UBRARYOFPRlNCap'^ 
 
 FEB 3 
 
 Turni 0^! C^L SEVlNARYj 
 
Phillips Brooks's Sermons 
 
 1st Series 
 
 In Ten Volumes 
 The Purpose and Use of Comfort 
 
 And Other Sermons 
 
 The Candle of the Lord 
 
 And Other Sermons 
 
 Sermons Preached in English 
 Churches 
 
 And Other Sermons 
 Visions and Tasks And Other Sermons 
 
 The Light of the World 
 
 And Other Sermons 
 The Battle of Life And Other Sermons 
 
 Sermons for the Principal Festi- 
 vals and Fasts of the Church Year 
 
 Edited by the Rev. John Cotton Brooks 
 New Starts in Life And Other Sermons 
 
 The Law of Growth 
 
 And Other Sermons 
 Seeking Life And Other Sermon* 
 
 2d Series 
 
 3d Series 
 
 4th Series 
 
 5th Series 
 
 6th Series 
 
 7th Series 
 
 8th Series 
 
 9th Series 
 
 10th Series 
 
 E. P. Button and Company 
 
 31 West 23d Street New York 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
1 he >;,^v^.L ^i 
 Light of the WorlH 
 
 .4^. 
 
 And Other Sermons 
 
 By the 
 Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks, D.D. 
 
 Fifth Series 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 EP- BUTTON ^ COMPANY 
 
 31 West Twenty-Third Street; 
 
 I 910 
 
Copyright, 1890 
 
 E. P. UUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 tEbe Imicltecbocfiec preee. tkevo lock 
 
EJje iEemorg of tng Brotfjer, 
 
 GEORGE BROOKS, 
 
 WHO DIED IN THE ORE AT WAR, 
 I DEDICATE THESE SERMONS. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SSBKON PA«B 
 
 I. The Light of the World i 
 
 II. The New and Greater Miracle 24 
 
 III. The Priority of God 40 
 
 IV. Identity and Variety 67 
 
 V. The Seriousness of Life 73 
 
 VI. The Choice Young Man 89 
 
 VII. Backgrounds and Foregrounds 106 
 
 Vin. The Silence of Christ 124 
 
 IX. How to Abound 140 
 
 X. How to be Abased 159 
 
 XI. The Christian Church 177 
 
 XII. The Opening of the Eyes 194 
 
 XIII. The Beloved Physician 216 
 
 XIV. Deep Calling unto Deep 234 
 
 XV. The Wings of the Seraphim 253 
 
 XVI. The Planter and the Rain 270 
 
 XVII. New Experiences 287 
 
 55:VIII. The Perfect Faith 806 
 
 XIX. The Joy with God 324 
 
 XX. The Illumination of Obedience 340 
 
 XXI. The Certain End 859 
 
SERMONS. 
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WOELD. 
 
 Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the Light of the 
 World : he that followeth me shall not walk in Darkness, but shall have 
 the Light of Life. — John viii, 12. 
 
 Sometimes Jesus gathers His work and nature up in 
 one descriptive word, and offers it, as it were out of i. 
 wide-open hand, complete to His disciples. In such a 
 word all the details of His relation to the soul and to 
 the world are comprehensively included. As the dis- 
 ciple listens and receives it, he feels all his fragmentary 
 and scattered experiences drawing together and round- 
 ing into unity. As, having heard it, he carries it forth 
 with him into his life, he finds all future experiences 
 claiming their places within it, and getting their mean- 
 ing from it. Such words of Jesus are like spheres of 
 crystal into which the world is gathered, and where the 
 past and future, the small and great, may all be read. 
 
 It seems to me as if there were days on which we 
 wanted to set one of these comprehensive words of 
 Christ before our eyes and study it. There are days 
 when we must give ourselves to some particular detail 
 
 1 ^ 
 
The Light of the World. 
 
 of Christian truth or conduct. There are other days 
 when we are faced by the question of the whole meaning 
 of the Christian faith and its relation to the great world 
 of life. Vague and perplexed the soul is to which its 
 faith does not come with distinct and special touches, 
 pressing directly on every movement of its life. But 
 poor and petty is the soul which has no large conception 
 of its faith, always abiding around and enfolding its de- 
 tails and giving them the dignity and unity they need. 
 
 One of these comprehensive words of Jesus is our text 
 this morning. 
 
 I want to ask you then to think with me what Jesus 
 means when He declares Himself to be the " Light of the 
 World " or the " Light of Life. " The words come down 
 to us out of the old Hebrew temple where He spoke 
 them first. They pierce into the centre of our mod- 
 ern life. Nay, they have done much to make our mod- 
 ern life, and to make it dilferent from the old Hebrew 
 temple where they were spoken first. It will be good 
 indeed if we can feel something of the power that is 
 in them, and understand how clear is the conception of 
 Life which they include, how far our present Christian- 
 ity is an embodiment of that conception, how far it fails 
 of it, how certain it is in being ever truer and truer 
 to that conception that the faith of Christ must come 
 to be the Master of the soul and of the world. 
 
 We may begin, then, by considering what would be 
 the idea of Christ and His relation to the world which 
 we should get if this were all we knew of Him, — if He 
 as yet had told us nothing of Himself but what is 
 wrapned up in these rich and simple words, "I am 
 
The Light of the World. 
 
 the Light of the World," «I am the Light of Life." 
 They send us instantly abroad into the world of Nature. 
 They set us on the hill-top watching the sunrise as it 
 fills the east with glory. They show us the great plain 
 flooded and beaten and quivering with the noon-daj 
 sun. They hush and elevate us with the mystery and 
 sweetness and suggestiveness of the evening's glow. 
 There could be no image so abundant in its meaning ; no 
 fact plucked from the world of Nature could have such 
 vast variety of truth to tell ; and yet one meaning shines 
 out from the depth of the figure and irradiates all its 
 messages. They all are true by its truth. What is that 
 meaning ? It is the essential richness and possibility 
 of the world and its essential belonging to the sun. 
 Light may be great and glorious in itself. The sun 
 may be tumultuous with fiery splendor ; the atmosphere 
 may roll in billows of glory for its million miles ; but 
 light as related to earth has its significance in the 
 earth's possibilities. The sun, as the world's sun, is 
 nothing without the world, on which it shines, and 
 whose essential character and glory it displays. 
 
 Do you see what I mean ? When the sun rose this 
 morning it found the world here. It did not make the 
 world. It did not fling forth on its earliest ray this 
 solid globe, which was not and would not have been but 
 for the sun's rising. What did it do ? It found the 
 world in darkness, torpid and heavy and asleep ; with 
 powers all wrapped up in sluggishness ; with life that 
 was hardly better or more alive than death. The sun 
 found this great sleeping world and woke it. It bade 
 it be itself. It quickened every slow and sluggish fac- 
 
Tlie Light of the World. 
 
 ulty. It called to the dull streams, and said, "Be 
 quick ; " to the dull birds and bade them sing ; to the 
 dull fields and made them grow ; to the dull men and 
 bade them talk and think and work. It flashed electric 
 invitation to the whole mass of sleeping power which 
 really was the world, and summoned it to action. It 
 did not make the world. It did not sweep a dead world 
 off and set a live world in its place. It did not start 
 another set of processes unlike those which had been 
 sluggishly moving in the darkness. It poured strength 
 into the essential processes which belonged to the very 
 nature of the earth which it illuminated. It glorified, 
 intensified, fulfilled the earth; so that with the sun's 
 work incomplete, with part of the earth illuminated and 
 the rest lying in the darkness still, we can most easily 
 conceive of the dark region looking in its half -life drow- 
 sily over to the region which was flooded with light, and 
 saying, " There, there is the true earth ! That is the real 
 planet. In light and not in darkness the earth truly 
 is itself." 
 
 That is the Parable of the Light. And now it seems 
 to me to be of all importance to remember and assert 
 all that to be distinctly a true parable of Christ. He 
 says it is : "I am the Light of the World. " A thousand 
 things that means. A thousand subtle, mystic mira- 
 cles of deep and intricate relationship between Christ 
 and humanity must be enfolded in those words; but 
 over and behind and within all other meanings, it means 
 this, — the essential richness and possibility of human- 
 ity and its essential belonging to Divinity. Christ is 
 unspeakably great and glorious in Himself. The glory 
 
The Light of the World. 
 
 which He had with His Father " before the world was, " 
 of that we can only meditate and wonder ; but the glory 
 which He has had since the world was, the glory 
 which He has had in relation to the world, is all 
 bound up with the world's possibilities, has all con- 
 sisted in the utterance and revelation and fulfilment of 
 capacities which were in the very nature of the world 
 on which His Light has shone. 
 
 Do you see what I mean ? Christ rises on a soul. 
 Christ rises on the world. I speak in crude and super- 
 ficial language. For the moment I make no account of 
 the deep and sacred truth, — the truth which alone is 
 finally and absolutely true, — that Christ has always 
 been with every soul and all the world. I talk in crude 
 and superficial words, and say Christ comes to any soul 
 or to the world. What is it that happens ? If the fig- 
 ure of the Light is true, Christ when He comes finds 
 the soul or the world really existent, really having 
 within itself its holiest capabilities, really moving, 
 though dimly and darkly, in spite of all its hindrances, 
 in its true directions; and what He does for it is to 
 quicken it through and through, to sound the bugle of 
 its true life in its ears, to make it feel the nobleness of 
 movements which have seemed to it ignoble, the hope- 
 fulness of impulses which have seemed hopeless, to bid 
 it be itself. The little lives which do in little ways 
 that which the life of Jesus does completely, the noble 
 characters of which we think we have the right to say 
 that they are the lights of human history, this is true 
 also of them. They reveal and they inspire. The 
 worthless becomes full of worth, the insignificant be- 
 
The Light of the World. 
 
 comes full of meaning at their touch. They faintly 
 catch the feeble reflection of His life who is the true 
 Light of the World, the real illumination and inspira-" 
 tion of humanity. 
 
 But metaphors bewilder and embarrass us when once 
 we have caught their general meaning, and they begin 
 to tempt us to follow them out into details into which 
 they were not meant to lead us. Let us then leave the 
 figure, and try to grasp the truth in its complete sim- 
 plicity and see what some of its applications are. The 
 truth is that every higher life to which man comes, and 
 ^ y especially the highest life in Christ, is in the true line 
 of man's humanity; there is no transportation to a for- 
 eign region. There is the quickening and fulfilling of 
 what man by the very essence of his nature is. The 
 more man becomes irradiated with Divinity, the more, 
 not the less, truly he is man. The fullest Christian ex- 
 perience is simply the fullest life. To enter into it 
 therefore is no wise strange. The wonder and the un- 
 naturalness is that any child of God should live outside 
 of it, and so in all his life should never be himself. . 
 
 When I repeat such truths they seem self-evident. 
 No man, I think, denies them ; and yet I feel the absence 
 of their power all through men's struggles for the Chris- 
 tian life. A sense of foreignness and unnaturalness and 
 strangeness lies like a fog across the entrance of the 
 divine country ; a certain wonder whether I, a man, have 
 any business there ; an unreality about it all ; a break 
 and gulf between what the world is and what we know 
 it ought to be, — all these are elements in the obscurit}', 
 the feebleness, the vague remoteness, of religion. 
 
The Light of the World. 
 
 And yet how clear the Bible is about it all ! How 
 clear Christ is ! It is redemption and fulfilment which 
 he comes to bring to man. Those are his words. There 
 is a true humanity which is to be restored, and all whose 
 unattained possibilities are to be filled out. There is no 
 human affection, of fatherhood, brotherhood, child- 
 hood, which is not capable of expressing divine rela-' 
 tions. Man is a child of God, for whom his Father's' 
 house is waiting. The whole creation is groaning and 
 travailing till man shall be complete. Christ comes 
 not to destroy but to fulfil. What is the spirit of such 
 words as those ? Is it not all a claiming of man through 
 all his life for God ? Is it not an assertion that just so 
 far as he is not God's he is not truly man ? Is it not a 
 declaration that whatever he does in his true human 
 nature, undistorted, unperverted, is divinely done, and 
 therefore that the divine perfection of his life will be 
 in the direction which these efforts of his nature indi- 
 cate and prophesy ? 
 
 I bid you to think whether to clearly believe this 
 would not make the world more full of courage and of 
 hope. If you could thoroughly believe that the divine 
 life to which you were called was the completion, and 
 not the abrogation and surrender, of your humanity, 
 would you not be more strong and eager in your en- 
 trance on it ? If below the superficial currents which 
 so tremendously draw us away from righteousness and 
 truth we always felt the tug and majestic pressure of 
 the profoundest currents setting toward righteousness 
 and truth, would not our souls be stronger? Shall we 
 not think that ? Shall we leave it to doubting lips to 
 
8 Tke Light of the World. 
 
 tell about the "tendency which makes for righteous- 
 ness " ? Shall we not tell of it, — we who believe in 
 Christ, who made in His very being the declaration of 
 the nativeness of righteousness to man, who bade all 
 generations see in Him how the Son of Man is the Son 
 of God in the foundation and intention of His life ? 
 
 Let us see how all this is true in various applications. 
 Apply it first to the standards of character. We talk of 
 Christian character as if it were some separate and spe- 
 cial thing unattempted, unsuggested by the human soul 
 until it became aware of Christ. There would come a 
 great flood of light and reality into it all if we knew 
 thoroughly that the Christian character is nothing but 
 the completed human character. The Christian is noth- 
 ing but the true man. Nothing but the true man, do I 
 say ? As if that were a little thing ! As if man, with 
 any inflow of divinity, could be, could wish to be any- 
 thing more or different from man ! But we imagine a 
 certain vague array of qualities which are to belong to 
 the Christian life which are not the intrinsic human 
 qualities ; and so our Christian type becomes unreal, and 
 our human type loses its dignity and greatness. Human 
 courage, human patience, human trustiness, human hu- 
 mility, — those filled with the fire of (xod make the graces 
 of the Christian life. We are still haunted by the false 
 old distinction of the natural virtues and the Christian 
 graces. The Christian graces are nothing but the nat- 
 ural virtues held up into the light of Christ. They are 
 made of the same stuff; they are lifted along the same 
 lines ; but they have found their pinnacle. They have 
 caught the illumination which their souls desire. Man- 
 
Tlie Light of the World. 
 
 liness has not been changed into Godliness; it has 
 fulfilled itself in Godliness. 
 
 As soon as we understand all this, then what a great, 
 clear thing salvation becomes. Its one idea is health. 
 Not rescue from suffering, not plucking out of fire, not 
 deportation to some strange, beautiful region where the 
 winds blow with other influences and the skies drop with 
 other dews, not the enchaining of the spirit with some 
 unreal celestial spell, but health, — the cool, calm vigor 
 of the normal human life ; the making of the man to be 
 himself; the calling up out of the depths of his being 
 and the filling with vitality of that self which is truly 
 he, — this is salvation ! 
 
 Of course it all assumes that in this mixture of good 
 and evil which we call Man, this motley and medley 
 which we call human character, it is the good and not 
 the evil which is the foundation color of the whole. 
 Man is a son of God on whom the Devil has laid his 
 hand, not a child of the Devil whom God is trying to 
 steal. That is the first truth of all religion. That is 
 what Christ is teaching everywhere and always. " We 
 called the chess-board white, we call it black ; " but it 
 is, this chess-board of our human life, white not black, 
 
 — black spotted on white, not white spotted upon 
 black. 
 
 It is easy to make this question of precedence and in- 
 trusion seem unimportant. " If man stands here to-day 
 half bad, half good, what matters it how it came about, 
 
 — whether the good intruded on the bad, or the bad 
 upon the good ? Here is the present actual condition. 
 Is not that enough ? " No, surely it is not. Everything 
 
10 Tlie Light of the World. 
 
 depends in the great world upon whether Peace or War 
 is the Intruder and the Rebel, upon whether Liberty or 
 Slavery is the ideal possessor of the field. Everything 
 depends in personal life upon whether Cowardice has 
 invaded the rightful realm of Courage, or Courage has 
 pitched its white tent on dusky fields which belong to 
 Cowardice, or whether Truth or Falsehood is the ulti- 
 mate king to whom the realm belongs. The great truth 
 of Redemption, the great idea of Salvation, is that the 
 realm belongs to Truth, that the Lie is everywhere and 
 always an intruder and a foe. He came in, therefore 
 he may be driven out. When he is driven out, and 
 man is purely man, then man is saved. It is the glory 
 and preciousness of the first mysterious, poetic chapters 
 of Genesis that they are radiant through all their sad- 
 ness with that truth. 
 
 Does this make smaller or less important that great 
 Power of God whereby the human life passes from the 
 old condition to the new, — the power of conversion ? 
 Certainly not ! What task could be more worthy of the 
 Father's power and love than this assertion and fulfil- 
 ment of His child ? All of our Christian thinking and 
 talking has been and is haunted by a certain idea of 
 failure and recommencement. Man is a failure, so there 
 shall be a new attempt; and in place of the man we 
 will make tha Christian! There is nothing of that 
 tone about what Jesus says. The Christian to Jesus is 
 the man. The Christian, to all who think the thought of 
 Jesus after Him, is the perfected and completed man. 
 
 Just see what this involves. Hear with what natural- 
 ness it clothes the invitations of the Gospel. They are 
 
Tht Light of tU World. 11 
 
 not strange summons to some distant, unknown land; 
 they are God's call to you to be yourself. They ap- 
 peal to a homesickness in your own heart and make it 
 their confederate. That you should be the thing you 
 have been, and not be that better thing, that new man 
 which Is the oldest man, the first type and image of your 
 being, is unnatural and awful. The world in the new 
 light of the Gospel expects it of you, is longing for it. 
 The creation, in Saint Paul's great phrase, is groaning 
 and travailing, waiting for the manifestation of this 
 child of God which is hidden in your life. 
 
 And all this vindicates itself by a mysterious and beau- 
 tiful familiarity in the new life when you have begun 
 to live it. With confidence I know that I could appeal 
 to the experience of many of you who hear me, to rec- 
 ognize what I mean. I take a plant whose home is in 
 the tropics, but which has grown to stunted life amid 
 the granite of Vermont. I carry it and set it where its 
 nature essentially belongs. Does it not know the warm 
 earth, and does not the warm earth know it ? Do not 
 the palm-trees, and the sky which it sees through their 
 broad leaves, and the warmer stars which glorify the 
 sky at night speak to the amazed but satisfied heart of 
 the poor plant in tones which it understands ? And 
 when a soul is set there where its nature always has be- 
 longed, in the obedience of God, in the dear love of 
 Christ, does it not know the new life which embraces 
 it ? Ah, it has lived in it always in the idea of its 
 being, in the conception of existence which has been 
 always at its heart. It has walked the great halls of 
 the divine obedience. It has stood by this river of di- 
 
12 The Light of the World. 
 
 vine refreshment. It has seen these great prospects of 
 the celestial hope. It has climbed to these hill-tops of 
 prophetic vision. They are not wholly strange. Noth- 
 ing is wholly strange to any man when he becomes it, 
 which it has always been in his nature to become. Be- 
 cause it has always been in man to become the fulfilled 
 man, which is the Christian, therefore for a man to have 
 become a Christian is never wholly strange. \ 
 
 See also here what a true ground there is for the ap- 
 peal which you desire to make to other souls. It must 
 be from the naturalness of the new life that you call out 
 to your brethren. You must claim your brother for 
 the holiness to which his nature essentially belongs. 
 " Come home ! " " Come home ! " "I have found the 
 homestead ! " "I have found the Father ! " "I have 
 found the true manhood ! " ''I have found what you and 
 I and all men were made to be ! " So the soul out of 
 the tropics cries out to its brother souls still lingering 
 among the granite hills, and the voice has all the per- 
 suasiveness of Nature. The soft southern winds which 
 bring it tell the souls to which it comes that it is true. 
 
 There are two sorts of attraction which draw, two 
 sorts of fascination which hold, human nature every- 
 where, — the attraction of the natural and the attrac- 
 tion of the unnatural. The attraction of the natural 
 everywhere is healthiest and highest. The attraction 
 of the natural is the true attraction of Religion, — most 
 of all, the attraction of the Christian Gospel. 
 
 And yet again this makes the higher life intelligible, 
 and so makes it real. This alone makes such a thing 
 as Christian Manliness conceivable. Christian Unman- 
 
Tlu Light of the World. 13 
 
 liness is what a great many of men's pious, earnest 
 struggles have been seeking. If the saint on to all 
 eternity is to be the ever-ripening man, never changing 
 into any new and unknown thing which he was not be- 
 fore, never to all eternity unfolding one capacity which 
 was not in the substance of his humanity from its crea- 
 tion, then it follows that the most celestial and trans- 
 cendent goodnesses must still be one in kind with the 
 familiar virtues which sometimes in their crude and 
 earthly shapes seem low and commonplace. Courage 
 in all the worlds is the same courage. Truth before the 
 throne of God is the same thing as when neighbor talks 
 with neighbor on the street. Mercy will grow tenderer 
 and finer, but will be the old blessed balm of life in the 
 fields of eternity that it was in your workshop and your 
 home. Unselfishness will expand and richen till it en- 
 folds the life like sunshine, but it will be the same self- 
 denial, opening into a richer self-indulgence, which it 
 was when it first stole in with one thin sunbeam on the 
 startled soul. There is no new world of virtues in any 
 heaven or in any heavenly experience of life. God is 
 good and man is good ; and as man becomes more good, 
 he becomes not merely more like God, but more himself. 
 As he becomes more godly, he becomes more manly too. 
 It is so hard for us to believe in the Mystery of Man. 
 " Behold man is this, " we say, shutting down some near 
 gate which falls only just beyond, quite in sight of, 
 what human nature already has attained. If man would 
 go beyond that he must be something else than man. 
 And just then something breaks the gate away, and lo, 
 far out beyond where we can see stretches the Mystery 
 
14 The Light of the World. 
 
 of Man. The beautiful, the awful mystery of man! 
 To him, to man, all lower lines have climbed, and hav- 
 ing come to him, have found a field where evolution 
 may go on forever. 
 
 The mystery of man ! How Christ believed in that ! 
 Oh, my dear friends, he who does not believe in that 
 cannot enter into the full glory of the Incarnation, can- 
 not really believe in Christ. Where the mysterious 
 reach of manhood touches the divine, there Christ ap- 
 pears. No mere development of human nature outgoing 
 any other reach that it has made, yet still not incapable 
 of being matched, perhaps of being overcome ; not that, 
 not that, — unique and separate forever, — but possible, 
 because of this same mystery of man in which the least 
 of us has share. To him who knows the hither edges 
 of that mystery in his own life, the story of how in, on, 
 at its depths it should be able to receive and to contain 
 divinity cannot seem incredible ; may I not say, cannot 
 seem strange ? 
 
 Men talk about the Christhood, and say, " How strange 
 it is ! Strange that Christ should have been, — strange 
 that Christ should have suffered for mankind. " I can- 
 not see that so we most magnify Him or bring Him 
 nearest to us. Once feel the mystery of man and is it 
 strange ? Once think it possible that God should fill a 
 humanity with Himself, once see humanity capable of 
 being filled with God, and can you conceive of His not 
 doing it ? Must there not be an Incarnation ? Do you 
 not instantly begin to search earth for the holy steps ? 
 Once think it possible that Christ can, and are you not 
 sure that Christ must give himself for our Redemption ? 
 
The Light of the World. 15 
 
 80 only, when it seems inevitable and natural, does the 
 Christhood become our pattern. Then only does it shine 
 on the mountain-top up toward which we can feel the 
 low lines of our low life aspiring. The Son of God is 
 also the Son of Man. Then in us, the sons of men, 
 there is the key to the secret of His being and His work. 
 Know Christ that you may know yourself. But, oh, 
 also know yourself that you may know Christ! 
 
 I think to every Christian there come times when all 
 the strangeness disappears from the divine humanity 
 which stands radiant at the centre of his faith. He 
 finds it hard to believe in himself and in his brethren 
 perhaps ; but that Christ should be and should be Christ 
 appears the one reasonable, natural, certain thing in all 
 the universe. In Him all broken lines unite ; in Him 
 all scattered sounds are gathered into haiviony; and 
 out of the consummate certainty of Him, the soul 
 comes back to find the certainty of common things 
 which the lower faith holds, which advancing faith 
 loses, and then finds again in Christ. 
 
 How every truth attains to its enlargement and real- 
 ity in this great truth, — that the soul of man carries the 
 highest possibilities within itself, and that what Christ 
 does for it is to kindle and call forth these possibilities 
 to actual existence. We do not understand the Church 
 until we understand this truth. Seen in its light the 
 Christian Church is nothing in the world except the 
 promise and prophecy and picture of what the world in 
 its idea is and always has been, and in its completion 
 paust visibly become. It is the primary crystalization of 
 humanity. * It is no favored, elect body caught from the 
 
16 The Light of the. World. 
 
 ruin, given a salvation in which the rest can have no 
 part. It is an attempt to realize the universal possibil- 
 ity. All men are its potential members. The strange 
 thing for any man is not that he should be within it, 
 but that he should be without it. Every good move- 
 ment of any most secular sort is a struggle toward it, 
 a part of its activity. All the world's history is eccle- 
 siastical history, is the story of the success and failure, 
 the advance and hindrance of the ideal humanity, the 
 Church of the living God. Well may the prophet poet 
 greet it, — 
 
 " heart of mine, keep patience ; looking forth 
 As from the Mount of Vision I behold 
 Pure, just, and free the Church of Christ on earth, — 
 The martyr's dream, the golden age foretold." 
 
 Tell me, my friends, can we not all think that we see a 
 progress and elevation in men's ideas about their souls' 
 conversion which would seem to show an entrance into 
 the power of this truth ? In old times more than to- 
 day he who entered into the new life of Christ thought 
 of himself as rescued, snatched from the wreck of a 
 ruined and sinking world, given an exceptional privi- 
 lege of safety. To-day more than in old times the saved 
 soul looks with a delighted and awe-struck wonder into 
 his new experience, and sees in it the true and natural 
 destiny of all mankind. "Lo, because I am this, I 
 know that all men may be it. God has but shown me 
 in my soul's experience of what all souls are capable." 
 And so the new life does not separate the soul from, 
 but brings it more deeply into sympathy with, all 
 humanity. 
 
Tlie Light of the World. 17 
 
 I believe that here also is the real truth and the 
 final satisfaction of men's minds as concerns the Bible. 
 As the spiritual life with which the Bible deals is the 
 flower of human life, so the Book which deals with it 
 is the flower of human books. But it is not thereby an 
 unhuman book. It is the most human of all books. In 
 it is seen the everlasting struggle of the man-life to ful- 
 fil itself in God. All books in which that universal 
 struggle of humanity is told are younger brothers, — less 
 clear and realized and developed utterances of that which 
 is so vivid in the history of the sacred people and is per- 
 fect in the picture of the divine Man. I will not be puz- 
 zled, but rejoice when I find in all the sacred books, in all 
 deep, serious books of every sort, foregleams and adum- 
 brations of the lights and shadows which lie distinct 
 upon the Bible page. I will seek and find the assur- 
 ance that my Bible is inspired of God not in virtue of 
 its distance from, but in virtue of its nearness to, the 
 human experience and heart. It is in that experience 
 and heart that the real inspiration of God is given, and 
 thence it issues into the written book : — 
 
 "Out of the heart of Nature rolled 
 The Burdens of the Bible old. 
 The Litanies of nations came 
 Like the volcano's tongue of flame ; 
 Up from the burning core below 
 The Canticles of love and woe." 
 
 That book is most inspired which most worthily and 
 deeply tells the story of the most inspired life. 
 
 Is there not here the light of every darkness and the 
 key to every riddle ? The missionary goes into a hea- 
 
18 The Light of the World. 
 
 * 
 
 then land. What shall he make of what he finds there ? 
 Shall he not see in it all the raw material and the sug- 
 gested potency of that divine life which he knows that 
 it is the rightful condition of the Sons of God to live ? 
 Shall he not be eager and ingenious, rather than reluc- 
 tant, to find and recognize and proclaim the truth that 
 the Father has left Himself without witness in no home 
 where His children live ? As in the crudest social ways 
 and habits of the savage islanders he sees the begin- 
 nings and first efforts toward the most perfect and elab- 
 orate civilizations which the world contains, — the germs 
 of constitutions, the promise of senates and cabinets 
 and treaties, — so in the ignorant and half -brutal faiths 
 shall he not discover the upward movement of the soul 
 to which he shall then delight to offer all the rich light 
 of the teaching which has come to his centuries ^of 
 Christian faith, saying, "Lo, this is what it means: 
 Whom you are ignorantly worshipping, Him declare I 
 unto you " ? 
 
 Among all the philosophies of history where is there 
 one that matches with this simple story that man is the 
 child of God, forever drawn to his Father, beaten back 
 from Him by base waves of passion, sure to come to Him 
 in the end. There is no philosophy of historj which 
 ever has been written like the Parable of the Prodigal 
 Son. The first idea, the wanton wandering, the discon- 
 tent, the brave return, the cordial welcome, — all are 
 there. It is the history of man's action and man's 
 thought; it is the story of his institutions and of his 
 ideas; it holds the explanation of the past and the 
 promise of the future; its beginning is where the first 
 
The Light of the World. 19 
 
 conception of what man shall be lies in the heart of the 
 Creative Power ; its end is in that endless life which 
 man, having been reconciled to God and come to the 
 completion of his idea, is to live in his Father's house 
 forever. 
 
 Do we ask ourselves, as well we may, at what point 
 in that long history the world is standing in this rich 
 and interesting period in which we live ? Who shall 
 precisely say ? But in the wonderful story of the Prodi- 
 gal Son must there not have been one moment when at 
 the very height of the revel there came a taste of bit- 
 terness into the wine, and when the faces of the harlots, 
 in some gleam of fresh morning sunlight which broke 
 into the hot and glaring chamber, seemed tawdry and 
 false and cruel ? Must there not have been a moment 
 somewhere then, perhaps just when the carouse seemed 
 most tempestuous and hopeless, a moment when the 
 heart of the exile turned to his home, and the life with 
 his father seemed so strong and simple and natural and 
 real, so cool and sweet and true and healthy, that the 
 miserable tumult and the gaudy glare about him for a 
 moment became unreal and lost its hold ? Much, much 
 had yet to come, — the poverty and swine and husks, — 
 before the boy gathererk himself together and arose and 
 said, " I will go to my father ; " but the tide was turned, 
 the face was set homeward, after that one moment of 
 true sight of the true light in the hall of unnatural 
 revel and resplendent sin. I sometimes think that 
 there, in many ways just there, is where our age is 
 standing with its startled and bewildered face. 
 
 I may be wrong or right about our age, I may be 
 
20 The Light of the World. 
 
 wrong or right about many of the ways in which it has 
 appeared to me as if the truth which I have tried to 
 preach to you to-day touches the great problems of re- 
 ligion and of life. But now I turn to you, young men 
 and women, earnest and brave and hopeful — many of 
 you also sorely perplexed and puzzled. What does this 
 truth mean for you ? Does it not mean everything for 
 you if Truth and Courage and Unselfishness and Good- 
 ness are indeed natural to man and all Evil is unnatu- 
 ral and foreign ? 
 
 There is indeed a superficial and a deeper nature. 
 I am talking of the deeper nature. I am talking of the 
 nature which belongs to every one of us as the child of 
 God. I am talking, not of the waves which may be 
 blown this way or that way upon the surface, but of the 
 great tide which is heaving shoreward down below. 
 
 The man who lives in that deeper nature, the man 
 who believes himself the Son of God, is not surprised 
 at his best moments and his noblest inspirations. He 
 is not amazed when he does a brave thing or an unself- 
 ish thing. He is amazed at himself when he is a 
 coward or a liar. He accepts self-restraint only as a 
 temporary condition, an immediate necessity of life. 
 Not self-restraint but self-indulgence, the free, unhin- 
 dered utterance of the deepest nature, which is good, — ■ 
 that is the only final picture of man's duty which he 
 tolerates. And all the life is one; the specially and 
 specifically religious being but the point at which the 
 diamond for the moment shines, with all the diamond 
 nature waiting in reserve through the whole substance 
 of the precious stone. 
 
'The Light of the World. 21 
 
 Great is the power of a life which knows that its 
 highest experiences are its truest experiences, that it is 
 most itself when it is at its best. For it each high 
 achievement, each splendid vision, is a sign and token 
 of the whole nature's possibility. What a piece of the 
 man was for that shining instant, it is the duty of the 
 whole man to be always. When the hand has once ' 
 touched the rock the heart cannot be satisfied until the 
 whole frame has been drawn up out of the waves and 
 stands firm on its two feet on the solid stone. 
 
 Are there not very many of us to whom the worst that 
 we have been seems ever possible of repetition ; but the 
 best that we have ever been shines a strange and splen- 
 did miracle which cannot be repeated ? The gutter in 
 which we lay one day is always claiming us. The 
 mountain-top on which we stood one glorious morning 
 seems to have vanished from the earth. 
 
 The very opposite of all that is the belief of him who 
 knows himself the child of God. For him, for him 
 alone, sin has its true horror. ' ' What ! have I, who 
 once have claimed God, whom once God has claimed, 
 have I been down into the den of Devils ? Have I bru- 
 talized my brain with drink ? Have I let my heart 
 burn with lust ? Have I, the child of God, cheated and 
 lied and been cruel and trodden on my brethren to sat- 
 isfy my base ambition ? " Oh, believe me, believe me, 
 my dear friends, you never will know the horror and 
 misery of sin till you know the glory and mystery of 
 man. You never can estimate the disaster of an inter- 
 ruption till you know the worth of what it interrupts. 
 You never will understand wickedness by dwelling on 
 
22 The Light of the World. 
 
 the innate depravity of man. You can understand 
 wickedness only by knowing that the very word man 
 means holiness and strength. 
 
 Here, too, lies the sublime and beautiful variety of hu- 
 man life. It is as beings come to their reality that they 
 assert their individuality. In the gutter all the poor 
 wretches lie huddled together, one indistinguishable 
 mass of woe ; but on the mountain-top each figure stands 
 out separate and clear against the blueness of the sky. 
 The intense variety of Light ! The awful monotony of 
 Darkness ! Men are various ; Christians ought to be va- 
 rious a thousand-fold. Strive for your best, that there 
 you may find your most distinctive life. We cannot 
 dream of what interest the world will have wh^n every 
 being in its human multitude shall shine with his own 
 light and color, and be the child of God which it is 
 possible for him to be, — which he has ever been in the 
 true home -land of his Father's thought. 
 
 Do I talk fancies ? Do I paint visions upon unsubstan- 
 tial clouds ? If it seem to you that I do, I beg you to 
 come back now, as I close, to those words which I quoted 
 to you at the beginning. " I am the Light of the World, " 
 said Jesus. Do you not see now what I meant when I 
 declared that it was in making the world know itself 
 that Christ was primarily the Power of the World's Re- 
 demption ? The Revealer and the Redeemer are not two 
 persons, but only one, — one Saviour. 
 
 What then ? If Christ can make you know yourself ; 
 if as you walk with Him day by day. He can reveal to you 
 your sonship to the Father ; if, keeping daily company 
 with Him, you can come more and more to know how 
 
The Light of the World. 23 
 
 native is goodness and how unnatural sin is to the soul 
 of man; if, dwelling with Him who is both God and 
 Man, you can come to believe both in God and in Man 
 through Him, then you are saved, — saved from con- 
 tempt, saved from despair, saved into courage and hope 
 and charity and the power to resist temptation, and the 
 passionate pursuit of perfectness. 
 
 It is as simple and as clear as that. Our religion is 
 not a system of ideas about Christ. It is Christ. To 
 believe in Him is what ? To say a creed ? To join a 
 church ? No ; but to have a great, strong, divine Master, 
 whom we perfectly love, whom we perfectly trust, whom 
 we will follow anywhere, and who, as we follow Him 
 or walk by His side, is always drawing out in us our 
 true nature and making us determined to be true to it 
 through everything, is always compelling us to see 
 through falsehood and find the deepest truth, which is, 
 in one great utterance of it, that we are the sons of God, 
 who is thus always " leading us to the Father. " 
 
 The hope of the world is in the ever richer natural- 
 ness of the highest life. " The earth shall be full of the 
 knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. " 
 
 Your hope and mine is the same. The day of our 
 salvation has not come till every voice brings us one 
 message ; till Christ, the Light of the world, everywhere 
 reveals to us the divine secret of our life ; till every- 
 thing without joins with the consciousness all alive 
 within, and " the Spirit Itself beareth witness with our 
 spirits that we are the children of God." 
 
11. 
 
 THE NEW AND GREATER MIRACLE. 
 
 Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused 
 that even this man should not have died ? — John xi. 37. 
 
 It is interesting to remember how all which has hap- 
 pened to Christianity happened first to Christ. All the 
 welcome and rejection, all the eager love, the passion- 
 ate hatred, and the perplexed questionings which have 
 greeted the religion of the Saviour greeted the Saviour 
 first, and have left their record on the pages of the Gos- 
 pels, in which the story of His earthly life is told. K 
 men have always wondered whether the final salvation 
 of this world has been attained in Jesus, has there not 
 been in their questioning the echo of John the Baptist's 
 message, "Art thou He that should come, or do we 
 look for another ? " If men have taunted Christianity 
 because with all its vast claims to mastery it still has 
 been despised and trodden under foot of men, we can 
 hear through their mockery the words which greeted 
 Jesus in his agony, " If thou be the Son of God, come 
 down from the cross." If men's pride in their own 
 self-sufficiency and in the competence of their earthly 
 associations and traditions has been wounded, they have 
 cried out to the Redeemer, who offered His redemption 
 with such importunate insistence, "Art thou greater 
 
The New and Greater Miracle. 25 
 
 than our father Abraham ? Art thou greater than our 
 fathei- Jacob, which gave us this well ? " If the spirit- 
 ual region from which Christianity issued has seemed 
 too obscure, too remote from the great accredited inter- 
 ests of mankind, the voice which declared that such a re- 
 ligion could not save the world has only taken up again 
 the old objections, "Can any good thing come out of 
 :^. Nazareth ? " " Search and look, for out of Galilee ariseth 
 no prophet. " It is a sign of the vitality and reality of 
 Jesus, it is a sign of how Christianity is but the ex- 
 tension and perpetuation of Christ in the world, that 
 all which is said of Christianity to-day was said years 
 and years ago of Christ. 
 
 An illustration of all this is found in the words which 
 I have chosen for my text. A miracle of Jesus was 
 fresh in people's minds. He had touched a blind man's 
 eyes and given him his sight. Then some short time 
 had passed, and a new need for help had come. Lazarus 
 of Bethany was very sick. And Jesus had not healed 
 him. He had not even come to him. He had let Laza- 
 rus die. And to the people, as they stood around the 
 tomb where he was buried, there had inevitably come 
 this question, " What does it mean ? Why was there 
 not another miracle ? Surely it is strange that He who 
 could restore the power of sight should have found any 
 difficulty here. Could not this man, which opened the 
 eyes of the blind, have caused that this man should not 
 have died ? " Mary and Martha, the dead man's sisters, 
 felt the same wonder. " Lord, if thou hadst been here 
 my brother had not died ! " so each of them exclaimed 
 as she came into the Master's presence. It was evi- 
 
26 The New aiid Greater Miracle. 
 
 dentlj the feeling of the whole scene, — this wonder 
 at the imrepeated miracle, at the unused power which 
 might have prevented all this sorrow and kept the dear 
 life alive. 
 
 And we can imagine something of the questions which 
 such a wonder must have started in the people's minds. 
 Some of them must have found themselves questioning 
 the reality of the old miracle. "Did He indeed then 
 open the blind man's eyes ? Could we have been mis- 
 taken ? " To others it must have seemed as if Jesus 
 could not have cared for Lazarus. " It must have been, 
 if He had cared for him, that He would have helped him 
 here. " And then there must have been others to whom 
 there came some better light. "Perhaps after all to 
 have caused that this man should not have died would 
 not have been the greatest mercy. Perhaps Jesus did 
 love Lazarus and could have saved him, and did not 
 choose to. Perhaps not the repetition of a former mercy 
 but something new and diiferent was best." At any 
 rate the power and the love of Jesus were to them be- 
 yond all question ; and so they waited. 
 
 Between these last and the other two groups there 
 evidently is a clear distinction. These last believe in 
 Jesus; to the others Jesus is still on test and trial. 
 Here is the parting of the ways. Here is where some 
 turn this way and some that, and some stand hesitating 
 at the fork. Here is where men either go up to great- 
 ness and full faith, or rest in partialness and scepti- 
 cism which yet often calls itself faith. Oh, strange 
 clear scene outside the tomb at Bethany, where men 
 stood wondering why Christ did not do what they ex- 
 
The New and Greater Miracle. 27 
 
 pected Him to do, and giving their faithful or their 
 faithless explanations ! 
 
 And now has not the same scene been repeated ever 
 since ? This is what I want to speak of to you this 
 morning. Some miracle is wrought; some manifesta- 
 tion of the strength of the spiritual power of Christ is 
 made. The whole world which recognizes the miracle 
 shouts for joy. " How strong Christ is ! " it cries, and 
 seems to feel as if for all time to come there could be 
 nothing again like difficulty or doubt or lack of faith. 
 Then by and by a new emergency occurs. Men say 
 "There is no danger; we know exactly what to do. 
 The Christ who saved us yesterday will come again." 
 They watch and listen confidently, but He does not 
 come. The emergency works itself out to its catastro- 
 phe. Then comes dismay. "Has Christ grown power- 
 less or pitiless ? " or, " Were we then mistaken, and was 
 that no Christ which saved us yesterday? If He did 
 really open the eyes of the blind, surely He could have 
 caused that this man should not have died. " So spring 
 suspicions and misgivings ; so is scepticism born. But 
 some souls stand serene and patient, with more spiritual 
 insight into Christ and what He will do. " He will not 
 Work the same work twice ; He will do something new 
 and greater. Let us wait and see." And by and by 
 such faith is justified, and He who did not choose to 
 cause that this man should not have died cries, " Laza- 
 rus, come forth ; " and the greater miracle has taken 
 place where the smaller miracle seemed to fail. 
 > No doubt in all times the illustrations of this truth 
 have been abundant, but it would seem as if they were 
 
28 The New and Greater Kirade. 
 
 especially plentiful to-day. For now the new is every- 
 where opening out of the old, and the methods of God's 
 treatment of His world are manifestly and bewilderingly 
 changing. Take the whole subject of the difficulties of 
 religious thought. How often in the past it has seemed 
 at least to be the case that when difficult questions arose 
 men were raised up to answer them ! In the great crises 
 of the Church's life great souls like Athanasius, Augus- 
 tine, Luther, Calvin, have stood forth, and with some 
 great and timely word have seemed to satisfy men's 
 souls and set their questionings at rest. But how is it 
 to-day ? There never was more doubt or tumult. Never 
 was the great human heart, seeking for truth, more be- 
 wildered and distracted. How natural then is the cry 
 which here and there breaks forth, " Where is the mighty 
 champion of truth who is to come to-day and answer 
 all these questions, as other champions have answered 
 the hard questions of other days ? Where is the mal- 
 leus hoeretieorum who is to beat into fine dust these hard 
 and puzzling adversaries of the truth ? " Now and then 
 we hear reports that he has come. The rumor runs 
 about that some book has been printed, or some voice 
 has been raised which is to settle and make plain for- 
 ever all that has grown so mixed and unintelligible. 
 The rumor always ends in disappointment. The book 
 or the teacher clears up perhaps some special point, or 
 calms perhaps some corner of the tempest, but the great 
 tumult of cloud still fills the sky. And then there 
 comes to many men, there has come to very many men 
 in these our days, another possibility, another hope. 
 "What if it be that God has for His people in these 
 
 1 
 
The New and Greater Miracle. 29 
 
 days a better blessing than any whicli He gave to them 
 of old ? What if instead of sending them a subtle and 
 ingenious leader who can answer questions and put 
 doubts to rest, I^e chooses by the very process of unan- 
 swered questions and unresting doubts to bring the whole ^ 
 soul of man onto a higher level, into a broader light, and 
 make it ready for a larger and completer faith ? " The 
 difference between the old faith patched and made habit- 
 able and a new faith where men with hearts wide open 
 to the truth may go in and live without a fear, — this 
 is the difference between the two sets of dreams which 
 men are dreaming. One man expects to see old forms 
 of faith restored, and thinks that doubt and all disturb^ 
 ance will be looked back on by and by as a mere dread- 
 ful cloud through which the human soul has passed, 
 coming out from it finally just as it entered in. Another 
 man looks for a great re-birth of faith and expects to see 
 mankind grateful forever that out of the very grave of 
 unbelief there came a resurrection to a fuller spiritual 
 life. All men who think at all about the strange condi- 
 tion of religious things to-day belong to one or other of 
 these classes. Which is the nobler dream ? Which 
 dream is the more worthy both of God and man ? Which 
 opens the more hopeful prospect for the years to come ? 
 Nor is this true only about religious things. The 
 real question everywhere is whether the world, dis- 
 tracted and confused as everybody sees that it is, is go= 
 ing to be patched up and restored to what it used to be, 
 or whether it is going forward into a quite new and 
 different kind of life, whose exact nature nobody can 
 pretend to foretell, but which is to be distinctly new, 
 
30 The New and Greater Miracle. 
 
 unlike the life of any age which the world has seen 
 already. Men say, "The world has been disturbed 
 before. Classes have clashed with one another. Gov- 
 erned and governors, employed and employers, rich and 
 poor, have come to blows in other days, but things have 
 always adjusted themselves again. The stronger have 
 grown kinder; the weaker have grown humbler; the 
 paternal governor has grown more fatherly; the obe- 
 dient subject has grown more filial, and things have 
 gone on again as smoothly as before. " " So shall it be 
 again, " men say. That is what they expect as the out- 
 come of all this conflict. But other men see clearer. 
 It is impossible that the old conditions, so shaken and 
 broken, can ever be repaired and stand just as they stood 
 before. The time has come when something more than 
 mere repair and restoration of the old is necessary. 
 The old must die and a new must come forth out of its 
 tomb. It is not going to be enough that the strong 
 should once more grow kinder and the weak grow hum- 
 bler. The balance and distribution of strength and weak- 
 ness is being altered, must be altered more and more. 
 The sources of artificial strength and artificial weakness 
 are being dried up. Governors and governed, employers 
 and employed, are coming to be co-workers for the same 
 ends. Not the old mercies repeated, but new mercies 
 going vastly deeper than the old, — these are what men 
 are beginning to see that the world is needing and that 
 God is giving to the world He loves. 
 
 We think of the world's misery. Our souls are sick 
 with the sight of hunger and nakedness and want. We 
 cry out for the miracles of old ; we remember the manna 
 
 I 
 
Tlie New and Greater Miracle. 31 
 
 falling from the skies ; we see the loaves and fishes mul- 
 tiplied beside the lake ; we wonder where is the mira- 
 cle-worker now. Cannot He who fed the hungry Jews 
 feed these hungry Americans ? We are ready to doubt \ 
 the old story of His mercy, or to think He has forgotten 
 to be gracious and ceased to care for these modern na- 
 tions whom He has not " chosen. " And then, just as 
 we are ready to give up to despair in one or other of 
 these forms, we catch a glimpse of something better, of 
 something which makes us see that the manna and the 
 miraculous loaves and fishes, made perpetual, would be 
 demoralizing and degrading. Some light comes on the 
 necessity and nobility of struggle. We see the greater 
 glory of the new miracle, — the miracle of the advancing 
 civilization, whose purpose is not to do away with strug- 
 gle but to make the conditions of struggle fair and the 
 prospects of struggle hopeful. Into the spirit of that 
 miracle we cast ourselves, not expecting to see the 
 world's misery suddenly removed, but sure that at last 
 the world, in and through its misery, will triumph over 
 its misery by patience and diffused intelligence and mu- 
 tual respect and brotherly kindness and the grace of 
 God. 
 
 To expect the miracles of the present and the future, 
 not the miracles of the past, — is not that the secret of 
 all living and progressive life ? There is no other life 
 for a true man to live to-day. The man is weak and 
 useless who, however devoutly, looks only for the repeti- 
 tion of past miracles, good and great as those miracles 
 were in their own time. Solemnly and surely — to 
 some men terribly and awfully, to other men joyously 
 
 ') 
 
32 The New and Greater Miracle. 
 
 and enthusiastically — it is becoming clear to men that 
 the future cannot be what the past has been. The 
 world of the days to come is to be different from the 
 world that has been. Every interest of life is altered ; 
 government, society, business, education, all is altered, 
 all is destined to alter more and more. Only these 
 two elements remain the same, — God and man ! 
 What then shall we expect ? That God will guide man 
 and supply him as He has in all the times which are 
 '4- past and gone, but that the new government and guid- 
 ance will be different for the new days. He who be- 
 lieves that, looks forward to changes of faith and changes 
 of life without a fear, for underneath all the changes is 
 the unchangeableness of God. The ship looks forward 
 fearlessly to the new ocean with its new stars and new 
 winds, for the same captain will sail her there who has 
 sailed her here, and the fact that he will sail her there 
 otherwise than he sails her here will be only the sign of 
 how sleepless and watcMul is his care. 
 
 Is it not very interesting to see how sometimes in the 
 typical life of Jesus there had to be the same struggle 
 with which we are familiar, — to let go of one kind of 
 mercy and pass on into another ? Twice especially the 
 Lord cried out to be saved from the future which was 
 just upon Him. " Father, save me from this hour ! " 
 " Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. " 
 Both of these are cries for deliverance. "Father, thou 
 hast saved me, save me again ! " It is a cry for the re- 
 peated miracle. But — how wonderful it is ! — both 
 times, before the words are fully spoken, comes a fuller 
 light; the glory of a new and better miracle appears. 
 
The New and Greater Miracle. 33 
 
 ' No I I cannot be saved from this hour, " " No ! I cannot 
 see this cup pass from me except I drink it;" but 
 " Father, glorify thy name, " " Father, not my will but 
 thine be done ! " The miracle of escape is abandoned ; V 
 the miracle of victory is taken up. Thenceforth not to 
 
 ^ be saved from suffering but to save the world by suffer- 
 ing is His hope and prayer. Is He not the type of the 
 world He saved ? Is it not growing evident that there 
 are many things which the world thus far has striven 
 to escape which now it must strive, not to escape, but to 
 overcome ? Duties which it has ignored, tasks which 
 it has counted too great for its strength, problems for 
 which it has thought that there was no answer, which 
 
 , now it must take up, with which it must grapple, by its 
 victory in the struggle with which it must be judged. 
 The best part of the world, seeing its new history before 
 it, is saying just as Jesus said, first fearfully, " Father, 
 save me from this hour, " and then bravely, " But for 
 this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy 
 name!" 
 
 It does not prove that the old miracle was not real, or 
 that it was not the best miracle for its time ; but a new 
 time is worthy and capable of a new miracle, and if it 
 rises to its full privilege it does not ask that the old 
 shall be preserved, but rather that out of the death of 
 the old a better new may come to life. 
 
 I bid you think what is the different and higher kind 
 of faith which such a change involves ? They who, hear- 
 ing that Lazarus was ill, believed that Christ would 
 come and heal him as He had opened the blind man's 
 eyes, had faith in the old miracle. They who were will- 
 
 3 
 
34 The New and Greater Miracle. 
 
 ing that Lazarus should die, knowing that death could 
 not take him out of Christ's power, and that Christ 
 would still do for him what was best, had faith in 
 Christ. That is the difference. That is the great, ever- 
 lasting difference of faiths. There is the faith in what 
 God has done, which believes that He can do it again, 
 and there is the faith in the God who did it, which be- 
 lieves that He can do whatever else is needed in any day i 
 to come. ' Some men only let us believe in their actions ; 
 other men's actions open to us themselves and make us 
 believe in them. Some men, dealing with God, are sat- 
 isfied to get at His ways of acting and fix their faith on 
 them ; other men cannot be content unless through every- 
 thing they come to God Himself, and knowing Him in 
 His omnipotence, are ready to see ever new miracles 
 issuing from His power as ever new sunbeams come 
 streaming from the sun. The first man only looks to 
 see the old machinery of the world and the Church re- 
 paired and kept in order; the other man looks to see 
 world and church ever made new, ever bearing new tes- 
 timony that they are fresh and living utterances of Him 
 who has always deep and richer manifestation of Him- 
 self to make. 
 
 My friends, do not be content with believing in God's 
 ways of action. Insist on believing in God. Then the 
 future will not take you by surprise. Then you will be 
 ready not merely for the repetition of the miracles of 
 the past, but for ever new and richer miracles, for you 
 will feel above you and beneath you and around you the 
 inexhaustibleness of the God in whom you believe. 
 
 I have spoken mostly — perhaps too much — about the 
 
The New and Greater Miracle. 35 
 
 way in which one truth affects the larger expectations 
 of the world; but it is no less true concerning each 
 man's own personal career. Let me turn for a little 
 while to that. For years you have lived, it may be, a 
 secluded and protected life. " Lead me not into temp- 
 tation," so you have prayed every morning, and every 
 day has brought the answer to your prayer. But some 
 day all that breaks and goes to pieces. A great temp- 
 tation comes and is not hindered. Then you cry out for 
 the old mercy and it is not given. What does it mean ? 
 Was the old mercy no mercy ? Was it by mere accident 
 that you so long escaped being tempted ? Or has God 
 grown tired of protecting you ? Has He ceased to care ? 
 Could not He who saved you so often save you again ? 
 And then, behold what comes ! A new mercy ! You 
 go into the temptation. Your old security perishes, but 
 by and by out of its death comes a new strength. Not 
 to be saved trom dying but to die and then to live 
 again in a new security, a strong and trusty character, 
 educated by trial, purified by fire, — that is what comes 
 as the issue of the whole. Not a victory for you, pre- 
 serving you from danger, but a victory in you, strength- 
 ening you by danger, — that is the experience from which 
 you go forth, strong with a strength which nothing can 
 subdue. ' 
 
 And if it is so with you, why shall it not be so also 
 with the soul for which you care ? Here is your brother 
 or your child. You have prayed that he might be 
 shielded, and God has shielded him. The wickedness 
 of the world has been for him as if it went on in another 
 planet. The unbelief of men has never found him out. 
 
36 57^6 New and Greater Miracle. 
 
 wrapped as he is in the unquestioned and unquestionable 
 truth which you have taught him. Every night you have 
 thanked God for the miracle of preservation safely con- 
 tinued for another day. And then some day all that is 
 over. The safe walls seem all to give way together ; the 
 lurid flames burst in on the bewildered soul; the un- 
 belief, shouting and arrogant, lifts itself up, and all the 
 peace of settled, unquestioned faith is gone. You cry 
 out for the old familiar miracle and it does not come. 
 Oh, terrible day ! Oh, bitter anxiety ! Happy and wise 
 and brave are you if, knowing that the day for the old 
 miracle is past, you hope and wish and pray for it no 
 longer, but make ready for the new miracle and for the 
 help which it will be yours to render to the soul in the 
 new life upon which it is to enter through its tempta- 
 tion and its doubt. Happy and wise and brave are you 
 if, discerning that Jesus has something better to do for 
 Lazarus than to save him from dying, you stand ready 
 to receive him as he comes out of the tomb, to loosen 
 and take off his grave-clothes, to give him the raiment 
 and the food of living men, and to welcome him into 
 the new and larger life which has become possible to 
 him through death. 
 
 Suppose it is the death to which we more literally 
 give that great and awful name. You have prayed that 
 your child may live, and God, once and again, has 
 spared his life. " Can He not spare it again ? " you 
 cry upon some dreadful night as you stand by your 
 child's sick-bed, counting the pulse, watching the fee- 
 bler and feebler flutter of the breath. The morning 
 comes and he is dead ! Has God been then deaf to your 
 
The New and Greater Miracle. 37 
 
 prayer ? Oh, if there is a new miracle, if beyond the 
 miracle which saves from dying there is the miracle 
 which brings through death to life beyond, then God 
 has not been deaf ! Your child living with Him speaks 
 back to you and says, " He who has saved me often has 
 saved me now completely. ^ I am alive ; not from death 
 but through death He has saved me. The last, best, 
 greatest miracle has come, and I am alive, I am saved ; I 
 am alive and safe forever. " 
 
 To that last miracle we must all come. A thousand 
 times, yea, every perilous moment, God saves us from 
 dying. There is a moment on the way for every one of 
 us when that preservation will be possible no longer. 
 We shall pray, our friends will pray for us, "Again, 
 Father, spare him ; let him live. " And then the an- 
 swer which is looked for will not come, and he who has 
 been so often saved from dying at last will die. Will 
 it be a sign of God's forgetfulness ? If so, then God has 
 forgotten all His children, and let them every one, either 
 in childhood or as life-worn veterans, slip through His 
 careless hands ; for all have died or will die. But, no ; 
 if, as we know is true, the real life lies beyond, and 
 can be reached only through death, then the old mira- 
 cles are nothing to this new one. They are to it as 
 little as was the miracle by which at Nazareth Christ 
 walked through the hostile multitude and went His way 
 unharmed to the great miracle of resurrection, in which 
 through Death the Lord of Life came forth to be alive 
 for evermore. 
 
 Could not Christ have saved Lazarus from dying? 
 Could not Christ save you or me from perplexity or 
 
38 The New and Greater Miracle. 
 
 from temptation or from doubt ? Surely those are ques- 
 tions which have their lower and their higher answers. 
 He could, because the power of life and death was in 
 Him. But the power to use the power depended upon 
 other things. It depended on the necessity which lay 
 back of all things in Jesus to do the absolutely best 
 thing, — not the second-best, but the absolutely best of 
 all. If it were best for Lazarus to die, then Christ 
 could not have caused that he should not have died. 
 That is a sublime incapacity ; to stand with the gift 
 of life in the all-powerful hands, to see the cry for life 
 in the eager eyes, to hear it in the dumb appeal of the 
 terrified lips, and yet to say, " No, not life but death is 
 best, " and so to be unable to give life, — that is a sub- 
 lime, a divine incapacity! Could not Christ have an- 
 swered your prayer ? No, He could not ; not because the 
 thing you asked for was not in His treasury, but because 
 behind the question of His giving or refusing it there 
 lay the fundamental necessity of His nature and His 
 love, that He should do for you only the absolutely 
 best. The thing you asked for was not absolutely best, 
 therefore He could not give it. Back of how many 
 unanswered prayers lies that divine impossibility ! 
 
 Is it not true again that we must know not only God's 
 way of acting but God Himself before all this can be 
 perfectly accepted into our life ? Oh, how we make 
 God a method, a law, a habit, a machine, instead of a 
 great, dear, live, loving Nature, all afire with affection, 
 all radiant with light, quick as light to discriminate 
 and choose and shine Avith His own color on every na- 
 ture where He falls ! This was what Jesus was so full 
 
The New and Greater Miracle. 39 
 
 of, — the living God. He would not let God seem a 
 method or a law. God was a life. And our theolog}^, 
 our ecclesiasticism, our religion is always trying to 
 beat and trample Him down into a law again. How we 
 have taken that great word Faith and made it mean the 
 holding of set dogmas, when really what it means is 
 the wide openness of a whole life to God ! How we have 
 limited and stereotyped the range and possibility of 
 miracle till only what God has done we think that God 
 can do, and so do not stand ready for the ever new light 
 and mercy and salvation which the Infinite Love, the 
 Infinite Power, the Infinite God has to give ! 
 
 Open your hearts to-day. God cannot merely do for 
 you over and over again what He has done in the past. 
 He must do more, — a new and deeper sight of His 
 truth, a new and deeper obedience to His will. Oh, by 
 and by, when Lazarus sat with them all at Bethany and 
 the house was solemn with the resurrection life, how 
 good then it seemed that Christ had not caused that 
 this man should not have died! And the day will 
 come sometime, somewhere for you when it will be 
 your everlasting thankfulness that your Lord refused to 
 just repeat the old familiar mercies of the past, but 
 forced you through everything to let Him do for you the 
 larger and larger mercies which your soul required. 
 When He so tries to bless you with His largest blessing, 
 may He make you ready to submit to be blessed ! 
 
/ 
 
 in. 
 
 THE PRIORITY OF GOD. 
 
 We love Him because He first loved us. — 1 John iv. 19. 
 
 John the Disciple had learned from Jesus, his Master, 
 the truth of the priority of God, — the truth that be- 
 fore everything is God. Some truths, when we have 
 learned them, are to us like precious jewels which we 
 keep in caskets, hidden most of the time from sight, 
 our great satisfaction regarding them being simply 
 their possession, — simply that they are ours. Other 
 truths, when we have learned them, are like new coun- 
 tries into which our lives have entered, and in which 
 they thenceforth constantly live. There is a new sky 
 over our head and a new earth under our feet. They 
 fold themselves about us and touch every thought and 
 action. Everything which we do or think or are is dif- 
 ferent because of them. Of this second sort is the truth 
 of the priority of God. Unless God had been first we — 
 our whole human race in general and each of us in par- 
 ticular — never would have been at all. We are what 
 we are because He is what He is. Everything which 
 we do God has first made it possible for us to do. Every 
 act of ours, as soon as it is done, is grasped into a great 
 world of activity which comes from Him ; and there the 
 influence and effect of our action is determined. Every- 
 
The Priority of God. 41 
 
 thing that we know, is true already before our knowl- 
 edge of it. Our knowing it is only the opening of our^ 
 intelligence to receive what is and always has been a 
 part of His being who is the universal Truth. Every 
 deed or temper or life is good or bad as it is in harmony 
 or out of harmony with Him. Everywhere God is first ; 
 and man, coming afterward, enters into Him and finds 
 in God the setting and the background of his life. 
 There is no part of life which is not different if that is 
 true. What John learned in mind and soul from Jesus 
 was that that is true. I ask you this morning to dwell 
 with me on the truth which He who is our Master 
 teaches to us as He taught it to this great disciple 
 long ago. 
 
 We may say a few words first upon the whole subject 
 of the backgrounds of life in general. Man never is sent 
 first into the world and bidden to evolve out of his own 
 being the conditions in which he is to live. Always 
 something is before him; always there is a landscape 
 in which he finds his figure standing when he becomes 
 conscious of himself. If we go back to the story of the 
 Book of Genesis, behold ! the earth is made before the 
 human creature comes. The light and the firmament, 
 and the sun and the moon, the grass and the ocean and 
 the living creatures, — they are all here. The earth is 
 this sumptuous palace of luxuries, this rich treasury of 
 influences, before God says, " Let us make man. " 
 
 Natural science has the same story to tell. It is into 
 a furnished and a garnished earth that man steps fortli. 
 His earliest figure stands against the background of 
 abundant pre-existent life. And coming down out of 
 
42 The Priority of God. 
 
 the antique stories into the picture which we see to-day, 
 is there not something before man everywhere ? Does 
 not every part of him, each sense and faculty, find the 
 provision for its exercise, the provocation and education 
 of its use, in something which was before he came, 
 against which each new-discovered power of his lays 
 itself and knows itself and comes to its exquisite enjoy- 
 ment and ripe growth ? The food is before the hunger, 
 and says, " I have waited for you to come. " The river 
 is before the thirst. Beauty was in the sky and on the 
 hills before the eye was fashioned. Music was breath- 
 ing on the winds before the ear was framed. Fragrance 
 was in the violet and the forest before the nostrils 
 came to catch its odor. The picture was before the 
 imagination which discerned it; the sea before the 
 ship that sailed it. Man finds the rocks waiting with 
 their problems, frost and heat holding their inspira- 
 tion and their comfort in expectation of his coming. 
 And he never says, " Here I am, " that the servants do 
 not stand in ranks at the door of his great homestead to 
 welcome the heir into his own, and to pledge him their 
 obedient service. The material is background for the 
 spiritual, — the earth, which is body, for man, who is 
 soul. 
 
 A child was born yesterday. How he lies to-day in 
 his serene, superb unconsciousness ! And all the forces 
 and resources of the earth are gathered about his cradle 
 offering themselves to him. Each of his new-born 
 senses is besieged. Each eager voice cries out to him, 
 " Here I am. I have waited for you. Here I am. " He 
 takes what they all bring as if it were his right. Not 
 
The Priority of God. 43 
 
 merely on his senses, but even on his mind and most 
 unconscious soul, the world into which he has come is 
 pressing itself. Its conventionalities and creeds, its 
 standards beaten out of the experience of uncounted gen- 
 erations, its traditions of hope and danger, its preju- 
 dices and limitations and precedents, all its discoveries 
 and hopes and fears, — they are the scenery in which 
 this new life stands, they are the mountains in whose 
 shadow and the skies in whose light he is to unfold his 
 long career. They are here before him, and he comes 
 into them. You cannot separate him and them from 
 each other. He and his world make one system, one 
 rich, complex unit of life, as he lies this Sunday morn- 
 ing in his cradle, sleeping his unsuspecting sleep. 
 
 Shall we talk about all this as if it were a bondage 
 into which the new child is born ? Shall we dream 
 for him of a freedom which he might have had if noth- 
 ing had been before him, if he had found nothing here 
 when he came ? Surely that is no true way to think 
 about it. There are men who, if they cannot destroy 
 the world of assured truths and accepted ways into 
 which they have been born, would at least destroy the 
 consciousness of it. They would ignore it. They would 
 seem at least to be trying experiments as if nothing had 
 yet been proved. They would live as if they were the 
 first man, with no history to rest upon, — almost as if 
 they could reverse the course of Genesis and make the 
 round earth and the whole of Nature issue from and fol- 
 low them instead of their issuing from and following it. 
 We have all known men more or less of this sort ; and, 
 interesting as many of them have been, suggestive as 
 
44 The Prioritij of God. 
 
 their lives have often been, we have all felt, I am sure, the 
 weakness that was in them. They have lacked coher- 
 ence and unity with the great world. They have lacked 
 humility. They have been self -asserting. The note 
 which their life made has not blended with the music 
 of the whole, but has been strange and violent. It has 
 seemed as if a man of this kind thought that he must 
 make the world before he could live in it, as if his 
 knowing the truth was what made it true, and his 
 doing of righteousness was what made it righteous. 
 
 Far be it from me to deny the exceptional value of 
 such men ; but their value is the value of protest and 
 exception. There is always something gaunt and fever- 
 ish and wild about their look. The normal, healthy 
 human life lives in its environments and keeps its back- 
 grounds. It is not their slave, but their child. They 
 were before it; and its strength is to know that it 
 comes into their richness. It recognizes their priority. 
 It fastens itself into them, and realizes and fulfils its 
 life by them, and makes in its due time along with them 
 the background for the lives of the years to come. 
 
 Now all of this is not religious, save in the very larg- 
 est sense ; but all of this becomes distinctively religious 
 the moment that all this background of life gathers it- 
 self into a unity of purpose and intention and becomes a 
 Providence, or care of God. When once that truth has 
 opened on us, then aU the interest of life centres in and 
 radiates from this, — that He, God, is before it all. All 
 the welcome which Nature gave us on the bright morn- 
 ing when we came was His welcome. All the depth of 
 Truth out of which our opinions have shaped themselves 
 
The Priority of God. 45 
 
 and from which our creeds draw their inspiration and 
 dignity, was He, the everlasting truth. See what a 
 change has come. It is as when up the morning sky, 
 all coldly beautiful with ordered ranks of cloud on 
 cloud, is poured the glow of sunrise, and every least 
 cloud, still the same in place and shape, burns with the 
 transfiguring splendor of the sun. So is it when the pri- 
 ority of existence is seen to rest in a Person, and the 
 background of life is God. Then every new arrival in- 
 stantly reports itself to Him, and is described in terms of 
 its relationship to Him. Every activity of ours answers 
 to some previous activity of His. Do we hope ? It is 
 because we have caught the sound of some promise of 
 His. Do we fear ? It is because we have had some 
 glimpse of the dreadfulness of getting out of harmony 
 with Him. Are we curious and inquiring ? It is that we 
 may learn some of His truth. Do we resist evil ? We 
 are fighting His enemies. Do we help need ? We are 
 relieving His children. Do we love Him ? It is an an- 
 swer of gratitude for His love to us. Do we live ? It 
 is a projection and extension of His being. Do we die ? 
 [t is the going home of our immortal souls to Him. 
 
 Oh, the wonderful richness of life when it is all thus 
 backed with the priority of God ! It is the great illu- 
 mination of all living. And the wonder of it is the 
 way in which, in that illumination, the soul of man 
 recognizes its right. This is what it was made for. 
 Everything, until that light was poured into it, was 
 half-born, cold, and incomplete, like the drawing with- 
 out the color, like the morning sky before the sunrise. 
 Take the single experience of joy. You have been very 
 
 / 
 
46 The Priority of God. 
 
 glad. Some particular delight or some great perpetual 
 radiance of happiness has poured itself down upon your 
 life. You have waked singing in the morning. You 
 have fallen asleep with songs upon your lips at night. 
 Men have beheld you in the street, and said, "How 
 glad he is," and felt their own life brighter, their own 
 burden lighter as they passed you by. Suppose that 
 some day behind your happiness opens the depth of God. 
 Suppose that it all turns to gratitude. It all is seen 
 to come streaming out of the exhaustless fountain of 
 His love. Tell me, is it the same ? Is there no deeper 
 color in its radiance, no deeper music in its song ? Has 
 it gained nothing of spirituality and peace ? Has not 
 the joy lifted its face skyward and been filled with a 
 new light ? 
 
 Or if it has been not joy but deep distress, — pain of 
 the poor racked body or of the perplexed and wounded 
 
 • spirit, — it is still the same. You have gone up and 
 down the earth in sadness, and behind that sadness 
 too has opened God, — God not in anger and revenge, 
 not hurling the arrows of your torment from his in- 
 dignant wrath, not vexing and worrying you with 
 peevish spite, but God full of pity, pitiful just in pro- 
 portion to His holiness ; God anxious to help, and watch- 
 
 ' ing that the worst tragedy of pain may not happen, that 
 the pain may not come and go and leave no education 
 and blessing. Let this open behind your pain, and is 
 not pain transfigured ? Not removed but transfigured, 
 made something more than tolerable, pervaded with a 
 low, strong light, and filled, as the joy was, with peace. 
 The same is true of all experiences. The same is 
 
The Priority of God. 47 
 
 true of that sum of all experiences which we call life. 
 A man's world, stretching back and back, farther and 
 farther, finds back of all, before all, God. The world 
 becomes religious. Oh, those old words, that old phrase, 
 " the religious world, " — what a poor, petty, vulgar thing 
 it often has been made to mean ! " The religious world," 
 in the language of the newspapers, is almost sure to 
 mean a little section of humanity claiming monopoly of 
 divine influences and making the whole thought of 
 man's intercourse with God cheap and irreverent by 
 vicious quarrels and mercenary selfishness. "The re- 
 ligious world " is the world of ecclesiastical machin- 
 eries and conventions and arrangements. But look ! 
 See what the religious world really is in its idea, and 
 shall be when it shall finally be realized. A world 
 everywhere aware of and rejoicing in the priority of 
 God, feeling all power flow out from Him, and sending 
 all action back to report itself to Him for judgment, — 
 a world where goodness means obedience to God, and 
 sin means disloyalty to God, and progress means growth 
 in the power to utter God, and knowledge means the 
 understanding of God's thought, and happiness means 
 the peace of God's approval. That is the religious 
 world. That is the only world which is religious. It 
 is the world of which Isaiah and Habakkuk dreamed, 
 in which "the earth should be filled with the knowl- 
 edge of the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea. " 
 
 And now we want to go on and see how all this truth 
 comes to the full display of its richness in the Christian 
 faith. The Christian faith is the sum and flower of the 
 religious life of man. Whatever has struggled in all 
 
48 The Priority of God. 
 
 other religions comes to its free and full expression 
 there. And so the truth of the priority of God is the 
 first and fundamental truth of Christianity. Remem- 
 ber how it all begins. Jesus is sitting with Nicode« 
 mus, and telling him what He wants him to believOo 
 What is it ? Is it of a fermentation in humanity, — a 
 loving impulse, a reaching up of man after a Deity whom 
 he has discovered, to which at last God, out of His dis- 
 tant heaven, graciously responds ? It distinctly is not 
 that. " God so loved the world that he gave his only 
 begotten Son. " It is a movement from the side of God. 
 Everything which Christianity conceives of man as do- 
 ing, everything which Christianity bids man do, is in 
 answer to some previous activity of God. God has 
 given a law which you have broken. That is sin. God 
 has offered a forgiveness and new life which you may, 
 which you must, accept. That is salvation. Behold 
 how all that we saw in the relation of man to Nature, 
 all that was richly involved in the very fact of Re- 
 ligion, burns out in most complete expression in the 
 Religion of Religions, in the Gospel of the Son of 
 God, who becomes the Son of Man. 
 
 If I enter into the spirit of the narratives and see how 
 Jesus approached the people whom He wished to save, 
 1 find the same thing everywhere. Did He meet them 
 in the streets, did He step across the thresholds of their 
 houses, and say to them, "You must love God," calling 
 upon them for an adventurous excursion into an un- 
 known land to which they could not tell whether they 
 would find an open door or not ? It was always a rev- 
 elation. It was always, "God loves you." He went 
 
Tlie Priority of God. 49 
 
 about saying that from house to house, from man to 
 man. He said it to the Publican, the Magdalen, the 
 Pharisee. He said it by His sermon, His miracle, and 
 finally His cross. He built this background behind 
 every life. He spread this great sky over every soul, 
 and then He looked to see the great compulsion, " You 
 must love God, " " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, " 
 grasp every nature, not as a hard commandment, but as 
 a warm necessity to which the nature yields as a cloud 
 yields to the atmosphere and melts into the sky. 
 
 What will you do if you are sent to carry the Gospel 
 to your friend, your child ? Will you stand over him 
 and say, "You must love God; you will suffer for it 
 if you do not " ? When was ever love begotten so ? 
 " Who is God ? " " Why should I love Him ? " " How 
 can I love Him," answers back the poor, bewildered 
 heart, and turns to the things of earth which with their 
 earthly affections seem to love it, and satisfies itself in 
 loving them. Or perhaps it grows defiant, and says, " I 
 will not," flinging back your exhortation as the cold 
 stone flings back the sunlight. But you say to your 
 friend, your child, " God loves you, " say it in every 
 language of yours, in every vernacular of his, which you 
 can command, and his love is taken by surprise, and he 
 wakes to the knowledge that he does love God without 
 a resolution that he will. 
 
 So it is that children come to love their fathers and 
 their mothers everywhere. There is no struggle after 
 an uncertain thing. You do not urge them or exhort 
 them. They are set into the lives which are before 
 their lives, and the love of those lives flows into them 
 
 4 
 
/ 
 
 50 Tlie Priority of God. 
 
 and becomes their love. The real reason why men do 
 not love God is that they do not really believe that God 
 loves them. That does not take their blame away, but 
 it does shift it and put it in the right place. They are 
 to blame, grievously to blame, because they have made 
 their lives so base and poor that they cannot believe 
 that God loves them. There is where the attack must 
 be made and the victory won. Fix their thoughts not 
 on themselves but on God. Make them see that God is 
 such that He must love His children, however base and 
 poor they be, and then love becomes possible from them 
 to Him, because its great cause, its depth of spiritual 
 reason and reality, is there. 
 
 Sometimes far out at sea the sailor sees the sky 
 grow tremulous and troubled. The cloud seems to be 
 all unable to contain itself; its under surface wavers 
 and stretches downward toward the ocean. It is as if it 
 yearned and thirsted for the .v^adred water. A great 
 grasping hand is reached downward and feels after the 
 waves. And then the sailor looks beneath, and lo, 
 the surface of the waves is troubled too ; and out from 
 the water comes first a mere tremble and confusion, 
 and then by and by a column of water builds itself, 
 growing steadier and steadier, until at last it grasps the 
 hand out of the cloud, and one strong pillar reaches 
 from the sea into the heavens, from the heavens to the 
 sea, and the heavens and the sea are one. So you must 
 make man know that God loves him, and then look to \ 
 see man love God. ijijl 
 
 How shall you make man know that God loves him ? 
 In every way, — there is no_speech nor language in 
 
The Priority of God. 51. 
 
 which that voice may not be heard, — but most of all 
 by loving the man with a great love yourself, by a lofty 
 and generous affection of which he shall know that, 
 coming through you, it comes from beyond you, and 
 say, " It is my Father that my brother utters, " and so 
 be led up to the Father's heart. We talk about men's 
 reaching through Nature up to Nature's God. It is 
 nothing to the way in which they may reach through 
 manhood up to manhood's God, and learn the divine 
 love by the human. God make us all such revelations 
 of His love to some of His children ! 
 
 We may think again not of the way in which we shall 
 get our friends and brethren to love God, but of the way 
 in which we shall get ourselves to love Him. Oh, the 
 old struggles ! How many of us have said, " I will love 
 God; I ought to, and I will," and so have wrestled 
 and struggled to do what they could not do, — what in 
 their hearts they knew no real reason for doing, — and 
 have miserably failed, and now are satisfying them- 
 selves with loveless obedience, or else have left God 
 altogether and tell their hearts that they must forego 
 all such beautiful, hopeless ambitions. Ah, my friend, 
 what you need is to get away round upon the other side 
 of the whole matter. It is not whether you love God 
 but whether God loves you. If He does, and if you can 
 know that He does, then give yourself up totally and 
 unquestioningly to the assurance of that love. Rejoice 
 in it by day and night. Go singing for the joy of it 
 about your work and your play. Let no man, however 
 wise, persuade you that you have not a right to the sat- 
 isfaction of that love. You have. It does not wait for 
 
52 The Priority of God. 
 
 your summons. Of course it does not wait for your re- 
 sponse. How could the offer say, " I will not give my- 
 self to you till you accept me first ? " But as you go 
 singing for joy that God loves you, behold the response 
 is born before you know it, and you are loving God as 
 countless souls have always loved Him, in Saint John's 
 old way, " because He first loved you. " 
 
 Sometimes it seems good to sweep aside all the com- 
 plications of spiritual experience and bring it all to 
 absolute simplicity. Here is God, and here is a child 
 of God. The Father loves the child, not because the 
 child is this or that, or anything but just His child. 
 He says to you, " Go save my child for me. " And you 
 say, " How, my Father ? " And He says, " By Me. " 
 And you say, " Yes, I see, " and go and take the Father's 
 love and press it on that child of His, just as you 
 find him. You do not ask him how he feels about it, 
 any more than you ask the wood how it feels about the 
 fire which you bring to it. You know that the fire and 
 the wood belong together. You are sure that if the 
 fire gets at the wood, the wood will burn, and by and 
 by, look ! the wood is burning. The wood turns to fire 
 because the fire gave itself to the wood. The wood 
 loves the fire because the fire first loved it. 
 
 It is the way in which one man gives himself to an- 
 other man ; and shall God be more cautious and prudent 
 in His gift ? If you want your fellow-man to trust you, 
 you must trust him first. With frank, free cordialness 
 you give yourself to him and he responds. All stingy 
 caution and reserve defeats itself. The same trust, only 
 infinitely greater, is in the Cross of Christ. It does 
 
 
The Priority of God. 53 
 
 not always at once succeed. As in the Parable, God 
 says, " They will reverence my Son, " and this man or 
 that gives Him not reverence but scorn ; but neverthe- 
 less it is that trust of God in man that saves the world. 
 God trusts Himself to man, and countless souls in 
 answer trust themselves to God. 
 
 Sometimes the great world and the human life which 
 it contains grow wonderfully simple. Its mixed confu- 
 sion disappears. Its one or two great certainties stand 
 out to view. It all seems for one bright moment to come 
 just to this, — if there is a God, everything is right, if ' 
 there is no God, everything is wrong. And there is a 
 God. There is a God. Therefore all is right at the 
 bottom and in the end. Into the world all full of God 
 comes man, and God is there before him. He finds God 
 there. God takes him as he comes. Sometimes he 
 talks as if he made God, and could make God over 
 again to be what he would. But God made him. And 
 it is to the God who made him that he comes. "Of 
 Him and through Him and to Him are all things." 
 All is well ! 
 
 And now I wonder whether in some of your minds 
 there does not come a question regarding all this that 
 I have said. " After all, " you may ask yourself, " what 
 does it matter ? If the end is gained, if God and man 
 come together, what matter is it from which side the 
 first impulse came, — whether God went out to seek 
 man, or man with daring spiritual impulse rose up and 
 went and clamored at the gates of God ? " But must it 
 not make a difference ? Is there a situation or a fact or 
 a condition anywhere which is absolute and identical, 
 
54 The Priority of God. 
 
 and does not vary with the character of him who occu- 
 pies it ? And one of the strongest elements in making 
 the character of him who occupies a situation is the way 
 by which he came there. It is not enough that a man 
 stands upon the mountain-top. I must know the path 
 by which he climbed. It is not enough that a man 
 walks in the dark valley. I must know what brought 
 him there. The man is more than the situation. The 
 situation means little without the soul of the man giv- 
 ing it its meaning. 
 
 When then I see man reconciled to God and walking 
 with his Lord in the white garment of a new life, it 
 makes vast difference what is the spirit of that recon- 
 ciled, regenerated man. If it is the first fact of his new 
 existence — that which he never loses for a moment — 
 that the impulse of it came from God ; that God sought 
 him ; that before he ever thought of the higher life, its 
 halls were made ready for him, and its Lord came forth 
 into the wilderness to find him and to bring him in, 
 — then the strength of a profound humility is always 
 with him. The paralysis of pride does not creep over 
 him. Into his feebleness, through the openness of his 
 humility, there is always pouring the power of God. 
 It is not so much he that stands upon the mountain or 
 walks in the valley, but the God who brought him there 
 stands or walks there in him ; and it is God's work that 
 is being done, God's life that is being lived. He is 
 full of the humility which exalts and strengthens. 
 
 Besides this, the appeal of the new life to the soul 
 which lives it is largely bound up with the truth of the 
 priority of God. To know that long before I cared for 
 
 I 
 
The Priority of God. 55 
 
 Him, He cared for me ; that while I wandered up and 
 down in carelessness, perhaps while I was plunging 
 deep in flagrant sin, God's eye was never off me for a 
 moment, He was always watching for the instant when 
 His hand might touch me and His voice might speak to 
 me, — there is nothing which can appeal to a man like 
 that. The man is stone whom that does not appeal to. 
 When, touched by the knowledge of that untiring love, 
 a man gives himself at last to God, every act of loving 
 service which he does aftewards is fired and colored 
 by the power of gratitude, surprised gratitude, out of 
 which it springs. How shall he overtake this love which 
 has so much the start of him ? This is what makes his 
 service eager and enthusiastic. It is a " reasonable ser- 
 vice, " justified by the sublime reason of the soul which 
 loves its God because He first loved it. 
 
 Again this truth, that God is first, gives me the right 
 to keep a strong and lively hope for all my fellow-men. 
 It gives me also the chance to believe that I can help 
 them. It is all hopeless if I have to stir them from, 
 their lethargy and force them over distant hill and dale 
 to find a distant God who will not care about them till 
 He sees them coming. But, behold ! God is here. He 
 is infinitely nearer to them than I can come. Perhaps 
 they are loving and serving Him already in ways which 
 are so thoroughly their own ways that I cannot recognize 
 them. I have only to tell them over and over again 
 how near He is ; I have only to beg them to open their 
 eyes and see ! 
 
 Sometimes in our faithlessness it seems to us as if 
 we had to do very much more than that. It seems as if 
 
56 The Priority of God. 
 
 we had to go and find God, and bid Him love this child 
 of His, It seems as if we had to remake God's child into 
 such a being as God could love ! We almost act as if 
 we must introduce God and this man to one another! 
 Ah, let the veil drop from your eyes ! See how it really 
 is ! God loved this man before you dreamed of loving 
 him. God loves him deeper than you imagine. What 
 can you do, what need you do, but hold your life in 
 such a way, and make it such a life, that besides the 
 direct radiance of God's love, which is pouring on him 
 all the time, some indirect testimony may be borne by 
 you, that so this brother man may a little more speed- 
 ily and clearly see the love of God X 
 
 Have I talked to-day too generally of the priority of 
 God ? Then make it absolutely special and concrete. 
 There is some duty which God has made ready for you 
 to do to-morrow ; nay, to-day ! He has built it like a 
 house for you to occupy. You have not to build it. He 
 has built it, and He will lead you up to its door and set 
 you with your feet upon its threshold. Will you go in 
 and occupy it ? Will you do the duty which He has 
 made ready ? Perhaps it is the great comprehensive 
 duty of the consecration of yourself to Him. Perhaps 
 it is some special task. Whatever it is, may He who 
 anticipated your love by His own in giving you the 
 task, now help you to fulfil His love with yours by 
 doiag it. Amen. 
 
 I 
 
IV. 
 
 IDENTITY AND VARIETY. 
 
 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and 
 another glory of the stars j for one star differeth from another star in 
 glory. — 1 Cor. xv. 41. 
 
 These words are part of Saint Paul's great argument 
 for immortality. His reasoning has caught fire. It has 
 become far more than a mere piece of logic, although it 
 has not lost its logical consistency. Before him as he 
 reasons there has opened up the splendor of the thing 
 he pleads for ; as he talks of heaven he has been caught 
 up into heaven, and sees the glory of the everlasting 
 life. 
 
 The way in which he comes to the particular words 
 which are my text is this, — he has been claiming man's 
 resurrection on the strength of Christ's. Christ has 
 risen and entered into glory. Man too, because he is one 
 in human nature with Christ, must also rise. "Now. 
 is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits 
 of them that slept." But then the great misgiving 
 came. Can man's life undergo a change like that and 
 yet be truly his ? Must he not be another being if he 
 enters on such a different condition ? If he remains 
 the same being, must he not ever repeat the same ex- 
 periences which are bound up with his very nature ? 
 
58 Identity and Variety. 
 
 Are real identity and such variety compatible with one 
 another ? 
 
 Paul sets himself to answer those questions. First 
 comes his beautiful parable of the seed and the plant. 
 "That which thou sowest is not quickened except it 
 die ; and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that 
 body which shall be, but bare grain. But God giveth 
 it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed its 
 own body. " The vital principle is too spiritual to be 
 confined to one form. It passes from one form into 
 another which is wholly different, and yet it remains es- 
 sentially the same. The buried seed and the wheat 
 waving in the sunshine are the same, and yet how dif- 
 ferent they are ! Then he passes to a yet more brilliant 
 illustration. There is a power of life which pervades 
 the universe. Everywhere it is identical ; everywhere 
 it is glorious. It shines in everything. By it sun, 
 moon, and stars are clothed with radiance. But how 
 different is the splendor which it gives to each! It 
 fills each with itself; and lo, the result! "There is 
 one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, 
 and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth 
 from another star in glory," — the same life keeping 
 itself the same through every change, yet changing 
 so completely. Shall not then this human life, still 
 keeping itself the same human life, be able to go up to 
 heaven and stand in the light of God ? That is Paul's 
 argument. 
 
 It is not so much the way in which his argument 
 bears upon human immortality that I wish to speak 
 about to-day, — though to that we will return at last,-— 
 
Identity and Variety. 59 
 
 it is rather this whole idea of identity and variety co- 
 existing and ministering to each other, and of the in- 
 terest and beauty which that idea gives to the world. 
 But notice first of all how Saint Paul builds his argu- 
 ment for immortality upon the richness and the splendor 
 of this mortal life. Because this world is so great and 
 beautiful, therefore there must be another greater and 
 still more beautiful. Often enough have men made 
 heaven a compensation for the woes of earth. Often 
 enough have men said, " Because this world is so full of 
 wretchedness, therefore there must be another world, 
 where the starved soul shall be fed, and the wounded 
 soul healed, and the frozen soul warmed. " Paul makes 
 heaven not a compensation, but a development. Be- 
 cause this world is so glorious, therefore the glory of 
 heaven must be surpassing and unspeakable. How 
 much nobler is Paul's way ! How much fuller of in- 
 spiration and of genuine faith ! 
 
 One sign of how much greater Paul's way is, lies in 
 the higher life which it will make for one who uses and 
 believes in it. For he who finds in the manifold glo- 
 ries of this mortal life a symbol and witness of the glo- 
 ries which belong to immortality will always be led to 
 live this life as intensely and profoundly as he can, in 
 order that the higher life may become real and attrac- 
 tive to him. Men have thought that they must separate 
 themselves from earth in order that they might believe 
 in heaven. Paul's doctrine says emphatically, "No!" 
 He says, " The deeper that you go in life, the more life 
 must spread itself out around jou and become eternity. 
 He who gets to the centre feels the sphere. Live 
 
60 Identity and Variety. 
 
 lightly, superficially, and formally, think little, make 
 little of life, and it will be little to you. Think much, 
 make much of life, and it will assert its greatness and 
 prophesy its continuance." Indeed his doctrine seems 
 to teach almost this : that immortality is not a truth to 
 be directly striven for and proved, but a truth which 
 will open itself to and fold itself around the man who 
 deeply reaches the meaning of this life, — the man who 
 realizes in living how identity and variety blend and 
 unite to make the richness and solemnity of existence. 
 
 Identity and variety; identity and difference. Do 
 we not feel even as we say the words together how 
 they express together the tone and feeling which our 
 thought of life demands ? Identity sounds solid and 
 substantial ; it means the steady, continuous, unchanged 
 quality of things; it almost suggests monotony; it is 
 dimly haunted with misgivings and fears of dulness. 
 On the other hand variety is vital. It quivers with the 
 constant expectation of change ; it is full of the interest 
 of novelty ; it sparkles and rustles, and is sensitive and 
 open to all influences. If it has a danger, it is not dul- 
 ness but restlessness; not heaviness but lightness is 
 what it has to dread. But join the two ; quicken iden- 
 tity with variety ; steady variety with identity ; make 
 the man always himself, yet let him always feel the 
 power of new conditions opening around him, — and then 
 have you not made the best and happiest life ? You 
 have preserved at once responsibility and hope; you 
 have gained both stability and movement; your man 
 is at once a rock to build on and a wind of living 
 inspiration. 
 
Identity and Variety. 61 
 
 Think of the men whom you know best and who have 
 been most to your life, and I am sure that you will find 
 in them these qualities in highest union. They have 
 been the men who, you were sure, always were them- 
 selves, and yet men who have felt the largeness and rich- 
 ness of life, and so who have made changes ever from 
 condition to condition. In the union of these two quali- 
 ties lay their helpfulness and strength. 
 
 But let us trace a little more largely how this union 
 of identity and difference pervades the universe, and 
 how wherever it appears it gives richness and depth. 
 
 I wish I knew enough of the great world of physical 
 Nature to realize how true it must be there, in the re- 
 gion to which Saint Paul's image first transports the 
 mind. The most ignorant observer, the merest lounger 
 by the rivers or among the mountains, can catch sight 
 of it, — the genuine reality of Nature as one true exist- 
 ence, and yet the manifold variety with which the 
 whole earth teems, in which Nature embodies herself. 
 The lark and the lily, the sunbeam and the flashing 
 river, the mountain and the ocean and the man, — it 
 takes but the most elementary sensitiveness to feel the 
 oneness of them all ; while still our eyes and ears and 
 all our senses are tingling with the tidings of their 
 difference which they are always sending. I stand in 
 awe and wonder when I think how delightful and im- 
 pressive this must grow to a great naturalist, as year 
 after year he learns more of Nature's countless differ- 
 ences ; and yet year by year, the more he knows her dif- 
 ferences, she — the one Nature, the single being, great 
 and gracious — issues from her vast variety, and shows 
 
62 Identity and Variety. 
 
 herself to liim. It must be a life full of fascination, 
 — the eternal, undivided glory never losing its divine 
 unity, ever unfolding itself into " one glory of the sun, 
 and another glory of the moon, and another glory of 
 the stars." 
 
 Pause here a moment as we pass, to think how when 
 Saint Paul wants to depict the vast variety of which the 
 world is full, it was distinctly as a variety of glory that 
 he conceived of it. Enough he knew of the variety of 
 woe. Easily enough he might have depicted how man, 
 the same man still, was tossed from suffering to suffer- 
 ing and remained the same identical miserable sufferer 
 in all. It would have been the same truth taught upon 
 its darker side. But Paul knew that the true side on 
 which to teach it was its side of light. The real va- 
 riety of life is a variety of glories. Such a choice of 
 the side from which to draw his illustration is a noble 
 characteristic of Saint Paul. It is a sign of how healthy 
 he is. Change from glory into glory, — that was what 
 life seemed to him. Remember, it is no rapturous and 
 untired boy who is talking; it is a man all sore with 
 sorrow, beaten and broken with disappointment and 
 distress. Is it not a sign of what a true Christian he 
 was that life seemed to him still to be only a variety 
 and constant interchange of glories ? 
 
 But turn from physical Nature and think of the 
 history of man. How true it is that history cannot be 
 rightly understood unless it is illumined by this double 
 truth of the identity and difference of life. The ages 
 come and go, each stamped with its own character. 
 There are the ages of war, and the ages of peace ; the 
 
Identity and Variety. 63 
 
 centuries of thought, and the centuries of action; the 
 times of faith, the times of philanthropy, the times of 
 philosophy, the times of prospect and of retrospect, of cer- 
 tainty and of doubt, — each has its glory. In the eyes 
 of the inhabitants of each it seems as if all other times 
 were inglorious by the side of theirs. The truth of the 
 difference of ages is most manifest and claims the first 
 importance ; but all the time the other truth of identity 
 is always true, and is always making its assertion. 
 The time is great which in the midst of its self-value 
 is conscious always of the deeper value which belongs 
 to the long life of man. We rejoice in the nineteenth 
 century. We believe that there has been since Adam 
 no century so good to live in. But greater than the 
 nineteenth century is the sum of all the centuries, — this 
 varied, ever-changing life of man. One long, unbroken 
 nineteenth century from Adam all the way to us would 
 be terrible indeed. The ages of the cloisters and the 
 castles, of the dreams and mysteries, of the starlight 
 and the moonlight, they are all needed in the sky of 
 universal history ; each of them, while it is thoroughly 
 itself, may be proud and glad of all the rest. 
 
 And so with nations. We say England, France, It- 
 aly, America. What mere geographers we are unless 
 as we say each of those names a very being stands be- 
 fore us, — a being with a character, a being unlike all 
 the others, and yet bearing a true identity with them 
 because both it and they are made of men, and have 
 shaped all their ways and institutions out of the needs 
 of the same old manhood living on the same old earth. 
 The nations learn more and more how the advantage 
 
64 Identity and Variety. 
 
 of one is the advantage of all. Great universal tenden- 
 cies are bringing them to more and more of likeness 
 with each other. Not quite so far-away and impossible 
 a dream appears "the parliament of man, the federa- 
 tion of the world." But more terrible almost than that 
 absolute diversity and consequent hostility, would be 
 the perfect identity of nations. The nations, like great 
 children, match themselves with each other, compare 
 their characteristics, call each other small or great, are 
 filled with contempt or envy ; but really it is not a 
 question of smaller or greater, it is a question of the 
 difference of glory. Palestine or Grece or Rome, — 
 who shall decide, who cares to decide, their rank ? 
 "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of 
 the moon, and another glory of the stars," and all 
 together fill the radiant sky. 
 
 Or take another illustration, from the occupations of 
 mankind. Three men are close together on the street. 
 One of them makes shoes, another writes books, an- 
 other is mayor of the city. It is foolish and false to 
 say that there is no rank and precedence between the 
 lives which those three men live. One of their lives 
 demands higher powers and offers the opportunity of 
 higher education than the others. It is perfectly right 
 and wise that the shoemaker, if he feels in himself the 
 power, should aspire to leave his shoemaker's bench 
 and become in his turn the mayor of the city; but 
 there are other truths besides this truth of rank and 
 precedence. The truth that quite apart from all com 
 parison with other arts, each of these arts has abso 
 lute standards of its own, has its own bad ways and 
 
Identity a7id Variety. 65 
 
 good ways of doing its own work, has its own high 
 and noble way of being done ; and the truth that each 
 art, so far as it lives up to its own best standards, be- 
 comes a true utterance of universal human nature, 
 an utterance which gets its value from the fact that it 
 is at once identical with and different from all other 
 utterances, — these are the real truths about men's arts 
 and occupations which are most important. It is these 
 truths which make the thronged streets of a great city 
 food for thought and imagination. They clothe the vast 
 buildings in which men do their various work with a 
 fascination and an interest which the trees of the state- 
 liest forest in springtime or in autumn cannot begin to 
 match; they give dignity and pathos and meaning to 
 our colleges and schools ; they make the richness and 
 the harmony of all active life. 
 
 And so our illustrations bring us at last to human 
 character. There, in the difference and the identity of 
 personal human natures, is the fullest exhibition of the 
 two truths of identity and of variety, and of their essen- 
 tialness to one another. Here is the endless variety. 
 Men are thoughtful or active, spontaneous or mechani- 
 cal, conservative or radical, simple or elaborate, — 
 where is the end of the differences which we might de- 
 scribe ? And yet below all differences men are men. 
 The endless variations are all wrought upon one single 
 mighty strain. Think of the dreadful loss if either of 
 these truths should fail. If the variety fails, mankind 
 is a great, dreary, indistinguishable monotony. If the 
 identity fails, mankind is a great tumult of confused 
 and unharmonious particles which have no kinship 
 
 .6. 
 
66 Identity and Variety. 
 
 with, no lesson for, each other. How unreligious, how 
 unchristian either of those conditions is any one knows 
 who has entered at all deeply into the truth of Christ 
 and into the spirit of the Incarnation. Christ is at once 
 the inspiration of the individual and also the assertion 
 — such as the world has never heard before — of the 
 identity of man. He is the Eevealer of the Father- 
 hood of God, we say. Think what that means. He 
 builds mankind into a family ; and where as in a family 
 is every life distinct and yet are all lives one ? That 
 household of your own, — is not its beauty here, that 
 in it every child's nature and ways and destiny are a dis- 
 tinct and special study, and yet that a sweet, subtle 
 unity runs through the whole and makes it one ? One 
 blood runs in the veins, one spirit looks out of the eyes 
 of all, — identity and difference, not in contention with 
 each other but confederate, helping each other, make 
 the completeness o* the family life. Conceive Christ's 
 thought of the human race ; see all humanity, as he saw 
 it, as one great family ; and then there too there is the 
 harmony of these two truths, and every man honors his 
 individual existence, while he rejoices in the oneness of 
 the mighty whole. 
 
 A new child is born into the world to-day, this Sun- 
 day morning. What shall you say as you stand beside 
 his cradle ? Shall not two consciousnesses fill you ? 
 Shall you not say two things : First, here is something 
 new, original, and strange, — another apparition on the 
 earth, another history commenced, different from any 
 that the world has ever seen. That fills you with the 
 fresh delight of newness. Curiosity, inspiration, exal- 
 
 I 
 
Identity and Variety. 67 
 
 tation fill your heart. But you say also, Lo, the old 
 life-spirit once more utters itself. Lo, that which has 
 heen is once again. The tree puts forth another bud. 
 The chain builds on another link. That fills you with 
 the peaceful sense of permanence, and lets you feel the 
 whole humanity and the God of humanity holding this 
 infant life. In the union of these two emotions lies 
 the best fitness for the wisest work that you can do in 
 training this new immortal. 
 
 I leave the statement and illustration of our truth, 
 and turn now in what time remains to point out very 
 plainly what its consequences are, what sort of life and 
 conduct it will make in him who understands it and 
 accepts it as his law. 
 
 First of all, it will make self-respect. Here are you, 
 seemingly insignificant, not making much of yourself, 
 not seeming to be worthy to be made much of. Oh, if 
 you could know two things about yourself : First, that you 
 are a different creature from any that the world has ever 
 seen ; and second, that you are a true utterance of the 
 same Spirit of Life out of which sprang Isaiah and Saint 
 John. Indeed, there must come self-respect from both 
 those truths together, wrought and kneaded into the very 
 substance of a human nature. It is some glimpse of them 
 which makes the school-boy idling at his desk on some 
 inspired morning gather up his books and go to work. 
 It is some glimmer of these in his poor dark soul that 
 gives the slave the power to look boldly in his eye the 
 master who is flogging him and keep his heart untamed. 
 It is the simple certainty of these that makes it easy 
 for the laborer who digs your ditch not to be bullied h-^ 
 
68 Identity and Variety. 
 
 your arrogant wealth, but to do his task perfectly, and 
 report it, past your arrogant patronage or fault-finding, 
 to God. Every act has its appropriate glory, its per- 
 fect and entire way of being done. To do any act in 
 its perfect way is a perfect act. The star is not a lit- 
 tle sun ; it is a star. It is not a fragment broken off 
 from the great orb and shining with a broken, fragmen- 
 tary lustre ; it is a thing by itself. It has its own way 
 of shining, which the sun itself cannot invade. There 
 is one glory of the sun and another glory of the star. 
 To shine itself out boldly in the heavens is to do a new, 
 distinct thing which makes the heavens rich. 
 
 I would that I could make this clear to some dis- 
 turbed and discontented soul which is here this morn 
 ing. You are a star and not a sun. God forbid that i>. 
 you really are a sun and not a star any arbitrary com 
 pulsion should keep you in the star's place and shut 
 you out of the sun's. We must labor everywhere till 
 there is perfect freedom for every nature to know and 
 be itself. But you do know yourself. You are a star 
 and not a sun. Your place in life is not in the fore- 
 front of things ; it is subordinate and secondary. What 
 then ? Can you learn this truth, — that if you do your 
 work with complete faitlifulness and with the most abso- 
 lute perfectness with which it is capable of being done, 
 you are making just as genuine a contribution to the 
 substance of the universal good as is the most brillant 
 worker whom the world contains ? You are setting as 
 true a fact here between the eternities as he. You are 
 doing what he cannot do. It is Emerson's fable of the 
 Mountain and the Squirrel, — 
 
Identity and Variety. 69 
 
 " If I cannot carry forests on my back, 
 Neither can you crack a nut." 
 
 "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of 
 the stars." 
 
 All our works, even the greatest, arc so little in rela- 
 tion to the world's need; all our works, even the least, 
 are so great in relation to the doer's faithfulness. 
 There is the secret of self-respect. Oh, go take up your 
 work and do it. Do it with cheerfulness and love. So 
 shall you shine with a glory which is all your own, — 
 a glory which the great heaven of universal life would 
 be poorer for missing. 
 
 You see how inevitably respect for others is bound 
 up with such self-respect as this. Let us turn and think 
 of that. The absorbing character of a great enthusi- 
 asm is one of the commonest of observations. He who 
 cares earnestly for anything is apt to care very little 
 for other things, and is apt to wonder and be indignant 
 that other people do not care as much as he does for the 
 thing he cares for. How the philanthropist, all eager 
 to set right the world's tumultuous wrongs, chafes and 
 grows furious at the sight of the recluse or scholar sit- 
 ting in his cell, raking over the ashes of history or 
 dreaming of the sacred elementary and abstract truths ! 
 Then how that scholar, if he looks abroad, is ready to 
 despise the bustling restlessness which is forever or- 
 ganizing committees and petitioning legislatures and 
 screwing up the loosened machinery of charity ! " There 
 is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, 
 and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth 
 from another star in glory," — is not that the very truth 
 
70 Identity and Variety. 
 
 which such despisers of their brethren need to under- 
 stand ? Sometimes it seems as if such narrowness were 
 necessary, — as if it were the inevitable price which you 
 must pay for earnestness and energy; but surely that 
 cannot be so, surely it must be possible for men to be 
 profoundly devoted to their own work and yet to be pro- 
 foundly thankful for the work which other men are do- 
 ing, — work which they could not do, and whose details 
 and methods it is not in their natures to understand and 
 care for. Surely I may claim my right to be glad and 
 proud that the great singers are singing, though my 
 ears are dull to music ; and that the great sculptors are 
 carving, even if my soul does not respond to art; and 
 that the great statesmen are ruling, though my quiet life 
 seems to be lived entirely outside the region of their 
 grand ideas. They are all mine, and I am theirs. 
 
 Is this a fancy ? Is it a mere blind struggle to en- 
 large my life, whose littleness makes it intolerable ? 
 Not if I genuinely believe in God ! If I feel Him be- 
 hind all existence, then there is a great identity estab- 
 lished between all the utterances of Him throughout 
 the length and breadth of human life. The volcanoes 
 know each other, — Etna crying out to Vesuvius across 
 the sea, — because of the oneness of the central fire 
 from which they all proceed. Let me know God, the 
 source of all that man does anywhere, and then, 
 poet, sing your song! sculptor, carve your statue! 
 O builder, build your house! engineer, roll out 
 your railroad on the plain! sailor, sail your ship 
 across the sea ! They are all mine. I am glad ; I am 
 proud of them all. Is it not what Paul wrote so trium- 
 
 i 
 
Identity and Variety. 71 
 
 phantly to his disciples, — " All things are yours, and 
 you are Christ's, and Christ is God's " ? And then 
 that everything should reach its best, that every man 
 should do his best in his own line, that every star 
 should shine brightly with its own light, becomes the 
 wish and prayer and purpose of my life. Here is the 
 only true respect for fellow-man. 
 
 All this applies to the different conditions and degrees 
 in which we see other men's lives to stand ; but it may 
 also be made to apply to the different conditions and 
 degrees into which we may think of our lives as passing. 
 You or I are this to-day ; to morrow or next year we 
 may be something quite different. To-day we are in- 
 significant ; to-morrow or next year we may be illustri- 
 ous and prominent. Or just the opposite — to-day we 
 are illustrious and prominent, to-morrow or next year 
 we may be insignificant. How shall we look upon those 
 possibilities of change ? Is not this what we want ? To 
 see each condition as a distinct thing with its own 
 values and meanings, and yet to feel how our human life 
 may, still the same that it is now, spread itself out and 
 come to larger things. This harmonizes contentment 
 in the present with large-hearted aspiration after greater 
 fortunes. Let the student honor his studentship. Let 
 him live in it as in a home thoroughly honorable and 
 worthy. Let him think of it, not as a road over which 
 he is compelled to travel, but as a dwelling in which 
 he has the privilege of living; but let him realize him- 
 self in it so truly that whatever else he may be capable 
 of doing in the coming years may seem to him not hope- 
 less while he looks forward to it, an^ not gtrange or uu- 
 
72 Identity and Variety. 
 
 natural when it arrives. He who lives so, lives in a 
 present peace which the large hopes of the future dc 
 not disturb, but deepen. 
 
 And so at the end as at the beginning of my sermon 
 I touch the use which Saint Paul first made of this truth 
 which we have taken from him for our study. To him 
 it was a proof of immortality. He would have men live 
 here on earth, yet conscious of their capacity of Heaven. 
 He would have earth real, clear, definite, distinct, 
 shining with its own color, holding us with its own 
 grasp ; and yet he would have man so conscious of his 
 larger self that the very definiteness of what he is to- 
 day makes real to him the greater thing that he will be 
 in the vast world beyond. 
 
 Is not that what we want ? The life of earth now, 
 the life of heaven by and by, — each clear with its 
 own glory ! And our humanity capable of both, capable 
 of sharp thinking, timely hard work here and now, ca- 
 pable also of the supernal, the transcendent splendor 
 there when the time shall come ! The glory of the star, 
 the glory of the sun ! We must not lose either in the 
 other; we must not be so full of the hope of heaven 
 that we cannot do our work on earth; we must not 
 be so lost in the work of earth that we shall not be in- 
 spired by the hope of heaven. God grant us all the 
 contentment and the hope which come to those who 
 live in Him who covers all yesterday, to-day, and for- 
 ever with Himself. 
 
 i 
 
V. 
 
 THE SEKIOUSNESS OF LIFE. 
 
 Let not God speak to us, lest we die. — Ex. xx. 19. 
 
 The Hebrews had come up out of Egypt, and were 
 standing in front of Sinai. The mountain was full of 
 fire and smoke. Thunderings and voices were bursting 
 from its mysterious awfulness. Great trumpet-blasts 
 came pealing through the frightened air. Everything 
 bore witness to the presence of God, The Hebrews 
 were appalled and frightened. We can see them cower- 
 ing and trembling. They turn to Moses and beg him 
 to stand between them and God. " Speak thou with 
 us, and we will hear ; but let not God speak to us, lest 
 we die." 
 
 At first it seems as if their feeling were a strange 
 one. This is their God who is speaking to them, their 
 God who brought them " out of the Land of Egypt, out 
 of the House of Bondage. " Would it not seem as if 
 they would be glad to have Him come to them directly, 
 to have Him almost look on them with eyes that they 
 could see, and make unnecessary the interposition of 
 His servant Moses, bringing them messages from Him ? 
 Will they not feel their whole history of rescue coming 
 to its consummation when at last they find themselves 
 
74 The Seriousness of Life. 
 
 actually in the presence of the God who has delivered 
 them, and hear His voice ? 
 
 That is the first question, but very speedily we feel 
 how natural that is which actually did take place. The 
 Hebrews had delighted in God's mercy. They had 
 come singing up out of the Red Sea. They had fol- 
 lowed the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud. They 
 had accepted God's provision for their hunger. They 
 had received Moses, whom God had made their leader. 
 But now they were called on to face God Himself. , In 
 behind all the superficial aspects of their life they were 
 called on to get at its centre and its heart. In behind 
 the happy results, they were summoned to deal with the 
 mysterious and mighty cause. There they recoiled. 
 " Nay, " they said, " let us go on as we are. Let life 
 not become so terrible and solemn. We are willing 
 to know that God is there. We are willing, we are 
 glad, that Moses should go into His presence and bring 
 us His messages. But we will not come in sight of 
 Him ourselves. Life would be awful. Life would be 
 unbearable. Let not God speak with us, lest we die ! " 
 
 I want to bid you think this morning how natural and 
 how common such a temper is. There are a few people 
 among us who are always full of fear that life will be- 
 come too trivial and petty. There are always a great 
 many people who live in perpetual anxiety lest life 
 shall become too awful and serious and deep and sol- 
 emn. There is something in all of us which feels that 
 fear. We are always hiding behind effects to keep out 
 of sight of their causes, behind events to keep out of 
 sight of their meanings, behind facts to keep out of 
 
 I 
 
TTie Seriousness of Life. 75 
 
 sight of principles, behind men to keep out of the sight 
 of God. Because that is such poor economy ; because 
 the only real safety and happiness of life comes from 
 looking down bravely into its depths when they are 
 opened to us, and fairly taking into account the pro- 
 fomidest meanings of existence ; because not death but 
 life, the fullest and completest life, comes from letting 
 God speak to us and earnestly listening while He 
 speaks, — for these reasons I think this verse will have 
 something to say to us which it will be good for us 
 to hear. 
 
 We have all known men from whom it seemed as if 
 it would be good to lift away some of the burden of life, 
 to make the world seem easier and less serious. Some 
 such people perhaps we know to-day; but as we look 
 abroad generally do we not feel sure that such people 
 are the exceptions ? The great mass of people are 
 stunted and starved with superficialness. They never 
 get beneath the crust and skin of the things with which 
 they deal. They never touch the real reasons and mean- 
 ings of living. They turn and hide their faces, or else 
 run away when those profoundest things present them- 
 selves. They will not let God speak with them. So 
 all their lives lack tone; nothing brave, enterprising, 
 or aspiring is in them. Do you not know it well ? Do 
 you not feel it everywhere ? 
 
 For we may lay it down as a first principle that he 
 who uses superficially any power or any person which 
 he is capable ot using profoundly gets harm out of that 
 unaccepted o})portunity which he lets slip. You talk 
 with some slight acquaintance, some man of small 
 
76 The Seriousness of Life. 
 
 capacity and little depth, about ordinary things in very 
 ordinary fashion ; and you do not suffer for it. You get 
 all that he has to give. But you hold constant inter- 
 course with some deep nature, some man of great 
 thoughts and true spiritual standards, and you insist 
 on dealing merely with the surface of him, touching 
 him only at the most trivial points of living, and you 
 do get harm. The unused capacity of the man — all 
 which he might be to you, but which you are refusing 
 to let him be — is always there, demoralizing you. If 
 you knew that a boy would absolutely and utterly shut 
 his nature up against the high influences of the best 
 men, would you not think it good for him to live not 
 with them but with men of inferior degree, in whom he 
 should not be always rejecting possibilities which he 
 ought to take ? A dog might live with a wise man, and 
 remaining still a dog, be all the better for the wise 
 man's wisdom, which he never rejected because he could 
 not accept it. But a brutish man who lived with the 
 sage and insisted that he would be still a brute, would 
 become all the more brutish by reason of the despised 
 and neglected wisdom. 
 
 Now we have only to apply this principle to life and 
 we have the philosophy and meaning of what I want to 
 preach to you this morning. It is possible to conceive 
 of a world which should offer the material and opportu- 
 nity of nothing but superficialness, — nothing but the 
 making of money and the eating of bread and the playing 
 of games ; and in that world a man might live superfi- 
 cially and get no harm. On the other hand it is possible 
 to conceive of a man who had no capacity for anything 
 
The Seriousness of Life. 77 
 
 but superficialness and frivolity and dealing with sec- 
 ond causes ; and that man might live superficially even 
 in this deep, rich world in which we live, and get no 
 harm. But — here is the point — for this man with 
 his capacities to live in this world with its oppor- 
 tunities and yet to live on its surface and to refuse its 
 depths, to turn away from its problems, to reject the 
 ^>fyoice of God that speaks out of it, is a demoralizing 
 and degrading thing. It mortifies the unused pow- 
 ers, and keeps the man always a traitor to his privi- 
 leges and his duties. 
 
 Take one part of life and you can see it very plainly. 
 Take the part with which we are familiar here in church. 
 Take the religious life of man. True religion is, at 
 its soul, spiritual sympathy with, spiritual obedience 
 to God. But religion has its superficial aspects, — first 
 of truth to be proved and accepted, and then, still more 
 superficial, of forms to be practised and obeyed. Now 
 suppose that a man setting out to be religious confines 
 himself to these superficial regions and refuses to go 
 further down. He learns his creed and says it. He 
 rehearses his ceremony and practises it. The deeper 
 voice of his religion cries to him from its unsounded 
 depths, " Come, understand your soul ! Come, through 
 repentance enter into holiness ! Come, hear the voice 
 of God." But he draws back; he piles between him- 
 self and that importunate invitation the cushions of his 
 dogma and his ceremony. "Let God's voice come to 
 me deadened and softened through these," he says. 
 " Let not God speak to me, lest I die. Speak thou to 
 toe and I will hear. " So he cries to his priest, to his 
 
78 The Seriousness of Life. 
 
 sacrament, which is his Moses. Is he not harmed by 
 that ? Is it only that he loses the deeper spiritual power 
 which he might have had ? Is it not also that the fact 
 of its being there and of his refusing to take it makes 
 his life unreal, fills it with a suspicion of cowardice, 
 and puts it on its guard lest at any time this ocean of 
 spiritual life which has been shut out should hurst 
 through the barriers which exclude it and come pouring 
 in ? Suppose the opposite. Suppose the soul so sum- 
 moned accepts the fulness of its life. It opens its ears 
 and cries, " Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. " It 
 invites the infinite and eternal aspects of life to show 
 themselves. Thankful to Moses for his faithful leader- 
 ship, it is always pressing through him to the God for 
 whom he speaks. Thankful to priest and church and 
 dogma, it will always live in the truth of its direct, 
 immediate relationship to God, and make them minis- 
 ter to that. What a consciousness of thoroughness and 
 safety; what a certain, strong sense of resting on the 
 foundation of all things is there then! There are no 
 closed, ignored rooms of the universe out of which un- 
 expected winds may blow, full of dismay. The sky is 
 clear above us, though we have not soared to its farth- 
 est height. The ocean is broad before us, though we 
 have not sailed through all its breadth. 
 ^/0h, my dear friends, do not let your religion satisfy 
 itself with anything less than God. Insist on having 
 your soul get at Him and hear His voice. Never, be- 
 cause of the mystery, the awe, perhaps the perplexity 
 and doubt which come with the great experiences, let 
 yourself take refuge in the superficial things of faith. 
 
The Seriuiisness of Life. 79 
 
 It is better to be lost on the ocean than to be tied to the 
 shore. It is better to be overwhelmed with the great- 
 ness of hearing the awful voice of God than to become 
 satisfied with the piping of mechanical ceremonies or 
 the lullabies of traditional creeds. Therefore seek 
 great experiences of the soul, and never turn your back 
 on them when God sends them, as He surely will ! 
 
 The whole world of thought is full of the same neces 
 sity and the same danger. A man sets himself to thinlr 
 of this world we live in. He discovers facts. He ar- 
 ranges facts into what he calls laws. Behind his laws 
 he feels and owns the powers to which he gives the 
 name of force. There he sets his feet. He will go no 
 further. He dimly hears the depth below, of final 
 causes, of personal purposes, roaring as the great ocean 
 roars under the steamship which, with its clamorous 
 machineries and its precious freight of life, goes sailing 
 on the ocean's bosom. You say to him, "Take this 
 into your account. Your laws are beautiful, your 
 force is gracious and sublime. But neither is ultimate. 
 You have not reached the end and source of things in 
 these. Go further. Let God speak to you. " Can you 
 not hear the answer ? " Nay, that perplexes all things. 
 That throws confusion into what we have made plain 
 and orderly and clear. Let not God speak to us, lest 
 we die ! " You think what the study of Nature might 
 become, if, keeping every accurate and careful method 
 of investigation of the way in which the universe is gov- 
 erned and arranged, it yet was always hearing, always 
 rejoicing to hear, behind all methods and governments 
 and machineries, the sacred movement of the personal 
 
80 TJie Seriousness of Life. 
 
 will and nature which is the soul of all. Whether we 
 call such hearing science or poetry, it matters not. If 
 we call it poetry, we are only asserting the poetic issue 
 of all science. If we call it science, we are only de- 
 claring that poetry is not fiction but the completest 
 truth. The two unite in religion, which when it has 
 its full chance to do all its work shall bring poetry and 
 science together in the presence of a recognized God, 
 whom the student then shall not shrink from, but de- 
 light to know, and find in Him the illumination and the 
 harmony of all his knowledge. 
 
 The same is true about all motive. How men shrink 
 from the profoundest motives ! How they will pretend 
 that they are doing things for slight and superficial rea- 
 sons when really the sources of their actions are in the 
 most eternal principles of things, in the very being of 
 God Himself. I stop you and ask you why you give 
 that poor man a dollar, and you give me some account 
 of how his poverty offends your taste, of how unpleasant 
 it is to behold him starve. I ask you why you toil at 
 your business day in and day out, year after year. I 
 beg you to tell me why you devote yourself to study, and 
 you reply with certain statements about the attractive- 
 ness of study and the way in which every extension or 
 increase of knowledge makes the world more rich. All 
 that is true, but it is slight. It keeps the world thin. 
 This refusal to trace any act back more than an inch 
 into that world of motive out of which all acts spring, 
 this refusal especially to let acts root themselves in Him 
 who is the one only really worthy cause why anything 
 should be done at all, — this is what makes life grow so 
 
'lite Seriousness of Life. 81 
 
 thin to the feeling of men who live it; this is what 
 makes men wonder sometimes that their brethren can 
 find it worth while to keep on working and living, even 
 while they themselves keep on at their life and work in 
 the same way. This is the reason why men very often 
 fear that the impulse of life may give out before the 
 time comes to die, and shudder as they think how awful 
 it will be to go on living with the object and the zest of 
 life all dead. Such a fear never could come for a mo- 
 ment to the man who felt the fountain of God's infinite 
 being behind all that the least of God's children did 
 for love of Him. 
 
 I know very well how all this which I have under- 
 taken to preach this morning may easily be distorted 
 and misunderstood. It may seem to be the setting 
 forth of a sensational and unnatural idea of life, the 
 struggle after which will only result in a histrionic 
 self-consciousness, a restless, discontented passion for 
 making life seem intense and awful, when it is really 
 commonplace and tame. "Let us be quiet and natu- 
 ral," men say, "and all will be well." But the truth 
 is that to be natural is to feel the seriousness and 
 depth of life, and that no man does come to any worthy 
 quietness who does not find God and rest on Him and 
 talk with Him continually. The contortions of the sen- 
 sationalist must not blind us to the real truth of that 
 which he grotesquely parodies. His blunder is not in 
 thinking that life is earnest, but in trying to realize its 
 earnestness by stirring up its surface into foam instead 
 of piercing down into its depths, where all is calm. Yet 
 even he, grotesque and dreadful as he is, seems almost 
 
 6 
 
82 The Seriousness of Life. 
 
 better than the imperturbably complacent soul who re- 
 fuses to believe that life is serious at all. 
 
 The whole trouble comes from a wilful or a blind 
 underestimate of man. " Let not God speak to me, lest 
 I die," the man exclaims. Is it not almost as if the 
 fish cried, "Cast me not into the water, lest I drown," 
 or as if the eagle said, " Let not the sun shine on me, 
 lest I be blind. " It is man fearing his native element. 
 He was made to talk with God. It is not death, but his 
 true life, to come into the divine society and to take his 
 thoughts, his standards, and his motives directly out 
 of the hand of the eternal perfectness. Man does not 
 know his own vitality, and so he nurses a little quiver 
 of flame and keeps the draught away from it, when if 
 he would only trust it and throw it bravely out into the 
 wind, where it belongs, it would blaze into the true fire 
 it was made to be. We find a revelation of this in all 
 the deepest and highest moments of our lives. Have 
 you not often been surprised by seeing how men who 
 seemed to have no capacity for such experiences passed 
 into a sense of divine companionship when anything 
 disturbed their lives with supreme joy or sorrow ? 
 Once or twice, at least, in his own life, almost every 
 one of us has found himself face to face with God, and 
 felt how natural it was to be there. Then all interpre- 
 ters and agencies of Him have passed away. He has 
 looked in on us directly ; we have looked immediately 
 upon Him ; and we have not died, — we have supremely 
 lived. We have known that we never had so lived as 
 then. We have been aware how natural was that direct 
 sympathy and union and communication with God. 
 
The Seriousness of Life. 83 
 
 And often the question has come, " What possible rea- 
 son is there why this should not be the habit and fixed 
 condition of our life ? Why should we ever go back 
 from it ? " And then, as we felt ourselves going back 
 from it, we have been aware that we were growing un- 
 natural again ; we were leaving the heights, where our 
 souls breathed their truest air, and going down into the 
 valleys, where only long habit and an educated distrust 
 of our own high capacity had made us feel ourselves 
 more thoroughly at home. 
 
 And as this is the revelation of the highest mo- 
 ments of every life, so it is the revelation of the 
 highest lives; especially it is the revelation of the 
 highest of all lives, the life of Christ. Men had been 
 saying, " Let not God speak to us, lest we die ; " and 
 here came Christ, the man, — Jesus, the man ; and 
 God spoke with Him constantly, and yet He lived with 
 the most complete vitality. He was the livest of all 
 living men. God spoke with Him continually. He 
 never did a deed, He never thought a thought, that He 
 did not carry it back with His soul before it took its 
 final shape and get His Father's judgment on it. He 
 lifted His eyes at any instant and talked through the 
 open sky, and on the winds came back to Him the an- 
 swer. He talked with Pilate and with Peter, with 
 Herod and with John ; and yet his talk with them was 
 silence ; it did not begin to make His life, to be His 
 life, compared with that perpetual communion with His 
 Father which made the fundamental consciousness as it 
 made the unbroken habit of, His life. All this is true 
 of Jesus. You who know tl^e rich story of the Gospels 
 
84 The Seriousness of Zife. 
 
 know how absolutely it is true of Him. And the strange 
 thing about it is that the life of which all this is true is 
 felt at once to be the most natural, the most living life 
 which the world has ever seen. Imagine Jesus saying 
 those words which the Hebrews said: "Let not God 
 speak to me, lest I die. " You cannot put those words 
 upon His lips. They will not stay there. "0 God, 
 speak to me, that I may live, " — that is the prayer with 
 which He comes out of the stifling air of the synagogue 
 or the temple, out of the half-death of the mercenary 
 streets, out of the foolish rivalries and quarrellings of 
 His disciples. 
 
 And every now and then a great man or woman comes 
 who is like Christ in this. There comes a man who 
 naturally drinks of the fountain and eats of the es- 
 sential bread of life. Where you deal with the mere 
 borders of things he gets at their hearts; where you 
 ask counsel of expediencies, he talks with first princi- 
 ples ; where you say, " This will be profitable, " he says, 
 "This is right." Remember I am talking about him 
 now only with reference to this one thing, — that when 
 men see him they recognize at once that it is from 
 abundance and not from defect of vitality that this man 
 lives among the things which are divine. Is there one 
 such man — it may be one such boy — in the store 
 where all the rest of you are working for rivalry or ava- 
 rice ? Is there one who works from principle, one who 
 works for God; and will you tell me whether you do 
 not all count him the most genuinely living of you all ? 
 
 The student of history knows very well that there are 
 certain ages and certain races which more than other 
 
The Seriousness of Life. 85 
 
 ages seem to have got down to the fundamental facts, 
 and to be living by the elemental and eternal forces, — 
 ages and races which are always speaking with God. 
 So we all feel about the Hebrews. The divine voice 
 was always in their ears. Often they misunderstood it. 
 Often they thought they heard it when it was only the 
 echo of their own thoughts and wishes that they heard ; 
 but the desire to hear it, the sense that life consisted in 
 hearing it, — that never left them. And so, too, we feel, 
 or ought to feel, about the great Hebrew period of our 
 own race, the Puritan century, in which everything 
 was probed to the bottom, all delegated authorities were 
 questioned, and earnestness everywhere insisted upon 
 having to do immediately with God. Plenty of crude, 
 gross, almost blasphemous developments of this insist- 
 ence set themselves forth ; but the fact of the insistence 
 was and still is most impressive. It never frightened 
 the Puritan when you bade him stand still and listen to 
 the speech of God. His closet and his church were full 
 of the reverberations of the awful, gracious, beautiful 
 voice for which he listened. He made little, too little, 
 of sacraments and priests, because God was so intensely 
 real to him. What should he do with lenses who stood 
 thus full in the torrent of the sunshine ? And so the 
 thing which makes the history of the Puritans so im- 
 pressive is the sense that in them we come close to the 
 great first things. We are back behind the temporary, 
 special forms of living, on the bosom of the primitive 
 eternal life itself. 
 
 When we turn suddenly from their time to our own 
 time what a difference there is ! At least what a 
 
 L 
 
86 The Seriousness of Life. 
 
 difference there is between all their time and a part 
 of ours. For our time is not capable of being charac- 
 terized as generally and absolutely as theirs. It has 
 'many elements. Certainly it lias much of Puritanism. 
 The age which has had Carlylc for its prophet, and 
 which has fought out our war against slavery has not 
 lost its Puritanism. But the other side of our life, 
 how far it is from the first facts of life, from God, who 
 is behind and below everything ! When I listen to our 
 morals finding their sufficient warrant and only recog- 
 nized authority in expediency ; when I behold our poli- 
 tics abandoning all ideal conceptions of the nation's life 
 and talking as if it were only a great mercantile estab- 
 lishment, of which the best which we can ask is that it 
 should be honestly run ; when I see society conceiving 
 no higher purpose for its activities than amusement; 
 when I catch the tone of literature, of poetry, and of 
 romance, abandoning large themes, studiously and de- 
 liberately giving up principles and all heroic life, and 
 making itself the servant and record of what is most 
 sordid and familiar, sometimes even of what is most 
 uncomely and unclean; when I think of art grown 
 seemingly incapable of any high endeavor ; when I con- 
 sider how many of our brightest men have written the 
 word Agnostic on their banner, as if not to know any- 
 thing, or to consider anything incapable of being known, 
 were a condition to shout over and not to mourn over, — 
 when I see all these things, and catch the spirit of the 
 time of which these things are but the exhibitions and 
 the symptoms, I cannot help feeling as if out of this 
 side, at least, of our time there came something very 
 
The Seriotisness of Life. 87 
 
 like the echoes of the old Hebrew cry, " Let not God 
 speak to us, lest we die. " We are afraid of getting to 
 the roots of things, where God abides. What bulwarks 
 have you, rich, luxurious men, built up between your- 
 selves and the poverty in which hosts of your brethren 
 are living ? What do you know, what do you want to 
 know, of the real life of Jesus, who was so poor, so radi- 
 cal, so full of the sense of everything just as it is in 
 God ? You tremble at the changes which are evidently 
 coming. You ask yourself, How many of these first 
 things, these fundamental things, are going to be dis- 
 turbed ? Are property and rank and social precedence 
 and the relation of class to class going to be over- 
 turned ? Oh, you have got to learn that these are not 
 the first things, these are not the fundamental things ! 
 Behind these things stand justice and mercy. Behind 
 everything stands God. He must speak to you. He 
 will speak to you. Oh, do not try to shut out His 
 voice. Listen to Him that you may live. Be ready for 
 any overturnings, even of the things which have seemed 
 to you most eternal, if by them He can come to be 
 more the King of His own earth. 
 
 And in religion, may I not beg you to be vastly more 
 radical and thorough ? Do not avoid, but seek, the 
 great, deep, simple things of faith. Religious people 
 read thin, superficial books of religious sentiment, but 
 do not meet face to face the strong, exacting, masculine 
 pages of their Bibles. They live in the surface ques- 
 tions about how the Church is constituted, how it ought 
 to be governed, what the forms of worship ought to be. 
 They shrink from the profound and awful problems of 
 
88 The Seriousness of Life. 
 
 the soul's salvation by the Son of God and preparation 
 for eternity. Do "we not hear — strangest of all ! — in 
 religion, which means the soul's relationship to God, 
 do we not hear there — strangest of all — the soul's 
 frightened cry, " Let not God speak with me, lest I die" ? 
 In all your personal life, my friends, it is more thor- 
 oughness and depth that you need in order to get the 
 peace which if you spoke the truth you would own that 
 you so wofully lack. You are in God's world; you 
 are God's child. Those things you cannot change ; the 
 only peace and rest and happiness for you is to accept 
 them and rejoice in them. When God speaks to you 
 you must not make believe to yourself that it is the 
 wind blowing or the torrent falling from the hill. You 
 must know that it is God. You must gather up the 
 whole power of meeting Him. You must be thankful 
 that life is great and not little. You must listen as if 
 listening were your life. And then, then only, can 
 come peace. All other sounds will be caught up into 
 the prevailing richness of that voice of God. The lost 
 proportions will be perfectly restored. Discord will 
 cease ; harmony will be complete. 
 
 I beg you who are young to think of what I have said 
 to you to-day. Set the thought of life high at the be= 
 ginning. Expect God to speak to you. Do not dream 
 of turning your back on the richness and solemnity of 
 living. Then there will come to you the happiness 
 which came to Jesus. You, like Him, shall live, not 
 by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out 
 of the mouth of God ! 
 
VI. 
 
 THE CHOICE YOUNG MAN. 
 
 Saul, a choice young man. — 1 Sam. ix. 2. 
 
 Saul is as true a character of the Old Testament as 
 his namesake, who is by and by called Paul, is of the 
 New. He is full of the spirit of the morning. He is 
 eager and incomplete. He attracts and disappoints us. 
 He is a mixture of loyalty and disobedience. He ex- 
 cites great hopes, and dies in tragical failure. He 
 makes ready the way for something better than him- 
 self. He is the true Old Testament man. 
 
 But it is not of him that I want to speak to-day. It 
 is simply of that striking phrase in which he is de- 
 scribed. "A choice young man," so he is called. It 
 is the general description of a being in whom we are 
 all interested, who is supremely interested in himself, 
 and yet who has an element of mystery, and excites our 
 curiosity as well as our interest. Let us ask ourselves 
 this morning what are the characteristics of the choice 
 young man. 
 
 The " choice " of anything signifies the best example 
 of that thing. The word involves the idea not of ex- 
 ceptionalness but of representativeness. The choice 
 fruit of the tree is the tree's best fruit; it is that in 
 which the tree's juices have had their most unhindered 
 
90 The Choice Young Man. 
 
 way, and made the best which that tree was capable of 
 making. The choice work of art is the freest embodi- 
 ment of the artistic spirit, the thing in which beautiful 
 thought and beautiful work and beautiful material have 
 done their best. The choice man is the best specimen of 
 humanity, the human being in whom there is least that 
 is inhuman or unhuman, and in whom the truly human 
 qualities are most complete. In every case there is a 
 ruling out of what is exceptional, and a fulfilling of 
 what is essential. The choice thing is the true thing. 
 
 So is it with the choice young man. He is the 
 true young man. He is the human creature in whom 
 the best material of the world, which is manhood, ex- 
 ists in its best condition, which is youth; or if I am 
 wrong in calling youth the best condition, at least it 
 is a condition which has excellences and fascinations 
 which are wholly its own. The great point of the 
 phrase is this, — that it denotes not an exception but a 
 true condition of human life. The choice young man 
 is the man in whom are uttered the normal character- 
 istics of young manhood ; and so he invites our study, 
 not as a strange phenomenon, but as a revelation in pe- 
 culiarly perfect, and therefore peculiarly distinct, dis- 
 play of a nature with which we are familiar, and which 
 we everywhere desire to understand. 
 
 The charm of young human life is felt everywhere, 
 and through all special conditions which give it its 
 variety of local color. It belongs to no nation and no 
 age. The young Roman, the young Greek, the young 
 Arab, the young Englishman, the young American, as 
 well as the joung Jew, excite at once the imagination 
 
The Clioicc Young Man. 91 
 
 and the admiration of the world. Indeed in the fresh- 
 ness of life is felt the unity of life ; and youth is one 
 throughout the world and throughout history as older 
 life never is. And it would seem to be man's pure 
 delight in his humanity which, previous to all analysis 
 or careful enumeration of the qualities which make it 
 beautiful, compels from all mankind a glory and de- 
 light in the young of its own kind. "Here is pure 
 man, " he says , " unmixed, untainted. It is crude in- 
 deed, it is unfinished; but that is man, that is his 
 glory. The finished man is not man. lb is a contra- 
 diction of terms." And so before we ask ourselves 
 what it is that is admirable about him, we admire and 
 are inspired by the young man as we admire and are 
 inspired by the morning and the spring-time. 
 
 When, however, we go on, as we must, to ask, beyond 
 this general consciousness of admiration, what it is 
 which we admire in young manhood, our answer must 
 be found, I think, in the way in which the true human 
 life always begins with its circumference, as it were, 
 complete, and then fills in its space with its details. 
 It starts with large conceptions, great desires, enthu- 
 siastic notions of what man may be, and it is the fact 
 of these, suggested by and present in the young man's 
 life, which makes the immediate attraction of a gen- 
 erous young manhood. 
 
 It might have been just the opposite. Life might 
 have been made to begin with some one point and 
 slowly widen out from that point until its complete- 
 ness were attained. Prudently adding one well-tried 
 conception to another, making successive unexpected 
 
92 The Choice Young Man. 
 
 discoveries about itself, the nature might have only 
 come by slow degrees to realize its own greatness and 
 mysterious dignity. As it is, it leaps at once to this 
 completeness of itself ; it is exuberant at the beginning ; 
 it does not distrust the world and only gradually learn 
 that the world is worthy of its trust ; it trusts the world 
 outright, and lets all stingy questionings come afterward. 
 Life seems so good that it is satisfied with its own nor- 
 mal exercises and emotions, and does not seek additions 
 in artificial stimulants. It bears everlasting witness 
 that the good is deepest and most original in human 
 life, by believing in it first, and only slowly recognizing 
 the presence and power of the evil. 
 
 Now here is a distinct quality in human youth, be- 
 longing to a distinct truth concerning the life of man. 
 If it is so, then we have reached our first idea about 
 the choice young man. In him this quality of human 
 youth will be most bright and clear. He will be most 
 possessed with the sense of the sufficiency of life, and 
 most eager to preserve its purity because of the com- 
 pleteness which he feels in it. 
 
 This is the true motive of the best young man's de- 
 sire for purity. It is not fear. The wise men gather 
 round him and say, " You must not sin. You must not 
 be licentious; you will suffer if you do. You must re- 
 strain your passions; you will suffer if you do not." 
 It is good for him to hear their voices ; it is good for 
 him in his weaker moments to be told how God has 
 emphasized the good of every goodness by the penalty 
 which he has attached to every wickedness. But alas 
 for every young man if these fears are the safeguards 
 
Tlie Choice Young Man. 93 
 
 upon which his soul habitually and finally relies to 
 keep him pure. There is nothing choice about a vir- 
 tue such as that. Alas for you, young men, if there is 
 no such conception in you of the essential sacredness 
 of life as shall make every natural process and experi- 
 ence beautiful, and just in proportion shall make every 
 unnatural action first of all an impossibility, and then, 
 when in some baser moment it seems possible, make 
 it a horror. This is the young man's true purity, — 
 first, a divine unconsciousness and incapacity; and 
 then, when that is no longer possible, a divine hate of 
 impurity. How absolutely such a truth quarrels with 
 all the abominable doctrines which would make us be- 
 lieve that a youth must wade its filthy way through the 
 depths of iniquity up to the heights of a wasted and 
 withered continence ! Not so ; life, the true life, the 
 choice life, begins upon the mountains. As the morn- 
 ing mists scatter, it sees the gulfs it did not see at 
 first ; but it has no natural necessity to plunge into them 
 when they are seen. And the true power of its conti- 
 nence is not the horror of the gulf, but the abundance 
 and glory of the pure hill-top where the young feet 
 stand. 
 
 All this does not apply only to those things which 
 are absolutely and manifestly vicious, to wanton licen- 
 tiousness and reckless sin; it applies to all the acci- 
 dents of life. It is a bad sight for the eyes to see when 
 a young man has come prematurely into the power of 
 those accidents, when he cannot find life abundant 
 without what we call the " comforts of life, " even those 
 which have no vicious element about them. What busi- 
 
94 The Choice Young Man. 
 
 ness has the young vigor of twenty to demand that the 
 fire shall be warm and the seat cushioned and the road 
 smooth ? Let him not parade his incompetence for life 
 by insisting that life is not worth living unless a man 
 is rich, — unless, that is, the abundance of life should 
 be eked out with wealth, which is an accident of life, 
 not of its essence. Let him not insult himself by be- 
 having as if the sunshine or the shower made a differ- 
 ence to him. Let those poor slaveries wait till the heart 
 is soured and the knees are weak. No ! the young man's 
 place is to scorn delights. We will tolerate any folly 
 of exuberant vitality which vents itself in over-scorn ; 
 but the other folly is unnatural and base. Our gilded 
 youth are not — and they ought to know that they are 
 not; they ought to be told that they are not — choice 
 young men when the study of their life is to spare them- 
 selves pain and surround themselves with creature com- 
 forts. It is a sign that they have not got hold of the 
 sufficiency of life. They do not know what pure gold 
 it is, and so they try to eke it out with gilding. Good 
 is it when their better human nature breaks through 
 sometimes, and in the rough life of the wilderness or 
 the sea, sought by whatever artificial means, demands 
 its right to rejoice in the simplicity of living, in the 
 privations which mean the close, uncushioned contact 
 with life. Sad is it when a community grows more 
 and more to abound in young men who worship wealth 
 and think they cannot live without luxury and physical 
 comfort. The choicest of its strength is gone. 
 
 The same principle, that life in the young man should 
 be abundant in itself, would find still broader applica- 
 
The Choice Young Man. 95 
 
 tion in every relation of human action. It would bring 
 simplicity and healthiness in every standard. It would 
 rule out and cast aside as impertinent and offensive all 
 that was artificial and untrue. How clear it makes the 
 whole question of the way in which money is to be gained 
 or given ! And so it brings us at once to another practi- 
 cal question of young men's life. Money to the simple, 
 healthy human sense is but the representative of energy 
 and power. It is to pass from man to man only as the 
 symbol of some exertion, some worthy outputting of 
 strength and life. Save in the way of charity, it is not 
 to be given or taken without something behind it which 
 it represents. With his mind full of this simple, hon- 
 est truth, feeling himself ready to earn his living and 
 to give an equivalent for all that he receives, the young 
 man ought to have an instinctive dislike and scorn for 
 all transactions which would substitute feeble chance 
 for vigorous desert, and make him either the giver or 
 receiver of that which has not even the show of an 
 equivalent or earning. I do not say that gambling and 
 betting are admirable or respectable things in gray- 
 haired men. It is not of them or to them that I am 
 speaking now. I do say that in young men, with the 
 abundance of life within them and around them, gam- 
 bling and betting, if they be not the result of merest 
 thoughtlessness, are signs of a premature demoraliza- 
 tion which hardly any other vice can show. In social 
 life, in club, in college, on the street, the willingness 
 of young men to give or to receive money on the mere 
 turn of chance is a token of the decay of manliness and 
 self-respect which is more alarming than almost any- 
 
96 The Choice Yoking Man. 
 
 thing besides. It has an inherent baseness about it 
 which not to feel shows a base soul. To carry in your 
 pocket money which has become yours by no use of 
 your manly powers, which has ceased to be another 
 man's by no willing acceptance on his part of its equiv 
 alent, — that is a degrading thing. Will it not burn 
 the purse in which you hold it ? Will it not blight 
 the luxury for which you spend it ? Will you dare to 
 buy the gift of true love with it ? Will you offer it in 
 charity ? Will you pay it out for the support of your 
 innocent children ? Will it not be a Judas-treasure, 
 which you must not put into the treasury, because it is 
 the price of blood ? 
 
 So I rank high among the signs of a choice human 
 youth the clearness of sight and the healthiness of 
 soul which make a man refuse to have anything to do 
 with the transference of property by chance, which 
 make him hate and despise betting and gambling under 
 their most approved and fashionable and accepted forms. 
 Plentiful as those vices are among us, they still in some 
 degree have the grace to recognize their own disgrace- 
 fulness by the way in which they conceal themselves. 
 Some sort of hiding and disguise they take instinctively. 
 Let even that help to open our eyes to what they really 
 are. To keep clear of concealment, to keep clear of 
 the need of concealment, to do nothing which he might 
 not do out on the middle of Boston Common at noon- 
 day, — I cannot say how more and more that seems to 
 me to be the glory of a young man's life. It is an aw- 
 ful hour when the first necessity of hiding anything 
 comes. The whole life is different thenceforth. When 
 
21ie Choice Young Man. 97 
 
 there are questions to be feared and eyes to be avoided 
 and subjects which must not be touched, then the bloom 
 of life is gone. Put off that day as long as possible. 
 Put it off forever if you can. And as you will hold nc 
 truth for which you cannot give a reason, so let your- 
 self be possessed of no dollar whose history you do not 
 dare to tell. 
 
 It is no drawback from the truth or power of all this 
 that it involves the appeal to sentiment, for (and this 
 is the next thing I want to say) the presence and the 
 power of healthy sentiment is another token of the 
 choice young humanity. Sentiment is the finest es- 
 sence of the human life. It is, like all the finest things, 
 the easiest to spoil. It bears testimony of itself that 
 it is finer than judgment, because a thousand times 
 when judgment is all clear and right, sentiment is 
 tainted and all wrong. And hosts of men, feeling the 
 mysterious dangers which beset sentiment, would fain 
 banish it altogether. They do not know how to use it, 
 and so they will not try. It is explosive and danger- 
 ous, and so it shall be watched and made contraband, like 
 dynamite. How many men do you know who can frankly 
 look you in the face and say a piece of sentiment, and 
 make it seem perfectly real and true, and not make either 
 you or themselves, or both, feel silly and embarrassed 
 by their saying it ? Now if men must come to that, the 
 longer it can be before they come to it the better ! Let 
 the sentiments have their true, unquestioned power in 
 the young man's life. Let him glow with admiration, 
 let him burn with indignation, let him believe with in- 
 tensity, let him trust unquestioningly, let him sympa- 
 
98 The Choice Young Man, 
 
 thize with all his soul. The hard young man is the 
 most terrible of all. To have a skin at twenty that 
 does not tingle with indignation at the sight of wrong 
 and quiver with pity at the sight of pain is monstrous. 
 Do you remember in "The Light of Asia" how the 
 young Prince Siddartha caught his first sight of human 
 suffering ? 
 
 " Then cried he, while his lifted countenance 
 Glowed with the burning passion of a love 
 Unspeakable, the ardor of a hope 
 Boundless, insatiate, * suffering world, 
 known and unknown of my common flesh, 
 Caught in this common net of death and woe 
 And life, which binds to both ! I see, I feel 
 The vastness of the agony of earth. 
 The vainness of its joys, the mockery 
 Of all its best, the anguish of its worst ! ' " 
 
 Do you remember the simpler, nobler story of the 
 young Christ ? " When He came near He beheld the 
 city, and wept over it." Tell me what becomes of 
 the hard young man, proud of his unsensitiveness, even 
 pretending to be more unsensitive than he is, incapable 
 of enthusiasm, incapable of tears ; what becomes of him 
 beside the knightliness of a sorrow such as that ? The 
 little child is sensitive without a thought of effort. The 
 old man often feels the joy and pain of men as if 
 the long years had made it his own. But in between, 
 the young man is hardened by self-absorption; when 
 d,ll the time he ought — with his imagination, with his 
 power to realize things he has not been nor seen — to 
 go responsive through the world, answering quickly to 
 every touch, knowing the bi^'^'^cned man's burden just 
 
The Choice Young Man. 99 
 
 because of the unpressed lightness of his own shoulders, 
 feeling the sick man's pain all the more because his 
 own flesh never knew an ache, buoyant through all with 
 his unconquerable hope, overcoming the world with his 
 exuberant faith, and farthest from sentimentality by 
 the abundance and freedom of the sentiment which fills 
 him. Be sure that there is no true escape from soft- 
 ness in making yourself hard. It is like freezing your 
 arm to keep it from decay. Only by filling it with 
 blood and giving it the true flexibility of health, so only 
 is it to be preserved from the corruption which you, 
 fear. Be not afraid of sentiment, but only of untruth. 
 Trust your sentiments, and so be a man. 
 
 It would be strange indeed if our first truth did not 
 apply to the whole methods of thought as well as to the 
 actions and the feelings. That truth was, you remem- 
 ber, that youth began with the large circumference, and 
 then filled in the circle gradually with the details of 
 living. It does not start with the small detail and only 
 gradually build out to the large idea. Now, what will 
 that truth mean as we apply it to the intellectual life ? 
 Will it not mean that, the choicer a young mind is, the 
 more immediately it will begin with the perception of 
 great truths, which then its thought and study and ex- 
 perience will fill out and confirm ? It is the place and 
 privilege of the young man to know immediately that 
 God is good, that the world is hopeful, that spirit is real. 
 These great ideas are his ideas. He does not prove God's 
 existence, building it up out of his own sight of the 
 things God does. He sees God. He, the pure in heart, 
 sees God : and then all his life is occupied in gathering 
 
100 The Choice Young Man. 
 
 into the substance of the faith which he has won by 
 direct vision, the vividness and definiteness which sepa- 
 rate successive experiences of God have to give. 
 
 Until we know this method of the young man's knowl- 
 edge we shall always be going astray, as I doubt not we 
 are going astray now. We shall discredit every intuitive 
 perception of the fresh nature, and demand of it to go 
 without faith till, we may almost say, the time has 
 come when the gaining of faith is possible no longer. 
 We shall meet the spontaneous utterance of a belief in 
 the spiritual world with a cold, " How do you know ? " 
 which, failing to elicit what we call a reasonable an- 
 swer, will kill the newly born belief and bury it in an 
 early grave of scepticism. But bid the young man be- 
 lieve that which his heart tells him is true, enlarging 
 the testimony of his own heart by the witness of the 
 universal human heart through a docile deference for 
 authority; and then adjure, implore him to be pure 
 and righteous, — for the light cannot come except 
 through purity and righteousness; lust and iniquity 
 are surely darkness — do this, and then you may be 
 sure of — what? Not that your young man will not 
 make a thousand blunders, not that he will not some- 
 times seem to lose his sight of truth, but that the method 
 of his mental life is right, and so that in the end he 
 must stand clear under a cloudless sky. 
 
 The world's strength has been built up thus, by young 
 men believing and uttering the truth they saw, — the 
 greatest, largest truth, — and then their experience fill- 
 ing that truth with solidity, until it became a foundation 
 on which yet greater truth might rest. 
 
The Choice Young Man. 101 
 
 Begin with largeness of thought, and with positive- 
 ness of thought. The way in which a man begins to 
 think influences all his thinking to the end of his life. 
 Begin by seeking for what is true, not for what is false, 
 in the thought and belief which you find about you. 
 Be as critical as you will, search as severely as you 
 want to into the belief which offers itself for your ac- 
 ceptance, but let your search and criticism always have 
 for its purpose that you may find what you may believe, 
 not that you may find what you need not believe. Some 
 things which your first thinking accepts, your riper 
 thought may feel compelled to lay aside ; but the habit 
 of believing once established will not be lost out of your 
 life, and the young man's time is the time to make that 
 habit. Scepticism is not merely the disbelief of some 
 propositions. If it were that, there is not one of us but 
 would be a sceptic. It is the habit and the preference 
 of disbelieving. God save us all from that scepticism ! 
 God save especially our young men from it, for a scep- 
 tical young man is a monstrosity. 
 
 What shall we say about this whole last matter, 
 the matter of belief, except that the true young man's 
 life, the choice young man's life, is bound to be a life 
 of vision. To see the large things in their largeness, 
 — that is his privilege ; and there is no privilege which 
 is not a duty too. It is God's word to Abraham, " Look 
 now toward heaven and tell the stars if thou be able to 
 number them. So shall thy seed be. " " And Abraham 
 believed the Lord and it was counted unto him for 
 righteousness." Afterwards came the long journeys 
 and the struggles and the darknesses and the disap- 
 
102 The Choice Young Man. 
 
 pointment and the sins ; at the last came the quiet rest 
 in the cave of Machpelah which is before Mamre, where 
 they buried him ; but the vision of the stars never faded 
 from his eyes. 
 
 And now I do not know whether there has come at 
 all out of what I have said anything like a clear image 
 of the choice young man. As I said when I began, I 
 should care little to try to create that image if it were 
 some strange, exceptional creature that I was trying to 
 carve. But it is not that; it is the true young human 
 being, the type and flower of the first vigor of humanity. 
 And these are the qualities which we have seen in him, 
 — purity of body, mind, and soul ; simple integrity, and 
 a dignity which will not have what is not his, no matter 
 under what specious form of game or wager it has come 
 into his hands ; tenderness, sympathy, sentiment, — • 
 call it what name you will, a soul that is not cynical or 
 cruel ; and positive, broad thought and conviction. Do 
 these things, as I name them, blend with one another ? 
 Does there stand out as their result a figure recogniz- 
 able and clear, well-knit and strong, brave, generous, 
 and true, but very little conscious of itself, claiming the 
 love and honor of the human heart ? 
 
 For men do love the type and flower of their own 
 young manhood. Little children and young boys look 
 up to it with touching reverence. Old men look back 
 to it with wistful longing, often with a perplexed won- 
 der how they ever passed themselves through a land 
 which they see now to be so rich and kept so little of 
 its richness. Men love and honor it; and their love 
 and honor for the choice young man is only measured 
 
The Choice Young 3Ian. 103 
 
 by the disappointment and anger and disgust with which 
 they look at the young libertine, the young gambler, the 
 young cynic, the young sceptic, the young fool. 
 
 If all these qualities do really blend into a recogniz- 
 able character and being, then there ought to be some 
 fact, the fine resultant of them all, in which they should 
 all take expression, and which should represent them 
 before the world. As the resultant of all the qualities 
 of a star is its brightness, and the resultant of all the 
 qualities of a flower is its fragrance, and the resultant 
 of all the qualities of an action is its glory, — so the 
 resultant of the purity and integrity and tenderness and 
 thoughtfulness of a young human life ought to be its 
 joy. I cannot count that a separate quality, far less 
 a separate action ; it is the radiance, it is the aroma of 
 all the qualities. The depressions of youth are very 
 real, as real and as likely to appear as are the clouds 
 which gather at the rising of the sun. But the sun and 
 not the cloud is the characteristic fact of the morning ; 
 and joy, not sadness, is the characteristic fact of young 
 humanity. To know this, to keep it as the truth to 
 which the soul constantly returns, — that is the young 
 man's salvation. Whatever young depression there is, 
 there must be no young despair. In the morning, at 
 least, it must seem a fine thing to live. 
 
 Only once in this sermon have I spoken of Jesus as 
 the specimen of human youth. But He is such a speci- 
 men always. And I appeal to all of you who have sym- 
 pathetically read the Gospels to say whether you do 
 not feel through all His life of sorrow the subtle, cer- 
 tain presence of this joy of which I speak. It breaks 
 
104 The Choice Young Man. 
 
 out into flame upon tlie mountain summits of His life ; 
 but, where there is no flame, it nestles into warmth 
 in all His ordinary intercourse with men, and it glows 
 with a fervor of consolation which is unmistakable be- 
 neath the darkest blackness of His suffering. It is the 
 ideal joy of life, burning through all the hardest and 
 cruellest circumstances of life, and asserting, in spite of 
 everything, the true condition of the Son of God and the 
 Son of Man. 
 
 Let this conduct me naturally to the last word I want 
 to say in order to make all that I have said complete. 
 I have spoken of the young man's character and life, 
 and I have seemed to say nothing at all of his religion. 
 Is it because I have forgotten his religion or thought it 
 of small consequence ? God forbid ! It is because one 
 of the most effectual and convincing ways to reach 
 religion is to make life seem so noble and exacting that 
 it shall itself seem to demand religion with the great 
 cry, " Who is sufficient for these things ? " When not 
 yet driven by the stress of sin and sorrow, but exalted 
 by the revelation of what life might be, and eager with 
 the witness of the truth of that revelation which fills his 
 own self-consciousness, the young man looks abroad for 
 help that he may realize it, then he finds Christ. And 
 he finds Christ in the way that belongs to him just then 
 and there, just in the time and place where he is stand- 
 ing. He finds Christ the model and the master. It is 
 the personal Christ that makes the young man's reli- 
 gion. "Behold this being, young Himself with the 
 eternal youth, knowing this life which I am just begin- 
 ning, with the true share in it which made His Incar- 
 
The CTwice Young Man. 105 
 
 nation, living now in the heavens and also here by my 
 side, with these dimly felt purposes of life which are in 
 me all perfectly clear and bright and glorious in Him, 
 — behold this Christ standing before me, pointing to 
 the heights of the completed human life, and saying 
 not, ' Go there, ' but saying, ' Follow me, ' — going be 
 fore us into the land our souls desire ! " 
 
 When religion comes to mean simply following Christ, 
 when the young man gives himself to Christ as his 
 Leader and his Lord, when he prays to Christ with the 
 entire sense that he is laying hold of the perfect strength 
 for the perfect work, — then the whole circle is com- 
 plete. Power and purpose, purpose and power, both are 
 there; and only the eternal growth is needed for the 
 infinite result. 
 
 It is always sad not to feel the choiceness of anything 
 which has in it wonderful and fine capacities, — to be 
 content with the ordinariness and coarseness of that 
 which is capable of being exquisite and great. Oh, that 
 there could thrill through the being of our young men 
 some electrical sense that they are God's sons, that so 
 they might make themselves the servants of His Christ, 
 and live the life and attain the nature which are rightly 
 theirs. God grant it for the young men who are here 
 to-day ! 
 
VII. 
 
 I 
 
 BACKGROUNDS AND FOEEGEOUNDS. 
 
 For lo, He that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and 
 declareth unto man what is His thought, that maketh the morning dark- 
 ness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, — the Lord, the God 
 of Hosts, is His name. — Amos iv. 13. 
 
 The mountains to the Hebrew were always full of 
 mystery and awe. They stood around the sunlit level 
 of his daily life robed in deep clouds, the home of wan- 
 dering winds, flowing down with waters, trembling, as 
 it seemed, with the awful footsteps of God. 
 
 They made indeed for him the background of all life, 
 as they make the background of every landscape in 
 which they stand. Close to the eye that watches them 
 there are the shrubs and grass; the river murmurs at 
 our feet ; the common works of life go on. And then 
 beyond, holding it all in their strong grasp, setting 
 their solid forms against the sky, sending their streams 
 down into the open plain, stand the great hills, which 
 keep the sight from wandering indefinitely into space 
 and throw out in relief all the details of the broad 
 scenery. The foreground of the plain-land rests upon 
 the background of the hills. From them it gains its 
 lights and shadows. The two depend on one another. 
 Take the background away and the foreground which 
 
Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 107 
 
 is left is tame and thin, and leads to nothing. Take 
 the foreground away, and the background, with nothing 
 to lead up to it, is misty and unreal. The man who 
 lives and works in the foreground does not think all 
 the time about the background ; but it is always there, 
 and he is always unconsciously aware of it. The back- 
 ground and foreground together make the complete land- 
 scape in the midst of which a human life is set. 
 
 Now all this is true not merely in the world of outer 
 Nature, but also in the world of inner life. There is a 
 foreground and a background to every man's career. 
 There are the things that press themselves immediately 
 upon our attention, — the details of life, the works our 
 hands are doing, the daily thoughts our minds are 
 thinking, the ground and grass on which we tread. 
 Those are the foreground of our living. And then, 
 beyond them, there are the great truths which we be- 
 lieve, the broad and general consecrations of our life 
 which we have made, the large objects of our desire, 
 the great hopes and impulses which keep us at our 
 work. Those are the mountain backgrounds of our life. 
 When we lift our eyes from the immediate task or 
 pleasure, our eyes rest on them. They are our reser- 
 voirs of power; out of them come down our streams 
 of strength. Once more the background and the fore- 
 ground together make the perfect picture. You cannot 
 leave out the foreground of immediate detail. You 
 cannot leave out the background of established princi- 
 ple and truth. Both must be there, and then the picture 
 is complete. 
 
 The danger of our life is not ordinarily lest the fore- 
 
108 BackgrouTids and Foregrounds. 
 
 ground be forgotten or ignored. Only a dreamer here 
 and there, wrapt in his distant vision, forgets the press- 
 ing duties and the tempting pleasures which offer them- 
 selves directly to our eyes and hands. They crowd too 
 closely on us. The detail of life at once commands us 
 and attracts us. The danger with most of us is not lest 
 it should be neglected or forgotten. It is the back- 
 grounds of life that we are likely to forget. The moun- 
 tains sink out of our sight. The highest sources of 
 power do not send us their supply. Shall we discard 
 the figure for a moment and say that to most men the 
 actual immediate circumstances of life are so pressing 
 that they forget the everlasting truths and forces by 
 which those circumstances must be made dignified and 
 strong ? Then must come something like the cry of 
 Amos the Prophet, " Lo, He that f ormeth the mountains, 
 and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is 
 His Thought, that maketh the morning darkness and 
 treadeth upon the high places of the earth. " Is there 
 not in these words, dimly but very grandly and majesti- 
 call}^ set forth, the great suggestion of the divine back- 
 ground of all life ? It is the same which Tennyson has 
 pictured in the Vision of Sin: — 
 
 " At last I heard a voice upon the slope 
 Cry to the summit, ' Is there any hope ? * 
 To which an answer pealed from that high land. 
 But in a tongue no man could understand ; 
 And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn 
 God made Himself an awful rose of Dawn." 
 
 And now, if I have made my meaning plain, you 
 understand what I intend when I say that I want to 
 
Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 109 
 
 make my subject for this morning The Backgrounds of 
 Life. We are troubled — whoever looks carefully at 
 his fellow-men is troubled — by the superficialness and 
 immediateness of living. There is a need of distance 
 and of depth. And the distance and depth are there if 
 men would only feel them. Let us try to see what and 
 where they are. 
 
 I speak especially to those who are young, whose life 
 is just beginning, for it is in youth that the landscape 
 of a life most easily constructs itself in its completeness. 
 Then, in youth, the immediate thoughts and occupa- 
 tions are intensely vivid ; and at the same time the great 
 surrounding truths and principles have a reality which 
 they often lose in later life. Sometimes, much later, 
 as the man grows old, the great surrounding truths and 
 principles gather once more into sight. The old man 
 feels again the distance, which the middle life forgot. 
 But with him by that time the immediate interest has 
 grown dull. The present occupations are not pressing 
 and vivid. The beauty, the glory of young life, of the 
 best and healthiest of young life, is that while it is in- 
 tensely busy with the present it is also aware of and in- 
 spired by those larger truths, those everlasting timeless 
 verities out of which all true life must be fed. Youth 
 has the power of realism and idealism most perfectly 
 combined. Its landscape is most harmoniously com- 
 plete ; therefore it is to healthy youth, to life with all 
 its promise opening before it, that one speaks with the 
 surest hope of being understood as he discourses on the 
 backgrounds of life. 
 
 I shall be most likely to make myself intelligible if I 
 
110 Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 
 
 speak not too generally, but describe to you several of 
 the special ways in which the greater and more lasting 
 stands behind the less and temporary and holds it in 
 its grasp. 
 
 Consider first, then, how behind every foreground of 
 action lies the background of character on which the 
 action rests and from which it gets its life and mean- 
 ing. It matters not whether it be an age, a nation, a 
 church, a man ; anything which is capable both of being 
 and of acting must feel its being behind its acting, must 
 make its acting the expression of its being or its exist- 
 ence is very unsatisfactory and thin. What does it 
 mean to me that the French Revolution burst out in 
 fury a hundred years ago, unless in that outburst I see 
 the utterance of the whole character of that crushed, 
 wronged, exasperated time which had gathered into it- 
 self the suppressed fury of centuries of selfish despot- 
 ism ? What is it to me that a great reformer arises and 
 sets some old wrong right, unless I see that his coming 
 and the work he does are not mere happy accidents, but 
 the expression of great necessities of human life and of 
 a condition which mankind has reached by slow develop- 
 ment and education ? What is your brave act without a 
 brave nature behind it ? What is your smile unless I 
 know that you are kind ? What is your indignant blow 
 unless your heart is on fire ? What is all your activity 
 without you ? How instantly the impression of a char- 
 acter creates itself, springs into shape behind a deed. 
 A man cannot sell you goods across a counter, or drive 
 you a mile in his carriage on the road, or take your 
 ticket in the cars, or hold the door open to let you pass, 
 
Backgrounds and Foregrounds. Ill 
 
 without your getting, if you are sensitive, some idea of 
 what sort of man he is, and seeing his deed colored with 
 the complexion of his character. 
 
 If this were not so, life would grow very tame and 
 dull. We cannot picture to ourselves how tame and 
 dull it would become. An engine has no background of 
 character. Its deeds are simple deeds. Unless you feel 
 behind it the nature of the man who made it, its actions 
 are complete and final things and suggest and reveal 
 nothing beyond themselves; therefore its monotonous 
 clank and beat grows wearisome. Its very admirable 
 orderliness destroys its interest. You weary of it. 
 Nobody can make an engine the hero of his novel ; for 
 man, being character, will care for nothing which has 
 not character behind it, finding expression through its 
 life. 
 
 Here is the value of reality, of sincerity. Reality, 
 sincerity, is nothing but the true relation between action 
 and character. Expressed artistically, it is the har- 
 mony between the foreground and the background of a 
 life. We have all seen pictures where the background 
 and the foreground were not in harmony with one an- 
 other ; each might be good in itself but the two did not 
 belong together. Nature never would have joined them 
 to each other, and so they did not hold to one another 
 but seemed to spring apart. The hills did not embrace 
 the plain, but flung it away from them ; the plain did 
 not rest upon the hills, but recoiled from their embrace. 
 They were a violence to one another. Who does not 
 know human lives of which precisely the same thing is 
 true? The deeds are well enough and the character is 
 
112 Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 
 
 well enough, but they do not belong together. The one 
 does not express the other. The man is by nature 
 quiet, earnest, serious, sedate. If he simply expressed 
 his calm and faithful life in calm and faithful deeds, 
 all would be well ; but, behold ! he tries to be restless, 
 radical, impatient, vehement, and how his meaningless 
 commotion tries us. The man's nature is prosaic and 
 direct, but he makes his actions complicated and ro- 
 mantic. It is the man's nature to believe, and only 
 listen to the scepticism which he chatters! It is the 
 discord of background and foreground, of character and 
 action. 
 
 On the other hand, when the two are not in discord 
 but in harmony, every one feels the beauty of the pic- 
 ture which they make. The act which simply utters 
 the thought which is the man, what satisfaction it gives 
 you ! The satisfaction is so natural and instinctive that 
 men are ready enough to think, at least, that they pre- 
 fer a bad man who without reserve, without disguise, 
 expresses his badness in bad deeds, to another bad man 
 who with a futile shame tries to pretend in his activi- 
 ties that he is good. "Let us have sincerity at least," 
 they say. They are not always right. The good deed 
 which the bad man tries to do may be a poor blind 
 clutching at a principle which he does not understand 
 but dimly feels, — the principle of the reaction of the 
 deed upon the character ; that principle and its working 
 we must not lose sight of in our study. The heart 
 gives life to the arm. The arm declares the life of the 
 heart ; but the heart also gets life from the arm. Its 
 vigorous exertion makes the central furnace of the body 
 
Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 113 
 
 to burn more brightly. So the good action may have 
 some sort of power over the chariacter of which at first 
 it expresses not the actual condition but only the 
 shames, the standards, and the hopes. 
 
 What will be the rule of life which such a description 
 of life as this must necessarily involve ? Will it not 
 include both the watchfulness over character and the 
 watchfulness over action, either of which alone is wo- 
 fully imperfect ? We are familiar enough with a cer- 
 tain lofty talk which seems to make small account of 
 action. "To be rather than to do; not what you do but 
 what you are; be brave and true and generous," — so 
 some idealists seem to talk. And on the other hand 
 there are hard-headed practical people who have no 
 eyes for anything but action. " Do your duty and do 
 not worry about the condition of your soul ; your deed, 
 not you, is what the world desires; get done your 
 stroke of work and die, and the world will take up the 
 issue of your life and use it and never ask what sort of 
 man it was from whom the issue came, — to do and not 
 to be, that you must make your motto. " 
 
 Oh, the inveterate partialness of man ! Oh, his per- 
 sistent inability to take in the two sides of any truth, 
 the two hemispheres of any globe ! " This ought ye 
 to have done and not to leave the other undone " — some- 
 times it seems as if that were the most continually 
 needed word of Christ. ■> When will men learn that, 
 above all, to feed the fountain of character and yet 
 never to neglect the guiding of the streams of action 
 which flow out of that fountain, — that that in its com- 
 pleteness is the law of life. All the perplexing ques- 
 
114 Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 
 
 tions about the contemplative and active life, about 
 faith and practice, about self-discipline and service of 
 our fellow-men have their key and solution hidden some- 
 where within this truth of the background and the 
 foreground — the background of character and the fore- 
 ground of action — without both of which together the 
 picture cannot be complete. 
 
 Do we ask ourselves what culture there is by which 
 the human life can be at once trained into character 
 and at the same time kept true in active duty ? I reply 
 that there is only one culture conceivable by which it 
 may perfectly be done, — that is the culture of personal 
 loyalty, the culture of admiration for a nature and obe- 
 dience to a will opening together into a resemblance 
 to Him whom we ardently desire and enthusiastically 
 obey. 
 
 I recall what Jesus said, "You must be born again," 
 
 — that is His inexorable demand for the background of 
 character. " If ye love me, keep my commandments, " 
 
 — that is His absolute insistence on the foreground of 
 action. And the power of both of them — the power 
 by which they both unite into one life — lies in the 
 personal love and service of Himself. 
 
 This is the largest and richest education of a human 
 nature, — not an instruction, not a commandment, but 
 a Friend. It is not God's truth, it is not God's law, 
 
 — it is God that is the salvation of the world. It is 
 not Christianity, it is not the Christian religion, it 
 is Christ who has done for us, who is doing for us 
 every day, that which our souls require. What has 
 He done for you, my friend ? "f'irst, He has made you a 
 
 *l 
 
Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 115 
 
 new creature in Himself. He has given you a new 
 character ; and then He has guided you and ruled you, 
 making you do new, good, holy actions in obedience to 
 Him. Not two blessings, not two salvations, — only 
 one ! This is His promise to the soul which He in- 
 vites, " Come, give yourself to me and you shall be new 
 and do new things ; you shall have opened within you 
 the fulness of new admirations, new judgments, new 
 standards, new thoughts, — everything which makes 
 new character; and there shall be new power for the 
 daily task, new clearness, new skill in the things which 
 every day brings to be done." The background and 
 the foreground ! " This ought ye to have done and not 
 to leave the other undone, " — the full harmonious^ 
 picture of a life ! 
 
 Closely related to the background of character, and 
 yet distinguishable from it, is what I may call the back- 
 ground of the greater purpose. It is like travelling on 
 a long journey. You set out with a clear intention of 
 going to some distant place where there is work wait- 
 ing for you to do. You keep that intention all the 
 way ; it governs the direction of your travel ; it keeps 
 yon moving on and will not let yOu wander, and will 
 not let you rest ; it gives dignity and meaning to every 
 mile. But under and within that intention lie the num- 
 berless details, the interesting circumstances of your 
 journey, the people whom you meet, the landscape 
 which you see, the conversations which you hold, the 
 waking and the sleeping, the idleness and occupation 
 of your days. Often and often you forget the greater 
 purpose of your travel in your absorption in its inci- 
 
116 Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 
 
 dents, and yet that greater purpose is always lying 
 behind the incidents and holding them in their place. 
 If it should vanish, they would become instantly insig- 
 nificant and frivolous. That is exactly the way in 
 which a man's purpose in life lies behind and gives 
 dignity and meaning to everything that the man does 
 or says. He is not always thinking of it. The ambi- 
 tious lawyer is not always consciously determining to 
 conquer at the bar. The eager scholar is not every 
 moment consciously hungering for knowledge. The 
 avaricious merchant is not always consciously strug- 
 gling to be rich. The unselfish philanthropist does 
 sometimes cease consciously to labor for his fellow- 
 man. But each of them has always the greater purpose 
 of his life unabandoned, unextinguished, resting behind 
 the lightest and most unprofessional action that he 
 does, and making it different because it is he — this 
 man with this purpose — that does it. No wave that 
 plays most lightly on the beach which does not feel the 
 great solemn ocean with the mysterious heaving of its 
 tide behind. 
 
 The greater purpose may be bad or good, horrible or 
 splendid. One man's greater purpose is an undying 
 passion for revenge. Another man's greater purpose 
 is a perpetual desire for the glory of God. Which ever 
 it is, it dominates the life. No word that the man 
 speaks but is reverberated from that background; no 
 act he does that is not shone through by its color. It 
 is what makes two lives which outwardly are just the 
 same, essentially and manifestly different. It is the 
 life. Tlie other, the outward exhibition, is the living. 
 
Backgrou7ids and Foregrounds. H7 
 
 In the larger experience of men, in what we call his- 
 tory, the same truth is true; the same landscape, the 
 same combination of background and foreground, builds 
 itself. Behind the immediate activity of any people 
 rises what we call the public spirit, by which we mean 
 the general thought or idea or purpose of living which 
 the whole people has conceived. Behind the things 
 which a time is doing there grows up the Zeitgeist^ or 
 spirit of the time. The countless actions of a State, its 
 laws, its wars, its administrations of justice, its shap- 
 ing of its institutions, — all go on within the influence 
 of its idea of its own destiny, the thought of why it ex- 
 ists in the world and what its existence means. Poor 
 is the life that is not in sympathy with its time and 
 with its nation. It fastens itself into no complete pict- 
 ure. It is a spot of discord which the harmony of the 
 whole is always trying to cast out and throw away. 
 
 In the smaller world, it is a man's profession which 
 makes the most palpable background of his life. If 
 the choice of it has sprung, as it ought to spring, in- 
 tuitively and almost unconsciously out of the slowly 
 developed dispositions and capacities of a man's nature, 
 it then enfolds itself warmly about all he thinks and 
 does. It is as the merchant, the lawyer, the artist 
 that he does everything. Every most broadly human 
 act — the way in which he walks the streets, the way in 
 which he serves his family, the way in which he rea- 
 sons about abstract truth — has in it the marks and to- 
 kens of the chosen occupation of his life. Thereby they 
 all gather consistency. They are saved from being 
 scattered fragments. The life does not drift, but 
 
118 Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 
 
 moves from recognized purpose to assured result, carry- 
 ing each drop onward in its current. 
 
 If this were the only truth it would seem to make life 
 very stiff and rigid; it would hold every act in the 
 slavery of the pre-established purpose. But here again 
 the power of a re-active influence comes in. The fore- 
 ground tells upon the background, as well as the back- 
 ground on the foreground. The settled purpose, the 
 profession, the dedication of the life is not a fixed and 
 uniform thing. Nothing is fixed and uniform. EvVy- 
 thing is played upon and beaten through and through by 
 personal nature. No two buglers blow their bugles, no 
 two prisoners rattle their hoarse chains alike. There- 
 fore the great purpose is ruled by the man, as well as 
 the man by the great purpose, and it is the complicated 
 result of the mutual ruling that makes the life. It is 
 the background and foreground telling on each other, 
 that make the picture. 
 
 And let us notice this, that both the great purpose of 
 a life and its immediate activities are provided with 
 their safeguards that they may not be lost. The great 
 purpose has its impressiveness and its solemnity. The 
 immediate activities have their absorbing present in- 
 terest. So strong is this last that the great purpose 
 often ceases to be conscious ; yet let us not think that 
 this makes it cease to be powerful. I forget to think 
 about the thing I have resolved to be ; I am not ponder- 
 ing upon the dignity of the law or the sacredness of the 
 ministry the livelong day ; I am busy, I am delighted 
 with the detail of life which my career involves, but 
 none the less I am in the power of the idea with which 
 
Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 119 
 
 I undertook it, I am sensible in an instant to any im- 
 pulse which turns me out of its course, and I am ready 
 to claim the triumph when the gates of success open 
 before me at the end. 
 
 Once more we ask ourselves, as we asked before, 
 What kind of life will the presence of this background, 
 the background of great purposes, involve ? And our 
 answer is, once more, that it involves a double life, — a 
 life of practical alertness and a life of profound conse- 
 cration, a life intensely conscious of the present tem- 
 porary forms of duty and a life also deeply conscious 
 of the unchangeable, eternal, ever-identical substance 
 of duty. Men lose the first, and they become vague 
 dreamers ; men lose the second, and they become clat- 
 tering machines ; men keep them both, and they are sons 
 of God, living in their Father's house, filled with its 
 unchanging spirit, and yet faithful and happy in its 
 ever-changing tasks. 
 
 We ask ourselves, How shall a life like that be won ? 
 And again we must answer as we answered before, By 
 personal allegiance. No other power is large enough 
 and flexible enough at once to make it. Loving obedi- 
 ence, loving obedience is the only atmosphere in which 
 the vision of the general purpose and the faithfulness 
 in special work grow in their true proportion and re- 
 lation to each other. The distant hills with the glory 
 on their summits, and the close meadow where the grass 
 waits for the scythe, — they meet completely in the 
 broad kingdom of a loved and obeyed Lord. And who 
 is Lord but Christ ? And where but in the soul of him 
 who finds in Christ the worthy revealer of the life's pur- 
 
120 Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 
 
 pose and the sufficient master of every deed shall the 
 great ideals of life and the petty details of life come har- 
 moniously together ? Obey Him, love Him, and nothing 
 is too great, nothing is too little; for love knows no 
 struggle of great or little. No impulse is too splendid 
 for the simplest task; no task is too simple for the 
 most splendid impulse. 
 
 I hasten to say a word or two upon another of the 
 backgrounds of life, which every earnest heart will rec- 
 ognize the moment it is pointed out. I mean the back- 
 ground of prayer. Every true prayer has its background 
 and its foreground. The foreground of prayer is the 
 intense, immediate desire for a certain blessing which 
 seems to be absolutely necessary for the soul to have ; the 
 background of prayer is the quiet, earnest desire that 
 the will of God, whatever it may be, should be done. 
 What a picture is the perfect prayer of Jesus in Gethsem- 
 ane ! In front, burns the strong desire to escape death 
 and to live ; but, behind, there stands, calm and strong, 
 the craving of the whole life for the doing of the will of 
 God. In front, the man's eagerness for life; behind, 
 " He that f ormeth the mountains and createth the winds 
 and declareth unto man His thought, that maketh the 
 morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of 
 the earth." In front, the teeming plain; behind, the 
 solemn hills. I can see the picture of the prayer with ab- 
 solute clearness. Leave out the foreground — let there 
 be no expression of the wish of Him who prays — and 
 there is left a pure submission which is almost fatalism. 
 Leave out the background — let there be no acceptance 
 of the will of God — and the prayer is only an expression 
 
Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 121 
 
 of self-will, a petulant claiming of the uncorrected 
 choice of Him who prays. Only when the two, fore- 
 ground and background, are there together, — the special 
 desire resting on the universal submission, the univer- 
 sal submission opening into the special desire, — only 
 then is the picture perfect and the prayer complete ! 
 
 What Christ's prayer was all prayers may be, all true 
 prayers must be. What is it that you ask for when you 
 kneel and pray ? Directly, no doubt, it is some special 
 mercy. It is the coming in of your ship ; it is the re- 
 covery of your friend ; it is the opportunity of useful- 
 ness which you desire for yourself. But do you want 
 any of those things if God does not see that it is best 
 that you should have them ? Would they not fade out 
 of your desire if you should know that they were not 
 His will ? Do you not wish them because it seems to 
 you that they must be best, and therefore must be His 
 will ? Is it not, then, His will which is your real, your 
 fundamental, your essential prayer ? You must keep 
 that essential prayer very clear or the special prayer 
 becomes wilful and trivial. You must pray with the 
 great prayer in sight. You must feel the mountains 
 above you while you work upon your little garden. 
 Little by little your special wishes and the eternal will 
 of God will grow into harmony with one another, — the 
 background will draw the foreground to itself. Fore- 
 ground and background at last will blend in perfect har- 
 mony. All conflict will die away and the great spiritual 
 landscape from horizon to horizon be but one. That is 
 the prayer of eternity — the prayer of heaven — to which 
 we may come, no one can say how near, on earth. 
 
122 Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 
 
 I must not multiply my series of suggestions. I hope 
 you see that they are mere suggestions and instances 
 of that which pervades all life. All life has this con- 
 struction of the foreground and the background. Every- 
 where there must be the background on which the fore- 
 ground rests ; everywhere the foreground grows thin and 
 false if the background is destroyed or ignored. The 
 love for truth behind the belief in the special creed, 
 the sense of duty behind the conviction that this par- 
 ticular thing must be done, the joy in life behind the 
 enjoyment of this single pleasure, all human history 
 behind the present age, the whole man's culture behind 
 the training of one particular power, the good of all 
 behind the good of each, — all these are instances 
 among a hundred others of the backgrounds of life, and 
 bear witness of how the construction of life is every- 
 where the same. 
 
 Wherever the background is lost, the foreground 
 grows false and thin. "What is this foolish realism in 
 our literature but the loss of the background of the 
 ideal, without which every real is base and sordid ? In 
 how many bright books there is no God treading on the 
 high places of the earth ; nay, there are no high places 
 of the earth for God to tread upon. What is the prac- 
 tical man's contempt for theory ? What is the modern 
 man's contempt for history ? What is the ethical man's 
 contempt for religion ? All of them are the denials of 
 the background of life. All of them therefore are thin 
 and weak. 
 
 Again I say that it is only in personal love and loyalty 
 that life completes itself. Only when man loves and 
 
Backgrounds a7id Foregrounds. 123 
 
 enthusiastically obeys God, does the background of the 
 universal and the eternal rise around the special and 
 temporary, and the scenery of life become complete. 
 
 Therefore it is that Christ, who brings God to us 
 and brings us to God, is the great background-builder. 
 You give yourself to Him, and oh, the wondrous widen 
 ing, the wondrous deepening of life ! Behind the pres- 
 i^ ent opens eternity; behind the thing to do opens the 
 thing to be ; behind selfishness opens sacrifice ; behind 
 duty opens love; behind every bondage and limitation 
 opens the glorious liberty of the child of God. So may 
 we give ourselves to Him, and life become complete for 
 all of us ! 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE SILENCE OF CHRIST. 
 
 But He answered her not a word. — Matt. xv. 23^ 
 
 We often think about the different tones which may 
 belong to the same words. We do not think so often 
 about the different way in which silences may be under- 
 stood. A man speaks to me, and I say to myself, " What 
 does he mean by what he says ? " Not merely " What 
 do his words mean ? " but " What does he mean ? " But 
 a man stands silent in my presence, and there too I must 
 ask, before I understand it perfectly, "What does he 
 mean by this silence ? Why docs he stand there and 
 not speak ? " For silence has as various moods as 
 speech, and its moods are far more subtle. One man 
 sits silent in my room while I am at my work, and his 
 speechless presence fills the room with sympathetic in- 
 fluence and an atmosphere in which my work almost 
 does itself. Another man the next day sits silent in 
 the same chair, and his silence weighs like lead upon 
 my brain and hand, and work is hopeless. And so with 
 the same man at different times. I walk with my 
 friend to-day, and he does not say a word, and my 
 soul all the time is saying to itself, " Oh, if he would 
 only break out and upbraid me ; no condemnation could 
 be half as awful as this dreadful silence. " I walk with 
 
The Silence of Christ. 125 
 
 the same friend to-morrow, and am almost afraid to have 
 him speak because it seems as if no sympathy could be 
 so entire, no inflow of his richness into me could be so 
 perfect as this in which our lives silently are almost 
 mingling into one. So silence is as various as speech. 
 Silence is what the silent man is.*^ There is the silence 
 of vacancy and dulness, and the silence of the thought 
 for which the thinker cannot find sufficient words. 
 There is the silence of crafty concealment, and the si- 
 lence which is completer revelation than any speech 
 could be. There is the silence of utter condemnation, 
 and the silence which is sweeter than any spoken praise. 
 The completest joy and the profoundest sorrow, both 
 are silent. It is as different in men as it is in Nature. 
 There is the silence of sunrise, all tremulous with hope, 
 and the silence of sunset, wrapped in the stillness of its 
 memories. There is the stillness of the snake slipping 
 unseen through the grass, the silence of the cattle feed- 
 ing on the hillside, the silence of the war-horse waiting 
 for the signal of the battle. How different they are 
 from one another, yet all alike are silent. 
 - I turn this afternoon to the record of one of the 
 silences of Him whose silences must have been most 
 significant because of the richness of His nature and 
 the deep importance of all His relations to mankind. 
 One day a Canaanitish woman came running after 
 Jesus with the cry, "O Lord, thou Son of David, my 
 daughter is grievously vexed with a devil ! " We hear 
 the sharp agony pierce the keen, trembling air. The 
 poor woman's whole soul is in her words. She cries to 
 Him in whom alone seems any chance of help; then, 
 
126 The Silence of Christ. 
 
 almost frightened with her cry, she pauses. The thing 
 is done. Her heart has told its story. The face of 
 Christ has touched and stirred her misery into self- 
 consciousness, and out of the cloud this lightning of 
 her cry has flashed. The thing is done, and she waits 
 tremblingly for the result. Can we not almost hear 
 her heart beat as she listens ? What will He say ? And 
 then see what does happen. " He answered her not a 
 word. " Bowed down before Him there, waiting to hear 
 whether He was blaming her or blessing her, think of 
 the dismay with which her soul must have been filled 
 as slowly the moments passed by and she became aware 
 that He was doing neither. The sense of His silence 
 standing over her, how bewildering, how terrible, how 
 worse than any blame it must have been ! But, behold ! 
 I think that I can see her slowly lift her eyes. She 
 cannot bear this suspense. She must look this awful 
 silence in the face. Her eyes find out the face of 
 Christ, and then she feels Him behind, within, His 
 silence. She knows Him not clearly but certainly. 
 He is there, and she has found Him. The disciples 
 come and upbraid her, but she does not stir. She will 
 know what this silence means before she goes. She 
 knows that it means something gracious ; and so she 
 listens and listens till at last the silence is broken and 
 she hears Him say, " Oh, woman, great is thy faith, be 
 it unto thee even as thou wilt. " Then she goes away 
 satisfied, and finds her daughter whole. 
 
 This story, then, suggests a study which must very 
 often have forced itself on every devout and earnest 
 soul. What is the meaning of the silences of God? 
 
The Silence of Christ. 127 
 
 How shall I understand it wlien I pray to Him and He 
 answers me not a word, when my whole life cries out to 
 Him and there comes no reply? Such silences there 
 are beyond all doubt, — times when the sense of need is 
 overwhelming ; when the soul, bowed down with its bur- 
 den, comes staggering up to the door and finds it closed, 
 and no knocking of the desperate and bleeding hands 
 brings any answer. The connection seems to be broken. 
 The sympathy seems to be lost. There, in the great 
 depth and distance which seemed but yesterday to be 
 full of God as the sky is full of sunhght, now there is 
 no God at all, — nothing but emptiness and blackness. 
 Oh, it is terrible ! Better even the curse of God — so 
 sometimes the soul thinks ; better anything which should 
 show that He was there, and that He was aware of me, 
 than this blank silence. Oh, that He would say some- 
 thing ! 
 
 But then the question always keeps coming up. May 
 it not be that He is saying something which I cannot 
 hear ? There is at the bottom of every soul such a true 
 sense of its own incapacity that it does not go very far 
 into the question of why God does not speak, before it 
 begins to wonder whether it is ready and quick and 
 spiritual enough to hear Him if He did. There are two 
 kinds or grounds of silence. There is the silence of 
 the empty, speechless ocean or prairie, and there is the 
 silence which envelops the deaf man who stands in 
 the very central roar of London. Which is this silence 
 of God ? It may be either ; nay, it may be both. Both 
 elements may be in it. And so our study of God's 
 silences divides itself into two parts : First, there are 
 
 \ 
 
128 The Silence of Christ. 
 
 the silences which are apparent, and then there are the 
 silences which are real. We cannot always draw the 
 line between them, and say of any special silence to 
 which class it belongs, but we know that both kinds 
 exist ; and he does not fully understand the fact that 
 often his life seems to have lost its communication 
 with the life of God who has not asked the meaning 
 both of the apparent and the real silences which refuse 
 his soul an answer. 
 
 Let us speak, then, first of God's apparent silences, 
 — of the times when He really answers us but does not 
 seem to. That such times would be, I think that I 
 should know beforehand if I thought in general of the 
 greatness of God and the littleness of man. There is 
 nothing in that contrast that should make the great 
 refuse to hear the little. The great would become 
 little if that were the effect. Your beast looks up ap- 
 pealingly into your face. The vast difference between 
 his beasthood and your manhood ' does not make you 
 disregard his mute appeal, — you would be almost a 
 brute yourself if that were so, — but it does make him 
 in large degree unable to understand how his appeal 
 touches you. Perhaps he catches some glimpse of sym- 
 pathy upon your face, perhaps he is aware of some tone 
 in your voice ; but all your thoughtfulness, all your care 
 and plan to help him, of that he knows nothing. 
 
 The resemblance docs not tell the story, for we are 
 far more to God than the beast is to us. We are of the 
 same nature as God. We are God's children. Take, 
 then, your child. He asks you for some blessing. It 
 seems to him an easv tliinar. something which you can 
 
The Silence of Christ. 129 
 
 almost take up in your hand and give him; but you 
 know that it is something far more complicated. It is 
 something which you must scheme and plan for, some- 
 thing which can only be given from life to life and not 
 from hand to hand. When, then, your brow knits with 
 thought as to how you may give the gift, may it not 
 well be that he thinks you have refused him ? Is it not 
 evident that he must have your mind, and see with your 
 eyes, before he can know what is the giving of the gift, 
 and so can know that it is given ? 
 
 So that we might be sure beforehand that there would 
 be times when God would seem to refuse what He was 
 actually at the very moment giving. But look at it in 
 another way. Think of the unconscious wants in us 
 which are forever laying themselves before God : needs 
 w^hich we do not know ourselves enough to apprehend, 
 far less to understand ; deficiencies whose worst defect 
 is that they are not aware of their own falling short ; 
 poverties which count themselves riches; sin which 
 calls itself goodness; shame which imagines itself 
 glory, — all of these go with a pathetic urgency into 
 God's presence and plead for a supply which is all the 
 more needed because the needy soul itself to which they 
 belong is not aware of want! God answers all these 
 prayers. He gives to each unconscious need all the 
 supply which, in its unconsciousness, it is able to re- 
 ceive ; but the soul, ignorant of the need, cannot know 
 the answer which its needs are getting. It does not 
 dream what God is doing for it. Blessing comes into 
 it, and it is wholly unaware. But may it not be — will 
 it not almost certainly be — that, in large part by means 
 
 a 
 
130 The Silence of CJirist. 
 
 of the unrecognized but real supply, the sense of need 
 will be awakened, and will recognize itself in the pres- 
 ence of the suppl}^ which it has received ? So it is that 
 children come only gradually to know their father's 
 and their mother's care. They are cared for before 
 ithey are aware that they cannot care for themselves. 
 The helplessness by and by reveals itself. Then they 
 cry out ; and only in their crying out do they attain the 
 knowledge of how their helplessness has been already 
 enfolded in protecting love. In the soul's history there 
 is the same period of wakening, — when, conscious of 
 need but not yet conscious of supply, the spirit cries 
 out for a God who long before it knew its own want has 
 been supplying that want with Himself. I think my 
 prayer unanswered when really God not merely is an- 
 swering it, but has been answering it for years, before 
 ever it knew enough of itself to be prayed. 
 
 One other thought must still be added: God is the 
 Lord of all the world ; whatever goes on in the world 
 goes on under His care. It would be awful if that fact 
 made God careless of any, the least or feeblest of His 
 children ; awful if all these thronging prayers, pouring 
 in from Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and the islands 
 of the sea, had it in their power to hinder or silence 
 the feeblest fluttering petition which tried to find its 
 way to God from any weakest child of His who after 
 long hesitation and doubt has dared to pray. It is not 
 that. But is it not easy to conceive that such a multi- 
 tude of need may, likely enough, have influence upon 
 the way in which that single petitioner's prayer re- 
 ceives its answer, lyaon .the form the answer shall 
 
The Silence of Christ. 131 
 
 assume ? If I prayed all alone, — my prayer the only 
 prayer which pierced the darkness because mine was the 
 only soul which stood in need, — then I can possibly 
 imagine that as I stood and looked I should behold the 
 answer come like a white dove out of the distance 
 until it laid itself upon my soul and gave it peace. 
 But now I cannot help seeing what a far greater rich- 
 ness there will be if my petition blends with a million 
 others, and the answer comes in some great outpouring 
 of the divine light and love which addresses itself to all 
 the world. It seems to me almost like this : You write 
 your letter to your friend, and straightway there comes 
 back his reply. Thin, narrow, limited, a transaction 
 purely between you and him, getting part of its value 
 from its specialness and limitation, is your correspond- 
 ence. But suppose your letter is one of a thousand 
 which reaches this great helpful friend of you all ; and 
 suppose that by some great act done out in the broad 
 face of the sun, or by some mighty book which speaks 
 like a trumpet from a mountain-top, he answers you all 
 together, — you all and a host besides, — tell me, are 
 not you answered, you whose prayer started and soared 
 out of a special closet on a certain day? Will you say 
 almost peevishly, " Nay, but I wanted my own answer 
 all to myself " ? Is not that selfish and weak ? May 
 not the very richness of this larger answer have it for 
 one of its purposes to rebuke that selfishness and let 
 you know that he best finds God and is God's who finds 
 Him and becomes His, not in separation from his 
 brethren but in the certainty of God's love to all and 
 of the belonging of all souls to God? 
 
132 The Silence of Christ. 
 
 I must not follow farther these suggestions of the 
 seeming silences of God. I never think of them with' 
 out thinking how great is the delight which comes when 
 any man discovers that God really has been answering 
 him all the time when he thought that his prayers were 
 all unheard. That must be one of the most exquisite 
 joys of heaven. Among the vials which in the Book 
 of Revelations held the prayers of saints, there must be 
 some which, when the saints who prayed them find them 
 in their vision-time, shine with a brilliancy supremely 
 precious. They are the prayers which seemed as if they 
 were not answered, but which really did bring down their 
 blessing. When we do really see them and know their 
 history, two things will become very real to us about all 
 prayer : First, that not the gift but the giver is the real 
 answer to prayer ; not to get God's benefactions, but to 
 get God, is the soul's true answer. And second, that the 
 faith which comes by the assurance that God must have 
 answered is often a nobler culture of the soul than even 
 the delightful thrill of the heard answer as it enters 
 into our ears, or the warm pressure of the blessing it- 
 self, held tight in our tremulous and grateful hand. 
 May both of these assurances come to all of us when we 
 pray to God, and yet it seems as if He sent us no reply. 
 Often those days of bewilderment and disappointment 
 are the birthdays of faith. 
 
 But now that we may reach the second part of our 
 topic, shall we not come back to the poor woman who 
 stands before the silent Saviour in that unknown spot 
 in the coasts of Tyre and Sidon? It was no apparent 
 silence which she had to confront. The blessed lips 
 
TJie Silence of Christ. 133 
 
 were really closed; the blessed hands really did not 
 move with any gesture of bestowal. " He answered her 
 not a word," — that is the story which His servant 
 tells. 
 
 And is there anything like that in the experience of 
 Jesus which comes to souls to-day ? Indeed there is ! 
 Many and many a prayer there is which not merely 
 Christ does not seem to answer, — which Christ does 
 not answer. Let us think of such prayers a while. Let 
 us see to what classes they belong, and what ought to 
 be the teaching of their lack of answer to our souls. 
 
 Some prayers Christ does not answer, we may say, 
 because they ask Him to do our work for us. They ask 
 Him to do what we ought to do for ourselves. Tell 
 me, is there a kinder thing that you can do for your 
 pupil who comes up to you with his slate, asking you 
 to work out for him his problem, than to bid him go 
 back to his seat and do his task himself, and get that 
 discipline and learning which is really the object of his 
 having his task set to him at all, — the object of his 
 being in the school ? You ask Christ to show you with 
 a flash of lightning what your sorrow means. You ask 
 him to decide for you and to reveal to you by some su- 
 pernatural illumination which path of life you ought to 
 take, which friendship you shall cultivate, what profes- 
 sion you can most successfully pursue. There comes no 
 answer to those prayers. The Christ to whom you pray 
 answers you not a word. And why ? Those are your 
 problems. It is by hard work of yours, by watchful 
 vigilance, by careful weighing of consideration against 
 consideration, that you must settle those things for 
 
134 The Silence of Christ. 
 
 yourself. Still, if you are wise and devout, you will not 
 fail to say, " God showed me it ! " when you have really 
 found out the answer by the use of your own powers ; 
 for where did those powers get their enlightenment ex- 
 cept from Him ? But the first prompt, definite answer 
 which your prayer expected never comes. It is with- 
 held because the same God who is ready to do His work 
 for you demands that you should do your own. 
 
 Closely united with this, and coming also very near 
 to the story of the poor woman, there is the truth that 
 Christ does not answer many a petition because the pe- 
 titioner is not able to appropriate and understand the 
 answer. Very often, as I said before, the sense of 
 need becomes developed in advance of the ability to 
 take in the supply. You , see a group of people enjoy- 
 ing intensely some great work of art. You cannot see 
 its beauty ; but as you hear them talk there wakens in 
 you some dim sense that it is beautiful, and that for 
 you not to see its beauty is in you a sad defect and loss. 
 You speak to them and say, " Explain to me this beauty 
 and make me feel it. " They look into your face, and 
 answer you not a word. They see that it is hopeless. 
 You need so much before this need can be supplied. 
 They cannot answer this prayer till many another has 
 been prayed and answered. Is not the same thing true 
 of Christ ? Some youth upon the street in Jerusalem 
 meets Him as He walks among the disciples and, see- 
 ing the intelligence and peace and joy which fills their 
 faces, appeals to the Master and says, " Lord do for me 
 what thou hast done for them," and then expects the 
 fulness of the blessing instantly. It does not come. 
 
The Silence of Christ. 135 
 
 And why ? He is not ready. It cannot come. He 
 must be John or Peter before the Lord can do John's or 
 Peter's work in him. And so the Lord looks him in 
 the face, and answers him not a word. 
 
 One other cause there is for silence when we pray, and 
 that is the largeness of God's kingdom. I have spoken 
 of it already, but here it comes in again. Two friends 
 come to me together, one of them wants me to go with 
 him for a pleasant walk ; the other wants me to come 
 and rescue his child from some most imminent and 
 dreadful danger. I do not hesitate a moment. I turn 
 away from him who wants me to walk with him and 
 hurry off to save, if it is possible, the child's imperilled 
 life. And if he be the man he ought to be, my walk- 
 ing friend will thank me for denying his request, 
 would have no respect for me if out of foolish fondness 
 I let the poor child die in order that I might get with 
 him the freshness of the autumn breeze or the glory of 
 the mountain view. He will recognize my greater re- 
 sponsibility. He will see my larger kingdom. Now 
 God is not limited exactly thus. He is above all time, 
 and so has all time for His own. He has time enough 
 for all His children ; but there may be other kinds of 
 complications. In many ways it may be impossible 
 that what 1 ask should be done without the sacrifice of 
 something else which is of far more importance con- 
 cerning some special brother's life, or concerning the 
 vast world at large. What then ? Shall I not rejoice 
 in my unanswered prayer ? Shall I not be thoroughly 
 glad that my petition goes to One who will leave it un- 
 answered if there are greater things which the answer^ 
 
136 The Silence of Christ 
 
 ing of it would hinder, or if in my blindness I have 
 asked something which for myself would be not good 
 but evil ? Who is there that would dare to pray at all 
 if he had not that assurance ? Who has not felt some- 
 times as if the face of Christ was never so gracious or 
 won from us such perfect trust as when He simply 
 looked on us in silence and answered not a word. 
 
 Thus we detail a few of those conditions in which God 
 does not answer prayer. They are but specimens and 
 instances. There are a great many others. And now, 
 as I stand and look abroad across them all, they all 
 give me one great impression. That impression is, 
 that none of them are necessarily condemned to act as 
 discouragements of the soul which prays and whose 
 prayer goes unanswered. I think that that is very 
 strange. Go back to our poor Canaanitish woman once 
 again. Look at her I See what she does when Jesus 
 gives her no reply ! Does she turn off in despair ? 
 Does she go away in anger ? Does she say, " He is 
 not for me," and leave Him to His Hebrew follow- 
 ers ? Not so ! In the sweet melody of the old 
 verses we can feel her pressing more closely to Him 
 through the silence which He has drawn about Him like 
 a veil. " Then came she and worshipped Him, saying, 
 * Lord help me. ' " And she said, " Truth, Lord, yet the 
 dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from the master's 
 table. " Behold her undiscouraged faith ! Nay, is it not 
 much more than that ? Not merely she clings to Him 
 in spite of His silence. Do we not feel that somehow 
 it is His very silence through which as through a rich 
 revealing glass she looks in on His nature, and sees 
 
The Silence of Christ. 137 
 
 what is truly He ? At any rate all the story lets us see 
 clearly how the result is that she is led on to Him. 
 Behind His gifts, which were what she first came 
 seeking, she is led in to Him. 
 
 My friends, do we know anything of that experience ? 
 Do we know anything of what it is to take refuge from 
 Christ's silence in Christ Himself ? If we do not, there 
 are great depths of our religion still waiting for our 
 souls to sound. You cry, " Lord, solve me this prob- 
 lem ! " and the solution does not come. " What ! must 
 I walk in darkness ? " your poor soul cries out ; and 
 then He comes and takes your hand and says, "He 
 that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall 
 have the Light of Life." In place of the answer to 
 your prayer comes He to whom you prayed. You have 
 not got the solution of your problem; it still floats 
 in doubt. You have not got the sure prophecy of the 
 future; it is hid behind the wavering and trembling 
 veil. You have not got the brother's dear presence 
 for whose life you cried and wrestled; he is walking 
 beside the river of Life in the new Light of Heaven. 
 You have not got what you prayed for, but you have got 
 God! You have the source, the fountain, the sun! 
 You have taken hold of the essential meaning and es- 
 sence of all these things for which you prayed, in tak- 
 ing hold of Him to whom you prayed. In His silence 
 you have pressed back to Him. If He had spoken, you 
 might have rested in His words. Now you have 
 pressed back to Him. Not in the word He speaks but 
 in the word He is, you have found your reply. 
 
 It is in the silences of Nature that we are often sensi- 
 
138 ThG Silence of Christ. 
 
 ble of being most near to Nature's heart. Not when 
 the thunder is roaring, nor when the winds are sighing, 
 but in some hour of the morning or the evening when 
 even the distant song of a bird seems an intrusion, 
 when the silence of Nature grows a transparent veil 
 which reveals and does not hide her loveliness, — then 
 is the time when you know how lovely Nature is ! It is 
 in the silence of a great city ; not in the noisy clashing 
 noontide of its furious business, but in the solemn 
 midnight when the hush is over all its streets, — then 
 it is that the heart of the city opens to you, and you feel 
 to the full its mystery and awe and delight. And is it 
 not true about the men whom you have known best that 
 the times when you have sat or walked side by side 
 with them in silence, have often been the times when 
 you have known them most deeply and most truly ? 
 
 Is it strange that the same thing should be true of 
 Christ ? If my brethren, who are my equals, have each 
 some sacred chamber in his nature which only silence 
 and not speech can open and reveal, shall I think it 
 strange that Christ, in the completeness of His life, 
 should many a time meet my especial petition with 
 silence because so, and so only, can He let me see Him- 
 self, which is the purpose of all His treatment of me. 
 We glorify talk overmuch. We meet a man and ask 
 him countless questions. " Where was he born ? Who 
 were his father and mother ? Where was he educated? 
 What docs he believe ? " And so we try to know him. 
 He answers us the best he can. He means to keep 
 back nothing. But when his answers are all in, and I 
 have registered them in my book, and analyzed them, 
 
The Silence of Christ. 139 
 
 and arranged them, do I know the man ? And then in 
 some crisis or emergency, or on some sunny day which 
 is like hundreds of others in his life, I just sit in his 
 presence, and he says nothing to me, and the result is 
 that I get up and go away at evening full of the knowl- 
 edge of what manner of man he is. 
 
 "Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on 
 the ground as though He heard them not. " So Christ 
 revealed Himself to the furious Jews who were howling 
 for the life of the poor woman whom they had caught 
 in her sin. When Pilate said to him, " Hearest Thou 
 not how many things they witness against Thee ? 
 Jesus answered him to never a word; insomuch that 
 the governor marvelled greatly." So the Prisoner re- 
 vealed Himself to His amazed and frightened judge. 
 By silence often of necessity and not by speech He must 
 make Himself known, because the revelation is too great 
 for words to contain ; because the hearer cannot hold the 
 truth and yet, by his strange human capacity, can hold 
 Him who speaks the truth. Him who is the truth ; be- 
 cause words sometimes hide instead of revealing what 
 they try to tell, — for all these reasons the Lord often 
 when we pray to Him answers us not a word. 
 
 Oh, my friends, our answered prayers are precious to 
 us ; I sometimes think our unanswered prayers are more 
 precious still. Those give us God's blessings; these, 
 if we will, may lead us to God. Do not let any mo- 
 ment of your life fail of God's light. Be sure that 
 whether He speaks or is silent. He is always loving 
 you, and always trying to make your life more rich and 
 good and happy. Only be sure that you are always ready ! 
 
IX. 
 
 HOW TO ABOUND. 
 
 I know how to abound. — Phil. iv. 12. 
 
 Saint Paul is rejoicing in a double knowledge. " I 
 know both how to be abased and how to abound," he 
 says. The experience of want and the experience of 
 abundance, both of them he understands, and he is 
 ready to meet either of them. It is of the second of 
 his two kinds of knowledge that I want to speak to you 
 to-day; but the two are not distinctly separable from 
 one another. No man can have one kind of knowledge 
 and be wholly destitute of the other. Just as no man 
 knows how to rule who is not able also to obey ; and no 
 man knows how to obey without being also ready to 
 command, — so the man who is truly wise in poverty 
 would be wise also in wealth; and he who is most 
 truly fit for wealth would not fail if poverty should 
 come upon him. Thus each condition becomes in some 
 sort a test of the other. There is one great philosophy 
 which covers both. Let us try to remember this as we 
 think this morning about knowing how to be rich. " I 
 know how to abound, " says Paul. 
 
 It often seems as if men had more than enough in- 
 struction as to how they ought to meet adversity, but far 
 too little as to how to meet prosperity. As if that were 
 
How to Abound. 141 
 
 so easy ! As if success could take care of itself ! Nor 
 does the prosperous and affluent man know his own 
 need ! A hundred poor men come and say, " Show me 
 what all this means. Tell me how shall I live in pov- 
 erty and not grow wretched, sour, cruel, hopeless." 
 Hardly one comes to God or fellowman, and with his 
 hands overrunning with good things cries, " help me 
 to escape my dangers ! Show me how to abound ! " Our 
 Litany, indeed, does make men think. " In all time of 
 our tribulation, in all time of our prosperity, good 
 Lord deliver us, " it bids us pray. As those words fall 
 upon his ear, the rich, abmidant man must sometimes 
 look up almost in surprise, and see the dangers of his lot 
 in life staring at him through the silken curtains ; but 
 at most times the curtains hang ample and smooth and 
 quiet, and no fear disturbs them. " Hard enough to get 
 rich, " men will say, " but very easy to be rich. Tell 
 me how to win prosperity, and I will not ask anybody to 
 tell me how to use it. " 
 
 And perhaps it is just because affluence does not 
 seem to bristle with dangers as poverty does, that it 
 seems often to many people to be an inferior, almost an 
 unjustifiable condition for a noble man. It seems to 
 afford no chance of moral heroism. It looks sleek and 
 self-satisfied. The sweet moral uses of adversity mo- 
 nopolize our thought. To throw away wealth and pro- 
 fusion, to turn ascetic, to disparage learning, to isolate 
 one's life from the pleasant association of family and 
 friends, — we all know how this has seemed to many men, 
 to many noble men, to many groups and generations of 
 men not destitute of lofty aspirations, to be the first 
 
142 How to Abound. 
 
 condition of high spiritual character, — the making of 
 life bare and meagre. It is a strange confusion. The 
 idea seems to be that a man ought to throw away wealth 
 and luxury because they make life too easy. Really it 
 is throwing away wealth and luxury because they make 
 life hard, because in them the chance of deep and spirit- 
 ual life is beset by many mysterious and subtle dangers, 
 over the conquest of which alone can man go forward to 
 his best. Surely there is a braver, a franker, and a 
 nobler way. Surely the man who takes his wealth or 
 privilege and keeps it and learns how to live in it and 
 use it and conquer its dangers by continual watchful- 
 ness and care, — surely he has done work more worthy 
 of respect than any monk or ascetic in the cell or cave 
 to which his coward life has fled. 
 
 You will not think of me that I stand here as a Chris- 
 tian minister before a congregation in which there are 
 many people who are rich, simply trying to feed their 
 self-complacency, to congratulate them upon their lot. 
 I am not so mean as that. If there are men and women 
 here whose lives are full of privilege, it is not my place 
 to bid them throw their privilege away; it is not my 
 place to tell them that their privilege is wrong; but 
 my duty surely is to remind them of the dangers and 
 responsibilities which privilege involves, and to exhort 
 them as earnestly as I can to think and pray and study 
 that they may " know how to abound. " 
 
 The phrase is very simple. Behind the duty of being 
 anything, lies the deeper duty of knowing how to be that 
 thing in the best way and to the best result. I meet 
 a man who says, "My fellow-citizens have chosen me 
 
How to Abound. 143 
 
 to such and such an oflSce." His face is all aglow with 
 triumph. He has won the victory. He has carried the 
 election. How quickly the question starts up in my 
 mind — " Does this man know how to govern ? He is 
 going to sail the ship of State. Does he know anything 
 about such navigation? Woe to the State if he does 
 not ! " " "Woe to thee, O Land, when thy king is a child," 
 says the wise preacher. Another man is proud that he 
 is a father; but he has evidently not got hold of the 
 first ideas of fatherhood, of its sacredness and serious- 
 ness and far outreach. There are officers in every great 
 army who have the commission but have not the knowl- 
 edge, and they are the officers whose men are sacrificed 
 in reckless ventures. The priest is made by ordination, 
 but the knowledge how to be a priest comes only by 
 prayer and study and the grace of God. No man has 
 a right to be anything unless he is conscious that he 
 knows how to be it. Not with a perfect knowledge, for 
 that can come only by the active exercise of being the 
 thing itself, but at least no man has a right to be any- 
 thing unless he carries already in his heart such a sense 
 of the magnitude and the capacity of his occupation as 
 makes him teachable by experience for all that his 
 
 'i occupation has to make known to him. 
 
 'j How the strict application of our rule would depopu- 
 late our industries and professions ! How it would bid 
 the king come down off of his throne, and the judge off 
 of his bench ! How many fathers and mothers it would 
 depose from their sacred seat at the head of the family ! 
 How it would beckon many a priest out of his pulpit, 
 many an author from his desk, many a teacher from his 
 
144 How to Abound. 
 
 school-room, many a merchant from his counting-housej 
 many a mechanic from his bench ! Every man who is 
 satisfied with being anything, and is not trying to know 
 how to be that thing as well as it is possible to be it, 
 this law would summon to resign and leave his place 
 for larger, more earnest, more conscientious men ! This 
 is the law which Paul suggests with regard to abund> 
 ance. Wealth is a condition, a vocation, he declares. 
 A man may have the condition and not have, not even 
 seek to have, the knowledge of how to live in that con- 
 dition. Go to, ye rich men, and learn how a rich man 
 ought to live. 
 
 I talk of wealth as if it were synonymous with Paul's 
 word " abundance ; " but no doubt the word as he uses it 
 means much more than what we generally understand 
 by wealth. He is thinking of any plentiful supply of 
 life, of anything which makes life sumptuous and ample. 
 Plenty of learning, so that the mind is nowhere starved ; 
 plenty of friends, so that the affections are all satisfied ; 
 plenty of peace and spiritual comfort and certain faith 
 and enthusiastic inspirations, — all of these may be in- 
 cluded in his great word, "to abound." Not only to 
 the man of money, but to the man of scholarship, to the 
 popular man, to the man of great spiritual hopes and 
 enjoyments, — to all of them his words suggest that 
 there is something more needed than to have these 
 great possessions, even to know how to have them, to be 
 worthy of them, to be able to get the real heart and 
 substance of their value out of having them. 
 
 He did not certainly have all these things himself, 
 but one of the subtlest and profoundest suggestions 
 
How to Abound. 145 
 
 which his words contain is this, that as a man may- 
 have the things and yet lack the knowledge how to use 
 them, so on the other hand, a man may lack the things 
 and yet possess the knowledge of them, — the knowl- 
 edge of their nature and their use. Paul, a poor man, 
 nevertheless says, " I have the best part of money still, 
 — the knowledge of what money is, and what a true man 
 ought to do with money. " Some secret he possessed by 
 which he unlocked the heart of wealth, even although 
 his lot in life was almost abject poverty. That is a 
 very lofty mastery indeed. 
 
 And now is it possible for us to put our finger upon 
 this mysterious knowledge of Saint Paul, and say exactly 
 what it was ? I think we can. It must have been a 
 Christian knowledge. He is speaking, as he always 
 speaks, distinctly as a Christian. Remember he be- 
 came a Christian not later probably than thirty-five 
 years after the birth of Christ. He wrote this epistle 
 to the Phillippians as late as the sixty-fifth year of the 
 Christian Era. It was then after thirty years of Chris- 
 tian life that he professed this knowledge. Thirty 
 years had passed since he first saw his Master, Jesus, on 
 the road to Damascus. Thirty years of consecration, 
 thirty years of ever-deepening communion with his 
 Lord, thirty years of the profoundest consciousness of 
 his own soul. If we sum up those thirty years in one 
 great phrase what shall we say of them but this, — that 
 Paul had learned in them the true perfection of a human 
 soul in serving Christ. All knowledge for him had be- 
 come summed up in that, — the true perfection of a 
 human soul in serving Christ! 
 
 10 . 
 
146 How to Abound. 
 
 And now imagine that to his meagre life there had 
 been brought the sudden prospect of abundance. " To- 
 morrow, Paul, a new world is to be opened to you. 
 You shall be rich; you shall have hosts of friends; 
 your struggles shall be over; you shall live in peace. 
 Are you ready for this new life ? Can your feet walk 
 strong and sure and steady in this new land so differ- 
 ent from any land where they have ever walked be- 
 fore ? " What will Paul's answer be? "Yes, I have 
 Christ, I know my soul in Him. I am His servant. 
 Nothing can make me leave Him. With the power of 
 that consecration I can rob abundance of its dangers 
 and make it the servant of Him and of my soul. I 
 shall not be its slave ; it shall be mine. I will walk at 
 liberty because I keep His commandments. " So in the 
 words which David had spoken long ago might Paul 
 reply. The power by which he could confidently ex- 
 pect to rob abundance of its dangers and to call out all 
 its help was the knowledge of the true perfection of a 
 human soul in serving Christ. 
 
 Let us turn quickly from Saint Paul to ourselves. 
 Let us take one by one the different kinds of abundance 
 of which we spoke, and see how it is true that over each 
 of them a man would win the mastery who carried into 
 it the secret of Saint Paul, — the knowledge of the true 
 perfection of a human soul in serving Christ ; how such 
 knowledge would certainly be the power he would need. 
 
 Take then, first, the simplest of all the meanings 
 of abundance, which is wealth, — the ownership of 
 riches. Do all rich men know how to be rich ? He 
 does not know how to do anything who does that thing 
 
How to Abound. 147 
 
 so that he brings it to its worst and not its best results. 
 Is that not true ? A man does not know how to sail a 
 ship who steers it so that when it ought to go to Liver- 
 pool he brings it into Madagascar. Where is the ship 
 of wealth then meant to sail ? Her port is clear and 
 certain, — to generosity and sympathy and fineness of 
 nature and healthy use of powers. What shall we say 
 then of the man whose money makes him selfish and 
 cruel and coarse and idle, or any one of these bad 
 things. There are many hard names which we may 
 call him by, but the real philosophy of the whole mat- 
 ter, the comprehensive definition of it all is this, — he 
 does not know how to be rich ! He is a blunderer in a 
 great art. Look at his opposite. Look at the man who 
 takes money into the easy mastery of his character. 
 His selfliood, which is his character, appropriates it. 
 He makes it part of him. The richer that he grows 
 the more generous and sympathetic and fine and active 
 he becomes. What can you say of him but that he 
 does know how to be rich. I say of a man that he 
 knows how to travel when he makes each new country, 
 as he enters it, open its secrets and render up to him 
 new interest and knowledge. I say of a man that he 
 does not know how to swim when the water takes pos- 
 session of him and drowns him in itself. So I say that 
 a man does not know how to be rich when his money 
 makes him its slave, and turns him into a coarseness 
 like itself instead of being elevated and refined by the 
 commanding spirituality of his human soul. 
 
 There is certainly a very terrible aspect to a sight like 
 this, — an aspect of it that makes one very angry, that 
 
148 How to Abound. 
 
 sometimes stirs up a whole class or city-full of poor 
 men who seem to themselves to be wronged by the rich 
 man's ignorant and stupid use of wealth, to rage and 
 violence. There is certainly another way of looking at 
 it in which it is most pathetic. For what can be more 
 pitiable than the condition of a blunderer who holds in 
 his hands the power of such happiness and good and 
 usefulness as money gives, and knows not what to do 
 with it ? The failure may take various forms. It may 
 deck itself with gaudy tinsel, and shine in the extrava- 
 gance of gold and diamonds ; or it may clothe itself in 
 the false sackcloth of miserliness. It may affect frivol- 
 ity, or affect severity. The failure is the same in either 
 case. In either case an infinitely pathetic object is the 
 rich man who has not known how to be rich. 
 
 And now what is the lacking knowledge ? Certainly 
 not something which any schools to which the man 
 might have gone could possibly have taught. We not 
 merely cannot find, we cannot picture to our imagina- 
 tion, any college which among its other courses should 
 have one course which should teach men how to be 
 rich, how to live worthily in wealth. Only the col- 
 lege of life could teach that fine and difficult and lofty 
 art ; and in the college of life more than in any other 
 university everything depends upon the spirit and 
 teachableness of the student himself. But in that col- 
 lege there is one lesson which every right-spirited and 
 docile student ought to learn. It is the mystery of liv- 
 ing, and the supremacy of some great power on which 
 life depends, and the need of obedience to God. That 
 lesson is the purpose for which the college of life exists. 
 
Holo to Abound. 149 
 
 Its professors are the solemn events which come to 
 every man. Its text-books are the histories of men, 
 whose leaves and chapters are the passing years. Its 
 halls are the several businesses and relationships in 
 which men are engaged. In that great college, sacred 
 with the accumulations of generations of learning men, 
 the great central lesson must be learned that humanity 
 is not its own, but God's ; and that to glorify God and 
 to enjoy Him forever is the chief end of man. We may 
 not say that sympathy with fellow-man and the desire 
 to help him is the world's lesson. That is one of its 
 subordinate sciences, one of its necessary departments, 
 but only one. " The fear of the Lord is the beginning 
 of wisdom ; a good understanding have all they that do 
 His commandments. " That is the testimony of one of 
 the profoundest students of this university of life, one 
 of its most finished graduates, — David, the King of 
 Israel, in his hundredth and eleventh Psalm. His son, 
 King Solomon, a student of a diiferent temper, but also 
 no slight or superficial scholar, bore the same testi- 
 mony in the same words in the first chapter of his Book 
 of Proverbs. And what shall we say who stand by and 
 look at rich men and their failures ? What will some 
 of you who are rich men say, over whom as you are 
 growing older there is creeping a most depressing sense 
 that you have been all your life playing with your 
 riches as a child plays with diamonds ? Are you not 
 ready to say that if you could have carried from the first 
 a deep strong sense of God, it would have been a point 
 around which all your great melancholy, aimless, use- 
 less fortune, all your inherited wealth which has simply 
 
150 How to Abound. 
 
 kept you all these years from doing anything in this 
 busy world, would have crystallized into the most vigor- 
 ous shapes of character and usefulness. If your whole 
 soul had been full of that knowledge all these years, 
 how you would have been the master of your money, 
 and lifted your little corner of the world with it as a 
 lever, instead of its being your master as it has been, 
 and either crushing you down with the anxious care of 
 it, or wearing you out with the aimless spending of it ; 
 and it is hard to tell which of those two is worst. 
 
 When Jesus said to the rich young man " Go and sell 
 all that thou hast and give to the poor, " he had simply 
 found a man who did not know how to be rich. There 
 was nothing to do with that man but to send him back 
 to the preparatory school of poverty. To make that 
 special treatment of a single man the universal rule of 
 human life would be to shut up one of the great higher 
 schools of human character in sheer despair. Some- 
 times perhaps a rich man feels that if he could get rid 
 of his money he could be a strong and unselfish man. 
 It is the old delusion. The sinner in the tropics thinks 
 he could be a saint at the North Pole. It is only that 
 he knows how the sun burns, but has never felt how the 
 frost freezes. There is a special strength and a partic- 
 ular unselfishness which the rich man's wealth makes 
 possible for him. It is his duty to seek after them, and 
 never rest till he has found them ; not to make himself 
 poor, but to know how to be rich is the problem of his 
 life. 
 
 These thoughts rise up in us with every outcry of 
 poor men at the anomaly, — almost, some of the poor 
 
How to Abound. 151 
 
 would call it, the atrocity, — of some men being rich 
 while other men are very poor. Such outcry there will 
 always be ; but at its heart that which makes such an 
 outcry pathetic, and that alone which makes it danger- 
 ous, is that, often blindly and not able to understand 
 or to define itself, it is an outcry not against rich men, 
 but against rich men who do not know how to be rich. 
 Always there will be angry protests against any man 
 holding in any way, even the highest and most un- 
 selfish, wealth which the man who protests has failed to 
 reach ; but it is not this, — it is not wealth simply in 
 itself, — it is the pride of wealth, the indifference of 
 wealth, the cruelty of wealth, the vulgarity of wealth, 
 in one great word the selfishness of wealth, which really 
 makes the poor man's heart ache, and the poor man's 
 blood boil, and constitutes the danger of a community 
 where poor men and rich men live side by side. Let 
 riches know " how to abound " and poverty will not lose 
 its self-respect, and so will not struggle after the self- 
 respect which it feels that it is losing, with frantic and 
 tumultuous struggles. Oh, that every rich man and 
 woman here might know this truth, and use it when 
 their lives touch the sad and sore and hopeless lives of 
 poor men at their side. 
 
 I must pass rapidly on and say what little there is 
 time to say upon the other three divisions of my subject. 
 I said that there were other kinds of abundance besides 
 wealth. Think, if you will, for a few moments, about 
 the abundance of knowledge. How clearly we discover 
 as we watch the lives of learned men that there is some- 
 thing else needed besides the knowledge of truths ; there 
 
152 How to Abound. 
 
 is the knowledge of how to know truths, without which 
 a very large part of learning is a waste and failure. 
 Do you see what I mean ? Here is a scholar who has 
 accumulated all the facts which it is possible for him 
 to know about his special science. He knows them 
 all. You cannot ask him for one of them that he does 
 not instantly hold it out to you in his ready hand. 
 Why is it that you do not feel any enrichment of mind, 
 any enlargement of nature or character with all his 
 wonderful acquirements ? Why is it that as he has 
 grown more and more of an encyclopedia, he has grown 
 less and less perhaps, certainly not more and more, of 
 a man ? Why is it that with your ever-increasing won- 
 der at what he knows, you have no increased respect for 
 him ? He has no deep convictions. He has no strength- 
 ened reason. Knowledge has come to him but wisdom 
 has lingered ; not in a technical or special meaning, but 
 in a deep and human sense he has no faith ! Or per- 
 haps what strikes you still more is that his best and 
 most helpful relations to his fellow-men have faded away 
 in the thin air of his study. He has grown less hu- 
 man as his learning has increased. His sympathies 
 have dried up. He values his knowledge as the bot- 
 anist values his flower, — for the curiousness of its 
 structure ; not as the gardener values his flower, — for 
 the richness of life which it contains. He prefers to 
 press his flower in a heavy book, rather than to plant it 
 in the warm and fructifying earth. 
 
 What can we say of such a scholar but that he does 
 not know how to know. There is a science of knowl- 
 edge, as well as a science of fossils, and a science of 
 
How to Abound. 153 
 
 stars. The sacredness of all knowledge as the gift 
 of God ; the unity of all knowledge as the utterance of 
 God ; the purpose of all knowledge as the food of char- 
 acter in the knower and the helper of humanity through 
 him, — these are the great departments of that science. 
 Sometimes we see a scholar who has learned them all, 
 and what a new vision he gives us of the glory of schol- 
 arship ! Men who know less than he do not begrudge 
 or disparage his knowledge. The light that is in him 
 is not darkness ; it lightens all his world. And oh, my 
 friends, boys studying at college, men and women read- 
 ing books and struggling so restlessly for culture, there 
 is no way to fully win this highest knowledge, — the 
 knowledge of how to know, — but in the service of the 
 God of Light, who is also the God of Love, the God of 
 Character, the God of Man. Any industrious man 
 with a good brain and a good memory can know things 
 if he will ; only the reverent and devoted man can know 
 how to know. 
 
 Or turn your thoughts to another sort of abundance 
 — the abundance of friendship and acquaintances. 
 " Happy the man of many friends, " we say ; but hardly 
 have we said it when we stop ourselves. So many of 
 the men of many friends whom we have known have 
 run to waste. So many of the popular men have been 
 tyrannized over and ruined by their popularity. Their 
 principles have crumbled; their selfliood has melted 
 away ; they have become mere stocks and stones for fool- 
 ish men to hang garlands on, not real men, real utter- 
 ances of divine life, leading their fellow-men, rebuking 
 sins, inspiring struggles, saving souls. 
 
154 How to Abound. 
 
 Ah, yes ! Not merely to make men love you and 
 honor you, but to know how to be loved and honored 
 without losing yourself and growing weak, — that is the 
 problem of many of the sweetest, richest, most attractive 
 lives ; and there is only one solution for it, which blessed 
 indeed is he who has discovered ! To stiffen yourself 
 against the praise and honor of your fellow-men, to make 
 yourself insensible, to be a stoic and insist you will not 
 care what men think of you, that is the base way of 
 escape; that is as if a rich man escaped avarice by 
 throwing his money in the sea, or as if a scholar escaped 
 pedantry by laboriously forgetting all he knew. 
 
 But if the much-beloved man can look up and demand 
 the love of God ; if, catching sight of that, he can crave 
 it and covet it infinitely above all other love ; if, laying 
 hold of its great freedom, he can make it his, and know 
 that he loves God, and know that God loves him, — 
 then he is free. Then let him come back and take into 
 a glowing heart the warmest admiration and affection 
 of his brethren ; let him walk the earth with hosts of 
 friends, the heaven that he carries in his heart pre- 
 serves him. They cannot make him conceited, for he 
 who lives with God must be humble. They cannot 
 drown his selfhood, for the God he loves and serves is 
 always laying upon him his own personal duties, and 
 bringing the soul before its own judgment-seat every 
 day. He who knows that God loves and honors him may 
 freely take all other love and honor, however abundant 
 they may be, and he will get no harm. All that is 
 weak and foolish and unworthy in them, he will cast 
 aside; all that is worthy he will take worthily. 
 
Holo to Abound. 155 
 
 And now 1 come to the last sort of abundance of 
 which I wish to speak. It is that which belongs to the 
 Christian experience. I speak to Christian men, — to 
 those men who are living in the acknowledged and rec- 
 ognized obedience of Christ. Sad is the Christian life 
 to which there do not come times when the soul seems 
 to be living in great spiritual abundance. The world 
 of the soul grows rich; doubts disappear; faith be- 
 comes easy ; the assurance of God is on every side ; the 
 church overruns with helpfulness; trust is the happy 
 instinct of the heart ; peace, like a great sun-lit ocean, 
 receives the soul and soothes its anxieties and pains, 
 and makes it think itself almost in heaven. Oh, those 
 are very sacred days ! No other soul may know in what 
 abundance you are living; but, in a joy too deep for 
 songs, you live on, and no sorrow has the power to 
 make you sorrowful. Then is the time, my friend, my 
 Christian friend, when you do indeed need to know how 
 to abound. For such times have their very deep and 
 subtle dangers. Spiritual content, self-satisfaction, 
 idleness, are waiting at the door ; and at the other door 
 the powers of reaction, — fear which will feed upon the 
 triumph of this very hope, distrust which will be all 
 the stronger for this earnest faith, they too are waiting 
 for their chance. Oh, critical moment of a Christian 
 life! Then everything depends on whether you are 
 wise enough to know that only by duty, only by some 
 brave, self-sacrificing service of this Christ of whose 
 love all your soul is full, can Christ's love come to be 
 your permanent possession, and this peace and exalta- 
 tion be made more than mere spiritual luxuries, — be 
 
156 How to Abound. 
 
 made indeed a true new life. Many a Christian has 
 failed just there. Soon the great light, unused, has 
 faded away and left the soul in darkness. Soon peace 
 which was not vitalized to power has decayed to pride. 
 Something of this kind has come, I think, to whole 
 generations, to whole periods of Christianity. But see ! 
 If you lift up your head, if you put out your hand and 
 take your task, which certainly is waiting for you, then 
 instantly your high emotions know their place. They 
 turn themselves to motives. They become the neces- 
 sary habits of the life. They prove their reality by what 
 they can make you strong to do. No cloud can hide 
 them from you, no Satan's hand can rob you of them, 
 for they have entered in through the open door of your 
 will, and have become a true part of you. 
 
 If there are any of you, dear friends, to whom to-day, 
 by the kind grace of God, peace and faith and vision 
 are thus rich and real, I beg you to bestir yourself and 
 make them yours forever by doing some great hard duty 
 in their strength. That is the only way to keep them. 
 Let no spiritual exaltation come to you without your lift- 
 ing yourself up in its present power, and doing some 
 work for God which in your weaker moments and lower 
 moods has scared you with its difficulty. For duty is 
 the only tabernacle within which a man can always 
 make his home upon the transfiguration mountain. 
 
 And so in each of these several departments of our 
 life it is not enough that a man shall have attained abun- 
 dance, he must also know how to abound in riches, in 
 learning, in friendship, in spiritual privilege ; there is a 
 
How to Abound. 157 
 
 deeper knowledge -which alone can fasten the treasure 
 which you have won, and make it truly yours, and draw 
 out its best use. What a great principle that is ! Under 
 that principle, as I said, a man may even be the master 
 of the heart and soul of some possessions whose form 
 he does not own. I know that Jesus, the poor man who 
 walked through rich Jerusalem and had not where to 
 lay his head, had still the key of all that wealth. He 
 knew how to be rich, and so He was more master of 
 the heart of riches than any of the rich men in the great 
 houses, whose wealth was crushing them into misers, or 
 dissipating their powers in frivolity. And so with you 
 and me ; we cannot attain to all abundance in this one 
 short life which is our only one, but if we can come 
 to God and be His servants, the knowledge of how to be 
 things which we shall never be may enter into us. In 
 poverty we may have the blessing of riches ; in enforced 
 ignorance the blessing of knowledge ; in loneliness the 
 blessing of friendship ; and in suspense and doubt the 
 blessing of peace and rest. 
 
 Let me close all that I have said this morning with 
 two exhortations. 
 
 There are struggling men here, — men working day 
 and night for the precious things which make life full 
 and rich. Go on and struggle; only remember that 
 your struggle will be worthless, however you may get 
 the things you seek, unless you can get not merely the 
 bodies of those things but their souls. This was 
 Christ's exhortation, " Not for the meat which perish- 
 eth but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting 
 
15S How to Abound. 
 
 life. " Be satisfied with no gain unless you can carry 
 into its possession such a soul and spirit that it can 
 make of you a better, a truer, and a larger man. 
 
 And oh, my young friends, prosperous and happy, 
 with life all full of hope and chance and light, go on 
 and take the great abundance which God is offering 
 you ; only do not dare to go on into it all until first you 
 have prayed to God that He will make you know how 
 to abound. Pray for new hearts, large hearts which 
 shall be worthy of your privileges, and then go on and 
 without a fear take them all ; for no lot is too rich for 
 a soul that enters into it full of humility before God, 
 and love for fellow-man, and a deep desire for holiness. 
 So may you go on to all the blessings of full and happy 
 lives. 
 
X. 
 
 HOW TO BE ABASED. 
 
 I know how to be abased. — Phil. iv. 12. 
 
 I SPOKE to you last Sunday about knowing how to be 
 rich. Let us think to-day about knowing how to be 
 poor. Saint Paul declared that he had both kinds of 
 knowledge, and certainly he had had the chance to win 
 this last ; for his had been a life of poverty. First as 
 the poor student, then as the poor missionary, he had 
 never known what it was to live an easy life. He had 
 met all the temptations, he had enjoyed all the oppor- 
 tunities which hardship involves. He knew them from 
 his personal experience. And after all, the knowledge 
 of hardship and privation which comes from personal ex- 
 perience, must always have a reality which cannot be- 
 long to any other kind of knowledge of them. There is a 
 way, a true way, — as I pointed out last Sunday, — in 
 which a man may be able to say in the midst of his abun- 
 dance, " I know how to live the life which is destitute of 
 all this. " There is a central knowledge, a knowledge 
 of the heart of things, a consecration to God who is the 
 King and Heart of things, which makes it possible for 
 one to know conditions in which he has never lived ; but 
 still the supreme reality of personal experience remains. 
 The poor man looks askance while the rich man talks tq 
 
160 How to he Abased. 
 
 him about poverty. " Wait till you have tried it, " he 
 says. And the rich man owns the rebuke to his theo- 
 retical wisdom and is silent and almost ashamed. 
 Nothing of this kind is there in Saint Paul. However 
 we may have hesitated when he said, " I know how to 
 abound, " when he says this other thing, " I know how 
 to be abased," we accept most cordially the self-asser- 
 tion of a man who has come out of the midst of perse- 
 cutions and disappointments and disasters and poverty, 
 with a strength of character and a record of work which 
 has been one of the great glories of the world. 
 
 All men have owned that the knowledge which Paul 
 claimed is not an easy one to win or keep. To know 
 how to be poor ! Plenty of people there are who are set 
 down to the hard lesson. Plenty of people — yes, all 
 people, in different degrees and different ways — are led 
 into some disappointment and abasement, but how few 
 seem to stand in it evidently the stronger and the better 
 for it. How few look when they are in it as if they un- 
 derstood it, and come out of it as if it had done them 
 good. Indeed, men's feeling with regard to the possi- 
 ble blessing of adversity and trouble is, I think, very 
 suggestive and significant. They know there is some 
 secret hidden there, but it seems to be hidden so pro- 
 foundly that it is almost hopeless to find it, and the 
 effort to find it is most dangerous. Poverty seems to 
 men to be like the old fabled sphinx, — a mysterious 
 being who has in herself the secrets of life, but who 
 holds them fast, and tells them only in riddles, and 
 devours the brave, unfortunate adventurers who try to 
 guess at the wisdom she conceals and fail. The result 
 
How to he Abased. 161 
 
 is that few men seek her wisdom voluntarily. It is 
 only when all the other schools turn them out that they 
 will go to hers. Her gifts of wisdom seem to be pos- 
 sibly very rich, but actually very hard to win, and to be 
 meant for single and exceptional souls rather than for 
 the ordinary run of men. Is not this the feeling about 
 the uses of adversity, — that, while probably the few 
 very best men which the world has seen have been 
 trained by disappointment, the general mass of the 
 world's average virtue has been educated by success; 
 that disappointment and difficulty make the officers, 
 but prosperity makes the rank and file of the great hu- 
 man army ; that while the best man in all the world to- 
 day, probably, if we could find him, would prove to be a 
 very poor man, — perhaps a man just on the brink of 
 starvation, — it is the moderately comfortable classes of 
 mankind in which you will find the highest level of good 
 and comely living? If these are the ordinary judg- 
 ments of mankind about the blessing of abasement, I 
 think we ought to be interested in what Paul's words 
 suggest about knowing how to be poor. 
 
 And at the very outset, to come at once to the con- 
 trolling idea of what we have to say, do we not feel in 
 Saint Paul's words a certain tone and accent which con- 
 vey to us some sort of idea that to him abasement, as he 
 called it, was a positive thing, was not simply a condi- 
 tion of privation, but was something definite and real, 
 — something with a character and influences of its 
 own; not merely a condition of being without some- 
 thing, but a condition of being with, of being in, some- 
 thing else ? You cannot imagine him as he writes 
 
 11 
 
162 How to he Abased. 
 
 thinking of himself as one who is waiting outside of 
 doors where he is wholly anxious to enter in, the cul- 
 tivation which comes to him as he stands outside being 
 only the negative education of patience. It is evidently 
 a distinct region of life in which he finds himself, 
 where so long as he lives there is a special harvest for 
 him to reap which he could reap nowhere else. To rec-; 
 ognize the land in which he finds himself, and to reap 
 the harvest which he finds waiting for him there, — that 
 is the knowledge of how to be abased which Paul is 
 thankfully claiming; that is what all his life of abase- 
 ment has given him. 
 
 This appears in many of the words of Paul. He 
 writes to the Corinthians, "I take pleasure in infirmi- 
 ties, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in 
 distresses for Christ's sake ; for when I am weak, then 
 am I strong." There is a noble dignity about those 
 words. They are not the words of one who is merely 
 trying to console himself for the lack of comfort, and 
 to hold out till comfort shall bestow itself upon him. 
 They are the words of a man whom circumstances, 
 which he knows to be the hands of God, have led into a 
 certain life. He has not led himself there ; he has not 
 chosen poverty ; he has not tried to be poor ; but being 
 in that land of poverty, he looks about, and lo! it is 
 not barren. It has pleasures, revelations, cultivations 
 of its own. It has its own peculiar relationships to 
 Grod. It is not necessary to say whether it is poorer or 
 richer than the other land, the land of profusion and 
 al)undance. It is a true land by itself ; and Paul, who 
 lives there, honors and respects it, and so it honors him 
 
How to he Abased. 1G3 
 
 and gives him freely its own peculiar strength ; and ho 
 stands in the midst of it and cries, " When I am weak, 
 then am I strong. " 
 
 Is there not here a true intelligible picture of the way 
 in which a man may know how to be abased ? If it is 
 possible to look upon a limited, restricted life as a cer- 
 tain kind of life with its own peculiar chances and en- 
 lightenments out of which a man, if he knows how, may 
 get a character ; in which a man, if he knows how, may 
 live a life which would be impossible elsewhere, — then 
 certainly this limited, restricted life may win and hold 
 an affectionate respect which is a positive thing and 
 may be very strong and real. We need not be haunted 
 with the demon of comparison ; we need not say whether 
 the cultures and pleasures of abasement are greater or 
 less than those of abundance; enough that it has its 
 own, peculiar to itself, and full of value. Life is a 
 medal with two sides ; the other side, as we choose to 
 call it, has its own image and superscription, and is not 
 made up only of the depressions which are necessary to 
 make the elevations on the face. Or change the figure : 
 we live here in rocky New England. Surely there is 
 something more to say of its harsh landscape than 
 simply that it has not the palms of Egypt or the oranges 
 of Florida. We need not talk of it or think of it in 
 negatives. It has its own peculiar wealth of forest and 
 pasture and pond; it has its own peculiar beauty of 
 rocky ridges and broad sea-shore beaches ; it has its 
 own sky and soil and water ; and we who live here are 
 not merely resigned to our New England life and cli- 
 mate from necessity. We honor it and love it for its 
 
164 How to he Abased. 
 
 own intrinsic qualities. The pine-tree is as real a thing 
 as the palm-tree. It does not be a pine-tree merely be- 
 cause it cannot be a palm ; and surely it has no com- 
 plaint to make. This is the picture in my mind of the 
 positive nature of a life of abasement which makes it 
 worthy of honor and respect. 
 
 Such an idea as this is not in any way inconsistent 
 with the constant struggle of the abased and limited 
 life toward profusion and enrichment. Each stage or 
 kind of existence keeps the possibilities of its own char- 
 acter, although it feels the impulse which is always 
 moving it on toward another stage or kind of life. 
 Boyhood is a positive thing while it lasts, although it 
 is forever being carried on toward manhood. Rugged 
 New England may still struggle to improve her soil and 
 grow as near the palm-tree as she can, while still she 
 treasures and honors the characteristics which her pres- 
 ent condition has decreed. To honor the life you live 
 in now and here for its intrinsic goodness, part of that 
 goodness consisting in the fact that it may open into 
 some more abundant life, so to hold within it in perfect 
 balance contentment and hope together, — that cer- 
 tainly must be the way for a man to get the best out of 
 any stage of living. 
 
 I shall venture to take again for the illustration and 
 enforcement of what I have been saying, the same enu- 
 meration of the departments of living which I used last 
 Sunday. Abasement of life, like enrichment of life, is 
 a term which may be applied to wealth or to learning 
 or to friendships or to spiritual privilege. Let me 
 speak of each- 
 
How to he Abased. 165 
 
 Here is the poor man then — in the most literal 
 sense, the man who has not money ! His face and fig- 
 ure is familiar enough. I rejoice to know that he is 
 here this morning, and that I may speak to him to-day 
 as I spoke last Sunday to his wealthier friend. I should 
 be sorry indeed to be the minister of any church in 
 which I might not speak to both. And how shall one 
 speak to the poor man ? That must depend upon what 
 the speaker thinks he sees in the poor man's face, 
 upon what is the attitude in which the poor man stands 
 toward life. What some of his possible attitudes to- 
 ward life are, we know. To take the meanest first, he 
 may be servile and cringing in the presence of a wealth 
 some of whose overflowing crumbs he thinks that he 
 can coax to fall into his lap ; or, with more spirit, he 
 may be eagerly envious and jealous, over-estimating the 
 unknown luxury of wealth, and restless so long as he 
 must go without the things his richer neighbors have ; 
 always in feverish struggle to be rich himself. Or, with 
 the same cause working just the other way, he may de- 
 spise the abundance which has not fallen to his lot. He 
 may denounce wealth as wickedness ; he may grow bit- 
 ter and morose, and talk about his poverty, which cer- 
 tainly he has not deliberately chosen, as if it had 
 somehow a sort of merit in itself. Now all these atti- 
 tudes of the poor man toward life, different as they are 
 from one another, have this in common, — that they are 
 all shaped and controlled by the man's perpetual con- 
 sciousness that he is not as rich as other men; therefore 
 they all have a touch of slavishness about them. If my 
 neighbor's wealth keeps me in a condition of continual 
 
166 How to he Abased. 
 
 defiance, I am as much the slave of it as if it kept me 
 in a condition of continual obsequience. It controls 
 my life. It decides what I shall be, and interferes 
 with my self-decision; and that is slavery. 
 
 But now suppose that some bright day of freedom 
 comes, — some day when I forget comparisons and do not 
 think whether my neighbor is richer or poorer than I, 
 Still I am just as poor as I was before. Still all the posi- 
 tive condition of my poverty remains, but now it is posi- 
 tive not negative, not relative ; and so it has a chance to 
 show me its true character. A rugged, barren land it is 
 to live in still, — a land where I am thankful very often 
 if I can get a berry or a root to eat; but living in it 
 really, letting it bear witness to me of itself, not dis- 
 honoring it all the time by judging it after the stand- 
 ards of the other lands, gradually there come out its 
 qualities. Behold ! no land like this barren and naked 
 land of poverty could show the moral geology of the 
 world. See how the hard ribs which make the stony 
 structure of the planet stand out strong and solid. No 
 life like poverty could so get one to the heart of things 
 and make men know their meaning, could so let us feel 
 life and the world with all the soft cushions stripped off 
 and thrown away. No life like poverty could call out 
 such need for struggle. Poverty makes men come 
 very near each other, and recognize each other's human 
 "hearts ; and poverty, highest and best of all, demands and 
 cries out for faith in God. Not with a greater need, 
 but with a more ready consciousness of need, than 
 wealth, it turns in the destitution of external things to 
 the internal, to the spiritual, to the eternal, to God. 
 
How to he Abased. 167 
 
 Now it is not right to think of these things as mere 
 mitigations of a lot whose real intrinsic quality is that 
 it is not wealthy. On the contrary, they themselves 
 make a lot with its own qualities, with a value of its 
 own. Do you quietly laugh and say, "At least, how- 
 ever fine you may make them sound as you describe 
 them, no man would ever see in them such a value that 
 he would be poor for the sake of living the life which 
 those things make " ? The answer is, " Men have done 
 it. Men of other races, other standards, other natures 
 than yours have deliberately chosen poverty because it 
 seemed to make the richest and most honorable life. 
 And men of all races, of all times, who have not chosen 
 it but have been led into it by God, have found when 
 they had come there a true life which satisfied them. " 
 
 I know how superficial and unfeeling, how like mere 
 mockery, words in praise of poverty may seem. I am 
 not taunting the poor man by telling him that it is bet- 
 ter to be poor. God forbid ! But I am sure that the 
 poor man's dignity and freedom, his self-respect and 
 energy, depend upon his cordial knowledge that his 
 poverty is a true region and kind of life with its own 
 chances of character, its own springs of happiness, and 
 revelations of God. Let him resist the characterless- 
 ness which often comes with being poor. Let him in- 
 sist on respecting the condition where he lives. Let 
 him learn to love it so that by and by when he grows 
 rich he shall go out of the low door of the old familiar 
 poverty with a true pang of regret, and with a true 
 honor for the narrow home where he has lived so long, 
 and which he leaves to other men. We know that such 
 
168 How to he Abased. 
 
 a reverence of the poor man for his poverty is possible ; 
 for men enough vrhom we could name have borne in- 
 dubitable testimony that they have felt it. Sometimes 
 it has been almost elevated and incorporated into a re- 
 ligion. We know that any man who truly feels that 
 reverence for his own poverty is thereby liberated from 
 the worst part of the slavery to wealth. He may still 
 struggle to be rich, but he is not the slave of other 
 men's riches nor of his own unwon wealth for which he 
 strives. Calm, dignified, self-respectful, with no bit- 
 terness and no pride, — who but he is the man who 
 knows how to be abased ? 
 
 I must pass on and speak about the way in which a 
 man may know how to be poor in learning. That was 
 our second point. There are many of us who need that 
 knowledge, — many of us who before we have got well 
 into life see what a great world learning is, and also 
 see for a certainty how hopeless it is that we shall ever 
 do more than set our feet upon its very outermost bord- 
 ers. Some life of practical duty claims us ; some career 
 of business all made up of hard details, sharp, clear, 
 inexorable, each one requiring to be dealt with on the 
 instant, takes possession of us and holds us fast, and 
 the great stream of learning into which we long to 
 plunge and swim sweeps by our chained feet and we can 
 only look down into its tempting waters and sigh over 
 our fate. How many practical men — men who seem 
 to be totally absorbed and perfectly satisfied in their 
 busy life — really live in this discontent at being shut 
 out from the riclmess of learning. Is there a right way 
 and a wrong way, a wise way and a foolish way of liv- 
 
How to he Abased. 169 
 
 ing in that discontent ? Indeed there is. The foolish 
 ways are evident enough. The unlearned man who by 
 and by is heard sneering at learning, glorifying ma- 
 chineries, boasting that he sees and wants to see no 
 visions and that he never theorizes, — he has not known 
 how to be ignorant. He has let his ignorance master 
 and overcome him. It has made him its slave. The 
 man who, the more he became conscious of his hopeless- 
 ness of great scholarship, has grown more and more 
 sensible of what a great thing it is to be a scholar ; and 
 at the same time, by the same process, has grown more 
 and more respectful toward his own side of life, more 
 and more conscious of the value of practical living as a 
 true contribution to the great final whole; the man 
 therefore who has gone on his way, as most of us have 
 to do, with little learning, but has also gone on his way 
 doing duty faithfully, developing all the practical skill 
 that is in him, and sometimes, just because their de- 
 tails are so dark to him, getting rich visions of the gen- 
 eral light and glory of the great sciences, seen afar off, 
 seen as great wholes, which often seem to be denied to 
 the plodders who spend their lives in the close study of 
 those sciences, — he is the man who knows how to be 
 unlearned. It is a blessed thing that there is such a 
 knowledge possible for overworked, practical men. The 
 man who has that knowledge may be self-respectful in 
 the face of all the colleges. He may stand before the 
 kings of learning and not be ashamed; for his lot is 
 as true a part of life as theirs, and he is bravely hold- 
 ing up his side of that great earth over which the plans 
 of God are moving on to their completenesa. 
 
170 How to he Abased. 
 
 And next we speak about the destitution of friend- 
 ships, which is the appointed life of many people. Is 
 it a hard thing to know how to be poor in, perhaps al- 
 most destitute of, cordial associations with our fellow- 
 men ? " Let them pass me by ! I know well enough 
 how to do without their help or their society ! " Who 
 has not heard those scornful words coming out of the 
 hot lips of some angry man, and been sure, as he heard 
 them, that the man who spoke them did not know the 
 very thing which he boasted that he knew so well. 
 For, as I said last Sunday, no man knows how to do 
 a thing, who does it so that it makes him a worse 
 and not a better man. We say that society is a fine 
 art. It may be true that solitude is a finer. To get 
 along with our fellow-men seems often very hard, but 
 to get along without them seems impossible. 
 
 But let me suppose that somewhere in these pews this 
 morning is a man or woman whose life seems in some 
 strange, marked way to have been left out of the great 
 currents of humanity. Perhaps your very earliest days 
 were without the protection of a father's and a mother's 
 care; no circle of friends received you into the warm 
 world of its hospitality ; your own nature has not been 
 such as has easily attracted friendship ; your business 
 has been of some solitary sort; and besides all these 
 things, what we call accident has seemed to always 
 break every crystallization just as it was being formed. 
 Not even the church has seemed to gather your life into 
 the natural and cordial society of other lives; so you 
 have lived alone. Years, years ago you must have 
 found what a problem had been set you in that iso- 
 
How to he Abased. 171 
 
 lated life. You must have seen that as it offered you 
 temptations and dangers, so it offered you also chances 
 of its own. You must have seen that, without disparag- 
 ing the social life wnich opened to other men more 
 readily than it did to you, without ceasing to keep your- 
 self ready for it if it came, tnere still were certain 
 valuable things which, while it did not come, were 
 peculiarly within the power of your solitude. Whether 
 you have attained those valuable things or not, you can 
 at least imagine what they are. Can you not picture 
 to yourself a man who, shut out by any circumstances 
 from most active contact with his fellow-men, became 
 thereby a watcher of the universal human life in such a 
 way, from such a point of view, that he saw it more 
 truly than if he were in the very heart of its whirl and 
 movement ? A wiser insight, a larger knowledge of 
 mankind, a broader vision of the significance and, one 
 may say, of the glory of human life may surely come to 
 him who looks at it, as it were, sympathetically from 
 the outside, as a true man, and yet in some degree as a 
 spectator of humanity. The planet Mars shines for us 
 with a light which no citizen of Mars can see. 
 
 And then something more may come. The man thus 
 gazing upon life may see in the larger aspects which 
 are given to him, revelations of God. The Great King 
 may show Himself to one who gazes with such thought- 
 ful and broad view at His Kingdom. And then, having 
 seen the King and loved Him, the watchful man may 
 come back to the Kingdom which first revealed that 
 King, and love it for His sake. Here is a noble and 
 natural and beautiful progress. I am sure that it has 
 
172 How to he Abased. 
 
 made the charm and strength of many men who have 
 seemed somehow to be rather spectators of life than 
 themselves deeply involved in the complexity of living. 
 They have often been men who have loved their race 
 with the deepest and the largest love. The enthusiasm 
 of humanity often has seemed strong in them just in 
 proportion as their lives had little contact with the per- 
 sonal lives around them, and it has come about through 
 God. The large sight of the world has first led them 
 to Him, and then from Him they have come back to 
 love His Kingdom. 
 
 Now here is something which is much more than 
 compensation and consolation. It is not a reward 
 given by pity to make up for the loss of the privilege 
 of social life. It is a life itself. It brings out its 
 own qualities and powers in the man who lives it. He 
 may think it better or worse than some other life ; he 
 may endeavor to pass out of it into a fuller life ; but 
 while he lives in it, it ought to be always making him 
 more profoundly aware of his own soul, more reverent 
 toward God, more able to think great thoughts of his 
 fellow-men. If you must pass through what is even a 
 desert to get to fertile, smiling lands beyond, still it is 
 not good to count even the desert a mere necessary evil 
 to be got through and forgotten as soon as possible. It 
 is good as you plod through the sand to feed your eyes 
 with the vastness and simplicity of the world which 
 the monotony of sky and sand can most impressively 
 display to you. So if God has appointed to any of us 
 times of solitude and f riendlessness, — perhaps times of 
 unpopularity and neglect, — let us pray that we may not 
 
How to he Abased. 173 
 
 pass through them, however dreary they may be, with- 
 out bringing- out from them greater conceptions of Him 
 and of our fellow-men and of ourselves. This is the way 
 in which a man may show that he has known how to 
 live alone, or even to live neglected and despised. 
 
 And so we come to the last of our specified instances 
 of abasement, — the loss of spiritual exaltation and de- 
 light. It is a loss indeed. Delight, enthusiasm, hope, 
 content, — these are the true conditions of a Christian 
 life, just as song is the true condition of the bird, or 
 color of the rose. But just as the bird is still a bird 
 although it cannot sing, and the rose is still a rose al- 
 though its red grows dull and faded in some dark, close 
 room where it is compelled to grow, — so the Christian 
 is a Christian still, even although his soul is dark with 
 doubt, and he goes staggering on, fearing every moment 
 that he will fall, never daring to look up and hope. To 
 such conditions of depression every Christian some- 
 times comes. In such a condition many Christians 
 seem to live all along through their melancholy lives. 
 What then ? What shall we say ? It is not good. It 
 is not necessary. That we ought to know first of all. 
 Let us beware of giving to such moods and conditions 
 any such advantage as would come from thinking them 
 to be the right and true condition of a himible Chris- 
 tian life. Humility for the Christian, the truest 
 humility, means hope and enthusiasm. It must be so. 
 Since the whole strength of the Christian experience is 
 in the Saviour and not in the soul, the real acceptance 
 of the Saviour by the soul must, just in proportion as 
 it is complete, endow the soul with His vision and open 
 
174 How to he Abased. 
 
 before it all His certain prospects of success. No! 
 To be distrustful and gloomy in the Christian life is 
 not a sign of humility ; often it is a sign of pride. Yet 
 the evident distinction still remains. A man may 
 be a Christian and yet fail of a Christian's rapture 
 and peace. And what then ? While he walks in the 
 darkness, he must know how to be abased. However 
 he ought to be up and out of this condition, yet while 
 he lives in it there is a right way and a wrong way for 
 him to live. Then there comes in the great regulative 
 force of duty, — duty, the due, the thing that ought to 
 be done. Oh, how we come to value the perpetual min- 
 istry of that great power ! I spoke last Sunday of how 
 it kept the soul in its exaltations from flying wildly 
 off into vague rhapsodies and dreams. Behold, to-day 
 how this same power of duty preserves the soul in its 
 depression from despair ! Then when all higher light 
 seems dark, may be the very time when the light on 
 daily tasks grows clear. You cannot see the distant 
 heaven. You cannot hear the songs of angels. You 
 cannot even say assuredly that you know the love of 
 God, — but you do know that to be brave and true and 
 pure is better than to be cowardly and false and foul. 
 You do know that there are men and women all about 
 you suffering, some of them dying, for sympathy and 
 help. You do know that whether God loves you or not, 
 right is right ! Oh, how these great simple assurances 
 come out when the higher lights of the loftier experi- 
 ences grow dark ! I will not say, I dare not say, that 
 God lets the heavenly light be darkened in order that 
 these earthly duties may appear. I only say that when 
 
How to he Abased. 175 
 
 the cloud stretches itself across the heavens, then, un- 
 derneath the cloud and shut out from the sunshine, the 
 imprisoned soul still finds for itself a rich life of duty, 
 a life of self-control, a life of charity, a life of growth. 
 
 Is there some man or woman here who says, "My 
 religious life has no exaltations, no high hopes. I am 
 not equal to this life of depression. I do not know how 
 to be abased. I do not know how to go on and be true 
 to my religion, still shut out from its divinest hopes. " 
 What shall our answer be ? The world of duty is your 
 world. Go ; do your duty, giving to every task the sub- 
 limest motive which you know and which you can bring 
 to bear upon it. Get at the essence of goodness, which 
 is not in its enthusiasms or delights, but in its heart of 
 consecration. Sometimes the consecration may be all 
 the more thorough and complete when the joy of conse- 
 cration seems to be farthest away. And yet every con- 
 secration made in the darkness is reaching out toward 
 the light, and in the end must come out into the light, 
 strong in the strength which it won in its life and 
 struggle in the dark. 
 
 So here, then, is one brief conclusion, — here is the 
 result and substance of it all : Not to all men, not to 
 any man always does God give complete abundance. 
 To all men sometimes, to some men in long stretches 
 of their lives, come the abasement times, — times of 
 poverty, times of ignorance, times of friendlessness, 
 times of distrust and doubt; but God does not mean 
 that these times should be like great barren stretches 
 and blanks in our lives only to be travelled over for the 
 
176 Hoio to he Abased. 
 
 sake of what lies beyond. To him who, like Paul, 
 knows how to be abased, they have their own rich 
 value. They do for him their own good work. To have 
 our desire set on nothing absolutely except character, 
 to be glad that God should lead us into any land where 
 there is character to win, — this is the only real expla- 
 nation of life. He that has it may be more than rec- 
 onciled to living. He may do more than triumph over 
 his abasements. He may make close friendships with 
 them, so that he shall part from them with sorrow 
 when he is called to go to the right hand of God where 
 there is no more abasement, nothing but fulness 
 forevermore. 
 
XI. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 
 
 Ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. — 2 Cor. iv. 5. 
 
 The Church of Christ has been a power in the world 
 for many years. More and more widely it has spread, 
 till civilization is familiar with its presence ; and over 
 the borders of civilization it has run with its mission- 
 ary influence, and in lands which once were civilized 
 it has lingered with its persistent vitality, so that to- 
 day it is hard to find any country which is the home 
 of man wherein the Christian Church has not laid the 
 corner-stones of its truth and lifted the spire of its 
 hope. 
 
 It is possible at least to ascribe to the intrinsic vital- 
 ity of the Church some of those features of her history 
 which oftentimes seem strange. That she should have 
 excited violent hatred as well as violent love ; that she 
 should have been variously conceived, and that men 
 should have quarrelled over their various conceptions of 
 her ; that she should have actually been different things 
 at different times, — all these indisputable facts are 
 what might naturally have been looked for in a living 
 system made of living men. They all have come. They 
 fill the Church's history with life and movement. They 
 bring her ever new, though ever old and still the same, 
 
 12 
 
178 The Christian (Jliurch. 
 
 to each new age. They make the question, What then 
 is the Church ? a question always fit to ask and answer. 
 
 I shall not try to ask or answer it to-day. But on 
 this morning when we are to ask you for your offerings 
 for the extension of the Church's work and life in our 
 own country, — for domestic missions, — I should like, 
 as it has been my custom, to draw your thoughts to one 
 or two truths about the Church and its people and its 
 ministry which are very simple, but which I am not 
 certain that we always carry in our memories. 
 
 We go back to the New Testament for the beginnings 
 of the Church ; and, when we once are there, — quite on 
 the other side of all the discussions and refinements 
 which have come in through all the Christian ages, — it 
 is wonderful how simple it all is. Jesus Christ comes 
 and preaches the Gospel of the Kingdom, and manifests 
 the life of God. He stands with His shining nature 
 upon the hill of the truth He has to preach. He is 
 lifted up, by and by, in the fulness of His self-sacrifice 
 upon His cross. Toward His light, soul after soul is 
 drawn out of the darkness. Into the power of His self- 
 sacrifice one life after another is summoned out of its 
 discontent. It is all personal and individual at first. 
 " As many as receive Him to them gives He power to 
 become the Sons of God. " It is this man and that man 
 that is summoned. The light shines through this win- 
 dow and finds one laborer at his work. It smiles in 
 through the smoke of some boisterous revel and fills 
 some generous heart with shame. It smiles upon some 
 dreamer and turns his dream into a purpose. It is all 
 personal and individual. "Follow me," "Follow me," 
 
The Christian Church. 179 
 
 and Matthew leaves his tax-table standing in the street ; 
 and the sons of Zebedee pull hastily in over the blue 
 water to give themselves to the Master, who has called 
 them from the shore. 
 
 And what came next ? Why, the most natural thing 
 in all the world, — that which must always come when 
 single men believe the same truth, or are driven on by 
 the same impulse. When did a host of scholars ever 
 sit at the same teacher's feet and not become a school ? 
 When did a host of separate soldiers go each to fight 
 the same enemy and not be drawn into an army ? When 
 were a multitude of atoms ever filled with one mag- 
 netism and not brought into magnetic communion with 
 each other ? All the individual believers in, and fol- 
 lowers of, Christ become one in their common loyalty 
 and love. And so out of the crowd of disciples comes 
 the Church. 
 
 By and by a change approaches. The fountain out of 
 which the Church life visibly has sprung, the Master 
 who has called each of these disciples audibly to Him- 
 self, is just about to vanish from their sight. He is 
 to be still to each of them, and to each of those who 
 shall come after them, the same which He has always 
 been. Still, with His unseen presence. He is to give 
 His separate summons to every soul. The unity of His 
 believers to the end of time is still to have the secret of 
 its existence in the personal relation between each of 
 them and Him. To help this invisible relation to real- 
 ize itself and not to be all lost in the unseen, the gra- 
 cious kindness of the Master provides two symbols which 
 thenceforth become the pledges at once of the personal 
 
180 Tlie Christian Church. 
 
 believer's belonging to the Lord, and of the belonging of 
 believers to each other. The sacraments are set like 
 gems to hold the Church into its precious unity. 
 
 Such is the Church. The union of believers, out- 
 wardly manifested by the sacraments, but having its 
 essence in the personal union of each believer's soul 
 with Christ. I see the gates of the New Testament 
 open outward. That life which had been taking shape 
 within the little world which the New Testament en- 
 closed, goes forth so quietly, so simply to meet the 
 larger life of the world ! It is Peter coming down from 
 the house-top to go to Cornelius at Cesarea. It is 
 Paul crossing over from Troas into Macedonia. I see 
 the history which has come since. And all bears testi- 
 mony to the naturalness of the New Testament process 
 by the way in which it has possessed the world. This 
 Jesus must be a true Lord of men. This power which 
 draws His disciples to each other must be a genuine 
 power. These sacraments must be intrinsically natural 
 utterances of what they try to express; for, lo, every- 
 where the Church has built itself! In every age, in 
 every land she stands, her single life pulsating with 
 the multitudinous life of which she is composed, the ul- 
 timate pulsation coming from the living life of her 
 Master, to which every particle of her being immediately 
 responds; the two jewels on her breast-plate burn- 
 ing with ever-deepening and accumulating richness, and 
 making together the clasp which holds about her essen- 
 tial nature the robe of her outward form. 
 
 This is the Christian Church, — the most glorious 
 because the most natural, the most natural because the 
 
The Christian Church. 181 
 
 most glorious, of all the associations and institutions 
 of mankind. But as yet, you see, we have not spoken 
 of that which sometimes seems to stand forth first in 
 people's thinking of the Church. We have not spoken 
 of the ministry, and we are right. The Church exists 
 before the ministry. Jesus has gathered His disciples. 
 They are united each to Him, and through Him they are 
 all united to each other ; and then, one day, out of the 
 group of those disciples He chooses twelve whom also 
 He calls apostles. They are disciples first, and their 
 discipleship lies behind their apostleship until the end. 
 Out from the body of the Church rise certain men, 
 called by the Lord to whom the Church belongs, in 
 whom all that the Church means shall be peculiarly 
 represented, who shall tell its story to the world, who 
 shall both cultivate and manifest its life. They are to 
 build the Church, and to declare the Church. They 
 are not to rule the Church, certainly not to be the 
 Church. That is what has taken place ever since. Out 
 of the great body of Christians have stood forth the 
 Christian leaders. Now with one sort of ordination, 
 now with another ; now with the summons of the people, 
 now with the irresistible impulse of their own souls; 
 now with the direct call of God most clear and plain, 
 but always, if they were truly ministers of Christ, 
 with all three consenting and confederate to give them 
 their position, — in every age, in every land there have 
 stood forth the Church's ministers (true successors of 
 the first apostles), some more and some less visibly 
 united to those earliest ministers by their forms of 
 faith and action; but all successors of the apostles 
 
182 The Christian Church. 
 
 in the nature and the spirit of the work they had 
 to do. 
 
 And that ministry, what was it, what is it, to the 
 Church ? Is it the Church's master ? Is it the sole 
 and solemn channel through which divine truth and the 
 divine will comes to the waiting hearts which could 
 know neither but for it ? Is it the stream tlii'ough which 
 alone grace flows out of the Fountain of Grace, which 
 is the heart of God ? That were a clear idea, a most 
 distinct and unmistakable theory. That would set the 
 people following wherever the ministry chose to lead. 
 That would reduce all duty to one single duty, obedi- 
 ence, perfect obedience to the spiritual lord. But also 
 that would either deny or render insignificant the very 
 fact from which, as we saw, the Church took its exist- 
 ence. That fact is the personal communion between 
 each believer and the Christ. That fact must not be 
 tampered with. No ministry of any most thoroughly 
 ordained apostle must relieve the individual soul of its 
 responsibility or rob the individual soul of its privilege 
 of immediate search after the truth, immediate submis- 
 sion to the commandment of its Lord. What then ? 
 There is only one other place for the ministry to hold. 
 If it is not the master it must be the servant of the 
 Church. If it is not set to rule, it must rejoice to obey ; 
 to know the Church to be greater than it and not its 
 creature, to accept it as its highest duty to help the 
 Church to realize itself, and to grow into the full power 
 of the Divine Life of which it, through the relation be- 
 tween Christ and the souls of its individual members, is 
 perpetually the recipient. 
 
The Christian Church. 183 
 
 Ruler or servant, which shall it he ? Strange how 
 from the first the very name by which the successors of 
 the apostles have been called has seemed to answer the 
 question for itself. They have been ministers; and 
 " ministers " means " servants. " Strange how the great- 
 est of them all at the beginning took pains to claim the 
 place in which he and his brethren should stand. " Not 
 for that we have dominion over your faith, " cried Paul,» 
 " but we are partakers of your joy. " And then again in 
 those great words which I have made my text, — " We 
 preach ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. " Strange 
 that, with words like these written in the very forefront 
 of its shining history, the Church should have so loved 
 the other notion of the rulership of the clergy, the 
 dominion of the priest ; and hierarchies, splendid with 
 pomp, or subtle with intrigue, but always hard with 
 tyranny, should have so filled the story of the Chris- 
 tian ages. 
 
 And yet not strange ! Nothing is strange whose illus- 
 trations occur alike in every region of human life. And 
 where is the department of living in which servantship 
 has not always tried to turn itself into rulership, and 
 had with long delay and difficulty to be brought back to 
 the higher idea of servantship again. Certainly it is 
 so in government. What is the world learning after 
 all these years except that the governor is the servant 
 of his people ? After centuries of tyranny and subject- 
 ship, — centuries in which the people seemed to exist 
 only by the ruler's permission, and to have no power of 
 originating thought and action, — everything is changed. 
 In all of civilized Christendom there is no king who 
 
184 The Christian Church. 
 
 dares to claim that he is anything but the people's 
 servant, that his power came from them, and that their 
 will must lie behind his everywhere. 
 
 That idea of servantship has never been so absolutely 
 lost in religion as it has in politics ; but if you read the 
 story of five centuries ago, or if you see the visions which 
 floating before the eyes of priests have been incorpo- 
 rated into ecclesiastical institutions, you will become 
 aware of how the other idea, — the idea of lordship, — 
 has always been pressing for assertion. Lord-Bishops 
 and Lord-Presbyters, Church Barons and Church 
 Princes, Popes, Prelates, Potentates, — they all bear 
 witness to the presence of a theory that the Church 
 exists first in the clergy, and that the laity become part 
 of the Church only by the extension of the clergy's life 
 to them. Against that theory stands up the other : that 
 the laity are the Church, and that the clergy exist sep- 
 arate from them only to carry out the purposes of their 
 life, to do in special and peculiar ways what it is the 
 duty and privilege of the whole Church to do, — in one 
 great word to be the Church's servants, not its lords. 
 
 There is indeed one word in our own church's use 
 which seems at first to give a color to the other theory. 
 The minister of any parish is called its "rector" or 
 its "ruler." And no doubt much of the direction of 
 the parish's affairs is given to his hands. What is his 
 power ? I take it to be very much like that which the 
 company of any ship intrusts to one among their num- 
 ber whom they make their steersman. They set him at 
 the helm ; they put the rudder in his hands ; they bid 
 him watch the compass and the stars, — but it is all a 
 
The Christian Church. 185 
 
 delegation of their power. He has no right to sail the 
 ship to any other than the port they wish to reach. 
 They really steer the ship in him. He is their servant 
 still, obeying the commandment which they gave him 
 when they said, " Guide us and help us find our way. " 
 
 But then the question comes whether with such an 
 idea of the ministry as this, it is possible to think of it 
 and speak of it as a divine institution, — as something 
 instituted and ordained by God Himself. Why not ? 
 It all depends on where we let ourselves get into the 
 habit of looking for the work of God and discovering 
 the operations of His hands. If we can see God only 
 in movements quite outside of the natural proceedings 
 of humanity, then we shall hardly think of any minis- 
 try as being divinely ordered, unless it come down to 
 us in a chariot out of the sky, or else a hand be 
 reached forth from heaven to rest upon the head of the 
 selected priest. But if we thoroughly believe that 
 God's activity is never more potent than when His 
 children, full of the love and fear of Him, give Him 
 the opportunity to work through them, then surely 
 there can be no ordination more complete or solemn 
 than that which draws forth from the host of worship- 
 ping and working Christians here one and there another 
 to be in special ways that which they all are in the es- 
 sence of their Christianity ; to be, as Saint Paul says, 
 "helpers of their joy." Do you or I believe that the 
 President of the United States is less divinely called to 
 his high place than Henry the Eighth or Charles the 
 First was set upon the throne of England. And yet the 
 president is the people's servant, and the kings were 
 
186 The Christian Church. 
 
 tyrants. When from the depths of any nation's life 
 there stirs a consciousness of need which finally by a 
 deliberate choice calls forth one man and says to him, 
 " Be our guide, " and he obeys, I know not where to find 
 a more true utterance of God's will than that. 
 
 The very methods of the early Christian life sound 
 crude to-day. We read the story of how they chose 
 Matthias by lot to fill the place of Judas. We hear 
 their prayer to God that He will guide the drawing of 
 the numbered disk. We watch them as they stand 
 around with serious exalted faces waiting the result. 
 It is all true, inspiring, and impressive ; but what is it 
 compared with the movement of God's spirit through a 
 church, bidding it summon this or that earnest soul to 
 help it and to show it of His love. A group of Chris- 
 tian hearts is a nobler and more sensitive medium for 
 God to speak through than a handful of pebbles in an 
 urn. God may speak through either ; surely the Voice 
 through the sacred, the divine medium of Man will be 
 the more sacred, the more divine. 
 
 There are three possible calls to every minister, — 
 the call of God, the call of his own nature, and the call 
 of needy men. May not one almost say that no man 
 has a right to think himself a minister who does not 
 hear all three vocations blending into one and marking 
 out his path to walk in past all doubt. And these 
 three come to perfect union in the soul of him who 
 hears the Father call one of His children to serve the 
 rest in those great necessities which belong to them 
 all. 
 
 And if we ask not simply about the sacredness of the 
 
Tlie Christian Church. 187 
 
 ordination, but about the inspiration that goes with it. 
 the answer is no less clear. Which will inspire a man 
 most, which will carry him most buoyantly through a 
 long life of labor, making the last years more eager and 
 exhilarating than the first, the joy of ruling men or the 
 joy of serving men ? He little knows what human na- 
 ture is who hesitates about his answer. You may in- 
 deed feel the identity between the two. You may see 
 how each, realized at its fullest, becomes the other; 
 how he who rules men most wisely, serves them most 
 humbly ; and he who serves men most efficiently, rules 
 them most powerfully ; but taking them in their ordi- 
 nary distinction from each other, it is a nobler relation 
 to a man to serve him than it is to rule him. Ruler- 
 ship stifles and hardens the nature which it deals with. 
 Servantship opens and softens it. Rulership is unsym- 
 pathetic. Servantship is full of sympathy. Rulership 
 is monotonous and works by law. Servantship is in- 
 genious and various and free. Rulership is self-con- 
 scious. Servantship is self -forgetful. The ruler grows 
 tired on his throne. The servant sees his working- 
 room always alive with desire and need. 
 
 One sees the young men pressing in at the gates of 
 life, eagerly asking what there is to do in this great, 
 busy world, and he longs to hold out to them the privi- 
 lege of the Christian ministry. I see the young men of 
 this congregation ; I have seen them for almost twenty 
 years. I have watched some of them as they have 
 taken their places as ministers, and are doing the Gos- 
 pel work. I have seen the great host of them going 
 other ways. I see the great host of them goring other 
 
188 The Christian Church. 
 
 ways to-day. They turn to honest, useful, interesting 
 work on every side. I rejoice in all that they are do- 
 ing and will do, but all the time I ask myself, " Why 
 is it that they do not more largely seek the ministry of 
 Christ ? " I would that I could put the privilege of that 
 ministry before them as it seems to us who have long 
 lived in it. I wish that some one here this morning 
 might so see it that it might win his life. I believe so 
 fully that the Christian ministry in the next fifty years 
 is to have a nobler opportunity of usefulness and power 
 than it has ever had in the past, that I would gladly 
 call, if I could, with the voice of a trumpet to the 
 brave, earnest, cultivated young men who are to live in 
 the next fifty years to enter into it, and share the privi- 
 lege of that work together. 
 
 And the word with which I would summon them 
 should be that great word " service. " " Whosoever will 
 be chief among you, let him be your servant," Jesus 
 said. It was an announcement, not of mortification, 
 but of satisfaction. It was not saying, " You must dis- 
 appoint your desire," but "You must fulfil it." The 
 fulfilment of life is service. And then He stretched out 
 His arms, and with that self-assertion which no other 
 son of man has ever dared to make. He bade them see 
 the illustration of what He had just told them in Him- 
 self. " Even as the Son of Man came not to be minis- 
 tered unto but to minister," He said. 
 
 The man who ministers, the man who is a minister, 
 -^ that is, a servant, — enters into the company of 
 Jesus. He lives with Him who gave His life for men, 
 and in so doing, lived supremely. He undertakes the 
 
The Christian Church. 189 
 
 sympathetic study of humanity in every part. He 
 clothes his life with honor for human nature. He be- 
 lieves in man as clogged, hindered, and broken, but as 
 capable of purification and rectification by the power of 
 God which he may help to bring into exercise upon it ; 
 and so he undertakes his service. Is there any theory of 
 rulership which can compare with that for the exhila- 
 ration and elevation of a devoted man ? 
 
 But the ministry does not exist for the good of the 
 ministers, but for the good of the people ; and so it is 
 necessary — before we are sure that any conception of 
 the ministry is thoroughly good and true — that we 
 should see if that theory will help the people to their 
 best life. What then will be the effect upon the people 
 of being taught that their ministers are indeed their 
 ministers, their servants ? There is one effect which it 
 might produce which would indeed be a blessing. It 
 might make the people feel and accept their true re- 
 sponsibility. If they are indeed the Church, charged 
 with its interests, with its progress dependent upon 
 them, they must be full of thought and care and study. 
 They must know how their charge is faring. Their 
 eyes must be here at home and at the ends of the earth 
 at the same time. They are the Church, and its dis- 
 grace or honor, its success or failure, is theirs. 
 
 There have been great times, some far back in the 
 early history, some in the modern days, in which the 
 whole body of the Church has seemed in large degree 
 ready to claim its privilege. The problems of religion 
 have seemed to be all men's problems. The worship of 
 the House of God has seemed to be all men's care. 
 
190 Tlie Christian Church. 
 
 tn I , 
 
 The extension of the truth, the spread of missions, 
 has enlisted all men's anxiety and ingenuity. At 
 those times the ministers have seemed really to be what 
 they ought to be, not strange, foreign beings dropped 
 down from the skies, or blown into a region with which 
 they had no affinity out of some wholly alien world. 
 They have been part and parcel of the life from which 
 they sprang, and which always lay behind them and fed 
 them with its strength. They were the leaders of the 
 people only as the first curling wave which runs up 
 farthest on the beach is the leader of the great world of 
 waves which stretches out behind it, all crowding for- 
 ward, all uttering its shoreward impulse in the servant- 
 wave which bears its banner, and tells of its desire. 
 
 The Church — our church like all the rest — falls too 
 far short of this idea. It is too much a clergyman's 
 church. The people sit too much and say, "Tell us 
 what we shall think," instead of turning their own 
 thoughts to the most sac'ocl things, and by and by being 
 able to say, "We think this; help us, servants and 
 friends of ours, to see if it be true. " The people sit too 
 much and say, " Tell us what to do, " instead of coming 
 with their hands full of plans, saying, " This needs to 
 be done. Do it, servants and friends of ours, and we 
 will supply you with all the means and help you need. 
 It is our work. " 
 
 Do you not feel, even as I speak, what a breadth and 
 freshness and freedom and variety and vitality would 
 come into the Church's thought and working if the 
 Church itself — which is the people, not the clergy — 
 really did think and work, and with a true sense of 
 
The Christian Church. 191 
 
 responsibility and a true initiative impulse accepted 
 the privilege of their commission ? 
 
 Sometimes we hear our American system of Church 
 management abused and even ridiculed. And no doubt 
 it is liable to manifest theoretical objections. It is 
 capable of being made to seem very absurd that a con- 
 gregation should ask a man to come and be their 
 teacher, but insist that they will only ask him with 
 the understanding that he believes what they believe, 
 and that if he comes to believe otherwise than they 
 do, he will go away and teach them no longer. Such 
 theoretical objections are easy to draw up in telling 
 shape, but they amount to very little. They are of no 
 consequence whatever compared with that, the real 
 fact of value about our system, — which is, that the 
 people are, at least declaredly, the living and effective 
 body of the Church. The power and the responsibility 
 reside in them. They have the real apostolical succes- 
 sion. Only this certainly is true, — that, with a sys- 
 tem at whose heart is such a truth, we are bound to 
 carry that truth out into activity with vastly more 
 completeness than we do now. It will not do for the 
 people to hold the power and try to give the re- 
 sponsibility away. Power and responsibility must go 
 together. If the Church, as it ought, counts the minis- 
 ters its servants, it must assume the deeper and higher 
 and more exigent prerogatives of mastery, and think 
 and study and believe and act with the energy and 
 earnestness of a true Church of God. 
 
 There is good reason to believe that the people in all 
 the churches -— and in our church as well as all the 
 
192 The Christian Church. 
 
 others — show signs to-day that they will recognize and 
 claim their place. There is more general thought 
 about religious truth. There is more spontaneous ac- 
 tivity in Christian work. Men come into the Church's 
 communion less and less from mere drift and habit, 
 more and more with serious question about what it 
 means. If the clergyman is less reverenced as an auto- 
 crat and less consulted as an oracle, he is more used as 
 a willing servant, and more valued as a faithful friend. 
 
 For you will freely understand how, in all that I have 
 said this morning, the word "servant" must be com- 
 pletely stripped of a great deal of base association be- 
 fore it can be put to the high use which I have claimed 
 for it. It must be not contradictory to, but identical 
 with, the other word which I have just linked to it, 
 the word " friend. " " Servus Servorum Dei, " — the ser- 
 vant of the servants of God, — so the most gorgeous of 
 ecclesiastical princes has called himself, reverting ever 
 to the first and truest thought of what he is. And yet 
 "Amicus Amicorum Dei," — friend of the friends of 
 God, — surely that too must be his name. All hard- 
 ness, all reluctance, all tyranny on the one side, and all 
 obsequiency on the other side, must pass away. And 
 then in an atmosphere of mutual service — which is also 
 an atmosphere of mutual love — the lives of minister 
 and people must give themselves each to the other, and 
 both to the work of Christ and of His Church. 
 
 The Church of the Millennial days shall be nothing 
 less, nothing else than a regenerated and complete hu- 
 manity. There all shall be ministers, for all shall be 
 servants. All shall be people, for all shall be served. 
 
The Christian Church. 193 
 
 In these imperfect days let us watch and wait for those 
 days of perfectness. Let us do all we can to help 
 their coming. Let us count no condition final till 
 they come. Let us live in, and live for, and never de- 
 spair of, the ever-advancing, ever-enlarging Church of 
 Christ. 
 
XII. 
 THE OPENING OF THE EYES. 
 
 Jesns said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God ? He an. 
 swered and said, Who is He, Lord, that I might believe on Him ? And 
 Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen Him, and it is He that talketh 
 with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe, and he worshipped Him. — 
 John ix. 35-38. 
 
 There is always a deep fascination for us in seeing 
 exactly how another person's mind works. Some peo- 
 ple are very attractive simply from a transparency 
 which lets us look in perfectly upon their mental move- 
 ments and see just how all their processes work out 
 their conclusions, even if there is nothing remarkable 
 in the processes themselves. And even with the other 
 kind of attraction which belongs to very difficult and 
 reserved people, whose mental action it is hard to 
 follow, the secret of it is still the same ; for what draws 
 us to them is merely the desire to do what seems so 
 hard, to catch some sound of the machinery which they 
 conceal so well, and guess how it is working. We are 
 unable to accept any result without supposing a process 
 behind it. 
 
 In all the outward works of men, in all that their 
 bodies do, we see the process perfectly, and trace it 
 perfectly to the result, and all is very satisfactory. 
 We see the mason lay every brick, and so the house 
 
The Opening of the Eyes. 195 
 
 when it is done is perfectly accountable. At the other 
 extreme all the highest workings, all God's workings, 
 we cannot trace. Results stand out alone. There we 
 have miracles. Between the two, half -hidden, half-dis- 
 coverable, always tempting us to discover more, there 
 are men's mental movements. Some part they will not 
 tell us, other parts they cannot. We watch the pro- 
 cesses by which our neighbors come to their conclu- 
 sions ; and they elude us like a stream that goes sliding 
 along through thickets, only occasionally glistening out 
 into a patch of sun-lit water, just frequent enough to let 
 us keep the general bearing of its course. How Moses 
 came to undertake the leadership of Israel, how David 
 was led to offer himself against the giant, how Caesar 
 came to cross the Rubicon, what made my friend give up 
 his promising career and go into the army for his coun- 
 try, — I can see just enough of these to give me interest 
 in them, an interest, that is, a real place inside such 
 questions, just enough to tempt me always with the 
 desire to know more. The way in which the workings 
 of God's mind are always represented to us in the Bible 
 under the most familiar human representations, — re- 
 pentance, jealousy, anger, patience, — those affections 
 which must be so different from anything we can con- 
 ceive of in their mightiness and their purity being 
 identified with and expressed by the feeble human 
 echoes of them of which we do know something, — this 
 is the Bible's effort to give men the same interest in 
 the thoughts of God which they have in the thoughts of 
 one another. It is a part of the same effort of which 
 the Incarnation was the sum and crown. 
 
196 The Opening of the Eyes. 
 
 The book or story or lecture which by sympathetic 
 insight lets us have this interesting view of how some 
 mind is working, is always popular. If any one could 
 perfectly describe how the poorest man in town came to 
 do the simplest of his duties, if he could show how every 
 wheel of motive was toothed and fitted into its task, 
 and make it perfectly clear how each step led to every 
 next one, he would fascinate any audience that listened 
 to him. The books that do it most completely are not 
 the subtle books of casuistry which set out to do it, 
 but the simplest and most earnest books, — those which 
 deal with men in their most earnest, which are always 
 their simplest, moments. This description applies 
 above all books to the Bible, and the Bible people do 
 open their mental movements to us with a clearness 
 which no other series of characters can rival. We see 
 their thoughts grow ; and we see more than we usually 
 can of how the thought involves and necessitates the 
 action. This is a large part of the charm of the Bible 
 for those who have no deepest personal religious 
 interest in it. 
 
 There is an illustration of this in the story from 
 which I take this evening's text. Jesus had given a 
 blind man his sight. The Pharisee, associating the 
 man with his Restorer, had made a captious quarrel 
 with him, and finally excommunicated him. Jesus 
 meets him, and it ends by his becoming the worship- 
 ping disciple of the Master. Here was a great change, 
 and yet the whole story of it is told in one chapter. 
 Everybody who reads the chapter feels that he knows 
 the whole, understands just how the man became a 
 
The Opening of the Eyes. 197 
 
 Christian. It would not be possible to find a story 
 through which you could more clearly trace the flow of 
 a simple, candid mind from motive to conviction, from 
 fountain to ocean, than we can this man's. 
 
 If we can understand it so clearly, it must throw 
 some light upon other religious experiences, — upon the 
 ways in which some other men come to Christ, — which 
 are not so clear ; and this is why I want to make it the 
 basis of a few words to-night. What I have to say 
 will belong in part to each of the three speeches in the 
 short dialogue which I read for the text: "Dost thou 
 believe on the Son of God ? " " Who is He, that I 
 might believe on Him ? " " Thou hast both seen Him, 
 and it is He that talketh with thee." Then he wor- 
 shipped Him. 
 
 Jesus said to him, Dost thou believe on the Son of 
 God ? Consider the man's position. He had been 
 blind all his life; he was blind that morning; now, 
 at night, he saw. The wonderful beauty of the world 
 had burst upon him. The greatest luxury of sense that 
 man enjoys was his, and he was revelling in its new- 
 found enjoyment. And he was intensely grateful to 
 the friend who had given it to him. He loved Him 
 and thanked Him with his whole heart. And the 
 blessing had cost him something, and was all the dearer 
 for that. It had cost him his hereditary position in 
 the national synagogue. One must almost be a Jew to 
 know what a sacrifice it was to give that up; but he 
 had been very brave and generous about it. He had 
 stood by his benefactor. When they wanted to make 
 him insult Jesus he had honored Him ; and now when 
 
198 Tlie Opming of the Eyes. 
 
 he saw Him coming, his whole heart leaped up with joy. 
 All that he had suffered seemed as nothing. Here was 
 his wonderful friend, and he could thank Him once 
 again. He had found Him. He saw Him with the 
 new, strange, beautiful sight which He Himself had 
 given. And just then Jesus steps in and questions 
 him ; not, " Are you glad and grateful ? " but " Dost 
 thou believe on the Son of God ? " It is a new thought, y 
 a new view altogether. We can almost see the sur- 
 prise and bewilderment creep over his glad face. He 
 had been hurrying to thank a friend, and here he was 
 stopped and thrown back to think and answer whether 
 he " believed on the Son of God. " 
 
 "The Son of God." The name was not wholly 
 strange to him. It had lurked throughout his well- 
 learned national history. Angels in the Old Testa- 
 ment had been called God's sons. Sometimes great, 
 pure, and holy men had recognized their sonship to di- 
 vinity, or had it recognized by others. That there was 
 a God, and that they were His children, bearing some 
 part of His nature, and loved with His fatherly tender- 
 ness, — all this he knew something about ; but " The 
 Son of God," — one in whom the hints and best prom- 
 ises of all these others were fulfilled, one who really 
 brought the Deity with Him and stood as Mediator 
 between the Father and the sons everywhere, between 
 the beneficent divine and the needy human, — this 
 bewildered him. It may have fascinated him, and 
 filled him with that strange sort of longing which we 
 all have after our highest dreams of whose reality we 
 have no proof except the intensity with which we wish 
 
The Opening of the Eyes. 199 
 
 that they were true. It may have fascinated him, but 
 it bewildered him first. It was not what he had ex- 
 pected. The ground where he had thought to lay the 
 foundation of his little monument of gratitude had 
 opened to infinite depths, and he must build so much 
 deeper than he had thought. He had it on his lips to . 
 thank his friend, and lo ! suddenly he was dealing with 
 God and with the infinite relations between God and 
 man. 
 
 It is a bewilderment which is always ready to fall, 
 which often does fall, upon the superficialness of our 
 ordinary life. ^ There are always deep truths ready to 
 open beneath us, and great unifying truths which are 
 always waiting to close around and bind into a sur- 
 prising unity the fragmentary lives we live. For we 
 certainly do live very much in fragments. Our special 
 blessings stand isolated, and are not grasped and gath- 
 ered into one great pervading consciousness of a blessed 
 life, — of a life brooded over and cared for and trained 
 by God the Blesser. Health is a joy of the senses, 
 a delight of full red blood and strong springy mus- 
 cles, and a skin that tingles with joy in the cold or 
 basks with joy in the sunshine. It has no strong, suffi- 
 cient purpose. We are well and strong for nothing. 
 Talent, skill, culture, do their little separate works. 
 They have hardly more, in some ways they have less, 
 associations in the unity of a plan of life than the in- 
 stincts of the brutes. One paints his picture, another 
 builds his house, another wins his fortune, and each 
 achievement stands by itself and leaves the bystander 
 asking, or at least sets the worker himself to asking, a« 
 
200 The Opening of the Eyes. 
 
 he looks back on his life, " Well, what of it ? " Power, 
 as men get it and use it, is like the play of a crowd of 
 children turned into a great factory and amusing them- 
 selves by whirling one this wheel, and one the other, 
 with no single purpose controlling and no single result 
 issuing from the whole. One rules his senate and an- 
 other his society and another his family and another his 
 club and, with all the power everywhere lavished, the 
 whole goes largely unruled. Is not this the trouble ? 
 We live in such small detail. The world unfolds its 
 riches more and more. We are turned loose among 
 them. Blessing — opportunity, which is the great 
 blessing — opens around us on every side; but in the 
 midst of it all we seem to live such a baby-life. We 
 are so like children in their nurseries, who know every 
 toy and bit of furniture perfectly, but know no whole, 
 — have no conception of the purpose of the nursery 
 and its meaning. There are high impulses enough; 
 there are patriotism and courage; men will die for 
 friends and country, — but it all lacks spiritual unity. 
 Where is the centre of it all ? 
 
 Take any life. A boy has his dozen years of full 
 boy's pleasure, and every day's enjoyment is a sort of 
 rude, healthy, barbaric hymn of how good it is to live. 
 Then comes the young man's education, and that is 
 good too, subtler, finer, more conscious, sweeter. Then 
 comes manhood with its happy cares and incitements. 
 That is good too. Business, public spirit, family life, 
 ■ — the great sum-total of all is a sense of gladness; but 
 how blind it is, how it eddies in circles which come 
 back on themselves, how it seems to lack drift and ten- 
 
The Opening of the Eyes. 201 
 
 dency and direction. How hard it is to think of it all 
 as having been launched from the hand of any deliber- 
 ate design, or as having an appointed end in any defi- 
 nite result. How easy it is to sit down by the side of 
 the very richest and fullest and most successful life we 
 ever knew, and in certain moods find ourselves saying of 
 it, " Well, what of it after all ? " That is not the great 
 first feeling to be sure. The first feeling is a pure de- 
 light and thankfulness for our existence and its blessed- 
 ness, even fragmentarily as we conceive of them ; but, 
 because we do conceive of them fragmentarily, that 
 other feeling is always lurking underneath and any lit- 
 tle convulsion may throw it any moment to the top. 
 
 What can save us ? Suppose this. Suppose that. 
 Meaning to thank God for the fulness of your life, — for 
 health, wealth, power, for love, for friendship, for all 
 this beautiful world with all that it is full of, — you are 
 suddenly met with this question, " Dost thou believe on 
 the Son of God ? " At first it seems so unmeaning. 
 What does it mean ? It means this : Are you glad and 
 grateful for these things as little separate sensations 
 of pleasure ? That amounts to nothing. Or are you 
 thankful for them as manifestations of the divine life 
 to yours, as tokens of that fatherhood of God which 
 found its great utterance, including all others, in the 
 Incarnation of His Son ? That is everything. No 
 wonder that such a question brings surprise. It is so 
 much more than you expected. It is like the poor Nea- 
 politan peasant who struck his spade into the soil to dig 
 a well, and the spade went through into free space and 
 he had discovered all the hidden wealth of Hercula- 
 
202 The Opening of th& Eyes. 
 
 neuin. No wonder there is surprise at first ; but after- 
 ward you see that in the belief in a manifested Son of 
 God, if you could gain it, you would have just the prin- 
 ciple of spiritual unity in which your life is wanting, 
 and the lack of which makes so much of its very best so 
 valueless. If you could believe in one great utterance 
 of God, one incarnate word, the manifested pity of 
 God, and the illustrated possibility of man at once, — 
 then, with such a central point, there could be no 
 more fragmentariness anywhere. All must fall into 
 its relation to it, to Him, and so the unity of life show 
 forth. Blessings of every sort are reflections of that 
 great blessing. Powers of every sort are glimpses of 
 that possible manhood which was manifest in Him. 
 Love of every kind is God's love. The centre once set, 
 the circle builds itself. The manifestation of the Son 
 of God, of Christ, gives all other blessings a place and 
 meaning, just as the sun in heaven accounts for and res- 
 cues from fragmentariness every little light of the innu- 
 merable host which, in every hue and brilliancy, sparkle 
 and flash and glow from every point of our sun-lit 
 world. 
 
 This is the importance of the question. "True," you 
 say, " but the eye may enjoy the sparkle of a diamond 
 or the color of a rose even if it does not know that both 
 are borrowed from the sun and belong to it ; and so one 
 may delight in many a joy of life without any conscious 
 reference of it to that spiritual purpose of it all which 
 Christ illustrated. " I know he may ; but on the whole 
 that wearying sense of a lack of unity and purpose must 
 come in ; and the pleasure and the culture which come 
 
The Opening of the Eyes. 203 
 
 by spiritual treatments unconsciously experienced are 
 always deepened and richened when one consciously and 
 cordially submits to a training that is clearly understood. 
 
 Superficialness and fragmentariness go together. The 
 more profoundly you get into the heart of things the 
 more simple they become, and the more their unity 
 comes out. This question, then, is a demand for more 
 profoundness, and appeals from the surface to the heart 
 of things. 
 
 If one could get the ear of modern enterprise and 
 progress, what question would he want to ask of this 
 wonderful giant that is conquering the earth ? What 
 but this ? " Dost thou believe in the Son of God ? " 
 Ask it of the business that fills our streets, of the science 
 that discovers, of the philosophy that thinks, of the labor 
 that creates, of the invention that devises. Ask it of 
 education which is the atmosphere, and politics which 
 is the electricity, and home-life which is the sunshine 
 of the days men live. Ask it of art, ask it of philan- 
 thropy; ask it at the doors of schools and counting- 
 rooms and state-houses and city halls and museums 
 and homes. " Dost thou believe in the Son of God ? " 
 Have you faith in a spiritual purpose behind, under, 
 through and through all that you are doing, — the soul 
 by which it lives ? Do you believe in and are you in- 
 spired by a pure, clear faith in God's love and in man's 
 destiny as all gathered and summed up in the redemp- 
 tion of the God-Man, Jesus Christ? "Dost thou be- 
 lieve in the Son of God ? " A strange question for such 
 places; but if they could answer it, what a new life 
 would be in them all ! 
 
204 The Opening of the Eyes, 
 
 And then if we could ask the question of separate 
 men in their separate lives. Your blessings are heaped 
 up ; your powers tempt and fascinate you ; your associ- 
 ations are so many fountains, each pouring in its spe- 
 cial joy upon your soul, — tell me, do you believe in the 
 Soii of God ? Do not turn away and say the question is 
 impertinent, that it means nothing to you. It means 
 this. Is there any controlling present sense of a mani- 
 fested and ever-manifesting God that gives a unity to 
 your family, your occupation, your pleasure, in the 
 certainty of a divine Fatherhood and Brotherhood. Do 
 you have any understanding of what this means : " He 
 that spared not His own Son but freely gave Him up 
 for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give 
 us all things, " — any understanding such that when 
 " all things " come they are immediately recognized as 
 given in Him, so that they are no longer unaccountable 
 fragments, — these many blessings, — but the pledges 
 of the great spiritual heritage of holiness, of perfect 
 life, which belongs to you as a child, an heir of God, a 
 joint heir with Christ the Son of God ? Do you believe 
 in the Son of God like this ? If you do, not the bread 
 on your table, not the joy of the sunshine, not your bal- 
 ance in the bank, no blessing is too common or vulgar 
 to fall into its due place in the structural unity of the 
 new life which is faith in Christ. Every gift excites 
 gratitude to Him as the Giver, and grows sacred in its 
 necessary dedication to Him as the Lord. 
 
 Our whole thanksgiving is pitched in too low a key ; 
 we come with gratitude for opened eyes, and the Sav- 
 iour meets us with, "Dost thou believe in the Son of 
 
The Opening of the Eyes. 205 
 
 God ? " If so, thank God for that faith, for that in- 
 cludes every blessing. 
 
 So much of Christ's question. Now what was the 
 man's answer ? " Dost thou believe on the Son of 
 God ? " " Who is He, Lord, that I might believe on 
 Him ? " "I do not know, " he seems to say, " I did not 
 mean anything like that ; I did not seem to believe, but 
 yet I have not evidently exhausted or fathomed my own 
 thought. There is something below that I have not 
 realized. Perhaps I do believe. At any rate I should 
 like to. The vague notion attracts me. I will believe 
 if I can. " " Who is He, Lord, that I might believe on 
 Him ? " The simplicity and frankness, the guilelessness 
 and openness of the man makes us like him more 
 than ever. There is evidently for him a chance, nay, 
 a certainty, that he will be greater, fuller, better than 
 he is. 
 
 Some natures are inclusive; some are exclusive. 
 Some men seem to be always asking, " How much can 
 I take in," and some are always asking, "How much 
 can I shut out ? " You see it in men's affections. Some 
 men from boyhood up are eager for objects to love. They 
 crave new currents of affection as the ocean craves the 
 rivers. They will love anything or anybody that gives 
 them a chance. They will fasten like vines about any 
 most shapeless thing which will simply stand still and let 
 them. They do not need response. Other men are chary 
 of their love. Their ingenuity seems to run the other 
 way. They will find something in the most perfect char- 
 acter that can release them from the unwelcome duty of 
 admiration and regard. They seem to be always saying, 
 
206 The Opening of the Eyes. 
 
 " Tell me something about him that can lessen my love, 
 that can show me that I need not love him. " And so 
 it is in matters of action too. Some minds are quick 
 to find the practicability and usefulness of things, and 
 devise how they can do them ; other minds are quick to 
 see the impossibilities and the hindrances of things, 
 and discover why they need not do them. Some men 
 seek tasks, and some men shirk them. 
 
 And so it is peculiarly of faith. One man wants to 
 believe; he welcomes evidence. He asks, "Who is 
 He, that I may believe on Him ? " Another man seems 
 to dread to believe ; he has ingenuity in discovering the 
 flaws of proof. If he asks for more information, it is 
 because he is sure that some objection or discrepancy 
 will appear which will release him from the unwelcome 
 duty of believing. He says, " Show me more of Him, 
 of what He is, and I will surely find some reason why I 
 should not believe Him. " We see the two tendencies, 
 all of us, in people that we know. Carried to their ex- 
 tremes, they develop on one side the superstitious and 
 on the other side the sceptical spirit. 
 
 Different ages swing to one side or the other. There 
 is one view of our own time which sees in it the embodi- 
 ment of the sceptical tendency; certainly its critical 
 spirit is very manifest. It asks with a loud voice how 
 it may escape believing. I believe the other spirit, 
 though quiet in its operations, is very active all the 
 while down below. I believe that what passes for the 
 spirit of doubt is very often the spirit of belief misun- 
 derstood, sometimes misunderstanding itself; but cer- 
 tainly the tendency to avoid believing unless one is 
 
The Opening of the Eyes. 207 
 
 absolutely forced to it is very strong and very common. 
 Any one can see it. 
 
 But speculations on the character of our own time as 
 a whole are good for very little. How is it with us 
 ourselves ? Do we not share in this spirit of unwilling- 
 ness to believe ? It is an educated temper which often 
 has become so set in us that we do not recognize it 
 for what it is ; we do not know that there is any other 
 temper. But there is another. There is a large healthy 
 hunger after belief which is as different from the mor- 
 bid appetite of superstition, as health always is different 
 from disease. There are men who want to believe, — 
 who would rather believe than not, — when some great 
 spiritual theory of the universe is offered them to ac- 
 count for its bewilderments and to help its troubles. 
 The secret of their life seems to be this, that they are 
 men deeply impressed with the infiniteness of life. 
 Does that seem vague and transcendental ? They are 
 men who are always conscious of the spiritual and un- 
 seen underneath the visible and material, — men who 
 are always sure that there is a great region of unknown 
 truth which they ought to know, and who are restless 
 after it. To such men all that they see presupposes 
 things which they do not see. 
 
 There comes great happiness to them. That happi- 
 ness is perfectly hollow unless there is a meaning be- 
 hind it, unless it tells of intentions somewhere, unless 
 it means love. They know that "Eat, drink, and be 
 merry," is not the end of it all. To love some one who 
 is loving them, that is what they want to do. " Oh, 
 that I could find Him ! Oh, that I could find Him I " is 
 
208 The Oldening of the Eyes. 
 
 their cry. Great sorrow comes. But to them sorrow 
 cannot rest in broken limbs or lost fortunes. Those 
 again are only symbols. The essential thing lies deeper. 
 The meaning once more must be personal. Some hand 
 — of friend or enemy — hath done this. Whose hand ? 
 And immediately the eager eye is searching among 
 spiritual and eternal things. What has God had to do 
 with it all ? The sorrow rolls over the soul with 
 stronger forces than its own weight could carry. They 
 are sure they do not know the whole about it. They 
 crave something more to believe. 
 
 Or sin comes, great sin, — for to such a mind no sin 
 seems small. What is sin ? The broken law, the dis- 
 ordered order, seem but outside things. Somewhere 
 there must be a centre and a source of law, a soul of 
 order. Somewhere there must be one to whom the sin- 
 ful heart can cry, "Against Thee have I sinned," in the 
 deep satisfaction of confession ; to whom it can appeal, 
 " Be merciful to me a sinner, " in mighty supplication 
 for forgiveness. Until it finds Him, it carries its load ; 
 and no pardon from fellow-man, no repair of conse- 
 quences can take it off. 
 
 So everywhere the nature that is conscious of the in- 
 finiteness of life longs to believe in a manifested God. 
 Its whole disposition is toward faith; and then if any 
 glimpse is offered of a Son of God, a manifestation of 
 the Invisible Deity who sends happiness and sorrow and 
 who can forgive sin, there is no tendency to disbelieve, 
 there is the hunger of the heart leaping with fearful 
 hope, there is the stretching out of the arms as when 
 they told Bartimeus, "Jesus of Nazareth passeth by;" 
 
The Opening of the Eyes. 209 
 
 and the soul cries out, " Who is He that I may believe 
 on Him." 
 
 More than we think, far more, depends upon this first 
 attitude of the whole nature, — upon whether we want 
 to believe or want to disbelieve. To one who wants to 
 disbelieve, objections, difficulties, spring from every 
 page of the Bible, from every word of Christ. To one 
 who finds the forces of this life sufficient, an incarna- 
 tion, a supernatural salvation is incredible. To one 
 who, looking deeper, knows there must be some infinite 
 force which it has not found yet, — some loving, living 
 force of Emanuel, of God with man, — the Son of God 
 is waiting on the threshold and will immediately come. 
 Christ supposes an element of incompleteness every- 
 where, making a hungry world, — preparing the whole 
 man not to reject as useless and incredible, but to accept 
 as just what it needs and expects, a mysterious, a su- 
 pernatural, divine Redemption, preparing the mental 
 nature for faith, and the moral nature for repentance, 
 and the spiritual nature for guidance. To this readi- 
 ness alone can Christ come. You remember that there 
 were cities where Jesus could do no mighty works be- 
 cause of their unbelief. You remember Jerusalem: 
 "Oh how often would I have gathered thy children 
 together and ye would not." 
 
 This seems to me part of what Christ means when He 
 tells us that, "^xcept we become as little children we 
 cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." The little 
 children are ready for every revelation that may come 
 to them. This strange new world is very big, is infinite 
 to them ; and no force seems too mighty, too infinite to 
 
 11 
 
210 The Opening of the Eyes. 
 
 fill it. You tell them of a Son of God, and it seems 
 most natural to them, — the whole story of Bethlehem 
 and Calvary ; they cry, " Who is He that we may believe 
 in Him ? " This is what Wordsworth sings in his great 
 ode, — 
 
 " Those obstinate questionings 
 
 Of sense and outward things, 
 
 Fallings from us, vanishings, 
 
 Blank misgivings of a creature 
 Moving about in worlds not realized. 
 High instincts before which our mortal nature 
 Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised : 
 
 those first affections. 
 
 Those shadowy recollections, 
 Which, be they what they may, 
 Are yet the fountain light of all our day." 
 
 These are what make the little children blessed, these 
 Teachings back and down into the darkness for the hand 
 of the God whom they have just left, and whom they 
 still expect, and in whom they easily believe. 
 
 Go asking for a Son of God, seeing how life is empty 
 and sad and inexplicable without Him, ready and want- 
 ing to believe in Him, and He shall surely come ; for 
 He must come to every soul to which He can come. 
 And if He seems to delay His coming, it is only that 
 He may come more deeply and more richly. 
 
 How will He come? We go back to our story and 
 read the third speech of the dialogue: "Who is He, 
 Lord, that I might believe on Him ? " " Thou fiast 
 both seen Him, and it is He that talketh with thee." 
 The teaching that seems to me to be here for us, is this, 
 — that when Christ "comes," as we say, to a human 
 soul, it is only to the consciousness of the soul that He 
 
JTie Opening of the Eyes. 211 
 
 is introduced, not to the soul itself ; He has been at the 
 doors of that from its very beginning. We lose this 
 out of our Christianity ; but really it ought not only to 
 be in our Christianity, it ought to be our Christianity, 
 — this certainty of an ever-present, ever-active Christ. 
 We live in a redeemed world, — a world full of the 
 Holy Ghost forever doing His work, forever taking of 
 the things of Christ and showing them to us. That 
 Christ so shown is the most real, most present power 
 in this new Christian world. Men see Him, men talk 
 with Him continually. They do not recognize Him; 
 they do not know what lofty converse they are holding ; 
 but some day when, in some of the ways we have been 
 talking of to-night, a man has become really earnest 
 and wants to believe in the Son of God, and is asking, 
 " Who is He that I may believe on Him ? " then that 
 Son of God comes to him, — not as a new guest from the 
 lofty heaven, but as the familiar and slighted friend 
 who has waited and watched at the doorstep, who has 
 already from the very first filled the soul's house with 
 such measure of His influence as the soul's obstinacy of 
 indifference would allow, and who now, as He steps in 
 at the soul's eager call to take complete and final pos- 
 session of its life, does not proclaim His coming in aw- 
 ful, new, unfamiliar words, but says in tones which the 
 soul recognizes and wonders that it has not known long 
 before, " Thou hast seen me. I have talked with thee. " 
 This is Christ's conversion of a soul. " Say not in 
 thine heart. Who shall ascend into Heaven ? (that is, to 
 bring down Christ from above) : or. Who shall descend 
 into the deep ? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the 
 
212 The Opening of the Eyes. 
 
 dead). But what saith it ? The word is nigh thee, even 
 in thy mouth and in thy heart : that is, the word of faith, 
 that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus 
 and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised 
 Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. " , To open the 
 eyes and find a Christ beside us, — not to go long jour- 
 neys to discover a Christ with whom before we have had 
 nothing to do, — this is the Christian conversion. 
 
 To this every man who is living the new life at all 
 will bear his witness. How did the Saviour first prove 
 himself to you ? Was it not by the past which suddenly 
 or gradually became full of Him, so that you recognized 
 that He had been busy on you when you did not know 
 it, that He had been leading you when you thought 
 you had been wandering, so that you saw your past 
 thoughts grow luminous as His inspirations, your past 
 dreams as the contagions of His presence and the 
 prophecies of His touch ? Was not this His answer 
 when you called Him ? Not, " I am coming, " away off 
 in the distance, but "Here I am," spoken right out of 
 the very soul and centre of your life ? 
 
 I am not speaking merely of that general, beautiful, 
 wonderful presence of the supernatural in and under 
 and through the natural courses of human life of which 
 all men are more or less aware, and which every now 
 and then breaks forth, — which always gives the great 
 ground swell of mystery to human existence. I do not 
 wish to lose in vagueness the personal, clear, dear 
 Christ. I mean that close to every man from his birth 
 the Redeemer stands by His spirit with the great pur- 
 poses of His redemption ; that He brings those purposes 
 
The Opening of the Eyes. 213 
 
 to bear upon the soul from the very first; and that 
 when a man awakes up to know his need and calls for 
 a Son of God, and then when he opens his eyes and 
 sees the Christ beside him, the dearest part of it all ia 
 that it is not a Christ newly come, but the Christ who 
 has cared for him from the beginning, ever since, nay, 
 long before, he was born. " Thou hast both seen me, 
 and it is I that talked with thee. " 
 
 "Thou hast both seen me." How touching in this 
 special story is the allusion to the light which the Lord 
 had given only that day. Jesus reminds him of the 
 lower mercy that He may assure him of the higher. 
 " Thou hast seen Him with the eyes that I have opened. 
 Let that be a pledge and earnest to thee that I can and 
 will open yet other eyes, and thou shalt see Him more 
 completely, more profoundly, in wonderful new ways. " 
 Still, you see, it is as the Saviour of the past life that 
 He offers Himself for the future. 
 
 \ I love to think of this, that where men to-day are 
 most unconscious of His presence, Christ is laying foun- 
 dations for His future work. Here is a perfectly worldly 
 man who cares nothing for Christ or Christianity, but 
 yet Christ's touches are on him. He is surrounded 
 with blessings ; he is pressed upon with sorrows ; he is 
 led through apparently meaningless experiences; and 
 all that some day, when he is really moved to cry out 
 for a Son of God, Christ may be able to come to him, 
 not new and strange, but with the strong claim of 
 years of care and thought and unthanked mercy. It 
 makes the world very solemn to think how much of this 
 work Christ must be doing everywhere. It makes our 
 
214 The Opening of the Eyes. 
 
 own lives very sacred to think how much of it He may 
 be doing in us. 
 
 There have been great creative moments in the hir.- 
 tory of the world, as all history and science seera 1*0 
 show, — moments when after long, silent preparation^^ 
 suddenly the old order broke and a new, as if by magic, 
 came into its place. So it has been in physical and 
 social and political history. But in neither was there 
 any magic. The same force which was in the last 
 changing conviction had been in all the preparation. 
 The flower is but the ripening of the same juices that 
 built the stem. So it is with conversion to the very 
 last. The Christ who in eternity opens the last con- 
 cealment, and lays His comfort and life close to the 
 deepest needs of the poor, needy, human heart, is the 
 same Christ that first laid hands upon the blind eyes, 
 and made them see the sky and flowers. 
 
 It is a wondrous revelation of the Saviour. He 
 comes to us by showing that He has been always with 
 us. He finds the material of the Christian life in us, 
 and builds it by His touch. Does this seem to lessen 
 and depreciate His work ? Does it take from its abso- 
 lute importance ? Do you ask what is the fate of the 
 material if it is not used ? That He has answered Him- 
 self in the Parable of the Talents. 
 
 In words full of solemnity, Jesus summed up His 
 whole impression of the story which we have been study- 
 ing to-night. He declared the critical character which 
 He brought into the world, — that men are tested by 
 how they are affected by Tlim. How wonderfully deep 
 His words are. "For judgracnt I am come into the 
 
The Opening of the Eyes. 215 
 
 world, that they which see not might see, and they 
 which see might be made blind. " 
 
 May we first know how blind we are, and then come 
 to Him for sight, and then out of past mercy always win 
 new trust, and so go on until at last we come unto the 
 perfect Light. 
 
xm. 
 
 THE BELOVED PHYSICIAlSr. 
 
 Luke, the beloved physician. — Colossians iv. 14. 
 
 The eighteenth day of October has long been kept in 
 the Church as the Festival of the Evangelist, Saint Luke. 
 Once every year, upon this day, the Church has chosen 
 to remind us that the third Gospel did not drop down 
 from the stars, and did not spring up out of the earth ; 
 but that it was written by a man, and is stamped with his 
 personality ; that it is the description of the life of Jesus 
 through a special human medium ; and that it is good 
 for us, in our sense of the preciousness of the Gospel, to 
 remember and study and be grateful to the man who 
 wrote it. 
 
 No doubt the institution of a Saint Luke's day was 
 meant to be a special commemoration of the evangelist. 
 It is as the author of the Gospel that the Church is 
 mostly interested in Saint Luke. That book is one of 
 the four golden columns on which rest the Christian 
 history. It is one of the four golden trumpets out of 
 which has been blown the summons of Christ to the 
 sons of men. And besides being one of four, it has also 
 its own peculiar character. The reader of the Gospel 
 of Saint Luke, if he has been intelligent and sympa- 
 thetic, has always felt a sort of human breadth and 
 
The Beloved Physician. 217 
 
 richness in it which, in kind at least, was peculiarly its 
 own. It was not so Jewish as the others. The very 
 fact that it is the Gospel in which we have most fully 
 told the story of the Lord's nativity, and in which alone 
 occurs the Parable of the Prodigal Son, is enough to 
 show how well the Church does in commemorating 
 always the man who wrote it. 
 
 But it is not only as the writer of the Gospel that we 
 know Saint Luke ; and though we shall not forget for 
 a moment, while we speak of him, that he is the writer 
 of the Gospel, it is with reference to what is told us 
 of him in other associations that I want to speak to- 
 day. It is not much. At a certain point in the book 
 of the Acts of the Apostles the writer of the book be- 
 gins to use the first personal pronoun "we," in telling 
 the story of the missionary journeys. At another cer- 
 tain point he ceases to say "we," and falls back into 
 the use of the third person. The first verse of that same 
 book of Acts identifies its author with the author of the 
 Gospel which bears the name of Luke. Between these 
 two points, then, of which I spoke, Luke was the fellow- 
 traveller and fellow-laborer of Paul who is the central 
 figure of the larger portion of the book. During the 
 time when they were thus together Paul wrote several 
 epistles, among them two from his imprisonment at 
 Rome, — one to the Church of the Colossians, and the 
 other to his young disciple Timothy. In his letter to 
 Timothy he says, " Only Luke is with mc. " In his let- 
 ter to the Colossians he uses the expression of my text, 
 — " Luke, the beloved physician. " He says, " Luke, the 
 beloved physician, and Demas greet you ! " 
 
218 The Beloved Physician. 
 
 That is almost all. By early tradition or by putting 
 together incidental indications we are able to discern 
 that Lucanus, as he was called in Latin, was a Gentile 
 and a citizen of Antioch. All else is vague. Simply 
 there came from among the men of Antioch one — a 
 physician by profession — who travelled on his mis- 
 sionary journeys with Saint Paul, and by and by, before 
 he died, wrote at Saint Paul's suggestion the story of 
 that life of Jesus which lay at the back of all the teach- 
 ing in which the missionary journeys were engaged. 
 
 And yet there is something more ; for careful and in- 
 genious study has seemed to make it clear that Luke's 
 character as a physician was a genuine and significant 
 thing, and that it remained a strong and influential fact 
 even after he became a missionary. His style, his 
 choice of words, the special events of Christ's life 
 which he selects for his narration, bear marks of the 
 physician's habits of thought and speech; and an ex- 
 ceedingly ingenious comparison of times has made it cu- 
 riously appear that Luke on several occasions came to 
 Saint Paul just when the great apostle was most over- 
 come with weakness, or was just recovering from some 
 one of the severe attacks which every now and then 
 broke down his feeble strength. Indeed I think we feel 
 in these words from the letter to the Colossians, "Luke, 
 the beloved physician, " that Paul is speaking not merely 
 of one who once had been, but of one who now was in 
 practice of the art of healing. It is a present fact. It is 
 a fact that excites affection. It is as a physician, among 
 other things, that Luke travels with Paul from land to 
 land or shares his long imprisonment at Rome. 
 
The Beloved Physician. 219 
 
 Nothing of this same sort, so far as I remember, is 
 true of any of the other of the early converts and mis- 
 sionaries of Christ. Of the professions of some of them 
 we are told nothing; of others of them it would seem 
 as if they left their former occupation and had no more 
 to do with it after they had been converted. Of Luke 
 alone it would appear as if he still continued to do as a 
 Christian the same thing which he had done before he 
 became Christ's disciple. In him alone we see what 
 since his time has been the natural and normal type of 
 Christian life, — the inspiration of a definite old occu- 
 pation by a new spiritual power, so that it continued to 
 be exercised, and showed its genuine capacity and ful- 
 filled its true ideal. 
 
 It is of this feature in the dimly-outlined story of 
 Saint Luke that I wish to speak to you to-day. It sug- 
 gests, I think, certain thoughts with reference first, to 
 the general relation of the Christian life to men's occu- 
 pations and professions, and then, to the special profes- 
 sion with which the physician-disciple belonged. 
 
 The disposition to find the simplicity of motive under 
 the variety of action is one of the most familiar dispo- 
 sitions of our time. The first man, the savage man, the 
 child, looks at the world and fancies as many forces as 
 he sees moving things. The brook running from the 
 hillside, the branch waving in the breezes, the solemn 
 procession of the stars across the sky, the fire bursting 
 from the mountain's summit, the silent growth of corn- 
 fields, and the noisy rush of the tornado, — every one of 
 these to the barbarian is absolutely separate. He fan- 
 cies a new force for each. He crowns in his imagina- 
 
220 The Beloved Physician. 
 
 tion one deity for the forest, and another for the fire, 
 and another for the stream. It is one fruitful source 
 of polytheism. And if, behind his multitude of dei- 
 ties, there sits in his thought some mighty lord over 
 all, it is his only to keep in order a distracted universe, 
 and to curb his quarrelsome divinities that he may pre- 
 serve some sort of disorderly and fragmentary peace. 
 What is the progress from that first barbarism ? What 
 is the maturity which comes out from that childishness 
 of thought ? Is it not the suspicion first, and then the 
 certainty, of some few great motive forces lying deep in 
 Nature which at least shall take these multitudinous 
 forms of action and combine them into groups ? What 
 is the dream of him who watches this great grouping of 
 the forms of action under the inspiration of a few great 
 forces ? Is it not that some day — far hence but cer- 
 tainly some day — these few great forces shall themselves 
 be seen to be but utterances of one great force, vital 
 enough to fill them all with vitality, and the complete 
 simplicity of Nature be attained in the dependence of 
 everything on some one first moving force, — when Na- 
 ture herself shall become almost a real being standing 
 at the centre of all life, and claiming all action out to 
 the budding of the least flower and the waving of the 
 lightest twig as a direct act of hers ? 
 
 And now suppose we turn from the world of Nature 
 to the world of human action. Is not the one a parable 
 of the other ? Is not the world of human action, like 
 the world of Nature, a scene of endless superficial vari- 
 ety which by and by we learn to gather into unity under 
 the power of some central inspiration ? One at his 
 
The Beloved Physician. 221 
 
 farm and another at his merchandise, one singing songs, 
 one painting pictures, one pleading causes, one build- 
 ing houses, and one making shoes, — here is this count- 
 less diversity of human action. To the first observer 
 that would seem to be everything. Each profession is 
 a life by itself. It will have its own thoughts and 
 standards, its own principles and passions, with which 
 no other profession will have anything in common. So 
 it is in certain crude communities where caste prevails. 
 The caste of the shoemakers and the caste of the cooks 
 have nothing to do with one anotner. 
 
 But that is only the first aspect, — the earliest form 
 of human life. Very soon he who lives begins to feel, 
 and he who watches begins to discover, some deeper 
 forces which are working underneath and giving a real 
 unity to all this seemingly incoherent life. The love 
 of independence, the love of family, the love of fame, 
 — these great elemental desires of humanity are what 
 are making the lawyer plead his case, and the mason 
 lay his blocks of stone. As you walk the streets with 
 this truth in your mind the furious discord begins to 
 deepen and condense itself to music. It sounds in va- 
 rious strains to different men, and to the same man at 
 different times, according as this or that one of the 
 great dispositions of humanity is most dominant in the 
 listener's soul ; but it is always rich and deep in pro- 
 portion to the depths of the motive under which the 
 soul tries to harmonize the discord. The deeper in the 
 mass lies the point which you make your centre, so 
 much the larger will be the portion of the substance of 
 
222 The Beloved Physician. 
 
 the mass which can group itself into a sphere around 
 the point which you have chosen. 
 
 And so the question will inevitably come into men's 
 minds, How will it be if you can reach one point 
 which is the genuine centre of the whole mass and 
 behind all the other forces which come from part way 
 in can feel one supreme force of which they all are 
 only modifications and exhibitions, issuing from the 
 very heart of all ? The dream of physics renews itself 
 in morals. The physicist wonders whether perhaps all 
 these special forces of heat and electricity and all the 
 rest are only forms and phases of some great vital force 
 which man shall some day find, and which, when it is 
 found, shall perfectly account for all that goes on in the 
 world of Nature ; so the moralist asks himself whether 
 these partial forces, the love of the exercise of powers, 
 the love of independence, the love of family, the love of 
 fame, may not, if they be carried deep enough, be found 
 to meet in and to issue from one central force, — the 
 love of God, — of which they are the utterances, and in 
 their common belonging to which they may find unity. 
 If this could be, if man's pleasure in the exercise of his 
 powers could be felt as the desire to realize the part of 
 God's nature which has been put forth in him, and the 
 love of independence could seem to be the desire to re- 
 late oneself directly to the source of life, and the love 
 of family could become the echo of God's Fatherhood, 
 and the love of fame could be made a seeking for God's 
 glory, — if this could be, would not the unity of life be 
 perfect ? Out from one central fountain of force — the 
 soul's love for God as its Father — would flow the power 
 
The Beloved Physician. 223 
 
 which would first take form in all the variety of sec- 
 ondary impulses which I have described, and then, at 
 last, create all the endlessly various forms of activity of 
 man ; so that everything which man had a right to do at 
 all upon the earth might be ideally done as an expres- 
 sion of it, — this central force, this love of man for 
 God. 
 
 Does it not change the aspect and feeling of his work 
 in life, of that which we call his profession, when this 
 which I have pictured as taking place some day univer- 
 sally takes place for any man ? That which he has to 
 do first, reaches inward to the heart of things — to the 
 source of life — and finds its deepest motive. Then, 
 that deepest motive reaches outward and becomes the 
 inspiring force and the sufficient cause of what he has 
 to do. If it has a real right to take hold of that deepest 
 motive and say, " I am done because of it, " is not the 
 man's profession glorified ? Is it not redeemed ? If it 
 have drudgery connected with it (and where is the pro- 
 fession which has not ?) is not its drudgery enlightened 
 by this impulse from within, by being made part of the 
 working out into utterance of this transcendant force ? 
 And is not its real unity with other professions, how- 
 ever absolutely different they may be from it in form, 
 brought out and made vivid in their common relation 
 to the source from which all spring ? And, what per- 
 haps is more than all, the man's own life is harmon- 
 ized; the general and special come to reconciliation. 
 The glory and the detail of living cease to contend with 
 and destroy each other. They begin to help each other. 
 The talk about the way in which life is hindered by 
 
224 The Beloved Physician. 
 
 having to get a living is put to silence. These are the 
 things which professional life needs, these three, — the 
 redemption of its drudgery, the establishment of sympa- 
 thy with other professions, and the harmony of the ab- 
 solute and universal with the relative and special ; and 
 all of these must come when that which a man does in 
 his profession reaches down and lays hold as its motive 
 on the love of God. 
 
 And now what is conversion ? What was it that 
 came to Luke of Antioch when suddenly or slowly by 
 the preaching of Saint Paul he came to believe in the 
 Incarnation of Jesus Christ, and all that the Incarna- 
 tion meant ? We have his glowing book to tell us, we 
 have the sweet and loving and triumphant story which 
 he wrote of " all that Jesus began both to do and teach 
 until the day in which He was taken up. " But when 
 we want to crowd it into one great word, I think we 
 turn to what Paul the great apostle wrote — perhaps 
 with Luke sitting by him at the time — to the Gala- 
 tians : " The life which I now live in the flesh, I live 
 by the faith of the Son of God. " Paul must have taught 
 Luke the meaning of those words. Luke must have 
 learned to say them of himself. Luke's work in life 
 consisted, in part at least, of the physician's duty. 
 Therefore Luke must have gone among his patients say- 
 ing, "I do this by the faith of the Son of God." Tell 
 me, when he could say that, was there no holier sacred- 
 ness in the finger which he laid on the sick man's pulse ? 
 Was there no truer sense of sympathy with the men 
 whom he saw on every side of him engaged in other 
 works than his ? Was there no calmer sense of recon- 
 
The Beloved Physician. 225 
 
 ciliation between the general conception of existence 
 which must have filled a mind like his and his special 
 labor of the hour, no truer mutual understanding be- 
 tween the vast slow-heaving tide and the light waves 
 which ran their races on its broad bosom when the sea 
 of which they both were parts had given itself com- 
 pletely into the power of the great attraction ? 
 
 This is conversion. Suppose that there is nothing of 
 it in the world to-day. Suppose that not a single man 
 in all the world to-day knows Christ and all the love of 
 God which Christ reveals; yet still the needs of life 
 and the discovered aptitudes of various human creatures 
 have created the professions and the trades, the tasks 
 of life have been distributed and in their different 
 groups, men are engaged in all these well-known occu- 
 pations, — buying and teaching and digging and build- 
 ing and carving and doctoring, — you know the familiar 
 list. And then suppose that suddenly there is put in 
 at the heart of all this human action, as a totally new 
 thing, the warm fire of the love of God. Suppose it 
 comes in an instant in its full-grown strength. How 
 it will take at once the old chambers and fill them with 
 itself! How it will pour itself forth through the old 
 channels! How they will become transfigured with 
 the fire that will come burning through them! How 
 the old professions, remaining the same things, will 
 be such different things from what they were before! 
 It will be as if you took a group of common men using 
 the common human organs for most ordinary work and 
 poured into each one of them the whole mind of Shakes- 
 peare or the whole soul of Saint John. Still the old 
 
 15 
 
226 The Beloved Physician. 
 
 physical machinery would be in use; but what words 
 now those lips would speak which used to talk only 
 of markets and of weather ! What deeds now those 
 hands would do that used to pull the wires of petty 
 tricks ! The professions have no more real character in 
 them than the lips or the hands have. They get all 
 their character, all their glory or disgrace, from the 
 purpose and nature of the men who live in them, and 
 send whatever kind of vitality they may possess into 
 effect through them. 
 
 See then what are two at least of the effects that a 
 true conversion (which means nothing less than the fill- 
 ing of the man who is within the profession with an 
 entire sense of the love of God and a profound love of 
 answering gratitude in return) must have upon the pro- 
 fessional and technical life, — the life in certain arts 
 and occupations of which the world must necessarily 
 be full. 
 
 First, It must purify all the professions. It must re- 
 ject and, as it were, turn away from each profession 
 everything which is not capable of being filled and in- 
 spired with this spirit. So it becomes a judgment for 
 us all. It melts away the dross and leaves the gold. 
 It makes the man, first of all, purely the thing he means 
 to be, without admixture of base and foreign elements 
 which are corruption. 
 
 Then, secondly. It makes the professions to be no 
 longer means of separation, but means of sympathy and 
 union between men. My profession is totally different 
 from yours. What then ? If we fasten our thoughts 
 upon our diverse methods of activity, the harder each 
 
Tlie Beloved Physician. 227 
 
 works in his profession the more our lives are separated 
 each from each. If both of us feel always beating 
 through our diverse methods of activity the common 
 purpose of the love of God, then the harder we work in 
 different ways the more our lives are one. This is the 
 promise of a future in which specialized action shall 
 not merely be consistent with but shall help forward 
 the realized brotherhood of man. 
 
 I look abroad upon the men who are gathered here 
 this morning. I know how almost all of you are closely 
 identified with some one among the many occupations 
 and professions which together make up the active life 
 of men. I know that not one of you who is at all 
 thoughtful has failed to feel how this division of labor 
 has its dangers. You have feared corruption, — that is, 
 the loss or overlaying by baser accretions of the pure 
 idea of your work ; and you have feared narrowness, — 
 the loss of broad human sympathy in the inevitable 
 provincialness of what you have to do. Where is your 
 safeguard against these things which you fear ? Shall 
 you give up the life of your profession and simply be a 
 man at large ? That you cannot do ; and if you could it 
 would not be good for most men, however it might an- 
 swer for a few. Probably it would not be good for you. 
 No, not by deserting your profession but by deepening 
 it, by seeking a new life under it, by praying for and 
 never resting satisfied until you find regeneration, — 
 the new life lived by the faith of the Son of God ; so 
 only can your life of trade or art or profession be re- 
 deemed ; so only can it become both for you and for the 
 world a blessed thing. The necessary labors which the 
 
228 The Beloved Physician. 
 
 nature of man and his relations to this earth demand, 
 all done by men full of the love of God, and each 
 using to its best the special faculty that is in him, 
 — the world needs no other millennium than that; 
 and that millennium, however far away it looks, is 
 not impossible. 
 
 I have spoken at length about professional life in 
 general, and its effect upon the men who live it. Let 
 me say a little, before I close, about the special profes- 
 sional life of Luke, the beloved physician, especially 
 as it is linked to the life of the Apostle Paul. As he 
 and Paul are seen travelling on together over land and 
 sea, those two figures taken together represent in a 
 broad way the total care of man for man. Paul is dis- 
 tinctively a man of the soul, a man of the spiritual life. 
 We know him only in his spiritual labors. If he turns 
 aside to tent-making, it is not for the sake of the tents 
 which he can make, but simply that, earning his own 
 living, he may be in true relations to the men whose 
 souls he wants to save. Luke, on the other hand, is 
 physical. His care is for the body. The two together, 
 then, as we watch their figures, climbing side by side 
 over mountains, sleeping side by side on the decks of 
 little Mediterranean boats, standing side by side in the 
 midst of little groups of hard-won disciples, — may we 
 not say of them that they may be considered as recog- 
 nizing and representing between them the double nature 
 and the double need of man ? Body and soul as man is, 
 the ministry that would redeem him and relieve him 
 must have a word to speak to, and a hand to lay upon, 
 
The Beloved Physician. 229 
 
 both soul and body. The two missionaries together 
 make a sort of composite copy of the picture which 
 Saint Matthew gives us of Jesus going " about all Gali- 
 lee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the 
 Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing all manner of 
 disease among the people. " 
 
 It is interesting, I think, to see how this belonging to- 
 gether of the two activities was so natural and genuine 
 that they were not satisfied with being represented in 
 two separate men, — each activity keeping its own man 
 to itself, and the total being made up only by combina- 
 tion of the two, — but tried to crowd themselves, as 
 it were, both together into each man of the travelling 
 company of two. Thus Luke the physician was a 
 preacher and a teacher also, as well as Paul; and as 
 they journey together Paul is pondering, and no doubt 
 sometimes discussing with his medical companion 
 those great ideas of the sacredness of the body — the 
 body the temple of the Holy Ghost — and the entire 
 man, body, soul, and spirit, needing to be consecrated 
 to God as one entire sacrifice, which he was always writ- 
 ing in his letters to his churches. 
 
 This need of unity in the care for man is always reas- 
 serting itself. There is no true care for the body which 
 forgets the soul. There is no true care for the soul 
 which is not mindful of the body. The pressure of psy- 
 chology on physiology, the wise and learned, also the 
 unwise and ignorant, methods of reaching physical con- 
 ditions through the change of mental states which are 
 so prominent in the medical practice of to-day, bear 
 witness to the first fact. All the kind of teaching 
 
230 The Beloved Physician. 
 
 which a few years ago went by the name of muscular 
 Christianity gives testimony to the second. 
 
 It certainly is not aside from the purpose if I beg you 
 to remember how the two ought to go together in your 
 treatment of your own lives. The duty of physical 
 health and the duty of spiritual purity and loftiness are 
 not two duties; they are two parts of one duty, — which 
 is the living of the completest life which it is possible 
 for man to live. And the two parts minister to one 
 another. Be good that you may be well ; be well that 
 you may be good. Both of those two injunctions are 
 reasonable, and both are binding on us all. Sometimes 
 on one side come exceptions. Sometimes a man must 
 give up being well in order to be good. Never does an 
 exception come upon the other side. Never is a man 
 at liberty to give up being good in order to be well; 
 but the normal life of man needs to be lived in obedi- 
 ence to both commands. Both Paul and Luke — or 
 rather the whole of Luke and the whole of Paul — must 
 be its masters. 
 
 The way in which the care for the body and the care 
 for the soul belong together, the way in which Luke 
 and Paul have the same work to do, is indicated per- 
 haps by the similarity of the vices to which both minis- 
 tries are liable. Theology and medicine, the minister 
 and the doctor, make the same mistakes. Both of them 
 are liable to lose sight of their ends in their means, 
 and to elaborate their systems with a cruel heartless- 
 ness, forgetting for the moment the purposes of mercy 
 which are their warrant for existence. Thus theology 
 has driven human souls into exquisite agony with its 
 
Tlie Beloved Physician. 231 
 
 cold dissection of the most sacred feelings ; and medi- 
 cine has tortured sensitive animals in a recklessness 
 of scientific vivisection which has no relation, direct or 
 indirect, to human good. Again both ministries to man 
 have been misled from time to time into a sacrifice of 
 the plain and primary obligations of truthfulness to 
 what the minister or doctor has dared to think a higher 
 obligation. That which with more or less of justice has 
 been called Jesuitism in religion on the one side, and 
 on the other side the physician's perversion or denial of 
 the simple truth at the bed-side of his patient, — both 
 of these moral wrongs, both of these indefensible sins, 
 bear close relation to the sense of the sacredness of his 
 trust which is in the heart of the modern Paul or Luke. 
 And yet again, the narrowness of both, the stout and 
 obstinate guard over their orthodoxy, the unwillingness 
 that the work they loved should be done in any but the 
 way that they approved, the anger with irregular prac- 
 titioners, — who shall say which, the minister or the 
 doctor, has borne the palm in these ? 
 
 But if these close-united ministries share the same 
 vices, and so prove that they are one, what a far richer 
 testimony to their oneness lies in the virtues which 
 they have in common. I have said this morning that 
 every honest occupation was to be considered as a chan- 
 nel of utterance for the divine life in the character and 
 soul of the man who exercised it; but while this is 
 true of all professions, there is still a difference in the 
 degree of readiness and fulness with which different 
 professions may give utterance to the inner fire. In 
 some the crust of technical methods is more transpa- 
 
232 The Beloved Physician. 
 
 rent than in others. In some the volcano torch, out of 
 which the inner fire is to blaze, is held up supremely 
 high. May we not say this of the two works which we 
 are to-day taking Paul and Luke to represent: that, 
 first, they above all others demand, as of fundamental 
 importance, character in the men who do them; and 
 that, second, the element of merciful feeling and readi- 
 ness for self-sacrifice which are incidental to most other 
 occupations are essential and indispensable in these two? 
 These are what really mark how divine they are, and 
 how they belong together. Neither of them can pros- 
 per with any true prosperity save in the hands of a man 
 of goodness and of strength ; and in both of them the 
 fountain of pity is the only source of pure and unfailing 
 life. I add to this that both live constantly in the im- 
 mediate presence of awful and mysterious forces; that 
 both are always, while they see before them human 
 need, feeling behind them that which, call it by what 
 name they will, is Divine Power — is God ; and so are 
 always pressed on by the demand for reverence and 
 piety. 
 
 I add again that while each has its immediate appeal 
 to make to terror and the fear of pain, the ultimate 
 address of each must be to ardent courage and enthu- 
 siastic hope. I put all these together and then the fig- 
 ures of Paul and Luke walking together through history 
 as the ministers of Christ, — the images of theology and 
 medicine laboring in harmony for the redemption of 
 man, for the saving of body, soul, and spirit, — become 
 very sacred and impressive. May their fellowship be- 
 come more generous and hearty as the years go on! 
 
The Beloved Physician. 233 
 
 May each gain greater honor for the other, and both 
 become more humbly and transparently the ministers 
 of Christ ! Thus may the two together, working as if 
 they were but one, grow to be more and more a worthy 
 channel through which the helpfulness of God may flow 
 forth to the neediness of man. 
 
XIV. 
 DEEP CALLING UNTO DEEP. 
 
 Deep calleth unto deep. — Psalm xlii. 7. 
 
 In one of the most spiritual of David's Psalms there 
 come, almost incidentally as it were, the most striking 
 pictures of external Nature. He begins by singing, 
 " Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks, so longeth 
 my soul after Thee, God. " Then he goes on to that 
 profound remonstrance with his own oppressed and mel- 
 ancholy heart. "Why art thou so full of heaviness, 
 my soul ? Why art thou so disquieted within me ? " 
 And then comes his great appeal to God in Nature, — 
 " Therefore will I remember Thee concerning the land 
 of Jordan and the little hill of Hermon. Deep calleth 
 unto deep at the noise of Thy waterspouts." It is 
 partly a recollection of the causes of his gratitude. 
 It is a remembrance of how Jordan and Hermon had 
 witnessed God's goodness to him; but it is also the 
 effort to lose his own spiritual vexations in the vast- 
 ness and majesty of the scenes and the phenomena of 
 natural life. He would put his own personal woe where 
 the billows and the tides are sweeping and beating 
 across one another, and make it sensible in their move- 
 ment of the larger world of which it is a part, and in 
 whose whole there is peace. 
 
Dee'p Calling unto Deep. 235 
 
 This is the way in which David's descriptions of Na- 
 ture come about. He is no word-painter depicting the 
 beautiful majestic world for the mere pleasure of the 
 exercise of his literary skill. It is all a spiritual expe- 
 rience. "The heavens declare the glory of God, and 
 the firmament showeth His handiwork." It is God 
 and peace and holiness which his soul is seeking when 
 he climbs the mountain, or stands under the starry 
 heavens, or is tossed on the tumult of the resistless 
 sea. 
 
 We all know something of what was in the great 
 man's heart. We have all taken a sorrow or a perplex- 
 ity out into the noontide or the midnight and felt its 
 morbid bitterness drawn out of it, and a great peace 
 descend and fill it from the depth of the majesty imder 
 whose arch we stood. It was not consolation. That 
 can come only through the intelligence and reason, or 
 through personal sympathy and love. The sweet and 
 solemn influence which comes to you out of the noon- 
 tide or the midnight sky does not take away your pain, 
 but it takes out of it its bitterness. It lifts it to a 
 higher peace. It says, "Be still and wait." It gives 
 the reason power and leave and time to work. It 
 gathers the partial into the embrace of the universal. 
 It fills the little with the large. Without mockery or 
 scorn it reminds the small that it is small. The atom 
 floating on the surface hears deep calling unto deep be- 
 low, and forgets its own restlessness and homelessness 
 in listening. 
 
 This was what Nature in our Psalm is seen doing 
 for the spiritual life of David. But that is not what I 
 
236 Deep Calling unto Deep. 
 
 want to speak about to-day, although I could not help 
 alluding to it as it gives so rich a character to our 
 Psalm. 
 
 I want to take now these words by themselves, — 
 " Deep calleth unto deep, " — and let them suggest to us 
 some thoughts with regard to man's relation to the 
 world and his true way of living in it, which I hope 
 will not be without their value. "Deep calleth unto 
 deep. " It is the profound responsiveness of life which 
 those words utter. If some great natural philosopher 
 were to speak to us, no doubt he could tell us of the 
 way in which even in physical nature what they suggest 
 is true ; of how there is no force which does not corre- 
 spond with other forces, and find the reason of its own 
 existence in its relationship to them. For such a great 
 rich topic as that, I have no fitness. But there is an- 
 other responsiveness, — the responsiveness of the life of 
 man, the responsiveness of the world and the human 
 nature which inhabits it to one another, which is also 
 worthy of our study. And it is of that that I desire to 
 speak. 
 
 How clear they are, and how they call and answer to 
 each other, — the world and man ! The world, — this 
 aggregate of conditions and phenomena and events, this 
 multitudinous complexity of things which happen as 
 old habits to which the gray old earth has long been 
 used, and other things which come with sharp and 
 strange surprise and unexpectedness, as if they never 
 had occurred before ; the world, — this crowd of circum- 
 stances, with a certain subtle spirit and identity and 
 law pervading it ; this world, living and yet dead, dead 
 
Deep Calling unto Deep. 237 
 
 and yet living, — at one moment a thing of mere mate- 
 rial of wood and rock and water, at the next moment a 
 thing all instinct with quickness and vitality; the 
 world on one side, and on the other man, sensitive and 
 eager, ready to respond, often responding even when no 
 one speaks to him, — man who seems sometimes to be 
 only the chief of animals, sprung as it were out of the 
 very substance of the world itself, and then at other 
 times seeming to carry on his forehead the star of a 
 supremacy and an authority almost divine, — this world 
 and this man, behold them standing and looking each 
 other in the face, and listening for one another's words ! 
 The world hears the man. It answers him with its 
 obediences. It responds to his advancing character. 
 It holds its resources ready as he grows fit to call for 
 them. But even more sensitively the man hears the 
 world. The mass and crowd of things abound in in- 
 fluences which pour forth and tell upon the human creat- 
 ure's life. Its slightest wnisper fills him with emotion 
 and works upon his sensitive will. Almost we can 
 think of the angelic beings which are in the heavens, 
 full of sympathy, bending and listening to this converse 
 between man and his world, between each man and his 
 circumstances, and knowing how it fares with him by 
 the way in which they speak to him and the way in 
 which he answers. 
 
 But then, to take another step, when we look some- 
 what closer at the world and at man, we find this 
 other thing, — that both in the world and in man there 
 are profounder and there are more superficial parts, 
 there are depths and shallows ; and that it makes great 
 
238 Veep Calling unto Deep. 
 
 and most critical difference which part of the world it is 
 that speaks to which part of the man. The world is deep 
 or shallow. How deep it is ! What solemn and per- 
 plexing questions come up out of its darknesses ! How 
 it is always on the point of vast changes, terrible explo- 
 sions ! How character is alwaj^s being moulded by the 
 powers which it contains ! How souls seem to change 
 their whole nature as they pass through its furnaces! 
 And yet change your point of view and what a shallow 
 thing the world is ! How its changes chase one an- 
 other almost like the idle alternation of joy and sorrow 
 on the face of a child ! How much happens in the State 
 and in society, and in the schools, which comes to 
 nothing! What a waving of lights and jingling of 
 bells and playing at hide-and-seek of waves upon the 
 sea a large part of this perpetual activity appears. 
 
 And not only the world but man as well is deep or 
 shallow. How deep he is! What struggles may tear 
 the very foundations of his life asunder ! On the other 
 hand, what peace which passeth understanding may lie 
 like a great ocean underneath the surface turmoil of 
 his days. How profoundly he can suffer; how pro- 
 foundly he can enjoy ! What rich things are his con- 
 science and his will ! And then, all of a sudden, when 
 it seems as if all the universe were in him; when it 
 seems as if he were as high as heaven and as low as 
 hell ; when the music of his nature seems to be full of 
 the intensest passion which out-goes expression, — how 
 he will begin, all of a sudden, to chatter like a bird! 
 How nothing is too light for him ! How he will play 
 with straws and chase shadows across the fields ! Hoir 
 
Beejp Calling unto Deep. 239 
 
 he will make life a frolic, and refuse to be serious even 
 when the heaviest shadows fill the solemn sky ! 
 
 Thus both the two, — the world and man, whose con- 
 verse with each other makes the history and poetry, the 
 comedy and tragedy of this planet whereon we live, — 
 both of them have their depths and their shallows. 
 Each olthem is capable of seeming profound and rich 
 and serious or superficial and meagre and trivial. And 
 all this makes their talk with one another, their influ- 
 ence on one another, endlessly interesting and pathetic. 
 It is the noblest and completest form of their inter- 
 course — the intercourse of the world and man — which 
 has seemed to me to be suggested by the words from 
 David's Psalm. When the strongest powers of man are 
 brought out by the greatest exigencies of life; when 
 what a man can do is tested to the very bottom by the 
 most awful or splendid exhibition of what the world 
 can be ; when a man stands amazed himself at the pa- 
 tience and courage and resource which comes welling 
 up in his soul at the demand of some great suffering or 
 some great opportunity of his fellow-men, — could there 
 be words which could describe the great scene better 
 than these, " Deep calleth unto deep ? " 
 
 It may be in the region of thought or in the region of 
 action ; it may be a great problem awakening the pro- 
 foundest intelligence, and saying, " Come, find my solu- 
 tion," or it may be a great task summoning the active 
 powers, and saying, " Come, do me ; " it may be in an 
 excitement and a tumult which shakes the nature 
 through and through, or it may be in a serene and 
 open calmness which means more than any tumult. 
 
240 Deep Calling unto Deep. 
 
 The form is nothing ; the substance of the experience is 
 everything. When the supreme demand of life calls out 
 the supreme capacity of man, then it is that the pict- 
 ure of the waves is fulfilled in spiritual life and " Deep 
 calleth unto deep. " 
 
 It is a great inspiring spectacle when this is seen 
 taking place in a young man's life. There is a beauti- 
 ful exhilaration in it. The mysterious world lifts up 
 its voice and asks its old unanswered questions, — 
 problems which have puzzled all the generations which 
 have come and gone, lo ! they are not dead. They are 
 still alive. They lift up their undiscouraged voice and 
 ask themselves anew of this new-comer, and he with 
 his audacious heart accepts their challenge. All that 
 is most serious and earnest in him tells him that their 
 answers must be somewhere. His clear eyes question 
 them with hope. Perhaps he can find what all who 
 have gone before have failed to find. So the best which 
 the young man is leaps to wrestle with the hardest which 
 the world can show ; so deep answereth to deep. 
 
 At the other end of life the same thing comes, only 
 in another way. When the great shadow of the earth 
 lies on the old man's soul, and the light of the life be- 
 yond is gathering in the western sky; when wonder 
 deepens and great questions swarm and the supreme 
 problem, " What does it all mean ? " stares out at him 
 from all familiar things, — how often then a patience 
 and a faith, a love and trust and spiritual certainty 
 come forth which all the life has been preparing uncon- 
 sciously ; and in the silent days which wait the end, the 
 soul hears the eternity, and " Deep calleth unto deep. " 
 
Deep Calling unto Deep. 241 
 
 I speak of notable periods which are, as it were, 
 emergencies of life ; but I should be sorry to think that 
 this dealing of the deepest part of us with the deepest 
 part of the world were confined to critical occasions 
 and solemn or enthusiastic days. I should be sorry not 
 to think that there are lives in which it is habitual. 
 There are men, not oppressed and gloomy, but serious 
 and happy, whose deepest thought is always busy with 
 the deepest things. Very unhappy is the man who 
 never knows such converse. Happiest of all is he for 
 whom it starts without surprise at any moment, who 
 is always ready to give his deepest thought to deep- 
 est questions and his strongest powers to the hardest 
 tasks. 
 
 This then is what we mean by deep calling unto deep. 
 You see what kind of life it makes. There is another 
 kind of life by contrast with which this kind may per- 
 haps best be understood. There is a life to which the 
 world seems easy, and so in which the strongest powers 
 of the human nature are not stirred. I call that the 
 life in which shallow calleth unto shallow. Like little 
 pools lying in the rock, none of them more than an inch 
 deep, all of them rippling and twinkling in the sun- 
 shine and the breeze, — so lie the small interests of the 
 world and the small powers of man ; and they talk with 
 one another, and one perfectly answers the demands 
 which the other makes. Do you not know all that ? The 
 world simply as a place of enjoyment summons man 
 simply as a being capable of enjoyment. The whole 
 relationship gets no deeper than that. The material of 
 pleasure or of pride cries to the power of pleasure or 
 
 16 
 
242 Dee'p Calling unto Deep. 
 
 of pride, "Come, be pleased," or "Come, be proud." 
 It is the invitation of the surface to the surface, — of 
 the surface of the world to the surface of the man. 
 
 What shall we say of this ? It is real. It is legiti^ 
 mate. In its degree and its proportion it is good ; but 
 made the whole of life and cut off from connection with 
 the deeper converse between the world and the soul, it 
 is dreadful. The world does say to us, " Enjoy ;" and 
 it is good for us to hear her invitation. But for the 
 world to say, and for us to hear, nothing better or 
 deeper than " Enjoy" is to turn the relation between the 
 world and man into something hardly better than that 
 which exists between the corn-field and the crows. It 
 is clothing oneself with cobwebs. Only when the 
 deeper communion, rich and full and strong, is going 
 on below, between the depths of life and the depths of 
 man, — only then is the surface communion healthy and 
 natural and good. He who is always hearing and an- 
 swering the call of life to be thoughtful and brave and 
 self-sacrificing, — he alone can safely hear the other cry 
 of life, tempting him to be happy and enjoy. 
 
 But look ! What multitudes of men have ears only for 
 the summons to enjoyment, who never once seem to 
 hear the call to righteousness and self-sacrifice and 
 truth. Look at the devotees of art to whom it is never 
 more than a mere vehicle of pleasure. Look at the 
 slaves of society who never make it their slave by 
 compelling it to make them generous and good. Look 
 at the business-men who never make anything out of 
 their business except money. It is shallow calling 
 unto shallow. It is the tinkling clatter of the lighter 
 
 4 
 
Deep Calling unto Deep. 243 
 
 instruments with no deep thunder of the organ down 
 below, and oh, how wearisome it grows ! 
 
 But there are two other wrong and bad relations be- 
 tween man and the world he lives in, which result of 
 necessity from what we saw, — that both the world and 
 man have their shallows and their depths. I have 
 spoken of deep calling upon deep, which is great and 
 noble; and of shallow calling upon shallow, which is 
 unsatisfactory and weak. The words of David suggest 
 to me also that there is such a thing as deep calling 
 unto shallow, — by which I mean, of course, the pro- 
 found and sacred interests of life crying out and find- 
 ing nothing but the slight and foolish and selfish parts 
 of a man ready to reply. There are a host of men who 
 will not leave great themes and tasks alone and be con- 
 tent to live trivially among trivial things. They are 
 too enterprising, too alive for that. You cannot re- 
 duce them to mere dilettantes of the galleries, or ex- 
 quisites of the parlors, or book-keepers of the exchange ; 
 they will meddle with the eternities and the profundi- 
 ties. They have perception enough to hear the great 
 questions and see the great tasks; but they have not 
 earnestness and self-control enough to answer them with 
 serious thought and strong endeavor ; so they sing their 
 answer to the thunder, which is not satisfied or answered. 
 This is what I mean by deep calling unto shallow. 
 
 If you do not understand what I am thinking of, con- 
 sider what you see in politics. Is there a greater call 
 than that which comes out of the depths of a nation's 
 needs ? " Tell me what this means, and that, in my ex- 
 perience. Tell me how I shall get rid of this corrup- 
 
244 Deep Calling unto Deep. 
 
 \ 
 
 tion and that danger. Tell me how I can best be 
 governed. Help me to self-control." These are the 
 appeals which come out of the nation's heart of hearts. 
 And what is it that they find to cry to ? In part, at 
 least, are they not answered back by personal ambi- 
 tions, by party spirit, by the trickery of selfishness, 
 and by the base love of management? This is the mis- 
 ery of politics, — the disproportion between the inter- 
 ests which are at stake and the men and machineries 
 which deal with them. Those interests need the pro- 
 foimdest thought and the most absolute devotion. In 
 some degree they get it; but how often what they get 
 is only prejudice and passion, — the lightest, least rea- 
 sonable, most superficial action of our human nature. 
 
 If we turn to religion, the same thing is true there 
 as well. What does it mean when out of the profound 
 realities of the soul, of God, of life, of death, of immor- 
 tality, of duty, there rises to the surface and flaunts 
 itself in the astonished gaze of men — what ? The ban- 
 ner of a denominational pride, or the ribbons of a ritu- 
 alistic decoration, or the rigidities of formal dogma. 
 Listen to what men call a religious discussion. Is this 
 captiousness, this desire to get the advantage of an ad- 
 versary, this delight in making hits, this passion for 
 machinery, this mixture of the false with the true, — 
 is this the utterance in human speech of the overwhelm- 
 ing dangers, the overwhelming opportunities of the soul 
 of man ? The religious newspaper and the religious 
 convention are often the least religious of all the jour- 
 nals and meetings, the least exalted in their spirit, the 
 most sordid and worldly in their tone. 
 
Beejp Calling unto Deep. 245 
 
 I find the same regarding truth of every kind. Truth 
 and the search for truth are the great food and disci- 
 pline of human nature. Good is it when a man, sweep- 
 ing around some sudden corner of his life, sees looming 
 up before him a truth which he has not known before. 
 He has grown used to the old truth ; here is another of 
 another kind. How great the moment is ! 
 
 " Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
 When a new planet swims into his ken. 
 
 Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
 He stared at the Pacific, — and all his men 
 
 Looked at each other with a wild surmise, — 
 Silent, upon a peak in Darien." 
 
 In the heart of the finder of the new truth, as in the 
 heart of the discoverer of the new ocean, new chambers 
 open for the new-comer to abide in ; new engineries of 
 power leap to life for the new truth to use. All this 
 sometimes. But sometimes also the new truth stirs 
 nothing but new jealousies and vanities. A new law 
 opens out of the complexity of Nature and sometimes 
 — not often, let us be proud to claim — the naturalists 
 stand quarrelling which it was that saw it first. A new 
 view of life, a new religion which is very old, is brought 
 by some disciple of it from his ancient home, and the 
 best use which we can find to make of it is to use it for 
 the attraction and stimulus of our flagging social ex- 
 istence, to discuss it in our aesthetic clubs, and to pre- 
 tend dilettante conversions to it before we have taken 
 pains to understand what it really means. 
 
 Everywhere the deep calls to the shallow, and the 
 shallow answers with its competent and flippant tongue. 
 
246 Deep Calling unto Deep. 
 
 It is earnest questions dealt with by unearnest men 
 and in unearnest ways which make a large part of 
 the darkness of the world. "If he would only let it 
 alone," we feel a thousand times when some flippant 
 trifler takes up some solemn theme and turns it easily 
 round and round between his thumb and finger. " Who 
 are these that darken counsel by words without knowl- 
 edge ? " The earnest man to match the earnest ques- 
 tion ! When he comes how the light breaks ! Oh, my 
 dear friends, I beg you listen to no other. When deep 
 calls to deep, when the conscience and the spiritual 
 earnestness of any man — whoever he be — talks with 
 truth, draw near and listen, for you will surely get 
 something; if not great wisdom, from the earnest 
 talker, at least an atmosphere and light in which your 
 own wisdom can work at its best. But when deep calls 
 to shallow, when man deals with great truth in a little 
 spirit and for ends of little selfishness and pride, then 
 turn and go away ; for there there is no food or educa- 
 tion for your soul. 
 
 We have heard the deep calling to the shallow. Now 
 let us turn for a few moments and, with another ear, 
 listen to the shallow calling to the deep. All of our 
 treatment of this imagery will, I am sure, show you 
 what I mean by that. When the mere superficial 
 things of life, which are all legitimate enough in their 
 true places and enlisting their own kind of interest, as- 
 pire to lay hold of man's serious anxiety and to enlist 
 his earnest thought, then there is born a sense of dis- 
 proportion just the opposite of that of which I have been 
 speaking, — a disproportion which seems to be rightly 
 
Deep Calling unto Deep. 247 
 
 described as the shallow calling to the deep. If we are 
 offended when eternity calls to men, and men chatter 
 about it as if it were a trifle ; so we also ought to be 
 offended when some trifle speaks to them and they look 
 solemn and burdened and anxious over it, and discuss 
 it as if it were a thing of everlasting import. Have you 
 never stood in the midst of the world of fashion and 
 marvelled how it was possible that men and women 
 should care, as those around you seemed to care, about 
 the little conventionalities which made the scenery and 
 problems of its life ? Natural enough questions many 
 of them were, necessary, perhaps, that they should be 
 settled one way or the other, but certainly questions to 
 be settled in an instant and forgotten, — questions to 
 be settled with the simplest powers and the least anx- 
 ious thought. You meet your friend some morning and 
 he wears an anxious face. You can seem to see into 
 the depths of his being, and they all are stirred. You 
 picture to yourself some awful woe which has befallen 
 him. You seem to see him wrestling like Jacob in 
 Peniel for his life. You stop him and ask what is the 
 matter, and his answer tells you of some petty dis- 
 turbance of the household, or some question of a bar- 
 gain he has made, — whether it will turn out twenty-five 
 or thirty per cent to his advantage. Are you not vexed 
 with a vexation that is almost a sense of personal 
 grievance ? The man has no right to conceive things in 
 such disproportion. A man has no right to give to 
 the tint on his parlor walls that anxiety of thought 
 which belongs only to the justification of the ways of 
 God to man. And why? Mainly, I suppose, because 
 
248 Deep Calling unto Deep. 
 
 the man who has expended his highest powers upon the 
 lightest themes has no new, greater seriousness to give 
 to the great problems when they come, and so either 
 avoids them altogether or else, by a strange perversion, 
 turns back and gives them the light consideration 
 which was what he ought to have given to his headache 
 or the color of his walls. Very often the man in whom 
 the shallow calls to the deep is the same man in whom 
 also the deep calls to the shallow. 
 
 There is a noble economy of the deepest life. There 
 is a watchful reserve which lieeps guard over the pow- 
 ers of profound anxiety and devoted work, and refuses 
 to give them away to any first applicant who comes 
 and asks. Wealth rolls up to the door and says, " Give 
 me your great anxiety ; " and you look up and answer, 
 " No, not for you ; here is a little half-indifferent desire 
 which is all that you deserve. " Popularity comes and 
 says, " Work with all your might for me ; " and you re- 
 ply, " No ; you are not of consequence enough for that. 
 Here is a small fragment of energy which you may 
 have, if you want it ; but that is all. " Even knowledge 
 comes and says, " Give your whole soul to me ; " and 
 you must answer once more, "No; great, good, beau- 
 tiful as you are, you are not worthy of a man's whole 
 soul. There is something in a man so sacred and so 
 precious that he must keep it in reserve till something 
 even greater than the desire of knowledge demands it. " 
 But then at last comes One far more majestic than them 
 all, — God comes with his supreme demand for goodness 
 and for character, and then you open the doors of your 
 whole nature and bid your holiest and profoundest devo' 
 
 I 
 
Deep Calling unto Deep. 249 
 
 tion to come trooping forth. Now you rejoice that you 
 kept something which you would not give to any lesser 
 lord. Now here is the deep in life which can call to 
 the deep in you and find its answer. 
 
 Oh, my dear friends, at least do this. If you are not 
 ready to give your deepest affections, your most utter 
 loyalty to God and Christ, at least refuse to give them 
 to any other master. None but God is worthy of the 
 total offering of man ! Keep your sacredest till the most 
 sacred claims. The very fact that you are keeping it 
 unused will tempt its true use constantly, and by and 
 by the King will take and wear the crown which it has 
 been forbidden any less kingly head than His to wear. 
 
 I think that there are men to-day who are living in 
 exactly the condition I describe. Unable to find God 
 and believe in Him in such way that they can give 
 themselves to Him, they yet know themselves to be 
 possessed of powers of love and worship and obedience 
 which it is not possible for them to exercise toward any 
 but a God; therefore they hold these powers sacredly 
 unused and wait. They know their lives imperfect; 
 but they will not try, they will not consent, to complete 
 them by restriction or degradation. If part of the great 
 circle is yet wanting, they will hold the gap open and 
 not draw the line in to fulfil a more limited circum- 
 ference. To all such waiting souls sooner or later the 
 satisfaction must be given. 
 
 Thus I have tried to show how the proportions subsist 
 or fail between the world we live in and the human 
 soul. See what the various conditions are. Sometimes 
 deep calls to deep, and man matches the profoundest 
 
250 Deep Calling unto Deep. 
 
 exigencies with profound emotions and actions ; some- 
 times shallow calls to shallow, and then there is the 
 surface life of ordinary intercourse and easy careless- 
 ness; sometimes deep calls to shallow, and then you 
 see men trifling with eternal things, and playing on the 
 brink of awful truths ; sometimes shallow calls to deep, 
 and then the powers which ought to wrestle with the 
 mightiest problems are wasted on the insignificant 
 whims and fancies of the hour. 
 
 What is the issue of it all ? Does it not sometimes 
 seem as if the struggle of man's history was toward the 
 establishment of the true proportion between man and 
 his world, and as if, when that were reached, every true 
 man and his world would be saved ? There is a slow 
 revelation going on by which men are learning that the 
 effort and the purpose must have relation to each other. 
 " Cast not your pearls before swine ; " " Render to Caesar 
 that which is Caesar's, and to God that which is 
 God's ; " " This ought ye to have done and not to leave 
 the other undone, " — those are the words of Christ 
 which teach the lesson of that proportion. He who 
 hears those words cannot waste his soul's strength on 
 trifles, nor can he think that the great prizes of life are 
 to be had without a struggle, a self-denial, and a 
 patient hope. 
 
 There are abundant signs in Jesus of how completely 
 that proportion was maintained in His own life. Men 
 came to Him with selfish little questions about the 
 division of inheritances, and He would not waste His 
 time upon them; but Nicodemus came eager for spir- 
 itual light, and Christ would sit all night and teach 
 
Deep Calling unto Deep. 251 
 
 him. The people at Nazareth wanted to stone Him, 
 and He quietly '^ ..oed away and left them with their 
 stones in their hands; but the cross demanded Him, 
 and He went up to the terrible experience with a soul 
 consecrated to endure it all, and spared Himself not 
 one blow of the scourge upon the shoulders, and not 
 one piercing of the nails into the hands and feet. He 
 knew what was worth while; and He knew that be- 
 cause He was one with God, the Son of God could not 
 count the great little nor the little great. That was 
 the secret of His perfect life. 
 
 If we can live in Him and have His life in us, shall 
 not the spiritual balance and proportion which were His 
 become ours too ? If He were really our Master and 
 our Saviour, could it be that we could get so eager and 
 excited over little things ? If we were His, could we 
 possibly be wretched over the losing of a little money 
 which we do not need, or be exalted at the sound of a 
 little praise which we know that we only half deserve 
 and that the praisers only half intend ? A moment's 
 disappointment, a moment's gratification, and then the 
 ocean would be calm again and quite forgetful of the 
 ripple which disturbed its bosom. 
 
 On the other hand, if we were His, could we help 
 giving the anxiety which we refused to everything be- 
 side, to spiritual things ? When the deep called, must 
 not the deep reply ? 
 
 My friends, there are things which it is a shame and 
 an absurdity for any earnest man to care about with 
 any serious care ; but there are other things about which 
 a man must care or he is no real man. Whether he is 
 
252 Deep Calling unto Deep. 
 
 good and honest ; whether he is getting more truth and 
 character; whether the world is better for his living; 
 whether he is finding God, — God help us to care for 
 those things with all our hearts. They are the things 
 the care for which brings us into the company of noble 
 souls. They are the things the care for which we never 
 shall out-go; for for those things the souls of men 
 glorified will still care, and talk of them upon the 
 streets of heaven. 
 
XV. 
 
 THE WINGS OF THE SEEAPHIM. 
 
 Above it stood the seraphim. Each one had six wings ; with twain he 
 covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he 
 did fly. — Isaiah vi. 2. 
 
 In the majestic vision of Isaiah the Lord Jehovah sits 
 upon His throne, and around Him as He sits there stand 
 mighty figures such as do not appear in just the same 
 guise anywhere else in Scripture. Isaiah calls them 
 " the seraphim. " They are not angels ; they are rather 
 the expressions of the forces of the universe waiting 
 there beside the throne of God. They are titanic be- 
 ings, in whom is embodied everything of strength and 
 obedience which anywhere, in any of the worlds of God, 
 is doing His will. Since man is the noblest type of 
 obedient power, these majestic seraphim seem to be hu- 
 man in their shape; but, as if farther to express their 
 meaning, there are added to each of them three pairs of 
 wings, whose use and disposition are with particularity 
 described. 
 
 It is from what is said about these wings of the sera- 
 phim that I want to take my subject for this morning. 
 You can see what right we have to treat the seraphim 
 themselves as types and specimens of strength offering 
 itself obediently to God. And if the highest attitude 
 
254 The Wings of the Seraphim. 
 
 of any man's life is to stand waiting for what use God 
 will choose to make of him, then we have a right to 
 seek for something in the fullest life of consecrated 
 manhood — of manhood standing by the throne of God 
 — correspondent to each indication of temper and feel- 
 ing which Isaiah shows us in the seraphim. 
 
 How shall man stand, then, in a world where God sits 
 in the centre on His throne ? This is the question for 
 which I seem to find some answer in the picture of the 
 mighty creatures, each with his six wings, — with two 
 of which he covered his face, and with two he covered 
 his feet, and with two he did fly. We gather so many 
 of our impressions of humanity from poor stunted human 
 creatures — poor wingless things who strut or grovel in 
 their insignificance — that it will surely be good if we 
 can turn for once and see the noblest image of conse- 
 crated power, and say to ourselves, " This is what man 
 is meant to be. This it is in me to be if I can use all 
 my powers and let God's presence bring out in me all 
 that it really means to be a man." 
 
 Each of the three pairs of wings has its own sugges- 
 tion. Let us look at them each in turn and see how 
 they represent the three qualities which are the condi- 
 tions of a complete, effective human life. 
 
 With the first pair of wings, then, it is said that the 
 living creature, standing before God, "covered his 
 face. " There was a glory which it was not his to see. 
 There was a splendor and exuberance of life, a richness 
 of radiance coming from the very central source of all 
 existence which, although to keep close to it and to 
 bathe his being in its abundance was his necessity and 
 
The Wings of the Seraphim. 255 
 
 joy, he could not search and examine and understand. 
 There was the incomprehensibleness of God ! 
 
 We talk about God's incomprehensibleness as if it 
 were a sad necessity ; as if, if we could understand God 
 through and through, it would be happier and better for 
 us. The intimation of Isaiah's vision is something 
 different from that. It is the glory of his seraphim 
 that they stand in the presence of a God so great that 
 they can never comprehend Him. His brightness over- 
 whelms them ; they cover their faces with their wings, 
 and their hearts are filled with reverence, which is the 
 first of the conditions of complete human life which 
 they represent. 
 
 We have only to think of it a moment to become 
 aware how universal a necessity of human life we are 
 naming when we speak of reverence, — meaning by it 
 that homage which we feel for what goes beyond both 
 our imitation and our knowledge, and shrouds ' itself in 
 mystery. No man does anything well who does not 
 feel the unknown surrounding and pressing upon the 
 known, and who is not therefore aware all the time 
 that what he does has deeper sources and more distant 
 issues than he can comprehend. It is not only a pleas- 
 ing sentiment, it is a necessary element of power, — 
 this reverence which veils its eyes before something 
 which it may not know. What would you give for the 
 physician who believed that he had mastered all the 
 truth concerning our human bodies and never stood in 
 awe before the mystery of life, the mystery of death ? 
 What would you give for the statesman who had no rev- 
 erence, who made the State a mere machine, and felt 
 
256 The Wings of the Seraphim. 
 
 the presence in it of no deep principles too profound for 
 him to understand ? What is more dreadful than irrev- 
 erent art which paints all that it sees because it sees 
 almost nothing, and yet does not dream that there is 
 more to see; which suggests nothing because it sus- 
 pects nothing profounder than the flimsy tale it tells, 
 and would fain make us all believe that there is no sa- 
 credness in woman, nor nobleness in man, nor secret in 
 Nature, nor dignity in life. Irreverence everywhere 
 is blindness and not sight. It is the stare which is 
 bold because it believes in its heart that there is noth- 
 ing which its insolent intelligence may not fathom, and 
 so which finds only what it looks for, and makes the 
 world as shallow as it ignorantly dreams the world 
 to be. 
 
 When I say this, I know, of course, how easily corrup- 
 tible the faculty of reverence has always proved itself 
 to be. The noblest and finest things are always most 
 capable of corruption. I see the ghosts of all the super- 
 stitions rise before me. I see men standing with delib- 
 erately blinded eyes, hiding from their inspection things 
 which they ought to examine, living in wilfully chosen 
 delusions which they prefer to the truth. I see all this 
 in history ; I see a vast amount of this to-day and yet 
 all the more because of this, I am sure that we ought to 
 assert the necessity of reverence and of the sense of 
 mystery, and of the certainty of the unknown to every 
 life. To make the sentiment of reverence universal 
 would be the truest way to keep it healthy and pure. 
 It must not seem to be the strange prerogative of saints 
 or cranks; it must not seem to be the sign of excep- 
 
OiTie Wings of the Serapliim. 257 
 
 tional weakness or exceptional strength ; it must be the 
 element in which all lives go on, and which has its own 
 ministry for each. The child must have it, feeling his 
 little actions touch the Infinite as his feet upon the 
 beach delight in the waves out of the boundless sea that 
 strike them. The mechanic must have it, feeling how 
 his commonest tools are ministers of elemental forces, 
 and raise currents in the air that run out instantly be- 
 yond his ken. The scientist needs it as he deals with 
 the palpable and material which hangs in the impalpa- 
 ble and spiritual, and cannot be known without the 
 knowledge of the mystery in which it floats. Every 
 true scientist has it; New^ton or Tyndal pauses a mo- 
 ment in his description of the intelligible, and some 
 hymn of the unintelligible, some psalm of delight in 
 the unknown, comes bursting from his scientific lips. 
 Every man holds his best knowledge of himself bosomed 
 on an ignorance about himself, — a perception of the 
 mystery of his own life which gives it all its value. 
 You can know nothing which you do not reverence ! 
 You can see nothing before which you do not veil your 
 eyes! 
 
 But now take one step farther. All of the mystery 
 which surrounds life and pervades life is really one 
 mystery. It is God. Called by His name, taken up 
 into His being, it is filled with graciousness. It is no 
 longer cold and hard ; it is all warm and soft and pal- 
 pitating. It is love. And of this personal mystery of 
 love — of God — it is supremely true that only by rev- 
 erence, only by the hiding of the eyes, can He be seen. 
 He who thinks to look God full in the face and question 
 
 17 
 
258 The Wings of the Seraphim. 
 
 Him about His existence, blinds himself thereby, and 
 cannot see God. He sees something, but what he sees 
 is not God but himself. In Christ Himself there is the 
 perpetual intimation of His ignorance. There is the 
 continual awe of a nature from the perfect knowledge 
 of which the conditions of His human life excluded 
 him. And if He could not know the Father perfectly, 
 while He lived here in the flesh, shall we complain that 
 we cannot ? Shall we not rather rejoice in it ? Shall 
 it not be a joy to us to feel, around and through the 
 familiar things which we seem perfectly to understand, 
 the wealth and depth of Divinity, out-going all our 
 comprehension ? 
 
 Sometimes life grows so lonely. The strongest men 
 crave a relationship to things more deep than ordinary 
 intercourses involve. They want something profounder 
 to rest upon, — something which they can reverence as 
 well as love ; and then comes God. 
 
 ** Call ye life lonel)' ? Oh, the myriad sounds 
 Which haunt it, proving how its outer bounds 
 Join with eternity, where God abounds ! " 
 
 Then the sense of something which they cannot know, 
 of some one greater, infinitely greater than themselves 
 surrounds their life, and there is strength and peace, as 
 when the ocean takes the ship in its embrace, as when 
 the rich warm atmosphere enfolds the earth. 
 
 But I do not think that we have reached the fulness 
 of Isaiah's description of reverence as one of the great 
 elements of life until we have looked more carefully at 
 the image which he sets before us. He says of the 
 
The Wings of the Seraphim. 259 
 
 seraphim not merely that their eyes were covered, but 
 that they were covered with their wings. Now the wings 
 represent the active powers. It is with them that move- 
 ment is accomplished and change achieved and obedi- 
 ence rendered ; so that it seems to me that what the whole 
 image means is this, — that it is with the powers of ac- 
 tion and obedience that the powers of insight and knowl- 
 edge are veiled. The being who rightly approaches God, 
 approaches Him with the powers of obedience held for- 
 ward ; and only through them does the sight of God come 
 to the intelligence which lies behind. The mystery and 
 awfulness of God is a conviction reached through serv- 
 ing Him. The more He is served the more the vastness 
 of His nature is felt. The more obedience, the more rev- 
 erence. That, I take it, is the meaning of Isaiah's sera- 
 phim with their two wings covering their faces. 
 
 Behold, what a lofty idea of reverence is here! It 
 is no palsied idleness. The figure which we see is not 
 flung down upon the ground, despairing and dismayed. 
 It stands upon its feet ; it is alert and watchful ; it is 
 waiting for commandments ; it is eager for work ; but 
 all the time its work makes it more beautifully, com- 
 pletely, devoutly reverent of Him for whom the work is 
 done. The more work the more reverence. So man 
 grows more mysterious and great to you, oh, servant of 
 mankind, the longer that you work for him. Is it not 
 so ? So Nature grows more mysterious to you, oh, nat- 
 uralist, the longer that you serve her. Is it not so ? 
 So God grows more sublime and awful as we labor for 
 Him in the tasks which He has set us. Would you grow 
 rich in reverence ? Go work, work, work with all your 
 
260 TJie Wings of the Seraphim. 
 
 strengtli ; so let life deepen around you and display its 
 greatness. 
 
 Poor is the age which has not reverence. Men say 
 it sometimes of this age of ours. But just because it is 
 an age of active over-running work, I cannot, I do not 
 believe that it is really so. At least, I feel sure that 
 it cannot be so in the end. Its work may make it at 
 first arrogant and merely trustful of itself. A little 
 work like a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It 
 may not easily and all at once submit to be obedient ; 
 but as it goes deeper and touches more mighty tasks it 
 must come into the presence of the power which is be- 
 hind all powers, and feel God. Until it does that it 
 may trifle, it may grow profane; but all the time it 
 is on the way to reverence, the highest reverence, — the 
 reverence which comes not by idle contemplation, but 
 by obedient work. 
 
 Poor is the soul which has not reverence ! You may 
 have many powers and gifts, but if you have not rever- 
 ence there is a blight upon them all. Only be sure you 
 seek for reverence aright. Not by shutting your eyes 
 to God or any of His truth, but by spreading your wings 
 before your eyes, by putting your active powers in the 
 forefront of your life, by doing your work as deeply, in 
 as true a sense of obedience to God, as possible, so shall 
 you touch the Infinite, and live in a serene and cheerful 
 awe. The veiling of intelligence with obedience shall 
 give it light and not darkness. The reverence which 
 comes in service shall be not paralysis, but strength. 
 
 Let us pass on to the second element in Isaiah's 
 image of a strong and consecrated life. With twain of 
 
The Wings of the Seraphim. 261 
 
 his wings, he says, each of the seraphim " covered his 
 feet. " The covering of the feet represents the covering 
 of the whole body. As the covering of the face means 
 not seeing, the covering of the feet means not being 
 seen. It signifies the hiding of oneself, the self-efface- 
 ment which belongs to every effective act and every 
 victorious life. 
 
 Here is a man entirely carried away by a great en- 
 thusiasm. He believes in it with all his soul. His 
 heart and hands are full of it. What is the result ? 
 Is it not true that he entirely forgets himself ? Whether 
 he is doing himself credit or discredit, whether men 
 are praising him or blaming him, whether the comple- 
 tion of the work will leave him far up the hill of fame 
 or down in the dark valley of obscurity, he literally 
 never thinks of that. He is obliterated. It is as if he 
 did not exist, but the work did itself, and he was only 
 a spirit to rejoice in its success. Some morning the 
 work is done. It is successful ; and he is famous and 
 amazed. Another man's work is all filled with self- 
 consciousness. He never loses himself out of it for a 
 moment. It may be a noble self-consciousness. He 
 may be anxious all the time that the work he is doing 
 should make him a better man ; but the work is weak 
 just in proportion as he thinks about himself. It is 
 strong just in proportion to his self-forgetfulness. 
 
 Is it not so ? Consider your own lives. Have you 
 not all had great moments in which you have forgotten 
 yourselves, and do you not recognize in those moments a 
 clearness and simplicity and strength which separates 
 them from all the other moments of your life ? There 
 
262 The Wings of the Seraphim. 
 
 was a moment when you saw that a great truth was true 
 and accepted it without asking what the consequences 
 of its acceptance to your life might be. There was a 
 moment when you saw a great wrong being done, and 
 resisted it with an impulse which seemed to be born 
 directly out of the heart of the eternal justice and had 
 nothing to do with your personal dispositions, — hardly 
 anything, even, with your personal will. There was 
 a moment when you were in battle ; and whether you 
 lived or died was unimportant, but that the citadel 
 should be taken was a necessity. Those are the great 
 moments of your life. 
 
 The man who forgets himself in his work has but one 
 thing to think of, — namely, his work. The man who 
 cannot forget himself has two things to think of, — his 
 work and himself. There is the meaning of it all. 
 There is the distraction and the waste. The energy 
 cannot be concentrated and poured in directly on its 
 one result. Who wants to see a governor, whose whole 
 thought might be given to the welfare of the State, for- 
 ever pulled aside to think how what he proposes to do 
 will affect his popularity, his credit, his chance of be- 
 ing governor again ? My friend comes and sits down 
 beside me, and begms to give me his advice. I listen, 
 and his words are wise. I am just catching glimpses 
 of his meaning and seeing how there may be truth in 
 what he tells, when suddenly there breaks out through 
 his talk a lurid flash which spoils it all. The man is 
 thinking of himself. He is trying to be wise. He is 
 remembering how wise he is. He is trying to impress 
 me with his wisdom; and so his power is gone. A 
 
The Wings of the Seraphim. 263 
 
 student sits and seeks for truth, but mingled with his 
 search for truth there is a seeking after fame or some 
 position; and truth hides her deepest secrets from a 
 man like him. So everywhere the noblest streams 
 grow muddy with self-consciousness. Only here and 
 there a stream refuses to be muddied; and then, 
 whether it be great or small, a mighty torrent or a sil' 
 ver thread of quiet water, in its forgetfulness of self it 
 flows on to its work, and makes men's hearts joyous 
 and strong. Efface yourselves, efface yourselves; and 
 the only way to do it is to stand in the presence of 
 God, and be so possessed with Him that there shall be 
 no space or time left for the poor intrusion of your own 
 little personality. 
 
 Here also, as before, it is possible to follow out the 
 image of Isaiah. Here, as before, it may mean some- 
 thing to us that the feet are not merely covered, but 
 covered with the wings. The wings, we saw, meant the 
 active powers ; and so the meaning is that the thought 
 of oneself is to be hidden and lost behind the energy 
 and faithfulness and joy of active work. I may deter- 
 mine that I will not be self-conscious, and my very de- 
 termination is self-consciousness ; but I become obedient 
 to God, and try enthusiastically to do His will, and I 
 forget myself entirely before I know it. It is not be- 
 cause men make so much of their work that their work 
 makes them vain and fills itself with secondary thoughts 
 of their own advantage ; it is because they make so 
 little of their work, because they do not lift themselves 
 up to the thought of obedience to God. The efface- 
 ment of self is not to come by sinking into sleep, but 
 
264 The Wings of the Seraphim. 
 
 by being roused into intensest action at the call of God, 
 ■ — by a passionate desire that His will should be done, 
 whether by us or by another. When that is in our soul, 
 we shall do the part of His will which is ours to do, and 
 in our eagerness for the doing of the work forget the 
 worker. Here is the true death of personal ambition, 
 into the higher life of desire for the attainment of re- 
 sults. "P^re Jandel is myself without the inconven- 
 ience of myself," said Lacordaire when his brother-monk 
 was elevated above himself to the master-generalship of 
 their order. Behind the wings the feet are growing 
 always strong and beautiful. Within the obedience the 
 obedient nature is growing vigorous and fair; but its 
 own growth is not its purpose, and by and by when the 
 obediencG is complete, the soul itself most of all is sur- 
 prised at the unguessed, unhoped-for life which has 
 come to it in its voluntary death. 
 
 This i-6 the history of all self-sacrifice, of all the mar- 
 tyrdoms, of all the crosses. This is what is going on in 
 the sick-rooms where souls are learning patience, and on 
 battle-fields where brave young soldiers are fighting for 
 the truth. This is what true life does for true men 
 as the years go on. Work for God somewhere, in some 
 form, takes gradual possession of a man until at last the 
 thought of self, even in its highest interests, has passed 
 away. It seems to be dead, and only wakens into con 
 scious life again when the great salutation greets it at 
 the end, " Well done, good and faitliful servant. Thou 
 hast been faithful. Enter into My joy." Then the 
 wings part, and the uncovered feet walk by the river of 
 the water of life. 
 
The Wings of the Seraphim. 265 
 
 One pair of wings remains. After the twain which 
 hid the face of the seraph, and the twain which hid his 
 feet, Isaiah says still, "And with twain did he fly." 
 We have spoken of obedience as the method of re- 
 verence, and of obedience as the method of self-- 
 effacement ; but here there comes the simpler and per- 
 haps the healthier thought of obedience purely and 
 solely for itself, — the absolute joy and privilege of 
 the creature in doing the Creator's will. 
 
 " His state 
 Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed 
 And post o'er land and ocean without rest." 
 
 So sang the poet of divinity. And though he goes on 
 to turn his great truth into consolation of his own afflic- 
 tion, yet in the lines themselves we cannot help feeling 
 a true and simple joy in the great glory of a universe 
 all thrilled and beaten with the wings of hurrying 
 obedience. 
 
 To live in such a universe of obedient activity, to feel 
 its movement, to be sensible of its gloriousness, and yet 
 to make no active part of it would be dreadful. Milton 
 felt this, and in his last great line was compelled to 
 pierce down to the deepest truth about the matter, and 
 assert that he too, even in his blindness, had share in 
 the obedience of the untiring worlds. 
 
 " They also serve who only stand and wait." 
 
 Here is the deepest reason, here is the reasonable 
 glory of that which is perpetually exalted and belauded 
 in cheap and superficial ways, — the excellence of work, 
 the glory of activity. Many of our familiar human in- 
 
266 Tlie Wings of the Seraphim. 
 
 stincts live and act by deeper powers than they know. 
 That which is really the noble, the divine element in 
 the perpetual activity of man is the sympathy of the 
 obedient universe. The circling stars, the flowing 
 rivers, the growing trees, the whirling atoms, the 
 rushing winds, — all things are in obedient action, 
 doing the will of God. It is the healthy impulse of 
 any true man who finds himself in this active world to 
 share in its activity. It is the healthy shame of any 
 true man to find himself left out, having no part in that 
 obedience which keeps all life alive. 
 
 This is the power of the flying wings, — the simple 
 glory of active obedience to God. Somewhere, in some 
 sphere, to do some part of the Eternal Will, to bear some 
 message, to fulfil some task, — no human being can be 
 complete, no human being can be satisfied without that. 
 You may have the face-covering wings and hide your 
 eyes behind them, — that is, you may be full of rever- 
 ence ; you may feel most overwhelmingly the majesty of 
 God ; you may stand all day in the most sacred place, 
 crying, "Holy, holy, holy," through the clouds of in- 
 cense all day long. You may have the feet-covering 
 wings ; you may efface yourself ; you may tear out the 
 last roots of vanity from your life; you may mortify 
 your pride; you may even deny facts in your eager 
 depreciation of yourself; but reverence and self-efface- 
 ment come to nothing unless the spirit of active 
 obedience fills the life. 
 
 I think this appears to be ever more and more criti- 
 cally true. If a man wants to do God's will, there can 
 be no misbelief in him so dangerous as to be his ruin, 
 
The Wings of the Seraphim. 267 
 
 there can be no prison of false sentiment or feeling in 
 him that is not already being cast out. It is not that 
 belief is unimportant. God forbid 1 Belief is of the 
 rery substance of the life. "As he thinketh in his 
 heart, so is he. " It is not that false feelings, pride, and 
 self-consciousness are insignificant. They are the soul's 
 corruption and paralysis. But it is that through active 
 service, through the will to do God's will, belief is ever 
 struggling to become true, and feeling is ever strug- 
 gling to grow healthy. No man is fool enough to think 
 that an active arm and a big muscle can be a substitute 
 for a slow beating heart or a torpid brain. It is to set 
 the dull brain thinking and the slow blood running that 
 you take your exercise. Not as a substitute for doctrine 
 or for love, but as a means of both, the Christian says, 
 " Lord, what shall I do ? " And so his act of service 
 has in it all the richness of faith not yet believed, and 
 love not yet kindled into consciousness. 
 
 There are two extremes of error. In the one, action 
 is disparaged. The man says, " Not what I do but what 
 I am is of significance. It is not action. It is charac- 
 ter. " The result is that character itself fades away out 
 of the inactive life. In the other extreme, action is 
 made everything. The glory of mere work is sung in 
 every sort of tune. Just to be busy seems the sufficient 
 accomplishment of life. The result is that work loses 
 its dignity, and the industrious man becomes a clatter- 
 ing machine. Is it not just here that the vision of the 
 wings comes in ? Activity in obedience to God. Work 
 done for Him and His eternal purposes. Duty con- 
 scious of Him and forgetful of the doer's self, and so 
 
268 The Wings of the Seraphim. 
 
 enthusiastic, spontaneous, — there is the field where 
 character is grown, there is at once the cultivation of 
 the worker's soul and the building of some comer of 
 the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Oh, my young friends, listen to the great modern Gos= 
 pel of Work which comes to you on every breeze, but do 
 not let it be to you the shallow, superficial story that it 
 is to many modern ears. Work is everything or work 
 is nothing according to the lord we work for. Work 
 for God. Let yourself do no work which you cannot 
 hold up in His sight and say, " Lord, this is Thine ! " 
 and then your work indeed is noble. Then you are 
 standing with your flying wings which will assuredly 
 bear you into fuller light as they carry some work of 
 God toward its fulfilment. 
 
 These then are the three, — reverence and self-f or- 
 getfulness and active obedience, — " With twain he 
 covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, 
 and with twain he did fly. " It is because of irrever- 
 ence and self-conceit and idleness that our lives are 
 weak. Go stand in the sight of God and these wings 
 of salvation shall come and clothe your life. They per- 
 fectly clothed the life of Jesus. Eeverence and self- 
 sacrifice and obedience were perfect in Him. In the 
 most overwhelmed moments of His life, — crushed in 
 the garden, agonized upon the cross, — he was really 
 standing, like the strong seraphim, at the right hand 
 of God. 
 
 You want to be strong. Oh, be strong in the Lord 
 and in the power of His might, — strong as He 
 
The Wings of the Seraphim. 269 
 
 was by reverence and self-surrender and obedience. 
 The opportunity for that strength is open to every 
 man who bears a soul within him, and over whom is 
 God, and around whom is the world all full of duty and 
 need I 
 
XVI. 
 
 THE PLANTEK AND THE KAIK 
 
 He planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish it. — Isaiah xliv. 14. 
 
 The Prophet is telling us how men make idols. He 
 pictures the whole process. He describes the planting 
 of a tree upon the hill-side, its growth into full size and 
 strength, its being cut down and made into fuel, the 
 comfort which it gives its owner as it burns upon the 
 hearth, and then how "the residue thereof he maketh a 
 god, even his graven image. " What is on the Prophet's 
 mind is the indiscriminateness, the lack of separateness 
 and sanctity in that which is put to sacred uses. It 
 is but the refuse and residue of ordinary life that is 
 given to religion. We will not try to follow the Prophet 
 in this line of his thought to-day; rather let us dwell 
 on one idea which is incidentally suggested by what he 
 says. In the course of his story he depicts the growing 
 of a tree. " He planteth an ash, and the rain doth nour- 
 ish it. " It is the same thing going on long ago in old 
 Judea which has gone on since man began to live upon 
 the earth, which is going on everywhere to-day. The 
 civilized and cultivated tree is the joint product of hu- 
 man care and the earth's fertility. Man puts the seed 
 into the ground, and then the ground, made fruitful by 
 rain and sunshine, does the rest. Man has the initia- 
 
The Planter and the Bain. 271 
 
 tive, but he does not follow out what he begins to its 
 fulfilment. It is taken out of his hands. The great 
 machinery of Nature appropriates it, and by and by 
 the full-grown product does not belong alone to him 
 or to Nature, but is the work of both together, — of his 
 designing and of Nature's execution. "He planted 
 the ash, and the rain did nourish it." 
 
 The words have in them that, I think, which immedi- 
 ately harmonizes with the large and general feeling 
 which we all have about the way in which things grow 
 in the world. Partly by deliberate choice, and partly by 
 what seems to be automatic action ; partly by man giv- 
 ing orders to Nature, and partly by Nature carrying 
 out the suggestions of man ; partly by human will, and 
 partly by natural force, — so it appears to us as if the 
 operations of the world went on. Sometimes one ele- 
 ment and sometimes the other seems most prominent, 
 according to the observer's general nature or special 
 mood. But, behold! here is a recognition of them 
 both, and a blending of the two. Here is man the de- 
 viser, the conceiver, and here is the great system of the 
 universe taking his devise or conception at his hands 
 and carrying it forward to its full development. Let us 
 study the picture which is thus set before us, and see 
 how true it is to what the world contains. 
 
 We may ask ourselves how it is that any institution 
 or established form of human living comes to be preva- 
 lent and dominant. We cannot often — perhaps we can 
 almost never — trace the process, but we know what it 
 must be. A strong idea, of freedom, of justice, of 
 mercy, enters into some strong man's soul. It makes 
 
272 The Planter and the Bain. 
 
 itself completely his. Then it will not be satisfied with 
 him; it grows restless within him and demands the 
 world. Then he takes it out some day and plants it. 
 With some vigorous, incisive word or deed he thrusts 
 his live and fiery idea down deep into the fruitful soil 
 of human life. Then human life takes up his idea and 
 nourishes it. "Wonderfully all the forces gather around 
 it and give it their vitality. History bears witness that 
 it has all been living by the power of that idea un- 
 known, unguessed ; philosophy says that in it lies the 
 key of her hard problems; economy discovers that by 
 it life may be made more thrifty and complete ; poetry 
 shows its nobleness ; affection wreaths it with love ; all 
 the essential hopes and fears and needs of human na- 
 ture come flocking to it; until at last you can no more 
 conceive of human life without that idea than you can 
 think with complacency of the landscape without the 
 great tree which is as thoroughly a part of it as is the 
 very ground itself. A free church, a just court, a pop- 
 ular government, — this is the way in which every in- 
 stitution comes to be. It is the thought of a man set 
 into the great system of human life, claimed by that 
 system, fed by it, becoming so thoroughly the possession 
 of that system that it quite forgets the mind in which, 
 it first sprang, but yet being through all its long per-', 
 petual life the result of both, — of the hand that planted 
 it, and of the elements which fed it into its full result 
 — the ash-tree which the man planted, and the rain 
 nourished. 
 
 Here is the relation of the world's few great creative 
 men to the great mass and body of its life. Helpless 
 
The Planter and the Rain. 273 
 
 would the great general humanity be without their 
 pregnant thoughts; helpless would they be for all 
 their pregnant thoughts without the great general hu- 
 manity in which to plant them. Helpless Europe 
 without Martin Luther. Helpless also Martin Luther 
 without Europe. The idea may be the richest and the 
 truest ; without the human heart to plant it in, it comes 
 to nothing. The human heart may be tumultuous with 
 fructifying power ; if it have no idea to work upon, it 
 tears itself to pieces with its purposeless fermentation. 
 Here is the mutual need of great souls and the great 
 world. Here is where they must learn to respect and 
 to be thankful for each other. Here must be their 
 escape from all grudges and jealousies and weak 
 contempt. 
 
 This may serve for our first illustration of the truth 
 we have to study. We have another, even more strik- 
 ing, close at our hand in the way in which character 
 grows up in our personal nature. Where do our char- 
 acters come from ? It is easy sometimes to represent 
 them as the result of strong influence which other men 
 have had over us. It is easy at other times to think of 
 them as if they made themselves, shaping themselves 
 by mere internal fermentation into the result we see. 
 But neither account tells the story by itself. We know 
 that it does not. When we question ourselves, not 
 about character in general, but about special points and 
 qualities of character, then we are sure that it was by 
 some outer influence made our own, some seed of mo- 
 tive or example set into our lives and then taken pos- 
 session of by those lives and filled with their vitality, 
 
 18 
 
274 The Planter and the Rain. 
 
 developed into their own type and kind of vice or 
 virtue — it was thus that this which is now so intimate 
 that we call it not merely ours but ourselves came into 
 being. This is the reason of the perpetual identity 
 along with the perpetual variety of goodness and bad- 
 ness. We are all good and bad alike; and yet every 
 man is good and bad in a way all his own, — in a way 
 in which no other man has ever been bad or good since 
 the world began, — just as all ash-trees are alike be- 
 cause they have all been planted from the same nurs- 
 eries; and yet every ash-tree is different from every 
 other because it has grown in its own soil and fed on its 
 own rain: the society and the individuality of moral 
 life. 
 
 Of course what I am saying is true both of the evil 
 and of the good which is in us. It is true of the evil. 
 Here is the bad man. Here is the thief. How did he 
 grow bad ? How is he bad to-day ? He cheats himself 
 if he tries to believe that he is bad because of a constant 
 outside influence which holds him every moment, and 
 thinks that if that influence were taken off he instantly 
 would flee to goodness. The evil in him is vastly 
 more his own, more himself, than that ; and yet it did 
 come into him from without. He did not invent rob- 
 bery. The temptation dropped in through the open 
 channel of the eye or ear ; but, once in, it became his. 
 It became he. His nature seized it ; his passions col- 
 ored it ; it turned its growth in the direction of his am- 
 bitions. How harmless the temptation without him! 
 How innocent he but for the temptation! 
 
 Or is it goodness and not evil? Still the same thing 
 
The Planter and the Rain. 275 
 
 is true. You have absolutely forgotten what suggestion 
 it was which first brought to your thought the idea of 
 self-conquest, or of knowledge, or of charity, which is 
 now your very life of life. Was there ever a time when 
 you were destitute of it ? Is it possible that other peo- 
 ple have it too, this which is so especially and ab- 
 solutely your own ? How far away seems the time, as 
 your strained memory recovers it, when some dear 
 hand dropped into your soft, young life the seed which 
 has grown richly into this ! The lips which spoke the 
 word which was the New Word of your life have with- 
 ered beneath the tombstone long ago. The father or 
 the mother who said to you, " Be brave, be true, " have 
 gone on themselves deep into the courage and truth of 
 eternity. But what then ? Does the harvest-field re- 
 member the bright morning when the sower walked in 
 the brown furrows and scattered the seed ? It is not 
 what stays in our memories, but what has passed into 
 our characters that is the possession of our lives. The 
 long-forgotten deed or word was caught up into your 
 life. Everything in you was different because of it. 
 And here it is in you to-day ; not a seed any longer but 
 a tree, not an influence but a character, yet carrying in 
 itself forever the virtue of its double history, — that it 
 came into the nature and that it became the nature ; for 
 we are parts of the great whole, and we are wholes 
 ourselves. 
 
 So it is that men become good or bad. Such is the 
 germ-theory of character. So credit and blame are in- 
 tricately interwoven and shared between our circum- 
 stances and ourselves ; and yet it must not be forgotten 
 
276 The Planter and the Rain. 
 
 to be said, this does not make our natures indiscrimi- 
 nate. It is not true that they lie waiting equally in- 
 different and ready to give growth to the evil and the 
 good. The truth above all others which Christ came 
 to declare was that the human nature had its prefer- 
 ence ; that it preferred the good, and gave its best fos- 
 tering to that. Forced to bestow its growth-power on 
 the evil if the evil was forced upon it, it felt that to 
 be a violence. It lived in slavery while it did that. 
 It hated the work it had to do, for its real nature was 
 to serve the good. It struggled to cast out and to re- 
 fuse the evil. It was to claim that for it and to tempt 
 it to do that that Jesus came. That refusal of the 
 power of growth to strengihen and vivify the bad was 
 complete in Him. Only the good that came to Him 
 commanded His strength. And ever our nature strug- 
 gles more and more to be what His was and is, who was 
 and is the perfect man ! 
 
 The truth which I am preaching has its clearest illus- 
 tration, it may be, in the way in which God has sent 
 into the world the Gospel of His Son. Most sharp and 
 clear and definite stands out in history the life and 
 death of Jesus Christ. The skies are broken at one 
 special point. The print of the divine footstep is on 
 one special spot of earth. The Son of Man comes at 
 one special date, which thenceforth shines supremely 
 luminous among the years. It was the entrance of a 
 new, divine force into the world. But what has been 
 the story of that force once introduced ? You have 
 only to read the history of Christendom and you will 
 see. It has been subjected^ it^ i^^^ influences which 
 
The Planter and the Bain. 277 
 
 have created the ordinary currents of human life. The 
 characters and thoughts of men have told upon it. The 
 Gospel has shared in the fortunes of the Christian 
 world. It has followed in the track of conquering 
 armies; it has been beaten back and hindered by the 
 tempests of revolution and misrule ; it has been tossed 
 upon the waves of philosphical speculation ; it has been 
 made the plaything or the tool of politics; it has 
 taken possession of countries and centuries only by tak^ 
 ing possession of men through the natural affections of 
 their human hearts ; it has worked through institu- 
 tions which it only helped to create. While it has 
 helped to make the world, it has also at every moment 
 been made by the world into something different from 
 its own pure self. It has been carried forward on the 
 tide of human progress to which it was always itself 
 giving its greatest force and volume. A divine gift to 
 the world, then when once given made in large degree 
 subject to the nurturing conditions of the world to 
 which it had been given — what but this has been the 
 Gospel of God's grace ? Is not its story told in the 
 words of this old parable ? " He planteth an ash, and 
 then the rain doth nourish it." 
 
 If you try to take either half of the truth by itself, you 
 get into the midst of puzzle and mistake. Think of the 
 Gospel simply as an intrusion of divine force kept apart 
 from any mixture with the influences of the world, and 
 it is impossible to understand the forms in which it 
 has been allowed to present itself. Its weaknesses and 
 its strength are alike unintelligible. Think of it as 
 a mere development of human life, and you cannot 
 
278 The Planter and the Rain. 
 
 conceive how it came to exist at all. But consider it 
 in its completeness. Remember that it is a divine 
 force working through human conditions ; see it flowing 
 through the deep channels of the universal human needs ; 
 hear it summoning to its standard the eternal human 
 hopes and fears ; let it be all one long incarnation, God 
 manifest in the flesh, — a true God, with the real strength 
 of Godhood manifest in a true flesh, cumbered by its 
 hindrances and at the same time made utterable through 
 its sympathies, — and then you see at once why it is so 
 weak, and why it is so strong ; why it has not occupied 
 the world with one lightning flash of power, and why it 
 must at last, however slowly, accomplish its complete 
 salvation. 
 
 Oh, wondrous tree, whose seed came surely from the 
 hand of God, whose growth has never passed out of His 
 watchful care, which He has set here in this rich, way- 
 ward, tumultuous soil of human life, how hast thou 
 wrestled for existence with this bounteous yet reluctant 
 ground, how hast thou sent thy roots into the pierced 
 heart of man's affections ! Through what dark stormy 
 nights hast thou struggled with the winds, and grown 
 strong in wrestling! How hast thou drawn up into 
 thyself what is eternal and spiritual in man and made 
 it claim its kinship to divinity ! Oh, wondrous tree ! 
 oh, Christian faith! oh. Christian Church! so small, 
 so strong ! what would the world be without thee ? 
 "What wouldst thou be without the world ? Grow on 
 till in thy life the perfect union of the earth and 
 heaven, of God and man, shall be complete! 
 
 Every Christian is a little Christendom; and the 
 
The Planter and the Bain. 279 
 
 method of the entrance of the Gospel into the great 
 world is repeated in the way in which the Gospel enters 
 into every soul, which then it occupies and changes. 
 Again there is the special act of the implanting of the 
 new life, and then there is the intrusting of the new- 
 implanted life to the nature and its circumstances. Do 
 you remember, oh, my Christian friend ! Perhaps the 
 place has perished from the earth ; perhaps the fire has 
 swept the stately church away in which the Lord first 
 came and spoke the word which woke you from your 
 lethargy ; perhaps there is a well-remembered chamber 
 in some house here in the city where strangers have long 
 lived, whose threshold you have not crossed nor had 
 the right to cross for years, but into which your memory 
 at any instant may go back and see, almost visible, the 
 figure of the Saviour who stood there on one unforgotten 
 night and said to you, " You are mine ; " perhaps it is 
 a silent wilderness ; perhaps it is the corner of a crowded 
 street which you can never pass without the old myste- 
 rious wonder growing into reality again. There Christ 
 came to you ! There the descent from heaven silently 
 took place, and the seed was in the soul ; then was a 
 new miracle of grace. The man was born again ! 
 
 Since then long years have come and gone. What 
 have they seen ? The rain has nourished it, — that long- 
 sown seed ! Nothing has happened since which has not 
 touched that seed and helped or hindered its maturity. 
 Your child's death twenty years ago, your failure, your 
 success in business, the fame you won by some brilliant 
 action, the book you wrote, the cause you argued, the 
 long journey which you made, the friend you won or lost ; 
 
280 The Planter and the Bain. 
 
 and things more silent, more subtle, less evident and 
 notable : your growing older, your changing thought of 
 life, the philosophical idea which took you captive ; and, 
 deeper still, the slow and steady operation of your es» 
 sential nature, of the man that you intrinsically were, 
 the being of your being, — all of these have held the 
 new life in their grasp. They all have poured in upon 
 it their vitality. They have made it a different thing 
 from any other Christian life in all the Church. They 
 have nourished it ; they have colored and shaped it ; and 
 to-day you are the Christian which these two together 
 
 — the historical conversion and the continuous experi- 
 ence — have created. What shall we say that God has 
 done for you ? Shall not our parable still tell the story ? 
 "He has planted an ash, and the rain has nourished it." 
 
 Still, remember, it is His rain. The influences into 
 whose influence the seed was given still were God's. He 
 took the child, and gave the friend, and sent you on the 
 journey, and shaped the nature which bestowed on the 
 Christian life its distinctive character. It is not a dis- 
 crimination between what God does and what you do. 
 God forbid ! It is not that ! God is behind and in it 
 all ; but it is the perception of two parts of His working, 
 
 — one in which He comes directly from the heavens ; the 
 other in which, through your essential sonship to Him- 
 self, He ripens the seed which He implanted to its full 
 result. It is all He. He is all and in all. 
 
 How beautiful it is ! Oh, Christian, lose not either 
 portion of the perfect whole, — not the divine historic 
 access of the deeper life, not the subjection of the total 
 nature, the total experience, to the perfection of that 
 
The Planter and the Rain. 281 
 
 divine access by assured possession. Stand forth, oh, 
 human souls, and let the light which lighteth every 
 man enter into you all. It seems to enter into all 
 alike. But then, with the new light within you all, go 
 forth, each with his several nature to his several life ; 
 and, oh, the myriad glories of the various church, the 
 rainbow splendor of the heaven which slowly builds it- 
 self, as in each one life appropriates grace and grace 
 transfigures life, and God becomes yours, and you be- 
 come God's in the experience of which eternity shall 
 see no end! 
 
 These have been more or less clear illustrations and 
 applications of our principle. May we not say that the 
 principle itself includes the whole truth of the super- 
 natural and its relation to the natural ? Let me give 
 what time is left to that. What is the picture which 
 the verse of Isaiah sets before our eyes ? A group of 
 ash-trees are growing on the hill. We see them stand 
 strong and substantial in the ground. Their roots are 
 drinking in the juices of the earth; their branches 
 catch rhe winds; the rain descends for their refresh- 
 ment. We come back to them year after year, and lo ! 
 each year they are a little larger than they were the 
 year before. They live and grow, and all their life and 
 growth appears to be the simple outcome of their terres- 
 trial conditions. If we let our questioning run back no 
 farther than the years which we and our fathers can re- 
 member, these ash -trees are the creatures of the earth, 
 set fast into its bosom, and with its life abundantly 
 accounting for their lives. 
 
 But by and by there comes a man whose questions 
 
282 The Planter and the Rain. 
 
 will not be content within that limitation. He hears 
 of a time when there were no ash-trees here. He asks 
 behind the method of their growth the method of their 
 origin ; and then he learns how one day, long ago, there 
 came a man bringing these ash-trees with him, and 
 planted them, and said to the earth and to the elements, 
 "Here, I give these to you. Take them and nourish 
 them for me. " And then, when he has discovered that, 
 the story of the ash-trees is complete. Behind the law 
 of their growth has been set the fact of their planting. 
 Behind the process there is a beginning. Behind the 
 natural forces of their nourishment there is the super- 
 natural will of him who chose that they should be. 
 
 And now, let it be not a group of ash-trees but a group 
 of men, — a world-full of men. They too stand rooted 
 in the earth. Soil, winds, and rain, the things of 
 earth, its nourishments and inspirations, are their 
 food and drink. They are what you are, men and 
 women who are listening to me now. The earth is 
 theirs, and they are its. Agnosticism says that that is 
 all which it is possible to know about them. Whence 
 they came, what hand planted them here, it is folly to 
 try to tell. The natural is everything. " The rain doth 
 nourish them. " Religion says, " They must have come 
 from somewhere, and calls the Somewhere which they 
 came from God. The lives which the rain nourishes 
 He planted. There is a supernatural. I feel the freer 
 beating of a will." 
 
 If we are not agnostics but religious men taught by 
 the voice of God which speaks to us in our souls, then 
 this is the view which we hold about these lives of ours. 
 
 il 
 
The Planter and the Rain. 283 
 
 my brethren. I will not try, here at a sermon's end, to 
 prove that that view is true. I will only ask you to see 
 how great it is, and beg you to be true to it if you hold 
 it ; for the place in which it sets your life, the thing it 
 makes out of your life, is very noble and inspiring. 
 A thought of God intrusted to the world — which, re- 
 member, is itself full of God — for its embodiment and 
 execution, — that is what your life is if the religious 
 conception of life is true. Tell me, does the definition 
 as you get hold of it meet and correspond with no 
 double consciousness about yourself within yourself 
 which has puzzled you a thousand times ? A thought 
 of God intrusted to the earth for its embodiment and 
 execution ! What are these dreams and visions, these 
 upward reachings, these certainties of infinite belong- 
 ings, these remonstrances with earth as if it were a ty- 
 rant holding us in slavery ? What are they, oh, thought 
 of God, but the unbroken tension of the chain which 
 binds the thinker to his thought forever ? And what 
 are all these earthlinesses, these tender clingings to the 
 things our senses understand, these practical devices, 
 these comfortable limitations, these perceived adap- 
 tivenesses, these dreads of the vast universe, these 
 calls of present duties, this fear of dying, this love of 
 the present, warm, domestic earth, — what are they all 
 but the pressure of the school -room on the scholar, of 
 the warm ground upon the seed intrusted to it ? The 
 man who does not somehow hold the complete truth 
 about his life — both of these truths combined in one 
 — does not live worthily. The man who has and holds 
 them both, look, what a life he lives ! Look how sub- 
 
284 The Planter and the Bain. 
 
 stantially his roots are fastened in the earth. Look 
 how aspiringly he lifts his branches to the sky. 
 
 It is not strange that in the greatest of all human 
 lives, — the life of lives, the life of Jesus, — all this com- 
 plete truth about the life of man should be most mani- 
 fest. A thought of God intrusted to the earth for its 
 embodiment and execution ! Hear what He says about 
 Himself : " I came forth from the Father and am come 
 into the world. " Again, " I leave the world and go unto 
 the Father. " " I came forth from the Father ! " All the 
 mystery of Nazareth is in those words. All that made 
 that birth to differ from the births of other men as be- 
 ing more immediately the utterance of a thought of God 
 is in these words, "I came forth from the Father." 
 And "I am come into the world." All the distinct 
 work of the thirty-three years, all the development of 
 consciousness by propitious or unpropitious circum- 
 stances, all the perfecting by suffering, and finally the 
 cross and its consequences are in those words, " I came 
 into the world." A thought of God's intrusted for its 
 embodiment and execution to the earth ; " The word was 
 made flesh and dwelt among us, " — that is the Incarna- 
 tion. And it is in the light of the Incarnation that every 
 man must understand his own life and his brethren's. 
 
 His own life and his brethren's, I say; for I am anx- 
 ious to have you feel that only when we see the super- 
 natural and natural meeting in our brother's life can 
 we be fair to him, or kind to him, or honor him as a 
 fellow-creature ought to be honored, or help him as a 
 fellow-creature ought to be helped. Here are you, set 
 between your brethren who arc more fortunate and your 
 
The Planter and the Rain. 285 
 
 brethren who are less fortunate than you are. On one 
 side of you is the rich and popular man, who can do you 
 a favor. On the other side of you is the poor, obscure 
 man, who wants your favor shown to him. To the one 
 you are tempted to be obsequious, to the other you are 
 tempted to be brutal. Here are you tempted to yield to 
 public opinion on one side, and tempted to despise brave 
 and noble earnestness on the other. Tell me, will it not 
 set you right with both, will it not enable you to keep 
 your respect for yourself before the one man and your 
 respect for him before the other man if you say of each 
 of them as you look him in the face, " This is a thought 
 of God intrusted to the earth for its embodiment and 
 execution " ? Two thoughts about each brother-man must 
 swallow up everything beside when you say that to 
 yourself about any fellow-creature, — the thought of 
 the sacredness of his life, and the desire to make the 
 earth to which God has intrusted him as full of helpful- 
 ness, as free from hindrance for him as you can. Oh, 
 fathers and mothers, say it of the children in your 
 arms ! Oh, students, say it of the men who are your 
 fellow-students ! Oh, friends, say it of the friends you 
 love ! Oh, enemies, say it of the enemies you dare to 
 hate ! Oh, helpers, say it of the poor you help 1 Oh, 
 suppliants, say it of the rich who help you ! Oh, men 
 and women, say it of each other, everywhere ! " This is 
 a thought of God intrusted to the earth for its embodi- 
 ment and execution. " And so peace and responsibility 
 and elevation shall take possession of all human inter- 
 course, and the children live together like their Father's 
 children in their Father's house. 
 
2S6 The Planter and the Rain. 
 
 Behold, then, here is the issue of it all ! We live to- 
 gether between the solemn heaven and the solemn earth. 
 The hand which planted us and the soil in which we 
 are planted — both of them are real, neither of them 
 can be forgotten. God help us to be true to both. God 
 help us to stand in the world with natures opened up- 
 ward to receive the divinest gifts, with natures opened 
 outward to catch every humblest opportunity which life 
 affords. What were we if we had not come from God ? 
 What were we if we had not come into the world ? Oh, 
 by the God we came from and by the world into which 
 we have come, let us be men ! And to be men is to be 
 images of Christ, the Tree of Life. It is to have the 
 Psalmist's blessing, to be trees planted by the waterside 
 which shall bring forth their fruit in due season. May 
 that blessing come to all of us ! 
 
XVII. 
 
 NEW EXPEEIENCES. 
 For ye have not passed this way heretofore, — Joshua iii. 4. 
 
 It was just before the entrance of the children of Is- 
 rael into Canaan that these words were spoken to 
 them. For three days their camp had been stretched 
 along the low hills which skirt the Jordan, and on this 
 fourth day the officers of Joshua went through their 
 ranks to give them the last commands. They said, 
 "When ye see the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord 
 your God, and the priests, the Levites, bearing it, then 
 shall ye remove from your place and go after it. Yet 
 there shall be a space between you and it, about two 
 thousand cubits by measure. Come not near unto it, 
 that ye may know the way by which ye must go ; for 
 ye have not passed this way heretofore. " And Joshua 
 said unto the people, " Sanctify yourselves, for to-morrow 
 the Lord will do wonders among you." As he spoke 
 the Jews became solemn. Their long journey in the 
 desert was over, and the mystery of an unknown country 
 and an unknown life lay before them. They looked 
 across to where " fair Canaan stood, and Jordan rolled 
 between ; " and all their pettier life was hushed, and 
 they grew serious and thoughtful. 
 
288 New Experiences. 
 
 It was the impressiveness of a new experience. It 
 was the departure from what was familiar, a long habit 
 of life, and the near entrance upon something new. 
 That always makes men serious when they realize it. 
 A ship's company who have lived together for a few 
 weeks, growing accustomed to their shipboard life, at 
 last draw near the land toward which they have been 
 sailing, and it is always striking to see how a quietness 
 and seriousness seems to come over them in the last 
 hours before they go on shore. New things are waiting 
 for them there. They are going to exchange the fa- 
 miliar for the unfamiliar; so there is little of lightness 
 and much seriousness. And this is the way in which 
 life keeps its solemnity. It is always opening new and 
 unexpected things to us. There is no monotony in 
 living to him who walks even the quietest and tamest 
 paths with open and perceptive eyes. The monotony 
 of life, if life is monotonous to you, is in you, not in 
 the world. It may be that you think all days alike, 
 and grow weary with their sameness, and get none of the 
 stimulus and solemnity which comes from constantly 
 reaching unexpected places and experiences. If it is 
 so, you are very much to be pitied. You cannot think 
 what a different, what a more solemn and delightful, 
 place this world is to a man who goes out every morn- 
 ing into a new world, who is Adam over again every 
 day, who starts each day with the certainty that he 
 "has not passed that way heretofore." The horse in 
 the treadmill does not live a life more different from 
 the horse on the prairies than your life is from such a 
 man's. And if we leave out of account the merely 
 
New Experiences. 289 
 
 superficial and unreliable difference of animal spirits, 
 the fundamental difference of the two lives lies in the 
 difference of their perception of God. It is God, and 
 the discovery of Him in life, and the certainty that He 
 has plans for our lives and is doing something with 
 them, that gives us a true, deep sense of movement, 
 and lets us always feel the power and delight of un- 
 known coming things. Without Him a life must sink 
 into weary monotony, or escape it only by artificial and 
 superficial changes. 
 
 Let us look to-day at this power of unprecedented 
 things, and try to get some idea of the true way to ap- 
 proach them. And if we think of this story of the Jews 
 we get at the first principle of the matter immediately. 
 What made the seriousness and impressiveness of their 
 entrance into the promised land was the mixture of the 
 new with the old which it brought. The land into 
 which they were to go was new. Never before had their 
 feet trodden the western bank of Jordan. The very 
 unseen bed of the stream itself was to be uncovered that 
 they might pass through. But into this new land they 
 were to be led by the old familiar ark which had led 
 them all the way from Sinai. A new land, new wars 
 to fight, by and by new towns to dwell in, a new life to 
 live, but into it all the old power was to guide them, 
 in it all they were to live by the same old principles 
 and under the same old care. It was this application 
 of the old principles to the new life that gave the seri- 
 ousness to their position. If there had been nothing of 
 that sort, if they had been going to leave all behind 
 them, and this new world were wholly another world, 
 
 19 
 
290 New Experiences. 
 
 where nothing of their old experience should be availa- 
 ble, where the ark could not lead them, where God 
 could not keep them, there might have been fright and 
 terror as they prepared to enter ; but there would not 
 have been that bright, calm, thoughtful seriousness 
 which bm'ns in the words of Joshua, and seems to 
 glow on the faces of the waiting Hebrews all through 
 the verses of this significant and graphic chapter. 
 They are asking themselves about God. They are won- 
 dering what He has in reserve for them. They are 
 gathering up all that they have known of Him. They 
 are pondering how their thoughts of Him will be modi- 
 fied and enlarged in the new experience. The past and 
 the future, like the waves of two great oceans, are meet- 
 ing in their minds as they stand waiting for the ark to 
 move and the crossing of the Jordan to begin. 
 
 And this is the power of every approach to what is 
 unprecedented. It is that we cannot leave behind the 
 old even when we go on into the new. It is that every 
 passage into new and untried things brings out the es- 
 sential principles under which we are living, unsnarls 
 them from the multitude of accidental things with 
 which they have been entwined, brings out their real 
 character, develops them into their fuller force and 
 clearness. Let us see how this is true in several ways. 
 
 Apply it first of all to the changes which are coming 
 all the time in the circumstances of our lives. These 
 changes are either great or small. Their real great- 
 ness or smallness depends upon the power which they 
 possess over the principles by which we are living. No 
 change in life is small which really brings into new 
 
New Uxperiences. 291 
 
 shapes the laws and principles which we are living by. 
 The naturalist over his microscope watches with the in- 
 tensest interest some just perceptible transformation in 
 some obscure part of an animal system, because he sees 
 that the laws of life of that system are working them- 
 selves out there in new shapes to new results. Now 
 when a change comes in the circumstances of our lives 
 you will see, I think, if you consider it, that what 
 makes it interesting is that you go into the new condi- 
 tion the same man that you have been, and that some 
 new development of your old character comes out in the 
 newer life. If you go and stand in the midst of Lon- 
 don, or climb to the top of the Pyramids, or set your- 
 self in the middle of a snow-field of the Alps, it is a 
 thrilling and delightful experience. What is it that 
 makes it so ? It is that you carry your old self there. 
 Some accidental parts of yourself you have left behind 
 in Boston, but your essential self, with your habits and 
 your ways of thinking, you have carried there ; and the 
 wonder is to feel this identity of yours standing among 
 these unfamiliar things, beaten by the waves of this 
 strange city life, frowned on by the hoary ages, or 
 lighted by the glory of the everlasting snows. You 
 realize yourself there with a strange and sharp distinct- 
 ness ; and then you feel this identity of yours, without 
 ceasing to be itself, becoming larger for the new things 
 about it, accomplishing its completest thought and life, 
 prophesying for itself destinies, declaring for itself ca- 
 pacities, as it did not do at home. These are the two 
 pleasures of the traveller who has any disposition to- 
 ward philosophy and self-inspection. The new places 
 
292 New Experiences. 
 
 where he goes first bring out his own familiar individ- 
 uality into clearness, and then ripen it to some finer 
 quality or larger size ; but this of course depends upon 
 his carrying his old self there with him. If he did not 
 do that, London and Egypt would be no more to him 
 than they are to the Londoners and the Egyptians who 
 have lived there always ; whereas they really are many 
 things to us which they cannot be to them. 
 
 And now let it be the going, not from Boston to Egypt, 
 but from wealth to poverty, from poverty to wealth, 
 from health to sickness, from sickness to health, from 
 one business to another business, from one home to 
 another home. The poetry and lesson of it all seems 
 to me to lie in this, that the change of life takes its 
 value from the continuity of life. The change of life 
 first brings out the fact of what you are, and then pro- 
 ceeds to work its changes in that fact. You have been 
 apprehending God after one fashion, from one point of 
 view, while you were a poor man ; now, behold ! wealth 
 is opening before you. Bright paths unfold themselves 
 all carpeted with flowers. You have not passed that 
 way before. You are going to enter it next week when 
 the fortune drops from the ripe tree into your lap. 
 And when you have entered there, what will really be 
 the significant and interesting fact to yourself and 
 other people ? Not certainly that there is one less poor 
 man in the world and one more rich man, — as if the 
 poor man that is gone and the rich man that has come 
 were wholly different beings who had no relation to 
 each other, — but that this rich man was the poor man, 
 that he has come into wealth with the experiences of 
 
New Experiences. 293 
 
 his poverty, that he is filling out the idea of God 
 which he got when he was poor, by the new sight of 
 God which he is having inside the walls of gold. Oh, 
 my dear friends, when any of the changes of life draws 
 near to yon, whenever God is leading you into new cir- 
 cumstances, clasp with new fervor and strength the old 
 hand which you have long been holding, but prepare to 
 feel it send new meanings to you as it clasps your hand 
 with a larger hold. And since you are always entering 
 into some new life, whether it mark itself by notable 
 outward change or not, always hold the hand of God in 
 grateful memory of past guidance and eager readiness 
 for new, — that is, in love and in faith. 
 
 It is by this same principle that we are able to picture 
 to ourselves the natural and healthy way by which men 
 ought to pass from one period or age of life into another. 
 The principle is, that the new and unprecedented is to 
 be entered under the guidance of the old and famil- 
 iar, the old and familiar being expected to show them- 
 selves in altered and larger ways when they have brought 
 us into the new. Evidently such a principle would 
 redeem the fragmentariness of life, and make it one 
 great, growing whole. For there come great breaks in 
 men's spiritual history as men pass from one period of 
 life to another. The worst and the most seemingly ir- 
 reparable of them all is that one to which apparently 
 people have made up their minds as if it were some- 
 thing that could not be avoided. I mean the break be- 
 tween the child's religion and the man's, — the violent 
 break which comes in later boyhood and earlier youth, 
 when, having ceased to obey mere authority and to believQ 
 
294 New Experiences. 
 
 what he is taught implicitly, the human creature has 
 not yet attained the faith and life of reason and personal 
 conviction. A young man's life is full of novelty. 
 " You have not passed this way heretofore " seems 
 written upon every fascinating new pathway down which 
 he walks. His freedom is a novelty. His bold begin- 
 nings of individual reason are all new. Behind him, 
 with a river rolling between, there lies that despised 
 land in which he was a child, bound to obey what others 
 commanded, and not knowing enough to doubt what 
 others said was true. What shall we say about the 
 progress which the boy seems to have made across the 
 gap that lies between him and his childhood ? Shall we 
 not certainly say this, that the progress is natural and 
 healthy and good, that the gap is unnatural and bad ? 
 It is right that he who has been a child in leading-strings 
 should rejoice in the conscious power of walking alone. 
 It is wrong that he should cast aside all the culture 
 and strength which he gathered while he was being 
 held and carried, and should insist on counting those 
 years all thrown away. The boy, aware that the years 
 are close upon him when he must act for himself and 
 hold his belief upon his own conviction, is foolish if he 
 does not accept the responsibility, and seek to understand 
 the world and the faith with which he has to deal ; but 
 he is no less foolish if in the desire for manliness and 
 originality, he throws away all that has been taught 
 him as a child, and grows contemptuous about it. The 
 true birth of manliness, the true originality of the boy 
 coming to be a man, is seen in him who, taking the 
 faith and discipline of his childhood, makes it his own, 
 
New Experiences. 295 
 
 applies it to his own life, finds its peculiar adjustments 
 to his own character. I think there is no better condi- 
 tion of the human nature to contemplate than that of a 
 young man dealing truly and seriously with the faith 
 of his fathers which has been implicitly his child- 
 hood's faith. He finds new questions rising which he 
 never dreamed of. He sees new tasks unfolding most 
 perplexingly. The belief in God and Christ which has 
 been vague to him begins to grow clear as his new needs 
 call out new reality from it. As his faith becomes 
 clearer, no doubt it changes in this part or that. The 
 faith which is shaping for his manhood evidently is not 
 to be wholly the same as that in which he was trained. 
 He is to see more of God, he is to see God differently ; 
 but the essential thing is this, that it is to be the same 
 God whom he has been seeing, that he is still to see. 
 There is to be no dreadful gap in which, with crude 
 impiety, he rebels against God altogether. It is to be an 
 enlargement of faith as he makes it his own, not a 
 flinging away of faith with a mere possibility of finding 
 it again some day. 
 
 This is the meaning of a boy's, or a young man's, con- 
 firmation. That is the time in life when confirmation 
 ought to come. Not in mere childhood, when the life 
 is still wholly under other people's influence ; not, un- 
 less it has been put off by neglect before, in those later 
 years when manhood is an old story, and the nature 
 is hard with long doubt and hesitation ; but it ought to 
 come just when the new freedom is beginning to be felt, 
 when obedience to authority is opening into personal re- 
 sponsibility, when the implicit faith is Just asking for 
 
296 New Experiences. 
 
 its soul of reason, and anticipating the changes which 
 shall make it the peculiar faith of this peculiar life, — 
 then it is that confirmation has its fullest meaning. 
 It is the gathering up of all the faith and dutiful im- 
 pulse of the past that it may go before the life into the 
 untried fields. All later times for it — though it is 
 good indeed to seize them if the true time has been al- 
 lowed to slip by — all later times for confirmation are 
 as if the Jews had forgotten the ark when they crossed 
 the Jordan and had to send back for it when they were 
 fighting their hard battles before Jerusalem or Ai. But 
 the boy's confirmation is like the host refusing to cross 
 the river, beyond which lay the untrodden land, unless 
 they saw the ark going through the water first, so that 
 they could follow it. 
 
 All this applies indeed to every change from period to 
 period of life. The poetry of all growing life consists 
 in carrying an oldness into a newness, a past into a 
 future, always. So only can our days possibly be bound 
 " each to each by natural piety. " I would not for the 
 world think that twenty years hence I should have 
 ceased to see the things which I see now, and love them 
 still. It would make life wearisome beyond expres- 
 sion if I thought that twenty years hence I should see 
 them just as I see them now, and love them with no 
 deeper love because of other visions of their lovable- 
 ness. And so there comes this deep and simple rule for 
 any man as he crosses the line dividing one period of 
 his life from another, the same rule which he may use 
 also as he passes through any critical occurrence of his 
 life; Make it a time in which you shall realize your 
 
New Experiences. 297 
 
 faith, and also in which you shall expect of your faith 
 new and greater things. Take what you believe and 
 are and hold it in your hand with new firmness as you 
 go forward ; but as you go, holding it, look on it with 
 continual and confident expectation to see it open into 
 something greater and truer. 
 
 No doubt there is something which every critical 
 change in the circumstances of life, or a change from 
 one period of life to another, gives us the chance to 
 cast away and leave behind. No doubt the Israelites 
 left in heaps the accumulated rubbish of their desert 
 journey, — their worn-out clothing and their ragged 
 shoes, — on the eastern bank of Jordan ; but they took 
 the ark with them. So let every call that comes to us 
 to enter into new and untried ways be to us the summons 
 to leave our worthless way and foolish sins behind us, 
 but to tighten our hold on truth and goodness, to re- 
 new the covenant of our souls with God before we go on 
 where He shall lead us. 
 
 I think, again, that the picture of the relation between 
 the old and the new which is seen in our story throws 
 light upon the true method and spirit of all change in 
 religious opinions. The change of one religious opinion 
 for another is, if we think of it, a profoundly serious 
 thing. It is an alteration in our thought of God ; and 
 if our thoughts of God are real thoughts, they decide 
 what we are. And so a change in our thought of God 
 must be a change in us. " As he thinketh in his heart, 
 so is he," said Solomon. And a different way of think- 
 ing in our hearts ought to make us different men. But 
 there is little of this feelinp; oi seriousness very often 
 
298 New Experiences. 
 
 in the way in which people say that they change their 
 faith. A light and careless toss from creed to creed 
 seems often to be all that one can see. " I used to be a 
 Unitarian, but now I am a Trinitarian." "I used to 
 think so and so about eternal punishment, but now I 
 have changed my views and think so and so instead. " 
 You know how frivolously in the gaps of other talk peo- 
 ple say things like these. And there is no community 
 where such words are heard more plentifully than in 
 this community where we live. It is not good. I think 
 that the most stationary bigot, who is what he is for no 
 other reason in the world except that he has been it for 
 so long, is better than this vagrant among the creeds. 
 
 But yet there must come changes of religious faith. 
 Men and women do go on, led by God, step by step, 
 until they come where what has seemed to them to be 
 true, seems to them to be true no longer, and some- 
 thing which they once disbelieved has opened to them 
 its soul of truth. Another spiritual prospect opens to 
 them which they never saw before. God is different ; 
 the Bible is very different ; Christ is profoundly differ- 
 ent ; and their own natures reveal to them sights which 
 are all strange and unexpected. These are not the 
 people who parade their change of faith. These are 
 not they who, having been noisy partisans of one creed, 
 are heard in a few days among the noisiest of shouters 
 for another. They are people with whom the change 
 has come in silence. In their quiet rooms, in calm 
 and prayerful thought, taking deep hold of them so 
 that they are wholly ready to accept the consequences 
 of their faith and be something different because of the 
 
New Experiences. 299 
 
 new belief they hold, in silence that is full of fear and 
 hope, slowly and patiently, so their new view of truth 
 has come to them. But it has come. No longer is 
 there any doubt about its imminence. They stand upon 
 the brink of the thin line that separates them from ito 
 No longer can the full entrance into it be delayed. 
 
 There is no sense of newness and inexperience in the 
 world like that. No change of outward circumstances 
 can for a moment match it. " You have not passed this 
 way before " seems to be rung into the soul's ears out 
 of every new application of the new-learnt truth to 
 everything. And then, just then, when all seems new, 
 and we are bewildered and exalted with the opening 
 spiritual prospect, then is the time to call up the Ark 
 of God, which may have fallen in the rear, and to set it 
 clearly in the front. Then, when you are going forth 
 into regions of spiritual thought that are new to you, 
 then you need to put all the honesty and purity and un- 
 selfishness of your nature in the van of your life ; then 
 you need to review and renew your old covenant with 
 God; then you want to have all your earnestness, all 
 your sense of the value of truth, refreshed in you. Be- 
 lieve me, my dear friends, this is the only salvation of a 
 man who is compelled to change his opinions of relig- 
 ious truth, that in doing it he should become a more 
 spiritual man. If he does not, the change will demoral- 
 ize him. It is so in the world. A change of creed 
 coming in a frivolous and unspiritual age shakes the 
 whole fabric of religion; but a change of religious 
 thought among men full of religious earnestness is 
 quickening and reviving. Do not let yourself conteTi- 
 
300 New Ex'pcriences. 
 
 plate any new view of truth, though you be sure that it 
 is truer than the old, unless you are sure that what 
 leads you to it is a deep desire for holiness and a real 
 love of truth, and a real love of God. "Where they 
 lead you, you may freely go, and the land shall be very 
 rich under your feet. 
 
 The principle which we have been studying seems to 
 furnish again the law of all more distinctly spiritual 
 life and progress. It furnishes the law of the conver- 
 sion-time, for there the new and old unite ; we pass on 
 into the new under the guidance and assurance of the 
 old. What is it that comes in that day when a man 
 begins the Christian life ? Across a resolution which 
 may be hard or easy for him, he sets forth into a new 
 way of living. How often I have tried to tell to you the 
 story of that newness ! How many of you have known 
 it well out of your own experience ! He who has been 
 living alone begins to live with God. He who has 
 been living for himself begins to live for other men. 
 New motives are open within him ; new tasks are spread 
 before him. Old things are passed away; all things 
 are become new. And yet consider ! Is not a very large 
 part of the impulse which propels the new life born of 
 the late discovered knowledge of what the life has been 
 before ? If you want to make a man a Christian, how 
 shall you begin ? Will you tell him of Christ as if 
 then for the first time he and Christ had anything to 
 do with one another ? Will you emphasize the moment 
 of the change so strongly that it shall seem as if, before 
 that, as he had cared nothing for the Saviour, the Saviour 
 also had cared nothing for him ? No ; you will tell him, 
 
New £xpc7'iences. 301 
 
 if you know your blessed work, of a power which has 
 been in his life from the moment that his life be- 
 gan. You will bid him open his ears and hear the 
 voice of a Saviour who has been always pleading. You 
 will call up, out of the past, signs of God's love which 
 he has never seen, but which have been always there. 
 You will set those signs of a love which has always been, 
 at the head of the progress which is yet to be. You 
 will say, " I beseech you therefore, brother, by the mer- 
 cies of God that you present your body a living sacrifice 
 to Him. " " By all the love which He has shown you 
 when you were most ungrateful now give yourself to 
 Him, and go forward in His service." 
 
 Conversion would be something very different from 
 what it is if this were not so. The old life would go 
 for nothing. No motive, no teaching, would come out 
 of it. It would be as if the stream of Jordan were the 
 stream of Lethe, bringing forgetfulness of all the past, 
 and sending out the souls of men upon the other side as 
 if that were the first beginning of their history. But 
 no, take the new Christian and ask him what it means ; 
 and all the absorbing interest and hope of his story 
 rests on this : " See what a life I have lived ! I have 
 neglected Christ ; I have been selfish. I have done my 
 will and not His ; I have not even thought about Him 
 all the time ; and yet see, He has been loving me all 
 these years. He never has forgotten me. He has been 
 loving me and helping from the beginning. My eyes 
 have just been opened. I have just found it out. Hence- 
 forth that late-discovered love will be the power of my 
 life. It will lead me forward into other wavs than those 
 
302 New ExperieTwes. 
 
 in which I have been walking." And so, as the host 
 of the Israelites stopped by the Jordan's bank before 
 they crossed, until the old ark of the desert had swept 
 through their ranks and taken its true place at their 
 head, the believer's new conviction and hope waits on 
 the brink of the new life till the mercies of the past 
 have swept on to the front, and stand ready to lead into 
 the yet untrodden fields of God. 
 
 Such be the new life when it comes to you, my friends ! 
 From childhood God has loved you, God has kept you. 
 When you are moved to give yourself to God, let there 
 come out of all that love and keeping one large, strong, 
 deep assurance of God's love. On that love cast your- 
 self and beg forgiveness, and then go forward under its 
 assurance, giving yourself always more and more com- 
 pletely to a God who does not need to give Himself to 
 you because He has been always yours. 
 
 All this does not apply only to the one critical experi- 
 ence of the spiritual life which we call conversion ; it is 
 true of all spiritual progress. Never let your Christian 
 life disown its past. Let every new and higher consecra- 
 tion and enjoyment into which you enter be made real 
 to you by bringing into it all that Christ has already 
 trained within you of grace and knowledge. I do not 
 like to hear a Christian say of some great enlightenment 
 of his life, "I never knew what Christ was till then. 
 All my Christian life before that was worthless, and 
 goes for nothing. " There are Christians who are fond 
 of saying such things. Their experiences are all spas- 
 modic, full of jerks and starts. The probability is that 
 God led you up to that enlightenment by all that went 
 
New Experiences. 303 
 
 before. You never could have apprehended that truth or 
 seen that glory of which you make so much, if first He 
 had not led you through the dark and quiet places which 
 you now despise. To the soul which dares believe the 
 vast and precious truth of God's personal love, all life 
 becomes significant, and no past is so dreary that out of 
 it there will not come up some ark of God to lead us to 
 the richer things beyond. 
 
 I pass to one more application of our principle on 
 which I must not dwell at length. It concerns our 
 thoughts about the new life which awaits the soul in 
 heaven. We think of the strangeness of that life into 
 which they pass who have done with all the old familiar 
 things of earth. Once, only once, for every man it 
 comes. No feet pass twice down that dim avenue 
 which we call death; so that for every one who passes 
 there, all that he sees is strange and new. This is the 
 wonder, the impressiveness of death, I think. The 
 common road grows tame because the feet have trodden 
 it a hundred times, and the eyes have grown familiar 
 with its scenery until it has ceased to be noted any 
 longer. I think that any road anywhere on the earth 
 over which all men on earth passed once, and through 
 which no man on earth might pass twice, would become 
 solemn and awful to the thoughts of men. So it is of 
 death and all that lies beyond. " We have not passed 
 this way heretofore, " men are saying to themselves as 
 they begin to feel their path slope downward to the 
 grave. It is that consciousness which we see coming 
 in their faces when they know that they must die. And 
 beyond death lies the unknown world. " No man hath 
 
304 N&io Experiences. 
 
 seen God at any time, " said Jesus ; but there the power 
 of the new life is to be that " we shall see Him as He 
 is. " It is our privilege to dwell upon the untold, un- 
 guessed glory of the world that is to come. It is a 
 poor economy of spiritual motive which tries to make 
 heaven real by taking out of it all thought of inexpressi- 
 ble and new delight, and bringing it down to the tame 
 repetition of the scenes and ways of earth. But no man 
 listens to the talk or reads the books which are often 
 popular, about heaven, without feeling that the glory 
 and delight of which they speak are far too completely 
 separated in kind from any which this world's experi- 
 ence has taught us how to value. It ought not to be 
 so. The highest, truest thought of heaven which man 
 can have is of the full completion of those processes 
 whose beginning he has witnessed here, their completion 
 into degrees of perfectness as yet inconceivable, but still 
 one in kind with what he is aware of now. 
 
 Having this thought of heaven, all the deepest life of 
 this world is leading the man toward it. When he 
 goes in there at last, it will be his old life with God 
 that leads him. It will be his long desire to see God 
 which at last introduces him to the sight of God. It 
 will be his long struggle with sin which finally prepares 
 him for the world where he can never sin. Let this be 
 the glory that gathers around your daily experiences, 
 my Christian friends. Poor, weak, homely, common- 
 place as they may be, they are preparing you for some- 
 thing far greater and more perfect than themselves. Be 
 true in them, learn them down to their depths and they 
 shall open heaven to you some day. The powers and 
 
New Experiences. 305 
 
 affection which are training in your family, your busi- 
 ness, and your church are to find their eternal occupa- 
 tion along the streets of gold. " Well done, good and 
 faithful servant, thou hast been faithful over a few 
 things. I will make thee ruler over many things. En- 
 ter thou into the glory of thy Lord. " And so the long 
 life of heaven shall be bound to the short life of earth 
 forever. 
 
 It is good then for a man to come to a future which 
 he does not know. It is good for you if God brings you 
 to the borders of some promised land. Do not hesitate 
 at any experience because of its novelty. Do not draw 
 back from any way because you never have passed there 
 before. The truth, the task, the joy, the suffering on 
 whose border you are standing, oh, my friend, to-day, 
 go into it without a fear; only, go into it with God, 
 — the God who has been always with you. Let the 
 past give up to you all the assurance of Him which 
 it contains. Set that assurance of Him before you. 
 Follow that, and the new life to which it leads you 
 shall open its best richness to you; for he who most 
 humbly owns what God has given him and taught him 
 already is surest of the best and deepest blessings and 
 teachings which God has yet to give. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 THE PEEFECT FAITH. 
 
 Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. — Job xiii, 16. 
 
 These words have always seemed to be the expression 
 of the profoimdest faith. When David sings, "I will 
 sing unto the Lord because He hath dealt bountifully 
 with me," it seems to be something which all men can 
 understand. It is a gratitude and trust won by visible 
 mercy. But when a soul is able to declare that even 
 under the smiting, ay, even under the slaying, of God 
 it is able still to trust in Him, every one feels that that 
 soul has reached a very true and deep, sometimes it 
 must seem a rare, faith in Him. 
 
 And yet it is a degree of faith which we know that 
 men must have attained before they can be in any com- 
 plete or worthy way believers in God. Merely to trust 
 Him when He is manifestly kind to them, is surely not 
 enough. A man's own soul cannot be satisfied with 
 that. A man questions himself whether that is faith at 
 all; whether it is not merely sight. Everywhere and 
 always any lofty conception of trust has been compelled 
 not to stop short of this: such an entrance into the 
 nature and character of the trusted person that even 
 when he seemed to be unreasonable and disappointing 
 and unkind the faithful soul could trust him still. 
 
Tlie Perfect Faith. 307 
 
 Always the man who really wanted to completely trust 
 another man has been obliged to feel that his trust was 
 not complete if it stopped short of that. 
 
 They are words that might be said almost in despera- 
 tion. The soul, compelled to realize that there was no 
 other hope for it, that if this hope failed it every hope 
 was gone, and feeling that it could not live without some 
 hope, might say, " I must and will keep faith in God. 
 No matter how He fails me I will cling to Him still; 
 for I must cling to something still, and there is nothing 
 else to cling to, and so, though He slay me, yet will I 
 trust Him. " This is the spirit of a familiar hymn which 
 always seemed to me doubtful as the expression of a 
 healthy or even of a possible experience. 
 
 •' I can but perish if I go. 
 I am resolved to try ; 
 For if I stay away, I know 
 I shall forever die." 
 
 It is a question whether a faith as desperate as that 
 is faith at all, but certainly it is not the faith expressed 
 by these words out of our English version of the Book 
 of Job. " Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. '* 
 There is something far more cordial about these words. 
 They are not desperate ; they anticipate possible disap- 
 pointment and pain; but they discern a hope beyond 
 them. Their hope lies in the character of God. What- 
 ever His special treatment of the soul may be, the soul 
 knows Him in His character. And for the explanation 
 of His treatment, for the cordial acceptance of His 
 treatment even when it cannot be explained, the soul 
 falls back upon its certainty concerning His character. 
 
308 The Perfect Faith. 
 
 I 
 
 There is no desperation here. There is no mere cling- 
 ing to God because the soul, looking all about, can find 
 nothing else to cling to. All is positive. God is just 
 what the soul needs, and to its certainty of what God 
 is the soul turns in every distress and perplexity about 
 what God does. Behind its perception of God's con- 
 duct, as an illumination and as a retreat, always lies 
 its knowledge of God's character. 
 
 The relations of character and conduct to each other 
 are always interesting. Let us look at them in general 
 for a few moments. The first and simplest idea of their 
 relation is that conduct is the mouth-piece of character. 
 What a man is declares itself through what he does. 
 I see a man steal, and I know he has a thievish heart. 
 I see a soldier fling himself upon the spears of the 
 enemy, and I know that he is brave and patriotic. We 
 know how closely this relation between character and 
 conduct binds the two together. Each is a poor weak 
 thing without the other. Character without conduct is 
 dumb and paralyzed. Its life is there but it is shut out 
 from action, and all man's history bears witness that it 
 is shut out from growth. Mere qualities which do not 
 become conscious of themselves, and do not make them- 
 selves effective by contact with the world of things, lie 
 stagnant, and can hardly be called live qualities at all. 
 And on the other hand, conduct without character is 
 thin and most unsatisfying. The pleasant deed which 
 does not mean a kindly heart behind it, the dashing en- 
 terprise which is mere physical excitement, the steadi' 
 ness in work which is merely mechanical habit and 
 routine, the search for learning which is only curiosity, 
 
The Perfect Faith. 309 
 
 — we all know how weary and unsatisfactory all of 
 these become. No ; conduct is the trumpet at the lips 
 of character. Character without conduct is like the lips 
 without the trumpet, whose whispers die upon them- 
 selves and do not stir the world. Conduct without 
 character is like the trumpet hung up in the wind 
 which whistles through it, and means nothing. The 
 world has a right to demand that all which claims to 
 be character should utter itself through conduct which 
 can be seen and heard. The world has a right to dis- 
 allow all claims of character which do not utter them- 
 selves in conduct. " It may be real, — it may be good, " 
 the world has a right to say, " but I cannot know it or 
 test it ; and I am sure that however good and real it is, 
 it is deprived of the condition of the best life and 
 growth which is activity." 
 
 This is the first relation between character and con- 
 duct. Conduct utters and declares character; but we 
 very soon find that this is not their only relation. It 
 is through conduct that I know first what character is. 
 I cannot enter into the knowledge of character in any 
 other way ; but when I have once entered into a knowl- 
 edge of character through my perception of conduct, 
 then something else occurs which it is very interesting 
 and often very beautiful to watch. By and by I come 
 to know character, to which conduct has first intro- 
 duced me, by itself ; and in its turn it becomes the in- 
 terpreter of other conduct, so that I, who first knew 
 what a man was by what he did, come afterward to un- 
 derstand the things he does by the knowledge of what 
 he is to which I have attained. 
 
310 The Perfect Faith. 
 
 Does this seem obscure ? But it is what each of you 
 is doing every day. Your life touches another man's 
 life in some of the many varied contacts of the world, 
 — you live beside him, you do business in the same 
 street and watch how he behaves, you see that he does 
 honest deeds, that he resists temptations to dishonesty ; 
 by and by when your convictions about his conduct 
 have become very clear, after you have watched him for 
 a long time, you go behind his conduct to his character. 
 You say not merely, " He does honest things ; " you say, 
 " The man is honest. " You not merely know his acts, 
 you know him. That is a different kind of knowledge. 
 He is more than the aggregate of his acts. He is a na- 
 ture. To know a nature is an exercise of your faculties 
 different from what it would be to know facts. It in- 
 volves deeper powers in you, and is a completer action 
 of your life. It is thus that, going on through his hon- 
 est conduct to his character, you have come to know 
 your friend's honest self. And now suppose he does 
 some act which puzzles you. The world shakes its 
 head at him and calls his act dishonest. You yourself 
 do not see the clew by which to understand it. But 
 suppose you are so sure that he is honest that not even 
 the strange and puzzling circumstances of this act can 
 shake you. You say, " I know that he is honest and so 
 this cannot be a cheat. " Such a degree of confidence 
 is possible; in many cases it is perfectly legitimate. 
 Each of you has that degree of confidence in some one of 
 your fellow-men. When such a confidence in character 
 exists, do you not see what a circuit you have made ? 
 You began with the observation of conduct which you 
 
The Perfect Faith. 311 
 
 could understand ; through that, you entered into knowl^ 
 edge of personal character ; from knowledge of charac- 
 ter you came back to conduct, and accepted actions which 
 you could not understand. You have made this loop, 
 and at the turn of the loop stands character. It is 
 through character that you have passed from the obser- 
 vation of conduct which is perfectly intelligible into 
 the acceptance of conduct which you cannot understand, 
 but of which you know only who and what the man was 
 that did it. 
 
 All this is quite familiar. And we can see how ne- 
 cessary some such progress of relation to our fellow- 
 men must be. We can see how limited our life would 
 be if we could never pass through study of their actions 
 into confidence in the characters of the men with whom 
 we have to do. Every man would always be on trial. 
 We should always be testing even our dearest friends. 
 Indeed, there could be no such thing as dear friendship ; 
 for friendship implies communion with and confidence 
 in character. We should look at the last act of our 
 companion with whom we had kept company for scores 
 of years with the same suspicious and watchful scrutiny 
 with which we examine the first things which a new ac- 
 quaintance does. Any one can see how sterile this would 
 make our whole association with our fellow-men. The 
 best that is in any man is locked away until you trust 
 him. When the first scrutiny is over ; when you have 
 satisfied yourself that the man whom you are dealing 
 with thinks wisely and means generously ; when, having 
 first made his actions a key to his character, you have 
 come to make his character a key to his actions, — then 
 
312 The Perfect Faith. 
 
 you begin to get the real benefit of whatever richness 
 and helpfulness of nature there may be in him. 
 
 The same is true about every one of the higher asso- 
 ciations of mankind. It is true about the association of 
 man with Nature. Man watches Nature at first sus- 
 piciously, sees what she does, is ready for any sudden 
 freak or whim or mood; but by and by he comes to 
 know of Nature's uniformity. He understands that she 
 is self-consistent. He sees what she means by all her 
 actions. He is able to state what he calls her laws. 
 That is really an entrance into the character of Nature. 
 Man has come to know not merely what Nature does, 
 but also in some degree what Nature is. And after that, 
 when he interprets every new phenomenon by the es- 
 tablished laws, he is only doing by Nature what we have 
 already seen him doing by his fellow -man. He has 
 passed around the loop. Beginning with observed and 
 criticised conduct, he has passed, through sympathy 
 with character, into an acceptance of conduct otherwise 
 wholly mysterious to him. 
 
 Or think about a man's relation to any institution to 
 which at last he gives the direction of his life. A man 
 observes the actions of a church, and they so win his 
 confidence that he comes to believe in the church's char- 
 acter as a depositary of divine wisdom and of the spirit 
 of God. When he has once come to that, the church 
 may offer him most unreasonable dogmas and bid him 
 do most unspiritual things and he will not rebel against 
 the utterances of that voice which is to him the very 
 voice of God. Everywhere this circuit marks the 
 course by which man is brought to unquestioning 
 
The Perfect Faith. ~ 313 
 
 submission. He starts with the watching of conduct. 
 He goes on into the perception of character, and on the 
 warrant of apprehended character he accepts conduct 
 which in itself bewilders and perplexes him. 
 
 And now we want to carry all this over to our thought 
 of God, and see how it supplies the key to that great 
 utterance of faith which is in our text, — " Though He 
 slay me, yet will I trust Him." It is from God's 
 treatment of any man that that man learns God. What 
 God does to him, that is what first of all he knows of 
 God. "His creation, preservation, and all the bless- 
 ings of this life, " the tendency, the evident tendency of 
 \xod's conduct toward him to make him good and happy, 
 — that is the first revelation which he meets. That 
 revelation we can imagine as stopping short with itself, 
 and becoming the whole religion of a man. The man 
 might say, "Yes, I see, the sun is bright. I feel the 
 air is soft and gentle. I recognize that the whole world 
 is tempting me to honesty and industry and purity. 
 God is feeding me, body and soul, and I take His food 
 and thank Him for it. " That might be all. The man 
 might get no farther than just that bare acceptance of 
 treatments of God, each one of which, separately taken 
 up and criticised, challenged his approval and made him 
 see that it was good. And evidently, if that were all, 
 if the man had really not gone beyond that, there would 
 be no ground on which the man should, nay none on 
 which he could, accept any treatment of God which ap- 
 peared to him harsh or unwise. If the air roughened 
 or the sun grew dim, or if the world tempted him to 
 evil instead of enticing him to good, he, holding God 
 
314 The Perfect Faith. 
 
 always on trial, judging God anew by each new treat- 
 ment he received, must of necessity be thrown off from 
 God by each new disappointment. He could not help 
 it. The moment God's conduct went against his judg- 
 ment, he must disown God. 
 
 But suppose the other case. Suppose that the man, 
 behind and through the treatment that God has given 
 him, has seen the character of God. God has been just 
 to him. He has not rested merely in the instances of 
 God's justice, but has risen to the conception that God 
 is just. God has been loving to him. He does not 
 merely recount God's loving acts, but he sees God, 
 and says, " Yes, God is love. " He goes up along the 
 conduct to the character. He goes up along the sun- 
 light to the sun. His nature, made to know God's na- 
 ture, does know Him with immediate apprehension. 
 The acts of God toward him are, as it were, the ushers 
 which open the door and lead us into His presence. 
 When we are once there the ushers may retire. We 
 may forget the special acts of love or justice which first 
 showed us what He was, and live in the direct percep- 
 tion of His character. If that is possible, then evi- 
 dently we are ready to see each new act which God does 
 toward us with all the illumination of His realized char- 
 acter upon it. Let us be certain that He did it, and we 
 know that it must be just and kind because He is love 
 and justice. Let me know that the water flows directly 
 from the fountain, and it must be pure because the foun- 
 tain, I know, is purity itself. The taste of corruption 
 which seems to be in the water must really be in me who 
 taste it. God being good cannot do evil. I, standing 
 
The Perfect Faith. 315 
 
 where all my experience has brought me, clear in His 
 presence, know that He is good. Therefore, however 
 cruel His deeds may seem, they cannot shake my cer- 
 tainty that He is kind; however unreasonable His 
 deeds may seem, they cannot shake my certainty that 
 He is wise. Therefore, in the tumult and distress of 
 what seems to be the ruin of my life, I can still stand 
 calm and say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust 
 Him." 
 
 This, then, is our doctrine of man's relation to the 
 conduct and the character of God. Through God's con- 
 duct man knows God's character, and then through 
 God's character God's conduct is interpreted. Such a 
 doctrine neither sets man in the miserable and false 
 position of forever judging God by his own poor stand- 
 ards, nor, on the other hand, does it call on man to 
 bow in blindness and accept as good the will of a God 
 of whom he knows nothing because that God has borne 
 no witness of Himself. These are the two dangers of 
 all man's search after God, — one, that man will keep 
 his idea of God forever on test and trial, and never cor- 
 dially accept Him and enlarge his own life by trusting 
 faith in the life that is greater than his ; the other, that 
 man will make a God of his own imagining, and never 
 verify his thought of Him by any reference to the facts 
 of human life. Against both of these dangers the doc- 
 trine of man's trust in God which I have tried to state 
 attempts to guard. Man knows God's character by 
 God's conduct, and then interprets God's conduct by 
 God's character. And if to each individual's observa- 
 tion of God's ways you add the observation of the race 
 
316 The Perfect Faith. 
 
 in all its generations, which the man who is in true 
 sympathy with humanity may use in large degree as if it 
 were his own, it does appear as if you had a doctrine 
 out of which must come at once intelligence and rever- 
 ence, — the culture of the watchful eye and of the 
 trustful heart together; the possibility both of David's 
 reasoning, "I will praise Him because He has dealt 
 lovingly with me," and of Job's faith, "Though He slay 
 me, yet will I trust Him. " 
 
 It is interesting to see (as we have already seen to 
 some extent) how this method of faith prevails in all the 
 relations of the human mind to the objects of its trust. 
 There is a possible confidence of soul in soul, won by 
 the experience of the trusted soul's trustiness, which 
 has again and again enabled one human being to say of 
 another, "Though he slay me, I will trust him still." 
 Think of the old story in the Book of Genesis. See 
 Abraham and Isaac — the father and the son — travel- 
 ling together from the land of the Philistines to the 
 mountain of Moriah, which God had showed to him. 
 Behold the preparations for the sacrifice ; hear the boy's 
 artless and pathetic question, "Father, behold the fire 
 and the wood ! where is the lamb ? " Then see how 
 gradually the boy comes first to suspect and then to 
 know that it is for him that all this preparation has 
 been made. He is to be the victim. There is no word 
 even of remonstrance. Isaac has learned long back to 
 trust his father as one who knew the will of God ; and 
 so when now Abraham looks him in the face and says 
 to him, "God wills this, my son," the child's confi- 
 dence bears the strain and does not falter. " Though 
 
The Perfect Faith. 817 
 
 he slay me, yet will I trust him, " we can almost hear 
 the boy say as we see him submit to be bound and to be 
 laid upon the wood. 
 
 Turn for another instance to a later day in the same 
 Jewish history. Remember how the " daughter of the 
 warrior Gileadite " gave up her youth and hope and life 
 in free acceptance of her father's will. Jephthah, her 
 father, had vowed that he would offer to the Lord what- 
 ever first came out to meet him when he returned victo- 
 rious. We need not sympathize with the reckless folly 
 of the vow in order to feel the beauty of the self-conse- 
 cration with which his child accepted for herself its 
 dreadful consequences. The poet has unfolded the sim- 
 ple pathos of the Bible story and made us feel the honor 
 for him who by all his loving care had deserved the 
 trust with which the maiden sings from the land that 
 lies beyond the pain of dying, — 
 
 " My God, my land, my father, these did move 
 Me from my bliss of life that Nature gave, 
 Lowered softly with a threefold cord of love 
 Down to a silent grave. 
 
 " It comforts me in this one thought to dwell, 
 That I subdued me to my father's will, 
 Because the kiss he gave me e'er I fell 
 Sweetens the spirit still." 
 
 There is a faith that not merely welcomes the fatal 
 blow but remains even after the blow has done its work. 
 Though He has slain me, yet do I trust Him. 
 
 If we turn from sacred to classic story, the same thing 
 is there too, and we see how everywhere human nature 
 loves the spectacle of such unquestioning faith. The 
 
318 Tlie Perfect Faith. 
 
 Roman Virginius when his daughter is threatened with 
 insult cries with a voice full of woe and love together, 
 " There is no way but this, " and as he smites her, Vir- 
 ginia falls without a word or look except of loving 
 trust. Or, again, we may recall the most pathetic of all 
 the ancient tragedies, in which the gentle daughter of 
 the Grecian leader gives her life to make possible the 
 success of her father's army on its way to Troy. At 
 first there is terrible remonstrance and clinging to this 
 sweet, earthly life ; Iphigenia cries, " The light of heaven 
 is sweetest of things for men to behold, but that below 
 is nought; and mad is he who seeks to die. To live 
 dishonorably is better than to die gloriously." But 
 soon her father's terrible conviction takes possession of 
 her. Her faith in him which he has won in all the 
 years of his fatherly kindness does not desert her now ; 
 and at the last she is seen standing, — a figure of exalting 
 light and triumph and beauty, by his side, waiting to 
 be sacrificed. "Oh, father, I am here for thee, and I 
 willingly give my body on behalf of my country and of 
 the whole land of Greece, that leading it to the altar of 
 the goddess they may sacrifice it, since this is ordained. 
 . . . Thou hast nurtured me for a glory to Greece, and 
 I will not refuse to die. " 
 
 So everywhere the beings who most strongly and 
 justly lay claim to our confidence pass by and by be- 
 yond the testing of their actions, and commend them- 
 selves to us and command our faith in them by what we 
 know they are. It would be strange and very dreadful 
 if this were not true of God, if to the end of all our 
 intercourse with Him we always had to try each treat- 
 
 I 
 
The Perfect Faith. 319 
 
 ment which He sent to us by that one act's evident 
 reasonableness, justice, and kindness. That were to 
 live in the most meagre relationship to Him with whom 
 our whole soul's desire that our relationship should be 
 most intimate and rich. That hateful watch on God to 
 see whether He would not fail us after all, that suspi- 
 cious guard over ourselves lest we should give Him too 
 extravagantly more of our heart's trust than He had de- 
 served or justified, would make religion odious. There 
 never has been a religion really deserving of the name 
 which has not gone beyond that and in some way, in 
 some degree, trusted the Godhood which it dimly saw, 
 because of what it dimly knew Him to be, even in all its 
 inability to understand His actions. 
 
 This has been true of all religions, but it is most true 
 of Christianity. When Christ came, it was distinctly 
 for this purpose, to make men know God, — God Him- 
 self, God in, behind. His actions. This was the purpose 
 of the Incarnation. No longer on difficult and hazard- 
 ous deductions from His treatment of them were men 
 to depend alone for the understanding of God's nature. 
 "The Light of the Knowledge of the glory of God in 
 the face of Jesus Christ," says Paul; "He that hath 
 seen Me hath seen the Father," says Jesus. Still 
 helped, no doubt, by what they saw God do, but shown 
 by Jesus what God was behind His doing, what the 
 God was who did all that was done to them, — so they 
 who received the truth of Christ were to attain to faith 
 in the fatherliness of their Heavenly Father. 
 
 In the few moments which remain, let us consider 
 how such a faith must shape and influence our life. I 
 
320 The Perfect Faith. 
 
 have already spoken of it all along with reference to 
 the way in which it must affect our thoughts of joy and 
 sorrow. Have not your hearts, my friends, at least 
 sometimes, caught sight of a possible faith in God by 
 which you might believe in Him, believe on Him, trust 
 Him, even although no tokens of His presence or His 
 love came to you in the shape of special pleasures, or 
 even of the ordinary joys of living, — even although 
 there came to you from Him what men who simply saw 
 His treatment of you, and knew nothing of your insight 
 into His character, thought as they watched it must be 
 a sure destruction of your faith ? To stand with the 
 good things of life all stripped away, to stand beaten 
 and buffeted by storms of disaster and disappointment, 
 to stand with all our brethren saying, "Behold, how 
 God hates him, " and yet to know assuredly in our own 
 hearts that God loves us, to know it so assuredly, with 
 the intercourse that lies between our heart and His, that 
 we can freely let go the outward tokens of His love, as 
 the most true and trusty friends do not need to take 
 gifts from one another for assurance of their affection, 
 — this surely is the perfection of a faithful life. It is 
 the gathering up of all happinesses into one happiness 
 which is so rich that it can live without them all, and 
 yet regally receives them into itself as the ocean 
 receives the rivers. 
 
 But happiness is not the only one, nor the richest 
 one, of the gifts of God. There are two other gifts 
 which every true man values vastly more than happi- 
 ness. They are light and work. It would be sad in- 
 deed if our principle did not apply to them; but it 
 
 
Tlie Perfect Faith. 321 
 
 does ! To stand in the darkness and yet know that 
 God is light ; to want to know the truth about a thou- 
 sand mysteries, the answer to a thousand problems, and 
 not to find the truth, the answers, anywhere, and yet to 
 know beyond a peradventure that God is not hiding from 
 us anything which it is possible and useful for us to 
 know ; to stand in the darkness and yet know that God 
 is light, — that is a great and noble faith, a faith to 
 which no man can come who does not know God. If I 
 know Him, know how He, by the very necessity of be- 
 ing what He is, must value character in us more than 
 acquirement, then I can understand how He can permit 
 knowledge to be hidden from us till the time when its 
 acquirement will bring the richest help to character; 
 and, knowing that, I can live unrebelliously in dark- 
 ness though I am always seeking after light, and 
 though I am certain all the time that God is light and 
 desires light for all His creatures. 
 
 And so too about work. To want to do some useful 
 labor in the world, to think that useless life is only 
 premature death, to find ourselves apparently shut out 
 from usefulness, and yet to believe that God wants us 
 to grow into His likeness by whom all the work of the 
 great working universe proceeds, — that is indeed a 
 puzzle to one's faith. It may be that God used to give 
 you plentiful chance of work for Him. Your days went 
 singing by, each winged with some enthusiastic duty 
 for the Master whom you loved. Then it was easy to 
 believe that He was training you; His contact with 
 your life was manifest; the use He made of you was 
 very clear. By and by came a change. He took all 
 
 21 
 
322 'The Perfect Faith. 
 
 that away. He snatched your work out of your hands, 
 or made your hands so weak with sickness that they let 
 it drop themselves. What then ? Have you been able 
 still, in idleness, in what seems uselessness, to keep 
 the assurance of His care for you ? Have you been able 
 still to be satisfied with knowing just that here you 
 were, ready to be used if He wanted to use you, ready 
 also to be laid aside if He thought best ? That has de- 
 pended upon whether all your old work with Him really 
 brought you to know Him. If it did, if in it all, while 
 you delighted in doing it, the principal blessing of it 
 all was that it permitted you to look into God's soul 
 and see how self-complete and perfect and supreme He 
 was; how, after all His workings, it was not in His 
 works but in His nature, not in His doing but in His 
 being, that God's true glory lay ; if as you worked with 
 Him, you really looked into His nature and discerned 
 all this, — then when He takes your work away and bids 
 you no longer to do good and obedient things but only 
 to be good and obedient, surely that is not the death of 
 faith. That may be faith's transfiguration. You can 
 be idle for Him, if so He wills, with the same joy with 
 which you once labored for Him. The sick-bed or the 
 prison is as welcome as the harvest-field or the battle- 
 field, when once your soul has come to value as the end 
 of life the privilege of seeking and of finding Him. 
 
 So out of all our thought this afternoon there comes 
 one prayer which sums up everything: Lord, by all 
 Thy dealings with us, whether of joy or pain, of light or 
 darkness, let us be brought to Thee. Let us value no 
 
 I 
 
The Perfect Faith. 323 
 
 treatment of Thy grace simply because it makes us 
 happy or because it makes us sad, because it gives us 
 or denies us what we want ; but may all that Thou send- 
 est us bring us to Thee, that knowing Thy perfectness 
 we may be sure in every disappointment that Thou art 
 still loving us, and in every darkness that Thou art still 
 enlightening us, and in every enforced idleness that 
 Thou art still using us ; yea, in every death that Thou 
 art giving us life, as in His death Thou didst give life 
 to Thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen ! 
 
XIX. 
 
 THE JOY WITH GOD. 
 
 Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost, 
 Luke xv. 16. 
 
 The law that " a man is known by the company he 
 keeps " works upward as well as downward. We are 
 too apt to give it mostly a downward operation. If a 
 man seeks the society of ruffians and thieves, we are 
 ready enough to think that he himself is coarse and dis- 
 honest; but if a man tries to live in the company of 
 good and reputable people, we are not so ready to be- 
 lieve that he too is pure and trustworthy. We wonder 
 whether it is not for the purpose of making himself 
 seem respectable and shielding himself under the shadow 
 of their goodness ; we wonder whether he may not be an 
 impostor or a toady. It is part of our suspicious and 
 despondent disposition to attribute a strength to wicked- 
 ness which we will not allow to goodness; but really 
 goodness is the stronger power, and more natures in 
 the world to-day are being made noble and pure by 
 keeping company with nobleness and purity, than are 
 being made base by the contagion of baseness. Think 
 of the children with their fathers and their mothers, 
 think of the unselfish and exalting friendships, think of 
 the 'generous ambitions which every great good man 
 
The Joy with God. 325 
 
 inspires, and, disposed as you may be to think ill of 
 human life, you must own that it is so. 
 
 It is of this companionship with the good, with the 
 best, that I am to preach to you to-day. The good shep- 
 herd bringing home his sheep says, " Rejoice with me, 
 for I have found it. " We think about the shepherd and 
 about the sheep, but all the while, surrounding the fa- 
 miliar parable, there is a dim and shadowy company of 
 whom we do not often think. They are the shepherd's 
 friends. He claims their friendly sympathy; and so 
 they represent to us the people everywhere who are 
 known to be good by their society with goodness, who 
 are both shown to be noble and pure, and also are made 
 to be nobler and purer by their power to rejoice with 
 the noblest and purest natures in their success. 
 
 To " rejoice with" a fellow-man implies a very inti- 
 mate association with him. You may work with a 
 man, sell goods at the same counter, or dig dirt in the 
 same ditch, and that is mere companionship of habits. 
 You may think with a man, have the same conception of 
 what your work is, and how it ought to be done ; that is 
 companionship of mind. But there comes a deeper kind 
 of company when you come to share your fellow-worker's 
 joy, when you are glad with an echo of his gladness and 
 feel enthusiasm answering to his; then there is real 
 companionship of nature. " Idem velle et idem nolle, '* 
 to love and hate alike, — that has always been the ex- 
 pression of the closest union. 
 
 For a man's joy in what he has to do is the heart and 
 soul of his relation to it; or rather it is the relation of 
 his heart and soul to it. Faithfulness to one's ^rork 
 
326 The Joy with G@d. 
 
 may be only an outside bondage, but joy in it is a rela- 
 tionship of heart to heart, — of the heart of the man to 
 the heart of his task. He, then, who enters into a 
 worker's joy enters into fellowship with the worker's 
 heart, and must come close to him. 
 
 It follows from all this that there can be no sign of 
 sharing a great man's greatness like the power to re- 
 joice with him in the success of his great works ; and it 
 is a kind of partnership with him which is open to any 
 fellow-man who, however inferior to him in powers, 
 however incapable of doing the great thing himself, is 
 in such sympathy with the great man's fundamental de- 
 sires that he is capable of being glad because his friend 
 is glad. Here is where little men and great men may 
 freely come together. You and I perhaps know nothing 
 about natural science, but we hear that some great scien- 
 tific discovery has been made, and instantly we think how 
 glad the man must be who made it ; and in our rejoic- 
 ing with him we are brought at once into an association 
 with this new discovery which would otherwise have 
 been entirely indifferent to us. We perhaps know noth- 
 ing about art, but we see the artist's eye kindle as his 
 inner vision of beauty takes color on canvas, or takes 
 shape in stone ; and being glad that he is glad, we pass 
 over through his human sympathy and have some part 
 in that artistic triumph with which we could have 
 established no direct connection. 
 
 And even when the work is not the man's own but 
 merely one which he is capable of appreciating as you 
 are not, still your joy in his joy may be the means of 
 introducing you to regions from which you would other- 
 
The Joy with God. 327 
 
 wise be entirely excluded. It may be that some great 
 advance of Christianity is noted, — perhaps some ad- 
 vance of Christian thought in which man's reverent 
 study has reached a little deeper into the mystery of 
 God, perhaps an advance of Christian activity by which 
 the Gospel has filled some new darkness of heathenism 
 with its light. You are glad, but you are not Christian 
 enough to be very glad; but close at your side there 
 stands a man who is Christian through and through. 
 You can feel his soul leap and dilate. He looks round 
 to you for sympathy in his delight, and you catch the 
 kindling of his eye. Do you not know the process ? At 
 first you are only glad that he is glad; but it cannot 
 stop there. When you have gone as far as that, his 
 gladness takes you into its power. Through him you 
 pass over to his interest. You see that it must be a 
 great joy which could make such a man so happy, and 
 by and by you are glad with an echo of his gladness. 
 You are triumphant over the same success of Christian- 
 ity in which he so heartily rejoices. 
 
 Herein lies the interpreting power of great enthusias- 
 tic men. They bring out the value of things so that 
 other men can see them. They stand with their need of 
 human sympathy and look from the things which they 
 love and admire to their fellow-men and cry to them, 
 ** Rejoice with us ! " and it is in the effort to answer 
 their demand for sympathy that the loveliness and admi- 
 rableness of the thing they praise becomes apparent to the 
 eyes of common men. This is what happens when you 
 ■\falk through a great picture gallery with a true artist. 
 , At first you are surprised, perhaps you are disgusted at 
 
328 The Joy vnth God. 
 
 yourself. You find yourselt praising the pictures that 
 he praises and having no eyes for anything which he 
 passes by with indifference. You say, " I have no mind 
 of my own. I am his mere echo. I do not really like 
 these things, I am only trying to like them because he 
 does." But very possibly you are wrong. It is very 
 likely that your artist companion is revealing to you 
 what you are perfectly capable of appreciating, although 
 you are not capable of discovering it. The revelation 
 comes not through any formal lecture that he gives, but 
 through the subtler and finer medium of sympathy with 
 his delight. That it is real appreciation and not mere 
 imitation you will feel sure when by and by you go back 
 alone to the picture and find that still, though he is no 
 longer with you, the charm which you felt in it through 
 him remains. He has not blinded but enlightened your 
 perceptions ; and, much as they may afterward develop 
 their individuality and show how different they are from 
 his, still they will always owe to him the debt for their 
 first enlightenment, as the flower comes to shine in the 
 sunlight with a color that is all its own, but yet would 
 never have shone at all if the sunlight had not first 
 shone upon it. 
 
 I suppose that almost all one's patriotism gets more 
 of its life in this way than we know. It is the great 
 patriots that interpret the value of their country to the 
 common citizen. The man absorbed in his own small 
 affairs, or so restricted in his power of thought that he 
 would never have taken in the national idea for himself 
 abstractly, sees how Washington and Webster and Lin- 
 coln loved the land ; and through their love for it, its 
 
 I 
 
The Joy with God. 329 
 
 worthiness of his own love becomes made known to him. 
 Still his love for his country, when it is awakened, is his 
 own, and may impel him to serve her in most peculiar 
 personal ways, very different from theirs, but none the 
 less it is true that but for the interpretation of these great 
 men's honor for her, he would have honored his country 
 less or not at all. 
 
 Can we not see how necessary it is that all of us 
 should live with men who are greater than ourselves, 
 and try to share their joys ? We cannot afford to shut 
 ourselves up to the value of those things whose value we 
 ourselves are able to discover. Live with enthusiastic, 
 noble men and you will find the world opening its in- 
 spiring delights to you on every side. If charity to you 
 is dull and stupid, if you cannot conceive what pleas- 
 ure it can give to help the poor, go and put your life as 
 close as possible to the most enthusiastic helper of the 
 poor that you can find. Stand where, when he has made 
 a poor man's lot the brighter and looks round for some 
 one with whom to share his pleasure, his kindling eye 
 shall fall on you. That is the truest way, — to put your- 
 self at least close to the gate which leads to the delight 
 in charity, even though it be only close to it on the out- 
 side. When he turns round and says to you, " Rejoice 
 with me, for I have made an unhappy man happy, " then 
 it may be that the door will open and you too can go 
 in yourself to the delightful service of your fellow- 
 men! 
 
 But now it is time to turn more directly to our text. 
 In the parable of Jesus it is the shepherd returning 
 from his search with the rescued sheep upon his shoul- 
 
330 The Joy with God. 
 
 ders who calls out to his friends, "Rejoice with me!" 
 The Shepherd of the parable we know is Christ Himself, 
 and Christ is the manifestation of God in the world. 
 In this familiar picture, then, we have the voice of God 
 calling on all His children to rejoice in the good work 
 which He is able to do for any one of His children. 
 Let me point out to you a few of the ideas which that 
 picture suggests. Do we not feel at once how this agrees 
 with all that we know about the will and ways of God ? 
 Nothing that we have seen of Him ever gives us the 
 idea of a great Lord standing outside of His estate and 
 helping, however kindly, each one of His subjects by 
 himself, without reference to the rest. God uses man 
 to save his fellow-man. He brings in all the machinery 
 of social life and folds it around the special soul which 
 He wants to rescue, and bids it help, and delight in 
 helping, the unfortunate and lost. This is the very 
 commonplace of our observation of God's ways. He 
 works through human means, we say. And at the root 
 of this disposition to rescue man by man — to work by 
 human means — I am sure that there lies the fact of a 
 very close and vital and essential union between God 
 and man ; that old truth to which we are forever coming 
 back. When God calls in the aid of man for fellow- 
 man, or when God summons man to rejoice in fellow- 
 man's salvation, it is not a baffled workman calling for 
 help to do work which he cannot do himself, nor is it a 
 conqueror commanding the crowd to shout his praises. 
 It is something wholly different from either. It is the 
 father of a family gathering around himself the other 
 children and telling them of the need or of the rescue of 
 
The Joy with God. 331 
 
 one child whose interests are theirs as well as his, in 
 saving whom they and he are really one. 
 
 You have a friend who has fallen into some wretched 
 vice. As clearly as if God's voice spoke to you out of 
 the sky you hear the divine summons to go and rescue 
 that poor soul. You go, and by and by that soul is 
 brought back into purity and honesty again ; and then 
 there comes into your heart that old familiar conscious- 
 ness which has been in such multitudes of hearts, that 
 it is not really you but God who has saved him. It is 
 God using you. Behind your power you feel a stronger 
 power. Above your joy you are aware of another joy as 
 much more joyous as the perception of the wretchedness 
 of the vice from which the rescued soul has escaped is 
 more intense. That joy and your joy are not two but 
 one. Your joy rests upon and is fed out of that joy as 
 the sunlight rests upon and is fed out of the sun. Never 
 are your soul and God's soul so near together as in that 
 common joy; never are you more perfectly and con- 
 sciously his child than when, in a delight which cannot 
 be divided and portioned into shares between you, but 
 is blended and mingled as one single emotion, you re- 
 joice together over the finding of the sheep which was 
 lost. 
 
 Another thought which is suggested by the picture is 
 the need of God for human sympathy. In many forms 
 that idea is seen floating through the Bible. It is not 
 easy to grasp. When we try to define it and realize it 
 in detail it often eludes us and bewilders us, sometimes 
 it almost shocks us ; but we feel its fascination, and we 
 know that there is truth in it. God's need of human 
 
332 The Joy with God. 
 
 sympathy! At first it seems as if there were some 
 weakening in our conception of God in such a thought 
 as that. That God should care what we poor mortals 
 think about His ways, that it should make any differ- 
 ence to Him whether we see the beauty of His character 
 and love, — that seems to weaken Him. Why should 
 He not go on His way, content with His own perfec- 
 tion, regardless of what we or any other creatures in His 
 universe may think of what He does ? That, we say, is 
 our idea of the greatest greatness. But is it ? It is our 
 first idea, no doubt. Our earliest thought of greatness 
 is entire self-containment ; but by and by that thought 
 becomes crude and vulgar in comparison with another 
 loftier and finer thought which comes up to take its 
 place. By and by always the greatest men are seen ful- 
 filling their greatness by an earnest and loving demand 
 that lesser natures should complete their happiness by 
 sharing it. The savior of his country wins not less 
 but more respect, does not detract from but increase 
 his dignity, when a new lustre kindles in his eye at the 
 sight of men, women, and little children who come 
 crowding round him with shouts of triumph over the 
 liberty and peace which he has won for them. The 
 same is true of God. It is the passage from the low 
 and crude into the loftier and finer thought of God 
 when we conceive of Him as caring for His children's 
 thought of Him. 
 
 It is the sign of how fine and high and true the Bible 
 thought of God is that the pages of the Old and New 
 Testaments are full of this idea. It comes to its com- 
 pletest utterance in Christ, in the sublime sensitive- 
 
Tlie Joy with God. 333 
 
 ness of the character of Him who, while He never 
 swerved an inch out of His path to win a man's ap- 
 plause or to escape a sneer, yet lets us freely see through 
 His transparent story how the face grows sad when the 
 half-hearted disciples turn their back on Him and go 
 away, and how it brightens when Peter calls Him the 
 world's Saviour, or when even in the agony of death a 
 fellow-suiferer cries out to Him for mercy and owns 
 Him as the King of Paradise. Surely it sets some of 
 our false ideas of greatness right, and lets us see that 
 the truest dignity is to be attained not in separation 
 from our brethren but in closest sympathy with them, 
 even in urgent need of them, when we hear Christ, full 
 of the manifested power and mercy of God, appealing to 
 men to rejoice with Him in the fulfilment of His 
 glorious work. 
 
 Again the summons of God for men to join Him in 
 His joy appears to open a new region of motive, which, 
 if it really becomes influential with any of us, must 
 become very strong indeed in inciting us to noble work. 
 Who does not know how we need every motive which 
 we can have to keep us faithful to the good works which 
 we know ought to be done, but from which our hands 
 so often drop discouraged ? The pleasure of the task 
 itself ; the harm and misery which will result if some 
 one does not do it ; the gratitude of those for whom it 
 is directly undertaken ; the sympathy and honor of our 
 fellow-men, — I am sure that there are many of you who 
 hear me who have often and often summoned all of 
 these motives and bidden them inspire your hesitating 
 will to do some half-attractive, half-repugnant duty of 
 
334 The Joy with God. 
 
 righteousness or charity. Perhaps some of you now, 
 with such a duty just before you, are calling almost 
 desperately for these powerful champions to come and 
 strengthen your weakness, lest you fail. And yet, with 
 all the strength that comes from them, how weak you 
 are ! Can you imagine another motive which, without 
 interfering with or crowding out any of these, might 
 possibly come in and multiply their strength with all 
 the intenseness of your love for God ? What if you 
 could know that if you did that duty bravely and faith- 
 fully God would be glad ; what if you could know that 
 if you thought out your hard problem honestly, or over- 
 came your lust manfully, God would send down His 
 message to you, " I am rejoicing with you, oh, my child ; 
 come and rejoice with me that you have conquered ! " 
 Would not] that make you stronger ? Would it not be 
 as if at last the captain had joined his hesitating and 
 imperilled army when such a motive as that came in, 
 shining and confident, among the half-dismayed and 
 frightened motives which had been trying to rally and 
 lead on your life. 
 
 But a man may be sure of that, a man must be sure 
 of that, if he is genuinely certain that there is a God at 
 all. From the shop-boy tempted to steal, up to the 
 leader of some goodly cause tempted to lower his stand- 
 ard in discouragement, there is no human being set to 
 do duty who may not, if he will, throw behind his own 
 weakness this great strength. " If I can only persevere, 
 if I only can be faithful, I may rejoice with God ! If I 
 fail and give up, the door closes upon that inmost cham- 
 ber of the soul's company with God in which it shares 
 
The Joy with God. 335 
 
 His joy. " There are souls as incapable of feeling the 
 power of that motive as a deaf man is of responding to 
 the trumpet ; but to any soul which can feel it and an- 
 swer to it there comes strength which almost insures 
 success. 
 
 All these are ways in which it helps a man when he 
 hears God calling upon him to rejoice with Him in His 
 salvation of the world. But I think on the whole that 
 there is no help coming to us out of such a summons 
 which helps us more than that which corresponds to the 
 enlightenment that I tried to describe at the beginning 
 of my sermon as coming from man to man when such an 
 invitation passes from one to the other. When God bids 
 us rejoice with Him in the salvation of a soul, it is a 
 revelation to us of what a precious thing a soul must be. 
 I pictured the artist going through a gallery and bidding 
 you rejoice with him in some great picture, and I bade 
 you remember how in the light of his summons you 
 saw the picture's greatness. I pictured the patriot 
 interpreting the value of their country to the great host 
 of his duller fellow-citizens. Now think what an il- 
 lumination must come to a man who is working slug- 
 gishly for some good cause when the fact of God's love 
 for what he works for gets into his heart. You are 
 working along in our sluggish missionary way, doing 
 with weary punctiliousness your yearly task for the con- 
 version of the world, contributing when Epiphany comes 
 round a little piece of money of such a size that if every 
 man in the church contributed as much once every year 
 the Gospel would be preached to all the world in about a 
 hundred thousand years. As you are lounging so over 
 
336 Tlie Joy with God. 
 
 your task, you hear of some heathen tribe which has cast 
 away its idols and accepted Christ. You know what that 
 means for them. You know it means a new, clean life, 
 family purity, education, liberty, the lifting of all life 
 into self-respect, and the quickening of the vision and 
 the hope of souls which used to lie in darkness and the 
 shadow of death. You read the news, and you think it 
 is a good thing, and then you are just about to turn back 
 to your business when out of heaven there comes down a 
 voice to you, crying, " Rejoice with me ! Rejoice with 
 me ! " It is the voice of God ! The God of the spirits 
 of all flesh. Behold ! to Him this bit of tidings from 
 the southern seas seems to be full of glory. Can you 
 hear His summons and not see anew how glorious the 
 tidings are ? 
 
 Some friend here by your side attains to a new life, 
 casts off the sloth or vice which has been crushing 
 him into a brute and begins to live for God. He 
 begins to know his own soul. He grows ashamed of 
 sin. He sees visions of purity and spiritual growth be- 
 fore him which make time and eternity glow with hope. 
 He sets himself down to the long, hard, patient, glow- 
 ing struggle of duty. He takes his stand on Christ's 
 side. He breaks his old comradeship and calls all 
 good men his brethren ; and you, a good man, a Chris- 
 tian man, say, " I am glad of it. My friend always was 
 kindly and honest, now he is all right. He has joined 
 the church. He is where he ought to be. " And then, 
 perhaps, you set yourself to wondering what sort of a 
 church it is that he has joined, and noticing whether 
 he bows in the creed or not, and asking whether he is 
 
The Joy with God, 337 
 
 going to be a high churchman or a low churchman! 
 And just then comes the song of the Shepherd, bringing 
 home His treasure, " Rejoice with Me, for I have found 
 My sheep which was lost." That is what this man's 
 conversion means for Jesus Christ. It is a lost soul 
 rescued into the family of God, and the heart of the 
 family is richer for the return of this lost fragment. 
 Is there no revelation there for you which makes the 
 whole transaction seem a different thing ? Is not your 
 brother's soul more precious when you see how Christ 
 cares for it ? Do you not want to help your Lord in the 
 completion of that soul's salvation, even as the under- 
 shepherds might have run to meet the rescuer whose 
 voice they heard, and taken his burden off his shoul- 
 ders, and tended the rescued sheep, and fed it until it 
 was strong again, — as they might have done all this 
 when they read the value of the sheep in what their 
 Lord was ready to do to save it ? 
 
 You hear of the partial success of some good cause. 
 You know the cause is good, but men despise it ; they 
 call it fanatical, quixotic, or something else as foolish. 
 Some day it wins a success, and you are glad, but you 
 keep your gladness to yourself. You hear men in the 
 streets sneering at this unpopular thing which is pre- 
 sumptuously daring to be successful without their sup- 
 port, and you are slavish and cowardly and hold your 
 peace. What a rebuke and what a freedom comes when 
 out of heaven you hear the voice of Christ triumphant 
 ever this, over which the streets and the clubs are so 
 contemptuous, and calling to you, "Rejoice with me, 
 for another of my good causes has succeeded. " This is 
 
338 The Joy with God. 
 
 the way in which causes often get possession of the 
 world. The men who are most in sj^mpathy with God 
 become aware that God rejoices in the cause's success; 
 so they have its desert interpreted to them till they too 
 desire it earnestly; and then in their turn they in- 
 terpret to their fellow-men what God has first inter- 
 preted to them, till ultimately the fire which starts 
 from the central heart of all runs through the world, 
 and the blindest are enlightened to discern, and the 
 most timid become bold enough to praise, the move- 
 ment which at first had no friend but God. 
 
 I know that when I speak thus I am drawing out into 
 distinct definition what, as it works in the human soul, 
 is only vaguely realized. It is not analyzed as I have 
 tried to analyze it. It lies in the memory as a half- 
 conscious experience. But yet I think that as I close I 
 may appeal to your experiences and ask you to bear 
 witness to what I have been saying. If ever, as you 
 worked conscientiously but feebly at some good work, 
 you have been conscious, however dimly, that you were 
 not working alone but that your work was dear in some 
 way to the Heart on which all our life rests ; if ever, 
 trying to help your brethren, you have known as a richer 
 motive than your love for them the love of God to whom 
 their souls were dear ; if ever duty, struck for an instant 
 by the certainty that it was God's wish, has blazed into 
 sudden beauty as a diamond blazes when it is smitten 
 by the sun, — in any of those experiences you have 
 known what it was to hear God call to you, "Come, 
 rejoice with Me! " 
 
 It must be a noble, happy life which lives in such 
 
The Joy with God, 339 
 
 experiences all the time. It must be a life calm, ex- 
 alted, active, independent ; and yet see how simple are 
 the conditions of such a life ! It is simply a life whose 
 ears are open, through constant sympathy with God, to 
 hear what God loves and desires, and whose heart has so 
 accepted Him as its Master that His desires become its 
 desires through its admiring love. They are sublime 
 conditions, but they are wonderfully simple. They are 
 the conditions which any soul must reach which has 
 been really brought back out of its sins and forgiven and 
 reconciled to God by Jesus Christ. Into that life, by 
 what way He chooses, may He bring us all ! 
 
XX. 
 
 THE ILLUMINATIOISr OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it. — John ii. 5. 
 
 Through the mists of long and devout tradition which 
 have obscured her character and made her very person 
 almost mythical we are surprised sometimes in reading 
 the Gospels at the clearness and simplicity with which 
 Mary the mother of our Lord stands out before us there. 
 She speaks only on three occasions, but when she speaks 
 her words have such a directness and transparency 
 about them, they come so short and true, they are so 
 perfectly the words that an earnest and unselfish woman 
 would have spoken that they leave us the clearest and 
 most satisfactory idea of what manner of woman she 
 must have been. Those three utterances of hers are 
 like three clear notes of a bell, that show how sound 
 and rich its metal is. Think what they were. In the 
 presence of the messenger who comes to tell her of her 
 great privilege she bows her head and says, " Behold the 
 handmaid of the Lord. Be it unto me according to thy 
 word. " When she finds her son in the temple she cries 
 out to Him, " Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us ? 
 Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing. " "When 
 she stands with Him before the puzzled guests at Cana 
 she turns to the servants and says, "Whatsoever He 
 
The Illumination of Obedience. 341 
 
 saith unto you, do it." The young soul's consecration! 
 The mother's overrunning love ! The disciple's perfect 
 loyalty ! What can be clearer than the simple, true, 
 brave, loving woman that those words reveal ? How 
 all the poor tawdry mythology which has clustered 
 about her, and called her the Queen of Heaven, disap- 
 pears before the vastly deeper beauty of this true woman 
 of the earth, who wins our confidence and love. 
 
 I want to speak to-day of the last of those three words, 
 and some of its suggestions. You remember the circum- 
 stances, but let me repeat them once more in the words 
 of the ever-fresh and beautiful old story. "And the 
 third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and 
 the mother of Jesus was there. And both Jesus was 
 called and His disciples to the marriage. And when 
 they wanted wine the mother of Jesus saith unto Him, 
 They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her. Woman 
 what have I to do with thee, my hour is not come. 
 His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever He 
 saith unto you, do it." It is a moment of bewilder- 
 ment. The impatient guests are asking for what the 
 host has not to give them. The mother of Jesus turns 
 to Him, but He seems to put her suggestion back. 
 There is an air of embarrassment about it all. She and 
 the guests are puzzled, and then she says to them, as 
 if that were the only outlet and escape from their per- 
 plexity, "Do what He bids you do." It is as if she 
 said, "I do not understand Him, I do not know what 
 He means or why He speaks as yon have heard Him 
 speak, but the oily way for Him to interpret Himself is 
 to say what He wants done, and you and 1 in doing it 
 
342 The Illwinination of Obedience. 
 
 will see exactly what He means. Therefore, whatever 
 He saith unto you, do it. " We ask ourselves at once, 
 where had she learned this of her son ? And we re- 
 member that since the last glimpse the Gospel gave us 
 of them, they have been quietly living together, mother 
 and son, at Nazareth. There she had studied Him 
 with a love that must have been more and more filled 
 with reverence. There she had realized the mystery of 
 His nature. And one of the things which her experi- 
 ence of Him had taught her must have been just this : 
 that often there were meanings and ideas which He in- 
 tended to convey which could not be set forth in words, 
 but which must be displayed in action, — in the com- 
 pletely sympathetic action of two beings working to- 
 gether with a common will. Can we not picture many 
 a time in the intercourse of their quiet home in which 
 this must have come to her, ■; — times when some deep 
 mysterious word fell from His lips which awed and 
 fascinated her, perhaps, but of which she could make no 
 clear meaning, and when, as she watched His actions and 
 helped them, doing all that He wanted her to do, there 
 gradually came out from His action the meaning which 
 was in His words, but which they could not perfectly 
 express ? I think their life together must have been 
 full of such experiences. There is something like it in 
 the relation that all thoughtful and watchful parents 
 hold to their little children. How often you have 
 watched their actions and quietly helped them out, and 
 learned from them what they were wholly powerless to 
 put in words ! There are always some childlike people 
 of whom we feel that the only true expression must be 
 
 I 
 
The Illumination of Obedience. 343 
 
 in the working out of their activity. They cannot toll 
 their meaning except in deeds. We feel something of 
 the same kind in our intercourse with Nature. We try 
 to catch her messages, to put ourselves into sympathy 
 with the vague spirit which breathes through all her life ; 
 but at the last we learn that it is only by obedience, 
 only by helping her works to their completest by our 
 service and by attentive study of the things she does, 
 that we come really to know this mysterious life of 
 Nature on whose bosom we are living. Whatsoever she 
 saith unto you, do it. Obey Nature and she will reveal 
 herself to your obedience, — is not that the real watch- 
 word of our modern science ? 
 
 And like that, only more deep and holy, was the law 
 which the mother of Jesus had learned in the treatment 
 of her Son. That only by doing His will, even when 
 it was darkest, could she truly come to the light which 
 she knew was in Him. 
 
 It sounds perhaps at first as if the words of Mary were 
 a mere utterance of despair ; as if she said, " I cannot 
 make Him out. He is far away above us. It is not 
 for us to try to make Him out. Such as we are cannot 
 understand such as He is. All we can do is just to 
 take His commandments in the dark, and do them in the 
 dark, and be content. " But if what I have just said is 
 true, the tone of the words is not despair but hope. She 
 does not say, " We cannot know Him ; " she only says, 
 " He must take His own way to make us know Him, to 
 make Himself known to us. We cannot understand His 
 words. Let us see what He does. Let us put ourselves 
 into His action by obedience, and we shall understand 
 
344 The Illumination of Obedience. 
 
 Him. " Surely she struck there the note ot all the best 
 Christian experience that has come since, through all 
 the ages. How familiar has become the grand and sim- 
 ple way in which the soul which has been puzzled with 
 the words of Jesus may stand still and say, • " Lord, re- 
 veal Thyself to me in dealing with me. I will not 
 hinder Thee. I will obey Thee. Whatsoever Thou say- 
 est unto me I will do it, and so I shall reach the true 
 knowledge of Thee which my soul craves. " A man has 
 studied Christ in all the books. He has sat still and 
 meditated, and tried to see through His meditation 
 into the very face of Christ whom he has longed to 
 understand; and he has not succeeded. Christ has 
 seemed to elude him. He would not show Himself. 
 He has almost seemed to lay His hand upon the eyes of 
 the inquiring man as if He said, " What have I to do ? 
 Mine hour is not yet come. " But then the man looks 
 up and sees a duty, — a very hard one it may be, — or 
 sees a burden which is very heavy. It is evidently 
 coming toward him. He cannot escape it. Suppose 
 that he is lifted up to such a knowledge of it all that he 
 is ready with all his heart to say, " I do not want to es- 
 cape it. If God sends it, God is in it. God sends noth- 
 ing, God brings everything. Whatever comes from 
 God has the God whom it comes from in its heart. 
 This, then, is He that is coming to me. What He 
 could not tell me in words about Himself, I shall learn 
 in this touch — what men call this blow — of His hand 
 which I see approaching, " Oh, it is possible so to look 
 forward to a great, an awful experience, with something 
 that is truly triumph filling all the pain and drowning 
 
Ths Illumination of Obedience. 345 
 
 all the dread, so to look to disaster, to sickness, to be- 
 reavement, to death, saying, "Now I shall know! In 
 submissive acceptance of God's will I shall understand 
 that which no study of His words could teach me. " 
 
 But yet our verse does not allow us to forget that all 
 true waiting for Christ's self-revelation is of an active 
 and not merely of a passive sort. "Whatsoever He 
 saith unto you, do it, " says Mary. There is something 
 to be done in order that Jesus may show out completely 
 what He is trying to make manifest. And here, I 
 think, is where a human action mounts to its highest 
 dignity, and puts on its fullest meaning. There are 
 two views of human actions. One looks on them as 
 they are in themselves, seeing only the force and 
 friction which is involved in the specific thing that is 
 done, and in the will of the immediate doer ; the other 
 regards them as setting free for expression and effect 
 some higher force and purpose, — the force and purpose 
 of God which are waiting behind. One is the purely 
 human, the other is the divine view of human action. 
 It is as when you turn a screw in some great engine. 
 A child who sees it turned thinks only of the hand 
 which he sees turning it, and sees only the twisting of 
 that bit of brass ; but to the man who knows the engine 
 the turning of that screw is the setting free of the im- 
 prisoned steam to do its work. And so with human 
 actions. Take any one. You engage to-morrow, it 
 may be, in a new business, take a new partner, and be- 
 gin to sell new goods in a new store. To one man that 
 may mean the setting forth by your own will in search 
 of fortune, — nothing more than that ; to another man 
 
346 The Illumination of Obedience. 
 
 it may mean what we can reverently call the opening up 
 to God of chances to show Himself, and work effects 
 which have been seemingly impossible before. New 
 combinations, new contacts, will result out of that act 
 of yours, new needs of divine illumination, of divine 
 guidance are sure to come ; and if man's need is indeed 
 God's opportunity, then this new enterprise of yours 
 will surely open some new chink through which the 
 everlasting light can shine, or build some wall against 
 which the everlasting and all-loving voice can echo. 
 And so it is with everything you do. You make a 
 friend, you read a book, you take a journey, you buy a 
 house, you write a letter, and so full is the great 
 world of God, so is He waiting everywhere to make 
 Himself known and to give Himself away, that through 
 this act of yours, to men who are looking and listening, 
 there comes some revelation of His nature and some 
 working of His power. Acts become little or great only 
 according to the degree in which God manifests Himself 
 and works through them. To call acts insignificant or 
 important in themselves is as if a child looked into an 
 engine-room and judged of the importance of different 
 parts of the machinery by the size of the handles that 
 moved them. The slightest handle may set free the 
 great power of the steam. To one who listens wisely, 
 the click of a delicate needle may sound as awful as the 
 thunder of the walking-beam. For acts have their true 
 meanings in the points of manifestation and operation 
 which they give to God. It was not because she knew 
 that somehow they would have wine or something 
 better, it was because her Son would surely show Him- 
 
The Illumination of Obedience. 347 
 
 self through their obedience, if they obeyed Him, that 
 Mary cared what these servants did. It is strange to 
 think what a dignity and interest our own actions 
 might have for us if we constantly recognized this ca- 
 pacity in them which they have not now. We play r,. 
 with bits of glass, finding great pleasure in their pleas- 
 ant shapes, but never knowing what glorious things they 
 would be if we held them up and let the sun shine 
 through them. 
 
 It is necessary for us to recognize that this quality in 
 Jesus which made it impossible that He should per-, 
 fectly reveal Himself except in His action on and 
 through obedient men, is not something peculiar 
 to Him. It belongs to the very substance of the hu- 
 man nature which He had assumed. The first princi- 
 ple of all influence is, that there is something in every 
 nature which cannot be communicated by mere contact 
 of intelligences. It must pass over, it can only pass 
 over, from man to man through a sympathy of wills; 
 and such a sympathy can exist between an inferior and 
 a superior, between a less and a greater, only where there 
 is loving obedience on one side and loving authority on 
 the other. All the communications of men with one 
 another lie as it were in two strata, — two stories 
 with a floor between them ; one story is deeper than the 
 other. In the upper, superficial story men tell each 
 other what they know. All schools, all books, belong 
 in this superficial region of companionship. In the 
 deeper story men give each other what they are. All 
 obedience of will to will, all trust of life in life, belongs 
 in this profounder region. Do you not know the differ- 
 
348 The IlluiiLination of Obedience. 
 
 ence ? You go to a man's school, or read his book, and 
 there are great and precious things that pass from him 
 to you. The facts which he has gathered in his industri- 
 ous study, the ideas that have come forth like stars out 
 of the darkness in his conscientious thought, — these he 
 can give you and he does, and you are richer for them. 
 He has only to teach ; you have only to attend and un- 
 derstand. But by and by you come to know the man, 
 to love him, to count his will a better expression of the 
 will of God than your will. You obey him. Then at 
 once is there not a new kind of communication be- 
 tween your life and his ? Does he not give you things 
 that he could not give before, — not only facts and 
 ideas, but motives, hopes, fears, loves, dreads, inspi- 
 rations ? You have passed from the upper to the deeper 
 story of companionship, and the passage took place 
 when you passed beyond listening and learning and be- 
 gan to love and to obey. We all have benefactors with 
 whom we live in one chamber or in the other, whom 
 we meet in the upper or the lower regions of communi- 
 cation. Our teachers we meet in the room of instruc- 
 tion; our masters, our saviors, we meet in the deeper 
 room of influence and inspiration. The question of ques- 
 tions, as concerns our Christian faith, is in which room 
 we meet Christ. We certainly meet Him in the upper 
 room where, as we listen. He tells us things we never 
 could have known without Him. Does He meet us also 
 in the deeper chamber where as we obey He reveals to us 
 the very secret of His being and makes us like Himself ? 
 There can be no doubt in which room He wants to 
 meet ua. The very fact that His coming was an Incar 
 
The Illumination of Obedience. 349 
 
 nation is a witness of how thoroughly He wanted to give 
 Himself to us. And nothing is finer in the history of 
 His disciples in the Gospels than to see how He led them 
 down from the surface to the depths, — from the upper 
 region in which they followed Him saying, "Master 
 where dwellest Thou ? " and He answered, " Come and 
 see, " to the profound revelation in which the prostrate 
 disciple cried, " Who art Thou Lord ? " and the answer 
 came to him from the sky, " Arise and go into the city, 
 and it shall be told thee what thou shalt do. " The first 
 is enlightenment through attention; the second is re- 
 generation through obedience. In the first, knowledge 
 is given through intelligence; in the second, life is 
 given through the utterly submissive will. This was 
 the essential difference between the teaching of Jesus 
 and the teaching of the scribes which" the simple- 
 hearted people on the mountain felt so truly. This was 
 the great transfer and deepening of the learning life to 
 which the Lord invited His disciples when He said, 
 "If any man will do My will, he shall know of the 
 doctrine. " 
 
 But then perhaps another question comes. " Intelli- 
 gence comes by obedience you say. I shall hear what 
 Christ has to say to me if I obey Him ; but can I obey 
 Him till I first know what He has to say ? Have I a 
 right to make myself the servant of any one till I know 
 what it is that he will bid me do ? " Or, to take the 
 simple picture of our story, had the mother of Jesus a 
 right to bid any man do whatever Iicr Son should say ? 
 Had she the right to bid them obey one whom she did 
 not understand ? Must she not wait till she sees what 
 
350 The Illumination of Obedience. 
 
 His commandments are before she can call on them for 
 such unquestioning obedience ? The answer lies in the 
 essential difference between faith and sight, those two 
 acts of which men have so long talked so much, and of 
 which it has sometimes seemed as if they understood so 
 little. But how simple they are ! Faith is the knowl- 
 edge of a person; sight is the perception of a thing. 
 To believe anything on faith is to believe it because the 
 person who tells it to me I am sure is trustworthy. To 
 believe anything on sight is to believe it because I my- 
 self perceive that it is true. I believe the sun is warm 
 because it pours its gracious heat down upon my open 
 hand. I believe that man, the child of God, is not born 
 to die because God Himself, God manifest in Christ, has 
 told me so. They are not different degrees of certainty, 
 they are different kinds of certainty, — different grounds 
 on which certainty may rest. And just as it evidently 
 needs a different kind of a man to trust a personal na- 
 ture and to examine the structure of a thing, so there 
 will always be a certain broad difference between the 
 men of faith and the men of sight. There is not the 
 slightest antagonism between them, but the ideas are 
 always distinct, always distinguishable. 
 
 And now with this distinction clear in our minds, see 
 what a perfect right one has — one who knows Christ by 
 any true experience of His character as Mary knew Him 
 — to bid other men obey Him even although they do not 
 know what commandments He will give. You are a 
 Christian, let us say. You have known this Lord of 
 ours for many years. You have learned from many 
 an experience to trust Him absolutely. Well, some 
 
TJie Illumination of Obedience. 351 
 
 day I come to you with a poor handful of confused ideas 
 about Him, with a poor heartful of broken hopes, faded 
 enthusiasms, disappointed expectations. " See, I am 
 all lost, I can make nothing of life!" I cry to you; 
 " What shall I do ? " And you just turn to me and 
 point to Christ, and say, "Obey Him, follow Him. 
 Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it. " It is an aston- 
 ishing answer. I am not ready for it. I turn on you 
 and say, " Follow Him ! Why ? Where will He lead 
 me ? What will He make me do ? " And your answer 
 is, " I do not know. If I did know I should not need to 
 point you to Him. I need then only point you to your 
 task. I only know He cannot lead you wrong. I do 
 not know His way, but I know Him. " That is faith. 
 And if I still persist, and say I will not promise to 
 obey Him until I know just what He will have me do, 
 so that I can see for myself that it is the best thing to 
 be done, then I am asking not for faith but for sight. 
 How simple it is. I hear men praying everywhere for 
 more faith, but when I listen to them carefully and get 
 at the real heart of their prayers, very often it is not 
 more faith at all that they are wanting, but a change 
 from faith to sight. " What shall I do with this sor- 
 row that God has sent me ? " " Take it up and bear it, 
 and get a strength and blessing out of it. " " Ah, if I 
 only knew what blessing there was in it, if I saw how 
 it would help me, then I could bear it like a plume ! " 
 "What shall I do with this hard, hateful duty which 
 Christ has laid right in my way ? " " Do it, and grow 
 by doing it." "Ah, yes; if I could only see that it 
 irould make me grow. " In both these cases do you not 
 
352 The Illumination of Obedience. 
 
 see that what you are begging for is not more faith, al- 
 though you think it is, but sight. You want to see for 
 yourself the blessing in the sorrow, the strength in the 
 hard and hateful task. Faith says not, " I see that it 
 is good for me, and so God must have sent it, " but " God 
 sent it, and so it must be good for me. " Faith walking 
 in the dark with God only prays Him to clasp its hand 
 more closely, does not even ask Him for the lifting of 
 the darkness so that the man may find the way himself. 
 Mary is all faith when she says, " Do what He tells you, 
 and all must come right simply because He is He." 
 Blessed the heart that has learned such a faith and can 
 stand among men in all their doubts and darknesses 
 and just point to Jesus Christ, and say, " Do His will 
 and everything must come right with you. I do not 
 know how, but I know Him. God forbid that I should 
 try to lead you, but I can put your hand in His hand 
 and bid you go where He shall carry you ! " 
 
 There is a reason then ; Mary had a right to say what 
 she said to the servants. We may have good right to 
 say the same thing to ourselves and to each other. 
 There is one complete act by which a man is justified in 
 taking his whole life and giving it over into the keep- 
 ing and authority of a Being whom he has thoroughly 
 tried and perfectly trusts. That is the act of faith; an 
 act, as I trust you see, not irrational but full of the pro- 
 foundest spiritual reason. There is a conviction of our 
 Friend's trustworthiness so large and deep that we know 
 He must be universal. He is not ours alone. He is all 
 men's if they will trust Him too, and so it is possible 
 for us to turn to every man we meet and, out of the 
 
r 
 
 The Illumination of Obedience. 353 
 
 perfect certainty of our own heart, say to him, " Do this 
 great act. Make this my Lord your Lord. Whatso- 
 ever He saith unto you, do it. " That is the preaching 
 of faith, — the consummate work that any man can do 
 as it regards his fellow-man, surpassing utterly all the 
 most wise and watchful care and suggestion about the 
 details and special actions of the life, this claiming of 
 the life as one great whole for its true Lord. 
 
 Think what there must come — I rejoice to know that 
 to many of you I may say. Remember what has come — 
 with such a complete acceptance of the overlying and 
 surrounding authority of Christ. The two things that 
 men's lives want most as they grow older are, I think, 
 simplicity and independence. We become broken and 
 scattered among a thousand interests until life has no 
 unity, and we become fettered by a hundred gradually- 
 accumulated obligations, till, without ever having de- 
 liberately given ourselves away, we grow aware, with a 
 dull and heavy consciousness, that we are no longer our 
 own, and cannot act ourselves. The only restoration of 
 both — of simplicity and independence — must come, not 
 by the cutting off of our relationships and the rebellion 
 against authorities, — that would be ruining the life in 
 the vain attempt to save it, — but by enveloping all the 
 relationships in one great relationship, and by subor- 
 dinating all the authorities to one great authority. 
 The child's life is simple and independent. He can 
 think of it as a unit, and he can walk across false mas- 
 teries which try to govern him almost without seeing 
 them. And why ? Because his life is held, firmly and 
 warmly, in another life. It may be that you have lost 
 
 23 
 
854 The Illumination of Obedience. 
 
 this privilege and power of the child. If you are like 
 most men, you certainly have lost it. How shall you get 
 it back ? There is only one way, — you must be a child 
 again. You must be converted and become like a child. 
 Not by cutting your life down and making it meagre will 
 you make it simple, not by making it restive and rebel- 
 lious will you make it independent ; but if ever, to-day or 
 any other golden day, — though to-day is the best day 
 in which to do it that you will ever see, — if ever you 
 can take your life and, won by His love and justified by 
 the abundant assurance of His faithfulness that He has 
 given you, you can give your life away to Christ, saying 
 as the comprehensive law of all your action, " Whatso- 
 ever Thou sayest unto me, Lord, I will do it," then 
 simplicity and independence will open around you like 
 the peace around the disciples when their Lord was in 
 their storm-tossed boat. Then you may make your re- 
 lations with your fellow-men as rich and full as possible. 
 You may accumulate the dependences which make the 
 sweetness and value of a life on every side, but, held in 
 the grasp of that great loyalty, the multiplicity of life 
 shall make and not destroy simplicity ; and you shall be 
 men's servant without being their slave, just as Jesus 
 was, when you are as truly His servant as He was the 
 servant of His Father. 
 
 I have talked freely this morning about obeying Christ, 
 about doing whatever Christ says to us. I know that 
 there are some souls among you in which such words 
 have started anew the question and the doubt which has 
 often haunted them; before. I must try to show where 
 
The Illumination of Obedience. 355 
 
 the answer to that question lies, before I let you go. 
 You say, " I would indeed obey if Christ should speak 
 to me, but can He speak ? Can I hear Him and be sure 
 it is His voice ? Oh, if I only could have been there 
 where He lived in the flesh ! Then I should have known 
 that it was He. Now, is it not all a vague figure of 
 speech when you talk to me about obeying Jesus, a Jesus 
 whom I never saw, whose voice I never heard ? " The 
 question is one that easily becomes confused in theory, 
 but practically I believe that it is much clearer than 
 we think. "Obeying Christ," we say; and what is 
 Christ ? I think over all that I know of Him, and this 
 is what He is : First, He is the utterance of the eternal 
 righteousness, the setting forth before men of that su- 
 preme nature in which there is the source and pattern 
 of all goodness, — God ; second. He is a man of clear, 
 sharp, definite character, who lived a life in Palestine 
 which still shines with a distinctness that no other hu- 
 man life can rival ; third, by His spirit He is a perpet- 
 ual presence, a constant standard and inspiration in the 
 heart of every man who loves and trusts Him. All 
 those things come up to me when I say " Christ. " And 
 now can such a Christ speak to me ? Can He say to me, 
 " Do this ? '* If as I think about some act which it is 
 possible for me to do, there rise up about that act these 
 three convictions : First, that it is right, that it is in 
 harmony with that great, constant goodness which fills 
 the world and comes from God; second, that that man 
 in Palestine would have done it if it had offered itself 
 to Him there as it offers itself to me here ; and third, 
 that if I do it now, my own soul will be fed and strength- 
 
356 The Illumination of Obedience. 
 
 ened. If these three convictions come and gather round 
 that act, and take it up and lay it before my conscience 
 and my heart, then I know Christ is bidding me do it. 
 Is that clear ? There is some act that you are ques 
 tioning, about to-morrow or to-day. If Jesus were at 
 hand, you would go out and ask Him, — " Is it Thy will 
 that I should do it, oh, my Lord ? " Can you not ask 
 Him now ? Is the act right ? Would He do it ? Will 
 it help your soul ? It is not often that a man really is 
 in doubt who seriously wants to know the answer to any 
 of these questions. And if the answer to them all is 
 " yes ! " then it is just as truly His command that you 
 should do that act as if His gracious figure stood before 
 your sight and His finger visibly pointed to the task. 
 You say, perhaps, " I might know that an act was right 
 and that would be enough, without bringing in Christ at 
 all. Why need I think of it as His command ? " Only 
 because He is just that, — the reassertion, the enforce- 
 ment of essential duty. He does not make righteous- 
 ness, He reveals it ; and when the soul that loves Him 
 does an act at His command it is conscious that it is 
 doing that which in the very nature of things, in the 
 very nature of God, it was bound to do. 
 
 But let us not grow confused with many words. I 
 turn to your own consciences, dear friends. Is there 
 nothing that Christ as your friend, your Lord, your Sa- 
 viour, wants you to do that you are leaving undone to- 
 day ? Do you doubt one instant that with His high and 
 deep love for your soul. He wants you to pray ? — And 
 do you pray ? Do you doubt one instant that it is His 
 will that you should honor and help and bless all these 
 
The Illumination of Obedience. 357 
 
 men about you who are His brethren ? — And are you do- 
 ing anything like that ? Do you doubt one instant that 
 His will is that you should make life serious and lofty ? 
 • — And are you making it frivolous and low ? Do you 
 doubt one instant that He wants you to be pure in deed 
 and word and thought ? — And are you pure ? Do you 
 doubt one instant that His command is for you openly to 
 own Him and declare that you are His servant before 
 all the world ? — And have you done it ? These are the 
 questions which make the whole matter clear. No, not 
 in quiet lanes, nor in bright temple-courts as once He 
 spoke, and not from blazing heavens as men seem some- 
 times to expect, — not so does Christ speak to us. And 
 yet He speaks ! I know what He, there in His glory, 
 He here in my heart, wants me to do to-day, and I know 
 that I am not mistaken in my knowledge. It is no 
 guess of mine. It is His voice that tells me. 
 
 How full of mystery and light our life becomes as we 
 go on into it, not knowing what there will be there for 
 us to do, but knowing that through it all He will be 
 with us and in us giving us His commandments, and 
 resolved only on this, that whatsoever He shall say to 
 us, we will do it always. What will He say ? What 
 wondrous new commandments has He in reserve which, 
 as we lovingly obey them, are to make the interest and 
 growth and glory of these coming years ? 
 
 And let us remember that here, in what we have been 
 thinking of this morning, lies the real bond of union 
 between this life and what we choose to call " the other 
 life," — the life that lies beyond the grave. There as 
 here obedience to Christ and everlasting revelation of 
 
358 The Illumination of Obedience. 
 
 Christ to the obedient soul is to be the essence and de- 
 light of life. Oh, my dear friends, let us do whatsoever 
 He saith unto us now, that then we may be ready for 
 the higher duties and the completer revelations which 
 He will have to give us through eternity. 
 
XXI. 
 
 THE CEKTAIN END. 
 Then cometh the end. — 1 Cor. xv. 24. 
 
 It is not possible to rule these words out of life. 
 They are perpetually recurring. You tell of any pro- 
 cess ; you trace out how it is going to work on from step 
 to step ; you see how cause opens into effect and then 
 effect, becoming cause, opens into still further effect 
 beyond, — but always, by and by, your thought comes 
 to a stoppage and a change. The process is exhausted. 
 "Then cometh the end." Your story has to round 
 itself with that. 
 
 We look into a child's face and imagine the life which 
 he will live. We see him growing up from childhood 
 into manhood; all the works that he will do, all the 
 truths that he will learn, all the associations that he 
 will form, roll out their length before us: we let our 
 eye run along their course ; but at last we must reach the 
 point where, "Then cometh the end," sums up and 
 closes all. 
 
 You start upon a new business, you build you a new 
 house, you set on foot some new measure of public policy, 
 you begin some new study, you enter some new school, 
 — whatever you do, however long are the anticipations 
 of what you undertake, there is where they all arrive at 
 
360 The Certain End. 
 
 last. " Then cometh the end, " is written, however far 
 away, as the conclusion which all must reach. 
 
 And if we go far out beyond the little reach of our 
 own personal affairs, still it is the same. Our text is 
 telling us of Christ. Here is the great work which He 
 is doing, conquering death, redeeming men from sin, 
 claiming the world for God ; but even of His work it is 
 written, " Then cometh the end, when he shall have de- 
 livered up the kingdom to God, even the Father ; when 
 He shall have put down all rule and all authority and 
 power. " Even the great redemptive work of Christ must 
 some day be folded up and finished, and some new dis- 
 pensation, some longer expression of the life of God 
 upon the life of men must come to take its place. 
 
 This constant recurrence of ends and finishing places 
 in life must certainly mean something. It may beget 
 a mere frivolity. It may make it seem as if nothing 
 were worth beginning very earnestly or prosecuting 
 very thoroughly. " What is the use ? " a man may say. 
 " If every thing I do, every bit of work I undertake, is 
 to be hurried up and tossed aside for a new work, if my 
 whole life is some morning to be rounded off where 
 that morning happens to find it, and the poor-finished, 
 unfinished thing is to be flung into the basket, and an- 
 other life is to be set up on these spindles of circum- 
 stances where mine is whirling now, what is the use ? 
 Why should I be thoughtful? Why should I be 
 serious ? Let me eat, drink, and be merry, " 
 
 Another man gets out of precisely the same state of 
 things a totally different impression. This quick, 
 sharp beat in life, this constant coming round to where 
 
The Certain End. 361 
 
 the shears cut off the work, and where if it is not done 
 it has to stay undone forever, this perpetual ripening 
 of processes which makes the seed-time of new pro- 
 cesses beyond, this constant ending and beginning, 
 gives a freshness and vitality to living which is exhil- 
 arating and delightful. It seems to be always bringing 
 life back to report itself to its first principles and fun- 
 damental motives. It is forever breaking up routines 
 and starting things anew. It demands briskness and 
 promptness. " Now or never you must do this thing, " 
 it seems to say, " for in a few moments the chance is 
 over and then cometh the end." 
 
 Let us think of this characteristic of life and try to 
 see what it means. Let us see what sort of temper and 
 spirit it ought to produce, — this law of life that all 
 things come to an end, that only by perpetual stoppage 
 and re-starting is motion kept up, only by perpetual 
 perishing is life maintained. 
 
 And we may begin by noting this, — which is the 
 most striking thing about the whole matter, — the way 
 in which men's desire and men's dread are both called 
 out by this constant coming of the ends of things. The 
 human soul, as I have been saying, at once delights in 
 and shudders at this perpetual finishing and re-begin- 
 ning, this stopping and re-starting of the works of life. 
 
 Look first at man's desire of the end. It is, in the 
 most superficial aspect of it, a part of his dread of mo- 
 notony. There is something very pathetic, it seems to 
 me, in man's instinctive fear of being wearied with 
 even the most delightful and satisfactory of all the ex- 
 periences which he meets with in the world. la it not 
 
362 The Certain End. 
 
 a sign, one of the many signs, of man's sense that his 
 nature is made for larger worlds than this, and only 
 abides here temporarily and in education for destinies 
 which shall be more worthy of its capacities ? The 
 friendship which seems to give you all that your heart 
 requires, the occupation which seems to call out all your 
 powers, the opinions which embody your whole present 
 view of truth, — all of these, if you come to be more 
 than you are now, must fail you, and prove insufficient. 
 Even this earthly life itself, delightfully rich and vari- 
 ous as it is, deep has been the instinct in the human 
 heart which has felt that it would be a terrible thing to 
 have it last forever. "I would not live alway," has 
 been a true cry of the human soul. The wandering 
 Jew, compelled to live on until the Saviour came again, 
 has been one of the most fearful figures which have 
 haunted the imagination of mankind. Man's mere 
 dread of monotony, his sense of the awful weariness of 
 living forever, has always made him rejoice that, far off 
 but still in sight, down the long avenues of living, he 
 could read the inscription of release, " Then cometh the 
 end." 
 
 But this is the most superficial aspect of it. There 
 is something deeper in man's desire to anticipate an end 
 than this. Very early in every experience there comes 
 the sense of imperfection and failure in what we have 
 already done, and the wish that it were possible to be- 
 gin the game again. There is a curious phenomenon 
 that often takes us by surprise as it comes just in the 
 full freshness of the new human life : The young man 
 of twenty in his newly undertaken work or in his col- 
 
The Certain End. 363 
 
 lege-room breaks out in pessimistic railing at the misery 
 and unsatisfactoriness of life. He sings great psalms 
 of misery and disappointment. We laugh at that some- 
 times, and call it foolish affectation. It seems to be a 
 feeble effort to create or imagine an experience which 
 does not exist. No doubt that element is in it, and 
 that is worthy of our laughter; but something else is 
 in it also. The cry of the boy of twenty that life is too 
 long, that the end is far away, that there are weary 
 years to travel before the end is reached, — that cry does 
 not come from very deep down in the soul. The soul is 
 really full of joy in life, of gladness in the abundant 
 days and in the years of bounteous promise; but this 
 cry, so far as it is real, means the beginning of satisfac- 
 tion in the fact that there is an end. Already there are 
 some things in life which the soul would fain get out of 
 life. The first sketch has so marred the canvas that 
 the perfect picture seems impossible. 
 
 And as life goes on to more than twenty that convic- 
 tion grows. The cry may not be uttered as it was at first. 
 The habit of living gets to be so strong that men do not 
 think so much about the end, but the expectation of it 
 and the comfort of the expectation of it are still there. 
 Tell any man that he, out of all these mortals, was never 
 to die, that there was to be no end for him, and, what- 
 ever might be his first emotion, by and by must come 
 something like dismay; for every man has gathered 
 something which he must get rid of, something which 
 he would not carry always, and so there is promise to 
 him when it is prophesied, "Then cometh the end." 
 
 But it is not only the sense of the evil element in 
 
364 The Certain End. 
 
 life that makes men think with satisfaction of the 
 coming end. So far as life has been a success and 
 developed its better power, the same satisfaction comes. 
 It is a poor and pathetic and desperate thing for a 
 traveller along a dreary and difficult road to look for- 
 ward to where the road evidently takes a sharp turn 
 into the mountains and say to himself, "Thank God, 
 there is an end to this ! Thank God, the new road 
 which I cannot see cannot be worse than this which I 
 am travelling now!" But for a man to say, "This 
 road is glorious, but I am glad to see that it stops yon- 
 der ; for no doubt beyond is something yet more glori- 
 ous still," that is a fine impatience. The noblest 
 human natures are built thus, with such a conscious- 
 ness of their own capacity, with such a feeling of eter- 
 nity, with such an assurance of the richness of living, 
 that all the best which they enjoy and see and are, be- 
 comes suggestive and prophetic. Perfectly satisfied 
 with it for the present, the moment that you shut down 
 the curtain on it and said, "That is all," the color 
 would be gone, the exhilaration and splendor would 
 have vanished. But let the life be filled with the spirit 
 of the springtime. Let the voice in its heart always 
 keep saying to it, "You are to go on filling yourself 
 with vitality and joy, day after day, month after month, 
 and then cometh the end, then cometh the end;" and 
 then it is not a cessation of life but fuller life which the 
 heart expects. The end which comes to the promise of 
 springtime shall be the luxuriance of summer ! 
 
 And so in many tones, yet all of them tones of satis- 
 faction, men desire the end. Sometimes it is pathetic, 
 
The Certain End. 365 
 
 sometimes it is triumphant, but, either way, it rejoices 
 in this arrangement of life by which things do not move 
 on in unbroken processes to their results, but there are 
 always endings and beginnings. It is like a great com- 
 pany of travellers coming together in sight of the rest- 
 ing-place where they are to spend the night, and lifting 
 up all together one great shout of joy. Their hearts 
 have various feelings. Some are glad because their 
 day's task is done, others are glad because of the new 
 task which, standing on this summit of attainment, they 
 can see opening out beyond them for to-morrow; but 
 all are glad. The end to which they are coming meets 
 their desire. 
 
 But now, with all this full in our sight, turn to the 
 other side and think of the dread with which men 
 think of the coming of ends in life. There can be no 
 doubt that such dread does come to men when those 
 changes are prophesied which are always sure to be 
 waiting in the distance. Indeed the general sense of 
 the changefulness of things is what sends such a perva- 
 sive sense of insecurity through all our ordinary living. 
 Let that be taken away, let the dread of change be 
 driven out from this half -conscious possession which it 
 holds on all we do and think and say, and it would 
 be as if a dull and threatening day had cleared up into 
 sunshine. The birds would burst out into song, and 
 every twig upon the trees would quiver into bud and 
 blossom. 
 
 Can we give any account of this dread which thus 
 haunts the very feature of life which, as we have seen, 
 wakens also the almost enthusiastic desire of men's 
 
366 The Certain End. 
 
 souls ? We can at least see what some of its elements 
 are. 
 
 The first of them is almost too dull and mechanical 
 to give any account of itself, while, at the same time, it 
 is very real. It is the sheer force of habit. It is the 
 inertia of life. That this which is should cease to be 
 is shocking and surprising. Let it continue. Let 
 there be no disturbance. So the soul shrinks from 
 change. So it shudders as, far away, it hears the mur- 
 mur of the sea whose shores it must reach at last and 
 end its journey and embark on something new. 
 
 Even in that dread of inertia there is something 
 which is good. It is good for the tree to love the soil 
 in which it grows and to consent with difficulty to 
 transplanting, and not to have a restless habit of skip- 
 ping constantly from field to field. It is good that the 
 burden of proof should be on the side of change. 
 
 But there is something more than this mere force of 
 habit. I think that very often one shrinks from the 
 announcement of the coming end of the condition in 
 which he is now living because, when he hears it, he 
 becomes aware how far he is from having yet exhausted 
 the condition in which he is now living. A boy has 
 longed to be a man, but when he stands upon the brink 
 of manhood and looks behind him over the yet-un- 
 reaped acres of his youth, he is almost ready to go back 
 and postpone his manhood till he has taken richer pos- 
 session of those harvest-fields. The scholar-period of 
 some man's life is over, and the working days are ready 
 to begin. How many students have stood and gazed 
 back over the calm days of books, and hated the thought 
 
The Certain End. 367 
 
 of going out and leaving all the stores of learning whicli 
 were lying there unlearned. And so of the great end, 
 - — the mighty change. Who wants to die so long as 
 this great rich world has only had the very borders of 
 its riches touched, so long as the fountains are spring- 
 ing everywhere of the mere overflow of one or two of 
 which only our lips have drunk ? This is no slight 
 tie to life, no small element in the dread of death, — 
 this sense of the unexhausted richness of the life we 
 leave. 
 
 But even more than this, perhaps, comes in the great 
 uncertainty which envelops every experience which is 
 untried. The great mystery of the unlived is a strong 
 element in our dread of change. Your friend may 
 tell you everything about it, but you cannot really 
 know any experience till you have passed through it 
 yourself. The passage from light into light must be 
 always through a zone of darkness. How we are feeling 
 this in these days in which we live ! Old social condi- 
 tions are ceasing to be possible any longer. In their 
 place new ones are evidently coming, which, when they 
 shall have come, we know will be more just and happy 
 and humane than those which we have known so long ; 
 but who that feels this most deeply is not conscious of 
 misgiving and of dread as he enters with his time into 
 the cloud of disturbance that hovers between the old 
 and the new ? Whenever a great public policy has ex- 
 hausted itself and must be exchanged for a broader and 
 a better, it is not mere blind conservatism, it is the 
 true sense that in the untried ways must lie unguessed 
 dangers that makes every wise man, however determined 
 
368 The Certain End. 
 
 he may be, pause in a momentary dread and hesitate a 
 second — and, if he be a real servant of God, pray for 
 new grace — before he cuts loose from the familiar 
 shore, and sails out on to the untried seas. We dread 
 the end even of that condition whose imperfectness we 
 know by sad experience. This is a large part of the 
 reason why the most miserable cling to life, counting 
 it better — 
 
 " to bear the ills they have 
 Than flee to others which they know not of." 
 
 Thus we recount our human lot, and see man stand- 
 ing in desire and in dread, at once, of this perpetual 
 change, this perpetual coming of the end of things. 
 Blessed indeed it is for man, standing in such confused 
 and mingled mood, that the end of things does not de- 
 pend upon his choice, but comes by a will more large, 
 more wise than his. If we ourselves had to give the 
 signal when each experience would close; if the boy 
 must say when he had been boy long enough, and 
 summon the man's responsibilities to gather out of the 
 vague world and rest upon him ; if our own hand must 
 be put forth to disturb the settled peace, and waken 
 confusion and perplexity ; if at last we must with our 
 own finger give the sign that the time had come for the 
 mortal to put on immortality, — how the desire and the 
 dread would fight within us! In large part we are 
 spared all that. The workman's voice has not to sum- 
 mon out of the east the shadows of the night in which 
 no man can work. " It comes of itself, " we say. We 
 mean, and when we speak with perfect reverence and 
 truth, we say, "God sends it." 
 
The Certain End. 369 
 
 God sends it ! And when we do indeed say that, does 
 there not come at once some sort of larger light into 
 this mixed condition, this double attitude of man to- 
 ward the changefulness of life of which we have been 
 speaking ? That thing which man thus alternately, and 
 sometimes even simultaneously, desires and dreads, if 
 we consider it only with reference to man, is all con- 
 fusion. We can make nothing of it. Who can say 
 whether it be good or evil, blessing or curse, wisdom 
 or blunder, — this perpetual hurrying of all things to 
 their end ? But if around this instability of human life 
 is wrapped the great permanence of the life of God ; if 
 no end comes which is not in His sight truly a begin- 
 ning; nay, if the whole element of time is so lost in 
 His eternity that not the beginning and the ending of 
 experiences but their spiritual relations to our growing 
 characters is everything, — then is there not light upon 
 it all ? To value everything which comes to me, and yet 
 to know that not its form but its spiritual essence is 
 really valuable, therefore to hasten while I have it to 
 get out of it what it has to give me, and to even rejoice 
 that some day in the loss of its formal presence I shall 
 be able to make myself completely sure of the posses- 
 sion of its spirit, — that is the true attitude of the soul 
 toward every good thing that God gives, — health, friends 
 wealth, learning, life. But that true attitude the soul 
 cannot keep toward them all unless they all mean God, 
 come by His gift, and are instinct with His spiritual 
 intention. 
 
 How many things there are of which we say, " I thank 
 God I may do this, but I thank God also that the time 
 
 94 
 
370 The Certain End. 
 
 will come when I shall stop doing this and do it no 
 longer. " The business in which we engage to earn ouf 
 bread, the slight associations and partnerships which 
 we make for special purposes with our fellow-men, the 
 journeys which we undertake, the schools in which we 
 spend our years of study, the houses which we build to 
 live in, — all these are of this sort. They are good and 
 welcome because they are but for a while. Our mortal 
 life, that too we are thankful for, but thankful also that 
 it shall not last forever. But all this satisfaction in 
 the temporariness comes only from its being enfolded 
 and embraced within the eternity of the eternal. There 
 must be something which does not pass away, something 
 to which comes no end. The soul and its character, 
 God and His love and glory, — it is because within 
 these as the ends of life all other things are enfolded as 
 the means of life, that we can be reconciled to, nay, 
 even can rejoice in the knowledge that the means must 
 cease when they shall have made their contribution to 
 the end which must endure forever. 
 
 But to know no everlasting end or purpose, to have 
 nothing but the means to rest on, to see them slipping 
 out of our grasp and leaving nothing permanent behind, 
 — that is terrible! 
 
 How is it with you, oh, my friend ? There comes an 
 end to all these things which you are doing now ! Not 
 because God snatches them out of your hands, but be- 
 cause they exhaust themselves and expire, because they 
 are by their nature temporary and perishing, they die. 
 You follow out any of them a little way and you come 
 to this inevitable epitaph of their mortality, "Then 
 
The Certain End. 371 
 
 Cometh the end. " How is it then with you ? Have you 
 anything which is not perishable ? Have you anything 
 to which there comes no end ? " What ? " you say ; 
 " what sort of thing ? " And I reply, " Any passion for 
 character and love of God ! " Those are eternal. There 
 comes no end to those. You may change your dress, 
 your name, your habits, your companionships, your 
 work, — everything that you do, — but your passion for 
 character and love for God, if you have them, you never 
 change; they are the same forever. New temptations 
 spring out of new soil, and the old hatred of sin leaps 
 on its feet to fight them. New chances of goodness 
 start up in some completely novel life, and the old eager- 
 ness for goodness cries out and claims them for its own. 
 There is no end to the great ends of life. K one is 
 living in the resolute pursuit of them, he may first 
 welcome, and then rejoice to leave behind the several 
 means which in succession come to offer him their help 
 toward the attainment of those ends, as the traveller 
 whose heart is set upon some distant city rejoices when 
 he comes to, and then rejoices when he gets beyond, 
 each field and river which must be crossed before he 
 enters the far-off city-gates. 
 
 A noble independence this gives to a man's soul. 
 Poverty comes up and joins you, and you say, " Welcome, 
 Poverty. We will walk together for a while, and when 
 I have done with you, when you have done for me all 
 that you can, then you shall go. I will dismiss you 
 with my thanks. " Riches comes rolling up to be your 
 fellow-traveller, and you say, " Welcome, Riches. There 
 will come an end to you; but while you last we will 
 
372 The Certain End. 
 
 be friends, and you shall help me." Men praise you 
 and you accept their praise as, when you are sailing 
 in a ship, you accept a wind which will not last for- 
 ever, but which while it lasts may fill your sails and 
 speed you on your way. Men blame you, and you take 
 their blame and bid it make you humble that you may 
 be more strong, because more trustful of a greater than 
 yourself when the sunshine comes again. The more 
 your soul is set upon the ends of life, the more you use 
 its means in independence. You use them as a work- 
 man uses his tools, taking them up in quick succession, 
 casting them down one after the other, never falling in 
 love with the tool because the work possesses him. 
 
 To-day, upon Palm Sunday, Jesus comes riding into 
 Jerusalem in the midst of palm-branches and hosannas. 
 Next Thursday, He is prostrate in Gethsemane. Next 
 Friday, He is hanging on the Cross. Next Sunday, He 
 is rising from the tomb. The great experiences come 
 quick on one another. Joy crowds on sorrow, sorrow 
 presses on the steps of joy. To each comes the quick 
 end. Each is but born before it dies. But one thing 
 never dies, — the service of His Father, the salvation of 
 the world, the sum and substance of His life ! Set upon 
 that, with His soul full of that, joy comes and pain 
 comes, and both are welcomed and dismissed with thank- 
 fulness because their coming and their going bring the 
 end for which He lives more near. 
 
 Such be our lives ! As Jesus was, so may we be, 
 seeking an end so gi'eat, so constant, so eternal that 
 every change may come to us and be our minister and 
 not our conqueror ; that even our cross may come as His 
 
The Certain End. 373 
 
 came, and men may gather round it and say, "Alas, 
 then this is all ! Alas, that finally it should all come 
 to this ! " While we who hang upon the cross cry, " It is 
 finished, " with a shout of triumph, counting the finish- 
 ing but a new beginning, and looking out beyond thr 
 cross to richer growth in character, and braver and n^ 
 fruitful service of our Lord ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
A lAhrary of Information in One Volume 
 
 THE TEMPLE 
 
 BBLE DICTIONARY 
 
 Edited by 
 
 The Rev. W. EWING, M. A. 
 
 The Rev. J. E. H. THOMSON, D. D. 
 
 IndispensabU to: 
 
 The Student 
 
 The Preacher 
 
 The Class Leader 
 
 The Foreign Missionary 
 
 As well as to 
 
 Every Christian Household 
 
 A mine of rich instruction and interest 
 
 1100 Pages 500 Illustrations 8 Maps 
 
 One Volume 9^^ x 6^ Handsome Maroon Cloth 
 Tinted tops and edges Price $4.00, net. 
 
THE TEMPLE BIBLE DICTIONARY 
 
 THE EDITORS OF THE DICTIONARY. 
 
 THE REV. W. EWING, M. A., the Editor-in-Chief, is a 
 native of the South of Scotland. He graduated from the 
 University of Glasgow with distinction in Logic and Moral 
 Philosophy. After taking a post-graduate theological course 
 at the Free Church College, Glasgow, he studied at Leipzic 
 under Delitzch, and after ordination went to Palestine as a 
 missionary — his work there being centered principally around 
 Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee. 
 
 Here his proficiency in the native tongues and his persistent 
 activity made him an influence throughout the surrounding 
 country, both in the villages of the peasantry and in the 
 encampments of the wandering Arabs. 
 
 Returning to England in 1893, Mr. Ewing has occupied 
 important pulpits in Birmingham, Glasgow, Stirling, and 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 He has also contributed a great deal to current literature on 
 oriental subjects. He wrote many of the articles dealing with 
 the East in the dictionaries edited by Dr. Hastings, and is the 
 author of the well known book, "Arab and Druze at Home." 
 
 For upwards of seven years he has contributed articles on 
 oriental subjects to the American Sunday School Times, thus — 
 so to speak — preparing himself for the very responsible posi- 
 tion he now occupies as editor of the TEMPLE BIBLE DIC- 
 TIONARY. 
 
 DR. J. E. H. THOMSON, D. D., the Associate Editor, is 
 also a Glasgow University graduate, but took his post-graduate 
 work at Edinburgh, where he was medallist in Logic and 
 Moral Philosophy. 
 
 After graduation he engaged in literary work, and travelled 
 on the Continent of Europe. His first important book, "Books 
 Which Influenced our Lord and His Apostles," appeared in 1891 
 and at once took rank as a standard work on Apocalyptic litera- 
 ture and gained him admission to the staff of the "Pulpit 
 Commentary. " 
 
 In 1895, Dr. Thomson went to Palestine as Free Church 
 Missionary to the Jews, and was stationed at Safed, in 
 Napthali, the loftiest city in Palestine. From this point he 
 made frequent journeys throughout Palestine to all the 
 points famous in the Old and New Testaments. 
 
THE TEMPLE BIBLE DICTIONARl? 
 
 Briefly, the practical experience of both Editors has put 
 them in a position to know what is needful in a Bible Diction- 
 ary which is to be used by practical workers and students — 
 and has given them that thorough, first-hand knowledge of 
 Bible Lands and Peoples, which only actual contact can 
 bestow. 
 
 THE LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS incmdes manyof the best 
 orientalists and archaeologists, the names of such men as Pro- 
 fessor Margolioth, M. A., Litt. D., etc., professor of Arabic in 
 the University of Oxford, Professor A. H. Sayce, LL.D.,D. 
 C. L., Litt. D., professor of Assyriology in the same Univer- 
 sity, the Lord Bishop of Ripon, Professors Mackintosh of 
 Edinburgh University, Wenley of the University of Michigan, 
 Dalman of Leipzic, Anderson Scott of Cambridge, James 
 Robertson of Glasgow, being guarantees of accuracy, scholar- 
 ship, culture and precision. 
 
 THE OBJECT OF THE WORK: 
 
 The results of the research and criticism have in the last 
 few years been cumulative in their effect. Egypt and the 
 Euphrates Valley, Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine itself, 
 through the researches of Ramsay, Petrie, Conder and others, 
 have yielded up enough of their secrets for us to be able to 
 lift with practical completeness the veil which has for centuries 
 obscured Bibical lands from the accurate comprehension of 
 Western people. 
 
 At the same time the vastly conflicting views of scholars 
 with regard to the date, authorship, mode of composition, trust- 
 worthiness, etc. of the various books of the Canon of Scripture 
 have settled down to a stable mean which is not liable to vary 
 very much for many years to come — either in the direction of 
 conservatism or in that of radical departure from accepted 
 values. 
 
 Consequently it has seemed to the editors that this is a 
 favorable period at which to put forth a work which shall 
 embody late results in both Biblical Archeology and Critical 
 Inquiry without the prospect of its almost immediately becom- 
 ing out of date in either department. 
 
 Excellent work has been done in some larger Dictionaries of 
 the Bible recently published, but their size and price put them 
 
THE TEMPLE BIBLE DICTIONARY 
 
 beyond the reach of many who are keenly alive to the neces- 
 sity for competent and trustworthy guidance in the study of 
 the Scriptures. 
 
 The Editors therefore believe that there is room for a Dic- 
 tionary such as this, which, leaving aside all that is merely 
 theoretical and speculative, presents simply, shortly and 
 clearly the state of ascertained knowledge on the subjects | 
 dealt with, at a price which brings the latest results of 
 scholarly investigation within the reach of every earnest 
 student of the Bible, and which for the working clergyman, 
 the local preacher, the class leader, the Sunday School teacher, 
 the travelling missionary, offers an indispensable vade-mecum 
 of scientific and critical knowledge about Biblical lands, peo- 
 ples and literature. 
 
 THE BOOK ITSELF: 
 
 The volume is a singularly handsome one of eleven hundred 
 pages, 9 inches by 6/^ in size, bound in dark maroon cloth, 
 with gilt back and tinted top and edges. There are over 500 
 explanatory illustrations — many from entirely new photo- 
 graphs — and eight colored maps. 
 
 A sensible series of ingenious contractions, not only of 
 proper names, but of ordinary words also, has made it possible 
 to pack information very much closer in these pages than is 
 usual elsewhere. 
 
 The Dictionary to the Apocrypha is in a section by itself, 
 with a special introductory article. There are also special 
 articles on: The Influence of the Bible on English Literature; 
 The New Testament Apocrypha; Apocalyptic Literature; The 
 Targums; Versions of the Scripture; Philo Judasus; Josephus; 
 and The Language of Palestine in the time of Christ; while 
 in the Text of the Dictionary everything possible has been 
 done by the use of thin opaque paper, appropriate sizes of 
 type, and a serviceable system of cross-references to make the 
 book more legible, more intelligible, and more generally com- 
 fortable to read than any other book of its kind in existence. 
 
 It is the devout hope of the Editors that at last a Bible 
 Dictionary has been produced which will be the standard of 
 its kind for many years to come, both as to fullness and erudi- 
 tion of contents and to mechanical excellence of bookmaking. 
 
14391TQ. G88J 
 
 01-23-03 32180 MS W 
 
Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 
 
 1 1012 01293 4446 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 GAYLORD #3523PI Printed in USA