THE MODERN MAN 
 
 TACING 
 TUB OLD PROBLEMS 
 
 ' ANDREW W ARCHIBALD 
 
7.xx.ZoJ 
 LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 Presented byTVo\ . cJ.'T?\'Von \ (S Smi-Vln "t)T), 
 
 Division. 
 
 Section. 
 
 
The Modern Man Facing the 
 Old Problems 
 
OTHER WORKS 
 
 By Andrew W. Archibald, D.D. 
 
 The Bible Verified. 
 
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The Modern Man Facing 
 The Old Problems 
 
 By 
 ANDREW W. ARCHIBALD, D.D. 
 
 Author of The Bible Verified;' ''The Trend 
 of the Centuries ;' etc. 
 
 "Act well your part, there all the honour lies." 
 — Pope''s ^^ Essay on Man" 
 
 JUL ■ '5 1920 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 1916, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 Kew York: 15S Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 2s Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
To the meynory 
 
 of my Father and Mother^ 
 
 Robert and Betsy Ha?mlton Archibald 
 
Preface 
 
 THE author's previous volumes, in the order 
 of their publication, have been " The Bible 
 Verified," " The Trend of the Centuries," 
 " The Easter Hope," and " Biblical Nature Studies." 
 Their themes might be stated as follows : God in the 
 Word, God in the world of history, God in the future 
 world, God in the natural world, and now in this new 
 work, " The Modern Man Facing the Old Problems," 
 we have God in the world of practical living. The 
 logical succession of topics would put the consider- 
 ation of the hereafter at the end, and with such a 
 rearrangement we have a measurably complete line 
 of thought, and one advancing steadily to a climax. 
 But perhaps the most important subject is the last 
 receiving treatment, namely, that of the following 
 pages. 
 
 In this series of discussions, the studied aim has 
 been to unfold every thought from a Biblical and 
 therefore from an authoritative basis. The Psalmist 
 was right when he said : 
 
 ** Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? 
 By taking heed thereto according to thy Word^ 
 
 For this reason there is not only frequent citation 
 of the literary and the historical and the scientific 
 
 7 
 
8 Preface 
 
 and the philosophical, but particularly there is a con- 
 stant appeal to Holy Writ. Conversely, while the 
 positions taken are fortified preeminently from the 
 Scriptures, they are also strongly sustained by very 
 copious illustrations from literature and history and 
 science and philosophy. A special use might be 
 made of the sixteen chapters in furnishing a suc- 
 cession of studies for Men's Classes, so rapidly multi- 
 plying in the Churches and in the Christian Asso- 
 ciations. 
 
 An indulgent public has given such a gracious and 
 appreciative recognition of the vi^riter's preceding 
 efforts, that he is emboldened to make this farther 
 venture into the field of literature. 
 
 A. W. A. 
 
 Newton Center^ Boston* 
 
Contents 
 
 I. Time and Eternity .... 
 
 II. The Reign of Law or of God, Which ? 
 
 III. The Power and Persistence of Memory 
 
 IV. The Will as a Factor in Determining 
 
 Destiny ..... 
 
 V. Cornelian Inquiries as to the Great Es 
 
 sential ..... 
 
 VI. Some Pertinent Though Not Impertinent 
 
 Questions ..... 
 
 VII. How to Make the Most of Ourselves 
 
 VIII. Masters of the Situation . 
 
 IX. How the Forgotten Past May Contribute 
 
 TO Our Future Success 
 
 X. The Ministry of Angels 
 
 XI. The Weaving of Life's Web and the En 
 
 graving of Character . 
 
 XII. The Silent Building of the Temple . 
 
 XIII. Limited Though Ample Opportunities 
 
 XIV. A Larger Sphere .... 
 
 XV. Commendatory Letters : . 
 
 Worth- While Testimonials of Things Achieved 
 
 XVI. The Quest of the Grail and of the Christ 
 
 II 
 
 22 
 
 35 
 
 48 
 
 61 
 
 n 
 
 90 
 
 103 
 
 116 
 
 129 
 
 141 
 
 157 
 
 170 
 182 
 
 195 
 
 208 
 
Time and Eternity 
 
 THE modern man has to face the same prob- 
 lems as have ever engaged the attention of 
 humanity. He is still baffled by the mys- 
 tery of life with its outlook on eternity. He con- 
 tinues to ask the significance of the brief pres^ent 
 and of the unending future. He exclaims with the 
 Psalmist, " How short my time is." He hkewise 
 wonders what is to be his destiny in that Hereafter 
 which Holy Writ tries to measure in the familiar, 
 ** A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday 
 when it is past, and as a watch in the night." 
 
 I. We will endeavour, first, to get some concep- 
 tion of our ephemeral existence here. We recall 
 what a poet has said : 
 
 <* How short is human life ! the very breath, 
 Which frames my words, accelerates my death." 
 
 The brevity of our earthly career is variously illus- 
 trated in Scripture, and always in a way to impress 
 the mind. 
 
 We have all stood at the harbour, and watched 
 the departure of ocean craft. There is something 
 majestic in them as they steam away or sail away 
 from the dock, and carriages and automobiles are 
 
 II 
 
12 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 stopped, and people who have witnessed the sight 
 scores of times will sit and look with a dreamy at- 
 tention. There is a trace of sadness in their faces, as 
 if they were reminded of the ocean of Hfe, upon 
 which so many set sail with high hopes only to van- 
 ish out of view in a few short years, landing on the 
 far-away shore of eternity. In olden times there 
 was a man of God, who doubtless had often gazed at 
 the white sails on the blue Mediterranean. He had 
 seen the ships bearing out to sea, he had seen them 
 growing less and less distinct against the horizon, 
 until they were mere specks, and finally they were 
 entirely lost to the vision. Turning away in a pen- 
 sive mood, he said. My days " are passed away as 
 the swift ships," and we all feel the force of the pic- 
 turesque characterization. 
 
 To vary the figure, Isaiah says, " Mine age is re- 
 moved, and is carried away from me as a shepherd's 
 tent." There is nothing permanent in tent life, it is 
 a camping out from place to place. Especially must 
 the shepherd, for the sake of pasturage, frequently 
 shift his location. He settles down in some valley, 
 hoists his canvas in the evening, and while the 
 smoke may curl upward in the morning with the 
 busy activities of breakfast preparation, at noon or 
 by late afternoon there is hardly a vestige of his 
 having been on the spot. He has struck his tent 
 and gone. So it is with our earthly habitation, with 
 the body in which we tabernacle here. We live our 
 
Time and Eternity 13 
 
 little life in one brief generation, and the next gen- 
 eration finds scarcely a trace of our existence. Our 
 lives have been removed as a shepherd's tent. 
 
 Again we are told in the Chronicles that " our 
 days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is no 
 abiding." That makes a very definite impression on 
 the writer's mind. Often has he sat on some slope 
 of the Catskills, and followed with his eye the flying 
 shadows. It is in the autumn when they are seen to 
 the best advantage and with the finest effect. The 
 atmosphere is dreamy, the leaves are sufficiently 
 tinged with red and gold to speak of decay. The 
 murmuring of the brook in the adjacent meadow, 
 and the occasional lowing of the cattle can be heard. 
 The whistle of the farmer's boy and the song of the 
 bird seem to be in a minor key. There is plain- 
 tiveness in every sound. You find yourself sighing 
 involuntarily once in a while, and you cannot help 
 feeling a little melancholy. You look over the land- 
 scape, and there are the shadows. There is some- 
 thing beautiful and yet saddening in the continuous 
 procession which they keep up. No one of them 
 takes more than a minute or two to traverse the 
 whole stretch of country within the range of vision. 
 Verily, our days are like the fleeting shadows : they 
 chase one another very rapidly, and there is " no 
 abiding." 
 
 Still farther, Job declares, " My days are swifter 
 than a post." This figure is taken from an ancient 
 
14 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 institution, which is thus described by the author 
 of the *' DecHne and Fall of the Roman Empire " : 
 " Houses were everywhere erected at the distance 
 only of five or six miles, each of them was constantly 
 provided with forty horses, and by the help of these 
 relays it was easy to travel a hundred miles in a day 
 along the Roman roads." Xerxes, in his famous 
 march from the Orient to Greece, by such a postal 
 arrangement kept in close communication witli the 
 most distant parts of his realm. Herodotus says 
 that there was no more speedy way of travelling by 
 land than on the post-horses. How the courier must 
 have gone flying along ! Art represents him spur- 
 ring his steed to a full run. When Gibbon's '• five 
 or six miles " had thus been journeyed, the messen- 
 ger would mount a fresh animal, and gallop away to 
 the next stopping place, where there would be an- 
 other saddled beast awaiting him, and with such 
 postal conveniences 150 miles a day could be made. 
 Even foot couriers, by being trained from child- 
 hood, used to travel 100 to 200 miles a day in 
 Mexico, as we learn from Prescott's " Conquest." 
 This historian expressly says, " Fresh fish was fre- 
 quently served at Montezuma's table in twenty-four 
 hours from the time it had been taken in the Gulf of 
 Mexico, 200 miles from the capital." This feat was 
 accomplished by a runner on foot, and not by one 
 who was mounted, as the ancient postman was. We 
 can imagine the latter literally dashing by the ob- 
 
Time and Eternity 15 
 
 server, who would watch him as he ascended a hill, 
 who would lose sight of him as he descended into a 
 valley, who would see him appear again on a farther 
 elevation of ground, who would see him growing 
 smaller and smaller against the sky, till in a few min- 
 utes he disappeared altogether. Swifter than a post 
 is our fleeting life, rising and falling on hill and in 
 dale, till ere long it vanishes in the distance. Swifter 
 than the modern post even, than postal telegraphy, 
 are our days. We do not send messages by the 
 mounted courier now, but by the electric flash. 
 Quickly as that, in one view of the matter, do we 
 run our earthly course. The Master Himself once 
 said, " As the hghtning cometh forth from the east, 
 and is seen even unto the west, so shall be the com- 
 ing of the Son of Man," in a moment. Down from 
 heaven through intervening space with the velocity 
 of light, which shoots through the air 186,000 miles 
 a second, God sends the despatch, " This night is 
 thy soul required of thee," and somewhere before 
 morning there is an instant tragedy. There is a 
 blaze of electricity, a bUnding flash of lightning, fol- 
 lowed by lurid darkness, for another life has ended. 
 
 It is likewise Job who says, ♦' Oh, remember that 
 my life is wind." Bring forth the anemometer, and 
 let us measure the rapidity with which the wind 
 moves. What is the velocity of that gentle zephyr 
 whose motion can with difficulty be discerned? 
 About a mile an hour. Let the tornado sweep 
 
l6 The Modem Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 along, and what does the anemometer register? 
 More than a hundred miles an hour. How long 
 does it take the cyclone to do its awful work ? There 
 is a momentary roar like the deafening noise of ten 
 thousand trains of cars, there is a bewildering sense 
 of the passing of a blast of the Almighty's breath, 
 and all is over, but what fearful havoc has been 
 wrought by that brief whirl of wind. It is here and 
 gone before one has scarcely time to think. As 
 rapid sometimes seems the whirl of time. In such 
 different ways do we have illustrated in Holy Writ 
 how short our time is. 
 
 2. Turning to the other side of our subject, we 
 will try to get some conception of the endless future, 
 of Him who " inhabiteth eternity," and concerning 
 whom Whittier says : 
 
 ** From out whose hand 
 The centuries fall like grains of sand.'* 
 
 A hasty sketch of the ages of geology will perhaps 
 best enable us to understand how with God a thou- 
 sand years " are but as yesterday when it is past, and 
 as a watch in the night." We will picture to our- 
 selves the cosmos as evolved according to the nebu- 
 lar hypothesis, for though this should be supplanted 
 by some other theory of the universe, it yet will ever 
 furnish us with an impressive illustration of how ab- 
 solutely unending is eternity. 
 
 We start with that indefinite " In the beginning/' 
 
Time and Eternity 17 
 
 and we see this earth, as Scripture says, " waste and 
 void," a vaporous mass, which cooled and condensed 
 into a Hquid sphere. This fiery, molten ball whirled 
 round and round, and radiated heat, till it had a 
 solid outside crust. Millions of years were required 
 to make this " beginning " of our globe. The en- 
 veloping gases were precipitated into the waters of 
 which they were the constituents, and a hot ocean 
 completely covered the surface of the primordial 
 earth. Slowly this deposited its sediment, adding 
 grain to grain, until there was a formation five miles 
 thick, and the Cambrian age had run its course 
 through thousands of years, which, however, were 
 only as a watch in the night in comparison with 
 eternity. 
 
 There followed the Silurian age with a deposit of 
 still greater depth, and we see the Rockies and the 
 Alleghanies lifting themselves out of the water, while 
 yet the greater part of North America was a rolling 
 sea. This condition of things lasted for thousands 
 of years, but the eternal God looked upon them as 
 so many days, or even fractions thereof. The 
 Devonian age succeeded, and more land rose from 
 the vasty deep in the shape of numerous islands, 
 such that, said the geologist Dawson, " the conti- 
 nental areas of the northern hemisphere must have 
 much resembled the present insular and oceanip 
 regions of the South Pacific." Only another day or 
 watch in the night of eternity had passed. 
 
i8 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 The Carboniferous age came, and with it the 
 elevation of more land in great swampy flats. 
 America's inland sea became more and more con- 
 tracted, and a boggy soil appeared where the 
 prairies now are, and it was clothed in the most lux- 
 uriant vegetation under tropical conditions. Then 
 came a mighty subsidence, and the vast swamps were 
 overflown, and the forests were covered with detritus, 
 which gradually rose above the water to wave with 
 another tropical forest, and that also sank and was 
 buried in mud. Thus were the coal measures formed 
 through thousands of years, which occupied only a 
 part of a night for Him who was, and is, and is 
 to be. 
 
 The Permian age continued the elevations and de- 
 pressions through other millenniums, for everything 
 was billowy and unstable yet. We pass down through 
 the Messozoic ages, and see the Rockies and Andes 
 submerged, and all Britain under water except the 
 highest peaks, while chalk a thousand feet deep was 
 formed by the almost imperceptible growth of micro- 
 scopic shells. Then we see another tremendous up- 
 heaval, producing for the first the majestic mountain 
 ranges of the Alps and of the Himalayas. The sub- 
 sequent Tertiary age with its subdivisions introduces 
 us to a succession of gigantic changes which speak 
 of immeasurably long time. We see South and 
 North America still separated by a sea, and no 
 Panama canal was needed. We see northern Africa, 
 
Time and Eternity 19 
 
 southern Europe, and western and southern Asia 
 still constituting an ocean bottom. We see Green- 
 land, now clad in ice, luxuriating in a mild climate 
 and a rich vegetation. We see a cold wave indeed 
 extending southward over the earth, till our present 
 temperate zones were sheeted with glaciers, to be 
 succeeded by a glacial sea which flowed more than a 
 thousand feet deep over the plains of Europe, until 
 there was another elevation producing more land 
 than exists now. We see man appear, to experience 
 perhaps that last geological subsidence of any great 
 extent, whereby the earth in its present contour of > 
 continents and oceans was formed, and the promise 
 was that the world should not be drowned again, 
 should not be subjected to another deluge. 
 
 The modern man gets a more adequate conception 
 of eternity than any in the past, because he has in 
 geology a more satisfactory unit of measurement. 
 How long were the geologic ages ? Long enough 
 for the formation of sedimentary rocks to the depth 
 of at least fifteen miles, and that, too, by the deposit- 
 ing of a sand, as it were, at a time. Sir William 
 Thompson (though later authorities make more 
 moderate estimates) calculated seventy to a hundred 
 million years from the first formation of the solid 
 crust to the modern period. The cooling down from 
 the first vaporous condition is supposed to have oc- 
 cupied an immeasurably longer time, and we can say 
 with Longfellow : 
 
20 The Modem Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 ** The ages come and go, 
 
 The centuries pass as years." 
 
 All these form only a small section of eternity. Such 
 infinite duration of personal existence staggers the 
 intellect. With such a conception of this as we are 
 able to get from our geological comparison, we can 
 see the deep significance of the Lord's own state- 
 ment, that it would be no profit to gain the whole 
 world and lose the soul. We can say with Wesley: 
 
 ** And deeply on my thoughtful heart 
 Eternal things impress : 
 Give me to feel their solemn weight.** 
 
 Having thus set over against each other time that 
 is so brief and eternity which is without beginning 
 or end, in closing we recall a scene from Milman's 
 " History of Latin Christianity." In one of the 
 early Anglo-Saxon conferences to consider the ques- 
 tion of accepting Christianity, a thane came forward 
 and said, " To what, O King, shall I liken the life 
 of man ? When you are feasting with your thanes 
 in the depth of winter, and the hall is warm with the 
 blazing fire, and all around the wind is raging and 
 the snow falling, a little bird flies through the hall, 
 enters at one door and escapes at the other. For a 
 moment while within, it is visible to the eyes, but it 
 came out of the darkness of the storm, and glides 
 again into the same darkness. So is human life : we 
 behold it for an instant, but what has gone before, or 
 
Time and Eternity 21 
 
 what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If the 
 new religion can teach us this wonderful secret, let 
 us give it our earnest attention." 
 
 The advice was good, and those early ancestors of 
 ours well decided to accept the Christ, who " only 
 hath immortality." In view of human life being Hke 
 a bird flitting through a room on a wintry night, we 
 cannot afford to leave out of account the Christian 
 religion, which alone has a satisfactory solution of the 
 mystery of our earthly existence flashing momen- 
 tarily across the eternity wherein it is comprehended. 
 Contemplating the swiftly-passing days of the present 
 and the countless aeons to come, and we recognize 
 how true and how appealing are the lines of the 
 poet : 
 
 " We live in deeds, not years, in thoughts, not breaths, 
 
 > In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
 
 We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives 
 Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best." 
 
II 
 
 The Reign of Law or of God, Which ? 
 
 IN the preceding chapter we reached the conclu- 
 sion that the Christian religion is a satisfactory 
 explanation of life, that opens up into an ever- 
 expanding future. So widely has this view been 
 accepted that we have what is known as Christendom 
 comprising so large a portion of the race. It has 
 been reserved for our day to throw doubt on the 
 prevailing beHef. Christianity itself has come to be 
 questioned. With the larger knowledge of our age, 
 we are impressed with the reign of law. We query 
 if this is not inconsistent with the sway of a personal 
 God. We do not quote with confidence the old 
 Hebrew sentiment: 
 
 ** Who is like unto the Lord our God, 
 That hath his seat on high, 
 That humbleth himself to behold 
 The things that are in heaven and in the earth ? " 
 
 We are inclined to think that there is no great Being, 
 who is concerned about what takes place either here 
 below or in the sky above. At first certainly, modern 
 scepticism seems to be justified by the revelations of 
 science. But perhaps a deeper view will make for 
 the old faith, that the Omnipotent does not relax His 
 
 22 
 
Reign of Law or of God 23 
 
 control anywhere, and that He governs everywhere, 
 though very hkely by secondary processes. We 
 shall attempt to see how law is only the method of 
 His working. 
 
 I. First, God fills the earth. He is, to use a phil- 
 osophic word, immanent everywhere, and there is 
 nothing in the evolutionary theory ruling Him out 
 of the universe. The creation is progressive, it is a 
 development, the accomplishing of the divine pur- 
 pose by long and intricate and subtle processes, 
 rather than by quick and spectacular acts. Let us 
 suppose that the nebular hypothesis is correct. In 
 some mysterious beginning a fiery mist was revolv- 
 ing, though even then its laws of motion must have 
 come from a personal Intelligence. Under the ac- 
 tion of centripetal and centrifugal forces the original 
 mass became separate globes which cooled and solid- 
 ified, and one of these would be our terrestrial ball, 
 which in the course of geologic ages became habit- 
 able. 
 
 How marvellous that the green earth could have 
 come from the primordial material first noted, and 
 what wisdom and power must have been in the 
 Being who could cause such a development of a 
 beautiful cosmos from the previous chaos ! We 
 may smile at Herbert Spencer's definition of evolu- 
 tion, " a change from an indefinite, incoherent homo- 
 geneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity through 
 continuous differentiations and integrations," and yet 
 
24 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 the evolutionary in nature is widely accepted, and 
 cannot indeed be disputed along many lines. If 
 man himself as to his physical structure once existed 
 in a lower animal organism, our faith need not be 
 disturbed, since it is only a question of a quicker or 
 slower formation of man, whose " ascent " indeed 
 Drummond traced with an increasing reverence as he 
 unfolded the story in his book on this theme. While 
 other biologists have seen mainly if not exclusively 
 the law of the struggle for life, resulting in the sur- 
 vival of the fittest, that is, of the strongest, he has 
 exalted that coordinate working principle of the 
 natural world, namely, the struggle for the hfe of 
 others ; so that animals, for instance, instinctively 
 protect their young even at the risk of their own 
 life. 
 
 Had it not been for this altruistic feeling in the 
 very brutes, whole species must have become ex- 
 tinct, and death in time would have reigned supreme, 
 for without tender care life in its infancy must perish. 
 Not so strangely, therefore, does this distinguished 
 writer claim that evolution is " a love story," and he 
 could still maintain that " the greatest thing in the 
 world," material as well as religious, " is love." 
 
 Not without suggestiveness is his illustration of 
 how there may have been the dawn of mind, when 
 the developing body reached a certain degree of 
 fineness. He said that some portions of the Arctic 
 regions know nothing of liquids. The thermometer 
 
Reign of Law or of God 25 
 
 may range from 31 degrees below zero to 31 above, 
 and there are only solids in matter : there is ice and 
 there are glaciers. When the mercury marks 31 
 above, let there be a rise of only two degrees more, 
 and behold the transformation. " The glaciers under 
 the new conditions," to quote from my informant, 
 *' retreat into the mountains, the vesture of ice drops 
 into the sea, a garment of greenness clothes the land. 
 So," he continues, " in the animal world, a very small 
 rise beyond the animal maximum may open the door 
 for a revolution." That is, at a certain stage of the 
 evolutionary there may be an inflow of human in- 
 telligence, the mortal becoming immortal. There 
 is a place for God even in such a scheme, and per- 
 haps a God more majestic and more glorious than 
 enters into the ordinary conception of his way of 
 working. Victor Hugo once said, " I am the tad- 
 pole of an archangel," and substantially such a glori- 
 fication is yet to be ours when the natural unfolds 
 into the spiritual, the earthly into the heavenly. If 
 we feel that the divine inworking is needed to carry 
 us up to this higher stage of development, we need 
 not be so very incredulous about our present eleva- 
 tion having been primarily from much lower condi- 
 tions under the moulding hand of the mighty God. 
 
 Whatever may be the truth as to race develop- 
 ment, every individual is an evolution. Each child 
 that is born starts in a single cell that is microscopic 
 in size, and the embryonic changes, step by step, 
 
26 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 have been noted by the biologist, and the marvellous 
 transformations are such as to necessitate the bring- 
 ing in of the divine agency. The wondrous evolu- 
 tion of what the Psalmist calls our *♦ substance " into 
 human shape and semblance, so far from ruling God 
 out, makes Him essential to explain the mysterious 
 development, and the devout exclamation of the in- 
 spired writer is ours also : 
 
 *' My frame was not hidden from thee, 
 When I was made in secret, 
 And curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the 
 
 earth. 
 Thine eyes did see mine unperfect substance. 
 And in thy book were all my members written, 
 Which day by day were fashioned. 
 When as yet there was none of them." 
 
 As there was an individual development, so a race 
 evolution may be a fact. There is considerable evi- 
 dence for this in the revelations of the very rocks. 
 Primeval man is shown to have had implements of 
 stone, and there succeeded a bronze age, and later 
 still the use of iron was learned. Still, Professor 
 Sayce of Oxford says : " The monumental history of 
 Egypt gives no countenance to the fashionable 
 theories of to-day which derive civilized man, by a 
 slow process of evolution, out of a brute-like an- 
 cestor. On the contrary, its testimony points in an 
 opposite direction : the history of Egypt, so far as 
 excavation has made it known to us, is a history, 
 
Reign of Law or of God 27 
 
 not of evolution and progress, but of retrogression 
 and decay." But if the opposite conclusion be 
 finally established to the satisfaction of all, we need 
 not be disturbed in our faith, since God is needed in 
 a long and laborious unfolding of humanity. The 
 more minute and involved and prolonged the proc- 
 ess, the more acute the intelligence that directs the 
 movements of a steady progress. 
 
 It is the Omnipotent and Omniscient who makes 
 the single drop of water to teem with Hfe, and the 
 solitary atom to be a thing of mighty potentialities. 
 None but He could create the Httle ants, which with 
 waving antennae meet and hold evident communica- 
 tions with one another. He teaches the butterfly, as 
 my scientific authority says, to place ** the eggs of 
 its young on the very leaf which the coming cater- 
 pillar likes the most, and on the under side of the 
 leaf where they will be least exposed." 
 
 In plant life there is a similar indication of divine 
 design. When Herodotus more than two millenniums 
 ago said that at a certain season of the year the priests 
 went to the desert for branches of wild palm, and 
 bringing them home waved them over the garden 
 palms as a prerequisite to a crop of dates, they igno- 
 rantly were availing themselves of a natural law that 
 is essential to fruitfulness, and how wondrously God 
 does here work. The fertilizing pollen may grow on 
 one plant, and the stigma to receive it on another, 
 but God has a way of getting them together without 
 
28 The Modem Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 the help of any human priesthood. He has the wind 
 to connect the two, or the bee flying hither and 
 thither for a different purpose brings about the con- 
 nection. The flower opens its heart of sweetness to 
 the insect, and the latter bears away to another flower 
 that which is needful to its blooming. Insects that 
 are fond of darkness are provided with flowers which 
 are white, or which reveal their location by exquisite 
 perfumes. 
 
 To such small details does God descend. He gives 
 delicate hues that are beyond the skill of human 
 touch. As Shakespeare says : 
 
 *' To paint the lily, 
 To throw a perfume on the violet, 
 To smooth the ice, or add another hue 
 Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light 
 To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, 
 Is wasteful and ridiculous excess." 
 
 No one can rival God in those minute perfections 
 revealed everywhere in nature. He is Lord of heaven 
 and earth, and the deeper the insight we get into 
 the material world, the more microscopic our vision, 
 the more profound is our conviction of a divine hand 
 that weighs the " small dust of the balance," that 
 arrays the lily, and that models our very substance. 
 2. Turning now in the second place from the 
 earth to the heaven, the first effect of a larger knowl- 
 edge here might be to cause a personal God to recede, 
 but on maturer thought He is seen to be all the more 
 
Reign of Law or of God 29 
 
 glorious because of the revelations which the telescope 
 has to make. The wavering faith, which Drummond 
 sought to reestablish by his book on evolution, Chal- 
 mers endeavoured to confirm, when astronomy be- 
 came a matter of common information, by preaching 
 his famous " Astronomical Discourses," which have 
 been preserved in a very readable volume. There 
 was the same ferment of belief then as at present, the 
 cosmic problem being no less serious than the bio- 
 logical. There was a tendency to unbelief on the 
 ground that the Governor of so vast a universe could 
 not be concerned for this paltry globe of ours, and 
 for its comparatively insignificant inhabitants. If the 
 splendid argument of the celebrated Scotchman were 
 reproduced, we would be ready to entertain his view 
 of God, of whom he said, " Magnitude does not over- 
 power Him, minuteness cannot escape Him." He is 
 concerned with " the things that are in heaven and 
 in the earth." Though seated ** on high," He conde- 
 scends to what is of low estate. 
 
 And why should this be regarded as incredible? 
 When Newton discovered the law of gravitation, God 
 at first might seem to have been eliminated, but we 
 have come to see in gravity a grander method of the 
 divine working, and the great discoverer himself was 
 a devout believer, as many an evolutionist is to-day. 
 To be sure, there may be something bewildering in 
 the fact that the telescope has brought within the 
 range of vision more than two hundred million suns 
 
30 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 alone, while each of these is doubtless the center of a 
 system Hke our own solar group, with its planets and 
 moons and a central orb. We feel the power of 
 natural laws, their clock-like regularity and mechan- 
 ical force, when we can predict to a minute eclipses 
 and transits, and yet there ever recurs the question, 
 Who made the great clock, who constructed the vast 
 machine ? In this way we are ultimately led back to 
 an intelligent Creator. 
 
 But granting His existence, it does seem amazing 
 that He should have condescended to save a little 
 world like ours, when it could be dropped out of the 
 immense universe and be no more missed than a 
 solitary leaf that falls in the foliage of a forest stretch- 
 ing away for miles. Perhaps, however, the miracle 
 of grace may not be so stupendous or rather so soli- 
 tary as it appears to be. Other planets may have 
 been redeemed as well as ours, two at least. Mars and 
 Venus, of those in our small system being habitable 
 on the highest astronomical authority, while in the 
 endless stretches of boundless space may be numer- 
 ous worlds that share in a redemption resembling 
 that of earth. 
 
 Besides, to use for substance an illustration of 
 Chalmers, the whole period of human history in an 
 eternity without beginning or end is but a point of 
 time, and so after all God's interest in humanity may 
 be only like that of an earthly monarch, who has 
 reigned as long as Victoria, for instance, did, — like 
 
Reign of Law or of God 31 
 
 such a one turning aside for a minute to show a kind- 
 ness to a suffering waif in the street. The royal at- 
 tention is not bestowed beyond measure on the single 
 child, not to the neglect of the interests of the king- 
 dom at large. In this view of the matter, dispropor- 
 tionate attention may not have been paid to our 
 comparatively insignificant globe. Moreover, we are 
 to bear in mind that the Infinite is not limited as we 
 finite creatures are in the range of attentions and 
 affections which can be bestowed. We cannot take 
 in too many things and persons without neglect 
 somewhere, but the •' high and lofty one that inhab- 
 iteth eternity " is not subject to any such limitations. 
 And yet we are not to belittle the great act of re- 
 demption. There is no lack of, there is rather mani- 
 festation of, divinity in condescension. When a man 
 of fame notices a helpless child, he rises in our esti- 
 mation. The great orator Fronto, in the time of 
 Marcus Aurehus, never commended himself more to 
 posterity than when he asked his Majesty the Em- 
 peror to be remembered to his little grandchildren, 
 and, says the historian, " to kiss for him their fat little 
 feet and dainty hands." That showed that he had 
 heart, and we commend him for his afifectionate in- 
 terest in those who might be supposed to be beneath 
 the attention of a person of imperial eloquence. The 
 divineness of the God of heaven is indicated in no 
 way so much as by His stooping to the sons of earth 
 and bestowing upon the prodigals even His redemp- 
 
32 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 live kiss. Horace Bushneil, playing with his chiU 
 dren, is exalted in our estimation. Wilberforce is 
 all the greater because he consecrated his magnificent 
 endowments, intellectual and spiritual, to the securing 
 of the liberty of poor slaves. Lincoln towers up all 
 the more sublimely as President, because his heart 
 was touched by some mother pleading for the life of 
 her soldier boy, who in a moment of weakness and 
 homesickness may have deserted from the army. 
 
 Condescension, so far from disproving, establishes 
 divinity. When a single member of a large family 
 becomes seriously sick, to borrow another illustra- 
 tion, all attention and tenderness are turned towards 
 him, and the whole neighbourhood becomes con- 
 cerned for his case. If anything glorifies human 
 nature, it is such a fact as that, and so of the divine 
 nature. When, therefore, one little world became 
 sick unto death with sin, there is nothing incredible 
 in the Scriptural representation of all heaven becom- 
 ing concerned, angels, and most of all God. 
 
 The analogy of a nation's interest in its humblest 
 citizen conveys the same lesson. If he is unlawfully 
 arrested by some foreign power, the government of 
 the United States would secure him his rights, if an 
 army had to be enlisted, and the whole power of the 
 country would be pledged to make his American 
 citizenship good. A nation which will thus interfere 
 in behalf of the most obscure is for that very reason 
 considered great, and its flag is respected and cheered 
 
Reign of Law or of God 33 
 
 on every sea round this terrestrial ball. The gov- 
 ernment of high heaven has commended itself to our 
 admiration and enthusiastic loyalty by a similar in- 
 terference in behalf of a humble world over which 
 Satan presumed to claim dominion. 
 
 If the smallest island of the United States were 
 seized by a hostile power, the tocsin of war would be 
 sounded, the Congress would vote ample supplies for 
 the necessary naval force to maintain national 
 honour, patriotism would everywhere be stirred, and 
 all the resources of the country would be enlisted 
 for the sake of expelling the invader of the most in- 
 significant part of our domain. When this globe of 
 ours, floating on the ocean of immensity, was wrong- 
 fully claimed by his Satanic majesty, the rousing of 
 high heaven and the moving of all the armies thereof 
 and the pledging by God of all His resources even to 
 the giving of His Son for the recovery of the merest 
 islet in His vast kingdom of the universe, — all this is 
 godlike, and is what we should expect and not doubt. 
 
 The astronomical as well as the biological argu- 
 ment adds to the glory of God. Whether with the 
 microscope we study the earthy, or with the tele- 
 scope survey the heavenly, God on reflection is seen 
 to be more and more glorious in proportion to our 
 enlarging knowledge, and we rejoice to feel that 
 though the celestial sovereign is seated on high, He 
 notices the very sparrows that fall to the ground, He 
 numbers the hairs of our heads, He takes up His 
 
34 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 abode in humble and contrite hearts, and makes all 
 things work together in their highest interest. 
 
 *' I sing the almighty power of God, 
 That made the mountains rise, 
 That spread the flowing seas abroad, 
 And built the lofty skies. 
 
 " I sing the goodness of the Lord, 
 That filled the earth with food : 
 He formed the creatures with His word, 
 And then pronounced them good." 
 
Ill 
 
 The Power and Persistence of Memory 
 
 THERE is mystery not only in the world 
 wherein we are placed, and in our relation 
 thereto, but also in our own strange per- 
 sonality. Modern philosophy has much to say of 
 the subliminal. Our psychology never wearies of 
 considering the subconscious self. It is the old won- 
 der of the power and persistence of memory, to 
 which the next few pages are to be devoted. We 
 have here a most interesting faculty of the mind. 
 We see it exhibited in a memorable experience of 
 Nebuchadnezzar, when Daniel gives these various 
 items regarding the king : " The thing is gone from 
 me. . . . But there is a God in heaven that re- 
 vealeth secrets. . . . That thou mayest know 
 the thoughts of thy heart." The monarch had fallen 
 asleep, thinking of his widely extended kingdom, 
 wondering about its probable future, "what should 
 come to pass hereafter." He dreamed about it, and 
 it was a troubled dream, which he could not recall 
 on awaking. 
 
 Most of us have had a similar experience. We 
 have just an inkling of something which occupied 
 
 35 
 
36 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 our minds during our slumbers, but as to what 
 exactly it was we are left in aggravating ignorance. 
 By mental efforts we try to grasp it, but it eludes us, 
 and keeps vanishing from our almost successful en- 
 deavours. We sometimes have a like difficulty in 
 recalling a thought of our waking hours. A name, 
 which we know just as well as our own, escapes us, 
 and we attempt again and again to seize it, but with- 
 out avail. We have not really forgotten it, for if a 
 friend repeats several names, and finally hits upon the 
 fugitive, we recognize it at once. That is it, we say, 
 how singular that we could not speak it for the mo- 
 ment. 
 
 So that we can understand the irritability of the 
 oriental king, who insisted that the professed inter- 
 preters of dreams should reveal the escaped dream 
 itself, as they should have been able to do, if they 
 actually possessed supernatural knowledge. It was 
 a very practical test, such as should be applied now 
 to so-called spiritual manifestations. But modern 
 mediums are as careful to maintain their reputation 
 as the ancient magicians were. If they can only 
 have a screen up, and an aperture cut into it, they 
 are just in their element, and will caper around in 
 great shape. They will make faces at you with their 
 half-hidden smirks, they will shake the hand at you, 
 and they will give you a message straight from the 
 other world. But make a movement to go behind 
 the curtain, and they are mightily indignant, and 
 
The Power and Persistence of Memory 37 
 
 they gather up their celestial robes, and depart in 
 high dudgeon. They do not like too close inspec- 
 tion. It is because of the fraudulent nature of their 
 claims that they always want to select their own 
 ground, to impose their conditions. 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar did not propose to have any such 
 foolishness. He meant business, and the astrologers 
 were required to tell the dream itself, and not simply 
 to give some general, enigmatic, and perfectly safe 
 interpretation thereof. They declared that the royal 
 demand was unreasonable and preposterous. But 
 they would have had to pay the penalty of their false 
 pretensions, had not Daniel come to the rescue. He 
 and his rehgious companions prayed that the dream 
 might be miraculously imparted to him, and it was. 
 The thing had gone from the king, but God revealed 
 the secret, and Nebuchadnezzar once more knew the 
 thoughts of his heart. 
 
 Every one now in his more sober moments is apt 
 to query what is to come to pass hereafter, what after 
 the present is to be his destiny. Do the deeds of this 
 life have any relation to eternity? A momentous 
 inquiry is here started. Will all the past come up in 
 judgment ? Much of it has nearly if not quite faded 
 from the mental vision, but glimpses of it recur now' 
 and then to the mind, as if to suggest that all lies 
 hidden somewhere, and that there is needed only the 
 proper exciting cause to bring it all clearly to light. 
 Thackeray in his " Henry Esmond " says, " We forget 
 
38 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 nothing. The memory sleeps, but wakens again. I 
 often think how it shall be when, after the last sleep 
 of death, the reveille shall arouse us forever, and the 
 past in one flash of self-consciousness rush back, Hke 
 the soul revivified." Thus even the romancer felt the 
 force of this truth which is stranger than fiction, that 
 nothing is forgotten. 
 
 To be sure, Prof. WilHam James, who for so many 
 years gave distinction to the chair of philosophy in 
 Harvard, demurred to the sweeping claim, caUing it 
 an " extravagant opinion that nothing we experience 
 can be absolutely forgotten." Even he, however, 
 made this significant admission : " The sphere of pos- 
 sible recollection may be wider than we think, and 
 in certain matters oblivion is no proof against possible 
 recall under other conditions." Certainly, therefore, 
 very much more may be recalled than will be for our 
 comfort, and every thing may be subject to recall at 
 the quickening of the Omniscient. The scientist 
 himself. Prof. Morton Prince of Boston, in a lecture 
 to the Technology Biological Society maintained that 
 every thought is retained by the mind, and that 
 thoughts can be reproduced in a hypnotic state, 
 showing that they are still existent though ordinarily 
 lying dormant. " All emotions," he declared, " gen- 
 erate a galvanic current, which can be registered by 
 a galvanometer." It is like an Edison record taking 
 and holding with unerring fidelity whatever is uttered 
 for its retention. You cannot eliminate part of what 
 
The Power and Persistence of Memory 39 
 
 has been said, all goes down. As Pilate would say, 
 What is written is written. 
 
 I. Our first proposition, then, in considering the 
 power of memory is, that nothing seemingly is ab- 
 solutely forgotten. It may appear to be, but it really 
 is not. We may say with the king, " The thing is 
 gone from me," but after all we are vaguely conscious 
 of its existence somewhere, and we feel that it may 
 yet be recovered. We realize this very sensibly of 
 some things, and a natural inference is that all 
 thoughts are imperishable. 
 
 A marvellous faculty is memory, as is evidenced by 
 the reading of metaphysicians, by passing in review 
 established psychological facts. We stand in awe 
 before such prodigies as the learned ScaHger of the 
 sixteenth century, who memorized Homer in three 
 weeks, and all the Greek poets in three months. We 
 do not hesitate to say " the rare Ben Jonson " in- 
 deed, when he informs us that he could repeat all that 
 he had ever written, and entire volumes of what he had 
 read. We are astounded by what is recorded in our 
 mental philosophies of the young Corsican, who after 
 hearing words in Greek and Latin to an almost inter- 
 minable extent, could reproduce them from beginning 
 to end without the slightest error, and also backwards 
 with equal readiness, as well as alternately, and in 
 every other order, who did this on actual trial before 
 a gathered company, and who claimed that he could 
 thus recite to the number of thirty-six thousand words. 
 
40 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 There is the familiar example of Seneca in the first 
 century, who, bemoaning the loss of memory in his 
 declining years, fondly and proudly recalled his youth, 
 when, he said, he could repeat two thousand names 
 in the order in which he had heard them pronounced. 
 TertuUian, the early Church Father, could recite the 
 Old Testament Scriptures, it is asserted, from Genesis 
 to Malachi. Cicero is our authority for the state- 
 ment that Themistocles could address by their names 
 the twenty thousand free inhabitants of Athens. 
 Pliny avers that Cyrus knew the names of all the 
 soldiers in his army. Though at present we depend 
 so much upon the arts of printing and stenography, 
 upon our books of reference and other helps, yet once 
 in a while there is a case of a phenomenally retentive 
 memory as to persons and events and dates and fig- 
 ures. A recent example is Blind Tom, who could 
 play on the spot the most difficult music he had 
 heard. Lord Bacon could rehearse the whole of 
 Tacitus, and Gladstone had only to be given the first 
 line of a page of Homer, and the following lines 
 would be recalled with the greatest exactness. 
 Macaulay, the historian, could reproduce the whole 
 of Milton's "Paradise Lost," and, he himself de- 
 clared, all of Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress." 
 
 But the wonder of wonders is, that probably all 
 retain every impression ever made upon the mind. 
 The thing goes from us, we say, but it is not really 
 forgotten, it may be and often is recovered from the 
 
The Power and Persistence of Memory 41 
 
 subconscious self after the lapse of years. We have 
 merely for the time being lost the consciousness of 
 what after all remains. We hold in mind, only hid- 
 denly, more than the greatest prodigy, who has been 
 instanced, was ever able to reproduce. We only lack 
 his power of immediate reproduction. 
 
 Memory was well termed by Cicero a storehouse. 
 It has many chambers, in which we frequently have 
 to rummage around for a considerable time before 
 we find what we want, and then perhaps we miss it 
 because of its lying in some overlooked corner. A 
 storehouse is a thesaurus, to use the Latin word, 
 which has been Anglicized, and which Virgil em- 
 ployed once to indicate the cells of a honeycomb. 
 There are a great many brain cells, in which sweet 
 thoughts hke honey are stored away, and in which the 
 foul like worms lie concealed. They are all there, 
 good and bad, and God has but to open the door of 
 this cranial hive to have displayed as through trans- 
 parent glass all that has been secret and out of sight. 
 
 The inner chambers, to vary the figure, are as 
 multitudinous as those of any labyrinth, as those 
 even of that most famous one which Herodotus 
 visited in Egypt, with its three thousand compart- 
 ments. The slayer of the Cretan Minotaur did not 
 dare enter the labyrinthian retreat of that fabled 
 monster, till the princess of the island, who had fallen 
 in love with the hero, had furnished him with a clue 
 of thread, by which he might make his way out after 
 
42 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 destroying the half-human beast. God could give us 
 a clue by which we would be able to thread the intri- 
 cate mazes of memory, and such a search would 
 doubtless reveal more than one monstrous sin lurk- 
 ing in some hidden recess. 
 
 Memory is a vast storehouse, is a complicated 
 honeycomb, is a many chambered labyrinth, retain- 
 ing everything that has been done or said or felt, 
 holding in reserve for some future day of reckoning 
 every deed and word and thought. It is, as Plato 
 illustrates, a tablet upon which successive impressions 
 are made, and this figure enables us to understand 
 the indelibility of what is once committed to the 
 memory. There are ancient manuscripts, palimp- 
 sests, which have been written over again and again. 
 The first text has been erased, and a later one has 
 been added. Sometimes there has been a third and 
 a fourth writing, one above the other. Have the 
 first characters been entirely obliterated? No, but 
 to increase the difficulty of deciphering them, the 
 vellum leaves frequently have been bound together in 
 a different order each time, and often upside down. 
 But by painstaking care, and by chemical applica- 
 tions, and by various expedients known to adepts, 
 repeatedly has the original writing, after a supposed 
 erasure, been restored. More than one classic of 
 antiquity has thus been rescued from oblivion, and 
 some of our oldest and most valuable Biblical manu- 
 scripts have in this way been discovered. Like oft- 
 
The Power and Persistence of Memory 43 
 
 used parchment is memory, upon which impression 
 after impression has been made, and all in apparent 
 confusion, but nothing is lost. There is needed only 
 the reveaHng light of God, and the subtle chemistry 
 of heaven, to bring everything out clear once more. 
 As under some Scriptural might be a pagan writing, 
 so beneath some good deed may be an evil one, lying 
 there a secret sin, not entirely lost to memory by any 
 means. It only awaits the reading of the great De- 
 cipherer of the heart's hieroglyphics, which are never 
 wholly obliterated to His all-searching eye. 
 
 We shall remember more than earth's greatest 
 prodigy ever did, when we appear *• before the judg- 
 ment seat of Christ." We can see from the illustra- 
 tions which have been employed how probably 
 nothing will be actually forgotten. " Son, re- 
 member," is what was said of the man in the gospel 
 story, and straightway he recalled all the past, and 
 he was filled with inexpressible sorrow thereby, be- 
 cause of the memory of neglected opportunities. 
 The recollections of his earthly life followed him 
 into eternity. 
 
 2. Directing our attention next to the more posi- 
 tive side of our subject. Is there likely to arise any 
 crisis which will so stimulate the conscience, that 
 faded memories will acquire their former vividness 
 and distinctness ? Nothing may be really forgotten, 
 but if the undesirable thing is to be forever stored 
 away out of sight in some hidden cell, or in some 
 
44 The Modem Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 labyrinthian chamber, to give us no farther uneasi- 
 ness and anxiety ; if it is not to be discernible on 
 the tablet because of subsequent and more agreeable 
 impressions ; if it is to be practically forgotten, great 
 relief would be afforded the mind and soul. Is there 
 any reason for supposing that there will be a repro- 
 duction of what has been long dormant ? Can it be 
 possible that what we were hardly conscious of at 
 the time will be capable of being recalled ? 
 
 All who have pursued philosophical studies are 
 acquainted with that incident, which Coleridge re- 
 lates. A German servant girl, who could neither 
 read nor write, in a fever astonished everybody by 
 talking very correct Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and 
 she was beheved by many to be demoniacally pos- 
 sessed. An investigation was instituted, and it was 
 ascertained that years before she had worked in the 
 family of a very scholarly clergyman, who was ac- 
 customed to walk to and fro and to read in her 
 hearing the Greek and Latin Fathers, as well as the 
 Hebrew Scriptures and certain Rabbinical volumes. 
 So many of the sentences of the young woman's 
 ravings in her delirium of sickness were found upon 
 examination to correspond exactly to passages in the 
 books which she had heard read years before, there 
 was no longer a question but that under a nervous 
 stimulus and exaltation she repeated verbatim senti- 
 ments in languages which she did not at all under- 
 stand. 
 
The Power and Persistence of Memory 45 
 
 If what memory thus ignorantly, and as it were 
 mechanically, like a Victor record holds, can be 
 called forth from hidden recesses under an excita- 
 tion of the nervous system, how much more intelli- 
 gent acts at the bidding of God, however far they 
 may have receded in memory's labyrinth. Those 
 who have been resuscitated from a drowning condi- 
 tion testify to their whole life, down to the minutest 
 details, passing almost instantly in review before the 
 mental vision. As Hamlet says of apparitions, 
 " There are more things in heaven and earth than 
 are dreamt of in our philosophy." Not only is no 
 impression apparently ever lost, but everything 
 seems likely to be positively recovered, even to un- 
 conscious acts. We do not know what may be 
 brought against us at the bar of God. " God shall 
 judge the secrets of men," says Paul to the Romans, 
 and to the Corinthians he writes that God " will 
 bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and 
 make manifest the counsels of the heart." 
 
 There is philosophy in the Biblical teaching that 
 for every idle word we shall have to give an account. 
 Every recess of the labyrinth will be exposed. Every 
 impression on the tablet will be made legible. Hence 
 our fear that there may be sins, of which we know not, 
 to rise up at last and call for an expiation. There is 
 " the dread of something after death," as says the 
 great dramatist, who adds, 
 
 " Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.'* 
 
46 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 Or, as it is expressed in Shakespeare's " King Richard 
 the Third": 
 
 *< My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, 
 And every tongue brings in a several tale, 
 And every tale condemns me for a villain." 
 
 To be sure, there are pleasant recollections which 
 will arise in that judgment, into which is to be 
 brought " every hidden thing, whether it be good 
 or whether it be evil." There is a constant stream 
 of the benevolent as well as of the malevolent. 
 Wordsworth says : 
 
 " And, when the stream 
 Which overflowed the soul was passed away, 
 A consciousness remained that it had left, 
 Deposited upon the silent shore 
 Of memory, images and precious thoughts 
 That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed.'* 
 
 There are, then, recollections both pleasant and 
 otherwise that apparently will be carried over from 
 this life to the next. If all the impressions ever 
 made upon us abide, personality to which they be- 
 long must survive. Our separate mental acts form 
 a continuous, and, we may logically infer, an endless 
 chain. We have in the memory an explanation of 
 the continuity of our being. In our intellectual proc- 
 esses, link is added to link ad infinitum. This makes 
 a future so prolonged an appalling thing, especially 
 when we reflect that our vices far outnumber our 
 
The Power and Persistence of Meoiory 47 
 
 virtues, that our deficiencies vastly exceed our ex- 
 cellencies. 
 
 This consideration causes us to wish to be true 
 what indeed is held out in Holy Writ as a hope and 
 even an assurance, that there is a forgetting on the 
 part of the Infinite. Of Him it is said, " Their sins 
 and iniquities will I remember no more." As the 
 fabled ring of Gyges in classic story is said to have 
 rendered the wearer invisible, so the ring which the 
 Father places upon the hand of the penitent will for- 
 ever bHnd even the all-seeing eyes to pardoned sins, 
 and the prophecy of Micah will be fulfilled, " Thou 
 shalt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea." 
 Memory's tablet at last will have the hitherto most 
 indeUble impressions of guilt perfectly erased by 
 Him, who is represented by Paul as having " blotted 
 out the bond written in ordinances that was against 
 us, nailing it to the cross." We shall be troubled no 
 more by our sins, for they shall be " nailed," nailed 
 to the cross. In no other way can we escape the 
 eternal uprising of guilty memories that like specters 
 haunt the soul. Only by divine grace can we des- 
 troy those disturbing ghosts that lurk in labyrinthian 
 recesses. Holding to the scarlet thread of salvation 
 furnished us by the Prince of peace, we in the end 
 shall have the satisfaction of seeing our most secret 
 sins entirely overcome and completely eradicated 
 from our natures. Memory shall be only a gladsome 
 possession. 
 
IV 
 
 The Will as a Factor in Determining 
 Destiny 
 
 OUR next inquiry is as to how one can relate 
 and properly adjust himself to the situation 
 as outlined, to the strange environment 
 wherein, without any choice of his own, he is so 
 mysteriously born. What is it that determines his 
 destiny ? The Master gave a very specific answer 
 to that question when He said, " If any man willeth 
 to do his will, he shall know of the teaching." At 
 another time He said in further elucidation of this 
 thought, " Ye will not come to me, that ye may 
 have Hfe." 
 
 Man is a trinity. He is intellect, feeling and will. 
 He acquires knowledge, he receives impressions 
 pleasurable or painful, and he acts, he puts forth 
 effort. Philosophy generally makes this threefold 
 division of the mind. Or if now there is often a 
 different nomenclature, we can at least say with 
 Prof. Josiah Royce of Harvard fame, " That the 
 traditional view has a real significance cannot be 
 questioned." Following, then, what even he admits 
 is " the usual division of mental life," there are the 
 cognitive faculties by which we learn about an ob- 
 
 48 
 
The Will in Determining Destiny 49 
 
 ject, there are the emotions which are produced 
 thereby, and there are the consequent decisions 
 which are made. In which of these does reUgious 
 character he ? 
 
 We sometimes have confused ideas here, we do 
 not have well-defined views. We have a good com- 
 prehension of the physical, of what we can see, or 
 hear, or taste, or smell, or feel. We know just how 
 many senses we have, and we understand what each 
 of the five is for. We do not always have as clear a 
 conception of the faculties of the soul. We do not 
 seem to comprehend that mental phenomena spring 
 from three separate and distinct functions of the 
 mind, the power to know, the power to feel, and the 
 power to act. Sir William Hamilton in his " Meta- 
 physics " used an illustration that is worth recalling. 
 One sees a beautiful work of art. He recognizes 
 what it is, the faculty of knowledge is exercised. He 
 experiences agreeable affections, the capacity of feel- 
 ing appears. He decides to possess the treasure, the 
 power of action comes into play. Now with regard 
 to the material, one is not at a loss how to proceed 
 with his senses. He looks, he listens, he uses his 
 olfactory organ, he tests with the palate, he touches, 
 applying to the object each of the five senses of the 
 body. With equal facility, and with as nice a dis- 
 crimination as to the peculiar use of each, should he 
 be able to apply the three faculties of the mind. He 
 should know the truth, he should be susceptible to it, 
 
50 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 and he should choose it, and the last is what deter- 
 mines if he is a Christian. Knowledge and feeling 
 are insufficient, unless they lead up to a choice. 
 
 I. First, as to knowledge. This includes all that 
 can be acquired by the intellect, and that is not un- 
 important. Instruction in religious things is neces- 
 sary. Here we find the reason for preaching, and 
 no other religion compares with Christianity in that 
 feature. There is something inspiring in the fact 
 that every Sunday clear round the globe discourses 
 are given on the noblest topics which can occupy 
 the attention of humanity. The sermons preached 
 on a single Lord's Day in the United States alone 
 would make a library of immense proportions. How 
 multitudinous would be the volumes, which should 
 contain all the pulpit literature of our land for a 
 whole year ! We can scarcely measure the sermonic 
 productions through all the years of the past, and for 
 all countries. We might almost say of sermons 
 what John said of the sayings of Christ, " If they 
 should be written every one, I suppose that even the 
 world itself would not contain the books." 
 
 Besides, there has grown up in the last century 
 another agency for the impartation of knowledge, 
 and that is the Sabbath-school. For every preacher 
 there are several teachers, whose text-book is the 
 Bible. Nor is it an occasional lesson which they 
 give out of God's Word, but the instruction is re- 
 newed from week to week and from year to year. 
 
The Will in Determining Destiny 51 
 
 Then there is to be added the knowledge gained of 
 divine things in the home. Every mother instils the 
 precepts of the Gospel in young minds. Children 
 are taught the facts of religion in the very nursery, 
 and they never forget vi^hat they learn from parental 
 lips. Verily the opportunities for knowing about 
 God are abundant. Literature, too, is full of sacred 
 lore. The very newspapers which have enterprise 
 report the teachings of the pulpit. The great Maga- 
 zines and Reviews contain elaborate articles in the 
 realm of theology. No one in Christendom need 
 perish from lack of knowledge. The difficulty is not 
 anywhere ignorance of the way of salvation. 
 
 People will say very frankly, We know that we 
 ought to do differently, that we ought to be Chris- 
 tians, that we ought to be more consistent as church- 
 members. And yet very likely, so far as taking a 
 positive stand is concerned, they are waiting for 
 clearer perceptions, not appreciating that knowledge 
 at the best must be limited in our finite state. Now 
 we know in part, says an apostle. There are and 
 must be things which we have not satisfactorily 
 settled. There may be questions about inspiration, 
 about evolution, about the antiquity of man, there 
 may be great moral and scientific problems, upon 
 which we are intellectually befogged, and therefore 
 if we are approached on the topic of personal piety, 
 if we are urged to commit ourselves religiously, we 
 hesitate and say that we do not know about it, for 
 
52 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 there are some things we do not quite understand. 
 We imagine or try to make ourselves believe that 
 the obstacle is a mental one, whereas the great 
 Teacher gives the true explanation of our attitude, 
 when He says, " Ye will not come to me." 
 
 Our knowledge is sufficient, but our willingness 
 is not. What we need to do is not to store the mind 
 more, but to make it up. It is not a matter of in- 
 tellectual comprehension so much as of moral de- 
 cision. Absolute knowledge is not necessary, but the 
 willing spirit is what is essential. With line upon 
 line, and precept upon precept, from the pulpit, and 
 in the Sunday-school, and within the home, and 
 through the public print, we all have knowledge 
 enough. Indeed we may have so far come into in- 
 tellectual accord with the Gospel, our minds may 
 have so far accepted the truths of Christianity, that 
 we are resting in our mental beliefs. We have not 
 made any choice in religion. The teachings of 
 Scripture meet with our approval, but we have not 
 consciously accepted their author. Our will has not 
 acted, and until it does, all our knowledge will be in 
 vain. 
 
 2. In the second place, religious character does 
 not lie in sensibility, any more than in knowledge. 
 There may be the capacity to feel, and to feel nobly, 
 while yet there is no genuine religion. People 
 may have high aspirations, they may be stirred by 
 fine sentiments. They may be deeply moved by ex- 
 
The Will in Determining Destiny 53 
 
 alted views of God. They may be able to portray 
 the divine attributes with wondrous effect. And 
 yet they may have no religious principles. Ir- 
 religious poets have written very excellent hymns, 
 which the most devout love to sing. Horace Bush- 
 nell has very properly distinguished between a 
 religious nature and religious character in a person, 
 who, he says, " may even go so far as to enjoy the 
 greatness and beauty of God, and have the finest 
 things to say of Him, and have no trace of a genuinely 
 religious character, any more than if he were enjoy- 
 ing or praising a landscape. He will do the two 
 things, in fact, in exactly the same manner, and one 
 will have just as much to do for his piety as the 
 other," and we might add that neither will have any- 
 thing to do therewith. Chalmers, the eloquent 
 Scotch orator, made the same distinction. He 
 produced a profound impression by his far-famed 
 "Astronomical Discourses," which remain to us in 
 published form. He closed the series with a sermon 
 from that text in Ezekiel, " Thou art unto them 
 as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant 
 voice, and can play well on an instrument : for they 
 hear thy words, but they do them not." From this 
 passage of Scripture he deduced the theme of the 
 futility " of mere taste and sensibility in matters of 
 religion." He made bold to say, " that as much de- 
 light may emanate from the pulpit on an arrested 
 audience beneath it, as ever emanated from the 
 
54 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 boards of a theater, aye, and with as total a disjunc- 
 tion of mind, too, in the one case as in the other, 
 from the essence or habit of rehgion." After he had 
 made his vast audiences feel the beauties and sub- 
 limities and magnitudes and amplitudes of creation, 
 he yet insisted that " conscience may be in a state 
 of the most entire dormancy, and the man be regal- 
 ing himself with the magnificence of God, while he 
 neither loves God, nor believes God, nor obeys 
 God." 
 
 So that it is not enough to be in sympathy with 
 the truth at certain ecstatic moments. People will 
 go to church and enjoy the singing. They feel up- 
 Hfted by the prayers. They drink in with delight 
 the elevated sentiments which flow from the sacred 
 desk. They not only know about the kingdom, but 
 they take a certain satisfaction therein. They ex- 
 perience pleasure in listening to the unfolding of some 
 religious thought, to the development of themes that 
 relate to heaven and eternity. They go from the 
 house of God with nobler impulses, and with grander 
 views of life. They have a good understanding of 
 religion, and they have a great admiration therefor. 
 They really would like to be Christians. And yet 
 they may not be, though their intellects may endorse 
 every utterance of the pulpit, and though their feel- 
 ings may respond to every tender appeal. 
 
 Herod, the murderer of John, heard the Baptist 
 gladly. Pilate was so impressed with the godlike 
 
The Will in Determining Destiny 55 
 
 bearing of Christ, whom he yet dehvered to the exe- 
 cutioner, that he washed his hands as an expression 
 of his desire to be held innocent of the great crime, 
 with which nevertheless his name ever since has been 
 justly associated. The feelings of both Herod and 
 Pilate were moved, but their wills were not. Some- 
 thing more than religious susceptibility is needed. 
 There is often too much reliance placed upon the 
 emotions. Not that these are to be depreciated. 
 They are natural and proper. There should be glow 
 and rapture, when the things of God and the im- 
 mortal soul are contemplated. But an occasional or 
 a periodic excitation of our natures is not religion by 
 any means. 
 
 It is too much like the famous Sabbatic River, to 
 which PHny refers, and of which Josephus gives this 
 description : " When it runs, its current is strong and 
 has plenty of water, after which its springs fail for 
 six days together, and leave its channel dry, as any 
 one may see. After which days it runs on the 
 seventh as it did before, and as though it had under- 
 gone no change at all. It has also been observed to 
 keep this order perpetually and exactly, whence it is 
 that they call it the Sabbatic River," because it 
 flowed only every seventh day. Thus intermittent 
 is emotional rehgion, which flows full and impetuous 
 in a rush of feelings on the Sabbath, but which has 
 no steady current of principle and of purpose. It 
 fails during the trials and temptations of the week. 
 
56 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 It is wholly Sabbatic in its nature, or at least it does 
 not pour forth a constant stream of good influences. 
 
 A moving of the sentiments is all right so far as 
 it goes, but an act of volition, with an unswerving 
 purpose subsequently, is what is specially needed. It 
 is a mistaken notion to suppose that a religious life 
 springs from uncertain and unreliable sensibiHty. 
 And yet many are looking for some mysterious 
 moving of this pool for spiritual healing, whereas 
 they should be hke the impotent man at the pool of 
 Bethesda, who, after waiting for years to be put into 
 the water when it was troubled, at last heard the 
 voice of Jesus saying, "Rise, take up thy bed, and 
 walk," and who, it is recorded, •' took up his bed, and 
 walked." We want in Christianity no intermittent 
 spring, no pool of Bethesda folly, but exertive power 
 in response to the divine summons for action on the 
 part of the lethargic will. To any, who excuse them- 
 selves from becoming Christians on the ground of a 
 lack of feeling, on the ground of too great insensi- 
 bility to sin and God's love, on the ground of not 
 being profoundly enough moved, — to such the Mas- 
 ter says that the real reason why they hold back is, 
 '* Ye will not come to me." The lack is not knowl- 
 edge, they know enough to be saved. The lack is 
 not feeling, they may be relying too much on the 
 moving of the sensibility, which is not decisive of re- 
 hgious character at all. The lack is in the matter of 
 choice, they do not will to become Christians. 
 
The Will in Determining Destiny 57 
 
 3. There remains, therefore, only this one thing 
 to do. It is to decide. " Choose you this day," said 
 Joshua of old. Reverting to the philosophical an- 
 alysis of the mind, cognition and emotion are only 
 designed to lead up to volition. When we know 
 about religion, when we are informed as to its excel- 
 lencies, we feel that it is a good thing, we desire to 
 be Christians, but unless we determine to be, unless 
 our will acts, all is in vain so far as actual possession 
 is concerned. We might be aware of the value of a 
 diamond, or of a certain painting being by one of the 
 masters, we might long to own the treasure, but un- 
 less we decided to possess it, it would never be ours. 
 We may understand what is meant by the pearl of 
 great price, in PauHne language we may earnestly 
 covet this best of all gifts, but unless, as the parable 
 says, we go and get it, unless our knowledge and 
 feeling take shape in action, the gospel pearl will not 
 be gained. 
 
 The whole responsibility is lodged in the imperial 
 human will, which even Omnipotence cannot con- 
 sistently coerce. What dignity is thus conferred 
 upon man ! His knowledge is superb, his sensibihty 
 is often exquisite, but his will is magisterial. It en- 
 ables him to withstand God Himself. In intellectual 
 capacity he cannot compare with Him who knows 
 all things. In fine feeling he cannot equal the in- 
 finitely pure and holy One. In the wonderful power 
 of choice he stands on the same level as his Maker, 
 
58 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 to whom he can say, " I will," and " I will not." By 
 this marvellous third faculty of the mind he can ac- 
 cept or reject salvation. There is where the deter- 
 mination of his eternity lies, in the will. If he wants 
 to become a Christian, he can, by simply making the 
 decision, without waiting for more knowledge or a 
 deeper feehng. To be sure an apostle says, " It is 
 God which worketh in you both to will and to work," 
 but after all every one is consciously a free moral 
 agent, and he realizes that in a sense he is the archi- 
 tect of his own fortune, that the determination of his 
 everlasting destiny remains largely in his own con- 
 trol. Emerson with prophetic insight said : 
 
 " So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 So near is God to man. 
 When Duty whispers low, Thou must, 
 The youth replies, I can." 
 
 God helps those only who help themselves. As He 
 imparted strength to the palsied arm so that it could 
 be stretched forth according to command, so He 
 strengthens the enfeebled will. 
 
 There is no occasion for confusion here. We do 
 not have to know or feel any more. It only remains 
 for us to act, to choose. That is the final step to 
 take in any department of life. In the matter of a 
 profession, one may consult his acquisitions and his 
 inclinations, but he becomes a merchant, or a lawyer, 
 or a physician, by a definite, deliberate choice. A 
 
The Will in Determining Destiny 59 
 
 woman may find out all she can about her suitor, 
 she may consider the affections, but she becomes 
 a wife only by a distinct, voluntary act. The really 
 determinative faculty every time is the regal will. 
 In the sphere of religion a person should get all the 
 knowledge he can of God, he should be as suscep- 
 tible as possible to spiritual impressions, intellect and 
 emotion are not to be disparaged, but the supremely 
 important thing is to choose, and the decisive choice 
 can be made at once. 
 
 Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru, once summoned 
 his hesitating followers to a decision. He gathered 
 them around him, with his sword drew a Hne in the 
 sand, and said that on the south side would be toil 
 and hunger, though with a rich, final reward, while 
 on the north side would be ease and safety, but with 
 no satisfactory compensation in the end. Then came 
 the ringing appeal, " Choose, each man, what best 
 becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the 
 south." Thereupon he himself stepped over to the 
 southern side of the line. A few others did the 
 same, but the rest returned northward. We all 
 know that glory came to those who made the right 
 choice, it came in the historic conquest of Peru. So 
 it is yet. Happy will be all those who, at some 
 sacrifice of the temporal, will resolutely step over 
 the line to win the eternal. Every one, like Julius 
 Caesar, should cross his Rubicon, and with such de- 
 cisive action he can say with him of the long ago in 
 
6o The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 terms of fine accomplishment, *' I came, I saw, I con- 
 quered," or, as it is so strikingly phrased in allitera- 
 tive Latin, " Veni, vidi, vici." This is the way to 
 move on to the eternal city, not to that on the 
 yellow Tiber, but to that on the river bright as 
 crystal. 
 
Cornelian Inquiries as to the Great 
 Essential 
 
 WE have historic reference to " the noblest 
 Roman of them all," but most Romans 
 in the best days of the Empire were na- 
 ture's noblemen. All the centurions mentioned in 
 the New Testament were of high character. On the 
 occasion of Paul's voyage Romeward, this was true 
 of that Julius who courteously permitted the apostle 
 though a prisoner certain liberties. During the stop- 
 ping of the ship at Sidon, he kindly allowed him to 
 ^o ashore, " gave him leave to go unto his friends 
 and refresh himself." When the well-known ship- 
 wreck followed at a later stage of the journey, the 
 soldiers wanted " to kill the prisoners, lest any of 
 them should swim out, and escape. But the cen- 
 turion, desiring to save Paul, stayed them from their 
 purpose." The centurion at Capernaum appears to 
 an equally good advantage. He was deeply con- 
 cerned for a slave of his, who, it is said, was " dear 
 unto him," and whose recovery was besought of the 
 Lord by the Jewish elders on the ground of his great 
 generosity, ** himself built us our synagogue." It 
 was the centurion at the cross who, much impressed, 
 
 6i 
 
62 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 said, •' Truly this was the Son of God." There was 
 a fourth centurion, in whom Peter became much in- 
 terested, and who is introduced to us by the book of 
 the Acts, when there was a divine voice " saying to 
 him, Cornelius." When Hke him the modern man 
 responds to the appeal to live for what is highest, he 
 yet may miss what should be the culminating ex- 
 perience. He may be satisfied with what is al- 
 together excellent, while forgetting what is most 
 vital. He may have various moral virtues, while 
 lacking a deep religious experience. 
 
 In making inquiries as to the great essential in 
 human life, we will direct attention to members of 
 the great Cornelian family, which has had distin- 
 guished historical representatives, who are constantly 
 being reproduced in their religious attitude. We 
 may call them all Cornelians, which is also the name 
 of a highly-prized gem, though the latter is more 
 generally spelled with an a instead of an o in the 
 first syllable, while yet both spellings are allowable. 
 As a precious stone the cornelian was one of the 
 twelve set in gold in the breastplate of the High 
 Priest in Old Testament times, being more usually 
 designated, however, as sardius. When the prophet 
 Ezekiel wished to portray the magnificence of the 
 prince of Tyre, he made the cornelian or sardius to 
 be one of the costly gems adorning his person. The 
 sixth foundation in the wall of the celestial city was 
 the same bright-red stone. When the inspired reve- 
 
Cornelian Inquiries 63 
 
 lator set forth the glory of Him who sits on the 
 throne in heaven, he hkened Him to the sardius to 
 " look upon." The cornelian's beauty of colour, 
 therefore, may fittingly be made to symbolize Christ- 
 hke character. 
 
 Now we are to consider various Cornelians, who 
 have adorned history, and who, all of them, might 
 have become gems for the Master's own ornamenta- 
 tion, when He comes to make up His jewels, to gather 
 His peculiar treasure. Gems in their natural state 
 may shine, and yet be capable of a higher polish, 
 thus attaining unto their fullest briUiancy. We 
 shall have this illustrated in our consideration of 
 various Cornelians under suggestion from the Cor- 
 nehus of the New Testament. At Csesarea were 
 quartered Roman soldiers, one of whose bands, re- 
 cruited from Italy, was commanded by a centurion, 
 to whom a personal, religious appeal was made, and 
 the result was that he became a Christian. 
 
 His conversion was the more striking because of 
 his prominent position. The Gospel at first gained 
 most of its adherents from the lower walks of life, but 
 Julian, the apostate emperor of the fourth century, 
 that intellectual and yet impotent opposer of the 
 Church, admitted that Cornelius was one of a few 
 persons of distinction who espoused Christianity. 
 He, therefore, may have belonged to the great 
 Cornelian family so renowned in Roman history. 
 Highly favoured as he wa.= in this respect, he was 
 
64 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 not satisfied. There was a voice speaking his name, 
 and not till he gave heed thereto did he find peace. 
 There was started in his heart an inquiry which led 
 to his listening to the story of the cross as told by 
 Peter, and to his baptism on profession of a new ex- 
 perience and faith. It would have seemed that he 
 if any one could have gotten along without any such 
 revolution of character. He was as exemplary as the 
 model young man of the New Testament. We are 
 to see how much there was to make him contented 
 with his lot, we are to make some exclusively Cor- 
 nelian inquiries. 
 
 I. He was first of all in the line of military pro- 
 motion and glory. He was an officer in the best 
 army that ever marched to victory. Nor was he put 
 in charge of mercenary troops, of soldiers enlisted 
 from foreign and barbaric countries. His company 
 was formed out of genuine Romans, out of the noble 
 stock of Italy, the very center of power in the mighty 
 empire. He was, we read, " centurion of the band 
 called the Italian band." Nero afterwards had an 
 Italian legion " of men," says Suetonius, '• all six feet 
 high." It was the material from which the emperors 
 chose their body-guards. Such was the desirable 
 command of CorneHus. There was before him, then, 
 an honourable career, and all the more so because 
 there coursed through his veins the blood of great 
 generals. 
 
 Let me mention only one of his military ancestry. 
 
Cornelian Inquiries 65 
 
 When the famous Hannibal, whom at the early age 
 of nine his father at a pagan altar made swear eternal 
 enmity to Rome, when as a man this genius of 
 northern Africa crossed over into Spain, scaled the 
 snowy Alps, and descended into the sunny plains 
 of Italy, when 45,000 Romans there fell m a single 
 battle before the conquering hero, when among the 
 killed were so many men of rank that three bushels 
 of signet rings are said to have been gathered from 
 the distinguished dead, when in this crisis with 
 Hannibal thundering at the gates of Rome, it was 
 seriously proposed by those in authority to abandon 
 Italy, there rushed into the counsel chamber with 
 drawn sword to protest against such cowardice a 
 young man of eighteen, and his name was Publius 
 Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major. 
 
 This Cornelian Scipio at the age of twenty-four 
 defeated Hannibal's brother in Spain, and then pro- 
 posed to measure swords with Hannibal himself, and 
 how did he proceed? " He thought," says Plutarch, 
 " the occupation of contesting Italy with Hannibal 
 a mere old man's employment, and he proposed no 
 less a task to himself than to make Carthage the seat 
 of war, fill Africa with arms and devastation, and so 
 obhge Hannibal, instead of invading the countries 
 of others, to draw back and defend his own." The 
 plan succeeded, and Hannibal was finally overcome 
 on his own soil. It was a member of the Cornelian 
 family who made this bold venture and gained this 
 
66 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 splendid victory, and who thus gave rise to an expres- 
 sion which is heard to this day more than two thousand 
 years after the event, namely, the expression, to carry 
 the war i7tto Afnca^ meaning thereby a sort of ven- 
 turesome but successful flank movement. Cornelius 
 Scipio Africanus was the name of the conqueror of 
 Hannibal, and Cornelius was the name of the cen- 
 turion of the Italian band, who heard a voice direct- 
 ing him to something better than military glory, of 
 which he would seem to have been assured in view 
 of his ancestry and his own present advancement. 
 But he was not at ease. 
 
 Nor are people now at rest, though getting on 
 well in secular Hfe. They may be doing a good 
 business, they may be in the way of professional 
 promotion, they may have everything to encourage 
 them in the prosecution of their worldly plans, but to 
 Cornelius there was as much if not more to make 
 him content, and yet he was not. There was a sug- 
 gestion that he had not yet gotten in the line of true 
 glory. Not till he became a soldier of the cross, 
 not till he was assured of a crown in heaven, not till 
 he had seen that he could become a king to reign to 
 all eternity, not till he had been baptized in this faith, 
 were the cravings of his nature met. To every one 
 now however successful in hfe comes a voice point- 
 ing from the earthly to the heavenly. As the Roman 
 officer was exhorted to become a Christian soldier, 
 so the merchant is urged to lay up treasures on high, 
 
Cornelian Inquiries 67 
 
 the doctor is advised to consult the great Physician, 
 the lawyer is referred to that " Advocate with the 
 Father " who alone can plead his case before " the 
 Judge of all the earth," every one is entreated to 
 place his affections on things above, on what alone 
 can satisfy the deepest wants. Cornelius became a 
 true Cornelian. The immortal soul needs to be 
 saved to shine as a gem of the first order. 
 
 2. Cornelius also was evidently happy in his 
 family, as well as fortunate in the way of personal 
 success. The sacred narrative mentions him in con- 
 nection " with all his house," and intimates that they 
 were animated by one purpose. When Peter came, 
 the whole household were together, waiting in unison. 
 It was no divided home, harmony and love prevailed. 
 Probably Cornelius was as domestic in his tastes as 
 that ancestress of his, the daughter of Cornelius Scipio 
 to whom allusion has been made, who bore the 
 family name, being known as Cornelia. " Her char- 
 acter," says the American Cyclopaedia, " was the 
 purest of any woman's mentioned in the historical 
 period of Rome." It was she who was so devoted 
 to her children, and who, upon being asked to show 
 her jewels by a caller profusely decked out in this 
 regard, sent for her two boys, and when they appeared 
 she said, " These are my jewels, and their virtues are 
 my ornaments." This scene art has preserved in the 
 picture not infrequently seen of a mother and her 
 children, while below are the suggestive words, Her 
 
68 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 Jewels. Thus long, for more than twenty centuries, 
 has Cornelia been remembered for her devotion to 
 her children, for her domestic excellencies. 
 
 The Cornehus under consideration, a descendant 
 presumably of hers, seems to have taken equal satis- 
 faction in his home. But while his felicity in this 
 respect was well-nigh complete, there was a voice 
 which woke an echo in his soul, which roused 
 slumbering and unmet wants. He was not content 
 till under his roof the One altogether lovely had 
 taken up an abode. Nor does the home now, ap- 
 proximate as it may perfection, meet all the wants 
 of the soul. A mother may rejoice in her children, 
 as Cornelia did, but when particularly they are called 
 to " cross the bar," there is a sorrow which cannot be 
 comforted without Him who is " the resurrection and 
 the life." A daughter may have ever so attractive a 
 home, she may be fondly loved there, but so long as 
 she does not respond to a heavenly voice within, she 
 is not entirely happy. Not till one joins the house- 
 hold of faith, not till he becomes a member of God's 
 family, does repose come to the heart. Not till 
 natural traits are supplemented by graces of Chris- 
 tian character, do any become the shining gems 
 which it is their privilege to become, do they display 
 the beautiful features and colours of the resplendent 
 cornelian. 
 
 3. Still farther, Cornelius was a man of public 
 spirit, of popular sympathies. He gave, it is said, 
 
Cornelian Inquiries 69 
 
 " much alms to the people," and we are informed 
 that he was " well reported of by all the nation of the 
 Jews." In this respect he was like some of his 
 ancestors, for instance, like the Gracchi, Cornelia's 
 two sons, to whom reference has already been made. 
 At the time that they lived, Italy was in a deplorable 
 condition. The country was owned by a few large 
 proprietors who had forced the smaller ones to sell, 
 and the vast estates were worked by hordes of slaves. 
 
 Originally there had been a law limiting the pos- 
 sessions of any single individual to about 330 of our 
 acres, but this law was evaded by the rich getting 
 land in other people's names, and after a while it was 
 openly defied as they recorded deeds with their own 
 signatures. This continued until, says Plutarch, 
 " there were comparatively few freemen in all Italy, 
 which swarmed with workhouses full of foreign-born 
 slaves." It was an abuse similar to that which exists 
 at present in Great Britain and which causes the 
 Irish agitation, and which in these days of growing 
 monopolies is the increasing danger of this country, 
 and which is everywhere developing the spirit of 
 socialism and anarchy. 
 
 The two Cornelian brothers set out to rectify this 
 wrong, and to relieve the consequent distress. Their 
 idea was to break up the great estates into small 
 farms, to revive the old agrarian law. Tiberius 
 Gracchus used this forceful illustration : " The savage 
 beasts in Italy have their particular dens, they have 
 
yo The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 their places of repose and refuge, but the men who 
 bear arms, and expose their lives for the safety of 
 their country, enjoy in the meantime nothing more 
 in it than the air and light, and, having no houses or 
 settlements of their own, are constrained to wander 
 from place to place with their wives and children." 
 This was all too true, and he farther called attention 
 to the absurdity of generals urging soldiers to fight 
 for their altars and their homes, when there was 
 neither altar nor home to defend, when the poor men 
 in the ranks, says an ancient classical writer, " had 
 not one foot of ground which they could call their 
 own." The Cornelian brothers wanted a reform, 
 wanted the country possessed not by a few great 
 proprietors but by a multitude of small farmers. 
 When King Attalus died and willed his treasures and 
 kingdom to Rome, they proposed that the money 
 which had been left ** should be distributed," says the 
 historian just quoted, " amongst such poor citizens 
 as were to be sharers of the pubHc lands, for the 
 better enabling them to proceed in stocking and 
 cultivating their ground." This beneficent revolu- 
 tion, however, was fought by the interested wealthy, 
 and both brothers met with violent ends. They were 
 martyrs in a worthy cause, they died for the people. 
 Their broad sympathy, their interest in the general 
 good, their humanitarianism, was inherited by that 
 descendant of theirs at Csesarea, who " gave much 
 alms to the people," and who endeared himself to a 
 
Cornelian Inquiries 71 
 
 whole " nation." Surely a person of such a philan- 
 thropic disposition, so public-spirited a man, who in- 
 terested himself in the welfare of others, who had a 
 national reputation for benevolence, must have been 
 content. But he was not, for his repose was dis- 
 turbed till under the instruction of an apostle he be- 
 came a Christian, receiving the baptism of the Spirit 
 and of water. Likewise one at present may be gen- 
 erous. He may be liberal in the support of the 
 church. He may be recognized as invaluable to the 
 community in which he lives. He may be alert to 
 all sociological problems which to-day are absorbing 
 attention, till some seem almost ready to substitute 
 sociology for the Gospel. He may be a great be- 
 hever in social settlements which improve the envi- 
 ronment, and in everything of that kind, which indi- 
 cates a noble nature that cares for the poor and 
 unfortunate. More than this, could he rise to a 
 position where his services would be appreciated by 
 a nation, as Cornelius did, there still would be one 
 thing needful, and he would not attain to perfect 
 peace, till led to become a disciple of the Lord. 
 Though he may be concerning himself about others, 
 as the Cornelian Gracchi did and as the Csesarean 
 Cornelius did, though he may be receiving the ad- 
 miration and the applause of those about him, though 
 he may be an excellent and eminent citizen, there is 
 a voice which will not be silenced till he has found 
 favour with God as well as with man. Both divine 
 
72 The Modem Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 and human responsibilities need to be recognized. 
 The nature needs to be regenerated, the gem in the 
 rough needs to be cut and polished, before it attains 
 unto the lustrous beauty of the cornelian that is 
 worthy to flash on the breastplate of Him who is our 
 prophet, priest and king. Natural goodness needs 
 to be supplemented by the spiritual, or if you please, 
 by the spirituelle. 
 
 4. Once more, Cornelius was after a fashion a re- 
 ligious man. He was " devout," he " prayed." To 
 this extent he was unlike one of his ancestors. We 
 have been tracing family resemblances, and now 
 comes a contrast. One of Rome's illustrious dic- 
 tators was Lucius Cornelius Sylla, who was brutal in 
 the extreme. Our Cornelius called in his servants to 
 go on a religious errand, and they returned with 
 Peter who made known the way of salvation to the 
 centurion " and his kinsmen and his near friends." 
 Near the close of Cornelius Sylla's life, in fact, " the 
 very day before his end, it being told him that the 
 magistrate Granius deferred the payment of a public 
 debt, in expectation of his death, he sent for him to 
 his house, and placing his attendants about him, 
 caused him to be strangled." No such ghastly scene 
 was witnessed in the household of Cornelias of 
 Caesarea. Messengers were despatched for a certain 
 person, to be sure, but it was that the centurion and 
 all the rest might hear the word of God. That is to 
 say, unlike the wicked Cornelius Sylla, Cornelius of 
 
Cornelian Inquiries 73 
 
 Caesarea was a religious man. Nevertheless there 
 was an intimation that something more was essential* 
 
 What lacked he yet ? It was a vital religious ex- 
 perience which he needed, and when he had that, 
 when the fullness of the blessing came like a refresh- 
 ing flood upon his soul, when his heart was changed 
 and new affections were kindled, when religion be- 
 came to him a living, thrilling reality, and when he 
 had identified himself with God's people, then he was 
 satisfied, and the reproving voice was no longer 
 heard. He had been a Cornelian by inheritance, but 
 he became one of the shining-gem order in the at- 
 tainment of genuine Christian character. One still 
 may be religious in a sense, he may have the habit 
 of prayer, he may reverently worship in church, and 
 yet because of one thing lacking go away sorrowful 
 like him of old. 
 
 The whole thought, then, is that one must have 
 more than honourable success, more than domestic 
 felicity, more than a philanthropic, and even religious 
 nature, if he is going to be such a Christian as he 
 should be. He may belong to the great Cornelian 
 family with certain distinguishing and excellent traits 
 of character, and yet not belong to the Christian 
 household, or at least to the inner circle thereof. In 
 such exemplary persons, however, the Gospel ought 
 to awaken an immediate response, and it does in 
 those who have the true Cornelian spirit. We could 
 believe that if Peter had preached to the others of 
 
74 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 that illustrious family of antiquity, they would have 
 accepted the truth, as did the one whom we have 
 been considering. Indeed it is gratifying to read 
 from a page of Gibbon descriptive of the fourth cen- 
 tury this sentence : " The Gracchi embraced the 
 Christian rehgion." This was more than 500 years 
 after the two eminent brothers, the progenitors of 
 these, had died. It is also pleasant to learn that 
 Paula, the celebrated Roman matron who devoted 
 her large fortune to religion, and who was the help- 
 ful friend of Jerome, the Scriptural translator giving 
 us the Latin Vulgate, descended from the Scipios 
 and the Gracchi. Any to-day with recognized ex- 
 cellencies may become genuine Cornelians, gems that 
 at last shall shine among the Lord's " precious jewels." 
 5. There is a final word of encouragement for 
 any to enter upon the distinctively religious life, to 
 become Cornelians in the double sense indicated, as 
 belonging to the great and noble family furnishing 
 one of its finest specimens in the Cornelius of the 
 Acts, and as belonging to a collection of rare stones, 
 none of which shine more attractively than the cor- 
 nelian. Some fear to start lest they may not gain 
 the victory. Their foe does seem stronger than they, 
 but God is on their side, and by many promises as- 
 sures them of triumph. To give one more Cornelian 
 illustration : in the annals of Roman warfare as car- 
 ried on by Cornelius Sylla, sixteen cohorts under one 
 of his generals were facing fifty cohorts of the enemy. 
 
Cornelian Inquiries 75 
 
 The Romans being less in number and also inade- 
 quately armed delayed the attack. They stood timid 
 and irresolute, till, says Plutarch, " a gale of wind, 
 bearing along with it from the neighbouring meadows 
 a quantity of flowers, scattered them down upon the 
 army, on whose shields and helmets they settled and 
 arranged themselves spontaneously, so as to give the 
 soldiers, in the eyes of the enemy, the appearance of 
 being crowned with chaplets." Animated by this 
 beautiful omen, they joined battle and gloriously won. 
 Even so when the spiritual foe seems to us as fifty 
 against sixteen, and when, poorly equipped as we 
 are, we hardly feel like venturing to go forward, 
 there come floating to us from the sweet fields above 
 on the breath of the Spirit such promises as these : 
 «' My grace is sufficient for thee," " Be thou faithful 
 unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life," 
 " Ye shall receive the crown of glory that fadeth not 
 away," — these precious promises from Beulah Land 
 rest like fairest flowjsrs upon our shields of faith and 
 our breastplates of righteousness and our helmets of 
 salvation, and they presage certain victory. Encour- 
 aged by these sweet reminders of coming triumph, 
 we can enter upon the Christian Kfe with confidence 
 and gladness, singing as we go : 
 
 " A sweet perfume upon the breeze 
 Is borne from ever vernal trees. 
 And flowers that never fading grow 
 Where streams of life forever flow. 
 
76 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 Beulah land, sweet Beulah land, 
 As on thy highest mount I stand, 
 
 1 look away across the sea. 
 
 Where mansions are prepared for me, 
 And view the shining glory shore, 
 My heaven, my home, foreverraore." 
 
 Thus in the city whose viralls are precious stones, and 
 whose sixth foundation is sardius, shall we be sardian 
 gems, beautiful cornelians that shall sparkle as " the 
 stars for ever and ever," and ourselves sharing in the 
 splendour of Jerusalem the golden we can with jubi- 
 lant feelings say : 
 
 ** What radiancy of glory. 
 
 What light beyond compare ! ** 
 
VI 
 
 Some Pertinent Though Not Impertinent 
 
 Questions 
 
 IN the last chapter having inquired as to the 
 great essential in human life, in this we pro- 
 ceed to some more definite questions that are 
 pertinent though not impertinent. They were orig- 
 inally addressed to Jonah, but they are capable of the 
 most up-to-date applications. The modern man 
 needs frequently to face the call for personal action. 
 There are put to him interrogatories which are meant 
 to line him up to duty. He may be restive some- 
 times under the appeal that comes close home, but 
 he ought not to resent what is undoubtedly for his 
 good. He should meet squarely any summons to 
 do his best. 
 
 The prophet of old came to a crisis in his career. 
 He had been commanded to go and preach to the 
 wicked Ninevites, but he rebelled. He heard a voice 
 calling him to a specific duty, but he tried to get 
 away from the divine summons. He went in an ex- 
 actly opposite direction from Nineveh. He fled to 
 Joppa which was fifty miles from his Galilean home, 
 and at that seaport he boarded a ship bound for 
 
 77 
 
78 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 Tarshish which was probably in Spain. He paid his 
 passage, and set off with some heathen sailors over 
 the Mediterranean. Thoroughly exhausted after the 
 struggle of mind through which he had gone, and 
 unhappy in his conscious wrong-doing, he retired to 
 a place of quiet, and soon was fast asleep. He was 
 not awakened even by the terrific storm which arose, 
 and which threatened to destroy the boat. He knew 
 nothing of the excitement of the mariners, who were 
 now praying and again were throwing overboard 
 whatever could be spared to hghten the ship. He 
 had to be forcibly aroused by the captain, who urged 
 him to add his prayers to those already being of- 
 fered. He was next designated by lot to be the one 
 on whose account the tempest had been sent, and he 
 was asked in rapid succession these questions : 
 "What is thine occupation? and whence comest 
 thou ? what is thy country ? and of what people art 
 thou?" 
 
 He confessed all, and as the sea grew more and 
 more tempestuous, he saw no relief except in his own 
 sacrifice. But not till the sailors had made another 
 and last desperate effort to row back to the shore 
 only to see themselves more and more at the mercy 
 of the waves, did they consent to his proposition to 
 cast him into the raging deep. He did not experi- 
 ence the comparative calm which followed, for he 
 was in mid ocean wrestling with the angry billows. 
 He was supernaturally rescued according to the Bib- 
 
Some Pertinent Questions 79 
 
 lical story, but he never forgot how he felt when, to 
 use his own words, 
 
 ** The waters compassed me about, even to the soul ; 
 The deep was round about me ; 
 The weeds were wrapped about my head. 
 I went down to the bottoms of the mountains." 
 
 After his miraculous deliverence, he hesitated not 
 to obey the Lord, and he did a great work at Nine- 
 veh. His preaching there produced a profound im- 
 pression. The people repented literally in sackcloth 
 and ashes. They all put on the garb of mourning, 
 and the city was saved from destruction. Though 
 Jonah himself was dissatisfied with the result of his la- 
 bours, he received honourable mention long afterwards 
 from Christ, and he doubtless now is rejoicing in a 
 crown many of whose jewels are the setting of the 
 mission which he so reluctantly undertook. 
 
 It all grew out of a storm in which he nearly 
 lost his hfe, and in which there came to him thick 
 and fast questions that set him to thinking. Josephus 
 describes a storm that occurred in his day at the same 
 point where the prophet so nearly found a watery 
 grave. This is his language : " Now as these people 
 of Joppa were floating about in this sea, in the morn- 
 ing there fell a violent wind upon them ; it is called 
 by those that sail there the Black North Wind ; and 
 there dashed their ships one against another, and 
 dashed some of them against the rocks, and carried 
 
8o The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 many of them by force, while they strove against the 
 opposite waves, into the main sea." There, of 
 course, is the greatest consternation, and the utmost 
 solemnity, at such a time. 
 
 So it will be when the ocean of life is struck by 
 the great Black Wind from eternity. How would it 
 be with us in such a crisis ? Plutarch tells us that 
 Julius Caesar once entered a boat in disguise, intend- 
 ing to make his way over a sea covered by a vast 
 fleet of his enemies. He floated down a river towards 
 the ocean till the salt waves therefrom by a strong 
 wind were forced up the channel of the fresh-water 
 stream. " The current was beaten back with such a 
 violent swell that the master of the boat could not 
 make good his passage, but ordered his sailors to 
 tack about and return." In this emergency came 
 the thrilling command : " Go on, my friend, and fear 
 nothing ; you carry Caesar." The rest of the tale is 
 not usually told, how the mariners for a while did 
 bend anew to the oars under the inspiration of so 
 august a presence, but how he himself, as the danger 
 increased, meekly consented to a return. When his 
 life was actually in peril, he lost his bravery. 
 
 Occasionally there may be one like Hume, who in 
 the midst of the dark river, in the sweUing of the 
 Jordan, in the passage of the classical Styx, can jest 
 with the imaginary ferryman of the dead, bantering 
 ** good Charon " for just a little more time, as the 
 infidel historian did, but most are rendered thought- 
 
Some Pertinent Questions 8i 
 
 ful at that supreme moment of our earthly existence. 
 So long as they glide along a smooth current, and 
 even when they catch some of the swell from eternity, 
 they cry, " Go on, we are not afraid of the future ; 
 this boat carries Caesars, courageous spirits." But as 
 the waves mount higher and higher, and the billows 
 dash over them with increasing force, and the break- 
 ers become deafening in their thunderings, the bravest 
 are apt to desire a return. They are not quite ready 
 to pass out into the mysterious hereafter, they would 
 hke to tarry here a while longer, so as to accomplish 
 something in the world, they say, before going 
 hence. 
 
 Now what are some of the questions which all 
 eventually will have to face ? They will be those 
 which were directed to Jonah, only in a deeper 
 sense. 
 
 I. First it will be, " What is thine occupation?" 
 It is a very important matter, when one comes to 
 decide upon a vocation. Mercantile life has its at- 
 tractions. The legal profession has its advantages. 
 The healing art is by no means to be despised. 
 Teaching furnishes a rare opportunity for useful- 
 ness. A literary career may well tempt the most 
 ambitious. The humbler employments even should 
 be chosen with moral deliberation. There is dignity 
 in common labour, ever since the Lord worked at 
 the carpenter's bench. But there is a calling superior 
 to all these, and to be followed in conjunction with 
 
82 The Modem Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 these, and that is what Paul terms " the high calHng 
 of God in Christ Jesus." The same apostle speaks 
 of being " called to be saints," and in the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews we read of being " partakers of a 
 heavenly calling." 
 
 When there bursts upon us the black tempest, 
 like the frightful Euroclydon encountered on the 
 Mediterranean, in such an ordeal, what will most 
 concern us will not be the manual skill that may 
 have been ours, nor the professional, nor the com- 
 mercial success with which we may have met, but it 
 will be the degree of Christian faithfulness that may 
 have characterized our life. All else will dwindle 
 into insignificance. We shall recall with alarm how 
 often like Jonah we ran away from duty. We shall 
 be amazed and humiliated, that we could have been 
 interested so much in the world and so little in 
 religion. Once in a while even now there comes to 
 us a revelation of our indifference to the things of 
 God. 
 
 Horace Bushnell one day awoke to a realization 
 of this fact. He laboured for years for the beautiful 
 park, which has since been made to bear his name in 
 the city of Hartford, where he was so long a dis- 
 tinguished Congregational pastor. He wrote a letter 
 containing this language, " This park matter has been 
 a kind of revelation to me, which I pray God I may 
 never forget. Why should I carry a park to bed 
 with me, and work it over in my dreams during the 
 
Some Pertinent Questions 83 
 
 night, and wake in it in the morning, and yet be so 
 Httle exercised in the magnificent work of the Gospel 
 and the care of souls?" Does not our business, or 
 our profession, or our daily toil equally monopolize 
 our attention ? We do not ordinarily seek first the 
 kingdom. We are apt to make religion a secondary- 
 consideration ; we are more likely to be active in 
 secular than in the Christian life. " What is thine 
 occupation ? " It should be more and more the 
 heavenly, as some day every one will wish it had 
 been. If any have been lacking in attention to the 
 highest things and in religious faithfulness, they will 
 then be conscious of having been as poor Christians 
 as Jonah was of having been an unworthy prophet, 
 and they will be filled with the deepest regret. 
 
 2. " And whence comest thou ? " was the second 
 question. This primarily was an inquiry for the 
 prophet's native town. He, however, did not ap- 
 parently answer. From such and such a place in 
 Galilee, from Cana or Capernaum or Nazareth, but 
 he spoke of having " fled from the presence of the 
 Lord." That is whence he came. 
 
 Likewise the question. Whence comest thou ? as 
 it will be heard at the hour of crisis will take us 
 back to the very beginning of things. There has 
 been an attempt to get away from the thought of 
 God in the materialistic theory of man's origin. 
 The eminent naturalist, Huxley, had a good deal to 
 say about " The Physical Basis of Life," with an 
 
84 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 evident leaning to the doctrine of spontaneous 
 generation. The idea is that one arrangement of 
 molecules produces an animal, and another disposi- 
 tion of them a plant. So one aggregation of brain 
 atoms gives rise to the emotion of love, and another 
 shift of them to the feeUng of hate. Everything has 
 a physical basis, and if we only knew how to put 
 dead matter together properly, and we may yet learn 
 how, we could form man out of the dust of the earth, 
 even as God is- said to have done. We could thus 
 create his soul itself, including intellect, will and con- 
 science. " Whence comest thou ? " Out of a cer- 
 tain molecular compound, replies the materialist, and 
 the one already referred to expressed himself in this 
 wise : " With organic chemistry, molecular physics, 
 and physiology yet in their infancy, and every day 
 making prodigious strides, I think it would be the 
 height of presumption for any man to say that the 
 conditions under which matter assumes the proper- 
 ties we call vital may not some day be artificially 
 brought together." 
 
 A physical basis may thus very plausibly be given 
 to that, mind which has wrought such marvels in the 
 intellectual world, to that conscience which places 
 man so far above the beast, to that immortal spirit 
 which has aspirations after the infinite, but at the 
 crucial period of human existence if not before, the 
 question, " Whence comest thou ? " will bring a differ- 
 ent answer, even the prophet's : " From the presence 
 
Some Pertinent Questions 85 
 
 of the Lord." The words of inspiration will then be 
 felt to be true, that the dust shall return to the earth 
 as it was, and the spirit to God whence it came. 
 There will be no scepticism when the Black Wind 
 and Tempest strike us ; our origin from God, and 
 our destination up before the bar of God, will be 
 very keenly realized, and will give us pleasure or 
 pain, according as we may have hved. 
 
 3. " What is thy country ? " is the next question, 
 and Jonah replied, " I am an Hebrew." " So am I," 
 was Paul's proud claim, and he still further gloried 
 in being "a Hebrew of Hebrews." With no less 
 complacency of feeling, many a one used to say, ♦* I 
 am a Roman citizen," as he thought of belonging to 
 the mightiest empire of antiquity. The Englishman 
 to-day rejoices that his ensign, the Union Jack, is 
 recognized on every sea, and the American's heart 
 glows with satisfaction because the stars and stripes 
 are now so widely known and respected. 
 
 Grander than all, however, is that kingdom of the 
 truth which Christ established, and which so im- 
 pressed the great Napoleon that he made this memo- 
 rable confession on the island of St. Helena : " Alex- 
 ander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded 
 empires. But on what did we rest the creations of 
 our genius ? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded 
 His empire upon love; and at this hour millions 
 would die for Him." Nay, an apostle says with 
 reference to Christians, " Our citizenship is in heaven." 
 
86 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 Here is a kingdom which sweeps the earth below 
 and the heaven above. Nineteen centuries ago a 
 Roman theater rang with applause when the now 
 famihar hne from Terence was first heard : 
 
 " I am a man ; nothing that affects man is indif- 
 ferent to me." 
 
 More inspiring than this cosmopolitan citizenship 
 is one that is also celestial, embracing two worlds. 
 What, then, is thy country ? Is it the better, is it 
 the heavenly ? Is it the kingdom of the truth, which 
 so blessedly links the here and the hereafter ? More 
 satisfactory than to say, I am a Hebrew, or a Roman, 
 or an Englishman, or an American, will it be to say 
 before the throne, I am a Christian. 
 
 If any would bear that glad testimony at the last, 
 they must seek the kingdom now, and seek it ear- 
 nestly and supremely. *• The kingdom of heaven suf- 
 fereth violence," said the Master, " and men of 
 violence take it by force." It is those who venture 
 at what seem great hazards, it is those who have the 
 spirit of conquest, it is those who are determined to 
 conquer or die, it is those who say they can but 
 perish if they go and they are resolved to try, it is 
 those who gain the kingdom. They press in for its 
 possession. What if they do fall? They can rise 
 again. 
 
 When William of Normandy landed in England, 
 " as he leaped on shore," says Hume, " he happened 
 
Some Pertinent Questions 87 
 
 to stumble and fall, but had the presence of mind, it 
 is said, to turn the omen to his advantage by calling 
 aloud that he had taken possession of the country." 
 He did not let the unfortunate fall turn him back, but 
 he sprang to his feet and pressed on, fought the cele- 
 brated battle of Hastings, and became William the 
 Conqueror. Suetonius relates a similar incident of 
 JuHus Caesar : *' Happening to fall, upon stepping 
 out of the ship, he gave a lucky turn to the omen 
 by exclaiming, I hold thee fast, Africa." The same 
 spirit is needed in the religious hfe, if any would 
 come off conquerors and more than conquerors. 
 They must not be discouraged or hindered by falls. 
 They are to recover themselves as soon as possible, 
 and march on to the conquest of the kingdom. They 
 are to take it by force, as the Captain of their salva- 
 tion has said. They are to venture something in 
 order to gain that which follows. They are to start 
 in the Christian life, though they may stumble at 
 the very outset. They are to persevere, and they 
 will gain the victory, and at the end when each is 
 asked, " What is thy country ? " he will be able to 
 answer with a joyful confidence, " The kingdom of 
 the truth ; my citizenship is in heaven." 
 
 4. Once more, the question is, •' And of what 
 people art thou ? " One might live in America, and 
 not be an American. If he is a foreigner, he must 
 decide formally to transfer his allegiance from one 
 government to another, he must get his naturaHza- 
 
88 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 tion papers, he must become a citizen according to 
 certain prescribed, legal forms. In like manner one 
 may live in Christendom, and not be a Christian. 
 He may be an alien from the commonwealth of 
 Israel, he may be a stranger and a foreigner. He 
 should by a definite, outward act change sovereigns. 
 He should confess with the mouth as well as believe 
 with the heart. He should stand up, and, so to 
 speak, swear his allegiance to him whose follower he 
 becomes, and whose leadership and Lordship he 
 acknowledges. 
 
 In our day a good deal is being said about " out- 
 side saints," and men of the present are inclined to 
 range themselves with these, whereas they should 
 commit themselves religiously, they should be found 
 inside, if they would make the most of their powers. 
 Every analogy of life establishes this as a fact. What 
 would be thought of a woman who would not take 
 the name of her husband ? Would it be sufficient for 
 her in spirit to be a wife ? Nay, she must appear at 
 the marriage altar, and there publicly plight her 
 faith. Likewise should the disciple assume the name 
 of Christ by becoming a professed Christian. He 
 should meet the conditions of citizenship in heaven, 
 and these are. Confess, and you should be confessed. 
 Deny, and you must be denied, before the angels 
 of God. 
 
 The final question, therefore, recurs, and it will 
 come up with renewed force as we peer into the 
 
Some Pertinent Questions 89 
 
 future, " Of what people art thou ? " If any belong 
 to the people of God, they should indicate it by an 
 open stand. They will not regret it, when they are 
 caught by the tempest raised by the Black Wind 
 from the eternal shore. No one should be wiUing to 
 be like that English king, who is known in history, 
 not as Ethelred the Great or Good, but as Ethelred 
 the Unready, because he was never ready to proceed 
 against the Danes, his enemies. We are to be ready, 
 for at such an hour as we think not, the Son of man 
 Cometh. We are to identify ourselves with God's 
 people, as we say with the devout Ruth, " Thy peo- 
 ple shall be my people, and thy God my God." In 
 the swelling of the Jordan, in life's Euroclydon, we 
 will wish that we had. 
 
VII 
 
 How to Make the Most of Ourselves 
 
 THE man of to-day likes to do his best. He 
 wants to make the most of himself, and the 
 word, efficiency, is much on his lips. He 
 often needs the stimulus of some inspiring example. 
 He responds to the appeal of some striking per- 
 sonality. There is this one, and there is that one, 
 serving as a concrete ideal. What particular case 
 shall now be cited for its encouraging influence ? An 
 Old Testament writer points out a definite one, when 
 he says, " There is httle Benjamin." If we enter 
 somewhat into detail here, we shall feel the force of 
 an admirable career. 
 
 Benjamin was one of the sons of Jacob, from whom 
 sprang the twelve tribes of Israel. The patriarch be- 
 lieved that there was to be an important future for 
 the child, and for his posterity, and this hope was 
 reahzed, for though the epithet " Httle " was always 
 applicable in the literal sense, in achievement there 
 was abundant cause for satisfaction. The descendants 
 of Benjamin in Egypt during the long centuries of 
 sojourn there became a considerable number, and 
 yet at the time of the Exodus they were with one 
 exception the smallest of the twelve tribes. In the 
 
 90 
 
How to Make the Most of Ourselves 91 
 
 assignment of territory in the promised land, Josephus 
 says they had the smallest allotment. They, how- 
 ever, had the finest of warriors, who indeed con- 
 stituted the best part of the army, and who could, we 
 are assured, " use both the right hand and the left in 
 sHnging stones and in shooting arrows from the 
 bow." They had the distinction, too, of furnishing 
 the first king of Israel, in Saul, who in his noble 
 youth disclaimed the exalted honour of proffered 
 royalty in the immortal words, " Am not I a Ben- 
 jamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel ? " So 
 also this httle tribe, during the Babylonian captivity, 
 gave Queen Esther to Xerxes, one of the mightiest 
 monarchs of the orient, and gave him his prime 
 minister in Mordecai, who, says the sacred record, 
 was " the son of Kish, a Benjamite." At the return 
 from exile to rebuild the waste places, the choice 
 remnant is indicated by a passage in Ezra which says, 
 " Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin gathered 
 themselves together unto Jerusalem." Little Ben- 
 jamin was not one of the lost ten tribes, but one of 
 the faithful two, standing alongside of proud Judah 
 in the restoration. Coming down to the next great 
 epoch in Jewish history, the chief of the apostles in 
 New Testament times was, as he himself expressly 
 testified, " of the tribe of Benjamin." 
 
 Benjamin was small, small in numbers, it was the 
 least of the tribes ; small in territory, it occupied a 
 belt of land only twenty-six miles long by twelve 
 
92 The Modem Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 broad. But it had a fiery energy, which had only to 
 be chastened to accomplish the grandest results. 
 Quahty and not quantity is most important. Elec- 
 tricity is something so subtle as to have escaped 
 man's attention for ages, but how potent its influence 
 in the realm of nature, and now in the world of 
 mechanical appliances as well. Gravity is a force 
 which has never been seen, but which is evidenced 
 in the tremendous water-power of a Niagara, and 
 which is felt to the uttermost bounds of the universe. 
 What is true in the natural and industrial sense is 
 true in the intellectual, in the political, in the moral 
 sphere. 
 
 We might illustrate indefinitely along this line. 
 There is little Greece. But from that small country 
 came art, literature, culture. There is little Rome. 
 But from the seven hills came law, jurisprudence, the 
 best type of human government known to antiquity. 
 There is little Palestine. But from that narrow strip 
 of land came the religion of Christendom. The 
 classic river of Athens is insignificant as to volume. 
 When former President Felton of Harvard went to 
 see the Ilissus, of which he had read so much in his 
 Greek, on reaching its bank, the story is, he stooped 
 down and drank up the whole stream. Nevertheless, 
 because of a wealth of associations, this that is least 
 is mightier than our Mississippi, or even than the 
 gigantic Amazon, neither of which historically stands 
 for very much. There is a mere youth, only a 
 
How to Make the Most of Ourselves 93 
 
 "stripling," as an Old Testament king said con- 
 temptuously of David, but what a future he had I 
 More splendid was it anciently than that of his royal 
 detractor. "There is little Benjamin." We are to 
 see what conduced to the relative importance of that 
 small tribe. We are to see why it played such an 
 important part in the history of the twelve tribes ; 
 why it produced such leading characters as Saul and 
 Esther and Paul, king and queen and apostle ; why 
 it figured so prominently in the military annals of 
 Israel, furnishing the flower of the army ; why it con- 
 tributed so largely to the distinctively religious wel- 
 fare of mankind, being identified with the faithful few 
 who returned from Babylon to Jerusalem to provide 
 a setting, a favourable environment, for the establish- 
 ment of Christianity, and giving one of its number 
 to plant the Gospel more extensively than any other 
 person. 
 
 There must have been reasons for little Benjamin 
 attaining to such a splendid eminence. If we can 
 discover the causes, the humblest to-day may become 
 great in the best sense, may rise to the enviable posi- 
 tion which calls forth the divine commendation, the 
 praise being none the less because delicately and in- 
 directly expressed. How, then, can we make the 
 most of our comparatively feeble powers, of our rela- 
 tively small endowments, of our confessedly single 
 talents ? The finite can so act as to make the Infinite 
 say approvingly and complacently, " What a creditable 
 
94 The Modem Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 career ! " There are two explanations of little Benja- 
 min doing so well. 
 
 I. For one thing, Ramah was within the domain 
 of this tribe, and at that place we first hear of the 
 schools of the prophets. Schools ! To be sure, there 
 were no palatial buildings such as adorn the campus 
 of Yale or the yard of Harvard, but we do read of 
 " Naioth in Ramah," and scholars tell us that Naioth 
 meant originally rude dwellings. They were leafy 
 huts, but even with such primitive accommodations 
 students gathered under the Presidency of Samuel, 
 who is represented " standing as head over them." 
 There were no such fine libraries as Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge can boast, but we are informed in the Chron- 
 icles of bookSy " in the history of Samuel the seer, 
 and in the history of Nathan the prophet, and in the 
 history of Gad the seer." The instructors had pre- 
 pared certain volumes. Older than England's two 
 most celebrated Universities, which date back to the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries, are the Schools of 
 the Prophets, which existed at Ramah in little Benja- 
 min. In referring to their establishment Dean Stan- 
 ley said : " This is the first direct mention, the first 
 express sanction, not merely of regular arts of in- 
 struction and education, but of regular societies 
 formed for that purpose — of schools, of colleges, of 
 universities. Long before Plato had gathered his 
 disciples round him in the olive grove, or Zeno in 
 the Portico, these institutions had sprung up under 
 
How to Make the Most of Ourselves 95 
 
 Samuel." In little Benjamin's educational advan- 
 tages, then, consisted one reason of its superiority. 
 
 What gives New England a greater influence in 
 the Union than its size would seem to warrant ? Its 
 colleges of world-wide reputation, and its literary 
 men produced thereby. Of the Old Bay State 
 Daniel Webster could say proudly, " There she is, 
 . . . there is her history, the world knows it by 
 heart," the statesman could say that of her because 
 of her unexcelled institutions of learning which have 
 been diligently used, till an investigator has found, 
 says Dr. N. D. Hillis of Plymouth Church, " that in 
 ninety years " she had mentioned " in the American 
 and English encyclopaedias " " 2,686 authors, orators, 
 philosophers, and builders of States." Or, take a single 
 community of this commonwealth, and we can say. 
 There is intellectual Northampton. We can say this 
 with pride, because on the authority of the one just 
 quoted this little place " has sent out 114 lawyers, 
 112 ministers, 95 physicians, 100 educators, 7 college 
 presidents, 30 professors, 24 editors, 6 historians, 
 14 authors, among whom are George Bancroft, John 
 Lothrop Motley, Professor Whitney, the late J. G. 
 Holland ; 38 officers of State, 28 officers of the United 
 States, including members of the Senate, and one 
 President." 
 
 Why does Congregationalism command a respect, 
 which naturally would not attach to it as being one 
 of the smaller or at least not one of the largest de- 
 
96 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 nominations ? Because it founded Harvard and Yale, 
 Amherst and Williams, Dartmouth and Bowdoin, 
 Oberlin and Beloit, and because this is always and 
 everywhere its spirit, and because it thus draws to 
 itself a support and constituency of more than ordi- 
 nary intelligence. The Schools at Ramah, and also 
 afterwards at Jericho in the territory of the same 
 tribe, doubtless developed little Benjamin, gave it 
 among the tribes an intellectual prominence, by 
 which like Saul physically it towered head and shoul- 
 ders above its fellows ; so that when Israel wanted a 
 king for the inauguration of a new form of govern- 
 ment, a Benjamite was chosen ; so that when Christ 
 wanted a great leader for the establishing of His 
 Church, another Benjamite was selected for the im- 
 portant trust. 
 
 In all this we have a suggestion that we should 
 make the most of ourselves mentally. Education 
 should not be neglected. School and college are 
 rightly exalted. There is too much haste to get into 
 business, or into a profession. There is too great 
 eagerness to go into society. Minds are thereby 
 dwarfed, not gaining the breadth necessary to the 
 highest efficiency. To be sure, there are self-made 
 men who make a mark in the world. Andrew Jack- 
 son is an example. When Harvard conferred upon 
 him as President of our country the honourary 
 LL. D., to the demurrer of some critic that he was 
 not sufficiently educated for such a degree, that he 
 
How to Make the Most of Ourselves 97 
 
 could scarcely write his own name, the bright retort 
 was, He at any rate can make his mark, and has. 
 But no one can doubt, and such prodigies usually 
 admit it themselves, that they would have accom- 
 plished far more with a better intellectual training. 
 
 Nor should any indulge the fancy that high stand- 
 ing in studies is to one's disadvantage rather than 
 advantage. President Tucker of Dartmouth made 
 an investigation regarding the graduates of that col- 
 lege for two decades, 1850-70, to see how many of 
 them had found a place in " Who's Who in America," 
 a volume giving brief biographies of the " notable 
 men and women of the United States." He discov- 
 ered in it the names of fifty Dartmouth graduates for 
 the twenty years, and out of these forty-one stood in 
 the first half of the class as to scholarship. From 
 this he concluded that those who forge to the front 
 in the class-room as a rule do the same in the world. 
 That is why Benjamin led the van in the march on- 
 ward of the twelve tribes ; it beyond the rest had 
 educational facilities, of which it made the most. 
 After the same manner can any yet rise in the scale 
 of being and of accomplishment. 
 
 2. The tribe of Benjamin profited not only from 
 its schools, but also from its containing the sanctuary, 
 the place of worship. At first this was at Bethel, 
 which was well called the house of God, the gate of 
 heaven, in view of the significant dream which Jacob 
 there had of a ladder reaching into the sky. With 
 
98 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 such associations it fittingly became a place for the 
 religious gathering of the tribes. Then at Gibeon, 
 the tabernacle of wilderness fame was located, and 
 great congregations worshipped there. Again at 
 Jerusalem the temple was finally erected, and thither 
 was conveyed the tabernacle of Gibeon, that vener- 
 able rehc of precious memory, and also, according to 
 tradition, the stone of Bethel, which had been the 
 patriarch's pillow when he had his wondrous vision, 
 and which is said to be that now encased under the 
 coronation chair whereon all Great Britain's sov- 
 ereigns for centuries have been crowned, and which 
 those female furies of England to their shame have 
 tried to blow up. Both Bethel and Gibeon were ex- 
 clusively in the territory of Benjamin, and Jerusalem 
 was at the outset, and later was the joint possession 
 of Judah and Benjamin. So that the httle tribe was 
 highly favoured in containing the center of worship, 
 it did not neglect religion any more than education. 
 Its character was undoubtedly moulded by the wor- 
 shipping assemblies, which met at its stone of Bethel, 
 at its tabernacle of Gibeon, and at its temple of 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 That nation to-day, which contains chapel and 
 church and cathedral, most commands the divine ad- 
 miration and our own high regard. There is little 
 Scotland. Her crowning glory is confessedly her 
 religious spirit. Of her family worship Robert Burns 
 said most charmingly : 
 
How to Make the Most of Ourselves 99 
 
 *< From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, 
 That makes her loved at home, revered abroad." 
 
 There is little Geneva, a city of only 12,000 inhab- 
 itants in the time of Calvin. But from that small 
 place, with the sturdy Reformer to give it character, 
 came the influence vi^hich has been developed into 
 Presbyterianism, a mighty factor in forming our 
 present Christian civilization. There is little Ep- 
 worth, but from that small village came John 
 Wesley, and Methodism whose adherents are now 
 numbered by the millions. There is little " Rhody," 
 the smallest State in the Union, but there that man 
 of God and of Providence (of Providence in a double 
 sense, for he founded the city of that name), there 
 Roger Williams started the great Baptist denomina- 
 tion in this country. There is the little Mayflower 
 which landed the Pilgrims at Plymouth, but from her 
 small cabin came Congregationalism. And so it has 
 been of every branch of the Christian Church, the 
 grand development has been because of the Spirit of 
 God each time in what at first was a very humble 
 movement. The superlative worth of little Benjamin 
 arose not alone from its enjoyment of educational 
 advantages at Ramah and later at Jericho, but also 
 from its sanctuary privileges of which it availed itself 
 at Bethel, at Gibeon, and at Jerusalem. 
 
 The individual attains his highest development, 
 not at the university of learning, but when he also 
 takes a course in God's university of soul culture. 
 
100 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 If a man would come to his best, he must cultivate 
 his faculties to the utmost, and he must be a devout 
 worshipper. Thus apparently did the smallest of the 
 tribes gain its preeminence. It started at a disad- 
 vantage, with less than the others in number, and 
 with less of territory, but its schools of the prophets, 
 and its carefully cultivated devotional spirit steadily 
 advanced it to the front, until God Himself said with 
 a certain degree of pride and gratification, " There is 
 little Benjamin." He desires to see us, who perhaps 
 feel that we have inferior abilities, rise by a similar 
 process of intellectual training, and of religious con- 
 secration. The school needs to be supplemented by 
 the church. Adequate mental equipment will give 
 us power, but the culmination is reached in that spir- 
 itual enduement which comes from being personally 
 religious. Only as we work up this climacteric can 
 we make absolutely the most of ourselves. 
 
 There is a closing scene. In connection with the 
 mention of little Benjamin, an imposing procession 
 is described. " The chariots of God are twenty thou- 
 sand, even thousands upon thousands," we read. 
 The inspired reporter continues, " Thou hast as- 
 cended on high, Thou hast led thy captivity cap- 
 tive." There are also enumerated '• the goings " o( 
 God. Another feature was, " The singers went be- 
 fore, the minstrels followed after." It is a grand tri- 
 umphal procession which is being pictured, but the 
 proudest exclamation of all is, " There is little Benja- 
 
How to Make the Most of Ourselves loi 
 
 min." It will be worth while if, insignificant as we 
 are, we can have God direct special attention to us 
 as we sweep along with the redeemed and sanctified 
 host over the streets of gold in the New Jerusalem. 
 There is one who did what she could. There is 
 another who outstripped others of greater natural 
 capabilities. There is a third who was faithful over 
 a few things. How sweet will be such commenda- 
 tion ! The thousands of chariots, the goings of God 
 Himself, His innumerable train of followers, the sing- 
 ers and the harpers, will all be noticed only to 
 heighten the effect of that magnificent climax, 
 *• There is little Benjamin." 
 
 There is a humble Christian who made the most 
 of his finite powers, who did better than others more 
 highly endowed. In the great saved throng, if we 
 cannot be rewarded for conspicuous service, we can 
 be those whose names shall receive personal mention 
 from the lips of the Lord Himself. We can be 
 among those whose faithfulness in expanding the in- 
 tellect, and in seeking spirituality, shall at last be 
 gloriously and divinely recogrlized. It will be a sat- 
 isfaction indeed to be singled out in that triumphal 
 procession with which human history is to culminate. 
 When the marching columns swing round in review 
 before the throne on which will be seated the Judge 
 of all the earth, shouts of hallelujahs will ascend, as 
 this and that one is named with honour, not alto- 
 gether for mental attainment, however desirable that 
 
102 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 may be and is, but more particularly for excellency 
 of character and for achievement of religious results. 
 No encomium ever received will equal that of the 
 heavenly Potentate, as again and again He says with 
 glow of feeling, " See what he made of /iimsoid " 
 
VIII 
 
 Masters of the Situation 
 
 IF the modern man can boast of anything, it is 
 of being masterful. Amid all difficulties he 
 rightly feels that he is a dominating force. 
 With a challenging statement less capable of denial 
 than that of Cowper's Alexander Selkirk, and from 
 a serene elevation, he says, 
 
 " I am monarch of all I survey." 
 
 It is an element of strength for one to be sure of 
 himself. Failure to attain not infrequently is due to 
 a lack of confidence. One distrusts his own powers. 
 He needs to be imbued with the idea of human 
 capability. There is no finer picture of mastery of 
 the situation than that painted by the writer of the 
 First Gospel, when he said, " An angel of the Lord 
 descended from heaven, and came and rolled away 
 the stone, and sat upon it.'' There is a simple maj- 
 esty to that portrayal of a well-known, divine exploit. 
 We feel the grandeur of the removal of the great 
 stone from the mouth of the sepulchre in which the 
 Lord lay, especially since it bore the seal of the for- 
 midable Roman government, and since it was closely 
 
 103 
 
104 '^^^ Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 guarded by soldiers representing the mightiest em- 
 pire of antiquity. The angel of the Lord feared no 
 earthly sovereign, and with superhuman strength 
 rolled away the stone. The triumph was complete, 
 and particularly when, as we are informed, he *• sat 
 upon it," indicating a conscious power and an easy 
 accomplishment of the task. 
 
 The very climax of victory is reached by us when 
 we can say of some opposing force or movement, 
 that it has been literally " sat upon." An opponent 
 is felt to be practically annihilated, when we can use 
 regarding him that common expression. Our col- 
 loquialism gives a correct representation of the con- 
 quering power of God through the agents He em- 
 ploys. We are impressed with the mighty reserves 
 of His strength, as again and again He is pictured in 
 a sitting posture. His absolute control of every ad- 
 verse circumstance and His elevation above all His 
 enemies are vividly depicted in the Psalm which 
 says : 
 
 ** He that siiteth in the heavens shall laugh : 
 The Lord shall have them in derision." 
 
 We have there no excited and nervous moving hither 
 and thither as if uncertain of the issue of the con- 
 flict, but there is the very personification of repose 
 and confidence. 
 
 The Emperor Constantius, son of Constantine the 
 Great, tried to produce an impression of greatness by 
 
Masters of the Situation 105 
 
 assuming this same attitude. Farrar says of him, 
 " Nothing pleased him better than to assume the aw- 
 ful immobihty of an idol, as he sat in the mid-splen- 
 dour of his court, or between the gold-embroidered 
 banners on his triumphal chariot. He would not 
 move or cough, lest the impression of his divinity 
 should be weakened." To be sure, in all this he pre- 
 sented a ridiculous figure, because in his case it was 
 littleness putting on pompous airs, posing as great- 
 ness. Nevertheless he saw what was a fact, that the 
 sitting attitude speaks of superiority and adds to dig- 
 nity. A king does not rise from his throne, but he 
 remains seated at the approach of his subjects. 
 There is a no more sublime description of God in the 
 whole Bible than that found in the prophecy of 
 Isaiah, " It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the 
 earth." An impressive truth, therefore, is contained 
 in the declaration of the evangelist, that the stone 
 was not only rolled away, but was also " sat upon." 
 
 I. We learn, first, the lesson of the resistless power 
 of God and of the godlike over physical forces. The 
 angel of the Lord made use of an " earthquake " to 
 open the closed sepulchre, and not only did the 
 earth quake, but, we read, " the watchers did quake." 
 The almightiness of God appears in nothing else 
 perhaps so much as in a convulsive throe of nature. 
 The helplessness of man before this manifestation 
 of divine power is indicated by the great number 
 of lives that have been lost in connection with various 
 
lo6 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 historic upheavals on the surface of our globe with 
 its molten interior. We have a recent example of 
 this in the quarter of million of people vk^ho were 
 said to have perished in Messina and vicinity at the 
 close of 1908. Before such demonstrations as that 
 in San Francisco in 1906, we are not slow to admit 
 that God ♦' sitteth upon the circle of the earth," that 
 He commands all the giant forces of this terrestrial 
 ball from center to circumference. In the presence 
 of some seismic disturbance like that in 1755 at 
 Lisbon, which shook the coast of Sweden and 
 caused the Alps to tremble, we are made deeply 
 sensible of human impotence and of divine omnip- 
 otence. 
 
 A few years ago in the Franconia Notch of New 
 Hampshire, the power of God was shown upon a 
 great stone. In some long-past geological age a 
 mighty convulsion had made a great rent in the side 
 of Flume Mountain. This fissure was so narrow at 
 the top, there long hung in the opening, between 
 the gigantic jaws, a huge boulder weighing many 
 tons. No human hand could spring it from its 
 sockets. But when God in a tremendous storm by 
 an immense landslide put forth His hand, it went 
 crashing and roaring to the bottom. The stone, at 
 which giants might have tugged in vain, and which 
 had resisted the storms of centuries, when God really 
 laid hold of it, was rolled away, and was, so to speak, 
 ruthlessly " sat upon." This superb mastery of the 
 
Masters of the Situation 107 
 
 physical belonged also to the angel of the Lord, and 
 likewise belongs to us, who with dynamite blow up 
 a hell-gate at the entrance to a harbour, or who tunnel 
 mountains, or who bore a passageway for trains 
 under majestic rivers, or who cut a continent in two 
 with a Panama Canal, making us thus, says Scripture, 
 " but a little lower than the angels," who can shake 
 the solid foundations of the earth. Through an in- 
 spiration breathed into us from above, we are con- 
 quering the forces of nature, and sitting thereon, 
 monarchs of all we survey. In view of such splen- 
 did achievements, our immortality cannot very well 
 be doubted, that we are destined to live forever. In 
 the language of the book of Job, " there is a spirit 
 in man, and the breath of the Almighty giveth them 
 understanding." Even our intellectual accomplish- 
 ments are thus rightly attributed to the understand- 
 ing given us from above, and very significantly ma- 
 terial progress itself is confined to lands having 
 knowledge of the Bible. That is why we are sit- 
 ting upon, triumphing over, stones concerning which 
 there once was defeat because of ignorance. 
 
 The modern world is familiar with the claim of the 
 ancients that they possessed here and there stones 
 which had descended from the sky, from a super- 
 natural source, the temple of Diana, for instance, at 
 Ephesus containing such a venerable relic, as we 
 learn from the book of the Acts, where we read of 
 " the image which fell down from Jupiter." We to- 
 
lo8 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 day have scientific knowledge of these stones which 
 formerly were superstitiously regarded, and the aero^ 
 lite, known now to be of natural origin, is eagerly 
 watched as it shoots down through the air, blazes its 
 way along, and buries itself deep in the ground, and 
 is carried off in triumph by the fortunate finder to 
 some college or institution of learning, where it 
 brings a rich pecuniary reward, and where it is 
 analyzed till it discloses its constituent elements. It 
 no longer frightens people into an unenlightened awe, 
 but it is coolly " sat upon " by scholars and geologists 
 and meteorologists, and it is made to yield up its 
 secrets. 
 
 Examples of human conquest under the inspiration 
 of the Almighty might be multiplied. Take the 
 photographic art. In 1838 Madame Daguerre in 
 France consulted a medical celebrity as to her hus- 
 band's mental soundness. The strongest evidence 
 of his insanity, she said, was his behef that he would 
 succeed in fixing one's shadowy outline on magical 
 metallic plates. The distinguished physician at this 
 manifest indication of a deranged mind advised that 
 Daguerre be quietly sent to a lunatic asylum. Two 
 months later the world was astonished to learn that 
 human shadows had been actually caught and pre- 
 served in pictures called from the man who first exe- 
 cuted them daguerreotypes, and there are few families 
 which cannot produce from some hidden source 
 samples of this first photographic work. The 
 
Masters of the Situation 109 
 
 French Academy in 1839 well crowned the sup- 
 posed lunatic of the year before the father of photog- 
 raphy, which has seen such marvellous develop- 
 ments, till, according to Prof. Percival Lowell, it 
 reveals canals on the planet Mars, whose geometric 
 regularity, and whose nice articulation at the junc- 
 tions, prove the existence there of a high order of 
 intelligent, constructive life. This fine art also 
 catches on sensitive plates impressions of hitherto 
 undiscovered worlds in the stellar spaces, as the very 
 skies are photographed. In that initial success of 
 the early half of the preceding century, another 
 difficulty had been overcome, another stone had 
 been rolled away and sat upon in the progress of 
 humanity. 
 
 Hervey's discovery of the circulation of the blood 
 was discredited ; Franklin's announcement of the 
 identity of lightning with electricity was derided, 
 though the outcome has been a succession of mir- 
 acles ; Stevenson's project for travelling by steam, by 
 railroad, was at the outset hooted by the British 
 House of Commons ; the preliminary disclosures as 
 to the telegraph and telephone and phonograph and 
 wireless despatching were received with incredulous 
 shakes of the head and with derisive comments. But 
 all these stones lying before the door of this and that 
 chamber of hidden mystery have been removed. 
 We, who a few years ago pronounced aerial naviga- 
 tion to be a dream of fools, can now ride with the 
 
no The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 lunatics through the air over houses and trees, while 
 we glorify the inventors as the lords of creation, and 
 while also we feel that we were the foolish ones for 
 being such doubters. Man's conquest of what only 
 recently was the exclusive element and domain of 
 the birds makes us recognize that he is but little 
 lower than the angels. We ought to realize what 
 our capabilities are, and we ought to be stimulated 
 so to live as not to fail of the immortal destiny which 
 can be ours. It doth not yet appear, we are taught, 
 what we shall be. There can be through the ever 
 living One an unfolding of our powers to all eternity. 
 We can be among those who become partakers of 
 the Holy Ghost, and who taste the good word of 
 God, and, says an apostle, " the powers of the age to 
 come." In order to this, every temptation to wrong, 
 every soHcitation to an irrehgious life, should be re- 
 sisted and mastered. The difficulties in the way of 
 living the Christian life may seem insuperable, they 
 may loom up in the pathway like great stones, but 
 the indomitable spirit that has overcome these along 
 natural lines should say of spiritual obstacles what 
 Napoleon said of the mountains barring his advance 
 to Italy, *' There shall be no Alps," and there were 
 none, and shall be none in the future to such 
 courage. 
 
 2. We are to consider also the moral triumphs 
 which can be and have been won. The power of 
 God and of man working in harmony with Him has 
 
Masters of the Situation 1 1 1 
 
 appeared in the progress of the Gospel, as well as in 
 the more material progress that has so far engaged 
 our attention. William D. Howells the author, in 
 his " Altruria," says that in our national history there 
 have been several changes in the type of man to 
 whom greatness has been ascribed. From the Revo- 
 lution, for a considerable time onward, the statesman 
 filled the public eye. Then literature monopolized 
 the attention, and Longfellow and such as he came 
 to the front. The war of the rebellion enthroned the 
 soldier, the general, and only a mihtary man could 
 aspire to the Presidency. Finally, he said, there has 
 come the era of fabulous fortunes, and the millionaire 
 is now king, money rules the nation. There is a 
 certain amount of truth in these successive stages, 
 that are noted, of our national development, but it is 
 to be hoped that the type of manhood soon to follow 
 shall be that in which Christian character is dominant. 
 Indeed if we take a comprehensive view of the course 
 of human events, we see that Howells was not alto- 
 gether correct, we are struck with the fact that Chris- 
 tianity is already in a large way dominating the 
 world. 
 
 There is recalled the significant observation of 
 Gibbon, that enemy of Christianity, with reference 
 to the first three centuries of our era ; his memorable 
 words were these : " A pure and humble religion 
 gently insinuated itself into the minds of men, grew 
 up in silence and obscurity, derived new vigour from 
 
112 The Modem Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 opposition, and finally erected the triumphant banner 
 of the cross on the ruins of the Capitol. Nor," he 
 continues, " was the influence of Christianity con- 
 fined to the period or to the limits of the Roman 
 Empire. After a revolution of thirteen or fourteen 
 centuries, that religion is still professed by the na- 
 tions of Europe, the most distinguished portion of 
 human kind in arts and learning, as well as in arms. 
 By the industry and zeal of the Europeans it has 
 been widely diffused to the most distant shores of 
 Asia and Africa ; and by means of their colonies has 
 been firmly established from Canada to Chili, in a 
 world unknown to the ancients." That is all very 
 true. Never did 2i friend more eloquently sketch the 
 triumphs of Christ, who ascended the throne of an 
 empire declining to its fall, and who sat victor 
 thereon. Every obstacle to the establishment of His 
 principles in the European States that subsequently 
 rose, and in the other continents that are being 
 steadily Christianized, has been rolled away, until 
 now there is confessedly no such all-pervasive in- 
 fluence as that emanating from the Gospel. 
 
 Whether the Apostate Julian exclaimed at last^ 
 " O Galilean, thou hast conquered," whether that 
 was his dying testimony or not, it was the truth. 
 When this Emperor with some show of success pro- 
 ceeded to revive pagan worship and to dethrone 
 Christianity, it was sneerlngly asked, ** What is the 
 Gahlean carpenter doing now ? " The sufficient an- 
 
Masters of the Situation 113 
 
 swer was, that the Carpenter of Nazareth was " mak- 
 ing a coffin," the coffin of Julian's greatness and of 
 his system of paganism, and it was even so. His 
 imperial majesty might have been a ruler famous and 
 not infamous in history, had it not been for the stand 
 he took against the rising power of the Christian re- 
 ligion, before which he went ignominiously down. 
 The Carpenter is still making the coffins of all op- 
 posers and of all opposition. Every stone in the 
 way of the coming of His kingdom is being sum- 
 marily removed. 
 
 Our subject has not only a general but also a very 
 personal bearing. There are foes not only without 
 but also within. Our own evil propensities should 
 be dealt with vigorously, till they are utterly subdued, 
 and very reaHstically ♦' sat upon." Paul with a similar 
 idea talked about keeping " the body under," as if one 
 should get another down and sit upon him, and he 
 spoke of mortifymg the members^ fairly pounding the 
 offenders. Not that we should go to the extreme 
 of monasticism, which was unnecessarily severe with 
 the human. Jerome, for instance, carried self-morti- 
 fication too far, when he groaned over his sinfulness 
 in that he was naturally fond of the classics, in our 
 judgment not a very serious offense. He once felt 
 himself to be face to face with the Judge of all the 
 earth, who, to his faltering plea that he was a Chris- 
 tian, was made by his distorted imagination to 
 thunder out, " Thou liest, thou art a Ciceronian, not 
 
1 14 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 a Christian ; for where thy treasure is, there is thy 
 heart." Then he endeavoured to dissuade another 
 from reading classical literature, as he said, " What 
 has Horace to do with the Psalter ? Virgil with the 
 Gospels? Cicero with the Apostles?" But the 
 great Monk outgrew these abnormal views and this 
 narrowness, himself afterwards quoting freely from 
 Roman and Greek writers, while he left to the world 
 that literary monument, the Latin Vulgate, that 
 translation of the Bible into the common language in 
 his day of the people. 
 
 There is sometimes yet a sort of monastic severity, 
 as something entirely innocent is condemned by a 
 strained and morbid conscience. Abstinence from 
 meat during the Lenten season, or from a harmless 
 recreation, or something else of a similar kind, is 
 rigorously exacted of the Christian. We, however, 
 need not worry over imaginary sins, when there are 
 so many that are real to engage our most strenuous 
 efforts for their subjugation. Gregory of Nazianzus, 
 who is reverenced as one of the best of the church 
 fathers, saw the essential thing, when to cure himself 
 of speaking too much and too harshly he devoted 
 one whole Lent to silence, that his tongue might 
 learn its place. Abstinence from speech might be 
 better for us now than refraining from this or that 
 which may be quite immaterial, but which may be 
 censoriously judged by some. Hasty and incon- 
 siderate criticism is a stone to be rolled away and sat 
 
Masters of the Situation 115 
 
 upon very hard, if it is to be entirely overcome. 
 Gregory himself had suffered and he knew whereof 
 he was speaking in this respect. When even in his 
 declining years he retired from the activities to which 
 he long had been given, and when he found enjoy- 
 ment in his garden with its cooling water and with 
 its delightful shade, he was charged by an ascetic 
 with living in luxury. His Hfe was simplicity itself, 
 and yet had its critic. 
 
 We want no monastic severity, but we do want to 
 be severe with real sins, with unchristian judging, 
 with displays of temper, and with whatever else is 
 alien to the mind of Christ. Our natural quickness 
 to resent an injury, our sharpness of speech, or some 
 other besetting sin, may be hard to get rid of, it may 
 lie before us like a great stone, but with the aid of 
 the Master it can be rolled away, and actually sat 
 upon in the completeness of our victory. However 
 difficult the situation, we can be masters thereof, and 
 we can enter into the spirit of Henley, when he 
 wrote : 
 
 ** Out of the night that covers me, 
 
 Black as the pit from pole to pole, 
 I thank whatever gods may be 
 For my unconquerable soul. 
 
 }|e 4: He ♦ ](e 
 
 " It matters not how strait the gate, 
 
 How charged with punishments the scroll, 
 I am the master of my fate : 
 I am the captain of my soul." 
 
IX 
 
 How the Forgotten Past May Contribute 
 to Our Future Success 
 
 ACCOMPLISHMENT is not the achievement 
 solely of the present. Victory is never the 
 product of the moment. The forgotten past 
 repeatedly contributes to our future success. Seek- 
 ing again a Scriptural embodiment for our thought, 
 as we steadily have been doing, there comes to mind 
 an incident in David's hfe. When he defeated 
 Goliath, he drew the fallen giant's own sword from 
 its sheath, and with it he cut off his prostrate enemy's 
 head. He thereupon carefully laid the weapon away 
 as a kind of sacred trophy. He seems afterwards to 
 have forgotten all about it, and where it was. But 
 there came a crisis in his hfe, when it unexpectedly 
 came forth to his help. 
 
 He was fleeing from King Saul, who had deter- 
 mined upon his death. He fled from the enraged 
 monarch in such haste that there was no time to get 
 any armour. He was absolutely defenseless. In his 
 flight he arrived at Nob so hungry that the priest 
 there was induced to give him some of the holy 
 shew-bread. With his appetite satisfied he next in- 
 quired of the friendly priest if there was not lying 
 
 ii6 
 
The Forgotten Past 117 
 
 about an unused weapon which he might have, and 
 the reply was that there was nothing except Gohath's 
 sword, which the refugee himself had in the past 
 taken from the giant, and which was kept sacredly 
 wrapped up as a precious memorial of a signal tri- 
 umph. That information brought from David the 
 well-known words, " There is none like that ; give it 
 me." He had forgotten all about the weapon having 
 been laid up, and he certainly had never expected to 
 use it again, but here in an emergency it, so to speak, 
 sprang to his need from its scabbard behind the ephod 
 where it had long lain. That is just the thing, said 
 the warrior, as if in recogniton of an old friend. In 
 every conquest of ours there is laid up that which 
 may for a while sink out of memory, but which 
 at some time or another serves our purpose again, 
 coming in unexpectedly to fortify us when we are 
 in the midst of peril. So that each triumph helps us 
 sooner or later some other to win. 
 
 I. First, this truth applies along natural lines. 
 The Northmen, for instance, would never have 
 spread the fame of their name so widely had they 
 not long inured themselves to the hardships of the 
 sea. Steadily they built up their naval power, ven- 
 turing farther and farther over the ocean wilds, each 
 voyage helping them in another of wider sweep. 
 And therefore more than a thousand years ago 
 Charlemagne, looking out over the blue Mediter- 
 ranean and seeing their galleys gliding over its sur- 
 
1 18 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 face, is said to have wept, because he saw in these 
 alien but enterprising people coming from afar a 
 spirit of conquest, which was ominous for his de- 
 scendants. And he was right in his forecast of the 
 future from what he saw in his day. Those sea 
 kings, or Northmen, did afterwards establish them- 
 selves in the realm of his successors, in northern 
 France which accordingly was named Normandy. 
 Our proud English ancestors were compelled to pass 
 under their yoke. Canute, who sat on the beach at 
 Southampton and pretended to order back the rising 
 tide, was a Danish before he was an English king. 
 He sat conqueror of England if not of the Ocean. 
 
 Then there was the Norman Conquest nearly a 
 century later, when the celebrated battle of Hastings 
 was fought. Who gained that victory over the Eng- 
 lish? William of Normandy, whose ancestor was 
 Rollo, the sea king who came from the same north 
 country. These people likewise discovered America 
 500 years before Columbus did. Why all this splen- 
 did history ? Because each victory was followed up 
 by another, each advantage gained stimulated to new 
 effort. The whole was the result of a steadily cumu- 
 lative process. The sword, with which one giant's 
 head was severed, though laid aside it may be for a 
 while, came into play for the overcoming of another 
 Goliath. There was a subtle, though sometimes 
 unrecognized, connection between each brilliant 
 achievement and the humbler triumphs of the past. 
 
The Forgotten Past 1 19 
 
 Every voyager, availing himself of the knowledge 
 and experience of his predecessor, must have said 
 for substance, " There is nothing like that," while he 
 swept out beyond the point already reached. 
 
 Take again nature laying up its coal formations. 
 The rank vegetation that once luxuriated over 
 swampy continents was practically forgotten. It lay 
 buried beneath the accumulation of ages, but in the 
 economy of the universe there came a period when 
 fuel seemed likely to fail unless reserves were tapped. 
 Unnumbered forests had been felled, the wood supply 
 was becoming less and less, while with railroads and 
 blast furnaces and immense factories in operation the 
 demands were becoming enormously larger. As the 
 need became increasingly urgent, suddenly there was 
 revealed the hidden coal that centuries ago had been 
 stored up, and the world cried, " There is none like 
 that, give it me." Thereupon a mighty impetus was 
 given to the progress of mankind in the development 
 of material resources, which place this age far in ad- 
 vance of all the ages that have preceded. 
 
 The same principle operates in the growth of the 
 physical man. A youth resolves to refrain from all 
 sinful and even merely hurtful excesses. He ad- 
 mires young Hercules, who as a child falling asleep 
 was awaked by two serpents, which, according to 
 the classical story, glided into the room, " twisted 
 their long coils round the cradle, and peered upon 
 him with their cold, glassy eyes," while he grasped 
 
1 20 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 the hissing creatures by their necks and choked them 
 to death. The young person to-day, who wishes to 
 become a Hercules in strength of character and in 
 power of achievement, destroys at once that which 
 at last biteth hke a serpent and stingeth Hke an 
 adder. He avoids every harmful bodily indulgence 
 whereby disease is fastened upon more than one who 
 goes into a mysterious decline, and who early falls a 
 victim of his own sinful folly. Let one from the be- 
 ginning keep absolutely free from the vices indicated, 
 and from others that are similar, and he finds himself 
 better equipped to fight life's battles. He may be 
 brought down with sickness, but the doctor says that 
 he has a good constitution which he can call to his 
 help, and he responds, *' Sure enough, there is noth- 
 ing like that," and by the aid of an unimpaired 
 physical organism he rallies and recovers, when 
 another debilitated by habits which are too common 
 goes down. 
 
 Or, he sees a fine opening for business, if only he 
 had anything to invest. Has he accumulated the 
 necessary funds ? He looks over his bank account, 
 the savings of years, and yet only the equivalent of 
 what others have wasted on foolish indulgences, and 
 with a great leap of heart he says, " It is sufficient, 
 there is none like that, give it me." He thus be- 
 comes a man of means and of influence and of char- 
 acter, while others fritter away all these. No victory 
 over sin and self is lost, there is invariably laid up a 
 
The Forgotten Past 121 
 
 Goliath's sword, which may temporarily pass out of 
 mind, but which in time of need proves a most useful 
 weapon. Every sin against the body is so much 
 spiritual impairment also, and every conquest over 
 what Paul calls the flesh brings a fresh increment of 
 power for other conflicts that are sure to follow.'^ 
 
 2. A second apphcation of the truth under con- 
 sideration may be made to the intellectual life. The 
 sentiment of the young should ever be, We ought to 
 do our best along mental lines, and we will seek the 
 best equipment possible in this respect, with the as- 
 surance that the improvement of present opportu- 
 nities will not be lost, however bHnd we may be now 
 to the future availabiUty of the knowledge and dis- 
 cipline received. There is sometimes an outcry at 
 the uselessness of studies that are disliked. They 
 will never be of any practical value, we say. We 
 carry this rebellious spirit even into college, where 
 we ought to know better. We will burn " Conic 
 Sections," or we will bury Greek to show the con- 
 tempt in which we hold the mastering of this lan- 
 guage. But not infrequently what is acquired as 
 part of a regular curriculum or in the course of the 
 ordinary pursuit of knowledge, does come into unex- 
 pected and very practical use. 
 
 Prescott on hearing Ticknor give some lectures on 
 Spanish Hterature was thereby influenced to study 
 the Spanish tongue. The fruitful result of this he 
 did not anticipate at the time, but he was thus intro- 
 
122 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 duced to historic researches, which led up to the 
 production of his memorable works, " Ferdinand and 
 Isabella," " The Conquest of Mexico," and " Philip 
 the Second." When he wished to satisfy himself on 
 some controverted point in history, how gladly he 
 must have said. Here is where my knowledge of 
 Spanish gained as a pastime or as a study of youth 
 comes in to help me. As he consulted the archives 
 of libraries in Spain, he would recall his Spanish with 
 the exultant remark, «' There is none like that ; give 
 it me," while he accomplished what he could not 
 have done with his English alone. But even if our 
 mental training does not always issue in anything 
 practical, it gives us a discipline which is invaluable. 
 The young person, who can hold himself firmly to a 
 distasteful study till he masters the same, who is de- 
 termined to stand high or at least creditably in his 
 school, acquires a trait which will put him well to 
 the front in the general world. Caesar in crossing 
 the Alps and in passing a small village of barbarians 
 remarked, " For my part, I would rather be the first 
 man among these fellows than to be second in 
 Rome," and it was because he did become first in 
 Gaul that he was enabled subsequently to take the 
 same position in the imperial city on the Tiber, 
 whence he ruled the whole Roman Empire. 
 
 There is rarely any such thing as genius in the 
 common understanding of that term, for genius gen- 
 erally is only hard labour, it is, as Edison has said, 
 
The Forgotten Past 1 23 
 
 ninety-nine per cent, perspiration and only one per 
 cent, inspiration, it is indomitable perseverance, mak- 
 ing each victory count for another, utiHzing past 
 achievements for future triumphs. Daniel Webster 
 himself, whose fine periods are often thought of as 
 purely spontaneous and extemporaneous, elaborated 
 them with great care, and wrote them out, or laid 
 them up in memory, for use when they could be 
 worked into one of his magnificent orations with ap- 
 propriateness. That glowing sentence, which we 
 have all admired, about England's drum-beat follow- 
 ing the sun around the globe, this was studied and 
 pruned till it assumed its present perfect shape. 
 
 Noah Webster, who brought out his ♦' American 
 Dictionary of the English Language," laboured for 
 twenty years before he saw it completed. Naturally 
 he trembled with excitement, on his own confession, 
 when what has formed the groundwork of every 
 Webster issued since was finished, when he wrote the 
 last word. How did he build up that massive book ? 
 Word by word, making use of each bit of informa- 
 tion gained to carry the work forward to completion. 
 
 The Elder Pliny, who perished in that eruption of 
 Vesuvius which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in 
 79 A. D., who became a great naturalist, and who was 
 a voluminous writer, succeeded only by the utmost 
 diligence. He was so industrious that at his meals 
 he had a book read to him, and when one day a 
 friend stopped the reader, who inadvertently had 
 
124 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 mispronounced a word, and who was asked to correct 
 the same, Pliny asked the person interrupting, '' Did 
 you not understand the word ? " When the reply 
 was in the affirmative, the reproof was, " Why then 
 did you stop him ? We have lost more than ten 
 lines by this interruption." Pliny's genius was only 
 a most diligent use of time. 
 
 Agassiz in our day rose to fame by the same ap- 
 plication, step by step gaining his scientific lore. In 
 proof of this we need only cite his conduct at a cer- 
 tain time when he could not use his eyes, which had 
 been weakened by his unremitting studies. He had 
 to remain in a darkened room, but he continued his 
 work upon fossils by the use of his hands, and when 
 his fingers lost their sensitiveness, he applied his 
 tongue so as to determine all the lines that were so 
 delicate. 
 
 So that the youth in school, and the man in business, 
 and every one in his work needs to learn that applica- 
 tion is what counts. Every time we cut off a giant's 
 head we lay up a Goliath's sword, which temporarily 
 may be a forgotten weapon, but of which we will 
 some day say, ♦' There is none like that ; give it me." 
 We should value the strength laid up in the mastery 
 of every task as it comes to hand. For the time 
 being we may not seem to be accomplishing any- 
 thing, while yet we are. It is a suggestive picture 
 which Mary Lamb gives of her literary brother 
 Charles. She says that they both wrote at the same 
 
The Forgotten Past 125 
 
 table, and she represents him " groaning all the while 
 and saying he can make nothing of it, which he al- 
 ways says till he has finished, and then he finds out 
 he has made something of it." Of course he did, or 
 we would not now have his inimitable essays whose 
 reading is our delectation. The young, therefore, 
 should make the most of their opportunities for im- 
 proving the mind, since every mental acquisition will 
 rise up in the future to bless them in the greater 
 things they will be enabled to accomplish. God re- 
 quires of them a right use of their time and talents, 
 and they themselves will yet regret any failure to 
 make the most of their early days. On the contrary, 
 with faithfulness in youth they will be able to sum- 
 mon every mental acquirement to their aid in making 
 a success of life in general. Of the tenacity of pur- 
 pose gained in some intellectual task, of the knowl- 
 edge acquired that will be serviceable, of the disci- 
 pline which a stern application gave them, of every 
 such acquirement, they will be able to say. That is 
 just what we have needed time and again in hfe, 
 when God was summoning us to do our best. 
 
 3. Once more, there is a distinctively religious 
 view to be taken of this matter. Each time we go 
 to church as reverent hearers and worshippers, there 
 is put into our character a new element of strength. 
 We are unconsciously fortified as against the day of 
 temptation and trial. We cannot listen to the range 
 of elevated topics discussed in the pulpit from week 
 
126 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 to week for a succession of years without gaining 
 much that is valuable. Supposing one is found in 
 the sanctuary every Sunday from the age of ten to 
 thirty. That would make twenty years of Sabbaths 
 devoted to the culture of the soul, or three full years, 
 or, counting out vacations, four school years, as 
 much time as is spent in college. A single Lord's 
 Day may seem to have no perceptible influence, its 
 lessons may be quite forgotten, but the sum total of 
 religious impressions received is very great, for there 
 is the training of four collegiate years in God's uni- 
 versity. In this way a matchless opportunity is af- 
 forded for becoming acquainted with the Bible, the 
 Book of books. People do not realize what they are 
 missing by neglecting this steady acquiring of Bib- 
 lical knowledge. The acquisition of one Sunday 
 may not be so very noticeable, but multiply this by 
 what can be acquired through a conscientious use of 
 all the Sabbaths in a lifetime, and there is no calcu- 
 lating the benefit that can be derived in enlarged 
 conceptions of Scriptural truth and in a correspond- 
 ing betterment of human lives. Let one use well 
 each passing opportunity, and the cumulative out- 
 come will be most gratifying. 
 
 He can again store his memory with the divine 
 promises by learning a verse each day. A friend of 
 mine had the habit of memorizing a golden text of 
 Scripture, while he was dressing and making his 
 morning toilet. He was Hke Archimedes the great 
 
The Forgotten Past 127 
 
 mathematician of antiquity, who said he could move 
 the world had he a place to rest his lever. When 
 he was taking his bath and was being anointed after 
 the fashion of his day, he used to trace " geometrical 
 figures," " diagrams in the oil on his body." In a 
 similar manner we should be diligent in storing up 
 the promises especially of Holy Writ. The one we 
 learned to-day or next Sabbath may be forgotten for 
 a while, as it lies unused in the memory, but there 
 will come some crisis in Hfe when we will need it, 
 and by some providential association of ideas it will 
 spring to our help in the emergency, as Goliath's 
 sword, laid away in its wrapping, leaped from its 
 scabbard for David when he was caught unarmed, 
 and it will then be appreciated as never before. 
 Such will be the fact with reference to every Scrip- 
 tural truth which we may have acquired by redeem- 
 ing well the time. Every spiritual acquisition that 
 we may make, every giant that we may overcome, 
 will leave in our possession a sword, which may be 
 forgotten when all is tranquillity, but which will be 
 our strong defense in some dire extremity. As 
 surely as bodily strength comes from a continuous 
 observance of hygienic laws, as certainly as mental 
 force is developed by the usual educational processes, 
 so will Christian enlargement follow systematic at- 
 tention given to the religious. 
 
 The conclusion of the whole matter is, that past 
 successes along every line will avail us much in the 
 
128 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 future. We can go still farther and say, Our very 
 failures can be made to serve us, if only we have the 
 grace, the happy faculty, of learning from our mis- 
 takes. We can say with Tennyson : 
 
 ** I hold it truth, with him who sings 
 To one clear harp in divers tones, 
 That men may rise on stepping-stones 
 Of their dead selves to higher things." 
 
X 
 
 The Ministry of Angels 
 
 « T^ Y the help of Almighty God " is a truth of 
 ■"■^ which almost every man, however self-reli- 
 -■— ^ ant, acknowledges the need. But as to one 
 phase of this assistance by divine grace, namely, 
 through ministering angels, he is not so very clear. 
 Practically he does not count much on any reinforce- 
 ment from unseen spiritual sources of this kind. To 
 be sure, he reads in his Bible this question, "Are 
 they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do serv- 
 ice for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation ? " 
 He, however, is inclined to relegate to the realm of 
 the fanciful the teaching that seems to be implied in 
 the Scriptural interrogatory. Indeed in this matter 
 he often is utterly sceptical. 
 
 I. Our discussion will first proceed from a gen- 
 eral standpoint. Formerly, angels both bad and 
 good were recognized as sustaining a close and act- 
 ive relation to this world. The stars were thought 
 to be moved in their orbits by them, and all natural 
 phenomena were attributed to the same superhuman 
 agency. This has led the rationalist to consider 
 them only poetical personifications of the forces of 
 nature. Nor was it in the natural realm alone that 
 
 129 
 
130 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 they were supposed to act. They were likewise be- 
 lieved to be instrumental in shaping human history 
 and in ordering daily events, and it depended upon 
 the sort of result whether the moving spirit was bad or 
 good, although the evil angels were more frequently 
 called demons or devils. Luther said : " Let no man 
 doubt when a fire breaks out which consumes a vil- 
 lage or a house, that a little devil is sitting there 
 blowing the fire to make it greater." 
 
 Witchcraft, which the most intelligent persons two 
 and three centuries ago accepted as real, was this evil 
 angelic influence. The conservative Dr. Charles 
 Hodge of Princeton has told us that " the most en- 
 lightened men of Europe " gave credence to it in the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thousands 
 were put to the most cruel deaths because they were 
 regarded as being in league with evil spirits or bad 
 angels. The execution at Salem, Massachusetts, of 
 nineteen persons on this account will ever stand out 
 in history as the culmination of the long and ghastly 
 tragedy. Those were times when the very atmos- 
 phere was peopled with spirits, and nothing was done 
 without their agency, and good angels and bad were 
 everywhere present. Their influence was vastly ex- 
 aggerated. God was crowded out of the universe by 
 the innumerable divinities and demons. The former 
 were worshipped, and the latter were feared. Angel- 
 worship and witchcraft, both of which the Bible con- 
 demns, became prevalent even in the Church. 
 
The Ministry of Angels 131 
 
 Then came a mighty reaction. The spirituahstic 
 bent of mind was followed by the materialistic. We 
 are disposed to laugh at the hobgoblins of the past, 
 at Shakespeare's creation of the witch Ariel, which 
 he made 
 
 ** To run upon the sharp wind of the north." 
 
 We are inclined to resolve everything into natural 
 force. We have become very Sadducees, saying 
 with them that there is " neither angel, nor spirit." 
 To this position the extravagances and foUies of mod- 
 ern Spiritualism have assisted in driving our minds. 
 For one reason and another we have drifted away 
 from the doctrine of the Scriptures, which teach us 
 that we " wrestle not against flesh and blood," but 
 " against the spiritual hosts of wickedness ; " not 
 against the human but against the superhuman, 
 against hosts which march and countermarch in the 
 air above us, making onslaughts on the soul from 
 time to time. What are the mysterious and some- 
 times unaccountable uprisings of evil within us but 
 suggestions whispered to us by malignant spirits 
 about us, marshalled and led on by him who is called 
 by an apostle " the prince of the power of the air " ? 
 We are surrounded by an atmosphere, which is a 
 vehicle of communication, and through this medium 
 would seem to be communicated to us by the prince 
 of the air and his legions sinful thoughts and desires. 
 Such certainly appears to be the representation of 
 
132 The Modem Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 Holy Writ, that evil spirits, bad angels, are all around 
 us to tempt the soul. In this materialistic age it is 
 well to get back to Scriptural ground, although this 
 does not mean the extreme of two and three centuries 
 ago, when the devils seemed to receive more atten- 
 tion and to have more power than God Himself. 
 Moreover, while evil spirits thus approach us, good 
 angels Hkewise come, with noble suggestions. Why- 
 do holy aspirations and promptings to the right at 
 times rise so strangely and as it were unbidden in 
 our hearts ? God may have sent His angels forth to 
 stir within us just such feelings, to do precisely this 
 service for us who are heirs of salvation. This is a 
 truth, which should bring consolation to us, but with 
 our materialistic tendency and trend of thought, and 
 in the tremendous reaction from the angel-worship 
 of some, we have ruled angels almost if not alto- 
 gether out of our creed. If their agency occurs at 
 all to our minds, it is with no positive comfort. We 
 are as uncertain as the venerable but doubting Dr. 
 Archibald Alexander, who in prayer is said to have 
 used this expression, " We thank Thee, O Lord, for 
 the ministry of angels — probably." Their blessed 
 ministry, however, would seem to be not only a 
 probability, but a Scriptural certainty. We can con- 
 sistently come to the position of Bishop Phillips 
 Brooks, who lamented that belief had faded away " in 
 a universe all full of unseen forces." He thought 
 that the absurdities of witchcraft and the like had 
 
The Ministry of Angels 133 
 
 caused this. " When men can get rid of the para- 
 phernalia of ghost stories and the false supernatural," 
 he once said, " I do beheve that we shall see a great 
 restoral of healthy behef in spiritual presences," and 
 \ he preached a sermon with the title, " Unseen Spiri- 
 tual Helpers." 
 
 2. We will now turn to various specific teachings 
 of Holy Writ. Our appeal will be '• To the law and 
 the testimony," for we must move carefully here, not 
 along the lines of reason, but of inspiration and of 
 positive revelation. Note, for instance, what Christ's 
 experience was. When He was tempted in the wil- 
 derness among the wild beasts, when He fasted till 
 He was weak and faint from hunger, when after His 
 intense spiritual conflict He realized the nervous 
 drain that had been made upon every fiber of His 
 being, who at that critical moment " came and min- 
 istered unto Him " ? His mother, the tenderly sym- 
 pathetic Mary? No. John, who had but recently 
 baptized Him for His great work? No. Who, 
 then ? " Angels," says the record. When at the 
 midnight hour He went out to the garden of Geth- 
 semane, when He kneeled in prayer under the 
 shadow of the olive tree whose gray leaves glittered 
 in the moonlight, when in His agony there started 
 from every pore of His body, not the cold sweat of 
 approaching death, but the red perspiration of re- 
 deeming blood, who appeared in the midst of that 
 amazing scene " strengthening Him " ? The dis- 
 
134 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 ciples ? No, He had left most of them at the en- 
 trance to the garden, where they were to stay while 
 He went to pray some distance beyond. But He 
 took with Him farther on Peter, James and John, 
 and they must have been with Him to strengthen 
 Him ; were they ? On the contrary, they had fallen 
 asleep. Who did go to Him with sustaining influ- 
 ence ? "An angel from heaven," is what we read 
 in the sacred narrative. In the life of Christ, there- 
 fore, we do have the ministry of angels. But He 
 was God, is a very natural demurrer that is entered, 
 He moved amid the celestial in a way we do not. 
 The miraculous entered into His experience, and the 
 day of miracles, according to the beHef of most, is 
 past. That is granted, but the day of angelic minis- 
 tration has not gone. 
 
 We are taught by Paul in his first epistle to the 
 Corinthians that angels are present when believers 
 are met for worship. He exhorted the Christian 
 women of Corinth to appear veiled in the public as- 
 sembly, to observe the proprieties of the time ; why ? 
 " Because of the angels," are his exact words. Hence 
 Chrysostom in commenting on this says, " Knowest 
 thou not that thou standest with angels ? With them 
 thou singest, with them thou praisest ; and wilt thou 
 stand laughing ? " This distinguished Greek preacher 
 of the fourth century urged proper decorum in the 
 house of God on the same ground that Paul of the 
 first century urged it, namely, because the holy 
 
The Ministry of Angels 135 
 
 angels were present. Theodoret and others anciently, 
 and Alford and others more recently, give this same 
 interpretation. Those bright beings from above are 
 all about us in a church service ; *' the whole air is full 
 of them/' as said the golden-mouthed orator of old. 
 
 Nor are they with us simply when we are gathered 
 together. The Master said, " See that ye despise 
 not one of these httle ones ; for I say unto you, that 
 in heaven their angels do always behold the face of 
 my Father." That is, by these messengers they 
 have ready access to^ and they have great influence 
 with God, and they are not therefore to be lightly 
 esteemed. The reference apparently is, not only to 
 children literally, but to all disciples, who are Christ's 
 little ones, and the intimation here as elsewhere 
 would seem to be that Christians have guardian 
 angels. They guard possibly against accident and 
 danger. Doddridge once dreamed that he had gone 
 to heaven. He was ushered into a room, where soon 
 he noticed that depicted on the walls were scenes in 
 his life from the cradle to the grave. One picture 
 was that of himself falling from a horse, and that had 
 actually occurred on earth. At the time it was a 
 complete mystery to him and everybody why he was 
 not crushed, and how he could have escaped with his 
 life. Now the secret was disclosed. The picture 
 showed an angel keeping the horse from falling di- 
 rectly and with full weight upon the thrown rider. 
 This may not have been all a dream; it could 
 
136 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 easily have represented a fact, for are there not guard- 
 ian angels ? Says the Psalmist, " He will give his 
 angels charge over thee." 
 
 They are present to help when we are tempted ; 
 they are with us to strengthen in sorrow and in every 
 time of need. How came we successfully to resist 
 such and such a temptation ? We almost yielded, but 
 we did not ; why ? Because a good angel whispered 
 to us a better purpose. Or in the presence of death, 
 we were on our knees in a very agony of prayer, 
 and it seemed as if we could not possibly drink the 
 cup pressed to our hps, but suddenly we felt recon- 
 ciled, and we " could say with a quiet resignation, 
 " Not my will, but thine, be done." Whence came 
 this strength ? Exactly where Christ's came from : 
 " There appeared unto him an angel from heaven, 
 strengthening him." There is where time and 
 again we derive our help, from heavenly visitants. 
 
 Helen Hunt Jackson, author of " Ramona," not 
 only a novelist but a poetess, has said : 
 
 ** Oh, not with any sound they come, or sign, 
 
 Which fleshly ear or eye can recognize; 
 
 No curiosity can compass or surprise 
 The secret of that intercourse divine 
 Which God permits, ordains, across the line, 
 
 The changeless line which bars 
 
 Our earth from other stars. 
 But they do come and go continually. 
 
 Our blessed angels, no less ours than his ; 
 ******* 
 
The Ministry of Angels 137 
 
 Whenever in some bitter grief we find, 
 All unawares, a deep, nnysterious sense 
 Of hidden comfort come, we know not whence ; 
 
 When suddenly we see, where we were blind ; 
 
 Where we had struggled, are content, resigned ; 
 Are strong where we were weak. 
 And no more strive nor seek, — 
 
 Then we may know that from the far glad skies, 
 To note our need, the watchful God has bent, 
 And for our instant help has called and sent, 
 
 Of all our loving angels, the most wise 
 
 And tender one, to point to us where lies 
 The path that will be best. 
 The path of peace and rest." 
 
 The angels do take a deep and very personal interest 
 and part in human struggle and victory. There is 
 joy in their presence, we are taught, over one sinner 
 that repenteth. 
 
 Nor do they sinaply stand afar off and applaud 
 our efforts to do better. They may sweep their 
 golden harps before the throne, they may make 
 heaven's arches ring with their praise, but they also 
 come down to this globe of ours, and speak encour- 
 agement to those who are heirs of salvation. Jacob's 
 ladder still remains, with its foot on earth and its top 
 in the sky, " and behold the angels of God ascending 
 and descending on it," said the matchless teacher. 
 There is free communication between the other world 
 and this, and the procession of radiant messengers on 
 their errands of mercy is never broken. There is good 
 cheer for us here. In the midst of temptation, in 
 
138 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 the midst of trouble, in all the trying emergencies of 
 life, " The angel of the Lord," we are authoritatively 
 assured, " encampeth round about them that fear 
 him, and deUvereth them." The angeUc hosts encir- 
 cle us round and round. Said Spenser long ago of 
 these beings, fairer than his Fairy Queen : 
 
 ** How oft do they their silver bovvers leave, 
 
 To come to succour us that succour want ! 
 
 They for us fight, they watch, and duly ward, 
 And their bright squadrons round about us plant ; 
 And all for love, and nothing for reward ; 
 O, why should heavenly God to men have such regard ! " 
 
 In the great Christian conflict we feel sometimes as 
 if the battle would go against us ; the enemy presses 
 us hard on every side, and threatens to break in upon 
 us at this point and at that, and we are discouraged 
 and disheartened. We forget that the angels are en- 
 camped about us, like line within line of soldiers 
 standing guard. What if we do not see them? 
 They are about us all the same. A clergyman-poet 
 of my acquaintance has written : 
 
 "By every troubled soul some angel stands 
 And stretches forth her gentle, pitying hands." 
 
 Milton himself said : 
 
 ** Millions of spiritual creatures 
 Walk the earth, both when we wake, and when we 
 sleep." 
 
 These are entirely Scriptural conceptions. 
 
The Ministry of Angels 139 
 
 That was an impressive Biblical scene in the career 
 of Elisha. The king of Syria had determined to 
 make the prophet a prisoner. He heard where the 
 man of God was, and in the night when his move- 
 ments could not be detected, he marched his army 
 to the city where Elisha with his servant was sojourn- 
 ing. The servant arose early in the morning, and 
 what was his consternation to find that they were 
 surrounded with a mighty host, with horses and 
 chariots, and in dismay he cried out, What shall we 
 do ? The prophet perfectly calm replied : " Fear 
 not : for they that are with us are more than they 
 that are with them." Then came the climax: " And 
 Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his 
 eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the 
 eyes of the young man ; and he saw ; and, behold, 
 the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire 
 round about Elisha." If our eyes were not " holden," 
 if they were opened, we doubtless would see our- 
 selves encircled by angelic hosts. With our imperfect 
 vision, with our lack of spiritual discernment, we do 
 not actually see the flaming spirits, we walk by faith 
 and not by sight, but their ministrations are none the 
 less real. Sometimes we do feel their subtle touch, 
 and we hear them in the still small voice that speaks 
 to our inner heart. 
 
 A last incident that will be mentioned is connected 
 with the death of Lazarus. He was, we read, " carried 
 away by the angels into Abraham's bosom." That 
 
140 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 pictures a happy termination to the righteous life. 
 It portrays a heavenly escort through the gates of 
 pearl into the streets of gold. It reminds us of Bun- 
 yan's delightful imagery, of his Christian and Hope- 
 ful, who on leaving this world were compassed about, 
 says the dreamer, " round on every side ; some went 
 before, some behind, and some on the right hand, 
 and some on the left (as if to guard them through 
 the upper regions), continually sounding as they 
 went, with melodious noise, in notes on high ; so 
 that the very sight was to them that could behold it 
 as if heaven itself was come down to meet them." 
 With these celestial beings thus attending us through 
 life and up to the very last, we surely can appreciate 
 their service. They will not usurp in our affections 
 the place of the Father and of the Son and of the 
 Holy Spirit, but in their subordinate position, as 
 agents of the divine, they will bring us nearer to God 
 Himself, and our sentiment will be, 
 
 ** Angels to beckon me 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee^ 
 Nearer to Thee." 
 
XI 
 
 The Weaving of Life's Web and the En- 
 graving of Character 
 
 THE greatest problem of all to face is the 
 simple living of the Christian life. In order 
 to this, the average man of to-day is too 
 much impressed with the spectacular. He is not al- 
 together like those of the first century, who wanted 
 a " Lo, here," and a " Lo, there," and who thought 
 the kingdom was to come " by observation," whereas 
 they were divinely taught that it was something 
 " within you," in the heart. Shakespeare does not 
 give the best representation of life when he says : 
 
 *' All the world's a stage, 
 And all the men and women merely players : 
 They have their exits and their entrances." 
 
 Says the same dramatist in another place : 
 
 ** A stage where every man must play a part." 
 
 But the figure of the theatre is not the best that can 
 be used for inciting to right living. One will be 
 more encouraged if he can think of himself not in 
 dramatic but in humbler aspects. A religious life is 
 not a matter of " acting," in the theatrical sense, so 
 
 141 
 
142 The Modem Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 much as of weaving and of engraving. These are 
 Scriptural metaphors, and we are to see their fitness 
 in setting forth the facts. 
 
 I. It is Isaiah who said, " I have rolled up like a 
 weaver my life ; he will cut me off from the loom." 
 In Grecian and Roman literature, in classical story, 
 three Fates were represented as presiding over hu- 
 man destiny. One held a distaff and spun the thread 
 of life, another twirled the spindle or directed all the 
 movements, and the third with shears cut off what 
 had been woven. King Hezekiah is made by Isaiah 
 to give a clearer and truer conception of Hfe, when 
 he compares it to a web which each weaves for him- 
 self, rolling it up as he proceeds, while it remains 
 with God to cut it off. Our concern should be for 
 the make-up of the web. 
 
 We are too inclined to be indulgent with ourselves, 
 to excuse our lapses. We say, We have such mani- 
 fold infirmities, so many inborn weaknesses, that we 
 cannot veiy well help ourselves. We speak apolo- 
 getically of poor, frail human nature, and we call it a 
 bundle of contradictions. We are too easy-going as 
 to the interweaving of evil. With Shakespeare we 
 say rather nonchalantly : 
 
 ** The web of our hfe is of a mingled 
 Yarn, good and ill together." 
 
 The idea is that vice is a necessary complement of 
 virtue, that our life must be a mixture. 
 
The Weaving of Life's Web 143 
 
 Scripture, however, tells us differently. In Leviti- 
 cus we read, *• Neither shall there come upon thee a 
 garment of two kinds of stuff mingled together." In 
 Deuteronomy the command is, " Thou shalt not wear 
 a mingled stuff, wool and linen together." A strange 
 prohibition is that, is it not? What could it have 
 meant ? It must have had some significance in the 
 pictorial religion of the Hebrews. It was one of 
 many Biblical types for the conveyance of truth. It 
 was an exterior representation of something interior. 
 The unmixed garment which was to be worn pictured 
 what our moral robing should be, there should be 
 unmixedness of character. This is only another way 
 of saying that we cannot serve God and Mammon, 
 that saints should be separate from sinners, that 
 there should be a clear line of demarcation between 
 the two. In the web of life should be the pure linen, 
 and no wool, which is of animal origin. There 
 should be spirituality unmingled with carnaHty or 
 worldliness. When Ezekiel would draw a distinction 
 between the holy and the profane, he says of the 
 former, " They shall be clothed with linen garments ; 
 and no wool shall come upon them." Then he adds 
 by way of explanation, " they shall not gird them- 
 selves with anything that causeth sweat." In the 
 sultry climate of the orient, woolen which caused 
 perspiration became a symbol of uncleanness, and 
 therefore was not to be worn. The outer garment 
 was to typify the inner life ; wool and linen were not 
 
144 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 to be interwoven. The web of character was to be 
 kept " unspotted from the world." That this is the 
 truth conveyed is still more manifest from that pas- 
 sage in the Revelation, where the heavenly attire of 
 the bride is described : " And it was given unto her," 
 says the divine John of the purified Church, " that 
 she should array herself in fine Hnen, bright and 
 pure ; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the 
 saints." 
 
 Is our life being woven as exclusively as it should 
 be of righteous acts, or is there a good deal of wool 
 in the web ? Take the simple matter of worship on 
 the Sabbath, and there is not apt to be that single- 
 ness of service which ought to be. " Keep thy foot 
 when thou goest to the house of God," is the Scrip- 
 tural direction. That is, we are to give our mind to 
 what we are going to do. We are to go to the 
 Lord's house on His day with some preparation of 
 heart. We are not to go, if we would get the most 
 possible out of the hour, from the reading of a secu- 
 lar newspaper, our thoughts being all occupied with 
 the things of the world. We are not to go chafed 
 with the cares of the household. We are not to go 
 fretted with business. We are not to go in a soul- 
 sweat because of a spiritual investiture of wool. We 
 are to be arrayed in cool linen, in a religious calm- 
 ness of spirit. 
 
 Our attention is too likely to be distracted in the 
 very temple of God. We sit in the sanctuary itself 
 
The Weaving of Life's Web 145 
 
 and spin out thoughts of a wholly worldly nature, or 
 at any rate our devotions are too much mingled with 
 the things of the earth. On the Sabbath at least we 
 should give our undivided attention to the kingdom, 
 we should seek it first and supremely. How is it 
 with the web we are weaving ? We know that the 
 shuttle is moving very swiftly, and we ought to con- 
 sider very seriously the nature of the garment we 
 are preparing for ourselves, whether its warp and 
 woof are those of the garment of salvation, of the 
 robe of righteousness. We may be weaving a web 
 of *« mingled stuff, wool and linen together," as the 
 inspired writer says, or our web of life may be, as 
 the great dramatist says, " of a mingled yarn, good 
 and ill together." 
 
 Is there this mingled yarn, this mingled stuff in 
 our life ? A poet has said : 
 
 " All day, all night, I can hear the jar 
 Of the loom of life, and near and far 
 It thrills with its deep and muffled sound, 
 As tireless the wheels go always round. 
 
 " Busily, ceaselessly goes the loom, 
 In the light of day and midnight gloom. 
 The wheels are turning early and late. 
 And the woof is wound in the warp of fate. 
 
 '* Click, clack ! there's a thread of love wove in : 
 Click, clack ! another of wrong and sin ! 
 What a checkered thing this life will be 
 When we see it unrolled in eteriity ! " 
 
146 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 Are there in our life these commingling, opposing 
 elements ? Does our character show such an ad- 
 mixture of traits ? People would cherish the Chris- 
 tian hope, while yet they acknowledge that they are 
 not doing just right in some respects. They are neg- 
 lecting little duties, they are committing what seem 
 to be trivial sins. But Jude speaks of "hating even 
 the garment spotted by the flesh." We should seek 
 to have upon us no marks or stains even of sin. We 
 should avoid the very appearance of evil, making our 
 life as nearly perfect as possible. 
 
 There are many mperfect places in the web that 
 is being rolled up, and that ultimately is to be cut 
 off. Here is a sin of omission, and there another of 
 commission. Here is a secret thought which was 
 evil, and there is a spoken word which ought to have 
 been left unsaid. None of these is lost, being rolled 
 up in the past. The record that is unrepented of 
 cannot be changed. Pilate was uttering a great and 
 melancholy truth when he said of a requested alter- 
 ation in the inscription over the cross, " What I have 
 written I have written." He would have been glad 
 afterwards to have had all of his unhappy connection 
 with the crucifixion effaced, but there it was, part of 
 his life as a Roman governor, and history still repeats 
 in the words of the creed, " suffered under Pontius Pi- 
 late." There is no getting away from that damning 
 record. It has survived through nineteen centuries, 
 and eternity cannot blot it out. We think that our 
 
The Weaving of Life's Web 147 
 
 unforgiven sins will be forgotten, do we? They 
 never can be, they are woven into the warp and woof 
 of our character. Those of a year or of five years 
 ago may be turned in out of sight, but the web is to 
 be cut off and unrolled some day. After death is 
 the judgment, when there shall be disclosed " every 
 hidden thing, whether it be good or whether it be 
 evil." The books of human destiny are to be 
 opened, and all that has been written is to be 
 read. We are to be judged for the deeds done 
 in the body. The thoughts and intents of the 
 heart are to be discerned, and all things are to be 
 «' laid open before the eyes of him with whom we 
 have to do." The web of our entire Hfe is to be un- 
 rolled for the inspection of the Judge. 
 
 Such considerations should lead us to endeavour 
 to keep out all admixture of wool, and to weave in 
 only the pure linen, saying with a certain poetess : 
 
 "I will weave it fine, I will weave it fair; 
 And ah ! how the colours will glow, said she ; 
 So fadeless and strong, I will weave my web. 
 That perhaps it may live when I am dead." 
 
 Their works do follow those who die in the Lord, 
 who have lived a good life, and in view of the judg- 
 ment to come, of the minute examination to be made 
 of the warp and woof of our whole life, we should be 
 as intent upon working out our salvation as Archi- 
 nQe4es was in solving his mathematical problem. He 
 
148 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 was so absorbed in this that he did not know when 
 the city of his nativity was taken by the Romans. 
 When the threatening sword was raised above his 
 head, he only asked the soldier, says Plutarch, " to 
 hold his hand a little while, that he might not leave 
 what he was then at work upon inconclusive and im- 
 perfect." All the same he was cut off before he had 
 finished his problem. We should settle the question 
 of what constitutes right living and of our eternal 
 destiny before we are summoned hence. We should 
 not be in the midst of that great problem, What shall 
 it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 
 his soul ? We should have been working that out ^ 
 all through life, if we would be found at last with the 
 wedding garment on, in that spiritual vestment, in 
 that religious character, growing out of years of trust 
 and prayer and activity. Then shall we be among 
 those of whom it is said, " Which did not defile their 
 garments, and they shall walk with me in white." 
 The unrolling of the web of life in that event will 
 give us only satisfaction, for it will be all that it 
 should be, it will be washed white. The loom will 
 stop running, because the web will be complete, like 
 Christ's robe, which, says John, " was without seam, 
 woven from the top throughout." With such a 
 glorious result attained, the movement of the weav- 
 er's shuttle will cease naturally, and one will come to 
 his end like him of whom Dryden sings so charm- 
 ingly : 
 
The Weaving of Life's Web 149 
 
 ** Till, like a clock worn out with eating time, 
 The wheels of weary life at last stood still." 
 
 Even though trying experiences may be ours, the 
 patterns woven need not be dark. On the contrary, 
 they can even then gleam with bright hnes, provided 
 only that we heed the divine summons : ** See, saith 
 he, that thou make all things according to the pat- 
 tern that was showed thee in the mount." The 
 truthfulness of Jean Ingelow's lines will then appear : 
 
 " Your life is one, and in its warp and woof 
 There runs a thread of gold that glitters fair, 
 And sometimes in the pattern shows most sweet 
 Where there are somber colours." 
 
 2. We said in the beginning that life finds illus- 
 tration not only in weaving, but also in engraving. 
 This, too, gives a different and a more satisfactory 
 representation of Christian hving than that of any 
 dramatic " acting " on our miniature stage. We 
 speak of the shaping of character, which is from a 
 Greek word meaning " to engrave." This brings in 
 the divine agency. Haggai portrays God as saying 
 of His servant, " and will make thee as a signet." 
 Anciently the signet was of great value and impor- 
 tance. It often contained, with other devices per- 
 haps, the name of the owner. Instead of subscribing 
 with pen and ink, the custom used to be to affix 
 one's seal. This instrument in a modified form is 
 still employed in legal transactions and in matters of 
 
1 50 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 state. The Seal of the County, or of the Common- 
 wealth, or of the Country, is supposed to add binding 
 force to the conveyance of property, or to the procla- 
 mation of a ruler. Kings of old had their seals, which 
 gave the stamp of authority wherever impressed. 
 Private citizens even had their signets, by which le- 
 gality was imparted to any document that might be 
 stamped. 
 
 What was thus universally used, and not excep- 
 tionally as now, meant a great deal more than it does 
 at present. It was worn every day, suspended from 
 the neck or arm, or set in a ring upon the finger. 
 The pledge asked of Judah in patriarchal times was, 
 Give me thy signet and thy cord ; that is, the seal 
 which he carried, and which hung from his person 
 by a cord. The proud trophy sent to Carthage by 
 Hannibal, after the great victory of Cannae, was said 
 to have been three bushels of rings gathered from 
 the Romans he had slain. He had taken from the 
 dead bodies the precious signet rings, which adorned 
 the knightly hands of those who had fought their last 
 battle. An Englishman of to-day congratulates him- 
 self upon being the fortunate possessor of the well- 
 authenticated signet ring of Cheops, the builder of 
 the Great Pyramid six thousand years ago. The one 
 hundred thousand men, who are said to have wrought 
 for years upon that prodigious pile which rose to the 
 height of nearly five hundred feet and covered an area 
 of about thirteen acres, probably felt the full force of 
 
The Weaving of Life's Web 151 
 
 commands issued to them under the seal of that httle 
 finger ornament. 
 
 The signet, therefore, was something which was 
 most valuable. It accordingly was made very early 
 out of the most costly stones, engraved with all the 
 skill of a perfected art in this respect. Of the exceed- 
 ingly nice work done upon the breastplate of Aaron, 
 it is said that the twelve precious stones, which ght- 
 tered and flashed thereon, were engraved " like the 
 engravings of a signet." That indicates the exquisite 
 fineness of the workmanship. On emerald, amethyst, 
 and diamond, and upon nine other precious stones 
 were engraved the names, one by one, of the twelve 
 tribes, which the High Priest was thus represented 
 as bearing *' upon his heart," when he appeared before 
 God. 
 
 Now the soul is God's signet. When saved. He 
 delights in it as in a precious stone, which has been 
 cut and polished. He wears it, so to speak, upon His 
 person, upon His arm, upon His hand, or upon His 
 neck as it Hes near His heart. Hence the significance 
 of the prayer in the Song of Solomon, " Set me as a 
 seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm," while 
 in the prophet Jeremiah God speaks of one being a 
 "signet upon my right hand." It is saved souls 
 which thus shine and sparkle, and it is these which 
 constitute the Lord's precious jewels, His " peculiar 
 treasure." Of an ancient orator, who rivalled De- 
 mosthenes in eloquence, and who surpassed him in 
 
152 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 character, his wife once spoke with special admira- 
 tion. A visitor, says the historian, having " showed 
 her all her rich ornaments, made of gold and set with 
 jewels, her wreaths, necklaces, and the like," this re- 
 sponse was called forth : " For my part, all my orna- 
 ment is my husband, Phocion." But God antedated 
 this beautiful thought when He said of a servant of 
 His, " and will make thee as a signet." 
 
 Like the precious stone therein, the soul at the 
 outset is found in the rough, and it has to be cut and 
 polished. Take a diamond of the first water, which 
 looks so much like a drop of clear spring water, and 
 in the state of nature it is a comparatively rough 
 pebble. It has to be subjected to the lapidary's art 
 before it attains its lustrous beauty. So must the 
 emerald and ruby and all the stones of their class. 
 There must be scientific cleavages made. The various 
 angles must be gotten just right. Revolving wheel 
 and emery powder must do service to give the final 
 finish. Months of labour, and sometimes two whole 
 years of work, are expended upon a single diamond. 
 
 Before the soul can flash as God's signet, it must 
 be brought out of the rough state of nature. It must 
 be subjected to wondrous processes of grace. There 
 is required, for instance, some deep cleavage of con- 
 viction. The defects caused by sin need to be cleared 
 away. In order to this, the great Artist cuts straight 
 into it with the sharp truth of His Word. He says, 
 Thou hast sinned in deed, word, and thought. With 
 
The Weaving of Life's Web 153 
 
 this discerning of the very intents of the heart, there 
 is that which is " sharper than any two-edged sword, 
 and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit." 
 The whole being sometimes seems to be rent through 
 and through by the awful consciousness of guilt. 
 One feels his essential meanness, his great unworthi- 
 ness. He is cut to the heart because of his manifold 
 sins, and he longs to come into the beauty of Christ- 
 like character. One of God's methods for preparing 
 a soul to be His signet is by the cleavage which 
 comes from conviction of sin. 
 
 There is also in human life what corresponds to 
 the lapidary's wheel. There is many a turn of vary- 
 ing fortune ; sometimes one is on the top, and again 
 he is rolled under. He is prosperous, and then he 
 meets with adversity. He is in the full flush of suc- 
 cess, and again he knows what financial stringency 
 is. It is the great Artist's wheel whirhng him 
 through the different experiences needful to develop 
 the best character. God thus tries to make the life 
 religious. Or He brings affliction and sorrow, which 
 are like the fine emery powder, grinding upon the 
 sensitive heart. A divine purpose is thereby an- 
 swered. The perfectly smooth surface of a polished 
 stone sonietimes has to be roughened a bit, that 
 definite lines and impressions may be made thereon. 
 The soul, that has been roughened by the abrasion of 
 trouble, is better fitted to receive the delicate engrav- 
 ings of God in what are called spiritual impressions. 
 
154 ^^^ Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 In these several ways does God take a soul in 
 rough, in a state of nature, and by the disciplinary, 
 and by transmutations of grace, He makes it an en- 
 graved stone, fit to be worn as an ornament on His 
 own hand. One can be brought after this fashion 
 to shine to the glory of God. While perhaps adorn- 
 ing in a way society, there should be a distinctly 
 Christian setting. 
 
 The empress of Russia wears a diamond, which is 
 said long to have served as one of the eyes of a pagan 
 idol. A person may be shining from some worldly 
 standpoint, the eye of some idol, when he could be 
 flashing with splendour, with bright religious char- 
 acter, as one of the great King's jewels. He was 
 not created to remain in the dullness and imperfec- 
 tion of his natural state, but to be developed by the 
 skill of the divine Artist into a bright ornament. In 
 other words, he should become a shining light, a 
 Christian radiating brightness, like a signet in which 
 the owner takes infinite delight. Every conviction 
 of sin, every reverse of fortune, every infliction of 
 trouble, is designed to bring out the full beauty of 
 the stone. Afflicted Zion is represented by Isaiah 
 as saying that she was forsaken of God, who how- 
 ever assures her, " Behold, I have graven thee upon 
 the palms of my hands," and *' I will lay thy stones 
 with fair colours." 
 
 The signet, however, is to be useful as well as or- 
 namental, serviceable to others as v/ell as beautiful in 
 
The Weaving of Life's Web 155 
 
 itself. It was designed originally to seal, to make an 
 impression. It is not sufficient to become simply- 
 professed Christians. Counterfeits are made of all 
 the precious stones. There are regular manufactories 
 of artificial gems, and the imitations cannot be readily 
 detected, cannot easily be distinguished from the 
 genuine, except by an adept. In the ring, in the 
 circle of disciples constituting the Christian Church, 
 are the real stones and also the artificial, are genuine 
 and also counterfeit Christians. They seem to be of 
 about equal briUiancy, but God sees the difference, 
 and we can by close observation. The professed be- 
 liever merely does no work, he is not living his re- 
 ligion, he is making no impress on others. He is 
 not acting as a seal upon God's hand to make upon 
 plastic natures religious impressions. He is not mak- 
 ing others feel his Christianity, he is not living in 
 such a manner that his acquaintances are taking 
 knowledge of him that he has been with Jesus. 
 
 There are impressible natures, which we can in- 
 fluence, if we have real Christian character, if we are 
 God's signet and not an artificial gem, if we are the 
 Revelator's " white stone " whereon is written the 
 " new name." We do not have to be any particular 
 stone to act as a seal upon others. We may not be 
 a " brilliant," a diamond, we may not have shining 
 ability, we may not have resplendent talent, but we 
 can be some one of the twelve gems, by which the 
 different qualities of the twelve tribes were indicated. 
 
156 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 We can do something for the Master. There is 
 some one, over whom we can exert an influence for 
 good, and upon whom we can place the stamp of our 
 consecrated personaHty. We should endeavour to 
 be the very diamond, with its cutting power and its 
 flashing radiance, or if not that, some other stone 
 such as He can use more or less effectively. God 
 stands ready to make each of us just such an instru- 
 mentality for good, taking us in the rough and mak- 
 ing us Christlike, and then using us to impress others 
 religiously. He will not only bring out in us the 
 perfected beauty of the precious stone, but He will 
 give the Christian character thus formed such a 
 favourable setting upon His own hand that we shall 
 be able to influence and shape other lives. We can 
 thus be not only ornamental, as Titus says, " adorn- 
 ing the doctrine of God our Saviour," but we can 
 also be useful, contributing to the progress of the 
 kingdom. 
 
XII 
 The Silent Building of the Temple 
 
 CONSPICUOUS in the world at present is the 
 miUtarist type of man. He answers to the 
 description of the ** war lord." He is ag- 
 gressive, brutally disregardful of the rights and feel- 
 ings of others. Shakespeare seems to have him in 
 mind when he writes : 
 
 *' Man, proud man, 
 Drest in a httle brief authority. 
 Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven 
 As make the angels weep.*' 
 
 The modern man, in order to be masterful, need not 
 be domineering. He need not ride rough-shod over 
 others. He need not bluster. Indeed, in order to 
 the ideal, a milder quality must enter into his 
 make-up. He must be able to say with David, 
 " Thy gentleness hath made me great." Our great- 
 est dramatist endorses this Scriptural conception of 
 strength of manhood when he says : 
 
 ** His life was gentle, and the elements 
 So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up 
 And say to all the world. This was a man.'* 
 
 The unobtrusive, the unostentatious, is what we 
 should seek. The building of character should be 
 
 157 
 
158 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 like that of Solomon's temple, concerning which we 
 have this record : "And the house, when it was in 
 building, was built of stone made ready at the 
 quarry ; and there was neither hammer nor axe nor 
 any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in 
 building." The growth in nature is gradual and 
 quiet. Let one accustomed to the hubbub of the 
 city go into the country, and how peaceful every- 
 thing seems. There is no ringing of bells, no blow- 
 ing of whistles, no clanging of hammers, no whir of 
 machinery. A solemn hush rests on the whole rural 
 scene. There is quiet in the valleys, there is repose 
 in the mountains. There is stillness in the woods, 
 there is serenity in the sky. A solitary voice attracts 
 attention, as the farmer speaks to his team. The 
 silence is so marked that a hollow echo is noticeable. 
 And yet mighty forces are at work, upbuilding the 
 vegetable kingdom. There is being made to appear 
 the blade, and the ear, and the full corn in the ear. 
 There is being brought forth leaf, and flower, and 
 fruit. 
 
 What a transformation again is wrought in nature 
 by the succession of the seasons, and yet there is no 
 noise. One of our little puffing road rollers makes 
 more commotion than all the wheeling spheres 
 moved by the hand of Omnipotence. It is the silent 
 process that speaks most of power, and that most 
 commands our admiration. Says John Burroughs 
 of the vast ice-engine, which ploughs out huge val- 
 
The Silent Building of the Temple 159 
 
 leys like the Yosemite : " A glacier is almost as silent 
 as the slumbering rocks, and, to all but the eye of 
 science, nearly as immobile, save where it dis- 
 charges into the sea. It is noisy in its dying, but in 
 the height of its power it is as still as the falling 
 snow of which it is made." This author further says 
 of the disintegrating forces of nature, silent and yet' 
 powerful, " They are grinding up the rocks every- 
 where — pulverizing the granite, the limestone, the 
 sandstone, the basalt, between the upper and nether 
 millstones of air and water, to make the soil, but we 
 hear no sound and mark no change ; only in geolog- 
 ical time are the results recorded." 
 
 It is the same in history. The great building eras 
 are the years of peace, and not those of war, and his- 
 torians are increasingly recognizing this fact. They 
 used to relate little more than the conflicts between 
 alien races. They filled their pages with accounts of 
 bloody struggles between hostile nations. They wrote 
 almost exclusively of wars, and rumours of wan. 
 Modern writers very fittingly are dwelling less upon 
 the sanguinary, and are giving more attention to art, 
 and architecture, and agriculture, and industrial 
 growth, and advance in science, and progress in in- 
 vention, and moral and religious development. They 
 are telling less how people fought, and more how 
 they lived. We are being reminded that the silent 
 building going on during the years of tranquillity is 
 more important and more to be desired than the 
 
l6o The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 tumult of battle. We abhor the clash of arms that 
 involves all the continents of the globe. We are 
 learning to appreciate the substantial rather than the 
 showy. We have come to admire the Augustan age 
 of the Roman Empire, because then the temple of 
 Janus was closed as emblematic of the fact that no 
 wars were being waged, and because at that time ap- 
 peared the Prince of peace on earth. 
 
 We are seeing more and more the glory of 
 Solomon's reign, to which even Christ called atten- 
 tion, because under him the kingdom of Israel had 
 rest from its adversaries, and because on that account 
 there was time, and there was opportunity, for the 
 development of the religious. The building of the 
 temple is what specially made his administration 
 glorious. David was divinely forbidden to erect the 
 house of God, because he had been a man of war. 
 This great and beneficent enterprise was left to Sol- 
 omon, whose very name means " peaceful." He could 
 and did enter into the true spirit for the erection of the 
 edifice. He felt that it should go up without noise. 
 Accordingly he had the timbers all hewn in their 
 native forests that waved in primeval beauty and 
 strength from the heights of the Lebanon range of 
 mountains. He had the stones, enormous as they 
 were, some of them measuring seventeen and eight- 
 een feet in length when dressed, — he had all these 
 prepared in quarries as distant as the forests, or 
 deeply secluded underneath the city, within whose 
 
The Silent Building of the Temple 161 
 
 excavated and hidden recesses modern tourists wan- 
 der amid a profound silence. Not that noise was 
 absolutely avoided. There must have been tumult 
 enough in the forests and mountains and quarries, 
 where the basal work was done. There 30,000 were 
 employed to cut the timber. There 80,000 were 
 hewers of stone. There 70,000 were porters. There 
 was a regular army of labourers, and the ring of the 
 axe and the sound of the hammer must have been 
 incessant at Lebanon, and the air there must have 
 been filled with din and confusion. But the actual 
 rising of the walls at Jerusalem was in silence. As a 
 poet has said : 
 
 ** Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung." 
 
 I. We can apply this truth, first, to the silent 
 building of a church. Private differences of opinion 
 should rarely be carried to the point of controversy 
 and open collision. The peace of Zion should be 
 maintained, even if individual views have to be held 
 somewhat in check. The less agitation and dis- 
 cussion, the less accentuation of differences there 
 may be, the better ordinarily. Most of us have ideas, 
 which if aggressively expressed would antagonize, 
 which it is not necessary sharply to define and 
 urgently to press. We are stones in the rough, and 
 we need hewing, we need to have some of the angles 
 taken off, if from us collectively a beautiful and 
 symmetrical temple is to arise. 
 
l62 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 For this reason we should be charitable rather 
 than censorious as regards one another. Instead of 
 assailing others or their views, we can well take our- 
 selves in hand, we can search our own hearts, we can 
 look for our own faults and defective conceptions. 
 Then, as we become associated with others, we will 
 recognize not only diversities of gifts but also of 
 temptations and concepts and failures, and we will 
 fit in better with those who are seen to be of like 
 passions with ourselves and who yet are dissimilar. 
 Let there be less strictures upon others and more 
 private quarrying, more hewing at our own character, 
 and they and we together will constitute what Peter 
 calls a " spiritual house," and what Paul terms •' a 
 holy temple," " a habitation of God," " fitly framed 
 together." That is what it is to be a church that 
 grows silently, like Solomon's temple, without sound 
 of axe or hammer, without the personal antagonisms 
 which sometimes prove so destructive. We are to 
 keep the axe and hammer, the hewing and the ham- 
 mering, to their proper sphere, to their making of 
 ourselves " living stones," or as the Psalmist says, 
 " stones hewn after the fashion of a palace." Such 
 stones, Hke sculptured pillars, will gracefully drop 
 into their niches, will take their place in with the 
 rest without a jar, and with the silence and peace 
 that breathe in the great cathedral, whose tranquil 
 calm is never broken by sound of any iron tool. 
 
 2. Silent building is needed in the home as well 
 
The Silent Building of the Temple 163 
 
 as in the church. Business, for instance, does not go 
 right. There are annoyances in the office or in the 
 factory or in the store. Some one did not get his 
 order filled satisfactorily. There has been complaint 
 because goods were not delivered promptly. A 
 customer, in buying an article, says some sharp and 
 unjust thing, and that causes an angry retort of which 
 the unpleasant recollection does not easily fade. A 
 clerk makes a blunder, and gets things sadly mixed. 
 There are these commercial and similar professional 
 distractions. Carry such things home, and the 
 whole household is disturbed. Irritation is made to 
 reign there. 
 
 There may be times when it is proper to seek 
 sympathy from the rehearsal of worries and troubles, 
 but a daily, a constant turning over to the family 
 of the perplexities and vexations incident to business 
 or to our work is not healthful in its influence, is not 
 promotive of the highest good. Many things should 
 be rigorously kept to the counting room, or to the 
 shop, or to the study. They cannot be shared with 
 others to any advantage. They may even poison 
 the whole domestic atmosphere, causing there a 
 constant ferment which is destructive of all quietness 
 of mind and serenity of living. 
 
 Or the difficulties may come from the other side 
 of the house. The servant spoiled something, she 
 broke a choice piece of ware. There was friction 
 between the housekeeper and her help. Added to 
 
164 The Modem Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 all was the misbehaviour of children. This one did 
 that, and another did something else. There was a 
 good deal of disturbance the whole day, and at the 
 evening meal it is all gone over, and the entire family 
 is made unhappy. As a consequence the children 
 scatter as speedily as they can, and the husband 
 seeks relief in the club or in some other place of 
 resort. Here, too, is it true that some things should 
 be settled at the time, and by the parties directly 
 concerned. Not that the head of the house should 
 be unwilling to carry in part the burdens of domestic 
 hfe, but things should not unnecessarily be put upon 
 his shoulders. He should not be compelled, with his 
 heavy outside responsibilities, to be a listener to 
 chronic complaints. Let the hewing be done, let 
 the chips be made to fly, if need be, in the quarry, 
 in the nursery, in the kitchen, but do not let the 
 spirit of these rule the whole house. When the 
 family come together, let the pleasant and agreeable, 
 so far as possible, be uppermost. 
 
 Petty vexations on both sides should be left in 
 the quarry, in their proper place, and there should 
 be brought to the building up of the home what 
 would not break the holy calm and the peaceful 
 silence of a temple. Let there not be sound of axe 
 and hammer, but an atmosphere of repose and rest- 
 fulness. There will have to be hewing to the line, 
 there will have to be cutting and hammering, but 
 out of it all should come characters that are by 
 
The Silent Building of the Temple 165 
 
 divine grace perfected, and that are all the better 
 prepared, because of trials, for making the symmet- 
 rical home. The chiselled and polished stones, 
 those who have been properly disciplined, will drop 
 noiselessly into their respective niches, combining to 
 form the ideal household of faith. 
 
 3. Once more, there should be silent building in 
 the case of the individual. There is a freedom of 
 speech which is not Christian, which unnecessarily 
 hurts the feehngs of others, and excuses itself on the 
 ground of being honest and frank, of speaking right 
 out what one thinks. Criticism is freely passed upon 
 others, and fraternal and friendly relations are thus 
 disturbed. The plea often made is that a person 
 might as well say the adverse thing as to think it, 
 but this is a mistaken desire to be open and sincere. 
 For the selfish purpose of getting the reputation of 
 being blunt and outspoken, he will give his opinions 
 about others in a way that cuts their sensitive souls 
 to the quick. 
 
 We need to curb this propensity to which we are all 
 so prone. We may keep up a terrible thinking, if 
 you please, but we might better keep still oftener 
 than we do. Von Moltke, the great general who 
 planned the campaigns that humbled Austria and 
 France and that secured German unity and suprem- 
 acy, did not appear on the field, but quietly at home 
 arranged all the details which proved so successful. 
 Quite as wonderful as this was is the fact that though 
 
i66 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 he was a fine linguist and could write and speak ten 
 languages, he yet was specially distinguished, we 
 are informed, for being able to keep silent in all ten. 
 How he ever could have done so is a mystery to us, 
 who find it difficult to maintain a proper silence in 
 one language. But then he was a great commander, 
 and his greatness perhaps appeared more in his 
 masterful self-control than in the military move- 
 ments which he directed to such a successful issue. 
 " Better," says Scripture, " is he that ruleth his spirit 
 than he that taketh a city." 
 
 An Athenian maiden, Lansea, which means lioness, 
 refused to reveal the names of her lover's accomplices 
 in striking down a tyrant. She was put under tor- 
 ture, but still she held her tongue, and she died 
 silent. A bronze Honess without a tongue long 
 stood on the Acropolis to commemorate her forti- 
 tude even to the point of silence until death came to 
 her relief, when many would have spoken. She in 
 this respect is a good example for us to follow under 
 less trying circumstances. We too easily yield to 
 sharp and unwise expressions. If we must form 
 harsh judgments, if we must hew to the line in our 
 estimate of others, let it usually be in the quarry 
 of our own minds, but when we come to express 
 ourselves, let it ordinarily be in the way of what we 
 can say in commendation. 
 
 Dr. Goodell, in his last years pastor of the largest 
 Congregational Church in St. Louis, recorded a 
 
The Silent Building of the Temple 167 
 
 prayer which we should make ours, namely, " O 
 Lord, help me never to speak of one person to 
 another, save in respect to his virtues." If all would 
 cease their uselessly critical remarks, those that do 
 no good, for just a day, what a silence would fall 
 upon the world, but it would be a most genial and 
 delightful atmosphere in which all the Christian 
 graces would spring up spontaneously. We pro- 
 mote our own religious growth by maintaining a 
 judicious silence, whatever may be our thoughts. 
 The expression of opinions confirms us in the same, 
 and we thus acquire an excessively critical spirit 
 which is not Christlike. We necessarily form 
 opinions, and sometimes we should advance them 
 vigorously even to the extent of denouncing indi- 
 viduals for cruel wrong and injustice, but oftener we 
 should be discreetly reticent. 
 
 Among the divinities of classic times, the good 
 and wise Numa, says Plutarch, " recommended to 
 the veneration of the Romans one in particular, 
 whom he named Tacita, the silent." We more fre- 
 quently should be taciturn, walking in silence. The 
 ancient writer just quoted says of Pericles, " Once, 
 after being reviled and ill spoken of all day long in 
 his own hearing by some vile and abandoned fellow 
 in the open market-place, when he was engaged in 
 the despatch of some urgent affair, he continued his 
 business in perfect silence, and in the evening re- 
 turned home composedly, the man still dogging him 
 
i68 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 at the heels, and pelting him all the way with abuse 
 and foul language ; and stepping into his house, it 
 being by this time dark, he ordered one of his serv- 
 ants to take a hght, and to go along with the man 
 and see him safe home." He hghted homeward one 
 who had abused him all day and all the way to his 
 house at night. That is a pagan example worthy of 
 Christian emulation, answering admirably to the 
 Master's ideal, though reviled to revile not again. 
 
 We should learn to be patiently silent under ex- 
 asperating circumstances, and especially should we 
 ourselves refrain from the acrimonious. We should 
 not throw off criticisms in the rough. We should 
 trim them in our private quarry, till they lose all 
 that they contain of asperity and of personal reflec- 
 tion and of venomous sting. Then as generally we 
 speak only words of praise about others, our own 
 Christian character will grow silently and beauti- 
 fully in the considerate silence which we have main- 
 tained. We shall find ourselves steadily rising in the 
 religious life, noiselessly and undemonstratively it 
 may be, but none the less surely than rose the temple 
 in silence, when the quarrying was all done out of 
 sight and hearing. 
 
 The conclusion of the whole matter is that a cer- 
 tain silence is essential to the best development of 
 the church, of the home, and of the individual, and 
 that what hewing and hammering may be necessary 
 should be in the hidden quarries. Even in these 
 
The Silent Building of the Temple 169 
 
 secret recesses we should remember the watchful 
 eyes of Him who is above. Phidias, the ancient 
 Greek sculptor, poHshed the backs of his statues 
 which stood against the temple walls, on the ground 
 that if men did not see what was thus out of the pub- 
 lic gaze, the gods saw all. We should be equally 
 conscientious in the sight of the Omniscient. We 
 should be silent builders for God, praying to the 
 Father in secret over difficulties and deficiencies that 
 only He need know, and that we should be glad to 
 have Him know. He stands ready to help us in a 
 quiet way to attain unto the perfection which will be 
 finally reached, when the topstone of Christian char- 
 acter shall be laid amid the breathless attention of 
 angels, who will break out into the applause of 
 " Grace, grace unto it," only when the moral struc- 
 ture we have been rearing has been silently finished 
 in heaven. 
 
XIII 
 
 Limited Though Ample Opportunities 
 
 WHEN we are urged to a life of Christian 
 activity, we often excuse ourselves on the 
 ground of lack of opportunity. There 
 seems to be no conspicuous place where we can 
 make our strenuous efforts count. We too fre- 
 quently are looking for some open door, which will 
 fairly challenge our highest capabilities. But the 
 most active man who ever lived was accustomed to 
 consider limited opportunities as entirely ample. 
 What did the chief of the apostles write to the Phi- 
 lippians ? Simply this : " Now I would have you 
 know, brethren, that the things which happened 
 ' unto me have fallen out rather unto the progress of 
 the Gospel; so that my bonds became manifest in 
 Christ throughout the whole praetorian guard, and to 
 all the rest." That was a cheerful view for Paul to 
 take of what was certainly a cramped situation. His 
 imprisonment, which hampered and restricted his 
 movements, turned out to the benefit of the cause. 
 
 This is the way the matter worked : The soldier, 
 to whom he was chained to-day, might be converted, 
 and to-morrow be standing before the emperor as 
 
 170 
 
Limited Though Ample Opportunities 171 
 
 one of the imperial guard, and thus some of " Caesar's 
 household " might be reached, as we are informed 
 they were. Or soldiers, who had become Christians 
 while guarding Paul, might be transferred, we will 
 say, to Britain, and so carry the Gospel there, where 
 indeed the wife of the Roman general in charge of 
 that province is said to have become a convert. 
 When Tacitus says that she was " accused of a for- 
 eign superstition," since this Latin historian termed 
 Christianity a " superstition," this is evidence that 
 she had become a disciple of Christ, not improbably 
 through the influence of soldiers who had become 
 Christians while acting as guard to Paul. 
 
 Through the same agency, it is not unreasonable 
 to suppose that British princess may have been con- 
 verted of whom the Poet Martial in the first century 
 sang in these lines : 
 
 " Though British skies first beamed on Claudia's face, 
 Her beauty far outvies the Latin race : 
 E'en Grecian nymphs her form cannot excel, 
 Or Roman matrons play the queen so well." 
 
 She is thought by some to have been the Claudia 
 who joined Paul in salutations to young Timothy 
 from Rome, where she may have been visiting at the 
 time. She is alleged to have taught the apostle's 
 principles to our benighted ancestors in England, her 
 native country. Paul's chain, therefore, seems to 
 have hnked him, in the influence which he exerted, 
 
172 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 with every part of the Roman Empire. His bonds 
 resulted in " the progress of the Gospel," as he himself 
 said, " throughout the whole praetorian guard, and to 
 all the rest." He worked out to the length of his 
 chain, and how wide-spreading have been the results ! 
 
 Not that he never chafed under his restrictions, for 
 he did. With an outburst of feeling before King 
 Agrippa he wished that others were altogether such 
 as he was, " except these bonds." He evidently 
 longed to be freed from the limitations thus placed 
 upon his activities. There is pathos in the request 
 which he sent to the Colossians, namely, " Remem- 
 ber my bonds." The Ephesians must have been 
 touched by his portrayal of himself as Christ's " am- 
 bassador in chains." Never under civilized condi- 
 tions had the representative of any human government 
 been subjected to such indignity. It was a violation 
 of international law even among the ancients to put 
 a diplomatist in chains. But a minister from the 
 high court of heaven was thus shamefully treated by 
 an earthly power. He, however, made the best of 
 the situation. He turned the providential hmitation 
 upon his freedom to a circumscribed though very po- 
 tential service for the Master. His chains even in- 
 creased his influence. 
 
 We have illustrations of this from the confinement 
 at Caesarea, in that it gave him the opportunity to 
 speak to Felix till this Roman governor trembled, 
 and to Agrippa until this king was almost persuaded 
 
Limited Though Ample Opportunities 173 
 
 to become a Christian, however ironically this ad- 
 mission may have been made. Then in the Roman 
 imprisonment we have him saying in his epistle to 
 Philemon of that master's runaway slave, Onesimus, 
 " whom I have begotten in my bonds." That is, he 
 was the means of saving that poor wretch, who had 
 robbed Philemon, and who had fled to that city which 
 Juvenal compared to a "vast sewer," into which 
 flowed " the dregs " of all lands. But the hitherto 
 worthless, miserable fellow, who came in contact with 
 the imprisoned Paul at Rome, went away a new 
 creature in Christ Jesus, no longer a slave but a 
 '• brother beloved." That was the kind of work the 
 apostle was doing even in bonds, rescuing from sin 
 either directly or indirectly British princess and Ro- 
 man slave. Confined to a hired house, and part of 
 the time, it has been conjectured, to the famous 
 Mamertine prison, whose two dark subterranean 
 chambers very appropriately at present serve as 
 chapels for worship, and whose chill and gloom 
 some of us have felt, as we have entered them on 
 visiting the eternal city : — deprived of his Hberty in 
 these underground vaults, prevented from going 
 everywhere as he would have liked, he yet did good, 
 and through those nearest his person he reached out 
 after others, till every part of the empire felt his 
 influence. 
 
 It is not strange that so grand a man was sought 
 out by Onesiphorus, who went to Rom.e, and who, 
 
1 74 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 says the apostle in writing to Timothy, ** was not 
 ashamed of my chain." Paul himself came to recog- 
 nize more and more the triumphs he was gaining 
 notwithstanding the hindrances of his imprisonment. 
 His farewell words, issuing from his dismal dungeon, 
 came forth like a trumpet blast, as we have them in 
 the last letter he ever wrote, " I suffer hardship unto 
 bonds, but the word of God is not bound." Five of 
 his epistles, Colossians, Ephesians, Philemon, Philip- 
 pians, and Second Timothy, came from him during 
 the Roman imprisonment. The Word of God, as 
 coming from his own inspired heart under such cir- 
 cumstances, has been moulding lives and reconstruct- 
 ing society ever since, through a stretch of nineteen 
 centuries. He scarcely could have appreciated the 
 mighty truth he uttered, that the Gospel was not to 
 be restricted in its victories. He hardly could have 
 realized how widely the religion he proclaimed was 
 to prevail ; that it was to pervade the whole Roman 
 Empire, and eventually the entire world ; that many 
 hundreds of years after he wrote, his words, penned 
 with shackled arm, were to be the theme in pulpits 
 clear round the globe. Again and again has it 
 proved true that no prison walls can frustrate the 
 divine purpose. 
 
 From Luther, while a prisoner at the Wartburg 
 Castle in the Thuringian forest, came the German 
 Bible in the vernacular of the fatherland. From 
 Bedford jail came Bunyan's immortal allegory, the 
 
Limited Though Ample Opportunities 175 
 
 " Pilgrim's Progress," which has been translated into 
 almost every language of earth. The dreamer in his 
 narrow quarters well wrote : 
 
 ** For though men keep my outward man 
 Within their bolts and bars, 
 Yet, by the faith of Christ, I can 
 Mount higher than the stars." 
 
 From the Tower of London, where have languished 
 kings and martyrs and dehcate women like Anne 
 Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey, — from that fortress first 
 came the hymn which is still sung, as composed, it is 
 said, by Francis Baker : 
 
 *' Jerusalem, my happy home ! 
 Name ever dear to me ! 
 When shall my labours have an end, 
 In joy, in peace, in thee? " 
 
 That hymn could not be confined, not by the walls 
 of London's Tower itself, which no dynamite can 
 easily overthrow. Like the song from the jail at 
 Philippi at midnight, it still rises towards the sky. 
 Like the nightingale's song it soars away upward 
 through the darkness. That which has the inspira- 
 tion of heaven cannot be fettered. 
 
 Madame Guyon in imprisonment, with something 
 of the French but with more of the Christian elasticity 
 of spirit, could and did echo the apostle's sentiment, 
 as she burst out in the uplifting strain ; 
 
176 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 " My cage confines me round, 
 
 Abroad I cannot fly ; 
 But though my wing is closely bound, 
 
 My heart's at liberty. 
 My prison walls cannot control 
 
 The flight, the freedom of the soul." 
 
 Paul recognized that his sphere was restricted, but 
 he faithfully used every opportunity which he had, 
 and we all see how the work expanded. He did the 
 best he could under the circumstances, and his labour 
 was not in vain in the Lord. There are chains yet 
 which hamper, but which need not destroy our use- 
 fulness. 
 
 I. There is, for instance, the chain of business. 
 With links of adamant it binds us to store, to office, 
 to shop. If we only had our freedom, we sometimes 
 say, how much good we could accomplish. If we 
 could spend all our time in religious work, if we 
 could devote ourselves exclusively to it, or at least 
 if we could have more leisure for the things of the 
 kingdom, we would be encouraged to attempt some- 
 thing. There is where we make our mistake. Paul 
 did not constantly lament his bonds, but he worked 
 out to the length of his chain, he did all he could 
 under the circumstances. He applied himself to the 
 conversion of his guard, and as this was changed 
 daily, he had different soldiers with whom to talk 
 and pray. But it was one at a time, or certainly it 
 was only a few, for many could not crowd into his 
 
Limited Though Ample Opportunities 177 
 
 lodging or into his cell. Through those with whom 
 he was brought into immediate contact, from soldier 
 to servant, through those right around him from day 
 to day, he reached out after others, until Caesar's 
 household and not improbably Britain's isle thus 
 learned of the Gospel. 
 
 The Christian merchant or manufacturer, who is 
 bound to his business, can yet make his influence 
 felt for Christ upon those in his employ, and upon 
 those with whom he has dealings. There must be 
 opportunity somewhere to speak a word for Jesus, 
 or at any rate by a consistent life to testify to the 
 reality of religion. Perhaps if any are confined to 
 their office, they can send to some friend a letter 
 indicating a tender interest in his spiritual welfare. 
 Though they may be tied down to their work, there 
 is alongside of them, at the same bench or by a 
 neighbouring machine, some one whom they might 
 induce to go to church, or might persuade to become 
 a Christian. Those, whom they thus reach, may be 
 instrumental in saving others, and influence thus 
 exerted will continue in ever-widening circles down 
 the future. There is nothing wrong in persons being 
 bound up in their business, or their profession, or 
 their work, but let not the Word of God be bound, 
 let not the chain grow too heavy till the interior life 
 is crushed out by the weight of care. 
 
 Scripture well speaks of the " deceitfulness of 
 riches." The golden fetters may seem light and 
 
178 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 harmless, but there may be in the inordinate pursuit 
 of the material the fate of the Roman maiden, 
 Tarpeia. She coveted the bracelets of the Sabines, 
 and promised to betray the citadel on the Capitoline 
 Hill to them for " what they wore on their left arms." 
 She opened the gate at night, and, as they passed 
 through, they cast upon her their shields, which also 
 they carried on their left arms. She was crushed 
 thereby, and will ever remain a warning against 
 covetousness, of which one naturally thinks as he 
 stands on the Tarpeian Rock in the ancient city. 
 We may think that in getting riches or in our efforts 
 in that direction, we are only securing golden brace- 
 lets, whereas the accumulations of years or our con- 
 tinuous endeavours therefor may prove a veritable 
 mountain of brass, of heaviest metal, to overwhelm 
 us utterly so far as religion is concerned. We should 
 be careful what kind of a chain we forge for our- 
 selves, as we prosecute our business, as we give our- 
 selves to the secular. A reasonable degree of atten- 
 tion thereto is proper, but we should leave some room 
 for what is of eternal interest. In the midst of the 
 worldly we should not altogether cease to be re- 
 ligiously active. Our sphere in the latter respect 
 may be restricted, but a fine opportunity neverthe- 
 less is offered for Christian usefulness, if we do the 
 best we can, while we receive the commendation 
 bestowed upon the woman of old, " She hath done 
 what she could." 
 
Limited Though Ample Opportunities 179 
 
 2. There is also the domestic chain. One is 
 kept closely to the house. She is a mother, and her 
 children take most of her time. She sometimes 
 complains of her humdrum sort of existence. If she 
 only had her liberty, she feels that she might be of 
 some account. She chafes at the thought of so 
 restricted a sphere. She grows impatient over her 
 lot. She aspires to something grander than the 
 care of little ones, and she is anything but the 
 Scriptural ^^ joyful mother of children." She forgets 
 that the home can be made the center of mighty 
 influences for good, if she does not rebel against the 
 restraints imposed by the responsibilities of a family. 
 The household furnishes a field for the exercise of the 
 most queenly gifts of mind and heart. There are 
 moulded characters, which are soon to shape history. 
 As the walls of Athens are said to have fallen before 
 the music of Dorian flutes, so a mother's lullaby gives 
 easy access to a child's innermost being. Along 
 this line of the affectional is often fought the battle 
 which determines individual destiny, though there is 
 no sound of heavy cannonading but only of sweetest 
 music, as the maternal life, in gentle influence, is 
 attuned to heavenly harmony. Mightier than great 
 generals are consecrated mothers in giving direction 
 to human lives and events. 
 
 In the silent but steady conquest of paganism by 
 Christianity, Libanius, the most literary pagan of the 
 fourth century, recognized this, when upon seeing 
 
l8o The Modem Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 the influence of a saintly mother upon Chrysostom, 
 the golden-mouthed Greek preacher of his generation, 
 he exclaimed, " Ah, gods of Greece ! what wonder- 
 ful women there are among the Christians ! " The 
 home may seem a contracted sphere, but it is the 
 very center of all radiating influences for good. The 
 chain, that binds to the household, is indeed golden. 
 There may be bonds in domestic duties, there may 
 be restraints, but the word of God need not be 
 bound. There is abundant opportunity for the high- 
 est usefulness, if one gracefully accepts the situation. 
 We recall how the beautiful queen of Palmyra, the 
 renowned Zenobia, successfully resisted the Roman 
 arms during the reign of two emperors, but how be- 
 fore Aurelian she fled defeated on her fleet drome- 
 dary, and how she was overtaken, and how she was 
 made the chief attraction in the imperial triumph, 
 appearing in the long and splendid procession in fet- 
 ters of gold. There was grace and there was dignity 
 in her answer to Aurelian, who sternly inquired why 
 she had presumed to stand out against his predeces- 
 sors : " Because I disdained to consider them as Ro- 
 man emperors," she said, while she added, " You 
 alone I acknowledge as my conqueror and my sover- 
 eign." She was a prisoner, but a gold chain encir- 
 cling her fair neck was the symbol of her easy captiv- 
 ity. She was presented with an elegant villa near 
 the capital, where as a loyal subject she doubtless 
 found greater enjoyment than as a queen in rebellion. 
 
Limited Though Ample Opportunities i8l 
 
 She became, says Gibbon, " a Roman matron, her 
 daughters married into noble families, and her race' 
 was not yet extinct in the fifth century," two hun- 
 dred years after her submission. 
 
 Better than to rebel against the King of kings, 
 who is worthy of obedience, is a graceful yielding to 
 Him, and to the obligations imposed by Providence 
 in the domestic chain, whose every link is love, is 
 pure gold, while children are reared for the kingdom 
 of the truth, the blessing of God descending for thou- 
 sands of generations upon such as fear Him and keep 
 His commandments. In the seclusion of the home, 
 in domestic bonds, the Christian spirit need not be 
 fettered, and should not be, when immortal souls are 
 directly subject to the maternal influence, which is so 
 potent for good or for evil. The sphere of useful- 
 ness to those largely confined to the hearthstone may 
 be and is restricted, but the opportunity nevertheless 
 is immense, in view of plastic natures which can 
 there be given their eternal set, in view of everlasting 
 destinies which there can be determined. 
 
XIV 
 A Larger Sphere 
 
 NOTWITHSTANDING what has been said 
 in the preceding chapter, that we should 
 make good use of what opportunities we 
 have, there are ambitious persons who still long for 
 what they term a larger sphere. That is what our 
 aspiring modern man wants. That is what the chil- 
 dren of Joseph in Old Testament times wanted. In 
 the allotment of territory after the conquest of Ca- 
 naan, they were not satisfied with their portion, 
 which they declared to be " too narrow." They in- 
 timated that they were greater than the other tribes, 
 and the argument was that they should be given a 
 correspondingly larger field in which to work out 
 their destiny. But the facts and figures did not bear 
 out their claim. They had an exaggerated notion 
 of their importance, and of their ability to accom- 
 plish great things. They did not sufficiently appreci- 
 ate the opportunity which they had. 
 
 It is the simple truth to say that they were as- 
 signed the central and choicest part of Palestine, 
 where there was the greatest fertility, and the best 
 supply of water. There were very rich valleys alter- 
 
 182 
 
A Larger Sphere 183 
 
 nating with the hills, but they were dissatisfied, and 
 they went to Joshua with their complaint, that they 
 were not as highly favoured as they ought to be, 
 that their abilities were too much restricted. A little 
 more modesty on their part would have been becom- 
 ing, and somewhat less jealousy of others, who were 
 imagined by them to have fared better. But the 
 leader of Israel took them at their own estimate, as 
 he said, " If thou be a great people, get thee up to 
 the forest, and cut down for thyself there." That is, 
 if they wanted more land, they could have it, by 
 clearing it up, by going to work right where they 
 were, by improving what they had. 
 
 There is mentioned another way in which they 
 could have enlargement. The plains were still occu- 
 pied with the Canaanites, who were so formidable with 
 their iron chariots that the sons of Joseph shrank from 
 proceeding with the dispossessing process which had 
 been bravely begun. They were, therefore, urged 
 to conquer completely what they already had in gen- 
 eral. There, it was implied, was a place where their 
 alleged greatness could have full play in an actual 
 demonstration. So that the perhaps rather unpala- 
 table advice of Joshua to the boastful petitioners for 
 more territory was. Help yourselves ; you have your 
 fair share now, but if you want more, get it, by clear- 
 ing up the mountainsides at present covered with 
 forests, and by driving from the valleys your foes 
 there established, whose iron chariots must be dis- 
 
184 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 dained by so great a people as you are. You have 
 land enough, they were told, if you will only see that 
 it is properly cleared and made habitable : cut down 
 the forests primeval, and cut down your foes on the 
 battle-field, and your greatness will be proven, and 
 your enlargement will be all that heart could wish. 
 
 There are sons of Joseph yet who feel that they 
 are underestimated, and who spend their time in 
 sighing for a larger sphere, whereas they should do 
 their best just where their lot happens to be cast. 
 Genuine greatness can be the achievement of but 
 few, if Arnold of Rugby was right in saying, " The 
 three great objects of human ambition " are " to be 
 the prime minister of a great kingdom, the governor 
 of a great empire, or the writer of works which 
 should live in every age and in every country." Not 
 many of us can become rulers of nations, or the 
 powers behind the throne, or authors of undying 
 fame. We can waste much time in fretting because 
 we do not have the chance, which we fancy some 
 one else has for rising to distinction. We can build 
 air castles, and dream dreams, and talk about our re- 
 stricted sphere and our narrow field for operations, 
 but the practical thing for us to do is to accept the 
 situation as it is, and to do what we can under the 
 existing conditions. If we want a larger sphere, we 
 can enlarge it by doing our best where for the time 
 being we are providentially placed. 
 
 I. We may apply this truth, first, to school life. 
 
A Larger Sphere 185 
 
 Shakespeare paints a very reaUstic picture when he 
 says ill lines familiar to all : 
 
 ** Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel 
 And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
 Unwillingly to school." 
 
 His slow pace would quicken into eager, elastic steps, 
 and he would fairly jump, if he were on his way td 
 some game. There is too often reluctance to resume 
 studying ; the opportunity for getting an education is 
 not appreciated. The boy longs to get away from 
 books, as he expresses it, into real life where he can 
 accomplish something that is worth his while. A 
 son of a friend of mine became restive in his enforced 
 pursuit of knowledge, and he ran away from a most 
 excellent home, that he might exchange mental 
 drudgery for physical freedom, but exposure and in- 
 ability to get work and to make money brought him 
 to his senses, and he was finally glad to have his 
 father telegraphed for the means to get back. He, 
 however, still talked about his intention of earning 
 his living by his brawny muscles. That he might 
 have a little experience of what he longed for he was 
 set to work during his vacation as a section hand on 
 the railroad, and he was put through in good shape 
 every day, and he was glad enough of rest and sleep 
 each night, and the result was that the glamour of 
 bread-winning by the sweat of his brow disappeared. 
 When fall came, he very willingly took his place in 
 
i86 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 the high school, and after that he pursued a col- 
 legiate course with great satisfaction. 
 
 Many young people are foolishly uneasy in school, 
 they are eager to get out into the busy world where 
 they can make their mark, but a practical trial would 
 disabuse them of their ability to succeed without an 
 education. Of course, there are exceptions to the 
 rule, but generally one gains every way by taking 
 time to train the mind. And yet not infrequently 
 there is a confident youth, who thinks he does not 
 have a chance to show in the contracted schoolroom 
 the stuff of which he is made. If he could only get 
 into business, or go on a farm or to sea, he would be 
 a most marked success. He should demonstrate 
 what he can do where he is. What he needs is a 
 realizing sense of what he can accomplish as a 
 student, if he will only apply himself. He may re- 
 peatedly get in the woods intellectually, but let him 
 hew down the forests. Sometimes there may seem 
 to be arrayed against him whole hosts of difficulties 
 with iron chariots, but these can be swept away. 
 
 Even the naturally dull can do wonders by patient 
 continuance. That distinguished English teacher, 
 Thomas Arnold, came to have a profound respect for 
 what he termed " the mere plodding boy." He had 
 once, he said, become impatient at such a one, and 
 had spoken sharply to him, who replied, " Why do 
 you speak angrily, sir ? — indeed I am doing the best 
 that I can." The grieved look showed the honesty 
 
A Larger Sphere 187 
 
 of this answer of the pupil, and years afterwards 
 Dr. Arnold said, " That look and that speech I have 
 never forgotten." It was in view of this experience, 
 which doubtless was often duplicated, that he paid 
 his tribute to the simple plodder. If he who is re- 
 garded as a dullard will apply himself, if he who does 
 not naturally take to books will hold himself firmly 
 to his appointed tasks along educational lines, he will 
 make at least a comparative success. He is certain 
 to lay the foundations of a more substantial record 
 than would otherwise be his. 
 
 The fine attainments of manhood often grow 
 directly out of something creditably done in one's 
 school days. A prize essay, for instance, by 
 Macaulay in college on William of Orange is said 
 to have suggested the subsequent writing of the im- 
 mortal History wherein William has a conspicuous 
 place. The young are always preparing themselves 
 for something better when they give themselves un- 
 flaggingly to their studies. He who fails in life is 
 the braggart, who neglects his passing educational 
 opportunities and talks about the wonderful things 
 he is going to do when he gets out of school. 
 Thoroughness in early life makes for efficiency 
 in manhood ; youthful discipline spells subsequent 
 success. 
 
 2. Keeping purposely to the ordinary round of 
 life, our subject has also an application to business. 
 One ought always to do his very best there, however 
 
i88 The Modem Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 low down he may start. He who sweeps the office 
 with thoroughness and cheerfuhiess is more hkely to 
 be promoted than he who feels the menial task to 
 be beneath him, and who does it with reluctance 
 and carelessness. When Montezuma received the 
 tidings of his election to the Mexican throne, " he 
 was found," says Prescott, " sweeping down the 
 stairs in the great temple of the national war-god." 
 He was Uke Cincinnatus, who was summoned from 
 his plow to the dictatorship of ancient Rome. The 
 call to a higher sphere usually comes to the one who 
 is busily occupied, and who is doing his best in a 
 lower position. The painstaking clerk is the one 
 who after a while is taken into the firm. When a 
 person talks about his having no sort of a position, 
 that he is no partner in the concern, and therefore 
 he does not care if he does slight things, he is not 
 going to rise. He may sigh for a time when his 
 ship shall come in, but it never will. He may 
 dream of coming success when he has a better op- 
 portunity, but he is doomed to disappointment, un-- 
 less he hews his way along, unless he cuts down the 
 forests that lie immediately before him, unless he 
 drives his chariot like Jehu against the iron chariots 
 of difficulty in the valleys along which he struggles. 
 Commercial triumphs, ships of trade on every sea, 
 are the rewards of none but the toilsome. 
 
 Illuminating here is the career of Magellan, who 
 gave his name to the straits southward of South 
 
A Larger Sphere 189 
 
 America, and who triumphed over the Pacific,, be- 
 ing the first to sail across its broad expanse, and as 
 a consequence the first to circumnavigate the earth. 
 He did not accompHsh all this without laborious 
 and even painful effort. When his provisions began 
 to grow short, his men wanted to return home, but 
 he declared he would go on, " if he had to eat the 
 leather off the ship's yards," and he and his follow- 
 ers were reduced to precisely that strait before 
 reaching Asia. He, however, effected his purpose, 
 being slain, to be sure, by some savage islanders in 
 the moment of his victory, but not till his ship had, 
 so to speak, reached port, in one of the Philippines, 
 his followers afterwards completing the circuit of the 
 globe. If one's ship, of which he sometimes talks, 
 is going to come in, or is even to go out, there must 
 be a strong hand steadily at the helm. No hap- 
 hazard attention to business in its initial stages can 
 lead up to success. 
 
 It is, therefore, a sound maxim as well as a re- 
 ligious duty not to slight work that may not be 
 exactly to one's taste. It is folly, and it is wicked, 
 for him to be discontented and negligent and un- 
 faithful in the humbler stations, while there is an 
 idle wishing for some position where he can prove 
 that he has business capacity. He is to work up 
 from where he is to where he wants to be. He is 
 to achieve success in his narrower sphere, and a 
 wider one is certain to follow. By always doing his 
 
190 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 best, he will have a fairer prospect of promotion, and 
 a surer passport to ultimate success. 
 
 3. Again, not to go far afield but to confine our- 
 selves to a circle wherein we have hitherto moved, 
 the truth being developed should be operative in the 
 home: A sacred poet has said : 
 
 *' The trivial round, the common task, 
 Will furnish all we ought to ask." 
 
 Many a woman chafes at the drudgery to which she 
 feels that she is tied down, and she goes about the 
 house with a querulous spirit, as if she did not have 
 an equal chance in the world with others. She gets 
 the masculine idea of having no opportunity, unless 
 there is something big to rouse her energies. She 
 laments that by her very sex she is shut out from 
 most of the openings which have any attraction, and 
 in which alone is there any prospect of realizing her 
 destiny. She does not have a sufficient appreciation 
 of the noble sphere which is hers. By a Christian 
 graciousness and love she can create about her an 
 atmosphere that will be mentally and spiritually 
 stimulating, and she can thus shape characters for 
 eternity. By cultivating a spirit of contentment 
 and thankfulness, by minimizing the evil there is 
 in others and magnifying the good, by dwelling in 
 thought upon the manifold blessings of Hfe, by look- 
 ing on the brighter rather than the darker side of 
 things, by esteeming it a privilege to influence im- 
 
A Larger Sphere 191 
 
 mortal souls, by planning better and better things 
 for the family, — in such ways can the household be 
 made a sphere large enough for the utiHzation of tlie 
 highest talents. 
 
 This is happily illustrated in Tennyson's story of 
 the '• Princess," who said : 
 
 '* O I wish 
 That I were some great princess, I would build 
 Far off from men a college like a man's." 
 
 She talked much of "ladies' rights," and she founded 
 her university, from whose grounds those of the 
 male sex were excluded by a threatened penalty 
 of death. She became a misanthrope, cold and hard 
 in her nature, 
 
 " And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair," 
 
 to use the poet's well-known line, could never have 
 come from her tuition. Such a one, while gaining 
 fame perhaps, yet missed 
 
 ** Meanwhile, what every woman counts her due, 
 Love, children, happiness." 
 
 Fortunately the princess herself eventually became a 
 convert to 
 
 *' Sweet household talk, and phrases of the hearth," 
 
 and then 
 
 " The dew 
 Dwelt in her eyes, and softer all her shape 
 And rounder seemed." 
 
192 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 We need to read and reread Tennyson's " Princess " 
 for the portrayal therein of the home as a sufficient 
 sphere for the most aspiring of the gentler sex. In- 
 stead of sighing, " O that I were some great prin- 
 cess/' one can be a princess of the finer mould, along 
 the line of domesticity. It is to homes made in this 
 spirit that strong men look back with grateful recog- 
 nition of their influence in shaping the lives, which 
 they have been enabled to live, to the benefit of 
 society and perhaps to the adorning of history. 
 
 4. Once more, steadily holding ourselves to the 
 prosaic round of life, the principle under discussion 
 applies to the church. There are those who have 
 great aspirations, and who would like to be set to 
 work where their talents could be made properly 
 available. And yet they may not be giving them- 
 selves to the ordinary activities of the Christian life. 
 If there could be some new scheme of religious prop- 
 agandism under their leadership, they might be 
 brought into active service. But some of us are 
 feeling that Christianity is already sufficiently organ- 
 ized, or at least that only one more organization is 
 needed, and that one to prevent the formation of any 
 other societies. People should respond to the sug- 
 gestion to move out along the lines of existing insti- 
 tutions. Let them enter into the present activities of 
 the church. There is outlet enough now for the 
 abilities lying dormant in any community. And 
 then those, who have already become identified with 
 
A Larger Sphere 193 
 
 this and that branch of the work, can still further im- 
 prove matters by putting more of themselves into 
 that at present engaging their attention. One may- 
 be fitted for a more responsible position than he 
 has in the kingdom, but he should not repine. He 
 should rather fill so vi^ell the sphere which for the 
 time being is his that he will be called higher. To 
 any thinking they could accomplish something for 
 the Master if they had the chance, the advice is. Im- 
 prove the opportunities you have in connection with 
 the organized church. *' If thou be a great people, 
 get thee up to the forest, and hew down for thyself 
 there." Persons can have a clear field by clearing 
 it themselves. 
 
 They may not be sufficiently appreciated and ad- 
 vanced, but they can win positions for themselveSf 
 and all the more if they are left to their own re- 
 sources and outgoing energies, if without encourage- 
 ment and help they work to the front by pure merit. 
 They can have the experience of the famous Black 
 Prince at the battle of Crecy in 1 346. He, with a 
 much less force, found himself confronted by one 
 hundred thousand Frenchmen, and being hard 
 pressed he asked his father, Edward the Third of 
 England, to support him with the reserve. But the 
 monarch, watching the conflict from a distance, de- 
 clined to move to the son's assistance, because he 
 saw that there was no such necessary emergency. 
 He simply replied, " Let the boy win his spurSy for, 
 
194 The Modem Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 if God will, I desire that this day be his, and that all 
 the honour of it shall remain with him and those to 
 whom I have given him in charge." The Prince 
 did win, gaining a most decisive victory, thereby 
 coming to the front in English history. If one is 
 capable of greater things, and he iSy let him win his 
 spurs where he is, and the King of kings will advance 
 him, and will bestow upon him eternal honour and 
 reward, in accordance with the religious success that 
 may have been won. 
 
XV 
 
 Commendatory Letters: Worth -While 
 Testimonials of Things Achieved 
 
 THE most tremendous problem which one 
 can face is when he seeks to determine hu- 
 man destinies, to mould the hves of others 
 for the kingdom. We are to show how this can be 
 done, and how a person can thus gain testimonials 
 that are worth while, because they testify both to his 
 own genuineness and to the highest efficiency which 
 can possibly be his. Here is where every man, who 
 wishes to count for the most, has his greatest oppor- 
 tunity. He can enter the apostle's " great door and 
 effectual," where he can make his life sublime by 
 leaving his impress on other personalities. There 
 are in lives, that he may have helped to shape, testi- 
 monials of which he need not be ashamed. This is 
 what Paul meant when he said of his Corinthian con- 
 verts, " Ye are our epistle, written in our hearts, 
 known and read of ail men ; being made manifest 
 that ye are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, 
 written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living 
 God ; not in tables of stone, but in tables that are 
 hearts of flesh." 
 
 195 
 
196 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 It is sometimes said that church-membership does 
 not figure at all in the determination of one's com- 
 mercial standing. His habits, his associations, and 
 various items are taken into account, but it is not 
 asked if he is a professing Christian. A church let- 
 ter, it is averred, would not assist him in the least at 
 the counter of any bank in the country. Probably 
 these are exaggerated asseverations, but it is un- 
 fortunate if they are in any degree true, as they very 
 likely are. They perhaps indicate a too great laxity 
 in ecclesiastical discipline. At any rate, it cannot be 
 doubted that church- membership is not made to 
 mean enough. A letter too often commends an un- 
 worthy character. Possibly the venerable Leonard 
 Bacon was right when he used to say to us, who 
 were his students at Yale, that it should some- 
 times read : " In good and regular, but by no means 
 high standing." 
 
 Still it is difficult to maintain the exalted standard, 
 which would be desirable, in an organization that is 
 designed to help the weak and erring and sinful. 
 The apostle's glorification of charity or love as the 
 supreme virtue, and the Master's caution against re- 
 moving the tares lest the wheat also be rooted out, — 
 these considerations may have made the church more 
 careful than she should be in dealing with offenders, 
 whose inconsistencies are not glaring. It can hardly 
 be questioned, however, that a greater effort should 
 be made to have the church more nearly approximate 
 
Commendatory Letters 197 
 
 the gospel ideal, '• holy and without blemish." Nev- 
 ertheless, in apostolic times, church letters did not al- 
 ways signify what they should. They were fre- 
 quently more complimentary than truthful, till Paul 
 ceased to carry with him to a new field the certifi- 
 cates which it was customary to grant. The flatter- 
 ing epistles of recommendation were so often false 
 that to his mind they became well-nigh worthless. 
 He seems to have been challenged to produce the 
 ordinary testimonials of the day, the formal resolu- 
 tions which were common. To such an apparent 
 demand he wrote to the Corinthian Christians that 
 he had better credentials. " Ye are our epistle," he 
 said, " written in our hearts, known and read of all 
 men." 
 
 In view of the low estimation in which church 
 letters are frequently held now, we need to be able 
 to appeal to something more conclusive. It is not 
 sufficient to have our names on the roll of church- 
 membership. " Faith without works is dead," is the 
 old test which at present is very properly being in- 
 sisted upon. When we can point to souls that we 
 have been instrumental in saving, the world will 
 recognize their validity, the force of such an argu- 
 ment. There is nothing which so convinces of the 
 truth as a walking, living epistle. Very remarkable 
 is the telephone, by which we can talk at a distance, 
 but more wonderful is a letter which has hands and 
 feet, which can be sent hither and thither without 
 
198 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 guiding poles. Every person converted through our 
 influence is such an epistle recommending our relig- 
 ion to others. It is a letter whose impression we 
 retain on our own heart, we are conscious of having 
 led such a one to the Saviour ; and it is a letter 
 which going here and there is known of all men. 
 
 Present the usual church letters to people, and 
 that does not settle for them the question of the re- 
 ality of our religion ; but show them some drunkard 
 we have saved, refer them to some professional man 
 to whose life we have given an entirely different di- 
 rection, name some young person we have rescued 
 from the ways of sin, and such evidence cannot be 
 rejected. So that souls saved through our instru- 
 mentality are the commendatory letters from us, which 
 the world desires to see. Can we adduce for scep- 
 tical minds such credentials ? Is there a solitary in- 
 dividual in whose salvation we have humbly wrought 
 with God ? Here is a test for ascertaining if we are 
 true Christians, and for proving to others that we are. 
 
 Benjamin Frankhn is said to have tried to persuade 
 the farmers of his day that plaster would enrich the 
 soil. He failed to convince them, till with this ferti- 
 lizer by the roadside he formed a sentence. The 
 wheat came up in luxuriant letters of green, and 
 every passer-by could read in raised characters, 
 *' This Has Been Plastered." All around us should 
 be converts of ours, each of whom should bear the 
 inscription, " Our Epistle." Such commendatory 
 
Commendatory Letters 199 
 
 letters we all should be able to produce, and the 
 process of their production should be noted. 
 
 I. First of all, in letter-writing, there must be the 
 paper, or the prepared surface upon which the inky 
 impressions are made. The ten commandments were 
 inscribed upon tables of stone, to which there is an 
 allusion in the language, " not in tables of stone, but 
 in tables that are hearts of flesh." That upon which 
 people have written has varied with the age and 
 country. Gracing the shelves of many a modern 
 Museum are volumes of baked bricks, which stood 
 in Assyrian and Egyptian libraries six to fifteen hun- 
 dred years before the Christian era. The plastic clay 
 after receiving the cuneiform inscriptions was hard- 
 ened by heat, to preserve for future generations the 
 deeds of the past. In New Testament times the tab- 
 let neither of stone nor of brick was used, but the 
 skins of animals were manufactured into a fine vellum, 
 or the reeds of the Nile were converted into papyrus, 
 rudely resembling and leading up to our modern 
 paper. 
 
 The apostle institutes a comparison between the 
 heart and the ancient table of stone upon which the 
 finger of God wrote the decalogue on the mount, 
 after the manner of the inscriptions on the Rosetta 
 Stone in the British Museum, and on the Moabite 
 Stone in the Louvre at Paris, and on that stone which 
 archaeology has recently discovered, and which con- 
 tains a code of laws by Hamurrabi, who reigned 
 
200 The Modem Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 nine hundred years before Moses, and who, about 
 2200 B. c, antedated Abraham himself. " I will 
 take away the stony heart," says Ezekiel, " and I 
 will give you an heart of flesh." God causes the sur- 
 face upon which religious impressions are to be made 
 to be soft and tender. He prepares the heart for the 
 divine writing. He renders the very brick plastic 
 clay, into which arrows of conviction sink, making 
 cuneiform (arrow-headed) inscriptions indeed. He 
 makes the soul as susceptible to truth as delicate 
 vellum or papyrus is to ink. He in short furnishes 
 the clean paper, the new heart, for this spiritual letter- 
 writing. 
 
 There is an analogy between the preparation of the 
 heart and the manufacture of paper. Of the many 
 paper mills of the country, enter a single one of them, 
 turning out every day a white roll one hundred and 
 forty miles long, and what is seen ? Quantities of 
 wood pulp, tons of coarse rye straw, bales of filthy 
 rags. It would never be imagined that from such 
 unpromising materials could come the polished quires 
 and reams upon which are written our messages of 
 love. Wonderful are the processes of inventive 
 genius bringing about such a transformation. The 
 rags, for instance, the most repulsive of all the com- 
 bining elements, are cut into small bits and cleared 
 of dust on rapidly revolving cylinders, are subjected 
 to chemical baths which render them colourless and 
 which subdue the fibre, and eventually they unite 
 
Commendatory Letters 201 
 
 with the renovated straw and wood-pulp to form, as 
 a great Daily has said, " beautiful, light- blue foam or 
 suds," which are run through a wire screen, which are 
 pressed and rolled, until they come out pure, white 
 paper. The rags become a metropolitan newspa- 
 per, they become a handsome book, they go flying 
 through the mail in charming epistolary missives all 
 over the world. It hardly seems possible that filthy 
 rags could be converted into that smooth, glossy sur- 
 face upon which we write our letters, and yet they can 
 be and are by what is termed •* a complicated series 
 of washings, and bleachings, and churnings, and 
 boiUngs." 
 
 The human heart by mysterious processes of grace 
 goes through similar cleansings, and emerges from 
 them a new heart upon which can be written most 
 effectively the w^ords of God. But Omnipotence 
 alone can work this marvellous change. Isaiah says : 
 '« We are all as an unclean thing, and all righteous- 
 nesses are as filthy rags," but from such pollution 
 God brings clean, renovated natures. Out of all 
 that is mean and wretched and debased in humanity 
 He can make new creatures, even as out of wood- 
 pulp and straw and rags can be manufactured the 
 finest, ivory-finished paper. He turns hearts of stone 
 into those of flesh, upon which religious impressions 
 are easily made, upon which can be written very 
 readily our letters of commendation. 
 
 Have we any of these living epistles testifying to 
 
202 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 the reality of the religion we profess ? Are there any 
 conversions which under God can be attributed to 
 our influence ? We ought to be able to say of some 
 as Paul did, " Ye are our epistle." We ought to 
 have such clear, undoubted evidence that we are 
 faithful Christians. " By their fruits ye shall know 
 them," not by the church roll, not by certificate of- 
 church-membershlp, but by living epistles, by the 
 converts which we have made. We should be 
 stimulated by this thought to greater activity. To 
 be sure, it seems a hopeless task for us to make any 
 religious impression upon cold and indifferent and 
 hard and even wicked hearts. But God prepares the 
 tablet, though it be of stone or brick. He furnishes 
 the clean, sensitive paper out of very rags, out of the 
 most unpromising elements. 
 
 2. There will be farther encouragement, if we 
 consider next who writes the letters. It certainly is 
 not ourselves, for they are epistles of commendation, 
 and it would not be proper for us to write our own 
 recommendation. The apostle says, " being made 
 manifest that ye are an epistle of Christ, ministered by 
 us." Every conversion to which we stand personally 
 related is a kind of testimonial which we bear about, 
 but which after all is written by the Lord. What 
 wondrous letters He does write ! Never man so 
 spake, and never man so wrote. 
 
 It has generally been supposed that the Master's 
 teaching was wholly oral. There is only one reference 
 
Commendatory Letters 203 
 
 in the gospel narrative to His writing, and that is in 
 John where it is said of Him on one occasion that He 
 " stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the 
 ground." Very interesting it would be to know the 
 words thus traced in the dust or sand. But there is 
 no record of what was then and there written, if in- 
 deed the writing (as is believed) was not merely me- 
 chanical, without any actual formation of words. 
 Have we, then, no writing of His ? When we think 
 of Paul's numerous epistles it would seem strange 
 if the apostle's Lord and Master never wrote a letter. 
 Did He ever? 
 
 In almost all the Lives of Christ there is an allusion 
 to what is related by Eusebius, the church historian 
 who died about 340 A. D. As early as that prevailed 
 the tradition that Abgarus, a prince of Edessa, being 
 afflicted with some malady and hearing of the Lord's 
 miracles, wrote Him a letter, asking Him to come to 
 his relief, and promising Him for the persecution of 
 Jerusalem freedom and peace in " a beautiful and 
 agreeable city which," such was the royal language, 
 " though it be not very large, will be sufficient to 
 supply you with everything that is necessary." To 
 this reputed invitation, Christ is said to have returned 
 this epistolary reply : " You are happy, Abgarus, thus 
 to have believed in me without having seen me ; for 
 it is written of me that they who shall see me will 
 not believe in me, and that they who have never seen 
 me shall believe and be saved. As to the desire you 
 
204 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 express in receiving a visit from me, I must tell you 
 that all things for which I am come must be fulfilled 
 in the country where I am ; when this is done, I 
 must return to him who sent me. And when I am 
 departed hence, I will send to you one of my dis- 
 ciples, who will cure you of the disease of which you 
 complain, and give life to you and to those that are 
 with you." Eusebius states that he found this in the 
 archives of Edessa. But the authenticity of this 
 letter, though defended by some (by Tillemont and 
 others), has been denied by most. 
 
 If now the writing upon the ground was not 
 transcribed and preserved, and if the document, 
 mentioned by the ecclesiastical writer of the fourth 
 century, must be pronounced a forgery, have we no 
 letter of the Lord ? Certainly, for says Paul to the 
 Corinthian Christians, ** ye are an epistle of Christ." 
 Upon every converted soul, upon the tablet of every 
 renewed heart, He writes. We can read the living 
 characters which He traces. Very legibly stands out 
 this sentence as recorded in the prophecy of Jere- 
 miah : " The sin of Judah is written with a pen of 
 iron, and with the point of a diamond, it is graven 
 upon the table of their heart." The great fact of sin 
 is that which Christ impresses first of all upon the 
 human heart. He imparts the consciousness of guilt. 
 He engraves with the point of a diamond into the 
 quivering soul, Thou hast sinned. But there is some- 
 thing more to this letter which He writes in the 
 
Commendatory Letters 205 
 
 breast of humanity. The revelation oisin is followed 
 by that of redemption ^ as we learn from Job who 
 says : 
 
 *' Oh that my words were now written ! 
 Oh that they were inscribed in a book ! 
 That with an iron pen and lead 
 They were graven in the rock forever ! 
 For I know that my Redeemer liveth." 
 
 When the great thought of immortality first dawned 
 upon the patriarch, when the glorious doctrine of 
 salvation was wrought out in his experience, he was 
 afraid the blessed truth would be lost, unless it were 
 written with an iron pen in everlasting rock, in im- 
 perishable stone. He did not realize apparently that 
 multitudes of redeemed souls would have as vivid a 
 sense of the Saviour as himself. 
 
 Now we are the pens which Christ uses to impress 
 these two great facts of sin and redemption upon the 
 human heart. With us as instruments He writes His 
 letters upon precious souls, His letters containing the 
 two revelations of lost and saved. We should be 
 able to name persons upon whom through us Christ 
 has wrought conviction of sin and assurance of par- 
 don. These are the testimonials which we should 
 seek to bear witness to the genuineness of our Chris- 
 tianity. If we can present, not a letter of the church, 
 but an " epistle of Christ," not a religious certificate, 
 but a religious person as the fruit of our activity, if 
 we can show such credentials, the world will be 
 
2o6 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 forced to take knowledge of us that we have been 
 with Jesus, and seeing our good works to glorify our 
 Father in heaven. We should, therefore, seek to be 
 iron pens with diamond points in the hands of the 
 master letter-writer of the universe. 
 
 3. One more need is indicated by these words : 
 «' written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the 
 living God." We shall be useless as pens without 
 that influence from above flowing through us, with- 
 out heavenly grace conveyed through us as channels, 
 without an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. What 
 ink the divine is ! superior to any vegetable or ani- 
 mal or silver or gold ink of which we read. Says 
 Byron : 
 
 *' A small drop of ink 
 Falling, like dew upon a thought, produces 
 That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.** 
 
 Not that the convictions produced are always clear 
 at first. They may lie concealed for a while. There 
 is such a commodity as sympathetic ink, which 
 makes no visible marks upon the paper till heat is 
 applied, when the letters come out distinct. So it is 
 with the ink of the Spirit, shed from us as pens upon 
 some soul. The convictions which we secure may 
 not come out so as to be really seen, until there is the 
 heat of some revival or of some trial, and then the 
 sympathetic ink, by which impressions have been 
 made, develops in a manner to be read by all. If 
 only we have the proper spiritual equipment, if only 
 
Commendatory Letters 207 
 
 we are divinely inspired, we shall not approach 
 people in vain. 
 
 If the poet needs inspiration, much more does the 
 disciple. Pausanias is our authority for this story 
 regarding one of the earliest of Greek poets : " It is 
 said of Pindar that when he was a young man, as he 
 was going to Thespia, being wearied with the heat, 
 as it was noon and in the height of summer, he fell 
 asleep at a small distance from the public road ; and 
 that bees, as he was asleep, flew to him, and wrought 
 their honey on his lips." If we speak the Gospel 
 with the sweet unction of the Spirit, if our words to 
 the unconverted distill like honey, if the appeal be 
 kind and tender and affectionate, hearts will be im- 
 pressed. The hard pen needs the gentle flow of the 
 ink. Surely with God to furnish the paper, to pre- 
 pare the heart, and with Christ to wield us as instru- 
 ments or pens, and with the Holy Spirit like ink to 
 leave indelible impressions, we need not be lacking 
 in living epistles to testify to our Christian character 
 and to our religious efficiency. 
 
XVI 
 
 The Quest of the Grail and of the Christ 
 
 WE reach our climacteric in the challenging 
 Christ. Very significantly all the Lives 
 of Him, outside of the gospel narratives, 
 have been written in the last hundred years. To 
 such an extent has He arrested the attention of the 
 modern man, of him more than of persons in any 
 other century of the Christian era. The cry of Job 
 has been that of the human heart, " Oh, that I knew 
 where I might find him ! " To the satisfying of that 
 yearning, writers have addressed themselves in our 
 day as never before. Many have heard the summons 
 of Herod, in a deeper sense than he meant the com- 
 mand, " Go and search out exactly concerning the 
 young child." In our concluding chapter we are to 
 give ourselves to the quest, symbolized so beautifully 
 in the legend of the Holy Grail. Our course of 
 thought would be incomplete if we did not come 
 face to face with the transcendent character, the most 
 commanding Personality, of all history. Was there 
 really such a one as we have been supposing to have 
 been the motive power in all right conduct ? Can 
 we clearly determine that there was the advent of the 
 Messiah ? 
 
 208 
 
The Quest of the Grail 209 
 
 It is worth noting that His coming was predicted 
 by inspired prophets. There were even what have 
 been called the unconscious prophecies of heathen- 
 ism. The passages of Scripture foretelling the great 
 event are familiar, and need not be cited. The long- 
 ings of pagan hearts for a divine Redeemer are not 
 so well known, and yet these feelings have been ex- 
 pressed in language hardly less striking and prophetic 
 than the words of Holy Writ itself. A single illus- 
 tration will suffice. Forty years before the Christian 
 era, the celebrated Latin poet, Virgil, wrote these 
 hnes, which seem to savour of a true inspiration : 
 
 "Lo ! from the high heavens 
 Comes a new seed of men. . . . 
 . , . The child shall purge 
 Our guilt-stains out, and free the land from dread. 
 He with the gods and heroes like the gods 
 Shall hold familiar converse, and shall rule 
 With his great Father's spirit the peaceful world. 
 
 **^ t* 5j€ 3|C 3^ 3|C 
 
 Come, claim thine honours, for the time draws nigh, 
 Babe of immortal race, the wondrous seed of Jove ! 
 Lo, at thy coming how the starry spheres 
 Are moved to trembhng, and the earth below. 
 And wide-spread seas, and the blue vault of heaven ! 
 How all things joy to greet the rising age ! " 
 
 Gibbon says that Virgil's fourth eclogue, from which 
 this quotation is made, " contributed to the conver- 
 sion of the first Christian emperor," Constantine, who 
 considered the Roman bard's verses as among the 
 
210 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 proofs of the Gospel. Very remarkable are such 
 sentiments coming from a pagan less than a half 
 century before the great Child Prince was born. 
 But was the hope realized, was there the birth of 
 any such person ? Did He, the anniversary of whose 
 nativity we annually observe, actually appear on the 
 earth ? The event occurred, if at all, a long while 
 ago. Nineteen centuries constitute a tremendous 
 chasm for human belief to leap with much con- 
 fidence. May it not all be a mistake about Christ 
 and the religion He is said to have established by 
 such indubitable signs ? 
 
 I. First, we will search along the line of the 
 historical. We will all admit that memorial days 
 rest on a solid basis. We would not celebrate the 
 Fourth of July except for the fact of national inde- 
 pendence proclaimed in 1776. Regarding Him whom 
 Bethlelem claims, we have memorials of His resurrec- 
 tion in Easter and of His birth in Christmas, and 
 either of these anniversaries can be traced far back. 
 Confining ourselves to the latter, can we by search- 
 ing ascertain that the alleged advent of the Lord was 
 a fact ? We certainly can. If we traverse the cen- 
 turies back from the present, we discover evidence 
 of Him all along the shining way. We do not have 
 any doubt about the coming of the Pilgrims to our 
 New England shore in December of 1620. Our 
 annual celebration of Forefathers' Day testifies to 
 the actuality of the landing on Plymouth Rock. 
 
The Quest of the Grail 21 1 
 
 We would not enthuse every year over a mere fic- 
 tion. We are at a remove practically of three cen- 
 turies from the event, but our ever-recurring anni- 
 versary shows what our belief is. Can we trace 
 back the observance, commemorating the divine 
 nativity, till we are as near to Christ as we are to- 
 day to the Pilgrims ? 
 
 There will be no question about recent times, and 
 with one bound we go back to 1066. As long ago 
 as that, on Christmas in that eventful year, William 
 the Conqueror after the epochal battle of Hastings 
 was crowned King of England. That is a matter 
 of record. We recall again that historic scene of the 
 splendid coronation of the immortal Charlemagne in 
 Rome, and we are informed that this was on Christ- 
 mas of the year 800. More than a thousand years 
 ago, therefore, the nativity of Christ was undoubted. 
 There was also that well-known crisis in early French 
 history, when the Prankish King, Clovis, vowed that 
 if he gained a certain battle he would adopt his 
 wife's religion and become a Christian, and he did. 
 France has never forgotten that memorable day 
 when the proud monarch and three thousand of his 
 warriors and a great many women and children were 
 baptized. When did this occur ? On Christmas, 
 496 A. D. So that fourteen hundred years ago the 
 birth of Christ was a matter of commemoration ; so 
 anciently as that was it taken for granted that He 
 had been born in human conditions. We can go 
 
2 1 2 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 still farther back, even to the year 386, when the 
 golden-mouthed Chrysostom preached a sermon at 
 Antioch, taking as his subject Christmas, and 
 though it appears from him that there had been 
 some variation as to the exact date, so has the 
 Plymouth anniversary alternated between December 
 the twenty-first and the twenty-second. There we 
 are, then, with a Christmas observance about as near 
 to Christ as our last Forefathers* Day was to the 
 beginnings in the Old Colony on the Massachusetts 
 coast. We have thus found Him, of whom Moses 
 and the prophets wrote, by working gradually back 
 over historic ground. 
 
 The fact is that Christianity in some shape or 
 other is prominent through all of nineteen centuries. 
 Art is interwoven with Christian thought. Science 
 revolves about the sun of righteousness and the 
 bright and morning star, as its relation to religion 
 is ever eagerly discussed. Music has received much 
 of its inspiration from the divine Son, whose praises 
 have been sung in hymn and oratorio. Eliminate 
 the Master, and poetry and general literature would 
 largely lose their vital elements. Law is permeated 
 with the principles of the Gospel, and with the teach- 
 ings of Christ. Political revolutions have been car- 
 ried forward with a momentum that came from an 
 effort to approximate the ideal kingdom of the 
 truth. Christianity can be lost sight of nowhere. 
 
 Step by step we thus get back to the very begin- 
 
The Quest of the Grail 213 
 
 ning, and there not Christians only but pagans also 
 testify to the great fact of Christ, and of Christianity. 
 Pliny the Younger, for instance, was a cultured 
 heathen, who from the vicinity of the Black Sea 
 wrote some letters to his emperor early in the second 
 century. Did he make any reference to the Chris- 
 tians ? He gave to Trajan this picture of them : 
 " They are accustomed to meet on a stated day, 
 before sunrise, and to repeat among themselves a 
 hymn to Christ as to a god." Suetonius about the 
 same time wrote his " Lives of the Caesars," and did 
 he know of any such persons as Christ and the Chris- 
 tians ? In referring to a banishment of Jews from 
 Rome, he says it was because they were " continu- 
 ally making disturbances at the instigation of one 
 Chrestus," which is only another form of the name 
 Christus or Christ. This same pagan writer else- 
 where says of Nero that he " inflicted punishments 
 on the Christians, a sort of people who held a new 
 and impious superstition." Tacitus is another clas- 
 sical author, who is Hnked to the apostolic age, and 
 he, in speaking of the Neronian persecution, says 
 that the emperor " punished those persons who were 
 commonly called Christians. . . . This name 
 was derived from one Christus, who was put to 
 death as a criminal by Pontius Pilate." 
 
 Does Christianity, then, have a historical basis? 
 Did Christ ever live on the earth ? " Go and search 
 out exactly concerning the young child." We have 
 
214 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 thu& searched along one line, the historic, and we are 
 glad to learn that we do not, as Peter says, " follow 
 cunningly devised fables." We really find the object 
 of our search, even Him whose nativity is yearly cel- 
 ebrated. The child, whose coming Virgil seems to 
 have sung no less than Isaiah, was born nineteen 
 centuries ago in Bethlehem, and was the founder of 
 a reUgion which sings jubilantly : 
 
 " Glory to God in the highest, 
 And on earth peace." 
 
 2. In the second place, we can prosecute our 
 search not only along the historical but also along 
 the experiential line. The Lord Himself said that 
 if we would do His will, we would learn of the doc- 
 trine. We can find Him in our personal experience, 
 if we will lead Christlike lives. Under such circum- 
 stances He will manifest Himself unto us as He does 
 not unto the world. We are taught this by the 
 fascinating tale of the Holy Grail, whose quest has 
 ever been the inspiration of poets. 
 
 When with the destruction of Jerusalem the dis- 
 ciples were scattered abroad, Joseph of Arimatliea is 
 said to have gone first to Gaui or France. Spread- 
 ing the gospel story there, he heard of the need in 
 pagan Britain, for which he sailed. He made his 
 way to what was then the lovely island of Avalon, 
 since called Glastonbury. Arriving the night before 
 Christmas, he thrust into the ground his thornwood 
 staff, which he had carried all the way from Palestine. 
 
The Quest of the Grail 215 
 
 Awaking on the morning of the anniversary of the 
 Lord's nativity, he was astonished to see that, Hke 
 Aaron's rod which budded, his staff had miraculously 
 blossomed. He naturally decided to build on the 
 sacred spot a church, which became the Mother 
 Church of England. This Abbey still continues as a 
 most attractive ruin, which has been personally vis- 
 ited by me because of the associations. 
 
 Now the sacramental cup, used for the wine at the 
 last supper, and mystically at least receiving the pre- 
 cious blood from the pierced side of the Saviour on 
 the cross, came, according to the interesting legend, 
 into the possession of the wealthy Joseph, who with 
 Nicodemus had given the crucified one tender burial 
 amid sweet spices in a fragrant garden. He bore 
 the holy relic, according to Tennyson's " Idylls of the 
 King," to the English Glastonbury, and there it was 
 long kept by the Arimathean's descendants. The 
 keepers became an order of nobles, knights of the 
 round table, and as long as they remained chaste in 
 deed and word and thought, they were to be allowed 
 to retain what, like the ark of God, always brought a 
 blessing to its fortunate possessors. In the course of 
 time, however, one of the highly favoured circle 
 sinned, violated his vow, and immediately, as the 
 English poet has written, the Grail disappeared, van- 
 ished from Glastonbury, 
 
 '* Where the winter thorn 
 Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord." 
 
2i6 The Modem Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 There followed an earnest quest of it by different 
 knights, who for this reason left King Arthur pretty- 
 much to himself in his castled hall. Why was Sir 
 Galahad successful in his search ? Why was he 
 alone permitted again a vision of the chalice with its 
 contents blushing rosy-red ? He was rewarded with 
 the longed-for sight, since he could say, 
 
 " My strength is as the strength of ten, 
 Because my heart is pure." 
 
 The Lord's own beatitude is still true, that the pure 
 in heart shall see God, shall be granted a vision of the 
 Christ. We do not need to sweep back through the 
 centuries in order to find Him ; we shall discover 
 Him in our lives if these are Christlike. 
 
 James Russell Lowell, our American poet, teaches 
 us this same lesson in his interpretation of the ro- 
 mantic quest of the Grail. He makes one Sir Laun- 
 fal go in search of it, in flashing armour and on a 
 i spirited charger dashing away from the castle, while 
 he tossed a gratuity to a leper at the gate. After 
 long searching in every country, only to be disap- 
 pointed, he came back after many years a broken old 
 man. At the gate of his former estate, which 
 another now owned, was found again the leper, with 
 whom this time he lovingly shared the single crust 
 he had, while he broke the ice in an adjacent stream, 
 and with a wooden bowl filled therefrom he quenched 
 the thirst of his companion in distress, in whom as 
 
The Quest of the Grail 2 17 
 
 one of the least he tried to see his Saviour, and then 
 a marvellous transformation took place. 
 
 " The leper no longer crouched at his side, 
 But stood before him glorified, 
 Shining and tall and fair and straight 
 As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate, — 
 Himself the Gate whereby men can 
 Enter the temple of God in man." 
 
 Such was " the vision of Sir Launfal," who ultimately 
 found the Christ in the one he had first passed by at 
 his own door. He was given this needful lesson : 
 
 " In many climes, without avail, 
 
 Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail ; 
 Behold, it is here, — this cup which thou 
 Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now ; 
 This crust is my body broken for thee, 
 This water His blood that died on the tree ; 
 The Holy Supper is kept indeed, 
 In whatso we share with another's need." 
 
 It was in this way, and " at the Christmas time," that 
 the knight was made to have learned that Christ 
 lived not only centuries ago, but lives yet, and that 
 He may be served in those we help in His name. It 
 may be some trifling thing that we do, a considerate 
 word spoken, a self-forgetful and graceful yielding to 
 another on a minor point, a pleasant smile given 
 with its cheering effect, a cordial hand-greeting ex- 
 tended, a small gift made where it is needed. Any 
 kindness which we may do, a cup of cold water 
 
2i8 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 which we may give, — anything of that sort is the 
 holy cup wherein we often get the revelation of the 
 Christ. What we do unto the least, we do unto 
 Him, according to His own teaching, and we thereby 
 secure the blessing we covet. Our search for the 
 Christ no less than the quest of the Grail will be 
 successful when we steadily show the spirit of the 
 Master. 
 
 Not only again did the wise men of the east find 
 the Christ at Bethlehem, but we all agree that Van 
 Dyke's charming " Story of the Other Wise Man " 
 is essentially true. When in middle life he converted 
 all his vast wealth into three precious stones of 
 enormous value, and with his portable riches set out 
 in search of the new King heralded by the star, and 
 when on his journey he helped the sick man in the 
 desert which with his caravan he was crossing, saved 
 the babe of the house in Bethlehem, where he was 
 being temporarily entertained, from the historic 
 slaughter of the innocents, and redeemed the young 
 girl in Jerusalem from the slavery with which she 
 was threatened, he was really finding the Christ in 
 these ways, though he knew it not as yet. When to 
 do all this he parted with his costly jewels one by 
 one, and when as an old man he sank to his death in 
 the streets of the holy city from the falling of a tile 
 that had been loosened by an earthquake shock fol- 
 lowing the tragedy of Golgotha, he of course at the 
 end, after such a life of helpfulness on every side, 
 
The Quest of the Grail 219 
 
 heard sweetest music, which, coming nearer, became 
 vocal with the Lord's own words, that what he had 
 done to others he had done to the King, who was 
 rightly revealed to him in a ravishing, dying vision. 
 He found the object of his quest otherwise than did 
 the wise men, but he found the Christ all the same. 
 
 We are likewise taught this lesson by the legend 
 of St. Christopher, who in an early century wanted 
 to serve his Lord, but who found himself tied to a 
 very humble task. It was his to carry pilgrims 
 across a bridgeless river. Being of heroic size, in- 
 deed a giant in stature, he could do that very well, 
 for his head and shoulders were well above the water 
 of the stream which he forded. He probably felt 
 that there was not much if any Christian service in 
 such lowly employment. But one day he lifted a 
 child to his neck, and never before had such hard 
 wading. It seemed to him that his burden would 
 sink him into the swirling waters, but he struggled 
 on till he reached the farther shore. Thereupon in 
 amazement he looked upon the small bundle of 
 humanity who had weighed him down, and who 
 immediately revealed Himself as the Christ Child, 
 warmly commending him for what he had done and 
 was doing, and naming him, from two Greek words, 
 Christopher or Christ-bearer. If we will give another 
 a helpful lift, if we will seek to carry him over a 
 difficult place, if we will assist a young person at his 
 studies, if we will do any such loving service, there 
 
220 The Modern Man Facing Old Problems 
 
 will come to us a disclosure of the Lord, and we will 
 find ourselves bearing the image of the Christ, and 
 the Christian hfe will become a glad and thrilling 
 reality, and our doubts will vanish. 
 
 As Christopher found the Christ in the child he 
 carried over the river, as " the other wise man " 
 finally learned that he had seen him in each of the 
 cases he helped, as Sir Launfal at last saw the same 
 Lord in the needy person by his own gate, we should 
 see the Christ in those with whom we daily come 
 in contact, as we seek to do them little kindnesses 
 for His sake. If we invariably would act towards 
 others as we would to Him were He on earth, the 
 vision of the Holy Grail would always be ours, the 
 whole year round would be a blessed Christmas or a 
 glad Easter, those anniversaries on which, with the 
 sway of tender thoughts and feelings and acts, the 
 Lord is particularly revealed to longing hearts. 
 
 In such ways, along the Hnes both of the his- 
 torical and of the experiential, can our quest have a 
 most happy end, while ours can be the triumphant 
 expression of the first disciples, who said, " We have 
 found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the 
 prophets, wrote, Jesus of Nazareth." At least we 
 will feel that here is the ideal manhood after which 
 to strive, a most unique combination indeed of the 
 human and the divine, and with the doubting Thomas 
 each of us in a burst of conviction will say, " My 
 Lord and my God." Richard Watson Gilder was 
 
The Quest of the Grail 221 
 
 only reechoing this when with a forceful ruggedness 
 he wrote : 
 
 *' If Jesus Christ is a man, — 
 And only a man, — I say 
 That of all mankind I cleave to Him, 
 And to Him will I cleave alway. 
 
 " If Jesus Christ is a God, — 
 And the only God, — I swear 
 I will follow Him through heaven and hell, 
 The earth, the sea, and the air !" 
 
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