence is given to 
 us as a blessing, and not as a curse; and it 
 moves straightforward to the recognition of 
 Him who gave it. It rests itself upon God, 
 because in him it finds help to do right. Its 
 affirmation is that it gives the assurance of 
 pardon and the sense of peace. 
 
 We come to this conclusion: If God is be- 
 hind this world, as he indubitably is, then he 
 is in the world, and beyond it. We come from 
 him, we live with him, and we shall appear 
 before him at last. Contrasting the results of 
 the two positions in the alternatives that are 
 before us, the faith of the atheist has proved 
 itself everywhere sterile, drear, with no con- 
 viction and no comfort, and, at last, with no 
 hope and no peace. The faith of the Christian 
 is the faith of the multitude who in believing 
 have found life, life at its very best, wide as 
 
12 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 the universe, luminous, clear, glorious, having 
 a firm hold of that which now is, and the 
 assurance of that which is to come. The 
 psalmist wrote, "The fool hath said in his 
 heart. There is no God." Was his word too 
 severe? 
 
II 
 
 WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF LIFE? 
 
 "As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the 
 field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, 
 and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no 
 more"— Psalm 103. 15, 16. 
 
 We feel no serious sadness over the fading 
 of the grass and the leaves in the autumn, for 
 we know they will soon return, and the earth 
 will appear with renewed beauty in the open- 
 ing spring. It is very different in regard to 
 man. He dies, and his place knows him no 
 more. The question before us is not primarily, 
 What is the purpose of life? but. Has life any 
 purpose? The question is vital, for the an- 
 swer inevitably shapes a man's life. As we 
 think in our heart, so we are. If the golf- 
 player is startled to discover that the slightest 
 mental distraction spoils his stroke, should 
 it be hard to convince any man who is in 
 earnest that it is necessary to think straight 
 and reach conclusions if he will have his life 
 run straight and true? 
 
 Has life, then, any purpose ; and, if so, what 
 is it? We make a purpose, surely enough, each 
 
 13 
 
14 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 one for himself. Just now the great Dutch 
 painter Israels, who is over eighty years of age, 
 is producing beautiful pictures, the counter- 
 part of those of his great days. For him, cer- 
 tainly, life has a purpose, and he holds to it. 
 The ancient alchemist, whose portrait we have 
 come across so often in the stories of the Mid- 
 dle Ages, sitting over his flasks and his cruci- 
 bles, his hair white and his beard long, intent 
 on turning base metal into gold, had a domi- 
 nant purpose. The aged millionaire whose 
 figure was so well known in Wall Street, and 
 whose name was familiar in the banking world 
 of both continents, who died the other day, 
 leaving a vast fortune to his widow to dis- 
 tribute, because he could never bring himself 
 to part with a single cent, had set to a suffi- 
 cient certainty his purpose in life. It was to 
 accumulate and to keep money to the end. The 
 old tramp, who shuffles along the sidewalk, 
 past my house, with eager face and pendent 
 arms, has his purpose. It is to get a "square 
 meal.'' The lawyers and the business men 
 hurrying downtown in the morning see each 
 his purpose; and the old club-man sauntering 
 down the avenue, well gloved and groomed, 
 with a flower in his buttonhole, to sit in the 
 club window, or play his diurnal game of 
 whist, knows his purpose and holds to it. 
 
THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 15 
 
 We are all at it. Our purposes are various 
 and innumerable. But they largely control 
 us all; and the hustle of life is made by the 
 rush with which we all respond to the pressure 
 of the great city, where we are each striving 
 to maintain our position. The white mice said 
 to Alice in Wonderland, "Here it takes all the 
 running you can do to keep in the same place.'' 
 We are all running, and most of us are content 
 if we can hold our place. Our purposes do 
 not reach the change beyond. Perhaps some 
 of us feel a little superior, as we say, "How 
 foolish!" when we look at others and see in 
 what direction they are spending their 
 strength. We are wiser, and we are content. 
 A character in a recent French story, when 
 men worried themselves about things beyond 
 him, used to say, "I am a man who only knows 
 how to plant cabbages." That was his pur- 
 pose in life. He had mastered its details and 
 it was enough for him. Why should he bother 
 about anything beyond? 
 
 Larger minds, however, are not so easily 
 content. For life is always larger than any 
 theory of life. And there is that in the heart 
 of man which some time or other is sure to cry 
 out to something more, and to yearn for some- 
 thing beyond. Tennyson attached great im- 
 portance to his poem, "The Ancient Sage," 
 
16 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 which deals with the problems of life. Its note 
 
 is the confession : 
 
 "My son, the world is dark with griefs and graves, 
 So dark that men cry out against the heavens." 
 
 John Stuart Mill, with all his learning and 
 success in life, succumbed at last to what he 
 called "the disastrous feeling of ^not worth 
 while.' '' He found that he had no clue to the 
 meaning of life. And he thought the game 
 not worth the candle. Cardinal Newman 
 poured out his heart in the "Apologia'' : "To 
 consider the world in its length and breadth, 
 its various history, the many races of men, 
 their stories, their fortunes, their mutual 
 alienations, their conflicts, their aimless 
 courses, their random achievements and ac- 
 quirements, . . . the greatness and little- 
 ness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short 
 duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, 
 the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, 
 the success of evil, physical pain, mental an- 
 guish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the 
 prevailing idolatries, the dreary, hopeless ir- 
 religion; that condition of the whole race so 
 fearfully yet so exactly described by the apos- 
 tle, as ^having no hope and without God in the 
 world' " — all this is a vision to dizzy and ap- 
 pall, and inflicts upon the mind the sense of 
 a profound misery which is absolutely beyond 
 
THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 17 
 
 human solution. Many men say, "Great or 
 small, grand or ignoble, what does anything 
 matter, if we are but the creatures of a day, 
 with no destiny?'^ Maeterlinck in his assay 
 on the "Intelligence of the Flowers" describes 
 the life of the flower as governed by the single 
 purpose "to escape above the fatality below, 
 to evade, transgress the heavy somber law, to 
 set itself free, to shatter the narrow sphere, 
 to invent or invoke wings, to escape as far as 
 it can, to conquer the space in which destiny 
 incloses it, to approach another kingdom/' 
 Shall man do less; shall his life have a less 
 noble, a less compelling purpose, especially 
 when he can know what that purpose and goal 
 are, and the flower cannot? 
 
 The kind of purpose one will accept for life 
 will depend upon what kind of a man one is. 
 A theory of life is endowed with a soul only 
 by the soul of the man who holds it. Only as 
 his soul comes into play does life become seri- 
 ous to him. Otherwise it matters little what 
 his purpose is, or how often he changes it, so 
 long as he can content himself from day to 
 day. When he awakes to discover that immor- 
 tality is his goal and eternity awaits him it 
 becomes of moment for him to know how he 
 shall live. 
 
 The psalmist says: "When I consider thy 
 
18 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and 
 the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is 
 man, that thou art mindful of him?^' The 
 same heavens, the same moon and stars are 
 over us. In the silence of the cloudless night 
 we cannot walk beneath them without asking 
 the same question. They have a purpose. They 
 move on their' eternal way, fulfilling his will. 
 They are magnificent, not simply in their heav- 
 enly beauty, but in the stately majesty of their 
 eternal and undeviating steadfastness to that 
 for which they were created. We feel our- 
 selves caught up in the embrace of the mighty 
 Universe of which we are a part. 
 
 The ageless evolutionary process leads some- 
 where. It has some interpretation. A man 
 discovers the remains of a white marble stair- 
 case still in place in the tangled thicket in 
 some Greek valley, or on some mountainside. 
 It had some purpose. It led to something. 
 A temple once was at its top. Men ascended 
 and descended, that they might worship the 
 god for whom it was erected. The innumer- 
 able steps of the wonderful staircase of Nature 
 most surely were not shaped by a smaller pur- 
 pose, surely cannot lead to a less worthy adora- 
 tion. 
 
 President Woodrow Wilson told the other 
 day the story of a poor woman who had 
 
THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 19 
 
 stumbled on one of Darwin's books. She said 
 it "took all the kick out of her." It gave her 
 "something to chew on." Life had been hard 
 and humdrum. Only with much-tried patience 
 had she borne it. She could understand little 
 of its meaning and had thought little of what 
 lies behind or beyond. This book gave her chil- 
 dren no bread, but, somehow, as she said, it 
 showed her "something doing.'' It told of a 
 great plan in which she had some little place. 
 It changed the vision of her life. 
 
 Surely that was worth something. That 
 vision had value. It lifted for her the horizon ; 
 and that is no small thing for any man. It 
 gave her a place in the universe. It oriented 
 her life with the Eternal. 
 
 You all are busy men and women. You have 
 purpose to get knowledge, or money, or suc- 
 cess, or only, if sick, to get well. It is for the 
 hour sufficient. It is in large measure all- 
 absorbing. All this is excellent, but you and 
 I know that it is all subordinate. We must 
 ask, "What is the real purpose of it all?" 
 "What really is man?" Surely there is some- 
 thing more than these! 
 
 Let us go to headquarters for our answer. 
 Let us interrogate the one Perfect Man. What- 
 ever may be your opinion of Jesus Christ, he 
 certainly, more than any other who has lived 
 
20 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 upon earth, grasped the real purpose of life. 
 He knew what was in man. He touched the 
 hearts of men. He understood the meaning 
 of life. He did not confuse values; he saw 
 clear and thought straight, if anyone ever did. 
 Now, the notable thing about Jesus is the 
 way in which he changed and subverted values. 
 Take the most important of all. Go to the 
 very center of things. See how he altered 
 men^s estimate of life itself. Up to his day 
 life was everywhere the supreme good. Men 
 fought for it and sacrificed anything to protect 
 and insure it, because they knew nothing be- 
 yond. Death extinguished all. A dead man was 
 the least to be regarded, the most despicable 
 of objects. Jesus said, "Whosoever would save 
 his life shall lose it : and whosoever shall lose 
 his life for my sake shall find it." At once, 
 first a few and then a throng of followers of 
 Jesus were ready to fling their lives away. The 
 noble army of martyrs began their slow pro- 
 cession across the centuries. They sang their 
 songs triumphant in the midst of the amphi- 
 theater, and with radiant face confronted the 
 murderous shouts of their persecutors. From 
 that day "the multitude, which no man can 
 number,'' has been passing out of this life, 
 sustained by the faith of Jesus and the strength 
 of the conviction that they were not losing life, 
 
THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 21 
 
 but winning it, as the things that are seen slip 
 from them and the things that are not seen 
 become to them the blessed reality. 
 
 Then, as to success and wealth, we hear 
 Jesus telling the story of the rich man, who 
 had much goods laid up for many years and 
 said to his soul that he would tear down his 
 barns and build greater, to whom comes the 
 solemn warning, "Thou fool !" And ever since 
 men have faced that word and have found 
 themselves compelled, even with their hands 
 upon the world's greatest wealth and most 
 notable successes, to ask whether the same 
 condemnation should fall upon them. Again, 
 in regard to home, and friends, and pleasure, 
 we hear him saying, "If any man will come 
 after me, let him deny himself," and giving 
 the promise of richest blessing to those who 
 will forsake father and mother, and wife and 
 children, and homes and land, for his sake and 
 the gospel. And we are thrilled again with 
 the missionary tales of the Christian centuries. 
 First the apostles themselves, "debtors" to 
 Greeks and Barbarians, Parthians, Scythians, 
 bond and free, then Augustine and Patrick, 
 and Columba and Columbanus, and Xavicr, 
 and Schwartz, and Carey, and Livingstone, 
 and Coleridge Patteson, and Falconer, and 
 Pitkin, and the multitude of the foreign mis- 
 
22 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 sionaries in every land to-day. Then, we think 
 of health and exemption from pain as a chief 
 good, for which men have everywhere striven, 
 and we hear the disciple of Jesus saying: "I 
 besought the Lord thrice that my thorn in the 
 flesh might depart from me. And he hath 
 said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: 
 for my power is made perfect in weakness. 
 Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my 
 weaknesses, that, the power of Christ may rest 
 upon me. Wherefore I take pleasure in weak- 
 nesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecu- 
 tions, in distresses, for Christ's sake : for when 
 I am weak, then am I strong.'' In many a sick- 
 room is to be seen to-day the comfort of the 
 Lord, and many a suffering form is sustained 
 by the Everlasting Arms. And many a dear 
 child of God is gaining a new sense of the 
 divine compassion and acquiring a new power 
 of faith and of sympathy and of love for God's 
 men. So Jesus set up another goal, and es- 
 tablished another purpose in life, which he 
 made supreme for all men. It had to do with 
 God. It fixed the final answer to the supreme 
 question. Life is given to us that we may 
 know God. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, 
 and his righteousness; and all these things 
 shall be added unto you." Get at God's pur- 
 poses. Grasp his character. Accept his com- 
 
THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 23 
 
 mandments. Come to him and know him. 
 That is the purpose of life. 
 
 It is a man's work. It is worth the doing. 
 Many men are saying to-day, "Give us a man's 
 work." They find the organization of life too 
 intricate; its details, as they present them- 
 selves, too petty. They long for what requires 
 a larger grasp, a more heroic effort, a more 
 prolonged and steadier purpose, than they 
 find in the vast majority of appeals that come 
 to them for cooperation. Here is the summons 
 that will satisfy every need. It is, Live your 
 life! Recognize its meaning. Understand 
 that it is to know God ; to so find him, and be- 
 lieve in him, and live for him, that all your 
 life shall be drawn into that purpose and con- 
 trolled by it for good. 
 
 One says: "My purpose is to cultivate my- 
 self. I have a right to make the most of my 
 talents and my opportunities." So far good. 
 The talents and the opportunities are God's 
 good gifts. Life as possessing them is to be 
 lived to-day, for opportunities pass and talents 
 may be lost. But is your cultivation of your- 
 self to the end that you may know God and 
 serve him? Otherwise you are wrong. Your 
 life is going astray. Another says : "My pur- 
 pose is to care for my family. That is all I 
 can do. To clothe, to house, to feed, to edu- 
 
24 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 cate them, takes all my strength. It is my 
 task. No other will do it." That is well. 
 There is no better task for you. But is it that 
 you may fit them for God; to lift them to the 
 plane of life in which they shall know him and 
 be fitted for his service? Are you giving them 
 the equipment with which they shall be chil- 
 dren of God in a larger and truer sense, if God 
 will, than you have been yourself? Another 
 says : "My purpose is to do good, to help men." 
 That is well. But why are you doing it? Is 
 your devotion to your society, or your class, 
 or whatever may be the agency to which you 
 are devoting yourself, for your own satisfac- 
 tion or for your own glory and self-praise, 
 or because it is yours and not another's? 
 Is it that, or are you doing it for God to pro- 
 mote his kingdom and make known his love? 
 If so, you will be humble and patient, and 
 considerate of others, and self-sacrificing. You 
 will find your reward and your joy in the kind- 
 ness of your own heart as at the close of the 
 day you shut yourself up alone with God to 
 thank him for the privilege of rendering one 
 more day's service. Here is the real purpose 
 of life. The man who holds and is held by it 
 attains life; and the man who turns from it, 
 surelv he loses his life. 
 
Ill 
 
 CAN SIN BE FORGIVEN? 
 
 "Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a 
 Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood 
 and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I 
 am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adul- 
 terers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the 
 week; I give tithes of all that I get. But the publican, 
 standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes 
 unto heaven, but smote his breast, saying, God, be thou 
 merciful to me a sinner." — Luke 18. 10-13. 
 
 This story told by our Lord, if it does not 
 answer our question, sets before us at once 
 the real conditions which underlie it. One 
 of these men did not believe himself a sinner 
 in any serious sense. The other knew that he 
 was, but did not know how he could find for- 
 giveness. The real question before us is not 
 so much, "Can sin be forgiven?" as, "Are we 
 sinners?" The fact is that we do not know 
 much about sin in the biblical sense, or care 
 much about it. 
 
 It was not always so. It is not many years 
 since sin was the burden of the minister's 
 preaching, and the confession of sin and the 
 cry to know how to obtain the forgiveness of 
 
 25 
 
26 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 God were the burden on the hearts and lips 
 of his congregation when their interest was 
 aroused and they turned to him for guidance. 
 It is not so now. One seldom hears a con- 
 fession of sin in the old sense, one that is any- 
 thing other than the acknowledgment of hav- 
 ing gone wrong, or having done something that 
 one wishes one had not done, and there is good 
 ground for the doubt as to whether the com- 
 munity at large has any other view of sin than 
 that it is largely the result of ignorance or care- 
 lessness. 
 
 Of course, we know there are sinners. I 
 remember that when Mr. Moody was first in 
 New York, at the time of his great meetings, 
 a story was told of his interview with a rich 
 lady, who said to him when he was talking of 
 the need of repentance, "Why, Mr. Moody, I am 
 not a sinner.'' "Who, then, are sinners?" was 
 the surprised reply. "O, just young men in their 
 wild davs.'' There are sinners without doubt 
 to-day in India, for we hear of the licentious 
 form of their worship, and the orgies that at- 
 tend it, and we can well believe the destructive 
 effect upon the people at large. Over in China, 
 also, there are sinners; and sin is somewhat 
 near to us in Chinatown, if we can believe the 
 story of what goes on there. The "white slave" 
 traffic also disturbs us with the disclosure of 
 
CAN SIN BE FORGIVEN? 27 
 
 sin in such horrible form so near our doors. 
 We are shocked also all too frequently with the 
 exposures in the courts and newspapers of 
 men high in position in the great commercial 
 trusts and the insurance companies and the 
 banks who are dishonest, or who even descend 
 to mean and petty forms of thieving. Now and 
 again some prominent member of the church 
 is caught in similar transactions, and we know 
 that not a few are the owners of tenements 
 where the poor of the city are herded, and are 
 content to maintain conditions in those tene- 
 ments unfit for human habitations, because of 
 the profit to themselves. The divorce courts 
 distress us also with their horrid tales and 
 their revelation of evil among those whose cir- 
 cumstances would seem to remove them from 
 the ordinar}^ temptations of life. Then there 
 is the gambling passion so hard to control, 
 breaking out continually in circles even of 
 Christian people, who in their eagerness to 
 make money for some good cause, or to win 
 something for themselves, yield to the tempta- 
 tion to join in schemes that thinly clothe gam- 
 bling devices. Now and again we feel the pres- 
 sure of the jealousy and the envy and the evil- 
 speaking that exist in the world about us, 
 from which even we ourselves are not entirely 
 free. "The woman with the serpent's tongue'' 
 
28 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 does not live only in London. We think of 
 the Christian people absorbed in their own 
 pursuits, seeking their own comfort, or success, 
 or pleasure, with little sense of duty to God 
 or to others, and no sense of sacrifice, and we 
 are compelled to stop and say. Perhaps there 
 is more sin in the world than we thought. 
 Perhaps we are not so free as we could wish. 
 It may be that we have senses that are dull 
 and need both conviction of sin and the assur- 
 ance of pardon, which can only come to those 
 who realize what they are doing and truly 
 repent. The cry of the publican, perhaps, 
 should be far more general than it is, and the 
 comfortable boast of the Pharisee should be 
 recognized more widely in its hideous untruth- 
 fulness and its unrecognized shame. 
 
 Having said this, we now must ask. What is 
 the testimony of the past? What have men al- 
 ways thought about themselves, and what has 
 been their attitude toward forgiveness, or 
 their expression of the need of it? Men have 
 had, always and everywhere, some form of 
 religion, and, always and everywhere, religion 
 has been connected with sacrifices. The best- 
 known history is that of the Semitic races, 
 those from which our modern civilization has 
 chiefly come, and students have given much 
 labor to interpreting the significance of their 
 
CAN SIN BE FORGIVEN? 29 
 
 worship. They have reached this conclusion, 
 that the sacrifices which always accompa- 
 nied the worship were an expression of the 
 thought that their sins had in some way sepa- 
 rated them from the fellowship of their god 
 or gods, and the sacrifice was offered as a 
 confession of the wrong and a supplication for 
 the return of the offended deity. The feast 
 which always followed the sacrifice was to 
 indicate that the interrupted communion was 
 restored, and the joy which the feast expressed 
 was because of that restored fellowship. A 
 meal shared with others has always had some- 
 thing of that significance. The Bedouin in the 
 desert treats his guest as a friend so long as 
 they are eating together, no matter what may 
 be the real relationship when they are outside 
 the tent. 
 
 When we turn to the Old Testament we find 
 that it divides itself into three great periods. 
 During the first of these, that extending down 
 to about the eighth century before the Christian 
 era, the thought of the meaning of sacrifices 
 was slowly, but significantly, enlarged. They 
 marked the effort to reestablish interrupted 
 communion with God. They began also to 
 represent something of the character of God as 
 holy, and to lay emphasis upon the inner atti- 
 tude of the worshiper, both toward the crime 
 
30 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 he had committed and the god whom he sought 
 to propitiate. They connected such propitia- 
 tion with visible worldly good, and looked 
 upon the blessings of this life, wealth, pros- 
 perity, success over enemies, bountiful har- 
 vests, as so many marks of that restored rela- 
 tionship. 
 
 Then comes the period of the great prophets. 
 Nowhere in human history is there such a 
 group of great men, and nowhere are there 
 writings comparable to those which bear their 
 names. Before all else, they were men who 
 knew God, and also knew what God requires, 
 and what separates men from God. Every- 
 where they dwell on the need of repentance, 
 active, prompt, and decisive. Their cry is, 
 "Turn ye, turn ye ; for why will ye die, O house 
 of Israel?'' They begin to emphasize the fact 
 of individual responsibility and to declare the 
 privilege of direct approach which every sin- 
 ner has to God. "Away with your burnt offer- 
 ings and sacrifices!" they cry. "God has no 
 need of them." "Cleanse your hearts, and not 
 your garments." They tell that God alone can 
 pardon, and that his pardon purifies the soul. 
 "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be 
 as white as snow ; though they be red like crim- 
 son, they shall be as wool." They sweep aside 
 the excuse of circumstance or of heredity. 
 
CAN SIN BE FORGIVEN ? 31 
 
 "In those days they shall say no more, The 
 fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the chil- 
 dren's teeth are set on edge. But every one 
 shall die for his own iniquity." Each one is 
 responsible for his own act. A man is a sinner 
 because of what he does and what he thinks. 
 
 They have conception of the vicarious nature 
 of suffering as a redemptive agency. The fifty- 
 third chapter of Isaiah with its picture of the 
 Servant of God "wounded for our transgres- 
 sions and bruised for our iniquity, bearing our 
 griefs and carrying our sorrows," which was 
 to become the graphic description of Jesus of 
 Nazareth, suggests that mysterious sharing 
 in the work of atonement bv the elect of God 
 by which the atoning purpose of God was to 
 be revealed to the world, and by which men are 
 to be bound together with a new understanding 
 of the meaning and the purpose of the sorrows 
 of life which make all men one. 
 
 Then came the period of the development of 
 the priestly ritual. This helped to make effec- 
 tive the great teaching of the prophets by es- 
 tablishing men in the habit of worship, and 
 witnessing to them of the new relation in which 
 they stood to God. Evils arose, as evils are 
 sure to do in connection with every temptation 
 of man to draw near to God in external ways, 
 but the ritual served a great purpose, as public 
 
82 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 worship and Christian habits of prayer and 
 reading the Scripture serve a great purpose 
 to-day. And if men are tempted to think that 
 they have fulfilled their obligation to God 
 when they have gone to church on the Sabbath, 
 or have engaged in some accustomed act of 
 private devotion, and then go out and forget 
 what manner of men they are, it is no more 
 to be charged against the value of the worship 
 than the falling away of Israel is to be charged 
 upon the priestly ritual which they had set up. 
 Through all this God had come to be known 
 as a God who would forgive sinners. But much 
 more remained to be known. Forgiveness can 
 only be effective to those who truly repent, 
 and true repentance can only come to those 
 who have some proper sense of the character 
 of the God whose law they have violated, and 
 from whose allegiance they have departed. 
 John the Baptist, the last of the great prophets, 
 had only this message: "Repent, and make 
 restitution." Such revelation as was given 
 to him of God himself was only intimated in 
 a prophetic way when he beheld Jesus and 
 said, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh 
 away the sin of the world." But the fullness 
 of time had come, and God had sent forth his 
 Son; and we ask, What was the mission of 
 Jesus Christ? 
 
CAN SIN BE FORGIVEN? SS 
 
 He has told us himself. He came to seek 
 and to save that which was lost. The lost were 
 not only the children of Israel, but all God's 
 children; and his message was not to that 
 house of Abraham, which had held its knowl- 
 edge of God as its private possession, but to 
 all God's children ; and their need was to know 
 the Father. So we have him, when the ques- 
 tion was crowded upon him the third time, 
 telling the story of the lost sheep that the 
 shepherd sought, and the lost money which 
 the woman strove so hard to find, and the 
 story of the lost son, which we call the story 
 of the prodigal son, but which is indeed the 
 story of the prodigal's father. For here was 
 the purpose of Jesus's coming — to make lost 
 sons in all God's world know the Father. 
 
 From that Father he had come. He now 
 speaks his word and does his will. His busi- 
 ness is to make him known to men; to make 
 him known as a righteous God who loves 
 righteousness and hates iniquity ; who can hate 
 the sin and yet love the sinner, and who would 
 deal with the sinner in such a way as to make 
 him also hate sin and turn from it, and love 
 the Father and obey him, and, so doing, to find 
 life for himself. 
 
 He proceeds to show what this life from God 
 is meant to be. He lives the perfect life in 
 
34 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 such sweetness and beauty that men see it and 
 wonder at it. But he shows it not as a life 
 widely remote, but as the life of one truly of 
 themselves, touched with the feeling of their 
 infirmities, sympathizing with their sorrows, 
 ministering to their needs, always knowing 
 what is in the hearts of men, which he strives 
 everywhere to reach, and, at the same time, 
 ministering to their bodily wants, healing their 
 sicknesses, calling the leper to himself to be 
 cleansed, opening the eyes of the blind, restor- 
 ing the son to the widow, and weeping at the 
 grave of Lazarus, his friend. Then, only, it is 
 made plain to him that nevertheless those 
 whom he has come to bless will not understand 
 him, and, in fact, despise him and will finally 
 reject him, and he proceeds to tell them that he 
 "must suffer many things, and be rejected by 
 the elders, and be killed.'' And when Peter be- 
 gins to rebuke him, saying that this cannot be, 
 he turns to Peter with the sharp words, "Get 
 thee behind me, Satan." For his settled pur- 
 pose is to do the will of God and make the love 
 of God and the righteousness of God known as 
 they cannot otherwise be known, even though 
 he must die to do so. Thus bearing upon him- 
 self the whole weight of the world's sin, and 
 accepting the rejection with its incredible 
 wickedness, he utters the cry, "My God, my 
 
CAN SIN BE FORGIVEN? 35 
 
 God, why hast thou forsaken me?" And with 
 the sublime act of consecration and glad sur- 
 render, in the fullness of his understanding of 
 the divine love, he prays, "Father, forgive 
 them ; for they know not what they do." Then 
 comes, after the long and stormy day, the quiet 
 evening with its peaceful word, "It is finished." 
 
 We ask. What did Jesus accomplish? He 
 made God known to man as never before. He 
 offered himself a vicarious sacrifice in this 
 sense, that he puts himself in others' place and 
 does what is necessary to bring them to God. 
 God did not need to be appeased. God was al- 
 ways merciful and tender. His loving-kind- 
 ness has been "ever of old"; and God always 
 is the righteous God, and forgiveness always 
 can only be given to those who repent and turn 
 from their sin. Forgiveness on any other 
 terms would be impugning the character of 
 God. Now men see this, and seeing God, as 
 Jesus revealed him, see themselves as they did 
 not see before. 
 
 The way of life is open. It is a straight and 
 narrow way, but it is available and near at 
 hand. The outermost sinner can find it, and 
 the chief of sinners shall know that it is open 
 for him ; for Jesus Christ has come to take him 
 by the hand and to lead him step by step to 
 God. Jesus himself becomes the embodiment 
 
36 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 of a new covenant. God witnesses to himself 
 in him, and by that witness to himself seals the 
 promise that men who will accept that revela- 
 tion of God which Jesus has made, who will 
 believe it, and will begin to do the will of God 
 as Jesus has made that will known, shall have 
 the assurance not only that their sins are for- 
 given, but that God by his Spirit will take pos- 
 session of their hearts and will abide with 
 them in their life. They shall have strength 
 against temptation and power to do right. 
 They shall grow in grace and in the knowledge 
 of God. The work that has begun shall ad- 
 vance through all the vicissitudes of the 
 earthly life, and in spite of many weaknesses, 
 and many possible falls, they will be sustained 
 and cheered and not suffered to be overcome. 
 The love of God in their hearts will well over 
 into an abounding love for others. The sac- 
 rificial work of Jesus Christ in their behalf 
 will inspire them to sacrificial lives for their 
 fellow men. They will feel a sympathy of the 
 kind that Jesus felt, and by the grace of God 
 will be enabled to show a helpfulness as real 
 as was his. 
 
 Greater works indeed he promised that they 
 should do, and the world to-day has abundant 
 evidence of those works. At last, when God's 
 work in them and with them is done, and they 
 
CAN SIN BE FORGIVEN ? 37 
 
 have played their part in bringing in his king- 
 dom in the world, he will take them unto him- 
 self. They shall see their Lord as he is, and 
 find that they have grown so much into his 
 likeness, into the understanding of his purpose 
 and the acceptance of his life, that where he is 
 shall be to them heaven and home. These men 
 have found their God. They are restored to 
 that fellowship with him which the heart 
 craves, for the old word of Augustine is eter- 
 nally true, "Thou hast made me for thyself, and 
 my heart cannot rest apart from thee." And 
 now, having found God, they love Jesus Christ 
 and bear his name because it was through him 
 that God came to them. 
 
IV 
 
 WHAT GOD HAS DONE FOR THE WORLD 
 
 "God hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in 
 his son." — Hebrews 1. 2. 
 
 Why not be content? We have done our 
 best; or, we cannot alter conditions; or, we 
 are reasonably happy. Why disturb ourselves 
 with questions as to what lies behind, or with 
 matters with which we have no immediate con- 
 cern? It seems easy for many to live on from 
 day to day and perhaps from year to year sat- 
 isfied with this. But there are hours when we 
 must think; times even when we must ask, 
 What does God see as he looks at our world? 
 
 Always there is much evil; not simply that 
 now and then we are startled by some alarming 
 instance of oppression or cruelty or personal 
 dishonesty or the strife and clash of opposing 
 interests, but we are made aware that these 
 things exist, although it may be possible for 
 us to ignore them, or to be indifferent to them 
 much of the time. We like to fix our thoughts on 
 signs of improvement in the world^s condition. 
 We assert with more or less assurance that 
 the world is growing better. There is much of 
 
 38 
 
WHAT GOD HAS DONE 39 
 
 what passes for progress, and unquestionably 
 great advance in man's mastery over the pow- 
 ers of nature, and in the extent of his knowl- 
 edge as to how to prolong his life and to secure 
 that accumulation of possessions which pro- 
 motes his material well-being. 
 
 But the insistent question returns, What 
 does God see in this world in which we strive 
 so hard to insure our own well-being, and 
 therewith to be content? God looks not on the 
 outward appearance. He sees the evils that 
 trouble us; but he traces evil to its source; 
 and evil traced to its source becomes sin. In 
 his eye it is not sufficient to arrest the evil or 
 ameliorate its effects ; for the sin remains. If 
 employers are unjust in dealing with their em- 
 ployees, law and awakened public opinion may 
 remedy the evil, but the selfishness that in- 
 spired the oppression remains untouched and 
 awaits only the new opportunity, which will 
 require new resistance, and which meanwhile 
 is hardening the heart and establishing the 
 character. The group of angry strikers mal- 
 treats the girl who remains at work. A few 
 arrests may cause the violence to cease, but the 
 bitter hatred remains. In a given State amend- 
 ing the divorce law may do much to bring peace 
 in homes that otherwise would be disturbed, 
 and to secure better marital relations, but un- 
 
40 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 controlled passion, vanity, self-indulgence, im- 
 patience, are not reached. The embezzler may 
 be imprisoned and the money restored, but his 
 heart is unchanged, and the unchanged heart 
 is the fruitful source of every evil. The old 
 Puritan preacher, Andrew Fuller, said that 
 twenty years or more before he had heard an 
 evil jest which he had never been able to for- 
 get ; whereas he had heard many beautiful good 
 things said since then which he had altogether 
 forgotten. Whereupon he commented, "The 
 heart is a foul pool, wherein good fish die, but 
 frogs survive." 
 
 So we must ask. Does God care ; and need we 
 care? It is an old question. God has seemed 
 far off, or quite out of this world, and men in 
 their thoughtful hours have turned here and 
 there seeking guidance. They interrogated 
 Philosophy, saying: "Tell us what we must 
 do to live"; and Philosophy said in reply: 
 "Endure! Be the master of your own emo- 
 tions. Rise above the vicissitudes of life. Let 
 the world wag on as it will. Only do not wear 
 your heart on your sleeve. If you must suffer, 
 suffer bravely. If successful, be content. If 
 you fail, try again. It will not last forever, 
 and we all go down at last to a common grave 
 and to the unknown." Then men turned to 
 Culture, and Culture said : "Grow. Lift your- 
 
WHAT GOD HAS DONE 41 
 
 self above the common things of life. Adorn 
 your home. Cultivate your talents. Refine 
 your person and your surroundings. Be de- 
 corous. Be gentle in manners. Be civilized 
 in life. Separate yourself from the vulgar and 
 the base. Live the exalted and solitary life 
 of the man who is able to lift himself above all 
 that is low and ignorant. Try to believe that 
 the further you get from men, the nearer you 
 are to God." But men could not be satisfied 
 with this, for they found that no man can by 
 culture escape from himself. He may succeed 
 in cleansing the outside of the platter, and may 
 still be a whited sepulcher within. Then men 
 turned to the world at large, and the world 
 said : "Live while you live. Fill to the brim 
 the cup of pleasure. Eat, drink, and be merry. 
 Have a good time wherever you are and what- 
 ever the conditions, for to-morrow we die." 
 And there have always been multitudes who 
 try to take the advice; and everywhere there 
 have been great centers of luxury and of pleas- 
 ure toward which the hearts of the multitude 
 have turned. The fascination of "seeing life" 
 is not new. 
 
 But the old question has been insistent, and 
 continually men have turned to some form of 
 worship which has passed to them for religion, 
 much of it being Superstition; and Supersti- 
 
42 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 tion has said to them: "Adopt a ritual. Go 
 through religious performances, the more aus- 
 tere and prolonged the better. Leave the world 
 to its own devices. Turn, at least for a time, 
 to the doing of what you have been taught, or 
 the guidance of a priestly expert. Seek the aid 
 of the properly initiated, and then dismiss all 
 further care.'' And, nevertheless, men doing 
 this, when they came to themselves and knew 
 their own hearts, have exclaimed with Saul of 
 Tarsus, "O wretched man that I am ! The good 
 that I would I do not: but the evil which I 
 would not, that I do." 
 
 Turning away from all these sources of re- 
 lief, weary and oppressed, or frivolous and in- 
 different, men came to talk about God and evil 
 as men talk to-day. They confounded morality 
 with religion. They found it easy to hold that 
 God is good, and indifferent. They made 
 character a matter of taste, and religion a fad. 
 Even to-day sentimentality may be seen tak- 
 ing the place of a serious view of truth. And 
 public teachers are found making the mistake 
 of supposing that if they are "only vivacious 
 enough, and actual enough, they will enable 
 men to become good without God." 
 
 And the world finds no peace. Men talk of 
 law, and progress, and evolution. They have 
 lengthened indefinitely human history, but 
 
WHAT GOD HAS DONE 43 
 
 morally the work is yet to be done. Evil 
 abounds, and the struggle with sin in the indi- 
 vidual heart is as keen and as hopeless as ever. 
 Men deny the existence of God in this world, 
 or in the other, because the world about them 
 gives so much more evidence of the existence 
 of the devil. Reginald Campbell writes : "The 
 poor crippled child, who has been maimed by 
 a falling rock, and the white-faced matchbox- 
 maker, who works eighteen hours out of the 
 twenty-four to keep body and soul together, 
 have surely some sort of a claim upon God 
 apart from being miserable sinners who must 
 account themselves fortunate to be forgiven 
 for Christ's sake. . . . This kind of a God 
 is no God at all. The theologian may call him 
 infinite, but in practice he is finite. He may 
 call him a God of love, but in practice he is 
 spiteful and silly." Men have come to be more 
 shocked by sin against a fellow man than by 
 sin against God, and the thought of God in the 
 beauty and perfection of the divine character 
 seems as remote as it ever was. 
 
 But with this as the record and the evidence 
 of the world about us, when we turn to the 
 story of Jesus Christ, and the revelation that 
 God has made of himself in him, we find 
 at once startling testimony concerning God's 
 judgment of sin. This is the single possible 
 
44 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 interpretation of the life and death of Jesus 
 Christ. He was "despised and rejected, a man 
 of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," be- 
 cause he was "wounded for our transgressions 
 and bruised for our iniquities." Never did sin 
 seem so sinful, and never was man's need of 
 forgiveness more pronounced. The testimony 
 even of physical science is expressed in the 
 words of Sir Oliver Lodge: "The sacrifice of 
 Christ has convinced the world of sin, to a 
 unique degree, of its relation and dire conse- 
 quences, of its unreasonableness, its aspect as 
 a disease that must be cured — with a knife if 
 need be, but cured; we have learned that it is 
 foreign to the universe, it is not the will of 
 God, it is not due to his caprice, or amusement, 
 or dictation, or predestination, or pagan ex- 
 ample; it is something which gives even him 
 pain and suffering, it is something to be rid 
 of, and there is no peace or joy to be had until 
 unity of will is secured and past rebellions are 
 forgiven. Forgiveness removes no penalty; 
 it may even increase pain, though only of a 
 regenerative kind; it leaves material conse- 
 quences unaltered, but it may achieve spiritual 
 reform."^ 
 
 Men cannot listen to Jesus Christ, or give 
 themselves to his service, without awakening 
 
 » Hibbert Journal, October, 1904, pp. 24, 25. 
 
WHAT GOD HAS DONE 45 
 
 to the full significance of sin as involving per- 
 sonal degradation and permanent separation 
 from God, or without the discovery that this 
 conviction of sin opens the way to a knowledge 
 of God and the restitution to fellowship with 
 God that otherwise were both unknown and 
 unsought. Through Jesus Christ we learn that 
 God is one with us in sympathy and in sorrow. 
 Sin is not merely a violation of his law; it 
 is a burden on his heart, a grief, a defeat. God 
 is a Father in the sense of the parable of the 
 prodigal. He suffers far more keenly than the 
 wandering son in his life of alienation. He 
 fights his grief far harder than the son does 
 in his effort to be content with his surround- 
 ings. He yearns with an infinite love for his 
 child's restoration and return, and is eager to 
 do all that is possible to win him back; and 
 when he comes, he greets him with a love be- 
 yond words in its tenderness, its pity, its heal- 
 ing power, because he himself is so wrapped 
 up in the son of his love. This was the great 
 truth that the world never had known and 
 which the world to-day finds it so hard to be- 
 lieve, that God could "so love the world" in its 
 sin, no less than in its sorrow. 
 
 Furthermore, Jesus Christ shows that God 
 is effective to save. He hates sin and loves the 
 sinner. He sympathizes and he suffers, but he 
 
46 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 also can save. To-day evidence is to be seen 
 everywhere. Men are actually changed. They 
 have new hearts, and live new lives, by just so 
 much as they are seen to give themselves to the 
 service of Jesus Christ. Coarse and wicked 
 lives are purified. Selfish hearts are made 
 generous. Suffering and want and death are 
 faced, not simply with patience and courage, 
 but with serenity and peace. 
 
 Wherever Jesus Christ goes, there human 
 life is restored and ennobled. The spirit of 
 Christ as a matter of visible experience does 
 change men from sin to holiness; from bitter 
 revolt to peace and joy. It gives a meaning to 
 life which cannot be affected by weariness, or 
 pain, or poverty; and that not simply in the 
 army of devoted men and women who, giving 
 up at home all that makes life sweet and 
 precious, have gone to carry the gospel of a 
 forgiving God to the ends of the world in mis- 
 sionary service, but in the far larger number 
 who, called to abide in the conditions in which 
 they are found, as workers in the ordinary serv- 
 ice of life, merchants and mechanics, soldiers 
 and sailors, lawyers and doctors, are living 
 as God would have them live, serving their fel- 
 low men and bringing in the kingdom of God, 
 doing a steadfast and loving duty to God and 
 their neighbors with dignity and strength and 
 
WHAT GOD HAS DONE 47 
 
 a growing self-mastery which the world al- 
 ready has come to recognize as typical of men 
 who have a right to call themselves Christians. 
 It is true that wrong endures; that the king- 
 dom of Christ comes but slowly; that many 
 who hear his name are unworthy, and, as 
 Browning says, 
 
 "His sad face on ttie Cross sees only this 
 After the passion of a thousand years." 
 
 But he sees far more than this. He sees a 
 multitude of humble disciples fighting a good 
 fight, keeping the faith, and doing their best 
 to bring in the day of his final triumph. This 
 is the irrefutable evidence that God is in his 
 world, and it is well with all who serve him. 
 
ON WHAT CONDITION IS HEAVEN TO BE 
 ATTAINED? 
 
 "In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were 
 not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a 
 place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, 
 I come again, and will receive you unto myself; that 
 where I am, there ye may be also." — John 14. 2, 3. 
 
 For some reason, nowadays, we are not 
 much concerned about heaven. The life we 
 know is full, absorbing, and brief. It is a 
 man's work. Heaven as pictured by winged 
 cherubs and diaphanous angels does not ap- 
 peal to us ; it does not suggest a man's work. 
 
 In one experience we all are alike — ^we all 
 were born. Another inevitable experience 
 awaits us all — we all shall surely die. We 
 ought to be concerned about what is beyond. 
 It is certain that we cannot come back and 
 try life again. 
 
 The question, On what condition is heaven 
 to be attained? divides itself into two parts, 
 Where and what is heaven? and. How can we 
 get there? When we have answered the one 
 we can quickly settle the other. 
 
 48 
 
HOW TO ATTAIN HEAVEN 49 
 
 One thing we know with certainty : Heaven 
 is a place of service. God's universe is dy- 
 namic. Everything about us suggests move- 
 ment. Each form of existence stands related to 
 every other. Each contributes to some other, 
 and our knowledge delights to find everywhere 
 signs of what we know as progress, or move- 
 ment, from the lower to the higher. Life when 
 we come to know it is always outreaching ; and 
 life is from God. God's work surely is not 
 done with this world ; nor is it conceivable as 
 limited by this world. Heaven is conceivable 
 only as a place of continued energy. When 
 John, therefore, describing the New Jerusalem 
 come down from God out of heaven, the glori- 
 fied abode of redeemed souls, says as his final 
 word that there his servants are serving him, 
 we see that the familiar description, 
 
 "Where congregations ne'er break up. 
 And Sabbaths have no end," 
 
 is transcendental and incomplete. Heaven in 
 the Bible is a man's heaven. 
 
 It is also a place where service succeeds. 
 The disaster of the life that we know is that 
 here so much does not succeed. Turn where 
 you will, there is disappointment and failure. 
 Take the records of commercial life, where 
 failure is recorded at a percentage hard to 
 believe. Look at the great number of men in 
 
50 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 every profession who, having laboriously pre- 
 pared themselves for their career, find either 
 no opportunity adequate to their attainments 
 or their needs, or find it only to suffer disap- 
 pointment. They cannot take advantage of 
 it, or it comes too late. Continually death 
 dogs our heels, and ill health constantly in- 
 capacitates us. Heaven is to be a place that 
 knows no failures ; for it is a place w^here God's 
 will is done, and the essential feature of all 
 who shall enter heaven is that they are at one 
 with God. They will what God wills, and, 
 therefore, what they will cannot fail. There 
 "the wicked cease from troubling, and the 
 weary are at rest," because there nothing en- 
 ters that can interfere with the doing of the 
 will of God, and there all are upheld with the 
 cheer of inevitable success. 
 
 Furthermore, it is a place where service sat- 
 isfies. This seems more difficult. We all are 
 so different one from another; we want dif- 
 ferent things. It is hard for us to conceive a 
 life, however beautiful, which will satisfy all. 
 But God has made himself known to us as our 
 Father, and a father never loses the individual 
 child in the family group. His love and his 
 care and his planing are all for each as if each 
 was the sole object of his affection. At least 
 this is our conception of fatherhood, and what 
 
HOW TO ATTAIN HEAVEN 51 
 
 we all aim at and delight to think. Its only 
 limitations are those which come from the im- 
 perfection of our own powers. But that im- 
 perfection cannot apply to the heavenly Father. 
 His provision is adequate for all and adjusted 
 to each. We may be sure that that life which 
 is to be the goal and final reward for his serv- 
 ants on earth will bring to each supreme con- 
 tentment. Furthermore, there are certain 
 things which satisfy every man because we are 
 men. Harmony and beauty and truth and joy 
 and the sense of right and peace, these belong 
 to what we think as supreme good, good in its 
 very nature, good for which we are prepared; 
 and all this belongs to heaven, which God has 
 made for those who love him. This is the story 
 that runs through the entire New Testament. 
 Peter says, "We look for new heavens and a 
 new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." 
 Paul thinks that the time for his departure is 
 at hand. He exclaims, "Henceforth there is 
 laid up for me the crown of righteousness, 
 which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give 
 to me at that day ; and not to me only, but also 
 to all them that have loved his appearing ;" and 
 John knows heaven as the abode of those who 
 have "washed their robes and made them w^hite 
 in the blood of the Lamb." 
 
 We also know with certainty that heaven is 
 
52 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 a place of growth. This is the mark distinctive 
 of life. Life is not only f orthputting ; it is 
 forthputting for a purpose. It seeks every- 
 where to attain to something more and better. 
 The bud becomes the flower; the sapling the 
 tree ; the child the man. Herein lies the blight 
 and misery of death. We cannot conceive of 
 life continuing in the face of death ; for death 
 obliterates all hope of growth. There seems 
 to be nothing beyond. When, therefore, we are 
 told that death is conquered and life is to be 
 restored, at once we are possessed with the 
 thought of continuous growth. We have the 
 vision of ever-enlarging powers, of infinite 
 possibility of attainment. This is why the 
 revelations of the Scripture always move us 
 to awe. Whenever we contemplate the story 
 of a man lifted out of the ordinary conditions 
 in which death seems to end all, we find our- 
 selves arrested with the thought of the possi- 
 bilities that must then have opened before him. 
 Enoch "walked with God, and was not, for 
 God took him.'' We wonder what Enoch saw, 
 and how he felt, and what new powers were 
 given, and what development of his own pow- 
 ers, beyond imagination, appeared. Moses on 
 the mount talked with God, and God "passed 
 before him," with that merciful restraint of 
 revelation which alone a man could bear, for 
 
HOW TO ATTAIN HEAVEN 63 
 
 "no man can see the face of God and live." And 
 as God "covered him with his hand" and 
 passed by, and with the sense of the divine 
 presence he knew "Jehovah, a God merciful 
 and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in 
 loving-kindness and truth," we recognize an 
 anticipation of the day when the redeemed 
 "shall see him as he is, and be like him." 
 
 So with all the prophets. They had visions 
 of God, and with them came that uplift of 
 the soul which made them at once the men they 
 are, unique in their position in human history, 
 in their account of God, and in their hold upon 
 the hearts and consciences of men in every age 
 who long to know God. And when we come 
 to the beloved disciple alone on the rocky islet 
 with the glories of the ^gean sunset, changing 
 into the splendors of the New Jerusalem, we 
 are prepared to find his powers failing in his 
 attempt to describe for us the wonders of the 
 world that for the moment was visible to him. 
 
 The transcendent truth that runs through 
 all is that heaven is the place of the enlarge- 
 ment of those powers with which human life 
 is endowed as the summit and the crown of 
 God's work in this world. In the world that 
 lies beyond, these powers are surely to expand 
 and develop in directions that are limitless, 
 until the mind falters in its attempt to picture 
 
54 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 to itself what is the life which God has as- 
 sured to us. 
 
 In that world up to which the long patience 
 and compassion of God has led, we also know 
 with certainty that heaven is the place for the 
 completed work of Jesus Christ. That work 
 was to bring men to God. And this was the 
 way of it. He made sin hateful. He showed 
 that it was sin against God, our heavenly 
 Father. He set the Pharisee, in his supreme 
 complacency, over against the poor publican 
 beating against his breast and not lifting so 
 much as his eyes to heaven, as he cried, "God, 
 be thou merciful to me a sinner^' ; and men saw 
 what sin really is in the setting up in the heart 
 of something else than God as the supreme 
 object of love and of obedience. Men began 
 to see what it means to transgress God's com- 
 mandments, to rebel against the doing of his 
 will, to harden one's heart against him, and, as 
 Jesus showed the Father in his love and purity 
 and forbearance and righteousness, men re- 
 pented of their sin and turned to God, and God 
 had mercy upon them and gave them new 
 hearts, and opened for them the possibilities 
 of a new life. 
 
 Then men with this new attitude of soul to- 
 ward God and this new disposition of the mind 
 began to live. They set themselves, stumbling, 
 
HOW TO ATTAIN HEAVEN 55 
 
 it is true, but none the less sincerely and ear- 
 nestly, to doing the will of God, serving him. 
 And then a new joy came. It was the foretaste 
 of a new heaven and a new earth. Life itself 
 began to change. It acquired a new valuation. 
 It became a pilgrimage rather than an attain- 
 ment, a progress rather than a goal. Death 
 was robbed of its fears, for there was the as- 
 surance that it is the gateway to a life beyond, 
 where God is, and where the fullness of the 
 possessions which God has made possible for 
 his children is to be attained. 
 
 There, and there only, is to be found the key 
 to the mystery of life as it is here. Its limi- 
 tations will be removed. Its perplexities will 
 be understood. Its restricted conditions will 
 be seen to have been helps to its enduring at- 
 tainments, its sorrows but the shadows by the 
 experience of which its final lights are to be 
 made eternally radiant. There is the final 
 work of Jesus Christ. There is the abode of 
 the redeemed souls whose presentation to the 
 Father is to be to him the final satisfaction. 
 
 And now we ask, what are the conditions 
 upon which this heaven is to be attained? 
 Jesus Christ, think of him as you will, is the 
 most startling fact in human history. His 
 birth and life and teachings and death taken 
 together stand incomparable. As an event it 
 
56 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 certainly means something. It is not a the- 
 ology or a theory. Its eiTects are real, and 
 their influence like them enduring. The world 
 needed him. He came, and from that day the 
 world was changed. You and I even are not 
 the same that we would have been had he not 
 come. Our ancestry, our surroundings, our 
 ideals, the very conditions of the life that we 
 live, our training, our hopes, the goal we have 
 before us, all are other than they would have 
 been but for Jesus Christ. Conceive, there- 
 fore, of Jesus Christ as you will, the fact is 
 that he drew a line and forced an abiding dis- 
 tinction between the men who seek to know 
 God and those who do not, or in the same man 
 before and after he makes his choice in that 
 decision which Jesus Christ sets before him. 
 His cross has become the supreme symbol in 
 the world's religion, because it expresses what 
 to-day the world knows as God's judgment of 
 sin. On that cross the Son of God died because 
 of sin, yours and mine. It was that we might 
 be forgiven, and henceforth might be different 
 men. In the language of the apostle, he "died 
 unto sin that we might live unto righteous- 
 ness." That opens heaven; that makes it a 
 place for those who seek righteousness. Hence- 
 forth heaven, in the last analysis, is character; 
 is fellowship with Him who did the will of 
 
HOW TO ATTAIN HEA\^N 57 
 
 God and taught men to do the same. To be 
 with him is, to the man who loves God, to be 
 with one of whom he says, "This is he my soul 
 loves." Heaven is not a place of visions or 
 dreams, or weakness or regrets, but of glad 
 tribute to Jesus Christ, through whom we 
 know God, a tribute expressed in a humble, 
 grateful, but full, eager, earnest, and ever- 
 growing life in our Father's house. In the 
 words of the Lord's promise, it is to be "with 
 him, where he is." 
 
 How shall we attain that heaven? By heed- 
 ing him, opening our hearts to his love, giving 
 ourselves to his service, here below. Do you 
 ask, what of the men who never knew Jesus 
 Christ? It is sad to think of the world's grop- 
 ing for God. But how many of that vast multi- 
 tude who have never heard his name are per- 
 haps truly longing and striving after God, 
 and, when the curtain of death is drawn, will 
 for the first time see Him for whom they have 
 yearned, and in beholding the face of Jesus 
 Christ will know that redeeming love which 
 with all their might they have sought but could 
 not find I That little Japanese woman who told 
 the story of her going out as a child into the 
 garden in Japan to pray to the unknown God 
 for the restoration of her sick mother to health, 
 and who in gratitude because of that restora- 
 
58 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 tion had loved him, though unknown, and car- 
 ried his love in her heart, when she came to 
 America and heard in a mission church the 
 story of Jesus, and remained after the service 
 and said to the leader, "Tell me of him, for 
 I have loved him, and have worshiped him, 
 though I never knew his name,'' is but the 
 picture of others whom God alone can know, 
 w^ho will at last be seen in that great multi- 
 tude out of every kindred, and nation, and 
 clime, who shall sing the song of the redeemed 
 and cry, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain ; 
 for he has redeemed us unto himself V' 
 
 When Jesus spoke of his Father's house 
 with the many mansions and the prepared 
 place, he also said, "I am the way, and the 
 truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the 
 Father, but by me." The word abides; the 
 condition of attaining the heaven into which 
 he has gone, the heaven of the pure in heart 
 who see God, is to bring one's heart to him to 
 be made pure, and to take up with him, even 
 now, the life that is life indeed. It is a strait 
 and narrow way, a way of honesty and self- 
 denial, of purity and of truth, often a way of 
 cross-bearing and of sacrifice, but a way of 
 strength and joy and peace, a way out of dark- 
 ness into ineffable light, a way open to you 
 and me and whosoever will to-day! 
 
VI 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 FAITH.— I 
 
 "Neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, There! for lo, the 
 kingdom of God is within you." — Luke 17. 21. 
 
 Men are saying concerning religion that 
 this, and that, is not essential. A belief in 
 miracles, or the Virgin Birth, or the resurrec- 
 tion of Christ, or his divinity, or the doctrine 
 of the Trinity, or the inspiration of the Scrip- 
 ture, is thus set aside, or held indifferent. 
 And the statement is so frequently made that 
 we are forced to ask. Are these, any or all, 
 essential to faith? 
 
 Theoretically they certainly are not, for all 
 are in one sense doctrines, and religion does 
 not consist in the holding of theological opin- 
 ions. Religion is an experience, an attitude 
 of the soul. It is a life, the life of God in the 
 soul of man, with character as its result. We 
 like to think of this relation to God as direct 
 and immediate, depending upon no external 
 aid or intermediary ; and this has been the con- 
 tention ever since the great days of the Refor- 
 mation, namely, that no priest, or church, or 
 
 69 
 
60 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 sacrifice, or ceremonial, is necessary in order 
 to bring the sinful and penitent soul into com- 
 munication with his God, or to make sure to 
 any such penitent the forgiveness of his sins 
 which, through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, is freely offered to all the world. The 
 test of the acceptance of this pardon and access 
 to God is the subsequent life of the believer. 
 No other test is satisfactory. The world is 
 correct in its instinctive judgment. It holds 
 that men are what they do. Whatever a man 
 does he was capable of doing, and his deeds are 
 inseparable from himself. As he thinks in his 
 heart, so he does, and in the long run the out- 
 ward life and the inward thought correspond, 
 whatever a man's profession, or whatsoever 
 appearance he may seek to preserve or put on 
 before men. What is essential to a saving 
 faith God alone can determine, for God alone 
 knows the heart; and the truth concerning a 
 man's heart can only be open to the all-seeing 
 God, and to the man himself by so much as he 
 is enlightened by the Spirit of God. According 
 to the ancient phrase, "A man hath so much 
 religion as he has between God and himself 
 alone, and no more. What shoAvs soever he 
 makes before men." Far be it from us to at- 
 tempt to determine what are the realities of 
 that innermost relation of the soul to God. 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 61 
 
 Sufficient that to his own Master each man 
 stands or falls. 
 
 But this is not all that is to be said. There 
 are other questions that are important. How 
 shall we get this saving faith? How shall we 
 know it? How shall we impart it to others? 
 For it is something that cannot be kept to one- 
 self. One test of the reality of the possession 
 is the desire to communicate it, that others 
 may share in the blessing; and above all this, 
 that it is that possession which increases only 
 as it is shared with others about us. 
 
 We may compare ourselves with children 
 before a well-spread table. There are all kinds 
 of food upon it in abundance, and we are 
 hungry and need the food. Those seem to be 
 the two aU-important facts. But time quickly 
 shows that something more is necessary. There 
 must be discrimination between what is food 
 and what is not, and what is proper and what 
 undesirable to eat, or we may make serious 
 mistake; and when that is discovered it is too 
 late to remedy it. We should know now, there- 
 fore, what are the essentials of a true faith, 
 if there are any ; and we should know them in 
 a way to judge of their real value and of their 
 inevitable effect. 
 
 Faith that is to point a man to God, which 
 is the one fact of chief importance in every 
 
62 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 man's life, cannot be a matter of chance. It 
 is not a gamble, and it is not an accident. Nor 
 can it be the possession, or gift, only of certain 
 individuals, for God "made of one every nation 
 of man to dwell on all the face of the earth," 
 and we are all his children, made in his image, 
 brought into being by the breath of his Spirit. 
 Faith, like health, is a result of certain definite 
 forces. It is intended to be a normal and uni- 
 versal experience, and life is so ordered that 
 if men live a right life they shall not lack it. 
 But it is to be understood that some things 
 produce it and some do not. 
 
 This faith, that occupies so large a place in 
 our thought, is the product of Christianity, 
 and Christianity is an historic fact. It is not 
 necessary to discuss Buddhism, or Brahman- 
 ism, or Confucianism, or Mohammedanism. 
 These all have had their day, and have failed. 
 At least they are not an immediate concern of 
 the world in which we live and in which all 
 our best conceptions of what life means are 
 involved. 
 
 The East has much yet to give to the world. 
 It cannot be otherwise than that the vast ag- 
 gregation of humanity wjiich has survived with 
 so little change through the centuries, wrapped 
 up in its own thought, working out its own 
 remarkable career, should have, in God's good 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 63 
 
 time, much to contribute to the progress of 
 the world. The attitude of the Occident to 
 the Orient must greatly change in the not dis- 
 tant future and take on a respect far worthier 
 both of its head and its heart than that which 
 to-day controls our current opinion. But the 
 contribution for which we may feel that the 
 world is waiting is not to be of the religions of 
 the Orient. The hope of the world is not in 
 those faiths, but in the Christian faith, and 
 the Master of the hearts of men to-day, and the 
 sustainer of hope for the days to come, is not 
 Mohammed, or Confucius, or Gautama Bud- 
 dha, but is Jesus Christ. 
 
 We, then, are concerned only with the ques- 
 tions of the Christian faith because we know 
 it as the best. So the question becomes, 
 What are the essentials of the Christian faith? 
 and the answer is at once. Faith in the truth 
 of Christianity. Because Christianity is an 
 historic faith this means faith in the facts on 
 which Christianity rests. 
 
 It is inconceivable that this great historic 
 force in the world, which we know as Chris- 
 tianity, should rest on myths or dreams or mis- 
 conceptions. Is the real business of life in any 
 department carried forward through the years 
 on such things; and is there any business of 
 life which is now or for two thousand years 
 
64 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 has been comparable to Christianity? We 
 have lately had the great Hudson-Fulton Cen- 
 tennial. Is it conceivable that if Hendrik 
 Hudson and Kobert Fulton were not real 
 personages, that Centennial could have oc- 
 curred? New York is here, in any case, you 
 may well say. Somebody certainly would have 
 discovered our great river and the beautiful 
 harbor; and the providence of God makes it 
 inevitable that such exceptional privileges and 
 opportunities for human life would in time 
 be taken advantage of, and the great city 
 would appear lying between the two rivers; 
 but would there have been any Hudson-Fulton 
 Centennial? Imagine it for Diedrich Knicker- 
 bocker! The thought is preposterous. The 
 great forces of life rest on facts, not on dreams. 
 Life, at least, is a reality. 
 
 Primarily, then, the Christian religion is the 
 religion of God as made known through Jesus 
 Christ. To the Christian, Jesus Christ must 
 be a true historic personality. He lived at a 
 certain time ; he was himself and not another ; 
 and he did and said certain things; all of 
 which stand in essential relation to the Chris- 
 tian faith. Men may conceive a different story; 
 and men of all grades of intelligence have 
 busied themselves with describing a form of 
 religion to serve their purpose, and in their 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 65 
 
 view to be an improvement on the Christian 
 religion, while omitting more or less of the 
 Christian story, or dispensing with it alto- 
 gether. This is any man's privilege, and he 
 may justly call it a religion; but it is not the 
 Christian religion, whatever other name may 
 properly be given to it. 
 
 Furthermore, we can know Jesus Christ 
 only through the Christian story. God may 
 reveal himself directly to any man, and we 
 know that God does so through every variety 
 of human experience. Temptation, and sor- 
 row, and sickness, and loss, and sometimes 
 sheer loneliness or weariness of life, and some- 
 times fullness of blessings, serve to open a 
 man's heart and enable him to hear the voice 
 of God. God has not left himself without wit- 
 ness, and can find ways of access to the human 
 soul that lie far beyond our ken. But when 
 God has found such access, and a heart that 
 has been closed to him is softened and a new 
 life has begun ; when to that soul is presented 
 the story of Jesus Christ, it at once recognizes 
 him as the revealer of the Father, in a larger 
 and fuller and more abiding w^ay than hitherto 
 it had known. He becomes at once the Guide 
 and Master, the Teacher and the Sanctifier 
 of that soul, and the more completely it sur- 
 renders itself to the inspiration of God, the 
 
66 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 more completely is it satisfied with a personal 
 surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 Paul stands in the New Testament story as 
 the vivid illustration of this process. An 
 enemy of Jesus Christ, bitter in his antagonism, 
 he suddenly receives a communication from 
 God. In what form and by what channel is 
 of no consequence. It is sufficient that he 
 found himself arrested in his course. The 
 "still small voice" which through the ages has 
 from time to time spoken to men who were 
 ready to hear was heard in his inmost soul. 
 He found himself stopped in his career and 
 summoned to a new and wholly different life. 
 Immediately we see him turning for instruc- 
 tion to those who could tell. him about Jesus 
 Christ ; and as the story of Christ was opened 
 to him and the person of Christ made real he 
 moved out upon that new career which has 
 made him the greatest of the Christian dis- 
 ciples. 
 
 This, then, becomes an abiding and uni- 
 versal test of the Christian faith as an actual 
 possession in any man's heart. He who has 
 it approves its reality and is confirmed both 
 in the peace and in the grace which it bestows 
 by the completeness of his union in spirit and 
 in life with Jesus Christ. 
 
 What, then, is essential to the Christian 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 67 
 
 faith? We speak now only of those things 
 about which there can be no dispute. Matters 
 which are a subject of difference of opinion, 
 and concerning which men must necessarily 
 be left to judge for themselves when the facts 
 have properly been placed before them, must 
 be reserved to another chapter. For the pres- 
 ent it suffices to concern ourselves with what 
 is beyond question. 
 
 It is unmistakably essential to the Christian 
 faith that a man believe in the validity of 
 Christianity as exhibited in the world to-day. 
 Men are not concerned with dead things, or 
 even with those that are dying; and unless 
 a man recognizes that Christianity is neither 
 the one nor the other, that it has a vital force 
 and is a moving power in the world in which 
 we live, he cannot think it worthy of his con- 
 sideration, and he certainly is not in the way 
 of possessing what may be called a Christian 
 faith. 
 
 The evidences of this validity are not far 
 to seek. Christianity can be seen actually 
 changing the lives of men, and that not in one 
 condition of life or another, but in all lands 
 and with all classes of people. Everywhere it 
 inspires and supports goodness. And the more 
 completely men surrender themselves to the 
 Christian faith, the more completely do their 
 
68 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 lives give evidence of what the world is every- 
 where ready to recognize as the true Chris- 
 tian life, a life of purity and honesty and sim- 
 plicity and self-denial. Only where men bear 
 his name lightly is it found in other forms; and 
 then the accusation lies not against Chris- 
 tianity, but against the men who are insincere 
 in their profession. 
 
 Furthermore, it makes God known ; it brings 
 God to men and men to God actually. For 
 where Christianity controls the lives of men, 
 that control appears in a well-ordered life, in 
 comfort, in peace, in a true humanity and 
 brotherhood, and in a progress definite, hope- 
 ful, and established, such as is not elsewhere 
 to be seen. 
 
 Moreover, it helps on all that is best in men 
 and in life. After all the centuries in which 
 civilization again and again has appeared only 
 to be destroyed, the world to-day finds its hope 
 centered in Christianity. The deliverance of 
 the oppressed, the uplifting of the degraded, 
 the inspiring of the ignorant, the care of the 
 sick and the helpless, the overcoming of the 
 force of evil, whether in government or in the 
 hearts of men — in short, the progress of the 
 world in all that is best for humanity as a 
 whole or for the individual — rests on Chris- 
 tianity. This has been its work in the past. 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 69 
 
 even in the face of all the obstacles which have 
 been deeply established in human history, with 
 its stories of aggression, its antagonism of 
 race and of class, its insatiable greed of gain, 
 its pestilences and its famines, its ambitions 
 and its vices. As Christianity spreads its in- 
 fluence and strengthens its control the hope of 
 the world grows more assured. We believe 
 that a better day is coming and that the world 
 is indeed advancing in proportion as our faith 
 in Christ is established. 
 
 And this force is by no means exhausted. Its 
 gospel is as efficient for any man, anywhere, 
 and for every people under whatever condi- 
 tions, as it ever was. 
 
 This, then, is what Christianity is in the 
 world to-day; and, because it is this, belief in 
 its validity as a life-giving force given from 
 God to men may properly be regarded as 
 starting with the acceptance of this fact. 
 Actually it becomes a personal appeal to us 
 only as we individually become cognizant of it 
 in some man in whom we see it as the regener- 
 ating force in his life. We are won to Christ 
 and to Christianity only as we are persuaded 
 that Jesus Christ is the ruler in the heart of 
 our friend, and as the Christianity which is 
 presented to us for our acceptance is revealed 
 in the life of him who standing before us bears 
 
70 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 the Christian name. No man can be persuaded 
 of any faith which is not so embodied. "By 
 their fruits ye shall know them" is the abiding 
 principle; and the challenge of Christianity 
 is based on the validity of the Christian faith 
 as witnessed in the spirits and the lives of those 
 who bear the Christian name. If that should 
 cease to be genuine and commanding there 
 would be no Christian faith in the world. Be- 
 cause there is in all lands such a multitude of 
 humble, faithful, earnest, and genuine follow- 
 ers of the Lord Jesus Christ, the acceptance 
 of that testimony to the reality of his religion 
 is the initial step for the man who would be- 
 lieve to-day. 
 
 In the second place, an essential of the 
 Christian faith is the belief in the substantial 
 accuracy of the historic documents on which 
 Christianity rests, and through which it has 
 been promulgated; that is, the Scriptures of 
 the New Testament. These documents are to 
 be tested and judged as any other historic docu- 
 ments are; they have always been so tested, 
 and they are so tested to-day — more thor- 
 oughly, indeed, than ever before. There always 
 have been questions raised as to some of these 
 documents, the Epistle of James, of Second 
 Peter, and the Kevelation, for example. And 
 all at any time may be exposed to such ques- 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 71 
 
 tioning. But Christianity to-day rests on their 
 substantial historic accuracy. 
 
 This means that those who caH themselves 
 Christians, and who feel charged with the duty 
 and privilege of presenting the faith which 
 they hold to others, have a right to believe that 
 the story of the beginnings of that faith, and 
 of the person and work of Him who is in him- 
 self the center and the life of the faith, and 
 the interpretations of his life and work as 
 given by those who were his immediate follow- 
 ers, which have been cherished by the Church 
 from the beginning, are so far genuine and ac- 
 curate that they may be accepted as a sufficient 
 authority for the historic facts on which their 
 personal faith rests. 
 
 They have tested these teachings in their in- 
 dividual lives, and have found that in propor- 
 tion as they have heeded them the reality of 
 their understanding of Jesus Christ, their 
 sense of his living presence, and their access 
 to God have strengthened and become assured. 
 Therefore we are justified in saying that an 
 acceptance of the historic documents of Chris- 
 tianity, as presenting with substantial accu- 
 racy the truths of Christianity, is essential to 
 an acceptance of the Christian faith. 
 
 It is not sufficient to spiritualize the Chris- 
 tian story, saying, as some do, that one need 
 
72 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 pay no attention to the narrative, provided 
 he has in his heart a spiritual apprehension 
 of God or of the truth of religion. A man may 
 have that and yet not be justified in calling 
 himself a Christian, for the reasons we have 
 given. 
 
 It is not enough for a man to say, "I accept 
 the Sermon on the Mount," and to think, be- 
 cause of that, he is a follower of Jesus Christ ; 
 for Jesus Christ was not simply a teacher or 
 a prophet. He did not come expounding a 
 principle or promulgating a method of life. 
 In that case the principle and the method re- 
 main and have all the value that may be in- 
 herent in them, regardless of the source from 
 which they came, or the person who promul- 
 gated them. The command of Christ was not, 
 "Accept my teaching," or, "Follow my 
 method" ; but, "Accept me," and, "Follow me" ; 
 and only as men do that are they worthy to be 
 called his disciples. 
 
 Therefore, the third essential of Christianity 
 of which we may speak is to believe in Jesus 
 Christ himself, as he is presented in the New 
 Testament. For the person and the work of 
 Christ are the core of Christianity; and the 
 one question to the would-be believer is, Does 
 his faith hold to him, or does it not? Before 
 all else a Christian is a man who knows Jesus 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 73 
 
 Christ, one to whom he is a reality, a personal 
 friend, a helper, a Saviour, one to be loved 
 and longed for, one to serve now with joy, and 
 to be looked for in the other life as the supreme 
 reward. The Christian is before all else a man 
 who has given himself to Christ. He accepts 
 him as he is accepted by him. He lives not 
 for himself ; but Christ Jesus lives in him. To 
 that man life is a service of Christ, and death 
 is but the drawing back of the curtain which 
 separates a sinful man from the Holy God 
 whom he has learned to know and to love 
 through the revelation of him that has been 
 made in the Saviour who sought him and 
 found him and gave his life to redeem him. 
 These are indisputable essentials of a Chris- 
 tian faith. There may be religion without 
 them, but certainly not the Christian religion. 
 
VII 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 FAITH.— II 
 
 "For I delivered unto you first of all that which also 
 I received: that Christ died for our sins according to 
 the scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he 
 hath been raised on the third day according to the scrip- 
 tures." — 1 COBINTHIANS 15. 3, 4. 
 
 To know the essentials of the Christian 
 faith we must first know what is the Christian 
 faith. We come, then, from general considera- 
 tions to the specific facts. 
 
 Here is the earliest form in which that faith 
 was announced. It is indisputably authentic, 
 for this Corinthian letter of the apostle Paul is 
 one of the four writings of the New Testament 
 which have never been seriously questioned. 
 It antedates even the Gospels. Harnack gives 
 its probable date as the year 52 or 53 ; that is, 
 within about twenty years of the death of our 
 Lord. It was written without doubt from 
 Ephesus, to which the apostle had come after 
 two years of patient work in the great city 
 of Corinth, where he had lived supporting him- 
 self at his trade of a tentmaker, while he gath- 
 
 74 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 75 
 
 ered a little group of followers, both Jews and 
 Gentiles, and formed there a Christian church. 
 He crossed to Ephesus, only to learn soon after 
 that dissensions had broken out in Corinth. 
 It perhaps was not to be wondered at. The 
 Christian community was too new and made 
 up of too diverse elements thoroughly to fuse, 
 even under the passion of the new love in their 
 hearts. 
 
 But PauPs grief was none the less keen, and 
 he writes to them this letter, in which, in chap- 
 ter after chapter, he rebukes and argues and 
 pleads with them that he may reestablish them 
 promptly in that imitation of Christ and 
 obedience to Christ in which he had found his 
 own new life. He cares little that they ques- 
 tion his personal authority, but it broke his 
 heart to think that they were, under any ex- 
 cuse, departing from following Jesus Christ 
 as the one source of their life, and their one 
 sufficient authority. He had come to them 
 solely as the messenger of Jesus Christ, bear- 
 ing his gospel, and he hastens now to declare 
 what that gospel was and what is the real 
 ground of his own authority. It is funda- 
 mental both to his work and to their faith, and 
 he would have no misunderstanding about it. 
 There has been no change in his preaching. 
 He says : "I make known unto you, brethren, 
 
76 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 the gospel which I preached unto you, which 
 also ye received, wherein also ye stand, by 
 which also ye are saved, if ye hold fast the 
 word which I preached unto you, except ye 
 believed in vain." Then he proceeds in the 
 words of the text, in which he recounts the 
 simple facts concerning Jesus Christ as one 
 who came and died for our sins according to 
 the scriptures, and rose again, as was abun- 
 dantly witnessed. 
 
 This, then, is sufficient for our purpose. We 
 recall the phrase from the French, "It is not 
 possible to love and hope for that which one 
 does not believe" ; and we are justified in say- 
 ing that the essentials of the Christian faith 
 are obviously belief in Jesus Christ, as Paul 
 knew him; that is, as he is presented in the 
 Scriptures. 
 
 Beyond question men may find God other- 
 wise, as they have done in the past. But any 
 man having done so will inevitably be himself 
 found of Jesus Christ. The union of the soul 
 that in any way finds God, with Jesus Christ, 
 when the two are brought together, is imme- 
 diate; and the Christian faith is the faith of 
 those who anywhere or at any time, having 
 found God, find him most truly and most per- 
 fectly presented in his Son, our Lord. And 
 having so found him themselves, they take the 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 77 
 
 story of Christ, or, as we call it, the gospel of 
 Christ, as the message which God has given 
 them by which to lead others to the same 
 blessed experience. 
 
 With this as the central and comprehensive 
 truth we may now properly examine it, and 
 ask what may be regarded as the essentials of 
 this faith. 
 
 Manifestly the first of these is the belief that 
 Jesus was a real person. In the very earliest 
 days of the propagation of the gospel this was 
 questioned. It was quite in the line of the 
 thought and temper of the times to imagine 
 that any new doctrine or movement of men 
 might be attributed to some ghostly or spirit- 
 ual appearance, and the Church had the early 
 duty of establishing its contention that this 
 assumption had no place in its message or in 
 its history. We are so much further away from 
 those primitive days that it is still easier to 
 question the historic truth, and there are 
 those, from time to time, who advance such 
 a suggestion. 
 
 But the answer is twofold. Christianity 
 has to be accounted for; and the figure in the 
 gospel is its own evidence. Christianity is 
 the great fact in the world's history to-day, 
 and is as vital as it ever was. It cannot be 
 ignored; and it is inconceivable that this 
 
78 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 great system, so fuU of an energy which shows 
 no suggestion of either diminished force or 
 impaired effectiveness, should rest upon a lie, 
 or should have its spring and origin in a tra- 
 dition or a ghostly appearance. Furthermore, 
 the picture of Jesus given to us in the gospel 
 is one that it would be impossible to create 
 if it did not exist. Saintliness is the most 
 difficult of all types of character to depict; 
 and the higher the type of sainthood the more 
 shadowy and impersonal it inevitably be- 
 comes. John Stuart Mill's question still 
 stands: "Who among the disciples of Jesus, 
 or among their proselytes, was capable of in- 
 venting these sayings ascribed to Jesus, or 
 of imagining the life and character revealed 
 in the Gospels? Certainly not the fishermen 
 of Galilee, and certainly not Saint Paul." The 
 reality of that Person and that character may 
 therefore properly be regarded as an essential 
 fact of the Christian faith. 
 
 Again, as such a real personage Jesus con- 
 stitutes not a revelation but the revelation of 
 God. This means that Jesus stands by him- 
 self. He is not a product of Judaism, nor of 
 his time, nor of evolution. He was born of 
 'Jewish parentage in Palestine and at a defi- 
 nite date, but nothing is more indisputable 
 than that he was not a Jew in any immediate 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 79 
 
 sense; nor did he belong to any one time, or 
 period, or race. In two thousand years the 
 world has greatly changed, and men's knowl- 
 edge and range of thought and apparatus of 
 criticism have all become extensive and defi- 
 nite. But it never was more certain than it 
 is to-day that Jesus Christ is for all men every- 
 where. He speaks directly to the human heart, 
 and in terms which are as truly pertinent to 
 the scholar as to the peasant, to the Occident 
 to which his gospel has come as to the Orient 
 to which he historically belongs. 
 
 Nor is he a product of the evolution of the 
 natural world. His physical body might be 
 such a product, as were his clothes. That we 
 do not know, and that we cannot conceive to 
 be essential ; but he himself was certainly not 
 such a product. All such products we describe 
 as natural. He was supernatural. The Chris- 
 tian faith maintains that he came into this 
 world from outside the world, to make God 
 known to men living here, as God otherwise 
 had not been known and could not be known. 
 
 In the year 1872, immediately after the fall 
 of the Second Empire in France, the Protes- 
 tant Synod, which had been suppressed for 
 more than two hundred years, reassembled 
 under the new Republic. Freedom of religion 
 was to be permitted, and the scattered French 
 
80 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 Protestants, of an historic and noble ancestry, 
 felt themselves called to proclaim their ex- 
 istence and to establish their Church for its 
 proper work in their own country. It was at 
 once necessary for them to define their posi- 
 tion, and the question arose, "What consti- 
 tutes the Christian faith? Is a man who be- 
 lieves in God a Christian?'' Some stood for 
 that — that is, for a deistic Christianity, hold- 
 ing that if a man has what he regards as a 
 joyous faith in God, that is enough. But in- 
 evitably the question was put, "Is there or is 
 there not a supernatural revelation of God? 
 Yes or no. Has God created, loved, and saved 
 us by his Son? If so, is this compatible with 
 its contradictory? If Christianity is a super- 
 natural revelation of God, it is not a product 
 of the human reason, even though it be re- 
 garded as the supreme product. There are no 
 shades or degrees there. The proposition is 
 either wholly true or wholly false." After long 
 debating on the highest possible plane and 
 with the sole purpose of making it clear to 
 the world what Christianity is, this affirma- 
 tion was accepted and defined as the only 
 Christian position. It would seem that this 
 is the only one which is justifiable to-day. 
 
 Furthermore, Jesus appears a unique per- 
 sonality in that he is sinless. Of this, of 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 81 
 
 course, it is impossible for history to give an 
 absolute demonstration; but there is no mis- 
 take in seeing in the record that this was the 
 impression that he made upon all who came in 
 contact with him. From the beginning to the 
 end of his recorded life he moves always on 
 that plane. There is an undeniable but definite 
 and real gulf between him and his most inti- 
 mate disciples. The more intimate he is with 
 them, and the longer they are in his company, 
 the more manifest this becomes; until in the 
 closing hours, especially as recorded in the 
 conversations in the Gospel of John, and, in 
 all the Gospels in the scenes connected with 
 Gethsemane and Calvary, a whole world of 
 existence seems to lie between him and them. 
 His prayer is, "Father, forgive them!" never 
 once, "Father, forgive meT' In him prayer 
 never is supplication, but always communion. 
 This sinless character of Jesus has never 
 been successfully questioned. Now and again 
 someone has attempted to disparage it in some 
 particular, but such criticism has never se- 
 cured even a respectful hearing. Instinctively 
 the world has recognized that there is some- 
 thing irreverent, if not sacrilegious, in it. That 
 character stands so beautiful in its perfection 
 that men seem to feel that even the suggestion 
 of a fleck on its purity or a flaw in its perfect 
 
82 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 simplicity would be an irreparable loss of that 
 which could not be replaced and which the 
 world long since learned to regard as its chief- 
 est treasure. Jesus was this which the evan- 
 gelists described him to be, and which the 
 world has found itself ready to believe that 
 he was, or he was inexplicable. If he were 
 not this his words are absurd and arrogant. 
 For he said, "Come unto me, and live !" "Fol- 
 low me, and find life !" "Take my yoke upon 
 you, and enter into peace!" If he were not 
 himself sinless he cannot save any man. The 
 world's condition would be hopeless, and the 
 Christian faith would have already encoun- 
 tered its inevitable defeat. 
 
 Furthermore, Jesus was possessed of powers 
 corresponding to his nature and his claims. 
 His spiritual power is the greatest of all. Pro- 
 fessor Bruce said, "A sinless Christ is as great 
 a miracle as a Christ who can walk on the 
 water." Jesus said, "The Father has life in 
 himself." This being the source of life is the 
 nature of God. He then added, "The Father 
 hath given to the Son to have life in himself." 
 In so saying he proclaimed the possession of 
 power that men have not. 
 
 What the measure of that power was, and 
 what were the conditions within which it was 
 to be exercised, we cannot determine. It is 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 83 
 
 enough that coming as he did, tlie revelation 
 of God, he claimed and exercised powers that 
 pertained to that relationship. And there can 
 be no reasonable question, other than such as 
 is simply historical, as to what powers he ex- 
 ercised, and what he did not; and when the 
 historical question is settled, if it ever should 
 be, there would still remain the altogether un- 
 settled question as to what powers he might 
 have exercised in harmony with his nature 
 and his mission, had he had occasion to do so. 
 The argument from the natural improbability 
 of the appearance of any person on this earth 
 possessed of such power fails at once and com- 
 pletely before the evidence w^e have, and the 
 facts on which Christianity rests, that Jesus 
 Christ, in the very nature of the case, and by 
 virtue of what he was, possessed powers that 
 were appropriate to himself. 
 
 P^urthermore, his death was voluntary and 
 sacrificial. In the Christian faith the death 
 of Jesus Christ occupies a central place, as 
 declared by the text. That that death was both 
 voluntary and sacrificial is the burden of the 
 whole story. Jesus saw it coming long before 
 he surrendered to it ; and he accepted it for the 
 sake of the world. His earliest message was, 
 "God so loved the world, that he gave his only 
 begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him 
 
84 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 should not perish, but have eternal life." And 
 his final prayer was, "Father, forgive them; 
 for they know not what they do." 
 
 This sacrificial death of Jesus Christ is the 
 central truth taken up by his disciples, and 
 ever since maintained by his Church. The 
 historian tells us that it was the sacrament of 
 the Last Supper, the whole significance of 
 which lies in its relation to the death of Jesus 
 Christ, that through the early centuries held 
 the church to its faith and made its life both 
 united and true to its mission. Sir Oliver 
 Lodge, in a recent address in Birmingham, 
 said that in the course of the evolutionary 
 process in nature there came a time when 
 knowledge of good and evil arrived, with power 
 of choice. Then man tripped and fell. Whether 
 that be called a fall or a rise will differ with 
 the point of view. But then, "Christ realizing 
 that men were blundering, laid aside his maj- 
 esty, and lived on our planet as a teacher." 
 This is the declaration of a man of science. It 
 it sufficient as witnessing to the fact that there 
 came a time in human history when man 
 needed something done for him which he could 
 not do for himself. Sir Oliver seems to think 
 that he has sufficiently described what Jesus 
 did by saying that he came as a teacher. The 
 Christian Church has never been content to 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 85 
 
 say that. Its message is that he came as a 
 Saviour. He not only told men what the king- 
 dom of God is, but he made it possible for 
 them to enter it. He did that without which 
 all teaching of the kingdom would have been 
 to leave the Avorld all the more hopeless in its 
 despair before the picture of a life that to it 
 had become no longer possible. It was Jesus' 
 sacrificial death, and his resurrection follow- 
 ing upon it, which made the teachings of his 
 word and the morality of his life at once an 
 inspiration and a possibility. This, and noth- 
 ing short of this, is the gospel. The Christian 
 accepts it, and rejoices in Jesus Christ as his 
 Saviour ; and he turns to the world inviting it 
 to accept the faith which rests on this as its 
 immovable foundation. 
 
 Finally, an essential of the Christian faith 
 is the belief that Jesus Christ is not dead, but 
 is living to-day. He is not an influence, but 
 a Saviour; not a memory, but a friend, one to 
 bring us to God and to eternal life, a very 
 present help in every time of need. 
 
 Some say that men can save themselves if 
 they would. Some say the sense of guilt is a 
 superstition. Some say remorse is a morbid 
 passion; and still some others, that divine 
 intervention is inconceivable. The Christian 
 replies to one and all : "I know Jesus Christ. 
 
86 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 He has helped me to know God and to know 
 myself. He has sought and found me, and 
 having found me has helped me to find myself, 
 and through him to find God. And now he 
 is with me to assure my pardon, to guide my 
 life, to strengthen my purpose, and to 
 strengthen me in the effort to work out a 
 growing Christian character, until, as he has 
 promised, I shall be complete in his likeness, 
 and shall see him as he is. This is my gospel, 
 that Christ is my Saviour.'' 
 
 Forty years ago Dr. Dale, in his presidential 
 address to the Congregational Union of Eng- 
 land, said: "Here is the real issue. Is Chris- 
 tendom to believe in Christ or not? It is a 
 battle in Avhich everything is to be lost or won. 
 It is not a theory of ecclesiastical policy that 
 is in danger; it is not a theological system, it 
 is not a creed, it is not the Old Testament or 
 the New, but the claim of Christ himself to 
 be the Son of God and the Saviour of man- 
 kind." 
 
 I think we are justified in saying that the 
 faith of Jesus as embracing these substantial 
 truths concerning Jesus is one of the essen- 
 tials of the Christian teaching. It is to be 
 held and taught by those who regard them- 
 selves Christians. It should be the substance 
 of the appeal to those who are not Christians, 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 87 
 
 and we may well believe that it is the founda- 
 tion of the standing or falling of the Christian 
 Church, and the truth for the winning of men 
 everywhere to God and to life. 
 
 Dr. E. H. Sears, the Unitarian, in a beau- 
 tiful book entitled "The Heart of Christ," 
 writes these words : "Those who acknowledge 
 Jesus Christ as the supreme authority and 
 guide, and enter more and more into his all- 
 revealing mind, are making progress toward 
 the harmonizing truths which he represents. 
 It is not that one sect is making conquests of 
 the others, but Jesus Christ is making con- 
 quest of us all.'^ 
 
VIII 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 FAITH.— Ill 
 
 "If Christ hath not heen raised, then is our preaching 
 vain, your faith also is vain." — 1 Corinthians 15. 14. 
 
 The Christian faith is based on a miracle, 
 the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Back 
 of that is a still greater miracle, the person 
 and work of Jesus Christ himself. The Chris- 
 tian accepts Jesus as Saviour and Lord. To 
 him he is not a product of nature, but is from 
 above. He does for man what only God can 
 do. If a miracle is an event not to be ac- 
 counted for in nature, Jesus is a miracle, and 
 so much of belief in miracles is an essential 
 of the Christian faith. 
 
 For a man to say, "I do not believe in any 
 kind of a miracle," is to set himself against 
 Christianity; not necessarily against religion 
 or against God, but against that particular 
 form of religion and that particular presen- 
 tation of God which is the substance of Chris- 
 tianity. He may present a scheme of religion 
 which he labels Christian. It may rest upon 
 a description of Jesus that is harmonious with 
 
 88 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 89 
 
 the man's own conception of nature and of God, 
 but it is not the Jesus of the New Testament, 
 and cannot be regarded as a substitute for the 
 historic Christian faith. 
 
 To deny the possibility of miracles, and, 
 therefore, to decline to consider evidence ad- 
 duced in support of them, is a very old form 
 of attack upon Christianity. But with the 
 modern advance of science and the clearer 
 thinking which has come to prevail in the 
 scientific world, no less than in the general 
 realm of culture, it may now be truthfully 
 said that it is unphilosophical to say that 
 miracles are impossible. So generally is this 
 proposition accepted among scholars that it 
 may be declared a general truth. Men differ 
 now only as to the nature of the evidence that 
 is necessary to prove that any particular event 
 is miraculous. The thinking world recognizes 
 that the limitation of man's knowledge makes 
 it manifestly impossible for him to say that 
 any event claimed to occur in the natural 
 world lies beyond the possibility of divine 
 power. Though so much has been gained in 
 the knowledge of nature, the effect has been to 
 widen the realm of the unknown; and the 
 ancient doctrine that all things are possible to 
 God was never more universally accepted and 
 never was better established, than it is to-day. 
 
90 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 The question whether the belief in miracles 
 is essential in the Christian faith can be best 
 answered by dividing miracles into three 
 classes: the miracle of the Resurrection; the 
 miracle of the Incarnation, including the ques- 
 tion of the Virgin Birth; and the group of 
 miracles which Jesus is recorded as having 
 wrought. 
 
 The Church holds, and always has held, that 
 on the third day after the crucifixion Jesus 
 reappeared on earth, an unimpaired person- 
 ality. For the Church his grave has always 
 stood with an open door, and is an empty 
 tomb. That empty tomb is the enduring monu- 
 ment of his final and complete victory over 
 death. Furthermore, the Church holds that 
 in this lies the proof of Jesus's real nature. 
 His dominion over the physical world is so 
 complete that all questions as to what became 
 of his material body, or how, to use PauPs 
 term, for him "the terrestrial'' passed into 
 "the celestial," are as unimportant as they are 
 insolvable. They belong to the things which 
 are not revealed. But the fact of that transi- 
 tion is as unquestioningly accepted by the 
 Church as is the reality of that life into which 
 the faith of Jesus introduces the believer. 
 
 The resurrection of Jesus is also to the 
 Church the proof of the resurrection of the be- 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 91 
 
 liever through him. He is henceforth the Lord 
 of life for this world and for the next. This 
 the early Church held as amply proved. Paul 
 recounts in this fifteenth chapter of First Co- 
 rinthians the outline of the evidence which he 
 made the historic basis of his message. Jesus 
 had appeared after his death to Cephas, then 
 to the twelve, then to above five hundred breth- 
 ren at once, then to James, then to all the 
 apostles, and, last of all, to him also. The 
 Church accepted the evidence, not simply be- 
 cause it was so abundant and so accessible 
 on the lips of those who were still living, but 
 perhaps much more because of the reality of 
 the new life which was witnessed in every 
 convert. It was the reality of that new life 
 wrought in the hearts and conduct of his fol- 
 lowers that became to the world the appeal 
 and the proof of the new faith. The ever- 
 present testimony in the existing monuments 
 of the early Christian world is of this faith in 
 the resurrection of the dead. "Because he 
 lives, we shall live also," was their triumphant 
 cry. The most notable critic of the Christian 
 faith in the last century said, "It was the be- 
 lief in the resurrection that gave permanence 
 and authority to the precepts of Jesus ; other- 
 wise they would have been blown away and 
 scattered like leaves before the wind." Recog- 
 
92 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 nizing this, and too honest to deny it, Ferdi- 
 nand Baur, because he held that a miracle is 
 impossible, said, "The problem of the resur- 
 rection of Christ must be regarded as insolv- 
 able." The Christian believer crowds the in- 
 disputable fact back upon the preconceived 
 theory as to miracle, and confidently expects 
 the theory to be abandoned. 
 
 In the language of Dean Church: "The 
 Christian Church is founded on a definite his- 
 toric fact, that Jesus Christ who was crucified 
 rose from the dead. A so-called Christianity, 
 ignoring and playing with Christ's resurrec- 
 tion, and using the Bible as a sort of Homer, 
 may satisfy a class of clever and cultivated 
 persons. But it is well in so serious a matter 
 not to confuse things. This new religion may 
 borrow from Christianity as it may borrow 
 from Plato, or from Buddhism, or Confucius, 
 or even Islam. But it is not Christianity. A 
 Christianity which tells us to think of Christ 
 doing good, but to forget and put out of sight 
 Christ risen from the dead, is not true to life. 
 It is as delusive to the conscience and the soul 
 as it is illogical to reason." 
 
 As to the Incarnation, the Christian Church 
 holds that Jesus Christ came into our life 
 from without, but in a real sense became man. 
 He bears our sins and carries our sorrows, be- 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 93 
 
 cause he is one with us. It has speculated 
 much and long over the question of the union 
 of the divine and the human ; but it has reached 
 no conclusion, and, perhaps it may be said, 
 has gained no light. That is another of the 
 hidden things of God. The questioning mind 
 of man may always stand before it with rev- 
 erent inquiry. But the unanswered question 
 concerning the method does not impinge upon 
 or disturb the acceptance of the fact upon 
 which so much that is most real in the Chris- 
 tian faith and the Christian life depends. We 
 certainly are justified in saying that the belief 
 in the incarnation of Jesus Christ is essential 
 to the Christian faith. 
 
 It will at once be asked, How will this affect 
 the question of the Virgin Birth? There are 
 those who reject that on two grounds: first, 
 because they think that then Jesus would not 
 be truly man; and, second, in their view the 
 record is not sufficiently authentic. To this 
 we may make reply that we cannot say that 
 the doctrine is essential, because if the record 
 were discredited, or, indeed, entirely removed 
 from the gospel story, it would not follow 
 that the foundations of the Christian faith 
 were disturbed, or that the Church would not 
 go on its way unaffected. But the Church ac- 
 cepts the narrative as it stands and holds to 
 
94 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 its faith in the historic event undisturbed, for 
 the following reasons : It is entirely harmoni- 
 ous with the nature of Jesus Christ. That 
 nature is so exceptional that Jesus's entrance 
 into our life might well be attended with cir- 
 cumstances or conducted in a way that would 
 be unique, and the declaration of the immedi- 
 ate agency of the Spirit of God is certainly 
 not inharmonious, but, on the contrary, is 
 most congruous with Avhat we know and re- 
 joice to believe as to the divinity of our Lord. 
 Furthermore, the Church cannot fail to note 
 that repudiation of the story is largely limited 
 to those who repudiate what the Church be- 
 lieves as to the real nature of the Person of 
 Christ. Denial of the Virgin Birth is most 
 often connected with denial of the virgin life 
 of our Lord. Moreover, such denial leads to 
 an intolerable suggestion, that of Professor 
 Cheyne in the "Encyclopaedia Biblica," where 
 he says, "The name of the father of Jesus is, 
 to say the least, extremely uncertain." The 
 bare suggestion this implies is shocking. 
 Finally, the Church recognizes that the narra- 
 tives of the Immaculate Conception are an 
 undisputed section of the Gospels, and that 
 there is nothing in the narrative that is in- 
 harmonious with the description of Jesus that 
 is everywhere found in the Epistles. The com- 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 95 
 
 pleteness of the recognition of his divine na- 
 ture may well be regarded as intimately con- 
 nected in the minds of the writers with their 
 faith in his supernatural birth. 
 
 We come, then, to the group of miracles 
 which Jesus is recorded as having wrought. 
 No one of them, certainly, is essential to the 
 Christian faith; that is, the narrative of our 
 Lord's earthly life and teaching would remain 
 substantially unchanged if any one of them 
 were not there. The opening of the eyes of the 
 blind, the healing of the sick,, the feeding of 
 the multitude, the calling to life of the widow^s 
 son, or the raising of Lazarus, might conceiv- 
 ably be removed from the record, and, great 
 as would be the loss, the story would not be 
 seriously injured, nor the Christian faith 
 affected. In each instance it may be admitted 
 that faith in the individual event properly de- 
 pends upon the evidence of its historic charac- 
 ter. The Christian faith certainly does not 
 rest upon any one of these recorded miracles. 
 
 But that is not the real question. We are 
 reminded of the famous horsetail argument 
 of the old rhetoricians : "This single hair does 
 not make the tail ; I pull it out. This one does 
 not make the tail ; I pull that out. I continue 
 with each separate hair. At last, where is 
 the tail?" We may dispense with individual 
 
96 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 miracles, but the miracles as a whole are 
 wrought into the web of the gospel, and they 
 cannot be removed from it without the de- 
 struction of the picture of Christ, and the his- 
 toric foundations of the gospel. The Church 
 believes in the miracles that Jesus wrought 
 because it believes that he was able to work 
 them; because they were natural to him and 
 suitable to the task he had to perform ; because 
 they accomplished his purpose, challenging 
 the attention of the world which he needed 
 and which he could not otherwise secure; be- 
 cause they attested that revelation which he 
 was in himself, and which he delivered in his 
 words, and which furthermore disclosed itself 
 in his wonderful deeds; because his story 
 would be more strange without them than it 
 is with them; for such a person to come into 
 our life for the purpose for which he came, 
 and not to manifest powers above and outside 
 of those which men recognize as pertaining to 
 the natural world, would be far stranger than 
 for him to disclose the powers which Jesus 
 so naturally, so quietly, and so effectively 
 used. We agree with Dr. Dale: "That Christ 
 should have worked miracles does not surprise 
 me. It would have surprised me if he had 
 not."i 
 
 'Living Christ and Gospels, p. 102. 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 97 
 
 We say with truth: "We do not want the 
 miracles which saints have wrought, but the 
 miracle through which the saint himself is 
 made/' Because Jesus wrought this great 
 miracle, and lives to work it to-day in the heart 
 of every penitent coming to him seeking grace 
 that he may become a saint, we are ready to 
 believe that he not only has the power to do 
 this, but that also, on occasion, he did exercise, 
 and can again exercise, all power that may be 
 related to his beneficent purpose. 
 
 Having said this, we say with John Calvin, 
 "So long as the central truths of Christianity 
 are held intact, differences of opinion are to 
 be allowed." We would not lay unnecessary 
 burdens upon any man's faith, but we seek to 
 open the way and set up the landmarks which 
 will enable the humblest soul to come straight 
 to his Lord, and, having come, to know what 
 the Christian faith is, and how to make it 
 known to others. 
 
 We have only to ask, then, What are the 
 great central truths? 
 
 The first is that we live in a world of mys- 
 tery. This was never so true and so nobly 
 impressive as it is to-day. Science has opened 
 vast realms of new knowledge, but in every 
 instance it has been to disclose a vaster mys- 
 tery lying beyond. The conception of the in- 
 
98 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 finite and of the infinitesimal, of an all-em- 
 bracing ether, the idea of an all-prevailing 
 unity, of the limitless areas of time and space, 
 of the indestructibility of all existence, of 
 the ceaseless change of life and death, of con- 
 struction and destruction in the universe, 
 create a sense of mystery and of awe hitherto 
 unknown, but are now forced upon us with a 
 new and commanding significance because 
 they are now scientific. 
 
 We recognize in every direction that our in- 
 tellectual faculties are not adequate to solve 
 the problems that crowd upon us. We have 
 to fall back for our knowledge upon the con- 
 sciousness of possessing powers of apprehen- 
 sion outside the realm of logic. The truth 
 comes in upon us through many channels. We 
 reach the decisions which are necessary for 
 the conduct of life and for the building of 
 character by ways we often cannot determine. 
 It is sufficient for us to know that they have 
 the quality of truth. They serve our purpose. 
 They enable us to do our work. They help 
 us to something of permanence in right ways, 
 and to solidity in the peace that possesses our 
 hearts. They serve to secure for us what we 
 are glad to recognize as an established faith. 
 Religion comes with an appeal to this power 
 of the soul. We can discern our own needs. 
 
ESSENTIALS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 99 
 
 We can search and try ourselves. We can 
 feel the burden of a sinful heart and the guilt 
 both of the transgression that has passed and 
 of the passion that led to it. We can ask God's 
 forgiveness and believe that he hears and will 
 answer. When out of the mystery that sur- 
 rounds us there comes the revelation of God in 
 Jesus Christ, there is that in us which re- 
 sponds to it. We can believe and find light. 
 
 Therefore the second great truth which may 
 be regarded as central is that Jesus Christ 
 stands alone as the revealer of God and the 
 Saviour of men. He is the great fact to-day. 
 He is the final and absolute revelation of God 
 to man. When John Wesley lay dying, after 
 a long silence, he opened his eyes and asked, 
 "What was the text on which I preached last 
 Sunday?" and when one standing by repeated, 
 "For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your 
 sakes he became poor, that ye through his 
 poverty may be rich," he said, "Yes, that's it. 
 That is the only foundation. There is no 
 other." 
 
 Finally, we must yield to him, we must open 
 our hearts to the faith that centers in him, if 
 we would find forgiveness and live. Multi- 
 tudes have done so. !Many whom we have 
 known and loved have walked with him, have 
 
100 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 kept the faith, and to-day are singing the song 
 of the redeemed. There never were so many 
 in the world holding this faith and living that 
 life as there are to-day. The greatest of all 
 miracles is a new heart. The changing of a 
 mind from unbelief to belief, from darkness 
 concerning itself and concerning God to light 
 that shall grow and illumine both the soul and 
 God more and more ; the breaking of the fetters 
 of vice; the making of the harsh loving, the 
 selfish generous and kind, the dishonest trust- 
 worthy and true, is the work that only the 
 Spirit of God can do. That rebirth of the 
 soul that lies back of all this, you and I must 
 have. If we have it at last as God's free gift 
 we must come and seek it with penitent heart. 
 We must be willing to give up all things for it. 
 The appeal of the Christian faith is thus a 
 personal one. It brings Jesus Christ within 
 the reach of every man, and it makes essential 
 in the faith of Jesus those, and only those, 
 truths concerning him which are the unchang- 
 ing and sufficient foundation of a living faith. 
 These we can confidently press upon every 
 man. 
 
IX 
 
 WHY NOT SIMPLY THE MORALITY OF 
 JESUS? 
 
 "And as he was going forth into the way, there ran 
 one to him, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good 
 Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? 
 And Jesus said unto him. Why callest thou me good? 
 none is good save one, even God." — Maek 10. 17, 18. 
 
 There is a story of Lockhart, Walter Scott's 
 son-in-law and biographer, writing in a lady's 
 album : 
 
 "In Fancy's days Hope's fervid gaze 
 
 O'er Life's fresh circuit ran: 
 And Faith, like Hope, found ample scope 
 
 Within this world of man. 
 But now my creed, from nonsense freed, 
 
 In three short items lies — 
 That nothing's new, and nothing's true, 
 
 And nothing signifies!" 
 
 This is a sufiSciently accurate description of 
 conditions to-day. There is so much that is 
 new, and so much that is claimed to be true, 
 and so much that was thought true that 
 now is known to be untrue, that men find it 
 easy to sweep all credence aside. Doctrine is 
 little esteemed. Convictions are looked upon 
 
 101 
 
102 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 as unintelligent, if not vulgar; and the hall- 
 mark of culture is a gentle but well-satisfied 
 agnosticism in regard to all things outside 
 of one's own special line of occupation or 
 training. The unspoken motto that governs 
 many lives is, "Let us live wisely" — with the 
 emphasis on the "live"; at least, "Let us live 
 well/' If we must have teaching that lays 
 down rules, and gives us maxims, and appeals 
 to life, let it be restricted to ethical culture. 
 When we go beyond that and discuss the re- 
 quirements of religion we become narrow and 
 dogmatic. Jowett, the Master of Balliol, re- 
 flecting the rationalistic spirit of his times, 
 said, "It is impossible to have a personal af- 
 fection for Jesus Christ because he lived two 
 thousand years ago." And this in the face 
 of the testimony of the Christian centuries, 
 from Polycarp in the second century, who ex- 
 claimed in his martyrdom: "How can I blas- 
 pheme him, my Lord and Saviour? Eighty 
 and six years I have served him and he has 
 never injured me. How can I blaspheme my 
 King who saves me?" to the last dying be- 
 liever, even though it was the little lad who 
 the other day on his deathbed said, "Mamma, 
 I love you, but you know I love Him most.'' 
 
 The question is continually put. Why not 
 the morality of Jesus without his personal 
 
MORALITY APART FROM JESUS 103 
 
 claims? Where it is not expressed in words 
 it is the attitude of a multitude of cultivated, 
 upright, and altogether respectable and ami- 
 able people on every side. 
 
 The first reply must be our Lord's answer. 
 He will have none of it. Our text speaks to 
 us with all the vividness of Mark's graphic 
 details. One came running to him. Jesus, 
 beholding him, loved him. To the eager ques- 
 tion, "What shall I do that I may inherit eter- 
 nal life?'' the answer is, "Why callest thou me 
 good? None is good save one, even God." 
 
 The end of our Lord's ministry was at hand. 
 He was on the way to the last Passover. He 
 had just interrogated his disciples at Csesarea 
 Philippi as to the people's opinion and their 
 thought about himself, and had spoken the 
 words to Peter that were to become imperish- 
 able in regard to his testimony to him as the 
 Son of God. Already the shadow of the cross 
 is upon him, and he talks of his death which 
 he is to accomplish at Jerusalem. The light- 
 minded multitude are forsaking him because 
 he refused to accept their thoughtless adora- 
 tion when they wanted to make him a king. 
 Even his disciples are soon to desert him 
 with denials and betrayal. He says: "I am 
 not alone. My Father is with me. My Father 
 is greater than I. I and my Father are one." 
 
104 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 The wedding garment, which was to furnish 
 the supreme test in admission to the feast, in 
 the parable, was a gift, and not an earned 
 acquisition, or a desert, and was the picture 
 and type of the condition under which alone 
 his Father was to give admission to the heav- 
 enly kingdom; and he was soon to say, "If I 
 wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." 
 His attitude was becoming like that of a king 
 marching to his triumph and distributing 
 kingly gifts the values of which were little 
 understood, but which would soon become in 
 the hearts and lives of his followers the pledge 
 of his coming again, and their eternal reward 
 in his presence. Never for a moment does 
 he relax or modify his demands or his personal 
 claims. His word always is, "Forsake all, 
 and follow me!" "Come unto me, and live!" 
 "Take my yoke!" "Be my disciple!'' "Obey 
 me if you would find life !" It is utterly im- 
 possible to read his story and be uncertain as 
 to his claims, which remain unchanged to-day. 
 It is Christ himself as the Saviour of the 
 world, or it is nothing. 
 
 In the next place, as a matter of fact it is 
 impossible to accept the morality of Christ 
 and neglect him. For these reasons: Every 
 such emasculated ethics lacks dynamic. It 
 seems to have power, and sometimes is impos- 
 
MORALITY APART FROM JESUS 105 
 
 ing in its pretenses. Like the continued revo- 
 lution of the great flywheel of an engine after 
 the steam has been shut off, it is showy, but 
 on its way to utter ineffectiveness. Any scheme 
 of morals is worth nothing, as Carlyle says, 
 that cannot show its effectiveness in work; 
 and any scheme of morals that rests solely on 
 a utilitarian basis, or on its appeal to the 
 human reason, or on the strength of human 
 resolution, is sure to fail. Time runs against 
 it. It has no propagating power ; the weakness 
 of the flesh and the weariness of age destroy 
 eventually even its appearance of vitality. 
 When religion has attempted, as it has done 
 not infrequently, to base Christianity on a 
 scheme of practical morals without the sanc- 
 tion of personal allegiance to Jesus Christ, 
 it has quickly developed conditions under 
 which Christianity itself disappears. Bishop 
 Butler tells of the condition of the London 
 pulpits in his day when the Deism of the 
 eighteenth century prevailed. He said one 
 could not tell from anything he heard whether 
 the preacher was a Mohammedan, a Buddhist, 
 or a Confucian. We have the testimony of the 
 historian of the eighteenth century that the 
 "ages in which morality is most preached are 
 the times in which it is least practiced." And 
 we have about us in every modern capital a 
 
106 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 refined society in its highly developed aesthetic 
 and luxurious condition displaying a depth 
 of corruption against which its culture is prov- 
 ing absolutely no protection. 
 
 A morality without the sanction of a per- 
 sonal faith is sure to breed Phariseeism. It 
 makes one always conscious of his own su- 
 periority. We know just how good we are, 
 and just how we became so. Our message be- 
 comes simply, "Do as I do. If you do not, 
 you are by so much less worthy." We have 
 before us the picture of Benjamin Franklin 
 with his little card and his pin, pricking each 
 day a hole to mark his practice of the several 
 virtues, with his growing self-sufficiency; and 
 then his weakness before the temptations of 
 the French capital. It is the mark of a cul- 
 ture which, in proportion as it becomes ex- 
 quisite and refined, becomes self-satisfied and 
 remote. It looks out upon a vulgar world 
 from which it holds itself growingly aloof. 
 It is characterized by the increasing intensity 
 both of its aloofness and of its self-sufficiency, 
 until it becomes so manifestly separate from 
 the spirit of Christ and the teachings of Christ 
 that, at the end, it has no hope in Christ, and 
 dies, when it does, wrapped about in its own 
 defiant pride which it tries in vain to make a 
 substitute for peace. 
 
MORALITY APART FROM JESUS 107 
 
 Moreover, such morality does not deliver 
 one from his own past. Two facts are sure to 
 become true of us all. There is in every heart, 
 however smooth and protected the outer life, 
 the double consciousness of sin and of weak- 
 ness. These are not always recognized, but 
 they are sure in time to declare themselves. 
 Not one of us is what he should be. We know 
 it as everyone knows it of us. And no moral 
 code, however complete or however beautiful, 
 can eradicate this consciousness. It lies in 
 wait for us all, as life advances. It is sure to 
 meet us before the bar of God. And in that 
 day, when the books are opened, no peace of 
 the soul, passing out of this life to the other, 
 that rests solely upon what a man has made of 
 himself, will satisfy. We need something that 
 goes far deeper into our experience, and gives 
 larger promise of delivering us from our own 
 past. That no man can find in a mere code 
 of morals. 
 
 But if we succeeded with our Christian code, 
 as we will call it, freed from the personal 
 claims of Jesus Christ, it would not satisfy 
 us. At best it would only be the performance 
 of a duty, and we all long for love. Kuskin 
 has said that "a man is never so great as when 
 he looks up to one nobler than himself"; and 
 we need that inspiration and that help if we 
 
108 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 would come into the possession of what God 
 has made possible to us as his children. The 
 dry code of morals, however sublime its 
 maxims and supreme its sanctions, does not 
 speak to the heart and does not open the deep- 
 est wells of the spirit. 
 
 The great electric generator in the power 
 house is started by steam. Then it is swung 
 into the mechanical system of which it is a 
 part, and immediately it begins to run by a 
 new power. The steam becomes then no longer 
 necessary, for the engine has been brought 
 into unison with the electric current which 
 comes from the vast storehouse of the earth, 
 and with that new and throbbing life it pro- 
 ceeds now on its mighty way. Henceforth you 
 cannot stop it without stopping all the vast 
 enginery of which it is a part. However a 
 man may begin in his course of right living, 
 with whatever vision of what is before him, or 
 impulse from what lies within and about him, 
 it is only when he has some one to love that 
 he really becomes aware of the power he pos- 
 sesses. Then he works. Then he sacrifices. 
 Then he is filled with the joy which both satis- 
 fies and ennobles. 
 
 That young man who was so indifferent to 
 his work, so listless and even reckless in his 
 life, is now intent, industrious, prudent, eager 
 
MORALITY APART FROM JESUS 109 
 
 to save and to possess, eager to become what 
 he should be. Why? Simply because he is 
 in love. His affection has gone out to some 
 other, and that other's response has awakened 
 this new life in his very soul. "Cut a little 
 deeper," said the French soldier under the 
 surgeon's knife, "and you will find the image 
 of the Emperor." That was the explanation 
 of the triumph of the French army, and of the 
 military glory which so intoxicated the French 
 people. Where is the key to the mystical 
 courage of Charles George Gordon at Khar- 
 toum, or James Chalmers offering himself a 
 sacrifice to the cannibals of New Guinea, if 
 it is not in the vision that never left their 
 thoughts of the Christ whom they loved and 
 whom they served, present with them, speak- 
 ing to them, waiting for them even in the mo- 
 ment of the last surrender? 
 
 The disciples of Jesus understood this. 
 Open the book of the Acts. Are they there 
 preaching morality? Everywhere "they preach 
 Jesus, and him crucified." "The God of our 
 fathers hath glorified his servant Jesus, whom 
 ye delivered up, and denied. Yea, the faith 
 which is through him hath given him this per- 
 fect soundness in the presence of you all." "I 
 preach not myself, but Christ crucified." "For 
 the love of Christ constraineth us." This was 
 
110 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 their message everywhere and always. Their 
 gospel went to the hearts of men and changed 
 their lives. It reached from the palace of the 
 king to the slave in his hut. Everywhere it 
 made the crucified Christ a living presence. 
 It brought to men a new life and a new hope 
 because it gave them a new friend who was 
 at once their Saviour and their God. Their 
 glad testimony became quickly the response 
 to the message that was brought to them ; and 
 the first witnesses of Christ could turn to their 
 hearers with perfect confidence of the reality 
 both of their experience and of their confes- 
 sion when they said to them as Peter did, 
 "Whom not having seen ye love; on whom, 
 though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye 
 rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full 
 of glory : receiving the end of your faith, even 
 the salvation of your souls/' This was the 
 first gospel delivered to the saints. It remains 
 the only gospel of the Christian Church to- 
 day. In offering it the Church pleads with 
 men to accept it as it stands, that in it they 
 may live. Christ is the one foundation; and 
 there is no other. However a man may be led 
 into the way of life, once in it, and learning 
 of Jesus Christ, his heart at once answers to 
 him; Jesus becomes the test of the reality of 
 his new life and the pledge of its permanence. 
 
THE SEARCHING QUESTION 
 
 *'He saith unto them, But who say ye that I am?" — 
 Matthew 16. 15. 
 
 The turning point had come in our Lord's 
 ministry. The miraculous feeding of the mul- 
 titude on the shore of Galilee had been fol- 
 lowed by his refusal to allow the people to 
 proclaim him king. When they realized this, 
 and that his answer was final, the crowd that 
 had followed him, and had been rapidly grow- 
 ing in numbers and in enthusiasm, began at 
 once to dissolve. He saw what it meant and 
 recognized that the failure of his mission so far 
 as the people were concerned was inevitable. 
 He had then withdrawn from Galilee to the 
 neighborhood of Tyre to seek retirement, and, 
 after a while, was returning to the northern 
 borders of Galilee to prepare for the final jour- 
 ney to the Passover at Jerusalem. He had 
 now reached a spot on the southern slope of 
 Mount Hermon, in the neighborhood of Csesa- 
 rea Philippi. About a grotto which had been 
 taken advantage of by early Greek settlers to 
 erect an altar to their sylvan god Pan a com- 
 
 111 
 
112 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 munity had gathered which had grown into a 
 town ; and lately Philip, the best son of Herod 
 the Great, had built a city and given it the 
 name of the emperor Tiberius Csesar in con- 
 nection with his own. 
 
 Here, standing on the confines of the great 
 world of heathenism, then lying in its dark- 
 ness and despair, but to whom his gospel was 
 to be preached as a message of the love of that 
 Father in heaven who is not willing that the 
 least of his children should perish, of whom, 
 as yet, they knew nothing, with behind him 
 the chosen people, who, though heirs of the 
 promises, and having the law and the proph- 
 ets, were still so far from apprehending their 
 privileges, or knowing the God of Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob, that they were about to 
 crucify his Son, Jesus turns to his disciples 
 with the searching question of the text. 
 
 He introduced it by asking what the people 
 thought of him. He knew, but he had a deep 
 purpose. Their answer would be that they 
 thought him anyone except the true Messiah. 
 Their hope was dead. They did not know it, 
 but, in fact, they had fallen away from the 
 desire for spiritual leadership. They wanted 
 only a conventional and convenient Christ. 
 When he has their answer he turns to his dis- 
 ciples, asking, "But what do you think?" His 
 
THE SEARCHING QUESTION 113 
 
 question was intended to separate them from 
 the people about them and to lift them, if pos- 
 sible, at once to a higher faith and a final de- 
 cision. He presses the same questions to-day, 
 and we hear the same answers. 
 
 There is the answer of the favored classes. 
 They say, "One of the prophets." It is enough 
 to be Israelites. There have been many proph- 
 ets. They are well known to us. We are of 
 their kind, and this new one may be trusted to 
 recognize us, if there be need, as we recognize 
 him. Just as to-day the elect say, "It is enough 
 to be gentlemen and ladies, cultivated people. 
 We are not of the common herd. We belong 
 to the privileged class who have had much 
 knowledge of God in the past and who have 
 taken advantage of their opportunities and 
 privileges." They are not to be classed with 
 the drunkard or the profligate or the heathen. 
 Their attitude is that of the French nobleman 
 of the old day, who dying was asked whether 
 he did not want the priest, and replied, "No; 
 the good God knows a gentleman when he 
 sees him." That w^as sufficient; wrapped in 
 the mantle of that supreme self-satisfaction 
 he passed aw^ay. Many to-day are living in 
 the same atmosphere and are, more or less 
 consciously, making the same answer to Jesus 
 Christ. They have no conscious need. On the 
 
114 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 contrary, if there is any need, it is the world's 
 need, and possibly God's need, of them, which 
 in their own way and without undue burden 
 they will recognize as they see fit. They pat- 
 ronize religion so far as they concern them- 
 selves at all with it. 
 
 Then, again, there is the answer of the 
 Pharisee — the man who lives a scrupulous life, 
 and is not "as this publican." He said of old, 
 Jesus was another John the Baptist. He, 
 therefore, was but slightly concerned, as 
 John's message had never been for him. He is 
 himself a worker along the same lines. To-day 
 he believes in civic service. He devotes himself 
 to helping the community by various reforms. 
 He believes in purified politics and settlements 
 and clubs and general philanthropy. He de- 
 nounces the churches because of their appar- 
 ent indifference to these things. He thinks 
 they spend too much money on foreign mis- 
 sions, and too little at home. He compares 
 his well-ordered life with that of some whom 
 he knows who are officers of churches. He 
 feels that the betterment of the world is to 
 come through the agencies in which he is 
 chiefly interested, and frequently asserts that 
 there are many better men outside of the 
 church than there are in it. He approves of 
 Jesus Christ so far as he finds in the Sermon 
 
THE SEARCHING QUESTION 115 
 
 on the Mount a justification for his own atti- 
 tude, and meantime has many a word of dis- 
 paragement for the churches which bear 
 Christ's name. 
 
 Then there are those whose answer is, 
 "Elijah." These are the scribes. They are 
 devoted to the ceremonies of religion. They 
 keep the commandments. They magnify the 
 ritual ; they tithe the mint, the anise, and the 
 cummin; they are faithful to the church. It 
 is enough for them to make themselves accept- 
 able to God by what they do in his service and 
 for his cause. "Why do you talk to me as if 
 I were not a Christian ?'' one of this class said 
 to me. "You are not a member of the church." 
 "No, but I am there every Sunday morning, 
 rain or shine; and I often notice that when 
 the weather is bad your deacons are not." To 
 these men Christ is an institutor of certain 
 ceremonies by which men can make themselves 
 acceptable to God. It is an exalted form of 
 penance, and readily passes current in the 
 scheme of indulgences. We make God our 
 debtor by the extent of our devotions, and 
 we have no fear of the result, for God is just, 
 and will recognize the debt. 
 
 Turning from these, Jesus presses a per- 
 sonal but a theological question : "Who do you 
 say that I am?" 
 
116 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 Some would separate religion from theology. 
 They make religion a matter of chief impor- 
 tance, while theology is of small consequence. 
 But if religion is, as some say, the binding of 
 a man's thoughts to God, we must inquire 
 what God is, in order that we may know upon 
 whom our thoughts shall be fixed. If religion, 
 on the other hand, is a system of service, we 
 must ask what is the sanction for this service, 
 and by what authority it is governed ; to whom 
 does it belong? Or if, again, it is said religion 
 is a matter of the feelings and of the heart, 
 we must ask to whom are those feelings to be 
 directed, and upon whom is the affection of 
 the heart to be set. Keligion cannot exist 
 apart from its object, which is God. So that 
 when Jesus presses the question, "Who do ye 
 say that I am?" he is asking not only for the 
 affection of the heart, but for the clear appre- 
 hension by the head, for that completeness of 
 devotion and personal surrender to him which 
 alone can be accepted as marking a true dis- 
 cipleship. 
 
 As he led up to this question and turned 
 with his searching gaze to his disciples, the 
 pathos of the scene is impressive. Some 
 thirty-two years had been spent under the re- 
 strictions and burdens of his earthly life. He 
 was within a half year of his death. Indeed, 
 
THE SEARCHING QUESTION 117 
 
 he now began to speak of his death which he 
 was to accomplish in Jerusalem, where he has 
 to "suffer many things of the elders and the 
 chief priests and the scribes, and be killed." 
 He had from the beginning claimed his Mes- 
 siahship and his oneness with his Father. The 
 life in himself which is the characteristic of 
 divinity was his. He had power on earth to 
 forgive sins. He had fed the multitude and 
 healed all who were brought to him, as witness 
 of his power to bless in this life no less than 
 in the other. And the multitude had turned 
 from him because he would not be made a 
 king. He had gone to the coast of Tyre under 
 the weight of the sorrow in his heart over 
 Israel, and to come in touch with the heathen, 
 who were waiting for his gospel. The poor 
 Syrophoenician woman, pleading for her sick 
 child and in her eager faith willing to accept 
 even "the crumbs that fall from the children's 
 table," was the picture of the new field open- 
 ing for his gospel in the world outside. 
 
 He now turns with the new light in his 
 heart, the "joy" in which he was to endure the 
 cross, as he sets his face once more to the 
 familiar scenes of his active ministry. Here, 
 as he stands on the slope of that splendid 
 mountain, which is the glory on the horizon 
 of northern Palestine, and which furnished 
 
118 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 to all the generations of Israel the noblest 
 imagery of their praises, the words on the lips 
 of the little company of his disciples but ex- 
 pressed the completeness of the separation of 
 his people from him. There was no place for 
 him in their hearts, as there was no under- 
 standing of him in their intelligence. They 
 would gladly offer to him so much of recogni- 
 tion and respect as would place him with their 
 great prophets; but there was not the least 
 trace of recognition of what he was in him- 
 self. And the day is far spent. The shadow of 
 the cross on which he is to give his life for the 
 world already stretches out toward him. The 
 night is at hand. How can he be content with 
 such acceptance? He must press upon these 
 followers about him the earnest question, 
 "Where do you stand ?'^ Have you not a surer 
 faith? Does not your love spring from a 
 deeper well? Is there not a recognition in 
 your hearts of what I am doing for you, of 
 what I am in myself? You have been close to 
 me. You have been favored with privileges 
 that the multitude have not. You have heard 
 my words. You have had the benefit of my 
 intimate teaching. I have done for jou what 
 it was not permitted to me to do for others. 
 Tell me where you stand. Will you not go 
 further than the thoughtless crowd? Have 
 
THE SEARCHING QUESTION 119 
 
 you not in your hearts a deeper, surer truth 
 than they? 
 
 He presses that question upon the favored 
 men and women of to-day. You are the chil- 
 dren of privilege. You know what it is to be 
 a Christian. You have been brought up in 
 Christian homes. Y^ou live in a Christian com- 
 munity and have all the advantages of an in- 
 herited Christian training. And you say, 
 "There are many good men outside the 
 church,'' and, "What need is there why I 
 should make a public confession? There are 
 so many things I am undecided about ; so much 
 in the Creed that I do not believe. I do not 
 want to bind myself." 
 
 And this is all you have to say to the sor- 
 rowing Christ. We look into his face. We 
 hear again his pathetic voice pressing the old 
 command, "Follow thou me!'' "Take my yoke 
 upon you!" "Confess me before men!" An- 
 swer me clearly: "Who do you say that I am? 
 Are you ashamed of me?" And when the an- 
 swer comes, as it did of old, "Thou art the 
 Christ, the Son of the living God," we see 
 again the bright smile and hear again the 
 solemn answer, "Flesh and blood have not re- 
 vealed it unto you." This is not the wisdom 
 of a man's own intelligence. It is not the re- 
 sult of labored argument, or of eager resolu- 
 
120 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 tion. This is the work of the Spirit of God. 
 It is the direct testimony of God to the soul, 
 enlightening it in its darkness, melting it in 
 its hardness, driving away the mists which 
 long have beclouded it, showing a man to him- 
 self in the sin of his unbelief, in the weakness 
 of his procrastination, delivering him, in 
 short, from himself, by that grace of God 
 which seeks the lost sheep and calls the prodi- 
 gal back to his father's house. Yours is to be 
 the joy of the forgiven sinner; yours the 
 strength to do right; yours the new and ever- 
 growing love of the Father, made known to 
 you by his Son. 
 
 What is the religion that Jesus calls you to, 
 as he asks this confession? It is a religion 
 represented by his cross. Its head is lifted 
 toward God. Its arms are outstretched toward 
 men ; its foot is rooted in the solid earth, and 
 extended upon it is one who has given up 
 himself in absolute devotion to God and to 
 his service. Christ has spoken to you, and in 
 the depths of your heart you have heard his 
 voice, you have answered his call, and you 
 have entered into life. What matters it what 
 particular life it may be to which in his serv- 
 ice you are to be led? Is it not enough that 
 it is with him, and that you are entering his 
 kingdom, where there is to be joy for evermore? 
 
XI 
 
 THE MEANING OF A NEGLECTED CHRIST 
 
 "And we esteemed him not." — Isaiah 53. 3. 
 
 In this sentence the sorrows of the servant of 
 God, depicted in this incomparable chapter of 
 the prophet, culminate. It seems to gather 
 up in itself all that has been described of his 
 being "despised and rejected," "a man of sor- 
 rows and acquainted with grief ; and then to 
 add this final affront, at once unnecessary, 
 gratuitous, unspeakable. 
 
 Whomever the prophet had in mind, the 
 Christian Church has with one consent recog- 
 nized the description of the Lord, and has been 
 moved with an emotion that has lost none of 
 its strength through the centuries. It is "we" 
 who have done it ; and that "we" has been the 
 self-accusing confession of generation after 
 generation. To-day it is ours. It is not a 
 charge that can be shifted from the speaker 
 to be used as an arrow of God in other hearts. 
 As we repeat it we find ourselves in the posi- 
 tion of the great prophet who spoke for him- 
 self as well as for his people. You and I alike 
 have no privilege of passing it on to some other 
 
 121 
 
122 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 one while we stand aside. It is written of us 
 as truly as it is written of any. The solemn re- 
 sponsibility that it declares becomes a solemn 
 judgment upon every soul that does not find 
 its last acquittal before the throne of God. 
 Its consequences, whatever they may be, are 
 not to be escaped ; and the thought of the pos- 
 sible consequences, in the light of the later 
 revelation of the New Testament, may well 
 make any man pause. 
 
 We like to say, "Every man has a right to 
 his own opinion''; and, "How I may esteem 
 Jesus Christ I alone shall determine." Yes, 
 we all have every right to our opinions; but 
 we must all face the consequences. The gauge 
 on the steam boiler is set at one hundred and 
 fifty pounds. The engineer thinks the boiler 
 can safely carry two hundred pounds. He 
 raises the steam. The boiler explodes ; and he 
 has no second chance. The captain approach- 
 ing the harbor says, "I can steer my vessel in 
 as well as any pilot." He attempts to do so 
 and runs her on the rocks. No one will listen 
 to his excuses. The funeral cortege, conveying 
 the remains of President Lincoln to their last 
 resting place, was passing through the streets 
 of Springfield, Illinois. A man on the side- 
 walk refused to take off his hat and uttered 
 some disparaging remarks concerning the 
 
MEANING OF A NEGLECTED CHRIST 123 
 
 martyred President. He barely escaped with 
 his life at the hands of the indignant crowd. 
 Jesus Christ goes to his death, and "we es- 
 teem him not." Is it not a matter of conse- 
 quence? 
 
 But some one says, "The world does esteem 
 Jesus Christ, and never more than to-day.'' 
 Ask yourself, Is it true? Do I esteem him? 
 A distinguished writer was recently in Amer- 
 ica. She was eagerly entertained and cordially 
 welcomed. Suppose that on her way back to 
 England she remembered that she had been 
 welcomed as the granddaughter of Arnold of 
 Eugby, that she was recognized as a cultured 
 and refined lady, but that not a word was 
 said about her books, even though there were 
 those among them in the writing of which she 
 had braved the public opinion of her own land 
 and staked her heart, would she have felt 
 that she had been esteemed? A world-famous 
 German medical professor was lately with us. 
 He had risked his life in India studying the 
 bubonic plague, hoping to discover its bacillus 
 and to find the antitoxin. If, when Professor 
 Koch was returning to Berlin from America, 
 he reflected that he had been received hos- 
 pitably, and treated as a distinguished gentle- 
 man, but no mention had been made of the 
 plague or antitoxin, would he have thought 
 
124 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 himself rightly esteemed? A member of the 
 Russian Duma was in America at the time 
 of its first session when the question was agi- 
 tating Russia whether the people would be 
 allowed to send their representatives to Saint 
 Petersburg. Suppose that after all the atten- 
 tion that was shown him, and the hospitality 
 he received, he was allowed to return home 
 without having had a word said to him about 
 Russia and the great crisis for which he stood, 
 w^ould he have felt himself esteemed? The 
 story is told of the late Mr. Whistler, the dis- 
 tinguished Anglo-American painter, that some 
 one was talking to him of Sir Frederick Leigh- 
 ton, at that time the foremost English painter. 
 The friend spoke of his personal charms, his 
 culture, the beauty of his home, and his many 
 attractive traits. When he paused Whistler 
 with upturned nose and familiar sneer said, 
 "He paints, I believe!" 
 
 So some men speak of Jesus Christ — a won- 
 derful teacher, a great social reformer, a beau- 
 tiful character, and so on, and so on; for the 
 tale of his excellencies is never quite ended; 
 and then we hear it added, "He died for the 
 world, I believe." Do we, then, say that he 
 was esteemed? What does it all come to if 
 you and I accept the blessings of Christian 
 civilization, and recognize the supreme influ- 
 
MEANING OF A NEGLECTED CHRIST 125 
 
 ence of the Bible, and join in the praises of 
 Him who is the object of so much of the New 
 Testament story, and we do not care to know, 
 or do not value, that for which he came into 
 the world? The text, then, has an application 
 for us and for the men of to-day. 
 
 Jesus Christ came for two things. First 
 of all, he came to make God known. This 
 was the burden of his utterance from the be- 
 ginning to the end. God is love, and because 
 He "so loved the world" he gave his Son to 
 die for the world. Men knew^ nothing of God 
 in that relation. Look where you will in hea- 
 thenism, will you find anywhere such teaching 
 as in this fifty-third chapter of Isaiah? Where 
 is there a revelation like that which is given 
 in Jesus Christ himself? Here is the love that 
 will not let us go. It seeks that which is lost, 
 and it saves, as only the Son of God can save. 
 It gathers little children in its arms, and it 
 reaches to the outermost man. And it pre- 
 sents this love as the expression of the charac- 
 ter of a God who is holy and just. 
 
 Did you ever think what an awful thing it 
 would be if God were not just? There are 
 certain great facts which are to us funda- 
 mental. Our life moves within them as in a 
 fixed orbit and we cannot go outside of them 
 without distress and even disaster. For ex- 
 
126 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 ample, we always assume that the earth is 
 stable. Imagine what would happen if for a 
 moment we were in doubt about it, if the earth 
 beneath our feet should begin to give away, 
 or even should tremble and rock. The uni- 
 versal testimony is, there is no terror like that 
 which an earthquake occasions. Suppose a 
 wife is compelled to doubt that her husband 
 is loyal. At once everything is changed. 
 What matters how fine her house is, or how 
 abundant his provision for her needs? The 
 foundation of all has gone. Imagine what 
 the condition would be if we could doubt that 
 God is just! No proclamation of divine love 
 would have any validity. The foundation for 
 faith in God and for every conceivable rela- 
 tion in which man can stand to his Maker, or 
 in which there shall be room for adoration in 
 the human soul, rests on the conviction that 
 God's ways are always right. Paul has this 
 in mind when in his exposition of the justify- 
 ing work of Jesus he says, "It was for the 
 showing of God's righteousness, that he might 
 be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith 
 in Jesus.'' 
 
 Here lies the supreme work of the Lord. He 
 came to justify the ways of God to men. The 
 wonder of the revelation that he made lies 
 in this, that that holy God, before whom every 
 
MEANING OF A NEGLECTED CHRIST 127 
 
 sinner must tremble, is the same who yet loves 
 the sinner and seeks, even in a way that lies 
 beyond the understanding of man, by a di- 
 vinely suggested atonement to deliver him 
 from the consequences of his sin and to es- 
 tablish him in the divine grace. When this is 
 grasped, then there is for the penitent heart 
 peace in the assurance of pardon, comfort in 
 the face of sorrow, strength as against every 
 temptation, and, once and for all, meaning 
 given to life; for we are to know him as only 
 those know him to whom through Jesus Christ 
 he is revealed. 
 
 When the late Dr. Martineau was resigning 
 his pastorate in Liverpool he gave this as a 
 farewell utterance : "The one deep faith which 
 has determined my whole word and work 
 among you is in the living union of God with 
 our humanity. We pine as prisoners until we 
 burst into the air of that supernatural life 
 which he lives eternally; we are parched with 
 a holy thirst till we find contact with the run- 
 ning waters of his quick affection. Him im- 
 mediately, him in person; him in whisper of 
 the day, and eye to eye by night; him for a 
 close refuge in temptation, not as a large 
 thought of ours, but as an Almightiness in him- 
 self; him ready with his moistening dews for 
 the dry heart, his breathings of hope for the 
 
128 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 sorrowing; him always and everywhere living 
 for our holy trust, do we absolutely need for 
 our repose, and wildly wander till we find. In 
 Christ alone is the reconciliation perfect be- 
 tween the human and the divine."^ 
 
 A year before he said of Jesus Christ : "He 
 opens to us the moral and spiritual mysteries 
 of our existence, appealing to a consciousness 
 in us that was asleep before. And though he 
 leaves whole worlds of thought approachable 
 only by silent wonder, yet his own walk of 
 heavenly communion, his words of peace and 
 works of power, his strife of divine sorrow, 
 his cross of self-sacrifice, his reappearance be- 
 hind the veil of life eternal, fix on him such 
 holy trust and love that where we are denied 
 the assurance of knowledge we attain the re- 
 pose of faith."^ This, then, is the supreme 
 work of Jesus. 
 
 In the second place, Christ came to save us 
 from sin. He died for you and me that we 
 might live. This is the insistent and compel- 
 ling message of the New Testament. It is 
 reiterated in every form, and language is 
 strained to present it to our apprehension. 
 "Ye were redeemed, not with corruptible 
 things, with silver or gold, but with precious 
 blood, even the blood of Christ." "Unto him 
 
 ^Life, i, 333. 2Life, i, 286. 
 
MEANING OF A NEGLECTED CHRIST 129 
 
 that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins 
 by his blood/' "How much more shall the 
 blood of Christ, who through the Eternal 
 Spirit offers himself without blemish unto 
 God, cleanse your conscience from dead works 
 to serve the living God/' "It was the good 
 pleasure of the Father through him to recon- 
 cile all things unto himself/' This is not a 
 theory, but an experience; Christianity is not 
 a philosophy, and not a quiet influence. It is 
 a life born of God, his gift, the result in the 
 sinful and penitent soul of accepting the re- 
 demption that is found in Jesus Christ. It 
 brings joy and love and peace. 
 
 The other day the rescuing party after a 
 long struggle reached the gallery in the mine 
 where some English miners had been im- 
 prisoned for days. They were found all dead. 
 By their side were written their last messages 
 to the loved ones whom they were not to see 
 again. They were messages full of love, and 
 of joy in their faith in Jesus Christ. Both 
 expressions were equally real, their love of 
 their friends and their love of their Lord. This 
 joy and peace, this strength in the presence of 
 death itself, is what he came to bring; what 
 he has brought to unnumbered souls and what 
 he is bringing to-day and is able to bring to 
 whoever will receive him. And the accusa- 
 
130 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 tion stands, "We esteemed him not!" What 
 if that accusation be true of you? 
 
 Years ago I knew a widow who had a 
 younger son who was a constant anxiety. She 
 made a home for him. She watched over him 
 and cared for him while his spirit grew more 
 and more rebellious through the years of his 
 youth, until in early manhood his recklessness 
 made him a daily distress. At last he left 
 her home. Soon after she died. At the hour 
 of her funeral I stood by her open coffin with 
 a few friends in the little parlor of her humble 
 cottage. As the service was about to begin 
 steps were heard, and the son came in through 
 the back door in the kitchen, and stood by the 
 open coffin, looking into his mother's face. No 
 one spoke. He gazed for a moment in silence, 
 then turned and went out. He had esteemed 
 her not! And now the meaning of that word 
 and of his act was thrust upon him and upon 
 all. 
 
 What will that day mean when you and I 
 stand not by an open grave, but in the presence 
 of Him who on the throne still will show the 
 marks of the wounded hands and the pierced 
 side, who died that we might live? "And we 
 esteemed him not!'' may well be the cry that 
 will ring in the heart forever. 
 
XII 
 
 THE CALL OF THE WORLD 
 
 "Jesus answered them. My Father worketh even until 
 now, and I work." — John 5. 17. 
 
 A LITTLE while ago some one wrote this story, 
 which is the best introduction of our theme : 
 
 "When the Nineteenth Century died, its 
 Spirit descended to the vaulted chamber of 
 the Past, where the Spirits of the dead Cen- 
 turies sit on granite thrones together. When 
 the newcomer entered, all turned toward him 
 and the Spirit of the Eighteenth Century 
 spoke: 'Tell thy tale, brother. Give us word 
 of the human kind we left to thee.' 
 
 "*I am the Spirit of the Wonderful Cen- 
 tury. I gave man the mastery over nature. 
 Discoveries and inventions, which lighted the 
 black space of the past like lonely stars, have 
 clustered in a Milky Way of radiance under 
 my rule. One man does by the touch of his 
 hand what the toil of a thousand slaves never 
 did. Knowledge has unlocked the mines of 
 wealth, and the wealth of to-day creates the 
 vaster wealth of to-morrow. Man has escaped 
 the slavery of Necessity and is free. 
 
 131 
 
132 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 " ^I freed the thoughts of men. They face 
 the facts and know. Their knowledge is com- 
 mon to all. The deeds of the East at eve are 
 known in the West at morn. They send their 
 whispers under the seas and across the clouds. 
 
 " ^I broke the chains of bigotry and despo- 
 tism. I made men free and equal. Every man 
 feels the worth of his manhood. 
 
 " ^I have touched the summit of history. I 
 did for mankind what none of you did before. 
 They are rich. They are wise. They are free.' 
 
 "The Spirits of the dead Centuries sat si- 
 lent, with troubled eyes. At last the Spirit 
 of the First Century spoke for all : 
 
 " ^We all spoke proudly when we came here 
 in the flush of our deeds, and thou more 
 proudly than we all. But as we sit and think 
 of what was before us, and what has come 
 after us, shame and guilt bear down our pride. 
 Your words sound as if the redemption of man 
 had come at last. Has it come? 
 
 " *You have made men rich? Tell us, is 
 none in pain with hunger to-day and none in 
 fear of hunger for to-morrow? Do all children 
 grow up fair of limb and trained for thought 
 and action? Do none die before their time? 
 Has the mastery of nature made men free to 
 enjoy their lives and loves, and to live the 
 higher life of the mind? 
 
THE CALL OF THE WORLD 133 
 
 " ^You have made men wise. Are they wise 
 or cunning? Have they learned to restrain 
 their bodily passions? Have they learned to 
 deal with their fellows in justice and love? 
 
 " ^You have set them free. Are there none, 
 then, who toil for others against their will? 
 Are all men free to do the work they love best? 
 
 " ^You have made men one. Are there no 
 barriers of class to keep man and maid apart? 
 Does none rejoice in the cause that makes the 
 many moan? Do men no longer spill the blood 
 of men for their ambition and the sweat of 
 men for their greed?' 
 
 "As the Spirit of the Nineteenth Century 
 listened, his head sank to his breast. 
 
 " ^Your shame is already upon me. My 
 great cities are as yours were. My millions live 
 from hand to mouth. Those who toil longest 
 have least. My thousands sink exhausted be- 
 fore their days are half spent. My human 
 wreckage multiplies. Class faces class in sul- 
 len distrust. Their freedom and knowledge 
 has only made men keener to suffer. Give me 
 a seat among you, and let me think why it has 
 been so.' 
 
 "The others turned to the Spirit of the First 
 Century. *Your promised redemption is long 
 in coming.' 
 
 " ^But it will come,' he replied." 
 
134 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 It has come. To-day this text has an inter- 
 pretation which it has not had in the past. 
 Our Lord declared in this solemn and formal 
 way that he had come to do only what God 
 had always been doing. God had always loved 
 the world. God had always sought to be 
 known by his creatures. God had always 
 sought to save sinners. Now he is making a 
 ncAv and final effort to do what had not been 
 successfully done before. 
 
 Here is the explanation of the past. At the 
 beginning God gave men religion. Always 
 and everywhere they have possessed it. It is 
 the expression of that divine image in which 
 God made man and of that spirit which at the 
 beginning God breathed into him. Man is a 
 child of God. His Father has never forsaken 
 him, and he has never been without that yearn- 
 ing which has moved him to express himself 
 in some form of worship, and to be aware of 
 that voice in his heart which we call con- 
 science, but which instinctively men recognize 
 as the voice of God. Men have overlaid such 
 revelation of God as they have had and smoth- 
 ered it with their passions and appetites and 
 wrongdoing. They have heaped upon such 
 worship as God inspired in them their own 
 misleading and often corrupting ceremonies, 
 until the religions of the world have come to 
 
THE CALL OF THE WORLD 135 
 
 be known chiefly as heathen, and as at once a 
 mark and a cause of man's degradation. 
 
 Its counterpart is to be seen in the vast 
 array of traditional rituals and ceremonies 
 and historic doctrines which, whatever pur- 
 pose they may have served in the past — and 
 many of them have rendered great service — 
 to-day are the load which a pure Christianity 
 is carrying and which serve to divide the fol- 
 lowers of the Lord Jesus Christ into so many 
 distinctive groups or denominations which 
 have kept Christians apart, have weakened 
 its attack upon evil, and constitute the chief 
 difficulty in the way of presenting the gospel 
 of Christ to the outside world. 
 
 Therefore it was that when the method of 
 the past failed, and the world like an over- 
 loaded ship was sinking with the weight of its 
 corruptions, God sent his Son. In this sense 
 it was that Jesus came to fulfill, and not to 
 destroy. His message was not, God will so 
 love the world, or even, God does so love the 
 world, but God has so loved the world. It is 
 the great historic truth that he proclaims. 
 True in the present because it always has been 
 true in the past. 
 
 This is the new vision of God in relation to 
 the world which is given to us to-day. Men 
 have attained only now to a new interpreta- 
 
136 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 tion of the world religions. As never before 
 men are eager to rid Christianity of all that 
 divides and impairs. As never before they are 
 feeling the yoke of its inherited divisions, and 
 they now would strip off its forms and cere- 
 monies and break away from its exclusive 
 rituals. They will have none of its denomina- 
 tional or distinctive authorities. They are im- 
 patient of its divisive creeds; they are eager 
 to reduce its denominational differences to a 
 minimum, seeking only to cherish that which 
 is a reminder of a moral and spiritual history, 
 while they get rid of all that holds them back 
 from recognizing the larger brotherhood. This 
 movement which has begun by spontaneous 
 movement, or, as may more justly be said, by 
 the impulse of the Spirit of God, has already 
 gained great headway on the more important 
 mission fields. The churches of South India 
 have already united in a common organization. 
 Certain churches in Japan already are known 
 as the Kumai churches, or the native Christian 
 churches of that great country; looking for- 
 ward to the day when all Christian churches 
 there will be joined in one national organiza- 
 tion. In North China three of the oldest 
 Christian bodies have already combined their 
 forces, and on one great mission field a native 
 Christian recently said, "If the missionaries 
 
THE CALL OF THE WORLD 137 
 
 were withdrawn we should at once unite our 
 churches under one national name." 
 
 The reflex influence of this is widely felt at 
 home. The question of Christian brotherhood 
 has become vital and uppermost in all re- 
 ligious assemblies. At least, wherever it is 
 broached it at once becomes dominant. Chris- 
 tianity is stripping herself for her great work 
 as never in the past, and is reaching out the 
 hand to her fellow men with a new eagerness 
 and a new appeal as the Christian recognizes 
 that the same Father in heaven who sent the 
 message of his Son to him has been sending 
 his message in other forms to his other chil- 
 dren in all the ages; and that the religions in 
 which their worship to-day is expressed, how- 
 ever degraded and antagonistic to that which 
 the Christian believes, is nevertheless inspired 
 by the revelation of the same God that the 
 Christian worships. And his business is to 
 help his brother to get rid of the ashes heaped 
 upon the altar of his faith that the live coal 
 from the altar of God hidden beneath may 
 blaze anew. 
 
 This is the interpretation of the mission of 
 Christ given to his Church to-day. He sum- 
 mons his followers to go with him into the 
 great world and tell the world of his Father 
 and theirs. The triumphant work which he 
 
138 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 began, and which has been the glory of Chris- 
 tendom through the centuries, is the same 
 work which God has been seeking to do from 
 the beginning and which only now, by his sac- 
 rifice in giving himself for the world, is finally 
 to be accomplished. This is the vision that 
 makes the great appeal to the Christian Church 
 to-day. -It is the call of the twentieth century, 
 and is the challenge and summons to the 
 young life of the churches. Never have our 
 young people had such an opportunity; and 
 nobly they are responding to it. The Student 
 Volunteer Movement, which the other day gath- 
 ered four thousand young people in their great 
 convention, is gaining volume like the rising 
 tide, and is making possible a development of 
 Christian missions and a progress of the Chris- 
 tian Church such as has never been seen in 
 the past. 
 
 Over against it is the call of the world in 
 secular directions. Business and science and 
 art are each holding out their hands offering 
 great prizes to the young people. Wealth and 
 luxury and pleasure and power were never so 
 accessible and never so attractive. But the 
 call of the world as the cry of children of 
 a common father is far more eloquent and 
 should be far more impressive. It is a new 
 voice as none of the others is. More startling 
 
THE CALL OF THE WORLD 139 
 
 than the progress of the world in any other di- 
 rection is this advance in Christian under- 
 standing of God's work in the past and of 
 God's voice to-day. The shame and the loss, 
 if it be not heeded, will be overwhelming. 
 
 Another parable by the same hand that 
 wrote the one above sets this before us : 
 
 "The Spirit of Modern Progress one day 
 called up a human being, and said to him : ^I 
 perceive that you are discontented with your 
 life. You long for things beyond your power. 
 Tell me, now, what it is that will make you 
 happy, and I will give it to you.' 
 
 "The human being stopped a moment to 
 reflect before he replied: ^If you have such 
 wonderful power at your command, then make 
 my life more comfortable, for I am weary of it.' 
 
 " ^You ask what is easy,' replied the Spirit ; 
 and thereupon he gave the human being beau- 
 tiful cities, with streets that were sometimes 
 clean, and police departments that were occa- 
 sionally efficient. He gave him handsome 
 houses with modern plumbling and electric 
 lights, and a thousand other things that made 
 life comfortable. 
 
 " 'Now,' said the Spirit, 'do you wish for 
 anything more? for you have but to ask and 
 I will give it to you.' 
 
 " 'I should wish,' replied the human being. 
 
140 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 ^that my business life was less exacting and 
 more comfortable/ 
 
 " ^That, too, is easy/ answered the Spirit ; 
 and thereupon he gave the human being tele- 
 phones and telegraphs, railroads and steam- 
 ships. 
 
 "And after this the human being asked that 
 his pleasures be made more comfortable, and 
 thereupon the Spirit gave him fireproof 
 theaters and comic operas, motor cars and 
 yachts. 
 
 "Then again the Spirit asked, ^Do you still 
 desire more?' and the human being replied, 
 ^ Yes ; make my religion more comfortable.' 
 
 " ^That is simplicity itself,' replied the 
 Spirit; and thereupon he gave the human be- 
 ing magnificent churches, good preachers, and 
 twenty-minute sermons. 
 
 " ^And now,' asked the Spirit, ^are you sat- 
 isfied at last? Or is there something yet lack- 
 ing to your happiness?' 
 
 " ^ Yes,' answered the human being ; 'my 
 conscience troubles me. Make that comfort- 
 able.' 
 
 " 'That is the easiest thing of all,' said the 
 Spirit; and thereupon he did away with the 
 personal devil and gave the human being an 
 easy-going summer and a hell that made a 
 comfortable winter resort. 
 
THE CALL OF THE WORLD 141 
 
 "At that the human being feU back into his 
 easy-chair and remarked, "Really, my dear 
 Spirit, you have made religion so comfortable 
 that I shall hardly need think of it,' and he 
 buried himself in the Sunday newspaper. 
 
 "As for the Spirit, he began to float out of 
 the window. 
 
 ** ^Where are you going?' asked the human 
 being. 
 
 " ^To see my father,' said the Spirit. 'He is 
 dying.' 
 
 " ^And who is your father?' 
 
 " *The Spirit of Nobility,' replied the Spirit 
 of Modern Progress. ^He is on his last legs.' " 
 
 The Church is challenged to march with the 
 army of modern civilization which is sweeping 
 over the Oriental world. That civilization is 
 destroying the civilization of the past, and the 
 Church is challenged out of its destruction to 
 gather the best possessions of its life that 
 the world may be the gainer. "It is a dan- 
 gerous work," said Lord Cromer, on his return 
 from Egypt, "politically, socially, and morally 
 to trifle with the religious beliefs of a whole 
 nation. European civilization destroys re- 
 ligion in the Orient without substituting an- 
 other in its place. It remains to be seen 
 whether the code of Christian morality on 
 which European civilization is based can be 
 
142 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 disassociated from the teachings of the Chris- 
 tian religion." The Christian Church does 
 not believe that it can, and, furthermore, it 
 believes that because God has been working in 
 all the life of the Orient, and the people of 
 the Orient are God's people to-day, the 
 gospel of Christ, which has created its own 
 life, is as truly meant to take up and finish 
 God's work in the Orient as it was to do his 
 work in the Occident. It hears his voice in the 
 command of Jesus that it is to go and disciple 
 all nations; and its summons to its own young 
 people is to give themselves to that task with 
 an eagerness of hope and an earnestness of 
 consecration which is worthy of the new cen- 
 tury, and will be the answer of their hearts to 
 the summons of Christ to advance with him 
 to his final triumph. 
 
XIII 
 
 THE WINNING OF THE BEST 
 
 *'0 Lord Jehovah, thou hast begun to show thy servant 
 thy greatness, and thy strong hand: . . . Let me 
 go over, I pray thee, and see the good land that is 
 beyond the Jordan." — Deuteronomy 3. 24, 25. 
 
 This is the pathetic cry of a successful but 
 brokenhearted man. His life work was ac- 
 complished. He had successfully led the chil- 
 dren of Israel through the forty years of wan- 
 dering, and now stood with them on the border 
 of the promised land, only to be told by God 
 that he was not to enter with them. It was 
 the long-deferred but inevitable penalty for 
 his past shortcoming and all but forgotten 
 earlier sin. 
 
 His prayer is to be in vain ; but it shows the 
 greatness of the man, and marks the contrast 
 between him and the people about him. They 
 have been content with the life of the wilder- 
 ness. He alone has had the vision of the land 
 beyond. It was the goal of his hopes. It had 
 fixed the strong purpose with which he had 
 led them through all the years of their wander- 
 ings. And now when he stands on the brink 
 
 143 
 
144 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 of Jordan he is not to be permitted to cross, 
 eager as is his prayer. 
 
 Some such vision is in the plan of God given 
 to all of us. It is intended to be the inspira- 
 tion and the call to the best things of life, as 
 it has been the inspiration and call to all who 
 have done things in the service of God in the 
 past. We feel the futility and emptiness of 
 any historic celebration in the life of a nation, 
 as of great da^^s in the life of the individual, 
 if they do not create for those concerned in 
 them ideals and set before them goals of at- 
 tainment which shall be an abiding inspira- 
 tion. They are, however, merely landmarks 
 of the path in which our daily life lies. They 
 serve to summon us to inquire how far that 
 life is guided by the inspiration of the vision 
 of the future; how far we are looking beyond 
 the things that are seen, despite the abundant 
 prosperity of the years through which we are 
 passing and the wide prevalence of conditions 
 of material comfort. 
 
 There is always more or less unrest in many 
 hearts — unrest over ourselves and those we 
 love, as to the value and purpose of our lives 
 and the worthiness of the ends to which our 
 hearts are directed. But when we come to 
 examine ourselves we find that but few are 
 praying Moses's prayer. Whatever may lie 
 
THE WINNING OF THE BEST 145 
 
 beyond, as a matter of fact we are more cou- 
 ceroed with the present than we are with any- 
 thing that the future may have in store. God 
 has given us "exceeding great and precious 
 promises." We know there is a spiritual Ca- 
 naan to be attained. But when we read 
 Moses' story and stand in thought by his side, 
 how little of his thought takes possession of 
 us; and, whether we have been successful or 
 not in the things to which we have set our 
 hands, how little we feel of the passionate out- 
 burst of his heart, as he proclaimed his feeling 
 of the utter emptiness of all that he had, and 
 all that he had done, if at last he were not to 
 gain the great blessing which God had once 
 set before him as the goal of all his hope ! How 
 little we know of the passion of the cry with 
 which he appealed to all that God had done 
 for him in the past, the showing of his great- 
 ness and his strong hand in his behalf, only 
 to sweep it all aside as he pleaded for what 
 now he was not to see, the good land that is 
 beyond the Jordan ! 
 
 As we pause to ask why it is that we are 
 so easily contented, we are reminded that the 
 method by which we have attained so much of 
 religion as we have has been an easy one. Pos- 
 sessions are generally valued according to 
 what they have cost. What is lightly won is 
 
146 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 lightly held. We live in a time when Chris- 
 tianity is the accepted faith. Most of us were 
 brought up in Christian homes, or at least 
 have always lived in a Christian community. 
 Such religion as we have has come to us, as 
 Dogberry says in the play, as reading and 
 writing do, ^^by nature." We take it as a mat- 
 ter of course. We have not had to struggle 
 and fight for it as many have done, and we 
 know little of the meaning of sacrifice either 
 to get or to maintain it. 
 
 The result is that we do not value those par- 
 ticular things for which religion stands, and 
 which it holds out to us as its best gifts, as 
 we would have valued them under other con- 
 ditions; and the effect of this easy possession 
 is morally w^eakening, according to the law of 
 the physical life and of nature. There we find 
 what we know as the law of survival. There 
 attainment, and growth, even existence, de- 
 pends upon struggle. When that necessity 
 ceases degeneracy follows, and then decay and 
 death. New teachings of theology or of ethics, 
 so far as they make attainment of religion and 
 of morals easy, play havoc with character. 
 In comparison with the material things which 
 life offers as rewards for strenuous efforts, 
 success in business, wealth, luxury, power, 
 such attainment has but a slight hold on us. 
 
THE WINNING OF THE BEST 147 
 
 These things we have contended for in the 
 arena or the market, where the crowd contests 
 every prize and challenges every ambition. 
 Each has cost us all that we had to put into it 
 of devotion and courage, our every thought 
 and unhesitating self-denial. When it is won, 
 of course, we value it. We seize it with both 
 hands. We suffer it to fill for us the entire 
 horizon. What wonder that under such con- 
 ditions the unattained in religion is the un- 
 real, and the visions of any land of promise 
 are but the shadowy substance of a dream ! 
 
 Furthermore, the common characteristic of 
 the Christian life to-day is contentment with 
 so much of religion as we have. The ready 
 response to the appeal to strive for the higher 
 and better things, the things of the Spirit, is : 
 "O, we are not saints. We are just average 
 Christians. Those things are all very well, 
 and doubtless mean much to some people, but 
 they are not for us." We forget that "saint'' 
 is the New Testament term for all Christians. 
 By so much as they regard themselves as fol- 
 lowers of the Lord Jesus Christ, and bear his 
 name, in the New Testament they are ad- 
 dressed as saints, no less than brethren, and 
 beloved. We have no right, then, to limit that 
 word to mark the spiritual gifts of the few, or 
 the possibilities of spiritual life set here and 
 
148 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 there before some exceptional child of God. 
 To speak of "average Christians" means to 
 lower the standards of our own possible at- 
 tainment, as in the trade unions, when an 
 average is fixed which depreciates and mini- 
 mizes possibilities of efficiency, and is to rob 
 the Christian of ambition and to deprive the 
 religious life of its sweetest joys. 
 
 That this is a widespread and prevalent con- 
 dition may be readily shown. For example, 
 consider how easily we content ourselves with 
 our religious knowledge. Great questions are 
 in the air to-day. They concern God, and the 
 Bible, and heaven, and hell, and revelation, and 
 immortality itself; and they are thoroughgo- 
 ing, attacking the very foundations and ques- 
 tioning the actual existence of the great revela- 
 tions upon which religion and the hopes of the 
 soul depend. But how little interest they 
 awaken compared with other questions, social, 
 economic, political. In these, even in their 
 most transient and superficial forms, it is very 
 easy at any time and almost anywhere to 
 awaken interest, to gather an audience, to mo- 
 nopolize conversation, or to arouse heated dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 Think of the questions concerning which the 
 talk of the day is most abundant, suffrage and 
 taxation and party politics and social ambi- 
 
THE WINNING OF THE BEST 149 
 
 tions. It would be easy to extend the list in- 
 definitely. But in the great things of religion 
 and of the deeper life of man, how much is 
 waiting to be known, and how much depends 
 on the views that men take of these things! 
 The centuries have been shaped by the doc- 
 trines that men have held concerning them in 
 the past. No influence is comparable to them 
 in molding the lives of the multitude of indi- 
 vidual men and women. 
 
 Think of the power exercised in the past by 
 such doctrines as that of the inspiration and 
 verbal authority of the Bible, or of the sov- 
 ereignty of God, or of predestination and elec- 
 tion, of original sin and total depravity, of the 
 authority of the Church, or of great systems, 
 like Calvinism. Harnack has lately said that 
 the Western world. Catholics and Protestants 
 alike, are thinking the thoughts of Augustine, 
 the great formulator of the earlier Christian 
 doctrines, and speaking his words to-day. 
 Then turn to the newer doctrines, the higher 
 criticism, the immanence of God, evolution, 
 a monistic philosophy, and all views that have 
 been held in regard to the doctrine of the Holy 
 Spirit. Where will you match them with any 
 influence in the life of men comparable for 
 power? And yet the great mass of Christian 
 men are content, not simply not to know what 
 
150 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 is true and what is false concerning these 
 great teachings, but not to care and not to 
 inquire. 
 
 Consider also how content we are with such 
 spiritual attainment as we may happen to 
 possess. We are Christians. Yes. We hold 
 the faith of Jesus Christ and rejoice in the 
 assurance of forgiveness of sins and the hope 
 of- heaven; and, holding this, we go about our 
 business with little further concern. We say, 
 "Many things were for me settled long ago, 
 and I do not bother myself further about 
 them." But compare PauPs attitude. "The 
 excellency," that is, the fullness, "of the knowl- 
 edge of Christ Jesus my Lord," is something 
 in comparison with which he says, "I count 
 all things but dross." That is, he will give 
 up everything if only he may attain to it. For 
 he says: "Not that I have already obtained, 
 or am already made perfect: but I press on, 
 if so be that I may lay hold on that for which 
 also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus. Breth- 
 ren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold : 
 but one thing I do, forgetting the things which 
 are behind, and stretching forward to the 
 things which are before, I press on toward the 
 goal unto the prize of the high calling of God 
 in Christ Jesus." Imagine Paul set alongside 
 of Moses and told as Moses was that he was 
 
THE WINNING OF THE BEST 151 
 
 not permitted to go forward ! Is it imaginable 
 that he would have uttered any other cry than 
 that which burst from Moses's heart? Com- 
 pare with it our indifference, and say if it 
 ought not to be a revelation as to the real sig- 
 nificance of the contentment concerning our 
 spiritual attainments with which we jog on. 
 
 Consider also our general attitude toward 
 Christian service. How constantly we find on 
 our lips the answer, "I am too busy" ! Every 
 day brings us abundant excuse. Life is so 
 full. Business is so pressing. We have so 
 many engagements. We get so tired. Of 
 course, we are not able to engage in much that 
 is w^orthy to be called definite Christian serv- 
 ice. We delight to think, and we think prop- 
 erly, that the Christian's daily life may be, 
 and in many cases doubtless is, his true serv- 
 ice. If God inhabits the praises of Israel, as 
 the psalmist sings, surely he does not find the 
 honest, faithful life of his children a matter 
 of unconcern to himself, or in many respects 
 alien to his thought. 
 
 We talk much of our unconscious influence, 
 and doubtless it is of high value. We thank 
 God for it. We may well pray that it may in- 
 crease, and that we may be helped to live lives 
 which will make the appeal to it both sincere 
 and in some degree worthy of our profession. 
 
152 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 "Example speaks louder than words." That 
 is true. But the contrast is not between ex- 
 ample and words. It is between that kind of 
 service which costs us something and that 
 which does not. That tribute to Christ to 
 which with some justice we may apply "tak- 
 ing up our cross daily and following him": 
 how little there is of it in an easy-going, luxuri- 
 ous Christian's life of to-day ! And how much 
 there is in the pressure under which we all are 
 of the constant excuse of our being too busy 
 with other things, or unprepared, or not hav- 
 ing strength, because we have used the strength 
 up on other things! When the old Puritan 
 preacher, John Eliot, was on his deathbed, a 
 friend called to see him and found a little 
 Indian child by his bedside being taught by the 
 dying man to read. The friend protested that 
 in such an hour the sick man might be re- 
 lieved from the burden of such a task, and his 
 answer was, "God has left me just strength 
 enough to teach this child his letters." 
 
 God is giving us as a nation many a new 
 lesson. Not the least of these is that as a 
 result of the Spanish War our self-centered 
 national life has been broken up. We were 
 largely a hermit, if not an unchristian, nation, 
 so far as international affairs were concerned. 
 We washed our hands of responsibility for the 
 
THE WINNING OF THE BEST 153 
 
 rest of the world. The outer world was for us 
 merely "a foil to the single blessedness of 
 American conditions." "Yankee boasting'' 
 was a far too real expression of the self-suffi- 
 ciency of our national life. To-day the old 
 provincialism and disdain, the utter absorp- 
 tion in our material prosperity and super- 
 abundant strength, has been disturbed. We 
 now find, whether we will or not, that we have 
 to face new duties and new responsibilities. 
 We must shape our policies, both internal and 
 external, with regard to the world at large, 
 and even to the interests of other nations, 
 great and small. We may be sharply chal- 
 lenged at any time for our doings, and may 
 be made to suffer commercially and in our 
 good repute. We must now advance on the 
 way that leads to the land of promise that 
 lies beyond. We must cross a Jordan which 
 divides the old condition from the new as 
 really as the river divided the wilderness of 
 the promised land for the children of Israel. 
 
 Compare this with our personal life. The 
 call to us is to recognize similar conditions. 
 Expanding business does not mean expanding 
 men. Great wealth now so widely diffused, 
 great business opportunities now within the 
 reach of so many, the abundant life now open- 
 ing to all in every realm of human occupation. 
 
154 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 is not to be our excuse from doing the will of 
 God, or to close our eyes to the vision of those 
 spiritual attainments and Christian duties 
 which God holds out as constituting the real 
 land of promise, to win which life is really 
 given to us. A growing man is God's greatest 
 achievement. Up to this the long process of 
 nature has led, a man made in the image of 
 God, endowed with mind and heart and will, a 
 man possessing an immortal soul, capable of 
 thinking God's thoughts, of responding to 
 God's love, of growing into the divine likeness, 
 of playing a man's part in God's universe. 
 
 God needs our help to secure this result. 
 The work is to be done, and done now in the 
 life in which we are living and in such condi- 
 tions as those which are about us; for God in 
 his wisdom has placed us here with the possi- 
 bilities to which he has shaped us. It was for 
 us living this life that the Lord prayed, not 
 that we might be taken out of the world, but 
 that we might be kept from the evil, and that 
 in this life, with our weaknesses and our temp- 
 tations, we might still be sanctified, that is, 
 upbuilt and perfected in the truth. The con- 
 ditions of success and of possibility are varied 
 and important, but, after all, these conditions, 
 of which we make so much, are largely ex- 
 ternal, and externals have only a secondary; 
 
THE WINNING OF THE BEST 155 
 
 place in the work that God has for us to do. 
 One says, "If I were rich!'' but the rich man 
 is generally self-sufiBcient, and that self-suffi- 
 ciency is one of the most effective obstacles 
 in the way of doing the will of God. Another 
 says, "If I were not rich !'' but the poor man 
 finds himself so absorbed in the effort to pro- 
 vide for daily necessities that he has little 
 heart or thought for anything else. Paul said, 
 *'I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, 
 therein to be content''; that is, I may be free, 
 not to be content with myself, or that to which 
 I have attained, or with that with which I am 
 now so wholly engaged, but content to use 
 life as it comes to me, to do the will of God. 
 As Edward Bowen, of Harrow, used to put it, 
 "to take sweet and bitter as sweet and bitter 
 come, and to play the game !" 
 
 The most important truth to-day is not the 
 great new truth of human brotherhood, greater 
 and newer in the thought of men to-day than 
 it ever was in the past, and not the power that 
 lies in organization, a power to the realization 
 of which the world has only at last come. 
 Rather it is this, that the chief business of life, 
 the really vital things in life, like the meet- 
 ing of the sexes, the rearing of the young, and 
 the forming of character, must be left to or- 
 dinary men to do for themselves, even if they 
 
156 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 do them ill. In other words, that the real re- 
 sponsibility for what we do, or what we do not, 
 is not to be determined by our circumstances, 
 but is determined by our purpose. 
 
 We are "Avorkers together with God," and 
 the glory of the life that he has given to us 
 is that he has intrusted us with this great re- 
 sponsibility of directing that life in all its 
 deep essentials ourselves. Every appeal, there- 
 fore, that he makes to us to come up higher in 
 our conception of truth, in our attainment of 
 character, in the efficiency of our service, in 
 our sure hold of his promises, in our actual 
 possession of spiritual life — in short, in our 
 faith and in our fellowshi]3 with himself — is 
 addressed to that in us by virtue of which we 
 are children of God. And when that appeal 
 awakens in any human heart a response, and 
 on any lip is heard a cry like that of Moses, 
 that the Lord will not suffer us to drop behind, 
 but will make it possible for us to press for- 
 ward to the actual possession of the land of 
 promise that lies beyond, then, and then only, 
 is the purpose of God with his child attained. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE TEST OF THE JORDAN 
 
 "They said, If we have found favor in thy sight, let 
 this land be given unto thy servants for a possession; 
 bring us not over the Jordan." — Numbees 32. 5. 
 
 To catch the significance of this text we 
 must set beside it Moses's pleading petition 
 that he might be permitted to go over the Jor- 
 dan, which the Lord had refused him. We 
 have the picture of the man of God asking for 
 that from which the people about him begged 
 to be excused. He was a man with a vision. 
 They are the men without. 
 
 Their request was perfectly natural. The 
 narrator of the incident tells that the country 
 about them was "a land for cattle." And as 
 cattle-raising was their occupation, naturally 
 they said, ^'Bring us not over Jordan. This 
 land is good enough for us. Why should we 
 not be content? Why should we give up the 
 immediate tangible good for possible advan- 
 tages, only to be obtained by hazardous ad- 
 venture, and in the face of unknown difficul- 
 ties?" 
 
 The question suggested by the text is not 
 
 157 
 
158 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 simply of Reuben and Gad, the two tribes that 
 pleaded it, but of us who to-day read the story. 
 It changes its form, but it has its old signifi- 
 cance. Why not exercise our own judgment 
 and order our lives by common sense? Why 
 not be content where we are and with such 
 things as we have? Why disturb ourselves 
 over what lies in the future or what is unat- 
 tained? Doubtless there is a large realm of 
 possible attainment in matters of religion that 
 is opened to us in the Bible, matters of spirit- 
 ual attainment and apprehension of the things 
 of God and fellowship with him, of growth in 
 Christian character, with endless possibilities 
 of Christian service. Undoubtedly there is in 
 these things what corresponds to "the goodly 
 land beyond the Jordan,'' of the children of 
 Israel. But the troublesome Jordan runs be- 
 tween, and there are many difficulties, seen 
 and unseen. Why may we not be content as 
 we are? This is a particularly good country 
 that lies about us. It meets very satisfactorily 
 our present needs. We have business and 
 friends and some choice of pleasure, plenty to 
 do that is worth doing, and plenty to enjoy. 
 Why worry ourselves over the unattained? 
 Saint Paul did, it is true, and made a hard 
 time for himself. And the Church is continu- 
 ally exhorting us to be up and doing in other 
 
THE TEST OF THE JORDAN 159 
 
 directions ; and from time to time the preacher 
 makes us more or less uncomfortable because 
 we do not do differently. As a matter of fact, 
 we can get along very well as we are, having 
 a quiet conscience, living a reasonable life, 
 and withal becoming increased with goods. 
 This land is "good for cattle." It supplies the 
 things we need, and we have not begun to ex- 
 haust its resources. Why can we not, as the 
 Lord's people, do his will, and, at the same 
 time, make it very comfortable for ourselves 
 by staying where we are? 
 
 Thus the parable of the text states more or 
 less graphically the problem of Christians 
 everywhere. It is by no means a hypothetical 
 question, but one which all must recognize as 
 obviously practical, and one that perhaps 
 should be regarded as pressing. Let us seek 
 the answer which the narrative suggests. 
 
 It is clear from the story that the children 
 of Reuben and of Gad did not see that it was 
 important to God that they went on. They 
 were a part of the larger company of the chil- 
 dren of Israel with whom God was undertak- 
 ing a definite work. We believe that God has 
 a plan for each life, but we fail to see that that 
 plan is wrapped up in his plan for his king- 
 dom. God was leading Israel for a purpose. 
 The revelation of God to the world was in it. 
 
160 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 Conditions were to be created in which it was 
 to be possible for God to bring in his kingdom 
 among men, and the command was, "Every 
 armed man of you will pass over the Jordan 
 before Jehovah, until he hath driven out his 
 enemies from before him." If they stayed be- 
 hind the plan would fail. As Moses says, "For 
 if ye turn away from after him, he will yet 
 again leave Israel in the wilderness; and ye 
 will destroy all his people.'' 
 
 It is of consequence to God if you or I stay 
 behind, or fall out on the way, or fail to do 
 our part as he sets it before us in the progress 
 of his kingdom. We reply that this seems to 
 stake too much upon us. What possible dif- 
 ference can it make in the plan of God, or in 
 the accomplishment of his great purposes in 
 the world, if so insignificant an individual fails 
 to go forward in Christian service, or in the 
 attainment of spiritual growth? Among the 
 countless millions, not simply of humanity, 
 but of the great multitude who are eventually 
 to make up the company of the redeemed, one 
 more or less is certainly unimportant. And 
 in the midst of the great achievements of God 
 through their service in the redemption of the 
 world the service of one who is but as the 
 least of them cannot count for much. It may 
 possibly be a matter of some importance to 
 
THE TEST OF THE JORDAN 161 
 
 myself, but it cannot signify in the kingdom 
 of God. 
 
 But we can easily see how it works. Sup- 
 pose Moses, when an exile and a herdsman 
 in Midian, had not heeded the call of God, or 
 later had not ventured to lead the Israelites 
 out of Egypt; suppose Abraham had not gone 
 up from Ur of the Chaldees; or the Pilgrim 
 Fathers had been content not to leave their 
 refuge in Holland; or David Livingstone had 
 not plunged into the heart of Africa; or Han- 
 nington had not gone to his death at the hands 
 of the Massai ; or the first missionaries had not 
 gone to Japan just at the time when the move- 
 ment for the new Japan of to-day began : how 
 different the history of the world would be! 
 Because we are God's children; because he 
 is in truth our heavenly Father, and not a 
 mere Omnipotent Creator, we must believe 
 that we are important to God, and that our 
 doing or not doing has its part in the advance 
 of his kingdom. This persuasion is essential 
 to the conception of the love of God and to 
 the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 By so much as we regard ourselves Christians, 
 on the basis of what Christ has done in seeking 
 and finding us and redeeming us unto him- 
 self, we must believe that it was done for a 
 divine purpose, and that that purpose is an 
 
162 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 integral part of the ultimate plan of God; so 
 that when we come to discuss the question of 
 personal Christian growth, or of our training 
 for service, or of choosing our life career, from 
 the smallest question to the largest that af- 
 fects the character that we are to form, the 
 kind of life that we are to live, or the particu- 
 lar service that we are to render, nothing is 
 too insignificant to be considered in its rela- 
 tions to what God desires us to do, or what 
 is really important in his sight and in his 
 great purposes. So far from this being an ab- 
 surd conception, it is what gives dignity to 
 life, and alone serves as the sufficient inter- 
 pretation of the true meaning of life, with its 
 inexhaustible opportunities and continual call 
 for choices, the future outcome of w^hich we 
 cannot see, but the immediate bearing of 
 which upon Christian character and Christian 
 service, and often of direct Christian testi- 
 mony, we cannot fail to recognize. 
 
 It is also evident that these children of 
 Reuben and of Gad did not see that service 
 of our brethren may be a measure of service of 
 God. Moses at once presses this upon them: 
 "Shall your brethren go to the war, and shall 
 ye sit here?" God would not accept their ex- 
 pressions of gratitude or their recognition of 
 his providential care as a substitute. Moses 
 
THE TEST OF THE JORDAN 163 
 
 sweeps away their words to this purport as 
 of no consequence in comparison with their 
 prayer to be suffered to remain behind. 
 
 We give money to build houses of w^orship, 
 or to establish or support notable philan- 
 thropies. There is something more to be done. 
 There is a more compelling law than the in- 
 stinct of worship or of philanthropy, namely, 
 the law of love. Nature has suggestions of it 
 even in the presence of a merciless force de- 
 fined for us as the law of the survival of the 
 fittest — that is, of what is best adapted to sur- 
 vive in the great struggle of existence. There 
 is provision in nature itself for the survival 
 of the best. Everywhere there is indication 
 of what we recognize as social instinct, of 
 mother love, of sex relationship, involving 
 sacrifice and personal surrender in order to 
 secure the life or the well-being of some other. 
 Only so are the highest forms of nature ob- 
 tained. In man this has become the compelling 
 law, both of society and of religion. "He that 
 loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how 
 can he love God whom he hath not seen?" 
 
 God aims at the best. Only in obedience to 
 this law does the best become possible in God's 
 universe. No simple survival of the selfish, or 
 the self-sufficient, or the strongest, or the most 
 cunning, or the best adapted to the environ- 
 
164 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 ment, will answer the purpose of God. He 
 will have only the worthiest, only that ulti- 
 mately which approaches nearest to himself, 
 which is best fitted to represent himself, his 
 wisdom, his character, his love. No man can 
 live to himself and hope to attain to this. 
 The moment a man discovers that there is an 
 ideal of life and character after which he has 
 to strive, and everyone is capable of this, he 
 discovers that he needs the help of his fellows 
 in his effort to reach that ideal. Unless there 
 is that mutual help, not only does he fail to 
 attain the goal, but the community of which 
 he is a part also drops to a lower level. It 
 can only attain to what are lower forms of 
 character. Therefore, the appeal of the sick, 
 and of the poor, and of the social needs of the 
 community as a whole, becomes essential to 
 the progress both of the individual and of the 
 community; and, therefore, God requires that 
 this appeal be recognized, as he has so consti- 
 tuted society that the appeal shall be made. 
 A man cannot go about his business content 
 with what he possesses, or what he has to en- 
 joy, while he is indifferent to the needs of his 
 fellow men, and at the same time regard him- 
 self as a worthy servant of God. The taking 
 up one's cross daily and following Jesus 
 Christ, which is the condition of discipleship, 
 
THE TEST OF THE JORDAN 165 
 
 involves looking not upon one's own things, 
 but upon the things of others, in order that 
 the love of God, which has taken possession 
 of us, may go forth from us to the blessing of 
 others. "Bear ye one another's burdens, and 
 so fulfill the law of Christ,'' is the command of 
 universal application. 
 
 Those men of Reuben and of Gad also failed 
 to see that even the possession of the things 
 upon which they had set their hearts turned 
 on their service of their brethren. Moses said 
 to the people, "If the children of Gad and the 
 children of Reuben will pass with you over the 
 Jordan, every man that is armed to battle, 
 before Jehovah, and the land shall be subdued 
 before you; then ye shall give them the land 
 of Gilead for a possession." We can easily 
 understand why a Christian must recognize 
 his duty to his brethren as the condition of 
 his entering into the privileges which are 
 properly his own. Such service brings the ap- 
 proval of God and peace in one's own heart, no 
 less than it brings that love of others which 
 is the sweetest recompense for an unselfish life. 
 It is the surest path and the widest door to 
 that appreciation and grateful memory which 
 are the best reward of a generous life. In 
 many places in England one comes upon 
 statues of the late Lord Shaftesbury, the man 
 
166 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 best known in his generation for his lifelong 
 devotion to the interests of the poor and the 
 suffering, the costermonger in the street and 
 the women and children working in the mines 
 of Great Britain. He exalted and beautified 
 the conception of Christian character, as he 
 made its possible attainment more real to the 
 men of his generation and of the Christian 
 world. 
 
 Furthermore, these men of Eeuben and of 
 Gad did not see that penalty would ensue if 
 their prayer were granted. Moses's rebuke 
 was, "But if ye will not do so" — that is, go 
 forward with your brethren — "behold, ye have 
 sinned against Jehovah ; and be sure your sin 
 will find you out." This is the judgment pro- 
 nounced upon selfish indifference to others' 
 needs. We hear it constantly argued against 
 any doctrine of future punishment that it is 
 inconceivable because of the character of God. 
 God is love; therefore, it is claimed, logically 
 it follows that that love will never rest while 
 any creature of God falls short of happiness, 
 or the attainment of all that ever was possi- 
 ble for him. It is well to remember that the 
 world is not ordered by logic. There are other 
 great forces and other methods of arriving 
 at the truth. There is deeply planted within 
 us the conviction that the moral law requires 
 
THE TEST OF THE JORDAN 167 
 
 punishment of the transgressor; that sin, 
 which is and always must be ^^exceeding sin- 
 ful'' in any realm in which the moral law shall 
 run, must be found out, or brought to light, 
 and, being brought to light, must encounter 
 penalty which shall stand in some adequate 
 relation to the sin itself. God cannot be mor- 
 ally indifferent; and in no perfect moral 
 character can love supersede the demands of 
 justice and of righteousness. Men cannot run 
 counter to the purposes of God, or be dis- 
 obedient to his command, without, in his own 
 determined time and measure, incurring con- 
 sequences. 
 
 Here, then, is our Jordan. On the one hand 
 are the things about us — the life that we are 
 living, the condition to which we have at- 
 tained. Beyond are the hard things, the land 
 of promise, the work we have not yet done, the 
 things we have not yet tried. They have not 
 the same phase to all ; each has his own place, 
 as he has his own gifts and his own opportuni- 
 ties, and, therefore, his personal call of God. 
 The great business of life is to find occupation 
 for oneself, not simply in determining the 
 career which we shall enter, or the particular 
 work we shall do, but also in determining 
 when we shall be content, and how, and when, 
 and how long we shall strive for that which 
 
168 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 is yet to be attained. Not to press onward is 
 defeat. 
 
 The blessed rule is that "if there be first a 
 willing mind, it is accepted according to that 
 a man hath, and not according to that he hath 
 not.'^ But a willing mind will not be content 
 until it finds its opportunity, and makes its 
 effort, and does its best to reach the goal. It 
 is sure to get its hand upon its task and does 
 not easily let go. This is the call of God to 
 every Christian. To come up higher, to make 
 life more profitable, to have larger joy, a richer 
 spiritual experience, a more satisfactory serv- 
 ice, a closer fellowship with the Master, than 
 have yet been realized — these are the true 
 Christian goal and the sweetest Christian re- 
 ward. 
 
xy 
 
 CHRIST'S CURE FOR "THE BLUES" 
 
 "And Jesus answered and said unto them. Go and tell 
 John the things which ye hear and see: the blind receive 
 their 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. And blessed 
 is he, whosoever shall find no occasion of stumbling in 
 me." — ^Matthew 11. 4-6. 
 
 John the Baptist had been arrested by 
 King Herod and was in prison. The martyr, 
 or criminal, who finds himself in prison, takes 
 a very different view of things from what he 
 did before. Courage and bravado fall off there. 
 John had staked all on Jesus. When he saw, 
 in the crowd gathered about him, him on 
 w^hom the Spirit of God descended, and knew 
 him as the Messiah, he recognized the cul- 
 mination of his own work. He said, "He must 
 increase, but I must decrease." But how dif- 
 ferent a Messiah he had proved to be from 
 what John had expected ! And now that John 
 found himself in prison it was not strange 
 that doubts gathered thick and fast. 
 
 We all have similar experiences. We throw 
 ourselves into some task. We ought to see 
 
 169 
 
170 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 such and such results ; or we ought to receive 
 such recognition; or we ought to have the 
 health and strength to complete our work; 
 or we ought to have still about us the children, 
 or the friends for whom we care or who are to 
 assure our success; and, in fact, we have en- 
 countered very different experiences. Failure 
 has come, or disappointment, or illness, or the 
 death of those we love. Then we doubt every- 
 thing. We are querulous toward God. We 
 cannot pray. We will not attend church. Our 
 Bible remains closed. We talk much at ran- 
 dom. We are not sure that there is a God. We 
 do not know what we have done to deserve 
 such treatment. Religion is of small use. 
 
 Sometimes we are downcast and disap- 
 pointed without knowing why, and the effect 
 is much the same. The doctor says we are 
 bilious, or dyspeptic, or have a liver. He tells 
 us that fatigue is a poison, and we have 
 had an overdose. Our world goes wrong in 
 one way or another, as John's did ; and we are 
 "blue." It is a common experience. When 
 the sorrow is great, friends come and sit by 
 our side and talk to us, as Job's friends did, 
 and we feel the same emptiness in their 
 words. When the wise friend appears and 
 says nothing, but just takes our hand, or re- 
 mains by us, we are grateful; for we are glad 
 
CHRIST'S CURE FOR "THE BLUES" 171 
 
 that he knows how Httle words count in such 
 an hour. Even when, as with Job, God an- 
 swers, we look in vain, as he did, for the signifi- 
 cance of the answer. In that wonderful drama 
 Job found his comfort, not in any divine ex- 
 planation of his experiences, but in the simple 
 fact that God was with him. 
 
 But now day has come; and when a good 
 man is in trouble, as John was, it is interest- 
 ing to know that he sends directly to Jesus; 
 and the chief value of the record is in the an- 
 swer which our Lord returns to him. For here 
 we have Christ's method of dealing with peo- 
 ple who are in sorrow, or are disappointed 
 and downcast; a method which may be ac- 
 cepted as the God-given method for all time. 
 
 Jesus's message to John is, "Go and tell 
 John the things which ye hear and see: the 
 blind receive their 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. And blessed is he, 
 whosoever shall find no occasion of stumbling 
 in me." He tells John in a word that all goes 
 on just as it did before. John's condition alone 
 has changed. God's plan is fixed and nothing 
 has happened to interfere with it. "God's in 
 his heaven : all's right with the world." 
 
 There is immense comfort to be found in the 
 
172 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 mere steadiness of nature. At the beginning 
 of the Bible story, after the flood, the promise 
 was, "While the earth remaineth, seedtime 
 and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer 
 and winter, and day and night shall not 
 cease.'' We all know the meaning of this. The 
 winter may be upon us, dark and cold and 
 stormy, but underneath the frost the earth is 
 stirring with new life. The days already are 
 lengthening. The sun grows warm. The 
 rivers will soon be loosened. The robin will 
 soon be singing before our door. The spring 
 is coming, all the richer in its promise, all the 
 more joyous in its beauty, because the winter 
 has preceded it. We have no thought that the 
 springtime will fail. The night has been dark ; 
 but it will not be long before the day dawns 
 and the night will be forgotten. Or we walk 
 at midnight under the stars, and however 
 great our burden, or oppressive our sorrow, 
 the stars speak to us of comfort. They are 
 shining undisturbed, or completing their ma- 
 jestic courses in the heavens. The morning 
 stars that sang together at the beginning of 
 creation have never changed their music or 
 failed in their praises. Abraham walked be- 
 neath them on the hills of Palestine, and God 
 talked with him "as a man talketh with his 
 friend." And men have heard God's voice and 
 
CHRIST'S CURE FOR "THE BLUES" 173 
 
 felt God's presence ever since, as they also 
 have walked beneath the midnight stars. 
 
 John perhaps could only get a glimpse of 
 them from his prison cell, but when the mes- 
 sage came to him he knew that they were there, 
 and realized that God had not changed, that 
 his love was not withdrawn, that his child 
 and faithful servant was not forgotten. His 
 quick recall by Jesus to this great truth at 
 once laid hold of him, and brought him to him- 
 self, and drove away his "blues,'' and minis- 
 tered to him a new comfort and strength, as 
 it brought back to him the truth in which he 
 had always lived and for which, indeed, he 
 was now suffering. This suffering itself be- 
 came at once a glad tribute to the faith in 
 which he had lived. It could not be otherwise, 
 for the faith was real, and the foundations 
 which had been laid in it were not likely to 
 be disturbed. 
 
 The message of Jesus brought also to him 
 the prophylactic of sympathy. It said, "Lift 
 up your eyes and see how many others are in 
 trouble. About you is the great world of the 
 blind and the lame, the lepers, the deaf, and 
 the poor. Even the dead are in many homes, 
 and sorrow quite as great as yours burdens 
 a multitude of hearts." And as John hears 
 the message he recognizes that Jesus is speak- 
 
174 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 ing to him out of his own experience ; for he had 
 come to bear our sicknesses and carry our sor- 
 rows, and he was "touched with the feeling of 
 our infirmities." He was entering every day 
 deeper and deeper into the mystery of pain, 
 and encountering more and more heavily the 
 weary weight of all this unintelligible world. 
 
 Instinctively John recognizes this as he re- 
 calls the very face of the Master and remem- 
 bers the prophecies of the Servant of God, who 
 w^as to be the suffering one, despised and re- 
 jected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with 
 grief ; and at once his thoughts are lifted above 
 himself and turned upon others, with a life- 
 giving reaction of tenderness. It is singular 
 that it should be so — that power of sympathy 
 has to wait until suffering comes to us. It 
 would seem that the joyous and the strong 
 would be the ones who would sympathize most 
 promptly with suffering or distress, and that 
 if the weak are to be lifted up, those who have 
 their own feet firmly planted are the ones who 
 more effectively could minister to them. But 
 the opposite is true. When one comes to us 
 with words of comfort, and we can reply, "We 
 know that you also have suffered," at once our 
 hearts are open to his ministration, and the 
 comfort he brings is a true prophylactic. 
 
 So we get help ourselves when in our suffer- 
 
CHRIST'S CURE FOR "THE BLUES" 175 
 
 ing we can turn our thoughts or our hands to 
 minister to others who are in some trouble. 
 Our Lord's message helped John at once to for- 
 get himself, and when he did that new powers 
 opened in his own soul, which not only 
 changed his view of his situation, but filled 
 him with the desire to be helpful to others. 
 
 The other day a business man died whose 
 name is known in all the land for a most 
 blessed and successful philanthropy. Years 
 ago he lost a beautiful young daughter, his 
 only child. His heart at once went out to the 
 young girls lost in a far more distressing way 
 in our great cities ; and to-day "Florence Crit- 
 tenton Homes'' for the rescue of fallen girls, 
 extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, are 
 the expression of the power of that sympa- 
 thetic heart comforting and restoring itself 
 in its blessed service of saving others. 
 
 Many years ago, when in my student days I 
 was in Paris, there was there a famous oculist 
 who was also a banker. Years before the sister 
 with whom he lived was stricken with blindness 
 which the doctors pronounced incurable. He 
 was not married and had no one else to love, 
 and could not bear the thought that this sister 
 who was so much to him should be left without 
 remedy. He therefore took up the study of 
 medicine in the hours that he could spare from 
 
176 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 his business, and with such success that he 
 became one of the most famous oculists of his 
 time. When I knew of him he was still giving 
 his mornings to his business, while every after- 
 noon he ministered to the poor blind people 
 of Paris without price. One can readily im- 
 agine the wells of comfort that his distress 
 had opened in his own heart, through the new 
 power to heal sufferers, for all the remaining 
 years of his life. 
 
 Dr. Horton, of London, says that Mr. Bryce 
 on a certain occasion, seeing Mr. Gladstone in 
 the House of Commons with countenance sad- 
 dened by the troubles of Ireland, to divert his 
 thoughts told him that some one had recently 
 discovered that Dante had in his last years 
 been appointed at Eavenna to a lectureship 
 which raised him above the pinch of want. 
 Mr. Gladstone's face lit up at once and he 
 said, "How strange it is to think that these 
 great souls whose words are a beacon light to 
 all the generations that have come after them 
 should have had cares and anxieties to vex 
 them in their daily life, just like the rest of 
 us mortals!" It was a condition of their 
 power. 
 
 Jesus summons John to consider the needs 
 of others, that the sympathy thus awakened 
 and kept alive in his heart may heal his own 
 
CHRIST'S CURE FOR **THE BLUES" 177 
 
 distress. But his message contains still more 
 than this. It testified that the kingdom of 
 Christ was coming, and God's work was going 
 forward in the world. Here were the signs 
 of it. They were the same that John had seen 
 and that were foretold by the prophets. Did 
 he not recall the ancient testimony that the 
 Anointed One would come, proclaiming that 
 the Spirit of the Lord was upon him, as he 
 preached good tidings unto the meek, and 
 bound up the broken-hearted, and proclaimed 
 liberty to the captives, and the opening of the 
 prison to them that are bound! Those signs 
 were everywhere to be seen, though the Messiah 
 appeared to him so different from what he 
 expected. There were no armies with banners 
 to drive out the oppressor and to restore to 
 Israel her earthly kingdom. But the kingdom 
 of God was come. God's power is adequate to 
 the task. He is working in love. The sorrows 
 of men are his opportunity. Trials and dis- 
 appointments and loss do God's work in bring- 
 ing the world to him. They give love a chance. 
 They make hearts tender and joys sweeter. 
 They enrich and ennoble human life. Above 
 all, they detach men from lower things and in- 
 spire them to rise above themselves, and pre- 
 pare them for the day of Christ's final coming. 
 The gospel, that is, "good tidings of God," is 
 
178 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 preached. Men are hearing. Hearts are 
 opened to God, not in spite of sorrow, but even 
 by means of sorrow ; and God is glorified, and 
 men are blessed. 
 
 As this message came to John and as, turn- 
 ing his eyes from himself, he recognized the 
 work of Jesus in its deeper significance, he 
 saw that it was the work of God, hastening his 
 day, as that day had never been hastened in 
 the past. How small his trials must have 
 seemed in comparison! How completely the 
 "blues" must have been driven out of his 
 heart! The darkness of the cell in which he 
 was confined must have been irradiated with 
 the glory of the new day whose dawn he was 
 permitted to behold. 
 
 That vision of the kingdom is the abiding 
 one in the Christian world. The light never 
 has failed altogether on the mountain tops, 
 dark as at times have been the shadows in the 
 valleys. Persecutions have come and gone. 
 In many places and for long periods the cry 
 of the martyr has been the only song of the 
 Christian; but the light has never been put 
 out, and we are living in a day when that light 
 is rapidly dispelling all others, and nations 
 that long have sat in heathen gloom are now 
 emerging into the new life of the kingdom of 
 Jesus Christ. If, then, sorrow falls upon the 
 
CHRIST'S CURE FOR "THE BLUES" 179 
 
 individual believer, or the "blues" get posses- 
 sion of the individual Christian heart, the mes- 
 sage which brought comfort to that earliest 
 disciple should come with an altogether re- 
 storing power to the despondent soul to-day. 
 God's work is going forward, and we have but 
 to play our part, to hold fast our faith, in order 
 to enter in with him into his triumph, no mat- 
 ter how great the sorrow or how bitter the dis- 
 appointment or the trial. 
 
 But the message went further than this. It 
 proclaimed blessings, too great for words, 
 awaiting the man Avhose sorrows and dis- 
 appointments do not separate him from Christ. 
 "Blessed is he, whosoever shall find no occa- 
 sion of stumbling in me." It is often a very 
 hard thing to do, not to be arrested in one's 
 work, not to find one's hand palsied, or one's 
 feet rendered sluggish in the service of our 
 Lord, when we ourselves are called to pass 
 through deep waters, or are confronted by 
 unexpected disappointment. 
 
 We were in full career. The heart was eager 
 and the hands were full of work. We had no 
 thought of self, no care for fatigue. Are we 
 not doing what is worth while? Is it not for 
 Christ and for his kingdom that we are help- 
 ing others and serving him? Suddenly the 
 distress comes, and all is changed. Then is 
 
180 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 the real trial of the Christian's faith. When 
 George Romanes, the brilliant young professor 
 at Oxford, the friend of Darwin, the one who 
 was to carry on that great man's work, was 
 stricken with the painful disease, of which he 
 died, and the doctors had announced to him 
 that the suffusion of the brain which had be- 
 gun, and had marked itself in the advancing 
 blindness, would continue, and that he had at 
 most but a few months to live, and he found 
 himself face to face with the arrest of his work, 
 and saw all about him the accumulated ma- 
 terial which no one else could use, his friend 
 Canon Scott-Holland wrote to him these 
 words : "It is a tremendous moment when first 
 one is called upon to join the great army of 
 those w^ho suffer. . . . Since Christ, this 
 world of pain is no accident, untoward or sinis- 
 ter, but a lawful department of life, with ex- 
 periences, interests, adventures, hopes, de- 
 lights, secrets of its own. These are all thrown 
 open to us as we pass within the gates — things 
 we could never learn or know or see so long 
 as we were well. God help you to walk through 
 this world now open to you as through a king- 
 dom regal, royal, and wide, and glorious." 
 
 His spirit at once rose to this summons. He 
 had long been an unbeliever, but his heart had 
 been opened to the faith of the Christian ; and 
 
CHRIST'S CURE FOR "THE BLUES" 181 
 
 now that he saw that he was called to walk 
 in the way in which his Master had walked, 
 that that way was a royal road, though it was 
 the Via Dolorosa, he was ready to follow. And 
 this was the result as recorded in his biogra- 
 phy by his wife: "Now more resolutely than 
 ever he set himself to face the ultimate prob- 
 lems of life and being. It is impossible to tell 
 here of the inner workings of that pure and 
 unselfish soul, of those longings and searchings 
 after God, of the gradual growth in steadfast 
 endurance, in faith. To one or two these are 
 known, and the example of lofty patience 
 and of single-heartedness is not one they are 
 likely to forget." 
 
 To-day, where George Komanes's name is 
 known, he is loved and reverenced, not so 
 much because he was a great scientist, as be- 
 cause he was so sweet and beautiful, so strong 
 and tender, a Christian. 
 
 This is the meaning of trial as our Lord him- 
 self has interpreted it. When the hour of 
 darkness comes and the sorrow is overwhelm- 
 ing, or the distress is too great for human min- 
 istering, then it is that Jesus himself speaks 
 to the broken heart, and calls his child to that 
 outlook upon his own ministry which is at 
 once the promise and the means of the world's 
 healing. He walked in the sorrowful way, 
 
182 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 and if that way opens before us, it is that, fol- 
 lowing him, we may be led into larger service 
 and richer attainments than otherwise could 
 be ours. However dark the day may be, he 
 would keep before our eyes the vision of that 
 new day when he will come into his kingdom 
 and himself extend the blessing beyond human 
 utterance to those who have found no stum- 
 bling-block in him, but, entering into "the 
 fellowship of his sufferings," have at last 
 realized "the power of his resurrection.'' His 
 work in them is accomplished. They shall see 
 him as he is, and be like him ! 
 
XVI 
 
 THE MANLY SIDE OF TEMPTATION 
 
 "There hath no temptation taken you but such as man 
 can bear." — 1 Corinthians 10. 13. 
 
 The indisputable thing about temptation is 
 its universality. The young man who in self- 
 justification said there was one thing that he 
 could not withstand, namely, temptation, de- 
 scribed the common experience; for its effects 
 are as uniform as the experience is universal. 
 
 The difficulty begins after we have had the 
 experience, and attempt to explain to ourselves 
 its real significance. It locks itself up with 
 the question of human suffering, and the two 
 together present a problem with which the 
 mind of man has wrestled since the beginning 
 of history, and which remains to-day to most 
 men as insolvable or as unsatisfactorily ex- 
 plained as it ever was. The book of Job, one 
 of the oldest and the most splendid of dramas, 
 is wholly concerned with this question. His 
 voluble friends thought they had the key to 
 the problem as they offered each his neat and 
 satisfactory philosophy of life. The fact is 
 that if we could explain temptation and suf- 
 
 183 
 
184 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 fering it would only be a mechanical interpre- 
 tation of life, and would be intolerable. Life 
 is a battle in which God sends his best and 
 holiest into the agonies and temptations of 
 hell, and in which Jesus, the best, endured the 
 worst. He alone came through the ordeal un- 
 scathed. He alone knew so much of the mind 
 of God as to rest undisturbed in his faith in 
 the Father from whom he had come, and who 
 ordered the circumstances in which he suf- 
 fered. 
 
 But we common men have no such knowl- 
 edge, and God interposes with no miracles or 
 unusual interpretation. When he answers Job 
 in the drama the answer is an undecipherable 
 mystery; and when we find that Job is silent 
 and comforted, the manifest truth is that his 
 comfort does not come from any interpretation 
 that was given him of life's trials and sorrows, 
 but in the simple fact that he knows that God 
 was loving him through it all. The greatness 
 of the book lies here. Out of the dark days 
 of human history, when sorrow and sin lay as 
 a pall on every life, the writer of this tale is 
 able to reach up into the light and hold this 
 truth before the eyes of men for all time; and 
 it is the one great fact for men to know, that 
 God reigns, and that God is love. 
 
 The next thing that is to be said about 
 
THE MANLY SIDE OF TEMPTATION 185 
 
 temptation is that it is needful. One objection 
 that has been urged against the doctrine of 
 evolution is that "It is bad for a man to be set 
 where he looks down on all that has gone be- 
 fore him." This is the position in which the 
 evolutionary process places him; for he is the 
 latest if not the final product of that process. 
 He not only looks back and down upon all that 
 has preceded him, as being in the evolutionary 
 story inferior to himself; but he also looks 
 down upon all about him, for that, too, be- 
 longs to the past. If man were left undis- 
 turbed in that attitude, his own development 
 would be seriously retarded, if not entirely pre- 
 vented. The doctrine of individual superiority 
 is one that appeals most powerfully to every 
 heart and is immediately immoral in its ef- 
 fect. It produces arrogance and pride. -Temp- 
 tation comes and quickly discloses the truth 
 about ourselves. It uncovers a man's vain- 
 glory, and startles him out of his proud self- 
 sufficiency. Where he thought himself strong 
 he finds himself weak; for the most common 
 characteristic of temptation is that it attacks 
 us where we are least conscious of our own 
 weakness, at least in the first stages of the 
 attack; and it is the first step that costs. It 
 may, therefore, be said, speaking in the large, 
 that temptation is wholesome as having a place 
 
186 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 in the scheme of morality. It is easily justi- 
 fiable. Indeed, in the scheme of the moral 
 life in which we live, it may well be regarded 
 as essential. Without it, it would be difficult 
 to conceive how man could advance morally. 
 It stands to moral fiber very much as resist- 
 ance does to physical muscle, something given 
 us to overcome in order that we may grow 
 strong by overcoming. 
 
 The next thing to be said is that it is mani- 
 festly a part of God's plan. We may say this 
 with some assurance, because when we open 
 the story of our Lord we find that when the 
 time came for him to begin his ministry and 
 to present himself to men as one of themselves, 
 and yet the witness of the Father, he was at 
 once led by the Spirit into the wilderness to 
 be tempted. This temptation was manifestly 
 not due to an accident, or to chance, or to any 
 law of heredity, as bringing to him experience 
 lying outside of God's dealings. It was, as 
 presented to him, and as recorded by his disci- 
 ples, the direct purpose of God, and stood in 
 some important or even essential relation to 
 the work he had to do. 
 
 It would seem, therefore, that we are wholly 
 justified in saying that, no matter how sin 
 originated, or what is to be the ultimate method 
 of its expulsion from the universe, temptation, 
 
THE MANLY SIDE OF TEMPTATION 187 
 
 as we know it in human life, does not lie out- 
 side of God's direct dealing with us. If temp- 
 tation was necessary and appointed by God in 
 the case of Jesus, we may conclude that it is 
 equally necessary and as truly appointed by 
 God for us. God knows all the circumstances 
 of our life. Therefore the comfort and the 
 strength that are to be found in the text, 
 "There hath no temptation taken you but such 
 as man can bear." God knows; God can de- 
 liver; God will judge justly. 
 
 Temptations are of two kinds — those that 
 come as penalty, and those that lie in oppor- 
 tunity. An immediate and awful consequence 
 of wrongdoing is its creation of new tempta- 
 tion. This new form of temptation, new es- 
 pecially because of its power, is due in part 
 to familiarity which dulls the sense of an- 
 tagonism; in part to habit which quickly fas- 
 tens chains upon us ; to the love of ease which 
 makes us unwilling long to struggle; to loss 
 of shame which so quickly follows undetected 
 transgression ; to sophistry with which an un- 
 quiet and disregarded conscience soon surren- 
 ders; and to loss of moral sensitiveness which 
 marks the gradual but sure surrender of the 
 whole nature to a form of transgression which 
 has become as easy as it is seductive. 
 
 We find ourselves in an atmosphere of temp- 
 
188 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 tation. We say, "Others do it." We give way 
 to temper, or passion, or the habit of being 
 cross, or reading suggestive books, or fre- 
 quenting unclean places, or even listening to 
 and repeating vulgar or shameful talk. We, in 
 one direction or another, make temptation for 
 ourselves, solely because we have not resisted 
 the beginnings of evil; and this whole line of 
 conduct and relationship comes as a penalty 
 for the initial surrender. 
 
 Now, with this form of temptation we may, 
 perhaps, say that God has nothing to do. We 
 make it for ourselves, and his sole connection 
 with it is that he has placed us in the universe 
 and given us individual powers which make 
 it possible for us to do what we will. W^e have 
 to form our own character. Not even God 
 can do this for us. This comes as a part of 
 our own work, which we cannot charge upon 
 God, but over which we may well believe God 
 grieves. It is of no use to ask God's help while 
 we continue in such a course. We are doing 
 what we want to do, whether we know it or 
 not. And the petition which Jesus has given 
 us in the prayer, "Lead us not into tempta- 
 tion," is not for men and women who deliber- 
 ately make temptation for themselves, and love 
 it. If one read thoughtfully some of the 
 modern novels which purport to give an accu- 
 
THE MANLY SIDE OF TEMPTATION 189 
 
 rate description of life as it is among culti- 
 vated people, he will see the folly of charging 
 the transgression into which the hero and the 
 heroine are described as ultimately falling as 
 due to heredity, or native temperament, or the 
 sins of their ancestors, or the circumstances 
 with which they are surrounded, as if they had 
 no responsibility themselves. The truth is 
 that they prepare for themselves the tempta- 
 tion, however subtly it is conceived, or with 
 whatever plausible suggestions the situation 
 is justified. At last they fall into the pit 
 which they themselves have digged. 
 
 There is, however, an entirely different class 
 of temptation, that which comes with oppor- 
 tunity. Of this it may be said that God lets 
 down a ladder and says to his child, "Come up 
 higher V It may be a hard climb. It often is 
 attended with pain ; it often is in private, not 
 seen of men; but, nevertheless, it is a tremen- 
 dous temptation, and it is sent of God. Happily, 
 we know that in the vast majority of cases the 
 temptation is not only overcome, but great 
 blessing is won by it. Thousands of young 
 men are to-day in positions of trust, and do 
 not steal. Temptation is constant. Daily 
 God calls them to be strong, to climb, to grow 
 in grace and in character; and the habit has 
 become fixed. They sweep temptation aside 
 
190 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 and they press upward. Thousands of young 
 women are turning aside from allurements 
 that offer fine clothes and ease and luxury, 
 in order that they may make growth in service 
 and in character and in conscious strength. 
 In this acceptance of temptation, and resist- 
 ing it as a matter of duty and of strength and 
 of fixed purpose, lies the real heroism of the 
 common life. Kead the story of men like 
 Lincoln and Grant and the great War Secre- 
 tary Stanton, or of Lord Cromer in Egypt. 
 Here you have men to whom came great op- 
 portunity of personal aggrandizement, of mak- 
 ing themselves rich, of winning power, through 
 corruption. They not only swept it from them, 
 but they conquered the temptation. They 
 made themselves the men they became; and in 
 doing so they lifted their fellows. "Leave me 
 the glory of dying poor," said the Italian pa- 
 triot D'Azeglio, when his countrymen at the 
 close of the Austrian War wanted to give him 
 a large gift of money. "I heard," said the 
 apostle in the vision of the revelation, "as it 
 were the voice of a great multitude, and as the 
 voice of many waters, and as the voice of 
 mighty thunders, saying. Hallelujah: for the 
 Lord our God, the Almighty, reigneth." These 
 are the voices of those who have fought the 
 fight and have won the victory which is to be 
 
THE MANLY SIDE OF TEMPTATION 191 
 
 won in this our daily life, with its temptations 
 and its sorrows that are to be bravely borne or 
 victoriously resisted, that men may show their 
 allegiance to God and the strength of their pur- 
 pose in their efforts to serve him. 
 
 So it follows that the common temptations 
 of life are proving us every day. In the inti- 
 mate letters which General Gordon wrote 
 from Khartoum to his sister during the weary 
 months of that sad siege, he refers more than 
 once to the Old Testament story of Agag, the 
 king of the Amalekites, whom Saul spared 
 and Samuel hewed in pieces before the Lord. 
 He says, "I had a hard half hour this morning 
 hewing Agag in pieces before the Lord.'' It 
 referred to his custom to spend an hour in his 
 tent in private devotion before the work of 
 the day began. There he examined his own 
 heart carefully, and in his letters he wrote to 
 his sister the story of these inmost struggles. 
 Such phrases as this occur : "Just before I left 
 I told you about Agag. The only way to fight 
 the Amelekite is to keep in union with God in 
 Christ. My constant prayer is against Agag, 
 who, of course, is here as insinuating as ever." 
 
 Agag was to him no Turkish Pasha, or Su- 
 danese slave driver, nor any of the foes in flesh 
 or blood against whom Gordon carved out his 
 great career, but just that old and evil self, in 
 
192 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 meeting and overcoming which lie the duty, 
 the appointed warfare, the sanctification and 
 growth of character of every one of us. Agag 
 is Self, pleading for notice, saying: "Look at 
 what I have done. Talk about me. Fix your 
 thoughts on me. Do what I want. Get the 
 things that I like." It was against this that 
 Gordon kept up his daily fight. It is 
 against this temptation, which we common 
 Christians find in our own hearts and which 
 comes to us out of every day's experience, that 
 we are to win our crown as he won his. Here 
 is the pattern for manly men, men who do not 
 dally with temptation, men who know them- 
 selves and are afraid to sin. Such men do not 
 whine because temptation attacks them. Nor 
 do they charge it back upon God when they 
 fall. Nor do they talk about the mistakes of 
 their father and mother in making them go to 
 church or giving them too much religion 
 when they were children. They know the 
 Devil when they see him. They have acquired 
 the habit of victory over him. They resist him 
 and all his works ; and he flees from them, be- 
 cause God is on their side. And they grow to 
 be men in the contest. 
 
XVII 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONVERSION 
 
 "I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in 
 unbelief."—! Timothy 1. 13. 
 
 This text leads the thouglits in what may be 
 regarded as modern lines. It is an interesting 
 study in psychology. But let no one think 
 it less serious or less important in conse- 
 quence. The apostle Paul was in dead earnest. 
 He was in prison. His death was at hand. He 
 writes a brief letter to Timothy, his beloved 
 son in the gospel, crowding into it the experi- 
 ences of a lifetime. He is full of strong as- 
 severations. "Faithful is the saying, and 
 worthy of all acceptation,'' he repeats. He re- 
 affirms the convictions which his long walking 
 with Christ has established ; and in the text he 
 applies them to the greatest experience of his 
 life, his conversion. He had some very posi- 
 tive and important things to say about it. 
 They are true for him, and he knows them to 
 be true for all time and for all men. 
 
 As we read the short letter we are impressed 
 with his uppermost thought, which is that God 
 has been very good to him. Again and again 
 
 193 
 
194 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 he thanks God. Paul was always thanking 
 God. His religion, whatever else is to be said 
 of it — and much is being said nowadays about 
 PauPs religion — is one of gratitude and joy. 
 He rejoices in God always. The love of God 
 which fills his heart overflows in constant ex- 
 pression of thanksgiving and also in constant 
 exhortations to others to share his feeling. He 
 would have all believers know so much of 
 Jesus Christ and walk in such intimate com- 
 panionship with him that the joy of that com- 
 panionship and the reality of the love which 
 has redeemed them shall be their constant and 
 richest experience. 
 
 We would not think much of Paul's religion 
 if it had not this characteristic. He always 
 talks freely of himself. Other men talking of 
 themselves, of how and what they have done, 
 if their career has been exceptional, may 
 amuse or interest us, but they do not touch our 
 heart. Religion is a matter of the heart ; and 
 Paul grips us, not because his experience was 
 in itself so exceptional or so impressive, but 
 because it has this quality of self-forgetting 
 joy and gratitude. He had surrendered his 
 heart with his life to the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 and in that surrender he had entered into ex- 
 periences which he is eager to share with us. 
 
 In the common vicissitudes of life we all 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONVERSION 195 
 
 have burdens to bear. We are despondent, or 
 cold, or hardened, and we aH want to have our 
 hearts touched. It does not often happen ; but 
 when it does we know it and we are quick to 
 respond. When Paul talks about himself it 
 is in a way to touch men's hearts. God has 
 reached his heart. His joy over it is deep and 
 constant, and we are glad for him. What God 
 has done for him he may do for us. 
 
 Here is his account of the process. He re- 
 views his innermost experiences and uncon- 
 sciously gives us this lesson in psychology. 
 
 He begins with the important fact that he 
 has discovered that he was before his conver- 
 sion in a state of unbelief. Here are two 
 things: there is such a thing as a discovery, 
 and there is such a thing as a state of the 
 mind. More than two thousand years ago the 
 Greeks had a highly developed drama, so 
 highly developed that it has never been sur- 
 passed. It was an intense study of life and 
 was developed along carefully defined lines. 
 It was held to the single purpose of showing 
 men to themselves in their innermost nature 
 and under the working of the most elemental 
 passions. The study and the art were carried 
 to such perfection that certain laws were de- 
 duced for the proper interpretation of the hu- 
 man mind and for the development of its repre- 
 
196 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 sentation in the drama. One of these laws was 
 that there must always be presented in the 
 drama, because they are always to be found 
 in life, these two things, recognition, or an 
 awakening (anagnorisis) ^ and a revolution, 
 that is, a sudden and complete change 
 (peripeteia). These two experiences the Greeks 
 discovered as universal in the inner life of 
 man if that life is to make progress, and as 
 therefore fundamental in the true presenta- 
 tion of that life in the drama. 
 
 Whether Paul learned this from his studies, 
 or whether he first learned it from his own 
 experience, the fact is that he constantly re- 
 fers to it. "Awake, thou that sleepest"; 
 "Awake to soberness righteously"; "Already 
 it is time for you to awake out of sleep," are 
 familiar appeals of his. He discovered that 
 he had been asleep. He did not know it be- 
 fore, but he now realized it. He had gained 
 a new view of himself, and the transition from 
 the old life to the new he characterizes in these 
 terms. 
 
 Furthermore, he discovers that he had been 
 in a state of unbelief. To-day much is said 
 about states of consciousness, the hypnotic 
 state, the subconscious self, the other self, and 
 the like. Some of this is trickery ; much of it 
 is strange, but more of it is truth ; that is, we 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONVERSION 197 
 
 have states of mind of which we are imper- 
 fectly conscious. Their real relation to our 
 conscious self is not clearly defined, but we 
 are aware of their existence. We have "moods" 
 which, unfortunately, those who live with us 
 have reason to know better than we do our- 
 selves. We recognize them quickly enough in 
 others. We say, "It is his bad day" ; or, "He 
 is not himself; or, "His breakfast did not 
 agree with him''; or, "Something has gone 
 wrong" ; and we govern our approaches to one 
 another by our knowledge of these conditions. 
 Of our own moods we also are more con- 
 scious than we are always willing to admit. 
 We were cross, or ugly, or despondent, or self- 
 indulgent in disagreeable ways, and we knew 
 all the time that it was so, but we were little 
 disposed to shake ourselves out of the mood. 
 When it was over we have often wondered at 
 ourselves and asked ourselves why we allowed 
 such a state to continue. But we did allow it, 
 and we probably will again, as we find it is 
 possible to awake to the knowledge of the con- 
 dition not infrequently and still to revert to 
 it. Indeed, these moods often grow upon us 
 and become a more or less manifest and set- 
 tled trait of character, even against our own 
 desire, and often much to the grief of those 
 who love us. In short, there are many evi- 
 
198 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 dences of the fact that there is such a thing 
 as a state, continuous and more or less set- 
 tled, of the mind, of which we ourselves are 
 only partially conscious, but which pretty ac- 
 curately represents our real self, and is the 
 controlling feature of our character. We are 
 willingly indifferent to it, and would perhaps 
 be prompt to resent it if we were charged with 
 it, but it is there and must be reckoned with. 
 
 Now, Paul says that his awakening, or self- 
 recognition, brought to him the knowledge of 
 this inner state, and showed to him that it was 
 a state of unbelief. He had been a student, 
 and thought himself a sincere seeker for truth, 
 but he was now aware that there is a realm of 
 truth against which he had been prejudiced 
 and the evidence of which he had not been will- 
 ing to admit to himself ; that because of some- 
 thing in himself, his mental or moral attitude 
 toward it, of which he had been but little con- 
 scious, he had been living in a state of resist- 
 ance to the truth, and that that accurately 
 explains his acts and his moods up to the hour 
 of his awakening. He has had a mirror held 
 up to him. He sees just what his condition 
 was when this awakening came. He was in a 
 state which was wholly unworthy of him ; and 
 he did not know it. 
 
 Furthermore, he now sees what he did not 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONVERSION 199 
 
 see before, that in that state he was a great 
 sinner; not a drunkard, or profligate, or dis- 
 honest, or corrupt, a sinner in the common 
 sense of the term, but a sinner against the 
 Lord Jesus Christ and, consequently, against 
 God. He had done the Lord dishonor in word 
 and act and purpose; he was "a blasphemer, 
 and a persecutor, and injurious," or, insulting. 
 In every way he had been under the dominion 
 of the state of unbelief in which he was then 
 living. He had held himself back from ac- 
 cepting the truth, and had even persuaded 
 himself that he was doing God service when 
 he was rejecting Jesus Christ and his gospel 
 with all his might. He sees it now, and in the 
 knowledge of it, clear and indisputable as it is 
 in his own heart, all question as to what other 
 things he had done, or not done, falls into in- 
 significance. The one overwhelming truth is 
 that he is a sinner because of his attitude to- 
 ward Jesus Christ. 
 
 We may pause to note that in this discovery 
 Paul is exactly in line with the whole teaching 
 of the New Testament. "We shall all appear 
 before the judgment seat of Christ." The only 
 song of the redeemed is that he is worthy to re- 
 ceive honor and praise because "he has re- 
 deemed them out of every kindred and nation." 
 The final question of that supreme hour is. 
 
200 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 What has been the relation of the suppliants to 
 Jesus Christ the Judge? Have they known 
 him, and believed him, and loved and served 
 him? Have their hearts been opened to such 
 revelation as has been made to them of him? 
 Has their life been a growth into his likeness? 
 Then, and not otherwise, "they shall see him 
 as he is, and be like him." 
 
 Paul is overwhelmed by the contrast be- 
 tween the love that had been shown to him 
 and what he had failed to show in return. 
 Here is where he grips us. He has come to see 
 the reality of what he did not know of himself. 
 That is what we all need to be taught. We 
 think we are all right. We are satisfied that 
 w^e are not as other men, or "even as this pub- 
 lican." Are we not gentlemen? Have we not 
 a proper self-respect? Are we not walking 
 carefully and living upright lives? What more 
 can be required? Meanwhile there are revela- 
 tions of self in the presence of the glory of 
 God and the holiness of God before which the 
 angels cover their faces. And the saintliest 
 souls are seen to be those who are most con- 
 scious of their unworthiness. We pause before 
 their confessions. We even doubt their sin- 
 cerity. We say it is sentiment or tradition. 
 Paul says : "I thought I was doing God service. 
 Now I see. I have been awakened. I know 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONVERSION 201 
 
 the truth. I am overwhelmed." We do not 
 feel so. We have no clue to the real meaning 
 of his words ; therefore we are in need of being 
 awakened. 
 
 Paul now bears testimony that it was the 
 grace of God that awoke and changed him. He 
 did not do it; he was in a state of unbelief. 
 How to get out of that state, he did not know ; 
 for he did not realize the need of the change. 
 Indeed, he can hardly believe in its reality, 
 now that he sees how tremendous it was. It 
 seems too much even for God to have done; 
 and when he tries to confirm it to himself and 
 to understand how it came about, he says that 
 perhaps the explanation lies in that he did it 
 ignorantly in his unbelief. He remembers the 
 saying at the beginning of the Old Testament, 
 "My Spirit shall not strive with man forever." 
 He remembers how often Israel had hardened 
 his heart, and how God had withdrawn him- 
 self, even from his chosen people, because of 
 their unbelief. He sees himself the chief of 
 sinners, and he seeks to assure himself in the 
 mercy that has been shown to him in the 
 thought that perhaps it was because of his 
 ignorance and his state of unbelief. 
 
 The fact is that Jesus Christ has come to 
 him ; and with him came a new gift and a new 
 power. God has done this for him which he 
 
202 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 could not do for himself. It had been simply 
 and easily done, so easily that he lives in per- 
 petual amazement at the thought of it. He 
 was on the way to Damascus, full of his hos- 
 tility to Jesus Christ, possessed by his state 
 of unbelief, when God spoke to him, and a 
 vision of Christ as he is dawned upon him. 
 Then and there he found he was moved to sur- 
 render himself to Jesus Christ. Then and 
 there he saw his unbelief and broke from it 
 and said, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to 
 do?'' He rose from his knees with a new pur- 
 pose in his heart to do whatever his Lord 
 wanted him to do, and though it was only to 
 go to Damascus, ignorant of what was before 
 him, he was obedient to the heavenly vision, 
 and went on that way in which God himself 
 had led him from step to step until the present 
 hour. 
 
 From beginning to end it was God's grace, 
 that grace which now fills his heart with 
 thanksgiving, and in which Paul is continu- 
 ally rejoicing, which then opened his eyes and 
 ever since has guided his life. The one word 
 which describes his whole experience he gives 
 us : "I thank him that enabled me, even Christ 
 Jesus our Lord." 
 
 Finally, he finds the proof of the reality of 
 this great change in his new love for God and 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONVERSION 203 
 
 his new love for men. He says, "The grace of 
 our Lord abounded exceedingly with faith and 
 love." His own purpose ever has been to bring 
 men to know the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 To-day men question conversion. They com- 
 pare it with hypnotic or medicinal cures, which 
 change men so greatly, and they make light 
 of it as a real experience, or at least as an ex- 
 perience changing the whole man, as the 
 Christian asserts. The radical difference lies 
 in this, that in the Christian's conversion the 
 character is changed. From a state of unbelief 
 he passes into a state of faith, so real, so per- 
 manent, that it appears in a new strength to 
 do right, and in a new love for God and man. 
 
 The command of Christ to his followers to 
 go and make disciples of all men was but the 
 expression of what is the inevitable impulse 
 of the man who has in reality given himself to 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, and by the blessed work 
 of God's Spirit has been changed from sin to 
 righteousness. He finds a new love in his 
 heart which expresses itself in an eager desire 
 to share his new experience with other men, 
 to bring them to the Lord who has done so 
 much for him. This, from the beginning, has 
 been the distinctive mark of the Christian. 
 The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is pre- 
 eminently a missionary faith, not simply be- 
 
204 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 cause the Lord has so commanded, but because 
 this is the natural and inevitable expression 
 of the true Christian experience. The first 
 impulse of the heart that is filled with the joy 
 of the Lord is to share that joy with others, 
 and the witness to the Christian of the reality 
 of his own acceptance is the thought of the joy 
 that he will have when he shall see his Lord 
 as he is, that he shall find there others also 
 who share the same joy ; and that he, perhaps, 
 has been permitted to have some part, small 
 though it may be, in bringing them to him 
 whom he so loves. The working together with 
 God into which we are called is but the natural 
 outflowing of the love in which the grace of 
 our Lord exceedingly abounds. 
 
XVIII 
 
 GOD'S USE OF THE USELESS 
 
 "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, which art little to 
 he among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall one 
 come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose 
 goings forth are from of old, from everlasting."— 
 MiCAH 5. 2. 
 
 It used to be said that the plan of redemp- 
 tion is unreasonable because man is so unim- 
 portant in the universe, and at best Christians 
 are so few. When men held the Ptolemaic 
 theory that the earth is the center of the uni- 
 verse it might have been possible to accept 
 such a scheme, but now that we know how 
 small a place the earth occupies, even in the 
 visible universe, the doctrine is absurd; the 
 world is far too small and man too insignifi- 
 cant to be made the center of God's thought, 
 or the goal to which creation has led. 
 
 The obvious answer is that the new view 
 of the universe wrought no change in men's 
 religious faith. Most of us are, in fact, geo- 
 centric. Our thought, as well as our life, is 
 largely circumscribed by the earth on which 
 we live. No one, in planning his life, or in 
 
 205 
 
206 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 determining his religious faith, considers 
 whether the sun is actually so many thousands 
 or millions of times bigger than the earth, or 
 whether it is only as big as a dinner plate. The 
 fact is that bigness is no measure of value in 
 interpreting the purpose of God. Greatness 
 and littleness as applied to material things 
 have no meaning in the things of his kingdom. 
 When our thoughts turn to God and we begin 
 to consider our relations to him, our immedi- 
 ate situation, whether we are rich or poor, 
 large or small, in our influence and surround- 
 ings, falls out of mind. These considerations 
 belong to a different realm of thought, and 
 the standards and measures of the one do not 
 apply and cannot pass over to the other. 
 
 Astronomers speak of the possibility of our 
 solar system being at the center of the uni- 
 verse. It would be idle to attempt to prove it 
 in order to show the importance of man's 
 place in the universe, or the true significance 
 of what is done on this earth, either by God 
 or men. It is equally unimportant whether 
 other worlds are inhabited or not, as necessary 
 to interpret the meaning of life here. 
 
 The fact is that the earth has been prepar- 
 ing through countless ages. It is among the 
 smallest of the heavenly bodies. Hegel called 
 it "the Bethlehem of worlds." Large parts of 
 
GOD'S USE OF THE USELESS 207 
 
 its surface are still unused by man, for whose 
 uses it seems at last to have been fitted. In 
 fact, in its smallness and in its insignificance 
 it is in the analogy of all God's work, in which 
 the relations of large and small are to us so 
 unintelligible. 
 
 Israel was among the smallest of the people 
 of antiquity, and in Israel, time and again, 
 some man from the least of the tribes, and the 
 most insignificant of households, was chosen 
 by God to the first place. 
 
 A parallel to this is the place that smaller 
 states have occupied in human history. Greece 
 and Venice and Portugal were in their great 
 days among the smallest. England has always 
 been relatively small, as Europe is to-day 
 among the continents. 
 
 The fact is, as scientific men assert, our 
 earth is the most highly organized spot in the 
 universe, and organization brings in a very 
 different standard of measure than bigness. 
 That thought presents at once new conditions, 
 and opens a realm in which bigness and little- 
 ness are alike unimportant. 
 
 Such as it is, our earth was chosen for the 
 scene of a divine redemption, and according 
 to the revelation given to us in the Scriptures 
 that embraces other realms vaster than our 
 imagination can grasp. The angels "desire 
 
208 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 to look into'^ these things. "Principalities and 
 powers in heavenly places" are concerned with 
 them. The redeemed "without us are not made 
 perfect"; and the kingdom of God in all his 
 universe is intimately concerned with the un- 
 folding of the kingdom of God on earth. 
 
 The choice of Bethlehem, therefore, is not 
 only not out of line in God's method, but is so 
 directly in accord with it that it gives us a 
 principle. We are to disregard greatness and 
 littleness and to ask simply. Does this man, 
 this thing, this task, have relations to God, to 
 his love, to his wish? Can this be the Bethle- 
 hem of the hour? Can there come out of it a 
 revelation of God to men, or to me? 
 
 This thought at once sheds light on the 
 meaning of life. Constantly we see people, 
 apparently the most insignificant and unim- 
 portant, turning out to have wide usefulness, 
 or to fill a large place in later life. Who 
 would have thought that the child deaf, dumb, 
 and blind, apparently shut out from all possi- 
 ble connection with the world of humanity, 
 could ever be of importance to anyone? But 
 years pass, and as Helen Keller she becomes an 
 example of what patience and love and skillful 
 teaching can do for the humblest human be- 
 ing, and an inspiration and an example to the 
 great multitude of the deaf, dumb, and blind, 
 
GOD'S USE OF THE USELESS 209 
 
 and those who care for them. The little girl 
 in a poor farmer's home seemed to have no im- 
 portant role, but Alice Freeman becomes the 
 leading teacher of college girls, and the in- 
 spiration of the great army of young women 
 who are pushing out into the new realms of 
 culture and usefulness which to-day are open- 
 ing for the women of America. In the same 
 way, the slave boy, Booker Washington, ap- 
 parently has nothing in his make-up or his sur- 
 roundings to separate him from the multitude 
 of children of the freedmen who form the great 
 burden laid upon the civilization and the life 
 of the newly established American nation ; but 
 in the plan of God he was to become the Moses 
 of the new era, to lead the millions of his race 
 in our country out of the hopelessness of their 
 inherited condition into a new life of promise, 
 the possibilities of which and the bounds of 
 which no man can to-day define. So the story 
 of the workhouse lad, afterward known as 
 Henry M. Stanley, just now written, is sure to 
 be an inspiration to a multitude of boys in gen- 
 erations to come, handicapped by the circum- 
 stances of their birth or their surroundings, 
 and to inspire them to the courage necessary 
 to make their lives what God would have them 
 become. 
 
 These are in the line of a multitude of simi- 
 
210 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 lar instances to show that God's ways are not 
 as our ways, and that he can do his work as 
 readily by what men call the small things, as 
 he can by what we regard as the large things 
 of life. 
 
 So that we are compelled to ask, Why is not 
 the same true of us? Why may we not do what 
 will make life to us large and profitable and 
 blessed, no matter what our condition or our 
 endowment, if we will but look beyond our- 
 selves and the things which lie about us, and 
 see that we are a part of the plan of God, and 
 that God is working in us and through us? 
 "It is not with us," said William Brewster, 
 the leader of the Pilgrim Fathers, "as with 
 men whom small things can discourage or 
 small disappointments cause to wish them- 
 selves home again." It was this spirit which 
 led that little company of exiles landing on the 
 stern and rockbound coast of Massachusetts 
 to devote themselves to the task of doing some- 
 thing to advance the kingdom of Christ in 
 the world, which laid the foundation of this 
 great nation. 
 
 This principle interprets for us also the 
 meaning of illness and of death. We measure 
 life by its visible usefulness ; but we are taught 
 that that standard is wrong. We say of the 
 trials and disappointments and sorrows and 
 
GOD'S USE OF THE USELESS 211 
 
 losses of life, as the text says of Bethlehem, 
 "Thou art little to be among the thousands. 
 There is no place for you in our plan of life. 
 Indeed, you do not belong there at all.'' And 
 yet these experiences, to us so much worse 
 than useless, so thwarting of our plans and 
 destructive even of our hopes, are in the plan 
 of God. They are indeed chosen of God and 
 ordained for us. They are sent to us without 
 explanation, but so constantly, so inevitably, 
 so universally, as applied to the race, that we 
 cannot fail to see that their existence and pur- 
 pose are wrought into the very web of God's 
 great plan of the moral universe. We rebel 
 against them. We try in vain to explain them. 
 We bend all our energies to escape them. They 
 destroy our courage and our hope; but our 
 efforts are useless. Our explanations do not 
 satisfy. No progress that we have made in 
 knowledge, or in civilization, or in the mastery 
 of the powers of nature gives us immunity 
 from them. Indeed, the wider our knowledge, 
 the greater the mystery that lies beyond. The 
 more masterful our control over the forces of 
 nature and of life in given directions, the more 
 do we heap up unanticipated difficulties and 
 face unexpected perils at every step. We con- 
 tinually boast of our progress, but life loses 
 none of its sorrows and finds that its anxieties 
 
212 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 are always increased. Year by year suicides 
 become more numerous by as much as men 
 give up their faith in God. Everything con- 
 spires to force back upon us the primitive con- 
 ception that back of the universe, and over all 
 life, is God himself, whose ways indeed are not 
 as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts. 
 He saves not by many, nor by few. He as- 
 signs to every man both his task and his lot. 
 He suffers none to be tried more than he is 
 able to bear, and with the trial provides a 
 means of escape. The sorrows and disappoint- 
 ments of life are, therefore, to be accepted as 
 truly a part of God's plan and ministers of 
 his grace, as are the successes and the health 
 which move us to such abundant thanksgiving. 
 Bethlehem was in itself nothing; but out of 
 it was to come Him "whose goings forth are 
 from everlasting''; and out of the darkest, 
 most disappointing, most intolerable events in 
 our life may come, if we will, influences that 
 are to go with us into eternity. 
 
 Here is where we get the key for interpret- 
 ing present duty. Is the task small? Is it 
 difficult? Am I insignificant — even unfit? 
 Nevertheless it is in relation to God's work. 
 It is assigned to me by him. It is in accord 
 with his plan. I must hear in it his call to 
 press forward, to use the powers I have, to 
 
GOD'S USE OF THE USELESS 213 
 
 look up and not down, forward and not back. 
 When I "lend a hand'' it is not simply to help 
 my fellow men, but it is to put my hand in 
 God's, to let him direct its service and bestow 
 the strength which will make that strength 
 efficient. Consequences are with him; and 
 with him is the reward. "What I fear most 
 is lest some call to duty be left unheeded." 
 This saying of Mary Lyon, which was the 
 motto of her life, is the motto of every life that 
 is truly given to his service. As Jesus himself 
 came out of Bethlehem and carried with him 
 to his death the burden of being despised and 
 rejected, one so little esteemed that men hid 
 their faces from him, and yet never faltered in 
 his service, so we are to think little of our 
 Bethlehem of circumstances or endowment, 
 and are to press forward, concerned only that 
 we do not fail in the duty which God has ap- 
 pointed to us. The glory oflBethlehem to-day, 
 the inspiration that comes from it, undiminish- 
 ing through the centuries more surely than is 
 the energy of radium, is its testimony both 
 to the love and the power of God effectively 
 to deliver us, his children, from ourselves, to 
 carry our weaknesses, to blot out our trans- 
 gressions, to inspire new hopes, to bestow that 
 newness of life which will enable us, however 
 insignificant, however humble, nay, however 
 
214 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 sinful, to play our part, to do God's work and 
 ours, and not to fail at last of the great reward. 
 
 We may well make our own this prayer of 
 the late Dr. James Martineau : 
 
 "O thou Eternal, in whose appointment my 
 life standeth, thou hast committed to me my 
 work; and I would commit to thee my cares. 
 May I wait upon thy seasons, and leave myself 
 to thee. May I feel that I am not my own, and 
 that thou wilt heed my wants while I am in- 
 tent upon thy will. May I never walk anx- 
 iously, as if my path were hid, but with a mind 
 fixed simply upon the charge intrusted to me, 
 and desiring nothing but the dispositions of 
 thy providence. More and more fill me with a 
 pity for others' trouble which shall bring for- 
 getfulness of my own, with the charity of them 
 that know their own unworthiness, with the 
 promptitude of them that dare not boast of 
 to-morrow and the glad hope of the children 
 of eternity. Lead me in the straight path of 
 simplicity and sanctity, and let neither the 
 flatteries nor the censures of men draw me 
 aside from it. And unto thee, the Beginning 
 and the End, Lord of the living and Refuge 
 of the dying, be thanks and praise forever. 
 Amen." 
 
XIX 
 
 THE VOICE OF GOD IN OUR DAILY LIFE 
 
 "The multitude therefore, that stood by, and heard it, 
 said tliat it had thundered: others said, An angel hath 
 spoken to him." — John 12. 29. 
 
 The surprise of the text is that when God 
 speaks he can be misunderstood. We know 
 that in human speech as much depends upon 
 the hearer as upon the speaker ; as Shakespeare 
 long ago said, "A jest's prosperity lies in the 
 ear of him that hears it''; but we are not 
 prepared for the same limitation when God 
 speaks. In the instance before us the narra- 
 tive reads, "There came therefore a voice out 
 of heaven," with the immediate comment that 
 the multitude said that it had "thundered"; 
 while still others said that it was "the voice of 
 an angel." 
 
 Conditions have not greatly changed to-day. 
 We find ourselves affected by two as widely 
 different comments upon most occurrences. 
 The multitude has its vociferous opinion, and 
 we are more or less under the influence of their 
 noisy dominion. Most of us are glad not to 
 be compelled to do much independent think- 
 
 215 
 
216 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 ing, still less to withhold our judgments until 
 we have carefully gathered the facts. It is 
 more comfortable to do as others do, and to 
 think as others think. The warning of the 
 text is lest we may be tempted to do so when 
 God has spoken, and thus may shut ourselves 
 out from hearing his voice and knowing his 
 will. 
 
 This brings us of necessity to a fundamental 
 question: Does God ever speak to man? or, 
 Is it only thunder, that is, natural law? Two 
 theories of God's relation to the natural world 
 have been, and, perhaps it should be said, are 
 now, widely prevalent. According to the one, 
 when God created the world he set it going and 
 retired, waiting, perhaps, until it has accom- 
 plished his purpose, or, like a run-down clock, 
 should need winding up again; meanwhile it 
 is sufficient in itself, and he need not seriously 
 concern himself about it. According to this 
 conception any voice of God coming into this 
 world, like an interference of God in its opera- 
 tion, would be inconceivable. The more men 
 learn of nature, the more perfect, the more 
 complete and adequate seem its organization 
 and its interlocking machinery. The concep- 
 tion of the universe as a vast, complicated, but 
 perfectly organized machine appeals to the hu- 
 man mind. Men delight in order, and our 
 
GOD IN OUR DAILY LIFE 217 
 
 conception of all knowledge that is worthy of 
 the name, or is to be thought of as scientific, 
 is that it shall be completely systematized. In- 
 deed, under the dominion of the evolutionary 
 idea of to-day, the monistic conception of all 
 existence is so intellectually truthful that not 
 a few are content in extending it until it shall 
 embrace all conceivable existence, including 
 God himself. From this standpoint the natural 
 world is so perfect an organism that there is 
 really no place for God in it, or, indeed, any- 
 where else within any realm with which we 
 need to concern ourselves, and obviously the 
 only voice of God that can possibly be looked 
 for, or accepted, is man's interpretation of na- 
 ture. The multitude is perfectly justified in 
 saying whenever it meets a claim of divine 
 revelation, or of special utterance of divine 
 word, that it "thunders." It can be nothing 
 that is worthy of the attention of men who are 
 busy with the ordinary concerns of daily life. 
 But there are those who are not content 
 with this interpretation of nature in its rela- 
 tion to God. They conceive of God as immanent 
 in the universe. They see in it not only his 
 handiwork, but his abiding presence. Its life 
 is his life. Its functioning is his doing. Its 
 progress is his procedure. Its adjustments 
 are his thinking. If anything unusual occurs 
 
218 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 which by any possibility can be regarded as 
 directed to man's spiritual life, or as appealing 
 to his inner nature, they would interpret it 
 as belonging to phenomena concerning which 
 we are not adequately informed. It is occult, 
 subconscious, spiritualistic, or possibly, in 
 some restricted and unknown sense, super- 
 natural — "An angel hath spoken." And there 
 is not in it present occasion for particular con- 
 cern on the part of men who have their own 
 business to attend to. 
 
 But when we open the Bible we find there 
 the story of men who in some way came to 
 know, or at least to believe, that God could 
 speak to them. So firm was their conviction 
 and so positive was the effect of it upon their 
 lives that the men of their time took note of 
 them. They were seen to differ in very re- 
 markable and essential degree from the men 
 about them. They rose in their lives, as well 
 as in their thoughts, above the plane of the 
 world in which they moved. The men of sub- 
 sequent generations, observing this, treasured 
 their memory and preserved their story. Here 
 is a long array of them, from Enoch, who 
 "walked with God, and was not, for God took 
 him," to Abraham, who under the stars of the 
 Palestinian sky talked with God as a man 
 talks with his friend; and Jacob, whose 
 
GOD IN OUR DAILY LIFE 219 
 
 troubled life was still filled with the sense of 
 God's presence and the sure consciousness of 
 God's guidance; and David, coming out of the 
 sheepfold into the life of the great king of 
 Israel, the sweet singer whose psalms have 
 found entrance into and have been the best 
 expression of the deepest thoughts of human 
 hearts; and Stephen, who laid down his life 
 for his faith, and who in the moment of death 
 believed that he saw the face of his Lord ; and 
 Paul, to whom God spoke on the way to Da- 
 mascus, and who ever after had the conscious- 
 ness that God was with him, directing his life 
 and helping him to do the work which has 
 changed the face of the centuries. These were 
 the first of what we know as old-fashioned 
 Christians, who at least labored under the con- 
 viction that God had spoken to them, and in 
 their sturdy effort to obey his voice subdued 
 kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained 
 promises, endured bitter trials and mockings, 
 and wrought the great deeds which have 
 helped forward all that is worth preserving 
 in this troubled world, which has been little 
 worthy of them. 
 
 When, reading their story, we come to Jesus 
 of Nazareth and find in him the pattern man, 
 we discover also that he heard God. The great 
 fact with him, as we read the Gospels, is his 
 
220 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 ever-present consciousness of God. It is a 
 constant intercourse. When he speaks, he 
 speaks the word of God. When he has a great 
 work to do, he appeals to the strength of God 
 who was with him in the act. When he is 
 burdened and weary, he goes alone upon the 
 mountain, that he may spend hours in com- 
 munication with God. In the supreme mo- 
 ments of his life, as on the Mount of the Trans- 
 figuration, in the garden of Gethsemane, and 
 on the cross, we find him absorbed with the 
 Divine Presence, or, if for a moment it seems 
 to be withdrawn, crying out for its return, 
 with a cry that would indicate that life was 
 not possible to him apart from the realized 
 presence of God. In the present instance it 
 was entirely in keeping with all we know of 
 him that disregarding the others he should 
 proceed to interpret the voice. 
 
 When, therefore, men have said to us all 
 that is to be said about the uniformity of na- 
 ture and the sufficiency of natural law, and 
 have supplemented this with wise teachings 
 drawn from man's history and from philoso- 
 phy, and we turn to Jesus Christ, we find our- 
 selves moved to ask what it would mean to us 
 individually if it should be given to us to know 
 God as he knew him, or to have our ears at- 
 tuned to hear God's voice, and to have it pos- 
 
GOD IN OUR DAILY LIFE 221 
 
 sible for our lives to be directed by words of 
 his, which, speaking to the inward ear of the 
 soul, if not to the outward ear of the body, 
 would at once enlighten and inspire our daily 
 life? Would you not wish it? And if we are, 
 as we delight to believe, indeed children of 
 God, why should we not expect it? Is it con- 
 ceivable that our Father in heaven has so far 
 forgotten his children, or removed himself 
 from them, as to leave them no other communi- 
 cation with himself and no other knowledge 
 of himself than is to be gathered from ancient 
 tales of his doings in the original creation, so 
 long ago that no record of them remains, and 
 the imagination falters in trying to arrive at 
 them? Surely it is easier for the Christian to 
 believe that God not only desires to speak to 
 him, but can speak to him, and does speak, in 
 ways that are intended to be effective, and 
 that if we fail to hear such voice or to recog- 
 nize it the cause lies in ourselves. 
 
 This brings us, then, to the final question. 
 How can we hear God's voice? for we must 
 assume that, as we believe there is a God, he 
 from time to time is speaking to us. Obviously 
 the first necessity is that we expect the voice 
 and make ready for it. The common experi- 
 ence is that men see what they look for, and 
 hear when they listen. A woman is interest- 
 
222 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 edly talking with you. Her mind is appar- 
 ently wholly engaged in what she is saying 
 or hearing. Suddenly, without your noticing 
 that anything has occurred, she turns sharply 
 from you. She has heard the voice of her little 
 child, for which her ear was always open, and 
 which at the first note she heard, and you did 
 not. Many footsteps are passing in the street. 
 One is instantly recognized, because there was 
 one in the waiting group who was listening 
 for it, and momentarily expected it. A great 
 tragedy is represented on the stage; the audi- 
 ence is held spellbound. Behind it is a small 
 group of men busily adjusting the stage scen- 
 ery, entirely indifferent both to the play and 
 the audience, so absorbed are they in the stage 
 mechanism, which is dependent upon their 
 control. That old man with the bag on his 
 back and an iron hook in his hand moves 
 through the crowd on the sidewalk, seeing 
 neither the beautiful array of the ladies he 
 passes nor the splendor of the equipages on the 
 avenue, so intent is he on the ash-barrels and 
 their contents. If, then, we are to hear the 
 voice of God, and to catch its significance, we 
 must have in our hearts the thought of God as 
 our Friend, in whose love we are living, and to 
 every indication of whose will we are looking 
 for the direction and control of our life. Ob- 
 
GOD IN OUR DAILY LIFE 223 
 
 viously, if we do not stand in that relation to 
 him, if we have no such thought in our mind 
 or in our heart, if, indeed, we are uncertain 
 whether we wish to hear his voice, or, perhaps, 
 are certain that we do not wish to hear it, for 
 we have no purpose of obeying it, manifestly 
 if he does speak, we are not likely to know it ; 
 or, if arrested by it, will be very sure to find 
 it easy to mistake it for something else. 
 
 Again, if we are to hear God^s voice we must 
 have some knowledge of the direction in which 
 it is likely to come, and of the notes by which 
 we shall recognize it. These are not hard to 
 determine, and yet many seem sadly perplexed 
 as they ask. How can we know God speaks, 
 or what God would have us do? If we recog- 
 nize that our relation to God is not a casual 
 or occasional one, but is constant ; if we really 
 believe that in him we live, and move, and 
 have our being ; if we are prepared to find both 
 the joy and the strength of life in that relation- 
 ship, then we may look for God's voice coming 
 to us in ways that are simple and not hard to 
 understand. 
 
 The first of these appears in an oppor- 
 tunity. The occasion for action or choice ap- 
 pears. It is the next thing to be done, or left 
 undone. It represents life as at that moment 
 life is to us in its most definite and tangible 
 
224 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 form. It is a call. So far, then, the oppor- 
 tunity is the voice of God speaking to us of 
 what he would have us do, because he has ap- 
 parently opened the way for our doing it. But 
 we also know that God sometimes opens doors 
 to test us, and that there are doors through 
 which he would have us know his will and 
 show our obedience by not entering them. 
 George Mtiller, of Bristol, the man of faith, 
 laid much emphasis upon this. This is one of 
 the ripest, if not the earliest, experiences of 
 the man who seeks to do the will of God and 
 to grow in Christian knowledge. 
 
 Therefore beyond the opportunity we must 
 seek also the voice of duty. If with the oppor- 
 tunity there arises in the heart the feeling that 
 it would be right to do the thing that offers, 
 and, whatever the cost or the sacrifice, the 
 duty at least is clear, then the voice of God 
 becomes more definite and begins to be im- 
 pelling. 
 
 Then we remember that God has often 
 spoken in the past to those who love him, and 
 we have the record of that speech in the Bible. 
 If, then, when we turn to the Bible we find 
 that the teaching of the Bible, or what we may 
 regard as the echo of God's voice coming to 
 us out of the past, corresponds with what ap- 
 pears the call of duty and the present oppor- 
 
GOD IN OUR DAILY LIFE 225 
 
 tunity, the voice becomes more distinct and 
 the call more imperative. 
 
 This drives us to interrogate our own hearts 
 more carefully, and when we find that the 
 voice of conscience begins to speak in the same 
 direction with something of insistence, we are 
 strengthened in our thought that there can be 
 no mistake in the voice that we have heard. 
 
 But if we would be sure we turn to our 
 friends ; and then we are glad if we have some 
 friends, or even one, who we know is accus- 
 tomed to walk humbly with God, whose life 
 shows that he hears a divine voice which he 
 obeys and whose spirit is manifestly that of 
 one who knows God as a friend. We are glad 
 to turn to such a friend and lay the case before 
 him; and, if we find that his judgment cor- 
 responds with the purpose forming in our own 
 hearts, we become again more deeply assured 
 that the opening way is a divinely appointed 
 path. 
 
 As thus persuaded we begin to move in that 
 opening path, whether it be hard or easy, 
 whether it is a way that we have long sought, 
 or one into which we find ourselves impelled, 
 it may be, with costly sacrifice, in the one case 
 or in the other a new peace begins to reveal 
 itself in the heart with the sweet consciousness 
 that we are doing the will of God and that 
 
226 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 his blessing is upon us. The story is told of 
 Algernon Sidney that when, under sentence 
 of death, he was awaiting the hour for his 
 execution and a messenger came from his 
 father who pleaded with him to take the oath 
 of allegiance which would save his life, he 
 sent back this answer: "I have long been of 
 the mind that if the time should ever come 
 when I could not save my life, but by doing 
 an act that would be unworthy of me, I would 
 understand it as indicating that God meant 
 me then to return to him the life which he 
 had intrusted to me." Here was a man who 
 knew God so intimately that he not only 
 knew that God could speak to him, but he 
 taught himself to catch the message and rightly 
 to interpret it whenever and in whatever way 
 it should come. He had no occasion to wait 
 for the clamor of the multitude, or the pro- 
 nouncement of the few, even if it might be the 
 voice of those who were the nearest and the 
 dearest to him. 
 
 But we not only have to expect God's voice, 
 making ready for it, and teaching ourselves 
 to recognize it, if we would hear it, but we must 
 also be prompt to obey it when it is heard. 
 There are three stages in obeying the voice of 
 God, or what the New Testament calls the 
 teaching of the Spirit of God. The first stage 
 
GOD IN OUR DAILY LIFE 227 
 
 is when the voice comes, and is heard. At 
 the moment we are startled. It seems easy 
 to obey it then, if only we act. If we delay 
 and begin to argue with ourselves it quickly 
 becomes more difficult, and the longer the 
 delay, the more tremulous the hesitation, the 
 more difficult becomes obedience; until we 
 reach the third stage when, because of the 
 delay and the parleying, it has become prac- 
 tically impossible. 
 
 This goes far to explain why so many who 
 regard themselves Christians are doubtful of 
 the reality of God's voice ever speaking to 
 them, or are ready to deny its possibility. 
 They have argued about it so long that they 
 not only become doubtful of hearing it, but 
 incapable of obeying when they do hear it. In 
 that way we lower our faith to the plane of 
 our living, and when the life is indifferent to 
 God, or rebellious, the faith walks heavily 
 in its train, and we begin to deny what was 
 once to us a blessed truth. But when we have 
 walked in a different course and have held 
 ourselves to prompt obedience, then we find 
 both strength and peace. Turn to the lives 
 of any of the notable Christians. Sit with 
 William Carey, the young shoemaker, as with 
 other young men of his day in the Bible class 
 he inquires of the learned pastor about the 
 
228 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 heathen and what is to be their destiny, and 
 hears the imperious answer, "Whatever God's 
 plans with them may be, you have no duty 
 in that direction." Then go with him on 
 his solitary journey to London to ask if he 
 may go to the heathen ; and stand with him in 
 the canebrake in India, where in disguise he 
 is working as a laborer that he may earn his 
 living, acquire the language, and fit himself 
 for that missionary service from which he will 
 not be gainsaid, because he has heard the voice 
 of God calling him to it. Or turn to the 
 story of Charles Gordon at Khartoum, or John 
 Lawrence in India, or James Chalmers, so 
 gladly laying down his life for the men who 
 murdered him in New Guinea, and you will 
 find what it means when we speak of the 
 strength and possibility of the men who heard 
 the voice of God, because they were ready so 
 gladly to obey it. Is there any reason why you 
 and I should not have the same privilege and 
 the same blessing ; or that our God should not 
 be our constant Friend, or that we should not 
 knov/ that he is never far from any one of us? 
 
XX 
 
 THE KINDNESS OF GOD 
 
 "And the king said, Is there not yet any of the house 
 of Saul, that I may show the kindness of God unto 
 him?"— 2 Samuel 9. 3. 
 
 David, the king of Israel, learned this 
 phrase from Jonathan, his friend. Some time 
 before, when he had discovered that SauFs 
 hatred for him was deep and permanent, and 
 he had turned with his distress to Jonathan, 
 SauFs son, Jonathan cheered him by assuring 
 him that God was on his side, and that in the 
 end David would be exalted and the house 
 of Saul overthrown. In witness to the sin- 
 cerity of his words he asked David to promise 
 that when the day should come in which 
 David's enemies were cut off, in that day 
 David would show him and his house "the 
 loving-kindness of Jehovah." The phrase 
 found a lodgment in David's heart; and now, 
 years afterward, when both Saul and Jona- 
 than are dead and David gets that revelation 
 of the love of a friend which so often comes 
 when death has separated us forever, he breaks 
 out in a eulogy over Jonathan which has been 
 
 229 
 
230 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 cherished in this Old Testament narrative and 
 has furnished a beautiful final phrase that 
 has been on the lips of men ever since: 
 
 "How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! 
 
 Jonathan is slain upon thy high places. 
 
 I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan. 
 
 Very pleasant hast thou been unto me : 
 
 Thy love to me was wonderful, 
 
 Passing the love of women." 
 
 Then he remembers Jonathan's words and 
 awakens to the thought that here is the real 
 source of Jonathan's love for him. He knew 
 himself the kindness of God. It had been 
 the inspiration in Jonathan's life, and had 
 wrought in him that beautiful character which 
 made Jonathan so attractive and gave him 
 such dominion over the hearts of Israel. This 
 was the spring from which flowed the love 
 that was now so precious to David. As he 
 thought upon it the impulse naturally came, 
 "Ought I not to feel the same, and can I not 
 pass it on to others?" Therefore, he asks, "Is 
 there yet any left of the house of Saul, that I 
 may show him kindness for Jonathan's sake?'^ 
 And when the former servant of Saul is 
 brought to him he repeats the question in the 
 form of the text. "The kindness of God" is 
 the compelling force in his heart. 
 
 So he sends for Mephibosheth, Jonathan's 
 
THE KINDNESS OF GOD 231 
 
 son, who alone has survived from the destruc- 
 tion of the house of Saul. He is a helpless 
 cripple, so insignificant and so helpless that 
 he has been overlooked in the general slaughter 
 and has been cared for and taken to the home 
 of one of his father's friends, Machir, the son 
 of Ammiel, who, stirred by the same love 
 which Jonathan had shown to David, and hav- 
 ing also some feeling for the kindness of God, 
 risks his own life in protecting the helpless 
 youth. David's troubles had called out Jona- 
 than's affection, and the disaster upon the 
 house of Saul had done the same for Machir. 
 
 Troubles are plenty in life. It is of no use 
 to make light of them. 
 
 "Before the beginning of years 
 
 There came to the making of man 
 Life with the gift of tears, 
 Time with the glass that ran." 
 
 Here is one certain offset to trouble. Sor- 
 row and pain remain the great mystery; and 
 there is much to be said by the Christian of 
 their place in the plan of God. But when all 
 is said they still return with sharp and often 
 overwhelming impact even upon the stoutest 
 hearts. We are reminded that the "pleasures 
 of each generation evaporate in thin air. It 
 is their pains that increase the spiritual mo- 
 mentum of the world." But we are always 
 
232 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 glad when we can get hold of some immediate 
 good that follows upon sharp distress, and we 
 are glad to try to comfort ourselves with it. 
 These were bitter days in Israel. Saul, their 
 first king, the hope of Israel, was dead. En- 
 emies were everywhere. David, as yet, was 
 little known and was a man of war. War, in- 
 deed, seemed to be the normal condition of 
 the life of Israel, just as the war of selfish 
 interest is normal in the world to-day. Out of 
 this, as a valley of shadows, a thicket of vague 
 impending evils, sprang this sudden revelation 
 of kindness and love. It is often so. Trouble 
 is a fertile soil for such growth. The poor are 
 the quickest and the most generous in helping 
 the poor. The most sacrificial gifts are to be 
 found among those who are so often seen 
 dividing their last meal with neighbors who 
 have nothing. The great truth that Chalmers 
 taught in his parish in Glasgow, and which 
 the charitable world is finding that it is slow 
 to learn even now, is that the great danger of 
 official charity, however efficient and well ad- 
 ministered, is that it may dry up these springs 
 of immediate and generous helpfulness which 
 are ever opening among the poor in their rela- 
 tions one with another. Organized charity is 
 necessary. And most philanthropists are com- 
 pelled to work through agents who are trained, 
 
THE KINDNESS OF GOD 233 
 
 or have the time to give to the care of the in- 
 dividual sufferer ; but the fact is none the less 
 true that the price that is often paid for such 
 effective assistance is a costly one in the loss 
 of that kind neighborly interest which keeps 
 life human even in the dirtiest tenement and 
 the darkest alley. 
 
 But we cannot stop to dwell upon this. We 
 notice that this kindness of God, which ap- 
 peared working in Jonathan and then in 
 David, is a productive kindness. It has life. 
 It reproduces itself. It bears fruit. This at 
 once interests us. The great and carefully 
 thought out benefactions proclaimed in the 
 legacies of some recently dead millionaire stir 
 the business community, of which he was a 
 member, no less than they do the outside 
 world. Many another rich man is moved to 
 consider what he shall do with his money. 
 Many another millionaire finds himself yield- 
 ing to impulses of thoughtful benevolence 
 which have hitherto dwelt only on the out- 
 skirts of his mind, or which have had no place 
 at all in his thoughts. Many a will is carefully 
 rewritten. Many a request for aid, which has 
 been lightly put aside, is reconsidered. How 
 much more is this true when a benefactor gives 
 himself! Florence Nightingale was followed 
 to the Crimea by a crowd of young English- 
 
234 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 women to face the horrors of Sevastopol and 
 the Scutari hospital, and her name remains a 
 sweet fragrance and an abiding inspiration, 
 because she gave herself to a task so distress- 
 ing in its first presentation and so bitter and 
 so prolonged in its miseries that all the world 
 wondered. 
 
 In a great English city the silent monument 
 to "Sister Dora," in the Public Square, tells 
 a similar tale of heroic devotion, which stirs 
 many a kindly impulse in the passing crowd. 
 This is the visible source of the power of the 
 foreign missionary. "Now I know what it 
 has cost you to come to us and live with us," 
 said a Barotsi chief, to Francois Coillard, the 
 French missionary in Central Africa, when 
 the chief had returned from his visit to Eng- 
 land. And the graves of that devoted servant 
 of God with his equally devoted wife under 
 the great tree in the heart of Africa are to-day 
 only one of the multitude of similar witnesses 
 to the kindness of God, awakening an immeas- 
 urable love in the hearts of Christian men for 
 their fellow men, which are to be seen on every 
 mission field. 
 
 The wonderful truth is that everyone can do 
 this, show a kindness that carries something of 
 oneself. It is so simple and so easy, and the 
 opportunities are so constant. Just to give 
 
THE KINDNESS OF GOD 235 
 
 oneself ! Being what we are, and having only 
 what we have, to put oneself at the disposal of 
 another's need! The immediate outcome is 
 that such kindness lives. We die, as Jonathan 
 did. The occasion that called forth the kind- 
 ness passes away. Perhaps, indeed, it is for- 
 gotten, but the deed itself is like seed in the 
 ground. It may lie a long time; by and by it 
 springs up and bears fruit. Such kindness, 
 then, is well worth the while. It is very beau- 
 tiful in itself, nothing more so — just to be 
 kind, to see another's need, to try to compre- 
 hend it and feel it, to lend a hand. How it 
 smoothes out trouble! How it changes the 
 aspect of life! What friends it makes for a 
 lifetime! Sometimes it is only a very little 
 thing that is done. We utterly forget it our- 
 selves. Even a passing smile, an encourag- 
 ing word, a touch of sympathy, and a down- 
 cast one is cheered; new courage comes to a 
 despondent heart. 
 
 David went off into the wilderness prepared 
 to endure bitter exile among the Philistines 
 and the mongrel companionship of the cave of 
 Adullam because of Jonathan's love. And now 
 Machir, and, indeed, all the people, felt some- 
 thing of the same, as they heard the new king 
 asking for Jonathan's son that he might show 
 to him the kindness of God. 
 
236 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 But, again, we pass on from that. It was 
 "the kindness of God'' that went to the heart 
 of the people. This was destined to become a 
 frequent expression in Israel. The Psalms are 
 full of it. "His loving-kindness is great to- 
 ward us." "We have thought on thy loving- 
 kindness, O God.'' "Thy loving-kindness is 
 better than life." "Who crowneth thee with 
 loving-kindness and tender mercies." "Thou 
 showest loving-kindness unto thousands." "I 
 am Jehovah who exerciseth loving-kindness."^ 
 
 So we ask, what is this kindness of God? It 
 is what inspires all good in men. There is 
 good in all men, probably much more than we 
 think. It gets buried, like a live coal under 
 ashes, and the ashes accumulate. But we de- 
 light in the good whenever it comes to light. 
 It makes all the world kin. It is the real 
 "touch of nature," for, in fact, whether men 
 believe it or not, we all are God's children. 
 David discovered this kindness in his own 
 heart as he had seen it in Jonathan's, and he 
 recognized with Jonathan's help that it was 
 from God. The loving-kindness that he was 
 moved to show to Mephibosheth was only the 
 expression of a forbearance and a tenderness 
 which he had received himself from God, just 
 as Jonathan had. And it was that which kept 
 
 ^Psa. 117. 2; 48. 9; 63. 3; 103. 4; Jer. 32. 18; 9. 24. 
 
THE KINDNESS OF GOD 237 
 
 love alive in his heart. He knew that it came 
 from an inexhaustible source, and therefore 
 he could trust the impulse in his own heart, 
 and could look for a response to it in the 
 hearts of others. 
 
 We delight to think that God has made us 
 so. We call this human capacity for kindness 
 normal; and we are glad to believe that it is 
 closely connected with the main purpose of 
 life. God has placed us all in conditions to 
 develop it. God constantly deals with us so 
 as to promote it. Nothing is sadder than to 
 find it crushed out of a man's heart, or a man 
 brought to think that it is so obliterated. 
 When one is persuaded of this he comes as 
 near to being a beast as a man can be. Indeed, 
 the difference between human kindness and 
 that which is its nearest counterpart in the 
 heart of an animal is that in man it is to be 
 recognized as a part of his humanity, a wit- 
 ness to his origin, and really essential if he is 
 to fulfill the purpose of his being. Without 
 it we can hardly conceive of him as a man. 
 
 So, again, this loving-kindness is of the na- 
 ture of God. It is God's character ; for "God 
 is love," in the sententious phrase of the apos- 
 tle. If we only knew God better we would see 
 this. Men doubt it, and when sorrow comes, 
 or great disaster, cry out against God, only 
 
238 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 because they do not know God. They deny his 
 existence, or attempt to portray him in the 
 overwhelming forces of nature, in the pesti- 
 lence, or the earthquake ; or they think of him 
 as an omnipotent power, remote and austere 
 in his judgments. They do not realize that 
 the kindness of God is God himself. But the 
 heart that opens to this truth gets a vision of 
 love that transfigures life in all its conditions. 
 It is this love of God and faith in God that 
 make life patient and strong and tender and 
 self-forgetful, and always so beautiful, wher- 
 ever it is found, whether in the alley or in the 
 palace. 
 
 For this kindness of God is Jesus Christ. 
 In him dwells "the fullness of the Godhead 
 bodily." All of God that could be made mani- 
 fest to men was made manifest in him. And 
 when we turn to him and read his story from 
 beginning to end, it is the revelation of the 
 loving-kindness of God. Its inner note was, 
 "Peace on earth, good will to men." It quickly 
 brought an infinite peace into the heart of 
 Mary, and then of Joseph, and then of one and 
 another saintly soul who came within its in- 
 fluence. Then we see it reaching out and gath- 
 ering in poor fishermen distraught with doubts 
 and fears, Israelites, indeed, but with despair- 
 ing hearts both for their country and for them- 
 
THE KINDNESS OF GOD 239 
 
 selves, transforming them into messengers of 
 life and of light, first to their countrymen and 
 then to the world. 
 
 Then it lays hold of the "woman that was 
 a sinner," and of the outcast leper, and the 
 widow by the bier of her only son in the gate- 
 way of the little city of Nain. Then in the 
 sorrowing home in Bethany we hear for the 
 first time the blessed word that has brought 
 the comfort of God as well as the kindness 
 of God. into thousands of sorrowing homes ever 
 since: "I am the resurrection, and the life: 
 he that believeth on me, though he die, yet 
 shall he live." Then we stand on Calvary, and 
 we hear again, "Father, forgive them ; for they 
 know not what they do." And the final mes- 
 sage is, "Go ye into all the world with this 
 news, the kindness of God is for you!" So 
 Jesus gave himself for us that we might know 
 what God's love is and that we might show 
 kindness to one another. Thus the religion of 
 Jesus Christ has become itself the final and 
 sufficient revelation of God and the abiding 
 inspiration of all that is best in the life of men. 
 
XXI 
 
 LIFE'S GREAT TRUSTS ' 
 
 "For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are 
 given in marriage, but are as angels in heaven." — 
 Matthew 22. 30. 
 
 It was our Lord's method to proclaim a 
 great truth under a concrete example. He 
 pointed to the lilies and compared their deli- 
 cate beauty with Solomon in all his glory. As 
 the eyes of his hearers wander over the fields he 
 seizes the opportunity to warn them against 
 worrying about the things of daily life and ask- 
 ing, "What shall we eat, or wherewithal shall 
 we be clothed?" saying to them, "Your heav- 
 enly Father knoweth that you have need of 
 all these things." "Behold the birds of the 
 heaven; your heavenly Father feedeth them. 
 Are not ye of much more value than they?" 
 He spoke of the joy of the shepherd who finds 
 the sheep that is lost, and he makes it the occa- 
 sion to emphasize the joy among the angels 
 of God over one sinner who repents. He looks 
 at the penny to be paid in tribute, and he says, 
 "Render unto Csesar the things that are 
 Caesar's, and unto God the things that are 
 
 240 
 
LIFE'S GREAT TRUSTS 241 
 
 God's." An eager complainant comes urging 
 him to command his brother to divide with 
 him the inheritance. He says, "Who made 
 me a divider among you?" and at once tells the 
 story of a certain rich man who was increased 
 with goods, but who was a fool, to impress the 
 great truth that religion is not to be exploited 
 for the profit that there may be in it. So, with 
 the text, when certain Sadducees, who believed 
 there is no after life and, therefore, no resur- 
 rection, sought to pose him with the question 
 of the much-married woman, his answer is, 
 "In the resurrection they neither marry, nor 
 are given in marriage, but are as angels in 
 heaven." And we now turn to it, forgetting 
 the mocking Sadducees and seeking to possess 
 ourselves of the underlying truth, which our 
 Lord takes that opportunity to emphasize. 
 
 We observe that in the plan of human life 
 marriage serves two purposes: primarily, to 
 perpetuate the race; and, secondarily,, to de- 
 velop the higher traits of character which find 
 their true opportunity for culture only in the 
 home. It is to make life humane, no less than 
 human. It will cease when, in the plan of God, 
 the race no longer requires it; and when, in 
 the new conditions of the heavenly life, it gives 
 place to other higher and surer forms of spirit- 
 ual culture. Then, we are told, "We shall see 
 
242 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 him as he is, and be like him/' Then our joy 
 shall be full. In that world where his servants 
 are serving him there will be nothing that cor- 
 rupts, or makes a lie, or that renders it diffi- 
 cult for character to complete itself along the 
 line of a normal growth. 
 
 Here, then, is the underlying truth. The re- 
 lationships, the duties, the tasks, the privi- 
 leges, the opportunities of this life, all have a 
 present worth that will end with the present 
 life. It is distinctively their earthly function. 
 One has wife, children, home ; one has wealth, 
 business, success; one has talents for art or 
 music, or of personal beauty; one has a rich 
 inheritance of race or ancestry, or the gifts 
 of personal charm; one has life given to him 
 in great days when movement is rapid and 
 great things are to be accomplished. Each 
 has his trust in his gifts, or his possessions, 
 or his opportunities. It is a trust for to-day. 
 Its function is immediate. It soon is to be 
 recalled. It has a value, therefore, that, wisely 
 used, is not easily to be overrated. But each 
 has also a particular function that does not 
 end. The effects are eternal. They are taken 
 up and perpetuated in character. How wide 
 their sweep is we can only surmise; for life 
 acts upon life, and the influence of character 
 is not easily to be measured. Nor can we un- 
 
LIFERS GREAT TRUSTS 243 
 
 derstand the role that time plays in the plan 
 of God. Of all existing things, character is 
 that which, alone, passes on undiminished by 
 time, and with possibilities of influence which 
 extend far beyond the horizon of the life that 
 we know. Because it is what it is, its growth 
 and attainment cannot be considered as com- 
 pleted in any one stage of its existence. The 
 human soul is of the nature of God. It is to 
 expand and to acquire so long as it exists. 
 When it passes, therefore, from this life into 
 the other, it is sure that it will find within its 
 reach other and more effective service than it 
 found in the previous state of its existence. 
 It has used its opportunities here for better 
 or for worse. They have fallen from its grasp 
 only to give place to others that belong to the 
 new life. Therefore, as we look upon our- 
 selves here, we recognize in every direction 
 this double function, that applies to every 
 earthly possession and opportunity: the one 
 transient and brief, the other eternal and 
 spiritual ; the one only to meet the necessities 
 of the earthly life, the other to take advantage 
 of the earthly life to start and carry forward 
 the work which is to be the business of the 
 life beyond. On an old sun dial in an English 
 garden is inscribed the legend, "The hours fly ; 
 the judgment waits." The temporary passes. 
 
244 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 There is in every instance a function and an 
 effect that are eternal. The shadows lengthen. 
 Age, weariness, death are near at hand; but 
 the new day dawns and with it come new 
 powers and life eternal. Marriage, like all 
 the rest, is in its immediate relations given to 
 meet the necessities of the world in which we 
 live. But, at the same time, it is working out 
 results which belong to eternity, and which, 
 when the immediate function of marriage is 
 ended, will be taken up and carried forward 
 by the new agencies which God has reserved 
 for the life that lies beyond. 
 
 With this interpretation of our Lord's words 
 w^e see the immense responsibility that at- 
 taches to the possession of these various 
 earthly trusts. Has a man wife, home, chil- 
 dren? These have a brief, immediate function. 
 How soon the home breaks up I The children 
 leave the nest. But yesterday they gathered 
 about the familiar table to be fed and clothed 
 and cared for, and to bring the delight and 
 the sweet joys which are the return for the 
 tender but insistent cares of a home. How 
 quickly they will be gone ! Therefore, the pres- 
 ent must be made much of. Shall we leave, 
 until the children arrive at years of discretion, 
 the teaching of the important things, the disci- 
 pline of character, the opening of the mind 
 
LIFE'S GREAT TRUSTS 246 
 
 to God, to the meaning and responsibility of 
 life? Shall we be afraid to talk to them of 
 serious things, or take them into our confi- 
 dence concerning the great questions which 
 even their young minds are sure to raise? 
 Shall we trust them wholly to servants and 
 teachers, however skilled? If we do, the op- 
 portunity for us will quickly end. The im- 
 mediate value of the earthly privilege will be 
 taken from us, while the effect in those young 
 hearts, which are never to be destroyed, passes 
 on beyond our reach. 
 
 Has a man business, or money, or power? 
 Very well! How soon he will be separated 
 from it all! It will have wrought its work 
 and played its part in the life that now is. 
 Whether he use it well or not, its deep effects 
 will endure. Shall he be half-hearted, or care- 
 less, or thriftless, or dishonest, thinking that 
 it does not matter? To-morrow life will be 
 gone, and all that the talents meant will have 
 slipped from his hands. Has he an inheritance 
 peculiar and rich in race or ancestry or citizen- 
 ship ; or has he talents that separate him from 
 others and give him opportunity of distinction, 
 so easily won, so rich in reward, when others 
 toil for them in vain and fall disheartened and 
 failing by the roadside? If he is selfish and 
 indifferent to others ; if he thinks only of him- 
 
246 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 self; if he cares little for the passing hour, 
 except for what it may mean in his own pleas- 
 ure, or aggrandizement, let him take heed : for 
 the hours fly and the function of this world 
 passes away and is not to return. All these 
 have their immediate obvious value. They bear 
 directly upon some pleasure and the fullness 
 of the life which we are now living. We may 
 feel that we are getting out of them all 
 they are worth to us as the days go by. We 
 may even school ourselves to indifference as 
 to the future, because of the fullness of the 
 life w^e are living. The other side of the truth 
 is that in addition to their place in the plan of 
 the present life these all are relational to eter- 
 nity. They all have a permanent effect. They 
 are producing results which are to be delivered 
 into the hands of God for his use when the new 
 day comes. They are intrusted to us as a great 
 trust in the present life, in order that they may 
 prepare us, and those whom we can influence, 
 for something more and better in the life be- 
 yond, where they will give place to the other 
 agencies and influences and opportunities 
 which God there has in store for every soul that 
 returns as the child from school to his father's 
 house, when he is summoned to take up the 
 privileged life which is to be lived there and for 
 which he was born. 
 
LIFE'S GREAT TRUSTS 247 
 
 On the other hand, is any one without the 
 possession of these special privileges? For 
 him is the assurance that these are peculiarly 
 of this world, and are transient ; while beyond 
 are others, and far better, awaiting him. To 
 the one who is not married we hear Jesus say : 
 "In the providence of God you are shut out 
 from the joys and the privileges of all that 
 makes for personal culture and growth in the 
 home. Be not downhearted. In the resurrec- 
 tion they neither marry, nor are given in mar- 
 riage." In that day it will be found that other 
 relations and other opportunities are pro- 
 vided which will fill the place and do what you 
 need for the development of heart and soul for 
 the larger life. To the one who is poor Jesus 
 says: "You are condemned in the providence 
 of God to toil and dream and hope for privi- 
 leges which life has not brought. Never mind ! 
 In the life beyond, these relations of poverty 
 or wealth, of bondage or freedom, of hope- 
 less repression or of buoyant and expanding 
 growth with the privileges of leisure and of 
 culture, will disappear beyond the grave. 
 Shrouds have no pockets. Naked you were 
 born, and naked you return." What is this but 
 to emphasize the fact that Lazarus in the bosom 
 of God has entered into joys and opportunities 
 and privileges which Dives in his best estate 
 
248 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 never knew? God's treasure house is un- 
 limited. It is to be opened as never before in 
 that life which awaits beyond. 
 
 Let us hold, then, all these things as a pass- 
 ing possession. We will not allow ourselves 
 to be overburdened by them, nor distressed if 
 we have them not. How quickly like riches 
 thej^ take to themselves wings and fly away! 
 On the monuments in the ancient churches 
 in England one sees the effigies of kings with 
 their crowns, and knights clad cap-a-pie^ and 
 ladies decked with their laces and their brave 
 broideries; but also other figures emaciated 
 to the bone, to record the wasting disease of 
 which they died ; and here and there only a grim 
 skeleton stretched in all its gaunt hideousness 
 above the marble tomb. Which is the truer 
 representation, the king in his splendor, or 
 the skeleton, as marking all that remains? We 
 note the truth suggested by them all. The 
 possessions perish, the man survives. We look 
 for what lies beyond, not only as something 
 to be won, but as something that supersedes. 
 In that world, when, with the marrying and 
 giving in marriage, the wealth and the power 
 and the business of this life shall have passed 
 away, will be found riches of a different kind, 
 bonds of a more enduring nature, opportuni- 
 ties for attainment of promise; in short, a 
 
LIFE'S GREAT TRUSTS 249 
 
 life such as a loving God, in the vastness of 
 his plans of blessing and the fullness of his 
 wisdom and his power, shall provide for the 
 children of his love. Therefore, our Lord's 
 word, "If any man would come after me, let 
 him deny himself," and also, "Every one that 
 hath left houses, or brethren, or sisters, or 
 father, or mother, or children, or lands, for 
 my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold, 
 and shall inherit eternal life." 
 
 While, then, we have these things we are 
 to use them, redeeming the time, or, in our 
 Lord's graphic phrase, buying them up as 
 things offered at a bargain in the market, be- 
 cause they must be had now or never. The 
 opportunity is immediate and quickly gone, 
 but they have a value that is enduring. Woe 
 to him who misuses them, or who in his care- 
 less indifference forgets that the marrying and 
 the giving in marriage, the opportunities and 
 the demands of the life that now is, while they 
 all belong to to-day, are, because they have 
 relations which are eternal, the great trusts 
 of life. 
 
XXII 
 
 THE SETTING UP OF THE ARK 
 
 "And David went and brought up the ark of God from 
 the house of Obed-edom into the city of David with 
 joy."— 2 Samuel 6. 12. 
 
 The ark stood in Israel for all that helped 
 men to realize God. Therefore it stood for 
 what helps men to attain to what is best, and 
 to help others to do the same. Whatever were 
 the immediate circumstances or the immediate 
 motives of David's act, we can pass them over 
 in view of the fact that the ark placed in his 
 new capital had this value. And in the light 
 of David's history and what we know of his 
 own relation to God it is not too much to 
 assume that he had this purpose in his heart. 
 The ark witnessed to God. 
 
 In any case, this was the effect. Jerusalem 
 has been the Holy City ever since. Consider 
 what Jerusalem stands for to-day ! Think how 
 hearts through the centuries have thrilled at 
 the mere thought of it ! Think how it has be- 
 come the name for the consummation of every 
 Christian hope! "The New Jerusalem, the 
 city of God!" A thousand memories cluster 
 
 250 
 
THE SETTING UP OF THE ARK 251 
 
 about the actual city. It may have been plun- 
 dered and destroyed and rebuilt and plundered 
 again; it may to-day be squalid and its in- 
 habitants degraded ; it may be the scene of the 
 squabblings of the wretched representatives 
 of degenerate Christian faith; it may, indeed, 
 eventually disappear from the face of the 
 earth; still its name attaches to the "Celestial 
 City," and the very thought of it calls up the 
 beatific vision of the heavenly abode where 
 saints of God are to live in uninterrupted com- 
 munion with their Lord. That for which the 
 ark stood at the beginning is there achieved in 
 its most glorious possibilities. 
 
 We may use the text, therefore, with refer- 
 ence to the life of to-day, and ask what it 
 means to us. For the ark stands for all that 
 is given to help men to God. Its counterpart 
 in our life is the Bible, and worship, and the 
 church; and we may ask at once. What are 
 these in fact doing for us? Have we made a 
 Jerusalem with our ark, and are we in our 
 personal and united history advancing in the 
 course in which the work so begun will, for 
 us at least, be completed? 
 
 As we raise this question we become aware 
 that many to-day are eager only to put the ark 
 of God where the Philistines cannot get at it. 
 This, perhaps, was the prevalent feeling in 
 
252 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 Israel when David brought the ark back; for 
 we read that all Israel thrilled at the sight, 
 but no one wanted the ark in his own home. 
 Many are very solicitous to-day about the 
 Bible and public worship and the church. 
 They are much disturbed over biblical criti- 
 cism, fearing that the Bible is to lose some- 
 thing of its sanctity, as if we had to stay the 
 ark. Some would make worship very dignified 
 and remote, associating it always with stately 
 churches and beautiful windows and exquisite 
 music and soft carpets and gentle refinement. 
 Many would keep the church a sanctuary un- 
 contaminated by the concerns of daily life, 
 sacred from the world, and all this while not 
 very particular to make much use of the Bible 
 or worship or the church themselves. 
 
 Some w^ould set the ark high as a symbol. 
 The Bible and worship and revealed religion 
 are to them chiefly symbols of truth. Their 
 main use is in the impression which they may 
 make. Their worth is to be stated in what are 
 called "value judgments." The Bible is true, 
 it is said, because "it finds me." It has no 
 particular historic importance, nor does it 
 stand for any truth that can be very definitely 
 stated. The day of dogma has passed and even 
 definitions are of little value. Each man must 
 be left to determine what answers his own 
 
THE SETTING UP OF THE ARK 253 
 
 need or may perchance correspond to some- 
 thing in his heart. It is desirable to drop the 
 idea of the supernatural, which will carry 
 with it revelation and miracles. The Old 
 Testament is made up of fragments of ancient 
 stories, and how closely similar the New may 
 be is of comparative unimportance. We still 
 have the essentials of religion, and the real 
 value of prayer, and Christian meditation, and 
 spiritual thought and aspiration undisturbed. 
 The ark answers very well for a symbol, each 
 man finding in the symbol what may prove 
 to be good for himself. 
 
 Others would set the ark entirely aside as 
 marking merely the beginnings of Christianity. 
 The Bible and public worship and the church, 
 like the ark of the Israelites, are long since 
 outgrown. Questions concerning them may 
 be of interest to antiquarians, and doubtless 
 will be the subject of learned disquisitions 
 from scholars and professors in theological 
 seminaries, but the wise men of the street, who 
 are concerned with the real business of life, 
 and are readers of books, or have had the privi- 
 leges of education, have no further use for 
 them, and look with outspoken scorn or gentle 
 pity, as the case may be, upon those who still 
 are under the bondage of tradition and feel it 
 a duty daily to read the Bible and go to church. 
 
254 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 Recognizing this situation, we turn to the an- 
 cient story to see what suggestion it may have 
 for us. 
 
 We discover, first of all, that David set up 
 the ark to help himself to realize, and to lead 
 the people to know, that they were dealing 
 with God. 
 
 Those were prosperous days in Israel. The 
 king had founded a new capital; riches and 
 luxury and success were beginning to affect 
 the life of the people. Times were coming to 
 be in Israel what they are to-day in every 
 prosperous community. The old was passing 
 away and the new was coming upon them with 
 all the charm and glamour both of novelty and 
 of abounding prosperity. Whether they real- 
 ized it or not, with the history of the centuries 
 behind us, and even with what we know of our 
 own experience, we can see that they would 
 surely forget God unless from some source 
 they should receive especial help, just as to- 
 day when engaged in large business, with its 
 multitude of cares and its pressing tempta- 
 tions, with increasing wealth and the com- 
 panionship of those who have already advanced 
 far in the same line, we come upon men about 
 us who have ceased to read the Bible. They 
 begin to neglect worship, both public and pri- 
 vate. They find the demands of religion a task 
 
THE SETTING UP OF THE ARK ^55 
 
 and, very often, a burden. They cease to feel 
 the importance of the church to themselves 
 or the community ; and little by little the com- 
 munity itself under this influence begins to 
 drift aTMay from God. The young man coming 
 up to the great city to find a career has a Bible 
 in his trunk, and has no other thought than 
 to maintain the religious habits of his home 
 and to keep himself in constant touch with his 
 mother. But he is in a new atmosphere. The 
 nights are short. The mornings are hurried. 
 The Sabbath finds him tired. The outside 
 world is attractive. What is easier and, in 
 many cases, more inevitable than that his good 
 resolutions will be forgotten and his religious 
 habits will speedily vanish? He may still be 
 strong against temptation and find little 
 charm in evil companions, but the reality of 
 religion and the sense of companionship with 
 Christ fade from his heart. 
 
 David was wise enough to anticipate this. 
 He knew the place of the habit of worship in 
 his life, and the relation of what we may call 
 the instruments of worship to those habits. 
 There must be both a time and a place for 
 prayer. There must be something which is a 
 visible reminder of God and of the claims of 
 his worship and his service. The temple was 
 to be the place for the dwelling of the Sheki- 
 
256 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 nah of Israel, the presence of God which every 
 Israelite felt when he entered the house of God. 
 The ark was all that Israel boasted at this time 
 in preparation for the temple. David needed 
 it himself, and he needed it also to place it 
 where it would be before the eyes of the people. 
 If he would nourish faith in his own heart, and 
 if he would lead the people in ways of right- 
 eousness and of truth, he could not long 
 dispense with its presence. 
 
 The situation is not changed to-day. The 
 Christian who would himself hold true to his 
 faith, who would be strong against tempta- 
 tion and grow in character and in the things 
 of God, needs his ark, and he may find it in 
 his Bible, in regular habits of prayer, and in 
 attendance at church. If he would do any- 
 thing to help others into the Christian life, 
 or to make his influence in the world count 
 for Christ, these things are indispensable. 
 Without them his religion, at best, will be only 
 an inner experience, and may quickly fade 
 away into little more than a sentiment or a 
 memory. 
 
 Men have always needed such aids, and cer- 
 tainly the world has not outgrown them. In 
 spite of her temple and her ark and all her 
 incentive to maintain the worship of Jehovah, 
 Israel fell away into idolatry. Without such 
 
THE SETTING UP OF THE ARK 257 
 
 aid we certainly cannot hope to do better. In 
 our richer experience and riper knowledge we 
 may be tempted to think that habits and forms 
 and ceremonies tend only to formalism. We 
 have but to consider what the great cathedrals 
 have stood for through the centuries. They 
 arose by virtue of the devotion of a multitude 
 of unknown worshipers, toiling through many 
 years, and they have stood an impressive wit- 
 ness to the Christian faith and a silent but 
 powerful appeal to the community about them, 
 compelling the recognition of God and sus- 
 taining the sense of the Divine Presence. To- 
 day their majesty and their silent beauty go 
 far to make serious the mood and to humble 
 the spirit of even the thoughtless man who 
 stands within their walls. 
 
 But, in the second place, David's purpose 
 was also to connect religion with God's provi- 
 dential care, and, what is more important still, 
 with his covenant. The ark was the ark of the 
 covenant. It marked the peculiar relationship 
 existing between God and the chosen people. 
 It carried with it the witness of all that God 
 had done in caring for his people, leading them 
 out of Egypt, feeding them in the wilderness, 
 overthrowing their enemies, planting them at 
 last in the land of promise, teaching them 
 through all to rest in that divine care, and to 
 
g58 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 know and to love the God who so provided for 
 them. When no one in Israel was ready to 
 receive the ark into his home, God had blessed 
 Obed-edom, the Gittite, and all his house, be- 
 cause of the ark of God which he had cared for. 
 This is the record of Christian homes every- 
 where. Their testimony is abundant, both to 
 God's providential care and to the constancy 
 and extent of his peculiar blessings. What 
 would the possession of the land be without 
 them? What would we be but for what they 
 have been to us in the past? The question be- 
 fore us is, Shall they be preserved, or shall 
 they go down before the wave of worldliness 
 which is sweeping over the land? 
 
 The ark of God, as we know it, has been 
 abundantly tested. It is not a mystical pos- 
 session, an occult experience, known only to 
 the few. The Bible, for example, is within 
 every man's reach. The right for any man to 
 investigate it is thoroughly established. It 
 is an open door through which any man may 
 pass to the knowledge of God and of his own 
 heart. The criticism to which it has been ex- 
 posed has swept away the difficulties that gath- 
 ered about the doctrine of its verbal inspira- 
 tion, while its use, and the history of the Chris- 
 tion centuries, have settled the question of 
 the substantial truth of its representation of 
 
THE SETTING UP OF THE ARK 259 
 
 God and of Jesus Christ. We have in it a 
 credible history of Jesus and his apostles, with 
 the account of what God has done to deliver 
 sinful men from the guilt and the bondage of 
 their own transgression, and to open to them 
 a way of life for this world and for the world 
 beyond. The Bible is no longer a veiled au- 
 thority. It is a source of intelligent knowl- 
 edge to be studied and pondered and ques- 
 tioned incessantly; and, thus approached and 
 used, it reveals the deep things of God in a 
 larger sense than ever the ark of Israel did. 
 It is the authoritative witness to God, and the 
 great agency by which men can be helped to 
 know God. 
 
 So of the church and worship. No man need 
 be in ignorance as to what takes place where 
 they are neglected. They are the God-given 
 help to men to attain to all that is best of 
 strength and peace and that knowledge which 
 leads into life. The day has gone by when men 
 can successfully attempt to separate religion 
 from life. Religion is not simply a matter of 
 the Sabbath and the church; but the Sabbath 
 and the church are necessary to save the re- 
 ligion of the week. If they are neglected, or 
 lightly considered, religion, in every form, in 
 the heart of the individual and in the life of 
 the street and of the store, perishes. 
 
260 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 "A Sabbath well spent 
 Brings a week of content, 
 
 And health for the toils of to-morrow; 
 But a Sabbath profaned, 
 Whatso'er may be gained, 
 
 Is a certain forerunner of sorrow." 
 
 The joy which pervaded Israel when the ark 
 was brought to Jerusalem is but a faint ex- 
 pression of what should be the joy in every 
 Christian community where the Bible and the 
 church and worship are set in their proper 
 place in the life of individuals and in the his- 
 tory of all. 
 
XXIII 
 
 CHRIST'S LOVE FOR THE CHURCH 
 
 "Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up 
 for it; that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by 
 the washing of water with the word, that he might 
 present the church to himself a glorious church, not 
 having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it 
 should be holy and without blemish." — Ephesians 5. 
 25-27. 
 
 The apostle's vision is not of a heavenly 
 glory, but of an earthly reality. The business 
 of his Church is to bring in the kingdom of 
 God on the earth. He has redeemed and glori- 
 fied and is sanctifying it to be his immediate 
 witness and abiding possession. What its 
 place is to be in the heavenly kingdom, we do 
 not know. That it will have a place, and that 
 all that is in it of love and brotherhood and 
 joy and comfort and strength, all that makes 
 up its true life, as in the case of the individual, 
 will be preserved and will find its final oppor- 
 tunity and realization in the presence of God 
 and the New Jerusalem, we cannot doubt. 
 But the details of that life, despite the splen- 
 did vision of the Apocalypse, have not been 
 revealed, and were evidently not the immediate 
 
 261 
 
262 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 concern of our Lord or the supreme purpose 
 of the vision given to Saint Paul in the text. 
 
 The Church in the New Testament is the 
 whole body of believers. The contrast that 
 from time to time appears, and which we often 
 make to-day, is not between the visible and the 
 invisible Church. It is between the Church 
 as it is and the Church as it is to be; between 
 the Church of to-day and the Church made 
 perfect, the Church which Christ will present 
 to himself "without spot or wrinkle or any 
 such thing" when his Spirit is in full posses- 
 sion and his work approaches its triumph. 
 
 The vision given to the apostle as described 
 in the text is of Jesus Christ, his Lord, dying 
 for his Church, as in the opening verse of the 
 chapter we have the picture of Christ doing 
 the same for the individual believer: "Be ye 
 therefore imitators of God, as beloved chil- 
 dren; and walk in love, even as Christ also 
 loved you, and gave himself up for us, an offer- 
 ing and a sacrifice to God." He had before his 
 mind the mystery of the Incarnation; Christ 
 Jesus "existing in the form of God," "count- 
 ing not the being on an equality with God a 
 thing to be grasped," but "emptying himself," 
 "taking the form of a servant," "being made in 
 the likeness of men" ; and the beauty of his 
 life, the perfect pattern for human life for all 
 
CHRIST'S LOVE FOR THE CHURCH 263 
 
 time; the awe of his sinless character which 
 bowed even the soldiers sent to arrest him; 
 the power of his redeeming love which awoke 
 a new life in every penitent heart that came 
 within his touch; and, above all, the wonder 
 of his sacrificial death, in which *^he became 
 obedient even unto the death of the cross." All 
 this, of which Paul was not an actual witness 
 when it transpired, but which had gradually 
 been made clear to his eyes opened by the 
 revelation of the risen Lord given to him at 
 the beginning of his new life, he now saw as 
 the revelation of the love of the Lord for his 
 Church. Years had passed; the days of his 
 captivity had come; his own death, of which 
 every^^here of late he had been warned, was 
 not distant. And now the simple phrase of 
 the text, "Christ also loved the church and 
 gave himself up for it," becomes the supreme, 
 all-embracing truth of his life. 
 
 We have this truth, then, to unfold. 
 
 Obviously that supreme love will purify the 
 Church. Love tolerates no half-hearted serv- 
 ice. Love endures no intruder. It must have 
 all or nothing. Here is the interpretation of 
 that tremendous saying of the Avriter of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, "Our God is a con- 
 suming fire!" Of course; for "God is love," 
 and love, especially a divine love, must sweep 
 
264 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 the field. The whole being of God is expressed 
 in that supreme affection. God must change, 
 or eliminate from his universe, all that is un- 
 sound and ungenuine. Only "the pure in heart 
 shall see God.^' Manifestly; because the love 
 of God draws to itself all that responds to that 
 love, and that which does not respond cannot 
 see his face. This is the tremendous truth 
 of that revelation of God which Jesus Christ 
 brought into the world. This is the meaning 
 of the great pronouncement, "God so loved the 
 world.'' The Son of God, who came to make 
 manifest that love, became of necessity the 
 divider between those who consent to its em- 
 brace and those who resist. Love must have 
 its way ; and the glory of the divine love is that 
 it can and will refine and purify, even though 
 as by fire, or, failing of this, will eliminate 
 from the sphere of the divine action. This is 
 that power of the Spirit of Christ which is 
 so much dwelt upon throughout the New 
 Testament. The Paraclete, the Spirit of 
 Truth, whom Jesus promised to send, was to 
 sanctify and renew, to enlighten and guide, to 
 recreate and to sustain, until the work of God 
 in men shall be accomplished. 
 
 The hope of the Church lies in this. The 
 world is continually pointing to the shortcom- 
 ings of the Church and the imperfections, and 
 
CHRIST'S LOVE FOR THE CHURCH 265 
 
 even the wickedness, of many who are within 
 the Church, and the Church itself is bewil- 
 dered over the lifelessness, even the degener- 
 acy, of the great historic Churches, the Roman, 
 the Greek, the Armenian, in which, as cor- 
 ruption coming from the world in which we 
 all alike must live, we ourselves, and the Chris- 
 tian body to which perchance we belong, are 
 in danger of being involved. We ask, How 
 is the Church to be saved? How is its work in 
 the kingdom of God ever to be performed? and 
 the answer comes. By the renewing power of 
 the Spirit of God, the "times of refreshing from 
 the presence of the Lord," the "wind from the 
 Holy Spirit." This is what the Church has 
 experienced again and again in its past his- 
 tory. This is the object of its incessant prayer. 
 This is the one hope that we must all cherish 
 for returning life in moribund members of the 
 body of Christ, as of the quickening of that 
 vitality in the whole Church which alone con- 
 stitutes it the body of Christ. With him we 
 will mourn over the Church in its weakness 
 and its imperfections. We may sorrow for 
 others and scrupulously examine ourselves; 
 but the life of the Church is not to be secured 
 in the cutting off of the unworthy, or its rigor 
 with the weak, or the strenuousness of its self- 
 discipline. All this at times may be the par- 
 
^ee BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 ticular object of its immediate care and even 
 the measure of its faithfulness, but its hope is 
 only in the power of the Holy Spirit abiding in 
 the Church and renewing the life of its mem- 
 bers. Because the Lord so loved his Church he 
 will not forsake it, and he will not suffer it to 
 go on unawakened or unclean. 
 
 If Christ so loves the Church, then we ought 
 to love it. This was the bond that united the 
 early Christians. They went forth to life and 
 to death together. They faced the arena and 
 the beasts. They pressed to martyrdom, as 
 they braved exile and persecution, not as fel- 
 low Jews, or Gentiles, or as fishermen, or mem- 
 bers of any common trade, or having bonds 
 of any ordinary human relationship. Jesus 
 Christ was the one bond among them; and 
 it was a bond made visible in the fellowship 
 of the Church that bore his name. The su- 
 preme strength of that bond lay in the great 
 truths it represented, the truth of God, of the 
 soul, of heaven, of redemption, of immortality, 
 all made real through the Church. Is it any 
 wonder that they were a band quickly to prove 
 itself more invincible than the famous phalanx 
 of Alexander? The testimony of the historian 
 stands : "The Christians pressed to martyrdom, 
 and the world thronged to baptism.'^ This 
 was the force which gave five hundred thou- 
 
CHRIST'S LOVE FOR THE CHURCH 267 
 
 sand members to the cause of Christ in the 
 first century. The organization and the love 
 which did the Lord's Avork so effectively at the 
 beginning are his appointed means for doing 
 his work in the world to-day. It has brought 
 the gospel to us. It has gathered us as the 
 shepherd the lost sheep. It has brought hope 
 and joy into our lives. It has created the 
 civilization of the Christian centuries. Ought 
 we not, then, to cherish our membership in the 
 Church, to love the Church, which in this true 
 sense is the mother of us all, and to believe! 
 in it as appointed of God to bring in God's 
 kingdom in the hearts of men and in the world? 
 Furthermore, we should expect great things 
 of the Church. We should expect this in what 
 it can do for us. The world is fully awake to 
 the value of organization, but the limitation 
 to that value, of which on all sides we are com- 
 ing to be aware, is the tendency of organiza- 
 tions to crush the individual. By as much as 
 the organization becomes complete and effi- 
 cient, or passes into the control of one or a 
 few powerful hands, it destroys the liberty of 
 the individual. Witness the heavy -handed- 
 ness of many of the captains of industry and 
 the masters of the great trusts, and the cruelty 
 of many a trade union in dealing with the indi- 
 vidual workingman. 
 
268 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 Exactly the opposite is the characteristic 
 of the Christian Church. In proportion as it 
 develops in doing the work of the Lord, or 
 enters into fullness of understanding of his 
 Spirit and his purposes, it exalts each believer, 
 no matter how humble or weak, to a proper 
 recognition of his place in the plan of God. 
 The fixed rule of its life is, if one member suf- 
 fers all suffer. The head cannot say to the 
 foot, "I have no need of thee" ; and only as all 
 contribute their several parts does the whole 
 body grow into the image of its Lord. By the 
 very terms of our membership, we are sum- 
 moned to have our Church lift us to our best, 
 to hold that ever before us as our goal, and to 
 maintain every incentive that will help us to 
 reach it. 
 
 We are constantly falling below our best. 
 In business and in social life we have to de- 
 pend upon laws and social conventions to keep 
 us within the range of reasonable conduct, 
 not to say within the only conditions of com- 
 mendable success. In all our personal habits, 
 and still more in the acquisition of character, 
 we can be sure of advancing in right lines, and 
 making attainments that are genuine and de- 
 sirable, only as we value and secure keenness 
 of religious comprehension and tenderness of 
 Christian love. If we allow these things to 
 
CHRIST'S LOVE FOR THE CHURCH 269 
 
 disappear, or to grow cold in our hearts, if 
 religion becomes to us merely a tradition or 
 a name, we are sure to fall off from what is 
 sweetest and best both in our inner life and in 
 our outward deportment; we are sure to be- 
 come men and women of a different temper 
 and spirit from what we would wish to be. 
 Now, the Church stands for all that will help 
 us to attain the best. Its recurring hours of 
 worship, its invitations to prayer, to self- 
 examination, to testing oneself by the Word of 
 God, as faithfully delivered and pressed upon 
 us, its rebuking, exhorting, instructing, and 
 comforting us, are all to this end, to help us to 
 be men after God's own heart, who can know 
 him and serve him and glorify and enjoy him, 
 both here and hereafter. We should recognize 
 this as the indispensable function of the Church 
 in our personal life, as in the constitution of 
 human society, and make sure that we do not 
 fail of getting the benefit of it. 
 
 Finally, the Church is to save men. As such 
 it is God's gift. This is a day of fierce strug- 
 gle with the world. The Church is hard 
 pressed without, and is in still greater danger 
 from seductive and corrupting influences work- 
 ing within. It is tempted to ignore, or even 
 to deny, the peril and the need of struggle. 
 Everyw^here we hear the world cry, "Peace! 
 
270 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 Peace!'' Perhaps the real reason for the pro- 
 test is that the Church does not feel competent 
 for the fight. It is too conscious of its own 
 weakness, and finds little to say in reply to 
 those who sneer at its professions and make 
 light of its teachings. When we remember 
 how the Lord loves his Church, then we can 
 believe that he will purify and strengthen it. 
 Its abiding power is in its witness to him. He 
 is competent, whether at any given time the 
 Church is or is not. The sole duty of the 
 Church is to turn to him, to strive to be more 
 like him, to open its heart to his presence, to 
 seek to be filled with his Spirit ; and the Spirit 
 of Christ is the one irresistible force in the 
 world. The hardest hearts have broken before 
 it. The bitterest enemies have been changed 
 into friends, and the world has even now begun 
 to see the method and the certainty of the ful- 
 fillment of the old prophecy that "a nation 
 shall be born in a day." The Church of Jesus 
 Christ survived the great struggles of the past 
 when Rome went down before the barbarians 
 and civilization was swallowed up in the abyss 
 of universal corruption. It will survive in 
 the great struggle when, as to-day, society is 
 threatened by greed, and luxury, and unbelief, 
 and the strife of class with class. It will re- 
 construct society on the basis of a brotherhood 
 
CHRIST'S LOVE FOR THE CHURCH 271 
 
 gathered about Jesus Christ as the Son of God 
 and the Son of Man. It will become the 
 Church of the kingdom of God on earth be- 
 cause it is, and always will be, the Church of 
 the redeemed. 
 
XXIV 
 
 THE SUPREME POSSESSION 
 
 "In Christ." — Ephesians 1. 10. 
 
 There is a mystical element in the religion 
 of Jesus Christ which is difficult to describe. 
 It is an experience rather than a doctrine. The 
 Lord's Supper has always been the symbol of 
 it, and a chief instrument for its expression. 
 The attempt to define it in connection with 
 the Supper has been the cause of the deepest 
 and bitterest divisions in the Christian 
 Church. But, however it has failed in describ- 
 ing it, the Church has always held to the fact. 
 The union of the believer with Christ is to be 
 realized in the rite, and as so realized it is 
 the earnest of an abiding experience which is 
 to be the progressive attainment of the true be- 
 liever. That union is the important thing, 
 however it may be set forth. It is what Jesus 
 promised and foretold in his last prayer in 
 the seventeenth chapter of John: "I in them, 
 and thou in me, that they may be perfected 
 into one." It is what Paul expressed and 
 refers to constantly in his letters. The letter 
 to the Ephesians is full of it. Indeed, as Stier 
 
 272 
 
THE SUPREME POSSESSION 273 
 
 says, "the mystical relation with Christ is the 
 very soul of the epistle." Among the epistles 
 many are the references to it, such as these: 
 "Spiritual blessings in Christ"; "All things 
 summed up in Christ" ; "We are a heritage in 
 him"; "One body in Christ"; "Made alive in 
 Christ"; "Established in Christ"; "New crea- 
 tures in Christ"; "We triumph in Christ"; 
 the blessed dead are "in Christ."^ In com- 
 menting on Ephesians 1. 6 a German writer 
 says: "We have not redemption in his work 
 without his Person, but in his Person, with 
 which his work forms a living unity." 
 
 This phrase, "In Christ," carries us, then, 
 to the very center of religion, not as a theory, 
 but as a practical experience. Though we can- 
 not adequately define it, and only with diffi- 
 culty can talk successfully about it, we can 
 at least see how large a truth it is. 
 
 The phrase suggests being in Christ as in 
 an atmosphere. Atmosphere determines the 
 conditions of life. To a fish it is water, in 
 which it is at home, and, if undisturbed, at- 
 tains all the possibilities of its being. To the 
 tree it is the air charged with carbonic 
 acid, which the tree absorbs and from which 
 it gains its nourishment and makes its growth. 
 
 ^Eph. 1. 3 ; 1. 10 ; 1. 11 ; Rom. 12. 5 ; 1 Cor. 4. 22 ; 2 Cor. 
 1. 21 : 5. 17 ; 2. 14 ; 1 Thess. 4. 16. 
 
274 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 For man it is the oxygenated air. Having that 
 in undiminished quantity, he has vigor, mental 
 rightness, and buoyancy, as weU as life. De- 
 prived of it, or even with a diminished supply, 
 he quickly perishes. 
 
 We see at once the closeness of the analogy 
 as we turn to the Scripture phrases, "Made 
 alive in Christ," "In him we live, and move, 
 and have our being." We realize this as an 
 atmosphere of love. God as revealed to us in 
 Jesus Christ is with us and about us, caring 
 for us, ordering our life. "Underneath are 
 the everlasting arms." He invites our appeal 
 to him in prayer, and as we seek him prayer 
 becomes not an appeal to meet present need, 
 but a communion, an expression of an inti- 
 macy that is constant, and a dependence which 
 is far more than a realized help in time of need. 
 It is a companionship established in a love 
 without which life would seem hardly possible. 
 
 In the quotations from his journal which 
 are found at the close of the biography of 
 Henry M. Stanley, the African explorer, we 
 find this testimony, not as something written 
 for others, but as the most memorable experi- 
 ence amid the perils and terrible trials of his 
 struggles in Central Africa. He writes: 
 "Those in whom faith in God is strong feel the 
 same sense of security in the deepest wilds. 
 
THE SUPREME POSSESSION 275 
 
 An invisible Good Influence surrounds them, 
 to whom they may appeal in distress, an In- 
 fluence which inspires noble thoughts, comfort 
 in grief, resolution when weakened by misfor- 
 tune. I imperfectly understand this myself, 
 but I know when I have called I have been an- 
 swered, strengthened, and assisted. It was of 
 benefit to myself and to others.'' This experi- 
 ence might be confirmed in fuller expression 
 from the testimony of many a saintly writer ; 
 but this from one not conscious of saintliness, 
 or of having a message for others, has its pe- 
 culiar value. It is the unconscious testimony 
 of a strong man, living the most strenuous life, 
 to the reality of the love of Christ as an abid- 
 ing presence, as an atmosphere in which alone 
 he found he could face the daily task and meet 
 the constantly recurring peril. 
 
 "In Christ" means also living as in a larger 
 world. Paul says in the text that God "sums 
 up all things in Christ, the things in heaven 
 and the things upon earth." The life we are 
 compelled to live here is by itself a petty thing. 
 Diverse as are our individual experiences, they 
 are all substantially one in their common fea- 
 tures. We are absorbed in the details of liv- 
 ing. We must have food and clothing; we 
 must care for those who are dependent 
 upon us; we must do the work to which our 
 
276 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 hands are set; we must succeed according to 
 the measure of our circumstances if it is pos- 
 sible for us to do so. We are driven by am- 
 bitions and desires and passions which largely 
 center in ourselves and spring from ourselves. 
 We are aware of the pettiness and often the 
 mean and sordid character of much that we 
 have to do and even of much that we most de- 
 sire. We know that these things perish in the 
 using. We are aware that we ourselves are 
 the creatures of a day. We can but most in- 
 adequately protect, and have little assurance 
 that we can prolong, the life that we are living. 
 Time will surely conquer us, and we shall go 
 out of life as naked as we entered it. We know 
 and care nothing for what is above or beyond 
 it, and we make little or no attempt to inter- 
 pret it even as we leave it. And it has always 
 been the same. Nearly three thousand years 
 ago we have a picture of it in Homer which 
 corresponds accurately to the picture of it 
 given to us each day in the daily newspaper. 
 This is the way in which a student of Homer 
 describes it: "He sees life as it is. He does 
 not question it; there it is, final, glorious, 
 lovely, august, terrible, sordid, cruel, unjust. 
 And the partially smiling, unmoved, unac- 
 countable Olympians are the symbols of its 
 brute actuality. Not even is there no expla- 
 
THE SUPREME POSSESSION 277 
 
 nation, there is not even a question to be asked. 
 So it has been ; so it is ; so it will be."^ Your 
 practical man is Homeric. He is content to 
 take life as it is, and make out of it all he can 
 for himself for the passing hour, and to-mor- 
 row is as to-day. 
 
 But this does not satisfy anyone. God has 
 made us for himself. The soul reaches out for 
 the light that is above and beyond, and per- 
 petually feels for it in the hope that it may find 
 Him who is the Maker of all. Saint Paul does 
 more than this. He knows what is beyond. 
 He sees it and has realized it. It has become 
 to him the true life, the larger world. There 
 is for him a universe in which the divine pur- 
 pose of redemption is accomplished; a universe 
 in which man becomes a new creature and 
 finds his true life, the realm for which man as 
 a child of God was created. We belong to it. 
 Christ is the center of it. God gathers there all 
 things in him. He was not present when Jesus 
 uttered his final prayer, but he knows it is 
 true : "I in them, and thou in me, that they may 
 be perfected into one." He knows where that 
 perfection is to be attained, because he is al- 
 ready having experience of its beginnings. As 
 the saintly Archbishop Leighton beautifully 
 said, "It is but little we can receive here, some 
 
 *Lowe Dickinson. 
 
278 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 drops of joy that enter into us; but there we 
 shall enter into joy, as vessels put into a sea 
 of happiness." 
 
 The Christian believes this. He has learned 
 it not only from the teaching of Jesus and of 
 Paul, but he has been led into the blessed ex- 
 perience as his own. He now accepts life as 
 God has appointed it to him, but he interro- 
 gates it at every point. He asks, "Whence? 
 Why? Whither?'^ because he knows that be- 
 hind and beyond is reality. Here we never 
 can attain. Beyond is the goal of all and the 
 interpretation of existence; beyond is the 
 larger world of which this world is the smallest 
 and least significant part. It is but the portal 
 to the temple ; but the preparation for the life ; 
 but the preparatory school for the larger 
 knowledge and service. Money and pleasure 
 and power belong to the things of sense and 
 perish with the senses. Character and the 
 soul and love and truth and God are beyond. 
 All these are to be found in Christ, and no- 
 where else. The phrase, "In Christ," is the 
 expression of that larger world, that truer life. 
 
 "In Christ" also lies the divine help which 
 alone bridges the gulf between this life and 
 the other. We are "made alive in Christ." 
 "He chose us in him." In him we have "our 
 redemption, through his blood, the forgiveness 
 
THE SUPREME POSSESSION 279 
 
 of our trespasses, according to the riches of 
 his grace." Apart from Christ we should not 
 know life, and we should not know God. For 
 apart from Christ what have we? We have 
 nature ; and some would have us live according 
 to nature, as if reading its laws and being 
 obedient to its teachings we should attain the 
 real purpose of being. But what is nature? 
 It is like Niagara. "It is force without direc- 
 tion, noise without significance, speed with- 
 out accomplishment. All day and all night 
 the water rushes and roars. It does nothing, 
 it has no significance. There is no progress. 
 It is always the same river. New waves suc- 
 ceed others forever, but always the old forms, 
 always the same tale, the victory of the strong 
 over the weak, of the active over the reflective, 
 of intelligence over intellect."^ 
 
 Life is always the same old enigma. The 
 "Why?'' and the "To what end?'' are never 
 answered. To men in this world of nature and 
 sin Jesus came. In him is life that leads to 
 God. What we cannot do he does for us. He 
 pardons ; he renews ; he teaches and leads. "In 
 Christ" is all. We find deliverance from the 
 past, strength for the present, hope for the 
 future. In proportion as we are in him we 
 live. To the old elder, asking the Scotch lassie, 
 
 *Lowe Dickinson, 
 
280 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 "How do you know you are a Christian?" she 
 answered, "Why, he saved my soul!" That 
 was an explanation that no interrogations and 
 no fears could disturb. "I gave up all for 
 him," said John Calvin, "and what have I 
 found? I have found everything in him." 
 Having Christ, being in him, we need no more. 
 The heart knows its possession, and that is 
 enough. 
 
XXV 
 
 THE CHALLENGE TO THE CHRISTIAN 
 CHURCH 
 
 "And I lifted up my eyes, and saw, and, behold, a man 
 with a measuring line in his hand." — Zechaeiah 2. 1. 
 
 This is a prophetic picture of a man of the 
 world passing judgment on the Church. In- 
 terrogated as to his purpose, he says, "It is to 
 measure Jerusalem, to see what is the breadth 
 thereof and the length thereof." He is further 
 described as a young man, evidently full of 
 new knowledge, as is the young man of to-day, 
 and, like the young man of to-day, eager to 
 apply that knowledge to the right and the left, 
 and, especially, to the Church of God, which 
 demands so much and occupies so large a 
 place. 
 
 The interpreting angel, who talks with the 
 prophet, explains the purpose of the vision, 
 with the sententious utterance, "Jerusalem 
 shall be inhabited as villages without walls,'' 
 or, as it was given in the Authorized Version, 
 "as towns without walls." 
 
 At once we have the picture of the modern 
 city, as distinct from the ancient one, sug- 
 
 281 
 
282 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 gested to us bj some European cities, where 
 within the modern city is stiU to be seen the 
 old town shut in within the circle of what re- 
 mains of the ancient walls. The walls were 
 once a necessity for its preservation; but the 
 constricting power of the wall not only pre- 
 vented growth, but compelled the inhabitants 
 to adjust their lives to ever-narrowing condi- 
 tions. When the day of the new city came its 
 characteristic was that it burst through the 
 walls like overflowing waters, covering the 
 adjacent territory and rapidly developing en- 
 tirely new conditions, until we have the mod- 
 ern city, transcending all bounds, leaping over 
 all restraints, growing by incalculable forces 
 in ways that cannot be forecast, and at a rate 
 that is not readily to be estimated, as it eats 
 up the adjacent fields and draws to itself an 
 ever-increasing proportion of the population 
 of the state. There were great cities in an- 
 cient days, but they were great only as they 
 were able to sustain and extend their walls. 
 The vision of the prophet was of a new day and 
 of a new life. It was a vision hard for him to 
 understand, but open and intelligible to us. 
 
 The message is for the Church of to-day. 
 The world is full of new thought, and the 
 young man with the measuring line stands 
 as the expression of it. He comes with his 
 
CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH 283 
 
 new science. He points to new social condi- 
 tions and marks the contrast which the 
 Church seems to present. The air is burdened 
 with the cries of all the new movements. So- 
 cialism is rampant in the political world. 
 Protestantism is said to be in decay. The 
 Christians are weak in faith, insincere in their 
 professions, and unworthy in their life. Ko- 
 man Catholicism is held up in contrast as hav- 
 ing more efficient organization, a more aggres- 
 sive policy, and succeeding where Protestant- 
 ism is said to fail ; and this in face of the fact 
 that it represents a discredited authority, a 
 disproved creed, and a corrupting despotism. 
 The young man finds it not hard to apply his 
 measuring rod, and to pronounce authoritative 
 judgment upon the Christian Church. You 
 hear his voice on all sides, and everywhere he 
 is impatient of question or reply. 
 
 To him and to his kind comes God^s answer : 
 Jerusalem is a city without walls. Your meas- 
 uring line is out of place. Here work is going 
 forward under conditions which you cannot 
 understand, and obedient to forces for which 
 you have no standards of measurement. You 
 might as well attempt to measure electricity 
 with a yardstick, or light with a bushel basket, 
 or love with a pair of scales. The Lord is do- 
 ing his own work in the world with an agency 
 
284 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 that is entirely outside of your comprehension. 
 The Lord will be "a wall of fire round about 
 her.'' Zion shall shake off her bondage. Her 
 enemies shall be a spoil. The Lord shall in- 
 herit Judah, and dwell in the midst of her. 
 She is the apple of his eye, at once his care and 
 his glory. 
 
 So far the prophet. We might stop with 
 this and let it stand as a picture, to find its 
 own interpretation in the unfolding of the 
 kingdom of God ; but it shall serve to turn our 
 attention to certain foundation truths. 
 
 The first of these is that religion is a matter 
 of the soul, an attitude toward God. This con- 
 stitutes a distinction that is real and valid. 
 As a matter of fact, in his immediate life man 
 is to be found out of relation with God. In 
 the light of our understanding of ourselves 
 and our reading of human history we are justi- 
 fied in calling this abnormal. The world 
 recognizes this more or less constantly, and 
 continually offers explanations and seeks de- 
 vices by which men can be explained to them- 
 selves, or helped into conditions in which hu- 
 man life shall appear more reasonable, and the 
 ever-present burden of its insufficiency and its 
 abnormality be lifted from men's hearts. 
 
 The gospel of Christ brings at once the ex- 
 planation and the cure. It seeks to plant a 
 
CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH 285 
 
 new life in the hearts of men, a life so different 
 in its characteristics and its goal, so sufficient 
 in the forces by which it is maintained, that 
 it supersedes the old life, changing its abnor- 
 mality into a just and normal and permanent 
 relation to God. It brings the assurance of 
 pardon for the past, a new strength for the 
 present, and assured guidance for the future. 
 The man who accepts it finds himself at once 
 in new relations to God ; a new love takes pos- 
 session of his heart ; a new sense of divine com- 
 panionship fills his soul; and a new hope and 
 a new courage at once begin to reveal them- 
 selves in the presence and the tasks of his 
 daily life. 
 
 The challenge of the world is to ignore or to 
 deny this change. It points out the great 
 progress that the world is making in all direc- 
 tions, and the growing adjustment everywhere 
 of life and thought among civilized and culti- 
 vated people, to what are called the Christian 
 standards. It minimizes the distinction be- 
 tween the Church and the world, and it ap- 
 proves and encourages every effort on the part 
 of the Church to busy itself with remedying 
 the evils of society and of the state. It would 
 make this the supreme test of the real value 
 of the Church, and as far as possible limit its 
 function to this service. Under the pressure 
 
286 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 felt on every side, the Church is tempted to 
 yield to it, and finds herself continually strug- 
 gling to meet new conditions by new forms 
 of philanthropic or civic service, while she ex- 
 plains away her distinctive doctrines and dep- 
 recates her own history and traditions; until 
 the Church is to be seen in many a community 
 preaching a diluted gospel and apparently 
 conscious of no message either to the satisfied 
 sinner or the sorrowing penitent. It was in 
 view of this that Professor Francis Peabody, 
 of Cambridge, felt himself called in a recent 
 address in Chicago to say that the Church is 
 diverted from her original purpose of redeem- 
 ing and sanctifying the individual soul. She 
 is substituting clubs, gymnasiums, dispensa- 
 ries, and the like, and diminishing her devo- 
 tion to worship that she may apply her 
 energies to work. The practice of the Presence 
 of God is easily forgotten in the practice of the 
 service of man. An industrial revolution is 
 sought in the place of the spiritual evolution. 
 Christians are so busy doing good that they 
 have no time to be good. 
 
 The warning comes to us that the primary 
 business of the Church is to change men^s 
 hearts. Like a railway train off the track, or 
 a ship at sea without chart or compass, a man 
 whose heart is not right with God can only 
 
CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH 287 
 
 wander more or less aimlessly, or exert him- 
 self with little satisfaction for his own peace 
 or the welfare of others. 
 
 This is the day of the specialist. Nowhere 
 are men satisfied unless work is done as well 
 as it can be done by one who has devoted him- 
 self to the doing of that particular thing until 
 he can do it better than others. The specialist 
 has his limitations. But, for all that, the world 
 is making progress, and the world is eager in 
 its activity because it knows the value of the 
 specialist, and has adopted as its motto, 
 "Every man to his task." The Church is a 
 specialist in the work of saving souls. Her 
 primary business is adjusting men to God, and 
 in that way adjusting them to life. If she 
 gives up that work for any other she will not 
 only fail in her great business, but she will 
 lose the respect of the community. These 
 other things she may, and indeed must, find 
 desirable to do, for we are to live in this world 
 and do our part like men; but the other she 
 must not leave undone under penalty of losing 
 her inheritance. 
 
 Furthermore, it is to be noted that the 
 change that religion works is not to be meas- 
 ured in outward things. It is not measured 
 by our knowledge, nor our success, nor our 
 wealth, but by an inner relation to God, by 
 
288 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 peace and love and faith and joy and hope; 
 for these, and not the others, are the "fruits of 
 the Spirit.'^ It crowds a man back upon his 
 inner self. It begins by requiring honest and 
 thorough self-examination. It exalts the impor- 
 tance of motive, and sets a man to the difficult 
 and often unpleasant task of holding the 
 mirror of truth up to himself, and judging 
 the character of his own thoughts and words 
 by their relation to Jesus Christ. John Stuart 
 Mill said, "I have learned from experience 
 that any false opinions may be changed for 
 true ones without in the least altering the 
 habits of mind of which false opinions are the 
 result.'' The Church brings right opinions to 
 substitute for false ones, but she does not make 
 the mistake of teaching that her work is ac- 
 complished when men have simply changed 
 their opinions. The essence of faith is to plant 
 leaven in a man's heart, which will work out 
 in his life in proportion as his heart is changed. 
 We are eager to substitute external au- 
 thority for internal examination and disci- 
 pline, and are better satisfied with changes 
 which appear to men and are approved by 
 them than we are by that change in our own 
 spirits which can only be wrought by the 
 Spirit of God when a man subjects himself 
 with earnest purpose to his guidance. We are 
 
CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH 289 
 
 glad if we can be acquitted of the toil and bur- 
 den of responsibility by shifting it upon some 
 external authority, particularly on an impos- 
 ing Church or a dogmatic priesthood. And in 
 the same spirit we long for visible changes, 
 immediate and structural, in society and in 
 politics, which shall mark our adhesion to the 
 Church and to Christ. Responsible external 
 authority and visible material good press to 
 the front, even where Christianity is presented 
 in the humblest form, and at the price of the 
 greatest personal sacrifice. When the French 
 missionary, Francois Coillard, stood before 
 the Barotsi king, who for many months had 
 kept him at the frontier of his country and 
 only at last reluctantly permitted him to come 
 into his presence to deliver his message, after 
 the missionary had spoken to the king and his 
 attendant chiefs for an hour, delivering to 
 them the message of the gospel, the king im- 
 patiently interrupted, saying: "You come to 
 me, the ambassador of the Prince of Peace, you 
 say, and you bring only words ! I thought at 
 least 3^ou would give me guns!" And when 
 afterward the war broke out between England 
 and the Zulus and the missionary was charged 
 by the natives with the failure of his religion 
 to control the Christian nations from whom 
 he had come, he turned sorrowfully to his 
 
290 BEHIND THE WORLD AND BEYOND 
 
 tent and wrote in his journal, ^'If we cannot 
 influence nations, we can go on saving souls." 
 It was this recognition of the supreme purpose 
 of his calling, and the independence of his work 
 in the hearts of men from the measures which 
 the world continually seeks to apply from the 
 outside life, that gave him the courage to live 
 through those terrible years, and, at last, when 
 his work was done and the cross was planted 
 in the heart of Central Africa so firmly as 
 never to be uprooted, to lay his own body for 
 its last resting i)lace in the soil which he had 
 thus won for Christ by winning men one by 
 one to his gospel. 
 
 The third abiding truth is that this work of 
 the Church is God's work rather than ours. 
 Therefore she knows no bounds. Zion is a 
 "city without walls.'' She delights in difficult 
 things. She knows no impossibilities. The 
 poorest man responds to the summons to rise 
 above himself. He becomes a God-made man. 
 "Show him that," as Carlyle said, "and the 
 dullest drudge kindles into a hero." The ques- 
 tion of the hour to the Church is not. What is 
 your demand? but. What is your gospel? not. 
 What is 3^our range? but, What is your power? 
 What is the life that you have? 
 
 If the Church is filled with the Spirit of God, 
 if she relies on God for her strength and her 
 
CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH 291 
 
 Hfe, then her power and her possibilities of 
 usefulness are not to be measured at any given 
 time by her size in comparison with other in- 
 stitutions, or by her visible activities. 
 
 We want activity. We want boldness and 
 we want conquest. But true religion has sim- 
 plicity, purity, blamelessness, love, faith, 
 sweetness. It grows as the hearts of men open 
 for the indwelling of the Spirit of God. 
 
 The true Christian cares little for rights, 
 but much for privilege, the privilege of service 
 to God and men. If a man seeks his own ad- 
 vantage it is of little use giving him political 
 power, or changing his material surroundings. 
 The advance of men in civilization is not to 
 be measured so much by improvement in ma- 
 terial CQuditions as by self-imposed restric- 
 tions cheerfull}^ adopted for the sake of others. 
 A Church may have breadth and length, as 
 the state may have prosperity and dominion, 
 and not be Christian. She must have height ; 
 that is, have extension toward God. When that 
 is true of any. Church, and the Spirit of God 
 dwells manifestly within her, she may well 
 be fearless of criticism and of greed, or of the 
 young man with the measuring rod. Her life 
 shall be that of a city without walls, and 
 Jehovah will be her glory. This is the con- 
 viction we are summoned to hold fast; 
 
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