1 N BV A821 .K57 1914 King, Henry Melville. Thinking God's thoughts after Him LOslCT K Thinking God's Thoughts After Him #»^ OF ^mc A RETIRED MAN'S MEDITATIOl By JUN 8 19] ^r^ 2ilC\0M %^ HENRY MELVILLE KING, D.D. PASTOR EMERITUS OF THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, PROVIDENCE, R. I. Author of "Mary's Alabaster Box," "Our Gosptls," The Messiah in the Psalms," "Why We Believe the Bible," "Religious Liberty," "The Baptism of Roger Williams," "John Mylis," "Sir Henry Vane, Jr." etc, etc. ^■ L\oro\x^i o-j rsl:-t-. BOSTON: THE GORHAM PRESS TORONTO: THE COPP CLARK CO., LIMITED Copyright, 1914, by Henry M. King All Rights Reserved The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. PREFACE It is for the purpose of encouraging men to think God's thoughts after Him that these chap- ters containing some of " the meditations of a retired man " (to borrow a phrase from Sir Henry Vane, Jr.) have been collected, and are offered to the public. God's thoughts, when they become man's thoughts, determine character and destiny. '* You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," said the infallible Teacher sent from God for the distinct purpose of making known to men the mind and will of the Father. The original plan in preparing this little vol- ume for the press contemplated a short preface on " Certainty of Faith." But that important topic would not allow Itself to be compressed within the limits of a narrow preface, but claimed a chapter, though brief, for itself. The discussion is still altogether too brief, measured by the importance of the theme. It will serve, however, to suggest the possibility and the necessity of having a definite apprehension of that definite, saving " faith once delivered to the saints." May the promised Spirit of Truth bless every effort, however hum- 3 4 PREFACE ble, put forth In the interest of a positive religious faith, and still perform his gracious office of guid- ing inquiring minds Into all the truth, Henry M. King. Providence, R. I. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Certainty of Faith 9 II. The Bible, Our Great Educational As- set 32 III. The Church of Christ in the Nine- teenth Century 135 IV. Peace and Light on the Cross, an Inter- pretation 210 V. Mrs. Emma Willard, the Pioneer in the Higher Education of Women , . . 234 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS AFTER HIM Thinking God's Thoughts CHAPTER I CERTAINTY OF FAITH CAN we know the mind of God? Of course the finite mind cannot fully comprehend the Infinite Mind. But it is generally believed that God has revealed Himself in the moral nature of man, who was created in his image; in the physi- cal universe which, as the Psalmist affirmed, de- clares his glory; in his dealings with his intelli- gent creatures, which have enabled men to say, "There is a Divinity which shapes our ends"; and above all in the Revelation which we call pre- eminently and in harmony with its own claims, " the Word of God "; and it is believed that He has revealed Himself sufficiently to meet all the practical purposes of this life, and to instruct and prepare men for the life to come. The great Teacher said, " This is life eternal to know Thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." Man's highest ambition and chief 9 lo THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS glory should be, as far as possible, to know the mind of God, and to think his thoughts after Him. All other knowledge is unsatisfying and unim- portant in comparison with this. Man's tendency is to philosophize about what is revealed, and to speculate beyond what is re- vealed, and hence we have changing and contra- dictory views of religious truth, and idle conjec- tures, which are born of human ignorance, and have only a human basis of authority. A safe and incontrovertible canon of interpretation is this: "The obvious meaning of the Word of God is the Word of God," as binding in the twentieth century as in the second. To affirm that Christianity has not a definite historical quantity is to repudiate it altogether. It would seem that with so many sources of knowledge there should be a satisfying degree of fullness and a reasonable degree of unanimity. The truth of God does not change, and is always made known as the truth of God to the willing and obedient spirit. " He that willeth to do his will shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." The truth of God is unaffected by divergent In- terpretations, or by changing climes or centuries. Some people are led astray, it is to be feared, by the specious plea that truth must be expressed in CERTAINTY OF FAITH ii terms of modern thought, which often covers a wide departure from or an actual denial of the truth of God. As it is frequently used it covers a multitude of heresies. Some theologians seem to have adopted the famous saying of Heraclitus, " All things are in a state of flux, and nothing abides." The faith of yesterday is discarded and outgrown to-day by reason of supposed new light. The old and the tested must give place to the ever-changing modern, and the more modern the modern is the more acceptable it sometimes seems to be, until a recent English writer, himself a mod- ernist, is constrained to declare that *' Modern lives of Christ have become too modern." In like manner it may be said that some modern in- terpretations of the Bible and revealed religion are too modern. If the modern thought of to- day is to give way to the more modern thought of to-morrow, the time will soon come, if it has not come already in some quarters, when Christ will not be able to recognize his own Gospel, and the note of finality and universality which rings out clearly and unmistakably in the great commis- sion, will be silenced forever. Another English writer declares that American Christianity is now divided into two schools. " The one is ortho- dox. . . . The other school seems to have sacri- ficed almost everything which makes Christianity 12 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS distinct from a temporary philosophy. Its mem- bers have the bad habit of preaching eugenics in the place of the Gospel. They appear to be afraid of the great Epistles and the nobler pas- sages of the Gospels, and are apt to speak in terms which would suggest that there was nothing dis- tinctive in Christianity which can make it an ab- solute and universal faith. They have become afraid of the historian and the natural scientist. Unless they are careful they will prove to have sold the pass to the enemy from an unmanly and needless timidity." Professor Josiah Royce in " The Problem of Christianity " frankly says, *' What views or types of views are, or ought to be, characteristic of the modern man, hardly any of us will wholly agree in defining. And if there is any typical modern man, he would seem, at first sight, to be a creature of a day. To-morrow some other sort of modern man must take his place. And of the modern man of a future cen- tury we now cannot even know the race, much less, it would seem, the religious creed." We are hearing much in these days about " a progressive revelation," a phrase which probably does not always mean the same thing on different lips. No one doubts that God, the God of na- tions and of our lives, is constantly revealing Him- self in human history and in personal experience CERTAINTY OF FAITH 13 to those who are wise enough to detect his pres- ence and his guiding purpose. But when the technical term, Revelation, is employed, as it con- stantly is, to denote the plan of salvation unfolded in the Bible in the prophetic history of God's ancient people and in the life, teachings, death, resurrection and completed mission of his only begotten Son, our Lord, it can be called progres- sive only in the sense of an advancing conquest to itself of the faith of men and nations, but not in the sense of an increase or modification of its original content and substance. Christ com- manded that his Gospel, the Gospel which He committed to his disciples, should be preached in all the world to every creature. The apostle Paul expressed his astonishment that men should for a moment be tempted to surrender that Gos- pel for another, which was " not another," and pronounced an anathema upon those who yielded to the temptation. Christ's Gospel could not be duplicated or outgrown. For it there was no possible substitute, and never would be. President Arthur T. Hadley, speaking of " some influences in modern philosophic thought," says truly enough, " Fashions in thinking have changed nearly as fast as fashions in dress. Sys- tem has succeeded system with bewildering fre- quency. The idol of to-day is the antiquarian 14 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS curiosity of to-morrow." But when he or others imply that similar changes are to be expected and are actually taking place, not only in the fashion of religious thinking, but in the substance of re- vealed truth, so that they constitute a progressive revelation, the implications are utterly without warrant. President Hadley says, " The poet of to-day, like the Hebrew poets of old, is essentially a prophet, the bearer of a progressive revelation; one of a historical chain of seers, feeling after God, if haply they may find Him, and each in his own way bringing men a little nearer to the truth." There seems to be ample evidence that the inspired Psalmist not only felt after God, but that he actually found Him, and that his inspira- tion was of a unique kind, altogether different from that of Kipling and Walt Whitman, more authoritative and commanding than theirs, a bet- ter and truer and more trustworthy revealer of God and duty and the spiritual nature of man, and not only not surpassed by, but not to be classed with, the progressive inspiration of the latest modern poets. As an illustration of the continued progress in the fashion and substance of poetic religious think- ing. President Hadley makes the following com- parison. " No longer do we content ourselves with saying, as Tennyson did. CERTAINTY OF FAITH 15 " Our wills are ours, we know not how, s Our wills are ours to make them thine." We deem it a truer, as well as a nobler conception of life, to say with the more modern poet, '■ East and west and north, wherever the battle grew, Forth to a feast we fared, the work of the will to do. Pillar of cloud by day, by night a pillar of fire, Sons of the will, we fought the fight of the will, our sire." We are prompted to ask, is it true that this is " a truer and nobler conception of life," that the enthronement of the human will is indicative of genuine progress? Is not the submission of the human will to the divine will, and its harmoniza- tion with the revealed will of God, the method and the secret of the highest manhood? Christ disclosed the supreme motive and Inspiration of his perfect life, when He declared, " I came not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me." It would seem, then, that the " pro- gressive revelation " so called, as manifested in recent poetry, carries us not only beyond the teaching of Tennyson and David, but even beyond the wisdom of God as revealed in the teaching of Jesus Christ. What the next generation of poets, " the bearers of a progressive revelation," will attain unto we can scarcely imagine. We must modestly confess with Professor Royce, " we 1 6 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS now cannot even know the race, much less the re- ligious creed." But in all seriousness, the truth of God, re- vealed In his Word, If it Is the truth of God, should control and determine modern thought, and not be controlled and modified by it. New thought is not always or necessarily true thought. A change of view is often mistaken for growth and progress. That there is a legitimate growth and progress, the Scriptures plainly avow. But " growth In grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ " cannot be under- stood as meaning the rejection of revealed truth or a modification of It, but evidently a deeper ap- prehension and a richer experience of it, not a growth out of, but a growth in and into, that Is the normal and expected development of the be- liever In Christ by the use of the means which He has provided from the beginning, for the use of the earliest disciples and also of the latest. In his able volume, " The Christian View of God and the World" (p. 25), Dr. James Orr says, " Bit by bit, as the ages go on, we see more clearly the essential lineaments of the truth as It Is in Jesus; we learn to disengage the genuine truths of Christ's Gospel from human additions and cor- ruptions; we apprehend their bearings and rela- tions with one another, and with new truths, more CERTAINTY OF FAITH 17 distinctly; we see them in new points of view, de- velop and apply them in new ways. All this is true, and it is needful to remember it, lest to temporary points of view, and human theories and formulations, we attribute an authority and completeness which In no way belong to them. But it does not by any means follow from this that, therefore, everything in Christianity Is fluent, — that it has no fixed starting-points, no definite basal lines, no sure and moveless foundations, no grand determinative positions which control and govern all thought within distinctly Christian limits, — still less that, in the course of its long history, theology has achieved nothing, or has reached no results which can fairly be regarded as settled." The strangest delusion of our times Is the exaltation of the fickle and illusive Zeitgeist to the position of supreme arbiter In the realm of revealed truth. Anyone familiar with the prog- ress of religious discussion through the Christian centuries knows that the so-called modern thought is not so modern, for the most part, after all. Every truth of revelation has been called in ques- tion again and again in the long past by the sup- posed spirit of the time, and over against It has been arrayed the " new thought " which has had its little day and won a limited following. Dis- carded error ever and anon Is revived, and poses 1 8 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS . as newly discovered truth. One of the best pre- ventives against erroneous views of religious truth, is familiarity with church history. In a volume which has been recently published, entitled " Foundations of Christian Belief in Terms of Modern Thought," and containing es- says by seven Oxford men, the foundations have been so effectually undermined that the reader is compelled to ask, " If the foundations be de- stroyed, what shall the righteous do? " One of the seven essayists, having repudiated the au- thority of the Scriptures as well as of the Church, declares, " Forms and habits of thought change from age to age, and thus in a limited sense new theologies are required." He is constrained to say, however, " But unless we are to suppose the Christian thinkers of the past to have done their work wholly amiss, we ought not to expect to find the new theologies turning out to be radically at variance with the old. Human nature, after all, varies but little from age to age, and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day and forever." He then strangely adds, " He who would teach a new truth or reject an old, . . . must face the prima facie likelihood that his own prophecy may turn out false." It would be a thought distressing beyond expression that the ultimate truth, the saving truth of God, the wisdom that is able to CERTAINTY OF FAITH 19 make wise unto salvation and eternal life, has not been apprehended by the fathers, and is not at the present time positively attainable, and that we are consigned to the deplorable condition of those who are " ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." The essential truths of Christianity are facts, not fancies or theories. The fundamentals though often assailed, are among the things which " cannot be shaken." Men may differ as to non- essentials, but be solid as to the fundamentals. The mythical theory of interpretation has received little favor at the judgment-bar of enlightened human reason. There is a wonderful harmony and consistency between the character and the words and the deeds of Christ, Accept the fact of his supernatural origin and nature, and all else is supernaturally natural; it is just what would be expected, and occasions no surprise. The person of Christ stands out in clear outline like the sum- mit of some lofty mountain against a cloudless sky, not cold and snow-capped, but warm, glow- ing and glorified in the light of the setting sun; rather He is like the sun itself, shedding his light upon the loftiest summits of human thought and into the deepest valleys of human experience. He is the great outstanding miracle of Christianity. He still lives in the lives and the institutions of 20 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS men and nations. He was taken up out of the sight of his followers, but his influence yet sur- vives, increasing from century to century. Every new generation in the progress of the Christian centuries is adding its additional weight to the in- creasing volume of Christian evidences. The highest civilization shows abundant fruits of Christ's presence and influence in the world. As another has said, " Christ has changed the map of the world." As you cannot classify Him, neither can you annihilate Him. The doubter and denier, not the believer, is compelled to at- tempt the task, of justifying himself in the eyes of men. Dr. Jesse B. Thomas has said, " If Christians believe the Bible superhuman, and ac- cept the revelation it makes of things beyond proof on its testimony, they show themselves neither unscientific nor unphilosophic." " Probability is the guide of life," as Bishop Butler long ago wisely said. Christianity, at first believed on rea- sonable evidence to be of divine authority, offers to demonstrate that authority in personal experi- ence to him who will " do the will of God." Its eternal challenge is " come and see." Probabil- ity may be so convincing, when acted upon, as to become absolute certainty. If Christ and Christianity do not furnish a basis for certainty of faith, there is nothing trustworthy in human CERTAINTY OF FAITH 21 knowledge, history or experience, the history of men and of nations is nothing but a dream, and the world itself a great unreality. There may be honest doubt in a mind willing to be convinced and honestly seeking after truth, but not yet wholly persuaded of its validity. Such a mind is never kept waiting long. Christ will come to it as to Thomas, and lead it from a state of painful uncertainty to a full confession and an assured peace. But it is easy for a man to de- ceive himself. He may think he is simply in doubt and in a state of uncertainty, when he is already rooted and grounded in error. " The heart is deceitful above all things." A Scotch- man is reported to have said, " he was willing to be convinced, but he should like to see the man who could convince him." A man's so-called doubts may be little less than bald and obstinate denials. Dr. Van Dyke speaks of men " whose doubts were more dogmatic than dogmas." Prof. Shailer Mathews says, " There is no dogmatism so intolerant as that of unbelief." To deny a truth is to affirm its opposite. A creed of negations, if it was possible, would be as useless as it would be morally indefensible. Faith, and faith alone, gives strength of character and of purpose. The will to believe is a sacred right, and is as indicative of intellectual freedom as the will to 22 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS deny. In revealed religion, as well as in accepted science and accredited history, there are certain well established and unalterable facts, which con- stitute a creed. To hold such a creed is no sac- rifice or infringement of personal liberty or in- tellectual freedom. Liberty is not lawlessness and unrestrained license. True freedom is not freedom to do wrong or to believe a falsehood. Civil liberty is liberty regulated by law. Intel- lectual liberty is liberty regulated by truth. If revealed truth, clearly enunciated and easily com- prehended, does not hold men, their freedom is not the freedom that truth imparts. Openness of mind does not imply emptiness of mind, or a mind that contains no ascertained beliefs, and no deposit of sacred and verifiable truth. Unset- tledness of conviction is no evidence of superior intellectuality. Great thinkers have been great believers from the days of Paul and Augustine to Jonathan Edwards, and from Jonathan Edwards until now, who have believed that God, in his in- finite wisdom and grace, has given to the world a permanent and authoritative standard of faith, and have been unaffected by the ever changing, anti-evangelical Zeitgeist, which has been much more formidable and influential in other days than it is at the present time. Doubt is now, as Dr. Jesse B. Thomas has said, one manifestation of CERTAINTY OF FAITH 23 " the universal restlessness of our time which pro- tests against the intrusion of authority in any sphere. In politics, in industrial life, in social ethics, in domestic relations, in fashion of dress, in amusement, in journalism, in literature, in personal behavior, there is a defiant and almost deafening outcry against the tyranny of ' tradition,' of con- ventionality, of custom, o'f fixity in law or institu- tion. Every existing institution becomes the sub- ject of criticism and of proposed readjustment to fit the needs of the Zeitgeist. It might well be expected, then, that a new fashion in religion would be also proposed." It is claiming too much to assert that all present theological dissent is the result of accurate scholarship or of unusual mental acumen and a careful reweighing of the grounds of religious belief. Many Biblical scholars on both sides of the Atlantic, of recognized standing, find the legitimate scholarship of the present time strongly confirmatory of faith in the Bible as the Word of God. Fresh attacks always call forth fresh and stronger defenses. To possess no fixed, settled convictions, instead of being commendable and matter of boasting, may be proof of culpable neglect or intellectual impotence. Certainty of belief produces the truest spiritual liberty as well as abiding peace of mind. The possession of 24 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS truth is infinitely better than the fruitless and end- less search after truth. Moreover, instead of vainly exploring the un- known and the unknowable, and indulging in un- verifiable and useless speculations, men should rejoice that so much has been made known, and hold fast to the truth which has been plainly re- vealed. An aged minister once said to my youth- ful mind, perplexed by the mysteries of life and death, of God and the future, as we came away from a funeral-service in which we both had par- ticipated, " Let us not be troubled about the un- known, which a wise God has not seen fit to re- veal; let us rather thank God that we know so much." Christ's mission was not a failure. He said, " I speak the things which I have seen with my Father," and declared Himself to be " the way and the truth and the life." He was " God man- ifest in the flesh." He conditioned discipleship, spiritual freedom, salvation, eternal life upon the knowledge of his Word and continuance therein. He is still " the light that lighteth every man that Cometh into the world." His light can never be dimmed or superseded. All human lights pale before it. He is the central sun in the moral and spiritual heavens. To be his disciples and learn of Him is to walk in the light, which can never CERTAINTY OF FAITH 25 lose its Illuminating and life-giving power, and is destined to dispel the darkness of doubt and ig- norance and sin, which now beclouds human minds. Certainty of faith can be found in Jesus Christ, and is ever authenticating itself in Chris- tian experience. The fathers had great strength of faith and clearness of faith, because they had deep and thorough experiences. It is not only true, as Goethe says, that " What you have inherited from your fathers, you must earn for yourself before you can call it yours," but it Is also true that what- ever of religious faith you have Inherited from your fathers you must experience for yourself be- fore you can truly call It yours. Experience not only holds the title deed of faith, but it is Its test and Its certain verification, " Now we believe," said the Samaritan villagers, " not because of thy saying, for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is Indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world." Robertson Smith makes this confession, " If I am asked why I receive Scripture as the Word of God and as the only perfect rule of faith and life, I answer with all the Fathers of the Protestant Church, because the Bible Is the only record of the redeeming love of God, because in the Bible alone I find God drawing near to man in Christ 26 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS Jesus, and declaring to us in Him his will for our salvation, and this record I know to be true by the witness of his Spirit in my heart, whereby I am assured that none other than God Himself is able to speak such words to my soul." An experimental religion is the only religion that has value, and the only religion that gives promise of permanence. No man is qualified to judge Christian truth, or to determine its reality and genuineness, unless he has seen Its fruits and felt its power In his own soul. His spiritual sen- sibilities must be first quickened and his spiritual eye opened. " These things are spiritually dis- cerned." A faith which is deeply rooted In per- sonal experience Is not likely to weaken or change or perish. Modern doubt and infidelity are often born of a lack of experience or of a religion of form and ceremony, which lays the supreme em- phasis upon some outward act or rite, and ignores the Inward life. What is needed in our time and In all times to preserve our Christianity as a di- vine and authoritative religion for the world is not a new interpretation or a new philosophy of re- ligion or a progressive revelation (if such a thing were possible and within the power of man to accomplish), but a deeper and richer experience of the truth as it is in Jesus, men who believe be- cause they have tasted and tested, and have felt CERTAINTY OF FAITH 27 their souls responding penitently, humbly, affec- tionately and approvingly to the great unchanging verities of revealed truth. We are not straitened in God or in his truth, which is able to save to the utmost in this and every generation, but we are straitened in ourselves. The deeper experience will give certainty to faith in the pulpit and in the pew. Ministers will then be indeed ambassadors for Christ, bearing a certain, distinct message. They will " preach the Word," not human opinion which changes from year to year, and possibly from week to week, but God's truth, divine, authoritative, un- alterable, and divinely adapted to the spiritual needs of men. Whether the hearers believe what the preacher preaches or not, they must believe that he believes it, and that he believes it to be God's message entrusted to him. Otherwise the influence of his preaching will be nil, and worse than nil. A minister without definite faith, born of a vital Christian experience and certified as to its divine character, would be out of place in a Christian pulpit. He has mistaken his calling. President Henry Churchill King does not hesi- tate to say, " The moral or spiritual prophet, who speaks, as out of his own insight, what he has only caught up from another, is himself a fraud, and cannot help another into reality of life." 28 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS A minister of Christ cannot know everything. There are vast reahns of knowledge beyond his ken. But there are some things which he must know, and know for a certainty, if he would be a faithful steward of the grace of God. The Christian pulpit stands for a distinct something in all lands and in all ages. It is founded upon a definite message, which has created it and justi- fies its existence. It is to give no uncertain sound, but an authentic proclamation of prescribed truth. It is not a searcher after truth or a discoverer of new truth, but a possessor and proclaimer of ac- cepted truth. It is not an interrogation point, or a weather-cock veering with the changing wind. Its finger is the magnetized needle, pointing in- variably and surely to the star in the heavens. The true minister is to be a safe leader who knows the way through the wilderness of con- flicting opinions, and is able to guide others in it, a competent instructor who has himself been instructed and is not carried about by every wind of doctrine, and a believer whose faith rests se- curely upon the solid rock of revealed and ex- perienced truth, and who can say with humble assurance, " I know whom I have believed." Professor William Adams Brown of Union Theological Seminary says, " The world has a right to ask of the Christian minister that he CERTAINTY OF FAITH 29 knows what he believes and why he believes it. ... It has a right to ask of the man who speaks to it of God's continuing power to renew and to transform, that his own life should evidence the truth of his words," in others words, that the truth preached should be illustrated and confirmed in the experience of every preacher. A church that would save the world from the dominion and penalty of sin, and introduce it into the fellowship and peace of God, that would reform and purify society in all its diseased con- ditions and bring in the kingdom of Heaven, must know how to sing in the future as the church has loved to sing in the victorious past, that old eighteenth century hymn of unshaken confidence, " How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, Is laid for your faith in his excellent Word." If there is no certainty of faith, that hymn by George Keith must be discarded and expunged from our hymn books, as a past superstition, and its echoes only come down to us from a happier time. " Interpreted in terms of modern doubt " (a slight change in words, but possessing the old meaning as often used), it would read. You have no foundation, ye saints of the Lord, Laid up for your faith in his uncertain Word. But we are assured that the faith of Christ's 30 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS true followers is much more precious to Him than gold that perisheth, that the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his, and that the faith once delivered to the saints, unchanged and reg- nant, will continue to triumph over all error and denial, as well as over all the changing theories of so-called progressive thought. A faith that has wrought such marvelous transformations in human character and life, and has produced such conspicuous results in moral sentiment, in legisla- tion and government, in social customs and civi- lization itself, has proved its divine origin, and established its claim to be worthy of all accepta- tion. It needs not to be exchanged, and cannot be improved upon. It is to continue to be su- preme in the realm of moral and religious thought. As unfolded at the beginning, having upon it the stamp of Heaven's mint, it is to dominate all thinking, however modern, and to pass current to the end of the world. Like its divine Author it is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. Principal Fairbairn says, " You will find many a beautiful proverb in Seneca; you will get many a fine ethical principle in Plato ; you will find in Stoicism some of the most exalted precepts that human ethics have ever known. But mark you one thing, you will never discover that these ele- CERTAINTY OF FAITH 31 vatcd the common life of man, . . . made the bad good or the impure holy. Where they failed, Christ succeeded with splendid, glorious success. He made out of the very outcasts men that be- came saints of God." The late Dr. James Orr, to quote again from his able work on " The Chris- tian View of God and the World," uses these significant words: "I do not believe that the Christian view is obsolete; that it is doomed to go down like a faded constellation in the west of the sky of humanity. I do not believe that in order to preserve it, one single truth we have been accustomed to see shining in that constella- tion, will require to be withdrawn. The world needs them all, and will one day acknowledge it. It is not with a sense of failure, therefore, but with a sense of triumph, that I see the progress of the battle between faith and unbelief. I have no fear that the conflict will issue in defeat. Like the ark above the waters, Christ's religion will ride in safety the waves of present-day unbelief, as it has ridden the waves of unbelief in days gone by, bearing in it the hopes of the future of hu- manity." CHAPTER 11 THE BIBLE, OUR GREAT EDUCATIONAL ASSET THERE never was a time when the book or books which we call " The Book," was so much discussed as In recent years. Its origin, composition, authorship, authenticity, inspiration, authority, all these have been matters in constant debate. The " higher criticism," a term which is very misleading to those w^ho do not understand its meaning, its scope, its limitations and its re- sults, has done not a little to disturb the confidence of many persons in the Word of God as an au- thoritative revelation of truth. This discussion was not unexpected. Wise leaders saw the gathering clouds. President Henry G. Weston said, some years before his death in 1909, " The next great battle to be fought will be over the divine origin and authority of the Bible." Men began to issue publications with such titles as this, " The Gospel for an Age of Doubt." Friends and foes saw that the Bible was the Gibraltar of the Christian religion. On this issue the battle was joined. Dr. Weston lived to see his prophecy fulfilled. 32 THE BIBLE 33 It should be said that the term " higher criti- cism " denotes a kind of criticism, and not its character or quality. It signifies the study of the origin and authenticity of the books of the Bible, and their relation to the facts of history as well as to each other. There are critics and critics, some destructive and others constructive. Presi- dent E. G. Robinson said, " I am glad for the existence of the ' higher criticism.' It is ap- pointed of God like every other method of test- ing the truth of Christianity, to bring that truth more clearly to light." Unfortunately it has not always had that effect. There has been, however, of late a strong reaction In prominent circles in favor of the evangelical faith. The adverse criticisms had gone too far to carry the consent of intelligent, thinking men, and numerous conjec- tural opinions have been compelled to be aban- doned by the light of fuller investigation and modern discovery. The testimony of the monuments which contain contemporaneous records bearing upon the Old Testament especially, and which though buried In the sand for centuries have in the providence of God been unearthed at a time when especially needed, has given its unvarying confirmation to the truthfulness of the Sacred Scriptures, and we can await confidently further developments. Says 34 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS Professor George Frederick Wright, an acknowl- edged authority, " That this history should be confirmed in so many cases and in such a remarka- ble manner by monuments uncovered 3000 years after their erection, can be nothing else than provi- dential. Surely, God has seen to it that the fail- ing faith of these later days should not be left to grope in darkness. When the faith of many was waning, and many heralds of truth were tempted to speak with uncertain sound, the very stones have cried out with a voice that only the deaf could fail to hear." Moreover, men have come to recognize more fully than ever before the irresistible witness of the Bible to its own claims, its transforming in- fluence upon thought and literature, upon char- acter and life, upon the development of the in- dividual, the welfare of the community and the progress of nations. Men have too long been discussing " mint and anise and cummin," and are turning now to the weightier matters of faith and the fundamentals of the religious life and the soul's salvation. Four facts need to be recog- nized. The Bible is still here, and in the judg- ment of the great body of Biblical scholars still stands as " an impregnable rock." Christianity is still here, with its authoritative sanctions, its holy inspirations and its lofty ideals, unweakened and THE BIBLE 35 untarnished. The Church of Christ is still here, with a constantly widening influence and a con- stantly increasing fellowship, Christ is still here, with his imperative challenge to the faith, the love and the supreme devotion of the world, de- claring evermore, " All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth," and sending out his gracious invitatio,n which demands a courteous response, " Come unto me." Another fact should be recognized more than it is wont to be, viz., the preservative influence of the Bible. It is the Bible that has preserved Christianity as a definite system of religion, with its holy inspirations and lofty ideals, and saved it from degenerating into a lifeless deism or some form of natural religion, which neither satisfies nor saves. It is the Bible that has preserved the Church from decay and been to it its authorita- tive standard of faith, and its mighty instrument of conquest among men, sometimes calling it back from gross departures to a simple spiritual faith. It is the Bible that has kept living and vivid the portrait of Jesus Christ in the world, and preserved it from fading into an unreal and powerless myth. Christ is enshrined in the Bible, not as a gem in a beautiful setting, but as a living, breathing Presence, imparting life to its sacred pages and sharing with its truth his own immor- 36 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS tality. So long as Christ is its tenant, men need not fear for the ark of the Lord. The purpose of this paper is didactic, not con- troversial, to indicate the important and neces- sary place which this Bible, of which I have been speaking, must hold in any complete educational system, to suggest its supreme value as a part of our educational equipment. The Bible is con- fessedly the most unique and conspicuous book in the English language or in any language. It has been called " The greatest English classic." Sir Matthew Hale, Chief Justice of England, de- clared, " There is no book like the Bible for ex- cellent learning, wisdom and use." John Quincy Adams confessed, " The first and almost the only book deserving attention is the Bible." And Professor O. M. Mitchell, the devout Astronomer and patriotic General, expressed his belief that " The most wonderful volume in existence is, be- yond a doubt, the Bible." These testimonials, and other similar ones almost without number, from men eminent in every calling and profession in life, give to the Bible the supreme place in our literature, and in the mental and moral training of the race, a Book to be sacredly honored, to be devoutly studied and to be passionately loved. No other attainments can render a knowledge of this Book superfluous. It forms a necessary part THE BIBLE 37 of a liberal education. No man can claim to be a truly educated man who has not made himself familiar with the contents of this Book, and learned the lessons which it inculcates. There are five methods of studying the Bible, viz., the historical, the biographical, the literary, the ethical and the religious. All are important, but all are not equally important. But all are necessary to the complete mastery of the Book. I. The Bible contains the history of a remarka- ble people, called by way of distinction " God's ancient people "; of the development of its moral and religious life, of its solitary monotheistic faith, of its relations to other peoples friendly and hostile, of its survival under conquest and exile, and of the strange preparation in it and evolution out of it, of a religion which bears the name of " Christianity," which has proved to be the mightiest force in our modern civilization, and is destined to overcome all other religious faiths, and eventually to rule the world. Professor Ben- jamin W. Bacon of Yale University, speaking of Christianity as we know it, characterizes it in these words, *' The religion of humanity which it has become, and the world-religion which it is destined to be." All this is included in the his- torical study of the Jewish people, which inhabited a narrow strip of territory lying on the eastern 38 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS border of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory which though narrow and insignificant when com- pared with the great empires of the old world, was the thoroughfare of the nations, and whose history by reason of its connection with other lands, as well as by reason of its far reaching in- fluence, is an integral part of universal history. History is a legitimate study and forms an essential part in an educational curriculum. No education is complete and worthy of the name, which does not include a knowledge of Greece and Rome, of Egypt and Babylonia and Assyria, and even of the great empires of the farther East, India and Japan and China. Modern education lays a tremendous emphasis upon the study of the classic languages of Greece and Rome, and the history of the peoples who spoke them. Should it not give an equal place to the study of the his- tory of Israel and the land of Syria, which have had a mightier influence at least upon the life and civilization of the West than Greece and Rome combined? It is said, as if by way of explana- tion, that the Greeks had a genius for art, the Romans for law and government, and the Jews for religion. That is probably an explanation which does not wholly explain. But religion is as much a matter of history as art and government, and its study is certainly as broadening and illumi- THE BIBLE 39 nating, and as helpful to life and character, whether personal or national. Art found per- manent expression in architecture and the beauty of sculptured form. Law found permanent ex- pression in the Roman Pandects, a digest of the decisions and opinions of the Roman jurists made in the sixth century by order of the Emperor Jus- tinian. And religion found permanent expression in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, which have molded the thinking and conduct of men and the life of nations until now, and never more powerfully than at the present time. All this is history. To study the Bible historically is to be- come familiar not only with the external events of the Hebrew nation, marvelous as some of them were, but with its spirit, its genius and its faith, and with the beginnings of the religion founded by Him of whom Jean Paul Friedrich Richter says, " He is the purest among the mighty, the mightiest among the pure, who with his pierced hand has raised empires from their foundations, turned the stream of history from its old channel, and still continues to rule and guide the ages." Inevitably the study of this ancient history will find much about it that will justify the term " sacred," which is uniformly applied to it, much that will be unmistakable evidence of the presence and pur- pose, Interposition and guidance of the supreme 40 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS Ruler of the universe. Dr. William S. Rainsford has well said, " We owe much to the beauty- loving Greeks, we owe much to the law-making Romans; but more, far more do we owe to the God-loving Jews." The following paragraph is taken from " The American Mind " by that eminent litterateur. Professor Bliss Perry, who discloses a just insight into the forces, subtle and complex, which have produced our Western civilization. " For that matter, what was, and is, that one Book — to the eyes of the Protestant seventeenth century infalli- ble and inexpressibly sacred — but the most potent and universal commerce of ideas and spirit, pass- ing from the Orient through Greek and Roman civilization, into the mind and heart of western Europe and America? 'Oh, East is East, and West is West, And ne'er the twain shall meet,' declares a confident poet of to-day. But East and West met long ago in the matchless phrases translated from Hebrew and Greek and Latin into the English Bible; and the heart of the East there answers to the heart of the West, as in water face answereth to face. That the coloniz- ing Englishmen of the seventeenth century were Hebrews in spiritual culture, and heirs of Greece THE BIBLE 41 and Rome without ceasing to be Anglo-Saxon in blood, is one of the marvels of the history of civilization, and it is one of the basal facts in the intellectual life of the United States to-day." 2. The second method of studying the Bible is the biographical. This is nearly related to the historical, for biography is largely history per- sonified. Human history is the story of human lives, singly or in groups. Great movements in the annals of the world are connected with the men who are denominated great leaders, kings, generals, statesmen, reformers and philanthro- pists, and are revelations of their genius, their character, their ambitions, their aspirations, their ability, their convictions and their personal traits. To know history is to know men, their activity, their influence, their successes or failures, their victories or defeats. Educators to-day are em- phasizing the v^alue of the study of biography as one of the most attractive, inspiring, character- building branches of learning. Our libraries are being filled with the lives of those who have been really or supposedly great among their fellows, and worthy of permanent record, who have made conspicuous attainments, illustrated great princi- ples and served noble causes. Even fiction ac- quires its principal charm, not from its literary style, but from the imaginary characters which it 42 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS portrays, and the living incidents which make up its chapters. It is a real world into which the Bible introduces us, with inhabitants like ourselves, intensely human, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, living our lives, sharing our experiences of temptation and trial, of joy and sorrow, and looking forward to the same destiny. It is not a world of myths and unrealities. It is no fic- tion. Reality impresses us everywhere. As an- other has said, " There is no other book which reflects so many sides and aspects of human ex- perience as the Bible, and this fact alone would suffice to give it a worldwide interest and make it popular. Born in the East and clothed in Oriental form and imagery, the Bible walks the ways of all the world with familiar feet, and en- ters land after land to find its own everywhere." It is humanity's book and makes its appeal to every age and nation. The Bible is throbbing with human life. It Is not simply a book of philosophy however sublime, nor of unlllustrated moral and religious truth. It Is crowded with the names and deeds of men and women who were prominent in their time, and will be prominent in all time; It is alive with char- acters which are worthy of devout study and of perpetual imitation. This fact constitutes its re- sistless attraction and no small part of its perma- THE BIBLE 43 nent value. The world cannot afford to forget Enoch, the man who knew how to " walk with God and was not, for God took him," or Abra- ham the man of sublime faith and the founder of a great nation, " who looked with clear vision for a city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God," or Moses, the father of history and matchless leader of his people, " who chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season," or Joseph, the heroic and incorruptible official, or David, the royal singer, whose Psalms, born out of his own experience, will express the deepest experiences of the humble, the devout, the true, the God-fearing in all the ages, or Elijah, the prophet of fire and defender of the one true God, or Isaiah, the magnificent preacher of righteous- ness and sweet voiced prophet of the coming Mes- siah and the glory of his kingdom, or any of the other prophets and servants of God who stood for justice and humanity, and whose messages are find- ing fresh application to-day for the rectification of the oppressions and wrongs of our social con- ditions, heroes and martyrs, a great company, some of whose names are written in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, the Westminster Abbey of the ancient Church, men " who through faith sub- dued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained 44 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS promises, stopped the mouths of lions, . . . were stoned, sawn asunder, tempted, slain with the sword, . . . being destitute, afflicted, tormented, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection, of whom the world was not worthy." Surely, to live in such company and look upon such lives is to live in the heroic age of the world, and be lifted up out of the narrow- ness and littleness of the ordinary, selfish, hum- drum existence. No more can the world afford to forget Peter, the impulsive, fickle, steadfast, lion-hearted apostle and martyr, or Paul, the persecutor, then the pioneer missionary and founder of churches and mighty teacher, who laid his frail body and vigorous intellect without reserve upon the altar of his new found faith, or John, who once a son of thunder, became the devout mystic and the apostle of love, and was admitted into the inner chamber of his Master's person and spirit, or Stephen, the proto-martyr under the Christian dis- pensation, who when the cruel stones were crush- ing the life out of him, had a vision of his ascended Lord, to whom he committed his departing spirit, and the angels had a vision of the Christ-spirit dwelling in him, as he prayed for his murderers, that their sin might not be laid to their charge, and indeed there was a threefold vision, for his THE BIBLE 45 murderers looked upon his shining face as it had been the face of an angel. And who can afford to forget the Master himself, who, regarded as a merely human being, a man among men, stood upon the very pinnacle of moral excellence, pos- sessing in Himself all beauty, symmetry, harmony, completeness and perfection of life, the one abso- lute illustration of genuine manhood for all the ages to the end of time, whose life Carlyle calls " a perfect ideal poem " and whose person " the greatest of all heroes"; with whom Rousseau says " Socrates was not to be compared," whom Goethe calls " the divine man," " the pattern and model of humanity," and of whom Renan speaks as " the incomparable man," and adds " what- ever may be the surprises of the future Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will grow young without ceasing, his legend will call forth tears without end, his sufferings will melt the noblest hearts, and all ages will proclaim, that among the sons of men, there is none born greater than Jesus." When we find unbelievers employ- ing such unqualified language in describing the character of the man, Christ Jesus, we need not be surprised to hear Dr. Philip Schaff, a devout and learned disciple, speaking of Him as " over- flowing with the purest love to men, free from every sin and error, innocent and holy, teaching 46 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS and practicing all virtues in perfect harmony, de- v-oted solely and uniformly to the noblest ends, sealing the purest life with the sublimest death, and ever acknowledged since as the one and only perfect Model of goodness and holiness." It is well to remember that all evolution in character is evolution backward, towards the one flawless Example and Model for all mankind. Is biography worth while in a system of educa- tion? Is it true that " Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime"? Is familiarity with noble examples of men who have been consecrated to truth and righteousness, to God and humanity, inspiring and helpful to right living? Does it have an important place in mental training and moral discipline? Can it be placed side by side, as an educational influence and aid to character and culture, with an acquaint- ance with many languages, living and dead, and the reasonings of human philosophy, and the facts of natural science? Does fellowship with those who have " dealt justly, and loved mercy, and walked humbly before God," who have illustrated the higher manhood and served their generation acceptably, stimulate and broaden, strengthen and uplift, in a word, educate and lead out the mind THE BIBLE 47 to larger possibilities and loftier endeavors? Then, where can be found nobler and more in- spiring biographies, examples more worthy of imitation, lives whose fellowship would be more valuable than those recorded in the pages of the Bible? The saintly Dr. Edward Payson, of blessed memory, spoke of the companionships in the Bible in this manner: " By opening this volume we may at any time walk in the garden of Eden with Adam, sit in the ark with Noah, share the hospitality or witness the faith of Abraham, ascend the mount of God with Moses, unite in the secret devotions of David, or listen to the eloquent and impassioned address of Paul. Nay, more; we may here converse with Him who spake as never man spake, participate with the just made perfect in the employment and happiness of Heaven, and enjoy sweet communion with the Father of our spirits through his Son Jesus Christ. Such is the society to which the Scriptures intro- duce us, such the examples which they present for our imitation," The following apt quotation is taken from " Re- ligion as Life " by President Henry Churchill King. " Just because the method of life includes, as everywhere requisite, fellowship, men are driven to find the great sources of life, short of God himself, in the most rewarding personalities 48 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS of the moral and religious sphere, and so to give special place to the great line of prophetic seers of the spiritual, culminating in Jesus." 3. A third method of studying the Bible is the literary method. The Bible, it has been affirmed without contradiction, *' holds a place of pre- eminence in the republic of letters." It is not only " part and parcel of the human story," but it is part and parcel of the world's literature. Not only in elevation and sublimity of thought, but in simplicity and beauty, dignity and charm of expression, it is not only unsurpassed, but is without a parallel among the myriads of volumes that crowd each other on library shelves, and more than they all together, our English version has in- fluenced the thinking and literary style of the au- thors of books that have won recognition and any degree of permanence during the three hundred years since its production. John Richard Green, the historian, declares, " As a mere literary monu- ment, the English of the Bible remains the noblest example of the English tongue, while its perpetual use made it from the instant of its appearance the standard of our language." Macaulay, in his " Essay on Dryden," characterizes the English Bi- ble as " a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the extent of its beauty and power." Pro- THE BIBLE 49 fessor George P. Marsh, an unquestioned au- thority, expresses his conviction that " Tyndale's translation of the New Testament has exerted a more marked influence upon English philology than any other native work between the ages of Chaucer and Shakespeare." Indeed, he goes so far as to affirm that " the English Bible has made the English language." It would not be difficult to fill a good sized volume with similar testimonies as to the dominant character and molding influ- ence of our Scriptures upon the literature and lan- guage of English-speaking peoples. A short time ago the New York " Nation " quoted from a European journal as follows: " The philosophies, the literatures, the arts and the languages themselves of Western civilization have been nourished in large part by the Bible. The Biblical tradition impregnates all of our fashions of thinking and speaking. A man totally unacquainted with sacred history would go through the world as if deaf and blind. A people that loses familiarity with the Bible is exiled from its spiritual and intellectual fatherhood, and becomes a band of outlaws." It will be remembered that Tyndale's version of the Bible (about 1534) which flowered into the version of 161 1, the most splendid piece of Eng- lish of all the versions, was based upon previous 50 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS translations, going back to Wycliffe's (about 1384). It will also be remembered that the cen- tury in which the King James version was com- pleted and published, lying between 1550 and 1650, " gave birth to more men," to quote from Professor T. Harwood Pattison, " who were destined to great literary distinction than has any other period of equal length in English history." It is only necessary to recall the names of Raleigh and Spenser and Hooker, of Jeremy Taylor and Robert South, of Izaak Walton and Lord Bacon and George Herbert, of Leighton and Owen and Baxter, and above all of Shakespeare and Milton and Bunyan. Among these brilliant luminaries of that brilliant century the Bible shines as the bright, particular planet. As a literary orb Cow- per's language is true of it, " A glory gilds the sacred page, Majestic like the sun, It gives a light to every age, It gives, but borrov?s none." Indeed, it may be said that the chief element that gives elevation and attractiveness and perma- nence to contemporaneous literature, as well as subsequent, is the infusion of the thought, kinship with the style and allusions to the incidents and imagery of the Bible. Shakespeare is sometimes said to be " saturated " with the Bible, so fre- THE BIBLE 51 quent are its references to the characters and phraseology of Scripture, while Milton and Bun- yan often seem little more than paraphrases. It would be easy to cite the names of men who have been distinguished in the fields of history and science, statesmanship and literature, who have borne glad testimony to their reverence for the Bible and its creative and formative influence upon their thought and literary style, or whose writings have plainly revealed the master-spirit at whose feet they have patiently and admiringly sat, and whose lessons they have not failed to im- bibe, for it is evermore true that a man's speech often betrayeth him. In addition to Macaulay and Green in the realm of history, already men- tioned, we think of Froude and Milman and Free- man, of Bancroft and Motley and Prescott and of Washington Irving, who confessed, " I think I have waked a good many sleeping fancies by the reading of a chapter in Isaiah." In the realm of science, we think of Sir Isaac Newton and David Brewster, of Sir Humphry Davy and Faraday, who expounded the Bible every Sunday in the meeting of an obscure religious sect, and of our own Agassiz and Gray and Dana, who were dili- gent students of the Bible, and even of Professor Huxley, who could not withhold his testimony to the educational value of the Bible, for he said: 52 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS " For three centuries this book has been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in English history; it has become the national epic of Britain, and is as familiar to noble and simple, from John O'Groat's House to Land's End, as Dante and Tasso once were to the Italians." In the realm of statesmanship we think of Cromwell and Shaftesbury, of Bright and Gladstone, whom their familiarity with the Bible qualified for their high service, and of Washington, who associated " the pure and benign light of Revelation " with " re- finement of manners and growing liberality of sentiment," and Webster, who ascribed the dig- nity and stateliness of his speech to his intimate acquaintance with the Old Testament prophets, and Lincoln, who had almost no other text book than the Bible, and whose classic and immortal utterances glow with its beauty and spirit. In the realm of prose literature we think of Wal- ter Scott, who called for " the Book " in his last hour, saying " there was only one Book," of Dickens and Thackeray, in whose writings hundreds of Biblical allusions are found, of Ruskin, who paid an affectionate tribute to his Bible and to his mother, who with gentle authority early introduced him to its purity of thought and of language, of Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater and A. C. Benson, of Hawthorne and THE BIBLE 53 Emerson, to speak of no others in the long list of prose writers on both sides of the Atlantic. And in the realm of modern poetry we think of Cowper and Wordsworth, of Tennyson and Browning and Edwin Arnold, of Longfellow and Whittier and Lowell and Bryant, all of whom drank deep at this pure Pierian spring, and have imparted their inspiration to their own genera- tion, and will impart it to the generations that follow. A few personal testimonies of superior weight will emphasize the literary value of the Bible as an educational asset. Mr. Charles A. Dana, the successful American journalist, in an address at Union College to students who might be con- templating entering upon that profession, said: " There are some books that are absolutely in- dispensable, . . . and of all these the most in- dispensable, the most useful, the one whose knowl- edge is most effective, is the Bible. There is no book from which more valuable lessons can be learned. I am considering it now not as a re- ligious book, but as a manual of utility, of pro- fessional preparation and professional use for a journalist. There is perhaps no book whose style is more suggestive and more instructive, from which you learn more directly that sublime sim- plicity which never exaggerates, which recounts 54 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS the greatest event with solemnity of course, but without sentimentality or affectation; none which you open with such confidence and lay down with such reverence; there is no book like the Bible." Froude, the historian, speaking of the translation of Tyndale, says, " The peculiar genius which breathes through it, the mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the preternatural grandeur, unequaled, unapproached in the at- tempted improvements of modern scholars, are all here, and bear the impress of one man, and that man William Tyndale." Sir Edwin Arnold, of international reputation in the field of letters, frankly acknowledges in answer to the query, " What I owe to the Bible? " " My short reply would be ' everything.' My long reply, to be sufficiently serious and comprehensive, would run into reams of paper. But if, as I suppose, I am addressed as a man of letters, I will simply say that I owe my education as a writer more to the Bible than to any other hundred books that could be named. It is the grandest possible school of style, letting alone all that it must ever be on the moral and spiritual side. I had read the Bible through and through three times over before I was twelve years of age." Professor Hoare, of Balliol College, is quoted as follows, " The Bible is accepted as a literary THE BIBLE 55 masterpiece, as the noblest and most beautiful book in the world, which has exercised an incal- culable influence upon religion, upon manners, upon literature and upon character." Professor Simon Greenleaf, once Professor in Harvard University, has expressed his deliberate verdict in these words, " In sublimity of thought, in grandeur of conception, in purity and elevation of moral principle, in the practical wisdom of its teachings, and the universality and perpetuity of their application, and above all, in the high and important character of its themes, the Holy Bible is not even approached by any human composi- tion." Theodore Parker left behind him this honest judgment, " View it in what light we may, the Bible is a very surprising phenomenon. It is read of a Sabbath in all the ten thousand pul- pits of our land. In all the temples of Christen- dom is its voice lifted up, week by week. The sun never sets on its gleaming page. It goes equally to the cottage of the plain man, and the palace of the king. It is woven into the litera- ture of the scholar, and colors the talk of the street. ... It blesses us when we are born, gives names to half of Christendom, rejoices with us, has sympathy for our mourning, and tempers our grief to finer issues. It is the better part of our sermons. It lifts man above himself; our best S6 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS of uttered prayers are In its storied speech, where- with our fathers and the patriarchs prayed." Dr. Andrew P. Peabody, formerly a Professor in Har- vard University, declared, " Our Bible is still the key to the best English diction, and by conversance with it our children are made familiar with their own language in a purer form than any other which can be placed before them." And John Stuart Mill adds his testimony in these words, " The Bible and Shakespeare have done more than any other books for the English language, in- troducing into the soul of it such grand ideas ex- pressed with such sublime simplicity." Such consenting and unanimous testimony from the great world of letters, from which there is no discordant note, gives to the English Bible not only an exalted place, but the supreme place in its influence upon the literary product of English- speaking people. In it we have narrative and parable, poetry and song, oratory and drama, de- nunciation and promise, moral precept, theological statement and glowing prophecy, all expressed with a simplicity and lucidity, beauty and charm, dignity and sublimity, force and impressiveness, unsurpassed, not to say unequaled. If familiarity with literature is a necessary part of a liberal education, and if the highest literature will in- evitably tend to cultivate the noblest think- THE BIBLE 57 ing, as well as furnish the best training in the use of words and forms of expression, the student who is ambitious to achieve ex- cellence for himself, and even to read intelli- gently the classics in his own tongue, must give himself diligently and conscientiously to that Book which, as a living x'Xmerican educator has recently said, " has had an immeasurable effect upon the whole body of English literature, and has shaped not only the thought of the greatest writers and orators, but also their phraseology and style, who expect their readers to know the meanings of the scriptural allusions with which their works abound." It is to be feared that our educational system, from the lowest grade to the highest, is culpably neglecting a chief source of culture, and that the neglect of home training and the changed method of Sunday School instruction, which requires little of the language of the Bible to be committed to memory, are giving to us a generation, whose cul- ture Is greatly Inferior to that of the fathers, and which Is disqualified from appreciating the riches of our literary inheritance. The results of tests which Professors in colleges have submitted to their students In order to ascertain their ability to understand Scriptural allusions In our standard 58 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS literature, would be amusing, if they were not so painful and deplorable, 4. The fourth method of studying the Bible, and a method vastly more important than those which have been considered, is the ethical method. More valuable than the informing and training of the mind and the cultivation of the literary taste and style, is the inculcation of moral principle and the development of personal character. It can be safely said that no book in our language or in any language can be compared with the Bible as a moral dynamic. For its exalted moral teach- ings, for its principles which should control con- duct and life, for its inspired guidance for man in all his relations, the Bible furnishes the abso- lutely perfect rule. All ethical systems have value as they are conformed to this standard. President Francis Wayland, who acquired a na- tional reputation, not only as a college adminis- trator but as a teacher of Moral Science, gave ut- terance to his high appreciation of the moral in- fluence of the Scriptures in these positive words, " That the truths of the Bible have the power of awakening an intense moral feeling in man under every variety of character, learned or ignorant, civilized or savage; that they make bad men good, and send a pulse of healthful feeling through all the domestic, civil and social relations; that they THE BIBLE 59 teach men to love right and hate wrong, and to seek each other's welfare, as the children of one common Parent; that they control the baleful pas- sions of the human heart, and thus make men proficient in the science of self-government; and finally, that they teach men to aspire after a con- formity to a Being of infinite holiness, and fill them with hopes infinitely more purifying, more exalted, more suited to their nature, than any other which this world has ever known, are facts as in- controvertible as the laws of philosophy or the demonstrations of mathematics." And Thomas Jefferson frankly declared, " Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus." Again he said, " I have always said, and always will say, that the studious perusal of the Sacred Volume will make better citizens, better fathers and better husbands." All ethnic religions have had their moral teach- ings. It has been said that it is not difficult to find single threads in these religions which faintly suggest the cloth of gold found in the ethical precepts of the Gospels. The teachings of Con- fucius, for example, contain what Is sometimes spoken of as " the golden rule," which reads, " Do not do unto others what you would not have them do to you," a mere negative prohibition. 6o THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS which would produce a race of ciphers, and would justify a man in finding his chief cause for grati- tude to God, in that he had done no harm in the world, but is in striking contrast with the positive injunction of Christianity, which would fill life with a benevolent helpfulness and an abounding service. Meroz was cursed because it came not to the help of the Lord. There were seven thou- sand men in Israel, who had not bowed the knee to Baal, but their virtue was a negative quantity. They did nothing to make themselves publicly known as on the Lord's side, or to comfort and support his prophet. It is impossible to construct a useful life and a worthy and acceptable char- acter out of mere negatives. The doom of the final judgment, as foretold by Christ, was pro- nounced upon those who " did it not," while eter- nal blessedness is to be the reward of the actively obedient and sympathetically helpful to God's needy ones. But the so-called moralities of other religions are worse than negative; they are crude and often offensive in comparison with the pure and lofty teachings of the Bible. A comparison between the moral teachings of the Bible and the philosophic ethics of Greece and Rome has been frequently made, and discloses but slight resem- blances, and at the same time enormous contrasts. Romanes pronounces the latter often " absurd " THE BIBLE 6i In the judgment of reason and " shocking to the moral sense." It is true that there is progress in the Scrip- tures in their ethical teachings, as well as in their doctrinal teachings. There is a basis of truth for the statement of Dr. Newman Smyth, though it is put so strongly that by many persons it is cer- tain to be misunderstood, and leave an utterly er- roneous impression. He says, " The morality of the Old Testament was incomplete, in many re- spects defective, and neither in its outward sanc- tions nor its inward motives a final morality for man; yet it was real morality, striving towards better things, growing from a genuine ethical root into the light and fruitfulness of the coming sea- son of divine grace. The method of the morality of the Old Testament is educational and progres- sive; its whole character Is preparatory and proph- etic." Such language inevitably leads to a false underestimate of the character of the moral teach- ings of God's ancient Scriptures. Whatever may have been their Incompleteness, they had upon them the stamp of the divine approval and author- ship, and were fully sufficient to lead men to obedi- ence and fellowship with God, and to a godly life. The legislation of Moses In the matter of divorce, referred to In the Gospels, was not, as is sometimes supposed. In favor of a loosening of 62 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS the marriage bond, and an instance of immoral legislation, but it was for the purpose of tighten- ing and protecting the marriage bond, and making divorce more difficult, while at the same time the original primal relationship, which made of twain one flesh, not to be put asunder, was reasserted in all its sanctity. No intelligent reader of the Old Testament can dispute the fact that the whole tendency and drift of its teachings were positively and only ethical. They produced saints, not only in name but in reality, saints who feared God and loved his commandments, who hated iniquity, who " wrought righteousness and obtained promises." An eminent American preacher, when called to preach before a University audience, chose for his text the words of the prophet Micah, " What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God," and he found in them the whole duty of man, his duty towards God and his duty towards his fel- low man. They contained in his judgment a complete moral code, with no incompleteness and no defectiveness. Men were exhorted in the ante-Christian era to " mark the perfect man and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace," implying that the moral light of that olden time was sufficient to produce upright and godly examples worthy of study and imitation. Again THE BIBLE 63 it was said, " Thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom," and again, " Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart." Inward purity and outward obedience, inward motives that were holy and outward sanc- tions approved of God, were alike demanded in the accepted worshiper. How often were men told by God's servants that He desired not sacri- fice, and was not pleased even with thousands of rams, with the empty, even excessive observance of an outward ritual, but with a broken spirit and a contrite heart. These were God's delight. Who, even in our day, has a deeper insight into the true nature of sin, and the nature of spiritual worship, than that Old Testament saint who under the deep consciousness of his guilt, cried out, " Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight,'' and looked above his sin as a mere violation of human moral law, and saw in it a blow aimed at the moral government of the universe, and at the known will of Him who sits upon Its throne? Such a conception of the guilt and na- ture of sin is not too frequent even in this morally enlightened age. A moral system that had em- blazoned upon its central page and clothed with divine authority and supernatural sanctity, the ten 64 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS great commandments, including reverence for the one personal God, the prohibition of all substi- tutes in his place, of whatever kind, the One, whose unquestioned prerogative it is to dispense justice to all who hate Him, and mercy to those who love Him ; whose name is to be sacredly hon- ored and adored; a holy regard for his Sabbath; the sanctity of parental authority and the family life; a conscientious respect for the life, the rights, the property, the good name of all men, not only the forbidding of graft, oppression, unchastity, untruthfulness, robbery, but even of the Inward coveting of whatever is not one's own, must have had in it elements of permanence and universal application. When men boast that they have outgrown the Old Testament teachings and are living in a new and enlightened period of the world's history, it may be replied confidently that there is abundant evidence all about us that the world has not yet lived up to the moral standard proclaimed by the prophets and teachers of the Jewish nation. It should be added that those teachings were preeminently social in their application, and had to do with the community life and the national life and conditions as well as with the life of the Individual. Modern conditions are directing the attention of preachers anew to the fearless utter- THE BIBLE 6s anccs of their God-called and God-inspired pred- ecessors, which are as applicable and necessary at the present time as they were in the days of old, indeed which seem as if they were spoken especially for our day, when conditions are strik- ingly analogous. No message is more modern than this one of ancient times, that the prosperity of the nation is dependent upon the righteousness of the nation. " Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." No prog- ress has been made beyond the old condition of a nation's glory, when " Mercy and truth are met together, and righteousness and peace have kissed each other." It is as true of the Old Testament in the twentieth century as it was in the first cen- tury that " Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for correction, for reproof, for instruction which is in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work." The striking language of Matthew Arnold, In " Literature and Dogma," cannot be forgotten or disputed, — " As long as the world lasts all who want to make progress in righteousness will come to Israel for inspiration as to the people who have had the sense of righteousness most glowing and strongest, and In hearing and reading the words Israel has uttered for us, carers for 66 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS conduct will find a glow and a force they could find nowhere else. As well Imagine a man with a sense for sculpture not cultivating It by the help of the remains of Greek art, or a man with a sense for poetry not cultivating it by the help of Homer and Shakespeare, as a man with a sense for conduct not cultivating It by the help of the Bible. . . . Greece was the lifter up to the nations of the banner of art and science, as Israel was the lifter up of the banner of righteousness." This discussion of the character of the moral teachings of the Old Testament does not Imply that Christ has not given to morality a fuller, deeper and more spiritual meaning. He de- nounced the formalism, the shallowness, the In- sincerity of his time. He demolished the accre- tions and misinterpretations, which In the degen- erate years had attached themselves to the rules of conduct and of life. But He came not to de- stroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill, not only to fulfill the Old Testament types and Messianic predictions pertaining to Himself, but to fill out In distinct and visible outline, by his teaching and his example, the moral and spiritual command- ments which his generation had received from the fathers. The Old Testament does not stand alone. It finds Its Illumination and Illustration In the New. As has been said, " the New Is THE BIBLE 67 concealed in the Old, and the Old is revealed in the New." There is no contradiction, but a ful- lillment, a rounding out, a completion, a new and deeper spiritual emphasis. Christ laid special emphasis not upon the act, but upon the spirit, which lies behind the act, and may never find expression in outward conduct. Hatred is mur- der, and lust is adultery. Morality is too often regarded as a mere matter of conduct. The moral man, it is thought, is the man who abstains from wrongdoing, who is guilty of no violation of legal enactment or moral precept. That is as far as the judgment of men can go with its narrow vision. But Christ teaches that there is immo- rality of the soul, which lies beneath the gaze of man's eyes, which only the eye of God can see. This is the true standard of judgment and of life. Ordinary morality may make better citizens in the Republic, but it does not go deep enough to qualify for citizenship in the kingdom of God. The moral code of Christ may be said to be contained in the Sermon on the Mount, which men who little comprehend its searching, pene- trating, revealing character, sometimes say " is good enough Gospel for me," thinking thereby to declare their independence of the Gospel, which contains a sacrificial death and the offer of par- doning grace. If the Sermon on the Mount is 68 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS the only Gospel which the world possesses, there is no hope for it, for it is, in very truth, a new and resplendent law of life, which while it reveals Christ's perfect standard, reveals at the same time the utter insufficiency of man's conformity and obedience. It is a new schoolmaster to lead every thoughtful man to the cross of Christ, and trust in his perfect obedience and offer of eternal life. It makes a demand for virtues which are not wont to be comprised in the world's category, and pro- claims the universal law of perfect, required man- hood, and at the same time discloses " the touch- stone of every social and political order." Pov- erty of spirit, meaning a humble consciousness of spiritual need, penitence and meekness of soul, hunger and thirst after righteousness or justice, which means a passion for the doing of God's will in heart and life, mercifulness like the divine, including compassion as well as forgiveness, in- ward purity which allies a man to God, and con- tains the assurance of eternal fellowship with Him, the ability to live at peace with all men, and to persuade all men to live at peace with one an- other, avoiding all oppression and wrong, and so to be the sons of God, and help to realize the ful- fillment of the angelic prophecy, when the only begotten Son of God was born into the world, and joy in the midst of persecution bravely endured THE BIBLE 69 for righteousness' sake, — these, these are the re- quired credentials of the subjects of Christ's king- dom, these are the beatitudes of those who would be his followers, these are the characteristics of those who would live according to the standard of his moral teachings. And then He goes on to enjoin upon his hearers to be " perfect as God is perfect," and closes his sermon with the one just criterion of all life, " by their fruits they should be known." It is no wonder that the peo- ple were astonished at his teaching, and wondered as He ceased and came down from the mount. John Stuart Mill boldly affirmed: *' Not even now could it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve of our life." This, then, briefly was Christ's ethical standard of life and character, the like of which the world had never seen, and of which the moralists and philosophers among men had never even dreamed. And yet Christ left to the world not a code of morals simply, but a life. He illustrated his pure and sublime moral teaching by his perfect ex- ample. He lived what He taught, and taught by his life, and to his example all human life is to be conformed. All students who aspire to know that which is highest and best in character 70 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS and life, and to realize it in themselves and in the world, must sit at the feet of " the Lord and Mas- ter of us all," and as they catch his spirit, and imitate his example, and walk in his footsteps, civilization is to be advanced, social evils are to be eradicated, social conditions are to be made perfect, righteousness and peace are to kiss each other, and the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven is to be brought in. Well has John Morley spoken of " the volcanic elements that slumber in the Sermon on the Mount." Rev. J. Bradford Thomson, in his volume en- titled " Central Evidences of Christianity," de- clares, " But the fact is that the ethics of Chris- tianity did not come from man but to man, that the Lord Jesus professed a divine authority for his revelations, and that, after all, what gives Christian morality its true power is its actual em- bodiment in Christ Himself, and the special mo- tive to aspiration and obedience which He fur- nished in his voluntary devotion to the cross for the salvation of mankind." Again he says, " The New Testament is a trumpet-call, summoning all who acknowledge its authority to aspiration, progress and eminence in goodness." A poet has finely expressed the magnetic power of the teach- ing and life of Christ in these lines: THE BIBLE 71 "Thou art the great completion of my soul, The blest fulfillment of its deepest need; When self-surrendered to thy dear control, It enters into liberty indeed. Thy love, a genial law, Its very aim doth draw Within its holy range, and sweetly lure Its longing toward the beautiful and pure." Ethical Christianity, it will be noticed, stands in striking contrast also with all other moral sys- tems in that it furnishes an adequate dynamic for its own realization. In " Supernatural Religion," a book which was intended to be a fatal assault on the Christian faith, it was nevertheless confessed, " The teach- ing of Jesus carried morality to the sublimest point attained or attainable by humanity. The influ- ence of his spiritual religion has been rendered doubly great by the unparalleled purity and eleva- tion of his own character." Mr. Lecky, though an enemy of evangelical Christianity, has declared, " It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has filled the hearts of men with an impassioned love, and has shown itself capable of acting in all ages, nations, temperaments and conditions; has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the highest in- centive to its practice; and has exerted so deep an 72 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers, and all the exhortations of moralists." And Mr. J. Brierley, an English author, whose interpretation of the facts and truths of the Christian religion fre- quently calls for a sharp dissent, nevertheless says in " Religion and Experience: " " As against all that had gone before, or was outside, we have here [in Christianity] a religion that was, for one thing, through and through ethical; that for another, possessed apart from its precepts a unique source of stimulus; and that for a third thing, set its inspired ethic working not amongst the philos- ophers, amongst the elite, but amongst the ob- scurest and most neglected portions of humanity." It should be added that the ethical principles of Christ found fresh and consistent expression in the teachings of his apostles. As the follow- ers and servants of Christ men were exhorted to do " the will of God from the heart." Whatso- ever things were " true, honest, just, pure, lovely and of good report," these things were to govern thought and control action. Christ was exalted as " the way, the truth and the life," and his disciples everywhere were to be his " living epis- tles." Somebody has said " the ethics of Paul THE BIBLE 73 and John and Christ are quite as worthy of study as the ethics of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche." He might have truthfully added the names of Aristotle and Plato, Kant and Hegel, Spencer and Mill, and all other teachers ancient and modern. The Epistles are plainly the unfolding of the truth that was taught in germinal form in the Gos- pels, and were a manifest fulfillment of the dis- tinct promise of Christ to his disciples of the Spirit of Truth, who should " lead them into all the truth," emphatically the truth, the truth per- taining to Himself and his kingdom, and the char- acter and conduct of his followers; else Christ's promise was null and void, and kindled an expec- tation that was false. 5. The fifth method of studying the Bible is the religious method, that is, the study of the Bible as a Book of religion, a Book which con- tains certain great truths which when coordinated constitute a system of religious faith or a theology, which Boccaccio defined as " the poetry of God." The other methods which have been considered, have been found increasingly important. This method must be acknowledged to be by far the most important of all, the supreme method. As a Book of religion the Bible makes its strongest, its most imperative appeal to men, and exerts its largest educational influence. The truest moral- 74 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS Ity is based upon a religious faith, and the man who looks upon the Bible as an inspired Book of religion will find every method of study productive of the largest good. Sabatier has said, " Man Is incurably religious," and President Shurman, of Cornell University, characterizes man as " a religious animal," and says that " without religion a man is only half a man." The religious element is as real and as integral in a man's nature as the intellectual, the affectional and the volitional. Dean Hodges in a chapter on " Religion and Moral Training " af- firms, " Religion is not an artificial thing grafted on human nature. It is an integral part of human nature itself. It is native to the soul. Man is just as essentially religious as he is social, political, moral and aesthetic in nature. Anthropology and psychology bear testimony to this fact." Educa- tion to be worthy of the name, must include the whole being. A recent writer has said, " We must define the educated man in terms of life, and not of some scholastic experience. And we must de- fine him in terms of the whole of life. Washing- ton and Lincoln were educated men, though they had little experience of the school. The educated man is a rounded character, well adjusted by na- ture and by training to the world in which he is called to live. He has learned self-mastery, con- THE BIBLE 75 sideration for the rights of others and the final art, that schools so often fail to teach, of know- ing how to learn and keep on learning. Knowl- edge that is applied to life and is increased in using, sympathy that is ever awake and active as a motive power for action, humility and curiosity that deepen and broaden the soul in following out the thoughts of God, — these are elements of the education we desire for all men upon earth." The professional athlete is not thereby an edu- cated man. He has developed strength of mus- cles and skill in their use, but they are only his lower, his animal nature. He may have acquired hardly the rudiments of an education. The man who has amassed knowledge, the facts of history and of science, and made himself familiar with the problems of philosophy, is not necessarily a fully educated man, no matter how many diplomas he may carry. His knowledge must be converted into wisdom, and his wisdom into character, into reverence, into humility, into purity of thought and desire, into unselfishness of purpose, into love for the things of the spirit and a growing likeness to that which is highest and best in personal being. Religious faith is the ordained means of accom- plishing this, when it becomes dominant in the soul. There is a Godward side of man's nature, the capacity of knowing and loving and serving 76 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS the Infinite Spirit, of having fellowship with the personal Power above us which makes for right- eousness. To neglect this is to remain half-edu- cated, with the possibilities of the soul unrealized, and the demands of the soul unmet, and the des- tiny of the soul uncared for. The Bible claims to be preeminently a religious Book, a revelation from God, and its contents, as well as its influence, justify its claim. It is called " the joint product of God and man," " the literature of an inspired race that saw God more clearly than any other race." It has been said that " when the Bible is at its highest it Is litera- ture, and when literature Is at Its highest It Is reve- lation." No education can claim to be complete which does not recognize the Inestimable Impor- tance of the Sacred Scriptures, and have a large and definite place for their study, and no education can be called Christian, which does not pay proper respect to the Book which Is the depository and vehicle of Christian truth. It Is not enough to study only the history, or the biography, or even the literature of the Bible. That is as far as some college studies go. But that would be to omit that which Is fundamental and vital. That would be to pay attention to the prison walls, and Ignore the life which dwells within. It is the moral and religious teaching of the Book (the one Is In- THE BIBLE 77 separable from the other) that gives to it its supreme value and sacredness to every rational mind. There are three sources of religious truth, viz., the natural world, the inner life with its instincts and its conscience, and the Word of God. The last is a necessary supplement of the other two, and when rightly interpreted, they confirm and strengthen each other's testimony. No sublimer utterance was ever penned than the Nineteenth Psalm, which bursts forth in a tribute of praise to the material universe. " The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." It is no wonder that such eloquent language has inspired the pens of hymn-writers and poets, who have caught some- thing of its spirit and voiced its faith in the divine Creator and resident Deity of the marvelous worlds which fill and swing in the boundless space, as against a materialistic and Godless evolution, which can create nothing, and against which the heart and mind of men persistently rebel. No more beautiful spiritual interpretation of the si- lent, voiceless world has appeared than that from the pen of Bishop H. W. Warren: 78 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS " The harp is ever singing to itself In soft and soul-like sounds we cannot hear; The stars of morning sing, and soundless words Make God's commands run swift from sphere to sphere. Each flower is always sending incense up, As if in act of holy worshiping, Till fragrant earth is one great altar, like To heaven where saints their prayer-filled censers swing. The stars send out a thousand rays, writ full Of mysteries we cannot read nor see. Of histories so long and going forth. So vast, the volumes fill infinity. O Source Divine of things so fine and high, Touch all thy children's souls with power to see That vibrant earth and air and boundless sky Still throb with immanent Divinity." He that hath ears to hear, he will hear. He that hath eyes to see, he will see. The testimony is there, whether men recognize it or not, the tes- timony to the infinite wisdom, power, wonderful skill, aesthetic taste and love of beauty, and the in- finite goodness of the personal Creator. Every man who studies the objects and laws of the nat- ural world, from the most sublime to the most minute, may say, if he will, with the ancient sci- entist, " I am thinking God's thoughts after Him." Someone has said beautifully that the Himalayas are only raised letters by which God teaches his blind children to read the evidence of his eternal power and Godhead. Blessed are the pure in THE BIBLE 79 heart and the devout in spirit, for they shall sec God here as well as hereafter, in the world of nature as well as in the spiritual heavens. All things visible may incite to worship, even though what may be called the higher and more moral attributes of God may not be clearly revealed in them. It is nevertheless true as Dr. Holmes sang, " I'hy glory Hames from sun and star," or as Browning phrased it, " You've seen the world, The beauty, the wonder and the power, The shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades, Changes, surprises, — and God made It all: For what? . . . What's it all about? To be passed over, despised? or dwelt upon, Wondered at? " or as Mrs. Browning phrased It in lines still more beautiful and positive, " Earth's crammed with Heaven, And every bush aflame with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes." In the universal conscience, the inner light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, there is the instinct or intuition of God, the knowl- edge of right and wrong, the testimony to the moral universe and the supreme Governor of all, including every moral being, the hidden, almost irrepressible and deathless longing after the In- 8o THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS finite Spirit. As another has said, " The listen- ing ear of the race can never cease to hearken to a Voice that speaks out of the silences beyond the range of time and sense." It is the deepest fact of human nature. " Thou hast made us for Thy- self, and we find no rest until we find it in Thee." The Christian Father who uttered those words, voiced the cry of the human race. The apostle Paul declares that God has not left Himself with- out a witness in the inner spirit of all men, " Which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another." That conscience, that inner light, that law written in the heart, that longing after God, has often been silenced, dimmed, perverted, maltreated, and made the fruitful source of false religions, cruel faiths, abominable superstitions, and immoral rites. " Men became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. They changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator." As the result, many of the abodes of men have been shrouded in darkness, and have been filled with all unrighteousness and uncleanness, and must have the illumination of a new and stronger light, the guiding and directing influence of a completer THE BIBLE 8i and authenticated Revelation, the regenerating and transforming power of a divinely ordained Instrumentality. That new light, that authenticated Revelation, that ordained Instrumentality is the Book we call the Word of God. This is the third and neces- sary source of religious truth, completing and en- ergizing the other sources, and constituting the su- preme religious educational asset for mankind. This Book, and this Book alone, contains the wis- dom that is able to " make men wise unto salva- tion and eternal life." Napoleon Bonaparte is reported to have said, " Paganism is the work of man. One can here read imbecilit)'. What do these gods, so boast- ful, know more than other mortals? . . . They have made a perfect chaos of morals. There is not one among them all who has said anything new in reference to our future destiny, to the soul, to the essence of God, to the creation." Said that skeptical philosopher and moralist, Rousseau, '* I will confess to you that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the Gospel has its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers, with all their pomp of diction, how mean, how contempti- ble, are they, compared with the Scripture. Is it possible that a Book, at once so simple and sub- 82 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS lime, should be merely the work of man? Is it possible that the sacred Personage whose history it contains should be Himself a mere man? " The language of Sir Walter Scott is so familiar as hardly to need repetition. " Within that awful volume lies The mystery of mysteries. Happiest they of human race, To whom our God has granted grace To read, to fear, to hope, to pray, To lift the latch and force the way; And better had they ne'er been born. Who read to doubt, or read to scorn." Such language in endorsement of the Bible as a Book of religion, coming from the lips not of professional preachers and teachers, but from the lips of representative men of other classes wide apart, the great General, the infidel Philosopher and the distinguished Novelist, may well dispose our minds to inquire studiously as to the teachings of this incomparable, cosmopolitan Book. It may be said to contain a fourfold revelation. I. The Bible contains a revelation of the being and character of God, more complete, more consistent, more worthy of adoration than can be found anywhere else. Whatever other fruits the study of comparative religion, now much in vogue, may yield, the Bible's conception of God tran- scends by an infinite distance all other concep- THE BIBLE 83 tions. Its opening sentence, " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," surpasses in the sublimity of its utterance, in its authoritative tone, in its assumption of positive knowledge, and in the sweep of its influence, every other sentence that was ever penned. A recent writer has said, " When this first sentence of the Bible was writ- ten it was in ages when men held strange fancies and fables concerning the origin of the world. This sentence was in opposition to the notion that the world sprang into being through chance or by blind forces acting within and without it, and em- phasized the fact that it was the product of the wisdom and will of a personal Being. Some an- cient conceptions were atheistic, some pantheistic, and some polytheistic; but this single, simple sen- tence sets forth the personality, eternity, omnisci- ence, omnipotence, and spirituality of God. It ex- cludes every possible ism of error in the human conception of God." This is the Bible's interpre- tation of all origins, its reaffirmation of the teach- ing of natural theology as to the wisdom and cre- ative power of the eternal Spirit. But the Bible does not stop there. It completes the perfect picture of the absolutely perfect Being, as infinite in holiness and love as in wisdom and power, the Possessor of every divine attribute, the Personification of every moral excellence, and 84 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS even going so far as to interpret Deity in the terms of loving and thoughtful Fatherhood, and declaring " there is none beside Him," " none be- fore Him," and " none like unto Him." He is represented as " merciful," " gracious," " long suffering," " compassionate," " forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin," the divine " Shepherd," satisfying, leading, feeding and protecting his flock, the Father of the prodigal son, waiting to welcome the returning penitent with kiss and robe and joyful feast. And then in order to make the portrait more real, more comprehensible, more resistlessly attractive and commanding. Revela- tion gives to the world the story of the incarna- tion, a new and unique life, human and divine, beautifully natural and convincingly supernatural, Son of man and Son of God, " God manifest in the flesh," the living illustration of all that is high- est in manhood and all that is essential in God- hood, so that Christ could say, " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Was ever pic- ture so true, so real, so inspiring, so captivating to the human heart? Even the infidel, Rousseau, was lost in admiration as he contemplated it, and his Infidelity seemed almost to be swept away by the swelling tide of his appreciation, as the doubt of Thomas was removed by the ocular evidence of his Lord's reality and divinity. He says, " What THE BIBLE 85 sweetness, what purity in his manner! What an affecting graccfuhiess in his delivery! What sub- limity in his maxims! What profound wisdom in his discourses! What presence of mind, what subtlety, what truth in his replies! How great the command over his passions! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live, and so die, without weakness, without ostenta- tion? . . . Yes, if the life and death of Socrates, which nobody presumes to doubt, were those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus were those of a God." 2. The Bible contains also a revelation of man, his character and condition as a moral being, and his relation to the God who made him. The highest counsel of the old Greek philosopher to his fellow man was, " Know thyself," This was the supreme business of life, the Imperative duty of every man. It was as if he had said, " The unexamined life is not one fit to be led by man." iVIodern reflection echoes the importance of the ancient mandate. In Charron we read, "La vrayc science ct le vray etude de rhomme c'est rhomme." Alexander Pope endeavors to make the command doubly emphatic by concentrating man's thought on himself, and shutting out all thought of Him who gave him power to think. 86 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS " Know then thyself, presume not God to scan ; The proper study of mankind is man." The testimony of Lotze is accepted by all per- sons who are familiar with the literature and characters of the Bible: " For the most faithful delineation of the ever-recurring fundamental characteristics of human life, the Hebrew his- tories and hymns are imperishable models." It needs to be remarked that no man can know himself in his entirety and in his relations until he knows something of the Being who brought him into life, and whose image he bears. It was a flip- pant remark of Henry Sidgwick, if he ever made it, that " as he grew older his interest in what or who made the world was altered into interest in what kind of a world this is anyway." Man and the world are both profound secrets, and will re- main such, until they are studied in the light of their origin, a guiding and overruling providence and purpose, and their final destiny. The Bible contains in some true sense every man's biography, written by an unprejudiced and unerring hand, and no man can know himself until he knows what the Bible says about him. His self-knowledge may deceive him, and his human biographer may flatter or defame him, but the Bible reveals his true image. The Bible discloses man's primal glory. It THE BIBLE 87 tells him what he can learn nowhere else, that he was created in the image and likeness of God. Whatever resemblance he may bear to the animal world about him, whatever true science or science falsely so-called may think as to his classification with forms of animal life, God set him apart and above them all, and gave him dominion over them all, God breathed into him his own spirit and en- dowed him with his own intellectual and moral faculties, and man became a living soul and a son of God. This gives to him a dignity and a glory, of which science and philosophy know nothing. It is not they who have discovered him, but it is he who has discovered and given birth to them, and they become his servants, the embodiments and vehicles of his thoughts, and the means of his growth and development. President Henry Churchill King wisely sug- gests; " If a man's greatest discovery, next to the discovery of God, is the discovery of himself, and if the complete discovery of himself in all his spiritual possibilities involves the discovery of God, we may perhaps get a new light on the sig- nificance of the Bible for our spiritual life, if we think of it as an aid to self-discovery." By means of man's moral nature and his cre- ated freedom it became possible for man to dis- obey God, to forfeit his fellowship and glory, to 88 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS mar his likeness and sonship, and to lose his peace of soul. The Bible conceals nothing. " Sin en- tered into the world," we are told, " and death by sin." This revelation of Scripture is con- firmed by the universal consciousness of man. " All we like sheep have gone astray." It is not a new truth which the Bible discloses, but the in- sistent iteration and enforcement of a truth as old and as wide as humanity. To ignore it does not change the fact. Men may differ as to the degree of demerit and possible consequences, but sin is here, an intruder in God's fair world, ever writing its dark record in unmistakable characters upon individual consciousness, upon domestic life, upon social conditions, upon every page of the book of human experience. The Bible holds the mirror up to life, and reveals not only man's primal glory, but his present shame and weakness, peril and necessity. It presents no imaginary or over- drawn portrait. Every thoughtful man acknowl- edges its sad reality as true to the life of man. The following obvious statement of fact is bor- rowed from Dr. S. Parks Cadman. " Religion, as well as science, has lived and will live by the certainty of its ideas, and these ideas are not ' such stuff as dreams are made of,' but sterling convictions, which have shaped and transfigured the whole fabric of Western civilization." THE BIBLE 89 3. The Bible contains the revelation of a possi- ble restoration of man to union and fellowship with God. It proclaims the offer, which would be unspeakably wonderful, if it was not so famil- iar, of forgiveness and peace through the divine Christ. The voices of nature, though many and varied, have in them no redemptive note. The conscience and moral judgment contain no atoning cross of reconciliation and pardon, but only words of condemnation. To sit alone in court with an enlightened conscience on the bench is to be with- out hope. Conscience bears no olive branch, but only a naked sword. Christ as a perfect example only, resplendent in all the symmetry of a divine manhood, would leave man far behind, a conspic- uous failure, in the struggle for perfection of character and life. The Bible furnishes the one means of forgiveness and the one adequate in- spiration for a godly and acceptable life, viz., the cross of Calvary. " In whom we have redemp- tion through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, ac- cording to the riches of his grace." It reveals a two-fold indwelling, " God in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself," and " Christ in man the hope of glory." So we find in the Gospel of Christ revealed not only the primal glory of man, but his final glory, not only his primitive dignity in God's likeness, but his ultimate restoration in 90 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS the likeness of Jesus Christ through union with Him. " We shall be like Him," says the Apos- tle, " for we shall see Him as He is." Faith in Christ, submission to Christ, union with Christ, this is the culminating truth of a progressive reve- lation, this is the central fact in God's plan of sal- vation, this is the method and secret of a restored manhood. Unless a man has learned this (and he learns it nowhere outside of the Bible), there is a serious and fatal lack in his education. Not only the highest ideal in life, but the highest in- centive to nobility of character and the divinely ap- pointed means for its attainment, are all painfully wanting. Well has Tennyson, the great inter- preter of God and man, expressed the truth when he sang, " Thou seemest human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood Thou; Our wills are ours, we know not how, Our wills are ours to make them thine." 4. And lastly the Bible contains a clear and convincing revelation of immortality, by which is meant not simply continued existence beyond the grave, but the unending continuance of a blessed existence. The old question is still asking itself, as it has been from the beginning, " If a man die, shall he live again? " Science is very busy to-day, endeavoring to discover proof that death does THE BIBLE 91 not end all, that the spirit survives the cessation of the bodily functions, and goes on to an endless ex- istence. Matter it is claimed is indestructible. It is a reasonable inference that personality survives all change. Nature furnishes many suggestive analogies of a resurrection-life. The Ingersoll Lectureship has been established at Harvard Uni- versity to discover and establish a scientific basis for the immortality of the soul. The doctrine of a future life has had a place in some form in all ethnic religions, in shadowy beliefs, in religious rites, in preserved mummies, and even in the faiths of the most savage tribes and peoples. The In- dian has his happy hunting ground. The uni- versal longing has found expression in gross forms of reincarnation and the transmigration of souls. The hope has been argued from the incomplete- ness of this life, which is distressingly full of un- fulfilled promises, of unrealized plans, of blighted hopes, of buds that have been broken off before the time of flower and fruit. The doctrine has even been grounded in the justice of the holy and infinite Creator. Tennyson reasoned after this manner, "Thou wilt not leave us in the dust; Thou madest man, he knows not why; He thinks he was not made to die; And Thou hast made him; Thou art just." 92 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS Jouffroy, a French writer, has said, " Ever}' man feels within himself a crowd of desires and facul- ties which this life does not content; and he would deem himself very unhappy, and Him who has made him very unjust, if his destiny were never to attain this happiness, this perfection, of which he has the idea. ... It is that which unavoidably suggests to him thoughts of the other life; and these thoughts once awakened in his mind, there is no more rest for him, if the doubt remains, and if no clear solution comes to solve it." Professor John Fiske, in *' The Destiny of Man," says, " For my part, I believe in the immortality of the soul, not in the sense in which I accept the demonstra- ble truths of science, but as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God's work," Poets, philosophers, religionists, scientists, have all been lending a hand in the advocacy of this great and greatly desiderated doctrine of a future life. How refreshing, how heartening, how comfort- ing, how satisfying, it is to turn away from all these conjectures, and inferences, and blind rea- sonings, which can never bring rest and peace, and listen to the clear, strong, positive, authoritative affirmations of the Bible, and know that here we have testimony which no doubt can shake and no denial can destroy. In the Old Testament there were bright and morning stars whose light was THE BIBLE 93 suflicient to comfort and sustain the souls of the patriarchs and the people in anticipation of life's hastening end. The prophet Daniel declared with unshaken confidence, " And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlast- ing contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." In these words there is, in the words of an able commentator, " obvious reference to the final resurrection of all men, the just and the unjust, the eternal joy of the first and the unend- ing woe of the second, and the glorious reward of those who had been successful workers for right- eousness." In Job, perhaps the oldest of all the Biblical books, we read the confident assurance, " For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth : and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another." The meaning is most apparent. The afflicted servant of God " now turns for comfort, under the harsh treatment of men, to his assured belief in a consolatory truth of universal and permanent importance, which he desires to have not only inscribed in a book, but also more last- 94 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS ingly and publicly recorded by being engraven on a rock. ... It is therefore to his hope of vindi- cation in a future life that he here refers, encour- aging himself in the conviction that after death he should joyfully behold his ever-living Vindi- cator." In the Psalms we read, " For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt Thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life; in thy presence is ful- ness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." Although these striking words, as interpreted by both Peter and Paul, refer pri- marily to the resurrection of Christ, the thought of the Psalmist is naturally expanded to include himself and all true servants of God, who know the path of life, which Inevitably leads to God's presence and communion with Him, " and from that springs, of necessity, the idea of immortality." It would seem that the ancient Psalmist antici- pated the thought of the writer to the Thessa- lonians when he said, " For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus, will God bring with Him." Of the quotation from the Psalm Perowne says, " In the utterance of this confident persuasion and hope, David was carried beyond himself. He spake as a prophet, knowing that God had promised of the fruit of his body to raise up Christ to sit on THE BIBLE 95 his throne. The hope of his own immortality was based upon, and bound up in, the life of Him who was at once his Son and his Lord." Only one other passage needs to be quoted of those found in the Old Testament. " As for me I will behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satis- fied when I awake with thy likeness," words which have brought inexpressible comfort to minds per- plexed by questionings as to the future state. Perowne declares these words are not to be un- derstood as meaning, " When I wake up from sleep," nor, " When I find deliverance from the present night of sorrow and suffering. ... I can- not doubt that the reference is to a resurrection." The Psalmist seems to have anticipated again the language of the New Testament, where we are told, " We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." It may be added that the translation of Enoch and the translation of Elijah were a part of the sacred history of the Jewish people, as firmly be- lieved as any recorded events in that history, and must have added their strong and unique testi- mony to the doctrine of a future life. Rather brilliant " morning stars " we have found these passages to be. We read them to- day at every Christian burial. Yet they fade away in the fuller light and glory of the teaching 96 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS of Him who spake as never man spake. It will be sufficient to quote a few of the utterances of Christ as to the doctrine of immortality, " I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." " Because I live, ye shall live also." '* Marvel not at this; for the hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation." Who can ever forget or distrust the most beautiful and consolatory words that were ever spoken by lips human or divine, that carried unspeakable comfort and strength to the hearts of the sorrow- ing disciples, who listened to them, and have been carrying comfort and strength to the hearts of the sorrowing and dying ever since, and can never lose their power? " In my Father's house are many mansions, if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." Christ believed in a future life. He foretold his own resurrection, and accomplished it to es- tablish faith in Himself and his message. The disciples believed in it, and went everywhere THE BIBLE 97 preaching Christ and the resurrection. There is no more induhitable fact in all history, ancient or modern. There is no more trustworthy truth in the axioms of science or philosophy. A faith in immortality rests upon the word, the veracity of the Son of God. Christ *' brought life and im- mortality to light in the Gospel." The New Testament is filled with the mighty, transforming power of the world to come. That which may have seemed to some dimly revealed before, now shines in the light of a thousand suns. What the world was seeking and longing to know for a certainty, is now a part of the certified knowledge of mankind. The grave has been illuminated and its darkness dispelled. It is no longer a closed tomb, but an open doorway. Death, to use the strong language of Scripture, has been " abolished," and the certain knowledge of this blessed fact is contained in the Bible. Some persons profess with great inconsistency to repudiate the Bible and its teachings, and yet are indebted to it for their highest conceptions of morality, and for all they know of God and a fu- ture life. The following words are from the pen of the English Professor of Moral Philosophy already quoted, J. Bradford Thomson, " A nature with such requirements cannot be indifferent to the pro- 98 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS fessions and promises of the religion of Christ. Is it likely that man, so constituted, will turn aside from the revelations of Christianity, and adopt in preference the teaching of the materialist and atheist, according to whom man perishes like the brutes and is no more; a foam-fleck upon the rush- ing river of universal being? Or will he not rather exclaim, God made the soul for immortality, and appointed immortality for the soul? Here is found the true and longed-for rest, here the strong and sustaining hope." What Milton thought should be true of every great book, is preeminently characteristic of the books of the Bible, " the pre- cious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." Here then we have the fourfold revelation of the Bible, viz., God the Infinite Spirit, the su- preme Object of worship and affection; man, his true character, his origin and destiny; the possible union through Christ between man and his Maker, and a real spiritual fellowship with Him; and the doctrine of a future life, established beyond a question or the shadow of a doubt. Without the light which the Bible sheds on these, the greatest of all truths, the world would be still groping in darkness. An education which does not include these verities of knowledge would be deplorably incomplete, and inadequate to meet the demands THE BIBLE 99 of the moral soul. The mind which does not wel- come and appropriate these vital, transcendent truths, will hav^e empty spaces which no amount of secular knowledge can fill, and a diminished life which must occasion everlasting regret. This is the standard of fullness of knowledge and com- pleteness of life, as Christ affirmed, " To know Thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent; this is life eternal." It is because of this supreme characteristic of the Bible, viz., that it is the veritable Word of God, an inspired and authoritative revelation of his character and will, a complete and final mes- sage of grace and salvation to all the generations of mankind, commanded by Christ to be made known in all the world to every creature, that Bible Societies have been established and generously supported in Christian lands. It is interesting to know that in the last year in order to carry out the divine commission and to meet in some meas- ure the world-wide need, the English and Ameri- can Bible Societies have published and distributed in hundreds of languages between ten and twelve million copies of the Sacred Scriptures in whole or in parts. Such a work, continued from year to year, will prove to be no small contribution to the effort to dispel the darkness, the ignorance and superstitions of men, and shed abroad the light of 100 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS Him who is the Light of the world, and in whose name every knee shall eventually bow. The bearing of this paper is more than per- sonal. It has to do not only with man as an in- dividual, a moral and intellectual unit, and with the necessary completeness of his education, but it has to do with man as a social being, a member of society and a citizen of the Republic. The ed- ucation which a man needs, and must have for himself, society and the nation need, and must have for themselves. The use of the Bible, therefore, is intimately connected with the good morals of the community, with the purity of the social life, with the stability and perpetuity of good government, and with the progress of the race. It was John Milton who wrote, " There are no songs comparable to the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of the prophets, and no politics like those which the Scriptures teach. Better teaching The solid rules of civil government In their majestic, unaffected style, Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome. In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt, What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so, What ruins kingdoms and lays cities flat; These only, with our law, best form a king." Reference is often made to the undisputed fact that the Bible was largely responsible for the THE BIBLE loi English Reformation, and for the civil and re- ligious liberty which England and America enjoy. Indeed democracy itself is declared to be the fruit of the influence of the Bible. Dr. Cleland B. McAfee says, " The English Reformation received less from Luther than from the secret reading of the Scriptures over the whole country. What we call the English spirit of free inquiry was fos- tered and developed by Wycliffe and his Lollards with the English Scriptures in their hands. Out of it has grown, as out of no other one root, the freedom of the English and American people." The founders of this Republic brought with them the spirit of reverence for things sacred and divine, high moral standards, regard for law, and above all, the accountability of the individual soul to God; and all these they had learned from their Book of religion. It was these that inspired them and guided them in their great undertaking. Pro- fessor Bliss Perry says, " One Rev^erence, at least, was common to the Englishman of Virginia and to the Englishman of Plymouth and Massachu- setts Bay. They were joint heirs of the Refor- mation, children of that waxing and puissant Eng- land, which was a nation of one Book, the Bi- ble, ... a Book rich beyond all others in human experience; full of poetry, history, drama; the test of conduct ; the manual of devotion ; and above 102 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS all and blinding all other considerations by the very splendor of the thought, a Book believed to be the veritable Word of the unseen God. For these colonists in the wilderness, as for the Prot- estant Europe which they had left irrevocably behind them, the Bible was the plainest of all sym- bols of idealism; it was the first of the " Rever- ences." Again he says, " The United States is properly called a Christian nation, not merely be- cause the Supreme Court has so affirmed it, but because ' a Christian nation ' expresses the his- torical form which the religious idealism of the country has made Its own. The Bible is still con- sidered by the mass of the people a sacred Book; oaths in courts of law, oaths of persons elected to great office, are administered upon it." It should be added, as indicating the Christian character of the nation, that the Congress of the United States, and the army and navy have their chaplains, ap- pointed by the Government and salaried out of the public treasury. Moreover, State and City administrations are wont to be inaugurated and public buildings to be dedicated by prayer to the God of the Christian revelation. An attempt to eliminate these religious officials and to abolish these religious services would be met by a nation- wide protest, and would not only proclaim this nation as a Godless nation, but would reduce it to THE BIBLE 103 a worse than heathen condition, for heathen na- tions have their authorized religious ceremonies. The Supreme Court of one of our States has re- cently taken action " barring finally and perma- nently, on constitutional grounds, the Bible from public use in the public schools." A correspond- ent to a religious journal commenting on this action, justly says, " It sounds anomalous that in a nation which owes its existence to the devotion of its founders to the principles of the Bible as such, its youth should be denied the benefit of Bible-reading, not to say Bible-study, in their school exercises. But such seems to be one of the paradoxical results of the logical ( ?) applica- tion of the principles of liberty of conscience and separation of Church and State." The cor- respondent adds, " The evil of this is that appar- ently it puts a public ban or stigma upon the Bible, under which the lovers of the Book, cannot permit it to remain. The very appearance of discrim- inating against the Bible must be removed." That Supreme Court in order to be consistent in its action should decree that all literature and text books making any reference to the Bible, or in- culcating lessons contained in the Bible, or show- ing the fruits of the Bible in individual character and in national history, our own national history included, should be excluded from the public I04 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS schools forever. Neither modern English litera- ture, nor the marked progress in ethical ideals and in philosophic thought during the last three hundred years, nor modern history in any of its phases, can be studied intelligently without a knowledge of the Bible. One great reason, probably the great reason, why the founders of the Republic exalted the Bible to such a conspicuous place, was because of the in- dissoluble connection which they believed to exist between morals and religion, between personal, social and political morality and the great truths of the Christian faith. In their judgment the highest morality was based upon the teachings of a divine Revelation, and must be sustained and perpetuated by them; the Bible which had given to them their essential freedom and democracy was necessary to preserve them and keep them pure. Washington said in words which should ever be remembered by the American nation, " The free cultivation of letters, the unbounded extension of commerce, the progressive refinement of manners, the growing liberality of sentiment, and above all, the pure and benign light of Reve- lation have had a meliorating influence on man- kind, and increased the blessings of society. Of all the dispositions and habits of men which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are THE BIBLE 105 indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect them. And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be sus- tained without religion. Whatever may be con- ceded to the influence of refined education on minds of a peculiar structure, reason and experi- ence both forbid us to expect that national moral- ity can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." These noble words uttered without fear of being charged with narrowness or bigotry, disclose a rational and farsighted statesmanship which will ever make the name of Washington illustrious. In like manner Judge Hornblower, Chief Jus- tice of New Jersey, who was born the first year after the Declaration of Independence and died widely honored in the third year of the Civil War, declared, " Let this precious volume have its proper influence on the hearts of men, and our liberties are safe, our country blessed, and the world happy. There is not a tie that unites us to our families, not a virtue that endears us to our country, nor a hope that thrills our bosoms in the prospect of future happiness, that has not its foundation in this Bible. It is the charter of char- io6 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS ters, the palladium of liberty, the standard of righteousness." It was the prevalence of such views as these that led the fathers to establish schools of learning and to encourage the organization of Christian churches, that we might be an intelligent, moral, upright and God-fearing people, whose prayer should ever be, " Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it." They had no thought of an education which did not include morality and re- ligion. And although they firmly believed in the great principle of religious liberty, the separation of Church and State, they did not believe in the misinterpretation and perversion of that principle which would separate religion from the State. The Bible was read in the schools, not as a sec- tarian book, but as a book of morals and religion, with its silent but powerful appeal to the reverence of the pupils, their love of truth and honor, their recognition of the being of God and the spiritual nature of man, and a belief in the immortal life and an invisible world, and prayer was offered to the Lord and Maker of us all. It is to be feared that we are drifting away from the wise spirit and purpose of the fathers, that in our nar- row and erroneous interpretation of religious lib- THE BIBLE 107 erty and the meaning of the separation of Church and State, we are robbing the State of the princi- pal means of its healthy growth and prosperity, and destroying that which has given to us our re- ligious liberty, and is its only preservative. Bishop Anderson of Chicago says, " Education has been completely secularized as if man had no soul, and the world had no God. Religion has been as completely isolated as if character had no place in a child's education. Our education is losing its religious values. Our religion is losing its educational values." The State is bound to be the protector and pro- moter of the morals of the people for its own sake. It exempts Church property, as it does school property, from taxation, because Christian churches minister to the peace, the good order and purity of the community. Without them and their unceasing ministry, life, property and hap- piness would all be imperiled. The State sets apart the Sunday as a day of rest and an oppor- tunity for worship, because it believes that such an ordinance is for the health and good morals of the people, and for the protection of their rights. If a man from conscientious scruples insists upon observing Saturday, there is no law against it; but his duty is clear, that is, to have two days of rest, one for his conscience's sake and a second for his io8 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS neighbor's sake, that his rest may not be dis- turbed or his rights invaded. In like manner the State has a right not only to insist upon the educa- tion of the young people, but to determine its character, that it shall possess a distinctly moral element, that it shall not be non-moral or God- less or non-patriotic or unpatriotic. Sects may add to it, but they ought not to be allowed to change or diminish it. The State should be con- trolled and determined by the thought of its own high interests. It is a matter of imperative needs and of self-preservation. All education should be under the supervision of the State, not only public education, but that of private institutions, sup- ported by private funds, especially if the State ex- empts their properties from taxation. The edu- cation should be such as will strengthen moral character as well as Inform the mind, and will prepare for good citizenship. A college sup- ported by a religious denomination may teach sec- tarianism in addition, if it chooses to do so, unless the tenets and practices of the denomination are Immoral, as in the case of the Mormons. Then the State has no option but to assume control of Its educational system, and purge It of Its per- nicious and dangerous elements. If a college charter prohibits sectarianism In Its teaching but still provides and Insists that It shall be a Chris- THE BIBLE 109 tian college, and give a Christian education, then its teachers are honorably bound to avoid sectarian teaching, and are bound in equal honor to build up Christian faith. Christian morality and posi- tive Christian character. To hold their positions with the approval of conscience and the approval of their fellow men, their whole influence, by teaching and example, must be constructive of the fundamental positions of the Christian religion, and not destructive. Infidelity and skepticism can be as sectarian as faith, and the worst kind of sectarianism is a sectarian infidelity, and that should be prohibited in every educational institu- tion of whatever grade in the land, lest the solid foundations of government be destroyed. His- tory is not without its solemn warnings. It is sometimes said that every branch of knowl- edge, language, history, science, philosophy, so- ciology and even mathematics can be taught not only in a Christian spirit and in a Christian man- ner, but so as to leave a Christian impression upon character and life, and minister to the strengthen- ing and confirmation of Christian faith. Profes- sor John Fiske declared in 1886, " As in the roar- ing loom of time the endless web of events is woven, each strand shall make more and more clearly visible the living garment of God." Pro- fessor Shaler, also of Harvard University, says no THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS in " The Interpretation of Nature," a strongly theistic book, " As the conception of these and other laws and principles operating in nature be- comes more complicated, naturalists are being driven step by step to hypothecate the presence in the universe of conditions which are best explained by the supposition that the direction of affairs is in the control of Something like our own intelli- gence. ... In other words, it seems to me that the naturalist is most likely to approach the posi- tion of the philosophical theologian by paths which at first seemed to lie far apart from his domain." Sir Oliver Lodge closed his Presidential Address before the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held in September, 1913, with these significant words, "We are deaf and blind to the immanent grandeur around us, unless we have insight enough to appreciate the whole, and to recognize in the woven fabric of existence, flowing steadily from the loom of an infinite progress towards perfection the ever- growing garment of a transcendent God." This language is strikingly similar to that of John Fiske. An editor of a religious journal, com- menting on this Address, said, " The more recent developments of science have been all in the direc- tion of confirming the supremacy of the spiritual, the truth of creational evolution, the existence of THE BIBLE iii God, and the immortality of the soul." It seems evident as another has said that, " Science is thus leading to something beyond science as alone sup- plying the solution of the world's riddle." A living Professor of Biology, in an article re- cently published, goes farther and affirms, " Real religion finds ,no better ally than real science, and false religion no saner foe. The insight of sci- ence must find a present God, an abiding and im- manent God, living, not dead, the great 'I am '; a working God, not one who did work once, but quit it; not a dead idol, or a dead notion, but the pulsing flame and force in all and through all and above all, the one true God ' in whom all things consists.' . , . Science tends more and more not only to show, but to prove, that the Christian life is the only entirely rational life; that all it de- mands is a sane and vital consistency with the ethical needs and hungers of our nature to make complete one whole human being, in character and conduct, as God meant it; that there is something in us that responds nobly to every item of the Christian programme; in other words, that Chris- tianity is psychologically and scientifically rational. . . . The outlook of science is not toward a new religion, but an all-pervading Christian religion, the paragon and perfection of sanity; neither 112 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS fanaticism nor unreason, but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." That Professor is evidently a convinced and a pronounced believer in the reality, the universality and the finality of the Christian religion, and be- lieves that his scientific knowledge is confirmatory of every item of the Christian faith. He has found that " the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," and also the middle and the end. Most teachers of science are in accord with him. Would that all were like-minded, and had as full an appreciation of the responsibilities of their high and holy calling. Many American colleges and universities have established chairs of Biblical Literature and His- tory, believing that the curriculum would be sadly deficient without such instruction. In many of them, possibly in all, the instruction needs to be reconstructed and expanded to a larger value and service, covering the varied uses to which the re- markable Book offers itself, viz., historical, bi- ographical, literary, ethical and religious. There are few departments in a college course, in which the Bible would not be at home. A recent Uni- versity Alumni Monthly contained a prepared list of books for the guidance of students, which every student ought to know by personal intimate ac- quaintance. The list comprised the names of THE BIBLE 113 about sixty authors, ancient and modern, and in- cluded more than two hundred books. There were Homer and Plato, Cicero and Virgil, Plu- tarch and Marcus Aurelius, Dante and Chaucer, Bacon and Shakespeare, Milton and Bunyan, Goethe and Victor Hugo, and English and Amer- ican historians, novelists and poets. But the Bible was placed at the head of the list. Of course it was, and would have been had the list been many times longer. But the great problem at the present time is with the public school, how the Bible may be re- stored to its former place and lend its marvelously helpful influence and greatly needed aid to the edu- cation of the rising generation.* Many of the teachers, both men and women, are Christians, openly connected with Christian churches, and their high personal character, known attitude to- ward the Christian religion, and their general ad- ministration of their schools exert a positive in- fluence for good upon the minds of the children * Inquiries, sent to the Superintendents of Schools in the different States elicited the following replies. In twelve States the oldest in the Republic, the Bible is required to be read in the schools daily, according to a long established custom. In thirteen States it is not excluded, and the reports state that it is read quite generally in the schools. In five States the reports state simply that it is read in a part of the schools. In two States the reading of the Bible is said to be encouraged, but the results are not given. And in one State it is left to local Boards, whose action is not reported. No reports from the other States are given, probably because none were received. 114 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS and youth under their care. They are living il- lustrations of the Christian spirit and its molding power upon character. They teach obedience to authority, loyalty to duty, love for truth and hon- esty, and respect for the rights of others, and in many ways they are not only imparting the ele- ments of secular education, but are seeking faith- fully to prepare their pupils for the important du- ties of citizenship in a nation, in which the power rests upon the intelligence and purity and high moral principles of the people. Professors Sneath and Hodges, joint authors of a small vol- ume on " Moral Training in the School and Home," acknowledge the silent and important in- fluence of the religious teacher in the work of edu- cation in these words — " The personality of the teacher is the constant text-book of the school. The religious teacher, conscious of God, devoted to the highest ideals, looking toward the life un- seen and immortal, will overcome all limitations and temporary hindrances, and make the school a religious influence. Morality will be infused with religion as flowers are filled with fragrance." It has been well said, " Morality must be lived before it can be taught; it is first introduced into school life by example. . . . Ethics makes no distinction between master and pupil." But great and beneficent as are the work and THE BIBLE 115 influence of such teachers, the results are acknowl- edged by educators themselves to be far from sat- isfactory. Men of eminence in the educational world, men of large experience and wide observa- tion, are recognizing and confessing the weakness and inadequacy of our present methods of educa- tion, even for the purpose of good citizenship, of high toned morality and honest dealing between man and man. Dr. Charles W. Eliot, late Presi- dent of Harvard University, in an address before the Connecticut Teachers' Association a few years since, acknowledged frankly and regretfully " the failures and shortcomings of American education," saying it did not furnish a successful method of dealing with certain personal vices and social evils, whose persistence was sadly disappointing to the friends and advocates of popular education. Ed- ucation, it is believed, must have introduced into it somehow a stronger and more potent moral ele- ment. It must somehow be made to touch the deeper things of the spirit and kindle the nobler emotions of the heart, inciting to reverence, purity, self-restraint, self-sacrifice and worthy ambitions. This conception of education is by no means new or modern. It is as old as Greek philosophy, if it is rightly interpreted. Professor Irving Bab- bitt of Harvard University says, " We are told that the aim of Socrates in his teaching of the ii6 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS young was not to make them efficient, but to In- spire in them reverence and restraint; for to make them efficient, said Socrates, without reverence and restraint, was simply to equip them with ampler means for harm." " Not to make them efficient," said Socrates (we are hearing much in these practical days about the great need of effi- ciency), "but to inspire in them reverence and restraint," reverence for law, for truth and justice, and the higher values of life, and the restraint of the evil passions and appetites of the heart, and of selfish and unworthy ambitions. Heeren, the Greek historian, tells us significantly that " Greece fell when things sacred ceased to be sacred." All its art and education, philosophy and culture, did not save It from decay. The following paragraph is quoted from an English author, " But the realization that re- ligion is fundamental both to national greatness and to the moral progress of human nature should be a permanent conviction of the mind, the deep- est and the most earnest — a conviction entirely independent of chance occurrence for its emphasis. From the beginning of time there have been no morals without religion; and every period of the world's history of a great moral decadence, and the downfall of mighty empires, has been pre- ceded by the triumphs of skepticism." THE BIBLE 117 Emile Boutroux, a teacher of teachers at the Fontenay School, says, " Even in the eighteenth century Rousseau inquired whether intellectual progress has moral progress for its necessary consequence; he maintained that for civilization to have the happy effect of transforming a human being acting by instinct into a reasonable and free individual, it must be dominated by the idea of the moral determinations of human nature." The National Educational Association, in its Declaration of Principles in 1905, affirmed " The ultimate object of popular education is to teach the children how to live righteously, healthily and happily, and that to accomplish this object it is essential that every school inculcate the love of truth, justice, purity and beauty. . . . The build- ing of character is the real aim of the schools and the ultimate reason for the expenditure of mil- lions for their maintenance." The Christian Register, a Unitarian organ, wisely says, — " The more we open the world to what we call civilization, and the more education we give it of the kind we call scientific, the greater are the dangers to modern society, unless in some way we contrive to make the world better." And Professors Sneath and Hodges declare — *' Boys and girls may go out from such a school . . . ignorant of the value of the virtues, and ii8 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS resenting authority. They may be sent out into the community equipped to do evil intelligently, and inclined to do it. The very excellence of the intellectual instruction may make the school a menace to the State." Can this " ultimate object " of popular educa- tion be accomplished without the aid of moral teaching enforced by a religious motive and re- ligious truth? Herbart expresses the wide- spread conviction when he says that the impera- tive need in education is " character-training based on an irrefragable foundation of morality." Should the faithful teachers be deprived of the slightest use of an instrumentality which is the most hopeful, if not the only possible one, for the accomplishment of the ultimate object of edu- cation, which is the main justification of the State's enormous expenditure? Has the Stalte the right to recognize the Bible and.its influence in any way as a necessary part of an educational outfit? Or must it leave to the uncertainty or the utter neglect of the home, or the limited oppor- tunity of the Sunday School, whose influence only a part of the children enjoy, a work on which it depends for its peace and its abiding prosperity? Here is the problem. The Jews and the Roman Catholics (strange to say) object to the simple reading of the Bible in the public schools, though THE BIBLE 119 by no means all of them. Some Protestants ob- ject, basing their opposition upon their conception of the great doctrine of the separation of Church and State, which they interpret as meaning the separation of religion and the State. Yet there is an increasing demand, growing out of a felt necessity, for a recognition of the Bible in our public school system. Its literary influence is needed by all, especially by those who are not to enjoy the opportunities which a college course may offer. Its charm can be felt by the young- est minds, and its elevation of the literary taste. It has been called " the key to modern culture," and opens the door to the better enjoyment of the true riches of our libraries. But above all, its moral and religious influence is needed by the mind in its most plastic period, when impressions sink deepest and abide longest; and the impres- sions made by the pure Word of God will be good and only good, and helpful to the family life and to parental authority and discipline, whatever may be the particular religious faith of the par- ents, as well as a determining influence upon the character of the children. To quote again from the authors above men- tioned— *' If the function of the school is to send out, not merely persons who can read, write and cipher, but good citizens, then it is plain that the I20 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS highest service the school can render to the com- munity is to secure the goodness of those citizens by founding it on the soundest possible basis." In order to accomplish this it is evident that moral sanctions must be enforced by religious sanctions. President Stanley Hall says, " The realization that God's laws are not like those of parents and teachers, evadible, suspensible, but changeless, and their penalties sure as the laws of nature, is a most important factor in moral training." Mr. Huxley is compelled to confess, " I have always been strongly in favor of secular educa- tion, in the sense of education without theology; but I must confess I have been no less seriously perplexed to know by what practical measures the religious feeling, which is the essential basis of conduct, was to be kept up, in the present utterly chaotic state of opinion on these matters, without the use of the Bible. The Pagan moralists lack life and color, and even the noble stoic, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, is too high and refined for an ordinary child." This is the glory of the Sacred Scripture, that while its thoughts often tax the minds of the most learned and mature, its language is suited to the simplest and the hum- blest. " A child can play in its waters, and an elephant can swim in them." Different remedies are being urged by many who THE BIBLE 121 are interested in the best education of the young and in the welfare of the nation, for the serious neglect to secure the full value of the Bible as an educational influence upon the life of youth. Of course the instruction in the Christian home and the Sunday School needs to be advanced to the highest point of perfection, but even then a large portion of the scholars are not included un- der such influences, and the responsibility of the State is not met. It has been suggested that the schools close one hour earlier each day or that a half day each week be given up, and that the scholars of such parents as are willing be per- mitted to receiv^e instruction from especially ap- pointed teachers in the Bible, and in the applica- tion of its teachings to conduct and life. It has also been suggested that the different religious denominations withdraw their children from the general public schools, and organize them into sectarian schools which shall be under the imme- diate supervision of the Church authorities, and in which the tenets and practices of the individual Church may be freely taught. This is already be- ing done by the Roman Catholic Church, and the children in large numbers are being gathered in parochial schools, and taught by priestly teachers in courses of instruction, over which the State has no control, and of which it knows absolutely noth- 122 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS ing. The reports of parents who have with- drawn their children from these schools because of dissatisfaction with the education they were re- ceiving, state that the education is superficial and inadequate, and is calculated to make the pupils Roman Catholics first rather than intelligent citi- zens of a free Republic, in which the conscience is free, and every man is responsible only to God and the revelation of his will, which He has made in his inspired Word. Moreover, the Roman Catholic authorities are making bold and per- sistent demands for a share in the public funds for the maintenance of their schools, and already confidently boast of speedy success by reason of a rapidly increasing immigrant vote, which will be able to dictate party-politics, and control legisla- tion. There should be but one reply to this de- mand, viz., that school funds can never be used for sectarian purposes, that consent in one case would establish a most confusing and dangerous precedent, and would be a direct and flagrant vio- lation of the fundamental principle enunciated in the national constitution. The course to be pursued to remedy the serious deficiency in our educational system, which seems to be feasible and unobjectionable to an increas- ing number of thoughtful citizens, is to restore the Bible, in whole or perhaps better in part, to a THE BIBLE 123 recognized and influential place in public instruc- tion as an unequaled literary standard, as a book of superior ethical value, and as inculcating a re- ligious motive without which morality has a weak and uncertain basis. The Bible cannot be charged with being a sectarian book, and there can be religion, that is, the acceptance of great, universal and unchangeable truths about God, in harmony with the deepest instincts of the moral nature of man, without sectarianism. A prom- inent educator, the Principal of a Baptist Acad- emy, has recently declared in a public address, " The Bible should be taught in our public schools because of its value as history and its value as literature. School and college training in the humanities covers the history and literature of all peoples, except that peculiar people whose reli- gious spirit has permeated all art, literature, law and government, and is the lasting glory of our modern civilization. More than all, the Bible should be taught in our public schools for its moral and religious influence. Since a nation is the aggregation of its individual units, the people must be moral and religious as well as intelligent. It is the province of the State to teach morals and religion as the foundation of its own prosperity. States are moral persons, and as such need a moral and religious training. No other civilized 124 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS nation except the United States neglects moral and religious instruction in its educational system. The Bible should be taught because this is a Christian nation, and the public schools should conform to the national character. Such teach- ing does not produce a union of Church and State, for the Bible is a Book common to both. If the State hands over to the Church instruction in some truths essential to national well-being, it thereby vacates a part of its own authority, and really does form a union with the Church. The Government should administer its own affairs in training youth to a full understanding of the teach- ing of the Bible upon which the nation is founded. The Bible is not a sectarian Book but rather a foe of all sectarianism." This is eminently wise and sane reasoning. Many persons who cherished a narrow concep- tion of the meaning of the separation of Church and State, have been compelled by further reflec- tion to accept a broader view, as more in harmony with the principles on which our nation was founded, and necessary to the continued growth and permanent prosperity of the Republic. This broader interpretation is a return to the wisdom of the founders. If additional evidence is needed, it can be abundantly produced. Hon. Thomas S. Grimke, a distinguished Scholar and THE BIBLE 125 Philanthropist in the South, declared, " Believing as I do that one of the first duties of the Refor- mation was to have incorporated the Bible into the whole course of instruction, I trust the time is not far distant when this principle will be uni- versally acknowledged and acted on, that the Bible is the only good basis, and the only safe, en- during cement, of education." Rev. J. H. Seelye, D.D., a well known Biblical scholar, has affirmed that " The religion of this country is that of the Bible ... It is that which gives character and force and stability to our government and laws. You might as well take out the heart from the body, and suppose that it would be a living body still, as to take away the Bible and all its in- fluences from our institutions, and expect that these will be preserved from decay. He that does not see, and will not acknowledge the power of the Bible in building up the whole framework of American institutions, is either unwise or in- sincere." Benjamin Rush, M.D., the honored physician and signer of the Declaration of In- dependence, said, " In contemplating the politi- cal institutions of the United States, I lament that we waste so much time and money In punishing crimes, and take so little pains to pi-event them. We profess to be republicans, and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating 126 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS our republican form of government; that is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible; for this divine Book, above all others, favors that equal- ity among mankind, that respect for just laws, and all those sober and frugal virtues which con- stitute the soul of republicanism." In harmony with the views of this Christian physician and statesman is the frankly expressed opinion of the agnostic philosopher. Professor Huxley — " I may add yet another claim of the Bible to the respect and attention of a democratic age. . . . Nowhere is the fundamental truth, that the welfare of the state, in the long run, de- pends upon the righteousness of the citizens, so strongly laid down. The Bible is the most dem- ocratic book in the world." All persons may not be agreed as to the ex- tent to which this education should be carried, but it would seem that no man interested in the moral character of the young, who to-morrow are to be heads of families and to hold the reins of government, and no lover of the country's wel- fare and prosperity, could raise any objection to the introduction and use in the public schools of such selections from the Scriptures as are appro- priate to their special needs, for the cultivation of literary style and high thinking, and of those pri- THE BIBLE 127 vate and social virtues which make for noble char- acter and responsible citizenship. A collection of parts of the Bible, for example, like the Ten Com- mandments, the stories of Joseph and of Queen Esther, the beautiful idyl of Ruth, the drama of Job, which Alexander Pope said " exceeds beyond all comparison the most noble parts of Homer," the nineteenth and twenty-third Psalms and many others, the sparkling and timeless wisdom of Proverbs, several chapters in Isaiah, of which Coleridge said " after reading them. Homer and Virgil are disgustingly tame, and Milton himself barely tolerable," the messages of the old Proph- ets which thunder with demands for private and social righteousness, the beatitudes of Mat- thew and the whole Sermon on the Mount, the kingly Life recorded in Mark, the touching par- ables of Luke, so natural and yet so divine, the fourteenth to the seventeenth chapters of John, which take us up into the third heavens of truth, the wonderful story of Paul's life and heroic con- secration to the present and eternal welfare of men, to whom he confessed himself a debtor for the simple reason that he was a possessor of riches which they had not, the striking appeal to integrity and holiness of life in the sixth chapter of Romans and the intensely practical lessons for the control of conduct which close the book, the 128 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS unparalleled and immortal panegyric of love, the crowning, the supreme grace, in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, — But why specify more? What a collection of literary gems, of moral treatises, of exalted truths expressed in the most attractive forms for the instruction, the puri- fication, the inspiration of the mind and heart of youth ! It is no wonder that Professor Gaussen of Geneva should call the Bible, " God's great an- them of revelation, in which we have the sublime simplicity of John, the argumentative, elliptical, soul-stirring energy of Paul, the fervor and solemnity of Peter, the poetic grandeur of Isaiah, the lyric moods of David, the ingenuous and ma- jestic narratives of Moses, the sententious and royal wisdom of Solomon." The great body of the Bible is composed of moral and religious teachings utterly unrelated to the controversies which have divided Jew and Christian or Christian denominations from each other. It would seem as if little or no objection could be raised from any source to such beautiful and wholesome and character-building teachings in our public schools. No reasonable man, no friend of ethical instruction as having to do with the development of character and life, no patri- otic citizen anxious that the nation should pre- THE BIBLE 129 serve the high Ideals of the fathers, could raise any serious opposition to such use. No atheist or infidel, if such there be among us, would lift his voice against the plan proposed, unless he is willing to be regarded as the enemy of virtue, of the highest education of the young, and of the weal of the Republic. Any opposition from that quarter may be regarded as a negligible quantity. There are few pronounced atheists or infidels among us. Men almost without exception, what- ever their belief or unbelief, desire Christian bur- ial for their friends and for themselves. It is manifestly absurd to compel a community, per- meated by a religious faith, to eliminate all ref- erence to God and religion from their educational system, without which their education would be fatally weak, for the sake of two or three pro- fessed unbelievers. Such a procedure would be the worst kind of tyranny, and would change re- ligious liberty into a mockery. An incoming atheist would thus have power to pervert and un- dermine the educational structure and even the civil government of a Christian commun- ity, if it had in it any recognition of God. No intelligent Roman Catholics could object to such use, for such teaching forms a part of their professed educational system, and would enforce, and in no way conflict with, what Is best and holi- I30 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS est in their claims, and could be supplemented by what is essential to the perpetuation of their par- ticular church organization. The members of the Jewish faith could not reasonably oppose the plan, for the selections would be in large part taken from their most sacred books; and very many leaders among them at the present time, while they do not accept Jesus as their promised Mes- siah, being disposed rather to believe that He was carried away by the enthusiasm of his disciples into that belief in reference to Himself and his mission (Is it not rather the correct interpreta- tion to say that He found it difficult to overcome the unbelief of his doubting disciples?) , have come to feel a national pride in Jesus as one of their own race, and to proclaim Him as a great Jewish prophet and teacher, because of his remarkable and increasing influence upon the best thought of modern times.* Moreover, it is believed that Protestant Chris- tians, under the new and saner interpretation of the meaning of the separation of Church and State, viz., that it does not mean the separation of religion and the civil government, but only that *The following tributes to Jesus are from eminent Jews, and are samples of many that might be adduced. Mr. Claude Montefiore: "The most important Jew that has ever lived, to whom the sinner and the outcast, age after age, have owed a great debt of gratitude." Dr. Isidore Singer: "I regard Jesus of Nazareth as a Jew THE BIBLE 131 the Church as an organized institution shall not rival or interfere with or be allowed to control the civil powers which themselves are ordained by God, will not long be willing to exclude from our educational equipment, now actually and widely acknowledged to be inadequate, the chief source of moral and literary culture, and the one instrument above all others that can elevate the education of the young to the highest standard of efficiency, and preserve the civil institutions, in- herited from the wise founders, from weakness and decay, viz., the Bible. A general movement on the part of the better class of our citizens of the Jews, one whom all Jewish people are learning to love. We are glad to claim Jesus as one of our own people." Dr. Berkowitz: "In Jesus there is the very flowering of Judaism, the noblest Rabbi of them all." Jacob SchiflF: "We Jews honor and revere Jesus of Nazareth as we do our own prophets." Dr. Friedlander: "The Divine Son of Man," and, "It is the glory of Judaism to have produced such a being." Dr. Kohler: "The Jew of to-day beholds in Jesus an in- spiring ideal of matchless beauty. . . . The very sign of the cross has lent a new meaning, a holier pathos to suffering, sick- ness and sin. . . . All this, modern Judaism gladly acknowl- edges, reclaiming Jesus as one of its greatest sons." Dr. Max Nordau: "Jesus is the soul of our soul, flesh of our flesh. Who, then, could think of excluding Him from the people of Israel? St. Peter will remain the only Jew who said of the Son of David, I know not the man." Rabbi Stephen Wise: " In reappropriating their elder brother, Jesus, the Jews of to-day are not urging a single step towards Christianity, but accepting the Jewish teaching of Christ, the Jew, a teacher, a leader, a prophet, clear-visioned, tenderly loving, unselfish, godlike though not uniquely godly, and not humanly divine, but divinely human." 132 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS would easily result in a nation-wide recognition of this most valuable educational asset known to mankind. President Woodrow Wilson, with a prophetic insight into national conditions and needs, has re- cently given expression to this conviction — " There are problems which will need purity and an integrity of purpose such as have never been called for before in the history of this country. I should be afraid to go forward if I did not be- lieve that there lay at the foundation of all our schooling and all our thought the incomparable and unimpeachable Word of God." I should be unjust to my deepest convictions, if I did not in closing this paper reassert and em- phasize my belief in the Bible as the inspired Word of God, a divine Revelation indeed, worthy of all acceptation, to continue to the end of time to make known to mankind the gracious purpose and will of God, to show to sinning men how they can be reconciled to God through penitence and faith in an atoning Saviour, how they can live righteously, meet successfully life's high demands, bear triumphantly the ills to which flesh is heir, attain unto the stature of perfect manhood, and die in the peaceful assurance of a blessed immor- tality. It was S. T. Coleridge who said, " I know the Bible is inspired, because it finds me at THE BIBLE 133 greater depths of my being than any other book." Experience is the test of truth. Millions in the past, and millions more in the present have tested the power of the religion of Christ to meet the deepest needs of the human heart, and have not found it to fail. A recent English writer has said, " Such, then, is the fourfold deepest need of the human heart; God's peace, to lead us into a truer and more assured conception both of righteousness and sin; God's peace and reconcil- iation, to restore us to right relations to Himself and to his will; God's love, to dower the heart with plenary joy and hope, and a sense of over- flowing fullness and sufficiency; and God's strength passing into our weakness, to fortify us in duty, to uphold us in conflict with evil, and to assure us final victory in the battle of a good and godly life. A religion that can adapt itself to all these moral and spiritual needs of the heart, in the sense of recognizing them, meeting them, supplying them all to the full, and leaving noth- ing wanting to constitute itself the light and the peace and the joy and the strength and the hope of all human existence in life and in death, such a religion, it is plain, must as a practical religion be absolutely perfect." That religion is the Christian religion. The 134 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS Christian religion is revealed in a Book. That Book is the Bible. " Father of mercies, in thy Word What endless glory shines! Forever be thy name adored For these celestial lines. Oh, may these heavenly pages be My ever dear delight! And still new beauties may I see, And still increasing light! " The vivid imagination of Edward Everett Hale portrayed the pitiable condition of " a man without a country." Only the pen of inspiration can depict the infinitely more deplorable condi- tion of a man or a country that should try to live without the knowledge of God and his revealed will. CHAFFER III THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY THE nineteenth century is universally re- garded as a century of remarkable progress. No one questions for an instant that in discovery, in invention, in the arts of living, in the accumula- tion of wealth, in all lines of material advance- ment and prosperity, the last century surpasses any century in the world's history of which we have knowledge. All the forces of nature have been harnessed to the car of human progress. When we think of the limitations of the fathers who lived a hundred years ago, the almost entire absence of luxuries and even of conveniences which we now regard as necessities, of the use of steam, of gas, of electricity, the steamship, the railroad, the telegraph, the telephone, the phrase res angusta dom't, which was descriptive of gen- eral conditions at that time, seems painfully im- pressive. We wonder as we try to recall their simple, circumscribed life, how the people of that generation managed to live and take comfort in 135 136 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS life, and we thank God that " the lines have fallen to us in pleasant places, and that we have a goodly heritage." As someone has truly said, we do not now exist, we live. Knowledge has certainly " grown from more to more," especially the knowledge of the natural sciences and their appli- cation to the needs of modern life, and also of other peoples and lands. Buried cities have been exhumed and brought to light. There are no longer hermit nations and dark continents. The question may be asked, has the religion of the people participated in the progress of the last century? Has the church of Jesus Christ, using the term as descriptive of the varied visible forms of organized Christianity, in any degree lived up to Its responsibilities? Has It shared in the gen- eral activity that has been going on around It? What has it to show that Is proof of the divine life which it professes to possess, and that will make a creditable chapter in its history? Of course, no one can claim that the religion of the people has been as active, as aggressive, and as abundant In achievement as It might have been, and ought to have been, that the Christian church has made the progress which with God's help was possible, and has molded the Ideals, and minis- tered to the needs, and lifted the life of the people as a conscientious fidelity to its divine commission THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 137 would have enabled it to do. All human works are marked by imperfection. Whatever man's hand touches is doomed to weakness. No man and no church ever attains in this world unto its ideal of life and service. " Our own hearts con- demn us." But this should not prevent us from recognizing the achievements of the past, and thanking God for whatever of success and prosperity has been secured. Inhere is a tendency at the present time to speak disparagingly of the past, to ignore what the church has accomplished, to criticise sharply, even censoriously, its spirit and methods, and even its ideals and doctrinal standards, for the purpose, it may be hoped, of arousing it to new zeal, in- creasing its activity and usefulness, and giving to it a broader vision of its Christ-given mission and the means and methods by which it is to be ac- complished. But a wise father is wont to com- mend his son for what he has tried to do well, if he desires to encourage him to do better. He who has only words of severe and unrighteous condemnation for past effort and its measure of success, is little likely to stimulate to increased effort and fidelity. Much of the sharp and un- pardonable criticism which is being poured upon the Christian church to-day grows out of a pro- found ignorance of its spirit and efforts, its in- 138 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS fluence and progress, or of a bitter hostility to it as a divine institution. Moreover, for a man to blind his eyes to the luminous record of the church's past achievements and its present moral and spiritual power in the world, is to refuse to honor God, who by his indwelling and outwork- ing Spirit has made it a mighty leaven for the regeneration of individual life and the purifica- tion and improvement of social customs and con- ditions. When all the facts are remembered, it may be said without fear of successful contradic- tion that the nineteenth century of the Christian era has been unequaled in moral and spiritual achievement, as well as in material progress, by any century that has preceded it, that the church of Christ in activity, in aggressiveness, in numer- ical growth and in its moral standards, has come nearer to fulfilling the divine purpose and the lofty ideals of its Founder than at any period, at least since the third century. Prof. Charles R. Erd- man of the Princeton Theological Seminary says, " The last century of Christian history has been characterized by notable achievements in var- ious spheres of religious thought and endeavor. It has been an era of great activity in Biblical and theological science, of marked development in philanthropic and social service, of unequaled progress in evangelical and missionary work. All THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 139 these activities have been manifestations of the spiritual life of the church. In its essence this life has been the same in all ages, however varied may have been its providential expressions and em- bodiments." Take for instance its obedience to Christ's final commission to " make disciples of all nations." The last century has been preeminently the mis- sionary century. At its beginning the church which, as a whole, had been sleeping, awoke to a new appreciation of Christ and spiritual religion, and a new sense of responsibility for the nations that sit in darkness and the shadow of death. Thousands of men and women have heard the call of God and have gone forth to labor and to die that they might bear witness to Him who gave his life for the life of the world, and billions of dollars have been laid upon God's altar for their sending and their support. As the result of this heroic consecration and willing sacrifice, within the hundred years all the great heathen nations have been visited, Christianity has laid permanent foundations in all lands, churches and schools and hospitals have been established, the Word of God has been translated into hundreds of tongues, an efficient native ministry has been raised up and educated, and already millions have been converted and other millions have been' I40 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS brought under the influence of the Gospel of Christ. It has been stated that " There have been three times as many adherents added to Christianity during the last century as during the first sixteen centuries of its existence. Only thirty-six per cent, of the world's population were governed by Christians in 1786, now more than fifty-five per cent. In 300 years Christian Powers have in- creased the territory under their rule from seven per cent, of the world's surface to eighty-two per cent. In view of these figures we feel that not only is Christian faith not on the decline, but that it is growing with great rapidity, and that Dr. Dorchester has truly expressed it when he said, " No intelligent person standing in the light of the last four centuries and beholding the great re- ligious movements of this age, can doubt that Christianity is advancing. Every year it is rob- ing itself with new effulgence and pouring its blessed illumination upon new millions of earth's population." The hoary religious systems of the far East are being rapidly undermined by the Gospel of Christ; their crude moralities are giving place to the purer ethics of Christianity; and in one in- stance, in the largest and most conspicuous na- tion of all, the form of government has yielded THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 141 under practically Christian leadership to the en- lightening influence of the advanced Christian civilization of the West. An English correspond- ent after a prolonged visit to China, declared, " The missionaries are the men who began the work of awakening China. . . . Their work Is not to be measured by their enrolled converts. . . . They have been not only the teachers of religion, but the advance agents of civilization." The leaven of the one true religion has been In- troduced, and even though the aid of Christian lands should now be withheld, the spiritual leaven of revealed and transforming truth would un- doubtedly go on working until the whole lump of heathenism is leavened. Sir Monier Monier- WlUiams affirmed thirty years ago that, " The present condition of India seems very similar to that of the Roman Empire before the coming of Christ. A complete disintegration of ancient faiths Is In progress in the upper strata of society. Most of the ablest thinkers become pure Theists or Unitarians. In almost every large town there is a Samaj or society of such men, whose creed would be well expressed by the first part of the first article of the Church of England." And Cheshub Chunder Sen has asserted that " Buddha no longer rules in India but Jesus Christ." A Professor in one of the Universities of Japan 142 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS recently declared, " No man can estimate the con- tribution which Christianity has made to Japan. . . . Japan has taken the best of everything found in Western civilization, and she must take the best in religion." As showing the present missionary activity an American journal recently published the follow- ing facts — "At the close of the year 1911, the total missionary funds raised by the various Pro- testant missionary organizations here and abroad for work in heathen lands were $25,297,074.00. With this magnificent annual offering, support was furnished for 22,058 white missionaries and '88,542 native helpers, teachers, pastors, Bible women and evangelists, at 49,579 different mis- sionary stations in India, Africa, Japan, China, Burma, Siam, the Arctic, South America and Polynesia. The missions had an enrolled list of 4,875,454 adherents professing Christian belief, of whom 2,304,308 were communicants. In the same year there were 1,477,049 children in the various missionary schools. The United States contributed nearly one-half of the total fund for conducting the whole work, having raised last year $12,290,005.00 for missions." The work which has been accomplished, great as it is, is not so great a work by a vast deal as would have been achieved, if every disciple of THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 143 Christ had been fully consecrated and every power had been laid upon the altar of service for the world's Redeemer; but it bears witness to the commendable missionary spirit of the church which has characterized the nineteenth century. It should be added (what of course was inevi- table) that the home missionary spirit in Christian lands has moved on with equal and even greater pace during this period, and has been rewarded with splendid results. If we confine our obser- vation to our own land, with which we are most familiar, we find that every evangelical denomina- tion has been stirred to increasing activity, and has organized vigorous missionary societies, city, state, and national, ministering indiscriminately to the needy native and foreign populations, car- ing for the aboriginal tribes which still remain, the native born settlers who are pushing Westward the course of empire, the destitute freedmen of the south, and the swelling tides of immigrant population that are flooding our cities and sweep- ing into the Western prairies. The church was never so responsive as it is to-day to the appeal of the destitute rural sections of our country and the more imperative challenge of the city. It seeks to embrace in the ever widening scope of its ac- tivity all conditions of people, all localities and all nationalities, and God's blessing has been, and 144 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS still is, on it all. The Baptist denomination in this country may serve as an illustration of growth as well as of service. At the beginning of the nineteenth century it numbered 75,000 or 80,000 members; at the end of the nineteenth century the number of communicants had swollen to more than five millions. The churches of Christ have not been wholly indifferent to their solemn duty and privilege, and surely God has given the in- crease. Great spiritual awakenings in response to prayer and earnest effort have been expe- rienced at frequent intervals, and Pentecost has been repeated again and again. While the churches humble themselves before God in view of the fact that they have not done more, may they not also praise Him that He has enabled them to do so much, and especially for the strengthening purpose increasingly manifest to go forward to the conquest of this land and of all lands for our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? The nineteenth century has been also the great educational century in this country. In the year 1800 there were but few colleges and institu- tions for higher education among us, and those were poorly endowed. No college had yet been founded for young women. At the present time almost every State has a college of its own. Some of them have several colleges representing dif- THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 145 ferent denominations of Christians. Separate colleges for women are numerous, and doors open to both sexes are found from ocean to ocean. The little faculty of a half dozen professors has grown in many instances to hundreds, and the meager endowments now amount to hundreds of millions of dollars. The most of these institu- tions, all except the State Institutions, have been founded, and supported, and endowed by private benevolence, a benevolence which has been born of prayer and kindled in the churches of Jesus Christ, Christian men and women contributing often out of their poverty that knowledge may be placed within the reach of all the youth of the land, and that an educated ministry may be raised up to be the leaders of our churches and guides of the people in the way of true wisdom. Some gifts for educational purposes in the latter part of the century have been little less than fabulous, and are without a parallel in the history of the world. The motto of Harvard University, the oldest of them all, Christo et Ecclesiac, may be truthfully inscribed over every college gateway, as expres- sive of the Christian spirit and purpose of its founders. Surely a Christianity which has brought forth such rich and abundant fruit has ac- complished something for the enlightenment of mankind, and is worthy of grateful recognition 146 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS as one of the potent forces in our advancing civili- zation. That eminent litterateur, Bliss Perry, says, " American faith in education, as all the world knows, has from the beginning gone hand in hand with faith in religion; the school-house was almost as sacred a symbol as the meeting-house; and the munificence of American private benefactions to the cause of education furnishes to-day one of the most striking instances of idealism in the history of civilization." It should be remembered that even the State colleges and universities which have been founded and are supported by public funds, have been created by an appreciation of the value and neces- sity of higher education for the welfare and prog- ress of the people, which has been fostered by the churches of Jesus Christ. President James B. Angell says, in " Selected Addresses," " For the most part the direction of education has been in the hands of the church. Now whatever criti- cism may be made upon the church through these eighteen centuries, she has with impartial hand held wide open to men, of high and of low degree alike, the gates of generous learning. She has encouraged and persuaded the rich to endow her schools and colleges and universities, so that the instruction might be almost, if not entirely, free. THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 147 She has taught them to found scholarships, which would enable the poorest boy to spend the best years of his youth and manhood in the still air of delightful study." He might have added, should a Professor in a college so far forget himself as to speak disparagingly of the Christian church, he is ungratefully condemning the generous bene- factor to which he is indebted for his education, his living and his opportunity. But our churches through their inspired rep- resentatives have not only been in most wise and generous ways seeking to overcome the ignorance of the world, but they have been faithfully and sympathetically ministering to the want, the sor- row and the misery of the world which they have seen about them, and are doing it to-day with an increasing zeal and a far reaching activity. The nineteenth century may be characterized as par excellence the philanthropic century. There never was a time when the disciples of Christ followed more closely or in greater numbers in the foot- steps of their divine Master, who ever went about doing good, than during these recent years. There never was a time when the practical sympa- thy of Christ found more beautiful or abundant illustrations than in our day. It is true, painfully true, that selfishness and forgetfulness and cold- ness still live in too many hearts which profess to 148 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS have been warmed by the love of the Saviour. But the church as a whole has proved itself to be the friend of the poor, the sick, the suffering, the wandering, the needy of all classes and conditions, and its members have gone forth to found not only institutions of learning, but institutions of charity and philanthropy of every name, hospi- tals, asylums, homes for the aged, the orphan, the friendless and the wayward. All those whom the heathen and Christless world has neglected and abandoned, the Christian church has adopted as its peculiar care. These are some of the things that distinguish our Christian civilization and make it Christian. A well known English writer has truthfully said, " All that we call modern civilization in a sense which deserves the name, is the visible ex- pression of the transforming power of the Gos- pel." Dr. Lyman Abbott has recently declared, in " My Fifty Years as a Minister," " Looking back upon the history of the church or abroad upon its present work, the church is seen as an inspiration to practical helpfulness. The church was the first distributor of charity to the poor; the first builder of hospitals and asylums; the first minister to the sick and suffering; the first founder of schools for the education of the common people. THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 149 And it is still. It is the church which has sent doctors and teachers to foreign lands; the church which has introduced medicine and surgery into China, India, Africa; the church which has es- tablished, first, schools for the primary education of the children, and then, colleges for the higher education of adults, in lands where there was either no educational system, as in India, or none which really educated, as in China. It was to the church that the army looked in the Civ^il War for the es- tablishment and maintenance of the Christian and Sanitary Commissions; it was to the church that, after great battles, calls were sent for bandages, medicines, nurses, doctors and delicacies for the hospitals. That the world agrees with me in thinking that the churches are springs of practical benevolence is indicated by the fact that the pastor of every town and city church of any considerable size gets every month, often two or three times a month (and often two or three times a week) appeals for help for some practical benevolence or some moral reform." And not only by organized institutions of Chris- tian charity, but by a quiet personal ministry of which every pastor knows. Christian men and women are busy performing deeds of mercy, help- fulness and love. There are undoubtedly in- 150 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS stances of suffering which do not come to the eye of the Christian pubHc, and distressing cries which reach no ear. There are conditions which can be changed and Improved only by wise and author- itative legislation, which can be brought about only by slow processes. But the great body of the church, in spite of some unworthy exceptions, are animated to a good degree by the spirit of Christ, or at least by a sincere purpose to walk worthy of their high calling. It is this that furnishes the basis for the hope that as the religion of Jesus con- trols the spirit and the conduct of men, there will be realized on earth the divine ideal of human brotherhood. An American professor and writer on Socialism is reported to have said in an address before a Christian Convention, " Throughout Western Christendom there has been a long struggle of the people towards political liberty and social brother- hood. It was often blind, sinful, brutal, as every great movement of humanity has always been. Yet God was in it. But the churches that exist for the very purpose of establishing the reign of justice, peace and brotherhood have with fatal persistence ranged themselves on the other side. This is the great moral stumbling block beside which all intellectual difficulties of belief in Chris- tian doctrine are insignificant. It has produced THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 151 more alienation from religion than all other causes combined." If this accusation means or includes Christendom in this Western hemisphere it is utterly without foundation. Here social brother- hood has to a large degree accompanied political liberty. The churches of the largest denomina- tions in the United States are practically social democracies. Their members to a very large ex- tent belong to the humbler walks in life, to the laboring classes, or are those who have limited in- comes. There are few millionaires or semi-mil- lionaires among them, and those are not the in- heritors of large unearned properties, but such as have come up from the lower strata of society, and by industry, economy, thrift and, for the most part, honest toil and enterprise have accumulated what they possess. It can be asserted confidently that the sympathies of the churches are uniformly with the laboring classes, when they observe the laws of the land and the rights of others, and do not *' blindly, sinfully, brutally " endanger the peace and stability of the social order. Anything else is inconceivable, for the members of the churches are largely the laboring classes. There is sometimes manifested an unjust and unreasonable antagonism against wealth and those who possess it, without which all commerce and industry and large philanthropy and missionary 152 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS enterprise would be impossible, and society would resolve itself into a lifeless and unprogressive agrarianism. We are living in a time of extrav- agant, not to say insane assertions. Some would- be leaders in this social crisis seem to care not so much to instruct wisely and to generate calmness of judgment, as to arouse unrest and passion and class-hostility. A Christian minister who had abandoned the pulpit for the socialist's platform, publicly declared that " Every poor man is a robbed man," an assertion as absurd and inde- fensible as it is criminal and dangerous. Poverty is often the result of incompetence, folly or waste- ful dissipation. A. C. Benson is authority for the following Incident in the life of Charles Kingsley. He was once traveling in the United States and met a newspaper editor who said to him, " Mr. Kingsley, I hear you are a democrat. Well, so am I. My motto Is, Whenever you see a head above the crowd, hit it." " Good heavens! " said Kingsley, commenting upon the remark, " what a ghastly conception of human equality, to attempt, not to raise everyone to the level of the best, but to boycott all force, all originality, all nobility, and to reduce all to a dead level! If that is de- mocracy, I am no democrat." That pugilistic edi- tor seems to have a large following, all of whom do not occupy editors' chairs; whose conception of THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 153 democracy is the overthrow of the prosperous in order to exalt the less favored, whose method is a leveling down instead of a leveling up, and who mistake violent hostility against the rich for gen- uine and helpful sympathy for the poor. Unless there can be a wiser spirit introduced into the discussion of social questions, and the use of more temperate and saner language, the discussion will not only be utterly futile of good, but will lead to widespread social disaster. Some teachers and preachers who profess to be the friends of the church and the social order, are proving themselves to be the worst enemies of both by their unwar- ranted and incendiary language. They are blind leaders of the blind, aye, worse, they are playing with the inflammable passions of men, and inciting to riot and anarchy. What is needed is not aliena- tion and distrust and enmity, but mutual under- standing and sympathy and good will. A recent writer, himself a Christian teacher, discussing the church and socialism, says, " The church is to-day in large part a collection of people who thank God that they are not as others — even as this socialist! The indifferent Priest and the hard hearted Levite still throng the highways, but to many a man who has fallen among robbers, and has been bruised and beaten and left half dead, no good Samaritan comes with his oil and 154 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS wine. The church is too busy holding conven- tions and saving the heathen to attend to such small matters at its doors." Such language com- ing from the pen of an infidel and a bitter and mentally and morally unbalanced socialist would not be surprising, for he hates both the church and missions to the heathen. But a sober second thought on the part of the author and a better acquaintance with the Immense and increasing ac- tivity on the part of many of our churches In ministering " oil and wine " would have prevented such a wholesale and unjust criticism. Any candid survey of the philanthropic and charitable move- ments of the last century, and an acquaintance with the work of practical sympathy In which our churches are constantly engaged will convince any man that this has been a prominent characteristic of the visible life of Christianity. Our Young Men's Christian Associations and Young Women's Christian Associations, with all their excellent and far reaching service, have been generated by the teaching of the Christian pulpit, and have been sustained and made efficient by the presence, the prayers, and the devotion of the men and women of the churches. Take away that presence, and those prayers, and that devotion, and their fine buildings, expensively equipped, erected in every city, would quickly be in the market for sale; in- THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 155 deed without these they would never have been built. The truth is, that all these existing philan- thropies and charities which are the glory of our modern civilization, organizations and societies of every name for the relief of suffering and for moral prevention, are simply so many forms of church-activity. The church of Jesus Christ with the religion which it embodies and the life which it imparts, is the inspiring and prolific mother of them all. To withhold from the church its just dues is as culpable as it is to bring false charges against it. Professor William Adams Brown of the Union Theological Seminary states a fact too little recog- nized, when he says, " Long before our modern economists had begun to tell us of the dependence of vice upon an unfavorable social environment. Christian missionaries had established in the slums of our great cities centers of helpfulness and sym- pathy which were a practical demonstration of this truth . . . And to the darkest and most destitute regions of the earth the hospital, the workshop and the school have been carried by men and women who have been sustained in the sacrifice and renunciation which the task required, by their faith that the little they were able to do to help men here was so much contribution towards pre- paring them for an eternal destiny." Again he 156 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS says, " There are many persons to-day who are ready to recognize the beneficent work done by foreign missionaries for the social welfare of the peoples among whom they have been working, who have no sympathy with the religious motives which animate them. Why, they ask, can we not have the hospital and the school without the doc- trines that go with them? They forget that it is faith in the realities which the doctrines express, which alone has made the missionary enterprise possible. Had it not been for the belief that man is an immortal spirit, capable of communion with God and meant for fellowship with Him through all eternity, we should have had no Livingstone or Moffat or Paton." Possibly there may be here and there an exclu- sive, self-centered, heartless and unspiritual church, blind to the great verities of its professed faith, which is irresponsive to the appeal of a lost world, and holds himself aloof from the common tide of human life which goes moaning and sob- bing by. But the general spirit of the followers of the divine Son of Man has been: " Let me live in my house by the side of the road, And be a friend to man." The appeal of a needy and distressed humanity has been invariably to the Christian community, THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 157 and has not been wont to be refused when rehef was possible. It was the dictate of the plainest wisdom, confirmed by the result of past experience, that prompted the friends of the ancient cripple to carry him daily at the hour of prayer, and lay him by the Beautiful Gate of the temple, where the throngs of worshipers would pass to and fro. It is the religiously inclined in whose bosoms the divine sympathy throbs. The friends of a suf- fering Christ are uniformly the friends of a suffer- ing humanity. But what shall be said of the influence of the Christian church and its teaching during the last century upon public and private morals? No one who is familiar with the ethical ideals of Jesus will question their pure and exalted character and their insistent demand for righteousness in per- sonal character and in all human conduct and re- lations. All ethical systems of acknowledged worth are based upon the teachings of Christ. Did the church of the nineteenth century enforce those teachings as part of its divine message, or was the pulpit ministration such as to obscure their importance and weaken their power? In other words was the evangelicanism of the fathers non- ethical? This question is raised by reason of the supposed contrast between the preaching of the past and the preaching of the present. Formerly, 158 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS it is said, the emphasis was laid upon doctrine, while now it is laid upon practice, formerly upon creed and now upon life. This supposed contrast is largely imaginary, and grows out of an entire misapprehension of the facts. The fathers did preach doctrine, but rarely or never as an end in itself. It was uni- formly as a means to fullness and integrity of life. It would be easy to show from their voluminous sermons which have been preserved, with their numerous inferences, applications, improvements and practical lessons that they were not wont to disconnect truth from life, doctrine from personal obedience and righteousness. The following clear and distinct utterance was made as long ago as 1811 at the meeting of the Warren Baptist Asso- ciation for that year, and may be accepted as an illustration of the all-round preaching which in a large degree characterized the century. The italics are the author's. " But while the Scriptures enjoin the absolute necessity of faith unfeigned, with no less decision do they affirm that those who believe must be careful to maintain good works. True faith always works by love and purifies the heart. Nothing can be adapted more effectually to produce the fruits of righteousness than a hearty belief of the truth exhibited in the Bible. The Gospel is a grand expedient in which the wis- THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 159 doni and glory of Ciod arc displayed in recovering men from the dominion of sin. No person can have more real religion than he has practical re- ligion. He that doeth righteousness is righteous, and he only. The grace of God which bringeth salvation, teaches its possessors to deny ungodli- ness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, right- eously and godly in this present evil world . . . Faith in Christ as the root, and obedience to his commands as the branches, constitute the true plant of our Heavenly Father's planting." Christ taught, " You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free," not only free from error and superstition, but free from the power and dominion of sin. Christ prayed for his dis- ciples in his last recorded prayer, " Sanctify them by the truth ; thy word is truth." The fathers took Christ at his word, believing that the truth of Christ, the doctrine of Christ, alone had renewing and sanctifying power. It was not the creed ac- cepted merely by the intellect, but the creed wrought into the life, that they had in view. Be- lievers were to be " living epistles." By their fruits they should be known and judged. If they preached the necessity of faith in Christ as a di- vine Saviour, it was because He would save his people from their sins, from their power as well as their penalty. If they held up Christ on the cross i6o THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS in full atonement, they joined believers in Christ with Him in his crucifixion, crying " How shall we who are dead to sin live any longer therein?" If they preached the virgin birth of Christ, they proclaimed the absolute necessity of a new birth into a spiritual life in order to see the kingdom of God. If they preached the resurrection of Christ as the crowning article in the Christian faith, it was that men might experience the moral power of that resurrection, and rise to newness of being. If they preached the doctrine of justification by faith, they were quick to say, while it is your faith in Christ that justifies you before God, it is your righteous and obedient life that will justify your faith before God and men. If they preached much of Heaven and its eternal glories, it was be- cause they knew that no man can live this life as he ought, without feeling the uplifting and sanc- tifying power of the world to come constantly on his soul. They put first things first, the cause before the effect, the prescribed means before the desired end. They did emphasize doctrine that they might se- cure life. They did emphasize doctrine, because to ignore it was fatal to life. Christ said, " The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." And so they spoke them unto men, pregnant with divine doctrine, throbbing with divine life, THE CHURCH OF CHRIST i6i that they might have here and now the true and abundant life which Christ came to give. Well will it be for the church and the ministry of to-day and to-morrow and the next day, if they follow the examples of the fathers, which brought large in- crease to the people of God and crowned the century with gracious revivals. A leader in the recent " men and religion forward movement " declared that if his denomination, the Congrega- tionalist, did not lay greater emphasis upon the soul's conversion by the Spirit and truth of God, it would soon die out. The continued existence of Christian churches depends upon the continued proclamation of revealed truth and the continued insistence upon a vital spiritual experience, which consists in the soul's communion with God through a personal faith in the crucified and risen Christ. Without these there may be social clubs, fraternal orders, benevolent societies, philanthropic organi- zations, but Christian churches after the New Tes- tament pattern are doomed to extinction. Chris- tianity is doctrine as well as life, and all permanent Christian life must have its roots in the unchang- ing truth of Christ. Men will soon cease to talk about " applied Christianity," unless they con- tinue to hold fast to a definite, positive Christian- ity which they are to apply. Doctrinal preaching has always produced moral i62 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS results. Froude in his essay of " Calvinism " de- clared (and he cannot be charged with undue prejudice) that Calvinism produced character, and that whatever of moral fiber the English and Scotch people possessed was due to the Puritan preaching of Calvinistic doctrine. Froude's exact language is, " Whatever exists at this mo- ment in England and Scotland of conscientious fear of doing evil is the remnant of the convic- tions which were branded by the Calvinists into the people's hearts." Dr. William E. Griffis de- clares, " Calvinism with its democratic spirit, in- tense love of liberty, high ideals, and austere morals was mighty in shaping the minds of the men who made the Dutch Republic, the English Commonwealth, New England and the Scotland and North Ireland of public schools and an edu- cated peasantry." The earlier and later testimony of historians is in exact accord, and voices the un- varying consensus of opinion. In a review of a volume entitled " Nine Great Preachers," by Dr. A. H. Currier, beginning with Chrysostom and ending with Phillips Brooks, four of whom are well within the memory of living men, viz., Robertson, Beecher, Maclaren and Brooks, it is said, " The boldness with which all these preachers denounced the sins of their times IS strikingly apparent in these biographies; while THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 163 the elevated standard of morality which they pro- claimed shows them all, and the class to which they belong, to be lineal descendants of the great lawgiver of Israel, who by divine sanctions en- forced a morality far higher than any which can be obtained by mere legal enactments." Certainly in the preaching of the great preachers of the church doctrine and ethics have not been di- vorced. The results of doctrinal preaching have been seen in a positive as well as negative morality. The nineteenth century revealed in several respects a remarkable progress in moral sentiment in our country. The system of human slavery, which had rested like a menacing curse upon the land, and came near dismembering the nation, went down, not so much by reason of the demand of the Civil War (that was only the providential occa- sion) as before the uprising and onward march of aroused moral sentiment. The abolitionists had their mission, but the growing sense of the injustice and wrong of the system, felt by many Christians in the South as well as the North, voiced in many Christian pulpits, journals and conventions, was at last victorious, and the abnormal institution disappeared forever from our free land. Dr. Lyman Abbott, to quote again from his Reminiscences which refer to the history of both i64 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS the temperance and the slavery agitations, says, " That the church has sometimes been laggard in moral reform movements is true; but it is not true, as is sometimes affirmed, that it has been in- different. Dr. Lyman Beecher's ' Six Sermons on Temperance ' were among the causes which brought about the great temperance movement in this country. There was not in the anti-slavery reform, from any body of lawyers, doctors, mer- chants or scientists, any utterances analogous to the petition signed by three thousand clergymen of New England against the Nebraska Bill, allowing the extension of slavery." These are specimen illustrations of moral sentiment which was finding expression in pulpit and pew constantly during the last century. As early as 1787 the Warren Baptist Associa- tion which embraced the Baptist churches through- out New England, passed a resolution condemning the traffic In slaves. This is thought to be the earliest of many denunciations of slavery by re- ligious conventions in the North. During the first half of the last century many Influential citizens of the South openly declared the system of slavery to be *' unjust," " unchristian," " cruel," " dis- graceful," " diabolical," " a black stain," " a ter- rible calamity," " a moral and political evil," " an evil greater to the master than to the slave." THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 165 This was especially true of prominent leaders in Virginia. In the year 1845 the Baptist General Convention for Foreign Missions, having been one body for thirty-one years, was torn asunder, making two bodies, a Northern and a Southern, because the Appointing Board resident in the North, refused in response to an inquiry from the Alabama Baptist Convention, to appoint slave- owners as missionaries, " lest it become respon- sible for an institution which it could not with good conscience sanction." The Civil War brought de- struction to the system, triumph in a way little expected to the vigorous moral sense of the peo- ple, and immortal glory to the name of Abraham Lincoln; and in due time came healing and a more permanent union to the dismembered denomina- tions of Christians. Now no sane man is so insen- sible to the demands of justice and the inalienable rights of humanity as to defend the ancient wrong. The practice of gambling by lottery which pre- vailed so extensively a hundred years ago, and was resorted to without a blush, by the authorization of legislative enactment, in works of public im- provement, in securing funds for the erection of public buildings and even Christian sanctuaries, is forever ostracized by reason of the pronounced condemnation of educated Christian sentiment. In some forms gambling still survives, and though i66 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS sometimes protected by official corruption, it is under the ban of statutory condemnation like other crimes and vices, and lives in the dark, shrinking from discovery and criminal prosecution. The following statute was passed by the Legis- lature of the State of New York, April 13, 18 14: " An Act instituting a lottery for the promotion of literature and for other purposes. Whereas well-regulated seminaries of learning are of im- mense importance to every country and tend especially, by the diffusion of science and the promotion of morals, to defend and perpetuate the liberties of a free state. Therefore I. Be it enacted by the people of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, that there shall be raised by lottery, in successive classes, a sum equal in amount to the several appropriations made by this act. $100,000.00 for the benefit of Union College. $ 40,000.00 for the benefit of Hamilton College. $ 40,000.00 for the benefit of Asbury African Church in the City of New York to pay a mort- gage and establish a school. $ 30,000.00 for the benefit of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and certain provisions for the benefit of Columbia College. See Elihu Root's Yale Lectures on "The Citizen's Part in Government," pp. 105, 106. The intemperance that was so rife even in Christian circles in former days, so that no build- ing could be framed, not even a college or a church, and no day's work could be done in field THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 167 or shop, without the use of intoxicating liquor, and hospitality even to a clerg)'nian was not complete unless it was furnished, is now a mark of moral degeneracy, and more and more by constantly in- creasing public sentiment restrictive laws are being placed upon our statute books in reference to its manufacture and sale. Rev. William Goodell, D.D., an honored missionary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to Constantinople, describes in his " Memoirs " the social conditions which prevailed in his boyhood in the Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts. An eminent clergyman consulted a physician in great perplexity of mind. In his pastoral work as he visited the sick and the dying, comforted 'mourners, prayed with the aged and guided in- quirers, wherever he called on these sacred er- rands liquor was offered to him, which in order not to give offense he felt bound to take. After a few calls " his head was invariably affected, so that he found himself in danger of saying or do- ing some foolish thing. Could the doctor pre- scribe something for him to take in siich frequent emergencies?" The doctor's only prescription was, when his head was thus affected, the clergy- man should go home while he was still able to walk, and remain until the dizziness had passed away. " The idea of total abstinence seems not i68 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS to have entered the mind of either of them. That he must drink was taken for granted, or give unpardonable offense. In those days everybody drank, old and young, rich and poor, male and female." Dr. Goodell relates another incident, in which he himself, then a boy, had a prominent part. A godly man, who like his own godly par- ents believed in the Assembly's Catechism, together with " the reasons annexed to the whole Ten Com- mandments " was wont to call at his home " to confer with his parents about the prophecies in general and the millennium in particular," and the great missionary enterprise which was then be- ginning to engage the thoughts of Christians. No conference ever closed without glasses of toddy or mugs of flip, varying according to the season, " the sugar at the bottom being always reserved for the longing palates of the children." On one occasion when the godly man called, the parents were absent, and Dr. Goodell says, " I felt it be- came me as the oldest son of the family to treat the servant of the Lord with all due respect." He therefore undertook to make for this good man the customary glass of toddy. " On tasting it I thought it too strong and put in more water with sugar to match. Tasting it again I thought it was too weak and too sweet, and therefore made an- other change and still another." And so he con- THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 169 tinued tasting and changing, and changing and tasting until he had prepared a large bowl full, and had lost all idea of how it ought to taste. The good man drank a part, and gave the children his blessing, advising them to put the remainder of the liquor aside until their parents returned. They were ashamed to have their parents come home and see what remained, and to throw any of " the good creature " away would be quite wicked, and so they undertook to reduce the quan- tity remaining, and drank until, as the doctor says euphemistically, " their heads turned around." He adds " I presume that the children of to-day would know a more excellent way of honoring the servants of the Most High God; but those were days of darkness." There are far too many peo- ple in nominally Christian communities who still love darkness rather than light. But it is incon- ceivable that such scenes could be repeated in Christian homes to-day. Several States and large sections of many others have passed prohibitory and no-license laws, which are executed as suc- cessfully as any laws against vice and crime. Many citizens are urging such laws, as a distin- guished educator in the South said, on the simple ground of self-protection, for the protection of life and property against those made insane by drink. It is stated that fifteen millions of our 170 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS people are livang in nine states under Statewide prohibition, or about one-sixth of the entire popu- lation. In twenty-five states more than fifty per cent, of the territory is dry, and in thirteen states more than seventy-five per cent, is dry. An im- mense amount of literature portraying the fearful evils of alcoholism from a physical and economical as well as moral standpoint, has been published and widely circulated. Temperance societies and anti-saloon leagues are vigorously and patiently at work, hoping In due time by means of an awak- ened moral sentiment to have a controlling voice in the national politics. A mighty work of reformation still remains for the church of Christ to do for the salvation of the bodies and souls of men from the destroying In- fluence of Intoxicating drink, and the removal of this formidable obstacle to the progress of the kingdom of God. The terrible judgment needs to be loudly and constantly proclaimed from every pulpit in the land — " No drunkard shall enter Into the kingdom of heaven," whatever his position in the social scale; and the lofty principle of Chris- tian self-denial and true brotherhood needs to be urged again and again — "If meat make my brother to stumble, I will eat no flesh forevermore, that I make not my brother to stumble." The progress of the past in sentiment and determina- THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 171 tion to abolish this great evil prognosticates the final victory. It needs to be added that unless labor-unions incorporate a temperance plank into their platforms and conscientiously live up to it, and unless reformers and socialists of every name, Christian and anti-Christian, grapple and strangle the drink-habit which is the prolific source of waste, poverty, misery, degradation, vice and crime, they are only playing with reform and so- cial betterment. The following confession of the result of personal observation is from the pen of Carroll D. Wright, that eminent student of eco- nomics: " I have looked into a thousand homes of the working people of Europe; I do not know how many in my own country. In every case, so far as my observation goes, drunkenness was at the bottom of the misery, and not the industrial system or the industrial surroundings of the men and their families." Phillips Brooks once re- marked that if intemperance could be wiped out, there would not be poverty and misery enough left to keep our Christian charity in healthy ex- ercise. The temperance movement, which was born of the activity of Christian men and women, is still largely in their hands. The church of Christ is not yet completely aroused, to its shame be it said; but when the church in which resides the omnipotence of God and through which He 172 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS works, shall present a united and aggressive front to the opposing forces of evil, viz., social customs in high life, heartless greed, enslaving appetite and a subsidized secular press, they will go down before it. Moreover, whatever moral instinct has existed in the hearts of the people, whatever inborn sense of right and justice, the church of Christ has quickened, interpreted, enlightened, enforced and energized it, so that the church by its ministra- tions, and by the consistent lives, examples and ef- forts of its members has been the chief promoter of public moral sentiment and civic righteousness. One has only to imagine the condition of a com- munity, a city or a nation, in which the moral in- fluence of the church has never been felt or should be blotted out, to form an idea of the indebted- ness of the general public to its preservative and beneficent power. Men who ignore or repudiate the authority and teachings of the religion of Jesus Christ, are enjoying in their homes, in their social and business life and in the undisturbed privileges of citizenship the incalculable benefits of its ac- tive presence. The moral influence of the Gospel permeates all walks and conditions of life. Christ still comes to his own, though his own receive him not. What Harold Begbie says of his nation is equally true of America. " Materialism in Eng- THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 173 land is saturated through and through with the ethical ideals of Jesus; our intellectual agnosticism is moral with the inexpugnable leaven of Christian- ity." It can be said with absolute confidence that the world is a better world to live in than the world of a hundred years ago, and that it is a better church which lives in it, with a vastly better equipment, and a more aggressive spirit, and higher ideals of its life and mission. A recent issue of " The Christian Work and Evangelist " contained the following positive ex- pression of its belief. " We believe that never in any period of the world's history was the church making more earnest effort than it is to-day to reach the people and to build up the kingdom of God. In half a million churches next Sunday Christ will be truly preached. There never was so devoted and passionate humanitarianism mani- fested as the church to-day is exercising. Never has the church shown such enthusiasm for the kingdom of God in the world." Professor George W. Knox of the Union Theo- logical Seminary says, in " The Gospel of Jesus," " Never before was the Gospel of Jesus in its sincerity so widely recognized and followed; never before was there such enthusiasm in the service of humanity; never before did so many powers 174 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS combine for the doing of the Father's will on earth." These testimonies are samples of innumerable expressions of belief that might be adduced. They voice the very general conviction of think- ing men, based upon a candid and comprehensive survey of the religious conditions of the world and the progress and present activity of organized Christianity. A narrow view, limited to certain local and variable aspects, may sometimes be dis- heartening; but a broad outlook upon society and the world will confirm and strengthen the faith and courage born of the positive, unmistakable and repeated promises of the Almighty in refer- ence to the triumph of his Kingdom. There are a few people, among whom is a small body of Christian interpreters, who believe that the world is constantly growing worse, and that even the church of Christ is becoming more cor- rupt and increasingly false to the teachings of its divine Master. Sometimes these interpreters seem almost jubilant in their pessimistic belief, for according to their interpretation of Scripture prophecy, these conditions foretoken the speedy personal coming of Jesus Christ in judgment. It is declared that " the church is in a pitiable condi- tion," " It is daily growing weaker," " it Is In fact dying, and its occasional spasms of righteousness THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 175 are only the galvanic twitching of its stiffening members." The inevitable effect of such a belief is to paralyze all Christian effort, to silence the voice of prayer, to destroy faith in the saving power of the Gospel of Christ and in the pur- pose of Christ to endow his church with such strength that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, and to extinguish all hope in the full, glad coming of his kingdom and its triumph over all the kingdoms of the world. Such a belief, as if it was an integral part of the programme of Christ, is gloomy beyond expression. To rejoice in it would be unnatural and inhuman. Few men can be found who will endorse the astonishing assertions of Alfred Russel Wallace, contained In his recent volume entitled " Social En- vironment and Moral Progress." He says, " I have come to the general conclusion that there has been no advance either in intellect or morals from the days of the earliest Egyptians to the keel-lay- ing of the latest Dreadnaught." Again he says, " It Is not too much to say that our whole system of society Is rotten from top to bottom, and the social environment as a whole, in relation to our possibilities and our claims, is the worst the world has ever seen." Such utterances are the blindest and wildest utterances of a pessimistic socialism, which sees no progress in the human race, and has 176 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS no faith in the forces that have been working for its advance, and have produced a Christian civiH- zation. And what is worse, Mr. Wallace has only one remedy for the conditions which he thinks he sees, and that is a remedy out of which God and religion have been eliminated. When men thoughtlessly, or in a hostile spirit, or in mistaken sincerity dwell upon the imagined in- effectiveness of Christian churches, they are blind to the fact that they are universally the homes of individual and social purity, that they are the ex- ponents of righteousness in doctrine and in life, that they hold up persistently the highest ethical standards, that they are as a solid sea-wall to protect communities against the encroachments of vice and crime of every description, and that in them is deposited the hope of the world's redemp- tion. Judge Lewis L. Fawcett of Brooklyn has made this significant revelation of personal ex- perience. " Approximately 2700 cases have been brought before me in my five and a half years of service on the bench. During all this time I have never had to try a man who was at the time of the alleged offense, or ever had been, an active member of the church." Similar testimony has been given by a judge in Chicago, before whom have come many divorce suits. He said, " Rarely, almost never, were the parties to a di- THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 177 vorce suit active church workers." The question arises whether the apparently careful emphasis laid in both instances upon the activity of the parties, and by implication upon the lack of it, is not suggestive. An idle profession may be no certain protection against wrong-doing. Judge Fawcett added, — " I have asked each young crim- inal who came before me, if he was a member or an attendant at a Sunday School, and I have never been answered Yes. . . . When by means of sus- pended sentence I have seen fit to give young pris- oners opportunities to lead better lives, I have in- sisted that the first thing they must do is to join a Sunday School." A leading religious editor commenting on these remarkable testimonies to the restraining influ- ence of organized Christianity, said — " It really looks as though the Christian church quite sufli- clently justified its existence to the nation merely as a preventive of crime, a barrier against relapse into barbarism, a police agency in preserving order, a preservative of common virtue and de- cency. We believe any careful student of sociol- ogy and morals will sustain Judge Fawcett's state- ment that the church is a great curb on crime. Furthermore, we believe that he would agree that It Is the wall which holds the race from falling back into primeval habits and criminal instincts. 178 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS . . . Most of our respectable, attractive commu- nities of high moral tone are so because the church of Christ is there. Our beautiful towns are what they are, instead of hotbeds of vice, drunkenness and crime, because the church of Christ is there. . . . Were not the town predominantly Christian, crime would make it Impossible as a home. There- fore every man In the community owes a debt of gratitude to the church. He profits from it, whether he serves It or not. It Is better burglar Insurance than Insurance companies. It makes the streets safer for his daughters. The stronger the church Is, the cleaner, healthier, safer, happier, more respectable the town. If every man were in the church, it would save most of the expense for police, judges, lawyers and courts. Judge Faw- cett tells us that crime now costs us $700,000,000 a year. It would cost us hardly any of that. If all were In the churches. Really the man who Is living In our crime-free, respectable towns, and does nothing for the church, Is living on charity. He is profiting from the church's curb on crime, but is giving nothing In return." The Christian church Is the greatest moral as well as spiritual force In the community. The first question of an educated man who owes his education in no small part to the generous gifts of the Christian public, should be, not what can I get out of the church, THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 179 but how can I help it, and increase its power for good. Otherwise unless the selfishness of his heart has been brought under the control of the higher motive, his education has failed in its noble pur- pose. A clergyman in a Western city, desiring to know the views of intelligent laymen upon religious faiths and problems, propounded a list of ques- tions to 120 of "the most prominent business men " of his city, and published a summary of their answers. One of the questions pertained to the church and its influence in the world. The follow- ing is his report of the answers returned. " Not one unkind criticism or weak indorsement of the church was received. Appreciation of the church was comprehensively and startlingly expressed. Witness the following: The church stands first in the world's institutions for the good of mankind in every relationship of life; the church is the foun- dation of civilization, and is doing great good; the world would be lost without churches; without the moral teachings of the church the world's degen- eration would inevitably follow; it is the keystone of social order, society would be chaos without it; it uplifts the world and does away with vice; it teaches that, regardless of future reward, morality pays, not in money or glory, but in all that makes a man satisfied with himself; it creates and keeps r8o THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS alive high ideals; the example of its members in living right is of great value; it emphasizes the spiritual against the material; it elevates, softens, soothes and comforts humanity; it keeps us close to God." These are the candid judgments of men of business, who live in the midst of life and its practical affairs, and are able to estimate the influence of the churches upon personal character and social conditions. Such testimonies can be duplicated in every city in the land, and the fact has convincing weight with all unprejudiced minds. It is well to remember the often quoted rebuke said to have been uttered by James Russell Low- ell, when minister to the Court of Saint James, in the presence of a group of literary men, some of whom were boasting that they and the rest of the world could get on safely without the religion of Christ. " When the keen scrutiny of skeptics has found a place on this planet where a decent man may live in decency, comfort and security, support- ing and educating his children unspoiled and un- polluted, a place where age is reverenced, infancy protected, womanhood honored, and human life held in high regard, — when skeptics can find such a place ten miles square on this globe, where the Gospel of Christ has not gone before, and cleared the way, and laid the foundations that made de- cency and security possible, it will then be in order THE CHURCH OF CHRIST i8i for these skeptical literati to move thither, an(3 there ventilate their views. But so long as these men are dependent on the very religion which they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may well hesitate to rob the Christian of his hope and humanity of its faith in the Saviour, who alone has given to men the hope of eternal life, which makes life tolerable and society possible, and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom." It is said that Dr. Horace Bushnell was once appealing to a man of wealth for a contribution towards the erection of a church in a new town in the West, and urged his appeal by saying that the existence of a Christian church would minister to material values in a community as well as to pri- vate virtue and public morality. When the man of wealth questioned the truth of his statement. Dr. Bushnell quickly asked him, " What would your real estate be worth in Sodom?" The Christian church is the conservator of all values, material as well as moral and spiritual. A vital godliness has been and will continue to be our only safeguard against misrule and anarchy. The ex- istence of vice and crime, of political corruption and vicious legislation, of fraud and graft, of op- pression and wrong, continues to curse the body politic, only because the Prince of Peace and Righteousness has not yet been allowed to have i82 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS full sway among the people. The disciples of Christ have made their influence felt mightily, and by no means in vain, but the full victory is yet in the future. The progress of moral sentiment in a community is not to be judged always by the con- tinued existence of certain evils. The truer criterion is, what is the attitude of the public con- science towards them? Are these evils unrecog- nized and condoned, or are they recognized and condemned? The gross exhibitions of moral de- pravity, in high places and low, which now and then startle the community, serve to reveal the vigorous moral sentiment of the people, which in- variably expresses itself in swift, positive and un- mistakable condemnation. It should be added as one of the moral achieve- ments of the last century, that the Hague Court, established for the peaceable settlement of inter- national disputes which until very recent years were wont to be submitted to the arbitrament of cruel and barbaric war, which settles nothing ex- cept the superiority of brute force or power of en- durance on one side or the other, is a conspicuous illustration of the progress of a Christian civili- zation and has been secured largely through the enforcement of Christian principles and the tri- umph of Christian sentiment. Already in a large number of instances disputes have been amicably THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 183 adjusted by means of this Court, and the enor- mous waste and cruel suffering of war have been avoided. If the last century had been distin- guished for nothing else, this new tribunal and its remarkable success would have made it illustrious. It has a conspicuous place in the divine programme of the coming of the kingdom. It has brought perceptibly nearer the prophetic time, when under the reign of the great Prince of Peace " nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." In general it may be affirmed that the church of Christ to-day occupies a higher ethical ground than ever before, and that the last century has lifted the ideals of Jesus for individual and per- sonal life, for society and for human government to a more conspicuous and luminous place in the judgment of thoughtful men than in the past, as the supreme standard of conduct and life for man in his every relation, and as the divine law which is to govern the kingdom of God on earth and in Heaven. Luther's interpretation of the practical nature of the Christian religion, viz., " Good works fol- low redemption as the fruit grows on the tree," has certainly been the prevailing belief of Protes- tant Christianity. The great preachers and the great revivalists of the last century have empha- 1 84 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS sized honesty and integrity of character as a neces- sary sequence of personal faith in Jesus Christ, and their preaching has often been followed by marvelous exhibitions of voluntary restitution and reparation of wrong on the part of converts. Men who have been brought into right relations with God have hastened to come into right re- lations with their fellow men. The epistles of Paul and the epistle of James have been accepted as of equal authority and as integral parts of the one divine Gospel proclaimed by Christ, whose legitimate, whose expected, whose genuine fruits would be regenerated men, " Whose faith and works are bells in full accord." Our ablest theologians have believed that to draw a distinction between the writings of Paul and Christ or of Paul and James to the disparage- ment of Paul, as if his writings were lacking in ethical force, is to misunderstand utterly the great apostle. Dr. Galusha Anderson has well said — " One has but to run his eye over Paul's epistles to be convinced of the utter incorrectness of this charge. Very much that he wrote was for the very purpose of correcting unchristian conduct. The twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Romans are wholly ethical. First Corinthians deals almost entirely with Christian morals. The THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 185 eighth and ninth chapters of Second Corinthians are devoted to the duty of giving. In Ephesians whole chapters are solidly ethical. A large space in Colossians is also. And so it is, in different degrees, in all Paul's letters. Moreover, moral precepts are scattered through all his doctrinal discussions. Paul was always earnestly and in- tensely practical. His aim in every argument was to secure right thinking and consequently right conduct. His doctrines flowered and fruited into duty." President E. Y. MuUins says, " If the reader will turn to the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Romans and compare these with the Sermon on the Mount, he will be struck with the resemblances." Dr. Sanday expresses the same view in these words, " To these verbal resem- blances must be added remarkable identity of teaching in these successive chapters." And Knowling, as quoted by Dr. Sanday, adds, " In- deed it is not too much to add that the Apostle's description of the Kingdom of God reads like a brief summary of its description in the Sermon on the Mount." If additional testimony Is needed to the preva- lent belief that the ethical teachings of Paul are in full harmony with those of Christ, the following striking quotation is taken from the able volume 1 86 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS of R. W. Livingstone on " The Greek Genius and its Meaning to Us." " Turn to the close of one of his epistles, where with warning and encourage- ment, with argument and exhortation, the apos- tle is urging on some infant community the prac- tice of the Christian virtues. One on the heels of another, his precepts come tumbling out, breaking impetuously into questions, reinforced by quota- tions, by adjurations, by appeals to his personal appearance by prayers, by tears. It is difficult to select single instances from Saint Paul, for the whole of his epistles are instinct with a feeling which, except perhaps for certain passages in Plato and Euripides, is absent from Greek literature, a passionate hunger for righteousness, a passionate indignation against those who frustrate it. He overflows in enthusiastic denunciations. Of sex- ual vice he writes let it not be once named among you. Of avarice he says that the covetous man has no inheritance in the kingdom of God. . . . Everywhere he is insistent in season and out of season, without regard of consequences, to con- demn evil. For him Christ can have no concord with Belial." Whatever may have been the failures of the Christian church in the nineteenth century, for fail- ures as well as successes have marked the progress of the years, they have not been the result of THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 187 a misunderstanding of the teachings of Christ and his apostles, or of a lack of faith in their applica- bility to all the conditions of human life, or in the divine sufficiency of their remedial power, a faith which Christian experience has served only to strengthen and confirm, " New occasions teach new duties." Social conditions have arisen, of which the fathers never dreamed, — strife between capital and labor with fault on both sides, in many instances the oppres- sion of the poor and powerless, the hardships of toiling women and children, the unsanitary condi- tion of the modern slum, the glaring inequalities which exist in society, the colossal corruption in high places, and the prevalence of nameless and shameless vices. These conditions present new and serious problems in new lights. They widen the application of the Gospel of Christ, and fur- nish new fields for the enforcement of its right- eous and humane principles. But the Gospel is the one divine and all sufficient remedy. To abandon the remedy prescribed by infinite Wis- dom, and think to change evil conditions by simply changing environment, or by an analytical study of the disease, or by enacting legislation without changing the moral character of men and women, would be to rub the empty bottle on the diseased part, and expect by so doing to effect a cure. So- 1 88 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS ciology is the one study that can least get on with- out a vital Christianity. A thoughtful writer has said, " Law is great, but religion is greater, and we shall have gained very little, if as the Arch- bishop of York told the Congress of the Sanitary Institute in his cathedral city, we produce a race ' physically fit, but spiritually, mentally and mor- ally sterile.' It is i,n that direction that the danger lies, and it is a danger to which we have as yet given far too little consideration. There is abun- dant room for that regeneration which is the only effective and lasting antidote to degeneration." Dr. Josiah Strong, speaking of " the new so- cial ideal " which is being advocated in certain quarters to-day, pronounces it " little more than a millennium of creature comfort. It needs to be elevated, illuminated and glorified by Christ's so- cial ideal. It is quite possible for society to be at the same time well housed, well fed, well clothed, well educated, and well rotted. The world can never be saved from misery until it is saved from sin, and never ought to be. The ideal of Chris- tianity is that of a society in which God's will is done as perfectly as it is in heaven; one in which absolute obedience is rendered to every law of our being, physical, mental, spiritual, social; and this is nothing more nor less than the kingdom of God fully come in the earth." THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 189 President Augustus H. Strong says in " Chapel Talks," " Christianity aims at both reform and regeneration, but it puts cause before effect, re- generation before reform." " Make the tree good and its fruit good," says Christ. Much of our modern socialistic propaganda, however, ig- nores this logical relation, and thinks to purify the stream without touching the fountain. He quotes from Horace Mann who said, " One former is worth a hundred reformers," and adds, " Let us who are preachers take that comfort to our- selves. We are set to purify the springs of hu- man action, and that is a grander thing than to direct the course of the stream after it has be- gun to flow. Reform will come in due time, if regeneration has only gone before. It is our busi- ness to help on all true reform; but as ministers of Christ, we can best do this by giving to the com- munity truly regenerated men." Prof. W. H. Maynard in an address before the Colgate Theological Seminary on " The Twen- tieth Century Preacher," says — " Had the Master with his twelve legions of angels, deposed the Emperor Tiberius, retired to private life every corrupt official, enacted a perfect code of laws, and appointed model officers for their enforce- ment, and thereupon reascended to Heaven, doubtless the old corruptions would have soon re- I90 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS turned. It is a fact too generally overlooked, that under any system righteousness will reign only in proportion as men become righteous." The following extracts from " A Warning " by Professor Shailer Mathews have no uncertain sound. " A danger to which Protestantism, par- ticularly progressive Protestantism, in America is exposed is that its churches shall become mere agents of social service. . . . But we cannot let social service take the place of God. ... A Protestant church cannot be an ethical orphan asylum; it must be a home in which souls are born into newness of life. We want efficiency in or- ganization and in activity. We want our minis- ters to be alive to the needs of the hour, etc. . . . But most of all does American Protestantism need a spiritual passion, a contagious faith in the su- premacy of God's spiritual order and an alarm at the misery that waits on sin. From many a community there is already rising a cry for ele- mental religion. With all their scientific and business success, American laymen are asserting that they want to be assured of God and immor- tality and the worth of righteousness. They want companionship in spiritual loneliness, com- fort in hours of pain, courage in moments of moral wavering. Their souls are athirst for the Un- known, and they will be satisfied with nothing THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 191 save the water that comes from the River of God." And Dr. J. H. Jowett utters a like warning when he says, " Men may become so absorbed in social wrongs as to miss the deeper malady of personal sin. They may lift the rod of oppres- sion and leave the burden of guilt. They may seek to correct dislocations and overlook the awful disorder of the soul." The primary duty of the Christian church and pulpit is supremely personal. It is not, as has been said, to create an atmosphere merely favor- able to the solution of social problems, nor simply to proclaim a divine standard of life and conduct, but it is to create Christian men and women, with hearts touched by the divine life, with a clearer vision of God's truth and man's duty, with an earnest, self-denying purpose which will not be satisfied with any superficial remedies or half-way measures, but will seek in Christ's way to destroy the works of the Devil and bring in the kingdom of God; in a word, who will not only pray " thy kingdom come," but will intelligently, prayer- fully, unitedly, persistently labor to make it come. Someone has said, " Produce great persons, the rest will follow," whether persons or the condi- tions which make for human progress. It has been wisely remarked, " Not wells flow- 192 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS Ing with oil, nor mines teeming with silver and gold, nor plains covered with flocks and herds so enrich a State as noble men and noble women, equipped by training and culture to meet all the demands and high opportunities of our Christian civilization." The church of Jesus Christ in these recent years has been especially fruitful, not only in producing such noble men and no- ble women, but in producing the Christian civilization with its insistent demands and its high opportunities. It has created both the demand and the supply. The women of our churches, as well as the men, have been enlisted as never before in the varied activities of our time, educational, philanthropic, reformatory and missionary. Christianity from the time of its introduction exalted woman to a place of equal honor and responsibility in the family life; but not until the last half century were there opened to her the splendid opportunities of privilege and of service which she now enjoys and welcomes. It is as if she had come to a new emancipation. It should be remembered that the men and the women demanded by the times can be created only by placing the emphasis upon the things of the spirit, the being of God, the mission of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, the new life by the divine Spirit, communion with the unseen and eternal, THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 193 the far vision that is not limited by the physical, the earthly, the temporal. " In the world, but not of it " is the secret of the highest life and blessedness and power. He who would lift up the world must have a life above it and a strength superior to it. The world has become intensely materialistic. The outward and visible crowds out all thought of the spiritual and eternal. The Christian church is the divinely appointed agency, whose chief mission is to remind man of his higher nature and minister to it. Its spiritual aim must be paramount and overtop everything else. Its spiritual message must ever be exalted to the place of supreme importance. Man is more than flesh and bones. Life Is more than meat and raiment. To look no higher than physical needs and social reforms Is to forget the divine Image and the glory of true manhood. These ought you to have done, and not to leave the other undone. The following article taken from the platform of " The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America," expresses clearly and succinctly the lofty ideal and purpose of Christianity. " Christ's mission is not merely to reform society, but to save it. He is more than the world's Readjuster. He is its Redeemer. The church becomes worthless for its higher purpose when It deals with conditions and forgets character, relieves misery and ignores sin, 194 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS pleads for justice and undervalues forgiveness." Another has said, " The greatest service the church can render to the community lies in the message she proclaims. In the midst of organiza- tions and administrations she is sadly impover- ished, and the community is destitute indeed, if she loses her lofty note of spiritual insight and vision. The temporal passes away. She is to reveal unto men the eternal. When she inspires a man to hunger and thirst after righteousness, when she imparts a glimpse of the invisible, when she draws down from the heavenly places a little of the unattained, she is setting the high ideal and lifting humanity heavenward as no other agency can do. To her it is given to preach the mys- tery of Christ." Has the church been doing this, and is it doing it to-day? Is it seeking to fulfill its exalted mis- sion, and with honest purpose and pure heart striving to live up to its high ideals? Making allowance for human weakness and possible cases of self-deception, is its testimony clear and strong to the spiritual and ethical nature of its mes- sage? Is it deserving of the sharp criticism which is sometimes heard in unexpected quar- ters? The Christian teacher and author, al- ready quoted, has publicly asserted that *' The church maintains a splendid ideal of the king- THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 195 dom, hut only as an ideal, something too spirit- ual to be expected in this life, a hope for the world to come, and as to this world it winks at all injustice and iniquity." Again he asserted, " To-day the church pardons, if it does not en- courage, ways of doing business totally irrecon- cilable with the Gospel and at variance with the fundamental instincts of justice." These words of sweeping condemnation from such a source are as unjust as they are surprising, and are exceed- ingly regrettable. They give countenance to the bitter and blasphemous assaults of infidelity, and confirm it in its hostility and unbelief. They im- ply the possession of a knowledge which no man possesses, and an absence of a charity which every man ought to possess. There may be some persons who bear the name of Christ, and un- doubtedly are, whose business methods will not bear the light of Christian morality or of com- mon honesty, who " break God's laws for a divi- dend," but to charge the whole Christian church with being false to its profession, and sheltering injustice and fraud, and with criminally encour- aging and conniving at all iniquity, would be like charging the eleven apostles with wicked com- plicity with Judas in his base betrayal of his Lord. Can the Christian ministry and the Christian church in all its branches in our day be looked 196 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS upon as a generation of hypocrites, or as making as empty profession of a religion of whose re- quirements they are grossly ignorant or willfully neglectful? Are not the great body of the dis- ciples of Christ holding in reverent regard the ethical teachings of their divine Master, both as to the inner spirit and the outer conduct, and acknowledging their binding authority, and are they not humbly and conscientiously endeavoring to incorporate them in living examples? Is not the Christian pulpit universally demanding justice and charity among men, and proclaiming loudly and insistently, and with a wider application than ever before, the high ideals of Jesus? Is not the church devoting thought and strength in- creasingly to moral reform and ever inaugurating new methods of social betterment? Rev. Charles Stelzle states (and no man is better informed), " A study of over a thousand professional social workers as to church affiliation shows that of those who were associated charity workers 92% were church members. ... As a matter of fact, the church practically controls through its member- ship nearly every great philanthropic movement of any consequence. Glance at the list of direc- tors and verify this statement. Practically all of the money that goes to the hospitals, orphan asylums, clubs and charitable institutions of THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 197 various kinds comes from the church people. Without them these could not exist." The church cannot justly be charged with indifference to ex- isting needs and conditions. If there is any fail- ure and any peril at the present time it is in spend- ing the strength upon attempts to supply the needs, while the fountain is allowed to remain corrupt, seeking to change environment and conditions without changing disposition and character, sub- stituting outward comfort and decency for inward godliness, in a word, allowing moral reforms and social movements to assume an importance above the fundamental truths of the Christian faith and the sublime realities of the Christian experience. Professor Royce of Cambridge says, in " Sources of Religious Insight," " There are some clergymen to whom the preaching of religion has come to mean in the main the preaching of benef- icent social reforms." But religion has to do fundamentally with a man's spiritual and Immor- tal nature. It anticipates the next world as well as this. Even a man's life here cannot be saved from weakness and failure, and be enabled to attain unto its largest meaning and service by purely human and external means. Workers in social settlements are learning from experience that back of all social reform that looks for suc- cessful and permanent fruits, there must be the 198 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS religious faith with its regenerating and trans- forming power. Indeed this is the supreme and inspiring motive and divine method of all such reform work. Another has said, " But giving the merely social settlement all its due, there are still many who believe that it comes far short of meet- ing the deepest need. There are many who pro- foundly believe that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ directly applied is the greatest uplifting force known, even to social science, and that ex- perimenting with ethical culture and social re- forms without direct religious effort is, to use the language of a noted missionary worker, trying to elevate the masses without the elevator." All true love to man has its roots in love to God. The second commandment of the law, epitomized by Christ, is inseparably connected with the first, and grows out of it. The order is significant. Christianity works from within outward, and not vice versa. The divine order cannot be Inverted. The fruit of the tree is dependent upon the life- giving sap. Out of the heart are the issues of life. Right living is dependent upon right be- lieving and right thinking. To know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent is life, in its fullest and deepest meaning, is life here and life here- after. A man must first learn to sing out of an THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 199 intelligent appreciation and vital experience, with Charles Wesley, " Oh for a thousand tongues to sing My dear Redeemer's praise, The glories of my God and King, The triumphs of his grace," before he can sing trustingly, lovingly and sub- missively with Washington Gladden, " Oh, Master, let me walk with Thee In lowly paths of service free." There is no antithesis in these hymns, but only a natural and logical sequence. In the preaching of the pulpit and in the work of the church, it must not be forgotten that Chris- tianity' deals primarily with the individual. Its message is to the individual. Its command is, " Follow thou me." It is to change social condi- tions, determine public sentiment, root out iniquity and every form of evil, establish righteousness and peace and brotherhood on the earth, and bring in the kingdom of God, as men one by one accept its message and yield obedience to its commands. For strong as is Christ's emphasis upon individual discipleship, it is everywhere understood to have far-reaching relationships. He himself declared, " Ye, my disciples, are the light of the world. Ye are the salt of the earth." Dr. Stalker has 200 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS called Christ " the discov^erer of the individual." He was that, and He was more than that. He was the revealer of the true social order, and also of the divine method of its realization, an order for which there is no adequate human substitute, and an order based upon the worth of the in- dividual soul and resulting from its spirit-quick- ened life and its gracious activities. Whenever the church of Christ has become formal and lost its spirituality, when the salt has lost its savor, it has been irresponsive to social needs or has resorted to unscriptural methods for their relief. The more spiritual the church has been, the more sensitive it has been to human needs and the swifter to respond to them. The methods of that response, the outward forms of its activity, have changed with the changing conditions; but what- ever the forms of service undertaken, genuine success has always depended, and will depend ever- more, upon the vital principle and spiritual pur- pose which inspire and pervade them all. The past is often characterized as the age of the individual, while the present is spoken of, by way of contrast, as the social age, with its wide- spread social sympathies and numberless social activities. There may be some truth in this dis- tinction, says Dr. Cleland B. McAfee, but there is danger of its being overaccented. " There were THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 201 many of our fathers and grandfathers," he says, " who were mightily concerned with the mass of the people, and looked as carefully as we do for a corrective of social evils." He adds as a con- spicuous evidence of this fact, " The first English translations of the Bible were fruits of the social impulse." Tyndale said, " If God give me life, the plowboys shall know more of the Scriptures than you do." The same is true of the German Bible of Luther. No movement of modern times can compare with the enlightening, emancipating, uplifting, equalizing, ameliorating influence of that movement which gave the word of God to the people in their native tongue. That social im- pulse, born of a devout spiritual faith, was the author of all that is good in our modern civiliza- tion, and contained the prophecy of that perfect social democracy for which the world still waits. It is an acknowledged fact, then, that the Gos- pel when rightly interpreted is individualistic and socialistic in the truest sense, and at the same time. " Exclusively it is neither; inclusively it is both." Its individualism is utterly free from all taint of narrowness or selfishness. Its socialism is di- vinely spiritual. Its aim for the individual is likeness to Christ, the perfect man, our elder brother, in character and in life, and individual perfection of character includes the recognition of 202 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS all social obligations and the practice of all social virtues. Redeemed men will inevitably produce a redeemed society and a redeemed humanity. Dean Shailer Mathews of the Chicago Univer- sity, in an admirable paper on the subject, " A Strategic Movement for Baptists," with a sub- title, " A Platform and an Opportunity," declares in Article 8 of his Platform. " The individual possessed of the Spirit of Christ is of supreme worth. Baptists recognize no antithesis between the individual and the social Gospel. They work for the kingdom of God, and may be counted upon to champion every advance toward social right- eousness. But they insist that the individual Is not to be lost In the mass, and that a regenerate society is possible only when composed of re- generate people. They therefore seek to de- velop Individual lives into religious and moral ef- ficiency rather than to superimpose upon them religious authority or any form of ecclesiastical aristocracy." Mr. R. H. Coates, an English au- thor, in his volume entitled " Types of English Piety," distinguishes the evangelical type from the sacerdotal on the one hand, and on the other from the mystical, In that " it seeks to approach God through the redeemed conscience, the moral will, and the establishment of the righteous State," and demands In the true saint not " the anaemic THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 203 and aureoled recluse," but " the full blooded and effective citizen with a passion for the sovereignty of God in the affairs of the world." Though present-day Christians come far short of attaining their sublime ideal, they are in a mul- titude of instances prayerfully striving to make it practical and real. Imperfect as the life of the church may appear, when compared with the one perfect Example of obedience, of purity and of love, history records no higher level. The hum- ble washerwoman exclaimed, looking upon her washing as It hung upon the line amid the falling snow, " Nothing can stand comparison with God Almighty's whiteness." There Is, we must be- lieve, a purity and integrity and completeness of character yet to be secured. There are heights yet to be won even In our present state of exist- ence. The testimony of the living church is yet to be a more potent and convincing force In the regeneration of men and In the perfecting of so- cial conditions. While the perfect life and the perfect character and the perfect society are to be realized in Heaven, when we shall see the great Son of God as He is, and be like Him, this vision and hope are not the lifeless dream of the mys- tic, nor the Idle fancy of the visionary, but the glorious Inspiration of the Christian believer, as here and now he confronts God and man and 204 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS duty. It is everlastingly true that " he that hath this hope in Him (that is in Christ) purifieth him- self even as He is pure." The kingdom of God or the kingdom of Heaven, for whose manifestation the whole crea- tion groaneth and travaileth in pain, is primarily, and fundamentally, and essentially spiritual in its nature. It is not to be identified with any ec- clesiastical body or visible realm, and is not to be brought about by organizations or reforms or enactments or external rite or force, but by the preaching of the Gospel received through per- sonal faith. We need to remind ourselves con- stantly of his conception of it, who came to earth to establish it, and who alone as acknowledged King has a right to define it, and power to estab- lish it. To the Pharisees who thought only of an outward visible kingdom, and demanded of Christ when it should come. He answered, " The kingdom of God cometh not with observation," and to the midnight inquirer He disclosed the unalterable condition of admission into it, when He said — " Except a man be born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God." In conclusion, it may be said that a candid and unprejudiced review of the recent progress of the church of Christ and the substantial and outstand- ing victories it has already won, and a just recog- THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 205 nition of Its present life and spirit, its accumulated power and increasing activity, will surely lead to three results, viz. : First, a profound sense of gratitude to God that in spite of human frailty and imperfection, the weakness, not to say the disobedience, of the hu- man Instrumentality with which God works. He has marvelously carried forward his kingdom in the world, until the name of Christ is now highly exalted in much of the thought, the affection and the life of the nations. Secondly, an unshaken conviction In the funda- mental spiritual nature of Christianity, and in the adaptability of the unchanging Gospel to meet the deepest needs of the human heart, and to furnish the only adequate solution for the ills which now afflict or may hereafter afflict the social organism. And thirdly, a confident assurance that God's promises will in due time be fulfilled to the letter, that " in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow of things In Heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord," and that " the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever." We may mourn over the sometimes apparently 2o6 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS slow coming of that kingdom, we may deplore the coldness and indifference of many who bear the name of Christ, we may long for a deeper consecration of heart and life on the part of every disciple, which beginning at the center of being shall reach the outmost circumference of human life and influence. But the forces of good are mightier than the forces of evil. It is God's king- dom, whose corner stone was laid at infinite cost, in his unerring wisdom, before the foundation of the world. " If God be for us, who can be against us?" So long as God lives and reigns, the issue cannot be uncertain. When Frederick Douglass was once addressing a large convention in Tremont Temple, Boston, in ante-bellum times, and was portraying in dark and hopeless colors the condition of his enslaved race, the voice of Margaret Fuller, who sat behind him on the plat- form, was suddenly heard saying, " Frederick, Frederick, God is not dead." We may not accept Browning's optimistic in- ference in the present tense in which he put it — " God is in his heavens, All's right with the world," for many things are far from right in the social order and in the moral condition of men. But we may have such faith in God and in his invinci- THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 207 blc purpose, in the enlightening power of his truth, in the active presence of his regenerating Spirit among men, and in the efficiency and suf- ficiency of the agencies which He has ordained and through which He has promised to work, that we can calmly and fearlessly affirm that in his own good time all will be right with the world. " His word shall not return unto Him void." The battle with error and wrong and sin will not be won by the timid and discouraged, but by the con- fident and courageous. To detect the evils in human society and the tremendous obstacles in the way of the coming of God's kingdom is not difficult, and requires no high order of genius. To face them unflinchingly, and march " breast forward, never doubting clouds will break," to cry in the darkest hour as if the triumph was al- ready secured, " thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ," that is noble, that is Pauline, that is Christlike. Christ who was King in the realm of truth, the- ocentric, redemptive and prophetic, said to his trembling disciples, " Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." There is no room for pessimism in the Christian's vocabulary. His attitude should always be one of courage and expectancy. Al- ready he sees the dawn of that new day which 2o8 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS shall dispel all the darkness and sorrow of sin, and gladden the whole habitable earth with its effulgence. Back of all our timid praying and feeble effort, and fronting the superhuman tasks before the church of Christ, stands the purpose of the Almighty, inscribed upon the uplifted cross, and voiced in the predictions of Him who died and rose again, and whose word cannot be broken. To some men these predictions may seem to be only an unsubstantial dream inspired by Jewish hopes. " But they come to us to-day," said Presi- dent Ewing in his eloquent address at the meeting of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ire- land, " as an integral element in his message to mankind, and they assure us that through all difficulties Christianity moves on to triumph, a triumph the fruit of the Redeemer's sacrifice, a triumph achieved not by worldly forces but by the power that comes down from above, and they identify that triumph with the personal exaltation of Jesus upon a throne of ineffable glory. A dream, is it? But the dreams of Jesus Christ are the shaping forces of history. He dreamed of Calvary, and his cross to-day is the hiding place of sinners. He dreamed of resurrection — and his open tomb is now the consolation of the world. He dreamed of a church He would build — and his church now worships Him in every clime. He THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 209 dreamed of his return to conquer and reign — and amid all the turmoil of these latter days faith hears his herald's voice, and sees the flashing of his chariot wheels." The following jubilant anthem recently ap- peared in a publication in what was once darkest India. " There's a light upon the mountains, and the day is at the spring, When our eyes shall see the beauty and the glory of the King: Weary was our heart with waiting and the night-watch seemed so long. But his triumph-day is breaking, and we hail it with a song. In the fading of the starlight we can see the coming morn. And the lights of men are paling in the splendors of the dawn; For the eastern skies are glowing as with light of hidden fire, And the hearts of men are stirring with throbs of deep desire. There's a hush of expectation, and a quiet in the air. And the breath of God is moving in the fervent breath of prayer ; For the suffering, dying Jesus is the Christ upon the throne. And the travail of our spirit is the travail of his own. He is breaking down the barriers, he is casting up the way; He is calling for his angels to build up the gates of day; But his angels here are human, not the shining hosts above, For the drum-beats of his army are the heart-beats of our love. Hark! we hear the distant music, and it comes with fuller swell, 'Tis the triumph-song of Jesus, of our King Emmanuel! Zion, go ye forth to meet him! And my soul, be swift to bring All thy sweetest and thy dearest for the triumph of our King! " CHAPTER IV PEACE AND LIGHT ON THE CROSS An Interpretation WE shall never be able to comprehend In this life, and perhaps not in the life to come, the extent of that humiliation and the depth of that agony, when the great Son of God in the form of a servant bore our sins in his own body on the tree, and suffered the cruel death of the cross in our behalf. But the end has now come. The rejections, the betrayal, the arrest, the denial and abandonment by his disciples, the mocking, the scourging, the disgraceful trial, the hateful sentence, the blackness of darkness, the pains of the crucifixion, are now ended. After the pro- longed and agonizing struggles Christ's soul finds peace, and the enveloping clouds are riven by rays of light. This new mental condition is in- dicated by his words, " Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," and by the last brief utter- ance which fell from his lips, " It is finished." These are words of deepest significance. PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 211 What is finished? Not simply his physical and mental suffering, and not merely his earthly life among men. The word translated " finished " means accomplished, not ended but fulfilled. It is the same word which was used just before, when it says, " Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said ' I thirst.' " Christ's life, in all its manifestations and experiences, was the accom- plishment of an eternal purpose which culminated on the cross, was the fulfillment of many distinct prophecies which had been spoken by God's serv- ants in the long ages, and was the completion of an ordained plan for the salvation of the world. TTiis was what Christ meant when He said, " It is finished, or accomplished." This was the basis of his peace. He looked upon a finished work, a completed mission, a divine service for hu- manity, in which nothing had been left undone, in which there had been no failure, no omission, no incompleteness. " Life's work well done, Life's race well run, Life's victory won, Then cometh peace." And this it was that let light through the dense, almost impenetrable darkness that enveloped the cross. He who had just before cried in words 212 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS fraught with strange, mysterious meaning, " My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me!" now says in loving, filial confidence, " Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." Let us think for a few moments of what Christ meant when He uttered those final words, " It is accomplished." The Scriptures frequently as- cribe the coming of Christ into the world and his mission of salvation to the gracious and eternal purpose of God. Christ's advent was no after- thought. Christ's crucifixion was no unforeseen tragedy of local significance. To make the Chris- tian religion an affair of the first century of the Christian era, or the natural evolution of the re- ligious thinking of the Jewish race is to rob It of its divine, its heaven-born, its God-born origin, and to deny to it its repeated and exalted claims. Back of the cross, and back of the life, and back of the advent of Jesus Christ stood the purpose and the grace of the Almighty. Calvary was planned in the council chamber of Heaven. Are we not told that " God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have ever- lasting life?" Did not Jesus say, " I came not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me," and as He approached the end of his life, PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 213 did He not declare, " I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do "? Christ's ministry of grace and suffering, from beginning to end, from Bethlehem to Calvary, was the fulfillment of a preconceived programme. Peter on the Day of Pentecost told the crucifiers of Christ that He was delivered to them according to " the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God," which however did not relieve them of their responsibility and guilt, for they had taken Him, and " by wicked hands had crucified and slain Him." Christianity is older than the Chris- tian era, yes, older even than the human race. Christ was " the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world." The message of the gospel is God's message, clothed with divine au- thority and grace and power. When Christ hung upon the cross of Calvary his soul found rest in the thought that the eternal purpose of the Father was at last accomplished. But more than that; all along through the ages that purpose had found expression in numerous prophetic utterances and in significant rites and symbols. Beginning in the garden where man fell, and continuing with little interruption until the last prophet had spoken for God, the hopes of men were pointed to the coming Saviour. The books we call the Old Testament, which contain 214 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS the sacredly preserved records of God's dealings with his ancient people, are all aglow with promises of a divine Deliverer, who should " preach deliverance to the spiritually captive, the opening of the prison to them that are bound, and proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." Be- tween three and four hundred distinct prophecies, interpreted as referring to Christ by Christ him- self and his apostles, and by the devout scholar- ship of the world, point to his birth, to his spirit, to his character, to his mission, to his sufferings and their purpose, and to his death and resurrec- tion. Christ's portrait was drawn, his mission foretold, his character portrayed, his biography outlined, before He entered Mary's humble home in far Judea. Christ recognized the portrait and bore witness to its genuineness and accuracy, say- ing again and again, " That the Scriptures may be fulfilled," " These are they which testify of me." To the sorrowing and disappointed disciples, mourning over their crucified and buried Master He said, " Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory? And begin- ning at Moses and all the prophets He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concern- ing Himself." " One jot or one tittle," He said, " shall not pass away till all be fulfilled." The Old Testament and the New Testament PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 215 stand or fall together. They are bound together by the living personality of Him who was Son of God and Son of Man, child of prophecy and subject of history. Prophecy points forward to reality, and reality answers back to prophecy. As has been said, " The New Testament is concealed in the Old, and the Old Testament is revealed in the New." Neither can be adequately under- stood without the other. If one is the lock, the other is the key. If one is the image in the mirror, the other is the glorious form and face. If one is the blessed hope and longing, the other is the full and perfect realization. If one is the bud, the other is the consummate flower. If one is the voice of God by his ancient prophets, the other is the Word of God made flesh in his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. And so the suffering Christ could say peacefully at last, when He thought of the long line of splendid prophecy stretching through the ages, with which He was perfectly familiar, *' It is accomplished." But once more. God's eternal purpose being fulfilled, and the ancient prophecies to the mi- nutest detail being also fulfilled, Christ could now look upon his mission to earth for the revelation of God's grace and the salvation of lost men as fully accomplished. He had the peace which comes from the consciousness of a perfect life 2i6 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS and a completed service. He had left nothing undone. He had failed at no point. His cru- cifixion by which He had offered Himself a sacri- fice for the sins of the world, was the culmination and the crowning of his life of sinlessness and self-sacrifice, just as his resurrection would be the crowning of it all, when He should be " declared to be the Son of God with power." He could now say, " Now lettest Thou thy Son depart in peace, for I have accomplished and made known thy salvation. Thou canst now be just and the justi- fier of all who repent and believe. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." The way is now open from earth to heaven. The method of the world's salvation is now perfected, and needs no amendment or sup- plement. All the moral and spiritual conditions have been met. The provisions are ample for all nations and for all ages of the world. The shadow of the cross of Jesus Christ shall fall with healing power upon every land and to the last syllable of recorded time. " Enough for each, enough for all, enough forevermore." And so Christ could now say to his disciples, " Go ye, go ye into all the world and preach my Gospel to every creature," the unchangeable Gospel of God's infinite love, of which the cross shall be the per- fect and enduring symbol. This was the supreme PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 217 element in Christ's satisfaction. He became a perfect Saviour, able to save to the utmost all that come unto God by Him. Christ's words were, indeed, words of divinest wisdom and truth, and have enriched the thought, the faith and the literature of the world. All students of philosophy and ethics and religion will ever sit at his feet. " No man ever spake like this Man." But Christ was more than a teacher. His spirit and life were absolutely perfect, with- out stain or flaw, able to bear the closest and even the hostile scrutiny of men, and to receive the full commendation of God, illustrating the highest morality and the divinest purity. He was " the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of his person." He was pronounced " holy, harmless and undefiled, and separate from sinners," that is. He constituted a class by Him- self, the very image of Deity, the typical, the unparalleled Man. Conscious of his moral in- tegrity He could challenge the whole world, without fear of contradiction, " Which of you con- vinceth me of sin? " Yet Christ was more than an example of righteous obedience to the holy and perfect law of God. If that was all He was, He would have been no Saviour for sinners, but only a new and higher law of life, a perfect mirror to reveal human imperfection and shortcomings and 2i8 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS guilt, a holy Judge whose words would be only words of condemnation for us all. Christ laid special emphasis upon his suffer- ings and death as the supreme evidence of the forgiving grace of God and his own Saviourhood, and as providing the sure basis of all hope of per- fect character and of eternal life and blessedness. " Ought not Christ to have suffered these things? " " The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." " The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give his life a ran- som for many." " And I, if I be lifted up from the earth (on the cross) will draw all men unto me." Here was the magnetic power, the divine attraction, the resistless charm of the Son of God. Here was the judgment, and at the same time the atonement, of human guilt. Here was the all- conquering grace of the Almighty. Here was the sure foundation of the world's immortal hope. A year without passion week would be an empty mockery in the calendar of the Christian church; passion week without Good Friday would be pow- erless in the appeal to God or to men. When the apostle writing to the Hebrews said, " Jesus was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death . . . that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man," he proclaimed the sufferings and death of the Son PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 219 of God to be the end, the object, the purpose of his humihation and mission to earth, the ordained completion of his earthly ministry, the crowning act of his redemptive work. And when he added, " For it became Him ... in bringing many sons unto glory to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings," he referred not to Christ's personal character, as is sometimes er- roneously supposed, for the moral character of Christ was absolutely sinless and needed no per- fecting, but he referred unquestionably to his official character. He was made a perfect Saviour, the victorious Captain of our salvation, by his sufferings and death on the cross of Cal- vary. And so Christ " endured the cross, de- spising the shame, for the joy that was set be- fore Him." He put Himself under the great law of life and productiveness. " The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die It bringeth forth much fruit." This is the ordained, the heaven-prescribed condition to which Christ submitted. First the cross and the shame, then the crown of joy and the offered salvation; first the buried seed and then the abundant har- vest; first the agony and death and then the peace of an assured and world-wide victory. As the 220 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS Saviour at that final moment looked upon his fin- ished work, and saw the strong foundation now laid for the spiritual temple of believing souls, Himself being the chief corner stone, and beheld in prophetic vision the great multitude of those who in all lands and ages should accept his invitation, and trust in his redeeming blood, one can almost hear Him say calmly, peacefully, tri- umphantly, " It is accomplished." And such peace of soul had for its accompani- ment " the light that never shone on land or sea." The darkness which had grown denser and denser, is now broken. After a starless night the dawn flashes up the eastern sky. The golden light is the light of the Father's countenance in loving approval, whose words of endorsement, heard at the beginning and then again at the middle of Christ's public ministry, " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," we may well be- lieve fell softly on Jesus' ear at this time also. When Christ said trustingly " Father," the Father smiled approvingly, " My Son." It is the light of the upper home and the many mansions, where no night is, because no sin or sorrow enters there. It is the light of that ineffable glory which Christ had with the Father before the world was, and (may we not say it?) the light of that greater glory which is to be, when love's redeeming work PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 221 is done, when the cross and passion of Christ have borne their legitimate and promised fruit, and when the children of light shall all be gathered within the walls of that heavenly city of which the apostle John says, " It had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof, and the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it." Then will our risen and glorified Saviour say with a new emphasis, " It is accomplished." The cross of Christ can never be repeated or duplicated. In its sacrificial relation to divine law and human guilt it stands alone. Christ was both priest and sacrifice. He offered Himself once for all. " After He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever He sat down on the right hand of God." Yet we are told that in some true sense, even in his sufferings, Christ is an example for his followers. " Because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps," language which means as the context clearly shows, that the spirit which Christ mani- fested in his supreme sufferings, the spirit of meekness, patience and unmurmuring submissive- ness, is to be manifested by his disciples in the lesser sufferings which they may be called to en- 222 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS dure. And again Paul says to the Colossians, In striking language, " Who now rejoice In my suf- ferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church." The progress of Christ's kingdom Is to be accomplished by the consecration and the self-sacrifice of those who bear his name. The spirit of the cross must enter into all true, acceptable and successful life. He who would follow Christ and carry on the work of Christ, must take up his cross and follow after Christ. As Lightfoot says with an intelligent ap- preciation of the apostle's words, " The church is built up by repeated acts of self-denial In suc- cessive generations. They continue the work which Christ began." They fill up that measure of service and self-sacrifice and suffering which the sufferings of Christ have left for those who come after Him to do. But as Lightfoot con- tinues, " The Idea of expiation or satisfaction is wholly absent from the passage." The true fol- lowers of Christ who are carrying on their hearts the burden of the world's redemption, are so identified with Christ that their sufferings are his sufferings, and their work is the continuation of the work which He inaugurated, and so they come to know " the fellowship of his sufferings " as well as " the power of his resurrection." PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 223 Is this the ordinary Christian experience? Do we know Christ as a suffering Saviour? Is his cross so wrought into our lives that when we come to the end of life his peace shall be our peace, and his light shall be our light? If we would know Christ In his exaltation we must know Him In his humiliation. To rejoice with Him In his glory we must watch with Him in the garden and weep with Him at the cross. No story could be more graphic or more pathetic than the story of Christ's last days on earth, the clear vision of the cross, the deepening shadows on his sensitive spirit, the scorn and rejection of men, and the unbroken darkness which rested down upon Cal- vary's summit and its expiring sufferer. Surely, we say, He became for us " a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." But have our hearts been stirred within us? Have the emotions of peni- tence, of sympathetic appreciation, of gratitude, of love and devotion been kindled In our souls? Shall we go forth from such meditations to a larger service of self-denial for Him who kept nothing back, but loved us unto death? Is not our re- ligion too often coldly intellectual, reaching not to the deeper sensIbiHtles of the spirit, and producing no permanent results In the conduct and life? How calm and cool we are, and apparently un- moved, while we think of the great Son of God 224 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS pouring out his life on the cross! Do we not wickedly repress and stifle our emotions, if we have any? We are absorbed in our petty cares and pleasures, and think little of the sinless, suf- fering Christ and the supreme tragedy of human history, which was enacted for us. We talk of the common trials and burdens of life as if they were " crosses." It is a pitiful travesty of the word. The cross is the symbol of intense suffer- ing, of total self-sacrifice, of the pouring out of life unto death. And so we come to measure the great cross of Christ with its immeasurable wealth of meaning and its unspeakable agony by the in- significant " crosses " of our personal experience, as we call them. We may not have fallen so low in spiritual dis- cernment and in religious fervor as the England of the eighteenth century, of which an historian says, " The Church as a whole, at this period, was cold and its teaching rationalistic. The living and present Christ seemed to be left out of its theology. The necessity of conversion was not brought home to the people. Enthusiasm or zeal was repressed. The Archbishop of Canterbury warned Heber, setting out on his glorious missionary career in In- dia, to put down enthusiasm. It was, we read, an age of artificial formality, of self-satisfied enlight- enment, of material prosperity and lethargy. Like PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 225 a malarious fog, it crept into the church, and laid its cold hand upon her heart." I do not forget the hopeful movements of our day, the young people's uprising, the splendid ac- tivity of many Christian women, the effort to spread the missionary spirit which is the vital spirit of Christianity, indeed without which there is no Christianity, and '* the men and religion for- ward movement," in which a part of the follow- ers of Christ are enlisted. But Christ died alike for all. His sufferings were endured for all. His cross makes its appeal to every sincere and thought- ful heart. His dying love should kindle respon- sive love in every living, breathing soul. " We love Him because He first loved us "; equal love for souls equally needy demands a response measured only by individual ability and capacity. We are apt to lose ourselves in the multitude. W^e make the love and the sufferings of Christ so general in their scope as to weaken the force of the individual application. The application should be strongly and tremendously personal, as at the conversion so all through the Christian life and experience. It is not enough to say " God so loved the world." No man ever yet found the peace of forgiveness who did not feel the flame of God's love focused by the lens of Christ's cross on his own soul. And no man ever yet accom- 226 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS plished much for the kingdom of God, who did not live under the ever present inspiration and resistless impulse of the apostolic conviction, " who loved me and gave himself for me." This burning conviction, this personal appropriation of the benefit of Christ's passion, will keep the heart glowing with a true, self-sacrificing, consistent, un- dying devotion to the divine Lamb of Calvary. We sing with some degree of warmth, it may be. Dr. Holmes' fine hymn, " Grant us thy truth to make us free, And kindling hearts that burn for Thee, Till all thy living altars claim One holy light, one heavenly flame." And then before the echo of our song dies upon the ear, we lapse into a state of almost refrigera- tor coldness and forgetfulness and inactivity. Our faith often finds sympathetic utterance and con- firmation in our Christian hymns, which are filled with the music of redeeming love. Our beliefs and our aspirations, our creeds and our hopes are wedded in the songs of the sanctuary. With sub- dued hearts and tearful eyes we sing, " We may not know, we cannot tell What pains He had to bear; But we believe it was for us He hung and suffered there." Do we honestly believe it, and does that belief in- PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 227 rtame our love, and move us on to ever fresli purity of life and constant acts of self-sacrificing and loyal devotion? We sing tenderly, " Oh, dearly, dearly has He loved, And we imist love Him too, And trust in his redeeming blood. And try his works to do." Do we honestly try, and are our efforts crowned with any degree of success, so that we can truly affirm that " we know Him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death "? Oh, that our meditations upon the passion of Christ may kindle in our hearts a holy, a burning passion to be like Christ, to make known Christ, and to know and to do the will of our Father who is in heaven, as Christ did! May we strive to live up to the standard of our confession expressed in our hymns. May our Christian songs sing themselves into our lives. It is sometimes said, as if it was a sign and evi- dence of progress, that the emphasis to-day in the Christian world is not upon faith but upon life, not upon doctrine but upon practice. This re- veals a strange, dangerous and culpable forgetful- ness of the incontrovertible fact that Christian life is born and nourished by Christian faith, and noth- ing else, that behind all acceptable practice and 228 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS sustained activity there must be a firm and intel- ligent and loving grasp of the vital and essential doctrines of Christianity, viz., the supernatural birth and lordship of Jesus Christ, his miracle- working power, his sacrificial death on the cross and his bodily resurrection. The rationalistic periods of history have been the dead periods of history. The churches that have ignored or de- nied the true nature and mission of the Son of God, have been the inactive, non-missionary, fruit- less and stagnant churches. It is evermore true that " as a man thinketh so is he." A decay of faith will inevitably result in the weakening of life. You cannot keep the stream full, if you dry up the fountain. Power will not long continue if you break connection with the dynamo. A living faith in the sinless and crucified Son of God is the only sufficient inspiration to personal and church activity and spiritual success. " By this sign con- quer." Dr. Gore, Bishop of Oxford, protesting against the present tendency to belittle faith in essential truth while seeking to meet the demand for an en- larged outward activity, declares substantially, " We are not going to enrich our action by the impoverishment of our thought. A skimmed the- ology will not produce a more intimate philan- thropy. We are not going to become more ar- PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 229 dent lovers of men by the cooling of our love for God." And Dr. J. H. Jowett in his Yale Lec- tures, discussing the multiplication of organiza- tions to the neglect of " the vital, the inspirational, the divine," says, " We may be absorbed in de- A'ising machinery, and careless about the power which is to make it go. That is our peril." The cross of Christ must always be the distin- guishing symbol of the Christian religion, as it has been for nineteen centuries, conspicuous in its architecture, central in its creed and in its preach- ing, proclaimed in its two permanent rites, vital and vitalizing in its life, the secret of its progress and the ordained promise of its final conquest and world-wide triumph. " God forbid that I should glory," exclaimed the spirit-enlightened apostle, *' save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." A sad day will it be for the Christian church, if it ever loses its relish for such hymns as these: " In the cross of Christ I glory," "Rock of ages cleft for me," " My faith looks up to Thee, Thou Larab of Calvary, Saviour divine." President E. Y. Mullins has said, " In every age of Christian power and aggressiveness the cross has been prominent. Christianity possesses 230 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS an unrivaled view of God and the universe, a matchless system of ethics. It would probably live and eventually overcome all other religions for these reasons alone. But its most distinctive characteristic, the one thing which has always given it supreme regenerating power in the indi- vidual and in society, is its crucified Redeemer. Liberal Christianity has popularity and ethics and culture; evangelical Christianity has transforming power. It was the message of the cross that gave Paul his power; it is the cross that lends power to the preacher to-day; and it is probable that the message of the cross, truly believed and sincerely preached, will continue to be the supreme power in Christian history to the end." We shall all come down to the end of life, as did Christ. May we come down to it in peace and in light, as He did? We shall not be able to say then, " I have finished the work, which Thou gavest me to do," for all human work and achieve- ment are marred by weaknesses and imperfections. As we take the backward look we shall be com- pelled to confess, notwithstanding our most stren- uous endeavor, " We have done the things we ought not to have done, and have left undone the things we ought to have done." Our peace will not be the peace that comes from entire satisfac- tion with the work we have accomplished and a PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 231 consciousness that we have lived a life of perfect obedience to the will of God. Yet we may have the peace of Christ in our hearts, the peace that comes from fellowship with Him, and a participa- tion in the rich blessings of his purchased salva- tion. He made peace, we are told, " by the blood of his cross," and is now made unto all sincere be- lievers " wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption," so that we can sing in fullest confidence, "Thou, O Christ, art all I want; More than all in Thee I find." The fact and the method are clearly revealed. " Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Even now amid the storm and stress of life's experiences we have foretastes of that peace which passes all understanding, which is satisfying in its nature and eternal in its duration. Surely Christ did not mock his sorrowing disciples when He said to them, " Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you." With the calm assurance of a tri- umphant faith the great apostle cried out, " Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? Shall God who justifieth? Who is he that con- demneth ? Is it Christ who died, yea, rather, who is risen again, and is even at the right hand of God, and also maketh intercession for us? " Such 232 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS questions bear their absurdity on their face. If the Father justifies, and the Son who died and rose again, intercedes for the disciple, his safety at the hour of death is assured. His sins are com- pletely forgiven. They are, as it were, blotted out, and the condemning consciousness of his sin is utterly silenced. The sting of death is sin, but if Christ bore the believer's sin on the cross, the sting is extracted. Reconciliation has taken the place of condemnation. " There is now no con- demnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." This is the mystery of Christ and the glory of his cross, revealed in the experience of every trusting dis- ciple. Christ bore his sins; and he shares Christ's peace. It is a double fellowship. But his peace rests not only upon what Christ has wrought for him, but upon his continued love and ever living interest. " Whom He loves He loves to the end." Nothing, not even death with all its power, " shall be able to separate him from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Christ's earthly mission was accom- plished; but his heavenly service still goes on, and will go on until the last disciple is safely sheltered in the heavenly home. The dying victim of Cal- vary has become the ever living and victorious intercessor for his believing and accepted follow- ers. " And so it shall come to pass that at even- PEACE AND LIGHT ON CROSS 233 ing time it shall be light." Every humble saint as he closes his eyes upon the familiar scenes of his earthly sojourn, and looks through the open por- tal of the mansion prepared for him, can calmly say as did Stephen, the proto-martyr, " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." CHAPTER V MRS. EMMA WILLARD, THE PIONEER IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN ALL great movements have their humble be- ginnings. All reforms educational, moral and religious can be traced back to some inspired soul or souls, gifted with wisdom in advance of their time, endowed with a courage which scorns all thought of defeat, whose dreams become con- victions, whose desires assume the nature of in- domitable purposes, who conquer success in spite of indifference, ridicule and opposition. All ad- vance in the onward march of civilization has been led by pioneers who pushed out into the untried, and by their inspiring example have extended the boundaries of human effort and knowledge and happiness. The higher education of women is a modern movement, and had its beginnings within the mem- ory of men now living. It was a reform against long continued neglect and unaccountable preju- dice, in the direction of the completeness and exal- tation of human life, personal, domestic and social. 234 MRS. EMMA WILLARD 235 It has been a conspicuous element in the ad- vancing civihzation of the nineteenth century, and has given a distinction and a glory to it, which nothing else has. It is doubtful if anything has occurred during the last hundred years more in- dicative of the progress of our time than the of- fering to young women of educational advantages equal to those provided for young men. I wish to call attention to the beginning of this great move- ment, and to the name and service of one, who must ever be held in honor as the richly endowed, consecrated and successful pioneer in the higher education of woman. It will not be forgotten by those familiar with English literature that Daniel Defoe, writing in 1697, in "An Essay upon Projects," proposed among other things " An Academy for Women," which has been called " surprisingly modern " in its views and suggestions. He opened his plan with the following generous confession: " I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilized and Christian country, that we deny the ad- vantages of learning to women. We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence, while I am confident, had they the advantages of edu- cation equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves." 236 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS After discussing the question of woman's ca- pacity and native endowment, he presented his plan of having one plain building " in a form by itself, as well as in a place by itself, the gardens being walled in and surrounded with a large moat, and but one entrance." Admission to the acad- emy should be voluntary on the part of the stu- dents, and also continuance in it. " An act of Par- liament should make it felony, without clergy, for any man to enter by force or fraud into the house." For the school thus secluded and guarded, he pro- posed a curriculum which was quite full, including languages, history and literature, as well as music and dancing. Indeed he says, " To such whose genius would lead them to it I would deny no sort of learning." One such academy at least he would have " in every county in England, and about ten for the city of London." He closed the essay with the following paragraph, " I need not enlarge upon the loss the defect of education is to the sex, nor argue the benefit of the contrary practice; it is a thing that will be more easily granted than remedied. This chapter is but an essay at the thing; and I refer the practice to those happy days, if ever they shall be, when men shall be wise enough to mend it." Those happy days were slow in coming. One hundred and twenty-four years passed away, be- MRS. EMMA WILLARD 237 fore a successful attempt was made to mend the condition Defoe deplored, and made not by the wisdom of men, but by the enlightened zeal of a woman. In the year 1821 there was founded in the city of Troy, N. Y., a Female Seminary, so called, by Mrs. Emma Willard, for the avowed purpose of furnishing to young women an education higher, broader and more complete than any then open to them, or hitherto supposed to be necessary for them. This Seminary still exists, and for ninety- two years has sought to carry out under various successful administrations the noble purpose of its gifted founder and first principal, though not at- tracting to itself so much attention from the out- side world during the later part of its history as during the earlier, for reasons largely external to itself, notably because of the growing recognition and triumph of its purpose, and of the existence and multiplication of similar and larger institu- tions in the country. At its beginning this Seminary was a new move- ment, an untried experiment, and was looked upon by many minds with indifference and unbelief, and by not a few with open hostility; and the devoted founder was regarded as a dreamer or a fanatic. It is not easy for us to put ourselves back into the educational status even at the beginning of the last 238 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS century. Indeed we are quite likely to be de- ceived by the eloquent perorations of those, who laud the spirit, plans and achievements of the early settlers of this western world, which are often " without fact or reason." Hon. Andrew S. Draper, Superintendent of Ed- ucation in the State of New York, speaking of these rose-colored representations, once remarked facetiously, that from them one would expect to find a schoolhouse standing on Plymouth Rock the morning after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. The truth is that even the system of common schools was a matter of slow growth in New England as well as in the New Netherlands, and only comparatively recently has it attained the scope and completeness which it now has. When the nineteenth century dawned, after a century and three quarters of struggle, hardship and poverty, of the conquest of untamed nature, of warfare with the Indians, and with the mother country in the long and exhausting struggle for national in- dependence, there were hardly more than twenty- five institutions called Colleges in the country, and these were little superior to modern high schools. They were all of course for young men. These first educational institutions had in view primarily the preparation of candidates for the Christian ministry and the so-called learned professions. MRS. EMMA WILLARD 239 The general education for young men was exceed- ingly meager and limited, while that for young women was distressingly so. In many cities a high school supported by public taxation had to fight for an existence, and a high school or a Latin school distinctively for girls was long and bitterly opposed in the Athens of America, on the ground of increased taxation and declared use- lessness. Mrs. John Adams, near the close of the eight- eenth century, said, " Female education in the best families went no farther than writing and arith- metic, and in some few and rare instances, music and dancing." The question of woman's sphere was rarely or never discussed in those days, either because it was supposed to be so narrow that it was hardly worth discussing, or because it was looked upon as fixed and determined by the de- crees of nature and the Almighty, and therefore unalterable and unimprovable. Such was the condition at the beginning of the last century, and well on towards its middle, and on the other side of the Atlantic as well as on this. Indeed America has always been far in advance of the Mother Country on the subject of free, popular education, and is to-day, an education free to all regardless of condition, sex or religious test. It is only within a few years that the restriction 240 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS was removed from the great English Universi- ties, and Dissenters admitted to their privileges, and the Nonconformists are still engaged in a bit- ter struggle for their rights, and suffering arrest, loss of goods and imprisonment for the sake of conscience and principle. However backward our own country was in its sentiments, and in making equal educational provision for its sons and its daughters, no other nation was in advance of it. The general belief, a hundred years ago and less, as to the sphere of lovely woman found expres- sion in the familiar couplet, " To eat strawberries, sugar and cream, Sit on a cushion and sew up a seam," a belief which a seeker may find still in districts not wholly rural. The following rules were adopted in the estab- lishment of a grammar school in New Haven in 1684: "For ye instruction of hopeful youth In ye Latin tongue and other learned languages soe far as to prepare such youths for ye Coledge and public service of ye country in Church and Com- monwealth. . . . And all girls be excluded as Im- proper and inconsistent with such a Grammer Schoole as ye law enjoins, & is ye Designe of this Settlement." President Charles F. Thwing, in his volume en- MRS. EMMA WILLARD 241 titled " A History of Higher Education in Amer- ica," makes the following confirmatory statement, " The education of women for two centuries had relation to their condition as wives and mothers. Their education was, like that life, simple, prosaic, narrow. The first President Dwight said, * The employments of the women of New England are wholly domestic' Education, therefore, hardly extended beyond reading, writing and arithmetic. In Boston girls were not allowed to attend the pub- lic schools until the year 1790, and then their at- tendance was limited to the months of summer. Two years before, the town of Northampton voted not to be at any expense for schooling girls." To attempt to provide an advanced education for young women equal to that provided for young men, was looked upon, at first, as a reform against nature, a quixotic dream. It was not a question of a few fathers considering the wisdom of edu- cating their daughters in the highest branches of human knowledge, but it was a general question, viz., whether any fathers should run the risk of ^ allowing their daughters to pursue the advanced studies of the College and the University, lest they should be unsphered, if not practically un- sexed, and so unfitted for woman's practical duties and ordained position in life. Professor William Seymour Tyler has vividly 242 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS portrayed the strange opposition to the higher education of women in the following words: *' The objections to this idea of equalizing the ed- ucational advantages of the two sexes were many and various, and not always consistent with each other or consonant with the courtesy due to the gentler sex. It was an innovation uncalled for, unheard of until now since the foundation of the world, and unthought of now except by a few strong minded women and radical men, who would level all distinctions and overturn the foundations of the family, of society, of Church, and of the State. It was unnatural, unphilosophical, unscrip- tural, unpractical and impracticable, unfeminine and anti-Christian; in short all the epithets in the dictionary that begin with un and in and anti were hurled against and heaped upon it. . . . It would be the entering wedge to woman's preach- ing, practicing, lecturing, voting, ruling, buying and selling, doing everything that men do, and per- haps doing it better than men do, and overstock- ing all the trades and professions. At the same time it was insisted that such occupations as math- ematics and philosophy were not suited to the tastes and capacities of women; they did not want them, and would not undertake them; and if they did, they would ruin their health. Impair their MRS. EMMA WILLARD 243 gentleness, delicacy, modesty and refinement, un- sex them, and unfit them for their proper sphere." Women's legal condition was defined by Black- stone in his " Commentaries " in these words, '* By marriage the husband and wife are one person in law; that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of her husband." The opinion of woman's subordination to man prevailed among the most advanced thinkers and idealists at the close of the eighteenth century. Rousseau declared the object of woman in crea- tion to be this, " Women are specially made to please men. All their education should be rela- tive to men. To please them, to be useful to them, to make themselves loved and honored by them, to bring them up when young, to take care of them when 'grown up, to counsel and console them, to make their lives agreeable and pleasant — these, in all ages, have been the duties of women, and it is for these duties they should be educated from infancy." Dr. Lyman Abbott, commenting on these quo- tations, says, " This conception that woman was made for man, that in marriage she lost her per- sonal identity, and became merged and consoli- 244 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS dated with the man, entered into and determined the popular ideal of woman's education." If the higher education of woman was a reform against nature, this was the reform, which Emma Willard inaugurated, and the splendid task to which she applied herself, with all the energy of her strong nature and all the resources of her cul- tivated mind. It is universally conceded that though other schools were established soon after hers, to her belongs the high honor of being the pioneer. The late George William Curtis in his scholarly oration, delivered at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of Vassar College, quotes Sidney Smith as saying " that the immense disparity which existed between the knowledge of men and women admitted of no rational defense, because," said the sensible canon, " nature has been as bountiful of understanding to one sex as to the other." " While he was writing," says Mr. Cur- tis, " Mrs, Emma Willard, whose name should always be held in honor at Vassar, and at every similar institution in the world, was improving the minds of young ladies at a school in Vermont, and a few years afterward founded upon the banks of the Hudson the Troy Female Seminary. This was a conspicuous advance in the scope and con- ception of such academies at that day. But the MRS. EMMA WILLARD 245 time was ripe for Mrs. Willard, as it was for Columbus, and for every leader of civilization." This Is high praise, coming from such a distin- guished source, which makes Mrs, Willard the Columbus of the new world of woman's oppor- tunity and development. Four hundred years ago the time may have been ripe for discovery, discov- ery may have been In the air, but to Columbus alone belongs the honor of having plucked the ripened fruit, of having sublimated the vaporous ether into a solid continent, which ought In justice to be called in its entireness to-day by his euphoni- ous name, instead of his name being restricted to the western portion of the British possessions in North America. It is no discredit to the Christian religion that the advent of its divine Founder took place " in the fullness of time," that then when prophetic voices, national conquests by Roman arms, uni- versal unrest and desire, and the perfection of the Greek tongue had put all things In readiness. He appeared and entered upon his sublime mission as the Teacher and Redeemer of the race. The preparation of the hour and the preparation and appearance of the chosen instrument were both of divine Providence. At the end of the first quar- ter of the last century the hour had come for the enlargement of woman's sphere, for her full 246 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS emancipation from the limitations which had so long encompassed her, for the clear assertion of the rights and possibilities of womanhood under the Christian dispensation, and Mrs. Willard was, under God, the woman for the hour, illustrating in herself very much of the ideal, which she per- sistently and persuasively held up for her sisters. Descended directly from a Puritan ancestry, which had its fountain head in this country in Rev. Thomas Hooker of Connecticut, broadened in her views and attainments by the liberal spirit of her father, who openly rebelled against the narrowness and oppression, which still lingered in his day, we find Miss Emma Hart (for that was her maiden name) at the early age of seventeen teaching her first school, and mistress of the school and of the situation, using the rod or pulling the teeth of her pupils as occasion required (though probably not giving to them the option as ex- pressed by the child's request to her mother, if she could not have her picture taken, might she have a tooth out), encouraging them to fidelity, self- respect and the love of study, independent in her methods, thorough in her work, exciting the ad- miration of the parents and the ambition of the children, and already catching glimpses of the scope, and giving promise of the success, of the work to which she was to devote her life. MRS. EMMA WILLARD 247 Passing from the little Connecticut village to the more advanced work and larger opportunities of her brief Vermont experience, her success was still more marked. Her marriage to Dr. Wil- lard, when she was twenty-two years of age, seemed for the moment to put an end to her brief career as an educator, and to blight all hopes which she or her friends may have cherished of enlarged usefulness and successful reform in this direction. But soon financial reverses came to her husband, and never were misfortunes more conspicuously overruled for the accomplishment of a great pur- pose, and the disappointment of one made to issue in the benefit of a countless multitude. Smitten to the ground, not by dazzling light, but by exces- sive darkness and momentary blindness, she asked with devout and submissive spirit, " Lord, what wilt thou have me do?" Marriage was not to her the great end of life. Through it she secured the broader vision of life and duty. There flashed upon her mind, probably as never before, the needs of her own sex, the unjust disparity which existed in the prevailing provisions for the intellectual culture of the youth of her time, the outline of the reform demanded, and her call in the providence of God to the leadership of the new movement. She understood and accepted the significance of the hour. She " was not dis- 248 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS obedient to the heavenly vision." Life to her took on a grander purpose. She rose with true womanly courage, and undertook cheerfully and resolutely her appointed work as the apostle of the higher education of woman, the broader cul- ture, the elevation, the progress of her sex. In giving the chief place to Mrs. Willard in the advanced educational movement for young women, I do not forget the preparatory work of Miss Zilpah Grant at Ipswich Seminary, of Abi- gail Haseltine at Bradford Academy, of Miss Catherine Beecher at Hartford, and of Eli Thayer of the Oread Collegiate Institute at Worcester; nor do I forget the noble work of that other noble Avoman, Mary Lyon. But Mrs. Willard was born ten years before Mary Lyon, and the Troy Seminary antedated the South Hadley Seminary by sixteen years. Mrs. Willard was born Feb- ruary 23, 1787, and Miss Lyon, February 28, 1797. It should be added that the pub- lic career of Mrs. Willard lasted almost a score of years longer than Miss Lyon's, and was much broader in its relations, although no higher in its purpose. It may be well at this point, now that the names of these two educators have been associated in our thought, to quote President Thwing's very just and discriminating characterization of them, con- MRS. EMMA WILLARD 249 tained in the volume already referred to. " It is not a little significant that near the beginning of the period of the enlargement of the higher edu- cation and greater opportunity for women, stood two women embodying noble and diverse charac- teristics, movements and methods. The one em- bodied intensity, and the other largeness. Mary Lyon stood for an interpretation of life which is still denominated Puritanism, and Emma Willard for an interpretation optimistic and free. One declared that to do her duty was her great pur- pose, and the other regarded freedom of develop- ment as her great desire for humanity and herself. The one interpreted religion as life, and the other sought to make life religious. One poured all of life into religion, and caused its conceptions and principles to become dominant. The other poured all of religion into life, seeking to give to life a symmetry more complete, a nobler sympathy, a finer enrichment, and a higher and holier aspira- tion." President Thwing goes on to say, " Each of these two types embodies advantages and disad- vantages. Each is subjected to perils. Intensity is in peril of narrowness; liberality and largeness, of vagueness and looseness. . . . But both Miss Lyon and Mrs. Willard were largely saved from falling into the evils and weaknesses of their re 250 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS spective methods. Each made a noble contribu- tion to the education of women, important in it- self and for the periods of their service, and which also bore the seeds of yet greater development." While conducting her school at Middlebury, Vt., Mrs. Willard projected the educational plans which she afterward carried out with such signal ability and success. By the character of her school, as well as by the publication and circulation of her advanced views on woman's education, she was already attracting to herself the attention of educators, and men prominent in business and political life. Her programme, formulated with great care and minuteness of detail, passed through edition after edition, and called forth wide approval and criticism. It contained the basis of her whole system of education, and by whatever name the school contemplated might be called, seminary or college, it was in all essential respects of college-grade, and has fur- nished the foundation of all distinctive colleges for young women. It had in view large public buildings, a library well supplied with books in all branches of knowledge, laboratories, philosophical apparatus, a large staff of teachers, a board of Trustees, and generous aid from the legislature of the State. The plan was too large, the en- terprise too expensive, to be carried on by any one MRS. EMMA WILLARD 251 person or by private benevolence — at least, in those days. It was a great public institution which she contemplated, and was designed to con- fer incalculable benefit upon society at large, upon every community, upon the State and the Nation, and therefore would be justified fully in making its appeal to the public treasury. By the advice of influential friends, Mrs. Wil- lard decided to make New York State the arena for her new and " lively experiment." A be- ginning was made at Waterford, and after two years the school was transferred to the more favorable location in the city of Troy, and was called " The Troy Female Seminary." This was under the shadow of the State capitol, only six miles away, from which Mrs. Wlllard hoped to receive practical sympathy and aid, as well as from other States, and even from the national Govern- ment at Washington. Then began the strenuous work of education and appeal, which she under- took single-handed, relying upon the obvious jus- tice of her cause, and its unquestionable reasona- bleness, to commend itself to the favorable judg- ment of thoughtful, public-spirited citizens of every rank. She prepared an able and extended memorial, and secured Its presentation before legislatures. It attracted very wide attention. She solicited 252 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS personally the cooperation of legislatures, of members of Congress, and of Presidents. She sought to create public sentiment, to overcome in- difference, to remove prejudice, to kindle en- thusiasm, and to secure private benefactions and State patronage. Hers was a work of agitation, in which reforms always begin. Her language, which was certainly not wanting in force or pre- cision, indicates the nature of the objections she met. In a letter she wrote, " I am gratified with your sentiments on female education, and I wish legislators thought as you and I do. They can expend thousands for the education of male youths, but when was anything ever done by the public to promote that of females? And what is the reason of it? It is not because the expense is valued, nor because fathers do not love their daughters as well as their sons. It is partly from inattention to the subject, and partly from the prejudice that if women's minds were cultivated they would forget their own sphere, and intrude themselves into that of men, . . . because a few individuals of masculine minds have forcibly broken through every impediment, and rivaled the men even in their own department. . . . They might as well reason that because there is now and then a brawny woman who can lift a barrel of cider (was that the kind of exercise customary MRS. EMMA WILLARD 253 among young ladies of the olden time?) her whole sex should be kept constantly within doors and not allowed to exercise, less if they should at- tain the full perfection of their strength, they would contest the prize upon the wrestling ground, or attempt to take the scythe and the hoe from the hands of men, and turn them into the kitchen." Again she wrote, " I think the business of edu- cation is not to counteract the decision of nature, but to perfect ourselves in nature's plan." And again, " Education should seek to bring its sub- jects to the perfection of their moral, intellectual and physical nature, in order that they may be of the greatest possible use to themselves and others." And once more, " Another error is that it has been made the first object in educating our sex to pre- pare them to please the other. But reason and religion teach that we too are primary existences; that it is for us to move, to the orbit of our duty, around the holy center of perfection; the com- panions, not the satellites, of men." These are noble sentiments, marked by sanity, full of " sweetness and light," and the wonder is that they did not win their way at once to the acceptance of every mind. Mrs. Willard scorned the idea that the higher education would unsex her sisters, or would educate them away from the simple, practical, homely duties of life. It was 254 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS not to unfit them for their lot, and make them dis- contented with their environment; but it was to fit them to dignify every duty, to give them power over their environment, to make them better sis- ters, and wives, and mothers, and members of the social order, in a word, not to change their sphere, but to interpret it, and enlarge and en- rich it. What Margaret Fuller claimed near the middle of the last century as woman's birthright, viz., " the freedom, the religious and intelligent freedom of the universe, to use its means, to learn its secrets, as far as nature has enabled her," Mrs. Willard claimed in its second decade with equal earnestness and comprehensiveness of view, when the distinguished transcendentalist was but a child. The opposition to her reform sometimes dis- appointed Mrs. Willard, and sometimes aroused her righteous indignation; but never chilled the ardor of her purpose, or paralyzed the persist- ency of her effort. Men from whom she expected better things, withheld their sympathy, and legis- latures their patronage and support; but her spirit was undaunted, and her efforts were at last crowned with a splendid and far reaching success. The new location proved to be most favorable. To the intelligent and sympathetic citizens of Troy belongs the distinguishing honor of having cor- MRS. EMMA WILLARD 255 dially welcomed the experiment, and of having furnished the opportunity and the means for the establishment of a Seminary for the higher edu- cation of young women, which became at the same time a model and an inspiration, and in that city Mrs. Willard was enabled to furnish an illustra- tion of her plan, approximating at least her lofty ideal. It has been said that " Mrs. Willard with all her peculiar pride of sex and desire to elevate women was far from being in sympathy with those women who early began the agitation of those intricate questions which pertain to ' women's rights,' by which is usually meant ' political rights.' " A brief extract from her reply to Miss Catherine Beecher, who had appealed to her to join certain ladies in Hartford in an organized movement to secure the " rights " of women, will indicate her views. "Dear Madam: Sincerely do I regret that in the present instance of an appeal to act jointly with yourself and the highly respected ladies of Hartford, the case should be one in which my own opinion is not coincident with yours and theirs. In reflecting on political subjects my thoughts are apt to take this direction; the only natural government on earth is that of the fam- 256 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS ily, the only natural sovereign, the husband and father. Other just governments are these sov- ereigns confederated, that they may together the better secure the advantage of all their families combined." As showing Mrs. Willard's native brightness and wit, which can co-exist with the most serious purpose of a strenuous life, a letter to a cousin accompanying a wedding present of a pair of stockings, may be quoted. " To J. D. Willard, Esq. Dear Cousin, Herewith you will receive a present of a pair of woollen stockings, knit by my own hands, and be assured, dear Coz, that my friendship for you is as warm as the material, active as the finger-work, and generous as the donation. But I consider this present as pecul- iarly appropriate on the occasion of your mar- riage. You will remark, firstly, that here are two individuals united In one pair, who are to walk side by side, guarding against coldness, and giv- ing comfort as long as they last. The thread of their texture Is mixed, and so, alas, Is the thread of life. In these, however, the white is made to predominate, expressing my desire and confi- dence that thus it may be with the color of your MRS. EMMA WILLARD 257 lives. Xo black is used, for 1 believe your lives will be wholly free from the black passions of wrath and jealousy. The darkest color here is blue, which is excellent, when we do not make it too blue. Other appropriate thoughts rise to my mind in regarding these stockings. The most indifferent subjects, when viewed by a mind in a suitable frame, may furnish instructive inferences, as saith the poet — "The iron dogs, the peat and tongs, The bellows that have leathern lungs. The fire, wood ashes, and the smoke. Do all to righteousness provoke." But to the subject. You will perceive that the tops of these stockings (by which I suppose court- ship to be represented) are seamed, and by means of seaming are drawn into a pucker. But after- wards comes a time when the whole is made plain, and continues so to the end and final toeing off. By this I wish you to take occasion to congratu- late yourself that you have now come to plain sailing. Again as the whole of these comely stockings was not made at once, but by the addition of one little stitch after another, put in with skill and discretion, until the whole presents the fair and equal piece of work which you see, so life does not 258 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS consist of one great action, but millions of little ones combined, and so may it be with your lives, no stitch dropped when duties are to be done, no widenlngs made when bad principles are to be re- proved, or economy is to be preserved, neither seaming nor narrowing when truth and gener- osity are in question; thus every stitch of life made right and set In the right place, neither too large or too small, too tight or too loose — thus may you keep on your smooth and even course, making existence one fair and consistent piece, un- til having both passed the heel, you come to the very toe of life, and here, in the .final narrowing off, and dropping the coil of this emblematical pair of warm companions, of comforting associ- ates, nothing appears but white, the token of inno- cence and peace, of purity and light; and may you, like these stockings, the final stitch being dropped and the work completed, go together from the place where you were formed, to a happier state of existence — a present from earth to heaven. Hoping these stockings and admonitions may meet a cordial reception, I remain, In true blue friendship, seemly, yet without seeming, yours from top to toe, Emma Wlllard." Mrs. Wlllard's husband died in May, 1825, MRS. EMMA WILLARD 259 four years after the establishment of the school. He was twenty-eight years older than she, and had been her helper in many ways, relieving her of the financial management of the school, being a wise counselor in all her perplexities, and filling the place of resident physician. From that time on, for twenty years until her retirement from the principalship, the entire management of the rap- idly growing school rested upon her shoulders. It is not within the purpose of this paper to sketch Mrs. Willard's activity and usefulness in many directions, as the author of numerous val- uable text books and other literature, as a poet of recognized ability, as an active friend of philan- thropy at home and abroad, as a leader in social and literary circles burdened with a large cor- respondence, as the discoverer and advocate of a new theory of the circulation of the blood which attracted at the time much attention, as the earnest supporter of every good cause, educational and patriotic, which had in view the diffusion of knowl- edge, the elevation of society, the progress of the State and the Nation, and the welfare of humanity. All these numerous and exacting activities, which were continued until her death in 1870 at the age of 83, and which made her, as another has said, " the representative woman of her generation," together with details of her unfortunate second 26o THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS marriage, which cast the shadow of a great dis- appointment upon her middle life, all these will 'be found narrated in her complete biography. Her peculiar glory was the service she rendered to the education of her sex, in securing for it a more general recognition of its importance and a wider scope in its essential character. This serv- ice made her a benefactor worthy of special honor among all who believe in the value of education, and in the equal rights of all to its inestimable advantages. To Mrs. Willard's school were gathered pupils from far and near, many coming from the South, and from it she sent forth six thousand educated young women into the homes of our land, with such measure of education as they were able in- dividually to take on (or rather to take in, for edu- cation is not an external matter), of whom five hundred became teachers, who caught something of her spirit, and labored to carry out her purpose. It was not for her school alone that she labored and pleaded, but for the establishment of similar schools everywhere. Her thoughts were as broad as womanhood, and embraced her entire sex. She endeavored to show in Troy what could be done, what ought to be done, and what must be done for the education of woman, if she is to MRS. EiMMA WILLARD 261 reach the summit of her development and useful- ness, the divine goal of her womanhood. Other influences have, of course, been at work, and other hands have been busy, but in the rapid progress and the large fruitage of these later years, it is only just to recognize the influence and the hand of the founder of the Troy Seminary. From this fountain have flowed streams, which have fertilized the soil out of which Vassar, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Radclifte, Barnard, and other distinctive schools for young women have sprung blossomed-crowned into life, and from those eloquent walls on the banks of the upper Hudson has gone forth the authoritative mandate that has already opened the doors of many of our colleges to both sexes, upon equal terms and with equal privileges. Mount Holyoke Seminary was founded in 1837, and changed its name to College in 1888, Vassar College in 1861, Girton, the first English College, in 1870, Smith College in 1871, Wellesley in 1875, Radcliffe in 1879, Bryn Mawr in 1880, the Col- lege for Women in Western Reserve University in 1888, the Women's College in Brown Univer- sity, 1 89 1,* and Barnard in 1900. It should be * An early friend of the higher education of women in Rhode Island was John Kingsbury, LL.D. He was a Trustee and Fellow of Brown University from 1844 to 1874, the date of his death, and Secretary of the Corporation fronn 1853 until he died. 262 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS remembered that an historic beginning in the di- rection of female education was made in Ohio in Oberlin Institute, as Oberlin College was first called, which was chartered in 1834. The his- torian says, however, that " the method of giving a College education to women and men together was not a primary thought. The primary thought was to give an education to women of the sort which they were fitted to receive. The condi- tions necessitated the giving of the education to both men and women upon equal terms." At the commencement in 1841 three women received In 1828 he founded in Providence a school which he called a " Young Ladies' High School," a term not yet emplo3'ed in our system of public education, and which was a marked advance on anything provided for young women at that time. It was a private school, and probably attracted few pupils outside of Providence and its immediate vicinit3\ In it was offered in- struction in history, advanced mathematics, and the ancient as well as modern languages. The movement called out not a little ridicule at the beginning, the boys on the street, as Mr. Kings- bury passed by, shouting in derision, " There goes the man who is teaching the girls Latin." The school room was furnished with a carpet and cloth-covered desks, and chairs in keeping with the other furnishings. Not a few citizens regarded the expenditure as mone}^ wasted. It attracted much attention and visitors from abroad on account of its novelty. Dr. Kingsburj' conducted the school with notable success for thirty years. It was subsequently under the care of Professor John L. Lincoln of Brown Univer- sity, and later of Rev. Dr. John C. Stockbridge, much of the in- struction being given by Professors of the University. The school was continued until 1877. The name was changed by Prof. Lincoln to " Young Ladies' School," the term " High " having been adopted to designate a public school grade. It was the precursor of the Women's College in Brown University. MRS. EMMA WILLARD 263 degrees, the first women, it is said, to receive the degree of Bachelor in Arts in the United States. Professor Wiinsterberg says, " To-day there is no need of defending the claims of women; the women themselves have declared with pride that the battle is now won. We no longer hear the old-fashioned pitiful arguments that the women have too small a brain for study, or that their health breaks down if they go through a college course, or that they lose charm and become un- womanly if their education goes beyond the finish- ing school, or that they are bad housekeepers and selfish mothers if they have too much intellectual training. All these exaggerations which belonged to a period of transition have melted away. The social prejudices have disappeared, and any one who should argue to-day against the principle of college education for women would appear a relic of by-gone times." The education of seventy-five years ago was not the education of to-day. The progress has been remarkable. It has been more than an evolution; it has been a revolution. Mr. Weise, in his " History of Troy," says that Mrs. Willard's school " had not at the time of its establishment its equal in the United States," that is, for the education of young women, and that she was " the first woman in America to place the standard of 264 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS female education upon the same plane of study which was then pursued by young men in the various colleges and higher academies in the land." And her biographer, Dr. John Lord, tells us that, at first, Mrs. Willard was compelled to create her own text-books in certain branches of study, which possessed such excellence that they were widely used, and passed through many edi- tions. But the scope of education is far greater now than was possible then. The frontiers of human knowledge have been pushed farther and farther back. New sciences have been discovered, and old ones have been greatly modified and ex- tended. New studies have been introduced, and better methods and improved apparatus. The curriculum has been reconstructed and enlarged many times, and the standard has been immensely elevated. Colleges that were only colleges In name are now such in fact, and a few are prop- erly called Universities, probably as many as will be necessary to meet the demand for years to come. In nothing probably within the memory of living men and women have there been changes so great, improvements so marked, advances so noteworthy, as in the matter of education. In saying this it is not necessarily implied that all changes that have been introduced in our educational system and methods, have been in the direction of gen- MRS. EMMA WILLARD 265 nine and unquestioned improvement. There must be some just reason for doubt and criticism, when so thoughtful and sane an educator as Dean Briggs of Cambridge is prompted to invent and give pub- Hcity to the phrase " old fashioned doubts con- cerning new fashioned education." It should be remembered also that progress In knowledge in these recent years, of which we make our boast, has been largely confined to the natural or physical sciences, to the discovery and utiliza- tion of the facts and forces of nature, to inven- tion and the increased comfort of living. The standards of art, architecture, literature, philos- ophy and religion are all in the past, and all students of these branches of knowledge are com- pelled still to sit at the feet of the old masters. But in all this actual progress, these vaster re- sources, these multiplied facilities, Mrs. Willard's Ideal has not been outgrown, nor can It be ever outgrown. It was, to use her words, " the per- fection of the moral and intellectual nature of woman." It was not the mere accumulation of knowledge, but It was the effect which all good learning should have upon the discipline, the growth, the expansion, the moral elevation of the mind Itself. To the realization of this lofty ideal all knowledge known and to be known, all fresh discoveries In science, all progress In education 266 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS by the increase of its contents or the improvement of its methods were to be made to contribute. Mrs. Willard looked upon education not as an end, but as a means, and all enlargement of the means would have the same sublime, spiritual end in view. Professor Henry Fowler in an article on " The Educational Services of Mrs. Willard," published in the American Journal of Education in 1859, said very justly — "She is preeminently a repre- sentative woman, who suitably typefies the great movement of the nineteenth century for the eleva- tion of woman. Her life has been consecrated to the education and advancement of her sex, or rather we might say that the Christian elevation of woman has been the life itself." Mrs, Wil- lard, therefore, seems to have been a pioneer not only in her efforts for the higher education of her sex, but in her views of the true aim of all educa- tion, Ex-Chancellor E. Benjamin Andrews, of the University of Nebraska, in an article published a few years since in an Educational Review, de- clared that a change is now taking place in the conception of the nature and aims of true educa- tion. The old encyclopaedic idea which made it little more than the mere amassing of knowledge, is passing away. The aim which is now coming MRS. EMMA WILLARD 267 to be accepted, he defined as fourfold, viz., first, " character," secondly, " culture," that is, refine- ment, a love for the beautiful in art, nature, litera- ture and conduct, thirdly, " critical power," and fourthly, " ability to work by rule," in other words, to bring things to pass; but character first. Edu- cation according to this definition is the cultivation and development of one's intellectual and moral powers, refinement of soul, an increased relish, in Edmund Burke's phrase, for " the true, the beau- tiful and the good," self-control, self-mastery for worthy ends, the concentration of life and its forces for the attainment of noble objects and lofty ideals. Dr. Andrews went so far as to say that " All reflecting persons are coming to feel that unless schooling makes pupils morally better, purer and sweeter, kinder and stronger in out- ward conduct, it is unworthy the name." I refer thus at length to Dr. Andrews' article in order to say that where leading educators are now coming to stand, Mrs. Willard stood clearly and strongly seventy-five years ago. Let me re- call her words. " Education should seek to bring its subjects to the perfection of their moral, in- tellectual and physical nature in order that they may be of the greatest possible use to themselves and others," a comprehensive and wholly admir- able definition, upon which it would be difBcult to 268 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS improve, and which is worthy to be inscribed in letters of gold over the entrance of every seminary and college in the land. Mrs. Ellen H. Richards, an early graduate of Vassar College, and the first female student in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who became an eminent teacher in the Institute and an active promoter of the higher education of her sex, adopted in her College course as a sacred rule of life, " I must keep the body in good condition to do the bidding of the spirit." Mrs. Willard in her broad plan for the perfec- tion of her sex, did not overlook the physical needs, though she had few or none of the artificial helps found in the schools of to-day. A recent writer on physical training for women says, " In many respects the gymnasium of a girls' college is equal to that of any other college. The girl students have their boat clubs and regattas, into which they enter with as much spirit as if the scene were New London, and the event the ' varsity ' race. While the girl students built up brain cells by study, they also gain muscle by exercise, and the girl college graduate of the present day can put up a dumb bell as neatly and proficiently as she can analyze the teachings of Kant or Schlegel. In fact she does the one all the better for having done the other. In addition, the game of tennis has served to de- MRS. EiMMA WILLARD 269 vclop broader chests and stronger muscles. The bicycle and tricycle have won many young women Into knowing the delights of a healthy spin along country roads. There is much reason for satis- faction In this increase of health and vigor in womankind, all the more so as too many young men of the present day have not shown the same eagerness toward physical development. It Is to he hoped that the narrow chested, thin, cigarette- smoking young man who is too often seen on the city streets, may be shamed into athletic training by his sense of physical inferiority, when com- pared with the girls of to-day, who can walk two miles to his one, and who show in every move- ment the perfect health which he lacks." This position of Mrs. Willard, which laid proper emphasis upon provisions for securing soundness of body, has been endorsed by all later friends of female education, and in no colleges do we find better equipped gymnasiums, and better average health, and more buoyant spirits than In the colleges for young women. This Mrs. Wil- lard believed to be absolutely essential to the suc- cess of the second Item in her comprehensive scheme, viz., the training of the Intellectual to the highest point of development and culture. And then above all, she insisted that the moral nature, which Is the highest element In personality, should 270 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS be brought under such enlightenment and disci- pline as to bring it more and more into harmony with the laws of right-being and right-living, and the known will of the Maker of us all. But even this was not, in Mrs. Willard's plan, the ultimate purpose of the higher education. But the whole nature, thus disciplined and per- fected, was to become a tempered and polished instrument for " the greatest possible uses " to humanity. Long years before the word " altru- ism " was invented, Mrs. Willard was an altruist of the purest type. No harp, however complete and exquisite its workmanship, performs its mis- sion until it gladdens and inspires human souls with the melody of its music. No human mind, however well-trained and furnished, fulfills the high and holy purpose of its being and its train- ing, until it takes its place among the active forces of life for the comfort, the help, the uplifting of humanity. The angels of the Christian faith, resplendent with supernatural light and beauty, are represented as messengers of God, " minister- ing spirits sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation." The more exalted the life of woman can be made, the more angelic will be her ministry on the earth. Mrs. Willard dis- tinctly recognized and suitably emphasized the moral and religious element in a complete educa- MRS. EMMA WILLARD 271 tion. She persistently excluded all sectarianism from her Seminary; but she made it a Christian school, pervaded by a Christian atmosphere, in which the Christian faith was held up as the in- spiration to all noble living, and the Christian graces as the perfection of all highest character. All knowledge, rightly apprehended, centers in God. History is but the record of God's deal- ings with the human race in its progressive devel- opment. Literature is but the expression of thought and life as it is lived in harmony with or apart from God. Philosophy is " the knowledge of phenomena as explained by, or resolved into, causes and reasons, powers and laws," all of which are traceable to the great First Cause. Science is the systematic and orderly arrangement of facts and principles, in the realms of matter and force and mind, which discloses the results of God's operations or methods of his activity. The true scientist is, as has been beautifully said, sim- ply " thinking God's thoughts after Him." Ex- President Eliot has strikingly defined the true pur- pose of scientific education in these words: "I have never been able to find any better answer to the question, What is the chief end of studying nature? than the answer which the Westminster Catechism gives to the question, What is the chief end of man? namely, to glorify God and enjoy 272 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS Him forever." Knowledge and wisdom ought to be one and the same thing, and would be, were it not for the perversity of human hearts, so that knowledge has come to mean the accumulation of facts, and wisdom the right use of them. As Cowper says, " Knowledge and wisdom far from being one, Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men, Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. Knowledge, a rude, unprofitable mass, The mere material with which wisdom builds, Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place, Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. Knowledge is proud that it has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that it knows no more." He who finds knowledge, then, finds facts about God, the Infinite Spirit, the essential Life, by whom all things consist. He who finds wisdom finds God. The man who by common consent is denominated '' the wise man," affirmed, " The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." In the broadest sense, Christ who was the Word, the utterance of God, the manifestation of his wis- dom as well as his power and love, could say, " I am the truth." Kaulbach, in his famous cartoon of the Reformation, grouped all the intellectual activity of the seventeenth century around Luther and the open Bible, the sun which, unveiled, il- MRS. EMMA WILLARD 273 luminated the mind, and quickened it Into life, and at the same time was the center around which all good learning revolved, and toward which it grav- itated. Christianity, which is the synonym of light and wisdom; which has been the mother of schools as well as of churches; which has founded colleges and universities; which has stimulated thought and inquiry; which has pushed on investigation and discovery; which has given birth to scholars and libraries and literatures; which has insisted that all history and all realms of truth and all worlds of matter are the legitimate field of man's explora- tions; which has taught that wisdom is the her- itage of the people, that the right to know is the inalienable right of every man and every woman, and that knowledge should be as free as the light and the air, and is as essential to man's normal and healthy development, bases its primary argu- ment for education upon the nature and immortal- ity of the soul itself. Its capacity for growth is one of the strongest scientific evidences for the soul's immortality, and its immortality is one of the strongest arguments for its highest present edu- cation. The folly of education upon any low, un- spiritual, materialistic conception of man is finely expressed by Tennyson in the familiar words, 274 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS "We are not cunning casts of clay, Let science prove we are, and then What matters science unto men, At least to me ; I will not stay, For I was made for better things." The effect of present wise training will endure throughout eternity. Mental development and enlargement, the cultivation of the intellectual and moral powers, personal growth in this life, fit the mind inevitably for a higher destiny in the life to come. We may well shrink from going through this life and out into eternity with dwarfed or stunted powers, and be eager to know and to grow until the germ of manhood and womanhood within us shall expand into the large ideal and perfect type, which is held up before us by the great Teacher. Religion reveals to us the sublime thought of God with reference to us, and the sub- lime possibilities of development that are shut up in every human spirit. How narrow and belittling, then, is that theory of education, which is sometimes called the utili- tarian, which limits itself to practical studies, that can be converted into silver and gold, and bread and butter, to the useful branches of knowledge as they are called, and overlooks the immortal mind and its discipline and progress, and puts a higher value upon material prosperity than it does MRS. EMMA WILLARD 275 upon developed manhood and womanhood 1 You all recall good Bishop Bienvenu, that ideal por- traiture of saint and philosopher combined, drawn by Victor Hugo in " Les Miserables." He denied himself of every unnecessary comfort, and shared the hardships and poverty of his flock. The only luxury he would tolerate was his garden. This he kept in exquisite order. His haughty house- keeper reproved him, saying, " You who turn everything to account have at least one useless spot. It would be better to grow salads there than bouquets." " Madam," retorted the good Bishop, " you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful," and after a pause he added, " More so, perhaps." And how narrow is that view of education which sometimes obtained in the past, which said education is for the few and not for all, as if all souls were not equally immortal, and were not possessed of equal needs, and endowed with like possibilities! And how narrow and indefensible would be any theory of education which made a distinction in sex, and provided a more abundant and extended course of Instruction for boys than for girls, as if all minds were not of equal value and duration, and as if the progress of the human race was not, under God, more dependent upon the broad intelligence, the high refinement, the 276 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS generous culture of woman than upon any other one thhig conceivable. President Dwight, in an article in the Forum, has well said, " So long as education is conceived of as valuable merely for its uses, or as desirable simply as fitting a person for his individual and peculiar work, the higher education of women may find many to oppose it with objections which may have, perchance, seeming reasonableness. . . . But if education is for the growth of the human mind, the personal human mind, and if the glory of it is in the upbuilding and outbuilding of the mind, the womanly mind is just as important, just as beautiful, just as much a divine creation, with wide-reaching possibilities, as is the manly mind." There are two views of education, or perhaps I should say, two opposite tendencies, not alto- gether unknown in our day, that are equally erro- neous and indefensible. First, a thoroughly self- ish view that exhausts the benefits of education upon one's self, that leads to a life of exclusiveness and separation, that disconnects a man from poli- tics and the duties of citizenship, and a woman from the plain duties of home, and the responsi- bilities of social life, and the demands of charity, that makes both men and women " impractica- bles " and " impossibles," and makes life a sort of useless, monastic, transcendental existence. MRS. EMMA WILLARD 277 Mrs. Russell, the brilliant daughter of Father Taylor of Boston, described the transcendentalists, who separated themselves in the little select, lit- erary Brook. Farm experiment, as " a race, who dove into the infinite, soared into the illimitable, and never paid cash." An education which takes one's feet out of the ordinary paths of life, and prevents one from dealing in its customary cur- rency and meeting its common obligations, has no justification for its existence in this work-a-day world of ours. President Henry Churchill King of Oberlin College has wisely said, " Just this, then, is the function of the college, to teach in the broadest way the fine art of living, to give the best preparation that organized education can give, for entering wisely and unselfishly into the complex relations of life, and for furthering unselfishly and efficiently social progress." A second peril to which we are exposed at the present time, and it may be called the great edu- cational peril of two continents, is that of exalting the practical side of education in such a way as to belittle the cultural and spiritual side, to determine the character of education and measure its value by its ability to coin itself into material possessions, and minister to the bustling, noisy activities of our age, forgetting that refinement, taste, beauty and strength of character are the choicest possessions 278 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS of the soul, and the richest fruits of liberal culture; Indeed, without which there is no liberal culture. Professor Huxley's definition of " a liberal edu- cation," expressed in what Sir Oliver Lodge calls *' a magnificent sentence," is as follows: "That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of the will, and does with ease and pleas- ure all the work that as a mechanism it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth v/orking order; ready, like a steam-engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of nature and the laws of her operations ; one, who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself. Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education." Arthur C. Benson in his able and discriminating " Life of Walter Pater," accounts for Pater's lack of appreciation at Oxford, his Alma Mater, and the University, in which most of his life was spent, MRS. EMMA WILLARD 279 in this way, " Moreover it is fair to say that the air of the Universities is not at the present mo- ment favorable to the pursuit of Belles lettres and artistic philosophies. 1 he praise of academical circles is reserved at the present time for people of brisk, bursarial and business qualifications, for men of high technical accomplishment, for exact researchers, for effective teachers of prescribed subjects, for men of acute and practical minds, rather than for men of imaginative qualities. This is the natural price that must be paid for the (so-called) increased efficiency of our Universi- ties, though it may be regretted that they main- tain so slight a hold upon the literary influence of the day. The whole atmosphere is, in fact, sternly critical, and the only work which is em- phatically recognized and approved, is the work which makes definite and unquestionable additions to the progress of exact sciences." And Ferris Greenslet in his appreciation of the same English scholar, says, " This is the sum of Pater's Cy- renaic philosophy of life. Its plea was for a sys- tem of morals as living and flexible as life itself, and for a recognition of the importance of " be- ing " as well as " doing." Such considerations have perennial value, but especial significance in an age like ours, when it is so fatally easy to 28o THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS glorify over much great aggregations of horse- power, men of high voltage, and the efficient life." This language portrays to us most strikingly the tendencies in the mother country. In like manner President Thwing, deploring the sadly di- minished effect of the forces of the American Uni- versity on American literature in these recent decades, declares, " The reason lies in the ab- sorption of men in things material. In the former age men gave themselves to ideas; they now give themselves to things. The reason is that this is an age of materialism; it is the time of the reign of the exterior senses. The voice of the imag- ination is hushed. The altar fires of the creative imagination are burned out, and in their place are the fires of the steamship boiler and of the mogul locomotive." An Eastern college which has had an honored history for more than a hundred years as a clas- sical school, laying special emphasis upon the hu- manities, graduated at a recent commencement thirty-five men with the following degrees. Three received the degree of Bachelor of Arts, three the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy, two the degree of Bachelor of Science, and twenty-seven the degree of Bachelor of Engineering. This is an extreme case ; but it is symptomatic. Professor Miinsterberg declares, " There are MRS. EMMA WILLARD 281 too many who fancy that everything which is not directly useful for the vocational technique is a waste of time and energy. They have stuffed our colleges with practical subjects, and have allowed far-reaching choice of courses in the high schools under the one point of view that only that which is directly applicable to the future trade can be worth while. If this tendency were to win the day, the life work would be built up on thinner and thinner foundations of real culture, and our society would be more and more threatened by uneducated experts. The whole cultural level of our community would sink, . . . the value of this whole fabric and the worthiness of our social life would rapidly diminish." A sad day will it be for our colleges and uni- versities, when the spiritual is crowded out by the material, when the humanities are driven to the wall by the so-called practical studies, when re- finement and culture are at a discount and busi- ness efficiency at a premium, when things are of more value than high ideals and noble aspirations, when the noise of machinery and the shouts of the athletic field put an end to " the still air of delightful studies," when physical strength counts for more than moral strength and intellectual at- tainment, when the popular applause is given not to the successful student but to the successful 282 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS athlete, when the colleges are no longer able to produce Longfellows, and Hawthornes, and Lowells, and John Hays, because they have lost the mold; In a word, when they cease to be pre- eminently the homes of elegant culture. If that day should ever come, which may God forbid, then we shall look to the colleges for young women to preserve the lofty aims, the high spiritual ideals, the garnered and priceless results of a liberal edu- cation. In the University of Minnesota from the gradu- ates of 1 910 the Phi Beta Kappa Society, whose members are elected on the basis of scholarly at- tainments and literary proficiency, elected to mem- bership thirteen women and four men. President Tucker of Dartmouth College, speaking of Trinity College, Cambridge, said: "The curator took me from alcove to alcove, and uncovered first the manuscript of Lord Bacon's Novum Organum, and in turn, the manuscript of Milton's Paradise Lost, the manuscript of Newton's Principia, a canto of Byron's Childe Harold, Tennyson's In Memoriam and Thackeray's Henry Esmond, all the product of One College in one University," and then he added, " England may multiply her wealth, and increase her navy and expand her em- pire, and she will still live more surely in the names which will outlast her power." Ambassador MRS. EMMA WILLARD 283 James Bryce, in his admirable volume on South America, declares " The world to-day is ruled by physical science and business." And again he says in the same volume, " There is a sense in which Shakespeare is a greater glory to England than the Empire of India. Homer and Virgil, Plato and Tacitus are a gift made by the ancient world to all the ages, more precious, because more enduring, than any achievements in war, or gov- ernment, or commerce." This distinguished scholar and publicist in a commencement address at the University of Wis- consin, uttered a much needed word of caution against the all-absorbing pursuit of so-called prac- tical studies. " Whatever a nation achieves, what- ever a university achieves, is the result of patient observation, close reasoning, and, let me add, of the love of knowledge for its own sake; for the man who is bent only on finding what is primarily profitable will miss many a path at the end of Avhich there stands the figure of Truth, with all the rewards she has to bestow. Just as any na- tion which should force its children to narrow their energies to purely gainful aims, would soon fall behind its competitors, and see its intellectual life fade and wither, so any university which sac- rificed its teaching of the theory of science to the teaching of the practical applications of science 284 THINKING GOD'S THOUGHTS would be unworthy of its high calling, and would handle ev^en the practical part of its work less effectively. The loss of a high ideal means the loss of aspiration, of faith, of vital force." Professor Willcox of Cornell University, rec- ognizing the inappropriateness of old definitions to modern conditions, says, " The most vital need of college education throughout America is the formulation and application of some definition of liberal education which will apply to new condi- tions," which virtually means some definition which will deceive us into the belief that the new educa- tion contains all the elements of broadening cul- ture, and liberal training, and spiritual refinement possessed by the old. New definitions will not alter the nature of things, or endow with spiritual life that which is of the earth earthy. " In the world but not of it " should be as true of culture as of religion. " In it " to elevate, purify and ennoble its life, to exalt and spiritualize its aims, and inspire it with the love of worthy objects of human pursuit; but "not of it," unin- fluenced by its low and debasing ideals, free from its bondage to the material and the sensual, and superior to its vulgar pleasures and its sordid and perishable gains. In .conclusion, I desire to say that continued in- tellectual progress and moral improvement should MRS. EMMA WILLARD 285 be the distinct and unweakening purpose of life. Seminaries and colleges can at best only lay the foundations of an education. All life must be building the superstructure. The roof of our schoolhouse is the broad heavens above us, and the whole system of nature and Providence, of moral government and divine grace revealed in Jesus Christ, under which we live, is an educa- tional system. He who ceases to learn and to grow, is unworthy to live, and to have the vast opportunities of life. Heaven is the home of successful and victorious students, " disciples," that is, learners, the New Testament calls them, who have diligently and faithfully learned the truths of God in nature, in philosophy, in human experience and in divine Revelation, and felt their quickening and expanding, purifying and maturing influence on their souls. The dying Goethe is said to have asked for more light. Light, knowledge, truth, which may be converted into faith, into character, into service, into victory, into eternal possessions, this should be the perpetual cry of every immortal spirit, made in the image of God. y Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 1 1012 0 197 0219