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FAITH AND CHARACTER 
 
Faith and Character 
 
 BY 
 
 MARVIN R^ VINCENT, D.D. 
 
 l>rJl jvg. fv/i^i*^*^ iu^^^ ^^^i. ^'w^^ vA". y. 
 
 "Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of 
 God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ " 
 
 EPHESIANSiv. 13 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway 
 
 1880 
 
COPTEIGHT BY 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 1880. 
 
 Trow's 
 
 Printing and Bookbinding Company, 
 
 201-213 F-ast x'ith Street, 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
-pnm: 
 
 
 S:L 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 OF TROY, N. Y., 
 
 IN MEMORY OF OUR YEARS OF HAPPY FELLOWSHIP 
 IN THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD, 
 
 3E IgjelJuate ftis Volumt. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This volume is composed of sermons, preached 
 at different times to my congregation of the Church 
 of the Covenant, and does not, therefore, claim to 
 be the methodical development of a single topic. 
 
 At the same time, a reference to the table of con- 
 tents will show that it is not devoid of a certain 
 unity ; and that its title is fairly representative, and 
 is not selected arbitrarily, nor from some incidental 
 feature of a collection of miscellaneous discourses. 
 The two thoughts of FAITH and CHARACTER un- 
 derlie the whole book. Each sermon deals, either 
 with the relations and bearings of character, or with 
 the principle of faith in the unseen as its only per- 
 manent basis. 
 
 If the volume shall contribute, in any degree, to 
 dissipate that indifferentism toward religion, which is 
 rife, and which carries a worse menace than positive 
 
viii Preface, 
 
 unbelief; if it shall do aught, within the church it- 
 self, to prick that dangerous conceit that emotional 
 raptures, or activity in church work, or regular 
 ecclesiastical standing can be substitutes for solid 
 goodness and for consistency of conduct ; if it shall 
 go to strengthen the emphasis upon the fact that 
 religion is a development of character, and is not 
 summed up in the single experience which inaugu- 
 rates that development ; if, in showing that char- 
 acter attains symmetry through discipline and con- 
 flict, it shall nerve some sincere but discouraged 
 soul to fight its way across the storm-swept expanse 
 between itself and its ideal ; if, above all, it shall 
 help any man to a larger and clearer view of the 
 divine Saviour, and shall enable him to discover a 
 new meaning in manhood and a new dignity and 
 sweetness in duty through their relation to Jesus 
 Christ, it will not have been written in vain. 
 
 Marvin R. Vincent. 
 
 Covenant Parsonage, yanuary 6, 1880. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 FAITH. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Faith in the Unseen. 
 
 1. Seeing the Invisible. (Hebrews xi. 27.) , .3 
 
 II. Intercourse with the Unseen. 
 
 2. " Because of his Importunity." (Luke xi. 5-8.) . 25 
 
 III. Christ the Interpreter of the Unseen. 
 
 3. ** What think ye of Christ ?" (Matthew xxii. 42.) 43 
 
 4. The Wardship of the Law. (Galatians iii. 24.) . 61 
 
 5. Sonship by Receiving Christ. (John i. 12.) . . 81 
 
 6. Rest Given and Rest Found. (Matthew xi. 28-30. ) 97 
 
 7. The Divine Gift of Wisdom. (James i. 5, 6.) . .117 
 
 CHARACTER. 
 
 I. Its Integrity. 
 
 8. The Patched Garment. (Luke v. 36.) . . .135 
 
 II. Its Development. 
 
 9. Infancy and Manhood in the Sphere of Faith. 
 
 (Hebrews xi. 23-29.) 153 
 
X Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 10. The Divine Law of Education. (Deuteronomy 
 
 xxxii. IO-I2.) 173 
 
 11. Good and Bad Building on the One Foundation. 
 
 (I St Corinthians iii. 10-15.) • • • • '93 
 
 III. Its Risks. 
 
 12. Caution and Comfort for the Tempted, (ist Cor- 
 
 inthians x. 12, 13.) 211 
 
 13. Taste and Holiness. (Philippians iv. 8, 9.) . .231 
 
 14. Balaam. (2d Peter ii. 15.) 249 
 
 IV. Its Independence. 
 
 15. Christian Self-Sufhciency. (Philippians iv. 11-13.) 269 
 
 V. Its Attitude toward Men. 
 
 16. Christian Relations not after the Flesh. (2d Cor- 
 
 inthians V. 16.) 287 
 
 VI. Its Active Side. 
 
 17. Meat or Drudgery. (John iv. 34.) . . . 305 
 
 18. The Lesson of Moses' Rod. (Exodus iv. 2.). . 323 
 
 19. The Multiplied Oil. (2d Kings iv. 1-7.) . .341 
 
 VII. Its Eternity. 
 
 20. The Eternity of Godly Character, (ist John ii. 
 
 I7-) 361 
 

 ^ 
 
 SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 
 
HEBREWS XI. 
 ( 27) For he endured as seeing Him who is invisible. 
 
SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 
 
 This chapter is a catalogue of the heroes of faith. 
 The words of the text refer to Moses, and sum up 
 and explain what the writer has been saying about 
 his renunciation of the highest worldly advantages, 
 for the sake of an unseen, future, and, humanly 
 speaking, most improbable good. As the adopted 
 son of the royal house of Egypt, he might have en- 
 joyed the powers of sovereignty, the pleasures of 
 wealth, and the pure delights of learned leisure. 
 Instead, he chose a lot which converted his patrons 
 into enemies, which withdrew him from the scene of 
 his studies, and which insured him toil, anxiety, and 
 vexation for the whole remainder of his life. Almost 
 every day we see fanatics doing strange things, and 
 things which are hurtful to themselves ; but Moses 
 was not a fanatic. He was a wise man in the worldly 
 sense. He was not only an accomplished, but a 
 shrewd man. He knew, as well as any sage in Egypt, 
 how chimerical, how hopeless, how utterly senseless, 
 such a movement as the migration of the Hebrews 
 was, viewed from the standpoint of worldly wisdom. 
 If he saw the matter from God's point of view, he 
 was also quite competent to see it from Pharaoh's. 
 
4 Faith and Character. 
 
 The explanation of this strange course is given us 
 by the writer of this epistle in the words of our text. 
 Moses ignored the law of worldly expediency, and 
 worked and suffered under a higher law, as one who 
 saw a lawgiver whom Egypt could not see, who felt 
 the obligation of a law which Egypt did not recog- 
 nize, who worked toward a result which did not enter 
 into the dreams of Egypt's wisest, and who looked for 
 a recompense unseen, intangible, yet richer than all 
 the treasures of the Pharaohs. ** He endured as 
 seeing Him who is invisible. '' 
 
 As we go through this chapter, we see that Moses 
 was not alone in acting on this principle. The same 
 principle underlies the work and the suffering of 
 every one who is named in that wonderful catalogue ; 
 the principle of faith^ of which all these men and 
 women are cited as illustrations : and faith is declared 
 to be nothing more nor less than this clear seeing and 
 realizing of that which is unseen by the world at large. 
 You read, in the first verse of this chapter, that faith 
 is the substance^ the real beings of things which to 
 others are only matters of hope : it is the demonstra- 
 tion of things which are ?iot seen. 
 
 You are not unfamiliar with the same thing on a 
 lower plane — a region quite distinct from the sphere 
 of religion. Every great inventor or discoverer, 
 every great man, indeed, who, in any particular, is in 
 advance of his age, illustrates it. A Columbus sees 
 a new continent, where his age sees only a madman 
 putting out to sea in quest of dreamland. A Palissy 
 sees the potter's work improved and beautified, 
 
Seeing the Invisible. 5 
 
 where society sees only a fanatic ruining himself by 
 building fires to destroy good cups and bowls. A 
 Watt sees weights lifted and machinery driven, where 
 his neighbors laugh at an idiot dreaming over a boil- 
 ing teakettle. To men at large, these things are but 
 dreams^ fancies^ at best, hopes. To these men they are 
 real facts. 
 
 In the case of the heroes of this chapter, we find 
 this sense of realness treated in its relation to one set 
 of facts only : the facts, namely, of the invisible, spirit- 
 ual world : the facts of the order, the government, and 
 the sanctions of a moral universe, of which God is the 
 administrator. That there is a God, that He governs 
 the world, that He directs the thought and doing of 
 men, that He loves and cares for them, that He 
 calls them to positions and sets them duties, that He 
 will fulfil His promises to them, that He will reward 
 their well-doing and punish their evil, that it is both 
 right and most profitable to obey Him, even though 
 obedience entail present pain and loss — these and 
 similar facts are the ones w^hich faith made living and 
 telling forces in the lives of Noah and Enoch, Abra- 
 ham and Moses, David, and Samuel, and the prophets. 
 Evidently the invisible world was very real to those 
 men. Over the best of them, it had more power 
 than this present, visible world. You know how 
 powerfully their age influences men ; how much it 
 does to shape them ; how hard and how rare it is for 
 a man to rise above the great, accepted, unquestioned 
 convictions of his time. Does it not then seem won- 
 derful that in an age which did not at all realize the 
 
6 Faith and Character. 
 
 fact of a future of the world, in which the present 
 was '* as much a boundary of the world's horizon, and 
 stood as much upon the very edge of time as to-day 
 stands," Abraham should have looked into an " indefi- 
 nitely distant era of the world, and to an improved 
 condition of the world," with a fixedness, a clearness, 
 and a certainty which even our Lord remarked ? 
 "Your father, Abraham," He says, ** rejoiced to see my 
 day, and he saw it and was glad." Is it not strange 
 that such a man should cast off the idolatry which 
 was *' pressed upon him with all the power of associ- 
 ation and authority," and grasp the doctrine of one 
 spiritual God, at whose commands and promises he 
 forsakes the home of his fathers, and binds the son of 
 his hopes to the sacrificial altar ? Will anything but 
 a sense of reality in unseen things send a man along 
 such paths ? And when we get into the region of the 
 Christian heroes, we find the realization of the unseen 
 world, and the sense of its power surprisingly intense 
 and vivid. When a man can say, ** For me to live is 
 Christ :" **To depart from this life and to be with 
 Christ is far better:" '' My citizenship is in Heav- 
 en." " I walk by faith, not by sight : " ''The things 
 which are seen are temporal^ but the things which are 
 not seen are eternal " — it shows that the unseen, spir- 
 itual world is far other than a matter of guess, or 
 even of mere intellectual faith to him. It is the very 
 element in which he lives. He believes in it in such 
 a way as that it has practical power over him, shapes 
 him, controls him, makes him, in short, whatever he 
 is in every relation. Men cannot be, as in the record 
 
Seeing the Invisible, 7 
 
 of this chapter, stoned, sawn asunder, destitute, af- 
 flicted, tormented, for the sake of One whom they 
 have never seen, and of ti-uths which get all their 
 meaning from His person, without a very distinct and 
 powerful sense of the 7'eality of such a Being and of 
 the practical bearing of such truths. 
 
 The Bible gives us these facts ; but is the Bible a 
 book for to-day's living ? Is the Bible the only infal- 
 lible rule of faith and practice ? Do we believe this ? 
 If we do, how can we escape the conclusion that this 
 clear seeing and realizing of the unseen, this con- 
 stant, direct bearing of the unseen world upon life, 
 plans, hopes, is commended to us^ no less than to the 
 men of older time ? Is there any reason why Enoch's 
 walk with the invisible God, and Abraham's faith in 
 the invisible God, should be to us mere matters of 
 admiring allusion ? Or do we admit that Abraham's 
 faith may, and ought to be reproduced, yea, im- 
 proved upon in our lives ? Moses saw Him who is 
 invisible. Is that fact stated in order to show us how 
 much greater Moses' privilege was than ours, or is it 
 the statement of our privilege to see as much if not 
 more than Moses ? 
 
 If the Bible is the manual of living for you and me, 
 we are shut up to the answer that the unseen world 
 ought to be to us all that it ever was to the men of 
 whom it tells us. If it was real to thetn^ it should be 
 real to us. If it imposed obligations, and gave direc- 
 tions, and ministered warning and comfort and hope 
 to them, we are bound to look to it for the same things; 
 because, if the Bible does not mean this, it means 
 
8 Faith and Character, 
 
 nothing whatever. The Bible, from beginning to end, 
 is concerned with the establishment of an effective 
 connection between the seen and the unseen worlds ; 
 with bringing the things of sense under the dominion 
 of the unseen, and with teaching us that this unseen 
 world is the great, dominant fact, not only of the fu- 
 ture, but of the present. 
 
 Thus we get down to the very practical question : 
 Is the unseen world to us what it was to the men of 
 the Bible ? Do we look back with envy and with 
 longing to Jacob's dream at Bethel and to his wrestle 
 at Jabbok, to Moses on Sinai, to Elijah on Horeb, 
 and feel that the present has robbed us of something 
 which brought Heaven nearer to them ? Do we live 
 as though we saw Him who is invisible, and as if the 
 things of the unseen world were substance and not 
 shadow ? 
 
 Understand me, I am not asking now whether we 
 believe that there is a Heaven and a Hell ; a God, a 
 special providence. If it is a matter of vital impor- 
 tance what a man believes, it is a matter of no less 
 moment ho7v he believes it, and what are the applica- 
 tions of his belief. I may fully believe in the elec- 
 tric telegraph, for instance. I may be able to give a 
 perfectly correct and intelligible explanation of its 
 principle and working. I may have a telegraphic 
 apparatus set up in my room, with its batteries in 
 good working order, and yet I may make no connec- 
 tions with anything outside, but may simply keep 
 the polished machine ticking away without sending 
 a message to a soul under the sun. Just so, it is en- 
 
Seeing the Invisible. o 
 
 tirely possible for one to believe every essential truth 
 of the spiritual world, and yet never give his belief a 
 vital contact anywhere with his practical life. And 
 it is that contact which is the important thing. The 
 power of faith in the unseen upon the regulation of 
 what is seen ; the depth and sharpness of the stamp 
 of the invisible upon the visible, is the true measure 
 of our faith. You believe in God's being and attri- 
 butes. Do those attributes make your life any bet- 
 ter, or larger, or happier ? You believe that there is 
 an invisible world. What character does it set upon 
 you ? To what degree do you live in its atmosphere ? 
 You believe that the unseen imposes laws upon our 
 life. Do you keep those laws .^ You believe that in- 
 fluences go forth from that invisible realm. Do you 
 give yourself up to them ? The unseen realm is a 
 kingdom. Do you live in it as a subject ? It is a 
 kingdom not of this world. Are you of the world or 
 not of it.? Is the whole array of heavenly intelli- 
 gences, facts, and laws, to you and to me like the 
 far-off light of distant auroras, on whose cold splen- 
 dors we merely gaze, which measure for us no times 
 and seasons and send forth no warmth,— or are they 
 as the sun in heaven, quickening and fructifying our 
 lives ? These are questions without the right answer 
 to which it matters little how correctly we can say 
 our catechisms, or how orthodox are our systems of 
 faith. 
 
 So, then, I repeat my question. How real a thing 
 is the unseen world to us ? How much will we do 
 under its power? How much will we bear 7 How 
 
lO Faith and Character. 
 
 much will we renounce 1 How much does it restrain 
 us ? How much will we do and suffer to win its re- 
 wards ? How much afraid are we of its retributions ? 
 One thing is certain, either it is or it is not real. If 
 it is, in the very nature of the case it must be a tre- 
 me?idous reality, and the absence of the sense of its 
 realness from any life is the most tremendous defect 
 which it is possible to conceive. 
 
 Let us bring the matter to some practical tests. 
 There, for instance, is the substance of belief — what we 
 call doctrine. I do not think that the positive disbe- 
 lief of people in the doctrines of the Bible is as re- 
 markable or as dangerous as the perfect tranquillity 
 with which they settle down upon the conclusion 
 that it is quite indifferent what they believe. In any- 
 thing which they are convinced is real, they show 
 that they think it of very great consequence what 
 they believe, and are at great pains to form an intel- 
 ligent belief. If, for example, a capitalist holds five 
 thousand shares of a certain stock, that is a very 
 real thing to him. It represents so much capital. 
 If he believes that the stock is selling at a premium 
 when it is already below par and is daily going down, 
 he knows very well that that belief, however sin- 
 cere, will make a very appreciable difference in his 
 income. So he is careful not to be betrayed into any 
 wrong belief on the subject. Every fact which can 
 help him to form a right belief is diligently sought 
 out, and carefully weighed and studied. Yet often 
 the very same man, if asked his belief respecting the 
 great principles of religion, would say : *' Well, I don't 
 
Seeing the Invisible.. \\ 
 
 know, I have not given much thought to such things. 
 It is a matter of a good deal of uncertainty, any way ; 
 and if I try to do about right, I don't know that it 
 makes much difference what I believe." Scores of 
 people who do not say this in so many words, say 
 the same thing by their lives ; and that thing means 
 that the question whether the world and society are 
 moved by blind chance or guided by a loving Father 
 in Heaven ; whether they themselves are to live after 
 this life or to return to the dust ; whether 
 
 **we fare 
 
 As summer gusts, of sudden birth and doom, 
 Whose sound and motion not alone declare. 
 But are their whole of being ; " 
 
 where they are going to be when buying and sell- 
 ing and laughter and feasting shall be over forever ; 
 whether there is any answer beyond the grave to the 
 questioning of their lonely hearts about their dead— 
 they say the answer to such questions is a matter of 
 indifference, and they are easily content to have the 
 days slip away, leaving them unsettled. Do you not 
 see that the radical defect with such is that the spirit- 
 ual world has no r^^^m— practically, no existence for 
 them? How well has Pascal said of such, *'The 
 only shame is that there is no shame. Nothing 
 shows more an extreme weakness of mind than to 
 know not what is the unhappiness of a mind without 
 God ; nothing indicates more a bad disposition of 
 heart than not to desire the truth of eternal prom- 
 ises ; nothing is more cowardly than to brave God. 
 
12 Faith and Character. 
 
 There are but two sorts of persons who can be called 
 rational : either those that serve God with all their 
 heart, because they know Him ; or those that seek 
 Him with all their heart, because they do not know 
 Him." 
 
 Or, consider the way in which the Scriptures affect 
 people. Remember, that if the Bible is not the reve- 
 lation of the laws and forces of the spiritual world, 
 and of the thought and feeling of its intelligences, it is 
 nothing. But it is more than we sometimes suspect, 
 to love and to trust the Bible as such a revelation. 
 Some of you remember the first letter which came to 
 you from home, while you were in the first homesick- 
 ness of your school life. How you read it and re- 
 read it, and stole looks at it in lesson time, and went 
 away into quiet places to brood, and perchance to 
 w^eep over its love-laden lines. And why ? Because 
 it came from a place which was the dearest reality of 
 your existence. Because it told of persons and facts 
 w^hich formed your little world. Because it bore ad- 
 monitions from those whose word gave the law to 
 your life, and praises from those whose approval was 
 your most coveted prize. Is the Bible any such 
 thing as that to us ? And observe, that one may be 
 honestly interested in the Bible without having any 
 such feeling as this. A poet may enjoy the poetry 
 of Isaiah or of Job. An historian may become ab- 
 sorbed in Kings or Chronicles as illustrating secular 
 history. A philosopher may study the character of 
 Christ as a moral phenomenon. All these, good 
 things though they are, yet attach, if I may so speak, 
 
Seeing the htvisible. 13 
 
 to the outside of the Bible. But it is a different 
 matter when one loves the Bible as a message from 
 home ; when he reads it as a traveller does his guide- 
 book in a strange city, and studies it as a sailor stud- 
 ies his chart on a dangerous coast ; when he delights 
 in it as the voice of the Father whom he loves, of the 
 Savior in whom he trusts, as the manual of that 
 kingdom to which his loyalty is pledged. You go 
 into the cabin of a mountaineer in some wild region, 
 and hanging up against the wall is an old lantern. 
 Something peculiar in its shape or make attracts 
 your attention for a moment, and you are turning 
 away, when the mountaineer says to you : ** I have 
 no better friend than that old lantern. Many a star- 
 less night, when I have been among the ravines and 
 precipices, climbing the crags, or threading the nar- 
 row sheep-paths, I should have been lost but for the 
 spark which it kept from the boisterous wind. And 
 just so, when we shall have begun to realize that the 
 world is a dangerous place, that the journey to heaven 
 lies amid rocks and pitfalls, and that light from heaven 
 is indispensable to safe walking ; when we shall have 
 laid up the memories of a few dark, tempestuous 
 seasons, out of which only our Bibles saved us, we 
 shall know what the Psalmist meant when he said : 
 *' Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto 
 my path." 
 
 Once more, look at prayer. It is not wonderful 
 that men are skeptical about communication with 
 the unseen world when they view prayer from with- 
 out, as a phenomenon to be weighed in material 
 
1 4 Faith and Character. 
 
 balances and tried by mechanical tests. No wonder 
 the invisible world is unreal to them. He who 
 knows prayer as an experience^ from within the circle 
 of communion with God, who lingers in that heaven- 
 ly atmosphere, seeing Him who is invisible, asking 
 and receiving, feeling his burdens drop off and his 
 strength renew itself — can afford to smile at the 
 bustling philosopher outside, knitting his brows over 
 the question whether man can ask and receive from 
 God. If I want to satisfy myself about prayer, I 
 shall not run to the manufacturers of prayer-tests. 
 Rather will I go and stand by Isaiah at the altar, 
 while the posts of the door move at the voice of him 
 that cries, and the live coal is laid by angel hands on 
 the suppliant prophet's lips. Rather will I bow be- 
 side Elijah on Carmel, while his own life and the 
 honor of Israel, hang on the issue of his prayer. 
 Rather will I seek the chamber where Luther, pros- 
 trate before God, pleads for courage to stand for His 
 truth before kings and potentates. In such scenes 
 we learn how real the unseen world is to men. We 
 see how they depend upon it ; what kind of help they 
 seek from it ; what terrible issues they stake on its 
 responses ; and how real and how mighty are the 
 aids and comforts which come from it to them. The 
 difference between such men's view of prayer and his 
 who merely studies prayer as a phenomenon, is the 
 difference between him who stands in the telegraph 
 office, studying the machinery, and asking about the 
 connections of the wires, and him whose wife or child 
 is in deadly peril in a distant city, and who leans 
 
Seeing the Invisible. 15 
 
 over the operator's shoulder with set lips and strain- 
 ing eyes, as the ticking instrument resolves or deep- 
 ens his agony of suspense. 
 
 You see the same thing in times of sorrow. You 
 remember how, some years ago, the first Atlantic 
 cable, which had lain broken in mid-ocean for nearly 
 two years, was raised and repaired. From the mo- 
 ment that the telegraphic squadron set sail, an opera- 
 tor sat, night and day, at the European terminus, 
 watching for signals. He told afterwards a weird 
 story. Long before the grappling-iron had found it, 
 the parted cable, under the power of mysterious elec- 
 tric currents, was writing grotesque signs and combi- 
 nations with the sensitive indicator, sometimes even 
 forming unmeaning sentences, as if the old sea were 
 struggling to unbosom its awful secrets. At last the 
 pencil of light moved as in the hand of a ready 
 writer, and told the joyful story of success. The 
 vague, stammering utterances of the sea were 
 changed into living words of joy. Purpose, knowl- 
 edge, will, were at the other end of the wire. Thus it 
 often is in human experience. Men get down at 
 times into depths where the world of sense becomes 
 unreal to them through their own misery. The in- 
 ward life is one wild, chaotic waste, full of sighs and 
 murmurs and cries for light and peace. The mes- 
 sages that come from that waste are as idle jargon 
 telling only of chance and change. And when, under 
 such conditions, you find these souls holding by 
 something unseen, never losing faith in Divine order, 
 feeling the thrill of divine love and comfort amid all 
 
1 6 Faith and Character, 
 
 the confusion, strengthened not only to bear and to 
 work, but to coin sorrow into power, you may be 
 sure that that unseen thing, whatever it is, is a real 
 thing to them. You may call it phantasy, but it is 
 none the less true that they endure as seeing the in- 
 visible. And I think we never have so keen a sense 
 of the realness of the unseen world, as when we see 
 a racked, tempest-beaten soul thus kept in perfect 
 peace. The seen and the unseen appear to have 
 changed places. The eyes of the children of sorrow 
 are anointed, and almost everything but the unseen 
 becomes unreal. God and Christ, heavenly strength, 
 the clasp of the everlasting arms, have become the 
 great facts of that life. 
 
 I go back to my old question : How real is the 
 spiritual world to us ? What does it stand for in 
 your life and in mine ? Must we wait until we are in 
 the next world to feel its power and to obey its 
 promptings ? Or does not the Apostle Paul give us 
 more than a hint in those words *' our citizenship is 
 in Heaven," that we may live in this world and in di- 
 rect contact with Heaven at the same time ? You 
 have often marked a blind man walking the streets. 
 A score of things are going on round him ; incidents 
 which draw the attention of every eye are taking 
 place within a few yards of him. How sadly impres- 
 sive is his entire unconsciousness of it all! He does 
 not bow his head at the missile hurled by a careless 
 hand. He does not check his footsteps at the ap- 
 proach of his dearest friend. He walks straight to- 
 ward the yawning pit which workmen have opened 
 
Seeing the Invisible, 17 
 
 in the street. Yet is this any more sadly impressive 
 than the spectacle of the multitudes who walk this 
 world as if unconscious that there is any other, blind 
 to the hints and suggestions and symbols and moni- 
 tions which come crowding up and compassing their 
 very path and their lying down ? How such must 
 appear — yea, how many of those who profess to be 
 walking by faith in the unseen must appear to the 
 tenants of the spiritual region, the cloud of wit- 
 nesses compassing this earthly sphere of ours. Oh, if 
 our eyes were but opened, how common things would 
 teem with lessons and suggestions of the unseen. 
 How often we should see teachers where we see but 
 stocks and stones ; how often we should stand unshod 
 on ground which we profane with careless feet, and 
 all along the line of our daily walk find 
 
 ** Earth crammed with heaven. 
 And every common bush afire with God ; " 
 
 and how the things which now seem to us so great, 
 the baubles we covet, the praises for which we are 
 impatient, the successes on which we stake our happi- 
 ness, the failures which go well-nigh to break our 
 hearts, would dwindle and fade in the presence of the 
 tremendous facts of that vast, mysterious realm which 
 we so often treat as though it had no existence. This 
 blindness is not enforced. We may see if we will. 
 Thank God, the awful picture of the German poet is 
 false in every line, wherein he depicts the genera- 
 tions of men between the past and the futare as be- 
 tween two black curtains, where they stand bearing 
 
1 8 Faith and Character. 
 
 torches, cheated now by their own magnified shad- 
 ows, and now by the images which poets, statesmen, 
 tricksters, have drawn on the curtain of the future 
 according to their fantastic humors, while no voice 
 comes out of the darkness beyond, but only a hollow 
 echo answers the agonized questioner, as when one 
 calls into an abyss. It is false, I say. The Christian 
 knows what are the powers of the world to come. 
 The invisible world is not silent to ears which Christ 
 has touched. It has something besides fancies or 
 juggleries for those on whose eyes He has laid His 
 hand ; and such texts as this, combine with myriads 
 of later testimonies to tell us how men have stood 
 between the past and the future in good cheer and 
 in buoyant hope, hearing real voices behind the veil, 
 and passing behind it at last, not as taking a leap in 
 the dark, but as departing to be with Christ, which 
 is far better. 
 
 Young ladies of the graduating class,' it would be 
 an ungracious task to attempt to throw a shadow over 
 the bright outlook upon which you gaze from the 
 doors of this peaceful retreat which open now to let 
 you out into the world. For one, I have no disposi- 
 tion to undertake it. On the other hand, I do most 
 confidently believe that in directing your attention 
 to this theme, I am pointing out to you the way to 
 draw most brightness and sweetness out of the world ; 
 the way to the solution of some of those problems 
 
 * This sermon was preached as a baccalaureate to the graduating 
 class of Packer Institute, Brooklyn, 1878. 
 
Seeing the Invisible, 19 
 
 which so often embitter life and blight hope. If the 
 subject seems a grave one, its selection is justified by 
 the fact that the view which you shall take of it and 
 shall carry out into practice, will determine the char- 
 acter of your life and the character of your destiny. 
 
 This issue confronts you at the commencement of 
 your career, the issue between the claims of the seen 
 and of the unseen. It will be well for you to face it 
 decisively and intelligently. The world has changed 
 in many things, but it is the same old world in stoutly 
 maintaining the superior authority of that which is 
 seen, as against that which is apprehended by the 
 spiritual sense. It comes to meet you with tangible 
 pleasures and rewards ; with its own debased stand- 
 ards of right and wrong ; substituting pleasure for 
 duty, and what is tasteful for what is right. Inno- 
 cent though you may be of metaphysics, the cold 
 materialism of its so-called ''advanced thought" will 
 find its way to you as surely as the tide works up 
 into the little creeks and inlets far back from the 
 shores, and with its subtle touch will seek to par- 
 alyze the faith which lays hold on the unseen 
 world. And your only safeguard will be the convic- 
 tion, firmly rooted in your hearts, and faithfully acted 
 out in your lives, that you are the subjects of an in- 
 visible kingdom, of which God is the king ; that that 
 realm, which includes Christ and duty and spiritual 
 communion, is appointed for your daily dwelling- 
 place, and that your first and highest allegiance is 
 due there. 
 
 Some of you are familiar with that beautiful scene 
 
20 Faith and Character. 
 
 in Schiller's drama of Wallenstein, where a maiden 
 timidly enters the chamber of her father's astrologer, 
 and finds herself in a circle of colossal statues, kingly 
 forms representing the planets. 
 
 ** Each one in his hand 
 A sceptre bore, and on his head a star ; 
 And in the tower no other light was there 
 But from these stars : all seemed to come from them." 
 
 Thus they stood in their silent majesty, telling her 
 of the power of the heavenly intelligences in shaping 
 human fates, and appealing to her to seek to learn 
 her destiny at their hands. So I would fain think of 
 you ere you go forth into the bright sunshine of 
 "that new world which is the old," turning aside to 
 the circle of 
 
 ** The great intelligences fair, 
 That range above our mortal state ;'* 
 
 and seeing only by the "great light which lighteth 
 every man that cometh into the world," ask there to 
 have the lines of your destiny drawn, and come forth 
 leaving it in Christ's keeping forever. Those lines 
 w^ill lead you away from much which the world calls 
 success. You will follow them down to many a low 
 place, where tears are shed, and weak and helpless 
 hands are stretched forth in mute appeal, and whither 
 the world will not follow to minister to you ; but 
 when you shall find yourself working side by side 
 with Him who came to minister, you will find your- 
 self in the ranks of the givers and not of the receiv- 
 
Seeing the Invisible. 2i 
 
 ers. You will be led in paths of sacrifice, where you 
 shall find your highest joy in duty, your sweetest 
 rest in bearing Christ's yoke and burden, your abid- 
 ing comfort in seeing Him who is invisible. Your 
 whole education will have been to little purpose, if, 
 with all your mental discipline and trained percep- 
 tion, your spiritual sense shall not have been sharp- 
 ened to look straight through the glamour and mir- 
 age of this world to the things which are real to God 
 and to angels. I can ask no better thing for you 
 than thus to walk under a constant sense of the 
 power and reality of the unseen world ; no better 
 thing than that which was said of that old, old saint 
 who passed to heaven by a gate unknown to other 
 men : '* He walked with God, and he was not, for 
 God took him." 
 
"BECAUSE OF HIS IMPOR- 
 TUNITY." 
 
LUKE XI. 
 
 (5) And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, 
 
 and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, 
 Friend, lend me three loaves ; 
 
 (6) For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I 
 
 have nothing to set before him : 
 
 (7) And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me 
 
 not : the door is now shut, and my children are with me 
 in bed ; I cannot rise and give thee. 
 
 (8) I say unto you. Though he will not rise and give him 
 
 because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity^ 
 he will rise and give him as many as he needeth." 
 
11. 
 
 "BECAUSE OF HIS IMPORTUNITY." 
 
 ''Lord, teach us to pray." This was the request 
 which drew from Christ that wonderful answer of 
 which this parable forms a part ; and surely, even the 
 disciples who made the request could never have 
 dreamed of the depth of their own ignorance of this 
 subject, until they saw how it unfolded under Christ's 
 touch. It is worth a thought whether we, at this 
 late time, have gotten all the beauty and fragrance 
 out of that perfect flower of the life of Jesus — the 
 Lord's prayer. This, however, was but the first part 
 of the answer to the disciples' request. While this 
 conveyed to them the mode of prayer, it remained to 
 inform them concerning the spirit of prayer, and this 
 Our Lord does through the parable of our text. 
 
 Like all such utterances of Christ, this draws its 
 material from the ordinary life and incidents of the 
 time. The deep stillness which settles upon an East- 
 ern city soon after nightfall, is broken by the urgent 
 call of a man under a neighbor's window. " Friend ! 
 friend ! ! Lend me three loaves ! A guest has ar- 
 rived at my house." Not a strange occurrence in the 
 East, where so many travel in the night to avoid the 
 burning heat of the day. " Friend, lend me three 
 
26 FaitJi and Character. 
 
 loaves. My guest has taken me unawares. He is a 
 hungry traveller. My larder is empty, I have noth- 
 ins: to set before him." And the answer is that of a 
 man who cares chiefly for his own comfort ; a churl- 
 ish answer enough: "Trouble me not. My door is 
 shut and bolted. The household have gone to rest. 
 I cannot rise and give thee." But the applicant is 
 not so easily disposed of. The ungracious neighbor is 
 not to be left so comfortably to his rest. Hardly has 
 he settled himself on his couch when the knock at 
 the door comes again, and the call is repeated ; and 
 again and again, until, for very peace's sake, he is con- 
 strained to rise and give his persistent ^neighbor what 
 he wants. " Though he will not rise and give him 
 because he is his friend^ yet because of his i?nJ>o?'t unity, 
 he will rise and give him as many as he needeth." 
 Then follows the Lord's application: ''When ye 
 pray, go thus to God's door, in dead earnest, like the 
 importunate friend. Ask, seek, knock. Ye shall re- 
 ceive, ye shall find, the door shall be opened." This 
 is the great lesson of the parable. God urges us 
 
 TO BE URGENT WITH HiM. 
 
 Let us observe, before we go further, that this para- 
 ble does not teach that we can get anything we want 
 from God, if we are only persistent enough. The par- 
 able is to be read in the light of the Lord's prayer 
 which precedes it. It is as if Christ had said : '' After 
 this manner pray. Let your petitions breathe such 
 needs as are expressed in this form of prayer ; and 
 when ye pray thus, asking for that w^hich God him- 
 self bids you ask, then pray with assurance and with 
 
^^ Because of his Importimityy 27. 
 
 persistence." When a man's petition falls within the 
 circle of the Lord's prayer, he is like one who has 
 the written credentials of a king, entitling him to 
 admission to his palace and person. The lackeys at 
 the gate may repulse and mock him, he cannot be 
 driven away. He comes back after every repulse, 
 ho].ding forth the signature of his sovereign, until he 
 makes his way within. 
 
 And it is also worth noting how strongly our Lord 
 puts this duty of earnestness in prayer by the very 
 word which he uses. " Importunity" does not begin 
 to convey the force of it. Literally the word is 
 shamelessness : impudence : and in the parallel parable 
 of the unjust judge, to which I shall have occasion to 
 refer more than once, the judge uses the same word 
 which Paul afterwards employs to express the keeping 
 his body in subjection — the boxer's word — to strike 
 under the eye, so that his words, literally rendered, 
 would run thus : " Because this widow troubleth me 
 I will avenge her, lest, by her continual coming she 
 beat me black and blue." I never get this idea so 
 clearly before me as in reading that story of Abra- 
 ham's intercession for Sodom. I never can prevent 
 that sense of iinpudence coming uppermost as I follow 
 the patriarch through his plea for that horrible moral 
 cesspool, Sodom, and hear him beating down from 
 fifty to ten. Almost anybody but Abraham would 
 have thought God's proposal to save the city for 
 the sake of fifty righteous men, a wonderful stretch 
 of Divine mercy. On ordinary principles of justice 
 Abraham had no case at all ; and yet every concession 
 
28 Faith and Character, 
 
 only encourages him to venture farther, until one 
 fairly blushes for him, and wonders how he can have 
 the face to ask again. But this is the spirit which 
 God encourages in His children when they pray. He 
 does not think of it as impudence. He only uses the 
 invidious word to convey to us more forcibly the holy 
 boldness of faith. To Him, the real shamelessness is, 
 when His own dear children, purchased with the 
 blood of His son, and with His offer in their hands to 
 give them all things freely with Him, make meagre 
 requests, and come to His throne like trembling beg- 
 gars and not like the children of a king. 
 
 The question will at once arise then, why is God, 
 if He is so gracious, represented under the figure of 
 a churlish person : of one who refuses to put himself 
 to a little inconvenience for a friend's sake ; or, as 
 in the other parable, to an unrighteous judge who 
 grants a request merely to save himself trouble ? 
 Does not this look rather as if prayer had some re- 
 luctance on God's part to overcome ? 
 
 I reply, no. The contrary is the truth. In the first 
 place, such an assumption is squarely in the face of 
 Scripture, which everywhere emphasizes God's will- 
 ingness to give good gifts to His children. Men are 
 urged to ask, to ask large things, and are told that 
 whatsoever they ask in Christ's name they shall re- 
 ceive. And this is just what the illustration of the 
 parable is intended to convey. The course of reason- 
 ing is from the worse to the better. The argument 
 lies thus : If a churlish man can be prevailed on by 
 the importunity of a neighbor, to give him bread at 
 
''Because of his Importunity''' 29 
 
 an unseasonable time, how much more will a gracious 
 Father listen to the request of His own child who 
 cannot ask unseasonably, because He has told him to 
 pray always. If an unrighteous judge can be over- 
 come by the petition of a stranger, coming in the way 
 of business, and besieging him with importunity which 
 he hates, shall not the righteous Judge of all the earth 
 listen to the cry of His own chosen in the prayer which 
 He loves to hear ? So, the more ill-natured the neigh- 
 bor, the more unjust the judge, if importunity can 
 prevail with them, so much the stronger is the argu- 
 ment for its success with a just and loving Father in 
 Heaven. 
 
 Why, then, the importunity at God's gate at all ? 
 What place is there for urgency and persistence if 
 God's willingness to give is perfect, and God's sure 
 promise to give on record ? Why not simply ask and 
 receive ? 
 
 Simply because man's apprehension of that will- 
 ingness and faith in that promise are not perfect. If 
 they were, there would be nothing in the kingdom of 
 grace but this sweet, calm interchange of asking and 
 receiving, and the consequent fulness of joy. But 
 even God's children are not always well acquainted 
 with Him ; and prayer is the great means of getting 
 acquainted with Him and of getting hold of the deep, 
 rare meaning of those precious words, '' Our Father." 
 When a man once practically understands those words 
 throughout, (and he never can vmderstand them 
 otherwise than practically,) he has the answer to the 
 central petition of the Lord's prayer. For him the 
 
30 Faith and Character. 
 
 kingdom is already come. He dwells in God and 
 God in him, and abiding in God, he asks what he 
 will, and it is done. Prayer, I repeat, is a means to 
 this consummation. It is the arena where God dis- 
 ciplines man's faith so that he may know and believe 
 the love which God hath toward him. And, there- 
 fore, God sometimes seems to a weak faith to imitate 
 the churlishness of the neighbor and the injustice of 
 the judge. He delays His answer when His children 
 cry. The judge does not move to vindicate. The 
 door does not open. The hand with the loaves is 
 not thrust out. And faith, as it stands waiting be- 
 fore the closed door, must needs summon up its per- 
 sistence. It must refresh its memory with the ex- 
 ceeding great and precious promises ; it must push 
 away rising doubts, and crowd down impatience, and 
 hold fast to God's faithfulness through all His delays. 
 God knows very well that, in such a contest, faith not 
 only prevails finally, but grows stronger. Hence He 
 often sends the untimely guest in the hours of dark- 
 ness, forcino: his householder to rise and seek the 
 bread of heaven, and then hiding Himself in clouds 
 and darkness. And in this He deals very much as 
 you do when you hold your little child upon your 
 knee, and lift above his head the toy he desires, and 
 hold it for a while out of reach of his hand ; and that 
 not to tantalize him, but to train his eye, and to 
 teach him the use of his hands, and to exercise his 
 limbs. And so when God hides Himself from His 
 child, it is that faith, stimulated by difficulty, may 
 forget its fear, and breathe itself out in mighty ur- 
 
''Because of his Importunity ^ l\ 
 
 gency, and stay at the mercy-seat until divine love 
 rise and reveal its beaming face at the open door 
 and bid the suppliant come in and help himself. 
 There is nothing which delights God more than such 
 a faith in His goodness and love and power, as will 
 persist in large demands upon these ; yea, increase its 
 demands in the face of obstacles. He loves to hear 
 men assert that faith in prayer. He smiles, amid the 
 clouds and darkness which are round about Him, to 
 hear the feet of faith coming steadily up the hill diffi- 
 culty, never slackening its pace, but strong and ex- 
 ultant in the knowledge of light above the clouds. 
 
 There was that Syrophoenician woman who came to 
 Jesus asking him to cast the devil out of her daugh- 
 ter. If you have seen a mother meet a physician as 
 he came into the room where her child hung between 
 life and death, you can get some faint sense of the 
 agony of that Greek mother's plea for her tormented 
 child. And he answered her not a word ; and when 
 he did speak there was no hope nor comfort in the 
 words, cold as chiselled marble : " I am not sent to 
 you, but to Israel." Very possibly she knew that. She 
 liad called him son of David. There was no answer 
 to that. He was sent to the Jews. Nothing for her 
 but to clasp his feet in her anguish and cry '' Lord, 
 help me ! If not of right, at least of mercy ! " And 
 I have often wondered how the pitying tenderness of 
 Christ pent itself up long enough to utter that wither- 
 ing reply : " It is not meet to take the children's 
 bread and give it to dogs." But if her faith had been 
 wavering before, that last thrust stung it into full 
 
32 Faith and Character. 
 
 vigor. She would contest the day even with the Son 
 of David. That he had the power she knew. She 
 would not believe that he had the heart to refuse her. 
 He had given her an argument, and she met him on 
 his own terms. *' Truth, Lord, grant that I am 
 not a child, but only a dog : I ask but a dog's por- 
 tion. I do not claim the privileges of a daughter of 
 Israel. I ask not for the solid meat, nor for the 
 dainties of the table. I take my place among the 
 dogs, and I ask but for my share of the crumbs ; 
 for the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from the 
 master's table." Christ was conquered, as he ex- 
 pected and wanted to be. Hungry as she had been 
 for sympathy and help, he had yearned still more to 
 help her, and now he gave his love and power full 
 vent, and put both at her command : "Oh, woman, 
 great is thy faith : be it unto thee even as thou wilt." 
 Now, in the light of this parable, we get upon solid 
 ground concerning that which some are pleased to 
 call "wrestling with God in prayer," a phrase from 
 which I confess that I shrink, and which certainly 
 conveys to many minds that utterly unscriptural idea 
 of wresting something from God by persistence and 
 struggle. This parable very plainly teaches that if 
 there is any wrestling at all, it is not with God, but 
 with things which stand between us and God : with 
 self, with doubt, with unbelief, with fear, with the 
 devil. Whatever wrestling there is, is the vigorous 
 effort of faith to push through and over these things 
 to God ; and when faith once gets there, it does not 
 wrestle, surely. It rests. It abides in God. It asks 
 
^^ Because of his Importunity y 33 
 
 and receives. It is kept in perfect peace. An emi- 
 nent minister in a discussion on this subject, not long 
 ago, said : " God puts His blessings high up, as He 
 puts His choicest prospects on the top of His Righis 
 and Matterhorns ; and we must wrestle and climb be- 
 fore we can enjoy them." I say no. God puts His 
 choicest blessings so low down that a little child's faith 
 can reach them. And where we have to climb, the 
 mountains are of our making, raised by our worldliness 
 and pride and unbelief. There is where the wrestling 
 comes in. Not w4th God. He keeps back nothing. 
 When He gave the world Jesus Christ He had nothing 
 better to give it, and so He said, ^' All things are yours 
 with him — freely." But w^e are kept back because we 
 doubt this very thing, that all things are ours ; and 
 God sometimes keeps us back Himself, so that we may 
 overthrow that doubt, and get our foot on its neck, 
 and strangle it before we go farther. Do not mistake 
 that for a wrestle with God. Once get the doubt out 
 of the way, and you will not find God in your way. 
 
 Thus it is only after we have studied the lesson 
 of this parable that we are prepared to read intelli- 
 gently those verses which follow, and which are so 
 often quoted independently. From the parable they 
 flow naturally enough. Such being the power of 
 importunity with a churlish neighbor, the same ear- 
 nestness will surely bring a gracious answer from a 
 gracious God. Therefore, ask, seek, knock, and ye 
 shall find a loving response. Why not ? Will even 
 a human father mock his son with a stone, when he 
 asks for bread ? ** If ye then, being evil, know how to 
 
34 Faith and Character. 
 
 give good gifts unto your children," how much more 
 shall the perfect One, the sinless God, the Heavenly 
 Father with His all-embracing, consummate love, 
 give the Holy Spirit, the best of all gifts, and w^hich 
 sums up in itself all other gifts, to them that ask Him ? 
 And when God does answer, you observe that He 
 does not confine His gift to the strict limits of the 
 petition. When the householder is once roused by 
 the importunity of his neighbor, he not only gives him 
 the three loaves, for which perhaps he asked out of 
 delicacy as the very least that would suffice, but ''as 
 many as he needeth : " enough to spread a bounteous 
 repast. And when God delays giving, it is not only 
 to encourage faith to press for that particular gift, but 
 to introduce it to a larger range of gifts : to bring it 
 to a better acquaintance with Himself in whom are 
 all gifts. A praying soul, under such circumstances, 
 is like a thirsty man following up the windings of a 
 clear cold stream, but unable to get down to the 
 w^ater's edge because the banks are so steep. He 
 walks mile after mile along the precipitous shores, 
 and the sun is hot, and he is faint, and his thirst is 
 aggravated by the sparkling water below; but by 
 and by he finds himself among the springs, at the 
 source of the stream, high up w^here the fountains 
 are sheltered, and clear and exhaustless, and he bows 
 down and drinks his fill. God is better than all His 
 gifts, and the object of prayer, as has already been 
 said, is to make us acquainted with Himself. Your 
 boy comes to you and asks you to buy him a fishing- 
 rod ; and he says: **I saw one to-day in a window, 
 
*' Because of his Importunity .'' 35 
 
 on such a street, which was just what I want. Can't 
 I go down now and buy it?" And you say, *' No, 
 not to-day. Wait a little. You shall have your rod." 
 And doubtless the lad is disappointed; perhaps a 
 little sullen for the time, and a week passes and he 
 hears nothing about his rod, and he begins to say to 
 himself : '' I wonder if father has not forgotten all 
 about it." Then, just at the end of the week, you 
 put into his hands a better rod than he has ever seen 
 before, and with it a complete outfit for his sport, 
 and the boy is overwhelmed with surprise and pleas- 
 ure. And yet the main thing in all this is not that 
 your son has received what he wanted. You meant 
 he should have that; but the gift won, through delay, 
 has given him a new view of his father's wisdom, and 
 a new confidence in his affection, which makes him 
 say, " Hereafter, when I want anything of this kind, 
 I will leave it all to Father." That is the great point 
 gained. And so the main thing which a man gains 
 when God at last answers his prayer with the gift 
 which he asked, is not the gift, but the clearer con- 
 sciousness that God is better than His gifts, that he 
 has all things in God. Thus with the three loaves 
 which he asked, he gets the freedom of his heavenly 
 Father's house ; all the luxuries of the heavenly table. 
 So that Syrophoenician woman, having won the gift 
 she asked of Christ, found Christ himself at her ser- 
 vice. Not only '' thy daughter is healed," but '' be it 
 unto thee even as thou wilt." Solomon asked for 
 wisdom, and God answered him : '' Lo, I have given 
 thee a wise and an understanding heart, and I have 
 
36 Faith and Character. 
 
 also given thee that which thou hast not asked, both 
 riches and honor." Job, from the midst of his distress, 
 cries, ** Oh, that I knew where I might find Him," and 
 the Lord not only renewed his former prosperity, but 
 blessed him more than at the beginning. When God 
 opens the door He gives as many as the applicant 
 needeth ; not by the measure of little, weak, human 
 petitions, but ''according to the riches of His glory." 
 He gives all things, but all things with Christ, a 
 richer gift than all things beside. 
 
 And from this thought we get a broader outlook 
 upon the character of importunate prayer. It is not 
 only urgency and persistence on special occasions 
 and with a view to special favors. True prayer is 
 not only the soul's striving for some particular thing, 
 but the soul's desire for God as its life, and the giver 
 of every gift. And just to the degree in which the 
 soul recognizes that God is its life, that man lives 
 not by bread alone but by every word of God, not 
 by God's gifts but by God Himself — to that degree 
 the desire for God will span the life. The life will 
 be a life of importunate prayer, in that it will be a 
 continuous aspiration after God, a prayer without 
 ceasing, a continuing instant in prayer. '' That soul," 
 as one most beautifully says, ''that is accustomed to 
 direct herself to God upon every occasion ; that as a 
 flower at sun-rising conceives a sense of God in 
 every beam of His, and spreads and dilates itself to- 
 ward Him, in a thankfulness, in every small blessing 
 that He sheds upon her ; that soul who, whatsoever 
 string be stricken in her, base or treble, her high or 
 
** Because of his ImporUutity ^ 37 
 
 her low estate, is ever turned toward God, that soul 
 prays sometimes when it does not know that it 
 prays." 
 
 We are urged then, in this parable, to earnest, con- 
 tinuous prayer. 
 
 I St. By the character of the Friend at whose door 
 we knock. Oh, how tliis chapter throws the tender- 
 ness and magnanimity and patience of God into re- 
 lief against the narrowness and churlishness of men. 
 On what a grand scale is His giving as compared with 
 the stinted giving of human selfishness. Is He your 
 friend to-day ? Do you know Him from personal ac- 
 quaintance, from having sought His doors in the 
 midnight when some unwelcome visitant made your 
 couch uneasy, and drove sleep from your eyes ; or 
 from still, sweet communings in the breaking of the 
 day, when you awoke and found yourself with Him ? 
 Do you know Him as a Father and friend, as a co- 
 worker and sympathizer ? If so, you know what it is 
 to pray. Knowing Him thus, as the God of your life, 
 the source of your joy, the fountain of your power, 
 you cannot be content without being often at His 
 door, yea, dwelling in the very secret of His taberna- 
 cle continually. 
 
 2d. This duty and privilege of importunate prayer 
 is urged by our needs. The untimely guests are ever 
 coming, as our Lord knew they would be, when He 
 put upon our lips the prayer, ''Give us this day our 
 daily bread." Need, helplessness, weakness, igno- 
 rance, sorrow, are not exceptional incidents in our 
 lives ; they are the very atmosphere in which we 
 
38 Faith and Character. 
 
 live, the staple of our existence, and through them 
 we learn, if in no other way, that men need always to 
 pray and not to faint. 
 
 3d. This duty is urged by the encouragements 
 which it presents. With such a friend, who need 
 faint in prayer ? The trouble is that we do not al- 
 ways know our friend, and so mistake Him and do 
 Him injustice. We accuse Him of churlishness, 
 when He keeps us waiting only that He may feed 
 us more richly : may give us not only the three loaves, 
 but Himself and all His riches of grace and glory. 
 
 ** It is not so, but so it looks, 
 And we lose courage then. 
 And doubts will come if God hath kept 
 His promises to men. 
 
 Ah ! God is other than we think. 
 
 His ways are far above ; 
 Far beyond reason's height, and reached 
 
 Only by childlike love. ' ' 
 
 Prayer has a history of victories, enough to en- 
 courage the weakest heart. The faith which has kept 
 its hold on the promises and has pressed its suit in 
 spite of all delays, has developed a strength which 
 has filled history with marvels. The old Greek phi- 
 losopher used to say, that if he had a lever long 
 enough, and a place somewhere outside the world to 
 stand upon, he could move the planet. Revelation 
 has furnished the place. The mercy-seat, where the 
 Christian stands, is far above the seething and tur- 
 moil of earth. Prayer is a lever which puts earth at 
 
^* Because of his Lnportiinity.''^ 39 
 
 the disposal of heaven, and, plying that lever with the 
 strong arm of faith, the feeblest child of God works 
 results which fill earth with wonder, and hell with 
 dismay and rage. 
 
 Oh, my brethren, fail not to use the power God 
 thus puts into your hands. You have great needs, 
 large desires, bitter sorrows, vast enterprises ; be not 
 driven from your place at God's doors. Stand there 
 though He delay long. Plead His faithful promises. 
 Let no doubts of the love and faithfulness of your 
 friend make you chary of asking large things. 
 
 ** Lose not heart, 
 
 But learn what God is like, 
 And in the darkest battle-field 
 Thou shalt know where to strike." 
 
 Remember that it is through faith and patience 
 you shall inherit the promises ; and the day shall 
 come when the importunity of prayer shall be 
 changed into the victory of faith, the doors shall be 
 opened, and you shall be satisfied with the fulness of 
 His house. 
 
WHAT THINK YE OF 
 CHRIST." 
 
MATTHEW XXII. 
 
 (41) While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked 
 
 them, 
 
 (42) Saying, What think ye of Christ ? Whose Son is he ? 
 
III. 
 
 "WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?" 
 
 There is a familiar saying to the effect that fools 
 can easily ask questions which wise men cannot an- 
 swer. As a naked statement, it is true enough ; but 
 so far as it implies that all the difficulty or all the 
 wisdom involved in question and answer are on the 
 side of the answerer, it is quite false. It is doubtless 
 the mark of a w^ise man to be able to answer ques- 
 tions Avell ; but it is the mark of a higher wisdom 
 to be able to ask them pertinently. This is a distin- 
 guishing trait of every great teacher. Socrates owes 
 his eminence among the ancient sages largely to this 
 power ; and Jesus Christ is distinguished by it above 
 all other teachers. A volume might be w^ritten upon 
 the questions of the Son of man. If we study them, 
 we shall find them adapted, in most cases, not mere- 
 ly to bring out appropriate answers, but to set the 
 mind of him to whom they were addressed at work 
 upon some of their fresh and remote relations. 
 When Christ asked a question, it usually drew, not 
 only upon one's memory and knowledge, but also 
 upon his reasoning power. Thus, he often set on 
 foot, by a simple question, a train of thought which 
 exposed to a false reasoner his own sophism, or 
 
44 Faith and Character. 
 
 opened a new find startling view of an old truth to 
 the unthinking. Some of his most instructive par- 
 ables are thus put in the form of question: ''What 
 think ye ? If a man have an hundred sheep and one 
 of them be gone astray, will he not leave the ninety 
 and nine and seek the lost ? What woman, if she 
 lose one piece of silver out of ten, \y\\\ not sweep for 
 the one ? What think ye ? Which of the two sons 
 who were sent into the vineyard did the will of his 
 father ? " 
 
 Our text introduces a question of this character : 
 not a profound question, apparently ; to a Pharisee it 
 might well have seemed an absurd question : '' Whose 
 Son is the Christ ? " " Art thou a Jew and askest that 
 question of us ? Does any true child of Abraham 
 dream of the Messiah's coming through any other 
 line than David's ? " And, as we see, the question was 
 asked only that through the answer which, as Jesus 
 knew, was so ready on their lips, they might be 
 brought to contemplate the divine as well as the 
 human lineage of the Messiah : to acknowledge the 
 Son of God in the Son of man, David's divine Lord 
 in David's son. 
 
 Modern criticism would leave the matter just here, 
 as an incident in the life of Clirist, having no signifi- 
 cance beyond the immediate matter in hand. It was 
 an ingenious dialectic artifice, intended to confound 
 the Pharisees, and it succeeded. It raised a question 
 concerning a prominent character in Jewish prophecy, 
 and left the Jewish teachers to settle it as they could. 
 It is a question which in no way concerns the present. 
 
*^What thuik ye of Christ .'' 45 
 
 But is this true ? Can we stop here ? Is that 
 question a merely local and historical one ? Cer- 
 tainly, if Christ was only a Jewish Messiah ; cer- 
 tainly, if Christ was only a teacher like Socrates or 
 Aristotle, a product of his age. But if Christ, as he 
 claims, has a relation to every creature in all the 
 world, if his precepts are given for all mankind, if it 
 be true that he has been lifted up to draw all men 
 unto him, then the question does not stop Avith the 
 confusion of the Pharisees. It moves on, demand- 
 ing an answer from every age. It is as truly a living 
 question to-day as on the day it was asked ; a question 
 touching alike our thinking and our living. ''What 
 think ye of Christ ? " 
 
 However we regard it, whether as local or univer- 
 sal, whether as temporary or permanent, there is one 
 assumption distinctly underlying this question, name- 
 ly, that it relates to a subject of common interest, and 
 one, therefore, about which every man may be ex- 
 pected to have some kind of an opinion. There are 
 some questions which man would be a fool to ask 
 outside of a circle of specialists. If an astronomer 
 were to ask of the crowd in the cabin of a Brooklyn 
 ferry-boat, ''What do you think of the transit of 
 Venus ? " probably nine-tenths of the crowd would 
 wonder what he was talking about. If he should ask 
 the same people, "What do you think of a return to 
 specie payment ? " opinions would be offered in abun- 
 dance. There are, in short, subjects on which every 
 man is presumed to think ; and to be without an 
 opinion about them exposes him to contempt. 
 
4^ Faith and Character. 
 
 Of this nature was the Messianic question in 
 Christ's time. Christ, in speaking of the Messiah, 
 alludes to him as a well-known character: '^What 
 think ye of the Christ ? " The subject of the most 
 glowing prophecies, the centre of expectation to a 
 proud but degraded people, his coming looked for 
 with the most ardent hope, and prayed for with fast- 
 falling tears — what Jewish child could be ignorant of 
 the Christ ? 
 
 Now, when I say that Christ occupies to-day pre- 
 cisely the same position with reference to current 
 thought, I do not merely state an opinion that the 
 subject is as important now as then : I state a fact, 
 let it be accounted for as it may, that a man who 
 thinks at all can hardly be in contact with nineteenth 
 century civilization, and not be compelled to think of 
 Christ. All attempts to banish Him into the region of 
 remote history are in vain. The age has gotten past 
 other men. Plato, Socrates, Caesar, Alexander, Homer 
 and Virgil — all confessedly great men, are yet instinc- 
 tively felt to belong to the past. But the age does not 
 get past Christ. He is as distinctly, yea, more dis- 
 tinctly, a fact of the nineteenth century than of the 
 first. In a hundred different ways he appears in the 
 philosophy, the politics, the social science, the states- 
 manship, the language, the ordinary customs of the 
 present. He is historical, but he is more than histori- 
 cal. He is a memory, but he is also a power, and a 
 growing power ; and the position of modern society 
 with reference to Christ is very well represented by 
 Pilate's dilemma when the Saviour was brought before 
 
" What think ye of Christ ^ 47 
 
 him. He could not but respect him ; he wanted to 
 avoid the responsibility of dealing with him. He sent 
 him to Herod, and Herod sent him back ; and he had 
 to dispose of him in some way, and Pilate never had 
 a harder question to settle than that which he pro- 
 pounded to the Jews, "What shall I do then with 
 Jesus of Nazareth, who is called Christ ? " Christ is in 
 the w^ay of the nineteenth century. He cannot be 
 waved out of the way, nor argued out of the way, nor 
 patronized out of the w^ay, nor driven out of the way, 
 nor ignored. He must be confronted and dealt with, no 
 matter how many Pilates desire to wash their hands 
 of him. He was a troublesome fact in his own 
 time, but the trouble has taken on a thousand new 
 forms since that. His own time dealt with him at 
 last, and thought it had gotten him safely out of the 
 way; but the resurrection disappointed its hopes, 
 and Christ, being raised from the dead, has been 
 proving to every succeeding age that He dieth no 
 more ; and an age that is annoyed by His presence, 
 and stirred into opposition by His power, is yet 
 forced to hear, with chagrin, the words so dear to His 
 disciples : *' Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the 
 end of the world." 
 
 I say these are not opinions, they are facts : facts 
 patent to any judicious observer. Remand Christ to 
 his own time ! Why the most superficial student can- 
 not help seeing how the stream of Christian history 
 keeps breaking, all along the line, into the current of 
 secular history, and mingling with its waters, until 
 sometimes the history of a period is mainly the his- 
 
48 Faith and Character. 
 
 tory of the Christian church. Take out all the ele- 
 ments which Christ and his followers have contrib- 
 uted to the story of nineteen centuries, and you will 
 blot out at least two-thirds of that story. 
 
 Or, take Christ as he comes forward in the familiar 
 institutions and customs of society. You come upon 
 him constantly, just as you come upon churches in 
 the streets, or shrines by foreign roadsides. When 
 you shall go down to your offices to-morrow, and be- 
 gin to write your letters, the first one you write will 
 contain in its date a recognition of Christ — " the year 
 of our Lord." You may have more than one call in 
 the course of the day to contribute to schemes for 
 the moral and intellectual elevation of the poor. 
 Who, in all the old civilizations ever dreamed that 
 the poor had aught to do but to keep down at the 
 bottom of the social fabric, where birth and poverty 
 had placed them ? Who, before Christ, ever troubled 
 himself to inquire whether a poor man had any soul 
 or mind to educate ; still less to give him knowledge 
 or moral culture which might make him an intruder 
 into higher circles, or a less passive tool of the vil- 
 lainies of his superiors ? It was Christ's idea to 
 preach a gospel to the poor, a gospel with all that 
 that term involves of mental and spiritual culture ; 
 and that idea, with all its blessed outgrowth, is an ac- 
 cepted fact in modern civilization, a part of its ma- 
 chinery, a thing of which civil government takes 
 cognizance, and for which you find it a most natu- 
 ral thing to make provision, when you lay out the 
 scheme of your yearly expenditures. A thousand 
 
*' W/iai thi7ik ye of Christ ^ 49 
 
 social regulations and ordinary decencies which have 
 become a second nature to you, the violation of 
 which you resent as trenching upon common pro- 
 priety, have their origin in Christ's teachings. Your 
 very speech betrays the Galilean accent as unmista- 
 kably as did Peter's. How many of the most famil- 
 iar words upon your tongue have gotten their ac- 
 cepted meaning solely through the contact of Chris- 
 tian ideas, yea, have been dragged up out of low 
 and vile associations to be the heralds of him who 
 spake as never man spake. " Talent," a word of the 
 money-market, associated only with traffic or with 
 extortion, received a stamp which it has carried ever 
 since, when Christ uttered the parable of the five, 
 two, and one talents. " Sacrament," the name which 
 carries with it to us the whole group of sweet mem- 
 ories, solemn reflections, joyful hopes, which cluster 
 round the Lord's table— what gave that meaning to a 
 word of the camp, a word linked with blood and fire 
 and disciplined brutality, the word for the Roman 
 military oath? These are only specimens of hun- 
 dreds which might be cited in illustration of the fact 
 that common speech perpetuates the ideas of Christ. 
 You can send your children to no school where they 
 will not come into contact with mfluences, and be 
 shaped by forces which have had their rise in Christ. 
 Every one of us, in short, is the product of a Christian 
 civilization, and its mark is on us. We cannot deny 
 our birthright. We are children of Christian influ- 
 ences, moulded by Christian associations ; our habits 
 of thought unconsciously modified by Christian forces, 
 3 
 
50 Faith and Character. 
 
 our lives unconsciously regulated by Christian rules. 
 The very fact that you or I can deny Christianity if 
 we choose, or accept and practise it through any de- 
 nominational medium that we choose, without danger 
 to person or property from church or state, is a re- 
 sult of Christianity. Frame a community, the first 
 article of which shall be to reject and violate every 
 precept of Christ, and ere sunset you shall find your 
 doors assailed by the decency, the culture, the refine- 
 ment, the virtue, the authority of society, crying out 
 against you as the disturbers of the public peace and 
 the sappers of the public virtue. 
 
 Such facts cannot fail to set us thinking. It is not 
 in ordinary human nature to be continually meeting 
 this Jesus of Nazareth identified with so many fami- 
 liar things, and not have its interest and curiosity 
 keenly aroused. Inevitably we are led to ask, *' Whose 
 son is he ? " Who a man's parents were, makes or- 
 dinarily very little difference to us. We gauge the 
 man according to his own ability and efficiency, with- 
 out reference to his origin. Our estimate of Shake- 
 speare or of Bacon is no greater because we know their 
 ancestry. But the case is otherwise with Christ. His 
 practical relation to the world is bound up with his 
 origin. His life suggests and his words lay claim to 
 a superhuman lineage ; and it bears very directly 
 upon the living and thinking of all of us, whether he 
 be indeed born Lord of men and angels, coequal with 
 God, or whether he be no more than a man like unto 
 ourselves. It makes the difference between worship 
 and admiration ; between allegiance and partial ad- 
 
**Whai think ye of Christ ^ $1 
 
 herence ; between implicit trust and critical discrim- 
 ination ; between passionate enthusiasm and cool re- 
 spect. 
 
 So it behooves us to press the question in this 
 direction : '^ What think ye of Christ ? Is He the son 
 of God or not ?" 
 
 The more so because there is often visible a ten- 
 dency to put aside the question as of little practical 
 moment. It is said the question of Christ's divinity 
 belongs to the region of metaphysics, and does not 
 affect the acceptance of his precepts as a rule of life. 
 
 But the truth is that if Christianity be accepted as 
 a fact, and still more if it be accepted as a rule, 
 those who so accept it cannot stop here, for the fact 
 gets its main significance and the rule its obligation 
 from what Christ is. Christianity cannot be accepted 
 as a mere system, since the system is framed to set 
 forth and to exalt its author. The system is Christ. 
 Christ alone interprets it ; and therefore the whole 
 question of its value to the world turns on the nature 
 of Christ's person. Here comes a teacher claiming 
 to be equal with God, and defending, instead of sur- 
 rendering, his position when the Jews threaten to 
 stone him for blasphemy ; one who claims power to 
 forgive sins ; one w^ho claims pre-existence with God ; 
 one who asserts that he is to judge the world, and to 
 do this with the special intent that men may honor 
 him as they honor God. I hesitate not to say that 
 such claims bring us face to face with a single 
 sharply-cut alternative — deity or imposture. I hesi- 
 tate not to say that if the Christ of the gospels is the 
 
52 FaitJi and Character. 
 
 being whom Renan, for example, decorates with the 
 title of ''a pillar of humanity," he is the fitting ob- 
 ject for the w^orld's contempt and not for its love 
 and reverence. What think ye of Christ ? Is he the 
 Son of God, or a conscious and deliberate impostor ? 
 We must answ^er this question ere we commit our- 
 selves to Christianity. 
 
 So, too, if Jesus is not sinless, I may admire him, 
 like other men of genius ; but I cannot accept a 
 moral system at his hands, much less a professed 
 atonement for my sins based on his perfect obedi- 
 ence and the offering of his spotless nature to God. 
 If he be not coequal w^ith the Father, I may even 
 reverence, but I must not worship him. If he was 
 but a good man, a brilliant teacher, I may study and 
 copy ; but I need not look up into the heavens ex- 
 pecting to see a Great High Priest, touched with the 
 feeling of my infirmities through his human nature, 
 and lifting me above them by his divine power. Ac- 
 cording as I answer the question to myself, whether 
 he be the Son of God or no, he is either a mere mem- 
 ory, 'growing fainter with the lapse of time, or a liv- 
 ing power and presence, growing dearer and sweeter 
 and mightier in his influence over my life, the nearer 
 the years bring me to his eternal presence. As an 
 earnest truth-seeker, as a lost sinner, as a sufferer, as 
 an heir of immortality, the question is one of tremen- 
 dous import to me— ''Whose Son is Christ?" 
 
 But the gospel never encourages mere speculative 
 thinking. Whenever it asks, ''What think ye ? " we 
 may be sure it is marshalling us along some line of 
 
'* What think ye of Christr 53 
 
 practical duty. So our views of Christ's person and 
 character bear directly upon what we are and upon 
 our line of conduct. Opposite views of Christ w411 
 not conduct us to the same point. If one approaches 
 from the left hand, and the other from the right, they 
 wall find, if the gospel is to be believed, a very great 
 difference between the place at Christ's right hand 
 and that at his left. If you think Christ is the Son 
 of God, you are logically committed to follow Christ. 
 If you answer Christ's question, **Whom say ye 
 that I am," w4th Peter's words, "Thou art the Christ, 
 the Son of the living God," he follows it promptly up 
 with that other question to Peter, ''Lovest thou 
 me ? " I do not assume that Christ is what he claims 
 to be ; only that if you are satisfied that he is, you 
 are committed to a passionate devotion. You have 
 acknowledged a Master whose rule is love, with 
 whom love is the very basis of loyalty ; you have ac- 
 knowledged him to be coequal with God, and he turns 
 upon you with God's own law of love. ''Thou shalt 
 love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 'with 
 all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all 
 thy mind." Face this practical side of the question 
 and tell me, ''What think ye of Christ?" I do not 
 say that Christ has any authority to call you a sinner, 
 or to forgive sins ; only that if you think Christ is the 
 Son of God, the conclusion is very damaging to your 
 self-righteousness. It is a conclusion which is adapt- 
 ed to bring tears of penitence to your eyes, and words 
 of confession to your lips. It is bound up with the 
 story of a lonely sufferer in Gethsemane, of an up- 
 
54 Faith and Character, 
 
 lifted cross, of a pierced side, and it points to the foot 
 of that cross as your appropriate place, and to that 
 bleeding victim as your offering for sin. And stand- 
 ing to-day in view of that cross, on the very thresh- 
 old of the chamber where Jesus is to be again lifted 
 up in symbol before the eyes of his church, I ask 
 once more, '^ What think ye of Christ ? " 
 
 I do not assume that Jesus is the Master he claims to 
 be. Perhaps others have an equal or a superior claim 
 to masterdom. Perhaps the v/ords of some Hindu 
 saint, some Greek philosopher, some modern tran- 
 scendentalist come home to you with more authority 
 than the words of the man of Nazareth. But if you 
 grant that Jesus is the Son of God, you are committed 
 to service. There is a yoke and a burden for you. 
 There are talents, one, five, ten, awaiting your admin- 
 istration. There is a lesson of fidelity for you, a liv- 
 ing lesson, running through those wondrous three 
 years of a ministry, whose key-note was, " My meat is 
 to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His 
 work." If Christ be the Son of God, the lesson of this 
 ministry is bound to be your rule of living. Service 
 is to be the very staple of your life ; fidelity your 
 highest aim. Christ is to rule your life absolutely ; 
 is to choose your place for you, to mete out your 
 work to you, to apportion your time as He will, to 
 command your means for his own uses, to be su- 
 preme in your business and in your home. Oh, let 
 your thought steal away this morning from this busy 
 century, with its pushing and wrangling for place and 
 pelf. Go back, far back into the olden time, and 
 
*'Whai think ye of Christ,'' 55 
 
 mount to that upper chamber in old Jerusalem, and 
 look upon that kneeling figure, girded with a towel, 
 that head so soon to bear again the flashing diadem 
 of the Father's glory, bent over the wayworn feet of 
 the fisherman and publican, and with that picture in 
 your eye, and in your ear those meaning words, *' The 
 Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to 
 minister, and to give his life a ransom for many ; " 
 tell me, '' What think ye of Christ ? " 
 
 And now I change my ground. I make no more 
 concessions for argument's sake. I take the stand- 
 point of one who believes that Jesus is the Son of 
 God ; and if there is one here who rejects Christ, if 
 there is one here who deems it a matter of little con- 
 sequence what he thinks about Christ, if there is one 
 here who professes to believe in Christ without fol- 
 lowing Christ, to such an one I address myself. I 
 have shown you, and you needed no words of mine to 
 show you, that Christ is a fact and a power in the 
 world, and has been such since the day of his death. 
 To attempt to ignore this fact, thrusting itself under 
 a thousand forms daily, into our very faces, argues 
 anything but wisdom. Men may honestly differ as to 
 the solution of the problem furnished by Christ's life 
 and lessons, but solved it must be. No thoughtful 
 man can evade it. In the eloquent words of a mod- 
 ern apologist, *' Though you only salute your Saviour 
 with the Pagan cry, * Behold the man ! ' at least you 
 cannot ignore him ; you cannot resist the moral and 
 intellectual forces which converge in our day with 
 an ever-increasing intensity upon his sacred person ; 
 
56 Faith and Character. 
 
 you cannot turn a deaf ear to the question which he 
 asks of his followers in each generation, and which 
 he never asked more solemnly than now : ^ Whom 
 say men that I, the Son of man, am ? ' " ' 
 
 And from my point of view, I maintain that it 
 makes an enormous practical difference what answer 
 you give to this question. It may matter little what 
 you think about some things, but it cannot matter 
 little what you think about Christ. Christ declares 
 himself to be the Son of God. The whole Scriptures 
 indorse his claim. His words and his works leave 
 it beyond question ; and being the Son of God, the 
 equal of God, one with God, the manifestation of 
 God, the only medium of knowing or approaching 
 God — the acceptance or rejection of Christ is the 
 acceptance or rejection of God. You may choose 
 some other mode of deliverance from sin, but you 
 will find it is not strong enough to break your chains. 
 You may choose some other type of manhood as your 
 model, but you w^ill achieve only an inferior man- 
 hood. You may adopt some other theory of life than 
 Christ's theory of service, but your life will be a fail- 
 ure. In short, and I would have you weigh these 
 words well, what you think of Christ determines your 
 moral destiny. 
 
 The matter is open to you now. You are left to 
 form your opinion. The evidence is before you to 
 weigh it calmly. Christ is before you in the gospels, 
 in history, in daily life, suggesting constantly the 
 
 ' Liddon. 
 
" W/iai think ye of Christy 57 
 
 question, *' What think ye of Christ ? " As an intelli- 
 gent man or woman, as an honest man or woman, as 
 an immortal soul, you cannot, you must not shirk the 
 question. For depend upon it, if you choose not to 
 think of him at all, or any more than you are abso- 
 lutely forced to do ; if you resolutely shut your eyes 
 to him, the day is coming when every eye shall see 
 him ; when he shall stand clearly revealed as your 
 judge ; when there shall no longer be any room for 
 question as to his lineage or dignity, and when the 
 great question forcing itself upon your heart, and 
 shaking it with fear to its inmost core, will be no lon- 
 ger, ''What think you of Christ ?" but, ''What does 
 Christ think of me?" No longer "What shall I do 
 with Jesus ? " but, " What will Jesus do with me ? " 
 
 It is well that we may come to the Lord's table to- 
 day. A fitting place it is to ask ourselves once more, 
 " What think ye of Christ ? " No better place to win 
 the strength and courage for the w^ork and warfare 
 which awaits us. You say much by coming to this 
 table with its broken bread, symbol of the wheat 
 crushed for the world's hunger ; with its outpoured 
 wine telling of a life freely given as a ransom for 
 many. You say you accept the portion of the bruised 
 wheat ; are ready to be broken, if Christ can so use 
 you best for the world's weal. You say you choose 
 not the life which hides and seals itself within its own 
 carefully dug w^ells ; but the life which freely flows 
 abroad in the multiplied channels of ministry. You 
 say that even though a part with Christ carries with 
 it sorrow and sacrifice, you take Christ's part never- 
 
^g Faith and Character. 
 
 theless. Be it so. Come to the feast ; but better 
 than even here shall you give the answer to the ques- 
 tion, **What think ye of Christ," by the way in which 
 you shall take up the real, no less than the symbolic 
 cross ; by bearing about in the body the dying of the 
 Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be mani- 
 fest in you. So may God help you to answer this 
 question to the world, that, seeing that the thought of 
 Christ is more than an opinion, rather a daily, liv- 
 ing power in you, they may, through the servant, be 
 drawn to his Lord. 
 
THE AVARDSHIP OF THE 
 LAW. 
 
GALATIANS III. 
 
 (24) Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us 
 unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE WARDSHIP OF THE LAW. 
 
 The transfiguration vision set forth the fact that the 
 law and the prophets, represented on the mountain by- 
 Moses and Elias, had given place to Christ Those 
 two appeared there, paying homage to our Lord ; 
 and by this, no less than by the voice which came out 
 of the cloud, declaring that Christ was the anointed 
 of God, the men who were to preach the gospel were 
 distinctly told that the day of Moses and Elias was 
 past, the dispensation of ceremonies and of shadows 
 at an end, and that Jesus was henceforth to be the 
 theme of their preaching and the central figure in 
 the eyes of the church and of the world. 
 
 Yet while Christ thus intended to exalt himself 
 above Moses and Elias, his gospel above the law and 
 the prophets, he by no means meant that the disci- 
 ples should hold these in contempt. On the con- 
 trary, Christ everywhere endeavors to show his fol- 
 lowers that the law and the prophets and the gospel 
 were parts of one great scheme by which God was in- 
 structing and saving tlie world. And nowhere does 
 this appear more clearly than in that very "sermon on 
 the mount," by which superficial readers seek to dis- 
 parage the teachings of the Old Testament. No decla- 
 
62 Faith and Character. 
 
 ration could be more explicit than this : '* Think not 
 that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets : 
 I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I 
 say unto you " (a formula with which the Saviour 
 always prefaces any specially weighty saying), **Till 
 heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in 
 no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Who- 
 soever therefore shall break one of these least com- 
 mandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called 
 the least in the kingdom of heaven : but whosoever 
 shall do and teach them, the same shall be called 
 great in the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 Hence we see in this, as in so many other instances, 
 the necessity of studying the Scriptures entire. Not 
 only must we look back and see how the law and 
 the prophets lead up to Christ and prepare the way 
 for him, but we must also look forward and see 
 how this connection between the law and the gospel 
 is explained arid illustrated in the writings of ths 
 Apostles. There are those who say that they are 
 quite satisfied with the gospels— the words of Christ 
 — and who treat Paul, for instance, as though he 
 were an intruder; as though his writings in some 
 way detracted from the purity and simplicity of the 
 gospel, and were quite superfluous. Such forget that 
 our Lord himself declared that his own teachings 
 were germinal, and would require and would receive 
 further illustration in the future ; and they forget also 
 that Paul was instinct with the very spirit of Christ, 
 and was divinely declared to be a "chosen vessel" 
 to proclaim His name. And no one, I think, can 
 
The Wardship of the Law. 63 
 
 study the writings of Paul, of John, or of Peter, with- 
 out seeing, not only that they do not contradict 
 Christ, but also that they reflect much light upon the 
 teachings of Christ. 
 
 Take our text, for instance. It might stand as a 
 parallel to the declaration of our Lord : ** I am not 
 come to destroy but to fulfil the law and the proph- 
 ets," and also to the lesson on the mount of transfig- 
 uration. In that formal resignation of their position 
 and honors to Jesus, Moses and Elijah only did what 
 they had been appointed from the first to do. From 
 the very beginning their mission had pointed to Jesus, 
 and their work had been to lead the world forward on 
 the road to Christ. 
 
 That is just what this text declares concerning the 
 law. It was not a thing independent of the gospel. 
 It meant the gospel. It was the gospel on its lower 
 side. It issued in the gospel, and could find its true 
 fulfilment only in the gospel. 
 
 Hence, our text says the law was our schoolmaster 
 to lead us to Christ. 
 
 Here we have one of those graphic picture lessons 
 in which the writings of Paul abound, and which 
 show how deeply he had studied the illustrative teach- 
 ing of his master Christ. The original of the picture 
 might be seen in any respectable Greek or Roman 
 family. 
 
 Somewhere about a boy's sixth year, he was taken 
 from the care of his mother, and of the female slaves, ' 
 and entrusted to a male slave, known as the ^^peda- 
 gogue.'' This person was often a foreigner, often a 
 
64 Faith and Character. 
 
 person of education and culture, and sometimes a 
 man of distinction in his own country. But we must 
 not be misled by the word *' schoolmaster " in our ver- 
 sion, which is all that we commonly understand by 
 the term pedagogue. Teaching, indeed, was not the 
 main part of his office, though he sometimes had a 
 share in that work ; nor was the formation of morals. 
 These things were entrusted principally to others. The 
 pedagogue's business was that of general super\dsion. 
 He accompanied the boy to school, he carried his 
 books, he attended him to the gymnasium, he as- 
 sisted him in preparing his tasks, he seems to have 
 had, in some cases, authority to punish his faults. 
 He was, in short, a kind of nurse. 
 
 Now, Paul uses this figure to represent the relation 
 of the law to the gospel. The law, he says, was to the 
 spiritual education of the w^orld, just what the peda- 
 gogue w^as to the boy. Before the boy could enter 
 upon the freedom of manhood, he must be under this 
 tutor. He must be, in a certain sense, in bondage ; 
 under specific rules. His intercourse with his father 
 must be largely through the medium of the tutor, and 
 not free and direct. Just so, Paul says, God's pur- 
 pose toward His people was to bring them into the 
 liberty of His own children, to make them free men 
 in His own household ; but to this there was neces- 
 sary a preparatory stage of legal discipline. *' Be- 
 fore faith came," he says, *Sve were kept under the 
 law, shut up unto the faith which should afterward 
 be revealed. Wherefore, the law was our pedagogue 
 to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by 
 
TJie Wardship of the Law. 65 
 
 faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer 
 under a pedagogue." 
 
 Thus, then, instead of finding the law depreciated 
 by the gospel, we find it exalted. We are told that it 
 played a most important part in our Christian educa- 
 tion ; that it had a sublime purpose ; that it was 
 nothing less than the instrument in bringing us to 
 that Christian liberty which we most highly prize ; 
 to that life of faith in Jesus Christ, of free intercourse 
 with our Heavenly Father ; to that freedom in the 
 form and outworking of our individual, spiritual life, 
 which belongs only to the sons of God. 
 
 But the question now arises, '^ What becomes of the 
 law, now that we are brought to Christ ? " Is it a 
 dead letter ? Has it no more part to play in our re- 
 ligious life ? Does the life of faith and of love do 
 away with the life of law ? 
 
 Here we strike into the track of our Saviour's ow^n 
 teaching, to which I have already referred in His 
 words — " Think not that I am come to destroy the 
 law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but 
 to fulfil." Here, then, we must try to possess our- 
 selves of some of those great fundamental truths 
 which underlie the relation of the law to the gospel, 
 and in stating these, I go no further than Christ's 
 own statements. 
 
 The first truth we are to bear in mind is, that the 
 WHOLE LAW OF GoD IS ONE. God's law is the decla- 
 ration of His will ; and God's perfect will never 
 changes, and, therefore, God's law is like Himself — 
 the same yesterday, to-day, and forever ; or, as the 
 
(^ Faith and Character, 
 
 Psalmist says, "All His commandments are sure. 
 They stand fast forever and ever, and are done in 
 truth and uprightness." So that it is essentially im- 
 possible that one part of God's law should ever con- 
 tradict any other part, or that the whole law as re- 
 vealed in the Levitical Code, the Psalms, the Proph- 
 ets, the Gospels, and Epistles, should be other than 
 one. At the same time it is true that this law may 
 develop itself by successive stages, and that it may 
 manifest itself in different ways in these different 
 stages. The best illustration of this is found in a 
 tree. Under ground, among the rocks, among the 
 subterranean springs, the tree develops in the form 
 of roots. Above ground we find the tree developing 
 in the form of trunk. We go higher, and our tree is 
 branches, and then leaves, and blossoms and fruit. 
 The tree is one. Fruit and roots are the extremes of 
 one perfect organism ; yet what a difference between 
 the juicy fruit, swinging in the fresh air and clear sun- 
 light, and the clammy, tough, dirty roots in the 
 depths of the mould. Just so God's law is one law, 
 whether we see it in its lower or in its higher stage. 
 Love and law are not distinct growths. On the con- 
 trary, we are told that love is the fulfilling of the law. 
 All that is essential to law remains in love. They are 
 not disjoined any more than the root and the fruit are 
 disjoined in the tree ; on the contrary, law runs up 
 into love, and law is never seen at its best and high- 
 est until it is seen fulfilled in one word : '^ Thou 
 shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
 thy neighbor as thyself." 
 
The Wardship of the Law, 67 
 
 Now, Paul says the law brought us to Christ ; but 
 when we get to Christ, we do not find that we are 
 done with the law. On the contrary, we find Christ 
 standing for the integrity of the law. " Not a jot or 
 tittle shall pass away till all be fulfilled. I came to 
 fulfil the law." And yet, we find scattered through 
 the New Testament words like these: ''Ye are not 
 under the law, but under grace." ''Having abol- 
 ished in his flesh the law of commandments con- 
 tained in ordinances," and others to the same effect. 
 Are Paul and Christ then at variance ? Are we, in 
 one part of Scripture, told that we are still under the 
 law, and in another that we are no longer under the 
 law? 
 
 There is no contradiction, but rather perfect har- 
 mony. And here we reach our second general truth 
 which you have already anticipated, namely, that we 
 
 ARE TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THE SUBSTANCE AND THE 
 
 FORM OF THE LAW ; between the divine thought, the 
 divine, eternal, binding truth, which is the essence of 
 the law, and the mere formal/r<r<:^// or jtj;;/^^;/ by which 
 it was conveyed. As we have seen that God's law 
 was revealed to men through successive stages, in 
 ways suitable to their grade of intelligence or of 
 moral development, so it is not difficult to conceive 
 that the law might, at a later stage, drop off from it- 
 self much which belonged to an earlier stage, and 
 yet remain essentially the same, unchanged and un- 
 changeable law ; just as the tree drops off in the 
 branches the mould which clings about the roots, 
 and drops off in the blossom and fruit the bark of 
 
68 Faith and Character. 
 
 the trunk and branches, while root and trunk and 
 branch and blossom yet continue to be one tree. 
 
 And so we see that it was. The law, for example, 
 contained the great principle of satisfaction. Sin 
 must be atoned for. The form under which the 
 Mosaic law taught and enforced that truth, was that 
 of animal sacrifices. The Levitical altars flowed with 
 the blood of bulls and of goats offered in sacrifice for 
 sin. Now when Christ came, he did away with all 
 this ; but did he do away with the law of sacrifice for 
 sin ? Nay, he set the eternal seal of God on that 
 law, by oiTering himself a sacrifice. Not one jot or 
 one tittle passed from the law that sin must be atoned 
 for. Only the earlier form and mode of expressing 
 and working out the law passed away. And hence, 
 says the writer to the Hebrews, ** For the law, hav- 
 ing a shadow of good things to come, and not the 
 very image of the things, can never with those sacri- 
 fices which they offered year by year continually 
 
 make th^ comers thereunto perfect It is not 
 
 possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should 
 take away sins In burnt offerings and sacri- 
 fices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I 
 (Christ), Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is 
 
 written of me) to do Thy will, O God He tak- 
 
 eth away the first, that he may establish the second ; " 
 taketli away the shadoAV that he may give the sub- 
 stance ; docs not take away the law of sacrifice for 
 sin, but fulfils that very law, by the offering of him- 
 self, and makes it as binding upon a penitent sinner 
 as ever it was in Moses' day, that he should bring to 
 
TJie Wards J lip of the Law. 69 
 
 God an offering for his sin, even the body of Jesus 
 Christ offered once for all. 
 
 Or, take the numerous sanitary provisions of the 
 Levitical law, so necessarily minute and specific for 
 a people so long enslaved and ignorant of the most 
 ordinary laws of decency. No Christian thinks of 
 carrying out these precepts now ; and yet the truth 
 which underlay all those precepts, the broad general 
 obligation they conveyed, was not at all impaired by 
 Christ. It stands to-day, a law lor the Christian just 
 as much as for the Israelite at the foot of Sinai — that 
 the body is the temple of God, and that he who wil- 
 fully neglects or abuses it sins against God. " What ! 
 know ye not that your body is the temple of the 
 Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, 
 and ye are not your own ? For ye are bought with a 
 price : therefore glorify God in your body, and in 
 your spirit, which are God's." The very fact which 
 marks the transition from the old dispensation to the 
 new, the death of Jesus Christ for the world, is used 
 to emphasize this old physical law. *' Ye are bought 
 with a price, therefore glorify God in your body." 
 
 See how this fact is carried out in Christ's fulfil- 
 ment of the law. The old Mosaic law was separative. 
 In order to carry out His purpose of making a pecu- 
 liar, chosen people, God found it necessary to begin 
 with physical separation. They were not ready for 
 the higher development of that idea — the separation 
 in spirit and character from the men of the world. 
 God desired to fasten in their minds the thought that 
 they were a people set apart to His service. So He 
 
70 Faith and Character. 
 
 began by separating them from the nations about 
 them, and forbidding their intercourse and intermar- 
 riage with the heathen. When Christ came, he found 
 that the people had not gotten beyond this lower 
 phase of the idea of separation. The great thing 
 with them w^as not to violate the letter of the old 
 law ; not to eat wuth publicans and sinners. You re- 
 member that, after Christ's ascension, Peter was re- 
 buked for eating with the family of the gentile Cor- 
 nelius. And so little was the essence of that law of 
 separation appreciated, so far w^ere the very leaders 
 of the Jews from being morally purer than those with 
 whom they refused intercourse, that our Lord said to 
 the priests and elders : *' The publicans and the har- 
 lots go into the kingdom of God before you." Christ 
 was continually shocking the legalists by seeming to 
 break that law. *' He eateth with publicans and sin- 
 ners " was one of the stock charges against him. And 
 yet he did not break the law, and he meant that no 
 Christian should ever break it in the real essence of its 
 meaning, which he taught the world by being himself, 
 and commanding his disciples to be " holy, harmless, 
 undefiled, separate from sinners ; " and Paul, there- 
 fore, merely gives us the spirit of the old law of sepa- 
 ration when he says : " Be not conformed to this world, 
 but be ye transformed by the renewing of your viind" 
 
 There, again, was the Sabbath. In nothing did 
 Christ so shock and exasperate the teachers of the 
 law as by his behavior on that day ; and yet he did 
 not destroy the law ; he fulfilled it, and set a far 
 higher character upon it than it had in the popular 
 
The Wardship of the Law. 71 
 
 conception. He observed it as a day of worship, of 
 rest, of cheerful festivity, and not by refusing to help 
 the lame or the blind, or to pluck the ears to satisfy 
 his hunger, nor by repreaching the puerilities of the 
 Rabbis about putting out a lamp kindled before the 
 Sabbath, or preventing the dropping of oil in a press, 
 or forbidding the sick to send for a physician, or a 
 tailor to go out with his needle on Friday night, lest 
 he should forget it and break the Sabbath by carry- 
 ing it about. 
 
 And not only so, but instead of letting down the 
 claims of the law Christ showed men that it reached 
 far deeper than they had thought, and told them that 
 unless their righteousness should exceed that of those 
 who were their highest examples of legal strictness — 
 the Scribes and Pharisees — ^they should not enter into 
 the kingdom of heaven. To take a single instance, 
 there was the law of murder. The strictest Jew never 
 thought that it reached beyond the taking of human 
 life. He might hate his enemy as intensely as he 
 pleased, and so long as he kept his hands unstained 
 with his blood he was guiltless. What must have 
 been his surprise when he heard this Jesus, whom he 
 was wont to look upon with disgust and horror, as a 
 breaker of Moses' law, saying: *'The law means 
 more, not less than you think. Think you only he 
 who kills is in danger of the judgment ? I say unto 
 you that anger and hatred are the roots of murder, 
 and are of one piece with it, and whosoever is angry 
 with his brother, without a cause, shall be in danger 
 of judgment." 
 
72 Faith and Character. 
 
 With these two truths clearly before us, namely, 
 that God's law is one, and that its interpretation 
 may broaden, and its letter and form disappear with 
 the progress of the race, while its substance and es- 
 sence remain unchanged, we are, I think, prepared to 
 see that our pedagogue, the law, brings us to Christ 
 in its own interest, for its own higher, broader, deep- 
 er, more spiritual interpretation. We are not done 
 with law when we get to Christ, any more than the 
 Roman boy was done with obligation and obedience 
 to his father when he passed from under the peda- 
 gogue's care. Paul's very figure teaches us that, if we 
 study it ; for you know that, according to the Roman 
 law, a father's dominion over his son remained abso- 
 lute, even after he came of age. Parental affection 
 indeed might allow him the largest liberty ; but ac- 
 cording to the law he might exert his authority over 
 him. The son might be a magistrate or a triumphant 
 general, but the father could chastise him with stripes, 
 put him in prison, sell him into slavery, or take his 
 life, and the law would justify him. 
 
 So Paul's picture tells us that the law, in bringing 
 us to Christ, while it leads us into the liberty of sons, 
 does not relieve us from the obligation of sons. God 
 is still our Father ; Christ himself teaches us to ad- 
 dress him thus ; a father, who, in giving us the liberty 
 of dear children, none the less says : " If ye love me, 
 keep my commandments." And therefore Paul says, 
 in this same letter: ''For, brethren, ye have been 
 called unto liberty : only use not liberty for an occa- 
 sion to the llesh, but by love serve one another. For 
 
The Wardship of the Law, 71 
 
 all the law is fulfilled in one word." Even love refuses 
 to separate itself from law. The liberty of sonship re- 
 fuses to be divorced from law, for you remember that 
 James says that the man shall be blessed in his deed 
 who looks into the perfect law of liberty and contin- 
 ues therein, being a doer of the work. 
 
 And yet, you can understand how a man may live 
 under law, and the same law, too, which shaped his 
 childish life, and yet live a man's life, a free, broad, 
 generous life, as different from the life of childhood, 
 as a blossom is from a root. Here is a boy, for 
 instance, who begins to study mathematics. The 
 teacher gives him specific rules. ''Do thus, and you 
 will add numbers. Do so, and you will subtract or 
 multiply." It is not a matter of principles or laws at 
 all. The boy has, and can have, no conception of the 
 great fundamental laws of numbers and of their rela- 
 tions. He takes his arithmetic and studies the rule 
 for decimals or long division, and does his sums by 
 the process laid down in the rule. But one day, the 
 boy comes to the teacher with his sum worked out by 
 a process not laid down in his arithmetic. He has 
 thought it out by a process of his own. The rules he 
 has been practising have led him unconsciously up to 
 certain great mathematical principles which are not 
 confined in their working out to the one little rule of 
 the arithmetic, but are capable of a variety of expres- 
 sions. Is the teacher angry because the sum was not 
 done by the rule ? Is he not rather delighted ? He 
 sees, in the lad's overstepping the rule, the very result 
 at which he has been aiming. All the rules were di- 
 
74 Faith and Character. 
 
 rected to bring about this grasp of principles which 
 he has obtained. Henceforth, he will not be bound 
 by the rules, but will he therefore violate the great 
 laws of mathematics ? Will he not be as much under 
 law as ever, yea, under the same law, when he meas- 
 ures the orbits of planets or weighs suns, as when he 
 repeated the multiplication table, or cast up the little 
 columns in simple addition ? 
 
 So it is in moral development. You want to teach 
 a child the great principle of order. You begin with 
 specific rules. ** You must put your books in such a 
 place, and your hat in such a place. You must study 
 such and such hours. You may amuse yourself at 
 such times." The time finally comes when all these 
 rules drop off of themselves. They are no longer 
 needed. He has gotten hold of the great truth of 
 order, and its obligation has its grip upon him, and 
 that was all that the rules were intended for. That 
 being reached, he may be orderly and systematic in 
 his own way. The great point is that, however his 
 way may differ from that prescribed by his old rules, 
 he is still under law, and under the same law — the 
 law of order. 
 
 So then, when God's law, the pedagogue, the law 
 of commandments, precepts, prohibitions, hands a 
 man over to Christ, it introduces him to a life which 
 is just as much under the power of law and of the 
 same law as ever. Law is not abolished, but whereas 
 formerly the law was applied to the man from with- 
 out, it now begins to work from within the man. In 
 other words, he lives by the law of God written upon 
 
The Wardship of the Law. 75 
 
 his conscience and wrought into his life. He is a law 
 unto himself. He is no longer a moral schoolboy, but 
 a man in Christ Jesus. The law of precepts has been 
 silently preparing the man to be kindled and quick- 
 ened into life by contact with Christ's life. You 
 know how, at the sacred season in Rome, the work- 
 men are engaged for days in arranging the lines of 
 lamps over the dome and portico of St. Peter's ; and 
 when at last the hour strikes, on a sudden the whole 
 gigantic structure bursts into flame. Just so law 
 draws the lines of obedience and duty ; but these, 
 however symmetrical and sharp, are dead and cold 
 until they feel Christ's touch ; then the life kindles 
 and glows. The lines of law are all irradiated. 
 
 But, remember, this comes only in the full and free 
 surrender of the life to Christ. That surrender is faith, 
 and the law brings us to Christ that we may be justi- 
 fied by faith. When a man gives himself up in faith 
 to Christ, accepts his offer to make good his offences 
 against the law, opens his heart to the full power of 
 Christ's character and example, gives himself up to 
 the grand enthusiasm of love for Christ, then and 
 only then he is in right relations both to Christ and 
 to the law. Then he is justified ; then he moves in 
 harmony with God and with God's law and order ; 
 then he fulfils the law under the impulse of love, and 
 walks in loving obedience, yet with the freedom of 
 a child at home. 
 
 We see, then, that we have lighted upon no strange 
 or arbitrary fact. We see that it is the tendency of 
 precepts and rules everywhere to expand into some- 
 
^6 Faith and Character. 
 
 thing larger than themselves, and that God's law of 
 commandments contained in ordinances is no excep- 
 tion, but leads up to Christ, and to that broad, free, 
 generous life, which only faith in Christ, and love for 
 Christ will enable us to live. But this truth bears 
 with especial force upon those whose lives are guided 
 merely by moral precept. You say you are a moralist. 
 God forbid I should quarrel with morality. You say 
 you try to live by God's law ; that you study His pre- 
 cepts and try to keep them. All well. But I take your 
 own ground. I stand beside you on the law, and I 
 ask — How far does the law lead you ? Let me remind 
 you of that good centurion Cornelius — a moral man, 
 yea, a devout moralist ; yea, more, told by an angel 
 from heaven that his good deeds had been pleasing to 
 God. And yet he w^as told that there was another 
 step yet to be taken, and that he would find out what 
 it was by sending for Christ's apostle. When Peter 
 came he told him that needful thing was faith in 
 Christ. So I say to you as a lover of the law, as a 
 man who professes to stand by the law, as one who 
 praises the ''sermon on the mount," the law carries 
 Christ with it. The law was not framed to be an end 
 unto itself, but the law was to bring us to Christ. 
 Take away Christ, and the law is meaningless ; and 
 therefore I say that, as a mere moralist, you are 
 only on the first stage of the law. You have not 
 carried out the law to its full development ; if you 
 had, it would have brought you to Christ inevitably. 
 Let me urge that point. As a legalist you are 
 committed to Christ ; by the very terms of the law 
 
The Wardship of the Law. 77 
 
 you must come to Christ ; as a professed lover and 
 keeper of the law you are committed to faith in 
 Christ, for Christ is the end of the law, and the law 
 was our pedagogue to bring us to Christ. And you 
 cannot say that if Christ be proven to be a myth, and 
 faith in Christ a fond delusion, you can fall back on 
 the law. No, the law means Christ, and Christ and 
 the law stand or fall together. I stand with you 
 in your admiration of the "sermon on the mount." 
 You tell me law is emphasized there by Christ him- 
 self ; but do you not hear Christ say, "The fulfil- 
 ment of the law is in meV Is not Christ saying 
 just what Paul does, that the law was to lead us to 
 Christ ? But you say, there is nothing there about 
 atonement, about a redeemer. No, not in words ; 
 but try you, my friend, to keep that law in the 
 "sermon on the mount," to keep it in its deep sense, 
 as a law not only of outward action, but of spiritual 
 condition, and I am mistaken if you shall have gone 
 far in your task without breaking helplessly down, 
 and finding that the work can be done only through 
 the indwelling of the new life, the life of faith in 
 Christ the redeemer. So it will be just as Paul says : 
 " For what the law could not do, in that it was weak 
 through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the 
 likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in 
 the flesh : that the righteousness of the law might be 
 fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after 
 the Spirit." May Christ shed His own light upon the 
 law, and may the law, which you reverence, lead you 
 to its legitimate end — a perfect man in Christ. 
 
SONSHIP BY RECEIVING 
 CHRIST. 
 
JOHN I. 
 
 (12) But as many as received him, to them gave he power 
 to become the sons of God, even to them that beheve 
 on his name. 
 
V. 
 
 SONSHIP BY RECEIVING CHRIST. 
 
 To be a son of God ! I wonder if we realize all 
 that is contained in that phrase. Years ago, this 
 whole nation was stirred to admiration and homage 
 by the visit of a mere boy, not remarkable in himself, 
 but the son of the Queen of Great Britain. How 
 many thousands envied his lot. Yet such sonship is 
 insignificant compared with this which our text pre- 
 sents — to be a son of the King of kings and Lord of 
 lords. The origin of this sonship is the highest con- 
 ceivable. The mould in which it is cast is divine ; 
 for whom God called as sons, He tells us, He predes- 
 tined to be conformed to the image of His only be- 
 gotten Son, that he might be the first-born of a glori- 
 ous train of brethren. Its destiny — can we believe 
 it ? — is to share the glory of Christ in glory ; for if 
 children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs 
 with Christ, that we may be glorified together. Men's 
 ideas of a son of God are often strangely meagre. 
 Even Christian men sometimes fall into the way of 
 regarding him as a starveling, picked up out of vaga- 
 bondage and misery by God's kindness, and just kept 
 out of perdition by a special stretch of God's mercy. 
 That is not the scale on which God does a work which 
 
82 Faith and Character. 
 
 commenced with the princely gift of Jesus Christ. 
 The work is carried through on the same scale ; and 
 being made a new creature in Christ Jesus, means not 
 only forgiveness of sins, but *'a far more exceeding 
 and eternal weight of glory." That is the best Paul 
 can do to express it. "Whom He justified, them He 
 also glorified." 
 
 A large part of the world is indifferent to this 
 whole matter ; but in every age there are those to 
 whom it is the chief question : seekers after God 
 asking, " How shall we become God's children ?" 
 
 The text gives to all who thus seek, a plain answer. 
 It is speaking of society at the first coming of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ. It was indifferent to Him. '' The 
 light shone in darkness, and the darkness compre- 
 hended it not. He came unto His own, and His own 
 received Him not." But there were some who did 
 become sons of God ; some who were put in posses- 
 sion of that secret after which so many sincere souls 
 in all ages had been feeling. They were those and 
 those only who received Him. To them gave He power 
 to become sons of God. 
 
 As many as received Him. My sermon is mainly 
 on this word "received." The statement of the text 
 is that, to become a son of God, is to receive God in 
 Christ Jesus. 
 
 That seems simple enough, and yet I am mistaken 
 if some of you do not find yourselves fighting away 
 from it before we leave it. Indeed the very trouble 
 is, that it is altogether too simple to not a few minds. 
 It seems such a puerile way of reaching so great a 
 
Sons hip by Receiving Christ. Z"^ 
 
 result In a transaction between giver and receiver, 
 the receiver always makes the smaller figure, and 
 men do not like to make a small figure in their moral 
 struggles, any more than in their business or in their 
 warfare. They want results associated with some he- 
 roism, some deserving effort which shall throw them 
 into prominence. And it is just at this point that 
 the gospel economy makes an issue. Where, men 
 emphasize doing, it emphasizes receiving. All the 
 old economies are in a ferment of temple-building, 
 sacrificing, pouring out of purchase-money, consult- 
 ing oracles, going on pilgrimages, in order to win 
 this blessing of divine sonship. The receiving is to 
 come after all this ; after the sacrifice has bled, the 
 treasury been drained, and the penance undergone. 
 In the new Christian order, receiving comes first. 
 Man does not become a son after he has painfully 
 worked his way up to God. He has no power to 
 work up. He must receive it from God to begin 
 with. He becomes a son, ''not of blood, nor of the 
 will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God," 
 and by receiving God. '*To as many as received 
 Him to them gave He power to become the sons of 
 God." 
 
 Some one will perhaps say : '' Is not this the doc- 
 trine of faith without works ? " It is astonishing how 
 fearful many people are that Christ will not give them 
 enough to do. But so far as Christ's gospel is con- 
 cerned they have no cause to be uneasy on that point 
 In whatever the Bible may be supposed to be defect- 
 ive as a manual of living, it never fails to keep a man 
 
84 Faith and Character. 
 
 busy. No other book presents such objects of effort ; 
 no other kindles such impulses to work ; no other 
 so urges and emphasizes work. Work is not turned 
 out of doors when Christ comes in as master of the 
 house. It is only put in its right place. It is de- 
 throned as the instrument of the new birth and life 
 in Christ ; it is exalted as the frtiit of that new life. 
 Doing does not make men sons of God, but true sons 
 of God are the most active of men. Christian life is 
 made up of faith and works, as man is of soul and 
 body ; but faith comes first in that life, and expresses 
 itself in w^orks. The people asked Christ, "What 
 shall we do that we might work the works of God ? " 
 Our Lord replied : '' This is the work of God, that ye 
 believe on Him whom He hath sent." Here John is 
 not discussing the matter of works at all. Men are 
 out of their right relation to God; are not sons but 
 prodigals, and he is telling them how to get back and 
 become sons ; and he says that, in the establishment 
 of this right relation, man must take the position of a 
 receiver : only as he receives God in Christ can he 
 become a son of God. 
 
 Let us inquire whether, in the light of ordinary 
 laws, this is a strange or an isolated fact. 
 
 We hear and talk a great deal about the wonderful 
 achievements of men. We flatter ourselves that our 
 own doing is largely concerned with what we attain ; 
 and yet, when we get back to the fundamental con- 
 ditions of success, we find that they are, without ex- 
 ception, gifts, and that our success, after all, is based 
 on what we have received. Our very existence was a 
 
Sons/tip by Receiving Christ. 85 
 
 gift to begin with. You are a prosperous man to-day. 
 You own houses and lands ; or you are a power in law 
 or in medicine ; and you say you are a self-made man. 
 You had no advantages of birth or of patronage. You 
 just worked your own way up. My dear friend, you 
 are quite mistaken. The first essentials of your suc- 
 cess you received ; your reason, your sight, your hear- 
 ing, your health, what had you to do with those ? 
 Then there were ten thousand facts and influences in 
 your time, in the civilization in which you lived, 
 which were the fruits of all the experience of the past, 
 which prepared the way and the conditions of your 
 success, and which you simply received as matters of 
 course. There were moral influences which you 
 breathed in with the atmosphere of your childhood — 
 floating round you in your home, and in the society 
 about you, and in the spirit of your age ; and you re- 
 ceived from these a basis ready made, on which you 
 climbed to your present prosperity. To take a single 
 instance : you, as a successful, educated man, are 
 the product of a Christian civilization. You did not 
 help to make it. You found it made for you. You 
 only received it. Is there not a familiar, ever}^-day 
 truth as well as a spiritual truth in our Lord's words ? 
 " I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no 
 labor. Other men labored, and ye are entered into 
 their labors." 
 
 And indeed, do we not utter this truth, even though 
 we do not recognize it, in our common speech ? 
 When we spejak of a man of genius, the peculiar 
 range and quality of whose power other men cannot 
 
86 Faith and Character. 
 
 win by study and labor, who is bom on a higher 
 plane than other men, do we not say that such a man 
 is endowed, or, to use the popular word, ** gifted ?" 
 
 You can supply for yourselves abundant illustra- 
 tions in the same line, all going to prove that when 
 we meet this truth in the spiritual region, we have no 
 right to be startled as by an isolated or an arbitrary 
 fact. The fact is only a counterpart of what we see 
 here ; that the very beginnings and foundations of 
 man's life and success are in what he receives — in 
 that which is done for him and on him. If his natu- 
 ral existence is a gift, why should his spiritual life be 
 any less a gift ? If the essential conditions of his 
 happiness and prosperity and usefulness as a son and 
 as a citizen are furnished him and received by him in 
 the one case, why not in the other ? 
 
 And as you study the successive stages of the life 
 of a son of God, you find him at each stage in the 
 attitude of a receiver. Before he becomes a son of 
 God, he is, if the Bible is to be believed, at enmity 
 with God. His heart is set upon his own ends, and 
 not on doing God's will. Now, if there arise in him 
 any better sentiment, any desire for God, any distaste 
 for his sinful life, these are not produced by his own 
 will. They do not grow up naturally in his own 
 heart ; they are the work of the Holy Spirit of God, 
 drawing him to God. The very impulse to become a 
 son of God comes to him from outside himself, and 
 is received by him. Suppose you take a child into 
 your household. He has been under the care of 
 those who have taught him to hate you. He has 
 
Sonship by Receiving Christ. 87 
 
 been made to believe that you are harsh, cruel, arbi- 
 trary ; that your home is a gloomy place ; and he 
 comes into your house reluctantly, and keeps away 
 from you as much as possible, and is cold and re- 
 sei-ved, morose and rebellious. But you surround 
 him with an atmosphere of love. You speak to him 
 kindly. You give him many privileges. By and by 
 a change comes over his feelings. He begins to 
 desire to know you better ; his reserv^e melts away, 
 he seeks your society, and finally comes to you and 
 confesses his error, and gives himself up to you with 
 a child's abandonment of affection. I ask, whence 
 came the impulse to this change of feeling ? It was 
 not self-generated. It came from you. It was cre- 
 ated by your affection showm to him. The attraction 
 over him was exerted by your character. Is not this 
 just what John says : ''We love Him because He first 
 loved us ? " Is it strange, as we come to know some- 
 thing of the hardness and wilfulness of the human 
 heart, that Christ said, ''No man can come unto me 
 except the Father which hath sent me draw him ? " 
 So, then, in the very first movement of a sinful man's 
 desire toward God, he is a receiver. The impulse 
 comes from God. 
 
 Go on a step farther, to repentance. Is that a 
 matter of one's will? "Perhaps," says Coleridge, 
 "the repentance required in Scripture, the passing 
 into a new and contrary principle of action, is in the 
 sinner's own power, at his own liking. He has but 
 to open his eyes to the sin, and the tears are close at 
 hand to wash it away. Verily the tenet of transub- 
 
88 Faith and Character, 
 
 stantiation is scarcely at greater variance with the 
 common-sense and experience of mankind, or borders 
 more closely on a contradiction in terms, than this 
 self-change." Ah, no. You cannot repent at will. 
 The change of mind, the changed principle of life, 
 must be received in receiving God to melt with the 
 Spirit's breath the ice about your heart ; to break as 
 with hammer and lire its llintiness. Men do not 
 comprehend the nature of repentance when they 
 think they can repent at will. Too often it is repre- 
 sented to them by a transient emotion ; by a tempo- 
 rary disgust at a sin with which they are surfeited, or 
 by a few sentimental tears over an inane life of which 
 they are tired for the time. If they did but know 
 repentance as it is, as the cleaving the life down to its 
 very base, breaking it up, nmning it into a new moidd, 
 they would understand why God Himself imdertakes 
 to superintend that work, and says, ''/will take away 
 the heart of stone out of your flesh." 
 
 Or, go on still farther to faith. Can men believe 
 what they will, and when they will ? If you have ever 
 dealt much with them in their moral and religious 
 struggles, you w411 have no difficulty in answering that 
 question. You will recall instances where men have 
 been solemnly, painfully in earnest to arrive at intel- 
 lectual conviction of the truth, and yet could not be- 
 lieve ; when they have shown that it was possible for 
 the mind, otherwise clear and well balanced, to be- 
 come absolutely incapable of justly weighing religi- 
 ous truth. All the reasoning in the world, desire to 
 believe, determination to believe, will not do away 
 
Sonship by Receiving Christ, 89 
 
 with this impotence of the believing faculty. And 
 when it comes to the deeper work of faith, the be- 
 lieving w^ith the heart, the resting of the whole self 
 upon Christ crucified, the work exceeds all nature's 
 power. The very ability thus to believe must be re- 
 ceived in answer to the prayer: ''Lord, help thou 
 mine unbelief." 
 
 Just as in the case of repentance, men are misled by 
 underestimating the difficulties of faith. Possibly it 
 is an easy thing to believe, as too many do, with the 
 top of the mind, if I may so speak, with a faith which 
 grasps at straws, and cleaves chiefly to what it desires 
 to believe, and is easily shifted by a new hearsay or a 
 new fascination. But faith, on which a man stakes 
 his soul, his life, his immortality, is not something 
 which the mere beck of his will can command at any 
 time, or which merely plays upon the surface of his 
 moral nature. " With the heart man believeth unto 
 righteousness." The faith by which he lays fame, 
 fortune, ambition, will, at Christ's feet, and accepts 
 him as master, saviour, teacher, comforter, surety for 
 time and for eternity, is the gift of God. Receiving 
 God he then first receives power to believe. 
 
 And this idea of receiving enters far more than we 
 commonly think into what we conceive as the active 
 side of Christian life. For instance, this matter of 
 sacrifice, devotion, self-consecration. Somehow, too 
 much of our own effort gets into it, so that it becomes 
 pen^aded with a busy self-consciousness. We mean 
 it for self-consecration, but sometimes there is more 
 self than consecration. We bring the sacrifice and 
 
90 Faith and Character, 
 
 lay it upon the altar, but the bringing assumes too 
 much importance. A man is very apt to begin a 
 Christian life with the question, *' Now, what must I 
 give up ? My becoming a son of God must begin in 
 an act of sacrifice. So here I put into a heap rny pleas- 
 ures, my ambitions, my indulgences, and, with much 
 tugging and straining, with many qualms of the re- 
 bellious flesh, I drag them to the altar. This pile 
 once consumed, I may expect God to come and own 
 me as His child." Ah, my friend, you have gotten 
 hold of this matter on the w^rong side. There is, in- 
 deed, no question that your sinful indulgences must 
 be surrendered, your whole self presented a living 
 sacrifice ; but think you this is accomplished in say- 
 ing, "Here, Lord, I give myself away?" Nay; self- 
 consecration is the craivning act of Christian life, 
 not the introductory act. It is the grand, final result 
 of years of Christian experience. Do not misunder- 
 stand me. I recognize what is called consecration at 
 the beginning of Christian life, the forsaking all, and 
 going after Christ. But forsaking the world is only 
 the beginning of consecration. Leaving all for Christ 
 is one thing ; becoming like Christ is another thing. 
 Consecration is more than renunciation. Consecra- 
 tion is being all God's : having the life so merged in 
 Christ, that the man can say, '* Not I live, but Christ 
 liveth in me : " when the life is not merely given to 
 God, but per\\aded with God. This is not at the be- 
 ginning, but far on toward the end of the course. 
 Paul gives us the truth in the Epistle to the Philip- 
 pians. He had suffered the loss of all things. That 
 
Sonship by Receiviftg Christ. 91 
 
 was behind him. Before him lay this : "That I may- 
 win Christ, be found in Him, having His righteous- 
 ness, and know Him and the power of His resurrec- 
 tion, and the fellowship of His sufferings." And then 
 he says, '' Not as if I had already attained, but I follow 
 after." Thus, I say, we are to recognize a distinction 
 between consecration as an act of the will, and conse- 
 cration as a consummated fact. The former marks 
 the entrance on Christian life, the latter is its ripe re- 
 sult. Between the two is the long, hard struggle to 
 make the act of the will a fact of experience : the 
 ''following after" of which Paul speaks. Now, I 
 have said that our self-consecration often has too 
 much self in it ; carries with it too much the sense of 
 our doing ; whereas consecration, from its beginning 
 in the act of the renewed will to its consummation in 
 the merging of the life in Christ, comes through our 
 receiving God in Christ. That is the side of it which 
 we ought to push forward. We say, "■ we will conse- 
 crate self, and then and therefore receive God." God 
 says you cannot consecrate self without first receiving 
 Him. You say, '' I will sweep and garnish the house, 
 and God shall come into the place which I have 
 cleared for Him." God says you cannot clear the 
 place without Him. The amount of it is, all God 
 asks of you is to receive Him. He will make His 
 o^vn place. You want to be a consecrated man or 
 woman ; receive Christ and He will teach you how. 
 You want strength to make the first great resolution — 
 " I will be the Lord's." You think you cannot have 
 Christ until you have made it. You had better let 
 
92 Faith a7id Character, 
 
 Christ come in and help you make it. You never 
 will make it else. You want power to keep your will 
 toned, and to carry your purpose of consecration into 
 your life. You will need a great deal of instruction, 
 correction, encouragement to do this ; a mighty love 
 and enthusiasm drawing you on to self-forgetfulness. 
 You cannot have these unless Christ first come in. 
 '' To as many as received Him, to them gave He power 
 to become sons of God ; " *' a power," as one says, " in- 
 volving all the actions and states needful to their so 
 becoming, and removing all the obstacles in their 
 way." And so we reach that truth which Norman 
 McLeod puts so pithily in one of his letters : ''What 
 is devotedness ? It is not a giving up, but a full and 
 complete receiving, in the best possible way (that is, 
 in God's way), of the riches of His bounty. It is being 
 first in sympathy with God, judging and choosing, 
 rejoicing with Him, and then, consequently, resting 
 satisfied with all that He wills us to be, to do, to re- 
 ceive, give up, to suffer or enjoy." 
 
 Our failure to realize this exposes us to much un- 
 necessary trouble through our anxious self-scrutiny 
 as to the extent of our consecration. In other words, 
 we make our Christian confidence and peace depend 
 very much upon our feeling satisfied how far we have 
 yielded ourselves to God ; upon our assurance that 
 we have given up everything to Him. And thus we 
 establish a false centre of assurance. How often 
 must we be reminded that what we need to be as- 
 sured of is not anything concerning ourselves — what 
 we are, what we have done — but simply that Christ is 
 
Sonship by Receiving Christ. 93 
 
 ours, and is available to us for everything. If we 
 can say " Christ is ours," assurance of everything 
 needful follows. We have the best authority for say- 
 ing that we have all things with Him. 
 
 So our life is too much a series of resolutions, of 
 gathering up our energies for successive self-crucifix- 
 ions, and self-surrenders. When shall we learn that 
 when Christ gets into the life, self strikes at once 
 into the road to the cross ? Christ will crucify self 
 better than we can, if we will only receive Him. 
 
 And the same truth reaches into our work. Oh 
 how much we need this lesson of receiving Him 
 there. We have so many plans. We begin with 
 such great ideas of sendng God. We mark out such 
 grand schemes of usefulness, and we grow impatient 
 and fearful if these plans are interfered with. We 
 set about the thing which God gives us to do, but we 
 see so much else that needs doing, that we grow ner- 
 vous and afraid that we are not doing the right work 
 or covering enough ground. Let us be at peace. 
 Let us do the work God gives us, and let Christ take 
 care of the rest. Pardon me if I quote again the 
 w^ords of that noble servant of God, McLeod : ''I 
 have been," he says, ''for years, a very busy man; 
 but I never for an hour sought for work, it was al- 
 ways given to me." Be patient, and only by God's 
 grace keep your mind in that most necessary state, 
 which will discern the Lord's voice when He calls. 
 I have great faith in what I call signs, indescribable 
 hints, palpable hints that, " this is the way, walk ye 
 in it." One cannot, before they come, tell what they 
 
94 Faith and Character, 
 
 shall be ; but when the fulness of the time comes, 
 when the Lord has appointed us to do anything, 
 something or other occurs that comes home instanta- 
 neously to us with the conviction, *' The Lord's time 
 has come, I have to do this." 
 
 In short, the key to the highest Christian experi- 
 ence is in these two words : Receive Him. Then the 
 strain passes over from our life to Christ's ; then all 
 our care is cast on him. Then Christ takes on him- 
 self the task of fitting us for Heaven. He tells us all 
 we need to know, to do, to surrender, to suffer. That 
 is self-consecration, a far deeper, larger thing than 
 merely forsaking this or that. That is something 
 which includes both renunciation and devotion. Oh, 
 the peace of such a life ! What deep-rooting ! What 
 steady growth ! What rich and rare fruitful ness ! 
 What fragrance of holy character and example, what 
 heavenly attraction, mark the life which receives God 
 in Christ, the life with all its celestial energy and 
 beauty. 
 
 "To as many as received him, to them gave he 
 power to become the sons of God." Do you ask this 
 morning how you may receive him ? The answer is 
 simple ; it is Christ's own : *' Ask, and it shall be given 
 you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be 
 opened unto you." 
 
REST GIVEN AND REST 
 FOUND. 
 
MATTHEW XI. 
 
 (28) Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
 
 and I will give you rest. 
 
 (29) Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am 
 
 meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest unto 
 your souls. 
 
 (30) For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. 
 
VI. 
 REST GIVEN AND REST FOUND. 
 
 When Christ was upon earth, each one who came 
 to him approached him, naturally enough, from the 
 standpoint of his own peculiar w^ants. Some, as he 
 plainly told them, sought him merely to have their 
 hunger satisfied without labor or cost ; because they 
 did eat of the loaves and were filled. Others came to 
 be healed of their diseases. Others, like Nicodemus, 
 to have their own views of truth confirmed. 
 
 Our Lord did meet these various desires, but he 
 met them in his own way. He had come to instruct 
 men, not to confirm them in their own fancies ; to 
 give them what they needed, and not always what 
 they wanted. He saw, too, what they did not see, 
 that all human needs sprang from a common source, 
 and could be reached by a common remedy ; and, 
 therefore, he was chiefly concerned to show them the 
 universal need and the universal remedy. 
 
 And how wonderfully his wisdom appears in the 
 exhibition of this fact in the text. Suppose Christ 
 in person addressing the whole world, as he is doing 
 to-day through the gospel. Suppose he should say, 
 " Come to me, philosopher, and I will show you 
 where your system is wrong." At once the wa3'far- 
 5 
 
98 Faith and Character. 
 
 ing man turns away saying, *' He has nothing for 
 me. I know nothing and care nothing about sys- 
 tems of philosophy." Or, let him say to the legalist, 
 "Come unto me. I will adjust all these intricate 
 cases of conscience, all these subtle casuistries, all 
 these nice points of legal obligation." Away goes 
 the philosopher in his turn, saying, '' I have heard 
 enough and too much of these precepts and ordinan- 
 ces. They cramp and belittle my life." And the 
 wayfaring man, though he stops to listen for awhile, 
 says at last, ''It is too deep for me. These are heaAT* 
 and grievous burdens." Or he says, "Come unto me 
 and learn." The sinner says, "Nothing for me here. 
 I want forgiveness and peace of conscience, not learn- 
 ing." Or, "Come unto me and get the loaves and 
 fishes." An anxious multitude turn their backs upon 
 him, saying, " Our souls are hungry. Our immortal 
 life cries out for nourishment. Our hands are feeling 
 about for God." 
 
 But see how Christ, waiving all these for the time, 
 strikes down to something which is common to every 
 human heart : "Come to me and get rest." Here he 
 reaches philosopher, wayfaring man, sinner, beggar, 
 all alike ; for every man has his burden which wea- 
 ries him ; his sorrow which saddens him ; his toil 
 which frets him. Not one who does not respond to 
 the appeal to the weary and heavy laden. The phi- 
 losopher : "Yes, I am weary. Shall I never find the 
 truth ? Am I not tired in heart and brain with the 
 long, studious search?" The ascetic: "Yes. I am 
 so weary of fasts and vigils, and yet this rebellious 
 
Rest Given aitd Rest Found. 99 
 
 flesh is not subdued, and this uneasy conscience is 
 not at peace." And at this invitation they come, and 
 keep coming — men, and women, and little children — 
 and tell of poverty, and hunger, and care, and sin, 
 each and all weary and heavy laden. 
 
 Here, therefore, Christ establishes his point of con- 
 tact with mankind. He leaves the region of their 
 moral and mental combats and speculations, and 
 comes down to that of their great practical need. 
 From wiiatever cause, they are not at rest. 
 
 Our question to-day is, how Christ meets the need 
 which his wisdom thus discerns in man. And a care- 
 ful study of this very familiar and comforting text 
 will, I think, show us two phases of his mode of sup- 
 plying it. Rest is Christ's gift. First, directly, and 
 second, as a result of experience. '' I will give you 
 rest when you come to me. Ye shall find rest, in 
 taking my yoke and in bearing my burden." 
 
 Let us look, then, first at Christ's rest as a direct 
 gift. 
 
 And you obsen-e that our Lord says nothing at all 
 about taking away burdens or labors. He merely 
 says, " I will give you rest." Indeed, there is a yoke 
 and a burden of his own to be borne. 
 
 But this does not meet the ordinary views of men 
 at large ; for their idea of rest is summed up in the 
 removal of their burdens and toils. ** Only take away 
 my poverty," says the poor man, ''and I shall be rest- 
 ful." "Only relieve me of these business claims 
 which hurr}' and drive me through life, as with whip 
 and spur," says the careworn merchant, "and I shall 
 
100 Faith and Character. 
 
 be at rest." ''Only reveal a few things more clearly. 
 Shed a little more light on this or that point, restore 
 one or two missing links of history, and," says the 
 student, '' I shall be at rest." This conception of the 
 cause of restlessness Christ emphatically and radi- 
 cally contradicts. He tells men that their restless- 
 ness and weariness come from themselves and not from 
 their circumstances; that they spring from their very 
 inmost life, their souls, and not from their bodily in- 
 firmities. Hence it is to the soul that he offers rest. 
 *' Ye shall find rest unto your souls." In other words, 
 if the man's spiritual being shall find its true point and 
 centre of rest, circumstances may remain as they will. 
 Let the man himself once be at rest, and circumstan- 
 ces cannot make him restless. The engineer who 
 looks out upon that reef over which the breakers are 
 foaming and thundering, is not thinking of the means 
 of making the sea quiet, or of restraining the Avind. 
 He knows that the winds will continue to rage and 
 the sea to be troubled. But he is thinking how he 
 can put a structure upon that very reef, founded on 
 the very spot where the sea pours in most mightily, 
 against which the waves shall beat in vain, and wiiich 
 shall rise up out of the foam and spray, carrying aloft 
 a beacon, in the darkest night of tempest. 
 
 Man is restless, therefore, because he himself is 
 not at rest. Circumstances burden him and drive 
 him to and fro, because he is floating about in the 
 track of circumstances. 
 
 As to what man's true point of rest is, the Bible 
 leaves us in no doubt. From beginning to end it 
 
Rest Given and Rest Found, loi 
 
 teems with the stories of his misfortunes and sorrows 
 through absence from God. One great purpose runs 
 through it, to bring him back to his point of rest in 
 God. And Christ is only repeating the old lesson 
 when He says, ''Come unto me and fmd rest." It is 
 God who speaks in Him. In those words He says, 
 **Ye are restless and burdened because ye are away 
 from me ; and ye are away from me because of sin. 
 It is not that your bodies are enfeebled or your intel- 
 lects clouded, but that your hearts are estranged from 
 God." 
 
 Is there anything strange or unnatural in this an- 
 nouncement ? Is it, for instance, a fact strange to 
 science, that when a revolving body gets away from 
 its proper centre, that very fact entails disaster ? If 
 yonder planet were by any means to fall out of its 
 orbit, would anything else be required to account for 
 the collision and confusion which would follow in the 
 realms of space ? Let that child go away from home, 
 violating the moral obligations, and trampling upon 
 the filial affections which bind him to his father, and 
 is not all his subsequent disaster summed up in the 
 fact that he has ceased to be an obedient son ? Can 
 a son of God go away from his Father and not be 
 restless and burdened ? By that very act he makes 
 himself the sport of circumstances. By that very act 
 of separation he removes that which God interposes 
 between his obedient child and the shock of circum- 
 stances. By that very act he cuts the lines by which 
 God was wont to adjust his life to circumstances. 
 By that very act he forfeits the power which was his 
 
102 Faith and Character, 
 
 birthright gift as a son of God, to master circumstan- 
 ces. Is it strange that sin, which separates men from 
 God, should be treated by Christ as the root of all 
 weariness and restlessness ? 
 
 And here, therefore, is where Christ meets the hun- 
 ger for rest. Though men know it not, it is the hun- 
 ger of an unforgiven soul. He satisfies it with the 
 gift of pardon and restoration to himself. Let us 
 not mistake Christ here, as we cannot mistake him if 
 we read these words in the light of the whole gospel. 
 Let us not be betrayed into any vapid sentimentalism 
 by the beautiful and comforting word, *'rest." It is 
 moi'al rest, rest of the soul in God ; rest grounded in 
 sin forgiven, and in lost sonship restored, that Christ 
 means when He says : '* I will give you rest." It is 
 for this reason that to His w^ord of comfort to the for- 
 given, *'Go in peace," He is wont to add: *^Sin no 
 more." 
 
 Rest ! Is it not indeed something more than mere 
 quietude when a straying, tempest-tossed soul finds 
 its way back to God ? Is it not as well the sense of 
 something abiding that has come into the life ; of a 
 solid foundation under one's feet ; of moral order re- 
 stored ; of security in the hand of Him who makes 
 all things work together for good ? That poor out- 
 cast in Simon's banqueting hall— think you the relief 
 and soothing of Jesus' words was all of the rest that 
 came to her as she knelt in tears at his feet ? If in- 
 deed that were all, it was not likely to stay long with 
 her. Whatever Jesus might say, in the eyes of the 
 world she was still an outcast, and she would go out 
 
Rest Given and Rest Found. 103 
 
 from that chamber to be sneered at and abused and 
 disgraced as before. But her calm of heart had a 
 foundation in a precious fact. Jesus understood her. 
 Jesus had received her. Jesus had forgiven her. 
 Whatever the world might say or do hereafter, he 
 was her friend. She had staked her all on that ap- 
 proach to him, and henceforth the mob might howl, 
 and the Pharisee gather up his robes to escape her 
 touch ; she was at rest, because at one with him whom 
 she loved much. 
 
 This is Christ's gift to all who come to him. Par- 
 don is rest, not only because the man is relieved of a 
 sense of danger, but because his life has found its 
 centre. This is a most precious consciousness which 
 leads him to sing : 
 
 ** Now rest my long divided heart, 
 Fixed on this blissful centre rest ; 
 Nor ever from thy Lord depart, 
 
 With him of every good possessed." 
 
 And a man in this condition is not unlike that one 
 out of whom Christ cast the devil. He sits at Jesus' 
 feet clothed, and in his right mind ; and so sweet is 
 the companionship of his new-found friend that he 
 would fain sit there forever, and enjoy his rest of 
 heart, and pass his life away in peaceful gazing on 
 his Lord. 
 
 But he has only begun. He knows rest only in its 
 first stage and in its simplest form. There is a de- 
 velopment of the gift which he is to reach by a longer 
 road. Rest has been ^iven^ but given only to point 
 
104 Faith and Character. 
 
 him to a rest to be found. He knows the rest of par- 
 don, the rest of reconciliation, he is to find the rest 
 of developed character, the rest which is to come in 
 the balance of his disciplined, matured moral nature 
 on this divine centre. He is to learn the rest of 
 Christian manhood worked out through burden-bear- 
 ing and conflict, and poised on Christ. For this he 
 is put forthwith under Christ's yoke and Christ's bur- 
 den. 
 
 Here, doubtless, is a source of practical embarrass- 
 ment to many young Christians, in the failure to 
 perceive that God's first gift of rest in pardoning 
 their sins, points beyond itself to a fuller, sweeter 
 rest in Christian experience. They make too much 
 of this first rest, in that they linger in it, and depend 
 upon it to supply what can only come through the 
 manful facing and undertaking of Christian duty and 
 conflict. Their first experience of the love of Christ 
 and of peace with God is so sweet that they think, in 
 proportion as they recede from that experience, they 
 lose ground and endanger their peace, not suspecting 
 that the larger, more substantial peace, which is their 
 birthright as sons of God, lies far on beyond that ex- 
 perience. Doubtless the recovered lunatic, of whom 
 I have spoken, thought he was running a risk in leav- 
 ing his post at Jesus' feet. Doubtless he shrank from 
 going out from the sight of that beloved face into the 
 brawling world which had knowm him as a madman. 
 Yet Christ knew when he bade him go home to his 
 friends and exercise his recovered powers in pro- 
 claiming his Redeemer, that he would find in this 
 
Rest Given and Rest Fonnd. 105 
 
 very work a deeper sense of rest, a more vivid con- 
 sciousness of his presence, tlian in the mere passive 
 enjoyment of the sense of healing. 
 
 So a young Christian lingers in the still daybreak 
 of his first peace with God. He almost dreads the 
 coming of the bright, hot day, with its glare and 
 noise ; and probably fails to suspect that there may 
 be a deeper peace for him amid all the glare and 
 noise than even in his quiet musing over his first ex- 
 perience of forgiveness. Robertson has truthfully 
 said, that "a man whose religion is chiefly the sense 
 of forgiveness, does not thereby rise into integrity or 
 firmness of character." Jacob rose up from the stone 
 at Bethel in great peace ; with an overpowering, rap- 
 turous sense of God's presence. ** Truly God was in 
 this place. This is none other than the house of 
 God. This is the gate of heaven." And yet, for years 
 Jacob lived in the mefno?y of that restful vision, in- 
 stead of moving out under its impulse to a deeper rest 
 in God. That life at Padan-aram, with all its uneasy 
 plotting and scheming and wrangling, was anything 
 but a restful life. He had to have another vision of 
 God and a grapple that lamed him before he reached 
 that higher plane of character where, the supplanter 
 gave place to the prince of God. 
 
 Now, if a Christian depends upon his first experi- 
 ence at conversion to keep him happy and restful all 
 his life, he will find himself growing very unhappy 
 and very restless. If he makes his rest to-day depend 
 upon the memory of his rest a year or a month ago, 
 his character w411 not grow strong. He has a rest to 
 
io6 Faith and Character. 
 
 find ; and to find it daily, as the Israelites found the 
 manna daily at their tent doors. The sense of for- 
 giveness is something, nay, is very much ; but God 
 has a great deal to do for a man in the course of his 
 Christian life, besides forgiving him. Forgiveness is 
 only that which brings him to his true standpoint of 
 life. Forgiveness makes him right with God. From 
 this point an immense and infinitely varied range of 
 experience opens before him. He must strike out 
 into it without delay. Suppose your son of fifteen or 
 sixteen years had offended you in some serious way, 
 and after some time should come back, confess his 
 fault, and be freely forgiven. That first day of recon- 
 ciliation would be a most precious day to you both. 
 Your sorrow over his disobedience would be gone, his 
 clouded looks and heavy heart would be gone, and 
 he would move with elastic step and smiling face 
 about his accustomed haunts, only too happy to find 
 himself again at home in his father's house. How 
 much you have to teach him. Into what large re- 
 sponsibilities you have yet to introduce him. What 
 large plans your love has framed for him, all which 
 things are now become possible through his repen- 
 tance and forgiveness. But suppose the boy should 
 be simply anxious to prolong the pleasure of that first 
 day of reconciliation. Suppose he should talk of 
 nothing else but his father's goodness in forgiving 
 him. Instead of setting himself to his studies or 
 duties, he remains in his chamber, or strolls abstract- 
 edly about the house or garden, musing on his fath- 
 er's goodness. Now and then there comes a day 
 
Rest Given and Rest Found. 107 
 
 when he is a little low-spirited. You yourself are 
 preoccupied and do not say much to him. He be- 
 gins to think something is wrong, and takes you 
 aside and asks you if he may be sure you have 
 forgiven him. Now you can easily see that that will 
 not do. The boy's whole life is concentrating itself 
 morbidly upon that one point in the past. He is 
 neither doing the duties of a son, nor learning the 
 privileges of a son. He is not finding the joy of 
 doing his father's will daily. He is not feeling the 
 sense of victor}^ in the manful grapple with his old 
 faults, and in his growth in self-control and self- 
 denial. He is not realizing, through experience, that 
 it is in his father's power to do more than to forgive 
 him. And yet, absurd as this may seem, is it not a 
 picture of many a Christian experience ? Are there 
 not scores of Christians whose happiness and restful- 
 ness are made by themselves to depend upon keeping 
 the memory of forgiven sin at its first vividness ? The 
 result is the unhealthiest, weakest religious life im- 
 aginable. Such a religious experience is very much 
 as if a bricklayer should try to build a wall with 
 only one point in contact with the foundation. The 
 whole thing would very soon be a heap of ruins. 
 He must have the whole line of his wall resting on 
 the foundation. Just so a healthy Christian life must 
 rest in God all along its line. The single experience 
 of forgiveness is a great and precious one, but it is 
 not strong enough to bear the weight of the whole 
 Christian life. That must touch God daily and every- 
 where. A Christian experience, with only one lumi- 
 
io8 Faith and CJiaracter. 
 
 nous point in it, far back at the beginning, is like a 
 tunnel lighted only at the entrance. The light gets 
 dimmer and dimmer as you go on. And that is not 
 the Scriptural idea of a life in God, for Scripture tells 
 us that "the path of the just shineth more and more 
 even unto the perfect day. " A great many people who 
 have gotten hold of the first part of our text, coming to 
 Christ and recekmig rest, seem to have failed entirely 
 to grasp the second ^2irt—Jindi?ig rest under Christ's 
 yoke and burden. It seems as if they had come to 
 Christ only to be forgiven, and then had parted com- 
 pany with him. Such do not know what they lose. 
 The importance of forgiveness and reconciliation we 
 cannot overestimate. They lie at the foundation of 
 all. But as to their forming the best part, the most 
 joyous part of Christian experience, there never was 
 a greater mistake. One might as well compare the 
 joys of infancy to those of strong and cultured man- 
 hood. He might, with as good reason, linger at agate- 
 way, examining its carvings, while a paradise lay on 
 beyond. And therefore it is that the apostle puts the 
 case so strongly : " Therefore, leaving the principles 
 of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfec- 
 tion." The alphabet is a very necessary thing ; but 
 only an idiot would linger over the alphabet when 
 the vast fields of literature were before him. 
 
 It is a good thing for such people, a good thing for 
 us all that the world has to be faced and fought ; a 
 good thing that Christ puts us from the beginning 
 under a yoke and a burden. I think so, because I see 
 that the greatest restfulness and the nicest poise of 
 
Rest Given and Rest Found. 1 09 
 
 character have somehow risen up out of the midst of 
 these very disturbing influences. Just as the little 
 coral workers, beginning far down on the ocean's bot- 
 tom, build patiently up through the deep, until there 
 emerges from the spray a rock, on which by and by 
 trees and flowers grow, and men dwell, and in whose 
 shelter storm-tossed vessels anchor,— so through all 
 the tempests and floods of sorrow and persecution and 
 pain, I see these characters working their way up to 
 fixedness and beauty and fruitfulness ; and words 
 which strengthen the world's heart, and stir its slug- 
 gishness into heroism come forth from them, and 
 storm-driven souls moor themselves to them, and sor- 
 row and pain creep into their shadow, and draw rest 
 from their restfulness. Jesus, the author and finisher 
 of our faith: nothing in his character is more impres- 
 sive than its perfect calm ; ''not the stillness of tor- 
 pidity, or the silence of the ice-bound Arctic Seas, but 
 a repose consistent with a rich, deep, inexhaustible 
 enthusiasm."' He was the Prince of peace. When 
 he said to his disciples, " Peace I leave you," it was 
 with a deep and good reason that he added, ''my 
 peace I give unto you ; " for the peace which he 
 gave was that which dwelt in his own, calm, harmo- 
 nious soul : and yet in him we are bidden to consider 
 ''Him who endured such contradiction of sinners 
 against himself." And Paul, who lived in the very 
 spirit and temper of Christ : looked at in its out- 
 ward incidents, there never was a more restless life — 
 
 1 Ullmann. 
 
no Faith and Character, 
 
 travelling, arguing, preaching, writing ; in prisons, 
 before mobs, and councils and kings, a life of endless 
 variety, a life to which the sense of danger must have 
 become habitual ; and yet we see none of this in the 
 man. The unrest is round him, not in him ; and, in 
 the midst of its dizzying whirl his own manhood 
 flows out in all its richness, and silently grows in 
 depth and power, and his grand work keeps on its 
 steady course, and his well-weighed words, so full of 
 cheer and instruction, come out of a heart which rests 
 in calm conviction and in undisturbed trust. De- 
 pend upon it, there is a point of rest somewhere in 
 the heart of the storm. It must be that this very 
 shifting and tumult cover some blessed secret which 
 those only discover who walk through the midst of 
 flood and fire. This cold, hard, bustling world ! 
 When a man comes fresh and warm from his first 
 contact with Christ, he shrinks from it as from a 
 tumbling and freezing sea. Christ points him to his 
 work in a sphere where it appears to him as if all his 
 spirituality, all his calm, all his bright, cheerful hope 
 must be swallowed up and lost. Perhaps the kind of 
 Christian experience which he has in mind as an 
 ideal will be swallowed up. If his ideal is exhausted 
 in the first raptures of forgiven sin, if it is a monastic 
 ideal of secluded musing and spiritual ecstasy, be 
 sure Christ is striking directly at it. He has some- 
 thing better for him than that, and he means that he 
 shall find it. And, as he goes down with fear and 
 trembling into that uncongenial sphere, and puts his 
 hand to that unpromising work, the first thing he will 
 
Rest Given and Rest Found. m 
 
 learn will be the need of a constant contact of his life 
 with Christ. The memory of the first contact will 
 not answer. He must have Christ with him alway ; 
 and to his surprise he will begin to find that this sense 
 of personal, hourly contact with his Lord swallows 
 up in itself the disturbance and annoyance from with- 
 out. He will find that the very rage and cruelty and 
 opposition, which drive him closer and closer to 
 Christ, only open to him new secrets of loveliness, 
 'and new resources in Christ's character. He will 
 find, to his delight, that it is possible, amid the world's 
 sordidness and meanness, which call out his disgust ; 
 amid its upheavings and tumults, which appeal to his 
 fears ; amid the bitter sorrows which call forth his 
 tears ; amid the drudgery which tires — he will find, I 
 say, that it is possible for a man to carry a peaceful 
 heart in his bosom ; a rest which these things cannot 
 disturb ; a quiet consciousness of the pressure of 
 God's everlasting arms underneath him w^hich shall 
 keep him in perfect peace. This is the rest that is 
 found. It is not, it cannot be the rest of the new- 
 born soul. It comes only through experience, only 
 through the pressure of Christ's yoke. Paul said, 
 " I am persuaded ; " as if life and death and things 
 present and things to come had been presenting their 
 arguments and their menaces to shake the repose of 
 his soul, and he had beaten them all back. ** I am 
 persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, 
 nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, 
 nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from 
 the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 
 
112 Faith and Character, 
 
 So then, ye who are in the midst of life's whirl to- 
 day, fighting and bearing, striking and being stricken, 
 do not look backward to an earlier experience of the 
 love and rest which are in Christ, as to some brighter 
 day which never shall kindle again until Heaven's 
 morning break. That was not your best nor your 
 purest rest. Look for rest in your conflict. Expect 
 to find it to-day and to-morrow, and all along to the 
 end ; to find it in the working out of your Christian 
 manhood ; in your conquest over self, in the disci- 
 pline of sorrow, in the faithful dealing with routine 
 and drudgery. It is there for you. Ye shall find rest, 
 as the world slips away and leaves you alone with 
 Christ, the rest which comes through the deeper 
 stamp of his character upon yours. The reason why 
 many of your lives are so uneasy, is that you are look- 
 ing for rest in the removal of your burden instead of 
 in the bearing of it. The rest lies right under the yoke , 
 a?id notuhere else. Learn to seek it there. 
 
 *• We ask for peace, O Lord, 
 
 Thy children ask Thy peace; 
 Not what the world calls rest, 
 
 That toil and care should cease, 
 That through bright sunny hours 
 
 Calm life should fleet away. 
 
 And tranquil night should fade 
 
 In smiling day — 
 
 It is not for such peace that we would pray, 
 
 ** We ask Thy peace, O Lord ! 
 
 Through storm, and fear, and strife, 
 To light and guide us on, 
 
 Through a long, struggling life : 
 
Rest Given and Rest Found, 1 1 3 
 
 While no success or gain 
 
 Shall cheer the desperate fight, 
 
 Or nerve, what the world calls 
 
 Our wasted might : 
 
 Yet pressing through the darkness to the light. 
 
 " It is thine own, O Lord ! 
 
 Who toil while others sleep. 
 Who sow with loving care 
 
 What other hands shall reap ; 
 They lean on Thee, entranced 
 
 In calm and perfect rest : 
 
 Give us that peace, O Lord ! 
 
 Divine and blest, 
 
 Thou keepest for those hearts who love Thee best." 
 
THE DIVINE GIFT OF WISDOM. 
 
JAMES I. 
 
 (5) If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that giveth 
 
 to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be 
 given him. 
 
 (6) But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering ; for he that 
 wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind 
 and tossed. 
 
VII. 
 THE DIVINE GIFT OF WISDOM. 
 
 Wisdom is the central thought of this text. What 
 is wisdom ? 
 
 It cannot be defined in a word. In the first place, 
 it is not knowledge. You remember the lines in which 
 the distinction is so well brought out: 
 
 ** Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, 
 Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells 
 In heads replete with thoughts of other men ; 
 Wisdom, in minds attentive to their own. 
 Knowledge, a rude, unprofitable mass, 
 The mere material with which wisdom builds, 
 Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its use, 
 Doth but encumber whom it seems to enrich. 
 Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much, 
 Wisdom is humble, that he knows no more." 
 
 Wisdom represents, not so much what a man knows, 
 as his perception of the right bearing of knowledge 
 upon practice. In the Scriptures, wisdom is bound 
 up with character. It has been defined as "an in- 
 sight, rooted in faith, into whatever goes to the per- 
 fection and practical efficiency of Christian charac- 
 ter." If, therefore, knowledge grasps the facts and 
 the laws of morals and religion, wisdom discerns the 
 
Ii8 Faith a7id Character. 
 
 applications of these facts and laws to right conduct. 
 Knowledge represents only what a man knows. Wis- 
 dom tells us besides, something of what he is. Solo- 
 mon, viewed as one who knew all the trees and shrubs 
 from the cedar to the hyssop, all beasts and fowl and 
 creeping things and fishes, was merely a man of 
 knowledge. His asking God for heavenly under- 
 standing instead of for wealth or power, his decision 
 w^hen the two mothers appeared before him with their 
 claim for the same child, proved him a wise man. 
 Hence, in the Bible, you constantly find wisdom as- 
 sociated with moral traits. In our text, it is con- 
 nected with trial of faith and with patience. We are 
 told by the Psalmist that its beginning is the fear of 
 the Lord ; and James describes the wisdom which is 
 from above by moral characteristics : it is pure, peace- 
 able, gentle, easy to be entreated, without partiality 
 and without hypocrisy. 
 
 We have nothing to do, therefore, with that prac- 
 tical shrewdness which goes in the world under the 
 name of wisdom. We are concerned with that di- 
 vine gift of spiritual insight which acquaints a man 
 with God's truth as it is related to his becoming a 
 good, useful, and truly happy man. The object of 
 living to which we are here directed by the apostle 
 is, that we may be perfect and entire, wanting noth- 
 ing. And we can easily see why patience comes in just 
 here, and why we are exhorted to let it have its per- 
 fect work ; because growing perfect and entire is not 
 easily nor quickly done, especially when the standard 
 of perfection is God's. 
 
The Divine Gift of Wisdom. 119 
 
 Here, then, is where the need of wisdom reveals 
 itself. If living were merely a question of getting 
 bread and clothes and shelter and amusement, while 
 it would still be a very hard problem to many, it 
 would be greatly simplified to many more. But the 
 moment you introduce the moral element into life, 
 the moment you make life something to be devel- 
 oped with primary reference to God, to character, 
 and to eternity — the moment, in other words, you add 
 to the problem of getting food and clothing and 
 home, the problem of being pure and truthful and 
 generous and patient and brave and tender — of being 
 Christlike, in short — that moment you greatly enno- 
 ble living, but you make it, at the same time, a much 
 more serious and difficult thing. That is true both 
 as to our thinking and our acting. The questions of 
 our age about literature, science, or politics, we can 
 master them, or if not, it does not so much matter. 
 The next generation will do it, or the next, and the 
 solution of many of these questions affects some of 
 us very remotely indeed. But these great moral and 
 spiritual questions growing out of God's relation to 
 us, and out of our relation through God to the world 
 — these touch us. They come into the region of our 
 joys, our successes, our friendships, our choices. We 
 want to answer them each for himself, and yet how 
 successive generations have wrestled with these same 
 questions, and have found them hard questions as we 
 do. 
 
 And on the active, practical side of life, it is the 
 same. The hardest thing that you and I confront is, 
 
I20 Faith and Character. 
 
 how to be good, how to keep down the devils in us, 
 and to keep out those around us : how to choke sel- 
 fishness, how to abate pride, how to rejoice in an- 
 other's success where w^e fail, how to keep conscience 
 unsullied on its Godward side. Do you find these 
 things easy, any of you — that is, any of you who have 
 honestly set yourselves to work out this problem, and 
 are not trying to get round it ? I think not ; and you 
 are not alone in your difficulty either : for these moral 
 questions, both theoretical an4 practical, are the very 
 questions which we find troubling earnest men as far 
 back as we can read history. ** It is a solemn thing 
 to die," it is said. Truly, it seems to me that living 
 is the solemn thing, and that the solemnity which at- 
 taches to death grows mostly out of its relation to 
 life ; to the life which it closes, and to the larger life 
 which it introduces. 
 
 I repeat, that the moment you introduce the moral 
 element into living, that moment you make living a 
 problem of thq first magnitude. Look at our text and 
 context. Here is an exhortation which strikes seven 
 men out of ten as a paradox : '* Count it all joy when 
 ye fall into divers trials." '^ That is ridiculous," says 
 the average man of the world. Trial is not a pleas- 
 ant nor a joyful thing. Not only so, he says it is all 
 wrong and inconsistent that a good, true, generous 
 man should suffer. If he does right, he ought to be 
 prosperous and happy. If he does wrong, why then 
 it is his own fault if he suffers. That was the way in 
 which Eliphaz, the Temanite, put it to Job ; and Job 
 himself, who had tacitly accepted the same popular 
 
TJie Divhie Gift of Wisdom. 121 
 
 view of reward and punishment, for that very reason 
 found his affliction such a mystery. Why do the 
 good suffer ? is one of the main questions underlying 
 that wonderful poem. So Eliphaz stands by the ash 
 heap, and begins to moralize. He has a very easy 
 explanation of that pitiable spectacle, '^ Bethink thee 
 now : whoever perished, being innocent, and when 
 have the upright been cut off ? As I have seen, they 
 who plow iniquity and sow mischief, reap it. At the 
 breath of God they perish." The logic of all which 
 is : " You, Job, must have sinned, else you would not 
 be afflicted." And because Job persists in maintain- 
 ing his integrity, and refuses to renounce his con- 
 scious innocence until he has been proved guilty, he 
 is loaded with reproaches by his friends. And that 
 hard problem was not solved until there came a man 
 of more sorrows and of higher wisdom than Job, who 
 said : " Every branch in me that beareth fruit, he 
 purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit." • 
 
 So as to the matter of faith which James here tells 
 us is to be developed by temptation. A large part of 
 the world is still fighting the claim of faith to a place 
 in character, and especially to the first place. " Why 
 so much admonition and so much trial to develop 
 faith ? Sight, not faith, is the thing. Walk only 
 where you can see. Believe only the evidence of your 
 senses." And we who recognize the claim of faith, 
 and admit that the life of faith is the higher, rarer 
 life, do we find it easy to live by faith ? Are we al- 
 w^ays patient under the trials which test and aim to 
 
 develop faith ? Is it always easy to be cheerful when 
 6 
 
122 Faith and Character. 
 
 we go after God into rough and crooked ways ? Does 
 faith always make our dark nights full of songs ? Do 
 we find it easy to believe in God's love for us while 
 the strokes of His rod are falling ? 
 
 All these, you see, are questions of character. 
 Faith, patience, temptation resisted, yielded to, or 
 translated into power, are elements in character- 
 building. A thousand experiences test our faith : a 
 thousand temptations call out our strength and cour- 
 age and caution : a thousand burdens tax our patience. 
 If the problem were only to get round the burdens, 
 or to shirk the trials, or, at worst, to nerve one's self 
 doggedly to bear and get along with such things 
 somehow, it were comparatively simple ; but to walk 
 by an intelligent faith in God, with a clear conscious- 
 ness of the power and preciousness of the principle 
 of faith, to be initiated into the laws of that life 
 where trial and suffering are God's ministers of per- 
 fection, nothing will serve us here but wisdom. 
 
 If that will solve these questions for us, if that will 
 unravel the great Sphynx riddle of life, shall we call 
 the Bible's estimate of wisdom extravagant, even 
 when expressed in Job's words : '^ Man knoweth not 
 the price thereof, neither is it found in the land of 
 the living. The depth saith : It is not in me, and the 
 sea saith : It is not with me. It cannot be gotten for 
 gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price 
 thereof. The gold and the crystal cannot equal it ; 
 and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine 
 gold ? " 
 
 And as we face, sometimes almost in desperation. 
 
The Divine Gift of Wisdom. 123 
 
 these great questions of right, godly living, this fight 
 and climb toward goodness, as we cry with Job, 
 ** Where shall wisdom be found, and where is the 
 place of understanding ? " we are met with the sim- 
 ple answer of the text: *'Ask God for it, and you 
 shall have it." Is it not beautiful, godlike, the large, 
 generous way in which the Bible offers the most rare 
 and precious gifts to men ? What a sense of omni- 
 potence and of infinite love pervades such offers as 
 this. The thing you want is God's, simply ask for it 
 and you shall have it. 
 
 And this divine generosity is thrown into high re- 
 lief by the very wording of the text : '' God, who 
 giveth to all men liberally." But our translation, 
 while it states the truth, covers up a part of it which 
 is very precious, namely, the description of God as, in 
 His very 7iature, a giver. Literally it is, " let him ask 
 of God the giver" and those words, '' the giver," are 
 put first to emphasize them. So that we are not 
 only told w^here to ask, but are encouraged to ask by 
 being told that God is, in His very nature, a giving 
 God. 
 
 More than this, we are told ho7v God gives ; which 
 is not the least important element in the case. For 
 you know how, in giving and receiving among men, 
 the value of the gift itself to the receiver is greatly 
 affected by the mode of bestowal. If I do for my 
 neighbor the favor he asks with sullen reluctance, 
 with w^ords which show that I regard him as an in- 
 truder and his request as an impertinence, I make 
 the favor a bitterness instead of a blessing to him. 
 
124 Faith and Character, 
 
 A penny given, a little, insignificant serv^ice rendered 
 with a smile and a blessing, is more to the receiver 
 than a princely gift bestowed with a curse. That 
 way of giving has found expression for itself in the 
 phrase, 'Ho do one a kindness," which is more than 
 simply doing a favor, however great. Now this char- 
 acteristic of God's giving is strongly marked. We are 
 relieved of the fear that God will give what we ask in 
 such a way as to make us regret that we ever asked. 
 *' He giveth, simj>/y," for that is the true meaning of 
 the word, rendered "liberally." And then, byway of 
 explaining the word, there is added, " and upbraideth 
 not." So that the text says just this : that God, when 
 He bestows a gift, adds nothing to it w^hich may take 
 from its graciousness. He gives the gift simply ; 
 which is just what Solomon says in other words : 
 " The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and He 
 addeth no sorrow with it ; " and Paul likewise tells us 
 that ^' the gifts and calling of God are without repent- 
 ance." If men's own conscious wickedness and un- 
 worthiness make God's gifts a reproach to them, the 
 reproach is not God's. God gives the gift simply 
 and in good faith : the reproach comes from the re- 
 ceiver's side. There is no reproach given with the 
 sunshine w^iich streams into the bad man's window 
 and awakes him to another day of crime. There is 
 no reproach falling with the rain and the dew into 
 the field w^on by oppression and robbery. " He mak- 
 eth His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and 
 sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." 
 
 Then, too, as regards human giving, self enters in 
 
The Divine Gift of Wisdom. 125 
 
 various subtle ways into our gifts, unconsciously of- 
 ten, so that not unfrequently we give a stone where 
 we think we are giving bread. Sometimes a request 
 betrays the folly or the ignorance of the asker ; and 
 then, how often the sense of our own superiority gets 
 into our answer, and gives it a flavor of reproach ex- 
 quisitely painful to him who asked of us only help 
 and not upbraiding. Sometimes a child or a weak 
 brother comes to us for aid in some matter which, 
 perchance, we think quite beneath our dignity. Do 
 we always stoop gracefully and cheerfully to the lit- 
 tle thing, or does our reluctance or inability to un- 
 bend make itself appreciated, and carry with it an up- 
 braiding ? Our children ask absurd questions some- 
 times, and we are in danger of checking the healt4i- 
 f ul spirit of inquiry, of doing the little hearts a w^rong 
 and of brushing the bloom from their impulsive nat- 
 uralness, by our ridicule or our rebuke. That is not 
 simple giving ; giving out of the simple, unmixed 
 desire to do another good. And that is not the way 
 God gives. He has no need to be anxious for His 
 own greatness or dignity. He is so great that He can 
 afford to be simple. He is too loving to despise 
 the smallest matter which concerns His feeblest child. 
 If our children's requests appear absurd to us, how 
 must many of our requests appear to God ? What 
 folly may He not detect under so many of the smooth 
 and stately petitions which daily rise to His ear ? 
 I think if the wisdom of our prayers were all that 
 kept them from reproach, we should get little be- 
 sides upbraiding at the mercy-seat. But no : ''Like 
 
126 Faith and Character. 
 
 as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth 
 them that fear Him." And why ? For the very rea- 
 son which might seem to make the approach to Him 
 so hard : because He knows so much. Ignorance and 
 weakness have their best chance of a hearing with in- 
 finite wisdom. He knoweth our frame, our mental 
 and moral, no less than our bodily constitution. Lit- 
 tleness ceases to be a reproach in His presence. We 
 are all alike little there ; and it is a delight to be able 
 to shelter ourselves under such greatness ; to be en- 
 compassed by it and swallowed up in it, for it touches 
 us every^vhere so lovingly and so intelligently. 
 
 If, then, any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God. 
 No one else has the gift to give him, and if any one 
 else had it, if the thing lay in human hands, James 
 could not speak as confidently as he does here about 
 the certainty of receiving it. But with a God as the 
 giver whose A^ery nature it is to give, and Avith the 
 word of Christ behind him, '' Every one that asketh 
 receiveth ; and he that seeketh findeth ; and to him 
 that knocketh it shall be opened," — our apostle has a 
 good warrant for saying : " It shall be given him ; let 
 him ask in faith, nothing w^avering. " 
 
 Now, do you see how much is implied in this assur- 
 ance, and what an invaluable one it is to you and me ? 
 Bear in mind the line of our thought. Remember 
 we are concerned with the question of making char- 
 acter, of living rightly, of getting manhood out of trial 
 and temptation, of cutting a straight path through 
 the besetments of this world. This is our problem, 
 and this statement of the text means simply that you 
 
The Divine Gift of Wisdom, 127 
 
 and I can solve that problem ; that we can learn how 
 to live, and to live purely and nobly ; that if life is a 
 fight, we may be victors in that fight ; that strong and 
 subtle as temptation is, bitter though trial be, though 
 life in the moral sphere presents many and hard 
 questions, we need not walk the world as ignorant 
 victims led to sacrifice by sin and sorrow, but rather 
 may be king's sons and daughters in our Heavenly 
 Father's house, having our conversation in heaven, 
 making trial and difficulty minister to our perfection, 
 and being intelligent sympathizers and co-workers 
 with God. This is the gift of wisdom. This result 
 only wisdom, the wisdom from above, will enable us 
 to compass. God only holds the key to that alpha- 
 bet of ciphers — life ; and God is pledged to give us 
 that key for the asking. 
 
 But as to the nature of that gift, you are to notice 
 particularly one thing. I called your attention, at 
 the outset, to the distinction between wisdom and 
 knowledge, and showed that wisdom, in the scriptural 
 sense, is bound up with character. And in pursuance 
 of that thought, remember that while character and 
 right living are the ends which wisdom contemplates, 
 wisdom also begins not in knowledge but in charac- 
 ter. That is to say, if you ask me how God will an- 
 swer your prayer for wisdom, while I can by no means 
 answer you fully, I can tell you how He will begin 
 with you in every case. Not by drawing up for you 
 systems of living, social theories, methods of study 
 and of exercise, moral philosophies. He will begin 
 by laying down for you a basis of character in these 
 
128 Faith and CJiaracter, 
 
 two words — Fear God. He will tell you that wisdom 
 — the wisdom you want to live by — depends first, not 
 on what you know, but on what you are. It is not 
 knowledge that solves the great, practical problem 
 of life. It is being in right relation to God. Try 
 and get that truth sharply defined in your thought ; 
 then you will have some idea of what you are ask- 
 ing for w^hen you ask for wisdom. *' The fear of the 
 Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Knowledge, in- 
 deed, is not excluded from heavenly wisdom, but 
 knowledge is to get its direction and its quality, and 
 its application from the stand-point of the fear of 
 God. Otherwise it has nothing to do wMth wisdom. 
 I say this on the authority of our Lord himself. He 
 was discussing this very question how to live, and he 
 said that the first thing was not to know, but to be 
 right toward God: ''Seek ye first the kingdom of 
 God and His righteousness." The rest would come in 
 due time and order. And when Nicodemus came to 
 him, assuming that the first element of heavenly wis- 
 dom was knowledge, and saying, " Rabbi, thou art a 
 teacher, thou doest great things by God's help, thou 
 canst teach us the things we want to know ; " he re- 
 ceived an answer which cut down to the very roots of 
 his mistake. The first thing, Nicodemus, is not to 
 know, but to be. Entrance into the kingdom of God 
 and life in it, is, primarily, a matter of character, not 
 of knowledge. " Except a man be born again, he 
 cannot see the kingdom of God." And so, again, 
 when Jesus went up to the feast and taught, the Jews 
 marvelled. They thought of nothing but his knowl- 
 
The Divine Gift of Wisdom, 129 
 
 edge. They said, '' How knoweth this man letters, 
 having never learned ? " And he answered them : 
 '' If any man wills to do His will, he shall know of 
 the doctrine," whether it be God's truth or no. 
 
 Perhaps you will repeat the question : How will 
 God impart wisdom to me ? I have told you how 
 He will begin ; beyond that I cannot say. His meth- 
 ods and His instruments will differ in different cases, 
 according to the material upon which He has to 
 work. It has always been so ; even as the writer to 
 the Hebrews tells us that God spake ''in divers man- 
 ners " unto the fathers. He has used many and strange 
 instruments in times past. He has made very com- 
 mon things the means of introducing men to His wis- 
 dom : — a stone on which Jacob pillowed his head ; 
 a thorn-bush where Moses pastured his flock ; a com- 
 mon stick in Moses' hand ; a dumb beast on which 
 Balaam rode ; a flask of oil in a poor widow's hut. 
 There is no predicting what things or what facts God 
 may make vehicles of His wisdom to us. One or two 
 things we may count on as very likely to happen, 
 when we ask and receive God's gift of wisdom. One 
 is that our wisdom will be thrust aside in a great 
 many cases ; that our conclusions and pet theories 
 will be contradicted ; and that very different courses 
 will be marked out for us from those we had chosen 
 for ourselves. Another is that we shall not get our 
 wisdom all at once. Jesus himself, in his earthly life, 
 increased in wisdom as well as in stature. We must 
 be prepared for God's taking time, and developing 
 His gift along the line of the trials and temptations 
 
130 Faith and Character. 
 
 which go to perfection of character. Much of our 
 wisdom will come through these. So that in the 
 attainment of this gift, as ever^'where in our Chris- 
 tian discipline, we must " let patience have her per- 
 fect work." 
 
 Another fact is that the wisdom which God gives 
 will leave us in ignorance of a great many things. 
 A part of our wisdom will come in our learning that 
 there are things we cannot learn, and in our cheerful 
 waiting before those closed gates, till God shall see 
 fit to open them. Such will be some of the deep, 
 fundamental mysteries of His government. Such 
 will be some of His providences which touch us most 
 hardly ; dispensations of His which shall seem charged 
 only with wrath. Mere knowledge, or mere human 
 reason, in the presence of these things, will be like 
 one who tries to combine the two sides of a stereo- 
 scopic picture with the naked eye. He cannot bring 
 them into unity, even as reason cannot reconcile 
 God's providences with each other. Wisdom will 
 apply the glass of faith, and keep it fixed, spite of all 
 the confusion, until, not perhaps till the clearer light 
 of heaven shall have risen, all the dealings of God 
 shall fall into place as one perfect whole. 
 
 Here, then, let us sum up the matter. The great 
 question for you and me to answer is, how to live and 
 to build up character according to God's law. 
 
 The question is one which human research cannot 
 answer satisfactorily. History shows that the men 
 who have had most knowledge, have not known best 
 how to live. 
 
TJie Divine Gift of Wisdom. 131 
 
 It is answered for us by the offer of wisdom ; that 
 heavenly gift, which is pure and peaceable and gentle 
 and patient ; that gift which, in its very essence, is 
 bound up with character. 
 
 The gift is promised us for the asking, on the au- 
 thority of a God whose nature it is to give, and who 
 offers the gift simply, to all who ask in faith, without 
 anything to detract from its value. 
 
 And this wisdom, beginning in the fear of God, is 
 not only for the general regulation of life. It de- 
 scends to details. You and I can have it and avail 
 ourselves of it in those daily, petty trials and ques- 
 tions which make up so much of life. It is a gift 
 for mothers, to teach them to be right and to keep 
 right in all the petty perplexities of domestic life ; for 
 business men, to help them in maintaining high ideals 
 and honest lives ; for school children, to keep them 
 faithful to duty, and to solve for them the questions 
 of right doing which arise in their intercourse with 
 their fellows. All of us may walk with God, and 
 when we are ignorant, ask and receive. 
 
 If such is the importance and value of this gift, 
 what is life without it ? Is it not a serious thing for 
 any man to launch out upon that troubled sea with- 
 out this compass ? Is it not, in view of what we have 
 seen, the best economy of life to begin it in the fear 
 of God, through faith in Jesus Christ ? Shall we not 
 be held to a fearful responsibility if, with divine wis- 
 dom placed freely at our control, and offered with 
 abundant love, we choose to live by our own theories, 
 and make shipwreck of life at last ? 
 
THE PATCHED GARMENT. 
 
LUKE V. 
 
 (;^6) And he spake also a parable unto them. No man put- 
 teth a piece of a new garment upon an old ; if other- 
 wise, then he both will rend the new, and the piece 
 that was taken out of the new agrecth not with the old. 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE PATCHED GARMENT. 
 
 At the feast which Levi made for his friends on 
 the occasion of his forsaking liis old employment and 
 entering upon the service of Christ, the disciples of 
 John and tlie Pharisees for once joined forces, in 
 charging upon Christ neglect of the fasts which 
 formed so important a part of their practice. 
 
 Our Lord's answer furnishes several points of great 
 interest, but we are concerned at present with only 
 one part of it ; that, namely, which contrasts the old 
 and the new — the legal and the gospel dispensations. 
 Stated fasts belonged to the ceremonial economy. 
 That was now passing away with the entrance of the 
 gospel. The gospel economy, with its large liberty, 
 would indeed permit, and even encourage, fasting or 
 any similar rite as a means conscientiously adopted 
 to promote a higher spiritual consecration and ser- 
 vice ; but the day of fasting for fasting's sake had 
 gone by. The gospel system was a new and beautiful 
 w^hole. Men were not to take such parts of it as com- 
 mended themselves to their acceptance, and to seek 
 to combine them with the worn-out system of rites 
 and ceremonies. The incongruity would be apparent. 
 The new system would be mutilated, the old would 
 
136 Faith and Character. 
 
 lose its consistency. The effect would be like that 
 of taking a piece out of a new garment to mend a 
 worn-out one. The new garment would be spoiled, 
 and the rotten threads of the old garment would not 
 hold the new piece ; it would soon tear itself loose, 
 and the rent would be made worse. Let the old gar- 
 ment be thrown aside altogether, and the new substi- 
 tuted. Let the old system of ceremonies go, and let 
 the gospel be accepted entire. 
 
 The applications of this truth are very numerous. 
 It would be interesting to study them, for instance, 
 in the history of the church, and to see how the vari- 
 ous attempts to combine the gospel, or portions of 
 it with other faiths, have failed. Tlic liistory of the 
 apostolic church shows how futile were the efforts to 
 graft it upon Judaism. Peter, to take a single in- 
 stance, would have striven to make his new faith and 
 apostolic zeal work Avith the Jewish separativeness 
 which would have kept him from the gentile Corne- 
 lius. That vision of the great sheet, with its mingled 
 beasts, tore the patch loose from tlie old garment at 
 once. Still worse was the fate of those later attempts 
 to combine the gospel with the philosophies of hea- 
 thenism. The two would not go together. The 
 patched system was worse rent than the out-worn 
 creed. 
 
 But I wish to discuss this fact in its more limited 
 relations to personal faith and character ; and, with 
 this view, let us first take up the figure of the text — 
 this new patch on old cloth — in some very familiar 
 applications. 
 
The PatcJied Garment. 137 
 
 We appreciate easily the offensiveness of what is 
 incongruous. It is fatal alike to beauty, to symmetry, 
 and to effectiveness. A sparrow is not as beautiful 
 as a bird of Paradise, yet the little brown bird is a 
 pleasant sight. Try to fasten upon him the gorgeous 
 plumage of the other bird, and you make him ridicu- 
 lous at once. His beauty consists in being simply 
 himself. An inferior thing that is constant to its 
 own ideal, consistent, true, is a far more useful and a 
 far more pleasurable thing than when you try to 
 make it look like something else, or do the work of 
 something else, or take it out of its place and put it 
 in circumstances to which it has no adaptation. Take 
 a plain stone wall, for instance. There is nothing 
 very artistic about it, but if it be well and truly 
 built, a simple wall and nothing else, it is not an un- 
 pleasing object. But now go to the ruins of that 
 Gothic church, and bring away the sculptured key- 
 stone of an arch, the fragments of a carved screen, a 
 column with an elaborately cut capital, and sundry 
 pinnacles and gargoyles, and work these into the 
 masonry of your wall, and set up your pinnacles 
 along the top, and let your gargoyles protrude their 
 hideous heads at intervals : you have made a ridicu- 
 lous thing out of your stone wall. People at once 
 see that something is there which belongs to quite 
 another order of things. Everybody acknowledges 
 the difference between the church and the plain 
 wall, and the difference offends no one so long as 
 each keeps its place and is simply itself. But the at- 
 tempt to patch one with the other emphasizes the 
 
138 Faith and CJia^'actcr. 
 
 difference offensively. The rent is made worse : the 
 beauty is taken from the church, and the wall is made 
 ugly. 
 
 I remember an old farmer who, when he was about 
 sixty years of age, professed faith in Christ. He was 
 full of zeal, and, for a time, was like a flaming torch 
 in the neighborhood. I never saw a man who seemed 
 to feel so keenly the awful risk he had run in delay- 
 ing his salvation so long. He could not be in a 
 prayer-meeting without rising to warn his fellow-men 
 against his mistake. But he was also an ignorant 
 man, and his new experience only deepened his sense 
 of his ignorance of the things of God ; and he used 
 to shut himself in his room with volumes on syste- 
 matic theology, and painfully wade through their 
 contents, and then come down to the prayer-meeting 
 and attempt to reproduce what he had read ; and 
 you can easily imagine the result. So long as he 
 kept to his own experience, so long as he was just 
 himself, speaking of what he knew and felt, he spoke 
 with power. The moment he tried to patch the theo- 
 logian upon the plain farmer, he spoiled it all. The 
 theology was ruined and so was the personal experi- 
 ence. The ignorance which no one would have 
 thought of in the plain man speaking out of a full 
 heart, was thrust into prominence by the ridiculous 
 attempt to play the part of a theological teacher. 
 The rent was made worse. 
 
 It would be easy to multiply similar illustrations. 
 These are all that are necessary to show us the ordi- 
 nary applications of the truth. Let us now look at 
 
The Patched Garment, 139 
 
 its applications to the gospel as a system and as a 
 life. 
 
 The gospel is a unit ; one and inseparable. It is 
 sufficient unto itself. It asks no aid from any source 
 outside of itself. It needs no combination to de- 
 velop its peculiar virtues. The great truth it sets 
 before men is Christ all, and in all. And it does its 
 work for and in man upon the condition that it be 
 received as it is : entire, adding notliing and subtract- 
 ing nothing. It does not engage that there shall be 
 virtue in its fragments apart from the whole. You 
 may take up the lock of that rifle, and pull and snap 
 it as much as you please, and it will be a good while 
 before you shoot anything. You must combine it 
 with the barrel and the stock. Neitlier lock, stock, 
 nor barrel is good for anything, except as they to- 
 gether make up a rifle. Similarly, I cannot answer 
 for the effect of a single Christian precept or doc- 
 trine disjoined from the whole. It is only a patch, 
 cut out from a good, solid garment, and refusing to 
 match with any other fabric. 
 
 Nicodemus came to Christ full of this notion of 
 patching pieces of the new Teacher's doctrine upon 
 the old Jewish robe. The thought of any inconsist- 
 ency or incongruity never occurred to him. He sim- 
 ply expected to get from Christ certain new items of 
 knowledge, certain new maxims of duty, perhaps, 
 which he might combine with his familiar religious 
 ideas. Christ very soon opened his eyes to that de- 
 lusion. It is curious to see how the Rabbi's first 
 remark and Christ's answer are like pieces from two 
 
140 Faith and Character. 
 
 entirely different garments. The Rabbi says, "Thou 
 art a teacher from God. The kingdom of God is mere 
 teaching and learning." Christ says, "Except a man 
 be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. 
 The entrance into the kingdom of God, Nicodemus, is 
 not through learning, but through becoming a new 
 man. The kingdom of God embraces new w^orks 
 indeed, but it requires a new man to do the new 
 works. The question is not a question of a few scraps 
 of wisdom which I might give you, a few works which 
 you think j^ou might learn to do. It is a question of 
 a new economy, a new administration, a new nature 
 in you." Christ's Avords in Nicodemus' mouth, and 
 Christ's works in his hands, would have been indeed 
 like a piece of a new garment sewn upon an old one. 
 Tlie rent w^ould liavc been made worse. They would 
 have torn liim loose from both economies. The Jews 
 would have rejected such sentiments with horror, 
 and would probably have stoned him for blasphemy. 
 They w^ould have cursed him as a traitor to the tradi- 
 tions of the elders. The Jewish ceremonial robe 
 would not hold that new piece for a moment : while, 
 on the other hand, the new garment would liave been 
 disfigured. Nicodemus, tlie Master in Israel, with a 
 few of Christ's precepts on his lips, and a little of 
 Christ's practice in his life, would not have repre- 
 sented Christ and the gospel, any more than the patch 
 represents the garment. He would have been a cari- 
 cature of a Christian. 
 
 And yet it is on this very kind of patchwork, tliis 
 effort to piece fragments of Christianity upon other 
 
The Patched Garment. 141 
 
 systems, or to combine the practice of gospel pre- 
 cepts with an unrenewed nature, that scores and lum- 
 dreds of men and women are engaged to-day. I do 
 not think that square rejection of the gospel is much 
 more deplorable than these attempts, which really 
 amount to the same thing. I doubt if hostile sys- 
 tems are more dangerous than these hybrids. 
 
 Take the gospel as a history and as a moral code. 
 Nothing is more common than the practice of pick- 
 ing out of it this or that, holding it up to admira- 
 tion, and even reverence, working it up with some 
 philosophic system of morality, and, at the same time, 
 casting away a large part of what accompanies it in 
 the New Testament. Modern literature is full of such 
 experiments. Skeptical schools are founded upon 
 this theory of dealing with the gospel. We are told, 
 for example, that the gospel system of morality is of 
 a very pure and elevated character, that Christ him- 
 self was a model of excellence, and, in the same 
 breath, that the gospels are a mixture of history and 
 of legend, that miracles are an absurdity and an im- 
 possibility, that Jesus was no more than man, and 
 that his dying on the cross for the world's sins is a 
 mere theological fiction. We are met in the same 
 volume by such a panegyric as this : *' Wliatever may 
 be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never be sur- 
 passed. All ages will proclaim that among the sons 
 of men, there is none born greater than Jesus. Tlie 
 sermon on the mount is the most beautiful code of 
 perfect life that any moralist has ever traced." And 
 then, turning back to read the life of this wonderful 
 
142 Faith and Character. 
 
 moralist, we find it gravely asserted that the great- 
 ness of his moral ideal compelled him to seek its ac- 
 complisliment by impure means, by pretending to be 
 wliat he was not, by concocting juggler's tricks to 
 pass with the multitude for miracles.* Is not this, in- 
 deed, rending the new garment ? This cutting of 
 patches out of the New Testament has gone on at 
 such a furious rate that one may be pardoned for 
 using the caustic words of a modern apologist,' in 
 speaking of the boldness with which the name of 
 ** Christian " is assumed, *'\Vhen you have ceased 
 to believe all that is specially characteristic of the 
 New Testament, its history, its miracles, its peculiar 
 doctrines, you may still be a genuine Christian." 
 They separate the example of Jesus from his salva- 
 tion. They cut out his teaching, but leave behind his 
 atonement. He is an apostle, but he is not a High 
 Priest. His manhood can be worked into their phil- 
 osophies, but it must be cut loose from his divine 
 nature. Christ was a splendid pattern of manhood. 
 Oh, yes ; but everything in the New Testament re- 
 lating to miracles is fable and legend ; because, you 
 see, a miracle is plainly impossible. 
 
 Now the question at present is not whether Christ 
 was divine, or whether miracles are possible or not. 
 The point is that whatever leaves out these elements, 
 is not Christianity, however it may call itself so. It 
 were as sensible to cut a piece from yonder splendid 
 velvet mantle, and sew it upon a calico gown, and 
 
 ^ Renan. ^jjei^ry Rogers. 
 
The Patched Garment, 143 
 
 then to say that the calico is velvet. Christianity, it 
 cannot be repeated too often, is not the combination 
 of certain elements of the gospel with some moral or 
 philosophic theory of man's devising. It is the gos- 
 pel pure and simple ; the gospel entire, the gospel as 
 it was given by Christ, and illustrated by Christ, and 
 borne witness to, with ''signs and wonders, and di- 
 vers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost," and 
 made over to man in its fulness and power by the 
 blood of the everlasting covenant. He who would 
 call himself Christian must take the gospel thus, or 
 call himself by another name. Christ's exalted hu- 
 manity is not the gospel. The sermon on the mount 
 is not the gospel. Christ's example is not the gos-- 
 pel. Christ's deity is not the gospel. Miracles are 
 not the gospel. But Christ's deity and Iiumanity ; 
 Christ's person and doctrine ; precept and example ; 
 miracles and gracious words ; atonement and teach- 
 ing, all blend in one consummate whole to form the 
 gospel ; and any presentation of it which leaves out 
 any of these, belittles it, and rends the new and perfect 
 garment. 
 
 The application of any of these elements disjoined 
 from the rest is equally unfortunate. They fare like 
 the new piece on the old garment. Take Christ's 
 person and join it with any human philosophy of 
 morals, with the best and purest of the much lauded 
 pagan creeds, and your elements will not combine. 
 Christ does not fit into Stoicism, or Platonism, or 
 Mahometanism. Take the story of Socrates and put 
 the Christ of the gospel in the place of Socrates, and 
 
144 Faith and CJiaracter. 
 
 the result would be simply monstrous. Christ is too 
 large for these. He is of another mould and of an- 
 other fibre. He tears loose from them on every hand. 
 His aims are different, his spirit is purer, his character 
 is nobler. 
 
 You say, perhaps, you accept the historic gospels 
 so far as they present Christ as a man, and you piece 
 this mere humanity of Jesus upon your rationalism 
 which rejects miracles. I have only to say, when you 
 find yourself confronted in that very manhood Avith 
 a greater miracle than was ever ascribed to the Son of 
 man, try to find your way out of the difficulty through 
 the mere manhood of Christ. Try to explain his life, 
 his teaching, his power in the world by human con- 
 ditions, and see if the rent be not made worse. 
 
 You say, and say honestly, no doubt, that you want 
 to be right and to do right, but you can accept the 
 gospel only in part. Christ's moral code is all very 
 well, but the doctrine of the new birth you cannot 
 accept. So you go to cutting patches again. You cut 
 the moral code clear from the new birth. You will 
 keep Christ's precepts without being a new creature. 
 You will sew the new code upon the old nature. 
 
 Very well. Some people in a city think they will 
 build a f(mntain. They engage an engineer, and a 
 noted sculptor. A beautiful design is carried out in 
 stone or bronze. The water is to pour from vases in 
 the hands of sea-nymphs, and to spout from the horns 
 of tritons. At last all is ready. The crowd assemble 
 to witness the opening of the fountain. The signal is 
 given, there is a little spirt from a jet here and there, 
 
The Patched Garment. 145 
 
 and then all is dry as before. The stupid engineer 
 has drawn his water from a point almost as low as 
 the base of the fountain, and there is no head to send 
 the water through the pipes. But a more competent 
 workman comes to the rescue. He lays a large 
 main. He leads it to a deep lake or reservoir far up 
 above the town ; and now, at the signal, the crystal 
 waters shoot high into the air, and drape the beau- 
 tiful forms with tlieir falling spray. Oh, my friend, 
 I greatly fear you have not rightly estimated that 
 moral system of Christ. It is grander than you 
 think ; higher than you are aware ; and to make 
 your life flow through it to refresh the world, you will 
 need something besides the pressure of your feeble 
 will. Your reservoir is too low down. If your life 
 is to fill that godlike outline of virtue, its impulse 
 must be divine. If your impulse is earthly, your life 
 will be earthly. That moral code was meant for a 
 new man, and nothing but a birth from above, noth- 
 ing but an impulse generated and maintained by God 
 Himself, will ever enable you to live it. The new 
 code and the new man will not be separated. If they 
 shall not go together the gospel will be caricatured 
 by you, and the new precepts will break loose con- 
 tinually from the old will and the old passions and 
 the old habits, and the rent will be worse. 
 
 Men talk of turning over a new leaf — of beginning 
 over again. How many times you hear it. *' Yes, I 
 have been careless, self-indulgent, hasty and passion- 
 ate ; I am going to try and do better." Never does 
 the old year strike its last hour, that hundreds and 
 7 
 
1 4^ Faith and Character, 
 
 thousands of people are not lying wakeful and 
 thoughtful upon their beds, or sitting with sober 
 meditation in their closets, and gathering up their 
 faculties into mighty resolutions for the year to come. 
 ** I will swear no more. I will drink no more. I 
 will go to the house of God. I will begin to read 
 my Bible." The resolutions are good and honest, no 
 doubt. It is a good thing that one's attention has 
 been called to those faults. It will be a better thing 
 if he can carry out his resolution and master them ; 
 but, alas, neither the good resolutions nor their ac- 
 complishment go far enough. It is patch-work still ; 
 patching pieces of the gospel on the old nature ; a 
 temperance piece, and a Bible-reading piece, and a 
 church-going piece, upon a nature which, in its very 
 quality and essence, is estranged from God. The man 
 gives up an indulgence here and there, says to God in 
 effect, '' Your moral law may come and occupy this 
 ground which has been occupied by my misdoing ; " 
 but such an entrance of God's law is like the occupa- 
 tion of some remote outpost of a fortified town by an 
 invader. The citadel is still unreached. The situa- 
 tion is commanded by the garrison of the town. 
 There is no conquest until the invader gets in there. 
 You reform a drunkard. It is a good thing, a thing 
 to thank God for. And yet making him a sober 
 man does not accomplish the work which Christ 
 wants to do on him. Making him a sober man 
 will not save him. He may become a sober man and 
 remain an avaricious man, a dishonest man, an un- 
 kind man, a licentious man. The man is not re- 
 
The Patched Garment, 147 
 
 formed ; the fountain of his life is not cleansed. He 
 is better than he was in that one thing, but he is not 
 a new creature in Christ Jesus. His reform is by no 
 means a safe one either. He has taken a pledge ; he 
 has made a solemn vow in good faith, but the pledge 
 is a patch sewn upon an enervated will, upon a de- 
 praved appetite, upon a moral nature enfeebled by 
 indulgence, and these are too weak to hold the 
 stitches. It will not be strange if the rent is made 
 worse. Give the man a new nature, a new point of 
 rest, a new impulse to duty, a new and ruling pas- 
 sion for Christ, a will sustained by faith ; make his 
 whole life one of reliance on another's strength and 
 another's merit, and you surround his temperance 
 with something that will hold it. It is no longer a 
 patch, but of the solid fabric woven of virtue, knowl- 
 edge, faith, love, patience. 
 
 Yes, that is what Christ wants in his work upon 
 men — a new creature ; a garment like his own, one 
 piece, without seam. On you who are revolving 
 to-day the question of duty and of destiny, this 
 truth forces itself. Christianity has so woven itself 
 into the social fabric, Christ's ideas circulate so un- 
 consciously in the very life-blood of society, that 
 hundreds of men exhibit Christian traits, and are 
 swayed more or less by Christian precepts without 
 being Christians, and are content with this partial, 
 fragmentary reproduction of the gospel. But it is 
 with such as when, from the ruins of a buried city, 
 one digs out a beautifully chiselled marble hand or 
 head. Men say, " how beautiful the whole must be." 
 
148 Faith and Character, 
 
 The very beauty of the fragment creates special dis- 
 appointment at the loss of the statue. The rent is 
 made worse. To one who looks at this matter from 
 Christ's standpoint, a moral man without consecra- 
 tion to Christ is a sad spectacle. The sense of his 
 great, fundamental need is heightened by his very 
 excellencies. He is so honorable, so upright, so 
 kindly, he bears himself so nobly in trouble, he is 
 so helpful to others, that we long for the presence 
 in him of that one power that would gather up these 
 shining qualities into itself, and fuse them into one 
 absorbing enthusiasm for Christ, and set them all 
 working together toward the high aims of Christ's 
 kingdom. There was sorrow in more than one heart 
 that day when the young ruler turned his back on 
 Jesus, and refused the one thing which he lacked. 
 Jesus mourned no less than he, but for a different 
 cause. He loved him for his zeal, his honesty, his 
 fidelity to the teachings of his childhood, but he 
 grieved at the refusal to follow him, which vitiated 
 the whole. 
 
 I say to you plainly, you who seek virtue, you who 
 believe in goodness, you who love and would lead 
 pure lives — only one thing w^ll compass your desire. 
 It is not the forsaking of this or that evil habit. It 
 is not the adoption of this or that Christian precept. 
 It is not the assent to such detached portions of the 
 gospel as may commend themselves to your reason. 
 These are good, but they need a principle to unify 
 them, and to direct them upon the chief good, and 
 to mould them into a life. But one thing is need- 
 
Tlie PatcJied Garment. 149 
 
 ful, and that is the new life of the gospel, a new birth 
 in Christ Jesus ; the gospel entire, its moral transfor- 
 mation as well as its precepts ; the gospel entire, 
 nothing but the gospel, Christ all, and Christ in all. 
 ** Except a man be born again, he cannot see the 
 kingdom of God." Happy he, who, at the foot of 
 the cross, like that soldier who watched the crucified 
 Lord, receives as his lot the whole seamless robe of 
 Christ. Remember, it is not a virtue and a vice here 
 and there that are in conflict in man. It is two prin- 
 ciples, two natures, two economies, two men ; and the 
 work of Christ centres in making of twain one new 
 man, reconciling both in one body on the cross. Paul 
 sums up the whole matter in his Epistle to the Colos- 
 sians. He bids them indeed put away individual 
 vices, '* anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy com- 
 munications, falsehood ; " but as the root and main- 
 spring of all this he says : *' Ye have put off the old 
 man with his deeds, and have put on the new man, 
 which is renewed in knowledge after the image of 
 Him that created him." 
 
 Oh ye who would be pure, busy yourselves no lon- 
 ger with this or that fault or virtue. Ye must be born 
 again. Turn from your sins and your virtues to your- 
 selves. Let your prayer be not only '* Wash me from 
 mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin ; " but 
 '* Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a 
 right spirit within me." 
 
INFANCY AND MANHOOD IN 
 THE SPHERE OF FAITH. 
 
HEBREWS XI. 
 
 (23) By faith Moses, v/hen he was born, was hid three 
 
 months of his parents, because they saw he was a 
 proper child ; and they were not afraid of the king's 
 commandment. 
 
 (24) By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to 
 
 be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter ; 
 
 (25) Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of 
 
 God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season ; 
 
 (26) Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than 
 
 the treasures in Egypt : for he had respect unto 
 the recompense of the reward. 
 
 (27) By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the 
 
 king ; for he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible. 
 
 (28) Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling 
 
 of blood, lest he that destroyed the first-born should 
 touch them. 
 
 (29) By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry 
 
 land : which the Egyptians assaying to do, were 
 drowned. 
 
'IX. 
 
 INFANCY AND MANHOOD IN THE SPHERE 
 OF FAITH. 
 
 In these verses we are shown two distinct periods 
 in the life of Moses. The first of these is the period 
 of his infancy and childhood. It covers the time of 
 his unconscious life, of his helplessness, when his 
 destiny is at the disposal of others : of his training, 
 when others give the shape to his thoughts and stud- 
 ies and habits. The second period is that of his man- 
 hood. Here his life is self-determined. Here he 
 gives instead of receiving the law ; teaches, instead 
 of being tutored ; has his own definite responsibilities 
 and duties, for which he alone is answerable. 
 
 These two periods of his life are very different ; but 
 they have one element in common : they both bear 
 the mark of faith. Faith in God is the atmosphere 
 in which the whole life of Moses develops. Faith is 
 the power which determines the character of his in- 
 fancy no less than of his manhood. The only differ- 
 ence is that, in the first period of his life he is the sub- 
 ject of his parents' faith ; that the influences which 
 shape his childhood grow out of their faith, while, in 
 the second period, he exercises that faith for himself, 
 and makes all the choices and decisions of his man- 
 
154 Faith and Character. 
 
 hood under its power, and does his life-work by its 
 means. 
 
 The little babe appears in the Hebrew house- 
 hold at a peculiarly unfortunate crisis, as it would 
 seem to us. Aaron and Miriam had grown up un- 
 molested ; but this child is met by an edict of Phar- 
 aoh commanding his destruction. The child was 
 peculiarly beautiful : traditions of his beauty are 
 found in ancient records. Stephen, in his review of 
 the history of the Jewish people in the seventh chap- 
 ter of Acts, speaks of him as '' beautiful unto God," 
 or, as we should say, '' divinely beautiful." The very 
 beauty of the child was, to the mother, a token of di- 
 vine approval, and a sign that God had some special 
 design concerning him ; and this, not from any pecu- 
 liar revelation made before his birth, nor from faith 
 in the patriarchal promises, but from her natural love 
 for her child — that feeling which is so quick to rise 
 in a mother's heart as she bends over the cradle of a 
 son, that he is destined for some great work in the 
 world. It was not here that her faith began to work. 
 Even nature teaches parents that they owe a duty to 
 their offspring ; and this sense of duty develops along 
 with the parent's knowledge of God. In the case of 
 Moses, both these influences combined to make them 
 resist the command of Pharaoh. It was a dangerous 
 thing to refuse or to attempt to evade the command 
 of an Eastern despot ; but the law of nature and the 
 law of God alike constrained this father and mother 
 to preserve their child's life at any hazard. Hence, 
 the bulrush ark among the reeds, and the watching 
 
Infancy and Manhood in Sphere of Faith. 1 5 5 
 
 sister. And the hiding of the child is praised in the 
 text as an act of faith, because the parents' faith was 
 manifested in their not obeying the tyrant's com- 
 mandment ; but in fulfilling, without fear of man, 
 all that was required by that parental love which 
 God approved. It was manifested by the means 
 adopted by the mother when she could no longer 
 hide Moses in her cottage. She committed him to 
 the Nile, in faith that he would be cared for. 
 
 Thus Moses was, if I may so speak, launched into 
 life by the hand of faith ; and it can hardly be doubted 
 that the mother's faith, however rudimentary, left its 
 impress on the boy. His very name, given by the 
 Egyptian princess, recalled the strange history of his 
 infancy ; and who can say that his mother, receiving 
 him back into her arms as a gift from God, and nurs- 
 ing him in Pharaoh's palace, did not make his dawn- 
 ing consciousness acquainted with the God who had 
 saved him from the king and from the river ? 
 
 We know almost nothing of any influences going 
 to keep alive in Moses the knowledge and the fear 
 of God during the years of his childhood. We know 
 that he was brought up under circumstances which 
 would seem likely to extinguish in him the faith of 
 his fathers ; and he received, as the adopted son of the 
 royal house, a thoroughly Egyptian training. He was 
 learned in all the learning of the Eg}^ptians. He was 
 taught not only by sages, but by priests. He was 
 trained not only in science, but in the Egyptian idol- 
 atry and superstition. 
 
 It is all the more surprising and gratifying, there- 
 
IS6 Faith and Character. 
 
 fore, as we enter upon the second stage of Moses' 
 history, to find in him a clearly developed faith in 
 God, and a strong national feeling. The life which 
 Was begun in the faith of the parents, develops the 
 same faith as its own master impulse. The text very 
 clearly states that the principle of Moses' choices, the 
 rule of his life, the secret of his endurance, the rea- 
 son for the high place he holds in history, was faith 
 in God. The point I wish to emphasize is, that the 
 two parts of this life are made one by this princi- 
 ple of faith. That its second stage, with its solemn 
 responsibilities, its wonderful works, its honors and 
 achievements, was a natural outgrowth from the first 
 stage in which parental faith committed him to God. 
 You observe, in the first place, that the life thus 
 committed to God by the parents was continuously 
 under God's direction. It is very easy to see this 
 now, looking back from this distance, and seeing the 
 life in its whole course. The circumstances of Moses' 
 childhood, indeed, would seem at first to contradict 
 this view. It would seem a strange and hazardous 
 thing to throw a child, whom God was preparing to 
 lead His people out of the civilization and idolatry of 
 Egypt, into the very place where he would be most 
 likely to become attached to both the civil institu- 
 tions and the religion of Egypt ; to throw him there, 
 too, at an age when he was most susceptible to their 
 impressions. It would seem a dangerous experiment 
 to rear the man who was to be the leader and confi- 
 dential adviser and the associate of a nation of slaves, 
 the man who was to work out his mission amid forty 
 
Infancy and Manhood in Sphere of Faith. 1 57 
 
 years of toil and hardship and desert life, in the luxu- 
 rious atmosphere of an Egyptian palace ; in the so- 
 ciety of the learned and cultured, and with that abun- 
 dant leisure which the true student demands. And 
 yet God was wiser than men. If He found it neces- 
 sary to throw Moses into such temptations He could 
 supply corresponding safeguards. What these were, 
 I have already said we do not know. We merely 
 know that at the end of this period he comes before 
 us as a man, with a firm faith in God, with a deep en- 
 thusiasm for his people, and with a tender sympathy 
 for their wrongs. And while God has kept his heart 
 from becoming estranged from his faith and from his 
 nation. He has also put him in possession of all that 
 Egypt has had to give him of knowledge and culture. 
 Egypt was training her own avenger in her own 
 schools. The Pharaohs themselves were furnishing 
 every appliance which their wealth and their wisdom 
 could command, to the man who was going to take 
 more than half a million of their useful serv'ants, at 
 one stroke, out of their brickyards and quarries and 
 from the scaffoldings of their new palaces. It is an 
 instance of the providence of God which grows upon 
 one, the more he studies it : that God should have 
 made His own enemies train His serv'ant, and that 
 through so many years. 
 
 Then, as we pass on, we see the life of Moses still 
 directed by God. He came to manhood a genuine 
 Hebrew, though reared in an Egyptian palace. He 
 went out among his enslaved people. He saw how 
 they were oppressed. His Hebrew heart waxed hot 
 
158 Faith and Character, 
 
 within him as he beheld a taskmaster smiting one of 
 his brethren, and, in his anger, he smote the oppressor 
 and killed him. That act was his own ; the act of his 
 own fiery zeal. It was not God's bidding ; and Moses 
 showed in this that he could not yet rule himself, and 
 was not therefore yet fit for leadership ; and so God 
 took him in hand at once. He must go away where 
 that fiery spirit could be tamed ; and the rocky soli- 
 tude of Horeb was a good glace, and keeping sheep a 
 good occupation to foster thoughtfulness and self- 
 communion. A great change it was from his honors 
 and congenial studies to the dull routine of a shep- 
 herd's life among the Arabian mountains ; and ^Moses 
 was only human, and he was lonely and sad some- 
 times. You catch a glimpse of this in the name which 
 he gave his first-born son, ** Gershom," banishment, 
 *' for I have been a stranger in a strange land." Then, 
 at last, when the time was ripe, God gave him his 
 commission. It had taken a long time, forty years 
 of solitude, but the work was thoroughly done, and 
 he should never know solitude any more — no, not 
 even its sweet refreshment, until forty years later, 
 w^hen he should have a few blessed hours of the old 
 mountain stillness alone with God ere God took him.' 
 Like many another great man, when the time for his 
 great life-work had come, he found his mission in the 
 track of his daily task. God spoke to him out of one 
 of the common thorn-bushes in the mountain pas- 
 
 ' It will be remembered how beautifully this thought is treated by 
 Ruskin in his chapter on " the mountain glory." ** Modern Paint- 
 ers," vol. V. 
 
Infancy and Manhood in Sphere of Faith. 1 59 
 
 tures, and sent him back to Egypt and to Pharaoh to 
 deliver his people. I need not go on with the story. 
 From this time, until the hour when, amid the sound 
 of a nation's weeping, he went up Nebo to die, you 
 all know Moses as God's chosen agent, carrying out 
 God's will, *' faithful in all his house as a servant." 
 The life, I repeat, was continuously under God's di- 
 rection. The same hand which took up the infant in 
 the bulrush ark, and led him first into the palace of 
 the Pharaohs, and then into the solitudes of the Ara- 
 bian desert, guided him through his last forty, care- 
 burdened years, and took him at last to Himself, and 
 made his grave with His own hands, no man knoweth 
 where to this day. 
 
 And all this, I repeat, grew out of the original act 
 of his parents in committing him to God. That act 
 was an act of faith, and, as a consequence, Moses' life 
 was a life of faith. Faith spans this life of the He- 
 brew lawgiver, from the bulrush ark to Pisgah. 
 
 Let us look at some illustrations of this fact, as 
 they are specified in the text. By faith he refused to 
 be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. 
 
 I have already spoken of the probability that Moses, 
 thrown at so early an age into the Egyptian court, 
 and graced with all the advantages which royal favor 
 could give, would become attached to his benefactors 
 and to his princely life. He would have been more 
 than human if this had not been the case. Then, con- 
 sider his prospects : wealth, power, leisure for study, 
 association with the learned, honors of all kinds. It 
 would have been strange, indeed, if these had not 
 
i6o Faith and Character. 
 
 presented a strong attraction for him. Again, look 
 at the alternative as between this princely life and 
 the life among a degraded, subject race, ignorant of 
 even ordinary decencies ; a lot which would make his 
 former patrons his enemies, and which would insure 
 him toil, vexation, and pain, for the whole remainder 
 of his life. Every day, almost, we see fanatics doing 
 strange things and things hurtful to themselves. But 
 Moses was not a fanatic. He was a Avise man, as 
 worldly men count wisdom. He knew, as well as 
 any sage in Egypt, how chimerical, how hopeless, 
 from the stand-point of worldly prudence, such a 
 movement as the migration of the Israelites was. If 
 he saw the matter from God's point of view, he was 
 also quite competent to see it from Pharaoh's. 
 
 And yet he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's 
 daughter. He renounced his royal adoption, with 
 all its honors and privileges, and took up wdth his 
 nation's hard lot. On any worldly basis of reasoning 
 it is very hard to account for this choice. Scripture 
 makes no difficulty in accounting for it. Our writer 
 here says that the same faith w^iich made his parents 
 hide his infancy, moved his manhood to choose the 
 harder instead of the easier lot ; affliction with the 
 people of God, rather than the pleasures of sin ; the 
 reproach of Christ rather than the treasures of Egypt ; 
 the unseen divine recompense, rather than the honors 
 of royalty. Moreover, you perceive that this same 
 faith gave him an insight into the sin which underlay 
 much of the pleasure by which he was surrounded, 
 and in which he would naturally have participated. 
 
Infancy and Manhood in Sphere of Faith. i6i 
 
 Youth is generally wont to accept the pleasures which 
 offer themselves, without much thought as to their 
 tendency or their bearing upon character. Faith, it 
 would seem, gave Moses a right discernment in this 
 matter. Then, too, youth naturally thinks that its 
 pleasure will last. Its life seems too bright ever to 
 fade. This same discernment of faith enabled Moses 
 to see that pleasure, and especially sinful pleasure, is 
 short lived. Again, it is not natural for men to count 
 reproach as riches. The natural mind does not at all 
 accept nor understand the Saviour's words, '' Blessed 
 are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, 
 and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for 
 my sake. " It is a clear and marked token of the power 
 of faith in Moses, that he esteemed the reproach of 
 Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt. 
 Again, you observe, that faith v/rought courage in 
 Moses. As we are told that his parents, through 
 their faith, were not afraid of the king's command- 
 ment, so we read that Moses forsook Egypt, not fear- 
 ing the wrath of the king. There were two ways in 
 which this wrath might work harm. If he were de- 
 tected in his flight, he might suffer personally, be de- 
 graded from his honors, and perhaps pay the penalty 
 of his life. If he were not detected, Pharaoh might 
 revenge himself upon the helpless people whose 
 cause Moses had made his own, and thus strike him 
 through them. The contemplation of both these 
 dangers required faith ; and Moses displayed it, both 
 in commending himself and his oppressed people to 
 God's care and protection. 
 
1 62 Faith and Character, 
 
 '*He endured, as seeing the invisible." In those 
 words the very essence of faith is stated. '^ Faith," as 
 the writer of this very epistle puts it, '' is the evidence of 
 things not seen ; " and yet I cannot help thinking that 
 a reference lay in the author's mind to the contrast of 
 Moses' simple faith in the one invisible God, with the 
 Egyptians' belief in their three orders of gods, and 
 their worship of inanimate nature. From infancy 
 Moses' eyes had been familiar with the sacred bulls 
 and goats and cats ; with the stone images of hawk or 
 lion-headed deities ; with the worship of the sun, and 
 with the reverence paid to the mummied crocodile ; 
 and yet out of all this gross idolatry he had come 
 with a faith in the one invisible Jehovah ; a practical 
 faith, too, as in one to whom he could appeal with 
 confidence in the great crisis of his life ; from whom 
 he was to receive the law of his life, and whose unseen, 
 future recompense he preferred to all the honors of 
 this world. 
 
 And you observe, farther, that this faith was vindi- 
 cated in the position, the character, and the power of 
 Moses, No man ever held a position involving more 
 labor and care and responsibility, and for that very 
 reason, none but a man of faith could ever have held 
 it successfully. The burden was too heavy for any 
 man's shoulders ; and the secret of Moses' successful 
 administration of forty years lay simply in the faith 
 which threw the burden upon God. However great 
 may have been his natural talents, however extensive 
 his learning, he occupies his place in history, not be- 
 cause of these, but because he was a man of faith. 
 
Infancy and ManJiood ill Sphere of Faith. 163 
 
 The wonderful deeds with which his name is associ- 
 ated, like the passing of the Red Sea, do not suggest 
 him so much as they do God. "■ By faith they passed 
 through the Red Sea as by dry land." When God 
 gave back to Moses his shepherd's staff on Horeb, the 
 rod had become a wonder-working instrument. In 
 Moses' hand it had been but a stick. Having passed 
 through God's hand it took on God's power ; and so 
 long as faith maintained the connection between God 
 and his serv^ant, so long that rod had power over the 
 pestilence, the hail and the fire, the sea, and the rock. 
 
 Faith, then, was the basis of this life, both in its un- 
 conscious and in its self-determining stage ; and the 
 faith of the first stage is carried on into the second, 
 and gives it its character and its success. 
 
 And now I ask if this truth belongs only to remote 
 ages and characters like those of Moses ? Is it not 
 equally a truth of the development of the Christian 
 child into the Christian man or woman ? 
 
 Childhood and maturity can no more be in two 
 pieces than the roots and the trunk of a tree. You 
 might just as well expect the roots of an oak to begin 
 to develop into a strawberry vine the moment the 
 shoot came above ground, as to expect that maturity 
 is going to develop something quite distinct from the 
 character and influences of the childhood. The char- 
 acter of the underground stage of the life — to carry 
 out the figure — while the child is yet hidden away in 
 the bosom of the household, will show itself when the 
 man and the woman emerge into society as active 
 forces. " Train up a child in the way he should go, 
 
1 64 Faith and Character. 
 
 and when he is old he will not depart from it." We 
 say it is only a proverb : granted ; but need it be any 
 less a truth for that reason ? Is it not a truth which 
 we recognize everywhere else ? Do we expect a tree 
 to grow straight which we suffer as a twig to grow 
 crooked ? So it will be true that if faith is the mas- 
 ter motive of the parents' life, if faith controls the 
 earlier training of the child, if faith inspires the pa- 
 rental longings and the parental discipline, faith will 
 perpetuate itself in the maturer life of the son or 
 daughter. 
 
 Faith in God I mean, not faith in human nature. 
 The human nature of men and women does not en- 
 courage our faith in it. Why then should we think 
 Solomon antiquated w^hen he says: "foolishness is 
 bound in the heart of a child ?" Do not let us be de- 
 ceived by any of the modern sentimentalism about 
 the child being suffered to "unfold his own individu- 
 ality without hindrance, as if childhood were of itself 
 so beautiful and perfect a thing that to meddle with 
 it were to mar it. Moses was beautiful unto God, 
 divinely fair, and in his beauty and other natural gifts 
 lay the special reason for his training for God's uses 
 and by God's liand. The more promise our children 
 reveal, the stronger individuality, the greater reason 
 that God's hand should be upon that life from the 
 very beginning. Our children must not be left to 
 think their own thoughts, to develop their own prin- 
 ciples, to mould their own conscience, without any 
 bridle upon their natural impidses. **This kind of 
 nurture assumes, that human children will grow up, 
 
Infancy and Manhood in Sphere of Faith. 165 
 
 left to themselves, into the most genuine, highest 
 style of human character ; whereas . . . what they 
 most especially want is ... to be preoccupied with 
 holy principles and laws ; to have prejudices instilled 
 that are holy prejudices ; and so to be tempered be- 
 forehand by moderating and guiding influences, such 
 as their perilous freedom and hereditary damage re- 
 quire." ' 
 
 And the Christian faith of parents embraces not 
 only God and Christ, but the church of Christ. If 
 parental training includes Christ, it cannot exclude 
 the church, for Christ and his church go together. 
 Parents recognize society as one of the primary forces 
 in the training of their children ; and Christian pa- 
 rents can surely desire for their children no less 
 than that their society should be Christian ; that the 
 social influences, which go so far to mould them, 
 should be sanctified. For this reason the Christian 
 economy associates the child's infancy with the church 
 of the living God, as the Jewish economy did. It as- 
 sumes that the child of a Christian believer is born a 
 member of a Christian society. It guards the social 
 influences of its very infancy, and there in the church, 
 where the parents' faith is professed, where the pa- 
 rents' sanctified energy is marshalled for Christian ser- 
 vice, where the parents' Christian culture is so largely 
 given, where the parents find so many of their best 
 and purest associations, there the lot of the child is 
 intended to be cast, and its society and its privileges 
 
 ^Dr. Horace Bushnell, *' Christian Nurture." 
 
1 66 Faith a?id Character, 
 
 are to be offered to him habitually as his birthright. 
 And thus we say, in our confession of faith: "The 
 visible church consists of all those throughout the 
 world that profess the true religion, together with 
 their children ; " and again, '' Children born within 
 the pale of the visible church, and dedicated to God 
 in baptism, are under the inspection and government 
 of the church." 
 
 The practical lesson, therefore, is two-fold. It is, 
 first, to parents. Our children come into the world 
 to meet an edict as cruel and destructive as was Pha- 
 raoh's. It is the malignant wdll of the great enemy of 
 souls, speaking through the fashion of this world, and 
 decreeing the ruin of their souls. It is not for us to 
 fear this king's commandment. We must meet it 
 with faith, hiding our children in the covenant of God, 
 and watching them with prayer. Faith must launch 
 their infant life. Our faith and our application of it 
 to our children's lives has everything to do with their 
 future. Until they can exercise intelligent faith for 
 themselves we must bring to bear on them the powers 
 and the principles of the life of faith. We all want 
 their maturer life to be a life of faith. Why, then, is 
 it so often overlooked that, to this end, faith must 
 work in their earlier life ? Oh, it is all wrong when 
 Christian parents look upon this first life as some- 
 thing which is to have its own bent, and is only to be 
 transformed into something else by a shock or a crisis, 
 by powerful preaching or revival by and by. In ac- 
 cepting that theory they are throwing away their own 
 and the child's best opportunity, and are leaving to 
 
Infancy and Manhood in Sphere of Faith. 167 
 
 uncertain forces, in the future, that which is very 
 largely in their own hands in the present. It is 
 true that our children's hearts must be changed ; but 
 change of heart is the work of God's spirit — an in- 
 ward, secret work — and it is by no means needful 
 that we should know when it takes place. Train up 
 your child in the atmosphere of faith and prayer, in 
 the circle of Christ's church ; train him to recognize 
 and to claim his birthright privilege as a member of 
 Christ's church, and he will grow up sweetly and nat- 
 urally into faith and love, and escape the terrible shock 
 by which a mature life is wrenched from the world and 
 given to Christ. 
 
 And the appeal is, secondly, to the children and 
 youth. Dear children, I speak to you as children 
 of the church. You early learned the story of this 
 Moses, the man of God, and early learned to ad- 
 mire and to revere him. Remember, the secret of 
 his greatness was his goodness ; and the secret of 
 his goodness was faith in God ; and this faith did not 
 come first in his latter years, but began when he was 
 a child, and kept him from the sin which was all 
 , round him. And it was this same faith which made 
 Pharaoh tremble, which brought darkness and fire on 
 the land of Egypt, which divided the Red Sea, which 
 took him up into the mountain to see God's glory, and 
 sent him down with his face shining with the light 
 of heaven, which made a whole great nation lean 
 on him and trust him as a father and friend, and fill 
 the desert with the sound of their weeping when he 
 went up to die. Children, if you expect to be good 
 
1 68 Faith and Character. 
 
 and useful men and women, you must begin the work 
 here and now. Do not think that your manhood and 
 womanhood will be something good, and pure, and 
 true, if your childhood and youth are not so. Do not 
 think that faith in God and in Christ will come into 
 your later life as a matter of course, even though you 
 give them no place in your earlier life. God calls 
 you now. *' Remember now thy Creator in the days 
 of thy youth." Christ calls even to the youngest of 
 you : '' Suffer the little children to come unto me." 
 And your parents have prayed for you. They gave 
 you to God in baptism. You are to-day within Christ's 
 church, and Christ and the holy angels and the church 
 are waiting and longing to have you confess your 
 Lord and Master, and to sit down with the church at 
 His table. 
 
 Our standards say, concerning the children of be- 
 lievers, 'Svhen they come to years of discretion, if 
 they be free from scandal, appear sober and steady, 
 and to have sufficient knowledge to discern the Lord's 
 body, they ought to be informed it is their duty and 
 their privilege to come to the Lord's Supper." It 
 seems to me that this provision falls in so beautifully 
 with the gospel idea of the family of God, and is so 
 beautifully illustrated in our family life. It is a little 
 epoch in the family history, when the babe gets old 
 enough to come to the family table. You know what 
 a rejoicing there is, when the little one is first perched 
 in its high chair at the mother's side. And yet we 
 do not count it a strange or an unnatural thing that 
 the child should appear at the family board. We are 
 
Infancy and Ma^ihood in Sphere of Faith, 169 
 
 not tempted to keep it away year after year until we 
 are quite sure it will behave itself. Oh, parents, 
 Christian parents, is our Father's house any less the 
 children's house than ours ? Is the bread of the 
 Father's table not the children's bread ? and shall we 
 any the less rejoice to see them sitting with us at 
 Christ's board than at our own ? God help us to set 
 the seal of faith on their earlier years, that their life 
 may be crowned at last with God's own recompense 
 of reward. 
 8 
 
THE DIVINE LAAV OF EDUCA- 
 TION. 
 
DEUTERONOMY XXXII. 
 
 (lo) He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howHng 
 
 wilderness ; He led him about, He instructed him. He 
 
 kept him as the apple of his eye. 
 (ii) As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her 
 
 young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, bear- 
 
 eth them on her wings ; 
 (i2) So the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no 
 
 strange god with him. 
 
X. 
 
 THE DIVINE LAW OF EDUCATION. 
 
 Most of you have seen those little toys, in the 
 end of which is inserted a minute magnifying-glass, 
 through which one may distinctly see the picture of 
 some familiar scene. The grandest landscape is thus 
 brought by the photographer within a space not 
 much larger than a pin-head. 
 
 So God constantly reproduces the great outlines of 
 natural life in individual experience. Nations and 
 men pass through the same stages. The great fea- 
 tures of the process by which God develops them are 
 the same ; and especially is this true of a nation like 
 Israel, whose development was pre-eminently moral 
 and religious. The Christian, who reviews intelli- 
 gently his own life, will find himself retracing the 
 outlines of the chosen people's history. Bondage, de- 
 liverance by divine power, guidance, discipline, lapses 
 into idolatry, frettings and murmurs, chastisements, 
 entrance upon a promised land, fighting with its old 
 tenants, growing compactness and stability, all these 
 and many more, he will find reproduced in his own 
 spiritual record. 
 
 Our text contains a lesson of this character. It 
 forms a part of that memorable farewell address of 
 
1/4 Faith and Character. 
 
 Moses to the children of Israel, ere he went up the 
 mountain to die. In themselves, the words are 
 merely a review of God's mercies to His people 
 throughout the most critical period of their history : 
 yet, with New Testament light shining through them, 
 they mean to us something more. Whether they were 
 intended to do so or not, these verses wonderfully il- 
 lustrate and foreshadow certain great features of God's 
 process in educating a Christian in the divine life. 
 
 And first, " He found Israel in a desert land, and in 
 the waste howling wilderness. " Moses does not mean 
 to imply by this that God's care for His people began 
 in the Arabian desert. The description is figurative, 
 and covers their residence in Egypt, where their de- 
 liverance began. This was, indeed, as a waste of 
 howling beasts. What condition can be imagined 
 more pitiable than that of a nation of slaves under an 
 Oriental tyrant ? It was not only that their time and 
 strength were not their own ; not only that their chil- 
 dren were murdered at the tyrant's whim ; not only 
 that the lash of the taskmaster added terror to their 
 intolerable labors ; those things, bad as they are, are 
 not the worst of slavery. Worse than all was the im- 
 bruting power of bondage ; the degradation of man- 
 hood ; the crushing out of aspiration ; the making 
 them satisfied with the pleasures of the beast, and 
 ignorant of any higher pleasures. That is a truth 
 which ought to be very plain to us. That was just 
 the result which our national sin brought to pass ; 
 and tlie brute bulk which we nurtured for so many 
 years, is on our hands to-day, complicating our politics, 
 
The Divine Law of Educatioft, 175 
 
 and tormenting us with its ignorance and helpless- 
 ness. 
 
 In this condition then, this wilderness of tyranny, 
 ignorance, superstition, bereft of comfort and of hope, 
 God found this rabble of slaves. With this unpromis- 
 ing material He undertook to make a nation and a 
 new civilization. And truly it seems as if God de- 
 lighted in taking the worst possible subjects in which 
 to display His saving power. It is the truth set forth 
 in the prophet's vision— the fair mitre and the clean 
 robe put upon the arraigned prisoner, whom God 
 Himself calls ''a brand plucked from the fire." As 
 between two men, we not unfrequently see God 
 choose the most unpromising. Take, for example, 
 the father of this very nation, Jacob. God's choice 
 lights on him rather than on Esau ; on the younger, 
 rather than on the elder. And yet Esau really ap- 
 peals to us as the nobler character of the two. He is 
 the more frank, manly, generous nature ; Jacob is full 
 of low cunning ; the characteristics which to-day are 
 most offensive in his race, are sharply developed in 
 him ; and yet Esau goes away to Edom and drops out 
 of history, while Jacob wins the name and the power 
 of a prince of God, and will be a leading factor in the 
 history of the human race to the end of time. Why 
 go to the slave huts for a new nation, when palace and 
 temple and obelisk, hieroglyph and parchment told 
 of a civilization ready made, of a cultured race, and 
 of a venerable wisdom ? It is not for us to say. We 
 know the fact. And, what is better, we see the fact 
 repeated in the economy of Christ. He comes, pro- 
 
jy6 Faith and Character, 
 
 claiming that his work lies in the desert ; that his 
 sphere is down among the poor and sorrowful ; that 
 his call is to sinners and not to the righteous ; that 
 his search is for the lost ; that he, in short, will take 
 up what every one else casts aside ; what the wisdom 
 of the world despises ; what the sanctity of the world 
 refuses to touch ; what the charity of the world ex- 
 cludes ; what the world's refinement shrinks from ; 
 that he will seek in its deserts, that he will find, that 
 he will choose and justify and glorify, and make to 
 sit with him in heavenly places. And let us not de- 
 ceive ourselves by thinking that a cultivated and 
 moral man who becomes a subject of Christ's saving 
 grace, is any exception to this rule ; that when Christ 
 seeks and finds him, he finds him anywhere but in a 
 waste howling wilderness. The wilderness is w^here 
 Christ is not. Men may live there and make gardens 
 in the sand, and dig wells ; but the tree of life does 
 not grow there, and the deepest wells do not yield 
 living water. And when a man once reaches a clear 
 consciousness of what sin is, what divine love is, what 
 a sinner is, the most cultured man will be constrained 
 to confess that Christ found him as a dweller in the 
 wilderness. It is noteworthy how that sentiment 
 breaks up at intervals through Paul's close logic and 
 impassioned eloquence. So far from feeling that he 
 has conferred a favor on the gospel by coming to its 
 aid with all his wealth of learning and intellect, he 
 regards it as one of the greatest of marv^els that 
 Christ should give him a place among its preachers. 
 He goes back with a groan to the old day?, and says, 
 
The Divine Law of Education. 177 
 
 *'I persecuted the church." ''I scourged men and 
 women." *'I made them deny the faith." ** I am 
 not meet to be an apostle." *' Unto me, who am 
 less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, 
 that I should preach among the Gentiles the un- 
 searchable riches of Christ." No, sin is not the 
 difference between ignorance and culture, between 
 legal morality and crime. It is the difference be- 
 tween a subject and an outlaw, a servant of Satan 
 and a friend of God, a desert and a paradise. 
 
 But having once delivered Israel from its taskmas- 
 ters, the work was but begun. The people had well- 
 nigh everything to learn. They knew little or noth- 
 ing of law, of religion, of self-government, even of 
 ordinary decencies. Look at this rabble, and then at 
 God's ideal as it afterward came into shape ; of a 
 nation with laws, arts, literature, military institutions, 
 and religion overarching and penetrating all, and 
 what a task is this. So, having found Israel in this 
 howling wilderness, He must needs instruct him. 
 How wonderfully He did it, with how much tact and 
 patience and delicacy, with how much wisdom and 
 forbearance, we all know, but it took a long, long 
 time. 
 
 And so, to turn to the Christian application of the 
 truth, no conception of Christian experience is com- 
 plete which omits this idea of instruction. I do not 
 mean merely teaching ; I mean rather the result of 
 teaching ; what is implied in the word '' instruction " 
 itself ; building, furnishing, developing manhood on 
 every side, and in its completeness in Christ Jesus. 
 
178 Faith and Character. 
 
 Now, unquestionably, this process of instruction 
 must have a beginning ; and that beginning is con- 
 version. There was a time when the Israelites passed 
 from Egypt and from Pharaoh's power ; so there is a 
 time when a man receives a new heart, when he 
 changes his allegiance ; goes out from the service of 
 his old master, and enlists with a new one. Some- 
 times this change involves a sudden, startling expe- 
 rience, sometimes it does not. There are children 
 educated under such influences, as that they expand 
 like a flower into Christian faith and love, and can- 
 not remember a time when they did not love Christ. 
 There are men and women who pass by a gradual 
 transition from darkness and sorrow into clear-seeing 
 faith and Christian peace. These are only phases of 
 the one fact. There is a starting-point, a conver- 
 sion, a passing from death unto life. But no sane 
 man could fail to see that when Israel had passed out 
 of Egypt, the work was but just begun. If merely 
 their oppressors had been destroyed, and they set 
 free and left to themselves, it is quite certain that 
 they would have brought themselves into a much 
 worse condition than that in which Pharaoh left 
 them. You give a lad who does not know a hand- 
 saw from a chisel a chest of tools, and leave him en- 
 tirely to himself, and he will spoil good wood, and 
 spoil his tools, and cut himself terribly besides. Give 
 a nation or a man freedom, and nothing else, and the 
 last state will be worse than the first. There is no 
 such terrible slavery in the world as liberty without 
 law. Similarly, let a man be converted and then left 
 
The Divine Law of Education. lyg 
 
 to himself to work out his own salvation without 
 God working in him, and he might about as well 
 not have been converted. That was the reason why- 
 Christ laid so much stress on the keeping of his dis- 
 ciples, and prayed, '* Holy Father, keep through thine 
 own name those whom thou hast given me. Sanctify 
 them through thy truth." And in gospel salvation 
 the two things go together — conversion and training. 
 They cannot be separated. They are one purpose of 
 God. When you take a poor ragged boy out of the 
 street, and promise that you will be a father and pro- 
 tector to him henceforth, you do not merely bring him 
 to your house, bid the servant take him to the kitchen 
 and feed him, and give yourself no farther thought 
 about him. Adopting him as your child is not mere- 
 ly taking him out of the street. If he is to become 
 your son, he must not remain a vagabond. So, when 
 God calls a man, He proposes to do for and in him 
 all that is involved in making him a son of God ; not 
 only to forgive his sins, and adopt him as His child, 
 but to train him as an heir of eternal glory. But it 
 takes time to do this work. 
 
 Thus, then, I repeat, salvation, life in Christ's king- 
 dom, begins in conversion ; but it only begins. One 
 goes to school to Christ, but he is not educated on 
 entering the school-room. One becomes a soldier of 
 Christ, but he is none the less a blundering, awkward 
 recruit after he has enlisted. That common and most 
 pernicious phrase ^^ getting religion^'' carries with it to 
 popular thought the idea of a work done in a mo- 
 ment, once for all, leaving nothing to be done more. 
 
l8o Faith and C liar act er. 
 
 But religion embraces the whole range of a man's 
 relations to God. It is not exhausted in a single ex- 
 perience. It is commensurate not only with his nat- 
 ural life, but with his immortal life. He will be 
 ** experiencing religion " forever, as eternity shall re- 
 veal more of God. And when he enters Christ's 
 kingdom for the first time, he is a little child, not 
 only in humility, but in experience ; a babe in Christ. 
 Did you ever think how much there is in that phrase, 
 *' a babe in Christ ? " Look at a babe in a loving house- 
 hold, compassed about with love, with prudence, with 
 care and wisdom, with all manner of appliances to 
 make him strong and upright and learned, and yet 
 how ignorant of it all. How much he has to learn of 
 his own privileges, powers, and responsibilities. How 
 little he knows of the power and preciousness of the 
 love which encircles him. Take the most cultivated 
 man into the Kingdom of God, and he is a babe, ver- 
 itably. He is in Christ, Christ's love all round him. 
 Christ's power all round him, Christ's wisdom all 
 round him, and he with but the smallest practical ex- 
 perience of their infinite resources. He has entered 
 a new realm, where unseen things are the great 
 things ; where faith is a power of the first class ; 
 where things are on a larger scale and move in vaster 
 orbits ; and this man, fresh from a realm of sight 
 and skepticism and selfishness, is not at home at 
 once. He has everything to learn. He is changed, 
 in that he has now the spirit of a disciple, the humil- 
 ity and simplicity of the asking child ; but he under- 
 stands now why asking, seeking, and knocking enter 
 
The Divine Laiv of Education, i8i 
 
 so largely into the life of the heavenly kingdom. 
 He does not at once walk stoutly and confidently by 
 faith. He has been too long walking by sight. He 
 does not readily obey without question. He has been 
 too long used to obey only when he saw good reason 
 for it. He does not at once learn the permanency of 
 the unseen as compared with the seen. He is not a 
 perfect man, he is only striving to become such. He 
 is not out of the reach of doubt or fear or sin, though 
 he is vigorously fighting them all. He forgets his 
 divine friend sometimes, just as did the Israelites. 
 He murmurs sometimes, just as they did. He de- 
 spairs, as they did. He is tempted by his old idols, 
 as they were. And the raising up of the new man in 
 him, the developing him from a babe in Christ to a 
 man strong in faith, sublime in unselfishness, wary 
 and victorious in temptation, ripe in charity, is a 
 work covering his entire life, from the time when 
 he puts his hand in his Saviour's, until the moment 
 when he says, '* Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." All 
 through that time he is learning, compacting, grow- 
 ing, through the agency of teaching, trial, defeat and 
 victory, joy and sorrow, study of the word, prayer, 
 Christian practice ; learning his own weakness, learn- 
 ing Christ's resources, learning Satan's subtlety and 
 power, growing up into Christ his living head in all 
 things. 
 
 One of the stubborn facts, therefore, which has 
 to be confronted in the kingdom of grace, is imper- 
 fect Christians. It is a fact on which the world, out- 
 side that kingdom, either tlirough ignorance or per- 
 
1 82 Faith and Character, 
 
 verseness, persists in putting its own damaging con- 
 struction ; and as it never sees a Christian who is per- 
 fect, its sweeping inference is that the heavenly king- 
 dom is no better than the earthly. And this is the 
 subterfuge behind which hundreds of men are taking 
 refuge to-day from the claims of Christianity. *' I do 
 not believe in it. Look at its professors." The truth 
 that the kingdom of grace is a training-school, and 
 not an academy of saints, is one which such men seem 
 incapable of grasping ; and yet I might as reasonably 
 go into yonder school-room to-morrow, and denounce 
 the school and its teachers as humbugs because the 
 pupils were not mathematicians like Newton, or lin- 
 guists like Miiller, as to abuse Christianity because 
 its disciples are imperfect. The truth is that this 
 kind of judgment, which pretends to a very profound 
 moral insight, is really very shallow. Perfection al- 
 ways looks easy. From seeing a thing done easily, 
 certain people conclude that it is easy to do. It 
 looks very easy as that masterly musician runs his 
 fingers over the keys. It looks very easy as the 
 painter lays the colors on the canvas ; but only when 
 you attempt the same thing do you begin to realize 
 how many weary years of drudgery and discipline lie 
 behind that easy deftness. It requires not a little 
 knowledge to know the difficulties of perfection ; and 
 if men had a deeper moral insight, if they knew more 
 of the perfection of Christ's manhood, they would 
 have a deeper sympathy with the slow progress which 
 their earnest but erring brother makes toward it. I 
 remember one day going into a great bronze foundry, 
 
The Divine Law of Education. 183 
 
 where some of the masterpieces of modern art are 
 cast ; and the workmen were busy preparing the 
 moulds for the statue of an American statesman. 
 And it would be hard to find uglier things than those 
 moulds, or a process more strange and bewildering to 
 a novice. I could not recognize, in those masses of 
 clay, the outlines of the symmetrical model I had seen 
 in the exhibition room. But the master saw them. 
 Through all the dirt and confusion, through all those 
 strange shapes in the clay, yea, through the tossing 
 and seething of the boiling mass in the furnace, 
 he saw that thing of beauty which should greet the 
 eye when the furnace should have been emptied and 
 the mould knocked away. So one who himself 
 knows somewhat of Christian discipline and of Chris- 
 tian growth, sees something taking shape under and 
 through the mingled elements of his brother's Chris- 
 tian career. There is much clay and sand, much 
 boiling and stirring, much unshapeliness ; but he 
 knows that the master is shaping a man in Christ 
 Jesus through it all ; that under his touch the life 
 is slowly working its way out into light, symmetry, 
 and clearness ; and that one day, after long years 
 of God's wondrous patience, the fleshly mould shall 
 drop away, and the new creature in Christ Jesus 
 stand forth perfected in the light of heaven, unto 
 praise and honor and glory of Christ his redeemer. 
 
 And young Christians need to grasp this truth; 
 One of the greatest obstacles in their career is likely 
 to be their comparison of themselves with older and 
 more experienced Christians, either as they see them 
 
iS^ Faith ajid Character. 
 
 or read about them. They too often put themselves 
 under a course of memoirs of eminent saints or of 
 precocious Christians ; and with a most pernicious re- 
 sult to their own Christian peace and growth ; since 
 they lose sight, in most cases, of this idea of being 
 at school, and become discouraged because the rich 
 fruits of matured faith and saintly heroism do not 
 appear in themselves. Such literature has a real 
 and a permanent value ; but it wants some wisdom 
 to read it to profit. If Professor Tyndall or Profess- 
 or Huxley should go into that scientific school where 
 a dozen lads were beginnirig the study of chemistry, 
 and their teachers should tell them of the scienti- 
 fic achievements of these men, the legitimate result 
 would be to make them bend more vigorously to 
 their present study. The effect upon one morbid 
 mind of the dozen might be to make him throw 
 down his book and turn away from his retorts, say- 
 ing : ** I am not like these men, it is useless for me 
 to study more ; I am discouraged." The proper an- 
 swer of course would be : " You are not here as a 
 chemist, but as a student of chemistry." But you see 
 the point of the illustration as applied to a young 
 Christian. The thing for him to keep in mind is, you 
 are a disciple, a pupil. Take up your life and teach- 
 ing as God gives it to you daily. Keep close to your 
 divine Teacher. Do the task He sets you, and let the 
 experience of maturer Christians alone. If their ex- 
 cellencies excite your admiration and desire, remem- 
 ber that that boy becomes the best developed man 
 who best lives out the life of his childhood, and does 
 
The Divine Law of Education. 185 
 
 not try to be a man before his time. The range of 
 your experience is narrower ; see to it only that you 
 gain and do all that is within your range. Let Christ 
 work out what he will, in his own way, in the sphere 
 of your Christian pupilage. He will not go too fast, 
 nor too slow ; but if you obediently and trustfully 
 follow him, he will bring you ''unto a perfect man, 
 unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
 Christ." 
 
 When God delivered Israel, He designed to make 
 of them a peculiar people. He was going to develop 
 a civilization unlike any that the world had ever seen ; 
 and this was not to be done in Egypt. He must get 
 them away from the contact of that old, idolatrous 
 nation, and train them by themselves. And so He 
 dealt with them as the eagle with her young, when 
 the time comes for them to learn to fly. Their true 
 element, little as they think it, is the air ; and they 
 can never learn to be at home in its boundless fields, 
 so long as they remain in the snug nest. So she stirs 
 up her nest, drives them out, pushes them into the 
 air ; yet all the while is ready, if the timid pinions fail, 
 to drop beneath, and to receive them on her wings. 
 Thus God drove Israel out into the wilderness into a 
 new and strange life ; a life at which they now and 
 then rebelled, and from which, in their worst moments, 
 they looked longingly back to the animal comforts of 
 the old slave nest in Egypt. But in the new and 
 untried sphere God never left them. He bare them 
 as on eagle wings. In their weakness and inexperi- 
 ence, He kept them as the apple of the eye. The 
 
1 86 Faith a?td Character. 
 
 divided sea, the smitten rock, the manna, the pillar 
 of cloud and of fire, all were tokens of His presence 
 and care. And, similarly, the inauguration of a Chris- 
 tian experience is the inauguration of a new life. A 
 man moves out into a new element. Walking by faith 
 instead of by sight is a good deal what trying to fly is 
 to the young eaglet. He shrinks from it. He looks 
 longingly back at the nest. And hence this complete 
 change of spheres, this detachment from old formulas 
 of thought, old habits of life, old desires, old princi- 
 ples of actions, old aims, is a literal stirring up of the 
 nest. God wants him where He alone can lead him. 
 
 And within the sphere of this general experience 
 there will be a good many special experiences, tend- 
 ing the same way, to develop the man's own individ- 
 ual character by contact with God. Oh, there is a 
 wonderful depth and pregnancy in that thought, ** The 
 Lord alone did lead him." Will Christians ever fairly 
 get Iiold of that thought that God is their teacher, 
 and that they are to be not what society would make 
 them, nor what family tradition would make them, 
 nor what self-interest would make them, nor even 
 what they see other Christians to be, but just them- 
 selves, their own selves, remoulded by the power of 
 Christ, and developed into such phases of manhood 
 as God shall select for them ? So, young man, you 
 thought, it may be, that with your liberal education, 
 you would grace the bar, or adorn the annals of litera- 
 ture. You were building a beautiful nest, and set- 
 tling down with cheerful content, and, mayhap God 
 stirred up your nest, broke up your plan, and launch- 
 
The Divine Law of Education. 187 
 
 ed you forth into that grander field from which your 
 untried powers shrank, in which more than in any 
 other you should daily feel the need of a power not 
 your own — the preaching of the unsearchable riches 
 of Christ. Oh, that God would stir up scores of nests, 
 and send their inmates forth into that sphere. Or it 
 may be you had mapped out a wide sphere of useful- 
 ness. You were to be active and prominent in pub- 
 lic charities and philanthropic movements, and God 
 disarranged all that, and sent you to pass long years 
 by a sick-bed, and in daily, petty ministries which 
 required only patience and sweetness. You thought 
 God was narrowing your sphere ; but narrow and 
 wide do not mean to Him always what they do to us. 
 If you went into that life obediently, the Lord alone 
 leading you, you came nearer to God in that sphere 
 than in any other ; and any sphere in which you walk 
 with God is wide enough for you. The difference 
 between a Christian in a wide and in a narrow 
 sphere, is sometimes the difference between a lake 
 and an artesian well. The one covers more surface, 
 but the other goes down deeper. Again, I say, wide 
 or narrow, are matters of little consequence. The 
 great thing is that in your sphere of life the Lord 
 alone lead you, and that there be no strange god with 
 you. If he takes you out into the desert alone with 
 Him, have you lost anything ? In the more busy and 
 populous and stirring life, all came from Him ; and 
 having Him, have you not all, just as much as before ? 
 The course of thought leads to two or three practi- 
 cal questions. Has God found you ? Are you in the 
 
1 88 Faith and Character, 
 
 desert land to-day ? Nay, do not evade the question. 
 The desert is where God is not. The far country is 
 anywhere outside your Father's house. Anywhere 
 where you are living without faith and hope in Jesus 
 Christ is desert ground. There are no living springs 
 there. There are powers of evil that hunger for your 
 soul. There grows no fruit there that will nourish 
 you into a noble manhood after Christ's pattern. Has 
 God found you ? He is seeking you I know. The 
 prints of His footsteps are all over those barren 
 sands, and by the brink of those shallow wells you 
 have dug with so much toil. Go there some day 
 when the sun beats fiercely on your head, and you 
 are tired and thirsty and heartsick, and you shall find 
 one sitting there in the guise of him who talked with 
 the Samaritan, and who will talk with you, and tell 
 you too of living water. Or is it true that you have 
 heard His voice many times, and, like Adam, are still 
 hiding from His face — afraid to meet Him lest He 
 should stir up your nest in the desert ?• 
 
 Is God your guide ? Have you put yourself, in 
 good faith, under God's instruction ? Then, Chris- 
 tian, why this hot, hasty, feverish life, this constant 
 anxiety to be or to do something else? ''Aspira- 
 tion," you say. Must I not strive for that which is 
 before? Yea, verily, but all the while ''''looking unto 
 Jesus.'' Aspiration is not fretting, not anxiety, not 
 trouble. You shall realize your aspiration best and 
 soonest by walking with Christ, at liis rate, doing his 
 will daily, and communing with him as you walk. 
 Paul did indeed press toward the mark for the prize 
 
The Divine Law of Education. 189 
 
 of his high calling. No man ever had a higher ideal ; 
 but it was all ''in Christ Jesus," the pressing on as 
 well as the ideal. 
 
 And do you realize how much peace and comfort 
 there is for you in the fact of God's keeping? ''He 
 kept him as the apple of his eye." Oh, what tender- 
 ness, what delicate, watchful care there is set forth in 
 that figure. The apple of the eye — the most exqui- 
 site, the most sensitive part of the human frame — suf- 
 fering from the touch of the smallest mote ; yet God 
 keeps you as you keep that. In your ignorance and 
 in your blundering, in your weakness and in your dan- 
 ger. He keeps you. Need you be sorry any more ? 
 Have you any better refuge in earth or heaven than 
 this ? Have you aught else to do in this world of 
 care and sin, but to draw ever closer to His side, and 
 gratefully and trustingly do the day's work in the day, 
 sure that the eternal God is your refuge, that under- 
 neath are the everlasting arms ; and that as He will 
 guide you by His counsel, so He will afterwards re- 
 ceive you to glory ? 
 
GOOD AND BAD BUILDING ON 
 THE ONE FOUNDATION. 
 
I CORINTHIANS III. 
 
 (lo) According to the grace of God which is given unto me, 
 as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, 
 and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take 
 heed how he buildeth thereupon. 
 
 (i i) For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, 
 which is Jesus Christ. 
 
 (12) Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, 
 
 precious stones, wood, hay, stubble ; 
 
 (13) Every man's work shall be made manifest : for the day 
 
 shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire ; 
 and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort 
 it is. 
 
 (14) If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, 
 
 he shall receive a reward. 
 
 (15) If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss : 
 
 but he himself shall be saved ; yet so as by fire. 
 
XL 
 
 GOOD AND BAD BUILDING ON THE ONE 
 FOUNDATION. 
 
 We are looking through these verses into the Cor- 
 inthian church of the first Christian century. It is 
 not a pleasing picture. Riot at sacred feasts, gross 
 sin tolerated, endless disputations over meat offered 
 to idols, bitter partisanships centring in favorite min- 
 isters, awaken our disgust. Yet neither is it a picture 
 adapted to flatter the self-complacency of the modern 
 church. We are not altogether unlike. Some at 
 least of these old abuses repeat themselves, and make 
 Paul's keen admonitions as fitting now as then. 
 
 No one, for instance, need ask for a better descrip- 
 tion of the church in New York (not to go farther), 
 than is given in this chapter ; the church divided 
 into parties, each with the name of its favorite minis- 
 ter for a watchword. One saith, *' I am of Paul," an- 
 other, "I am of Apollos," another, ''I am of Peter." 
 Substitute other names for these, and you have the 
 picture faithfully reproduced in our own commu- 
 nity. 
 
 Against this error Paul puts forward God in Christ, 
 as the proper centre of the church's interest and zeal. 
 Ministers, he says, are only servants, as their name 
 9 
 
194 Faith and Character, 
 
 implies, receiving from God everything which endears 
 or makes them useful to His people. They have dif- 
 ferent gifts and different offices. One plants, another 
 waters, but the increase, the fruit of their labor, is 
 from God only. '* Neither is he that planteth any- 
 thing, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the 
 increase." He that planteth and he that watereth are 
 not two, doing two works, heading two parties, they 
 are one ; fellow-workers under God. And in reading 
 the ninth verse in the original, you will observe how 
 the word God is emphasized. ** For of God are we 
 fellow laborers : of God are ye the husbandry : of God 
 are ye the building." Each congregation is not a 
 field of its own, cultivated by its own minister. Ye 
 are Goifs husbandry, not Paul's nor Peter's. We are 
 not building up each a sect for himself. Ye are Goifs 
 building. 
 
 We are prepared, therefore, for the following state- 
 ment : The foundation of Christian teaching is not 
 in man ; it is not Paul, nor Apollos, nor any system 
 or philosophy of theirs. It is Jesus Christ. Other 
 foundation can no man lay. ''If," says Paul, in 
 effect, '' I have laid the foundation of the church, 
 it has been only as God's agent, presenting to you 
 Christ and him crucified as the basis of your church 
 life, the starting-point of the instructions of all who 
 shall succeed me." 
 
 It is not my purpose, however, to dwell upon this 
 foundation truth, but to follow the apostle in the line 
 of thought which lie draws from it. The text refers 
 directly to Christian ministers ; but its application 
 
Good and Bad Building on One Foundation. 195 
 
 need not be confined to them, since every Christian 
 is, in his own sphere, a builder or a worker for 
 God. 
 
 The matter of the foundation, then, is settled. 
 There is but one basis of Christian life, Christian 
 work, and Christian teaching. But the foundation is 
 not an end unto itself. It implies a building ; and 
 the building as well as the foundation is to be the 
 object of care to the Christian. ^' Let every man take 
 heed how he buildeth thereupon." It is indispensa- 
 ble that a man should begin his religious life with the 
 right principle ; but it is likewise important that he 
 should carry out his principle in the right way. A 
 bank clerk may perfectly understand the principles 
 of book-keeping, and the rules of arithmetic, yet 
 through carelessness may make a mistake, which shall 
 render a balance impossible, and keep him hunting 
 half the night for his error. It is distinctly implied 
 here that even on so secure a foundation as Jesus 
 Christ it is possible to build work or teaching which 
 will not stand the final and decisive test of the judg- 
 ment-day. 
 
 It is evident from the apostle's words that a great 
 variety of building on this foundation is contemplated. 
 It is of different qualities, represented by different 
 materials : some permanent and precious, as gold, 
 silver, jewels ; others perishable, like wood, hay, stub- 
 ble. This, which appears here in figure, is a fact of 
 experience to all of us. We see the great variety of 
 teaching, of methods, of types of character, which the 
 Christian church represents. In preaching we have 
 
196 Faith and Character, 
 
 Paul's kindled logic and pungent appeal, Apollos' 
 graceful rhetoric, and Peter's straightforward sim- 
 plicity, all reproduced, with infinite varieties, in the 
 modern pulpit. One deals more with the intellect, 
 another more with the heart. One deals with the 
 skeleton of truth, another clothes it with flesh and 
 blood. One dwells more on the doctrinal, another 
 on the historical and poetical parts of the Scripture. 
 One deduces from it one scheme of theology, another 
 another. One man's preaching is solid, scriptural, 
 full of the jewels of truth ; another's is largely mixed 
 with rant and fustian, betraying hasty and superficial 
 study of the word. There is the simple freedman 
 with little beside his experimental knowledge of 
 Christ, who finds in a text the expression of some 
 quaint conceit of his own, and expounds it with unc- 
 tion to his unlettered brethren. And there is the re- 
 former who practically regards the whole Bible as 
 written to enforce his peculiar hobby, and who inter- 
 prets it accordingly. 
 
 Or, take the matter of commenting on the Scrip- 
 tures. Here, too, the work of the various builders 
 differs. Here is one who looks upon a portion of 
 Scripture as a mosaic composed of a multitude of 
 pieces, each piece precious ; and he takes a Psalm or 
 a gospel chapter, and examines every' piece as with 
 a microscope, and finds a meaning in every word and 
 in every shade of mood or tense. Another, like a 
 quarry-man, finds the great lines of cleavage, and 
 cuts along those, and treats the Bible broadly with 
 reference to its great salient truths. One allegorizes 
 
Good and Bad Building on Ojze Foundation. 197 
 
 Scripture, finding in every narrative a hidden spirit- 
 ual or doctrinal sense. This tendency is very mani- 
 fest in our own day, in the way in which a certain 
 class of teachers interpret the details of the Mosaic 
 ritual and of the tabernacle furniture. Others, again, 
 like the vast army of modern German and English 
 commentators, labor to penetrate to the literal mean- 
 ing of the text, and bring to its illustration the treas- 
 ures of historic and linguistic learning, and the results 
 of observant travel. 
 
 Or, look at the matter of Christian work. Here, 
 on the one hand, you see Christian zeal taking shape 
 in young men's or young w^omen's Christian associa- 
 tions, or in Sabbath-schools, and mission chapels. On 
 the other hand you have an institution like the Port 
 Royal Monaster}^, the home of such rare Christlike 
 spirits as St. Cyran, Angelique Arnauld, and the Pas- 
 cals, yet equally the home of Romish austerities and 
 miracles, and the scene of unnatural seclusion from 
 society. On the one hand, the work of a Presbyte- 
 rian or Methodist missionary in China or India, trans- 
 lating the Scriptures, setting up printing presses, or- 
 ganizing native churches ; on the other the Jesuit mis- 
 sionaries in Northern America in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, carving the name of Jesus on the forest trees as 
 a terror to the demons of the wilderness, rejoicing 
 over the salvation of a soul if they could but touch, 
 by stealth, the brow of a dying infant w^ith baptismal 
 water, and sending home for highly-colored pictures 
 of souls in torment as gifts to the Indians ; yet pur- 
 suing their w^ork in the face of mutilation and death 
 
198 Faith and Character. 
 
 with a courage and persistence and devotion unsur- 
 passed in the annals of missions. 
 
 So, too, when we come down to individual types 
 of Christian character, we find the variety infinite ; 
 the gold of saintliness, the stubble of bigotry, oddi- 
 ties and eccentricities for which it seems as if there 
 were not room on the one foundation ; and manhood 
 and womanhood which seems well-nigh of a piece 
 with the foundation itself. 
 
 With this recognized fact of the variety of Christian 
 development, the text advances another truth, namely, 
 that each of these forms of development has a value of 
 its own, and that they are not alike valuable, even 
 though they rest on the true foundation ; in other 
 words, that a man may be really a Christian, and yet 
 do work which may be described by wood, hay, stub- 
 ble, and which will not stand the final, fiery test of 
 the last day. It is a not uncommon popular error 
 that all work, done sincerely in Christ's name, de- 
 serves approval because of the sincerity of the doer. 
 But that is not the teaching of this passage. How 
 God may turn such work to good, is another and an 
 entirely distinct question. The question here con- 
 cerns the essential quality of the work. Two teach- 
 ers interpret Scripture in opposite ways. Both can- 
 not be right, and both maybe wrong. Of two sincere 
 Christians we can see for ourselves that one is nobler, 
 sweeter, larger than the other. Of two methods of 
 work, we can see that the one goes farther and deeper 
 than the other. It is a matter of endless surprise 
 what varieties of work and of workmen the gospel 
 
Good and Bad Building 07i One Foundation. 199 
 
 tolerates — incompetent teachers, injudicious reform- 
 ers, fanatics, and shallow expounders. The final re- 
 sult of this toleration we have nothing to do with. 
 That is God's matter ; but this at least is clear, that 
 God, in tolerating, does not waive the right to judge 
 the work itself, whatever He may do with the work- 
 ers ; that some of this work done in Christ's name 
 will be summarily condemned ; and that God tells us 
 this truth as a warning to take good heed as to the 
 character of our work and teaching. Sincerity will 
 not destroy the difference between the essential value 
 of different kinds of building. In the great day of 
 judgment, of two equally sincere men, one's w^ork 
 shall stand and the other's shall be burned. 
 
 This fact gives tremendous emphasis to the key- 
 note of this passage : "Let every man take heed hoiv 
 he buildeth thereupon." Thereupon^ on that founda- 
 tion. The foundation alone does not insure good 
 building. When a man is once converted, truly con- 
 verted, his life resting on Jesus Christ, the only foun- 
 dation, the necessity for caution does not cease. Now 
 begins the process of developing the highest and best 
 uses of such power as nature or education may have 
 given him ; a process calling for the utmost caution 
 and vigilance and persistence. Now begins the train- 
 ing in duty. Now begins the education of the con- 
 science. Do you think that is a strange statement ? 
 Possibly you do, for it is commonly assumed that con- 
 version sets the conscience, of all other things, right 
 at once ; and we are filled with horror, as if there 
 were something unnatural in the fact, when a recent- 
 
200 Faith and Character. 
 
 ly converted man or woman walks deliberately into 
 some sin, with no apparent sense of its sinfulness. 
 And yet is it so unnatural after all ? I was talking, 
 not many months since, with one of the most experi- 
 enced and intelligent mission w^orkers in this city, 
 and he said, speaking of some of the degraded people 
 among whom his w^ork lay : '' One of the greatest of 
 all the needs which w^e feel in our work is that of a 
 steady influence to educate the conscience. Those of 
 them who give the best evidence of conversion, will 
 often be found doing shocking things, without seem- 
 ing to know that they are doing anything out of the 
 way." But you need not go to a New York mission 
 to see that truth illustrated. Paul deals with it in 
 this very Epistle. He devotes a great deal of atten- 
 tion to the weak, uneducated conscience, as a famil- 
 iar fact in the Christian church. And the sooner a 
 newly converted man can be gotten out of the con- 
 ceit that conversion sets him right, and all right once 
 for all, and can be made to grasp the fact that he has 
 a building to erect upon his foundation — a structure 
 which involves the right training of his will and con- 
 science, his power to speak and to work, the right 
 casting of his example into a right mould — the better 
 for him, and for those about him. 
 
 The Church cannot insist too much upon the one 
 foundation ; but she needs to press far more urgently 
 than she has done the caution : '' Let every man take 
 heed how he buildcth thereupon." We are not to re- 
 press men's individuality ; we are to take it for granted 
 that, in the infinite variety of God's methods, each 
 
Good and Bad Building on One Foundation. 201 
 
 man can find the way of building best adapted to his 
 own powers and qualities. But we are to insist on the 
 truth that men have a duty beyond, and growing out 
 of the duty of being born again ; that they are respon- 
 sible not merely for being converted, but for the 
 shape which conversion takes in the net result of 
 their lives. Opposed to this is the popular religious 
 sentiment that it matters little how crude a man is 
 and remains, provided he is right at the foundation, 
 sincere and enthusiastic. It does matter greatly. 
 The sincerity is indispensable. The enthusiasm is 
 a heavenly spark which should be kept alive ; but 
 moral building implies character, and character is 
 more than enthusiasm, or sincerity. Salvation is a 
 gift of God, but it is also to be worked out by each 
 man with fear and trembling to carry out the good 
 pleasure of God who worketh in him. The Devil's 
 kingdom is not going to be carried by men's begin- 
 ning to be Christians, any more than a country is to 
 be captured by any number of soldiers enlisting, or a 
 house to be carried up by merely laying a good foun- 
 dation. A man must tell positively upon the world, 
 as well as enjoy the raptures of forgiven sin. Under 
 the impulse of his faith and joyful hope, he is to go 
 forward, building prayerfully and heedfully a super- 
 structure of trained character and power, which shall 
 by and by bring the divine reward of good work as 
 well as the saving result of sincere faith. 
 
 There has been mischief done under the shelter of 
 the familiar phrase '' preaching Christ. " A host of plau- 
 sible crudities and hasty generalizations have found 
 
202 Faith and Character, 
 
 their way into popular religious teaching under this 
 name. And this fact reaches beyond ministers of the 
 gospel. Every Christian is a builder, every Christian 
 is, in some sense, a teacher. Every Christian does 
 something to shape the life, modify the opinions, and 
 mould the conscience of others ; and, consequently, 
 ever}^ man who by teaching or life preaches Christ 
 only as a saviour from sin, and does not farther 
 preach him as a teacher, a guide, a developer of char- 
 acter, a power in Christian growth and culture, who 
 remains standing before the world a forgiven man, 
 and nothing more, preaches him partially, and needs 
 the apostle's caution, '* Let every man take heed how 
 he buildeth thereupon." 
 
 And even in its relation to ministers of the gospel, 
 this truth touches the people at large ; for the people 
 have much to do in shaping their ministers. That 
 there are terrible possibilities in this popular power 
 over the pulpit, you may easily see from that passage 
 in Paul's second Epistle to Timothy : " For the time 
 will come when they will not endure the teaching 
 that is healthful, but, according to their own desires 
 (and the word is almost always used in the New Tes- 
 tament for evil desire) shall they, being tickled in 
 their ears, heap up teachers unto themselves." In 
 other words, a time is predicted when such teachers 
 shall abound, be heaped up ; made by men to suit 
 their own notions, and not anointed by God to de- 
 clare His mind and will. Too often we have seen 
 that prophecy fulfilled. Too often to-day we hear 
 the people's clamor to have their ears tickled. Too 
 
Good and Bad Building on One Foundation. 205 
 
 often we have seen the tragedy of Sinai repeated, the 
 priest making, with his owi^i hands, the gilded idol, 
 for which the multitude cries out, and offering the 
 sacrifice of their idolatry in the very temple of the 
 living God. The fact that such a power exists, that 
 it does now and then prevail to debauch an anointed 
 servant of God, is enough to awaken our vigilance. 
 If the preacher is to heed this admonition to take 
 care how he builds on the foundation, Jesus Christ, 
 the people are equally to take heed that they bring 
 no pressure to bear to divert him from his heed- 
 ful building, and to urge him to build more showily, 
 more hastily, and more carelessly. We are only too 
 familiar in this city with what comes of running up 
 houses too fast. With all their brave frontage of cut 
 stone and pointed brick, there is an awful crash now 
 and then. We want no gain in the church which comes 
 at the expense of careful building ; and it becomes 
 the people not to look to their pastors for weekly 
 entertainment, but, as co-workers with them in build- 
 ing the building of God, to guard their pulpits with 
 prayer, with sympathy, and with intelligence, and to 
 encourage them, in every possible way, to take heed 
 how they build. 
 
 But the apostle gives us another thought, lest we 
 should be tempted to identify the final judgment of 
 the worker with the judgment pronounced upon his 
 work. A man's personal relation to Christ is one 
 thing, the essential excellence of his work is another 
 thing. It is true that his work will be affected very 
 decidedly by his relation to Christ, but we are none 
 
204 Faith and Character. 
 
 the less bidden to hold fast the distinction between 
 these two. No man will be saved because of his 
 work. He will be saved only because Jesus Christ 
 gave himself for him. But this work may receive 
 approval nevertheless, and he may get a reward for it, 
 or, on the other hand, his work may be condemned ; 
 the material he has used may prove to be no better 
 than hay or stubble, and may be burned, but he him- 
 self may be saved. He will suffer loss, but he him- 
 self shall be saved, yet saved as by fire, saved as he is 
 who escapes from his burning house, unharmed in- 
 deed, but with the loss of all his goods. You may 
 ask me w^hy, if a man rests on the true foundation, 
 his work is not necessarily good. Has not God prom- 
 ised to direct the work of those who trust Him, and 
 will He not make their work right as well as them- 
 selves ? Yes, that is true, logically ; true, scripturally ; 
 true, in fact, often enough to substantiate both logic 
 and Scripture ; and yet it is also true (who of us does 
 not know it ? ) that the workers on the great founda- 
 tion often do not fully know nor use their helps ; that 
 they are often slow in learning self-distrust, slow in 
 apprehending the wonderful love of God w^hich is at 
 their disposal ; slow in availing themselves of the 
 heavenly wisdom offered for the asking ; slow in 
 growing out of their conceit and self-will ; and, there- 
 fore, much of their work takes its character from 
 these lower and baser conditions, while the new prin- 
 ciple of life in them is slowly pushing them upward 
 through these conditions toward something better. 
 Only the better thing may come very late ; too late 
 
Good and Bad Building 07i One Foundation. 205 
 
 for the worker to get any reward for his work itself ; 
 yet the sincere believer in Jesus shall not lose his 
 place at his right hand. Your little child comes to 
 you with a few scrawls, by which she has tried to rep- 
 resent a flower or an animal. Her work itself you 
 cannot enjoy nor approve ; you would not frame it 
 and call on your friends to admire it ; it is fit only for 
 the waste basket ; but none the less does the child re- 
 ceive the coveted kiss, and climb into the loved place 
 in your arms when she brings the scrawl. 
 
 So long as love does not fail, and faith which works 
 by love, imperfect work will not separate the believer 
 from the love of God in Christ Jesus. But this fact 
 is not intended to weaken the force of the admoni- 
 tion, '' Let every man take heed how he buildeth 
 thereupon." He who should encourage himself in 
 hasty or superficial work by the consideration that he 
 might be saved though his work should perish, would 
 awaken a very reasonable doubt as to his being on the 
 true foundation at all. And a Christian man ought 
 to be ashamed to live for nothing but his final salva- 
 tion. Life, though it be short, is rich in opportuni- 
 ties ; it is a seed time for a harvest which other lives 
 may reap. At any rate, these words of the apostle 
 fasten our eyes on this life, brief though it be, and 
 point to our task of building, and bid us take heed 
 to it, and not presume upon final bliss to neglect pres- 
 ent duty. 
 
 Who that surveys this span of life we tread, 
 This narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless seas — 
 The past, the future— two eternities — 
 
206 Faith and Character, 
 
 Would sully the bright spot or leave it bare, 
 When he might build him a proud temple there? 
 A name which long should hallow all its space, 
 And be each purer soul's high resting-place. 
 
 One thing more remains. The tests of work which 
 we apply here cannot be final. The day shall declare 
 it — the day which shall he revealed in fire. Then 
 first we shall fully understand the absolute value of 
 work. We shall doubtless find out then that the great 
 temple of God on the one foundation is a far larger 
 structure than we think, and admits of far greater 
 varieties of work. On the one hand, this text does 
 not convey the comforting doctrine that God will ap- 
 prove all work which men reject. Many a man who 
 has gone grumbling through life because he thought 
 he was unappreciated, will find there that his work 
 did not deserve to be appreciated, and that the de- 
 stroying fire confirms and emphasizes the judgment 
 of men. But, on the other hand, the text does im- 
 ply that men's judgment of work may be utterly 
 at fault ; and that much which they have mistaken 
 for hay and stubble, may turn out to be gold and 
 silver ; and much which they have received as pre- 
 cious stones, prove to be but paste. We are easily 
 misled in this thing. We sometimes think a man's 
 work is poor, because he cannot get other men to 
 accept his ideas and methods. But I am tempted 
 to quote to you just here some w^ords of one of the 
 vigorous thinkers of the English pulpit : ** No great 
 man really does his work by imposing his maxims on 
 his disciples. He evokes their life. Correggio cries, 
 
Good and Bad Building on One Foundation. 207 
 
 after gazing intently on a picture of Raphael, * I, 
 too, am a painter,' not one who will imitate the great 
 master, but who will work a way for himself. The 
 pupil may become much wiser than his instructor, 
 he may not accept his conclusions, but he will own, 
 'you awakened me to be myself, for that I thank 
 you."" 
 
 So a sincere and good man's theories may be wrong ; 
 but he may do his work through the stimulus which 
 his character gives to another man whose charac- 
 ter and theories are both right ; and that work will 
 stand. But that is a kind of work which lies under 
 the surface. It is little appreciated here ; but it is 
 preparing a host of surprises for us against the final 
 day of award. And oh, what a collapse of great 
 popular reputations that day will witness ; what a 
 change of places among men who have been leaders 
 in science, in politics, in business, in religion ; what a 
 paling and vanishing of much work whose glitter has 
 dazzled the world ; and what bursting into eternal 
 beauty and glory of the work of many a quiet toiler 
 who took far more heed to the quality of his building 
 than to what men said of it or of him. 
 
 We reach, then, some important practical counsels. 
 
 I St. Every Christian is responsible for the way in 
 which he makes his life in Christ tell upon the world. 
 His care and watchfulness only begin with the hour 
 of his conversion. Henceforth he owes the world 
 that lesson of healthy. Christian growth, and of true 
 
 ' Maurice, " The Conscience." 
 
2o8 Faith and Char'acter, 
 
 economy of power, and of labor regulated by heavenly 
 laws, and conducted on divine plans, which he him- 
 self can learn only by diligence and faith and prayer 
 and caution. Take heed. Christian, what you build. 
 
 2d. Remember that good work shall receive a re- 
 ward. It will not save you, but it shall be saved and 
 approved in the light of the great day. You and I 
 may be indeed thankful if we be saved as by fire ; 
 if, having done all, we may simply stand ; but, for all 
 that, we should blush to set before us salvation by fire 
 as the goal of our efforts. To do good work, perma- 
 nent work, is a lawful ambition, which ought never to 
 be wanting to a Christian disciple. Try to fill your 
 days with it. Try to make your lives the scene of the 
 very best building you can do ; building w^hich shall 
 stand and shine forever in the smile of God, when the 
 hay and stubble shall consume in the judgment fire. 
 
 3d. Remember, then, that if you honestly strive, and 
 fail, yet Christ remains to you. Only be sure you 
 abide in him. Only be sure the one foundation is 
 under you ; and then, if through sincere mistaking 
 your work be lost, you shall none the less be changed 
 into his image in that realm of clear seeing, from 
 which error shall be forever banished. 
 
CAUTION AND COMFORT FOR 
 THE TEMPTED. 
 
I CORINTHIANS X. 
 
 (12) Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed 
 
 lest he fall. 
 
 (13) There hath no temptation taken you but such as is com- 
 
 mon to man : but God is faithful, who will not suffer 
 you to be tempted above that ye are able ; but will 
 with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye 
 may be able to bear it. 
 
XII. 
 
 CAUTION AND COMFORT FOR THE 
 TEMPTED. 
 
 Paul's object in citing the history of Israel in this 
 chapter, was the admonition of the Corinthian church. 
 ** These things," he says, *' happened unto them for 
 ensamples : and they are written for our admonition, 
 upon whom the ends of the world are come ; " that is, 
 who are living in the latter days of the world. That 
 people enjoyed great and special privileges, yet they 
 fell into sin, provoked God's displeasure, and died in 
 the wilderness. "Therefore," is the argument, ** there 
 is danger that you Christians, with all the great privi- 
 leges of which you boast in this beautiful and culti- 
 vated city of Corinth, may fall into sin as they did, 
 and incur punishment as they did. I, Paul, myself, 
 your teacher, must needs watch and pray, and keep 
 myself in subjection, lest after having preached to 
 others, I should be rejected." 
 
 The caution of the text follows naturally from this 
 course of thought : " Wherefore," since there is such 
 danger, " let him that thinketh he standeth take heed 
 lest he fall." 
 
 In these two verses we may find three truths grouped 
 round the old theme of temptation. 
 
212 Faith and Character. 
 
 I St. That he whose moral stability seems to be as- 
 sured by the very best safeguards, is in danger of fall- 
 ing. 
 
 2d. That there is nothing in the nature of tempta- 
 tion which necessitates his falling. 
 
 3d. That there is everything in the divine ordering 
 of temptation to prevent his falling, and to increase 
 his stability. 
 
 First, then, he who seems to himself to be, morally, 
 most secure, is in danger of falling. 
 
 There is more than an implication that a man may 
 be mistaken about his security. Not he that standeth, 
 but he that thinks he stands is w^arned to take heed. 
 I believe that if there were any way of finding out 
 the truth about all the mishaps of travellers in the 
 world, it would be discovered that a great many more 
 disasters have happened on smooth and safe roads 
 than on rough and dangerous ones. Some of you 
 who have been in Switzerland, will remember a spot 
 along the border of the Mer de Glace, known as the 
 "bad path" — a narrow ledge, with only room for 
 one person to walk at a time, with a steeply shelving 
 bank below, and an equally steep one above. If you 
 watch a party of tourists threading that path, you see 
 that each one keeps his eye fastened on the ground, 
 sets down his foot each time with the utmost care, 
 and often clings to the hand or staff of the guide in 
 front. And you do not often hear of accidents there, 
 dangerous as the place is. But when a man starts off 
 on a fine, smooth road, he is very apt to think that 
 his feet will take care of themselves, and that his eyes 
 
Caution and Comfort for the Tempted. 213 
 
 may be employed as he pleases ; and so, while he is 
 striding along, looking up at the clouds or hill tops, 
 or off to the landscape, his feet are sure to find a stray 
 stone, and down he goes. It is no otherwise in moral 
 experience. Confidence ruins more men than fear. 
 Safety corrupts more men than danger. He who 
 knew human nature as no other knows it, urged on 
 his own disciples no duty more strenuously than that 
 of watching; and right on from Adam downward 
 there has been a series of sad histories, histories of 
 falls of the men who seemed to be most securely 
 guarded against falling. 
 
 Observation seems to show that a power of delusion 
 lurks in the very circumstances which appear to favor 
 firm standing. If you study the remarkable succes- 
 sion of moral shipwrecks which has astonished and 
 shocked society in the last few months, you notice 
 that they are mostly those of men who, to all appear- 
 ance, had every reason and every help for firm stand- 
 ing ; so that the prevailing tone of comment is that 
 of surprise: ''To think that he should fall! So 
 honored, so trusted, so much to live for ! Such splen- 
 did opportunities !" And that is not mere surface talk 
 either. When you get inside the circle of these men's 
 lives, you find the safeguards even stronger than pop- 
 ular comment had represented them. Let me cite 
 you one case. He was a minister of the gospel. He 
 had passed on to middle life esteemed and trusted. 
 He served his church in great financial interests, where 
 hundreds of thousands passed through his hands. He 
 retired from public life with the respect and confi- 
 
214 Faith and Character. 
 
 dence of the church, and was journeying quietly on 
 toward life's close with a good name, a modest com- 
 petence, an affectionate family ; and then came the 
 tidings that he had fled, in disgrace, with the stolen 
 funds of a public institution in his pocket. You 
 would have said, that if any man had passed the dan- 
 ger of a moral fall he was the man. You could under- 
 stand how a young man, in the first flush of passion 
 and ambition, might yield to the temptation to secure 
 for himself a life of ease and pleasure by a single des- 
 perate act ; but for an old man, with the best of his 
 life gone, with all the hard-earned fruit of respect and 
 confidence safely garnered, to throw it all away, and 
 to pass the short remnant of his days under the stigma 
 of a thief — that, indeed, it is hard to explain. One 
 thing you would most surely find, I think, if you 
 could know all the circumstances ; and that is, that 
 he had stood firmly so long, had resisted temptation 
 so successfully, had grown so old in honesty, that he 
 had come to think caution needless — to think that an 
 old man and a Christian minister was past the danger 
 of temptation. He found, to his sorrow, that neither 
 age nor priestly station could supply the place of 
 watching and prayer. 
 
 Just here it ought to be said that, when the apostle 
 speaks of falling, he does not merely mean gross vio- 
 lations of honor or of law. His word includes all 
 kinds of lapses from the standard of Christian char- 
 acter. 
 
 To go back, then, I repeat that a power of delusion 
 lurks in the very circumstances which seem to favor 
 
Caution and Comfort for the Tempted, 2 1 5 
 
 firm standing. There are always those who sneer at 
 the suggestion of the human heart's deceitfulness and 
 weakness. Such an one will say, ''True manhood is safe 
 from the danger of a fall. My sense of manly honor 
 and dignity will be an effectual safeguard against the 
 meanness of such moral lapses. As a man^ it is im- 
 possible that I should descend to such depths." Alas, 
 alas ! manhood, with all its dignity and self-reliance, 
 is not to be trusted too far, if Paul speaks the truth. 
 He tells us here that temptation is humatt, peculiar 
 to man's nature (for that is one meaning of the word 
 rendered here "common to man.") Poor human 
 nature, at its best estate, is in its very essence suscep- 
 tible of temptation, and by its very conditions exposed 
 to temptation. It is manhood that is assailed. It is 
 in manhood that the weakness lies enfolded. Nay, it 
 is in the very self-reliance and assurance of manhood 
 that the danger lies. Humanity, as suchy is exposed 
 to temptation, and in danger from temptation ; and 
 hence the prayer of humanity, the world's model of 
 prayer, closes with the petition, " Lead us not into 
 temptation, but deliver us from evil," as though it 
 would leave the petitioner with the thought that while 
 he is ennobled by being a son of God, with the dear 
 privilege of saying, " Our Father," he is not to forget 
 that he is a weak and fallible man in a sinful world. 
 
 This power of delusion lies in the most familiar 
 things. 
 
 There, for instance, is worship. A man naturally 
 thinks that if there is any place in the world where 
 he is safe from temptation, it is in church, under 
 
2i6 Faith and Character. 
 
 the sound of sacred anthems and holy truths, and in 
 the atmosphere of prayer. And yet it is over the 
 church door that God thinks it needful to write a 
 pointed caution, telling church-goers that it is quite 
 possible for them, even amid all the holy associations 
 of a spiritual sacrifice, to offer the sacrifice of a fool. 
 The song which is meant to kindle devotion may exert 
 only a sensuous charm, and the mind of the wor- 
 shipper be absorbed by its art, to the neglect of its 
 w^orship. He may be thinking of the beautiful periods 
 of the form of prayer, instead of on his needs and fol- 
 lies and infirmities which the prayer is bearing up to 
 the throne of grace. He may make of his admiration 
 for the sermon, a buckler which shall turn the arrow 
 shot at his conscience. He may be lulled into self- 
 deception and into self-complacency by the ready re- 
 sponse of his nature to the sentiment of worship. I 
 have often been impressed with the suggestion of 
 this danger which appears in that sublime Christian 
 chant, the *'Te Deum." Closely following that 
 magnificent outburst of praise, '* Day by day we mag- 
 nify Thee ; and we worship Thy name ever, world 
 without end " — comes the prayer : " Vouchsafe, O 
 Lord, to keep us this day without sin." It seems like 
 a sudden letting down from the very atmosphere of 
 heaven to the dark, dangerous region of earthly sin. 
 And yet, in this very thing, it is true to the spirit of 
 the Bible. All through that Book the two go together 
 — man in the image of God, and man fallen ; man ca- 
 pable of adoration and of communion with God, and 
 of the high, rapt emotions of worship, and man sus- 
 
Caution and Comfort for the Tempted. 217 
 
 ceptible to temptation, the subject of the concen- 
 trated wiles of the kingdom of darkness. And so in 
 the glorious chant, he is stopped in the full current 
 of his praise, and reminded that he is still a sinful 
 man in a sinful world. 
 
 There are the holy ties of family affection. Men 
 naturally think they are safe from temptation in the 
 sweet retirement and innocent interchange of the do- 
 mestic circle. And yet we have all known a father's 
 or a mother's love to degenerate into idolatry ; a pa- 
 rent's just caution and wise authority to give way to 
 hurtful indulgence. It has been but too common that 
 a man's honest pride in his family, and his desire that 
 they should appear in all things as well as their neigh- 
 bors, have led him to wink at extravagance, and some- 
 times, alas, to compromise his honesty to enable his 
 household to keep up appearances. 
 
 There are beauty and taste — good and pure things 
 in themselves. The man who truly loves beauty 
 shares his love with God ; and yet, in this very epistle, 
 we may discover how sin made beauty its ally ; how, 
 in that lovely city of Corinth, taste and cidture made 
 themselves ministers of corruption, and clothed the 
 foulness of Paganism with a charm which overcame 
 the holy eloquence of Paul, Apollos, and Peter. 
 
 Again, there is strictness. A man never thinks he 
 
 is standing more safely than when he plants himself 
 
 upon severe self-discipline, the inexorable curbing 
 
 of his natural inclinations, the closest and strictest 
 
 regulation of all the details of his life. And all this 
 
 is well, only there were those who did this, in our 
 10 
 
2i8 Faith and Character. 
 
 Lord's time, who tithed mint and anise and cummin, 
 and yet strangely overlooked some weighty matters 
 of the law, such as judgment, mercy, and faith, and 
 who were called by a hard name by the gentle Christ 
 himself. And Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, 
 while he urges circumspection in the Christian life, 
 and that w^th great minuteness of detail, says, 
 ''See how ye walk circumspectly;" be circumspect 
 in your very circumspection. See to it that you have 
 a rule, but be careful also that you have the best 
 rule. 
 
 So we might go on, taking every influence or set 
 of influences under which men w^ould seem to be 
 most safe, and we should find that in them all lurks 
 the danger of a fall ; that men stand on no ground so 
 high, so safe, or so sacred, that they do not need the 
 apostle's caution, ''Let him that thinketh he stand- 
 eth, take heed lest he fall." 
 
 But when men fall, no excuse is more frequently on 
 their lips than this : "It was unavoidable. I could 
 not help it. The temptation was exceptional and 
 was beyond my strength." This excuse is squarely 
 met by the text with our second truth, namely, that 
 no man need fall ; and that because every tempta- 
 tion is controlled by God, who will not suffer it to go 
 beyond His children's ability to resist it. " There 
 hath no temptation taken you but such as is com- 
 mon to man." Let us not be misled by this word 
 " common." It is not used in the sense in which we say 
 a thing is of common occurrence, or in common use. 
 It docs not mean that all men are tempted in the 
 
Caution and Comfort for the Tempted. 219 
 
 same way, or that one form of temptation is as com- 
 mon as another. The passage is, literally, ''there 
 hath no temptation taken you but such as is human:' 
 And it carries with it two ideas. First, th^it temptation 
 is peculiar to humanity as such, so that no man dif- 
 fers from his fellow-man in being tempted, and, second, 
 that temptation is adapted by God to man's strength. 
 God will not suffer him to be tempted above that he 
 is able, but will, with the temptation, also make away 
 to escape, that he may be able to bear it. So that no 
 man is exceptional in the matter of temptation. He 
 is tempted like other men because he is a man, and 
 his peculiar form of temptation does not excuse him 
 for yielding, because it does not come from any higher 
 or different source from other men's temptations, and 
 is no more severe than, with God's help, he can bear. 
 No " supernatural soliciting " selects a man here and 
 there, and sweeps him resistlessly off his feet. There 
 are, indeed, elements wrought into man's very consti- 
 tution, whose nature it is to take fire at appropriate 
 contact ; but then it is that very nature with those in- 
 flammable elements in it which Christ is interested to 
 redeem and to save. It is that very nature which is 
 the object of the whole scheme of divine education 
 and discipline. And so Paul can say to the Corin- 
 thians and to us, you are not subject to these tempta- 
 tions as to some blind, brute force, operating by its 
 own natural law, like the downward plunge of a Nia- 
 gara. Temptation works under God's law. Its pres- 
 sure is accurately gauged by divine wisdom. The 
 whole matter is summed up in the little story of the 
 
220 FaitJi ajid CJiaracter. 
 
 lad whose father was laying package after package 
 upon his extended arms, when a playmate, fearing 
 his load was growing too heavy, said, *' Don't you 
 think you've got as much as you can bear ? " " Never 
 mind," was the reply, "father knows how much I 
 can bear." That is the fact which takes away the 
 common excuse for falling ; " the temptation was too 
 heavy." If, indeed, a man takes matters into his own 
 hands, and goes into temptation, instead of waiting 
 for temptation to take him, then I cannot answer for 
 him. In most cases it will be very little that he is 
 able to bear. But that is not the case contemplated 
 in the text. A child of God, clad in God's armor, 
 and wielding God's weapons, vv'ho meets an ApoUyon 
 bestriding his path towards heaven, knows in advance 
 that he need not go back one step except he choose. 
 He knows that that enemy is one that he can conquer. 
 If it were not so, the enemy would not be there. 
 God could not suffer an invincible foe to assail you 
 without being unfaithful to you ; for he called you 
 into His heavenly kingdom ; the kingdom of strength 
 and purity and moral victory ; and to call you, and 
 then to oppose to you a temptation too heavy for 
 your strength, would be like your inviting a child to 
 your house, and then locking the door in his face. 
 '* But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be 
 tempted above that ye are able." He is faithful to 
 His own promises such as these : "Call upon Me in 
 the day of trouble, I will deliver thee." " When thou 
 passest through the waters I will be with thee ; when 
 thou walkest through the fire thou shalt not be 
 
Caution and Comfort for the Tempted. 221 
 
 burned." "I also will keep thee from the hour of 
 temptation which shall come upon all the world." 
 *' The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of 
 temptations." 
 
 He is faithful to the promise of his own past deal- 
 ings. The Christian who is sorely tempted to-day, 
 may refresh his faith with the stories of Moses and 
 Joseph, of Job and Elijah. As he is linked to them 
 by like passions and common infirmities, so he is 
 drawn with them into the shadow of the same love 
 which sheltered them from the power of temptation. 
 "The almighty power of God," says a quaint old 
 English divine, "is engaged for the saints' defence : 
 God brought Israel out of Egypt with a high hand ; 
 but did he set them down on the other side of the 
 Red Sea to find and force their way to Canaan by 
 their own policy or power ? When He had opened 
 the iron gate of their house of bondage, and brought 
 them into the open fields, did he vanish as the angel 
 from Peter when out of prison ? No. As a man car- 
 ries his son, so the Lord bare them in all the way 
 they went. This doth lively set forth the saints' 
 march to heaven. God brings a soul out of spiritual 
 Egypt by His converting grace. Now when the saint 
 is upon his march, all the country riseth upon him. 
 How shall this poor creature pass the pikes and get 
 safely by all his enemies' borders ? God Himself en- 
 folds him in the arm of His everlasting strength. 
 The power of God is that shoulder on which Christ 
 carries his sheep home, rejoicing all the way he goes. 
 These everlasting arms of His strength are those 
 
222 Faith and Character. 
 
 eagles' wings upon which the saints are both tender- 
 ly and securely conveyed to glory." ^ 
 
 Thus, then, we find ourselves in the region of the 
 third truth of the text, namely : 
 
 There is everything in the divine ordering of 
 temptation to prevent our falling and to increase our 
 stability ; God will, with the temptation, make a way 
 for your escape, that ye may be able to bear it. Just 
 here a new aspect of the subject opens. In all the 
 previous part of the text our thought has been oc- 
 cupied with the idea of deliverance, escape from 
 temptation ; but in these closing words, that ye may 
 be able to bear it, we come suddenly upon the sug- 
 gestion that in God's economy, temptation may not 
 only be something to escape from, but may also serve 
 a positive purpose in the salutary discipline and the 
 strong maturing of God's children. For, if it be 
 merely a thing to be escaped, why not stop with the 
 word '' escape " ? But here it appears that by escape 
 God means something else besides getting clear of the 
 temptation. The clear intimation is, that the temp- 
 tation may stay by us, and that escaping, in God's 
 sense, may consist in bearing it rightly. So that the 
 thought of escape is complex. It does indeed imply 
 victory over the temptation, but it also implies a lar- 
 ger victory through the sustained conflict with the 
 temptation ; a victory which appears in the general 
 toning up and broadening of the whole character. 
 You go down to the Battery some day and hire a 
 
 ' Gurnall, "Christian in Complete Armor." 
 
Caution and Comfort for the Tempted. 223 
 
 sail-boat to go to Sandy Hook. And as you look for 
 the direction of the wind, you find it blowing straight 
 up the Narrows, and therefore dead against you. Do 
 you turn round and go home, saying I will defer my 
 sail till some other day when the wind shall be blow- 
 ing the other way ? Not if you know anything about 
 boating ; for you know that you can trim your sail at 
 such an angle as tp make that very adverse wind 
 carry you to Sandy Hook. You can sail into the 
 very eye of the wind ; and though your boat lean over 
 under the strain of your close-hauled sheet, and the 
 water come rushing over your gunwale, you will 
 make good headway, and rejoice in a sense of mas- 
 tery over the elements, such as never comes with go- 
 ing before the wind. Just so God teaches his chil- 
 dren to make temptation drive them tow^ard heaven. 
 Paul prays that the thorn in the flesh may depart 
 from him. That is Paul's idea of escape. God's 
 idea is different and larger. The thorn shall not 
 subdue Paul, but it shall not depart from him. Paul 
 shall escape from it by having it with him. He shall 
 gain a grander victory by becoming a grander man 
 through the torment of the thorn. That is a figure 
 of speech, you say. Well, you and I know that there 
 are enough thorns in the flesh that are a good deal 
 besides figures of speech. The experience is com- 
 mon enough where a child of God is exposed to a 
 lifelong trial, a burden of some kind which he can- 
 not escape, but must take it into his life and adjust 
 his life to it as best he can. And the burden brings 
 with it a daily temptation to peevishness, or to faith- 
 
224 Faith and Character. 
 
 lessness, or to cowardice, a temptation to slip out 
 from under it at any hazard, and to escape from its 
 daily, galling pressure — duty or no duty. And you 
 know how such men and women have found the grace 
 of God all-sufficient to convert that burden into wings 
 on which they have mounted nearer to heaven. 
 
 I have seen, down by the bank of a stream, a rock 
 which seemed to have been placed at the very point 
 where it interfered most with the various processes 
 going on round it. Because of that rock, a tree 
 could not strike freely outward and downward with 
 its roots ; the grass which grew round it could not 
 climb over it to fringe the bank ; the river was com- 
 pelled to turn out of its channel. But how quietly 
 Nature took the rock into those A'ery processes, and 
 used it to heighten the beauty of the whole scene. 
 The tree Avove round and under it a picturesque net- 
 work of brown roots, and dropped upon it leaves and 
 flickering shadows from above. The mosses and the 
 gray lichens crept up into the hollows and crevices, 
 and lined them with velvety green and silver. The 
 stream used it to break the monotony of its flow with 
 an eddy, and its silence with a ripple. The grass 
 reached up with its blades to meet the mosses, and 
 in that spot, of all along the bank, the idler and the 
 artist loved to linger. 
 
 Even so, many an one has been forced to incorpo- 
 rate with his life, and to carry along with him, day by 
 day, some living, active, growing trial of patience ; 
 and, not only in spite of it, but by means of it, has 
 developed a life at once fruitful and joyful. 
 
Caution and Comfort for the Tempted. 225 
 
 Such have quietly accepted the rankling of the 
 thorn, the daily pressure of the load ; and patience, 
 and gentleness, and steady persistence and courage 
 have bloomed in their character until their lives are a 
 continual fragrance. They have escaped the tempta- 
 tion by transmuting it into power. Through such an 
 experience as this, and only thus,one learns the mean- 
 ing of that apparent paradox of the Apostle James : 
 *'My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into di- 
 vers temptations." James himself states the solution 
 in the next verse, '* Knowing this that the trial of 
 your faith worketh patience;" but something more 
 than a statement is necessary to make us understand 
 it. Temptation is a blessing in disguise, and we 
 work through the disguise to the blessing, only by 
 patient endurance. Blessed is the man that endureth 
 temptation ; after the endurance, concealed for the 
 time by the obstacles which call out endurance, 
 comes the crown. When he is tried, he shall receive 
 the crown of life. The brow which bears the crown 
 is crossed and wrinkled with lines of care and sor- 
 row, but the hand which is stretched out to take it is 
 a man's hand, strong and trained and deft through 
 long and faithful wielding of God's weapon. 
 
 Here, then, we have our lesson to-day. I preach to 
 myself no less than to you, when I repeat the Apostle's 
 words, '' Let him that thinketh he standeth, take 
 heed lest he fall." I say to you, on the authority of 
 Him who knew what was in man, the higher your 
 position, the more secure your reputation, the more 
 numerous the circumstances which seem to insure 
 
226 Faith and CJiaracter, 
 
 you against moral or spiritual shipwreck, the more 
 need you have to watch and pray ; the more need 
 to look out for the temptations which lurk about 
 your strongest safeguards, and at those very points 
 at which you think the enemy will not think it worth 
 while to shoot his arrows. 
 
 Amid such dangers, lurking at your very firesides 
 and around your very altars of worship, you "will be 
 safe only as you shall put your life w^holly and im- 
 plicitly into God's hands. You need not fall, great 
 as is. the danger of your falling ; but you will stand 
 only as you shall enlist God's faithfulness on your be- 
 half. Oh, never forget this truth, that no temptation 
 is too strong for God's child. It might, it would 
 surely be, if the matter lay simply between him and 
 temptation ; but when God's faithfulness and God's 
 power come into the question, that changes the whole 
 aspect of the case ; and whatever a fallen Christian 
 may be able to say in his own defence, this excuse, at 
 least, that the temptation was too mighty for his 
 strength, is forever taken out of his mouth by the 
 simple answer, ''God is faithful, and you might have 
 had His strength." And, remember, too, that God's 
 deliverances from temptation come when they are 
 needed, and not before. Many a young Christian 
 gets frightened at the beginning of his journey. He 
 says : ** I am afraid I shall deny my Lord, and dis- 
 grace my profession ; " and he begins to imagine cer- 
 tain possible emergencies, and to wonder how he 
 shall extricate himself, and, seeing no way, he works 
 himself up into a state of great distress. He may 
 
Caution and Comfort for the Tempted. 22^ 
 
 quiet his heart. God does not promise the way of 
 escape until the temptation shall have come ; but then^ 
 He says, with the temptation He will make a way. 
 There is a place on the Hudson River where, as you 
 sail, you seem to be entirely hemmed in with hills. 
 The boat drives straight on toward a rocky wall, and 
 it seems as though it must either stop or be dashed to 
 pieces ; but, just as you come within the shadow of 
 the mountain, a little opening suddenly discloses it- 
 self, and the boat is headed into it, and passes out into 
 one of the grandest bays in the river. So it is with 
 temptation. You are not to seek it, not to enter into 
 it ; God promises no way out in such a case. But if 
 it meets you on your heavenward journey, you are to 
 go straight on, though you see no way out. The w^ay 
 w411 reveal itself in due time, if you only keep on ; 
 and remember, that, as in the river, the beautiful bay 
 lies just round the frowning rock, so, often your 
 sweetest and best experience of life lies just behind 
 your most menacing temptation. 
 
 Let us not deceive ourselves, brethren, with any 
 fond dream of some coming time when we can relax 
 our vigilance, and walk with tranquil security the rest 
 of the way to heaven. It will not come. The enemy 
 will dog the path to the end. It has seemed to me 
 as if the progress of a human soul through this world 
 was as that of one entrusted with a fragile and costly 
 vase, to carry it to a king in a distant city, over a road 
 full of rocks and pitfalls, and with a succession of ene- 
 mies starting up here and there and striking at his 
 treasure. It is a wonder if he reach the city with his 
 
228 Faith and Character. 
 
 vase unbroken. Yes, it is a wonder, but it is a won- 
 der of grace. It is a wonder which reflects no glory 
 on man, but rather upon that infinite faithfuhiess 
 which keeps its children as the apple of the eye, and 
 bears them as on eagle's wings through the waste, 
 and up to the city of God, — scarred and bruised, in- 
 deed, but presented blameless before the presence 
 of the King of kings with exceeding joy. 
 
TASTE AND HOLINESS. 
 
PHILIPPIANS IV. 
 
 (8) Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever 
 
 things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever 
 things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatso- 
 ever things are of good report ; if there be any virtue, 
 and if there be any praise, think on these things. 
 
 (9) Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, 
 
 and heard, and seen in me, do : and the God of peace 
 shall be with you. 
 
XIII. 
 TASTE AND HOLINESS. 
 
 At the close of the third chapter of this epistle, 
 Paul says : '* We are citizens of heaven." We live in 
 this world as those who are natives of another coun- 
 try, bearing our national mark and speaking our na- 
 tive tongue, and looking for the coming of the Lord 
 Jesus to restore us to our true home. 
 
 The exhortations of the next chapter grow directly 
 out of this. *' If you are thus citizens of heaven, stand 
 fast in your loyalty ; be at peace among yourselves ; 
 rejoice ; be forbearing to one another ; be not unduly 
 burdened with the cares of this world ; " and so the 
 apostle works on toward a close which he strikes in 
 the word *' finally," and runs into a strain of appeal 
 which, at the same time, sums up his previous exhor- 
 tations : *' finally, whatsoever things are true, honest, 
 just, pure, lovely, of good report, whatever there is 
 anywhere that is virtuous or beautiful or praise- 
 worthy, think on those things, and act out your 
 thinking in your life. Thus the God of peace shall 
 be with you." 
 
 ** Think on these things." That is more than 
 merely to remej7iber them, or to muse over them. It is 
 
232 Faith and Character, 
 
 rather to ** exercise the faculties upon them," to ap- 
 ply the mind to drawing out their lessons ;, so to think 
 of them as to get out of them all that can be turned 
 to use for growth in holiness, and for practical use- 
 fulness and happiness in the world. 
 
 Think on these lovely, good, pure, true things. It 
 would seem then that w^e are responsible for our 
 thinking. Paul urges his brethren to do, but he puts 
 the thinking, pondering, meditating, first. And holy 
 men long before Paul had discerned that men are ac- 
 countable for their thinking ; else Solomon would not 
 have said, *' Keep thy heart with all diligence ;" else 
 David would not have prayed, '' Search me, O God, 
 and know my heart ; try me and know my thoughts." 
 Else Solomon, again, would not have written, ''The 
 thoughts of the wicked are an abomination unto the 
 Lord." Too many persons assume that they can 
 have no control over their thoughts. They seem to 
 feel that their mind is like a common canal, through 
 which the tide must needs wash whatever is thrown 
 into it. That is not the teaching of God's Word, nor 
 do they admit the principle in their studies, for in- 
 stance. Their masters in science or history or com- 
 position tell them that they must learn to command 
 and concentrate and arrange their thoughts ; and 
 they find that practice and resolution enable them to 
 do so. Why should not the same practice and the 
 same resolution, especially with the aid of the divine 
 Spirit, enable them to regulate what good or evil 
 passes through their minds, and to exclude that which 
 is unholy and impure, and to discipline the mind into 
 
Taste and Holiness, 233 
 
 exercising itself habitually upon what is true and just 
 and lovely ? 
 
 In this exhortation, then, Paul lays down a Chris- 
 tian duty, to have the mind occupied with good and 
 beautiful things. But it is to be observed that these 
 words may easily be wrested from their strictly 
 Christian construction. There are worldly men who 
 do not believe a word of the Bible, who, nevertheless, 
 would indorse every word of this exhortation: '^ Think 
 on true things, venerable things, just things, pure 
 things, lovely things." Surely this Paul has a glim- 
 mer of common-sense and true appreciativeness with 
 all his fanaticism ! Think on these things ! Why, 
 that is just what I believe, that a man ought to have 
 and to cherish pure and ennobling thoughts. Above 
 all things, that he ought to think on what is true. 
 That is the ground upon which ninety-nine hun- 
 dredths of the attacks on Christianity are justified. 
 The assailants claim that they are pushing away false- 
 hood, and giving the world truth in its place. As a 
 late writer has said of certain skeptics, ''they want 
 the naked soul of truth ; they penetrate through form 
 and exterior to pluck it out ; they put aside all cover- 
 ing to get at the core, the solid divine particle itself of 
 truth. Dogmas are husks ; creeds are distortions ; 
 everything is seen through, nothing is final. He re- 
 jects the outside ; he peels off coating after coating 
 to come to something solid. "^ As to beauty — what- 
 soever things are lovely — no one will talk more en- 
 
 * Canon Mozley. 
 
234 Faith and Character. 
 
 thusiastically about it than an atheist. You find the 
 strictest insistence on the laws of taste among some 
 whose contempt for religion is unconcealed ; you hear 
 the loudest talk about honor among duellists who 
 violate the divine command against murder; you find 
 absolute ferocity of character among those whose ear 
 is jarred by the slightest discord, and their eye of- 
 fended by a hairbreadth variation from the lines of 
 symmetry ; you find extreme polish of manners often 
 grafted upon heartless brutality. And yet such 
 people would indorse Paul's \vords, taking them by 
 themselves. 
 
 It is quite needless to say that Paul w^ould be far 
 from feeling honored by any such indorsements as 
 these. Such thoughts of beauty and truth as should 
 be compatible w4th dispositions or deeds like those I 
 have cited, would awaken only his disgust. Like the 
 spirit over which the sons of Sceva pronounced the 
 name of the Lord Jesus, w^hom Paul preached, he 
 would have asked, "Who are ye ?" 
 
 It is quite evident, and it must be held in mind as 
 the very basis of our discussion, that Paul is speaking 
 here of true and just and lovely things on their moral 
 and spiritual side, and not on their artistic and taste- 
 ful side. Not that he is insensible to the charms of 
 beauty and nobility, however displayed, but that he is 
 thinking and speaking here of things that are pure 
 in the sight of God ; true to God's standard of truth ; 
 beautiful with the beauty of the Lord. 
 
 I wish to speak to-day of the practical issue between 
 beauty and taste in themselves considered, and these 
 
Taste and Holiness. 235 
 
 same things considered in their moral and spiritual re- 
 lations. I say '* the issue," for there is a very danger- 
 ous and a very subtle issue between these two. I 
 have already foreshadowed it in speaking of those 
 who, with intense love and keen perception of beauty, 
 even in some of its moral relations, unite habitual 
 disregard for the law of God. But I am thinking of 
 it not so much in this grosser form, as in the form in 
 which it creeps stealthily into modern Christian 
 society, and leads not a few practically to believe 
 that religion consists in good taste ; that beauty is a 
 substitute for holiness, and elegance for character, 
 and propriety for duty, and contemplation of what is 
 noble and majestic for worship, and which resolves 
 the " moral sense " into love of the beautiful. If this be 
 true, it is time that the Spirit of truth should search 
 such hearts as with a lighted candle, and should teach 
 them the true meaning of the words, '' if there be 
 any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these 
 things." 
 
 This danger comes always with advancing civiliza- 
 tion. The moment that the rough, pioneer work is 
 done, and society begins to crystallize, life begins 
 to develop on its aesthetic side ; the refinements and 
 amenities of culture make their way into social inter- 
 course, and the appliances of culture, books, pictures, 
 music, and their whole beautiful train, come in to do 
 their ennobling and refining work. And in older 
 communities there grows up a large class who think 
 a great deal on these things ; who give a great deal 
 of time to them, and spend a great deal of money 
 
236 Faith and Character. 
 
 upon them. These are, in many senses, real benefac- 
 tors to society. They do a good work in elevating 
 its taste, and in establishing true standards of taste. 
 The man who makes a common article of furniture 
 beautiful — a chair, or a lamp — and sends it into the 
 homes of the community ; the man who makes accu- 
 rate copies of the great standard works of art, and 
 puts them within reach of the poorest, is, so far forth, 
 doing God's work. For, let it be always remembered 
 that God's word nowhere says or implies anything 
 tending to depreciate beauty. Those wretched per- 
 versions of the Bible and of Christianity which dedi- 
 cated to God the ugliest and barest structure in the 
 community, and which assumed that the crucifixion 
 of the sense of beauty was one of the most accept- 
 able sacrifices that could be offered at His throne, 
 are things for which men and not God were responsi- 
 ble. I shall be glad if you will find for me a book 
 which shows a keener sense of beauty and majesty 
 and grace and fitness, which introduces one to more 
 grand and beautiful scenes, or which treats its themes 
 with more sublimity and with a finer play of the im- 
 agination than the Bible. See, for instance, what a 
 sense of the beauty of nature pervades the Psalms. 
 See how God Himself gave expression to the artistic 
 sense in the tabernacle and in the temple ; and in 
 Paul's writings, you will find all sorts of pictures and 
 figures hidden away in single words, which show how 
 sensitive he was to the charm of the same things 
 which gratified the taste and revealed the skill of the 
 beauty-loving Greek — the stately palaces of Athens 
 
Taste ajtd Holiness. 237 
 
 or Corinth, or the manly grace and symmetry which 
 appeared in the race-course or in the arena. 
 
 All this is true. But everything which develops 
 itself apart from God and from God's moral law, de- 
 velops a danger corresponding to its departure ; and 
 beauty and fitness and symmetry, in themselves con- 
 sidered, have not so much of the divine in them, 
 that they form an exception to this rule. On the 
 contrary, the very charm of the beautiful, which 
 seems to raise it so far above the evil and sordid- 
 ness of earth, makes it the most dangerous ally of 
 evil the moment it is divorced from God. Greece 
 is our standing example of this truth. It is a histo- 
 rian who would be accounted very far from orthodox 
 who says, *' In no other period of the world's history 
 w^as the admiration of beauty in all its forms so pas- 
 sionate or so universal. It colored the whole moral 
 teaching of the time, and led the chief moralists to 
 regard virtue simply as the highest kind of supersen- 
 sual beauty." ^ And this same historian tells us that 
 Greek public opinion acquiesced without scandal in 
 an almost boundless indulgence of sinful pleasures ; 
 that nameless vices prevailed among the most illustri- 
 ous men, and that licentiousness was a recognized 
 minister of worship. 
 
 Now, when we go back to the Bible, we find beauty 
 everywhere the handmaid of holiness. It is never 
 contemplated as an end unto itself. The Bible refuses 
 to divorce beauty from rectitude. Even, as in the 
 
 ' Lecky, " History of European Morals." 
 
23S Faith and Character. 
 
 old tabernacle, the most costly and beautiful work 
 was reserved for the holiest place of all, the place 
 where God specially manifested Himself, for the ark 
 of the covenant, the symbol which most vividly figured 
 the divine presence — even so, the higher the develop- 
 ment of beauty or sublimity in the Bible, the nearer 
 it brings us to God. Take, for example, the weird, 
 mysterious grandeur of Ezekiel's vision ; it is a vision 
 of the Eternal Himself. Take what is perhaps the 
 most wonderful poetic flight in all literature — the 
 prayer of the prophet Habakkuk — again it is a vision 
 of the Almighty. Hear the Psalmist discoursing of 
 the glory of the starry heavens. How exquisite his 
 imagery : the w^hole heaven as a chorus of voices 
 proclaiming the glory of God, the days and the nights 
 telling each other of His power and majesty in a won- 
 drous speech of their own unheard by mortal ears ; 
 their line going out to all the earth, the heavens 
 everywhere spanning it and everywhere preaching 
 the same divine sermon ; the sim coming forth from 
 the pavilions of the east as a bridegroom from his 
 chamber ; and yet all this pomp of diction is only to 
 prepare the way for a panegyric upon the law of 
 God ; all the beauty of the starry heavens serves the 
 poet to illustrate the perfection, the surety, the recti- 
 tude, the purity, the illuminating power of the stat- 
 utes of the Lord. Saul had saved fine cattle from 
 -A-gag's herds to sacrifice to God. It would have been 
 a most princely and impressive sacrifice. None the 
 less does his disobedience cost him his kingdt)m. 
 Jezebel was beautiful ; her beauty docs not palliate 
 
Taste and Holiness. 239 
 
 her crimes. Babylon was magnificent, but what 
 cared God for temples or hanging gardens, gigantic 
 walls or stately bridges, when the vessels of His sanc- 
 tuary were profaned, and the abominations of the peo- 
 ple cried to heaven ? So the Bible insists throughout 
 on moral beauty as the highest type of beauty, uses 
 every lovely thing in nature and art to emphasize 
 that type, and rejects, with loathing, everything, 
 however attractive otherwise, which refuses that im- 
 press. 
 
 And, in the highest revelation of Himself which 
 God gave to the world, the incarnation of Jesus 
 Christ, He proclaimed, most unmistakably, the supre- 
 macy of moral and spiritual beauty, and its power to 
 assert itself over the most uncongenial and hostile 
 circumstances. We need not enter into speculations 
 (for they can be nothing more) upon the personal ap- 
 pearance of Jesus, whether he was a man of perfect 
 physical beauty as we love to picture him, or one with 
 visage ^' more marred than any man." Under all 
 such trilling lies the patent fact that the outward life 
 of Jesus was habitually detached from circumstances 
 of beauty or majesty. He drew no helps from that 
 artistic atmosphere which enspheres and glorifies not 
 a few inferior men. He was poor, and poverty is not 
 beautiful. He was the friend and associate of the 
 poor, and much of his life was in contact with squalor 
 and misery. He was a man of sorrows, despised and 
 rejected ot men. Take that figure as it bends in 
 Gethsemane in agony such as never man knew ; or as 
 it stands in Pilate's hall, crowned with thorns and 
 
240 Faith and Character. 
 
 with shoulders scarred with the scourge ; or as it 
 toils under the weight of the cross, or hangs between 
 two thieves, the very type of physical agony. Put 
 beside this one of the gods of Greece, one of those 
 lovely creations of a beauty-worshipping intellect, a 
 graceful Mercury with winged feet, a sun-crowned 
 Apollo, a robust Hercules, a majestic Jove, and bid 
 the Greek look on this crucified man of sorrows, who 
 has no beauty that he should desire him, and worship 
 him. Do you wonder that the cross was ''foolish- 
 ness " to the Greek ? And yet we know that the 
 Greek was mistaken ; that there was a deeper beauty 
 which he did not see — the beauty of character, which 
 has been gaining on the world, rising above all cir- 
 cumstances of poverty, suffering, human contempt, 
 and asserting itself to men as the one thing altogether 
 lovely. And the same is true of Christ's ideals as he 
 outlined them to his followers. You find them in the 
 Sermon on the Mount, ideals quite different from the 
 world's. The beautiful, majestic, triumphant men of 
 his kingdom are the poor in spirit, the meek, the 
 merciful, the mourners over moral evil — all of them 
 distinguished by moral beauty, by beauty of charac- 
 ter. 
 
 So, then, I say that, in all our thought and love 
 and pursuit of what is amiable and beautiful, we must 
 hold by the gospel stand-point, or these fair things 
 will delude us fearfully. 
 
 Scores of illustrations of this delusion might easily 
 be cited. For instance, people are not unfrcquent- 
 ly deceived into mistaking a certain feeling of admi- 
 
Taste and Holiness. 241 
 
 ration toward God as the creator of the beauties of 
 nature, for genuine worship. They go out on some 
 bright morning, and as their eye ranges over a grand 
 scene of mountain and stream and forest, with the 
 pastures covered over with flocks, and the valleys 
 standing thick with corn, they think of the power and 
 goodness of God, and give themselves credit for be- 
 ing qiite religious in entertaining such a thought. I 
 stumbled the other day upon the sad story^ of a mor- 
 bid man of letters who attained some notoriety in his 
 day, not only for his gifts, but for his violent recoil 
 from the Christian faith, and here is his idea of prayer : 
 ** I had opened my window and seated myself in view 
 of the heavens to collect my mind for the daily trib- 
 ute of adoration to my Maker. The mere act of di- 
 recting my mind to Him, in the presence of His glori- 
 ous works, filled me with an inexpressible, though 
 tranquil and rational delight. I said to myself, 
 'What a glorious gift conscious existence is in itself ! 
 Heaven must essentially consist in the absence of 
 whatever disturbs the quiet enjoyment of that con- 
 sciousness, in the intimate conviction of the presence 
 of God.' " And then he goes on to tell the Deity that 
 He is not to'suppose Himself worshipped in the strict 
 sense of the word. ''It is long," he says, "since I 
 have renounced the (to me) superstitious practice of 
 falling on my knees and formally addressing unto 
 Thee either praise or petition. I am, however, unin- 
 terruptedly in a praying state." Well says the nar- 
 rator, " The religious feeling that sur\'eys nature sim- 
 ply is weak. The mind expands and has an idea of a 
 
242 Faith and CJiaractcr. 
 
 large pervading Being ; but this Being has not a 
 character." * 
 
 Men say it is right to indulge their sense of the 
 beautiful ; but too often they become possessed with 
 the idea that beauty in itself has a moral value, and 
 therefore excuse themselves for the neglect of duty 
 or for indulgence in sin, on the plea of gratifying the 
 pure sense of the beautiful. I have known professing 
 Christians to lend the countenance of their presence 
 to spectacles that were morally vile, on the ground 
 that they were so beautiful. Remember that the 
 sense of beauty, which is gratified through sin, is a 
 perverted sense. 
 
 Or again, there is danger of resting satisfied with a 
 life which conforms to proprieties merely ; of mistak- 
 ing an elegant and orderly life for a good life ; of 
 thinking that because the life is passed in the enjoy- 
 ment of pure tastes, it is for that sole reason a life 
 acceptable to God. Such a life may be as selfish and 
 unchristlike as a miser's. 
 
 Or again, there is danger of resting in a superficial 
 view of evil : of forgetting the sinfulness of sin when 
 it ceases to be gross. Some of you will recall that 
 familiar picture in three compartments, representing 
 the history of the prodigal son ; and you may remem- 
 ber that the central picture, which sets forth his life 
 of pleasure in the far country, portrays a scene in 
 which not only eating and drinking, but music and 
 literature and the fine arts bear a part. Remember 
 
 ' Canon Mozley, Essay on Blanco White. 
 
Taste and holiness. - 243 
 
 that sin is no less sin because it is beautifully draped 
 and conventionally recognized. I want to read you 
 one or two passages from a man whom God endowed 
 with a terrible crystalline plainness of speech, and a 
 deep insight into truth. '' As the reason is cultivated, 
 the taste formed, the affections and sentiments refined, 
 a general decency and grace will of course spread 
 over the face of society, quite independently of the 
 influence of Revelation. That beauty and delicacy 
 of thought which is so attractive in books, then ex- 
 tends to the conduct of life, to all we have, all we do, 
 all w^e are. Our manners are courteous ; we avoid 
 giving pain or offence ; our w^ords become correct ; 
 our relative duties are carefully performed. Our 
 sense of propriety shows itself even in our domestic 
 arrangements, in the embellishments of our houses, 
 in our amusements, and so also in our religious pro- 
 fession. Vice now becomes unseemly and hideous to 
 the imagination, or, as it is sometimes familiarly said, 
 out of taste. Thus elegance is gradually made the 
 test and the standard of virtue, which is no longer 
 thought to possess an intrinsic claim on our hearts, 
 or to exist, farther than it leads to the quiet and com- 
 fort of others. Conscience is no longer recognized 
 as an independent arbiter of actions, its authority is 
 explained away ; partly it is superseded in the minds 
 of men by the so-called moral sense, which is regarded 
 merely as the love of the beautiful, partly by the rule 
 of expediency which is forthwith substituted for it in 
 
 the details of conduct Here is a teaching only 
 
 partially evangelical, built upon worldly principle, yet 
 
244 * Faith and Character. 
 
 pretending to be the gospel — dropping one whole side 
 of the gospel, its austere character, and considering 
 it enough to be benevolent, courteous, candid, cor- 
 rect in conduct, delicate — though it includes no true 
 fear of God, no fervent zeal fur His honor, no deep 
 hatred of sin, .... no sense of the authority of 
 religion as external to the mind, in a word, no seri- 
 ousness."' It may be well to remember that that is 
 the condition ascribed to the Laodicean church by 
 the Spirit — lukewarm, neither cold nor hot — and 
 that God says to such a character, '' I will spue thee 
 out of My mouth." 
 
 But we must not only keep our sense of the beau- 
 tiful from interfering with duty ; there is a step far- 
 ther, namely, a conscious and habitual consecration of 
 all the beautiful and tasteful elements of our life to 
 God and to Christian service. If you have a beauti- 
 ful thing, make it teach you heavenly lessons, and 
 turn it to heavenly uses. If you cannot do this, the 
 thing itself is ugly. If you can, you will get from it 
 in this way the very best and richest that it has for 
 you. That flower mission was a Christian thought in 
 its very essence and spirit, a consecration of beauty 
 to Christlike ministry. I knew a man in this city, 
 years ago, who taught a large Bible class of pt)or 
 people. At regular intervals he would meet his class 
 at his house, where thousands of dollars' worth of 
 paintings covered the walls, and where the shelves 
 were loaded with books and engravings and articles 
 
 ' John Henry Newman, Seimon on *♦ The Religion of the Day." 
 
Taste and Holiness. 245 
 
 of beauty. And he would give up his evening to 
 showing and explaining to these people his treasures. 
 They came and received a glimpse into a new world; 
 — hints of a beauty and grace and loveliness, very lit- 
 tle of which ever found its way to their poor homes. 
 ''They did not appreciate it all," some one will say. 
 No, probably not, but that deed, that consecrated use 
 of beauty, was more beautiful than all the pictures 
 on their benefactor's walls. 
 
 And so I close by saying that you will know what 
 beauty, grace, majesty, loveliness, truly are, only 
 when you shall have consecrated all artistic suscepti- 
 bilities, all beautiful things about you to Christ and 
 to his service. As I have said already, God loves 
 beauty. He loves to have you love what is beautiful. 
 He bids you think on these things. But He wants 
 your sense of the beautiful rooted in holy character, 
 and all the beauty of your life and thought to resolve 
 itself finally into the beauty of holiness. You know 
 what a geode is — a pebble, which on being broken, is 
 found to be full of crystals. Some years ago a very 
 large one was found, which, on being opened, dis- 
 played a cluster of brilliant crystals arranged in the 
 form of a cross. And so, when the hard shell of sel- 
 fishness shall have been broken, and all these beauti- 
 ful tastes and affinities shall group themselves about 
 the cross, and fall into the lines of Christian ministry 
 and assimilate with that spirit of holy love which is 
 the essence of the gospel and the essence of divine 
 beauty, then shall men know with what good reason 
 the apostle said, ''Think on these things." 
 
BALAAM, 
 
2 PETER II. 
 
 (15) Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone 
 
 astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, 
 who loved the wages of unrighteousness ; 
 
 (16) But was rebuked for his iniquity, the dumb ass, speak- 
 
 ing with man's voice, forbad the madness of the 
 prophet. 
 
XIV. 
 
 BALAAM. 
 
 Balaam is mentioned tliree times in the New Tes- 
 tament, and each time with reproach. It is a sad 
 thing to have a great man's name come down to us 
 only as a warning ; saddest of all when we recognize 
 in him a prophet of God, and the vehicle of words 
 which even now thrill our hearts by their beauty and 
 the richness of their divine promise. The contrast is 
 sharp and painful between the sublime prophecy in 
 the twenty-fourth chapter of Numbers, and the words 
 of our text. 
 
 But no man traverses the distance between these 
 two extremes in the twinkling of an eye. We never 
 cease wondering at the sudden falls of men from high 
 religious positions to infamy, forgetting that the sud- 
 denness is only seeming, and that much of the appar- 
 ent goodness which preceded the fall was hollow, 
 fallacious, and covering the slope to the final ruin. 
 The special value of the story of Balaam is in uncov- 
 erinor some of these fallacies. As he comes before us 
 in the Old Testament narrative, we may justly say 
 that goodness and greatness appear to blend in him. 
 Not a perfect man, according to the New Testament 
 standard, we yet are impressed with the appearance 
 
250 Faith and Character. 
 
 of a well-developed sense of duty, a sturdy conscien- 
 tiousness, a goodly share of moral courage, and a 
 highly-wrought moral enthusiasm. 
 
 With this, we find that he is no obscure man. He 
 is known throughout the region as one whose bless- 
 ing or curse carries power with it. He is one whom 
 kings approach with respectful urgency, and with 
 magnificent offers. 
 
 The tribes, in their journey to Canaan, had now 
 reached their last encampment on the east of the Jor- 
 dan, in the land of Moab. Their camp was pitched 
 on the highest of the three terraces which rose from 
 the bed of the Jordan ; and from this height they 
 could look across to the land of promise, and could 
 see the green meadows and balsams of Jericho which 
 was soon to fall beneath their power. 
 
 Frightened by the recent success of Israel against 
 the Amorites, Balak, the Moabite king, formed an 
 alliance with the forces of Midian ; and the united 
 host encamped on the heights of Abarim, behind the 
 Israelites. But Balak was not disposed to trust en- 
 tirely to this alliance. He desired supernatural aid ; 
 and, for this purpose, sent messengers to Balaam, 
 who lived somewhere among the Mesopotamian hills ; 
 a worshipper and prophet of the true God, but so 
 well known and so highly respected that the Moabite 
 king said in this message, '' I wot that he whom thou 
 blessest is blessed, and he whom tliou cursest is curs- 
 ed." Evidently tlie gods of the Moabites were not 
 jealous gods, and did not insist on having a monop- 
 oly of devotion. At any rate, their royal worshipper 
 
Balaam. 251 
 
 was not so jealous for their honor, that he was not 
 quite willing to have it shared with another and a 
 strange deity, provided he could secure thereby some 
 stronger spell for the destruction of his enemies. 
 Such is the inherent weakness and inconsistency of 
 pagan faiths. This was why so much emphasis was 
 laid on the truth that the Lord God is a jealous God. 
 He will not give His glory to another ; and His true 
 worshippers must trust Him wholly, or not at all. 
 
 The envoys from Balak, having presented to 
 Balaam their master's request that he would come 
 and curse Israel, were detained by him until he 
 should have asked counsel of God ; and that counsel 
 was promptly given, and in no doubtful terms : 
 *' Thou shalt not go with them ; thou shalt not curse 
 the people, for they are blessed." 
 
 Balaam did not argue nor temporize. He acted 
 as a true prophet of God might be expected to act. 
 He took God's literal answer back to the deputies : 
 *'The Lord refuseth to give me leave to go with 
 you." Would that, for Balaam's sake, the story 
 might have stopped just here. Thus far all is hon- 
 orable to him ; his appeal to divine wisdom, his un- 
 questioning acquiescence in the answer, his point- 
 blank refusal of the ambassadors. 
 
 But character is not to be estimated by one such 
 act, however bold and manly. The engineer who 
 knows that fortress wall, knows that there is a cer- 
 tain spot where the first ball will not tell, nor the 
 second ; but he trembles when he thinks of the 
 third. In his illustration of the houses on the sand 
 
252 Faith and Character. 
 
 and on the rock, you remember that our Lord rep- 
 resented them as exposed to a succession of shocks — 
 the floods, the wind, the rain — and the same idea is 
 brought out by Paul in the Epistle to the Ephesians, 
 where the victor, in the spiritual fight, is declared to 
 be the one who stands after having done all. Men 
 often exhibit enough moral strength to carry them 
 through one or two ordeals ; but the long succession 
 of assaults which waits on all moral warfare will cer- 
 tainly disclose the latent moral weakness at last. 
 
 I do not know whether Balak knew his man. At 
 all events this direct refusal did not discourage him. 
 Back came the envoys again, and this time with 
 large promises. '' I will promote thee unto very great 
 honor, and I will do whatsoever thou sayest unto 
 me." 
 
 At first sight it appears as though Balaam were 
 going to stand tliis second ordeal equally well. His 
 words have a good honest ring : "If Balak would 
 give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go 
 beyond the word of the Lord my God, to do less or 
 more." Why did he not stop right there ? Why did 
 he not tell the envoys to go back to their master at 
 once, saying " God has refused to let me go. Your 
 offers of honor and wealth can make no difference ? " 
 But no, we begin to detect Balaam's weakness in his 
 next words. " Now therefore, I pray you, tarry ye also 
 here this night, that I may know what the Lord will say 
 unto me more." More, forsooth ! What more could 
 he expect ? Could any declaration have been more 
 decisive or more comprehensive than the one he had 
 
Balaam. 253 
 
 already received : '' Thou shalt not go with them ; 
 thou shalt not curse the people, for they are blessed ? " 
 Did Balaam know so little of God as to think that the 
 circumstance of Balak's sending a second time, and 
 offering him a bribe, would influence the Almighty to 
 change His positive decree ? Did he think God was 
 a man that He should repent ? Balaam's secret heart 
 is disclosed in that invitation to tarry, and in that 
 second consultation of God. He wanted to go. He 
 was not satisfied with God's answer. He wanted to 
 talk it over again. He did not mean to disobey God, 
 but he thought God might be prevailed on to let him 
 ^Ci ; and he meant to prevail on him, if he could. 
 Yet Balaam only illustrates a common tendency of 
 the human heart in all ages. Strange if we have not 
 found traces of it in ourselves. It is not natural for 
 us to accept one utterance of God as decisive, when 
 it clashes with our own purpose. And a wrong de- 
 sire has not only a power of resistance, but a power 
 of delusion. In ordinary life, you will often notice 
 how completely a man is blinded when he wants a 
 certain thing very much — a house, or a picture, or a 
 marriage alliance. His eyes will be completely shut 
 to the state of his own purse, to the rightfulness of 
 other claims, to defects of character in another ; and 
 he will plunge into a folly or extravagance which, 
 perhaps, cripples him for the rest of his life. And 
 this same power of delusion often gives a man a 
 false and debased view of God Himself. When he 
 wants to gain some end, or to pursue some course 
 which is wrong or imprudent, while he is neverthe- 
 
254 Faith and Character, 
 
 less afraid to violate God's command, he often tries 
 to bring God into complicity with his purpose. He 
 refuses to accept the clear indication of God's word or 
 Spirit, that he had best drop tlie thing entirely, and 
 turn his back on it. It comes back to him with new 
 allurements, and instead of saying : '' The word is 
 spoken, God's will is declared, and there is an end 
 of the matter," he says, like Balaam, '' Do not go yet. 
 Let me talk it over once more with God. Let me 
 see if I cannot find a way to gratify myself without 
 positively disobeying Him." The man is so blind to 
 the awful purity and truth of the divine character, as 
 to think that, in this particular case, because tlie 
 thing is so dear to him, God will relax the stringency 
 of His law, and grant his desire. It was against this 
 delusion that those solemn words were written, *' Be 
 not deceived, God is not mocked." 
 
 But we find this error of Balaam's character leadina: 
 into another and more radical one. We get down 
 here to one of his fundamental principles of action, 
 and we find it thoroughly unsound. Bear in mind 
 that Balaam has no intention of disobeying God. 
 He will not go in the face of a direct prohibition, 
 and if he goes, he does not mean to speak anything 
 but what God shall tell him. But at this very point 
 you see that the emphasis in Balaam's mind is upon 
 not disobeying. He wanted God to open some way 
 whereby he could accomplisli his own j^leasure, and 
 yet keep within the limit of obedience. Whereas, the 
 emphasis ought to have been upon carrying out to 
 the letter God's first injunction, " Tliou shalt not go 
 
Balaam. 255 
 
 with them ; thou shalt not curse them." So his error 
 may be simply put in the words of a great modern 
 divine : ^ *' His endeavor was not to please God, but 
 to please self, without displeasing God." 
 
 And here we see the worm at the root of a good 
 deal of service which goes under a higher name than 
 did Balaam's. The Christian ideal of service to God 
 is that of an enthusiasm with love as its mainspring ; 
 a service which is spontaneous, generous in the be- 
 stowment of all its powers, unselfish, and not disposed 
 to stand on what it conceives to be its rights. It is 
 illustrated by the woman who broke the alabaster box 
 of ointment on Jesus' head, and poured out the whole 
 without stint. Everywhere, love's service seeketh not 
 her own. Love says : *' Only let me know what God's 
 will is, and my delight shall be to do it." This is the 
 plane upon which Christ puts His disciples when He 
 says: ** Henceforth I call you not servants, but 
 friends." It is the plane of confidential relationship : 
 the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth, but 
 the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him. 
 This relation involves obedience and service, it is 
 true ; but it is something more than mere obedience 
 or mere service. It is cooperation : God and man 
 working in the harmony of perfect love to carry out 
 God's will. 
 
 But a man may be content to live on the lower 
 plane of bare obedience, in which case the great 
 question of his life will be, not, " How can I please 
 
 ' J. H. Newman, 
 
256 Faith and Character. 
 
 God? What can I do for Him?" but " How much 
 can I do for self within the limits of God's law ? 
 How much can I keep for self without defrauding 
 Him ? " Such an one abandons the loving, impulsive, 
 generous side of service, and takes up with the cau- 
 tious, niggardly, self-interested side. He substitutes 
 the obedience of fear for the obedience of love. 
 
 And what is our heavenly Father's view of such 
 sefvice from one whom He would fain regard as a son 
 and a friend ? You may answer the question from 
 your own parental feeling. Suppose you had bidden 
 your boy not to go within a certain distance of a dan- 
 gerous stream w^hich ran through your grounds ; and 
 suppose that every time you happened to see him at 
 his play, you should find him just as near the line as 
 he could go Avithout actually disobeying you, look- 
 ing longingly over to the stream ; that ever}^ time 
 you talked with him about his day's pursuits, you 
 should find that his thought was dwelling on that 
 forbidden pleasure ; that he was continually hinting 
 his desire to have you withdraw your command, and 
 seeking for an excuse to evade it. Would you be sat- 
 isfied with such obedience, even though he should 
 never transgress ? Would not his behaviour tell you, 
 immistakably, that his heart was set, not on doing 
 your will, but his own ? And yet how much just such 
 service as this there is, which goes under the name 
 of Christian service, which consists in an absence of 
 actual transgression rather than in the free will offer- 
 ing of the life. An absence of transgression do I say ? 
 Let us not be too sure of that. That, perhaps, is the 
 
Balaam. 257 
 
 way men view it. They may think it makes very 
 little difference which way the secret desire tends, so 
 long as the outward life is kept within bounds ; but 
 it is the tendency of that secret desire w^hich makes 
 all the difference to God. It was Balaam's longing 
 to go with the Moabitish envoys w^hich made the 
 great, final difference in the issue of his life. A pro- 
 fessing Christian does not go over the boundary, per- 
 haps, but does it not indicate a strange state of things 
 in a Christian heart that it should want to go so near ? 
 He does not mean nor want to be identified with 
 God's enemies, but is it not a strange longing in a 
 Christian heart, to want to have so much of their 
 society ? He does not want to be a lover of pleasure 
 more than of God, but is there not a singular incon- 
 sistency in his zeal to pursue worldly pleasure up to 
 the very limit of Christian fidelity ? He does not 
 want to transgress the bounds of honesty in business, 
 but does it look like hearty sympathy with the high, 
 broad, generous morality of the gospel, when he is will- 
 ing to stretcli the morals of trade to the very verge of 
 fairness ? It is this spirit which we have to fear in the 
 church at large. This spirit, wiiich keeps men down 
 on the low plane of fearful obedience, instead of the 
 spirit which leads them up to the higher level of lov- 
 ing consecration ; this spirit which wants just as much 
 of the world as it can possibly smuggle in on the 
 road to Heaven ; this spirit which is afraid openly to 
 disobey God, but which, nevertheless, longs for that 
 which He forbids. This is not the spirit of Christ's 
 friends ; not the spirit which will make men cham- 
 
258 Faith and Character. 
 
 pions of truth and holiness ; not the spirit which will 
 make tlie Church a terror to evil-doers, or a bright 
 and shining light in an evil and compromising world. 
 The only spirit which will work such results is that 
 which found voice in the words of Him whom Ba- 
 laam saw in the vision of prophecy, *' My meat is to 
 do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His 
 work." 
 
 The result of Balaam's second consultation witli God 
 is very startling, and, at first sight, puzzling. We have 
 been prepared to expect that the first refusal would 
 be repeated and sternly emphasized with a rebuke 
 of the prophet's persistence. Instead of this, God 
 seems to give way. He comes to him by night and 
 says : '* If the men come to call thee, rise up, and go 
 with them ; but yet the word w^hich I shall say unto 
 thee, that shalt thou do." That was exactly as 
 Balaam wanted it. He did not want nor mean to 
 curse Israel. He did not want to go with Balak's 
 messengers, and God gave him the permission he 
 desired, and laid the prohibition just where he would 
 have laid it himself. 
 
 So he was off betimes the next morning. How 
 prompt men are to move when they are carrying out 
 their own wishes. But now we are told that, after 
 allowing him to go, God's anger was kindled because 
 he went, and the angel, with drawn sword and mena- 
 cing look, met him with God's message of wrath. 
 Does not this look like caprice ? 
 
 On the contrary, it opens to us one of the most aw- 
 ful features of God's dealing with men. There is no 
 
Balaam. 259 
 
 inconsistency nor caprice here. God's will was ex- 
 pressed in the first refusal : *' Thou shalt hot go with 
 them ; thou shalt not curse them. " That will had not 
 changed. God's intent was no different when He 
 permitted Balaam to go than when he refused him ; 
 but Balaam's perverseness of heart had complicated 
 the matter, and had introduced a new element into it ; 
 and it was this new element which was contemplated 
 by God's permission. It not unfrequently happens 
 that permissions are God's most fearful punishments ; 
 that the worst judgment God can send upon a man is 
 to give him his own way. We are often perplexed 
 and troubled at the prosperity of wicked men, won- 
 dering why God permits them to have their own way 
 and does not judge them, and we forget that, possibly, 
 the judgment is already begun ; that in giving them 
 their own way, God is letting them work out their 
 own judgment. That terrible passage in the first 
 chapter of Proverbs shows that the wise man had 
 recognized this truth : '' For that they hated knowl- 
 edge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord : they 
 would none of my counsel ; they despised all my re- 
 proof : therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their 
 own way, and be filled with their own devices. For 
 the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and 
 the prosperity of fools shall destroy them." 
 
 There was one encampment of Israel which bore 
 an awful name, Kibroth-hattaavah, ** the graves of 
 greediness." They left a multitude of their kins- 
 men in those graves. God had provided for them 
 the food best suited to their condition, His own spe- 
 
26o Faith and Character. 
 
 cial gift, the manna falling fresh from heaven every 
 morning. But they were discontented. There is 
 something almost ludicrous in the spectacle of that 
 host of people weeping at the remembrance of the 
 flesh-pots of Egypt, and cry^ing : ''Who will give us 
 flesh to eat ? " The answer came from an unexpected 
 quarter. The God who had all along refused them 
 flesh, suddenly said : ''/ will give you flesh to eat." 
 It came on the wings of the wind. The blast which 
 blew from the Arabian Sea, bore into the camp the 
 hosts of the migrating quails, and for a day's journey 
 on either side the camp, they lay piled two cubits 
 high on the face of the earth. The people might 
 revel in flesh. Let the seventy-eighth Psalm, Asaph's 
 Psalm of instruction, finish the story: **They tempt- 
 ed God in their heart, by asking meat for their lust. 
 Yea, they spake against God. They said. Can God 
 furnish a table in the wilderness ? . . . Therefore the 
 Lord heard this, and was wroth ; so a fire was kindled 
 against Jacob, and anger also came up against Israel ; 
 because they believed not in God, and trusted not 
 in His salvation ; though He had commanded the 
 clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven, 
 and had rained down manna upon them to eat. . . , 
 He rained flesh also upon them as dust, and feathered 
 fowls like as the sand of the sea. ... So they did eat, 
 and were well filled : for He gave them their own de- 
 sire ; they were not estranged from their lust ; but 
 while their meat was yet in their mouths, the wrath 
 of God came upon them, and slew the fattest of them, 
 and smote down the chosen men of Israel." 
 
Balaam. 26 1 
 
 So God often punishes men by answering the 
 prayer of their estranged hearts. They have either 
 the positive prohibitions of His word, or other equally 
 clear indications of His will, pointing them away from 
 certain courses which they wish to pursue, or indi- 
 cating God's denial of certain things which they want. 
 Yet they will not accept God's decision in the matter 
 as final. They want to talk it over and argue it with 
 Him, or they reject His decision with contempt, and 
 press on after the coveted boon ; and, finally, God 
 withdraws His restraint. He says, '* Have your own 
 way. You are determined to be rich ; see ! here are 
 silver and gold to your heart's content. You are de- 
 termined to form such a connection ; well, have your 
 desire. You are determined to thrust yourself into 
 public life, and to have your ears tickled Avith the 
 popular breath ; you were better fitted for a more 
 quiet sphere, and I would gladly have kept you there, 
 for your own sake ; but go out into the wider, more 
 tumultuous life." I know not how many of us to-day 
 may be reaping the fruit of our own heart's lust in 
 something or other which God has conceded to our 
 desire, only to be our pain and our daily trial. You 
 know how often the coveted riches have buried man- 
 hood under their accumulations ; how often the cov- 
 eted alliance has proved a snare and a life-long 
 pest ; how often the coveted fame has brought bitter- 
 ness and slander, and disappointment in its track. 
 Now and then my attention is called to people who 
 have taken the direction of their life into their own 
 hands ; who have deliberately set themselves to carry 
 
26*2 Faith and CJiaracter. 
 
 out their own godless and selfish principles. They 
 think the Bible an antiquated book, and they want 
 none of it in fashioning their own lives or their chil- 
 dren's. They have set out " to have a good time," as 
 they say, and they mean to have it, and in their own 
 way. They form not the associations which are best, 
 but the associations which please them. They mean 
 to have their cultured, elegant leisure, no matter 
 what duty stands in the way. They will gratify 
 pride and selfishness, no matter who goes under. 
 And in God's tolerance, and it would almost seem 
 furtherance, of these lives along their chosen line, 
 I see their retribution working itself out. I hear 
 God saying, *' Have your own way. I have warned 
 you. I have called and you have refused. I give 
 you your heart's desire. You shall be filled with 
 your own devices. The calamities which begin to 
 fall in along the line as it is farther and farther drawn 
 out, may all be traced to the original, perverted de- 
 sire and determination to please self, and not God. 
 Balaam received a terrible hint of his mistake long 
 before he reached his destination. The angelic mes- 
 senger bestriding the path, who made the dumb beast 
 start back and tremble, and finally speak with human 
 accents, laid open Balaam's delusion, and showed him 
 that, whereas he had congratulated himself on having 
 secured God's permission, he was riding toward God's 
 wrath, along the very line of his permission. Tliat in 
 his very permission, God was withstanding his per- 
 verse way. Balaam would have gone back then, but 
 it was too late. The angel said, *'No ; you must go 
 the way you Iiave chosen." 
 
Balaam. 263 
 
 But men are usually blind to this fearful truth. 
 They rejoice in God's permission to have their own 
 way, and when the appropriate retribution comes, 
 they lay it to circumstances. Balaam, not seeing the 
 angel of the Lord in the path, grew angry at his beast 
 which started, and shrank, and crushed his foot 
 against the wall, and began to belabor the poor 
 dumb creature. And so men, overlooking the great, 
 eternal truth that all the evil in life grows out of 
 being in wrong relations to God, put it to themselves 
 that their evil grows out of being in wrong relations 
 to circumstances, and curse circumstances as the 
 cause of their disaster. They forget that a man is 
 never in right relation to circumstances until he is 
 in right relation to God. They think that the evil 
 circumstances have come to them upon their road, 
 whereas they have come to the evil circumstances by 
 taking the wrong road. Many of the disasters which 
 seem to them the product of the day, are linked by 
 invisible lines with that point, far back in their his- 
 tory, perhaps forgotten, where the ways parted, and 
 where they left God's way and followed their own. 
 
 One thing more is to be briefly noted. Balaam 
 was not ruined when he took the road to Moab. The 
 fact that God opened his eyes to his mistake showed 
 that there was still a chance of retrieval. If he had 
 accepted the warning which laid bare his radical 
 mistake, he might, though with pain, have retrieved 
 himself in the very position in which his error had 
 placed him. He did not accept it. He w^ent on 
 his way. He was God's mouthpiece for one of the 
 
264 
 
 grandest prophecies of the Old Testament. God 
 used him even while He punished him. He blessed 
 Israel even while the curse fell on his own head. 
 But the old perverseness, the old, worldly, self-seek- 
 ing spirit, was too much for him in the end. Not 
 his going with Balak, but the godless desire which 
 prompted him to go, and which he did not overcome, 
 brought his ruin at last ; made him the tempter of 
 God's people, and brought down on him the swift 
 and summary judgment of an outraged God. So, 
 while these judgments which men work out for them- 
 selves are their punishment, they are also their warn- 
 ing ; and though they set men walking in roads from 
 which God would gladly have kept their feet, yet, if 
 men will accept the warning, they may, even by the 
 hard road in which their own transgression has 
 placed them, in the brave fight with the calamities 
 which their own folly has brought upon them, work 
 out retrieval, and fight their way back to God at last. 
 But it is a dangerous experiment, and Balaam's story 
 proclaims its most common result. 
 
 Thus, then, amid numerous lessons which this his- 
 tory furnishes, we carry away with us two. The one 
 is a w^arning against occupying that low plane of ser- 
 vice to God, which is merely the obedience of fear 
 without the impulse of love, and the aim of which is 
 not how we may please God in all things, but how 
 much we may please self without actually disobeying 
 God. 
 
 The other is the danger of being left to our own 
 way. The temptation to want our own way does not 
 
Balaam. 26$ 
 
 cease with experience ; but I think that apart from 
 the warnings of God's word, most of us have pages 
 in our record to which we now and then turn back 
 with shame, and with thankful tears bless God that 
 He refused to give us our heart's desire. And the re- 
 sult of such reminiscences should be, at every move- 
 ment of our perverse wills away from God, to make 
 us cry out : " O God, quench the first spark of this 
 desire, and, above all things, save me from myself." 
 
 12 
 
CHRISTIAN SELF-SUFFI- 
 CIENCY. 
 
PHILIPPIANS IV. 
 
 (ii) I speak in respect of want : for I have learned, in what- 
 soever state I am, therewith to be content. 
 
 (12) I know both how to be abased, and I know how to 
 
 abound : everywhere, and in all things, I am instructed, 
 both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and 
 to suffer need. 
 
 (13) I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth 
 
 me. 
 
XV. 
 
 CHRISTIAN SELF-SUFFICIENCY. 
 
 The apostle has been speaking of the liberality of 
 the Philippian church toward himself. On several 
 occasions they had sent him pecuniary aid ; and as 
 soon as they heard of his imprisonment at Rome, they 
 dispatched Epaphroditus with a fresh supply. It is 
 after receiving this last contribution that he writes, in 
 terms of warm thankfulness for the gift, and of high 
 praise for the givers. 
 
 At the same time, he does not wish the Macedonian 
 brethren to think that he is dependent upon human 
 aid. Hence the first words of our text, " Not that I 
 speak in respect of want," that is, as one who is in 
 want, ** I am deeply grateful to you for your affec- 
 tionate interest in me. I have given you a high 
 proof of my love for you by accepting gifts from 
 you ; but I am not dependent on your gifts for 
 the support of my life or for the prosecution of my 
 work. I have learned, in whatever position I am, 
 therewith to be self-sufficient.'* 
 
 That has a very conceited and arrogant sound to 
 us, who have come to use self-sufficiency almost 
 wholly in a bad sense. We are tempted to say: 
 *' Is this the courteous Paul meeting the gift which 
 
270 Faith and Character, 
 
 his friends have sent him out of their deep poverty, 
 with the assertion that he is quite able to take care 
 of himself ? Is this the humble Paul, talking like a 
 hard, proud Stoic about his own self-sufficiency ? " 
 
 We may be quite sure that the word, in Paul's mind, 
 had a meaning quite different from this evil one ; and 
 that meaning it shall be our object to develop, and 
 to show how the apostle is our example in the virtue 
 of Christian self-sufficiency. 
 
 I have spoken of a Stoic ; and it is not a little re- 
 markable that this word ** self-sufficiency " was a fa- 
 vorite word with that very important sect of philoso- 
 phers. A Stoic would have used Paul's very expres- 
 sion : *' I have learned to be self-sufficient in every 
 position in life." And here some modern thinkers 
 may step in, and say : " There, you see that Paul, 
 after all, is no improvement on the heathen teachers 
 of his time." Unfortunately for these thinkers it 
 appears that Paul is very far from meaning the same 
 thing by the same word. The philosopher, when he 
 said, *' I am self-sufficient," meant that he had in his 
 own character, without any aid from any quarter, 
 the power which made him independent of circum- 
 stances. He had won that power himself, by study 
 and culture and self-discipline ; and when trouble or 
 adversity came, he fell proudly back on his own will, 
 on his own power of resistance, on his own dignity as 
 a man, and bade defiance to trouble. 
 
 But Paul, you observe, even while he is talking of 
 self-sufficiency, throws self into the background. He 
 can do all things, but not by his own discipline, nor 
 
Christian Self- Sufficiency, 271 
 
 by his own strength of will, but through Christ who 
 strengtheneth him. And in various places in his 
 writings you find the same sense of dependence on 
 some one else mingling with the strongest assertions 
 of his independence of circumstances. Surely he is 
 a rich man — what we call an independent man — to 
 whom one can say, ''AH things are yours." So says 
 Paul to the Corinthians, but he adds : ** Ye are 
 Christ's." You and all that belongs to you, belong to 
 Christ. Again he writes: ''That ye, always having 
 all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every 
 good work :" that is independence indeed ; "all suf- 
 ficiency in all things," but wait a moment. What is 
 that little sentence at the beginning of the passage ? 
 "God is able to make all grace abound toward you, 
 that ye, having all sufficiency may abound." So the 
 sufficiency is God's gift after all. And once more, 
 look at the third chapter of the second Epistle to the 
 Corinthians. If we should take it up without know- 
 ing anything about the writer, and begin to read, our 
 first impression would perhaps be : "Well, there is a 
 good deal of self-sufficiency here. This writer takes 
 very high ground toward his correspondents." Do 
 we begin again to commend ourselves ? Do we need 
 any commendatory letters ? See what we have done 
 among you. See what we have made you. You are 
 our letters. But a line or two further on, we read : 
 " You are the letter of Christ, ministered by us. We 
 were only his ministers or servants. The spirit of the 
 living God wrote his record upon your hearts." Just 
 hear this self-sufficient Paul: " And such trust have 
 
272 Faith attd Character, 
 
 we through Christ toward God. Not that we are 
 sufficient of ourselves to think anything, as of our- 
 selves ; but our sufficiency is of God. He hath made 
 us able ministers of the New Testament." 
 
 I think, by this time, we must see that Paul and the 
 philosopher mean quite different things by self-suffi- 
 ciency. The Stoic is proud and self-centred ; Paul is 
 humble, and centred in Christ. The Stoic withdraws 
 within himself. Paul betakes himself to Christ. The 
 one says : *' I have everything in myself to enable me 
 to defy circumstances." The other, "My God shall 
 supply all your need." Both are self-sufficient ; but 
 the philosopher's self-sufficiency lies in his own natu- 
 ral self, while the apostle's self-sufficiency is in the 
 new selfy created in him by Christ. It resides in that 
 life which he describes thus : '* Not I live, but Christ 
 liveth in me. For me to live is Christ." 
 
 Here, then, we have the characteristics of Paul's 
 self-sufficiency. He is independent through depend- 
 ance on Christ. He is self-sufficient through sinking 
 self in Christ. Paul, therefore, is our illustration of 
 this great and vital truth : that a man's true rela- 
 tion TO CIRCUMSTANCES IS DETERMINED BY HIS RELA- 
 TION TO Christ. 
 
 Now, there are a great many people who, doubtless, 
 think themselves independent and self-sufficient, and 
 who are so perhaps, in a certain sense, but not by 
 any means in the highest Christian sense. 
 
 What is the popular idea of being independent of 
 circumstances ? It comes out very oddly sometimes 
 in the talk of people whose worldly condition has 
 
Christian Self- Sufficiency. 273 
 
 changed. They say, Oh, yes, they are coming down 
 in their style of living ; they are going to give up a 
 great many things, they are going into a smaller 
 house ; but they shall nevertheless be very happy. 
 But you find that, after all, they are not independent 
 of circumstances. They have a small reserv^e of cir- 
 cumstance to fall back on. They are not going to 
 forfeit all the elegance and comfort of life. They 
 say, *' We have a great many worldly blessings and 
 comforts left yet." This is not wrong, understand. I 
 am not condemning it I only use it as an illustra- 
 tion of the fact, that while, perhaps, they religiously 
 think that they are showing themselves independent 
 of circumstances in being cheerful and brave, they 
 are yet leaning a good deal on circumstances. Sup- 
 pose something cuts away the little reserve of ele- 
 gance and comfort, and every other mitigating cir- 
 cumstance. What then ? Here is a man who says : 
 ** I can defy the world ; I am not rich. I have to 
 wear coarse clothes and eat coarse food, but I am 
 well and strong, and I have a good name among 
 men; and though I have a good many cares, yet I can 
 keep a contented heart, and be independent of cir- 
 cumstances." It may be all true, and yet the state- 
 ment amounts just to this, that he is independent of 
 all circumstances save good health, a good name, 
 and enough to eat and wear, however coarse. Sup- 
 pose all those bottom circumstances change. Suppose 
 God takes away health, and lets slander blast his 
 name, and cuts off even the poor supply of bread 
 and clothing. I do not say that the man will not be 
 
274 Faith and Character. 
 
 independent of circumstances even then ; but inde- 
 pendence and self-sufficiency will mean g, good deal 
 more than they do now. 
 
 There was Job. The oxen and asses were taken 
 away, but the sheep and the camels and the servants 
 and the children were left yet. Then came a thun- 
 der-storm and destroyed the sheep. Well, there were 
 the camels, at any rate ; but, in comes a messenger 
 with the news that the camels and their keepers have 
 fallen into the hands of the Chaldeans. Yet he can 
 comfort himself with his family ; and, lo ! the great 
 wind arises, and Job is childless in a breath. Still 
 his person is untouched ; but soon comes the foul 
 disease which transforms him into a mass of loath- 
 some flesh ; and his wife does not prove an efficient 
 comforter, and his friends, good men enough, but 
 displaying as little tact as good men often show when 
 they try to deal with a nobler and finer nature than 
 their own, only succeed in adding the last drop of 
 bitterness to his cup. Such cases are not confined to 
 poetry or to allegory. We ourselves have a proverb 
 that 'troubles never come singly," and you must 
 have noticed how often, when God begins to smite, 
 He smites along the whole line. He takes a dear 
 child from its moth-er's arms. By and by another 
 babe is sent, and the mother dries her tears, and even 
 while she thanks God for the consolation He has sent 
 her, lo ! the cradle is empty again. A rich man loses 
 money, and even while he thinks of reserved funds 
 on which he will draw, tidings come that his re- 
 serves are dissipated, and that everything is gone. 
 
Christian Self- Sufficiency, 275 
 
 The question of Christian self-sufficiency is never 
 fully answered, until this question is answered : How 
 is it going to be with you when everything is gone, 
 when you and God stand alone together, and you 
 have absolutely nothing ? Can you live then ? Can 
 you be self-sufficient then ? Is God alone enough to 
 you to make you absolutely independent of circum- 
 stances ? 
 
 And the question gains force as you note that 
 Paul's idea of self-sufficiency is not that a man 
 merely exists when circumstances are all against him ; 
 not that he is to be like a bare rock lying passive 
 to the sweep of successive breakers. It is rather 
 that he is to make head against circumstances, and 
 develop some positive good out of his life, and grow 
 in godly character if he does nothing else, in what- 
 ever state he is. Paul showed that he was not depen- 
 dent on outside aid to prosecute the work of an apos- 
 tle. When supplies failed, he could work with his 
 own hands, and make tents, and preach too. When 
 he could not do that, when he was a prisoner at Rome, 
 and before the supply from Macedonia reached him, 
 he was making use of his opportunities to preach 
 Christ to his guards and to strengthen the hands of 
 timid Christians that visited him ; and the tone of 
 this epistle, written from his prison, is not that of a 
 man who is enduring under protest. On the con- 
 trary, it is full of joy and cheer and stirring thought 
 from beginning to end. 
 
 Let us see how the apostle himself expands this 
 thought ; and, remember, he speaks from personal ex- 
 
2/6 Faith and Character. 
 
 perience. It will not answer for a man who wants to 
 drive home such a truth as this, merely to philoso- 
 phize and to dispense high-sounding words about the 
 superiority of mind to matter, and the power of will 
 over circumstances. He must be able to say as Paul 
 does here, *'I know." 
 
 See, then, how the apostle puts this Christian inde- 
 pendence into relation with low estate, and that, too, 
 a low estate which implies a coming down from some- 
 thing higher : '* I know how to be abased." Did he 
 not ? Look at the young man at whose feet the mur- 
 derers of Stephen laid down their clothes ; the pupil 
 of Gamaliel, the pride of the Jewish schools, the com- 
 missioned agent for the extinction of heresy. What 
 position might he not have held ? I fancy I can 
 hear some old Jew who had known him and had been 
 proud of him in those days, coming into his Roman 
 prison, and saying, *' Truly, Paul, this is a great 
 letting-down for you." For such a man, with such 
 recognized powers, to be stoned and publicly lashed 
 and imprisoned, was surely to be abased. And this 
 is a very hard experience to anybody. Paul was hu- 
 man, and he felt it. It is hard to take the third or 
 fourth place, or no place, after one has been first. 
 Hard to lose the consideration which even wealth 
 gives ; hard to exchange cultured associations for 
 vulgar ones. Yet men and women are daily called on 
 to do just such things, and when they are, the ques- 
 tion is answered for them : how much does their life 
 depend on these things ? If these are all their re- 
 sources, then there is nothing when these are gone. 
 
Christian Self- Sufficiency. 277 
 
 These are all external to them ; it remains to be seen 
 if there is anything in them which the removal of 
 these things cannot affect. It remains to be seen 
 whether the man's self-respect depends on his being 
 number one, or upon his own consciousness of man- 
 hood and of honor, and above all of being a son and 
 an heir of God through Jesus Christ. It remains to 
 be seen whether the man's refinement and delicacy 
 depend on cultured associations, or whether they are 
 part of himself, so that new and coarser associations, 
 instead of deteriorating his fineness, merely glide 
 over and round him as foul water on pure and pol- 
 ished marble ; nay, more : whether this same refine- 
 "ment of nature may not disclose power to shame and 
 lift and purify its tainted environment, and to create 
 in it affinities for purity. 
 
 But if coming down is a test of a true self-suffi- 
 ciency, going up is often a severer one. Paul said he 
 knew how to abound as well as how to be abased. 
 Many a man who keeps tolerably well poised while 
 he is going down, loses his head when he begins to 
 ascend. I think if you could get the honest testi- 
 mony of the majority of those who have experienced 
 both adversity and prosperity, you would find it to the 
 effect that abounding required more grace than being 
 abased. The question is, whether there is that in a 
 man's own self which will keep the flavor and quality 
 of his manhood unimpaired in spite of the tempta- 
 tions of prosperity. Whether the man himself is so 
 much and so true that men look through his circum- 
 stances to him, and feel that he is better and greater 
 
278 Faith and Character. 
 
 in himself than anything which circumstances may- 
 make him. Whether he will stand the stripping off 
 of all that factitious dignity with which prosperity 
 clothes one, and appear to all true souls the nobler in 
 his naked self. How many men and women can 
 stand that test ? You know the facts as well as I. 
 You know what infinitesimal selves sudden prosperity 
 often brings to light. How easy it is to see, w^hen a 
 man or woman becomes suddenly rich, what their 
 real ideal of manhood or of womanhood is. How 
 often you find that it consists in what they have and 
 not in what they are. You see how often they Avill 
 fly in the face of the best social sentiment, and of 
 true charity, and of natural obligation — yea, often of 
 common honesty, under the impression that money 
 will compensate for all defects, and will carry them 
 through anything. Many a man who has been es- 
 teemed a kind and neighborly man, as men go, so 
 long as he was a commonplace man with no more re- 
 sources than his neighbors, has developed into a veri- 
 table tyrant the moment he obtained a little power. 
 You see the thing in the surly insolence of scores of 
 ignorant and vulgar men who are placed in some 
 position of a ** little brief authority." 
 
 And then, further, what a subtle power to under- 
 mine the spiritual life lies in prosperity. The very 
 essence of a true self-sufficiency, the very basis of a 
 real independence of circumstances, is dependence on 
 God ; faith ; living as seeing the invisible ; but when 
 one has so many visible supports, how easy it is for 
 him to lose the sense of dependence on the invisible. 
 
Christian Self- Sufficiency. 279 
 
 When a man has abundant revenues pouring in from 
 farm and stock and factory, when he sees so many 
 strong hands and such a vast array of machinery 
 ministering to his prosperity, how easy it is for him 
 to forget that every good gift and every perfect gift 
 Cometh from the Father. And the point to be espe- 
 cially noted is this : that just to the degree in which 
 he loses out of his life the sense of humble depend- 
 ence on God ; just to the degree in which he bases 
 his happiness upon his possessions rather than upon 
 the fact of his relation to God ; just to the degree in 
 which he loses sight of the fact that man lives by 
 God, and not by God's gifts ; just to that degree his 
 character is impaired and his nobler self degenerates. 
 Just so far he falls short of a true self-sufficiency. 
 Just so far he has lost out of his manhood the ele- 
 ment which goes to make it independent of circum- 
 stances. 
 
 So Paul goes on to say that he knows how to be 
 full and to be hungry. Even under the pressure of 
 a lower class, of needs — bodily needs — he has learned 
 to be self-sufficient. A man may be well fed, and yet 
 little better than a beast. He may be hungry, and 
 yet be nobler than any king. What an echo of our 
 Lord's words we hear in the words of this apostle : 
 "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the 
 things which he possesseth." And yet one does be- 
 come so painfully impressed with the practical denial 
 of this truth which appears in not a few professed 
 followers of him who uttered it. So many people are 
 restless and troubled because they cannot have this 
 
28o Faith and Character. 
 
 or that. They want a picture on their walls, or an 
 ornament on their persons, or this or that amuse- 
 ment, or a house of such a size or in such a place ; 
 and they show, by the way they fret and worry over 
 these things, and by the efforts they make to get 
 them, by the foolish shame they manifest at not hav- 
 ing them, and by being absorbed in them, if they have 
 them, to the neglect of better and higher things — they 
 show, I say, that they believe that a man's life does 
 consist in the abundance of the things which he pos- 
 sesses. They show that they do not believe that the 
 simple fact of living by faith in God, and with the 
 dear sense of being God's child, is enough of itself to 
 make blessedness, and is the one central fact which 
 will put them in right relation to all possible circum- 
 stances. 
 
 This kind of self-sufficiency does not come by 
 nature. The other kind, the worldly self-sufficiency, 
 is thoroughly natural. It requires no school of phi- 
 losophy to teach it. You may see it any day in any 
 healthy, manly boy, who laughs at the cautions of 
 his elders, and feels himself sufficient for all possible 
 emergencies. But Christian self-sufficiency is learned 
 only of Christ, and Christ's favorite method of teach- 
 ing is by experience. Paul's word here is very sug- 
 gestive : " I am instructed." It was the word used of 
 the long and painful process of initiation into the re- 
 ligious mysteries of Paganism. **I have been initia- 
 ted, through much tribulation ; through stripes and 
 imprisonments ; through hunger and thirst ; through 
 perils of rivers and perils of robbers ; through stoning 
 
Christian Self -Sufficiency, 281 
 
 and slander and shipwreck — I have been initiated 
 into this divine mystery of being everywhere, and 
 in all things, self-sufficient, independent of circum- 
 stances." 
 
 But however painful the process, the result can be 
 reached. Paul attained in this, nothing which is 
 not possible to you. You can, simply through be- 
 ing a son of God by faith in Jesus Christ — simply by 
 living your life in intimacy with God, and in depen- 
 dence upon Him, you can have a manhood which 
 shall set you above circumstances ; a self which shall 
 make you master of circumstances. God is better 
 than all His gifts. All His gifts are included in 
 Him. And it is possible for you to stand in the uni- 
 verse empty-handed and alone with God, and yet be 
 richer than all the kings of the earth. The hunger- 
 ing Christ, refusing the kingdoms of the world, is 
 greater and richer than he who offered him the 
 world's glory and dominion. I remember one bright 
 day last summer, when I threaded my way up through 
 the mountain glens to where a plain little wooden 
 chapel stood in the midst of a few scattered homes of 
 the poor. And I went on to the humble home of the 
 young minister who had come thither to work, know- 
 ing well the poverty of his flock, stipulating for no 
 salary, but simply committing himself to God, and 
 going cheerfully about his work, taking what God 
 sent. I found that God sent a good deal by various 
 channels in the course of the year, and the minister 
 said he never had fared so well in his life as he had 
 since God alone took care of him. 
 
282 Faith and Character, 
 
 So when sorrow comes, when there has gone out 
 of the life that round which its best, divinest affec- 
 tions had twined, there is such a thing as being 
 master of circumstances even then. I do not mean 
 that there is such a thing as being insensible to sor- 
 row, dead to the cruel sense of loss. A man may- 
 brace himself to bear such sorrow, and may bear it in 
 silence, and shed no tears, yet feel the smart just the 
 same. Stoicism could do as much as that. But I 
 mean that a man may have the full sense of sorrow, 
 and the keenness of the pain of loss in his heart, and 
 yet realize that there is a part of him, and that the 
 best part, which the sorrow does not and cannot 
 reach ; that there is a life which he lives — the life hid 
 with Christ in God — on a high plane above the mists 
 of earth, where God reveals Himself as the Father of 
 mercies and the God of all comfort. 
 
 And, finally, there is a positive side to this subject. 
 Christian self-sufficiency, as we have already hinted, 
 does not exhaust itself in mere endurance. It is 
 active and aggressive. It makes powers out of men. 
 It not only does not cripple, it enlarges their resour- 
 ces. Paul says, '^ I can do all things through Christ 
 which strengtheneth me." 
 
 On this I have not time to dwell. And now we 
 come to-day to the very place where we can best learn 
 this lesson, to the table of the Lord. We come, I 
 think I am not mistaken, with a painful sense of our 
 own insufficiency. Any one of us can tell a story of 
 how self has tried great things and has failed ; how 
 self has plunged into great sorrows and has been 
 
Christian Self -Sufficiency, 283 
 
 well nigh drowned ; how self has been mortified and 
 humiliated ; how circumstances have gone against 
 us ; how earthly props have broken. Here, then, is 
 the place to turn from all this to something better. 
 Here a voice speaks to us of a sufficiency which 
 will stand the test of every state ; everywhere, in all 
 things. With the infinite possibilities of life before 
 us, that is the very thing we want. Nothing short of 
 this will answer. And here it is offered us in symbol. 
 Christ says to us, ** Take me into your life, not to sup- 
 plement, but to crowd out and supplant the old self. 
 Let your sufficiency be henceforth of me. Read in 
 this broken bread and outpoured wine the story of 
 one who pleased not himself, who lived not by bread 
 but by God, who was a man of sorrows, acquainted 
 with the worst the world could heap on him, yet 
 whose manhood shines with all the purer lustre in 
 this setting of poverty and shame ; who himself was 
 more, and greater, and better, than all his circum- 
 stances ; who, in spite of his circumstances, is the 
 captain of our salvation, the theme of our loftiest 
 songs, the object of our adoration. May we be like 
 him. He made at least one man able to say, " I 
 have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to 
 be self-sufficient." Has his power exhausted itself 
 with this one ? Or does he not rather say to you 
 and to me to-day, ** This is the victory that overcom- 
 eth the world, even our faith " ? 
 
CHRISTIAN RELATIONS NOT 
 AFTER THE FLESH. 
 
2 CORINTHIANS V. 
 (i6) Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh. 
 
XVI. 
 
 CHRISTIAN RELATIONS NOT AFTER THE 
 FLESH. 
 
 All men's lives are traversed at some point by a 
 sharply-marked division-line. Sometimes it is drawn 
 at a change of fortune ; sometimes at a change of 
 character ; sometimes at a change of position. Across 
 it they look back as into another sphere of being, and 
 contemplate their life there as better or worse, hap- 
 pier or more wretched than in the present state. 
 
 In a Christian experience this line marks a change 
 in the fundamental law of the life, and is drawn at 
 conversion. Looking back of this point, the Chris- 
 tian says : " Once I was a servant of sin, now I am a 
 servant of Christ. Once I was in bondage, now I am 
 free. Once I lived for self, now not I live but Christ 
 liveth in me." 
 
 In this text we strike such a dividing line in Paul's 
 experience, in the word ''henceforth." This word 
 points backward to a state of things in sharp contrast 
 .with his present and his future life. A broad chasm 
 is between the past and the present, and the particu- 
 lar point of contrast to which he calls attention is 
 the new relation in which the death of Christ and his 
 own conversion place him with reference to his fel- 
 
288 Faith and Character. 
 
 low men, and the new way in which he regards them. 
 However he may have previously looked at men, by 
 whatever standards he may have been wont to meas- 
 ure them, with whatever purposes he may have dealt 
 with them, henceforth he knows no man after the 
 flesh. 
 
 Paul's way of looking at men, therefore, will form 
 the subject of our discussion, as suggesting the true 
 point of view from which all Christians ought to re- 
 gard their fellows. 
 
 First, then, what does the apostle mean by know- 
 ing me^ ** after the flesh?" The expression "after 
 the flesh " is a common one in Paul's writings, and 
 means, generally, according to the natural way of the 
 world ; according to the principles of the worldly, 
 sensual, sinful life. To know a man after the flesh 
 is, therefore, to regard him solely in his worldly rela- 
 tions to ourselves or to society. If I regard a man as 
 happy only because he is rich or renowned, if I am 
 interested in him only as he ministers to my worldly 
 interest, if my kindly feeling toward him exhausts it- 
 self in aiding him to fame or fortune, if, in short, I 
 have no thought for him except as he is related to 
 this world, I know him after the flesh. 
 
 We find an illustration of Paul's meaning in his 
 own experience. In some of the infant churches, 
 notably in the Corinthian and Galatian churches, he 
 was bitterly opposed and hated as the enemy of Juda- 
 ism. Judaism had degenerated into a mere form of 
 godliness. It was a system of the flesh, and regarded 
 men solely with reference to the flesh. Was a man 
 
Christian Relations not after the Flesh. 289 
 
 circumcised ? Did he eat with Gentiles ? Did he 
 keep the law of Moses ? Did he observe Sabbaths 
 and new moons ? Of what tribe and family was he ? 
 In what school was he educated ? These were the 
 important questions. 
 
 From all this Paul cut himself loose. He refused 
 to look at men in this way. Forms and ordinances, 
 he tells them, are nothing. ''Why," he says to the 
 Colossians, ''as though living in the world, are ye 
 subject to ordinances, after the commandments and 
 doctrines of men, for the satisfying of the flesh ? 
 Circumcision profiteth nothing. As many as desire 
 to make a fair show in the flesh, they constrain you 
 to be circumcised. Men are not to be estimated ac- 
 cording to their nation or their family." Those are 
 true Israelites, he tells the Philippians, who worship 
 God in the spirit, and have no confidence in the flesh ; 
 and he goes on to show them how completely he him- 
 self had relinquished all advantages growing out of 
 his lineage and standing in the Jewish Church. " The 
 flesh ! Would you urge on 7ne the claims of the flesh ? 
 If the flesh counted for anything, which of you could 
 boast of it more than myself ? I was of direct Israel- 
 itish descent — no heathen proselyte nor Ishmaelite. 
 I was indeed a Jew, as distinguished from a Gentile, 
 a Hebrew as distinguished from a Greek-speaking- 
 Jew ; but more than all I was an Israelite, descended 
 not from Jacob, the supplanter, but from Israel, the 
 prince of God. I was of the honored tribe of Benja- 
 min, the only tribe which stood by Judah in the great 
 separation. I was a Hebrew, never forsaking my na- 
 13 
 
 
290 Faith a?id Character. 
 
 tive tongue. I belonged to the slraitest sect of legal- 
 ists. I was a zealous persecutor of Christianity. I 
 kept the law blamelessly. But I threw all these things 
 away. My manhood in Christ consists in none of 
 these. These worldly advantages I counted loss for 
 Christ, and so I value no man for these things. I test 
 him by a different standard. I labor to secure for 
 him other and better things. I know no man after 
 the flesh." 
 
 And Paul only puts in another way the words of 
 the Saviour : " If any man come to me, and hate not 
 his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and 
 brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he 
 cannot be my disciple." A strict literalist might say : 
 *' What, does Christ here teach men to trample upon 
 those sacred domestic ties to which God has given 
 the highest sanction ? " Christ, himself, if such a 
 question needs an answer, answered it by being the 
 best of sons, and the most tender and affectionate of 
 friends. What he means is, that these relations, and 
 other similar ones which his disciple sustains toward 
 the world, are all to be subordinated to the higher 
 law of his service. He honored these natural ties, 
 but he plainly foresaw that they inigJit clash at some 
 point with duty to him, and so he laid down the law, 
 providing that in every such case the lower relation 
 of husband or son or brother should give way to the 
 higher relation to Christ. If a wife should refuse to 
 go after Christ with her husband, he must go alone, 
 and not refuse to follow him for her sake. If a 
 Jewish father should give his son the alternative 
 
Christian Relations Jiot after the Flesh. 291 
 
 between disinheritance and denying Christ, the son 
 must cleave to Christ. In short, the law of Christ 
 stood ready to take up into itself these human rela- 
 tionships, to sanctify and ennoble them, and make 
 them serve its own divine ends ; but, if they would 
 not submit to be thus taken up, they must give way 
 at every issue to the claims of Christ. 
 
 Therefore it was in this sense that Paul knew no 
 man after the flesh. He did not, as an anointed apos- 
 tle, affect to despise the claims of kindred or of friend- 
 ship. He loved his country and his countrymen ; but 
 all these things went for nothing when the gospel of 
 Christ was in question. The moment they came into 
 collision with that, they were, to use his own strong 
 words, ''counted as refuse." He knew Peter, for in- 
 stance, after the flesh, as a friend. He respected him 
 as a man of talent and energy ; but the moment that 
 Peter began to compromise the liberty of the gospel, 
 and to yield to the demand of the Judaizers that 
 Christian converts should be circumcised, he with- 
 stood him to the face, and openly rebuked his coward- 
 ice before the brethren. 
 
 Thus much for the negative side of the subject. 
 We have seen how Paul did not know men after the 
 flesh. How, then, did he know them ? 
 
 The answer is found in the two verses just preced- 
 ing, which ought to be carefully studied in connection 
 with the text. Let us read them : '' For the love of 
 Christ constraineth us ; because we thus judge, that if 
 one died for all, then were all dead : and that he died 
 for all, that they which live should not henceforth 
 
292 Faith and Character. 
 
 live unto themselves, but unto him which died for 
 them, and rose again. Wherefore henceforth know 
 we no man after the flesh." That is to say, the great 
 fact which now regulates my views of men, and my 
 dealings with them, is the fact that Christ died for 
 them to make their lives unselfish and Christlike. 
 I look at a man first as a man whom Christ died to 
 save and purify. My first great question concerning 
 him respects not his circumstances, but his character 
 as related to Christ. Is he a saved man ? Has he 
 died to self ? Is he living unto him who died for him 
 and rose again ? According to the answer to this 
 question I count him safe or in danger ; happy or 
 miserable ; rich or poor. If he be not a Christian, 
 the chief element of sympathy between him and me is 
 lacking. If he be not a Christian, the chief object 
 of my labors must be to bring him to Christ with 
 penitence and faith. He may be rich in goods, high 
 in honor, endowed with intellectual gifts, abounding 
 in friends, strict in religious formalities ; but these 
 things are of the flesh, and I know no man after the 
 flesh. 
 
 Is there anything unnatural or fanatical in this ? 
 When a man stands in some peculiar relation to a 
 great event, what an interest he assumes in our eyes. 
 The commonest soldier who rode in the charge of the 
 six hundred at Balaklava, would draw to himself the 
 eyes of the proudest assembly in England. A few 
 months ago a political convention nominated for the 
 presidency of this nation a man of whom the great 
 mass of the population knew nothing, but from the 
 
Christian Relations not after the Flesh. 293 
 
 moment his name was flashed along the wires, how 
 the eyes of the whole nation, of all parties, were 
 turned upon him ; what an interest attached to all 
 the items of his personal history, to his personal hab- 
 its, to his domestic life. 
 
 Shall we then challenge the interest aroused in 
 such a man as Paul toward the meanest and obscur- 
 est of mankind, when he wakes up to the fact that 
 that soul is directly contemplated by such a stupen- 
 dous event as the death of Jesus Christ — that those 
 groans, that streaming blood, that agony of cross and 
 thorn and spear, were directly and distinctly for that 
 man's salvation ? Shall we challenge Paul's interest, 
 I say ? Ah, the interest reaches far higher than Paul. 
 The most wretched pagan creature in the remotest 
 island of the sea does not weep tears of penitence 
 for his sins, that heaven is not aglow with rapture. 
 The whole circle of heavenly intelligences is drawn 
 into the circle of that fact, and rejoices over it. The 
 Bible, at least, does not tell us of heaven's joy over 
 any worldly success or triumph. Heaven's interest 
 in man is essentially a moral interest. There is no 
 hint of joy in heaven over the birth of the heir to any 
 earthly crown ; over the acquisition of the largest 
 fortune. But the moment a soul moves to put itself 
 in right relation to God through Christ, that moment 
 heaven thrills. 
 
 Now let us bring the apostle's thought home to 
 ourselves. What is it that most interests us in the 
 men around us ? We know very well that we are 
 naturally inclined to look upon them chiefly as they 
 
294 Faith and Character. 
 
 stand related to our self-interest, or to our personal 
 affection, or to our pride in their success. We con- 
 sider whether their personal qualities are agreeable 
 or otherwise ; whether their learning will minister to 
 our culture, or their accomplishments to our enter- 
 tainment. Or w^e ask, '' What is their pedigree ? In 
 what circle do they move ? What are they worth ? 
 How much do they signify ''on change?" In how 
 many of our minds are such questions overtopped by 
 the great, vital question, *'Do they believe on the 
 Lord Jesus Christ ? " How many of us have ceased 
 to know them after the flesh, and see them first and 
 chiefly as immortal souls, shapers of destinies, mak- 
 ers of character, radiators of influence, possible shar- 
 ers of heavenly glory, possible aliens from the pres- 
 ence of God ? 
 
 There are our children. The natural fleshy rela- 
 tion thrusts itself into the foreground. The thought 
 which first forces itself upon us is that they are oiirs^ 
 *'bone of ovir bone and flesh of our flesh." The first 
 period of their lives emphasizes the fleshly relation, 
 calling, as it does, almost exclusively for fleshly min- 
 istries, for the tender care and nourishment of the in- 
 fant body ; for the piloting of the infant life among 
 the quicksands of disease and accident ; and as in- 
 fancy develops into childhood and youth, these flesh- 
 ly claims multiply. Not only food and drink and 
 clothing, but education, intellectual culture, prepara- 
 tion for business, providing of capital, forming right 
 connections, press themselves upon our attention. 
 Rightly enough, if we take heed of the danger which 
 
Christian Relations not after the Flesh. 295 
 
 lurks in these, if we do not let these swallow up all 
 other considerations, if we do not put these first. 
 For if Christ be right, the thing which most concerns 
 our children is precisely the thing which most con- 
 cerns us — their right relation to the Lord who bought 
 them. Their life is wrong along its whole line, in- 
 creasingly wrong, if it do not start from God in 
 Christ. If they are ours, they are His before they 
 become ours, and it is a strange oversight indeed, if 
 we overlook His proprietorship. Not, I repeat, that 
 we are to make light of the demands of their bodies 
 and of their minds, but all these ministries must be 
 brought into the sphere of one controlling motive, 
 that is, that they should not live unto themselves, 
 but unto Him who died for them and rose again. 
 Xhis higher sphere of ministry will not only include 
 all necessary lower ministries, but will prompt them, 
 regulate them, keep them in their place, and make 
 them contribute most effectively to perfect manhood. 
 Or look at those who minister to our minds, the 
 creators of our science and literature. How shall we 
 know them ? Are they out of the range of this pre- 
 cept to know no man after the flesh, because they 
 deal with mind rather than with matter ? Are cul- 
 tured men necessarily good men, or is knowledge so 
 spiritual a thing that the taint of the flesh cannot 
 reach it ? Not so, indeed. We shall know these 
 masters of thought after the flesh, if we shall know 
 them only as the enlargers of our worldly knowledge, 
 and the trainers of our natural reason, and if we do 
 not look beyond to see what they can do for charac- 
 
296 Faith and Character, 
 
 ten Literature is not exempt from Christian minis- 
 try. Men of thought are not out of the sphere of the 
 command, " Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of 
 God." Genius and culture, if they obey Christ's law, 
 must fall in with all other agencies to make men mor- 
 ally better ; and they fulfil God's purpose just to the 
 degree in which they issue in character. What I 
 mean then is, that our communion with great minds 
 through books, all our reading and study, is to be 
 looked at from this standpoint, and not merely as a 
 means to our knowing more and becoming more pop- 
 ular or more successful in the world : that we should 
 learn to choose our authors with a view first to the 
 building up of our characters, and to the making 
 ourselves moral forces in society. We read much in 
 these days, and knowledge passes for so good and 
 pure a thing in itself, that we are in danger of forget- 
 ting that, like other things, it will develop selfish, 
 godless, fleshly properties, if it be not sanctified by 
 Christ's touch. 
 
 Or there are our neighbors. We know them after 
 the flesh — as good friends, delightful companions, use- 
 ful helpers. We meet and exchange comments on 
 stocks and banking. We discuss books and pictures. 
 We are anxious for them if a wife or a child is sick, and 
 deeply sympathizing when death or disaster comes to 
 their home. Yet how far beyond the flesh does our 
 interest reach ? Do we not often ignore the fact 
 which overarches all these things, the fact that they 
 are immortal souls, on their way to Christ's judg- 
 ment-seat, laid by Christ's death under the most sol- 
 
Christian Relations not after the Flesh. 297 
 
 emn moral obligations, their most vital interests 
 hanging on their acceptance or rejection of Christ's 
 offered sacrifice, the great destinies of character 
 bound up with their relation to that fact? Do we 
 know them at all in this sense ? Do we know wheth- 
 er they are children of God or not ? Have we ever 
 sought to know ? Do we care whether they are shar- 
 ers in the grace of life, or strangers to the immortal 
 hope of the gospel ? Where is the practical demon- 
 stration of our professed faith that the kingdom of 
 God and His righteousness have the right to the first 
 place in man's life ? What does our acceptance of 
 Christ's sacrifice mean to us, if it does not commit us 
 to knowing men first, not after the flesh, but as sub- 
 jects of redeeming love and power ? 
 
 And again, as regards ourselves. There is a man 
 or a woman whom we know — not yet as a realized 
 creation, but as something away on before us — the 
 creature of our hope and desire, the ideal man or 
 woman in short who we would fain be. We have 
 drawn the portrait for ourselves many a time, and 
 each time have added some new line or some fresh 
 tint. What then is our ideal of manhood ? Is this 
 ideal which we have come to know so well, merely a 
 thing of the flesh ? Already, my young friend, you 
 have marked out a career for yourself. Perhaps you 
 see yourself in fancy a man to whose power the world 
 bows, a woman whose mark on society is deep. But 
 supposing your ideal realized, I ask you what it is 
 to which the world is to bow ? Are you first, to rep- 
 resent to it wealth, intellect, beauty, or character ? Is 
 
298 Faith and Character. 
 
 your ideal man the literary man, the man of pleasure, 
 the man of capital ? Is your ideal woman the woman 
 of fashion ? Ah ! if that be so, you are leaving out 
 that which God would put first ; just that very thing 
 which Christ so yearned to bring into your life, that 
 he gave his life for you. Your ideal man of the flesh 
 carries the seeds of death and corruption in him. You 
 may reach your ideal indeed ; but you will reach it 
 only to find that the ideal itself is debased, that man- 
 hood or womanhood which leaves out of itself conse- 
 cration, ministry, sacrifice, self-death, is of the poor- 
 est quality, and to learn, with bitter disappointment, 
 that ''he that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh 
 reap corruption." 
 
 And yet, as we have already hinted, the apostle's 
 principle does not take us out of the sphere of natu- 
 ral affection, nor destroy the ordinary relations of life. 
 The gospel law does indeed insist on being supreme 
 over all these, and on regulating them all ; and in the 
 event of an issue betAveen it and them, they must give 
 way. But if they will come under its absolute dicta- 
 tion, there is no human affection that will not be en- 
 nobled and deepened ; no relation of life which will 
 not be dignified and enriched. A man will be none 
 the less a patriot for being a Christian. The spirit 
 of Christ may refine and correct his patriotism ; it 
 may make it less feverish and more intelligent ; but 
 it will deepen the sentiment itself ; and when that 
 man strikes for his country, conscience and love to 
 God will set his patriotism on fire and make him 
 strong and terrible. See how this very Paul loved 
 
Christian Relations not after the Flesh. 299 
 
 his countrymen, even while he was fighting with all 
 his power their perv^erted patriotism, their national 
 exclusiveness and intolerance. Where, in all litera- 
 ture, is there the expression of a nobler, deeper patri- 
 otism than in his words to the Romans? '* I have 
 great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. 
 For I could wish that myself were accursed from 
 Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to 
 the flesh, who are Israelites." This from the man 
 who knows no man after the flesh. The husband 
 and wife who, to their mutual human love add the 
 new interest in each other's souls awakened by the 
 spirit of God, know, for the first time, the full sweet- 
 ness of conjugal affection. Their whole life is lifted 
 to a higher plane ; they are drawn together by the 
 common pursuit of new aims, by their interest in 
 new duties, and by their common joy in the love of 
 Christ. The son who forsakes father and mother to 
 give his life to the heathen, reaches, through that very 
 sacrifice for Christ's sake, the very highest grade of 
 filial love, even as the affection of the parents who 
 surrender him is infinitely exalted. A new sacred- 
 ness of love gathers around that which we have 
 wholly given to Christ. I have never seen this so 
 beautifully illustrated as in the life of John Cole- 
 ridge Pattieson, the English Bishop of Melanesia. In 
 his early manhood he gave himself to the work of the 
 gospel in the islands of the Pacific. The affection 
 between himself and his father was singularly strong. 
 He was the prop of his father's age, the very light of 
 his eyes ; and when his wish was first made known, 
 
300 Faith and Character. 
 
 the old man's heart was well-nigh broken. He ex- 
 claimed : '' I can't let him go :" and then faith came 
 to the rescue, and he caught back the words, saying : 
 *^God forbid I should stop him. I give him wholly, 
 not with any thought of seeing him again. I will not 
 have him thinking he must come home again to see 
 me." He never did come home. He labored there 
 for seventeen years, and six years ago was killed dur- 
 ing a visit to one of the islands, but the love between 
 father and son grew, through that mutual sacrifice, 
 into something almost too sacred to be committed to 
 the pages of a book. The father, in his letters to 
 friends, expresses his growing thankfulness that he 
 gave him to the heathen. The son enlists the father's 
 heart in the work, and begs him, in case he should 
 survive him, to give his inheritance to the mission. 
 He writes home, after five years of absence : ''The 
 first freshness of my loss is not felt now. But I think 
 I love them all and you all better than ever ; and I 
 trust that I am looking inward on the whole to the 
 blessedness of our meeting hereafter." And on the 
 evening after his consecration as bishop, he writes : 
 *' Oh, my dear, dear father, God will bless you for all 
 your love to me, and your love to Him in giving me 
 to His service." 
 
 *' Wherefore, henceforth know we no man after the 
 flesh." My brethren, is this the utterance of a vain 
 enthusiasm, or of an ignorant fanaticism ? You know 
 that he who spake it was no ignorant child of impulse, 
 but one of God's strong men, ripe in wisdom, thorough 
 in discipline, profoundly versed in the knowledge of 
 
Christian Relations not after the Flesh. 301 
 
 men, and as wary- and cautious as he was ardent. His 
 life is on record for us as a practical comment upon 
 this principle ; and it requires no laborious study to 
 discover that his first and highest consideration in 
 dealing with men was their relation to his crucified 
 Lord. Whatever else men were to him, they were 
 first of all subjects of Christ's dying love. Whatever 
 else he might desire for them, he longed and labored 
 before all to bring them through repentance and faith 
 into living union with him who died for them and 
 rose again. And if it was practicable for him to live 
 and work by that law, is it not equally practicable 
 for us ? Can we, dare we as Christians look upon 
 men from any lower point of view ? What does 
 our church fellowship in the name of Christ mean, 
 if it do not mean that we know men first of all in 
 their relations to Christ ? What do we exist for, if 
 it be not to carry this truth ? The true church of 
 Christ is no fleshly body ; it is a spiritual body with 
 Christ as its head. It does not work healthfully, ac- 
 cording to its primal organic law, if its energy in 
 ever)' part is not concentrated upon bringing men 
 into right relations with Christ, and developing those 
 relations when formed. We are not to know men 
 after the flesh. We are not banded together for our 
 common entertainment, for the gratification of our 
 curiosity, for the excitement of transient emotion, for 
 the encouragement of religious sensuousness, for the 
 promotion of social or professional ambitions — for no 
 such fleshly ends are we a church. We are to look 
 upon society as something which is to be brought into 
 
302 Faith and Character. 
 
 the spirit and life of Christ. We are to look upon 
 absence from Christ as the root of all human misery. 
 We are to look upon the gospel of Christ as the only 
 agency which goes to the root of human sin and of 
 human need, and, abandoning all human schemes 
 of moral reform, we must cleave to the gospel and 
 the gospel only, wielding it with all the might which 
 God shall give us, in the settled assurance that it is 
 the power of God unto salvation. But we shall not 
 do this until we cease to know men after the flesh. 
 We shall not work the appliances of the gospel at 
 their highest power, until the conviction has taken 
 deep root in our hearts that society's first and great- 
 est need is Christ. May God fill us with the sense 
 of this need. May He help us to concentrate our 
 energy upon the highest development of the gospel 
 agencies at our command. I do believe, yea, I know, 
 that the church of this day is scattering and wasting 
 her power, under the delusion that society has many 
 needs ; whereas all its needs are summed up in one. 
 One work is before us, and only one. That belongs 
 not to outside forces, not to reform associations, but 
 to the church of Jesus Christ, which is " his body, 
 the fulness of Him that filleth all in all : " that work 
 is to preach the gospel of faith and repentance to 
 men and to live it ourselves. If we do this, the 
 church will be as a fruitful vine. 
 
MEAT OR DRUDGERY. 
 
JOHN IV. 
 
 (34) Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of Him 
 that sent me, and to finish His work. 
 
XVII. 
 
 MEAT OR DRUDGERY. 
 
 Christ Avas resting from his journey at the well of 
 Samaria. He was alone ; his disciples having gone 
 into the city to procure refreshment. Weary though 
 he was, however, he would not lose the opportunity 
 to *' win a soul." His repose was soon broken by the 
 approach of a woman of the city who had come out 
 to draw water. Undeterred by her ignorance, her 
 degradation, her superstitious prejudices, he unfolded 
 to her the great central truth of spiritual religion. 
 
 In his holy zeal he seems to have forgotten for the 
 time his weariness and hunger ; so that when his 
 disciples returned with food, and urged him to par- 
 take, he replied, *' I have meat to eat which ye know 
 not of ; " and when he saw that they understood his 
 words literally, and supposed that some one had 
 brought him food in their absence, he explained him- 
 self by showing them how '^a higher spiritual joy had 
 suspended all sense of a lower bodily necessity." He 
 did not mean that he was sustained by a miracle. 
 The woman had hurried back to the town, and had 
 told her story with such power that crowds were 
 already streaming out of the gate and hastening to 
 the well. ''As his thirst," to use another's words, 
 
306 Faith and Character. 
 
 *^ had been not so much after the water of Jacob's 
 well as after her conversion who had come to draw 
 w^ater thence, so now his hunger is not for the food 
 which they have prepared, but for those whom he 
 beholds already hastening from the neighboring city, 
 that they may hear and receive his word." ^ This was 
 w^hat he meant by the words, "my meat is to do the 
 will of Him that sent me." The lesson which he 
 wished to give the disciples, and which is our lesson 
 to-day, w^as the satisfying joy which lies in duty. 
 
 But let us not, in the first place, mistake our 
 Lord's words as some have done, as exalting activity 
 to the neglect of the conditions of the spiritual life, 
 as if the words " my meat is to ^<7," set forth the 
 whole of Christianity. A little study of the conver- 
 sation with the woman will guard us against this 
 error. She was under a kindred mistake. She 
 thought that religion consisted in observance ; she 
 must worship God on Gerizim and not on Moriah ; 
 she must have nothing to do with Jews. She thought 
 that the deepest need of her life could be relieved by 
 some magical water which this stranger possessed, so 
 that she should no longer feel thirst, nor be troubled 
 with the daily drudgery of drawing water. Jesus 
 showed her, by using the well itself as a figure, that 
 what she needed, first of all, was a new principle of 
 life in her soul ; not a change of circumstances, but 
 a change of character; and what he then said to her 
 he says to us, namely, that we must be right before 
 
 ' Trench, " Studies in the Gospels." 
 
Meat or Drudgery. 307 
 
 our doing will be right ; that it is only the man in 
 whose heart God dwells, who does the will of God ; 
 that the active outflowings of the life must spring 
 from that fountain of water which is in every true 
 child of faith, springing up into everlasting life. 
 
 The tendency of religious thought for some years 
 past has been to exalt work. This has grown in part 
 out of the enormous needs which have forced them- 
 selves on the attention of Christians, and partly out 
 of a reaction from a morbid, self-contemplative, brood- 
 ing, and speculative type of piety. In many ways 
 this reaction was healthful. It stimulated the church 
 to enterprise and liberality, made her more aggres- 
 sive, and more familiar with the world's needs. On 
 the other hand, it tended and ran to a dangerous ex- 
 treme. In the vigor and variety of action, the true 
 motive power of Christian action fell into the shade. 
 In their zeal to do, men forgot that out of their hearts 
 were the issues of life, and neglected to keep their 
 hearts with all diligence. They began to substitute 
 work for prayer, and sometimes to cajole conscience 
 with the poetic prettiness that ''to labor is to pray." 
 And it came to pass thus that many a man concealed 
 real spiritual poverty, prayerlessness, uneasiness of 
 conscience, want of peace with God, under stirring 
 activity in Christian enterprise. Under cover of this 
 terrible fallacy, legitimate impulses to duty were be- 
 ing weakened while so-called duty was being done. 
 Men were building reputations for Christian activity 
 upon foundations which were rotting beneath them. 
 They were conducting Sunday-schools, and organiz- 
 
308 Faith and Character. 
 
 ing societies, nnd promoting conventions, saying 
 "Lord, Lord," and doing many wonderful Avorks, 
 when they knew not the secret of the Lord. You are 
 seeing some of the fruits of that fallacy now. The 
 tests of these aw^ful days are probing deeper than 
 men's activities. They are cutting down into the 
 secret places of character. It is coming to light how 
 much so-called religious energy was the fruit of nat- 
 ural enthusiasm and love of action, of the instinct of 
 organizing and leading, and how much of true love 
 and faith and solid, godly principle. 
 
 Therefore, in discussing this passage we must not 
 lose sight of its connection with what precedes. It 
 does set forth to us Jesus as a worker, but it equally 
 sets forth the work as the natural outcome of a soul 
 at one with God. It does hold up to us doing as the 
 very meat of a child of God, but it is a doing which 
 is impelled by a will informed throughout by the will 
 of God. 
 
 This being guarded, w^e may now go on to the spe- 
 cific truth of the text, which is that Christ is our ex- 
 ample in finding a perfect joy in duty. The practi- 
 cal question which is thrust upon us is, what makes 
 
 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DUTY AS MEAT AND DUTY AS 
 DRUDGERY ? 
 
 You are perfectly familiar with this difference in 
 ordinary life. We probably have all known what it 
 is to do a thing faithfully and persistently, because it 
 must be done, without having any interest in it be- 
 yond getting it out of the way as quickly as possible. 
 You have seen a man whose education and tastes fit 
 
Meat or Drudgery, 309 
 
 him for literary pursuits and society, plodding over a 
 set of books, or selling goods over a counter, because 
 it was a matter of bread. You know how Charles 
 Lamb has interpreted that fearful sense of drudgery 
 in his little essay, ''The Superannuated Man," the 
 story of his final deliverance from the book-keeper's 
 desk, after thirty-six years, in which the wood had 
 "eaten into his soul." You recognize the contrast at 
 once with a man whose business is the congenial ele- 
 ment of his life ; who rejoices in the contact with 
 men, the rivalry of trade, the keen encounter of wits, 
 and the sense of power in handling great financial or 
 mercantile combinations. 
 
 A man whose heart is really in a thing always has 
 a large surplus in his doing. There is a wide margin 
 around the limits of his necessary tasks. He is so 
 full of the thing that he inevitably runs over on all 
 sides. There, for instance, are two students of chem- 
 istry. One of them goes through the text-books and 
 lectures because his course of study requires it. He 
 learns what is set him, while he would much rather 
 be studying the classics or history ; and he passes 
 his examination without censure, but without special 
 credit. You ask the professor about the other student, 
 and his eye kindles. " That fellow ! Why, chemistry 
 is meat and drink to him. It is hard for me to give 
 him enough to do. He keeps ahead of the lectures 
 all the time." And as you watch the young man, you 
 see that he is forever hanging about the chemical lec- 
 ture-room. He is on intimate terms with the pro- 
 fessor. He stays after hours, and asks questions. 
 
310 Faith and CJiaracter. 
 
 You go to his room, and you find that he has set up a 
 laboratory of his own, and is dabbling in acids and 
 working over retorts every spare moment he can get. 
 It is just as much his duty as his fellow-student's to 
 complete the chemical course ; but the duty is meat 
 to him, while it is mere drudgery to the other. 
 
 You recognize the same difference in the religious 
 life of two men. There is one of them who never 
 fails in any duty, so far as you can discover. His 
 contributions are regularly given, he is regularly 
 present at the services of the church, he is punctilious 
 in doing the work assigned him, he is regular in fam- 
 ily worship. Do not understand me to despise all 
 this. Far from it. It is excellent, praiseworthy, and 
 the man is worthy of high respect and confidence. 
 And yet you miss in him the sense of exuberance. 
 You do not feel that duty moves under an over-mas- 
 tering pressure. No enthusiasm seems to get into his 
 accurately drawn squares of moral obligation. He re- 
 minds you of a neat, tightly-made cask, which gives 
 out its contents at just such a point and at just such 
 a rate when you turn the faucet. But now and then 
 you meet a man who reminds you of one of those 
 wayside reservoirs which you come upon now and 
 then on country roads. You hear the gurgle of the 
 stream as it comes down from the liill above the road, 
 mingling with the voice of the breezy pines, and run- 
 ning into its reservoir with a current that keeps the 
 water forever trembling and bubbling, and the old, 
 mossy trough is always brimming ; there are always 
 little streams trickling down the sides and forming 
 
Meat or Drudgery, 3 1 1 
 
 pools underneath, and here and there you find a crev- 
 ice where a jet comes spouting out under the strong 
 pressure which strains the oaken sides. So you find 
 this man equally punctilious with the other, yet more 
 than punctilious, doing all that is required, yet bub- 
 bling over into spontaneous activity, carrying into 
 the forms of duty something which fills them out and 
 makes the duties themselves look richer. 
 
 Again I ask, what makes the difference ? What 
 makes duty meat to one man, and drudgery to an- 
 other ? You certainly will not find the difference in 
 the character of the duties ; because if that were so, 
 you would find joyful workers only in spheres con- 
 genial to themselves ; and you know that that is very 
 far from being the case. No doubt a man may find 
 joy in congenial work, simply because the work is 
 congenial. If an astronomer is fortunate enough to 
 get a position in a grand observatory, there is nothing 
 strange in his enjoying his duties. The gospel does 
 not deny that fact, but neither is it especially con- 
 cerned with it. The problem of the gospel is when 
 the astronomer does not get his position in the obser- 
 vatory ; when he cannot give his life to the study 
 which he loves ; when he must spend his days in 
 teaching arithmetic to schoolboys or in casting up 
 dreary columns of figures at the desk of a bank. The 
 question is, must all joy go out of duty then? Must 
 the man's work cease to be meat and become drudg- 
 ery ? 
 
 Take Christ's life, for example. Christ was pre- 
 eminently a worker. lie went about doing. He 
 
312 Faith and Character. 
 
 said, *' I must work while it is called to-day." No- 
 body who knows anything of the character of our 
 Lord can for a moment suppose that his mission was 
 a pleasant one in itself considered. Confronting ar- 
 rogant priests and sneering Pharisees, pressed by the 
 filthy Oriental rabble, one thrusting forward his blind 
 and inflamed eyes, another his distorted limbs, the 
 epileptic falling in fearful convulsions at his feet, the 
 madman menacing him with frantic gestures and 
 rending the air with his howls ; mingling with men 
 who did not comprehend his plans and who were out 
 of sympathy with his spirit, there was nothing in all 
 this congenial to a nature so perfectly attuned as 
 Christ's. 
 
 And yet you can nowhere discover in the Lord's 
 life the faintest sign that his work was done under the 
 mere pressure of obligation. Ever)' point at which it 
 is studied, confirms his words in the text : '' My meat 
 is to do the will of Him that sent me." He wrought 
 as a man who loved his work. He carried into it all 
 the glowing zeal which burned in the talk with the 
 Samaritan by the well. He was always about his 
 Fathers business as one who had no other and no 
 dearer interest. 
 
 You see the same thing in Paul. He makes no 
 secret of the fact that the line of his duty is not a 
 pleasant one ; and yet along this line runs a parallel 
 current of hearty, joyful enthusiasm. *' If," he writes 
 to the Philippians, '' I be poured as a libation upon 
 the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and re- 
 joice with yuu all." Sorrowful he is, yet always re- 
 
Meat or Drudgery. 313 
 
 joicing ; poor, yet making many rich ; dying, and be- 
 hold he lives. No man can read the history and 
 epistles of Paul without saying, ** Here is a man who 
 loves his work, who lives in his work, to whom duty 
 is meat." 
 
 It is now time to point out the secret of this ; the 
 touchstone which converts drudgeiy into meat ; which 
 makes a man find a hearty satisfaction in duty as 
 duty, irrespective of its peculiar nature. 
 
 As you read the text, you observe that Christ places 
 his satisfaction in the fact of carrying out a commis- 
 sion — of doing another's will. Elsewhere he says, 
 " I came not to do my own will, but the w^ill of Him 
 that sent me ;" and here, " My meat is to do the will 
 of Him that sent me and to finish His work." By 
 laying the emphasis there, we strike the secret of en- 
 thusiasm in duty. Christ's joy in duty lay in the fact 
 that the duty was his Father's work and his Father's 
 will. No matter what form the duty might take, the 
 fact that it was part of his Father's plan, and assigned 
 him by his Father, was enough to make it his meat 
 to do it. This kindled the flame of zeal. This made 
 him forgetful of hunger and weariness. This carried 
 him over the pain and repulsiveness which so often 
 were bound up with the duty. The living fountain 
 of his enthusiasm lay not in the task itself, but in his 
 relation to God, which carried all tasks along with 
 it. And that must be our starting-point if we shall 
 ever know to the full the joy of duty. All specific 
 duties must be swept into the current of one, absorb- 
 ing, affectionate desire to do the will of God. Then 
 
3H Faith and Character. 
 
 the joy of each specific duty will depend not upon 
 its being an agreeable duty, but simply and solely 
 upon the fact that, in doing it, our Father's will is 
 done. 
 
 Look at the fifteenth of John, and you see how 
 Christ carries out this thought and enforces it upon 
 his disciples. In the first place, doing is emphasized. 
 " Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command 
 you." Then doing is referred to its proper root — the 
 relation of friendship between Christ and the disciple. 
 " Henceforth I call you not servants, . . . but I have 
 called you friends." According as the relation shall 
 be that of a friend or of a servant, the doing will be 
 either meat or drudgery. Let me try to illustrate this. 
 Let us suppose a father, a man of large wealth, to have 
 an only son who is about to marry and to establish 
 a home of his own. The father's hope and love are 
 bound up in that son. He proceeds to build for him 
 a beautiful house on an estate near his own, and to 
 fill it with everything that can gratify the eye and the 
 taste, or minister to the comfort of the young hus- 
 band and wife. And in all these preparations he is 
 aided by an old and dearly loved friend, the compan- 
 ion of his school days, and the intimate of his riper 
 years. He hides nothing from this friend. He takes 
 him into all his counsels, he tells him all his plans for 
 his son's happiness. And the friend is as much in- 
 terested as the father himself. He gives up his time 
 freely. He goes about with the father into all kinds 
 of places and in all kinds of weather, to look at land 
 or to consult architects. He never thinks of incon- 
 
Meat or Drudgery, 315 
 
 venience or trouble. Evening after evening you may 
 see the two gray heads bending over plans or title 
 deeds. The thought which masters him, and which 
 makes him forgetful of himself is — My dear friend has 
 a purpose in which his heart is bound up ; w^hat can 
 I do to help him carry it out ? 
 
 Now, on the other hand, there are the architect, and 
 the masons and carpenters and furnishers. They do 
 not know the old father. They do not care whether 
 his son brings home his bride or not ; whether he 
 have a house, or go to live in lodgings. They know 
 and care nothing about the old man's tender affection 
 or about his plans for his son's happiness. They are 
 merely serv^ants, hired for so much to do a certain 
 work. You may see through this simple illustration 
 the footing upon which Christ meant to put all his 
 followers, when he said, '^ Henceforth I call you not 
 sen^ants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord 
 doeth ; but I have called you friends, for all things 
 that I have heard of my Father I have made known 
 unto you." The Christian's relation to his Lord is that 
 of the Father's friend, in sympathy with his plans, 
 possessed of the secret of the Lord ; it is not that of 
 the servant who knows not and cares not what the 
 Father is doing, except as it puts money into his 
 pocket. 
 
 I have drawn out this contrast at length, because 
 in it lies the difference between duty as meat and 
 duty as drudgery. The true basis of Christian life 
 and work is friendship — confidential friendship with 
 Christ. It is of these friends that he says, 'I have 
 
3i6 Faith and Character, 
 
 chosen you and ordained you that you should bring 
 forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain." 
 
 In such a friendship, a man not only learns some- 
 thing of Christ's plans and desires for him and for the 
 world, but gets, through his love, into perfect sym- 
 pathy with them ; so that the carrying out of these 
 plans becomes the staple work, and the sustained en- 
 thusiasm of his life. He accepts his duty and his 
 position as alike parts of his Father's plan. It is not 
 that the specific duty is any pleasanter or any harder ; 
 but that the pleasantness and the hardness are taken 
 up into the grand motive of doing God's pleasure. 
 Such a man does not look upon duty and pleasure as 
 antagonists. He does not fence off duty from pleas- 
 ure. Not a few people engage in duty as a school- 
 boy pursues his studies, looking out longingly through 
 five days in the week for the Saturday holiday. To 
 him everything is subordinate to the holidays, and 
 the intervening duties form a disagreeable necessity, 
 which is to be gotten over as best he can, and under 
 a kind of silent protest. In Christian living, duty 
 and pleasure do not belong apart. Neither thrives 
 in a state of divorce. Pleasure degenerates into sin, 
 and duty into drudgery. Christ means that his fol- 
 lowers should find joy in duty ; that as duty must 
 needs be the staple of the life, the life should be joy- 
 ful ; that his true followers should be able to say with 
 himself, '' I delight to do Thy will." 
 
 Some of you may think that I preach to you a 
 great deal about duty. I do. If I am in earnest to 
 have you friends of Christ, I cannot preach too much 
 
Meat or Driidgcry. 3^7 
 
 about it, for I read his own words, ''Ye are my friends 
 if ye do whatsoever I command you." I know that 
 duty must needs make up by far the larger share of 
 your life and of mine, and therefore I would have it 
 propelled from the right point, and informed with 
 the right principle. And I am sure that the church 
 at large has great need of the lesson conveyed by 
 these words of the Master. Duty appeals to too many 
 souls as drudgery , and therefore carries with it a temp- 
 tation to evade it. Too many people set before them 
 as their end in life, the having a '' good time," as they 
 express it, which means following their own inclina- 
 tions and seeking their own pleasure ; and they prac- 
 tically regard all duty as an interference with this. I 
 am sure that God means that His children should be 
 happy ; but I am equally sure that the man who takes 
 that view of happiness will never find it. Happiness, 
 if it is to be found at all in this world, will be found 
 along the path of duty. The men who hurry over 
 the spaces between their selfish pleasures miss the 
 best of their lives. They are like a traveller who has 
 come to see the beauties of our country, and who is 
 so anxious to get to Albany that he takes a sleeping- 
 carriage, and loses all the beautiful scenery of the Hud- 
 son. There is a better way than this — a way which has 
 the recommendation of Christ's wor(;J and of Christ's 
 example. When I hold up to you this text, it is not 
 your sentence to a round of drudgery. It is your 
 passport over a road which Christ's feet have trod- 
 den, and where he, at least, found the purest blessed- 
 ness and the most joyful satisfaction. Then again, too 
 
3i8 Faith and Character, 
 
 much Christian duty is done painfully and wearily. 
 There is too much fretting over it. One is not sat- 
 isfied with his place ; another, with his success ; 
 another, with the kind of work he has to do. One 
 thinks he does not get his deserts at men's hands. 
 Another, that he has to bear an undue share of bur- 
 dens ; and so the way which God meant should be 
 sunny and full of songs, is clouded by these rising 
 vapors of discontent, and is full of the voices of mur- 
 muring. Service is moved too much by the attrac- 
 tiveness of the duty, and not enough by the impul- 
 sion of love. It picks and chooses duty according to 
 rules and preferences of its own, instead of being 
 swept onward to all duty by the master thought, '' I 
 am the friend of Christ." So long as Christians live 
 only by a code of rules, so long duty will be drudgery 
 and not meat ; so long it will be upon the basis of ser- 
 vice rather than of friendship. It will take on a new 
 and brighter and nobler aspect, only when each life 
 shall be thrilled with the love of a personal Christ ; 
 only when duty ceases to be a dry, hard code, and be- 
 comes identified with the free-will offering of a burn- 
 ing devotion to the Lord who bought us. What we 
 need in the church of Christ is a sicnng behind duty, 
 like the power which sends the billows of the At- 
 lantic steadily, rank after rank, against the cliffs. 
 
 Man and church ought to be moving, like the cru- 
 saders of old, under the battle-cry, " God wills it ! " 
 and with a sympathy with God's purpose to save our 
 poor lost race, as intense as that which drew the cru- 
 sading hosts to the gates of Jerusalem. 
 
Meat or Drudgery. 319 
 
 And I repeat it, this power and impulse in duty 
 will come only with the fresh baptism of the spirit of 
 love to Christ. Men must love Christ before they 
 will love duty. They must be in sympathy with 
 Christ before they will find duty to be meat, instead 
 of drudgery. Each man must see himself as commis- 
 sioned to do the will of Him that sent him, before his 
 discontent with his place or his work will be swal- 
 lowed up in his desire to do that will. 
 
 And he who moves out from this standpoint will 
 find that the new impulse not only propels, but lifts 
 him. It will take him out of the sphere of little, 
 nicely-adjusted measurements of duty, and set him 
 moving in the larger order of a free man in Christ 
 Jesus. It will put all the apparent pettiness and frag- 
 mentariness of his life in direct relation with Christ 
 and with God's great saving plans ; and thus there 
 will be a sense of power behind his smallest service 
 which will double its effect. Often, as I have been 
 drifting in my boat through the summer days along 
 the ocean coast, I have been struck with the way in 
 which the fulness and power of the ocean impressed 
 itself upon every single foot of the water. Go close up 
 to the rocks, select a little cove, hardly large enough 
 for a sea-bird to float in, and shut off the surrounding 
 water from your eyes. You never could mistake the 
 ebb and flow in that little cove for anything but an 
 ocean tide. There is something in the tremendous 
 suction which draws the water back, something in the 
 slow, majestic fulness with which it rises, that can 
 only come from the swing of the sea. You would per- 
 
320 Faith and Character, 
 
 ceive the difference in a moment, if you were taken 
 to the largest and deepest reserv^oir. And so, when 
 Christian life throughout the church shall have got- 
 ten behind it the infinite sweep of the love of Christ, 
 the power will be felt in the smallest Christian ser- 
 vice. The great tide will move in every little creek 
 and bay and cleft of duty, and the world shall hear 
 its voice as the sound of many waters. 
 
 This, then, is the sum of what I have said. Our 
 Christian lives are lives of service. Shall the service 
 be to us meat or drudgery ? The choice lies with us. 
 Christ has the secret of joyful, enthusiastic service, 
 but if he can truly say to us : ** I have meat to eat 
 which ye know not of," he is nevertheless not dis- 
 posed to keep the secret to himself. He gives it to 
 you in a word. Fall into your place as his friend 
 and not as his servant. Get your impulse from love, 
 and not from obligation. Identify your will with his, 
 your work with his work, your interest with that of 
 his kingdom, and then, and not till then you can 
 truly say with him : ''My meat is to do the will of 
 Him that sent me, and to finish His work." 
 
THE LESSON OF MOSES' ROD. 
 
EXODUS IV. 
 
 (2) And the Lord said unto him : What is that in thine 
 hand ? and he said, A rod. 
 
XVIII. 
 THE LESSON OF MOSES' ROD. 
 
 In our study of the men of Scripture, we are con- 
 stantly impressed with the fact that they are men of 
 like passions with ourselves. Even the heroic men 
 are only men after all, subject to the same tempta- 
 tions, weakness, and error which beset us. Moses, for 
 example, is one of the grandest of the men of old, yet 
 we cannot help seeing his infirmity of temper ; the hot 
 and hasty spirit which ran before it was sent, which 
 imperilled the cause of the people by the slaying of 
 the Egyptian, and which proved that he needed the 
 long solitude of Horeb to mellow him, and to fit him 
 for that leadership for which no man can ever be re- 
 garded as wholly fit who cannot rule himself. Then, 
 too, for one who had had such close intercourse with 
 God, it seems strange that he should exhibit such 
 weakness of faith and such reluctance to obey. One 
 would think that a man would not dare to hesitate, 
 much less to remonstrate, when a voice spoke to him 
 out of the midst of that visible miracle — the bush burn- 
 ing, but not consumed. Yet we hear him saying, first, 
 ''Who am I ?" As if that were any business of his. 
 Then, *'they will not hearken to my voice." Sup- 
 pose they would not. What was that to him ? God 
 
324 Faith and Character. 
 
 Himself has spoken to men ere now, and they have 
 refused to listen. Suppose God's purpose, so far as 
 Moses was concerned, was to be fulfilled simply in 
 Moses' speaking. What was there for him to do but 
 to speak ? His obedience was not to be conditioned 
 upon the peoples' hearing or refusing to hear. And 
 then, after God had wrought a miracle to encourage 
 his faith, he must needs raise the question of his elo- 
 quence. Did he suppose for a moment that God did 
 not know his lack of eloquence as well as he did ? 
 Did he suppose that an eloquent man was necessary 
 to carry out God's will ? How did he know but that 
 the fact that he was not eloquent was the very rea- 
 son why God w^anted him for that position ? It is 
 not hard to see why God's anger was kindled against 
 Moses, not merely because of these individual errors, 
 but because of the root out of which they sprang, 
 and which underlies all the similar and so frequent 
 errors on our part, namely : that ignorance of God 
 and consequent w^ant of faith in Him which lead us 
 to fix the measure of power and the character of the 
 agents necessary to do what God commands to be 
 done ; the measuring of divine possibilities by human 
 standards. 
 
 Here was Moses, for instance, summoned by God 
 to undertake the work of opening His great design of 
 deliverance to Israel, and to be the main agent in 
 carrying it out. The thing lay in Moses' mind thus : 
 '' This is a stupendous undertaking. The leader of 
 this people must be a wise and a ready man. He who 
 would persuade this people must be a fluent speaker." 
 
The Lesson of Moses' Rod. 325 
 
 The thing lay in God's mind (reverently speaking) 
 thus: '*I desire Moses to undertake this work. I 
 know his strength and his weakness, but his strength 
 or his weakness are nothing to Me. I am behind 
 him, and this work is to be My doing, not his ; and 
 whatever he may need to do My will, I can give him." 
 As for Moses' eloquence, it afterward appeared that 
 God did not need Moses' tongue at all. He had 
 Aaron whom he could and did employ for the pur- 
 pose ; and if He had not had Aaron, nor a single 
 speaker in the whole nation of Israel, He could have 
 done His own speaking in His own unmistakable 
 way. 
 
 This obedience, irrespective of our own estimates 
 of power or weakness, success or failure, is the uni- 
 versal rule laid down for God's workmen. The fact 
 once established that God commands a thing to be 
 done, and commands you or me to do it, — our estimate 
 of personal qualifications, of the probability or possi- 
 bility of success or failure, of the measure or mode of 
 power necessary to accomplish the work, are to be 
 absolutely laid aside. The fact that a man is without 
 the qualifications which appear needful to him, may 
 be the very reason why God chooses him. Men 
 somehow fall into the feeling that God is arranging 
 matters for their glory ; whereas He is arranging, in 
 every case, for His own glory. God does not care 
 whether you and I are great men, or not. He does 
 care that our life and work shall set Him forth to men 
 as a great God ; and if they can be made to see this 
 any better by His using a feeble and contemptible 
 
326 Faith and Character. 
 
 man, Instead of one to whose genius and power 
 society looks for great things, we need not be sur- 
 prised at His choosing such a man ; and the man him- 
 self has nothing to say about the matter, but is sim- 
 ply to suffer himself to be used, and to leave all the 
 rest to God. 
 
 If, then, wx once get firmly hold of this truth, 
 we shall understand w^hy God often turns our 
 thoughts away from the great plans and the elabo- 
 rate machinery which we had determined to be neces- 
 sary, and bids us use some familiar thing, or work in 
 some well-worn, commonplace track which had sunk 
 entirely out of our sight in the shadow of the great 
 thing to be done. While Moses was thinking and 
 talking about eloquent speech, God said to him, 
 ^' What is that in thy hand ?" Only a rod, his shep- 
 herd's crook, a stick cut from a common bush, a 
 thing to which his hand had become so used that he 
 carried it unconsciously. Only a rod ; but why that 
 question ? What can I do with the rod ? Nothing, 
 perhaps. The question is not at all w^hat you can 
 do with it. In your hand it would be nothing ; but 
 now cast it out of your hand. Throw it upon the 
 ground, and see what it w^ill do in My hand. And lo, 
 that thing so familiar to Moses, that thing which 
 he never would have dreamed could have any con- 
 nection with the work to which he had been called, 
 that rod became a lithe serpent ; and Moses fled from 
 it in terror. God's touch could make a fearful and 
 wonderful thing out of a contemptible stick. And 
 when God put it back into Moses' hand, Moses had 
 
The Lesson of Moses' Rod. 327 
 
 gained a new respect for that common thing ; and 
 he took with it the assurance conveyed by the mira- 
 cle that he w^as no more to wield that staff as Moses 
 the shepherd, but as Moses the agent and represen- 
 tative of God. 
 
 This, then, is the truth which every Christian worker 
 needs to get by heart : that human power and human 
 agencies, w^hen God uses them, cease to be limited in 
 their operation by human measurements. They are 
 lifted up into another plane, and work under the lar- 
 ger laws of God's omnipotence. / 
 
 And this fact, if we only knew it, is a very familiar 
 one to us, I mean on its lower side. That is to say, 
 we all know how often a thing or a person develops a 
 new and higher value, and a larger range of resources 
 simply by passing into a skilful hand, and by receiv- 
 ing the impress of another mind and will. 
 
 There is a lump of clay, for instance. It cannot 
 rustle and wave and shade like a tree ; it cannot emit 
 perfume like a flower ; it cannot afford refreshment 
 like a fruit. All it can do is to lie still and be clay, 
 until it passes into the hand of some one. The potter 
 finds it, and throws it upon his wheel, and shapes it, 
 and puts it into the fire ; and it comes forth to be an 
 ornament in a king's house, or a daily blessing beside 
 the poor man's well. 
 
 Or, to go a little higher, into the sphere of human 
 life, there is an ignorant clown. Leave him in his 
 own hands, and the best he can do will be to turn 
 over the glebe, and to eat and sleep like the ox he 
 drives. Yet put him into another's hands. Let the 
 
328 Faith and Character. 
 
 drill-sergeant take him in hand ; let him move in 
 the ranks under the word of a wise general, and he 
 may help decide the destinies of a state. 
 
 The principle, in short, lies at the bottom of all 
 education. Teachers and schools, and text-books, 
 and the whole machinery of education, assume that 
 man cannot be all that he is capable of being, so long 
 as he remains in his own hands ; that he must be 
 taken in hand by higher culture, and superior knowl- 
 edge and experience, and get their stamp upon him 
 before he can become a power in society. 
 
 What then ? Shall we say that it is strange or un- 
 natural, when common things and common men de- 
 velop such power under the touch of a competent 
 hand, that the same things and men, passing into 
 God's hand, should reveal powers and be turned to 
 uses which astonish the world ? 
 
 Yet this is the lesson of which Scripture is full ; upon 
 which Scripture history is one continuous comment. 
 It is **not by might nor by power, but by My spirit," 
 saith the Lord. Out of weakness men are made 
 strong. One chases a thousand, and two put ten 
 thousand to flight ; the shepherd's crook becomes a 
 rod of power ; a great tree arises from a grain of 
 seed; mountains are moved by faith; ''the things 
 which are," are brought to naught by ''things which 
 are not." 
 
 This general principle being established, it follows 
 that the first condition of its operation in the individ- 
 ual man is self -surrender^ or putting himself out of his 
 own hands, and putting himself absolutely, and with- 
 
The Lesson of Moses' Rod. 329 
 
 out any reserve, into God's hands. Doing this, he 
 has the assurance that his power will be made the 
 very most of, while he renounces all right to say what 
 power of his shall be used, or how it shall be used, or 
 for what end it shall be used. God may turn aside 
 from the power on which he prides himself most, and 
 use some little capability to which he attaches no im- 
 portance. God may set him at great work, which he 
 thinks he is not fit for. God may give him small and 
 obscure work, when he thinks he is competent to 
 great things. God may do by incidental work of his, 
 more than he could by all his carefully-laid plans. 
 God may use only a stick, where he thought the work 
 required eloquence. 
 
 All that he leaves with God. His office is simply 
 to obey ; working when and where God bids him, 
 and using the tools God tells him to use, no matter 
 how ridiculously inadequate they may seem to bring 
 about the end proposed. 
 
 A man who thus gives up his power into God's 
 hands, is like one who gives up his money, which is 
 power of a certain kind, into the hands of a financier. 
 He does not know w^hy his agent buys this stock or 
 sells that. He wonders sometimes why the agent 
 suspects an investment which he himself thought 
 good ; or why he attaches so much importance to 
 some little piece of real estate which he would almost 
 have given away. All he knows is that his money 
 increases ; that his financial power is doubled by his 
 finances being in other hands than his own. 
 
 It is with some natural fear and trembling that one 
 
330 Faith and Character. 
 
 tlius lets go liis hold on his old notions of power and 
 weakness ; but when he does, and begins to work on 
 this new principle, his eyes open very rapidly. By 
 the time Moses had brouglit the plagues upon Egypt, 
 and had seen the Red Sea open a path for the host, 
 and close again over their pursuers, and had seen the 
 bare, dry rock flow with water at the touch of his 
 rod, he must have gotten a quite new conception of 
 the possibilities of a shepherd's staff with God's power 
 behind it. He was too wise to bestow any supersti- 
 tious reverence upon the staff itself ; and yet that 
 common stick must have acquired a dignity and in- 
 terest in his eyes from the fact of its having been 
 God's instrument. 
 
 And one object of God's dealing with us is to teach 
 us respect for familiar modes of power. That is one 
 reason why He so often makes use of them. We very 
 naturally fall into the mistaken idea that power which 
 is little in our eyes is not worth using at all. God 
 corrects our mistake by using it. We look upon this 
 or that man, and say he is not worth cultivating. He 
 has no remarkable talent, no special gifts, he is com- 
 monplace ; and God every now and then takes one of 
 those commonplace men, whose only merit is faith- 
 fully doing his duty in his commonplace ground, and 
 puts him where society is forced to look up to him, 
 and makes him the instrument of work for which so- 
 ciety must needs thank him. s/We look about us to 
 find something to do to serve God and to enrich the 
 world. We are very ambitious ; we want to do some 
 great thing, and yet, somehow, the time for doing it 
 
The Lesson of Moses' Rod. 331 
 
 does not come ; there are so many little things which 
 come in day by day and prevent our getting at work at 
 the great thing. Meanwhile we have the great thing 
 in mind. It is maturing. We mean to do it some day. 
 These little cares and duties are only interruptions. 
 Our great service to God and to the world is yet to 
 be done. And some day we wake up on a sudden to 
 the fact that we shall never do that great thing ; that 
 some one else has done it ; or that the necessity for 
 doing it has gone by; and that our service to the 
 world and to God has been made up out of these lit- 
 tle daily services which we thought were only inci- 
 dental to the main current of our life. They turn out 
 to have formed the current. Well for us if we have 
 not despised them ; well for us if we have done with 
 our might what our hand found to do, and have not 
 slighted it because we meant to do something greater 
 some day. 
 
 Then, too, with this desire and planning to do great 
 things, we begin to think of correspondingly great 
 means. We must be so well equipped ;. we must 
 know so much ; we must have such and such appa- 
 ratus ; and meantime we cannot afford to stop and do 
 the little thing which needs doing to-day, or use the 
 familiar power which has become contemptible by its 
 familiarity. We are saving ourselves up for some 
 great demonstration when we shall be all ready. And 
 God comes to us and dissipates all our dreams of 
 elaborate machinery, by saying: ''What is that in 
 thine hand ? Go, use that to-day." He is a wise man 
 who does not rebel at that bidding. He may be sure 
 
332 Faith and Character. 
 
 that God will do more and better with that thing 
 which is in his hand to-day, than he will do with his 
 machiner}' and his great plans which are still dreams 
 of the future. 
 
 Many a man has died a nobody, and has left the 
 world no better than he found it, simply because he 
 thought the mode of power which lay nearest him, 
 and with which he was most familiar, was too insig- 
 nificant to be used. While he was waiting to nurse 
 some greater power and to develop some greater re- 
 sult, he died, and had done nothing. We have a right 
 to be suspicious of the value of those men who are 
 always telling how much they would do if they were 
 only properly placed, or if they only had such and 
 such tools. An artichoke is the meanest vegetable 
 that grows ; and it is the only vegetable which insists 
 on growing in a garden. An oak will grow any- 
 where ; and a man's true power and piety too are 
 shown by what he will do where God has placed him, 
 and with the thing that is in his hand. iP^When Paul's 
 missionary career was stopped, and he w^as shut up in 
 prison at Rome, he might have said : '*I may as well 
 give up all thought of doing anything more." A good 
 man who is suddenly transferred from a wide sphere 
 of activity to a very narrow one, is often tempted in 
 this way. But not so reasoned Paul. "What is that 
 in thine hand, Paul?" *'A pnetorian soldier chained 
 to my hand ; " and forthwith Paul sets about preach- 
 ing to these guards, as one after another they take 
 their place at his side ; and by and by we find him 
 writing to the church at Philippi, *^ My bonds in 
 
The Lesson of Moses' Rod, 333 
 
 Christ are known throughout the praetorian guard." 
 ** What are those in thine hand?" ''Visitors, mem- 
 bers of the Roman church, coming in day after day 
 to talk with me on the mysteries of the faith or the 
 interests of the church ; " and again we find him writ- 
 ing, *' Many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing con- 
 fident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak 
 the word without fear." Some of these are servants 
 in the imperial household, and so the gospel gets a 
 foothold in the palace of Nero. "What is that in 
 thine hand ?" "Only a pen ;" but the whole Chris- 
 tian world rejoices to-day in the four Epistles of the 
 Imprisonment. 
 
 There is a banking clerk in a German town. God 
 smites him with blindness. Cut off from the means 
 of earning his daily bread, what business has that 
 man to think of doing any philanthropic work ? Ab- 
 solutely nothing in his hand, only a thought in his 
 heart, that a blind man might teach other blind men, 
 and deal with them the better from being a personal 
 sharer of their affliction. That thought grew into 
 the blind school at lUzach, with its printing-office and 
 workshop, and library of books in raised type, and, 
 greatest of all, the German Bible in raised letters, 
 printed in sixty-two volumes, and costing only forty- 
 two dollars. One blind man, thinking his one thought 
 in the dark, opened the Word of God to the blind of 
 all Germany. 
 
 What is that in thine hand ? The Reverend Mr. 
 McCall, that devoted worker among the poor of Glas- 
 gow, and the author of that most interesting little 
 
334 Faith and Character, 
 
 book, *' Among the Masses ; or, Work in theWynds," 
 relates, that one evening a few young women came 
 to him, saying : "We have been thinking about what 
 you were saying on being doers as well as hearers of 
 the word. We have been praying that the Lord of 
 the harvest may send laborers to the multitude ; mean- 
 time, we have come to offer ourselves. We think we 
 might go round to some of the houses with tracts ; 
 and here we have six shillings to pay for them. We 
 hope to give that, at least, every month." They were 
 hard working girls, chiefly engaged in factories or 
 warerooms ; but in a few weeks thirty of them were 
 thus engaged. Sabbath after Sabbath they might be 
 seen entering the church with new followers gathered 
 from the lanes and tenements ; and when the work of 
 Bible-selling among the people of the district was in- 
 augurated, in one year these girls sold no fewer than 
 seven hundred copies of the Word of God. Only six 
 shillings in hand, and a little time taken from hard- 
 earned leisure, for Christ's sake. 
 
 Thus God points us to the thing in our hand ; the 
 duty nearest us ; the power of which we are masters ; 
 the opportunity of the present moment ; and bids us 
 make the best and the most of these. It was indeed in 
 a spirit of despondency and desperation that the wise 
 man wrote, ** Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do 
 it with thy might ; " as much as to say, "Whatever 
 you can get, get ; w^hatever you can do, do. You are 
 on your road to the dark, dismal grave where there is 
 no work nor device ; there is the more reason, there- 
 fore, why your journey should be a merry one ; " but 
 
The Lesson of Moses Rod. 335 
 
 the admiration is none the less sound, viewed in the 
 cheerful light of Christian hope. It is true that life 
 is short; that only to-day is ours; that there is no 
 work nor device nor knowledge in the grave ; and 
 that the man who wants to do anything in this world 
 had better do the thing that comes to his hand with 
 the tool that is in his hand. It is right to make plans. 
 It is right and laudable to make the whole life centre 
 in a great and good design. Sometimes God lets a 
 man carry out such a plan ; at any rate, whether He 
 does or not, the life is the better for the order and 
 concentration which are thus impressed on it ; but it 
 must never be forgotten that along the line of our 
 great plans lie many incidental things, or what seem 
 such to us ; and that, when God throws these in our 
 way. He means them to be done. We may think 
 them interruptions now, but they may prove to have 
 furthered our plan. Or, it may be that God shall 
 take one of these apparently incidental things, and 
 make our life centre in that, instead of at the point 
 we had fixed for ourselves. We may legitimately 
 strive to acquire new power, but meanwhile we must 
 not neglect that which is in our hand. The use for 
 the new power may never come. The use for the 
 power in hand may be to-day ; and that opportunity 
 says to us, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it 
 with thy might." Thy hand : a man, while his mind 
 is preoccupied with something far removed from the 
 place where he is walking up and down, might strike 
 his hand against a little tree, and, looking down, find 
 it something which promised rich and rare fruit on 
 
336 Faith and Character. 
 
 cultivation ; and thus taking what his hand found, 
 but which did not lie at all in his plans, and setting 
 out his little tree in his garden, he will be eating the 
 fruit, perhaps, when the plan on which he was medita- 
 ting has been blown to the four winds. So in Chris- 
 tian work. God not unfrequently honors the finding 
 of the hand above the carefully planned product of 
 the brain, in order that we may be taught how great 
 the small and incidental and commonplace things of 
 the world may become by His touch upon them. 
 
 How full is Scripture of such illustrations. There 
 is the host of the Midianites and of Amalek in the 
 valley like grasshoppers for multitudes, and here is 
 Gideon, with only three hundred left of all his thou- 
 sands. Twenty-two thousand fearful men, and nine 
 thousand seven hundred rash men gone at a stroke. 
 Three hundred ; and ** what is that in their hand, 
 Gideon ?" ^'Only an earthen pitcher, a lamp and a 
 trumpet." ''Well, Gideon, cease making elaborate 
 plans for battle or for escape. By these shall that 
 vast host be scattered. You never dreamed of lamps, 
 pitchers, and trumpets deciding a campaign, but you 
 shall see what God can do with light and breath and 
 broken earthenware." 
 
 In the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, 
 and travellers walked through byways for fear of vio- 
 lence and robbery. How shall they be delivered ? 
 "What is that in thine hand, Shamgar ? " '' Only an 
 ox-goad ; good for nothing but to drive my oxen." 
 '' Perhaps so, Shamgar, in yotir hand, but / touch it 
 now. Go forth and use it with God's touch on it ; " 
 
The Lesson of Moses Rod. 337 
 
 and lo ! six hundred men fall before him, and Israel 
 is delivered with an ox-goad. 
 
 And there are the hungry multitudes on the hillside, 
 and the disciples of our Lord in great worry and con- 
 fusion : *' How shall these people be fed?" And 
 Christ answers : ** How many loaves have ye'i What 
 is that in thine hand, little lad ?" "Only five loaves 
 and two fishes, but they are nothing." No, not in the 
 lad's hands, not in the disciples' hands, but when 
 Christ says, ''bring them to me," the problem is 
 solved. No need of saying "only five loaves," after 
 Christ's hand has been upon them. There is enough 
 and to spare. 
 
 So, then, a shepherd's rod gives us our lesson to- 
 day. It is simple and direct to every man, woman, 
 and child who loves and is trying to serve our Lord. 
 The first question as you enter upon service is, not 
 what power do you desire ? What are you striving 
 after, but what have you ? What can you do 7iow — 
 to-day ? Whatever that is, Christ says to you : " Use 
 it; do it." You remember the words of the Spirit to 
 that feeble Philadelphian church. He does not say 
 to her, " Bestir yourself to do what the stronger 
 churches of Sardis or of Thyatira have done," but 
 " thou hast a little strength ; I have set before thee an 
 open door : hold fast that thou hast. Thou hast an 
 opportunity, a door open before thee. Enter thy 
 door. Thou hast a little strength ; do not waste it, 
 hold it fast." And what the spirit there says to the 
 church. He says to you and to me as individuals. 
 *' An open door is before thee. Power of some kind 
 *5 
 
338 Faith and Character. 
 
 is in thy hand. Enter thy door. Go straight up be- 
 fore thee. What is that in thine hand ? Use it, and 
 use it now." 
 
 You have different gifts, but you each have some 
 gift. The first requisite for efficient sen-ice is the 
 consecration of your power. Of itself it is very lit- 
 tle ; but when Christ shall lay his hand on it, then 
 neither you nor I can measure it. All that Paul 
 could say about his own great gifts was that when 
 Christ strengthened him, only then, he could do all 
 things. So, with your power consecrated thus, begin 
 to do the thing which God puts in your way ; the 
 little trivial duty as it may seem to you which lies 
 nearest you. Begin to exercise your talent ; it may 
 be money ; it may be speech ; it may be song ; it 
 may be only the ability to give a book or a tract ; it 
 may be a loaf to a poor man, or a kind word to a sick 
 woman. It may be only lying still and waiting pa- 
 tiently in pain and helplessness. Whatever it is, do 
 it ; always keeping in mind that the doing is unto 
 Christ and gets all its significance and all its effect 
 from him. You may see wonders wrought with your 
 simple rod. Whether you do or not, you shall hear 
 some day a word from those divine lips which shall 
 open to you as in a flash the value which God sets 
 on consecrated power : "Well done, thou good and 
 faithful servant .... enter thou into the joy of thy 
 Lord." 
 
THE MULTIPLIED OIL. 
 
2 KINGS IV. 
 
 (i) Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons 
 of the prophets unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant my hus- 
 band is dead ; and thou knowest that thy servant did 
 fear the Lord : and the creditor is come to take unto 
 him my two sons to be bondmen. 
 
 (2) And EHsha said unto her, What shall I do for thee ? tell 
 
 me, what hast thou in the house ? And she said, Thine 
 handmaid hath not any thing in the house, save a pot of 
 oil. 
 
 (3) Then he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy 
 neighbors, even empty vessels ; borrow not a few. 
 
 (4) And when thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door 
 
 upon thee and upon thy sons, and shalt pour out into all 
 those vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is full. 
 
 (5) So she went from him, and shut the door upon her and 
 
 upon her sons, who brought the vessels to her ; and she 
 poured out. 
 
 (6) And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she 
 
 said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said 
 unto her. There is not a vessel more. And the oil stayed. 
 
 (7) Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, 
 
 Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy 
 children of the rest. 
 
XIX. 
 
 THE MULTIPLIED OIL. 
 
 The poet Wordsworth says of one of his charac- 
 ters, 
 
 ** A primrose by the river's brim 
 A yellow primrose was to him, 
 And it was nothing more," 
 
 The flower suggested nothing beyond itself. This 
 is a condition of mind for which men are wont to 
 receive praise from some quarters, as matter-of-fact 
 men. That it is not a desirable nor a healthy state of 
 mind, is evident from the fact that the Bible is con- 
 stantly at work to lift men out of it. The Bible never 
 touches a fact of nature or of our common life, that 
 it does not exhibit its connection with something out- 
 side itself, and that a spiritual truth, pointing upward 
 to God. God all and in all is the great underlying 
 truth of Scripture, and therefore it never shrinks 
 from associating the meanest, commonest, and most 
 familiar things with God ; nay, it rather emphasizes 
 His relation to these, for the reason that man would 
 naturally overlook it, and associate Him only with 
 what seemed to himself grand and worthy. But if 
 you will think of it for a moment, some of the most 
 
342 Faith and Character, 
 
 insignificant and commonplace things are permanent- 
 ly identified, through the agency of the Bible, with 
 the grandest and sweetest divine truths. You cannot 
 look at a loaf of bread, and think only of flour and 
 leaven and your daily hunger. The thoughts of 
 Christ's life, death, and resurrection, are, as it were, 
 kneaded into the loaf. A single hair, a twittering 
 sparrow, a common field flower, carry the sublime les- 
 son of providence. A sheep is a reminder of divine 
 compassion. Or take this article oil ; so common in 
 our domestic life, still more so in that of the East ; 
 what may not a single flask of oil suggest of the 
 early worship of Jehovah ; of the imposing rites of 
 the sanctuary ; of anointed kings and priests ; of 
 plenty and gladness ? What holy and tender associa- 
 tions linger about the Mount of Olives. And here, 
 God has taken one little flask of oil in the home of an 
 obscure woman in a far-off time, and has put it in a 
 setting of miracle, and hands it to us, bidding us pour 
 out and see how richly He can make it flow with les- 
 sons of grace for the instruction of His church. 
 
 The woman in the narrative was a prophet's widow. 
 Her husband had been a faithful servant of God, leav- 
 ing behind him a reputation founded on the only 
 basis which will stand ; and which enabled his 
 widow to appeal confidently to the Lord's prophet, 
 saying, '*Thou knowest that thy servant did fear the 
 Lord." Like not a few of the Lord's true prophets, 
 even in modern times, he had died in debt, having 
 perhaps suffered from Jezebel's vindictive persecu- 
 tion of his order ; and now the creditors were press- 
 
The Multiplied Oil. 343 
 
 ing the widow for payment, and, in the absence of 
 all effects, were preparing to enforce that provision 
 of the Levitical law, which allowed a creditor to hold 
 a debtor's children to ser^dtude until the arrival of the 
 year of Jubilee. 
 
 Her first thought in her trouble was of God as rep- 
 resented by His prophet. It could not have been a 
 new thing for her to call upon God in the day of 
 trouble. The history of the prophetic order in that 
 period makes it quite certain that she had known 
 affliction before this ; and the pressure of care, and 
 the teaching and example of that God-fearing hus- 
 band, with what other influences we know not, per- 
 haps similar ones in her childhood's history, had 
 taught her the lesson of casting her burden on the 
 Lord. 
 
 Elisha was not, in his own nature, one to resist 
 such an appeal, and besides, as a prophet of God, 
 none knew better than he the peculiar interest and 
 sanctity with which the divine law invested the widow 
 and the orphan. He was prompt in his response ; 
 not merely as a man who is liberal in good words, but 
 as one who rouses his energies to do what he can. 
 *'What shall I do for thee?" But his next words 
 must have seemed strange to her: '^What hast thou 
 in the house ? " She had told him she was destitute. 
 She had come to him for aid, and yet he turned 
 back to her own house, and asked what there was 
 there. 
 
 The opening of that house-door is the opening of 
 a familiar truth of God's administration ; namely, that 
 
344 Faith And Character. 
 
 God, in working for men, uses them and their posses- 
 sions as far as they will go. Often a man goes to God 
 for help, in abject need, feeling that he has absolute- 
 ly nothing wherewith to help himself, and is surprised 
 at being told to go back and look over his own re- 
 sources. It is just as when a boy in the country- is at 
 play out in the fields, and the little cart to which he 
 has harnessed his dog or goat breaks down. " Ah ! " 
 he says to his companion, ''it's a real bad break. I 
 can't mend it, and we shall have to walk a mile and a 
 half to the blacksmith's." Just then the boy's father 
 comes by. He examines the break and says : " Haven't 
 you something in your pocket that you can mend it 
 with?" "No," replies the lad; "it will have to go 
 to the blacksmith's." "Well, let me see what you 
 have." And the little fellow begins to pull out that 
 miscellaneous mass which always gathers in a school- 
 boy's pocket : a handful of marbles, a piece of chalk, 
 two or three yards of string, an apple, and one or 
 two screws. "There," he says, "that's all. You 
 can't mend it with any of those." "Stop," says the 
 father ; "give me one of those screws." And he sits 
 down and skilfully joins and fastens the broken part, 
 and sends the boy off to his play happy, and admiring 
 his father's skill. Just so God calls our attention to 
 some little thing which we had not thought worth 
 mentioning among our possessions, and says, "use 
 that." The widow had not thought of paying her 
 debt with the oil which she had in the house. It was 
 not a jar of oil as we are accustomed to think, but 
 only a little flask, used for anointing. Probably 
 
The Multiplied Oil. 345 
 
 there was not half a pint in all, yet the prophet seizes 
 upon this. '' What hast thou in the house ? Only 
 a little flask of oil ? That is the very thing. That 
 shall pay thy debt, and save thee thy children." A 
 flask of oil was not worth counting in liquidation 
 of the widow's debt ; but a flask of oil and God were 
 good for any amount. And one of our errors is that, 
 while we, perhaps, see the truth up to this point, we 
 do not see it as a universal truth. We confine it to 
 the occasional miracles of history ; whereas these 
 miracles are only illustrations of the law of God's 
 economy in all time ; that pcnver, consecrated to God, 
 Multiplies according to God's rule and not according to 
 mans. That law is in force just as much now as in 
 the days of Elisha or of Christ. When there is some- 
 thing to be done, something for you to do, God says 
 to you, ''What have you to do it with ?" And you 
 are very likely to say — '' Nothing, absolutely nothing. 
 A very little money, a very small share of personal 
 influence, a little gift of tongue or of pen, or possibly 
 only the power to pray ; but these are nothing. I 
 have nothing fit to do this work." God rebukes you. 
 He tells you plainly you look at the matter in the 
 wrong way. He says to you, " Do you call yourself 
 My child ; and do you think you are living under the 
 narrow, niggardly economy of men ? Am I restricted 
 to what men call great means to bring to pass great 
 results ? Cannot I, who made you and the wojdd out 
 of nothing, do this work with your little gift, ¥s well 
 as with something greater ? Bring forth your little 
 money. Utter your little word. Write your little 
 
346 Faith and Character. 
 
 line. Breathe your prayer, and see what your Father 
 in heaven can do. 
 
 If this faith was not largely developed in the widow, 
 she had at least enough of it to obey the prophet's sin- 
 gular order to go and borrow vessels from all her 
 neighbors. It may have crossed her mind that the 
 command had something to do with the oil ; but 
 whether this were so or not, she wasted no time in 
 asking questions, but obeyed. In temporal things 
 faith comes after experience. In spiritual things, 
 faith comes first, and experience afterward. What 
 her experience was going to be, she did not know ; 
 what God might be going to do, she did not know ; 
 what she had to do she did know, and she simply did 
 her work, and left God to do His in His own way and 
 time. Oh, if we did but get hold of this simple law 
 of living, the law of the obedience of faith, how much 
 life would be both simplified and enriched. From 
 this point of view the whole matter is so clear, so un- 
 embarrassed. All the responsibility for results is 
 God's. No strain comes on His child. All the order- 
 ing of methods is God's. The child need not perplex 
 himself. All the power is God's, the child needs but 
 to draw on it as he wants it. All the care is God's ; 
 the child is bidden to cast it all on Him ; and for the 
 child there remains only simple obedience. The 
 trouble is, that the child is not willing to humble 
 himself so far under the mighty hand of God as to 
 cast all care on Him. Simple obedience is altogether 
 too simple for him. He wants a hand in the other 
 department of the partnership. He wants to trim 
 
The Multiplied Oil. 347 
 
 his obedience according to his notion of the results ; 
 and therefore he complicates matters, and lives, not 
 the sweet, simple, restful, triumphant life of faith, but 
 the worried, blundering, defeated life of the half-sight, 
 w^hich is all that his human ignorance permits him to 
 catch of God's plans and methods. 
 
 The thing which this widow w^as bidden to do was 
 peculiarly significant. She was about to receive a 
 great blessing from God, and she had not room 
 enough to receive it. Probably she had a number of 
 empty vessels in the house ; but the destined blessing 
 was to be far greater than the emptiness of her house ; 
 and she must provide accordingly. Is not this some- 
 thing more than a mere side incident of the story ? Is 
 there not here the hint of a truth which will repay a 
 little study ? Do Ave ever think that sometimes God 
 cannot bless us as richly as He would because we are 
 not prepared to receive a large blessing ? It is true ; 
 and it is farther true that, in accordance with the 
 same law which we have already considered, God 
 throws a part of this work of preparation on us. If 
 you will look at the chapter just before this, you will 
 find an illustration of the truth. When the three 
 kings of Judah, Israel, and Edom were marching 
 against the Moabites through the wilderness of Edom, 
 and the water failed, and the host called upon God, 
 God promised to send water for both man and beast, 
 and to give victory besides. *' Ye shall not see wind, 
 neither shall ye see rain ; yet that valley shall be 
 filled with water. . . . And this is but a light thing in 
 the sight of the Lord : He will deliver the Moabites 
 
34-8 Faith and Character, 
 
 also into your hand." But the host must make prep- 
 aration. They must fill the valley with ditches. And 
 the ditches were dug ; and while the host were sleep- 
 ing, afar off on the mountains of Edom, where the 
 sound of wind and rain could not reach their ears, 
 the rain fell, and the mountain channels were filled, 
 and with the rising sun the pools seemed to deluded 
 Moab tinged with the blood of an army divided 
 against itself, and they rushed forward only to be 
 overwhelmed with defeat. 
 
 A great deal of this digging ditches and borrow- 
 ing vessels is often needful before we are in a con- 
 dition to receive some of God's best gifts. There is, 
 for instance, the preparation which comes in the 
 development of a larger sense of need. Men must 
 have great wants before they begin to make great 
 requests ; and very often they are scantily supplied 
 because they seek only the supply of certain famil- 
 iar and comparatively small needs ; only to fill the 
 empty vessels in their own houses. The very richest 
 of God's blessings come to him who has nothing 
 but God, and is therefore compelled to seek his all 
 in God. ''Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs 
 is the kingdom of Heaven." But many a man is so 
 well supplied in his own esteem, that his range of 
 conscious need is very limited. He must have it en- 
 larged ere he can receive those large blessings which 
 are made to fit into the great abysmal needs of the 
 human heart. And God does such a man a service 
 when He leads him outside the little space hemmed 
 in by his self-satisfaction and conceit, and shows him 
 
The Mtdtiplicd Oil. 349 
 
 the great empty spaces in his life ; when care and 
 weakness and grief, and the sense of sin and igno- 
 rance bring empty vessels into his house, which 
 there is no one on earth to fill. He learns to ask 
 large things very quickly then. And not unfrequent- 
 ly one's neighbors help him to this. To a man who 
 has real manhood in him, contact with other men is 
 a wonderful developer of the sense of need. He can- 
 not be long with wiser men without having borne into 
 him a keen sense of his own ignorance. He cannot 
 live with a richly-endowed spiritual life, which moves 
 in an atmosphere of prayer and has its conversation 
 in heaven, without an enlarged and quickened cra- 
 ving for the richer life of heaven. 
 
 Then, too, there are certain blessings which can 
 come to one only through the enlargement of his 
 sympathies. He who shuts himself up within his own 
 little circle of refinement and culture and selfish 
 pleasure, and never goes forth as God's minister of 
 joy and help to a lower, darker region, to which taste 
 and comfort and hope are alike strangers, does not 
 know the blessing there is for him there : Christ's 
 blessing that waits on ministry. He can get that new 
 enjoyment only by going down after it ; and every 
 poor man he visits and relieves ; every burdened 
 heart he makes lighter ; every tear he wipes away, is 
 the creator of an enlarged capacity for a purer happi; 
 ne^s. The man who is content to live within his lit- 
 tle sectarian circle, and who has brought himself to 
 believe that no good lies outside it, is not open to the 
 joy of a broader Christian fellowship. He cannot 
 
350 Faith and Character. 
 
 receive it until he goes out of his own door. The 
 very capacity for it is a vessel which he must get from 
 his neighbor. There was such a joy in store for 
 Peter, in the grander view of Christ's mission, in the 
 fellowship of such faithful Gentile souls as Corne- 
 lius ; but his heart must first be enlarged to take in 
 the Roman centurion, by the vision w^hich God sent 
 him on the house-top. 
 
 And the same is true in familiar religious experi- 
 ence. Prayer is a wonderful medium of blessing, and 
 yet the apostle bids us watch unto prayer, with a 
 view to prayer, before we pray, that we may enter the 
 closet prepared to hear what God the Lord shall 
 speak, and to receive the largest measure of what He 
 shall have to bestow. The man who rushes into his 
 closet out of the seething of a life into which not one 
 thought of God has entered since his last formal act 
 of prayer, is in no condition to receive God's spiritual 
 gifts. The man who depends upon the Sabbath ser- 
 vices or the weekly prayer-meeting to lift him twice 
 or thrice in the week out of an atmosphere of utter 
 worldliness, will not find himself lifted very high. 
 It is rather he who sets his mind in his daily task to 
 hallow all he finds : he whose 
 
 " Is the bliss of souls serene 
 When they have sworn, and steadfast mean, 
 Counting the cost, in all t' espy 
 Their God, in all themselves deny : " 
 
 and who, in the outworking of this high purpose, has 
 grown distrustful of self, and hungry for the continual 
 
The Multiplied Oil, 351 
 
 presence of God ; it is he who comes to the place of 
 prayer as the dweller in a thirsty land goes forth at 
 the rising of a cloud, setting all his vessels to catch 
 the gift of the skies ; it is he whose vessels are filled. 
 Do you know why David, even in the cave in which 
 he hid from Saul, could sing so joyously, as in the 
 fifty-seventh Psalm, ''Awake up, my glory; awake, 
 psaltery and harp ; I myself will awake early. I will 
 praise Thee, O Lord, among the people ; I will sing 
 unto Thee among the nations ? " You will find the 
 reason in the seventh verse : *' My heart is prepared,^ 
 O God, my heart is prepared." 
 
 The vessels, being thus procured, the widow was 
 commanded by the prophet to shut herself in her 
 house with her sons, and to pour out the flask of 
 anointing oil into the vessels. Here, again, there was 
 room for doubt. That little flask, and that great ar- 
 ray of empty vessels. It seemed absurd that the less 
 could fill the greater. But, as before, she obeyed 
 without question. She began to pour, and in a mo- 
 ment she saw that a mightier hand than hers was at 
 work. Vessel after vessel was filled, and still the sons 
 handed fresh vessels, and bore them away full like 
 the rest ; and still, without a thought in her believing 
 heart of the stream being stayed, she held the flask's 
 mouth downward and called for still another vessel, 
 and there w^as not another. Her own and her neigh- 
 bors' jars were full ; and then, and not till then, the 
 oil stayed. 
 
 ' Such is the meaning o{ *'Jixed.^^ 
 
352 Faith and Character. 
 
 Two or three thoughts force themselves upon us at 
 this point in the story. Look at that picture of the 
 widow and her children alone in the house, without 
 the presence even of the prophet of God, the door 
 shut against all intrusion and observation, and that 
 wondrous display of miraculous power going on for 
 that humble family alone. Miracle, in God's admin- 
 istration, is not an idle display to catch the eye of the 
 crowd. Many a wise man of this world would have 
 said, " Such a mar^^el of divine energy should not 
 have been confined to two or three poor, perhaps ig- 
 norant people, and shut vip within a little cabin. It 
 should have been exhibited in open day before crowds 
 of the learned and thoughtful. Grant that it was an 
 act of mercy. Less would have satisfied the widow's 
 want. No need for such an exertion of power." Ah ! 
 such have to learn that God has nothing too good or 
 too great for the poorest soul that loves and trusts 
 Him. Such reason as if mighty works of this kind 
 were as strange to God as to them, not realizing that 
 they are the familiar facts of His very being ; that 
 such words as those which raised Lazarus from the 
 dead, and changed the water into w^ine, and set the 
 paralytic leaping for joy, are household words to 
 Him. There was only a single prophet of the Lord, 
 at Dothan, in the day when the Syrian host compassed 
 it about ; and yet the anointed eyes of his servant saw 
 the whole mountain round about full of the chariots 
 and armies of God. They were there for the sake of 
 Elisha alone ; and that poor serv^ant who had cried, 
 "Alas, my master, and how shall we do?" learned, 
 
The Multiplied Oil. 353 
 
 as in a flash of light, that the whole host of heaven is 
 not too much to enlist when a single servant of God 
 is in need or in danger. 
 
 And then, too, what beautiful suggestions of family- 
 devotion flow to us from within the widow's closed 
 doors. Mother and children alike employed ; one 
 pouring, another holding the vessel, another storing 
 away the treasure. God's miracles of grace, God's 
 sweetest and most blessed demonstrations of spiritual 
 power, are not withheld from the humblest family 
 altar, any more than from the public sanctuary. 
 How is it, father, mother, when the doors are shut on 
 you and your household group in the morning or in 
 the evening, is there good store of vessels to receive 
 the treasure ? Do you come with prepared hearts to 
 the family altar ? Or do you come only to preserve 
 family order and outward religious decency, not 
 thinking it possible that your familiar service may be 
 the scene of God's manifestation, and your household 
 altar glow with such fire, as that which fell upon Eli- 
 jah's sacrifice on Carmel ? How is it ? Are all of 
 your household group present as participators in 
 your household worship ? Oh, those little flasks in 
 God's hand ! How much they pour out sometimes. 
 How God sometimes strikes a fountain of thought or 
 of feeling in the artless question of the youngest of 
 the group. Often the head of the household hesitates 
 to set up the family altar, just because he thinks 
 only of how little the flask is ; how limited his power 
 of expression ; how small his gift in prayer ; how 
 little his education perhaps, so that he hesitates to 
 
354 Fait J L and Character. 
 
 read the word of God aloud. My friend, let the flask 
 alone ; think of God's touch upon the oil. The great 
 question with you at the family altar is not how 
 well you can pray or expound the Scriptures, but, 
 is God there? If so, never mind the flask; take it 
 and pour out ; and that hand which multiplied the 
 oil shall fill even your broken petition with the very 
 spirit of grace and supplication, and make the verse 
 which the youngest child stammeringly reads, run 
 like a stream from the river of God. The vessels 
 shall be filled. There ought to be more such mira- 
 cles at the household altars. But it is the old fault, 
 the old mistake, one of the deepest rooted in all our 
 religious life — that we are not to expect God in 
 familiar scenes ; that special divine gifts are reserved 
 for special occasions. And so while the river of 
 divine power, broad and deep, flows at our very 
 thresholds, we refuse to launch our boats and dip 
 our pitchers, waiting for some laboriously cut canal 
 of man's devising. These familiar channels are the 
 very ones through which we ought to expect — through 
 Avhich God encourages and teaches us to expect the 
 richest, sweetest, deepest manifestations of His grace. 
 There is another thought at which I can only 
 glance : that the divine gift was, in kind, of the same 
 character as the original possession. She had only 
 a little oil, and God paid her debt with oil. God 
 might have heaped up the floor with gold. He might 
 have filled the jars with wine, but there would have 
 been, or so it looks to us, an incongruity in that. 
 But the miraculous gift was in beautiful harmony 
 
The Multiplied Oil, 355 
 
 with the original gift. It was just so at Zarephath, 
 in the house of that other widow. She had only a lit- 
 tle meal and a little oil. God might have fed her as 
 He did Elijah, by means of the ravens, but He did it 
 by means of her own barrel and cruse. When the 
 five thousand were assembled, and were hungry, it was 
 entirely possible for Christ, by a word, to make fruit 
 trees, laden with fruit enough for the whole multi- 
 tude, grow up over their heads. Instead of this he 
 used what was at hand. There was a little bread and 
 fish, and he fed them with bread and fish. And I 
 think you have found, or will find, in your own ex- 
 perience of God's gifts, that when God sets you to 
 looking for what you have, asks you **What hast 
 thou in the house?" — it is that He may make that 
 thing the vehicle of your blessing. I have some- 
 where heard of one who had no gift to preach, but 
 some power to pray. God took what he had, and de- 
 veloped that ; and the man prayed, and prayed, until 
 he became a power in the church ; until his very pres- 
 ence in a congregation inspired the minister of the 
 word with faith, and lent unction and might to the 
 preaching of the truth. That woman who anointed 
 the feet of Jesus, had only a single flask of ointment, 
 as the widow of oil. Christ did not give that woman 
 a name in his church through anything but that flask 
 of ointment ; but the odor of that ointment is as 
 sweet and penetrating this day as it was in Simon's 
 banqueting chamber. That one act has been a les- 
 son to the church for nineteen centuries, gathering 
 power and meaning as men have gained insight into 
 
35^ Faith mtd Character. 
 
 the character and work and teaching of the Son of 
 man. 
 
 So I might dwell on the abundance of the sup- 
 ply of oil. More than enough was given her to pay 
 her debt. She asked but to satisfy her creditors, 
 and God gave her that and a living besides. And it 
 is worth noting how beautifully the light is thrown 
 backward from the gospel upon this incident. This 
 same fulness of giving comes out in the parable of 
 the friend at midnight, who, when he did rise at his 
 neighbor's importunity, gave not only three loaves 
 but as many as he needed. 
 
 So, too, I might speak of the fact that, having re- 
 ceived God's gift, the w^idow sought God's direction 
 in the use of it. When the vessels were full, she 
 went and told the man of God. Our contact with 
 God is not intended to be occasional. It is to be 
 a life of faith ; and hence God often sends a gift so 
 large that it embarrasses us, and sends us again and 
 again to the mercy-seat to learn how to deal with 
 what has been so bountifully given. 
 
 We leave this beautiful narrative here. Is it not a 
 striking proof of the heavenly origin of the Scrip- 
 tures, that these old lessons and stories, dealing with 
 the men and habits of an age so remote and so differ- 
 ent from our own, have still a power to instruct us 
 in our duty to our own age, and to quicken our re- 
 ligious thought, and make closer our contact with 
 heaven ? Oh, if you feel yourselves needy to-day, 
 listen to God's voice as it turns you upon yourselves 
 to examine your own resources. And when you fuid 
 
The Multiplied Oil. 357 
 
 only some poor little gift, hesitate not to bring it 
 into use. Its very littleness will turn your thought 
 from it to Him whose word can multiply and fructify 
 it. Only learn this lesson of trust and of obedience. 
 Put yourselves in contact with God. Give out what 
 you have, and leave the ''excellency of the power " 
 where it belongs, with God. Not only your vessels, 
 but your neighbors' shall be filled. You deal with a 
 God to whom wonders are familiar things ; and faith 
 shall make them familiar to you likewise, and shall 
 keep your life in that high plane where God manifests 
 Himself as He doth not unto the world. 
 
THE ETERNITY OF GODLY 
 CHARACTER. 
 
I JOHN II. 
 
 (17) And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof : but 
 he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. 
 
XX. 
 
 THE ETERNITY OF GODLY CHARACTER. 
 
 It is plain to us all that men habitually seek what 
 is permanent. Whatever mistakes they may make in 
 their conceptions of permanency, or in their modes 
 of seeking it, they want what is sure, steadfast, abid- 
 ing. This is true in their living and in their think- 
 ing. Out of the restlessness and shifting of their ac- 
 tive life they look forward to a time when they shall 
 be '' settled." They are busy making for themselves 
 what they call established reputations and permanent 
 fortunes. They are ambitious to continue to live in 
 the memory and in the admiration and gratitude of 
 men after they shall have died. Under this motive,"* 
 they have made conquests and established dynasties ; 
 they have piled pyramids and built colossal sepul- 
 chres, and carved sphynxes, have written books and 
 painted pictures. 
 
 So it is in thinking. They look for solid ground 
 from which to think. They push back from facts to 
 the principle behind them. They are not satisfied 
 with seeing the apple fall. They must know what 
 immutable law has regulated the fall of every apple 
 that has dropped since the foundation of the world. 
 They search for the eternal centre of the physical 
 i6 
 
362 Faith and Character, 
 
 universe, for the key-note of nature, for the fixed 
 laws of their own intellectual being. 
 
 But the most important question of all to men, is 
 the question of th.Q\v personal permanency : ** Shall I 
 live forever, and how shall I live forever?" They 
 may be anxious to be favorably remembered ; to leave 
 the world abiding tokens of their skill and industry 
 and genius; but above all rise the questions, "Shall 
 / abide as well as my w^ork ? Hoiu long shall I 
 abide ? Where shall I abide ? " You cannot lay 
 such questions with such an icicle as this which I read 
 not long ago in a leading periodical : *' Our future is 
 simply an active existence prolonged by society. 
 There is no promise, be it plainly said, of anything 
 but an immortality of influence. We cannot even 
 say that we shall continue to love, but we know that 
 we shall be loved. It may be that we shall con- 
 sciously know no hope ourselves, but we shall inspire 
 hopes. It may be that we shall not think, but others 
 will think our thoughts and enshrine our minds." 
 That may satisfy an exceptional man here and there ; 
 the average man's instinct will reject it. He will not 
 surrender his eternal personality at the word of a 
 philosopher. He will come back, persistently, obsti- 
 nately, blindly, if you will, to the old question, *' How 
 shall I abide forever ? " 
 
 Whether we may think that the Bible answers the 
 question or not, we cannot help seeing that it is meant 
 to do so. Personal immortality is the thought which 
 underlies and perwides its whole movement. It is, 
 indeed, true that the thought does not often come 
 
The Eter7iity of Godly Character. 363 
 
 distinctly to the surface throughout the earlier stages 
 of Bible history ; but, from the moment that the first 
 man forfeited the gift of immortality by his disobedi- 
 ence, the purpose of recovery enters into the course 
 of the history, and gives direction to it, and animates 
 the words of prophecy, until the promise of the past 
 is fulfilled in Christ, who comes to bring life and im- 
 mortality to light through his gospel. 
 
 Our text, therefore, gathers up into itself what is 
 diffused over the whole of Scripture, and meets the 
 questioner with a distinct and exhaustive answer. 
 You may abide forever. Not your memory, not your 
 works. These may abide, but not forever. They 
 may abide as long as the world, but the world is not 
 forever. It passeth away. You may abide forever. 
 *' The world passeth away, but he that doeth the will 
 of God abideth forever." 
 
 How may this be ? And first we are told how it 
 cannot be. It cannot come to pass through anything 
 earthly. The warning is explicit, not to attach the 
 thought of permanency to anything on earth, nor to 
 the world itself. And it is worth noting how this is 
 put. It is not that the world is destined to pass away. 
 It is not such a warning as an experienced builder 
 would give to a man who should be intending to put 
 his house upon ground apparently firm, but which the 
 builder knew would one day bring the house about his 
 ears. It is rather as though one should call his neigh- 
 bor's attention to the already begun movement of a 
 land-slide. The thing is already at work. It appeals 
 to observation now. The world is passing away. You 
 
364 Faith and Character. 
 
 have but to look and you may see. Just stand where 
 you are to-day, and see what is behind you ; the past, 
 that which has already gone by. What a tremendous 
 range your backward look takes in. It is an oppres- 
 sive thought, how much of the passing away is al- 
 ready accomplished. What a long, dimming perspec- 
 tive of passed-away things — men by scores of millions, 
 empires, nations. And to-day we say, jubilantly, 
 *' the world moves." Yes, it does, and no doubt to- 
 ward something better, and yet it is none the less mov- 
 ing aivay. We say, jestingly, *' we are getting on." 
 Surely we are. Our children — but yesterday we heard 
 their infant prattle, to-day they are our companions. 
 It seems as though the echo of our ow^n boyish laugh- 
 ter was yet in our ears, but the struggle of manhood 
 is on us in all its intensity. The w^orld is passing away. 
 The men to whom we used to look up as to kings, and 
 for whom the instinctive reverence still lives in our 
 hearts, are gone and well-nigh forgotten. There have 
 been certain things we always meant to do. The time 
 had not come, but it would come presently. Well, we 
 have come to where we have quietly faced and accept- 
 ed the fact that they never will be done. The oppor- 
 tunity has gone. Some of you, when you sit down 
 and begin to call up old companions and schoolmates, 
 find that you are almost alone. Your class in college — 
 how many are left ? There are more of them in the 
 other world than here. That was a significant phrase 
 which the old Romans had to express the fact of a 
 man's death: ** he has gone over to the majority." 
 The world is passing away. Oh, how the years rush ! 
 
The Eternity of Godly Character, 365 
 
 A summer day used to be so long. It is so short now. 
 The holidays used to seem so far apart : there is only 
 a step between them now, and the anniversaries, es- 
 pecially the birthdays, fairly crowd upon each other's 
 heels ; and some of you are well-nigh done. You 
 have been setting your houses in order, and you find 
 yourselves now and then looking forward into your 
 own vacant place, and wondering who will be sitting 
 at your desk and doing your work. You have se- 
 cured a few feet of ground in God's acre, perhaps the 
 only real estate left of acres that have passed away. 
 It will not be long now. The world passeth away. 
 
 Well, all that sounds sadly enough, but I know not 
 after all if we need grow sad over it. If the world is 
 all we have, and if our all is passing away with the 
 world, it is sad enough, surely. But there was a good 
 deal more than a jest in the reply which a well known 
 man of letters made to a friend, who said : '^ They say 
 that the world is coming to an end within so many 
 years." ''Well," replied the other, "let it come to an 
 end. We can get on very well without it." That is 
 the very point. Can we do very well without it ? 
 
 We come back again to our text. There is such a 
 thing as eternal abiding, independently of the world. 
 Abiding forever is not affected by the fact that the 
 world passeth away. It passeth, but he that doeth 
 the will of God abideth, and that forever. There is 
 the divine law of permanency. It resides in doing 
 the will of God. 
 
 And that phrase, doing the will of God, carries 
 with it, as the inevitable condition of abiding forever, 
 
366 Faith and Character, 
 
 the truth of subjugation. Permanency here, so far as 
 anything can be permanent here, and eternal life, 
 come through a man's doing another will than his 
 own, and consequently through the subjugation of 
 his own will. Subjugation. You know the word, 
 coming and being under a yoke ; and that, to not a 
 few minds, seems a strange preparation for such 
 glory and triumph as are implied in the words '* abid- 
 ing forever." Many a man will be tempted to say: 
 **Why, such subjugation will wreck my manhood at 
 the outset ; and then farewell to anything permanent 
 or valuable in my life." 
 
 And yet subjugation is not necessarily ruin. In 
 certain spheres with which you are quite familiar it 
 is the indispensable condition of value and power. 
 
 For instance, there is a mass of quartz contain- 
 ing gold. The question is not whether it is beauti- 
 ful, everybody acknowledges that. Not whether it 
 is precious ; it has gold in it ; but whether, as it 
 stands, it is the best it is capable of being. The 
 master says no. It is of no use in its present state 
 but to be put into a cabinet to be looked at. There 
 is value in it, but not in its present shape. The first 
 condition of developing that value is subjugation. 
 The quartz, if it could reason about the matter, 
 might say, '* My crystals are beautiful. I am flecked 
 with precious gold. I am good enough as I am ; and 
 for me to go into the crusher is simply to ruin me." 
 And yet, into the crusher it must go. The beautiful 
 crystals must be broken all to pieces. The crusher 
 is not enough. The fire comes next. More subjuga- 
 
The Eternity of Godly Character, 367 
 
 tion ; it is run into a mould and shaped according to 
 the master's will. The ingot goes to the mint. Still 
 more subjugation. It is cut in pieces. It is mould- 
 ed into circular disks ; and at last, down comes the 
 die of the coining press upon each piece, and the 
 gold, so different from what it was when buried in 
 the quartz, is not ruined. For the first time it is a 
 power. The sign of a great state is upon it. It rep- 
 resents far more than its own actual value. It bears 
 the image of a king or the emblems of a common- 
 wealth. It no longer represents crude nature as it 
 did when it was mixed up with the quartz, but it 
 represents organization, civilization, fleets, armies, 
 sovereignty. From the stamp of the coining press 
 it has received a character^ which you know means a 
 mark. Whatever virtue, or power, or wealth is rep- 
 resented by the state is conveyed into those pieces; 
 and through that character, won only through subju- 
 gation, the gold becomes a permanent element of the 
 w^orld's commerce, a factor in that vast and compli- 
 cated system called finance. 
 
 Now, if you carry the illustration up into man's 
 moral life, you will find it fully borne out. Charac- 
 ter is all that abides, and character comes to man as 
 to money, only through subjugation. When God 
 takes a man in hand, it is that He may make him a 
 partaker of eternal life ; and to this end He must set 
 the stamp of His own character upon him. Hence 
 He tells us by His apostle, that He called His chil- 
 dren *'to be conformed to the image of His Son," to 
 be like Jesus Christ who is *'the brightness of His 
 
368 Faith and Character. 
 
 glory and the express image of His person." And 
 Christ, when he comes to carry out this design of the 
 Father, distinctly invites men to subjugation, to come 
 under the yoke : " Take my yoke upon you and learn 
 of me." His demand goes to the very roots of the 
 man's life : " If any man will be my disciple, let him 
 deny hi mst'//." That means a great deal more than 
 his doing without something that he likes. To deny 
 self is to say that self is not. It is to make self prac- 
 tically inoperative wherever the will of Christ is con- 
 cerned. Let him take up the cross. That is only 
 the figurative expansion of the same thought. The 
 cross is just what its name imports. It is the cross- 
 ing of man's will with God's ; its burden is the strug- 
 gle of man's heart to say, *'Thy will and not mine be 
 done ;" and the coming under that burden is subju- 
 gation. 
 
 So when a man comes into God's hands, asking, 
 ''What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" 
 he goes through much the same process as the gold 
 does. There is a good deal of crushing of the false 
 growths which have crystallized in his life ; a good 
 deal of sifting to get at the disordered, scattered ele- 
 ments of his moral power, so that they may be run 
 into the mould of some definite. purpose ; a good deal 
 of fiery trial before he falls into the lines of duty. 
 But through all this, God's mark comes upon him. 
 The image and superscription of the Great King 
 shines out in him. He acquires a character which is 
 the expression of the will of God and of the order of 
 the kingdom of heaven. 
 
The Eternity of Godly Character. 369 
 
 But subjugation has another side, an active side 
 which we must not overlook because it is expressed 
 in the text. It is service. Not only is man to be 
 subject to God's will, but God's will must be done. 
 To go back to the figure, it is not enough that gold 
 be coined. It must circulate. Shut up those eagles 
 and half-eagles in a safe, and they might as well not 
 have been coined ; they were coined to circulate. 
 And what circulation is to money, service is to char- 
 acter. It is not only its natural consequence, it com- 
 pletes the idea of character. It is its active side. 
 Character without service is character maimed. But 
 you are to remember that service gets its quality from 
 character. Men estimate serv^ice according to a rule 
 of their own. They distinguish between great and 
 small services, and they applaud the great, and care 
 nothing about the small. But it is with Christian 
 service as with coinage. The eagle may, it is true, 
 represent more power than the dime ; but the stamp 
 of the state is on both, and gives a value and dignity 
 to the dime as well as to the eagle. And in Chris- 
 tian service God's mark upon it is the great thing. 
 God's test of service is not whether it is great or 
 small; but whether it is the expression of His spirit 
 and will ; whether it bears His character. A man's 
 service may be fragmentary, all broken up into small 
 change, if I may so speak ; yet if each fragment be 
 stamped with Christ's image, God honors the service 
 none the less. You see that thought very plainly 
 brought out in the parable of the talents. The com- 
 mendation of the servants does not turn on their hav- 
 
370 Faith and Character. 
 
 ing brought interest for five or for two talents. It is 
 given to the character of fidelity stamped upon both 
 services. ''Well done, good and faithful servant." 
 There is that poor widow casting her two mites into 
 the treasury. Wliy has the act come down to us em- 
 balmed with Christ's praise ? Not for the amount she 
 gave, but for the nobility of the impulse behind the 
 gift, the Christlike devotion which made her cast in 
 all her living. There is the woman breaking the ala- 
 baster box of ointment upon Christ's head. A little 
 service it was. A little ointment wasted (or so the 
 disciples thought). A sweet odor lingering for awhile 
 in the house. Was that all ? Why, then, is the per- 
 fume of that ointment still fresh in the courts of the 
 Christian church ? Not for the gift, but for the peni- 
 tent's love to Christ. Our Lord states this principle, 
 that character gives quality to service, in those words 
 in the tenth chapter of Matthew: ''And whosoever 
 shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup 
 of cold water only in the name of a disciple, (because 
 he is Christ's disciple, and out of the impulse of love 
 for Christ,) I say unto you he shall in no wise lose his 
 reward." 
 
 And the men who thus, through subjugation of 
 self, and through service, bear God's mark, are the 
 men who abide. Their works abide. There is some- 
 thing in the permanency of character and of its fruits 
 which foreshadows its eternal abiding. You see it in 
 familiar instances. Take the man or the woman in 
 your own circle of acquaintance wliom you admire 
 and love most, or whose memory you cherish most 
 
The Eternity of Godly Character. 371 
 
 dearly. What is it that you cherish ? It is not their 
 wealth, not their brilliancy, not their learning or ac- 
 complishments, but they stand marked in your mind 
 and memory by their moral traits. The other things 
 are merely circumstances ; these things are wrought 
 up with their personality. These make them ; and it is 
 character and not cirqumstance which you love. 
 When circumstances change and pass away with the 
 rest of the world, these things abide. They are in- 
 dependent of the world ; they are God's sign manual, 
 showing that the man belongs to another and a high- 
 er order of things ; that he has his citizenship in 
 heaven. 
 
 Look back to your school days. The teacher who 
 has left his mark most deeply upon you was not al- 
 ways the most brilliant or the most learned one. It 
 was the best man. He set his stamp below the region 
 of your culture in the best part of your nature ; and 
 even though he may have had the learning of a Ba- 
 con, or the genius of a Milton, it is the man him- 
 self, daily living out God's truth, and radiating God's 
 love, who abides in your memory and in your life by 
 the simple power of character. 
 
 You cannot help seeing, as you read history, how 
 character overtops achievement. There is Abraham, 
 a prince, a warrior, a conqueror, the progenitor of a 
 mighty nation ; and yet it is to none of these that the 
 world pays honor. These are only incidental to the 
 great moral facts of faith and obedience. Abraham 
 represents to the world, not victory, not wealth, not 
 population. All these attached to him, but all these 
 
372 Faith and Character, 
 
 have passed away. He represents character ; and the 
 power of his cliaracter is working as vigorously in the 
 nineteenth century as in the infancy of time. Job was 
 a rich man, and a man of influence ; but who thinks 
 of Job's riches now ? Who does not think of his pa- 
 tience ? Yea, the character which came so triumph- 
 antly out of that fiery trial is a proverb to-day, even 
 upon the lips of scoffers. David was a conqueror, 
 but the interest of his moral history swallows up the 
 interest of his conquests. David represents to the 
 world a divine call, and a moral shipwreck, and a moral 
 retrieval, and the expression of devotion through the 
 Psalms, rather than the victories over Philistia and 
 Moab and Ammon. And Jesus, surely his impress on 
 the world is the impress of character. He rises above 
 all his circumstances. His works and his words take 
 all their meaning from the fact that he does and 
 speaks them. They are immortal because his charac- 
 ter is divine ; and when men receive the impression 
 of Christ, their first, spontaneous utterance is not, 
 "Behold the works or the words," but ''behold the 
 man ! " 
 
 Thus, as far as anything on earth can be said to 
 abide, character abides. As the greatest movements 
 of history are its moral movements, so the men who 
 live in the world's memory and gratitude are those who 
 survive through character and not through achieve- 
 ment ; the men whose subjugation to the will of God 
 has made them forgetful of self, and willing to be 
 broken up in love's service of the world : who have 
 lived not to be ministered unto, but to minister. Yes, 
 
The Eternity of Godly Character, '^']^ 
 
 character abides. You have heard the story of the 
 Egyptian king who employed an architect to build 
 him a lighthouse, and who bade him cut the royal 
 name upon it. But the architect covered the tower 
 with plaster on which the royal cipher stood forth 
 right boldly, while deep into the heart of the granite 
 beneath he cut his own name. And the years passed, 
 and the plaster crumbled, and the king's name van- 
 ished, while the architect's remained. Man's beauty 
 and strength, his gains and his exploits, are graven as 
 in plaster ; and as the generations drop their dews 
 and snows upon them they are gone; but character is 
 written as ''with an iron pen and lead in the rock for 
 ever." It bears God's stamp, and is immortal because 
 God is immortal. Go down the portrait gallery of 
 the world's great ones and draw comparisons for 
 yourselves. Alexander and Paul, the conquests of 
 ambition and the conquests of devotion. Plato and 
 David, the inspiration of culture and the inspiration 
 of heaven. Napoleon the man of destiny and Luther 
 the man of faith. Whose empire is the larger and the 
 mightier ? Which gives the greater promise of per- 
 manence ? Hands unclasp, and loving eyes close to 
 open no more, but the love which is the fulfilling of 
 the law does not pass away. The martyr is crucified, 
 but the truth lives on and leavens the world. The 
 Christian dies, but his works follow him. And every- 
 thing, great or small, which bears this mark of doing 
 God's will, takes on, through this, an eternal nature. 
 Things which the great world disregards, little ser- 
 vices, kind words, patient waitings, hidden sacrifices, 
 
374 Faith and Character. 
 
 none perish. Little dead born plans over which 
 God's children weep because they had meant them, 
 in good faith, as offerings to Christ, he gathers up 
 as they drop from their nerveless grasp, and hides 
 them in his bosom, and some day they shall come 
 back with the hundred-fold interest of heaven. 
 
 So we begin to more than suspect that the perma- 
 nency of character here is but the foreshadowing of 
 a deeper, grander fact, namely, that godlike character 
 is immortal in its essence. God's word asserts it. '* He 
 that doeth the will of God abideth forever." Char- 
 acter, inspired by God, won through subjugation to 
 His will, and through doing His will, shall share His 
 eternity. Well may we say, '^ Let the world pass, and 
 the lusts thereof, if this may be our lot." Well may 
 we say, *' Let the cross press ever so heavily, let the 
 discipline be ever so severe, let the self-surrender be 
 complete, if we may abide forever w4th God." Eter- 
 nity ! a conception after which the thought pants on 
 in vain through ages and cycles, and comes back 
 baffled and exhausted ; eternity with God's face un- 
 veiled, the springs of his wisdom forever open, with 
 thought unshackled by sense, love untainted with 
 passion, surrounded by the holy of all ages, and se- 
 cure in the certainty of endless rest, this is the inher- 
 itance of character. 
 
 I come back, in conclusion, to the thought with 
 which I began. You are seeking the permanent, the 
 abiding, all of you. You want to get your feet upon 
 something solid. What you want in your life, more 
 than anything else, is the sense of fixedness. I ask 
 
TJie Ete7'nity of Godly Character. 375 
 
 you, then, where are you seeking this ? On what 
 kind of a foundation are you building, and what are 
 you building ? Is it reputation, fortune, a palace of 
 art, a literary retreat ; and think you that when your 
 structure is finished you shall go in and dwell there 
 in unbroken peace, on foundations that never shall 
 rock nor tremble beneath you ? You build without 
 the best warrant of all if this be so. God does not 
 say these things shall abide. Nay, you have but to 
 open your eyes, and see how the vast train of such 
 builders, with their buildings, have passed away. 
 And the world is passing away still. Oh, try and 
 face eternity for a moment ; try and feel the fact 
 that to-morrow, or to-day it may be, you may quietly 
 step across the line which bounds this earthly scene, 
 and find yourself where all that is temporary and 
 perishable has passed away like a dream, and noth- 
 ing remains but what is real and eternal ; and as 
 you stand in thought upon that awful threshold, ask 
 yourself, "What is there real about me ? What have 
 I, what am I that will stand the touch of eternity ? 
 The world will dwindle as you stand there. The in- 
 terests which call out so much of your zeal and riv- 
 alry and labor will shrivel, and your own heart will 
 tell you that God speaks truth when He says that he, 
 and only he, who doeth the will of God abideth for- 
 ever. Have you begun this work of building char- 
 acter ? Have you put yourself under God's hands to 
 be moulded into the image of Christ ? Is your Avill 
 shrinking from subjugation to Christ's yoke ? Is 
 your reason revolting from the demand of faith ? I 
 
37^ Faith and Character. 
 
 can only say that if you will not accept these condi- 
 tions I have no promise of immortality for you. I 
 know of nothing but faith in Jesus Christ, and sub- 
 jection to his will and word, which will develop god- 
 like character ; and I know of nothing but such 
 character which has any promise of abiding for- 
 ever. It is well that in this busy, distracting world, 
 you should have some established connection with 
 eternity. You know how in the Indian Ocean the 
 pearl-diver, with weights tied to him to make him 
 sink, plunges into the deep, and searches for the 
 pearls on the bottom, yet having always a cord con- 
 necting with the surface by which he can ascend. 
 My brethren, we are heavily weighted here. We are 
 sunk deep in the eddies of business and of study ; we 
 are seeking treasure of one kind and another. Are 
 we linked to eternity ? Is there something which, in 
 all the striving and whirl of our life, keeps us in con- 
 tact with heaven and eternal life ? This is the great 
 thing after all. The world is passing away. We 
 shall not be long in this whirlpool. What then? 
 Shall we abide forever } 
 
Gates Into ^Psalm-Country 
 
 BY 
 
 Rev. MARVIN R. VINCENT, D.D. 
 
 One Volume, 12mo, ------ $1.50, 
 
 CRITICAL NOTICES. 
 
 " The book may be cordially recommended to the perusal of young 
 men especially, who will find in it the soundest views of life and the most 
 elevated religious conceptions, enforced with equal kindness, eloquence, 
 and power." — jVew York Tribune. 
 
 "As meditations upon that portion of Scripture designed for popular 
 rather than critical reading, they are delightful. The thought is warm and 
 earnest, and, like the Psalms themselves, these studies suggested by them 
 deal with the common experiences of life." — The Churchman. 
 
 " In the execution of his design, Dr. Vincent has shown rare skill and 
 ability. The work seems to us to be a model of its kind — scholarly, thought- 
 ful, enriched but not encumbered by the results of the best learning, devout 
 and cheerful in spirit, practical, sensible, and like the Psalms themselves, 
 full of Christ and the Gospel. The style is singularly clear, racy, and 
 incisive." — A^ew York Evangelist. 
 
 " They are rich in spiritual counsel, graceful in style, happy in thought 
 and illustration. The book is meant for the average Bible-reader, rather 
 than for the scholar, and any devout Christian loving the Bible, will find in 
 it an abundance of interesting and suggestive thought." — Boston Watchman. 
 
 " The treatment is deeply spiritual, the tone affectionate and earnest, 
 and the style clear, direct, and often picturesque ; and we are sure that 
 many a Christian will find in the volume both instruction and solace, and 
 varying helps for varying times of need." — Boston Congregationalist. 
 
 "They who thoughtfully read these pages find themselves not only 
 illummed and refreshed by the immediate subject, but stimulated to make 
 the Psalter fruitful under their own meditative study." 
 
 — New York Christian Intelligencer. 
 
 " Like the different parts of a beautiful garden, or the successive 
 strains of sweet music, these discourses charm the soul and fill it with 
 rupturous emotions. They are at the same time most helpful in the way 
 of right V\\'\wg." —Lutheran Quarterly. 
 
 "Christians of every name will find strength and comfort in these 
 essays, which are as sweet as they are simple, and as solid as they are 
 unpretentious."— 7%^ Living Church. 
 
 *^^ For sale by all booksellers, or mill be sent, prepaid, upon receipt of price 
 by 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 
 
 Nos, 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 
 
Old Faiths in New Light 
 
 NEWMAN SMYTH, 
 
 Author of •* The Religions Feeling.'*^ 
 
 One Volume, 12mo, cloth, - _ _ $1.50. 
 
 This work aims to meet a growing need by gathering materials of 
 faith which have been quarried by many specialists in their own depart- 
 ments of Biblical study and scientific research, and by endeavoring to 
 put these results of recent scholarship together according to one leading 
 idea in a modern construction of old faith Mr. Smyth's book is remark- 
 able no less for its learning and wide acquaintance with prevailing modes 
 of thought, than for its fairness and judicial spirit. 
 
 CRITICAL. NOTICES. 
 
 "The author is logical and therefore clear. He also is master of a singularly 
 attractive literary style. Pew writers, whose books come under our eye, succeed in 
 treating metaphysical and philosophical themes in a manner at once so forcible and so 
 interesting. We speak strongly about this book, because we think it exceptionally 
 valuable. It is just such a book as ought to be in the hands of all intelligent men and 
 women who have received an education sufficient to enable them to read intelligently 
 about such subjects as are discussed herein, and the number of such persons is very 
 nuich larger than some people think." — Congregationalist, 
 
 " We have before had occasi<m to notice the force and elegance of this writer, and 
 his new book shows scholarship even more advanced. * * * When we say. with 
 some knowledge of how much is undertaken by the saying, that there is probably no book 
 of moderate compass which combines in greater degree clearness of style with profundity 
 of subject and ot reasoning, we fulfil simple 'duty to an author whose success is all the 
 more marked and gratifying from the multitude of kindred attempts with which we have 
 been flooded from all sorts of pens." — Presbyterian. 
 
 "The book impresses us as clear, cogent and helpful, as vigorous in style as it is 
 honest in purpose, and calculated to render valuable service in showing that religion and 
 science are not antagonists but allies, and that both lead up toward the one God. We 
 fancy that a good many readers of this volume will entertain toward the author a feeling 
 of sincere personal gratitude." — Boston Journal. 
 
 " On the whole, we do not know of a book which may better be commended to 
 thoughtful persons whose minds have been unsettled by objections of modern thought. 
 It will be found a wholesome work for every minister in the land to read." 
 
 — Examiner and Chronicle. 
 
 " It is a long time since we have met with an abler or fresher theological treatise 
 than Olii Faiths in New Light, hy Newman Smyth, an author who in his work on 
 "The Religious P'eeling " has already shown ability as an expounder of Christian 
 doctrine. " — Inde/>endent. 
 
 *^* For sale by all booksellers, or sent JH>stpaid., upon receipt of Price, 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 
 
 Nos. 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 
 
The 
 
 Conflict of Christianity 
 
 WITH HEATHENISM. 
 
 By DR. GERHARD UHLHORN. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 PROF. EGBERT C. SMYTH and REV. C. J. H. ROPES. 
 
 One Volume, Crown 8vo, $2.50. 
 
 This volume describes with extraordinary vividness and spirit the 
 religious and moral condition of the Pagan world, the rise and spread 
 of Christianity, its conflict with heathenism, and its final victory. There 
 is no work that portrays the heroic age of the ancient church with equal" 
 spirit, elegance, and incisive power. The author has made thorough and 
 independent study both of the early Christian literature and also of the 
 contemporary records of classic heathenism. 
 
 CRITICAL. NOTICES. 
 
 *' It is easy to see why this volume is so highly esteemed. It is 
 systematic, thorough, and concise. But its power is in the wide mental 
 vision and well-balanced imagination of the author, which enable him to 
 reconstruct the scenes of ancient history. An exceptional clearness and 
 force mark his style." — Boston Advertiser. 
 
 " One might read many books without obtaining more than a fraction 
 of the profitable information here conveyed ; and he might search a long 
 time before finding one which would so thoroughly fix his attention and 
 command his interest." — PAi7. S. S. Times. 
 
 "Dr. Uhlhorn has described the great conflict with the power of a 
 master. His style is strong and attractive, his descriptions vivid and 
 graphic, his illustrations highly colored, and his presentation of the subject 
 earnest and effective." — Providence Journal. 
 
 "The work is marked for its broad humanitarian views, its learning, 
 and the wide discretion in selecting from the great field the points of 
 deepest interest." — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 
 
 " This is one of those clear, strong, thorough-going books which are 
 a scholar's delight."— //art/ord Religious Herald. 
 
 *^* For sale by all booksellers, or sent post-paid upon receipt of 
 price^ by 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 
 
 Nos. 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 
 
ffii^ anh llaHonalism. 
 
 By Prof. GEORGE P. FISHER, D.D.. 
 Author of *' The Beginnings of Christianity, " The Reformation," Etc. 
 
 One Volume, 12mo, Clolh, $1.25. 
 
 *' This valuable and timely volume discusses ably, trenchantly and 
 decisively the subjects of which it treats. It contains within small limits 
 a large amount of information and unanswerable reasoning." — PresbyUrian 
 Banner. 
 
 ** The book is valuable as a discussion of the mysteries of faith and 
 the characteristics of rationalism by one of the clearest writers and 
 thinkers. ' ' — Washington Post. 
 
 "The author deals with many of the questions of the day, and does 
 so with a freshness and completeness quite admirable and attractive." 
 •^-Presbyterian. 
 
 *• This singularly clear and catholic-spirited essay will command the 
 attention of the theological world, for it is a searching inquiry into the 
 very substance of Christian belief." — Hartford Courant. 
 
 *' This little volume may be regarded as virtually a primer of modem 
 religious thought, which contains within its condensed pa.2;es rich materials 
 that are not easily gathered from the great volumes of our theological 
 authors. Alike in learning, style and power of descrimination, it is honor- 
 able to the author and to his university, which does not urge the claims 
 of science by slighting the worth of faith or philosophy." — N. Y. Times. 
 
 "Topics of profound interest to the studious inquirer after truth are 
 discussed by the author with his characteristic breadth of view, catholicity 
 of judgment, affluence of learning, felicity of illustration, and force of 
 reasoning. . . . His singular candor disarms the prepossessions of his 
 opponents. ... In these days of pretentious, shallow and garrulous 
 scholarship, his learning is as noticeable for its solidity as for its compass." 
 ^N.Y. Tribune. 
 
 *0* The above book for sale by all booksellers, or ivill be sent, />re^aid, uficM 
 receipt of price ^ by 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 
 
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